MORE FORESTS LESS BUSH!
Matthew X
profrv at nex.net.au
Fri May 14 11:10:25 PDT 1999
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=02/08/24/0873054
Americans losing faith in Bush on Iraq
Matthew Engel
Saturday August 24, 2002
The Guardian
President George Bush found himself dealing with an unaccustomed degree of
dissent yesterday with the publication of a poll showing growing opposition
to an invasion of Iraq and a near-riot outside the hotel in Oregon where he
was speaking.
The poll results, showing a bare majority of Americans in favour of using
ground troops to attack Iraq, were published after the Portland police used
pepper spray to break up a demonstration outside the site of a Republican
party fundraising rally.
About 500 protesters were ordered to move after they pushed down a
barricade. Riot police moved in, using the aerosol sprays and pushing the
protesters with batons.
The protest, a rarity on this scale in American cities in the past 20
years, was held after Mr Bush announced his new plan to loosen controls on
logging in national forests.
The demonstrators were protesting against this policy and the plan to
invade Iraq. Some carried placards saying "Drop Bush, Not Bombs". There
were five arrests.
Electorally, Oregon is one of the most closely contested states in the
country, but Portland is a famously liberal city with a strong contingent
of activists and ageing hippies - Mr Bush's father used to refer to it,
oddly, as "Little Beirut" - and the demonstration does not necessarily
signal a return to more combative times in more typical American cities.
None the less, yesterday's events were the most visible sign of angry
dissent in the US since the initial post-September 11 activism on some
campuses was drowned by the tidal wave of patriotism.
The poll, published in USA Today, showed 53% of Americans answering yes to
the question "Should ground troops be sent to the Persian Gulf to remove
Saddam Hussein from power? and 41% against.
This contrasts with the majority of 61-31 when the question was asked two
months ago and 74-20 in November.
Some analysts believe this is still provides a satisfactory base on which
to swing support behind the president, as is traditional when war actually
breaks out.
The poll also showed that 94% believe that President Saddam either has
weapons of mass destruction or is developing them, 86% believe he is
supporting terrorist groups intending to attack the US, and 53% believe he
was involved in the September 11 attacks.
The president's own popularity rating is now 65%, still strong but no
longer sensational.
But there are growing signs of White House frustration with its inability
to take command of the Iraq argument. The president's normally
imperturbable spokesman, Ari Fleischer, has attacked reporters for being
obsessed with the subject in their coverage of Mr Bush's meeting with his
defence team in Texas on Wednesday.
"It reached an absurd point of self-inflicted silliness that goes beyond
the usual August hype," he said. "There have been meetings about Iraq in
the past, there will be meetings about Iraq in the future." This one, he
said, was not such a meeting, "and the press didn't care".
He added: "The president's opinion is the press looks silly."
This sort of attack suggests that Mr Fleischer's own iron grip on
Washington news management is beginning to falter. Given the conflicting
signals about Iraq coming from the administration, his job is certainly
getting harder, and his line has to jostle increasingly with contrary voices.
The latest comes from Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton's secretary of
state, who told the News Hour programme that Iraq was "not a direct threat
to the United States" and that sanctions were effectively containing
President Saddam.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,779999,00.html
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