He has been to Paris and gone, four hours in the City of Light without so much as a stop in a bistro or a quick tour of the Louvre, rien but a photo op with French President Nicolas Sarkozy standing in the doorway of the Palace Eysee.
“The French love the Americans,” Sarkozy enthused after a private 40-minute meeting with Barack Obama today. “The French have been following him with passion.”
Obama returned the affection by citing Sarkozy as responsible for "Americans calling French Fries French Fries again" and was whisked off to a flight to London without so much a single Pomme Frite.
Showing posts with label French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Show all posts
Friday, July 25, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Musharraf Marches On
A year from now, when Bush is gone, what will President Clinton, McCain or Obama do about our most annoying ally, Pervez Musharraf?
Here he is today, sashaying around Paris with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, pooh-poohing the notion that capturing or killing Osama bin Laden is of any importance in the war on terror and insisting that Pakistan is as stable as a rock.
His 100,000 troops on the Afghan border are not "trying to locate Osama bin Laden and (Ayman-al) Zawahri, frankly," Musharraf tells a conference at the French Institute for International Relations. "They are operating against terrorists, and in the process, if we get them, we will deal with them certainly."
As for the instability that led him to declare a state of emergency only weeks ago, Musharraf is sanguine. "I can assure you that nothing will happen in Pakistan," he says. "We are not a banana republic."
We have heard these songs before and, after years of being euchred out of $100 million by the Pakistani President's shell game without finding out where his nuclear weapons are, even the Bush Administration is catching on.
The State Department's counterterrorism chief is complaining about "gaps in intelligence" about the activities of extremist groups in the tribal regions.
"We don't have enough information about what's going on there. Not on al-Qaeda. Not on foreign fighters. Not on the Taliban," he says.
Our next President's priority will be picking a Secretary of State who will stop buying Musharraf's song and dance and make sure we get what we are paying for in Pakistan.
Here he is today, sashaying around Paris with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, pooh-poohing the notion that capturing or killing Osama bin Laden is of any importance in the war on terror and insisting that Pakistan is as stable as a rock.
His 100,000 troops on the Afghan border are not "trying to locate Osama bin Laden and (Ayman-al) Zawahri, frankly," Musharraf tells a conference at the French Institute for International Relations. "They are operating against terrorists, and in the process, if we get them, we will deal with them certainly."
As for the instability that led him to declare a state of emergency only weeks ago, Musharraf is sanguine. "I can assure you that nothing will happen in Pakistan," he says. "We are not a banana republic."
We have heard these songs before and, after years of being euchred out of $100 million by the Pakistani President's shell game without finding out where his nuclear weapons are, even the Bush Administration is catching on.
The State Department's counterterrorism chief is complaining about "gaps in intelligence" about the activities of extremist groups in the tribal regions.
"We don't have enough information about what's going on there. Not on al-Qaeda. Not on foreign fighters. Not on the Taliban," he says.
Our next President's priority will be picking a Secretary of State who will stop buying Musharraf's song and dance and make sure we get what we are paying for in Pakistan.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)