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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