from the WaPo, link requires registration, key excerpt below. Nice to see Powell speaking out. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58666-2004Mar14.html -- BETHLEHEM, Pa., March 14 -- Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) ran into some tough questioning Sunday -- from, among others, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell -- about his assertion last week that he had met with foreign leaders who support his candidacy over President Bush. Powell, who rarely makes overtly partisan comments, challenged Kerry to name one such official. "I don't know what foreign leaders Senator Kerry is talking about," Powell said on "Fox News Sunday." "It's an easy charge, an easy assertion to make. But if he feels it is that important an assertion to make, he ought to list some names. If he can't list names, then perhaps he should find something else to talk about."
good question. he seems to have no ideas, so he's forced to traffic in unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.
I gotta agree that this was a really boneheaded move by Kerry. I can believe that privately foreign leaders would rather have Kerry in charge than GW Bush and they might've even said that to him. The only problem is that for Kerry to name names would put those leaders in a terrible position since at the mininimum they have to work with the current Admin till Jan 21st next year. Kerry should've known if he brought it up it would become an issue what leaders he talked to so he either ends up betraying their trust by naming them or look foolish by not. He should've just kept it to himself. Anyway saying such and such foreign leader prefers him sounds too much like foreign interference in our election.
What is the point of this thread? Foreigners don't like Bush. THat includes foreign leaders. Everybody knows this already. Move it along basso, you must have something better, this was a rather lifeless attempt, even for you.
No, but I would think the new guy does... __________________ Kerry reaches out to a world where support for Bush is ebbing away Challenger claims president's 'allies' have told him they are cheering him on Ewen MacAskill, and Luke Harding in Berlin Wednesday March 10, 2004 The Guardian Shortly before Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, flew to Washington for talks with George Bush last month, a journalist asked if he was going to say goodbye to the president ahead of the US elections in November. Mr Schröder's adviser grinned broadly before composing his face into a frown. "I won't speculate on that," he said. Although Mr Schröder deliberately avoided the Democratic candidate, John Kerry, during his two-day trip to the US, there is little doubt that a Kerry victory would provoke rejoicing inside Germany's government, as it would in many other parts of Europe, as well as Asia, Africa and Latin America. This week Mr Kerry claimed that foreign leaders had told him they could not publicly offer him their support but added: "You've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy." Hostility towards a second Bush term is generally assumed to be widespread throughout the world because of the Iraq war, the concept of pre-emptive strikes and bullying of small countries. On issues from the Kyoto agreement and the international criminal court to antipathy towards the UN, President Bush has alienated countries Washington would normally classify as allies. Distress over Mr Bush's foreign policy is not confined to the world beyond the US. According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll yesterday, 57% of Americans want their next president to steer the country away from the course set by the current leader. Asked how much support Mr Bush had worldwide, Dana Allin, senior fellow for transatlantic affairs at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, said: "Not a lot. There is a conventional wisdom about US elections for foreign policy: that the incumbent is always preferred because of [established] relations and predictability. This is an election where that pattern is broken. There is a perception, for better or worse, that there has been a departure from the tradition of American foreign policy." It is difficult to assess the level of opposition to Mr Bush. When he put together a "coalition" for the war against Iraq last year he gathered just 43 countries - and it was an odd collection that included countries such as Azerbaijan, Eritrea and Uzbekistan, not normally in the forefront of international diplomacy. Tom Ridge, the US homeland security secretary, told diplomats and academics gathered in Singapore yesterday that 70 countries had joined an informal alliance against terrorism. But this is no evidence of support for Mr Bush; there are leaders who will think it prudent to back the world's sole superpower though privately they would welcome a Kerry presidency. Mr Schröder's spokesman last night denied he was one of the "foreign leaders" who had sent a secret message of support to Mr Kerry. Victor Bulmer-Thomas, director of Royal Institute for International Affairs, in London, said yesterday he doubted if any head of government had been unwise enough to say in private to Mr Kerry that they wanted him to win and thought it more likely that the "foreign leaders" to whom the Democratic candidate referred to were foreign secretaries or heads of parliamentary delegations. He said there was a difference between how a second Bush presidency was perceived by the "masses" - who wanted shot of Mr Bush in the belief there would be a return to a golden age - and the elite - who were not convinced there ever had been a golden age and leaned towards "better the devil you know". Unsurprisingly, this does not seem to be the view in France. "It's clear that Bush is widely disliked in France, even by the right," said Guillaume Parmentier of the France-America Centre. "The whole country and the government would rejoice if he lost. But although the tone of a Kerry administration would certainly be different, many difficulties would remain." A French foreign ministry official, who asked not to be identified, concurred: "Things might feel better, but they might not be better." Spain's prime minister, José María Aznar, and Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, are unequivocal in their support of Mr Bush, as are many eastern European countries and former Soviet republics. But opinion in Spain, as in Britain, is divided. The Spanish opposition leader in the general election this Sunday, the socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, said yesterday: "I think Kerry will win. I want Kerry to win." The position of Tony Blair and of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is ambiguous. In the Middle East there is overwhelming antipathy for a second Bush term. The Egyptian political columnist Salama Ahmad Salama said in Cairo yesterday: "The mood in Egypt is that nobody wants Bush any more. He has built a big reservoir of suspicion and doubt, and a bit of hate. I don't think anybody in the Middle East will welcome his staying." Israel has benefited from the Bush presidency but it would probably have few problems in embracing Mr Kerry, whose emotional article expressing support for the country has been widely circulated. Members of the Iraqi governing council have mixed feelings, even though the US president's war opened the way for them. One said he was unimpressed with the handling of postwar Iraq but would not welcome an abrupt change of personnel, let alone of policy. A source in the Iraqi foreign ministry said: "We are relaxed about the idea of a Kerry presidency, provided he doesn't sell us down the river in order to gain votes." Most Pakistanis claim to despise Mr Bush for what they consider America's unjustified attack on Iraq. But regime change in the White House is probably the last thing President Pervez Musharraf would really want. "The government would like Bush to win," said Tahir Mirza, editor of the Dawn, a leading daily paper. "We've always been pro-Republican - we think the Republicans are much more sympathetic to Pakistan. And, in the present case, they've given us a lot of money."
yet more reasons to vote for W. when autocratic regimes like egypts start to root for Kerry, it's time tovote W.
Islam Karimov, House of Saud, blah blah blah. You're like TJ minus the pictures. a tool, and not even an amusing one.
Tell ya what! As soon as the administration comes clean with the name of the felon in the white house, Kerry can divulge the "foreign leaders." Deal?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/06/20030603-1.html Yeah, I can see why they want Kerry, Bush has really played hardball with these despots! How many monthis is it going to take you two to get off the "He must suck because people don't dislike him" tip? It's quite amusing for me, I must say....
Kerry can't name names as he was just blowing smoke up our arses... But, for the sake of argument, let's say he did get some votes of confidence from abroad, then I would still expect him to not say anything... The pats on the back he received were probably some low level govt. agency people with no political influence what so ever...There is great dislike for GWB abroad due to his decisions not being status quo, which is ok with me...
This is such a red herring. There's probably not a single person in the world who knows better than Powell that Bush is disliked abroad. And there's probably not another person who knows better than Powell that Kerry can't name names. The suggestion that there aren't foreign leaders who are itching to be rid of Bush is insane. Internationally, he is the least liked US president in modern times.
I liked Powell's Libya comments as well. There's so much that the Bush Admin. has done wrong, I have no idea why Kerry makes ridiculous statements on the few things they've done right. WALLACE: Senator Kerry has also suggested that the Bush administration held up the agreement with Libya for it to give up its nuclear weapons program to help in the president's reelection. This is what Senator Kerry had to say, and you can see it on the screen: "Gadhafi's been trying to get back into the mainstream for several years now. There's evidence that we could've had that deal some time ago." POWELL: It's absurd. I don't know what Senator Kerry's talking about. It's just absurd. That took time to bring that deal together. And I've been following it very, very closely for a number of months. And when finally the United States and the United Kingdom negotiators got a deal with Libya, we acted on that deal and we announced that deal. It was not held up for any campaign or political purpose. WALLACE: You seem offended by it. POWELL: Well, it is offensive because it's a political charge in a political year. And I expect that we will be hearing and seeing many more charges and many more such video clips. But I don't know what basis Senator Kerry is using to make such a statement. I mean, what is his evidence for this, other than an assertion on his part? It's not accurate.
Unfortunately (for the Bush Administration) Powell's credibility is shot after his performance at the UN in the run up to the Iraq war. Otherwise, as a Vietnam veteran and "moderate" he would have been a powerful spokesperson with swing voters during the campaign.
You do if you can't fight the war on terror alone. Which we can't. We can't rebuild afganistan alone, we can't rebuild Iraq alone, we can't ensure our own safety alone. WHy do you think we had to go begging back to the UN with palms out looking for Iraq handouts, just like the "non-producers" you like to rant about? We can't do it on our own.
