Under the straightforward and innocuous heading "Trip Statement of the Vice President," the White House disclosed this morning that Vice President Dick Cheney is being dispatched to one more international hot spot — and one very delightful Italian resort.
No word on whether the schedule will still allow the vice president to speak next Monday at the Republican National Convention. But the itinerary calls for him to begin the trip on Tuesday, so that should leave sufficient time for a quick round of politics in St. Paul, Minn., where the GOP is meeting, before heading eastward to ... the Caucasus.
President Bush has tasked Cheney with showing the American flag in Azerbaijan, Georgia and then Ukraine, before completing the journey at an international conference, the Ambrosetti Forum, on the shores of Lake Como, in the Italian lake district not far from Milan.
Plunging publicly into a crisis that has tied the U.S.-Russian relationship in knots just as the Bush administration is coming to an end, Cheney will meet with President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, and President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine, in a clear effort to shore them up with a visible display of U.S. support in the face of Russian military and political pressure.
One of the big questions: To what extent will Cheney wave the blue and white NATO flag — a red flag in Russia's eyes? The Bush administration has been pushing to get Ukraine and Georgia, on Russia's southern border, into NATO, a move that Russia adamantly opposes.
Longtime allies of the vice president have been among those pushing hardest to bring the former Soviet satellites into the Atlantic Alliance fold. And, of course, Cheney isn't known for his soothing words — at least when it comes to national security matters.
His trip will be the third high-level U.S. visit to the region this year, following Bush's stop in Ukraine in March and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit to Georgia earlier this month following the Georgian-Russian clash.
In Italy, Cheney will meet with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, one of Bush's closest allies in Europe.
The Ambrosetti Forum is an annual conference — a miniature, late-summer version of the World Economic Forum that meets each winter in Davos, Switzerland — that aims to bring together world leaders, royalty, financiers and business executives to discuss "intelligence on the world, Europe and Italy."
For the White House announcement, click on Read Full Story below.
Marking the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush is planning several stops Wednesday along the Gulf Coast.
But the tour takes place on the same day that he is planning to speak in Orlando to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, delivering an address that a White House spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, said would focus on terrorism and, to a lesser extent, the conflict in Georgia.
Clearly, White House officials want the focus of the day to be the formal remarks Bush is delivering to the veterans and the message he will be sending to Russia about Georgia.
At the same time, they don't want to suggest that Bush is giving the brush-off to New Orleans and other Gulf Coast regions. We remember, after all, how the president first responded to the storm -- and the nighttime speech he gave in dramatically lighted Jackson Square to make clear that he had gotten the message.
So, in a step that avoids putting out dueling messages, the White House, which rarely lifts the curtain on Bush speeches, let alone does so 24 hours in advance, took the unusual step of distributing this evening a text of the remarks he is planning to give in New Orleans after the Orlando speech to the VFW.
It didn't have much to worry about.
The speech in New Orleans is largely a recitation of the "a-sunnier-day-is-coming" remarks Bush has delivered in the past along the Gulf Coast. Indeed, he says "a brighter day is coming," as he touts progress in restoring education and building housing and proclaims "hopeful signs of progress in efforts to reduce crime."
For the text of the president's prepared remarks, click on Read Full Story...
Vice President Dick Cheney has been one of the key players pushing for a muscular response to Russia in the Georgian crisis. And it was Cheney who this afternoon stopped by the Georgian embassy for two minutes on his way home from the White House to drive home that message in one sentence.
To be precise, he spent two minutes 20 seconds in a foyer -- 75 seconds of which were passed writing a message in a leather-bound remembrance book.
To make certain he wrote the correct message -- this being diplomacy, where every comma (or missing comma) might be parsed -- he copied his words from a blue note card. Four times he put pen to paper in a large hand, three times he paused as he wrote, to consult the card.
"To the people of Georgia" the vice president wrote, omitting punctuation after the salutation and at the end of his message.
He continued: "In this hour of sorrow, I offer the respect, condolences, and solidarity of the United States of America"
He signed it: "Dick Cheney"
He arrived at 4:31 p.m. He spent 20 seconds greeting Ambassador Vasil Sikharulidze and two senior aides; he passed another 45 seconds saying goodbye.
Not much doing in Crawford, according to the official White House schedule, and not much--from the looks of this hungry hummingbird this morning--in the White House Rose Garden either.
After warning Russia that "bullying and intimidation" have no place in 21st century foreign policy, President Bush left the Rose Garden and headed for Crawford and the start of a nearly two-week visit. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled in early Saturday morning.
At 8 a.m. Saturday, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters on the flight to Texas, the president will meet with Rice in Crawford and by video conference with other senior members of his national security team to talk about the crisis in Georgia and Rice's trip there.
Bush is expected to remain at his Texas home through Wednesday, Aug. 27--with one day set for travel. On Wednesday, Aug. 20 he will speak to the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, in Orlando, and then mark the three years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. He'll visit New Orleans and make a to-be-determined stop somewhere in Mississippi before returning later Wednesday to Texas.
For the White House schedule of the president's activities, click on Read Full Story...
It is one of the projects possibly put in jeopardy by the turmoil in the Caucasus -- and by one measure one of the closest to the troubled region -- but it is nowhere on Earth.
Because the U.S. space shuttles are scheduled to be retired in 2010 and the replacement craft won't be ready until 2015, the international space station, orbiting roughly 150 miles above Earth, will rely in coming years to a large extent on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft for crew transport.
But to make the Soyuz available, NASA must negotiate a new contract with Russian officials.
The tensions between Moscow and Washington of the past week, however, have put a variety of projects in question.
The Washington Post reports today that "NASA's ability to send its astronauts to the $100 billion international space station is in danger of becoming a costly casualty of the Russian-Georgian war."
How so?
A 2000 law prohibits the U.S. government from signing contracts with nations that help Iran and North Korea with their nuclear programs -- which, the Post notes, Russia has done.
So, before NASA could finalize an agreement to use the Soyuz to reach the space station, Congress must pass a waiver of the 2000 legislation.
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said:
In an election year, it was going to be very difficult to get that waiver to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to an increasingly aggressive Russia, where the prime minister is acting more and more like czar. Now, I'd say it's almost impossible.
President Bush delivered yet one more tough warning to Russia today over the crisis in Georgia: "Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century."
He spoke in the Rose Garden in a hastily-announced appearance just before heading off on what is scheduled to be a two-week holiday at his home in Crawford, Texas.
With little leverage available to him — and only modest steps to match his angry words — Bush has taken to the White House bully pulpit as a means of trying to exert pressure on the Kremlin.
The tensions in the Caucasus flared into war eight days ago between Georgia and Russia, which has backed rebels in the breakaway South Ossetia region of Georgia. Bush was in Beijing at the time, attending the opening days of the Summer Olympics.
Since he returned to Washington on Monday, he has met several times with national security officials, dispatched U.S. military forces to Georgia to carry humanitarian assistance and sent Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region.
But most visibly, he has made three public statements — all in the Rose Garden — to deliver no-nonsense messages to Moscow, and demonstrate a very public stance of opposition to the Russian invasion. And he postponed by one day his departure for Texas.
The situation has put Bush in the position at the end of his presidency — marked for the past five years by the U.S. war in Iraq — of conducting an angry face-off with Russia over its invasion of a country on its border.
"With its action in recent days, Russia has damaged its credibility and its relations with the nations of the free world," the president said.
In his statement, he sent this message to Russia:
A contentions relationship with Russia is not in America's interest. And a contentious relationship with America is not in Russia's interest.
Seeking to explain the rationale for the U.S. support of Georgia, the president said Georgia has a democratically elected government, its "sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected," it has sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan in support of the U.S. mission, and it has "sought to join the free institutions of the West."
"Georgia has become a courageous democracy," Bush said, adding later: "The people of Georgia have cast their lot with the free world, and we will not cast them aside."
For the White House transcript of the president's remarks, click Read Full Story below ...
The question of who lost Georgia has been generating comment and debate almost since the moment the crisis flared a week ago.
Misha Glenny, a British journalist writing in the Globe and Mail of Toronto, has pointed the finger at Vice President Dick Cheney-- or at least "Cheney's people" -- working with "considerable support from Israeli weapons manufacturers and military trainers."
His reasoning goes like this: Influenced by "an energetic neo-con lobby in Washington" with the Israeli support, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and company believed "the farcical proposition that Georgia's armed forces could take on [Russia's] military might" and win.
"So," he writes, "the Russians set a trap, and prodded by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's people, Georgia walked right in."
The argument, of course, is open to challenge by the neoconservative faction. And a key figure among neocons, Richard Perle, responding earlier this week to a question from Countdown to Crawford, said President Bush, in facing the Russians, may know how Jimmy Carter felt in 1979 when the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
So much for the past.
As for the future, Glenny suggests, for the Bush administration and John McCain's presidential campaign, Russia's success in Georgia is not a total loss.
Noting that Cheney produced the toughest response in the administration, saying Russia's invasion could not go "unanswered," he said:
Mr. Cheney has been spoiling for a fight with the Russians for a couple of years, and he and his allies have seized upon Georgia's and Ukraine's stated aims to join NATO as a way of riling Moscow. By cranking up the dispute with Russia over NATO, Mr. Cheney is also shifting the political debate in the United States away from the state of the economy and toward the issue of national security.
And if the presidential election hinges on national security, Glenny observes, "John McCain has to be the favorite."
So, he asks: "Who set the trap in Georgia? Mr. [Vladimir] Putin and his thuggish security service pals or Mr. Cheney and his equally unflappable neo-con friends?"
The bottom line question, then, might not be who is responsible for losing Georgia, but, rather, has the loss of Georgia been John McCain's gain?
"It sounds diabolical," writes our former Los Angeles Times colleague Robert Scheer in a post on Truthout.com, but making the case, he notes: "That may be the most accurate way to assess the designs of the McCain campaign in matters of war and peace."
-- James Gerstenzang
Photos: President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Credit: Evan Vucci / Associated Press; John McCain. Credit: Bill Pugliano / Getty Images
When the August crisis began, the president was focused on sports. The secretary of State was on vacation. The task of dealing with the problem fell to a friend of the president.
It sounds like the foreign policy equivalent of Hurricane Katrina, but it is the crisis in Georgia.
President Bush was in Beijing, paying heed to the Summer Olympic Games, although he was talking on the side with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on summer holiday. The diplomatic effort fell first and foremost to French President Nicholas Sarkozy, on behalf of the European Union.
The National Security Network, a centrist foreign policy think tank, made the analogy today to the administration's response three years ago to the devastating Gulf Coast hurricane, and in an added dig, called Sarkozy's mission "outsourced shuttle diplomacy."
President Bush told Russia today it must honor its promise to end the crisis in Georgia, and that Moscow's continued military operations there were putting at risk Russia's aspirations for greater cooperation with the West.
He said he was dispatching Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Paris, to confer with French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who is playing a central role in trying to mediate an end to the crisis over South Ossetia, and then to Tblisi, the capital of Georgia.
And, he said the United States was sending humanitarian supplies to Georgia, and he warned Russia not to interfere with their delivery. He said Russia must respect Georgian sovereignty.
The president's statement was his second public declaration in three days about the turmoil in Georgia. The fighting has put the administration in a difficult position: It is finding it has little leverage over Russia, while at the same time it has encouraged democracy in Georgia and has pushed for the admission of the former Soviet Republic into NATO.
The bind in which Bush finds himself as he seeks to confront Russia without edging closer to a direct role for U.S. forces other than in providing humanitarian aid is reflected in the gingerly way in which the administration has approached the crisis.
Before Bush spoke to reporters in the Rose Garden, he met with his national security advisors. Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates emerged from the Oval Office with the president just before he spoke, and returned immediately there with him after the roughly three-minute statement.
But none took questions from reporters--a reflection of the administration's efforts to speak with extra care and avoid statements that could inflame the situation, while also appearing firm. Indeed, for the most part the senior-most administration officials have, thus far, avoided responding to questions about the crisis since it began last week with the confrontation between Russian and Georgian troops in the breakaway region of South Ossetia.
Standing at the edge of the garden, Bush said he was concerned that despite Russian promises to end the fighting in the disputed region of the Caucusus, he was still receiving reports that suggested otherwise.
He said Russian units had taken up positions that could threaten Tbilisi, and Russian naval and other forces were attacking Georgian ships, and blocking a key port.
For the White House transcript of the president's remarks, click on Read Full Story...
A blogger for Asia Times Online, a Hong Kong-based Internet site of news "from an Asian perspective," is suggesting today that the United States should elect Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as its next POTUS.
After all, the author reasons, if Putin had been president for the last eight years instead of George W. Bush, "Would Iran try to build a nuclear bomb? Would Pakistan provide covert aid to al-Qaeda? Would Hugo Chavez train terrorists in Venezuela? Would leftover nationalities with delusions of grandeur provoke the great powers? Just ask Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili, who now wishes he never tried to put his 4 million countrymen into strategic play."
Asia Times Online publishes in English and Chinese. It claims a global audience. As for the blogpost's author, he is identified only as Spengler. A search of the website indicates that Spengler is a nom de plume taken from the German novelist Oswald Spengler, who wrote in a 1931 novel that "optimism is cowardice." If pessimism is his game, Spengler is very funny at it.
In May, he wrote a piece suggesting that Israel is "the world's happiest country" because of statistics showing that Israel has the widest national gap between fertility and suicide rates.
Now Spengler, who in some posts calls himself "a tragedian," suggests that Putin's "swift and decisive action in Georgia reflects precisely the sort of decisiveness that America requires."
James Gerstenzang and Johanna Neuman are reporters in The Times' Washington bureau. Between the two of them, they have covered the White House, diplomacy, military affairs, the environment, international economics, trade and Congress. They have both spent time in Crawford, Texas.
