Vacation? What vacation? That's the White House message

 

One way or another, every presidential administration must face it once a year: August.

Washington quiets down. Congress leaves town. The president goes on vacation. He just can't quite let it look that way.

August, after all, is the month of Saddam Hussein's assault on Kuwait in 1990, Katrina's assault on the Gulf Coast in 2005, and, now, depending on whether you are in Sochi or Crawford, Georgia's assault on South Ossetia or Russia's assault on Georgia.

It was in August from a Kennebunkport, Maine, golf course that President Bush memorably delivered --after a suicide bomb attack in Israel--a nearly-one-breath-no-nonsense message:

"I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers thank you now watch this drive."

That  gaffe was one of the few slip-ups in a concerted White House effort to make the point that the president is never fully on vacation. Never mind what Mike Allen, writing in the Washington Post in 2002, called "golf-cart diplomacy."

Now, with Bush's ratings hovering around 30% month after month, it certainly wouldn't do to suggest that the president was just  "on vacation," as reasonable as it might seem for any president to need to take some time off, specially in his eighth war-torn year in office.

Regardless of popularity, the staffs of all recent presidents have gone to some length to present him as hard at work--even as he clears brush and rides his bike (President Bush); clears brush and rides his horse (President Reagan); plays aerobic golf and rides on his speedboat (the first President Bush); plays slow golf and schmoozes aerobically with friends (President Clinton); or plays softball and swats gnats (President Carter).

So, along comes ...

Potential attack on Iran nuclear sites would accomplish little, report says

Could the Bush administration or Israel accomplish anything with a surprise attack on the heart of what the United States contends is an Iranian nuclear weapons center?

Probably not, a Washington think tank -- and former U.N. weapons inspector -- contend, in a detailed report that has quietly cast a skeptical eye on a central focus of U.S. foreign policy and national security attention.

It is not an idle question. It continues to dog President Bush, with critics expressing the fear that he is determined to attack Iran before leaving office.

The little-noticed study published Thursday by the Institute for Science and International Security cast doubt on comparisons between potential attacks on Iran's Natanz enrichment plants and its Esfahan uranium conversion facility, on the one hand, and, on the other, the surgical strikes by Israel on a clandestine Syrian nuclear reactor in September 2007 and Iraq's Osirak reactor in June 1981. Those attacks set back efforts to produce a plutonium bomb by several years, the report noted.

But any analogy between an attack on the Iranian facilities and the Syrian and Iraqi sites "is grossly misleading," it said.

The report stated:

It neglects the important differences between a gas centrifuge uranium enrichment program and a reactor-based program, and fails to account for the dispersed, relatively advanced, and hardened nature of Iran's gas centrifuge facilities.

Besides, it said, Iran has purchased reserve stocks, in many instances, from abroad, and "an attack on Iran's enrichment program could not just rely on a single strike."

Among the authors is David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security and a former U.N. weapons inspector.

"Following an attack, Iran could quickly rebuild its centrifuge program in small, easily hidden facilities focused on making weapon-grade uranium for nuclear weapons," he said, in a Washington Post report.

Bush has said repeatedly that his focus on dealing with Iran is diplomatic -- built on trying to isolate the country on the world stage and increase the cost of what he says is its pursuit of nuclear weapons (and which Iran's leaders say is a civilian nuclear power program).

-- James Gerstenzang

Photo: Vahid Salemi / Associated Press

Palestinians have gotten 'very little justice,' former diplomat says

In his 25 years as a U.S. diplomat, Nicholas Burns proved it is possible to serve as a senior official in both Democratic and Republican administrations while almost never uttering a word that could cause trouble.

But since he gave up his job in March as No. 3 at the State Department and confidant to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, he’s been loosening his tie a bit. Just look at what he said about the Middle East.

In an appearance at the Woodrow Wilson International Center this week, where he is now a scholar, Burns casually remarked that Palestinians “have received very little justice” for the last 60 years.

While he was in pinstripes, that kind of language could have brought a strong reaction, because it may have been taken to suggest an official Bush administration view that Palestinians have a right to reclaim former lands in Israel, or, more broadly, that our allies the Israelis are guilty of injustice. Neither is U.S. policy.

But life as a former diplomat is so much quieter. So far, his comments have passed without raising eyebrows -- let alone prompting the firestorm they might have a few months back.

-- Paul Richter

Photo: Mikhail Metzel / AFP-Getty Images

Concern about strike on Iran bumps up oil price

Are the Israelis going to deal with one of President Bush's biggest problems by bombing Iran before the president leaves office? Administration officials keep pooh-poohing the swirling reports, but the reports are convincing enough to cause flutters in the oil market.

After ABC News on Monday quoted an unidentified Pentagon official citing an increasing chance that the Israelis would attack Iranian nuclear facilities, oil again ticked up today to around $140 a barrel.

The ABC report followed stories last month reporting that Israeli air forces were conducting exercises to rehearse for possible strikes and other articles quoting Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz saying that an attack was "unavoidable" if international diplomatic efforts didn't halt Iranian enrichment of uranium.

Exasperated U.S. officials didn't want to get into an on-the-record discussion of the likelihood of such an attack, but ridiculed the use of all these unidentified sources. Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman, said: "You know, I need to find this guy, because apparently he's an expert on the Israeli military, an expert on Iran and an expert on nuclear issues at the same time. Let's get him a Nobel Prize."

-- Paul Richter

Photo credit: Abedin Taherkenareh / EPA