The speech drew little attention in the midst of the presidential campaign news and the continued turmoil in the stock markets.
But with Americans struggling to pay bills and concerned that their jobs will disappear along with their retirement savings, President Bush is holding strong to his belief that whatever economic problems the United States is facing at the end of his term, the nation must put aside money for foreign assistance.
It's a tough battle, and it comes up against what pollsters regularly discover: Americans consistently vastly overstate the amount of foreign aid the United States dispenses and, in particular, the percentage of the federal budget that it represents.
Speaking at a White House conference on international development last week, Bush put it this way:
During times of economic crisis, some may be tempted to turn inward--focusing on our problems here at home, while ignoring our interests around the world. This would be a serious mistake. America is committed--and America must stay committed--to international development for reasons that remain true regardless of the ebb and flow of the markets.
The Washington Post took note of Bush's speech. It reported that the United Nations had figured that even before the market went south, higher food prices meant that 925 million people faced chronic hunger.
There's a healthy Internet buzz today on a Washington Post story saying the CIA endorsed such harsh interrogation techniques as waterboarding against Al Qaeda suspects in 2003 and 2004 -- and eventually got a written endorsement from Bush administration higher-ups.
What we find interesting about the story is the prospect that as the Bush administration fades, there remains the likelihood that its wall of secrecy will slowly turn into shards. The result: The pieces will continue to reveal details of how President Bush conducted the campaign against terrorism.
As for the latest shard:
The Post reported that then-CIA Director George J. Tenet requested the memos "more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations," to create a paper trail leading to the White House.
The paper reported:
The repeated requests for a paper trail reflected growing worries within the CIA that the administration might later distance itself from key decisions about the handling of captured Al Qaeda leaders, former intelligence officials said.
And those concerns only grew after the revelations of prisoner abuse that occurred at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
For eight years, Stephen J. Hadley has observed President Bush up close.
As the president's national security advisor throughout the second term, and on many occasions before that as the deputy national security advisor, Hadley has traveled the world with the president, has cleared brush with him in Crawford, and briefed him daily on developments around the world.
He was there for discussions leading up to the surge in Iraq. Afghanistan? 9/11? North Korea? Iran? Hugo Chavez? Human rights and the Beijing Olympics? Russia? Georgia? All were in his portfolio.
If the word "crisis" was attached to it -- save, perhaps, for the stock market and Katrina -- it is only a slight exaggeration to say there's a good chance the debate went through Hadley's office at the northwest corner of the White House West Wing.
The vantage point for tracking the president could hardly be better.
Bush, Hadley said today, is "remarkably unaffected by eight years as president in terms of who he is, what he stands for, what he thinks of himself."
He spoke with a small group of reporters in the Roosevelt Room, across a small corridor from the Oval Office.
He was responding to a question about whether in its second term the administration had adopted a more pragmatic and less ideological approach to both foreign policy and economic matters, compared with the first term.
"Situations change," Hadley said, referring specifically to the Middle East, which he said was "a very different place" these days compared with 2001. Therefore, he said, the way the administration approaches it has naturally undergone change.
Of course no presidential aide wants to say the boss has eased back on his core principles. Nor would one want to say that the boss had not grown and adapted over eight years.
Hadley put it this way: "We've tried to be flexible. We've tried to learn."
-- James Gerstenzang
Photo: Stephen J. Hadley, left rear next to Vice President Dick Cheney, in the White House Roosevelt Room, 2006. Credit: Eric Draper / The White House
There's news in the new book by Bob Woodward, and it's not going to make life easier for the White House or John McCain's campaign to move in there:
The Bush administration has run an "extensive spying operation" in Iraq, focused on the Iraqi prime minister -- one of President Bush's biggest allies there.
According to the Washington Post's account, scheduled to appear on Page One of the paper's Friday edition, the United States has spied on Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, his staff and others in the government there.
How extensively?
"We know everything he says," the Post account says one of Woodward's sources told him.
The book, coming out Monday, is "The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008."
Another headline in the book by the Post associate editor -- and one that goes to the heart of McCain's approach to the war: The notable decrease in violence in Iraq is not primarily the result of the steep increase in U.S. forces that began in 2007.
Rather, Woodward reports, "groundbreaking" new covert techniques, beginning in 2007, enabled U.S. military and intelligence officials to locate, target and kill insurgent leaders and key individuals in extremist groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq....
Overall, Woodward writes, four factors combined to reduce the violence: the covert operations; the influx of troops; the agreement by militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to rein in his powerful Mahdi Army; and the so-called Anbar Awakening, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and allied with U.S. forces.
McCain has placed top priority on the buildup, reminding audiences throughout his presidential campaign that as unpopular as the surge was, he was for it before others were. Indeed, he presents himself as a leading proponent of the surge.
Woodward, according to his newspaper's account, found dissension within the administration, officials "either unwilling or slow to confront the deterioration of its strategy in Iraq during the summer and early fall of 2006" and the president saying publicly that the U.S. was "winning" while he believed the long-term strategy of training Iraqi forces and handing over responsibility was failing.
And, the Post reports, when he was asked in an interview with Woodward about how "the White House settled on a troop surge of five brigades after the military leadership in Washington had reluctantly said it could provide two, Bush said: 'Okay, I don't know this. I'm not in these meetings, you'll be happy to hear, because I got other things to do.' "
For the 7 1/2 years of the Bush administration, Zalmay Khalilzad has been the golden boy of U.S. foreign policy.
He began life in the Bush White House as a special assistant to the president for South Asia, Near East and North African Affairs--in other words, chief of the hot spots--on the National Security Council. In short order he moved into three of the most important ambassadorial jobs: Iraq, Afghanistan, and now, the United Nations.
He was the guy to whom Bush turned when he needed someone he trusted in an extremely sensitive job.
Now, he's gone from the guy on the hot seat to bubbling in hot water.
The New York Times is reporting today that he is "facing angry questions" from his colleagues at the top of the administration over unauthorized contacts with the Pakistani political leader, Asif Ali Zardari, who is a contender to succeed Pervez Musharraf as Pakistan's president.
It turns out, according to the Times, that Khalilzad had been speaking several times a week with Zardari, the widower of the assassinated opposition leader and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. And he had planned the meet with Zardari next week while on vacation in Dubai, the paper reported, quoting administration officials.
Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South Asia, put an end to that plan after discovering through Zardari himself that the United States' U.N. ambassador was providing "advice and help." An angry e-mail from Boucher to Khalilzad ensued.
Such contacts would suggest an extreme violation of diplomatic protocol and U.S. policy; the administration has remained officially neutral in the contest to succeed Musharraf, and in any case diplomats are discouraged from such interference in any country's internal politics--the history of CIA involvement in instances around the world notwithstanding.
With the United States walking an extremely narrow line as it seeks to encourage a new Pakistani administration to fight the Taliban along the Afghan-Pakistan border--but not appear overly friendly with whomever takes over in Islamabad, for fear of complicating the security task--any signs of a U.S. official's meddling in Pakistani political affairs can only complicate the mission.
The Times notes an intriguing back story:
The conduct by Mr. Khalilzad, who is Afghan by birth has also raised hackles because of speculation that he might seek to succeed Hamid Karzi as president of Afghanistan.
The official State Department biography of Khalilzad makes no reference to his Afghan heritage.
And now for something completely different: President Bush, yes, this President Bush--as a liberal.
The Canadian magazine Macleans is making that argument, under the shocking headline "The shockingly liberal legacy of George W. Bush."
The irony that it misses: Could it be that Vice President Dick Cheney is the force behind at least one element of the "liberalization?"
In a lengthy article that addresses the breadth of the Bush presidency and notes that the administration's legacy is more than just the war in Iraq, it says: "In some areas it is the result of hard-line conservative ideology — but in others it is surprisingly liberal."
Consider the seeming contradictions: The tax-cutting conservative who ...
Never mind that Vice President Dick Cheney will actually keep his speaking date at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul on Monday night. Or that he never intended to stick around after that anyway. Or that President Bush is speaking that night and also making a hasty exit.
It was just too delicious to ignore: We're talking about the possibility that Bush had found a way to keep the man with an even lower job approval rating than his far from the Twin Cities while the GOP meets there.
It didn't take much to suspect that Bush had something other than national security on this mind when he decided to send Cheney to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine and Italy next week in the midst of the Republican convention. Can you say "political security?"
Conspiratorialists immediately began fanning the fires, spreading the word that perhaps Bush's real motive in sending Cheney to the Caucasus region was to get him as far from the upper Midwest as possible. The Far East and Middle East are relatively quiet now; a trip there would have been too obvious a detour.
Enter the latest hot spot.
Besides, Georgia is probably somewhat more distant from St. Paul than the vice president's infamous "undisclosed location." With fears of a new Cold War, what better place to send the nation's premier cold warrior?
But Megan M. Mitchell of the vice president's press office had a six-word no nonsense message for any who suspected that Cheney was splitting the country rather than letting himself be seen anywhere in the vicinity of Republicans about to nominate Sen. John McCain as their presidential candidate:
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.
But eight years after he came to Washington with George W. Bush, 33-year-old Gordon Johndroe has seen the world.
A native of Fort Worth who attended the University of Texas at Austin, Johndroe volunteered to work for George W. Bush's re-election bid for governor of Texas in 1998. He's been a Bush loyalist ever since.
And what a fun-filled eight years it's been.
When Texas Gov. Bush flew in to Philadelphia in 2000 to accept the GOP nomination for president, Johndroe was at his side. The governor, according to the Houston Chronicle, looked out the plane window and asked who was on the tarmac to greet him. Quipped Johndroe: "Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin."
While working at the Department of Homeland Security, he defended the color-coding of threat risks and explained the new department's advice to Americans in February 2003 to stock up on duct tape so they could seal their homes in the event of a biological, chemical or nuclear attack.
He worked for First Lady Laura Bush, encouraging her to speak out on serious issues such as education for girls in Afghanistan. Since coming to the National Security Council, he's dealt with his share of news. Once, when President Bush was meeting with the South Korean President Roh, the two had a testy exchange over how to re-integrate North Korea that ended like this:
(Roh): If you could be a little bit clearer in your message.
(Bush): I can't make it any more clear, Mr. President. We look forward to the day when we can end the Korean War. That will end — will happen when (North Korean President) Kim verifiably gets rid of his weapons programs and his weapons.
Savvy enough to recognize a story-in-the-making, Johndroe rushed an e-mail to reporters saying, "There was clearly something lost in translation."
In addition to being smart, Johndroe has a sense of humor, important if you're a Bush staffer working with reporters. This week he's doing briefings from Crawford, an honor that is rotated among the top White House press staffers.
"We are very fortunate to have had Gordon as a part of our team for so many years," White House press secretary Dana Perino told Countdown to Crawford. "He's a go-to guy for so many things."
Perino, who is in her own right a stunning presence at the White House podium, added, "And it is really irritating to me that he doesn't seem to age at all!"
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo credit: J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press
The proposed rule change was first set out for public comment on July 31, and drew little attention:
As law enforcement agencies, including local and state units, watch for signs of terrorist activity, they could target groups as well as individuals, and begin criminal intelligence investigations "based on the suspicion that a target is engaged in terrorism or providing material support to terrorists." And they could spread around the law enforcement world the fruits of the investigation.
In short, it would move local police forces into the realm of intelligence-gathering that had been the work of the FBI and other federal agencies.
The proposed shift was noticed by the Washington Post, which reported Saturday that the Justice Department's proposal "would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years."
The newspaper noted that the administration was in the process of revising domestic intelligence-gathering in its waning months in office, and would lock in policies for President Bush's successor, completing the greatest expansion of executive branch authority since the Watergate era.
Jim McMahon, deputy executive director of the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police, was quoted by the Post as saying the changes would "catch up with reality," updating rules from the early 1990s to the post-9/11 world.
He said police agencies would still have to demonstrate a "reasonable suspicion" that a target was involved in a crime before collecting intelligence, the paper said.
But, it noted, Michael German, policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union and a 16-year veteran of the FBI, said police agencies could misunderstand it as allowing them to collect intelligence "even when no underlying crime is suspected."
He cited as an example an investigation into a charitable donation to a group later designated as a terrorist organization.
It risks turning police officers into "spies on behalf of the federal government," he said.
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.
