. August 21, 2006 SouthAmerica: Today George W. Bush made very clear that the US troops will stay in Iraq as long as he is the president of the USA. The Moron will keep the US troops in the middle of a sectarian civil war in Iraq. He does not get it maybe because he is too stupid to grasp the situation, but at the end of the day we will see in Iraq the same thing that we saw in Vietnam in the early 1970's when the last US helicopter lift off the roof top of a building when the last of the US troops abandoned that war. The war in Iraq is lost and the entire world knows that, and by staying there the only thing that it is going to be accomplished by the US occupation troops in Iraq is thousands of unnecessary further American casualties and thousands of wounded American soldiers. The Moron is too stupid to realize that the sooner the US troops leave Iraq â the sooner the Iraqi sectarian civil war will take its course and hopefully will result in someone being able to consolidate his power and at that point maybe they decide to end the civil war. First, the Iraqi people will settle their personal scores and after that they will make peace on their country. (This process can take a few months or most likely a few years, or until some group is able to consolidate its power and is strong enough to put an end to the civil war.) The US should stop the Saddam Hussein trial immediately, and let Saddam and his men free. Let the Iraqi people decide what they want to do with Saddam and his pals â let open even the possibility that he would be able to return to power in Iraq. Strange things happened in the past if you know world history â and I would not be surprised to see Saddam Hussein back in power. The United States is so frightened by the Shiite Iranian government that they project the image to the world of a little kid who is afraid of the boogieman â Saddam Hussein (a Sunni) is the only one that has the slightest chance today to bring back some balance in the Middle East between the Sunnis and Shiites sects. The reality is that the world is full of bad leaders running countries everywhere â We donât have to look to far to see what I mean â today we have a total Moron as the leader of the United States â a country supposed to be the only remaining superpower talking about bad leaders we have a Jackass in power in the USA â never mind some of the other bad leaders who are running countries around the world. In a global basis if we make a list of good leaders and compare it with the list of bad leaders â the list of the bad leaders probably will be much longer than the good leaders. ****************** âAmerica has emerged as a loser in the Middle Eastâ By Philip Gordon and Jeremy Shapiro Published: August 21 2006 The Financial Times - UK As Israelis and Arabs continue their debate over who won and lost in Lebanon, one outcome already seems clear: America lost. Washington's decision to back Israel's military campaign unconditionally and refusal actively to seek an early ceasefire may have had some marginal benefits for the US, such as the destruction of some of Hizbollah's military capability. But in the broader scheme of things, Washington's support of this war and tolerance for the way it was fought have been a disaster. America's stance on the Lebanon war has had a wide range of negative consequences for America. It has driven Sunni and and Shia Arabs together in an anti-US front, at a time when potential US allies among Sunni Muslims were themselves worrying about the rise of Hizbollah and Iran. It has provoked and empowered the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, just as Washington is deploying more troops to Baghdad to try to quell the violence there. It has distracted attention from the Iranian nuclear issue, just as the United Nations Security Council was coming together to threaten sanctions on Tehran. It has destroyed whatever remaining hope there was for the US to be perceived as an honest broker between Israelis and Arabs in the search for peace in the Middle East. It has undermined US allies and democratic reformers in Arab states. It has also created a new crisis of confidence with America's European allies just when transatlantic relations were starting to improve. Perhaps most important, it has almost certainly helped create more terrorist enemies, as images of Lebanese women and children crushed under Israeli bombs were broadcast on satellite televisions throughout the world. On an overall balance sheet, these developments vastly outweigh whatever benefits came from giving Israel a few more weeks to destroy Hizbollah's mostly replaceable missiles. Proponents of the Bush administration's approach claim that far from undermining US interests with its Lebanon campaign, Israel was actually doing a service for America. In this view, the US is essentially at war with an "Islamic-fascist" front, to borrow president George W. Bush's language, and Israel's attack on Hizbollah was just an early battle in what some US neo-conservatives and politicians such as Newt Gingrich are already calling "world war three". They argue that the only way to deal with such a front is to destroy it, and therefore Israel was acting in America's interest in launching the campaign. But this is a huge over-simplification of the strategic situation in the Middle East today, one that risks turning the assumption of a single enemy into a self-fulfilling prophecy. It conflates a complex array of connected but separable challenges - a Shia theocracy in Iran, a secular dictatorship in Syria, the nationalist/Islamist Hamas in Palestine, various Shia militia and Sunni insurgent groups in Iraq, and Lebanon's Hizbollah - into a monolithic threat that cannot be deterred or dealt with except through overwhelming force. Just like the Bush administration's approach to Iraq, it demonstrates utter disregard for the tendency of foreign military intervention to generate nationalist resentment and violent resistance. It remains unclear whether US officials were involved in the planning of Israel's war on Hizbollah (as asserted by Seymour Hersh in last week's New Yorker magazine) or whether Israel's actions surprised Washington and were unconditionally supported out of political reflex. Either way, it seems astonishing that US policymakers did not think through the ways in which Israel's military campaign might undermine competing American goals in the region. US officials now portray the decision by Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, to go to New York to negotiate a ceasefire last week as a bold diplomatic move that demonstrated US leadership and brought peace, but the real question is why it took her nearly 30 days to act. The damage done to western interests in the greater Middle East - to say nothing of the social and physical infrastructure in Lebanon and Israel - far exceeds whatever gains the Israeli military campaign achieved in the intervening period. It is too late now to undo all this damage. To make the best of a bad situation, the Bush administration should do what it can to bolster the Lebanese government, support the deployment of a capable UN force, provide reconstruction assistance and encourage a political process in the region. In the future, however, the US must think more carefully about the broader impact of its Middle East diplomacy, even if at times this means taking a different position from its closest regional ally. This would be the best way to help Israel, which would benefit from having a superpower friend that maintains some credibility and diplomatic influence in the Middle East. Philip Gordon is senior fellow for US foreign policy and Jeremy Shapiro a fellow in the foreign policy studies programme at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC .
. September 4, 2006 SouthAmerica: Since March 2003, George W. Bush has been trying to emulate his hero " Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf (M.S.S.)" by dropping facts for fiction on a regular basis. http://www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com/ George W. Bush has refined Mr. Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf (M.S.S.) communications style to the highest degree â and today he is almost matching Mr. Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf's performance during the last days of Saddam Hussein's Regime in Iraq. I wonder which one of these guys is more delusional than the other â George W. Bush or Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf. ************************* Guardian Unlimited â UK Sunday September 3, 2006 âNo civil war in Iraq, insists Bush - but Pentagon differsâ By: Paul Harris in New York President Bush yesterday denied that Iraq was plunging into civil war, just a day after the Pentagon painted a bloody picture of a nation caught in a spiral of increasing violence. His statement appears to widen the gap between the political message coming from a White House concerned about upcoming mid-term elections and a military establishment fearful of getting caught in another Vietnam. In his weekly radio address to the nation, Bush lashed out at critics of the war and portrayed the conflict in Iraq as an integral part of the war on terror. He said the country was not sliding into civil war. 'Our commanders and diplomats on the ground believe that Iraq has not descended into a civil war. They report that only a small number of Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence,' he said. That may be true, but the tone of Bush's speech was deeply at odds with a Pentagon report released late on Friday, which showed Iraqi casualties had soared by more than 50 per cent in recent months. The Pentagon often releases bad news late in the week in order to minimise press coverage and the study certainly made for grim reading. 'Death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife,' it noted. The report added that civil war was a possibility in Iraq, which seemed to jar with the message from the White House and top Republican politicians. Bush insisted that the war in Iraq would be won by American and Iraqi armed forces. 'The security of the civilised world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq, so America will not leave until victory is achieved,' he said. He did warn, however, that the struggle would be hard and unlikely to end soon. 'The path to victory will be uphill and uneven, and it will require more patience and sacrifice from our nation,' he said. Bush has faced increasing criticism in America for his 'stay the course' policy on Iraq. Many polls show a majority of Americans now believe the war was a mistake: even some Republican politicians are breaking ranks and calling for a change in strategy. But in response to the growing unease, Bush and other senior figures, such as Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, have launched a PR offensive aimed at convincing Americans the Iraq war is vital for their own safety. Yesterday Bush also hit back at those who argue for a pullout, or at least a timetable for withdrawal. 'Many of these people are sincere and patriotic, but they could not be more wrong,' he said. That last remark angered Democrats who accused the President of using the war in Iraq as a way of labelling his opponents as weak in the November elections. 'Our President continues to resort to name-calling and fear-mongering in an attempt to distract from his failure to keep America safe. But sadly Americans have seen this page of the Republican playbook before,' said Democrat Congressman Bennie Thompson. Bush's radio address was a re-hash of a speech he delivered in Salt Lake City last week. It is likely to be repeated at three other events that Bush has scheduled to make over the next few days as America prepares for the fifth anniversary of 9/11. It also follows on an attempt to evoke the Second World War struggle against fascism as a parallel for the struggle against Islamic terrorism. Republican strategists, including Bush's political guru Karl Rove, believe that focusing on national security will allow them to claw back support in November, because voters tend to favour the Republicans on defence. However, recent polls have shown that support cracking and Democrats have become noticeably more strident in their criticism of the war, in the belief that public opinion is now firmly against it. Meanwhile, events in Iraq continued to slide into chaos. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was yesterday holding talks with Iraq's most influential cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, on the worsening security situation. Sistani had recently warned that 'other powers' could take over the country if the government could not impose law and order. The meeting came after two days of bloodshed in Baghdad in which 64 people were killed and 286 wounded. Most of the victims appeared to be Shias, with blame for the violence focused on Sunni death squads. Yesterday the bodies of 15 pilgrims from Pakistan and India were found. In other incidents, a car bomb killed three in Baghdad, another killed three civilians and wounded 14 in the town of Mahaweel, and the bodies of three decapitated women were found in Baquba. An attack on Iraqi police in Baquba killed three policemen. At the same time, a long-awaited ceremony officially to hand over operational control of the Iraqi army to the Iraqi defence ministry was postponed. The delay was due to 'miscommunication' between the Iraqis and the US-led foreign forces in the country. However, the Iraqi government did take over control of Abu Ghraib prison, site of a prisoner abuse scandal by the US troops who had once been based there. Source: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1863851,00.html .
. September 22, 2006 SouthAmerica: This is happening under the responsibility of the United States occupation forces in Iraq and the entire world knows that. There is no one else to blame other than the foreign occupying military forces in Iraq - You broke it, you fix it. At a briefing in Geneva, United Nations chief anti-torture expert Manfred Nowak says: âTorture may be worse now in Iraq than under former leader Saddam Hussein - the situation in Iraq was "out of control", with abuses being committed by security forces, militia groups and anti-US insurgents. If this is not "a nasty sectarian civil war" then please let the entire world know what kind of atrocities the various sects in Iraq have to accomplish against each other for the United States government to finally grasp that the war in Iraq has become a major nasty sectarian civil war - with no end in sight, and a conflict with the potential to spill over into the other neighboring countries - and become a major mess for everyone in the entire area. ******** BBC News â Front Page Friday, 22 September 2006 âIraq torture 'worse after Saddam' â Torture may be worse now in Iraq than under former leader Saddam Hussein, the UN's chief anti-torture expert says. Manfred Nowak said the situation in Iraq was "out of control", with abuses being committed by security forces, militia groups and anti-US insurgents. Bodies found in the Baghdad morgue "often bear signs of severe torture", said the human rights office of the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq in a report. The wounds confirmed reports given by refugees from Iraq, Mr Nowak said. He told journalists at a briefing in Geneva that he had yet to visit Iraq, but he was able to base his information on autopsies and interviews with Iraqis in neighbouring Jordan. "What most people tell you is that the situation as far as torture is concerned now in Iraq is totally out of hand," the Austrian law professor said. "The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein," he added. Brutal methods The UN report says detainees' bodies often show signs of beating using electrical cables, wounds in heads and genitals, broken legs and hands, electric and cigarette burns. Bodies found at the Baghdad mortuary "often bear signs of severe torture including acid-induced injuries and burns caused by chemical substances". Many bodies have missing skin, broken bones, back, hands and legs, missing eyes, missing teeth and wounds caused by power drills or nails, the UN report says. Victims come from prisons run by US-led multinational forces as well as by the ministries of interior and defence and private militias, the report said. The most brutal torture methods were employed by private militias, Mr Nowak told journalists. The report also says the frequency of sectarian bloodletting means bodies are often found which "bear signs indicating that the victims have been brutally tortured before their extra-judicial execution". It concludes that torture threatens "the very fabric of the country" as victims exact their own revenge and fuel further violence. Mr Nowak said he would like to visit Iraq in person, but the current situation would not allow him to prepare an accurate report, because it would not be safe to leave Baghdad's heavily guarded Green Zone where the Iraqi government and US leadership are situated. .
. November 8, 2006 SouthAmerica: I am glad George W. Bush is finally listening to his father. As I mentioned a number of times before, it is time to bring the heavy guns of the Republican Party to clean up all the mess that the old crew created in the last 6 years. James Baker has an impossible job for anyone regarding the chaos and mess in Iraq. At this point there is only one way out â and he has to find a way to bring the American troops home as soon as possible. Claim victory in Iraq â victory meaning the overthrow of Saddam Husseinâs regime and withdraw the US army from Iraq immediately. Today during his speech after the democratic victory on yesterdayâs election George W. Bush still talking about victory in Iraq as if that was a possible outcome. Iraq has been in the middle of a sectarian civil war for a long time and things will just get worse in Iraq in the coming months and years until the Iraqis settle their differences among themselves and end the sectarian civil war. I have no idea why George W. Bush canât get it. It does not matter what he want or hope for the sectarian civil war will follow its course until someone is left standing and be becomes the new dictator in Iraq. It is that simple. When 900,000 people left Iraq in the last 3 years â including the better educated, the teachers, engineers, scientists, professors, healthcare workers from doctors to all the people that you need to run a hospital, to all the technical people necessary to run a modern society â when most of these people left the country and thousands more have been killed by the sectarian civil war â who is going to rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq? Most of the well-educated people which is necessary to build a stable nation have left Iraq, and the people left behind are the very poor people who did not have money to leave the country, the uneducated and other groups such as outlaw gangs, and the people who wanted to fight in the insurgency to get there country back from the foreign occupiers. On top of that every country in the area with the exception of Israel for obvious reasons, has an interest in making sure that the United States country-building project (including the implementation of democracy) it does fail in Iraq. Yesterday, Tuesday November 7, The Financial Times of London published an article about Iraq and as part of the article they had a large picture of an helicopter picking up people on a roof top just like in Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. That is the scene that I remember the most about the Vietnam War â that last American helicopter leaving the rooftop and leaving behind a lost war. For all practical purposes the United States has lost the Iraq War â it is just a matter of having the courage and recognizing that it is time to go home and let the Iraqis settle their score among themselves. In the same way the entire Asian area did not become communist after the US lost the Vietnam War â The Iraqis will sort out their mess and find a way to move forward from here. At this point Iraq is completely out of control and no American will be able to fix that mess. I am sure the Iraqis are going to get rid off all the people that the United States did try to install as a new government in Iraq. The current members of the government of the Green Zone knows that they are toast and it is just a matter of time for all of them to be gone, including the members of the kangaroo court that just sentenced Saddam Hussein to death. Finally, Donald Rumsfeld has been fired at least 4 years too late. His replacement is Robert Gates another man from Bush Seniorâs team who will help coordinated with James Baker a massive effort to fix the mess in Iraq and the Middle East. It is time to get rid off also of John Bolton and replace him with a real diplomat at the UN. I hope the democratic congress can stop George W. Bush cold in the last 2 years of his term â the less he can accomplish the better for the US and the world. Since it is time to clean up Washington then I hope the new democratic congress do some digging and find a lot of stuff to indict vice president Dickhead Cheney. In my opinion Dickhead Cheney should be in jail with the guys from Enron, WorldCom and so onâ¦.. Thatâs too bad the US government system it does not allow us the option of replacing George Bush Junior with his dad. .
Not for one second do I think that Senior has not had influence over Junior throughout his entire career. While I was not prone to believe conspiracy theories 10 years ago, I can not help but be amazed by the accuracy of the warnings made by the anti new world order conspiracy types I for one am more convinced than ever that this war was part of plan conceived by Senior to benefit him Carlye his as his Saudi friends that did not work as planned. Recently I saw a quote saying that W was nothing but a raider. A quote made 5 or 6 years ago. Everything Bush and Cheny have done seems to fit that accusation. GWB is just not smart enough to have to done anything but his fathers wishes. From wikipedia: Controversy Critics of the Carlyle Group frequently note its connections to various political figures. Some of the sectors and companies in which it invests are highly sensitive to political activity, indeed, its actions may be viewed as a form of political arbitrage. This may create conflicts of interest when political decision makers have their own personal wealth [1] linked to such investments. Unlike most private equity firms which are predominantly located in New York, Boston or around San Francisco, Carlyle is the only large private equity firm located in Washington, D.C. Corporate headquarters are on Pennsylvania Avenue. Critics refer to Carlyle as a private military contractor, because it owns controlling or partial interests in several military contractors. For example, it used to own United Defense Industries, which was developing the Crusader artillery project. This project was funded in eight consecutive Clinton budgets but was cancelled soon after Bush became president, which eliminated the remaining $9 billion of the original $11 billion contract. A much smaller contract was awarded to United Defense to capture technologies developed during the eight years of development. In the book House of Bush, House of Saud, author Craig Unger states that Saudi Arabian interests have given $1.4 billion to firms connected to the Bush family. That figure was again quoted by Michael Moore in his film Fahrenheit 9/11. Nearly 90% of the 1.4 billion, about 1.18 billion, refers to Saudi Arabian government contracts awarded to defense contractor BDM in the early to mid 1990s. Carlyle, however, sold its interest in BDM before former President George H. W. Bush joined as an advisor. Former President George H.W. Bush retired from Carlyle in October 2003. George W. Bush served on the Board of Directors of early Carlyle acquisition Caterair, but was asked to leave two years later by one of the founders and has had no personal dealings with Carlyle ever since. The Saudi Arabian relatives of Osama bin Laden were also investors in Carlyle until October 2001 when the family sold its $2.02 million investment back to the firm in light of the public controversy surrounding bin Ladenâs family after September 11. The bin Laden family has publicly disowned the al-Qaeda leader, but privately some members of the family have kept in contact with him. Osama bin Laden has no economic interest in Saudi Binladin Group (SBG), whose investments were in part managed by the Carlyle Group until the arrangement was terminated by mutual consent. [edit] Politicians affiliated with Carlyle * James Baker III, former United States Secretary of State under George H. W. Bush, Staff member under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, Carlyle Senior Counselor, served in this capacity from 1993 to 2005. * George H. W. Bush, former U.S. President, Senior Advisor to the Carlyle Asia Advisory Board from April 1998 to October 2003. * George W. Bush, current U.S. President. Was appointed in 1990 to the Board of Directors of one of Carlyle's first acquisitions, an airline food business called Caterair, which Carlyle eventually sold at a loss. Bush left the board in 1992 to run for Governor of Texas. * Frank C. Carlucci, former United States Secretary of Defense from 1987 to 1989; Also, former Princeton wrestling partner of present US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Carlyle Chairman and Chairman Emeritus from 1989 to 2005. * Richard Darman, former Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget under George H. W. Bush, Senior Advisor and Managing Director of The Carlyle Group from 1993 to the present * William Kennard, Chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under President Bill Clinton, Carlyle's Managing Director in the Telecommunications & Media Group from 2001 to the present. * Arthur Levitt, Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under President Bill Clinton, Carlyle Senior Advisor from 2001 to the present * Liu Hong-Ru,former chairman of China's Securities Regulatory Commission * John Major, former British Prime Minister, Chairman, Carlyle Europe from 2002 until 2005 * Frank McKenna, Canadian ambassador to the United States and former member of Carlyle's Canadian advisory board * Mack McLarty, White House Chief of Staff under President Bill Clinton, President of Kissinger McLarty Associates, Carlyle Senior Advisor from 2003 to the present * Anand Panyarachun, former Prime Minister of Thailand(twice), former member of the Carlyle Asia Advisory Board until the board was disbanded in 2004 * Thaksin Shinawatra, deposed Prime Minister of Thailand, former member of board, who resigned on taking office in 2001 * Fidel Ramos, former president of the Philippines, Carlyle Asia Advisor Board Member until th
. November 9, 2006 SouthAmerica: Reply to Jem In December 2002 Brazzil magazine published my article âOur Future Is Nowâ â the article was also published at that time on other newspapers under another title. You can read the entire article at: http://www.brazzil.com/content/view/6226/38/ I mentioned on that article published in December 2002 the following: âIf George Bush Jr. can start a war against Iraq, or any war for that matterâdad Bush and his pals can make a ton of money with the Carlyle Group.â Also quoting from that article: ââ¦Today the US is spending more in defense than the next 12 countries combined. On March 18, 2002, Fortune magazine had an interesting article: "What Do George Bush, Arthur Levitt, Jim Baker, Dick Darman, and John Major have in common? (They all work for the Carlyle Group.) The Carlyle Group, a Washington, D. C., buyout firm, is one of the nation's largest defense contractors. It has billions of dollars at its disposal and employs a few important people. Maybe you've heard of them: former Secretary of State Jim Baker, former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, and former White House budget director Dick Darman. Wait, we're just getting warmed up. William Kennard, who recently headed the FCC, and Arthur Levitt, who just left the SEC, also work for Carlyle. As do former British Prime Minister John Major and former Philippines President Fidel Ramos. Let's see, are we forgetting anyone? Oh, right, former President George Herbert Walker Bush is on the payroll too." In the next three years alone the US government will spend over 1.2 trillion dollars for defense. Even though the US economy is getting into a deflationary spiral, and it will be hard for most businesses to make ends meet, the Carlyle Group will have a bonanza in earnings, because of the government's defense spending spree. If George Bush Jr. can start a war against Iraq, or any war for that matterâdad Bush and his pals can make a ton of money with the Carlyle Group. .
. November 9, 2006 SouthAmerica: I wonder how much money the âCarlyle Groupâ made since Brazzil magazine published my article in December 2002. I would not be surprised if the âCarlyle Groupâ has been making a ton of money since January 2003. The only problem is that today - Jrâs experiment in Iraq is spinning completely out of control. PS: In that article I also mentioned that the price of oil could go to the range of $ 50 to $ 60 dollar per barrel. .
. November 30, 2006 SouthAmerica: Here is the Latest News from "MESS O POTAMIA." ******** âBush, Iraqi PM al-Maliki meet in Jordanâ By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer AP â Associated Press â November 30, 2006 AMMAN, Jordan - President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Thursday opened talks originally set for the day before but canceled following disclosure of U.S. doubts about the Iraqi leader's capabilities and a Baghdad protest of his attendance. Instead of talks over two days, the stunning turn of events found Bush and al-Maliki meeting only Thursday for a working breakfast and a longer session afterward. The Iraqi prime minister came to Bush's hotel, and the pair were to appear before reporters at the end of nearly two and a half hours together. The abrupt cancellation of Wednesday's opening session was an almost unheard-of development in the high-level diplomatic circles of a U.S. president, a king and a prime minister. Confusion â and conflicting explanations â ensued . Bush had been scheduled to participate in a three-way session with al-Maliki and Jordan's King Abdullah II, rearranging his overseas itinerary to be in Amman for both days for talks aimed at reducing the spiral of violence in Iraq. The last-minute scrub of those talks was not announced until Bush was inside Raghadan Palace and had posed for photographs alone with the king. White House counselor Dan Bartlett denied that the delay was a snub by al-Maliki directed at Bush or was related to the leak of a memo written by White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley questioning the prime minister's capacity for controlling violence in Iraq. "Absolutely not," Bartlett said." He said the king and the prime minister had met before Bush arrived from a NATO summit in Latvia. "That negated the purpose to meet tonight together in a trilateral setting." A senior administration official, who spoke with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, essentially echoed Bartlett's account. The Jordanians and the Iraqis jointly decided it was not the best use of time because they both would be seeing the president separately, the official said. Members of the Jordanian and Iraqi delegations contacted Khalilzad, who called Air Force One and spoke with Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, giving them a heads-up, the official said. However, Redha Jawad Taqi, a senior aide of top Shiite politician Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim who also was in Amman, said the Iraqis balked at the three-way meeting after learning the king wanted to broaden the talks to include the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Two senior officials traveling with al-Maliki, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said the prime minister had been reluctant to travel to Jordan in the first place and decided, once in Amman, that he did not want "a third party" involved in talks about subjects specific to the U.S.-Iraqi relationship. With al-Maliki already gone from the palace, Bush had an abbreviated meeting and dinner with the king before heading early to his hotel. The cancellation came after the disclosure of a classified White House memo, written Nov. 8 by Hadley. In one particularly harsh section, Hadley asserted: "The reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action." Administration officials did not dispute the leaked account. But they said that, on balance, the document was supportive of the Iraqi leader and generally portrayed him as well-meaning. The president "has confidence in Prime Minister Maliki," said Bush spokesman Tony Snow. He added that al-Maliki "has been very aggressive in recent weeks in taking on some of the key challenges." The memo recommended steps to strengthen the Iraqi leader's position, including possibly sending more troops to defend Baghdad and providing monetary support for moderate political candidates for Iraq's parliament. The Iraqi prime minister also faced political turmoil at home about the summit. Thirty Iraqi lawmakers and five cabinet ministers loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said they were boycotting Parliament and the government to protest al-Maliki's presence at the summit. The president was expected to ask the embattled Iraqi prime minister how to train Iraqi forces so they can more quickly shoulder more responsibility for halting the sectarian violence and, specifically, mending a gaping Sunni-Shiite divide. There are about 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and Bush is under unrelenting pressure from Democrats and many Republicans to start bringing them home. Some analysts suggested that, by showing distance between al-Maliki and Bush, the memo might actually help the Iraqi leader more than damage him. Jon Alterman, former special assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, said the memo's doubts about al-Maliki "seemed calculated to steel his spine." "This memo reads to me more like a memo to Prime Minister al-Maliki than to President Bush," said Alterman, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It has his entire to-do list as well as a list of what he'll get if he agrees." In Washington, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., called on Bush to appoint a high-ranking special envoy to work with the Iraqi government on disbanding militias, including all Iraq's factions in the nation's political process and equitably distributing resources such as oil revenue. "Steps have to be taken now," he said. Bush's meeting with al-Maliki is part of a new flurry of diplomacy the administration has undertaken across the Middle East. Hadley's memo suggests that Secretary of State Rice should hold a meeting for Iraq and its neighbors in the region early next month and also that the U.S. could step up efforts to get Saudi Arabia to help. It was written just weeks before Vice President Dick Cheney was dispatched to Saudi Arabia. Senior administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the document is still classified even though published, said that many of the concerns raised by Hadley have been or are being rectified in the month that has passed since his trip to Baghdad. .