As the Bush era draws to a close, Europeans are anxious to know what about American policy will change when he’s gone - particularly if a Democratic victory occurs as planned.
“In view of the ongoing presidential campaign, the American exception seems as strong as ever. Where else but in America would a primary race go on for more than a year? Where else would candidates obtain tens of millions of dollars a month from their supporters? Where else would party foot soldiers have the chance to select the candidate for the highest post? … All three candidates take lyrical flight in discussing the American dream. Above all, none will hesitate to resort to force.”
“Clearly, a Democratic victory in November would undoubtedly open the door to a more left-wing America. But it would be a kind of American left, certainly not modeled on Europe. Both candidates have rejected a “single payer” system for health insurance, like the Canadian and European models. The change ahead will not mean the end of the American exception, but the end of American triumphalism.”
LEADING ARTICLE
Translated By Kate Davis
May 8, 2008
France - Challenges - Original Article (French)
All countries are exceptional. But the United States gladly considers itself exceptionally exceptional, different from all other developed countries in its social organization and its fundamental values. The State is less extensive and the distribution of wealth more unequal. The United States is also more strongly committed to what Margaret Thatcher called the “Victorian values:” individualism, voluntarism, patriotism.
Thus the Bush government, which supports conservative values domestically and demonstrates an unlimited self confidence externally, is the most “exceptional” known in recent years. But at the end of Bush’s mandate, isn’t the United States entering a new cycle, characterized by the rejection of conservatism and a convergence with Europe’s standards?
In reality, three quarters of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction and for example, vigorously support a system of universal health care. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both have promised to address that. They also want to improve their image in the world. The next government will certainly initiate significant reforms, such as closing Guantanamo or adopting a more rigorous environmental policy in order to address some of the country’s more aberrant characteristics.
Yet in view of the ongoing presidential campaign, the American exception seems as strong as ever. Where else but in America would a primary race go on for more than a year? Where else would candidates obtain tens of millions of dollars a month from their supporters? Where else would party foot soldiers have the chance to select the candidate for the highest post? John McCain won the nomination of his party despite strong internal opposition. Barack Obama is the leader of an uprising against the Democratic old guard.
All three preach a patriotism specific to the United States. John McCain boasts of his service in Vietnam. Barack Obama claims that there is no red or blue, but only one America united by common values. The three candidates take lyrical flight in discussing the American dream. Above all, none will hesitate to resort to force. John McCain sings, “Bomb, bomb [bomb, bomb bomb] Iran.”
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the U.S. elections.
As Frederick Kagan spins Neo-Con daydreams of “turning a corner,” McClatchy reporters on the ground are telling a different story:
“One of the most powerful men in Iraq isn’t an Iraqi government official, a militia leader, a senior cleric or a top U.S. military commander or diplomat. He’s an Iranian general, and at times he’s more influential than all of them.”
Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, as “Tehran’s point man on Iraq,” is manipulating election of pro-Iranian politicians, meeting often with Iraqi leaders and backing Shiite elements in Iraqi security forces in the torturing and killing of Sunni Muslims.
According to American and Iraqi officials, Suleimani is Iran’s Petraeus who has succeeded, among other things, in slipping into Baghdad’s Green Zone in 2006 to orchestrate the choice of a new Iraqi prime minister and building intelligence networks in Iran’s embassy while providing Shiite Muslim militias with generalship, cash and arms, including mortars and rockets fired at the US Embassy and advanced roadside bombs that have killed hundreds of Americans and Iraqis.
Munitions merchants are not what they used to be. A century ago, in “Major Barbara,” George Bernard Shaw gave us Andrew Undershaft, an intellectual who philosophized about war and poverty. Today we have 22-year-old Efraim Diveroli, who peddles useless used weaponry and keeps getting arrested for domestic violence.
After “repeated inquiries” by the New York Times, the Army this week finally suspended his company, AEY inc., from future federal contracts, after learning Diveroli had sold them Chinese ammunition that he claimed to be Hungarian.
The company, which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach with a licensed masseur as Vice President, had supplied $300 million of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces, much of which turned out to be more than 40 years old…
Is the United States imagining a world in which Russia poses a threat, or is it actually a threat? Mikhail Taratuta, the former host of a Russian television show about America writes for Russia’s Kommersant newspaper, ‘Sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists make reference to a notion called a “second reality.” This isn’t reality itself, but rather a person’s perception of reality. … When we hear that the real objective of America and the West is to pull Russia down and keep it on its knees, how should we interpret this? Is it a cynical lie put forward for some sinister political purpose - perhaps to mobilize society to create the image of an enemy? Or are these the sincere words of people living in a “second reality,” where we already visited once upon a time?
By Mikhail Taratuta*
Translated By Igor Medvedev
March 24, 2008
Kommersant - Russia - Original Article (Russian)
Sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists make reference to a notion called a “second reality.” This isn’t reality itself, but rather a person’s perception of reality. Thirty years ago when I first went to America, I was confident that I would find all the signs of a decaying West as detailed in the Soviet press - unemployment, the suffering of working people, and so on. Read the rest of this entry »
Is there any truth to the charge made by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez last week, when he said that Colombia had become the ‘Israel of Latin America’? According to this EDITORIAL from Uruguay, which is another of Washington’s presumed allies, this is a question on many South American lips. The Editorial board of La Republica writes, ‘Undoubtedly, Colombia’s military adventure in Ecuador has served to open the eyes of those who have yet to understand the true significance of Plan Colombia. … The United States has failed to grasp this, but there are democratic forces in Colombia that should realize by now the role that has been assigned to their country.’
EDITORIAL
Translated By Halszka Czarnocka
March 10, 2008
Uruguay - La Republica - Original Article (Spanish)
It is necessary to begin with a clarification, given the severity of the title. We are not here looking to call into question the right to exist of the state of Israel. We have another theme and hope everyone understands that.
The problem, the point to question, isn’t the existence of an Israeli state, but the role that it plays in the Middle East. No one in their right mind can deny that Israel’s policy has been to defend the interests of the United States in the region. Beyond the controversy that might arise because of these words, it would be of interest to have someone illustrious - someone other than ourselves - examine closely the condemnations that Israel has suffered at the United Nations for its to its bellicose warlike activities, illegal occupations (can anyone deny them?) and incursions into the territories of neighboring countries (doesn’t unassailable and objective documentation exist about this?).
And all of this has been made possible thanks to the support of the United States, which provides sophisticated weapons by offering subsidies, trade preferences and investment advantages (unlike the way it deals with the Arab countries).
This pattern can be applied to Colombia, which is the subject at hand. President Bush, who took the reigns of his country’s government in a very shady manner (to put it generously), is a great promoter of Plan Colombia , a project that supports that country in its fight against drug trafficking and guerrillas.
In fact, this is a project that supports Colombia in its battle against the guerrillas, who maintain a popular movement that for 60 years has controlled a sizeable portion of the country’s territory [about 40 percent today]. Drug traffic is just an excuse; in its time Cuba was accused of supporting itself with income from drug trafficking and later it was President Hugo Chavez’ turn.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the U.S. from South America.
Is Israel’s latest incursion into Gaza an attempt to put an end to the firing of rockets from Gaza into Southern Israel, or is it something much more? According to this analysis from Algeria’s French language Le Quotidien, what people in Gaza and Lebanon are now witnessing is the build-up to a joint U.S.-Israeli ’settling of accounts’ to ‘reconfigure the balance of power in the Middle-East and enable them to achieve their political agenda in the region.’ Kharroubi Habib writes, ‘Everything suggests that Israel and the United States are creating the conditions for a new war in the region, at the end of which they will finally establish ‘peace’ on their terms. And although they don’t openly say it, even Arab forces in the region are pushing for this Israeli-American plan. That includes the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, who is counting on regaining control of the Gaza strip.’
By Kharroubi Habib
Translated By Sandrine Ageorges
March 2, 2008
Algeria - Le Quotidian - Original Article (French)
Since Wednesday, the Israeli air force has been conducting raid after raid over the Gaza strip. These are no longer “targeted” strikes, but are operations meant to claim the largest possible number of victims in a population that has been declared a “hostile entity,” and to which the principle of “collective Punishment” applies.
In just a few days, hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children have perished, having been engulfed in fire. But the worst is unfortunately still to come for the people of Gaza, as the Israeli government prepares for a major operation against their territory. It is this that the air raids are preparing, with the aim of “breaking” the morale and capabilities of the popular resistance in Gaza.
One should not view the ongoing aggression against Gaza as a response to rockets being fired on the Israeli village of Sderot. It is rather, in our view, the prelude to a much larger operation, planned jointly by Israel and the United States, to reconfigure the balance of power in the Middle-East and enable them to achieve their political agenda in the region.
It is by no means fortuitous that just as Israel launched its raids over Gaza and warned of plans to begin ground operations, the United States announced the presence along the Lebanese coast of one of its warships, the USS Cole.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing foreign-language coverage of events in the Middle East that relate to the United States.
Who does the Kremlin favor to be the next U.S. President? Is it John McCain, the hard-nosed hawk who grew to maturity during the Cold War? Or is it Hillary Clinton - the militarily well-studied Senator from New York? Nope - it seems that, according to this op-ed article from Russia’s Kommersant newpaper, Barack Obama is the best bet for Russia - although only marginally so. Konstantin Kosachev who is chairman of the Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee, writes, ‘Barack Obama looks like the candidate that can be expected to take the greatest strides toward Russia, since unlike McCain, he’s not infected with any Cold War phobias, and unlike Clinton, he won’t be tied down by the old habits of his advisors.’
By Konstantin Kosachev*
Translated By Igor Medvedev
February 7, 2008
Kommersant - Russia - Original Article (Russian)
The bet by Democrats that Americans want to change everything from U.S. policy to their leader’s sex and race may be fully justified. But I wouldn’t focus exclusively on the intrigues of the Democratic race. After all, the race won’t be decided until November, and the competition won’t be between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but between a Democrat and a Republican. And it is still too early to write the Republicans off.
From the Russian point of view, the choice is not a pleasant one. Senator McCain, who is known for comments on Russia that run along the lines of “Carthage must be destroyed,” is certainly no gift. His desire to expel Russia from the G8, like many other of his positions that are in the style of the Cold War, are sincere. Traditionally it has been felt that we [Russia] get along better with Republicans, but apparently this senator-veteran seems ready to break that stereotype.
Our problem with the Democrats is that (in our view), they place too much emphasis on ideologically-driven human rights issues. However under the current administration, Washington’s ideology-based foreign policy probably exceeds that of their domestic opponents. It’s clearly time that we stopped “fearing” the Democrats, especially in terms of the inevitable “democratic moralizing” by a Democratic president. For a country that has made its democratic choice, such calculations are largely unimportant.
In terms of attitude toward Russia, neither the declarations of Hillary Clinton nor those of Barack Obama go beyond the traditional views of the American establishment. Both candidates say they recognize the need to cooperate with Russia. But how sincere these statements are is difficult to judge. We know that Clinton has retained many people from her husband’s team that have no particular love for Russia. Obama, as they say, is not shy about communicating with Zbigniew Brzezinski [considered a Kremlin foe].
February 28th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
I am just adding another point to Shaun Mullen’s post on the Bush administration’s acts of, what he calls, “criminality and misdeeds”. What took my breath away was this story in The Guardian newspaper that American officials processing the payments at the US embassy in Islamabad have concluded that no one knows where 70 per cent of the American aid to Pakistan has vanished!!! Wow!
“America’s massive military aid package to Pakistan has come under scrutiny after allegations that as much as 70% of $5.4bn in assistance has been misspent. Pakistan provides over 100,000 troops and directs the fight; the US foots the bill for food, fuel, ammunition and maintenance. The cash payments — averaging $80m a month — have been a cornerstone of US support for President Pervez Musharraf.”
So is Bush and Co scared that once their man in Islamabad leaves office a lot of inconvenient questions may surface? Is it that the major threat to the US administration in the “War on Terror” does not come from terrorists but the change of guard in Islamabad? But that’s not the point. What is alarming is that no one in the US seems interested in the blatant misuse of the public money.
Let’s continue with The Guardian story: “Since 2002, the US has paid the operating costs of Pakistan’s military operations in the tribal belt along the Afghan border, where Taliban and al-Qaida fighters are sheltering.
“But over the past 18 months, as militants seized vast swaths of the tribal belt and repelled a string of Pakistani offensives, the funding has come under the microscope.
“The controversy highlights not only strains in the relationship between Washington and Islamabad but also the limits of President George Bush’s ‘war on terror’.”
Political chaos in Pakistan could bring nuclear headaches for the US, and what our government is doing to prop up a failing regime recalls efforts three decades ago on behalf of our old ally, the Shah of Iran.
The McClatchy Newspapers report: “The Bush administration is pressing the opposition leaders who defeated Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to allow the former general to retain his position, a move that Western diplomats and U.S. officials say could trigger the very turmoil the United States seeks to avoid.
“U.S. officials, from President Bush on down, said this week that they think Musharraf, a longtime U.S. ally, should continue to play a role, despite his party’s rout in parliamentary elections Monday and his unpopularity in the volatile, nuclear-armed nation.”
Pressuring the newly elected anti-Musharraf majority to retain our iffy friend may turn out to be the kind of mistake we made in the late 1970s on behalf of the Shah before and after he was deposed in Iran. Despite Jimmy Carter’s misgivings, he was persuaded by Henry Kissinger and his oil friends to let the old US ally come here, which resulted in occupation of the American Embassy in Tehran for 444 days and the ongoing hostility with Iran.
February 4th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
I shudder at the thought when (maybe in the not too distant future) the inside story of the bloody mess created by the key players in Afghanistan and Iraq appears in public domain. For starters a recent news report: “The Afghan government claims they (can) prove (that) British agents were talking to the Taliban without permission from the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, despite Gordon Brown’s pledge that Britain will not negotiate.
“The British insist President Karzai’s office knew what was going on. But Mr Karzai has expelled two top diplomats amid accusations they were part of a plot to buy-off the insurgents.”
The Independent continues: “Britain planned to build a Taliban training camp for 2,000 fighters in southern Afghanistan, as part of a top-secret deal to make them swap sides, intelligence sources in Kabul have revealed.”
In another article, Andreas Whittam Smith asks a pertinent quetion: “If the Afghans don’t want us, why should we stay?”
Smith’s article is a must read: “The President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, doesn’t think we (British) are doing a good job in his country. In the dangerous area where our troops are deployed we have, apparently, brought only more insecurity. Our decision to remove a brutal and corrupt governor of Helmand province was also a British error. ‘I made the mistake of Read the rest of this entry »
February 3rd, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
In the din and cacaphony of the presidential campaign/election in the US of A, two recent news stories are likely to be overshadowed, if not drowned. First, “Baghdad is drowning in sewage, thirsty for water and largely powerless, an Iraqi official said on Sunday in a grim assessment of services in the capital five years after the US-led invasion,” reports AFP. (More here…)
So how is American occupation better than life under Saddam Hussein? A good question. Once the local populace realises that foreign invaders are on their soil only to take care of their own interests, let’s be quite clear that it will be an ever-going war against terror.
Second, in the USA’s first-ever $3 trillion budget, “President Bush seeks to seal his legacy of promoting a strong defense to fight terrorism and tax cuts to spur the economy. The 2009 spending plan sent to Congress on Monday will project huge budget deficits, around $400 billion for this year and next and more than double the 2007 deficit of $163 billion. But even those estimates could prove too low given the rapidly weakening economy and the total costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which Bush does not include in his request for the budget year beginning Oct. 1… Read the rest of this entry »
January 29th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Challenges to return of democracy in Pakistan have multiplied after the assassination of Mrs Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister. For an independent woman, especially if she has a mind of her own, it still remains a herculean task to be heard in many countries of the world. In some countries it can become a matter of life and death.
However, there are brave-hearts who never give up. My attention has been drawn to a recent interview with Dr (Mrs) Ayesha Siddiqa Agha in a Pakistani blog. Mrs Agha, a former senior civil servant, is described as ‘Pride of Pakistan’. An author and a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, she does not mince words when it comes to addressing the ticklish questions relating to her country.
Sample this from her interview —-
Question:When President Musharraf says that Pakistan cannot have a democracy and human rights like West, do you agree with him?
Mrs Siddiqa Agha’s Answer: This is absolute nonsense. The ordinary people of Pakistan can decide as intelligently about their political future as an average American or people from developed countries. Our problem lies at the top. Our elite is highly predatory and suicidal. They have evolved a system of patronage and are holding ordinary people hostage to it. General Musharraf is part of that elite. It is ridiculous to hear people say that illiterate Pakistanis cannot chose their leaders. We are not less intelligent than the Indians. It is our tragedy that governments have always been voted in but booted out. Once that changes, we will also become a strong democracy.
Question:What Pakistan should do with its nuclear arsenal? Should we freeze it, or it roll-back, or improve it, or just hand it over to IAEA?
Answer: This is a political decision. Any answers must be sought by looking at how a certain technology serves the ordinary people. We have millions who do not have access to clean drinking water, basic health, education and dignity. I wouldn’t have a problem with nuclear weapons as long as the other needs are being met. But if any new technology is used to hold people hostage and make fools out of them, then whats the use.
Mrs Siddiqa Agha, who did her doctorate from King’s College London, is a scholar of Pakistan’s military and security affairs. She has worked on issues varying from military technology, defense decision-making, nuclear deterrence, arms procurement, arms production to civil-military relations in South Asia.
January 25th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Public in India and Pakistan wants peace. Yes, it does after having lived through a turbulent past. But the peace process is always thwarted because the leaders in the two countries, alongwith the leaders in the Western world, seem to have developed a vested interest in fanning insecurities among the large populace, and thus encouraging arms’ race in the Indian subcontinent. Never mind that in the past few years there has been a sea change in threat perspective.
Every leader from the powerful countries that comes visiting India and Pakistan (or for that matter any developing country, including the Middle East) has a bagful of arms, nuclear deals, aircraft and naval vessels to sell…Did someone say ‘merchants of death and destruction’…Arms manufacturing and sales, it is said, is big business and the deals provide the biggest kickbacks to the high and mighty…so who would among them object if the going is good!!!
Billions of dollars/rupees that go down the drain building up the huge arsenals could well be utilised for feeding, educating and keeping the teeming masses healthy in these extremely poor countries (where two square meals is a luxury). My earlier post clearly gives instances of how leaders dupe the public for their own good. Thus ordinary simple folks, living in extreme poverty in Pakistan & India, become a plaything in the hands of their leaders or religious radicals…with little to choose between the devil and the deep sea.
Military spending, says an expert, devours about two-fifths of Pakistan’s budget. It claims a seventh of India’s budget — the highest head after interest payments. This is three times higher than what India invests in primary education in government and private schools, and 275 percent higher than her public expenditure on health. These were 2005 estimates.
My childhood was haunted by the monster known to South Carolinians in that time and place as "the atom bum." I lay awake nights worrying about a nuclear strike the same way children of earlier generations worried about the monsters under their beds or the crazy son the mean old man up the road reputedly kept locked up in the attic. It was my Boo Radley, but one I would never really come to terms with. We heard—from whispered rumors on the
playground of things overheard on the evening news or from adult
conversations— that if it fell on our heads it would leave a crater
stretching to the next small town; we heard about shadows on walls in Japan;
we heard about radiation burns and radiation sickness and the poisoning of the air and water.
During a brief period—I don’t know what prompted it or why it
stopped—we used to have "bum" drills, where we’d hide under our
desks. What good would hiding under a desk do? I asked my teacher.
She told me to hush up and get back under the desk, but then admitted she didn’t know.
During the late seventies, when I was a teen-ager, post-apocalyptic fiction abounded. (The best were–if you’re
looking for something to read– were Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz and Russell Hoban’s beautiful but challenging Riddley Walker.)
After the Cold War receded, people didn’t talk about it so much for awhile. But of course it’s never really gone away.
It’s with a certain sense of inevitability that I now read in The Guardian that "five of the west’s most senior military officers and strategists," have put together a manifesto warning NATO that it needs to face up to the nuclear option if it wants to be able to Read the rest of this entry »
A French Canadian, writing in Le Devoir isn’t convinced about the Iranian motorboat story and sees that Bush is going about the Iranian situation in exactly the wrong way… and offers a suggestion or two…
It seems that George Bush has not yet understood that we will never solve the great problems of the world through threats and force of arms. The only possible and effective way to establish peace is fierce determination to make a friend out of an enemy and act accordingly.
Is there something odd about one war [Iraq] in which the post-war claims more lives than the war itself, and another [Colombia] in which hostages are taken not for a quick exchange of ransom, but to be held for years simply to make a point? This op-ed from Guatemala’s leading newspaper, Siglo Vientiuno, ponders the question of how the new millennium has altered humanity’s most destructive preoccupation.
“Like the temperature, the seasons, the rain and other natural phenomena that in this new century no longer respond to the old cycles we once knew, the dynamics of war (humanity’s most destructive activity) also seem to have changed.”
Victor Galvez Borrel
Translated By Paula van de Werken
January 14, 2008
Guatemala - Siglo Vientiuno - Original Article (Spanish)
Guatemala: Like the temperature, the seasons, the rain and other natural phenomena that in this new century no longer respond to the old cycles we once knew, the dynamics of war (humanity’s most destructive activity) also seem to have changed. Take two hot spots for example.
The first is the war in Iraq. Effectively, while the invasion of that country officially on May 1, 2003 (after the much-publicized victory if international coalition forces led by the United States after 40 days of combat that devastated the Iraqi Army). A few days later a different war began - and it continues today.
In the last four and a half years (until the end of October 2007) that conflict has resulted in 4,145 dead soldiers (92 percent of them North Americans and a total of five Salvadorans), as well as 28,171 wounded. In other words, 24 times more dead than during the initial invasion.
In addition to recording more deaths after victory than during the initial invasion, this war is characterized by the complexity of the battle being waged on several fronts: against the troops of the international coalition, against the government and the rebuilt Iraqi army (trained and subordinated to the invading forces), and between the majority Shiite Muslims (55 percent of the population) and the minority Sunnis (18 percent of the population).
This latter front gives the conflict the feel of a civil war, which had up to now spared the Kurds (21 percent of the population) but which now threatens to draw them in due to the recent bombings of their territory [northern Iraq] by Turkey. This feature creates the third and key paradox of this war: The troops of the international coalition don’t what to do in order to stay, but neither have they found the formula to go. Attacks with “car bombs” and the taking of hostages are two principal weapons of the fight.
The second “hot spot” is the internal armed conflict in Columbia, the oldest in America, which was ignored and isolated since it became impossible to conceal in 1980.
January 15th, 2008 by MICHAEL STICKINGS, Assistant Editor
As Fareed Zakaria put it on last night’s Daily Show, the U.S., and the Bush Administration in particular, supports democratic reform only in “strategically insignificant” countries like Burma — and not in, for example, Pakistan, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, where U.S.- and Bush-friendly dictators, or seemingly friendly dictators (like Pakistan’s Musharraf), accept U.S. aid in return for their compliance with U.S. interests, or seeming compliance with seeming U.S. interests. It’s all about seeming, you see, which is to say, about appearance. In the end, for Bush and the Bushies, democracy means much less than whatever it is they can get out of their friendly dictators, like oil, which may be real, or support for Bush’s war on terror, which may not be — support in speech is not support in deed, something Bush has yet to figure out.
Billions to Pakistan — for what? Billions to the Saudis — for what? For a hug, for a photo-op, for empty promises, for nothing.
And now Bush is in the Middle East making nice with his dictator pals. Indeed, not long after arriving in Riyadh, Bush announced that he was going ahead with the sale of sensitive military technology, specifically laser-guided bomb technology, to Saudi Arabia.
In what is surely related news, Abdullah awarded Bush the Saudi Order of Merit.
![[Espectador, Colombia]](http://worldmeets.us/images/chavezbushpuppets_elespectador.gif)
