Yahoo! News - Bush policy brings the world on his back: "Bush policy brings the world on his back | Tue Sep 21, 9:58 PM ETAdd U.S. National - AFP to My Yahoo!

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The world view of the US superpower has seldom been as low as since President George W. Bush (news - web sites) launched the invasion of Iraq (news - web sites) without explicit UN approval.

Arrogant, aggressive, too unilateralist are just some of the terms used to describe the US administration.

Opinion polls taken around the world confirmed the dim view of the US leader and his policies, which is most notable among traditional allies in Europe and the Arab world.

"But the breadth and depth of the current anti-Americanism are unprecedented," he said.

According to a study published this month by the German Marshall Fund and Compania di San Paolo of Italy, 76 percent of Europeans oppose Bush's foreign policy. This is a spectacular 20 percentage point rise in two years.

The fall in US popularity in the Muslim world has been marked by an accompanying increase in the popularity of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), who tops the US most wanted list after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Sixty-five percent of Pakistanis, 45 percent of Moroccans and 31 percent of Turks have a favourable view of the on-the-run Al-Qaeda leader, according to a Pew research poll released in March.

If the rest of the world was voting in the November 2 presidential election, the Democrats' John Kerry (news - web sites) would walk the competition against Bush.

The Massachusetts senator easily beat Bush in 32 out of 35 countries asked by the Globescan institute for a survey released this month.

Kerry wins in countries that opposed the Iraq war -- 64 percent to five percent in France, 74-10 in Germany, 61-16 in Canada -- and those in Bush's "coalition of the willing" -- 47 percent to 16 percent in Britain and 43-23 in Japan.

... The German Marshall Fund study found that 95 percent of Europeans and 96 percent of Americans believe that international terrorism is an important threat.

It is the answer to that threat which is in dispute.

Only 41 percent of Europeans believe that a war is justified, against 82 percent of Americans, most of whom also believe that the UN approval is not necessary.


- posted by Editor @ 5:47 AM

Excite - News: "Cat Stevens Calls U.S. Deportation 'Ridiculous' | Sep 23, 5:59 am ET | By Paul Majendie

LONDON (Reuters) - Muslim convert and former pop star Cat Stevens returned to Britain on Thursday after his deportation from the U.S. over 'potential' terrorism links sparked an Anglo-American diplomatic row.

'The whole thing is totally ridiculous,' Stevens said on arrival at London's Heathrow airport. 'Half of me wants to smile, half of me wants to growl.'

UK Muslim leaders were outraged. "The United States is shutting down its house, building walls around itself," said Anas Altikriti, spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain.

Stevens, 56, was traveling with his daughter on a United Airlines flight on Tuesday from London to Washington when American officials diverted it 600 miles to Bangor, Maine.
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... led Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to complain personally to Secretary of State Colin Powell at the United Nations.
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A leading Arab-American group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, has sent letters to President Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge asking them to explain why Islam was barred.

Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, the largest group lobbying for the country's 1.8 million Muslims, told Reuters: "This whole saga does not bode well for other Muslims.

"It will make them wonder who else, which other moderate educationalists or community leaders are on these U.S. watch lists," he told Reuters.
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He had a string of hits in the early 1970s including "Peace Train," "Moonshadow,," "Morning has Broken," and "Wild World" before converting to Islam in 1977.

- posted by Editor @ 5:42 AM

Far Graver Than Vietnam: Most Senior US Military Officers now Believe the War on Iraq has turned into a Disaster on an Unprecedented Scale: "Published on Thursday, September 16, 2004 by the Guardian / United Kingdom | by Sidney Blumenthal

Almost every day, in campaign speeches, Bush speaks with bravado about how he is "winning" in Iraq. "Our strategy is succeeding," he boasted to the National Guard convention on Tuesday.

But, according to the US military's leading strategists and prominent retired generals, Bush's war is already lost. Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, told me: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost." He adds: "Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends."

Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command, told me: "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."

Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College, said: "I see no ray of light on the horizon at all. The worst case has become true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in Iraq and the advantages we had after the second world war in Germany and Japan."

Andrew Terrill, professor at the Army War College's strategic studies institute - and the top expert on Iraq there - said: "I don't think that you can kill the insurgency". According to Terrill, the anti-US insurgency, centred in the Sunni triangle, and holding several cities and towns - including Fallujah - is expanding and becoming more capable as a consequence of US policy.
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General Hoare believes from the information he has received that "a decision has been made" to attack Fallujah "after the first Tuesday in November. That's the cynical part of it - after the election. The signs are all there."
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General Odom remarked that the tension between the Bush administration and the senior military officers over Iraqi was worse than any he has ever seen with any previous government, including Vietnam. "I've never seen it so bad between the office of the secretary of defence and the military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaida. Bin Laden could argue with some cogency that our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic."
- posted by Editor @ 8:49 PM

Ray Hanania: Israel's Demographics: "September 17, 2004 | Population and the One-State Solution | Israel's Demographics | By RAY HANANIA

Despite non-stop violence against them by Israel's military, Palestinians found some hope this week when the country's official census study showed Palestinians growing twice as fast as Jews.

Published by Israel's leading English language newspaper, Haaretz, the data shows that Israel's population of 6.8 million consists of 5.5 million Jews and 1.3 million Arabs.

Of course, those number do not include the Palestinians living under military occupation in the Gaza Strip and West Bank where Palestinians are killed at a rate three times faster than Israelis.

It does include citizens of East Jerusalem, which Israel illegally annexed and that the international community still considers occupied territory.

These quirks aside, the study indicated that the Jewish population grew by only 1.4 percent in 2003, compared to 3 percent for the Arab population."
- posted by Editor @ 8:25 PM