To borrow a phrase from the old Ella Fitzgerald tune “Undecided,” first they say they do and then they don’t. “They” being the Bush administration, which recently indicated it might back-pedaling on the Iraq contract ban against European nations that did not support the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan suggested, however, there was room for some flexibility when asked whether countries that helped erase Iraqi debt could qualify to win contracts from $18.6 billion of U.S. reconstruction funding.
“If countries want to join in our efforts in Iraq…then circumstances can change, and we’ll make that very clear,” McClellan told reporters.
Outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who refused to send troops to join the war in Iraq because the fighting was not approved by the United Nations, said Bush told him in a farewell conversation “not to worry.”
While I’d like to think the Bush team is skillfully playing both sides of the fence, Bush’s own bewilderment at the Pentagon annoucement which preceded his sending James Baker on a mission to ask those same European nations to help out by forgiving Iraqi debt suggests it yet another case of the left hand not only not knowing what the right hand is doing, but seeming utterly unaware that the right hand exists in the first place.