What Is Bush Really After At UN?

Bush agreed to go to the UN begging cup in hand because we don't have the troops or the money to occupy Iraq. At least the way he is going about it. Making up for eliminating 80,000 top Iraqi civil servants and 400,000 Iraqi troops we desperately need now is incredible tough and expensive.

The draft UN resolution offers no incentives to the UN or any country to get involved in our nasty tarbaby. So is this a ploy for something else?

Whiskey Bar concludes it is either a deliberate plan to negotiate in bad faith to give political cover at home and to give India, Pakistan or Turkey cover to send troops or that somehow Bush and Rove want gridlock over this issue for a later plan.

There is one other datapoint.

Bush seemed incredibly angry at his Labor Day speech to power plant engineers where he attacked Congress, where his party controls both houses, for his energy policy failures. Was this a carryover from Bush just making the decision to go back to the UN which he clearly doesn't want to do?

Does this suggest that Bush knows he needs the UN but he really doesn't want to ask and resents being forced to ask so he is asking petulantly? GW was always bad in business and the Texas Rangers under his leadership were known for bad trades and poor management.

The times that Bush has negotiated brilliantly has been under the guidance of Karl Rove seeking to score political points for later use. GW's first year as both govenor and as president he negotiated artful tax and education reforms that were used for political campaigns later. (He also did not keep the agreements he made to get Democrats on board but that is another story.)

Psychological studies show that very authoritarian personalities have difficulty in seeing points of view other than their own.

Is it simply that Bush doesn't know how to negotiate unless it is under the guidance of Rove for later political purposes?

Is it simply he doesn't realize that other countries and the UN have no incentive to get involved in Iraq. That the other countries and the UN aren't required to haul his ass out of the fire. Particularly after his administration has repeatedly insulted them and has always insisted that the US could go into Iraq illegally without them and would not need them.

Asking for other countries help and UN help requires that Bush eat crow. Former Texas governor Ann Richards long ago pointed out that GW was "born with a silver foot in his mouth." Has the arrogant Bush never learned to eat crow? To apologize and know how to ask for help?

I think it is either this or some plan behind GW seeking failure at the UN.

That would mean a neocon or Rove plan behind this. A neocon plan behind this would be Bush having to say he tried and then asking Congress to expand the size of the Army but I think Rove knows this is not politically smart. Is Rove trying to deflect not asking the UN to help as a campaign issue?

Either this is the case, Rove attempting political damage control for the next election, or we are seeing GW as a petulant small boy when things don't go his way.

It could be both - Rove and the neocon's told GW to seek a UN deal and Bush will but isn't happy about it. If he can get it fine and if he can't he can use his attempt in Congress to get them to appropriate more troops and in the election to deflect charges he didn't seek UN help.