The Brunch Table

Google News makes it much easier to find interesting news coverage from around the world, which is (unfortunately for us) often more comprehensive than the American coverage. For example, most U.S. news outlets only gave brief excerpts of Bush’s press conference last night; over in the U.K., The Guardian printed the full transcript. There were many good questions, and few satisfying answers. For example:

Question: … If all these nations, all of them our normal allies, have access to the same intelligence information, why is it that they are reluctant to think that the threat is so real, so imminent that we need to move to the brink of war now? …

Bush: … You asked about sharing of intelligence, and I appreciate that, because we do share a lot of intelligence with nations which may or may not agree with us in the security council as to how to deal with Saddam Hussein and his threats. We have got roughly 90 countries engaged in Operation Enduring Freedom, chasing down the terrorists.

We do communicate a lot, and we will continue to communicate a lot. We must communicate. We must share intelligence; we must share — we must cut off money together; we must smoke these al-Qaida types out one at a time. It’s in our national interest, as well, that we deal with Saddam Hussein.

But America is not alone in this sentiment. There are a lot of countries who fully understand the threat of Saddam Hussein. A lot of countries realise that the credibility of the security council is at stake — a lot of countries, like America, who hope that he would have disarmed, and a lot of countries which realise that it may require force — may require force — to disarm him.

He’s full of al-Qaeda non-sequiturs, but never actually answers the question, other than to say that there are “a lot of countries” that believe Iraq is a threat. (They must not be important ones, if the administration has been trying to entice the likes of Angola and Cameroon with promises of aid.) If the U.S. actions are in the right, why is it such a hard sell to the rest of the world?

Also: transcript analysis, and 13 questions that should’ve been asked.