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Not Looking Good

Entry 395, on 2006-09-15 at 15:42:18 (Rating 4, News)

Its often seems basically unnecessary to comment yet again on the state of US foreign policies, especially the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the news just keeps on coming so I guess I will just keep on commenting on it.

The trial of Saddam Hussein has often taken on elements of farce. Now the judge has more or less come out and said Saddam wasn't an evil dictator, and that some of the acts attributed to him were the result of others in the previous Iraqi government. Saddam seems to be gaining confidence and often using the court as a place for rhetorical commentary. I find the whole thing very amusing, but it doesn't bode well for the future of Iraq. The continuing violence and lawlessness doesn't look very positive either.

Yesterday I read an article in the BBC news from a British army group in Afghanistan. They expressed concern and alarm regarding the continued fierce resistance from the Taleban there. So things don't look so good in Afghanistan either.

Next, the IAEA (the UN nuclear watchdog organisation) has criticised a US report on Iran's nuclear programs, saying they are inaccurate and misleading. After the debacle of the exaggerated and false reports on Iraq's weapons capability the US should know better. This all looks depressingly familiar.

Tony Blair is worried about the amount of anti-US feeling in the world. He says that the world needs the US to solve many of its problems. In my experience people aren't anti-US, they are anti the current US administration, which seems to have a dysfunctional foreign policy, and various neo-conservative values which have no place in the modern world. I totally welcome positive input from the US, but I would prefer they keep out unless they can improve the quality of their current decisions. As things are now things are just not looking good.

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