Bush Flubs Navy Aid Claim, Forgets Turkey

By Cernig

When Dubya announced that US Navy ships would carry humanitarian aid to Georgia, he forgot that he hadn't asked Turkey if it was OK. Turkey, by the 1936 Montreaux Convention, controls all warship access to the the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. Jonathan S. Landay at McClatchy calls it a "flub".

"The president was writing checks to the Georgians without knowing what he had in the bank," said a senior administration official.

"The president got out in front of the planning when he talked publicly about using naval forces," said a second senior administration official. "At that point we need to look at treaty obligations, our bilateral relations with the Turks and others, waterway restrictions and what kind of ships might be appropriate and usable — something like the Comfort or something already in the Med (Mediterranean)."

The U.S. officials requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly, because the issue is diplomatically sensitive or because the administration takes a dim view of officials who reveal its internal deliberations.

That would be hillarious if it wasn't so f-ing sad. Don't imagine for a second that bush just upped and announced this - a whole slew of folk at State, the Pentagon and in the White House had to ignore or forget American treaty obligations before the speech was cleared too. This is your foreign policy on Republicanism.

The nutter in charge in Georgia then took it a step further:

Bush's pledge to send aid-carrying naval ships prompted Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to proclaim that U.S. warships would break what he claimed — inaccurately — was a Russian naval blockade of Georgia's Black Sea coast, and that U.S. forces would take control of his country's ports.

While Saakashvili either exaggerated or misunderstood Bush's announcement, a U.S. failure to fulfill the president's pledge could prompt other former Soviet republics and Soviet bloc nations to question whether they can count on U.S. support if Russia targets them.

The Pentagon stepped in very quickly to announce that Saakashvili was smoking something if he thought a single destroyer or hospital ship was going to go up against the entire Russian Black Sea fleet or that the US military was going to take responsibility for Georgian ports and airports.

But McClatchy reports that the Turks, understandably miffed, are now dragging their feet. "The Turks haven't been helpful," said a State Department official. "They are being sluggish and unresponsive." Imagine that!

Ah, the unbearable arrogance of American exceptionalism.

Update: meanwhile, the idiot John Bolton compares Nicholas Sarkozy of France to Neville Chamberlain because Sarko actually - gasp - negotiated a ceasefire, says Bush was an appeaser himself and throws his hat entirely into Mccain's "armed confrontation with Russia" ring. What a surprise. Imagine if Bush had managed to get this guy confirmed as US ambassador to the UN. Thankfully, he's been consigned to ranting in the UK's Telegraph and other media shills for the neoconservative movement.

Comments

[Cheryl Rofer]

I am so hoping that the overuse of Chamberlin-Hitler-Stalin rhetoric by all sides will burn out that particular mindless rhetorical tic.

That would be a positive outcome of this unfortunate confrontation.

[Steve Hynd]

Hi Cheryl,

Just for a second, I thought you meant Bolton when you wrote "mindless rhetorical tic" and was about to say you misspelled "tick". :-)

Regards, C