This is the headline:
NATO Agrees to U.S. Proposals to Revamp Alliance
Here's the "oh isn't that nice" blurb:
BRUSSELS, June 12 — NATO allies, some of whom had opposed the Bush administration over war in Iraq, agreed today to reorganize alliance bases and commands as desired by Washington to make them more responsive to regional conflicts around the globe.
"This is a new NATO, a NATO transformed," said the alliance's general secretary, Lord Robertson, in a speech heralding the changes that are among the most radical in NATO's 54-year history.
Then you get this:
But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, on his first visit to NATO headquarters since the Iraq war, then annoyed Europeans by effectively threatening to set up NATO headquarters elsewhere if Belgium did not rescind a law that has been used to accuse American officials of war crimes.
"This law calls into serious question whether NATO can continue to hold meetings in Brussels," Mr. Rumsfeld said, adding that the alliance could easily meet elsewhere.
Rummy rattled on about how it was going to go from now on, and, of course, the reaction was:
"Tactless," is how one NATO diplomat described Mr. Rumsfeld's remarks at an evening news conference where the defense secretary said the United States would withhold financing for a new NATO headquarters building as long as the law, passed in the mid-1990's, remained on the books.
But is there a motive for all this mischief-making?
Many diplomats said Mr. Rumsfeld would have done better to deliver his message privately. They worried that his public rebuke would fuel nationalist sentiments here and complicate the Belgian government's efforts to unwind the problematic legislation, originally conceived as a way to prosecute war criminals from countries lacking an independent or well-developed justice system.
Former President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Gen. Tommy R. Franks are among the Americans singled out by various groups seeking to prosecute them under the statute.
Seems to me that there's some conflict of interest here. Forget Iraq, here's the power struggle. Another suspicious thing:
The diplomat said Mr. Rumsfeld also insisted on describing NATO initiatives in ways that had already been rejected by NATO's consensus-building debates, suggesting, for example, that the demands of NATO's reaction force would take priority over the demands of the European Union or individual NATO countries. "The message was, `This is the way I want it and it doesn't matter what the consensus is,' " he said.
Did Rummy really say that the US should take over NATO, relocate it if Belgium refuses to change its laws, and have authority over the EU? Is is trying to take over the world? Too bad his military hates him.
Laura
3:36:41 PM
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