OxBlog

Sunday, November 10, 2002

# Posted 6:26 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

POWELL POWER: On Saturday, The NY Times ran a long article on Colin Powell's efforts to negotiate a workable UN resolution with both American hawks and UN doves. Unfortunately, the article did not absolutely nothing to explain how Powell managed to convert the French and the Russians to the US position. Did we buy them off? Were they afraid we'd go it alone? If there were an answer, it would say a lot about both Powell's ability as negotiator and the nature of our erstwhile allies.

The article also provided considerable substantiation for one of my favorite points, which is that the President never instructed the whole cabinet to support a single strategy, therefore provoking semi-open warfare within the administration that the the unfortunate effect of undercutting the effort of both sides.

UPDATE: Compare the NYT article with the WashPost article on the same subject. The Post avoids the issue of Russia and France, but provides a far superior account of Powell's effort to persuade the hawks to go along. Would someone please explain, then, whey the NYT costs three times as much as the Post?

Unless you read them online, in which case they're both free!
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