Sunday, September 12, 2004

How long will it take?

...for the White House to take Costa Rica off its list of "coalition" partners supporting the war in Iraq? A formal diplomatic request was given several days ago, after Costa Rica's constitutional court said they couldn't support a war that was not authorized by the United Nations.

As of Saturday, at least, Costa Rica was still up on the White House site, despite the fact that the AP story --which ran just about everywhere -- mentioned this little detail as early as Thursday.

As readers of this blog know full well, El Salvador is actually the only Latin American country with troops in Iraq, so why the heck is Costa Rica considered part of the coalition? Again, according to AP:
Controversy over the issue erupted when local newspapers noted that the White House had listed Costa Rica as a member of the coalition "that has already begun military operations to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction."

The White House page in question reads "Forty-nine countries are publicly committed to the Coalition, including ... Costa Rica."

Dated Feb. 4, 2004, the Web page continues: "Contributions from Coalition member nations range from: direct military participation, logistical and intelligence support, specialized chemical/biological response teams, over-flight rights, humanitarian and reconstruction aid, to political support."
The Bush administration really is desperate to have something it can call a "coalition," isn't it? Check it out for yourself here: White House's Iraq coalition web site.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

All they wanted to do was keep their phone company! The whole trade deal collapsed over this.

They really need to develp nuclear weapons and start outsourcing like India-then sell shares in the phone company to large corporations like Fruit of The Loom and its CEOs spread across the telecomm industry. I could have rambled there.......