The view from China: the United States is no longer seen as “that awesome, nor is it trustworthy"

from the nyt...

China views the United States as a declining power, but at the same time believes that Washington is trying to fight back to undermine, and even disrupt, the economic and military growth that point to China’s becoming the world’s most powerful country, according to the analyst, Wang Jisi, the co-author of “Addressing U.S.-China Strategic Distrust,” a monograph published this week by the Brookings Institution in Washington and the Institute for International and Strategic Studies at Peking University.

[...]

The United States is no longer seen as “that awesome, nor is it trustworthy, and its example to the world and admonitions to China should therefore be much discounted,” Mr. Wang writes of the general view of China’s leadership.

[...]

“It is now a question of how many years, rather than how many decades, before China replaces the United States as the largest economy in the world,” he adds.

in an interview, the brookings representative was quoted as saying that there is an increasing belief on both sides that the two countries would be "antagonistic in 15 years"...

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Everything's going so well in Iraq

kevin drum compiles a few stats from the brookings institution iraq index... brookings, btw, is where michael o'hanlon and kenneth pollack, shameless bush surge defenders, work... (see here and here...)

Violence Metrics

	June/July 2006	June/July 2007	Change
Iraqi Military and Police Killed	349	429	Up 23%
Multiple Fatality Bombings	110	82	Down 25%
# Killed in Mult. Fatality Bombings	885	1,053	Up 19%
Iraqi Civilians Killed (All violent causes)	6,739	5,300	Hard to say1
U.S. Troop Fatalities	104	187	Up 80%
U.S. Troops Wounded	983	1,423	Up 45%
Size of Insurgency	20,000+	~70,0002	Up ~250%
Attacks on Oil and Gas Pipelines	8	143	Up 75%

¹Methodology changed dramatically between 2006 and 2007, so numbers are highly suspect.
²Number is for March 2007.
³Numbers are for June only. No July numbers are available.

Infrastructure Metrics

	June/July 2006	June/July 2007	Change
Diesel Fuel Available	26.7 Ml	20.7 Ml	Down 22%
Kerosene Available	7.08 Ml	6.3 Ml	Down 11%
Gasoline Available	29.4 Ml	22.2 Ml	Down 24%
LPG Available	4,936 tons	4,932 tons	Down 0.1%
Electricity Generated	8,800 Mwatts	8,420 Mwatts	Down 4%
Hours Electricity Per Day	11.7	10.14	Down ~14%

⁴No numbers available for June/July. Figure is extrapolated from May and August numbers.

things are going smashingly well, i'd say...

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More shameless Bush defenders

today is an embarrassment, not of riches, but of fresh, steaming, 100%, grade A bullshit... not only do we have two shills, writing under the cover of their exalted positions at the brookings institution, pushing this sorry thesis in - where else? - the wapo...


Twin Yay-hoos, O'Hanlon and Pollack

A War We Just Might Win

By MICHAEL E. O’HANLON and KENNETH M. POLLACK
Published: July 30, 2007

we also have THIS yay-hoo, writing in bloomberg, who, were it not for the tipoff given by his email (khassett@aei.org) would be otherwise unidentified as the director of economic and policy studies at the american enterprise institute...


Yay-hoo Hassett

If you want a wretched sight, look at the political speech of the leading Democratic candidates. President George W. Bush has, to put it lightly, made numerous mistakes. But he isn't Satan. You would hardly know it if you listen to the Democrats.

my GOD, it's SO-O-O_OO tiresome having this kind of crap, passing as intelligent, informed, and, yes, ACADEMIC opinion, taking up printers' ink, bandwidth and pixels, cluttering up otherwise valuable media space...

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After posting about Dem lackeys and enablers, here's two more

here's somebody else in the democratic leadership supporting infrastructure who refuses to entertain the notion that the vast majority of the american people don't agree with his bullshit, but is definitely not going to let THAT FACT stop him from smearing it all over the walls... nor will it stop the consistently bushco-enabling wapo from headlining it on page one...

William A. Galston of the Brookings Institution, a Clinton administration domestic policy adviser and an early opponent of the Iraq war, said his party should note that voters appear just as worried that Democrats would withdraw from Iraq too quickly as they are concerned that Republicans would stay there too long.

"I think it's important to distinguish between the desire to bring this agony to an end and the consequences of bringing it to an end in the wrong way," he said. "I can't prove this, but I believe Democrats will be held responsible if they are seen as advocating a course of action that doesn't take the consequences of failure into account. We cannot afford as a party to be either silent or blithe about the consequences of rapid withdrawal."

there's an even more insidious line of crap embedded in this front-page story...

[T]he war is not the only area in which the candidates are at opposing poles of the debate. On issues such as taxes and spending, health care, and education, candidates are mostly taking their cue from -- or trying to cozy up to -- their respective ideological bases. In doing so, they risk embracing positions that could complicate later efforts to win the support of independent voters, whose votes will be crucial in November 2008.

read the above carefully... what picture does it conjure up...? that's right... two fringe groups, one parked on the far left and the other parked on the far right, both labeled as "ideological bases" with this vast white space labeled "independent voters" in between... this completely fails to take into account that the vast majority of that white space just so happens to support the very positions that are being ascribed to the far left fringe, however, no surprise to anybody, it's the "activists," as always, who are the ones making the most noise... seriously, i don't know how out of touch it is possible for mr. galston and the washington post to be and to still be citizens and residents of the united states...

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