Do As I Say...

Why I find it so hard to listen to that man...

Bush in Brussels:

Governments must choose to fight corruption, abandon old habits of control, protect the rights of conscience and the rights of minorities. Governments must invest in the health and education of their people, and take responsibility for solving problems instead of simply blaming others.

Governments must choose to:

'Fight corruption ...'

The U.S. Army on Thursday said Halliburton Co.'s Kellogg Brown and Root unit would not be slapped with a blanket 15 percent withholding on the payment of disputed bills involving billions of dollars of work in Iraq.

'Abandon old habits of control and protect the rights of minorities...'

Mr. Abu Ali has been at the center of a prolonged international conflict over his detention by the Saudis, as the defendant's family in the United States has said the United States effectively orchestrated his detention and interrogation in Saudi Arabia.

The family sued to force Mr. Abu Ali's release from Saudi custody, saying American officials threatened to declare him an enemy combatant and send him to a detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, if he did not cooperate. Judge John D. Bates has not issued a ruling on Mr. Abu Ali's detention, but he has expressed support for many of the family's central contentions and skepticism toward those of the government.

In an opinion in December, Judge Bates wrote, "There has been at least some circumstantial evidence that Abu Ali has been tortured during interrogations with the knowledge of the United States." He added that agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who were present for Saudi interrogations, "have despaired at his continued detention, and more than one United States official has stated that Abu Ali is no longer a threat to the United States and there is no active interrogation."

'Invest in the health ...'

Health and Human Services programs would face significant cuts. The Bush plan would kill seven Health Resources and Services Administration programs that earmark money for emergency medical services for children, hospital construction, traumatic brain injury and newborn hearing screening.

'And education of their people ...

The White House targeted a $41 million college scholarship program named for one of Bush's most persistent critics, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.). But even the president's own past priorities were not sacrosanct -- $496 million in education technology grants created by Bush's No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 would be wiped out because, the report said, "it is not clear that [it] has been successful in accomplishing this mission."

'Solving problems instead of simply blaming others.'

US President George W Bush today blamed a wave of violence in post-war Iraq in part on "foreign terrorists," and said he expected Syria and Iran to enforce border controls to stop infiltrators.

Bush vowed that the United States would not "crater in the face of hardship," and said those behind the suicide bombings had the "same mentality" as those who carried out the September 11 attacks on the United States.

"We're constantly looking at the enemy and adjusting," Bush said at a Rose Garden news conference in the aftermath of yesterday's bloodbath in Baghdad in which 35 people were killed.