Bush told reporters how he'll handle Saddam Hussein when they meet face to face. "I'll bust his coconut like a pinata," he said.
As Israeli tanks push further into Palestinian territories, calls from world leaders for an end to the regional conflict go unheeded. Rulers from around the globe are urging President Bush to become more involved in the situation to try and broker some sort of peace between the two peoples.
Peace, once a seeming possibility during negotiations headed by the outgoing Clinton administration, now appear nearly unobtainable. The Bush administration walked away from the situation when it took power and things have steadily declined in its wake.
Following a recent series of deadly suicide bombings, Israel declared Yasser Arafat an enemy of the state and has detained the Palestinian leader in his compound with a wall of tanks. The ability for either side to now negotiate any sort of agreement would appear to be hopeless.
Until now, the Bush administration has seemed content to simply watch events unfold with an occasional "why don't you guys just stop it" from the president. Even as the situation spirals madly out of control, Bush has not placed a phone call to either leader.
Sources close to the White House say the president is angry with both sides for screwing up his plans to invade Iraq and his desire to bring peace to the Middle East through his self-declared war on terrorism.
The White House, however, dismisses such claims.
"You people keep trying to draw a parallel between what's happening there and what's happening with our war," claimed press secretary Ari Fleischer, "but they are two entirely different things. Here we had terrorists fly planes into buildings to kill innocent civilians. In Israel they have suicide bombers walking into buildings to kill innocent civilians. The differences are really quite obvious."
The hypocritical views of the administration as it tries to maneuver through the mine field of Middle East relations is not lost on the rest of the world. On one hand Bush has made verbal statements that "Chairman Arafat" reign in suicide bombers, while the administration also signs resolutions calling for Israel to end it's aggressive push into Palestine.
Another example is the administration claim they have evidence that Saddam Hussein has offered $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers. This funding of terrorism is to be a basis for an invasion of Iraq under the broad strokes of the U.S. war on those who harbor, fund or aide terrorists in any way.
The White House, however, has said that the actions of the Palestinians are not terrorism per se, which leads many to wonder how Saddam Hussein can be guilty of funding terrorists that are not considered terrorists by the Bush administration.
Bush claims that there are great differences between Iraq and what's going on in Palestine. "For one thing, my daddy didn't lose to Bill Clinton because we didn't kills Arafat, but because he didn't kills Hussein. And I'm gonna fix that little mess, you marks my word. The other thing is that Palestine doesn't have the gazillion barrels of oil that Iraq and the Caspian Sea have, so who really cares what happens to them?"
