MB Civic

By Kathryn Cameron Porter | Saturday, Nov. 18, 2006 | The Washington Post

The writer is the President of the Leadership Council for Human Rights. Here she reviews the back story to Bush’s visit to Hanoi (Bill Clinton was the first US President to go there, in 2000), and she explains the current agenda. This is both an economic visit and a state visit. Accompanying the President are more than 200 leaders of American corporations, many of them Fortune 500 companies — and zero representatives of American organizations working to raise the bottom line on human rights and religious freedom in Vietnam. Also notably absent is the permanent normalization of trade status Bush hoped to bring as his big gift (a pact that would have made Vietnam a small but powerful competitor of China’s), because the “PNTR” (Permanent Normal Trade Relationship) was crushed very decisively by the Republican majority in Congress. So Bush, having lost the backing of his own party just before a big, historic appearance, is bringing a lump of coal and a bunch of bunch of greedy capitalists to Vietnam, and no human rights demands. It’s good in a way that he does not have a big stick, ‘cuz his carrot was taken away by His Own Boys on Capitol Hill. This story bears watching closely…BS

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/17/AR2006111701617.html