I hardly think Bush will go, but if they want to look like they take the Palestinian side seriously, they need to send someone of importance.
VP Cheney seems unlikely.
Sec of State Powell is my bet.
But they could also send a number of lower ranking officials.
Wolfowitz, Perle, and Bolton.
At the current rate, it’ll be 2008 and a new administration before Arafat gives up his grim last grasp on life.
But if they actually unhook him in the next four years, I think it’ll be someone lower then the Sec. of State. The administration has tried hard to marginilize Arafat, I don’t think they’ll stop just cause he’s dead.
Jimmy Carter should attend.
Actually, I’ve heard that Jimmy Carter has petitioned the White House to send him. I won’t be surprised if they accept his request - it makes them look good, sending a senior, non-controvertial (to Arab eyes) delegate, while distancing them from a murky situation.
Dani
Regarding Jimmy Carter - I believe he’ll go whether or not he has official government sanction.
He’s been quite chummy with Arafat in the past, to the point of helping him write speeches. This is just one more thing that Carter has done that disgusts me.
Yes yes, Mr. Moto, Carter is such an immoral scumbag! What a bad, bad man! :rolleyes:
Don’t know who they will send - probably nobody. And this administration wouldn’t say a peep if Israel attacks Arafat’s funeral with helicopter gunships.
I’m not saying Carter is immoral. I just disagree very strongly with some of the choices he’s made.
If the Democratic Party were to look at him without rose-colored glasses, they’d likely see much of the same - cozying up to dictators, and badmouthing American foreign policy while in other countries, something no other recent president has done.
You might also want to read about what a headache Carter was for the Clinton Administration. His willingness to chart a foreign policy for the country even though he has no part in government drove the Clinton State Department nuts.
Ohmygosh, Moto! Cozying up to dictators? Gasp! Wow, sure a good thing none of your Republican guys ever did anything like that. Leaves you in a position of moral clarity, compared to a nasty guy like Jimmy. Would you like a list of the bloody handed dictators Republican presidents have “cozied up” to? How much time have you got, its one hell of a long list!
Now, just to be fair, American foreign policy is rotten clear through for the last bloody century with cozying up to dictators, so I’m not about to pretend its an entirely Republican vice, it isn’t. But neither am I about to let you get away with pretending that Jimmy C. is somehow exceptional in that regard.
As to criticizing American foreign policy while abroad, what damn difference does it make where he’s standing when he says it? They’ve got newspapers and stuff over there, you know, if he says it in Peoria or he says in Ankara, its pretty much the same, don’t you think? So why are you trying to eke some extra mileage out of the geographic location wherein the criticism was spoken? Trying to squeeze some of that “disloyal Democrat” juice? Good luck with that, I don’t think Jimmy ever met with Jane Fonda. He had that disloyal long-hair hippie sumbitch Willy Nelson to the White House, if that works for you…
Hopefully Van Helsing, just to make sure.
Plus Moore and O’Reilly to record a historically accurate and spin free documentary/biography on the man.
I wonder if we can convince Ann Coulter to extend the symbolic olive branch in a key note speach at the memorial service in Ramalah. 
I think Bush will be the great diplomat of always… and send no one. A clear sign of what he thinks about the palestinian issue.
And Ash and Ripley.
I thought that US officials were prohibited from visiting the West Bank (and Gaza?) due to the Palestinian Authority’s lack of interest and cooperation in the apprehension of those responsible for the bombing of an American diplomatic convoy in Beit Hanoun.
President Carter isn’t a US gov’t official anymore, he’s a private citizen.