Scowcroft emphasizes just how much Dubya blows...

or is it sucks?

Frankly, I have a hard time telling:

Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush, was highly critical of the current president's handling of foreign policy in an interview published this week, saying that the current President Bush is "mesmerized" by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, that Iraq is a "failing venture" and that the administration's unilateralist approach has harmed relations between Europe and the United States.

Scowcroft's remarks, reported in London's Financial Times, are unusual coming from a leading Republican less than three weeks before a highly contested election. In the first Bush administration, Scowcroft was a mentor to Condoleezza Rice, the current national security adviser, and he is regarded as a close associate of the president's father.

...

Generally, such concerns have been muted and voiced privately, but Scowcroft's interview was blunt, especially over Bush's handling of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

"Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger," Scowcroft told the Financial Times. "I think the president is mesmerized." He added: "When there is a suicide attack [followed by a reprisal] Sharon calls the president and says, 'I'm on the front line of terrorism,' and the president says, 'Yes, you are . . . ' He [Sharon] has been nothing but trouble."

Although both Bush and Kerry have been very supportive of Sharon's plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, Scowcroft said he warned Rice that this is a ruse to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.

"When I first heard Sharon was getting out of Gaza I was having dinner with Condi and she said: 'At least that's good news,' " Scowcroft recounted. "And I said: 'That's terrible news. . . . Sharon will say: 'I want to get out of Gaza, finish the wall [the Israeli security barrier] and say I'm done.' "

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Regarding U.S.-European relations, Scowcroft said the U.S. rejection of offers of assistance after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was a "severe rebuff. . . . We had gotten contemptuous of Europeans and their weaknesses. We had really turned unilateral."

He added that there has been "some pulling back of the extremes of neocons scoffing at multilateral organizations," but that fundamentally little has changed. He said U.S. engagement with the United Nations and NATO in Afghanistan and Iraq is "as much an act of desperation as anything else . . . to rescue a failing venture."

Scowcroft said that relations with Europe are "in general bad," but that the United States has to work with Europe to deal with the world's problems.

Somehow, Scowcroft having endorsed Kerry's foreign policy, says he is still supporting Bush.