{"id":945,"date":"2003-12-10T17:53:49","date_gmt":"2003-12-11T00:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/uncategorized\/a-gratuitous-slap\/"},"modified":"2003-12-10T17:53:49","modified_gmt":"2003-12-11T00:53:49","slug":"a-gratuitous-slap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/a-gratuitous-slap\/","title":{"rendered":"a gratuitous slap"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Pentagon Bars Three Nations From Iraq Bids\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/12\/10\/international\/middleeast\/10DIPL.html?th=&amp;pagewanted=all&amp;position=\">Pentagon Bars Three Nations From Iraq Bids<\/a> By DOUGLAS JEHL, NYTimes<\/p>\n<p>The Pentagon has barred French, German and Russian companies from competing for $18.6 billion in contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, saying it was acting to protect &#8221;the essential security interests of the United States.&#8221;<br \/>\nThe directive, issued Friday by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, represents <b>the most substantive retaliation to date by the Bush administration against American allies who opposed its decision<\/b> to go to war in Iraq. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a statement criticizing the Pentagon move as <b>a &#8220;totally gratuitous slap&#8221;<\/b> that &#8220;does nothing to protect our security interests and everything to alienate countries we need with us in Iraq.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>A Republican congressman who recently returned from Iraq said in a telephone interview on Tuesday that it was a mistake to exclude particular countries from the rebuilding effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pentagon Bars Three Nations From Iraq Bids By DOUGLAS JEHL, NYTimes The Pentagon has barred French, German and Russian companies from competing for $18.6 billion in contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, saying it was acting to protect &#8221;the essential security interests of the United States.&#8221; The directive, issued Friday by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/a-gratuitous-slap\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">a gratuitous slap<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dump-duhbya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}