Our Preznit has done such a fine job screwing up the rest of the world, now he's going to work on India (via Slate's TP):

The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times (pdf), Wall Street Journal world-wide newsbox, and New York Times all lead with yesterday's unveiling of the big nuclear pact in which the U.S. will give India a helping hand with civilian technology and allow India to ramp up its nukes program. In return, India will give its abiding friendship and will allow international inspectors at civilian plants. Its military program is still off-limits.

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As the Post puts it, the agreement with India "marked a significant break from decades of U.S. nuclear policy." That's because under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the U.S. and other nuke-holding countries are supposed to give nuclear know-how and fuel only to countries that sign on the treaty and promise to skip making weapons. India hasn't exactly done either. Slate's Fred Kaplan recently detailed how the coming deal violates the NPT, U.S. law, and may be unwise to boot.

It's likely that the U.S. couldn't do much to stop India from ramping up it's nuculur arms program anyway. But to do so without regard to any of the international community and previous agreements is plain stupid. And to get "abiding friendship"? Huh?

To ratify a nuculur arms buildup in India, and then to do so without any oversight continues to give the green light to non-nuculur countries that this is the way to go. It also says to Iran, that "they don't need no stinking inspections". Plus, you gotta wonder how ole' Pakistan feels about India increasing it's nuculur arsenal? And while Bush's goal is to keep India from sucking on the oil teat and to strengthen our influence in the area, the guy never, ever, gets the law of unintented consequences. The U.S. has no authority to unilaterally ignore the Non-Proliferation treaty, signed by 187 countries including China, Russia, Germany and Japan. What's to keep China from helping Iran in the same way, or Russia from assisting Pakistan? And how about those itty bitty Federal laws preventing the sale of nuculur material to foreign countries not a party to the NPT?

Like everything else, Bush is like a bull in a china shop. He leaves the room with the room wrecked expecting someone to clean it up.