Matt Cooper has a good backgrounder on the nuclear ("nucular," if you're president Bush) deal just closed with India. It still has to be approved by Congress, but it's hard to imagine the Democrats mustering the strength to stop it.
Cooper quotes Bush: "Our Congress has got to understand that it's in our economic interests that India have a civilian nuclear power industry to help take the pressure off the global demand for energy....And so I'm trying to think differently, not to stay stuck in the past," says Bush.
India currently uses a lot of the world's oil and burns a particularly dirty species of coal. Helping them to use nuclear power as an alternative will eventually reduce world demand for oil and clean the air. It will also increase the Indian standard of living and open up markets for American goods, if we're still producing anything twenty years from now. The deal will also help cement relations with the world's largest Democracy and a looming power in that part of the world. If China starts flexing its muscles and casting a covetous eye beyond its borders it'll be good to have friends in the region.
All in all, it sounds like yet another success for an administration that Senator Harry Reid recently declared will be remembered only for its incompetency and not for any achievements.
That Senator Reid. He's such a caution.
