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zit, you are getting weaker by the day...
how could it, when the biased liberal media refuses to cover the good news?
REFUSES TO COVER THE GOOD NEWS??? Good gracious, zit, you have a brand-spankin' new pair of rose-colored glasses and you don't 'see' the good news? Either you are deaf and blind or again, my goodness, YOUR bias is unable to translate even the most simple news presented on tv, newspapers, radio, internet, etc. Even eddie proclaimed the 'good news'.
Man, to think you label yourself an 'independent thinker'...lol.
D-Day in Iraq
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: June 10, 2004
There's been some good political news out of Iraq in recent days. The newly installed — and now U.N.-blessed — Iraqi government is made up of some really decent people. There is hope. But it will not be realized if the sort of incident that happened last weekend keeps being repeated. Two American and two Polish employees of Blackwater USA, a security contractor, were killed in an ambush on the main road from Baghdad airport to downtown Baghdad. Remember a year ago when Saddam's spokesman, the wacky "Baghdad Bob," claimed that U.S. forces didn't control the airport? We shouldn't have laughed. A year later, we still do not fully control the main road from Baghdad airport to Baghdad. You can't build anything under those conditions.
It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry when you hear President Bush comparing D-Day to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the war on terrorism. If President Franklin Roosevelt had thrown the meager manpower resources into D-Day that George Bush threw into Iraq a year ago, France would be a German-speaking country today.
Alas, it is too late now to send a lot more U.S. troops, if we had them. Now that the interim Iraqi government is assuming sovereignty, it will be increasingly important for U.S. forces to assume a lower profile, to get out of the faces of Iraqis at checkpoints and eliminate any impression that Iraq is still under U.S. occupation or that the new Iraqi government is our puppet. The whole strategy of the bad guys in Iraq now is to wreak havoc and try to provoke a U.S. military reaction that might accidentally kill a lot of Iraqis — in the hope that this will embarrass and delegitimize the new Iraqi officials as ineffective U.S. flunkies.
We are up against some really evil, cynical forces: die-hard Baathists, Qaeda-inspired Islamists and criminals. They continue to kill large numbers of innocent Iraqis without ever spelling out a political demand. That's because their only interest is that America fail. They have no coherent vision for Iraq. Their only vision is that America must fail. Because if the U.S. succeeds in tilting Iraq onto a more progressive track, Baathism and Islamism will be diminished everywhere.
There is nothing more difficult to fight than an enemy whose only interest is that you fail and who has no interest in building a positive alternative. That kind of enemy can only be overwhelmed and crushed. But the D-Day solution for Iraq is not for America to throw all its troops into Iraq. As I said, it's too late for that. It is for America to throw all its resources into getting Iraqi soldiers trained and able to take on their own opposition. Only Iraqis will find out who their bad guys are and have the legitimacy to defeat them. As the Stanford University democracy specialist Larry Diamond, a former U.S. adviser in Baghdad, put it: "If you don't have security in Iraq, you don't have anything. We have to throw everything we have — everything — into getting the new Iraqi forces operating effectively."
How close are we to that? I called Lt. Gen. David Petraeus in Baghdad, the widely respected U.S. commander for rebuilding the Iraqi Army. He told me that contracts for more than $3 billion worth of equipment, uniforms, training facilities, weaponry, bases and communications gear for the new Iraqi Army are finally being signed and executed — so by the end of the summer, a lot of it should be getting to units. Moreover, he said, the first battalion of Iraqi internal security forces, trained for urban warfare, will be deployed in Baghdad. If the training stays on schedule, says General Petraeus, a critical mass of trained Iraqi Army, civil defense and police forces should be up and running by January, in time for elections.
"Early on, just after we got here, we talked a lot about how to win Iraqi hearts and minds, and get them to like us," General Petraeus said. "But we understand now that what we really need is for them to love the new Iraq. That is what needs to happen. . . . Bombs are going to go off every day, but what we need to do is somehow keep looking to the longer term and focus on building the new Iraq. . . . We just need to keep our heads down, be patient and keep driving on. This is really, really hard work."
That's what this D-Day looks like. It is not a single charge up a Normandy beach, but a long, hard slog to train an Iraqi Army to finish the war that we started. This is the Iraqis' real war of independence. If they beat back the bad guys and hold elections, they'll be free of us and the worst of their past. If they don't or can't, this will be our Waterloo, and theirs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/opinion/10FRIE.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2...
Epitaph and Epigone
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: June 10, 2004
WASHINGTON
Sometimes I feel as if I'm watching a nation mourn. And sometimes I feel as if I'm watching a paternity suit.
At every opportunity, as the extraordinary procession solemnly wended its way from California to the Capitol, W. was peeping out from behind the majestic Reagan mantle, trying to claim the Gipper as his true political father.
Finally, there's a flag-draped coffin and military funeral that President Bush wants to be associated with, and wants us to see. (It's amazing they could find enough soldiers, given Rummy's depletion of the military.)
"His heart belongs to Reagan," Ken Duberstein declared about Mr. Bush on CNN, in a riff on the old Cole Porter ditty "My Heart Belongs to Daddy." W. "is that bold-stroked primary-colors leader that—— somebody who has this big vision and wants to stick to it." (Well, the two presidents do share a middle initial.)
The Bush-Cheney re-election Web site was totally given over to a Reagan tribute, with selected speeches, including "Empire of Ideals" — too bad we didn't just stick to ideals — and "The Boys of Pointe du Hoc," President Reagan's 1984 Normandy speech, played so often last Sunday that it eclipsed W. at Normandy.
Bush hawks were visibly relieved to be on TV answering questions that had nothing to do with prison torture, phantom W.M.D. or our new C.I.A.-operative-turned-prime-minister in Iraq. What a glorious respite to extol a strong, popular, visionary Republican president who spurred democracy in a big backward chunk of the world — even if it isn't W., and it's the Soviet bloc and not the Middle East.
Showing they haven't lost their taste for hype, some Bushies revved up the theme that Son of Bush was really Son of Reagan.
Never mind that back in 1989, the deferential Bush père couldn't wait to escape the Gipper's Brobdingnagian shadow. Though he liked Ronald Reagan, 41 had a secret disdain for 40's White House. He was dismayed by the way media wizards treated the president like a prop and the Oval Office like an M.G.M. set. He and Barbara, who divide the world into peers and "the help," also hated being treated like "the help" by the Reagans, who did not have them upstairs at the residence for dinner and who did not always thank them for presents.
The Reagans returned the favor. "Kinder and gentler than who?" Nancy sniffed after 41's convention acceptance speech. (As for Barbara, Nancy had warned her off wearing "Nancy Reagan red.")
For the neocons, ideology is thicker than blood. Bush père is the weakling who broke his tax pledge and let Saddam stay in power. Just as Ronnie was a poor kid from Dixon, Ill., who reinvented himself as a brush-clearing cowboy of grand plans and simple tastes, so W. was a rich kid from Yale and Harvard and a blue-blooded political dynasty who reinvented himself as a brush-clearing cowboy of grand plans and simple tastes.
While W. talks the optimistic talk, he doesn't walk the walk; the Bush crew conducted its Iraq adventurism with a noir and bullying tone.
But Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz tried to merge Junior and Gipper. Mr. Perle said on CNN that Mr. Reagan wouldn't have been "pushed out of Iraq before completing the mission," and Wolfie agreed that 9/11 had "changed everything. I think it would have changed it for Ronald Reagan. We've gone from just being concerned with the freedom of other people in the Middle East to the threat to our own country from totalitarian regimes that support terrorism."
These maunderings forget that Mr. Reagan sometimes avoided risk, compromised and retreated; when 241 marines were blown up in Beirut, he rejected advisers' pleas and pulled out. Mr. Wolfowitz has told friends this was Mr. Reagan's low point.
As Alexander Haig told Pat Robertson yesterday, Mr. Reagan won the cold war without a shot. He championed freedom but didn't impose it at the point of a gun barrel. He had "Peace Through Strength"; Mr. Bush chose Pre-emption Without Powell.
The Bush crowd's attempt to wrap themselves in Reagan could go only so far. While Laura Bush and Donald Rumsfeld shared memories of fathers who had suffered from Alzheimer's, Mrs. Bush said she could not support Mrs. Reagan's plea to remove the absurd and suffocating restrictions on stem cell research.
Whether he was right or wrong, Ronald Reagan was exhilarating. Whether he is right or wrong, George W. Bush is a bummer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/opinion/10DOWD.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2...
Rooster, from what Democrat did you learn this???
We need to be compassionate, spree.
F6, and this is how the Bush administration deals with issues they disagree with but want to save 'face'; they simply underfund it and problem 'solved'. Delay (as in Tom), obfuscate, underfund.
The commission has said it is woefully underfunded, with only $1.2 million of its $10 million budget appropriated. Because of the funding problems, it has not scheduled additional hearings.
zit, good to have you back..
has anyone figured out who the foreign leaders are, who kerry says support him?
I would venture a guess that far more foreign leaders support (tacitly or otherwise) Kerry and prefer (hope) Bush is denied his election and shown the door.
he gives no legitimacy to "the coalition of the coerced and the bribed", so it can't be them........the u.n. security council just voted 15-0, so logically, it can't be them...............hmmmmmmmmmmm, it seems that the only foreign leaders left who support kerry are the terrorist nations and those nations that either harbor or support terrorists
Why can it not be those that are 'coerced and bribed'? Why is it that those who voted 15-0 'logically' cannot still hope for a Kerry victory?? hmmmmmmmm, so you think the only ones left who support kerry are affiliated with terrorists. Zit, your so-called logic is getting weaker by the day while your right-wing bias is growing like the cancer of this presidency.
I'll go you one further, zit: It is my opinion bin Laden (remember him, wanted dead or alive???) is the ONE leader and terrorist who wants BUSH elected!!! If new members are the lifeblood of any organization, Bush is the single best recruiting tool for al Queda. Now put that in your pipe and smoke it.
and can y'all see kerry now, trying to woo back those half a million or more fence voters, who just decided to vote for nader, after seeing kerry at the reagan memorial?
Bitter, zit, very bitter. Need some straws to grasp at??
and poor bill "bubba's got books to sell" clinton, angry and disappointed that he's not in the limelight at the reagan funeral, along with pelosi and other dems who were protesting that she wasn't allowed to turn reagan's funeral into "hate gwb" fest.............word has it that the real reason she was uninvited, is to avoid scaring the children in the audience, and even some adults who've never seen her
Take your pills, zit, a deep breath and join your wife watching Oprah...you'll feel better.
Kurds threaten to bolt new Iraqi government
Parties angry that U.N. resolution doesn't enshrine their rightsThe Associated Press
Updated: 9:19 a.m. ET June 09, 2004BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq’s Kurdish parties warned Wednesday that they might bolt the new government if Shiites gain too much power, threatening the U.S. transition plan that were endorsed by a unanimous vote of the U.N. Security Council.
The threat came a day after the Americans and British turned down a Kurdish request to have a reference to the interim constitution — which enshrines Kurdish federalism — included in a U.N. resolution supporting a return to sovereignty.
The country’s most prominent Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, had warned he would not accept mention of the interim charter in the resolution. Shiites oppose parts of the charter that give Kurds a veto over a permanent constitution due to be drawn up next year.
Both major Kurdish parties — the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan — conferred Wednesday to consider a response to the decision not to refer to the interim constitution in the U.N. resolution approved unanimously Tuesday by the 15-member Security Council.
Ahead of the vote, leaders Jalal Talabani of the PUK and Massoud Barzani of the KDP warned they might withdraw Kurdish officials from the interim government, refuse to take part in national elections next year and would “bar representatives of the central government from Kurdistan.”
The interim charter, adopted in March, affirms the principle of federalism and gave the Kurds an effective veto over the permanent constitution to be drafted next year.
Kurds fear that the interim constitution, which the Americans hailed as the most progressive in the Middle East, will be sidelined once the occupation ends and the Shiite clergy gains ascendancy.
Many Kurds favor independence
The Kurds have been running their own autonomous mini-state since 1991, and many Kurds would prefer their own independent country.
At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan sought to reassure the Kurds, saying that while the resolution doesn’t refer to the constitution, it “does have language that refers to a united federal democratic Iraq.”
Diplomats said reference to the interim constitution was omitted because of opposition by al-Sistani. Shiites are believed to compromise about 60 percent of Iraq’s 25 million while Kurds number around 15 percent.
In a statement addressed to the U.N. Security Council earlier this week, al-Sistani warned that mentioning the interim charter in the resolution would be “an act against the will of the Iraqi people and will have dangerous results.”
He denounced the charter, saying it was “put in place by an unelected council, under the shadow of occupation” — referring to the U.S.-picked Governing Council that approved it.
Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the first Kurd to hold the post, said he had lobbied unsuccessfully for an acknowledgment of the charter during his meetings at the Security Council last week.
But he said he was satisfied that the “spirit” of the charter was in the final resolution.
Still, Kurdish leaders in Iraq were unconvinced.
“Now our future is ambiguous,” said Nesreen Berwari, a Kurdish member of the interim government. “The interim constitution would have been the clear and bright roadmap to the all components of the Iraqi people.”
Berwari said she would resign if asked to do so by the Kurdish leadership.
“Until now, we have not called for a separate Kurdistan, but if the Kurds’ rights are not recognized, then we will take political measures that serve the interests of the Kurdish people,” said Mulaha Bekhtiyar of the PUK. “For the time being, we will commit to a united Iraq.”
Bekhtiyar said that the Kurds would not agree to the Shiites having the “lion’s share” of any government.
Supporters and opponents of the Iraq war joined forces to give unanimous approval to the U.N. resolution, which also gives Iraq's new leaders clout over a U.S.-led force.
The measure authorizes the U.S.-led multinational force for Iraq, but says the mandate will end when a constitutionally elected government takes power, expected by early 2006, or if the Iraqi government requests it.
It also gives the Iraqi government control over its oil revenues.
But whether the new government succeeds after the June 30 restoration of sovereignty will depend on its own efforts to rally support. It also remains unclear how other countries will respond to the resolution’s call for troops and aid.
No rush to provide aid
So far, there’s been no rush to provide financial or military help, and Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Alexander Konuzin, said: “I don’t think there are very many volunteers. There are enough forces — 150,000, that’s enough.”
The Security Council’s vote followed two weeks of intense negotiations and a last-minute U.S. compromise on a key French and German demand for the resolution to state clearly that the Iraqi government will control all Iraqi forces and have veto power over their participation in military operations by the multinational force.
France and Germany, key opponents of the war, also wanted the interim government to have veto power over major military operations by the U.S.-led force, like the siege of Fallujah.
But Iraq’s new leaders didn’t demand such power, so Paris and Berlin agreed to the U.S.-Iraqi deal requiring the force and the new government to agree on “policy on sensitive offensive operations.”
France’s U.N. Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere said after the vote that “France cannot imagine that the multinational force would go against the opinion of Iraq’s sovereign government.”
'Catalyst for change'
France and other council nations praised the U.S. flexibility in trying to reach agreement. The measure adopted Tuesday was the fifth version of the U.S.-British draft since May 24.
Annan said the vote showed the council’s willingness to come together after last year’s divisions over the war to help the Iraqi people “take charge of their own political destiny.”
“Obviously we are not there yet. Free and fair elections ... will be a historic milestone on Iraq’s road to stability and peace,” he said, but security must improve for voting to take place by January 2005.
President Bush said the measure will set the stage for democracy in Iraq and be a “catalyst for change” in the Middle East.
“The world community has spoken with one voice and given its support to the new Iraqi government,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair said at the Group of Eight summit in Sea Island, Ga. “The people of Iraq now know that the world community is united in helping them take charge of their future.”
U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte, who will become U.S. ambassador to Iraq early next month, said the resolution’s unanimous adoption is “a vivid demonstration of broad international support” for what the text called “a federal, democratic, pluralist and unified Iraq, in which there is full respect for political and human rights.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5156518/
The Resolution's Weakness
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Published: June 9, 2004
In his eagerness for the approval of the Shiite religious leader — and driven by desperation to get yesterday's unanimous U.N. resolution in time for the G-8 meeting — President Bush may be double-crossing the Kurds, our most loyal friends in Iraq.
Not a single U.S. soldier has been killed in the area of northern Iraq patrolled by the pesh merga, the army of Kurdish Iraqis who have brought order to their region. Savaged by Saddam's poison-gas attacks in the 80's, Kurdistan was abandoned by the first President Bush to Saddam's vengeance after the first gulf war. When our conscience made us provide air cover in the 90's, the Kurds amazed the Middle East by creating a free, democratic mini-state within despotic Iraq.
These Kurdish Sunni Muslims — an ancient ethnic group, neither Arab nor Turk — are one-fifth of Iraq's population. They cheered our arrival and set aside old dreams of independence, asking for reasonable autonomy in return for participating enthusiastically in the formation of the new Iraq.
In February, the Iraqi Governing Council, which included all religious and ethnic groups, hammered out its only memorable work: a Transitional Administrative Law, which laid the groundwork for a constitution to be adopted later by elected officials in a sovereign state. Most important for Kurds, who have long been oppressed by an Arab majority, it established minority rights within a federal state — the essence of a stable democracy.
But as the U.N. resolution supporting that state was nearing completion, the Shiite grand ayatollah, Ali al-Sistani, suddenly intervened. He denounced the agreed-upon law as "legislated by an unelected council in the shadow of occupation." He decreed that mentioning it in the U.N. resolution would be "a harbinger of grave consequences."
The U.S. promptly caved. Stunned Kurds protested in a letter to President Bush that "the people of Kurdistan will no longer accept second-class citizenship in Iraq." If the law guaranteeing minority rights was abrogated, Kurds would "have no choice but to refrain from participating in the central government, not to take part in the national elections, and to bar representatives of the central government from Kurdistan."
Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish leaders, appealed to Bush's sense of loyalty: "We will be loyal friends to America even if our support is not always reciprocated. . . . If the forces of freedom [do not] prevail elsewhere in Iraq, we know that, because of our alliance with the United States, we will be marked for vengeance."
I ran this pained appeal past John Negroponte, who will move from his post as our U.N. representative to be our ambassador to the new Iraq, at his farewell lunch yesterday. He pointed to a line in the preamble to the U.N. resolution welcoming an unspecified commitment "to work towards a federal, democratic, pluralist and unified Iraq, in which there is full respect for political and human rights."
Fine "preambular" words, but outside the action section of the resolution. That eviscerates the protective law, just as Sistani demanded.
Why do we take our proven allies for granted? The conventional White House wisdom holds that the Iraqi Kurds have no place else to go. It's an article of faith that if the Kurds tried to break away and set up an independent Kurdistan, with oil-rich Kirkuk as its traditional capital, Turkey, on its border, would never permit it — lest murderous separatists among its own Kurdish population of 12 million get a new lease on death.
Iraqi Kurds blundered last year in letting old grudges prevent Ankara from sending 10,000 troops south to help the coalition police Iraq. But since then, Kurdish leaders have gone all-out to establish economic and political relations with "our friends to the north."
A Turkish construction company is building a $40 million airport in Sulaimaniya, and Kurds have been steering contracts to Turkish engineers to study sports stadiums and tunnels through the mountains. Despite grumbling from some anti-Kurdish generals, Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been responsive. The influential Ilnur Cevik of the Turkish Daily News urges "more attention to Iraqi Kurdish sensitivities" and asks: "Do the Arabs realize what they are getting into?"
Our Kurdish allies will do their bit to hold Iraq together. But in appeasing the south, don't push the north too far.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/opinion/09SAFI.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2...
The Great Taxer
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: June 8, 2004
Over the course of this week we'll be hearing a lot about Ronald Reagan, much of it false. A number of news sources have already proclaimed Mr. Reagan the most popular president of modern times. In fact, though Mr. Reagan was very popular in 1984 and 1985, he spent the latter part of his presidency under the shadow of the Iran-Contra scandal. Bill Clinton had a slightly higher average Gallup approval rating, and a much higher rating during his last two years in office.
We're also sure to hear that Mr. Reagan presided over an unmatched economic boom. Again, not true: the economy grew slightly faster under President Clinton, and, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, the after-tax income of a typical family, adjusted for inflation, rose more than twice as much from 1992 to 2000 as it did from 1980 to 1988.
But Ronald Reagan does hold a special place in the annals of tax policy, and not just as the patron saint of tax cuts. To his credit, he was more pragmatic and responsible than that; he followed his huge 1981 tax cut with two large tax increases. In fact, no peacetime president has raised taxes so much on so many people. This is not a criticism: the tale of those increases tells you a lot about what was right with President Reagan's leadership, and what's wrong with the leadership of George W. Bush.
The first Reagan tax increase came in 1982. By then it was clear that the budget projections used to justify the 1981 tax cut were wildly optimistic. In response, Mr. Reagan agreed to a sharp rollback of corporate tax cuts, and a smaller rollback of individual income tax cuts. Over all, the 1982 tax increase undid about a third of the 1981 cut; as a share of G.D.P., the increase was substantially larger than Mr. Clinton's 1993 tax increase.
The contrast with President Bush is obvious. President Reagan, confronted with evidence that his tax cuts were fiscally irresponsible, changed course. President Bush, confronted with similar evidence, has pushed for even more tax cuts.
Mr. Reagan's second tax increase was also motivated by a sense of responsibility — or at least that's the way it seemed at the time. I'm referring to the Social Security Reform Act of 1983, which followed the recommendations of a commission led by Alan Greenspan. Its key provision was an increase in the payroll tax that pays for Social Security and Medicare hospital insurance.
For many middle- and low-income families, this tax increase more than undid any gains from Mr. Reagan's income tax cuts. In 1980, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, middle-income families with children paid 8.2 percent of their income in income taxes, and 9.5 percent in payroll taxes. By 1988 the income tax share was down to 6.6 percent — but the payroll tax share was up to 11.8 percent, and the combined burden was up, not down.
Nonetheless, there was broad bipartisan support for the payroll tax increase because it was part of a deal. The public was told that the extra revenue would be used to build up a trust fund dedicated to the preservation of Social Security benefits, securing the system's future. Thanks to the 1983 act, current projections show that under current rules, Social Security is good for at least 38 more years.
But George W. Bush has made it clear that he intends to renege on the deal. His officials insist that the trust fund is meaningless — which means that they don't feel bound to honor the implied contract that dedicated the revenue generated by President Reagan's payroll tax increase to paying for future Social Security benefits. Indeed, it's clear from the arithmetic that the only way to sustain President Bush's tax cuts in the long run will be with sharp cuts in both Social Security and Medicare benefits.
I did not and do not approve of President Reagan's economic policies, which saddled the nation with trillions of dollars in debt. And as others will surely point out, some of the foreign policy shenanigans that took place on his watch, notably the Iran-contra scandal, foreshadowed the current debacle in Iraq (which, not coincidentally, involves some of the same actors).
Still, on both foreign and domestic policy Mr. Reagan showed both some pragmatism and some sense of responsibility. These are attributes sorely lacking in the man who claims to be his political successor.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/08/opinion/08KRUG.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2...
zit, did you 'see the light' and loan Kerry your glasses???
Kerry Tries on Rose-Colored Glasses
The Democrat, seeking to overcome his too-serious image, seizes the power of positive thinking on the stump and in commercials.
By Matea Gold and Maria L. La Ganga, Times Staff Writers
TOLEDO, Ohio — Sen. John F. Kerry had solemn matters on his mind last week as he took on such weighty issues as nuclear proliferation, bioterrorism and an overtaxed military.
But even as he charged that the Bush administration had failed to effectively confront those concerns, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee tried to strike an optimistic tone.
"I didn't come to Missouri tonight to point out what was wrong," Kerry told a crowd of about 1,500 gathered in a Kansas City airport hanger Wednesday. "I came here tonight to talk about what lies in the future and where we can take America, how we can let America be America again."
The latter phrase, from Langston Hughes' 1938 poem "Let America Be America Again," has been cropping up frequently in Kerry's speeches as he attempts to cast his candidacy in sunny sheen.
But to do so, the Massachusetts senator must overcome what is widely perceived as a dour image, political experts said, as well as find the right balance between critiquing the Bush administration and projecting hope.
"He has to activate in the electorate an anger or anxiety that things aren't as perfect as they could be, while still identifying himself as the one who can steer the optimistic path," said Thomas Hollihan, a professor at USC's Annenberg School of Communication. "That's the rhetorical challenge that he faces."
The power of projecting optimism is evident. Upbeat politicians — such as the late Ronald Reagan, who invoked the image of "morning in America," or Bill Clinton, whose campaign tagged him "the man from Hope" — have triumphed at the ballot box.
Indeed, Reagan's death Saturday provoked an outpouring of remembrances focused on his cheery resolve. Kerry told reporters Sunday that the late president "had a way of making people feel the next day would be better."
Later, in a commencement address to students from a Temperance, Mich., high school, the senator praised Reagan's outlook. "Today, in the face of new challenges, President Reagan's example reminds us that we, we who are still here … must move forward with optimism and resolve," he told the graduating class of Bedford Senior High School.
Mindful of that lesson, Kerry launched a new television commercial last week called "Optimists," and began salting his rhetoric with sanguine pronouncements.
"When we put our minds to do something, there's nothing America can't do," he told Missourians, adding, "You have the privilege of changing our hopes and our future."
His new ad, running in 19 states, features images of beaming children as Kerry proclaims, "We're a country of the future. We're a country of optimists. We're the can-do people."
But projecting a cheerful outlook may not be enough to combat the caricature of Kerry that has already taken hold in the minds of some Americans, analysts said. While his craggy visage and deliberative speech may help convey gravitas, it has led to frequent jokes on late-night television about his persona.
"He looks imposing…. He doesn't look warm and sunny," said Audrey A. Haynes, a political science professor at the University of Georgia.
Kerry advisors dismiss such descriptions and say the public has yet to get a full picture of Kerry.
"There are aspects to his personality and public demeanor that frankly we're going to plead guilty to, like the fact that he is, much of the time, serious," said senior advisor Tad Devine. "But anybody who knows him says he can be very comfortable, charming, nice to be with. Our challenge is to communicate that on a much larger stage."
To accomplish that, the campaign plans to showcase Kerry in more casual settings and give him opportunities to share his personal experiences with voters. When he talks about policy proposals, aides hope to have him focus less on the nuts and bolts and more on what motivates his support for certain ideas. And they want people to see more of Kerry interacting with his family — especially his two daughters and his wife.
Devine added, "We're going to give people somebody to vote for, rather than something to vote against."
The Bush campaign, not ready to cede the optimist label, responded Friday with a new television commercial in which the president declares: "I'm optimistic about America because I believe in the people of America."
Called "Pessimism," the ad flashes a grim image of Kerry as an announcer says, "Pessimism never created a job."
"The claims by the Kerry campaign that they have an optimistic message are preposterous," said Bush spokesman Steve Schmidt. "Their campaign has been relentlessly negative. In the blue sky, they look as hard as they can for a dark cloud."
Kerry has continued to offer a glum assessment of the nation's economy, even amid several positive signs. On Friday, after the Labor Department reported that nearly a quarter of a million new jobs were created in May, the senator said more needs to be done.
"That's great, but guess what? There are still 1.9 net million jobs lost [in the private sector] during this presidency," he said during a rally at the University of Minnesota.
"There are still too many people who can't afford healthcare, can't afford to go to college," he said. "There's too many people struggling. While at the top end, people get ahead. I think it ought to be the reverse. I think we need to make it possible for every American to get ahead."
Kerry has tried lately to end his criticisms on an upbeat note. During a Tampa, Fla., panel discussion Wednesday about the threat of bioterrorism, he sought to reassure his audience.
"This is a daunting topic," he said, adding minutes later: "But leadership is about telling the truth, and it is about talking about the real choices we face as Americans in order to be stronger. I know we can be stronger here at home."
Wayne Fields, director of American culture studies at Washington University in St. Louis, said that for Kerry to successfully project optimism, he had to do more than speak in generalities. "He has to find some way of being convincing without being Pollyannaish," said Fields, the author of a book on presidential rhetoric.
Democratic strategist David Doak said Kerry should stop short of declaring himself an optimist because that assertion would ring hollow with some voters. "If you get up and say, 'I'm going to present a vision of hope and opportunity,' people say, 'Oh, another politician talking about hope and opportunity,' " Doak said. Kerry, he added, needs a device that will trigger those sentiments more subliminally, like Clinton's use of the Fleetwood Mac lyric "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow" in his 1992 campaign.
Kerry is hoping that Hughes' poem will serve the same function for him. After he used its opening line in an address in Topeka, Kan., on the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, he began inserting it into his regular campaign speech.
Cary Nelson, a University of Illinois professor, called "Let America Be America Again" an apt choice for Kerry, noting that the poet called for the country's highest ideals to apply to its most down-trodden citizens.
"The poem fits in this long tradition of the loyal opposition," said Nelson. "It's a poem that says you can criticize the country but still believe in it."
*http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-optimist7jun07,1,3085198.story
Truth, justice and the American way
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
AUSTIN - CBS News has acquired tapes of Enron employees boasting about how they were "[expletive] over" California during the late, great "energy crisis" there.
My favorite segment in these charming conversations is the dismay at Enron when local utilities try to get the money back. "They're [expletive] taking all the money back from you guys?" inquires an Enronite. "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?"
"Yeah, Grandma Millie, man."
"Yeah, now she wants her [expletive] money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her [expletive] for [expletive] $250 a megawatt hour."
Grandma Millie. The nerve of her. Imagine thinking it's wrong to rig a market and overcharge by billions of dollars. But hey, no worries at Enron, because George W. Bush is about to be elected president. "It'd be great. I'd love to see Ken Lay secretary of energy."
"When this election comes, Bush will [expletive] whack this [expletive], man. He won't play this price-cap [expletive]."
Bush said obligingly in May 2001, "We will not take any action that makes California's problems worse, and that's why I oppose price caps."
Bush eventually changed course, as he so often does, which adds such special piquancy to his campaign against John Kerry for "flip-flopping."
Since we're having a bad language day, I may as well quote Ben Bradlee, longtime editor of The Washington Post, who had a great fondness for "Holy [expletive]!" stories, meaning those where your reaction is, "And I thought I'd heard everything!"
I thought I'd heard everything about Ahmad Chalabi, the con man who conned the neocons in the Bush administration, collected more than $33 million in payments from the State and Defense departments for bad information and snookered The New York Times about weapons of mass destruction.
Turns out he did more damage than that -- he told the Iranians we'd cracked their intelligence code, thus blowing our most valuable intelligence asset in the Middle East.
Not being a Washington reporter myself, I can only read the tea leaves from afar. There appears to be a significant split between the military and both the Bushies in the Pentagon and in the White House. It's safe to say most of those now running the military earned their stars and bars in Vietnam, from which they took away two overwhelming lessons.
The first is that if you're going to go to war, go in to win -- go in with "overwhelming force," as Colin Powell did in Gulf War I. The second is, "Have an exit strategy" -- figure out ahead of time how you're going to get out.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, along with his Pentagon buddies Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Ken Adelman, etc. decided this hard-earned wisdom could be tossed out the window. That made the brass unhappy.
So now what we're looking at is one of those underwater struggles among various bureaucratic behemoths involved in some hideous internecine conflict of which we can see nothing except roiled water, as though several Loch Ness monsters were going at it deep out of sight.
I have no idea where the sad case of Pat Tillman, the patriotic football player, fits into this, but I'd bet it's connected. It takes nothing away from the heroism of Tillman, who gave up a highly remunerative pro football career to serve his country after 9-11, that he is now reported to have been killed by friendly fire. Anyone who was around for Vietnam knows these things happen.
The troubling part is the initial story we were fed about how Tillman was killed by the enemy in heroic action in Afghanistan and so was given a posthumous Silver Star. Again, the new information takes nothing away from Tillman, although it does raise some questions about the "elite unit" in which he served.
War is full of tragedy tinged with terrible irony. It's making stuff up afterward for public relations purposes that is so offensive. The story of Jessica Lynch going Rambo before being captured is a classic example.
One of the most admirable traits of the American military is its commitment to going back after the firing has stopped and the dust has settled to figure out what actually happened, so it might be done better next time. The after-report on the Grenada episode is a classic of the genre.
We have just finished dedicating the memorial in Washington to "the Good War," and all honor to those who served in it. But they, too, had their tragedies and their ironies. The military understands, if the White House does not, that what is, finally, most important is to get it right.
Can the PR. Give us the facts.
Level With Americans
By BOB HERBERT
Published: June 7, 2004
It's not too late for President Bush to go on television and level with the American people about what the war in Iraq is costing the nation in human treasure and cold hard cash. Like members of a family, the citizens of a nation beset by tragedy have a need and a right to know the truth about its dimensions and implications.
Last week the Army had to make the embarrassing disclosure that it did not have enough troops available to replenish the forces fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. So in addition to extending the deployment of many of the troops already in the war zones, the Army announced that it would prevent soldiers from leaving the service — even if their voluntary enlistments were up — if their units were scheduled to go to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Thousands of soldiers will be affected by these "stop-loss orders," which is the term the Army uses. Others have said that delaying retirements and blocking the departure of soldiers who have completed their enlistments will amount to a backdoor draft.
In any event, the Army is so over-extended, stretched so dangerously thin, that most knowledgeable observers, whatever their take on the war in Iraq, have described the stop-loss policy as inevitable.
"They don't have enough soldiers," said Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island who is a member of the Armed Services Committee. "And when you don't have enough soldiers, you have to keep the ones you have longer. And that's exactly what they did."
The shortage of soldiers was widely recognized by insiders, but the administration never made the problem clear to the public, and never took the steps necessary to deal with it. Senator Reed, a former Army captain, told me in an interview last week that he felt the civilian leadership at the Pentagon "should have recognized very early on that we needed a bigger army and should have moved aggressively" to expand the force.
"Last fall," he said, "I sponsored an amendment along with Senator Schumer on the supplemental appropriations bill to increase the Army by 10,000, just as sort of an opening salvo. And they vociferously opposed it. They lobbied against it and they killed it."
The stop-loss policy is the latest illustration of both the danger and the fundamental unfairness embedded in the president's "what, me worry?" approach to the war in Iraq. Almost the entire burden of the war has been loaded onto the backs of a brave but tiny segment of the population — the men and women, most of them from working-class families, who enlisted in the armed forces for a variety of reasons, from patriotism to a desire to further their education to the need for a job.
They never expected that the failure of their country to pay for an army of sufficient size would result in their being trapped in a war zone with the exit doors locked when their enlistments were up.
Meanwhile, the rest of us have been given a pass. The president has not asked us to share in the sacrifice and we haven't demanded the opportunity to do so. We're not even paying for the war. It's being put on credit cards issued in the names of future generations.
For America's privileged classes, this is the most comfortable war imaginable. There's something utterly surreal about a government cutting taxes and bragging about an economic boom while at the same time refusing to provide the forces necessary to relieve troops who are fighting and dying overseas.
We should stop the madness. A president who is sending troops into the crucible of combat has an obligation to support them fully and treat them fairly.
How many troops, really, are needed in Iraq? And for how long? Five years? Ten years? (Many thoughtful people who initially opposed the war but believe now that it would be wrong to just abandon Iraq think the U.S. will have to keep troops there for a minimum of five years.)
There seems to be widespread agreement now that tens of thousands of additional men and women are needed in the Army. If that's so, how much would such an expansion cost? And who would be called upon to serve?
Mr. Bush has always been quick to characterize himself as a wartime president. But he's never been candid about the true costs of war, about the terrible suffering and extreme sacrifices that wars always demand.
Now is the perfect time to correct that failing. The nation deserves the truth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/07/opinion/07HERB.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2...
Reagan's Next Victory
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Published: June 7, 2004
WASHINGTON — The outpouring of respect and affection for Ronald Reagan — the principled president and principal Alzheimer's victim — may help resolve the impasse blocking greater federal support of the use of embryonic stem cells in biomedical research.
Today's stem-cell debate is more far-reaching than Iraq, tax policy or Medicare. How do we follow the promise of genetic cures for terrible diseases without falling into the abyss of unrestricted human cloning?
President Bush wrestled with this two years ago. He came up with a compromise that permitted federally financed research on the few cell lines existing then, but not on new lines until we thought this issue through.
Embryonic stem cells may bring new life to dying organs, including the brain. They are taken from blastocysts, the union of sperm and egg that — less than two weeks old — can fit on a pinhead. Opponents say the harvesting of these cells destroys potential human life; proponents say these are left over from in vitro banks and already destined for destruction, donated by people to whom "pro life" also means saving the lives of suffering patients.
But Washington neither starts nor stops the progress of science. A Harvard biologist, privately supported, developed 17 new lines of cells and is making them freely available. South Korean researchers went further, extracting stem cells responsibly from a cloned human embryo. And now the state of California will vote in November whether to go deeper into debt with a $3 billion bond issue to advance this biomedical research.
The genetics is out of the bottle. This research, whether the government likes it or not, is growing apace. Unless we act now to direct it toward morally acceptable ends — cure and treatment of disease and the extension of active life, not monstrous manipulation and production of clones for spare parts — we risk losing the imperfectability that makes us human.
Fortunately, the diverse commission of ethicists and scientists appointed by Bush has done some serious thinking and writing about this. I called attention to its "Beyond Therapy" last year, and urge you to read "Reproduction and Responsibility" now. Its thought-provocation, a rarity in government documents, is available free at www.bioethics.gov.
The commission chairman, Leon Kass, a lucid scientific ethicist, urges scientists "to join the regulatory discussion and propose some principles and boundaries." At the same time, the conservative Dr. Kass writes that "prudent defenders of the sanctity of human life should realize that it is a Pyrrhic victory to keep the federal government out of certain activities, if the price of such a stance means that worse practices are allowed to proceed without oversight or regulation in the private sector."
Though the commission is silent on research based on biomedical cloning, which the Koreans have already done, Dartmouth's Michael Gazzaniga, one of the world's leading cognitive scientists, would go further than his colleagues: "Congress could vote to outlaw reproductive cloning. At the same time, they could allow biomedical cloning to go forward."
Congress may not be ready to take that step; any cloning seems like the slippery slope, and some argue that we should see if adult stem cells may someday do the regenerative trick. But "someday" doesn't help today's victims. Support is growing for federal regulation of new reproductive techniques, combined with approval of the use in medical research of some of the several hundred thousand frozen embryos that are stored in fertilization clinics and likely to be destroyed.
Here is where the ghost of Ronald Reagan comes in. Nancy Reagan has for some time advocated bringing the talents and financial muscle of the National Institutes of Health to bear on diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes.
The widowed former first lady speaks for herself; her husband's views on this will never be known. And perhaps it is unfair to allow sentiment to influence an ethical debate.
But if public opinion, already trending toward the rights of the afflicted, can be affected by the association of the warmly remembered Reagan name with a federal impetus to stem-cell research and rigorous cloning control, I say it's a good thing. If such regulatory legislation passed by Congress included a Reagan Biomedical Research Initiative at N.I.H, President Bush should feel comfortable in signing it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/07/opinion/07SAFI.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2...
Life After Whistle-Blowing
Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON
Published: June 6, 2004
As the whistle-blower at Enron, you must find it strange to continue living in Houston.
The only time it is awkward is when you run into the executives that are part of the guilty group. At least seven people have pleaded guilty, but they don't go to prison until all their witnessing is done.
So your former boss, Andrew Fastow, and his wife, Lea, are still your neighbors?
Our children play in the same park. Lea is going to prison soon, for 12 months. After she gets out, Andy will eventually go in. The last time I ran into her, she pretended she didn't see me.
Have you seen Ken Lay, your former C.E.O. whom you once pulled aside to warn about fraud?
No, I have not. He is keeping a pretty low profile. We had the Super Bowl in Houston this year, and he certainly wasn't spotted at any of the big Super Bowl events. He is persona non grata in the business group that runs Houston. He put a black eye on the city.
Do you think that post-Enron America is a more ethical place?
Not really. We are building more Enrons, but we don't want to admit it. I fall into Warren Buffett's camp when he says that C.E.O. pay is the acid test. When C.E.O. pay has been reduced, then I'll believe that our business leaders have adopted a spirit of corporate reform.
Whom do you consider the biggest offenders?
Wall Street sets the tone for the highest-paid packages. Citigroup paid Sandy Weill almost $45 million for 2003. But the real problem is where there is a disconnect, where shareholder return is low or negative, but the C.E.O. makes out like a bandit.
If the government were to demand a pay ceiling for C.E.O.'s in this country, what should it be?
J.P. Morgan said that C.E.O.'s should not make more than 20 times the average hourly worker. We're above 500 times right now! The average worker gets, let's say, $20 an hour.
So the highest C.E.O. salary should be -- let's just say it should be $1 million a year.
What were you earning as an Enron vice president when you left two years ago?
$165,000 a year. It was pretty good.
Did you get any kind of severance when you left Enron?
No. I am making a living on the lecture circuit, and that won't last forever.
You also co-wrote a book about your experiences at Enron. What would you like to do next?
I want to consult with boards on corporate governance issues.
Are you a Democrat or a Republican?
I am not a registered anything. I vote both parties. I did vote for Bush. My husband did, too. Now we're A.B.B. -- Anyone but Bush. We have lost the moral high ground in this country.
What is the connection between political lapses and business lapses?
Ken Lay's failure was that he just wanted to hear good news. It's the same with Bush. He doesn't want to hear the bad news about Iraq. Leaders have to be able to have their ear attuned to bad news too.
How would you define a good leader?
A good leader is someone who puts others' needs first. People follow you because they know you are looking after them.
Would you ever work for a corporation again?
About the only corporation I can see hiring me is one that is in a meltdown situation and trying to revamp its reputation.
Have any companies contacted you?
In terms of the bigger corporations, I have had people talk to me about various things, and then the door gets slammed. When it comes down to the final decision, there's probably one or two people who say: ''Are y'all crazy? She's a whistle-blower.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/magazine/06QUESTIONS.html
Skip....liberal media stuff. (My bold, zit)
June 6, 2004 E-mail story Print
MEDIA
A 'Sorry' State of Affairs
Oops. Some pundits who boosted war admit their crystal balls were flawed.
By Gale Holland, Gale Holland is a Los Angeles journalist.
The New York Times editor's note apologizing for a lack of skepticism in some of its prewar reporting (a "mini culpa," as Slate's Jack Shafer called it) was just the latest in a veritable typhoon of apologies raining down from Iraq war cheerleaders. They seem to have finally realized that the case for war wasn't quite as clear-cut as they once thought, and that regime change is not quite so simple.
Kenneth Pollack launched the trend. A former Clinton administration National Security Council member and now a scholar at the Brookings Institution, Pollack argued for invasion in his vastly influential prewar book "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq."
Pollack's prewar case went like this: Saddam Hussein was intent on building a nuclear arsenal, which he was then likely to use on the U.S. "For more than a decade," he wrote in the New York Times in February 2003, "we have consistently overestimated the ability of inspectors to impede the Iraqi efforts, and we have consistently underestimated how far along Iraq has been toward acquiring a nuclear weapon."
As late as June of last year, writing again for the Times, he was still certain we'd find weapons, arguing that "the fact that the sites we suspected of containing hidden weapons before the war turned out to have nothing in them is not very significant. American intelligence agencies never claimed to know exactly where or how the Iraqis were hiding what they had." He acknowledged that "it is also possible that Iraq did not have the capacity to make the weapons," but he quickly put those doubts aside. "Given the prewar evidence, this is still the least likely explanation."
Then, in an Atlantic Monthly piece in January, after Hussein's capture and the incredible vanishing WMD, Pollack acknowledged that he'd probably been wrong all along. "What we have learned about Iraq's WMD programs since the fall of Baghdad leads me to conclude that the case for war with Iraq was considerably weaker than I believed beforehand."
Pollack was followed by a much more reluctant Christopher Hitchens, a pro-war writer who famously cut his ties to many liberals — and the Nation magazine — over his disgust with the peaceniks. Hitchens largely based his arguments for war on moral grounds: We created Hussein; it was up to us to free the Iraqis from his clutches. But he clearly expected the Iraqis to be more grateful.
After reading Pollack's apology, Hitchens concluded in Slate that he should "concede at least something." And so he did: "The thing that I most underestimated is the thing that least undermines the case. And it's not something that I overlooked, either. But the extent of lumpen Islamization in Iraq, on both the Khomeinist and Wahhabi ends (call them Shiite and Sunni if you want a euphemism that insults the majority), was worse than I had guessed." Thanks, Hitch. I guess.
David Brooks, formerly a member in good standing of the Weekly Standard's neocon war brigade and now a New York Times columnist, pried eyes wide open with his mea culpa in the New York Times, also in April.
"I never thought it would be this bad," Brooks confided. "I didn't expect that a year after liberation, hostile militias would be taking over cities or that it would be unsafe to walk around Baghdad. Most of all, I misunderstood how normal Iraqis would react to our occupation."
But like Hitchens, Brooks wants to make sure we don't think he's apologizing for the war itself. God forbid there should be an outbreak of true humility in the pundit class. "I still believe," he concluded, "that in 20 years, no one will doubt that Bush did the right thing."
Still, these hawks had the grace to disclose, however grudgingly, that they got things wrong. Which is more than you can say for some of the antiwar types who issued their own prophecies before the invasion.
Has anybody heard from Nation writer Jonathan Schell? He's the one who, in the weeks leading up to the invasion, issued the following warning: "To take [Iraq's presumed weapons of mass destruction] away, the United States will overthrow the Iraqi government. No circumstance is more likely to provoke Iraq to use any forbidden weapons it has. In that event, the Bush administration has repeatedly said, it will itself consider the use of nuclear weapons. Has there ever been a clearer or more present danger of the use of weapons of mass destruction?"
And where's Alexander Cockburn? In the early days of the war, he cautioned that just because things appeared to be going well, it didn't mean the troops would be able to march straight into Baghdad. In 1991, he noted, the Iraqi army still had plenty of firepower to put down rebellious Shiites despite six weeks of bombing by the U.S.
As U.S. troops closed in on the capital, Cockburn warned they might be getting into more than they had bargained for: "Reports from various military sources suggest that [the Iraqis] didn't waste the following 12 years, either in preparing for guerrilla operations or in readying their defenses around Baghdad by a vast system of trenches, dugouts and decoys, plus more robust communications networks."
Is it too much to ask that someone, anyone, act — if not truly feel — happy that we're not bogged down in hand-to-hand combat or beating off a mushroom cloud?
It would be nice if journalists seized on the wave of contrition to trade in their crystal balls for pad, paper and field boots. Sticking to the facts at hand as the Iraq occupation rounds into its second year could save cascades of future apologies. And, no longer blinded by bedizened predictions, we just might see where we really are.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-holland6jun06,1,2344745.story
IRAQ
Sistani Is Winning, and That Helps U.S.
By Juan Cole, Juan Cole is professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. He runs an Iraq weblog, "Informed Comment."
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Fortunately for the United States, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the chief and most revered Shiite religious figure in Iraq, has won every important political battle so far. He has successfully pushed the Bush administration to involve the United Nations and to schedule free and fair elections for next winter. Sistani's guarded acceptance of the current process, as long as it leads to democratic elections, augurs well for the new government. Yet continued trouble on Sistani's right in the form of the bombastic young cleric Muqtada Sadr could complicate matters.
Sistani supports the newly appointed government even though many religious Shiites see themselves as losers in its makeup. Although the new prime minister, Iyad Allawi, is a Shiite, he is also a secularist who spent much of his career organizing ex-Baath officers to attempt to overthrow Saddam Hussein. As such, he is hardly counted by most religious Shiites as one of their own. The powerful Sadrist Shiite movement, one branch of which is led by Sadr, was excluded from the interim government.
Religious Shiites were not altogether shunted aside. One of two vice presidencies went to Ibrahim Jafari, leader of the Shiite Dawa Party, which seeks an Islamic state, albeit one ruled by the laity. The Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq received the powerful ministry of finance, but it had hoped for a higher office and more governmental positions.
Sistani was shown a list of candidates for high office and did not object to any of the contenders, including Allawi. Last Thursday, he acknowledged that the new government lacked legitimacy because it was not elected, but he expressed hope that it would carry out its duties and prepare the way for elections early next year. Sistani also demanded U.N. guarantees of full sovereignty for Iraq. Still, many observers are puzzled by his acquiescence to the current process.
The answer is that all of Sistani's demands, with the exception of his timetable, have been met — he wanted earlier elections — and even his timetable has been delayed a mere six months. The original U.S. plan on the transfer of sovereignty, announced Nov. 15, called for elections based on provincial councils in May 2004. But Sistani feared that such elections could be stage-managed by the United States and thus would not be truly democratic. Only a freely elected government, he insisted, could honestly claim legitimacy in Iraq. Despite his religious conservatism, Sistani has embraced key elements of Enlightenment thinking about democracy.
The grand ayatollah demanded that the United Nations send a team to Iraq to determine whether open elections could be held, and on what timetable. He asked that the U.N. Security Council, not just the United States, midwife the new Iraqi nation. Initially, the leadership of the U.S.-led coalition reportedly resisted this initiative, saying it "offended" them. In mid-January, however, Sistani called huge demonstrations in Basra and then in Baghdad, proving that he had the power to send tens of thousands of Shiite protesters into the streets. His move apparently alarmed the Americans and their British allies. In short order, the United States and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan stopped dragging their feet, and Annan dispatched special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to Iraq on a fact-finding mission. It is now often forgotten that Brahimi went to Iraq at Sistani's insistence, and that President Bush, who has since found the U.N. such a useful partner, had initially resisted the world body's involvement.
But Sistani faces a tough challenge on his right. The young sectarian leader Sadr, whose Al Mahdi army has been rapidly arming, has implicitly criticized Sistani as too timid, first in the face of Hussein, then the occupying Americans. Sadr demanded an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, while Sistani was willing to wait patiently for six months. By cooperating with the Americans, the grand ayatollah hoped the Shiites could eventually inherit the new Iraqi state.
The American decision in early April to attempt to arrest Sadr, which set off an uprising in portions of the Shiite-dominated south, upset Sistani's strategy. Sistani ended up denouncing both the Al Mahdi army and the Americans as their fighting threatened to seriously damage sacred Shiite shrines in Najaf. Still, he fears Sadr's rashness. A negotiated truce has not stopped the fighting.
Sistani and his allies, the Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, need the caretaker government and the United States to offset the power of Sadr's militia. Dawa and the Supreme Council will now begin organizing to win as many seats in parliament as possible in January. Even the Sadrists can probably be drawn into the political process by the prospect of wielding some power in parliament.
Sistani will remain happy with the process only if it produces a legitimate government, elected by the Iraqi people. Should the caretaker government become so seduced by power as to attempt to remain in place past January, or should elections be long postponed, the grand ayatollah might become so alarmed as to reenter politics. Nor will Dawa and the Supreme Council be willing to wait in the wings forever. Stability in Iraq depends not on the mere appointment of a caretaker government but on the ability of that government to hold elections seven months after it takes power.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-cole6jun06,1,2820686.story
Skip the article, zit. Arkin exposes your imperial president, however, I did bold the last sentence for you. Sound familiar??
THE WAR ON TERROR
A Cloak of Security -- or a Shield Against Debate?
The truth about this administration's policies is obscured by a barrier of secrecy.
By William M. Arkin, William M. Arkin is a military affairs analyst who writes regularly for Opinion. E-mail: warkin@igc.org.
SOUTH POMFRET, Vt. — Does the Bush administration lie?
It's hard to say. If you ask an honest man whether he lies, he's going to say no. But if you ask a liar, he'll say no too. So how's an ordinary citizen supposed to decide whether to believe the administration's adamant denials that it's covering up a secret program responsible for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal?
Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker, claims that Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld personally approved a highly classified program, code-named Copper Green, which "encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence." Rumsfeld and others in his department insist that what happened at Abu Ghraib was solely the work of a few bad apples, that there was no secret operation and that there is no bigger scandal. Rumsfeld aide Larry Di Rita went so far as to call Hersh's piece "the most hysterical piece of journalist malpractice I have ever observed."
But Rumsfeld and company are focusing on a small point to protect a bigger lie. In fact, the entire war on terrorism is built on a foundation of government deceit that comes awfully close to deliberate fibbing.
Over the last several decades, Congress has passed laws to ensure that the executive branch can't run secret operations without oversight. But under this administration, secrecy has become the default mode of operation. Whether that means that officials are actually lying to Congress or merely withholding information is impossible to know for certain.
We do know that the CIA and the Defense Department have legitimate reasons to run operations that aren't made public. CIA paramilitaries and "black" military organizations like the Army's Delta Force, the Navy's SEAL Team 6 and the so-called Gray Fox spies operate without making all their actions public, in part to protect individuals, operations and methods.
So when does the need for "operational security" cease to be about security and instead become a shield against public inquiry and debate?
The Abu Ghraib scandal and the Copper Green claim focus centrally on the role of black operations in the war on terrorism. These super-secret operations involve carrying out targeted killings and conducting severe interrogations, even working with foreign intelligence and security services and commando forces to carry out dirty work that U.S. law prohibits. In our current complicated world, most people think such operations are justified, hence the secrecy. But the label "super-secret" is often promiscuously applied, used to avoid scrutiny as much as to protect operations.
The current system of congressional review grew out of a response to a history of executive lying about matters of national security and covert operations. Today's laws are aimed at ensuring that at least a few of those who appropriate the funds and oversee the government are privy to even the most sensitive activities and operations. When it comes to the military, several different levels of notification are mandated, depending on the type of operation. Less-sensitive operations require that more members of Congress are briefed. The most sensitive programs allow as few as eight members of Congress to be "read into" the information loop.
Congressional aides who deal with the issue are convinced that the laws aren't being completely ignored and that Congress has been notified of existing secret Pentagon programs. Yet staffers on both sides of the political aisle also say there is a widespread sense that this administration is not just reluctant to share information with Congress but that the Pentagon under Rumsfeld is "intentionally unresponsive."
These same staffers speculate that the military may have found a means other than "brute-force secrecy" not to inform Congress about things that it wants to keep secret. One suspected method is "umbrella" secret operations, in which the Pentagon notifies Congress of an overall program but chooses to keep quiet about specific operations conducted under the umbrella of the larger program. With hundreds of special access programs and thousands of secret operations, there is plenty of wiggle room.
When a program is thus revealed in the media and Congress learns that it has not been formally notified beforehand, heads roll. This is such a sensitive question of executive-legislative relations that an otherwise somber and cautious staffer says that if lawmakers ever caught the Pentagon intentionally not informing Congress, "we'd kill somebody."
In the case of Copper Green, the Senate Armed Services Committee officially inquired about the program after the New Yorker article. It was told that there was no such program.
Whether or not the Pentagon is deliberately deceiving Congress here, one thing seems clear: Many of the Defense Department operations central to the war on terrorism are receiving significantly less oversight than covert operations run by the CIA. At least there, the president must sign an "intelligence finding," which is then shared with the congressional leadership.
The United States has been fighting the war on terrorism for more than 2 1/2 years. During that time, numerous "lessons learned" studies have come to the conclusion that Al Qaeda terrorists got away at the end of the Afghanistan campaign because the rules of engagement were too inflexible, because there was too much control over targeted killings, because the chain of approval for operations was too slow, because command structures were too fragmented and because persistent on-the-ground intelligence was lacking.
Rumsfeld's solution to all of this has been to endeavor to eliminate the roadblocks to instant action and give more and more authority to "special" — meaning clandestine — military organizations. And as the United States has gone on the offensive, some in the Pentagon have come to see oversight, even internal military oversight, as annoying and old-fashioned.
Weighed down by secrecy, we will probably never get to the bottom of why Abu Ghraib really happened, and the accused soldiers and officers will never really get a fair hearing. We are unlikely to ever understand the totality of what is going on in the shadows in Iraq without delving into a host of "special access" and other secret programs.
Secrecy is shielding the strategy and tactics in the war on terror from public and expert scrutiny, and that means we do not have enough information to determine if the war is being fought successfully or not. I, for one, doubt whether the aggressive and increasingly secret campaign undertaken since the middle of last year has improved the security situation in Iraq, or the United States, one iota.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-arkin6jun06,1,6620653.story
Skip this article, zit, it talks about a war of ideas...
Killing the Hydra
Only attacks on its ideas can defeat a network like Al Qaeda
By Marc Sageman, Marc Sageman, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Penn State, was a CIA case officer working undercover in the Afghan-Soviet war from 1987 to 1989. He is the author of "Understanding Terror Networ
PHILADELPHIA — If you follow such things, you're probably aware that two-thirds of Al Qaeda's leadership has been captured or killed. So why, then, do terrorist operations continue to escalate? Americans love to have identifiable enemies, and it is tempting to see Osama bin Laden or Abu Musab Zarqawi or any of the other Al Qaeda leaders as the faces of evil, the ones responsible for terrorism. If only they could be removed from the equation, the logic goes, then terrorism would end. But that's not how Al Qaeda works. It never really did, and it certainly doesn't today.
Al Qaeda has always been part of a loose-knit, violent, Islamic revivalist social movement held together by a common idea: the global Islamist jihad. It is a loose network with fuzzy boundaries.
For a brief period, when the Taliban provided sanctuary for him in Afghanistan, Bin Laden was able to establish a headquarters and training camps to school jihadists in terrorist operations. Formal induction procedures were implemented, and a central staff of experts was on hand to plan large-scale operations. Through their control of training and support, Bin Laden and his lieutenants were able to grab the reins of the movement, giving rise to the illusion that it was a more formal hierarchy than it actually was. Under Bin Laden's leadership, Al Qaeda became involved in the careful planning of sophisticated, long-term operations, like the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa and the 9/11 attacks.
But the Afghan sites, which gave Al Qaeda its control over the movement, were also its Achilles' heel because they became specific military targets. After 9/11, U.S. and allied forces destroyed all identifiable terrorist targets: training camps, residential compounds and support facilities. Communications were disrupted. The network lost much of its internal glue and reverted to being small clumps of terrorists loosely connected to each other.
Today, there is no longer a formal initiation into the movement, and there is no fixed number of individuals who are terrorists. Rather, there are a few full-time terrorists among a pool of people sympathetic to their ideology. The number available to carry out acts of terrorism fluctuates according to local grievances and the international situation. Far from having a formal command structure, wherein followers strictly obey orders from above, these networks are self-organized from the bottom up and demonstrate a great deal of local initiative and flexibility. Like the Internet, they function very well with little coordination from the top.
Gaps in the network don't last long. If a leader is eliminated, the most aggressive terrorists step up to fill the void. A successful operation against the West attracts eager followers to its perpetrator. It's a team effort, and the player with the hot hands gets the ball. Right now, Zarqawi is hot, and his successes against Americans in Iraq have attracted attention. His growing reputation has generated a following and made him a de facto leader. So although two-thirds of the 2001 leadership has indeed been eliminated, a new leadership has been reconstituted, one that is more widely dispersed and more aggressive than the old one.
There is good news and bad news in all this. The lack of central support and planning now prevents the execution of large-scale, sophisticated and costly operations. But at the same time, we're seeing operations that are more frequent, reckless and hurried — and they can wreak havoc. From Saudi Arabia to Madrid to Jakarta, we're seeing destructive attacks that were planned, supported and carried out by local operators without control from above.
This new wave of terrorist operations demonstrates the flexibility and resilience of the network and its ability to adapt to new circumstances. As the West has hardened itself as a target, Al Qaeda and its loosely affiliated partners have reverted to attacking local, softer targets in countries with lax anti-terrorist policies. In some regions — including the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria and Morocco — Islamic terrorists have successfully converted deep-seated local grievances into full-blown insurgencies.
U.S. mismanagement of postwar Iraq is rejuvenating this Islamist revivalist social movement worldwide. Potential terrorists are attracted to Iraq, where a collection of local jihads may coalesce into a more united, international one, just as occurred in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
But despite a re-energized movement fueled by strong anti-U.S. sentiments, it is unlikely that the U.S. will again be the victim of such a devastating and sophisticated operation on its soil. Post-9/11 vigilance has made the U.S. homeland a difficult target. And indigenous Al Qaeda cells failed to take root in the U.S. Before Sept. 11, Al Qaeda activities in the U.S. were largely limited to raising money. The rare Americans attracted to Al Qaeda's ideology left the U.S. for Afghanistan, which meant that when it came time for the attacks of 2001, terrorists had to be imported.
Americans have fretted about the possibility of "sleeper cells," but there is little or no evidence that they exist here. In fact, true sleepers — fully operational agents who remain undercover and inactive for a long period to escape detection before being reactivated to carry out an operation — are extremely rare. Al Qaeda-style terrorism is a group phenomenon. Without the support of close friends or family, it is difficult to sustain the motivation that drives terrorism.
How do we fight such fuzzy, idea-based terrorist networks? We've already hit the hard targets that can be taken out in military actions. Now we must move on to a more difficult phase. Idea-based networks can only be attacked through a war of ideas. The jihadist vision that has inspired terrorism must be taken on, and Muslims worldwide must be engaged to help in the fight. The aim is to alter Muslims' perception that their interests are hostile to the West. This demands a two-prong strategy: a negative one, aimed at de-legitimizing terrorist ideas, and a positive one, aimed at promoting an alternative vision of a just and fair Islamic society living in harmony with the West.
This war of ideas promises to be a long war of narratives, fought on a battlefield of interpretations. But it is the only thing that can work.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-sageman6jun06,1,7242665.story?coll=la-news-comm...
Is the GOP Well Dry for 2008?
No heir to Bush is in sight for the next go-round.
By Bruce Bartlett, Bruce Bartlett is a Washington-based columnist and senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis. He was a policy analyst in the Reagan White House.
In the midst of the 2004 presidential race, it may seem premature to be thinking about 2008. Yet what happens in this year's election will have a profound effect on the next one.
Starting on the Republican side, if George W. Bush wins in November, he immediately becomes a lame duck. So whether Bush wins or loses, the race for the Republican nomination will start the day after election day. Normally, when a president wins a second term, the vice president becomes the automatic front-runner for the nomination. Not this time.
Although Dick Cheney is liked and respected by rank-and-file Republicans, his well-known health problems preclude his being a viable presidential candidate in 2008. Moreover, fairly or unfairly, he has become a lightning rod for critics of the administration's Iraq policy. Unless this occupation turns out unexpectedly well, Republicans are probably going to want a candidate who does not have to carry that baggage.
President Bush has to be aware of all this. So why didn't he make a change this year? He could easily have moved Cheney out of the VP's office and made him a White House counselor. He would still have been nearby for advice but would no longer have been burdened by the responsibilities of being vice president.
More important, opening up the vice presidency would have given Bush the ability to, in effect, name his own successor. Vice presidents of two-term presidents almost always get the presidential nomination when they seek it (think Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, George H.W. Bush, Al Gore). Bush could have chosen the person he trusted most to carry on his work or who would have had the best chance of winning in 2008.
By retaining Cheney, Bush is passing up a terrific opportunity to pick a successor who might not otherwise have a chance of getting the presidential nomination — someone, for example, who is not a professional politician. He could have passed the mantle to someone in his Cabinet: Colin Powell, say, or Condoleezza Rice. Instead, the ticket will remain as it was, which means the Republican nomination will be wide open in 2008, with no apparent front-runner.
Truth is, the Republican candidate well is rather dry. There are no Ronald Reagans waiting in the wings for 2008, and the current crop of usual suspects — governors and senators — does not inspire much interest.
There is, of course, the governor of Florida: Jeb Bush, the president's brother and the one the Bush family used to consider the most likely of the brood to become president. Under normal circumstances, Jeb might be a viable candidate. He's been a competent governor and is well respected among the Republican base. But the American people have an intrinsic distrust of dynasties, and they just aren't going to elect someone who is both the brother of the current president and the son of another recent president.
A conspiracy theorist might suggest that George W. Bush has deliberately left the 2008 nomination open, failing to designate a successor precisely in order to make his brother a viable candidate. That's possible but improbable. It's more likely that he simply hasn't thought about a successor. Few presidents do. It's a little like contemplating one's own death: No one likes to do it, and so people tend not to — often with disastrous consequences.
And that's not the end of the GOP's problems in 2008. Another factor is that voters are almost certain to have tired of having the Republican Party in the White House by then. There is a well-known fatigue factor that usually gives the out-of-power party a leg up after one party has been in control of the White House for eight or more years. This helped Bill Clinton a lot in 1992 and would probably help the Democratic nominee in 2008 as well — even if the Iraq situation is successfully concluded and the economy is booming.
Which brings us to the Democrats. If Bush is reelected this year, the nation's presumed weariness of the Republicans will make the Democratic nomination in 2008 unusually attractive. Moreover, by that time, the party will have been out of the White House long enough that it will be easier to control its extremists and nominate someone who can win.
In Republican circles, it is universally believed that Hillary Clinton wants the Democratic nomination in 2008 and would have a very good chance of winning it. In contrast to her image as a fire-breathing liberal, she has established a moderate record as New York's junior senator. This puts her in a perfect position to run a centrist campaign similar to Bill Clinton's without having to worry too much about flak from her left. Those in that wing of the party won't make life difficult for her: They know she is one of them — as do the Republicans.
But Hillary Clinton is in a difficult position this year. If John Kerry wins in November, this whole scenario falls apart. Unless disaster strikes, he will again be the nominee in 2008, and his vice president would be the presumptive nominee in 2012. Not only would Clinton have a much tougher fight for the nomination, but by 2012 the country would probably again want a change of parties in the White House.
This suggests that if Clinton wants to be president, Kerry may be her biggest obstacle. If he wins, she's close to finished. But there's the Bill Clinton factor to consider. The former president's memoirs are scheduled for release this month, which could draw attention away from Kerry at a critical time. A deliberate move on Clinton's part to torpedo Kerry and help his wife? Unlikely, but possible.
The main problem with this theory is Kerry's good showing in the polls lately. If it starts to look as if he can win, Democrats will pull together behind him no matter what the distractions. And the Clintons are Democrats. Ultimately, they'd rather see one of their own elected to the White House in 2004, even if it meant sacrificing Hillary Clinton's White House ambitions.
Fortunately for Hillary, though, Kerry may be at his high-water mark right now. The economy is likely to be strong for the balance of the year, and the Iraq situation will probably improve after the June 30 turnover of power (at least in the eyes of Americans). The Bush campaign has plenty of money and a number of smart political operators. Moreover, Kerry has given them no shortage of material to work with, like his absurd comment that he voted for Iraq funding before he voted against it.
Also, given the spate of bad news on Iraq, one would expect Bush to be further behind than he is. This suggests that his base is solid and will improve once the Abu Ghraib torture scandal dies out. Consequently, Republicans still believe that Bush, despite his being behind in recent polls, will win relatively easily. If that happens, I expect to start to hear grumbling about how Bush missed an opportunity to give the Republicans a stronger candidate in 2008 than they probably will end up with.
I also expect to see Democrats quickly get behind Hillary Clinton, just as Republicans rallied around Reagan after Gerald Ford's defeat in 1976.
It's too soon to start playing "Hail to the Chief" for her, but her chances look good today. Only a Kerry victory stands in the way.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-bartlett6jun06,1,2705777.story?coll=la-news-com...
zitboy, you are full of crap!!
nancy reagan, and her tireless service of taking care of ronnie, embodies everything that liberals want this society to become.....she could have easily shuffled him off to a rest home, but chose to personally take care of him
Tell you what, for every American family wrestling with the problem of a family member suffering from this terrible disease, give them a few millions dollars in the bank and they too can stay home while offer their tireless service of taking care of theirs!! But until that happens, you hypocrite, and one NEEDS to go to work to maintain cash flow/medical insurance that you right wingers are so quick to deny, this often is THE ONLY CHOICE they have. You got a lot of nerve, zitidiot. A close friend of mine's father suffers from this disease and it takes the whole extended family to provide support and often times this is not enough. To imply "she is the role model that should be followed in a truly progressive society" is great and I am sure most every family would choose this route...IF THEY HAD THE CHOICE. Whatta load you spew. Those families with little money, half-ass medical and lacking support do the very best they can under terrible circumstances, and THEY are the true 'great americans'.
As for Oprah, she is nothing more than a female Jerry Springer who made millions, then conviently turned over a new leaf.
Nancy Reagan is a great american.........it's really too bad that ronald reagan was not a democrat, because it would have been the only way for nancy's dedicated, heroic service to be recognized........my wife, an avid oprah fan, is quite disappointed that in the ten years that nancy has taken care of ronnie, not one show by oprah has been dedicated to nancy reagan, even though oprah did plenty of alzheimer related shows
nancy reagan, and her tireless service of taking care of ronnie, embodies everything that liberals want this society to become.....she could have easily shuffled him off to a rest home, but chose to personally take care of him
she is the role model that should be followed in a truly progressive society, yet because of ronnie's politics, and the liberal media, this great american lesson was never highlighted, let alone taught to america.........instead, their only contribution was the recent slanderous account being pawned to the american people by cbs as to who ronnie and nancy were........what a shame, and a stain on those who pretend not to be bias..........inexcusable!
although the myriads upon myriads of our celestial brethren are welcoming ronnie, the real heavenly celebration of cheering and applauding is for nancy........may God continue to bless her, and her shining example of true service to one's fellow man
gosh dang liberal media!!!
Many Americans believe that a Middle East course correction is impossible, because Israel controls US Middle Eastern policy and Israelis are of one mind. Americans mistakenly believe Israelis are of one mind, because the US media does not report on the fierce Israeli opposition to the Likud Party’s aggressive policy toward the Palestinians.
the typical right winger hasn't met a war yet they didn't like
the typical left winger is more likely to provide daily sound bite rhetoric, which then is used daily by terrorists to motivate their followers
.......but the last week has shown that progress is being made, but i don't expect you to see any progress......shall we say it's not politically correct for you to root for good to happen in iraq
you shall say anything you like but I truly wished and hoped 'mission WAS accomplished'...lets just say it's not politically correct for you to admit this is not going well
in the next few months, you will witness a phenomenal turnaround in the perception of whether or not iraq is a quagmire.......this includes the rapid progress of the new iraqi government, the slow but sure, yet noticeable progress of peace in the streets of iraq, and the pullback of u.s. troops from the risky areas, as the new iraqi security forces start doing the job of securing their own country, at a better than expected pace
I hope you are right and I hope it is sooner rather than later and we witness the 'pullback of u.s. troops from the risky areas' to our brand spankin' new bases that we intend on using and maintaining for many, many years to come.
And when Bush's poll numbers go up 20 points and he is elected for the first time we can all look forward to our next war, huge(r) budget deficits and further cuts to programs/benefits for 'we the people'.
Personally, having an administration with a 'war first' mentality, I do believe we will need a draft that should include all those soon to be 18 year olds, no deferments allowed...so sit back and enjoy!
Could you see a typical left wing liberal swerving to cut you off and then flipping you the bird for a Bush sticker. Typical stereotyping, yes indeed. Rather accurate, yes indeed.
By the way, the 'fact' we are up to our arsses in alligators in beautiful Iraq is hardly 'farcical stuff', but y'all go believe what you want.
Beating Specialist Baker
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: June 5, 2004
The prison abuse scandal refuses to die because soothing White House explanations keep colliding with revelations about dead prisoners and further connivance by senior military officers — and newly discovered victims, like Sean Baker.
If Sean Baker doesn't sound like an Iraqi name, it isn't. Specialist Baker, 37, is an American, and he was a proud U.S. soldier. An Air Force veteran and member of the Kentucky National Guard, he served in the first gulf war and more recently was a military policeman in Guantánamo Bay.
Then in January 2003, an officer in Guantánamo asked him to pretend to be a prisoner in a training drill. As instructed, Mr. Baker put on an orange prison jumpsuit over his uniform, and then crawled under a bunk in a cell so an "internal reaction force" could practice extracting an uncooperative inmate. The five U.S. soldiers in the reaction force were told that he was a genuine detainee who had already assaulted a sergeant.
Despite more than a week of coaxing, I haven't been able to get Mr. Baker to give an interview. But he earlier told a Kentucky television station what happened next:
"They grabbed my arms, my legs, twisted me up and unfortunately one of the individuals got up on my back from behind and put pressure down on me while I was face down. Then he — the same individual — reached around and began to choke me and press my head down against the steel floor. After several seconds, 20 to 30 seconds, it seemed like an eternity because I couldn't breathe. When I couldn't breathe, I began to panic and I gave the code word I was supposed to give to stop the exercise, which was `red.' . . . That individual slammed my head against the floor and continued to choke me. Somehow I got enough air. I muttered out: `I'm a U.S. soldier. I'm a U.S. soldier.' "
Then the soldiers noticed that he was wearing a U.S. battle dress uniform under the jumpsuit. Mr. Baker was taken to a military hospital for treatment of his head injuries, then flown to a Navy hospital in Portsmouth, Va. After a six-day hospitalization there, he was given a two-week discharge to rest.
But Mr. Baker began suffering seizures, so the military sent him to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center for treatment of a traumatic brain injury. He stayed at the hospital for 48 days, was transferred to light duty in an honor burial detail at Fort Dix, N.J., and was finally given a medical discharge two months ago.
Meanwhile, a military investigation concluded that there had been no misconduct involved in Mr. Baker's injury. Hmm. The military also says it can't find a videotape that is believed to have been made of the incident.
Most appalling, when Mr. Baker told his story to a Kentucky reporter, the military lied in a disgraceful effort to undermine his credibility. Maj. Laurie Arellano, a spokeswoman for the Southern Command, questioned the extent of Mr. Baker's injuries and told reporters that his medical discharge was unrelated to the injuries he had suffered in the training drill.
In fact, however, the Physical Evaluation Board of the Army stated in a document dated Sept. 29, 2003: "The TBI [traumatic brain injury] was due to soldier playing role of detainee who was non-cooperative and was being extracted from detention cell in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during a training exercise."
Major Arellano acknowledges that she misstated the facts and says she had been misinformed herself by medical personnel. She now says the medical discharge was related in part — but only in part, she says — to the "accident."
Mr. Baker, who is married and has a 14-year-old son, is now unemployed, taking nine prescription medications and still suffering frequent seizures. His lawyer, Bruce Simpson, has been told that Mr. Baker may not begin to get disability payments for up to 18 months. If he is judged 100 percent disabled, he will then get a maximum of $2,100 a month.
If the U.S. military treats one of its own soldiers this way — allowing him to be battered, and lying to cover it up — then imagine what happens to Afghans and Iraqis.
President Bush attributed the problems uncovered at Abu Ghraib to "a few American troops who dishonored our country." Mr. Bush, the problems go deeper than a few bad apples.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/05/opinion/05KRIS.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2...
Typical right-winger: my way or (run you off) the highway, force is the answer to every problem. These bozo's ought to be enlisting.
It's only June, but already the John Kerry bumper sticker on my car gets me cut off on I-71 by obese white males in their pickups and Camaros who upon seeing my Kerry sticker, roar past, swerve into my lane, and flip me the bird out their window.
Jesse Jackson was on hardball last night and mentioned that every single southern state has had a net job loss since Bush's ascendancy to office, yet I bet most if not all those states go to Bush, lol.
The night before, I believe, Chris Mathews also said a poll had come out saying Bush was leading in Ohio. Regardless, keep your eye on Diebold.
Zitster, as I am catching up I see 5 responses to your post...lol, but you of all people to state:
wishing and hoping that something is true, doesn't make it true.....
Your whole thesis of democracy in Iraq and enthusiastic support of this war is nothing more than wishing and hoping.
Hey zit, speaking of kookoo for coco puffs, this reminded me of your creaky, three-legged stool.
This is what is killing us on Iraq,” one aide says. “We lost focus. The President got hung up on the weapons of mass destruction and an unproven link to al Qaeda. We could have found other justifiable reasons for the war but the President insisted the focus stay on those two, tenuous items.”
And another sad day for winning the peace in Iraq, but hey, I am sure you are feeling quite safe in lala land.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Five U.S. soldiers were killed and five others were wounded Friday when an explosion hit their vehicle in eastern Baghdad, a U.S. military official said.
The deaths raised the toll for U.S. combat deaths in Iraq to at least 603.
The 10 soldiers were members of Task Force Baghdad, which is made up primarily of the Texas-based 1st Cavalry Division, said Lt. Col. James Hutton, a spokesman for the division.
The vehicles came under attack near the Shiite district of Sadr City at 1:12 p.m. (5:12 a.m. ET) when militants fired a rocket-propelled grenade, witnesses said. Video footage from Associated Press Television News showed the burning wreckage of a Humvee and a huge plume of black smoke rising from the mangled vehicle.
At least three bodies, apparently of U.S. soldiers, lay on the ground nearby. About six other U.S. soldiers were loading the bodies onto another Humvee and guarding the site.
Elsewhere, a roadside bomb hit a civilian car on the highway north to Mosul in Tareimiya, 18 miles north of Baghdad. After the blast, unknown assailants approached the car and opened fire on the men inside.
Five men, who may have been foreigners, were killed in the attack, an Iraqi security officer said on condition of anonymity. U.S. Army and Iraqi security forces were investigating.
teapea, interesting article, one quite likely credible and fairly accurate. If Bush wins in November, the floodgates will open on White House resignations like rats jumping off a sinking ship.
"Tenet wanted to quit last year but the President got his back up and wouldn't hear of it," says an aide. "That would have been the opportune time to make a change, not in the middle of an election campaign but when the director challenged the President during the meeting Wednesday, the President cut him off by saying 'that's it George. I cannot abide disloyalty. I want your resignation and I want it now."
Tenet was allowed to resign "voluntarily" and Bush informed his shocked staff of the decision Thursday morning. One aide says the President actually described the decision as "God's will."
Personally, I think Rush really opened up a lot of eyes and minds in pointing out his 'talent on loan from God' when he leveled the playing field on Monday Night Football.
Personally, I think Rush has opened up a lot of eyes and minds in pointing out how we cannot trust the Liberal media in this country. He has leveled the playing field for us conservatives in this country! 20 to 30 years ago we only had 3 news networks and they were all slanted to the left, conservatives never had a chance. Rush has changed that for GOOD! God Bless Rush!
lol...Rush: Talent on loan from God???
Zit: Weaker by the day.
I do know Rush wannabe a blowhard...and God gave him ample talent. lol...
Zit, I got the point. The problem with your point is once again your bias seeps through. Yes, talk radio is full of opinions but they are quickly blurred and passed off as facts.
Just this afternoon I was listening to Larry Elder who ranted about how well things are going in Iraq, but you don't hear it (read ignored by liberal media) and then stated, "such as, electricity is operating at prewar levels" (loosely quoted). Yet F6 just posted an article stating quite a different fact (opinion).
In particular to news agencies and reporters IN Iraq, maybe they are reporting what they see, hear and experience and the liberal bias you constantly search for is what it is; fact blurred by your rose colored glasses.
Just listen to the radio...Maybe they are kooks!!
Journalists are often blind to their bias, says Bill Cotterell, political editor at the Tallahassee [Fla.] Democrat. "It starts when we decide to cover one story and not another, and decide some people are kooks and not worth calling," says Mr. Cotterell, a registered Democrat.
Just for you, zit...
The Swing Shift
Two high-profile gurus question Woods' worth off the tee
By Joel Greenberg, Times Staff Writer
Tiger Woods' golf swing — revered for years as a work of perfection in a notoriously imperfect sport — is caught in an identity crisis that has his critics and defenders pointing fingers and trading insults over the suddenly human world's No. 1 player.
In the "What's wrong with Tiger?" controversy, two high-profile swing gurus — including Woods' former coach Butch Harmon — contend that his swing has deteriorated under the influence of best friend and fellow touring pro Mark O'Meara and one of O'Meara's coaches. Woods and O'Meara have denied that contention.
For months, the sight of Woods spraying drives 30 yards to the right of the intended fairway, or hooking the ball left, into the trees, has been dismissed by many — including Woods himself — as part of the capriciousness of the game.
But as the U.S. Open approaches, Woods' swing has come under intense scrutiny, particularly after a string of tournaments in which his drives have missed their mark the vast majority of the time — seemingly costing him at least two victories.
The analysis reached a crescendo when Florida-based teaching professional Jim McLean wrote in Golf World magazine in April what many had been thinking for some time: "Tiger's golf swing has changed, and not for the better."
Moreover, McLean places much of the responsibility for the problem with O'Meara and Texas teaching pro Hank Haney, who has coached O'Meara.
"I agree with what Jim said" in the Golf World article, Harmon told The Times last week.
"Tiger should get his old film out and take a look at [his swing] and get back to those type of motions," Harmon said. "He would see how different his swing is now, and what a lack of control he has."
Until now, Harmon had been reluctant to discuss Woods since the two parted ways professionally nearly two years ago.
The article and its aftermath have injected the air of a soap opera into the genteel, hushed world of golf, where anger is almost always directed at oneself and aggression only at the ball.
At the center of the storm is the 28-year-old Woods, one of the most recognizable figures in sports and winner of eight major championships and 53 professional tournaments since turning pro in late 1996. Still ranked No. 1 in the world, Woods has shrugged off questions about his swing, saying it's "very close" to where he wants it to be.
Critics say statistics suggest otherwise. This year, Woods has driven the ball onto the fairway just 56.4% of the time, ranking him 161st on the PGA Tour. He has won just once so far this year — the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship. In 2000, he hit 71.2% of the fairways, for a ranking of 54th, and won 10 events, including three major championships.
McLean said he felt compelled to write the critique of Woods' swing after reading "a very negative comment" in Sports Illustrated that Haney made about Harmon, who has been credited with much of Woods' success.
Sports Illustrated "did a poll on whether Tiger should come back to me for help" with his swing, Harmon said. Haney's answer to that question in the magazine was, "No way, Jose."
"I thought that was very unprofessional," Harmon said.
McLean's reaction is more pointed. "I don't want to get into criticizing another tour player or another teacher," he said. "But … the gloves are off now."
The reason Woods' swing — specifically with his driver — is off, McLean said, is because he has adopted O'Meara's swing pattern, which promotes a right-to-left "draw" on the ball.
"I've known Mark a long time," McLean said. "He's a friend, a good guy and very successful. [But] O'Meara doesn't hit the ball like Tiger does, not as far or as straight, not in his dreams."
Woods has conceded that he listens to ideas on the golf swing from O'Meara — a two-time major champion — Haney and other players and teachers. But both golfers have disputed the assertion that O'Meara and Haney have an undue influence on Woods' current swing.
"Just like Tiger said, we're friends," Haney said. "I'm not teaching him."
Woods could not be reached for comment. "There's no need for … Tiger to respond to what you're writing," said Mark Steinberg, his agent at the IMG management company.
McLean is one of a group of internationally known teachers who coach the game's best players. His clients include Brad Faxon, Gary Player, Hal Sutton, Tom Kite, Sergio Garcia, Curtis Strange, Ben Crenshaw, Peter Jacobsen, Barnhard Langer, Steve Elkington and, McLean says, O'Meara himself.
It is not uncommon for a player to seek help from different coaches at different times in his or her career. Woods latest swing problems have prompted numerous observers to question why he doesn't revisit Harmon, the man who helped propel him to the pinnacle in 2000-01, when he held all four major championships — the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open and the PGA Championship.
Harmon said he and Woods have not talked, adding: "I don't plan on talking to him."
Woods has since maintained his standing as the world's best player. But within the last two years, his dominance has dwindled and he has seen the rest of the field narrow the gap.
In his two most recent tournaments, Woods lost after leading the field after two rounds — something unheard of for him. In the EDS Byron Nelson Championship in mid-May, he hit only three fairways in his final round and missed a playoff by one stroke. Similarly, he lost by one stroke after leading the Wachovia Championship after two rounds the week before.
"Tiger is so mentally tough that he still almost won the last [two] tournaments" despite his poor fairway accuracy, McLean said.
Part of the reason for his recent problems, Tiger-watchers say, is logical: No one can expect him to repeat his magical achievements of 2000.
But, McLean said, there should not be "this much of a drop-off. Tiger's game is not progressing — that's pretty clear. His mechanics are off."
In his article and in an interview, McLean detailed what he thinks are Woods' mechanical problems. He also shed light on the cloistered existence of the professional golfer and on why perhaps the greatest player of all time would even think of changing his swing.
"Tiger's had a great golf swing since he was 3 years old," McLean said. "The kid's just brilliant. [But] he's on an absolute quest … to get even better. He wants to erase all of [Jack] Nicklaus' records."
The quest is coupled with a golfer's natural tendency to tinker with his swing. "Guys want to get better, but they also get bored [working on the same swing] every day — it gets tedious," he said. "Even Jack [Nicklaus] fiddled with his game. But he always had [teacher Jack Grout] through his whole career."
In contrast, Woods is tinkering apparently without the consistent advice of Harmon or any other teacher. "Maybe he's going to prove he can do this on his own," McLean said. "I think he's in a bit of a search mode right now…. I don't know what Tiger's doing."
Woods' search has led him to a swing, McLean said, that "is almost a carbon copy of O'Meara's," which is designed to "draw" the ball from right to left. This is in contrast to Woods' prototypical swing of three or four years ago, which yielded a straight, long ball or a slight left-to-right fade. "Almost all of golf's greatest drivers either hit the ball straight or play a fade," McLean wrote in Golf World.
The problem is that two of Woods' most valuable physical assets — his strength and speed — often work against trying to draw the ball, particularly on drives, according to McLean. Whereas O'Meara has a swing speed of 105 to 110 mph, Woods' speed is about 130 mph, McLean said.
"A draw at a slower swing speed works pretty good," McLean said. "But at faster speeds, the ball runs farther and goes faster. So Tiger misses shots a long ways off line."
McLean and a colleague, Carl Welty, analyzed photos of Woods' swings taken during practice rounds in 2000 and 2003-04.
They observed that Woods' current swing takes a more inside-out path, which is consistent with an attempt to draw the ball. This difference, though perhaps imperceptible to the average viewer, is enough to throw off numerous components of the swing, they say. "It is different than what he used to do," McLean wrote, "and in my opinion … not quite as good."
"In photos from 2000, Tiger was more athletic swinging the club and kept the clubhead on a more neutral path," McLean and Welty wrote. "Tiger's downswing and follow through were superior [in] 2000…. His left foot was much more stable and controlled. Today, the left foot is often out of control, affecting balance and rhythm."
In addition, he says, the inside-out path forces Woods' hands out away from his body after impact, further affecting direction and balance.
"If you look at his swing … all the way back to 1992, it's better than what he's doing now," McLean said.
Woods has repeatedly downplayed any swing problems he might have with his "I'm getting close" mantra. As for his relationship with O'Meara and Haney, Woods said at a news conference at the Byron Nelson tournament: "[Haney's] my friend…. I love picking guys' brains, whether it's Hank or Butch [Harmon] or Lead [teacher David Leadbetter]."
O'Meara's agent at IMG did not return phone calls or an e-mail this week requesting a response. But O'Meara said recently that the notion that Woods was trying to copy his swing was "a total misconception."
"I wasn't getting any credit when he was winning all those majors," he told Golfweek.com. " … It's not my fault he's not playing well. Why would I do anything to hurt my friend?"
Woods also denies he is trying to go more toward a draw shot.
But McLean and Harmon say that Woods' swing path has clearly changed to a flatter plane. The evidence, McLean says, is indisputable in then-and-now photos.
"If he does what I see in those pictures," McLean said, the swing "isn't going to work." Moreover, he says, once a player strays too far from his usual swing, it may not be easy to recapture it.
"Some guys never come back," McLean said. "Look at Ian Baker-Finch — gone."
A former British Open winner who tried to change his swing and never was able to regain a professional-level game, Baker-Finch is now a golf broadcaster.
Woods is nowhere close to those dire straits, McLean said, primarily because he is so "strong mentally."
Harmon says that Woods can return to his old form quickly, if he would simply study it on film and make the appropriate corrections. "[Woods] is the most knowledgeable person I've ever been around," Harmon said.
Woods could recover in time for the U.S. Open in two weeks at Shinnecock Hills and the other majors, Harmon added.
Asked whether Woods' current swing can carry him to a win in the U.S. Open or the other two in any of the three remaining major championships this year, McLean said bluntly, "No."
Woods is known for referring to his "A-game" when he's in top form. According to McLean, that game is nowhere in sight. The only way Woods has a chance to win a major, he said, is "if
he can get [up] to his C game."
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-tiger3jun03,1,911708.story?coll=la-headlines-sports
Yeah, F6, all that 9/11 goodwill squandered and the payback will be a bitch. What a shame...
Osama couldn't have asked for a better foil for president and I am sure he is rooting for Bush to win in November, contrary to y'all hawks thinkin'.
Some countries are "not saddened" to see the United States squirming to get international backing for its plan to hand over political power June 30. Although the Security Council wants concessions, some also want to see the Bush administration "suffer," the official said.
"The Americans are wounded. They're desperate to get a resolution and a number of Security Council members are not trying to make anything easy for them," the official added.
Zit...saw him on hardball last night and also watched Nightline recorded from the previous night. You made several comments about the positive developments in Iraq and that only Nightline was prominent in their coverage of this. However, I found most of their quest's comments to be rather pessimistic in their evaluations.
Regarding outsourcing: the world is getting smaller by the day and this trend will continue. My complaint is tax laws favoring the rich and corporations that gain a significant advantage and short change our treasury by moving operations overseas. Level the playing field...how liberal of me, huh??
Wow, eddie, finally got a reply from you. I feel honored.
I also appreciate your enlightening me regarding the fact it is electoral votes that count, though I was responding to Rooster's comment about the 'majority' of Americans, and last time I checked had nothing to do with electoral votes.
Regarding the 'pointless recount' in FLORIDA: I find it curious though hardly surprising that Bush ran on states rights yet chose to run to the Supreme Court to secure his 'votes'. Didn't take long to show his true colors, now did it??
By the way, how are your metals doing??
Nope - the Supreme Court stopped the pointless recount that showed Bush won Florida anyway... and in case you are unaware, it's the electoral votes that count.
You call this 'recovery'? Try 'revolting'
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
Here's a special story about a big payday. Richard Strong, formerly of Strong Capital Management Co., will receive 85 percent of a sum estimated between $400 million and $700 million. That's a lot of lettuce.
For those of you who don't follow the business pages, last week Strong sold his company to Wells Fargo at this fire-sale bargain rate, leaving poor Richard with only several hundred million. Alas, the company was down in value from an estimated $1.5 billion just a few months ago on account of the recent unpleasantness over Strong's habit of making "market timing" trades, the root of the current scandal over mutual funds.
According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Strong made 660 such trades in the past few years for himself, family and friends. Strong was a slow learner.
According to The Chicago Tribune:
"The SEC complaint said that Strong employees, including Strong himself, were repeatedly warned by company officials not to frequently trade the funds. After being confronted by in-house counsel in 2000, Strong promised to stop the rapid trades, but continued doing so with even greater frequency, according to the SEC and the New York attorney general's office.
"Additionally, the Strong company let a hedge fund, Canary Capital Partners LLC, frequently trade its funds to win an investment from Canary, the government agencies said. Strong officials also failed to disclose the company owner's trades and withheld documents for months from investigators."
Well, darn it.
So Strong and the feds reached an agreement with the SEC and New York's attorney general, Eliot Spitzer: Strong personally will pay a $60 million fine, and the firm will pay another $80 million, as well as reducing investor fees by $35 million.
Those would be the investors who lost money, but they won't be able to sue anyone for it, because Wells Fargo bought the company under a deal where it has no liability for Strong's record.
Also, Strong and two associates have been banned from the securities industry for life. Aw. And they made him apologize. Yeah, a written apology saying he is sorry was part of the deal.
As syndicated columnist Chuck Jaffe observed: "His words had all the warmth and sincerity of a pro wrestler trying to say nice things about the slob who just kicked his butt. The apology felt as staged as one of those wrestling matches."
No criminal charges, of course, because ripping off a lot of little people for millions is not a crime in this great nation. But see, here's the beauty part: Strong will able to pay his $60 million fine with no sweat, and he'll have lots left over. According to the papers, it is unclear how many of the company's 1,075 employees will lose their jobs after the sale.
Don't you just love these heartwarming stories of adventurous, risk-taking pioneer capitalists?
Despite all the fine work George W. Bush and Co. are doing to convince Americans that the economy is tickety-boo and double jump-up jim dandy, for some reason many Americans remain stubbornly unpersuaded that things actually are getting better.
Perhaps that would be because they're not getting better for most people. What, am I so ignorant I don't know that we've officially been in an economic recovery since November 2001?
Well, yes, but this is a funny recovery -- quite droll, really.
According to a report for the Center for American Progress by Christian Weller and Radha Chaurushiya: "The distribution of economic gains is upside-down in this recovery, compared to previous ones. Profits received a larger share of national income than wages. Hence, profits soared to new record highs amid the first 'job loss' recovery since the Great Depression. Adding to families' woes were rapidly rising costs; housing, education and medical care jumped at double-digit rates in recent years.
"To maintain consumption levels, many families borrowed more. However, the debt is taking its toll. Families are being squeezed as they have to repay more and more debt, while the labor market is still trying to find its foothold. Many households lose this struggle and default on their loans, leading to serious ramifications for the economy. …
"For the first time in a recovery, the share of additional income that has gone to corporate profits is greater than the share that has gone to employee compensation -- i.e., wages and benefits."
And let me point out that the reason we're in an "economic recovery" is because of increased worker productivity -- we work harder, they get the money.
Folks, this is what the Bush administration is really about. While we're all distracted with 9-11 and the war on terrorism, it is steadily making this country less fair and making life harder for most citizens. How long are you going to put any credence at all into what it tells you?
The ABC's of Hatred
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: June 3, 2004
Surely the most chilling aspect of the latest terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia against foreigners at the Khobar oil center was in reports from the scene about how the Saudi militants tried to kill or capture only the non-Muslims, and let Muslims and Arabs go. The Associated Press quoted a Lebanese woman, Orora Naoufal, who was taken hostage in her apartment, as saying that the gunmen released her when they learned of her nationality. They told her they were interested in harming only "infidels" and Westerners.
Now where would the terrorists have learned such intolerance and discrimination? Answer: in the Saudi public school system and religious curriculum.
That is the only conclusion one can draw, not only from listening to what the terrorists said, but, more important, from listening to what some courageous Saudi liberals — and yes, there are many progressive Saudis who want their country to become more open and tolerant — are saying in their own press.
The Saudi English-language daily, Arab News, recently published a series by the liberal Saudi writer Raid Qusti about the need to re-evaluate Saudi education. Mr. Qusti quotes the editor of Al Riyadh newspaper as saying the people carrying out this latest rash of attacks inside Saudi Arabia have the same ideology as the Saudi extremists who seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979. They had an ideology of accusing all others as being "infidels," thereby giving themselves a license to kill them.
"If we as a nation decline to look at the root causes, as we have for the past two decades, it will only be a matter of time before another group of people with the same ideology springs up," noted Mr. Qusti. "Have we helped create these monsters? Our education system, which does not stress tolerance of other faiths — let alone tolerance of followers of other Islamic schools of thought — is one thing that needs to be re-evaluated from top to bottom. Saudi culture itself and the fact the majority of us do not accept other lifestyles and impose our own on other people is another. And the fact that from the fourth to the 12th grade, we do not teach our children that there are other civilizations in the world and that we are part of the global community, and only stress the Islamic empires over and over, is also worth re-evaluating. And last but certainly not least, the religious climate in the country must change." (Memri translation.)
Over the last year or so, Hamza Qablan al-Mozainy, an Arabic professor at King Saud University, published two articles in the Saudi daily Al Watan about "the culture of death in our schools" and the role that Saudi teachers are playing in promoting discussions on how bodies are prepared for burial and how the kind of life a person has led — righteous or decadent — can be read from the condition of the person's dead body. This effort to use death to get young people to abstain from the attractions of life, he said, only ends up making some Saudi youth easy targets for extremists trying to recruit young people for "jihad" operations. "Does the Education Ministry really know about the activities taking place in its schools?" Mr. al-Mozainy asked.
As the saying goes, "Denial is not just a river in Egypt" — and Saudi leaders have been in denial for too long. They need to wake up — and we need an energy policy that reduces our dependence on Saudi oil. I don't want the difference between a good day and bad day to be whether Saudi Arabia reforms its education system.
A few years ago, Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed those of us who advocate energy conservation as dreamy do-gooders. Had he spent the last three years using his bully pulpit to push for conservation and alternative energies, rather than dismissing them, we'd be a lot less dependent today on foreign oil. Oh, that is so naïve, says the oil crowd. Well, what would you call a Bush energy policy that keeps America dependent on a medieval monarchy with a king who has lost most of his faculties, where there is virtually no transparency about what's happening, where corruption is rampant, where we have asked all Americans to leave and where the education system is so narrow that its own people are decrying it as a factory for extremism? Now that's what I'd call naïve. I'd also call it reckless and dangerous.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/03/opinion/03FRIE.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2...
Amy...this is just the beginning as more will be coming, such as the outing of Wilson's wife. The goal of this imperial president is to stall them until the election. If Bush is elected for the first time (or Diebold works its 'magic') you will see plenty of investigations as the 'secrets' come out.
BTW, love those Enron quotes...no wonder Cheney vs. The United States is so important to them. Scalia will ensure Cheney wins....but who loses???
I don't think I have ever seen as many "probes" in an administration as I have witnessed with the Chickiehawks...
Rooster: the 'majority' of the country voted for Gore and Bush was appointed by the Supreme Court, hence he will never be 'reelected'.
Sara, the majority of the country still backs W. and they WILL reelect him! Sorry Libs!