Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Note to The Note:
Setting the Record Straight on Media Bias
February 11, 2004
The Note, a widely read and respected daily digest of political coverage and insights produced by the ABC News political unit, published the following passage yesterday summarizing the supposed liberal bias of the Washington and political press corps. The Center for American Progress, in a friendly attempt to offer our insights on conservative bias in Washington, has revised The Note’s words slightly to better reflect the real state of affairs today.
From The Note:
Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections.
They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are "conservative positions."
They include a belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation's problems; that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don't have a negative affect on economic growth; and that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories.
More systematically, the press believes that fluid narratives in coverage are better than static storylines; that new things are more interesting than old things; that close races are preferable to loose ones; and that incumbents are destined for dethroning, somehow.
The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush's justifications for the Iraq war – in any of its WMD, imminent threat, or evil-doer formulations. It does not understand how educated, sensible people could possibly be wary of multilateral institutions or friendly, sophisticated European allies.
It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy by stimulating summer spending.
It remains fixated on the unemployment rate.
It believes President Bush is "walking a fine line" with regards to the gay marriage issue, choosing between "tolerance" and his "right-wing base."
It still has a hard time understanding how, despite the drumbeat of conservative grass-top complaints about overspending and deficits, President Bush's base remains extremely and loyally devoted to him - and it looks for every opportunity to find cracks in that base.
Of course, the swirling Joe Wilson and National Guard stories play right to the press's scandal bias – not to mention the bias towards process stories (grand juries produce ENDLESS process!).
The worldview of the dominant media can be seen in every frame of video and every print word choice that is currently being produced about the presidential race.
That means the President's communications advisers have a choice:
Try to change the storyline and the press' attitude, or try to win this election without changing them.
What The Note Should Have Written, by the Center for American Progress:
Like every other institution, the conservative dominated Fox News Channel, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, New York Post, National Review, Weekly Standard, American Spectator, Policy Review, Commentary, Human Events, the entire talk radio spectrum and most major cable television talk shows operate with a good number of biases and predilections.
They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that conservative adherence to the positions of the NRA, the National Right to Life Committee, the Family Research Council, and the Christian Coalition are mainstream positions, and liberal positions are "elitist," "immoral," and "radical" attacks on Christianity and the beliefs of most Americans.
They include a belief that tax cuts aimed at the top 2 percent of earners solve the nation's problems; that tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy pay for themselves and are good ways to cut the deficit and slash social spending and don't have a negative effect on economic growth; and that emotional examples of suffering (provided by the Chamber of Commerce and major polluters) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories.
More systematically, the conservative media structure believes that ignoring most pressing social problems, like 35 million Americans in poverty and 43 million without basic health insurance, is better than attempting to explain and address these issues; that the White House line on the economy and Iraq is more interesting than the rising mountain of contrary facts; that the president has locked up the race; and that the president’s use of $10 million in taxpayer money to put ads on the air promoting his Medicare plan – produced by the same media consultant who made the PhRMA ads ripping Democrats for opposing the flawed prescription drug bill – seems fair, somehow.
The conservative media structure, by and large, does not accept David Kay’s evidence that weapons of mass destruction were not present in Iraq prior to our invasion or that the Vice President’s office and the DOD's Office of Special Plans trumped up intelligence to justify the war. It does not understand how educated, sensible people could possibly support multilateral institutions – now proven to have successfully disarmed Saddam following the first Gulf War – or our European allies who correctly challenged the rush to war last spring.
It does not accept the proposition that President Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy provided almost no stimulus to the economy and are primarily responsible for massive budget deficits projected to total $5 trillion over the next decade.
It remains fixated on stories of economic recovery even though 2.3 million people have lost jobs since President Bush took office in 2001 and hundreds of thousands of Americans have stopped looking for work altogether.
It believes President Bush should drop the "compassionate conservative" gibberish and move wholesale to using the U.S. Constitution to bash gays.
It still has a hard time understanding how, despite the early frontrunner status of Howard Dean, the Democratic base remains focused on winning the election with mainstream, moderate plans that benefit all Americans – and it looks for every opportunity to divide that base through emotionally charged racial politics and wedge issues.
Of course, the swirling Democratic Judiciary Committee memos and Kerry fundraising stories play right to the conservative establishment’s scandal bias – not to mention the bias towards character assassination (Bob Novak produces ENDLESS character assassinations!).
The worldview of the dominant conservative establishment can be seen in every White House economic speech given in the Midwest and every Bush-Cheney ’04 fundraiser held in the swank enclaves of investment bankers and oilmen.
That means Senator Kerry’s communications advisers have a choice:
Try to change the storyline and the conservative establishment's attitude, or try to win this election without changing them.
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=29635
"Imagine a system where docs can't share information amongst each other, much less talk to your patient for fear that what they say will be used 'em in court one day."
George W. Bush, January 16, 2003, addressing a crowd in Scranton, Pennsylvania, discussing medical liability reform.
Justice Dept. Seeks Hospitals' Records of Some Abortions
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: February 12, 2004
WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 — The Justice Department is demanding that at least six hospitals in New York City, Philadelphia and elsewhere turn over hundreds of patient medical records on certain abortions performed there.
Lawyers for the department say they need the records to defend a new law that prohibits what opponents call partial-birth abortions. A group of doctors at hospitals nationwide have challenged the law, enacted last November, arguing that it bars them from performing medically needed abortions.
The department wants to examine the medical histories for what could amount to dozens of the doctors' patients in the last three years to determine, in part, whether the procedure, known medically as intact dilation and extraction, was in fact medically necessary, government lawyers said.
But hospital administrators are balking because they say the highly unusual demand would violate the privacy rights of their patients, and the standoff has resulted in clashing interpretations from federal judges in recent days about whether the Justice Department has a right to see the files.
A federal judge in Manhattan last week allowed the subpoenas to go forward and threatened to impose penalties, and perhaps even lift a temporary ban he had imposed on the government's new abortion restrictions, if the records were not turned over.
But, also last week, the chief federal judge in Chicago threw out the subpoena against the Northwestern University Medical Center because he said it was a "significant intrusion" on the patients' privacy.
A woman's relationship with her doctor and her decision on whether to get an abortion "are issues indisputably of the most sensitive stripe," and they should remain confidential "without the fear of public disclosure," the judge, Charles P. Kocoras, wrote in a decision first reported by Crain's business journal in Chicago.
The Justice Department is considering an appeal.
The department's demands for the records are still pending against Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, Weill Cornell Medical Center and St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center, all in New York City; the University of Michigan medical center in Ann Arbor; and Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia. At least one undisclosed hospital also appears to have been served with a subpoena, officials said.
Judge Richard Conway Casey of Federal District Court in Manhattan, who issued an order in December enforcing the government subpoenas, said at a hearing last week that the department had good reason to want the records, and he threatened to sanction the opposing lawyers in the case unless the hospitals turned them over.
"I will not let the doctors hide behind the shield of the hospital," Judge Casey said, according to a transcript of the hearing. "Is that clear? I am fed up with stalls and delays."
Judge Casey issued a temporary injunction in November preventing the government from enforcing the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. He said last week that he was prepared to lift that injunction and possibly clear the way for the government to enforce the law if the records were not produced.
Sheila M. Gowan, a Justice Department lawyer, told Judge Casey that the demand for the records was intended in part to find out whether the doctors now suing the government had actually performed procedures prohibited under the new law, and whether the procedures were medically necessary "or if it was just the doctor's preference to perform the procedure."
The department said in its unsuccessful effort to enforce the Northwestern subpoena that the demand for records did not "intrude on any significant privacy interest of the hospital's patients" because the names and other identifiable information would be deleted.
Citing federal case law, the department said in a brief that "there is no federal common law" protecting physician-patient privilege. In light of "modern medical practice" and the growth of third-party insurers, it said, "individuals no longer possess a reasonable expectation that their histories will remain completely confidential."
It is still unclear exactly how many patients would be affected by the subpoenas — if they are enforced — because the affected hospitals are still reviewing their case files. Officials said several dozen women who have obtained abortions could be affected.
A lawyer for the National Abortion Federation, a plaintiff in the lawsuit before Judge Casey, told him that, over all, "many hundreds" of medical documents would be covered. The federation is a trade organization that represents abortion providers.
The University of Michigan, which initially refused to turn over the subpoenaed records because of privacy concerns, said it was discussing ways of deleting enough identifying information to comply with the subpoena. Other hospitals said they remained concerned.
Under the department's subpoena, "there still is enough identifiable information in these records to identify these people," said Kelly Sullivan, a spokeswoman for Northwestern.
Advocates for abortion rights said they were particularly troubled by the subpoenas because of Attorney General John Ashcroft's history as an outspoken opponent of abortion in his days in the Senate.
"This notion of John Ashcroft poring over medical records in a fairly unprecedented type of fishing expedition is exactly the type of privacy invasion that worries people," said David Seldin, a spokesman for Naral Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights organization. "The government just shouldn't be involving itself in private medical decisions and second-guessing doctors' ability to advise their patients properly."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/politics/12ABOR.html
True colours
In 1937 WH Auden and Stephen Spender asked 150 writers for their views on the Spanish Civil War. The result was the book Authors Take Sides. Jean Moorcroft Wilson and Cecil Woolf have repeated the exercise, asking literary figures if they were for or against the Iraq war and whether they thought it would bring lasting peace and stability
Saturday February 14, 2004
The Guardian
Dannie Abse
Bring your TV cameras, bring your microphones.
Soldiers to the broad gate, soldiers to the fire.
Oblivion is their name, vultures to their bones,
While far behind, with proper melancholy,
The ineffectual poet strums his lyre.
Beryl Bainbridge
I was against the attack on Iraq, not because of any considered understanding of the reasons for such a conflict, rather because I lean towards the belief that wars have been waged for centuries and that victory has never been of any use to the dead. I also believe that Saddam Hussein was bound to die sooner or later, and that, judging by press reports, his successors were too demented, drugged and diseased to hold on to power for very long. As the Americans and ourselves have reportedly been bombing Iraq for the last 12 years, I couldn't imagine why it would be necessary to stage an invasion.
My own experience of war, that of England against Hitler, in which the death toll came to 55 million, was played out during my childhood in Liverpool. I carried a gas mask to school, and when the air-raid sirens sounded, filed in a crocodile line to the shelters in the dug-up hockey field. At night, my brother and I were put to bed under the dining-room table.
We had a picture of Marshal Stalin on our kitchen wall. My father said Uncle Joe was the saviour of the world. I was introduced in the Kardomah Café to a man called Mr Gerhart, who had fled Germany in 1938. He had a dent in his forehead where he'd been hit for being Jewish. Mr Gerhart said the war was being fought because the Nazis wanted to wipe out the Jews.
I kept a diary in 1942 - there are only two entries:
September 2 1942. The Germans kill 50,000 Jews in Warsaw ghetto. Daddy upset.
September 18. Battle of Stalingrad. Uncle Joe worried not a bit.
Five years later, on July 18, a ship named the Exodus carrying 5,000 survivors of the Holocaust to the port of Haifa was attacked by British troops and forced to return to Cyprus. Twenty years later my children came home from school and told me Joe Stalin was a monster, the equal of Hitler.
Since then people have blown one another to pieces in Vietnam, Korea, Libya, Ireland, Britain, the Falklands, Kosovo, Bosnia, America, Burma, Egypt, Russia, Iran, Palestine, Africa, Israel and Iraq.
In the last two decades methods of war have undergone a change. Hand-to-hand fighting has gone out of fashion and it is no longer acceptable that soldiers should die in battle. With the invention of smart bombs, murder is now best committed from a great height.
I have no idea whether the recent conflict will lead to peace or stability. Why should it? Judging by the lessons of history, it is not bloody war but merely time that brings about change.
Julian Barnes
The reasons put forward by the British government to justify the Anglo-American invasion were at best flimsy, at worst mendacious. The British "dossier" was feeble and plagiaristic; the American presentation to the UN astonishingly thin. Finally, when these justifications seemed insufficient, the humanitarian argument was invoked, a sudden, hypocritical rush to caring where little had previously been evidenced.
We went to war because America had already decided to go to war for - unsurprisingly - American reasons (9/11, Bush family history, oil, military cojones). The nearest the government came to admitting this was when Jack Straw said Europe would "reap the whirlwind" if America went in alone: a pathetic and morally inept line of reasoning.
Lasting peace and stability? American and British military occupation of an Arab country is a great free advertisement for terror groups generally. Nor is America likely to arrange elections which Islamists might win. As for the Israel-Palestine question, if the best chance of a solution is US diplomatic muscle, why could that not have been applied without a war? Or are we meant to conclude that a vast demonstration of military power will scare the region into democracy, obedience and a new friendliness towards Israel? If so, dream on.
Jim Crace
It was never likely that the violent overthrow of a regime with base standards by a couple of govern ments with double standards would add much to the gaiety of nations.
Louis de Bernières
In principle I am in favour of forcibly deposing all Stalinist and fascist regimes, and establishing democracies in their place. My parents' generation did this on our behalf, and we owe them eternal thanks. In this case it is a shame that weapons of mass destruction were used as a pretext, especially if they turn out to have been illusory. If they do turn out to be illusory, and I was Tony Blair, I would put a gun to my head and shoot myself out of sheer embarrassment.
Arabs have no natural tradition of democracy, and their religion gives them an ultra-conservative, patriarchal, authoritarian and absolutist cast of mind. I fear that in Iraq they will simply vote to abolish democracy and create an Islamic state, in which case deposing Saddam Hussein would have been fairly pointless. The alternative would be an unelected American-supervised puppet regime, which is not what we were fighting for.
The intervention will no doubt have served as a salutary warning to various surrounding states, but there will be no peace and stability in the region until the Israelis feel secure and have given up Nazi tactics such as driving people off their land and creating ghettoes. A Palestinian state has to be established, and Arabs in general must democratise, get educated, and stop blaming everyone else for their own mess-ups. I look forward to the day when every synagogue and every mosque has become a concert hall or a cinema.
All this is to say that peace and stability are unlikely to happen in the region for a very long time, because none of the above is likely to come about. Western countries should make urgent efforts to stop sourcing their energy from that region, so that we have as little to do with them as possible. I might point out that most of the troubles in the region derive from the western powers' dismemberment of the Ottoman empire, which for centuries had preserved the peace by sitting heavily and impartially on everyone. Are we really prepared to do that in our turn?
Margaret Drabble
I was against the military action against Saddam Hussein's regime, because it was undertaken without an international mandate and it threatens international law. It suggests a dangerous trend of creeping American imperialism, also illustrated by the detaining of so-called illegal combatants without charge in Guantanamo Bay. The war was inadequately justified, and the justifications for it have kept changing in recent months. A very dangerous precedent has been created.
I doubt if the intervention will bring peace and lasting stability in the region, though if it does, I will eat some of my words. It seems to me more likely that it will further destabilise the region, and that we may see a tragic situation develop like that in Algeria, where the death toll has been very high. The intervention is perceived as an attack by the richest in the world on the poorest in the world. This is not very surprising and does not augur well. It is clear that the Americans will not tolerate a regime that does not suit them and their interests, and it is not clear how such a regime will legitimately emerge.
Duncan Fallowell
Militant Islam is the totalitarianism of the 21st century. It has shut down the life of the mind in its own countries and is seeking to do the same to ours. Unless we are prepared to succumb to a new Dark Age, the west has no alternative but to confront militant Islam in its various secular and religious forms.
As for a lasting peace in the region, well, the Middle East has been a nightmare since the end of the Ottoman empire. It has all but choked to death on the three gruesome religions which have been its tragic legacy to the world: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. It is kept going on a life-support system of petrodollars. The only hope for the Middle East is to shut off this vast stream of money from the west by finding an alternative to oil. The region might then sink back into a relatively tranquil world of date palms, desert sunsets and kif.
Antonia Fraser
I was strongly against it. Tony Blair predicted confidently of this interventionist war: "History will forgive us..." But history is not about predictions for the future - leave that to soothsayers and spin-doctors - it is about the study of the past, and trying if possible to learn something from it.
More to the point, the philosopher George Santayana, a Spaniard educated at Harvard, wrote in 1905 in The Life of Reason: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfil it." The study of history in advance would have shown Blair and his government that Anglo-American co-operation at its most successful must include the possibility of holding back (as the infinitely cleverer, wilier Wilson managed to do in Vietnam) and never slavish adherence against the will of most of their countrymen. Even a quick look at the inception and development of the Vietnam war would have done more good than an awestruck trip to Bush Jr's Texas ranch.
One should always hope for lasting peace even if one is always disappointed. Apart from anything else, that way, the relatives of those who have died, Iraqi, English and American, would have some kind of consolation. All I can say is that there is no sign of it yet.
Nadine Gordimer
I was totally against the American war on Iraq, and I deplore the almost general laissez-faire attitude of the world to the obvious power-manipulations evidenced in the bungled and bloody "reconstruction" of the country... It was clear from the beginning that the invasion would result in a situation amounting to near-civil war, the scenario for that readied in the wings of the scene by history. The consistent factor in all present conflicts is the vast gap between rich and poor, and the subliminal racism that continues, under the seven veils of democracy, to justify it.
David Guterson
I deplore the American-led military action against Saddam Hussein's regime in March and April of 2003. If the American government's express purpose is national and global security, it seems patently clear to me that these aims cannot be achieved through unilateral aggression. America will only have peace and security when it sincerely addresses the legitimate grievances arrayed against it around the world. Will this happen? I'm highly doubtful. The blind greed of American capitalism, its inherent immorality, means many more centuries of horrendous suffering, much of it perpetuated by America in the Orwellian name of peace and freedom.
David Hare
I was taken aback by the lying. George Bush lied when he pretended Iraq represented a threat to the United States. He lied, saying it was a current or increased threat to its neighbours. He lied when he pretended it possessed nuclear weapons. He lied shamelessly when he sought to relate Iraq to al-Qaida and September 11, with which it had no connection. And finally, as I write, he may be found to have lied when he said it still had chemical weapons of mass destruction.
Beyond the mendacity, Bush sought deliberately to work outside the authority of the United Nations, and to blacken the name of its weapons inspectors and other members of the Security Council, who were, in retrospect and at the time, right about everything. The pre-emptive attack had nothing to pre-empt, so it was doubly wrong in principle. It was also hideous in execution.
Will an illegal invasion bring peace? Has one, ever?
John Heath-Stubbs
I was for the war, though with some reservations. In fact I am inclined to think it should have followed from the first Gulf war. Although WMD have not been found, Saddam's previous actions made it likely that he would have them.
There is no guarantee that the intervention will bring lasting peace.
Michael Holroyd
I was against the American-led invasion of Iraq. I thought the reasons given for it were inadequate and the evidence presented in support of them largely fabricated. Iraq has no nuclear weapons (which are the only real "weapons of mass destruction") and did not threaten New York or London. Did you feel threatened? Nor did I: but I feel more vulnerable now since we must obviously and understandably be prime targets for violent retaliation.
That would be acceptable perhaps if the ethical justification for war was overwhelming. But it never was. When I listened to Kofi Annan or Robin Cook I heard the sound of truth. When I saw Donald Rumsfeld and George W Bush on television I was reminded of those ambitious businessmen who rose to power after the disgraceful Versailles treaty. And when Jack Straw stood up to speak, dressed in his brief authority, some lines from King Lear came back to me: "Get thee glass eyes; / And, like a scurvy politician, seem / To see things thou dost not." But what of Tony Blair? He was as sincere as believers in the Flat Earth were sincere. He was sincerely wrong, sincerely self-deceived, sincerely praying to love one's enemies and turn the other cheek on a Sunday, and sincerely going to war on a Monday. In short, he was, with deep sincerity, drawn to the magnet of power: the United States. I believe that history will show him to have been a sincerely dangerous man.
John Keegan
I was and am strongly for the military action taken against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq in March and April 2003, as I was for the war to expel his forces from Kuwait in 1991. I was also, with reservations, a supporter of the British government's decision to recover the Falklands in 1982 and the American intervention in Vietnam.
It is impossible to say what effect the intervention will have in the region, where neither peace nor stability has prevailed since the high days of the Ottoman empire. In general I am pessimistic about the future of the historic Muslim lands - Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and Algeria (though not Morocco or Egypt) - for reasons which have to do with the late medieval decision in Islam to renounce the pursuit of progress. I except Egypt because of its persisting tradition of non-Islamic nationalism and Morocco because of the strength of its monarchical institutions.
In general, I believe that the use of force, by states and armies that embody civilised values, can achieve good. I have no sympathy with those who shrink from the use of force as if it were in itself a bad thing.
Thomas Keneally
I was dead against the military action against Saddam Hussein's regime. I thought it gratuitous and likely to create more terrorists in the west and also to be an intervention that did not bring lasting peace but exposed all the conflicts within Iraq and would commit the Allies to a virtually endless police action, which is now happening. And I don't know how a dumbcluck in Australia, who knew about the divisions between Shi'ites and the Sunni, could work that out while the State department in Washington couldn't. It is a breathtaking act of irresponsibility on the part of at least three governments, the British, the Americans and the Australian.
Francis King
During the second world war I became a pacifist landworker. But as the war progressed and more and more acts of Nazi barbarism came to light, I began increasingly to wonder whether my youthfully idealistic decision had been the right one. I still wonder. It is impossible to balance what actually occurred against what might have occurred and so to arrive at a comparison between an actual sum of suffering and a hypothetical one. On the one side of the scales there is the terrible reality of the millions killed and maimed, historic cities ravaged or totally destroyed, the obliteration of works of art of incalculable value, the Soviet domination of eastern Europe, the Gulag, and the atom bomb. On the other side, if there had been no resistance to the Germans, there is - what? We can only guess.
I waver similarly over the recent war (I hate the euphemism "military action") in Iraq. No one could have been unmoved by those pictures of mutilated children and grieving adults, or of the chaos of cities deprived of all public services and subjected to mindless looting. But what would have been the sum of suffering if the coalition had never taken action? Again one can only guess. Saddam Hussein's regime was a monstrous one, which killed many more people over a period of years than the coalition did in a few weeks. The Marsh Arabs alone, subjected to a campaign of unrelenting genocide, died in far greater numbers. It seems certain that the barbarity and corruption would have continued.
In the end, my conclusion is that this was a righteous war but one started for the wrong reason. Repeated acts of genocide and the shameless violation of human rights, not the possible continuing existence of weapons of mass destruction, constitute the justification that works for me.
The most I now hope for is an emergence of some form of democracy in Iraq, and that Iraq's neighbours, frightened by the example of the nemesis that engulfed a state so close to them, may gradually retreat from their own despotic and intolerant forms of government.
The region is far too volatile and the Israeli-Arab conflict far too long-standing and bitter for me to have any expectation of a lasting peace.
John le Carré
I opposed the war before it began, wrote against it in the Times and marched against it in London. I believed then, and believe now, that this illegal and unprovoked invasion will lead to greater instability and suffering in the region than existed before it was launched.
But we should not overlook the damage it has done to us, and to our leaders: the damage to our reputation in the world, and to our self-respect. The lies and falsifications concocted by the two main aggressors and cravenly echoed by the appallingly docile American and British media will reverberate to our disgrace for generations to come. We in the west will of course quickly forget. The victims never will.
David Lodge
On April 2 2003, about two weeks into the war, I published an article on the subject commissioned by the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung. I wrote:
"I have a bad feeling about this war. I think Saddam Hussein is an evil monster and I would rejoice to see him removed from power; but I don't think our soldiers should be in that country, killing its citizens and risking their own lives, to achieve that end... Saddam is not a serious enough threat to our safety to justify, either legally or morally, a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq; we cannot be certain of keeping civilian casualties within acceptable limits; even if victory is achieved the consequences of the war for the Iraqi people are unpredictable and may well make a bad situation worse; the war can only have the effect of inflaming Arab opinion against us and encouraging Islamist terrorism."
I still take this position, but I did not find it easy to reach, and I have not found it easy to hold to subsequently. I differ from those of my fellow-countrymen, on both the left and the right, who believe that whether to support or oppose the war was a simple issue, and who are 100% convinced of the rightness of their own opinion. Once this exceptionally arrogant, intransigent and imperialistic American administration had made up its mind to go to war, Britain was faced with the uncomfortable choice of either opposing the policy but not affecting the eventual outcome, or supporting it in the hope of exerting some control over it, and its sequels. I don't condemn Tony Blair unreservedly for taking the second course.
It is increasingly clear that Saddam Hussein's regime was an exceptionally evil one, and very unlikely that it would have fallen without armed intervention from outside. But in the end the question of legality still tips the balance for me. The ostensible justification of the war - to remove the threat of weapons of mass destruction - was always unconvincing and seems increasingly so as (at the time of writing) they fail to materialise. Invading a sovereign country without satisfying the normal criteria of a "just war" sets a very dangerous precedent in the post-cold-war era, and is unlikely to produce lasting peace and stability in the Middle East or the world. But we won't know for years whether the war did more harm than good, or vice versa.
Nicholas Mosley
I was against the war in Iraq because the American and British governments produced no evidence to substantiate their stated reasons for going to war. It thus appeared that either they were liars, or their intelligence services were half-witted.
It seems to me inconceivable that lasting peace and stability will come to the area. On the other hand there is evidence that fundamentalist terrorism has to be fought, and so some good may come out of acts of savage arrogance.
Sara Paretsky
I was against the American-led military action in Iraq. I did all in my power as a citizen to oppose this action, including writing and calling Congress and the president, submitting letters to the editor, marching and giving money to the effort. I believed, and still do believe, that, however despicable Saddam Hussein was, nothing warranted our attack on the country. On the contrary, I believed this was wrong in setting a precedent for any other country wanting to dislodge another country's government. I also believed this action would seriously destabilise the Middle East and would prove - as in fact it has proven - a fertile recruiting ground for terrorists.
Harold Pinter
The invasion of Iraq was simply yet another monstrous assertion of American power and British subservience to that power. Weapons of mass destruction? Rubbish. Liberation of the Iraqi people? Rubbish. The invasion demonstrated utter contempt for the concept of international law and has brought about the death of thousands, anarchy and chaos. The invasion was a gangster act, a further step towards US domination of the world and control of the world's resources. But in this case it's not working.
Quite obviously the opposite - in spades.
Alan Sillitoe
I was in favour of the war in Iraq. Let me quote a poem by the great John Milton, called "The End of Violent Men":
Oh, how comely it is and how reviving
To the Spirits of just men long opprest!
When God into the hands of their deliverer
Puts invincible might
To quell the might of the Earth, th' oppressour,
The brute and boist'rous force of violent men...
He all their Ammunition
And feats of War defeats
With plain Heroic magnitude of mind...
Their Armories and Magazins contemns,
Renders them useless, while
With winged expedition
Swift as the lightning glance he executes
His errand on the wicked, who surpris'd
Lose their defence distracted and amaz'd.
Who could put it better than that? One can only congratulate the United States forces, and the soldiers of Great Britain.
And, as for settling things in the Middle East, if this won't help the process nothing will. Israel and the west must stick together.
Studs Terkel
The pre-emptive strike against Iraq was really an assault upon our native intelligence and whatever sense of decency we still possess. It now turns out - as though we didn't know it beforehand - that it was based on an outrageous lie - and will, if anything, encourage "terrorism" and imperil what chances we may have for world peace.
There is only one course for us Americans to take - an old-fashioned one: turn the scoundrel out. This applies to your chieftain, Tony Blair, who has played Jeeves to a doltish Bertie W - our (God help us) appointed chieftain, George W.
Paul Theroux
1. Utterly against military action.
2. Peace and stability in the Middle East might be possible when Israel withdraws from the land it has illegally occupied and tried to colonise since 1967; when a political (not military) solution is found to resolve the conflict; and a viable Palestinian state is established.
DM Thomas
I would much rather trust the views of taxi-drivers on any matter of great political importance than those of writers and intellectuals. History shows that the latter almost always get it wrong. The Falklands war is a good recent example. I was one of a mere handful of writers contributing to Authors Take Sides on the Falklands who supported the action. In the event, that war freed the islanders from a tyrannous occupation; delivered a lesson to aggressors; and destroyed the wicked Argentinian junta in favour of democracy. The people of Britain, who supported the war by a large majority, were right; the authors, wrong.
I have felt no such certainty about the war in Iraq. Both for and against there were strong arguments. It always seemed unlikely that Saddam Hussein could be a threat to us; and so how could we justify an invasion of a sovereign country? I believe that the sovereignty of individual nations is a guarantee of liberty for all, against the very real threat of liberal fascism. I was opposed to Nato's interference over Kosovo, for that reason.
Nonetheless, in the case of Iraq, this was an evil regime, responsible for millions of deaths. I was impressed by Ann Clwyd's quiet but passionate witnessing to Saddam's horrors. A war would, in the end, save lives, and give freedom from fear to millions who had never known it, and who had otherwise no prospect of it. One had to trust one's leaders - now, it seems, mistakenly - that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction; but for me this carried much less weight than the monstrousness of the regime. I felt too that Blair's conviction was - for once - convincing; that a man of sincere Christian faith would not make himself responsible for death and destruction without good reason. There are times when one simply has to trust one's country's leaders, who know more of the facts than we do.
So I supported the war, and still do; firmly, though never without self-doubt. When France and Germany came out against it, I became a stronger supporter of war. An alliance of Britain and the US has always been for the world's good; whereas Germany and France standing together reminded me too much of Vichy.
I certainly don't believe that intervention will bring lasting peace and stability in the region. Only justice for the Palestinians can bring any hope of that.
· Edited extracts from Authors Take Sides on Iraq and the Gulf War, to be published on March 7 by Cecil Woolf ( cecilwoolf@gmx.net).
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1147406,00.html
Wake-Up Time
Yes, Bush has bullied the national media. But are they really powerless? Only if they play along. Herewith, five suggestions for how the Fourth Estate can stop the charade.
By Eric Alterman and Michael Tomasky
Issue Date: 3.1.04
Print Friendly / Email Article
Are our national media -- schoolyard silly during campaign 2000, by turns somnolent and sycophantic ever since -- starting to rouse themselves from their long torpor? It's still way too early to answer that question with a "yes," but if that's what the answer turns out to be, the first week of February may have marked a turning point.
In that week, the media started raising new questions about the justification for the Iraq War; broke an important story about the administration knowing last fall that the Medicare bill would cost $134 billion more than it let on to its employers (the public); broke another about a probe of alleged bribes at Dick Cheney's Halliburton; and finally, led by The Boston Globe's Walter Robinson, started to take a semi-meaningful look into George W. Bush's disputed National Guard record.
Don't start dancing to the music just yet, though. Bad habits die hard, and we've all come to expect too little genuine journalism and far too much of what might be called "journalism-related program activity." This is what we got back in 2000, when Al Gore was deemed a lying SOB for statements he made that were wholly accurate. (Gore did play a large role in creating the predecessor to the Internet, he did hold the hearings that "discovered" contamination at Love Canal, and his only mistake regarding that most crucial of "lies" about who inspired the characters in Erich Segal's Love Story was accurately recalling a decades-old mistaken story in The Tennessean.) Remember, he was running against a guy who couldn't remember a year of his military service or anything connected with a million-dollar bailout he received regarding a fishy stock sale during which he was privy to inside information about the same stock's likely collapse. But hardly anyone thought those questions worth examining.
That was campaign 2000: almost no investigation of Bush's past and aggressive misrepresentation in his favor when the stories finally did come up. Karl Rove couldn't have asked for anything more.
We understand: It's tough out there. Campaign reporters have grueling jobs and can't always be expected to produce big-picture journalism. In the Bush White House, meanwhile, journalists have been forced to do their jobs under profoundly onerous conditions. In his much-discussed January 19 New Yorker article, Ken Auletta detailed the multiple ways in which the Bush administration has successfully shackled reporters. Among the straitjacket techniques detailed there and elsewhere: limited (or no) access, interviews granted on restrictive terms, rare presidential press conferences, and substance-less "availabilities" in which reporters get to ask Bush two or three questions, which they have been told had best relate to the topic Bush wants to discuss. The reporters described by Auletta's diligent reporting seem to believe themselves all but powerless to resist.
Come now. This isn't Pacifica Radio we're discussing here. These are the largest, richest, most powerful media corporations in the world, billion-dollar babies with plenty of resources at their disposal. What's one presidential administration to them? In time, Bush will be back in Crawford swatting Titleists. The Sulzbergers and the Grahams, to say nothing of General Electric and AOL Time Warner, will never be removed from office. That their journalists in Washington -- with a small but still significant number of admirable exceptions -- have quietly caved in to these conditions may or may not be unethical, but it is disgraceful. That the owners have let it happen will be their shameful legacy.
The fat lady has not yet completed her aria, however. The Democrats have stiffened their spines, and Bush's problems have grown unignorable. Election 2004 offers ample opportunity for the ambitious men and women of the Fourth Estate to reassert their power and professional pride. It is in that hope and spirit that we offer the following suggestions for reporters and editors this time around:
1. Go beyond the "he said, she said" and tell us what you believe to be true and important about a story. The chief convention of most news reporting -- this side says this, that side says that -- needs a drastic rethink. In the age of spin, an age brought to new lows by this White House, a formula that requires giving equal weight to both sides ends up helping the side that's lying. So when Bush says, as he often did during the last campaign, "y far, the vast majority of my tax cuts go to those at the bottom end of the spectrum," this obvious and factually checkable lie got the same play in most stories as the truth did. The he said, she said convention actually blurred the truth.
This reflex was at work in the major papers' coverage of Bush's February 7 Meet the Press interview. Some of the news stories were skeptical, especially Dana Milbank's in The Washington Post. Even so, Bush plainly made several claims that simply were not true. Reporters were aware of this, having received a well-documented fact-check from the Center for American Progress within hours of the interview's broadcast. Still, many allowed Bush to continue to attempt to justify the war on grounds that had already been discredited.
We've entered an age in which instantaneous Web analyses are quickly getting readers accustomed to ways of taking in news that are more frank and opinionated. Editors need to reconsider these conventions and reinvigorate them so that they are less concerned with giving equal weight to each side and more concerned with pursuing the factual truth (and yes, this should apply to lying Democrats as well). Truth is sometimes elusive and hard to pin down. It is, however, the point.
2. Challenge the master narrative with genuine investigative reporting. Do you have a good idea of how presidential sibling Neil Bush makes his money these days? Can you describe even briefly what Interior Secretary Gale Norton has been up to for the last three years? Can you name three (or even one) of Bush's top 10 corporate contributors? Do you know anything about The Carlyle Group beyond the fact that the president's father is affiliated with it?
If the media were working properly, you'd be able to answer at least a couple of those questions. But unless you're among America's most ferocious newshounds, you can't. And the reason you can't is that investigative reporting has all but disappeared in Washington.
We're aware of the many reasons for this problem: reduced newsroom budgets, Bush administration intimidation, and more. But the primary culprit is the tyranny of an instant news cycle coupled with the power of the master narrative. The cable shows, the Sunday shows, the major news weeklies, and, to a lesser extent, the leading editorial and op-ed pages -- with the hard-right radio world providing the background white noise -- establish a story line: Bill Clinton is Slick Willie, George W. Bush is Winston Churchill. All Democrats are sissies unless proven otherwise. In the land of the 24-hour news-cycle, the narrative, which gets repeated over and over until it takes on the veneer of being true even when it's nonsensical, is king.
With the glorious exception of the indomitable Seymour Hersh (and damn few others), the Washington media have given this administration an almost total pass. Even the one criminal probe into the administration, the Valerie Plame- leak investigation, was itself leaked to The Washington Post by a disgruntled administration official and only became a full-blown story after the Department of Justice announced its investigation.
Speaking at Harvard University last spring, Washington Post Executive Editor Len Downie said the following: "So if you do tough investigative reporting about Democrats or about issues that are important to the left, you'll get a strong backlash from the left. Similarly, if you do tough investigative reporting of the Republicans or people on the right, you'll get a strong backlash from them. And I think this is also having an impact on the media. It's scaring people."
There you have it. The top editor at America's second most-important newspaper admits that angry phone calls and e-mails are frightening editors (it's a good thing there was no Internet when Ben Bradlee was editor, we guess). And in a bit of painful poetic justice, the paper's most famous and once-great investigative reporter, Bob Woodward, has reverted to the role of court stenographer; channeling the majesty, greatness, and unwavering resolve of Bush, Cheney, and company in exchange for unrestricted access to national-security meetings and documents that are routinely denied to more critically minded reporters.
3. Show proportionality in covering controversies. In the runup to John Kerry's February 3 victories in five states, The New York Times' Glen Justice and John Tierney published a front-page article examining Kerry's and other Democrats' contributions from special interests. Fair enough: The public has a right to know. But it also has a right to knowledge that's placed in some sort of sensible context. Take a look at this sentence, for instance: "Mr. Kerry denounces President Bush for catering to the rich, but he has depended more heavily on affluent donors than the other leading Democrats except for another populist, Senator John Edwards." Just how does Kerry's standing vis-à-vis the other Democrats provide a useful measure of whether Bush caters to the rich? And do Kerry's contributions from special interests come even close to those of the president? This question is not explored with reporting. Instead, the authors tell us, using the paradigmatic "to be sure" construction, "To be sure, none of the Democrats have collected donations on the scale of President Bush's campaign, and they generally avoid donations from political action committees. But the Democrats are hardly naifs when it comes to enlisting support from special interests in Washington and elsewhere, from corporate leaders and from unions in the public and private sectors."
Talk about your false constructions. Did anyone accuse the Democrats of being "naifs when it comes to enlisting support from special interests in Washington and elsewhere, from corporate leaders and from unions in the public and private sectors"? A single sentence of context -- provided with no numbers whatever -- hardly gives readers a fair sense of who's giving what to whom. Rather, it plays perfectly into the Rove game plan of selling the country to special interests while proclaiming it to be in the public good. It would have taken Justice and Tierney about 90 seconds to go to a Web site every political journalist knows and discover that in fact, Bush has received 28 times more money in PAC donations than Kerry has.
4. A little solidarity on behalf of the truth, please. ABC Political Director Mark Halperin began a campaign awhile back for reporters to break former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer of his habit of ignoring questions he didn't like by calling on another reporter who would conveniently change the subject. Great idea, but it went nowhere. The apogee of a servile media was reached on television a year ago when reporters sat still for a perfectly scripted imitation of a prime-time press conference that had fewer surprises in it than the umpteenth viewing of an old I Love Lucy episode. There's really nothing that should prevent political reporters from agreeing not to ask a new question until their colleague gets a satisfactory answer to his or hers. In the long run, such a rule (which should of course be applied to Democrats, too) would help everyone.
But it isn't just reporters who should show solidarity. The news organizations they work for need to do the same. Last year, Jonathan Weisman, an economics reporter at The Washington Post, published a letter detailing the terms laid down by the White House that he would have to accept to get an interview with an administration official for a story about outgoing economic adviser R. Glenn Hubbard: The interview would be off the record only, quotes Weisman wanted to use would have to be e-mailed to the press office in advance of publication, and, if approved, the quotes could be attributed to "a White House official." Weisman went on to note that even after he met all these conditions, the official he was quoting demanded that the quote be changed -- that words never spoken be placed within quotation marks. When Weisman met this demand only halfway and the story appeared, he was met with "an angry denunciation by the White House press official," telling him that he had broken his word and "violated journalistic ethics." As Weisman acknowledged, he had violated ethics -- by agreeing to all this nonsense in the first place.
The blame here rests not with Weisman, who was brave enough to publicize these details, but with his employer. Why should the big, powerful Washington Post bow to terms like these? On a regular basis, our greatest media institutions are accepting conditions that every undergraduate journalism student in the country is taught to reject. Individual reporters, scrambling for access and scoops, can't change this on their own. It's up to their bosses and owners.
5. Don't let non-news organs drive the news cycle. This may be the most important point, and you need only think back to the last election to see how it might work this time. Some right-wing radio host or FOX will push some tale about the Democratic nominee. It will either be an outright deception (Gore and Love Canal), a perverse distortion of something that contains a small kernel of truth (Gore and the famous "standing student" in Sarasota, Florida), or something completely irrelevant to the man's qualifications to run the country (Gore and fully buttoned brown suits). It will be framed as reflecting the nominee's "character." And many voters, who pay only moderate attention to the news and don't give any thought to how and why the information in front of them gets there, will buy into it.
Every serious journalist will know, deep down, that it's exaggerated, unfair, and orchestrated. But it won't matter. It will travel from the right-wing media to the cable shows (if, indeed, that can be called "traveling" at all) and then land on the network news shows and the front pages and op-ed pages of the respectable newspapers.
A lot of things get "reported" on shows like Hardball with Chris Matthews and The O'Reilly Factor, and by people like Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh, that are, to be more than generous, not exactly nailed down. The fact that they are "out there," as an MSNBC producer once said about the report that a witness had caught Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in the act inside the White House, is not a reason for journalists to put their own names and that of their news organizations behind them. Journalists need to ask themselves not only whether a story is true but whether it's significant. Is it somehow more important that John Kerry may have gotten a Botox shot when the nation's deficit is shooting out of control and Iraq is proving not only unmanageable but turns out to have never been threatening?
The high-minded dodge for tabloid reporting of this type can be found in claims like that of Mickey Kaus: "[T]he Kerry Botox story is not a frivolous bit of gossip but a perfectly legitimate synecdoche for this type of Kerry behavior." Well, anything can be declared a "perfectly legitimate synecdoche" for any type of behavior by that standard. Botox or no Botox -- and we don't have a position on this -- has nothing whatever to do with carrying out the duties of the presidency. Save that crap for those who at least admit to being entertainers first and journalists second (if at all).
Journalists are supposed to enjoy their work and take pride in it. Otherwise, why bother? We are not typically overpaid or commanding of the respect in society that doctors or successful businesspeople enjoy. The profession experienced an all-too-brief injection of self-worth in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. "When you find yourself covering sex and sleaze stories, you're not terribly proud of it," explained Clarence Page, a Chicago Tribune columnist. "It wasn't the kind of thing I could go home and talk to my kid about. Now my son comes to me with questions about Afghanistan. I feel proud of what I do ... ."
If journalists demonstrated the kind of tenacity in going after key political stories that they did during that brief shining moment, well, America will have an election worthy of the world's oldest democracy, and reporters and editors alike will be able to speak proudly of the charge given to them by its oldest written constitution: to protect and defend the public's right to know its leaders -- and to choose them wisely.
Eric Alterman and Michael Tomasky
Copyright © 2004 by The American Prospect, Inc.
http://www.prospect.org/print/V15/3/alterman-e.html
Few Can Offer Confirmation Of Bush's Guard Service
Friends and Acquaintances Lack Firsthand Knowledge
By Manuel Roig-Franzia and Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 15, 2004; Page A01
MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- On an early summer day in 2000, in the manicured back yard of Sen. Richard C. Shelby's Tuscaloosa home, the moneyed elite of Republican Alabama clustered around the man they hoped would become the next president of the United States: George W. Bush.
They were packed too tightly for talk of private matters, so Bush leaned forward and whispered in the ear of an old friend, Winton Blount III. Bush had a problem: News reports were questioning whether he had fulfilled his National Guard obligations in 1972 when he was temporarily assigned to a unit in Montgomery.
"Go find Emily Marks," Bush told Blount. "She knows I served."
Blount did what he was told. He tracked down Marks -- now Emily Marks Curtis -- and even though she was jittery about talking to the media, he arranged an interview with a small Alabama newspaper, the Decatur Daily. Marks Curtis told the paper that she had dated Bush while they both worked on the 1972 Senate campaign of Blount's father, Winton "Red" Blount, and that Bush had talked of going to Guard duty on the weekends.
Blount was so pleased that he encouraged the reporter who wrote the story to offer the piece to the Associated Press. "We told him," Blount recalled, " 'This is a big story.' "
Marks Curtis's recollection of her long-ago friendship with the young Bush is once again relevant, as the president's military record has come under renewed scrutiny because of unexplained gaps in the documents. But even the woman Bush solicited to defend his record has no firsthand knowledge of his service in the Alabama National Guard, and relies, she said, on what she heard from the 26-year-old Bush.
Trying to quell a growing political storm, President Bush on Friday evening released all his military records to counter Democrats' suggestions that he shirked his duty in the Air National Guard at the height of the Vietnam War.
But the hundreds of pages of documents did little to answer questions about Bush's military history. Why, for example, is there no definitive documentation -- except a single dental exam -- that places Bush at Dannelly Air National Guard Base in 1972-73 and shows how he performed his temporary duty in the Alabama Guard?
The flap over Bush's Guard service arcs back to an aimless time in Bush's life that he has referred to as his "nomadic years" -- a post-college search for a career and purpose as he drifted from opportunity to opportunity, job to job.
Bush was unquestionably out of step with his generation and, as his mother has said, a late bloomer. While many of his 1960s contemporaries were openly challenging authority and convention, Bush held on to his father's values and ambitions, but with little success at the time. He partied and drank, clashing with his father after a night of carousing in 1972, and supported a war that many of his peers reviled.
But Bush never went to Vietnam. He instead enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard 12 days before he was to lose his student deferment in 1968, and committed to flying fighter jets part time at home. Four years later, after long periods of unemployment, a family friend took Bush under his wing.
Alabama was a logical place to park the young Bush while he sorted out his life. His father, then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, had befriended Red Blount years earlier in Washington.
Blount had been President Richard M. Nixon's postmaster general and controlled a fortune generated by one of Alabama's leading construction firms. The elder Bush had been an ambitious congressman with southern bona fides. The Blount family still proudly displays a photograph of Blount and Bush leaping into the air, rackets in hand, at the White House tennis court.
The younger Bush's move to Alabama was arranged by a Midland, Tex., newspaper publisher named Jimmy Allison, a family loyalist who served as a kind of mentor. Allison was running Blount's campaign against popular incumbent Sen. John Sparkman (D).
Bush was taken into the folds of the extended Blount family. He was given an upstairs bedroom to use whenever he liked in the Birmingham home of Red Blount's brother, Houston Blount, and his wife, Frances. The 26-year-old Bush charmed the Blount family, clearing his dishes and heaping attention on their 14-year-old daughter, Franny, Frances Blount recalled.
Bush also rented a house in Montgomery, a place he essentially had to himself, because his roommate was usually traveling, friends say.
Although a relative newcomer to political campaigns, Bush was given a title -- assistant campaign manager -- and responsibility. He was charged with developing county organizations, particularly in the hilly northern part of the state, and he impressed people with his energy.
Bush was soon dating Emily Marks, considered one of the most beautiful young women in the campaign. "We went to dinner; we went to the movies; we played tennis," she said in an interview from her home in suburban New Orleans. "Back then, we called that a date. But we were just friends."
But while Bush made a lasting impression on the Montgomery Republican establishment, he was virtually invisible to the Alabama National Guard, where he was on temporary assignment.
Documents in Bush's Guard file show that initially he asked for and received permission to fulfill his obligation at a nonactive reserve unit in Alabama. But a couple of months later -- after he was already in Alabama -- he received a letter from Guard personnel headquarters in Denver informing him that he still had a "military obligation" and would have to do his duty at a "Ready Reserve" unit comparable to his unit in Houston. He received permission to join the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group based at Dannelly field in 1972.
He would not be flying in Alabama, because he was not trained on the aircraft at that base. Still, around the same time, records indicate that Bush declined to undergo a physical exam -- a requirement to maintain his flying status. By August, he was suspended from flying and never again took a military physical or flew for the Guard.
White House communications director Dan Bartlett said that Bush declined to take a physical because he was not flying in Alabama and that when he returned to Houston, his unit was phasing out the F-102s that Bush flew.
Although documents released last week show that Bush performed some Guard duties in October and November of 1972, a time he was in Alabama, and dental exams show he was on the base in January 1973, none of the documents shows where on the base he worked or what his tasks were.
Only one person has vivid recollections of serving with Bush at Dannelly field. John B. "Bill" Calhoun, 69 -- whose name was provided by a Republican ally of Bush's -- said he saw Bush sign in at the 187th eight to 10 times for about eight hours each from May to October 1972.
But Calhoun remembers seeing Bush at Dannelly at times in mid-1972 when the White House acknowledges Bush was not pulling Guard duty in Alabama yet; his first drills were in October, according to the White House. White House press secretary Scott McClellan on Friday was at a loss to reconcile the discrepancy.
Other recollections are anecdotal. Marks Curtis and Nee Bear, who also worked with Bush on the Blount campaign, remember Bush mentioning National Guard duties while they were in Alabama, though it was not a big topic of conversation. "He told us that he had Guard duty and that he would be unable to do some things, from time to time, in the campaign," Bear said.
Marks Curtis says her memories are vague, but she believes she can pinpoint the dates of Bush's Guard duty by process of elimination. She remembers Bush staying in Montgomery after Sparkman defeated Blount in the November 1972 election, which could account for records showing he performed Guard service in mid-November.
Marks Curtis's timeline jibes with the memories of Joe Holcombe, a Blount campaign office manager, who remembers Bush renting a truck in November 1972 to pick up furniture. Holcombe and Jean Sullivan, a former Republican national committeewoman, say it was well-known that Bush was enlisted in the National Guard.
But Sullivan, now 70, said Friday that she remembers hearing grumbles in 1972 about Bush not showing up at Dannelly field for Guard duty. She was so angry, she said, that she called a Guard commander to say that Bush was in fact participating in Guard duties, but was spending most of his time on the Blount campaign.
"He didn't come to Montgomery to serve in the Guard; he came to work in the campaign," Sullivan said. "He was there just in case [the Guard] ever needed him."
Few others have any recollection of Bush participating in Guard drills. Winton Blount and his brother, Sam, who also worked on the campaign, do not remember Bush saying anything about Guard duty -- otherwise, they would have been more than happy to come to his defense themselves when his record was questioned, the brothers said in interviews.
Jim Hart, a major in charge of public affairs for the base at the time, said Dannelly field was unusually busy in the early 1970s because the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group was one of the first Guard units in the country to receive the F-4 Phantom fighter jets. Along with the new equipment in Montgomery came a rush of hundreds of new Guardsmen in 1972 and 1973, many of whom would report for monthly weekend duty shifts and would rarely be seen otherwise.
"It's ludicrous to say that if he wasn't seen, he wasn't there," said Hart, 68, of Bascom, Fla. "The base, then, was open seven days a week, four weekends a month. There were 900 to 1,000 people coming and going. Do I remember seeing a lieutenant by the name of George Bush? I couldn't say that I never saw him."
The Guard officer to whom Bush was ordered to report -- retired Brig. Gen. William Turnipseed -- has said repeatedly that he has no recollection of Bush. But Turnipseed, a Republican, wavered this week after a fellow member of the 187th, Joe LeFevers, said that he remembered meeting Bush in the unit's offices. "I'm beginning to have doubts," said Turnipseed, now 74.
Outside the base, the Senate campaign was generating big headlines. What started as a mostly civil contest turned ugly when the Blount campaign edited a Sparkman radio interview to make it appear that he favored mandatory busing, an explosive tactic in a state still struggling with great racial divides and the legacy of segregation. The Democrat's campaign team eventually found an unedited version of the interview and used it in the race's final days against Blount.
When the votes were counted, Sparkman had captured nearly two-thirds of the electorate, and the young George Bush had received a lesson in defeat.
It was time to go home.
Bush eventually went back to Texas in early 1973, and started dating Bear. She has pictures of their time together -- riding horses and mugging for the camera -- but she keeps them locked up, despite media requests to release them. "I couldn't do that to Laura," she said.
One night in December 1972 in Washington, while staying with his parents for the holidays, Bush went carousing with his 16-year-old brother, Marvin. He ran over a neighbor's garbage cans on the way home, and when their father, then ambassador to the United Nations, confronted them, Bush challenged him to go "mano a mano." Within a month, the elder Bush had found a job for his son at an inner-city youth program in Houston. In the spring of 1973, the younger Bush was accepted to Harvard Business School, quickly finished up his Guard requirements and asked for an early discharge.
The young man finally had a plan.
Romano reported from Tulsa. Staff writers Mike Allen, Josh White and George Lardner Jr., and researcher Lucy Shackelford, contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42735-2004Feb14?language=printer
My War
By LARRY DAVID
Published: February 15, 2004
LOS ANGELES
I couldn't be happier that President Bush has stood up for having served in the National Guard, because I can finally put an end to all those who questioned my motives for enlisting in the Army Reserve at the height of the Vietnam War. I can't tell you how many people thought I had signed up just to avoid going to Vietnam. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, I was itching to go over there. I was just out of college and, let's face it, you can't buy that kind of adventure. More important, I wanted to do my part in saving that tiny country from the scourge of Communism. We had to draw the line somewhere, and if not me, then who?
But I also knew that our country was being torn asunder by opposition to the war. Who would be here to defend the homeland against civil unrest? Or what if some national emergency should arise? We needed well-trained men on the ready to deal with any situation. It began to dawn on me that perhaps my country needed me more at home than overseas. Sure, being a reservist wasn't as glamorous, but I was the one who had to look at myself in the mirror.
Even though the National Guard and Army Reserve see combat today, it rankles me that people assume it was some kind of waltz in the park back then. If only. Once a month, for an entire weekend — I'm talking eight hours Saturday and Sunday — we would meet in a dank, cold airplane hangar. The temperature in that hangar would sometimes get down to 40 degrees, and very often I had to put on long underwear, which was so restrictive I suffered from an acute vascular disorder for days afterward. Our captain was a strict disciplinarian who wouldn't think twice about not letting us wear sneakers or breaking up a poker game if he was in ill humor. Once, they took us into the woods and dropped us off with nothing but compasses and our wits. One wrong move and I could've wound up on Queens Boulevard. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to find my way out of there and back to the hangar. Some of my buddies did not fare as well and had to call their parents to come and get them.
Then in the summer we would go away to camp for two weeks. It felt more like three. I wondered if I'd ever see my parakeet again. We slept on cots and ate in the International House of Pancakes. I learned the first night that IHOP's not the place to order fish. When the two weeks were up, I came home a changed man. I would often burst into tears for no apparent reason and suffered recurring nightmares about drowning in blueberry syrup. If I hadn't been so strapped for cash, I would've sought the aid of a psychiatrist.
In those days, reserve duty lasted for six years, which, I might add, was three times as long as service in the regular army, although to be perfectly honest, I was unable to fulfill my entire obligation because I was taking acting classes and they said I could skip my last year. I'll always be eternally grateful to the Pentagon for allowing me to pursue my dreams.
Still, after all this time, whenever I've mentioned my service in the Reserve during Vietnam, it's been met with sneers and derision. But now, thanks to President Bush, I can stand up proudly alongside him and all the other guys who guarded the home front. Finally, we no longer have to be embarrassed about our contribution during those very trying years.
Larry David, who served in the Army Reserve in the 1970's, appears in the HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/opinion/15DAVI.html
How Well Did He Serve?
Bush said he reported for duty in Alabama, but even with the new documents, the evidence is thin. TIME looks at four key questions
By MICHAEL DUFFY/WASHINGTON
Monday, Feb. 23, 2004
George W. Bush has long had a habit of giving people nicknames—and perhaps that's because he picked up a few along the way himself. Like the one he earned in 1972, when he left his home in Houston to work on the long-shot Senate campaign of Winton M. (Red) Blount in Alabama. Bush, then 26, would often turn up at campaign headquarters in Montgomery around lunchtime, recount his late-night exploits and brag about his political connections, according to a Blount campaign worker. All that made him slow to win over the Alabama crowd, who began to complain that Bush was letting things slide. C. Murphy Archibald, a nephew of Blount's who worked on the campaign that fall, told TIME that Bush "was good at schmoozing the county chairs, but there wasn't a lot of follow-up." Archibald, now a trial attorney in North Carolina, remembers that a group of older Alabama socialites, who were volunteering their time, gave Bush a nickname because they thought he "looked good on the outside but was full of hot air." They called him the Texas Soufflé.
Skimming the surface and skipping over details may be business as usual for a happy-go-lucky 26-year-old, but it's a problem for a President during a winter of discontent. Whether Bush performed his National Guard duties while he was working on the Blount campaign—as well as during much of the year starting in May 1972—was raised in his past campaigns and always fluttered away quickly, an issue regarded as irrelevant after two decades or more. But it has become germane this time in a way it never was before because for the second time in as many months—first on prewar intelligence in Iraq and now on his military record—Bush is caught in a gap between what he has claimed and what he can prove. At the same time, he's gearing up for a fight with a probable Democratic nominee whose record as a Vietnam War hero helps buy him credibility to challenge Bush on his military resume. Bush insists he did his duty in Alabama, but the records—and many memories—don't confirm it. And these days, people are paying a lot closer attention to the President's words.
All week long, the White House tried to complete two contradictory missions: keep Bush's promise to Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press to release all his military records—and change the story line as quickly as possible. First came the Bush pay stubs, which showed he was paid for some work during his Alabama sojourn but didn't prove he did any work. Then came a page of a dental exam, proving that he had at least turned up at an air base to have his teeth checked. And finally, when those documents weren't having the proper impact, the White House released 400 pages of military records on a late Friday afternoon. Those documents didn't solve the puzzle either, but by then the White House hoped that at least no one could accuse the President of hiding anything. "We're going on the offensive on this," says a top official. "The problem with the Democrats is that they always overplay their hand."
It may be that Bush's military service has already passed into the custody of amateur oral historians—those who say he never turned up, and the lone veteran and the ex-girlfriend who say Bush reported for duty in Alabama. But if the stack of papers may someday intrigue his biographers—we learn that Bush had an appendectomy at age 10, that he took a semester of Japanese during his senior year at Yale, that his Air Force minders rated him "a natural leader whom his contemporaries look to"—they also leave many of the central mysteries of his service unsolved. Here are four:
How Did Bush Get In the Guard, And What Were His Duties?
It was Bush's name that helped land him the coveted Guard-duty spot in the first place. Maurice Udell, the flight instructor who trained Bush, told TIME last week that "there was all kinds of people trying to get in, lot of 'em flying Cessnas. But Bush's stock went way up when I found out his dad was the youngest [Navy] pilot in World War II and got shot down. As far as I was concerned, who were they? When your dad flies in the war in combat, that gives you a leg up." It also probably didn't hurt that Bush's father was a Congressman from Houston.
After basic training and flight school, Bush spent most of his time in the service with the 111th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron at Ellington Field, a "champagne" unit based southeast of Houston. Suiting up for battle alongside scions of other Texas political families—Connally and Bentsen—Bush flew the F-102 Delta Dagger, a 1950s-era interceptor, at a speed of 600 m.p.h. over the Gulf Coast on the lookout for enemy aircraft. Duty at Ellington was relatively worry free; the Guard's air-defense mission was certainly a low priority in the 1970s. And the pilots had little fear of being called to active duty in Vietnam; they were flying nearly obsolete F-102s that were not suited to a guerrilla war. But the scene had a touch of glamour for a young man about town. The apron was often jammed with the sleek little jet planes of NASA astronauts who trained nearby and shuttled back and forth from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The 111th had its dangers: Bush and his wingmen often flew in formation, hovering just a few feet from one another's wing tips. At other times, they would wait in a ready room for hours, doing next to nothing on action-free alert drills.
What Did Bush Have to Do to Fulfill His Guard Commitment?
Requirements for service have tightened in the past 20 years, but in those days, the Air Guard made it hard to fail. In Bush's era, a Guardsman was supposed to earn 50 points each year to meet his commitment and avoid, at least in theory, the risk of facing induction into the active-duty force. Getting to 50 was relatively easy if you just showed up. And if you missed your drills, you were allowed to make up points in other ways.
But the Texas Air Guard seemed to make it even easier. For example, several members of the Dallas Cowboys belonged to another unit of the Texas Guard, and each was cut plenty of slack every fall during football season. Henry Simon, a Fort Worth, Texas, lawyer who toiled as a clerk in the Texas Guard's Grand Prairie office during the 1960s, said airmen were given lots of chances to perform "equivalent service" to make up for missed drills. "I don't think there was ever an objective standard of what equivalent service was. It might be something like going to the noon meeting of the town council and accepting a proclamation praising the fine work of the Texas Air National Guard," Simon told TIME. "We'd fill out a form detailing what [the person] did, and he'd get credit for the drill."
When Bush decided to go to work for Blount, he was obliged under Guard rules to request an official transfer to a different Guard unit. He applied in May 1972 to a tiny postal unit in Montgomery and was accepted. There is no paper evidence that he ever reported for duty. Two months later, the Air Force overturned that transfer, and so Bush, in September, requested reassignment to the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group at Dannelly Field, about 15 minutes from downtown Montgomery. The unit flew planes but not the kind Bush could fly.
So Did Bush Report for Duty in Alabama or Not?
Depends on whom you believe. During his Meet the Press appearance, Bush twice told Russert that he reported for duty in Alabama. But for most of last week (and for much of the past four years), it has been difficult to find anyone who recalls seeing Bush at Dannelly Field. (At one point in 2000, 10 Vietnam veterans offered a $1,000 reward to anyone who could prove he saw Bush on duty during 1972.) Even Bush had trouble explaining his job at Dannelly, saying he did "administrative work." John B. Calhoun, an Atlanta resident who served for 28 years in the Air Force and the Alabama Guard, told TIME he clearly remembers Bush reporting for duty on weekends starting in the summer of 1972, apparently before Bush officially requested reassignment there. Calhoun explained that Bush signed into his office and mainly read training manuals and safety magazines, signing out at the end of each drilling day. Bush kept a low profile, Calhoun said, and sometimes ate lunch with Calhoun in the snack bar.
But there are some discrepancies in Calhoun's account: he claimed Bush turned up more often than was indicated in Bush's official pay records for the period. And many other veterans of the 187th do not recall seeing Bush on base. Paul Bishop, a retired Air Force colonel who says he never missed a weekend drill in 27 years with the 187th, told TIME the physical layout of the unit's hangar made it "virtually impossible" for Bush to have met with Calhoun and for none of the unit's 800 other reservists to have seen him. "Fighter pilots, and that's what we are," says Bishop, "have situational awareness. They know everything about their environment, whether it's an enemy plane creeping up or a stranger in their hangar."
This much is known: for the first three years while he was in Texas, Bush had no trouble racking up hundreds of points each year, far in excess of what was required. He logged more than 600 hours of flying time and received glowing evaluations from his superiors. But in 1972, when he moved to Alabama, his points plunged. He earned only 41 points but was awarded the standard 15 "gratuitous" points from Texas Air Guard Major Rufus Martin for being a member in good standing—just enough to meet his obligation.
Why Did He Miss The Physical?
No question so unsettles some former Guardsmen as much as this: If Bush did report, as he contends, why did he let his medical certification lapse around the same time—a full two years before his Guard commitment was up? Four years ago, the Bush campaign said Bush didn't undergo the physical because his family doctor was back in Texas. That explanation doesn't wash; only flight surgeons can perform Air Force exams, and there were plenty of those in Alabama.
The official explanation has changed: the White House now says Bush didn't need to take the medical exam because he was no longer flying. But even if Bush wasn't planning a career in aviation, that explanation is difficult for other pilots to accept. Pilots routinely sacrifice everything to keep their "medical cert" current; the military is rife with stories of cheating by pilots to pass their physicals. And the government, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to train and keep its pilots flying, has never looked kindly on highly trained personnel, particularly pilots, standing down on their own. "There are certain things I expect from my pilots," said Major General Paul Weaver, who retired as head of the Air National Guard in 2002. "He should have kept current with his physicals." Some Guard veterans have speculated that Bush may have been dodging random drug tests, which were instituted in some military units as early as 1971. But there is no evidence to support that; in fact, the dentist who worked on Bush's teeth and who later became the commander of the base medical unit, told TIME that the Alabama Guard did not conduct random drug tests until the 1980s.
White House officials, surprised by what they call "the hysteria" over Bush's war record, concede that this has not been their finest hour. "We were a little rusty on this," said an adviser. Said another: "[The White House] swung at a pitch in the dirt."
But the White House has been off its game for weeks, and the hardballs just keep coming. Last week, as Wesley Clark endorsed John Kerry for the Democratic nomination, the retired four-star general said that "questioning our leaders, especially in time of war, is one of the highest forms of patriotism." That suggests a brutal campaign to come about the war that is still going on—especially since the two sides haven't stopped arguing about the one that ended more than three decades ago.
— Reported by Frank Sikora/Birmingham, Cathy Booth Thomas/Dallas, Jackson Baker/Memphis, Mike Billips/Montgomery and John F. Dickerson and Mark Thompson/Washington
From the Feb. 23, 2004 issue of TIME magazine
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040223-590683,00.html
zitface -- of course I am tornado, and as always you are clueless -- and re your lame attempt to portray me as having a 'new pet project' as a 'defender of idiocy', you haven't seen me sticking up for you yet, have you?
zit_for_brains -- first, you are the master of 'just making it up as you go along', hands down; there you go with that projection again -- second, whether or not you've ever actually responded to spree (I don't recall having said you had), the fact is that he has responded very effectively any number of times to shoot gaping holes in some of the utter crap you've posted here; he has consistently gotten the better of you here, and easily at that -- finally, as if I care at all what you think of me or my credibility; truth us, if anything, considering the source, the less you think of me, the more I like it . . .
zithead -- actually I did read that thread -- and whether you like it or will acknowledge it or not, spree has consistently gotten the better of you here, and easily at that
talk about being so perfectly and transparently bass-ackwards as to be beyond twisted -- from Yahoo!, yet another example of our "truth guide" twitboy's cluelessly and shamelessly prideful opinion of himself (in response to a post made, I believe, by spree) -- ah, projection can be such a wonderful mechanism for self-defense and denial -- though I've gotta admit he's right on one count -- this is a very funny post:
the difference between our posts is that, my posts are sharp, witty, and make other readers laugh, where your posts merely have people shaking their heads and wondering when you're gonna shutup
http://finance.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&action=m&board=4686767&tid=idc&sid=4686...
Halliburton Suspends Invoicing in Dispute
Mon February 16, 2004 12:53 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Halliburton (HAL.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Monday it has temporarily suspended certain invoicing of subcontractor services as it reconciles a discrepancy between meals ordered by the Department of Defense and the number of meals actually served to soldiers.
Halliburton, through its KBR subsidiary, is providing food services for the troops in Iraq. The oil services firm, which has been under fire over its Iraq contracts, said that it has temporarily suspended certain invoicing for meal planning, food purchase and meal preparation for the soldiers.
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4367601
Under Fire Over Jobs, Bush Hones Upbeat Message
Mon February 16, 2004 11:53 AM ET
By Adam Entous
TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - President Bush said on Monday that, contrary to recent polls and his Democratic challengers, there is an "undeniable" sense of economic optimism sweeping the country.
Bush's upbeat message stood in contrast to charges by his Democratic presidential rivals about high unemployment and jobs moving overseas.
Nearly 2.8 million factory jobs have been lost since Bush took office and the issue looms large ahead of November's vote.
Bush acknowledged during a visit to a Tampa window and door manufacturer that "a lot of economic growth depends upon the psychology of the people making decisions all throughout our economy."
Bush did his part on Monday to shape that "psychology." "You can say, 'Well of course, they just pick the upbeat people.' Well, the truth of the matter is people are pretty upbeat all over the country. That's what I'm here to report to you," he said.
Bush's goal: to reverse his slide in recent polls by boosting confidence in his economic stewardship.
An ABC News/Washington Post survey released on Friday found Bush at a low point in public approval, his popularity depressed by questions about the Iraq war, continued economic frustration and interest in his leading Democratic rival.
In his remarks at NuAir Manufacturing in Tampa, Bush steered clear of negative economic news, including a recent report showing Americans turned increasingly cautious on the economy. Analysts say weak jobs creation has dampened consumer confidence despite a strengthening U.S. economy.
Bush seized on NuAir's hopes to hire 40 more workers this year. "Forty workers here, five workers there, begin to add up," he said.
Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat, derided Bush's two-day visit to the state that was at the center of the 2000 recount controversy. "Had he spent a little more time, he would have seen some of the suffering people," he said.
'THINGS ARE LOOKING BETTER'
Bush made no mention of the controversy surrounding the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Gregory Mankiw, who praised the shifting of U.S. jobs abroad.
"The facts bear me out," Bush said. "The last six months of growth have been tremendous. Housing starts are way up. Inflation is low. Interest is low. New jobs are being created ... Things are looking better for America."
"There's an optimism in our country that is undeniable," he added. "The key question is: Are we wise enough to ... keep the policies in place that encourage growth."
He called on Congress to make his tax cuts permanent -- a move Democrats say will benefit the rich and increase an already record $500-billion-plus budget deficit.
Bush did his part for Tampa economy on Sunday night.
After mixing with the masses at the Daytona 500 stock-car race, the president and his wife settled in at Tampa's exclusive Bern's Steak House with local political allies.
The restaurant's dinner menu boasts $60.68 porterhouse steaks, golden Iranian caviar for $92 a serving, and 150- to 200-year-old bottles of wine including an 1851 Gruaud Larose for $10,000.
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4367246
Bush courts NASCAR fans
Monday, February 16, 2004 Posted: 1:21 AM EST (0621 GMT)
DAYTONA BEACH, Florida (AP) -- President Bush throttled up his re-election campaign Sunday by donning a racing jacket and opening the Daytona 500, NASCAR's most prestigious event and one that draws a prized voter profile.
"Gentlemen, start your engines!" Bush said, squinting up from pit road to the grandstands, where some 180,000 fans roared. They were promptly drowned out by the scream of stock car engines roaring to life.
Bush seemed to relish a chance to see what he called "one of America's great sporting spectacles."
The race provided an irresistible opportunity for Bush to woo tens of millions of NASCAR fans -- the sport claims a fan base of 75 million -- watching the televised event 81/2 months before the election. The crowd in the stands was almost exclusively white and heavily male. The phrase "NASCAR dads" has become political shorthand for voters who like Bush but who could be persuaded to vote Democratic if the issues and candidates were right.
It was also a plum chance to make a 19th visit to Florida, the state that decided the 2000 election.
His motorcade took a slow half-lap around the flat shoulder of the track, whose banks rise so steeply that a stopped car would probably roll end-over-end down to the bottom.
With his wife, Laura, trailing him, Bush walked the pit, mingling with drivers, shaking hands with fans. He peered into car No. 16, sponsored by the National Guard, and if the car reminded him of the tempest swirling around his own service in the Texas Air National Guard, he didn't show it.
Bush referred to that history in an interview with NBC just before the race.
"I flew fighters when I was in the Guard, and I like speed," he said. "It would've been fun to drive up on these banks. ... I'd like to, but I'm afraid the agents wouldn't let me."
The president got a much warmer reception than Bill Clinton did when he visited a NASCAR race as a candidate in September 1992. At the time, Clinton was dogged by the question of his lack of Vietnam-era military service.
At the Southern 500 race in Darlington, South Carolina, Clinton was booed and heckled by fans, many shouting "draft dodger!" at him.
As Bush strode through Daytona's pit road, he received rock-star treatment. An extravaganza unfolded around him.
A man with a rocket strapped to his back sailed into the speedway, followed, a short time later, by a bald eagle that landed on its trainer's arm. Fireworks erupted, cheerleaders danced, LeAnn Rimes sang "R-O-C-K in the USA."
Bush bumped into actor Ben Affleck, getting ready to drive the pace car. The president lingered with NASCAR legend Richard Petty.
"If you've never been to a Daytona 500, it's hard for me to describe what it's like to be down here with the drivers and to see the huge crowd and to feel the excitement for one of America's great sporting spectacles," Bush said.
The first couple watched the race from a suite, protected from the eardrum-shattering blast of noise, the gust of wind and the trail of flying debris that washed over the grandstands each time the 43 cars sped past. The cars reach speeds of up to 200 mph.
"This is more than an event; it's a way of life for a lot of people, and you can feel excitement when you're here," Bush said.
Bush's appearance culminated his aggressive courtship of NASCAR fans.
The Bush White House has added NASCAR winners to the list of sports champions formally honored at the White House. In December, as Bush paid tribute to drivers inside the White House, seven NASCAR stock cars were parked on the South Lawn.
Underscoring the political stakes, the Republican National Committee set up camp at the speedway to register potential voters.
Bush sought to maximize his exposure to racing fans during his visit. Air Force One circled low over the speedway so the president could get a look -- and to give racing fans a dramatic look at a symbol of the presidency.
He spent an unusually long time at the race -- more than 21/2 hours, compared to the 55 minutes he planned at a Monday event on the economy across Florida in Tampa. Bush does not submit to news media interviews often, but he did two Sunday with networks that reach millions of race fans -- NBC, which aired the race, and with the Motor Racing Network.
Afterward, he called race winner Dale Earnhardt Jr. to congratulate him.
Late Sunday night, Bush and the first lady had dinner in Tampa with former Florida Gov. Bob Martinez and his wife, Mary Jane. They are among Bush's "rangers" -- fund-raising volunteers who collected at least $200,000 for the president's re-election campaign.
----------------------------------
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/02/16/elec04.prez.bush.ap/index.html
merely being our self-proclaimed "truth guide" evidently hasn't been enough to sate your ego for more than a couple of days -- so now you've gone for the gusto, cut to the chase and answered all questions by just flat out appointing yourself god -- good luck to you if you ever meet the real one . . .
so sayeth our "truth guide" (somewhat gaseously, we note and accept as god's very will manifest) -- amen
Bush repeats support for school vouchers
Friday, February 13, 2004 Posted: 3:30 PM EST (2030 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, celebrating the nation's first federally funded school voucher program set up in the District of Columbia, said Friday he hopes it will turn into "change across the country" in education.
"At some point in time, in order to challenge mediocrity where we find mediocrity, parents have to be given other options," Bush said in a speech at Archbishop Carroll High School.
With his recently submitted budget proposal for fiscal year 2005, Bush is trying again to persuade Congress to go along with a national pilot program for children to attend private and religious schools at federal taxpayers' expense. He has asked for $50 million for school vouchers nationwide in the budget year that starts October 1.
The president asked for $50 million in 2003 and $75 million in 2004 for vouchers. All that survived is a $14 million private school-choice program for low-income children in underperforming public schools in the District of Columbia.
The program will benefit at least 1,700 poor students in the District, home to a chronically struggling system of 65,000 students. Students must gain admission to a private school and cover tuition or other costs exceeding their vouchers, with the maximum voucher per year at $7,500.
The District and the Education Department are scrambling to get the program running in time for the next school year, as many private schools are in their admissions season.
John T. Butler, principal of Archbishop Carroll High School where tuition this year is $6,250 this year for Catholic students and $6,500 for non-Catholics, said he hopes to serve at least 25 students through the new voucher program next year.
"This is an historic moment for education. It's the first time ever where the federal government has recognized that school choice is a viable alternative for parents," Bush said of the D.C. program. "This initiative is the beginning of what I hope is change all across the country."
He urged Congress to overcome its reluctance and go along with an expanded federal voucher program.
"We want our public schools to succeed. We want them to do well," the president said. "But we're going to raise the bar and raise expectations and when we find children trapped in schools that will not change, parents must be given another viable option."
---------------------------------
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/02/13/bush.vouchers.ap/index.html
America lags in stem cell research
Political pressure limits funds for cloning experiments
By Paul Elias
The Associated Press
Updated: 11:36 a.m. ET Feb. 13, 2004
SAN FRANCISCO - It’s official: The United States has fallen far behind in mining the promising field of stem cell research to treat disease.
A team of South Korean researchers announced Thursday it had successfully harvested stem cells from a cloned embryo — a feat U.S. researchers have been trying to accomplish since at least 2001.
Meanwhile, U.S. scientists complain that a lack of money and a charged political climate have brought the field to a virtual standstill here.
Many researchers believe creating stem cells by cloning embryos in labs may eventually create therapies that won’t lead to immune rejection problems in people.
U.S. scientists hailed the announcement as a landmark occasion but also lamented that a technology largely created in the richest nation on earth was getting more support abroad.
Singapore in November unveiled “Biopolis,” a $287 million government biotech center focused on stem cell research.
Chinese researchers last year reported fusing human skin cells with rabbit eggs to produce early stage embryos, which in turn yielded stem cells. The government is also building a stem cell research center.
England, Israel and several other countries also have more advanced stem cell programs.
Those countries aren’t as politically riven by the issue as the United States.
Some Christian and politically conservative groups oppose the research — especially cloning — as immoral because fertilized embryos must be destroyed to harvest the stem cells. Leon Kass, chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, on Thursday called on Congress to ban all forms of cloning.
Lack of money
Chief among the U.S. scientists’ complaints is the relative lack of money devoted to such research. The federal government limits what researchers can work on with taxpayer-funded grants. The Bush administration policy also forbids federal funding of all cloning research, even if the projects are intended solely to create stem cells like the South Koreans did.
“All the money for this work has dried up,” said Dr. Robert Lanza of Worcester, Mass.-based Advanced Cell Technology, the one U.S. company that has publicly attempted to clone for stem cells, albeit unsuccessfully. “We are lucky to still be in business. Our research has suffered immensely.”
Lanza said he’s been unable to work with human embryos since October because of the high cost of obtaining eggs and the company’s desperate need for investment.
Meanwhile, Menlo Park-based Geron Corp. has laid off most of its stem cell researchers and shifted much of its effort to developing a cancer-fighting drug based on a different technology.
The private sector is far from alone in its struggles. University researchers complain that President Bush’s stance on stem cell research has hindered them and could contribute to a brain drain of talent overseas.
Bush ordered the National Institutes of Health not to fund any research on stem cells harvested from embryos after Aug. 9, 2001.
But many scientists question the quality of the available stem cells and argue that many more stem cell lines need to be developed to move the field forward.
Research at a few universities
To do that, they said more federal funds are needed. The NIH has awarded $60 million in funding for human embryonic stem cell research, said Dr. James Battey, chair of the NIH’s stem cell research committee.
Battey said a lack of applications, rather than NIH restrictions, is the reason the federal government has funded comparatively few stem cell grants.
“We would be happy to spend more,” Battey said. But he said no federal funds are available to work on cloning experiments involving human embryos.
“The administration has stated very clearly it is opposed to therapeutic cloning,” Battey said. “As part of the administration, that prohibits us from supporting that research.”
Most U.S. research today is being conducted at a few universities such as Stanford University, Harvard University and the University of California, San Francisco that have established privately funded programs.
Small, private foundations such as the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation also support the work.
California may breathe new life into the field if an ambitious $3 billion stem cell research bond measure is passed in November.
A coalition of wealthy patient advocates, eminent scientists and Hollywood executives has launched a well-funded campaign to qualify the measure for the ballot.
The proposition would fund laboratory cloning projects intended to create stem cells for regenerative and therapeutic medicine while specifically banning cloning programs aimed at creating babies.
© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4261823/
Human cloning report sparks calls for ban
Lawmakers, church leaders aghast over 'unethical science'
The Associated Press
Updated: 10:43 a.m. ET Feb. 13, 2004
SEATTLE - In a clash of politics and science, the first successful cloning of a human embryo — and the extraction of stem cells from it — has ignited new calls for a ban on all forms of human cloning in the United States.
The cloning announcement by South Korean scientists on Thursday prompted members of Congress and church leaders to ask for immediate legislation.
“Cloning human beings is wrong. It is unethical to tinker with human life,” said Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa. A ban must be passed, he said, “before this unethical science comes to our shores.”
Bush decries 'reckless experiments'
The Bush administration favors such action and referred reporters to a statement by the president calling for “a comprehensive and effective ban.”
“Human life is a creation, not a commodity, and should not be used as research material for reckless experiments,” Bush said last month.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who voted against a bill passed last year by the House that called for a ban on human cloning, said there needs to be legislation that would prevent cloning of babies, but permit “lifesaving stem cell research to proceed under strict ethical guidelines.”
Two South Korean scientist who announced the landmark achievement here Thursday said they have already been the target of street demonstrations and egg-throwing incidents in Seoul even though their work is directed at treating diseases and not at making cloned babies.
Woo Suk Hwang, lead author of the study, admitted at a news conference that the technique developed in his lab “cannot be separated from reproductive cloning” and called on every country to prevent the use of the technology in that way.
He said the work was controlled and regulated by the Korea Stem Cell Research Center “to prevent the remote possibility of any uncontrolled accidents such as human reproductive cloning.”
Technique could yield major medical advances
Shin Yong Moon, a co-author of the study, said the work must continue because of its great promise for treating of diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, spinal cord injury and diabetes. But he said a new law passed in Korea will now require his group to get a government license before proceeding with their research.
The medical use of stem cells derived from cloning will require at least another decade of research, he said.
Both Hwang and Moon are researchers at the Seoul National University.
Donald Kennedy, editor of the journal Science, which published the study, said the work is not a recipe for cloning babies.
“It is a recipe (for human cloning) in the sense that ’catch a turtle’ is the recipe for turtle soup,” said Kennedy at a news conference. “There is much difficulty that would remain for anybody who tried to use this technology as a first step toward reproductive cloning.”
Hwang, Moon and their team created the human embryo after collecting 242 eggs from 16 unpaid, anonymous volunteers. They also took from each woman cells from the ovaries. To attempt male embryo cloning, they used cells taken from the ear lobes of adult men.
The researchers extracted the nucleus from each of the eggs and then inserted the nucleus from the other cells.
The eggs were then nurtured into blastocysts, an early stage of embryo development, and the stem cells were extracted.
Hwang said the group had a 43 percent success rate in making cloned embryos, but was successful only in making one colony of stem cells. Only the embryos made using both the nucleus and the egg from the same woman successfully matured enough to make stem cells, he said; eggs that received nuclei from adult male cells or from adult cells of women other than the egg donor failed to produce stem cells.
Some nations have significant advantage
Hwang, a veterinarian, developed the cloning technique on animals and then teamed with Moon for the human embryo experiment.
Embryonic stem cells are the source of all tissue. Researchers believe they can be coaxed to grow into heart, brain or nerve cells that could be used to renew ailing organs.
In the experiment, Hwang and his team said, the embryonic stem cells in tests that followed the cells for 70 divisions formed muscle, bone and other tissue.
Using cloned embryonic stem cells for therapy would avoid the problem of tissue rejection. Cloned stem cells, in theory, would be an exact genetic match to the cell donor and would not be attacked by the immune system.
Regulations approved by President Bush permit federal funding of stem cell research, but only on cell lines created from embryos destroyed before Aug. 9, 2001. The approved cell lines were not created by cloning, however.
Kennedy, the Science editor, said the U.S. restrictions are handicapping American researchers.
“There is no question that the degree of restriction has given other nations some significant advantage,” he said.
© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4253743/
sluggo -- that's just asinine galimatias, and you know it
Supreme Court will hear first appeals involving Guantanamo detainees
From Bill Mears
CNN Washington Bureau
Tuesday, November 11, 2003 Posted: 1:27 AM EST (0627 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In the first test of the Bush administration's sweeping anti-terrorism policies, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear two appeals over whether hundreds of terrorist suspects in secret custody are being held unlawfully.
It is the first time the justices will review the constitutionality of the White House's war on terror laws that have grown from the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Arguments in the appeals will be heard sometime early next year, with a ruling expected by June.
The cases involve the overseas detention of some 660 men from about 40 countries, said to be al Qaeda or Taliban fighters. Some have been held for as long as two years at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without access to lawyers or family.
The government has been interrogating the men, and deciding whether they will face a military tribunal or released back to their home countries. Most of the men were captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
At issue is whether U.S. courts have jurisdiction to intervene in the continued U.S. military detention of people held overseas, and whether that violates constitutional and international law.
Solicitor General Theodore Olson, in the Justice Department's brief, said the detentions are lawful since "American soldiers and their allies are still engaged in armed conflict overseas against an unprincipled, unconventional, and savage foe."
A list of prominent former judges, POWs, human rights groups and retired military are protesting the detention, in briefs filed with the court. The Associated Press reported that among those listed on the briefs protesting detention was Fred Korematsu, whose name is on a Supreme Court case that upheld U.S. detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
The first appeal was brought by parents of four detainees. Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal are British citizens, and David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib are from Australia. Hicks is one of six detainees President Bush has recommended face military tribunals.
A separate group of relatives of 12 Kuwait men detained also brought a habeas corpus claim, demanding the government explain why it continues to hold the men in secret.
The U.S. military says its interrogations have yielded important intelligence information. The government cites a 53-year-old case as precedent for denying courts the habeas corpus jurisdiction to hear appeals of non-citizens held on non U.S. soil. A writ of habeas corpus is used to bring a prisoner before the court to determine if the person's detention is lawful and justified.
A federal appeals court agreed with the government, prompting the most recent appeal. (Full story)
But Michael Ratner, president of Center for Constitutional RIghts, a New York-based group representing the detainees in their appeal, said courts should not duck their responsibility to intervene.
"This lawless situation must not continue," Ratner said. "Every imprisoned person should have the right to test the legality of their detention. It is this basic principle that has been denied to our clients."
In its appeal to the court, attorneys for the detainees said it fears the government "may simply forget them, in the vain hope the world will, as well."
The Supreme Court in March rejected hearing a similar appeal involving the Guantanamo detainees, filed on their behalf by a group of clergy, lawyers and civil rights advocates.
Until now, the justices so far had not been willing to interfere with enforcement of various Justice Department policies. The Court in May rejected an appeal to allow public access to closed hearings involving hundreds of so-called "special interest" immigrants, many of them of Muslim or Arab descent, who were detained in near secrecy shortly after the terror attacks two years ago (North Jersey Media Group v. Ashcroft, case no. 02-1289). A similar challenge is still pending before the courts.
The justices in March also rejected hearing an appeal from the ACLU over government surveillance powers, which were increased with passage of the USA Patriot Act by Congress shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Some Supreme Court watchers expected the justices to quickly tackle certain terror-related cases.
"I would think they would want to hear these cases rather soon, if the right kind of legal challenge is presented (to the justices)," said Eugene Fidell, a military law attorney. "These are incredibly important issues that need to be resolved. I don't know why they wouldn't want to do it."
But others said they understood the justices' go-slow approach, waiting for appeals to fully work their way through the lower courts.
"Most of the trains haven't arrived yet at the station," said David Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and leading court historian.
Other challenges in the legal pipeline include:
• The detention of two so-called "enemy combatants," a special designation of people who are not afforded rights normally given military prisoners. Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi are U.S. citizens who are not yet charged with any crime, are being held in U.S. custody indefinitely, and have no access to a lawyer.
• Padilla and Hamdi could face special military tribunals, designed for a handful of those captured in the war on terror. These trials would be held in secret and even if found not guilty, the defendant could remain in custody indefinitely. The government promises full and fair trials, but so far none have been announced, and the guidelines are still being worked out.
• The requirement of male visitors in the U.S. from certain countries, most from the Middle East and South Asia, to register with the government and to provide fingerprints and photographs. Families of the men, as well as some legal groups say this policy represents "racial profiling," with no clear justification for the war on terror.
• Further challenges to the detention policy of mostly Muslim immigrants. The Justice Department says most of those picked up shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks have since been deported, or had their cases resolved. Civil rights groups fear a new wave of immigrant roundups by the government.
• And the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, an admitted al Qaeda operative, who is accused by the government of having a role in the September 11, 2001, conspiracy. His pending trial in civilian court remains stalled, and the Court may eventually have the final word whether Moussaoui can question other alleged terrorists who may be helpful to his case.
"The Moussaoui case is nearing the end game," Fidell said. "The government may want to exhaust all its appeals, and then they could very well wind up sending him to a military court."
In the midst of an undeclared war on terrorism, the courts could ultimately establish new legal precedent. "There are issues we have never dealt with before," said David Yalof, a political scientist at the University of Connecticut. "And some of it has to be made up as we go along. It may be why the Supreme Court is not eager to circumvent the ongoing process. At the very least they may want multiple [lower] courts to look at these cases before they get involved."
The cases are Rasul v. Bush, case no. 03-0334 and Odah v. U.S., case no. 03-0343.
---------------------------------
Copyright 2003 CNN. All rights reserved. Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/11/10/scotus.detainees/index.html
Rumsfeld: Panel to review Guantanamo detainees yearly
Friday, February 13, 2004 Posted: 7:17 PM EST (0017 GMT)
(CNN) -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday a panel will annually review the cases of suspected terrorists detained at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The panel will make the final decision about whether the suspects remain a threat or should be released, Rumsfeld said in a speech to the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce in Florida, adding some detainees may stay there indefinitely.
"America is a nation at war," Rumsfeld said. "It is a war we did not ask for, but it is a war we must fight. It is a war we must win and we will. ... Detaining 'enemy combatants' is a part of that war."
Many details of the reviews have not been worked out yet, including the composition of the panel, Pentagon officials said, according to The Associated Press.
None of the more than 600 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere after the September 11, 2001, attacks has been charged. They are being held at a maximum-security prison at the naval base.
Critics -- including a number of countries -- have opposed the absence of trials and access to defense lawyers.
Rumsfeld defended the practice, saying the detainees had not been mistreated or tortured and have provided critical intelligence. "They are being treated with the appropriate care and, yes, compassion that they did not show our people," he said.
Some continue to say they want to kill, Rumsfeld said. "The reason for their detention is that they're dangerous," he said, and keeping them off the battlefield is "just plain common sense."
During interrogation, a number of the detainees have revealed al Qaeda leadership structures, methods of funding, communication, training and travel as well as plans to attack the United States and other countries, he said.
The United States is working to release those who no longer pose a threat or no longer possess intelligence that could prove useful to U.S. authorities, he said. Already, 87 have been released, he said.
In cases of people not guilty of war crimes but still considered a threat, "the United States government would prefer to transfer [them] to their native countries for detention and/or prosecution," he said, adding that U.S. officials are negotiating with countries for such transfers.
"A few have already been returned to their home country for continued detention [or] prosecution," he said.
Rumsfeld noted the circumstances surrounding some cases are ambiguous -- not only because of the chaos of war but also because some of the detainees "violated laws of war" by wearing civilian clothes and carrying multiple identifications -- "in one case, 13 aliases."
"The United States has no desire to hold enemy combatants any longer than is absolutely necessary," he said. Still, some could be detained "for the duration of the conflict."
Rumsfeld said the idea of detaining people without lawyers or trials "seems unusual -- after all, our country stands for freedom and the protection of rights."
But, he said, critics typically consider such issues in terms of criminal law rather than the law of war -- and the two are different. "They're not common criminals," he said. "They're enemy combatants and terrorists who are being detained for acts of war against our country, and that is why different rules have to apply."
The defense chief said the suspects will be accorded a number of rights, including the presumption of innocence, the ability to appeal their detentions, the requirement that proof beyond a reasonable doubt be the standard for detention, the right to counsel, the right to present evidence or witnesses, the right to cross-examine and the right not to testify.
Exculpatory evidence will be required to be given to the defense, and double jeopardy will be barred, Rumsfeld said. The proceedings also will be open "to the maximum extent practical," he said.
The continued detentions have been a source of tension between the United States and two key allies in the war on terrorism, Britain and Australia.
Britons and Australians are among those held without trial at Guantanamo Bay, and the London and Canberra governments have been pressing for a resolution of their cases.
In December, three U.S. senators visited the facility and asked the Bush administration to come forward with plans to try the detainees or return them to their countries. (Full story)
Later this year the U.S. Supreme Court will hear two cases filed by the families of men in the detention facility.
A list of prominent former judges, prisoners of war, human rights groups and retired military officials are protesting the detention in briefs filed with the court. (Full story) [F6 note -- see my next post, a reply to this one]
One of the critics, Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, called Rumsfeld's assertion that the laws of war should apply "unacceptable".
According to Ratner, the war on terror is not a conventional war, and the rules that apply for a conventional war do not apply. He accused the Bush administration of calling its campaign against terrorism a "war" in order to adopt the looser rules that apply to military conflicts.
He said that the war against terrorism "will go on forever. That means that people will be held forever."
Instead of having their fate determined by a panel appointed by the Bush administration, the detainees should have their cases heard in regularly constituted courts, Ratner said.
"Every single human being deserves a hearing before a process that's fair, independent and in which they have a meaningful right to defend themselves," he said.
Ratner said the only reason Rumsfeld had even broached the issue was because the U.S. Supreme Court plans to address it soon. The Center for Constitutional Rights represents some of the detainees in the case.
-----------------------------
Copyright 2004 CNN. All rights reserved. Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/02/13/rumsfeld.combatants/index.html
easymoney101 -- looking forward to that, even if our resident flat-earthers aren't -- thanks
bulldzr -- re why they didn't just contact the internal Halliburton phone line to report the fraud, as that whiny Halliburton lady would have preferred -- maybe they had a bigger concern than just their careers -- like maybe they, umm, wanted to stay alive -- ??
here's a link to a good site for anyone who's interested in issues of voting (and voter registration) fraud -- site includes links to other relevant sites:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
(COMTEX) B: Record currency interventions subsidizing U.S. debt, but experts warn
flows unsustainable ( AP WorldStream )
TOKYO, Feb 12, 2004 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Japan is on an unprecedented
spending spree, all focused on the same product: the U.S. dollar.
Tokyo bought an astounding US$172 billion last year to keep the yen from
strengthening too much against the greenback. The push only accelerated further
in January, when Japan snapped up another US$67 billion.
That Japan's government is buying dollars to prevent a stronger yen from
smothering a feeble economic recovery at home is not new. But the scale of the
current round is far beyond its earlier interventions.
The purchases are so large they are effectively subsidizing record U.S. budget
and trade deficits, keeping American interest rates low and worrying some
experts that a painful shock will hit if the spending spree stops.
"We are standing on a delicate balance," said Kohei Ohtsuka, an upper house
finance committee member and a former Bank of Japan official. "If this situation
were a miniature model, it would be in danger of falling apart if we removed
just one small part."
A key part of that model is the fragile Japanese economy, which has wallowed in
the doldrums for more than a decade. The world's second-largest economy,
however, has shown definite signs of recovery recently, built on increasing
exports of cars, steel and electronics.
The decline of the dollar threatens that by making Japanese products more
expensive in prime markets like the United States and China. So as other
investors sold the dollar out of worries about burgeoning U.S. deficits, Japan
has spent record amounts to buy it.
While Tokyo hasn't stopped the dollar from falling, it has limited its drop
against the yen to 12 percent since January 2003. In contrast, the dollar sank
23 percent against the euro during the same period.
A byproduct of the policy has been a jump in Japan's holdings of U.S. debt as
Tokyo has poured its new dollars into the Treasury market.
Japanese investors - mostly the government - bought a net US$104 billion in U.S.
debt between January and October, according to calculations by Japan's Nihon
Keizai newspaper. That's equal to a third of the US$314 billion in fresh debt
Washington issued during the same period.
There have been other effects. John Vail, senior strategist at Mizuho
Securities, a brokerage unit of Japan's largest bank, said the yield on the
benchmark U.S. bond would now be about 6 percent instead of 4.1 percent if Japan
hadn't been so active in the foreign exchange and bond markets over the last 13
months.
That means that if not for Japan, U.S. consumers would be facing higher interest
rates on their home mortgages and credit cards.
"If they weren't keeping their money in dollars, interest rates would be higher
across the board," Vail said by telephone from his office in Chicago.
The dollar-buying spree is having side-effects in Japan as well. U.S. investors
are plowing cash into Japanese shares with the cheap money they've borrowed in
the United States, boosting the Tokyo stock market.
Foreigners, primarily Americans, bought a net 8.213 trillion yen (US$77.36
billion) in Japanese stocks last year, according to the Tokyo Stock Exchange -
the second-highest annual total since the bourse started disclosing such data in
1981 and the most since 1999.
Ironically, these flows drive up the value of the yen, prompting Tokyo to
intervene even more in the currency market.
Some of the risks are obvious. If Japan stops buying as much U.S. debt, both
Washington and the private sector will have to pay more to borrow.
"There is a chance Americans will suffer a shock when and if Japan stops
intervening and its demand for Treasurys tapers off," said David Parsley,
associate professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
The higher rates would force Washington to dedicate more resources to paying the
interest on its debt, taking funds away from other programs and dampening the
economic recovery in the United States.
Eisuke Sakakibara, an aggressive interventionist during his tenure as Japan's
vice-finance minister for international affairs from 1997 to 1999, also noted
the Finance Ministry's activism cannot last forever.
"You have to think of an exit policy sometime," he said. "It distorts the
market. It takes the vitality out of the market. It has an unnatural impact on
the U.S. bond market."
Sakakibara's successors are showing no sign of letting up. Parliament this week
said it would allow the Finance Ministry to draw another 21 trillion yen (US$200
billion) on a special account used for intervening.
By AUDREY McAVOY
Associated Press Writer
Copyright 2004 Associated Press, All rights reserved
-0-
*** end of story ***
bulldzr -- more than enough unfortunate stuff to go around these days . . . with plenty more on the way if we don't stand up and force a little regime change right here at home
Men's Magazine: Hillary a Tough Guy
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Associated Press
NEW YORK — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (search) has been called many things, a savvy politician, a devoted wife. But Men's Journal magazine is adding one more description to that list: Tough Guy.
In its March issue, already on newsstands, the magazine publishes its annual list of "The 25 Toughest Guys in America" -- and Clinton weighs in at No. 25, just behind human crash test dummy Rusty Haight, who has been in 740 car wrecks.
It's the first time Men's Journal has put a woman on the list, senior editor Tom Foster said.
"I think just looking at what she's been through and what she represents, that sort of stood for itself," Foster said. "Would you mess with her?"
Foster referred to Clinton's handling of former President Clinton's (search) sexual improprieties in the Oval Office. Hillary Clinton wrote about the pain caused by the president's affair with a White House intern and the subsequent impeachment effort in "Living History," her White House memoir.
Foster said Clinton's listing -- among athletes, martial artists, racers and wrestlers -- is not a lambasting. "I would think people would take it as a compliment," he said.
Clinton wasn't the only Washington figure on the magazine's Toughest Guys list, which was topped by Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre (search). Arizona Sen. John McCain was No. 5, and Department of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was No. 21, two places above rapper 50 Cent, who was shot nine times and drove himself to a hospital.
Telephone calls to the Democratic New York senator's office were not immediately returned Wednesday.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111184,00.html
zit -- is gay marriage really a big issue to you? -- and if so, why, exactly? (note that I am not talking about the religious side of it -- any church is, and should always remain, free to marry only man-woman couples, or only same sex couples for that matter if it likes, or both; whichever -- I am talking specifically and only about the marriage licenses granted by the government, and the effects those marriage licenses confer on the persons thus married under the law, e.g., the tax laws, the inheritance laws, etc.)
yup, Sean sure is at that, isn't he?
U.S. to Let Lawyer to See 'Enemy Combatant' Padilla
Wed February 11, 2004 06:09 PM ET
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Wednesday it would allow "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla access to a lawyer for the first time since he was locked up without charges in a Navy brig in South Carolina in June 2002.
The Pentagon said it had decided that permitting Padilla, a U.S. citizen accused by the government of ties to the al Qaeda network, to see a lawyer "will not compromise the national security of the United States" and "will not interfere with intelligence collection from Padilla."
A Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the decision to give Padilla access to a lawyer did not signal that charges would be filed against him or that he would be released, and did not rule out further interrogation.
The U.S. government has accused Padilla, a former Chicago gang member and convert to Islam, of involvement in an alleged al Qaeda plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States.
The Justice Department has appealed to the Supreme Court a December ruling by a U.S. appeals court in New York ordering Padilla's release because President Bush overstepped his authority by ordering a citizen seized on U.S. soil held as an "enemy combatant" not entitled to customary legal rights.
Padilla's lawyers, Donna Newman and Andrew Patel, said the Pentagon attached numerous conditions to the visit, including monitoring all conversations with their client.
"I'm anxious to make sure that he's all right," Newman said.
"It's so disheartening. They're throwing us a bone, as if we should be thrilled that they can now listen to our attorney-client conversations after my client's been held incommunicado, based on their say-so, for over a year and a half," Newman added.
Padilla was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare airport in May 2002 on a return flight from Pakistan. He was held at the Manhattan federal prison until June 9, 2002, when the government deemed him an enemy combatant.
He was transferred to the brig in Charleston, South Carolina, where he has been locked up without access to lawyers and without charges.
SECURITY RESTRICTIONS
A Pentagon statement said Padilla would be "allowed access to a lawyer subject to appropriate security restrictions," which it did not define.
"Simply as a humanitarian thing, so that he has some idea that he has people fighting for him, yes, I think it's a positive step," Patel said.
"I would not ask my client under these conditions any facts about the case at all. In fact, I would urge him to say as little as possible," Patel said.
The Pentagon in December granted access to a lawyer to Yaser Esam Hamdi, another U.S. citizen held as an enemy combatant at the same brig whose case also is before the Supreme Court.
The Pentagon said it "is allowing Padilla access to counsel as a matter of discretion and military authority. Such access is not required by domestic or international law and should not be treated as a precedent."
The announcement came about an hour before the Justice Department filed a written brief with the Supreme Court in the Padilla case. Solicitor General Theodore Olson referred to the Pentagon decision in a footnote, saying that it rendered moot Padilla's lawyers' arguments that the justices consider whether Padilla should be entitled to meet with counsel.
The lower court earlier granted the government's request to delay Padilla's release until the Supreme Court decided the case.
A "dirty bomb," also called a radiological dispersal device, uses conventional explosives such as dynamite to spread radioactive materials over a wide area.
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=4339055
Texas mom faces trial for selling sex toys
Wednesday, February 11, 2004 Posted: 12:26 PM EST (1726 GMT)
DALLAS, Texas (Reuters) -- Joanne Webb is a mother of three, a Baptist, a booster of the town of Burleson, Texas, and a former schoolteacher. She also faces trial for being a smut merchant.
Webb, 43, was arrested in November by two undercover police officers for selling sexual toys and charged with violating Texas obscenity laws. She could face up to a year in jail and a fine of $4,000 if convicted.
Webb is a representative for Passion Parties, a California company marketing potions, lotions and sexual toys sold at gatherings that mimic Tupperware parties.
Women over 18 meet in a private home for what the company calls a "girl's night out of giggles and fun," during which products designed to enhance sex lives are sold.
It was not a secret in Burleson, a small town near Fort Worth, that Webb sold vibrators, edible creams and racy lingerie.
But not everyone was happy about it.
According to reports in the local media, police said a few residents, who they declined to identify, lodged complaints. A few prominent citizens with strong Christian beliefs were angered by Webb and her activities and asked police to investigate, local media reported.
Two undercover police officers posed as a couple trying to spice up their love life and Webb sold the woman a vibrator. Webb instructed her on its use and explained how it could enhance lovemaking.
That's where she got into trouble.
Texas law allows for the sale of sexual toys as long as they are billed as novelties, BeAnn Sisemore, a Fort Worth attorney representing Webb, told the Houston Chronicle before a gag order was issued by the judge presiding over the case. But when a person markets sex toys in a direct manner that shows their actual role in sex, then that person is subject to obscenity charges, she told the newspaper.
Webb said she turned to Passion Parties to supplement her family's income when her husband's construction business went into a slump.
"For women to become self-confident in their sexuality ... that's what I'm in this for," Webb told the Dallas Morning News before the gag order was imposed.
She added that because of her arrest, she has found herself in a role she never imagined -- a public advocate for allowing women and couples to make personal decisions about their sex lives.
Sex, lives and passion parties
Police and Johnson County prosecutors declined to discuss the case, even before the gag order was issued.
Gloria Gillaspie, a pastor at Lighthouse Church in Burleson, said she has met and counseled some women who had talked to Webb about the products she sold.
"It was causing problems with their marriages," she said.
Gillaspie said Webb and her family were asked to leave two churches in town. She did not name the churches.
"They didn't want to comply with what was really Christian conduct and that is why they were asked to leave those churches," Gillaspie said.
But James Brown, a member of the local chamber of commerce and an acquaintance of Webb's, told Reuters: "Most of the people in town support Joanne."
Sisemore said she wants to use this case to overturn obscenity laws in Texas and other states.
"I will fight this all the way with her," Sisemore told the Houston Chronicle. "This is the first time I have felt that my government has overstepped its boundaries."
Sisemore has said she plans to file a federal lawsuit challenging Texas obscenity laws, which she said are so vague that they could be used to prosecute anyone who uses or sells condoms designed to provide stimulation for sexual pleasure.
Patricia Davis, a 59-year-old grandmother and president of Passion Parties, said: "We are very proud of Joanne Webb. She believes in the mission of the company and she is doing a really nice job of representing us."
Passion Parties has been doing booming business. The company racked up $20 million in sales in 2003 and saw 30 months of consecutive growth above the 50 percent mark.
The company has representatives in every state and is doing some of its best business in California, New York and the Bible Belt, a section of the United States where Christian beliefs and clergy are influential.
"Women are looking for ways to enhance their relationship, enhance their sensuality and they have nowhere to go," Davis said.
When women get together at a friend's home to peruse body lotions, shower gels and battery-operated devices the company calls "passion toys," Davis said many are able to overcome embarrassment and talk openly about sex.
"We are doing a lot to help women, to help couples and to help families," Davis said.
Copyright 2004 Reuters. All rights reserved.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/02/11/obscenity.trial.reut/index.html
BARBARA WALTERS: "Isn't it all -- so much of it -- about oil? Shouldn't we be changing our energy policy?"
BUSH: "The war on terror has nothing to do about oil."
George W. Bush, December 13. 2002, speaking to Barbara Walters of ABC News during a White House interview.
so sayeth our "truth guide" -- amen
(here's the home page of the site our "truth guide" just used to show us a little of his "truth" -- interesting:
http://www.youdontsay.org/index.htm )
Bush to WMD Owners: 'We Will Find You'
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
By Liza Porteus
FOX NEWS
WASHINGTON — President Bush on Wednesday called for more of a get-tough policy from the global community against regimes and terrorist networks trying to get their hands on nuclear and other deadly weapons.
On Sept. 11, 2001, America faced a new danger, Bush said. "Killers armed with box cutters, mace and 19 airline tickets … those attacks also raised the prospect of even worse dangers."
"The greatest threat before humanity today is the possibility of secret or sudden attacks with chemical, or radiological or biological or nuclear weapons," Bush continued.
Bush's speech was already taking heat from some Democrats.
Sen. John Kerry, the front-runner in the Democratic race to clinch the nomination to run against Bush in the November election, said he hopes the president's speech isn't "yet another rhetorical performance for the 'say one thing, do another administration.'"
"It's good to hear that the president has finally acknowledged how critical cooperation with other countries is in solving the critical national security challenge of weapons proliferation," the Massachusetts senator said in a statement. "But cooperation is not just a few lines in a speech, it is crucial to safeguarding our national security."
Arguing that international efforts to combat nuclear proliferation haven't yet been effective enough, Bush unveiled his new push to put more teeth in the international community's moves to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction in a speech at the National Defense University (search).
"Armed with single vial of a biological agent or a single nuclear weapon ... [terrorists] could gain the power to threaten great nations, threaten the world peace," Bush said.
"America and the entire civilized world will face this threat for decades to come. We must confront the danger with open eyes and unbending purpose. I made clear to all the policy of this nation: America will not permit terrorists and dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most deadly weapons."
Bush said the Sept. 11 terror attacks and other events are proof that new tools and new strategies must be used in a post-Cold War era.
"What has changed in the 21st century is in the hands of terrorists, weapons of mass destruction would be a first resort — the preferred way to further their ideology of suicide and random murder," Bush said. "These terrible weapons are being easier to acquire, build, hide and transport."
With the president still enduring heavy criticism over whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (search), he outlined the role that good U.S. intelligence has played in recent nonproliferation successes in places such as Libya and Pakistan.
Bush, who has been counting on strong national security and anti-terrorism credentials to boost his re-election bid, last week reversed course and established an independent commission to examine prewar intelligence lapses.
"We're determine to stop these threats at their source," he said.
'Determined to Protect Our People'
Bush said the father of Pakistan's nuclear program sold nuclear technology to countries such as Libya, Iran and North Korea as an example of the global nature of the problem.
Abdul Qadeer Khan (search) confessed last week to transferring nuclear secrets.
U.S. intelligence helped prod Musharraf into acting against Khan and revealed other details of the black market network in which Khan was involved. Bush signaled U.S. expectations that Pakistan finish the job of completely dismantling the network.
The U.S. intelligence community also was praised for helping bring about Libya's agreement in December with the United States and Britain to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction and missile programs.
"We expect other regimes to follow his example," Bush said, referring to Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi (search), promising that countries that do, will enjoy "better relations with the United States" but those who don't will endure "political isolation, economic hardship and other unwelcome consequences."
"These regimes and other proliferators like Kahn should know, we and our friends are determined to protect our people and the world from proliferation," Bush said.
Bush specifically focused on what he has dubbed the "axis of evil" — Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
"The key here is not just to deal with rogue states but to deal with these shadowy networks ... to make sure we know the full story, to make sure we root out all the tentacles," Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said Wednesday before the speech.
The Seven Steps to Combating WMD
Bush laid out seven steps he wants taken to combat proliferation.
1. The global Proliferation Security Initiative (search) should be boosted. More efforts should be made to interdict lethal materials, share intelligence information with other countries, track suspicious cargo and conduct military exercises to stop weapons in their tracks.
"Our message to proliferators must be consistent and it must be clear. "We will find you and we're not going to rest until you're stopped,'" Bush said.
2. Nations should strengthen laws and international controls that govern proliferation.
Bush proposed a U.N. Security Council (search) resolution last year requiring all states to criminalize proliferation, enact strict export controls and secure sensitive materials. He called on the council to quickly pass that resolution, saying, "when they do, America stands ready" to help governments draft and enforce the new laws.
3. Countries should expand efforts to keep nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union and other dangerous weapons "out of the wrong hands."
4. Nuclear fuel exporters should ensure that states aren't using the fuel for nuclear enrichment and reprocessing purposes but are really using it for civilian power facilities. That move is likely to draw ire from nations like North Korea and Iran, which have, in the past, claimed they were using nuclear material for electricity purposes.
5. By next year, only states that have signed additional non-proliferation protocols would be able to import nuclear equipment for civilian programs. Bush asked for the U.S. Senate to immediately ratify the protocol proposal, which he sent to Capitol Hill.
6. The muscle of the U.N.'s Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (search), which is in charge of making sure countries comply with international nuclear disarmament, should be strengthened.
7. Countries under investigation for violating nonproliferation agreements that are on the IAEA's board of governors be suspended from the panel. Bush pointed to Iran, which is currently being eyed for its nuclear activity, which recently completed a two-year term on the board.
"Allowing potential violators to serve on the board creates an unacceptable barrier to effective action," Bush said sternly. "No state under investigation for proliferation violations should be allowed to serve on the IAEA board of governors, or on the new special committee.
"The integrity and mission of the IAEA depends on this simple principal — those actively breaking the rules should not be entrusted with enforcing the rules."
Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., said the president's intentions seemed long on rhetoric and short on action.
"He has consistently under funded and even cut the nonproliferation programs that would make the United States safer," Tauscher said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111088,00.html
Link to full text of speech:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111143,00.html
(COMTEX) B: Excerpts of Bush Speech on WMD ( AP Online )
Feb 11, 2004 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Excerpts from President Bush's speech on
weapons proliferation, as recorded by the White House:
In the past, enemies of America required massed armies and great navies,
powerful air forces to put our nation, our people, our friends and allies at
risk. In the Cold War, Americans lived under the threat of weapons of mass
destruction, but believed that deterrents made those weapons a last resort. What
has changed in the 21st century is that, in the hands of terrorists, weapons of
mass destruction would be a first resort, the preferred means to further their
ideology of suicide and random murder.
---
A. Q. Khan is known throughout the world as the father of Pakistan's nuclear
weapons program. What was not publicly known, until recently, is that he also
led an extensive international network for the proliferation of nuclear
technology and know-how.
For decades, Mr. Khan remained on the Pakistani government payroll, earning a
modest salary. Yet, he and his associates financed lavish lifestyles through the
sale of nuclear technologies and equipment to outlaw regimes stretching from
North Africa to the Korean Peninsula.
A. Q. Khan himself operated mostly out of Pakistan. He served as director of the
network, its leading scientific mind, as well as its primary salesman. Over the
past decade, he made frequent trips to consult with his clients and to sell his
expertise. He and his associates sold the blueprints for centrifuges to enrich
uranium, as well as a nuclear design stolen from the Pakistani government. The
network sold uranium hexafluoride, the gas that the centrifuge process can
transform into enriched uranium for nuclear bombs. Khan and his associates
provided Iran and Libya and North Korea with designs for Pakistan's older
centrifuges, as well as designs for more advanced and efficient models. The
network also provided these countries with components, and in some cases, with
complete centrifuges.
To increase their profits, Khan and his associates used a factory in Malaysia to
manufacture key parts for centrifuges. Other necessary parts were purchased
through network operatives based in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. These
procurement agents saw the trade in nuclear technologies as a shortcut to
personal wealth, and they set up front companies to deceive legitimate firms
into selling them tightly controlled materials.
Khan's deputy, a man named B.S.A. Tahir, ran SMB computers, a business in Dubai.
Tahir used that computer company as a front for the proliferation activities of
the A. Q. Khan network. Tahir acted as both the network's chief financial
officer and money launderer. He was also its shipping agent, using his computer
firm as cover for the movement of centrifuge parts to various clients. Tahir
directed the Malaysia facility to produce these parts based on Pakistani
designs, and then ordered the facility to ship the components to Dubai. Tahir
also arranged for parts acquired by other European procurement agents to transit
through Dubai for shipment to other customers.
---
Breaking this network is one major success in a broad-based effort to stop the
spread of terrible weapons. We're adjusting our strategies to the threats of a
new era. America and the nations of Australia, France and Germany, Italy and
Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom have
launched the Proliferation Security Initiative to interdict lethal materials in
transit. Our nations are sharing intelligence information, tracking suspect
international cargo, conducting joint military exercises. We're prepared to
search planes and ships, to seize weapons and missiles and equipment that raise
proliferation concerns, just as we did in stopping the dangerous cargo on the
BBC China before it reached Libya. Three more governments, Canada and Singapore
and Norway, will be participating in this initiative.
---
First, I propose that the work of the Proliferation Security Initiative be
expanded to address more than shipments and transfers. Building on the tools
we've developed to fight terrorists, we can take direct action against
proliferation networks. We need greater cooperation not just among intelligence
and military services, but in law enforcement, as well.
---
Second, I call on all nations to strengthen the laws and international controls
that govern proliferation. At the U.N. last fall, I proposed a new Security
Council resolution requiring all states to criminalize proliferation, enact
strict export controls, and secure all sensitive materials within their borders.
---
Third, I propose to expand our efforts to keep weapons from the Cold War and
other dangerous materials out of the wrong hands. ... We must also prevent
governments from developing nuclear weapons under false pretenses. The Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty was designed more than 30 years ago to prevent the
spread of nuclear weapons beyond those states which already possessed them.
Under this treaty, nuclear states agreed to help non-nuclear states develop
peaceful atomic energy if they renounced the pursuit of nuclear weapons. But the
treaty has a loophole which has been exploited by nations such as North Korea
and Iran. These regimes are allowed to produce nuclear material that can be used
to build bombs under the cover of civilian nuclear programs. ...
The 40 nations of the Nuclear Suppliers Group should refuse to sell enrichment
and reprocessing equipment and technologies to any state that does not already
possess full-scale, functioning enrichment and reprocessing plants.
---
It is the charge of the International Atomic Energy Agency to uncover banned
nuclear activity around the world and report those violations to the U.N.
Security Council. We must ensure that the IAEA has all the tools it needs to
fulfill its essential mandate. America and other nations support what is called
the Additional Protocol, which requires states to declare a broad range of
nuclear activities and facilities, and allow the IAEA to inspect those
facilities. As a fifth step, I propose that by next year, only states that have
signed the Additional Protocol be allowed to import equipment for their civilian
nuclear programs.
---
We must also ensure that IAEA is organized to take action when action is
required. So, a sixth step, I propose the creation of a special committee of the
IAEA Board which will focus intensively on safeguards and verification.
---
And, finally, countries under investigation for violating nuclear
non-proliferation obligations are currently allowed to serve on the IAEA Board
of Governors. For instance, Iran, a country suspected of maintaining an
extensive nuclear weapons program, recently completed a two-year term on the
Board. Allowing potential violators to serve on the Board creates an
unacceptable barrier to effective action.
By The Associated Press
Copyright 2004 Associated Press, All rights reserved
-0-
*** end of story ***
correction -- "ABC News correspondent", not "ABS News correspondent" -- otherwise accurate (unfortunately) . . .
BUSH: "Let's see, here's my office"
INTERVIEWER: "Oh, nice."
BUSH: "Yeah, isn't that neat? And so here's -- here's like a stack of reading I'll do this afternoon -- with a bunch of letters. And, aaah, I've got some phone calls to make, aah, I've got -- probably gonna make a, aaaaah -- probably call a couple world leaders today."
George W. Bush, August 10, 2001, giving a tour of the office at his Crawford, Texas, home to an ABS News correspondent.
"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says 'fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. You fool me -- can't get fooled again.'"
George W. Bush, September 17, 2002, speaking in Nashville, Tennessee.