WASHINGTON — In World Wars I and II, gold star mothers were the queens of their neighborhoods, the stars in their windows ensuring that they would be treated with great respect for their sacrifice in sending sons overseas to fight and die against the Germans and Japanese.
Instead of a gold star, Sue Niederer, 55, of Hopewell, N.J., got handcuffed, arrested and charged with a crime for daring to challenge the Bush policy in Iraq, where her son, Army First Lt. Seth Dvorin, 24, died in February while attempting to disarm a bomb.
She came to a Laura Bush rally last week at a firehouse in Hamilton, N.J., wearing a T-shirt that blazed with her agony and anger: "President Bush You Killed My Son."
Mrs. Niederer tried to shout while the first lady was delivering her standard ode to her husband's efforts to fight terrorism. She wanted to know why the Bush twins weren't serving in Iraq "if it's such a justified war," as she put it afterward. The Record of Hackensack, N.J., reported that the mother of the dead soldier was boxed in by Bush supporters yelling "Four more years!" and wielding "Bush/Cheney" signs. Though she eventually left voluntarily, she was charged with trespassing while talking to reporters.
The moment was emblematic of how far the Bushies will go to squelch any voice that presents a view of Iraq that's different from the sunny party line, which they continue to dish out despite a torrent of alarming evidence to the contrary.
Aside from moms who are handcuffed at Bush events and the Jersey 9/11 moms who are supporting John Kerry after growing disillusioned with White House attempts to suppress the 9/11 investigation, the president is doing very well with women. The so-called security moms, who have replaced soccer moms as a desirable demographic, are now flocking to Mr. Bush over Mr. Kerry, believing he can better protect their kids from scary terrorists.
In the new Times poll, 48 percent of women supported the president, compared with Mr. Kerry's 43 percent - a reversal from July, when Mr. Kerry had the women's vote 52 to 40 percent. This is an ominous sign for the Democrat, who lost his gender gap advantage after his listless summer and the G.O.P.'s convention swagger.
How did the president who has caused so much insecurity in the world become the hero of security moms? He was, after all, in charge when Al Qaeda struck, and he was the one to send off Mrs. Niederer's son and other kids to die in a war sold on a false premise. And that conflict has, despite what Mr. Bush claims, spurred more acts of terror and been a recruiting bonanza for Osama bin Laden.
In the Times poll, half of all registered voters said they had a lot of confidence in Mr. Bush's ability to protect the nation from another terrorist attack, compared with 26 percent who felt that way about Mr. Kerry.
While Mr. Bush managed to duck service in Vietnam and let Osama get away, he has been relentless in John Wayning the election and turning war hero John Kerry into a sniveling wimp.
Last week, Mr. Kerry finally tried to change the subject from Mr. Bush's mockery of Mr. Kerry's tortuous stances on Iraq to the awful reality of what's happening in Iraq.
He got an assist from the president's own intelligence community, which issued a gloomy report that gave the lie to the administration's continued insistence that Iraq is a desert flower of democracy.
This was followed by a report by Charles A. Duelfer, the top American weapons inspector in Iraq, that found no evidence that Iraq had begun any large-scale program for weapons production by the time of the American invasion last year. To rationalize its idée fixe on Iraq, the administration squandered 15 months, with 1,200 people - at a time when our scarce supply of Arabic experts should have been focused on the Iraqi insurgency and Al Qaeda - just to figure out that Saddam would have loved to have dangerous weapons if he could have, but he couldn't, so he didn't.
Even with the help of his new Clintonistas, Mr. Kerry is nibbling around the edges of the moral case against W(rong) and Dark Cheney. He charged that the president was living in "a fantasy world of spin" on Iraq.
But the Bushies are way beyond spin, which is a staple of politics. These guys are about turning the world upside down, and saying it's right side up. And that should really give security moms the jitters.
Turkey negotiating purchase of 350 German tanks: report
AFP: 10/16/2004 BERLIN, Oct 16 (AFP) - Unofficial talks on the sale of 350 German Leopard II tanks to Turkey have reached an advanced stage, said a report in a news magazine to appear Monday, in what could mark a decisive change in Germany's arms export policy.
A Turkish delegation inspected German arms stocks some weeks ago and current negotiations were focusing on the price, said the report in Der Spiegel, made available in advance.
Under German law, arms cannot be exported to countries where they might be used to aggravate domestic conflicts.
In the past Germany has refused to deliver tanks to Turkey because they might have been used against the restless Kurdish minority in southeastern Turkey.
The Turkish government would not make an official request for the purchase of tanks until assured of a go-ahead from the German government, Der Spiegel said.
A German defence ministry spokesman declined to comment, saying only there had been no official purchase request from Turkey.
The Greens, junior members of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's coalition government, have previously vetoed German tank sales to Turkey because of the situation in the Kurdish region.
Recalling this, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, a prominent Greens leader, also noted in an interview with Der Spiegel that his party had expressed past misgivings about Turkey's human rights record.
"If things change, we will reassess the situation in the light of new realities," Fischer said.
There were "clear standards by which as a general rule arms cooperation can occur between NATO and European Union partners."
Germany is a member of both NATO and the EU, while Turkey is a NATO member but has yet to fulfil its ambition of EU membership.
This ambition received a boost this month from an EU commission report recommending a start to membership negotiations.
A German foreign ministry spokeswoman said last Monday Germany was considering relaxing restrictions on arms exports to Turkey after Ankara began EU membership negotiations.
According to a report in the German newspaper Handelsblatt, Fischer no longer supports restrictions on arms exports to Turkey, because these would contradict the EU recommendation that Turkey be allowed to start accession talks.
Leaders of the 25 EU countries will convene on December 17 to decide whether Turkey should start negotiations.
Copyright 2004 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.
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