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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gao seng who wrote (144892)	5/12/2001 2:36:41 AM
From: Scumbria	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Gao, Political circles in Florida are buzzing with rumours that Jeb Bush may be on the point of deciding against running for re-election as the state governor next year, amid much innuendo about his private life and his marriage. Any decision by President George Bush's younger brother to step down - in the state that was at the centre of the disputed recount that followed last year's US presidential election - would have political consequences for the Republican cause across the country. Jeb Bush fanned the political speculation about his future this week when he told a newspaper in Tallahassee, the state capital, that he was not going to decide whether to run until next month. Mr Bush was elected governor of Florida in 1998 and is up for re-election in November 2002. "I'm going to decide in June," Mr Bush said. "There's lots of time. I plan to sit down with my wife and decide whether or not I want to keep the best job in the world." This hint of doubt followed an interview last year in which the Florida governor said his decision would depend on whether running for a second term was right for his family. The issue caught fire again at the weekend when a prominent political journalist with the Chicago Sun-Times, Robert Novak - a nationally syndicated conservative columnist with excellent Republican sources - wrote that "well placed Florida Republicans" believed there was "a real chance" that Mr Bush would not seek a second term. "Bush was an easy winner in 1998, but the bitter Florida recount eroded his popularity," Mr Novak wrote in his column. "Speculation about 2002 also centres on family troubles experienced by the president's brother." Jeb Bush hit back: "Bob Novak doesn't know what he's talking about." Several Florida newspapers have, like Mr Novak, made cryptic references to possible family troubles. The Tallahassee Democrat noted on Tuesday that Mr Bush and his Mexican-born wife Columba "are not regularly seen in Tallahassee social circles". In another report, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported that "some say the governor's wife Columba Bush does not like living in Tallahassee, does not like being [the state's] first lady and doesn't want her husband to run again. She appears with Bush infrequently and is said to spend a lot of time in Miami." This week, an alternative internet political site called Media Whores Online has twice run stories about the Florida speculation, alongside prominent stories about Cynthia Henderson, 38, a former Playboy bunny turned lawyer, whom Jeb Bush appointed last year as head of Florida's department of management services. This is not her first appointment by Mr Bush. When he was first elected governor he named her to a post in the Florida professional regulation department. "Jeb has gone out of his way to protect Cyndi," the website quoted a co-worker as saying. Whether or not Mr Bush does run for re-election, the contest for the governorship of Florida is already shaping up to become the premier grudge match of the 2002 mid-term elections across America. Democrats are focusing all their political efforts into an attempt to recapture the Florida governorship from Mr Bush, hoping that a victory would cast further doubt over the legitimacy of George Bush's presidential election win in the state over the Democrats' candidate, Al Gore. The current frontrunner to be the Democratic challenger in Florida in November 2002 in Pete Peterson, who is finishing his term as the Clinton administration's ambassador to Vietnam. guardian.co.uk

To: gao seng who wrote (144892)	5/12/2001 2:41:04 AM
From: Scumbria	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

President George Bush's decision to develop highly versatile, "multilayered" space, land, air and sea missile defences is an historic mistake that will have dangerously negative repercussions worldwide. Going far beyond anything envisaged by his predecessors, this grandiose scheme will demolish the foundation of the strategic nuclear balance, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with the Soviet Union. By banning defensive systems, the ABM accord effectively ensured that neither side could survive, let alone "win", a nuclear exchange. By deploying these new systems alongside its reduced but still superior offensive missile forces, the US will be well on the way to establishing a domineering, deeply threatening, global military posture. Perhaps Mr Bush, in his chauvinist ignorance, believes this is desirable. He is frighteningly wrong. Not only Russia but China and others such as India will feel obliged to respond in kind, in part by expanding their land-based nuclear arsenals to retain at least a vestige of offensive capability. Russia may in turn trash the medium-range INF treaty. "Rogue nations" such as Iran and North Korea, the fall guys which have provided a convenient, initial rationale for missile defence, can hardly be expected to scrap their weapons programmes. More likely, they will redouble their efforts, inferring the US has no use for dialogue and diplomacy. Regional frictions centring on US "clients" such as Israel and Taiwan, both promised a share of the theatre missile defence action, may be expected to intensify. Britain and America's other Nato allies will meanwhile face domestically divisive dilemmas about whether to support and buy into the new technology (which will not come free). With friends like the US, who needs rogue states? As disproportionate US military strength grows, as the imbalance of forces increases, as new arms races accelerate and as collective anti-proliferation efforts shred, international insecurity is likely to increase exponentially. Nor will the US itself escape this degradation, the very opposite of what it purportedly intends, even as a docile Congress pays through the nose for flash gear of unproven worth. The "hegemonistic" US will become, even more than now, the target of every ideological or religious fanatic and of every terrorist network from Afghanistan and beyond. Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld admitted recently that while "we are safer today from the threat of massive nuclear war than at any point since the dawn of the atomic age, we are more vulnerable now to the suitcase bomb and the cyber-terrorist". He is right. The state department agreed this week that while state-sponsored terrorism is declining, trans-national groups such as that led by Osama bin Laden are the big, growing threat. Random chemical and biological attacks are a more pressing danger than some dodgy rocket rusting in a silo on a Pyongyang pig farm or even Russia's ICBMs. Mr Rumsfeld's missiles, however smart, cannot stop an anthrax attack on the New York subway or the detonation in say, Austin, Texas, of a portable, low-yield "mini-nuke" of the kind favoured by US defence scientists and coveted by Iraq. So why do he and Dubya want them so? Perhaps it has something to do with manifest destiny and other bits of sentimental claptrap that rightwingers use to convince themselves the US has a god-given right to global supremacy. As we have remarked before, Mr Bush is becoming a menace. Tony Blair should stop being "sympathetic to his concerns" and tell him that Britain, at least, will have no truck with his madcap missiles. guardian.co.uk