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Pastimes : Home on the range where the buffalo roam -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Boplicity who wrote (9398)	10/14/2002 2:35:18 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13815

Public Enemy No. 1 shored up by Cheney couple years ago By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF SYNDICATED COLUMNIST Monday, October 14, 2002 President Bush and Vice President Cheney portray Saddam Hussein as so menacing and terrifying that one might think they've lain awake at night for years worrying about him. But when Cheney was running Halliburton, the oil services firm, it sold more equipment to Iraq than any other company did. As first reported by The Financial Times on Nov. 3, 2000, Halliburton subsidiaries submitted $23.8 million worth of contracts with Iraq to the United Nations in 1998 and 1999 for approval by its sanctions committee. Now let me say right up front that this wasn't illegal -- or even, in my view, sleazy. This was legitimate business conducted through joint ventures that had been acquired as part of a larger takeover in September 1998. Zelma Branch, a Halliburton spokeswoman, says that the subsidiaries completed their pre-existing Iraq contracts but did not seek new ones. So this is not evidence of scandalous conduct or egregious misjudgment. This is not like a politician being found, as former Gov. Edwin Edwards of Louisiana put it, in bed with a dead girl or a live boy. But as we debate whether to go to war with Iraq, it's a useful reminder of how fashions change in our perceptions of rogue states. Public Enemy No. 1 today is a government that Cheney was in effect helping shore up just a couple of years ago. More broadly, the United States has a long history in which Saddam, though just as monstrous as he is today, was coddled as our monster. In the 1980s, we provided his army with satellite intelligence so that it could use chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers. When Saddam used nerve gas and mustard gas against Kurds in 1988, the Reagan administration initially tried to blame Iran. We shipped seven strains of anthrax to Iraq between 1978 and 1988. These days, we see Iraq as an imminent threat to our way of life, while just a couple of years ago it was perceived as a pathetic dictatorship hardly worth the bother of bombing. What changed? Not Iraq, but rather our own sensibilities after 9/11. "What is driving this?" asked Raad Alkadiri, an analyst at the Petroleum Finance Co. in Washington. "It's not driven by any Iraqi provocation. You've got a regime there that has kept its head down. It's been driven by a domestic constituency in the U.S." We need to be wary that we are not just pursuing the latest fashion in monsters. Iran was the menace of the '80s, so we snuggled up with Iraq. The Soviet threat led us to cuddle with Islamic fundamentalists like those now trying to blow us up. In 1994, the vogue threat changed, and hawks pressed hard for a military confrontation with North Korea. We came within an inch of going to war with North Korea, in a conflict that a Pentagon study found would have killed a million people, including as many as 100,000 Americans. In retrospect, it is clear that the hawks were wrong about confronting North Korea. Containment and deterrence so far have worked instead, kind of, just as they have kind of worked to restrain Iraq over the last 11 years, and we saved thousands of lives by pressing diplomatic solutions. If we spent money on hypocrisy detectors as well as anthrax detectors, they would be buzzing. For example, Republicans are trying to defeat the Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota by running commercials featuring Saddam Hussein. (When I was writing from Iraq lately, some peeved readers suggested I stay there for good; they might have had their wish if they'd been shrewd enough to have sent effusive e-mails thanking me for the fine spying, signed George Tenet.) The fact is that neither Tim Johnson nor any lily-livered columnist ever bolstered Saddam's government the way Cheney did -- perfectly legitimately -- in 1998-99. Before we prepare to go to war, we need to take a deep breath and make sure we are doing so to overcome a threat that is real and enduring, not one that we are conjuring in part out of our trauma of 9/11. Old monsters like Libya, North Korea and Iran have proved -- well, not ephemeral, but at least changeable, less terrifying today than they used to be. And the Iraqi threat for which we're now prepared to sacrifice hundreds or thousands of American casualties, just a few years ago was simply another tinhorn dictatorship where CEO Cheney was earning his bonus. ____________________________________________________ Nicholas D. Kristof is a columnist for the New York Times. Copyright 2002 New York Times News Service. E-mail: nicholas@nytimes.com seattlepi.nwsource.com

To: Boplicity who wrote (9398)	10/14/2002 4:00:49 PM
From: pbull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13815

MDT was the stock to buy in the big spike down last July. Took me a while to find "the winner", but I knew it wouldn't be anything 'Net related. So there are still buyers out there _ at a price. And very picky about what they buy. So health care/medical devices/drugs/biotech looks to me like the best place to go fishing on the next spike down. The Nasdaq is becoming overloaded with $2 names that won't be able to raise the financing they need to continue playing the game. PB

To: Boplicity who wrote (9398)	10/14/2002 4:37:36 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13815

The Richland Report marketweb.com

To: Boplicity who wrote (9398)	10/15/2002 4:23:07 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 13815

Message 18113595

To: Boplicity who wrote (9398)	10/18/2002 2:00:38 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 13815

Tellabs posts wider net loss October 18, 2002 (Reuters) — Telecommunications equipment maker Tellabs Inc. Friday posted a wider quarterly net loss as sales slumped in the telecommunications industry downturn, and said things are looking equally drab next year. The Naperville, Illinois-based company did not provide any guidance for the current fourth quarter, saying it was still too hard to predict business trends. ``We're part of an unhealthy industry at this point,'' Tellabs Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Birck told analysts on a conference call. ``No one thinks it's a terminal illness, but there aren't very many signs of near-term relief. Clearly, next year is going to be a challenge.'' He told Reuters in an interview that the message on spending by Tellabs' phone company customers next year is still mixed, with Verizon Communications giving the sense that 2003 will match this year and SBC Communications Inc. talking of further declines. Tellabs shares fell by as much as 5.3 percent on the Nasdaq Friday morning as the company posted its first quarterly loss before one-time items since 1991. Analysts currently expect Tellabs to post a fourth-quarter loss before one-time items of 3 cents a share on revenue of $274 million, and a fiscal 2003 loss of a penny on sales of $1.17 billion, according to Thomson First Call. Tellabs said it expects to spend an estimated $50 million to $55 million on restructuring in the fourth quarter, and will spend about $150 million over the next five quarters. Telecommunications suppliers have been hit hard by the continued cutbacks of their telephone company customers, but Tellabs' loss before one-time items was not as bad as analysts had expected. ``It's not as bad as feared. In this environment, that is a good thing,'' said Lehman Brothers analyst Steve Levy, who has an ``equal weight'' rating on the stock and a ``negative'' rating on the sector. He added that Tellabs was seeing needed contract wins for its newer products, like the 6400 optical switch, which was shipped to seven new customers in the quarter. A switch looks at incoming data on a network to determine the destination address. INVESTORS DRIVEN AWAY ``In the absence of profitable growth, investors have and probably will continue to flock away from investment in this industry,'' said Andy Schopick, an analyst with Connecticut-based boutique broker-dealer Nutmeg Securities. He has a ``hold'' rating on Tellabs' stock. Tellabs reported a third-quarter net loss of $91.1 million, or 22 cents a share, compared with a year-ago net loss of $49.5 million, or 12 cents a share. During the third quarter, Tellabs recorded restructuring and other one-time charges of $68 million and an impairment charge of $30 million for investments. Excluding one-time items, its loss in the quarter was $16.6 million, or 4 cents a share, compared with a profit last year of $2.4 million, or a penny a share. Revenue in the quarter ended Sept. 27 slumped about 36 percent to $288.1 million from $448.2 million last year. Tellabs last month warned it would post a third-quarter loss and sales would fall as much as 25 percent from the $345 million recorded in the second quarter. It also said last month it would cut 14.5 percent of its work force as part of its fifth restructuring since April 2001. It employed 5,200 people at the end of the third quarter. After the warning, analysts cut their expectations for the quarter to a 6-cent loss per share, before one-time items, on sales of $270 million, according to First Call. Before the warning, they had expected break-even results and revenue of $339.8 million. The company said Friday it boosted its cash on hand at the end of the third quarter to more than $1 billion. Birck said no acquisitions were planned, but Tellabs would watch for deals. Tellabs stock was off 2 percent at $5.40 on Friday morning, off an earlier low at $5.22. So far this year, it has fallen 64 percent, compared with a 71 percent decline by the American Stock Exchange Network Index, made up of industry competitors.