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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (52842)	10/18/2002 8:17:57 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I learned a great deal from Selig Harrison's attempts to view the conflict from the North Korean side, particularly. I agree. He obviously did not agree with their arguments, but he presented them well. The one that will be presented here by the some as a "Told You So," is that they started the Bomb process because they were reacting to Bush's "Axis of Evil" and his "Preemption" declaration. But they had got these centrifuges in the missile trade with Pakistan in '98, so they have been enriching Uranium for at least the last 4 years. Fortunately, a classic containment policy should work with these people, and I assume we are getting the Allies lined up on that. I cannot believe that the Chinese or the Russians would want them to be an active Nuclear Power. North Korea really is dead broke, and cannot feed their people.

To: JohnM who wrote (52842)	10/18/2002 8:44:03 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

Getting to be a habit about PBS The worse parts are usually the interviews with Politicians. The two Senators from the Intel committee were the "top dogs", but dull as dishwater. These interviews are usually a waste of time. The excerpts from the committee discussions were interesting. FBI Director Robert Mueller demonstrated why the reports about him have been that he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He was not well prepared for the questions. I groaned when Tenet started talking about the hard working people who had processed all the info and missed the important stuff. That ties in with the article I posted yesterday about the lack of some very smart people at the top to figure out what was important and direct the efforts toward that. What we had was hundreds of hard working people processing an infinite amount of Intel, without being told what was important to look for. His response is almost the exact answer given for the failure of Intel after Pearl Harbor. The CIA was set up so that a "Pearl Harbor" could never happen again, and when it did, we still had the same problem!!

To: JohnM who wrote (52842)	10/18/2002 10:25:22 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

'Forced' to retire, but they win Nobels By Al Neuharth Op/Ed - USA TODAY 10/18/02 The Nobel prizes may be the most prestigious service awards in the world. Last week, these two involuntary ''retirees'' won coveted Nobels: * Dr. John Fenn, who was forced to quit his lab work at Yale University 15 years ago because of a mandatory age-70 retirement. * Former president Jimmy Carter, who was forced to retire from the White House by voters after just one term. Nobels are presented annually in six fields: chemistry, economics, literature, medicine, peace and physics. Carter, 78, won the Nobel Peace Prize. Fenn, 85, was awarded the Nobel in chemistry, shared with two other scientists. Octogenarians, such as Fenn, and those approaching that exalted age group, such as Carter, can be excused for shouting, ''So, there!'' when the awards were announced. These two old-timers give new hope and inspiration to the 29 million retirees age 62 and above across the USA. Fenn's case is bittersweet. He was in the midst of the laboratory experiments that led to his Nobel prize when he turned 70. Yale moved the professor to emeritus status and banned him from using the labs for his experiments. Later, Fenn went to Virginia Commonwealth University, where he continued the lab work and developed the Nobel Prize-winning technique called ''mass spectrometry.'' That enables scientists to rapidly identify a substance through its mass. Carter, only 56 when forced out of the White House, could have gone the way of most ex-presidents, living a life of leisure. Instead, he developed the Carter Center at Emory University in Atlanta and has worked tirelessly on peace missions around the world. As Fenn and Carter have demonstrated, there is life after voluntary or forced retirement at any age. The world is a better place because of post-retirement activities such as theirs and those of many other retirees. story.news.yahoo.com

To: JohnM who wrote (52842)	10/18/2002 5:58:42 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

cagle.slate.msn.com

To: JohnM who wrote (52842)	10/18/2002 11:36:15 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Mistaken Patriots By Mary McGrory Columnist The Washington Post Thursday, October 17, 2002 Are Democrats making a major effort to reduce voter turnout in the coming election? Or are they just trying to fight free of the trap they diligently fashioned for themselves on the subject of war with Iraq? By their conduct on the issue in the recent congressional debate, they seemed eager to show there was no difference between them and the Republicans -- a strategy that guarantees voters will ask themselves, when it comes to digging out on a cold November morning, "Why bother?" By way of preparing for the election, Democrats decided to get the war issue "out of the way." By overwhelmingly backing President Bush's desire to blow the bugle without the blessing of the United Nations, they ensured that the commander in chief will be at center stage. The papers throb with accounts of his minions moving troops and launching training exercises as if war had been declared. Sheepish Democrats continue to show the electorate that when it comes to the fateful business of sending young Americans into battle, they are at one with the Republicans. They turned aside the known skepticism of the uniformed military. They were undeterred by the newly enunciated doctrine of "preventive war," which all previous presidents have rejected. While they declared in their floor speeches that they were uncertain of the danger posed by Saddam Hussein, their votes said they were mindful of the danger to themselves and they were taking no chances. Candidates around the country were on their own in trying to make judgments about the right thing to do. The debate won't help them much. The votes in both houses of Congress for the new Tonkin Gulf resolution are still being studied for surprises and contradictions, particularly by liberals, who, according to The Post's Thomas Edsall, are outraged by the absence of strong convictions on the part of their leaders. Senate Democrats are quick to blame House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt, who has wraparound ambitions -- to be either president or House speaker. They say a coalition of moderates from both parties, who wanted U.N. approval of any use of force, fell apart when Gephardt emerged as Bush's chief lobbyist on the Hill. Republicans said they didn't want to be "to the left of Gephardt," and the coalition collapsed. The whole slate of Democratic presidential hopefuls lined up for the president's right to make war unilaterally. Of them all, Sen. John Kerry had a unique foreign policy perch. A decorated war veteran who also came home and led a brilliant demonstration to end the war, he delivered a sophisticated critique of the botched hunt for Osama bin Laden. But he joined the gang voting for the president -- such notable peaceniks as Tom Harkin, Chris Dodd and Tom Daschle -- not to mention Hillary Clinton. The majority leader hated to do it, but in the end he threw in the towel to show the world the country is "unified" on the issue. The country is ambivalent. On the one hand it is all for a short, sharp replay of Gulf War I that would be relatively casualty-free. But bring up body bags and they recoil. Polls show that the country would rather have the president protect it from the wolf at the door -- layoffs, market collapses and the like -- than from the beast of Baghdad, who might nuke us if he got the right stuff. Teddy Kennedy made daily speeches against going to war. He and Robert C. Byrd, long ago rivals, did their best, but Kennedy couldn't even convince his son in the House, Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, that he should give peace a chance. Rhode Island did, however, offer the Senate's only Republican profile in courage: Lincoln Chafee, faithful to his father's legendary independence, voted no. The Democrats hope that with the war issue "settled" they can drag voters' attention back to the economy, which can be criticized without fear of their being called unpatriotic. Bush brushes them off. You don't like my tax cuts? Okay, you want to rescind them? No, of course not, the Democrats protest. Pollster Peter Hart thinks the economy doesn't need much rhetoric. The ravages are all around and brought home in people's reports about their 401(k)s. And people can recall the Clinton boom to be reminded of how different things can be. At the height of the debate, House Whip Nancy Pelosi implored Democrats to remember that while a show of force in Iraq would surely demonstrate U.S. power, negotiation and diplomacy would show our strength. Her colleagues were not listening. Democrats know exactly how they feel about prescription drugs and the privatization of Social Security, but when it comes to war and peace, people dying and all that, they really have no comment. They just salute the commander if chief and hope voters mistake them for patriots. _____________________________________________ Mary McGrory, who has been a national columnist since 1960, won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1975. Her column generally appears on Thursdays and Sundays. © 2002 The Washington Post Company washingtonpost.com

To: JohnM who wrote (52842)	10/19/2002 5:42:51 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Notes on war and peace By Diana Abu-Jaber Guest columnist Special to The Seattle Times Saturday, October 19, 2002 - 12:00 a.m. Pacific seattletimes.nwsource.com • Today, the book on attacking Iraq Sure, President Bush is surrounded by all sorts of well-meaning consultants, analysts and spin-masters, but it seems that he's been getting some bad advice about story-telling — especially the story about Iraq. I'm no political pundit, but I have taught literature and creative writing for a while, and I had a few lesson-plan notes I thought President Bush might find useful. • Show, don't tell: This is the oldest creative-writing-class axiom of all. Readers crave tangible details in a story instead of bland assertions. It's much more convincing to have physical proof that Saddam Hussein is capable of or planning to injure us than merely declaring he's part of an "axis of evil," which is actually a fairly weak abstraction. • Pacing is crucial: Stories have to unfold at a natural, organic tempo in order to seem genuine. Pressuring Congress to make a hurry-up decision on a question as big as whether to attack another country, about two minutes before a major election, feels forced and manipulative. • Don't drop your story lines: Readers like to follow a story from beginning to end. Don't trail off in the middle of hunting Osama bin Laden to attack a new villain — that just leaves us all dangling. • Avoid cliché and hyperbole: A term like "war" implies there are two sides capable of fighting each other. But Iraq has already been devastated by the Persian Gulf War as well as our economic sanctions and foreign policy. Previous weapons inspectors tell us that Iraq barely has an army — much less any real "weapons of mass destruction" (see above: hyperbole, cliché and abstraction). • Draw on personal experience: The most authentic stories come straight from our own life experience. Merely having your father state "I hate that man" (i.e., Saddam Hussein) is not satisfying to readers. I've visited the Middle East and taught lots of Middle Eastern students and I've found that they respect and admire America and that most of them would love to live here. The "bad guys" are a distinct minority — just like in this country. • Familiarize yourself with your subject: If you haven't read any novels or seen any Hollywood movies told from an Arab perspective, you might ask yourself why that is. Ask yourself: What am I not hearing? Ask yourself: Is this really the story that I want to tell? Consider this: There may be other, more powerful and immediate narratives we need to hear right now — tales of corporate greed and ruined life plans, right here at home; stories of pollution, disappearing forests and clean water, and global warming the world over. True, "war" is a grand story full of sound and fury, to paraphrase Faulkner, but maybe we want a different story right now. Maybe what we need to hear is the story of ourselves. _________________________________________________ Diana Abu-Jaber is a novelist and writing professor at Portland State University. Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company