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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (11600)	1/11/2003 10:21:27 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Europeans Seek to Rein in American War Machine By Huda Majeed Saleh Reuters Friday 10 January 2003 BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Europe moved to stay America's hand over Iraq on Friday, as top officials spoke out against a rush to war on the basis of inconclusive weapons inspections. "Without proof, it would be very difficult to start a war," European Union foreign policy coordinator Javier Solana said. As President Bush continued to mobilize his forces and met Iraqi opposition leaders, one of President Saddam Hussein's main Iraqi foes said an invasion could destabilize the Middle East and warned that the sort of massive occupying force Washington envisages would face popular armed resistance. "We reject the idea of an invasion and occupation of Iraqi territory," said Shi'ite Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim. After U.N. inspectors told the Security Council on Thursday they had found no "smoking gun" to challenge Iraq's insistence it has no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, Washington made clear it still felt Baghdad was defying the United Nations. With the world's eyes turning to North Korea, which has admitted developing nuclear weapons and pulled out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty on Friday, U.S. officials insisted Iraq posed a major threat, however little the inspections found. Chief inspector Hans Blix told the Security Council Iraq had "failed to answer a great many questions." The United States said if Iraq continued to deceive it would again be in "material breach" of Council resolutions -- language that could mean war. In Iraq, U.N. experts visited three sites on Friday, including a rocket fuel plant which Britain has alleged may be developing missiles to carry chemical or germ warheads. EUROPE HESITANT The United States is doubling its 60,000-strong force in the Gulf. The Pentagon has told a further 7,000 Marines from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, to get ready, the Marine Corps said. But EU Commission President Romano Prodi called for calm: "War is not and must not be inevitable," he said in Greece, which plans to lead an EU peace mission to Arab capitals soon. The 15 EU nations are sharply divided over Iraq. Britain is mobilizing its forces -- including a big naval landing force led by flagship carrier Ark Royal -- alongside the Americans despite grave doubts within Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour party. The bloc's other main military power, France, is cooler, insisting on an international mandate for any war. Germany, the biggest economy, opposes outright the idea of attacking Iraq. "Inspections should continue and for that reason there are no grounds for military action," Berlin's ambassador to the United Nations, Gunter Pleuger, said in New York. Britain's U.N. envoy, too, said there was no undue focus on Blix's next report to the Council on January 27. Washington has little need of European military assistance and has made clear it is willing to fight alone if need be, despite agreeing to seek United Nations backing last autumn. MAJOR COMMITMENT In Turkey, a key NATO ally, Prime Minister Abdullah Gul wrote urging neighboring Iraq to comply with U.N. resolutions. Muslim Turkey fears war would hurt its security and economy and has dragged its feet over backing Washington. But Gul agreed to U.S. inspections of Turkish bases to assess their usefulness. Further away, another close U.S. ally, Australia, said it might send troops to the Middle East in the coming weeks. Washington has sketched plans for a post-Saddam Iraq that it says would be the most ambitious since its occupation of Germany and Japan after World War II. Critics portray that as a grab for Iraq's vast oil wealth and say it could get bogged down in the ethnically and religiously divided nation of 23 million. "Do you think that an American-installed government which does not respect the Iraqi nation and Islam could last long?" said Iran's former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. In the Gaza Strip, a leader of the Palestinian group Hamas urged Iraqis to adopt the suicide bomb tactics against any invaders that Hamas has employed against Israelis. "Blow yourselves up against the American army," Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi told a pro-Iraq rally. "Bomb them in Baghdad." truthout.org

To: TigerPaw who wrote (11600)	1/12/2003 3:15:34 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Curtailing consumer protection By HELEN THOMAS HEARST NEWSPAPERS Sunday, January 12, 2003 WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has it in for trial lawyers and is planning a big push for "tort reform." The public should be wary of this new attempt to curtail consumer protection. And I hope Congress will slam the brakes on this White House maneuver to trample on the rights of citizens who seek recourse from doctors for malpractice and from big corporations for defective products. The administration has co-opted the word "reform" to roll back progress and promote its goals of weakening government restraints in a variety of areas. It's noteworthy that the administration has never pursued the corporate chieftains whose greed stunned the nation last year with the same energy that it goes after lawyers who are fighting for the consumer. "Reform" implies intent to make things better and to correct defects and abuses. But buyers, beware. This so-called reform is double speak -- a euphemism to try to block private lawsuits brought by trial lawyers on behalf of consumers. Egged on by many congressional Republicans, the administration wants to put a $250,000 cap on malpractice awards for "pain and suffering." It follows a speech President Bush made last July 24 when he claimed that "the cause of the medical liability crisis is a badly broken system of litigation that serves the interest of specialized trial lawyers, not patients." Medical doctors are especially happy over the elevation of Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a surgeon, to Senate Republican leader. Frist has championed capping malpractice awards. After he was elected to lead his fellow Republican senators, Frist was praised by Donald Palmisano, president-elect of the American Medical Association. "It's encouraging to us that many issues (Frist) has championed are our top priorities," said Palmisano. He said the AMA's top issue was the $250,000 liability cap. Frist also is the author of a provision in the Homeland Security bill providing liability relief to the makers of Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that recently has been added to various childhood vaccines. The provision is applicable even to pending cases and is expected to result in the dismissal of numerous ongoing cases alleging that Thimerosal has caused autism in children. In Bush's eyes, the bogeymen, of course, are those trial lawyers seeking to extract mega money awards from big corporations. Trial lawyers are used to being demonized and they are a favorite political target of conservatives. When Bush was governor of Texas, he led a crusade to make the state's legal system less helpful to consumers. He pushed through legislation that capped punitive damages, limited class actions to federal courts and made it easier for judges to impose sanctions on plaintiffs who filed so-called "frivolous" lawsuits. Let's have more of that "frivolity." That is actually a misnomer because some of those lawsuits led to dramatic safety improvements that were forced on corporations through jury verdicts. Nothing gets their attention like writing a big check to an injured customer. The record is replete with tragic cases that produced verdicts and precedents that have saved lives and prevented others from suffering. Consider some of these lessons in recent years: When women using super-absorbent tampons were dying from toxic shock syndrome, the manufacturer -- Playtex -- disregarded studies that showed tampons were at fault. It took a $10 million verdict to convince Playtex that it would be smart to remove the tampons from the market. Eli Lilly was selling an arthritis pain-relief drug whose side effects included a fatal kidney-liver ailment. It took a $6 million jury verdict against the drug company to persuade it to stop selling the medicine. Another drug maker -- Johnson & Johnson -- knew that Tylenol turned poisonous when mixed with alcohol but the company did not put warnings on its bottles until a jury socked it with a $8.8-million judgment. That sure got J&J's attention. A $1-million punitive award forced the Riegel Textile Co. to halt sales of highly inflammable pajamas that caused children to be severely burned. A $125 million punitive award was slapped on the Ford Motor Co. after Pinto buyers were injured when their cars burst into flames on impact. Ford then redesigned the car. There are two ways of enforcing consumer protections. One approach is through government intervention. That's the job of agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Labor Department, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Federal Aviation Administration and a host of others and their state and local counterparts. The second way to enforce consumer rights is the private lawsuit. Bush's war on the trial lawyers can only please those from the consumer-be-damned school of corporate wrongdoing. This administration's tilt raises the question: In President Bush's "compassionate conservatism," just whom does he feel compassion for? I fear I know the answer. ______________________________________________ Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com. Copyright 2003 Hearst Newspapers. seattlepi.nwsource.com