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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (19596)	2/12/2003 11:23:18 PM
From: Ron	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93284

Pass the Duct Tape By MAUREEN DOWD WASHINGTON Osama bin Laden came to the rescue of George W. Bush yesterday. The president and his secretary of state had been huffing and puffing to prove a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. George Tenet, who presides over a C.I.A. full of skepticism about the tie, did his best for the boss, playing up the link to the Senate. Ignoring all the blatant Qaeda hooks to Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen and Pakistan; ignoring the fact that Osama has never had any use for the drinking, smoking, womanizing, secular Saddam; ignoring the fact that Saddam has no proven record of sharing weapons with Al Qaeda, the Bushies have been hellbent on making the 9/11 connection. The world wasn't entirely buying that rationale for war. And then who but Osama himself should pop up on an audio tape, calling on Muslims to fight the U.S. if the "infidels" attack "our brothers in Iraq." Osama's disdain for Saddam still gleamed through. He barely mentioned the Iraqi leader and seemed to be holding his nose when he gave permission to his Qaeda brethren to fight "the Crusaders" alongside Saddam's Baath Party, "even if we believe and declare that the socialists are apostates," and whether Saddam remains in power or not. Still, the administration pounced on the tape, hoping it would prove to those epicene Old Europeans, with their poufy blue-helmeted U.N. force, that Al Qaeda and Iraq were "bound by a common hatred," as the State Department's Richard Boucher said. Mr. Powell was so eager to publicize Osama's statements that he broke the news himself at a Senate Budget Committee hearing, hours before Al Jazeera even acknowledged it had the tape. He said the tape showed that Osama was "in partnership with Iraq," and proved that the U.S. could not count simply on a beefed-up inspection force in Iraq. In the past, Condi Rice has implored the networks not to broadcast the tapes outright, fearing he might be activating sleeper cells in code. But this time the administration flacked the tape. And Fox, the official Bush news agency, rushed the entire tape onto the air. So the Bushies no longer care if Osama sends a coded message to his thugs as long as he stays on message for the White House? To get Saddam, the Bush administration is even willing to remind the American public that it failed to get bin Laden. Its fixation on Saddam seems to have blinded it to the possibility that Osama might be perversely encouraging America in this war. The administration and Al Qaeda both have a purpose for invading Iraq, and both want a regime change. Both talk about "liberating" the Arab people, but Osama's vision is apocalyptic. He wants the Middle East — Israel and the Arab monarchies — to go up in flames. By Zionizing our battle with Iraq and promising an anti-American theocracy, he hopes to radicalize recruits for a jihad against an American occupation of Arab land. Osama's own fanaticism was forged by foreign occupations — the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan and American forces stationed in Saudi Arabia. The Bush hawks want to go to war in a non-apocalyptic way, to stabilize the Middle East, not to inflame it. They have a grandiose — if risky — plan to transform Iraq into a model kitchen of democracy, a buffer for Israel that the Palestinians and other Arab autocracies would be pressured to emulate. Senators quizzed Bush officials yesterday, asking whether Gen. Tommy Franks, the future mukhtar of Baghdad, would be choosing new Iraqi leaders. They pressed about the time and cost of an American occupation. Chris Dodd suggested that there could be unforeseen explosions in the model kitchen, citing an alliance between the Iraqi exiles who might run a post-Saddam government and conservative Iranian clerics who think we're the Great Satan. "You have to level with the American public," he lectured the Bush officials. "It could be very costly and take a long, long time." But it is the Bushies' dream of a model kitchen in Iraq, rather than a Saddam-Qaeda link, that makes this war seem noble to them. That's why they were so busy hawking the Osama tape, rather than coming up with ways we can protect ourselves from the coming Osama attacks — other than with plastic and duct tape.

To: TigerPaw who wrote (19596)	2/13/2003 2:26:52 AM
From: Patricia Trinchero	Respond to of 93284

Bush Seeks to Cut Boomers' Pension Rights Bush to Baby Boomers: You're on your own. The president did not say this, not in so many words. He said it in so many numbers. President George W. Bush's budget is a road map for a pension system with stripped-down security for future retirees. The budget would speed the shift of pension responsibility from employers to employees. It sets up the likelihood that fewer small and medium-sized businesses would offer pensions at all. It anticipates replacing guaranteed Social Security benefits with a hybrid in which the luck of the stock-market draw would have more to do with the comfort of life in old age than a lifetime of honest, if modestly paid, work. "What the Bush administration is proposing for the private retirement system is to basically destroy it," said Norman Stein, a tax specialist and visiting professor at the University of Maine School of Law. "He's certainly not interested in preserving and expanding what we have now." The biggest wrecking ball? Bush's proposal for two new tax-free savings accounts, geared to families who can save as much as $45,000 a year. Creation of the accounts, in which all investment gains would be forever free of tax, would most likely cause many small and medium-sized business owners to drop pension-savings plans for employees, retirement experts say. If owners could tuck away that much money for themselves without the hassle of regulations and paperwork for employees, why would they take up the workers' burden? The savings plans are seen as such a pension threat that even some House Republicans, usually the president's handmaidens, are balking. Of course, Bush has a plan on troublesome pension regulations, too. He would ease current rules on 401(k) plans that are meant to keep highly paid executives and managers from fattening their own tax-favored accounts without offering significant benefits to workers. The loosening would allow top executives to pump up their own savings without being bound as tightly by government requirements that they offer broad incentives to the rank-and-file. As for those lucky enough to work for a company that still offers an old-fashioned pension - the kind that guarantees income every month, instead of a guaranteed chance to take a chance on Wall Street - Bush has more ideas. The administration wants to make it easier for companies to replace traditional pension plans, in which a worker earns greater future benefits in the last few years of work, with so-called cash-balance plans. These change the calculation to gear benefits to income earned over a worker's entire tenure. The shift reduces employer costs. It does this by reducing benefits for workers - particularly those in their 40s and 50s who were promised traditional benefits but now are told to settle for less. Many have brought age-discrimination suits, but Bush has proposed rules to stymie them. His plan hit a temporary snag when key senators threatened to block Treasury Secretary John Snow's confirmation over the issue. Snow agreed to take a second look "This is part of the companies' saying, 'we'll shift more risk and responsibility to the individual,'" said David Certner, director of federal affairs for the AARP. "You sort of have the companies and the government saying the same thing at the same time." That is, you want to retire? Do-it-yourself. The White House still says Bush wants to change Social Security from a guaranteed benefit to a system in which workers would put some of their payroll taxes into private accounts, on the assumption that this would both "save" Social Security and allow everyone to retire to Boca. Trouble is, he's spent the budget surplus that more honest proponents of Social Security privatization had assumed would finance the transition to a new system. Bush's own Social Security commission, stacked with advocates of privatization, anticipated using the now-depleted budget surplus - plus a massive infusion of additional general budget revenues - to shore up Social Security, even after adding private accounts. They never did say where this money would come from. Neither has Bush. There are seven years to go before the biggest generation ever to retire starts cleaning out its cubicles. Bush wants to take employers and government off the pension hook. Blessed with luck in his own life, the president's plan is to wish us the same.