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Politics : Dutch Central Bank Sale Announcement Imminent? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gary H who wrote (17229)	2/18/2003 3:49:17 PM
From: sea_urchin	Respond to of 81954

Gary >Could turn back up just above the 4400 To my old eyes the "support" line is just below $4.40.

To: Gary H who wrote (17229)	2/19/2003 6:32:28 PM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81954

Gary, a new book for your library. Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg Viking, 498 pp., $29.95, October 2002, 0 670 03030 9 books.guardian.co.uk >>>The subject of Daniel Ellsberg's memoir is the decadence of American democracy. The conditions he began fighting in 1969 are much worse today and far more dangerous to many more people.... .....Even more important, not all American militarists wear uniforms. Partly as a reaction to the defeat in Vietnam, partly as a result of the Reagan Presidency, the United States now has a cadre of neoconservative war-lovers. These are today's 'chicken hawks', men and women with an abstract knowledge of war who have never come under attack of any sort. They are enthusiasts for the notion that the United States has become a New Rome, a colossus unconstrained by any values, loyalties or ideals of international law. When the Supreme Court appointed George W. Bush President, they came to power. The President himself avoided combat during the Vietnam War by wangling a commission as a second lieutenant in the Texas Air National Guard, then failing to report for duty between May 1972 and May 1973. Vice-President Dick Cheney has said that he 'had other priorities in the 1960s than military service' (very probably the 58,202 people whose names are inscribed on the Vietnam War Memorial also had 'other priorities'). Neither the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, nor the Chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, has ever worn a uniform. The Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, had a university deferment at Princeton during the Korean War (he later joined the peacetime Navy). The Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, and Cheney's influential Chief of Staff, Lewis Libby, are both innocent of garrison life. Although many veteran warlords - people such as Brent Scowcroft, Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf and Anthony Zinni - question the Pentagon's current Middle East plan, I fear the culture of the present Government has become extremely hostile to the kind of courage shown by Ellsberg. After the charges against him were dropped, Ellsberg expressed himself satisfied that the United States had reaffirmed its identity as 'a democratic republic - not an elected monarchy - a government under law, with Congress, the courts and the press functioning to curtail executive abuses, as our Constitution envisioned'. I wish that were true. My own conclusion is that it was more like the final surge of a consumptive, the false sense that good health has returned actually signalling that death is near. I believe that the advance of militarism in the United States is irreversible. If I am wrong, I will be forgiven because people will be so glad I was wrong.<<<