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Politics : WHO IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (1831)	4/27/2003 12:01:19 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

The U.N.'s Iraq Follies (Cont.) They're all back! The French, the Russians, Hans Blix! Saturday, April 26, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT French audacity has it charms, but sometimes even they get carried away. Consider President Jacques Chirac's transparently self-interested generosity Tuesday in suddenly proposing that U.N. sanctions against Iraq be "suspended." At least the French are figuring out that it doesn't look good for them to fight openly to maintain Saddam-era sanctions on newly free Iraqis. But in proposing merely to suspend, rather than lift, sanctions, the French also suggested leaving the U.N. in control of Iraqi oil revenues. A final lifting of sanctions would then have to wait for a clean bill of health from . . . Hans Blix and his U.N. weapons inspectors. Really. At least the French are smoother spin-artists than the Russians, who don't even bother to conceal their Iraq agenda. "We are not at all opposing lifting of sanctions. What we are insisting on is that Security Council resolutions must be implemented," Russian U.N. Ambassador Sergei Lavrov asserted. In other words, the two countries that did the most to erode sanctions against Saddam Hussein's dictatorship are now joined at the pocketbook in attempting to maintain them in some form on a newly free Iraq. They were only too happy to do business with Saddam. But now they're just as pleased to use sanctions as leverage to get some Iraqi affirmation of their odious debts and oil contracts from the Saddam era. If Iraqi redevelopment is held back in the meantime, so what? The polite word for this is blackmail. And on Manhattan's east side, it doesn't hurt their cause that the corrupt oil-for-food program helps the U.N. itself (the 2% or so its bureaucracy skims off the top for "administrative" expenses) or that the U.N. is desperate to prove its own relevance in post-Saddam Iraq. President Bush has for now delegated this thorny little problem to Foggy Bottom, which at least seems wise to the game. Sanctions should be lifted rather than suspended, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Negroponte said this week. But we hope Mr. Bush is also prepared to make a moral issue of the sanctions, and from the Presidential bully pulpit if need be. Holding hostage the only major source (oil) of hard currency for a newly liberated people isn't exactly an attractive position. But the French and Russians may get away with it so long as the U.S. remains reluctant to rebut the idea that either its occupation in Baghdad or any new Iraqi government require any kind of U.N. imprimatur. Mr. Bush could start by pointing out the extent to which the oil-for-food program served as little more than an instrument of Baath Party control. One reason American relief workers haven't been able to administer oil-for-food is because the Baath workers who previously ran it all melted away. General Tommy Franks's description of it as "oil for palaces" was entirely apt. The money intended for food and medicine went instead to finance, among other things, Uday Hussein's Olympic Committee. As this truth leaks out, even the French may find this hard to defend. There is also a strong legal case to be made that the sanctions can simply be declared null and void, having been imposed on a regime that no longer exists. Russian oil companies and their lawyers are blustering that they will challenge any new oil sales. But the idea that it will be difficult to find buyers for Iraqi oil absent a U.N. seal of approval isn't credible; oil is a commodity and a slight price discount should find enough willing buyers. The other U.N. game of the moment is to get Hans Blix and his U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq. No one should deny Mr. Blix a tourist visa, if he wants to see for himself the wreckage of Saddam's rule. But Mr. Blix has made clear his hostility to the war so many times in recent weeks that one suspects he has a vested interest in not finding the weapons he didn't find the first time around. The search for chemical and biological weapons is also about future security even more than past vindication. Something happened to Saddam's stockpiles of anthrax and botulinum toxin, and it's vital that the U.S. learn if they were destroyed or moved somewhere else. That news is likely to come from interviewing Iraqi scientists and generals, and the U.S. needs to get that information first before it gets to U.N. inspectors (and perhaps other intelligence services). Having liberated Iraq, the U.S. has no reason to be defensive about removing the U.N.'s sanctions and oil-for-food chokeholds over the Iraq economy. As for the validity of Saddam's debts and oil contracts, that should be up to a new Iraqi government to decide. Once that principle is established and declared non-negotiable, French and Russian behavior is likely to improve in a hurry. URL:http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110003415

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (1831)	4/27/2003 7:59:04 AM
From: John Carragher	Respond to of 10965

Rick not getting favorable press in Philly. Tom Ferrick Jr. \| Santorum makes his stand loud and clear By Tom Ferrick Jr. Inquirer Columnist There are politicians who don't mean what they say. There are politicians who don't say what they mean. Then there's Rick Santorum, who says exactly what he means. Geez, I wish he'd shut up. Pennsylvania's junior senator was on the griddle last week for remarks made in an interview with an Associated Press reporter. The reporter asked whether it was true that Santorum had said that liberalism was a cause of the Catholic Church's recent sex scandals. Oh sure, he said, I believe that. And then he launched into a riff that explained the last 30 years of societal change, which I will now paraphrase: You see, Santorum said, permissive liberalism has led to a decline in values because it condones deviant behavior, and this has undermined the central institution of our society: the family. How do the liberals get away with it? The courts let them. Using bogus "privacy rights" under the 14th Amendment, the court has stopped the states from fulfilling their proper role of regulating morality. Take the Texas case argued the other month before the U.S. Supreme Court. Two gays, who were arrested and fined under the state's antigay sodomy laws, want the statute declared unconstitutional because, they assert, it violates the rights of consensual adults to have sex in private in their home. 'Privacy rights' We can't let the court overturn that law. If it does, what's next? Laws against bigamy, incest and polygamy will be overturned because of "privacy rights." It's a slippery slope. "You say: 'Well, it's my individual freedom,' " Santorum said. "Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that's antithetical to strong, healthy families." Does this mean that the senator is antigay? Not at all, Santorum said. I am not against homosexuals. I am just opposed to homosexual acts. There it is in a nutshell - if you'll forgive the expression. Let's move onto the explication: This interview reminds us that behind that Boy Scout face lies a right-wing ideologue. You can read variations of the Santorum riff on any number of conservative and religious-right Web pages and publications. These groups particularly hate "privacy right" rulings, which they believe prevents the state from upholding morality through the use of laws and sanctions. (Read: fines and jail.) The Supreme Court has ruled in a number of cases that a person's right to privacy can trump a state's desire to regulate a person's behavior. The most famous is Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that decriminalized abortion. But, there are others in which the Supremes overturned laws that banned interracial marriage, the sale of contraceptives to adults, the purchase of obscene material for private use, and a law that required all children to attend public schools. (This was a 1920s Oregon law promoted by the Ku Klux Klan to force Catholic schools to shut down.) No middle ground So, maybe there's a little something to be said for privacy rights? No, there is not. Not in the Manichean world of the hard right. There is no middle ground. You are either with us or you are evil. It's as simple as that. Santorum put a happy face on these arguments. But don't kid yourself. He's pure Cotton Mather. It's an assertion of faith, not an invitation to debate. Santorum's line on not being antigay, but simply opposing gay sex is an embrace of the Roman Catholic Church's thinking on this matter. I've always felt that the church's position had a huge "Say what?" factor to it. It reminds me of a description I once read of the oppressive anti-Catholic laws the English imposed on Ireland beginning in the early 1700s: The British government was willing to tolerate the Irish being Catholic, as long as they didn't practice Catholicism. But let's get back to the essential question: Do you think homosexual acts should be criminalized? Or should we, at long last, just move on? I vote we move on. Meanwhile, I hereby nominate Rick Santorum for my trog of the year award - as in troglodyte. A lovely word, from the Greek, meaning "cave dweller." Another columnist... " A higher calling for Santorum the Virtuous.. The senator iswell-suited for protecting the United States from itself... Let's say Philadelphia Inquirer was kind to Rick... this Sunday. govn. Rendall came out with some remarks last night but couldn't find them.. doubt they were favorable.