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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: energyplay who wrote (399850)	4/28/2003 2:48:58 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Senator Rick Santorum rumoured to be a member or close to Opus Dei. I think it's sad that an old Atheist like me has to point this out, but practicing Catholics are allowed to be in office in this country. And still hold their beliefs, lousy as I think some of them are. NEW REPUBLIC KANAN MAKIYA'S WAR DIARY April 18 Only at TNR Online Post date: 04.21.03 [ Editor's Note: This column was written on April 18, but not posted until April 20. ] Previous Entries NASIRIYA, SOUTHERN IRAQ On Tuesday, some 80 former Iraqi exiles and Iraqi tribal leaders convened to discuss the postwar political arrangement, under the auspices of Retired Army Lieutenant General Jay Garner, head of the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. The meeting took place in a large tent pitched on the grounds of the old city of Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, some 100 yards from the steps leading up the ziggurat inside the holy precincts, which lie at the heart of the ancient city. Despite our being half a world away and steeped in Iraq's ancient history, the gamesmanship of the Washington Beltway was ever-present. After the opening presentations by coalition delegates--some of whom took hours to arrive--the meeting got underway with speeches from Hatem Mukhlis from Tikrit, who is much loved by the State Department, and then me, who is looked upon favorably by the Department of Defense. We are all, of course, on the side of the angels, but in the surreal world of this meeting, such protocols, occasioned by the Byzantine workings of what is known inside the Beltway as the interagency process, carry a great deal of hidden or potential meaning. Nevertheless, I think it is fair to say at the end of the day that the conference--which had cost me $3,000 and much family grief to attend--was a good thing for at least four reasons: 1. The participants agreed on an excellent final statement, with a particularly good paragraph on the paramount importance of a thorough political and cultural de-Baathification program for Iraq. Only two people did not raise their hands when the crucial vote on this issue was taken: Mukhlis himself (a former schoolmate of mine at Baghdad College) and Nouri Badran, from the CIA-supported Al Wifaq organization, otherwise known as the Iraqi National Accord. Everyone else, including the tribal sheikhs picked for attendance by the CIA's representative at CENTCOM, was wildly in favor of substantive de-Baathification. 2. The much-vaunted divide between the so-called "exiles" and the so-called "authentic Iraqis" who never left Baathist Iraq, never materialized, as the near-unanimity on the de-Baathification question demonstrated. This was contrary to years of soi disant expert analysis from the State Department and the CIA. It turned out that many of the "internals" knew who Kanan Makiya was, and even, God forbid, liked a thing or two that he had to say. Why, they even mentioned his name in pleasant tones from the podium. 3. There was a general sense that the maintenance of law and order inside Iraqi cities and the rapid emergence of an all-Iraqi authority for political reconstruction was the paramount task of the moment. No disagreement on this score at all. 4. Garner was an enormous hit with the Iraqis present at the meeting. He wisely stayed very much in the background, judging that the key task at hand was having Iraqis speak to one another, rather than having them hear speeches from representatives of the U.S.-led coalition. When Garner did finally speak, it was to make a direct, honest, straight-from-the-heart appeal to the participants that won them over instantly. He said, simply, that his role was to support Iraqis in the reconstruction of their country, and that he plans on leaving as soon as Iraqis themselves find it appropriate. "He really means it," a businessman from Mosul said to me after the conference. "This man is the genuine article." Additionally, the meeting gave me the cherished opportunity to visit southern Iraq for the first time since 1966, when I accompanied my father and his students from the Department of Architecture at the University of Baghdad on a tour of events of a much greener and more inviting south. A quarter of a century of warfare have ravaged the landscape and its people, in ways one has to see to understand. At Ur, we took preliminary but important steps to remedy the damage.

To: energyplay who wrote (399850)	4/28/2003 2:51:41 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

I can't laugh enough at this a$$hole. I'm a FARC, a fallen away roman cathaholic. Santorum is short for sanitorium. He's the inmate in his own fantasy world. Nuf sed.

To: energyplay who wrote (399850)	4/28/2003 9:31:33 AM
From: PROLIFE	Respond to of 769667

Santorum is right Posted: April 28, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern 2003 WorldNetDaily.com There are some people in this country who want to fire Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., because he talked candidly, dispassionately and accurately about a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. I always thought that's what senators did for a living. But I think someone should lose their job over this national story. As a news professional, I suggest the reporter who interviewed him and wrote the story is the one who should be fired from her position as an Associated Press newswoman. There's only one reason Santorum is getting flack for his remarks – they were dead-on target and undermine the entire homosexual political agenda. Santorum articulated far better and more courageously than any elected official how striking down laws against sodomy will lead inevitably to striking down laws against incest, bigamy and polygamy. You just can't say consenting adults have an absolute right to do what they want sexually without opening that Pandora's box. I've drawn this analogy before – in columns and in my new book, "Taking America Back." Santorum also made a distinction between homosexuality and homosexual acts – clearly differentiating between the sinner and the sin – a traditional and mainstream Judeo-Christian perspective. So how did this tempest in a teapot become a national scandal, with some of his colleagues even calling for him to step down? It was a set-up. It was what we call in the news business a "hatchet job." Rick Santorum is a young, good-looking, articulate conservative in the Senate's Republican leadership. He was deliberately targeted by a political activist disguised as a reporter – Lara Lakes Jordan. I invite you to read her original story and see for yourself how it is dripping in venom. It's an editorial camouflaged as a news story. And she wrote it for the largest and most powerful news-gathering operation in the world, ensuring it would get maximum play in newspapers throughout the world. Who is Lara Lakes Jordan? For starters, she is married to veteran Democratic Party operative Jim Jordan, the former executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and manager of Sen. John Kerry's presidential bid. Not surprisingly, the Massachusetts Democrat was among the first to criticize Santorum's remarks, using it as an opportunity to attack the White House. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Kerry got an advance copy of the article given his connections. But there's more to the Lara Lakes Jordan story. In January of this year, Mrs. Jordan was one of the signatories on a letter to her bosses at the AP attacking the news organization for "rolling back diversity" by not extending benefits to domestic partners. In a symbolic move, the signatories to the letter returned key chains AP management gave them to "celebrate" its corporate diversity. The key chains carried the slogan: "AP Diversity: Many Views, One Vision. It seems Mrs. Jordan's ideological fervor is not reserved only for her private life and her corporate politicking. This woman clearly ambushed Santorum on an issue near and dear to her bleeding heart. I've been in the daily news business for 25 years. When I got started a quarter century ago, there was an old newsroom saying that went like this: "I don't care if you sleep with elephants as long as you don't cover the circus." Mrs. Jordan violated that old newsroom ethic. She abdicated her right to cover the circus because she was sleeping with an elephant – or, in this case, a donkey. That's why I say these catcalls for the head of Rick Santorum are nothing more than a political sideshow. It's not Rick Santorum who should be forced from office for clearly stating views that have been considered mainstream for the last 5,000 years. It's Lara Lakes Jordan who should be drummed out of the news profession for scoring cheap political points under the guise of news reporting. It's not Rick Santorum who should apologize to anyone. It's the Associated Press for sponsoring this political hit piece.