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To: Oeconomicus who wrote (157346)	5/19/2003 10:32:15 AM
From: GST	Respond to of 164684

A President who tells the truth -- that would add value.

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (157346)	5/19/2003 10:35:38 AM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Paths of Glory By PAUL KRUGMAN The central dogma of American politics right now is that George W. Bush, whatever his other failings, has been an effective leader in the fight against terrorism. But the more you know about the state of the world, the less you believe that dogma. The Iraq war, in particular, did nothing to make America safer — in fact, it did the terrorists a favor. How is the war on terror going? You know about the Riyadh bombings. But something else happened this week: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, a respected British think tank with no discernible anti-Bush animus, declared that Al Qaeda is "more insidious and just as dangerous" as it was before Sept. 11. So much for claims that we had terrorists on the run. Still, isn't the Bush administration doing its best to fight terrorism? No. The administration's antiterror campaign makes me think of the way television studios really look. The fancy set usually sits in the middle of a shabby room, full of cardboard and duct tape. Networks take great care with what viewers see on their TV screens; they spend as little as possible on anything off camera. And so it has been with the campaign against terrorism. Mr. Bush strikes heroic poses on TV, but his administration neglects anything that isn't photogenic. I've written before about the Bush administration's amazing refusal to pay for even minimal measures to protect the nation against future attacks — measures that would secure ports, chemical plants, nuclear facilities and so on. (But the Department of Homeland Security isn't completely ineffectual: this week it helped Texas Republicans track down their Democratic colleagues, who had staged a walkout.) The neglect of homeland security is mirrored by the Bush administration's failure to follow through on overseas efforts once the TV-friendly part of the operation has come to an end. The overthrow of the Taliban was a real victory — arguably our only important victory against terrorism. But as soon as Kabul fell, the administration lost interest. Now most of Afghanistan is under the control of warlords, the Karzai government is barely hanging on, and the Taliban are making a comeback. Senator Bob Graham has made an even stronger charge: that Al Qaeda was "on the ropes" a year ago, but was able to recover because the administration diverted military and intelligence resources to Iraq. As former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he's in a position to know. And before you dismiss him as a partisan Democrat, bear in mind that when he began raising this alarm last fall his Republican colleagues supported him: "He's absolutely right to be concerned," said Senator Richard Shelby, who has seen the same information. Senator Graham also claims that a classified Congressional report reveals that "the lessons of Sept. 11 are not being applied today," and accuses the administration of a cover-up. Still, we defeated Saddam. Doesn't that make us safer? Well, no. Saddam wasn't a threat to America — he had no important links to terrorism, and the main U.S. team searching for weapons of mass destruction has packed up and gone home. Meanwhile, true to form, the Bush team lost focus as soon as the TV coverage slackened off. The first result was an orgy of looting — including looting of nuclear waste dumps that, incredibly, we failed to secure. Dirty bombs, anyone? Now, according to an article in The New Republic, armed Iraqi factions are preparing for civil war. That leaves us facing exactly the dilemma war skeptics feared. If we leave Iraq quickly it may well turn into a bigger, more dangerous version of Afghanistan. But if we stay for an extended period we risk becoming, as one commentator put it, "an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land" — just the recruiting tool Al Qaeda needs. Who said that? President George H. W. Bush, explaining his decision not to go on to Baghdad back in 1991. Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish leader, isn't afraid to use the "Q" word, worrying that because of America's failure to follow up, "this wonderful victory we have achieved will turn into a quagmire." The truth is that the pursuit of televised glory — which led the Bush administration to turn its attention away from Al Qaeda, and to pick a fight with a regime that, however nasty, posed no threat — has made us much less safe than we should be. nytimes.com

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (157346)	5/19/2003 10:42:31 AM
From: GST	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

<<Shiites March in Baghdad Against U.S. Mon May 19, 7:27 AM ET Add Top Stories - AP to My Yahoo! By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD, Iraq - Thousands of Shiite Muslims marched peacefully through the capital Monday to protest the American occupation of Iraq (news - web sites) and reject what they feared would be a U.S.-installed puppet government. Small groups of U.S. infantrymen, including snipers on nearby rooftops, watched the rally but did not intervene. Several dozen Shiite organizers armed with AK-47 assault rifles patrolled the area. They, too, were left alone by the Americans. Up to 10,000 people gathered in front of a Sunni Muslim mosque in Baghdad's northern district of Azimiyah, then marched across a bridge on the Tigris River to the nearby Kadhamiya quarter, home to one of the holiest Shiite shrines in Iraq. It appeared to be the largest protest against the U.S. occupation since the war ended. "What we are calling for is an interim government that represents all segments of Iraqi society," said Ali Salman, an activist. Some carried portraits of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran, senior Iraqi Shiite clerics and of Imam Hussein, one of the most revered Shiite saints. "We decided to gather outside a Sunni mosque to show unity between Shiites and Sunnis," said Rashid Hamdan, an organizer. He said the procession was organized mainly by religious groups from Baghdad's al-Thawra suburb — formerly known as Saddam City, home to an estimated 2 million Shiites. Shiites make up the majority of Iraq's 24 million people but were long excluded from political power by Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s Sunni Muslim regime. For decades, Shiites were banned from publicly practicing some of their rituals, and many of their top clerics and activists were murdered, jailed or pushed into exile under Saddam's 23-year rule. Many of Monday's protesters carried portraits of Imam Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, a top Shiite cleric slain in the Shiite holy city of Najaf in 1999. His death is widely blamed on Saddam's agents. Since Saddam's ouster by coalition troops last month, there has been a spate of smaller gatherings, some of them hundreds strong, demanding that occupying forces withdrawal. Monday's march was the biggest in terms of numbers and had a distinctly political message. The crowd chanted "No Shiites and no Sunnis, just Islamic unity," sang religious songs, and carried banners reading "No to the foreign administration," and "We want honest Iraqis, not their thieves." That appeared to be a reference to Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress and one of the key players in current rounds of U.S.-led discussions to form an interim government. He was convicted in 1992 by a Jordanian court of embezzlement and fraud, and some Iraqis have criticized him harshly. Chalabi says he was set up. The noisy but peaceful protest appeared to be well-organized. Organizers sprayed participants with water to cool them off and formed human chains around the crowd to ensure that the marchers stayed in line and no violence occurred. At one point, the crowd swelled to about 10,000 people, but many participants soon wandered off, and were replaced by fresh batches of demonstrators. At the end of the march, about 5,000 gathered near the shrine of Musa al-Kazim, a much revered 9th-century Shiite saint. Some banners held aloft by protesters called on al-Hawza al-Ilmiyah, the highest religious Shiite authority based in Najaf, to form an interim government. story.news.yahoo.com

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (157346)	5/19/2003 10:49:31 AM
From: GST	Respond to of 164684

<<Bored With Baghdad — Already By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN AGHDAD, Iraq Last Wednesday two top U.S. generals in Iraq held a news conference in Baghdad's half-wrecked convention center. The subject was deteriorating security and the two officers, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan and Maj. Gen. Buford Blount III, were pummeled by the press about why they weren't doing more to make Baghdad safer. It was 102 degrees, and in the middle of the session all the lights went out. The two generals looked like they were enjoying this encounter about as much as a root canal. At one point General Blount, explaining why his men didn't just shoot looters, said: "They were not threatening soldiers. They were just stealing something." Frankly, my heart went out to the generals, both of whom distinguished themselves in this war. First, they were stuck explaining U.S. policy in Baghdad, because Jay Garner's hapless nation-building team rarely spoke to anyone, and his replacement, L. Paul Bremer, had just arrived. But the generals were also miscast because they and their men are trained to kill people, not chase looters. Neither they nor their men want to be serving as the police, and they were not prepared to do that. They came to Baghdad with 1,800 military police officers. Saddam Hussein used 20,000 police officers to control this city of five million. But when Saddam vanished, so did his police and government. This created a power vacuum that we were not ready to fill. This unleashed the looting, which Donald Rumsfeld blithely dismissed with his infamous line: "Freedom is untidy. Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things." And so they did. Many pieces of Iraq's economic and governmental infrastructure — which the U.S. Air Force carefully spared with its smart bombs — were destroyed from the ground up by dumb looters or saboteurs, while we watched. Chaos is untidy. Freedom requires limits. Drive around Basra and see what looters have done to just one institution: the 12,000-student Basra University. It looks like a tornado hit it. Looters have made off with all the desks and chairs, ransacked the library, and were last seen by my colleague Marc Santora ripping out window frames and digging up cables. Check out some of the factories around Baghdad, or many ministries, power plants, oil refineries, police stations, water systems. All have been hobbled by looting — which is why power is in short supply, phones don't work, and gas lines are a mile long. "There are no police in my neighborhood, no judge — I can kill you right now and no one will say a thing," Hasanian Muallah, an engineer, said to me. "We're very happy to get rid of Saddam, but we're depressed by the situation on the street. People don't care who is going to be vice president. They just want a government." I am sure things will improve. But after traveling around central Iraq, here's what worries me: The buildup to this war was so exhausting, the coverage of the dash to Baghdad so telegenic, and the climax of the toppling of Saddam's statue so dramatic, that everyone who went through it seems to prefer that the story just end there. The U.S. networks changed the subject after the fall of Baghdad as fast as you can say "Laci Peterson," and President Bush did the same as fast as you can say "tax cuts." They are not only underestimating how hard nation building will be with this brutalized people, but how much the looting and power vacuum have put us into an even deeper hole. We need an emergency airlift of military police officers, a mobile telephone system so people can communicate, and a TV station. And we need, as one U.S. general said to me, to "take that $600 million of Saddam's money we found behind that wall, go up in a helicopter and spread it from one end of the country to the other." We have to get the economy going. Iraqis are an exhausted people. Most seem ready to give us a chance, and we do have a shot at making this a decent place — but not with nation building lite. That approach is coming unstuck in Afghanistan and it will never work in Iraq. We've wasted an important month. We must get our act together and our energy up. Why doesn't Mr. Rumsfeld brief reporters every day about rebuilding Iraq, the way he did about destroying Saddam? America is in an imperial role here, now. Our security and standing in the world ride on our getting Iraq right. If the Bush team has something more important to do, I'd like to know about it. Iraq can still go wrong for a hundred Iraqi reasons, but let's make sure it's not because America got bored, tired or distracted. nytimes.com