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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (19695)	5/30/2003 9:39:03 AM
From: Jim Willie CB	Respond to of 89467

take USArmy actions, wait 3 yrs, result will be worse / jw

To: stockman_scott who wrote (19695)	5/30/2003 9:39:43 AM
From: Jim Willie CB	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Anatomy of a real estate crash, by Clif Droke May 30, 2002 321gold.com "There are at least three major reasons for believing that 2004 will be the first of many bad years to come for real estate and ultimately the "beginning of the end" of imploding the myth that real estate represents the ultimate financial asset." this guy is quite good, very solid in his technical analysis basis of thinking if you can only ignore his parabolas with tiny bases he points to the RMS (real estate builders and REIT index) which is topping out in a perfect 5-wave I think it is safe to say that whatever the govt officials prop up, will come down hard for two years they have been pumping up real estate to insane levels their value has risen about 15% per year for 3 straight years in many areas while the economy is flat and debt default is widespread I just read that 12 foreclosures occur for every 1000 mortgages now, way up we also have 1.4 million personal bankruptcies per year now, way up and 25-35% of Ford and GMAC car loans are in delinquency or default now, way up Ford is still headed for bankruptcy by the end of the year here is a funny one: GM's pension obligation underfunding is 3x what the entire company is worth !!! in 1999 people said that stocks had gone up 15% per year, so they would continue now they are saying the same thing about real estate I expect they will be proven wrong Americans dont learn much from history, because they dont study history in fact, they ignore even the history of the most recent decade (let alone century) / jim

To: stockman_scott who wrote (19695)	5/30/2003 12:17:48 PM
From: abuelita	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

War was not about WMDs: Wolfowitz The chief justification for the invasion of Iraq was settled on for 'bureaucratic reasons': A Pentagon admission Jan Cienski National Post Friday, May 30, 2003 WASHINGTON - Finding banned weapons was never Washington's only reason for invading Iraq, but was highlighted by the Bush administration for "bureaucratic" reasons to help sell the war, Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defence Secretary, said in a candid interview that may stir controversy among some U.S. allies. "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on," Mr. Wolfowitz, the most determined advocate of the invasion within the Bush administration, told Vanity Fair magazine. He said a less public, but important reason for invading Iraq was to allow the Pentagon to remove U.S. troops protecting Saudi Arabia. Their presence had been fueling tension with Islamic fundamentalists in the kingdom and providing ammunition for al-Qaeda's terrorist campaign. U.S. troops were pulled from Saudi Arabia weeks after the victory over Saddam Hussein. "Just lifting the burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door" to a more peaceful Middle East, Mr. Wolfowitz said. His comments have caused acute discomfort for Australia and Britain, key U.S. allies that supplied troops for the invasion. Both countries emphasized the danger of Saddam Hussein's illegal arsenal in justifying their participation to critics. Despite thorough searches by more than 2,000 U.S. weapons experts, and hundreds of interviews with scientists and former Iraqi government officials, no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) have yet been uncovered. Earlier this week, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, said Iraq may have destroyed its chemical and biological weapons before the war. "From the Australian perspective, we entered the conflict to remove the threat of weapons of mass destruction," Robert Hill, Australia's Defence Minister, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Tony Blair, Britain's Prime Minister, visited Iraq yesterday amid allegations that Parliament and the public were duped into believing charges about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. The BBC reported an intelligence dossier on Saddam's chemical and biological weapons was rewritten to make it "sexier." The most sensational item suggested Saddam could ready his chemical and biological weapons for battle in only 45 minutes. "That information was not in the original draft," a government official told the BBC. "It was included in the dossier against our wishes because it wasn't reliable." The British government denies accusations it fiddled with the intelligence. "I have absolutely no doubt at all about the existence of weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Blair told reporters. But he admitted finding such evidence is important politically. "It matters immensely because the basis on which the war was sold to the British House of Commons, to the British people, was that Saddam represented a serious threat," he said. The weapons issue has much less political weight in the United States, where the discovery of mass graves and evidence of Saddam's undeniable brutality have muted the issue. A new poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes found 41% of Americans believe WMDs have been found in Iraq, while 21% mistakenly believe Iraq used such weapons during the war. "For some Americans, their desire to support the war may be leading them to screen out information that weapons of mass destruction have not been found," said Steven Kull, PIPA's director. Mr. Bush is paying no political price for the failure to find the weapons. According to the poll, 74% of Americans believe he is showing strong leadership on Iraq and 68% approve of the decision to go to war. Mr. Bush continues to insist Saddam's deadly arsenal will be found. The administration has seized on two Iraqi trailers it says were mobile biological weapons labs of the type cited by Colin Powell, the U.S. Secretary of State, in his Feb. 5 speech to the UN Security Council to build support for war. No biological agents have been found in the trailers and there is no evidence they were ever used to produce weapons. However, their similarity to the mobile labs predicted by U.S. intelligence has officials convinced they have at last uncovered some evidence of Iraq's pre-war threat. Iraqi scientists say the trailers were used to produce hydrogen for weather balloons. In an unusual step, the Central Intelligence Agency has posted some of its trailer evidence on its Web site, www.cia.gov. "We have found the bio trucks that can be used only for the purpose of producing biological weapons," said Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman. "That's proof perfect that the intelligence in that regard was right on target." jcienski@nationalpost.com © Copyright 2003 National Post nationalpost.com