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

To: techguerrilla who wrote (19777)	6/2/2003 8:40:19 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

HAVE AMERICANS CHECKED OUT ON OUR WARS? ________________________________ By Richard Reeves Syndicated Columnist May 30, 2003 WASHINGTON -- When I turned on the computer on Thursday to write about the president's latest tax cut, I was stopped by the headline on AOL's mail page: "Do you think the rescue of Jessica Lynch was hyped to boost the war?" Surprised to say the least, I forgot about getting rich and punched a key to get the totally unscientific answers to AOL's question. By then, 40,366 people had voted. Twenty-nine percent of them said, "Yes, it was a Hollywood-style stunt." Fifty-five percent said, "No, the troops did what they had to do." Two percent had no opinion. Fourteen percent checked the answer I would have picked, "We may never know." My second choice would have been that the soldiers did what they had to do. I know that doctors at Nasiriyah General Hospital told The Associated Press that they gave the Americans the key to Private Lynch's room and said there were no Iraqi soldiers at the hospital. But if I were one of those GIs, I would have taken no chances. That said, it seems pretty clear, at least to me, that the military tells the public what it wants us to know, the way it wants us to know it. Truth is the first casualty of war, particularly television wars ably fought by voluntary forces. There were, in fact, two other small stories in the papers the same day that made it seem as if the Pentagon certainly knows what it is doing in making and reporting news, even if citizens and journalists are a bit bewildered. The first one, a four-paragraph Reuters dispatch, said that the famous bunker we blasted from the sky to begin the war -- the one that was supposed to have killed or wounded Saddam Hussein and one of his sons -- never existed. The news agency was confirming a CBS News report that neither the Army nor the Central Intelligence Agency could find any evidence that there was a bunker under the house obliterated by the war's first missile. So it goes -- the fog of war. Who remembers that the Pentagon has been using that incident to promote the need for new nuclear weapons programs -- the first in more than 20 years -- to blast bunkers even deeper than this one was supposed to be? And who even remembers the hours of excited coverage from Washington and Baghdad that perhaps the war would be over before it began? The second item released on Thursday seemed to answer that last question. The Center on Policy Attitudes and the Center for International Security Studies at the University of Maryland released a national poll showing that almost half the respondents across the country, 41 percent, believed (or were unsure whether) our troops have discovered the "weapons of mass destruction." Those are the same WMD, it was once said, that were the reason we had to attack Iraq before it attacked us. For the record, of course, we have not found any -- at least yet. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been trying to explain where the fields of missiles and the tons of poison gas and biological weapons have disappeared to, but perhaps he doesn't have to bother. The poll also indicated that almost one-third of respondents, 31 percent, believed (or were not sure whether) Iraq had used such weapons against us. That could mean that if eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, we're in trouble. Or, it could mean that significant numbers of us are not paying any attention to the war, to the Pentagon or to the media -- at least not since we declared victory. There is another possibility, and that is that the press and television just do not have the attention span to cover events of such serious moment. You may have noticed that the cable channels interrupted the war to send their swarms to cover the murder of poor Laci Peterson. If by chance you think I exaggerate, then ask people around the neighborhood or the office what is going on these days in Afghanistan. You remember Afghanistan, don't you? It was a famous victory. Or was it just famous reality television? Does anyone know? COPYRIGHT 2003 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE uexpress.com

To: techguerrilla who wrote (19777)	6/3/2003 4:45:51 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Analysis: Optimism rises with market _________________________________________ Experts suggest bear's claws may be behind us with this rally By MIKE BLAHNIK MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL STAR TRIBUNE Tuesday, June 3, 2003 After three years of a bear market, stocks have risen about 20 percent since mid-March. That's nice, but with the Standard & Poor's 500 index still down 37 percent from its peak, the big question is: Does this signal the end of the bear market? Or, possibly even the beginning of another bull market? First, a historical perspective. The S&P now stands at about 967 -- closing yesterday above its Sept. 21, 2001, close of 965.80 for the first time since July 8, 2002. This is the fifth time since the market began its slide in 2000 that it's staged a mini-rally of about 20 percent. Each previous time, it has turned back down. "I think this time is going to be different," said David Chalupnik, head of equities at U.S. Bancorp Asset Management, which manages $115 billion. "There are so many truly positive fundamental factors that I think it protects the downside of the market." His counterpart at Thrivent Investment Management is just as positive. "We're probably on the cusp of a cyclical rise in stock prices," said David Francis, head of equities for the firm, which manages $57 billion. "We think the worst is behind us for the bear market." Several factors have fueled the current rally -- improved profits, low interest rates, Iraq, tax cuts. The strength of those influences has brought across-the-board impetus to the markets, with companies in a variety of sectors showing similar gains. For the month of May the S&P 500, which contains the country's best-established large companies, rose 5.1 percent, while the Nasdaq composite, home to many younger and more volatile companies, rose 5.7 percent. The fiscal and tax stimulus is similar in some ways to the steps that helped bring the economy out of the last major recession in the early '80s and is seen as portending an improving economy in the second half of the year. There's a sense among analysts that expectations have brought the market this far and now evidence of solid economic growth is needed to push it higher. One economic boost will come from low interest rates, which encourage companies to borrow money to finance expansion. Companies with existing loans usually can refinance and pocket the interest savings. Plus, the drop in interest rates will induce some investors to migrate from bonds to stocks. "Bonds are not that attractive as an investment anymore," Chalupnik said. While much has been made of the downside of a weaker value for the U.S. dollar, it is helping stocks rise. "The weaker U.S. dollar helps exports, it helps earnings through currency translation gains, it helps economic growth with more exports, and it really helps U.S. pricing power because it gives U.S. corporations a little wiggle room to raise prices," Chalupnik said. A factor preventing even bullish analysts from predicting continued immediate gains is stock valuations. The average stock in the S&P 500 is trading at a price about 19 times its projected profits for this year. "We are bullish on the market; the only concern we do have is on the valuation side," Chalupnik said. "For the next 18 months, because we do expect good earnings growth for 2004, we're looking for 10 to 15 percent upside from here. Francis said the market was "fairly valued" when this rally began. "We think you can get an average bull market from here, and that would be good, given that the market never got screaming cheap," he said. "And you've had good cyclical bull markets off fairly valued bottoms, but they tend not to be eye-poppers. We thought you could do pretty comfortably 40 to 50 percent off the bottom ... . and what we've had here looks to be a pretty good first leg." seattlepi.nwsource.com