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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (2255)	6/18/2003 12:44:54 AM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793926

Here's some of the fire, John....Weak spy network hurt hunt for arms By John Diamond, USA TODAY Note: Remember when James Woolsey, CIA Director for Clinton couldn't even get an appointment with Clinton for 6 months?? And the CIA funding was being cut?? Yes, there will be some stories here...Wonder if we will ever hear them all?? Posted 6/16/2003 8:09 PM Updated 6/16/2003 9:07 PM usatoday.com Weak spy network hurt hunt for arms By John Diamond, USA TODAY WASHINGTON — Slightly more than a year before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the CIA launched a major effort to rebuild its network of Iraqi agents, which had been badly depleted by repeated purges, according to congressional and Bush administration officials with knowledge of the effort. (Related story: Broad purges wiped out most Iraqis helping CIA) Despite the commitment of substantial resources, however, the CIA had only modest success in reconstituting its organization inside Iraq. By the end of 2002, Iraqis working for the CIA had begun providing helpful information about Iraq's conventional weapons and other matters relating to the looming U.S. invasion. But the agents had provided no incontrovertible evidence of chemical or biological weapons, the officials said. The difficulty the CIA had keeping its Iraqi agents alive underscores the challenges U.S. intelligence faced in locating the banned weapons U.S. officials claimed Iraq had. The failure to find those weapons has raised doubts about how much U.S. intelligence really knew about them before the U.S. forces invaded Iraq — and whether the administration was candid about possible weaknesses in its information. U.S. spy satellites could detect tanks, artillery and other conventional weapons. But finding chemical or biological weapons was much more dependent on spies or defecting scientists, who could point the way to microbes or lethal chemicals that might have been undetectable by virtually any other means. The CIA's intense effort to rebuild its spy network in Iraq came after it had been almost eliminated by Saddam Hussein's security forces, according to three U.S. intelligence officials. All the officials who gave information for this story spoke on condition of anonymity. All have routine access to classified information and are familiar with the CIA's struggles inside Iraq. CIA officials outlined a plan to rebuild a base of sources inside Saddam's regime in a series of classified briefings to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in late 2001 and early 2002, a congressional aide said. A major focus was to collect information on Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction programs, but the CIA also sought information that would help the Pentagon plan an invasion. A Bush administration official confirmed this account. The effort came after at least four years of little intelligence from Iraqi sources within Saddam's regime. The gap in collection was the result, in part, of the difficulty of penetrating a closed and brutal regime and of the CIA's near total focus after Sept. 11, 2001, on the al-Qaeda terror group. Beginning in 2002, after the defeat of Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, the CIA gradually developed some sources in Iraq who passed on reports about suspected Iraqi biological, chemical and nuclear programs, according to a senior intelligence official. But establishing spies within a regime as closed as Saddam's takes time. And by late last year, U.S. intelligence hadn't managed to develop a network that could find banned weapons or production facilities U.S. officials were sure existed. While the CIA disclosed its difficulties to congressional overseers, it did not make the problem public before the war. Only now are intelligence and congressional officials willing to discuss some of the weaknesses in the prewar effort to gather information on Iraq's suspected weapons.

To: JohnM who wrote (2255)	6/18/2003 4:11:08 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793926

I missed this when it came out last week. Broder said in his column today that it is really getting to Dems. The "Road Map" that the Repubs have planned for them. I "bolded" the key line on the Senate. I had not realized the 30/20 split from 2000. Step-by-Step Tax Reform By Grover Norquist Monday, June 9, 2003; Page A21 President Ronald Reagan enacted one significant tax cut in 1981 -- and then allowed a series of smaller tax increases almost every year of his presidency. Another tax cut did not follow until 1997. President Bush has proposed and now signed tax cuts in 2001, 2002 and 2003. The old Republican promise was that a new president would fight for one tax cut and then oppose tax hikes. The new Republican policy is an annual tax cut. The strategy of annual tax cuts has united the center-right coalition and avoided the sort of conflict that bedeviled the 1981 tax cut, when K Street pushed to include its favorite industry or corporation-specific tax change at the cost of paring back Reagan's proposed 30 percent cut in marginal tax rates. Businesses were rightly concerned that this would be the last tax cut for some time. Bush's 2001 tax cut received strong business support, even though it was completely aimed at individual taxpayers. Why? Because the best way to "lobby" to be in next year's tax cut is to cheerfully support the president's tax cut this year. The Bush administration -- wisely -- has not proposed fundamental tax reform in a single piece of legislation. But the president has been taking deliberate steps toward such reform with each tax cut. There are five steps to a single-rate tax, which taxes income one time: Abolish the death tax, abolish the capital gains tax, expand IRAs so that all savings are tax-free, move to full expensing of business investment rather than long depreciation schedules and abolish the alternative minimum tax. Put a single rate on the new tax base and you have Steve Forbes and Dick Armey's flat tax. Each of the Bush tax cuts, past and proposed, moves us toward fundamental tax reform. The step-by-step annual tax cut avoids the problem that faced Bill and Hillary Clinton's too ambitious effort to nationalize health care in one gulp: It is easy to stop oversized reforms. Conservatives want to move to a flat-rate income tax for both economic and political reasons. The economic goal is to reduce the tax rate on labor and capital and reduce the disincentives to savings, investment and work. The political goal is to unite all taxpayers. When taxpayers are divided into different tax brackets, they can be mugged one at a time through the "divide, isolate and tax" strategy that Clinton pursued when he promised to tax "just the top 2 percent" of earners. Bush's surprising call to abolish the double taxation of dividend income was a recognition that the U.S. economy has fundamentally changed. In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the single political measure of the economy's health was the unemployment rate. After the Great Inflation of the 1970s, inflation became an equal measure of economic well-being, and Jimmy Carter added together the unemployment rate and inflation rate to create the "Misery Index." Today, with 70 percent of voters owning shares of stock, there is a third measure: the value of the stock market. Politicians used to like to "hide" tax increases in taxes on corporations. Now 70 percent of voters understand that looting big business is actually looting their retirement portfolios. When Tom Daschle said that cutting taxes on investors was cutting taxes for the "wrong people," he was reminding voters that the Democratic leadership still thinks the American economy is in the 1930s, with only the Rockefellers and Kennedys owning stock. In crafting its agenda for economic reform, the Bush administration has the luxury of being able to think and plan over a full eight years. This is because the 2002 redistricting gave Republicans a lock on the House of Representatives until 2012 and the Founding Fathers gerrymandered the Senate for Republican control. In the 50-50 election that was 2000, Bush carried 30 states and Al Gore 20. Over time, a reasonably competent Republican Party will tend to 60 Republicans in the Senate. This guarantee of united Republican government has allowed the Bush administration to work and think long-term. Reagan could move in bursts, using his political capital from the 1980 and 1984 elections to push through key reforms, but then the Democratic majority in the House would slow or stop most other initiatives. The Bush administration can plan over an eight-year period, moving various initiatives at different paces. Progress need not come in short, fleeting moments of political strength. One sees this longer time horizon not only in the annual tax cuts that move slowly toward a flat rate income tax, but also in the decades-long move to free trade in the hemisphere and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick's call for zero tariffs on manufactured goods within 10 to 15 years, the focus on transformation in the Defense Department, reforms in personnel management and the Social Security changes that will take a generation to phase in. The Pentagon used to debate whether we had enough strength to fight two wars at the same time. The Bush administration is demonstrating that it can operate successfully on two fronts, fighting the war on terrorism and at the same time embarking on fundamental economic reform. The writer is president of Americans for Tax Reform. washingtonpost.com