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

To: lurqer who wrote (21431)	7/2/2003 10:39:26 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Was the Case for Invasion Built on Deception? by Jules Witcover Published on Wednesday, May 28, 2003 by the Baltimore Sun WASHINGTON -- Pardon me, but has anyone noticed the similarity between the recent deceptions by a New York Times reporter and the Bush administration's rationales for invading Iraq? At the top levels of both the Times and the administration, major reviews are under way over their particular embarrassments. The notable exception is that the Times has admitted that somebody was blowing smoke -- big time, as Vice President Dick Cheney might say. President Bush continues to talk about links (unproved) between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and saving the world from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which haven't been found. Meanwhile, the Central Intelligence Agency investigates whether there was much validity in the "facts" presented by U.S. officials as justification for the invasion. Although it's abundantly clear now that the president's objective always was "regime change," also known as getting rid of Mr. Hussein, he peddled the al-Qaida link and WMD as the better bet to get the U.N. Security Council to go along. He understood it was not about to sanction a blatant overthrow of a sovereign state, as despised as Mr. Hussein was. You'll recall how Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, with assurances of an imminent threat from Iraq, laid his considerable personal prestige on the line to squeeze a definitive war-making resolution out of the Security Council. In place of hard intelligence, he presented, among other things, computer-simulated mock-ups of mobile chemical and biological weapons factories to make the case. The council didn't buy it, and neither did most of the rest of the world, but President Bush, with a hard patriotic sell, got the American public on his side and went ahead. With those WMD so elusive, the administration's pitch now is that the invasion confirmed the Iraqi dictator's bestiality, which we already knew, and that that is enough justification. The corollary apparently is that it really doesn't matter whether such weapons are ever found. But what about the obligation that Mr. Bush had to level with Congress in insisting that the threat from Iraq was so imminent that its constitutional power to declare war should be ceded to the head of the executive branch? The Senate's 85-year-old dean, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, is dismissed as a ranting relic when he insists that the Constitution he carries in his coat pocket like a pacemaker continue to be observed and that the United States not use its superpower clout to remake the world in its image. Mr. Byrd's proposition hardly seems academic in light of reports that the administration is now turning its eye on Iran as the next target of its advocacy of "anticipatory self-defense" justifying pre-emptive war, conducted unilaterally, if necessary. A warning of an imminent threat from Iranian possession of WMD may well have more validity than the one used to win congressional approval of the Iraq invasion. But the Democrats who were so willing to buy that rationale from Mr. Bush then may be harder to convince the next time around. Another administration sales pitch for the Iraq invasion was that it would be accepted by the Iraqi people as a "liberation," not an occupation. But that hope has now been dispelled, not only by the unruly behavior of many of the "liberated," but also by the new American czar on the ground, L. Paul Bremer III. In a recent interview with The Washington Post, he was quoted as saying: "Occupation is an ugly word, not one Americans feel comfortable with, but it is a fact." It will be most interesting to see what the CIA comes up with in its investigation into the quality and assessment of the intelligence used by the administration to persuade Congress and, unsuccessfully, the Security Council to sanction the invasion of Iraq. If it reveals any intentional misrepresentation by the White House, the State Department or the Pentagon, the whole concept of "anticipatory self-defense" and pre-emptive war will be undermined, and should be. _______________________________ Jules Witcover writes from The Sun's Washington bureau. His column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Copyright (c) 2003, The Baltimore Sun commondreams.org

To: lurqer who wrote (21431)	7/2/2003 10:50:14 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Amateur Investors Mid Week Analysis - Retracement Levels amateur-investors.com

To: lurqer who wrote (21431)	7/2/2003 12:55:49 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

washingtonpost.com

To: lurqer who wrote (21431)	7/2/2003 1:25:24 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Blame Bush in State Fiscal Crisis ________________________ By Robert Scheer AlterNet July 1, 2003 alternet.org The other day a woman asked me to sign a petition calling for the recall of California Gov. Gray Davis. Why, I asked. Because he bankrupted the state, she said. When I begged to differ that it was the Bush administration and its buddies at companies like Enron that had put the state into an economic tailspin, she said she was being paid according to the number of petitions signed and didn't really care. But voters should care because Davis is being used as a fall guy for problems that are beyond his control. Remember Enron and those other scandals that cost folks their jobs and their 401(k) savings? They were a result of deregulation, the mantra of the Republicans. Deregulation was most disastrous for California's energy market, in which a crisis cost jobs and threw the world's fifth-largest economy into long-term disruption. This was not the normal workings of the market but the result of market manipulation by officials of Enron and other energy companies, some of whom are on their way to trial. Still out cruising the boulevards is our president's once close friend, Kenneth "Kenny Boy" Lay. A major contributor to Bush family political campaigns and former Enron chief executive, Lay invented the energy trading game. It was made possible by his successful lobbying for the 1992 Energy Policy Act, signed into law by the elder Bush. That law allowed a minor Texas company to mushroom into the world's largest energy titan before it went poof. Daddy Bush also tended to Enron's rise by appointing Wendy L. Gramm to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which promptly exempted electricity trading from the regulatory oversight covering other commodities. Gramm went on to serve on Enron's board of directors and its so-called auditing committee. Her husband, Phil Gramm, then a GOP senator from Texas, later pushed through legislation further deregulating the industry. When the younger Bush ran for president, he turned to Lay, who became the single biggest contributor to his campaign. George W. returned the favor big-time by appointing to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission members who looked the other way when Enron and its fellow swindler companies were fleecing California. These appointees insisted that California's problems were of its own making and would have to be solved without the imposition of the wholesale energy price caps that would have saved taxpayers from a crushing burden. Vice President Dick Cheney emerged from secret meetings with Enron executives and stated that the administration considered wholesale price caps a "mistake" because "there isn't anything that can be done short-term to produce more kilowatts this summer." Either Cheney was lying or his Enron buddies were lying to him because, at the time, Enron was routing electricity from California to sell at a higher price in Oregon. Federal price controls would have prevented Enron and the other companies from playing one state against another. It is disingenuous for California Republicans to now blame Davis rather than their man Bush for the state's economic problems. Only last week, the Republican-dominated FERC banned Enron from selling electricity as punishment for having severely distorted Western energy markets. Enron and 60 other companies were ordered to show why they should not be forced to return their illegally gained profits. FERC at the same time said California must honor $12 billion in long-term contracts written under duress with the same companies that were gaming the market. The contradiction was acknowledged by commission Chairman Patrick H. Wood III: "I guess people could go, 'Gosh, these are the same parties that show up in those other [market-gaming] cases.' " Duh! No kidding. They are being rewarded for scamming the state, which contributed to the budget crisis, and schoolchildren will have to pay the price. Californians provide much more to the federal government in taxes than they get back in services. The feds should bail out the states, which cannot indulge in the red-ink financing that has become a specialty of the Bush administration. It is absurd to blame current difficulties on any state's governor, Republican or Democrat. It is the Bush administration that has mismanaged a successful economy inherited from Bill Clinton. It is the Bush administration that should bear responsibility for the difficulties being experienced by state governments – and it should at least help California as much as it is helping our newest state, Iraq.

To: lurqer who wrote (21431)	7/2/2003 1:41:56 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Want to know more about the neocons' plans for the Middle East? Get to know Michael Ledeen. by Jim Lobe* tompaine.com *Jim Lobe writes for Inter Press Service, an international newswire, and for Foreign Policy in Focus, a joint project of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies and the New Mexico-based Interhemispheric Resource Center.

To: lurqer who wrote (21431)	7/2/2003 4:02:12 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Respond to of 89467

Stonehenge-Age Aboriginal Art Found in Australia Wed Jul 2, 5:45 AM ET Add Science - Reuters to My Yahoo! SYDNEY (Reuters) - More than 200 Aboriginal cave drawings, some as old as the Egyptian pyramids, have been found in a cave in rugged woodland not far from Sydney, Australian museum officials said on Wednesday. Some of the 203 wildlife drawings and stencils found in the Wollemi National Park northwest of Sydney, Australia's largest city, are up to 4,000 years old, Australian Museum spokeswoman Samantha Mattila said. "We know so much about the history of other cultures across the world...but we know very little about our own. This is at the backdoor of Sydney and it's untouched, it's pristine," she said. New South Wales state premier Bob Carr said the exact location of the cave would be kept a closely guarded secret to ensure its protection. The drawings depict birds, lizards and marsupials, while there are also stencils of human hands and arms and of boomerangs and other tools. There is also a drawing of a wombat, rarely seen in Aboriginal rock art. Australian Museum anthropologist Paul Tacon said the artwork is in 12 layers, the most recent dating to the 1800s. Tacon said bushwalkers stumbled on the cave in 1995. The densely wooded terrain meant that a team from the museum was only able to reach the site for the first time in May.