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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (427283)	7/15/2003 2:27:09 PM
From: Neeka	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Like I said: If you don't like it go live somewhere else. I will use the events of 9/11 to showcase the weakness on the part of the left if I choose. I won't be satisfied until every idiot carrying a gun and thinks that if he kills innocent American civilians he can rape 72 virgins in heaven, is eliminated. What difference does it make when the first time the president left US soil? And I knew it would all come down to money with you. It always comes down to money for liberals. They don't want the US to spend a dime on the military.....it takes funds away from their pet social projects. They like to have control over the money they steal. The President has sworn to uphold the constitution and defend America from foreign or domestic enemies and that is exactly what he is doing much to the chagrin of you and your socialist ilk. The US has always taken the bad with the good. Your hatred has been demonstrated far more times than anyone wishes to count........so? And I don't give a damn whether Europe likes us or not. We could send them billions of dollars, bow to their evey whim, and they will still hate us because we are POWERFUL AND WE AREN'T GOING TO GIVE THAT POWER UP TO THEM OR THE UN. You love this country far more that I.......... HAHAHAHAHAHA Child. You are a perfect example of the miserable, no guts left who don't appreciate that millions of American men and women have fought for and died wearing the uniform of the US military so that they can continue to destroy democracy with their hatred. You make a great case why liberals should never get control of our security again. But I'll tell you what......we will allow you to have a few seats in congress just to make it fair. Get back to me when you learn the meaning of the word courage. M A sober warning from one who predicted 9/11 By John Hughes The Christian Science Monitor E-mail this article Print this article SALT LAKE CITY — As you read this column, it is a fairly good surmise that, somewhere, a terrorist group is planning the next attack on the United States or on American installations abroad. It is an attack not necessarily being planned in some cave in Afghanistan. It could be organized from a coffee bar in Beirut, or a student apartment in Germany — or even somebody's basement in Miami or Atlanta. We do not know what form the attack will take. It could be an attempt to blow up one of America's landmark bridges. It could be a cyberattack, aimed at disrupting the communications network controlling the U.S. air-traffic control system. It could be a chemical or biological package carried in on a tramp steamer from some Mediterranean country. Or even a suitcase-sized nuclear bomb hidden in one of the thousands of containers that pass through U.S. ports every day. How well are we prepared? The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were a terrible wake-up call for Americans. Much has been done since, including the establishment of a Department of Homeland Security. But a large government bureaucracy takes time to galvanize and restructure. Huge gaps remain in the defense of the American homeland against terrorism. There are two most notable ones. One is the lack of inspection for the thousands of containers that are unloaded in U.S. ports every day from ships arriving from countries all over the world. The other is the failure to effectively fund and coordinate local firefighters, police officers and medical personnel, who will be the front-line soldiers in any new catastrophic attack on U.S. soil. The deficiencies are not for lack of nudging. A government commission co-chaired by former Sens. Warren Rudman and Gary Hart was warning before Sept. 11 of the pending terrorist threat, and making recommendations for countermeasures. Few paid much heed to either. To some of us, the members of the commission resembled those brave but few voices in the European wilderness in the mid-1930s warning of the coming Nazi threat. They were disregarded until Hitler began his military blitzkrieg. Post-Sept. 11, the Rudman and Hart recommendations gained more credence, but implementation moved slowly. In 2002, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) convened another updating task force with Rudman and Hart at the helm. It produced a report ominously titled: "America — Still Unprepared, Still in Danger." Finally, just over a week ago, the CFR produced the report of yet another task force chaired by Rudman. It assessed the preparedness of "emergency responders," firefighters, police and medical personnel. The task force finding: "Although in some respects the American public is now better prepared to address aspects of the terrorist threat than it was two years ago, the U.S. remains dangerously ill-prepared to handle a catastrophic attack on American soil." In a phone interview, Rudman told me: "I hope this report captures somebody's attention. It's very hard to get this government to act with urgency. It can be done. After 9/11, the government acted with extraordinary alacrity to improve the safety of aircraft and airports. We can send troops into Iraq with the latest equipment to withstand biological and chemical attack, but we don't seem to understand that people in the first line of defense against such an attack at home — the police, firemen, medical personnel — don't have enough equipment to do the job." Where lies the blame? Even some congressmen fault Congress more than the White House. Rudman is discreet, but says: "The Homeland Security Department has only been operating for eight or nine months. They have to have the funding to pass out to the locations which don't have even the minimum equipment they need." On the screening of containers, Rudman says the government is making progress, but there remains a huge task of mobilizing technology and deploying people and equipment. His task force warned last year that only the "tiniest percentage" of containers, ships, trucks and trains that enter the U.S. each day are subject to examination. Should these be used to hide and deliver a weapon of mass destruction, the consequence, said the task force, would be to shut the system down at enormous cost. His voice from the wilderness needs to be heard. John Hughes, editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News, is a former editor of The Monitor. archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com

To: tejek who wrote (427283)	7/15/2003 3:07:23 PM
From: Neeka	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

A few stories about the people you want to suck up to. M news.ft.com French link to UK's Iraq intelligence From correspondents in London 14jul03 TWO foreign intelligence services, thought to be those of France and Italy, supplied Britain with the information for its controversial claim that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had sought uranium from Africa, the Financial Times newspaper reported Monday. Britain made the uranium claim in a dossier last September despite being told the US Central Intelligence Agency had "reservations" about its inclusion. The paper said its information came from senior Whitehall sources. US administration officials have criticised the inclusion of a reference to the nuclear claim and the nation in President George W. Bush's January 28 State of the Union Address, and pointed out that it had not been corroborated by Washington's intelligence network. CIA chief George Tenet, who took the blame for Bush's discredited prewar claim, came under fire again Sunday with a leading Republican senator suggesting he resign. The Financial Times said it had learnt the original information on the nuclear claim came from two west European countries, and not from now discredited documents that proved to be forgeries. The financial daily reported an official saying the information from foreign intelligence services was not shared with the US because it "was not ours to share". The Italian government on Sunday denied reports that its intelligence services handed the United States and Britain documents indicating that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger for a nuclear weapons programme. The denial followed a report by Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper that Rome's SISMI intelligence services had given Washington and London documents in late 2001, showing the regime of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had sought uranium from the African state. There is considerable doubt in London and Washington over the strength of the US and British case for ending UN arms inspections and launching the March 20 invasion to topple the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Hans Blix, who was the UN weapons chief inspector in Iraq in the run-up to war, added to the criticism, telling The Independent on Sunday that Britain had "over-interpreted the intelligence they had." The Daily Telegraph reported that "US intelligence sources believe that the most likely source of the MI6 intelligence was the French secret service, the DGSE. Niger is a former French colony and its uranium mines are run by a french company that comes under the control of the French atomic energy commission." The French secret service is believed to have refused to allow MI6 to give the Americans "credible" information showing that Iraq was trying to buy uranium ore from Niger, the Telegraph reported. A third British newspaper, The Guardian, cited government officials saying the nuclear claim came from a "close ally" but one which didn't want Britain to give it to the US as a further pretext for war. "It has become an enormously overblown issue," White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told CNN. "The president of the United States did not go to war because of the question of whether or not Saddam Hussein sought the uranium in Africa," she said. Earlier, on Fox News Sunday, she dismissed the notion as "ludicrous." thecouriermail.news.com.au.