Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Victor Lazlo who wrote (158599)	7/17/2003 11:11:18 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Yellowcake Remix One of the mysteries of the recent yellowcake uranium flap is why the White House has been so defensive about an intelligence judgment that we don't yet know is false, and that the British still insist is true. Our puzzlement is even greater now that we've learned what last October's national intelligence estimate really said. We're reliably told that that now famous NIE, which is meant to be the best summary judgment of the intelligence community, isn't nearly as full of doubt about that yellowcake story as the critics assert or as even CIA director George Tenet has suggested. The section on Iraq's hunt for uranium, for example, asserts bluntly that "Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake" and that "acquiring either would shorten the time Baghdad needs to produce nuclear weapons." Regarding the supposedly discredited Niger story, the NIE says that "A foreign government service reported that as of early 2001 Niger planned to send several tons of 'pure uranium' (probably yellowcake) to Iraq. As of early 2001, Niger and Iraq reportedly were still working out arrangements for this deal, which could be for up to 500 tons of yellowcake. We do not know the status of this arrangement." That foreign government service is of course the British, who still stand by their intelligence. In the next paragraph, the NIE goes on to say that "Reports indicate Iraq also has sought uranium ore from Somalia and possibly the Democratic Republic of the Congo." It then adds that "We cannot confirm whether Iraq has succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/or yellowcake from these sources." This information, by the way, does not come from the White House, which to our mind has handled this story in ham-handed fashion. But we are told that language identical to what was in the NIE is what the CIA presented to the White House last January 24 in preparation for President Bush's State of the Union address. As we interpret that NIE language, the President was entirely accurate in what he said in that speech about Saddam pursuing uranium in Africa. Mr. Tenet's carefully calibrated statement and disclosure last Friday accepting responsibility for this "mistake" was more tortured than warranted by the assertions in the NIE. Keep in mind that NIEs are consensus documents. They aren't the view of some Lone Ranger analyst or a policy cabal. Our late great friend, strategist Albert Wohlstetter, disliked NIEs because he felt they often quashed alternative ways of looking at evidence. But faced with an intelligence community judgment like the one last October, what is an American President to do? Is he supposed to wait until we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law that some Iraqi agent has actually purchased the stuff? The larger truth is that it was a deeply held consensus of the U.S. intelligence community that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear weapons program. Multiple U.N. resolutions asserted the same thing. We had proof that Saddam had used chemical weapons in the past. The decision to disarm the Iraqi dictator wasn't based on a single intelligence report but on a mountain of evidence compiled over a dozen years. Mr. Tenet appeared yesterday in a closed meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has also had access to the complete NIE since last October. In our view, the Committee could do a public service by releasing the entire NIE section on Iraq's uranium hunt, and for that matter on its WMD program, consistent with not compromising sources and methods. Americans could then make their own judgments about whether Mr. Bush was properly looking out for their security. Source: WSJ, 7/17/03 online.wsj.com

To: Victor Lazlo who wrote (158599)	7/17/2003 11:14:03 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Respond to of 164684

Bulldog Blair By PETER STOTHARD For 30 days I was with Tony Blair while he prepared and fought the war against Saddam Hussein. I watched while he fired his own version of "shock and awe" into colleagues and supporters who had never dreamed that a Labour prime minister would launch a war against a nation that had "not done any harm to us." Even close friends were surprised at how determinedly he had adopted a doctrine of an "international community," one defined by shared and universal values, for which war was a legitimate resort against those who threatened it from the outside. I recall him, on one very difficult day before the Azores summit, sitting back and complaining that so few had been listening to him on this subject over the years. As far back as 1999 he had outlined the ideas that had led him to back America's determination to remove Saddam Hussein. That speech was made in Chicago. Even then this was a doctrine best delivered at a decent distance from home. He spoke of how globalization was about security not mere economics, how the U.S. and the EU had to make a substantial "step change" in security cooperation and how Saddam Hussein was at the root of "many of our problems." But when we were sitting together in his Downing Street apartment on March 16, after the very last peacetime phone call to Chile, before the last pre-war-summit call to the White House, he was angrily setting out to me this same forgotten theme -- "the dangers of a world in which Europe and America drift apart, where everything becomes a game in which old rivalries are played out forever." On that Saturday afternoon his house was ringed by placards proclaiming him a war criminal. His French ally Jacques Chirac, whose photograph with newborn Leo Blair had pride of place behind us, had destroyed his diplomatic campaign. Horrified ministers were about to resign. Incredulous members of Parliament were in open revolt. The prime minister was a frustrated man. Today Tony Blair is speaking again in the United States, not to the Chicago Economic Club but to a joint meeting of both houses of Congress. He will speak again of "a just war based not on territorial ambitions but on values." He will speak again of American responsibilities to find all other means to advance democracy, human rights, market economics and the rule of law -- from tough Middle East diplomacy to an environmental settlement beyond Kyoto. And he will warn of the dangers that will come if Europe tries to challenge American power rather than work with it. This time there will be more people listening. But support in Britain will not be found simply because more listeners are alert. During the war Tony Blair was merely unpopular. Since the war's end he has had to become hardened to an opposition, from some quarters, that is close to hatred. During the war, whether we were among the golf carts of Camp David or the royal portraits at Hillsborough Castle, he spoke of the threat to universal human values that came as much from divisions within the West as from enemies without. With the war over, he is himself becoming the victim of those divisions. The failure to find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction has allowed those who opposed the war to say it was fought for a lie. Even those who supported the war, if they desire to oust the government, delight to hear the prime minister called a liar. Jolly Jacques Chirac has spring in his step. Tony Blair insists that the WMDs are there -- and will be found. Given my 30 days behind the scenes with his security and defense advisers, I have no doubt they believed that Saddam had illegal weapons. But today they are not believed. Expect no apologies on Capitol Hill today. If either prime minister or president were, however, to be in apologetic mood, the mistake they must surely now recognize to themselves was to take even the slightest risk in exaggerating the intelligence case. Error is inevitable enough without the excessive enthusiasm of politicians and their aides. A "doctrine of the international community" has to be a doctrine for the long haul. Continual credibility is essential for justifying future strikes against terrorists, as well as for future acts to protect civilians from terrorists. It is a prime aim for those who oppose the arguments of Tony Blair and George Bush that the public has the minimum belief in what intelligence agencies say. Today the case for pre-emptive action against those beyond the pale of civilized values will be powerfully made and widely heard. But for the British prime minister at the podium, the aftermath of war has been the hardest part. Mr. Stothard is editor of The Times Literary Supplement, former editor of the Times of London and author of "Thirty Days: Tony Blair and the Test of History," just out from HarperCollins. Source: WSJ, 7/17/03 online.wsj.com

To: Victor Lazlo who wrote (158599)	7/18/2003 12:47:04 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Vic, this may go over the heads of some here, but thought you'd appreciate it: Who's Rich? Thomas Sowell July 15, 2003 Congressman Patrick Kennedy, a Rhode Island Democrat, recently declared to fellow party members at a Washington night spot, "I don't need Bush's tax cut" and added that he had never worked a day in his life. A number of other rich people have at various times likewise declared that they do not need what are called "tax cuts for the rich." But, whatever political points such rhetoric may score, it confuses issues that are long overdue to be clarified. One of the most basic confusions is between income and wealth. You can have high income and low wealth or vice versa. We have all heard of athletes and entertainers who have earned millions and yet ended up broke. There are also people of relatively modest incomes who have saved and invested enough over the years to leave surprisingly large amounts of wealth to their heirs. Income tax cuts apply to income, not wealth. So the fact that some rich people say that they do not need a tax cut means nothing because they are not getting a tax cut on their wealth, since their wealth is not being taxed anyway. Looked at differently, high tax rates hit people who are currently earning high incomes -- usually late in life, after having worked their way up in their professions over a period of decades. Genuinely rich people who have never had to work a day in their lives -- people like Congressman Kennedy -- are unaffected by income taxes, except on what they are currently earning, which may be a tiny fraction of what they own. In other words, soak-the-rich tax rates do not in fact soak the rich. They soak people who are currently earning the rewards of having contributed to the economy. High income taxes punish people for becoming prosperous, not for having been born rich. Even estate taxes can be minimized by hiring ingenious lawyers and accountants. But people who have had to work all their lives may not be nearly as able to afford such expensive ingenuity. Someone who eventually works his way up to $100,000 a year will qualify as "rich" in liberal rhetoric but, by the time you reach that level, you may have a child in college and need to put some money aside for your retirement years. You are very unlikely to be able to afford a yacht. Another fundamental confusion over tax cuts is confusing lower tax rates with reductions in tax revenues collected by the government. One of the enduring political myths of our generation has been the claim that the rise of federal deficits during the 1980s resulted from President Ronald Reagan's "tax cuts for the rich." Tax rates were cut. Tax revenues were not. More tax revenue was collected during every year of the two Reagan administrations than had ever been collected in any previous year in the history of the country. Nor was this experience unique. When John F. Kennedy cut tax rates during the 1960s, tax revenues went up. The whole point was -- and is -- to encourage more economic activity, and more activity generates more tax revenues, even at lower rates. The same thing happened back in the 1920s. Why then were there federal deficits during the Reagan administration? Because Congress spent even more money than the rising tax revenues brought in. There is no amount of money that Congress cannot outspend. Although these were christened "the Reagan deficits," all spending bills originate in the House of Representatives -- and Ronald Reagan was never a member of the House of Representatives. Indeed, the Republicans never controlled the House of Representatives during either of the Reagan administrations. Only after the Republicans gained control of the House in 1994 were there budget surpluses -- for which Bill Clinton took credit, even though he too had never been a member of Congress. It is fascinating to see Congressional Democrats, who have for decades been spending the country into growing deficits, suddenly expressing shock at the current deficits that have occurred while George W. Bush was in the White House -- and the country was at war. How serious are these deficits? As with all debts, the burden depends on what your income is. As a percentage of national income, today's deficits and national debt are far below what they were when Democrats were doing the spending. townhall.com And part 2: townhall.com