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

To: calgal who wrote (434235)	7/27/2003 1:06:51 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Less Safe and Less Secure? From the August 4 / August 11, 2003 issue: What the Democrats are saying changes everything. by William Kristol 08/04/2003, Volume 008, Issue 45 "George Bush has left us less safe and less secure than we were four years ago." --Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), July 22, 2003 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PRESIDENT BUSH'S 16 words on uranium and Africa in his January State of the Union address--"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa"--have become famous, or infamous. But Dick Gephardt's 16 words, spoken in the course of a major foreign policy speech this past Tuesday, are the ones that matter. Bush's words, though probably a mistake, didn't change anything. The vote to authorize war had taken place months before. The arguments for and against war had all been made and re-made. The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate--even if one accepts the State Department's modest dissent to one of its findings--shows that the president acted in good faith in making his case about the danger of Saddam's quest for weapons of mass destruction. Dick Gephardt's 16 words, by contrast, change everything. They reflect the considered judgment of a centrist Democratic presidential candidate--one who voted to authorize the war--that his party must stand in fundamental opposition to the Bush foreign policy. They indicate the capture of the Democratic party by the pace-setter in the presidential race, former Vermont governor Howard Dean. Dean said on June 22 that "we don't know whether in the long run the Iraqi people are better off" with Saddam gone, and "we don't know whether we're better off." At the time, Gephardt demurred from Dean's agnosticism. Now, exactly one month later, Gephardt is following in Dean's footsteps. Actually, Gephardt went further than Dean. I suppose it's technically possible that things could turn out worse for the Iraqi people, or for us, post-Saddam (though I'd be happy to take that bet, and I'm sure the Bush campaign would too). But Gephardt has laid down an extraordinarily clear marker for judging the Bush administration: He claims we're less safe and less secure than we were four years ago. Is this the case? Were we safer and more secure when Osama bin Laden was unimpeded in assembling his terror network in Afghanistan? When Pakistan was colluding with the Taliban, and Saudi Arabia with al Qaeda? When Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq? When demonstrations by an incipient democratic opposition in Iran had been crushed with nary a peep from the U.S. government? When we were unaware that North Korea, still receiving U.S. food aid, had covertly started a second nuclear program? When our defense budget and our intelligence services were continuing to drift downward in capacity in a post-Cold War world? Are we not even a little safer now that the Taliban and Saddam are gone, many al Qaeda operatives have been captured or killed, governments such as Pakistan's and Saudi Arabia's are at least partly hampering al Qaeda's efforts instead of blithely colluding with them, the opposition in Iran is stronger, our defense and intelligence budgets are up, and, for that matter, Milosevic is gone and the Balkans are at peace (to mention something for which the Clinton administration deserves credit, but that had not yet happened as of four years ago)? Is it reasonable to criticize aspects of the Bush administration's foreign policy? Sure. The initial failures in planning for postwar Iraq, the incoherence of its North Korea policy, the failure adequately to increase defense spending or reform our intelligence agencies...on all of these, and other issues as well, the administration could use constructive, even sharp, criticism. But that we were safer and more secure four years ago? Gephardt has made a claim that will come back to haunt him and his fellow Democrats. Bill Clinton understands this. Tuesday evening, hours after Gephardt's speech, he suggested in a television interview that rather than debate the past, "we ought to focus on where we are and what the right thing to do for Iraq is now." Indeed, he (implicitly) warned his fellow Democrats that "we should be pulling for America on this. We should be pulling for the people of Iraq." Clinton knows the Democrats cannot allow themselves to be seen as the party that begrudges American successes in struggles against our enemies. (Could he have this in the back of his mind: The Democrats continue to move in this suicidal direction, the administration flounders on other fronts, and a fresh face rides to the rescue in the fall--Hillary Clinton!) There are plenty of legitimate grounds to criticize the Bush administration's foreign policy. But the American people, whatever their doubts about aspects of Bush's foreign policy, know that Bush is serious about fighting terrorists and terrorist states that mean America harm. About Bush's Democratic critics, they know no such thing. --William Kristol

To: calgal who wrote (434235)	7/27/2003 1:07:14 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

16 Words From the July 22, 2003 Dallas Morning News: Maybe there is a reason Bush won't retract the sentence. by Terry Eastland 07/24/2003 12:00:00 AM Terry Eastland, publisher ONCE UPON A TIME, there was another president named Bush, and he, too, gave a speech that later gave him fits. In 1989, during a nationally televised address on drug law enforcement, George H.W. Bush held up a bag of crack cocaine that he said had been seized right across the street from the White House in Lafayette Park. Bush's point was that the drug trade was so widespread that the stuff was being dealt right there in his own neighborhood. Soon thereafter, Bush learned that there was more to the story about that bag of crack. A Drug Enforcement Administration official had lured to the park a dealer who then sold the crack to an undercover agent. The dealer hadn't done business there before, and for a reason that undercut Bush's point--dealers didn't see the park as a very good market! Bush was upset--indeed aides said he was furious--that he hadn't known all of that before his speech. He made it clear that had he known the facts, he wouldn't have said what he did. Bush thus could be said to have "taken personal responsibility" for his words, a phrase we hear a lot these days. In fact, we heard it last Thursday during the White House press conference held by President George W. Bush (the son) and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. As all the world knows by now, it was during his State of the Union address that Bush, in an effort to highlight Iraq's nuclear ambitions, spoke this 16-word sentence: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Earlier this month both CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said the evidence wasn't good enough to support that sentence. At the press conference, a reporter asked: "Mr. President, others in your administration have said your words on Iraq and Africa did not belong in your State of the Union address. Will you take personal responsibility for those words?" It was fair to think Bush would say "yes." Surely the time for "closure" on a story dominating the news for two weeks had arrived. Somehow or other he would admit a mistake--that being, oddly, the only way to "take personal responsibility" in Washington. But Bush didn't. "I take responsibility," he said, but it was "for putting troops into action" and "for making the decision . . . to put together a coalition to remove Saddam Hussein." And there Bush stands. He won't disown the uranium-in-Africa sentence. Is he simply being stubborn? Or is his refusal to concede error justified? The latter must be judged a strong possibility. On Friday, the White House released portions of October's intelligence summary on Iraq's nuclear weapons. The consensus document--a national intelligence estimate--said that Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure uranium ore" in Somalia and Congo and Niger. The State Department's intelligence arm dissented from that proposition, but it was in the minority. Having read the paper, White House speechwriters decided to work the point about Iraq's uranium shopping into the speech. And while Tenet and Rice now express doubt about the sufficiency of the U.S. evidence for the uranium allegation, the speechwriters did attribute it to "the British government." And what do the British have to say? During the press conference, Blair emphasized that his government's intelligence on the uranium allegation is "genuine," adding, "We stand by it." And so, it is apparent, does Bush. Notably, Blair, directing his comments to people "who think that the whole idea of a link between Iraq and Niger was some invention," said that "in the 1980s we know for sure that Iraq purchased round about 270 tons of uranium from Niger." Not "we believe," but "we know for sure," and not "sought" uranium from Niger, but "purchased" it. Doubtless we haven't heard the last about the most analyzed words Bush has uttered during his presidency. But at the moment it's hardly obvious that Bush should distance himself from what he said. And what is obvious is that the Democrats, eyeing the 2004 election, are seizing on the sentence as key evidence in their case that Bush misled the public. Indeed, one presidential hopeful, Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, has even gone so far as to raise the specter that Bush should be impeached. Could it be that the Democrats are the ones going too far? Terry Eastland is publisher of The Weekly Standard.

To: calgal who wrote (434235)	7/27/2003 1:11:11 AM
From: calgal	Respond to of 769670

washingtonpost.com GOP Escalates Push for Nominees By Helen Dewar Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, July 26, 2003; Page A06 Senate Republicans plan a series of votes next week aimed at turning up the heat on Democrats for filibustering two of President Bush's appeals court nominations and for weighing similar moves to block at least two others. The 51-member GOP majority has little hope of winning the 60 votes needed to end debate and force final votes on the nominations. But Republicans want to showcase what they characterize as Democratic "obstructionism" one more time before the Senate leaves at the end of the week for its August recess. For a time this year, Republicans were scheduling votes every few days to end the filibusters. But it has been nearly three months since the last such vote, and pressure was building within the Senate and among conservative groups for renewed efforts to draw attention to the issue. Democrats are filibustering, or blocking final action on, the nominations of Miguel A. Estrada to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Priscilla R. Owen for the 5th Circuit appeals court in New Orleans. Republicans have made six unsuccessful attempts to force final action on Estrada, and two for Owen. Carolyn Kuhl, whose nomination for the 9th Circuit bench in San Francisco is also pending before the Senate, is another candidate for a filibuster. And earlier this week, the Judiciary Committee narrowly approved Alabama Attorney General William H. Pryor Jr. for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta on a party-line vote, suggesting the likelihood of a filibuster against him, too. Some Democrats have also vowed to filibuster the renomination of Charles W. Pickering Sr. to the 5th Circuit bench, which Republicans have not yet tried to move out of the Judiciary Committee. In most cases, Democrats have accused the contested nominees of holding ideologically rigid conservative views on important legal issues. They have raised procedural objections that have helped keep their caucus united in opposition to the nominees. Yesterday GOP leaders scheduled for Tuesday a third vote to break the filibuster against Owen. Nick Smith, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), said Republicans also plan votes next week on Estrada, Kuhl and Pryor. "We continue to believe it's important these judges have an up-or-down vote and that all senators go on the record" on their nominations, Smith said. Democrats dismissed the GOP pre-recess plans as an effort to stir up conservative supporters during the August break. "They're just trying to throw some red meat to their base," said Ranit Schmelzer, spokeswoman for Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.). Democrats plan to consider at their weekly policy luncheon Tuesday whether to filibuster Pryor. They could raise Kuhl's nomination as well if Republicans try to force a vote on her. Democratic aides have said filibusters are likely in both cases. During a brief warm-up debate yesterday that focused on Pryor, Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) attacked the Democrats' use of filibusters against judicial nominations, saying, "It's a dangerous thing to do, it's the wrong thing to do . . . it flies in the face of Senate history." Minority Whip Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) noted that Democrats have helped approve 140 of Bush's judicial nominees, whereas they opposed just two. But Hatch said the filibustering of even one judicial nomination is "unacceptable." Late yesterday, Bush opened a new fight with Democrats by nominating two conservatives for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, considered the nation's second most powerful court because of its jurisdiction over appeals of rulings by federal agencies. The nominees are Brett M. Kavanaugh, an associate White House counsel who was an appellate expert for independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, and Janice Rogers Brown, a California Supreme Court justice. © 2003 The Washington Post Company