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Politics : WHO IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (3908)	8/6/2003 7:49:15 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 10965

Gore's speech plans trigger speculation By James G. Lakely THE WASHINGTON TIMES washtimes.com Former Vice President Al Gore will deliver a "major speech" on Iraq to a liberal activist group in New York tomorrow, fueling speculation that he will re-enter the race for the Democratic nomination for president. A member of MoveOn.org said Mr. Gore approached the group, founded to battle President Bill Clinton's impeachment, a few weeks ago about setting up the event. "He wanted to give the address and asked MoveOn to sponsor it," said the source, who requested anonymity. "He's going to be speaking out about a number of different issues, not just about the war." The speech will be Mr. Gore's first major public statement on foreign policy since delivering a scathing critique of President Bush's Iraq policy at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club on Sept. 23. At the time, the United States was attempting to build support for going to war with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Donna Brazile, who served as Mr. Gore's campaign manager during his run against Mr. Bush in 2000, said she is looking forward to hearing what Mr. Gore has to say. "Whatever Al Gore has to tell us will be relevant," Miss Brazile said. "He has extraordinary foreign policy credentials and experience." The speech is bound to draw attention from the Democratic nominees for president, if only for a day, but Miss Brazile said she didn't think it mattered. "That's comparing apples and oranges," she said. "He's a statesman." Miss Brazile refused to speculate whether this speech signaled a re-testing of the waters for Mr. Gore, who declared in December that he wouldn't run for president again. "I haven't talked to him so I don't know what's blazing in his saddle," Miss Brazile said. "But I do think he will give a very thoughtful, forward-thinking speech." Repeated phone calls to Mr. Gore's office were not returned. In the Sept. 23 speech, Mr. Gore foreshadowed the criticisms of Mr. Bush that have been championed of late by three front-runners for the Democratic nomination for president — Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri. Mr. Gore said then that the war in Iraq would distract from tracking down "those who attacked us on September 11 and have thus far gotten away with it." The president's doctrine to "pre-emptively attack whomsoever he may deem represents a potential future threat" was unwise, he said, and would alienate international allies that the United States needs to fight global terrorism. Mr. Gore also blasted the Bush administration for failing to "clarify its idea of what is to follow regime change" in Iraq, a theme echoed most strongly by Mr. Kerry. While insisting that Mr. Bush get additional international "permission" to invade Iraq, Mr. Gore, nonetheless, conceded that Saddam "does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf" because "we know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." Mr. Dean and Mr. Kerry have criticized Mr. Bush for the failure to uncover evidence of any weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq. Brian Lunde, former executive director of the Democratic National Committee, characterized Mr. Gore's speech last year as a "sucker punch and run away." And while Mr. Gore might "get his shots in" on Thursday, Mr. Lunde said he doesn't expect Mr. Gore to match the volume of Mr. Dean's antiwar rhetoric. Rather, the speech might be part of a plan to "provide cover for the mainstream Democratic candidates" and "help be a Dean slayer" by trying to move the momentum of the party away from the far left. "He will warn the party," Mr. Lunde said. "I think there's growing concern that Howard Dean might not just be a flavor of the month, but be a real political movement."

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (3908)	8/6/2003 8:04:58 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 10965

The fruits of Bushonomics ________________________________ By Robert Kuttner Columnist The Boston Globe 8/6/2003 GEORGE W. BUSH faces a race between the ill-advised economic policies sown in the first half of his term and the bitter fruit that those policies are starting to bear. If the sour effects of his economic policies are evident by mid-2004, he is in deep political trouble. For now, at least, Bush can say that the economic news is mixed. The unemployment rate went up to 6.4 percent in May. It dropped slightly, to 6.2 percent, in June -- but only because more and more people have dropped out of the labor force entirely as payrolls continued to shrink. Economic growth came in at 2.4 percent for the second quarter of 2003. That was better than expected, but it needs to hit 4 percent or higher to reduce unemployment. Bush's cheerleaders say that will happen, in well-choreographed fashion, in the election year. But will it? Timing is everything. George Bush the first missed his rendezvous with prosperity in 1992. And the policies of Bush I were not as damaging as those of Bush II. Consider these several danger signs: Deficits and interest rates. Long-term interest rates have gone up a full point in a month. Mortgages, which could be had at a bargain-basement 5 percent in late June, are back to 6 percent. The refinancing boom is slowing. The bond market is swooning. Bush optimists contend that interest rates are going up because investors, sniffing a recovery, are shifting to stocks, leaving less demand for bonds. Dream on. Skeptics correctly point to the immense deficits resulting from Bush's three tax cuts. If unsustainable deficits loom, the money markets eventually push up interest rates. Higher interest rates, of course, are bad for the recovery. If investors sense the risk of inflation down the road, that undercuts the Federal Reserve's ability to stimulate the economy with lower short-term rates now. Most serious of all, if long-term interest rates are impervious to the Fed's policy of cutting short-term rates, then Alan Greenspan's sorcery has lost its power. (And deservedly so. Greenspan should have used his prestige as a central banker to discourage the Bush tax cuts instead of taking a dive as a good partisan.) Will the true effects of the Bush deficits stay obscured until November 2004 while the Fed tries to keep growth on track? That looks less and less likely. Trade. Like his military policy, Bush's trade policy has been a blunt instrument. Bush and his economic appointees have been pushing for more international trade with few conditions attached. In theory this is good for everyone. In practice, global trade with few ground rules has exported more jobs than it has imported. In their recent road trip, top Bush economic officials heard that China's absorption of American jobs is killing local economies. America's trade deficit with the rest of the world continues to widen. The Democrats may be divided on some issues, but on trade most Democrats favor conditioning trade with labor and other regulatory standards so that its benefits truly flow both ways. In an election year with a soft economy, Bush-style free trade is likely to be an ever harder sell. Vanishing services. Ordinary Americans are saving a few bucks in their federal income taxes. Most of the breaks went to the top. But as Bush and company cut federal aid while adding costly federal mandates, local services are deteriorating. Meanwhile, many states are having to raise property and sales taxes. Normally in this kind of downturn, Washington helps the states. This time Bush put tax cutting ahead of aid to states and communities. Congress grudgingly included an emergency $20 billion only because Democrats insisted on it. Even so, that sum is a small fraction of the state budget shortfall. Ordinary people are also losing private health benefits and retirement income. The connection between some of these economic woes and Bush's policies are direct. In others, such as dwindling health security, the connection is more indirect; it reflects what the administration failed to do. But it almost doesn't matter how well voters explicitly connect the dots. A bad economy spells bad news for an incumbent president. A lot of this is implicitly about class and the tiny elite that Bush has helped. In good times Americans don't want to hear about class. Everyone expects to be Bill Gates someday. But in tough times, regular people become far more alert to who is getting most of the cookies. Bush is accountable for that, too. ______________________________________ Robert Kuttner's is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe. © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company. boston.com

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (3908)	8/6/2003 8:25:33 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 10965

John Kerry is back on C-Span right now

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (3908)	8/6/2003 8:35:34 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 10965

'The madness of President George' Posted on Tuesday, August 05 @ 10:06:07 EDT -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Gary Malone, Self Made Pundit It must be nice to be President Bush and live in your own protective fantasy world. No matter how badly things go in the real world, Bush remains protected in a fantasy world of his own making, where every action of his is fully justified and he is never to blame. In his fantasy world, Bush is not to blame for hyping the reasons to go to war with Iraq. The war with Iraq was fully justified by Iraqi intransigence. Thus, according, to Bush, the United States invaded Iraq only after the United States gave Saddam Hussein "a chance to allow the [U.N.] inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in." In the real world, however, Iraq did let the U.N. inspectors back in. In his fantasy world, Bush is not to blame for the gargantuan federal budget deficits that are primarily being caused by his massive tax cuts for the super rich. According to Bush, he warned voters during the 2000 presidential election that the U.S. government could go from surplus to deficit if we experienced a war, a national emergency or a recession. Bush claimed to recall making such a warning, leading him to make his tasteless joke "Lucky me, I hit the trifecta," after the tragedy of 9/11. In the real world, Bush never made any such warning, and instead campaigned on the theme that the budget surplus was big enough to sustain a massive tax cut without worry. In the past week, Bush has twice visited the fantasy world he has constructed around his failed economic policies. Bush's economic policies are not only giving rise to the biggest federal budget deficits in history - immediately after the biggest surplus - but are also making Bush's administration likely to be the first presidential administration since Herbert Hoover's - during the Great Depression - to experience a net loss of jobs in America. After compiling such a disastrous record, other presidents might rethink their economic policies. But not Bush. He knows what he believes, even if it is a fantasy. In Bush's fantasy world, he deserves credit - not blame - for the dismal state of the economy because he rejected nonexistent advice to let the economy get worse. When asked by a reporter at his press conference on Wednesday whether he should be rethinking his economic approach given the dismal results of this policies, Bush visited his fantasy world: The '01 tax cuts affected the recession this way, it was a shallow recession. That's positive, because I care about people being able to find a job. Someone said, well, maybe the recession should have been deeper in order for the rebound to be quicker. My attitude is, a deeper recession means more people would have been hurt. And I view the actions we've taken as a jobs program, job creation program. Bush, of course, never identified this phantom adviser that suggested the recession should have been deeper. Bush did, however, refer to this phantom adviser again on Friday in defending his administration economic record to reporters: "Economic historians would say that the recession of 2001 was one of the more shallow recessions. Some would probably say, well, maybe you shouldn't have acted and let the recession go deeper, which would have made - may have made - for a more speedy recovery," Bush told reporters after meeting with his Cabinet. Once again, Bush did not identify this phantom adviser with the Machiavellian bent who urged him to let the economy get worse so he could claim credit for a more impressive recovery. Perhaps Bush, like William Safire, is being haunted by the specter of an advice-dispensing Richard Nixon. Or perhaps Bush is reticent to identify this little Machiavelli because he is really a miniature Bush with horns who whispers into his ear when Karl Rove is otherwise occupied. When reporters pressed White House Spokesman Scott McClellan as to whether Bush's pixie of economic doom actually exists, McClellan instinctively began to cover for Bush, but then in mid-sentence apparently realized he lacked Ari Fleischer's flair for obfuscation and gave up: As to whether any particular individuals had actually urged Bush to deliberately let economic conditions worsen, McClellan said: "This goes back to conversations that people have said publicly and that - I don't know the specific person, though. I couldn't tell you." It is highly unlikely that Bush's phantom adviser exists. Bush himself seems unsure whether his demonic adviser is more than a figment of his imagination, wavering from Wednesday's claim that "someone said" such advice to Fridays's suggestion that "some would probably" offer such advice. The strongest evidence that Bush's phantom adviser is just a figment of his imagination is the sheer stupidity of the advice. Other than Bush, it is unlikely that there is anyone in the White House ignorant enough to believe that the best way to ensure a speedy recovery is to make sure that a recession is as severe as possible. The deepest economic downturn in American history was the Great Depression. And we all remember how speedy that recovery was. Recovery from the Great Depression only took the entire decade of the 1930s and America's entry into World War II. (Funny how any discussion of Bush's economic record invariably leads back to Herbert Hoover.) Bush's many retreats to his fantasy world do raise the question of whether Bush is delusional. Does he actually believe the stuff that he tells us? I doubt Bush is delusional since he puts so little effort into trying to discern reality. When Bush regales us with tales form his fantasy world, he does not appear to be describing some false memory of fictional events that he thinks really happened. Instead, he is blithely making things up and saying whatever he thinks will persuade people into agreeing with him. Bush is so supremely confident in his own beliefs, he just doesn't give a rat's rump about little things like reality. So, while, there is certainly evidence pointing to the madness of President George, I doubt that Bush is truly delusional (at least in a clinical sense). When Bush is put on the defensive, he just makes stuff up to get his way. We can all be comforted in knowing that it is likely that Bush is merely a scheming sociopath and not a paranoid schizophrenic. I wish Bush would tell the rest of us how we could live in our own protective fantasy worlds - at least until November 2004. Reprinted from Self Made Pundit: selfmadepundit.blogspot.com

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (3908)	8/6/2003 8:45:46 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 10965

Josh Marshall has some thoughts... talkingpointsmemo.com (August 5th, 2003 -- 12:12 PM EDT // link) I've been hearing more and more about these Meet-Up meetings for various presidential candidates. So yesterday I stopped by one for Wesley Clark in Washington, DC. Or rather I should say it was for the Draft Wesley Clark group, since Clark isn't even a candidate yet. I can't say I was particularly underwhelmed or overwhelmed by the turn-out or the energy of the folks there. But it's hard for me to judge really since it's the only one of these I've been to. I have a number of friends who are very taken by the idea of a Clark candidacy. And I think I'd say that I'd include myself in that group. At the same time, though, I'm awfully skeptical. Military heroes who get into politics or are drafted into politics are usually big heroes, generals whose popularity is so transcendent that they can literally sweep away all the rest of the contenders from the field. The key examples would be Grant, Eisenhower, Powell (had he chosen to get into the race in 1996). Clark, as much as I admire him (and I do, a lot), simply isn't in that category. And by conventional standards, it's way too late for him to get into the race. It's not at all clear to me that he can push these other contenders from the field simply by throwing his hat into the ring. And will he have the money or the organization or staff that will allow him to do it the old fashioned way? I have my doubts. Here's another issue. One of the big attractions of ex-military candidates is straight talk. Always has been. It signals a no-nonsensism that's one of the big attractions. Yet a while back I remember Clark not only being cagey about whether he was going to be a candidate (that's certainly understandable) but even which party's nomination he'd run for. And that falls a bit short on the no nonsense test. Now I say this as someone who'd really like to see Clark get into this race and catch fire. The national security credentials speak for themselves. And he does have the advantage that none of the other candidates have really pulled away from the pack or demonstrated any serious credibility as national candidates. (Even Dean's momentum --- as important and innovative as it is at the level of technology-assisted grass-roots organizing -- still strikes me as a sign of the weakness of the Democratic field.) I just have my doubts. -- Josh Marshall

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (3908)	8/6/2003 8:56:21 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 10965

Why kid gloves for the Saudis? Message 19185741

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (3908)	8/6/2003 9:07:26 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

Bush Is Racking Up "Frequent Liar Miles" scoop.co.nz Strategy of "lie and rely" relies on media to disseminate Dubya’s deceptions By Dennis Hans Lyndon Johnson is remembered for lying about Vietnam, Richard Nixon for lying about Watergate, Bill Clinton for lying about adultery. George W. Bush is known as a “straight shooter.” What’s wrong with that picture? Bush has, after all, racked up more “frequent liar miles” than any other politician in recent memory. Not familiar with “frequent liar miles”? I coined the expression to pay tribute to the staying power of Bush’s lies. After all, a lie is of no use to the teller if it is promptly branded a lie and the teller a liar. Not only does he not benefit from the lie, his now-tarnished image makes it more difficult to get anyone to believe subsequent lies. Call it the Saddam Syndrome: A guy gets caught in a few lies and before you know it nothing he says is taken at face value. All the good will is gone, as if Saddam never shook hands with Donald Rumsfeld or made common cause with Ronald Reagan against evil Iran. These days, reporters shout “Show me the weapons!” and pundits deride him as Mr. Cheat and Retreat. Our news media — without the imprimatur of a formal U.N. resolution — have even erected a “no lie” zone over Iraq and shoot down Hussein’s howlers before they can infect international audiences. In stunning contrast, Bush’s lies are broadcast as truth. They originate at the White House and are transmitted to network amplification centers in New York and Washington, at which point the lie leaves the president’s control. He then must rely on men named Brokaw, Jennings, Rather and Lehrer to treat the presidential lie with respect and deliver it to every nook and cranny in America via “the people’s airwaves.” The longer and farther the lie flies, the more “frequent liar miles” the president accumulates. The strategy of “lie and rely” entails considerable risks. What if the media Bush is relying on to disseminate his lies chooses instead to shoot them down? A president is doomed if his every pronouncement is greeted with groans and guffaws. That’s why it’s wise to lie only when the truth won’t suffice AND the stakes are high — to win an election, to avoid the taint of scandal-plagued cronies, to sell a war the public is disinclined to buy. Throughout Campaign 2000, candidate Bush test-piloted “lie and rely.” He lied to a Dallas Morning News reporter to keep hidden a drunk-driving conviction. He lied repeatedly to the national media about his own and Al Gore’s economic plans. Did so in speeches and again in the debates. The lies traveled far and wide. Amazingly, they remained airborne even after repeated puncturing by New York Times columnist and Princeton economist Paul Krugman. From that experience, Bush learned an invaluable lesson: So long as the airwaves remain loyal, “lie and rely” can override isolated, ink-based exposure. As president, a confident Bush lied after the Enron scandal erupted about how long and how well he knew the man he now referred to as “Mr. Lay” — though it was “Kenny Boy” back in the day. A quick study, Bush showed he had mastered what I call the “fact-based lie”(speaking words that are technically true, knowing full well they paint a false or misleading picture) when he said he had known of Lay in 1994 as someone who supported Ann Richards, his opponent for the Texas governorship. Lay and his wife did indeed give money to Richards’ campaign — and three times as much to Bush’s. Fact-based lies, long the domain of weasels, are particularly risky for a president who presents himself as the antithesis of weaseldom. If caught, he can’t reply, “Technically speaking, I didn’t lie.” The ridicule would be relentless. That Bush would resort to fact-based lying suggests unlimited confidence — both in himself and the giants of journalism, who he is counting on to play or be dumb. Bush and his foreign-policy team have told a string of traditional and fact-based lies about Iraq’s links to al Qaeda and 9-11, as well as the magnitude and imminence of the threat Saddam poses to the United States. Those lies have helped the president gain far greater support from the public and Congress for his aggressive stance than he would have garnered with a plain-spoken, straight-shooting approach. Again, we find that “lie and rely” has easily overcome sporadic, ink-based attacks. In October, for example, Washington Post reporter Dana Millbank detailed several jaw-dropping lies about Iraq and other matters, which he described euphemistically as presidential “flights of fancy.” But the airwaves held firm, and Millbank himself got back on the team when he guested January 12 on CNN’s Late Edition (click here for the transcript: cnn.com to discuss The Right Man, a book about Bush by his former speech writer, David Frum. A controversial passage was displayed on the screen and read aloud by host Wolf Blitzer (who missed the irony that the controversy revolved around those parts of the passage that appear to be true, rather than the one assertion that is patently false): “George W. Bush is a very unusual person — a good man who is not a weak man. He has many faults. He is impatient and quick to anger, sometimes glib, even dogmatic, often uncurious and, as a result, ill-informed, more conventional in his thinking than a leader probably should be. But outweighing the faults are his virtues: decency, honesty, rectitude, courage and tenacity.” Yep, Frum wrote “honesty.” Millbank, who knew better, didn’t bat an eye or squeak a peep. Nor did the presumably clueless Blitzer. When journalists are this deferential and reverential, there’s no limit to the frequent liar miles Bush can accumulate. # # # Bio: Dennis Hans is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, National Post (Canada) and online at TomPaine.com, Slate and The Black World Today (tbwt.com), among other outlets. He has taught courses in mass communications and American foreign policy at the University of South Florida-St. Petersburg, and can be reached at HANS_D@popmail.firn.edu. © 2003 by Dennis Hans

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (3908)	8/6/2003 9:16:16 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 10965

Why Is G W Bush Media Shy? _________________________ "A Drumbeat to War" By B. Rehak LOS ANGELES, August 4, 2003 - It's one of those little things Mr. Bush says that crosses the news wires, and unless you're looking really close your eyes might miss it, or more probably, your brain simply rejects it. The folks who wind him up and send him out are depending on that. It's very difficult to get Mr. Bush to go on the record about anything, and access to him by the working press is more restricted than any leader in American history. By this time in Bush 41's Presidency, he'd staged 61 full press conferences, and Bill Clinton had done 33 in the same period during his first term. President George W. Bush, after a disputed election, the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, a growing economic and employment disaster, and two unfinished wars (Afghanistan, Iraq) has given a grand total of just nine. In that ninth press conference on Wednesday, July 30, Mr. Bush engaged in the following exchange with a reporter, as recounted in the official White House transcript: Q "Thank you, sir. Since taking office you signed into law three major tax cuts -- two of which have had plenty of time to take effect, the third of which, as you pointed out earlier, is taking effect now. Yet, the unemployment rate has continued rising. We now have more evidence of a massive budget deficit that taxpayers are going to be paying off for years or decades to come; the economy continues to shed jobs. What evidence can you point to that tax cuts, at least of the variety that you have supported, are really working to help this economy? And do you need to be thinking about some other approach?" THE PRESIDENT: "Yes. No, to answer the last part of your question. First of all, let me -- just a quick history, recent history. The stock market started to decline in March of 2000. Then the first quarter of 2001 was a recession. And then we got attacked in 9/11. And then corporate scandals started to bubble up to the surface, which created a -- a lack of confidence in the system. And then we had the drumbeat to war. Remember on our TV screens -- I'm not suggesting which network did this -- but it said, "March to War," every day from last summer until the spring -- "March to War, March to War." That's not a very conducive environment for people to take risk, when they hear, "March to War" all the time." Drumbeat to war? The media? He gave an almost identical by-rote response to another reporter after the Cabinet meeting last Friday, according to the official White House transcript, just a day before he was scheduled to depart for a month off at his ranch in Crawford, Texas: Q "Mr. President, sir, are you surprised, and can you explain why three huge tax cuts and 12 rate cuts by the Fed have not done more in creating jobs to this point? And do you think that we're in a jobless recovery?" The President restated his rosy view of the country's economic problems, then said: THE PRESIDENT:"...And then we discovered some of our corporate CEOs forgot to tell the truth, and that affected confidence. And then as you may remember, Tom, we had the steady drumbeat to war. As I mentioned in my press conference the other day, on our TV screens there was a -- on some TV screens -- there was a constant reminder for the American people, "march to war." War is not a very pleasant subject in people's minds, it's not conducive for the investment of capital." Forgetful CEOs? March to war? Next day he split for Texas. The ‘forgetful CEO' that did the most damage to America is probably Ken Lay, late of Enron, a lifelong Bush family friend and primary contributor, who seems impervious to the usual vicissitudes of Federal Law, living in something of a Bush-devised protectorate at his posh place in Houston. Mr. Bush's carefully recited comments about the ‘true' cause of America's economic grief are pretty amazing, even for Mr. Bush, after he, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, all the President's men, and Condi Rice spent the entire year before the Iraq war carefully and progressively ramping up public panic over the mountain of hard evidence they assured us they had about the deadly Iraqi ‘weapons of mass destruction.' Even Tony Blair was convinced, and it may cost him his job. One could have deduced that Saddam Hussein was about to nuke us all. America HAD to act, even if the wimps at the UN wouldn't. The danger was that great. One could almost feel the fallout from those damned Iraqi nukes sapping our precious bodily fluids. The Bush Administration's fixation on the elusive WMD as an excuse to go to war is particularly remarkable when you consider that four months before the start of ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom,' the Washington Post and other media reported new details in US documents about the Reagan-Bush Administration's then special Middle East envoy, Donald Rumsfeld (yes, the same guy), who went to Iraq in December 1983, to assist in its ongoing war with Iran, where Iraq was said to use chemical weapons "almost daily." There's a dandy news photo of Rummy making nice with Saddam. The Republicans then reportedly allowed the export to Iraq of additional biological agents, including anthrax; key ingredients for chemical weapons; and cluster bombs sold by a CIA front organization in Chile. The press reports went on to say that a 1994 congressional inquiry also found that dozens of biological agents, including anthrax, were shipped to Iraq by US companies, under licence from the Reagan-Bush Commerce Department. The Republican-approved American WMD supplier's list reads like a Wall Street ‘Who's Who' (24 major companies), reportedly including Honeywell, Unisys, Sperry, Tektronix, Rockwell, Hewlett-Packard, Dupont, Eastman Kodak, Carl Zeiss-US, and Bechtel. That's the same Bechtel now working to ‘rebuild' Iraq. War is big business and big business is in power in today's Washington. Big money buys a lot of press, and it also buys a lot of silence and politicians. Almost at the same hour Mr. Bush was giving his rare Washington press conference last Wednesday, his war in Iraq, which has produced no solid WMD evidence at all, killed US Army Pfc. Michael J. Deutsch, 21, of Dubuque, Iowa; assigned to Troop C, 1-1 Cavalry. AP reported he died in Baghdad when his APC was hit, according to the Iowa National Guard. The Dubuque Telegraph Herald reports he graduated from Dubuque Senior High in 2000 and entered the Army in 2002. The paper says three other Iowa men have also died in the Iraq war: Marine Sgt. Bradley S. Korthaus, 28, of Davenport, Army Pvt. Kenneth A. Nalley, 19, of Hamburg, and Jeffrey E. Bohr, Jr., 39, of Ossian. As of Sunday, August 3, 2003, a total of 249 US soldiers and 43 British troops have died in Iraq. According to the Pentagon, Pfc. Deutsch was the 113th American solider killed since May 1, when Mr. Bush dramatically flew out to the carrier Abraham Lincoln for the ‘Mother of All Photo Ops' and thankfully declared that major combat operations had ended. The ‘big' Iraq story on AP Sunday was that for TWO entire days there had been no new US combat deaths. The news about Private Deutsch's untimely death only gets nine hits on Google News today. The routine AP story didn't play wide, but one can suppose it's pretty big news in Dubuque. The Bush Administration is counting on the press totally missing the gooey stuff and buying Mr. Bush's pre-programmed answers that never quite seem to address anything directly. Mr. Bush's handlers have made ‘vague' a vital arm of neo-con statecraft, and it's apparently working for them. Mr. Bush who holds a Yale B.A. and a Harvard M.B.A. has a unique way with the English language for a college man. If you're ever depressed late on a Saturday night, run ‘Bushisms' on Google and among the 16,500 hits you'll find some of the greatest unintended comedy ever produced by an American politician, sort of ‘Inverse Churchill.' That Iraq ‘cakewalk' which neo-cons promised would bring lasting peace to the area has instead created a raging Islamic insurgency, a holy war of perpetual proportions, fueled by the frustrations of the ‘liberated' Iraqi people and their suspicion that they've just traded one tyranny for another. Keep in mind that the followers of Islam consider even the most devoutly religious Christians sent to ‘save' them as ‘Infidels.' The fact that Mr. Bush and his handlers have convinced themselves that major ongoing US economic problems stem from loose media talk is probably the greatest ‘Bushism' of all. It was THEIR war, based on THEIR reading of the intelligence tea leaves, and they think the US economy is in the tank not because Mr. Bush gave the budget surplus away to his rich friends via tax cuts, but because of media hype? Ah, to be George W. Bush, wealthy beyond his talents, connected beyond all reason, and insulated beyond all caring; living in a fine free public house, and safe inside his simplistic world view, a Zeitgeist combining Norman Rockwell's art with the sure knowledge that you can sell anything wrapped in the flag and the Lord. It was a tough week for the other Bush folks though. Tom Ridge, Homeland Security Czar, presides over an uberagency so big it both cut airport screeners and sky marshals the same time it was warning Americans that al-Qaida was up to no good again. Imagine the Keystone Cops with unlimited government money and power. MSNBC reports that Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called the cuts "nonsensical",and he urged DHS to "immediately reverse reported plans to cut air marshals in light of intelligence indicating that al-Qaida and other terrorist groups may have stepped up plans" to launch attacks on airlines. Schumer said that the "proposed cuts...come in response to a $900 million budget hole at the agency." War on the cheap has begat Homeland Defense on the cheap. This fact is probably not lost within the dark caves of the Pakistan frontier. Count on it. For all the tough talk from the Bush people, almost half the airport screeners lack full security background checks, and in the 98 weeks and 3 days since the 9/11 attacks, the Administration only just closed a loophole allowing in transit non-visa foreigners to board international flights passing through US cities unchecked. Add to this the fact that almost all air cargo and ship-borne containers still come in and out of the country uninspected, and you have a prime recipe for further disaster. The radical enemies of the United States watch us closely and have a knack for hitting us where we ain't. It's interesting that every time the Administration comes under tough press and political scrutiny they suddenly warn us of new dangers. One suspects the alert level will only go to the top (Red) if the Democrats pull within four percentage points next October. For the far right, terrorism has become the ‘new communism,' and thus allows wide violation of due process and previously accepted privacy rights. The Reverend Mr. Ashcroft appeared on the White House's own network, Fox News, and predicted both success and failure. Fear works wonders, and it gets people to contribute. One of Al Qaida's own top men, Ayman al-Zawahir, has reportedly released a new tape promising more terror attacks in the US. For all the neo-con chest pounding and the money and blood we spent in Afghanistan and Iraq, it's odd that leaders of Al Qaida and even Saddam Hussein seem to have no trouble getting access to audio gear and getting the word out to their people. The Bush folks also took great pleasure in what at first seemed like a reduction in the nation's chronic unemployment problems. The LA Times reports that the jobless rate dropped 0.2 percentage points to 6.2 percent, but only because more than a half million people quit looking for work and dropped out of the labor force. The way the system works, they now aren't counted as ‘unemployed.' Nifty. Employers also cut payrolls by another 44,000 in July, the sixth consecutive month of such losses, making this the longest stretch of "jobless recovery" in the past half century. It's the worst job market in living memory. That half million jobless people that ‘just quit looking' are about the same number that voted for Mr. Gore over Mr. Bush. Imagine if the 540,520 people who put Mr. Gore over the top (but didn't quite get him actually elected) were to join up with the half million who gave up looking. and each of them got ten new people who didn't vote in 2000 to register and vote in 65 weeks in the general election. Do you suppose the Republicans, with all their friends and midnight powers, could hide TEN MILLION extra votes? Time will tell. Kenneth B. Mehlman, the fast-talking manager of the Bush re-election campaign predicts a ‘close race' in 2004. Considering Mr. Bush lost and still won in 2000, that's an interesting assessment. Would it be ‘close' if he got less votes or more than the Democratic candidate? Sadly, Admiral John M. Poindexter of DARPA will soon be among the unemployed, as he announced his pending resignation after the ‘terror futures market' debacle of last week. He'll doubtless land at a far right think tank, or even migrate to Talk Radio, that popular work release program for Republican ex-felons. The Bush Administration's one actual combat veteran, Secretary of State Colin Powell has indicated he'll also be leaving, even if Mr. Bush wins re-election. As the one reasonable, if seldom heeded, voice at the top of this government, he will be missed. One suspects as the war and the economy continue their downward slides, a lot more people will decide that their good work in Washington is done. Condi Rice may be the first to walk the plank. A bright spot, Mr. Bush and his people have been a true Godsend to the bankruptcy and repo industries. Business has never been better. Most of all this news apparently missed the general public because Mr. Bush's handlers were careful to insert a key bonding item in last Wednesday's press conference. The issue of gay marriage, a sure fire winner for the far right, was planted in the mix, and is all any of the folks on the right (and Fox News) are talking about. The Republicans use fear and ignorance better than anybody ever has in the history of politics. All they have to do is yell QUEER to the faithful and the re-election money pours in. Amazing. So, to the roster of famous harbingers shouting of impending doom, like Chicken Little, and the Boy who Cried Wolf, we must now add the rich man's son who cried havoc and loosed the lies of war. It's hot in Crawford in August, but not as hot as it is in Baghdad, and not as hot as it's going to get in Washington as all this plays out. © Copyright 1994-2003 columnleft.com scoop.co.nz

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (3908)	8/6/2003 10:46:08 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

The Road Diary, Part I __________________________________ By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t \| Perspective Thursday 07 August 2003 truthout.org Barefoot and Scanned in Denver – 115 Degrees in the Shade – Pacific Ocean My Ass – The Voting Machine Geeks – That Big Cross Behind Me – A Flag in the Flatlands – The Dead Soldier’s Father – Meeting Dennis For the third or fourth time in as many weeks – I am beginning to lose count – I am sitting in the smoking lounge of a bar in the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport. My bags, new on July 1st and now well-worn and road-battered, are wandering through the system somewhere beyond my sight. My waitress, whose name was Cindy, asked me what size beer I wanted: Small, medium or large. I asked for the large, and was brought a handled flagon bigger than my head. Sleeping my way back to Boston should be no problem, as long as I have clear sprinting space to the restroom. My laptop has that nifty Encarta encyclopedia loaded onto it, and I used the mapping program within it a few minutes ago, while contemplating my gallon of beer, to calculate how far I have traveled since embarking on this nationwide tour for my latest book, ‘The Greatest Sedition is Silence.’ Encarta told me, after much clicking and a little math, that I have laid down about 10,460 miles of air and road travel since hitting the road on July 16th. 10,460. I have given speeches in Philadelphia, Wilmington, Phoenix, Denver, Nantucket, Portsmouth, and San Diego. I have ghosted through airports in Chicago and Las Vegas, and have seen the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport more than any New Englander has a right to. Before the leaves turn, I will do the same in San Francisco, Missoula, Seattle, Nashville, a whole mess of places in North Carolina, New York, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and maybe a few cities in Europe before all is said and done. I can’t wait to see what the odometer reads once the snow flies back in Harvard Square. The road is an education, especially when you have to pass through fifteen airport security checkpoints with a laptop festooned with campaign stickers from every Democratic candidate for President in 2004. You learn to read faces, and places, and when it is wise to wear the t-shirt that reads “I’m sorry my President is a moron” in seven languages, and when to leave it in the bag. I haven’t left it in the bag yet, but when that metal detection wand took an extra-hard pass across my privates as the security agent read about George’s idiocy in Farsi and French, I must confess to having had some second thoughts. I spoke in Phoenix about Iraq, about the Patriot Act, about the September 11 report, about getting people motivated, about hope, about the fact that George is raising sixty zillion dollars for his unopposed 2004 Presidential campaign because he knows, and the fellows in his crew know, that he is beatable, and that he is going to need every dime of that campaign money to hang onto the job he has so thoroughly despoiled. The hotel shuttle dropped me at the wrong terminal at Sky Harbor and forced me to do the O.J. wind sprint to catch the plane to Denver. This was somewhat murderous, as it was 115 degrees in the shade. As we hovered into Denver International Airport, I suffered a moment of disturbing confusion. I looked out all of the windows and could see no mountains. Actually, I couldn’t see anything. There was a white pall that you couldn’t quite call fog covering everything. It was like flying inside a ping pong ball, and the Flatirons were completely gone. You forget that a lot of Colorado is flat, and for a moment I was afraid I had accidentally hopped a plane to Kansas. I soon found out that Denver was suffering an ‘Ozone Alert,’ and that the clouds had taken the mountains and hidden them. The next four days were a frenzy of activity. I did several radio and television interviews. I spoke to a large crowd at a Methodist church in a Denver suburb, holding forth on many of the same topics that were discussed in Phoenix. I was shown an equal level of hospitality. I watched the sun set behind the mountains with a fingernail moon glowing above the orange pall beyond the peaks. I discovered the wonder of the Quiznos submarine sandwich, a delight absent from the greater Boston area to my profound detriment. I spent an hour drooling onto the carburetor of a perfectly restored 1965 Mustang outside the Rock Bottom Brew House, shown to me along with a hundred other magic details by a gearhead liberal with a gift for bringing old automotive glory back from the dead. By far and away, the most fascinating part of my time in Denver came in a small hotel room downtown, when I sat with three computer engineering/computer software/computer security PhD’s for a rollicking two-hour interview about the wide and varied problems surrounding the new touch-screen voting machines. I’ve been following this story for some time, but these three super-geniuses laid it all out for me on tape. The transcription should be done next week, and when I get it out on the wires, I think a lot of people who have not yet dropped into this story will have a budget of issues to think about. I was required to wage a small war with the incompetents at United Airlines before I could hop the plane back to Boston for a small break. The experience was augmented when I was chosen for special attention by airport security. I don’t mind this. My home airport of Logan was the departure point for the planes that took down the Twin Towers, and so I am a fan of any airport security system that works to keep anything like that from happening again. I have gone happily barefoot through many of America’s prominent airport security checkpoints. The fellow with the wand, though, was clearly displeased with my choice of t-shirts. I stared out the window on that flight home at the immense checkerboard of farmland that is the American Midwest, and saw something familiar even from 30,000 feet. One of the farmers down there had fashioned his cube of cropland to resemble the American flag. Every detail was there for me to see, even as I sat only a few miles below space: Dark green stripes offset by white stripes, and a green box in the upper left corner filled with white stars. I realized that there below me was as neat a definition of patriotism as I would ever see. Any fool can rack a flag onto his antenna. The farmer below me had worked, in all likelihood for quite a long time, to create an American flag out of the same soil that provided our food. I wondered if he knew how badly his President had perverted the definition of patriotism, and the meaning of that flag, for purposes that had no merit whatsoever. Patriotism is not defined by war and fear, except within a nation that is far down the road to defeat and ruin. That flag, I decided, belonged to everyone lucky enough to see it. Had I looked down upon it from a few miles north, it would have appeared to be upside down, signaling great distress. That flag was for everyone, and the only difference was in perspective. Home was nice. Two days in my own bed, and laundry, and petting the cat, before loading up again for a jaunt to the West Coast. San Diego was the destination this time, with a brief layover in Las Vegas. As I walked off the plane in Vegas, I saw hundreds of slot machines blinking and beeping next to the gate. No big surprise there. Sunday night in San Diego found me in yet another church before a large crowd of activists and curious citizens. Somehow, it felt good to hold forth on these matters from the pulpit. Most of my speeches have taken places in a church, under the shadow of the cross. Given the fact that Bush and his minions somehow think they have cornered the market on righteousness and the definition of Christianity, in obvious defiance of the wisdom found in the Bible, I felt like God was there with me to help set the record straight. The man said, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” I never found anything in there about pre-emptive wars or the value of lying to the people. It was a comfort. The last day I was in San Diego was, simply, wild. The Executive Director of truthout, Marc Ash, hauled me down to Oceanside, to a beach called Swamis, and threw me onto a surfboard that was roughly the size and weight of my dining room table. I had to buy a wetsuit first, by far my favorite souvenir from the trip, because the water at Swamis came down from Alaska to say hello. For much of the morning, the water was glassed and smooth. Towards the end, though, a mob of swells came roaring in – called a ‘set’ in my new hepcat surfer lingo – and I caught the beating of a lifetime. I managed to catch one of the waves, and managed to get up on the board, and managed to ride it in. But Marc had warned me to bail before I got to close to shore, because of the rocks, so I bailed. And got rolled by the wave. And came up spluttering. And got bashed on the head by the flailing board. And got slammed by the rest of the set. And paddled out to do it again. ‘Pacific’ is supposed to mean ‘peaceful.’ Don’t believe the hype. That afternoon, barely able to lift my arms above my head, I was brought down to an organic foods co-op – essentially a vegetarian supermarket with a nice café on the second floor – to hear a quick speech by Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. He was there when we arrived, and I plowed through the crowd to get a view. Kucinich, I saw, was sporting a sharp new haircut, and was bristling with energy. He addressed the crowd very briefly and answered some questions. The man, I decided, has sand. As he was headed for the door, someone told him I was there. Came then the shock of my life. Kucinich stopped dead, whirled around, and bulldogged through the crowd to find me. I smiled and reached out to shake his hand. He grabbed it and hauled me in until we were basically bumping chests and nose to nose. He did not give me the standard triple-pump politician handshake, but the triple-grip old-school activist handshake. He said an incredible number of nice things about my work, and about truthout, the very last thing I was expecting to hear. He only had a few seconds before he had to head off to his next speech, but a connection got made in that café that is difficult for me to deny. I am not the swooning type, but I felt after that like I had just come out of the hot sun. There aren’t many politicians who can do that to me. That night, several activists and I went to hear Kucinich give a more formal address at a public theater. Before he came out, the crowd was addressed by a Hispanic man named Fernando Suarez del Solar. Mr. Suarez carried in every aspect of his bearing, in his eyes and his face and his very being – the most profound sorrow. His son, Jesus, was one of the first men killed in this second Iraq war. Mr. Suarez spoke to the crowd in passionate Spanish, which was translated by a woman to the side of the stage. Suarez denounced the war, denounced Bush, and asked that everyone present reinvest themselves in the effort to get American troops out of Iraq. He described how troops fighting in Iraq are being denied standard overtime pay, despite the fact that they have been deployed well beyond normal time parameters. He announced that he would be going from high school to high school on a tour to tell the children not to believe the lies told by military recruiters, lies that caused his son to enlist and die in an unnecessary war. When he was finished, he closed his eyes and kissed a pair of dog tags he was wearing around his neck. The tags had been worn by his son on the last day of his life. A document being handed out described an organization founded by Suarez called Guerrero Azteca, created to help Latinos whose family members have died in the war. The last paragraph reads, “The immense majority of the youths in the armed forces were recruited with deceptions. They are the ones in the line of fire. They are the first ones to go into battle. They are the cannon fodder. Therefore, for the Hispanic community to support the antiwar position is to protect their children. They are protecting their loved ones from going to die in absurd wars.” Then came Dennis. He reached the podium on the crest of a great ovation, and stood silently until the crowd hushed. And he waited. And he waited. And in that silence he began sing, softly, “Oh say does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave o’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?” Kucinich then slammed the podium and roared, “Courage, America! Courage, America! Courage, America!” before spending the next 20 minutes denouncing the Bush administration, the war, and the direction this nation is moving in some of the most eloquent language I have yet heard. There is not a single Presidential candidate in the field willing to say when Kucinich said on that stage in San Diego, for good or ill. The crowd reacted as if they were coming out of the desert to find a pool of ice-water waiting for them. They drank it up and called for more. I learned a few things on that road. I learned that a lot more people care about what is happening than the television would have us believe. I learned that just about everyone in the activist communities I met is ready and willing to join ABBA – the Anyone But Bush Association – to put aside their own hard-core preferences when the deal goes down to make sure that George is unemployed in January of 2005. I learned that, despite my sense on occasion that there isn’t anyone out there who feels as I do and is willing to act on it, there is an army of good people across the country doing just that. I learned that George has some tough sledding ahead of him. I learned that Dennis Kucinich is still polling in the low single digits. The political campaign analyst in me understands this: He has less cash, a few wild ideas, and is less well-known. A lot of people think Dennis has no chance to win, and they well may be right. But I learned that, in the end, there is something profoundly wrong with a country where a man like Kucinich has no chance to win the Oval Office. The point of the exercise, I learned, was to change that. I am off again tomorrow to participate in perhaps the greatest honor of my life. I have been invited to deliver the keynote address to the Veterans for Peace National Convention in San Francisco. I will tell them about Mr. Suarez, and I will leave the wetsuit at home. Before any of that, though, I am off to Charlie's to get the meatloaf dinner. If you need me, that's where you can find me. ------- William Rivers Pitt is the Managing Editor of truthout.org. He is a New York Times and international best-selling author of three books - "War On Iraq," available from Context Books, "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," available from Pluto Press, and "Our Flag, Too: The Paradox of Patriotism," available in August from Context Books. Scott Lowery contributed research to this report.