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

To: Rascal who wrote (26144)	8/23/2003 10:03:47 AM
From: T L Comiskey	Respond to of 89467

'Neutralization of Iraq as a source of terror will be sufficient.'........ If painting Iraq as a 'source' of terror...is The Objective.......... then Will.. does US a disservice........ they were Not........... nor were they a Threat .......... Repeated telling of a Lie...does Not make it True Letting Liars set the terms of debate is a Serious Mis Take T

To: Rascal who wrote (26144)	8/23/2003 4:31:04 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Message 19237430

To: Rascal who wrote (26144)	8/23/2003 5:14:36 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Forum on Iraq packs in 1,100 ________________________________ Inslee, panelists call for inquiry into Bush's claims leading to war THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Friday, August 22, 2003 seattlepi.nwsource.com SHORELINE -- A day before President Bush's visit to Washington state, about 1,100 people packed a forum organized by U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee and demanded an investigation into the administration's case for invading Iraq. Inslee, a Democrat, and three panelists offered a list of complaints about what they described as the Bush administration's exaggerations about Iraq, including suggestions that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were in cahoots and that Saddam tried to get uranium from Africa. "Why didn't Americans get the straight scoop?" Inslee asked. "Democracy demands an answer." Their arguments drew thunderous applause at nearly every turn. At one point, Inslee asked -- to no avail -- if there wasn't anyone in the audience who would defend the president. Inslee said he is supporting bills calling for congressional and independent commissions to investigate, saying some of his colleagues in Washington, D.C., who voted to authorize the invasion felt betrayed when they learned there was little or no evidence to back the administration's claims. He said he hoped such an investigation would uncover who knew the now-discredited uranium claim was false and when they knew it, and whether there was a pattern of the administration hyping unfounded rumors to build the case for war in Iraq. When he announced the midweek forum, Inslee only expected about 200 people to show up. More than 1,000 people signed up to attend, however, forcing the congressman to move the event into a larger conference center to accommodate the crowd. Some members of the audience, which spilled into five overflow rooms, suggested that the United Nations or an independent commission should examine whether high-ranking administration officials deliberately misled the public. The forum's star attraction was Joseph Wilson, the former American diplomat who blew the whistle on Bush's now-disavowed claim, made in his State of the Union address in January, that Iraq recently tried to buy uranium from Niger. The Bush administration sent Wilson, who was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam, to Africa in early 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq was trying to acquire the uranium with the intent of building nuclear weapons. Wilson found the reports to be "highly doubtful," and in July wrote to The New York Times to say the claim should not have been included in the State of the Union address. The administration subsequently disavowed it. "There's no excuse for it," Wilson said yesterday. "It hits on the basis of our democracy. It impacts on our credibility at a very dangerous time." Having taken the "highest risk, lowest reward" option in Iraq, Wilson said, "We run the risk of having a much bigger fight on our hands than we were ever told about by the crowd who said the Iraqis would be cheering from the rooftops" to greet the allies. Another panelist, retired Navy Adm. Bill Center, a former deputy to Secretary of State Colin Powell, said he never believed the administration's claims that Iraq posed a threat because of its weapons of mass destruction. If the United States had such good intelligence about Iraq's weapons, he noted, American officials could have shared it with U.N. weapons inspectors. "Personally, I didn't feel very threatened," Center said. "I don't think many Americans felt very threatened." The third panelist, Brewster Denny, the founder and first dean of the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs, suggested that the United States violated international law by invading, giving the international community "the royal finger" in the process.

To: Rascal who wrote (26144)	8/24/2003 12:57:10 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

Gotta Lotta Stigmata _____________________________ By MAUREEN DOWD OP-ED COLUMNIST THE NEW YORK TIMES August 24, 2003 nytimes.com WASHINGTON - John Kerry is going to announce his candidacy for the presidency next week (who knew?) standing in front of an aircraft carrier. That's a relief. If he had used the usual town square or high school gym backdrop, what would we have thought about his manliness? Dropping his heroic military service into almost every speech has not been enough, nor has mounting his Harley in a bomber jacket whenever a TV camera's near. Three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star in Vietnam should trump one lackadaisical Texas National Guard record, but we live in an age when "reality" is defined by ratings. So the issue is illusion: can Senator Kerry match President Bush's ability to appropriate an aircraft carrier as a political prop? Mr. Kerry, a Boston Democrat, had thought about announcing in front of a warship, wrote The Boston Globe's Glen Johnson, but felt the need for something bigger, to stage a more chesty confrontation with Mr. Bush. Even though his "Mission Accomplished" backdrop turned out to be woefully premature, W.'s "Top Gun" moment is immortalized with an action figure in a flight suit and the leg-hugging harness that made Republican women's hearts go boom-boom. In presidential races, voters look for the fatherly protector. In the 90's, contenders showed softer sides, crying, wearing earth tones, confessing to family therapy. But 9/11 and the wars that followed have made pols reluctant to reveal feminine sides. Howard Dean struts and attacks like a bantam, and wonky Bob Graham paid half a mil to plaster his name on a Nascar truck. Out-he-manning the cowboy-in-chief, Arnold Schwarzenegger strides into the arena in a cloud of cordite, cigar smoke, Hummer fumes and heavier bicep reps. Spike TV, the first men's channel, offers "Baywatch," a Pamela Anderson cartoon called "Stripperella," "The A-Team," "American Gladiators," "Car and Driver" and "Trucks!" Conservatives want to co-opt all this free-floating testosterone and copyright the bravery shown on 9/11. They disparage liberals as people who scorn "traditional" male traits and sanction gay romance. The cover of the American Enterprise Institute's magazine bellows: "Real Men: They're Back." A round-table discussion by conservative women produced the usual slavering over W. in his flight suit and Rummy in his gray suit. "In George W. Bush, people see a contained, channeled virility," said Erica Walter, identified as "an at-home mom and Catholic writer." "They see a man who does what he says, whose every speech and act is not calculated." Yeah. Nothing calculated about a president's delaying the troops from getting home and renting stadium lights so he can play dress up and make a movie-star landing on an aircraft carrier gussied up by his image wizards, at a cost of a mil. Kate O'Beirne of The National Review gushes: "When I heard that he grew up jumping rope with the girls in his neighborhood, I knew everything I needed to know about Bill Clinton. . . . Bill Clinton couldn't credibly wear jogging shorts, and look at George Bush in that flight suit." On the men's round-table, David Gutmann, a professor emeritus of psychology at Northwestern, notes that Mr. Bush "bears important masculine stigmata: he is a Texan, he is not afraid of war, and he sticks to his guns in the face of a worldwide storm of criticism." Stigmata, schtigmata. Shouldn't real men be able to control their puppets? The Bush team could not even get Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraq Governing Council to condemn the U.N. bombing or feign putting an Iraqi face on the occupation. The puppets refused because they didn't want to be seen as puppets. Shouldn't real men be able to admit they made a mistake and need help? Rummy & Co. bullied the U.N. and treated the allies like doormats before the war, thinking they could do everything themselves, thanks to the phony optimistic intelligence fed to them by the puppet Chalabi. No wonder they're meeting with a cold response as they slink back. Shouldn't real men be reducing the number of Middle East terrorists rather than increasing them faster than dragon's teeth? Could the real men please find some real men?