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

To: stockman_scott who wrote (27016)	9/4/2003 8:29:05 PM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

The FBI found no evidence of any type of terrorism or criminal hacking in its investigation of the August power blackout in the Northeast, but the threat of such action remains a concern, the FBI's top counterterrorism official told a House committee Thursday. from cnn.com I've wondered about this, especially after I first learned Burg acknowledged that his company's computer system experienced failures. from the same article. Now, I'm wondering if I'm receiving more "the-air-is-clean-after-the-WTC-collapse" type spin? JMO lurqer

To: stockman_scott who wrote (27016)	9/4/2003 8:58:42 PM
From: Rascal	Respond to of 89467

Empire of Novices By MAUREEN DOWD ASHINGTON The Bush foreign policy team always had contempt for Bill Clinton's herky-jerky, improvised interventions around the world. When it took control, it promised a global stewardship purring with gravity, finesse and farsightedness. But now the Bush "dream team" is making the impetuous Clinton look like Rommel. When your aim is remaking the Middle East, you don't want to get stuck making it up as you go along. Even officials with a combined century of international experience can behave with jejeunosity — if they start believing their own spin. The group that started out presuming it could shape the world is now getting shoved by the world. Our unseen tormentors are the ones who seem canny and organized, not us. As they move from killing individual U.S. soldiers and Iraqis to sabotaging power plants, burning oil pipelines, blowing up mosques, demolishing the U.N. headquarters and now hitting the Baghdad police headquarters, our enemies seem better prepared and more committed to creating chaos in Iraq — and Afghanistan — than we are to creating order. They've also proved more adept at putting together an effective coalition than the Bush team: a terrifying blend of terrorists from other countries, Al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam fighters, radical Shiites and Saddam remnants, all pouring into Iraq and united by their hatred of America. If we review the Bush war council's motives for conquering Iraq, the scorecard looks grim: • We wanted to get rid of Osama and Saddam and the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We didn't. They're replicating and coming at us like cockroaches. According to Newsweek, Osama is in the mountains of Afghanistan, plotting to use biological weapons against America. If all those yuppies can climb Mount Everest, at 29,000 feet, can't we pay some locals to nab Osama at 14,000 feet? • Bushies thought freeing Iraq from Saddam would be the first step toward the Middle East road map for peace, as well as a guarantee of greater security for Israel. But the road map blew up, and Israel seems farther away from making peace with the Arabs than ever. The U.S. has now pathetically called on Yasir Arafat to use his power to help after pretending for more than a year that he didn't exist. • Rummy wanted to exorcise the stigma of Vietnam and prove you could use a lighter, faster force. But our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan may not banish our fears of being mired in a place halfway around the world where we don't understand the language or culture, and where our stretched-thin soldiers are picked off, guerrilla-style. • The neocons wanted to marginalize the wimpy U.N. by barreling past it into Iraq. Now the Bush administration is crawling back to the U.N., but other nations are suspicious of U.S. security and politics in Iraq. • Dick Cheney and Rummy wanted to blow off multilateralism and snub what Bushies call "the chocolate-making countries": France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. But faced with untold billions in costs and mounting casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans are beginning to see the advantages of sidekicks that know the perils of empire. • The Pentagon wanted to sideline the C.I.A. and State and run the war and reconstruction itself. Now, overwhelmed, the Pentagon's special operations chiefs were reduced to screening a 1965 movie, "The Battle of Algiers," last week, as David Ignatius reported in The Washington Post, to try to learn why the French suffered a colonial disaster in a guerrilla war against Muslims in Algiers. • The neocons hoped democracy in Iraq would spread like a fever in the Mideast, even among our double-dealing friends like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. But after the majestic handoff of democracy to the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council, it seems the puppets (now nervous about bodyguards) don't even want to work late, much less govern. As one aide told The Times, "On the Council, someone makes a suggestion, then it goes around the room, with everyone talking about it, and then by that time, it's late afternoon and time to go home." • The vice president wanted to banish that old 60's feeling of moral ambivalence, of America in the wrong. Our unilateral move in Iraq, with the justifications on W.M.D. and Qaeda links to Saddam getting shakier each month, has made us more hated around the world than ever. Rascal @ScoreCardLooksbad.com

To: stockman_scott who wrote (27016)	9/4/2003 11:38:51 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

Ann Coulter gets slammed by David Horowitz her longtime champion...for here incredibly stupid, sleaze rag book, Treason: Many of the inaccurate generalizations of Treason are indeed the hyperbole of Coulterian satire, but unfortunately the most crucial ones are not. I realized this when I saw Ann defending her claims on Chris Matthews’ Hardball: Chris Matthews: What do you mean by the cover of this book? Ann Coulter: What I mean is that the Democratic Party, as an entity, has become functionally treasonable, including what you’re talking about, turning over documents to the enemy…. Chris Matthews: Well, should they be prosecuted? Ann Coulter: I wish it were that easy a problem, but that trivializes the point of my book, which is not that there are just a few dozen traitors out there. It is that the entire party cannot root for America. Chris Matthews: Well, let’s talk about the leaders of the Democratic Party over the years. Was Jack Kennedy a traitor? Was he guilty of treason? Ann Coulter: He was not as strong a president as a Republican would have been. But I’m referring, as I say again, I’m referring to a party that is functionally treasonable…. Chris Matthews: Was Jack Kennedy a traitor? Ann Coulter: No, he was not a traitor. Chris Matthews: Was he guilty of treason? Ann Coulter: His heart was in the right place but he was surrounded by bad policymakers and he harm[ed] the country and its national security. This exchange made me extremely uncomfortable. When somebody as smart and as gutsy as Ann Coulter equivocates over so direct a question – Was Jack Kennedy a traitor? -- you know (and they know) – that something is very wrong with the position they are defending. Equally disturbing was Coulter’s use of the phrase, “functionally treasonable” – as in “[the Democratic Party] has become functionally treasonable.” This is a problematic phrase on several counts. In the first place, “treasonable” is not a word but seems to suggest “capable of treason,” which is different from being actually treasonous. The distinction is important. But “functionally treasonable” is also disturbingly reminiscent of the old Stalinist term “objectively fascist.” This was how people who swore their loyalty to the cause were condemned (often to death) if they deviated from the party line. Stalinists defined all dissent as “objectively” treacherous. This is not a path that conservatives should follow. When intent and individuality are separated from actions in a political context, we are entering a totalitarian realm where Ann Coulter does not really want to be. Why is she equivocating about Jack Kennedy, anyway? Kennedy was not only not a traitor, he was not even a weak anti-Communist, as she claims. He was arguably stronger than Eisenhower or Nixon in prosecuting the Cold War. His politics were that of Ronald Reagan. He was a militant anti-Communist and a military hawk, authorizing the largest defense buildup in peacetime history. What can she mean when she says that Kennedy was “surrounded by bad policymakers” – i.e., policymakers who were presumably liberals and therefore harmed the country and its national security? Kennedy was surrounded by Republican policymakers. His secretaries of State, Defense and Treasury – the three key foreign policy posts – were all Republicans. He launched his administration by declaring that America would pay any price to defend the cause of freedom. He tried to overthrow Castro by force. It’s true that he bungled the invasion but Dwight Eisenhower failed the Hungarians in 1956, while Nixon and Kissinger betrayed the Vietnamese in the infamous truce of 1973. In 1961, Kennedy stood the Russians down in Berlin – risking nuclear war to do so – and a year later he again risked nuclear war to force the removal of Soviet missiles in Cuba. He put 16,000 troops into Vietnam rather than write that country off to the Communists. Why is Ann equivocating on the question of his loyalty and commitment to the anti-Communist cause? frontpagemag.com

To: stockman_scott who wrote (27016)	9/5/2003 12:02:21 AM
From: Rick Faurot	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Ex-Envoy Criticizes Bush's Postwar Policy By Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, September 5, 2003; Page A16 A former U.S. commander for the Middle East who still consults for the State Department yesterday blasted the Bush administration's handling of postwar Iraq, saying it lacked a coherent strategy, a serious plan and sufficient resources. "There is no strategy or mechanism for putting the pieces together," said retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, and so, he said, "we're in danger of failing." In an impassioned speech to several hundred Marine and Navy officers and others, Zinni invoked the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1960s and '70s. "My contemporaries, our feelings and sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice," said Zinni, who was severely wounded while serving as an infantry officer in that conflict. "I ask you, is it happening again?" Zinni's comments were especially striking because he endorsed President Bush in the 2000 campaign, shortly after retiring from active duty, and serves as an adviser to the State Department on anti-terror initiatives in Indonesia and the Philippines. He preceded Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks as chief of the U.S. Central Command, the headquarters for U.S. military operations in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. This was not the first time he has broken with the administration. He was publicly skeptical last winter of the decision to attack Iraq. Underscoring how much his views have changed since 2000, he implied that the Bush administration is now damaging the U.S. military in the way that Bush and Vice President Cheney during that campaign charged that the Clinton administration had done. "We can't go on breaking our military and doing things like we're doing now," he said. He also questioned the Bush administration's decision in January to have the Pentagon oversee postwar efforts in Iraq. "Why the hell would the Department of Defense be the organization in our government that deals with the reconstruction of Iraq?" he asked. "Doesn't make sense." In addition, he criticized the administration for not working earlier and harder to win a U.N. resolution that several nations have indicated is a prerequisite to their contributing peacekeeping troops to help in Iraq. "We certainly blew past the U.N.," he said. "Why, I don't know. Now we're going back hat in hand." Zinni's comments to the joint meeting in Arlington of the U.S. Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Association, two professional groups for officers, were greeted warmly by his audience, with prolonged applause at the end. Some officers bought tapes and compact discs of the speech to give to others. © 2003 The Washington Post Company