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

To: calgal who wrote (5131)	9/28/2003 9:06:07 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

Republican Party seeks to draft Miller into politics By Joe Mathews LOS ANGELES TIMES Arnold Schwarzenegger may be the latest celebrity to transform himself into a candidate for high California office. But if some Republican political operatives have their way, he will not be the last. The comedian Dennis Miller is being talked about, apparently seriously, as a Republican candidate for a statewide post. Three Republican strategists interviewed in the past week have said they want to draft Miller into politics. One, a prominent Republican operative and Schwarzenegger aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that once the recall election is over, he plans to recruit Miller to challenge Barbara Boxer for her U.S. Senate seat next year. The Schwarzenegger campaign even provided Miller a political audition of sorts this week. The comedian, famous for his raunchy and irreverent rants and his stint on "Saturday Night Live" more than a decade ago, provided the campaign's official post-debate spin in Sacramento Wednesday night. Later the same evening, Miller spoke at a Schwarzenegger rally. Miller, who is registered to vote as a Republican in Santa Barbara, betrayed no political ambitions in either appearance. He was filming a guest appearance on the Fox show "Boston Public" this week and declined to be interviewed for this story. But that has not kept Republicans from considering the possibility. Some point to his history of doing serious political comedy and his willingness to branch out from his acting career. He did a recent two-year stint as a football announcer on ABC's "Monday Night Football," though the experiment of comedian as sports commentator received a cool reception from viewers and critics. "There's a lot of us who'd like to see him campaign," Rob Stutzman, a Republican consultant and Schwarzenegger spokesman, said this week, noting Miller's appeal to younger voters. "Dennis Miller is at the cutting edge of biting political commentary." That Miller is even being talked about as a candidate underscores the realities of contemporary California politics; and how Schwarzenegger's candidacy has already changed them. The movie star's ability to transition in a matter of days from the screen, in "Terminator 3," to the campaign trail has prompted other celebrities to publicly contemplate similar career changes. (Actor Kelsey Grammer and tennis star Martina Navratilova are among those who have talked about opening political careers in recent weeks.) "You know all of the people on 'Friends' are going to be available. They are making $1 million an episode. Most everybody knows who they are," says Martin Kaplan, director of the University of Southern California's Norman Lear Center, which studies the intersection of politics and entertainment. "All this drives home the idea, I think a false one, that you don't need any particular skills or background to be a senator or a governor. All you need is ambition and fame." Miller had an Emmy Award-winning show on HBO for nine seasons, "Dennis Miller Live," and has appeared in several movies and has published four books, all of which have the word "Rant" in the title. Kaplan says that while Miller has name recognition, he doesn't have Schwarzenegger's ability to "chill the enthusiasm of other Republicans from getting into the race." Democrats and other political experts say celebrities are attractive candidates precisely because of the weakness of California Republicans. Not a single Republican currently holds statewide office; as such, the party lacks obvious candidates when high-profile seats come open. Republican consultants also want for well-funded clients, adding to the attractiveness of celebrity candidates. It is that vacuum, political experts say, that rallied Republicans so quickly to Schwarzenegger. Roy Behr, a spokesman for Boxer, said Friday that "naturally, we would welcome him or anybody else into the race." He said the serious discussion of such candidates demonstrated Republicans lack adequate challengers. "The Republican party has gone through a desperate search to find someone who is remotely credible; they've looked at everybody and everything and they couldn't find anybody, so they're looking at bringing in the circus," Behr said. "I think the public has always registered how they feel about Dennis Miller, and that's why he got booted off 'Monday Night Football.'" Whatever his intentions, Miller has been raising his political profile for at least a year. He spoke out passionately in favor of the war in Iraq. He has made frequent appearances on conservative talk radio. In June, Miller spoke at fund-raisers for President Bush in Los Angeles and San Francisco and endorsed the recall. "It's no longer the San Andreas fault; it's Gray Davis' fault," Miller said then, a line he repeated this week at a Schwarzenegger rally. In his two appearances on behalf of Schwarzenegger this week, Miller cut a less than conventional political figure. Known for his literary and historical references, he entered the media room after Wednesday's debate and immediately compared Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante to Sancho Panza in an extended allusion to "Don Quixote." He also used an expletive for toilet. And he declared of Schwarzenegger that "anyone who can negotiate back-end deals in Hollywood surely can resurrect this budget."

To: calgal who wrote (5131)	9/28/2003 9:42:27 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

Anyone but Bush would be a BIG improvement... IMHO, Bush has been the worst president our nation has ever had....He lied to take our country into an elective war in Iraq - there clearly was no imminent threat...He has NOT protected our environment...He has failed to allow adequate investigations to explore the events leading up to 9/11...Our deficit is at record levels -- we desparately need some real presidential leadership. I have researched many of the candidates and feel Clark, Dean or Kerry may end up being the Democratic nominee...They all have much more integrity than Bush -- they all have the potential to beat him too. IMO, Clark has the best chance.

To: calgal who wrote (5131)	9/28/2003 9:44:30 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 10965

House Probers Conclude Iraq War Data Was Weak By Dana Priest Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, September 28, 2003; Page A01 Leaders of the House intelligence committee have criticized the U.S. intelligence community for using largely outdated, "circumstantial" and "fragmentary" information with "too many uncertainties" to conclude that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda. Top members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which spent four months combing through 19 volumes of classified material used by the Bush administration to make its case for the war on Iraq, found "significant deficiencies" in the community's ability to collect fresh intelligence on Iraq, and said it had to rely on "past assessments" dating to when U.N. inspectors left Iraq in 1998 and on "some new 'piecemeal' intelligence," both of which "were not challenged as a routine matter." "The absence of proof that chemical and biological weapons and their related development programs had been destroyed was considered proof that they continued to exist," the two committee members said in a letter Thursday to CIA Director George J. Tenet. The Washington Post obtained a copy this weekend. The letter constitutes a significant criticism of the U.S. intelligence community from a source that does not take such matters lightly. The committee, like all congressional panels, is controlled by Republicans, and its chairman, Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), is a former CIA agent and a longtime supporter of Tenet and the intelligence agencies. Goss and the committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), signed the letter. Neither was available for comment yesterday. The full committee has not voted on the letter's conclusions. The CIA, through spokesman Bill Harlow, disputed the conclusions and accused the panel of not conducting "a detailed inquiry on this study." "The notion that our community does not challenge standing judgments is absurd." "To attempt to make such a determination so quickly and without all the facts is premature and wrong," Harlow said. "Iraq was an intractable and difficult subject. The tradecraft of intelligence rarely has the luxury of having black-and-white facts. The judgments reached, and the tradecraft used, were honest and professional -- based on many years of effort and experience." The committee's letter said the buildup to the war in Iraq amounted to "a case study" of the CIA's and other agencies' inability to gather credible intelligence from informants in Iraq or to employ technologies to detect weapons programs. "Lack of specific intelligence on regime plans and intentions, WMD, and Iraq's support to terrorist groups appears to have hampered the IC's [intelligence community's] ability to provide a better assessment to policymakers from 1998 through 2003," the letter said. The administration based its argument for going to war on the dangers allegedly posed by Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs and its supposed ties to al Qaeda. The Goss-Harman letter may give ammunition to critics who say the administration overstated the threat posed by then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The committee became concerned about the underlying intelligence on Iraq when U.S. forces failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and when President Bush admitted he should not have used discredited intelligence in January's State of the Union speech to suggest that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from an African nation. The committee reviewed the underlying information used by U.S. intelligence agencies to write a classified October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq. The NIE was the most comprehensive assessment of Iraq available to lawmakers before the war, and many based their approval of Bush's war resolution on it. The letter acknowledges one sharp difference between the two committee leaders. Harman, the letter indicated, believes the NIE judgments "were deficient with regard to the analysis and presentation." Goss believes the judgments were not deficient and were properly couched to reflect the incomplete nature of the intelligence. A congressional source said Goss "does not believe that [the intelligence] community's judgments were inaccurate." As to Iraq's ties to terrorists, the committee scrutinized three volumes of data and found "substantial gaps" in credible information from human sources that would have allowed U.S. intelligence agencies "to give policymakers a clear understanding of the nature of the relationship." Instead, the agencies had a "low threshold" or "no threshold" on using information the intelligence community obtained on Iraq's alleged ties to al Qaeda. "As a result, intelligence reports that might have been screened out by a more rigorous vetting process made their way to the analysts' desks, providing ample room for vagary to intrude," the letter states. The agencies did not clarify which of their reports "were from sources that were credible and which were from sources that would otherwise be dismissed in the absence of any other corroborating intelligence." Goss and Harman were particularly critical of the underlying intelligence used to conclude that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. "Our examination has identified the relatively fragile nature of this information," the letter states. It notes internal intelligence agency disputes about whether Iraq attempted to buy high-strength aluminum tubes that could be used in nuclear weapons manufacture, and points out the dual-use nature of equipment in other attempted purchases cited in the NIE. Moreover, Goss and Harman dispelled the assertion, made frequently by administration officials, that they possess more concrete information about Iraq's nuclear intention but are unable to disclose it because it remains classified. "We have not found any information in the assessments that are still classified that was any more definitive," the two wrote Tenet. On this point, the letter said the committee "had reviewed extensively the allegations that there was a disconnect between public statements by administration officials and the underlying intelligence." The letter continued: "We do believe . . . that if public officials cite intelligence incorrectly, the IC [intelligence community] has a responsibility to go back to that policymaker and make clear that the public statement mischaracterized the available intelligence." It does not say whether Tenet fulfilled that responsibility. © 2003 The Washington Post Company