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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (11213)	10/7/2003 4:10:35 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793800

Novak reports that the CIA paid his expenses for the trip, so there should be some paperwork. I suspect that the Administration did in fact send him to Niger, after getting information that the Niger/Saddam connection was bogus. When he so reported, backed up by the CIA and others, the claim was made at the State of the Union address that the Brits--not us--had info about Niger. Technically correct, but not really the whole truth, is it? Tenet dutifully fell on his sword on this point. I don't see the CIA asking Wilson to make the trip because, as a Gore supporter and part of the Clinton ambassadorial team, the CIA would have known that any report from Wilson would have been regarded as suspect by the WH. Why bother to send a guy who won't be believed in the first place? Is the whole thing any kind of a big deal? Not in my view. Look closely at the Kay report on WMDs. They are a problem that can't be readily solved. But to say that Saddam didn't have them and was not working to get them is just plain silly. Kay clearly justifies the war. We all need to focus on the ultimate issue. If Saddam somehow got hold of a nuke, whether home-made or purchased, the whole complexion of global relations would have changed. This is what it was about. The rest is political folderol to be dealt with politically. If the Bushies can't get out of this one, well, too bad for them but the fact remains that they did the country and the West a great service by getting rid of Saddam.

To: KLP who wrote (11213)	10/7/2003 5:50:04 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793800

BEST OF THE WEB: here are some final recall tidbits: Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, the Democrats' backup candidate, was supposed to capture the votes of his fellow Hispanics. It may not work out that way. A San Jose Mercury News poll of 400 California Latinos finds Bustamante unable to muster a majority; his plurality is just 48%. "Schwarzenegger received a significant 22 percent." As his prospects fade, Bustamante is waxing macho. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that at a debate with Republican Tom McClintock and Green Peter Camejo, the lieutenant governor had this to say about allegations that Schwarzenegger has groped women: "I tell you one thing, that if this had gone on with my daughter, it wouldn't have taken a campaign to resolve it." Bring 'em on, Cruz! The LA Weekly's Bill Bradley--presumably not the former New Jersey senator by the same name--is disputing the Los Angeles Times' claim that the women whose allegations of boorish behavior it reported were not put up to it by the candidate's rivals. In fact, according to Bradley, one of the women "says she came forward at the urging of Jodie Evans, described by the Times as a peace activist and 'co-founder of the women's peace group Code Pink.' " Evans "is actually a former close colleague of Gov. Gray Davis, a longtime Democratic operative and a friend of noted Democratic hit man Bob Mulholland." And she's "the ex-wife of Westside financier Max Palevsky, the man who gave Gray Davis his first job in politics as the fund-raiser in Tom Bradley's 1973 mayoral campaign." The new issue of The New Yorker features a "Letter From California" by Tad Friend called "Jumpers: The fatal grandeur of the Golden Gate Bridge." It's not clear if Friend wrote this with Davis in mind. In an example of the kind of reporting only Reuters can provide, the "news" service reports from Buenos Aires that "Argentines are watching the California governor recall vote with a sense of deja vu and have this advice to offer: booting out your leaders won't necessarily solve your problems." Reuters quotes an Argentine insurance salesman as saying of the Golden State: "They're turning into a banana republic just like we are." On reading Jill Stewart's 1997 article about Davis's tendency to explode at his underlings, we noted this passage: "Davis's hurling of phones and ashtrays at quaking government employees . . . bespeak a man who cannot be trusted with power." Ashtrays? Are those legal in California? As if the end of the recall weren't bad enough, last night brought news from the Associated Press that Sen. Bob Graham has withdrawn from the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. "I'm leaving because I have made the judgment that I cannot be elected president of the United States," Graham said. Somehow the candidate is always the last to know. Sure, we still have Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich to provide comic relief, but somehow Graham's goofiness was special, perhaps because the contrast between his excruciatingly dull personality and the deranged statements coming out of his mouth was so striking. opinionjournal.com