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

To: Dayuhan who wrote (14547)	10/30/2003 11:37:38 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793640

George likes him. __________________ The Daily Northwestern. Site URL: dailynorthwestern.com. Political journalist foresees Bush win By Samantha Nelson October 30, 2003 Though College Democrats brought George Stephanopoulos to Northwestern, his prediction of Republican victory in the 2004 presidential election appealed mostly to their opposition. Speaking to a nearly packed crowd at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, Stephanopoulos, President Clinton's senior adviser, was pessimistic about the Democratic party's chances of retaking the White House in 2004. "It looks like we are coming out of the recession," Stephanopoulos said. "Wages are starting to go up. Productivity is starting to go up. Generally if you look at polls across the country people respect President Bush even when people don't agree with his policies. He has an amazingly strong hold on the Republican party. He's not going to have a primary opponent. I think when you add all that up it puts President Bush in a very strong position going into the next election." Stephanopoulos said he expects the campaign will occur during a good economy and that national security will be the biggest campaign issue, something Democrats classically have had a hard time with. He was especially discouraged by front-runner Howard Dean's campaign based on antiwar outrage, believing Americans will prefer Republican optimism. "I was meeting with Bush officials today," Stephanopoulos said, "and they were salivating to run against Howard Dean so they can accuse him of raising taxes." Despite his doubts about Dean, Stephanopoulos did not express confidence in any other primary candidates. He said Gen. Wesley Clark has lost support because he lacks a defined platform, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was hurt by waffling on the war issue; Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., is seen as too old; and Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., is too young. He added that Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., originally polled high but hasn't been able to excite Democrats or raise money. Stephanopoulos stressed that circumstances could still change in the next year, giving the example of the elder Bush's extreme popularity in 1991, a year before he was defeated by Clinton. He also was hesitant to commit to the idea that America was undergoing a conservative realignment. During the question and answer period, Stephanopoulos discussed his experience as a journalist covering Sept. 11, 2001, which he called the scariest moment in his life. "I got on the subway and we got within one stop of the station and it stopped and went black," Stephanopoulos said. "We had no idea what was going on. What was happening was the towers were falling. They finally moved us one station west and we all got out. It looked like nuclear winter. You couldn't see five feet in front of your face." Audience members at Stephanopoulos' speech were divided about its impact. Weinberg junior Christian Hung said he appreciated the speech as a summary of current political issues. "I thought it was great in the sense that it's easy not to watch the news in college," Hung said. "I didn't know so much about the upcoming election until hearing this speech." But Malena Amusa, a Medill sophomore, said she was disappointed by the lack of complex analysis. "I felt as though he logged online and gave us some facts without drawing the connection," said Amusa, a former Daily reporter. "He didn't give us any facts that I hadn't heard before."

To: Dayuhan who wrote (14547)	10/30/2003 11:41:51 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Respond to of 793640

I object to Boykin’s comments on the grounds that they damage America’s interests What do you have against spaniels? What have THEY done? :-) boykinspaniel.org Don't French Presidents get at least an honorable mention in this "Shoot yourself in the head" contest? :-) If I were Malaysian I would object to Mahathir’s comments, on the grounds that they damage Malaysia’s relations with vital allies And that applies to French Presidents in spades. Pissing off US Presidents is not a good move. I don’t expect anybody to excuse Mahathir’s comments OK. I don't. “the Mad Hatter” LOL!!!! If I had to live in a Muslim country, perish the thought, I would offer to leave the planet and try to breath vacuum on the moon. :-)

To: Dayuhan who wrote (14547)	10/31/2003 12:15:00 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793640

If I had to live in a Muslim country, perish the thought That comment pretty well answers the exchanges we have had on "Comparative Religions."

To: Dayuhan who wrote (14547)	10/31/2003 12:34:16 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793640

The terrorists are going to win or lose in Iraq. They are going to win or lose here. __________________________________ War by Car Bomb By Charles Krauthammer Washington Post It is possible to win a counterguerrilla war. The British did so in Malaya in the 1950s. The United States may succeed in doing so in Iraq today. It is far more difficult, however, to defeat the car bomb. It is on the car bomb, therefore, that the Saddam Hussein loyalists' hope for victory rides. The guerrilla war in Iraq is wearing and painful for Americans. The enemy plants the roadside bomb and succeeds with the occasional ambush. The losses are mounting. What makes success for the saboteurs still dubious, however, is that they do not represent a true guerrilla force. They are nothing like the successful Vietnamese, Chinese or Cuban guerrillas, who were, in Mao's famous phrase, "fish swimming in the sea of the people." The Saddam loyalists swim in a small lake. They represent the deeply loathed Baathist regime, with just a small constituency at home -- bolstered by foreign terrorists who may speak for a general kind of Islamism but are no more loved by Iraqis than they were by the Afghans, who despised them. There is no general uprising among the Iraqi people. On the contrary: 80 percent of the country is either Shiite or Kurd, for almost a century ruled and repressed by the Sunni Arab minority. Which is why most polls show a very substantial majority of Iraqis want the Americans and British to stay and are pleased with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The resistance to the U.S. occupation is overwhelmingly Sunni Arab. But it represents only 15 percent to 20 percent of the Iraqi population. For 30 years, through their own Saddam Hussein, they used their power not just to rule but to rob. They gorged themselves on Iraq's oil wealth. Tikrit was a sleepy town before Saddam rose from it to Stalinist god-king and poured not only privilege, power and protection into Tikrit and onto Tikritis but vast amounts of money as well. The Iraqi resistance, such as it is, is rooted in Sunni Baathists who have everything to lose if the Americans succeed. But it is precisely because they represent so small a minority that they are likely to fail, barring a collapse of American will at home. Which is why the enemy has turned to the car bomb. The car bomb does not require a constituency. It does not require popular support. It requires only one person who knows explosives and another who is willing to drive and perhaps to die. The car bomb is the nuclear weapon of guerrilla warfare. The 1983 car bomb attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Americans, drove the United States out of Lebanon. Commemorated here on its 20th anniversary just last week, it has long been celebrated by jihadists as proof of American weakness. But there was another car bomb in Beirut in the early 1980s that was just as significant. It is now largely forgotten in the West, but well-remembered by the Arabs. It, too, had quasi-nuclear effect. In 1982 a car bomb blew up Phalange Party headquarters, killing Bashir Gemayel, the newly elected pro-Western, pro-American, pro-Israeli president. Syria was deeply unhappy with him. The car bomb soon took care of business, wiping out an entire office building housing not just Gemayel but many top aides and government officials. It was the perfect political decapitation. With Gemayel gone, and a year later the Americans too, Lebanon inexorably fell into Syria's lap. It remains a Syrian colony. Our enemies in Iraq have learned these lessons well. The car bomb of Oct. 12 was aimed at the Baghdad Hotel, housing not just large numbers of Americans but much of the provisional Iraqi government. It would have been the equivalent of the two Beirut bombings in one: a psychologically crushing massacre of Americans -- which would have sparked immediate debate at home about withdrawal -- and the instantaneous destruction of much of the pro-American government, a political decapitation that would have left very few Iraqis courageous enough to fill the vacuum. The bomber failed. Most significantly, it was Iraqi police who assisted in shooting up the car at a relatively safe distance and thus preventing a catastrophe. The car bomb campaign has, however, continued with singular ferocity since. The war in Iraq now consists of a race: The United States is racing to build up Iraqi police and armed forces capable of taking over the country's security -- before the Saddam loyalists and their jihadist allies can produce that single, Beirut-like car bomb that so discourages Americans (and Iraqis) that we withdraw in disarray. Who wins the race? If this president remains in power, the likelihood is that we do. washingtonpost.com