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

To: MSI who wrote (14799)	11/2/2003 12:28:25 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793656

Another Phony Scandal A look at "Windfalls of War." by Richard Starr, for the Editors Weekly Standard Who shall doubt "the secret hid Under Cheops' pyramid" Was that the contractor did Cheops out of several millions? . . . (Rudyard Kipling, "Departmental Ditties") THE ASSAULTS ON THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S Iraq policy grow more cartoonish with each passing day. Last week the Center for Public Integrity and its journalistic and Democratic party echo chamber insinuated that the White House harbors a nest of war profiteers. "More than 70 American companies and individuals have won up to $8 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the last two years," read the breathless press release announcing the center's new study, "Windfalls of War." "Those companies donated more money to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush--a little over $500,000--than to any other politician over the last dozen years, the Center found." The Associated Press soon chimed in with a barely rewritten version of that press release, headlined "Report Links Iraq Deals to Bush Donations." Citing the center's study, the AP reported that "most of the 10 largest contracts went to companies that employed former high-ranking government officials, or executives with close ties to members of Congress and even the agencies awarding their contracts." Then, faster than you can say coordinated attack, came the press releases from the Democratic campaigns: "Clark Questions War-Related Windfall for Bush Backers; Calls for More Transparency" read a typical one, citing, again, the "more than $500,000" donated to Bush by the contractors. Excuse us while we suppress a yawn and go back to our Kipling: Thus, the artless songs I sing Do not deal with anything New or never said before. As it was in the beginning Is to-day official sinning, And shall be for evermore! Yes, yes: Some people are going to make handsome profits from the reconstruction of Iraq, and we should pay close attention that they earn those profits honestly. And, yes, the usual arcane and cumbersome system of competitive bidding for federal contracts has been suspended in the interests of urgency. Shouldn't it be? Is the reconstruction of Iraq not urgent business? Is there evidence that, say, Halliburton, the conglomerate once run by the vice president, shouldn't be the largest contractor in Iraq, where it is helping get the oil industry back on its feet? This is, after all, Halliburton's line of work. Is Halliburton in some way not up to the task? Is some better qualified company sitting on the sidelines? Would it have been advisable to tell the Iraqis to chill while we issued requests for proposals and then took competitive bids for the work? Who knows? Maybe Saddam Hussein's French and Russian collaborators, arguably more familiar with Iraq's infrastructure than American firms, would have underbid Halliburton and saved taxpayers a few million. When it comes to malpractice in Iraq, we are not incapable of being outraged. But ritual incantations of the words Halliburton and cronyism don't do it for us. Neither does huffing and puffing about a very old and unsurprising story--that government contractors routinely employ former government officials, and that individuals at such companies habitually make donations to political candidates of both parties. What's missing from this elaborate insult to the Bush administration (which you can read for yourself at www.publicintegrity.org/wow/default.aspx) is any sense that the critics give a damn about the future of Iraq. If they did, they might have shined useful light on issues like the proper balance between American and Iraqi firms in reconstruction, and the degree to which military functions should be devolved onto private contractors. Oh, and one other thing got left out of these stories. Those profiteering contractors are dying alongside American soldiers. As the AP reported the day before the "Windfalls of War" was released, "A contractor near the Iraqi city of Fallujah died and an American engineer was wounded when their vehicles came under attack Monday--possibly by U.S. soldiers, said the British-based company, European Landmine Solutions. . . . The chief military contractor in Iraq, Kellogg, Brown & Root [a Halliburton subsidiary], has had three workers killed in Iraq, two of whom died in ambushes. Another top U.S. military contractor, DynCorp, saw three of its workers killed in an ambush by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip this month." Some windfall. weeklystandard.com

To: MSI who wrote (14799)	11/2/2003 8:14:52 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793656

Coulter is funny this week. I think the "My God, she has a big Adam's apple" running joke in "Boondocks" is vicious. ucomics.com But she gives as good as she takes. And unlike O'Reilly, she doesn't complain. ________________________________________________ (Bumper sticker version of the current Democratic platform: "Ask me about how I'm going to raise your taxes.") The 'Mainstream' Is Located In France October 29, 2003 THE NEWSPAPER that almost missed the war in Iraq because its reporters were in Georgia covering the membership policies of the Augusta National Golf Club has declared another one of President George Bush's judicial nominees as "out of the mainstream." The New York Times has proclaimed so many Bush nominees "out of the mainstream" that the editorial calling California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown "out of the mainstream" was literally titled: "Out of the Mainstream, Again." Among Bush's "many unworthy judicial nominees," the Times said, Brown is "among the very worst" – more "out of the mainstream" than all the rest! Even Teddy Kennedy, who might be well advised to withhold comment on a woman's position relative to a moving body of water, has described Brown as "out of the mainstream," adding, "Let's just hope this one can swim." Liberals are hysterical about Justice Brown principally because she is black. Nothing enrages them so much as a minority who does not spend her days saying hosannas to liberals. On the basis of its editorial positions, the Times seems to have called a bunch of racist Southern election supervisors out of retirement to cover judicial nominations for the paper. The only difference is, instead of phony "literacy" tests, now we have phony "mainstream" tests. Amazingly, no matter how many conservative minorities Bush sends up, the Times has not been able to find a single one who is "qualified." The Times thinks Justice Brown should be the maid and Miguel Estrada the pool boy. According to the Times, Brown has "declared war on the mainstream legal values that most Americans hold dear." What the Times means by "mainstream legal values" is: off-the-charts unpopular positions favored by NAMBLA, the ACLU and The New York Times editorial page. Thus, for example, opposition to partial-birth abortion – opposed by 70 percent of the American people – is "out of the mainstream." Support for the death penalty – supported by 70 percent of the American people – is "out of the mainstream." Opposition to government-sanctioned race discrimination – which voters in the largest state in the nation put on an initiative titled Proposition 209 and enacted into law – is "out of the mainstream." Opposition to gay marriage – opposed by 60 percent of the American people – is "out of the mainstream." Failing to recognize that totally nude dancing is "speech" is "out of the mainstream." Questioning whether gay Scoutmasters should be taking 14-year-old boys on overnight sleepovers in the woods is "out of the mainstream." I guess if your "mainstream" includes Roman Polanski, Michael Moore, Howard Dean and Jacques Chirac, then Brown really is "out of the mainstream." This proverbial "stream" they're constantly referring to is evidently located somewhere in France. Liberals are always complaining that they haven't figured out how to distill their message to slogans and bumper stickers – as they allege Republicans have. Though it can't be easy to fit the entire Communist Manifesto on a bumper sticker, I beg to differ. (Bumper sticker version of the current Democratic platform: "Ask me about how I'm going to raise your taxes.") The problem is, if Democrats ever dared speak coherently, the American people would lynch them. Fortunately for liberals, soccer moms hear that a nominee is "extreme" and "out the mainstream" and are too frightened to ask for details. (Ironically, based on ticket sales and TV ratings, soccer is also out of the mainstream.) In addition to the fact that she is black and "out of the mainstream," the first item in the Times' bill of particulars against Brown was this: "She regularly stakes out extreme positions, often dissenting alone. In one case, her court ordered a rental car company to stop its supervisor from calling Hispanic employees by racial epithets. Justice Brown dissented, arguing that doing so violated the company's free-speech rights." Despite the Times' implication that Brown was "dissenting alone" in this case, she was not. The opinion of the California Supreme Court in the case, Aguilar v. Avis, was as closely divided as it gets: 4-3. Among the dissenters was Stanley Mosk, who was once described by the Los Angeles Times as "the court's most liberal member." When Mosk died in 2001, his obituary in The New York Times described him as "the only liberal on the seven-member court." I suppose if the Times had mentioned that a prominent liberal jurist had agreed with Brown in Aguilar, it would be harder to frighten silly women with that "out of the mainstream" babble. But the real beauty part of Brown's dissent in Aguilar is that she was vindicating a constitutional principle that is second in importance only to abortion for liberals: no prior restraints on speech. In a major victory for Avis, the jury rejected almost all of the claims against Avis by Hispanic employees, but did find that two managers – only one of whom still worked at Avis – had called Hispanics names. So the lower-court judge got the idea to issue an injunction prohibiting one single Avis manager from ever using derogatory language about Avis' Hispanic employees. The injunction was broad enough to prevent the manager from using such language in his home, out of earshot of his employees, in a joking or friendly manner, as part of a hypothetical example, or even if his speech were incapable of creating a "hostile environment" under the law. Questions were also raised about whether he was even allowed to chuckle at the little dog in those "Yo quiero Taco Bell" TV commercials. It was basically a bill of attainder against this one manager (who was himself married to a Hispanic). I note that liberals laughed at the idea that a "hostile environment" could be created by a single incident of a governor dropping his pants and asking a subordinate to "kiss it." But the mere speculative threat of a manager saying "wetback" – one time – was such a threat to the stability of the nation that the Times backed a prior restraint on the manager's speech. Usually The New York Times is citing the law's antagonism to prior restraints on speech in order to wax eloquent about the Supreme Court's "landmark decision in the Pentagon Papers case." In a ruling that celebrated the very essence of the First Amendment, the court ruled that the government couldn't stop the Treason Times from publishing classified national-security documents. As the Times put it, that case had "made it clear that only a showing of concrete, immediate risk to the nation could justify a judicial order imposing a prior restraint on any kind of publication." But apparently, there is one interest even more vital than preventing an immediate risk to the nation: stopping a supervisor someplace in America from ever using the word "spic." Anyone who disagrees is "out of the mainstream." And any minority who is not duly grateful to liberals for supporting prior restraints against certain words is only qualified to be the maid. anncoulter.org