Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (503347)	12/3/2003 11:57:04 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 769670

Jonathan Gurwitz Want fair, balanced? Separate intelligence, politics jewishworldreview.com \| In a July 14 column, syndicated journalist Robert Novak wrote about an obscure mission to Africa in February 2002, made by Ambassador Joseph Wilson at the behest of the CIA. Wilson, who had held diplomatic posts in the region, was charged with investigating reports that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger. Novak wrote: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger." From these two sentences began what has come to be known as the Plame Affair. Wilson accused the White House of leaking his wife's name — a possible felony — to punish him for criticizing President Bush's policies on Iraq. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., the Senate Intelligence Committee's ranking Democrat, called the disclosure of Plame's identity "vile" and "highly dishonorable." "Retribution is their (the Bush administration's) method," Rockefeller said. "They go after the people they don't like." "This is an extremely serious situation," added Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., also a member of the Intelligence Committee. "In their effort to seek political revenge against Ambassador Wilson they are now attacking him and his wife and doing it in a fashion that is not only unacceptable, but may be criminal." By the end of September, television commentators, editorial pages across the country and Democratic leaders in Congress were calling for an independent counsel to investigate who leaked Plame's name and why. Lost in the rush to pin the scandal on the White House was the question of nepotism and the propriety of a CIA employee vouching her husband for an assignment. The FBI consequently opened a full-scale criminal investigation into whether Plame's name was illegally leaked. White House counsel Alberto Gonzales ordered White House employees to preserve all documents and correspondence related in any way to the Niger investigation, Wilson and Plame. "If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it and we'll take the appropriate action," Bush told the press. No issue in Washington has engendered greater bipartisan consensus than the belief that intelligence and the people who gather it should be immune from politicization. For nearly three decades, the Senate Intelligence Committee has embodied this belief and the principle that partisan differences on national security end at the water's edge. Or so we believed. Last month, a leaked memorandum written by a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee's Democratic staff revealed a cynical, partisan plan to help unseat Bush. The memo lays out a strategy to launch an independent investigation into prewar intelligence about Iraq "when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the (Republican) majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration's use of intelligence at any time — but we can only do so once. The best time to do so will probably be next year," closer to the presidential election, for maximum political impact. Rockefeller was unapologetic, dismissing the significance of the memo and expressing frustration with the White House. Durbin said the memo "frankly speaks to real feelings." If Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee believe that the Bush administration misrepresented or misused intelligence in a rush to war in Iraq, then they owe it to the American people to "pull the trigger" on Bush now, as American soldiers are being killed, not in 10 months when it might be more politically expedient. And if the mainstream media wants the American people to believe that it is truly fair and balanced, then it must demonstrate a single standard when it comes to political scandals and the partisan uses of intelligence. "If what has happened here is not treason, it is its first cousin," Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., said. "Of all the committees, this is the one single committee that should unquestionably be above partisan politics." Miller's fellow Democrats in the Senate know this, and so do their silent accomplices in the media.

To: calgal who wrote (503347)	12/3/2003 11:58:33 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Linda Chavez Show-time in parallel universes newsandopinion.com \| "The Reagans," the controversial made-for-TV movie finally made its way into American homes this week — but not nearly as many homes as originally planned after CBS moved it to its smaller, premium cable channel Showtime. I watched the entire three-hour melodrama in order to participate in a special Showtime panel discussion, aired after the movie, along with five other people who were invited to comment. The other guests included Reagan biographer and former Washington Post reporter Lou Cannon; veteran newsman Marvin Kalb; longtime Reagan advisor Martin Anderson, who is also the editor of three published collections of Ronald Reagan's letters, speeches and radio commentaries; as well as two Reagan critics, AIDS activist Hillary Rosen and the film's co-producer Carl Anthony. Anyone who tuned into the discussion, however, might have thought the panelists had seen two entirely different movies, so little could we agree on what we'd seen. Cannon, Kalb, Anderson and I agreed that the movie was not only factually flawed but bore the unmistakable mark of deep animus toward President Reagan. I thought the president came off as more or less a dolt, a man easily manipulated by others, indifferent to the suffering not only of AIDS victims but his own children. It's almost impossible to believe that the director, producers and writers of "The Reagans" didn't intend to portray Ronald Reagan in this way. Indeed, the movie's two most prominent themes were that Reagan was somehow responsible for the AIDS crisis that killed thousands of mostly gay men during his presidency, and that he was so out-to-lunch during his time in the White House that he was nearly impeached over the Iran-Contra scandal. The movie opens and closes on the Iran-Contra theme. The opening shot is of a stricken Reagan — looking as if he is already in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's, a cruel and vindictive touch — as Nancy and presidential aide Mike Deaver inform him he faces impeachment for selling arms for hostages. "The evidence is overwhelming," Deaver tells a tearful Nancy. I could hardly believe my eyes and ears. Ronald Reagan never faced any threat of impeachment. Indeed, when I searched a database of articles from major newspapers from November 1986, when the Iran-Contra arms deal story first broke, to January 1989, when President Reagan left office, there were only a handful of mentions of impeachment related to Iran-Contra, and most of these were from columnist Mary McGrory, a famously left-wing partisan. While Rep. Lee Hamilton, the Democrat who chaired the Iran-Contra hearings in the House, made passing reference in a television interview to the possibility of impeachment if it turned out President Reagan knew funds were being diverted to fund the Contras, but it was an offhand remark from which he quickly pulled back. In fact, Hamilton told veteran reporter David Broder that he would not join those Democrats who say, ''a president should not conduct a covert action without approval of Congress. I think a president has to have authority to conduct secret operations, so long as Congress is notified.'' Reagan was never in danger of being impeached, and Iran-Contra did not define his presidency. An ABC/Washington Post poll taken in July 1987, during the height of the controversy and following the televised hearings into the matter, showed that only 40 percent of Americans believed Reagan had made "major mistakes" in the affair, and nearly two-thirds believed that the president should use his pardon authority to prevent prosecution of Ollie North, the White House aide who was at the center of the scandal. As for President Reagan's putative indifference to the AIDS crisis, it's hard to know exactly what the film's creators believe the president could have done to stop the spread of AIDS. Could he have allocated more money to research? Sure, but we've spent billions in research in the intervening years, with no cure yet in sight. What's more, President Reagan's insistence on faster approval for AIDS drugs from the Food and Drug Administration helped usher in a new era of treatment that has kept many HIV sufferers alive and relatively healthy for years. Could the president have argued from his bully pulpit for "safe sex"? Yes, but nearly 20 years of constant hammering away on this theme still goes ignored by many gay men. The Center for Disease Control reported this week that new HIV infections among gay men were up 17 percent between 1999 and 2002. Perhaps the makers of "The Reagans" will figure out a way to blame this on President Bush in some future made-for-TV fantasy.