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

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (521770)	1/9/2004 4:42:52 PM
From: PROLIFE	Respond to of 769670

If Clark had been President, 9/11 would not have happened. stupid statement, even for an ambulance chaser....

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (521770)	1/9/2004 4:44:32 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769670

vote pandering without honors. be court martial if in active duties

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (521770)	1/9/2004 5:00:57 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

One of the campaign's TV ads in New Hampshire, which shows a young Clark receiving the Silver Star, recounts his valor in a 1970 battle: "The first bullet shattered his hand. The second and third hit his shoulder and leg. As he hit the jungle floor, he rallied the troops and directed the firefight." As the Chicago Tribune put it in a recent profile, "Clark is running on the hero myth." t's true that Clark's worldview appeared a little shaky 24 hours into his candidacy. Asked on September 18, 2003, if he would have voted for the October 2002 congressional resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, the ostensibly antiwar general equivocated: "At the time, I probably would have voted for it, but I think that's too simple a question. ... I don't know if I would have or not." That quote, combined with subsequent claims that he would never have voted for the resolution, led to a minor media frenzy, on which Clark's rivals were quick to capitalize. "He took six different positions on whether going to war was the right idea," Joe Lieberman charged at one debate.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (521770)	1/9/2004 5:07:42 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Why We Are Safer By Charles Krauthammer Friday, January 9, 2004; Page A17 "One of the attacks they don't bring up very often anymore is the Saddam Hussein thing, that it's not safer since Saddam Hussein's been captured -- because we now have 23 troops killed and we're having fighter planes escorting passenger jets through American airspace. I noticed that line of attack disappeared fairly quickly." -- Howard Dean, Newsweek, Jan. 12 issue Howard Dean may end up as a footnote in history, but he has already earned a place in the dictionary as the illustration accompanying the word smug. He claims that not only was he right that we are not safer with Saddam Hussein captured; not only has he already been vindicated by history, all 21 days of it; but he has been so obviously vindicated that his opponents, bowing to his superior wisdom, have stopped their attacks on this point. They have not. He has been peppered with questions about this statement, most recently during the Jan. 4 Iowa debate. How could he not? The idea that we are not safer (a) because we are still losing troops and (b) because al Qaeda has not been extinguished, amounts to an open-court confession of cluelessness on foreign policy. The first is the equivalent of saying that we were not safer after D-Day because we were still losing troops in Europe. In war, a strategic turning point makes you safer because it hastens victory, hastens the ultimate elimination of the hostile power, hastens the return home of the troops. It does not mean there is an immediate cessation, or even a diminution, of casualties (see: Battle of the Bulge). The other part of the statement -- we cannot be safer because we are still threatened by terrorism -- is even more telling. It rests on the wider notion, shared not just by Dean but by many Democrats, that so long as al Qaeda is active, we are never any safer. This rests on the remarkable assumption that we have a single enemy in the world, al Qaeda, and that it and it alone defines "safety." It is hard to believe that serious people can have so absurdly narrow a vision of American national security. The fact is that we have other enemies in the world. Saddam Hussein was one of them, and he is gone. Libya was another, and it has just retired from the field, suing for peace and giving up its weapons of mass destruction. (Gaddafi went so far as to go on television to urge Syria, Iran and North Korea to do the same.) Iran has also gone softer, agreeing to spot inspections, something it never did before it faced 130,000 American troops about 100 miles from its border. These gains are all a direct result of the Iraq war. A spokesman for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told the London Daily Telegraph in September that Gaddafi had telephoned Berlusconi and told him: "I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid." The idea that we are not safer because al Qaeda is not yet stopped is absurd. Of course we have terror alerts. We will continue to have them until al Qaeda is extinguished, and you do not eliminate in two years a menace that was granted eight years of unmolested growth and metastasis when Dean's party was in power. But look at the region whence al Qaeda came. Not only has the Taliban been overthrown, Afghanistan just this week adopted a new constitution agreed to by a loya jirga (grand council) representing every part of this fractured tribal society. It is an astonishing development in a country with so little experience in representative government and ravaged by more than a quarter-century of civil war. And it came about as a result of American force of arms followed by American diplomacy. Look at Pakistan. On Sept. 11, 2001, it was supporting the Taliban, ignoring al Qaeda and assisting other Islamic extremists. Force majeure by the Bush administration turned Pakistan. The Musharraf government is now a crucial ally in the war on terror. And now, just this week, another astonishing development: a summit between India and Pakistan leading to negotiations that, the joint communique said, "will" solve all outstanding issues, including the half-century-old fight over Kashmir. Both Pakistani and Indian observers agree that intense behind-the-scenes mediation by the Bush administration was instrumental in bringing about the rapprochement. From Libya to India, ice is breaking and the region is changing. In this part of the world, there is no guarantee of success. But if this is not progress -- remarkable, unexpected and hugely significant -- then nothing is. ">letters@charleskrauthammer.com

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (521770)	1/9/2004 5:11:00 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

The Balance Sheet for Dean washingtonpost.com By E. J. Dionne Jr. Friday, January 9, 2004; Page A17 RACINE, Wis. -- Democrats have so many reactions to Howard Dean that it's impossible -- hard as pundits may try -- to pigeonhole either them or him. This is not exactly 1972 (George McGovern) or 1976 (Jimmy Carter) or 1988 (Michael Dukakis). Nor, as Dean's most passionate supporters would have it, is opposition to Dean confined to "the Democratic establishment." Anyone who thinks there is an effective Democratic establishment probably also believes there are people on Mars, despite those great pictures we're getting of large amounts of emptiness. And worries about Dean extend all the way through the party, from right to center to parts of its left. But every worry is matched by a hope. Bear with me as I go through the one hand/other hand calculations that pour forth from agonized rank-and-file and big-shot Democrats alike. On the one hand: Dean has done an amazing thing by single-handedly building an activist organization and a money machine based on small contributors. This is exactly what the Democratic Party needs. It's hard to imagine the Democrats will again have a money base courtesy of big business and the rich. These guys used to give the party money as protection when Bill Clinton was in the White House and when Democrats seemed to have a lock on the House of Representatives. Now most of that big money is firmly Republican. Dean has shown there's an alternative. He has also created something close to the solidarity of the old party organizations. Once upon a time, people would show up at the local Democratic club to play cards, drink beer and be with their friends. The Deanies are also having fun -- going to pro games together, volunteering in community organizations and just hanging out with each other. Dean has energized the young, as John McCain did four years ago. Something like a third of the money Dean has raised online comes from people under 30. That's astonishing. Foundations have spent small fortunes trying to figure out how to connect young Americans to politics. Dean just did it. True, as one Wisconsin Democratic activist noted, many of the young Deanies were active in politics before he came along. They still give his campaign the feel of something new. On the other hand: Notice how much of the above is about process. What about the candidate? Is he too arrogant, a trust-fund baby, a closet secularist who suddenly discovers religion only after the New Republic writes that his distance from people of faith will doom his candidacy? Why does he keep shooting his mouth off? And how much do we really know about him? Could Dean sweep through the early primaries, guarantee himself the nomination -- and only then, too late, will everyone discover that the guy who won the stealth primary isn't ready for the real thing? No wonder a lot of Democrats are rooting for Dick Gephardt to beat Dean in Iowa and cheering the Wesley Clark surge in New Hampshire. Slowing Dean down will give everyone a chance to take a second look at the guy. On the one hand again: Lots of Democrats are petrified of coming out against Dean precisely because he has built one of the few formidable organizations the Democratic Party has. Thanks to his troops, Dean -- like the bosses of an earlier age -- has earned the power to intimidate people. And again to that other hand: Dean sure looks like a candidate for the Northeastern, educated upper middle class. Yes, his very toughness that gets trashed in the press might give him reach with the sorts of white guys who usually go Republican. But doesn't that sound like wishful thinking? How do Democrats resolve their dilemma? Here are some tests for Dean, care of Stanley Greenberg, the Democratic pollster who just published "The Two Americas," an important book about the current deadlock in American politics. Greenberg believes the deadlock can be broken by a Democrat who combines John F. Kennedy's sense of national strength with a vision of a "100 percent America" in which opportunity and success are not confined to the privileged. In an interview, Greenberg posed these questions about Dean: "Can he speak of faith, can he speak of God, can he speak of the culture of rural and working-class America in a way that is natural? Does he transcend the culture of the secular information world that he's part of and speak in a way that people outside that world can see as accessible?" Those are the right questions, which Dean's awkward forays into theology and Confederate memorabilia did little to settle. Dean won't become president unless he deals with them successfully. ">postchat@aol.com