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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: altair19 who wrote (37527)	2/9/2004 6:52:13 PM
From: lurqer	Respond to of 89467

the level headed discourse on this board ROTFL Yeah, right. Don't be a stranger, we need some mirth here. JMO lurqer

To: altair19 who wrote (37527)	2/9/2004 10:43:25 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

A19: It's great to hear from you...I hope to see you posting on 'The Debate Porch' more often... I'm also a supporting John Kerry and I feel he would deliver a higher standard of leadership. -s2@BushShouldBeWorried.com btw, check out this Washington Post column on John Kerry... washingtonpost.com Kerry Keeps Overcoming By Richard Cohen Columnist The Washington Post Thursday, January 29, 2004 MANCHESTER, N.H. -- John Kerry surrounds himself with what he -- borrowing from Shakespeare -- calls his "band of brothers," veterans from Vietnam and other wars. That's understandable given how Americans feel about military service and the importance of physical courage. But what brought Kerry his initial fame was not his battlefield exploits. It was his decision to turn against the war in Vietnam and ask a congressional committee questions that had no answers: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake?" That was April 1971, and Kerry was a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. He was already a genuine war hero, having received a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. The Vietnam vets had taken over the Mall in Washington -- an unforgettable sight for those of us who were there. Some of them were amputees, and one of them, missing an arm, took me up to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. We toured the wards together -- bed after bed of men missing limbs and other body parts. At one point I nearly fainted. The war in Vietnam is suggestive of the one in Iraq. It's not that either was a totally crackpot venture -- it made as much sense to stop the march of communism as it did to rid the world of Saddam Hussein. It's rather that both were triggered by false information. In Vietnam, it was the murky Gulf of Tonkin incident; in Iraq it was Hussein's nonexistent program to develop weapons of mass destruction, not to mention his apparently fictional links to al Qaeda. David Kay's recent statements have substantiated what long has been clear: When the war started, Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Kerry voted for the war. Twice now I have asked him about that and whether he thought he was "betrayed" by the Bush administration. Both times he said yes. A couple of days ago, on his campaign bus, I asked him what he thought of Kay's statements and whether he thought the U.S. intelligence community -- particularly the CIA -- needed to account for findings that supported the Bush administration's insistence that Iraq represented an imminent threat to world peace. With a startling intensity, he said yes. Among other things, he feels that CIA Director George Tenet has to go. Contrast that with the business-as-usual pose of the Bush administration. Oh so grudgingly it has conceded that its primary reasons for rushing to war are evaporating under scrutiny. No WMD. No nuclear weapons program, in particular. No verifiable links to al Qaeda. Add it all up, and there was no reason to hurry to war. Sanctions and U.N. inspections were doing their job. Hussein not only could be contained, he was. On the way back from New Hampshire this week, I ran into James Carville, and I borrow from him something he said about Kerry: He has faced three of the fears that haunt almost every man. The first is how we would conduct ourselves in combat. The second is how we would handle cancer. (Kerry recently underwent surgery for prostate cancer.) And the third is whether we would face ridicule for sticking with a losing effort. Kerry, who was 20 points down just a month ago, persisted -- and now has won the first two Democratic contests. But I would add something else: moral courage, or indignation -- call it what you want. Kerry exhibited that as a leader of the Vietnam vets. To my mind, this was as important as his battlefield valor, including the rescue of an all-but-doomed colleague who had fallen out of Kerry's Swift boat. Turning on a war in which he had distinguished himself says something about Kerry, and suggests that one line of attack on him is off the mark. He may well personify the Washington establishment -- 19 years in the Senate testifies to that -- but he is capable of turning against it. John Kerry may yet revert to being the remote figure he once was. But in a life of privilege, he has overcome challenges that most men have chosen not even to face. He is not the most affable of men, but somewhere in his gaunt frame is a rod of steely determination that enabled him to come off the mat and win the first two Democratic contests. He is not, like John Edwards, a natural, but in the end he asks, as he did back in the Vietnam War era, the right questions. "How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake?" Another couple of victories, and George W. Bush had better have an answer.

To: altair19 who wrote (37527)	2/9/2004 11:58:30 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Ancient strategies for today's businesses philly.com Posted on Sun, Jan. 25, 2004 The Art of the Advantage: 36 Strategies to Seize the Competitive Edge By Kaihan Krippendorff, Thomson/Texere, 268 pp, $29.95. Reviewed by Cecil Johnson Microsoft's strategists may be surprised to learn that their trial-and-error approach to launching products and services has roots in an ancient Chinese military stratagem called "beat the grass to startle the snake." That advice is dispensed in Stratagem 14 of 36 in a 2,500-year-old Chinese treatise on warfare compiled during China's warring-states period. Consultant Kaihan Krippendorff demonstrates in his new book how those pearls of wisdom may be used in the competitive world of business. Explaining Stratagem 14, Krippendorff writes: "When you approach a bush in which you fear a poisonous snake hides, you can beat the bush with a stick. If a snake is hiding, it will either strike or run away. Either way you will know if the bush is safe, and can decide where to place your next step with this information." That, Krippendorff insists, is what Microsoft and many other successful companies do when they launch small, indirect attacks, rather than large, decisive ones, against their competition. They are, inadvertently perhaps, following the prescription of the 14th stratagem, which says: "Any suspicion about the enemy's circumstances must be investigated. Before military action, be sure to ascertain the enemy's situation; repeated reconnaissance is an effective way to discover the hidden enemy." And: "The image of Microsoft thrusting into new territory and cutting down the competition through blitzkrieg warfare is, for the most part, inaccurate. Microsoft follows a patient, deliberate approach that allows it to feel out the competition as it works its way into a leading position over a course of many years," Krippendorff writes. With each chapter and stratagem, Krippendorff provides an example from ancient Chinese history to further illustrate his point. All the stratagems explained by Krippendorff bear cryptic and intriguing titles such as, "To catch something let it go"; "Exchange a brick for a jade"; "Invite your enemy onto the roof, then remove the ladder." Much of the advice dispensed in The Art of the Advantage resembles that in Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Krippendorff even includes numerous quotes from it. The Art of the Advantage may come to rival Sun Tzu's work as a source of Eastern wisdom that can be put to practical use by Western business leaders. The author includes an appendix that indicates ways to use the stratagems as brainstorming tools. Krippendorff has made The Art of the Advantage tantalizing reading by juxtaposing ancient Chinese history, Taoist philosophy and examples of how some modern companies are already practicing what those ancient Chinese generals were preaching. Any business leader will gain an advantage by using this book.