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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (3669)	2/23/2004 11:46:24 AM
From: JakeStraw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Unmasking John Kerry Andy Obermann, 02/23/04 Several days ago, a story broke that I thought would lead to the demise of John Kerry, and I’m not talking about his alleged Clintonian affair with a woman half his age. No, I’m talking about an old interview the Senator gave in 1970. In this interview, which appeared in the “Harvard Crimson,” Kerry makes some serious statements in regard to our intelligence gathering apparatus and our military—our National Defense mechanism. According to the interview, Kerry hoped “to almost eliminate CIA activity,” and claimed that he was an, “Internationalist, [who] would like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations.” Kerry’s CIA statement is perhaps the most haunting in our post 9/11 world. His actions as a Senator seem to demonstrate that his position on the issue hasn’t changed much either. For example, in 1994, Kerry proposed a bill to slash the budget of our intelligence agencies by more than $1 billion—and freeze spending at that level for the next several years. Luckily, some of Kerry’s comrades in the Senate thought otherwise. The bill failed by a 3 to 1 margin. A year later, Kerry proposed a similar bill set to cut $1.5 billion from the intelligence budget. Kerry stated that, “[the bill] will reduce the Intelligence budget by $300 million in each of the fiscal years 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000.” Kerry was the only Senator to sponsor the bill, which never made it to the floor. Want more proof? Ok, in 1997, Kerry was still rattling for reduced intelligence budgets. When addressing the Senate, he questioned the wisdom of our then-current intelligence apparatus after the Cold War. “Now that that struggle is over, why is it that our vast intelligence apparatus continues to grow…?” This is the same John Kerry that questioned the quality, effectiveness, and scope of our intelligence agencies after September 11. Hypocritical to say the least. Of course, his campaign has explanations for all of this, but actions speak louder than words. Kerry’s actions are making my ears bleed. More recent events, however, ring with even more volume. A seemingly overlooked aspect of a Kerry White House would be his position in regards to our chief enemy throughout the world—terrorists. You see President Kerry would not go to war with terrorists. In fact, to President Kerry, this isn’t even a war. It is a law enforcement issue, a policing problem. To him, we don’t need to use the military to annihilate terrorists and those who support them; we need only to arrest terrorists, put them on trial, and hope for the best. Kerry stated, “[The War on Terror] will involve the military now and then, but will primarily be an intelligence gathering, law enforcement operation.” Is this man actually so naive? I remember trying this for eight years, under Bill Clinton, and what did it get us? Three thousand dead Americans, that’s what it got us. We failed to respond to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, where thousands were injured. We failed to respond to the Khobar Towers attack in 1996. The 1998 Embassy attacks in Nairobi, Kenya, and Tanzania, and the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole also went without a major military response as well. All of these attacks were credited to al Qaeda, and they were all treated as a policing problem—and it did nothing more than embolden Osama bin Laden to reach for the stars, and succeed on 9/11. Kerry claimed that the War on Terror should be “a great big manhunt,” like we’re playing cops and robbers here or something. Wake up! These people want to kill us. They will stop only when America is in shambles and we the people are six feet under. The only effective way to defeat terrorists is to put them on the defensive. We have to take the fight to them! Why do you think we haven’t been attacked again since 9/11? It’s not because they don’t want to and it’s definitely not because they’re afraid of being arrested. It’s because we have brought the war to them—and have, in large part, been successful in dismantling their organizations and facilitating their extinction. Barry Goldwater once stated, “If an enemy power is bent on conquering you, and proposed to turn all of his resources to that end, he is at war with you; and you—unless you contemplate surrender—are at war with him.” I’m damn sure not surrendering and I’m grateful that we have a President that isn’t either. I’m not so sure about John Kerry, though. americandaily.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (3669)	2/23/2004 12:38:45 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

US poll finds outsourcing top concern timesofindia.indiatimes.com <<...the bad news for Bush is that 55 per cent disapproved of the way he is handling American jobs and foreign competition, with just 32 per cent showing their approval. As many as 80 per cent said a major reason for the loss of American jobs to foreign competitors, was that people in other countries were willing to work for lower pay and 77 per cent said a major reason was that investors and CEOs wanted to make profits...>> ----------------------------------------- This morning another poll released on CNBC concluded that by 53% TO 47% Americans want Congress to pass laws to limit outsourcing...Hmmm...this could become a big election issue in November.

To: American Spirit who wrote (3669)	2/23/2004 1:37:05 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

C.I.A. ADMITS IT DIDN'T GIVE WEAPON DATA TO THE U.N. nytimes.com by Douglas Jehl and David E. Sanger The New York Times February 21, 2004 INTELLIGENCE WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged that it did not provide the United Nations with information about 21 of the 105 sites in Iraq singled out by American intelligence before the war as the most highly suspected of housing illicit weapons. The acknowledgment, in a Jan. 20 letter to Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, contradicts public statements before the war by top Bush administration officials. Both George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said the United States had briefed United Nations inspectors on all of the sites identified as "high value and moderate value" in the weapons hunt. The contradiction is significant because Congressional opponents of the war were arguing a year ago that the United Nations inspectors should be given more time to complete their search before the United States and its allies began the invasion. The White House, bolstered by Mr. Tenet, insisted that it was fully cooperating with the inspectors, and at daily briefings the White House issued assurances that the administration was providing the inspectors with the best information possible. In a telephone interview on Friday, Senator Levin said he now believed that Mr. Tenet had misled Congress, which he described as "totally unacceptable." Senior administration officials said Friday night that Ms. Rice had relied on information provided by intelligence agencies when she assured Senator Levin, in a letter on March 6, 2003, that "United Nations inspectors have been briefed on every high or medium priority weapons of mass destruction, missile and U.A.V.-related site the U.S. intelligence community has identified." Mr. Tenet said much the same thing in testimony on Feb. 12, 2003. U.A.V.'s are unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly called drones. Asked about the contradiction between the C.I.A.'s current account and Ms. Rice's letter, the spokesman for the national security council, Sean McCormack, said, "Dr. Rice provided a good-faith answer to Senator Levin based on the best information that was made available to her." This is not the first time the White House and the C.I.A. have engaged in finger-pointing about the quality of the intelligence that formed the basis of administration statements. Last summer, Dr. Rice noted that Mr. Tenet had not read over the State of the Union address in which Mr. Bush said Saddam Hussein had attempted to buy uranium from Africa, a statement the White House later acknowledged was based on faulty intelligence. That began a prolonged period of tension between the agency and the White House that has never fully abated, and may be inflamed by the C.I.A.'s acknowledgment to Senator Levin. The letter to Senator Levin, from Stanley M. Moskowitz, the agency's director of Congressional affairs, disclosed that the agency had shared information on only 84 of the 105 suspected priority weapons sites. Mr. Moskowitz did not directly account for the sites omitted. But he cited an earlier letter from the agency to the senator that said the agency had sought to help the United Nations by providing "the intelligence that we judged would be fruitful in their search for prohibited material and activities in Iraq." In a letter to Senator Levin on May 23, 2003, Mr. Tenet had also said that "in hindsight, we could have been more precise in the words we chose to describe which of the high and medium sites that we gave" to United Nations inspectors. Mr. Tenet added in that letter, "We were focusing on the intelligence we had that we believed would lead to fruitful efforts by the inspectors, rather than trying to specifically decipher our `list of lists' and the process by which we shared information." An intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity described Senator Levin as "obsessed with this particular issue" and said the C.I.A. had done nothing inappropriate. "We provided the best information that we had, and the notion that we held back information that would have been useful is just absurd," the official said. Mr. Moskowitz suggested that the sites about which the C.I.A. had not provided information were already known to United Nations inspectors. The acknowledgment by the agency came after more than a year of questions from Senator Levin. He said he believed that the Bush administration had withheld the information because it wanted to persuade the American people that the United Nations-led hunt for weapons in Iraq had run its full course before the war.