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

To: LindyBill who wrote (35145)	3/17/2004 4:06:11 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793587

Tanks for the Memories Next to John Kerry, Michael Dukakis was a hawk. BY BRENDAN MINITER WSJ.com Wednesday, March 17, 2004 12:01 a.m. John Kerry is right about one thing: He's no Michael Dukakis. A look at the record shows that in his bid for the White House in 1988, Massachusetts' then-governor ran to Mr. Kerry's right on national defense. Mr. Kerry has not repudiated his opposition to the weapon systems Mr. Dukakis promised to support. Everyone remembers the pathetic image of Mr. Dukakis riding around in a tank while wearing a goofy helmet. But few remember why he staged that photo-op in the first place. Mr. Dukakis was fighting to overcome the impression that he had what Henry Kissinger called a "visceral, negative" attitude toward the military--a fatal problem for a Cold War presidential candidate. Being part of the Democratic Party was a hindrance. Many Democrats spent much of the 1980s fighting for the nuclear-freeze movement. Mr. Kerry joined the movement in 1982, during his successful campaign to become Mr. Dukakis's lieutenant governor, and he used many of its appendage groups in Massachusetts when he sought an open Senate seat in 1984. These were the intellectuals behind the rabble in the streets who protested things like deploying nuclear missiles to Turkey to counter the Soviets SS-23s. But they did much more than oppose building or deploying nukes. They believed so strongly in "mutually assured destruction"--neither side would start a nuclear war if it was clear neither side could win such a war--that they also opposed just about any weapon system that would give America a tactical advantage over the Soviets. That's why President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (which opponents derided as "star wars") was so vehemently opposed. And it's why Mr. Kerry and others voted against funding Trident II submarine launchers, stealth bombers and even the M1 Abrams Tank. Mr. Dukakis understood the political reality that he had to close his party's credibility gap on defense without alienating politicians like Mr. Kerry. So he tried to have his cake and eat it too. Mr. Dukakis promised to cut funding for SDI but not to kill the program altogether. He also offered qualified support to the Trident II and stealth bomber projects as well as to consider ways to get around his budget concerns regarding Midgetman missile launchers. But the bulk of his military program called for spending more money on "traditional" military hardware. He wanted more tanks, not more nukes. To pull off this feat, Mr. Dukakis drew close to "Defense Democrats" like Rep. Les Aspin and Sen. Sam Nunn, then chairmen of the Armed Services Committees in their respective chambers. He wanted to show that he wasn't the equivocating "liberal," Vice President George Bush said he was, but in fact had the support of hawks within his party. On Sept. 11, 1988, a group of Defense Democrats made a public show of meeting Mr. Dukakis to press him on, among other things, dropping the "ifs" and "buts" when voicing support for stealth bombers and Trident II missiles. After the meeting they publicly proclaimed him to be sound on defense. The next day Mr. Dukakis went into the tank for the famous photo. The voters understood that Mr. Dukakis wasn't really a hawk, and he became a laughingstock for trying to convince them otherwise. On Election Day Mr. Bush trounced him. Now that defense is again central to the presidential campaign, Mr. Kerry will have to explain why voters should trust him to combat terrorism when, in the face of the Soviet threat, he favored an even weaker military than Mr. Dukakis did. Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays. Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

To: LindyBill who wrote (35145)	3/17/2004 4:06:28 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 793587

<<his commitment to awaiting United Nations approval before "defending America." >>> Scandal at the U.N. By WILLIAM SAFIRE he cover-up in the office of the U.N. secretary general of a multibillion-dollar financial fraud known as the Iraqi oil-for-food program is beginning to come apart. The scandal has been brewing for years. The first I learned of it was in a New York Times Op-Ed article last April by the journalist Claudia Rosett charging that the U.N.'s secretive oversight of more than $100 billion in Iraqi oil exports and supposed humanitarian imports was "an invitation to kickbacks, political back-scratching and smuggling done under cover of relief operations." After checking with Kurdish sources in Iraq, I reported that half the money allocated to their people had been blocked by Saddam "conspiring with bureaucrats in the U.N. Plaza." Kofi Annan's right-hand man, Benon Sevan, had been named by the secretary general to head the oil-for-food program and report directly to him. Though he could not deny a favored French banking connection, Sevan branded as "inaccuracies" charges by Ms. Rosett and me of secrecy, citing a hundred audits in five years. But he refused to make public what companies in what countries got Saddam's largess. Now, thanks to evidence of systematic thievery on a huge scale, discovered by free Iraqis in Baghdad, the whole rotten mess of 10 percent kickbacks on billions in contracts is coming to light. In detailed accounts, Susan Sachs in The Times, Therese Raphael in The Wall Street Journal, and Charles Laurence and Inigo Gilmore of London's Daily Telegraph have flipped over the flat rock of corruption. Assistant Secretary General Sevan, now on an extended vacation until his retirement next month, denied through a spokesman "that I had received oil or oil monies from the former Iraqi regime" and demanded that his doubters produce documentary evidence. The Journal then produced a document in Arabic that suggests Sevan received an allocation of 1.8 million barrels of oil. Under the U.N. bureaucracy's nose — and I suspect, in some cases, with its collusion — nearly three-quarters of the suppliers jacked up their prices to pay the 10 percent kickback. These included European manufacturers, Arab trade brokers, Russian factories and Chinese state-owned companies. Corruption's take — out of the mouths of hungry Iraqi children — was estimated by Sachs of The Times at $2.3 billion. Hired by the U.N. to monitor these imports was a Swiss-based firm, Cotecna, which was paid out of the exorbitant fee the U.N. charged for overhead. Ms. Rosett, writing in National Review last week, notes that Kojo Annan, the secretary general's son, was once on staff and later a consultant to that tight-lipped company. In denying to The Telegraph in 1999 that he worked on the U.N. oil-for-food account, Kojo Annan said, "The decision is made by the contracts committee, not by Kofi Annan." About that "661 compliance committee," on which the U.S. has a seat and to which the secretary general now wants to pass the buck: a U.S. official familiar with its operation tells me that "its purpose was formally to approve what the U.N. staff recommended. Only the U.S. and the U.K. experts ever put a hold on a contract, and that about items that had dual use in weaponry. Few U.S. firms got contracts, and those that did worked through middlemen to avoid the General Accounting Office." Annan's office kept blaming the 661 committee and stonewalling the press until an irate Iraqi Governing Council hired the accountants KPMG and a law firm to investigate what its advisers told Annan was "one of the world's most disgraceful scams." Under mounting pressure, this week the U.N. let it be known that its laughably titled Office of Internal Oversight Services would look into the matter. An internal whitewash? Not nearly good enough. Will the Security Council appoint an independent counsel to clean house in an inept or corrupt Secretariat? No, because France and Russia had their hands in the kickback till. But free Iraq, backed up by the U.S., is not helpless. Our Congress supplies 22 percent of the U.N. budget, and we have a right to an accounting. Chairman Henry Hyde, of House International Relations, calls this "an outrage" and will arrange for a G.A.O. briefing this week, to be followed by open hearings in April. The U.N. can redeem its sullied reputation by helping to shape Iraq's future. To take up that challenge, it must have clean hands. E-mail: safire@nytimes.com

To: LindyBill who wrote (35145)	3/17/2004 5:36:36 PM
From: microhoogle!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793587

The conventional wisdom is that the election will be close, a replay of 2000. Not if Bush keeps attacking and Kerry fails to respond. Then it will be a replay of 1988. It will hardly be a replay of 1988. Kerry is hardly an inspiring candidate.. however with 527s sprouting left and right who are countering the smear by Bush team and in general there also is great feeling of disgust among many people on the Bush administration's deception about the war, I think it will be close. If Economy and job situation is bad, Bush is toast.