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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (127529)	3/28/2004 3:29:52 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

But all this evades the question of whether the military or the police are better at fighting terrorism. "Fighting terrorism" isn't precise enough. In order to "fight terrorism," is it more important to detect a terrorist than to prevent him from killing people? Or are both important?

To: Bilow who wrote (127529)	3/28/2004 9:55:36 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Awaking to a Dream ___________________________ By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN OP-ED COLUMNIST The New York Times Published: March 28, 2004 nytimes.com I have a confession to make: I am the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and I didn't listen to one second of the 9/11 hearings and I didn't read one story in the paper about them. Not one second. Not one story. Lord knows, it's not out of indifference to 9/11. It's because I made up my mind about that event a long time ago: It was not a failure of intelligence, it was a failure of imagination. We could have had perfect intelligence on all the key pieces of 9/11, but the fact is we lacked — for the very best of reasons — people with evil enough imaginations to put those pieces together and realize that 19 young men were going to hijack four airplanes for suicide attacks against our national symbols and kill as many innocent civilians as they could, for no stated reason at all. Imagination is on my mind a lot these days, because it seems to me that the only people with imagination in the world right now are the bad guys. As my friend, the Middle East analyst Stephen P. Cohen, says, "That is the characteristic of our time — all the imagination is in the hands of the evildoers." I am so hungry for a positive surprise. I am so hungry to hear a politician, a statesman, a business leader surprise me in a good way. It has been so long. It's been over 10 years since Yitzhak Rabin thrust out his hand to Yasir Arafat on the White House lawn. Yes, yes, I know, Arafat turned out to be a fraud. But for a brief, shining moment, an old warrior, Mr. Rabin, stepped out of himself, his past, and all his scar tissue, and imagined something different. It's been a long time. I have this routine. I get up every morning around 6 a.m., fire up my computer, call up AOL's news page and then hold my breath to see what outrage has happened in the world overnight. A massive bombing in Iraq or Madrid? More murderous violence in Israel? A hotel going up in flames in Bali or a synagogue in Istanbul? More U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq? I so hunger to wake up and be surprised with some really good news — by someone who totally steps out of himself or herself, imagines something different and thrusts out a hand. I want to wake up and read that President Bush has decided to offer a real alternative to the stalled Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming. I want to wake up and read that 10,000 Palestinian mothers marched on Hamas headquarters to demand that their sons and daughters never again be recruited for suicide bombings. I want to wake up and read that Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia invited Ariel Sharon to his home in Riyadh to personally hand him the Abdullah peace plan and Mr. Sharon responded by freezing Israeli settlements as a good-will gesture. I want to wake up and read that General Motors has decided it will no longer make gas-guzzling Hummers and President Bush has decided to replace his limousine with an armor-plated Toyota Prius, a hybrid car that gets over 40 miles to the gallon. I want to wake up and read that Dick Cheney has apologized to the U.N. and all our allies for being wrong about W.M.D. in Iraq, but then appealed to our allies to join with the U.S. in an even more important project — helping Iraqis build some kind of democratic framework. I want to wake up and read that Tom DeLay called for a tax hike on the rich in order to save Social Security and Medicare for the next generation and to finance all our underfunded education programs. I want to wake up and read that Justice Antonin Scalia has recused himself from ruling on the case involving Mr. Cheney's energy task force when it comes before the Supreme Court — not because Mr. Scalia did anything illegal in duck hunting with the V.P., but because our Supreme Court is so sacred, so vital to what makes our society special — its rule of law — that he wouldn't want to do anything that might have even a whiff of impropriety. I want to wake up and read that Mr. Bush has announced a Manhattan Project to develop renewable energies that will end America's addiction to crude oil by 2010. I want to wake up and read that Mel Gibson just announced that his next film will be called "Moses" and all the profits will be donated to the Holocaust Museum. Most of all, I want to wake up and read that John Kerry just asked John McCain to be his vice president, because if Mr. Kerry wins he intends not to waste his four years avoiding America's hardest problems — health care, deficits, energy, education — but to tackle them, and that can only be done with a bipartisan spirit and bipartisan team.

To: Bilow who wrote (127529)	3/28/2004 10:16:35 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

9/11 Hearings _______________ Key truths, and mission, shouldn't get lost in politics Editorial The Detroit Free Press March 27, 2004 It is unfortunate that so much political hay is being made of the work of the special commission investigating the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But part of the blame goes to President George W. Bush, who resisted full cooperation with the panel long enough to force an extension of its deadline -- and drag the work into the presidential campaign. If there was a recurrent theme in this week's much publicized hearings, it was cover-your-butt. Officials of the current and previous administrations, which happen to be from opposite parties, each said they had done all they could and others could have done more to attack terrorists before the terrorists attacked America. Obviously, neither did enough -- and both underestimated Al Qaeda's capacity for evil. Straddling the administrations of Republican Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton is Richard Clarke, a career terrorism fighter and presidential adviser whose new book criticizes the Bush White House for going to war in Iraq at the expense of the more important war on terrorism. Despite White House efforts to demean Clarke and shred his accounts, he emerges as a solid, credible figure who expected a heavy-handed reaction and is getting it. At least he had the fortitude to accept some of the blame for 9/11, acknowledging that he, too, had "failed" the American people on their most vital interest, national security. Now, Republicans in Congress are trying to declassify testimony Clarke gave in 2002 before a closed meeting of the House-Senate intelligence committees. They will be looking for contradictions in his two appearances -- in other words, something they can use to brand him a liar. In the hardball politics being played in Campaign '04, don't expect anything to be declassified if it does not serve such purpose, not withstanding Clarke's own admissions that how he might present things as an employee of the president could differ from what he feels free to say now, as a private citizen. None of this will undo the terrible damage of 9/11. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks cannot ignore it but must keep its focus forward, toward policies to make as sure as possible that America never goes through this nightmare again. freep.com