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

To: longnshort who wrote (45033)	5/5/2004 8:46:53 AM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 89467

Kerry campaign chided on diversity By Donald Lambro THE WASHINGTON TIMES Democratic strategist Donna Brazile criticized Sen. John Kerry yesterday for failing to put black and Hispanic leaders into senior campaign positions, saying it raised serious questions about his commitment to racial diversity. In a new sign of growing political discontent among the Democrats' large minority base, Miss Brazile, who managed Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000 — the first black woman to hold that post in her party — admonished the Kerry campaign for not involving more minorities in the development of the Massachusetts senator's campaign policy, strategy and message. Bookspan "The last thing the Democratic Party needs in 2004 is to repeat the failures of its most recent past on matters of race and inclusion," Miss Brazile wrote in this week's edition of Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper. "If the past is indeed prologue, this message has been lost on Sen. John Kerry's campaign, which has failed to understand how to navigate one of the most important issues in American politics: race relations and diversity." Her surprisingly sharp criticism of the party's presumptive presidential nominee was the second major broadside hurled at the Kerry campaign in the past week by a prominent minority leader. In a letter to Mr. Kerry last week, Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza, wrote that "relegating all of your minority staff to the important but limited role of outreach only reinforces perceptions that your campaign views Hispanics as a voting constituency to be mobilized, but not as experts to be consulted in shaping policy." "Not a single one of your senior staff is Latino. Quite frankly, we find this deeply troubling," Mr. Yzaguirre wrote, adding that that raises "questions about the seriousness of your commitment to diversity." Kerry campaign officials deny that minorities are not represented in its highest councils, pointing to deputy campaign manager Marcus Jardotte and senior adviser Art Collins, both of whom are black, and senior political adviser Paul Rivera, who is Hispanic. But these positions are well below the small, tight-knit circle of all-white senior campaign advisers that Mr. Kerry has assembled around him, including chief strategist Bob Shrum, campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill and senior adviser Tad Devine. As word of Miss. Brazile's criticism spread through the party, Democratic strategists yesterday urged Mr. Kerry to get a handle on the problem. "It certainly needs to be dealt with and dealt with immediately. This is something that the Kerry campaign ignores at their peril," said Maria Cardona, architect of a major Hispanic outreach ad campaign for the New Democrat Network. Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr., Illinois Democrat, has suggested that the staffing controversy may undermine minority-voter enthusiasm for Mr. Kerry's candidacy. "The senator should remedy this very quickly," he said. At the same time, a Bush campaign official said that its campaign was extensively staffed by minorities at top policy and strategy-setting levels.

To: longnshort who wrote (45033)	5/5/2004 8:50:36 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Analysis: Withdrawal on the cards? By Paul Reynolds BBC News Online world affairs correspondent Events in Iraq have been spinning out of control - and out of control of the spinners - so fast on so many fronts that the W word - withdrawal - is now being mentioned. Coalition troops have found themselves targeted throughout Iraq Charles Heyman, senior defence analyst for Jane's Consultancy Group, wrote in the London Times on Monday: "It begins to look as though there is going to be a rather messy political solution to the whole affair, possibly brokered by the United Nations. "Expect to see an agreement where both sides can claim some sort of a victory, followed by a rather hasty withdrawal of coalition troops at some stage in the next six months." It is certainly true that on three fronts the coalition is not doing too well: On the military, the insurgency has clearly spread from the few "former regime elements" and "foreign fighters" whom coalition spokesmen regularly blame. Will the interim government be able to command the loyalty of Iraqis to a sufficient degree to bring the insurgency under control? And the ability of the coalition to impose its own solutions has slipped away. The bizarre situation in Falluja is a prime example of this. The sight of former Republican Guard General Jasim Saleh appearing on the scene in his chauffeur-driven Mercedes and his old uniform to negotiate a security role for himself could hardly have contradicted the coalition's original aim of driving out the fighters from Falluja more vividly. And what has happened to Moqtada Sadr, the fiery young Muslim leader, who, we were told, was going to be brought to justice on a murder charge? Not much, it seems. The propaganda war could not have gone worse with the publication of the photos of prisoner abuse. Whatever the origin of some of these photos, the damage has been done on the street. The pictures highlight the problem that the coalition, having failed to make the case for going to war over the elusive weapons issue, is now failing to make its second case - the moral argument that it can bring the rule of law to a land without law. The third problem is political. Images of alleged mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners have damaged the coalition There is now only May and June to go before the handover of "sovereignty" to an interim government. Yet this government will have no power. It will be able to make no new laws or change any law previously decreed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. It will also have very limited powers over the occupation troops, to be renamed the multi-national force. So will it be able to command the loyalty of Iraqis to a sufficient degree to bring the insurgency under control? Tug of war Against the gloomy predictions, one has to say that the will of the soon-to-be-appointed Iraqi Interim Government and that of the United States and the UK to see this through should not be underestimated. Saddam Hussein's generals re-emerging as an alternative And there is always a risk that the herd instinct of journalists and commentators often predicts one thing while events produce another. Christopher Hitchens, the gadfly journalist who has been one of the war's great supporters, writes acerbically of his fellow hacks in Slate magazine: "It's now fairly obvious that those who cover Iraq have placed their bets on a fiasco or 'quagmire'." He is still hoping for an eventual settlement in Iraq, which might go democracy's way: "There are vast numbers of Iraqis - as we know from the leaflets distributed in Najaf, and the blogs from Baghdad, and from the hundreds of thousands who are exercising their right of return to the country - who do not wish to live under the rule of demented mullahs. The pulse and heart rate of the society have barely had a chance to register." The problem is that a year after the invasion, there are still no plans for an election before the end of this year and therefore the "chance to register" for all those moderates is still not available. The whole idea was based on the belief that, as in Germany and Japan after the war, resistance would collapse and that the task of building institutions could therefore be given time. It is instructive, for example, that even at this stage in Iraq, the drawing up of voting lists is only just being examined. Time, as it turned out, has not been on the coalition's side and the race between chaos and stability is still on. news.bbc.co.uk