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

To: LindyBill who wrote (45499)	5/19/2004 1:13:50 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793954

Kerry-Nader Meeting Unlikely to Alter Race By MIKE GLOVER ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON (AP) - Presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry is sitting down for a much-anticipated meeting with independent Ralph Nader, but there's little sign they'll alter this year's political dynamic when they get together. Nader is making it clear he won't leave the race, and Kerry isn't likely to overtly ask him to do so. In an interview with The Associated Press, Nader said he looked forward to discussing "certain common policies." "I think that's for the good of our country and for the benefit of the American people that are being ignored or repudiated by the Bush regime," Nader told the AP. Nader was endorsed last week by the national Reform Party, a move that gives him access to the ballot in at least seven states, including the battlegrounds of Florida and Michigan. Senior Kerry aides have concluded there's little chance of convincing Nader to leave the race. While senior campaign aides were still sifting through their strategy, aides said Kerry was likely to make the case that the two rivals share a goal of ousting Bush and a joint effort is the best way to go about that. Emerging as an issue was the war in Iraq, where Nader is seeking to rally anti-war sentiment. "You can't have a discussion without talking about the war in Iraq," said Nader. He has been critical of President Bush and Kerry for not outlining a plan to withdraw U.S. troops. Kerry has been campaigning with former rival Howard Dean, who made opposition to the war central to his campaign. Dean has warned that a vote for Nader only helps Bush. While Kerry voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, he has been critical of Bush's prosecution of the war. While Nader and Kerry camps have been seeking the meeting for some time, it developed quickly and top Kerry aides were meeting deep into the night Tuesday and on Wednesday to map their strategy, said officials speaking on condition of anonymity. The relationship between the two camps is delicate, with some fearing heavy pressure to exit could stiffen Nader to stay in the race. Kerry's advisers argue that the liberal Nader drains votes mainly from Democrats and could end up tipping the balance to Bush. Many Democrats argue that Nader cost Al Gore the White House in 2000, draining just enough votes from Gore to give Bush the closest president election in history. Nader dismisses that suggestion, saying Gore was a poor candidate. Kerry has said he plans to reach out to Nader backers. "I respect him. I'm not going to attack him in any way," Kerry said last month. "I'm just going to try to talk to his people and point out that we've got to beat George Bush. ... And I hope that by the end of this race I can make it unnecessary for people to feel they need to vote for someone else." Kerry's campaign also was releasing a campaign study on soaring gasoline prices, showing the average family is paying $593 more for gasoline since Bush took office, a total of $2,102 a year. Families with teens were hit harder, seeing their costs grow by $834 a year. Gasoline price spikes have cost farmers $1.3 billion, airlines $7.5 billion and the trucking industry $6.3 billion, the study said. Those prices have soared by 43.5 percent in Michigan, and 38 percent in Pennsylvania, the study said, breaking the hikes down by states to offer ammunition in key battleground states.

To: LindyBill who wrote (45499)	5/19/2004 1:20:31 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 793954

The UN's war for oil By: Tim Wood Posted: '18-MAY-04 22:00' GMT © Mineweb 1997-2004 NEW YORK (Mineweb.com) -- The UN's corrupt Oil-for-Food programme necessitates a hindsight check. Given evidence of abuses quite early in the programme's existence, the US failed to run through its final option before embarking on a very expensive war. Had the administration merely "followed the money", it would have found Saddam Hussein's courage proportionate to the oil money he was skimming off Oil-for-Food. Matching that were the motivation for French, Chinese and Russian recalcitrance on enforcing UN resolutions concerning Iraq. The tyrant was cosseted and indirectly funded by the UN bureaucracy and sympathetic Security Council members who did a roaring trade in Iraq. Perversely, the very means of punishing Saddam came to help him survive and prosper. The US has done the right thing the wrong way, or at least too soon. How much cheaper it would have been for Colin Powell to use his February, 5 2003 intelligence briefing before the UNSC to train the spotlight on the venal Oil-for-Food programme. The diagrams, photographs, videos and tapes would have been far more interesting and revealing had they shown Saddam's cronies trading oil at the al-Rashid hotel, or UN staff turning a blind eye to illegal surcharges on oil, or money sloshing about in foreign bank accounts, or tankers smuggling oil, or illicit French and Russian weapons imports, or fake companies selling fake goods to Iraq. The Bush administration had the tiger by the tail. Resolution 1441 should not have been directed toward Iraq and Saddam Hussein, but to the Office of the Iraq Programme (OIP). The OIP should have been given one last chance to clean up its act or have UN Headquarters exiled away from New York to a patch of moose pasture in North Dakota, hard up against the Canadian border (whereupon its staff would have shrunk by four-fifths). Had the US applied its military buildup to aggressively policing the oil-for-food scheme, it would have soon choked off most of Saddam's cash flow and in so doing neutralized several threats. Not the least of those threats are pseudo super-powers recklessly challenging American hegemony. An American led blockade would have had the usual suspects bawling about the inhumanity of it all even as they winked at the next shipment of missile motors or Saddam's umpteenth palace built with baby formula money. The Iraq War was indeed about oil, but not the one the mainstream media likes to trumpet. The war capped the fountain of money that rained down on a proliferating anti-freedom league. In the case of the UN and Saddam, never truer was the saying: "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." The US would be no less reviled whatever it did, and there is still no reason to care what the centuries old bloc bourgeoisophobe thinks or feels. However, as Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, has noted, grand strategy also requires simple cost-benefit analysis. Oil-for-food was left out of the equation. A costly oversight. If President Bush is short of a regret about the war, oil-for-food is one to bookmark although the elites would be paralyzed with indignation to hear it. Not all is lost. A thorough investigation of UNSCAM, as oil-for-food has been appropriately dubbed in the blogosphere, could still be very profitable. There are humiliations to dish out and reparations to impose. Unfortunately, the haggling in Baghdad between US envoy L. Paul Bremer III and Ahmad Chalabi over parallel investigations is not helpful. Nor does the White House's silence on the matter offer much comfort. We can surely rely on Paul Volcker and his investigators, who spared no sacred cows in tackling Swiss culpability for Nazi looting, to bring justice to an unaccountable institution. mineweb.net