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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (194218)	7/13/2004 11:42:50 AM
From: brian1501	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1577168

As it is things are worse and there was no retribution for 9/11. And you accuse the conservatives of thinking in black and white. We socked Al-queda a nice bloody nose in Afghanistan and caught or killed many of them. So we don't have Bin Laden yet, we'll get him eventually. Trying to say we haven't done anything is just a lie. I'm sure we're doing all we can on that front. Brian

To: Road Walker who wrote (194218)	7/13/2004 11:46:42 AM
From: Alighieri	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577168

Holy cow...it gets worse by the day. Al ============================== Red Cross Fears U.S. Hiding Detainees By NAOMI KOPPEL GENEVA (AP) - The international Red Cross said Tuesday that it fears U.S. officials are holding terror suspects secretly in locations across the world. The Geneva Conventions on the conduct of warfare require the United States to give the Red Cross access to prisoners of war and other detainees. ``We have access to people detained by the United States in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq, but in our understanding there are people that are detained outside these places for which we haven't received notification or access,'' said Antonella Notari, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross. The United States says it is cooperating with the organization and has allowed Red Cross delegates access to thousands of prisoners, including former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. But Notari told The Associated Press that some suspects reported as arrested by the FBI on its Web site, or identified in media reports, are unaccounted for. ``Some of these people who have been reported to be arrested never showed up in any of the places of detention run by the U.S. where we visit,'' Notari said. The U.S. government has not officially responded to a Red Cross demand for notification of all detainees, including those held in undisclosed locations, she said. That request was made by ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger in January during a visit to Washington that featured meetings with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. ``So far we haven't had a satisfactory reply,'' Notari said. An Army report on the abuses at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison found that military police there ``routinely held persons brought to them by Other Government Agencies without accounting for them, knowing their identities, or even the reason for their detention.'' On at least one occasion they moved these ``ghost detainees'' around the prison to hide them from a visiting Red Cross delegation, the report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba said. He described the actions as ``deceptive, contrary to Army Doctrine, and in violation of international law.'' In an interview in Tuesday's edition of the German business daily Handelsblatt, Kellenberger defended the Red Cross policy of refusing to comment publicly on the conditions that it finds in places of detention, preferring to negotiate directly with the authorities. The international Red Cross came under criticism for not speaking out about the abuse at Abu Ghraib until it was revealed in the media. ``Certain people had the impression that our repeated, confidential approaches to the U.S. authorities were falling flat,'' Kellenberger said. ``But impressions can be wrong. When we visited Abu Ghraib in January 2004, we found improvements compared with October 2003, and when we visited in March it was better than in January.'' The ICRC has, however, spoken out on its concerns over the continued detention without trial of prisoners at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba. ``I made it clear in January that we were not happy with the improvements,'' Kellenberger said. ``The most recent visit has just finished. We must now study the findings.'' 07/13/04 07:06 © Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained In this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

To: Road Walker who wrote (194218)	7/13/2004 1:39:19 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1577168

What's Really Wrong With the Market By James J. Cramer RealMoney Columnist 7/13/2004 9:22 AM EDT Sometimes, when big fulcrum events occur, days like June 30 a few weeks ago, and nothing of consequence happens, you have to step back and ask, "What the heck is wrong with this market?" That's what I have thought about endlessly these last two weeks. And I have reached a sobering conclusion: This market is sick from the top down. That's right, the problem with this market is that we have lost a tremendous amount of faith in our leaders to control the situations that currently determine the risk profile of equities. Look, this market suffers from a radical shrinking in the price we are willing to pay for any earnings save the earnings of oil stocks and a handful of overpriced tech stocks that are the darlings of the mutual funds. You get multiple shrinkage from a number of economic areas, chiefly higher rates and inflation. But you also get it when you have incompetence at the top. I have to go back a decade to find a time when we had multiple shrinkage like this, to the period when President George H.W. Bush cast a pall over the market with his lack of understanding about the way the economy really worked. The first President Bush surrounded himself with people similar to John Snow, the current Treasury secretary, and Don Evans, the current Commerce secretary, uncreative, unthinking people who didn't have the ability to see or articulate what needed to be done to improve things. I have been slow to recognize the bigger issues that are just killing this market in part because I wanted to believe that the current President Bush is smarter than he sounds or looks. I wanted to believe that he could articulate correctly why we went to war in some foreign land where a thousand guys have died and billions have been spent. But he hasn't. He had terrible intelligence and bad homework, stuff I fire people for regularly and always have. The market senses this, and that casts a pall over every day's trading. What we see now in the market is a gradual realization that Bush will be forced out in November and a new man will be president, a man who may not be better for the stock market but one who arguably may not be worse if simply because a gridlocked government is better than the drunken spending and the no-vision team we have in now. Of course, that new government will have its predilections. The health care business will be reined in from excess profit if the new team has its way -- I as much as gave up on one of my drug stocks Action Alerts PLUS because of that Monday. But with the Democrats will come the hope of some intelligence when it comes to broader policies. The other day, I happened to notice that I was spending a Laurence Summers dollar bill, one signed by the former Treasury secretary, and it reminded me how far we have descended in intellect and pure smarts with this team we have now. I actually was waxing nostalgic for the Clinton team! So, we can keep talking about how great the earnings are -- and they are indeed great -- or how low rates are or how good stocks are. I think the truth is quite different: Stocks, except for the exotic few, aren't going to do anything here to speak of, not with this team in the White House. Not with the uncertainty of the election ahead. I know that President George W. Bush has been a good friend of the market when it comes to taxing those of us with lots of money. We've done great these last few years. But it is time to recognize that things aren't working. Time to recognize that the stock market is out of favor because we don't trust it, and that the trust is more a function of the leadership in Washington than it is of anything the companies have to say. It would be so much easier to blame the companies, but as you will see when earnings are reported, they aren't to blame at all. In short, as much as it is "bad for business" for me to admit this, we will do nothing of consequence in this market to speak of, save for the speculative world of Stocks Under $10. It's too bad. But I have been nothing if not honest with you readers for so many years now, I can't start lying to you: This market is sick of the leadership; not of the stocks like General Electric (GE:NYSE - commentary - research) and Microsoft (MSFT:Nasdaq - commentary - research), but of the president and the vice president, and nothing that comes out this week or the next or the week after in earnings will change that. That only changes in November.</b. thestreet.com