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

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (52745)	8/4/2004 11:14:25 AM
From: Mannie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Haaaa, now that is funny.

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (52745)	8/4/2004 11:25:10 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

9/11 Commission Chimera ____________________________ by Ray McGovern Published on Tuesday, August 3, 2004 There they go again, I thought to myself while listening Friday to 9/11 Commission Chair, Gov. Tom Kean, tell Senators for the umpteenth time, “I do not find today anyone really in charge of the intelligence community.” Kean’s colleagues have been singing from the same sheet of music. Jamie Gorelick: “The authorities to act cohesively do not exist.” Commission Vice Chair Lee Hamilton shared with the Senators his frustration at the answer he got when he kept asking intelligence community officials who is in charge. “The President,” they said. Hamilton branded this “not a very satisfactory answer,” adding, “no one would say that the Director of Central Intelligence is in charge.” It need not be so. During my 27-years at the Central Intelligence Agency I served under nine directors and worked closely with four of them. They were in charge. One of them, Admiral Stansfield Turner, came to the C.I.A. from his post as commander of the 6th Fleet with a keen appreciation of the need for the authority necessary to carry out his responsibilities. Recognizing that his authority over the intelligence community was largely ad referendum to the president, he went to President Carter and obtained what was needed. Writing in Sunday’s Washington Post, Turner recounted that Carter issued a presidential executive order giving DCI Turner authority over all 15 intelligence agencies “to reallocate funds and people among them and to set priorities for both collecting and analyzing intelligence.” Turner notes, “This enabled a far greater degree of coordination than we have today.” So if today “no one is in charge,” it does not have to be that way. Hamilton’s comment notwithstanding, it is a completely satisfactory answer that the president is in charge, and that he need only empower the DCI by executive order to enable him to get the job done. Did the commission fail to solicit Admiral Turner’s views during its long investigation?…or fail to take them into account? It is difficult to believe that it is a totally new concept to the commission that, as Turner puts it, “the recommended position of National Intelligence Director (NID) already exists…It is the Director of Central Intelligence created by the National Security Act of 1947, with responsibility for coordinating the nation’s 15 intelligence agencies.” Did commission staff miss Turner’s thoughtful op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor of May 28, 2002, in which he emphasized that “With a stroke of the pen tomorrow, the president could make the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) responsible for ensuring coordination and give him/her the authority to do so…and thus move a good distance toward rectifying the failure last summer to deduce what would happen on Sept. 11.” Turner was quick to add, “Without the president’s personal intervention and exercise of decisive leadership,” one cannot ensure that future performance will be better. Fast Track…to ??? Instead, President George W. Bush chose yesterday to go with the political flow and endorse the commission’s recommendation for a National Intelligence Director—but without the teeth of budgetary authority over the intelligence community. This won’t get anywhere and, arguably, that is just as well. Admiral Turner’s article on Sunday reiterated what so many others have been saying—and with good reason; i. e., the last thing we need is a new layer of bureaucracy. This truism, which should be self-evident, was spoken first by one who ought to know, Tom Ridge, head of the recently created Department of Homeland Security. I was struck by his very quick—and somewhat cryptic—comment on the proposal for a National Intelligence Director: “I don’t think you need a czar,” Ridge said on Fox News Channel. “We already have one level of bureaucracy that we don’t need,” said the czar of Homeland Security, who reportedly has decided to quit at the end of the year. When the commission report was released on July 22, I ran into 9/11 Commissioner Slade Gorton at the BBC TV studio in Washington where we were each being interviewed. I used the opportunity to voice my skepticism regarding whether the proposed post of NID is really necessary, noting that the DCI can already discharge most of the tasks in the portfolio of the proposed NID. Gorton gave a wince/smile and then whispered in my ear, “Yes, but he didn’t use those authorities.” He was then called in for his live interview, so I was unable to ask the obvious follow-up question: If the main problem is a dearth of courage or competence, or a “lack of imagination,” how is adding another bureaucratic level going to fix that? My brief encounter with Gorton came to mind as I read a short piece in Sunday’s Washington Post by William Odom, the highly respected former Director of the National Security Agency: “No organizational design will compensate for incompetent incumbents…When we ask how to improve the intelligence community’s performance, we must recognize that it cannot be much better than the performance of the policymakers and commanders who own it.” I am certain that the 9/11 commissioners mean well. How they came up with the NID proposal may be explained by the hubris that often clings to senior folks with “former ___” titles, even when they wander far from their area of expertise and experience. The discussion of the NID proposal makes it clear that the commissioners lack a basic understanding of the intelligence community—indeed, of how things work in the executive branch of government. This naiveté shines through with equal clarity in their proposal to give a National Intelligence Director unprecedentedly wide budgetary authority. The past few decades are littered with abortive proposals to give the Director of Central Intelligence authority over the Pentagon’s intelligence budget. This, quite simply, will never happen, and there is a reasonable argument that it never should. If naiveté sounds harsh, I make no apology. Much is at stake; there has been enough pontificating; it is time for plain speaking—the more so, inasmuch as so many influential people, who cannot be depended upon to take the time to study the commission’s recommendations, are already fawning over them as a deus ex machina. All ten of the commissioners are either politicians or lawyers; some are both. Not one has worked in the intelligence community; only two have a modicum of experience in the executive branch of the federal government (John Lehman, who was Secretary of the Navy for six years under President Ronald Reagan and Jamie Gorelick, who was Deputy Attorney General for three years under President Bill Clinton). Philip Zelikow, executive director of the commission also lacks executive experience in the federal government. It was Zelikow who told an interviewer that the commission’s recommendations are “not a panacea. We may not have the right answers.” He got that right. “Wacky” The unseemly, “fast-track” haste to judgment is, in the well-chosen adjective used by former State Department intelligence director, Phyllis Oakley, “wacky.” But as the election approaches, no candidate can risk appearing soft on terrorism by raising the necessary questions regarding how a reconfigured intelligence structure would really work. Even before hearing testimony at Friday’s first hearing by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, Chairwoman Susan Collins of Maine and Vice Chairman Joe Lieberman of Connecticut expressed support for creating the post of national intelligence director. Committee members proceeded to fawn over Kean and Hamilton, upon whom they are relying for expertise on intelligence community issues that are as complicated as they are important. Mischievous Commissions Warning: Intelligence reform proposals and politics are a noxious mix. And experience has proved that congressionally mandated commissions often do more harm—serious harm—than good. In 1996, for example, the Aspin-Brown “Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community” recommended transferring to the Defense Department the Director of Central Intelligence’s responsibility for processing and disseminating satellite imagery. Understandably, the Senate Intelligence Committee expressed serious misgivings at this evisceration of the DCI’s charter for all-source analysis but in the end acquiesced and the legislation passed. The practical result? Today Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has imagery interpretation under his aegis. I believe that this goes a long way toward explaining why our extremely sophisticated satellites and imagery analysts were unable to check and disprove the spurious reporting served up by imaginative Iraqi defectors regarding weapons of mass destruction. Ceding imagery analysis to the Pentagon was clearly an egregious mistake with profound implications for the objectivity of intelligence collection and analysis. But this seems to have escaped the attention of the 9/11 commission—and our lethargic mainstream press. Now think back to 1998 when the congressionally mandated “Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States” led by Donald Rumsfeld succeeded in revising a 1995 intelligence community estimate in order to exaggerate the strategic threat from countries like North Korea. Key conclusions—since proven wrong—embodied in the Rumsfeld-revised estimate met his immediate need quite nicely by greasing the skids for early deployment of a multi-billion dollar, unproven anti-ballistic missile system. That whole exercise wreaked havoc on morale among honest analysts—the more so as they watched the analyst who chaired the revised estimate go on to bigger and better things. A man who gets the desired results, he was later handpicked to chair the infamous—and equally wrong—estimate of October 1, 2002 on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Ironically, Congress never adopted the prescient recommendations of the Hart-Rudman “United States Commission on National Security/21st Century.” Had those recommendations been given appropriate attention, there might have been no 9/11. 9/11 Families What really rankles is the fraud being perpetrated on the families of the victims of 9/11, unintentional though it may be. The families pressed heroically for a non-partisan, independent investigation. What they got was a bipolar panel, thoroughly partisan at each pole, who nonetheless grew to like one another and decided to settle for the lowest common denominator and—worse still—to hold no one accountable. Many of the families evidenced a deep need for some reason to hope that, if they were tenacious enough, some good could be extracted from the experience of that horrible day; that there was some reason to hope that by following up on their terrible loss they might contribute in some way to preventing similar tragedies in the future. To what can all this be compared? It is as though their van broke down on the New Jersey turnpike. Another van with ten well meaning senior executives stops to help. Only two of the ten have any experience with motor vehicles: one spent three years at an auto manufacturer’s corporate headquarters; the other devoted six years to running a trucking enterprise. None had taken Automechanics-101. No matter. They fall to the task of diagnosing the van’s problem anyway and come up with recommended solutions that are as good as their expertise in auto mechanics. Hope? There is always hope. I have the highest respect for the leaders of the 9/11 families. Gradually they will see that: Treating merely the symptoms of terrorism is quixotic; The soil and roots of terrorism must be dug and uncovered; As the 9/11 report acknowledges in a very subdued way, it is Washington’s strong bias toward Israel and its invasion of Iraq that produce the long lines at al-Qaeda recruiting stations and brings on code-orange alerts; That our current approach to defeating terrorism by trying to kill all the terrorists is akin to trying to eradicate malaria by shooting all the mosquitoes. No, we have to drain the swamp where the terrorists breed. It is important to remember that without the courage of the families there would have been no 9/11 commission. They continue to merit and enjoy credibility and clout that politicians lack on this important issue. But there is a danger that they could jeopardize this by letting themselves become political pawns over the next three months. Rather than being co-opted by the commissioners into lobbying for dubious proposals, the families may wish to consider taking a well-deserved break from that and turn their attention instead to the key question of which of the candidates for president would be most likely to prevent another 9/11. Why the Rush? Think about it. If there is substance behind the heightened alerts to terrorist attack before the election, a middle-schooler could conclude that this is precisely the wrong time to be implementing serious reforms of the kind recommended. These would inevitably be disruptive in the extreme. This alone would strongly suggest applying the brakes and letting the new Congress examine the whole problem afresh. Meanwhile, there is a quick fix for one key issue. As former DCI Stansfield Turner has indicated, President Bush could immediately sign an executive order giving the Acting DCI the authority that Turner enjoyed to force better coordination among the various intelligence agencies. Odd that this did not occur to the commission. ______________________________ Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He authored “A Compromised Central Intelligence Agency: What Can Be Done?” in Patriotism, Democracy, and Common Sense: Restoring America’s Promise at Home and Abroad to be published by the Milton Eisenhower Foundation in October. commondreams.org

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (52745)	8/4/2004 6:41:40 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

Bush's Biggest Deficit: Consistency ____________________________________ This year's budgetary shortfall will be bigger than ever -- but by White House math, that's a victory By Howard Gleckman Business Week Updated: 8:00 p.m. ET Aug. 2, 2004 In its latest fiscal forecast, released on July 30, the Bush Administration projects the deficit for the year ending on Sept. 30 will hit $445 billion. That would be $70 billion more than the record $375 billion deficit we hit last year. According to the White House and its GOP allies, this shows great progress in the battle against deficits. "Because the President's economic policies are working," says Budget Director Joshua B. Bolten, "We are ahead of pace to meet the goal of cutting the deficit in half within five years." Adds House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle [R-Okla.]: "Our budget outlook has significantly improved in the past seven months due to strong economic growth and spending restraint." MISOVERESTIMATE. Say what? How does the idea of the deficit getting $70 billion bigger translate into fiscal success? It's easy, when you combine Washington's bizarre budget accounting rules, the increasingly superheated campaign season, and some Orwellian rhetoric. You see, last February, President Bush projected the deficit for this year would hit $521 billion. Now, thanks to a growing economy, the Bushies figure it will come in $76 billion below that number. Thus, we have a whole new way to game the budget debate: Overestimate deficits at the beginning of the year, come in below that forecast, and declare victory. It's a pity that the real world isn't that rosy. Look more closely at the Bush numbers and you'll see that spending from '03 to '04 is up by a staggering $160 billion. Only $14 billion of that can be attributed to homeland security and Pentagon spending, including the war in Iraq. The rest is scattered throughout government, with much of it in programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The deficit would have been even bigger, except that a growing economy is boosting tax revenues across the board from last year. Individual income tax receipts are expected to be up by $23 billion, corporate taxes up by a whopping $50 billion -- thanks to higher profits -- and Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes up by $18 billion. Those Social Security taxes, of course, are not saved to pay retirement benefits. They are spent on the rest of government. THE REAL NUMBERS. And what about Bush's promise to cut the deficit in half in five years? The new Bush budget claims he can do it even faster -- by 2007. But don't hold your breath. That happy prediction assumes the U.S. will spend no more money on Iraq and Afghanistan after Sept. 30. And it ignores the need to fix the dreaded alternative minimum tax [AMT]. Without a fix, the levy will hit more than 30 million taxpayers by the end of the decade. The reality is that protecting millions of middle-class taxpayers from the AMT would cost close to $50 billion a year over the next decade. Once Washington fixes the AMT and pays for the war in Iraq, you can add at least $100 billion a year to Bush's deficit estimates over the next five years. That means forgetting about all that cutting-the-deficit-in-half business. If anyone pays attention to the real numbers, the fiscal situation is more bad news for Bush's reelection chances and good news for his newly minted Democratic challenger, John Kerry. The bad news for Kerry, of course, is that if gets elected, he'll actually have to do something about this mess. And while he at least can credibly claim he won't make matters much worse, he hasn't yet shown any inclination to make things better. Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved. URL: msnbc.msn.com

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (52745)	8/5/2004 9:44:20 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Rockers play for change _________________________ BY JIM DEROGATIS Chicago Sun-Times Pop Music Critic August 5, 2004 suntimes.com With a fervor that hasn't been witnessed since musicians in the late '60s united to protest President Richard M. Nixon and America's involvement in the Vietnam War, some of the biggest names in popular music are coming together for an unprecedented series of fund-raising concerts with the goal of unseating President Bush on Nov. 2. Superstars from several diverse genres in rock and country -- among them Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews, R.E.M., Pearl Jam and the Dixie Chicks -- are among the more than 20 bands taking part in the Vote for Change tour, announced Wednesday with a publicity blitz that started when Matthews appeared on NBC's "The Today Show" and ended with Springsteen talking to Ted Koppel on ABC's "Nightline." "There isn't going to be any illusion in the audience about why we're there," Matthews said. "This election is the most important one in our lifetime. It may be the most important in America's history." Added Springsteen in a statement to the Associated Press: "We're trying to put forward a group of progressive ideals and change the administration in the White House. That's the success or failure, very clear cut and very simple." Over the course of a week, the tour will play approximately 34 shows, visiting 28 cities in nine of the 17 "swing" states considered to be key for victory in the presidential election. In some cases, Vote for Change will find as many as six different shows happening simultaneously in cities throughout the same state. The tour kicks off on Oct. 1 in Pennsylvania as Springsteen's E-Street Band, R.E.M., former Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman John Fogerty and emo rockers Bright Eyes perform in Philadelphia. At the same time, alternative superstars Pearl Jam and modern-rock up-and-comers Death Cab for Cutie will play in Reading; the Dave Matthews Band, rappers Jurassic 5 and the alternative-country band My Morning Jacket in State College; country-pop giants the Dixie Chicks and veteran folk-rocker James Taylor in Pittsburgh; John Mellencamp and R&B giant Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds in Williamsport, and Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt and modern bluesman Keb' Mo' in Wilkes-Barre. The other states that have been targeted as tour stops are North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin. The tour will end in Florida, where the president's brother is the governor and the 2000 election was decided in a close call that remains controversial. Vote for Change is being sponsored by the political action committee MoveOn.Org. Tickets go on sale on Aug. 21, and while prices have not yet been announced, organizers say the millions of dollars in expected revenues will benefit an organization called America Coming Together. On its Web site, America Coming Together describes itself as "the largest voter contact program in history" and proclaims that its goal is to "derail the right-wing Republican agenda by defeating George W. Bush." "These artists feel so strongly about this election that they are doing something unprecedented in creating this magnificent tour," ACT president Ellen Malcolm said in the press release issued by the group Wednesday. "They are sending an important message to voters in the battleground states: You can change the country if you go to the polls and vote." Out on a limb In a country that is sharply divided along partisan lines, artists who are participating in the tour could face a harsh reaction from some fans who are opposed to their political views. Last year, the Dixie Chicks faced protest at concerts in some states and a boycott by many country radio stations after bandleader Natalie Maines told an audience in London that she was ashamed that President Bush hails from her home state of Texas. Two weeks ago, Linda Ronstadt, who is not participating in the Vote for Change tour, was kicked out of the Aladdin Resort in Las Vegas after she made comments onstage praising Michael Moore's provocative anti-Bush film "Fahrenheit 9/11." According to news reports, the remarks set off what was described as "a miniriot" by Bush backers who threw drinks, tore down posters and stormed out of the show. Some pop-music fans in Chicago say they're sick of musicians making political statements, and that the stars should just shut up and perform. "I believe 100 percent in free speech; furthermore, I don't consider myself a Democrat or a Republican," Chicago paralegal Maria Tararo wrote in an e-mail she sent me after the Ronstadt incident in Las Vegas and anti-Bush comments at recent concerts here by Morrissey at the House of Blues and Patti Smith at Skyline Stage at Navy Pier. "I want to get what I'm paying for. I feel like concertgoers nowadays are getting ripped off big time: We pay good money to see acts perform their music and wind up getting shortchanged by these same performers who feel it's their jobs now to 'educate' us, like we're stupid or something." But the artists participating in the Vote for Change tour say they aren't concerned about a backlash. "A change is in order," Maines told the AP. "There's never been a political climate like this, which is so the polar opposite of me as a person and what I believe in." Added Springsteen: "It's a pretty clear-cut decision in November. We're chipping in our two cents. That's all we're trying to do." Illinois fest to push registration Counted by political analysts among the solidly "blue" or Democratic states in the presidential election, Illinois will not be the site of any of the Vote for Change concerts. But the local musical community is also mobilizing to encourage voters, most notably via the ambitious four-day Interchange Festival, which includes a series of concerts at four Chicago venues Aug. 18-21. Less overtly partisan -- the organizers' stated goal is "to contribute money and volunteers to ongoing voter-registration efforts," and their Web site does not target Bush -- the sympathies of most of the musicians rest nonetheless with Democratic challenger John Kerry. Among the Chicago artists performing during the Interchange Festival at the Hideout, Schubas, the Empty Bottle and Metro are art-rockers Tortoise, rappers Diverse and the Molemen, psychedelic-pop songwriter David Singer, orchestral pop/alternative country musician Andrew Bird, the avant-jazz combo the Vandermark 5 and garage-rockers the M's. Contributing: Associated Press, Billboard __________ 'VOTE FOR CHANGE' Regional tour schedule: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, R.E.M., John Fogerty, Bright Eyes Sat., Oct. 2, Cleveland Sun., Oct. 3, Ann Arbor, Mich. Tues., Oct. 5, St. Paul, Minn. Pearl Jam, Death Cab for Cutie Sat., Oct. 2, Toledo, Ohio Sun., Oct. 3, Grand Rapids, Mich. Tues., Oct. 5, St. Louis Wed., Oct. 6, Asheville, N.C. Dave Matthews Band, Ben Harper, Jurassic 5, My Morning Jacket Sat., Oct. 2, Dayton, Ohio Sun., Oct. 3, Detroit Tues., Oct. 5, Madison, Wis. Wed., Oct. 6, Ames, Iowa Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Keb' Mo' Sun., Oct. 3, Grand Rapids, Mich. Tues., Oct. 5, Kansas City, Mo. Wed., Oct. 6, Des Moines Dixie Chicks, James Taylor Sat., Oct. 2, Cleveland Sun., Oct. 3, Detroit Tues., Oct. 5, Iowa City, Iowa Wed., Oct. 6, St. Louis John Mellencamp, Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds Sat., Oct. 2, Cincinnati Sun., Oct. 3, Kalamazoo, Mich. Tues., Oct. 5, Milwaukee Dates, performers subject to change