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

To: elpolvo who wrote (54394)	8/31/2004 8:57:50 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Human Cost of Iraq War Erodes Support for Bush ___________________________ by Ron Fournier Published on Monday, August 30, 2004 by the Associated Press NEW YORK -- War is hell on a presidency. And it plays havoc with presidential campaigns. President Bush led the nation through the Sept. 11 attacks, against the Taliban and into Iraq -- three defining moments that have brought his political fortunes full circle to the same middling job approval rating he held Sept. 10, 2001. At the opening of his nominating convention, supporters can't help but wonder how much stronger Bush would be politically had he kept the war on terrorism out of Iraq. "War is hard," Bush adviser Karen Hughes says. "Even when it's right, it's difficult. It takes a political toll." The numbers show it: By a 3-to-1 margin, people think the war in Iraq increased rather than decreased the threat of terrorism. Six in 10 say Bush does not have a clear plan for bringing the Iraq war to a successful resolution. A total of 969 U.S. Military members have died in Iraq, including 831 since Bush stood before a "Mission Accomplished" sign and declared an end to major combat on May 1, 2003. Nearly 40 percent of the dead soldiers came from political battleground states. In the 20 states where Bush and his rival, Sen. John Kerry, focus their time and money, each death has been a dominant story in the local news media. In the three most critical states to the president's re-election bid -- Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio -- 128 service members have died in Iraq, or about 13 percent of the total. "I'm just not sure I can trust him anymore," said Chris Flaig, a Philadelphia rental car agency worker who voted for Bush in 2000. Flaig says he knows two soldiers in Iraq and is friends with somebody who knew a slain soldier. Such few degrees-of-separation stories come up in nearly any conversation with swing voters such as Flaig. "This war colors everything," he says. "It may tip my vote against him." But it may not, because like many voters, Flaig says he's unimpressed with Kerry's stand on Iraq. He doesn't understand it because the Democrat hasn't always been consistent. Kerry, a four-term Massachusetts senator, voted against the 1991 Persian Gulf War led by Bush's father. In the late 1990s, he favored the ouster of Saddam Hussein, citing evidence that the Iraqi dictator had weapons of mass destruction. Gearing up for a presidential run, Kerry voted in 2002 to give Bush the authority to invade Iraq, when about 60 percent of the public supported the president's job performance, the war on terrorism was politically popular and Democrats didn't want to look weak on defense. As the invasion approached, Kerry accused Bush of rushing to war without the backing of allies. Advisers said he felt political pressure from rival Howard Dean, who had tapped a deep vein of antiwar sentiment in the Democratic Party. Months later, at the height of his primary fight against Dean, Kerry voted against an $87 billion aid package for Iraq and Afghanistan. At nearly every campaign stop, Bush tweaks Kerry for saying he voted for the funding bill before voting against it. "That's not the way they talk here in the Panhandle of Florida," Bush said Aug. 10. The Republican incumbent wants to raise doubts about Kerry's strength and credibility, particularly among voters who say they are open to persuasion. In Associated Press-Ipsos polling, two-thirds of persuadable voters disapprove of Bush's handling of Iraq. Yet, those same up-for-grabs voters are just as likely as other Americans to find Bush to be strong and honest. Although they concede Iraq has hurt Bush politically, his advisers say the war has focused voters on national security, an issue that favors Republicans and incumbents, rather than traditionally Democratic issues such as education and health care. In Pew Research Center polling, 51 percent of Americans approved of Bush's job performance just before the Sept. 11 attacks. The approval rating climbed to the 80s in the days after the attacks and during the war in Afghanistan. It was in the low 60s when Congress gave him approval to oust Saddam; the mid-50s just before the invasion; the mid-60s and 70s when the war began and Baghdad fell, then a steady slide as the death toll mounted. As he stands before a divided nation, accepting the Republican nomination four miles from ground zero, the president's job approval rating is where it was just before the attacks. About half the nation approves and about half doesn't. Both candidates have sustained collateral damage from the war. Bush now acknowledges that he miscalculated how fiercely insurgents would fight after the initial "catastrophic success" of U.S. troops. He could have heeded the words of his father, who pushed Saddam out of Kuwait in 1991 but decided against pushing toward Baghdad to oust the Iraqi leader. "Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land," the elder Bush wrote in a book published before his son became president. "It would have been a dramatically different -- and perhaps barren -- outcome." © 2004 Associated Press commondreams.org

To: elpolvo who wrote (54394)	8/31/2004 10:21:34 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Sailing buddies ______________________ A flotilla of new reports shows that the Swift Boat Veterans group is helmed by longtime cronies of the Bush family. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Joe Conason Columnist Salon.com Aug. 28, 2004 Revelations during the past week about the forces behind Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the allegedly independent outfit sponsoring unfounded attacks on John Kerry's military record, strongly suggest that the group is guided by Republicans at the commanding heights of the conservative movement. Those partisan operatives and lawyers, in turn, have longstanding connections with the Bush family, although the White House and the president continue to insist they bear no responsibility for the assault on the Democratic nominee's Vietnam service. Previous investigative reports in Salon have established that major Texas Republican donors Bob Perry Jr. and Harlan Crow provided nearly all of the initial financing for the Swift Boat group -- and that professional public relations and research experts affiliated with the GOP were instrumental in launching the group. This week, media reports focused on the president's chief outside campaign counsel, Benjamin Ginsburg, who has given legal advice to the Swift Boat group. That sudden exposure prompted Ginsburg's resignation from the Bush-Cheney campaign. The network of Republican operatives involved in the Kerry-bashing campaign can be traced still further to a pair of the most influential national conservative organizations, Empower America and Citizens for a Sound Economy, which officially merged last July under the banner of a new entity called FreedomWorks. That merger brought together such right-wing luminaries as former House Republican leader Dick Armey of Texas, former Bush White House counsel C. Boyden Gray (who also served on the Bush-Cheney transition team in 2000), former Republican vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp and author and foundation official William J. Bennett. Empower America and Citizens for a Sound Economy boast a combined "volunteer army" of more than 600,000 activists across the country, with many organized into state chapters. Their new combined Web site features an endorsement from George W. Bush: "Folks, you've got to get to know this organization. ... They have been doing a great job all over the country educating people." While Empower America, Citizens for a Sound Economy and their successor FreedomWorks describe themselves in high-minded prose as nonpartisan crusaders for liberty and American values, their aims are almost always ideological and often highly partisan. This year, in a transparent effort to assist the Bush-Cheney campaign, Citizens for a Sound Economy and its state chapters have mobilized their members to help place Ralph Nader on the ballot in several battleground states. In 2000, ironically enough, the Nader-founded Government Accountability Project denounced CSE as a "rent-a-mouthpiece" and "mercenary" for corporate special interests. And now, it seems clear that a FreedomWorks employee is directly employed in another direct thrust at Kerry through the Swift Boat veterans. The Times provided the first clue to the FreedomWorks connection by tracing the post office box registered to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to Susan Arceneaux, a Fairfax, Va., resident named as the contact person for the mail drop. As the Times noted, Arceneaux is a veteran conservative activist who has worked for various Republican campaigns and organizations over the years. She is listed as the treasurer of the Majority Leader's Fund, a Republican political action committee founded by Armey. Both Arceneaux and a spokesman for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth declined to explain to the Times who had introduced her to them. The Armey PAC's most generous donors include Bob J. Perry, contributor of $200,000 to the Swift Boat Vets group, and Sam and Charles Wyly, the Texas business executives who secretly financed attack ads against John McCain during the 2000 primaries. While Armey's Fund has been less active in 2004 than during previous election cycles, the former majority leader and his conservative colleagues are pursuing their political agenda under the new rubric of FreedomWorks. Like many other think tanks and activist groups, FreedomWorks also maintains a political action committee. The PAC's first quarterly report last April was signed by its treasurer, Susan Arceneaux -- not long before she showed up to work for the Swift Boat Vets group. Perhaps the surfacing of so many major contributors and operatives from the Bush/Texas Republican machine and the Washington conservative network in the "Swift Boat" controversy is all innocent coincidence. Yet by this stage, the myriad coincidences and connections heavily outweigh the strained credibility of White House denials. Just for history's sake, consider yet another coincidental connection between the FreedomWorks nexus and the Swift Boat group. Back in 1996, an attorney named Harold "Tex" Lezar was appointed chairman of Empower America after running unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor of Texas on the same ticket with George W. Bush, who won the governor's race. When Lezar died last January, the mourners included his wife, Dallas public relations executive Merrie Spaeth, and his law partner, John E. O'Neill. By April, Spaeth and O'Neill were meeting to plan the launch of O'Neill's new political venture -- the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The vast right-wing conspiracy truly is a small world after all. - - - - - - - - - - - - About the writer: Joe Conason writes a twice weekly column for Salon. He also writes a weekly column for the New York Observer. His new book, "Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth," is now available. salon.com

To: elpolvo who wrote (54394)	8/31/2004 2:33:54 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 89467

Hi elpolvo, Re: the quickest way to create a monster and an enemy is to accuse them of being just that. Let's put things into perspective here. I called Soros on his blatant, dishonest and ruthlessly self-serving racism as expressed by the disingenuous sophistry of Howard Bloom. While Bloom is clearly a clever and erudite man, he's a flawed, failed and fanatical fascist when it comes to his description of his tribe's enemy, the Arabs. Bloom represents the worst of emotional ethnocentrism overwhelming his long history of astute and honest analysis. The hysteria we are seeing being spewed by the Fascists in support of the rampant theft that Zionism espouses is simply in need of severe curtailment. There is no decency in being tolerant of fascists. Being tolerant of the despicable hate being spewed the Right is a morally reprehensible cop-out on the part of wishy-washy, namby-pamby "liberals", perhaps liberals like you. What if Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had decided to turn the other cheek as you propose to do when we are confronted with monsters of the Right? Well, we'd all be living in concentration camps and prison blocks today, if the Right had their way. It is time to fight evil, to expose rotten rhetoric as evil, not to coddle it. Not to accept the messed up messenger. *** Re: cut it out. Yes, I do intend to cut out the rotten heart of Fascism that is infecting and infesting public discourse in America today. I intend to drive a stake through the heart of evil whenever I confront it.