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

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (59209)	10/8/2004 9:56:12 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

The day that Dick Cheney was silenced The power behind the throne was out-manoeuvred by Edwards Sidney Blumenthal Thursday October 7, 2004 The Guardian Each man had his mission for the vice-presidential debate. For John Edwards, it was to continue John Kerry's momentum from his debate triumph over President Bush; for Dick Cheney, to halt it in its tracks. Edwards assailed Cheney's credibility; Cheney demeaned Edwards's status. But the debate went past scoring points into a clash of political cultures. Edwards began immediately to separate the Iraq war from the war on al-Qaida. Reports that morning provided a propitious backdrop. Paul Bremer, the former coalition provisional authority chief, had said that the strength of US forces had been insufficient from the start, leading to the present chaos. Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defence, had disclaimed any connection between Saddam Hussein and September 11. That implication had been a principal reason for public support of the war. The latest Gallup poll shows that 62% of Republicans still believe that Saddam was behind 9/11. "I have not suggested there is a connection between Iraq and 9/11," Cheney said. But he had done so many times, and the networks broadcast tapes of these statements after the debate. Cheney would still brook no admission of error. "What we did in Iraq was exactly the right thing to do. If I had to recommend it all over again, I would ..." Cheney expected the assertion of his authority to be sufficient to make his case. His logic is built on his force. He was commanding, domineering, sardonic and intimidating. His transparent attitude to the debate was as if it were a waste of his valuable time. Advertiser links Need a Car Loan? Bad Credit Specialists Shopping for a new or used car? Our 60-second free... instantcarloan.com Auto Loans Fast, Nationwide Approval Nationwide approvals for car loans. Bad credit, bankruptcy... autospecialfinance.org Fast Auto Loans for Bad Credit Qualify for a bad credit car loan online in 30 seconds... fundingway.com Cheney made no effort to hide his sense of unaccountability. Facts that did not serve him were treated like unruly underlings. His self-assurance in lying even when politically unnecessary revealed why he is the power in the vacuum. He could only exist with a chief executive self-absorbed in his resentments and narrow in experience and intellectual scope, who does not hold his vice-president accountable; a national security adviser incompetent in her eagerness to please; and a secretary of state who accepts his internal defeats, always playing the good soldier. Faced by another younger man, Cheney attempted to denigrate him. "Your rhetoric, Senator, would be a lot more credible if there was a record to back it up ... Now, in my capacity as vice-president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight." With that, the master of Washington dismissed the apprentice. But it turned out that Cheney's statement was untrue. He and Edwards had met several times before and photographs were published the next day showing the two together. Cheney's effort to intimidate Edwards rebounded on his credibility, the larger point the former trial lawyer was pressing. The case for the Bush doctrine floundered on the Groucho Marx doctrine: "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?" Then, in an act of grace, Edwards did more than unnerve Cheney. Edwards praised him and his wife for their "love" and "embrace" of their gay daughter. Cheney, who seemed personally affected, could only thank him. But Edwards went on to counter Bush's support for a constitutional amendment that would prohibit gay marriage. "It's nothing but a political tool ... We ought to be talking about issues like healthcare and jobs and what's happening in Iraq, not using an issue to divide this country ..." The Republicans have sought to stigmatise the Democrats as effeminate - "girlie men," "sensitive," "metrosexual". Edwards silenced Cheney; he also opened a political fissure in the fundamentalist Republican base. Cheney, unlike Bush, does not speak the language of the born-again. It is Bush, not Cheney, who appeals to the religious right. Edwards's attack on Cheney as CEO of Halliburton and a representative of entrenched special interests added another element to the strain of southern populism that runs back to before the civil war in its appeal to working-class whites against the plantation class. Even today, blacks and whites are deliberately divided by racial fear used as a "political tool". Now the lavender menace is used to augment racial anxiety. Cheney's performance revealed how formidable he is as the power behind the throne and how inadequate as a public man. Through charm and litheness, Edwards demonstrated that Bambi is the disguise of a fox. But enduring issues of class and culture, of power and democracy, were disclosed in this one-time encounter between the high-handed Cheney and the quicksilver Edwards. guardian.co.uk

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (59209)	10/8/2004 5:29:11 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Iraq Amnesia The real "coalition of the bribed" was at the U.N. The Wall Street Journal Friday, October 8, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT Judging from the current Iraq debate, you might think Saddam Hussein didn't use poison gas on the Kurds and the Iranians in the 1980s. Or that 500,000 American troops hadn't been sent to the Gulf in 1990-91 to reverse his invasion of Kuwait. Or that Saddam hadn't tried to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush in 1993, or long harbored one of the bombers who attacked the World Trade Center that year. It might also be easy to forget that Saddam never came clean about his weapons of mass destruction, resulting in Bill Clinton's Desert Fox bombing of 1998 and the ejection of U.N. inspectors. Or that he necessitated a huge U.S. troop presence in the region, which Osama bin Laden cited in his 1998 fatwa as one of his primary grievances against America. It's clear why John Kerry doesn't want to talk about these things, having decided for now that Iraq was "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time." Count us a bit mystified, however, that the incumbent hasn't done a better job putting his Iraq policy in this context. Fortunately for President Bush, Congressional Oil for Food hearings and Charles Duelfer's final weapons inspections report for the CIA have come along this week to remind us all that the "containment" of Saddam was neither as blissful as certain partisans remember it, nor even sustainable. "By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their international support," Mr. Duelfer writes. "Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime." We realize that some of our media friends think the salient news here is the old news: that Saddam did not possess large stockpiles of WMDs when Coalition forces invaded in March 2003. But Mr. Duelfer explicitly rejects the facile conclusion that therefore sanctions were working. Among his other findings, based in part on interviews with Saddam himself and other senior regime figures: • Saddam believed weapons of mass destruction were essential to the preservation of his power, especially during the Iran-Iraq and 1991 Gulf wars. • He engaged in strategic deception intended to suggest that he retained WMD. • He fully intended to resume real WMD production after the expected lifting of U.N. sanctions, and he maintained weapons programs that put him in "material breach" of U.N. resolutions including 1441. • And he instituted an epic bribery scheme aimed primarily at three of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, with the intent of having them help lift those sanctions. "Saddam personally approved and removed all names of voucher recipients," under the Oil for Food program, Mr. Duelfer writes. Alleged beneficiaries of such bribes include individuals in China, as well as some with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Jacques Chirac. As Congressmen Chris Shays's House International Relations Committee heard in testimony on Tuesday, France, Russia and China did in fact work hard to help Saddam skirt and escape sanctions. One Iraqi intelligence report uncovered by Mr. Duelfer says that a French politician assured Saddam in a letter that France would use its U.N. veto against any U.S. effort to attack Iraq--as indeed France later threatened to do. Evidence also continues to mount that U.N. Oil for Food Program director Benon Sevan was among those on Saddam's payroll. (He denies it.) And contrary to earlier claims that Secretary-General Kofi Annan's son Kojo severed connections with the Swiss-based firm Cotecna prior to it winning its Oil for Food inspections contract, we now know that Kojo was kept on the company payroll for another year. We eagerly await the promised interim report from the U.N.'s Paul Volcker-led Oil for Food review panel, and hope in the interests of an informed electorate that it can be delivered soon. But there are already plenty of facts on the table to support one conclusion. To wit: Even if one accepts the desirability of some kind of "global test" before America acts militarily, U.N. Security Council approval can't be it. There was never any chance that this "coalition of the bribed" was going to explicitly endorse regime change, or the presumed alternative of another 12 years of economic sanctions. "Politically," writes Mr. Duelfer, "the Iraqis were losing their stigma" by 2001. The sanctions-were-working crowd also ignores that Saddam never would have readmitted weapons inspectors without the kind of U.S. troop mobilization that isn't feasible with any frequency. For President Bush to have backed off in 2003 without unambiguous disarmament would have meant the end once and for all of any real threat of force behind "containment." Senator John McCain summed it up well at the Republican Convention: "Those who criticize that decision [to go to war in Iraq] would have us believe that the choice was between a status quo that was well enough left alone and war. But there was no status quo to be left alone." Supporters of his Iraq policy are hoping that Mr. Bush finds a similar voice tonight. opinionjournal.com