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

To: SiouxPal who wrote (63495)	10/28/2004 12:33:17 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 89467

Bush mobilizes the base Leftists and centrists unite against Bush's immoderate conservatism WASHINGTON -- In the torrent of polling information released over the weekend, the most significant finding was this one: John Kerry's supporters are more likely than George W. Bush's to believe that this year's election is the most important of their lifetimes. According to Newsweek's poll, 37 percent of Kerry's voters felt this way, compared with only 27 percent of Bush's. Of the rest, 40 percent of Kerry supporters thought 2004 was more important than most other elections, while 35 percent of Bush's did. As a political matter, this intensity gap suggests that even if Bush has been successful in mobilizing the Republican Party's political base, he has been even more successful in mobilizing Democrats. The Bush camp followers are not happy with this state of affairs. They tried to dismiss the strong feelings against Bush as irrational. The phrase "Bush hatred" is invoked to imply a legion of citizens gone mad. It's an odd argument when it comes from right-wing talk radio and cable television ranters who insisted in the 1990s that hatred of Bill Clinton was the highest form of patriotism. But their reaction is at least predictable. Anyone else who buys into the notion that the passions Bush has unleashed are primarily the product of unreasoning prejudices misses the central dynamic of this year's election. The fervent opposition to President Bush is rational and its intensity is a direct response to Bush's own efforts to discredit all opposition to his policies. Criticism of Bush comes not simply from the far left or from fans of Michael Moore movies, but also from political moderates, including Republicans, who see Bush's fiscal, social and foreign policies as decidedly immoderate. The passion comes from a conviction that the president would prefer to use the fear of terrorism and cast his opponent as a dangerous appeaser than to risk the loss of power. One antidote to the claim that Bush's opponents are nuts is the collection of endorsements of Kerry in The New Yorker, The New Republic and The Nation. The three magazines sit at quite different points along the center-left, yet their editorials are all serious, rational and sustained explorations of the dangers entailed in re-electing the president. You cannot come away from any of these without understanding why so many of Kerry's supporters consider this election so crucial. These magazines speak for themselves. But it's worth considering why so many moderates in particular are alarmed at the prospect of a second Bush term. They are, of course, affected by many specific issues. There is the fiscal mess created by Bush's oversized tax cuts and the president's insistence that we push on with the same approach. There is the prospect of a Supreme Court dominated not even by moderate conservatives, but by a judicial approach rooted in right-leaning judicial activism. Add in Bush's permissive approach to environmental regulation, his anti-union approach to labor regulation, his dismissal of even the mildest civil libertarian criticisms of the Patriot Act. Most importantly, there is the question of the administration's incompetence in Iraq. Even among the war's supporters, many now doubt the president's capacity to deliver a successful outcome. For those who favor moderation in governing, two questions predominate. The first is the president's conscious choice to divide a country that had been so united after the attacks of Sept. 11. He signaled the course for the rest of his term when, in a September 2002 speech aimed at electing Republicans to Congress, he said that the U.S. Senate -- meaning its then Democratic majority -- was "not interested in the security of the American people." If you say your opponents don't care about the nation's security, aren't you accusing them of being traitors? And this administration is desperately trying to have this campaign be about anything but the central purpose of democratic elections: to hold those in power accountable for what they have done. Bush does not want the election to be about his miscalculations in Iraq, his misleading statements before the war, his false predictions about the fiscal effect of his tax cuts. He wants to scare the country about terrorism and John Kerry. It is not an honorable approach to re-election. That is why moderate and independent voters are finding it so hard to support the president and why so many of Kerry sympathizers are so fervent in their commitment. For more, please visit the E.J. Dionne, Jr. archives. workingforchange.com

To: SiouxPal who wrote (63495)	10/28/2004 12:40:32 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Iraq says 'impossible' explosives taken before regime fall AFP: 10/27/2004 BAGHDAD, Oct 27 (AFP) - A top Iraqi science official said Wednesday it was impossible that 350 tonnes of high explosives could have been smuggled out of a military site south of Baghdad before the regime fell last year. He warned that explosives from nearby sites could have also been looted. The UN nuclear watchdog this week said the explosives went missing from a weapons dump some time after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled in April 2003 by the US-led invasion . But as the issue took centre stage in the final days of the US presidential campaign, some US officials have suggested the explosives had gone before the US-led forces moved on Baghdad. The Pentagon has said it did not know when the explosives went missing. Mohammed al-Sharaa, who heads the science ministry's site monitoring department and worked with UN weapons inspectors under Saddam, said "it is impossible that these materials could have been taken from this site before the regime's fall." He said he and other officials had been ordered a month earlier to insure that "not even a shred of paper left the sites." "The officials that were inside this facility (Al-Qaqaa) beforehand confirm that not even a shred of paper left it before the fall and I spoke to them about it and they even issued certified statements to this effect which the US-led coalition was aware of." He said officials at Al-Qaqaa, including its general director, whom he refused to name, made contact with US troops before the fall in an effort to get them to provide security for the site. The regime's fall triggered a wave of looting of government and private property, which US-led troops struggled to contain as they were busy securing their own positions. Sharaa warned that other sites close to Al-Qaqaa with similar materials could have also been plundered. "The Al-Milad Company in Iskandariyah and the Yarmuk and Hateen facilities contained explosive materials that could have also been taken out," he told AFP. Al-Qaqaa is near latifiyah, 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of Baghdad. The bulk of materials in question include HMX (high melting point explosive) and RDX (rapid detonation explosive), which can be used in major bombing attacks, making missile warheads and detonating nuclear weapons. The area in Babil province, which includes the towns of Iskandariyah and Mahmudiyah, used to be the centre of Saddam's military-industrial complex. It is now one of the most dangerous parts of the country, and is rife with crime, kidnappings and attacks. "It may be already too late to salvage many of these sites, which are controlled by bandits and beyond the control of Iraqi forces," warned Sharaa. Science Minister Omar Rashad sent a letter on October 10 to the International Atomic Energy Agency sounding the alarm about the explosives in Al-Qaqaa. Sharaa said the letter was sent after repeated warnings and inquiries by the IAEA over the disappearance of so-called duel-use nuclear material, which could be used for either conventional or nuclear means. "Normally we should be overseeing all sites but these responsibilities were stripped away from us under the coalition authority," he said. The ministry was only handed oversight responsiblities of two site -- Al-Tuwaitha and Al-Wardiya -- after authority was transferred from the coalition to the interim government in June. Sharaa refused to put a number on the sites with dangerous materials but said that many include hospitals, schools and factories that are now under the control of various ministries. Some Iraqi officials have estimated the number at 200. "It is very serious if these materials fall into the wrong hands, because they will be used to kill Iraqis," Muwaffaq al-Rubaiye, a special advisor to Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's government, warned Tuesday Rubaiye, formerly national security advisor, warned in July that materials to make so-called dirty bombs might already be in the hands of militant groups like that of Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, believed to be Al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq. 10/27/2004 13:56 GMT - AFP