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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PROLIFE who wrote (696501)	8/12/2005 3:02:39 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Bush ducks mother of dead soldier President using helicopter to enter, leave Texas ranch to avoid confrontation By ALAN FREEMAN Friday, August 12, 2005 Updated at 3:45 AM EDT From Friday's Globe and Mail Washington — As the Iraq war continues to produce growing U.S. casualties and shrinking public support, President George W. Bush was forced yesterday to confront the protest of a grieving mother of a soldier killed in the war. But he still won't meet her. As Cindy Sheehan camped out on a road leading to Mr. Bush's ranch near Crawford, Tex., for the sixth consecutive day, insisting she wants to speak to the President personally, Mr. Bush said he sympathizes with her plight, but rejected her call to pull the troops out of Iraq. Ms. Sheehan's 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed in an ambush in Sadr City, Baghdad's sprawling Shia neighbourhood, last year, just five days after he arrived in Iraq. "I begged him not to go," says Ms. Sheehan, 48, who travelled from her home in California to try to speak with Mr. Bush as he spends his summer vacation at his Prairie Chapel Ranch. "I said, 'I'll take you to Canada,' but he said, 'Mom, I have to go. It's my duty. My buddies are going.' Advertisements "I don't believe his phony excuses for the war," Ms. Sheehan has said of the President. She said she believes the war is really about oil and making Mr. Bush's friends richer. "I want him to tell me why my son died." Anti-war activists are converging on Crawford, eager to seize on Ms. Sheehan's newfound notoriety and telegenic appeal to get their message across. On Saturday, Mr. Bush dispatched deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley and deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin to meet with her to try to defuse the situation, but it just gave Ms. Sheehan more attention. Mr. Hadley said that Mr. Bush is very sensitive to the losses being sustained by military families, pointing out that he has already met privately with the families of more than 200 of the fallen. "He believes that they are engaged in a noble cause and it's terribly important for the safety and security of our country. And he respects her views, but respectfully disagrees." Yesterday, Mr. Bush felt obliged to respond himself. "She feels strongly about her position and she has every right in the world to say what she believes," Mr. Bush told a news conference. "And I thought long and hard about her position. I've heard her position from others, which is: Get out of Iraq now. And it would be a mistake for the security of this country and the ability to lay the foundations for peace in the long run if we were to do so." Mr. Bush said he grieves for every death in Iraq. "It breaks my heart to think about a family weeping over the loss of a loved one. I understand the anguish that some feel about the death that takes place." Yet there was no sign Mr. Bush intends to meet Ms. Sheehan. In fact, there were reports he is travelling solely by helicopter when he leaves the ranch in an effort to avoid racing past the protester in a limousine. "The President says he feels compassion for me," Ms. Sheehan said, "but the best way to show that compassion is by meeting with me and the other mothers and families who are here. "All we're asking is that he sacrifice an hour out of his five-week vacation to talk to us before the next mother loses her son in Iraq." Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas who has studied Mr. Bush's rise, said: "For him, meeting this woman face to face would be blinking. His whole game is to be confident and to appear never to doubt and never to waiver. It's this idea of determination." And unlike government leaders in a parliamentary system who are challenged directly by their political opponents, Mr. Bush can easily shelter himself from such confrontations. "He would not trust himself in a face-to-face meeting and neither would his staff. These guys like control," said Prof. Jillson, who added that Ms. Sheehan's protest in itself may not be that significant but it comes at a time when many Americans are reconsidering their views of the Iraq war. Approval of Mr. Bush's handling of the conflict has dropped to as little as 34 per cent of people surveyed, according to a recent poll conducted for Newsweek magazine. But only 33 per cent of Americans say the solution is withdrawing all troops, according to a recent Gallup Poll. Another 23 per cent say some of the troops should be withdrawn while 41 per cent say troop levels should remain the same or be increased. Ms. Sheehan's protest comes at a particularly bloody time for U.S. troops in the war as roadside bombs aimed at patrolling soldiers have become increasingly sophisticated and lethal. According to Associated Press, at least 1,841 American troops have died in the war since March, 2003, including 37 since the beginning of August. At his news conference, Mr. Bush said he strongly disagrees with those calling for troop withdrawal. "Pulling the troops out would send a terrible signal to the enemy ..... [that] the United States is weak and all we've got to do is intimidate and they'll leave." theglobeandmail.com

To: PROLIFE who wrote (696501)	8/12/2005 3:27:59 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 769670

Busted Flush Michael Freedman NEW YORK - Jack A. Abramoff, one of Washington D.C.'s most powerful lobbyists, was indicted yesterday for an alleged $23 million fraud, along with one-time business partner, Adam R. Kidan. It's not the first time the two have been in the spotlight: In 2000, the two men paid $147.5 million to buy SunCruz Casino, an offshore gaming business, but quickly ran into trouble amid lawsuits and the brutal assassination of former SunCruz owner Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis. SunCruz was a minnow in a sea of big fish such as Harrah's Entertainment (nyse: HET - news - people ) and MGM Grand and Mirage Resorts--which combined that year to produce MGM Mirage (nyse: MGG - news - people ). But under Boulis' ownership it was profitable on sales of $80 million and had carved itself a niche in the flashy business by ferrying customers three miles from the Florida shore into international waters and letting them gamble. Still, Boulis faced myriad regulatory issues through the years, and he made good use of a slew of high-powered lobbyists, including Preston Gates, Abramoff's employer at the time. Abramoff has been widely considered to be one of the top Washington, D.C. lobbyists, with particularly close relations with Tom DeLay, the Republican congressman from Texas. He told Forbes he first heard about SunCruz through his work at Preston Gates, but in an extremely high-profile move he left to work with Greenberg Traurig, where he represented a slew of Indian casinos as well as the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Pacific. In September 2000, Abramoff joined forces with Adam Kidan, a one-time lawyer and entrepreneur with a colorful past, to buy and expand the SunCruz. The two men had met years earlier as students in Washington, D.C. The deal, which included 11 boats in Florida and South Carolina, called for the buyers to put in $23 million of their own cash, get $60 million from a unit of Wells Fargo (nyse: WFC - news - people ), and Citadel Equity Fund, and cover the balance with promissory notes to the sellers. As co-owner, Kidan enjoyed the high life. He took a $500,000 salary, leased a turboprop airline for $30,000 a month and traveled the world. But the deal was quickly mired in violence and controversy. Boulis allegedly threatened to kill Kidan, jumping over a desk and throwing punches; Kidan filed a restraining order. And in February 2001, Boulis was murdered at the age of 51 in a hail of gunfire in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (See: "Going For Broke.") Shortly after the murder, both Abramoff and Kidan told Forbes they were out of the country when it happened. They said they had made themselves available to the police for questioning through lawyers. Yet as of yesterday, Fort Lauderdale police say Abramoff has eluded them. Though police said he is not a suspect, he is "definitely someone of interest" in the still ongoing investigation of Boulis' murder. In an exclusive interview with Forbes at Abramoff's Greenberg Traurig office shortly after the murder, Abramoff and Kidan said the violence would have no effect on the business plan, which included exploiting Abramoff's skills and contacts to develop SunCruz. They announced plans to bring a 150-foot casino boat to the Northern Mariana Islands, represented by Abramoff and his firm. They said they had signed agreements to manage casinos for American Indians in North Carolina, California and Oklahoma. They also said they were currently in the application process for a casino license in Europe, and had been a guest of the government in China, where they toured four cities. Yet their efforts were thwarted when Boulis' estate filed a suit alleging Kidan wrote bad checks and stole company cash. The suit claimed that in the weeks before Boulis' death Kidan wrote three $10,000 checks to Anthony Moscatiello, a man once indicted for racketeering along with a brother of gangster John Gotti. (The case ended in mistrial.) Adding to the intrigue was Kidan's past: His mother was murdered in the doorway of her Staten Island home in an apparent robbery attempt. Chris Paciello, a Miami night club owner and a reputed associate of the Bonanno crime family, later pleaded guilty to the murder. A U.S. magistrate judge found that Kidan and Abramoff (who was not a party to the action) had induced Wells Fargo to come up with its financing by certifying they had already paid the $23 million in cash. In fact, Kidan testified, he had never made payment. The judge also ruled that SunCruz failed to make promised repayments on $67.5 million still owed to the previous owners. The indictment, returned by a U.S. federal grand jury in Fort Lauderdale yesterday, alleges Abramoff and Kidan gave phony evidence of the $23 million wire transfer. In addition, the indictment alleges, both men provided in the loan application financial statements false information about their respective assets and liabilities. If Abramoff and Kidan are convicted of the six counts in the indictment, they could each face up to 30 years in jail. And Abramoff, meanwhile, reportedly faces a slew of other, apparently unrelated investigations related to his lobbying efforts. Their lawyers, who did not return phone calls, deny the charges, according to press reports. SunCruz ultimately went through a bankruptcy reorganization and is now operating under new management. forbes.com