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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (40770)	8/19/2005 10:40:26 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93284

From what I understand, Bush's anti-Cindy strategery is (in a quavering, reedy voice now!) "NINE ONE ONE! NINE ONE OOOOONE!" Really tired and LAME, dude! Bush Plans Sept. 11 Reminders guardian.co.uk By RON FOURNIER AP Political Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - What began as one mother's vigil on a country road in Texas two weeks ago has grown into a nationwide protest, putting a grieving human face to the miseries of war and the misgivings about President Bush's strategies in Iraq. It's still not clear whether Cindy Sheehan's effort was the start of a lasting anti-war movement or a fleeting summertime story fueled by media-savvy liberal interest groups. Sheehan left the camp Thursday, rushing to the side of her mother, who had suffered a stroke in California. She said she would be back if possible before Bush leaves his ranch for Washington on Sept. 3. While her backers maintain the vigil in Texas, Republican Party leaders are worried that the so-called Peace Mom has brought long-simmering unease over Iraq to a boil by galvanizing anti-war activists. They fear that protests will strike a chord with the large number of Americans who have long felt uneasy about the war yet have been giving Bush the benefit of the doubt. The president's falling poll numbers - less than 40 percent approve of his handling of Iraq - could drop further, threatening his military plans in Iraq, his agenda at home and Republican political prospects in the 2006 congressional and gubernatorial elections. But will that happen? Will one woman's demand to meet the president outside his vacation home be viewed someday as a tipping point against the war? ``It's really hard to tell whether this will be a blip on the radar screen or whether it reflects a deep change in public opinion,' said John Green, director of the University of Akron's Ray C. Bliss Institute for Applied Politics. ``A lot will depend to what extent Sheehan and her vigil link up with the disquiet we're seeing in public polls, especially with the people who haven't been opposed to the war in the past.' It also depends on factors outside the control of Bush, Sheehan and their supporters. A reduction in violence in Iraq or a legitimate, new constitution for the government would help Bush. More bloodshed and no political progress in Iraq would probably give momentum to Sheehan and her supporters. Changing the subject would help Bush, and he has a chance to do that with the upcoming fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes. Aides say the president plans to invoke Sept. 11 in his weekly radio address Saturday as he begins a weeklong push to remind Americans why he believes the United States must stay on the offensive in Iraq and not bow to terrorists. He plans to address the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Monday and a National Guard group on Wednesday. Whether or not she has sparked a lasting anti-war movement, it can't be denied that Sheehan has thrust herself and her cause into the spotlight at near-record speed. The vigil began Aug. 6, when she showed up outside Bush's ranch with 50 demonstrators to demand a meeting. ``I want to ask the president, `Why did you kill my son? What did my son die for?'' she said. Her son, Casey, 24, was killed in Sadr City, Iraq, on April 4, 2004. Less than a week into the vigil, the president gave Sheehan's protest a public relations boost by talking about it. He told reporters that while he sympathized with her, her call to withdraw U.S. troops ``would be a mistake for the security of this country.' MoveOn.org and other liberal interest groups used the Internet, e-mails and cable TV news coverage to keep the protest in full view. Normally slow news cycles of August were filled with stories about Sheehan and her fallen son - an altar boy, Eagle Scout and church youth troop leader. Even before the vigil, public opinion was shifting against Bush and the war. An AP-Ipsos poll showed a majority of people questioning the president's honesty. A Gallup Poll suggested that nearly six in 10 wanted some or all U.S. troops to be withdrawn. Bush's own advisers began to privately acknowledge that Americans were finding their views on Iraq out of sync with his upbeat rhetoric. Confronted by anxious constituents during their August recess, a few GOP lawmakers joined several Democratic ones in denouncing the war. Some Republicans who favor the war urged Bush to do a better job defending it. Others say Bush made a mistake in refusing to meet with Sheehan again (he met her along with other soldiers' family members in 2004). ``The better course of action would have been to immediately invite her in the ranch,' Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., a 2008 presidential prospect, said on CNN's ``The Situation Room.' Bush's backers argue that anti-war groups would have found another way to maintain pressure. As it is, they organized 1,600 candlelight vigils Wednesday night calling for an end to the war. One activist has called Sheehan ``the Rosa Parks of the anti-war movement,' a reference to the civil rights heroine who refused to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955. What happens in Iraq the next weeks and months may determine whether the ``Peace Mom' finds her own place in history, or becomes a footnote.

To: stockman_scott who wrote (40770)	8/20/2005 6:16:39 AM
From: AuBug	Respond to of 93284

The Trillion-Dollar War by LINDA BILMES, August 20, 2005, Cambridge, MA THE human cost of the more than 2,000 American military personnel killed and 14,500 wounded so far in Iraq and Afghanistan is all too apparent. But the financial toll is still largely hidden from public view and, like the suffering of those who have lost loved ones, will persist long after the fighting is over. The cost goes well beyond the more than $250 billion already spent on military operations and reconstruction. Basic running costs of the current conflicts are $6 billion a month - a figure that reflects the Pentagon's unprecedented reliance on expensive private contractors. Other factors keeping costs high include inducements for recruits and for military personnel serving second and third deployments, extra pay for reservists and members of the National Guard, as well as more than $2 billion a year in additional foreign aid to Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey and others to reward their cooperation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill for repairing and replacing military hardware is $20 billion a year, according to figures from the Congressional Budget Office. But the biggest long-term costs are disability and health payments for returning troops, which will be incurred even if hostilities were to stop tomorrow. The United States currently pays more than $2 billion in disability claims per year for 159,000 veterans of the 1991 gulf war, even though that conflict lasted only five weeks, with 148 dead and 467 wounded. Even assuming that the 525,000 American troops who have so far served in Iraq and Afghanistan will require treatment only on the same scale as their predecessors from the gulf war, these payments are likely to run at $7 billion a year for the next 45 years. All of this spending will need to be financed by adding to the federal debt. Extra interest payments will total $200 billion or more even if the borrowing is repaid quickly. Conflict in the Middle East has also played a part in doubling the price of oil from $30 a barrel just prior to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 to $60 a barrel today. Each $5 increase in the price of oil reduces our national income by about $17 billion a year. Even by this simple yardstick, if the American military presence in the region lasts another five years, the total outlay for the war could stretch to more than $1.3 trillion, or $11,300 for every household in the United States. Linda Bilmes, an assistant secretary at the Department of Commerce from 1999 to 2001, teaches budgeting and public finance at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. nytimes.com