Something is happening in the Midwest when the CHICAGO TRIBUNE prints a perspective on Bush as a slick liar and his administration is filled with the same. Here is an excellent breakdown on the immoral lying and corrupt manipulation of the Bush administration in regards to the events leading up to the Iraq war.
Administration's argument long on drama, short on facts
By Michael McConnell. Michael McConnell is regional director of the American Friends Service Committee in Chicago
August 3, 2003 CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Defending the invasion of Iraq, Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz recently declared that the United States, in light of Sept. 11, has the right to attack other nations, even on the basis of "murky intelligence." Unable to defend the quality of evidence used for the Iraq war, the Bush administration now wants to defend its ambiguity. Sept. 11, like a good religious savior, absolves us of all sins.
Murky data is itself a dubious, even immoral rationale for war, but the evidence presented by the Bush administration for war in Iraq was not even "murky." It was exaggerated, distorted, selective and fabricated evidence masquerading as absolute certainty.
In the months leading up to the war, the Bush administration portrayed the Iraq threat as certain, imminent and frightening. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice imagined a mushroom cloud. President Bush dramatized links to Al Qaeda, conjuring up smallpox epidemics. Last October he even hyped Iraq's aerial drones as capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction to the U.S., while conveniently omitting that they had a range of only 300 miles.
Kicking off the campaign for war on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "Imagine a Sept. 11 with weapons of mass destruction. It's not 3,000--it's tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children."
Linking this massive destruction to Sept. 11 was so effective that a Knight Ridder poll showed that 50 percent of respondents believed that some Iraqis were among the hijackers on board the planes that hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon, when none was.
Knowledge and certainty
The message from the Bush administration was constantly one of knowledge and certainty based on secret intelligence. In September, Bush told the UN, "Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."
In a February radio address, the president declared with equal certainty, "We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons." Even 10 days into the war, Rumsfeld, speaking of the weapons, told ABC News, "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
No doubts, no questions, rather absolute certainty and frightening threats have been the currency of the Bush administration--long on drama and assertion, short on facts. The evidence mounts that this was an unnecessary and manufactured war based on deceptive arguments and outright lies claiming an Iraq nuclear threat, links to Al Qaeda and huge stores of biological and chemical weapons.
The nuclear threat argument started last September when Rice said on television that the only use for aluminum tubes that Iraq recently had obtained was for uranium centrifuges needed for nuclear weapons. Bush reiterated the tube argument in his September address to the UN. Many intelligence analysts were appalled because a debate was raging inside the intelligence community about their use. Many analysts concluded they were for conventional rockets, a viewpoint confirmed by British intelligence.
The Niger uranium purchase, based on forged documents, has been equally discredited. A former ambassador who investigated the purchase claim told The New Republic, "They were unpersuasive about aluminum tubes and added this to make their case more persuasive."
Bulletproof?
The links to Al Qaeda, central to the fear mongering of the Bush administration, were even more tenuous. In September, Rumsfeld said there was "bulletproof evidence" of a Hussein-Al Qaeda link.
The big evidence was a meeting between an Iraqi agent and Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta in Czech Republic, based on one unreliable source. Hard evidence of receipts and travel documents put Atta in the U.S. at the time.
Another strand to the claim was that Al Qaeda members were being sheltered in Iraq and had set up a camp to provide training in the use of poison weapons. Not mentioned was that the camp was in northern Iraq, an area controlled by the Kurds, not by Hussein. When U.S. troops reached the camp, they found no chemical or biological traces.
But in June, the UN Committee on Terrorism concluded that nothing had been found indicating such a link. On the chemical and biological weapons front, the Bush administration campaigned to discredit the UN inspectors when they found nothing. Now with free reign in the country and Iraqi scientists free to talk--the two conditions the U.S. insisted were necessary to find weapons--no weapons have been uncovered.
In addition to stonewalling the Sept. 11 investigation and the contrived Pfc. Jessica Lynch "rescue," a litany of assertions gone sour characterizes the Bush administration over the past few months. In May, Bush declared that they had found weapons of mass destruction in the form of two trailers. Independent international scientists quickly disproved that assertion.
Rumsfeld refused to answer about the cost of the war and then gave figures that grossly underestimated the tab to taxpayers. They purported to have a solid plan for postwar Iraq but now admit it was based on faulty assumptions. Rumsfeld insisted that no guerrilla war existed in Iraq, only to have Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command, proclaim that indeed such a war was raging.
Since Bush's jet landing on the aircraft carrier declaring, "mission accomplished," more than 50 U.S. soldiers have been killed, with more dying daily. This adds up to a pattern of half-truths, deceptions and outrageous hyperbole that go far beyond a mere 16 words in the State of the Union address.
Trying to mesmerize
The Bush administration knows neither shame nor remorse over any of these errors. In the face of the unfolding reality in Iraq, the president simply reiterates the false claims of Iraq's danger without even trying to justify them. Constantly repeating the past stock answers, he wants to mesmerize us into forgetting that he is avoiding the real questions.
The Iraq war has cost the lives of more than 160 U.S. soldiers and several thousand innocent Iraqi civilians. Will those deaths now justify Iraq's future use of "murky intelligence" to attack others?
The majority of the people in the United States backed the Iraq war because of the certainty of the administration's rationale and a deep trust in the president. It is time to determine whether he and his administration merited that trust. The credibility and integrity of the United States of America are at stake.
We deserve a congressionally appointed independent commission to investigate the justifications for war. How high up does the deception go? What did the president know and when did he know it? A democracy, in matters of war and death, must have standards higher than "murky." We cannot settle for anything less than the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help us God.
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Saturday, August 09, 2003
Friday, August 08, 2003
The White House's handling of the Wilson revelations is not only disgusting, it's criminal and immoral. Worse, it's an act of treason. Here's a President and his administration willing to tar a CIA agent over its own bad judgement and in the process risk the lives of other CIA agents. They should find the bastards that "outed" this agent and throw the book at them (it's certified treason). How much do you want to bet that Bush pardons the White House people responsible for this like his old man did with all the Iran Contra gang? And this boob ran on the platform of bringing "honor and intigrity" back to the White House. The only thing he brought with him to the job was a spoiled, stupid rich kid's sense of entitlement and a false feeling of superiority to reality.
August 8, 2003
WEAPONS INTELLIGENCE
Iraq Arms Critic Reacts to Report on Wife
By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 — Joseph C. Wilson IV, a retired ambassador who was a secret envoy of the Bush administration to Africa and who publicly voiced doubts about a reported Iraqi weapons program, says he has become a target of a campaign to discourage others like him from going public.
In the prewar effort to uncover information about weapons in Iraq, Mr. Wilson made a fact-finding trip to Niger in February 2002 at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency. His findings challenged contentions in an unsubstantiated document that Iraq was trying to obtain nuclear-weapons material from the West African country.
But it was not until after Mr. Wilson made his account public last month in an op-ed article in The New York Times, to the intense discomfort of President Bush's aides, that the White House acknowledged that it had erred in including the disputed accusations in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address in January.
Days after the column, another chapter opened. Mr. Wilson's wife was identified by name as a covert C.I.A. operative in a column by the conservative columnist Robert Novak, a disclosure that Mr. Novak has attributed to senior administration officials.
Officials are barred by law from disclosing the identities of Americans who work undercover for the C.I.A. That provision is intended to protect the security of operatives whose lives might be jeopardized if their identities are known.
Among those who have cried foul are several Democratic senators, including Charles E. Schumer of New York, who have said that if the accusation is true and if senior administration officials were its source, law enforcement authorities should seek to identify the officials who appeared to have violated the law. Mr. Schumer has asked Robert S. Mueller III, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to look into the case.
Mr. Wilson, who as chargé d'affaires in Baghdad in 1990 was the last American diplomat to meet President Saddam Hussein, said the events were evidence of distressing American heavy-handedness.
"The issue was never about her," Mr. Wilson said of his wife in a telephone interview on Wednesday. "The issue was about who so badly staffed the president of the United States that they would put into a State of the Union address something that was so transparently unsubstantiable, and this from an administration that came to office saying it wanted to restore dignity and honor to the White House. It wasn't to intimidate me, because I'd already said my piece. Clearly, this was to keep others from stepping forward."
White House officials have said they would not condone disclosing any undercover C.I.A. operative.
In the run-up to the war, Mr. Wilson appeared frequently on television as an expert on Iraq. He freely offered his opinion that the best American policy would be to postpone any war and focus on intense international inspections to find weapons of mass destruction.
That opinion certainly won him no friends in the administration, which was arguing that the moment for inspections had passed.
The fact that a retired American envoy had traveled to Niger to look into an Iraqi connection was acknowledged by the administration this year. But Mr. Wilson said he had decided to discuss his role publicly early last month after concluding that efforts by senior administration officials, including Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, to pass off his findings as having been shared just with low-ranking intelligence officials were "simply inconsistent" with the facts that he knew.
"It was pretty clear that it had gotten to the right people," Mr. Wilson said in the interview.
The deputy national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, has publicly taken responsibility for the inclusion in the State of the Union speech of 16 words that repeated the disputed reports about Iraq's efforts to obtain nuclear material from Niger.
Mr. Wilson, who had told the C.I.A. and the State Department after his visit that there was no basis for that report, said in the interview that he had "tried to avoid taking a victory lap" after his comments prompted the White House acknowledgments. But he had begun to speak out again, in television interviews including one on "Today" on NBC, "until such time as you got those lowlifes over there deciding they would take some whacks at my wife."
Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is known to friends as an energy industry analyst. In the interview, Mr. Wilson said he had no doubt that those who sought to bring his wife into the controversy intended to sound a warning to others who might take on the White House on the charged issue of whether intelligence about Iraq was reshaped or ignored to fit a political agenda.
Mr. Novak cited administration officials as saying Mr. Wilson was chosen for the Niger mission because of Ms. Plame's connection to the Central Intelligence Agency.
Mr. Wilson said his qualifications — as an Africa expert, a former ambassador to Gabon and the senior director for African affairs on the staff of the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton — made him more than amply suited for the task.
The broad issue of whether intelligence information about Iraq, its weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism was subjected to undue influence is under investigation by the House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence.
Among current intelligence analysts questioned by the committee staffs, just one, Christian P. Westermann of the State Department, has been identified by name as having said Mr. Wilson perceived political pressure in his work on Iraq. Some other former and current intelligence officials who have spoken to reporters have made broadly similar charges.
Mr. Wilson said the Niger trip was prompted by an inquiry from Vice President Dick Cheney to a C.I.A. briefer. The conclusion that there was no basis to the report on nuclear materials was also reached by the United States Embassy in Niamey, the capital, and by an American general who visited there about the same time.
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August 8, 2003
WEAPONS INTELLIGENCE
Iraq Arms Critic Reacts to Report on Wife
By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 — Joseph C. Wilson IV, a retired ambassador who was a secret envoy of the Bush administration to Africa and who publicly voiced doubts about a reported Iraqi weapons program, says he has become a target of a campaign to discourage others like him from going public.
In the prewar effort to uncover information about weapons in Iraq, Mr. Wilson made a fact-finding trip to Niger in February 2002 at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency. His findings challenged contentions in an unsubstantiated document that Iraq was trying to obtain nuclear-weapons material from the West African country.
But it was not until after Mr. Wilson made his account public last month in an op-ed article in The New York Times, to the intense discomfort of President Bush's aides, that the White House acknowledged that it had erred in including the disputed accusations in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address in January.
Days after the column, another chapter opened. Mr. Wilson's wife was identified by name as a covert C.I.A. operative in a column by the conservative columnist Robert Novak, a disclosure that Mr. Novak has attributed to senior administration officials.
Officials are barred by law from disclosing the identities of Americans who work undercover for the C.I.A. That provision is intended to protect the security of operatives whose lives might be jeopardized if their identities are known.
Among those who have cried foul are several Democratic senators, including Charles E. Schumer of New York, who have said that if the accusation is true and if senior administration officials were its source, law enforcement authorities should seek to identify the officials who appeared to have violated the law. Mr. Schumer has asked Robert S. Mueller III, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to look into the case.
Mr. Wilson, who as chargé d'affaires in Baghdad in 1990 was the last American diplomat to meet President Saddam Hussein, said the events were evidence of distressing American heavy-handedness.
"The issue was never about her," Mr. Wilson said of his wife in a telephone interview on Wednesday. "The issue was about who so badly staffed the president of the United States that they would put into a State of the Union address something that was so transparently unsubstantiable, and this from an administration that came to office saying it wanted to restore dignity and honor to the White House. It wasn't to intimidate me, because I'd already said my piece. Clearly, this was to keep others from stepping forward."
White House officials have said they would not condone disclosing any undercover C.I.A. operative.
In the run-up to the war, Mr. Wilson appeared frequently on television as an expert on Iraq. He freely offered his opinion that the best American policy would be to postpone any war and focus on intense international inspections to find weapons of mass destruction.
That opinion certainly won him no friends in the administration, which was arguing that the moment for inspections had passed.
The fact that a retired American envoy had traveled to Niger to look into an Iraqi connection was acknowledged by the administration this year. But Mr. Wilson said he had decided to discuss his role publicly early last month after concluding that efforts by senior administration officials, including Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, to pass off his findings as having been shared just with low-ranking intelligence officials were "simply inconsistent" with the facts that he knew.
"It was pretty clear that it had gotten to the right people," Mr. Wilson said in the interview.
The deputy national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, has publicly taken responsibility for the inclusion in the State of the Union speech of 16 words that repeated the disputed reports about Iraq's efforts to obtain nuclear material from Niger.
Mr. Wilson, who had told the C.I.A. and the State Department after his visit that there was no basis for that report, said in the interview that he had "tried to avoid taking a victory lap" after his comments prompted the White House acknowledgments. But he had begun to speak out again, in television interviews including one on "Today" on NBC, "until such time as you got those lowlifes over there deciding they would take some whacks at my wife."
Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is known to friends as an energy industry analyst. In the interview, Mr. Wilson said he had no doubt that those who sought to bring his wife into the controversy intended to sound a warning to others who might take on the White House on the charged issue of whether intelligence about Iraq was reshaped or ignored to fit a political agenda.
Mr. Novak cited administration officials as saying Mr. Wilson was chosen for the Niger mission because of Ms. Plame's connection to the Central Intelligence Agency.
Mr. Wilson said his qualifications — as an Africa expert, a former ambassador to Gabon and the senior director for African affairs on the staff of the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton — made him more than amply suited for the task.
The broad issue of whether intelligence information about Iraq, its weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism was subjected to undue influence is under investigation by the House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence.
Among current intelligence analysts questioned by the committee staffs, just one, Christian P. Westermann of the State Department, has been identified by name as having said Mr. Wilson perceived political pressure in his work on Iraq. Some other former and current intelligence officials who have spoken to reporters have made broadly similar charges.
Mr. Wilson said the Niger trip was prompted by an inquiry from Vice President Dick Cheney to a C.I.A. briefer. The conclusion that there was no basis to the report on nuclear materials was also reached by the United States Embassy in Niamey, the capital, and by an American general who visited there about the same time.
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Thursday, August 07, 2003
Need the facts? Here's a QuickTime movie showcasing the odyssey of John Kerry's journey seeking the Democratic nomination for President.
Look to the right in the LINKS section for The COURAGE of JOHN KERRY and click on the link.
See the images and hear the words of the most qualified person running for President today and the only one that can beat Bush and the vicious GOP machine that will stop at nothing to keep the White House in the hands of the wealthiest and most powerful elite in the world. John Kerry has the steel in his backbone, tempered by battle in war and hard-nosed debate of our country's leading institutions of government, to take on the monied interests who have co-opted our democracy with a slick Madison Avenue PR front.
Bookmark this link with its call to COURAGE from John Kerry and view it when you need to understand the depth of the man's convictions and his lifetime of service to our country. Pass it along to others who are seeking to find a candidate worthy of their trust in these troubled times.
No other candidate can compare to JOHN KERRY.
Look to the right in the LINKS section for The COURAGE of JOHN KERRY and click on the link.
See the images and hear the words of the most qualified person running for President today and the only one that can beat Bush and the vicious GOP machine that will stop at nothing to keep the White House in the hands of the wealthiest and most powerful elite in the world. John Kerry has the steel in his backbone, tempered by battle in war and hard-nosed debate of our country's leading institutions of government, to take on the monied interests who have co-opted our democracy with a slick Madison Avenue PR front.
Bookmark this link with its call to COURAGE from John Kerry and view it when you need to understand the depth of the man's convictions and his lifetime of service to our country. Pass it along to others who are seeking to find a candidate worthy of their trust in these troubled times.
No other candidate can compare to JOHN KERRY.
The GOP media machine
I keep seeing these rosey reports exaggerating the economy's upside at Yahoo! News. You have to hand it to this White House for understanding how the news media competes for stories and that current headlines trump the one posted five minutes earlier. It keeps its media machine pumping out the slanted headlines over the real stuff by the second. Especially dealling with the economy. You'll read how the jobless rate has dropped in a headline but it won't mention how that rate is still at the bottom of the barrel for the first time since the last Bush administration. You'll see how less people are filing for unemployment in those White House manufactured headlines but you won't see mentioned that's because millions of people have given up on finding a job.
This is one of the most unreported on but most important stories of this GOP (I hesistate to call it a Bush-run administration) Machine that is running this White House. The GOP elite (both the ones IN government and those from the corporate boardrooms that finance and control the party) have an incredible band of media specialists working to tweak the news or take it over completely if only by winning the battle of competing headlines. This is the Madison Avenue crowd that has the best and the brightest money can hire to run its focus groups and come from polling and advertising backgrounds. They are in place at the White House and actually re-write reporters' stories when submitted to clarify certain techincial or policy fine points. They even own a network, Fox, and run its news under cover of "fair and balanced" reporting and use the disclaimer, "you decide", to get them off the hook on their slanted news. Hell, the GOP has even taken to forcing corporations to put GOP activists in as their lobbyists so as to keep the party line sacrosaint.
We're a democracy in name only today. Orwell's warnings play on deaf ears, drowned out by all those rosy commentaries on the TV and radio while the same headlines blind the print media.
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I keep seeing these rosey reports exaggerating the economy's upside at Yahoo! News. You have to hand it to this White House for understanding how the news media competes for stories and that current headlines trump the one posted five minutes earlier. It keeps its media machine pumping out the slanted headlines over the real stuff by the second. Especially dealling with the economy. You'll read how the jobless rate has dropped in a headline but it won't mention how that rate is still at the bottom of the barrel for the first time since the last Bush administration. You'll see how less people are filing for unemployment in those White House manufactured headlines but you won't see mentioned that's because millions of people have given up on finding a job.
This is one of the most unreported on but most important stories of this GOP (I hesistate to call it a Bush-run administration) Machine that is running this White House. The GOP elite (both the ones IN government and those from the corporate boardrooms that finance and control the party) have an incredible band of media specialists working to tweak the news or take it over completely if only by winning the battle of competing headlines. This is the Madison Avenue crowd that has the best and the brightest money can hire to run its focus groups and come from polling and advertising backgrounds. They are in place at the White House and actually re-write reporters' stories when submitted to clarify certain techincial or policy fine points. They even own a network, Fox, and run its news under cover of "fair and balanced" reporting and use the disclaimer, "you decide", to get them off the hook on their slanted news. Hell, the GOP has even taken to forcing corporations to put GOP activists in as their lobbyists so as to keep the party line sacrosaint.
We're a democracy in name only today. Orwell's warnings play on deaf ears, drowned out by all those rosy commentaries on the TV and radio while the same headlines blind the print media.
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It's Official, Dean Is GOP's Dream
It's official. The GOP is pushing for Dean to get the nomination. When George Will starts writing Dean up as a potential "threat" you know the GOP has started its stealth campaign in the media. Will, if you remember your election history, worked with a stolen Carter debating points primer to coach Reagan before a national debate. Then Will went on national TV to perform "unbiased" analysis of that debate and declared Reagan the winner. Later the facts came out that Will was involved with the stolen material and the coaching. Did he ever apologize or fess up for being a liar? What do you think? The underhanded Will is a proven shill for the GOP political elite who have the media talking heads starting the drumbeat. Watch for Rush and the rest to follow suit over the next few weeks.
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It's official. The GOP is pushing for Dean to get the nomination. When George Will starts writing Dean up as a potential "threat" you know the GOP has started its stealth campaign in the media. Will, if you remember your election history, worked with a stolen Carter debating points primer to coach Reagan before a national debate. Then Will went on national TV to perform "unbiased" analysis of that debate and declared Reagan the winner. Later the facts came out that Will was involved with the stolen material and the coaching. Did he ever apologize or fess up for being a liar? What do you think? The underhanded Will is a proven shill for the GOP political elite who have the media talking heads starting the drumbeat. Watch for Rush and the rest to follow suit over the next few weeks.
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Tuesday, August 05, 2003
Karl Rove is such a craven soulless sort of character that he hardly seems to be a real human being. It's as if he fell out of a lost story by Charles Dickens.
August 6, 2003 NY TIMES EDITORIAL
Karl Rove's Water Policy
It's hardly news that Karl Rove, President Bush's political strategist, keeps a hawklike eye on domestic policies emerging from the executive branch, the better to make sure that everything meshes with his boss's political interests and those of the Republican Party. Yet rarely have Mr. Rove's efforts to bend policy to politics been more transparent than his intervention in a seemingly remote dispute involving water rights in Oregon's Klamath River basin. As detailed in a Wall Street Journal report last week, Mr. Rove has worked almost obsessively behind the scenes to ensure that the outcome satisfies the party's agricultural base at the expense of conservationists and Indian tribes.
At issue is a long-simmering dispute over water flows in the Klamath River, which runs through southern Oregon and Northern California. Even in good years these flows can barely satisfy rival claims. Farmers want water for irrigation, while conservationists and Indian tribes want it for endangered fish species, including downriver salmon. The farmers have prevailed at almost every step of the way. In March 2002, the administration staged an elaborate ceremony in Klamath Falls to release irrigation water that had been held back to help the fish. In May, it unveiled a 10-year plan widely seen as pro-farmer. The fish have done less well. Last year, 33,000 salmon died in the lower Klamath, in one of the country's biggest fish kills. A subsequent report by the state of California blamed federal policies. Two weeks ago, a federal judge ruled that the 10-year plan itself contained flawed science.
The farmers clearly owe a considerable debt to Mr. Rove. He has journeyed to Oregon twice in the past 19 months to solicit their views, and early last year he showed up at a Fish and Wildlife Service retreat to make clear that agricultural interests came first. The Interior Department insists that Mr. Rove did not order any particular "outcome," though it would have been hard to miss the message.
The distressing thing here is that the administration is spending so much time on politics that it is ignoring obvious win-win solutions that could benefit all stakeholders. One idea is to have the federal government buy land from willing sellers, thus reducing agricultural demand for water and freeing up reliable supplies for everyone. That could provide a more lasting gift to the region than Mr. Rove's shortsighted politics can possibly confer.
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August 6, 2003 NY TIMES EDITORIAL
Karl Rove's Water Policy
It's hardly news that Karl Rove, President Bush's political strategist, keeps a hawklike eye on domestic policies emerging from the executive branch, the better to make sure that everything meshes with his boss's political interests and those of the Republican Party. Yet rarely have Mr. Rove's efforts to bend policy to politics been more transparent than his intervention in a seemingly remote dispute involving water rights in Oregon's Klamath River basin. As detailed in a Wall Street Journal report last week, Mr. Rove has worked almost obsessively behind the scenes to ensure that the outcome satisfies the party's agricultural base at the expense of conservationists and Indian tribes.
At issue is a long-simmering dispute over water flows in the Klamath River, which runs through southern Oregon and Northern California. Even in good years these flows can barely satisfy rival claims. Farmers want water for irrigation, while conservationists and Indian tribes want it for endangered fish species, including downriver salmon. The farmers have prevailed at almost every step of the way. In March 2002, the administration staged an elaborate ceremony in Klamath Falls to release irrigation water that had been held back to help the fish. In May, it unveiled a 10-year plan widely seen as pro-farmer. The fish have done less well. Last year, 33,000 salmon died in the lower Klamath, in one of the country's biggest fish kills. A subsequent report by the state of California blamed federal policies. Two weeks ago, a federal judge ruled that the 10-year plan itself contained flawed science.
The farmers clearly owe a considerable debt to Mr. Rove. He has journeyed to Oregon twice in the past 19 months to solicit their views, and early last year he showed up at a Fish and Wildlife Service retreat to make clear that agricultural interests came first. The Interior Department insists that Mr. Rove did not order any particular "outcome," though it would have been hard to miss the message.
The distressing thing here is that the administration is spending so much time on politics that it is ignoring obvious win-win solutions that could benefit all stakeholders. One idea is to have the federal government buy land from willing sellers, thus reducing agricultural demand for water and freeing up reliable supplies for everyone. That could provide a more lasting gift to the region than Mr. Rove's shortsighted politics can possibly confer.
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Dowd lays it out. Bush is a dullard dragged by his nose by the neocons. What do you expect from a Midland hick who used his brain for nothing more than keeping baseball statistics in it for 50 years?
August 6, 2003
Neocon Coup at the Department d'Etat
By MAUREEN DOWD NY TIMES
WASHINGTON
Let others fight over whether the war in Iraq was a neocon vigilante action disrupting diplomacy. The neocons have moved on to a vigilante action to occupy diplomacy.
The audacious ones have saddled up their pre-emptive steeds and headed off to force a regime change at Foggy Bottom.
President Bush staged a Texan tableau vivant last night, playing host at his ranch to the secretary of state, his wife, Alma, and his deputy, Richard Armitage. Mr. Bush wanted to show solidarity after a Washington Post story on Monday that said that Colin Powell, under pressure from his wife, said he would not be part of a second Bush term, nor would Mr. Armitage.
Mr. Bush might be trying to signal his respect for Mr. Powell, but the president is not always privy to the start of a grandiose neocon scheme.
The scene was reminiscent of last August in Crawford, when Mr. Bush dismissed press "churning" that the administration was on the verge of striking Iraq, saying, "When I say I'm a patient man, I mean I'm a patient man and that we will look at all options and we will consider all technologies available to us, and diplomacy and intelligence."
We all know how that turned out.
When the neocons want something done, they'll get it done, no matter what Mr. Bush thinks. And they think Mr. Powell has downgraded the top cabinet post into a human resources job, making nicey-nice with the U.N. and assorted bad guys instead of pursuing the neocon blueprint for world domination through what James Woolsey calls World War IV (World War III being the cold war.)
Countering the Post story, Mr. Powell's posse claimed that neither the secretary of state nor his deputy had ever said they intended to step down, and charged that the neocons were leaking a canard to turn the two men they consider lame doves into lame ducks.
"This is the revenge of the neocons for two months of bad news, looking like they're falling all over themselves in Iraq," said a Powell confidant, noting that Alma Powell was furious she had been dragged in.
In The Post, nearly all of the names of those who could move up if Mr. Powell moves out are Iraq hawks: Condi Rice, Paul Wolfowitz and Newt Gingrich were mentioned as candidates for secretary of state; Wolfie, Cheney Chief of Staff Scooter Libby and Condi deputy Steve Hadley, who may be radioactive after the uranium mistake, were mentioned for national security chief.
Mr. Wolfowitz has been tacitly campaigning for the jobs. He told Charlie Rose about his vice-regal trip to Iraq, where he said at last grateful Iraqis were thronging. "As we would drive by, little kids would run up to the road and give us a thumbs up sign," he said. (At least he thought it was the thumb.)
The move against the popular Powell had all the earmarks of the neocons' pre-emptive strike on Iraq.
1.) Demonize. Reiterating his speech trashing Foggy Bottom last April for propping up dictators and coddling the corrupt, Mr. Gingrich — a Rummy ally who serves on the Defense Policy Board — called for "top-to-bottom reform and culture shock" at State in an article in the July Foreign Policy magazine.
2.) Sex-up the intelligence. The leakers spread word that Mr. Armitage told Condi that he and Mr. Powell would leave on Jan. 21, 2005, the day after the next presidential inauguration. "Nonsense," said Mr. Powell. "Nonsense," said Mr. Armitage.
3.) Create a false rationale. Everyone knew the pair might not stay for a second term. But the neocons were impatient to give them a push, blaming poor Alma Powell for henpecking her husband when they were.
4.) Bring about regime change.
5.) Fail to prepare for the aftermath. "Newt as secretary of state?" sneered one Powell pal. "Hel-lo?"
6.) Make sure it's good for Ariel Sharon. Just as the neocons made their move on Mr. Powell, pro-Israel hawks scorned the secretary for not being on their team in the peace process. Israel's supporters scoffed at the new threat to cut loan guarantees as a State Department policy, not a White House policy.
7.) Ignore the real threat. While the neocons are preoccupying the country with Iraq and a coup at the department d'état, Al Qaeda may have blown up a Marriott in Indonesia and are plotting attacks here.
8.) Change the subject. Next stop, North Korea.
__________________________________________________________________
August 6, 2003
Neocon Coup at the Department d'Etat
By MAUREEN DOWD NY TIMES
WASHINGTON
Let others fight over whether the war in Iraq was a neocon vigilante action disrupting diplomacy. The neocons have moved on to a vigilante action to occupy diplomacy.
The audacious ones have saddled up their pre-emptive steeds and headed off to force a regime change at Foggy Bottom.
President Bush staged a Texan tableau vivant last night, playing host at his ranch to the secretary of state, his wife, Alma, and his deputy, Richard Armitage. Mr. Bush wanted to show solidarity after a Washington Post story on Monday that said that Colin Powell, under pressure from his wife, said he would not be part of a second Bush term, nor would Mr. Armitage.
Mr. Bush might be trying to signal his respect for Mr. Powell, but the president is not always privy to the start of a grandiose neocon scheme.
The scene was reminiscent of last August in Crawford, when Mr. Bush dismissed press "churning" that the administration was on the verge of striking Iraq, saying, "When I say I'm a patient man, I mean I'm a patient man and that we will look at all options and we will consider all technologies available to us, and diplomacy and intelligence."
We all know how that turned out.
When the neocons want something done, they'll get it done, no matter what Mr. Bush thinks. And they think Mr. Powell has downgraded the top cabinet post into a human resources job, making nicey-nice with the U.N. and assorted bad guys instead of pursuing the neocon blueprint for world domination through what James Woolsey calls World War IV (World War III being the cold war.)
Countering the Post story, Mr. Powell's posse claimed that neither the secretary of state nor his deputy had ever said they intended to step down, and charged that the neocons were leaking a canard to turn the two men they consider lame doves into lame ducks.
"This is the revenge of the neocons for two months of bad news, looking like they're falling all over themselves in Iraq," said a Powell confidant, noting that Alma Powell was furious she had been dragged in.
In The Post, nearly all of the names of those who could move up if Mr. Powell moves out are Iraq hawks: Condi Rice, Paul Wolfowitz and Newt Gingrich were mentioned as candidates for secretary of state; Wolfie, Cheney Chief of Staff Scooter Libby and Condi deputy Steve Hadley, who may be radioactive after the uranium mistake, were mentioned for national security chief.
Mr. Wolfowitz has been tacitly campaigning for the jobs. He told Charlie Rose about his vice-regal trip to Iraq, where he said at last grateful Iraqis were thronging. "As we would drive by, little kids would run up to the road and give us a thumbs up sign," he said. (At least he thought it was the thumb.)
The move against the popular Powell had all the earmarks of the neocons' pre-emptive strike on Iraq.
1.) Demonize. Reiterating his speech trashing Foggy Bottom last April for propping up dictators and coddling the corrupt, Mr. Gingrich — a Rummy ally who serves on the Defense Policy Board — called for "top-to-bottom reform and culture shock" at State in an article in the July Foreign Policy magazine.
2.) Sex-up the intelligence. The leakers spread word that Mr. Armitage told Condi that he and Mr. Powell would leave on Jan. 21, 2005, the day after the next presidential inauguration. "Nonsense," said Mr. Powell. "Nonsense," said Mr. Armitage.
3.) Create a false rationale. Everyone knew the pair might not stay for a second term. But the neocons were impatient to give them a push, blaming poor Alma Powell for henpecking her husband when they were.
4.) Bring about regime change.
5.) Fail to prepare for the aftermath. "Newt as secretary of state?" sneered one Powell pal. "Hel-lo?"
6.) Make sure it's good for Ariel Sharon. Just as the neocons made their move on Mr. Powell, pro-Israel hawks scorned the secretary for not being on their team in the peace process. Israel's supporters scoffed at the new threat to cut loan guarantees as a State Department policy, not a White House policy.
7.) Ignore the real threat. While the neocons are preoccupying the country with Iraq and a coup at the department d'état, Al Qaeda may have blown up a Marriott in Indonesia and are plotting attacks here.
8.) Change the subject. Next stop, North Korea.
__________________________________________________________________
Bush is out to shrink the Federal government at all costs. He's giving huge tax cuts to the rich so he can downsize everything including our national security. Oh, sure. He runs up trillons in debt on wasteful defense spending (did you hear how incredibly huge the salaries of the CEOs of the defense industries salaries went up in the last few years?) but gives nothing to our cops, firemen, air marshalls and everyone else on the front lines here at home.
August 6, 2003 NY TIMES EDITORIAL
Shortchanging Security
The Associated Press headline picked up by newspapers across the country last week said it all: "Air Marshal Program Could Be Cut, Despite Hijacking Threat." That was not exactly welcome news to millions of Americans at the height of the summer travel season, and the ensuing uproar helped kill the proposed spending cuts. Yet sadly enough, the story line was all too familiar. The Bush administration and Congressional leaders in Washington have been too reluctant to devote enough resources to protect the nation against terrorism.
A sense of complacency at this time would be inexcusable under any circumstances, but it is reckless when intelligence points to the likelihood of more terrorist attacks on aviation. President Bush called it a "real threat" at his press conference last week. The government is so concerned, it now requires travelers who need a visa to visit the United States to obtain one when merely changing planes here, say, en route to Paris from Rio.
Federal airport screeners and airlines have also been put on notice that Al Qaeda terrorists may be adapting cameras or other electronic devices into weapons. Aviation security has been substantially upgraded since the Sept. 11 attacks, but airliners remain the most alluring terrorist target all the same.
That is why it would be so wrong to roll back the air marshal program now. As the mounting threats were disclosed, a leaked memo from an official with the federal air marshal service cited budgetary concerns in urging regional offices to drop flights requiring overnight stays. The war on terror, apparently, must be waged on a day trip.
On Sunday, appearing on the NBC News program "Meet the Press," Tom Ridge, Homeland Security Secretary, conceded that the juxtaposition of proposed spending cuts and new threats amounted to an "unusual sequence of events." We'll say. He then reassured viewers that there would be no curtailment in the air marshal program that puts thousands of undercover law-enforcement agents on an undisclosed number of flights.
Mr. Ridge did not address the budgetary constraints faced by the Transportation Security Administration, the agency within his department established in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. The agency has received nearly $1 billion less than it has sought from Congress, forcing layoffs and the postponement of air marshal training.
Inadequate resources have also been devoted to the securing of airport perimeters and cargo facilities, not to mention ports and energy plants. These needs must be addressed.
__________________________________________________________________
August 6, 2003 NY TIMES EDITORIAL
Shortchanging Security
The Associated Press headline picked up by newspapers across the country last week said it all: "Air Marshal Program Could Be Cut, Despite Hijacking Threat." That was not exactly welcome news to millions of Americans at the height of the summer travel season, and the ensuing uproar helped kill the proposed spending cuts. Yet sadly enough, the story line was all too familiar. The Bush administration and Congressional leaders in Washington have been too reluctant to devote enough resources to protect the nation against terrorism.
A sense of complacency at this time would be inexcusable under any circumstances, but it is reckless when intelligence points to the likelihood of more terrorist attacks on aviation. President Bush called it a "real threat" at his press conference last week. The government is so concerned, it now requires travelers who need a visa to visit the United States to obtain one when merely changing planes here, say, en route to Paris from Rio.
Federal airport screeners and airlines have also been put on notice that Al Qaeda terrorists may be adapting cameras or other electronic devices into weapons. Aviation security has been substantially upgraded since the Sept. 11 attacks, but airliners remain the most alluring terrorist target all the same.
That is why it would be so wrong to roll back the air marshal program now. As the mounting threats were disclosed, a leaked memo from an official with the federal air marshal service cited budgetary concerns in urging regional offices to drop flights requiring overnight stays. The war on terror, apparently, must be waged on a day trip.
On Sunday, appearing on the NBC News program "Meet the Press," Tom Ridge, Homeland Security Secretary, conceded that the juxtaposition of proposed spending cuts and new threats amounted to an "unusual sequence of events." We'll say. He then reassured viewers that there would be no curtailment in the air marshal program that puts thousands of undercover law-enforcement agents on an undisclosed number of flights.
Mr. Ridge did not address the budgetary constraints faced by the Transportation Security Administration, the agency within his department established in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. The agency has received nearly $1 billion less than it has sought from Congress, forcing layoffs and the postponement of air marshal training.
Inadequate resources have also been devoted to the securing of airport perimeters and cargo facilities, not to mention ports and energy plants. These needs must be addressed.
__________________________________________________________________
Monday, August 04, 2003
Can the inept political manipulation of this bumbling and corrupt administration be more damning?!!!
The Pentagon has some explaining to do
By KAREN KWIATKOWSKI
The Houston Chronicle / Aug. 3, 2003, 12:03AM
After eight years of Bill Clinton, many military officers breathed a sigh of relief when George W. Bush was named president. I was in that plurality. At one time, I would have believed the administration's accusations of anti-Americanism against anyone who questioned the integrity and good faith of President Bush, Vice President Cheney or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
However, while working from May 2002 through February 2003 in the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Near East South Asia and Special Plans (USDP/NESA and SP) in the Pentagon, I observed the environment in which decisions about post-war Iraq were made.
Those observations changed everything.
What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline. If one is seeking the answers to why peculiar bits of "intelligence" found sanctity in a presidential speech, or why the post-Saddam occupation has been distinguished by confusion and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense. I can identify three prevailing themes.
*Functional isolation of the professional corps. Civil service and active-duty military professionals assigned to the USDP/NESA and SP were noticeably uninvolved in key areas of interest to Under Secretary for Policy Douglas Feith, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. These included Israel, Iraq and to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia.
When The New York Times broke the story last summer of Richard Perle's invitation to Laurent Muraviec to brief the Defense Policy Board on Saudi Arabia as the next enemy of the United States, this briefing was news to the Saudi desk officer. He even had some difficulty getting a copy of it, while receiving assignments related to it.
In terms of Israel and Iraq, all primary staff work was conducted by political appointees, in the case of Israel a desk officer appointee from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and in the case of Iraq, Abe Shulsky and several other appointees. These personnel may be exceptionally qualified; Shulsky authored a 1993 textbook Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence. But the human resource depth made possible through broad-based teamwork with the professional policy and intelligence corps was never established, and apparently never wanted by the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld organization.
* Cross-agency cliques: Much has been written about the role of the founding members of the Project for a New American Century, the Center for Security Policy and the American Enterprise Institute and their new positions in the Bush administration. Certainly, appointees sharing particular viewpoints are expected to congregate, and that an overwhelming number of these appointees have such organizational ties is neither conspiratorial nor unusual. What is unusual is the way this network operates solely with its membership across the various agencies -- in particular the State Department, the National Security Council and the Office of the Vice President.
Within the Central Intelligence Agency, it was less clear to me who the appointees were, if any. This might explain the level of interest in the CIA taken by the Office of the Vice President. In any case, I personally witnessed several cases of staff officers being told not to contact their counterparts at State or the National Security Council because that particular decision would be processed through a different channel. This cliquishness is cause for amusement in such movies as Never Been Kissed or The Hot Chick. In the development and implementation of war planning it is neither amusing nor beneficial for American security because opposing points of view and information that doesn't "fit" aren't considered.
* Groupthink. Defined as "reasoning or decision-making by a group, often characterized by uncritical acceptance or conformity to prevailing points of view," groupthink was, and probably remains, the predominant characteristic of Pentagon Middle East policy development. The result of groupthink is the elevation of opinion into a kind of accepted "fact," and uncritical acceptance of extremely narrow and isolated points of view.
The result of groupthink has been extensively studied in the history of American foreign policy, and it will have a prominent role when the history of the Bush administration is written. Groupthink, in this most recent case leading to invasion and occupation of Iraq, will be found, I believe, to have caused a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress.
I am now retired. Shortly before my retirement I was allowed to return to my primary office of assignment, having served in NESA as a desk officer backfill for 10 months. The transfer was something I had sought, but my wish was granted only after I made a particular comment to my superior, in response to my reading of a February Secretary of State cable answering a long list of questions from a Middle Eastern country regarding U.S. planning for the aftermath in Iraq. The answers had been heavily crafted by the Pentagon, and to me, they were remarkably inadequate, given the late stage of the game. I suggested to my boss that if this was as good as it got, some folks on the Pentagon's E-ring may be sitting beside Saddam Hussein in the war crimes tribunals.
Saddam is not yet sitting before a war crimes tribunal. Nor have the key decision-makers in the Pentagon been forced to account for the odd set of circumstances that placed us as a long-term occupying force in the world's nastiest rat's nest, without a nation-building plan, without significant international support and without an exit plan. Neither may ever be required to answer their accusers, thanks to this administration's military as well as publicity machine, and the disgraceful political compromises already made by most of the Congress. Ironically, only Saddam Hussein, buried under tons of rubble or in hiding, has a good excuse.
Kwiatkowski is a recently retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who spent most of her final three years of military service in the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Under Secretariat for Policy.
______________________________________________________________________
The Pentagon has some explaining to do
By KAREN KWIATKOWSKI
The Houston Chronicle / Aug. 3, 2003, 12:03AM
After eight years of Bill Clinton, many military officers breathed a sigh of relief when George W. Bush was named president. I was in that plurality. At one time, I would have believed the administration's accusations of anti-Americanism against anyone who questioned the integrity and good faith of President Bush, Vice President Cheney or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
However, while working from May 2002 through February 2003 in the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Near East South Asia and Special Plans (USDP/NESA and SP) in the Pentagon, I observed the environment in which decisions about post-war Iraq were made.
Those observations changed everything.
What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline. If one is seeking the answers to why peculiar bits of "intelligence" found sanctity in a presidential speech, or why the post-Saddam occupation has been distinguished by confusion and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense. I can identify three prevailing themes.
*Functional isolation of the professional corps. Civil service and active-duty military professionals assigned to the USDP/NESA and SP were noticeably uninvolved in key areas of interest to Under Secretary for Policy Douglas Feith, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. These included Israel, Iraq and to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia.
When The New York Times broke the story last summer of Richard Perle's invitation to Laurent Muraviec to brief the Defense Policy Board on Saudi Arabia as the next enemy of the United States, this briefing was news to the Saudi desk officer. He even had some difficulty getting a copy of it, while receiving assignments related to it.
In terms of Israel and Iraq, all primary staff work was conducted by political appointees, in the case of Israel a desk officer appointee from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and in the case of Iraq, Abe Shulsky and several other appointees. These personnel may be exceptionally qualified; Shulsky authored a 1993 textbook Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence. But the human resource depth made possible through broad-based teamwork with the professional policy and intelligence corps was never established, and apparently never wanted by the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld organization.
* Cross-agency cliques: Much has been written about the role of the founding members of the Project for a New American Century, the Center for Security Policy and the American Enterprise Institute and their new positions in the Bush administration. Certainly, appointees sharing particular viewpoints are expected to congregate, and that an overwhelming number of these appointees have such organizational ties is neither conspiratorial nor unusual. What is unusual is the way this network operates solely with its membership across the various agencies -- in particular the State Department, the National Security Council and the Office of the Vice President.
Within the Central Intelligence Agency, it was less clear to me who the appointees were, if any. This might explain the level of interest in the CIA taken by the Office of the Vice President. In any case, I personally witnessed several cases of staff officers being told not to contact their counterparts at State or the National Security Council because that particular decision would be processed through a different channel. This cliquishness is cause for amusement in such movies as Never Been Kissed or The Hot Chick. In the development and implementation of war planning it is neither amusing nor beneficial for American security because opposing points of view and information that doesn't "fit" aren't considered.
* Groupthink. Defined as "reasoning or decision-making by a group, often characterized by uncritical acceptance or conformity to prevailing points of view," groupthink was, and probably remains, the predominant characteristic of Pentagon Middle East policy development. The result of groupthink is the elevation of opinion into a kind of accepted "fact," and uncritical acceptance of extremely narrow and isolated points of view.
The result of groupthink has been extensively studied in the history of American foreign policy, and it will have a prominent role when the history of the Bush administration is written. Groupthink, in this most recent case leading to invasion and occupation of Iraq, will be found, I believe, to have caused a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress.
I am now retired. Shortly before my retirement I was allowed to return to my primary office of assignment, having served in NESA as a desk officer backfill for 10 months. The transfer was something I had sought, but my wish was granted only after I made a particular comment to my superior, in response to my reading of a February Secretary of State cable answering a long list of questions from a Middle Eastern country regarding U.S. planning for the aftermath in Iraq. The answers had been heavily crafted by the Pentagon, and to me, they were remarkably inadequate, given the late stage of the game. I suggested to my boss that if this was as good as it got, some folks on the Pentagon's E-ring may be sitting beside Saddam Hussein in the war crimes tribunals.
Saddam is not yet sitting before a war crimes tribunal. Nor have the key decision-makers in the Pentagon been forced to account for the odd set of circumstances that placed us as a long-term occupying force in the world's nastiest rat's nest, without a nation-building plan, without significant international support and without an exit plan. Neither may ever be required to answer their accusers, thanks to this administration's military as well as publicity machine, and the disgraceful political compromises already made by most of the Congress. Ironically, only Saddam Hussein, buried under tons of rubble or in hiding, has a good excuse.
Kwiatkowski is a recently retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who spent most of her final three years of military service in the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Under Secretariat for Policy.
______________________________________________________________________
Sunday, August 03, 2003
Here's another issue that requires someone with a strong military record to counter the GOP's command on the issue going into the election. Kerry has a proven record IN government chairing Senate committees of and working on the top issues of foreign policy and military preparedness. Not to mention that he's a decorated war hero whose photos from that conflict can NOT be ridiculed nor give veterans pause for giving him their full support. He's fought in combat. He knows battle and when faced with an unjust war he's also worked for peace. This is a key voting factor for conservative Democrats, Independents and moderate Republicans.
But beyond all this we need a seasoned leader who has a reasoned world view for dealing with the unthinkable move by our and other nation's military leaders to EXPAND nuclear weapons and making the world a more dangerous place. We need a candidate that can BEAT BUSH!
Kerry is that man.
Facing a Second Nuclear Age
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
This week, ten minutes by car south of Omaha, Neb., the United States Strategic Command is holding a little-advertised meeting at which the Bush administration is to solidify its plans for acquiring a new generation of nuclear arms. Topping the wish list are weapons meant to penetrate deep into the earth to destroy enemy bunkers. The Pentagon believes that more than 70 nations, big and small, now have some 1,400 underground command posts and sites for ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.
Determined to fight fire with fire, the Defense Department wants bomb makers to develop a class of relatively small nuclear arms — ranging from a fraction the size of the Hiroshima bomb to several times as large — that could pierce rock and reinforced concrete and turn strongholds into radioactive dust.
"With an effective earth penetrator, many buried targets could be attacked," the administration said in its Nuclear Posture Review, which it sent to Congress last year.
Welcome to the second nuclear age and the Bush administration's quiet responses to the age's perceived dangers.
While initiatives like pre-emptive war have gotten most of the headlines (understandably, given the invasion of Iraq and its shaky aftermath), the administration is hard at work on other ways to counteract the spread of weapons like nuclear arms. Federal and private experts agree that with the notable exception of North Korea, diplomacy and arms control, for now, have taken a back seat to muscle flexing...
______________________________________________________________________
But beyond all this we need a seasoned leader who has a reasoned world view for dealing with the unthinkable move by our and other nation's military leaders to EXPAND nuclear weapons and making the world a more dangerous place. We need a candidate that can BEAT BUSH!
Kerry is that man.
Facing a Second Nuclear Age
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
This week, ten minutes by car south of Omaha, Neb., the United States Strategic Command is holding a little-advertised meeting at which the Bush administration is to solidify its plans for acquiring a new generation of nuclear arms. Topping the wish list are weapons meant to penetrate deep into the earth to destroy enemy bunkers. The Pentagon believes that more than 70 nations, big and small, now have some 1,400 underground command posts and sites for ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.
Determined to fight fire with fire, the Defense Department wants bomb makers to develop a class of relatively small nuclear arms — ranging from a fraction the size of the Hiroshima bomb to several times as large — that could pierce rock and reinforced concrete and turn strongholds into radioactive dust.
"With an effective earth penetrator, many buried targets could be attacked," the administration said in its Nuclear Posture Review, which it sent to Congress last year.
Welcome to the second nuclear age and the Bush administration's quiet responses to the age's perceived dangers.
While initiatives like pre-emptive war have gotten most of the headlines (understandably, given the invasion of Iraq and its shaky aftermath), the administration is hard at work on other ways to counteract the spread of weapons like nuclear arms. Federal and private experts agree that with the notable exception of North Korea, diplomacy and arms control, for now, have taken a back seat to muscle flexing...
______________________________________________________________________
The Democratic voters in the early primaries want more than anything to beat Bush. And they are beginning to size up the candidates as to who has the "stuff" to do it. By that they want a man that can not be ridiculed on a tank or for his record on the issues. They want a man who other centralist voters will support (liberal and conservative Democrats, Independents and moderate Republicans).
That man is John Kerry.
Disdain for Bush Simmers in Democratic Strongholds
By ROBIN TONER NY TIMES
DES MOINES, July 31 — While Democratic leaders in Washington debate strategy and demographics for the 2004 election — the wisdom of campaigning from the left, right or center — something far more visceral is at work in the first caucus state, and in other Democratic redoubts.
There is a powerful disdain for the Bush administration, stoked by the aftermath of the war in Iraq and the continuing lag in the economy. There is also a conviction that President Bush is eminently beatable, and a hunger to hear their party's leaders and candidates make the case against him — straight up, from the heart rather than the polling data.
It is not simply a lurch to the left, many Democrats say; it could, in fact, lead caucus voters to more centrist candidates, if they seem most likely to defeat Mr. Bush in the general election.
Tom Rusk, a state welfare worker who turned out this week to see Senator John Kerry in Fort Dodge, Iowa, describes himself as "pretty liberal." He says he likes what he hears from former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont and from Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio, but he worries that both candidates could be "Dukakisized" in the general election.
What Mr. Rusk is looking for, he said, alluding to the infamous image that doomed that past Democratic nominee, is "someone who will look impressive enough at the helm of an M-1 tank."...
____________________________________________________________
That man is John Kerry.
Disdain for Bush Simmers in Democratic Strongholds
By ROBIN TONER NY TIMES
DES MOINES, July 31 — While Democratic leaders in Washington debate strategy and demographics for the 2004 election — the wisdom of campaigning from the left, right or center — something far more visceral is at work in the first caucus state, and in other Democratic redoubts.
There is a powerful disdain for the Bush administration, stoked by the aftermath of the war in Iraq and the continuing lag in the economy. There is also a conviction that President Bush is eminently beatable, and a hunger to hear their party's leaders and candidates make the case against him — straight up, from the heart rather than the polling data.
It is not simply a lurch to the left, many Democrats say; it could, in fact, lead caucus voters to more centrist candidates, if they seem most likely to defeat Mr. Bush in the general election.
Tom Rusk, a state welfare worker who turned out this week to see Senator John Kerry in Fort Dodge, Iowa, describes himself as "pretty liberal." He says he likes what he hears from former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont and from Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio, but he worries that both candidates could be "Dukakisized" in the general election.
What Mr. Rusk is looking for, he said, alluding to the infamous image that doomed that past Democratic nominee, is "someone who will look impressive enough at the helm of an M-1 tank."...
____________________________________________________________
Friday, August 01, 2003
Boy, stories of how these liberated Iraqis are responding to our troops over there are awesome and inspiring! It's just like the kind of justice Bush demands of people playng on his team. Or like that British scientist who took care of the problem with his own life under Blair. Like DeLay going after those Democrats trying to thwart his power-play in Texas. Man, baseball games and ice cream can't be far off in Iraq now!
For an Iraqi Family, 'No Other Choice'
Father and Brother Are Forced by Villagers to Execute Suspected U.S. Informant
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, August 1, 2003; Page A01
THULUYA, Iraq -- Two hours before the dawn call to prayer, in a village still shrouded in silence, Sabah Kerbul's executioners arrived. His father carried an AK-47 assault rifle, as did his brother. And with barely a word spoken, they led the man accused by the village of working as an informer for the Americans behind a house girded with fig trees, vineyards and orange groves.
His father raised his rifle and aimed it at his oldest son.
"Sabah didn't try to escape," said Abdullah Ali, a village resident. "He knew he was facing his fate."
The story of what followed is based on interviews with Kerbul's father, brother and five other villagers who said witnesses told them about the events. One shot tore through Kerbul's leg, another his torso, the villagers said. He fell to the ground still breathing, his blood soaking the parched land near the banks of the Tigris River, they said. His father could go no further, and according to some accounts, he collapsed. His other son then fired three times, the villagers said, at least once at his brother's head.
Kerbul, a tall, husky 28-year-old, died.
"It wasn't an easy thing to kill him," his brother Salah said...
________________________________________________________________
For an Iraqi Family, 'No Other Choice'
Father and Brother Are Forced by Villagers to Execute Suspected U.S. Informant
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, August 1, 2003; Page A01
THULUYA, Iraq -- Two hours before the dawn call to prayer, in a village still shrouded in silence, Sabah Kerbul's executioners arrived. His father carried an AK-47 assault rifle, as did his brother. And with barely a word spoken, they led the man accused by the village of working as an informer for the Americans behind a house girded with fig trees, vineyards and orange groves.
His father raised his rifle and aimed it at his oldest son.
"Sabah didn't try to escape," said Abdullah Ali, a village resident. "He knew he was facing his fate."
The story of what followed is based on interviews with Kerbul's father, brother and five other villagers who said witnesses told them about the events. One shot tore through Kerbul's leg, another his torso, the villagers said. He fell to the ground still breathing, his blood soaking the parched land near the banks of the Tigris River, they said. His father could go no further, and according to some accounts, he collapsed. His other son then fired three times, the villagers said, at least once at his brother's head.
Kerbul, a tall, husky 28-year-old, died.
"It wasn't an easy thing to kill him," his brother Salah said...
________________________________________________________________
Thursday, July 31, 2003
Billions of dollars to go fight the wrong enemy. But there was the largest supply of easily pumped oil in the world.
Grabbing the Nettle
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The Pentagon held an all-day meeting a couple of weeks ago seeking ways to restrain North Korea. At the end of it, one expert turned to another and summed it up: "In other words, we're" doomed — except he used a pungent phrase I can't.
It was a fair judgment. North Korea was always more terrifying than Iraq, and now the situation is getting worse...
_______________________________________________________________
Grabbing the Nettle
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The Pentagon held an all-day meeting a couple of weeks ago seeking ways to restrain North Korea. At the end of it, one expert turned to another and summed it up: "In other words, we're" doomed — except he used a pungent phrase I can't.
It was a fair judgment. North Korea was always more terrifying than Iraq, and now the situation is getting worse...
_______________________________________________________________
Is Dean a leftie? The GOP thinks so and that's how they will tar him with the largest campaign war chest of money ever raised in U.S. history. Nothing less than Kerrry can win this election. Put Clark on the ticket as VP and you're assured a victory as the conservative Democrats, the moderate Republicans and the Independents will vote for them.
Will the Real Howard Dean Please Stand Up?
By Terry M. Neal
Washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2003; 8:57 AM
Howard Dean is not a liberal – or so say the liberals who know him best in his home state of Vermont.
"He governed from the middle," says former state Sen. Jan Backus.
Ironically, some of Vermont's Democratic Party stalwarts say Dean's centrism sent liberals running from their party to the ultra-liberal Progressive Party -- handing some elected offices to Republicans.
But such things as liberalism and conservatism are, just like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. The centrist Democratic Leadership Council has made Dean a target - as a liberal who could hand the presidential election to Republicans if he were to become the party's nominee.
Republicans are not so divided on the subject. To them, he's just an old-time, unreconstructed leftie.
"The question is through whose prism are you looking," says Vermont Republican chairman James Barnett. "Vermont's Democratic party is far to the left of mainstream Democrats nationally. I mean, this is a state whose congressman is Bernie Sanders. One of the senators is Patrick Leahy, who is one of the most liberal senators. In this state, if you're to the right of Bernie Sanders, then you're a moderate. So I imagine if that's the way you view things, maybe [Dean's] not a liberal."...
______________________________________________________________________
Will the Real Howard Dean Please Stand Up?
By Terry M. Neal
Washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2003; 8:57 AM
Howard Dean is not a liberal – or so say the liberals who know him best in his home state of Vermont.
"He governed from the middle," says former state Sen. Jan Backus.
Ironically, some of Vermont's Democratic Party stalwarts say Dean's centrism sent liberals running from their party to the ultra-liberal Progressive Party -- handing some elected offices to Republicans.
But such things as liberalism and conservatism are, just like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. The centrist Democratic Leadership Council has made Dean a target - as a liberal who could hand the presidential election to Republicans if he were to become the party's nominee.
Republicans are not so divided on the subject. To them, he's just an old-time, unreconstructed leftie.
"The question is through whose prism are you looking," says Vermont Republican chairman James Barnett. "Vermont's Democratic party is far to the left of mainstream Democrats nationally. I mean, this is a state whose congressman is Bernie Sanders. One of the senators is Patrick Leahy, who is one of the most liberal senators. In this state, if you're to the right of Bernie Sanders, then you're a moderate. So I imagine if that's the way you view things, maybe [Dean's] not a liberal."...
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Duh? Just keep repeating McCarthy and McGovern when you get fired up over Dean's anti-war stands and whatever else he's selling. Is he right? I've been against the war since the beginning but so were McCarthy and McGovern and they got their arses handed to them in a sling by one of the coldest and ugliest politicians in modern U.S. politics. Hello? Disconnect your ears and use your brain to examine the past for five seconds and remember that those that don't remember the past ARE FORCED TO REPEAT IT.
A Sharp Turn Left?
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2003; 9:03 AM
A civil war has erupted in the Democratic Party.
It's the liberals versus the centrists, the Howard Dean loyalists versus the anti-Dean establishment, the bash-Bush crowd versus those who believe anger alone can't win elections.
This ideological struggle will not only shape the 2004 election, but the shape of the party for years to come...
__________________________________________________________________
A Sharp Turn Left?
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2003; 9:03 AM
A civil war has erupted in the Democratic Party.
It's the liberals versus the centrists, the Howard Dean loyalists versus the anti-Dean establishment, the bash-Bush crowd versus those who believe anger alone can't win elections.
This ideological struggle will not only shape the 2004 election, but the shape of the party for years to come...
__________________________________________________________________
Feeling the heat, Bush puts on his poker face. On a side note. Yesterday I received an interesting joke in email from a conservative independent friend of mine. The joke was a hoary relic about clocks in heaven whose hands spin around in relationship to their connection's (a famous celebrity) lying. I've seen it many times before using Clinton as the punch line but this time it was Bush's name that sold the joke. Seems like the country (at least those conservative independent SWITCH voters) is beginning to form a negative opinion of Bush going into the election.
Upbeat Tone Belies Downside Risks
Thu Jul 31, 8:58 AM ET
By Dan Balz, Washington Post Staff Writer
His poll ratings are down, his administration's credibility on Iraq has been challenged and the economy continues to limp along, but everywhere he looked yesterday, President Bush saw reasons for optimism.
Whatever the issue, whatever the question that came his way in his first formal news conference since the start of the war in Iraq, the president had essentially the same answer: "We're making progress." But threaded through that display of self-confidence was another, more sobering message that his advisers hope Americans will accept: "This is going to take time."
His upbeat appraisal across a wide range of problems belied the challenges that have confronted his administration in the past month and the political toll they have begun to take on his presidency. If confidence alone produced results, there might be less for him to worry about.
For the first time in months, there are glimmers of optimism among Democrats, based on their sense that Bush may be vulnerable in his bid for reelection. The energy with which Bush's political team has been attacking the Democrats as too far left to be trusted to run the country suggests they understand that the longer the problems in Iraq and at home fester, the more likely it is that Bush will face a genuine fight to win a second term...
______________________________________________________________
Upbeat Tone Belies Downside Risks
Thu Jul 31, 8:58 AM ET
By Dan Balz, Washington Post Staff Writer
His poll ratings are down, his administration's credibility on Iraq has been challenged and the economy continues to limp along, but everywhere he looked yesterday, President Bush saw reasons for optimism.
Whatever the issue, whatever the question that came his way in his first formal news conference since the start of the war in Iraq, the president had essentially the same answer: "We're making progress." But threaded through that display of self-confidence was another, more sobering message that his advisers hope Americans will accept: "This is going to take time."
His upbeat appraisal across a wide range of problems belied the challenges that have confronted his administration in the past month and the political toll they have begun to take on his presidency. If confidence alone produced results, there might be less for him to worry about.
For the first time in months, there are glimmers of optimism among Democrats, based on their sense that Bush may be vulnerable in his bid for reelection. The energy with which Bush's political team has been attacking the Democrats as too far left to be trusted to run the country suggests they understand that the longer the problems in Iraq and at home fester, the more likely it is that Bush will face a genuine fight to win a second term...
______________________________________________________________
Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Blanket of Dread
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
There is no more delightful way to pass a summer's day in Washington than going up to Capitol Hill to watch senators jump ugly on Wolfie.
Many Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee felt they had been snookered by Paul Wolfowitz, and they did not want to be played again.
They waited gimlet-eyed yesterday while Wolfowitz of Arabia shimmied away once more from giving the cost, in lives or troops or dollars, of remaking a roiling Iraq....
_________________________________________________________
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
There is no more delightful way to pass a summer's day in Washington than going up to Capitol Hill to watch senators jump ugly on Wolfie.
Many Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee felt they had been snookered by Paul Wolfowitz, and they did not want to be played again.
They waited gimlet-eyed yesterday while Wolfowitz of Arabia shimmied away once more from giving the cost, in lives or troops or dollars, of remaking a roiling Iraq....
_________________________________________________________
The amazing gall of John Poindexter has no limits.What do you expect from a convicted Iran/Contran criminal?
Poindexter's Follies
NY TIMES EDITORIAL
The time has obviously come to send John Poindexter packing and to shut down the wacky espionage operation he runs at the Pentagon. The latest idea hatched by Mr. Poindexter's shop — an online futures trading market where speculators could bet on the probabilities of terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups — was canceled yesterday by embarrassed Pentagon officials. The next logical step is to fire Mr. Poindexter.
In testimony before Congress yesterday, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, disowned the futures project. The insensitivity of the idea boggles the mind. Quite apart from the tone-deafness of equating terrorist attacks with, say, corn futures, the plan would allow speculators — even terrorists — to profit from anonymous bets on future attacks. The project's theoretical underpinnings are equally absurd. Markets do not always operate perfectly in the larger world of stocks and bonds. The idea that they can reliably forecast the behavior of isolated terrorists is ridiculous.
The "Policy Analysis Market" would actually have opened for business on Oct. 1 had Senators Ron Wyden and Byron Dorgan not blown the whistle. Despite Mr. Wolfowitz's pledge to kill it, however, the problem of Mr. Poindexter remains. He is a man of dubious background and dubious ideas. A retired rear admiral, he served as Ronald Reagan's national security adviser and helped devise the plan to sell arms to Iran and illegally divert the proceeds to the rebels in Nicaragua. He was sentenced to six months in jail for lying to Congress, a conviction overturned on appeal. He resurfaced under the Bush administration at the Pentagon. His first big brainstorm post-9/11 was a program known as Total Information Awareness, designed to identify potential terrorists by compiling a detailed electronic dossier on millions of Americans.
Congress agreed earlier this year to subject that program to strict oversight and prohibit it from being used against Americans. In light of the revelations about the latest Poindexter scheme, Congress obviously did not go far enough. It should close his operation for good. The Senate recently agreed to do just that, adding an amendment to a Defense Department appropriations bill that would terminate funds for the program. The House must now follow suit.
______________________________________________________
Poindexter's Follies
NY TIMES EDITORIAL
The time has obviously come to send John Poindexter packing and to shut down the wacky espionage operation he runs at the Pentagon. The latest idea hatched by Mr. Poindexter's shop — an online futures trading market where speculators could bet on the probabilities of terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups — was canceled yesterday by embarrassed Pentagon officials. The next logical step is to fire Mr. Poindexter.
In testimony before Congress yesterday, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, disowned the futures project. The insensitivity of the idea boggles the mind. Quite apart from the tone-deafness of equating terrorist attacks with, say, corn futures, the plan would allow speculators — even terrorists — to profit from anonymous bets on future attacks. The project's theoretical underpinnings are equally absurd. Markets do not always operate perfectly in the larger world of stocks and bonds. The idea that they can reliably forecast the behavior of isolated terrorists is ridiculous.
The "Policy Analysis Market" would actually have opened for business on Oct. 1 had Senators Ron Wyden and Byron Dorgan not blown the whistle. Despite Mr. Wolfowitz's pledge to kill it, however, the problem of Mr. Poindexter remains. He is a man of dubious background and dubious ideas. A retired rear admiral, he served as Ronald Reagan's national security adviser and helped devise the plan to sell arms to Iran and illegally divert the proceeds to the rebels in Nicaragua. He was sentenced to six months in jail for lying to Congress, a conviction overturned on appeal. He resurfaced under the Bush administration at the Pentagon. His first big brainstorm post-9/11 was a program known as Total Information Awareness, designed to identify potential terrorists by compiling a detailed electronic dossier on millions of Americans.
Congress agreed earlier this year to subject that program to strict oversight and prohibit it from being used against Americans. In light of the revelations about the latest Poindexter scheme, Congress obviously did not go far enough. It should close his operation for good. The Senate recently agreed to do just that, adding an amendment to a Defense Department appropriations bill that would terminate funds for the program. The House must now follow suit.
______________________________________________________
The Dean Debate. I've collected some excellent blog bits from Ruy Teixeira at the terrific DONKEY RISING:
July 14, 2003
Is Dean Electable?
That's really the question, isn't it? Now that his boosters are getting over the euphoria of his fundraising numbers and his indisputable status as one of the top tier candidates in the Democratic race, they are (to their credit) starting to engage on the issue of his electability. Yes, indeed, Dean has a reasonable chance of capturing the Democratic nomination. But does he have a reasonable chance of actually beating Bush?
John Judis' piece in Salon.com argues: not really; in fact, he'll probably get clobbered. The essence of Judis' argument is that, while Dean can fairly be said to represent the ethos of the country's increasingly influential professional class, which plays a leading role in today's Democratic coalition, his ability to appeal outside that group and other elements of the Democratic base is likely to be poor. His aggressive antiwar stance and liberalism on issues like gay marriage will turn off swing voters, especially white working class and culturally conservative voters, and especially in swing states the Democrats need to win to build an electoral vote majority.
DR thinks Judis is right. But TAPPED and Jerome Armstrong ( writing in MyDD ) offer some counterarguments that deserve attention. Perhaps their dominant theme is that Judis is contradicting his own thesis in The Emerging Democratic Majority by saying that Dean represents the views of the professional class--which EDM annoints as the ideological leader of the new Democratic coalition--but somehow can't put that coalition together.
DR is pretty familiar with the EDM thesis and can assure TAPPED and MyDD that there is no contradiction. The key point is that political leadership involves building coalitions that reach outside your base and absorb independent and moderate voters who are leaning your way. Clinton's strength was being able to synthesize the views of professionals with those of older elements of the Democratic coalition and present that synthesis in a way that made enough independent and moderate voters feel it was safe to vote Democratic. That includes the white working class and culturally conservative voters Dean is likely to have the most trouble with.
Really, it seems to DR that Dean supporters' main argument has to be that the Dean straight talkin', McCain mojo, aggressive alpha-male thing will obviate any need for the kind of electoral finesse displayed by Clinton. Independents will hear that straight talkin' and they'll rush to sign up, especially as the administration continues to dissemble on Iraq, etc. But DR believes that not all independents are created equal and that Dean's approach and persona is still likely to yield its most success with socially liberal, upscale independents in relatively liberal states.
None of this is to say that Dean couldn't possibly beat Bush in any situation. If the administration gets into enough hot water on Iraq and the economy anything is possible. But, if they get into that kind of hot water, then a more moderate, less polarizing--less purely professional class!--candidate like Kerry or Gephardt is even more likely to be able to beat Bush.
It's all a matter of probabilities. Dean's supporters can make a case that he possibly could beat Bush if enough things went his way. But we need to look at probabilities not possibilities and that's where Dean's candidacy falls short.
posted 1:25 pm
July 16, 2003
The Dean Debate Continues!
Yesterday TAPPED responded to DR's response to TAPPED's response to John Judis' Salon.com article about Dean's (non)electability. It appears we've reached unity on some the problems likely to beset a Dean general election candidacy As TAPPED puts it:
[There is] much that is appealing about Dean, but we'd have to agree that his ability to resonate with moderate voters in center-right swing states will probably be the acid test of whether his straight talk can overcome his geographic undesirability.
Exactly. That is where the case for Dean has to be made. An interesting contribution along these lines was made recently in &c., The New Republic 's blog. The post is essentially a response to a column by The Los Angeles Times ' Ron Brownstein, where Brownstein argues that Ho-Ho's fervent denunciations of Bush play great with Democrats but are probably frightening away centrist voters Democrats need in the general election.
&c. reasonably points out that any successful candidate for the Democratic nomination winds up frightening at least some centrist voters, due to the nature of the process: you're marketing yourself to Democrats not the general electorate. The question therefore is not whether there's damage but how much there is and how fixable that damage is. &c. argues that Dean's liberalism is more tonal (he let's 'em have it!) than based on policy (many of his policies--though not Iraq, which is a big exception--are relatively conservative for a Democrat). And that's good because tonal liberalism is much easier to modify for the general than policy liberalism, which tends to box you in with commitments that are hard to keep if you want to appeal to moderates.
&c. argues further that there are aspects of Dean's aggressive tone that could even help with some moderate voters, especially white men, since many of these voters see Democrats as hopelessly wimpy. Dean may be many things, but wimpy he's not!
There are problems with this argument, but it is crisply put and again focuses us on the central question that has to be convincingly addressed to make the case for Dean's electability: can he really get those moderate voters in the swing states--and can he get them better than the other Democratic candidates?
Well, maybe more on this tomorrow. DR's spies tell him that The New Republic 's two Jonathans (Cohn/pro and Chait/con) will weigh in tomorrow on the Dean electability question and they'll no doubt have new and interesting things to say.
July 17, 2003
Take Two Dean Articles and Call Me in the Morning
The good doctor is on trial today in the pages of The New Republic . Can feisty Ho-Ho (if nominated) actually beat George W. Bush and become President of these United States? Yes, he can! says Jonathan Cohn . Don’t be ridiculous, says Jonathan Chait .
DR urges you to read both of them and then pick your Jonathan. Both are fine articles. Cohn’s is possibly the best defense of Dean’s electability I’ve seen. Chait’s, if a bit over-the-top at times, raises so many good questions about Dean’s electoral viability that honest Dean supporters will be forced to slow down for a minute and ask themselves: gee, could this guy really, really beat Bush?
DR doesn’t entirely agree with either article, but he is inclined to think Cohn is more wrong than right and Chait is more right than wrong.
Cohn’s case is that Dean’s centrism is real and misunderstood and that his appeal to liberals is based mostly on the fact that “he’s as angry as they are� and tells it like it is about Bush and the sins of his administration. Cohn further argues that Dean’s blunt-speaking persona will be just the ticket with voters, including swing voters, who are looking for someone who speaks like a human being and tells you what they really think in clear, short sentences. That authenticity, Cohn argues, will be the key to reaching the political center, even on contentious issues like the Iraq war (where, he reminds us, Dean’s consistent stance against the war looks less far-out with every day that goes by).
Well, maybe. As Cohn himself cogently puts it:
[V]oters will quite properly demand that presidential candidates demonstrate their ability to protect national security. That's a difficult challenge for any governor lacking foreign policy or personal military experience. Make that governor a New Englander, load him up with a few cultural positions (such as pro-civil unions) that some voters interpret as "soft," then have him oppose a war that was widely popular at the time, and what you have--it would seem--is a recipe for disaster.
I’m not sure Cohn ever really extricates Dean from these problems in his article. And Chait’s article sticks this knife in and twists it. The article, ominously (biblically?) subtitled “Howard Dean and the Tempting of the Democrats�, systematically marches through all the ways (like the ones Cohn mentions and then some) in which Dean can easily be portrayed as out-of-step and too liberal for centrist general election voters. As Chait points out, Dean’s heterodoxy on issues like guns and the death penalty is unlikely to help him that much in the general because voters do not carefully examine each candidate’s individual positions. Instead, they go for a broad impression of the man, which Rove and Co. will be happy to supply based on the abundant raw material that a Dean candidacy will supply.
There are some problems with Chait’s article. He spends too much time upbraiding Dean for being unfair to his fellow Democrats (quit lying about their records!) And he never really deals with the energy and mobilization issue, which is surely a strong point of the Dean candidacy. Any Democratic candidate will need energy and mobilization in abundance to be successful and Chait, shall we say, doesn’t really give the devil his due on this one.
No matter. It’s a good article and so is Cohn’s. Read ‘em both and you’ll be up to speed as the Great Dean Debate continues.
July 22, 2003
Once Again on the Dean Question
DR’s posts on the Dean electability question (July 14, 16 and 17) have generated some comment, including most recently this post by MyDD and this post by Demosthenes , in which they hasten to assure me that my misgivings about Dean’s electability are misplaced.
I can’t say I was convinced, any more than I was by Jonathan Cohn’s fine case for the good doctor in The New Republic . But I think their posts are instructive because they reveal some of the assumptions that Dean boosters tend to make when arguing (in essence) that only Democratic wimps, hopeless Establishment types and/or DLCers believe Dean can’t beat Bush.
Assumption #1: Dean’s association with liberal social issues like gay marriage won’t hurt him much—or, at least any more than any other Democrat will be hurt by social liberalism--because he is conservative on other social issues (guns, death penalty). Anyway, the country is becoming more liberal on issues concerning gays (witness the recent Supreme Court decision), so Dean won’t seem nearly so out-of-step as a lot of commentators think.
Problem #1: Yes, all Democrats, including nominal front-runner Kerry, will have to battle social liberalism critiques and hit jobs if nominated. But that’s exactly why you don’t want to present too much of an easy target and Dean does, due to not only the specific issue of gay marriage (still a bridge too far for most of the public, as opposed to legalizing gay sex, which they support), but also his geographic origins and the general profile of his candidacy.
Assumption #2: Dean’s antiwar stance will not hurt him; in fact, it’ll help him, now that Iraq has evolved into a seemingly intractable mess and the public is starting to wonder whether the whole adventure was worth the costs. Dean’s been consistently against the war, while the other candidates, like Kerry, have not and voters will reward that consistency.
Problem #2: Voters do not necessarily reward consistency. They reward those who seem to represent their view of the world and what needs to be done. The fact of the matter is that Kerry’s ambivalence-but-reluctant-support of the Iraq war more fairly represented the public’s view of the war going in than did Dean’s intransigent opposition and Kerry’s current move from ambivalence toward a critique of Bush’s approach also fairly represents how the public mood is evolving. So the inconsistent Kerry is probably in a much better position than the consistent Dean to capture the moderate voters who are becoming disaffected with the war’s aftermath, as well as the administration’s mendacity. And don’t forget: Kerry’s war hero status does matter and will help allay moderate voters’ fears that a critique of Bush comes from Democratic softness on national security, not from a realistic, tough-minded appraisal of what it’ll take to beat terrorists and keep America safe.
Assumption #3: Sure, Dean may have some trouble with some independent voters. But he will do well with independent-leaning members of the public who do not currently vote. In fact, he will bring out enough of these currently nonvoting independents to more than cancel out his losses among today’s independent voters.
Problem #3: This almost never works. The idea you can make up serious losses among existing voters by turning out lots of nonvoters is a very dangerous game indeed. Nonvoters rarely differ enough from voters of similar characteristics to warrant such an approach. (For those who want the long course on why this is so, DR recommends, in all due modesty, The Disappearing American Voter ) Instead, stick to the tried and true: get out your base (the folks you know will vote for you); fight like hell for the swing voters; and hope that an exciting campaign will bring in some new voters that will lean your way. But to vest your hopes in new voters is a serious—albeit common—mistake.
Well, all for now and, as DR is fond of saying: let the debate continue!
Coming soon in DR: The Demographics of Deanism
posted 5:23 pm
__________________________________________________________________
July 14, 2003
Is Dean Electable?
That's really the question, isn't it? Now that his boosters are getting over the euphoria of his fundraising numbers and his indisputable status as one of the top tier candidates in the Democratic race, they are (to their credit) starting to engage on the issue of his electability. Yes, indeed, Dean has a reasonable chance of capturing the Democratic nomination. But does he have a reasonable chance of actually beating Bush?
John Judis' piece in Salon.com argues: not really; in fact, he'll probably get clobbered. The essence of Judis' argument is that, while Dean can fairly be said to represent the ethos of the country's increasingly influential professional class, which plays a leading role in today's Democratic coalition, his ability to appeal outside that group and other elements of the Democratic base is likely to be poor. His aggressive antiwar stance and liberalism on issues like gay marriage will turn off swing voters, especially white working class and culturally conservative voters, and especially in swing states the Democrats need to win to build an electoral vote majority.
DR thinks Judis is right. But TAPPED and Jerome Armstrong ( writing in MyDD ) offer some counterarguments that deserve attention. Perhaps their dominant theme is that Judis is contradicting his own thesis in The Emerging Democratic Majority by saying that Dean represents the views of the professional class--which EDM annoints as the ideological leader of the new Democratic coalition--but somehow can't put that coalition together.
DR is pretty familiar with the EDM thesis and can assure TAPPED and MyDD that there is no contradiction. The key point is that political leadership involves building coalitions that reach outside your base and absorb independent and moderate voters who are leaning your way. Clinton's strength was being able to synthesize the views of professionals with those of older elements of the Democratic coalition and present that synthesis in a way that made enough independent and moderate voters feel it was safe to vote Democratic. That includes the white working class and culturally conservative voters Dean is likely to have the most trouble with.
Really, it seems to DR that Dean supporters' main argument has to be that the Dean straight talkin', McCain mojo, aggressive alpha-male thing will obviate any need for the kind of electoral finesse displayed by Clinton. Independents will hear that straight talkin' and they'll rush to sign up, especially as the administration continues to dissemble on Iraq, etc. But DR believes that not all independents are created equal and that Dean's approach and persona is still likely to yield its most success with socially liberal, upscale independents in relatively liberal states.
None of this is to say that Dean couldn't possibly beat Bush in any situation. If the administration gets into enough hot water on Iraq and the economy anything is possible. But, if they get into that kind of hot water, then a more moderate, less polarizing--less purely professional class!--candidate like Kerry or Gephardt is even more likely to be able to beat Bush.
It's all a matter of probabilities. Dean's supporters can make a case that he possibly could beat Bush if enough things went his way. But we need to look at probabilities not possibilities and that's where Dean's candidacy falls short.
posted 1:25 pm
July 16, 2003
The Dean Debate Continues!
Yesterday TAPPED responded to DR's response to TAPPED's response to John Judis' Salon.com article about Dean's (non)electability. It appears we've reached unity on some the problems likely to beset a Dean general election candidacy As TAPPED puts it:
[There is] much that is appealing about Dean, but we'd have to agree that his ability to resonate with moderate voters in center-right swing states will probably be the acid test of whether his straight talk can overcome his geographic undesirability.
Exactly. That is where the case for Dean has to be made. An interesting contribution along these lines was made recently in &c., The New Republic 's blog. The post is essentially a response to a column by The Los Angeles Times ' Ron Brownstein, where Brownstein argues that Ho-Ho's fervent denunciations of Bush play great with Democrats but are probably frightening away centrist voters Democrats need in the general election.
&c. reasonably points out that any successful candidate for the Democratic nomination winds up frightening at least some centrist voters, due to the nature of the process: you're marketing yourself to Democrats not the general electorate. The question therefore is not whether there's damage but how much there is and how fixable that damage is. &c. argues that Dean's liberalism is more tonal (he let's 'em have it!) than based on policy (many of his policies--though not Iraq, which is a big exception--are relatively conservative for a Democrat). And that's good because tonal liberalism is much easier to modify for the general than policy liberalism, which tends to box you in with commitments that are hard to keep if you want to appeal to moderates.
&c. argues further that there are aspects of Dean's aggressive tone that could even help with some moderate voters, especially white men, since many of these voters see Democrats as hopelessly wimpy. Dean may be many things, but wimpy he's not!
There are problems with this argument, but it is crisply put and again focuses us on the central question that has to be convincingly addressed to make the case for Dean's electability: can he really get those moderate voters in the swing states--and can he get them better than the other Democratic candidates?
Well, maybe more on this tomorrow. DR's spies tell him that The New Republic 's two Jonathans (Cohn/pro and Chait/con) will weigh in tomorrow on the Dean electability question and they'll no doubt have new and interesting things to say.
July 17, 2003
Take Two Dean Articles and Call Me in the Morning
The good doctor is on trial today in the pages of The New Republic . Can feisty Ho-Ho (if nominated) actually beat George W. Bush and become President of these United States? Yes, he can! says Jonathan Cohn . Don’t be ridiculous, says Jonathan Chait .
DR urges you to read both of them and then pick your Jonathan. Both are fine articles. Cohn’s is possibly the best defense of Dean’s electability I’ve seen. Chait’s, if a bit over-the-top at times, raises so many good questions about Dean’s electoral viability that honest Dean supporters will be forced to slow down for a minute and ask themselves: gee, could this guy really, really beat Bush?
DR doesn’t entirely agree with either article, but he is inclined to think Cohn is more wrong than right and Chait is more right than wrong.
Cohn’s case is that Dean’s centrism is real and misunderstood and that his appeal to liberals is based mostly on the fact that “he’s as angry as they are� and tells it like it is about Bush and the sins of his administration. Cohn further argues that Dean’s blunt-speaking persona will be just the ticket with voters, including swing voters, who are looking for someone who speaks like a human being and tells you what they really think in clear, short sentences. That authenticity, Cohn argues, will be the key to reaching the political center, even on contentious issues like the Iraq war (where, he reminds us, Dean’s consistent stance against the war looks less far-out with every day that goes by).
Well, maybe. As Cohn himself cogently puts it:
[V]oters will quite properly demand that presidential candidates demonstrate their ability to protect national security. That's a difficult challenge for any governor lacking foreign policy or personal military experience. Make that governor a New Englander, load him up with a few cultural positions (such as pro-civil unions) that some voters interpret as "soft," then have him oppose a war that was widely popular at the time, and what you have--it would seem--is a recipe for disaster.
I’m not sure Cohn ever really extricates Dean from these problems in his article. And Chait’s article sticks this knife in and twists it. The article, ominously (biblically?) subtitled “Howard Dean and the Tempting of the Democrats�, systematically marches through all the ways (like the ones Cohn mentions and then some) in which Dean can easily be portrayed as out-of-step and too liberal for centrist general election voters. As Chait points out, Dean’s heterodoxy on issues like guns and the death penalty is unlikely to help him that much in the general because voters do not carefully examine each candidate’s individual positions. Instead, they go for a broad impression of the man, which Rove and Co. will be happy to supply based on the abundant raw material that a Dean candidacy will supply.
There are some problems with Chait’s article. He spends too much time upbraiding Dean for being unfair to his fellow Democrats (quit lying about their records!) And he never really deals with the energy and mobilization issue, which is surely a strong point of the Dean candidacy. Any Democratic candidate will need energy and mobilization in abundance to be successful and Chait, shall we say, doesn’t really give the devil his due on this one.
No matter. It’s a good article and so is Cohn’s. Read ‘em both and you’ll be up to speed as the Great Dean Debate continues.
July 22, 2003
Once Again on the Dean Question
DR’s posts on the Dean electability question (July 14, 16 and 17) have generated some comment, including most recently this post by MyDD and this post by Demosthenes , in which they hasten to assure me that my misgivings about Dean’s electability are misplaced.
I can’t say I was convinced, any more than I was by Jonathan Cohn’s fine case for the good doctor in The New Republic . But I think their posts are instructive because they reveal some of the assumptions that Dean boosters tend to make when arguing (in essence) that only Democratic wimps, hopeless Establishment types and/or DLCers believe Dean can’t beat Bush.
Assumption #1: Dean’s association with liberal social issues like gay marriage won’t hurt him much—or, at least any more than any other Democrat will be hurt by social liberalism--because he is conservative on other social issues (guns, death penalty). Anyway, the country is becoming more liberal on issues concerning gays (witness the recent Supreme Court decision), so Dean won’t seem nearly so out-of-step as a lot of commentators think.
Problem #1: Yes, all Democrats, including nominal front-runner Kerry, will have to battle social liberalism critiques and hit jobs if nominated. But that’s exactly why you don’t want to present too much of an easy target and Dean does, due to not only the specific issue of gay marriage (still a bridge too far for most of the public, as opposed to legalizing gay sex, which they support), but also his geographic origins and the general profile of his candidacy.
Assumption #2: Dean’s antiwar stance will not hurt him; in fact, it’ll help him, now that Iraq has evolved into a seemingly intractable mess and the public is starting to wonder whether the whole adventure was worth the costs. Dean’s been consistently against the war, while the other candidates, like Kerry, have not and voters will reward that consistency.
Problem #2: Voters do not necessarily reward consistency. They reward those who seem to represent their view of the world and what needs to be done. The fact of the matter is that Kerry’s ambivalence-but-reluctant-support of the Iraq war more fairly represented the public’s view of the war going in than did Dean’s intransigent opposition and Kerry’s current move from ambivalence toward a critique of Bush’s approach also fairly represents how the public mood is evolving. So the inconsistent Kerry is probably in a much better position than the consistent Dean to capture the moderate voters who are becoming disaffected with the war’s aftermath, as well as the administration’s mendacity. And don’t forget: Kerry’s war hero status does matter and will help allay moderate voters’ fears that a critique of Bush comes from Democratic softness on national security, not from a realistic, tough-minded appraisal of what it’ll take to beat terrorists and keep America safe.
Assumption #3: Sure, Dean may have some trouble with some independent voters. But he will do well with independent-leaning members of the public who do not currently vote. In fact, he will bring out enough of these currently nonvoting independents to more than cancel out his losses among today’s independent voters.
Problem #3: This almost never works. The idea you can make up serious losses among existing voters by turning out lots of nonvoters is a very dangerous game indeed. Nonvoters rarely differ enough from voters of similar characteristics to warrant such an approach. (For those who want the long course on why this is so, DR recommends, in all due modesty, The Disappearing American Voter ) Instead, stick to the tried and true: get out your base (the folks you know will vote for you); fight like hell for the swing voters; and hope that an exciting campaign will bring in some new voters that will lean your way. But to vest your hopes in new voters is a serious—albeit common—mistake.
Well, all for now and, as DR is fond of saying: let the debate continue!
Coming soon in DR: The Demographics of Deanism
posted 5:23 pm
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Let me give you some names.
Eugene McCarthy. George McGovern. Great men. But they had the pants beat off them by Nixon. Nixon! During a very unpopular war that eventually the U.S. was forced out of. McCarthy and McGovern were right about the war but they couldn't make it happen politically in their election bids.
Michael Dukakis. Even Bush the First beat him. Remember the ridicule over the tank photo op of Dukakis? The revolving door commercial of Willie Horton?
Ralph Nader. Imagine if those that had supported him had worked for Gore from the beginning of the struggle to get elected and voted for him. Think about how close the election was. How a few more votes in Florida could have turned the tide.
John McCain. Republican candidate for President. A certified decorated war hero and Viet Nam P.O.W. (five years, six months). Bush's attack machine smeared him in the primaries and the people that worked for him (with the recorded telephone help of Pat Robinson in South Carolina!). Get something straight my wide-eyed fellow un-Bushites. Bush and his political machine and its warchest of money and dirty tricks will stop at nothing. They will run over their own grandmother with a tank if she gets in the way of electing Bush president again. And they mean to lock the whole government under their control forever. Got that?
Bill Clinton. Kicked the first Bush out of the White House despite his winning the Gulf War. Won the election for President twice. And despite the brutal and obsessed money and forces of a united GOP political attack machine. Think about what it takes to do that and the kind of person who is smart enough and has the politically savy required to pull it off. This ain't tiddlely-winks, folks.
The poll reported on below (and the article under it) illustrates why Dean can't win and Kerry can. Especially if Kerry convinces Wesley Clark to join him on the ticket. The election will be lost on losing the older conservative Democratic base AND the younger moderate Republicans who will not vote for Dean because of his McGovern stance on Iraq. The war was wrong to be fought for the reasons given but only a candidate like Kerry will be trusted by the voters mentioned above to sweep house while keeping a strong military in place.
Regardless of how you feel, do the math on the voters with the evidence provided.
Bush's Political Wizard of Oz and the head of the vicious political smear machine, Karl Rove, is on public record of stating he'd love to have Dean to run against in the election. Read the poll and two brief article excerpts below and see why.
Poll Finds Democrats Lack Crucial Support to Beat Bush
Party Must Strongly Reposition Itself to Regain White Male Voters' Support, DLC Advised
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 29, 2003; Page A03
PHILADELPHIA, July 28 -- Dramatic erosion in support among white men has left the Democrats in a highly vulnerable position and unless the party strongly repositions itself, President Bush will be virtually impossible to beat in 2004, according to a new poll commissioned for the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).
The gloomy prognosis came despite evidence in the poll and in the assessments of Democratic elected officials attending the DLC's "national conversation" here that the economy alone makes Bush vulnerable for reelection. But Mark J. Penn, who conducted the poll, said that the party's image has regressed since former president Bill Clinton left office and that those weaknesses put Democrats in a weakened position.
Penn said his polling indicates that since Clinton left office in 2001, more Americans believe Democrats are the party of big government and higher taxes and he said Bush's handling of the war on terrorism has opened up a huge gap with Democrats on who is more trusted on issues of national security.
"If Democrats can't close the security gap, then they can't be competitive in the next election," said Penn, who polled for Clinton in his second term and who is the pollster for the presidential campaign of Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.).
The poll showed Bush's vulnerabilities. Fewer than half of those surveyed (48 percent) think he deserves to be reelected and 53 percent said the economy is heading in the wrong direction.
But Penn said Democrats must make a concerted effort to appeal to white voters, particularly men and married women, to make the 2004 race competitive. He said just 22 percent of white men identified with the Democratic Party in his poll, and he said younger men are even more strongly Republican in their leanings...
Centrist Democrats Warn Party Not to Present Itself as 'Far Left'
Tue Jul 29, 8:55 AM ET
By ADAM NAGOURNEY The New York Times
PHILADELPHIA, July 28 The moderate Democratic group that helped elect Bill Clinton to the White House in 1992 warned today that Democrats were headed for defeat if they presented themselves as an angry "far left" party fighting tax cuts and opposing the war in Iraq.
The warning, by the Democratic Leadership Council, an organization of moderate Democrats that helped move the party to the center 10 years ago, was largely a response to the popularity enjoyed in early presidential primary states by Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont.
Dr. Dean has attracted wide notice for his criticism of the Democratic Party for supporting the Iraq war and some of President Bush's tax cuts.
Neither Dr. Dean nor any other presidential candidate attended the two-day conference of the leadership council, which ended today.
But the group's leaders said their concerns went beyond Dr. Dean and reflected what they feared was an emerging perception of the entire Democratic presidential field as supportive of liberal policies that the council rejected long ago.
"It is our belief that the Democratic Party has an important choice to make: Do we want to vent or do we want to govern?" said Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, chairman of the organization. "The administration is being run by the far right. The Democratic Party is in danger of being taken over by the far left."
When a reporter asked a panel of council leaders whether Democratic woes were a result of Republican attacks or Democratic mistakes, Senator Bayh responded with a curt two-word answer that silenced the room.
"Assisted suicide," he said...
KERRY MEET-UP
JOHN KERRY FOR PRESIDENT
_________________________________________________________________
Eugene McCarthy. George McGovern. Great men. But they had the pants beat off them by Nixon. Nixon! During a very unpopular war that eventually the U.S. was forced out of. McCarthy and McGovern were right about the war but they couldn't make it happen politically in their election bids.
Michael Dukakis. Even Bush the First beat him. Remember the ridicule over the tank photo op of Dukakis? The revolving door commercial of Willie Horton?
Ralph Nader. Imagine if those that had supported him had worked for Gore from the beginning of the struggle to get elected and voted for him. Think about how close the election was. How a few more votes in Florida could have turned the tide.
John McCain. Republican candidate for President. A certified decorated war hero and Viet Nam P.O.W. (five years, six months). Bush's attack machine smeared him in the primaries and the people that worked for him (with the recorded telephone help of Pat Robinson in South Carolina!). Get something straight my wide-eyed fellow un-Bushites. Bush and his political machine and its warchest of money and dirty tricks will stop at nothing. They will run over their own grandmother with a tank if she gets in the way of electing Bush president again. And they mean to lock the whole government under their control forever. Got that?
Bill Clinton. Kicked the first Bush out of the White House despite his winning the Gulf War. Won the election for President twice. And despite the brutal and obsessed money and forces of a united GOP political attack machine. Think about what it takes to do that and the kind of person who is smart enough and has the politically savy required to pull it off. This ain't tiddlely-winks, folks.
The poll reported on below (and the article under it) illustrates why Dean can't win and Kerry can. Especially if Kerry convinces Wesley Clark to join him on the ticket. The election will be lost on losing the older conservative Democratic base AND the younger moderate Republicans who will not vote for Dean because of his McGovern stance on Iraq. The war was wrong to be fought for the reasons given but only a candidate like Kerry will be trusted by the voters mentioned above to sweep house while keeping a strong military in place.
Regardless of how you feel, do the math on the voters with the evidence provided.
Bush's Political Wizard of Oz and the head of the vicious political smear machine, Karl Rove, is on public record of stating he'd love to have Dean to run against in the election. Read the poll and two brief article excerpts below and see why.
Poll Finds Democrats Lack Crucial Support to Beat Bush
Party Must Strongly Reposition Itself to Regain White Male Voters' Support, DLC Advised
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 29, 2003; Page A03
PHILADELPHIA, July 28 -- Dramatic erosion in support among white men has left the Democrats in a highly vulnerable position and unless the party strongly repositions itself, President Bush will be virtually impossible to beat in 2004, according to a new poll commissioned for the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).
The gloomy prognosis came despite evidence in the poll and in the assessments of Democratic elected officials attending the DLC's "national conversation" here that the economy alone makes Bush vulnerable for reelection. But Mark J. Penn, who conducted the poll, said that the party's image has regressed since former president Bill Clinton left office and that those weaknesses put Democrats in a weakened position.
Penn said his polling indicates that since Clinton left office in 2001, more Americans believe Democrats are the party of big government and higher taxes and he said Bush's handling of the war on terrorism has opened up a huge gap with Democrats on who is more trusted on issues of national security.
"If Democrats can't close the security gap, then they can't be competitive in the next election," said Penn, who polled for Clinton in his second term and who is the pollster for the presidential campaign of Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.).
The poll showed Bush's vulnerabilities. Fewer than half of those surveyed (48 percent) think he deserves to be reelected and 53 percent said the economy is heading in the wrong direction.
But Penn said Democrats must make a concerted effort to appeal to white voters, particularly men and married women, to make the 2004 race competitive. He said just 22 percent of white men identified with the Democratic Party in his poll, and he said younger men are even more strongly Republican in their leanings...
Centrist Democrats Warn Party Not to Present Itself as 'Far Left'
Tue Jul 29, 8:55 AM ET
By ADAM NAGOURNEY The New York Times
PHILADELPHIA, July 28 The moderate Democratic group that helped elect Bill Clinton to the White House in 1992 warned today that Democrats were headed for defeat if they presented themselves as an angry "far left" party fighting tax cuts and opposing the war in Iraq.
The warning, by the Democratic Leadership Council, an organization of moderate Democrats that helped move the party to the center 10 years ago, was largely a response to the popularity enjoyed in early presidential primary states by Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont.
Dr. Dean has attracted wide notice for his criticism of the Democratic Party for supporting the Iraq war and some of President Bush's tax cuts.
Neither Dr. Dean nor any other presidential candidate attended the two-day conference of the leadership council, which ended today.
But the group's leaders said their concerns went beyond Dr. Dean and reflected what they feared was an emerging perception of the entire Democratic presidential field as supportive of liberal policies that the council rejected long ago.
"It is our belief that the Democratic Party has an important choice to make: Do we want to vent or do we want to govern?" said Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, chairman of the organization. "The administration is being run by the far right. The Democratic Party is in danger of being taken over by the far left."
When a reporter asked a panel of council leaders whether Democratic woes were a result of Republican attacks or Democratic mistakes, Senator Bayh responded with a curt two-word answer that silenced the room.
"Assisted suicide," he said...
KERRY MEET-UP
JOHN KERRY FOR PRESIDENT
_________________________________________________________________
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