Does Dick Cheney or Don Rumsfeld know about this? Why not? And shouldn't we be asking them?
Karzai's next hurdle: eradicating opium
U.S. officials consider using troops to quash Afghan drug trade
10:22 PM CDT on Wednesday, October 27, 2004
By JIM LANDERS / The Dallas Morning News
WASHINGTON – With Afghan President Hamid Karzai's election victory in hand, U.S. and Afghan officials are focusing on Afghanistan's opium poppies as the next major challenge.
Reports soon to be published by the CIA and the United Nations show opium poppy cultivation is soaring, along with laboratory production of heroin. The opium-based drug trade accounts for more than half of Afghanistan's economy and most of the financing for remaining al-Qaeda and Taliban forces.
Pentagon and State Department policy planners are trying to decide whether U.S. troops should play a role beyond intelligence in eradicating the drug trade, now left to the fledgling Afghan army and police under the supervision of British forces."This is a huge challenge for the new government," said Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. "We've been thinking a lot about this issue in the course of the last several weeks and months, and we're on the verge of embracing a more robust strategy to deal with this problem."
Mr. Karzai has repeatedly spoken of the threat drug trafficking poses to Afghanistan's future, and his election triumph gives him greater authority for moving against it.
But Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan specialist at New York University, said a successful strategy for curbing the drug trade has to start with cutting off security alliances with drug traffickers, and with the recognition that using U.S. forces to eradicate poppy fields could make enemies of Afghan farmers.
"There's no way we can eliminate this as long as we are publicly allied with major traffickers – which we are," he said. "Some have even been arrested by the U.S. military with trucks full of heroin and let go."
Mr. Karzai has moved against some powerful regional leaders with ties to the drug trade, but others who were allies in the early stages of the war against the Taliban remain in power, even within Mr. Karzai's Cabinet, Mr. Rubin said.
British officials say they expect opium production will start falling next year now that most of the pieces are in place for a sustained campaign against drugs. They share some of Mr. Rubin's concerns about alienating farmers by emphasizing eradication, which some members of Congress are pressing on the Bush administration.
Finding the carrot
U.S. officials won't say what role the military might play in curbing the Afghan drug trade. But crop eradication has to be part of the overall strategy, said Patrick Fine, director of the Afghan office of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
"There has to be a carrot, and there has to be a stick that makes growing poppy very risky," he said. "Right now, with the Afghan police and army, if you are caught, your crops will be ripped out. Farmers will see the alternatives are better because of this risk of eradication."
For some Afghan poppy farmers, it's hard to get out of the opium business. Mr. Fine and Mr. Rubin agree that many Afghan farmers are sharecroppers who need land and credit to raise food crops. Drug traffickers, the only source of rural credit in much of Afghanistan, provide land and money for seeds and fertilizers in exchange for notes promising delivery of cash that can only be raised through opium sales.
Farmers unable to pay are either killed, beaten or forced to hand over their daughters, Mr. Rubin said.
"There's no court system to protect them. If they don't supply that cash, they are threatened by armed men and either turn to crime or give their daughters to traffickers," he said.
The British strategy involves offering other sources of credit, tools and training in rural Afghanistan. Eradication efforts coupled with compensation haven't worked, however, because they encouraged other farmers to plant opium looking for the same rewards.
Offering farmers alternatives to opium hasn't been easy. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime and the Afghan government surveyed farmers this year and found opium poppies yielded an average of $12,700 per hectare (2.4711 acres), while wheat and other farm products yielded $222 per hectare.
The survey found opium poppies growing on 80,000 hectares across Afghanistan. The reports pending at the United Nations and CIA show another big increase this year, U.S. officials say.
Assistant Secretary of State Robert Charles estimates poppy cultivation has hit 100,000 hectares, which could translate into an increase in Afghan opium production of 20 percent to 40 percent.
Last year, Afghanistan produced an estimated 3,600 metric tons of opium, or roughly three-fourths of the world supply.
"We stand in the darkness of a long shadow," Mr. Charles told a congressional committee last month. "We and the Afghans can see the way forward, and there is increased urgency to the mission, but there remain challenges."
Big picture
Mr. Fine, who oversees $1.9 billion in U.S. reconstruction funds for Afghanistan, said poppy growers need help that goes beyond planting wheat instead of opium poppies.
"You need to look at food processing, at the ways to add value, not just other crops," he said. "You need to get money into the rural economy to create jobs through public works, like building roads."
So far, U.S. assistance has restored irrigation for 285,000 hectares of farmland, built more than 1,000 kilometers of rural roads and rebuilt 119 village markets.
Moral suasion also plays a role, Mr. Fine said. Afghanistan's religious leaders issued a fatwa, or scholarly decree, last summer saying opium growing was against Islam.
The U.N. survey found that nearly all opium poppy growers realize they're breaking the law, however. The main reason they keep growing poppies is economic necessity, the survey found.
E-mail jlanders@dallasnews.com
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/102804dnintopium.13ddc.html
Friday, October 29, 2004
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Voter Registrations changed using medical marijuana petition guise -- WHY?
A second instance of a Republican effort to obtain student voter registration information -- and to change the registration to Republican and to change the students' addresses -- has been revealed by Dennis Roddy at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Once again, students were approached this summer with a petition supporting medical marijuana and asked for signatures and voter information.
The students received new voter information in the mail.
What is the objective? The students are already registered. A political party is not trying to build participation in its activities by tricking people to register as members. The party isn't trying to get people to vote in its primary by trickery -- what candidate could it help in a primary?
The most reasonable explanation is that the GOP operatives are trying to sow chaos on Election Day in precincts where they expect large numbers of students to vote. In other words, they are trying to suppress the likely Kerry vote.
Think about your reaction. You show up at your polling place and are told that you aren't registered there. You say, Wwwhaaattt? Yes I am. No, you're not. Okay, who can I appeal to? Go over there. Where-You mean that long line???? Oh no....
Voters, hurrying in to vote before work or before dinner will see long lines, and say ohmigod, how long is this going to take -- and some of them are going to leave without voting.
Maybe someone will get really indignant and raise their voice, and the police will be called. The radio will report that Kerry voters are causing trouble at the polls and the police had to be called. Great for influencing last minute voters.
This is pretty dastardly.
Here's the second story
Students' Polling Places Switched in Scam
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v04/n1505/a01.html
Sat, 23 Oct 2004
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)
Dennis Roddy
The students received new voter information in the mail.
What is the objective? The students are already registered. A political party is not trying to build participation in its activities by tricking people to register as members. The party isn't trying to get people to vote in its primary by trickery -- what candidate could it help in a primary?
The most reasonable explanation is that the GOP operatives are trying to sow chaos on Election Day in precincts where they expect large numbers of students to vote. In other words, they are trying to suppress the likely Kerry vote.
Think about your reaction. You show up at your polling place and are told that you aren't registered there. You say, Wwwhaaattt? Yes I am. No, you're not. Okay, who can I appeal to? Go over there. Where-You mean that long line???? Oh no....
Voters, hurrying in to vote before work or before dinner will see long lines, and say ohmigod, how long is this going to take -- and some of them are going to leave without voting.
Maybe someone will get really indignant and raise their voice, and the police will be called. The radio will report that Kerry voters are causing trouble at the polls and the police had to be called. Great for influencing last minute voters.
This is pretty dastardly.
Here's the second story
Students' Polling Places Switched in Scam
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v04/n1505/a01.html
Sat, 23 Oct 2004
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)
Dennis Roddy
Thursday, October 21, 2004
Three Florida Third-Graders Face Felony Charges for Bringing Marijuana To School
Principal Debra Gore says, "We're not going to tolerate things like this."
Zero-tolerance for the mistakes of 8 or 9-year olds? The principal may be good,
but in the face of two "nickel" bags of marijuana, she is about to abandon reason.
I have a 6-year old daughter. Kids this young do silly things. They learn by making mistakes. We tell them when they have made and mistake and then they learn.
But making a felony out of this is preposterous. Oh, but it's drrrruggggs!
We can't be reasonable about this, we need to "send the children a lesson."
Well, let's see how it plays out. Maybe the principal will sober up in the morning.
http://www.wftv.com/news/3837061/detail.html
WFTV.com
Third-Graders Face Felony Charges For Bringing Marijuana To School
POSTED: 5:27 PM EDT October 20, 2004
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- Channel 9 has learned that three third graders at Pine Hills Elementary in Orange County are in trouble for bringing marijuana to school. A concerned parent called Channel 9 and we've been investigating ever since.
The Orange County Sheriff's Office says a teacher saw the third graders with two small bags of marijuana Tuesday. A letter was sent home to parents explaining the situation after the three children, none older than 10 years old, brought pot to school.
With a street value of about $10, the nickel bags of pot are far from the biggest drug seizure ever. But factor in where they were found and who was holding them, and Pine Hills parents are all but speechless.
Channel 9 has learned the three Pine Hills third graders are facing felony charges of drug possession after one of them brought cannabis to campus.
"We're not going to tolerate things like this," says Principal Debra Gore.
Gore says it was a teacher who first spotted the students showing off the drugs, which the on-campus deputy quickly confiscated.
Orange County schools have long had a zero-tolerance policy. Normally, a student found with drugs would be expelled on the spot. But since authorities may never know which student was ultimately responsible, Gore says all three will be suspended from school as the state attorney considers whether to prosecute them.
"I can't control what goes on in the neighborhood, but I can control what goes on on my campus. And that's where the focus is, and that's what I need to reassure parents," says Gore.
School leaders say parents have been cooperative, but defensive, of their respective kids, each of whom is claiming a different kid supplied the pot.
Copyright 2004 by wftv.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Zero-tolerance for the mistakes of 8 or 9-year olds? The principal may be good,
but in the face of two "nickel" bags of marijuana, she is about to abandon reason.
I have a 6-year old daughter. Kids this young do silly things. They learn by making mistakes. We tell them when they have made and mistake and then they learn.
But making a felony out of this is preposterous. Oh, but it's drrrruggggs!
We can't be reasonable about this, we need to "send the children a lesson."
Well, let's see how it plays out. Maybe the principal will sober up in the morning.
http://www.wftv.com/news/3837061/detail.html
WFTV.com
Third-Graders Face Felony Charges For Bringing Marijuana To School
POSTED: 5:27 PM EDT October 20, 2004
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- Channel 9 has learned that three third graders at Pine Hills Elementary in Orange County are in trouble for bringing marijuana to school. A concerned parent called Channel 9 and we've been investigating ever since.
The Orange County Sheriff's Office says a teacher saw the third graders with two small bags of marijuana Tuesday. A letter was sent home to parents explaining the situation after the three children, none older than 10 years old, brought pot to school.
With a street value of about $10, the nickel bags of pot are far from the biggest drug seizure ever. But factor in where they were found and who was holding them, and Pine Hills parents are all but speechless.
Channel 9 has learned the three Pine Hills third graders are facing felony charges of drug possession after one of them brought cannabis to campus.
"We're not going to tolerate things like this," says Principal Debra Gore.
Gore says it was a teacher who first spotted the students showing off the drugs, which the on-campus deputy quickly confiscated.
Orange County schools have long had a zero-tolerance policy. Normally, a student found with drugs would be expelled on the spot. But since authorities may never know which student was ultimately responsible, Gore says all three will be suspended from school as the state attorney considers whether to prosecute them.
"I can't control what goes on in the neighborhood, but I can control what goes on on my campus. And that's where the focus is, and that's what I need to reassure parents," says Gore.
School leaders say parents have been cooperative, but defensive, of their respective kids, each of whom is claiming a different kid supplied the pot.
Copyright 2004 by wftv.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Follow-up: Republicans use medical marijuana petition to hoodwink students to change voter registration
From: Steve Fox, Marijuana Policy Project steve@mpp.org
I haven't seen anyone point out the positive aspect of this [regarding medical marijuana as an issue] ...
Republicans apparently think that medical marijuana is so popular that
it is the best way to get people to sign a petition. Or, independent
signature gatherers think it is easier to get people to sign a medical
marijuana petition than to get them to register to vote.
Any issue could have been picked for this deception.
I haven't seen anyone point out the positive aspect of this [regarding medical marijuana as an issue] ...
Republicans apparently think that medical marijuana is so popular that
it is the best way to get people to sign a petition. Or, independent
signature gatherers think it is easier to get people to sign a medical
marijuana petition than to get them to register to vote.
Any issue could have been picked for this deception.
Republicans use pro-marijuana petition to hoodwink students to change voter registration
http://www.timesherald.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=13166132&BRD=1672&PAG=461&dept_id=33380&rfi=8
Norristown, PA Times Herald
10/19/2004
Marijuana 'petition' actually voter registration form
By: MARGARET GIBBONS , Times Herald Staff
COURTHOUSE - Montgomery County Community College (MCCC) students recently received a real-life lesson: Do not sign something unless you thoroughly read it.
Students, who last month signed a petition that was being circulated on the Blue Bell campus to legalize marijuana for primarily medicinal purposes, now are finding out that they are registered Republicans. "This is just very disheartening," said Plymouth resident Jennifer Fugo, a 24-year-old continuing education student who describes herself as a "victim of voter registration manipulation.""Everyone is encouraging young people to register and vote and then they experience something like this," Fugo said Monday. "This is just outrageous."Fugo, who had been living in New York, this summer returned to the area and, in August, had her voter registration transferred to Plymouth. Her new registration card at that time correctly listed her party affiliation as a Democrat. Imagine her surprise last week, said Fugo, when she received a new registration card from the county that listed her as a registered Republican. "It is disgraceful and detestable, not to mention illegal, to alter anyone's voter registration without that person's consent," Fugo said. "The thought that there is a special interest group in my area that is knowingly defrauding citizens voting records is outrageous, no matter what party or interest group is perpetrating this act." When she contacted the county's voter registration office, she was advised that she was not the only MCCC student who was a victim of registration fraud. County voter services Director Joseph R. Passarella said that his office has received "less than a handful" of complaints from MCCC students complaining that they have been registered as Republicans and all were tied into the same petition drive. His office has not been able to pin down the group that submitted these registrations. Passarella speculated that there are various organizations this year who are paying people to register new voters in specific parties and that this was the work of someone trying to cash in on the registrations. The good news is that it does not make any difference in what party a person is registered in the upcoming election because a registered voter can vote for any candidate on the ticket regardless of party, Passarella said.However, if a person wants to vote in next spring's Democratic or Republican primary elections and is not registered in the party of his or her choice, he or she can change the registration after the Nov. 2 general election, he said. "I think these kids learned the hard way to make sure they read things before signing them and not sign anything that is questionable," Passarella said. Fugo said she had questioned the signing of the registration form, telling the petition circulator that she already was registered to vote. He told her they were just using the form for information purposes and that she could not sign the petition unless she also signed the form. Susan Adams, MCCC's director of marketing and communications, Monday said she was first alerted to the situation last Friday after the school had received calls from a student and the parent of another student. Adams said that all persons circulating petitions on the college's campus must first sign in with the school. No one signed in nor received an OK to circulate the marijuana petition, Adams said. MCCC in early September did host a voter registration drive where the Republican, Democratic and Green Parties participated, Adams said. "That was very successful," said Adams. "There is a lot of interest in this election."Montgomery County Republican Committee Executive Director Adam Gattuso said the county GOP did not condone such registration fraud and did not learn about it until late last week. "That is despicable and not something we would do nor need to do," said Gattuso. Margaret Gibbons can be reached at mgibbons@timesherald.com or 610-272-2501 ext. 216.
Norristown, PA Times Herald
10/19/2004
Marijuana 'petition' actually voter registration form
By: MARGARET GIBBONS , Times Herald Staff
COURTHOUSE - Montgomery County Community College (MCCC) students recently received a real-life lesson: Do not sign something unless you thoroughly read it.
Students, who last month signed a petition that was being circulated on the Blue Bell campus to legalize marijuana for primarily medicinal purposes, now are finding out that they are registered Republicans. "This is just very disheartening," said Plymouth resident Jennifer Fugo, a 24-year-old continuing education student who describes herself as a "victim of voter registration manipulation.""Everyone is encouraging young people to register and vote and then they experience something like this," Fugo said Monday. "This is just outrageous."Fugo, who had been living in New York, this summer returned to the area and, in August, had her voter registration transferred to Plymouth. Her new registration card at that time correctly listed her party affiliation as a Democrat. Imagine her surprise last week, said Fugo, when she received a new registration card from the county that listed her as a registered Republican. "It is disgraceful and detestable, not to mention illegal, to alter anyone's voter registration without that person's consent," Fugo said. "The thought that there is a special interest group in my area that is knowingly defrauding citizens voting records is outrageous, no matter what party or interest group is perpetrating this act." When she contacted the county's voter registration office, she was advised that she was not the only MCCC student who was a victim of registration fraud. County voter services Director Joseph R. Passarella said that his office has received "less than a handful" of complaints from MCCC students complaining that they have been registered as Republicans and all were tied into the same petition drive. His office has not been able to pin down the group that submitted these registrations. Passarella speculated that there are various organizations this year who are paying people to register new voters in specific parties and that this was the work of someone trying to cash in on the registrations. The good news is that it does not make any difference in what party a person is registered in the upcoming election because a registered voter can vote for any candidate on the ticket regardless of party, Passarella said.However, if a person wants to vote in next spring's Democratic or Republican primary elections and is not registered in the party of his or her choice, he or she can change the registration after the Nov. 2 general election, he said. "I think these kids learned the hard way to make sure they read things before signing them and not sign anything that is questionable," Passarella said. Fugo said she had questioned the signing of the registration form, telling the petition circulator that she already was registered to vote. He told her they were just using the form for information purposes and that she could not sign the petition unless she also signed the form. Susan Adams, MCCC's director of marketing and communications, Monday said she was first alerted to the situation last Friday after the school had received calls from a student and the parent of another student. Adams said that all persons circulating petitions on the college's campus must first sign in with the school. No one signed in nor received an OK to circulate the marijuana petition, Adams said. MCCC in early September did host a voter registration drive where the Republican, Democratic and Green Parties participated, Adams said. "That was very successful," said Adams. "There is a lot of interest in this election."Montgomery County Republican Committee Executive Director Adam Gattuso said the county GOP did not condone such registration fraud and did not learn about it until late last week. "That is despicable and not something we would do nor need to do," said Gattuso. Margaret Gibbons can be reached at mgibbons@timesherald.com or 610-272-2501 ext. 216.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Chicago Tribune endorses Bush
The Chicago Tribune has irresolutely endorsed Bush for re-election... on the ground that Bush is resolute.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0410170332oct17,1,3673281.story?coll=chi-news-hed Their endorsement of Bush is quite striking for its explicit and implicit criticism of Bush. It is an endorsement based on wishful thinking on one hand, and on admiration of Bush's presentations on the other.
The over-riding issue in their analysis of the election, quite reasonably, is national defense. But how the Tribune analyzes our defense is pretty shocking. They tell us what they hearBush say sounds good to their ears, but they fail to appreciate adequately what they report that they have seen -- which doesn't look very good. Their view is in italics.
Bush talks more freely about what is at risk. Bush embraces a bolder struggle. Bush insists on taking the fight to the terrorists. Bush' sense of duty to defend America is wider in scope than Kerry's.
But this is what they've seen:
There is much the current president could have done differently over the last four years. There are lessons he needs to have learned.
Bush arguably invaded with too few allies and not enough troops. He will go to his tomb defending his reliance on intelligence from agencies around the globe that turned out to be wrong. And he has refused to admit any errors.
The Chicago Tribune allows itself to be more impressed with what Bush says than with what they report he has done. One can only recall the famous con man's line, "Who are you going to believe -- me, or your own lying eyes?"
When they praised Bush's sense of duty to defend America as being wider than Kerry's, I immediately thought of wide in the geographic sense: Bush, lucky member of the Texas Air National Guard, going off to Alabama to carry out his duty so he can work in the political campaign of a friend of his father's, and later telling the Texas Air National Guard he was transferring to Massachusetts to complete his Guard duties while he attends Harvard Business School -- except hardly anyone remembers seeing him carry out his duty to defend America in Alabama, and his spokesman finally admits to the Boston Globe in September 2004 that, yes, Bush NEVER showed up for Guard duty in Massachusetts. Bush's wide sense of duty looks like the fisherman holding up his hands, wide apart, as he tells about the fish that got away... Oh yes, John Kerry actually enlisted in the Navy and went to the other side of the world to fight in Vietnam. A sense of duty -- a fufillment of duty -- doesn't get much wider does it?
The Tribune says that "For three years, Bush has kept Americans, and their government, focused--effectively--on this nation's security. " Holy Cow! Maybe the Tribune's editors need new bifocals or something. Have the editors read Richard Clarke's, Against All Enemies? If there is one thing that Bush misfocused on, it was how to defend the nation's security.
Bush's current lines about national defense are amazing. In recent days, he is blasting Kerry saying that Kerry will wait for the U.S. to be attacked before he will defend the U.S. Hey, Bush is accurately describing his own record. Richard Clarke, the anti-terrorism coordinator in the White House under Bush I and Clinton and Bush II, tells in his book how in 2001 he couldn't get Bush, Condi Rice or Ashcroft to pay attention to the al Qaeda threat. Even though Al Qaeda had bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, and attacked the U.S.S. Cole, the Bush White House ignored Al Qaeda -- until September 11, 2001. Bush focused? Not exactly. Almost immediately Bush refocused on Iraq and ignored Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. What record was the Chicago Tribune looking at?
The Tribune says,
Bush's sense of a president's duty to defend America is wider in scope than Kerry's, more ambitious in its tactics, more prone, frankly, to yield both casualties and lasting results. This is the stark difference on which American voters should choose a president. There is much the current president could have done differently over the last four years. There are lessons he needs to have learned. And there are reasons--apart from the global perils likely to dominate the next presidency--to recommend either of these two good candidates. But for his resoluteness on the defining challenge of our age--a resoluteness John Kerry has not been able to demonstrate--the Chicago Tribune urges the re-election of George W. Bush as president of the United States.
There are lessons he needs to have learned. What a funny construction. I don't even know what tense this is. They seem to be saying that they are not sure he's learned the lessons to carry out the president's duty to defend America, aren't they? If they thought he had learned the lessons, they'd simply say that, right? If you can't quite say, he hasn't learned his lessons, you say that. If you want to irresolutely endorse a man who can never admit he learned a lesson because he can never admit he made a mistake, then you say something obscure like, "There are lessons he needs to have learned."
The Tribune's endorsement says,
Bush arguably invaded with too few allies and not enough troops. He will go to his tomb defending his reliance on intelligence from agencies around the globe that turned out to be wrong. And he has refused to admit any errors.
Bush has placed the nation, its men and women in the armed services, and the next President, in an impossible box. We never should have invaded Iraq. Iraq did not ally itself with al-Qaeda and didn't bomb the U.S. in 2001. Osama bin Laden was not captured. He was believed to be in Afghanistan, and Bush failed to direct the Pentagon to hunt him down. How can the editors see Bush as resolute?
Even in Iraq, Bush has been irresolute. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the Washington Post's Baghdad bureau chief, who has returned from two years in Iraq notes http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37171-2004Oct15.html in "Iraq's Barbed Realities (Oct. 17, 2004) that the clear U.S. strategy for pacification should have been to get people employed again. U.S. officials were repeatedly warned that failure to provide employment would fuel an anti-American inferno -- the one in which our men and women are now being killed. Bush failed to focus on what needed to be done to secure our troops who were going to be in Iraq when the Iraqi Army collapsed -- he was irresolute.
After four military contractors were killed, strung up, and defiled in Fallujah, and the U.S. military went in without a strategy. Then without meeting any objective of achieving security or taking out the insurgents, at Bush's direction, they pulled out. The surrender of authority in Fallujah to the insurgency demonstrated deep irresolution in the U.S. strategy and objectives, and gave enormous comfort to our enemies. All over Iraq Americans have been pulling back. This is simply another instance of Bush's failure to focus on his duty to defend America.
The problem for America and for Kerry is that, having been led by President Bush into this war, we can't walk away. We can't walk away simply and we can't walk away in any complex way.
President "He of focus" Bush disregarded the most famous advice of his Secretary of State: "If you break it, you own it." Having removed Hussein and broken Iraqi government and its system of law and order (such as it was), we can't simply walk away. What is the measure of achievement of the President's insistence on victory? Surely in the near and midterm, it is NOT going to be the absence of violence. Perhaps it is the inauguration of an elected government. And that may be the occasion for a declaration of victory and withdrawal -- if, if, if, security is being maintained by Iraqi's with assistance from an international force, one that is not simply a fig leaf for 100,000+ U.S. soliders and Marines. If our withdrawal creates a power vacuum that is filled by the Iraqi insurgency, then the repercussions will undermine American security for a generation. We will have been established as they say in Texas as, "All hat and no cattle."
The Tribune says,
Bush has scored a great success in Afghanistan--not only by ousting the Taliban regime and nurturing a new democracy, but also by ignoring the chronic doubters who said a war there would be a quagmire.
The world supported the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. There were some doubters who feared a quagmire in Afghanistan, given the history of the British a century ago, and the Soviets, a little more than a decade ago. Is it a great success to ignore "chronic doubters?" Is it a great success to "nurture" a new democracy? Man oh man, this is a very low bar. One can spend a lot of time "nurturing" and end up with sickness, failure, death. This is like giving a hard-working, not very successful student an "A for effort!"
Besides, to raise the dreaded "quagmire" invites us to look for the real "quagmire" -- back to Iraq where our men and women are being slaughtered -- even in the supposedly secure Green Zone. President "Focused on duty" Bush so utterly failed to assure that the men and women for whom he is the Commander-in-Chief have the weapons and tools they need. Vehicles not armored and no body armor, etc. Units are so demoralized they are refusing orders to transport fuel in vehicles which can't be adequately maintained.
To appreciate the hollowness of the Bush presidency, one simply has to carefully read the editorial endorsement of one of America's premier newspapers.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0410170332oct17,1,3673281.story?coll=chi-news-hed Their endorsement of Bush is quite striking for its explicit and implicit criticism of Bush. It is an endorsement based on wishful thinking on one hand, and on admiration of Bush's presentations on the other.
The over-riding issue in their analysis of the election, quite reasonably, is national defense. But how the Tribune analyzes our defense is pretty shocking. They tell us what they hearBush say sounds good to their ears, but they fail to appreciate adequately what they report that they have seen -- which doesn't look very good. Their view is in italics.
Bush talks more freely about what is at risk. Bush embraces a bolder struggle. Bush insists on taking the fight to the terrorists. Bush' sense of duty to defend America is wider in scope than Kerry's.
But this is what they've seen:
There is much the current president could have done differently over the last four years. There are lessons he needs to have learned.
Bush arguably invaded with too few allies and not enough troops. He will go to his tomb defending his reliance on intelligence from agencies around the globe that turned out to be wrong. And he has refused to admit any errors.
The Chicago Tribune allows itself to be more impressed with what Bush says than with what they report he has done. One can only recall the famous con man's line, "Who are you going to believe -- me, or your own lying eyes?"
When they praised Bush's sense of duty to defend America as being wider than Kerry's, I immediately thought of wide in the geographic sense: Bush, lucky member of the Texas Air National Guard, going off to Alabama to carry out his duty so he can work in the political campaign of a friend of his father's, and later telling the Texas Air National Guard he was transferring to Massachusetts to complete his Guard duties while he attends Harvard Business School -- except hardly anyone remembers seeing him carry out his duty to defend America in Alabama, and his spokesman finally admits to the Boston Globe in September 2004 that, yes, Bush NEVER showed up for Guard duty in Massachusetts. Bush's wide sense of duty looks like the fisherman holding up his hands, wide apart, as he tells about the fish that got away... Oh yes, John Kerry actually enlisted in the Navy and went to the other side of the world to fight in Vietnam. A sense of duty -- a fufillment of duty -- doesn't get much wider does it?
The Tribune says that "For three years, Bush has kept Americans, and their government, focused--effectively--on this nation's security. " Holy Cow! Maybe the Tribune's editors need new bifocals or something. Have the editors read Richard Clarke's, Against All Enemies? If there is one thing that Bush misfocused on, it was how to defend the nation's security.
Bush's current lines about national defense are amazing. In recent days, he is blasting Kerry saying that Kerry will wait for the U.S. to be attacked before he will defend the U.S. Hey, Bush is accurately describing his own record. Richard Clarke, the anti-terrorism coordinator in the White House under Bush I and Clinton and Bush II, tells in his book how in 2001 he couldn't get Bush, Condi Rice or Ashcroft to pay attention to the al Qaeda threat. Even though Al Qaeda had bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, and attacked the U.S.S. Cole, the Bush White House ignored Al Qaeda -- until September 11, 2001. Bush focused? Not exactly. Almost immediately Bush refocused on Iraq and ignored Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. What record was the Chicago Tribune looking at?
The Tribune says,
Bush's sense of a president's duty to defend America is wider in scope than Kerry's, more ambitious in its tactics, more prone, frankly, to yield both casualties and lasting results. This is the stark difference on which American voters should choose a president. There is much the current president could have done differently over the last four years. There are lessons he needs to have learned. And there are reasons--apart from the global perils likely to dominate the next presidency--to recommend either of these two good candidates. But for his resoluteness on the defining challenge of our age--a resoluteness John Kerry has not been able to demonstrate--the Chicago Tribune urges the re-election of George W. Bush as president of the United States.
There are lessons he needs to have learned. What a funny construction. I don't even know what tense this is. They seem to be saying that they are not sure he's learned the lessons to carry out the president's duty to defend America, aren't they? If they thought he had learned the lessons, they'd simply say that, right? If you can't quite say, he hasn't learned his lessons, you say that. If you want to irresolutely endorse a man who can never admit he learned a lesson because he can never admit he made a mistake, then you say something obscure like, "There are lessons he needs to have learned."
The Tribune's endorsement says,
Bush arguably invaded with too few allies and not enough troops. He will go to his tomb defending his reliance on intelligence from agencies around the globe that turned out to be wrong. And he has refused to admit any errors.
Bush has placed the nation, its men and women in the armed services, and the next President, in an impossible box. We never should have invaded Iraq. Iraq did not ally itself with al-Qaeda and didn't bomb the U.S. in 2001. Osama bin Laden was not captured. He was believed to be in Afghanistan, and Bush failed to direct the Pentagon to hunt him down. How can the editors see Bush as resolute?
Even in Iraq, Bush has been irresolute. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the Washington Post's Baghdad bureau chief, who has returned from two years in Iraq notes http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37171-2004Oct15.html in "Iraq's Barbed Realities (Oct. 17, 2004) that the clear U.S. strategy for pacification should have been to get people employed again. U.S. officials were repeatedly warned that failure to provide employment would fuel an anti-American inferno -- the one in which our men and women are now being killed. Bush failed to focus on what needed to be done to secure our troops who were going to be in Iraq when the Iraqi Army collapsed -- he was irresolute.
After four military contractors were killed, strung up, and defiled in Fallujah, and the U.S. military went in without a strategy. Then without meeting any objective of achieving security or taking out the insurgents, at Bush's direction, they pulled out. The surrender of authority in Fallujah to the insurgency demonstrated deep irresolution in the U.S. strategy and objectives, and gave enormous comfort to our enemies. All over Iraq Americans have been pulling back. This is simply another instance of Bush's failure to focus on his duty to defend America.
The problem for America and for Kerry is that, having been led by President Bush into this war, we can't walk away. We can't walk away simply and we can't walk away in any complex way.
President "He of focus" Bush disregarded the most famous advice of his Secretary of State: "If you break it, you own it." Having removed Hussein and broken Iraqi government and its system of law and order (such as it was), we can't simply walk away. What is the measure of achievement of the President's insistence on victory? Surely in the near and midterm, it is NOT going to be the absence of violence. Perhaps it is the inauguration of an elected government. And that may be the occasion for a declaration of victory and withdrawal -- if, if, if, security is being maintained by Iraqi's with assistance from an international force, one that is not simply a fig leaf for 100,000+ U.S. soliders and Marines. If our withdrawal creates a power vacuum that is filled by the Iraqi insurgency, then the repercussions will undermine American security for a generation. We will have been established as they say in Texas as, "All hat and no cattle."
The Tribune says,
Bush has scored a great success in Afghanistan--not only by ousting the Taliban regime and nurturing a new democracy, but also by ignoring the chronic doubters who said a war there would be a quagmire.
The world supported the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. There were some doubters who feared a quagmire in Afghanistan, given the history of the British a century ago, and the Soviets, a little more than a decade ago. Is it a great success to ignore "chronic doubters?" Is it a great success to "nurture" a new democracy? Man oh man, this is a very low bar. One can spend a lot of time "nurturing" and end up with sickness, failure, death. This is like giving a hard-working, not very successful student an "A for effort!"
Besides, to raise the dreaded "quagmire" invites us to look for the real "quagmire" -- back to Iraq where our men and women are being slaughtered -- even in the supposedly secure Green Zone. President "Focused on duty" Bush so utterly failed to assure that the men and women for whom he is the Commander-in-Chief have the weapons and tools they need. Vehicles not armored and no body armor, etc. Units are so demoralized they are refusing orders to transport fuel in vehicles which can't be adequately maintained.
To appreciate the hollowness of the Bush presidency, one simply has to carefully read the editorial endorsement of one of America's premier newspapers.
Monday, October 18, 2004
"Vital" Flu Shot?
The American Lung Association http://lungusa.org just solicited me for a donation with a fancy package of "Christmas Seals." It included 10 ways to take action against lung disease. The 8th caught my eye: flu shots are "absolutely vital for those who are over 50" years old. I love doing what's vital; I am absolutely vital. But, being not quite 55 and in good health, there's no way I'm going to snag one of those "absolutely vital" flu shots. I'm a dues-paying, card-carrying member of the AARP -- a lot of good those credentials will do me now. I'm not one of the elderly over 65 entitled to get a dose.
I can't imagine any doctor or nurse being impressed if I were to argue that the American Lung Association has classed me as elderly, and I have my AARP card to prove it! How persuasive can my plea be when they've been warned they'll be prosecuted for injecting healthy, not-high-risk people like me?
I've been getting a flu shot for years, and the recent speculation about a pandemic from Thailand or Vietnam, had me all set to roll up my sleeve.
The reporting in the New York Times on Sunday suggests this was a blunder by the federal policy makers. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/health/17flu2.html
I can't imagine any doctor or nurse being impressed if I were to argue that the American Lung Association has classed me as elderly, and I have my AARP card to prove it! How persuasive can my plea be when they've been warned they'll be prosecuted for injecting healthy, not-high-risk people like me?
I've been getting a flu shot for years, and the recent speculation about a pandemic from Thailand or Vietnam, had me all set to roll up my sleeve.
The reporting in the New York Times on Sunday suggests this was a blunder by the federal policy makers. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/health/17flu2.html
John Kerry for President
The New York Times has published the first editorial endorsement of a candidate for President that I've seen (other than the Crawford, TX Iconoclast). The editorial is mainly a commentary on the sad record of George W. Bush, not surprising given how bad that record really is. (The Times does not spend time on the personality or intellectual traits of the President, which has been a staple of the post-debate analysis.)
What is important is that Senator Kerry's record is correctly understood as far more than the sum of the bills he sponsored that were enacted or the report card-style analysis of his thousands of votes over the past twenty years. The Times notes near the end, for example, that Kerry "led investigations of the way the international financial system has been gamed to permit the laundering of drug and terror money."
My introduction to Kerry's courage was in the course of that investigation. I was the second banana in the investigation of the House Subcommittee on Crime into the "Contra Cocaine Connection" in 1987-88. Kerry was looking into the same allegations that we were -- that the State Department Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office was employing known drug smugglers; that the White House National Security Council staff of Oliver North and Rob Owen were tolerating cocaine trafficking by their contra clients; that the federal government's anti-drug agenda was being subverted by political gamesmanship. Kerry was intensely threatened to back off the investigation, but didn't. He put witnesses under oath in public hearings and directed the publication of a highly damning report of his findings. When one compares his work with, let's say the far better known House-Senate Iran-Contra hearings, it is fair to say that he demonstrated more courage than all those other Senators and Congressmen combined. And that his investigation dug up more scandal than those other highly-televised hearings that succeeded in making Oliver North a media star.
Eric Sterling
Editorial,The New York Times Section 4, p. 10
October 17, 2004
John Kerry for President
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/opinion/17sun1.html?oref=login&th
Senator John Kerry goes toward the election with a base that is built more on opposition to George W. Bush than loyalty to his own candidacy. But over the last year we have come to know Mr. Kerry as more than just an alternative to the status quo. We like what we've seen. He has qualities that could be the basis for a great chief executive, not just a modest improvement on the incumbent.
We have been impressed with Mr. Kerry's wide knowledge and clear thinking - something that became more apparent once he was reined in by that two-minute debate light. He is blessedly willing to re-evaluate decisions when conditions change. And while Mr. Kerry's service in Vietnam was first over-promoted and then over-pilloried, his entire life has been devoted to public service, from the war to a series of elected offices. He strikes us, above all, as a man with a strong moral core.
There is no denying that this race is mainly about Mr. Bush's disastrous tenure. Nearly four years ago, after the Supreme Court awarded him the presidency, Mr. Bush came into office amid popular expectation that he would acknowledge his lack of a mandate by sticking close to the center. Instead, he turned the government over to the radical right.
Mr. Bush installed John Ashcroft, a favorite of the far right with a history of insensitivity to civil liberties, as attorney general.
When the nation fell into recession, the president remained fixated not on generating jobs but rather on fighting the right wing's war against taxing the wealthy. As a result, money that could have been used to strengthen Social Security evaporated, as did the chance to provide adequate funding for programs the president himself had backed. No Child Left Behind, his signature domestic program, imposed higher standards on local school systems without providing enough money to meet them.
If Mr. Bush had wanted to make a mark on an issue on which Republicans and Democrats have long made common cause, he could have picked the environment. Christie Whitman, the former New Jersey governor chosen to run the Environmental Protection Agency, came from that bipartisan tradition. Yet she left after three years of futile struggle against the ideologues and industry lobbyists Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had installed in every other important environmental post. The result has been a systematic weakening of regulatory safeguards across the entire spectrum of environmental issues, from clean air to wilderness protection.
The president who lost the popular vote got a real mandate on Sept. 11, 2001. With the grieving country united behind him, Mr. Bush had an unparalleled opportunity to ask for almost any shared sacrifice. The only limit was his imagination.
He asked for another tax cut and the war against Iraq.
The president's refusal to drop his tax-cutting agenda when the nation was gearing up for war is perhaps the most shocking example of his inability to change his priorities in the face of drastically altered circumstances. Mr. Bush did not just starve the government of the money it needed for his own education initiative or the Medicare drug bill. He also made tax cuts a higher priority than doing what was needed for America's security; 90 percent of the cargo unloaded every day in the nation's ports still goes uninspected.
Along with the invasion of Afghanistan, which had near unanimous international and domestic support, Mr. Bush and his attorney general put in place a strategy for a domestic antiterror war that had all the hallmarks of the administration's normal method of doing business: a Nixonian obsession with secrecy, disrespect for civil liberties and inept management.
American citizens were detained for long periods without access to lawyers or family members. Immigrants were rounded up and forced to languish in what the Justice Department's own inspector general found were often "unduly harsh" conditions. Men captured in the Afghan war were held incommunicado with no right to challenge their confinement. The Justice Department became a cheerleader for skirting decades-old international laws and treaties forbidding the brutal treatment of prisoners taken during wartime.
Mr. Ashcroft appeared on TV time and again to announce sensational arrests of people who turned out to be either innocent, harmless braggarts or extremely low-level sympathizers of Osama bin Laden who, while perhaps wishing to do something terrible, lacked the means. The Justice Department cannot claim one major successful terrorism prosecution, and has squandered much of the trust and patience the American people freely gave in 2001. Other nations, perceiving that the vast bulk of the prisoners held for so long at Guantanamo Bay came from the same line of ineffectual incompetents or unlucky innocents, and seeing the awful photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, were shocked that the nation that was supposed to be setting the world standard for human rights could behave that way.
Like the tax cuts, Mr. Bush's obsession with Saddam Hussein seemed closer to zealotry than mere policy. He sold the war to the American people, and to Congress, as an antiterrorist campaign even though Iraq had no known working relationship with Al Qaeda. His most frightening allegation was that Saddam Hussein was close to getting nuclear weapons. It was based on two pieces of evidence. One was a story about attempts to purchase critical materials from Niger, and it was the product of rumor and forgery. The other evidence, the purchase of aluminum tubes that the administration said were meant for a nuclear centrifuge, was concocted by one low-level analyst and had been thoroughly debunked by administration investigators and international vetting. Top members of the administration knew this, but the selling went on anyway. None of the president's chief advisers have ever been held accountable for their misrepresentations to the American people or for their mismanagement of the war that followed.
The international outrage over the American invasion is now joined by a sense of disdain for the incompetence of the effort. Moderate Arab leaders who have attempted to introduce a modicum of democracy are tainted by their connection to an administration that is now radioactive in the Muslim world. Heads of rogue states, including Iran and North Korea, have been taught decisively that the best protection against a pre-emptive American strike is to acquire nuclear weapons themselves.
We have specific fears about what would happen in a second Bush term, particularly regarding the Supreme Court. The record so far gives us plenty of cause for worry. Thanks to Mr. Bush, Jay Bybee, the author of an infamous Justice Department memo justifying the use of torture as an interrogation technique, is now a federal appeals court judge. Another Bush selection, J. Leon Holmes, a federal judge in Arkansas, has written that wives must be subordinate to their husbands and compared abortion rights activists to Nazis.
Mr. Bush remains enamored of tax cuts but he has never stopped Republican lawmakers from passing massive spending, even for projects he dislikes, like increased farm aid.
If he wins re-election, domestic and foreign financial markets will know the fiscal recklessness will continue. Along with record trade imbalances, that increases the chances of a financial crisis, like an uncontrolled decline of the dollar, and higher long-term interest rates.
The Bush White House has always given us the worst aspects of the American right without any of the advantages. We get the radical goals but not the efficient management. The Department of Education's handling of the No Child Left Behind Act has been heavily politicized and inept. The Department of Homeland Security is famous for its useless alerts and its inability to distribute antiterrorism aid according to actual threats. Without providing enough troops to properly secure Iraq, the administration has managed to so strain the resources of our armed forces that the nation is unprepared to respond to a crisis anywhere else in the world.
Mr. Kerry has the capacity to do far, far better. He has a willingness - sorely missing in Washington these days - to reach across the aisle. We are relieved that he is a strong defender of civil rights, that he would remove unnecessary restrictions on stem cell research and that he understands the concept of separation of church and state. We appreciate his sensible plan to provide health coverage for most of the people who currently do without.
Mr. Kerry has an aggressive and in some cases innovative package of ideas about energy, aimed at addressing global warming and oil dependency. He is a longtime advocate of deficit reduction. In the Senate, he worked with John McCain in restoring relations between the United States and Vietnam, and led investigations of the way the international financial system has been gamed to permit the laundering of drug and terror money. He has always understood that America's appropriate role in world affairs is as leader of a willing community of nations, not in my-way-or-the-highway domination.
We look back on the past four years with hearts nearly breaking, both for the lives unnecessarily lost and for the opportunities so casually wasted. Time and again, history invited George W. Bush to play a heroic role, and time and again he chose the wrong course. We believe that with John Kerry as president, the nation will do better.
Voting for president is a leap of faith. A candidate can explain his positions in minute detail and wind up governing with a hostile Congress that refuses to let him deliver. A disaster can upend the best-laid plans. All citizens can do is mix guesswork and hope, examining what the candidates have done in the past, their apparent priorities and their general character. It's on those three grounds that we enthusiastically endorse John Kerry for president. ###
What is important is that Senator Kerry's record is correctly understood as far more than the sum of the bills he sponsored that were enacted or the report card-style analysis of his thousands of votes over the past twenty years. The Times notes near the end, for example, that Kerry "led investigations of the way the international financial system has been gamed to permit the laundering of drug and terror money."
My introduction to Kerry's courage was in the course of that investigation. I was the second banana in the investigation of the House Subcommittee on Crime into the "Contra Cocaine Connection" in 1987-88. Kerry was looking into the same allegations that we were -- that the State Department Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office was employing known drug smugglers; that the White House National Security Council staff of Oliver North and Rob Owen were tolerating cocaine trafficking by their contra clients; that the federal government's anti-drug agenda was being subverted by political gamesmanship. Kerry was intensely threatened to back off the investigation, but didn't. He put witnesses under oath in public hearings and directed the publication of a highly damning report of his findings. When one compares his work with, let's say the far better known House-Senate Iran-Contra hearings, it is fair to say that he demonstrated more courage than all those other Senators and Congressmen combined. And that his investigation dug up more scandal than those other highly-televised hearings that succeeded in making Oliver North a media star.
Eric Sterling
Editorial,The New York Times Section 4, p. 10
October 17, 2004
John Kerry for President
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/opinion/17sun1.html?oref=login&th
Senator John Kerry goes toward the election with a base that is built more on opposition to George W. Bush than loyalty to his own candidacy. But over the last year we have come to know Mr. Kerry as more than just an alternative to the status quo. We like what we've seen. He has qualities that could be the basis for a great chief executive, not just a modest improvement on the incumbent.
We have been impressed with Mr. Kerry's wide knowledge and clear thinking - something that became more apparent once he was reined in by that two-minute debate light. He is blessedly willing to re-evaluate decisions when conditions change. And while Mr. Kerry's service in Vietnam was first over-promoted and then over-pilloried, his entire life has been devoted to public service, from the war to a series of elected offices. He strikes us, above all, as a man with a strong moral core.
There is no denying that this race is mainly about Mr. Bush's disastrous tenure. Nearly four years ago, after the Supreme Court awarded him the presidency, Mr. Bush came into office amid popular expectation that he would acknowledge his lack of a mandate by sticking close to the center. Instead, he turned the government over to the radical right.
Mr. Bush installed John Ashcroft, a favorite of the far right with a history of insensitivity to civil liberties, as attorney general.
[REASON magazine recently wrote that Ashcroft,
when in the Senate, was a civil libertarian,
opposing the clipper chip installation of all new telephones
that would "pre-bug" your phone for the FBI's convenience.]
He sent the Senate one ideological, activist judicial nominee after another. He moved quickly to implement a far-reaching anti-choice agenda including censorship of government Web sites and a clampdown on embryonic stem cell research. He threw the government's weight against efforts by the University of Michigan to give minority students an edge in admission, as it did for students from rural areas or the offspring of alumni.
When the nation fell into recession, the president remained fixated not on generating jobs but rather on fighting the right wing's war against taxing the wealthy. As a result, money that could have been used to strengthen Social Security evaporated, as did the chance to provide adequate funding for programs the president himself had backed. No Child Left Behind, his signature domestic program, imposed higher standards on local school systems without providing enough money to meet them.
If Mr. Bush had wanted to make a mark on an issue on which Republicans and Democrats have long made common cause, he could have picked the environment. Christie Whitman, the former New Jersey governor chosen to run the Environmental Protection Agency, came from that bipartisan tradition. Yet she left after three years of futile struggle against the ideologues and industry lobbyists Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had installed in every other important environmental post. The result has been a systematic weakening of regulatory safeguards across the entire spectrum of environmental issues, from clean air to wilderness protection.
The president who lost the popular vote got a real mandate on Sept. 11, 2001. With the grieving country united behind him, Mr. Bush had an unparalleled opportunity to ask for almost any shared sacrifice. The only limit was his imagination.
He asked for another tax cut and the war against Iraq.
The president's refusal to drop his tax-cutting agenda when the nation was gearing up for war is perhaps the most shocking example of his inability to change his priorities in the face of drastically altered circumstances. Mr. Bush did not just starve the government of the money it needed for his own education initiative or the Medicare drug bill. He also made tax cuts a higher priority than doing what was needed for America's security; 90 percent of the cargo unloaded every day in the nation's ports still goes uninspected.
Along with the invasion of Afghanistan, which had near unanimous international and domestic support, Mr. Bush and his attorney general put in place a strategy for a domestic antiterror war that had all the hallmarks of the administration's normal method of doing business: a Nixonian obsession with secrecy, disrespect for civil liberties and inept management.
American citizens were detained for long periods without access to lawyers or family members. Immigrants were rounded up and forced to languish in what the Justice Department's own inspector general found were often "unduly harsh" conditions. Men captured in the Afghan war were held incommunicado with no right to challenge their confinement. The Justice Department became a cheerleader for skirting decades-old international laws and treaties forbidding the brutal treatment of prisoners taken during wartime.
Mr. Ashcroft appeared on TV time and again to announce sensational arrests of people who turned out to be either innocent, harmless braggarts or extremely low-level sympathizers of Osama bin Laden who, while perhaps wishing to do something terrible, lacked the means. The Justice Department cannot claim one major successful terrorism prosecution, and has squandered much of the trust and patience the American people freely gave in 2001. Other nations, perceiving that the vast bulk of the prisoners held for so long at Guantanamo Bay came from the same line of ineffectual incompetents or unlucky innocents, and seeing the awful photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, were shocked that the nation that was supposed to be setting the world standard for human rights could behave that way.
Like the tax cuts, Mr. Bush's obsession with Saddam Hussein seemed closer to zealotry than mere policy. He sold the war to the American people, and to Congress, as an antiterrorist campaign even though Iraq had no known working relationship with Al Qaeda. His most frightening allegation was that Saddam Hussein was close to getting nuclear weapons. It was based on two pieces of evidence. One was a story about attempts to purchase critical materials from Niger, and it was the product of rumor and forgery. The other evidence, the purchase of aluminum tubes that the administration said were meant for a nuclear centrifuge, was concocted by one low-level analyst and had been thoroughly debunked by administration investigators and international vetting. Top members of the administration knew this, but the selling went on anyway. None of the president's chief advisers have ever been held accountable for their misrepresentations to the American people or for their mismanagement of the war that followed.
The international outrage over the American invasion is now joined by a sense of disdain for the incompetence of the effort. Moderate Arab leaders who have attempted to introduce a modicum of democracy are tainted by their connection to an administration that is now radioactive in the Muslim world. Heads of rogue states, including Iran and North Korea, have been taught decisively that the best protection against a pre-emptive American strike is to acquire nuclear weapons themselves.
We have specific fears about what would happen in a second Bush term, particularly regarding the Supreme Court. The record so far gives us plenty of cause for worry. Thanks to Mr. Bush, Jay Bybee, the author of an infamous Justice Department memo justifying the use of torture as an interrogation technique, is now a federal appeals court judge. Another Bush selection, J. Leon Holmes, a federal judge in Arkansas, has written that wives must be subordinate to their husbands and compared abortion rights activists to Nazis.
Mr. Bush remains enamored of tax cuts but he has never stopped Republican lawmakers from passing massive spending, even for projects he dislikes, like increased farm aid.
If he wins re-election, domestic and foreign financial markets will know the fiscal recklessness will continue. Along with record trade imbalances, that increases the chances of a financial crisis, like an uncontrolled decline of the dollar, and higher long-term interest rates.
The Bush White House has always given us the worst aspects of the American right without any of the advantages. We get the radical goals but not the efficient management. The Department of Education's handling of the No Child Left Behind Act has been heavily politicized and inept. The Department of Homeland Security is famous for its useless alerts and its inability to distribute antiterrorism aid according to actual threats. Without providing enough troops to properly secure Iraq, the administration has managed to so strain the resources of our armed forces that the nation is unprepared to respond to a crisis anywhere else in the world.
Mr. Kerry has the capacity to do far, far better. He has a willingness - sorely missing in Washington these days - to reach across the aisle. We are relieved that he is a strong defender of civil rights, that he would remove unnecessary restrictions on stem cell research and that he understands the concept of separation of church and state. We appreciate his sensible plan to provide health coverage for most of the people who currently do without.
Mr. Kerry has an aggressive and in some cases innovative package of ideas about energy, aimed at addressing global warming and oil dependency. He is a longtime advocate of deficit reduction. In the Senate, he worked with John McCain in restoring relations between the United States and Vietnam, and led investigations of the way the international financial system has been gamed to permit the laundering of drug and terror money. He has always understood that America's appropriate role in world affairs is as leader of a willing community of nations, not in my-way-or-the-highway domination.
We look back on the past four years with hearts nearly breaking, both for the lives unnecessarily lost and for the opportunities so casually wasted. Time and again, history invited George W. Bush to play a heroic role, and time and again he chose the wrong course. We believe that with John Kerry as president, the nation will do better.
Voting for president is a leap of faith. A candidate can explain his positions in minute detail and wind up governing with a hostile Congress that refuses to let him deliver. A disaster can upend the best-laid plans. All citizens can do is mix guesswork and hope, examining what the candidates have done in the past, their apparent priorities and their general character. It's on those three grounds that we enthusiastically endorse John Kerry for president. ###
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