There are 44 days to go until the national referendum on the CHARACTER, CREDIBILITY and COMPETENCE of the _resident and the VICE _resident. The central theme of this referendum is SECURITY: National Security, Economic Security, Environmental Security, etc. Are you and those who love safer today than you were four years ago? No. Well, here is some clarity for you. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta) says he will get the troops out of Iraq by the end of his first term, Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) says there will be no draft in the Kerry administration...The Bush abomination's economic policies have squandered an unprecedented surplus and replaced it with an unprecedented deficit...We have lost four years we did not have time to lose in the international struggle against the quickening REALITY of Global Warming, as well as Nuclear Proliferation, AIDS in Africa and other vital national security issuess...And if you need more incentive, whoever wins this election will probably appoint at least three US Supreme Court justices, including a Chief Justice...There is an Electoral Uprising coming against the Bush Cabal, its
wholly-owmed-subsidiary-formerly-known-as-the-Republican-Party AND their sponsors in the US regimestream news media. This unholy Triad of shared special interest (i.e. oil, weapons, media, pharmaceuticals, tobacoo, etc.)is going to be dealt a defeat on Nov. 2. There is an Electoral Uprising coming...Here are SEVEN very important stories that should dominate the air waves and command headlines above the fold, but they won't...Please read them and share them with others. Please vote and encourage others to vote. And, please, remember that the US regimestream news media does not want to inform you about this presidential campaign, it wants to DISinform you...
Diane Davis Santoriello, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Now my son is dead. How did he die? According to the Army, he was killed on Aug. 13 in western Iraq when an IED -- an "improvised explosive device" -- detonated near his vehicle. According to me, he was killed by the arrogance and ineptitude of George W. Bush aided by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld...
Did our men and women in harm's way have what they needed? No.
Did we have enough tanks on the ground? No.
Could we supply parts as they were needed? No.
This Bush team could be on a poster for the old axiom: People don't plan to fail -- they fail to plan.
Their actions tarnished the reputation and honor of the United States. We are supposed to be better than other countries because we believe in individual rights.
The Abu Ghraib scandal not only tarnished our reputation, but has put all of servicepeople in jeopardy for decades to come. If we could abuse prisoners, what country will honor the Geneva Conventions when it comes to U.S. troops? The January 2002 memo by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales about the treatment of prisoners scares me. He wrote that because "the war against terrorism is a new kind of war," it "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." In my mind, this memo is Bush's Watergate. I do not understand how people who claim they believe in the ideals of our Founding Fathers can ignore this.
My son voted for Bush. If he were alive, would he be voting for him again? I am not sure. His wife and I avoided political discussions with him before and during his deployment. He would have never talked badly about the president, because you do not criticize your commander in chief.
But I sensed frustration in his letters. When he came home, I would have talked to him about it. I can't ask him now. Now I speak for him.
John Kerry was not my first choice for president, but I believe he has demonstrated a willingness to be open-minded. He knows that changing your position is not a character flaw, but a character plus. I believe he is the only person capable of getting the rest of the world to help us clean up the mess created by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld...
Norman Solomon: The big media themes about the 2004 presidential campaign have reveled in vague rhetoric and flimsy controversies. But little attention has focused on a matter of profound importance: Whoever wins the race for the White House will be in a position to slant the direction of the U.S. Supreme Court for decades to come...
Vacancies are very likely during the next presidential term. Rehnquist, 79, is expected to step down. So is Sandra Day O'Connor, 74, a swing vote on abortion and other issues that divide the court in close votes. Also apt to retire soon is 84-year-old John Paul Stevens, who usually votes with the more liberal justices. "The names of possible Bush or Kerry appointees already are circulating in legal circles," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported in August, "and there is virtually no overlap between the lists."
There should be no doubt about the kind of Supreme Court nominee that President Bush would want. "In general what he's going to look for is the most conservative Court of Appeals judge out there who is young," says David M. O'Brien, a professor of government who has written a book about the Supreme Court. "Those are the top two priorities."
Bush has made clear his intention to select replacements akin to hard-right Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Writing in the Washington Times on Sept. 14, conservative attorney Bruce Fein predicts that "the winner of the impending presidential sweepstakes will likely appoint from one to three new justices." He foresees that if Bush wins on Election Day and the seats held by O'Connor and Stevens become vacant, "constitutional decrees in pivotal areas concerning presidential war powers, church-state relations, freedom of speech, the death penalty, the powers of the police and prosecutors, racial, ethnic and gender discrimination and private property will display a markedly more conservative hue."
Some political agendas benefit from the claim that the Supreme Court's 1973 abortion-rights decision, Roe v. Wade, is not in jeopardy. But as Michael Dorf, a law professor at Columbia University, wrote this summer, "three justices -- Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas -- remain committed to overturning Roe. Meanwhile, two of the Court's three oldest members -- justices Stevens and O'Connor -- are part of the six-justice majority for recognizing a constitutional right to abortion. Should President Bush have the opportunity to name anti-Roe successors to these two justices -- or to any two or more of the six justices who oppose overturning Roe -- there is little reason to doubt that he would seize it. The result would be a Supreme Court majority for eliminating the constitutional right to abortion."
Arthur I. Blaustein, Los Angeles Times: Here's the Economic Sweepstakes Quiz. The rules are simple. Guess which president since World War II did best on these eight most generally accepted measures of good management of the nation's economy. You can choose among six Republicans — Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bushes 41 and 43 — and five Democrats — Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Clinton. Which president produced:
1. The highest growth in the gross domestic product?
2. The highest growth in jobs?
3. The biggest increase in personal disposable income after taxes?
4. The highest growth in industrial production?
5. The highest growth in hourly wages?
6. The lowest misery index (inflation plus unemployment)?
7. The lowest inflation?
8. The largest reduction in the deficit?
The answers are:
1-Truman; 2-Clinton; 3-Johnson; 4-Kennedy; 5-Johnson; 6-Truman; 7-Truman; 8-Clinton.
In other words, Democratic presidents trounced Republicans eight out of eight.
If this isn't enough to destroy the perception that the economy has performed better under Republicans, then let's include stock market performance under Democrats. The Dow Jones Industrial Average during the 20th century rose an average of 7.3% a year under Republican presidents. Under Democrats, it jumped 10.3%, a whopping 41% gain for investors. During George W. Bush's first three years as president, the stock market declined 4%.
Moreover, since World War II, the national debt increased on average by 3.7% a year under Democratic administrations, compared with 9.1% when Republicans occupied the Oval Office. During the same period, Democratic presidents oversaw on average an unemployment rate of 4.8%. For Republicans, it was 6.3%.
That's the historical record. What about current policies?
The Clinton administration presided over the longest peacetime economic expansion in U.S. history. The national debt fell dramatically, the industrial sector boomed, wages grew and more Americans found jobs. In contrast, the Bush administration has presided over the weakest job-creation cycle since the Great Depression, record household debt, the highest-ever bankruptcy rate and a substantial increase of those who live in poverty.
Kerry maintains that government has the responsibility to keep the economy on the right track. Toward that end, he has pledged to reduce the national debt and budget deficit. He would help the middle class and working poor by maintaining current benefit levels and eligibility for the earned income tax credit. Kerry has also promised to restore tax progressivity and fairness by rolling back Bush's giveaways to taxpayers earning more than $200,000 annually. And the Massachusetts senator wants to make significant investments in healthcare, education, affordable housing and the environment.
The president, by contrast, has emerged as little more than a supply-sider in the mold of his father, George H.W. Bush, and his father's former boss, Reagan. The results demonstrate why supply-side policies are sometimes called "trickle-down" economics. Corporate profits have soared 57.5% during the Bush administration, while workers' wages and benefits have increased a minuscule 1.57%.
Mary Jacoby, Salon, interviews Seymour Hersh: I think these guys in their naiveté and single-mindedness have been so completely manipulated by - not the Israelis - but the Iranians. The Iranians always wanted us in. I think there's a lot of evidence that Iran had much to do with [Ahmed] Chalabi's disinformation [about nonexistent Iraqi WMD]. I think there were people in the CIA who suspected this all along, but of course they couldn't get their view in. I think the Senate Intelligence Committee's report's a joke, the idea this CIA was misleading the president. They get some analysts in and say, "Were you pressured?" And they all say, "No, excuse me?" Is that how you do an investigation? The truth of the matter is, there was tremendous pressure put on the analysts [to produce reports that bolstered the case for war]. It's not as if anybody issued a diktat. But everybody understood what to do.
Talk about the ...
Wait. You're missing something now. The Iranian stuff. I think Iran probably had more to do with Chalabi's information than people know.
We know that Chalabi had Iranian agents on his payroll.
Yeah, but, well, he admits to that. He had a villa in Tehran. But basically I think Iran was very interested in getting us involved. We get knocked down a peg; they become the big boys on the block.
Are you working on this now?
Yeah, I'm thinking about it. I'm reporting on it. But I'm not working on it. I'm just - it's too cosmic.
Was Chalabi the conduit?
I think Chalabi thought he could handle the Iranians. They were helping him all along with disinformation and documents he could give to the White House. Don't forget, once the neocons decided to go to Iraq in the face of all evidence, they were like a super-reverse suction machine, and anything in the world that furthered the argument that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was hot. I call it stove-piping, because it's a technical work of art. But it was much more than that. It was anything - vavoom! - into the president's [office]. It was so amateurish, it was comical. How hard was it to get some crapola into the White House about WMD without the CIA looking at it?
New York Times Editorial: Many computer scientists insist that electronic voting machines will be trustworthy only when they produce paper receipts that can be audited. But supporters of electronic voting have long argued that doing so would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Nevada proved the naysayers wrong this month, running the first statewide election in which electronic voting machines produced paper records of votes cast. Election officials across the country now have no excuse not to provide systems that voters can trust.
There is a growing body of evidence indicating that electronic voting machines are vulnerable to tampering and to software glitches that can skew the vote totals. The best safeguard is a voter-verifiable paper trail, receipts that are printed out during the voting process. Voters can view the receipts to check them against the choices they made on the computer screens. Each receipt remains under glass and, after the vote is cast, falls into a locked box. The receipts can be used in a recount or an audit to check the accuracy of the machine tallies.
Eric Alterman, The Nation: Four years ago, Ralph Nader justified his third-party campaign on the grounds that the two parties represented nothing more than "Tweedledum and Tweedledee." As Americans die by the thousand in Iraq, the budget deficit explodes thanks to a tax cut targeting the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, the Justice Department demands women's private medical records from abortion clinics, and polluters are given carte blanche to despoil the earth and poison our children, the devastating evidence of Nader's myopia is everywhere around us.
Recall also that four years ago, Nader professed to want to help build the Green Party into a genuinely progressive alternative to what he termed the corporate-dominated "duopoly." But Nader was no more truthful about his commitment to party-building than George W. Bush was when he decried "nation-building." Today, Nader's party allies consist mainly of the motley far-right collection of Republicans who fund his campaign and collect his signatures, and the remains of the nativist Reform Party, late of Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign.
Michael Daly, New York Daily News: As politicians make grand speeches supporting our troops, families of our wounded soldiers are being told they soon will no longer receive the modest government stipend that helps them leave job and home to stay at their loved one's hospital bedside.
The majority of the 3,974 seriously wounded soldiers are young, and few earn more than $1,600 a month, tops. Their families are often of limited means and have a hard enough time keeping up with their bills. Family members forfeit wages and risk losing their jobs altogether as they help their soldier recover.
"None of these kids left a Park Ave. townhouse to go fight," observed one Army combat officer.
With exactly that in mind, the stipend was established in April 2003, just as the war in Iraq commenced. It lapses Sept. 30.
Support Our Troops, Save the US Constitution,
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Restore Fiscal Responsibility in the White House,
Thwart the Theft of a Second Presidential Election,
Save the Environment, Break the Corporatist
Stranglehold on the US Mainstream News Media, Rescue
the US Supreme Court from Right-Wing Radicals, Cleanse
the White House of the Chicken Hawk Coup and Its
War-Profiteering Cronies, Show Up for Democracy in
2004: Defeat the Triad, Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04262/381101.stm
First Person: For whom did my son die in Iraq?
Saturday, September 18, 2004
By Diane Davis Santoriello
For the last year and a half, the pain in my gut screamed at my head write about this war, speak out against the war! But my aching heart said, "You can't undermine your son's confidence in what he is doing." Memories of people scorning and smearing Vietnam vets ran rampant through my mind. You see, my son, 1st Lt. Neil Anthony Santoriello Jr., was living his dream. He had fulfilled his dream of becoming a military officer. I thought he was fulfilling his destiny of being a man of purpose, compassion and justice working to make the world a better place.
Diane Davis Santoriello lives in Penn Hills (dianesantoriello@hotmail.com).
Now my son is dead. How did he die? According to the Army, he was killed on Aug. 13 in western Iraq when an IED -- an "improvised explosive device" -- detonated near his vehicle. According to me, he was killed by the arrogance and ineptitude of George W. Bush aided by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
I hear people talk about how well-bred John Kerry and Bush were. What constitutes good breeding? What constitutes good character? My father taught me that when you make a mistake the first thing you do is own up to it and the second thing you do is fix it. Bush made mistakes. Did he own up to them right away? No, he waited until recently and admitted to miscalculations.
What Bush needed to do a year or more ago was to go to the United Nations with his hat in his hand and say, "We made a mistake. We thought we were doing the right thing, but now we have a mess that we can't handle. But now we are mired in a country that must be made stable; we don't have the right kind of troops on the ground to do the job right. You folks have the people and the Iraqi people will trust you. Will you help us fix this mistake?"
My son compulsively planned everything. For every Boy Scout outing, every ski trip, he was prepared for any eventuality.
This presidential administration ignored experts who told them that they could win the war, but winning the peace presented the challenge. Did they prepare for that? Of course not -- they were too arrogant to change their direction even as the insurgency increased.
Did our men and women in harm's way have what they needed? No.
Did we have enough tanks on the ground? No.
Could we supply parts as they were needed? No.
This Bush team could be on a poster for the old axiom: People don't plan to fail -- they fail to plan.
Their actions tarnished the reputation and honor of the United States. We are supposed to be better than other countries because we believe in individual rights.
The Abu Ghraib scandal not only tarnished our reputation, but has put all of servicepeople in jeopardy for decades to come. If we could abuse prisoners, what country will honor the Geneva Conventions when it comes to U.S. troops? The January 2002 memo by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales about the treatment of prisoners scares me. He wrote that because "the war against terrorism is a new kind of war," it "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." In my mind, this memo is Bush's Watergate. I do not understand how people who claim they believe in the ideals of our Founding Fathers can ignore this.
My son voted for Bush. If he were alive, would he be voting for him again? I am not sure. His wife and I avoided political discussions with him before and during his deployment. He would have never talked badly about the president, because you do not criticize your commander in chief.
But I sensed frustration in his letters. When he came home, I would have talked to him about it. I can't ask him now. Now I speak for him.
He worried about his men, his stateside friends set to deploy next month. I did not speak out against the war earlier and for this I am angry with myself. My son, a man of incredible honor, died from the actions of dishonorable men. I cannot bring him back. But I speak out now to protect the people still serving, to try to restore honor to our country.
John Kerry was not my first choice for president, but I believe he has demonstrated a willingness to be open-minded. He knows that changing your position is not a character flaw, but a character plus. I believe he is the only person capable of getting the rest of the world to help us clean up the mess created by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the administration's other Iraq
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/092004X.shtml
Missing: A Media Focus on the Supreme Court
By Norman Solomon
CommonDreams.org
Friday 17 September 2004
The big media themes about the 2004 presidential campaign have reveled in vague rhetoric and flimsy controversies. But little attention has focused on a matter of profound importance: Whoever wins the race for the White House will be in a position to slant the direction of the U.S. Supreme Court for decades to come.
Justices on the top court tend to stick around for a long time. Seven of the current nine were there a dozen years ago. William Rehnquist, who was elevated to chief justice by President Reagan, originally got to the Supreme Court when President Nixon appointed him a third of a century ago. The last four justices to retire had been on the high court for an average of 28 years.
Vacancies are very likely during the next presidential term. Rehnquist, 79, is expected to step down. So is Sandra Day O'Connor, 74, a swing vote on abortion and other issues that divide the court in close votes. Also apt to retire soon is 84-year-old John Paul Stevens, who usually votes with the more liberal justices. "The names of possible Bush or Kerry appointees already are circulating in legal circles," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported in August, "and there is virtually no overlap between the lists."
There should be no doubt about the kind of Supreme Court nominee that President Bush would want. "In general what he's going to look for is the most conservative Court of Appeals judge out there who is young," says David M. O'Brien, a professor of government who has written a book about the Supreme Court. "Those are the top two priorities."
Bush has made clear his intention to select replacements akin to hard-right Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Writing in the Washington Times on Sept. 14, conservative attorney Bruce Fein predicts that "the winner of the impending presidential sweepstakes will likely appoint from one to three new justices." He foresees that if Bush wins on Election Day and the seats held by O'Connor and Stevens become vacant, "constitutional decrees in pivotal areas concerning presidential war powers, church-state relations, freedom of speech, the death penalty, the powers of the police and prosecutors, racial, ethnic and gender discrimination and private property will display a markedly more conservative hue."
Some political agendas benefit from the claim that the Supreme Court's 1973 abortion-rights decision, Roe v. Wade, is not in jeopardy. But as Michael Dorf, a law professor at Columbia University, wrote this summer, "three justices -- Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas -- remain committed to overturning Roe. Meanwhile, two of the Court's three oldest members -- justices Stevens and O'Connor -- are part of the six-justice majority for recognizing a constitutional right to abortion. Should President Bush have the opportunity to name anti-Roe successors to these two justices -- or to any two or more of the six justices who oppose overturning Roe -- there is little reason to doubt that he would seize it. The result would be a Supreme Court majority for eliminating the constitutional right to abortion."
Though Bush and Kerry are inclined to understate the importance of potential new Supreme Court picks as they try to attract swing voters, Professor Dorf is unequivocal: "A Bush victory will greatly increase the likelihood that Congress and the state legislatures will be able to ban most abortions at some point in the next four years. In contrast, a Kerry victory will almost surely preserve the status quo of legal abortion prior to the third trimester of pregnancy."
Already, Bush's impacts on the judiciary have been appreciable. Like the members of the Supreme Court, the federal judges on appeals and district court benches are appointed for life -- and in less than four years, Bush has chosen almost a quarter of all those judges nationwide.
Dahlia Lithwick, a legal analyst with Slate, notes that "Bush has already had a chance to massively reshape the lower federal bench. He's now filled 200 seats" -- with judges who'll have far-reaching effects. "He has certainly put a lot of people onto the federal bench who have sort of litmus tests on issues like abortion, on issues like civil rights. And I think we are going to see -- in the far future, but not today -- the fallout of a massive, massive influx of quite conservative jurists who've been put on the bench in the last four years."
As opponents of abortion rights, civil liberties, gay rights and other such causes work to gain a second term for George W. Bush, they try not to stir up a mass-media ruckus that might light a fire under progressives about the future of the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary. Likewise, those on the left who don't want to back Kerry even in swing states are inclined to dodge, or fog over, what hangs in the balance. Kerry is hardly a champion of a progressive legal system, but the contrast between his centrist orientation and the right-wing extremism of the Bush-Cheney regime should be obvious. It's too easy to opt for imagined purity while others will predictably have to deal with very dire consequences.
"The popular constituency of the Bush people, a large part of it, is the extremist fundamentalist religious sector in the country, which is huge," Noam Chomsky said in a recent interview with David Barsamian. "There is nothing like it in any other industrial country. And they have to keep throwing them red meat to keep them in line. While they're shafting them in their economic and social policies, you've got to make them think you're doing something for them. And throwing red meat to that constituency is very dangerous for the world, because it means violence and aggression, but also for the country, because it means harming civil liberties in a serious way. The Kerry people don't have that constituency. They would like to have it, but they're never going to appeal to it much. They have to appeal somehow to working people, women, minorities, and others, and that makes a difference."
Chomsky added: "These may not look like huge differences, but they translate into quite big effects for the lives of people. Anyone who says 'I don't care if Bush gets elected' is basically telling poor and working people in the country, 'I don't care if your lives are destroyed. I don't care whether you are going to have a little money to help your disabled mother. I just don't care, because from my elevated point of view I don't see much difference between them.' That's a way of saying, 'Pay no attention to me, because I don't care about you.' Apart from its being wrong, it's a recipe for disaster if you're hoping to ever develop a popular movement and a political alternative."
Norman Solomon is co-author, with Reese Erlich, of "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You." His columns and other writings can be found at normansolomon.com.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-blaustein19sep19,1,5188096.story
THE ECONOMY
Who's Better in the Driver's Seat?
Under Democratic presidents, the engine hums along
By Arthur I. Blaustein
Arthur Blaustein was chairman of the President's National Advisory Council on Economic Opportunity during the Carter administration. He is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where
September 19, 2004
BERKELEY — A businessman who voted for President Bush four years ago and Bill Clinton in 1996 told me that John F. Kerry's social-program goals "seem good, but I'm worried the Democrats can't manage the economy as well [as Republicans], and they'll get into my wallet." Many voters agree, according to pollsters. But are Republicans better economic managers than Democrats?
Since we entered an entirely new phase of presidential politics 25 years ago, this question has become harder to answer in a full and open manner. Today's campaign imperatives are who can raise the most money and package the most attractive media image, not who can best demonstrate competence and capacity to govern. But fortunately, we don't have to depend on campaign slogans or advertising bucks to frame the debate. We can look to the record.
Here's the Economic Sweepstakes Quiz. The rules are simple. Guess which president since World War II did best on these eight most generally accepted measures of good management of the nation's economy. You can choose among six Republicans — Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bushes 41 and 43 — and five Democrats — Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Clinton. Which president produced:
1. The highest growth in the gross domestic product?
2. The highest growth in jobs?
3. The biggest increase in personal disposable income after taxes?
4. The highest growth in industrial production?
5. The highest growth in hourly wages?
6. The lowest misery index (inflation plus unemployment)?
7. The lowest inflation?
8. The largest reduction in the deficit?
The answers are:
1-Truman; 2-Clinton; 3-Johnson; 4-Kennedy; 5-Johnson; 6-Truman; 7-Truman; 8-Clinton.
In other words, Democratic presidents trounced Republicans eight out of eight.
If this isn't enough to destroy the perception that the economy has performed better under Republicans, then let's include stock market performance under Democrats. The Dow Jones Industrial Average during the 20th century rose an average of 7.3% a year under Republican presidents. Under Democrats, it jumped 10.3%, a whopping 41% gain for investors. During George W. Bush's first three years as president, the stock market declined 4%.
Moreover, since World War II, the national debt increased on average by 3.7% a year under Democratic administrations, compared with 9.1% when Republicans occupied the Oval Office. During the same period, Democratic presidents oversaw on average an unemployment rate of 4.8%. For Republicans, it was 6.3%.
That's the historical record. What about current policies?
The Clinton administration presided over the longest peacetime economic expansion in U.S. history. The national debt fell dramatically, the industrial sector boomed, wages grew and more Americans found jobs. In contrast, the Bush administration has presided over the weakest job-creation cycle since the Great Depression, record household debt, the highest-ever bankruptcy rate and a substantial increase of those who live in poverty.
Kerry maintains that government has the responsibility to keep the economy on the right track. Toward that end, he has pledged to reduce the national debt and budget deficit. He would help the middle class and working poor by maintaining current benefit levels and eligibility for the earned income tax credit. Kerry has also promised to restore tax progressivity and fairness by rolling back Bush's giveaways to taxpayers earning more than $200,000 annually. And the Massachusetts senator wants to make significant investments in healthcare, education, affordable housing and the environment.
The president, by contrast, has emerged as little more than a supply-sider in the mold of his father, George H.W. Bush, and his father's former boss, Reagan. The results demonstrate why supply-side policies are sometimes called "trickle-down" economics. Corporate profits have soared 57.5% during the Bush administration, while workers' wages and benefits have increased a minuscule 1.57%.
In less than a year and a half, the Bush administration's sweeping tax cuts, passed by Congress in 2001, wiped out the federal government's 10-year projected budget surplus of $1.6 trillion. In 2000, the budget surplus was $236 billion. Three years later, the surplus had turned into a deficit of $375 billion.
Because Bush believes the free market will solve America's economic problems, he wants to gradually privatize Social Security and Medicare. To finance current government spending — after having given the wealthiest 1% of Americans 43% of the tax cuts — Bush is borrowing more heavily from the Social Security trust fund than any previous president. At the same time, the Treasury owes billions to foreign investors who buy Treasury bonds, and thus subsidize the national debt, which has soared by 29%, to $7.3 trillion.
Bush's solution to the recovering economy's still-uneven job creation is more tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals and corporations. The cost of these tax breaks plus his proposed spending initiatives is estimated to be $3 trillion over a decade. In denying the tax cut's role in the nation's current budgetary problems — and placing the blame instead on Sept. 11 and corporate malfeasance — the administration is being dishonest with the public.
During the 2000 campaign, Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, bragged about their MBA and CEO credentials, respectively. We've learned what that means: fudging, manipulating, wheedling government contracts and favors, and, in general, working the system for all it's worth. Bush and Cheney were schooled in a corporate culture that believes success involves exploiting the government, the economy and the environment.
They now practice that culture in the White House. To them, the national treasury seems little more than a personal piggy bank to reward their corporate friends and largest campaign contributors.
We don't need more quick-fix schemes or lopsided tax cuts. Four more years of Reaganomics II could land us on the economic endangered nations' list. Ballooning deficits and private debt could strangle the economy for the next generation, and all but the wealthiest would have a tough time making ends meet.
Kerry understands these realities and has demonstrated a willingness to confront them with candor, fairness and vision. We need an administration that understands and believes in coherent, comprehensive and equitable policies that promote sustainable economic growth — and, on that count, Democrats have the winning record.
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.
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Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/091904D.shtml
Seymour Hersh's Alternative History of Bush's War
By Mary Jacoby
Salon.com
Saturday 18 September 2004
The crack investigative reporter tells Salon about a disastrous battle the U.S. brass hushed up, the frightening True Believers in the White House, and how Iran, not Israel, may have manipulated us into war.
Seymour Hersh
(Photo: Michael Schmelling / AP Photo)
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Seymour Hersh has written more than two dozen stories for the New Yorker magazine on the secret machinations of the Bush administration in what the White House calls the "war on terrorism." His revelations, including an investigation of a group of neoconservatives at the Pentagon who set up their own special intelligence unit to press the case for invading Iraq, have consistently broken news.
Arguably his most important scoop came last spring, when the legendary investigative reporter received the now infamous photos of prisoner abuse by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, Iraq, as well as the explosive report on the abuse by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba. The story Hersh published in the New Yorker, followed by a report by CBS's "60 Minutes," created an international scandal for the Bush administration and led to congressional hearings.
In a new book, "Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib," Hersh expands upon his work in the New Yorker to contribute new insights and revelations. He discloses how a CIA analyst's report on abuses against captured Taliban prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, made its way to the White House in 2002, putting National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on notice two years before the Abu Ghraib scandal that human rights violations were taking place in U.S.-run prisons abroad.
In March 2002, Hersh writes, a military action against al-Qaida, known as Operation Anaconda, was botched in Afghanistan's mountainous border with Pakistan. Billed at the time as a success story by the Pentagon, it was in fact a debacle, plagued by squabbling between the services, bad military planning and avoidable deaths of American soldiers, as well as the escape of key al-Qaida leaders, likely including Osama bin Laden.
Hersh's story is well known. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1969 exposé of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, in which American soldiers killed more than 500 civilians. He is the author of eight books, including 1983's "The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House." And, since 1998, he's been a staff writer for the New Yorker
I visited with Hersh this week in his tiny, unadorned two-room office in downtown Washington, where he works amid a whirring fax machine, a constantly ringing phone and delivery men knocking on the door with packages. A map of the world, slightly off-kilter, is taped to the wall behind his desk, which is piled high with papers.
He speaks quickly, answering questions before the sentences can be completed, and hopscotches through conversational topics, as if everything's a race against time. "I have some Brazilians coming in. You know, just to talk about ... wait! Turn it off for a second," he says, gesturing at my recorder. He shares with me a lead he's working on. He flashes me a look at an intriguing document before stealing it away. "OK, let's talk about the book. I've gone over the top here. I'm not pimping anymore. I'm now a full-fledged whore, with red paint," he says, pretending to smear rouge on his cheeks. He loosens his tie. "Let's get on with it!"
What is new in the book, and what is based on your published work?
I'd say about 35 percent of the opening material on Abu Ghraib is new, maybe about 15,000 words, altogether about, I don't know what percentage. Maybe about a third, maybe a little less, is either new or revised or significantly changed. But the bulk of the book is the articles I did, put in a different form and combined in a different way by a very competent editor of mine. This book was edited by the New Yorker and fact-checked by the New Yorker. Everything that is new in the book was fact-checked by the New Yorker.
Who was the editor?
Her name is Amy Davidson. She's a senior editor, and she's great. A man named John Bennet, who is a wonderful editor, was my editor for the first couple of years, and then Amy came on because John's good that way. John is very avuncular, and he wants other people to start editing significant stuff, because among other things, he's always stuck with the big pieces. It was fact-checked by the same people, and the publisher paid for it. And Remnick, to his everlasting credit, David Remnick the editor, agreed that even though there's a very good story at the beginning - the whole Condi Rice meeting issue - he said publish it in your book and go make some money. It was sort of nice of them. It reflects well on the New Yorker. His point was, your being out there reflects well on the New Yorker. We all fight for making a living.
To talk about the new revelations ...
Let me tell you the one I like the most; aside from the obvious stuff about Abu Ghraib, there was a story I didn't write two years ago about Operation Anaconda. I didn't write it because, oh, a lot of complicated reasons. One, it was very hostile to our soldiers, and the military, and General [Tommy] Franks, and [Major Gen. Frank] Hagenbeck, a very nasty story. And then secondly, there was bad blood between the Marine Corps, and General Franks, and CentComm and the Air Force, and it just didn't, uh ... it's one of those stories. The real reason in a funny way is that even though my sources were angry in talking about it, it's one of the stories they really would have regretted, because you're talking about internecine warfare among the services. It's about boys ... anyway.
They would have regretted it?
They would have regretted talking to me about that. In there is an account of the Marines insisting that General Franks sign an MOU, a memorandum of understanding, of how the Marines would be used. We're talking about in combat, this kind of war going on between the services. And, you know, I probably guess it was the right decision, because I had to do obviously an alternate history of the war. And obviously there were certain people talking to me. People on the inside know what's going on. And so, I probably agree it was OK to do it. But I felt bad when I saw [former Gen. Wesley] Clark later. I had talked to Clark about the story at the time. Then two years later I ran into him when he was running for president, or right before, and he said, "Whatever happened to that story?" I said, "Well, I just decided not to write it." And he said, "Well, you should have. It's your job."
He's an amazingly straight guy. A difficult guy. "You should have." He basically told me, "Punk kid. You didn't know what you were doing." I also respect him because ...
Let's talk about some of these revelations.
Oh, so that was the one I liked the most.
But why didn't you write it at the time? You thought it would be too hostile?
No! There was, you know, it was a tough story about troops running from the battlefield, you know; it was just a tough story. [Hersh is referring to the lost battle of Anaconda.] I was writing a lot of other tough stories, and, uh ... it just didn't work. Let's put it that way.
Isn't that what a lot of the mainstream press get accused of - certainly not you - but holding back important information out of sensitivity for the feelings of the nation?
Ain't none of us perfect. It just seemed at the time, some of the people who were talking to me at the time, it would cause a big stink, and some of the Marines who were talking to me would not talk anymore. I also know, in order to do the story right, I would have had to go find some of the guys who were in the mission ... There was a lot of reporting to do, and I don't know, I just didn't do it.
But now you've gone back and revisited it in the book?
Oh yeah. Give me the book. I'll show you right where it is. So I'm not backing off. It was a story that should have been written. Of course I should have written it.
Let's talk about this anecdote about Vice President Cheney saying there would be no resignations [over the Abu Ghraib scandal]. Your publisher emphasized this in the press release, and I wanted to know ...
Now, wait a minute. Are you asking about a press release? Excuse me. That's like asking me about a headline.
Just tell me why you feel it's important.
What? Tell me why I feel it's important that Cheney called up?
What does it reveal?
It's more complicated than you think. For one thing, it reveals that they're all as one. The notion that they're going to fire [Donald] Rumsfeld, as people actually entertained, is comical. After 9/11 he gets in this swaggering mode and says we're going to smoke those terrorists out of their snake holes. And then it's clear there's prisoner abuse and torture going on. But does Cheney call up and say, "Oh, my God! What's going on over there, Don? What kind of craziness are you doing to those prisoners? This is devastating to our campaign. What's going on?" I don't hear that. What I hear is, "Let's all pull together and get past it." Very interesting.
You're an expert on Henry Kissinger. Is there someone who ...
I'm an expert on the side of Henry Kissinger that lied like most people breathed.
Is there someone who is the Henry Kissinger in this administration?
Oh, believe me, I pray for one [clasps his hands and looks beseechingly upward]. Wouldn't it be great if the reality was that they were lying about WMD, and they really didn't believe that democracy would come when they invaded Iraq, and you could go to war with 5,000 troops, a few special forces, a few bombs and a lot of American flags, and Iraq would fold, Saddam would be driven out, a new Baath Party would emerge that's moderate? Democracy would flow like water out of a fountain. These guys believe it. They believe WMD. There's no fallback with these guys. These guys are utopians. They're like Trotskyites. They believe in permanent revolution. They really believe. They believe that they could go in with few forces. They believed that once they went in it would happen quick. Iran would get the message. What they call occupied Lebanon would get the lesson. Even the Saudis would change.
They thought it would happen quickly?
Very quickly. I don't have any empirical basis for it, but if I had to bet, the plan was to go right into Syria. That's why the fourth division was hanging for so long in the desert out there right on the border with Syria. In the early days of the war, before this government figured out how much trouble they were in - which took them a long time - they would drive practice runs, somebody told me. Again, I'm just saying what was told to me; this is not something I reported, but I was told pretty reliably, they were doing practice runs that amounted to the distance from the border to Damascus. It's my belief always - again this is not empirical, it's sort of my heuristic view - that the real reason [Paul] Wolfowitz and others were mad at [Gen. Eric] Shinseki when he testified before the war about [the need for] 200 or 300 troops - it wasn't about the numbers - was, "Didn't he get it? What had he been listening to in the tank? Didn't we explain to him in the tank what we told the chiefs? This is the way it's going to be. Didn't he understand what it's all about?" He didn't get it. He hadn't understood what they meant. This was all going to fall down. It was all going to be peaches and cream. And Shinseki just didn't get it! It wasn't about the numbers. He wasn't a member of the clan. He didn't join the utopia crowd.
You've answered one of my questions. Let's elaborate on it. Clearly there's very little that's, well, in touch with reality in these policies.
Ha, ha, ha. It's so easy for you to say that!
But it's not so clear actually. Many Americans ...
I think I used actually ... I'll get you this word [grabs book from my lap and begins flipping through it] ... there was a "fantastical" quality to the White House's deliberations. Fantastical. That was the phrase I used.
Yes, I read that. And that was my next question. With Kissinger, there were lies, and he knew exactly what he was doing ...
Yes, one of his aides was assigned - literally assigned on one of the secret flights they made to China - to keep track of the lies, who knew what. I think they used to describe it as keeping track of what statements were made, but essentially it was who was being told what, because so many different people were being told different things. But these guys, do you realize how much better off we would be if they really were cynical, and they really were lying about it, because, yes, behind the invasion would be something real, like support for Israel or oil. But it's not! It's not about oil. It's about utopia. I guess you could call it idealism. But it's idealism that's dead wrong. It's like one of the far-right Christian credos. It's a faith-based policy. Only it wasn't a religious faith. It was the faith that democracy would flourish.
So you don't think that this is some Machiavellian, cynical, manipulative ...
I used to pray it was! We'd be in better shape. Is there anything worse than idealism that doesn't conform to reality? You have an unrealistic policy.
It seems that they are very selective not only about what kind of information they present to the public but even in what they decide to believe in themselves.
I think these guys in their naiveté and single-mindedness have been so completely manipulated by - not the Israelis - but the Iranians. The Iranians always wanted us in. I think there's a lot of evidence that Iran had much to do with [Ahmed] Chalabi's disinformation [about nonexistent Iraqi WMD]. I think there were people in the CIA who suspected this all along, but of course they couldn't get their view in. I think the Senate Intelligence Committee's report's a joke, the idea this CIA was misleading the president. They get some analysts in and say, "Were you pressured?" And they all say, "No, excuse me?" Is that how you do an investigation? The truth of the matter is, there was tremendous pressure put on the analysts [to produce reports that bolstered the case for war]. It's not as if anybody issued a diktat. But everybody understood what to do.
Talk about the ...
Wait. You're missing something now. The Iranian stuff. I think Iran probably had more to do with Chalabi's information than people know.
We know that Chalabi had Iranian agents on his payroll.
Yeah, but, well, he admits to that. He had a villa in Tehran. But basically I think Iran was very interested in getting us involved. We get knocked down a peg; they become the big boys on the block.
Are you working on this now?
Yeah, I'm thinking about it. I'm reporting on it. But I'm not working on it. I'm just - it's too cosmic.
Was Chalabi the conduit?
I think Chalabi thought he could handle the Iranians. They were helping him all along with disinformation and documents he could give to the White House. Don't forget, once the neocons decided to go to Iraq in the face of all evidence, they were like a super-reverse suction machine, and anything in the world that furthered the argument that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was hot. I call it stove-piping, because it's a technical work of art. But it was much more than that. It was anything - vavoom! - into the president's [office]. It was so amateurish, it was comical. How hard was it to get some crapola into the White House about WMD without the CIA looking at it?
Do you have any idea of the origin of the forged Niger documents that Bush cited in his January 2003 State of the Union address as proof that Iraq was seeking uranium to make nuclear weapons?
I don't really know. I know that they think it was an inside job. And my idea is that there were people in the government who knew that you could give these guys [the neoconservatives] anything, and within three days, if it said the right thing, there would be a principals meeting [of the senior foreign policy officials] at the White House on it. And one idea would be to get them in a position where they really walked on their dongs, in a way. Give them some bad stuff. They'd have a big meeting about it and [the neocons] would finally be exposed as ludicrous. Nobody anticipated that [the forged documents] would end up in the State of the Union address. I mean, it's beyond belief. I don't believe in these conspiracy theories, about [Michael] Ledeen [a neocon operative] and these things. He's too smart for that. Because it was designed to be caught.
Do you think the responsibility for Abu Ghraib goes directly up to Rumsfeld?
I think they [Rumsfeld and senior administration officials] had a chance in the fall of 2002 to set the limits, and they chose not to. I don't think the CIA analyst who did the report was very explicit in his written document about the abuses. That isn't the way to get ahead. But he certainly told his peers there was a real mess there, so they know it. All she [Rice] had to do was put the word out there. The chain of command is very responsive. If you put out the word that you're not going to tolerate this crap, it's not going to happen. But that's not the word they put out.
Nobody would have countenanced in his right mind Abu Ghraib. But then again, if you think a bunch of kids from West Virginia understood the way to the soul of an Arab man is to take off his clothes and photograph him ... they didn't know that. Somebody told it to them. And that's the thing about the military. In loco parentis. They have an obligation to take our children and protect them, not only from land mines but from doing stupid things that could land them in jail.
The book is filled with reporting that shows how newspapers either got it wrong, or simply accepted the official version of events. What do you think of the performance of the main newspapers people look to as sources of information?
Well, so here I am, I'm busy trying to peddle a book and you're asking me to commit self-immolation! (Laughs). Well, all I'll say is, it speaks for itself.
"Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib"
By Seymour M. Hersh
HarperCollins
416 pages
Nonfiction
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/18/opinion/18sat2.html?ex=1096511651&ei=1&en=9fea3eeb78a68461
They Said It Couldn't Be Done
Published: September 18, 2004
Many computer scientists insist that electronic voting machines will be trustworthy only when they produce paper receipts that can be audited. But supporters of electronic voting have long argued that doing so would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Nevada proved the naysayers wrong this month, running the first statewide election in which electronic voting machines produced paper records of votes cast. Election officials across the country now have no excuse not to provide systems that voters can trust.
There is a growing body of evidence indicating that electronic voting machines are vulnerable to tampering and to software glitches that can skew the vote totals. The best safeguard is a voter-verifiable paper trail, receipts that are printed out during the voting process. Voters can view the receipts to check them against the choices they made on the computer screens. Each receipt remains under glass and, after the vote is cast, falls into a locked box. The receipts can be used in a recount or an audit to check the accuracy of the machine tallies.
The main argument against voter-verifiable paper trails is that they are impractical. At a May meeting of the federal Election Assistance Commission, and again at the National Association of State Election Directors' summer conference, local election officials denounced the campaign for voter-verifiable paper records. At both events, critics waved a receipt about three feet long, saying one that big would be needed for Los Angeles County's lengthy ballot.
But Nevada's secretary of state, Dean Heller, has always believed that paper records are practical, and this month he proved it. Primary voters across the state cast votes on machines that printed out paper records, and none of the nightmarish possibilities came to pass. The poll workers had no trouble with the technology. And election officials had spare machines and printers on hand in the few cases when printers jammed or had other mechanical problems.
Conditions in Nevada favored success. The turnout was light, and the ballot was short enough that the receipt was only about five inches long. But there is no reason to believe that paper trails could not work in any election. Alfred Charles, a vice president of Sequoia Voting Systems, which made the machines used in Nevada, says that if the receipts are done properly, listing only the candidates and referendum choices that the voter actually selects, length should not be a problem, and it is unlikely that even Los Angeles County would require anything like three-foot-long paper receipts.
Even if Nevada's approach - attaching printers to touch-screen machines - had failed, there would still be other ways to provide a paper record. Probably the best solution is the optical scan system used now in many jurisdictions, where voters mark paper ballots that are then read by computers. In optical scan systems, the paper ballots the voters fill out can be retained and used as a check against the machines' tallies.
Nevada has taken the lead on paper trails not only in its own elections, but also in Congress. Its senators - John Ensign, a Republican, and Harry Reid, a Democrat - have co-sponsored the bipartisan Voting Integrity and Verification Act, one of a number of pending bills that would require that all electronic voting machines produce voter-verifiable paper trails. Congress should pass such legislation right away so all Americans can have the same confidence in their elections as Nevadans now have.
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the liberal media by Eric Alterman
Bush's Useful Idiot
[from the October 4, 2004 issue]
Four years ago, Ralph Nader justified his third-party campaign on the grounds that the two parties represented nothing more than "Tweedledum and Tweedledee." As Americans die by the thousand in Iraq, the budget deficit explodes thanks to a tax cut targeting the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, the Justice Department demands women's private medical records from abortion clinics, and polluters are given carte blanche to despoil the earth and poison our children, the devastating evidence of Nader's myopia is everywhere around us.
Recall also that four years ago, Nader professed to want to help build the Green Party into a genuinely progressive alternative to what he termed the corporate-dominated "duopoly." But Nader was no more truthful about his commitment to party-building than George W. Bush was when he decried "nation-building." Today, Nader's party allies consist mainly of the motley far-right collection of Republicans who fund his campaign and collect his signatures, and the remains of the nativist Reform Party, late of Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign.
It's true that Nader once represented an important progressive voice in American politics; then again, so did Norman Podhoretz, David Horowitz and Christopher Hitchens. While Nader continues to employ the same rhetoric as before, this speaks merely to his personal self-delusion and shameless demagoguery. He also appears to be a rather brazen liar. "We have not been accepting signatures obtained through organized Republican Party efforts in the three or four states where we have learned of such activity," he insisted in a September Washington Post op-ed. In fact, as the Detroit Free Press reported a day earlier, 45,000 of the 50,500 petition signatures submitted on Nader's behalf in Michigan were indeed submitted by Republicans. (Meanwhile, in Florida, Nader's ballot access lawyer is one Kenneth Sukhia, who just happened to represent Bush in that state's 2000 recount.)
While Nader, with characteristic obliviousness, refuses to accept any responsibility for the horrors of the Bush Administration, Ronnie Dugger, who presented Nader four years ago at the Green Party convention, admits, "We, the Nader people, certainly put Bush close enough electorally for the Supreme Court to seize the presidency for him." Giving up on talking sense to Nader personally, many of his big-name 2000 supporters have joined together to oppose his current candidacy. Among the seventy-four members of the "113-person Nader 2000 Citizens Committee" who've signed a statement urging support for Kerry/Edwards in all swing states this year are: Phil Donahue, Jim Hightower, Susan Sarandon, Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Howard Zinn and Cornel West. Indeed, Nader is without a single high-profile supporter anywhere this time around. And he has added to his list of enemies what he terms the "liberal intelligentsia": those he defines as concerned with his issues but willing to accept "the least worst option."
Four years ago, writing in these pages about Nader's "nascent leftist movement," I pointed out that it enjoyed "virtually no support among African-Americans, Latinos or Asian-Americans. It has no support among organized feminist groups, organized gay rights groups or mainstream environmental groups. To top it all off, it has no support in the national union movement. So Nader and company are building a nonblack, non-Latino, non-Asian, nonfeminist, nonenvironmentalist, nongay, non-working people's left: Now that really would be quite an achievement." I could have added Jews, too.
Today Nader has managed to top even that accomplishment. This time he is actively hated by the leaders of the dispossessed to whom he professes his allegiance. On June 22, for instance, Nader met with members of the Congressional Black Caucus in a session that ended with shouting, cursing and several members walking out in a state of fury. When it was over, Texas Representative Sheila Jackson Lee told CNN, "This is the most historic election of our lifetime, and it is a life-or-death matter for the vulnerable people we represent. For that reason, we can't sacrifice their vulnerability for the efforts being made by Mr. Nader."
Pragmatic concerns carried no weight in what was essentially a Leninist campaign in 2000, based as it was on Nader's belief that things needed to get much worse before they could begin to get better. When Nader claimed a Bush victory would help energize groups like the Sierra Club, its leader, Carl Pope, loudly told him, No thanks. When I debated Cornel West and Frances Fox Piven before a large audience at NYU, our introductions were preceded by a plea from graduate student union organizers to support their efforts to elicit decent pay and conditions. I tried to point out that those students who supported both Nader and the union might wish to concern themselves with the makeup of the presidentially appointed National Labor Relations Board. Well, in July of this year, the graduate students who stuck with Nader got what they apparently wanted. The Bush-controlled NLRB voted to reverse an earlier decision and deny all American graduate students the right to bargain collectively.
Despite all of this, as I write, Nader is actually polling higher than the 2.74 percent of Americans who provided the votes for his 2000 kamikaze mission--high enough to tip key swing states toward the single worst President in American history. What in God's name will convince Nader's remaining supporters to abandon his lemminglike march? It's hard to imagine what kind of logic will resonate with people who define themselves as leftists and yet remain unmoved by the sight of George Bush and Dick Cheney lying us into war, John Ashcroft attempting to criminalize dissent and Donald Rumsfeld rationalizing rape and torture.
If anyone has any ideas, let's hear them, please, and fast. In the meantime, can the media please stop assuming that this Republican-funded, nativist-supported and Bush/Cheney-enabling campaign is somehow deserving of the label "liberal"? Are our problems not large enough that we must also be saddled with the sins of our enemies?
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/col/story/232224p-199435c.html
New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Soldiers' kin pay a high price
Wednesday, September 15th, 2004
As politicians make grand speeches supporting our troops, families of our wounded soldiers are being told they soon will no longer receive the modest government stipend that helps them leave job and home to stay at their loved one's hospital bedside.
The majority of the 3,974 seriously wounded soldiers are young, and few earn more than $1,600 a month, tops. Their families are often of limited means and have a hard enough time keeping up with their bills. Family members forfeit wages and risk losing their jobs altogether as they help their soldier recover.
"None of these kids left a Park Ave. townhouse to go fight," observed one Army combat officer.
With exactly that in mind, the stipend was established in April 2003, just as the war in Iraq commenced. It lapses Sept. 30.
"I think nobody expected the war to last that long," an Army medical official said.
Surprise, surprise. A provision making the stipend permanent, Section 632 of HR4200, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005, is languishing in Congress as if it were not a crime to compound the anxieties of wounded heroes.
A House Armed Services Committee spokesman said HR4200 was "in conference" and suggested any current benefits to wounded soldiers would only "technically" expire and "go on as has been." Those who disagree include the Department of Defense, which allowed, "it appears there will be a gap in payment of per diem."
Meanwhile, a nation in a multibillion-dollar war will be saving the $51 a day plus lodging expenses now accorded the mother of 23-year-old Spec. Ken Comstock of the 2nd Battalion, 108th Light Infantry, New York Army National Guard. He is at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, recovering from a head wound he suffered in Iraq. His most recent surgery involved an ear-to-ear incision and shifting tissue to stop drainage from his skull.
"He's now in a seven- to 10-day waiting period to make sure nothing else is leaking," said his mother, Bonnie Comstock of upstate New York.
The mother has been able to remain at his side thanks to a patient employer and the stipend. She has observed his reaction whenever she prepares to leave the room.
"He gives this bewildered look: 'What? Where are you going?'" the mother said.
Her son would then point to the wall clock above the sink on the other side of the room. She would have no trouble understanding the message.
"When are you coming back? How long are you going to be?"
He would hold up one finger then another.
"One hour? Two Hours?"
She would step out only long enough to get something to eat or send an E-mail. Each time she returned, she would see anew what her presence means to him.
"He's my firstborn," she said yesterday. "It's that bond."
She was notified Aug. 23 that her son had been wounded. She flew to the hospital in Germany where he was first treated and accompanied him on the flight to Andrews Air Force base on Labor Day weekend. She has now been away from her job as a restaurant manager for three weeks.
"I don't want to lose my job, and I don't want to leave my son here alone," Comstock said.
She certainly could not afford to commute, and she had used the single trip the Army provides each parent of a wounded soldier.
"They said, 'One trip. That's it,'" the mother said.
And as if all that were not enough, the hospital's family assistance office informed her she would soon be losing her stipend.
"I'm like, 'What do you mean?'" Comstock recalled.
The family assistance people, who seem as kind as anybody, suggested she call her congressman.
"I said, 'My son was seriously wounded in Iraq and now you're telling me I have to call somebody to ask for food and lodging?'" she recalled.
While the mother spent another day with her wounded firstborn, a columnist called the office of Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the House Armed Services Committee's ranking minority member. A spokeswoman was unable to predict when the bill reinstating the stipend would become law.
"They've just started," she said. "Hopefully, before they adjourn in October, but your guess is as good as mine."