Bush Administration Opposes Move to Delay Medicare Premium Increase

NY Times
September 15, 2004
Bush Administration Opposes Move to Delay Medicare Premium Increase
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 - The Bush administration came out Tuesday in opposition to Democratic proposals to hold down the scheduled 17 percent increase in Medicare premiums next year, saying that a one-year freeze would lead to much higher premiums in 2006.

Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the premiums would rise 20 percent in 2006 if Congress blocked the increase planned for next year. Under current law, the monthly premium is scheduled to be $78.20 next year, up $11.60 from the premium this year. In most cases, the amount is deducted from Social Security checks.

Democrats and a few Republicans have expressed concern about the increase planned for 2005. Dr. McClellan said it reflected higher projected Medicare spending, attributable in part to an increase in payments to doctors and improvements in benefits.

The elderly "will be getting more benefits than ever,'' he said.

John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, has charged that Medicare premiums are increasing 56 percent since Mr. Bush took office in 2001, when they were $50.

But Senator Gordon H. Smith, Republican of Oregon, said: "President Bush is not to blame for this. He is following the law.'' A 1997 law specified that premiums should be set to cover roughly 25 percent of the cost of Part B of Medicare, which pays for doctors' services and other outpatient care.

Dr. McClellan, testifying Tuesday before the Senate Finance Committee, gave an upbeat assessment of the new Medicare law, which Republicans pushed through Congress last year, over the opposition of most Democrats, who said the measure did more to help insurance and pharmaceutical companies than elderly people or the disabled.

New insurance for the cost of drugs under Medicare is scheduled to begin in 2006. Since June, beneficiaries have been able to save money by using Medicare-approved drug discount cards.

The government had estimated that by December, 4.7 million low-income people would have discount cards and would qualify for extra assistance of $600 a year in 2004 and 2005. But to date, Dr. McClellan said, only 1.3 million low-income people have signed up for such "transitional assistance.''

Discount cards are available to Medicare beneficiaries with higher incomes as well. As of Sept. 2, Dr. McClellan said, cards have been issued to a total of more than 4.3 million beneficiaries, or nearly 60 percent of the 7.3 million expected to enroll by the end of the year.

Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the senior Democrat on the Finance Committee, voted for the new Medicare law, but said he detected little enthusiasm for the discount cards.

"I believe there are too many choices,'' Mr. Baucus said. "Too many choices, too many options can result in paralysis.''

A Web site, www.Medicare.gov, displays prices for more than 60,000 drug products that can be purchased with 73 discount cards at more than 50,000 pharmacies.

Democrats stepped up pressure on the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, to allow a vote on legislation permitting imports of inexpensive prescription drugs from Canada.

Dr. Frist indicated that he had no immediate plans to bring up such legislation, because he feared it could expose consumers to unsafe drug imports. But Democrats said they would find a way to get a Senate vote on the issue before Congress adjourns for the Nov. 2 election.

In July 2003, the House voted to allow Americans to import drugs from Canada and Europe, despite intense efforts to defeat the bill by officials of the Food and Drug Administration, including Dr. McClellan, who was then head of the agency.

To speed the confirmation of Dr. McClellan in his new job, Senator Frist said on the Senate floor, on March 11, that "the Senate will begin a process for developing proposals that would allow for the safe reimportation of F.D.A.-approved prescription drugs.'' Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, said Tuesday that the process had "led to nothing.''

The new Medicare law offers subsidies to employers as an incentive for them to continue providing drug benefits to retirees.

Dr. McClellan said "retiree coverage has been in decline for many years,'' and he said the new law could reverse that trend.

But Gerald M. Shea, assistant to the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., told the Finance Committee: "We are very nervous. We are nervous and afraid.'' Rules proposed by the Bush administration "offer too few protections for retirees'' and could "produce some momentum to further reduce retiree coverage, just the opposite of what was intended by Congress,'' Mr. Shea said.

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Blue Blood Bush steals $1Million from taxpayers

By now everyone knows that George W Bush used his blue blood lineage to get into the National Guard to avoid the draft. Avoiding the draft is what many did at that time to avoid going to Viet Nam, so, by itself, taking advantage of what options one had to avoid the draft is not, by itself, an issue. What happened from that point on is.

Numerous documents have come to light showing that Mr Bush failed to fulfill his obligations and was AWOL for about half the time he was supposed to be serving his country.

The following, printed in today's NY Times, is rather telling:

One fall day in 1973, when Mr. Bush was a new student at Harvard Business School, he was wearing a Guard jacket when he ran into one of his professors. The professor, Yoshi Tsurumi, says he asked Mr. Bush how he wangled a spot in the Guard.

"He said his daddy had good friends who got him in despite the long waiting list," recalls Professor Tsurumi, who is now at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York. Professor Tsurumi says he next asked Mr. Bush how he could have already finished his National Guard commitment. "He said he'd gotten an early honorable discharge," Professor Tsurumi recalls. "I said, 'How did you manage that?' "

"He said, oh, his daddy had a good friend," Mr. Tsurumi said. "Then we started talking about the Vietnam War. He was all for fighting it."

Professor Tsurumi says he remembers Mr. Bush so vividly because he was always making outrageous statements: denouncing the New Deal as socialist, calling the S.E.C. an impediment to business, referring to the civil rights movement as "socialist/communist" and declaring that "people are poor because they're lazy."

From what has come to light so far, it would appear that in 1972 something went badly wrong. The politest comment being made so far is that perhaps "Mr. Bush went through personal difficulties that he's embarrassed to talk about today." Mr. Bush's performance ratings deteriorated, he skipped his flight physical, he stopped flying military planes forever, he transferred to Alabama, and he did not report to certain drills there as ordered. Mr. Bush was a no-show at required drills.

The next year Mr. Bush skipped off to Harvard Business School. He still had almost another year in the Guard he had promised to serve, but he drifted away, after taxpayers had spent $1 million training him, and he never entirely fulfilled his obligations.

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Taxes for an Ownership Society

NY Times
September 15, 2004

Taxes for an Ownership Society

When President Bush talks about an "ownership society," hold on to your wallet. The slogan, like "compassionate conservative" before it, is sufficiently vague to mean many things to many people, and the few details that Mr. Bush has provided - encouraging more home ownership and offering new tax-sheltered savings plans - seem innocuous enough. But in tax terms, "ownership society" means only one thing: the further reduction, if not the elimination, of taxes on savings and investments, including taxes on dividends and on capital gains on stocks, bonds and real estate. That, in turn, means, by definition, a shift in the tax burden onto wages and salaries - or, put more simply, a wage tax.

The regressive results would be appalling. The richest 1 percent of Americans earn just about one-tenth of total wages and salaries, but almost half of all income from savings and investments - income that would be largely, perhaps entirely, untaxed in an "ownership society." In contrast, taxable wages and salaries make up almost all of the income of most Americans.

The Bush camp has been floating the idea that what the president is getting at is a consumption tax. But the administration is not talking about a true consumption tax, which would apply to spending regardless of where the money comes from - from your paycheck, cashing in your stocks and bonds, selling your house, or borrowing. It is, in effect, talking about a tax on wages.

Properly understood, a consumption tax is intended to increase national savings by making it relatively more attractive to save than to spend. The main argument against it is that it hits hardest at low-income and middle-income families, who tend to spend most of what they earn. But as Peter Orszag, an economist at the Brookings Institution, pointed out in a recent speech at Georgetown University, Mr. Bush's de facto wage tax would be the worst of all worlds: it would have all the regressive aspects of a consumption tax and none of its potential for increasing national savings.

When Mr. Bush talks about new tax-favored savings accounts, he never mentions that most people don't even take full advantage of existing plans. They won't be turned into "owners" by new tax breaks for interest, dividends and capital gains. To increase Americans' financial stake requires a strong economy in which people who work for a living share in the benefits of growth.

A good place to start would be to tackle the obstacles to sustained growth that currently exist, like spiraling health care costs, dependence on foreign oil and the administration's mania for unaffordable tax cuts - in short, to reverse, not intensify, the trends in the current economy.

In the past nearly three years of economic recovery, the distribution of economic growth has become more skewed than at any other time in modern memory. Currently, 47 percent of growth is flowing to corporate profits, by far the largest share than that in any of the other eight post-World War II recoveries. Fifteen percent goes to wages and salaries, the smallest share of economic growth in more than 50 years. To make matters worse, the share of compensation that is devoted to health and pension benefits is far larger during this recovery than in any other, representing a further squeeze on the wages and salaries of ordinary Americans. In 2004, take-home pay as a share of the economy dropped to its lowest level since 1929, when the government started keeping records.

All of this would make the drive for a wage tax laughable, if only it were a joke. And yet, when he says "ownership society," a wage tax is exactly what Mr. Bush is driving at.

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Bush supports, then opposes assault weapons ban

"It makes no sense for assault weapons to be around our society."
-- George W. Bush, supporting the assault weapons ban in 1999

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$3 Trillion Price Tag Left Out As Bush Details His Agenda

washingtonpost.com

$3 Trillion Price Tag Left Out As Bush Details His Agenda

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 14, 2004; Page A01

The expansive agenda President Bush laid out at the Republican National Convention was missing a price tag, but administration figures show the total is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion over a decade.

A staple of Bush's stump speech is his claim that his Democratic challenger, John F. Kerry, has proposed $2 trillion in long-term spending, a figure the Massachusetts senator's campaign calls exaggerated. But the cost of the new tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses that of the Kerry plan.

Bush's pledge to make permanent his tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2010 or before, would reduce government revenue by about $1 trillion over 10 years, according to administration estimates. His proposed changes in Social Security to allow younger workers to invest part of their payroll taxes in stocks and bonds could cost the government $2 trillion over the coming decade, according to the calculations of independent domestic policy experts.

And Bush's agenda has many costs the administration has not publicly estimated. For instance, Bush said in his speech that he would continue to try to stabilize Iraq and wage war on terrorism. The war in Iraq alone costs $4 billion a month, but the president's annual budget does not reflect that cost.

Bush's platform highlights the challenge for both presidential candidates in trying to lure voters with attractive government initiatives at a time of mounting budget deficits. This year's federal budget deficit will reach a record $422 billion, and the government is expected to accumulate $2.3 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported last week.

The president has had little to say about the deficit as he barnstorms across the country, which has prompted Democrats and some conservative groups to say Bush refuses to admit there will not be enough money in government coffers to pay for many of his plans.

Although a majority of voters say they are concerned about the deficit, most view Kerry as only marginally better able to deal with it than Bush, according to polls. And Bush often invokes the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in justifying the mounting governmental red ink. The president's aides, ever cognizant of his father's failure to articulate a convincing vision, said it was crucial for Bush to offer an ambitious new plan for the coming four years, despite the surge in government borrowing.

Bush-Cheney campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said the new proposals "are affordable, and the president remains committed to cutting the budget deficit in half over the next five years," although last week's CBO report indicates that goal may not be attainable.

The White House has declined to provide a full and detailed accounting of the cost of the new agenda. The administration last week provided a partial listing of the previously unannounced proposals, including "opportunity zones," that totaled $74 billion in spending over the next 10 years. But there was no mention of the cost of additional tax cuts and the creation of Social Security private accounts. Discussing his agenda during an "Ask the President" campaign forum in Portsmouth, Ohio, Bush said Friday that he has "explained how we're going to pay for it, and my opponent can't explain it because he doesn't want to tell you he's going to have to tax you."

Some fiscal conservatives who are dismayed by the return of budget deficits found little to cheer in the president's convention speech. Stephen Moore, president of the conservative Club for Growth, said that Bush's Social Security plan was money well spent by saving the system in the long run, but he added that Bush "has banked his presidency on the idea that people don't really care about the deficit, and he may be right."

"He's a big-government Republican, and there's no longer even the pretense that he's for smaller government," Moore said.

Kerry cited the deficit figures as fresh evidence that Bush's tax cuts were reckless and that he is taking the country in "the wrong direction."

The administration has been secretive about the cost of the war and the likely impact that the bulging defense budget and continuing cost of tax cuts will have on domestic spending next year. The White House put government agencies on notice this month that if Bush is reelected, his budget for 2006 may include $2.3 billion in spending cuts from virtually all domestic programs not mandated by law, including education, homeland security and others central to Bush's campaign.

But Bush has had little to say about belt-tightening and sacrifice on the campaign trail. Nor has he explained how he would reconcile all his new spending plans with the mounting deficit.

Jason Furman, Kerry's economic policy director, said that Bush "wants to hide the true costs of his plan" and that taxpayers "would be shocked" to find out what he was really advocating.

"The Bush team has gotten a lot of traction with the point that the Kerry numbers and rhetoric don't add up," said Kevin A. Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "It behooves them now to demonstrate that theirs do."

In his acceptance speech in Madison Square Garden on Sept. 2, the president called for the expansion of health savings accounts, which provide tax breaks for families and small businesses; creation of new tax-preferred retirement savings accounts; and creation of lifetime savings accounts, which allow tax-free savings for tuition, retirement or even everyday expenses.

The "Agenda for America" also includes increasing testing and accountability measures for high schools and opportunity zones to cut regulations and steer federal grants, loans and other aid to counties that have lost manufacturing and textile jobs -- a clear appeal to swing states such as Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Bush has also promised to "ensure every poor county in America has a community or rural health center" and "double the number of people served by our principal job training program and increase funding for our community colleges."

A number of Bush's initiatives could have a big price tag. An estimate from the Social Security actuary's office, included in the 2001 report of a Social Security commission appointed by Bush, put the cost of adding private accounts to the government retirement program at $1.5 trillion over 10 years. With inflation, the figure would now be about $2 trillion. Much of the expense comes from continuing to pay most retirees at current benefit levels, at the same time that some payroll taxes are being diverted to the stock and bond market.

Although advocates of partial privatization contend that the transition can be financed without cutting benefits or raising taxes, the estimates mean the president's agenda could cost even more than the Bush projections of Kerry's proposal. Hassett, the AEI economist, said private accounts would lower the long-term cost of Social Security. "If you pay a few trillion in transition costs over a decade, then maybe the system doesn't go bankrupt," he said.

Bush also called for making permanent his tax cuts, which the administration has estimated at $936.2 billion to $989.75 billion over 10 years. The tax cuts include elimination of the inheritance tax, reductions in the top four income tax rates, an increase in the child tax credit, reduction in the marriage penalty, and cuts to the capital gains and dividend tax rates.

Robert Greenstein of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities put the figure for extending the tax cuts at $2 trillion over 10 years and said other tax breaks Bush mentioned in his speech -- mostly related to health care -- would likely cost $50 billion to $100 billion over the next decade.

Another expensive part of Bush's agenda is the expansion of health savings accounts and creation of lifetime and retirement savings accounts. The new accounts are designed to have minimal cost in the first 10 years but have very large costs in the long run because they provide tax breaks when the money is withdrawn rather than up front.

The Congressional Research Service has estimated those two types of accounts would eventually cost $30 billion to $50 billion a year.

Peter R. Orszag, a senior fellow in economic policy at the Brookings Institution, said a conservative estimate for the cost of Bush's permanent tax cuts and Social Security accounts would be about $4 trillion over 10 years. But Bush's agenda was vague and did not include details of how he would add Social Security accounts.

"It's hard to cost out rhetoric," Orszag said.

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Will voters get the debates they deserve?

Boston Globe

Will voters get the debates they deserve?

By Thomas Oliphant, Globe Columnist | September 14, 2004

WASHINGTON
PRESIDENT BUSH has until Monday to decide which battleground state he wants to infuriate -- Florida, Ohio, Missouri, or Arizona.

Each of the four is a designated venue for one of the three proposed presidential and the one vice presidential debate. Months ago, when he was leading in the polls, John Kerry accepted all four invitations. But to this day, Bush has said nothing, and word is that he doesn't want to face Kerry three times. The first debate between Bush and Kerry is set for Sept. 30 in Miami. For security agencies and the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, 10 days at the outside is required to prepare for a debate; the word is required, not desired, as far as the four, swing state venues are considered. Ten days is next Monday, simple as that.

Since the debate commission was set up by the political parties to replace the ad hoc affairs run from 1976 to 1984 by the League of Women Voters, two developments have occurred. The debates, as TV productions, have managed to focus all the attention on the candidates and away from moderators and verbose reporters.

In the process, research done every four years by the commission has repeatedly illustrated a very simple point: the public by gigantic margins has come to consider the debates as their property, not the Republicans' or the Democrats'. By now, it is not an extreme view that national conventions are scripted, campaigns themselves are scripted, and what we get from the candidates is the antithesis of candor and authenticity.

But the debates are different -- up to six hours of exposure to unscripted moments that can help voters decide on their candidate. Perhaps because the stakes are so high, the campaigns are always tempted to play games with the debates. Bush's dad cost the public one debate in 1988, and Bill Clinton did the same in 1996. Four years ago and in 1992, all three presidential debates and the vice-presidential tussle came off as planned. This time, it is Bush's opportunity either to behave or to show the politician's inbred tendency to ignore the public interest. To its credit, the bipartisan commission has made it clear that it is not going to play into the political silliness by negotiating about venues and dates that have been a matter of public record for months. To be bipartisan means being willing to take partisan heat in a larger cause, and ever since 1984, co-chairman Frank Fahrenkopf (Ronald Reagan's Republican national chairman), co-chairman Paul Kirk (who picked up the Democrats' pieces after Reagan's '84 landslide) and full-time boss Janet Brown (a protege of principled Republicans like Elliot Richardson and Jack Danforth) have been my favorite stand-up people in an increasingly discredited game. They have taken the heat and built the debates the public wants. Bush's negotiator will not be Karl Rove, it will be James Baker, former secretary of state and the treasury. Kerry's negotiator is super-lawyer Vernon Jordan. I have known all the players for years and offer the following roadmap for the mess that may lie immediately ahead:

In a hotly contested election, the public's interest in a full debate schedule will be served if the media, especially TV and newspapers in the four swing-state venues, is vocal.

In this hotly contested atmosphere that resembles 1992 without Ross Perot, Bush will take at least a big risk if he ducks one of those battleground state venues.

Kerry will take a big risk if he undercuts the commission and (dare I say it) flip-flops into connivance with Baker outside its auspices.

After dithering in '92 and getting hurt (remember Chicken Man?), Bush's dad did the right thing; after dithering in 2000 and getting hurt (Gore was ahead), Bush Jr. did the right thing. This time, with interest high, it would seem clear that debating is smarter than dithering. It's also in the public interest.

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Edwards's unheard message

Boston Globe
Edwards's unheard message

By Joan Vennochi, Globe Columnist | September 14, 2004

DICK CHENEY, the dour vice president with the downward-curling lip, is clobbering Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards.

Everyone knew that Edwards brought good looks and charisma to the Democratic ticket. But the one-term senator and trial lawyer from North Carolina supposedly offered more. During the primary season, Edwards delivered a stump speech that made liberals' eyes mist: There are two Americas, he said, the haves and the have-nots, the people buying $800 Manolo Blahnik pumps at Neiman Marcus versus the people buying flip-flops at Wal-Mart.

As the senior George H.W. Bush would say, "Message: I care." Grafting that message onto the Kerry-Edwards campaign was supposed to make voters forget that neither Kerry nor Edwards is, by necessity, a bargain-hunter.

Cheney snidely sidetracked the Democrats' message with these words: "Kerry says he sees two Americas. It makes the whole thing mutual. America sees two John Kerrys." Then, he threw an even lower blow, warning that if Kerry is elected "the danger is that we'll get hit again."

To that, Edwards said Cheney had "crossed the line . . . This is un-American." Cheney is still smarting over that riposte, don't you think? Meanwhile, Edwards and his economic message are receding into the background.

"In a game of visibility, it's a technical knock-out," says Boston political consultant Joe Baerlein. "Dick Cheney is the designated pitbull. His job is to make news and stir up controversy." He believes the Kerry campaign is deliberately choosing another strategy, using Edwards to make the case to swing voters in select markets, "in a nonpolarizing way."

Nonpolarizing is not the Bush-Cheney way. Their campaign is based on two false premises: that the US invasion of Iraq was necessary because of 9/11; and that Bush cares equally about every American, rich or not-so-rich, and is pushing policies that take care of them equally. If Democrats can't pierce either one of those lies, they don't deserve to beat Bush. So far, they don't deserve to beat Bush.

From his hospital bed before undergoing heart bypass surgery, Bill Clinton told Kerry to forget about Vietnam and talk about health care. But first, Kerry has to talk about Iraq.

Recent polling numbers show that voters care more about protecting the country than creating jobs and they trust the Republicans over the Democrats to do it. According to a recent Newsweek poll, 42 percent of Americans continue to believe Saddam Hussein's regime was directly involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Debunking that mythological connection is not easy. But over the weekend, Kerry's cause was helped by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who told "Meet the Press": "I have no indication that there was a direct connection between the terrorists who perpetrated these crimes against us on the 11th of September, 2001, and the Iraqi regime . . . I have seen nothing that makes a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and that awful regime and what happened on 9/11."

Kerry picked up on the theme, telling The New York Times that the administration has "taken their eye off the real ball. They took it off in Afghanistan and shifted it to Iraq. They took it off in North Korea and shifted it to Iraq. They took it off in Russia and the nuclear materials there and shifted it to Iraq."

That at least is a way for Kerry to start reframing the debate and move away from the Vietnam era and his Senate vote authorizing war with Iraq. Now, how about getting more surrogates out there on his behalf on the domestic front?

Edwards is correct, there are two Americas and there are many ways to show it. Poverty is on the rise, fewer people have health care. Stretching income to cover basic costs is more difficult. A recent Businessweek.com article labeled shoppers as "Moneyed vs. Worried." August retail sales showed that discount stores like Wal-Mart, Costco, and Target fell below analysts' forecasts. Some blamed hurricane season, gas prices or the late start of back-to-school shopping. However, the same factors did not impede retail sales at high-end stores. "Wealthy Americans seem unshaken by current economic uncertainties and are still spending their money freely, while consumers in lower income brackets are feeling less secure," Businessweek concluded.

One America is worried about money and jobs. But the guy who turned it into a campaign theme has all but vanished from the front page. As usual, the pitbull wins the headlines.

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Fla. official defies Court order and allows Nader onto ballot

Boston Globe

Fla. official allows Nader onto ballot
Democrats howl; court review slated

By Jim Loney, Reuters | September 14, 2004

MIAMI -- Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader's name can appear on Florida ballots for the election, despite a court order to the contrary, Florida's elections chief told officials yesterday in a move that could help President Bush in the key swing state.

The Florida Democratic Party reacted with outrage, calling the move ''blatant partisan maneuvering" by Governor Jeb Bush, the president's younger brother, and vowed to fight it.

In a memo to Florida's 67 county supervisors of elections, Dawn Roberts, director of the Division of Elections, said the uncertainty of Hurricane Ivan forced her to act. The massive storm could hit parts of the state by week's end, forecasters say.

The ruling came in an ongoing legal battle over whether Nader should be allowed on the Florida ballot as the Reform Party candidate.

Nader, an independent nominated by the Reform Party, was a presidential candidate in 2000 when Bush won Florida, and the White House, by 537 votes over Al Gore. Analysts said most of the nearly 98,000 votes Nader got in Florida would have gone to Gore had Nader not been on the ballot.

Florida Circuit Court Judge Kevin Davey issued a temporary injunction last week preventing the state from putting Nader on the 2004 ballot, siding with a Democratic challenge that the Reform Party did not qualify as a national party under state law.

A hearing on a permanent injunction is scheduled for tomorrow. But Roberts said Hurricane Ivan had raised ''a substantial question as to when such a hearing" will be held.

As a result, she said, Florida's Department of State had filed an appeal against the temporary injunction. The appeal application automatically lifts the injunction, allowing the counties to put Nader's name on overseas absentee ballots, which must be mailed by Saturday.

''I'm in disbelief," said Scott Maddox, chairman of the Florida Democratic Party. ''This is blatant partisan maneuvering on the part of Jeb Bush to give his brother a leg up" against Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry.

Governor Bush said he agreed with Roberts's decision.

''It's up to the judge to determine, based on the law, whether Nader should be on the ballot or not," Bush said. ''But while that process goes on, we cannot put ourselves in the position where the ministerial role of the supervisors cannot be fulfilled."

Tallahassee, the state capital where Davey sits, is not expected to be directly hit by the hurricane. Maddox said the circuit court could hear the case as scheduled tomorrow and rule immediately.

In addition, the case is before the Florida Supreme Court, which could also rule at any time.

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Taking On the Myth

NY Times
September 14, 2004

Taking On the Myth
By PAUL KRUGMAN

On Sunday, a celebrating crowd gathered around a burning U.S. armored vehicle. Then a helicopter opened fire; a child and a journalist for an Arabic TV news channel were among those killed. Later, the channel repeatedly showed the journalist doubling over and screaming, "I'm dying; I'm dying."

Such scenes, which enlarge the ranks of our enemies by making America look both weak and brutal, are inevitable in the guerrilla war President Bush got us into. Osama bin Laden must be smiling.

U.S. news organizations are under constant pressure to report good news from Iraq. In fact, as a Newsweek headline puts it, "It's worse than you think." Attacks on coalition forces are intensifying and getting more effective; no-go zones, which the military prefers to call "insurgent enclaves," are spreading - even in Baghdad. We're losing ground.

And the losses aren't only in Iraq. Al Qaeda has regrouped. The invasion of Iraq, intended to demonstrate American power, has done just the opposite: nasty regimes around the world feel empowered now that our forces are bogged down. When a Times reporter asked Mr. Bush about North Korea's ongoing nuclear program, "he opened his palms and shrugged."

Yet many voters still believe that Mr. Bush is doing a good job protecting America.

If Senator John Kerry really has advisers telling him not to attack Mr. Bush on national security, he should dump them. When Dick Cheney is saying vote Bush or die, responding with speeches about jobs and health care doesn't cut it.

Mr. Kerry should counterattack by saying that Mr. Bush is endangering the nation by subordinating national security to politics.

In early 2002 the Bush administration, already focused on Iraq, ignored pleas to commit more forces to Afghanistan. As a result, the Taliban is resurgent, and Osama is still out there.

In the buildup to the Iraq war, commanders wanted a bigger invasion force to help secure the country. But civilian officials, eager to prove that wars can be fought on the cheap, refused. And that's one main reason our soldiers are still dying in Iraq.

This past April, U.S. forces, surely acting on White House orders after American television showed gruesome images of dead contractors, attacked Falluja. Lt. Gen. James Conway, the Marine commander on the scene, opposed "attacking out of revenge" but was overruled - and he was overruled again with an equally disastrous decision to call off the attack after it had begun. "Once you commit," General Conway said, "you got to stay committed." But Mr. Bush, faced with the prospect of a casualty toll that would have hurt his approval rating, didn't.

Can Mr. Kerry, who voted to authorize the Iraq war, criticize it? Yes, by pointing out that he voted only to give Mr. Bush a big stick. Once that stick had forced Saddam to let W.M.D. inspectors back in, there was no need to invade. And Mr. Kerry should keep pounding Mr. Cheney, who is trying to cover for the absence of W.M.D. by lying, yet again, about Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda.

Some pundits are demanding that Mr. Kerry produce a specific plan for Iraq - a demand they never make of Mr. Bush. Mr. Kerry should turn the tables, and demand to know what - aside from pretending that things are going fine - Mr. Bush intends to do about the spiraling disaster. And Mr. Kerry can ask why anyone should trust a leader who refuses to replace the people who created that disaster because he thinks it's bad politics to admit a mistake.

Mr. Kerry can argue that he wouldn't have overruled the commanders who had wanted to keep the pressure on Al Qaeda, or dismissed warnings from former Gen. Eric Shinseki, then the Army's chief of staff, that peacekeeping would require a large force. He wouldn't have ignored General Conway's warnings about the dangers of storming into Falluja, or overruled his protests about calling off that assault halfway through.

On the other hand, he can argue that he would have fired Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary who ridiculed General Shinseki. And he would definitely have fired Donald Rumsfeld for the failure to go in with enough troops, the atrocities at Abu Ghraib and more.

The truth is that Mr. Bush, by politicizing the "war on terror," is putting America at risk. And Mr. Kerry has to say that.

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Film Walks Line Between Kerry Ad and War Documentary

NY Times
September 14, 2004

Film Walks Line Between Kerry Ad and War Documentary
By SHARON WAXMAN

TORONTO, Sept. 13 - The premiere on Tuesday night of a sympathetic documentary about Senator John Kerry stakes out new territory at the crossroads of politics and cinema: will audiences pay to see what amounts to a two-hour political tribute to a man spotlighted free on the news every night? Can a theatrically released feature film create last-minute momentum for a presidential candidate? Could the effort boomerang?

Those questions, similar to ones raised by Michael Moore's anti-Bush documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11," loom large as "Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry," directed by a longtime friend of Mr. Kerry, George Butler, makes its debut at the Toronto Film Festival, with the window for finding out the answers excruciatingly small. The film will open in 200 theaters on Oct. 1, less than five weeks before the election.

Acquired just six weeks ago by ThinkFilm, based in Canada, "Going Upriver" has shifted in content and story line almost daily. Three weeks ago, the film was far different, before the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth emerged to attack Senator Kerry's wartime record, the filmmakers said.

"George took a hatchet to the film," said Mark Urman, the head of distribution for ThinkFilm, and the focus was tightened exclusively to the Vietnam era. "The film was suddenly printed in capital letters. He took out anything that didn't address the point: who is this man, and why do we care about him?"

Using interviews and thousands of photographs taken by Mr. Butler since the late 1960's, the film is a careful, detailed portrait that features footage from Mr. Kerry's service on Swift boats in the Mekong Delta and rare images of him as he led several days of antiwar protest in Washington in 1971, culminating in the veterans' medal-throwing ceremony.

The film seems intended to settle questions of whether Mr. Kerry was indeed a war hero, which the Swift boat veterans' group has questioned, and to explain his shift from soldier to leader of the antiwar movement, which has been criticized by some of his detractors as unpatriotic. The film includes footage of Mr. Kerry briefly questioning a veteran at the Winter Soldiers event in 1971, when veterans gave anguished testimony about their experiences in Vietnam, testimony that may still inflame anti-Kerry veterans today.

But no one knows if audiences will be interested - and whether the film will help Mr. Kerry or simply inflame those already angry with his antiwar role.

"I'm trying to figure out what this film will do," said Mr. Butler, who first met the candidate in 1964, and told of becoming convinced early on that he would one day be president. "John Kerry fascinates me. I decided to do the movie about Vietnam and the peace movement because in many ways, it's the best story about John Kerry. But it's more than a film about John Kerry. It's a film about my generation."

At a research screening last week in a major swing state, Ohio, 80 percent of audience members said they would recommend that others go see the movie; the recruited audience included undecided voters, though movie research can be an unreliable predictor of success.

Depending on how well the film is received in Toronto, there are plans to raise several million dollars to distribute free copies of the film on DVD on the pro-Kerry "Vote for Change" rock concert tour led by Bruce Springsteen, and to get the film in the hands of voters in swing states.

The Kerry campaign was at pains to say it had nothing to do with the film, particularly with the release falling so close to the election and thus subject to federal election laws. (The $1.2 million budget for the film was provided by Kerry supporters.) The candidate did not give Mr. Butler an interview for the film and appears only in historical footage.

Monday, the campaign issued this statement about the film: "When John Kerry was a young man, he showed physical courage in voluntarily fighting the war in Vietnam. When he came home, he showed moral courage in fighting to end a war where over 40,000 of the 58,245 Americans had already died. Any movie that educates the country on the Vietnam War and the troubled times that surrounded it, is an important lesson."

Michael Meehan, a senior adviser to the Kerry campaign, said that no one at the campaign had seen the film "that I know of," and that there had been no strategizing over how to use the film to help the candidate.

Senator Kerry did provide Mr. Butler with his own Super-8 footage taken when he was a commander of a Swift boat, a dangerous coastal patrol that, as the film notes, at times had 90 percent casualty rates. When Mr. Kerry cites the pathos of seeing a young Viet Cong soldier left to die in his blue shirt beside a burning hut with no honors or medals, there is film to match the memory.

Mr. Butler also acquired Super-8 footage from another Swift boat commander, and relied on interviews with Mr. Kerry's fellow soldiers and historians like Neil Sheehan to reconstruct the Vietnam service.

There are no interviews with Mr. Kerry's critics. Instead, the film notes that the leading attacker of Senator Kerry's Vietnam record now, John O'Neill, was recruited by the Nixon White House to discredit antiwar veterans in 1971. Mr. O'Neill, in a recent interview in The New York Times unrelated to the new movie, said it was Mr. Kerry's antiwar stance that propelled him to act. He said that as a young Vietnam veteran just home from the war, he was so troubled by Mr. Kerry's Senate testimony against the war that he went on the talk show circuit to promote an opposing view.

Asked if he considers the film a hagiography, Mr. Butler smiled: "It's a word I'm familiar with. It means saintly," he said. "Everyone said I couldn't make a good film about a friend. But there's no narration in the film. It's one of the things I'm most proud of. That way you can show what John Kerry is like and not have to tell it."

The film is still a gamble on many levels. Unlike Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," the blockbuster anti-Bush documentary that ignited intense interest in political films this year, "Going Upriver" is not the comic rant of an angry polemicist, capitalizing on public anger over the war in Iraq. It is a close look at one man's experience during a war 30 years ago, not the sort of film that creates blockbuster interest.

And in creating such a positive portrait of a 27-year-old John Kerry, it seems fair to ask whether the current candidate may suffer by comparison. Mr. Butler said he was not worried. "People see this separation between John in Vietnam, and with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and now," he said. "He's surprisingly much the same person." .

Even less than 24 hours before the premiere, "Going Upriver" is not quite finished. The print being shown at the festival is an incomplete digital version that will be transferred to 35-millimeter film for the national release in two weeks. The film's distributors concede they are in uncharted waters, and are trying to figure out as they go how to make the $1.2 million budget movie a success.

"This film is being made as history as being made," Mr. Urman said. "I've never been involved with something that is so now. It's film distribution as performance art, and it's very exciting. We're making it up as we go along."

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The Urgent Task Left From 9/11

The New York Times
September 14, 2004

The Urgent Task Left From 9/11

It was good news when President Bush flip-flopped on intelligence reform and endorsed giving the proposed new post of national intelligence director some real authority. That removed any excuse for the House and Senate to delay. It is time for them to enact true reform of the government's failure-ridden patchwork of 15 competing agencies.

Last week, after weeks of resistance, Mr. Bush agreed that the new national intelligence director should have "full budgetary authority" over the various intelligence organs at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Department and other places. Critical details remain to be spelled out in the White House's reform bill, but giving the new supermanager the power to defy the Pentagon and shift funds and priorities as threats change was one of the crucial recommendations of the independent commission's report on the failures of 9/11.

The president's decision ended his earlier talk of a director who could merely recommend budget changes. The shift was prodded by public pressure in the campaign season, but we hope it signals the start of the real leadership that is required from Mr. Bush on this urgent issue, particularly in the face of the resistance toward serious reform already palpable in much of the Republican-controlled Congress.

As briefly sketched so far, Mr. Bush's proposal would have the new director control as much as 75 percent of the estimated $40 billion annual intelligence budget, leaving the rest to the Pentagon, which is already fighting on Capitol Hill to retain its current 80 percent domination of the money flow. The Pentagon's argument that this would leave troops exposed on the battlefield is a diversion. No serious proposal would remove the armed forces' tactical battlefield intelligence operations from Pentagon control.

To be effective, the White House bill, and whatever Congress eventually passes, had best guarantee the new director the fullest possible powers to manage personnel and to cut through the "groupthink" inertia, bureaucratic rivalries and failure to share information that were underlined by the 9/11 commission. As terrorist threats shift, the new director must be able to "move money and people quickly," in the apt summary of John McLaughlin, the acting director of central intelligence.

Whether much of this happens is an open question in Congress. The Senate has moved more determinedly than the House in promising to shape a reform bill this month. House leaders have been passive from the start. It was discouraging to hear Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, claim that "incredible progress" in intelligence gathering has already occurred since 9/11. Incredible, indeed, considering the intelligence bureaucracy's "slam dunk" certitude about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and its failure to foresee the bloody insurrection that has mired American troops.

This burning issue demands true bipartisan momentum as well as stronger leadership if an effective restructuring plan is to emerge from Congress. A worthy bipartisan benchmark has been set in both houses in a joint bill rooted in the main proposals of the 9/11 commission. The approach of Election Day presents a deadline by which voters will be able to see either true change at hand or more decades of dangerous procrastination.

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Bush Team Implicated in Prisoner Abuse

Bush Team Implicated in Prisoner Abuse

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh's new book "Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib" claims that not only was the Bush administration aware of the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib but had put the mechanics of inmate abuse in place.

"Hersh provides details of how President George Bush signed off on the establishment of a secret unit that was given advance approval to kill or capture and interrogate "high-value" suspects - considered by many to be in defiance of international law - an officially 'unacknowledged' programme that was eventually transferred wholesale from Guantánamo to the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Evidence of prisoner abuse and possible war crimes at Guantánamo Bay reached the highest levels of the Bush administration as early as autumn 2002, but Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, chose to do nothing about it. Hersh, quotes one former marine at the camp recalling sessions in which guards would 'f..k with [detainees] as much as we could' by inflicting pain on them." Read the Guardian report at http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1303106,00.html.

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Army Censors Soldier's Blog

Army Censors Soldier's Blog

A young soldier blogging about his experiences in Mosul has been banned from patrols and confined to base. Army Specialist Colby Buzzell, who uses the alias CBFTW (Colby Buzzell F . . This War) was getting 10.000 hits a day on his blog which the Wall Street Journal described as "a mixture of gripping accounts of caffeine-driven battle maneuvers and amusing vignettes from the dusty grind of life in Iraq's third-largest city." You can read his blog at http://cbftw.blogspot.com/

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POWELL DISSES CHENEY

NATIONAL SECURITY -- POWELL DISSES CHENEY: Just days after Vice
President Dick Cheney embarrassed himself
(http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/bush/articles/2004/09/13/powell_targets_terror_comment_kerrys_response_would_be_robust/)
by claiming terrorists would attack America if people voted for John
Kerry, he and the Bush campaign sought to " clarify his remarks
(http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/10/cheney.kerry.ap/) ." They
said Cheney actually meant that Kerry would not respond as forcefully
as Bush when an attack occurs. But Secretary of State Colin Powell
disagreed. Asked how he believes Sen. John F. Kerry would respond to a
terrorist attack, Powell said, "As commander in chief, I think he'd respond
to it in a robust way
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16707-2004Sep12.html) ."
Powell had already made news earlier in the week, as British journalist
James Naughtie reported the Secretary of State called neo-cons Cheney,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz " f---ing crazies
(http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/people/190325_people13.html) ."

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HOMELAND SECURITY -- INSECURE BORDERS

HOMELAND SECURITY -- INSECURE BORDERS: An investigation by Time
Magazine supports 9/11 Commission findings
(http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3859756) that the Bush
administration has failed to establish effective border security since
9/11. Time reports, "Despite all the talk of homeland security, sneaking
into the U.S. is scandalously easy?and on the rise. Millions of illegal
aliens will pour across the U.S.-Mexican border this year, many from
countries hostile to America...The U.S.'s borders, rather than becoming
more secure since 9/11, have grown even more porous
(http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101040920/story.html) . And the trend
has accelerated in the past year." A nationwide survey of the U.S.
Border Patrol conducted last month found the majority of the nation's
customs and border officials believe " they are ill-equipped to prevent
another terrorist attack
(http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=29264&dcn=todaysnews)
." Read more about the Bush administration's inadequate efforts to
improve border control and plug other gaps in Homeland Security in American
Progress' report, " Failing Grades
(http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=183682) ."

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FOREIGN POLICY -- FREUDIAN SLIP

FOREIGN POLICY -- FREUDIAN SLIP?: Apparently, the Bush administration
has conflated Saddam Hussein with Osama bin Laden
(http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/whitehouse/la-na-gop10sep10,1,3026441.story?coll=la-news-politics-white_house)
so many times that even its own officials have become confused.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld mixed up the names of bin Laden and
Hussein
(http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-rummy11sep11,1,2859808.story?coll=la-headlines-world)
twice in a speech at the National Press Club on Friday, at one point
referring to Hussein as the leader of the al Qaeda-backed Northern
Alliance in Afghanistan. At another point Rumsfeld said, "Saddam Hussein, if
he's alive, is spending a whale of a lot of time trying to not get
caught. And we've not seen him on a video since 2001." He meant bin Laden.
Rumsfeld might just be following the White House script. After all, in
2002 Bush said, "You can't distinguish
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020925-1.html)
between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror."

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US Government Cover-up: "Up to 400,000 New Yorkers breathed in the most toxic polluting cloud ever recorded"

9/11 -- MORE POTENTIAL DEATHS THAN ACTUAL ATTACKS: According to the UK
Independent, which cited a new report by the U.S. Government
Accountability Office, "Up to 400,000 New Yorkers breathed in the most toxic
polluting cloud ever recorded after the twin towers were brought down three
years ago, but no proper effort has been made to find out how their
health has been affected." The report "provides the latest evidence of a
systematic cover-up of the health toll
(http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0912-01.htm) from pollution
after the 9/11 disaster, which doctors fear will cause more deaths than
the attacks themselves." The Bush administration "suppressed evidence of
increasing danger" and officially announced that the air around the
felled buildings was "safe to breathe." Another report reveals that it has
since "failed at least a dozen times to correct its assurances, even
when it became clear that people were becoming sick." Just days after
9/11, the White House's Council of Environmental Quality -- headed by a
former asbestos industry
(http://www.earthjustice.org/policy/profiles/display.html?Department=Council%20On%20Environmental%20Quality)
lawyer-lobbyist -- doctored EPA press releases
(http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/6754648.htm)
to claim the air was safe to breathe. In fact, "Asbestos was found at
27 times acceptable levels" near Ground Zero. After that, the White
House refused to immediately fund critical health screening tests for those
exposed to toxic chemicals during the attack, instead waiting
two-and-a-half years
(http://www.house.gov/maloney/press/108th/20040319HealthScreening911.htm)
to address the situation.

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Novak's Duplicity

From Progressreport.org

Novak's Duplicity

In a move of stunning hypocrisy this weekend, journalist Bob Novak went
on CNN to demand CBS News reveal the confidential sources
(http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0409/11/cg.00.html) which gave them
President Bush's National Guard records. On the Capital Gang, Novak, who
has strenusously claimed his right as a reporter not to reveal his
sources to law enforcement officials
(http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000591250)
in the leak of an undercover CIA agent, said, "I'd like CBS, at this
point, to say where they got these documents from." He then repeated
himself: "I think they should say where they got these documents." The Wall
Street Journal's Al Hunt was perplexed, asking Novak, "You're saying
CBS should reveal its source?" He replied, "Yes." Hunt asked again, "You
think reporters ought to reveal sources?" Novak, then embarrassed said,
"No, no. Wait a minute...I'm just saying in that case." Hunt summed up,
"So in some cases, reporters ought to reveal sources?" Novak replied,
"Yes."

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Bush's Deafening Silence

From progressreport.org

Bush's Deafening Silence

In 1999, then-Gov. George W. Bush supported the ban on assault weapons,
saying " it makes no sense for assault weapons to be around our society
(http://congress.org/congressorg/bio/pr/?id=347&pr=08042004164546) ."
In 2003, then-White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said that Bush
not only "supports the reauthorization of the current assault weapons
ban" but would "work with Congress" to make sure it remained the law. But
during his presidency, "Mr. Bush has never once demanded that his
G.O.P. leaders cease playing first responder to the demands of the gun
lobby (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/11/opinion/11sat1.html) and take the
initiative" to extend the assault weapons ban. When the clock strikes
midnight tonight, military assault weapons will -- once again -- be
freely available across the country. (For more Bush flip-flops check out
President Bush: Flip-Flopper in Chief
(http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=118263)
.)

NO SURPRISE TO THE NRA: In 2000, NRA First Vice President Kayne
Robinson said that if George Bush was elected "we'll have... a president where
we work out of their office
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A694-2000May3¬Found=true)
" and that the NRA had "unbelievably friendly relations" with Bush. The
Los Angeles Times describes the expiration of the ban as "a trophy Bush
can lay at the NRA's feet as the group readies its presidential
endorsement." Pressure from the NRA also caused Sen. Norm Coleman -- who
supported extending the ban during his 2002 campaign -- to switch his
position (http://idea.startribune.com/stories/484/4971392.html) .

ASSAULT WEAPONS POSE ACUTE THREAT TO LAW ENFORCEMENT: According to a
2002 report by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, assault
weapons " pose an enhanced threat to law enforcement
(http://www.atf.gov/firearms/ycgii/2000/highlights.pdf) , in part
because of their ability to expel projectiles at velocities that are capable
of penetrating the type of soft body armor typically worn by the law
enforcement officers." Last week, scores of law enforcement personnel
from around the country -- including police chiefs from Washington, D.C.,
Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Seattle
(http://www.bradycampaign.org/press/release.php?release=585) --
assembled at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial "to demand that
President Bush and Congress reauthorize the federal assault weapons ban
before it expires."

GUN MANUFACTURERS READY: Gun manufactures have already been " taking
orders for semiautomatic rifles and high-capacity ammunition magazines
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3707-2004Sep7.html) "
that will become legal tonight at midnight. The gun manufacturer Beretta
"has been offering customers two free 15-round magazines after Sept. 14
with the purchase of two of its weapons." Current law "restricts the
capacity of ammunition magazines to 10 rounds." Armalite Inc. is
"allowing customers to order banned assault weapons now and have them shipped
once the ban is lifted." Israel Military Industries Ltd. is expected to
reintroduce Uzis to the U.S. market. Robert A. Ricker, a former
executive director of the American Shooting Sports Council, predicted "an
incredible buying frenzy."

BROAD SUPPORT FOR EXTENDING THE BAN: A recent poll by the Annenberg
Public Policy Center showed that 68 percent of Americans support the ban
(http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/naes/2004_03_guns_09-06_pr.pdfhttp:/www.mndaily.com/articles/2004/09/13/10138)
. Support for the ban extends to all demographics: 61 percent of
Republicans, 61 percent of people who live in rural areas and 62 percent of
conservatives. Among people who have a gun in their home, a solid
majority -- 57 percent -- support extending the ban.

BOON FOR TERRORISTS: The impact of the expiration of the assault
weapons ban may be broader than you think: newly legal assault weapons could
find their way into the hands of al Qaeda terrorists. An al Qaeda
training manual recovered in Afghanistan urged terrorists " to come to
America and buy assault weapons
(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/09/11/MNGO68N6P91.DTL)
."

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Powell: No link between Saddam and 9/11; Kerry as President would respond to terrorism "in a robust way"

Boston Globe

Powell targets terror comment
Kerry's response would be 'robust'

By Glen Johnson, Globe Staff | September 13, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday he believes Senator John F. Kerry would, if elected president, respond to terrorism "in a robust way," challenging a comment made last week by Vice President Dick Cheney.

"I can't tell you how he might respond to it. As commander in chief, I think he'd respond to it in a robust way," the retired Army general said of Kerry during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Powell added: "There's no commander in chief, no president of the United States, who would not respond to terrorism. Now, how he would respond, which strategies that individual would use, I can't predict the future."

Cheney, speaking to supporters last Tuesday in Des Moines, said: "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."

Two days later, in an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer, the vice president explained he would like to "clean up" his remark. "I did not say if Kerry is elected, we will be hit by a terrorist attack," Cheney said. "Whoever is elected president has to anticipate more attacks. My point was the question before us is: 'Will we have the most effective policy in place to deal with that threat?' George Bush will pursue a more effective policy than John Kerry."

Powell called attention to the clarification, saying Americans know how President Bush has responded to a terrorist attack, "and so you know where we're coming from and how we will deal with this kind of threat."

During the same interview, Powell also challenged the belief, indicated in some public opinion polls, that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was connected to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.

"We know that there had been connections and there had been exchanges between Al Qaeda and the Saddam Hussein regime, and those have been pursued and looked at. But I have seen nothing that makes a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and that awful regime and what happened on 9/11," Powell said.

Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards seized on that remark yesterday and accused Bush and Cheney of misleading Americans by implying a link between Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Today, Secretary of State Powell made clear that there is no connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks on September the 11th," Edwards said before an AFL-CIO rally in Detroit. "From this day forward, this administration should never suggest that there is."

Bush has declared he has seen no evidence of a direct link, but he implied there was a collaborative relationship between Hussein and Al Qaeda -- an assertion the 9/11 commission rejected.

Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, said Powell's comments are consistent with those made by Bush and Cheney.

The Kerry-Edwards campaign argued that Cheney suggested such a link as recently as last week.

Speaking Friday in Cincinnati, Cheney recounted the invasion of Afghanistan after the attacks, in which the United States punished the Taliban for harboring Al Qaeda. Then he said, "In Iraq, we had a similar situation." Hussein "provided safe harbor and sanctuary for terrorists for years," including Al Qaeda, Cheney said.

Edwards said yesterday that "Vice President Cheney should not say the kind of things he said Friday, and the president should not mislead the American people by implying there's connection between September the 11th and the attacks of September 11th and Saddam Hussein."

During another interview on "Fox News Sunday," Powell reaffirmed his distaste for Vietnam War draft policies that allowed sons of the powerful to avoid combat, as spelled out in his 1995 autobiography. At the same time, he said Bush, a congressman's son who served in the Texas Air National Guard, "served honorably."

In "My American Journey," Powell wrote, "I am angry that so many sons of the powerful and well-placed managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units."

Asked about that comment and Bush's military career, Powell said: "I disagree with the policies that were in place at that time. I didn't think it was the right set of policies for the challenge the nation was facing. But those were the policies that were in place at that time."

He added that Bush and Kerry "both served honorably, and they both were discharged honorably."

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Movie highlights Kerry's 2 Vietnam roles

The Boston Globe
Movie highlights Kerry's 2 Vietnam roles
New film may spur backlash

By Patrick Healy, Globe Staff | September 13, 2004

NEW YORK -- It is an image from the Vietnam era that most Americans have never seen: a somber John Forbes Kerry, then 27, speaking with a fellow veteran in 1971 about the violence of warfare that both men had participated in.

"Is there something that you really, kind of want to say in terms of crimes and why they happened?" Kerry gently asks the man, in a quiet moment in a Detroit banquet hall where veterans had come to speak about their own acts of brutality against Vietnamese noncombatants. "What sort of makes you -- what brings you here, what makes you say, 'I want to testify'?"

"I'd almost need a book to answer that now," the man replies wearily. "You're supposed to feel sorry for Americans, but you weren't supposed to feel sorry for the enemy."

An invitation-only audience recently watched this scene during a screening here of a new documentary about Kerry and Vietnam, "Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry," which premieres tomorrow at the Toronto Film Festival. In the documentary, the Democratic presidential nominee came across as "gripping" and "impressive," viewers said in a discussion afterward.

Yet the film, which is set to open in the United States on Oct. 1, arrives at a time when many voters are skeptical of the hagiography that envelops Kerry's wartime experiences in "Going Upriver," an expression for going into battle. The movie was conceived long before a group of veterans began attacking Kerry's combat record and antiwar activism last month, but several moments in it -- particularly Kerry's remark about soldiers' "crimes," and scenes of him marching for peace and throwing away his combat ribbons at a Washington protest -- are bound to whip up these critics anew during the crucial final weeks of the 2004 campaign. Other viewers, like the Greenwich Village audience screening the film last week, will be just as impressed by the former swift boat commander's poise in the glowingly positive 92-minute picture.

The movie, which drew no funding from the campaign, was financed by a range of investors across the country, many of whom are friends of Kerry or are strongly supporting his presidential bid.

The possibility that "Going Upriver" could be exploited to hurt Kerry's candidacy was not lost on one of the film's executive producers, Bill Samuels, who asked the New York audience for their reactions to Kerry's conversation with the veteran at the so-called "Winter Soldier hearings" 33 years ago.

"That [scene] could be just grabbed by someone as a stand-alone and that could be on the news -- John soliciting someone," Samuels explained. "I happen to like it. I'm just wondering if that piece could be used as a stand-alone by the Bush people. Maybe I'm overreacting."

One audience member answered, "The Bush people are going to do their thing. What can you do?"

The scene remained in the film.

Production for "Going Upriver," by George Butler, the documentary director and a longtime Kerry friend, was nearly complete last month when a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth launched a television commercial that questioned the official naval record of Kerry's Vietnam heroism and whether he deserved his combat medals. The swift boat group has also aired a commercial lashing Kerry for telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971 that some US soldiers had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads," and committed other atrocities in Vietnam.

While the film includes about two minutes of clips from that Senate appearance, Kerry's testimony about atrocities is left out. Butler said, "You can't get everything in a movie."

"I did cover Winter Soldier, which almost no one else has done, that formed the basis for his atrocity testimony," Butler noted.

The film, in which the Kerry campaign has played no role, has a wealth of personal pictures and footage from the Democrat's youth and 20s.

Kerry campaign spokesman Michael Meehan said officials at the campaign have not seen the film, and he did not express concern about some of the potentially controversial footage. "Any movie that educates the country on the Vietnam war and the troubled times that surrounded it is an important lesson," Meehan said.

Occasionally Butler, as an artist, takes dramatic license to re-create scenes of warfare. The director meticulously researched these moments and views them as accurate. One is designed to show the February 1969 firefight when Kerry (who does not appear on camera in these scenes) ran his swift boat ashore and killed a Viet Cong, an action that earned him the Silver Star. Butler also added sound effects of gunfire -- one shot for every hole in a battered boat, for instance -- and other touches that may invite criticism from the swift boat group, among others, which has alleged that some of the battles did not unfold with the intensity that Kerry has described and naval records indicate.

The Vietnam footage, which Butler weaves with interviews with Kerry's crewmates, war historians, and others, includes some film that Kerry himself took as a Navy lieutenant, which has been criticized by some veterans as calculated self-glorification.

"What struck me from looking through [Kerry's Vietnam film] was how much combat footage there was, how many buildings were set on fire, how many buildings were shot at," Butler said. "If there were no Super-8 footage from John, we could have done nothing -- Vietnam would have been a zero."

The bulk of the film is devoted to Kerry's growing anger at the war, and to his role in the protest movement after coming home: as an observer and occasional participant at the Winter Soldier hearings; as an emerging leader of the four-day antiwar demonstration in Washington in April 1971, which included his Senate testimony; and as the patrician-sounding spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, drawing the ire of President Nixon.

Tape recordings in the film of Nixon and his aides worrying about the well-groomed Kerry help document how the roots of Kerry's political power -- and for much of this year, his rationale to be president -- lay in his actions during the Vietnam era. It was scenes from the 1971 demonstration of Kerry marching through Washington, championing the veterans' cause to the media and to the Senate, and lobbing away his combat ribbons at the foot of the Capitol, that captured him as a leader for the Greenwich Village audience.

Last spring, when controversy first broke out over Kerry's wartime activities, it stemmed from some veterans arguing that he actually threw his medals away. In television interviews around the time of the protest, Kerry indicated as much. But he insisted last spring that he used the words "medals" and "ribbons" interchangeably over the years; Butler, who was at the Capitol protest in '71, has a picture in the film of Kerry getting ready to throw, but it does not show what is in his hand.

"If you looked at the film carefully, the damn vets threw every damn thing they could," Butler said. "I think we just have to take John's word for that. . . . I've never heard him tell a lie."

Butler said he cannot predict what impact, if any, the film will have on the race.

Butler recalled showing a three-minute clip of "Going Upriver" at a North Carolina film festival in April, when he was part of a panel of filmmakers that included the director Michael Moore.

"Michael was there talking about an upcoming film of his called 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' which I thought was about Osama bin Laden," Butler said, referring to Moore's harsh portrayal of Bush and the Iraq war that set box-office records this summer. "After I'd shown my clip, 15 minutes into the panel, Michael leans over and says to me, 'You know, George, if your film shows as much interesting stuff about John Kerry as your three-minute clip, you may have a good film."

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"I've Been in Worse Situations"

Time Magazine
Sunday, Sep. 12, 2004
"I've Been in Worse Situations"
TIME talks with John Kerry about the upcoming presidential election
By KAREN TUMULTY

In his first wide-ranging interview with a national news organization in more than a month, John Kerry sat down with TIME's national political correspondent Karen Tumulty last week as his campaign plane flew between a health-care forum in St. Louis, Mo., and a rally in Allentown, Pa. With a guitar case resting nearby and his daughter Alexandra, 31, popping in at one point, the challenger appeared very focused as he reflected on what lies ahead in the final seven weeks of the campaign—and, if he manages to pull off a come-from-behind victory, the four years after that.

TIME
This past month has been pretty brutal for you, between the Swift Boat ads, the Republican Convention and the Vice President saying if you get elected, it would invite another terrorist attack. Have you come to any new conclusions about whom you're running against and what you have to do to win?

KERRY
I think the President's unwillingness to walk away from those comments makes it clear that he and the Vice President will say anything and do anything to get elected and to hold on to power. It was a shameful and outrageous effort.

But you know, I've been in worse situations in my life. The attacks don't attack me as much as they attack Americans and America. They're trying to distract people from the real issues that matter.

America is not as safe as we ought to be after 9/11. We can do a better job at homeland security. I can fight a more effective war on terror. The standard of living for the average American has gone down. People's incomes have dropped. Five million Americans have lost their health insurance. The deficit is the largest it's been in the history of this country. They're taking money from Social Security and transferring it to the wealthiest people in America to drive us into debt. They're shredding alliances around the world with people we have traditionally been able to rely on. That's what bothers me.

TIME
What do you need to do to make this race about what you want it to be about?

KERRY
Draw the contrast; be crystal clear about it. That's what I've been doing every day. George Bush has made the wrong choices for America. He's leading the country in the wrong direction. John Edwards and I have better choices. We have a health-care plan for all Americans. We're going to stop subsidizing jobs that go overseas and create jobs here in America. We're going to fund education and not leave millions of children behind every day. The trail of broken promises and reversed decisions of this Administration is unlike any I have ever seen at any time that I have been in public life, and I'm going to draw that picture as clear as a bell.

TIME
Speaking of clarity, a number of your allies have said that you haven't drawn a clear contrast between yourself and President Bush on Iraq.

KERRY
The contrast could not be clearer. They spent a lot of money trying to confuse people, but I have been consistent. I would not have taken the country into war the way he did. I would not have put young Americans in harm's way without a plan to win the peace. I would not have interrupted as abruptly the effort to build alliances with other countries. I would not have turned my back on the international community. And Americans are paying a $200 billion cost today because this President rushed to war.

TIME
Is the President being as aggressive as he should be in dealing with insurgent strongholds in Iraq?

KERRY
At this moment in time, I'm not sitting with the generals in front of me for the full briefing. I'm not going to comment on that right now. That is up to the President. It's his decision to make. But I will tell you this, that we've gone backward in Iraq, and we've gone backward on the war on terror. I'm not President until Jan. 20, if America elects me. I don't know what I'll find in Iraq.

But I'll tell you this: I will pursue a far more aggressive, proactive statesmanship role to bring countries to our side in an effort in which they have an interest. Ninety percent of the casualties and costs are being borne by Americans. That's inexcusable.

I believe very deeply that it takes a new President, a new credibility, a fresh start, to change the whole equation in Iraq. I will get countries involved in ways that the President doesn't have them involved today, and I will get our troops home.

TIME
How? Diplomats say that it is not in our allies' political interest—

KERRY
George Bush has made it not in their interest today. There are all sorts of options with respect to Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds in the region that this Administration is not exploring. They have failed in their diplomacy utterly. In fact, they have made it easy for countries to say no, because of their arrogance, because of the way the President chose to go to war.

TIME
As President, who would be the first person you would phone?

KERRY
I'm not going to say one, two, three. I will tell you that I have 20 years of experience on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I have personal relationships with leaders around the world. I will not cede our security to any other country. I won't cede our security to any institution, but I know how to reach out to countries and leaders and build bipartisan-support structures necessary to strengthen the country.

TIME
You can't be more specific?

KERRY
I know exactly what I'm going to do, but I'm not the President today. I've already laid out the international conference, the shared responsibilities between European and Arab countries, the more rapid training of Iraqi police and military. I think it's almost pathetic the rate at which we have done that. They [the Bush Administration]are hardly behaving like we're truly a country at war. It's pathetic that they left ammunition dumps and nuclear facilities unprotected.

They disbanded the Iraqi military. They didn't protect the borders. It's one of the most catastrophic jobs of management that I've ever seen.

TIME
Will you be more specific about timetables for getting troops out?

KERRY
I have said that I have a goal to be able to bring our troops out of there within my first term, and I hope to be able to bring out some troops within the first year. But what's important here is that I can fight a more effective war on terror. George Bush diverted the focus from Afghanistan. The 9/11 commission makes it clear that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, nothing to do with al-Qaeda. The war was against al-Qaeda and for getting justice for 9/11. George Bush diverted attention from that. And we're spending $200 billion over there [in Iraq] now that could have gone to schools in America, could have gone to after-school programs, could have gone to health care, could have gone to infrastructure.

TIME
Do you think President Bush shirked his duties during the Vietnam era?

KERRY
I'm focused on the issues of now and today. The White House can answer questions they need to answer. I've answered all the questions I'll answer.

TIME
How would you go about winning the war of ideas in the Middle East?

KERRY
What I intend to do is to put in play the economic power, the values and principles, the public diplomacy, so we're isolating the radical Islamic extremists and not having the radical extremists isolate the United States. It means bringing religious leaders together, including moderate mullahs, clerics, imams—pulling the world together in a dialogue about who these extremists really are and how they are hijacking the legitimacy of Islam itself. That takes leadership, and that leadership has not been put on the table.

You have almost 60% of the populations of Egypt and Saudi Arabia under 30, and 50% under 18. We have to engage in a way that offers them some alternative to the radical madrasahs that are educating them to hate and to go out and strap explosives around themselves.

They [the Bush Administration] haven't even engaged in a legitimate effort to try to really transform the ability of Israel to find a legitimate entity to negotiate with. The only thing they do is rattle the saber.

TIME
If I could get back to politics—

KERRY
I don't talk politics.

TIME
People's views of the strength of your leadership have declined in the past few weeks. Is this in part because you were slow in responding to the Swift Boat ads? Do you wish you had been more aggressive?

KERRY
No, I think we did absolutely fine, and I think we are doing absolutely fine. I think this is a close race, and it's going to be a close race. I think we are doing extraordinarily well. If anybody had told me we'd be points apart from the sitting President of the United States, well, would you have believed them?

I feel very confident in where we are and confident about the direction of this race. And the American people are beginning to listen and listen carefully.

TIME
What did you think of the speech of your Democratic colleague Zell Miller at the Republican Convention?

KERRY
Everybody has the right to give a speech. I didn't see it, and I haven't read it. I didn't see one minute of the convention.

TIME
Our latest poll indicates that terrorism has become the No. 1 issue for voters.

KERRY
I will fight a more effective war on terror, and over the next weeks the American people will see the phoniness of the Bush efforts.

They haven't done port security; they're cutting cops; they haven't taken assault weapons off the streets. Firehouses are opened in Iraq; they're shut in the United States. Port security: 95% of our containers come in, and they are uninspected.

The fact is that these guys talk tough, but they haven't done what is necessary to make America as safe as it can be. There have been more terrorist incidents around the world in the last months than any time in recent history. Whole parts of Iraq are under the control of terrorists, and they never were. Afghanistan is exporting drugs like opium like never before, and whole parts of the country are under the control of the Taliban and terrorists again.

We're in a stronger place than I've been in any campaign I've ever run before. You looked at the polls; there wasn't one of you who said I'd be the nominee. Well, I'm going to win this race because Americans want better leadership.

As we get into those cold days of October and people's juices begin to flow and they measure us one to one, I'm confident that my record of fighting for this country since I was a young man is going to eclipse the disastrous choices that have been made by George Bush.

TIME
One question that has left the President at a loss for words is whether he has had regrets. Do you?

KERRY
I've made mistakes, and I've done things that I regret, sure. I regret voting for Justice Scalia. I regret that any of us put faith in what the President said about how he would take America to war.

TIME
Are you surprised at the bounce Bush got out of his convention?

KERRY
I don't know what you're talking about in terms of the Bush bounce. This is a very close race, and I'm not somebody that runs around worried about polls. If I did, I wouldn't have gotten up last December. Polls don't mean anything to me right now.

I feel really good. We're on an even playing field, and our folks are stoked. All over the country we've got an enormous amount of energy, people are organizing, and I just think the choice is very clear. The Supreme Court of the United States is at stake. After-school programs are at stake. Health care is at stake. Social Security is at stake.

Jobs are at stake. The character of our country is at stake—whether we're going to have people who traffic in fear instead of real solutions.

TIME
It sounds as if you think the Bush strategy is based on scaring the country.

KERRY
I think they are trying to do everything possible to divert attention from the real issues in front of the country, and their entire strategy for six months has been distorting my record and attacking me because they don't have a record to run on.

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Bringing On the Guns

washingtonpost.com

Bringing On the Guns

Sunday, September 12, 2004; Page B06

PRESIDENT BUSH doesn't care, and neither do the Republican House and Senate leaders. They're content to open up the streets to the pointless and exceptionally deadly gunfire of assault-style weapons. Their cold political calculation: Let the assault weapons ban expire Monday night, and let the police in particular and everybody in general fend for their lives. After all, that's the way people like it -- or so claims Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) who, unlike other doctors who have treated shooting victims, thinks this is what the people want. "I think the will of the American people is consistent with letting it expire, so it will expire," Mr. Frist told reporters last week.

That's dead wrong. As Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) responded, "The 'will of the American people' has been carefully evaluated by poll after poll that show two-thirds to three-fourths of the people support the ban." The most recent national poll, conducted by the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey, found that 68 percent of Americans wanted to extend the ban, including 57 percent of those with a gun in their household. A Frist aide said the majority leader was referring to a lack of pressure from within the Senate. Ms. Feinstein noted that she had written Mr. Frist asking him to schedule a vote on the issue.

In the House, Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) calls the assault weapon ban "a feel-good piece of legislation" that does nothing to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals. He's partly right; it's a feel-better ban for police on the front lines and citizens who would be far better protected if the ban were extended to cover the knockoff models that the gun industry has been peddling to circumvent the law.

What's the point of flooding the country with weapons that are modeled for killing people, not the hunters' prey? Why bring back bayonets, flash suppressors and multi-round magazines designed for quick and heavy gunfire that can help mow down a crowd in the streets or kids in a school? Why ignore the pleadings of D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, who stood together with more than 70 other police executives Wednesday in support of extending the ban? At least 2,000 sheriffs, police chiefs, law enforcement groups and prosecutors from around the country have asked Mr. Bush to help keep these weapons off the market. Joseph M. Polisar, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, noted that the White House ignored the chiefs' request for a meeting and said Republican leaders in Congress rejected their request for an immediate vote.

Whose "will" do these leaders respect? Most Americans have a will to live without these especially lethal and absolutely unnecessary weapons in their midst. Again, why won't the president act?

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What Women Voters Want

NY Times
September 12, 2004

What Women Voters Want
By LANCE TARRANCE and LESLIE SANCHEZ

resident Bush's post-convention "bounce" shows that he has managed to invigorate many of his supporters. According to Gallup surveys, among likely voters, Mr. Bush increased his slight lead over Mr. Kerry (50 percent to 47 percent) in the days following the Democratic convention to a more comfortable margin (52 percent to 45 percent) just after the Republican convention. Other surveys also show that Mr. Bush's lead has widened.

What accounts for this change in Mr. Bush's fortunes? According to our research, the answer is simple: women.

The same series of Gallup polls among likely voters showed women favoring Mr. Kerry by five points (51 percent to 46 percent) immediately following the Democratic convention. After the Republican convention, however, the Bush-Cheney ticket closed to a virtual tie among women (49 percent for Mr. Kerry to 48 percent for Mr. Bush). At the same time, according to the Gallup numbers, Mr. Bush's huge lead among men (57 percent to 42 percent) remained stable.

Mr. Bush's growing strength among women is the result not just of his emphasis on issues they care about. Instead, his boost stems from his skill at articulating the issues in a way that appeals to women - especially in his acceptance speech 10 days ago.

Some commentators criticized parts of Mr. Bush's speech for resembling a State of the Union address, complete with a laundry list of domestic agenda items. His references to schools, children's health care and mothers who work outside the home were seen as a transparent effort to win favor with women. Other critics portrayed the convention mostly as a testosterone-fueled rally at which Republicans stressed Mr. Bush's toughness and strength in the war on terrorism.

Our analysis of the speech differs. For the first time, the president was able to broaden his appeal to women not just by discussing social issues. He also found a way to talk about terrorism and the war in Iraq in a way that resonates with women.

The president's speech was interesting to us because it overlapped with some of the work we did this year analyzing the women's vote for a conservative women's group. Our work culminated last month with focus groups among undecided Republican and independent women voters. It soon became apparent that Mr. Bush's popularity among women would hinge on three critical elements: his building an emotional connection, humanizing himself and portraying himself as the candidate who can keep America safe.

Mr. Bush managed to hit all these points in his speech. He wasted no time building an emotional connection. "In the heart of this great city, we saw tragedy arrive on a quiet morning," he said in the first moments of his speech. "We saw the bravery of rescuers grow with danger. We learned of passengers on a doomed plane who died with a courage that frightened their killers."

Then, near the end of his speech, he humanized himself, telling his listeners that, in the presidency, "whatever shortcomings you have, people are going to notice them - and whatever strengths you have, you're going to need them." He told a story to give Americans - women in particular - a glimpse into his persona: "I've held the children of the fallen, who are told their dad or mom is a hero, but would rather just have their dad or mom."

Far from being a reckless, gun-toting cowboy, George W. Bush presented himself as a compassionate, thoughtful leader who made tough, lonely choices to keep Americans safe. The almost unspoken contrast was with Mr. Kerry - whose name Mr. Bush mentioned only once - as an indecisive, unknown commodity who could make us all vulnerable.

Doubtless many women - and men - would rather focus on "safer" domestic issues, like jobs or health care, that may be controversial but are rarely life-threatening. But events like 9/11 or the recent terrorist attack on a Russian elementary school have left many Americans wondering what could be next. Mr. Bush appealed not just to their fears but to their hopes as well.

To be sure, the president did not erase Mr. Kerry's lead among women with one speech. Yet Mr. Bush's speech was the culmination of a studied, nuanced effort to alter the Republican message to women, and - perhaps more significant - to overhaul the approach of the party in reaching out to the majority of voters.

It's a revision of strategy, and a reversal of fortune, that deserves greater attention. In this presidential election, it is becoming more and more clear that the female voter is the true swing voter.


Lance Tarrance is a Republican pollster and former executive with the Gallup Organization. Leslie Sanchez, a former official in the Bush administration, is president of a communications research firm.

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On the Voting Machine Makers' Tab

NY Times
September 12, 2004
On the Voting Machine Makers' Tab

As doubts have grown about the reliability of electronic voting, some of its loudest defenders have been state and local election officials. Many of those same officials have financial ties to voting machine companies. While they may sincerely think that electronic voting machines are so trustworthy that there is no need for a paper record of votes, their views have to be regarded with suspicion until their conflicts are addressed.

Computer scientists, who understand the technology better than anyone else, have been outspoken about the perils of electronic voting. Good government groups, like Common Cause, are increasingly mobilizing grass-roots opposition. And state governments in a growing number of states, including California and Ohio, have pushed through much-needed laws that require electronic voting machines to produce paper records.

But these groups have faced intense opposition from election officials. At a hearing this spring, officials from Georgia, California and Texas dismissed concerns about electronic voting, and argued that voter-verifiable paper trails, which voters can check to ensure their vote was correctly recorded, are impractical. The Election Center, which does election training and policy work, and whose board is dominated by state and local election officials, says the real problem is people who "scare voters and public officials with claims that the voting equipment and/or its software can be manipulated to change the outcome of elections."

What election officials do not mention, however, are the close ties they have to the voting machine industry. A disturbing number end up working for voting machine companies. When Bill Jones left office as California's secretary of state in 2003, he quickly became a consultant to Sequoia Voting Systems. His assistant secretary of state took a full-time job there. Former secretaries of state from Florida and Georgia have signed on as lobbyists for Election Systems and Software and Diebold Election Systems. The list goes on.

Even while in office, many election officials are happy to accept voting machine companies' largess. The Election Center takes money from Diebold and other machine companies, though it will not say how much. At the center's national conference last month, the companies underwrote meals and a dinner cruise.

Forty-three percent of the budget of the National Association of Secretaries of State comes from voting machine companies and other vendors, and at its conference this summer in New Orleans, Accenture, which compiles voter registration databases for states, sponsored a dinner at the Old State Capitol in Baton Rouge.

There are also reports of election officials being directly offered gifts. Last year, the Columbus Dispatch reported that a voting machine company was offering concert tickets and limousine rides while competing for a contract worth as much as $100 million, if not more.

When electronic voting was first rolled out, election officials and voting machine companies generally acted with little or no public participation. But now the public is quite rightly insisting on greater transparency and more say in the decisions. If election officials want credibility in this national discussion, they must do more to demonstrate that their only loyalty is to the voter.

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Preventive War: A Failed Doctrine

NY Times
September 12, 2004

Preventive War: A Failed Doctrine

If facts mattered in American politics, the Bush-Cheney ticket would not be basing its re-election campaign on the fear-mongering contention that the surest defense against future terrorist attacks lies in the badly discredited doctrine of preventive war. Vice President Dick Cheney took this argument to a disgraceful low last week when he implied that electing John Kerry and returning to traditional American foreign policy values would invite a devastating new strike.

So far, the preventive war doctrine has had one real test: the invasion of Iraq. Mr. Bush terrified millions of Americans into believing that forcibly changing the regime in Baghdad was the only way to keep Iraq's supposed stockpiles of unconventional weapons out of the hands of Al Qaeda. Then it turned out that there were no stockpiles and no operational links between Saddam Hussein's regime and Al Qaeda's anti-American terrorism. Meanwhile, America's longstanding defensive alliances were weakened and the bulk of America's ground combat troops tied down in Iraq for what now appears to be many years to come. If that is making this country safer, it is hard to see how. The real lesson is that America dangerously erodes its military and diplomatic defenses when it charges off unwisely after hypothetical enemies.

Before the Iraq fiasco, American leaders rightly viewed war as a last resort, appropriate only when the nation's vital interests were actively threatened and reasonable diplomatic efforts had been exhausted. That view always left room for pre-emptive attacks; America is under no obligation to sit and wait, if it is clear that some enemy is actually preparing to strike first. But it correctly drew the line at preventive wars against potential foes who might, or might not, be thinking about doing something dangerous. As the administration's disastrous experience in Iraq amply demonstrates, that is still the wisest course and the one that keeps America most secure in an increasingly dangerous era.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, plainly ushered in a new era of catastrophic threats to the American homeland. If these are to be met effectively, major changes in national security policy will be required. But a shift toward preventive wars is not one of them. As the 9/11 commission report clearly established, international terrorist groups like Al Qaeda are highly mobile, self-financing and largely independent of traditional states. Governments that grant them sanctuary and facilities, like Afghanistan under the Taliban or Sudan, must face strong international pressure, including American military attack. Any attempt by the president and his surrogates to lump the invasion of Afghanistan into the category of preventive wars is plain wrong. In fact, the war in Iraq has undermined the important work that American forces are doing in Afghanistan by diverting soldiers, supplies and money.

Al Qaeda has already declared war on the United States, and America needs to fight back relentlessly - in Afghanistan and through international efforts to capture terrorist leaders who function with forged passports and visas, safe houses and sleeper cells. That is why Mr. Cheney is also wrong to disparage law-enforcement cooperation with allies as an important weapon in this war.

Instead, he promises more preventive, offensive wars against hypothetical dangers like Iraq. Besides estranging America from its main European and Asian allies, and leaving Washington looking like an aggressor to much of the Arab and Muslim world, these policies kill American soldiers and civilians in the countries attacked, and they threaten to tie down the Army and Marine divisions America needs to have available for responding to real threats in the dangerous decades ahead.

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