|
 George
W. Bush
excerpts
from
the Iowa Daily Report
January 1-15,
2004
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"The economy has turned
around, we won the war and we've captured Saddam,"
said Michael
Barone of U.S. News and World Report.
(1/2/2004)
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"I think George Bush is
going to win in a walk,"
Pat Robertson
said on his "700 Club." "I really believe
I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be like a
blowout election in 2004. It's shaping up that
way." (1/2/2004)
Different foreign policy views
The NY Times offers a lengthy
article covering the differences between the
Democrats’ and Bush’s foreign policy views. The
Democrats are trying to retain some aspect of the
title of Defender of the Public during these times
of war on terrorism. Much of the debate centers
around America’s unilateral position of power in
the world:
The
consequences of unilateralism in Iraq dominate the
debate. Yet if you talk to Democratic policy
experts, Iraq rarely appears as the country's top
national security priority. In ''An American
Security Policy,'' a study ordered by Tom Daschle,
the Senate minority leader, and written by a group
that included top former Clinton aides like
William Perry, the former defense secretary;
Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state;
and Sandy Berger, the former national security
adviser, Iraq appears as only the fourth of six
major areas of concern. The first is ''The Loose
Nukes Crisis in North Korea,'' and the second is
the overall problem of weapons of mass destruction
in Russia, Pakistan, Iran and elsewhere.
A unifying aspect for the Bush
team is Condoleezza Rice during the 2000 campaign:
''The
belief that the support of many states -- or even
better, of institutions like the United Nations --
is essential to the legitimate exercise of power''
proceeds from a deep discomfort with the fact of
America's power. This discomfort is, in turn, the
residuum of Vietnam.
The article also points to the
arrogance and vulnerability of Wesley Clark’s
arguments with the Bush administration:
Clark
embodies what is most powerful, but perhaps also
what is most vulnerable, about the Democratic
critique of the Bush administration's national
security strategy. Clark's first book, ''Waging
Modern War,'' is a minutely detailed account of
the Kosovo air campaign, the first, and so far
only, war fought by the NATO alliance, which Clark
conducted as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander. You
could easily read the book as a primer on the
futility of multilateral warfare, for Clark
describes his endless battles with the Pentagon,
the White House and our 18 allies. On several
occasions, the war effort almost collapsed from
dissension. But it didn't: the Serbs ultimately
withdrew, the Kosovars returned home and for
several years now an uneasy peace has reigned in
Kosovo. ''The real lesson of Kosovo is this,''
Clark writes: ''To achieve strategic success at
minimal cost, a structured alliance whose actions
are guided by consensus and underwritten by
international law is likely to be far more
effective and efficient in the long term.''
Clark further argues:
''It's
not where you bomb and what building you blow up
that determines the outcome of the war.”… ''That's
what we teach majors in the Air Force to do --
make sure you hit the target. It's the overarching
diplomacy, the leverage you bring to bear, what
happens afterward on the ground, that gives you
your success. And for that you need nations
working together.'' That, in a nutshell, is the
Wesley Clark alternative paradigm of national
security.
The article points out the
debate is not about whether there is a war on
terrorism but rather how to conduct that war.
There are no McGovernite doves here save one:
…The foreign-policy debate is no
longer ideological, if ideology has to do with
differing conceptions of ends, rather than means.
The Democrats are not really a peace party.
Defense spending, once the great threshold issue
separating hawks from doves, has been laid to
rest. You have to go as far to the left as Dennis
Kucinich to find a candidate who wants to cut,
rather than increase, defense spending. (1/4/2004)
Preparing for Dean
The
Associated Press reports the Bush team is
preparing their campaign for Dean. The report
shows they are not over confident of beating Dean:
Bush's
chief political adviser, Karl Rove, reportedly at
one point had told Republican activists that Dean
was the dream candidate for the Bush campaign.
But
Rove and Bush re-election campaign manager Ken
Mehlman have been far more guarded in their recent
assessments of the Dean challenge, according to
those close to the campaign.
Republicans worry that in the face of continuing
job losses in industrial states, many of the
"Reagan Democrats" who supported Bush in 2000 may
return to the Democratic fold. Bush's constant
revisits to the Midwest and his fleeting support
of steel tariffs reflect this concern. (1/4/2004)
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"Dean has proven himself
to be a pretty darn effective campaigner, so I
don't want to take anything away from him,"
Republican
political strategist Charles Black said. "I
think Dean can consolidate the Democratic base,
and that gets him up to 46 percent. If we do a
good job, the president wins by a few points, but
it's not going to be huge." (1/4/2004)
MoveOn.org ad has Bush as Hitler
The liberal activist group
MoveOn.org came under fire Sunday from Republicans
over a television ad on its website that morphed
an image of President Bush into Adolf Hitler. The
30-second spot was one of more than 1,500 entries
for a contest MoveOn.org sponsored to find one
that "tells the truth about George Bush's
policies."
Eli Pariser, campaign director
for MoveOn.org, said the ad appeared on the
website with hundreds of others submitted by the
public and voted on during a two-week period. They
were removed Dec. 31, when the voting period had
ended. According to the organization the ad didn’t
make the cut
A panel of judges, including
such Democratic stalwarts as actor-director
Michael Moore, campaign strategists Donna Brazile
and James Carville and actor Jack Black will
select the winner, to be announced Jan. 12.
(1/4/2004)
Missouri visit
President Bush will travel to
St. Louis to promote his "No Child Left Behind"
education law in the face of Democratic attacks
that the two-year old act unfairly punishes weak
schools and is under-funded. Bush will also hold
his first campaign fundraiser of the year, adding
to a record total of more than $110 million in
contributions for a primary race in which he has
no Republican opponent.
Bush is expected in his fiscal
2005 budget request next month to seek increases
of $1 billion each for education of disabled
children and for schools in low-income areas, a
congressional source said. The National Education
Association, representing millions of U.S.
teachers, has proposed changes in the Bush
legislation that would reduce the importance of
test scores in judging school performance and give
more help to struggling schools. (1/5/2004)
Focused
A New York Times’ story covers
observations on the Bush campaign. One of the
reporters sited a Bush campaign worker having a
leisurely lunch. So, the reporter called to check
out if the campaign was feeling confident. The
basic real answer was yes, but the spin answer was
focused:
Will
Dr. Dean implode? "I don't have any idea about
that," Mr. Mehlman said briskly, then he promised
to call back with statistics showing how prepared
for the battle the Bush campaign was.
Faster
than you could say "Florida election recount," he
did. So far, Mr. Mehlman said, the campaign has
trained 5,500 county and precinct leaders in 52
regional training sessions around the country,
teaching them how to register voters, write
letters to the editor, be the hosts of Bush-Cheney
block parties and otherwise turn out the
Republican vote on Election Day. (1/5/2004)
Bush travels to land of hanging chads
The Palm Beach Post columnist
writes on Thursday’s visit by President Bush:
President George W. Bush and Palm Beach County are
inextricably linked in American history.
But
Bush has never visited the Home of the Butterfly
Ballot as president.
Bush
-- who has made 17 trips to other parts of
electorally crucial Florida since taking office --
is scheduled to make his first presidential
appearance in Palm Beach County on Thursday when
he attends a $2,000-a-head fund-raiser at the PGA
National Resort in Palm Beach Gardens.
Organizers hope to raise about $750,000 for Bush's
reelection campaign, says Elizabeth Fago, a
major GOP fund-raiser who is one of the co-chairs
of Thursday's event. Gov. Jeb Bush is also
expected, Fago said. (1/5/2004)
Democratic upstaging
The Democratic leadership in
Congress is working to upstage the President’s
State of the Union address. It is the time when
the President has center stage and Democrats are
trying to make that not true.
Senate Minority Leader Tom
Daschle of South Dakota and House Minority Leader
Nancy Pelosi of California are preparing a joint
speech that, it seems safe to say, will be
critical of Bush administration policies. The
speech will be given at the National Press Club in
Washington on Jan. 16, United Press International
reports.
The two Democratic leaders are
also expected to give the traditional
opposition-party rebuttal to Mr. Bush's Jan. 20
speech to Congress. (1/6/2004)
President fighting back
President Bush went to St. Louis
where he defended his program of “No Child Left
Behind.” Democrats and teachers unions have
opposed the program citing that it is not fully
funded and that testing is not the way to prove
children are learning. Bush countered in his visit
that it is the only way to make sure every child
is learning and no child is left behind:
"(The)
federal government's a source of money. It's now a
source of inspiration. It's a source of
measurement. But it's up to the local people to
really make it work," President Bush said.
A congressional source said that
President Bush is expected to seek an increase of
$1 billion each for education of disabled children
and for schools in low-income areas in his 2005
budget request next month. (1/6/2004)
In the money
The Bush-Cheney Campaign will be
releasing its fundraising results in the next few
days but a spokesman reports that it will be above
$120 million, according to the Associated Press:
The
Bush campaign this week is to release fund-raising
results for the three months ending Dec. 31. A
campaign official said the total since Bush began
fund-raising last June would be "well more" than
$120 million, which far outstrips any of Bush's
potential Democratic challengers. (1/6/2004)
Match maker immigration policy
President Bush is inviting
advocacy groups to the White House on Wednesday to
hear details of a proposal to match willing
foreign workers, mostly from Mexico, with
receptive U.S. employers.
"The president has long talked
about the importance of having an immigration
policy that matches willing workers with willing
employers," White House press secretary Scott
McClellan said Monday. "It's important for America
to be a welcoming society. We are a nation of
immigrants, and we're better for it."
The roll out of a new
immigration policy between America and Mexico
comes before next week’s visit by President Bush
when he meets up with Mexico's President Vicente
Fox at the Summit of the Americas in Monterey,
Mexico.
A White House spokesman has
stated that the policies to be revealed are a set
of principles and the White House would utilize
bills already in Congress as the vehicles to
implement the principles. Two guest-worker bills
have been proposed in Congress: one from Arizona
Republican Sen. John McCain and two of his
Republican House colleagues, Jim Kolbe and Jeff
Flake; and a second from Sen. John Cornyn,
R-Texas.
Meanwhile, the Latino
Immigration groups remain skeptical about the
White House motives and are taking a wait and see
attitude. (1/6/2004)
Poll Watching
In the national USA
Today/CNN/Gallup Poll Bush is viewed favorably by
nearly 2-to-1, 65% to 35%. Howard Dean has a net
negative rating, with 28% viewing him favorably,
39% unfavorably. Of the Democrats, only retired
Army general Wesley Clark has a net favorable
rating of more than one point. His rating was 37%
favorable, 26% unfavorable.
If the election were held today,
President Bush defeats Democratic front-runner
Howard Dean 59% to 37% among likely voters.
Against an unnamed Democrat, he wins 55% to 38%.
Bush’s support is fairly strong with 45% saying
they're sure to vote for him. Democratic support
is softer; 27% say they will support their party's
nominee.
Six in ten Americans say they
approve of the job Bush is doing. That's higher
than the approval ratings Clinton, Carter, Reagan
or the elder Bush had at this point. Bush's
approval rating on handling Iraq has risen 11
points in a month, to 61%.
Bush’s rating on the economy is
up 6 points. His 54% approval rating on the
economy contrasts with a 24% rating for his father
one year before the 1992 election.
(1/7/2004)
Overtime pay flap
Democratic presidential hopefuls
criticized the Bush administration Tuesday for
suggesting how employers could avoid paying
overtime to 1.3 million workers who would be newly
eligible in its proposal. White House spokesman
Scott McClellan said the options were part of "an
economic analysis that's required under the
rule-making process."
"Working men and women deserve a
president who will fight for them and their
hard-earned dollars, and not a president who helps
big corporations find loopholes to cheat their
employees out of decent pay for a hard day's
work," Sen. John Edwards said.
"Instead of doing whatever it
takes to create jobs, it seems like George W. Bush
is working overtime to make life harder for
working families. The Bush assault on working
people won't stop until we give the President a
pink slip. This Administration simply doesn't
share the values of the American people," Sen. Joe
Lieberman said.
"When will the Bush
administration devise a how-to plan to put people
back to work?" Sen. John Kerry asked.
Employers' options to reduce
costs, according to the department's report,
include cutting workers' hourly wages and adding
the overtime to equal the original salary, or
raising salaries to the new $22,100 annual
threshold so they would be ineligible.
(1/7/2004)
Immigration proposal
Here are some details of the
changes in immigration policy proposed by
President:
*The
new "temporary worker program" would allow either
one of the estimated 8 million illegal immigrants
already in the United States or someone abroad to
apply for the right to work legally in the country
for a three-year term that could be renewed. The
White House is not saying how long the term could
be extended or how many times it could be renewed.
*An
applicant for the program already in the United
States must pay an unspecified registration fee
and show they are currently employed. Applicants
still in their home countries won't have to pay a
fee, but must have a job lined up.
*The
employer must show no Americans wanted the job.
*Temporary workers would get all the same
protections afforded American workers.
*The
worker must return to his or her home country at
the end of the term.
*Dependents of the temporary workers would be
allowed in the United States if the worker can
prove they can support their family. The workers
would be allowed to move freely back and forth
between the United States and their home country.
*The
White House also is calling for an unspecified
increase in the number of green cards allowed to
be granted annually.
*The
plan also would provide incentives for the workers
to return to their home countries, including the
promise of access to retirement benefits and new
tax savings accounts.
*Congress would have to write legislation for the
changes to take effect (1/7/2004)
In the money
President Bush heads into his
re-election year with $99 million in the bank.
(1/7/2004)
Good times adjustments
Good times are becoming obvious
with the stock market surging and economic
indicators soaring, and that means bad news for
the Democratic presidential hopefuls. However,
they are shifting their economic messages from a
broad indictment of President Bush's economic
stewardship to more targeted appeals aimed at what
they call ‘stretched and struggling Americans.’
The Democrats still have hope that they can craft
a message of doom and gloom about the Bush
Presidency, according to a
Washington Post Article:
A
Clark campaign aide said of his candidate's
revised focus: "There's no question this is
something that can work for us regardless of what
might happen on the job front and economic growth.
We will still talk about jobs and the economy, but
we'll bring the other half in, too - middle-class
distress."
The selling of bad times will
continue to be difficult if the poll numbers
continue in their present direction. Last February
60 percent of Americans believed the economy was
bad or very bad. By last month, only 42 percent
believed that, while 55 percent said the economy
was good. It will grow more and more difficult to
sell the Democrats’notion that the Bush tax cuts
didn’t help the economy recover.
The
NY Times reports that the whole tax issue is
fraught with problems for the Democrats:
The
debate over taxes is painful terrain for the
Democratic Party, which is still haunted by the
memory of the 1980's, when Republicans ran
successfully against the Democrats as "taxers and
spenders." Bill Clinton built his primary campaign
in 1992 around the idea of the "forgotten middle
class," including a middle-class tax cut and a new
emphasis on fiscal responsibility. He argued that
Democrats would not be returned to power until
they regained the trust and loyalty of those
voters. (1/8/2004)
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“By any measure, the
charge that we are less safe under George W. Bush
than we were before is simply not true,”
said Bill
Bennett, “Because of President Bush and no
President before him, Osama bin Laden is dead, on
the run, or in a hole of his own.”
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“Instead of looking in
the mirror and trying to figure out what is wrong
with them, Democrats vent at Bush. It's a
disastrous strategy”
-- says Mort
Kondracke, Executive Editor of Roll Call.
(1/9/2004)
The Republicans are coming
After a year of Democrats
blasting away in Iowa and pounding the airwaves
with millions of dollars of propaganda, the
Republicans are dispatching troops to spin the
Iowa Caucus outcome on Jan. 19. Among the
Republicans who will be in Iowa that day: former
New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Marc Racicot,
the chairman of the president’s re-election
committee; Ken Mehlman, his campaign manager;
Republican National Committee Chairman Ed
Gillespie, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.;
U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.; House Majority
Leader Tom Delay, R-Texas; and Mary Matalin -- an
adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.
Sen. John McCain and the troops
will also be in New Hampshire on the run up to the
Jan. 27 primary vote as well. Beginning Saturday,
Jan. 24 through Tuesday, Jan. 27 -- the day of the
primary -- Bush-Cheney Campaign Chairman Marc
Racicot and Ken Mehlman, Bush campaign manager,
said they plan to attend varying Republican
get-out-the-vote events around Manchester. Also
scheduled to campaign in New Hampshire are Bush’s
sister, Doro Bush Koch, New York Gov. George
Pataki, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Republican
National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, Mary
Matalin and Bush-Cheney New England Regional
Chairman Jim Tobin. (1/9/2004)
There is trouble
Former Treasury Secretary Paul
O'Neill proved on CBS’s show Sixty Minutes
why he should no longer be Treasury Secretary. He
responded in what can only be characterized as
incredulity and surprise that his comments about
President Bush where unflattering. Anyone that
naive should not be in high office.
O’Neill’s accounts of Bush have
conflicting aspects but the criticism is familiar
to the criticism leveled at President Ronald
Reagan, who everyone said was not engaged. A
belief that was later found to be untrue. What the
facts are here will take some time to find out.
However, O’Neill’s response to questions for the
authoring of a book, "The Price of Loyalty," will
add new fodder for the Democrats who have found no
lack of subjects to attack Bush on before now.
The firing of O’Neill some 13
months ago came when he would not support the
second round of tax cuts. O’Neill was reportedly
concerned about deficits taking funds away from
fixing the Social Security problems. It was Vice
President Dick Cheney who delivered the message to
O’Neill that he was fired. According to O’Neil,
during that meeting Cheney also chastised him:
"You
know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter,"
he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued:
"We won the midterms (congressional elections).
This is our due."
O’Neill states that the Bush
Administration was working from ‘day one’ to oust
Saddam Hussein:
"From
the very beginning, there was a conviction that
Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed
to go," Mr. O'Neill said in an interview with the
CBS program "60 Minutes."
The White House had Commerce
Secretary Don Evans out countering O’Neill on the
talk shows this weekend. Evans said,
"I know how he leads, I
know how he manages.... He drives the
meetings, tough questions, he likes dissent, he
likes to see debate."
Wesley Clark jumped on O’Neill’s
statements saying they prove what he has been
saying all along:
"When
he writes that the Bush administration is planning
and exchanging documents on how to go to war with
Iraq as soon as they took office, that just
confirms my worst suspicions about this
administration," Clark said.
There have been some fringe
Democrats calling for impeachment of the President
because we have not found WMD. With O’Neill, it is
likely there will be a great deal more of that.
Wesley Clark is calling on Congress to investigate
Bush, according to the Associated Press. This
could offer Democrats a much needed vehicle to get
their revenge for Bill Clinton’s impeachment.
"We
went to a war in Iraq - we didn't have to go to,"
Clark told a group of supporters. "I'm calling on
the Congress of the United States to fully
investigate exactly why this country went to a war
it didn't have to fight."
When Chief of Staff Donald Regan
wrote his book about President Reagan it was
devastating to the administration. It was only
after the fact that Reagan was vindicated from his
former employee’s charges that he wasn’t capable
of handling the complex issues facing the country.
The Democrats have a new friend
in Paul O’Neill. (1/12/2004)
Soros: gunning for Bush
Billionaire George Soros called
on Americans to reject President Bush in the polls
next election and he is putting his money where
his mouth is. Soros made the comments during the
launch of his new book, "The Bubble of American
Supremacy," much of which is devoted to lambasting
U.S. foreign policy under Mr. Bush.
Reuters reports that the Democrats are likely
to outspend Bush despite his war chest:
Bush
has raised more than $130 million in campaign
funds toward a goal of at least $170 million. But
even with the large war chest and a big advantage
in fund-raising over Democratic candidates, the
Bush campaign says it could be outspent because
Soros and others will spend up to $400 million on
issue advertisements.
Soros
said the invasion of Iraq was an example of the
"Bush doctrine" which he charges entails
pre-emptive military action and lack of tolerance
for military rivals, suggesting two levels of
national sovereignty in which the U.S. is "exempt"
from constraints of international law.
"This
is reminiscent of George Orwell's famous book
Animal Farm in which all animals are equal but
some animals are more equal than others," said
Soros, a Hungarian-born American.
"If we
re-elect Bush in 2004 we endorse the Bush doctrine
and we will have to live with the consequences,"
he added. (1/13/2004)
Take backs
Former Treasury Secretary Paul
O’Neill said that he regretted some of what he
said about President Bush in his recently aired
interview with Diane Sawyer, according to Reuters:
Asked
about his comment that during Cabinet meetings
Bush was like "a blind man in a room full of deaf
people," O'Neill said he regretted some of the
language he used to describe his former boss.
"If I
could take it back, I would take it back. It has
become the controversial centerpiece."
Pressed whether he would vote for Bush in the
November presidential election, O'Neill said he
probably would, but he said the American people
needed to demand more of their leaders.
O’Neill on NBC’s Today Show said
that the documents he shared were provided to him
by the Treasury general counsel. (1/13/2004)
Going to the Moon
President Bush will ask for
international participation in his plan to resume
missions to the moon and to send human crews to
Mars within the next 20 years, a senior
administration source said. The decision means
foreign launch vehicles or spacecraft components
likely would play an important role in the space
effort. For more on the story go to The
Washington Times. (1/13/2004)
Canada can bid
President Bush informed Canada
that they can bid on American contracts to rebuild
Iraq according to the Associated Press:
In a
breakfast meeting with new Canadian Prime Minister
Paul Martin, Bush said he had told Martin of the
shift in policy. Martin "understands the stakes"
in rebuilding a free and peaceful Iraq, Bush said.
It was
Bush's second fence-mending session in two days.
On Monday, Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox
put aside two years of differences and said they
see eye-to-eye about a new U.S. proposal to grant
legal status to millions of undocumented workers
in the United States, many of them Mexicans.
(1/13/2004)
-
"We will build new ships
to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a
new foothold on the moon and to prepare for new
journeys to the worlds beyond our own,"
said President
Bush.
-
Georgia Democratic
Senator Zell Miller said yesterday that he would
campaign for President Bush's re-election
campaign, beginning this Thursday at a fundraiser
in Atlanta.
(1/14/2004)
Supporting marriage
The
NY Times reports on the administration’s
debate to include a provision that would spend
$1.5 billion on preserving and promoting marriage:
For
months, administration officials have worked with
conservative groups on the proposal, which would
provide at least $1.5 billion for training to help
couples develop interpersonal skills that sustain
"healthy marriages."
The
officials said they believed that the measure was
especially timely because they were facing
pressure from conservatives eager to see the
federal government defend traditional marriage,
after a decision by the highest court in
Massachusetts. The court ruled in November that
gay couples had a right to marry under the state's
Constitution. (1/14/2004)
Bush Bashing Super Bowl bound
MoveOn.org is raising money to
place the winner of their Bush Bashing ad contest
on the Super Bowl.
The organization originally
planned to play the winning ad nationally on CNN
during the week of Bush's State of the Union
address, but the response to the ads has been way
beyond their expectations. Now, they are working
to put the ad on the Super Bowl. They call on
their supporters to help place the first political
ad, "Child's Pay," on the prized Super Bowl
advertising slot. They urge their supporters to
send Washington a clear message: no more politics
as usual.
The Super Bowl ad will cost
$1.6 million to place nationally. The organization
needs to complete their $10 million dollar
grassroots campaign, which now stands at $7.5
million. (1/14/2004)
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“We can go forward with
confidence and resolve, or we can turn back to the
dangerous illusion that terrorists are not
plotting and outlaw regimes are no threat to us.
We can press on with economic growth, and reforms
in education and Medicare -- or we can turn back
to the old policies and old divisions,"
President Bush
said.
-
"Had we failed to act,
the dictator's weapons of mass destruction
programs would continue to this day,"
President Bush
said. (1/21/2004)
Bush center stage
For months $10 million were
poured into Iowa TV media as Democrat candidates
honed their attacks on President Bush. Last night
President Bush took center stage and declared that
the opponents to the war on terrorism are foolish
and wrong headed. For full text of the speech, use
this
link.
The appeasers, deflectors and
detractors were quick to counter that we are not
safer and that Bush’s proposals are not the right
ones to make us safe.
Bush was backed up from an
unusual source. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Barak said the president's leadership was helping
to bring about a safer world. The former Prime
Minister has frequently been critical of Bush. He
cited the televised image of a docile Saddam
Hussein submitting to medical checks after his
capture, sent a powerful message to the leaders of
Libya, Iran, Syria and North Korea.
“The real achievement of Osama
bin Laden...is that he ignited the imagination of
hundreds of millions in the Arab world. That's his
ultimate weapon. That's what gives him hope and
patience and a kind of evil optimism," Barak said.
Reuters reports that the World Economic Forum
entertained lecturers in Switzerland who said that
far from making the country safer, the war on
terror and the invasion of Iraq had made us
unsafe:
"Going
into Iraq in the way we did, without broad
international support, really increased the
ability of al Qaeda and its sympathizers to
'prove' that the objective of the United States is
to humiliate the Islamic world, more than it was
to liberate the Iraqi people." Gareth Evans,
former Australian foreign minister and head of the
International Crisis Group think-tank, said al
Qaeda and its sympathizers had expanded their
theater of operations since the September 11
attacks to countries including Morocco, Turkey,
Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.
The Al Qaeda already had
organizations in those countries before the
invasion of Iraq. (1/21/2004)
Liberal ads rejected
Last week, CBS officially turned
down ads by both MoveOn.org and People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) because of
their controversial nature and content. CBS
executives believed the ads were not appropriate
for the festive professional football game that
will take place on February 1.
The ad pushed by MoveOn.org was
the winning entry in the infamous "Bush in 30
Seconds" contest that recently concluded. The
proposed Super Bowl ad uses children working in a
factory to criticize President George W. Bush's
handling of the deficit.
PETA's proposed ad has two
attractive women barely wearing any clothing
endearing themselves to a pizza delivery man
eating meat.
When the man fails to be aroused
by the women, the screen shows the words, "Meat
can cause impotence." (1/21/2004)
Continuing the attack
MoveOn.org has another ad that
they say focuses on the State of the Union in 30
seconds. The ad actually focuses on prescription
drug coverage for seniors:
As the
ad opens, we see a series of photos from previous
State of the Union addresses, cut quickly together
to resemble a movie. We hear the voice of someone
who sounds like George Bush. "My fellow
Americans," he says, "My Medicare bill has real
drug benefits…but not for you. For my contributors
at the big drug companies. My bill actually
forbids Medicare from negotiating lower drug
prices...so you'll probably have to pay more for
your prescriptions than you do now; and you won't
be able to get cheaper prescriptions from Canada."
(1/21/2004)
Bush
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