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WE ARE FINISHING THE
WAR
Anatomy of our struggle against the Islamicists.
by Victor Davis Hanson
NRO
March 26, 2004
Across the globe we watch the terrible drama play out. Car and
suicide bombings in Baghdad are aimed at American aid givers, U.S.
peacekeepers, Iraqi civilians, and provisional government workers.
Spanish civilians are indiscriminately murdered — as are Turks,
Moroccans, Saudis, and Afghans.
President Musharraf is targeted by assassins. Synagogues are blown
apart. Suicide murderers try to reach a chemical dump in Ashdod in
hopes of gassing Jews to the pleasure of much of the Arab world and
the indifference of Europe. Indeed, Palestinian murderers apologize
for gunning down an Arab jogger in Jerusalem — for the colossal
mistake of thinking that he was Jewish. The world yawns, but is then
outraged because Israelis take out a mass-murderer during a time of
war. We are witnessing a grand struggle between those who create
things and those who can only destroy them, between those who are
confident and build civilizations and those who have failed and turned
vicious.
Daniel Pearl is executed on television. The U.N. is singled out as
a target for mass murder in Iraq, as are synagogues in Istanbul.
Again, we in the West are supposed to tremble at the devilishness of
the jihadists or turn on each other in fear. 'We worship death, you
cling to life,' they warn us. Al Qaeda's message to Europe — which
they hate even more than the United States, because it is not only
wealthy but soft and weak as well — is that of every mythical
monster who promises his trembling prey that with proper flattery he
can be gobbled down last.
We should remember that this war of barbarism against civilization
is global and connected. Poor Mr. Villepin may ignore that his
country's appeasement and profit-making in Iraq were helpful to Saddam
Hussein's state-sponsored terrorism and he may believe that things are
worse in Baghdad now. But he will learn that past French
double-dealing, flamboyant anti-Americanism, and obsequiousness to
Iranian theocrats will win him no reprieve from these purveyors of a
new Dark Age. The extremists will be just as likely to murder French
children over banning headscarves as they would have had three Gallic
divisions fought in Iraq.
The Spanish may think that bin Laden's past fury over the
Reconquista and the Crusades was silly while the present anger over
Spaniards in Iraq is logical. But they too will soon learn that
appeasement wins them temporary quiet from enemies and general
disappointment from friends — not a permanent pardon from terrorist
attacks. If they believe al Qaeda is a rational interlocutor, they
should assume that the U.S. withdrawal from Saudi Arabia and cessation
of the embargo of Iraq — replaced by massive American aid — have
met bin Laden's original 1998 demands and that peace is at hand.
What is our enemies' ultimate agenda? Judge them by what they say
and then do: Any who champion women are targeted. Those who are Jews
should die. Expressing tolerance for other religions is a capital
crime. Secular law and government are a betrayal. Apostasy from Islam
justifies murder. Hypocrisy does not matter — whether that means
using a hated Western computer or flocking to a despised Western
capital. This craziness is actually an agenda of sorts, proclaiming to
the wretched, "Purge yourself of the modern West (sort of) and
fool yourself into thinking that you will have power, honor, and
wealth as never before."
We laugh about such a formerly pampered playboy lunatic and his
puerile calls for a return of an 11th-century caliphate, replete with
a paradise of 72 virgins and hack medieval poeticisms like "O
this, O that," "God willing," and "infidel"
in all his court communiqués. But such fantasies out of the Arabian
Nights are perhaps not so fantastic. In al Qaeda's utopia a loose
confederation of Islamic theocracies — on the model of the Taliban
or Iran's mullocracy — will sweep the Middle East, liquidating
Westerners and those Muslims tainted by Westernization. Oil will not
only enrich a theocratic elite — note the pampered privileges of
Taliban insiders and the spoiled progeny of Iranian clerics — but
can be manipulated to gouge a petroleum-hungry West while paying for
plentiful weaponry from cynical Western arms dealers.
When terrorists are rounded up now in Spain or the United States or
deported to Britain, they deny rather than brag of their erstwhile
Afghan training, and plead that they are either innocent or were
misled. None throw down the gauntlet and bore us with the old long
harangues — a la Richard Reed — about the imminent death of the
West.
While Ted Kennedy and John Kerry pontificate about losing the war
on terror, al Qaeda is nearly finished. What we have been seeing
lately are its tentacles flapping about in search of prey, after the
head has been smashed — still for a time lethal, but without lasting
strength. We should remember that perhaps the bloodiest month for
Americans in the European theater of World War II was not during 1943
and 1944 amid the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, Italy, or
Normandy, but rather in January 1945, a mere five months before the
close of the war, when GIs fought back the last bitter German
offensive.
Likewise a mere four months before the surrender of Japan the
United States began the most bloody campaign of the entire war at
Okinawa, where almost 50,000 Americans were killed, wounded, or
missing. The fighting, which killed the commanding generals of both
sides, did not end until a mere two months before the surrender. What
later is seen rightly to be last gasps at the time often appear as
irrefutable proof of inexhaustible strength and endless war to come.
Instead, a much better measure than the week's explosions is a
systematic examination of al Qaeda's position, then and now.
The terrorists have been routed from their sanctuary of Afghanistan
and cannot come back as long as the United States and its allies are
determined to stay the course. They are being slowly drawn and
quartered inside Pakistan, where the Musharraf government has finally
agreed to begin to close down its frontier border sanctuary.
Terrorists' ties with rogue regimes like Saddam Hussein's and
Khaddafi's Libya are now cut. Saudi, Syrian, and Iranian subsidies and
sanctuaries of old are now under scrutiny. Reformists in all of those
countries are organizing.
The United States has imposed a global crackdown on terrorist
funding, and muscled suspect regimes like Yemen and Jordan into
deporting or jailing jihadists and their sympathizers. Pakistan and
India are talking, which is bad news for the fundamentalists in
Kashmir and the badlands along the Afghan border. The Palestinian
killers have brought only misery to their people and now a wall —
ensuring that their constituents will soon have a chance to enjoy from
Mr. Arafat the same good government that the Taliban, Saddam Hussein,
and the Iranian clerics extended to their similarly isolated people.
But perhaps the worst development for the fundamentalists has been
a radical change of attitude in the United States. No longer do we say
to autocrats "pump oil, and keep out communists — and do what
you want with your own people."
Yet we can do far more in this time of war that is also a military,
political, ideological, and economic struggle. We must explain to the
world that no nation has done more to save Muslims — whether in
Afghanistan, Kuwait, Somalia, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Iraq. In the last
quarter-century we have given billions in aid to Egypt, Jordan, and
the Palestinians. We are the most tolerant of Western countries to
Muslim and Arab immigrants. In Iraq now, we — not Arab
intellectuals, not "moderate" Arab governments, and not the
Europeans — are bringing consensual government and billions more in
aid to the Arab Middle East.
The problem is not "getting the message out," but having
the intellectual courage to tell the truth and not to be browbeaten by
faux intellectuals who talk monotonously of mythical pipelines and
Zionist aggression. The fact is, beneath the hype, Iraqis will soon
appreciate American help and idealism far more than French perfidy. It
is never wrong to be on the side of freedom — never.
Nor do we have anything to apologize about to the Europeans. We
liberated the continent, sent it billions in aid, protected it from
Soviet Communism, supported the EU and German reunification, created
NATO in part to keep internal peace, intervened in Kosovo to stop more
European genocide, and have well over 100,000 troops there still to
protect it sixty years after it nearly destroyed itself. We no longer
expect gratitude or even memory of the past, but we do expect maturity
and not the patronizing lectures from a Spanish or French foreign
minister who should know better — given the respective histories of
their countries and our own during the last century.
So, yes, they are our allies. And yes, we must be polite and
considerate as we all work together to hunt down terrorists. And yes,
we are often undiplomatic when there is no need to be given our
stature. But there is a reason for Europeans' anger and it transcends
George Bush — having everything to do with the fear that America is
a stubborn, powerful, moral antithesis to their own global socialist
utopia. What the Spanish did recently was only an affirmation of what
France has done with Saddam for twenty years.
Finally, for the duration, to sustain both our military power and
foreign largess, we also must look to ourselves inasmuch as we are
running vast trade deficits, along with unsustainable budget
shortfalls, and are stuck in an entitlement craze where government
payouts bring not gratitude but shrill demands for even more
subsidies. Our borders are porous and yet we are paralyzed and afraid
to enforce our own laws — even as 12 million illegal aliens inside
the United States cannot be identified or even be referred to as
illegal.
Our educational system is increasingly therapeutic and turning out
too many poorly educated youth who have not inherited the tradition of
American expertise and competence and cannot in the immediate future
ensure our privileged position as the world's most affluent consumer
society. The Chinese, Europeans, South Koreans, and Japanese are all
lending us money for consumption. But they do so only in the trust
that our legal system, stability, and competence will continue to
justify such debts, which can only be paid back on the expectation
that America can sustain its global civilizing role and lead the world
in technological innovation and capital formation.
So to press on, we must begin to look at the struggle across the
spectrum in this new multifaceted war: bring consensual government to
the Middle East; destroy the last al Qaeda holdouts; put Syria and
Iran on notice to cease their support for terrorists; reexamine the
location and purpose of all our bases; encourage candor and a new
honesty with our allies; and seek to bring a new discipline to our own
government and citizenry.
We have the chance not merely to win this war and do the world a
great deal of good, but also to aspire ourselves to be a stronger and
better people after it. We at least owe the dead of September 11 that
much. source...
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| Name: | compute
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In response to:
We have the chance not merely to win this war and do the world a great deal of good, but also to aspire ourselves to be a stronger and better people after it. We at least owe the dead of September 11 that much.
Message:
Thank you, President Bush, for your courageous leadership and moral clarity in the fight against global terrorism and against the enemies of this country (both domestic and abroad). All citizens of this nation owe you a debt of gratitude for your stand against evil.
We look forward to your 2nd term with great anticipation.
In response to:
John Kerry Outlines Plan to Require Service for High School Students
Part of 100 days Plan to Enlist One Million Americans in National Service A Year
On September 11th, 2001, America experienced the most terrible and deadly attack in its history. John Kerry believes we need to think big and do better and get more young Americans serving the nation.
As part of his 100 day plan to change America, John Kerry will propose a comprehensive service plan that includes requiring mandatory service for high school students and four years of college tuition in exchange for two years of nationa ...
| Name: | Brave people everywhere
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| To: | the world at large
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| Re: | The War on terrorism
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Message:
We will win this war and free the world of these terrorists who do not hold life as precious.* We at least owe the dead of September 11 that much.
In response to:
Communisism only works with the barrel of a rifle Lenin once remarked. Only Cuba and China practice communism today. However, the Berlin fell in 1989 and and the USSR no longer exists thanks to Harry S. Truman a democrat and his Truman Doctrine.
Message:
Wrongamundo on all counts. Lenin was a ntorious liar and doublecrosser, Vietnam and North Korea aree still Red slave staes, Chavez the bloody thug is trying to make Venezuela Red.....and Truman let so much of the misery get worse fast.
Nixon and Reagan are the ones who maneouvered the CCCP into downfall and they had a hell of a time doing it. none of the demmies, Harry included, were worth a wad of old wrigley's!!
| Name: | Woodrow Wilson Pickett
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In response to:
Maybe we should intern living in America.
Message:
Haa, you couldn't do it if you tried. They'd scoop your ass up out of the 'pizzeria' and bury you up to the ears at the Iran/Afghani border and let the Muslim kids play foosball with your silly head.
| Name: | 765
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| To: | c
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| Re: | close enough for govt. work
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In response to:
Thank you, President Bush, for your courageous leadership and moral clarity in the fight against global terrorism and against the enemies of this country (both domestic and abroad). All citizens of this nation owe you a debt of gratitude for your stand against evil.
We look forward to your 2nd term with great anticipation
Message:
Yes. That's right.
| Name: | Irgun apologist
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| Re: | Hanson the hatemonger
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In response to:
Indeed, Palestinian murderers apologize for gunning down an Arab jogger in Jerusalem — for the colossal mistake of thinking that he was Jewish.
Message:
Hey, they apologized, it was an understandable mistake butvthey did express their regrets
| Name: | Chopsley
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| Re: | Gotta love 'em!
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Message:
U.S. takes step to 'weaponize' space
WASHINGTON, March 30 (UPI) -- Washington's Missile Defense Agency has earmarked $68 million for what some believe is the first step for putting weapons in space, ABC News reported Tuesday.
Known as the Near Field Infrared Experiment or NFIRE satellite, it is primarily designed to gather data on exhaust plumes from rockets launched from earth.
As a result, military officials say the $68 million item in the 2005 budget is a defensive, rather than offensive project.
But, critics point out, the satellite will also contain a smaller "kill vehicle," a projectile that takes advantage of the kinetic energy of objects traveling through low-Earth orbit (which move at several times the speed of a bullet) to disable or destroy an oncoming missile or another orbiting satellite.
As one senior government official and defense expert, who requested anonymity, said, "We're crossing the Rubicon into space weaponization."
Copyright 2004 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
Message:
Harry S. Truman was a great president regardless what you say you twerp. He defendend South Korea against the Russian puppets Norh Korea. He together with our Allies never let the Russians take over the world with their crazy communism. With his Truman Doctrine the world was safe and now we have the Arab extremists. In the end we will prevail. We are not a weak people and when challenged we become the tiger.
| Name: | The Cold Hard Facts
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| To: | SUV
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In response to:
Only Cuba and China practice communism today.
Message:
You can't get anything right.
Current Communist Countries:
China
Cuba
Laos
North Korea
Vietnam
| Name: | Clan MacLaren
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| To: | Merci MOOveon.org
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| Re: | Truman was very warty. Quite the toad, he was!
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In response to:
Truman let so much of the misery get worse fast.
Message:
Truman's State Dept. midwifed the birth of Communist China, thereby sealing the doom of millions.
| Name: | Tess Tashkent
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| To: | Herky MOOveon.oink
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| Re: | The Cud
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In response to:
With his Truman Doctrine
Message:
He kept it in his shoe... the Left one, I think!
| Name: | student
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| To: | Clan MacLaren
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In response to:
Truman's State Dept. midwifed the birth of Communist China, thereby sealing the doom of millions.
Message:
How did they do that?
| Name: | Boxed Beef Blowout
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| To: | Gumma
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| Re: | Get even with yourself, poopsie, U R ur own worst enemy!
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In response to:
Maybe we should intern Thracian mummers living in America... that would be COOL!
Message:
How like Roosevelt, a Leftist, to go after the innocent!
| Name: | Alvin Zkorzeny
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| To: | questioningly
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In response to:
Truman's State Dept. midwifed the birth of Communist China, thereby sealing the doom of millions.
Message:
with airplanes and diplomats, guns and butter, fancy waiters and publicity hacks, international students and gangsters, and very little soul!
| Name: | Edgar
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| Re: | you are all kuomintng......... ohhhhhhhh..........aaaaiiiiiieeeeeeee!
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In response to:
Harry S. Truman was a great president regardless what you say you twerp. He defendend South Korea against the Russian puppets Norh Korea. He together with our Allies never let the Russians take over the world with their crazy communism. With his Truman Doctrine the world was safe and now we have the Arab extremists. In the end we will prevail. We are not a weak people and when challenged we become the tiger.
Message:
Sigh...soundslike another Red Chinese gangster-puppet.
In response to:
Harry S. Truman was a great president regardless what you say you twerp.
Message:
A lightwieght one termer who the people ran back to independence.
| Name: | student
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| To: | Alvin Zkorzeny
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In response to:
with airplanes and diplomats, guns and butter, fancy waiters and publicity hacks, international students and gangsters, and very little soul!
Message:
not the weapons, hacks, etc., that i was questioning. it was the rationale. why?
| Name: | WE Nuked Kansas City HeyHeyHey
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| Re: | one more opinionated version
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In response to:
A lightwieght one termer who the people ran back to independence
Message:
one-termer, yeahh mebbe, he di get nearly two full terms since old frankie had only served about 90days of term 4...............harry, one tgiempendergrass machine apparatchik, did not suffer any natinal ection defeats tho and in factv won a race he was expected to lose in 48. i thi k it was good he dropped the hiroshima bomb, and he handled the reconstructions in jpana & europe ok, he wasn't any worse than ike all things considered but definitely not atop rank president,, good or bad.
In response to:
not the weapons, hacks, etc., that i was questioning. it was the rationale. why?
Message:
because Chaing the K...wasn't so hot, because bad pinko 'journalist'/pawns like edgar snow and harrison salisbury too, no?, promoed mao as a swell cookie, because we wanted to make sure our friends the brist who kne chinnnnna well did not regain their footing there, because movers and quakers like alger' treason face' hiss and ellie the prune roosevelt-wife were rimming the top brass for the Red cause....factors like that! seriously,it is still an issue in dispute
| Name: | SonofPurpleHeart
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| Re: | FORMER GREEN BERET TACKLES KERRY AGAIN!
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Message:
Thank you, John Kerry, for helping make us Vietnam veterans war heroes now, but you also were the primary reason that the American public grabbed sturdy unbending brooms of judgment and swept us into the closet of silence and shame for so many years. Now, with your latest unreported insanity, you are getting ready for our society to grab those same stiff brooms and sweep our brave, noble young men and women fighting against the War on Terror in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, into that cold, dark cell of heartbreak and betrayal, like we Vietnam veterans had to endure in silent dignity. I cannot and will not watch this country go through that again.
The hardcore America-hating, Israel-hating, jihad-spouting Muslim clerics in the mideast are very excited and passing around a front page newspaper story from the very anti-American TEHRAN TIMES in Iran. In the country that is home of the world’s toughest theocratic dictatorship, an e-mail from Democratic Presidential nominee, you, John Forbes Kerry, sent to the paper by your campaign committee, although they deny sending it, was printed word-for-word on the front page of Iran’s main newspaper. Your message states emphatically that, if elected President, you, John Kerry plan to travel to the mideast and elsewhere and apologize for our actions and the actions of President Bush in the War on Terror. You are already apologizing. It says that you plan to apologize to friends and foes alike. That is right, folks. John Kerry will say he is “sorry,” and in his mind, all those jihad extremists, who have vowed to kill all Americans wherever we are, will simply forgive us, hold hands with Kerry, start singing “Kumbaya,” and all will be right in the world. This is insane! You have also made statements you will do these actions within 100 days of becoming President.
Senior writer Kenneth R. Timmerman in the March 1st edition of INSIGHT, tells about the massive campaign contributions to the Kerry-for-President campaign by three Iranian businessmen living in the US, who are lobbying for the US lifting of sanctions on Iran and accepting the anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-American Tehran regime and the close ties of one to the chairman of Mobil Oil.
“Pro-democracy dissidents” in Iran are shocked and appalled at your remarks, and have reported that in Iran and other Mideastern countries, that all the extremists and anti-west mullahs who strongly supported the attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, USS Cole, Marine Barracks, and anyplace Americans congregate, want you to become our President, but they are scared to death of George W. Bush. Just think, The Democratic candidate for President, you, John Forbes Kerry, is endorsed by the Al Q’Aida, Hezbollah, PLF, and Hamas.
But on February 27, 2004, in a speech at UCLA , you, while trying to talk tough, despite voting against all major weapons systems for the past 18 years, stated that you will continue the War on Terror, but would use our police forces, and especially those in foreign countries, and you would also put our troops back under the powder blue flag of the United Nations. You recently made comments about Bush making troops fight without Kevlar vests, but you, Senator Kerry, voted against buying them while you were in the Senate. Senate Bill 1689. Passed 87-12. You were one of the 12. Remember?
Like the Kama Sutra, Senator, you change positions constantly. You’re not going to end the War on Terror, but instead use police to handcuff terrorists and read them their rights; then a week later, you are going to end the War on Terrorism and apologize to everyone we have offended, such as Iran. What is it going be next week, John Kerry? You flip-flop more than a beached tuna on steroids.
You convinced TV reporters Chris Wallace on Fox and NBC’s Tim Russert that a photograph circulating the web and news showing you a few rows away from Jane Fonda at a September, 1970 Anti-War Rally at Valley Forge, was simply a coincidence and that you and Hanoi Jane barely knew each other. But, in fact, Senator, there were only 8 speakers that day, including Fonda, Donald Southerland, and Bella Abzug, and Hanoi Jane funded that rally, and the keynote speaker was you, John Forbes Kerry, executive committee member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
We must be Americans first, and think about our political parties after that. Sometimes we lose sight of that. I have six grown children and two are democrats. I voted for Jimmy Carter. This is not about politics. It is about standing up to the ultimate playground bully, and not simply cowering and kissing his shoes.
I left it “all on the field” in the jungles back there when I was medevaced out of Vietnam in March of 1969 and sent back to hospitals in “The World.” Although You, Mr. Kerry, painted all of us Vietnam veterans with the yellow brush of My Lai and Tiger Force, most of us, draftees and lifers alike, actually poured our hearts out in the tropical rain forests and in the rice paddies, thoroughly gave it our all, and acted as warriors who had honor. I have a son earning his green beret at Fort Bragg right now and a daughter-in-law who was on orders for Iraq but is making me a grandpa again. I am not going to stand by and watch them go through the same treatment we did, because some of our well-meaning fellow Americans choose to wear blinders and believe things just because they heard it on the network news or simply not care enough to get involved.
My fellow veterans, your families, survivors, and neighbors: God bless you and God bless America.
You want proof of all I have to say. Here are the references:
http://michnews.com/artman/publish/article_2889.shtml
http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=6246
http://www.iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2004&m=03&d=01&a=12
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20040229-105340-2864r.htm
http://johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2004_0227.html
http://nyyrc.blogspot.com/
http://www.daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_3130.shtml
Want more proof? Read the very exposing February 27, 2004 article, on page 8, of the NY Sun by Thomas Lipscomb, founder of Time Books and publisher of Admiral Elmo Zumwalt’s best-selling book. “ON WATCH ”. Also read what the man who pinned the Silver Star on John Kerry had to say about him. The article is entitled “Setting Straight Kerry’s War Record “
| Name: | Don Bendell
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| Re: | ATTACKING THE ATTACKERS
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Message:
I have written two widely-distributed editorials concerning the actions of democratic Presidential candidate John Forbes Kerry that have circulated the globe. In the first, the more popular, I wrote of my wife’s rotator cuff surgery, but I wish to address much deeper wounds. Kerry’s people have now said that I have slung mud, and I have. First, I was throwing it back, but more importantly; it was mud compiled from the dirt that has surrounded John Kerry since he first decided to run for President around 1970, mixed in with the blood and tears of those who fought in Vietnam, the men and women that he betrayed.
John Kerry is a decorated Vietnam veteran, but much more so is retired green beret Colonel (Ola) Lee Mize. Lee Mize, as an NCO, received the Congressional Medal of Honor in the Korean War, this nation’s highest award for extreme heroism and gallantry in battle, and later retired as a full bird colonel after four full tours in the Vietnam War.
Retired army Sergeant First Class Sammy L. Davis also earned the coveted Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions with the 9th Infantry Division in Vietnam in 1967.
Generals, even Presidents, traditionally salute Medal of Honor recipients when they see them, as these men are so revered. Both of these very special men wanted to give me direct quotes specifically for this editorial concerning John F. Kerry.
Lee Mize said, “What he (John Kerry) did to our Vietnam veterans, throwing his medals over the fence, his testifying before Congress (in 1971), and hanging around with Jane Fonda. Then, never regretting his made-up lies and his testimony, that is a real shame. It is equally disgusting the way he put down our National Guard and our Reserves. He certainly is a two-faced individual.”
Sammy Davis, the second MOH recipient I spoke with, said of Kerry, “He has done great disservice to every Vietnam veteran by his actions after he came home from Vietnam. He was in a position of power and could have implemented positive changes for veterans and active duty military personnel during the past 18 years, but he chose not to do so.”
When asked on TV, in January, about George W. Bush’s record in the Air National Guard, John Kerry mugged for the TV cameras and said, “I am not going to question someone’s decision back then to join the National Guard, go to Canada, be a conscientious objector, or go AWOL.”
Kerry did not stop to think, when he made such a statement, lumping National Guard service in with being AWOL or a draft dodger, that he was not only dishonoring the 6,077 men who died in Vietnam who were in the National Guard and Reserves, those who trained hard to protect our homeland and be a reserve force, but he also denigrated the 140 recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor in our nation’s history who were members of the National Guard. That is what I said: 140 Medal of Honor recipients were in the National Guard.
My wife is the most beautiful, but also the toughest individual I know. She is public about being the victim of both acquaintance rape and gang rape, close to thirty years ago. Now, as a fifth degree black belt, a master, she has even been presented the prestigious Jefferson Award, in big part, for teaching women and girls how to fight back and win. In some ways, I have hated it when she prepares to conduct another Sexual Assault Prevention Clinic, as she emotionally is raped all over again, and I have to hold her many nights while she cries.
Let us talk today’s facts: John Kerry called us his “Band of Brothers,” and now flaunts his hero status to get elected. What has he done for his “Band Brothers?” Each session of Congress is 2 years in length.
In the eighties, in the 99th Congress, Kerry’s first two years, when you would think he would be full of enthusiasm and eager to fix things, Kerry proposed 1 measly veteran-related bill, S1033. It died. In the 100th Congress, he proposed 1 measly veteran-related bill, S1510. It died, too. The 101st Congress, he proposed 1 measly veteran-related bill, S2128. It also died, but he did propose an amendment to a bill S2884. It died.
Then, in the 102nd , 103rd , 104th, 105th , 106th , and 107th sessions of Congress, 12 years, Kerry proposed ZERO bills related to veterans issues, his “Band of Brothers.”
Finally, in the 108th Congress, closing in on two decades of seniority, but more importantly, deciding to run for the Presidency, Kerry sponsored 1 measly veteran-related bill, S1112. It died.
Here is some factual mud: George W. Bush has increased military pay 21%. Kerry voted against military pay raises 12 times.
Under previous Presidents, democratic and republican, I always was treated like a bastard stepchild at VA hospitals. Since Bush became President, I am treated like a veteran with respect and dignity and have never had to wait for more than a half an hour for an appointment.
“So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real." - Sen. John F. Kerry 1/23/03
“disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."- Sen. John F. Kerry, 10/9/02
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and
developing weapons of mass destruction."- Sen. Ted Kennedy, 9/27/02
"Iraq is a long way from here, but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use
nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the
greatest security threat we face." Madeline Albright, 2/18/98
FACT: George W. Bush volunteered for extra service time to be trained as a jet pilot, no walk in the park itself, and voluntarily requested the release of 450 pages of his own personal military records, and they have been misrepresented and propagandized to attack him. Kerry touts his war hero status but adamantly refuses to request the public release of his own military records. He is a decorated hero. Being a decorated hero, why would he not release his records? What does he have to hide?
Now, Richard Clarke, an eight-year Clinton loyalist, has conveniently released his supposed tell-all book against the Bush Administration. He now slanders a President he publicly praised in a recorded 2002 news interview for taking a much tougher non-nonsense stance against the Al Q’Aida than his predecessor. I am an author: I know the value of releasing a book that creates controversy; and at this time, releasing this book can potentially put millions into Clarke’s pockets. I wish I was releasing a book right now. He said in his book that Bush did nothing militarily until November after the attacks on September 11, 2001. Clarke’s words about our military action at that time show how much he was NOT “in-the-.” Special Forces and Special Operations is a very, very tight-knit community, and most of us, even ones not on active duty anymore, knew that President Bush had two Special Forces (Green Beret) A-Teams on the ground in Afghanistan within 48 hours of the first jet slamming into the World Trade Center. Within two hours of the 9-11 attacks, military plans were underway at USSOCOM headquarters at MacDill AFB, Florida.
What about John Kerry? Once a predator, always a predator. We, the true Band of Brothers were his victims once, but we will be silent no more. We choose to be victors, not victims.
We, the 25,000,000 veterans in this country have power, and we have proven we have courage, can get the job done, and function as a team. We will call and write the major sponsors of NBC, CBS, CNN, and ABC and tell them we are sick of their news departments spinning the news with subtleties and outright lies against our Commander-in-Chief and in favor of the democratic presidential candidate. We will tell those sponsors we will boycott their products if this is not stopped immediately. We will write to, or e-mail, FOX NEWS and similar organizations, and insist that they have people such as me on to address these issues. I will be happy to go head-to-head with John Kerry, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Mike Wallace, or whoever they want to represent their liberal agenda, instead of news reporting like they are supposed to do.
We will talk to our democratic and independent friends and relatives and tell them we all must put our country ahead of political parties. We all know who the foreign leaders are that want John Kerry in the White House: the leaders of North Korea, Spain, France, the Hammas, PLO, mideast jihadists, overly-zealous mullahs, and let’s not forget Osama bin Laden. They are hoping and praying to get George W. Bush out of the White House and John Kerry in. Why is that?
If you actually believe Kerry would do better than Bush on the economy and that is more important to you than our defense, ask yourself this question: How many times have you seen a Brinks truck follow a hearse to a cemetery?
| Name: | Top Trash in America
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Message:
George Bush's America has become a byword for deception and abuse
of power. And the administration's reaction to Richard Clarke's
"Against All Enemies" provides more evidence of
something rotten in the state of our government.
OP-ED COLUMNIST
This Isn't America
By PAUL KRUGMAN
 ast
week an opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz about the
killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin said, "This isn't America; the
government did not invent intelligence material nor exaggerate the
description of the threat to justify their attack."
So even in Israel,
George Bush's America has become a byword for deception and abuse
of power. And the administration's reaction to Richard Clarke's
"Against All Enemies" provides more evidence of
something rotten in the state of our government.
The truth is that among experts, what Mr. Clarke says about Mr.
Bush's terrorism policy isn't controversial. The facts that
terrorism was placed on the back burner before 9/11 and that Mr.
Bush blamed Iraq despite the lack of evidence are confirmed by
many sources — including "Bush at War," by Bob
Woodward.
And new evidence keeps emerging for Mr. Clarke's main charge,
that the Iraq obsession undermined the pursuit of Al Qaeda. From
yesterday's USA Today: "In 2002, troops from the Fifth
Special Forces Group who specialize in the Middle East were pulled
out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden to prepare for their next
assignment: Iraq. Their replacements were troops with expertise in
Spanish cultures."
That's why the administration responded to Mr. Clarke the way
it responds to anyone who reveals inconvenient facts: with a
campaign of character assassination.
Some journalists seem, finally, to have caught on. Last week an
Associated Press news analysis noted that such personal attacks
were "standard operating procedure" for this
administration and cited "a behind-the-scenes campaign to
discredit Richard ," the Medicare actuary who revealed
how the administration had deceived Congress about the cost of its
prescription drug bill.
But other journalists apparently remain ready to be used. On
CNN, Wolf Blitzer told his viewers that unnamed officials were
saying that Mr. Clarke "wants to make a few bucks, and that
[in] his own personal life, they're also suggesting that there are
some weird aspects in his life as well."
This administration's reliance on smear tactics is
unprecedented in modern U.S. politics — even compared with
Nixon's. Even more disturbing is its readiness to abuse power —
to use its control of the government to intimidate potential
critics.
To be fair, Senator Bill Frist's suggestion that Mr. Clarke
might be charged with perjury may have been his own idea. But his
move reminded everyone of the White House's reaction to
revelations by the former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill: an
immediate investigation into whether he had revealed classified
information. The alacrity with which this investigation was opened
was, of course, in sharp contrast with the administration's
evident lack of interest in finding out who leaked the identity of
the C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame to Bob Novak.
And there are many other cases of apparent abuse of power by
the administration and its Congressional allies. A few examples:
according to The Hill, Republican lawmakers threatened to cut off
funds for the General Accounting Office unless it dropped its
lawsuit against Cheney. The Washington Post says
Representative Michael Oxley told lobbyists that "a
Congressional probe might ease if it replaced its Democratic
lobbyist with a Republican." Tom DeLay used the Homeland
Security Department to track down Democrats trying to prevent
redistricting in Texas. And Medicare is spending millions of
dollars on misleading ads for the new drug benefit — ads that
look like news reports and also serve as commercials for the Bush
campaign.
On the terrorism front, here's one story that deserves special
mention. One of the few successful post-9/11 terror prosecutions
— a case in Detroit — seems to be unraveling. The government
withheld information from the defense, and witnesses unfavorable
to the prosecution were deported (by accident, the government
says). After the former lead prosecutor complained about the
Justice Department's handling of the case, he suddenly found
himself facing an internal investigation — and someone leaked
the fact that he was under investigation to the press.
Where will it end? In his new book, "Worse Than
Watergate," John Dean, of Watergate fame, says, "I've
been watching all the elements fall into place for two possible
political catastrophes, one that will take the air out of the
Bush-Cheney balloon and the other, far more disquieting, that will
take the air out of democracy." source... |
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| Name: | Democrats in Free-Fall
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Message:
Colleague of Ex-Official (Clarke) Disputes Part of Account
ASHINGTON, March 29 — A senior national security official who worked alongside Richard A. Clarke on Sept. 11, 2001, is disputing central elements of Mr. Clarke's account of events in the White House Situation Room that day, declaring that it "is a much better screenplay than reality was."
The official, Franklin C. Miller, who acknowledges that he was often a bureaucratic rival of Mr. Clarke, said in an interview on Monday that almost none of the conversations that Mr. Clarke, who was the counterterrorism chief, recounts in the first chapter of his book, "Against All Enemies," match Mr. Miller's recollection of events.
Last week, when Mr. Clarke leveled accusations that President Bush and his staff largely ignored terrorism before Sept. 11, the White House responded by calling into question some of Mr. Clarke's descriptions of conversations.
In the book, Mr. Clarke describes himself as "the nation's crisis manager" that day, though he acknowledges periodically turning over his seat in the Situation Room, in the basement of the West Wing, to Mr. Miller.
"He did a hell of a job that day," Mr. Miller said of Mr. Clarke in an interview on Monday that was suggested by the White House. "We all did." But then he disputed many of the most dramatic moments recalled by Mr. Clarke, from conversations with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld to the question of whether another aide in the room was yelling out warnings that a plane could hit the White House in minutes. Efforts to reach Mr. Clarke on Monday through his publisher were unsuccessful.
Mr. Miller and other White House officials said they were not accusing Mr. Clarke of fabricating events. Events were moving so quickly, they said, and memories have since blurred, that it is little surprise that accounts differ. But Mr. Miller, a senior aide to Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, suggested that Mr. Clarke's version, while it would "make a great movie," was more melodramatic than the events he recalled.
In Mr. Clarke's account, in a chapter called "Evacuate the White House," he heads into the Situation Room at the first word of attack and begins issuing orders to close embassies and put military bases on a higher level of alert — not the kind of operational details usually handled by the National Security Council staff. He describes how Mr. Miller came into the room, squeezed Mr. Clarke's bicep, and said, "Guess I'm working for you today. What can I do?"
"I wouldn't say that," Mr. Miller said Monday. "I might say, `How can I help.' "
Mr. Miller disputes Mr. Clarke's recollection that the Secret Service asked for fighter escorts to protect Air Force One after it lifted off from Sarasota, Fla., where President Bush was visiting an elementary school. A young aide in the Situation Room made that suggestion to Mr. Miller, he said, who recalls telling the aide he had seen too many movies. A moment later, reconsidering, Mr. Miller asked Ms. Rice whether to call up fighter support, and she told him to go ahead, he recalled.
Mr. Clarke's book says Mr. Miller urged Mr. Rumsfeld to take a helicopter out of the Pentagon, part of which was still burning, and that Mr. Rumsfeld responded, "I am too goddamn old to go to an alternate site."
But Mr. Miller said he never talked to Mr. Rumsfeld that day.
Similarly, Mr. Clarke recounts how a career official in the Situation Room called out, "Secret Service reports a hostile aircraft 10 minutes out," left the room, then returned minutes later to report, "Hostile aircraft eight minutes out." Presumably that was the same aircraft that led to the panicked evacuation of the White House and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building that day. The evacuation turned out to be based on a false alarm.
Neither Mr. Miller nor Sean McCormack, the spokesman of the National Security Council, who was in the Situation Room that morning, say they recall hearing the aide warn that a plane could be only minutes away. They say the aide himself reports that he made no such announcement, but he declined to be interviewed.
Mr. Miller also provided a different account of why the officials working in the Situation Room stayed while the rest of the White House was being evacuated.
In Mr. Clarke's telling, he gathered the staff around and told them to leave for their own safety, particularly those with young children. They declined, and according to Mr. Clarke, Mr. Miller then "grabbed a legal pad and said, `All right. If you're staying, sign your name here,' " so that a list could be e-mailed out of the building. The purpose, he recalled Mr. Miller saying, was "so the rescue teams will know how many bodies to look for."
Mr. Miller said he made no such statement. According to Mr. Miller's account, there was no question that the staff members were staying — they were told to keep the Situation Room running by the deputy national security adviser, Stephen Hadley. "That paragraph was a complete fiction," Mr. Miller said. His recollection is that after Mr. Hadley issued his instructions to keep the Situation Room operating, Mr. Clarke went over to Mr. Miller and said, "You realize what we signed onto 10 minutes ago?" Mr. Miller said that this "is a very different spin" on events.
Mr. Miller agreed that a list of those in the Situation Room was compiled and e-mailed out of the White House complex, but it was done discreetly, he insisted, so as not to cause a panic.
While the book describes the Situation Room as sparsely populated, Mr. Miller and Mr. McCormack ticked off the names of at least a dozen people who came in to work the phones and help figure out the location of suspect aircraft.
| Name: | Ethyl MacLaren
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| To: | student
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| Re: | Socialists' Security! HOORAY!! Everyone into the SYSTEM!!
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In response to:
(New Deal-ish) factors like that! seriously,it is still an issue in dispute
Message:
Truman was a damned old machine Democrat, an up-from-the-ranks American Rooseveltian Socialist. He was more than comfortable with the collectivization of China, just as he was tickled a blushing pink when Britain caved in to Socialism. His State Department was downright ebullient over Mao's Communist power grab. He had no problems with Pinks and Reds working THEIR side of the street, just as long as they kept their hands off HIS side of the street!
| Name: | Lombardi Cultural Expert Trooper
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| To: | Kuggie Piddles of the TIMES!!
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| Re: | No one expects Spanish Cultural Expert Troops!!
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In response to:
And new evidence keeps emerging for Mr. Clarke's main charge, that the Iraq obsession undermined the pursuit of Al Qaeda. From yesterday's USA Today: "In 2002, troops from the Fifth Special Forces Group who specialize in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden to prepare for their next assignment: Iraq. Their replacements were troops with expertise in Spanish cultures."
Message:
Ever hear of AFGHANISTAN, Dearest Paulie??
In response to:
We have the chance not merely to win this war and do the world a great deal of good, but also to aspire ourselves to be a stronger and better people after it.
Message:
Sounds like a conclusion from someone at National Review. Talk about underestimating the religious zealotry of Islamic jihadists. We have a bunch of tenacious, religious flakes in this country. And they are bad enough. But they are nothing, not even close, to the Islamic zealots. It sounds like the guy who wrote the above still believes in Santa Claus, etc.
Message:
Mongolia tightens U.S. ties
Stars & Stripes ^ | March 29, 2004 | David Allen
CAMP , Okinawa — Mongolian troops will participate in the annual Cobra Gold exercise in Thailand this year for the first time, another sign of an emerging military alliance with the United States.
“Mongolia’s participation is the latest manifestation of the strategic alliance that has evolved quickly between Ulan Bator and Washington in recent years,” said Bill Adams, East Asian analyst for Stratfor, an independent geopolitical intelligence-gathering firm based in Austin, Texas.
Also joining the United States, Thailand and Singapore in Cobra Gold for the first time will be soldiers from the Philippines.
The exercise, scheduled for May 13-27, will be held in northeast Thailand and will concentrate on training in anti-terrorism, forest fire fighting and emergency rescue operations, according to planners. Military officials from another 10 countries will observe the action.
The number of U.S. personnel is expected to more than double from about 5,000 last year, according to a recent article in the Bangkok Post. U.S. officials have declined to comment on this year’s exercise pending an official announcement by Thai officials in early April.
A U.S. Army spokesman did acknowledge the participation of the Mongolian troops.
“Mongolia’s participation in itself is significant in that it’s another event in a chain of events strengthening the growing relationship between the U.S. and Mongolia,” Adams said.
Within the past year U.S. Marines from Okinawa have participated in a training exercise in Mongolia dubbed “Khaan Quest” and Mongolia sent about 175 soldiers from its 150th Elite Peacekeeping Battalion to Iraq.
It was the first visit by Mongolian troops to the country since the Mongol descendants of Genghis Khan razed Baghdad in 1258.
Mongolia also has peacekeeping personnel assigned to United Nations missions in the western Sahara and in the Congo and has a small unit working with the new Afghan National Army to repair equipment discarded by the Soviets.
During a visit to Ulan Bator in January, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, praised Mongolian leaders for their support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
“The world’s only superpower and Mongolia are developing a working military partnership,” Stratfor’s Adams said in a telephone interview Wednesday, saying the relationship benefits both countries.
“Mongolia is neither an economic or a military powerhouse, but it is geographically priceless,” he wrote in a recent Stratfor.com intelligence report. “Sharing a 2,800-mile border with China and a 2,100-mile border with Russia, the country is wedged between two of the most important geopolitical entities in the world — elevating Mongolia from the status of a pastoral backwater to a player with a seat at the table.”
Because of its position, it needs the United States to keep its two neighbors at bay, Adams said. Especially China, with its population of 1.3 billion threatening to culturally and economically assimilate Mongolia’s 2.7 million people.
“Basically, Ulan Bator is reaching across the Pacific for protection and the United States is only too glad to help,” he said. “The U.S. has poured some $200 million in economic and military aid since establishing diplomatic relations in 1987.”
The U.S. also has become Mongolia’s second-largest trading partner after China, Adams said.
“Mongolia’s primary asset is its location,” he said.
“If the alliance is strong enough that the U.S. military can operate freely in Mongolian territory, the United States can establish forward surveillance posts for observing Russia and China,” he wrote in the Stratfor report. “In addition, Mongolia could provide the location for a small military base as the Pentagon reorganizes forces around the globe.”
Adams sees no major deployment of U.S. forces to Mongolia in the near future, however.
“Moscow would scream bloody hell if that were to happen,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean some old Russian military installations, especially airfields with large runways, can’t be repaired as emergency bases and storage areas for possible future operations. They could be used for targeting militant groups in Central Asia, or for other contingencies.”
Mongolia is benefiting from the alliance in another way, Adams added.
“Russia and China are doing their best to counter the U.S. overtures,” he said. “Russia, especially, wants to re-establish ties with Mongolia as a hedge against an ascendant China.”
Its precarious position between China and Russia should continue to keep Mongolia on good terms with the United States, he said.
“By being squeezed between those two giants in Asia, Mongolia will continue to look across the Pacific to its North American patron to protect its sovereignty,” he said.
Message:
No matter what they say about Kerry's war record, at least he wasn't a chicken sh!t like Bush. Also, once Kerry gets new facts, he will change his mind if the facts warrant such a change. Bush has the attitude: "Don't confuse me with all of these facts. My mind is made up. I don't care about the deficits. I don't care whether there are any WMD."
In response to:
You are a greasy anti-religious ZEALOT
Message:
Not anti-religious at all. Just don't like the zealots. Regular people are just fine. The "greasy" part does remind me of times past when I actually was a "greaser." I remember a friend of mine and I were having a drink in a bar. He said (loudly so other people could here): "John, when you die, I don't want you to leave me any of your money or other stuff. All I want you to leave me is the mineral rights to your head." Everbody got a good laugh--except me. Fond memories.
In response to:
Truman was a damned old machine Democrat, an up-from-the-ranks American Rooseveltian Socialist. He was more than comfortable with the collectivization
Message:
Mr. Big shot you don't know a thing about Harry S. Truman. I do I was at his summer home at Key West. Old Harry knew how to relax and the buck always stopped with Ole Harry. Harry S. Truman was a Senator when FDR picked him for his honesty and integrity something most politicians don't have today unfortunately. He not only ended the World war II with a bang, but took our wartime US economy and transformed into the economic colossus it is today. So don't pick on my favorite President of the last 60 years. NO one has ever been able to come close to Harry S. Truman when it comes to being honest and brave as Mr. Truman was.
In response to:
he will change his "facts" if the poll numbers appear to his handlers to warrant such a change.
Message:
This statement doesn't make any sense. Why am I not surprised?
In response to:
Russia and China are doing their best to counter the U.S. overtures,” he said. “Russia, especially, wants to re-establish ties with Mongolia as a hedge against an ascendant China.”
Message:
I don't blame them.
| Name: | Compute
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| Re: | Moral: Treat a man with reason; you win your argument
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In response to:
Correct. And the friend of a known criminal boss as well. HIs name was Pendagast
Message:
Harry S. Truman was first a judge in Missouri and became close friends of the Pendagast a man in the road paving business who was by and large was not very honest. When Harry Truman confronted Pendagast about the poor construction of some of the Pentagast constructed roads, Truman was known to have said that there is my side of the story and your side but then there is the right side ie. better built roads! From then on Pendagast voted for Harry S. Truman and Harry who loved to play poker would play poker with Mr. Pendagast. When Mr. Pendagast died, against his own political advisors, Harry went to the Pendagast funeral in MIssouri proving that if you were a friend of President Truman, you had a friend in fair or foul weather. So much for the not so perfect cronies of Harry S. Truman.
| Name: | Dr. Hook
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| Re: | Truman was extremely rude to Ike at the inauguration
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In response to:
He not only ended the World war II with a bang, but took our wartime US economy and transformed into the economic colossus it is today. So don't pick on my favorite President of the last 60 years. NO one has ever been able to come close to Harry S. Truman when it comes to being honest and brave as Mr. Truman was.
Message:
Actually he took the economy that had got going by the end of ww2 and ran the damn thing into the ground through at least two brutal recessions during his tenure. Honesty from Harry the old Pendergrast stooge????? yeah, baby, sure thing wink nudge. That Key West business hardly says anyuthinggood about him either, but I guess that as plain as Margie was...
| Name: | Citizen of the World
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| Re: | If Kerry's the Answer, What's the Question?
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Message:
By WILLIAM BLUM
Of all the issues that the presidential campaign will revolve around, none is more important to me than foreign policy. I say this not because that is my area of specialty, but because the bombings, invasions, coups d'etat, depleted uranium, and other horrors that are built into United States foreign policy regularly bring to the people of the world much more suffering and despair than any American domestic policy does at home. I do not yearn for "anybody but Bush". I yearn for a president who will put an end to Washington's interminable indecent interventions against humanity. This is, moreover, the only way to end the decades-long hatred that has spawned so many anti-American terrorists.
So desperate am I to have the chance to vote for someone like that, that a few days ago I allowed myself to feel a bit buoyed when John Kerry, in response to a question about the situation in Haiti, said that the Bush administration "has a theological and ideological hatred for Aristide" which has led to the administration "empowering" the rebels.{1}
To me that remark revealed a significant nuance of understanding of the world of US foreign policy that rarely makes it to the lips of an American politician. Could it be, I wondered, that Kerry is actually a cut or two above prevailing wisdom and rhetoric on such matters? (I must point out that, holding little expectation, I seldom closely follow who's who amongst establishment politicians, so until very recently I knew almost nothing specific about Kerry; in fact, I only just learned to distinguish him from Bob Kerrey, former senator from Nebraska.)
As it happens, the next day Kerry delivered a talk entirely about his views on foreign policy, particularly about the war on terrorism.{2} And my heart lost its buoyancy. He called for an increase of "40,000 active-duty Army troops" -- not exactly the kind of relief our shell-shocked world hungers for.
"But nothing else will matter unless we win the war of ideas," Kerry said. "We need a major initiative in public diplomacy to bridge the divide between Islam and the rest of the world. For the education of the next generation of Islamic youth, we need an international effort to compete with radical Madrassas." -- This is the stuff of public relations, improving "image", ignoring the reasons for anti-Americanism. The problem, however, ain't a misunderstanding and it ain't due to poverty. It's the interventions, stupid; it's the harm we do to those people.{3}
"We have seen what happens when Palestinian youth have been fed a diet of anti-Israel propaganda," Kerry added. -- Again, no weight given to anything Israel has done to the Palestinians; it's all just a matter of propaganda; Palestinians are becoming suicide bombers because of something someone said, not because of the Israeli devastation of their lives. In fact, the US has done remarkably well in "the war of ideas". In June, 2003 the Pew Research Center released the results of polling in 20 Muslim countries and the Palestinian territories which revealed that while people interviewed had much more "confidence" in Osama bin Laden than in George W. Bush, "the survey suggested little correlation between support for bin Laden and hostility to American ideas and cultural products. People who expressed a favorable opinion of bin Laden were just as likely to appreciate American technology and cultural products as people opposed to bin Laden. Pro- and anti-bin Laden respondents also differed little in their views on the workability of Western-style democracy in the Arab world."{4}
Kerry in fact refers to this poll in his talk, but he mentions only the support of bin Laden, not the apparent contradictions found in the rest of the results.
"I will strengthen the capacity of intelligence and law enforcement at home and forge stronger international coalitions to provide better information and the best chance to target and capture terrorists even before they act." -- As if the United States was not already wiring, tapping, bugging and surveilling every institution in the known world and every creature that moves across the earth, and summarily imprisoning them by the thousands. It sounds like a remark Kerry threw in, as with many of his other remarks, hoping to demonstrate a nonexistent difference between his foreign-policy views and those of the Bush administration.
"I will not hesitate to order direct military action when needed to capture and destroy terrorist groups and their leaders." -- As The Washington Post stated, "Kerry appeared to outline his own preemptive doctrine in the speech."{5}
Kerry faulted Bush for providing insufficient funding for the National Endowment for Democracy. -- He probably thought he was on safe ground; the word "democracy" always sells well.
But this is his most depressing comment of all. He's calling for more money for an organization that was set up to be a front for the CIA, literally, and that for 20 years has been destabilizing governments, progressive movements, labor unions, and anyone else on Washington's hit list.{6} Which would be a worse mark against Kerry, that he doesn't know this about NED, or that he does know it? It sounds like another throwaway to imply a divide between he and George W.
So, what do we have here? Not a single word about the tens of thousands killed by US military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq; not a word about anything the United States has ever done anywhere in the world that could conceivably lead to anyone ever harboring justified resentment against the United States and seeking retaliation.
Not a word about ending, or even lessening, interventions.
It does not require total cynicism to point out that at most, at best, John Kerry's beef with the Bush administration over foreign policy -- to the extent that he really has any -- is a very minor difference of opinion between technocrats, Kerry offering a few tiny adjustments, a tweaking here or there. Most of his policy suggestions concerned things already being done by the Bush administration.
In sum total, nothing at all threatening, or even challenging, to business as usual for American foreign policy. What relief from the bully's outrages can the world expect from a John Kerry administration? What relief from the outrages done in our name can we Americans expect?
I think I can go back to ignoring establishment politicians.
NOTES
{1} Newsday (New York), February 27, 2004
{2} Talk at UCLA, February 27, 2004;
{3} For a discussion of this thesis, see the author's essay, "Myth and Denial in the War Against Terrorism" at:
{4} Ibid.
{5} Washington Post, February 28, 2004
{6} See the author's essay on NED
William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir. He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com
In response to:
Actually he took the economy that had got going by the end of ww2 and ran the damn thing into the ground through at least two brutal recessions during his tenure. Honesty from Harry the old Pendergrast stooge????? yeah, baby, sure thing wink nudge. That Key West business hardly says anyuthinggood about him either, but I guess that as plain as Margie was...
Message:
More lies from this jerk. Harry S. Truman not only helped the US but sent McArthur to rebuild Japan into a nonviolent non military trading partner and helped France become big shots so they snub their noses at us after we helped them be first liberated from the Nazis and gave all of Europe financial help called the Marshall Plan. Where were you during this period.
In response to:
Dogma is not only a "religious" term.
Message:
The best examples of dogma are the various religions. Also, commies are big on dogma.
In response to:
about your hero miracle boy
Message:
Clinton was a miracle. But he was against the war. Ergo, he refused to join up and took a deferrment instead.
| Name: | SonofPurpleHeart
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| Re: | Kerry-vs-Kerry
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Message:
Message:
All of us loathe the military when we have to go. It's no fun to have a training platoon sergeant or a top sergeant screaming at you. Talk about dogma.
| Name: | John Kerry
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| To: | Individual
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Message:
"...they cut off ears..."
| Name: | The Cold Hard Facts
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| To: | SPINdividual
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In response to:
My last two sources were: Bureau of Labor Statistics and OMB
Message:
Liar
You provided no sources. You claimed the data was from the Bureau of Labor Statistic yet when people went to the web site no such data was found. You are merely a liar.
No link, no source.
You are a proven liar.
| Name: | The Cold Hard Facts
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| To: | SPINdividual
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In response to:
deficits have climbed to almost a trillion dollars--and maybe close to two trillion dollars by FY 2006
Message:
SOURCE PLEASE!!!!
Message:
The Kerry campaign Feb. 27 e-mailed a new attack ad to supporters, asking them to pass it on to friends. The ad accuses Bush of breaking his word. But the Kerry ad itself falsely implies that Bush has cut off health benefits for 200,000 veterans, and overstates the number of jobs lost under Bush.
Analysis
In a news release about its new ad, the Kerry campaign said “George W. Bush has lost credibility” and “his rhetoric does not square with his record.” But the same can be said of some parts of the Kerry ad itself.
Kerry Ad:
“Keep Our Word”
Bush: When we make a pledge We keep our word. When America works, America prospers. So my economic security plan can be summed up in one word. Jobs.
On Screen: 2.9 Million Jobs Lost, [Bureau of Labor Statistics.]
Bush: The No Child Left Behind Act is opening the door of opportunity to all of America ’s children.
On Screen: No Child Left Behind Act Underfunded by $9 Billion. [H.R.1, 2001; Bush's FY2005 budget.]
Bush: I’ve got a plan to do something about that, it’s to make health care affordable and available.
On Screen: 3.8 million more Americans Lost Health Insurance. [Census Bureau, Historic Health Insurance Tables, Table H1.]
Bush: Our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short term.
On Screen: Annual Deficit to Exceed $400 billion for next 10 years. [CBPP, analysis of CBO, 2/1/04 ]
Bush: We should and must provide the best care for anybody’s who’s willing to put their life in harm’s way.
On Screen: 200,000 veterans cut from health system. [Department of Veterans Affairs, 9/03.]
Bush: We’re going to set aside all the payroll taxes aimed for social security and spend it on social security.
On Screen: Raids entire $2.6 trillion Social Security Trust Fund [Congressional Budget Office, 3/7/03 ]
Bush: When we make a pledge, we mean it. We keep our word. We keep our word.
Kerry: We need a President who’s on your side. I’m John Kerry and I approved this message.
False Statement About Veterans
At one point the ad shows Bush saying “we must provide the best care” for veterans, then shows a graphic saying: “200,000 veterans cut off from health system.” It cites the Department of Veterans Affairs as the source. But the statement is false.
In fact, no veterans have had benefits cut off under Bush. Quite the contrary, as we’ve previously noted , spending for veterans benefits has grown 27% since Bush took office, and the ranks of veterans drawing benefits have increased by more than 1 million.
The Kerry campaign says the ad is referring to a proposal in Bush’s budget for fiscal year 2005, which begins Oct. 1. But that proposal has not been enacted and, in fact, a similar proposal was rejected last year. Congress is expected to reject it again this year.
Furthermore, the proposal would not “cut off” veterans as the ad says. It would instead raise the cost of the VA’s popular prescription–drug benefit. The VA estimates this would cause an estimated 200,000 veterans to leave the system -- voluntarily -- because they have better benefits from other sources. The drug benefit currently requires no payment to gain coverage, and a $7 co-payment for each one-month supply of prescription drugs. The Bush administration proposes to charge $21 per month for coverage, and to raise the co-payment to $15 per one-month supply of prescription medications.
Job Loss Overstated
The ad wrongly states that 2.9 million jobs have been lost under Bush, and cites the Bureau of Labor Statistics as the source. That’s wrong.
BLS figures actually show the loss in total payroll jobs has been 2.2 million jobs. The Kerry ad overstates the job loss by a number that exceeds the population of Washington DC.
For those of you who wish to check the math on this, the BLS reports total nonfarm employment, seasonally adjusted, was 132,388,000 in January 2001, the month Bush took office. It was 130,155,000 as of the most recent report in January, 2004. That’s a loss of 2,233,000 jobs -- not 2,900,000 as the ad states. The ad overstates the job loss by 667,000. The US Census Bureau estimates the population of Washington DC last year at 563,384.
The Kerry campaign says the ad is referring to the loss of private sector jobs only, disregarding a large gain in federal, state and local government employment since Bush took office. But there’s no way anyone watching the ad would know that. Kerry has used this misleading tactic before, as we’ve previously noted .
$400-billion Deficits for next 10 years?
The ad is on more solid ground in other areas. It shows Bush stating in his 2002 State of the Union address that “our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-term,” and then displays a graphic stating: “Annual Deficit to Exceed $400 billion for next 10 years.”
Officially, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that deficits won’t be that large, but will be no lower than $240 billion every year for the next 10 years.
However, the Kerry ad accurately quotes an independent source, the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities . The CBPP predicts deficits exceeding $400 billion in each of the next 10 years if Congress makes Bush’s tax cuts permanent, enacts relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax before it affects many more middle-income taxpayers, and increases defense spending, all of which the CBPP deems likely to happen.
What Happened to the "Lock Box"
The ad also shows Bush saying, “We’re going to set aside all the payroll taxes aimed for Social Security and spend it on Social Security,” then says on screen: “Raids entire $2.6 trillion Social Security Trust Fund.” It's true that all proceeds from payroll taxes that exceed current needs for Social Security and Medicare are going to finance other government spending, and that a total of $2.6 trillion in excess payroll taxes are projected to be spent this way over the next decade.
However, the ad fails to make clear that Bush’s promise was made during the 2000 campaign, before the economic recession that began in March, 2001 and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. By the time Bush’s first budget took effect Oct. 1, 2001, all talk of putting excess payroll tax proceeds into a “lockbox” had ended. The assessment of the Los Angeles Times at the time was typical: “The turnabout is attributable in large part to the deepening economic downturn, last summer's big tax rebates and the response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.”
Sources
News Release: “Kerry Campaign Unveils New Internet Ad—Keep Our Word? Bush Credibility Gap Growing Wider By the Day” John Kerry for President campaign 27 Feb 2004.
Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2005 " Table 5.2 -- Budget Authority by Agency" (Washington, Government Printing Office) 3 Feb 2004.
US House of Representatives, Committee on Veterans Affairs, “ Statement of Anthony J. Principi , Secretary Of Veterans Affairs” 4 Feb 2004.
US Congressional Budget Office “ Preliminary Results of CBO's Analysis of the President's Budgetary Proposals for Fiscal Year 2005 ” 27 Feb 2004.
Richard Kogan , David Kamin, and Joel Friedman “Deficit picture grimmer than new CBO projections suggest ” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 1 Feb. 2004.
Warren Vieth, “‘Lockbox’ Lightened by $33 Billion in 2001; Social Security: U.S. Treasury tally details the portion of fund's surplus that was needed to ride out a rocky fiscal year," Los Angeles Times 30 Oct 2001: A17.
| Name: | The Cold Hard Facts
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| To: | SPINdividual
|
In response to:
deficits have climbed to almost a trillion dollars
and maybe close to two trillion dollars by FY 2006
Message:
Current projected deficit is 477 billion, liar. Source, something you never provide
Please present supporting evidence for your claim the deficit is "almost a trillion dollars"
Next, please provide supporting evidence for your stupid claim the deficit will "maybe" reach TWO TRILLION DOLLARS in 2006. Why not just say "a gazillion", fool.
| Name: | The Cold Hard Facts
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| To: | SPINdividual
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In response to:
deficits have climbed to almost a trillion dollars--and maybe close to two trillion dollars by FY 2006
Message:
Liar.
The current projected budget deficit is 477 billion, which is less than 1/2 of what you claim.
The current projected budget deficit for 2006 is 269 billion (about 1 quarter of 2 trillion) Source, something SPINdividual never provides
| Name: | The Cold Hard Facts
|
In response to:
(about 1 quarter of 2 trillion)
Message:
Oops. That should be "about 1/8th of the 2 trillion"
Message:
MoveOn.org, 2004 Election Cycle
Formed: September 1998 | Web Site
Begun in 1998 to protest the impeachment of President Clinton, the group became a powerful political action committee supporting Democratic candidates. Its Voter Fund is raising unlimited soft money contributions for TV ads in key battleground states that urge the defeat of President Bush.
Affiliated Personnel:
Zack Exley, director
Eli Pariser, campaign director
Joan Blades, co-founder and treasurer
Wes Boyd, co-founder and president
Peter Schurman, secretary
Donors:
Money provided by Peter Lewis, chairman of Progressive Corp., and financier George Soros
Budget:
Soros and Lewis to give a combined $5 million toward a goal of $95 million
527 Activity:
Total Receipts: $4,799,433
Total Expenditures: $4,858,073
Note: This data is based on records released by the Internal Revenue Service on Monday, March 29, 2004.
Some committees have not yet filed year-end reports for 2003.
| Name: | opensecrets
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| Re: | America Coming Together, 2004 Election Cycle
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Message:
Formed: July 2003 | Web Site
One of the leading Democratic interest groups dedicated to defeating President Bush in November. Run by longtime Democratic operatives and financed in part by wealthy Democratic donors, the group plans a massive voter mobilization effort in 17 battleground states.
Affiliated Personnel:
Ellen Malcolm, president (president, EMILY's List)
Steve Rosenthal, chief executive officer (former political director, AFL-CIO)
Minyon Moore (former Chief of Operations, Democratic National Committee)
Carl Pope, treasurer (executive director, Sierra Club)
Cecile Richards (president, America Votes)
Andy Stern (president, Service Employees International Union)
Donors:
Peter Lewis (chairman, Progressive Corp.), $10 million pledge
George Soros (financier), $10 million pledge
Sierra Club
$8 million pledged from labor groups, including SEIU
Budget:
$30 million raised by Jan. 2004, with a goal of $75 million
527 Activity:
Total Receipts: $12,515,000
Total Expenditures: $3,410,672
Note: This data is based on records released by the Internal Revenue Service on Monday, March 29, 2004.
Some committees have not yet filed year-end reports for 2003.
| Name: | opensecrets
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| Re: | Center for American Progress, 2004 Election Cycle
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Message:
Formed: 2002 | Web Site
Democratic think tank viewed as the Left's version of the conservative Heritage Foundation. Formed to find progressive solutions to domestic and international problems. Develops policy proposals to challenge conservative thinking on a wide range of issues. (Originally named "American Majority Fund.")
Affiliated Personnel:
John D. Podesta, president (former White House chief of staff to President Clinton)
Mortin Halperin, fellow (former National Security Council aide under President Clinton)
Laura Nichols, senior vice-president for communications (former adviser to House Democratic leader Gephart)
Donors:
$3 million promised by financier George Soros
Budget:
$10 million anticipated budget
Message:
| | Print a text version of this article | | Science on verge of new `Creation' | |
| | Submitted By:Alan | | Click for Source Article | | More than 3.5 billion years after nature transformed non-living matter into living things, populating Earth with a cornucopia of animals and plants, scientists say they are finally ready to try their hand at creating life.
If they succeed, humanity will enter a new age of "living technology," where harnessing the power of life to spontaneously adapt to complex situations could solve problems that now defy modern engineering.
Scientists eagerly talk of a new world of -small living machines, where marvelously made-to-order cells heal the body, clean up pollutants, transform electronics and communication, and much more.
The researchers say it may be possible to make sweaters that mend themselves. Or computers that fix their own glitches.
Though some experts see this new technology as providing unlimited benefits, others worry about the moral appropriateness of human-made life and the introduction of new species with the potential to evolve into creatures that could run amok.
"It's certainly true that we are tinkering with something very powerful here," said artificial-life researcher Steen Rasmussen of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
"But there's no difference between what we do here and what humans have always done when we invented fire, transistors and ways to split the atom," he said. "The more powerful technology you unleash, the more careful you have to be."
Such concern is escalating as more than 100 laboratories study processes involved in the creation of life, and scientists say for the first time that they have just about all the pieces they need to begin making inanimate chemicals come alive.
Unlike any other technology invented by humans, creating artificial life will be as jarring to our concepts of ourselves as discovering living creatures on other planets in the universe would be. It also would bring into sharper focus the age-old questions of "What is life?" and "Where do we come from?"
"The ability to make new forms of life from scratch--molecular living systems from chemicals we get from a chemical supply store--is going to have a profound impact on society, much of it positive, but some of it potentially negative," said Mark Bedau, professor of philosophy and humanities at Reed College in Portland, Ore., and editor-in-chief of the Artificial Life Journal.
"Aside from the vast scientific insights that will come, there will be vast commercial and economic benefits, so much so that it's hard to contemplate in concrete detail what many of them will be," he said.
But the first artificial life also is likely to shock people's religious and cultural belief systems.
"People from many different s have special views about what life is: how it originates, the special sanctity it has, the special dignity it deserves," Bedau said. "The ability to make new forms of life will perturb all of that. We need to think through the implications and how we are going to react to them."
`Biology revolution'
Still, artificial life now seems so attainable that the number of U.S. labs working in the field jumped from about 10 four decades ago to more than 100 today.
Spearheading the drive is the European Union's Programmable Artificial Cell Evolution project, recently established with a grant of about $9 million. This month PACE is scheduled to open the first institution devoted exclusively to creating artificial life, called the European Center for Living Technology, in Venice, staffed by European and U.S. researchers.
"It's a synthetic biology revolution," said John McCaskill, professor of theoretical biochemistry at Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena, Germany, who is overseeing the European Union's artificial life program.
"We obviously don't want to be too polemic about how rapidly this is going to transform society," he said. "But I think that we are seeing a new feature of science and technology where systems are tonomously adaptive and that this is a significant component of the design process."
Scientists are trying to unravel the grand mystery of how life originated on Earth, and possibly Mars and other places in the universe. How is it that when atoms of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen are organized in the right way, for example, they make a carrot? Arranging far more atoms in a different way produces a human being.
Life is generally not thought of as being mechanical. But a cell basically is a miniature machine in which non-living atoms are constantly being rearranged to make the moving parts that imbue it with life.
The cell, the basic unit of all living things, becomes much more than all of its parts. New properties emerge that give a cell the power to repair itself, reproduce and adapt to changing environments.
A key element of all living systems is the ability to evolve through natural selection. Things that are successful survive, while those that fail to adapt die off. The idea is to incorporate this evolutionary design process into technology that people can use, making things that are complicated and well-adapted without having to figure out in advance all the problems that could arise.
"Our technology right now is facing a complexity crisis. We need to make things that are more complicated if we want to have new kinds of functionality," Bedau said. "We want to have better telephone switching networks, better computers, better spacecraft, but we don't know how to do it."
"If we could make life, we would have a new insight into how to make things more complicated," he said. "We could apply these principles in other areas. Life is very, very complicated, but it also repairs itself, it organizes itself and it adapts spontaneously to changes. It would be nice to have a space shuttle that can do those things or a telephone switching network that can grow and adapt in an organic way."
It is a dream long pursued by scientists who now believe that it may be possible to create the first artificial unit of life in the next 5 to 10 years.
"We've been saying that for the last 50 years," said David W. Deamer, a pioneering professor of biomolecular engineering at the University of California at Santa Cruz. "What makes it different now is that we have a critical mass of people interested in the field and some recent breakthrough discoveries."
Natural safeguards
From Deamer's point of view, the risk that artificially created life could get out of hand is "infinitesimally small."
"There's nothing we could make that could compete with the predators that are out there and have had 3 billion years to evolve," he said. "Bacteria eat anything. They eat jet fuel, oil deposits, chlorinated hydrocarbons, anything. They will eat anything that we put out there to compete with them."
Another safeguard scientists are designing to provide total control over artificial cells is to make their lives dependent on chemicals that do not exist in the environment. Withdrawing the critical chemicals would result in the death of the cells, particularly if they should escape into the environment.
What makes life possible, scientists believe, is the natural tendency of atoms to assemble into molecules, and for molecules to assemble into increasingly complicated structures.
All of the basic elements of life--the amino acids that make proteins and the nucleotides that make DNA and its sidekick RNA--have been produced in the laboratory from chemicals thought to have been present on primitive Earth: hydrogen, methane, ammonia, formaldehyde, cyanide, thiols and hydrosulfide.
Some of these elements are so easy to self-assemble that amino acids are found on meteorites originating at the beginning of the solar system. The Murchison meteorite, for example, contains a wide variety of chemicals, including simple amino acids and fats called lipids. When put in water, lipids spontaneously form bubble-shaped membranes that resemble cells.
Earth coalesced 4.5 billion years ago during the formation of the solar system, and it was too hot for life for several hundred million years. But it didn't take long after the Earth cooled for life to appear. Scientists estimate that fossils of primitive organisms appeared 3.8 billion years ago.
Researchers argue over the definition of life, but they generally agree that it must have three elements: a container, such as the membrane wall of a cell; metabolism, the ability to convert basic nutrients into a cell's working parts; and genes, chemical instructions for building a cell that can be passed on to progeny and change as conditions change.
Each of these critical elements has now been achieved in the laboratory, albeit in rudimentary form, and scientists say they are ready to try to put them all together in one working unit.
"We have quite a bit of knowledge about how these different systems work independently," said microbiologist Martin Hanczyc of Massachusetts General Hospital. "We are at a point where we can start taking these things into the laboratory and do experiments.
"Whether we'll be able to synthesize a living cell in the near future is a big question. But we can start exploring that possibility with what we have available now," said Hanczyc, who along with Harvard's Jack Szostak is able to make artificial cellular membranes grow and divide.
One of the tricks they learned is how to use the remarkable properties of clay, thought to have been abundant on the early Earth. Clay has natural catalytic properties--it speeds up the assembly of lipid membranes a hundredfold, for example, and also hastens the assembly of genetic material called ribonucleic acid.
The two researchers' findings indicate that critical chemicals can spontaneously be brought together to form membranes and genes that are essential for life. They have succeeded in creating cell-like containers that have incorporated laboratory-made RNA.
A genetic riddle
How the first genes got together is a big mystery. Many scientists believe that RNA may have preceded DNA because it can carry genetic instructions and, unlike DNA, make copies of itself. Today DNA preserves the chemical instructions for making and maintaining an organism, while RNA mostly translates those instructions into proteins. DNA and RNA are nearly identical in structure.
David Bartel of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research is trying to make RNA that can fully reproduce itself. So far he has gotten compounds to assemble into small RNA sequences that can make partial copies of themselves.
Bartel calls it test tube evolution. More than 1,000 trillion random RNAs are squirted into a test tube and allowed to assemble into millions of different sequences. A few of those sequences acquired the ability to make copies of RNA sequences, a fledgling step toward artificial life that can reproduce itself and evolve.
Key ingredient
Rasmussen of Los Alamos National Laboratory and Liaohai Chen of Argonne National Laboratory believe they have a good chance of making an artificial cell by using a slightly different version of DNA called polypeptide nucleic acid.
Unlimited variations of PNA can easily be made. They love to stick to the surface of membranes where they can suck up nutrients and hopefully churn out all kinds of novel chemicals, including more cell membrane lipids.
"We have all the pieces, and we have demonstrated that our metabolism can produce the container molecules," Chen said. The protocells that assemble are 10 million times smaller than a bacterium, he said.
The idea is to get all the parts working together so that the artificial cells would not only make daughter cells, but would also be able to manufacture custom-made chemicals now beyond the reach of engineers, such as self-repairing materials.
"Once we have self-reproducing entities that can be programmed, you can do all kinds of useful things," Rasmussen said. "You don't need to build the useful molecules--you can actually have them self-reproduce--you can grow them."
Physicist Norman Packard, who established the first company, ProtoLife, to capitalize on the new field of living technology, thinks of artificial cells as tiny machines that can be programmed to clean out arteries, deliver drugs to specific sites in the body and perform other jobs with great precision.
"The goal of the company is to realize the vision of producing living artificial cells, and also producing other forms of living chemistry, and then programming them to do useful chemical applications," he said. "The range of useful chemical functions we ultimately envision is vast."
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| Name: | Kerry
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| To: | Individual
|
In response to:
"...they cut off ears..."
Message:
HA HA HA HA HA... yes, they cut off ears to identify the dead...while your guy was a drunken party boy who had to be taken off his plane because he was too drunk to fly.
HA HA HA HA HA...what a comparison. You should be ashamed to compare a decorated Veteran with a party boy who did not even fulfil all of his National Guard duties. Shame on you for impugning our decorated, honorably discharged Veterans who put their lives on the line for us. Shame, shame, shame on you.
| Name: | Ad Hominem
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| To: | Hateful American
|
In response to:
Halperin is an evil little rat! Soros is beneath contempt!
Message:
Ad Hominem attacks like this are deleted. Stop posting these lies you are wasting your time.
In response to:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,115690,00.html
Message:
Time to unite people....and stop this PC madness.
| Name: | Ad Hominem
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| To: | Van Gone
|
In response to:
You just don;t get it because you are one dumb victim obsessed moron.
Message:
This forum is for intellectual debate. It is not a place for juvenile schoolyard name calling.
If you criticize a poster state the facts, and the facts only. If you resort to name-calling you will be deleted.
In response to:
Shame on you for impugning our decorated, honorably discharged Veterans who put their lives on the line for us.
Message:
Can't take the truth i see. I am a vietnam vet and I think wee johnny ketchup boy impugned honorably discharged vets like myself with HIS lies, exaggerations and distortions for HIS own ambitions. You just don;t get it.
There is that better?
In response to:
This forum is for intellectual debate. It is not a place for juvenile schoolyard name calling.
Message:
You didn't seem to have a problem with that idiot Individual calling the president a chickesh!it. So you are full of crap.
| Name: | Milan
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| To: | Citizen of the World
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| Re: | What world? Planet Chomsky perhaps?
|
In response to:
I think I can go back to ignoring establishment politicians.
Message:
Does this moniker imply that you also join the U.N. in lamenting the disposal of Yassin?
I think we can all go back to ignoring posts by crackpots who are ashamed to call themselves American.
| Name: | Editor
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| To: | Van Gone
|
In response to:
You didn't seem to have a problem with that idiot Individual calling the president a chickesh!it. So you are full of crap.
Message:
I don't make any money out of this forum, Mr. Van Gone. I don't run it for a bunch of kids like you who can only indulge in school yard banter.
If you can't respect this forum go somewhere else. Don't bore me.
| Name: | An American
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| To: | Milan
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In response to:
Does this moniker imply that you also join the U.N. in lamenting the disposal of Yassin?
I think we can all go back to ignoring posts by crackpots who are ashamed to call themselves American.
Message:
You mean like John Kerry did when he testified in '71?
| Name: | Double Standard Strike Force 1
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In response to:
I don't run it for a bunch of kids like you who can only indulge in school yard banter.
Message:
Unless of course they're liberals.
| Name: | Milan
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| To: | Jew hater
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| Re: | The stove calling the pot black
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In response to:
Hey, they apologized, it was an understandable mistake butvthey did express their regrets
Message:
Hanson the "hatemonger"?
Only an hatemonger can defend a terrorist's apoligizing for killing the "wrong" civilian.
You are one sick puppy.
In response to:
I think we can all go back to ignoring posts by crackpots who are ashamed to call themselves American.
Message:
Or bordertex
| Name: | He's Got Medals
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| Re: | fer killing babies and wounded teenagers
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In response to:
I think we can all go back to ignoring posts by crackpots who are ashamed to call themselves American.
Message:
or LoF
| Name: | Plus Kerry's fortune
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| Re: | was made in the opium trade
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In response to:
I think we can all go back to ignoring posts by crackpots who are ashamed to call themselves American.
Message:
and especially Individual
| Name: | Milan
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| To: | American
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| Re: | Why do the Europeasers like him so much?
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In response to:
You mean like John Kerry did when he testified in '71?
Message:
I'm no fan of Kerry, but many of us did alot of foolish things when we were young (After all, David Horowitz was once a communist!).
If you want to beat Kerry, you need to focus your attack on his weakness on terrorism.
In response to:
I'm no fan of Kerry, but many of us did alot of foolish things when we were young (After all, David Horowitz was once a communist!).
If you want to beat Kerry, you need to focus your attack on his weakness on terrorism.
Message:
Horowitz has renounced his former positions and affiliates...Has Kerry?
| Name: | Milan
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| To: | New Jersey voters
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| Re: | TRAITORS: Rep. Bill Pascrell and Senator Corzine
|
Message:
Jihadists in Jersey
By Joel Mowbray (condensed by Milan)
The New York Sun | March 30, 2004
Rep. Bill Pascrell and Senator Corzine, both Democrats of New Jersey, addressed an annual "community brunch" last month co-sponsored by 11 Muslim organizations, including a mosque that has allegedly raised funds for Hamas and another New Jersey mosque whose former imam was convicted last year for smuggling more than a half-million dollars to an Egyptian group that the American Treasury Department subsequently designated a terrorist organization. Mr. Pascrell has also received campaign contributions and fund-raising support from the president of the event's primary sponsor.
The American Muslim Union's Annual Community Brunch on February 21, 2004, was co-sponsored by 10 other organizations, including the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Center of Passaic County of Paterson, the El Tawheed Islamic Center of Jersey City, and the Dar-ul-Islah Islamic Center of Teaneck.
The co-sponsor with the most apparent ties to radical Islam, including allegedly raising funds for Hamas and hosting as a speaker last year an alleged Hamas figure, is the Islamic Center of Passaic County. The American Muslim Union, though, appears to have close ties to the Islamic Center of Passaic County, as five of its current and former directors and executives have held or still hold leadership positions at the Islamic Center.
The American Muslim Union insists it is a mainstream group, and Mr. Pascrell says he doesn't regret the appearance. Neither Mr. Pascrell nor Mr. Corzine generally vote outside of the Democratic mainstream on Israel or terror-related matters.
The co-founder of and former imam at the Islamic Center of Passaic County, which was founded in 1989, was Mohamed El-Mezain. He worked with the ICPC to raise funds for Hamas in the mid-1990s, according to an FBI memo drafted in November 2001 by the FBI's assistant director of counterterrorism, Dale Watson. Mr. El-Mezain, who is no longer affiliated with the Islamic Center and could not be reached for comment, was never charged or arrested.
The FBI document, which provided the basis for the U.S. government to shut down the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in December 2001, cited a "reliable" source in noting that "during a speech at the Islamic Center of Passaic County (ICPC) in November, 1994, Mohammad El-Mezain, the HLFRD's current Director of Endowments and former Chairman of the HLFRD Board, admitted that some of the money collected by the ICPC and the HLFRD goes to HAMAS or HAMAS activities in Israel. El-Mezain also defended HAMAS and the activities carried out by HAMAS."
Mr. El-Mezain also attended a conference in Los Angeles in the mid-1990s where more than $200,000 was raised for Hamas and the keynote speaker urged participants to "finish off the Israelis," according to the FBI memo.
The FBI memo cites a "reliable" source who says that at a Muslim Arab Youth Association conference held from December 30, 1994, to January 2, 1995, the keynote speaker was Sheikh Muhammed Siyam, who was introduced as "head of operations of Al Jihad Al Islamia in Gaza, the Hamas military wing." According to the FBI in formant, Mr. Siyam told the crowd, "Finish off the Israelis. Kill them all! Exterminate them!"
"Following Siyam's speech," the memo continues, "El-Mezain exhorted the crowd to contribute money. It was subsequently announced that $207,000 was raised for 'the cause."' The FBI informant also said that at the conference, Mr. El-Mezain announced that he had raised $1.8 million inside the United States for Hamas in 1994 alone.
Magdy Mahmoud, who is the cofounder and president of CAIR-NJ, one of the co-sponsors of the American Muslim Union brunch, was on the executive board of the Muslim Arab Youth Association and directed its Chapters Committee from 1993 to 1998, during which time the 1994-95 conference occurred.
According to the Islamic Center of Passaic County's Web site, the mosque hosted a lecture in February 2003 by Abdelhaleem Ashqar, who was identified in the FBI memo as a prominent Hamas figure.
Another co-sponsor of last month's event attended by Messrs. Corzine and Pascrell, Dar-ul-Islah Islamic Center, was co-founded by Waheed Khalid, who has defended Hamas activities. When asked by the Bergen Record newspaper in 1998 about Hamas' terrorist activities, Mr. Khalid, who until late last year served as the mosque's president, responded, "They are trying to get the occupiers out of their home."
Mr. Pascrell said that allegations that any of the co-sponsors of the event are radical Islamists or tied to terrorist organizations are "pure crap." Asked if he felt that by appearing at the event he was lending legitimacy to radical organizations, he added, "I'm not going to deal in rumors; the rest is crap. I know these men as fine family men."
A spokesman for Mr. Pascrell later clarified that the congressman wasn't referring to Alaa Al-Sadawi, the former imam at El Tawheed Islamic Center, who was convicted last July of attempting to smuggle more than $650,000 in cash to the Global Relief Fund in Egypt in April 2002.The U.S. Treasury Department designated that fund as terrorist in October 2002.
Despite multiple calls from the Sun, Mr. Corzine's office offered no comment.
According to both men, the American Muslim Union's president and Rep. Pascrell have been friends for almost a decade. Mr. Younes and his wife have contributed more than $4,300 to Mr. Pascrell's campaigns since 1998, according to federal election records. Mr. Younes also said that he has hosted "several" fund-raisers for the congressman, including one that netted over $20,000 in October 2000. Messrs. Younes and Pascrell said they can't remember how many fund-raisers Mr. Younes has hosted, or when the most recent one was held.
Some information for this report was provided by the Investigative Project, a group headed by counterterrorism expert Steven Emerson.
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