April 2003 Archives

Jules Witcover takes note of President Bush's recent focus on Saddam Hussein's brutality and oppressive regime and asks an important question:

These references and others were powerful justifications for the invasion, as was his promise that the essential needs of the Iraqi people will now be met with American aid. But is it indelicate to point out that this was not the primary justification for launching the war when it was undertaken, in the face of the opposition of most of the world community?

Given that this war was the first under our nation's new preemption doctrine, examining how the Bush Administration justified it is important. For whether or not we examine that question, the rest of the world will.

Robert Samuelson thinks that corporate executives should start speaking publicly about the nature of their compensation packages. He wonders if CEOs are being quiet because they know that the large increase in pay and other compensation they have enjoyed over the past decade is largely indefensible.

Sprinkling so much money over so few people has created a sense of entitlement. The upper echelons of corporate America have come to believe that they shouldn't simply do well. They deserve to become rich, perhaps fabulously so. Now, a flourishing capitalist system ought to bestow great fortunes on people who create huge enterprises or revive flagging old ones. But great fortunes should not routinely go to people who merely preside successfully over existing firms. The CEO conceit is that everyone near the top of the corporate staircase should become a multimillionaire several times over.

David Broder analyzes how Rep. Richard Gephardt's (D-Mo.) health care plan is impacting the other Democratic presidential campaigns:

Much is debatable in the plan, but it is now certain that within weeks, every other Democratic hopeful will have to produce his own counterplan, and the pressure will rise on President Bush to address the lack of health insurance for 41 million Americans. A debate that has languished in Congress for nearly a decade will be joined -- in a place where the voters, thank goodness, take their responsibilities seriously."

Democrats need to run on substance and provide a viable alternative to President Bush. That is why I look forward to a vigorous primary campaign.

One might wonder how, in the midst of all this tax cut talk, our federal government leaders could have neglected to raise the national debt limit.

The Treasury's ability to play fiscal games is rapidly reaching the limit. Congress and the White House need to reach an agreement to raise the statutory $6.4 trillion national debt limit before the end of the month or the government could default on its obligations.

No one expects that a default will happen. (The results of a default would be dire, and even our government leaders are not that fiscally irresponsible.) One wonders which Friday evening they will choose to pass the legislation.

After all, Fridays are a great day to pass inconvenient government acts since the public are more likely to be thinking about the weekend to notice.

The San Jose Mercury News editorializes today in favor of an initiative campaign to return majority rule to California's budget process.

Proposition 13, the landmark anti-tax (and stealth anti-government) initiative passed by California voters in 1978, also included provisions to increase to two-thirds the vote needed in the legislature to pass a state budget or raise taxes.

That provision gives the minority party a veto over the budget process and makes it impossible for the majority party to be held accountable for its actions.

It is time to reduce the vote requirement for passing a budget or to raise taxes to a majority or 55 percent. That would allow the legislature's majority to pass a budget.

Then California voters could decide whether they approve of the legislature's actions. That is a suitable subject for an election.

James Pinkerton analyzes the news stories that should and shouldn't get more attention in these reality-obsessed times.

Rice University Professor James R. Thompson is not a member of the Alan Greenspan bandwagon. His criticism centers on Greenspan's engineering of the 1998 Long-Term Capital Management bailout:

From the standpoint of the dollars involved, the 1998 crash of LTCM (a $3.5 billion bubble) was orders of magnitude less significant than that of the $62 billion Enron debacle in late 2001. The Enron collapse was too large for even Greenspan to make disappear. Then there is the long list of other companies zapped by belated discovery of their irresponsible accounting practices in 2002 and subsequently. The total wreckage will easily top a hundred times the LTCM figure.

Even more importantly, there is the long list of the high-tech companies destroyed by Greenspan's cutting off of investment capital beginning in 1999 (and continuing for a punishing 18 months) as a means of damping down "irrational exuberance." Had nature been allowed to take its course with LTCM in 1998, it is likely that a general scrutiny of accounting practices would have precluded the devastating crash of Enron in 2001. Chairman Greenspan could have seen a natural dampening of "irrational exuberance" already in 1998 had he simply let LTCM fail. By bailing out LTCM on the one hand, and stifling investment capital on the other, it appears he acted with the wisdom one tends to associate with the economic planners of, say, Argentina.

E.J. Dionne thinks that Rep. Richard Gephardt's (D-Mo.) health care initiative has drawn a helpful line across our political debate for the upcoming 2004 presidential campaign.

Gephardt would offer voters a plain choice: They can have Bush's tax cuts or they can have secure health coverage. They can't have both. Yes, universal health insurance would cost a lot of money. But so would Bush's tax plan. If we're going to dedicate hundreds of billions of dollars to a cause, which cause should it be?

But the fact that Gephardt has chosen to make health care an issue is ultimately good for Democrats.

Democrats need to draw sharp distinctions with the Bush Administration on domestic policy. They also need to gain credibility on national security and foreign policy matters. It is important, as Dionne explains, for Democrats to stand for something.

A Bush Administration official argues that the White House was not lying as it sought to justify the war with Iraq by talking about weapons of mass destruction. It was instead, "a matter of emphasis."

(Ed. note: One can imagine what the Republican chorus would have said if a, say, Clinton Administration official tried a similar justification.)

This is not the first time "emphasis" has proven important. One wonders when people are going to catch on to the Bush Administration's successful technique. Paul Krugman describes how it has worked so far:

One wonders whether most of the public will ever learn that the original case for war has turned out to be false. In fact, my guess is that most Americans believe that we have found W.M.D.'s. Each potential find gets blaring coverage on TV; how many people catch the later announcement — if it is ever announced — that it was a false alarm? It's a pattern of misinformation that recapitulates the way the war was sold in the first place. Each administration charge against Iraq received prominent coverage; the subsequent debunking did not.

Did the news media feel that it was unpatriotic to question the administration's credibility? Some strange things certainly happened. For example, in September Mr. Bush cited an International Atomic Energy Agency report that he said showed that Saddam was only months from having nuclear weapons. "I don't know what more evidence we need," he said. In fact, the report said no such thing — and for a few hours the lead story on MSNBC's Web site bore the headline "White House: Bush Misstated Report on Iraq." Then the story vanished — not just from the top of the page, but from the site.

Thanks to this pattern of loud assertions and muted or suppressed retractions, the American public probably believes that we went to war to avert an immediate threat — just as it believes that Saddam had something to do with Sept. 11.

Michael Hill writes that we should look to Afghanistan to get a glimpse of the likely difficulties we face to rebuild Iraq. Hill explains that we need to remember that:

the situation on the ground, not always apparent from Washington -- or even Kabul or Baghdad -- is what will determine the success or failure of these nation building projects.

| Search Daypop for Related Blogs | Search Google for Related News |

Jonathan Weisman reports on the dividend tax cut debate:

But White House officials are holding firm to their plan, to the consternation of some Republican lobbyists and economists who say Bush is trying to win at all costs, even if the price is to sacrifice the economic benefits of the original package.

White House and Treasury aides "have a president who says, 'They have to have my plan after 10 years. Then I win,' " said a frustrated Republican economist with close administration ties. "That's what it has become all about."

How naive.

| Search Daypop for Related Blogs | Search Google for Related News |

Will President Bush need to run as a write-in candidate in some states? While I am sure the situation will be resolved, it is a possible outcome. Brian Faler reports:

The GOP's unusually late nominating convention -- it does not begin until Aug. 30 -- is the problem. Bush is not scheduled to accept his party's nomination until Sept. 2, 2004. That falls after the deadline for certifying presidential candidates not only in Alabama, but also in California, the District of Columbia and West Virginia. There are bills in the Alabama legislature to move its deadline from Aug. 31 to Sept. 5. But if, for some reason, they don't pass, the president would be forced to run there as a write-in candidate.

The GOP, after all, has made a choice. The Republicans are admittedly holding their convention that late so President Bush can attempt to take political advantage of the September 11 terrorist attacks' anniversary.

Their operatives knew -- or should have known -- about these deadlines. As we know, however, Republicans' diatribes about choices and responsibility are always meant for others and not for themselves.

| Search Daypop for Related Blogs | Search Google for Related News |

Perhaps the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz wing could put aside their dreams of going to Iran and Syria for just a few moments since the work in Iraq remains unfinished. As the Washington Post's Monte Reel and William Branigin report:

A fire that U.S. military officers blamed on an Iraqi guerrilla attack set off a chain of fierce explosions at a U.S.-controlled munitions dump today, sending rockets, missiles and other ordnance shrieking into residential neighborhoods in this southern Baghdad suburb. A number of civilians were killed or wounded, fanning anti-American sentiments that have been smoldering for days.

A team of U.S. troops helping residents move rubble to search for victims acknowledged that Zafaraniyah residents, including a local cleric speaking on his followers' behalf, visited U.S. soldiers in recent weeks to urge that the weapons repository be moved to a less populated area.

"The problem is that right now we don't have the assets to move them," said Lt. Gregory Holmes, a tactical intelligence officer helping remove debris. "We're going around collecting weapons from everywhere -- schools, houses, government buildings -- and bringing them here until we can move them out to a better location. But there's a lot more coming in than moving out. We're stretched really thin."

The military victory was, again, never in doubt. My concern was always about what would follow.

If it takes several hundred thousand troops to do the job, as Gen. Eric K. Shinseki told Congress in February it would, then Rumseld and his crew need to recognize their error so we do not lose the war's aftermath. Each civilian death makes our nation less secure.

| Search Daypop for Related Blogs | Search Google for Related News |

Andrew Sullivan this week has written several excellent posts about Senator Rick Santorum's (R-Pa.) recent remarks about homosexuals.

Sullivan is disappointed not only in Santorum's remarks, but in many Republicans' reactions -- including President Bush's -- to them. Sullivan at one point writes:

For the president to call the criminalization of an entire group of people the position of an "inclusive man" leaves me simply speechless. It indicates that the White House still doesn't understand the damage that this incident is doing, the fact that it is beginning to make it simply impossible for gay people and their families - or any tolerant person - to vote for the president's party.

Go read Sullivan's posts about this controversy. This latest Santorum affair must not be minimized and is well worth the discussion.

| Search Daypop for Related Blogs | Search Google for Related News |

H.D.S. Greenway explains how the United States may prove unprepared for what the Iraqis want in the war's aftermath:

AS DID ALADDIN in the Scheherazade tale told in ancient Baghdad, so did the conservative hawks in the Bush administration believe that if they could but possess that city, then the lamp of democracy could be rubbed and all their wishes to make over the Middle East in America's image and Israel's interest would be granted. And lo, today Baghdad is theirs, but look what is coming forth: Genies who are no longer slaves and have different agendas than the ones of those who set them free.

There are nascent political parties, factions, religious and tribal leaders, out-of-touch-exiles, and rival ethnicities emerging throughout Iraq, all vying to fill the political vacuum left by the fall of a wicked sultan and his card-carrying viziers. But the most powerful of all the genies now let loose in the land is Islam.

E.J. Dionne takes apart the Club for Growth's pathetic advertising campaign targeting Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio) for their opposition to President Bush's irresponsible tax cut.

The Club for Growth's ads relies on associating Snowe and Voinovich with the French. As Dionne explains, the message is impossible to miss:

President Bush courageously led the forces of freedom," the ad goes. "But some so-called allies like France stood in the way. At home, President Bush has proposed bold job-creating tax cuts to boost our economy. But some so-called Republicans like" -- the Maine ads mention Snowe; the Ohio ads, Voinovich -- "stand in the way."

Now follow this train of -- forgive the word -- logic. Bush fought for freedom. France got in the way. Like France, Snowe and Voinovich are getting in the way of Bush's tax cut. Unsubtle implication: Like France, they must be the enemies of freedom. In case you miss that link, the ad pictures a French flag flying next to the offending senator. Moore wants you to think that Snowe and Voinovich look French, too. That must make them un-American. After all, only the un-American would oppose the commander in chief's tax cuts.

Moore is not out there on his own. The White House has done nothing to discourage him from French-frying these Republicans. His campaign is only part of a broader strategy, deployed at critical moments since Sept. 11, 2001, to associate opposition to Bush with a lack of patriotism.

It goes back at least to May of last year. Remember when Democrats (and some Republicans) were urging an independent inquiry into what the U.S. government knew about the terrorist threat before the attacks? Rep. Tom DeLay, then the House whip, opposed an independent investigation with this line: "We don't need to hand the terrorists an after-action report." Suddenly, an attempt to tell the American people what happened became a way of giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Disagreeing with the President of the United States is not unpatriotic. It is not anti-American. It is one of the bedrock foundations of our nation. Republicans leaders need to be reminded of that fact.

Marie Cocco rightly condemns American Airlines Chairman Donald J. Carty for his recent attempt to get the airline’s unions to accept wage and benefit concessions while hiding the details of executive retention bonuses and pension protections.

The guy deserves immediate induction to the Gordon Gekko Hall of Fame. To win the honor, executives must demonstrate an unerring ability to run companies into the ground - destroying the lives of the rank and file - while cushioning themselves and their fellow managers from the fall. Special consideration is given to nominees who are simultaneously petitioning Congress for a taxpayer bailout, using the heart-wrenching plight of the very employees they've duped to lobby lawmakers.

The Washington Post’s editorial writers take Sen. Rick Santorum’s (R-Pa.) suggestion and consider his recent controversial comments about homosexuals within the context of his entire interview with the Associated Press.

Santorum urges this because he believes that his comments become more acceptable if they are placed in the context of a Supreme Court case. The Washington Post’s editorial writers do not agree. What they conclude is that Santorum’s ideas are even more disturbing than some originally believed.

So here we have a prominent Republican legislator advocating the right of states to sic their police on two consenting adults in their own home. You don't have to be pro-"anything" to know what's wrong with this. Bigamy and polygamy are not questions of privacy; they are regulated by the state as violations of a legal marriage contract. Whether states should sanction homosexual marriage is also a question of civil law, and a controversial one. But Mr. Santorum isn't taking on that question; he's advocating the criminalization of private behavior between two men or two women that (unlike, often, adultery) has no victims. The fact that many people disapprove of it does not justify sending the police to knock down doors and barge into bedrooms.

Richard Cohen takes the time to illustrate and explain Santorum’s intolerance. Cohen’s efforts reveal how silly it is for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) to call Santorum a “voice for inclusion and compassion.” Cohen writes:

Not to be picky, but when Santorum likens homosexuality to, say, incest, he is conjuring up an offense in which there often is a victim -- commonly a child. That is not the same as consensual sex between adults, which, some maintain, ought to be the business of no one else, particularly the government.

Remember how no one was supposed to use the September 11 terrorist attacks for partisan advantage?

I guess we should amend that. No one can use the attacks in a partisan way unless they happen to be a Republican president seeking reelection. Adam Nagourney and Richard W. Stevenson report on the Bush team's early election strategy:

The president is planning a sprint of a campaign that would start, at least officially, with his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, a speech now set for Sept. 2.

The convention, to be held in New York City, will be the latest since the Republican Party was founded in 1856, and Mr. Bush's advisers said they chose the date so the event would flow into the commemorations of the third anniversary of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. (emphasis added)

Paul Krugman takes apart the Bush Administration's claim that its tax cut plan would create 1.4 million new jobs:

Not that the budget cost is minor. The average American worker earns only about $40,000 per year; why does the administration, even on its own estimates, need to offer $500,000 in tax cuts for each job created? If it's all about jobs, wouldn't it be far cheaper just to have the government hire people? Franklin Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration put the unemployed to work doing all kinds of useful things; why not do something similar now? (Hint: this would be a good time to do something serious, finally, about port security.)

There is, after all, nothing more important to Republicans in a time of war than a tax cut package.

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) ranks third in the GOP's Senate leadership. He also thinks that homosexuality is akin to bigamy, polygamy, incest, and adultery. The Associated Press quotes him:

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."

Nice try, Senator.

As the Daily Kos notes, in early 2002 Sen. Santorum sent out a fundraising letter where he made a plea for supporters to donate money to fight efforts to allow homosexual couples to marry. Here's how he opened the letter:

I know it may sound like a huge exaggeration, particularly in light of the attack on America, but this may truly be the most important letter I ever write you.

Does that priority setting make sense to you?

Not only does this provide Democrats with opportunities on domestic issues, but it shows why Democrats must not cede the debate over homeland security and foreign policy to the other party. It is time to fight.

I just ran across a blog Tim Bishop created last month to cover SARS-related developments.

If you have an interest in SARS' spread -- and you should -- reviewing the information Bishop has accumulated is a must. He is doing an excellent job of providing information that people need to keep updated on SARS-related news from around the world.

Sars Watch Org is worthy of a daily read. I urge you to take a look and add it to your blogrolls.

Neal Peirce writes about President Bush's ongoing fiscal attack against the nation's cities and states. Peirce notes that while local, state, and federal taxes are theoretically separate, they are in fact linked quite closely.

When the federal government passes a tax cut, states also lose revenue. When the federal government fails to meet promises to fund mandates, the cities and states are left to pick up the tab. When a White House makes passing an irresponsible tax cut a higher priority than funding homeland security measures, local governments must cut jobs, services, and programs -- decisions that add downward pressure on the economy. Peirce explains:

So a fiscally sick Uncle Sam dooms states and localities to hard times. Already the states, denied the luxury of deficit spending, face grave fiscal crises. They've cut tens of billions from their budgets for the year starting July 1, and still have $25 billion in cuts to go. For next year their prospective shortfall is $85 billion to $90 billion -- nearly 10 percent of their total operating budget figures.

In the face of that extreme, the federal government ought to be helping out with emergency aid. Is it? No. Instead, it wants to dump, counting the earlier Bush tax cuts, $1 trillion-plus in tax benefits into the laps of wealthy individuals whom it claims will use the cash to invest and stimulate the economy.

Peirce also reminds us that a huge tax cut package during wartime and just a few years before the baby boom generation begins to reach the eligibility age for Social Security benefits is fiscal madness.

Robert Novak devotes his column today to reporting about how angry Republican leaders are at Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).

Frist's crime is cutting a deal with Senate moderates on an unacceptably small (but still irrresponsible) tax cut package. Frist agreed to a $350 billion cut. President Bush wants at least $550 billion.

The fact that any tax cut today is in effect a tax increase on future generations -- because a tax cut will increase the already rapidly rising federal budget deficit and national debt -- remains unspoken.

The Los Angeles Times editorial writers rightly place a chunk of the blame for California's current budget crisis and political paralysis on the misguided term limits initiative passed by voters in 1990.

The six-year limitation in the Assembly is simply too short. That has created a Legislature that simply does not work.

That may have been part of the plan. The anti-tax crusaders who supported Proposition 140 also hate government. As the editorial notes:

Larry N. Gerston of San Jose State University, co-author of the popular text "California Politics and Government," believes that the anti-tax authors of the measure meant to throw a wrench into state government's gears by creating constant turnover in the Legislature accompanied by lack of budgeting experience. "Why shouldn't we expect disaster?" Gerston said.

Further, term limits failed to remove "the grip of vested interests" on the Legislature, as promised by proponents in the 1990 ballot pamphlet. New Assembly members hold campaign fund-raisers in Sacramento while they're still finding their own offices. Some begin running for the state Senate the day they arrive in Sacramento. And just as leaders develop experience, they're gone.

The Proposition 140 pledge to clear out the Legislature's "web of special favors and patronage" now seems laughable.

That is why the efforts should begin now.

Steve Chapman explains why it is premature to label opposition to the Iraq War a mistake:

What Bush's critics stressed all along was that the biggest challenge would not be winning the war but managing the aftermath. The perils of occupation have arrived ahead of schedule. So far, we've had rampant looting, fighting between rival groups in Tikrit, ethnic cleansing in the Kurdish north, and anti-American violence in Mosul. I don't remember conservatives telling us about those in advance.

Tens of thousands of Muslims marched in Baghdad Friday demanding a U.S. withdrawal and an Islamic state. Thousands demonstrated against "colonial occupation" in Samawah. The most important Shiite group in Iraq boycotted the U.S.-sponsored meeting in Ur to form a new Iraqi government--which could spell trouble in a country that is 60 percent Shiite. The American military has found itself overwhelmed by the task of administering Iraq, and faced with widespread resistance.

Thomas Oliphant discusses the intramural war Republicans are having over the failure of some moderates to support President Bush's irresponsible tax cut plan.

In these circumstances, the idea of selling a repeal of dividend taxation to the country is a joke. The country has higher priorities that have little to do with taxes and more to do with security and budgetary common sense. There is no broad constituency in favor of it that extends an inch beyond the hardest core of the conservative movement.

In fact, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's (R-Texas) ideas about tax cuts continue to provide an important glimpse into the thinking of those who follow the tax-cut-only ideology.

Remember, DeLay in March told Congress Daily that in his mind:

"Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes."

The nation needs to be reminded constantly about what the Republicans' priroties are -- even in wartime.

More evidence comes out daily showing that the Chinese government is actively attempting to cover-up the extent of the SARS outbreak. The Washington Post Foreign Service's John Pomfret reports:

Chinese authorities ordered doctors in Beijing to hide SARS patients from a team of World Health Organization experts last week in an attempt to play down the extent of the epidemic, Chinese doctors and other sources said today.

Authorities transferred about 40 patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome to a hotel on the grounds of one hospital, and at another facility moved more than 30 SARS patients into ambulances to prevent the WHO team from finding them, the sources said.

We are, unfortunately, likely to learn that the potential Chinese market is far too important for the United States government to take strong action in response to the Chinese government's irresponsibility.

After all, how could the spread of a potentially dangerous disease compare to more than one billion potential consumers?

Perhaps Democrats should take some solace in the fact that some conservatives are no longer reserving their charges of a lack of patriotism to Democratic opponents of the White House.

Now the Club for Growth, a organization that tolerates no dissent from its tax cuts, tax cuts, and more tax cuts policy agenda, is now implying that two Republican Senators are less than patriotic for refusing to support President Bush's irresponsible tax cut plan. Helen Dewar writes:

With the help of a little digital wizardry, the conservative Club for Growth is airing ads showing Republican Sens. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and George V. Voinovich (Ohio) in proximity to French flags in order to disparage their resistance to President Bush's tax-cut plans.

Neither Voinovich nor Snowe is going to back down because an idelogical group picks such a lame fight. So it is a wasted effort that highlights nothing more than many conservatives desire for ideological purity.

If the Club for Growth had done any research, moreover, they would have realized that in Maine a French flag is not necessarily going to be seen as an insult. Many of Snowe's constituents (including many in the area of Maine in which I used to live) are of French ancestry.

The Republican Main Street Partnership is responding with ads that call the Club for Growth a group of "misinformed New York City elitists." Adding "ridiculous" or "irresponsible" to that sentence would make it more accurate.

The Washington Post fronts an article that should worry readers because it demonstrates just how hard it is to control the spread of biological weapons. Joby Warrick and John Mintz write:

Daan Goosen's calling card to the FBI was a vial of bacteria he had freeze-dried and hidden inside a toothpaste tube for secret passage to the United States.

From among hundreds of flasks in his Pretoria lab, the South African scientist picked a man-made strain that was sure to impress: a microbial Frankenstein that fused the genes of a common intestinal bug with DNA from the pathogen that causes the deadly illness gas gangrene.

But this article highlights one of the most troubling problems facing the United States today. Biological weapons are fairly common. With the fall of the Soviet empire (and our national inattention to some of that historic development's consequences), it is likely that some of the Soviet's biological -- if not nuclear -- stockpile was lost to the black market. Other nations, like South Africa, also had their own weapons programs.

There are three major lines of defense. Through science we could develop antidotes and other preventive defenses. Through better homeland security measures, like protecting our ports, our government could do much more to make it difficult and dangerous to try to sneak these items into our country.

But perhaps most important, we need a functioning public health system that is able to respond to the inevitable attack to come.

We are not ready. Worse, there are few signs that there are serious efforts underway to change that fact.

Matt Miller explains how Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is providing a glimpse into our future.

No, not militarily. He is providing an example of an upcoming major demographic shift. As the baby boomers age, 70 is going to be like 50 was just a few years ago. Miller writes:

Wisdom comes mostly from experience, and if we're living and working longer, it stands to reason that the average sum of wisdom among those leading us will rise. This should bring better results in those myriad realms of human endeavor in which judgment (not raw brainpower or talent) is the most highly prized quality. I don't know anyone who thinks their judgment has gotten worse with age.

But frustration among younger people is bound to soar as well. If you think it's hard today for younger executives, academics, scientists or whatever to wait for leadership slots to open up above them in the large organizations that manage much of life, just wait until people reach the top job when they're 45 or 50 - and then try to cling to it for 40 or 50 years!

In most respects, we are ill-prepared for this coming, and entirely predictable, demographic tsunami.

One wonders why the United Nations would seek to provide new arguments for those who believe it to be an ineffectual and hypocritical organization not worth the United States' attention.

For that, and many other reasons, the United Nations Human Rights Commission's refusal to condemn Cuban leader Fidel Castro for his recent crackdown is simply inexcusable. As the Los Angeles Times' editorial writes argue:

Tentative bursts of freedom in Cuba followed the 1998 visit of Pope John Paul II and last year's visit by former President Carter. But since mid-March, Castro has imprisoned the most effective advocates of free speech and democratic reform, handing down long sentences for their daring to call for freedom of expression, press and association.

What U.N. commission members did, in the false name of political parity, was to make Cuba's newly brutalized human rights advocates pay for the perceived sins of the U.S. president. Shame.

Steve Friess notes that the SARS outbreak, and the Chinese government's initial attempts to cover-up the spread of the disease, proves that the world should remain worried about that dictatorship.

Jules Witcover highlights why it is so important for former Senator Gary Hart (D-Colo.) to join the 2004 race for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

If the election were purely about domestic issues, the Democrats would win. But any post-September 11 and post-Iraq war election cannot focus on domestic issues alone. The Democrats need Hart in the race to elevate the campaign debate about foreign policy and national security issues. Witcover explains:

The notion of some Democrats that the key to victory in 2004 is to end-run the war and conduct the campaign debate on only the state of the economy, Mr. Hart says, "is doomed to fail."

Three issues in any national campaign -- the economy, foreign policy and defense -- are interrelated, he says, especially in the era of globalization, "so you can't just run on the economy. ... If you're going to nominate somebody for president, you'd better nominate somebody who's qualified in all three of those areas."

One of my favorite politicians, the late former Senator Paul Tsongas (D-Mass.), did not win the 1992 nomination. But he did help initiate a needed national conversation about the federal budget deficit and intergenerational equity.

Hart has a chance to win if he gets in. (The race is that wide open.) But if he can have an impact similar to the one Tsongas had, the Democrats will be in much better shape for the general election.

Infectious-disease epidemiologist Philip Alcabes writes in the Washington Post that the nation would be wise to return to the basics in the fight against infectuous diseases. For all the talk about hi-tech databases and fear of bioweapons, it is nature's natural microbes that continue to do most of the killing. Alcabes explains:

Besides chasing the chimera of the unforeseeable, biopreparedness systems are based on an erroneous premise. Our public health authorities presume that bioterrorism is a serious threat to public health. They're wrong. The number of deaths attributable to willfully produced epidemics, ever, pales by comparison with the toll taken by natural ones. In 1918-19 an influenza pandemic killed more people in just 16 months than World War I had killed in six years. Smallpox killed 10 times as many people in the first half of the 20th century as did both world wars combined. Even today malaria kills 2 million people each year; so does tuberculosis. By contrast, deliberate epidemics in the past 100 years, mostly through the actions of armies at war, have been responsible for only a few thousand deaths.

Our national public health system is already failing. It would likely crack if faced with a small human-made bioterror attack. It is obviously unprepared for something as large as the 1918 influenza outbreak.

James Pinkerton writes today about the looting of a Baghdad museum and the loss of priceless artifacts from the beginning of human civilization:

To be sure, it was Iraqis who destroyed these places. The worst that can be said about the American role is that the United States, having been warned of the possible danger months ago by delegations of archaeologists, merely looked on as the museums and libraries were annihilated. Yet that may be bad enough, in the hearts and minds of many. American priorities were revealing; soldiers were assigned to safeguard oil wells and buildings that contained the sorts of archival history that the U.S. government cared more about, such as the records of the Baath Party.

New York City is in trouble. Promises made to help the city so brutally attacked by foreign terrorists have largely not been kept.

The attacks have harmed New York. One of the consequences is a critical budget crisis. Yet Republican leaders in Albany and Washington, D.C., so far have done precious little to help solve the problem. As Bob Herbert writes:

Next year the Republican Party will hold its national convention in New York City, and it will go out of its way to exploit the powerful emotions evoked by ground zero and the memories of Sept. 11. The mayor of New York City, the governor of New York State and the president of the United States are all Republicans.

With that lineup you'd think this city, after all it's been through, could get a break.

Republicans will gladly take the photo-op next year. But as for rebuilding and protecting our nation's largest city, the GOP's leaders have shown that they have other priorities.

Richard Cohen again explains that in many ways the peace and rebuilding in Iraq will be harder than the war was. He writes:

Frankly, I have no idea if what the United States is attempting in Iraq has a chance of succeeding. All I know is that we have to try -- and try and try. Iraq has some of the elements conducive to democracy -- an educated populace, a middle class and, of course, vast oil wealth. But it is a nation by virtue of colonialist design and consists of ethnic groups who share only a mutual enmity -- toward each other.

Whatever the case, we cannot hit and run as we have mostly done in Afghanistan, which is returning to its old ways. We cannot do as we did in Beirut or Somalia. We must do as we did in Germany, Japan and South Korea -- which means sticking it out for a long time. We might, in fact, have to persist in making terrorism the functional equivalent of communism -- a mortal threat that justifies enormous sacrifice. The truth of that proposition has yet to be seen.

Can Republicans, who have shown an irresponsible hatred toward foreign aid in recent decades, now be trusted to keep funding the Iraq rebuilding long enough to nurture a democratic Iraqi government?

Budgets are about priorities. We know irresponsible tax cuts are the Republicans top plans.

So if the choice ends up being between another irresponsible tax cut for the affluent or for spending dedicated to rebuilding Iraq, what will Republicans choose?

James Pinkerton looks at President Bush's reelection prospects now that he has won the Iraq war. The signs are not all optimistic for President Bush and Karl Rove.

History teaches us that voters' support of wartime leaders can be quite fleeting once their concerns return to domestic matters. Pinkerton argues:

Since 9/11, the mood of the country has shifted, from private to public, away from wealth creation and conspicuous consumption toward sterner values of solidarity and sacrifice. If the heroes of the '90s were entrepreneurs and dot-commers, the heroes of the '00s are firefighters and GIs.

The president has stoked this mood, appearing regularly to rally the troops - and the voters. That's proven to be a great plan for mobilizing support for liberating the oppressed people of Iraq, but not such a good plan for seeking to liberate oppressed corporations in the United States.

Paul Krugman reminds us that as the Iraq war began, Republicans voted to cut veterans' benefits in order to help pay for a tax cut benefitting the rich.

And few noticed.

Krugman takes note of the lesson the GOP and Bush Administration has learned:

But back to the amazing spectacle of the war's opening, when the House voted to cut the benefits of the men and women it praised a few minutes earlier. What that scene demonstrated was the belief of the Republican leadership that if it wraps itself in the flag, and denounces critics as unpatriotic, it can get away with just about anything. And the scary thing is that this belief may be justified.

For the overwhelming political lesson of the last year is that war works — that is, it's an excellent cover for the Republican Party's domestic political agenda. In fact, war works in two ways. The public rallies around the flag, which means the President and his party; and the public's attention is diverted from other issues.

E.J. Dionne writes that the looting and disturbances in Iraq should remind us of an important lesson:

The lesson the looters teach is basic, and it is usually ignored: The alternative to tyranny is not the abolition of government. Absent a government committed to the protection of rights, there are no rights. Without government, individuals have no way to vindicate their rights to property, to basic personal liberty, to life itself.

What bunk. As Dionne observes:

What these groups never talk about, because it would wreck their story line, is the extent to which our personal and collective prosperity as a property-owning, enterprising people depends on strong and effective government. No government, no property. No government, no security from looting, theft or violence. No government, no national defense. No government, no social stability. No government, no securities law. No government, no food inspections, no consumer and environmental protection, no safeguards for workplace rights, no social insurance.

But it is not as obvious a thought as it once was. Anti-government conservatives and other groups, after all, have worked with some success to destroy our government's legitimacy over the past 25 years.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is attempting to slip a bill through Congress while poeple are preoccupied with the Iraq War. His proposal would eliminate the USA PATRIOT Act's sunset provisions. As the Los Angeles Times editorial writers explain:

Many in Congress voted for the Patriot Act only because of the agreement that lawmakers would have the opportunity to re- approve its most controversial changes after thorough review. They wisely wanted to see how the Justice Department used these new powers, whether there were abuses and whether the law was effective in combating terrorism. To protect American freedoms, they made sure some new powers not re- approved would expire in 2005. Yet since the act became law, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft has largely stonewalled congressional requests for information on Justice Department activities, angering even some Bush administration supporters.

Given that the Bush Administration has misused several of its provisions and Attorney General John Ashcroft scorns mandated Congressional oversight, now is not the time to remove the Act's sunset provisions.

Fred Hiatt discusses the impact the lies dictatorships tell their people (and force them to believe) are having throughout the world.

The fact that a 12-year-old Iraqi believes that her freedom has been taken away because Saddam has been removed from power is striking.

But the lies China continues to tell about how the SARS virus has and is spreading could ultimately threaten us all.

Mitch Albom writes about Baseball Hall of Fame President Dale Petroskey's decision to cancel a planned celebration for the movie Bull Durham.

As noted earlier here, Petroskey -- a former Reagan Administration official -- made his decision because he does not approve of political statements by Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, two of the movie's stars.

Worse, Petroskey joined the Republicans' slur campaign to label as unpatriotic anyone who dares disagree with President Bush by claiming that Robbins and Sarandon's words were putting our troops in danger. Albom rightly believes this to be nonsense:

Where do you begin with such misguided patriotism? First of all, it's the Baseball Hall of Fame, not the Pentagon. Petroskey's political views are no more appropriate there than Sarandon's and Robbins'. Who is this guy? Who decided the Hall of Fame's position on the Middle East?

Secondly, let's get beyond this "putting our troops in danger" thing. A couple of Hollywood types expressing their opinions does not put bullets in the face of our troops. Half the world spoke out against the war: I haven't seen our men and women going down because of it.

What I have seen is President Bush, in a message to the Iraqi people, saying "you will soon be free." Saying "the tyranny will end." Saying "the government belongs to you."

That's funny. What Bush wants to give to Iraqis, Mr. Petroskey won't share with his fellow Americans.

It was a good week for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas). Not only did he have a chance to fight for a grossly irresponsible tax cut, he also had an opportunity to reveal himself as a hypocrite yet again. The Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial writers explain:

The House on Friday approved tax cuts of $550 billion over 10 years as part of a $2.27 trillion budget for fiscal 2004. As stunningly irresponsible as that was, the House actually scaled back President Bush's request - for $726 billion in tax cuts - due to balking by moderate Republicans.

The Senate heard the voice of reason, declining to support such a large tax cut. As Republicans fought among themselves, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay suggested it would be better not to adopt a budget at all than to give up on the largest tax cut possible. It was a gallingly hypocritical comment for someone who led the cry against Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle last year for his failure to approve a budget.

Will California voters provide the initiative that begins a transformation towards a hydrogen-based energy economy?

James Pinkerton reports on the possibility that California voters may have to vote on a bond proposal including money to build some of the infrastructure needed to start us down that road.

Our national and economic security demands that we reduce -- if not eliminate -- our reliance on fossil fuels. If President Bush and the federal government continue in their refusal to lead, perhaps California voters will fill the void.

John Balzar highlights some disturbing numbers illustrating the United States' worsening health care crisis.

Among large companies, 22% say they are about to eliminate health-care coverage for employees who are nearing retirement. An additional 13% already have.

About 44% of these companies have raised the health-care premiums paid by retirees, and 36% now demand that retirees pay a greater share for medical treatment. The average increased cost for new retirees last year was 20%.

Looking ahead, 82% of large companies say more premium increases and benefit caps are coming in the next three years.

Asked to rank their worries, Americans in 2003 put the affordability of health care ahead of terrorism, crime, job security and the loss of their savings in the stock market.

It turned out that Dean's opposition to the Iraqi war moved him to the top tier of candidates. The nation's growing health care crisis is going to keep him there.

Clarence Page explains that there is an important debate underway right now about the future of the United States' foreign policy. He is rightly displeased, however, that this debate is going on behind closed doors at the White House and not on the floor of Congress.

Steve Chapman examines our nation's grand new mission: that of an empire. The fact that the Bush Administration has not been candid with the American people about these new burdens shall not remove them. Chapman explains:

By redefining the war on terror as a war against any nation anywhere that could conceivably pose a threat to us anytime in the next 500 years, and by throwing in a desire to spread democracy by the bayonet, President Bush has given America a grand mission in the world. And it's so ambitious that it could make the Cold War look like the Whiskey Rebellion.

The president and his aides have been loath to acknowledge the size of the burden we're shouldering in Iraq. But when you take over responsibility for running a shattered, strife-ridden nation the size of California, you can't expect the job to be quick, easy or cheap. It could take years, and it could cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

We are now responsible for Iraq. This obligation, moreover, will not be measured in months.

Thomas Oliphant makes an important observation about Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds:

The most recent arrangement by Secretary of State Colin Powell with Turkish foreign minister Abdullah Gul is that the observers can stay to watch the Kurdish troops leave Kirkuk.

That's where the concessions must stop. Turkey has no right to play sphere of influence games in northern Iraq, no right to block autonomy for the Kurds in a new Iraq federation, and no right to object if Kurds seek to return to homes in Kirkuk and Mosul from which they were brutally evicted by Saddam Hussein.

It's bad enough that the Kurds are not receiving the proper affection and gratitude for all they have done to help topple Saddam. The kid glove treatment of a misbehaving alleged ally, Turkey, needs to stop now.

David Broder writes about a conference he attended last week dedicated to figuring out how to involve an increasingly disconnected U.S. electorate in the health care reform debate.

An admitted sports fan himself, Broder knows that most of the nation's water cooler conversation focuses on sports events or reality television programming. Major reform solutions to problems like the increasing health care crisis will not be possible, however, unless a larger share of the U.S. public can be persuaded to engage in the debate. Broder writes:

In short, there are useful things to do, even in a time of tight budgets. But the status quo will not be broken in a major way unless somehow -- perhaps through the coming presidential campaign -- the public is mobilized for the fight. If people are ever stirred up about health care the way they are over the Masters' green jacket or the men on the sidelines at basketball tournament time, something might happen.

Michael Kinsley has the gall to continue to point out the unanswered questions of the White House's Iraq policy. I guess he has decided to ignore the unspoken (and pathetically stupid) assumption that such discussion is unpatriotic.

But the serious case against this war was never that we might actually lose it militarily.

The serious case involved questions that are still unresolved. Factual questions: Is there a connection between Iraq and the perpetrators of 9/11? Is that connection really bigger than that of all the countries we're not invading? Does Iraq really have or almost have weapons of mass destruction that threaten the United States? Predictive questions: What will toppling Hussein ultimately cost in dollars and in lives (American, Iraqi, others)? Will the result be a stable Iraq and a blossoming of democracy in the Middle East or something less attractive? How many young Muslims and others will be turned against the United States and what will they do about it?

Political questions: Should we be doing this despite the opposition of most of our traditional allies? Without the approval of the United Nations? Moral questions: Is it justified to make "preemptive" war on nations that might threaten us in the future? When do internal human rights, or the lack of them, justify a war? Is there a policy about preemption and human rights that we are prepared to apply consistently? Does consistency matter? Even etiquette questions: Before Bush begins trying to create a civil society in Iraq, wouldn't it be nice if he apologized to Bill Clinton and Al Gore for all the nasty, dismissive things he said about "nation-building" in the 2000 campaign?

Finally Kinsley aptly sums up the real problem facing many of the people who are skeptical about this war. At least, he describes well what is also my point of view:

The psychological challenge of opposing a war like this after it has started isn't supporting the American troops but hoping to be proven wrong. That, though, is the burden of pessimism on all subjects. As a skeptic, at the least, about Gulf War II, I do hope to be proven wrong. But it hasn't happened yet.

Nicholas Kristof will not make many friends among the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz wing of American life by pointing out that:

Perhaps it's churlish to say this so soon after an impressive military victory, but we may have underestimated the risk of chaos in postwar Iraq.

Remember, Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki infuriated Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz faction with his claim that "something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would be required to occupy postwar Iraq.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz snidely told reporters that Sinseki was "way off the mark" with his estimate. But, as Kristof explains:

But General Shinseki knows this subject — he commanded peacekeeping forces in Bosnia — and he looks smarter each day.

I hope that the images of lawlessness coming from cities around Iraq today are just a momentary blip in the plan. But I wonder why our leaders were able to so flippantly deride the concerns of a military man who has experience dealing with the chaos that is one of the obvious results from regime change.

Perhaps the Bush Administration will not follow its pattern of "conquest and neglect" with Iraq because they like to try to prove Paul Krugman wrong. As Krugman explains:

Credit where credit is due: the hawks were right to say that a whiff of precision-guided grapeshot would lead to the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime. But even skeptics about this war expected a military victory. ("Of course we'll win on the battlefield, probably with ease" was the opening line of my start-of-the-war column.) Instead, we worried — and continue to worry — about what would follow. As another skeptic, Michael Kinsley of Slate, wrote yesterday: "I do hope to be proven wrong. But it hasn't happened yet."

Why worry? I won't pretend to have any insights into what is going on in the minds of the Iraqi people. But there is a pattern to the Bush administration's way of doing business that does not bode well for the future — a pattern of conquest followed by malign neglect.

Perhaps our media entities can keep a few reporters embedded in Iraq to watch how the rebuilding goes. I know the United States public seems to have a short attention span, but some stories remain important even after all the explosions are done.

Want to know why I am skeptical of our ability to rebuild Iraq?

Because of our failures in Afghanistan. Salon's Jake Tapper reports on our broken promises:

As we consider reconstruction plans in Iraq, and the administration promises to democratize the country, it's worth taking a look at our "liberation" of Afghanistan. A year later, many of the atrocities we thought we'd stopped still continue, and even Bush's allies in the Senate and Afghanistan think we have undercommitted to efforts that could truly change that country for the better.

We must, moreover, not make these mistakes in Iraq. Our national security is at stake.

42,116 people (link is to a pdf document) died in highway accidents during 2001.

Matthew Miller wonders what would happen if the cable networks decided to give highway fatalities the 24/7 media treatment.

You have likely seen this Theodore Roosevelt quote before. I believe that given what is happening in the world, and especially this nation, today another citiation of it is in order.

On May 7, 1918, TR wrote an editorial for the Kansas City Star. This was also during a time of war in our nation's history, as American troops were fighting in World War I.

Should Americans keep their views about the president silent during wartime? Not according to Theodore Roosevelt. He wrote (scroll down on the page for the quote):

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

But, as TR noted, the real lack of patriotism comes from those who say that no criticism of the president can be tolerated.

Even during a time of war.

The Baseball Hall of Fame has cancelled a celebration planned for the 15th anniversary of Bull Durham, one of the best baseball movies ever made.

The decision was made in response to the anti-war statements made by two of the movie's stars, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon.

Okay.

The Baseball Hall of Fame has every right to make such a decision. Yes, it was a boneheaded one. The problem comes with the "justification" for the decision outlined by the Hall of Fame's president.

The Hall of Fame could have said that they did not want to create controversy right now. They could have stopped there and few would have cared.

Of course, since the Baseball Hall of Fame's president is a former Reagan Administration official, the Hall of Fame went much further. There is, after all, a great effort going on to tag any criticism of President Bush as anti-patriotic. Even anti-American. One must not pass on a chance like this when such a slur campaign is underway.

Hall of Fame President Dale Petroskey, in his letter announcing the cancelled celebration, informed Robbins and Sarandon that:

"We believe your very public criticism of President Bush at this important -- and sensitive -- time in our nation's history helps undermine the U.S. position, which ultimately could put our troops in even more danger. As an institution, we stand behind our President and our troops in this conflict." (emphasis added)

I would like Petroskey to explain how Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon making statements against the war "could put our troops in even more danger." Really. Perhaps when I was three years old I may have been tricked by such illogic. Not today.

These slurs are absolutely unacceptable. When Republican leaders complained about President Clinton when he sent military forces into action they were not risking our troops. The same principle applies today.

Rather, it should.

If Petroskey did not want to give Robbins and Sarandon a platform during this time, I could have accepted that. But he just had to get in his anti-patriotic condemnation.

Criticizing the President does not provide aid and comfort to the enemy. If Republicans cannot understand that, I am sure they can find a remedial civics course at a local community college where an instructor would be happy to explain the First Amendment to them.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) was quoted in the March 12 Congress Daily saying:

"Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes."

Johns Hopkins Professor of Economics Christopher D. Carroll analyzes this Bush Administration misrepresentation in a Baltimore Sun op-ed today. He notes that the White House has argued that its tax cut passage should be passed as a way to support our troops in Iraq. He writes:

Maybe next we will be told that the estate tax should be repealed on behalf of the unemployed, or that the corporate income tax should be eliminated to help struggling single mothers. Such arguments would be hardly less plausible than the idea that a tax plan whose central element is the elimination of dividend taxation should be passed on behalf of the troops.

But the point he makes is a good one. Military salaries simply do not allow many of our servicemen and women to accumulate stocks that would pay dividends. General Tommy Franks makes $154,000 -- a small amount compared to what civilian CEOs earn. New enlisted military personnel have a base pay around $12,000 per year.

Carroll explains that if the White House were serious about helping our military men and women it could propose a tax cut targeting them. Perhaps, for example, an increase in their personal exemption. Carroll finds the White House's refusal to acknowledge this troubling.

That the administration has made no such proposals makes it hard to resist the conclusion that the call to pass the latest tax cut on behalf of the troops is an attempt to manipulate patriotism in pursuit of an agenda that has nothing to do with the welfare of service members.

By arguing that cutting taxes -- and not the welfare of those in the military -- is the most important thing in wartime, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has already made that point.

Richard Cohen looks at the images from yesterday's toppling of the Saddam statue in Baghdad and notes the cautionary message they contained for our government. He writes:

Sometimes, a picture really is worth a thousand words. The picture I have in mind is the stirring one seen on TV when U.S. soldiers draped an American flag over the face of Saddam Hussein's massive statue in Baghdad's Firdaus Square. It made me feel good. But not the crowd in Baghdad. It went sullen. When Old Glory was taken down a moment later and an Iraqi flag was substituted for it, the crowd erupted in cheers. This, alas, was truly reality TV.

Unlike the people of Eastern Europe, who loathed communism and admired the United States, it's likely that most Iraqis loathed Hussein but have no particular fondness for the United States. Among other things, we have been bombing their cities and killing their soldiers for the past three weeks.

The United States is once again in a part of the world that is not Christian and not Western and not particularly enamored of America's values -- everything from its hip-hugging secularism to its unstinting support of Israel. Americans have been welcomed in such parts of the world before -- Lebanon, Somalia -- and then sent packing when elements of the local population turned homicidal. This could happen in Iraq as well.

But Iraq is not really a country. It is at least three. Cohen goes on to describe the caution then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney showed when asked why the United States stopped the Gulf War in 1991:

"Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it," Cheney said. "It's not clear what kind of government you put in place. Is it going to be a Shiite regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? . . . How much credibility is that government going to have if it's set up by United States military when it's there?"

The law of unintended consequences is now in full effect. I was never afraid that our military would fail. Winning the war was never in doubt.

I was, and remain, quite afraid about what will happen now in Iraq and the Arab world. The Bush Administration has never proven adept at diplomacy. Those skills, however, have rarely been more important than they are today.

While the Iraqi war is not over, we have at leaest arrived at the beginning of the end with yesterday's dramatic events in liberated parts of Baghdad. How can a person not celebrate the first public debates seen in Baghdad in three decades?

Now as our military servicepeople continue to destroy the final remnants of Saddam's regime, the hard work is about to begin.

I am concerned that we will face revenge terror attacks from the families and friends of those who have been killed in this war. One way to mitigate that problem, and ensure that Iraq transitions into a self-governing Republic, is to properly manage the rebuilding process and the transition towards a civilian government. I remain unconvinced that our government is up to this important task.

The Washington Post's editorial writers make this point today:

Yet the best way to build on the success of the Iraqi military campaign will be not by threatening other regimes but by allowing Iraqis to construct a government that offers them political freedom, human rights and a chance to prosper in the global economy. That task will be in many ways harder, and will certainly take longer, than this waning war; and the Bush administration's readiness for it is questionable.

Paul Krugman makes an important point today. He is rightly tired of the ongoing Republican effort to equate criticism of President Bush's policies with a lack of patriotism. He writes:

Last week John Kerry told an audience that "what we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States." Republicans immediately sought to portray this remark as little short of treason. "Senator Kerry crossed a grave line when he dared to suggest the replacement of America's commander in chief at a time when America is at war," declared Marc Racicot, chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Notice that Mr. Racicot wasn't criticizing Mr. Kerry's choice of words. Instead, he denounced Mr. Kerry because he "dared to suggest the replacement of America's commander in chief" — knowing full well that Mr. Kerry was simply talking about the next election. Mr. Racicot, not Mr. Kerry, is the one who crossed a grave line; never in our nation's history has it been considered unpatriotic to oppose an incumbent's re-election. (emphasis added)

After all, as Krugman reminds us, even President Franklin Delano Roosevelt faced a spirited election fight in 1944 as U.S. troops were fighting World War II. No credible person then thought that Thomas Dewey was providing aid and comfort to the enemy.

Some hypocrites are focusing on Kerry's use of the phrase "regime change" and trying to make it appear that Kerry was calling for President Bush's overthrow instead of his defeat in the next general election.

But it was okay to refer to President Clinton is leading a regime. Even Andrew Sullivan wrote of the "Clinton regime." (Thanks, Atrios.) In fact, a quick Google search for "Clinton regime" returns over 2,100 results -- including several from Republican politicians or institutions. (Thanks, David Neiwert.)

So what is really going on here?

It seems possible that once this Iraq war is concluded that President Bush may at least rhetorically return to the war against terrorism. An effort, President Bush warns, that could take years to complete.

It would be pretty convenient, would it not, if the Republicans could create an atmosphere that for years makes any criticism of President Bush on national security matters "unpatriotic"? As Krugman argues:

For years to come, then, this country may be, in some sense, at war. And all that time, if Mr. Racicot and his party are allowed to set the ground rules, nobody will be allowed to criticize the president or call for his electoral defeat. You know what? If that happens, we will have lost the war, whatever happens on the battlefield.

Our brave men and women in uniform fight and have fought for many things. One of them is for our right to disagree with whomever is in power.

Those who find these attempts to stifle debate now detestable -- or perhaps in conflict with this nation's founding principles -- need to speak up now. This devious effort by Marc Racicot, Tom DeLay, Trent Lott, George Allen, and other Republican leaders must not be allowed to succeed.

Philadelphia Inquirer Commentary Page Editor John Timpane takes a look at the important SETI@home project. He writes:

SETI@home is quite a project. An estimated 4.3 million people in 226 countries have volunteered their computers' free time to help comb the universe for leads. Participants download a screensaver program. When their computers are idle, the screensaver program kicks in and communicates with a computer at the University of California at Berkeley, which sends the participant a chunk of data, which the computer in turn analyzes and sends back. At one time, this project constituted the largest supercomputer in the world.

"We'll never know unless we look."

Attorney General John Ashcroft is not the only government leader threatening our civil liberties.

Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) is now trying to sneak the RAVE Act into the AMBER Alert bill during the conference committee negotiations.

Talkleft has all the information about this sneak attack on your rights and what you can do to help stop it.

Here's the excerpt from my post today on the Political State Report:

Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters previews the next few months of expected events in California's debate over its $30 billion deficit. The state's political process faces a gathering storm resulting from the need to borrow more than $10 billion to cover a cash flow shortfall, the constitutionally mandated deadline to pass a budget, and an expected court ruling on a lawsuit that will decide whether state workers can be paid without a budget in place.

You can read more from this post by following this link.

Cragg Hines wonders why the United States would consider appointing to a leading administrative position in Iraq a person who helped botch the investigation into Al Qaeda's attack against the USS Cole?

As Hines explains, former Ambassador Barbara Bodine would be an odd choice for a major post-war Iraq job for several reasons:

As one report observed last week: "Bodine has extensive ties to Iraqis but not the right ones." A senior administration official was quoted: "She only knows the Baathists, because that's who she dealt with and she's never bothered getting to know the democratic opposition very well."

Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) make a case for an international effort to rebuild Iraq after the war is over. They write:

In short, we must internationalize our policies for rebuilding a postwar Iraq, even as we retain full control on the security side, ideally with the involvement of NATO, the EU and countries in the region. The best way to do that is through a new U.N. resolution authorizing the necessary security, humanitarian, reconstruction and political missions in a post-conflict Iraq.

As we were told by our allies in the region in December and in subsequent meetings, securing the United Nations' endorsement would give political cover to leaders from allied countries whose people oppose the war, allowing them to justify their participation -- including financial participation -- in building the peace. It also would open the door to NATO, the European Union and the World Bank.

We must not allow the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz wing to win the debate over the Iraqi war's aftermath.

A Washington Post editorial today examines the case of Army Sgt. Dennis Maher, who was recently cleared of two rapes and an attempted rape after DNA testing, and wonders whether our judicial system can trust eyewitness testimony.

Here's the excerpt from my post today on the Political State Report:

The California Broadcasters Association is sponsoring an effort that will seek to ensure that the state's gubernatorial candidates will appear in a series of debates during the 2006 election campaign. As the Sacramento Bee's Daniel Weintraub explains, the quality of debate during the recent campaign between Gov. Gray Davis (D) and Bill Simon (R) was "was about as poor as could be for a contest to choose the leader of the nation's largest state."

You can read more from this post by following this link.

The New York Times Magazine's Jeff Madrick makes an apt analogy between Washington's fiscal crisis today and those analysts who tried to deny reality during the internet bubble:

The denial of economic reality that permeated Wall Street a few years ago has now migrated to Washington. On Wall Street, when companies did not generate the promised profits to justify the bubble in stock prices, many analysts told investors that profits did not matter. A new economy would be gauged by other measures, they insisted. Today, in similar fashion, as the federal budget has plunged into the red over the past two years, President Bush's economic team is telling the nation that deficits no longer matter.

But the internet bubble's burst, the recession, the war with Iraq, and President Bush's misguided tax cuts have combined to create a sea of red ink. Madrick summarizes the situation:

The consequence of all these steps? Budget deficits as far as the eye can see. When Bush took office, his budget team estimated there would be a cumulative surplus of some $5.6 trillion over the next 10 years. Now, in light of the 2003 tax cuts and the new Bush budget, the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan economic research arm of Congress, calculates that a long-term surplus will turn into a $1.8 trillion deficit between 2004 and 2013.

Unfortunately, economists outside the government estimate that the deficit will be even larger. William Gale and Peter Orszag of the Brookings Institution figure the deficit is likely to approach $2.5 trillion. The Wall Street economists William Dudley and Edward McKelvey of Goldman Sachs say that the deficit will exceed $4 trillion by 2013.

Instead of preparing for the so-called demographic tsunami of the baby boom generation's retirement, President Bush and our government leaders are engaged in fiscal games that will -- not probably -- will force tax increases on our children and grandchildren in the future.

The late former Sen. Paul Tsongas (D-Mass.) argued that perpetual deficits were "generationally immoral." (As this link shows, Republicans used to agree.) Tsongas understood that large deficits today -- especially when caused by huge tax cuts -- will result in large tax increases in the future.

We have an obligation not to pass along to future generations such a legacy.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was struck by a momentary attack of public candor this morning on Fox News Sunday. As Reuters reports:

Paul Wolfowitz, the U.S. deputy defense secretary, said on Sunday that it will take more than six months for an Iraqi government to be created to run the country after President Saddam Hussein's regime has been defeated.

Wolfowitz, in fact, famously shot down an estimate made by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki about the size of the force needed to occupy post-war Iraq by telling the House Budget Committee that it was "not a good time to publish highly suspect numbers."

NBC reporter David Bloom died today of a pulmonary embolism while with the 3rd Infantry Division outside of Baghdad. He is the second U.S. reporter, and sixth reporter overall, to die during this war

Bloom was a reporter with whom I worked a couple times a few years ago when we was NBC's White House correspondent and I was handling communications for the Concord Coalition. He was fair, smart, and a joy with which to work. (Even if the not-missed Brill's Content unfairly did not think so.)

My condolences go out to his wife and three daughters.

Army Chaplain Josh Llano is quite the spiritual entrepreneur. The Miami Herald's Meg Laughlin reports:

In this dry desert world near Najaf, where the Army V Corps combat support system sprawls across miles of scabrous dust, there's an oasis of sorts: a 500-gallon pool of pristine, cool water.

It belongs to Army chaplain Josh Llano of Houston, who sees the water shortage, which has kept thousands of filthy soldiers from bathing for weeks, as an opportunity.

''It's simple. They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptized,'' he said.

Our servicemen and servicewomen have been fighting a war for more than two weeks. Many of them have not had the opportunity to bathe in at least that amount of time.

Now an Army chaplain takes advantage of this situation to undertake religious extortion?

What if the serviceperson is Jewish, or Muslim, or atheist? Who does this supposed man of God think he is to force his views on the people who are fighting this war?

Why are the local non-religious military commanders tolerating it?

(Thanks to Talkleft and Atrios for the link.)

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) today responded to recent Republican slurs against his patriotism. He noted that he did not need any lessons in patriotism from a draft dodger like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).

It's about time Democrats started fighting back.

Speaking of DeLay, Kerry had a specific response for DeLay's contention that "Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes." Kerry said:

And I say to Tom DeLay, one thing I know about America is that in the face of war there are things more important than cutting taxes and it is wrong to reward the wealthiest Americans before we fulfill our solemn obligations to those that have served.

They should have learned this lesson after the travesty perpetuated against former Senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.), a man who had his patriotism questioned despite having left three limbs on a Vietnamese battlefield Tom DeLay and many of today's Republican leaders avoided.

Sen. John Kerry realizes this important fact. Other Democrats need to echo his sentiments.

A headline on Jim Romenesko's Media News today:

Most media ethicists applaud CNN's reporter surgery work

Some media ethics watchdogs today are arguing that CNN Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta's objectivity is now in question because he had the gall to attempt to save the life of a critically injured Iraqi child who was hit in the head with shrapnel.

Gupta, a neurosurgeon, was pressed into service in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt save a child's life.

The media watchdogs who are so concerned about Gupta's objectivity might want to take a breath and look at the important part of this story: a 2-year-old was critically injured and needed Gupta's expertise.

Against that, media "objective" purity does not begin to matter.

I often did not agree with him, but I will miss his writing and his editing.

His colleagues at the New Republic have offered some thoughts in tribute to his memory. Gregg Easterbrook's tribute is particularly worth a read.

My thoughts go out to Kelly's wife, his two young children, and the serviceperson who died with him.

The Poynter web site also has memorials to the other journalists who have lost their lives covering the Iraqi war.

David Ignatius analyzes the current Bush Administration debate about control over postwar Iraq. He writes:

On one side are hawks in the Bush administration, especially the civilian leadership of the Pentagon, who want a U.S.-dominated military occupation. On the other is a broad coalition that includes some U.S. State Department officials, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and America's chief economic ally in the Middle East, the oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They want an advisory role for the United Nations and a decisive voice for the Iraqis themselves.

While the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz hawks may have grander designs for the region, we must focus on rebuilding Iraq and making good on our promises there. We must return Iraq to Iraqi control as soon as possible. We need to involve the rest of the world (with the exception of France) in the reconstruction.

It is time for moderates to draw a line. The hardliners have had their way long enough.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay last month told a reporter that:

"Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes."

It is nice to know that the Republican leadership's priorities are in order.

President Bush keeps warning audiences about terrorist threats to our domestic security. Perhaps it might be time for the White House and Congress to get serious about funding security arrangements in our highest risk areas?

Homeland security funding remains sparse. Worse, what little money has been allocated is being sent to areas that are not the highest-risk targets. As a Los Angeles Times editorial notes:

Yet smaller states are getting more money per capita than big ones. According to a New York City study of the previous $600-million federal homeland security allocation, the least funding per capita went to California ($1.33) and New York state ($1.38). Wyoming got $9.78 per capita. The distribution formula was developed in part by a committee then chaired by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), whose own thinly populated state got $8.15 per capita.

Joan Vennochi wonders:

Is unpleasant truth now treason? Every day we are told we are bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. How can we celebrate democracy without dissent, one of its cornerstones? ''American history is replete with dissension in times of war,'' says political consultant Michael Goldman, who teaches a course in politics, media, and law at Tufts University. One example he gives in class includes John Quincy Adams's last speech on the floor of the House. The former president spoke out against the war America was waging against Mexico under President James K. Polk.

Dissent is a vital aspect of this great national experiment in self-governance -- even in war time. Under President Clinton leading Republicans like Rep. Tom DeLay and Sen. Trent Lott embraced that fact. Too bad their memories have proven so short and their principles so wavering.

Paul Krugman explains that the SARS outbreak could put the breaks on the nation's almost nonexistent economic recovery. The short-term economic news is not promising for many reasons.

David Broder examines a vital debate underway in Washington concerning how to govern and rebuild Iraq after the United States and British forces win the current war.

The outcome of this debate will have a direct impact on our national security. If the Cheney/Rumsfeld wing wins the argument and the United States refuses to allow the United Nations to play a lead role in the war aftermath, we will become a bigger terrorist target.

Broder sums up the situation:

As is often the case, no one is quite certain where President Bush stands in this debate. The hard-liners inside and outside the administration -- the same people who pressed for taking on Saddam Hussein -- are arguing that the United Nations showed its true colors when it refused to enforce its own ultimatum to Iraq, so the hell with it. But Bush's staunchest ally, Britain's Tony Blair, the State Department and now a significant group of internationalists in Congress who supported the resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq all are pressing Bush to invite the United Nations and other countries to share the postwar duties in Iraq.

This is a debate that Blair and the State Department must win.

Chris Mooney suggests that those protesting the war might want to stop trying to alienate the rest of the nation with their protests. He writes:

When asked, "Do you have a generally favorable or unfavorable opinion of anti-war protestors?", Americans responded as follows: 23% favorable, 63% unfavorable, and 14% not sure. This is even worse than I thought it would be.

Now, it seems to me that if you're an anti-war protester, and you see numbers like this, you have to ask yourself: Is shutting down traffic in the middle of New York City really doing any good? Is the cause of world peace furthered by what I'm doing? Or am I just strengthening and confirming the belligerent views of the rest of the country?

Mooney is not the only one who thinks so.

James Pinkerton writes that on the Churchill to LBJ war leader continuum, President Bush falls more on the LBJ "credibility gap" side of the ledger.

Paul Krugman points out the terrible truth behind the Republicans' homeland security spending strategy:

In other words, the allocation of money confirms Mr. Chait's point: even in a time of war — a war that seems oddly unrelated to the terrorist threat — the Bush administration isn't serious about protecting the homeland. Instead, it continues to subordinate U.S. security needs to its unchanged political agenda.

TAPPED rightly thinks it is time for Democrats to fight back against conservative attacks at their patriotism.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), men who actually have served in the military, have had their patriotism challenged by people who had other priorities during the Vietnam War era.

In short, it is time to say: How dare they!

Demcrats must fight against this pathetic litmus test. Rep. Rangel, was was tagged as a member of a "anti-American left" by neoconservative William Kristol over the weekend, is as much of a patriot as any United States citizen. As TAPPED notes:

That's Charles Rangel, who walks around every day with piece of North Korean shrapnel lodged in his butt, getting impugned as anti-American by Bill Kristol, who's never served. Where's the outrage? Where are the Democrats?

Prisoner of War Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch was rescued earlier today. This is obviously excellent news and those forces involved in the mission deserve much credit for the success.