JFK 2.0

Last night Democratic presidential nominee Senator John Kerry put forth an optimistic and clear vision for America's future. He spoke with quiet conviction, eloquence, and a sincerity that is often lacking in political rhetoric. I thought he gave a great speech. Here are some of my favorite lines...

"Remember the hours after September 11th when we came together as one to answer the attack against our homeland. We drew strength when our firefighters ran up stairs and risked their lives so that others might live; when rescuers rushed into smoke and fire at the Pentagon; when the men and women of Flight 93 sacrificed themselves to save our nation's Capitol; when flags were hanging from front porches all across America, and strangers became friends. It was the worst day we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us...

...Now, I know there that are those who criticize me for seeing complexities -- and I do -- because some issues just aren't all that simple. Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so. Saying we can fight a war on the cheap doesn't make it so. And proclaiming "Mission accomplished" certainly doesn't make it so...

...As president, I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in war. Before you go to battle, you have to be able to look a parent in the eye and truthfully say, "I tried everything possible to avoid sending your son or daughter into harm's way, but we had no choice... we had to protect the American people, fundamental American values against a threat that was real and imminent...

Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and a certain response...I will never give any nation or any institution a veto over our national security...

...As president, I will fight a smarter, more effective war on terror. We will deploy every tool in our arsenal: our economic as well as our military might, our principles as well as our firepower. In these dangerous days, there is a right way and a wrong way to be strong. Strength is more than tough words...

...We need to make America once again a beacon in the world. We need to be looked up to, not just feared...

And then, with confidence and determination, we will be able to tell the terrorists: You will lose, and we will win." The future doesn't belong to fear; it belongs to
freedom...

And tonight, we have an important message for those who question the patriotism of Americans who offer a better direction for our country. Before wrapping themselves in the flag and shutting their eyes to the truth and their ears, they should remember what America is really all about. They should remember the great idea of freedom for which so many have given their lives. Our purpose now is to reclaim our democracy itself. We are here to affirm that when Americans stand up and speak their minds and say America can do better, that is not a challenge to patriotism; it is the heart and soul of patriotism....

...And when I am president, we will stop being the only advanced nation in the world which fails to understand that health care is not a privilege for the wealthy, and the connected and the elected; it is a right for all Americans...

This is our time to reject the kind of politics calculated to divide race from race, region from region, group from group.

Maybe some just see us divided into those red states and blue states, but I see us as one America: red, white and blue.

And when I am president, the government I lead will enlist people of talent, Republicans as well as Democrats, to find the common ground, so that no one who has something to contribute to our nation will be left on the sidelines.

And let me say it plainly: In that cause, and in this campaign, we welcome people of faith. America is not us and them.

I think of what Ron Reagan said of his father a few weeks ago, and I want to say this to you tonight: I don't wear my religion on my sleeve, but faith has given me values and hope to live by, from Vietnam to this day, from Sunday to Sunday.

I don't want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side.(Best line in the
speech)

Never has there been a moment more urgent for Americans to step up and define ourselves. I will work my heart out. But, my fellow citizens, the outcome is in your hands more than mine. It is time to reach for the next dream. It is time to look to the next horizon. For America, the hope is there. The sun is rising. Our best days are still to come.

Thank you. Good night. God bless you, and God
bless the United States of America."

Hell of a speech!

Johnny B. Good!

Slate's William Saletan was at the Democratic Convention last night, and this is what he has to say about John Edwards electrifying speech, 

"For three nights, I've sat in the periodical press section with cynical and often disinterested reporters. Tonight, however, our section is packed. For the first time all week, journalists are standing up all around me, craning to see the speaker as he strides onto the stage. This tells you all you need to know about the media's relationship with Edwards. Their lips say nothing, but their necks say yes, yes, yes...
 
The speech is familiar to anyone who has heard Edwards speak during the primaries...But tonight's only important target is the folks at home who haven't heard him before...What matters is that Edwards says several things the Democratic ticket urgently needs to say, and he says them perfectly.
 
He begins with the Democratic buzzwords of the year: values, faith, family...Coming from Edwards, they sound natural, in part because he addresses them not to the audience as a whole but to his parents, who are in attendance. "You taught me" these values, he tells his mom and dad...
 
"You taught me that there's dignity and honor in a hard day's work," Edwards tells his mother and his father. "You taught me ... you never look down on anybody." I follow him through the advance text that's been handed out to reporters. He keeps ad libbing, substituting the second person for the third, or changing the plural to the singular, or turning second-person statements into second-person questions. He's personalizing the speech.
 
...He speaks of a mother who can't pay her bills because her husband has been called up for National Guard duty in Iraq. "She thinks she's alone," says Edwards. "But tonight in this hall and in your homes, you know what? She's got a lot of friends." The crowd roars its approval. In the next breath, Edwards promises not to bring our troops home but to "bring him home"—the woman's husband. Everything is singular because stories are what people understand. So when you return home and pass a mother on her way to work, he tells the convention, "You tell her, hope is on the way."
 
Edwards tells America that Kerry volunteered three times for his country: first for military service, then for Vietnam, then for dangerous Swift boat duty. He recalls how Kerry pulled a soldier from a river under fire and on another occasion turned his boat toward the enemy and beached it to take out the threat. What Edwards adds is a concise summation of why the story matters: "Decisive, strong—is this not what we need in a commander in chief?"
 
On economics, Edwards takes a subject that has been droned to death at the convention and sharpens it into a weapon that can pry culturally conservative voters away from the GOP. "A job is about more than a paycheck," he says. "It's about dignity and self-respect. Hard work should be valued in this country, so we're going to reward work, not just wealth." Responsibility, he argues, implies reciprocal responsibility. "Their families are doing their part," Edwards says of full-time workers. "It's time we did our part."
 
On national security, too, he hits the right points in the right way. "We will take care of them, because they have taken care of us," he says of veterans. To al-Qaida, he delivers with bull's-eye precision the words millions of nervous voters have waited to hear from the Democratic ticket: "You cannot run. You cannot hide. We will destroy you."
 
Edwards slows down as he utters these words because he understands that they're the most important moment of the night. At other junctures, he signifies crucial statements and quiets the crowd not by raising his voice but by lowering it. He does this when he turns the discussion to racial discrimination. He does it again when he turns to national security. We must unite the country, he says, with a descent into hushed gravity, "because we are at war." He does it again when he speaks of soldiers wounded in Iraq. "They need their mother to tie their shoe," he says. "Their husband to brush their hair. Their wife's arm to help them cross the room." The hall goes absolutely silent..."

Senator John Edwards gave a great speech last night, a terrific speech.  And the scary thing is, I've seen him perform much better then he did last night.  Republicans beware..."Hope is on the Way!"

 

SHOVE OFF!

What you haven't heard about Teresa and her "shove off" remark.
 
By Joe Conason

"In the case of Teresa Heinz Kerry, many in the media determined that she was trouble long before they even had a glimpse of her. Smart and dedicated, wealthy and opinionated, globally conscious and foreign-born, Ms. Heinz Kerry isn’t the typical political spouse our parochial press is accustomed to covering. So they were waiting for her to say something like what she said on July 25, after a reception for Democratic delegates from her home state of Pennsylvania. 

That was when she told an editorial writer for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review to "shove it."
 
Now the use of such direct language by a politician’s wife is no doubt shocking to the sensibilities of most journalists, especially the older male contingent. It’s one thing for the Republican Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates to berate a reporter as an "asshole" when they think nobody is listening, as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney did four years ago, or for the Vice President to growl "Go fuck yourself" on the Senate floor, as Mr. Cheney did a few weeks ago. Boys will be boys, even into late middle age, but girls must ever remain passive and demure...
 
...But it is also fair to ask why she rounded on the man from the Tribune-Review.

The innocuously named newspaper has long served as the weapon of Richard Mellon Scaife, its founder and publisher. His name is now synonymous with the campaign of hate and calumny focused on the Clintons during the 1990’s, but to Ms. Heinz Kerry, his methods were familiar long before he achieved any national notoriety...
 
Although both men were Republicans, Heinz tended to be moderate and occasionally even liberal, while Mr. Scaife was increasingly conservative, attracted to conspiracy theories and aggressive extremism. Years before her first husband’s death in 1991, Teresa Heinz came to feel that Mr. Scaife had misused his newspaper to punish her and her husband for dissenting from right-wing Republican orthodoxy. Since her marriage to John Kerry in 1995, the hostility of the Scaife press and the outfits funded by Scaife foundations toward her has been nothing short of vicious.
 
A few days after the Massachusetts Senator and his wife celebrated their second Christmas together, the Tribune-Review ran a column suggesting that Mr. Kerry had been enjoying a "very private" relationship with another woman. There was no byline on the story and no evidence to support the salacious insinuation. There was nothing to it, in fact, except pure malice.
 
...Last spring, a Scaife-funded "research group" sent out a study that accused her of covertly financing violent radicals of various kinds, including Islamists, through the straitlaced Heinz foundations that she controls. There was absolutely no basis for that tale—as the right-wing sleuths could have learned by making a single phone call. The Heinz money they had "traced" through a San Francisco group had actually gone in its entirety to support anti-pollution projects in Pennsylvania...
 
Those are only a few brief examples among dozens. The Scaife disinformation conglomerate has churned out nastiness about Ms. Heinz Kerry by the carload for years, and finally she talked back. The guy she scorched last Sunday was meant to take that message back to his boss in Pittsburgh—a man who has deserved the brunt of such refreshing candor for a long, long time."

 
I Guess that liberal media just forget to mention this important aspect of the story.

To summarize, Teresa tells a reporter who's paper has been slandering her family for years to "shove off"..........Vice President Dick Cheney tells a United States Senator to go fuck himself on the Senate floor, and goes on to say he felt better after he said it.....

Which is worse?

I report, you decide.

OOOOO-BAMA!

I know everyone is saying it, but this guy is something!!! 

Here's a great section of his speech last night, 
 

"Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters, and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal Amercan and a conservative America -- there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and a white America -- there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States [...] but I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

 
 
This is not the last time we'll be hearing from this "skinny guy...with a funny name...".

The Return of the King

Say what you will about President Bill Clinton’s personal life, he is unquestionably the most skillful politician of my lifetime.   Here are some highlights from the speech he gave at the Democratic Convention last night,

“My friends, we are constantly being told that America is deeply divided. But all Americans value freedom and faith and family. We all honor the service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform, in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the world.

We all want good jobs, good schools, health care, safe streets, a clean environment.

We all want our children to grow up in a secure America leading the world toward a peaceful and prosperous future. 

Our differences are in how we can best achieve these things in a time of unprecedented change. Therefore, we Democrats will bring to the American people this year a positive campaign, arguing not who is a good or a bad person, but what is the best way to build a safe and prosperous world our children deserve…

...Now, since most Americans aren't that far to the right, our friends have to portray us Democrats as simply unacceptable, lacking in strength and values. In other words, they need a divided America.

But we don't...
 
…Now, let me tell you know what I know about John Kerry. I've been seeing all of the Republican ads about him. Let me tell you what I know about him.
During the Vietnam War, many young men, including the current president, the vice president and me, could have gone to Vietnam and didn't. John Kerry came from a privileged background. He could have avoided going too, but instead, he said: Send me.

When they sent those swift boats up the river in Vietnam, and they told them their job was to draw hostile fire, to wave the American flag and bait the enemy to come out and fight, John Kerry said: Send me.

And then, on my watch, when it was time to heal the wounds of war and normalize relations with Vietnam and to demand an accounting of the POWs and MIAs we lost there, John Kerry said: Send me… 

…Now, everybody talks about John Edwards' energy and intellect and charisma. You know, I kind of resent him.

But the important thing is not what talents he has, but how he has used them. He chose -- he chose to use his talents to improve the lives of people like him who had to work for everything they've got and to help people too often left out and left behind. And that's what he'll do as our vice president… 

Now their opponents will tell you ... their opponents will tell you we should be afraid of John Kerry and John Edwards, because they won't stand up to the terrorists. Don't you believe it. Strength and wisdom are not opposing values.

They go hand in hand. They go hand in hand, and John Kerry has both. His first priority will be to keep America safe.”

Clinton delivered an incredible speech last night, Democrats should follow his lead, his message, and his criticism’s of the current administration.

Its the Environment Stupid!

Former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall wrote this today about the environment and the Bush administration,

"From 1961 to 1981, every president — Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter — gave his unwavering support to environmental reforms. Richard Nixon set a high goal by declaring that the 1970s should be the "environmental decade." He created the Environmental Protection Agency and approved laws to protect endangered species.

As the country moved rightward with Reagan, the rhetoric may have been negative, but in the end no effort was made to repeal important environmental laws. George H.W. Bush had a positive record, and although Bill Clinton was stymied by a hostile Congress, he used his executive powers to achieve positive results.

Overall, it's a record that bolsters my thesis that this administration is rowing against the tide of American history....Bush and company have not put forward a single positive new conservation concept. They have systematically lowered pollution regulations to please favored industries. They have allowed park and forest maintenance to be neglected and under-funded. I view these events and developments with dismay. This is a time for straight talk, for those who love the land to make their voices heard before more damage is done to the resources we all own."

Can anyone argue with the statement that George W. Bush has the worst enviormental record of any modern president.  ANYONE??

KERRY/EDWARDS 04!!!!!!!!!

Thomas Oliphant, a columnist for the Boston Globe, wrote this excellent article endorsing John Kerry candidacy for the United States Presidency.  Oliphant has been covering John Kerry for over 30 years and knows him just about as well as anyone in the business.  Here is what he has to say,

"The first two times I dealt with John Kerry, when he had his initial brush with notoriety many years ago, I didn’t know what to make of him. It was actually a little later, after he had screwed up and taken one on the jaw, that I became intrigued by him. He lost his first political fight, and deserved to; but instead of slinking off to a privileged corner of his world, he decided on a slow climb up the public-service ladder. Not for the last time, his grit surprised me...

...In non-Bush America, a far more prevalent symbol of sentiment these days, rather than outright affection for Kerry, is the “Anybody But Bush” pin. Anybody But Bush avoids Kerry. It also contains more than a little bit of disdain and disrespect -- common attitudes in a modern Democratic Party that seems able to take the concept of unity only so far. Democrats (political writers, too) love second-guessing, relentless kibitzing, pseudo-biographical psychobabble. In today’s political culture, progressives tend to be neurotic, conservatives fanatical.

The best cure for this neurosis is not artificially induced adulation but a rational decision to recognize Kerry’s strengths. This is a contemplative, serious person -- well-grounded in progressive principles -- who has the good habit of getting interested in new ideas that survive scrutiny. His work habits reveal an iron butt for grunt work, as well as considerable experience in working across party lines. A non-Bush president will have to repair considerable damage abroad and at home, complex tasks that will resist grand fixes and reward the patience and tough negotiating that are Kerry attributes. But a non-Bush president will also have to think and act big and new, and the work Kerry has already done on a range of issues should inspire confidence.

After Kerry returned for good from Vietnam, he impulsively entered one of the era’s many congressional fights in which pro-war politicians were being challenged...The anti-war candidates had agreed to abide by a vote at a mass gathering of the principal organization in the state, Massachusetts Political Action for Peace (MassPAX). The overwhelming favorite was the Reverend Robert Drinan, then dean of the Boston College Law School. But during the MassPAX meeting at Concord-Carlisle High School, Kerry made a riveting speech -- previewing themes of soldier betrayal and new-recruit determination the nation would hear the following year in Washington -- that won high praise. Kerry still lost, but I kept his phone number and made sure I stayed in touch as he became involved in the fledgling Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

What Kerry did in the spring of 1971 still amazes me. The power and eloquence of his statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee gets most of the attention because the film survives, but what amazed me more was the quiet leadership he and a few pals showed in guiding perhaps 2,000 veterans -- many severely wounded, angry, bitter, and passionate -- for a week that stunned the country with its nonviolent effectiveness...

...And, finally, to the present, and his own race. When Kennedy took Kerry around eastern Iowa... the senior senator regularly used a story that captures the best of Kerry’s last two decades. As Kennedy told it, accurately, there was nothing to be gained and much possibly to be lost when Kerry and John McCain set out in the 1980s to bind up the country’s wounds from the Vietnam War. For months on end, there was not a syllable of press coverage as they painstakingly put old prisoner and missing-in-action myths to rest and began assembling the case for establishing relations with Hanoi. Inch by inch, they brought the country along with them. From a master of hard political work like Kennedy, it was deserved praise, and a genuine sign of what Kerry is capable of...

It’s also helpful to know that his comeback was political and personal, but -- quite contrary to the “flip-flop” label the Bush team has sought to stick on him -- it did not involve a single change in his approach to the big questions of our day. Normally, positions on issues don’t work well for me as clues to a presidency, or as stand-alone reasons to be for someone. In Kerry’s case, however, he has made three contributions -- in health care, on energy, and in foreign policy -- to the national discussion over the past year that are vintage Kerry and powerful evidence of how his political mind works. They are not derivative, and, in each instance, the contributions were formulated not by the pollsters or the advisers but by Kerry himself.

On health care, as Kerry grappled with the mess of today’s nonsystem, he made a critical conceptual breakthrough in his analysis of why the great attempt in 1993–94 under Bill and Hillary Clinton flopped. In his mind, and he’s correct, the problem was that universal-coverage schemes tend to focus on the roughly 15 percent of the public that lacks insurance at any given moment, instead of the 85 percent who have what could be charitably called coverage (many of whom despise it almost to apoplexy).

Kerry’s second conceptual contribution was his determination to find and use savings from inside the wasteful status quo to finance health care’s reform and expansion, focusing on the third of all health-care costs that are not clinical. His third was to invest in and use new technology and other qualitative strides in medicine to accumulate still more savings. His fourth was to build toward universality using the existing mix of private and public delivery systems, not to jerry-rig a new one, the best example being his endorsement of tax credits to assist individuals who want to buy into the choice-laden federal employees’ health-insurance plan.
Finally, to deal with viciously escalating insurance costs, Kerry went for the idea of federalizing catastrophic costs, above $50,000 for a condition or illness. After careful vetting (a version of this had been on the table as far back as the Nixon administration; more recently, it has attracted considerable business support), he was able to claim that this would reduce insurance costs an average of $1,000 per beneficiary. This is vintage Kerry: part traditional progressive, part new thinking, and designed politically for swing voters in Congress.

Kerry sought from the beginning to plan big on the energy front, both to find a grand, worthy national effort along the lines of the space program in the 1960s and to serve a larger foreign-policy purpose. A national policy to gradually end the addiction to imports from the Persian Gulf is likely to do far more to “transform the Middle East,” to borrow the silly Bush phraseology, than invading Iraq almost unilaterally with no workable plan for the aftermath. Kerry would back it up with a reactivation of the Middle East peace process, with an activist United States at the center again and allies and moderate Arab states enlisted to provide aid to -- and put pressure on -- the Palestinian Authority. A long period of tacit and not so tacit acquiescence in Ariel Sharon’s postures and actions would cease. Vigorous diplomacy -- in his conviction that it really works, Kerry is very much his foreign-service-officer father’s son -- would define him in large part, not merely in the Middle East but also in Iraq, Iran, and North Korea; with trade agreements; the Kyoto Protocol process; and the various nonproliferation regimes. My pal Mark Shields once observed that, more often than not, each president is the stylistic antithesis of his predecessor. Kerry is a worker as well as a thinker.

Kerry has also shrewdly insisted -- from the beginning of his campaign -- on a requirement, as economic policy, that the budget deficit be halved within four years in order to keep the business recovery from hitting a wall of higher interest rates. It is often noted, accurately, that Kerry seeks a return to the basic ideas Bob Rubin followed for Bill Clinton in the ’90s. What the observation misses, however, is the fact that Clinton got all the way through his first campaign in 1992 decrying the economy’s stagnation and advocating stimulus. Kerry, by contrast, has stuck his neck out on fiscal sanity almost from the moment he declared. Kerry is a real Democrat in his commitment to significant new expenditures on priorities like health care, education, energy independence, child care, and additional tax breaks for the middle class and working poor. However, he is also a New Democrat in his belief that the overall context must be anti-deficit for the sake of long-term economic growth.

In his remarkably thorough book on Kerry’s formative youth, Douglas Brinkley tells a story about the two of us in the moments just before Kerry began his statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971. We had walked from the Vietnam veterans’ encampment on the National Mall together, taking a detour while he defused a potentially volatile demonstration outside the Supreme Court. When we entered the Dirksen Senate Office Building and raced up the stairs a few minutes before he was due to speak, we were struck by the absence of people in the stairwell and in the long corridor approaching the hearing room. It felt like a Sunday.
But when we reached the door and opened it a crack, Kerry drew back suddenly, stunned at the sight of a completely packed room. I nudged him forward again and attempted to cut the tension by saying, “Go ahead. Be famous. See if I care.”

It never occurred to me or to him where that moment might one day lead. I think it’s important that the presidency looms on his horizon not as a codicil in some trust fund, a virtual entitlement by virtue of lucky birth. Instead, it looms at the end of a long climb up the ladder from assistant county prosecutor.

John Kerry is a good, tough man. He is curious, grounded after a public and personal life that has not always been pleasant, a fan of ideas whose practical side has usually kept him from policy wonkery, a natural progressive with the added fixation on what works that made FDR and JFK so interesting. I know it is chic to be disdainful, but the modern Democratic neurosis gets in the way of a solid case for affection. Without embarrassment, and after a very long journey, I really like this guy. As one of his top campaign officials, himself a convert since the primaries ended, told me recently, this is pure Merle Haggard. It’s not love, but it’s not bad."

 

Tommy Boy

Courtesy of the Washington Monthy,

"THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW....Tom Davis is the Republican chairman of the House Government Reform Committee. Among other things, this means he's the point man for congressional investigations of governmental misdeeds.

Here is Tom Davis on his plans to open an investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, which was first exposed by David Corn on July 16, 2003:

July 17, 2003: Nothing.

October 3, 2003: "I know [John] Ashcroft very well, and I'm sure he'll go by the book." Um, OK. Nonetheless, he also said he was "gearing up" to lead an investigation of the matter. "It's our obligation to do so. This is something we can't tolerate."

January 23, 2004: "If they don't find it, we will. It will be looked at and second-guessed. It's a troubling and serious violation." But we'll still wait on gearing up that investigation.
July 21, 2004: Still gearing up. No investigation yet.

Two days ago, on July 19, 2004, AP reported that former NSA Sandy Berger had removed some classified documents from the National Archives and is the subject of an active FBI investigation.
 
How does Davis feel about this?

July 21, 2004: Congress has "a constitutional responsibility to find out what happened and why. At best, we're looking at tremendously irresponsible handling of highly classified information." An investigation is underway.

Hey! Tom Davis can move mighty quickly when he puts his mind to it! I wonder what the difference between these two cases is?"
 
Yes, I too wonder?

Can I get fries with that Berger?

Slate's Fred Kaplan gives a measured account of this latest Sandy Berger debacle, 
 

"Is Samuel "Sandy" Berger a criminal, a pilferer, a sneak, or just clumsy?
 
Nearly a year ago, we just learned this week, Berger—who was President Clinton's national security adviser—removed some highly classified documents from the National Archives without permission and failed to find one or two of them when officials discovered they were missing and asked him to give them back.
 
Berger had been poring over hundreds of documents, at Clinton's request, in preparation for testimony before the 9/11 commission. This was legal and routine. The federal statute controlling the National Archives and Records Administration states, "The presidential records of a former president shall be available to such former president or his designated representative." Berger was the designee.
 
However, the statutes expressly forbid anyone from taking such documents out of the building.  Berger claims the removal was inadvertent. His lawyer, Larry Breuer, explained to CNN's Wolf Blitzer that Berger had brought a leather portfolio into the archives vault and, somehow, a couple of documents—including a copy of Richard Clarke's 15-page "millennium threat" report—got "enmeshed" in his own papers. Berger didn't know he was removing any documents. A month later, when archive officials told him the documents were missing, he returned most of them. At least one document was missing and may have been thrown away.
 
A few questions come to mind:

 
How typical was Berger's action—or, depending how you see it, his lapse? Did it have any impact on the 9/11 commission's investigation? Did he swipe the document for political purposes? Could the act have damaged national security? Whatever the motives or impact, was the act criminal?
 
First, was it typical? Many former officials—even if their security clearances have long expired—obtain permission to enter the vaults and read classified documents dealing with matters from their heyday. They do this not only to prepare for official investigations, as Berger did in this case, but also to research their memoirs...
 
In this respect, some of the recent news accounts are just odd. A few stories noted that archive officials saw Berger stuffing documents in his pants pocket, jacket pocket, and even in his socks. This seems unlikely. First, if these officials saw this going on, why didn't they report it or confront Berger directly at the time? Second, whenever anyone examines classified material in a vault at the National Archives, a security official watches what's going on all the time. Berger could not have surreptitiously tucked away some secret papers while nobody was looking. Third, the two U.S. archivists tell me that the archive's guards almost never inspect ex-officials' briefcases when they leave the vaults or the building. Berger had a portfolio for papers. Surely if he'd wanted to take some papers out, he could have stuffed them into it. (Berger's lawyer said he'd put some notes in his pocket—more plausible, though also, it should be noted, improper. Section 202 of the National Archives' "Information Security Manual," which is not on the agency's Web site, states that anyone allowed access to the vaults must agree to "a review of his or her notes to make sure they do not contain classified information.")
 
Second, did this have any impact on the investigation? Did Berger (as at least one Republican charged) block the 9/11 commission from seeing any documents that might have been embarrassing to the Clinton administration? Clearly not. The commission saw everything, including the papers Berger was examining, well before Berger did.
 
Third, Berger was an adviser to John Kerry's campaign. (He quit over this fracas.) Republicans are accusing him of swiping the documents and handing them to Kerry as political ammo. This makes no sense. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry could obtain the documents—which had also been supplied to the 9/11 commission—of his own accord. More than that, Kerry's chief national security adviser, Rand Beers, was a staff member of the National Security Council, working on terrorism, under Presidents Clinton and Bush. He saw these documents, probably helped write some of them; he could certainly tell Kerry about them.
 
So, what does this amount to? At minimum, a stupid, careless act. It is conceivable that Berger deliberately slipped the papers into his portfolio so that, say, he could have a chance to read them more carefully at home. It is also conceivable—though less so—that he accidentally mixed the archive's papers into his own. (If he did mix them by mistake, he almost certainly would have spotted them before a month had passed, and in such cases, 18 U.S.C. 793(f) requires a "prompt report" of the removal.)

 
Either way, two things are clear:

First, this whole to-do should have no bearing on the presidential campaign; the leaking of the Justice Department investigation reveals a desperation on the part of the White House or the Republican National Committee to enmesh Clinton and Kerry in a cloud of blame just before the release of the 9/11 commission's report.

 
Second, Sandy Berger should forget about being appointed to a national security post ever again."

I tend to agree with Fred Kaplan on this matter, but I'm still puzzled as to why Sandy Berger removed the documents, especially since the 9-11 commission had already seen them.  It doesn't make much sense.  Hopefully the investigation will clarify some of my lingering doubts.  I’m inclined to believe Sandy when he says this was inadvertent; however if it is proven that he deliberately removed documents in an effort to deceive the commission or the American public then he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent.

Ralph

A great Nader quote regarding the Michigan story I detailed a few days ago,

"What we saw in Michigan yesterday is that Ralph Nader is indeed willing to sell his very integrity and soul to the extreme right-wing and the Bush White House," said Chris Kofinis, strategist for TheNaderFactor.com, "What is so amazing is that Nader would work with the same Republicans that have tried to destroy every progressive cause he has ever stood for. This is a tragic moment in the legacy of Nader and sad day for those who once respected what Nader stood for."

 

One more for Kerry

"The head of the Environmental Protection Agency for two Republican presidents criticized President Bush's record on Monday, calling it a "polluter protection" policy.  Russell E. Train, who headed the EPA from September 1973 to January 1977 — part of the Nixon and Ford administrations — said Bush's record on the environment was so dismal that he would cast his vote for Democrat John Kerry."It's almost as if the motto of the administration in power today in Washington is not environmental protection, but polluter protection," Train said. "I find this deeply disturbing."
 
In 1988, Train was co-chairman of Conservationists for Bush, an organization that backed the candidacy of George W. Bush's father.  Train spoke at an event organized by Environment 2004, which opposes Bush's environmental record.  He accused Bush of weakening the Clean Air Act and said the president's record falls short of those set by former Republican presidents, from Theodore Roosevelt, who advocated creating national parks and forests, to George H. W. Bush, who supported revised standards for clean air."
 
Not that you needed one, but this is just one more reason to vote Kerry in 04.

The War on Terror

This scathing critique of the Bush Admininstration's war on terror is right on point, 
 
Why the Right is Wrong About Iraq and al-Qaeda
  by tgirsch 

In the wake of the 9/11 Commission's finding that there is "no credible evidence" that Iraq and al-Qaeda ever had a "collaborative relationship" with respect to attacks against the United States, there's been a great deal of scrambling on the right side of the blogosphere to throw all the tenuous links that have been found against the wall and see what "sticks." What, specifically, are we hearing about? A statement on Meet the Press, which has since been invalidated by the Administration. A 1999 report that Hussein offered Asylum to bin Laden (an offer that bin Laden rejected, mind you). A 1998 letter that does little more than acknowledge that contact was made between Iraq's intelligence agency and al-Qaeda. The presence of Zarqawi in Iraq (even though intelligence officials say that Zarqawi operates separately from al-Qaeda, not as part of it).

There are two things that I notice here, one small, and one big. The small thing is that none of these things, even if taken together, in any way contradicts or discredits the 9/11 Commission's report. The report acknowledges that contacts were made, but that there's no evidence that a working relationship ever resulted from any of those contacts. Considering that the most recent of these reports is from April of 2003, it ought to be pretty safe to assume that the 9/11 Commission knew about them. If they were as important as the blog-hawks seem to claim they are, you would think that the Administration's members would have taken pains to point them out when they were being questioned. So it's reasonably safe to say that the bi-partisan, GOP-controlled commission didn't consider these links to be indicative of a meaningful working relationship.

 
But there's something larger here, something that not many people (particularly on the right) are talking about. It has to do with why the Administration repeatedly made claims linking Iraq with al-Qaeda in the first place, dating back to 2002. You see, back then, we had an active military campaign in Afghanistan, with wide bipartisan and public support. Al-Qaeda was seen (by the public as well as by the intelligence community) as the greatest threat to American security, and it was obvious that Afghanistan -- a well-known al-Qaeda haven -- would be the logical starting point.

The problem is, the Administration -- for whatever reason -- decided that Iraq should be the next step, and to most of the public (and the world), this seemed like the Underwear Gnomes at work (Step 1: Invade Iraq; Step 2: ????; Step 3: World Safer from Terror!). So the Administration needed to convince the American people not only that Iraq posed a terror threat, but that Iraq was a more important enemy to fight than any other potential enemy in the war on terror. As such, it was imperative that the Administration convince us that Iraq was actively working with al-Qaeda, actively training them, and actively harboring them.

 
Even before our invasion, the Administration's logic on the Iraq issue raised a lot of eyebrows. If WMDs were the big threat, then North Korea seemed like a far more compelling next target, what with them lobbing nuclear-capable warheads over Japan. If terrorism were the big threat, there are half a dozen countries -- including several of our "friends" -- that jumped out as being more compelling targets than Iraq. So the administration needed both things -- weapons of mass destruction and an active and meaningful relationship with al-Qaeda -- to frame the war in terms that the American people would accept. Sure, there are more dangerous targets in terms of WMDs, and sure, there are more dangerous targets in terms of terror. But when you combine WMDs with an active al-Qaeda link, now you're talking about a compelling target.

Everyone (war skeptics included) expected us to find WMDs, but the fact that we haven't found anything substantial makes the al-Qaeda connection even more critical. And now that the 9/11 Commission's report has dealt yet another blow to the dubious al-Qaeda claims, the right is absolutely scrambling to do damage control. The best they can come up with is five-year-old reports of tenuous connections that have mostly been dismissed by the intelligence community as inconsequential. But they miss the larger point completely. The idea that Iraq was the "logical next step" in the war on terror -- or even an important part of it -- has already been completely dismembered...

That argument has already been lost; the only thing that remains to be seen is whether or not they'll ever admit it, and how much kicking and screaming will it take."

Trial Lawyers

If you've watched the news in the last two weeks you have undoubtedly heard Republican operatives refer to Vice-presidential candidate Senator John Edwards as a "trial lawyer." Republicans often assert that high malpratice awards and greedy trial lawyers are the driving force behind the increasing cost of Medicare.  Ergo...John Edwards is partially responsible for this occurrence.  The consumer advice group Weiss Rating Inc.  drafted a comprehensive report in early June that may shed a bit of light on this subject.  Here is the executive summary, 
 

"Soaring premiums on medical malpractice insurance ("med mal") are a national crisis, invading the practice of medicine, threatening the availability of care, and prompting widespread public outcry. Physicians and the insurance industry place the blame on out-of-control jury awards, and, in response, 19 states have implemented caps on non-economic damages -- a key measure now included in various congressional proposals. However, the actual experience of the states with caps does not support these proposals. It shows that:

Caps did reduce the burden on insurers...

In states with caps, the median payout between 1991 and 2002 was 15.7% lower than the median in states without caps, despite the fact that many states did not impose the caps until late in the 12-year period.

Moreover, in states with caps, the payouts increased by 83.3% from 1991 to 2002, while the rate of increase in states without caps was 127.9%.
But most insurers continued to increase premiums at a rapid pace, regardless of caps...

In states with caps, the median annual premium went up by 48.2%, but, surprisingly, in states without caps, the median annual premium increased at a slower clip--by 35.9%.

Among the states with caps, only 10.5% experienced flat or declining med mal premiums. In contrast, among the states without caps, the record was actually better: 18.7% experienced flat or declining premiums.

These counter-intuitive findings can lead to only one conclusion: There are other, far more important factors driving the rise in med mal premiums than caps or med mal payouts. These include:

The medical inflation rate. In the 12-year period through 2002, medical costs rose 75%.
The insurance business cycle. The property and casualty industry as a whole suffered an unusually long 12-year "soft"period in the insurance business cycle through 1999, resulting in loose underwriting practices--not enough money in premiums collected to cover anticipated claims. At the end of the cycle, in an attempt to catch up, insurers began to tighten underwriting standards and raise premium rates.

The need to shore up reserves. Med mal insurers have been consistently under-reserving since 1997--to the tune of $4.6 billion through December 31, 2001. The only way to shore up reserves is to increase premiums.

A decline in investment income. With falling stock prices and declining interest rates, investment income for the entire property/casualty industry fell 23% in 2001 compared to 2000, and then another 2.5% in 2002. Moreover, investment income is particularly critical for lines of business like med mal where the duration of claims payouts typically spans several years.
Financial safety. Based on the Weiss Safety Ratings, we find that 34.4% of the nation's med mal insurers are vulnerable to financial difficulties (those with a rating of D+ or lower), as compared to 23.9% of the property and casualty industry as a whole. In order to restore their financial health, many med mal insurers will remain under pressure to increase premiums despite new laws to cap payouts.

Supply and demand. The number of med mal carriers increased until 1997, but has since fallen from 274 in that year to 247 in 2002. Moreover, in certain regions and medical specialties, there is evidence that some med mal insurers have pulled out or discontinued coverage.
Recommendations:

Legislators should put proposals involving non-economic damage caps on hold until convincing evidence can be produced to demonstrate a true benefit to doctors in the form of reduced med mal costs. Regulators must review and revise their parameters for approving rate increases. Insurance companies must never again allow marketing to divert or pervert prudent actuarial analysis and planning. The medical profession must assume more responsibility for policing itself, while states must be more pro-active in reviewing the licenses of individual practitioners. And consumers must not relinquish their right to sue for non-economic damages until the medical profession and/or state and federal governments provide more adequate supervision and regulation of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers."

Here is the whole report.

Republicans for Nader

The Washington Post is reporting this morning that, 
 

"The Michigan Republican Party submitted more than 40,000 signatures last week in a bid to get independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader on the state's November ballot.  Of course, this is not really about helping Nader. It is all about helping President Bush and hurting Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry's campaign in a closely contested state...
 
...Nader's campaign, assuming that he would run with the Reform Party there, stopped collecting signatures more than a month ago -- and turned in fewer than 6,000 of them by Thursday's deadline. He needed about 30,000 valid signatures to qualify as an independent.
Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese said the campaign still hopes to run with the state's Reform Party. But he said it may have to use the Republican-sponsored signatures: "We have to get on the ballot somehow."

 
 
To paraphrase, Nader would not have been on the ballot in Michigan had it not been for his amigos in the Republican party who took it upon themselves to ensure a third party candidate.  Why would they do something like that?
 
A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush plain and simple.

Bin Laden for Kerry!

According to Hill columnist Josh Marshal, the Louisville Republican Party Office is handing out signs and bumper stickers that read "Kerry is bin Laden's Man/Bush is My Man."
 
Marhsal states, "I put in a call to the head of the Jefferson County Republicans, Jack Richardon IV and asked him if this were true.   Richardson told me that he'd seen a bumper sticker with that phrase on it and agreed with it heartily.
 
"I believe that if you look at John Kerry's voting record in the senate," he told me, "why wouldn't bin Laden prefer Kerry over Bush?"

When I pressed Richardson on whether or not his party organization was distributing it, he acknowledged that they probably were handing it out on their campaign literature tables at recent events. And if it was being handed out, "I make no apologies for it."

Richardson went on. "Why wouldn't Kerry be bin Laden's man? Bush certainly isn't bin Laden's man."
 
Indeed, why wouldn't Kerry be Bin Laden's man?
 
Why?

Who's the most "Liberal?"

Much has been said by the media and by Republican talking heads recently regarding the most liberal members of the Senate. As I'm sure you've heard John Kerry is number one and John Edwards is number four. What the media declines to tell you is that statistic is a snap shot of one year in the Senate, a year in which Kerry and Edwards were heavily involved in a democratic primary and missed close to half of the votes. Using this same National Journal scale lets take a look at how these two men were rated over the past five years.


2003: Kerry - 1st (96.5) Edwards - 4th (94.5)
2002: Kerry - 9th (87.3) Edwards - 31st (63.0) Edwards made the centrist list.
2001: Kerry - 11th (87.7) Edwards - 35th (68.2) Edwards almost tied with Lieberman.
2000: Kerry - 20th (77) Edwards - 19th (80.8) Rankings past 20 are not available nor are composite scores for all Senators, so Kerry is 21st or higher.
1999: Kerry - 16th (80.8) Edwards - 31st (72.2)

Average: Kerry - 12th (85.9) Edwards - 24th (75.7)

Paints a bit of a different picture don't you think!!!!!!!!!!

It truly amazes me how inept our "Liberal Media" can really be. Is it too much to ask that someone put the National Journal numbers in some sort of context. Apparently so.

The Real Enemy

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert gives us the somber truth,

"Three American soldiers, not yet publicly identified, were killed yesterday in two separate attacks on military patrols north of Baghdad. On Saturday four marines were killed in a vehicle accident near Falluja. And five more American soldiers were killed Thursday in a mortar attack on a base in the Sunni-dominated city of Samarra.

For what?

Even as these brave troops were dying in the cruel and bloody environs of Iraq, the Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington was unfurling its damning unanimous report about the incredibly incompetent intelligence that the Bush administration used to justify this awful war.

...The bipartisan committee, headed by Republican Senator Pat Roberts, declared that the key intelligence assessments trumpeted by President Bush as the main reasons for invading Iraq were unfounded.

Nearly 900 G.I.'s and more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians have already perished, and there is no end to the war in sight. The situation is both sorrowful and disorienting. The colossal intelligence failures and the willful madness of the administration, which presented war as the first and only policy option, can leave you with the terrible feeling that you're standing at the graveside of common sense and reasonable behavior.

A government with even a nodding acquaintance with competence and good sense would have launched an all-out war against Al Qaeda, not Iraq, in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11. After all, it was Al Qaeda, not Iraq, that carried out the sneak attack on American soil that destroyed the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon and killed 3,000 people. You might think that would have been enough to provoke an all-out response from the U.S. Instead we saved our best shot for the demented and already checkmated dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein.

Bin Laden and Al Qaeda must have gotten a good laugh out of that. Now they're planning to come at us again. On Thursday, the same day Iraqi insurgents killed the five G.I.'s in Samarra, the Bush administration disclosed that bin Laden and his lieutenants, believed to be operating from hideouts along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, were directing an effort by Al Qaeda to unleash an encore attack against the United States.

According to Tom Ridge, the homeland security secretary, the latest effort may well be timed to disrupt the fall elections.

If that happens, I wonder if we'll finally get serious about the war we should be fighting against bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Maybe not. Based on the impenetrable logic of the president and his advisers, a new strike by Al Qaeda might lead us to start a war with, say, Iran, or Syria.

If we know that bin Laden and his top leadership are somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and that they're plotting an attack against the United States, why are we not zeroing in on them with overwhelming force? Why is there not a sense of emergency in the land, with the entire country pulling together to stop another Sept. 11 from occurring?

...I don't know what the administration was thinking when it invaded Iraq even as the direct threat from bin Laden and Al Qaeda continued to stare us in the face. That threat has only intensified. The war in Iraq consumed personnel and resources badly needed in the campaign against bin Laden and his allies. And it has fanned the hatred of the U.S. among Muslims around the world. Instead of destroying Al Qaeda, we have played right into its hands and contributed immeasurably to its support.

Most current intelligence analysts agree with Secretary Ridge that Al Qaeda will try before long to strike the U.S. mainland once again.

We've trained most of our guns on the wrong foe. The real enemy is sneaking up behind us. Again. The price to be paid for not recognizing this could be devastating."

Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9-11.

Just tell the truth!

Our President George Bush was asked this question in an interview last year,

"But, still, those countries who didn't support the Iraqi Freedom operation use the same argument, weapons of mass destruction haven't been found. So what argument will you use now to justify this war?"

He responded, "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them."

Nope Mr. President, you were wrong, those mobile weapons labs were in no way related to WMDs. Maybe you should clarify that for the American public.

The Bush Administration has engaged in a campaign of disinformation and its about time someone call them on it!

Justifications...

Paul Wolfowitz cited these reasons for going to war with Iraq in an interview last year,

"....there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people....The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it."

Let examine this for just a moment. Well, we know Iraq doesn't have any Weapons of Mass destruction. Both the 9/11 Commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee have agreed that although there were limited contacts between terrorists and Iraq in the mid 90s, no actual relationship existed. Furthermore these contact subsided completely nearly half a decade before we invaded. Both investigative bodies found no substantive link whatsoever between Iraq and Al Queda.

That leaves the third reason, which under Wolfowitz's own admission is not reason enough to "put American kids' lives at risk..."

What a Coincidence!

"Military records that could help establish President Bush's whereabouts during his disputed service in the Texas Air National Guard more than 30 years ago have been inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon.

It said the payroll records of "numerous service members," including former First Lt. Bush, had been ruined in 1996 and 1997 by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service during a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm. No back-up paper copies could be found, it added in notices dated June 25."

Were all his records destroyed? NOPE. Only records for the three months that would determine if he had or had not gone AWOL.

"The destroyed records cover three months of a period in 1972 and 1973 when Mr. Bush's claims of service in Alabama are in question."

My question is where was the liberal press on this months ago when this story began to gain traction again. The Bush administration claimed to release Bush's entire service record. Apparently they didn't, why wasn't this brought to the attention of the general public?

"There was no mention of the loss, for example, when White House officials released hundreds of pages of the President's military records last February in an effort to stem Democratic accusations that he was "AWOL" for a time during his commitment to fly at home in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.

Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director who has said that the released records confirmed the president's fulfillment of his National Guard commitment, did not return two calls for a response."

This whole fiasco reeks of foul play. But who knows, maybe the whole thing is one big coincidence...Maybe Donald Trump has a full head of real hair?

The National Review

Here is the National Review on Senator John Kerry's selection of John Edwards as his running mate,

"With the selection of John Edwards, John Kerry has shown that he is more ambitious than self-indulgent. It would have been natural for Kerry to carry resentments from the primaries. He could reasonably have feared that Edwards's fans in the press would write that Kerry will be upstaged by his running mate. Kerry decided that Edwards would help him win the election, and all merely personal considerations were laid aside.

"We are inclined to think that Kerry's calculation was correct: Edwards brings real strengths to the Democratic ticket. He is an attractive figure. Voters seem to respond to youth, energy, and good looks. Edwards may also help Kerry appeal to centrist voters: Americans outside the South have a dated perception of how conservative southern Democrats are. Edwards's campaign speech, though centered on the idea that Americans who are not rich have little hope of making it on their own, somehow comes across as optimistic. So Kerry may find himself competing with Edwards over who can better excite the crowds. The competition may be good for Kerry. Edwards does not much help him win voters concerned about national security -- but Kerry was always going to have to stand or fall on his own in this area.

"Republicans will be tempted to make an issue of Edwards's background as a trial lawyer. They should not overestimate the extent to which the public at large shares their dislike of trial lawyers. They make their money, after all, by telling sympathetic stories that win over ordinary people."

Johnny Boy...

The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne has got the right idea,

"When you hear Republicans disparage Sen. John Edwards's lack of experience, remember the words of Sen. Orrin Hatch, spoken to George W. Bush at a debate on Dec. 6, 1999.

You've been a great governor," Hatch declared of his rival for the Republican presidential nomination. "My only problem with you, governor, is that you've only had four and going into your fifth year of governorship. . . . Frankly, I really believe that you need more experience before you become president of the United States. That's why I'm thinking of you as a vice presidential candidate."

...Republicans grumbled that Edwards was Kerry's "second choice" after Republican John McCain. Can't blame the GOP for trying. But it's hard to think voters will hold it against Kerry that he tried to reach out to Republicans during a period of rancid partisanship.

Oh, yes, and one more point on that experience thing: "When it comes time to make the decision to send our young men and women into harm's way, that decision should be made by a leader who knows that such decisions have profound consequences. There comes a time when our nation's leader can no longer rely on briefing books and talking points." That was McCain in 1999. He was talking about the man who became our current president. You wonder which side will be most eager to cite that quotation."

KERRY/EDWARDS 04!!!!!!!!!

I received the following email this morning, before any media outlets were reporting the story. The Kerry campaign emailed their vice-presidential choice to all their supporters. Quite an inventive method if you ask me.

Dear Ian,

In just a few minutes, I will announce that Senator John Edwards will join me as my running-mate on the Democratic ticket as a candidate for vice president of the United States. Teresa and I could not be more excited that John and Elizabeth Edwards will be our partners in our journey to make America stronger at home and respected in the world.

You are the heart and soul of our campaign. You've shattered records and expectations every step of the way. Every time someone said you couldn't do it, you proved them wrong. Because of your incredible grassroots energy and commitment, I wanted to make the first official announcement of my decision to you -- more than one million online supporters at johnkerry.com.

I want you to know why I'm excited about running for president with John Edwards by my side. John understands and defends the values of America. He has shown courage and conviction as a champion for middle class Americans and those struggling to reach the middle class. In the Senate, he worked to reform our intelligence, to combat bioterrorism, and keep our military strong. John reaches across party lines and speaks to the heart of America -- hope and optimism. Throughout his own campaign for President, John spoke about the great divide in this country -- the "Two Americas" -- that exists between those who are doing well today and those who are struggling to make it from day to day. And I am so proud that we're going to build one America together.

In the next 120 days and in the administration that follows, John Edwards and I will be fighting for the America we love. We'll be fighting to give the middle class a voice by providing good paying jobs and affordable health care. We'll be fighting to make America energy independent. We'll be fighting to build a strong military and lead strong alliances, so young Americans are never put in harm's way because we insisted on going it alone.

I can't tell you how proud I am to have John Edwards on my team, or how eager I am for the day this fall when he stands up for our vision and goes toe-to-toe with Dick Cheney.

This is the most important election of our lifetime, and a defining moment in our history. With you by our side every day of this campaign, John and I will lead the most spirited presidential campaign America has ever seen, and fight to lead our nation in a new and better direction.

Thank you,


John Kerry

In a related side note, Republicans have already released an attack ad against Edwards. Are you surprised....

I can't wait for the VP debate, Edwards is going to carve up Cheney.

Iraq

Follow up on GAO report post:

The harsh fact is Iraqis are less safe today then they were 14 months ago. How are they supposed to “let freedom reign” if they are afraid to go to the grocery store?

The Washington Post’s Rajiv Chandrasekaran interviewed several senior CPA authorities and wrote an illuminating column on this very subject a week ago.

“BAGHDAD -- The American occupation of Iraq will formally end this month having failed to fulfill many of its goals and stated promises intended to transform the country into a stable democracy, according to a detailed examination drawing upon interviews with senior U.S. and Iraqi officials and internal documents of the occupation authority.

The ambitious, 15-month undertaking stumbled because of a series of mistakes that began with an inadequate commitment of resources and was aggravated by a misunderstanding of Iraqi politics, religion and society in occupied Iraq, these participants said…

… In the view of several senior officials here, a shortage of U.S. troops allowed the security situation to spiral out of control last year. Attacks on U.S.-led forces and foreign civilians now average more than 40 a day, a threefold increase since January. Assassinations of Iraqi political leaders and debilitating sabotage of the country's oil and electricity infrastructure now occur routinely…

…Within the marble-walled palace of the CPA's headquarters inside Baghdad's protected Green Zone, there is an aching sense of a mission unaccomplished. "Did we really do what we needed to do? What we promised to do?" a senior CPA official said. "Nobody here believes that."

…This account is drawn from interviews with a score of current and former CPA officials, several in senior positions, other U.S. government officials and Iraqis who work with the CPA. Most spoke on the condition they not be identified by name because of rules barring people working for the CPA from speaking to journalists without approval from CPA public affairs officials…

… Several CPA officials said the Bush administration has long underestimated reconstruction costs. In its war planning, the administration devoted $900 million to reconstruction despite reporting by the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations that depicted a far greater need. In the first months of the occupation, an additional $1.1 billion was committed by the White House. It was not until September that the administration asked Congress for billions more.

Although the $18.6 billion reconstruction aid package was approved by Congress in November, the Pentagon office charged with spending it has moved slowly. About $3.7 billion of this package had been spent by June 1, according to the CPA. Many projects that have received funding have slowed or stopped entirely because Western firms have withdrawn employees from Iraq in response to attacks on civilian contractors.
CPA officials contend the money should have been earmarked and spent far sooner. Had that happened, they argue, the CPA could have retained much of the goodwill that existed among Iraqis after the U.S. invasion and possibly weakened the insurgency.

"The failure to get the reconstruction effort launched early will be regarded as the most important critical failure," said one of Bremer's senior advisers. "If we could have fixed things faster, the situation would be very different today."

By starting late, the adviser said, the CPA got "caught in a security trap." More than $2 billion of the aid package will be spent hiring private guards for contractors, buying them armored vehicles and building secure housing compounds, CPA officials estimate. "If we had spent this money sooner, before things got bad, we could have spent more of it on actually helping the Iraqi people," the adviser said.”

The senior adviser to Bremer said he felt "a sense of opportunity that slipped away."

"The ambition for us was a grand one. We had great things in mind for them. We believed we could do it," he said. "But we didn't keep our promises.""

President Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of the Administration grossly miscalculated the ease with which they could bring peace and stability back to Iraq. This was a daunting task and I don’t know that anyone could have done it flawlessly, Democrat or Republican. Which is exactly the reason our leaders should use prudence when exercising American military power. Fourteen months later, we’ve handed Iraq their sovereignty, but they’ve inherited a make shift government, a deteriorating security situation and a laundry list of other problems which we failed to resolve. I sincerely hope the new Iraqi government will fair better then we did.

If you want to read the whole thing, its right here.

Polls Polls and more Polls

Here is some interesting date from the latest CBS News/New York Times poll.

The American public, by more than 3:1, thinks that US involvement in Iraq is creating more terrorists who are planning to attack the US (55 percent), rather than less (17 percent).

Similarly, by about 4:1, the American public thinks that US military action against Iraq has increased (47 percent) rather than decreased (13 percent) the threat of terrorism against the US.

Damn, the American people are really catching on.