Tuesday, December 02, 2003
It’s Bush’s job, after all, to lead us into disastrous foreign-policy adventures and then try to sugarcoat them with mawkish, grandstanding publicity stunts. No one should be upset with the president for doing his job. What we should be upset about is the national press corps behaving like p.r. agents, which is what happened last week. –Matt Taibbi, New York Press http://www.nypress.com/16/49/news&columns/cage.cfm
So Many Issues… I can understand why some bloggers have given it up. I’m trying to limit the subjects, really.
Krugman, on voting machines
Excerpts from today’s, for those who don’t look at the NY Times. This issue is a biggie, yet is too often lost amidst the multitude of issues. It should be of major interest, in view of Florida, 2000 and the stakes at hand.
Inviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." No surprise there. But Walden O'Dell — who says that he wasn't talking about his business operations — happens to be the chief executive of Diebold Inc., whose touch-screen voting machines are in increasingly widespread use across the United States.
For example, Georgia — where Republicans scored spectacular upset victories in the 2002 midterm elections — relies exclusively on Diebold machines. To be clear, though there were many anomalies in that 2002 vote, there is no evidence that the machines miscounted. But there is also no evidence that the machines counted correctly. You see, Diebold machines leave no paper trail.
______
What we do know about Diebold does not inspire confidence. The details are technical, but they add up to a picture of a company that was, at the very least, extremely sloppy about security, and may have been trying to cover up product defects.
_____
The point is that you don't have to believe in a central conspiracy to worry that partisans will take advantage of an insecure, unverifiable voting system to manipulate election results. Why expose them to temptation?
I'll discuss what to do in a future column. But let's be clear: the credibility of U.S. democracy may be at stake
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/opinion/02KRUG.html
The Samarra Aftermath:
The stories clash- It seems likely that there were too many civilian casualties as a direct result of the US army’s use of ‘overwhelming force’, i.e. blasting any and all buildings near where fire seemed to be originating. Amongst the lessons of this: the opposition is feeling more audacious, not content to merely snipe and set off bombs; Lots of questions and contradictions are noted at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3257460.stm
One simple comment is that these attackers may have been criminals released by Saddam prior to the invasion. After all, it seemed to be a robbery, attacking a convoy that was transporting huge amounts of cash.
An informed word on Samarra and the resistance at hand comes from B. Raman of the Asian Times. Many of my posts come from the Asian Times, as it’s of uniformly high quality.
Before the US-led invasion, Iraq had no jihadi terrorists. Some Palestinians belonging to outfits such as the Abu Nidal Organization and members of the anti-Iran Mujahideen-e-Khalq, to whom Saddam had given shelter, were terrorists, but not of the jihadi kind.
Since the occupation of Iraq, the country is swarming with jihadis - more indigenous (about 6,000) than foreign (about 320) - who have been waging a two-front jihad against the occupation troops - the jihad of the indigenous resistance fighters, who are not terrorists, and that of the foreign mujahideen, who are. The Iraqi resistance fighters have been attacking American troops and their Iraqi collaborators. The foreign mujahideen have been targeting nationals of countries that have been collaborating with the US and international organizations. There is so far no evidence of a common mastermind guiding the activities of the indigenous and the external.
The jihad of the indigenous fighters has been targeted and well planned, avoiding innocent Iraqi civilian casualties. They are well organized and seem to have better intelligence than the American troops. If the US version that the Iraqi attack on an American escort party at Samarra on November 30 was because that party was escorting a vehicle carrying large quantities of newly-printed currency notes is correct, the fact that the Iraqi fighters had advance knowledge of this would show the kind of moles they have in the setup of the occupational forces. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EL03Ak02.html
So, what do we do? Raman suggests we do as we’re doing in Afghanistan – ally with the former opponent:
…the US has no other alternative but to dump these quislings, rehabilitate the intellectuals and the ruling elite of the former ruling Ba'ath Party and seek their leadership and cooperation in its efforts to defeat the jihadi terrorists and reconstruct the Iraqi civil society that it has destroyed.
Re-Ba'athification of Iraq is the only solution to the dilemma confronting the US and other occupying powers. There is no other viable option.
Last, Best word on the Bush Thanksgiving p.r. move I’m fond of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, 11PM, EST, Comedy Central. The first ten minutes is the best comedy on t.v.. A sample, for those who actually click on these links: http://www.comedycentral.com/tv_shows/ds/
WMD: Lest we forget-- wmd, Valerie Plame, the phony nuclear threat. Just a reminder.
George Monbiot on Oil The Guardian’s stellar journalist gives us his thoughts on the tie that binds (and drains, inflames, etc.)
We seem, in other words, to be in trouble. Either we lay hands on every available source of fossil fuel, in which case we fry the planet and civilisation collapses, or we run out, and civilisation collapses.
The only rational response to both the impending end of the oil age and the menace of global warming is to redesign our cities, our farming and our lives. But this cannot happen without massive political pressure, and our problem is that no one ever rioted for austerity. People tend to take to the streets because they want to consume more, not less. Given a choice between a new set of matching tableware and the survival of humanity, I suspect that most people would choose the tableware.
In view of all this, the notion that the war with Iraq had nothing to do with oil is simply preposterous. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4809694-103677,00.html
Bush and Trade Looks like the Cheney-Rove folk got Junior in trouble. He is stuck with a sorry choice- to either alienate key electoral states (Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania) by going back on his word and lifting the steel tariffs or he can recommence a trade war with Europe by going back on “his” weekend decision. Either way the Administration looks bad. The Charlestown Gazette pitches in on the former solution to the dilemma. http://www.wvgazette.com/section/News/2003120141
As word spread Monday that Bush is preparing to revoke the tariffs, Sen. Jay Rockefeller accused the president of turning his back on American workers to appease foreign companies. The sources said Bush's aides concluded they could not run the risk that the European Union would carry out its threat to impose sanctions on orange juice and other citrus products from Florida, motorcycles, farm machinery, textiles, shoes, and other products.
Afghanistan: Only bad news. From the LA Times’ Sonni Efron:
Security in large areas of Afghanistan has so deteriorated that U.S. and U.N. officials fear that plans to hold presidential elections in June may be in jeopardy.
In an apparent strategy to obstruct the political process that is key to democratizing Afghanistan, Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents have been killing and threatening not only Westerners but also Afghans who "collaborate" with them.
Some of the tactics echo the intimidation being practiced by insurgents in Iraq. Taliban forces have, for example, left leaflets threatening to cut off the nose of anyone who participates in Afghanistan's constitutional assembly, or loya jirga, this month.
Under the Bonn agreement brokered after the Taliban was ousted in late 2001 by a U.S.-led invasion, the United Nations is in charge of reshaping Afghanistan politically, including supervising the constitutional process and registering voters.
But violence has worsened dramatically in the last six months. A U.N. refugee worker was killed last month, bringing the number of aid workers slain since March to at least 13. At least five of Afghanistan's 32 provinces are virtually off-limits to foreigners, aid workers said.
U.N., U.S. and other Western officials fear that unless voters in rural areas can participate in the presidential election, the resulting government will not be seen as legitimate. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan2dec02,1,4053226.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Recruiting for the Taliban: A fascinating account of how it’s done. Seems like one needs to merely drop by the local madrassa, the Saudi-financed Islamic religious schools in Pakistan that teach Wahhabism, a particularly austere and rigid form of Islam. From the Asian Times (Massoud Ansari)
In every madrassa in Balochistan there are one or two Taliban recruiters," says a local politician in Quetta, requesting not to be identified. "If you want to sign on for jihad, the easiest thing is to stay at one of these madrassas and someone will for sure contact you. These recruiters keep a vigil on your activities, and once they realize that you are a genuine fighter, they will certainly talk to you and put you in touch with the Taliban commanders."
So the madrassas, from where the Taliban originally emerged, are once again serving as a means of their revival. Even Karzai recently lashed out at the Pakistani religious clergy for their support of Taliban resurgents. Karzai in particular mentioned the Shaldara madrassa in Quetta, run by the Jamait-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI)-backed member of the National Assembly, Maulana Noor Mohammed, and called it a headquarters of the Taliban. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EK26Df03.html
Guantanamo: Time magazine weighs in (Nancy Gibbs, Viveca Novak)
The base is a prison, and a jewelry box. "You can't be too careful protecting this enormously valuable intelligence trove," says Army General Geoffrey Miller, commander of the joint task force that runs the detainee operation on the 45-sq.-mi. base. And so there are constant perimeter patrols by infantry squads in full battle gear, and visitors get turned inside out before they're allowed anywhere near the cellblocks. Getting out legally doesn't seem much easier. The detainees—660 suspects from 44 countries, scooped up in the war on terrorism—cannot challenge their arrests or plead their cases or even talk to a lawyer, because the U.S. government denies that they have those rights.
They are not U.S. citizens, and the base, while under total U.S. control, is not on American soil; since 1903, it has been leased from Cuba for 2,000 gold coins a year, now valued at $4,085, in perpetuity.
That leaves one last exit strategy when desperation takes hold. According to military officials, there have been 32 suicide attempts in 18 months, at least one of which left a man in a coma. .http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,552060,00.html
Dumbed Down America: The more you know, the smarter you are. It’s true.
Jeff Cohen of FAIR (fair.org) tells us what we knew to be true:
While most of us who pay attention know who was and who wasn't behind 9/11, others get their news on the fly -- basically headlines and banners. But even Americans who say they're paying attention, at least to TV, are highly misinformed. A massive University of Maryland study found that most who get their news from commercial TV held at least one of three fundamental "misperceptions": that Iraq had been directly linked to 9/11, that WMDs had been found in Iraq or that world opinion supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Not unexpectedly, Fox News viewers were the most misled. But strong majorities of CBS, ABC, NBC and CNN viewers were also confused on at least one of these points. Among those informed on all three questions, only 23 percent supported Bush's war. http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1201-13.htm
Kucinich: Many of us who voted for Nader would not do so this year. Besides, during these months we’re supposed to pick the person we think is best, not the ‘practical’ candidate, i.e. the one who the Democratic Leadership Council wants us to vote for. Oh. That means progressives should vote for Dennis, the admired chair of the Progressive Caucus in Congress.
Kucinich is all over the media this week, trying to tell people to vote their beliefs. On ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" on Sunday, he pleaded,
"I can bring Greens into the process. Those are a few percentage points. I can bring members of the Natural Law Party on sustainability issues; Reform Party members on trade issues; Libertarians on the Patriot Act and those issues. I'm the person, I think, who has the broadest appeal."
He also said he has the broadest base of support among the Democratic candidates, and that the selection of the nominee will not occur until the convention.
USA Patriot author has second thoughts
Looking at the case of Jose Padilla, dirty bomb plot suspect made him queasy. From Richard Schmitt of the LA Times:
Viet Dinh, who until May headed the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy, said in a series of recent speeches and in an interview with The Times that he thought the government's detention of Padilla was flawed and unlikely to survive court review.
The principal intellectual force behind the Patriot Act, the terror-fighting law enacted by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Dinh has steadfastly defended the Justice Department's anti-terrorism efforts against charges that they have led to civil-rights abuses of immigrants and others. While the Patriot Act does not speak to the issue of enemy combatants, his remarks still caught some observers by surprise.
In an interview, Dinh, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said the Padilla case was not within his line of authority when he was in the department, but that he began to think about the issue later, and came to the conclusion that the administration's case was "unsustainable."
Another top former Justice Department official, Michael Chertoff, who headed the department's criminal division, has said he believed the government should reconsider how it designates enemy combatants.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-justice30nov30,1,5074199.story?coll=la-home-headlines
A foreign Observer of our free-spending ways:
The Observer/Guardian’s William Keegan, a “senior economics commentator,” offers that we’re in trouble. Then again, we knew that, and that the Administration wants us to be in trouble.
There is something very special about Republican administrations, is there not? In theory, and before they are elected, they believe in balanced budgets and sound money - or "sound money and lots of it" as people used to quip during the 1980s heyday of Milton Friedman's monetarism.
In practice they let everything go haywire. Now some observers have suggested to me that there is no problem: after all, wasn't President Ronald Reagan criticised during the 1980s for the twin deficits (budget and balance of payments) but didn't the US and world economy thrive?
The answer is: up to a point. The fact of the matter is that the borrowing spree on which the US administration has embarked makes the Reagan balance of payments deficits look like child's play…
My conclusion is that we could be on the verge of a big currency and economic crisis, and the stock markets may have lost touch with the foreign exchange markets. http://www.guardian.co.uk/economicdispatch/story/0,12498,1098229,00.html
-R
So Many Issues… I can understand why some bloggers have given it up. I’m trying to limit the subjects, really.
Krugman, on voting machines
Excerpts from today’s, for those who don’t look at the NY Times. This issue is a biggie, yet is too often lost amidst the multitude of issues. It should be of major interest, in view of Florida, 2000 and the stakes at hand.
Inviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." No surprise there. But Walden O'Dell — who says that he wasn't talking about his business operations — happens to be the chief executive of Diebold Inc., whose touch-screen voting machines are in increasingly widespread use across the United States.
For example, Georgia — where Republicans scored spectacular upset victories in the 2002 midterm elections — relies exclusively on Diebold machines. To be clear, though there were many anomalies in that 2002 vote, there is no evidence that the machines miscounted. But there is also no evidence that the machines counted correctly. You see, Diebold machines leave no paper trail.
______
What we do know about Diebold does not inspire confidence. The details are technical, but they add up to a picture of a company that was, at the very least, extremely sloppy about security, and may have been trying to cover up product defects.
_____
The point is that you don't have to believe in a central conspiracy to worry that partisans will take advantage of an insecure, unverifiable voting system to manipulate election results. Why expose them to temptation?
I'll discuss what to do in a future column. But let's be clear: the credibility of U.S. democracy may be at stake
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/opinion/02KRUG.html
The Samarra Aftermath:
The stories clash- It seems likely that there were too many civilian casualties as a direct result of the US army’s use of ‘overwhelming force’, i.e. blasting any and all buildings near where fire seemed to be originating. Amongst the lessons of this: the opposition is feeling more audacious, not content to merely snipe and set off bombs; Lots of questions and contradictions are noted at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3257460.stm
One simple comment is that these attackers may have been criminals released by Saddam prior to the invasion. After all, it seemed to be a robbery, attacking a convoy that was transporting huge amounts of cash.
An informed word on Samarra and the resistance at hand comes from B. Raman of the Asian Times. Many of my posts come from the Asian Times, as it’s of uniformly high quality.
Before the US-led invasion, Iraq had no jihadi terrorists. Some Palestinians belonging to outfits such as the Abu Nidal Organization and members of the anti-Iran Mujahideen-e-Khalq, to whom Saddam had given shelter, were terrorists, but not of the jihadi kind.
Since the occupation of Iraq, the country is swarming with jihadis - more indigenous (about 6,000) than foreign (about 320) - who have been waging a two-front jihad against the occupation troops - the jihad of the indigenous resistance fighters, who are not terrorists, and that of the foreign mujahideen, who are. The Iraqi resistance fighters have been attacking American troops and their Iraqi collaborators. The foreign mujahideen have been targeting nationals of countries that have been collaborating with the US and international organizations. There is so far no evidence of a common mastermind guiding the activities of the indigenous and the external.
The jihad of the indigenous fighters has been targeted and well planned, avoiding innocent Iraqi civilian casualties. They are well organized and seem to have better intelligence than the American troops. If the US version that the Iraqi attack on an American escort party at Samarra on November 30 was because that party was escorting a vehicle carrying large quantities of newly-printed currency notes is correct, the fact that the Iraqi fighters had advance knowledge of this would show the kind of moles they have in the setup of the occupational forces. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EL03Ak02.html
So, what do we do? Raman suggests we do as we’re doing in Afghanistan – ally with the former opponent:
…the US has no other alternative but to dump these quislings, rehabilitate the intellectuals and the ruling elite of the former ruling Ba'ath Party and seek their leadership and cooperation in its efforts to defeat the jihadi terrorists and reconstruct the Iraqi civil society that it has destroyed.
Re-Ba'athification of Iraq is the only solution to the dilemma confronting the US and other occupying powers. There is no other viable option.
Last, Best word on the Bush Thanksgiving p.r. move I’m fond of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, 11PM, EST, Comedy Central. The first ten minutes is the best comedy on t.v.. A sample, for those who actually click on these links: http://www.comedycentral.com/tv_shows/ds/
WMD: Lest we forget-- wmd, Valerie Plame, the phony nuclear threat. Just a reminder.
George Monbiot on Oil The Guardian’s stellar journalist gives us his thoughts on the tie that binds (and drains, inflames, etc.)
We seem, in other words, to be in trouble. Either we lay hands on every available source of fossil fuel, in which case we fry the planet and civilisation collapses, or we run out, and civilisation collapses.
The only rational response to both the impending end of the oil age and the menace of global warming is to redesign our cities, our farming and our lives. But this cannot happen without massive political pressure, and our problem is that no one ever rioted for austerity. People tend to take to the streets because they want to consume more, not less. Given a choice between a new set of matching tableware and the survival of humanity, I suspect that most people would choose the tableware.
In view of all this, the notion that the war with Iraq had nothing to do with oil is simply preposterous. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4809694-103677,00.html
Bush and Trade Looks like the Cheney-Rove folk got Junior in trouble. He is stuck with a sorry choice- to either alienate key electoral states (Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania) by going back on his word and lifting the steel tariffs or he can recommence a trade war with Europe by going back on “his” weekend decision. Either way the Administration looks bad. The Charlestown Gazette pitches in on the former solution to the dilemma. http://www.wvgazette.com/section/News/2003120141
As word spread Monday that Bush is preparing to revoke the tariffs, Sen. Jay Rockefeller accused the president of turning his back on American workers to appease foreign companies. The sources said Bush's aides concluded they could not run the risk that the European Union would carry out its threat to impose sanctions on orange juice and other citrus products from Florida, motorcycles, farm machinery, textiles, shoes, and other products.
Afghanistan: Only bad news. From the LA Times’ Sonni Efron:
Security in large areas of Afghanistan has so deteriorated that U.S. and U.N. officials fear that plans to hold presidential elections in June may be in jeopardy.
In an apparent strategy to obstruct the political process that is key to democratizing Afghanistan, Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents have been killing and threatening not only Westerners but also Afghans who "collaborate" with them.
Some of the tactics echo the intimidation being practiced by insurgents in Iraq. Taliban forces have, for example, left leaflets threatening to cut off the nose of anyone who participates in Afghanistan's constitutional assembly, or loya jirga, this month.
Under the Bonn agreement brokered after the Taliban was ousted in late 2001 by a U.S.-led invasion, the United Nations is in charge of reshaping Afghanistan politically, including supervising the constitutional process and registering voters.
But violence has worsened dramatically in the last six months. A U.N. refugee worker was killed last month, bringing the number of aid workers slain since March to at least 13. At least five of Afghanistan's 32 provinces are virtually off-limits to foreigners, aid workers said.
U.N., U.S. and other Western officials fear that unless voters in rural areas can participate in the presidential election, the resulting government will not be seen as legitimate. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan2dec02,1,4053226.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Recruiting for the Taliban: A fascinating account of how it’s done. Seems like one needs to merely drop by the local madrassa, the Saudi-financed Islamic religious schools in Pakistan that teach Wahhabism, a particularly austere and rigid form of Islam. From the Asian Times (Massoud Ansari)
In every madrassa in Balochistan there are one or two Taliban recruiters," says a local politician in Quetta, requesting not to be identified. "If you want to sign on for jihad, the easiest thing is to stay at one of these madrassas and someone will for sure contact you. These recruiters keep a vigil on your activities, and once they realize that you are a genuine fighter, they will certainly talk to you and put you in touch with the Taliban commanders."
So the madrassas, from where the Taliban originally emerged, are once again serving as a means of their revival. Even Karzai recently lashed out at the Pakistani religious clergy for their support of Taliban resurgents. Karzai in particular mentioned the Shaldara madrassa in Quetta, run by the Jamait-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI)-backed member of the National Assembly, Maulana Noor Mohammed, and called it a headquarters of the Taliban. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EK26Df03.html
Guantanamo: Time magazine weighs in (Nancy Gibbs, Viveca Novak)
The base is a prison, and a jewelry box. "You can't be too careful protecting this enormously valuable intelligence trove," says Army General Geoffrey Miller, commander of the joint task force that runs the detainee operation on the 45-sq.-mi. base. And so there are constant perimeter patrols by infantry squads in full battle gear, and visitors get turned inside out before they're allowed anywhere near the cellblocks. Getting out legally doesn't seem much easier. The detainees—660 suspects from 44 countries, scooped up in the war on terrorism—cannot challenge their arrests or plead their cases or even talk to a lawyer, because the U.S. government denies that they have those rights.
They are not U.S. citizens, and the base, while under total U.S. control, is not on American soil; since 1903, it has been leased from Cuba for 2,000 gold coins a year, now valued at $4,085, in perpetuity.
That leaves one last exit strategy when desperation takes hold. According to military officials, there have been 32 suicide attempts in 18 months, at least one of which left a man in a coma. .http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,552060,00.html
Dumbed Down America: The more you know, the smarter you are. It’s true.
Jeff Cohen of FAIR (fair.org) tells us what we knew to be true:
While most of us who pay attention know who was and who wasn't behind 9/11, others get their news on the fly -- basically headlines and banners. But even Americans who say they're paying attention, at least to TV, are highly misinformed. A massive University of Maryland study found that most who get their news from commercial TV held at least one of three fundamental "misperceptions": that Iraq had been directly linked to 9/11, that WMDs had been found in Iraq or that world opinion supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Not unexpectedly, Fox News viewers were the most misled. But strong majorities of CBS, ABC, NBC and CNN viewers were also confused on at least one of these points. Among those informed on all three questions, only 23 percent supported Bush's war. http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1201-13.htm
Kucinich: Many of us who voted for Nader would not do so this year. Besides, during these months we’re supposed to pick the person we think is best, not the ‘practical’ candidate, i.e. the one who the Democratic Leadership Council wants us to vote for. Oh. That means progressives should vote for Dennis, the admired chair of the Progressive Caucus in Congress.
Kucinich is all over the media this week, trying to tell people to vote their beliefs. On ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" on Sunday, he pleaded,
"I can bring Greens into the process. Those are a few percentage points. I can bring members of the Natural Law Party on sustainability issues; Reform Party members on trade issues; Libertarians on the Patriot Act and those issues. I'm the person, I think, who has the broadest appeal."
He also said he has the broadest base of support among the Democratic candidates, and that the selection of the nominee will not occur until the convention.
USA Patriot author has second thoughts
Looking at the case of Jose Padilla, dirty bomb plot suspect made him queasy. From Richard Schmitt of the LA Times:
Viet Dinh, who until May headed the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy, said in a series of recent speeches and in an interview with The Times that he thought the government's detention of Padilla was flawed and unlikely to survive court review.
The principal intellectual force behind the Patriot Act, the terror-fighting law enacted by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Dinh has steadfastly defended the Justice Department's anti-terrorism efforts against charges that they have led to civil-rights abuses of immigrants and others. While the Patriot Act does not speak to the issue of enemy combatants, his remarks still caught some observers by surprise.
In an interview, Dinh, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said the Padilla case was not within his line of authority when he was in the department, but that he began to think about the issue later, and came to the conclusion that the administration's case was "unsustainable."
Another top former Justice Department official, Michael Chertoff, who headed the department's criminal division, has said he believed the government should reconsider how it designates enemy combatants.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-justice30nov30,1,5074199.story?coll=la-home-headlines
A foreign Observer of our free-spending ways:
The Observer/Guardian’s William Keegan, a “senior economics commentator,” offers that we’re in trouble. Then again, we knew that, and that the Administration wants us to be in trouble.
There is something very special about Republican administrations, is there not? In theory, and before they are elected, they believe in balanced budgets and sound money - or "sound money and lots of it" as people used to quip during the 1980s heyday of Milton Friedman's monetarism.
In practice they let everything go haywire. Now some observers have suggested to me that there is no problem: after all, wasn't President Ronald Reagan criticised during the 1980s for the twin deficits (budget and balance of payments) but didn't the US and world economy thrive?
The answer is: up to a point. The fact of the matter is that the borrowing spree on which the US administration has embarked makes the Reagan balance of payments deficits look like child's play…
My conclusion is that we could be on the verge of a big currency and economic crisis, and the stock markets may have lost touch with the foreign exchange markets. http://www.guardian.co.uk/economicdispatch/story/0,12498,1098229,00.html
-R
