Sunday, September 12, 2004
War on Terror: Assessments:
According to recent articles, they’ve re-organized, bin Laden and others have made their headquarters in Afghanistan (this sounds familiar…) and they’re biding their time for key moments. 3 takes from stellar thinkers.
Syed Saleem Shahzad (Asia Times)
Since the disintegration of the Taliban regime at the end of 2001, the Afghan resistance has endured, managing, if nothing else, to keep US-led occupying forces and the Afghan National Army engaged in small pockets. But much bigger things are planned.
You take a ride to Chaman and you will find black and white turbans everywhere, a sort of propaganda tactic to show their strength. Just go to a football stadium in the evening and you will find hundreds of black turbans, a hallmark of the Taliban," Malik Nabi adds. Nowadays, as far as the Taliban are concerned, there are two types of Taliban: those who are on the frontline battlefields, and those who are waiting for a call to become cannon fodder once the word goes out for a mass mobilization. As far as al-Qaeda is concerned, a new, dispersed, generation of cells are involved in plotting attacks worldwide. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FI11Ag01.html
Pepe Escobar (Asia Times)
Three years after September 11, President George W Bush's crusade is a failure. "War on terror" is a meaningless myth: you can't combat a supple attack machine like al-Qaeda with shock and awe. What should have been a long, meticulous police operation was turned by Bush - instigated by his foreign policy adviser, God - into an illegal, preemptive attack on a nation that had nothing to do with terror. This policy has actually increased terror attacks around the world. Last year in Cairo, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, Sheikh Yamani, a man who knows one or two things about Arabs, violence and oil, said the invasion would produce "one hundred bin Ladens". They are here, and they have no one else but Bush to thank.
The bottom line: since Bush proclaimed his "crusade" or mission from God against terror, the United States, the Middle East and the world are immensely less safe. Bush-Cheney '04 are afraid US voters will start making these connections as the November elections draw closer. For the apocalyptic Cheney - as on the campaign trail in Iowa - there's nothing left but the language of fear:
Al-Qaeda subscribes to no political strategy, other than the strategy of total opportunism: as any kind of attack can happen any time, anywhere, it rules by fear - while at the same time demonstrating it is immune to any large-scale US war, from Afghanistan to Iraq. The rule-by-fear tactic also serves the Bush administration well, as fear is constantly used as a powerful political argument to justify the administration's policies ("Be afraid, be very much afraid, but you can count on us to protect you"). Unlike the Bush administration's spin, European intelligence experts in Brussels assured Asia Times Online that the Madrid bombing was only accidentally tied to Spain's national elections. It was not the case that "Spaniards had bowed to terror" (Washington's version), but that Bush ally Jose Maria Aznar's conservative government was mendacious enough to lie to the country, blaming Basque separatists when it already had evidence to the contrary.
As nihilistic as it may be, al-Qaeda, from a business point of view, is a major success: three years after September 11, it is a global brand and a global movement. The Middle East, in this scenario, is just a regional base station. This global brand does not have much to do with Islam. But it has everything to do with the globalization of anti-imperialism. And the empire, whatever its definition, has its center in Washington. Bin Laden is laughing: Bush's crusade has legitimized an obscure sect as a worldwide symbol of political revolt. How could bin Laden not vote for Bush? http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FI11Ak03.html
Juan Cole:
Bin Laden's dream of a united Muslim state under a revived caliphate may well be impossible to accomplish. But with the secular Baath gone, it could be one step closer to reality. If you add to the equation the generalized hatred for US policies (both against the Palestinians and in Iraq) among Muslims, that is a major step forward for al-Qaeda. In Saudi Arabia, al-Qaeda has emerged as a dissident political party. Before it had just been a small group of Bin Laden's personal acolytes in Afghanistan and a handful of other countries.Although the United States and its Pakistani ally have captured significant numbers of al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a whole new generation of angry young Muslim men has been produced. Al-Qaeda has moved from being a concrete cell-based terrorist organization to being an ideal and a model, for small local groups in Casablanca, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and elsewhere.The US is not winning the war on terror. Al-Qaeda also has by no means won. But across a whole range of objectives, al-Qaeda has accomplished more of its goals than the US has of its.
http://www.juancole.com/2004_09_01_juancole_archive.html#109487993311862124
Good Terrorists: Welcome to the US of A!
A little-noticed but chilling scene at Opa-locka Airport outside Miami last month demonstrates that the Bush administration's commitment to fighting international terrorism can be overtaken by presidential politics — even if that means admitting known terrorists onto U.S. soil.That's what happened when outgoing Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso inexplicably pardoned four Cuban exiles convicted of "endangering public safety" for their role in an assassination plot against Fidel Castro during a 2000 international summit in Panama.After their release, three of the four immediately flew via private jet to Miami, where they were greeted with a cheering fiesta organized by the hard-line anti-Castro community. Federal officials briefly interviewed the pardoned men — all holders of U.S. passports — and then let them go their way.The fourth man, Luis Posada Carriles, was the most notorious member of this anti-Castro cell. He is an escapee from a prison in Venezuela, where he was incarcerated for blowing up an Air Cubana passenger plane in 1976, killing 73. He also admitted plotting six hotel bombings in Havana that killed one tourist and injured 11 others in 1997. Posada has gone into hiding in Honduras while seeking a Central American country that will harbor him, prompting Honduran President Ricardo Maduro to demand an explanation from the Bush administration on how a renowned terrorist could enter his country using a false U.S. passport. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-op-sweig12sep12,1,3912945,print.story
Seymour Hersh: Abu Ghraib’s roots
He’s doing his part to connect the dots.
Mr. Hersh's thesis is that "the roots of the Abu Ghraib scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists" who have been charged so far, "but in the reliance of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld on secret operations and the use of coercion - and eye-for-eye retribution - in fighting terrorism."
In particular, Mr. Hersh has reported that a secret program to capture and interrogate terrorists led to the abuse of prisoners. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/12/international/middleeast/12abuse.html
ELECTION
Democrat’s Aides Agree on Need to React Strongly but Not on How
Still? Awfully disturbing. The story behind the NY Times headline:
As a first step, the Kerry campaign this week dispatched the Democratic National Committee to go after Mr. Bush on his military record, and to begin criticizing Mr. Bush as a liar and a sheltered "son of privilege" who used connections to avoid combat in his youth and was out of touch with ordinary Americans.
Officials said these attacks were being made through the party and not the campaign to provide a measure of distance from Mr. Kerry, who is described by many officials as reluctant himself to impugn the president's character.
Now, the more difficult question, officials say, is just how the Kerry campaign - even if Mr. Kerry does not take part directly - should go after Mr. Bush. Some of Mr. Kerry's closest friends and longtime political operatives from Boston, who have now set up shop at Democratic headquarters in Washington, are pressing for more, saying the campaign and the candidate must go on the offensive, to restore Mr. Kerry's own character as a political asset and to hold Mr. Bush accountable for attacks on Mr. Kerry.
These friends and former aides, led by David Thorne, a Yale classmate, fellow Navy veteran and brother of Mr. Kerry's first wife, are agitating for the candidate himself to answer what they called the character-assassination attacks of people like Vice President Cheney and members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. They are pushing for Mr. Kerry to make a dramatic statement of his own to settle voters' doubts about Mr. Kerry's Vietnam War period.
Officials in the campaign, however, including both longstanding consultants like Bob Shrum and new additions like Joe Lockhart and other veterans of the Clinton administration, have balked at such a move, saying it could be a disaster and alienate too many swing voters who would view such an approach as mean-spirited. They said Mr. Kerry would do better to concentrate on issues where he outperforms Mr. Bush in polls, like jobs and health care.
A critical concern, several campaign officials said, is that polls have already shown Mr. Kerry's negative ratings rising recently, making it an exceptionally dangerous moment for him to attack Mr. Bush personally, since voters typically react with disapproval when candidates do so. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/11/politics/campaign/11campaign.html?hp
Post-Election: Todd Gitlin prepares for defeat, urges organizing.
They should, like the Republican Party after the Goldwater cataclysm of 1964, sigh, shudder, mourn--and organize. They'll pick themselves up and get back to work building their start-up think tanks and media and Internet networks, from the Center for American Progress through Air America Radio through MoveOn.org and various 527 soft money distributors, all of which, despite starting late, made up for a good deal of Democratic organizational weakness in 2004.
That is, if they're smart. The post-Goldwater Republicans were smart. Despite what looked like a calamity, they didn't bolt from the GOP. They didn't break off as a third party, though some of them dearly wanted to. Will the rebellious left discipline itself, cool its boiling blood, and decide that the pleasures of sectarianism are worth less than the steady resolve of infrastructural work? http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0409.gitlin.html
Those Bush Crowds: More Spin
This is the time in the political calendar when soothsayers point to the size of crowds at rallies to see which candidate is producing more enthusiasm. The campaigns, well aware of this practice, can't resist putting their thumbs on the scale.
On Tuesday, correspondents from The Washington Post and the Washington Times counted the crowds at President Bush's three stops in Missouri, then compared the actual figure with the official Bush campaign figure:
It seems that the Bush campaign is inflating its crowd counts by 45 to 75 percent. Some of this may be the result of people walking through metal detectors more than once, but there's clearly some old-fashioned crowd padding going on. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6628-2004Sep8.html
Fading Import of Network News: Tom Rosenstiel in the WaPost
Network news was built around the carefully written and edited story, produced by correspondents and vetted in advance to match words and pictures. On the network evening newscasts, 84 percent of the time is taken up by such packages, according to content analysis by the Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual State of the News Media study.
Cable news is a live and extemporaneous medium built around talk. Only 11 percent of the time is devoted to edited stories. Eighty percent is given over to in-studio interviews, studio banter, "anchor reads" and live reporter stand-ups, in which correspondents talk off the top of their heads or from hasty notes.
What is lost in the cable obsession with "live" is the chance to double-check, to rewrite, to edit -- and often to even report. What is lost with the passing of network TV, in other words, is the journalism of verification. It is gradually yielding place to a journalism of assertion. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13017-2004Sep10.html
Flashback: 1988
Remember when Bush Sr.’s co-chair John Sununu went on national television to attack Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-TX) claiming Bentsen had improperly helped get his son into the Texas National Guard during Vietnam. Bentsen's son just happened to serve in the very same National Guard unit at the very same time as George W. Bush. That same week, the Bush campaign had attacked Dukakis for receiving a draft deferment during the Korean War.
Typewritergate: While we await Kerry turning it up a few notches...
The fuss about the authenticity of the CBS-secured documents has overshadowed the Globe’s story re Bush not showing up in Massachusetts; it hasn’t been challenged. And no one is talking about how the challenge to the CBS story began with an email that was dispatched while the program was still on the air. How did anyone decipher from the program’s stills that the type might not be from that era?
CBS stands firm:
After CBS News on Wednesday trumpeted newly discovered documents that referred to a 1973 effort to ''sugar coat" President Bush's service record in the Texas Air National Guard, the network almost immediately faced charges that the documents were forgeries, with typography that was not available on typewriters used at that time.
But specialists interviewed by the Globe and some other news organizations say the specialized characters used in the documents, and the type format, were common to electric typewriters in wide use in the early 1970s, when Bush was a first lieutenant. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/09/11/authenticity_backed_on_bush_documents?mode=PF
Dan Payne in the Globe: The Democrat consultant weighs in: He has advice for Kerry, but also addresses 9/11 more than Kerry does…and must.
A "catastrophe" is how national security professionals describe Bush administration's response to 9/11 in James Fallows's piece in current Atlantic. Bush ignored clear warnings from outgoing Clinton officials that terrorism was serious threat. Ignored Aug. 6, 2001 briefing paper, "Osama bin Laden Determined To Strike inside US." On 9/11, when told "America is under attack," Bush froze in Florida classroom for seven long minutes reading "My Pet Goat."
Bush's anti-terrorism plan is simple: Kill Iraqis. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but Bush knew most Americans felt someone had to pay for it. We don't like Saddam, let's blame him. Kerry needs anti-terrorism proposal. Thanks in large part to Bush, most of world's one billion Muslims now hate us. Senseless slaughter in Beslan, Russia, makes global anti-terror action urgent. Kerry's Grand Canyon doctrine of no regrets for voting to let Bush invade Iraq has got to go. Saying Iraq is "wrong war, wrong time, wrong place" is first step. But Kerry has to oppose Iraq war. Forget flip-flop charge. Supporting unjustifiable war that's killed 1,000 Americans and 12 to 15,000 Iraqis is worse. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/09/11/bush_shamefully_exploits_tragedy?mode=PF
Polls: Time now an outlier; range is 3 – 6 points. Bush Bounce fading?
Time: Bush 50%, Kerry 39%
Newsweek: Bush 49%, Kerry 43%
Democracy Corps: Bush leading Kerry 48% to 45%.
Associated Press Poll: Bush leading Kerry 51% to 46%.
Zogby: Bush leading Kerry 46% to 42%.
Electoral Vote tallies (270 needed to win):
Electoral Vote Predictor: Kerry 273, Bush 233
Intrade State Futures: Bush 274, Kerry 254
state polls:
Pennsylvania: Kerry 49%, Bush 47% (Survey USA)
Missouri: Bush 48%, Kerry 46% (Survey USA)
Kansas: Bush 60%, Kerry 35% (Survey USA)
Indiana: Bush 60%, Kerry 36% (Survey USA)
Kentucky: Bush 56%, Kerry 39% (Survey USA)
North Carolina: Bush 55%, Kerry 42% (Rasmussen)
-R
According to recent articles, they’ve re-organized, bin Laden and others have made their headquarters in Afghanistan (this sounds familiar…) and they’re biding their time for key moments. 3 takes from stellar thinkers.
Syed Saleem Shahzad (Asia Times)
Since the disintegration of the Taliban regime at the end of 2001, the Afghan resistance has endured, managing, if nothing else, to keep US-led occupying forces and the Afghan National Army engaged in small pockets. But much bigger things are planned.
You take a ride to Chaman and you will find black and white turbans everywhere, a sort of propaganda tactic to show their strength. Just go to a football stadium in the evening and you will find hundreds of black turbans, a hallmark of the Taliban," Malik Nabi adds. Nowadays, as far as the Taliban are concerned, there are two types of Taliban: those who are on the frontline battlefields, and those who are waiting for a call to become cannon fodder once the word goes out for a mass mobilization. As far as al-Qaeda is concerned, a new, dispersed, generation of cells are involved in plotting attacks worldwide. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FI11Ag01.html
Pepe Escobar (Asia Times)
Three years after September 11, President George W Bush's crusade is a failure. "War on terror" is a meaningless myth: you can't combat a supple attack machine like al-Qaeda with shock and awe. What should have been a long, meticulous police operation was turned by Bush - instigated by his foreign policy adviser, God - into an illegal, preemptive attack on a nation that had nothing to do with terror. This policy has actually increased terror attacks around the world. Last year in Cairo, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, Sheikh Yamani, a man who knows one or two things about Arabs, violence and oil, said the invasion would produce "one hundred bin Ladens". They are here, and they have no one else but Bush to thank.
The bottom line: since Bush proclaimed his "crusade" or mission from God against terror, the United States, the Middle East and the world are immensely less safe. Bush-Cheney '04 are afraid US voters will start making these connections as the November elections draw closer. For the apocalyptic Cheney - as on the campaign trail in Iowa - there's nothing left but the language of fear:
Al-Qaeda subscribes to no political strategy, other than the strategy of total opportunism: as any kind of attack can happen any time, anywhere, it rules by fear - while at the same time demonstrating it is immune to any large-scale US war, from Afghanistan to Iraq. The rule-by-fear tactic also serves the Bush administration well, as fear is constantly used as a powerful political argument to justify the administration's policies ("Be afraid, be very much afraid, but you can count on us to protect you"). Unlike the Bush administration's spin, European intelligence experts in Brussels assured Asia Times Online that the Madrid bombing was only accidentally tied to Spain's national elections. It was not the case that "Spaniards had bowed to terror" (Washington's version), but that Bush ally Jose Maria Aznar's conservative government was mendacious enough to lie to the country, blaming Basque separatists when it already had evidence to the contrary.
As nihilistic as it may be, al-Qaeda, from a business point of view, is a major success: three years after September 11, it is a global brand and a global movement. The Middle East, in this scenario, is just a regional base station. This global brand does not have much to do with Islam. But it has everything to do with the globalization of anti-imperialism. And the empire, whatever its definition, has its center in Washington. Bin Laden is laughing: Bush's crusade has legitimized an obscure sect as a worldwide symbol of political revolt. How could bin Laden not vote for Bush? http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FI11Ak03.html
Juan Cole:
Bin Laden's dream of a united Muslim state under a revived caliphate may well be impossible to accomplish. But with the secular Baath gone, it could be one step closer to reality. If you add to the equation the generalized hatred for US policies (both against the Palestinians and in Iraq) among Muslims, that is a major step forward for al-Qaeda. In Saudi Arabia, al-Qaeda has emerged as a dissident political party. Before it had just been a small group of Bin Laden's personal acolytes in Afghanistan and a handful of other countries.Although the United States and its Pakistani ally have captured significant numbers of al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a whole new generation of angry young Muslim men has been produced. Al-Qaeda has moved from being a concrete cell-based terrorist organization to being an ideal and a model, for small local groups in Casablanca, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and elsewhere.The US is not winning the war on terror. Al-Qaeda also has by no means won. But across a whole range of objectives, al-Qaeda has accomplished more of its goals than the US has of its.
http://www.juancole.com/2004_09_01_juancole_archive.html#109487993311862124
Good Terrorists: Welcome to the US of A!
A little-noticed but chilling scene at Opa-locka Airport outside Miami last month demonstrates that the Bush administration's commitment to fighting international terrorism can be overtaken by presidential politics — even if that means admitting known terrorists onto U.S. soil.That's what happened when outgoing Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso inexplicably pardoned four Cuban exiles convicted of "endangering public safety" for their role in an assassination plot against Fidel Castro during a 2000 international summit in Panama.After their release, three of the four immediately flew via private jet to Miami, where they were greeted with a cheering fiesta organized by the hard-line anti-Castro community. Federal officials briefly interviewed the pardoned men — all holders of U.S. passports — and then let them go their way.The fourth man, Luis Posada Carriles, was the most notorious member of this anti-Castro cell. He is an escapee from a prison in Venezuela, where he was incarcerated for blowing up an Air Cubana passenger plane in 1976, killing 73. He also admitted plotting six hotel bombings in Havana that killed one tourist and injured 11 others in 1997. Posada has gone into hiding in Honduras while seeking a Central American country that will harbor him, prompting Honduran President Ricardo Maduro to demand an explanation from the Bush administration on how a renowned terrorist could enter his country using a false U.S. passport. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-op-sweig12sep12,1,3912945,print.story
Seymour Hersh: Abu Ghraib’s roots
He’s doing his part to connect the dots.
Mr. Hersh's thesis is that "the roots of the Abu Ghraib scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists" who have been charged so far, "but in the reliance of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld on secret operations and the use of coercion - and eye-for-eye retribution - in fighting terrorism."
In particular, Mr. Hersh has reported that a secret program to capture and interrogate terrorists led to the abuse of prisoners. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/12/international/middleeast/12abuse.html
ELECTION
Democrat’s Aides Agree on Need to React Strongly but Not on How
Still? Awfully disturbing. The story behind the NY Times headline:
As a first step, the Kerry campaign this week dispatched the Democratic National Committee to go after Mr. Bush on his military record, and to begin criticizing Mr. Bush as a liar and a sheltered "son of privilege" who used connections to avoid combat in his youth and was out of touch with ordinary Americans.
Officials said these attacks were being made through the party and not the campaign to provide a measure of distance from Mr. Kerry, who is described by many officials as reluctant himself to impugn the president's character.
Now, the more difficult question, officials say, is just how the Kerry campaign - even if Mr. Kerry does not take part directly - should go after Mr. Bush. Some of Mr. Kerry's closest friends and longtime political operatives from Boston, who have now set up shop at Democratic headquarters in Washington, are pressing for more, saying the campaign and the candidate must go on the offensive, to restore Mr. Kerry's own character as a political asset and to hold Mr. Bush accountable for attacks on Mr. Kerry.
These friends and former aides, led by David Thorne, a Yale classmate, fellow Navy veteran and brother of Mr. Kerry's first wife, are agitating for the candidate himself to answer what they called the character-assassination attacks of people like Vice President Cheney and members of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. They are pushing for Mr. Kerry to make a dramatic statement of his own to settle voters' doubts about Mr. Kerry's Vietnam War period.
Officials in the campaign, however, including both longstanding consultants like Bob Shrum and new additions like Joe Lockhart and other veterans of the Clinton administration, have balked at such a move, saying it could be a disaster and alienate too many swing voters who would view such an approach as mean-spirited. They said Mr. Kerry would do better to concentrate on issues where he outperforms Mr. Bush in polls, like jobs and health care.
A critical concern, several campaign officials said, is that polls have already shown Mr. Kerry's negative ratings rising recently, making it an exceptionally dangerous moment for him to attack Mr. Bush personally, since voters typically react with disapproval when candidates do so. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/11/politics/campaign/11campaign.html?hp
Post-Election: Todd Gitlin prepares for defeat, urges organizing.
They should, like the Republican Party after the Goldwater cataclysm of 1964, sigh, shudder, mourn--and organize. They'll pick themselves up and get back to work building their start-up think tanks and media and Internet networks, from the Center for American Progress through Air America Radio through MoveOn.org and various 527 soft money distributors, all of which, despite starting late, made up for a good deal of Democratic organizational weakness in 2004.
That is, if they're smart. The post-Goldwater Republicans were smart. Despite what looked like a calamity, they didn't bolt from the GOP. They didn't break off as a third party, though some of them dearly wanted to. Will the rebellious left discipline itself, cool its boiling blood, and decide that the pleasures of sectarianism are worth less than the steady resolve of infrastructural work? http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0409.gitlin.html
Those Bush Crowds: More Spin
This is the time in the political calendar when soothsayers point to the size of crowds at rallies to see which candidate is producing more enthusiasm. The campaigns, well aware of this practice, can't resist putting their thumbs on the scale.
On Tuesday, correspondents from The Washington Post and the Washington Times counted the crowds at President Bush's three stops in Missouri, then compared the actual figure with the official Bush campaign figure:
It seems that the Bush campaign is inflating its crowd counts by 45 to 75 percent. Some of this may be the result of people walking through metal detectors more than once, but there's clearly some old-fashioned crowd padding going on. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6628-2004Sep8.html
Fading Import of Network News: Tom Rosenstiel in the WaPost
Network news was built around the carefully written and edited story, produced by correspondents and vetted in advance to match words and pictures. On the network evening newscasts, 84 percent of the time is taken up by such packages, according to content analysis by the Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual State of the News Media study.
Cable news is a live and extemporaneous medium built around talk. Only 11 percent of the time is devoted to edited stories. Eighty percent is given over to in-studio interviews, studio banter, "anchor reads" and live reporter stand-ups, in which correspondents talk off the top of their heads or from hasty notes.
What is lost in the cable obsession with "live" is the chance to double-check, to rewrite, to edit -- and often to even report. What is lost with the passing of network TV, in other words, is the journalism of verification. It is gradually yielding place to a journalism of assertion. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13017-2004Sep10.html
Flashback: 1988
Remember when Bush Sr.’s co-chair John Sununu went on national television to attack Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-TX) claiming Bentsen had improperly helped get his son into the Texas National Guard during Vietnam. Bentsen's son just happened to serve in the very same National Guard unit at the very same time as George W. Bush. That same week, the Bush campaign had attacked Dukakis for receiving a draft deferment during the Korean War.
Typewritergate: While we await Kerry turning it up a few notches...
The fuss about the authenticity of the CBS-secured documents has overshadowed the Globe’s story re Bush not showing up in Massachusetts; it hasn’t been challenged. And no one is talking about how the challenge to the CBS story began with an email that was dispatched while the program was still on the air. How did anyone decipher from the program’s stills that the type might not be from that era?
CBS stands firm:
After CBS News on Wednesday trumpeted newly discovered documents that referred to a 1973 effort to ''sugar coat" President Bush's service record in the Texas Air National Guard, the network almost immediately faced charges that the documents were forgeries, with typography that was not available on typewriters used at that time.
But specialists interviewed by the Globe and some other news organizations say the specialized characters used in the documents, and the type format, were common to electric typewriters in wide use in the early 1970s, when Bush was a first lieutenant. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/09/11/authenticity_backed_on_bush_documents?mode=PF
Dan Payne in the Globe: The Democrat consultant weighs in: He has advice for Kerry, but also addresses 9/11 more than Kerry does…and must.
A "catastrophe" is how national security professionals describe Bush administration's response to 9/11 in James Fallows's piece in current Atlantic. Bush ignored clear warnings from outgoing Clinton officials that terrorism was serious threat. Ignored Aug. 6, 2001 briefing paper, "Osama bin Laden Determined To Strike inside US." On 9/11, when told "America is under attack," Bush froze in Florida classroom for seven long minutes reading "My Pet Goat."
Bush's anti-terrorism plan is simple: Kill Iraqis. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but Bush knew most Americans felt someone had to pay for it. We don't like Saddam, let's blame him. Kerry needs anti-terrorism proposal. Thanks in large part to Bush, most of world's one billion Muslims now hate us. Senseless slaughter in Beslan, Russia, makes global anti-terror action urgent. Kerry's Grand Canyon doctrine of no regrets for voting to let Bush invade Iraq has got to go. Saying Iraq is "wrong war, wrong time, wrong place" is first step. But Kerry has to oppose Iraq war. Forget flip-flop charge. Supporting unjustifiable war that's killed 1,000 Americans and 12 to 15,000 Iraqis is worse. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/09/11/bush_shamefully_exploits_tragedy?mode=PF
Polls: Time now an outlier; range is 3 – 6 points. Bush Bounce fading?
Time: Bush 50%, Kerry 39%
Newsweek: Bush 49%, Kerry 43%
Democracy Corps: Bush leading Kerry 48% to 45%.
Associated Press Poll: Bush leading Kerry 51% to 46%.
Zogby: Bush leading Kerry 46% to 42%.
Electoral Vote tallies (270 needed to win):
Electoral Vote Predictor: Kerry 273, Bush 233
Intrade State Futures: Bush 274, Kerry 254
state polls:
Pennsylvania: Kerry 49%, Bush 47% (Survey USA)
Missouri: Bush 48%, Kerry 46% (Survey USA)
Kansas: Bush 60%, Kerry 35% (Survey USA)
Indiana: Bush 60%, Kerry 36% (Survey USA)
Kentucky: Bush 56%, Kerry 39% (Survey USA)
North Carolina: Bush 55%, Kerry 42% (Rasmussen)
-R
