Kennedy Says Bush Broke Faith on Iraq




Wednesday, January 14, 2004 3:27 p.m. ET

By Vicki Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush marketed the war with Iraq as a "political product" and broke faith with the American people by forcing them into an unnecessary conflict, a leading Democratic lawmaker said on Wednesday.



In remarks fueled by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's blasts at the Republican White House, U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy said Bush and his advisers capitalized on fear from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and put "a spin on the truth to justify a war that could well become one of the worst blunders in more than two centuries of American foreign policy."

Speaking to the Center for American Progress, the longtime liberal Democrat from Massachusetts said the Republican administration "has broken faith with the American people, aided and abetted by a congressional majority willing to pursue ideology at any price, even the price of distorting the truth."

Kennedy, who served in the U.S. Senate since 1962, said Bush timed the Iraq debate to divide Democrats and help Republicans win 2002 congressional elections by distracting attention "from the troubled economy and the troubled effort to capture" Osama bin Laden, whose al Qaeda network was blamed for the September 2001 attacks.

Bush should not have sent U.S. troops "in harms way in Iraq for ideological reasons and on a timetable based on the marketing of a political product," he said.

With the White House intending to hand over power to an Iraqi administration by the end of June, Kennedy said the United States now cannot "simply walk away from the wreckage of a war we never should have fought so that President Bush can wage a political campaign based on dubious boasts of success."

He also said the Iraq war set back the effort to stop terrorism. "We knocked al Qaeda down in the war in Afghanistan, but we let it regroup by going to war in Iraq."

U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican, called Kennedy's speech a "hateful attack" that "insulted the president's patriotism."

Kennedy said critical statements by Bush's first treasury secretary showed that "despite protestations to the contrary, the president and his senior aides began the march to war in Iraq in the earliest days of the administration."

O'Neill, ousted about a year ago in a shake-up of Bush's economic team, has sparked a firestorm with interviews and his contributions to a book depicting a disengaged president and an administration bent on toppling Saddam long before Bush cited Iraq as a terrorist threat after the Sept. 11 attacks.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "Let me remind you that the world is safer and better because of the action that we took to remove a brutal regime from power in Iraq. The president worked to exhaust all diplomatic means possible before taking the action that we took."

Copyright © 2003 Reuters Limited.







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Bush's deception on Iraq
By BILL MAXWELL, Times Staff Writer
Published January 11, 2004

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Most Americans have never heard of the Joint Captured Materiel Exploitation Group.

Let me bring them up to speed: It is the 400-member military team whose job was to search every inch of Iraq for any and all military equipment. Well, guess what? The Bush administration has quietly pulled the team out of Iraq. Many members are back on U.S. soil, and others have been reassigned to duties related to insurgent fighters in Iraq.

Why has the administration recalled the team? Because Bush's deceptions and outright lies have pretty much come home to roost.

Some military officials say that bringing the team home is an embarrassing acknowledgement that Bush has no realistic expectations of finding the caches of biological and chemical weapons that he and others cited as the imperatives for invading Iraq last year.

The New York Times reports that another team, the Iraq Survey Group, whose job is to dispose of biological and chemical weapons, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars and has not found a single WMD to destroy.

According to the Washington Post, a document recently made public indicates that Iraq probably destroyed its WMDs as far back as 1991, and the regime had not restored its capability of producing such weapons since. The Post states that the purported WMD program was a maze of exaggeration and lies on the part of Iraqi officials and scientists who were trying to curry favor with Saddam Hussein and promote their personal careers.

In other words, experts cannot establish any credible evidence that Iraq had the illicit weapons that Bush claimed or show that Hussein was an "immediate" threat to American shores and the rest of the world.

Iraq had to be "disarmed," Bush and his people intoned time after time as the reason for toppling Hussein. When inspectors did not find WMDs, however, the administration shifted gears and suggested that the wily Hussein had destroyed the weapons or had hidden them on the eve of the U.S. invasion in March or had shipped them to neighboring terrorist countries.

But a new report by the nonpartisan Carnegie Endowment for International Peace disputes the administration's claims. The report asserts that Iraq could not have destroyed tons of WMDs or hidden them or sent them out of the country without the international community noticing. Certainly, the large team of U.N. weapons inspectors on the ground each day would have seen something and would have sounded the alarm.

In another blow to Bush's credibility on Iraq, David Kay, leader of the survey group, along with his deputy, is said to be leaving the post soon because his work is done. His efforts came up virtually empty. If Kay were on the trail of WMDs or had found them, he would have told the world.

Referring to Kay and his work, a weapons disposal team official told the New York Times: "They picked up everything that was worth picking up." Which turns out to be next to nothing.

Jane Harman of California, the head Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Bush hyped the Iraqi menace. About Kay's hunt for WMDs, she said: "I am sure that if they had found important evidence, we would know about it."

In response to the Carnegie report, Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged that despite his pinpoint, high-tech presentation before the United Nations last February justifying the war, he had no "smoking gun" evidence linking Hussein to al-Qaida and the World Trade Center attacks.

At a news conference, Powell said: "I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection. But I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did."

Like the president, Powell has not come clean with the American people. And like the president, he seems to be cynically satisfied that many people believe - with the administration's encouragement - that Hussein played a direct role in bringing down the World Trade Center.

As long as this powerful, false notion lives, the administration will continue to mislead and control a frightened, gullible public. Meanwhile, U.S. and coalition troops and civilians, on both sides, will continue to die in a war that was initiated by George W. Bush - who was going to war no matter what.

© Copyright 2003 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved

Report: Bush planned Iraq invasion before 9/11
Ex-Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill charges president was searching for way to do it
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was fired in December 2002 as part of a shake-up of Bush's economic team, and Bush are shown at the Treasury Building on March 7, 2001.

Updated: 2:00 p.m. ET Jan. 10, 2004NEW YORK - Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill charges in a new book that President George W. Bush entered office in January 2001 intent on invading Iraq and was in search of a way to go about it.

O’Neill, fired in December 2002 as part of a shake-up of Bush’s economic team, has become the first major insider of the Bush administration to launch an attack on the president.

He likened Bush at Cabinet meetings to “a blind man in a room full of deaf people,” according to excerpts from a CBS interview to promote a book by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind, “The Price of Loyalty.”

To go to war, Bush used the argument that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and had to be stopped in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, world. The weapons have never been found.

“From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” O’Neill said in the “60 Minutes” interview scheduled to air on Sunday. “For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap.”

CBS released excerpts from the interview on Friday and Saturday.

The former treasury secretary and other White House insiders gave Suskind documents that in the first three months of 2001 revealed the Bush administration was examining military options for removing Saddam Hussein, CBS said.

“There are memos,” Suskind told CBS. “One of them marked ’secret’ says ’Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq.”’

Another Pentagon document entitled “Foreign suitors for Iraqi Oil Field Contracts” talks about contractors from 40 countries and which ones have interest in Iraq, Suskind said.

Bent on war?
O’Neill was also quoted in the book as saying the president was determined to find a reason to go to war and he was surprised nobody on the National Security Council questioned why Iraq should be invaded.

“It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it,” said O’Neill. “The president saying ’Go find me a way to do this.”’

White House spokesman Scott McClellan rejected O’Neill’s remarks.

“We appreciate his service. While we’re not in the business of doing book reviews, it appears that the world according to Mr. O’Neill is more about trying to justify his own opinions than looking at the reality of the results we are achieving on behalf of the American people,” he said on Saturday.

O’Neill also said the president did not ask him a single question during their first one-on-one meeting, which lasted an hour. The president’s lack of engagement left his advisers with ”little more than hunches about what the president might think,” O'Neill told “60 Minutes.”

Suskind’s book, whose full title is “The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill,” uses interviews with O’Neill, dozens of White House insiders and 19,000 documents provided by O’Neill.

O’Neill, who was fired due to disagreements over tax cuts, spent a difficult two years in Washington, joining the Bush administration with a background as a no-nonsense corporate executive.

Feeble growth in US jobs market
EURO SOARS AGAINST DOLLAR
When the jobs data were announced at 1330 GMT, the euro soared against the dollar

US bosses took on only 1,000 new workers in December, official figures showed.
Nonetheless the US jobless rate fell from 5.9% to 5.7%, registering the biggest drop in months, the US Labor Department said.

The statistics show that robust economic growth is still not bringing employment opportunities for ordinary Americans.

Seconds after the news, the euro surged to an all time high against the dollar.

Scrooge bosses at Christmas

The euro leapt to $1.285, a rise of more than one US cent, managing another all-time high against the US currency within days of its record opening to the year.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said the latest employment data suggested that at least 300,000 people had simply stopped looking for work.

US retailers did not take on extra staff to cover the Christmas rush; instead they cut 38,000 jobs.

The manufacturing sector has been shedding workers for nearly four years, and the trend continued in the December, when industry cut 26,000 posts.

Political fallout

The news from the jobs market is awkward news for President George W Bush.

His political opponents have accused him of presiding over the largest destruction of jobs since the 1930s.

But during recent months the economy seemed to be at a turning point, with the strong economic growth at last generating new jobs.

The new data, however, suggest that the so-called "jobless recovery" could become a key issue in the 2004 presidential campaign again.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/3383245.stm

Published: 2004/01/09 14:10:45 GMT

© BBC MMIV

Dean Says Faith Swayed Decision on Gay Unions

By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 8, 2004; Page A01


MUSCATINE, Iowa, Jan. 7 -- Democratic front-runner Howard Dean said Wednesday that his decision as governor to sign the bill legalizing civil unions for gays in Vermont was influenced by his Christian views, as he waded deeper into the growing political, religious and cultural debate over homosexuality and the Bible's view of it.



"The overwhelming evidence is that there is very significant, substantial genetic component to it," Dean said in an interview Wednesday. "From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people."

Dean's comments come as gay marriage is emerging as a defining social issue of the 2004 elections, and one that is dividing the Episcopal Church in the United States and many other Christians and non-Christians. Driving the debate is a theological dispute over the Bible's view on homosexuality and a political one over the secular and spiritual wisdom of allowing gays to marry.

Dean said he does not often turn to his faith when making policy decisions but cited the civil union bill as a time he did. "My view of Christianity . . . is that the hallmark of being a Christian is to reach out to people who have been left behind," he told reporters Tuesday. "So I think there was a religious aspect to my decision to support civil unions."

Earlier Tuesday, when he and the other candidates were asked at a debate whether religion has influenced any of their policy decisions, Dean was the only one not to respond.

In the interview Wednesday, Dean said, "I don't go through an inventory like that when making public policy decisions."

Dean has been expanding on his religious views in a series of conversations with reporters, but his remarks Tuesday and Wednesday were the first time he has talked about how faith has influenced his policymaking.

Dean said he does not consider homosexuality a sin but nonetheless opposes gay marriage. The civil unions bill he signed as Vermont governor in 2000 granted homosexual couples the same rights and protections as if they were married. Among the nine Democratic presidential contenders, Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio), former senator Carol Moseley Braun (Ill.) and Al Sharpton support gay marriage.

Republicans are pushing a constitutional amendment against gay marriage, and President Bush has said he would support it if necessary. Religious groups and social conservatives in Congress are planning to push the issue aggressively before the November election, in part, to motivate Christian voters and paint Democrats as out of touch with most Americans. Polls show that a majority of Americans oppose gay marriage.

Dean, who leads in many polls, is increasingly trying to broaden his appeal by talking about faith and centrist policies such as a balanced budget and tax reform for the middle class. One week ago he said he planned to discuss his faith more openly in the South, but Tuesday he said he would take this message everywhere. "I think we have got to stop thinking about the South as some peculiar region," he said. "I am going to talk about the same things everywhere."

Some Democrats have said Dean, with roots in liberal Vermont and close identification with the nation's first civil unions law, might appear too secular to win over an increasingly religious electorate.

Dean, who is a member of the Congregationalist Church, which preaches a liberal brand of Christianity, falls on the side of Episcopal leaders in the United States who recently stirred international controversy by ordaining a gay bishop, and the millions of Americans who do not consider homosexuality a sin. This theological debate predates the questions of civil unions and gay marriage and has divided biblical scholars for a long time.

In broad terms, it pits Christians who look at the Bible less literally and argue that the Gospels never quote Jesus talking specifically about homosexuality against more conservative Christians who take a more literal approach and point to scripture in the New and Old Testaments that they believe forbids homosexuality. For instance, Leviticus 18:22, according to the King James version of the Bible, says, "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."

Polls show voters want a religious president and one who talks about faith. Some Republicans, including a few in the Bush administration, worry that the GOP could overplay its hand by appearing to divide people with hostility toward gays. But if Dean wins the Democratic presidential nomination, strategists from both parties predict it will become a major issue in the campaign.

At several campaign stops this week, Dean said that if Republicans push gay issues, he will talk "issues that unite us," such as health insurance for every American

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Global fears as US goes into the red
By Matt Wade
January 9, 2004

The huge black hole in the US budget and the country's ballooning trade deficit are threatening to push up interest rates across the globe and destabilise the international economy, one of the world's most powerful financial institutions has warned.

The budget deficit - which has swung from a healthy surplus in 2000 to a forecast blowout of more than $US400 billion ($521.2 billion) this year - was a "significant risk" for the rest of the world, the International Monetary Fund said yesterday.

"Sustained fiscal deficits lower national savings in the United States and will eventually raise real interest rates both in the United States and abroad," said Charles Collyns, deputy director of its western hemisphere department.

Economists said the warning was important for Australia, as local market interest rates are closely linked to those in the US.

The fund's warning also echoes concerns raised by the Australian Treasury in its most recent economic assessment last month when it said the US's "twin deficits" - its budget and current account blowouts - were a risk to global economic stability, and therefore posed a threat to the Australia's economic outlook.

The fund said the US would soon have a foreign debt totalling 40 per cent of its gross domestic product - an "unprecedented level debt for a large industrialised country".

This could trigger a "disorderly" plunge in the US dollar - and a corresponding jump in other currencies, including the Australian dollar - rocking the global financial system.

"The possible global risks of a disorderly exchange rate adjustment . . . cannot be ignored," the fund said.

While the fund's report said the US deficits were a medium-term problem for the world economy, this could have a more immediate impact because financial markets tend to respond quickly to future threats.

A Macquarie Bank economist, Brian Redican, said there was a close correlation between interest rates in the US and Australia,making the the fund's predictions particularly relevant to Australia.

"[The fund's scenario] could see Australian rates higher than they otherwise would be," he said.

The Australian economy has entered 2004 with considerable momentum but there are strong signs it will lose three assets that have bolstered growth: super-low interest rates, a cheap dollar and a housing boom. Given this, many economists believe growth will slow in the second half of the year.

The Reserve Bank lifted interest rates by a total of half a percentage point in the last two months of 2003, and economists are predicting at least one 0.25 percentage point rise early this year. The IMF's warning suggests there could be upward pressure on Australian rates for some time.

The greenback has lost ground on global currency markets for 18 months, pushing the Australian dollar above US77 cents for the first time in 6 years this week. It finished yesterday just below its latest peak at US76.77 cents.

The pace and magnitude of the dollar's rise has already put local exporters under pressure and a fresh plunge in the greenback - a possibility canvassed by the fund - would worsen the impact.

Economists say a bigger-than-expected slowdown in housing also poses a risk to the economic outlook. A survey released today suggests higher interest rates are taking a toll on expectations of future house price growth.

The Hawker Britton-UMR Research survey showed the number of people in NSW expecting house prices to rise fell from 66 per cent in September to 46 per cent last month. Those believing prices will drop in NSW had more than doubled to 11 per cent. In Victoria, one in four believes prices will fall.

The IMF said the US Government must develop a credible five- to 10-year plan to balance its budget and warned this would mean spending cuts and tax rises. While US Government spending had provided valuable support to the weak global economy in recent years, the "large US fiscal deficits also pose significant risks for the rest of the world", it said.


This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/08/1073437412930.html

washingtonpost.com
Ethnic Division in Iraq


By Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld

Sunday, January 4, 2004; Page B02


Sick to death of "identity politics" at home, Americans ironically find themselves dealing with a tinderbox of ethnic division in Iraq. We may be the least well-equipped nation in the world to manage the kinds of group hatreds that threaten Iraqi society today. Because of our beliefs in the "melting pot" and the United States' own relatively successful -- though halting and incomplete -- history of assimilation, Americans don't always understand the significance of ethnicity, both at home and especially abroad. In Iraq, our obliviousness to the realities of group hatred was on display from the first days of the occupation, when U.S. officials appointed former members of the almost-exclusively-Sunni Baath Partyto the highest government and police positions, apparently unaware that these appointments would provoke the fury of Iraq's Shiites, Kurds and others, who make up more than 80 percent of the population. The outraged reactions forced the Americans to rescind the appointments.

British colonial governments, by contrast, were fastidiously conscious of ethnic divisions. But their policies are a dangerous model. When it was the British Empire's turn to deal with nation-building and ethnicity, the British engaged in divide-and-conquer policies, not only protecting but favoring minorities, and simultaneously aggravating ethnic resentments. As a result, when the British decamped, time bombs often exploded, from Africa to India to Southeast Asia.

The U.S. government's ethnic policy for Iraq has essentially been to have no policy. The Bush administration's overriding goal is the transfer of power by the end of next June from the U.S.-led coalition to a new Iraqi government selected, in theory, through some kind of democratic process. The administration seems strangely confident that Iraq's ethnic, religious and tribal divisions will dissipate in the face of rapid democratization and market-generated wealth. In President Bush's words, "freedom and democracy will always and everywhere have greater appeal than the slogans of hatred."

Unfortunately , recent history suggests just the opposite. Rapid democratization has been attempted in many poor, ethnically divided societies in the last two decades, and the results are sobering. Democratic elections in the former Yugoslavia produced landslide victories for the hate-mongering Franjo Tudjman in Croatia and the genocidal Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia. In Rwanda in the early 1990s, democratization fomented ethnic extremism, yielding the majority-supported Hutu Power movement and the ensuing ethnic slaughter of Tutsis. In Indonesia in 1998, sudden democratization after the fall of Suharto's 30-year dictatorship produced a wave of anti-Chinese demagoguery and confiscations, leading to the devastating flight of more than $40 billion in Chinese-controlled capital.

It is impossible to predict who would win free and fair elections in Iraq, but given the demographic and economic conditions, it is extremely unlikely that such elections in the near future would produce a secular, pro-American outcome.

Iraq's ethnic and religious dynamics involve conflicts that cut across and among Kurds, Turkmens, Shiites, Christians and Sunnis; many horrendous massacres; wholesale confiscations; and deep feelings of hatred and the need for revenge. Iraq's Shiites represent a 60 percent majority, which has suffered cruel oppression at the hands of the Sunni minority. While Iraq's Shiites are far from homogeneous, liberation has already fueled religious demagoguery among vying Islamic clerics and unleashed powerful fundamentalist movements throughout the country. Needless to say, these extremist movements are intensely anti-American, anti-secular, anti-women's rights and illiberal. Meanwhile, Iraq's 20 percent Kurdish minority in the north, mistrustful of Arab rule, represents another source of profound instability. Finally, as many have pointed out, Iraq's oil could prove a curse, leading to massive corruption and a destructive battle between groups to capture the nation's oil, its main source of wealth.

None of this is democracy's fault. The blame for Iraq's current group hatreds rests largely with the fascistic regime of Saddam Hussein, which systematically terrorized and murdered Shiites and Kurds. In addition, Hussein's sadistic secularism spurred the growing fundamentalism among Iraq's Shiites.

Blaming Saddam, however, does not alter the facts. Given the conditions that exist today in Iraq -- conditions created by colonialism, autocracy and brutality, not to mention the historical schism between Shiite and Sunni Muslims -- rushed national elections could very well produce renewed ethnic radicalism and violence; an illiberal, Islamist regime in which women are murdered by their relatives for the crime of being raped (already happening in Shiite Baghdad); and an anti-American government determined to oust U.S. firms from Iraq's oil fields. Any of these results would create, at best, an awkward moment for the Bush administration. Combined, they could be catastrophic for American interests, for the Middle East and for Iraq.

Perhaps for these reasons the Bush administration is trying to create a "democratic" government by June without popular elections.

What is to be done? Retreating from democracy is not an option. Unfortunately, few good models exist to guide U.S. ethnic policy in Iraq. The British strategy might have been to pit Shiites against Sunnis, and perhaps Kurds against both. But if we want an Iraq not divided and conquered, but united and self-governing, the way forward will be considerably harder.

The polar opposite of no ethnic policy would be a plan for explicit ethnic and religious power-sharing. For example, a new Iraqi constitution could contain a Dayton-style formula guaranteeing Sunnis and Kurds major government posts. Such a plan might have salutary short-term effects, but enshrining ethnicity and religious division in the constitution would be a perilous strategy. It could harden group identity at the cost of national unity. The one thing potentially worse than rushing to national Iraqi elections might be rushing to such elections while clumsily manipulating combustible ethnic dynamics that few in the United States even understand.

All this suggests a very different alternative: Put the brakes on national democracy, and focus much more energy and resources on local democracy. To date, astonishingly, there have been virtually no city or town elections anywhere in Iraq. Apparently, U.S. policy calls for implementing national self-government first and worrying about local self-government later. The order of priority should be exactly the opposite.

Democracy at the national level will essentially pit the Shiite majority against the hated Sunni minority and autonomy-seeking Kurds in a battle for control over the country's destiny and oil wealth. By contrast, many Iraqi towns and cities are relatively less divided along ethnic and religious lines, and the electoral stakes there would be much lower. In elections for city councils and other municipal positions, the competing candidates and parties would have much less incentive to define themselves along sectarian lines or to engage in ethnic demagoguery.

Local democracy is the best instruction for national democracy. British and American democracy started locally, not nationally. The message of the U.S.-led coalition to Iraqis should be: We are turning over governance to you, right now, in every one of your neighborhoods, towns and cities. Although oil and certain other national policy matters would be taken off the table -- they could not possibly be decided at the town level -- local self-government would still represent an enormous transfer of sovereignty. Much of the Iraqi reconstruction effort will be local: providing water; restoring electricity; building and staffing schools; fostering commerce; establishing town courts; and of course policing. Billions of dollars will be spent on these things over the coming years; crucial policy decisions will be made about priorities, jobs for women, and the distribution of goods and services.

To its credit, after the war, the U.S. military created district and town councils to assist in local governance all over Iraq. Coalition officials refer to these councils as "inclusive" and "democratically selected," but there is a big difference between selected and elected. In fact, the councils appear to have been selected by U.S. military authorities. As one U.S. official candidly acknowledged, "In terms of actual elections, we are not focused on that in our assistance at this point." An October poll indicated that half of all Iraqis did not even know the councils existed.

To be sure, some Iraqi towns might elect fundamentalist clerics as their lawmakers. The coalition must not try to suppress such results. Let Iraqis see their decisions respected. Let them see some towns where fundamentalism reigns and some where it does not. The hopes of a democratic Middle East may depend on it.

Local self-government will not be easy to achieve. Ethnically diverse cities such as Baghdad and Kirkuk could present special challenges. But local governance is a far more realistic goal than trying in the next six months to establish national, democratic government. Instead of premature national elections, the coalition should pursue an interim Iraqi constitution establishing the framework for immediate local self-government. During the ensuing period, coalition authorities would have the job of ensuring fair elections, a free press and freedom of movement (so that Iraqis can also "vote with their feet"). Because they would also retain control over Iraq's oil for an additional year or so, coalition forces must credibly demonstrate that they are keeping the country's oil wealth in trust for the Iraqi people. National elections would be postponed until Iraqis agreed on a permanent constitution, a process that would profit enormously from actual experience with local democracy.

Before she was assassinated, Iraqi Governing Council member Akila Hashimi warned against top-down efforts to remake her country. "Culture creates laws, not the other way around," she said. If democracy is to flourish in Iraq -- and elsewhere in the Middle East -- it must spread from the bottom up.

Amy Chua is a professor at Yale Law School and author of "World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability" (Anchor Books). Jed Rubenfeld is also a professor at Yale Law School and a U. S. observer at the Council of Europe.




© 2004 The Washington Post Company

Pat Robertson: God tells me it's Bush in a blowout

By SONJA BARISIC
Associated Press
Posted January 2 2004, 12:44 PM EST

NORFOLK, Va. -- Pat Robertson said Friday that God told him President Bush will be re-elected in a landslide.

``I think George Bush is going to win in a walk,'' the religious broadcaster said on his ``700 Club'' program on the Virginia Beach-based Christian Broadcasting Network, which he founded.











``I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be like a blowout election in 2004. It's shaping up that way,'' Robertson said.

``The Lord has just blessed him,'' Robertson said of Bush. ``I mean, he could make terrible mistakes and comes out of it. It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad, God picks him up because he's a man of prayer and God's blessing him.''

Earlier on the program, Robertson had explained that he wanted to share ``some of the things that I believe the Lord was showing me as I spent several days in prayer at the end of 2003.''

Robertson also said that this year will be one of ``extraordinary prosperity'' and that God will bless China in 2004 ``in a way it's never known before.''

``God loves China and he loves the Chinese people,'' Robertson said. ``I believe there's going to be an unbelievable spiritual revival taking place in China this year.''

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, a frequent Robertson critic and executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said he had a prediction of his own.

``I predict that Pat Robertson in 2004 will continue to use his multimillion broadcasting empire to promote George Bush and other Republican candidates,'' Lynn said in a statement. ``Maybe Pat got a message from (Bush political adviser) Karl Rove and thought it was from God.''

A Robertson spokeswoman did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment. ___

On the Net:

Christian Broadcasting Network: http://www.cbn.com

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State: http://www.au.org

U.S.: No Need to Test All Cows
Spot checks for disease suffice




By Delthia Ricks
STAFF WRITER

January 1, 2004

One day after the U.S. Department of Agriculture prohibited "downer" cattle from entering the food supply, federal officials said it is not necessary that all livestock be tested for mad cow disease.

USDA officials said during a national briefing yesterday that it would remove all downer (immobile) animals from herds to be slaughtered as ordered by the Secretary of Agriculture on Tuesday and continue its practice of spot-testing animals for the fatal disease.

"We have had a good system in place," said Dr. Ron DeHaven, the USDA's chief veterinarian, referring both to the sweeping new guidelines and to existing regulations in place since the late 1980s.

"That system, as evidenced by this case, as unfortunate as it was, did work," DeHaven said. "The protections they have afforded have assured us that U.S. beef is safe."

A team of technical experts from Japan, which has banned U.S. beef products, is expected to arrive in the United States next week to discuss beef safety with U.S. agriculture officials.

Japan, the largest importer of U.S. beef, tests all its cattle for mad cow disease, and has detected the lethal condition in cattle younger than 30 months. U.S. officials say the disorder is not likely in younger animals.

Despite the U.S. government's assurances, federal veterinary and scientific experts still have no idea how the cow identified last week was infected with prions, the misfolded proteins that cause mad cow disease. One part of their investigation is looking into the feed that the 6 1/2-year-old cow may have consumed. The cow was slaughtered Dec. 9, despite its being a downer animal, which should have flagged USDA inspectors to the possibility of bovine spongiform encephalopathy - mad cow disease. The animal had been herded with cattle in Washington state.

Because federal agriculture officials have linked the cow's herd of origin to Alberta, Canada, part of their investigation into the animal's infection has been focused there. A cow from that province was identified in May as also having mad cow disease.

DeHaven, however, said yesterday that while cattle feed was the source of infectious prions in the British outbreak two decades ago, there is no evidence so far that the Canadian feed was contaminated.

The contents of cattle feed has been tightly regulated in the United States after the British outbreak in the 1980s, USDA officials said yesterday. USDA regulators further tightened guidelines on feed in 1997.

There is no evidence the infected cow consumed contaminated feed, DeHaven said.

"At this point in time it is way too premature to draw any conclusions," DeHaven told a national telebriefing from Washington yesterday. He also ruled out for now the possibility that a single feed-producing plant may be a target, saying Canadian ranchers like those in this country obtain "feed from a number of sources."
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

But last year, California scientists reported that mice exposed to prions did accumulate them in muscle. They called for a major effort to look for prions in muscle of infected livestock.

Belay cautioned that the lab result doesn’t necessarily apply to cattle. What’s more, he said, other researchers have found that muscle tissue from infected cows couldn’t spread disease when put into other animals. “That’s pretty reassuring,” Johnson