Our Views
Believing doesn't make it so
The Bush administration is having great difficulty admitting the president erred when he claimed Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa for use in a nuclear weapons program. Its spokesmen admit the claim should not have been in the State of the Union speech, but then argue the claim was technically true.Despite attempts from within the administration and among its defenders to argue that the evidence once seemed stronger, the evidence for the uranium story has always been tenuous.
U.S. intelligence agencies doubted the evidence that Iraq was shopping for uranium in Africa long before March 8, when the United Nations' chief nuclear weapons inspector denounced the infamous Niger memo as not just a forgery, but as a crude forgery. Those doubts existed months before Bush's Jan. 28 speech and continued afterward. Secretary of State Colin Powell refused to use the uranium-shopping claim in his February presentation to the U.N. Security Council because of the doubts.
More recent claims from within the White House and Tony Blair's British government that other evidence exists lack substance. If either government had such evidence, it would have long since been revealed in an attempt to control the growing political damage caused by the controversy.
Nobody should doubt that Saddam Hussein had a history of trying to develop nuclear weapons or that he would have liked to try again. But that is not the same as being actively engaged in such development in recent years.
Unfortunately, Bush and some of his advisers — particularly those concentrated around Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — have a stronger than normal tendency to force evidence into their pre-existing beliefs.
Instead of evaluating the evidence as objectively as possible and then reaching conclusions, they reach conclusions and then look for even the slightest evidence to support those conclusions.
That is a certain way to undermine credibility. Believing something
doesn't make it so.
Don't forget roots, Bubba
Tucked away on page C-6 of Monday's New York Times, the paper's advertising columnist wrote that stock-car racing, specifically NASCAR, was systematically trying to "shed its image as strictly Southern."Maybe it was inevitable. The sport has become so popular and so national and come so far from its roots in the Appalachian South. The folklore about its roots in moonshine running always had an element of exaggeration. But like any good story it had an element of truth. Junior Johnson, one of the sport's senior statesmen, did serve time for that particular offense.
NASCAR took a giant step away from the South last month when its sponsor of some 30 years, Winston, a Southern cigarette, bowed out and the racing circuit signed a 10-year, $750 million deal with Nextel, a wireless-communications company.
Further evidence is that NASCAR has opened a marketing office in New York; it has moved one of its North Carolina races to a track in California; and its most recent race was at "Chicagoland Speedway," a name that would have been unthinkable on the tour 20 years ago.
Let's hope NASCAR doesn't get too carried away with de-Southing its
product. It's not just that we like having the Talladega Superspeedway.
This country is too homogenized already. Regional accents are disappearing
from the broadcast booths, and it would be a cultural crime if Benny
Parsons' and Darrell Waltrip's disappeared from NASCAR. Stock-car racing
might get far from its roots, but its guiding lights should never forget
they got there on "tars," not "tires."
Meet Methuselah
It's about 800 times as massive as Earth, whizzes around two suns instead of just one and is close to three times as old as the orb on which we humans reside.Meet the Methuselah planet, the most ancient planet known to astronomers, just recently detected and suggestive of some rather extraordinary possibilities.
The chief thing, say excited astronomers, is it now looks like planets were formed billions of years earlier than anyone ever thought likely, meaning there must be a lot more of them than previously believed and far more chances for the development of intelligent life.
If there was intelligent life in that distant spot where Methuselah was discovered, it's gone by now, one astronomer is quoted as saying.
But as that astronomer and his colleagues are demonstrating,
intelligent life is having a good go at it on Earth. These men and women
are expanding our knowledge and awareness of the universe in which we
live. It is about as noble a calling as there is, and enriches us all.
Look Back
From Birmingham Post-Herald files:
T.C. McKeithen, 83-year-old father-in-law of Gov. Gordon Persons,
marries 66-year-old widow, Mrs. Olive Morris, despite opposition of
bridegroom's children who thought he was too old to marry.
Paul Hubbert, Alabama Education Association executive director, denies
hiring plans to take control of state Democratic Party.
Your Views
Tax reform proposal deserves support
As a loyal "Yellow Dog" Democrat, believe it or not, I am totally supportive of Republican Gov. Bob Riley's tax reform proposal to be voted on Sept. 9. And I plan to do all I can to encourage others to vote "yes," also!For the past five years I have been a volunteer at Norwood Elementary School, a Birmingham public school. Norwood is fortunate enough to be a site of the Alabama Reading Initiative, a reading program that was developed in Alabama and has become a model of excellence throughout the United States. Norwood is living proof if its success.
The sad part is only one-third of Alabama schools have the program because of lack of money to put it in all schools. If the people vote "Yes" on Sept. 9, all Alabama schools can have this life-changing program, otherwise none will be added. How sad that would be for two-thirds of our bright and deserving children, and we all suffer as well.
Democrats, Republican, Conservatives, Liberals, blacks, whites, Hispanics and Asians, let's all support our children, our future.
Emmy McGowin
Birmingham 35213
Best pill
We are all aware of the declining financial health of our state. Every state department from Medicaid to education to public works has suffered for years with under funding and inadequate resources. Gov. Bob Riley's tax plan is the best pill we have to start down the path of recovery.The fact is that without further revenues to the state coffers, Riley will have no choice but to drastically cut the state budget. This means that many of our senior citizens living in nursing homes will be forced to find other places to live as the Medicaid program loses funding.
Where will they go? Who will care for them? Healthcare funding through the Medicare /Medicaid program has been reduced time and time again in recent years. Further reductions will jeopardize the quality of healthcare our citizens deserve.
We must solve this financial crisis. We elected Riley. Let's support his courageous efforts to move Alabama in a new direction of excellence.
Terry Rogers, executive director
Episcopal Foundation of Jefferson County
St. Martin's-in-the-Pines Retirement Community
Birmingham 35210
Glad
I'm glad the governor didn't support the "Democratic Felons Voting Bill."Armond "Si" Simmons
Pell City 35128
Tax systems can never be made 'fair'
It was recently my displeasure to encounter Susan Pace Hamill (the university law professor, if you will recall, who has recently been on the political stump calling for Christians to support tax reform in the state) at a seminar on Gov. Bob Riley's new tax proposal. She was one of three speakers to address this meeting.The first person to address us gave a fairly nuts and bolts run-down on the proposal. It did not address anything substantial, and I did not expect it to do so. Reference was made to making taxes fairer, but this was not hammered home — not, at least, until Hamill spoke.
''Fair tax," of course, is an oxymoron; there can never be any fairness about a system where the decision about how money is spent is made by people other than those providing the money. My fair share of a government program I deem useless is zero; of a program I consider counterproductive less than nothing. My income has little or nothing to do with it. Still, ''politics is the art of the possible," so I shrugged and let it pass
Then Hamill spoke. She got on my bad side in the first few minutes by dismissing somebody she had seen on PBS as a ''lunatic" for favoring privatization of education; anybody who knows me knows that this is a favorite cause of mine. Granted, I did not see the show. I do not know who she was talking about. For all I know, the man really is a lunatic; I simply require more evidence of the fact than that he supports a cause I also favor. I suppose if my paycheck were dependent on tax dollars I would tend to be critical of anybody who threatened it, too.
Then she proceeded to give us a ''Christian" argument for Gov. Riley's proposal. These taxes will be fair because they will draw less from the pockets of the poor and more from the pockets of the rich. They will be just. The poor have historically been oppressed. And on and on and on.
At this point she made the mistake of asking for questions. By this time I was boiling; I asked her point-blank: ''What is my fair share of a government program I believe makes matters worse?" and she refused to answer my question.
First, she seemed to belittle me by saying I did not appear to have grown up with the "advantages" of most of the audience; I am not sure what this is supposed to mean, but suspect it is the adult version of "Your mother dresses you funny." (Sorry, Ms. Hamill, I dress myself. Have for years.) Then she asked for an example of a government program I did not approve of; as her remark about the gentleman on PBS was fresh in my mind I told her that and rather than answer the general philosophical question about my "fair share" she proceeded to sing the praises of public education. I repeatedly told her not to change the subject, to answer the question I had asked; she ignored me.
(Possibly my use of personal pronouns in framing the question was at fault, that I could have gotten a straight answer had I used some sort of generic everyman — John Q. Public, Joe Six-pack, Herman Beaninstead; I doubt it. I suspect Hamill finds the prospect of a free society so frightening she cannot bear to even contemplate it.)
Finally, having become thoroughly disgusted and angered, I rose and walked out in the middle of her "answer." About the time I got to the door something I said seemed to have gotten through to her, because she began ranting about how we had to have something better than the "morality of the marketplace." Well, this is a pretty good catch-phrase for my concept of right and wrong, I admit: "value given for value received," "the sanctity of private property rights," (i. e., "Thou shalt not steal") "a man's word is his bond." So I accept Hamill's phrase as accurate, but not her assessment.
On the way home I considered how the demonization of business is essentially a Marxist doctrine, and how ironic it was that Hamill should be boosting a tax plan proposed by a member of a political party whose leader only a few short years ago was referring to the old Soviet Union as an "evil empire" by citing that now-defunct country's principal prophet. And in place of my "morality of the marketplace" Hamill is promoting a morality which, to cite another old Communist leader (Mao Tse-tung), "[All political power] flows from the barrel of a gun." So the Republican Party has returned to the position of playing Tweedledee to the Democrat's Tweedle-dum!
The really ironic thing is that I have no great problem with Riley's tax plan, at least as it was explained by the first speaker. Politics really is the art of the possible. And I will wind up paying less money if it becomes law. But I make no pretense of this being fair, or just. It is a purely selfish desire to shift my unfair tax burden onto the shoulders of somebody else. This is not justice; this is at best simply trading one victim for another, at worst just broadening the base of victimization.
My problem was with Hamill, and her elitist attitude that she, alone, had the divine revelation about what was and was not "fair." Tweedledee needs a new spokesperson.
Ross Lowe
Birmingham 35255
Other Views
Nuclear fraud is old news; urgent news is postwar expense
By MARTIN SCHRAM
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
Washington's
politicians and the press corps that feeds them (and is fed by them) have
been frantically chasing the Iraqi nuclear controversy over Team Bush's
prewar hard-sell based on faked memos from Niger.
But they've apparently forgotten they're chasing old news of White House hype and CIA doubts — tales they mainly knew even before the Iraq war began.
Even worse, they have missed today's urgent Iraq policy news: Admissions that postwar military costs have doubled and postwar troop levels have tripled — and there is no foreseeable end to the U.S. commitment in Iraq.
This urgent news was hardly buried. On July 10, The New York Times led its newspaper with the double dose, from testimony at a Senate hearing:
One: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said postwar military costs in Iraq will be $3.9 billion each month — double April's $2 billion estimate.
Two: Retiring Gen. Tommy Franks said the present troop level must remain at 145,000 "for the foreseeable future." Last May, Bush officials said it could drop to 30,000 to 40,000 by autumn.
Virtually every day, one or more U.S. soldiers is killed by Iraqi guerrillas. Our nonstop TV news is showing us Iraqi mothers and fathers who haven't been paid a wage in months, cannot send their kids outside because of crime, still have no electricity or water (the French built the systems, but aren't there to repair them). These Iraqis say their lives are worse — not better — than under Saddam. U.S. troops hear more taunts than cheers these days.
Sadly, we see no evidence the Bush administration had a comprehensive quick-action postwar plan for winning the peace. That indicates a shocking ineptitude of Bush's senior team — Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, plus the inexperienced but intelligent Condoleezza Rice. It is most shocking to those like me who always thought Bush's savvy seniors would be his greatest strength.
Meanwhile, Washington's smart set is focusing on old Iraq policy tales of White House hype and CIA doubts, as they play pin-the-tale-on the elephant.
Apparently they've forgotten what they used to know:
March 8 — 11 days before the war began — The Washington Post reported that United Nations' chief nuclear inspector Mohamed El Baradei said U.S. and British assertions about Iraq seeking uranium from Niger were based on forged letters from Iraqi agents and Niger officials containing "crude errors ... including names and titles that did not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the letters were purportedly written. ..."
March 22 — The Washington Post reported that CIA officials say they communicated "significant doubts" to the administration about Iraq's African nuclear quest before it got into Bush's State of the Union speech.
June 13 — The Washington Post reported the CIA said it sent a cable to the White House and other agencies in March 2002, more than a year ago, saying Niger officials denied the claim.
Yet last June, National Security Adviser Rice said in a television interview she was unaware of the CIA doubts. But such denials are called into question by the unusual wording of the State of the Union sentence — a three-cushion bank shot, with a U.S. president sourcing intelligence about Iraq to a third country's spooks:
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
In every White House I've covered (since LBJ) the national security adviser was always the arbiter of intramural disputes over policy wording. Is this the only presidency where the buck never stopped at the national security adviser before it entered into the president's text and exited via his mouth?
According to the "CBS Evening News," midlevel CIA officials told national security council aides the CIA wanted the Africa sentence dropped from the text; the NSC aides came back with wording pinning it on the Brits, making it literally true (wink) even if the CIA doubted it really happened (nod). That fits the pattern. Throughout this administration's run-up to war, all major players were pushing the threat of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction like salesmen with a foot in the door trying to close a deal.
So we come to Bush's Iraq policy bottom line. It is a line indelibly stained red — by the bloodshed of a huge U.S. occupation force; by the red ink of huge costs of rebuilding Iraq amid a soaring $450 billion budget deficit (made worse by Bush's tax cut). Plus unemployment climbing to unconscionable highs.
Suddenly the once unthinkable looms as a new Bush family nightmare.
Both calculatedly and clumsily, America's 43rd president has gathered all
the ingredients necessary to cause his public opinion ratings to tumble —
and cause him to follow in his father's footsteps as a one-term
president.
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