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  #196  
Old 12-31-2003, 04:34 PM
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Welcome to The Fatherland...
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  #197  
Old 12-31-2003, 04:36 PM
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Quote:
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  #198  
Old 01-04-2004, 01:55 PM
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/po...04BUDG.html?th

Bush's Budget for 2005 Seeks to Rein In Domestic Costs

"They said the president's proposed budget for the 2005 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, would control the rising cost of housing vouchers for the poor, require some veterans to pay more for health care, slow the growth in spending on biomedical research and merge or eliminate some job training and employment programs."
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  #199  
Old 01-05-2004, 01:59 PM
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Here’s an interesting article that I came across. It was written by an independent Russian Foreign policy analyst for a Moscow newspaper. It’s an interesting take on US foreign policy (more specifically, the fight on terror) from an external perspective. This guy gets it…


U.S. Methods Paying Off
By Pavel Felgenhauer

2003 will primarily be remembered for the war in Iraq, the fall of Baghdad and the capture of Saddam Hussein. The U.S.-led invasion was strongly opposed by millions of Europeans and by former great powers France, Germany and Russia. But they protested in vain.

The U.S. march on Baghdad was a unique event in the history of modern warfare. The swiftness and zeal of the advancing armored columns, supported by relentless air power, is comparable to the best campaigns of the Israeli defense force. But the Israelis never achieved full victory; they did not manage or were not allowed by outside powers to occupy the entire territory of the opposing Arab nation.

Armed conflicts during the Cold War, when Russia and the West balanced each other globally, tended to be very bloody but strategically limited engagements: They were pitched battles on patches of disputed territory where the best possible outcome was to push the enemy back several kilometers and then fortify, awaiting a counteroffensive.

It was a time of frustrating tug-of-war conflicts in which clear and decisive victories were unachievable despite all the carnage. The 2003 campaign in Iraq, on the contrary, was a breath of fresh air for military history buffs -- almost like a return to Napoleonic times with the addition of modern military gear. This was a war that indeed achieved its goal of total enemy defeat and conquest.

Just before Christmas, a high-ranking French delegation of generals, admirals, defense industry officials and analysts came to Moscow. The French amazed their Russian counterparts by breaking to them something that is still news in Moscow today: The United States achieved a major victory in Afghanistan in 2001 and an even greater one in Iraq this year. Russian and French predictions of possible U.S. failure were totally off the mark, and today it would be wrong to expect a U.S. fiasco in suppressing the residual resistance in Iraq.

French and German leaders congratulated President George W. Bush with the capture of Hussein, while President Vladimir Putin remained silent. Die-hard antiwar Democrats like presidential hopeful Howard Dean, together with most Russians, still hope Bush will get a bloody nose in Iraq, but the reality of the situation on the ground does not lend support to this fantasy.

The vast majority of the Iraqi population does not support the resistance. On the contrary, as the guerrilla campaign has developed, the discretion in using force displayed by the Americans and the indiscretion in slaughtering innocent civilians of the jihadist resistance is effectively helping to win over hearts and minds. Today the United States is in a good position to achieve its ultimate goal: the installation of a pro-U.S. Iraqi authority equipped with a military, a police force and a cadre of informers that will keep the opposition down, while the United States will retain strategically important military bases in Iraq.

The Arab and Muslim world, despite many prophesies to the contrary and lots of agitation, did not rise as one to oppose the United States in Iraq. The majority of Iraqis and Arabs are waiting to see whether the United States will manage to make Iraq a better place to live than it was under Hussein. Everyone wants the Americans to hand over control to the locals eventually, but not immediately.

Extreme Islamists from abroad are helping pro-Hussein leftovers to resist in Iraq, but the resources of the jihadists are limited and stretched thin across many fronts: Fighting Israel, different Arab regimes, the Indian forces in Kashmir, the Russians in Chechnya, plotting terrorist attacks worldwide and so on. The jihadists surely cannot carry on a sustained Vietnam-like guerrilla war to chew up the U.S. military in Iraq.

Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi has weighed up the odds and decided to make a deal with Washington to surrender his weapons of mass destruction, rather than providing support to the Iraqi resistance. This year has been remarkable with two former rogue nations, Iraq and Libya, cleared of WMD and a third, Iran, signing a protocol that may prevent it going nuclear.

It has been proven that U.S. military force or the threat of force is an effective method of reversing the proliferation of WMD worldwide. Modern precision warfare also seems to be a more humane method of dealing with rogues than traditional decade-long suffocating sanctions. While the U.S. military continues to be effective, it will surely be much in use in the future.

Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/20...009-print.html
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  #200  
Old 01-07-2004, 01:14 AM
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http://truthout.org/docs_04/010704B.shtml
Senator Urges White House on Leak Probe


" Editors Note | As the probe into who leaked the name of CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame gathers steam the FBI will ask all White House staff members to sign waiver forms granting their permission to those reporters involved to name the source of the information. George W. Bush's press secretary Scott McClellan is saying all the right things publicly but refuses to commit to the waiver forms. Privately some of the reporters have told British reporter Julian Borger of the Guardian that the source was in fact top Bush confidant Karl Rove."
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  #201  
Old 01-08-2004, 11:18 AM
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http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/...lic/index.html

The New Republic endorses Lieberman

"The endorsement came as new polls show retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark -- the former NATO supreme allied commander -- emerging as a strong challenger to Dean, while Lieberman remains far behind."
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