In this issue:

Rep. Frank Demands Wolfowitz Resign

Biden Blasts White House Anti-Drug Policy

Newt Renews McCarthyite Assault on State Department—But Hits Bush, Again

Document Destruction Charges Added to Abuse of Power in DeLay's Manhunt for Texas Dems

Former Marine Congressman Quashed Rumsfeld Scheme on Military Officers

Kennedy Questions Sanity of Administration Over Nuke Weapons Proposals

Senate Debates What Creates Jobs

Clinton Gets Dems To Turn Out

From Volume 2, Issue Number 21 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published May 27, 2003

United States News Digest

Rep. Frank Demands Wolfowitz Resign

During the Congressional session of May 19, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) called on Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to resign. Frank based his argument primarily on the fact that Wolfowitz, during an interview with CNN on Turkey, had repeatedly criticized the Turkish military "because it allowed democracy to function in Turkey," as Frank put it. Wolfowitz had been arguing that the military should have intervened to prevent the blocking of military assistance to the United States in the Iraq war.

At the conclusion of his remarks, Frank turned to Wolfowitz's broader failures, including the "shambles" which Administration policy is creating in Iraq. "Wolfowitz can take some of the responsibility for that," Frank said, for publicly rebuking Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki's evaluation that many more troops would be needed.

Frank concluded as follows: "The justification for Iraq is the impact it will have on governments, in Iraq and in the rest of the Middle East. How does it help to have our Deputy Secretary of Defense, one of the shapers of that policy, now say—'By the way, when we say democracy, we mean a democracy where the military intervenes strongly; not just gives its viewpoint, but intervenes strongly to make sure things come out'? Things in Iraq and our credibility are in enough trouble without Paul Wolfowitz compounding it, and he ought to resign."

Biden Blasts White House Anti-Drug Policy

The Bush Administration's anti-drug record came under fierce attack on May 20 from Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Biden complained that the Administration has repeatedly "proposed slashing or eliminating law enforcement programs with track records that reduce crime." He noted that the FBI has transferred hundreds of agents away from counternarcotics work to anti-terrorism, putting a much greater load on the Drug Enforcement Administration, without a proportional increase in its budget or the manpower required to do the job. "We have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time," Biden said. "We can't separate fighting terrorism from fighting drug trafficking, given the considerable and increasing linkage between the two."

Biden did not stop there, however. He particularly blasted the Bush Administration's record in Afghanistan, where warlords who depend on opium production run most of the countryside. "The fact of the matter is," he said, "you can't stop opium production when the warlords control the regions, and when in fact we don't expand security in Kabul." Biden charged that "we are back to the same situation, again," as when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. He also complained that even though President Bush signed the Afghan Freedom Support Act last year, which authorized $1 billion to expand peace-keeping activities in that country, "The President has not asked for one dime of that money to be spent."

Biden said that the Bush Administration's record on Colombia was somewhat better, "but what concerns me is, with a 40% reduction in funding for law enforcement, locally, in this next year's proposed budget ... we are missing real opportunities here."

Biden's remarks on Afghanistan were prefigured by committee chairman Sen. Orin Hatch (R-Utah), who noted at the outset that while the United States and its allies successfully removed the Taliban from power, "we have not succeeded in stabilizing" that country. He warned that Afghan President Hamid Karzai's Tajik-dominated government has succeeded in alienating the majority of the Pushtun population in the opium-growing areas, which has led to "instability in Afghanistan that has resulted in fundamentalist and al-Qaeda resistance to U.S. forces, and an increase in opium production."

Newt Renews McCarthyite Assault on State Department—But Hits Bush, Again

Newt Gingrich renewed his McCarthyite assault on the State Department—and the President—on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" May 18. Stephanopoulos asked about Newt's "real blast at Colin Powell and the State Department" at the American Enterprise Institute last month, and in an article to be published in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs.

Gingrich responded: "I want a stronger, more effective State Department. I'm not anti-State Department. I think we can't have a world in which the U.S., as the only superpower, has only the military as an effective instrument. And my concern is that whether you're talking about communications strategy, which has failed, whether you're talking about Hamas this morning announcing that they are opposed to the peace process in Palestine, and you're not going to get a successful peace process if Hamas is killing people in Israel, whether it is the Saudis' failure to lock down security—I think we need a more effective State Department, not a weaker State Department."

In his Foreign Affairs article, on the journal's website, Gingrich calls the State Department "out of sync with Bush's views and objectives." He says: "The President should demand a complete overhaul of the State Department so it is capable of executing his policy goals effectively and of redefining peace on his own terms.... The world doesn't have to love us, but it must be able to predict us." He called for "a comprehensive study of the international press coverage of the U.S. leading up to and during the war in Iraq. The study should encompass state-owned media in the Arab world to determine if those outlets are a major contributing source of anti-American hostility." Any such "government-sponsored act of hostility ... should be dealt with accordingly."

Document Destruction Charges Added to Abuse of Power in DeLay's Manhunt for Texas Dems

The manhunt by Congressman Tom DeLay (R-Texas) to find Democratic state legislators who had fled to Oklahoma, rather than vote on a stacked redistricting bill in the Texas State Legislature, has already triggered a Federal investigation as to how the Department of Homeland Security became involved in the search for the lawmakers.

Now, the Texas Department of Public Safety has been caught in a cover-up, according to the May 22 New York Times. E-mails from the commander have been discovered which instructed that all "notes, correspondence, photos, etc." concerning the search, "be destroyed immediately." Trying to cover its tail, the DHS stated that it only got involved because it was told that a plane carrying the Democrats was missing or had crashed. On May 14, Democrats in Washington demanded the Federal investigation, and the same day, the Texas Public Safety e-mails were deleted.

Former Marine Congressman Quashed Rumsfeld Scheme on Military Officers

According to Stars and Stripes May 16, freshman Congressman John Kline (R-Minn.) drew upon his 25 years experience as a U.S. Marine Corps officer (including having served as a military aide to Presidents Carter and Reagan), to block Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's bid for expanded authority over flag and general officer rotations, tour lengths and age limits.

When an amendment was first offered in a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee by Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) to take this provision out of the defense authorization bill, it failed on a straight party-line vote. However, in the full committee, Kline got two Republicans to join with him and the Democrats, to support the Tauscher Amendment.

The Armed Forces' daily Stars and Stripes, in reporting the story, says that Rep. John McHugh (R-N.Y.), a subcommittee chairman, argued that the proposals were backed by a study from the RAND Corp., but it turned out that no one else on the committee had even read the RAND report.

Kline said that he preferred his own poll, in which "every colonel and general I know, active and retired" all oppose the Rumsfeld plan. With the Senate Armed Services committee also having rejected the provision on military officers, it appears to be dead for this session.

Kennedy Questions Sanity of Administration Over Nuke Weapons Proposals

During debate on the floor of the Senate, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said that since World War II, the prevention of nuclear war has always been a top priority of America's leaders, but now, with the passing of the World War II generation, a new generation of leaders has come to power, for whom the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "is just history."

Kennedy was discussing this in the context of the Bush Administration's desire to lift the 10-year-old ban on R&D on "mini-nukes"—nuclear weapons under 5 kilotons—and on "bunker busters"—so-called "battlefield nukes."

We have always considered nuclear weapons as a category separate from other weapons, but the Bush Administration wants to change this, Kennedy charged. To break down this firewall between conventional and nuclear weapons makes no sense, he argued.

Kennedy reviewed the Administration's Nuclear Posture Review, and its suggestions that the U.S. might use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear nation, or engage in first use of nuclear weapons. "We reap what we sow," Kennedy said. "If we brandish our own nuclear weapons, we only encourage other nations to do all they can to develop their own."

Kennedy attacked the Adminstration's proposal to develop "robust nuclear earth penetrators," or "bunker busters."

"It's difficult to believe that any Administration in its right mind would propose such a weapon," Kennedy said, claiming that such a bomb would spew radioactive waste in the atmosphere.

"We do not want our descendants surveying a devastated planet, to say that in this legislation, the United States breached this firewall, and took the decisive and shameful step that led to nuclear war," he concluded.

Senate Debates What Creates Jobs

After only two days of debate, the Senate passed its version of the tax cut bill on May 15. Senate Finance Committee chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) claimed the bill "will provide short-term stimulus and provide the building blocks for meaningful future economic growth." Among the provisions in the bill are an increase in the child tax credit from $500 to $1,000, a reduction in the so-called marriage penalty tax, expansion of the 10% tax bracket, expansion of provisions for small business expensing, and increased relief from the alternative minimum tax. As introduced, the bill also included a provision reducing the top rate on stock dividends to 28%. It also included some tax increases, mainly in the form of provisions scaling back tax shelters and discouraging the expatriation of profits overseas. This was done to keep the cost of the bill from exceeding $350 billion, since there are not the votes in the Senate to pass anything larger than that.

That problem did not save Grassley's language on the tax dividend, however. Senator Don Nickles (R-Okla.) offered an amendment to reduce the dividend tax by 50% in 2003 and eliminate it completely for the 2004, 2005, and 2006. He claimed it would "dramatically" help people with various types of retirement accounts. Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) called it "absurd and irresponsible," and noted that Nickles pays for it by modifying the rate at which the marriage penalty is reduced.

Nickles' amendment passed by a vote of 51-50, with Vice President Cheney casting the deciding vote.

Senate Minority Whip Harry Reid (D-Nev.) challenged the notion that the tax cuts would lead to any job creation. "There is no dispute," he said, "that for every $1 billion we spend on public works," including highways, roads, bridges, dams, water systems and so forth, "we create 47,000 jobs." Instead, the GOP proposal "is an effort to devastate the ability for domestic discretionary spending and cause tremendous harm to programs such as Social Security and Medicare."

Senator Bob Bennet (R-Utah) responded to Reid, claiming that jobs are only produced when someone risks accumulated or borrowed capital in some entrepreneurial undertaking.

Clinton Gets Dems To Turn Out

Former President Bill Clinton proved that Democrats turn out for Democrats with spunk, in two speeches on Sunday, May 18, to some 9,000 people between them. Clinton's morning commencement address at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Miss., was a virtual campaign rally. The graduating class included all of 144 students, but more than 7,000 people came. Tougaloo has played a major role in the civil rights movement nationally since its heyday, when Mississippi Freedom Summer and other campaigns were organized from there. It will be the site of one of the four Congressional Black Caucus (CBC)-sponsored Democratic Presidential debates on Aug. 13.

Mississippi Governor Ronnie Musgrove and Rep. Bennie Thompson were on the dais with Clinton, as he went after Bush for not looking out for America: "We can't be forever strong abroad, if we don't keep getting better at home," he said. He tore into the Bush tax cuts, saying the President himself will get "a bigger tax cut than most people I know ever earned in a year in their whole life.... How's it gonna be paid for? By cutting education for people like you. By cutting health care for people like your families.... They want to pay for the tax cut by kicking 500,000 children out of after-school programs. It is wrong. It is wrong. There is nothing right about it."

Two LaRouche in 2004 supporters got out hundreds of flyers informing the crowd that LaRouche is number one in Democratic Presidential fundraising; and pamphlets attacking the Straussian neo-conservatives as well.

In a second speech in Trenton, N.J., at which he received "thunderous" standing ovations entering and leaving, Clinton urged that the United States strike a peace deal with North Korea; he also poked fun at the neo-conservatives' campaign against France.

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