Monday, July 12, 2004

The New York Times > Washington > Scientists Say White House Questioned Their Politics: "In a report released yesterday, a scientific advocacy group cited more instances of what it called the Bush administration's manipulation of science to fit its policy goals, including the questioning of nominees to scientific advisory panels about whether they had voted for President Bush.…" Dr. Kurt Gottfried, an emeritus professor of physics at Cornell University and the chairman of the scientists group, said that the administration's actions could cause researchers to leave the government. "You can destroy that in a matter of years and then it can take another generation or two to get back to where you were in the first place," Dr. Gottfried said during a conference call with reporters yesterday. Dr. Gerald T. Keusch said that frustration led him to resign last year from the directorship of the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Keusch said the procedure for appointing members of advisory panels changed markedly with the change of administrations in 2001. Dr. Keusch, who became director in 1998, said that before Mr. Bush took office, he proposed candidates and if the director of the National Institutes of Heath approved, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration invariably signed off on the nomination. But under the Bush administration, he said, Secretary Tommy G. Thompson's office rejected 19 of 26 candidates, including Dr. Torsten Wiesel, a Nobel laureate. Dr. Keusch said that when he questioned the rejection, he was told that Dr. Wiesel had signed too many statements critical of Mr. Bush. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/09/politics/09data.html

Sunday, July 11, 2004

The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > Bad Iraq Intelligence Cost Lives, Kerry and Edwards Say: "Senator John Kerry and Senator John Edwards declared on Friday that slipshod intelligence invoked by President Bush to invade Iraq had cost the nation lives, billions of dollars and international prestige, signaling that the Iraq war would be a central issue in their White House campaign. The presumptive Democratic candidates for president and vice president, in a 30-minute joint interview given after the release of a Senate Intelligence Committee report challenging the prewar Iraq intelligence, said Mr. Bush's policies abroad had probably increased, rather than decreased, the prospects of domestic terrorist attacks. " And they said the discrediting of much of Mr. Bush's case for going to war had fed cynicism toward government by young Americans, reminiscent of the mistrust of authority that swept the country when Mr. Edwards and Mr. Kerry came of age during the Vietnam War. "They were wrong and soldiers lost their lives because they were wrong," Mr. Kerry said as Mr. Edwards, in an adjacent seat in the front of their chartered Boeing 757 jet, nodded in agreement. "And America's paying billions of dollars because they were wrong. And allies are not with us because they were wrong." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/11/politics/campaign/11TICKET.html?pagewanted=all&position=