Clark Comes Out Blazing at Bush's 'Arrogance' on Iraq Former Gen. Wesley Clark, in his first full day as a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, blasted President Bush for a "dogmatic" foreign policy and for putting "strong-arm tactics" on Congress to rush approval for the war in Iraq. Saying the Bush White House used its executive authority "in ways that cut off debate," Clark said he would likely have voted to authorize the war because "the simple truth is that when the president of the United States lays the power of office" on the line, "the balance of judgment probably goes to the president." "I was against the war," Clark said. "In retrospect, we should never have gone in there. We could have waited. We could have brought the allies in." Asked whether he would support the president's $87-billion request for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Clark said he would first want to see an accounting of the administration's projected costs and its exit strategy. He faulted the administration for "arrogance" in slighting Congress and many of the nation's traditional allies. But he added, "Now that we're there, I want the mission to succeed." Standing on a chair and using a microphone, Clark assailed Bush's economic record, asking why the country has lost 2.7 million jobs, to which the crowd responded, "Bush!" Clark said he had some other tough questions for Bush: "Why are we engaged in Iraq?" Clark asked. "Mr. President, tell us the truth. Was it because Saddam Hussein was assisting the hijackers? Was it because Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapon?" Someone in the audience yelled, "Oil!" Clark said: "We don't know. And that's the truth. We have to ask that question." To which another person in the crowd shouted, "Halliburton is why!" http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-clark19sep19,1,2682695.story?coll=la-headlines-nation-manual

MISTAKES HAVE BEEN MADE Iraqis wonder how U.S. can be so inept On Aug. 19, when the United Nations building in Baghdad was blown up, a little-known Franco-Egyptian UN worker, Jean-Selim Kanaan, was killed. He had volunteered for Iraq duty to help people, and was counting on the protection of the world's mightiest power. Two weeks after his arrival in June, he wrote letters to friends around the world. "Americans understand only what is American. . . . [They] made this war for their interests and surely not to liberate the Iraqi people . . . the revolt is growing," he said in the letters. There are some a series of questions on the streets of Iraq. How is it possible for the U.S. to make so many mistakes? Does the U.S. want to destroy Iraq or have it plunge into civil war and disintegrate? Is all of this an American conspiracy? People cannot believe that the U.S., with all its might and capabilities, could not provide basic security after the fall of the Baath regime in April or restore essential services such as electricity and water. The lawlessness that prevailed after the fall of Baghdad, the looting and destruction of hospitals, museums, public offices and private businesses, while American troops watched, will remain in the minds of many people. They see what happened as a purposeful dereliction of the occupying power's duty to protect the population. The protection is required of occupying armies by the Geneva Conventions. To have disbanded the entire Iraqi army and police, leaving the cities and streets undefended, sending home several hundred thousand trained persons without income, is insanity. These and other failures to provide for the people's elementary needs raise questions about U.S. motives. Many Iraqis see this as a conspiracy to bring about a civil war between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, leading to the breakdown of their country so that the U.S. can take over its oil--the world's second-largest oil reserve. And as is de rigueur in Middle East matters, Israel is added to the mix, though it has nothing to do with that "made in the U.S." mess. None of this is the American intention, but there is no way to explain these many mistakes. The economy Another astonishing decision recently announced by Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, is the privatization of Iraq's economy. Because there is no private capital in Iraq and the banking system has collapsed, it means that outside capital will own Iraq's future. Who is to benefit? The Ahmad Chalabi crowd supported by Deputy Defense Secretaries Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz? Add a layer to the conspiracy. Last, but not least, is the U.S. failure to bring the worst Baathist criminals to justice--one of the avowed U.S. purposes in going to war in Iraq. None of the Baath leaders held in U.S. custody, some for months, has been brought to trial, and there are no known plans to prosecute them before a legitimate international or national judicial body. The U.S. even rejects having a United Nations commission gather the evidence, just as one did in Yugoslavia, whose success led to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, which is now prosecuting Slobodan Milosevic. Meanwhile in Iraq, mass graves are dug out and bodies removed, documents pilfered from public officials, and on the whole, the evidence is being lost. In Baghdad, the word is that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized U.S. intelligence to make deals with the infamous deck of cards of most wanted criminals in exchange for information, particularly about the hitherto undiscovered weapons of mass destruction. In the U.S., the administration's Iraq occupation policies are mostly questioned from narrow perspectives addressing smaller pieces of the puzzle. The administration avoids those parts of the puzzle that do not fit the image it wants to convey. It also makes it possible to blame security problems in Iraq on "outside terrorists." It does not report the hundreds of Iraqi civilians accidentally killed by American troops. Nor does it account for thousands of civilian detainees. There is one added allegation not reported extensively in the U.S. That is the claim of kidnapping and presumed rape of more than 400 women, according to an Arab news agency. For Iraqi families, there is nothing worse that can befall them. These crimes are committed by Iraqis, but the people blame U.S. forces for the situation. Moreover, when they try to go to the U.S. authorities for help, they are turned away, like the families of the 5,000 detainees who seek news about their loved ones. The naive impression we are conveying is that our leaders were surprised by Iraqi nationalistic reactions because Iraqis were expected to greet invading American troops as Parisian troops did in 1945. That they didn't see Iraqi opposition coming when common people in the streets of every Arab country could have told them so strains credibility. These are, after all, brilliant people. If they purposely concealed it and misled the American people, they should be held accountable. And if they were imbued with their own arrogance to such a degree or deceived by their self-selected agents of change in Iraq, such as Chalabi, they should be removed from office for incompetence. Yet they still impose Chalabi, even when it is now well-established that he has little or no credibility in Iraq. Not unpredictable Nothing of what is happening in Iraq was unpredictable. Yet, despite consistent evidence of misguided policies and practices during the occupation, there is no indication of a significant change. We hear of cosmetic changes, such as having a Security Council resolution establish a multinational force under the command and control of the U.S. But that will not delude nor deflect Iraqi resistance, and it will not bring security for the Iraqi people. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/perspective/chi-0309140031sep14,1,5066949.story?coll=chi-newsopinionperspective-hed

Clinton Assails Bush at Gathering for Hopefuls Former President Bill Clinton seized the Democratic stage tonight, offering one of his strongest denunciations of President Bush since leaving office as he tried to rally Democrats here around candidates who have yet to stir the excitement he did in 1992. Speaking without notes or a prepared text, Mr. Clinton invoked the circumstances of the 2000 presidential election as he argued that the Bush administration had squandered the domestic and foreign policy gains he had made in his eight years in office. "That election was not a mandate for radical change, but that is what we got," Mr. Clinton said, adding, "We went from surplus to deficit, from job gain to job loss, from a reduction in poverty to an increase in poverty, from a reduction in people without health insurance to an increase of people without health insurance." The former president said that Mr. Bush had wasted an opportunity to unite the country and enhance its international standing in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks. "Instead of uniting the world, we alienated it," he said. "And instead of uniting America, we divided it by trying to push it too far to the right." Mr. Clinton used his own economic situation to mock Mr. Bush's tax cut. Mr. Clinton said he might, as a very wealthy former president living in Chappaqua, N.Y., be paying more taxes than just about anyone else in America. "I get my tax cut, and they are going to take 300,000 poor children and kick them out of after-school programs," he said. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/politics/14DEMS.html

Bush Seeks to Expand Access to Private Data For months, President Bush's advisers have assured a skittish public that law-abiding Americans have no reason to fear the long reach of the antiterrorism law known as the Patriot Act because its most intrusive measures would require a judge's sign-off. But in a plan announced this week to expand counterterrorism powers, President Bush adopted a very different tack. In a three-point presidential plan that critics are already dubbing Patriot Act II, Mr. Bush is seeking broad new authority to allow federal agents � without the approval of a judge or even a federal prosecutor � to demand private records and compel testimony. Mr. Bush also wants to expand the use of the death penalty in crimes like terrorist financing, and he wants to make it tougher for defendants in such cases to be freed on bail before trial. These proposals are also sure to prompt sharp debate, even among Republicans. Opponents say that the proposal to allow federal agents to issue subpoenas without the approval of a judge or grand jury will significantly expand the law enforcement powers granted by Congress after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And they say it will also allow the Justice Department � after months of growing friction with some judges � to limit the role of the judiciary still further in terrorism cases.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/national/14PATR.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Gunsmoke and Mirrors This is how bad things are for George W. Bush: He's back in a dead heat with Al Gore. (And this is how bad things are for Al Gore: He's back in a dead heat with George W. Bush.) One terrorist attack, two wars, three tax cuts, four months of guerrilla mayhem in Iraq, five silly colors on a terror alert chart, nine nattering Democratic candidates, 10 Iraqi cops killed by Americans, $87 billion in Pentagon illusions, a gazillion boastful Osama tapes, zero Saddam and zilch W.M.D. have left America split evenly between the president and former vice president. "More than two and a half years after the 2000 election and we are back where we started," marveled John Zogby, who conducted the poll. It's plus ?a change all over again. We are learning once more, as we did on 9/11, that all the fantastic technology in the world will not save us. The undigitalized human will is able to frustrate our most elaborate schemes and lofty policies. What unleashed Shock and Awe and the most extravagant display of American military prowess ever was a bunch of theologically deranged Arabs with box cutters. The Bush administration thought it could use scientific superiority to impose its will on alien tribal cultures. But we're spending hundreds of billions subduing two backward countries without subduing them. After the president celebrated victory in our high-tech war in Iraq, our enemies came back to rattle us with a diabolically ingenious low-tech war, a homemade bomb in a truck obliterating the U.N. offices, and improvised explosive devices hidden in soda cans, plastic bags and dead animals blowing up our soldiers. Afghanistan has mirror chaos, with reconstruction sabotaged by Taliban assaults on American forces, the Afghan police and aid workers. The Pentagon blithely says that we have 56,000 Iraqi police and security officers and that we will soon have more. But it may be hard to keep and recruit Iraqi cops; the job pays O.K. but it might end very suddenly, given the rate at which Americans and guerrillas are mowing them down. "This shows the Americans are completely out of control," First Lt. Mazen Hamid, an Iraqi policeman, said Friday after angry demonstrators gathered in Falluja to demand the victims' bodies. Secretary Pangloss at Defense and Wolfie the Naif are terminally enchanted by their own descriptions of the world. They know how to use their minds, but it's not clear they know how to use their eyes.? http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/opinion/14DOWD.html