Red Wave Radio

Tue Jul 20, 4:37 PM ET  

By Adam Entous

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (Reuters) - After launching two wars, President
Bush (news - web sites) said on Tuesday he wanted to be a "peace
president" and took swipes at his Democratic rivals for being lawyers
and weak on defense.

With polls showing public support for the war in Iraq (news - web
sites) in decline, the Republican president cast himself as a
reluctant warrior as he campaigned in the battleground state of Iowa
against Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites) and his running mate,
former trial lawyer John Edwards (news - web sites). Bush lost the
state in 2000 by only a few thousand votes.

"The enemy declared war on us," he told a re-election rally. "Nobody
wants to be the war president. I want to be the peace president."

Bush has called himself a "war president" in leading the United States
in a battle against terrorism brought about by the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks on America.

"I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in
foreign policy matters with war on my mind," he said in February.

Despite a surge in attacks in Iraq and U.S. warnings that al Qaeda is
plotting another major strike, Bush said U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan
(news - web sites) and Iraq had already made America safer, and that
his re-election would let him finish the job.

"For a while we were marching to war. Now we're marching to peace. ...
America is a safer place. Four more years and America will be safe and
the world will be more peaceful," Bush said.

Bush was joined by his twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara, and campaign
spokesman Scott Stanzel said the twins would pair up for campaign
appearances away from their father starting Tuesday night in Missouri,
Ohio and Pennsylvania. Stanzel said the events will be closed to the
press.

Bush and Kerry are fighting hard in Iowa, which Bush lost to Democrat
Al***(news - web sites) in 2000 by just 4,144 votes, or roughly two
votes per precinct. Recent polls give Kerry a narrow lead, but a Kerry
aide said the Iowa race and the one in Missouri remain a dead heat.

Later on Tuesday, Bush was to attend a re-election rally in Missouri,
a state he won by 3 percentage points in 2000. Underscoring its
importance to Bush, Vice President*** Cheney (news - web sites)
campaigned there on Monday.

Bush and Cheney have sought to cast Kerry and Edwards as on the side
of trial lawyers, who the president believes are responsible for a
flood of personal injury litigation that burdens the courts and is
costly to small business. Democrats get campaign contributions from
trial lawyers, while many businesses tend to favor the Republicans.

"I'm not a lawyer, you'll be happy to hear," Bush said to cheers.
"That's the other team. This is the pro-small business team."

He also lashed out at them for not backing an $87 billion funding for
the U.S. military presence in Iraq and the country's reconstruction.
The two Democrats have said they opposed the funding in opposition to
Bush's Iraq policy.

Bush campaign officials say they were increasingly upbeat about their
chances in Missouri after Kerry reduced his ad spending there ahead of
the Democratic presidential convention.

But the Kerry campaign said they were not ceding any ground, only
conserving resources for later and pouring ad money into other hotly
contested states.

"Missouri is a very competitive state and we're going to fight for
every vote," said Kerry campaign spokesman Phil Singer.

The two-state swing was part of a weeklong offensive by Bush before
the Democratic National Convention in Boston starting July 26.
(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan)

Quote:> Bush: 'I Want to Be the Peace President'

> Tue Jul 20, 4:37 PM ET

> By Adam Entous

> CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (Reuters) - After launching two wars, President
> Bush (news - web sites) said on Tuesday he wanted to be a "peace
> president" and took swipes at his Democratic rivals for being
lawyers
> and weak on defense.

Quote:> What? No story about Kerry advisor Berger being a document thief?

Putting them in his pants, jacket, etc.

A really great 'honest mistake'. LOL

He needs to do some jail time.

dxAce

But you should really lay off him. We know from Clinton that this should
be a private matter between the documents and Berger's pants.

--
Let's see Berger put THESE in his pants:
BAGHDAD, July 21 (UPI) -- Iraqi security reportedly discovered three missiles
carrying nuclear heads concealed in a concrete trench northwest of Baghdad,
official sources said Wednesday.

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39564

                OPERATION: IRAQI FREEDOM

Nukes found in Iraq? U.S. says no

Paper claims 3 missiles with warheads discovered near Saddam's hometown
Posted: July 21, 2004
4:01 p.m. Eastern

? 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

U.S. and Iraqi officials are denying a newspaper report claiming nuclear
weapons have been found near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.

<SNIP>

The weapons were said to be lying under six meters of concrete to prevent
high-tech sensors from discovering nuclear radiation.

"Nothing's been found," Master Sgt. Robert Cowens, a spokesman for the 1st
Infantry Division, based in Tikrit, told UPI. "The report is not factual."

Asked by Reuters about the report, a spokesman at Iraq's interior ministry
said: "It's stupid."

writes:

Quote:

> http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39564

>   OPERATION: IRAQI FREEDOM

> Nukes found in Iraq? U.S. says no

> Paper claims 3 missiles with warheads discovered near Saddam's
hometown
> Posted: July 21, 2004
> 4:01 p.m. Eastern

> ? 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

> U.S. and Iraqi officials are denying a newspaper report claiming
nuclear
> weapons have been found near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.

I hope they "inadvertently" throw the book at that jackass.

-- Stinger

The first problem I have with this reporting is that it is one war on
terror not two. Adam is a moron.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California

Freedom fries.

Bush waffles.

What's next, Kerry cookies?

I think I'll go get a snack...

FW

''Bush told he is playing into Bin Laden's hands

Al-Qaida may 'reward' American president with strike aimed at keeping
him in office, senior intelligence man says

Julian Borger in Washington
Saturday June 19, 2004
The Guardian

A senior US intelligence official is about to publish a bitter
condemnation of America's counter-terrorism policy, arguing that the
west is losing the war against al-Qaida and that an "avaricious,
premeditated, unprovoked" war in Iraq has played into Osama bin
Laden's hands.
Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, due out
next month, dismisses two of the most frequent boasts of the Bush
administration: that Bin Laden and al-Qaida are "on the run" and that
the Iraq invasion has made America safer.

In an interview with the Guardian the official, who writes as
"Anonymous", described al-Qaida as a much more proficient and focused
organisation than it was in 2001, and predicted that it would
"inevitably" acquire weapons of mass destruction and try to use them.

He said Bin Laden was probably "comfortable" commanding his
organisation from the mountainous tribal lands along the border
between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Pakistani army claimed a big success in the "war against terror"
yesterday with the killing of a tribal leader, Nek Mohammed, who was
one of al-Qaida's protectors in Waziristan.

But Anonymous, who has been centrally involved in the hunt for Bin
Laden, said: "Nek Mohammed is one guy in one small area. We sometimes
forget how big the tribal areas are." He believes President Pervez
Musharraf cannot advance much further into the tribal areas without
endangering his rule by provoking a Pashtun revolt. "He walks a very
fine line," he said yesterday.

Imperial Hubris is the latest in a relentless stream of books
attacking the administration in election year. Most of the earlier
ones, however, were written by embittered former officials. This one
is unprecedented in being the work of a serving official with nearly
20 years experience in counter-terrorism who is still part of the
intelligence establishment.

The fact that he has been allowed to publish, albeit anonymously and
without naming which agency he works for, may reflect the increasing
frustration of senior intelligence officials at the course the
administration has taken.

Peter Bergen, the author of two books on Bin Laden and al-Qaida, said:
"His views represent an amped-up version of what is emerging as a
consensus among intelligence counter-terrorist professionals."

Anonymous does not try to veil his contempt for the Bush White House
and its policies. His book describes the Iraq invasion as "an
avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no
immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantage.

"Our choice of timing, moreover, shows an abject, even wilful failure
to recognise the ideological power, lethality and growth potential of
the threat personified by Bin Laden, as well as the impetus that
threat has been given by the US-led invasion and occupation of Muslim
Iraq."

In his view, the US missed its biggest chance to capture the al-Qaida
leader at Tora Bora in the Afghan mountains in December 2001. Instead
of sending large numbers of his own troops, General Tommy Franks
relied on surrogates who proved to be unreliable.

 "For my money, the game was over at Tora Bora," Anonymous said.

Yesterday President Bush repeated his assertion that Bin Laden was
cornered and that there was "no hole or cave deep enough to hide from
American justice".

Anonymous said: "I think we overestimate significantly the stress [Bin
Laden's] under. Our media and sometimes our policymakers suggest he's
hiding from rock to rock and hill to hill and cave to cave. My own
hunch is that he's fairly comfortable where he is."

The death and arrest of experienced operatives might have set back Bin
Laden's plans to some degree but when it came to his long-term
capacity to threaten the US, he said, "I don't think we've laid a
glove on him".

"What I think we're seeing in al-Qaida is a change of generation," he
said."The people who are leading al-Qaida now seem a lot more
professional group.

"They are more bureaucratic, more management competent, certainly more
literate. Certainly, this generation is more computer literate, more
comfortable with the tools of modernity. I also think they're much
less prone to being the Errol Flynns of al-Qaida. They're just much
more careful across the board in the way they operate."

As for weapons of mass destruction, he thinks that if al-Qaida does
not have them already, it will inevitably acquire them.

The most likely source of a nuclear device would be the former Soviet
Union, he believes. Dirty bombs, chemical and biological weapons,
could be home-made by al-Qaida's own experts, many of them trained in
the US and Britain.

Anonymous, who published an analysis of al-Qaida last year called
Through Our Enemies' Eyes, thinks it quite possible that another
devastating strike against the US could come during the election
campaign, not with the intention of changing the administration, as
was the case in the Madrid bombing, but of keeping the same one in
place.

"I'm very sure they can't have a better administration for them than
the one they have now," he said.

"One way to keep the Republicans in power is to mount an attack that
would rally the country around the president."

The White House has yet to comment publicly on Imperial Hubris, which
is due to be published on July 4, but intelligence experts say it may
try to portray him as a professionally embittered maverick.

The tone of Imperial Hubris is certainly angry and urgent, and the
stridency of his warnings about al-Qaida led him to be moved from a
highly sensitive job in the late 90s.

But Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of operations at the CIA
counter-terrorism centre, said he had been vindicated by events. "He
is very well respected, and looked on as a serious student of the
subject."

Anonymous believes Mr Bush is taking the US in exactly the direction
Bin Laden wants, towards all-out confrontation with Islam under the
banner of spreading democracy.

He said: "It's going to take 10,000-15,000 dead Americans before we
say to ourselves: 'What is going on'?" ''

guardianuk