News Items Not To Be Overlooked!

Hi Everyone,

Here are some more news items that everyone should look into. These stories will probably get under reported or their significance will be ignored entirely. Republicans always say there is a liberal bias. At times, I've complained that there is a conservative bias (especially from Fox but also from MSNBC). But what there really is a sensationalist bias (except with Fox, those guys are ideologues). Because of that some of these stories will get ignored or under played.

Item 1: CNN is reporting that a book by former Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla) is saying that a year before the U.S. invaded Iraq, General Tommy Franks told him in a meeting at Franks' HQ in Florida (Graham was chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee at the time) that he was losing resources in Afghanistan because of a planned invasion of Iraq. Franks favored using those resources to finish in Afghanistan and then attack Somalia (which has a large Al Qaida presence and no functioning government) while avoiding Iraq where Franks felt intelligence was inadequate. A few days after Franks met with Graham, President Bush assured German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder that the United States "harbors no attack plans." Is it any wonder the German Chancellor seems to have taken the U.S. Iraq policy as a personal betrayal. Bush flat out lied to the Chancellor of one of our closest allies in Europe. Unlike France, Germany has long been one of the most pro-US governments in Europe. Not any more.

Graham also says that the 28 pages of deleted text in the Senate's 9/11 report dealt with financial ties between Saudi government officials and 9/11 hijackers. The pages were deleted at the request of the White House. You may remember also that at that time the Saudi government was running full page ads in major newspapers and TV ads in major markets claiming they were a misunderstood but loyal ally.

Item 2: CNN is also reporting more problems with President Bush's Texas Air National Guard Records. Air National Guard regulations of that time required commanders to issue an investigative report when someone under their command missed a scheduled medical exam. No such report was included in Bush's file. The regulations also required that anyone who missed as many months of drills as Bush did (five months) should undergo counseling. No report of such counseling is included in Bush's file. Air National Guard commanders of that time excuse the missing files by saying "Not everyone in the Guard wanted to be chief of staff of the Air Force back then."

Item 3: The pundits were right. The conventional predictions of the pundits that Bush would get only a modest bounce of two to four points has been shown to be correct. A CNN/Gallup poll (which has shown consistently more support for Bush than most independent polls) shows that Bush got a minimal 2 point bounce from the RNC. This is a HUGE difference from the sensationalist stories over the weekend of a 10 point bounce based on Time and Newsweek polls (which have since been discredited).

Item 4: Remember South Asia? India and Pakistan are still peacefully negotiating with each other. I guess their version of the Cuban Missile Crisis has scared them into sanity! This is good news and should be cause for a global mood of cautious optimism.

Meanwhile in Afghanistan, independent election monitors are sounding the alarm that the upcoming Presidential elections there could be a disaster of mismanagement, intimidation and violence.