:: Has the whole world gone mad or is it just me. ::

:: Friday, September 19, 2003 ::

Kosovars Greet Former President Clinton: "Kosovars Greet Former President Clinton


By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS








Filed at 10:57 a.m. ET



PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) -- Thousands of cheering ethnic Albanians greeted Bill Clinton in Kosovo on Friday as he made his second visit to the province since assembling a coalition that halted a brutal crackdown by Serb forces.



Guarded by an armored personnel carrier and NATO peacekeepers, the former president's motorcade streamed past flag-waving crowds as he traveled from the airport to the capital of the ethnically divided province. He then strode into the city's university to receive an honorary degree.



Clinton is adored by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority for leading the coalition that halted the brutal crackdown on ethnic Albanians seeking independence four years ago.



After donning a blue gown for the degree ceremony, the former president urged university students and other dignitaries to create a positive model in Kosovo that would encourage people in the Middle East and the rest of the world struggling with ethnic and religious problems.



He appealed to them to speak out against ethnic killings.



``You cannot build a new Kosovo on retributive violence,'' he said. ``No one ever gets even in this life.''



Friday's visit marked Clinton's second trip to Kosovo. He last visited in November 1999 -- just months after about 6,000 U.S. troops were deployed in the NATO-led peacekeeping mission here.



A 78-day NATO air war pushed out Serb forces under the command of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in June 1999. Milosevic is now on trial for war crimes at a U.N. tribunal in the Netherlands for atrocities committed in Kosovo and other Balkan wars.



An estimated 10,000 ethnic Albanians were killed during the crackdown and some 800,000 were forced out of their homes. They returned home after NATO-led peacekeepers moved in.



But even now -- four years after the conflict -- ethnic tensions and violence in Kosovo remain high.



About 200,000 Kosovo Serbs and other minorities fled Kosovo after the war, fearing attacks leveled in revenge for the Serb crackdown. Dozens of Serbs who remained have since been killed.



``Last time I was here, I admitted that you could never forget the injustices and inhumanity you suffered and that no outsider, including me, could force you to forgive anyone,'' Clinton said. ``But you should try. Not for them, but for you. I want you to be free.''






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:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 8:42 AM [+] ::
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washingtonpost.com: NY Times Columnist Sees Gloom in America's Future: "washingtonpost.com

NY Times Columnist Sees Gloom in America's Future



Reuters
Tuesday, September 16, 2003; 6:34 PM









By Mark Egan



NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Bush is an incessant liar bent on destroying America's social safety net, central bank guru Alan Greenspan should shut his mouth on issues unrelated to monetary policy and the U.S. media have done a terrible job of keeping the public informed.



If those opinions seem stark, they are meant to be. The New York Times pays op-ed columnist Paul Krugman to ruffle feathers. The Princeton University economist has been writing for the Times since 1999 -- work now compiled in his latest book 'The Great Unraveling.'



In it, Krugman says Bush lied during his 2000 presidential campaign, lied once he took office, turned a record budget surplus into the biggest deficit to line the pockets of the rich and abused the public's patriotism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.



'Bush is a leader of a movement that wants to smash the system as we know it, the social contract, the safety net that was built up since Franklin Roosevelt,' Krugman said in an interview late on Monday before a party to launch his book.



He believes no U.S. president has lied as much as Bush, who he says has fibbed on everything from taxes to the case for war against Iraq. 'Certainly there is nothing in modern American history that resembles this.'



A White House spokeswoman said she would have no immediate comment on Krugman's charges.



Krugman said he misses the honesty of Ronald Reagan, the last Republican president to slash taxes. Reagan had 'irresponsible fiscal policy,' Krugman said, but at least it was based on the 'crazy theory' that tax cuts for the rich would trickle down to help the working man.



'The Bushies just say black is white and up is down,' Krugman said of the current president. 'The Orwellian character of these people is very disturbing.'



Greenspan gets poor reviews from Krugman too.



'Alan Greenspan exceeded his brief,' Krugman said, calling the Federal Reserve chairman's backing of Bush's tax cut plans before Congress an abuse of his office. 'That's a violation of trust,' he said, adding, 'Alan Greenspan should apologize.'



Krugman also has little time for how the media has done in covering Bush, including reporting by the Times.



'There's a confusion between objectivity and even-handedness, they are not the same thing,' Krugman said. 'If Bush said the earth was flat, the reports in the mainstream media would say, 'Shape of the Earth: Views Differ.''



While some critics dismiss Krugman's views as inflammatory, his book shows many of his predictions have come true, especially those about the nation's budget. And that makes his ultimate prognosis of the nation's fiscal outlook chilling.



'I think the United States is setting itself up for a Latin American-style financial crisis,' he wrote in the book.



If Bush loses his job in the 2004 election, Krugman said, the day may yet be saved. But if he wins reelection to the White House, an economic meltdown will become 'inevitable.'







© 2003 Reuters "
:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 5:33 PM [+] ::
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Cost of war our burden, not our kids'

Jay Bookman
THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION

September 16, 2003

We must do what's necessary to maximize our chances of success in Iraq, because the potential consequences of failure are so dire. But the true scale of "what's necessary" is only slowly beginning to dawn on Congress and the American people.

After denying for months that estimates of spending on Iraq were even possible, the White House leaked word two weeks ago that it would seek $60 billion to $70 billion in the 2004 budget, on top of the $79 billion that had already been appropriated for the war and occupation.

That drew gasps from members of Congress, Republican and Democrat alike, who had been told last spring by top Bush officials that the reconstruction of Iraq could be financed largely through oil revenues. They were already trying to come to grips with the news that next year's budget deficit was estimated to reach $480 billion, by far the biggest deficit on record. Another $70 billion would push the deficit to well over half-a-trillion dollars.

Those gasps turned to howls last week, when President Bush told the nation that he would actually be seeking $87 billion in next year's budget to cover the costs of occupation.

And even that startling figure had an important asterisk to it.

In truth, the Bush administration had concluded that occupation and reconstruction of Iraq could require yet another $55 billion, in addition to the $87 billion requested by the president, for a total of $142 billion. It choose to leave that $55 billion out of its request to Congress, supposedly because it planned to seek that amount in contributions from other countries.

But that's not going to happen, and the administration knows it. In fact, last week Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were asked in a closed-door Senate hearing how the administration was going to close that $55 billion gap.

"They looked at each other and there was a sort of an embarrassing pause," a Senate official told the Los Angeles Times. "Powell said maybe we'll get a few hundred million from Europe and maybe a little help from Japan."

That would seem to give us two options, neither very palatable: We will have to cough up most of that additional $55 billion ourselves, or spend considerably less in Iraq than the administration believes is needed to stabilize that country. And given the administration's record, it's worth wondering whether $142 billion is even the real bottom line.

Even before the administration released its Iraq spending estimate, the highly respected Concord Coalition was warning that federal deficits over the next five years were going to total almost $2 trillion. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, a majority of the blame for that soaring deficit can be attributed to higher spending and tax cuts enacted in just the last three years.

In the same speech in which he announced his request of $87 billion for Iraq, President Bush warned of the sacrifices that would be required "to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has spoken in similar terms, describing our effort to remake the Middle East – of which Iraq is only the first step – as a "generational commitment."

The generation being committed, however, is not our own. The sacrifices that will be required will not be our own. With the notable exception of those serving in the U.S. military, we are refusing to make those sacrifices ourselves and are dumping them on our children and grandchildren, who are helpless to stop us.

This is not the act of a great country or a great people.

Bookman can be reached via e-mail at jbookman@ajc.com

Copyright 2003 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.

 

 

 

Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/uniontrib/tue/opinion/news_mz1e16bookma.html

 
:: Beauxbeaux's Daddy 6:47 AM [+] ::
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