Today’s Headlines

On Dec. 24, 1992, President Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Like father, like son, still linked to underbelly of the Reagan Revolution. mjh

Bush’s re-election seen linked to state of U.S. economy and security in Iraq BETH GORHAM

If there’s anything shaping U.S. politics these days, it’s uncertainty. …

With a $200 million campaign chest and the incumbency, it is Bush’s election to lose.

And it’s hard to say how the American public’s love him or hate him attitudes will play out in a country so evenly divided that Cook’s public opinion surveys find most months that the two parties are within a point of each other.

Cook predicts a 90 per cent to 95 per cent chance that Republicans will hold onto the House of Representatives and an 80 per cent chance that they will keep a majority in the Senate.

“But the presidential race, I’m increasingly convinced, is just going to be very, very, very, very close,” he says.

“It would be very difficult for it to be any closer than last time, but I think it’s going to be very close.”

Bush’s bonus depreciation perfectly fits election cycle Jay Hancock, sunspot.net

Only three decades after Yale economist William D. Nordhaus proposed the existence of what he called ”the political business cycle,” Bush and his allies have perfected the art of short-term economic manipulation. …

[C]ompanies rushing to take advantage of the ”bonus depreciation” provision in the recent tax bill are expected to spend billions of dollars on capital equipment next year, revive the sleepy business-investment sector and — not incidentally — ensure Bush’s re-election.

Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg expects bonus depreciation to be “wildly stimulative” in 2004 — so stimulative, he suggests, that even comatose technology spending will sit up, stretch out and take a few laps. …

“The name of the game is to get re-elected,” Rosenberg says. Bonus depreciation, he adds, “is going to bring forward activity that otherwise would have taken place in 2005 into 2004.” And, because it affects big projects taking months to complete, it will spur economic energy well before the November election.

You probably know the bad news. Rosenberg’s research and Nordhaus’ theory both suggest that once the polls close and stimulus stops, a slowdown or even recession are more likely.

More entries on Saddam

DNC – White House 2004

The Democratic National Committee sponsored six debates among the Democratic presidential candidates. Check out the transcripts below to see the candidates explain their visions for America and decide who you think is the best person to replace George W. Bush in 2004.

(Thanks to MB at New Mexico Progressive.
mjh)

Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein:
The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1984
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82
Edited by Joyce Battle
February 25, 2003

It is interesting that Hussein was captured almost exactly 20 years after Rumsfeld shook his hand as an envoy sent by Raygun. mjh

Documents: Rumsfeld Made Iraq Overture in 1984 Despite Chemical Raids By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS, NYTimes

As a special envoy for the Reagan administration in 1984, Donald H. Rumsfeld, now the defense secretary, traveled to Iraq to persuade officials there that the United States was eager to improve ties with President Saddam Hussein despite his use of chemical weapons, newly declassified documents show.

Mr. Rumsfeld, who ran a pharmaceutical company at the time, was tapped by Secretary of State George P. Shultz to reinforce a message that a recent move to condemn Iraq’s use of chemical weapons was strictly in principle and that America’s priority was to prevent an Iranian victory in the Iran-Iraq war and to improve bilateral ties.

During that war, the United States secretly provided Iraq with combat planning assistance, even after Mr. Hussein’s use of chemical weapons was widely known. …

Mr. Rumsfeld’s trip was his second visit to Iraq. On his first visit, in late December 1983, he had a cordial meeting with Mr. Hussein, and photographs and a report of that encounter have been widely published. …

The American relationship with Iraq during its crippling war with Iran was rife with such ambiguities. Though the United States was outwardly neutral, it tilted toward Iraq and even monitored talks toward the sale of military equipment by private American contractors.

Tom Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive, said: “Saddam had chemical weapons in the 1980’s, and it didn’t make any difference to U.S. policy.”

Mr. Blanton suggested that the United States was now paying the price for earlier indulgence. “The embrace of Saddam in the 1980’s and what it emboldened him to do should caution us as Americans that we have to look closely at all our murky alliances,” he said. “Shaking hands with dictators today can turn them into Saddams tomorrow.”