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Earth Cooling, Not Warming

By: Philip V. Brennan

A San Francisco-based scientist says that current solar activity strongly indicates that the earth is on the verge of a new ice age.

"Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh," warns Phil Chapman writing in The Australian. Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut.

"The scariest photo I have seen . . . is at www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory [SOHO], located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity," Chapman wrote, adding ominously that "what is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot."

"This is where SOHO comes in," he explained. "The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No. 24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers."

That, he writes did not happen. "The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon."

Why? According to Chapman "there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790. Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots."

Although the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No. 24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection, Chapman warns that it is cause for concern.

"Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming," he explains, "the average temperature on earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

"All four agencies that track earth's temperature [the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California] report that it cooled by about 0.7 C in 2007." This, he says is "the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over."

Moreover, he says, there is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold, noting that it snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.

Chapman wrote that the global warming dogma should be put aside, "at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850."

How bad could a new little ice age be? "Much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do. There are many more people now, and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the U.S. and Canada." Global warming, he added, "would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it. Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it [such as planning changes in agriculture to compensate], and millions more will die from cold-related diseases."

And grim as that outlook is, Chapman predicts that there is also another possibility, remote but much more serious — the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and other evidence show that for the past several million years, severe glaciation has almost always afflicted our planet and under normal conditions, most of North America and Europe are buried under about 1.5 km of ice.

This bitterly frigid climate is interrupted occasionally by brief warm interglacials, typically lasting less than 10,000 years.

The present interglacial period we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history, called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so an ice age is overdue. And glaciation can occur quickly: The required decline in global temperature is about 12 C and it can happen in 20 years.

His conclusions: "The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for another 1,000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14 C cooler in 2027."

By then, he writes, "most of the advanced nations would have ceased to exist, vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world would be faced with a catastrophe beyond imagining."

"All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinders and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead," he writes. "It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake."

British Lord Scolds Senators For Threatening All
Who Question the Global Warming "Consensus"

RUSH:

This is fabulous. Lord Monckton, Viscount of Brenchley, has sent an open letter to Senators Rockefeller (D-WV) and Snowe (R-Maine) in response to their recent open letter telling the CEO of ExxonMobil to cease funding climate-skeptic scientists. Lord Monckton, former policy adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, writes: 'You defy every tenet of democracy when you invite ExxonMobil to deny itself the right to provide information to 'senior elected and appointed government officials' who disagree with your opinion.'"

This is the letter we told you about that Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe wrote to the CEO of ExxonMobil basically telling them to shut up, that climate change -- human-caused climate change and global warming -- is not disputable anymore and to stop influencing the "deniers," the global warming "deniers," and to stop funding them and stop making these points and so forth, or we're coming after you. It wasn't stated, but when you get a letter like this from two US senators... What was odd about this -- ironic is a better word -- Jay Rockefeller would be nowhere, no how, nobody were it not for the fact that his great, great grandfather discovered oil in Saudi Arabia! The Rockefeller fortune derives from oil, and it was a trust, a big trust. It had to be busted up, and it led to all the Standard Oil and so forth, and now it's nowhere to be recognized by any of its original names.

The business that made Rockefeller who he is... Rockefeller is Lucky Sperm Club, folks. He just happened to have the right mom and dad and grew up like Ted Kennedy. Lucky Sperm Club. That's who these people are, but now he's an all-powerful, mighty United States senator, and he's sending out these disguised threats in the form of letters to ExxonMobil's CEO, and British Lord Monckton is telling them to shut up. You have no right to have these people deny themselves their First Amendment rights! They have the right to free speech and can say what they want to say, just as you do. "The Charleston (WV) Daily Mail has called 'an intemperate attempt to squelch debate with a hint of political consequences,' Senators Rockefeller and Snowe released an open letter dated October 30 to ExxonMobil CEO, Rex Tillerson, insisting he end Exxon's funding of a 'climate change denial campaign.'

"The Senators labeled scientists with whom they disagree as 'deniers,' a term usually directed at 'Holocaust deniers.' Some voices on the political left have called for the arrest and prosecution of skeptical scientists. The British Foreign Secretary has said skeptics should be treated like advocates of Islamic terror and must be denied access to the media. Responds Lord Monckton, 'Sceptics and those who have the courage to support them are actually helpful in getting the science right. They do not, as you improperly suggest [Senator Rockefeller], 'obfuscate' the issue: they assist in clarifying it by challenging weaknesses in the 'consensus' argument and they compel necessary corrections ... '"

Once again we're back to this. There can be no science if there's "consensus" involved, and all of the global warming scientists use that word "consensus" to give their argument the force of power and certitude. They're out there saying, "Well, the consensus is there's global warming." There can't be "consensus" in science. If you've got "consensus," there isn't any science. Science is. Facts are. The earth is round. If a "consensus" of scientists say it's flat, it doesn't change the fact that the earth is round. Just because a consensus say that, "Our models predict X, Y and Z, 15, 20, 30, 40 years from now..." Computer models are not science, either, and you cannot make the case that they are. Proven fact is science. Anything else isn't, and Rockefeller and his bunch... What kind of a threat was that, anyway, to send this letter out telling them to shut up or risk the consensus; calling them "deniers" and this sort of thing? It really is an example of the condescension and arrogance and the overall presumption of power these people think they have, and this is liberals, folks. Make no mistake: Olympia Snowe is a liberal, even though she's a Republican. When you say something they don't want to hear, they don't want to debate you because they can't beat you, they want to shut you up, discredit you, or ruin you, one way or the other.

White House Shuts Nuke Secrets Web Site

The nation's top intelligence official took down a government Web site with captured Saddam Hussein-era Iraqi documents, after questions were raised about whether it provided too much information about making atomic bombs.

In a statement Thursday night, a spokesman for National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said his office has suspended public access to the Web site "pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing."

The action came after The New York Times raised questions about the contents of the government site, called the "Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal." The Times' Web site reported Thursday night that weapons experts say documents posted on the government site in recent weeks provide dangerous detail about Iraq's covert nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

"While strict criteria had already been established to govern posted documents, the material currently on the Web site, as well as the procedures used to post new documents, will be carefully reviewed before the site becomes available again," said Negroponte's spokesman, Chad Kolton.

Former White House chief of staff Andrew Card said Friday that top officials knew there were risks when they decided to post the documents.

"John Negroponte warned us that we don't know what's in these documents, so these are being put out at some risk, and that was a warning that he put out right when they first released the documents," Card told NBC's "Today" show.

Pressed by Republican members of Congress, Negroponte's office last March ordered the unprecedented release of millions of pages of Iraqi documents, most of them in Arabic, collected by the U.S. government over more than a decade.

Until this week, the information had been posted gradually on public Internet servers, run by the military. In announcing the postings, Negroponte's office said the U.S. government had made no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, their factual accuracy or the quality of any translations, when available.

The International Atomic Energy Agency declined to comment Friday on the report.

A spokesman for the chief U.S. envoy to the nuclear agency, Gregory L. Schulte, denied that he was approached by agency officials about the posted documents.

"Ambassador Schulte did not receive any protest or expression of concern from the IAEA on this issue," spokesman Matthew Boland told The Associated Press in Vienna, Austria. "No representative of our mission was approached by a representative of the IAEA on this issue."

Sen. Harry Reid Accounts for Shady Land Deal

NewsMax - Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid announced Monday he is amending his ethics reports to Congress to more fully account for a land deal that allowed him to collect $1.1 million for property he hadn't personally owned for three years.

Reid acted several days after The Associated Press reported the senator didn't disclose to Congress that he first sold the land to a friend's company back in 2001 and took an ownership stake in the company. He didn't collect the seven-figure payout until the company sold the land again in 2004 to others.

Reid said his amended ethics reports will list the 2001 sale.

"I directed my staff to file amended financial disclosure forms noting that in 2001, I transferred title to the land to a Limited Liability Corporation," Reid said in a statement issued by his office.

Reid said he believed the 2001 sale did not alter his ownership of the land but that he agreed to file the amended reports because "I believe in ensuring all facts come to light."

Reid blamed the AP story as a "latest attempt" by Republicans to affect the election. AP reported last week that it learned of the land deal from a former Reid adviser who had concerns about the way the deal was reported to Congress.

Reid also announced he failed to disclose two other land transactions on his prior ethics reports and would account for those on his amended reports.

The Limbaugh Laws

Call it The Limbaugh Laws:

First: If you immigrate to our country, you have to speak the native language. You have to be a professional or an investor; no unskilled workers allowed. Also, there will be no special bilingual programs in the schools with the Limbaugh Laws. No special ballots for elections. No government business will be conducted in your language. Foreigners will not have the right to vote — or hold political office.

If you’re in our country, you cannot be a burden to taxpayers. You are not entitled to welfare, food stamps, or other government goodies. You can come if you invest here: an amount equal to 40,000 times the daily minimum wage. If not, stay home. But if you want to buy land, it'll be restricted. No waterfront, for instance. As a foreigner, you must relinquish individual rights to the property.

And another thing. You don’t have the right to protest. You're allowed no demonstrations, no foreign flag waving, no political organizing, no bad-mouthing our President or his policies. You’re a foreigner: shut your mouth or get out! And if you come here illegally, you're going to jail.

You think the Limbaugh Laws are harsh? Well, every one of the laws I just mentioned are actual laws of Mexico today! That’s how the Mexican government handles immigrants to their country. Yet Mexicans come here illegally and protest in our streets!

How do you say “double standard” in Spanish? How about: “No mas!"

Bubba Boots Dubya Outta the Dubba-Wide, or: Dubai, Cruel World

Tim Cavanaugh: Left-wing Bush opponents have spent six years fuming about an exquisitely irksome trait in George W. Bush's character: He's not really a man of the people! He's actually really rich and stuff! Now, they're so eager to join the frenzy over the Dubai Ports World deal that they're not even savoring the moment they've been praying for: For the first time, Bush has been completely out-populisted. And by Democrats, for Christ's sake!

If there's one thing the DPW dustup proves, it's that Bill Clinton really was a better Man of the People than George W. Here's why:

There's a very short list of concepts the president needs to spell out:

• The DPW deal is just a contract for services—the Arabs are not going to own our ports.

• This doesn't involve port security, and if opponents think there's a security risk they haven't provided any evidence for that.

• It's in our best interest to be engaging "moderate" Arab business types like our friends in the UAE, where gay marriage is legal and every citizen is the CEO of a private company that does nothing but manufacture "I Love America" bumper stickers.

•Yes, it seems scary to be turning over port services to this foreign company, but actually this kind of transnational deal carries many benefits, among them blah blah blah...

• It's not true that foreigners will be doing all our port services. All the employees will still be Americans. In fact, I've had my brain trust run the numbers and calculated that this deal will actually create umpteen new jobs.

• The fact that DPW is state-owned isn't substantially different from, say, Continental buying some planes from the heavily subsidized Airbus.

• And so on.

It's a simple bunch of talking points, but it's become very difficult to get out there because we're in the heat of a full-scale populist panic, and against a populist panic only a golden tongue can argue logic. Bush has been caught totally flat-footed. He tried first to play the race card—a tactic that worked back in 2003, when skeptics made the absurd, bigoted, America-hating claim that Iraq's factions might be just as happy attacking each others' mosques as voting for a new future together. But the race card doesn't work because a) it's not 2003 anymore, b) a general opposition to Arabs is a badge most Americans would wear proudly by this point, and c) go hold hands with another oil sheik, Gaylord.

His next gambit was what they call in The Sunshine Boys the A-1 material: I'm the President, so it's my way or the highway. That argument's worth nothing because what, after all this time the first veto you're going to use is in favor of some screwy deal to give away our country to a bunch of Arabs?

So that leaves only rhetorical Plan C: Terrorist terrorist terrorist, war war war, I've made my decision and these questions aren't helpful. You can see why that one doesn't work.

Who could get out of this fix?

I'll tell you who: NAFTA-era Bill Clinton, that's who! Explaining stuff like this is what Bill Clinton lived for. Just think back to that Clintonian love of factoids, that congenial explanation of the benefits that you, the listener, will directly receive, that enthusiastic drive to get you to share the president's love of policy minutiae. Clinton was great at this stuff because, whatever else he was, he was a man of the people. He understood (as Bush does) the benefit of a barrier-free market that might leave, say, Dubai Ports World providing services to American harbors. And he knew that populist panics are stupid and almost always wrong. But unlike Bush, he realized that populist panics come from deep within people's hearts, and that you have to respect that. (It just sweetens the deal that this time the populist panic is being driven by another Clinton, that Around the Way Girl in the Yankees cap who always has her finger firmly up the ass on the pulse of the Average American.)

Will Bush weather this storm? All signs say yes: A PR machine that can turn Sunday's The Vice President had "one beer" and then shot a guy story into Wednesday's Why is the media picking on the Vice President and why hasn't the guy who was shot apologized already story can do pretty much anything. Allahu Akbar, DPW! Welcome to our ports!

Osama bin Laden Used John Kerry's Talking Points

9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden may have borrowed some of Sen. John Kerry's talking points for the audiotaped message he released on Thursday - veteran CBS newsman Bob Schieffer said Saturday.

Asked whether bin Laden had expressed "almost the same" sentiments that Kerry did during an appearance on Schieffer's "Face the Nation" broadcast in December, the CBS anchorman told WABC Radio's Mark Simone: "Well, he did. That's exactly right."

Back then, Kerry complained to Schieffer: "There is no reason that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids."

In his message, bin Laden also complained that the U.S. was terrorizing Iraqi innocents, saying that "the oppressive measures adopted by the U.S. Army and its agents" show "there is no difference between this criminality and Saddam's criminality, as it has reached the degree of raping women and taking them as hostages instead of their husbands."

Schieffer said he wasn't sure whether bin Laden was consciously borrowing from Kerry, but he added it was possible.

"You can never know about things like that," he told Simone. "But these people seem to have tremendous access. And television being what it is, and now with satellites and so forth, these things go all over the world. Perhaps he did."

Sharpton: Stop Blind Support of Dems

Former Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton blasted blacks Thursday for what he described as their blind support of the Democratic Party without demanding anything in return.

Sharpton, during his remarks at the National Urban League's annual conference in Washington, noted that his fellow Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton, have taken African-American voters for granted and failed to act in the best interests of the black community.

"The whole network of incarceration (of African-American men) happened under this president and the last president. So it wasn't just George Bush. Bill Clinton - I wish Hillary had hung around - Bill Clinton built a lot of jails and passed the omnibus crime bill," Sharpton said shortly after Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, had addressed the same panel discussion, entitled "The Black Male: Endangered Species or Hope for the Future?"

Sharpton noted that African-American men make up 6 percent of the U.S. population but 44 percent of the nation's prison population.

"And just because Bill can sing "Amazing Grace" well doesn't mean the omnibus crime bill was not a bill that hurt our people," Sharpton told the several hundred people gathered at the Washington Convention Center.

Clinton enjoyed significant African-American support and was affectionately referred to by many in the black community as America's "first black president."

"We must stop allowing people to gain politically from us if they're not reciprocating when dealing and being held accountable," said Sharpton, referring to the allegiance that African-American voters maintain to the Democratic Party.

Sharpton said many politicians who court the black vote "come by and get our votes 'cause they wave at us on Sunday morning while the choir's singing. And we act like that is reaching out."

The problem is these same politicians "never addressed why they sit here in Washington with an epidemic proportion of HIV AIDS in our (black) community, unemployment in our community and they do nothing to deal with eliminating those problems," Sharpton explained.

"Imagine me going to a convention of whites who half of them were unemployed and I smiled, waved, sing a hymn and leave. They would whip me in the parking lot before [I left]," he said to laughter and applause.

"As long as we allow people to get elected off of us and deliver nothing to us, then part of our problem is that we have such low political self esteem," he said. "Every time we give them support for no support, we add to the marginalization of black men."

Sharpton said the situation has "gotten so bad that we hold black leaders accountable and give white leaders a pass."

'People emulate what they see'

Sharpton also took aim at black popular culture. Noting that in some U.S. cities, black male unemployment exceeds 50 percent, Sharpton said black music and movies only aggravate the situation.

"We come out in response to that with movies like (the 2005) "Hustle and Flow" and tell our kids that the personification of black men is a black pimp of a white prostitute that wants to be a rapper who shoots the rapper and at the end of the movie, [a] black woman he had as his prostitute has his baby and the white prostitute becomes the head of the record company and makes the money while he's in jail. That don't make sense," Sharpton said to applause.

"People emulate what they see ...We cannot succumb to a generation that acts like it's all right to celebrate being down. It's one thing to be down, it's another thing to celebrate being down," he explained.

Referring to gangster rappers, Sharpton said, "We've gone from 'black and proud' to groups now calling themselves "Niggers with an attitude."

Sharpton told the panel discussion of how he has confronted rappers about their lyrics only to be told that the rappers simply "reflect the times." Sharpton said black art and culture used to project its "hopes for the future."

"In slavery we wasn't singing, 'you a low down cotton pickin ho.' That would've reflected the times," he said to more laughter and applause.

"In the civil rights era, we sang "We shall overcome" we didn't sing 'You in the back of the bus, got gum on your show, no good MF.' I mean we've been down before. We never romanticized it and put melody to it and acted like it was all right," he added.

Sharpton concluded his discussion with a call for the black community to help itself and return churches to "the center of our community."

"Even if we [are] not responsible for being down, we [are] responsible for getting up," he said. "And if we wait on those who knocked us down to lift us up we'll never get up 'cause if they wanted us up we would have never been down," he said.

81 Percent Supports End Of Filbusters

"If you doubt whether the framing of a poll question can influence the outcome," FNC's Brit Hume asked, "consider this. When a Republican poll said quote, 'Even if they disagree with a judge, Senate Democrats should at least allow he President's nominations to be voted on,' 81 percent said they agreed."

In addition, a Rasmussen survey found that when asked "should the Senate rules should be changed so that a vote must be taken on every person that the President nominates to become a judge?", 56 percent responded affirmatively.

FNC's Brit Hume on Tuesday night pointed out how the wording of a Washington Post/ABC News poll led to its finding of overwhelming opposition to blocking Democratic filibusters of judicial nominees, an observation made in Tuesday's CyberAlert, and Hume noted how differently-worded polls led to opposite results.

The April 26 CyberAlert recounted: ABC and the Washington Post touted how a new poll found two-thirds opposed to a rule change to end Democratic filibusters of judicial nominees, but the language of the question led to the media's desired answer.

"An ABC News poll has found little support for changing the Senate's rules to help the President's judicial nominees win confirmation," World News Tonight anchor Charles Gibson trumpeted Monday night.

The Washington Post's lead front page headline, over a Tuesday story on the poll, declared: "Filibuster Rule Change Opposed." But the questions in the poll failed to point out the unprecedented use of a filibuster to block nominees who have majority support.

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60 MINS PLANNED BUSH MISSING EXPLOSIVES STORY FOR ELECTION EVENews of missing explosives in Iraq -- first reported in April 2003 -- was being resurrected for a 60 MINUTES election eve broadcast designed to knock the Bush administration into a crises mode.

Jeff Fager, executive producer of the Sunday edition of 60 MINUTES, said in a statement that "our plan was to run the story on October 31, but it became clear that it wouldn't hold..."

Elizabeth Jensen at the LOS ANGELES TIMES details on Tuesday how CBS NEWS and 60 MINUTES lost the story [which repackaged previously reported information on a large cache of explosives missing in Iraq, first published and broadcast in 2003].

The story instead debuted in the NYT. The paper slugged the story about missing explosives from April 2003 as "exclusive."

An NBCNEWS crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the liberation of Iraq.

According to NBCNEWS, the explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.

It is not clear who exactly shopped an election eve repackaging of the missing explosives story.

The LA TIMES claims: The source on the story first went to 60 MINUTES but also expressed interest in working with the NY TIMES... "The tip was received last Wednesday."

CBSNEWS' plan to unleash the story just 24 hours before election day had one senior Bush official outraged.

"Darn, I wanted to see the forged documents to show how this was somehow covered up," the Bush source, who asked not to be named, mocked, recalling last months CBS airing of fraudulent Bush national guard letters.

Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in IraqBy JAMES GLANZ, WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: October 25, 2004

his article was reported and written by James Glanz, William J. Broad and David E. Sanger.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24 - The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.

The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.

The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program "60 Minutes."

Administration officials said Sunday that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. task force that searched for unconventional weapons, has been ordered to investigate the disappearance of the explosives.

American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings.

The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the same type of material, and larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people.

The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material, and even sealed and locked some of it. The other components of an atom bomb - the design and the radioactive fuel - are more difficult to obtain.

"This is a high explosives risk, but not necessarily a proliferation risk," one senior Bush administration official said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.

A Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, said Sunday evening that Saddam Hussein's government "stored weapons in mosques, schools, hospitals and countless other locations," and that the allied forces "have discovered and destroyed perhaps thousands of tons of ordnance of all types." A senior military official noted that HMX and RDX were "available around the world" and not on the nuclear nonproliferation list, even though they are used in the nuclear warheads of many nations.

The Qaqaa facility, about 30 miles south of Baghdad, was well known to American intelligence officials: Mr. Hussein made conventional warheads at the site, and the I.A.E.A. dismantled parts of his nuclear program there in the early 1990's after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. In the prelude to the 2003 invasion, Mr. Bush cited a number of other "dual use" items - including tubes that the administration contended could be converted to use for the nuclear program - as a justification for invading Iraq.

After the invasion, when widespread looting began in Iraq, the international weapons experts grew concerned that the Qaqaa stockpile could fall into unfriendly hands. In May, an internal I.A.E.A. memorandum warned that terrorists might be helping "themselves to the greatest explosives bonanza in history."

(Page 2 of 4)

Earlier this month, in a letter to the I.A.E.A. in Vienna, a senior official from Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology wrote that the stockpile disappeared after early April 2003 because of "the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security."

In an interview with The Times and "60 Minutes" in Baghdad, the minister of science and technology, Rashad M. Omar, confirmed the facts described in the letter. "Yes, they are missing," Dr. Omar said. "We don't know what happened." The I.A.E.A. says it also does not know, and has reported that machine tools that can be used for either nuclear or non-nuclear purposes have also been looted.

Dr. Omar said that after the American-led invasion, the sites containing the explosives were under the control of the Coalition Provisional Authority, an American-led entity that was the highest civilian authority in Iraq until it handed sovereignty of the country over to the interim government on June 28.

"After the collapse of the regime, our liberation, everything was under the coalition forces, under their control," Dr. Omar said. "So probably they can answer this question, what happened to the materials."

Officials in Washington said they had no answers to that question. One senior official noted that the Qaqaa complex where the explosives were stored was listed as a "medium priority" site on the Central Intelligence Agency's list of more than 500 sites that needed to be searched and secured during the invasion. "Should we have gone there? Definitely," said one senior administration official.

In the chaos that followed the invasion, however, many of those sites, even some considered a higher priority, were never secured.

A No Man's Land

Seeing the ruined bunkers at the vast Qaqaa complex today, it is hard to recall that just two years ago it was part of Saddam Hussein's secret military complex. The bunkers are so large that they are reminiscent of pyramids, though with rounded edges and the tops chopped off. Several are blackened and eviscerated as a result of American bombing. Smokestacks rise in the distance.

Today, Al Qaqaa has become a wasteland generally avoided even by the marines in charge of northern Babil Province. Headless bodies are found there. An ammunition dump has been looted, and on Sunday an Iraqi employee of The New York Times who made a furtive visit to the site saw looters tearing out metal fixtures. Bare pipes within the darkened interior of one of the buildings were a tangled mess, zigzagging along charred walls. Someone fired a shot, probably to frighten the visitors off.

"It's like Mars on Earth," said Maj. Dan Whisnant, an intelligence officer for the Second Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment. "It would take probably 10 battalions 10 years to clear that out."

Mr. Hussein's engineers acquired HMX and RDX when they embarked on a crash effort to build an atomic bomb in the late 1980's. It did not go smoothly.

In 1989, a huge blast ripped through Al Qaqaa, the boom reportedly heard hundreds of miles away. The explosion, it was later determined, occurred when a stockpile of the high explosives ignited.

After the Persian Gulf war in 1991, the United Nations discovered Iraq's clandestine effort and put the United Nations arms agency in charge of Al Qaqaa's huge stockpile. Weapon inspectors determined that Iraq had bought the explosives from France, China and Yugoslavia, a European diplomat said.

None of the explosives were destroyed, arms experts familiar with the decision recalled, because Iraq argued that it should be allowed to keep them for eventual use in mining and civilian construction. But Al Qaqaa was still under the authority of the Military Industrial Council, which ran Iraq's sensitive weapons programs and was led for a time by Hussein Kamel, Mr. Hussein's son-in-law. He defected to the West, then returned to Iraq and was immediately killed.

In 1996, the United Nations hauled away some of the HMX and used it to blow up Al Hakam, a vast Iraqi factory for making germ weapons.
(Page 3 of 4)

The Qaqaa stockpile went unmonitored from late 1998, when United Nations inspectors left Iraq, to late 2002, when they came back. Upon their return, the inspectors discovered that about 35 tons of HMX were missing. The Iraqis said they had used the explosive mainly in civilian programs.

The remaining stockpile was no secret. Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the arms agency, frequently talked about it publicly as he investigated - in late 2002 and early 2003 - the Bush administration's claims that Iraq was secretly renewing its pursuit of nuclear arms. He ordered his weapons inspectors to conduct an inventory, and publicly reported their findings to the Security Council on Jan. 9, 2003.

During the following weeks, the I.A.E.A. repeatedly drew public attention to the explosives. In New York on Feb. 14, nine days after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented his arms case to the Security Council, Dr. ElBaradei reported that the agency had found no sign of new atom endeavors but "has continued to investigate the relocation and consumption of the high explosive HMX."

A European diplomat reported that Jacques Baute, head of the arms agency's Iraq nuclear inspection team, warned officials at the United States mission in Vienna about the danger of the nuclear sites and materials once under I.A.E.A. supervision, including Al Qaqaa.

But apparently, little was done. A senior Bush administration official said that during the initial race to Baghdad, American forces "went through the bunkers, but saw no materials bearing the I.A.E.A. seal." It is unclear whether troops ever returned.

By late 2003, diplomats said, arms agency experts had obtained commercial satellite photos of Al Qaqaa showing that two of roughly 10 bunkers that contained HMX appeared to have been leveled by titanic blasts, apparently during the war. They presumed some of the HMX had exploded, but that is unclear.

Other HMX bunkers were untouched. Some were damaged but not devastated. I.A.E.A. experts say they assume that just before the invasion the Iraqis followed their standard practice of moving crucial explosives out of buildings, so they would not be tempting targets. If so, the experts say, the Iraqi must have broken seals from the arms agency on bunker doors and moved most of the HMX to nearby fields, where it would have been lightly camouflaged - and ripe for looting.

But the Bush administration would not allow the agency back into the country to verify the status of the stockpile. In May 2004, Iraqi officials say in interviews, they warned L. Paul Bremer III, the American head of the occupation authority, that Al Qaqaa had probably been looted. It is unclear if that warning was passed anywhere. Efforts to reach Mr. Bremer by telephone were unsuccessful.

But by the spring of 2004, the Americans were preoccupied with the transfer of authority to Iraq, and the insurgency was gaining strength. "It's not an excuse," said one senior administration official. "But a lot of things went by the boards."

Early this month, Dr. ElBaradei put public pressure on the interim Iraqi government to start the process of accounting for nuclear-related materials still ostensibly under I.A.E.A. supervision, including the Qaqaa stockpile.

"Iraq is obliged," he wrote to the president of the Security Council on Oct. 1, "to declare semiannually changes that have occurred or are foreseen."

The agency, Dr. ElBaradei added pointedly, "has received no such notifications or declarations from any state since the agency's inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq in March 2003."

A Lost Stockpile

Two weeks ago, on Oct. 10, Dr. Mohammed J. Abbas of the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology wrote a letter to the I.A.E.A. to say the Qaqaa stockpile had been lost. He added that his ministry had judged that an "urgent updating of the registered materials is required."

A chart in his letter listed 341.7 metric tons, about 377 American tons, of HMX, RDX and PETN as missing.

The explosives missing from Al Qaqaa are the strongest and fastest in common use by militaries around the globe. The Iraqi letter identified the vanished stockpile as containing 194.7 metric tons of HMX, which stands for "high melting point explosive," 141.2 metric tons of RDX, which stands for "rapid detonation explosive," among other designations, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, which stands for "pentaerythritol tetranitrate." The total is roughly 340 metric tons or nearly 380 American tons.
(Page 4 of 4)

Five days later, on Oct. 15, European diplomats said, the arms agency wrote the United States mission in Vienna to forward the Iraqi letter and ask that the American authorities inform the international coalition in Iraq of the missing explosives.

Dr. ElBaradei, a European diplomat said, is "extremely concerned" about the potentially "devastating consequences" of the vanished stockpile.

Its fate remains unknown. Glenn Earhart, manager of an Army Corps of Engineers program in Huntsville, Ala., that is in charge of rounding up and destroying lost Iraqi munitions, said he and his colleagues knew nothing of the whereabouts of the Qaqaa stockpile.

Administration officials say Iraq was awash in munitions, including other stockpiles of exotic explosives.

"The only reason this stockpile was under seal," said one senior administration official, "is because it was located at Al Qaqaa," where nuclear work had gone on years ago.

As a measure of the size of the stockpile, one large truck can carry about 10 tons, meaning that the missing explosives could fill a fleet of almost 40 trucks.

By weight, these explosives pack far more destructive power than TNT, so armies often use them in shells, bombs, mines, mortars and many types of conventional ordinance.

"HMX and RDX have a lot of shattering power," said Dr. Van Romero, vice president for research at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, or New Mexico Tech, which specializes in explosives.

"Getting a large amount is difficult," he added, because most nations carefully regulate who can buy such explosives, though civilian experts can sometimes get licenses to use them for demolition and mining.

An Immediate Danger

A special property of HMX and RDX lends them to smuggling and terrorism, experts said. While violently energetic when detonated, they are insensitive to shock and physical abuse during handling and transport because of their chemical stability. A hammer blow does nothing. It takes a detonator, like a blasting cap, to release the stored energy.

Experts said the insensitivity made them safer to transport than the millions of unexploded shells, mines and pieces of live ammunition that litter Iraq. And its benign appearance makes it easy to disguise as harmless goods, easily slipped across borders.

"The immediate danger" of the lost stockpile, said an expert who recently led a team that searched Iraq for deadly arms, "is its potential use with insurgents in very small and powerful explosive devices. The other danger is that it can easily move into the terrorist web across the Middle East."

More worrisome to the I.A.E.A. - and to some in Washington - is that HMX and RDX are used in standard nuclear weapons design. In a nuclear implosion weapon, the explosives crush a hollow sphere of uranium or plutonium into a critical mass, initiating the nuclear explosion.

A crude implosion device - like the one that the United States tested in 1945 in the New Mexican desert and then dropped on Nagasaki, Japan - needs about a ton of high explosive to crush the core and start the chain reaction.

James Glanz reported from Baghdad and Yusifiya, Iraq, for this article, William J. Broad from New York and Vienna, and David E. Sanger from Washington and Crawford, Tex. Khalid al-Ansary contributed reporting from Baghdad.

Iraq Explosives Become Issue in Campaign
By DAVID E. SANGER

AVENPORT, Iowa, Oct. 25 - The White House sought on Monday to explain the disappearance of 380 tons of high explosives in Iraq that American forces were supposed to secure, as Senator John Kerry seized on the missing cache as "one of the great blunders of Iraq" and said President Bush's "incredible incompetence" had put American troops at risk.

Mr. Bush never mentioned the disappearance of the high explosives during a long campaign speech in Greeley, Colo., about battling terrorism. Instead, evoking images of the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and traveling with Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, at his side, Mr. Bush made an impassioned appeal to voters to let him "finish the work we have started." But he also charged that his opponent had abandoned the defense principles of Democrats like John F. Kennedy.
"Senator Kerry has turned his back on 'Pay any price and bear any burden,' " Mr. Bush said, "and he has replaced those commitments with 'wait and see' and 'cut and run.' "

Yet even as Mr. Bush pressed his case, his aides tried to explain why American forces had ignored warnings from the International Atomic Energy Agency about the vulnerability of the huge stockpile of high explosives, whose disappearance was first reported on Monday by CBS and The New York Times.

In several sessions with reporters, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, alternately insisted that Mr. Bush "wants to make sure that we get to the bottom of this" and tried to distance the president from knowledge of the issue, saying Mr. Bush was informed of the disappearance only within the last 10 days. White House officials said they could not explain why warnings from the international agency in May 2003 about the stockpile's vulnerability to looting never resulted in action. At one point, Mr. McClellan pointed out that "there were a number of priorities at the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom."

Asked about accusations from the Kerry campaign that the White House had kept the disappearance secret until The Times and CBS broke the story on Monday morning, Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said the White House had decided "to get all the facts and find out exactly what happened in this case, and then whether there are other cases."

Ms. Bartlett went on to say, "So doing it piecemeal - I don't think that would have been the responsible thing." He said that so far, no other large-scale cases of looting of explosives had been found.

Others in the Bush campaign characterized Mr. Kerry's attack as another instance of his willingness to say anything to be elected.

In New Hampshire on Monday, Mr. Kerry wasted no time seizing on the news to bolster his contention that Mr. Bush lacks the competence to act as commander in chief.

"Now we know that our country and our troops are less safe because this president failed to do the basics," Mr. Kerry said. "This is one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the great blunders of this administration. The incredible incompetence of this president and his administration has put our troops at risk and put our country at greater risk than we ought to be."

By the afternoon, Mr. Kerry's surrogates, including his adviser Joe Lockhart and Madeleine K. Albright, the former secretary of state, were deployed on the airwaves to repeat the case, describing in detail how many car bombs, larger explosions or nuclear triggers could be fabricated from the high explosives.

"It's an outrageous mistake, and one I'm afraid we will pay for for a long period of time," Dr. Albright said on CNN.

And in Toledo, Ohio, Mr. Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards, was hitting the same notes, telling a crowd: "It is reckless and irresponsible to fail to protect and safeguard one of the largest weapons sites in the country. And by either ignoring these mistakes or being clueless about them, George Bush has failed. He has failed as our commander in chief; he has failed as president."

The Republicans mounted a similarly vociferous counterattack, charging Mr. Kerry with seizing on the loss of 380 tons of high explosives and never mentioning what Mr. McClellan called "more than 243,000 tons of munitions" that had been destroyed since the invasion. "Coalition forces have cleared and reviewed a total of 10,033 caches of munitions; another 163,000 tons of munitions have been secured and are on line to be destroyed," he said.

Page 2 of 2)

On Monday afternoon, Ken Mehlman, the Bush campaign manager, wrote a letter to supporters saying that "every day brings a new charge against the president and every charge is pulled right from the headlines of The New York Times."

"John Kerry will say anything he believes will help him politically," Mr. Mehlman wrote, "and today he is grasping at headlines to obscure his record of weakness and indecision in the war on terror."

Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, also contended that The Times had chosen to run the article at the end of the campaign, though he argued that the explosives probably disappeared about 18 months ago. The Times article said it was based on a letter reporting the missing explosives dated two weeks ago, on Oct. 10, sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency by the Iraqi interim government. The Times and CBS confirmed the facts in the letter in an interview with the Iraqi minister of science and technology, Rashad M. Omar.

On Monday evening, Nicolle Devenish, the spokeswoman for the Bush campaign, noted a section of the Times report indicating that American troops, on the way to Baghdad in April 2003, stopped at the Al Qaqaa complex and saw no evidence of high explosives. Noting that the cache may have been looted before the American invasion, she said Mr. Kerry had exaggerated the administration's responsibility.

"John Kerry presumes to know something that he could not know: when the material disappeared," Ms. Devenish said. "Since he does not know whether it was gone before the war began, he can't prove it was there to be secured."

While the White House sought to minimize the importance of the loss of the HMX and RDX - two commonly used military explosives that can also be used to bring down airplanes or to create a trigger for nuclear weapons - the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, took the unusual step on Monday of writing to the United Nations Security Council to report that the explosives were gone. He usually sends a report every six months, and his last was just a few weeks ago.

"He doesn't do that to report trivia," a European diplomat familiar with Dr. ElBaradei's views said. "It's something that is considered grave."

Dr. ElBaradei said his agency, whose inspectors were barred from returning to Iraq by the Bush administration after the invasion, had informed the multinational force in Iraq of the disappearance 10 days ago, hoping for "an opportunity to attempt to recover the explosives before this matter was put into the public domain." However, he noted Monday's news coverage and said he had to inform the full Security Council.

The increasingly angry exchanges between the campaigns took place as Mr. Bush sped through three states critical to his re-election. Starting the morning at his ranch in Texas, he flew to Colorado, a state his aides said he had all but wonMr. Bush, Mr. Bartlett said, was unlikely to return to Colorado, whose nine electoral votes are considered safe. Mr. Bush won Colorado by about eight points in 2000.

Iowa, with seven electoral votes, is closer, Mr. Bartlett said, and Mr. Bush spoke on Monday in both Council Bluffs and Davenport. With Mr. Giuliani still at his side, Mr. Bush again returned to the terrorism theme, telling several thousand cheering supporters, "On good days and on bad days, whether the polls are up or the polls are down, I am determined to win the war on terror, and I will always support the men and women in uniform."

At every stop, Mr. Bush has added a new line of attack on Mr. Kerry, saying he was twisting the facts when he asserted, in the presidential debates, that Mr. Bush let Osama bin Laden escape in the mountains of Tora Bora by "subcontracting" the pursuit to unreliable tribal allies.

"This is unjustified criticism of our commanders in the field," Mr. Bush said, citing Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of the coalition forces at the time, who contends that intelligence at the time suggested Mr. bin Laden might have been in any of several countries at the time.

"This is the worst kind of Monday morning quarterbacking," Mr. Bush said of Mr. Kerry's criticism. "And it's what we've come to expect from my opponent."

Kerry 1 

New Picture 

Peachy Politics
Zell Miller, Why I Skipped The Boston Convention

Senate rivals aim at Oxford

Jobs plan, record decried in debate

By JIM THARPE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/12/04


The good news for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Cliff Oxford is that political opponents don't go on the attack unless they think you can win.

The bad news, at least Sunday, is that the thought occurred to four of Oxford's six challengers who shared the stage with him for an hourlong WSB-TV debate.


Just nine days before the July 20 party primaries, the three Republican candidates also debated on television Sunday.

Congressmen Johnny Isakson, considered the front-runner, and Mac Collins touted their governmental experience, while businessman Herman Cain, who has never held public office, called for "a new voice" to confront the nation's problems.

In the Democratic debate held before the GOP event, Oxford faced a searing attack by Democratic challengers Leigh Baier and Sid Cottingham.

"A lot of this is a bunch of scorched-earth politics," Oxford said. "I think I'm sitting here with Republicans. Republicans told me they were going to do this, but I'm surprised some of my Democrats are doing this."

Oxford, a Waycross native who made millions when he sold the computer services company STI Knowledge Inc., is the only Democratic candidate with the money to run a comprehensive television ad campaign touting his plan to create and preserve jobs in Georgia.

On Sunday, he tried to stick to that theme in the debate with his Democratic opponents for the party nomination to succeed Democratic Sen. Zell Miller.

"This is exactly how we can beat the Republican Party in November," Oxford said about his jobs-creation program. As head of STI, he said, he kept 150 jobs in rural Georgia that he could have "outsourced" to cheaper, foreign labor.

"It's not right," he said about outsourcing. "It's not patriotic. And we don't have to do it."

State Sen. Mary Squires (D-Norcross), who has been running a meagerly funded campaign, accused Oxford of "plagiarism" for taking some of the ideas in his jobs program from "think tanks" and Democratic presidential candidates.

And U.S. Rep. Denise Majette of DeKalb County blasted him for not voting in five elections since 1996.

The most pointed attack was a tag-team assault from Baier and Cottingham, a Douglas lawyer who often compares his candidacy to that of former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn.

Baier noted allegations of "serial spousal abuse" in one of Oxford's two divorces. Oxford has denied the charges, and the ex-wife who leveled the charges said she supports Oxford's Senate bid.

"I'd like to know if that would disqualify him from getting your support should he be the nomination of the Democratic Party?" Baier asked Cottingham during a segment of the debate.

Cottingham praised past Democratic senators and then returned to Baier's question.

"You ask me if I would support Cliff Oxford? The answer is no," Cottingham said.

He noted that one political commentator called Oxford a "flake." Cottingham said, "I think he's a fraud."

Oxford shot back that Baier and Cottingham were "taking a cheap shot." He then took aim at Cottingham's voting record.

"Mr. Cottingham, I don't think you would vote for me, since you voted for Mr. Bush in the last election," Oxford said. "Obviously, you didn't judge character then, and I don't expect you to judge it now."

The attacks show that Oxford's fellow Democrats are taking his candidacy seriously after the airing of wall-to-wall television ads that feature the 41-year-old talking about jobs and referring to his small-town roots.

The Democratic candidates all called for an exit strategy from Iraq, but Albany lawyer James Finkelstein said he is the only candidate with a plan to get the troops out in six months.

Finkelstein, whose U.S. Marine son served in Iraq, accused Majette of taking half a million dollars in campaign contributions from "special interest groups" including defense contractors. And he got in two plugs for Michael Moore's Bush-bashing movie "Fahrenheit 9/11."

The seven Democrats participating in the debate, including Govind Patel of Lilburn, were unanimous in opposing any constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Such a referendum will be on the general election ballot Nov. 2. The eighth candidate in the race, Jim Boyd, did not attend Sunday's event.

Republicans, who debated after the Democrats, agreed that President Bush's tax cuts should be made permanent and concurred that the United States must stay the course in Iraq.

However, Cain, the former Godfather's Pizza CEO, split with Collins and Isakson over extending the federal Voting Rights Act, which comes up for review in three years.

Cain, the only African-American in the July 20 GOP primary, said the provisions, which apply only to 16 Southern states, should be extended. However, Isakson and Collins said they would support an extension only if the Voting Rights Act is extended to all 50 states.

None of the Republicans favored returning to a military draft. Isakson said a draft could be counterproductive, given the high-tech demands of the modern armed forces.

"We are in a different world today," he said. "A voluntary military is critical."

Meet Tom Rawlings - Georgia Court of Appeals

Johnny Grant: I know Tom and his family, and support his candidacy for Court of Appeals.

Rawlings - Good Decisions For Georgia's Future.

Kay Rawlings: Election time is here! Remember that you can begin "early voting" at your local voter registrar's office beginning tomorrow, July 12.

Please encourage your friends and family to vote between now and the regular primary date, July 20. And please help us by contacting your friends and family Statewide and ask them to vote for Thomas C Rawlings in the nonpartisan Court of Appeals race.

Tom is the ONLY candidate in this race who:

....Already has experience as a full-time Judge....

He serves full-time in juvenile court and has done work in other courts across the state, including presiding over jury trials and hearings in Superior Court.

Prior judicial experience is essential to an appellate court judgeship... it's not an entry-level position!

....Has actual work experience at the Court of Appeals....

Tom served as an attorney-advisor to the Judges of the Court of Appeals and helped decide over 200 appellate cases. His experience gives him a working knowledge of the Court, its policies, and its people.

He already knows how to do the job and do it well!

....Has extensive business experience....

Tom helped run a manufacturing company in Columbus and understands the needs and concerns of the business community.

He has received support from many business and medical associations who respect him not only for his legal ability but also for his understanding of the way the Court of Appeals can impact this state's business climate.

Additionally, Tom is from Rural Georgia and will bring a voice for rural Georgia values to the Court.

Thomas C Rawlings - Good Decisions For Georgia's Future.

For Tom Rawlings Website: Rawlings-Court Of Appeals (Click Here)

Read more on this subject in Related Hot Topics:

Download a campaign brochure (Click Here)

Tom Rawlings - Juvenile Court Work

Tom Rawlings - Law Giving Us Limits And Direction

Meet Tom Rawlings - Background

For Pictures Of Tom Rawlings Great Family (Click Here)

Jul 07 2004

"Three GOP candidates duke it out for party nomination, edge in U.S. Senate"- Brandon Larrabee

Stories by Brandon Larrabee
Savannah Morning News
Morris News Service

While U.S. Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., begins packing up his Washington office, three Republicans are scrambling for their party's nomination - and the seat.

To be sure, Miller's open seat has attracted a field of candidates, including eight Democratic contenders and three Republicans in the July 20 primary.

Half of the candidates have no elected experience or widespread name recognition.

Among the crowded field: three Republicans have mounted campaigns with enough appeal that an Aug. 10 runoff could be possible. A similar fate is expected in the Democratic primary.

To avoid that, a candidate must win more than half the party's vote. Otherwise, the top two vote recipients face a second match-up to determine the party's final nominee.

The Republican field includes: U.S. Reps. Johnny Isakson and Mac Collins and pizza magnate Herman Cain.

Most political observers believe the Republicans will have an edge in the Nov. 2 general election, especially given Georgia's GOP-friendly voting record in recent years.

Cain looks to 'rock the boat'

DECATUR, Ga. - Herman Cain is having fun.

The former head of Godfather's Pizza, who had drawn national attention as a black Republican running for a Southern U.S. Senate seat, seems amused and amazed as he sits at a restaurant and discusses his sudden popularity.

Even as he pauses to grab a bowl of soup at Atlanta Bread Co. - an effort to make up for a meal he missed while speaking at a Kiwanis meeting - people show their support.

"Go get 'em, baby!" remarks one supporter.

For Cain, seeking elected office for the first time, the experience is new and uplifting. "You have to see it to believe it!" he proclaims.

Shaking things up.

Cain faces U.S. Reps. Johnny Isakson and Mac Collins for the GOP nomination to fill the seat of retiring Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga. The reason he's running is simple: to shake up the status quo.

"Either one of my opponents would show up, vote, but they won't rock the boat," Cain tells supporters. "I will show up, vote, rock the boat and then drive the boat."

Cain has certainly made a splash, running TV advertisements early and setting off a war of words between his camp and Isakson's about negative TV and radio spots. He has battled with Collins over which is the true conservative to the allegedly moderate Isakson.

But what has gotten most of the attention is not so much Cain's stance on the issues or even his sometimes unconventional campaigning. It's the fact that he's a black man running in a party that often draws a tiny share of the black vote.

Cain tries to defuse the issue, such as when he's asked about differences between himself and his opponents. He responds with: "The color of our eyes."

Cain said he doesn't alter his message when he's speaking to black voters. But he does add something: statistics showing how the problems he describes, like a Social Security system that needs to be restructured, are worse for blacks than for whites.

"When you look at the life expectancy of a black male, it is 68," he tells a biracial audience at the Rex World Outreach Center. "Well, I was informed by Social Security a few years ago that I could apply for benefits at 66...I mean, if God is good to me, I get to draw benefits for two years."

His party has erred by not giving black voters a "compelling reason" to vote Republican, he says. Instead, the party seems to want to get minorities to vote for Republicans simply because they are the party's nominee.

"What does that mean?" Cain said. "...Talk about the issues so they can connect with the issues."
The boldness in his message appeals to both black and white voters, Cain added.

"People rally around real solutions, real passion and real optimism, not the fake stuff. 'When I become your United States senator, I will fight for the mortgage interest deduction.' Whooptee-doo!" Cain said, laughing. "People don't get excited about mediocrity."

If Sandra Vincent, a Democrat running for the chair of the Henry County Commission, is any indication, Cain's strategy might be making progress. Vincent said she's known Cain for a while and plans to support him.

"I think that he is a candidate for all people, and that is what we need," she said.

Solutions in business.

Cain touts his business credentials as an example of how he can get things done in Washington. He points to the Pillsbury World Headquarters project, an effort to build a new base of operations for the food giant.

"When I took over the project, it was behind schedule and over budget," he said.

By the time Cain was done, the project was finished "ahead of schedule and under budget."

Business experiences have also informed his politics.

Cain is the only Republicans running for Miller's seat who supports postponing the Base Realignment and Closure process, which could close up to a quarter of the nation's domestic military installations.

The candidate brushes off Collins' and Isakson's contention that BRAC should go forward because other states might use the extra time to catch up on preparations.
"They have tried to position it as, our bases are ready for BRAC," he said. "They're gonna survive. They probably will. That's not the point. The point is focus."

But Collins, a businessman himself, says that Cain's rhetoric masks a flaw in his logic.

"There's a difference in operating a business and serving in a legislative body," the six-term congressman said.

Cain dismisses the notion that his lack of time in Congress puts him at a disadvantage.

"They like to call that experience," Cain says. "Well, just because you've been somewhere 12 years or six years does not necessarily mean you've got 12 or six years of experience. For some people, it's one year experience six times."

Collins looks to win, one vote at a time.

DALLAS, Ga. - If it weren't for the business shirt and tie, Mac Collins would look just like one of the guys at Martin's Restaurant.

Collins, a U.S. congressman from Butts County and candidate for the GOP nomination to replace U.S. Sen. Zell Miller, is seated at a table with 10 mostly retired men who gather regularly to talk over coffee and breakfast. Collins discusses everything from national and local politics to shopping at Sears.

It's an approach that has worked for the six-term representative before. And it's one he hopes will work when it comes to the July 20 Republican primary.

"If you get out like this, you get a feel for folks," Collins said, not that he necessarily has a problem with giving speeches. "But I like to also spend days just stopping in places and talking to folks."

Staking the campaign on his experience and conservative voting record, Collins appears determined to win the election - one vote at a time, if necessary. And there are signs, at least in Dallas, that such perseverance can help.
Stanley Ingram, seated at another table at Martin's, hadn't had a politician personally ask him for a vote in 20 years.

"I'll vote for (Collins) just for that," Ingram said.

Not high on scheduling.

Collins spends about four hours in and around Dallas. Then, after a stop in his Marietta office to hone a statement on Saddam Hussein's court appearance, Collins heads to a press conference he decided to call just hours before.

After that comes lunch and another stop at the office. Collins has a one-on-one meeting before speaking to a Veterans of Foreign Wars gathering. At 6:45 p.m., Collins decides to try to make a 7 p.m. forum (he was supposed to register at 6:15).

He arrives as one of the hosts is giving an introductory talk about the upcoming primary. Collins walks around the audience then takes a seat between his rivals, U.S. Rep. Johnny Isakson and pizza magnate Herman Cain.

Collins, who started his own trucking company at the age of 18 and later served in the Georgia National Guard, isn't much for being scheduled.

His political career hasn't been easily charted either.

The son of a Flovilla city councilwoman and a father who talked about running for the Butts County Commission but never did, Collins hankered to run for office at a young age. It began when he ran for the position his father always discussed in their home county, 45 miles south of Atlanta.

"I ran in two special elections and lost each of them," Collins remembered.

He later won a term as chairman of the Butts County Commission in 1976. Eventually, Collins turned his attention to the state Senate. Again, the third time was the charm, and he began serving his two terms under the Gold Dome in 1988.

"My home county told me if I'd have run as a Democrat, I'd have won the first time," said Collins, who lost the initial race by two votes. "And they were right."

In 1992, Collins opted to run for Congress, a decision he announced before redistricting was complete. Democrats abruptly drew Butts County out of the district Collins had been eyeing. It created a matchup between Collins and a 10-year incumbent.

Collins won anyway.

Feeling underestimated once again, Collins dismisses speculation he's looking for a second-place showing in the primary and a chance to take Isakson on in a face-to-face runoff Aug. 10.

"The goal for me is to win on July 20," he said.

Not a moderate or a new face

At a forum sponsored by the Cobb County Republican Women's Club, Collins clearly lays out why he should be chosen over his opponents: With the country continuing its war on terror and slowly economic recovery, "it's no time to send a moderate and it's no time to send someone with no experience to the United States Senate."

As for the issues, Collins says he's focused on "national security and personal security."

He points to his seat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence and his travels abroad - he hopes to return to Iraq for a third time after the primary to meet the new interim government - as signs of his experience on national security.

And he speaks passionately about the need to help Americans cope with a worldwide economy changed by the advent of free trade.

"We're slow to change when it comes to dealing with (the) free-trade market," Collins said. The three barriers holding back U.S. businesses are high tax rates, too much regulation and excessive lawsuits, he said.

While Isakson and Cain have drawn attention for arguments over radio and television ads, Collins said it's too soon for voters to start focusing on the race. He plans to begin running his TV ads closer to the primary.

But Collins is also relying on his one-on-one campaigning.

"It's picking up momentum every day," he said. "We're looking to reach our peak July 20."

Ahead of the pack, Isakson looks to avoid runoff.

ALPHARETTA, Ga. - As Rep. Johnny Isakson leaves a Sweet Tomatoes restaurant one Saturday morning, a female supporter calls out a hope that Isakson himself had voiced just a few minutes earlier.

"Without a runoff," she says.

Isakson, the front-runner for the GOP nomination to succeed retiring Sen. Zell Miller, would certainly like to avoid a runoff by taking more than 50 percent of the votes on July 20.

"It saves money; it saves time; it saves effort," he told supporters who gathered at the restaurant after a breakfast held by North Fulton County Republicans.

But to skip a second round of voting Aug. 10, Isakson has to dispose of two opponents who are committed to forcing a showdown with the three-term Cobb County congressman.

Fellow Rep. Mac Collins is an experienced legislator with ties to conservative groups. Herman Cain, a charismatic pizza magnate, has excited crowds with his oratory while drawing media attention as a high-profile black GOP candidate.

The irony is that Isakson, who likes to boast that he and the late Sen. Paul Coverdell helped build the Georgia GOP in the 1980s, now faces some of the loudest questions from those who form the core of the party. They question his fidelity to conservative values on issues ranging from gun control to abortion, criticism that Isakson says is off-base.

Sounding the right notes

On this particular Saturday, Isakson heads from the Alpharetta breakfast to a barbecue in Lumpkin County before flying to Augusta for a debate.

At each event, he sounds the right Republican notes: a shot at Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.; criticism of a judiciary willing to overstep its constitutional bounds; supporting the policies of President Bush.

Isakson points out that he was a Georgia Republican when Democrats had a stranglehold on state government.

Isakson won a seat in the General Assembly in 1976 and became House minority leader seven years later. During his time in that post, the number of House Republicans swelled by 85 percent. Coverdell, then a state senator, held the same position in the upper chamber.

Isakson made two unsuccessful shots at statewide office - a 1990 gubernatorial bid and an unsuccessful run for the GOP's nomination for Senate in 1996. Miller, governor at the time, tapped Isakson to head the state school board later that year.

In 1998, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., resigned after the GOP lost five seats in that year's midterm election. Isakson ran in the 1999 special election and beat several other candidates without a runoff.

Trying to do it again

Which is, of course, exactly what Isakson would like to do this time around.

"I've been in runoffs before. ... I think our chances are great either way," he says.

Isakson has run on a three-pronged campaign: "stay the course on the war in Iraq and the war on terror;" support tax reform; and back Bush's nominees for the federal bench.

And in a state where the military is a major economic engine, Isakson supports pushing ahead with the Base Realignment and Closure process, or BRAC. He opposes a recent effort to delay the process by two years, a stance shared by some involved in protecting the state's bases.

"Wherever you go, they all say, 'We're ready.' It's better for Georgia to go now than to give two years for some of these other states that maybe didn't get their act together," he said.

He also rebuffs suggestions that he's not conservative enough. Several groups have taken aim at Isakson's position on abortion. In addition to supporting legalized abortion for women in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother, Isakson has voted for legislation that would allow military hospitals overseas to perform abortions though the government won't pay for them. He says it's an issue of fairness: service members and their dependents should have the same rights other Americans have, whether he agrees or not.

Lately, Isakson's opponents have joined in the debate. Cain recently ran a blistering TV ad saying Isakson had voted for "pro-abortion" legislation 14 times, taken campaign donations from trial lawyers and wasn't committed to doing away with the current tax code.

Isakson's points to his relatively good ratings from anti-abortion groups and that he was chosen to preside over the debate on legislation banning a form of late-term abortion that opponents call "partial-birth abortion."

"I just tell everybody look at the record," Isakson said. "I'm running for something, not against anybody"

The attacks on Isakson don't seem to have phased supporters.

Mike Young, a Lumpkin County Commission candidate and one of Isakson's supporters at the barbecue, said Isakson has "the same values as I have."

"I'm just a good conservative, and I believe Johnny is," he said.

Old Yeller - Al Gore

Leno: I saw Old Yeller on TV yesterday – Al Gore.

(Videotape, May 26, 2004),
(In His shrill put on Southern tone )
Al GORE:

(Loud) We simply cannot afford to further increase the risk to our country with more blunders by this team.

(louder) Donald Rumsfeld ought to resign immediately as the chief architect of this plan.

(Loudest) Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, the intelligence chief Stephen Cambone all ought to resign immediately. Our nation is at risk every single day Rumsfeld remains as secretary of defense.

(Scream) Condoleezza Rice ought to resign immediately. She has badly mishandled the coordination of national security policy.

(Dean Scream) This is a disaster for our country, and they are responsible along with the president and vice president.

(Weird Gore Scream) President Bush's utter incompetence has made the world a far more dangerous place.

Joseph Farah: Wow! Thank God for the electoral college. Had the Constitution called for direct election of the president of the United States, a clearly mentally unstable man would be sitting in the Oval Office right now.

MR. RUSSERT: What did you think of Al Gore's tone?

REP. PELOSI: We all have our own style in all of these things, and I think that he has reached the level that many of us have... and there has to be a change.

So I share the frustration that he has. But I would say once you're calling for the resignation of all those people, it's about the president of the United States.

And I want to say one thing about the president, which also provoked me to say what I said. (Bush held her down and forced her to say these Things-)

Pelosi on May 20: "Bush is an incompetent leader. In fact, he's not a leader. ...He's a person who has no judgment, no experience and no knowledge of the subjects that he has to decide upon. ...He has on his shoulders the deaths of many more troops..."

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Gore mentally unstable

“Weird Al” Gore

Democrats unleash Gore on Bush

Worst President or Are the Goreocrats Just Nuts?

Pelosi: I Showed 'Great Courage' Bashing Bush

The text of Al Gore's speech

MEET THE PRESS - Transcript Sunday, May 30, 2004

Anger Is The Only Thing Democrats Have Been Offering

For Democrats, it's good vs. evil

Jennifer Harper (WT): The Democrats are talking trash these days, lobbing the left wing's frantic and often melodramatic insults at the Bush administration.

Christine Iverson (RNC): There is no longer a distinction between the rhetoric used by people on the left fringe of the Democratic Party and the rhetoric used by the leaders of the Democratic Party.

"This is the same vitriolic stream of political hate speech we've seen since the Democrat primary began. Anger is not an agenda, but anger is the only thing Democrats have been offering the American people. And it's going to backfire."

But the Democrats are forging ahead.

Sen. Tim Johnson: How sweet it's going to be on June 2 when the Taliban wing of the Republican Party finds out what's happening in South Dakota.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy: Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management — U.S. management.

Such talk is "anti-American slander," according to Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby yesterday..."ignored by the mainstream press and Democratic establishment."

Ralph Nader also got in on the act, calling President Bush a "messianic militarist" and "an out-of-control West Texas sheriff." Mr. Nader also suggested the president be impeached for purportedly lying about the Iraq war.

There could be a price for all this rudeness.

"Voters know the Democrats are angry," said the RNC's Miss Iverson. "But they don't know what they're for — and that's going to turn off moderate and undecided voters in a general election."

Meanwhile, sundry journalists trotted out Nazi themes and overblown comparisons.

ESPN, Hunter S. Thompson wrote that the prisoner-abuse images were worse than "the foulest atrocities of Adolf Hitler."

The public, indeed, has its limits.

When novelist E.L. Doctorow criticized Mr. Bush in the name of "responsible citizenship" during a college commencement address Sunday, he was booed by the audience.

Still, trash talk flourishes.

Ted Kennedy's anti-American slander

Webb: 'Should George Bush Get The Death Penalty? I Say Yes'

Democrats unleash Gore on Bush

SELF-DEFEATING HATE

Media should stop bashing America

2004 Democratic National Convention -- Official Program

(Sent to Us By Ed and Norma Bzdyk)

6:00pm - Opening flag burning ceremony.

6:15pm - Condemnation of prayer -Separation of State from Religion Speech.

6:30pm - Anti-war rally no. 1.

6:40pm - Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.

7:00pm - Tribute theme to France.

7:10pm - Collect offerings for al-Zawahri defense fund.

7:25pm - Tribute theme to Spain.

7:45pm - Anti-war rally no. 2. (Moderated by Michael Moore)

8:25pm - Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.

8:29pm - Somebody calls AA and they come and drag Senator to the meeting.

8:30pm - Terrorist appeasement workshop.

9:00pm - Gay marriage ceremony.

9:30pm - * Intermission *

Caucasuses on anti-business, pro-socialism, growing the government, protecting the cock roaches, ban the SUVs, ban all form or recreation, etc.

10:00pm - Flag burning ceremony no. 2.

10:15pm - Re-enactment of Kerry's fake medal toss.

10:30pm - Cameo by Dean 'Yeeearrrrrrrg!'

10:50pm - Pledge of allegiance to the UN.

11:00pm - Double gay marriage cermony.

11:15PM - Maximizing Welfare workshop.

11:30pm - 'Free Saddam' pep rally.

11:59PM - Ted Kennedy returns and proposes another toast.

12:00pm - Nominations from floor for candidate. Ted Kennedy nominates Bush. AA is called again.

12:15am - Condemnation of prayer speech.

Thanks to Ed and Norma Bzdyk Of Milledgeville Ga

Congressman Mac Collins Cherishes Last Look

Mac Collins: On Wednesday evening, I attended the Lying in State Ceremony for President Reagan in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol. Congress reserves this special honor for only a select few...It was a fitting tribute to our President and his family.

On Friday, my wife Julie and I attended the memorial service for President Reagan at the National Cathedral. We were honored to attend this service and give our respects to Mrs. Reagan and the other members of the Reagan family.

President Reagan embodied some of America's greatest qualities: integrity, civility and hope. His leadership paved the way for a better America and a safer world.

President Reagan believed in less government, lower taxes and a strong defense. For those who thought the government was the solution for America's problems, his reply was, "government is not the solution. Government is the problem."

Ronald Reagan was a president who, in a time of politicians, proved himself a statesman. He was a leader who, when others demanded compromise, preached conviction; a gentleman who, in time of average men, stood taller than anyone else.

He ranks as one of the finest men ever to hold the office. He was successful as a broadcaster, actor, union leader, Governor and President. But, above all else, he was a successful American whose legacy lives on across this land. May God bless this great man, his family and this land that he so dearly loved.

Atlanta Journal Constitution
RONALD REAGAN: 1911-2004: SOUND BITES BACK HOME

Congressman cherishes last look

When U.S. Rep. Mac Collins received one of just 2,100 invitations to the most exclusive event of the commemorative week, he had a question: Could his wife, Julie, accompany him to Ronald Reagan's funeral Friday at the National Cathedral?

Word came that spouses were welcome, and she flew up Thursday to join him.

In a ceremony whose every detail was dictated by Reagan and his family, from the speakers to the songs, Collins said he'll most remember the moment the casket was rolled down the cathedral aisle one last time.

"That would be the last time you would view him," he said. "That was the most passionate time of the service."

--- Staff writers Gayle White, Andrea Jones and Matthew C. Quinn in Atlanta and Bob Kemper in Washington

Read more on this subject in Related Hot Topics:

Collins Praises President Reagan’s Legacy of Freedom and Conservative Principles

Congressman Mac Collins Mourns Death of Former President Reagan

Congressman Mac Collins - "Taxpayer Hero"

May 13, 2004

U.S. Senator Zell Miller, D-GA
Floor Statement on the Situation at Abu Ghraib prison
Remarks as Delivered on the Senate Floor

Mr. President, here we go again, here we go again.

Rushing to give aid and comfort to the enemy.

Pushing and pulling and shoving and leaping over one another to assign blame and point the finger at America the Terrible.

Lining up in long lines at the microphones to offer apologies to those poor, pitiful Iraqi prisoners.

Of course, I do not condone all the things that went on in that prison, but I for one, Mr. President, refuse to join in this national Act of Contrition over it.

Those who are wringing their hands and shouting so loudly for “heads to roll” over this seem to have conveniently overlooked the fact that someone’s head HAS rolled - that of another innocent American brutally murdered by terrorists.

Why is it? Why is it that there’s more indignation over a photo of a prisoner with underwear on his head than over the video of a young American with no head at all?

Why is it that some in this country still don’t get that we are at war? A war against terrorists who are plotting to kill us every day. Terrorists who will murder Americans at any time any place any chance they get.

And yet here we are, America on its knees, in front of our enemy, begging for their forgiveness over the mistreatment of prisoners.

Showing the enemy and the world once again how easily America can get sidetracked and how easily America can turn against it self.

Yes, some of our soldiers went too far with their interrogation tactics and clearly were not properly trained to handle such duty.

But the way to deal with this is with swift and sure punishment, and immediate and better training.

There also needs to be more careful screening of who it is we put in these kinds of sensitive situations.

And no one wants to hear this, Mr. President and I’m reluctant to say it. But there should also be some serious questioning of having male and female soldiers serving side by side in these kinds of military missions.

But instead, I worry that the HWA - the Hand-Wringers of America - will add to their membership and continue to bash our country ad nauseam. And in doing so, hand over more innocent Americans to the enemy on a silver platter.

So I stand with Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma, who stated that he’s “more outraged by the outrage” than by the treatment of those prisoners.

More outraged by the outrage. It’s a good way of putting it. That’s exactly how this Senator from Georgia feels.

Thank you Mr. President. I yield the floor.