Aint even gonna touch references to my
dic...otherwise, ok, I give, kind of...what about dropping the words "in
on"? There's a case for Cheney having honed his
present message to mask the real message his ilk have homed in on during
the present and past administrations. Rufus
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Weaver" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 3:18
PM
Subject: Re: [Biofuel] The Blame
Game
> 2. It wasn't "honed" as in "he honed his argument", it was "honed in".
> He meant "homed in on."
>
> -Miss Grundy
>
> M&K DuPree wrote:
>
>> Well...whether he homed or honed it, according to this article Cheney
>> has been focusing on a message that betrays the historical work of his
>> party, or at least certain members of his party. Thanks Keith.
>> Now, according to my _Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary,
>> Eleventh Edition_:
>> "honed": to make more acute, intense, or effective; and
>> "homed": to proceed or direct attention toward an objective.
>> Given the context in which the word in the article is used, I
>> vote for "honed." However, from the article it appears the present
>> administration has honed its' public policy abilities and homed in
>> hard on my country's pocketbook for spending on stuff that benefits a
>> few at the expense of many...as usual.
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Mike Weaver" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>>
>> To: <biofuel@sustainablelists.org <mailto:biofuel@sustainablelists.org>>
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 11:44 AM
>> Subject: Re: [Biofuel] The Blame Game
>>
>> > "has honed in on"
>> >
>> > HOMED!!!
>> >
>> >
>> > Can't anyone write anymore???
>> >
>> > -Miss Grundy
>> >
>> > Keith Addison wrote:
>> >
>> >>http://rightweb.irc-online.org/rw/3588
>> >>Right Web | Analysis |
>> >>
>> >>The Blame Game
>> >>
>> >>Tom Barry, IRC | October 11, 2006
>> >>
>> >>IRC Right Web
>> >>rightweb.irc-online.org
>> >>
>> >>Stumping for Republican candidates across the country in recent
>> >>weeks, Vice President Dick Cheney has honed in on a particular
>> >>message: Terrorists are "still lethal, still desperately trying to
>> >>hit us again," and Democrats are no good at security (Washington
>> >>Post, October 8, 2006). The administration and the Republican Party
>> >>are again hawking the security issue prior to elections. Not only are
>> >>they saying that they are the only ones who can be trusted to protect
>> >>the nation's security, but they are also trying to burnish their own
>> >>security credentials by tarnishing those of the Clinton
>> >>administration.
>> >>
>> >>As part of this campaign, conservative pundits have attacked the
>> >>record of former President Bill Clinton, arguing that he missed
>> >>chances to destroy terrorist networks. During a highly publicized
>> >>September 24 interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace, Clinton accused
>> >>Wallace and Fox of undertaking a "conservative hit job" on his
>> >>administration's national security record and of neglecting to
>> >>adequately question President George W. Bush's antiterrorism efforts.
>> >>
>> >>Just as the former president thought it necessary to establish the
>> >>political context for the debate over who bears responsibility for
>> >>not preventing 9/11, it is also helpful to put the current
>> >>fear-mongering campaign into recent historical context-especially
>> >>since none of the pre-9/11 efforts had anything to do with terrorism.
>> >>
>> >>Early in his first term, Clinton faced a concerted attack on his
>> >>administration for being supposedly weak on defense when several
>> >>hawkish congressional figures and outside pressure groups tried to
>> >>revive Reagan-era missile defense programs. In May 1993, Clinton's
>> >>Secretary of Defense Les Aspin produced the administration's first
>> >>Quadrennial Defense Review, a periodic Pentagon study assessing the
>> >>country's national defense posture. Hailed by the administration as a
>> >>"bottom-up review" of defense needs and priorities, the assessment
>> >>concluded that plans for a full-blown missile defense system were
>> >>neither technically feasible, nor financially possible. Aspin ordered
>> >>the closure of the Pentagon's Strategic Defense Initiative Office,
>> >>downgrading the plans by assigning them to a new Ballistic Missile
>> >>Defense Organization.
>> >>
>> >>This outraged several hardline defense outfits like the Center for
>> >>Security Policy (CSP) and High Frontier, as well as the defense lobby
>> >>led by Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and TRW. With their
>> >>Republican allies a minority in Congress, the missile defense lobby
>> >>mobilized a coordinated grassroots congressional and media campaign
>> >>to boost support for a combination of national and regional missile
>> >>defense systems. Joining CSP in orchestrating the campaign were a
>> >>number of other rightist policy outfits, including the American
>> >>Conservative Union, the S.A.F.E. Foundation, the Coalition to Protect
>> >>Americans Now, and Americans for Missile Defense, which together
>> >>represented a formidable coalition of social conservatives,
>> >>neoconservatives, unionists, and hardline Republican nationalists.
>> >>
>> >>The Coalition to Protect Americans Now revived Reagan's
>> >>window-of-vulnerability claim in its demand to abolish arms control
>> >>treaties and construct a defense system to "protect our families from
>> >>ballistic missile attack." It sponsored a website featuring a map of
>> >>the United States where, by selecting a town's location, a reader
>> >>could receive often misleading information about which countries had
>> >>or soon supposedly would have the capability to strike it with an
>> >>intercontinental missile.
>> >>
>> >>Further enflaming the hardliners was a 1995 CIA National Intelligence
>> >>Estimate (NIE) that asserted that apart from Russia or China, no
>> >>rogue state could possibly pose a long-range missile threat to the
>> >>United States before 2010. In response, congressional hawks, who
>> >>after the 1996 elections controlled both houses of Congress, promoted
>> >>a Team B-type evaluation of the NIE, resulting in the creation of a
>> >>blue-ribbon panel known as the Gates Commission (after its chairman,
>> >>former CIA Director Robert Gates). In its 1996 report, the commission
>> >>concluded that the technical obstacles facing rogue states in
>> >>developing intercontinental missile capability were even greater than
>> >>those described by the CIA.
>> >>
>> >>Unsatisfied with this outcome, the "peace-through-strength" lobby
>> >>pushed their congressional allies to establish various "independent"
>> >>commissions. Congressional figures affiliated with CSP successfully
>> >>lobbied for the creation of two commissions, both to be headed by
>> >>Donald Rumsfeld, to examine the ballistic missile threat and
>> >>space-based defense capabilities. The unstated agenda of these
>> >>commissions was to increase pressure on the Clinton administration to
>> >>support new weapons programs and substantially increase major
>> >>military spending. Both of the so-called "Rumsfeld Commissions,"
>> >>which undertook their work in the second half of the 1990s, assumed
>> >>that the country faced near-term threats from a "strategic
>> >>competitor" such as China, or a "rogue" like North Korea.
>> >>
>> >>Both commissions received funding from defense spending bills, using
>> >>taxpayer revenues to subsidize them. Although billed as independent
>> >>and nonpartisan, the two commissions-guided by Rumsfeld and his top
>> >>deputy Stephen Cambone-served to reinforce the positions of
>> >>administration critics and military boosters.
>> >>
>> >>The Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United
>> >>States issued its report on July 15, 1998. The report contended that
>> >>"rogue states" such as Iraq, North Korea, or Iran could deploy
>> >>ballistic missiles within "five years of a decision to do so,"
>> >>contrary to the CIA's estimate that it would take at least 10-15
>> >>years.
>> >>
>> >>Although initially challenged by the director of central
>> >>intelligence, a little more than a year later, in September 1999 the
>> >>CIA released a new NIE that was substantially more alarmist than its
>> >>previous one. It predicted that North Korea could test a ballistic
>> >>missile capable of hitting the United States "at any time" and that
>> >>Iran could test such a weapon "in the next few years." Commenting on
>> >>the new threat assessment, Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), a main sponsor of
>> >>the Rumsfeld Commission, congratulated himself: "It was the largest
>> >>turnaround ever in the history of the [intelligence] agency." House
>> >>Majority Leader Newt Gingrich (R-GA) was similarly ecstatic, saying
>> >>the commission's conclusion was the "most important warning about our
>> >>national security system since the end of the Cold War."
>> >>
>> >>Although CIA officials argued that the new estimate was the result of
>> >>"improved trade-craft," many experts attributed the revision to
>> >>pressure from hardline Republicans, the considerable influence of
>> >>Rumsfeld, and a campaign by Israel to focus attention on what the
>> >>Likud government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saw as a rising
>> >>missile threat from Iran. A few years later, Joseph Cirincione,
>> >>then-director of the nonproliferation program at the Carnegie
>> >>Endowment for International Peace, argued that the CIA's 1995 NIE
>> >>"holds up pretty well in hindsight." He accused Weldon and other
>> >>Republican hawks of developing "a conscious political strategy" to
>> >>attack the CIA's estimate because "it stood in the way of a
>> >>passionate belief in missile defense."
>> >>
>> >>The second Rumsfeld Commission, the Commission to Assess United
>> >>States National Security Space Management and Organization, was not
>> >>so much a critique of the government's NIEs as an all-out exhortation
>> >>to militarize space. The commission found in its January 2001 report
>> >>that it is "possible to project power through and from space in
>> >>response to events anywhere in the world Š Having this capability
>> >>would give the United States a much stronger deterrent and, in a
>> >>conflict, an extraordinary military advantage."
>> >>
>> >>Paralleling a similar assessment prepared by the Project for the New
>> >>American Century (PNAC) in its Rebuilding America's Defenses report
>> >>(2000), the Rumsfeld space commission argued that because the United
>> >>States is without peer among "space-faring" nations, the country is
>> >>all the more vulnerable to "state and non-state actors hostile to the
>> >>United States and its interests." In other words, U.S. enemies would
>> >>seek to destroy the U.S. economy together with its ability to fight
>> >>high-tech wars by attacking global positioning satellites and other
>> >>"space assets."
>> >>
>> >>Another commission, chaired by the controversial former director of
>> >>central intelligence, John Deutch, was established in 1998 to assess
>> >>whether the Clinton administration was failing to adequately monitor
>> >>and counter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,
>> >>particularly in China. The Deutch Commission questioned the
>> >>administration's ability to assure China's compliance with nuclear
>> >>export controls and expressed alarm that U.S. bond traders might be
>> >>helping to finance China's weapons industry.
>> >>
>> >>Rep. Christopher Cox (R-CA) led another commission on China. A
>> >>recipient of CSP's annual "Keeper of the Flame" award, Cox identified
>> >>Chinese-Americans as suspects in leaking nuclear weapons data to the
>> >>Chinese military. His commission, called the House Select Committee
>> >>on U.S. National Security and Military/National Concerns with the
>> >>People's Republic of China, issued a report in January 1999 accusing
>> >>China of large-scale nuclear espionage. The report successfully
>> >>sparked widespread fear among the public and policymakers that China
>> >>was stealing U.S. nuclear secrets through payments to highly placed
>> >>nuclear weapons scientists such as Wen Ho Lee, who worked at the Los
>> >>Angeles Nuclear Laboratory-and was later cleared of espionage charges.
>> >>
>> >>Paralleling the congressional efforts were campaigns by various
>> >>hardline and neoconservative pressure groups. PNAC and the Heritage
>> >>Foundation issued a joint statement in August 1999 strongly
>> >>criticizing what they perceived as the lack of a firm U.S. commitment
>> >>to Taiwan. "Efforts by the Clinton administration to pressure Taipei
>> >>to cede its sovereignty and to adopt Beijing's understanding of 'One
>> >>China' are dangerous and directly at odds with American strategic
>> >>interests, past U.S. policy, and American democratic ideals," argued
>> >>the statement.
>> >>
>> >>Concerned that the Clinton administration was doing nothing to
>> >>address the viability of an aging nuclear weapons stockpile, Sen. Jon
>> >>Kyl (R-AZ) insisted in 1998 that the Department of Defense create yet
>> >>another independent evaluation commission-the Panel to Assess the
>> >>Reliability, Safety, and Security of the U.S. Nuclear Stockpile, or
>> >>the "Foster Panel" after its chair John Foster. Kyl, a proponent of
>> >>flexible uses of nuclear weapons, was among the leading opponents of
>> >>the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which had Clinton's full support.
>> >>
>> >>In the early 1970s, Foster had been a key instigator within the Ford
>> >>administration's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board for establishing
>> >>the Team B exercise. Foster directed the Lawrence Livermore National
>> >>Laboratory in the early 1960s and was also a member of the Committee
>> >>on the Present Danger (CPD) in the 1970s. Foster also had strong
>> >>connections with defense industries. Predictably, his panel
>> >>recommended that the U.S. government authorize the speedy production
>> >>of new nukes, smaller nukes, and high-tech nuclear weapons that could
>> >>reach precise targets.
>> >>
>> >>The Middle East also occupied center stage for the threat escalators
>> >>during this time-but not because of the threat of non-state Islamist
>> >>terrorists. Through PNAC, CSP, and the Committee for Peace and
>> >>Security in the Gulf (CPSG), the neoconservatives pressured Clinton
>> >>to authorize support for the Iraqi expatriates of the Iraqi National
>> >>Congress (INC) under the leadership of Ahmed Chalabi and to plan
>> >>military operations that would overthrow Saddam Hussein.
>> >>Congressional Republicans also mounted anti-Hussein initiatives in
>> >>1998. Randy Scheunemann, later a PNAC board member, served at the
>> >>time as the national security aide to House Majority Leader Trent
>> >>Lott (R-MS), drafting the Iraq Liberation Act, a bill cosponsored by
>> >>Lott and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), which allocated $98 million to
>> >>the INC and made the overthrow of Hussein official government policy.
>> >>
>> >>While they succeeded in pressuring Clinton on many fronts,
>> >>neoconservatives and allied hardliners failed to push his
>> >>administration to fully adopt many issues on their agenda. They saw
>> >>Clinton as soft on Israeli security and despised his sponsorship of
>> >>the Oslo Accords and his criticism of the rightist Likud policies.
>> >>
>> >>The irony is that despite all the current rhetoric about how
>> >>Democrats have failed to take terrorism seriously-a failure that
>> >>purportedly goes back to the early days of the Clinton
>> >>presidency-hawkish Republicans and their neoconservative allies spent
>> >>the better part of the 1990s advocating policies that doubtless
>> >>distracted key policymakers from paying adequate attention to real
>> >>security issues. Conservatives were raising the alarm over space
>> >>weapons, China, Iraq, North Korea-not terrorism, a threat they chose
>> >>to ignore. When George W. Bush arrived in office, his administration
>> >>focused on all the issues that his party had put in the pipeline,
>> >>instead of on more pressing concerns.
>> >>
>> >>Tom Barry is policy director of the International Relations Center
>> >>(www.irc-online.org <http://www.irc-online.org>) and a contributing
>> writer to Right Web
>> >>(rightweb.irc-online.org).
>> >>
>> >>
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>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>> >
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