Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

Cicerone Imposter says our debt is rising at over a Billion each day.

I am saddened that he did not read my posts about the relationship between the GDP and the deficit AND the relationship between the GDP and the debt.

The government's ability to finance its debt is tied to the size and strength of its economy.

The debt MUST BE VIEWED in light of its percentage of GDP.

At the end of World War II debt held by the public was at its highest , as a percentage of GDP, at 109%

By 1974 it fell to 24% of GDP.

This was because the Economy grew faster than the debt.

I am eager to see the posting of anyone WHO KNOWS WITH CERTAINTY, the relationship of our Total Debt to our GDP in the year 2014( ten years from now)

If the economy grows faster than the debt, then the One Billion dollars a day of debt means very little.

365 Billion, after all, is only about 3.2% of our GDP which is currently near 11,000,000,000,000(11 Trillion dollars).

If we were to spend a Billion a day ten years from now and our economy grew at a rate of 4 Percent a year, then our deficit for that year would be only about half of the above--l.6%.

No one knows whether future years will bring about a massive growth in the GDP and a massive growth in debt or a massive growth in GDP and a slower growth in debt or a massive growth in debt and a slower growth in the GDP.

Anyone who attempts to forecast the future in that regard is fooling themselves.

However, the FACT that Private Wealth in the USA has now reached 45 Trillion Dollars may be sufficient to persuade voters that the present administration is doing quite well on the economic front.

To put it in perspective, believe it or not, the national debt in value is not a great deal more than it was in the 1940's. It was reigned in after Congress balanced the budget in the late 90's, but you can see that virtually every administration in the last half of the century has had hefty increases.

09/30/2003 $6,783,231,062,743.62
09/30/2002 6,228,235,965,597.16
09/28/2001 5,807,463,412,200.06
09/30/2000 5,674,178,209,886.86
09/30/1999 5,656,270,901,615.43
09/30/1998 5,526,193,008,897.62
09/30/1997 5,413,146,011,397.34
09/30/1996 5,224,810,939,135.73
09/29/1995 4,973,982,900,709.39
09/30/1994 4,692,749,910,013.32
09/30/1993 4,411,488,883,139.38
09/30/1992 4,064,620,655,521.66
09/30/1991 3,665,303,351,697.03
09/28/1990 3,233,313,451,777.25
09/29/1989 2,857,430,960,187.32
09/30/1988 2,602,337,712,041.16
09/30/1987 2,350,276,890,953.00
09/30/1986 2,125,302,616,658.42
12/31/1985 1,945,941,616,459.88
12/31/1984 1,662,966,000,000.00 *
12/31/1983 1,410,702,000,000.00 *
12/31/1982 1,197,073,000,000.00 *
12/31/1981 1,028,729,000,000.00 *
12/31/1980 930,210,000,000.00 *
12/31/1979 845,116,000,000.00 *
12/29/1978 789,207,000,000.00 *
12/30/1977 718,943,000,000.00 *
12/31/1976 653,544,000,000.00 *
12/31/1975 576,649,000,000.00 *
12/31/1974 492,665,000,000.00 *
12/31/1973 469,898,039,554.70
12/29/1972 449,298,066,119.00
12/31/1971 424,130,961,959.95
12/31/1970 389,158,403,690.26
12/31/1969 368,225,581,254.41
12/31/1968 358,028,625,002.91
12/29/1967 344,663,009,745.18
12/30/1966 329,319,249,366.68
12/31/1965 320,904,110,042.04
12/31/1964 317,940,472,718.38
12/31/1963 309,346,845,059.17
12/31/1962 303,470,080,489.27
12/29/1961 296,168,761,214.92
12/30/1960 290,216,815,241.68
12/31/1959 290,797,771,717.63
12/31/1958 282,922,423,583.87
12/31/1957 274,897,784,290.72
12/31/1956 276,627,527,996.11
12/30/1955 280,768,553,188.96
12/31/1954 278,749,814,391.33
12/31/1953 275,168,120,129.39
06/30/1953 266,071,061,638.57
06/30/1952 259,105,178,785.43
06/29/1951 255,221,976,814.93
06/30/1950 257,357,352,351.04
06/30/1949 252,770,359,860.33
06/30/1948 252,292,246,512.99
06/30/1947 258,286,383,108.67
06/28/1946 269,422,099,173.26
06/30/1945 258,682,187,409.93
06/30/1944 201,003,387,221.13
06/30/1943 136,696,090,329.90
06/30/1942 72,422,445,116.22
06/30/1941 48,961,443,535.71
06/29/1940 42,967,531,037.68
06/30/1939 40,439,532,411.11
06/30/1938 37,164,740,315.45
06/30/1937 36,424,613,732.29
06/30/1936 33,778,543,493.73
06/29/1935 28,700,892,624.53
06/30/1934 27,053,141,414.48
06/30/1933 22,538,672,560.15
06/30/1932 19,487,002,444.13
06/30/1931 16,801,281,491.71
06/30/1930 16,185,309,831.43
06/29/1929 16,931,088,484.10
06/30/1928 17,604,293,201.43
06/30/1927 18,511,906,931.85
06/30/1926 19,643,216,315.19
06/30/1925 20,516,193,887.90
06/30/1924 21,250,812,989.49
06/30/1923 22,349,707,365.36
06/30/1922 22,963,381,708.31
06/30/1921 23,977,450,552.54
07/01/1920 25,952,456,406.16
07/01/1919 27,390,970,113.12
07/01/1918 14,592,161,414.00
07/01/1917 5,717,770,279.52
07/01/1916 3,609,244,262.16
07/01/1915 3,058,136,873.16
07/01/1914 2,912,499,269.16
07/01/1913 2,916,204,913.66
07/01/1912 2,868,373,874.16
07/01/1911 2,765,600,606.69
07/01/1910 2,652,665,838.04
07/01/1909 2,639,546,241.04
07/01/1908 2,626,806,271.54
07/01/1907 2,457,188,061.54
07/01/1906 2,337,161,839.04
07/01/1905 2,274,615,063.84
07/01/1904 2,264,003,585.14
07/01/1903 2,202,464,781.89
07/01/1902 2,158,610,445.89
07/01/1901 2,143,326,933.89
07/01/1900 2,136,961,091.67

http://www.toptips.com/debt_history.htm

foxfyre- thank you so much for doing the work and presenting the facts. It has become a tired cliche that we are in so much financial trouble.

When the foreign situation is more settled, I think the next move for the coming Republican Administration is to make an all out attack on the ridiculous spending of the left in the Senate and the House.


Anyone viewing the amounts still being spent on welfare and so called social programs, would be shocked.

I wonder if it would be correct to say that our national debt, at this time(6,700,000,000,000) rounded off is about 63% of our GDP- Now at about eleven trillion.

I wonder if we could make the analogy to a family that makes 70,000 a year and has a mortgage of 200,000.

I really don't think that, if our future legislators really cut the unnecessary pork programs, and continue to stoke up the economy, that the ratio of our debt to our GDP will much much higher as a percentage in ten years.

A good post, Foxfyre- Thanks.

Unfortunately, I give more credance to Greenspan than I do to fox or sept.
*********************
Pay Down Debt First, Greenspan Urges (Washington Post)
Pay Down Debt First, Greenspan UrBest Use of Surplus Is to Reduce Red Ink, Fed Chief Says
By John M. Berry
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 27, 2000; Page E01

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan strongly urged Congress
yesterday to use burgeoning federal budget surpluses to pay down the national debt rather than using the money to finance large new spending programs or big tax cuts.

In response to repeated questions on the issue from both Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee, Greenspan said his "first priority would be to allow as much of the surplus to flow through into a reduction in debt to the public."

"In my judgment, that would be, from an economic point of view . . . that would be by far the best means of employing it," he said.

The chairman appeared before the committee for a hearing on his
nomination by President Clinton to a fourth four-year term as head of the nation's central bank.

With U.S. unemployment and inflation close to their lowest levels in three decades, both committee Republican and Democrats praised Greenspan and the Fed's monetary policies. Even though financial analysts and investors widely expect the central bank's policymakers to raise their target for overnight interest rates by a quarter-percentage point on Feb. 2 and possibly by more later, no one asked the Fed chairman about that possibility.

The committee chairman, Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), said: "I believe that by virtual consensus . . . no one has ever had a more distinguished record as chairman of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve Bank.

"Millions of people who don't know that there is a Federal Reserve bank, much less that you're chairman of it, owe you a deep debt of gratitude for your leadership in probably doing more than anyone else on the planet to help produce the strong economy we have today."

Gramm said the committee will formally act to approve the nomination Tuesday morning and take the matter to the Senate floor that afternoon. There is little urgency on the confirmation, as Greenspan's current term doesn't expire until mid-June.

Asked by Gramm to rank the possible uses of the surpluses in descending order, Greenspan said reducing the debt clearly was best, followed by cutting taxes and, finally, boosting spending.

"A central bank is interested in as much fiscal restraint" as possible, the Fed chairman said, because "that usually makes it easier for us" to keep the economy growing in a sustainable way with lower interest rates than otherwise. On the other hand, he added, "the Fed does not respond to fiscal policy," but rather to changes in economic conditions that might be caused by changes in spending and tax policies.

Greenspan stressed that even though the Congressional Budget Office this week revised its projections of future surpluses up significantly, there is a "wide range" of uncertainty about such estimates. For instance, no one fully understands why individual income tax revenue is as high as it is. If the relationship between personal income and tax liabilities went back to where it was a few years ago, the surplus could be eliminated in a few years, he cautioned.

On the other hand, if the acceleration in productivity growth of recent years continues--and he said he sees no sign the acceleration is diminishing -- the growth of the economy and incomes could generate much larger surpluses than are currently projected.

"Does that counsel some moderation" in using the surpluses, asked Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.).

"I think it does," Greenspan replied. There is a portion of the surpluses "that we will not know the permanence of" for several years. If they turn out to be larger than expected, then spending can go up or taxes cut, he said.

In the meantime, reducing the debt lowers real interest rates, he said, which will encourage more investment. Besides, Greenspan said, "surpluses are not gone if you use them to reduce debt, because you can always increase debt again."

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) asked if the recent rapid rise in so-called margin debt--money borrowed to buy stock shares and secured by the shares -- worries Greenspan.

"Obviously," the Fed chairman replied, adding that he and regulatory officials have been having "considerable conversations" about what if anything should be done. A key concern, he said, is that wealthy investors can easily avoid the margin limit--now set at 50 percent of a share's value--by borrowing against other assets.

"We have been quite reluctant to see restraints on some individuals and not on others," he said.

During his testimony, the Fed chairman also urged the Banking Committee to act quickly on the president's nomination of Fed Vice Chairman Roger C. Ferguson Jr. to a new 14-year term on the central bank's board. Last fall the committee approved his separate nomination to a four-year term as vice chairman but took no action on the new term even though his current one expires next Monday. But board members whose terms have expired are allowed to remain in office until a successor is confirmed.

Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.), the committee's ranking minority member, also brought up the issue of Ferguson's new term and two other vacancies on the board. Clinton has nominated Carol Parry, a banker, to one of the seats, but no action has been taken on that nomination either.

© Copyright 2000 The Washington Post Company

Greenspan Testimony Highlights Bush Plan for Deliberate Federal Bankruptcy

By Michael Meurer
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 02 March 2004

Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's Feb. 25 testimony to the House Budget Committee provided an unintentionally candid look at the Bush administration's deliberate fiscal policy of bankrupting the federal government to justify a sweeping program of privatization.
During his February 25 testimony before the House Budget Committee, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan generated sensational national headlines by recommending that President Bush's $1.5 trillion in tax cuts be made permanent while Social Security and Medicare benefits be dramatically cut to achieve long term deficit reduction and a balanced budget.

In spite of the media furor and across the board condemnation by the remaining Democratic presidential candidates, there should be no reason for surprise at Greenspan's remarks. In his capacity as shill for the Bush administration, the Chairman's recommendations make perfect sense, as long as one is not foolish enough to believe the window dressing about a long term balanced budget. Mr. Greenspan is laying the groundwork for a second Bush administration, not a balanced budget. His remarks, and most of the economic policies of the Bush administration, can only be understood against the backdrop of the little remarked right wing agenda of deliberate federal bankruptcy.

From the first months of the Bush administration, when their initial breathtaking tax cuts were presented to Congress, it has been obvious that the explicit goal of this administration is to bankrupt the federal government to justify a sweeping program of privatization. Pursuing federal bankruptcy is a deliberate policy.

This administration's pursuit of bankruptcy as deliberate policy had to be extraordinarily bold from day one because public programs such as Social Security were so extraordinarily solvent into the distant future, and the underlying strength and diversity of the U.S. economy was sufficient to keep them that way if spending priorities were not radically altered. The events of 9/11 provided the perfect cover for pursuing federal bankruptcy in the guise of an open ended war on terror.

We know that the constituency for the Bush economic program consists of the military-industrial complex and the wealthy. The Bush administration's policies of massive defense spending and unprecedented tax cuts for upper income brackets reward both constituencies, while the short term economic lift from more than $450 billion in defense spending (dubbed "Military Keynesianism" by Robert Pollin of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and others) is part of a conscious election year strategy to give at least the appearance of economic recovery. But the longer term goal of these policies, cutting revenues while increasing spending into the indefinite future, is still federal insolvency.

A massive federal deficit, it is hoped, will justify to the public the wholesale privatization of social security, medicare, prisons, schools, water, the Federal Aviation Administration, Amtrak, welfare services, public power utilities, the federal postal service, etc., etc., etc. Visit the websites of any of the major right wing think tanks from which this administration has drawn its highest officials, and you will find entire sections of archived documents and books arguing the case for privatization of nearly the entire public sector.

From the American Enterprise Institute to the Heritage Foundation, from the Hoover Institution to the Cato Institute to the Reason Foundation, privatization has been a prime objective of the right for the past 25 years. The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) even provides a handy list of potential targets for privatization.

There are plenty of examples of the Bush administration's attempts to push privatization, such as their effort to change federal funding rules for public water utilities, making such federal funding contingent upon proof that the utilities each have a privatization plan in place. Amtrak, Social Security and public schools are explicitly in their sights. Education factories such as Edison Schools are the preferred Republican solution to education.

The public, so far, is resistant to an explicit agenda of mass privatization. But if Bush and his corporate backers were to be given a second term, pursuit of this privatization agenda would be unfettered, with the bulging Social Security trust fund at the top of the list among prospective candidate programs. That is what Mr. Greenspan is really signaling with his Congressional testimony in favor of permanent tax cuts today. The pursuit of federal insolvency increases the financial pressure on all elements of the public sector, making the argument for privatization theoretically more compelling. Indeed, Bush and company would read their election to a second term as a tacit mandate for their privatization agenda, and the consequences for the commonweal would be devastating.

Only Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean have talked explicitly about the Republican privatization agenda in this election year. Dean has noted that the Bush economic model for the U.S. is Argentina, although the sophistication of that analogy is lost on the average voter. Kucinich has talked about the dangers of privatizing water.

Privatization deserves to be front and center in this country's political debate, and privatization's history of miserable failure needs to be placed squarely on the table in plain language for the electorate to consider. The history of failed privatization schemes includes doomed water privatization projects in South America and the U.S. (Atlanta is the poster child), rail privatization in Britain, and school and prison privatization in the U.S.

The Bush administration's pursuit of federal bankruptcy on behalf of their largest corporate sponsors, who will be the primary beneficiaries of privatization, represents an all out assault on the idea that the federal government should represent the commonweal and act as a wise custodian of our collective resources. We see instead a vision of a global battlefield where scarce resources go to the strongest and to those who already have. Mr. Greenspan's comments today tell us that this world view extends to the domestic front and will continue and accelerate in a second Bush administration.

We would do well to heed the underlying message and put an end to the Bush administration's Imperial misadventures abroad and fiscal malfeasance at home.

This is the one I was looking for.
***************************

Posted on Tue, Feb. 11, 2003

Greenspan Cautions Congress on Deficits

MARTIN CRUTSINGER

Associated Press


WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan dealt a blow to President Bush's drive for new tax cuts Tuesday, saying he did not believe the economy needed further stimulus and warning Congress to be "very careful" to keep budget deficits from exploding.

Greenspan, who two years ago lent critical support to Bush's first round of $1.35 trillion in tax cuts, threw cold water on the new $1.3 trillion package. Bush is seeking $670 billion in accelerated tax cuts and elimination of taxes on stock dividends as part of a stimulus program. The rest of the package is devoted to making the 2001 tax cuts permanent. They are now due to expire after 2010.

Delivering the Fed's twice-a-year report on the state of the economy, Greenspan said that while war worries were weighing on business investment, the economy was poised for a significant rebound once that uncertainty passes.

"I am one of the few people who is still not as yet convinced that stimulus is a desirable policy," Greenspan told the panel.

He told the Senate Banking Committee that Congress needed to "be very careful not to allow deficits to get out of hand, especially when we are going to be running into a significant problem starting 2010, 2012 and beyond" with demands retired baby boomers will be making on the Social Security and Medicare programs.

Democrats, who have attacked Bush's tax-cut proposals as too expensive and too tilted toward the wealthy, quickly praised Greenspan's comments.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle called Greenspan's remarks "a kiss of death" for the Bush package. Sen. Kent Conrad, the Budget Committee's top Democrat, said Greenspan had been "clear and unambiguous about the importance of curbing deficits."

The White House sought to limit the damage from Greenspan's comments, noting that he did restate his long-held view that the current policy of taxing dividend income twice - once at the corporate level and again when investors receive the dividend payments - should be eliminated.

However, Greenspan said that given the worsening deficit picture, the Bush proposal to eliminate taxes on dividends paid to investors, which would cost $385 billion over 10 years, should be paid for, either by raising other taxes or cutting government spending.

Greenspan urged Congress to restore pay-as-you go rules for budget legislation. The rules require any increases in spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security or cuts in taxes to be offset by spending reductions or tax increases elsewhere so the proposals do not worsen the deficit. Greenspan also urged Congress to put back in place expired budget rules that limit increases in discretionary spending.

Bush's tax-cuts package does not contain any offsets to keep the deficit from rising. Some administration officials have argued that budget deficit concerns have been overstated.

But Greenspan said a rising deficit can affect the economy.

"Contrary to what some have said, it does affect long-term interest rates, it does have a negative impact on the economy," he said.

Republicans, who happily pointed to Greenspan's endorsement of the first tax cut, were displeased with his new remarks. Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., complained to Greenspan, "You are once again interjecting yourself into matters in which you have no business."

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer insisted the administration was pushing forward with an aggressive sales effort for the new tax cuts. Treasury Secretary John Snow traveled to Wall Street on Tuesday to promote the administration's economic package and Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney scheduled a White House meeting with key Republican senators to promote the plan.

Greenspan's comments Tuesday were in sharp contrast to the support he provided two years ago when he came out in favor of Bush's first large tax cut at a time when the government was projecting surpluses of $5.6 trillion over the next decade, not the record deficits now forecast.

The Fed's new economic forecast projected economic growth this year of 3.5 percent, up from 2.8 percent last year, when measured from the fourth quarter. It said inflation would stay low and the unemployment rate, currently at 5.7 percent, will be around that level at the end of the year.

Private economists said Greenspan's comments did not change their view that the Fed, which has pushed a key Fed interest rate to a 41-year low of 1.25 percent, would leave rates at that level probably through the summer, believing it has done enough to guarantee better economic growth this year.

Among Greenspan's criticisms of the tax-cut package, he took issue with the argument that the cuts could pay for themselves by stimulating faster economic growth.

"Short of a major increase in immigration, economic growth cannot be safely counted upon to eliminate deficits and the difficult choices that will be required to restore fiscal discipline," Greenspan told the committee.

I think Greenspan is far more concerned with the deficit than he is with the debt. He has repeatedly stated that economic growth is the only way to reduce the National Debt.

He is entirely correct that the deficit must be reined in and the way to do that is to stop spending like drunken sailors.

Fox, The deficit increases the debt. Our government keeps running on borrowed money. duh....

But the deficit and the debt are not the same thing. Greenspan has not criticized the debt. He has criticized the inflated deficit as a source of possible economic instablility. With that I agree with him.

Note in the chart I posted above that the debt continued to rise even after the deficit was eliminated. The general consensus among the economic gurus is that we have to grow our way out of the debt.

We do need to rein in the deficit.

The national debt can be thought of as the accumulated debt the government owes from all those years of borrowing money to pay off the annual deficits. It is the total of all money owed to individuals, corporations, state or local governments, foreign governments, and other entities outside of the United States Government. The national debt is also often called the public debt, because most of the money is owed to the public.

Correct C.I. And that does not change what Alan Greenspan said.

Why would I want to change what Greenspan said?

LOL okay. I think we probably are on the same page actually.

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, speaking to Attorney General John Ashcroft in a Senate Judiciary Hearing today:

Mr. Attorney General, welcome. It's been, I believe, about 15 months to pass since your last very brief appearance in March last year. Your testimony here comes today about 1,000 days after the September 11th attacks, and the subsequent launch of your efforts against terrorism.

As National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice acknowledged in her testimony before the 9/11 commission, the terrorist threat to our nation did not begin in September 2001. But the preliminary findings of the 9/11 commission suggest that counterterrorism simply was not a priority of your Justice Department prior to September 11th.

Problems ranged in your department from an understaffed foreign translation program, woefully inadequate information systems, cultural attitudes that frustrated information sharing across agencies. Just one day before the attacks, on September 10th, you rejected the FBIs request to include more money for counterterrorism in your budget proposal.

And while you have recently been critical of the so-called wall between criminal investigators and intelligence agencies, you did nothing to lower it during your first seven full months in office.

In fact, you put up exactly the same wall in your administration.

The president is fond of saying that September 11th changed everything, as if to wipe out all missteps and misplaced priorities of the first year of this administration. After the attacks, you promised a stunned nation that its government would expend every effort and devote all necessary resources to bring the people responsible for these crimes to justice. Certainly the American people would expect no less.

So a thousand days later and it is time to ask for the fulfillment of the promise you made.

Mr. Attorney General, your statement lists accomplishments of the Department of Justice since 9/11, but you leave out a number of things.

For example, of course the obvious, Osama bin Laden remains at large.

At least three senior Al Qaida operatives who helped plan the 9/11 attacks are in U.S. custody, but there has been no attempt to bring them to justice.

The Moussaoui prosecution has bogged down before any trial.

A German court acquitted two 9/11 co-conspirators, in part because the U.S. government and Justice Department and others refused to provide evidence to them.

Three defendants who you said had knowledge of the 9/11 attacks did not have such knowledge. The department retracted your statement and then you had to apologize to the court because you violated a gag order in the case.

The man you claimed was about to explode a dirty bomb in the U.S. had no such intention or capability, and because he's been held for two years without access to counsel, any crimes he did commit might never be prosecuted.

Terrorist attacks on Capitol Hill and elsewhere involving the deadly bioterror agent anthrax have yet to be solved, and the department is defending itself in a civil rights action brought by a man who you probably identified as a person of interest in the anthrax investigation.

U.S. citizens with no connection to terrorism have been in prison as material witnesses for chunks of time, and then, "Oops, I'm sorry," when what the Justice Department announced was a 100 percent positive fingerprint match turned out to be 100 percent wrong.

Non-citizens with no connection to terrorism have been rounded up seemingly on the basis of their religion or ethnicity, held for months without charges, and in some cases physically abused.

Interrogation techniques approved by the Department of Justice have led to abuses that have tarnished our nation's reputation and driven hundreds, if not thousands, of new recruits to our enemies to terrorism.

Your department turned a Canadian citizen over to Syria to be tortured. And then your department deported another individual to Syria over the objection of experienced prosecutors and agents who thought he was a terrorist and wanted to prosecute him.

And one of the most amazing things, your department, under your direction, has worked to deny compensation to American victims of terrorism, including former POWs tortured by Saddam Hussein's regime. You have tried to stop former POWs tortured by Saddam Hussein -- Americans -- you tried to stop them from getting compensation.

And documents have been classified, unclassified, reclassified, to score political points rather than for legitimate national security reasons.

Statistics have been manipulated to exaggerate the department's success in fighting terrorism. The threat of another attack on U.S. soil remains high, although how high depends primarily on who within the administration is talking.

Mr. Attorney General, you spent much of the past two years increasing secrecy, lessening accountability and touting the government's intelligence-gathering powers.

The threshold issue, of course, is -- and I believe you would agree with me on this -- what good is having intelligence if we can't use it intelligently. Identifying suspected terrorist is only a first step. To be safer we have to follow through.

Instead of declining tough prosecutions, we need to bring the people who are seeking to harm us to justice. That's how our system works. Instead, your practices seem to be built on secret detentions and overblown press releases.

Our country is made no safer through the self-congratulatory press conferences when we're facing serious security threats.

The government agency that bears the name of justice has yet to deliver the justice for the victims of the worst mass murder in this nation's history.

The 9/11 commission is working hard to answer important questions about the attacks and how the vulnerabilities in our system that allowed them to occur, but it can't mete out justice to those involved. Neither the 9/11 commission nor this committee can do the work of your Department of Justice.

Mr. Attorney General, since September 11th, you blamed former administration officials for intelligence failures that happened on your watch. You've used a tar brush to attack the patriotism of the Americans who dared to express legitimate concerns about constitutional freedoms. You refused to acknowledge serious problems, even after the Justice Department's own inspector general exposed widespread violations of the civil liberties of immigrants caught up in your post-September 11th dragnets.

Secretary Rumsfeld recently went before the Armed Services Committee to say that he, he Secretary Rumsfeld, should be held responsible for the abuses of Iraqi prisoners on his watch.

Director Tenet is resigning from the Central Intelligence Agency. Richard Clark went before the 9/11 commission and began with his admission of the failure that this administration bears for the tragedy that consumed us on 9/11.

And I'm reminded this week, as we mourn the passing of President Reagan, that one of the acts for which he will be remembered is that he conceded, that while his heart told him that the weapons for hostages and unlawful funding of insurgent forces in Nicaragua should not have been acts of his administration, his head convinced him that they were, and he took personal responsibility.

We need checks and balances. As much as gone wrong that you stubbornly refuse to admit. For this democratic republic to work, we need openness and accountability.

Now, Mr. Attorney General, your style is often to come to attack. You came before this committee shortly after 9/11 to question our patriotism when we sought to conduct a congressional oversight and ask questions.

You went before the 9/11 commission to attack a commissioner by brandishing a conveniently declassified memo and so unfairly slanted a presentation that President Bush himself disavowed your actions.

So I challenge you today to abandon any such plans for the session. Begin it instead by doing that which you have yet to do: talk plainly with us and with the American people, about not only what's going right in the war on terrorism -- and there are those things that are going right -- but also about the growing list of things that are going wrong, so we can work together to fix them.

Let's get about the business of working together to do our job, a better job of protecting the American people and making sure that the wrongdoers are brought to justice, are brought to trial and are given the justice that this country can mete out.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Are you going to be fair and post the Attorney General's rebuttal to the charges leveled by a Democrat notorious for contentious partisanship?

"Contentious partisanship" is an oxymoron no matter which side uses it.

ABC Online

AM - Bush denies torture allegations

[This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2003/s968060.htm]


AM - Thursday, 16 October , 2003 08:10:00
Reporter: Ben Knight
LINDA MOTTRAM: The US President, George W Bush, has denied allegations aired on this program last week, that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, including two Australians, have been tortured.

The claims were made by an Australian lawyer working in the US on the cases of Camp X-Ray inmates.

President Bush says America does not torture its prisoners.

But the lawyer, Richard Bourke, says the evidence says otherwise, and he's calling for a full investigation.

Ben Knight reports.

BEN KNIGHT: Richard Bourke says the US military's own reports of its treatment of Camp X-Ray detainees already meet the accepted definition of torture.

But he went further, saying there was now evidence that torture was being practiced in the medieval sense of the word.

Yesterday, President George W Bush responded directly to the claims in an interview with Channel 9's Laurie Oakes.

GEORGE BUSH: No, of course not. We don't torture people in America, and people who make that claim just don't know anything about our country.

BEN KNIGHT: Richard Bourke says he's pleased to hear it.

RICHARD BOURKE: Well, I welcome the President's flat-out rejection of torture. I think it's a wonderful thing that he's said that he does not accept torture.

But by the same token I simply can't accept his flat-out denial that it's not occurring, and it's entirely possible that the President doesn't know what his administration are now doing.

BEN KNIGHT: He says there are simply too many reports from too from many different sources citing evidence that torture is taking place.

RICHARD BOURKE: We just need to look at what members of the administration have said about the treatment of the prisoners, what released detainees have said about the prisoners, and look at the cases where we do know what happened, look at the shocking treatment of American citizen John Walker Lindh when he was captured by the Americans.

It's very clear to me that what's going on is torture.

BEN KNIGHT: Since Richard Bourke made the allegations, the US has come under increasing pressure over its treatment of prisoners at Camp X-Ray.

Last week, a brief was filed with the US Supreme Court by former American diplomats, federal judges, senior military officers and prisoners of war, urging the court to allow itself to hear the cases of the detainees.

And the Red Cross broke with its long-standing policy of not publicly commenting on concerns about conditions in prisoner of war camps, stating that it had serious concerns about the mental well being of prisoners at Camp X-Ray.

Richard Bourke says that decision by the Red Cross is an indication of how seriously the international community is taking the issue.

RICHARD BOURKE: It's also ought to be remembered that the Red Cross can only report what they can see.

They do not have full access to Bagram, they are not present during the interrogations in Guantanamo Bay.

BEN KNIGHT: The Australian Government has said it will raise the torture allegations directly with the American administration.

But Richard Bourke says it's up to President Bush.

RICHARD BOURKE: If the President is serious about his opposition to torture by American forces, or in collusion with American forces, then I'd call upon him to allow an independent inquiry into the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo and in the other detention camps the US is running.

LINDA MOTTRAM: US-based Australian lawyer Richard Bourke, speaking to Ben Knight.



© 2004 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Presidential-Election-Poll.html

Best post I've seen in a long while ... congrats, c.i.

LOL okay. But I am pretty old and remember a time when you could be partisan and still have civil discourse. Sometimes it even happens here on A2K