The huffing about puffing: problems facing medical marijuana use

Since President Richard Nixon declared an “all-out offensive” to curb the use of illegal drugs in the United States, the War on Drugs has mostly failed. Even though drug busts seem to be getting bigger each year, few today would agree that drug use is “America’s public enemy No. 1,” a statement Nixon made in 1971.

However, vilification of even the most harmless drugs, including marijuana, was quite effective and has lead to marijuana also being withheld from medical uses that would benefit patients. It also has made an objective debate about legalization almost impossible.

While many states have passed laws that make marijuana accessible to those carrying a prescription, the federal government continues to stonewall, stubbornly sticking to its story: Pot is bad. Period.

The New York Times reported Thursday that the Food and Drug Administration had issued a statement saying “no sound scientific studies” supported the medical use of marijuana. It is hard to fathom how the FDA can make statements like this while patients in California as well as other countries such as Canada and the Netherlands give daily proof that it improves their standard of living.

It is even harder to understand why the U.S. government would be so adamant about withholding drugs even from terminally ill patients. After all, even the most cold-hearted person should wonder why it is acceptable to literally nuke a cancer patient’s body, but prescribing a plant that would readily grow in most gardens and has been used for thousands of years is deemed illegal.

The reason behind this decision has to do with how drugs are classified in most countries. In the United States, the Controlled Substance Act classifies all drugs in one of five groups, ranging from Schedule I to Schedule V. “Abuse” of Schedule I drugs - meaning illegal use - is penalized worse than those in the other groups. Schedule I includes not only hard drugs such as heroin that are addictive often even after their first use, but puzzlingly also marijuana, a substance that has no proven properties that cause physical addiction.
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From world leader to rogue nation

In the days immediately following the attacks of Sept. 11, the world overwhelmingly stood with the United States. The French newspaper Le Monde even wrote on Sept. 12, “Today we are all Americans,” to express a sentiment felt throughout the world: If America’s freedom was being attacked, so was the freedom of anyone in the world, and the world needed to stand united in support.

This sentiment went far beyond a few words. NATO members agreed to recognize the terrorist attacks as an act of war that, per its charter, would warrant a response from all its members - an unprecedented action. No one was forcing foreign nationals to side with the U.S. call to take out the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, yet many offered military or humanitarian support.

Since then, the international goodwill has been squandered through President George W. Bush’s pet projects. The years before the World Trade Center towers were leveled in an explosion of kerosene and hate seem like memories from a past life. But unquestioning support of American ideals now seems unlikely to occur if - god forbid - another attack of this scale should occur.

The reason for this is a dramatic change in U.S. foreign policy that harkens back to times most Europeans hoped had ended. A vendetta to take down America’s enemies quickly followed, and justice went out the window just as quickly. (The mere existence of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, not to mention secret CIA-operated prisons worldwide, are a sad testaments to this new goal.)
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Citizen for sale!

Capitalism has long been a cornerstone of the “American Dream.” A system based on the flow of money that gives everyone the same chance to own that house in the suburbs, picket fences and all, which Americans secretly crave - or so they are told. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that unchecked capitalism can be quite detrimental to society, as it is beginning to seriously hamper that “pursuit of happiness” it was said to bring.

Historically, America has proven it will not budge when it comes to protecting its right to capitalism. The United States spent trillions of dollars and quite a share of human lives in its battle against communism during the Cold War era. U.S. officials justified the expenses similarly to how they now frantically try to justify the expanding cost of the war in Iraq: America needs to fight for freedom throughout the world.

But the opposite is true. An increasing number of Americans are in debt, especially students. Financial aid is being cut while tuition is rising, leading to record numbers of students in debt, a large amount of which is credit card debt.
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Secretary of state will not cure ills caused by president

At first I thought I was seeing an early April Fools’ joke - after all, admitting mistakes is the last thing I expect a member of President George W. Bush’s Cabinet to do. But the headline on the BBC’s Web site, “Rice admits multiple Iraq errors,” was not meant to be funny, even though everything even remotely touched by the war in Iraq is becoming more absurd by the day.

As part of a trip to England, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave a speech in Blackburn. She said, “I know we’ve made tactical errors - thousands of them, I’m sure,” in regard to Iraq, but also said that on the whole the U.S. government had made “the right strategic decisions.”

The trip was off to a bad start when it became public Rice would not be visiting a local mosque as planned because of protests in the area.

But even with spin, such a hurdle can be taken. Rice simply called the demonstrators that chanted “Condoleezza Rice go home” an example of free speech. Obviously it was, but it’s also hard to deny that if her speech had been held in the United States, such protestors would have been forced to stand in a “free speech zone” (Bush-speak for “out of sight”).

It was soon after her speech in Blackburn that the trip became even more absurd. The press conference following Rice’s speech included some rather peculiar talking points, a list that may as well be distributed as an example of what’s wrong with U.S. foreign policy.
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Google is latest victim of government intrusion

This weekend, a federal judge denied part of the Justice Department’s request for the popular Internet search engine Google to turn over files that would have given the government insight into who searches for what on the Web. It’s yet another example of a government that is quickly leaving notions such as “we the people” behind and replacing those notions with a society in which only the government’s rights are absolute.

It is hard to imagine a world in which one could not type something into the search window that is now ubiquitous in many popular Web browsers and have an instantaneous stream of knowledge and data returned within a matter of seconds. “Googling it” has become synonymous with conducting Web research. What could be more basic than the inhabitants of a free and democratic society having such unbarred access to information?

The judge presiding over the case said in his ruling he felt there were “privacy concerns” and would therefore not entirely rule in favor of the Justice Department. The verdict did, however, call for 50,000 Web addresses to be handed over to the government.

In this particular case, the Justice Department asked Google and other Internet-based companies to hand over search-related data in order to stifle Internet pornography, particularly pedophilia.

Stopping pedophilia is definitely a cause that’s worthy of the Justice Department’s time. Who wouldn’t want perverse exploitation of children to stop? But while the intentions behind this request were probably honorable, the idea of the U.S. government having the right to know what its citizens are doing on the Web is dubious at best and scary at worst.
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American debtors must find a new capitalism

Capitalism has long been a cornerstone of the “American Dream.” A system based on the flow of money that gives everyone the same chance to own that house in the suburbs, picket fences and all, which Americans secretly crave - or so they are told. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that unchecked capitalism can be quite detrimental to society, as it is beginning to seriously hamper that “pursuit of happiness” it was said to bring.

Historically, America will not budge when it comes to protecting its right to capitalism. The United States spent trillions of dollars and quite a share of human lives in its battle against communism during the Cold War era. U.S. officials justified the expenses similarly to how they now frantically try to justify the expanding cost of the war in Iraq: America needs to fight for freedom throughout the world.

But the opposite is true. An increasing number of Americans are in debt, especially students. Financial aid is being cut while tuition is rising, leading to record numbers of students in debt, a large amount of which is credit card debt.

At the same time, the government has actively catered to the credit card companies and made it harder for individuals to declare bankruptcy. This leaves credit card companies reaping profits while the people elected to represent citizens’ interests sell off their rights. How is that for taxation without representation?

Most of these individuals would hardly say they are “free,” as they are trapped in paying off credit card bills and the like. Suddenly, paying the rent or buying groceries becomes so hard that goals the individual meant to pursue are no longer feasible.

Yet after the attacks of Sept. 11, President George W. Bush famously announced in an address to Congress that if citizens want to help the United States prevail, they should go shopping.

This was evidenced in the case of General Motors. After GM initially announced late last year that it would lay off 30,000 workers - about 22 percent of its remaining workforce in North America, according to CNNMoney.com - and close nine of its factories in the United States, the corporation’s stock went up for the first time in months.

After this, 30,000 Americans faced the grim prospect of not only being unemployed, but also having to worry about future retirement benefits getting cut. Yet the financial market celebrated the event - and by buying into the company’s stock, it even indirectly profits from GM’s grim fate.

But who could be surprised by this if even one of the most basic ways of measuring “progress,” - the gross domestic product - has a blind spot for unsustainable models? Combining a country’s total consumption, investment, government spending and exports, but subtracting imports usually computes the GDP. The value usually used as a representation of a country’s economic health gives no indication about sustainability. If Saudi Arabia were to sell all the oil it has at once, its GDP would shoot through the roof. But what then? A war can also raise the GDP. Germany’s per capita GDP went up after WWII, when the country recovered after being bombed to bits by allied forces - but is hardly something America should strive for.

Another increasing problem is that many individual corporations now own every aspect of a product’s path to a consumer. They no longer only make a product and sell it to a wholesaler; they now also have the means to hype the product on media outlets they own and sell the product in its own stores. This concept of vertical integration means a corporation makes more profit and can more effectively corner a market and freeze the competition even more.

Ironically, vertical integration is also one character trait of communist regimes, the key difference being that in a capitalist model, the company is privately owned. In effect, capitalism is even worse than a communist setting as the private company has no duty to the common good, only a duty to its shareholders.

Capitalism, or rather Americans’ understanding of it, will therefore have to change, as the way it exists in today is unsustainable. While nobody would argue that the model should be abandoned altogether, America needs to re-evaluate how it allows capitalism to control its citizens’ lives before the country creates a new way of feudalism in which corporations take the role of nobility or landowners of the past.

Sebastian Meyer is a senior majoring in political geography and is a former Oracle opinion editor.

Florida wildlife should be treasured

Sometime this weekend, I stood in front of an exhibit at Busch Gardens and watched a throng of people point at a number of white birds that sat in the oak trees above. The birds — white ibises, to be precise — were native to Florida and were as much a part of the display as the individuals pointing at them.

The encounter gave me a pang of survivor’s guilt that stayed with me for the rest of the weekend. Floridians — myself included — are quickly destroying the world around them, and most don’t even seem to notice, let alone care.
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Wishing upon a Battlestar

Art has always been a way in which humans explored their social surroundings, not just described them. This makes it even stranger that television, one of if not the most prevalent cultural means of entertainment, is usually left out when literature or music is discussed.

Those who paid attention to their mothers when they were young know that “television is bad for you.” Naturally, TV can never replace the social interaction that makes people tick, but as time wears on, generations of mothers (and fathers, too) have learned that television is here to stay.

But not everything on the “boob tube” is bad. There is, for example, Battlestar Galactica, a remake of the Glen A. Larson-produced science fiction show that in the late ’70s and early ’80s followed a ragtag fleet of refugees who had survived an attack on their home planets and were now in search of a long-lost colony that went by the mythical name “Earth.” The show offered pop culture-friendly storylines and space combat, yet never managed to find a wide audience and was finally canceled because its budget of $1 million per episode was cost prohibitive. There was a 1980 spin-off show that would best be forgotten entirely, though I distinctly remember getting quite a kick out of the episodes when I saw them for the first time. The show never lived up to its potential, both creatively and commercially.

The show’s newest incarnation, also named Battlestar Galactica (BSG for short), had its debut in 2003 with a successful miniseries jointly produced by U.S. cable channel SciFi and British-based station Sky TV. Under the leadership of Ronald D. Moore, a veteran writer and producer of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the show has quickly evolved into one of the best on television.
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Crying wolf. Again.

Last week the Bush administration announced that measures — such as the much-debated NSA wiretaps on Americans — were needed and “proved it” by claiming ten terrorism plots had been averted because of measures such as this. This interesting correlation between falling poll numbers for the president and an announcement stressing the threat of terrorism was nothing new.

Shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush’s approval ratings reached an all-time high of nearly 90 percent. The nation was under attack and clung to the president for leadership, even though it seemed as if Bush’s presidency was running out of steam mere days before the attacks. A man who had been belittled for weeks entered the classroom at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota on the morning of Sept. 11 and exited as the nation’s “war-time president.”

The strong numbers held steady through most of the military actions in Afghanistan began to taper off. The notable spikes, however, are dates on which terrorism, for one reason or another, was in the news.

It didn’t take long for Bush’s strategists, namely Karl Rove, to figure the political capital this was bringing the president could be, shall we say, “enhanced” by strategically placing the speeches announcing the shocking “new evidence” of terrorist threats that often turned out to be much ado about nothing.
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Tampa needs to spend less time being creative

I am 27 years old, and I hate living in Tampa. Any other city might brush such a statement off, but in Tampa’s case, it doesn’t bode well, as it also casts a damning shadow over the city’s most recent strategy to market itself to would-be citizens.

In recent years, Tampa has been attempting to re-brand itself as a “creative city,” a trend to be seen in many cities that face an identity crisis after an economic downturn. This tactic often follows the theories of Richard Florida — a man who is half urban planner, half rock star.

Florida coined the phrase “creative class” in the late ’90s in an attempt to describe a mystical group of people who do not hesitate to move across the country in pursuit of not only cool jobs, but also cool locations.
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Administration gambling with global warming

This weekend, the New York Times ran an article with the headline “Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him.” It was one of many incidents that are symptomatic of a quite daring bet taken by the U.S. government founded on its seemingly steadfast belief that global warming does not exist.

The New York Times reported that this particular incident involved scientist James E. Hansen, longtime director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Hansen claims he had been carefully watched and put under pressure since he had openly lobbied for a restriction on greenhouse gas emissions at a conference last month.

In Hansen’s own words, “they feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public.”

The story was quickly picked up by Reuters and has since then caused quite a commotion, something I find rather puzzling since this is hardly a new tactic. If there is one thing the Bush administration is efficient at more than any other, it is denying any other viewpoint than its own, no matter how obvious its shortcoming may be. If this administration put as much effort into all its duties as does into keeping up its appearance, the country would be in a much better shape.

In June 2003, I wrote a column about how the Bush administration edited a report to be issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. Back then the EPA claimed, in various passages of the report, that global warming is a real-life problem that should be addressed. The Bush administration simply edited these paragraphs, or cut entire sentences — like “climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment” — from the report.

It’s sad to hear that these methods continue, but it’s hardly surprising. Even though past years have given more proof that global warming is indeed occurring, the Republican party still largely denies it while Democrats are sure it exists and are reaching new heights in ineptness when it comes to pushing the issue.
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Tutu’s message would be well served at home

Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s visit to the USF campus last week was celebrated by the University’s administration as a public relations coup. It was, no doubt, and the University milked the $150,000 event for all it was worth, cleverly tying it to the yearlong celebration of USF’s 50th anniversary.

But for many of the attendees, the event was more than a high-profile photo opportunity. It was encouragement to believe in peaceful activism, civil liberties and, most of all, forgiveness and reconciliation — charmingly delivered by a man who was not merely preaching it, but living it.

Tutu’s speech did not dwell much on the negative experiences he had when confronting apartheid in South Africa. Even in the press conference before his speech when reporters attempted to lure Tutu into making a political statement, Tutu laughed in the charming fashion that has become his trademark and began enumerating “good things” that had happened in recent months.

Speaking about Hurricane Katrina, he said many terrible things had occurred, but “also a lot of good things happened there.” He spoke of “incredible generosity” and of “people opening their homes” or giving money to help those in need. He also spoke of the “millions of people” who protested the war in Iraq.

While many people — myself included — often feel overwhelmed by the uphill battles they face, Tutu found a way to remain true to his positive outlook on the world and his drive to improve the world we live in. He even dismissed the allegation that “young people” did not care enough about their society as “baloney.” According to him, “some of the most idealistic are young people.” In our own little corner of the world at USF, such reflection and eventual reconciliation is desperately needed as well.

Nahla Al-Arian, wife of former USF professor Sami Al-Arian, seemed to also adhere to — or at least hope for — such reconciliation when I spoke to her in one of the cavernous hallways of the Sun Dome on Tuesday night. Mrs. Al-Arian, while quiet, seemed surprisingly upbeat even though members of her family had been put through the justice system without regard for the principle “innocent until proven guilty.”
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A memorable holiday

This column was written on Jan. 2 but was published in today’s Welcome Back edition of The Oracle.

Most students have set rituals and timetables throughout the year. The very nature of taking classes is one reason for a timetable, and the daily rat race of jobs, errands and trying to keep one’s house presentable (at least to the eyes of peers) makes up for the remainder of these rituals. The winter break, though, is one of those few exceptions when nearly all students leave campus to return home or try to spend some time with good friends and break out of their monotonous routine.

This winter break, I was especially lucky. My wife got vacation time over Christmas, and for the first time in two years, she joined me on my trek to Germany to visit family and friends I hadn’t seen in months, and in some cases, years.
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What I want for Christmas

Dear Santa,
I have everything I could want: a loving wife, a cat, a home and an iPod. Nevertheless, I am going to ask for some items that I think would be neat to have, even though they are not really just for me.

One errand I’d like you to run concerns all those being held illegally or tortured on behalf of the citizens of America. How about bringing them some chocolate along with the message that not all inhabitants of America are cruel? Most of us don’t condone throwing blood on prisoners, telling them it’s menstrual blood, or terrifying them with dogs, mock executions and the like. I think we can all agree that ripping out people’s finger- and toenails should never be done to anyone.

If that’s too much to ask, could you at least make sure the truth about those despicable acts gets out? That would usually be the job of the mainstream press, I know, but those guys seem to be busy being intimidated and writing books about how great they are.

I’d also like you to drop by the White House. I know this is usually not your line of work, but I hear both the Ghost of Christmas Future and the Ghost of Christmas Past are busy. The Ghost of Christmas Present is available; he’s just too whiny.

For far too long, the president has been cooped up in his bubble with no one telling him the true nature of the economy, the war and most other things a president should be truthfully informed about. Past advisers who spoke bluntly to him were fired, the ones he has right now are too scared to do so and any new adviser that has been hired as of late is informed to tell him only what he wants to hear. No wonder his notions are a bit messed up.
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No need to ‘rewrite history’

The White House has begun firing back at critics. Vice President Dick Cheney’s attempt last week (full text) to divert attention from his own deception by labeling his critics as liars was a desperate move in that direction. His statement that the opponents of the war in Iraq are the ones trying to “rewrite history” is asinine, but it’s not surprising the administration is trying this route, as it has gotten away with much worse in the past.

Cheney has been instrumental in laying the political groundwork for the war in Iraq since the beginning. He did so, for example, by tying Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq to the attacks of Sept. 11, a connection that simply isn’t there.

Whenever Iraq was mentioned, images of the burning Twin Towers were also invoked. The administration was so successful at tying the two together that a Washington Post poll conducted in September 2003 showed 69 percent of the American public believed there was a link between Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks. This was a direct result of the administration doing everything it could to exploit a national tragedy to further its own policy.

Then the 9/11 Commission categorically stated there was no connection between the attacks of Sept. 11 and Iraq. Cheney responded, “I never said that” and accused the press of putting words in his mouth. How’s that for rewriting history?

Key administration officials also misconstrued further facts to rally support for war. Cheney said on Aug. 26, 2002, in a speech for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”

There was more than “doubt.” Some of the ones who were suddenly the most adamant about the fact that Iraq had WMDs and that military action needed to take out the “imminent threat” previously had as vocally professed otherwise.

In 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell said, “We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction (and) is determined to make more.” But only two years prior, Powell had adamantly professed there was no need for a war with Iraq and said Saddam had “not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq.”

What changed in the two years that passed between Powell’s two contradictory statements was not intelligence, it was policy. The administration was suddenly hell-bent on taking out Saddam and was not prepared to let something as small as the truth stand in its way.
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Bush in worse position than Nixon during Watergate

I’ve always wondered what it must have been like to watch the Watergate scandal unfold. Now, as it looks as though a similar fate may be store for President George W. Bush, it turns out I was flat out wrong about how I presumed it would feel.

The Watergate scandal was already in full swing in the summer of 1973, yet Nixon’s approval rating was at 39 percent, higher than Bush’s latest numbers. Polls by both FOX News and Newsweek magazine saw President Bush score an abysmal 36 percent this weekend, even though Bush managed to pull off an election campaign in 2004 that was squarely built on his perceived leadership skills.

By July 1973, former Nixon aides G. Gordon Liddy and James W. McCord had been convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping in the Watergate incident. Three other White House staffers had resigned, and the White House counsel had been fired.

The scandal was front and center in the nation’s consciousness, yet Nixon’s numbers held steadier than Bush’s. One can only imagine what will happen to Bush’s numbers when the investigation gains more traction in the public’s awareness, let alone when other national crises arise.

On Friday, Bush felt compelled to hold a speech that was aimed at quelling questions concerning the way in which the war in Iraq was started. Bush said it was “deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how the war began” and those that said he had manipulated intelligence engaged in “revisionism.”

Coming from an administration that changed the reasoning behind the war more times than I switched majors, this was less than believable. Nevertheless, it was an attempt to persuade the nation that increasingly sees the war in Iraq as both pointless and lost that he had done the right thing.

In November 1973, Nixon stood in — of all places — Walt Disney World and told the nation, “I am not a crook.” Bush’s speech on Friday tried to do this without coming out and saying it.
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Avoiding the tough calls doesn’t solve the problem

The British government is engaged in a discussion that the U.S. government has never engaged in: How far it is willing to curtail civil rights in the face of looming terrorist threats? Four years after the attacks of Sept. 11, such an open discussion has yet to occur in the United States.

In the aftermath of last summer’s suicide bomber attacks on London’s public transportation system, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour Party called for many sweeping changes.

Most controversial was a change that would have allowed the government to imprison individuals for up to 90 days without being charged with a crime. Such a detainment would also likely extort false confessions and undermine efforts to gather solid intelligence rather than help them.

While Blair is still adamant that such changes would be for the better, he has bowed to increasing political and public pressure and is no longer insisting on the extension.

The main reason this even occurred is that laws have to be publicly discussed in Britain. Each bill must be read three times in both houses of parliament, where it is open to debate. Once this hurdle is passed, a committee goes over every single line in the bill to ensure that it is not only succinct and definitive, but also understandable by the average citizen. Only then can a bill be written into law.

Let’s think back about four years. The attacks of Sept. 11 sent the United States reeling. In the first few days after the attack, the nation was in a state of shock and unsure how to respond. The Republican Party quickly introduced the PATRIOT Act, a bill that nobody in Congress truly understood at the time and most still don’t.
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The scandal that wouldn’t die

The investigation surrounding the outing of a CIA official is far from over, even after the vice president’s chief of staff was indicted and forced to resign Friday. The premise, that Valerie Plame’s name was leaked to the press to hurt her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, not only made sense, but it also fits in with tactics the Bush administration had used before: If you can’t dispute the veracity of an opponent’s claims, utterly destroy their credibility by any means necessary.

Interestingly enough, the president himself declared his chief adviser Karl Rove to be the “architect” of his re-election and political strategy when he publicly accepted John Kerry’s concession earlier this year. But even before this, Rove’s use of character assassination-tactics was hardly a secret. Now Rove still remains under investigation for involvement in the leak.

In the past, such tactics worked quite well for Bush, at least in short-term goals. Bush’s primary campaign in 2000 did not completely manage to convince the public that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a decorated war hero and prisoner of war in Vietnam, was unpatriotic. But it worked well enough to sow a deep-rooted seed of mistrust in most voters’ minds, and Bush emerged victorious. To top it, the Bush campaign under Rove’s leadership managed to muddy the waters in the disputed 2000 presidential election — even if Al Gore had emerged as president, he would have been unable to govern because his credibility had been all but destroyed in the process.

In 2004, the Bush team did similar things to John Kerry, attacking not his weaknesses, but those traits the public perceived as his strengths just enough to undermine his standing as war-time leader.
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Sometimes waiting pays off

An election that occurred four weeks ago is also still grabbing headlines. The question of who will emerge as new chancellor following the German general election has been settled — and it’s a woman — but the terms under which the new “grand coalition” will operate still have to be reached. The election managed to prove that democracy can be messy and take time, but it works as long as all parties involved are committed to it.

The long trek toward a new government started in May when Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s party, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), lost a regional election in Germany’s most populated state, North Rhine Westphalia (NRW).

The left-leaning SPD has always received solid support from NRW, as the area includes many industrial areas and accounts for nearly a fifth of Germany’s gross domestic product. This time, the result was disastrous for the SPD. It only garnered 37.1 percent of the vote, the party’s worst result in the area in 50 years. Unpopular economic reforms that cut social benefits to make them economically feasible were blamed. The cuts had been aimed at lowering the nation’s unemployment figures and making its budget feasible, but all fallout was directed squarely at Schröder’s leadership and voters in NRW used the election to send a message.
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Torturing international relations

You’d think a self-proclaimed fan of freedom such as President George W. Bush would be onboard when it came to banning torture. But his recent threat to veto a bill that would effectively ban U.S. personnel from engaging in torture is proof that the president is trying to keep doors open that should never have been opened in the first place.

Prisoners released from the internment camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have repeatedly alleged they were mistreated. Most of the inmates of Guantanamo Bay have been held for several years without access to a lawyer and even without formally being charged. This flies in the face of the U.S. Bill of Rights, but since the camp is conveniently located away from American soil, the Bush administration argues it does not apply.

Amnesty International, the Red Cross and other human rights groups have been largely stonewalled in their attempt to corroborate reports of torture. Access to the facility is so limited that even the total number of inmates remains disputed. As of June, the number is said to be around 520.

In conjunction with the well-known pictures of inmates being mistreated in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, reports of cruel conditions or full-blown torture gain in credibility. The death of at least one “ghost,” a prisoner without documentation held by U.S. intelligence, further backs up the claim that the United States may be involved in torturing inmates in locations such as Guantanamo Bay and secret prisons in other locations.

The existence of such secret prisons and the method of handing over prisoners to foreign governments, which then do the “dirty work” on our government’s behalf, are also becoming more and more credible. One case of such “torture tourism” is Maher Arar, a 35-year-old Canadian engineer who claims to have been “apprehended” while switching planes in New York. He was then deported to Syria where he was held for 10 months and tortured. The New York Times has corroborated most of his claims, which begs the question of whether this was an isolated case.

Up to now, the Bush administration has been successful at keeping its hesitation to ban torture out of the public view. But Bush is threatening to veto a bill solely because an amendment attached to the bill would ban U.S. personnel from engaging in practices deemed “cruel, inhumane or degrading.”

The bill’s amendment was authored under the leadership of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, and was passed by an impressive 90-9 vote in the Senate despite Bush’s veto threat.
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The emperor’s new pants are on fire

President George W. Bush not only extended his stay at the White House during the general election last year, his party also managed to increase its majority hold in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. It was an impressive feat, and the administration must have thought it could do no wrong with such an overwhelming hold on the nation’s power centers. But following a number of indictments, ongoing scandals and the already disastrous yet quickly deteriorating situation in Iraq, the GOP has successfully done what Democrats couldn’t manage in last year’s election: illustrate the shortcomings ranging from trivial to catastrophic within the administration.

The situation in Iraq, for example, continues to spin out of control. It’s been doing so ever since Bush prematurely proclaimed “mission accomplished” in May 2003, but during the election the GOP successfully convinced the public the “liberal media” was focusing on the bad news while ignoring progress being made.

Now with the death toll of American soldiers alone passing 1,900 with no end in sight, the president himself recently warned tough times lay ahead. This was little more than an acknowledgment of what his military advisers had been saying for months.

The public is now more aware of the fact that it was the president’s own insistence that put American soldiers in Iraq. It is also increasingly aware that while Bush told his opponent Al Gore during a televised debate in 2000 he did not believe U.S. forces should engage in “nation building” unless a clear exit strategy was laid out in advance, his insistence to “stay the course” and lack of an exit strategy continue to make American troops a target.

In the 2000 election Bush vowed to “restore honor” to the White House, yet it is becoming clearer by the day that a top adviser within the White House leaked the identity of a CIA operative in order to undermine the credibility of a political opponent.

Federal auditors also ruled Friday it was illegal for Bush aides to pay “journalists” for favorable coverage, a tactic the administration repeatedly employed while attempting to drum up support for its policies.

In 1992 and 1994, the call to restore order to what was publicly perceived as a dysfunctional government helped Republicans take power of the House and Senate for the first time in decades. Democrats now have the potential to take a similar route to regain power in next year’s midterm elections.
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Cover-up of 9/11 seen again with Katrina

Four years ago I felt both incredulous and outraged as I watched the events of Sept. 11 unfold. As details slowly emerged, the feelings changed to anger about the colossal failure that occurred in both low-ranking administrations and in the highest offices of the government. The political cover-up that followed made it doubtful that the government had learned from experience, as high-ranking officials were not prepared to accept even the most remote of responsibilities.

Like many others, I hoped I would never feel that way again; yet today I feel the same about Hurricane Katrina.

Prior to the attacks of Sept. 11, intelligence surrounding al-Qaida suggested the group was planning something big. When George W. Bush took office in January 2001, the outgoing Clinton administration told the president that Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network were America’s biggest threat. The Bush administration brushed the concerns aside.

Over nine months, counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke attempted to get the ear of the president to convince him of the impending attack. Clarke had also served under presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton and was now advising George W. Bush. His credentials were more than credible, yet then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice did not even schedule a meeting with him until well into the year. The meeting was to occur on Sept. 12, 2001.
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Above it all

President George W. Bush has been criticized for being inaccessible and on vacation. The destruction brought to New Orleans and large stretches of the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina earlier this week proved once again that such criticism is more than justified.

Part of New Orleans lies 20 feet below sea level, a fact that was widely broadcast to persuade residents of the city to evacuate. The worst-case scenario spun on television news shows and in various newspaper reports was that the levee system protecting the city would fail, which is precisely what happened.

Even if the president had not paid attention to the media coverage, he cannot deny having knowledge of this fact. He was responsible for cuts to the funding for the levee and pump system in 2003. The money allotted for such projects — so the reasoning at the time — was needed for the so-called War on Terror and in Iraq.

The destruction in New Orleans may not be a direct result of the president’s actions, but the cut in funding for such an essential system hardly improved an already-dire situation.

Even though he must have known that the looming situation was not only going to be bad but could also quickly turn catastrophic, Bush continued a five-week vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. One of the few photos released of the president showed him lounging in front of a TV set while parts of the nation were being pummeled by torrential rain and torn to shreds by winds exceeding 150 mph — hardly an image that inspired trust in his leadership skills.
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U.S. could learn from the British

Last week’s attacks on London have been repeatedly called Britain’s equivalent of the attacks of Sept. 11, a comparison that should not be made. Not only does Britain have decades of terrorism experiences prior to Sept. 11, the way in which last week’s situation was handled by the British also showed that American officials and the American media still have a lot to learn.

Clearly the “first responders” that were involved in Sept. 11 rescue missions did an amazing job bringing as many victims to safety as humanly possible, often at the cost of the rescuers’ own lives. This is in no way an attempt to criticize these individuals.

But looking objectively at how the flow of information and management of the situation went in both instances, the way in which the situation was handled in London shows monumental improvements over the response Sept. 11 caused, and Americans should learn from the example.
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