:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 10.03.2003 ::
:: RE Dubya ::
From The New York Times:
Poll Shows Drop in Confidence on Bush Skill in Handling Crises
By TODD S. PURDUM and JANET ELDER
The public's confidence in President Bush's ability to deal wisely with an international crisis has slid sharply over the past five months, the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll has found. And a clear majority are also uneasy about his ability to make the right decisions on the nation's economy.
Over all, the poll found, Americans are for the first time more critical than not of Mr. Bush's ability to handle both foreign and domestic problems, and a majority say the president does not share their priorities. Thirteen months before the 2004 election, a solid majority of Americans say the country is seriously on the wrong track, a classic danger sign for incumbents, and only about half of Americans approve of Mr. Bush's overall job performance. That is roughly the same as when Mr. Bush took office after the razor-close 2000 election.
ALSO from the NYT:
NEWS ANALYSIS: ASSESSMENT
A Reckoning: Iraqi Arms Report Poses Political Test for Bush
By DAVID E. SANGER
The preliminary report delivered on Thursday by the chief arms inspector in Iraq forces the Bush administration to come face to face with this reality: that Saddam Hussein's armory appears to have been stuffed with precursors, potential weapons and bluffs, but that nothing found so far backs up administration claims that Mr. Hussein posed an imminent threat to the world.
While the report by the arms inspector, David Kay, is not final, and while the inspectors may yet come upon a cache of weapons, the preliminary findings support the claims of critics, including Democratic candidates, that Mr. Bush used dubious intelligence to justify his decision to go to war. At worst, these critics say, the usual caveats and cautions of the underlying intelligence reports were ignored in the rush to war.
Without question, the gap between what Mr. Bush said existed in Iraq and what Dr. Kay has failed to find will be argued about again and again as Americans discuss whether it was right to go into Iraq in the first place, and debate what to do now.
posted by me
:: 9:31:00 AM [+] ::
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