Frank Rich New York Times: The Terrorist Barrak Obama

The New York Times
October 12, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama
By FRANK RICH

IF you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about Barack Obama: a crazy person might take a shot at him.

Some voters told reporters that they didn’t want Obama to run, let alone win, should his very presence unleash the demons who have stalked America from Lincoln to King. After consultation with Congress, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, gave Obama a Secret Service detail earlier than any presidential candidate in our history — in May 2007, some eight months before the first Democratic primaries.

The New York Times
October 12, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama
By FRANK RICH

IF you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about Barack Obama: a crazy person might take a shot at him.

Some voters told reporters that they didn’t want Obama to run, let alone win, should his very presence unleash the demons who have stalked America from Lincoln to King. After consultation with Congress, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, gave Obama a Secret Service detail earlier than any presidential candidate in our history — in May 2007, some eight months before the first Democratic primaries.

“I’ve got the best protection in the world, so stop worrying,” Obama reassured his supporters. Eventually the country got conditioned to his appearing in large arenas without incident (though I confess that the first loud burst of fireworks at the end of his convention stadium speech gave me a start). In America, nothing does succeed like success. The fear receded.

Until now. At McCain-Palin rallies, the raucous and insistent cries of “Treason!” and “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” and “Off with his head!” as well as the uninhibited slinging of racial epithets, are actually something new in a campaign that has seen almost every conceivable twist. They are alarms. Doing nothing is not an option.

All’s fair in politics. John McCain and Sarah Palin have every right to bring up William Ayers, even if his connection to Obama is minor, even if Ayers’s Weather Underground history dates back to Obama’s childhood, even if establishment Republicans and Democrats alike have collaborated with the present-day Ayers in educational reform. But it’s not just the old Joe McCarthyesque guilt-by-association game, however spurious, that’s going on here. Don’t for an instant believe the many mindlessly “even-handed” journalists who keep saying that the McCain campaign’s use of Ayers is the moral or political equivalent of the Obama campaign’s hammering on Charles Keating.

What makes them different, and what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.” He is “palling around with terrorists” (note the plural noun). Obama is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.

By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out “Terrorist!” The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. It is stoked further by the repeated invocation of Obama’s middle name by surrogates introducing McCain and Palin at these rallies. This sleight of hand at once synchronizes with the poisonous Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail blasts and shifts the brand of terrorism from Ayers’s Vietnam-era variety to the radical Islamic threats of today.

That’s a far cry from simply accusing Obama of being a guilty-by-association radical leftist. Obama is being branded as a potential killer and an accessory to past attempts at murder. “Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family” was how a McCain press release last week packaged the remembrance of a Weather Underground incident from 1970 — when Obama was 8.

We all know what punishment fits the crime of murder, or even potential murder, if the security of post-9/11 America is at stake. We all know how self-appointed “patriotic” martyrs always justify taking the law into their own hands.

Obama can hardly be held accountable for Ayers’s behavior 40 years ago, but at least McCain and Palin can try to take some responsibility for the behavior of their own supporters in 2008. What’s troubling here is not only the candidates’ loose inflammatory talk but also their refusal to step in promptly and strongly when someone responds to it with bloodthirsty threats in a crowded arena. Joe Biden had it exactly right when he expressed concern last week that “a leading American politician who might be vice president of the United States would not just stop midsentence and turn and condemn that.” To stay silent is to pour gas on the fires.

It wasn’t always thus with McCain. In February he loudly disassociated himself from a speaker who brayed “Barack Hussein Obama” when introducing him at a rally in Ohio. Now McCain either backpedals with tardy, pro forma expressions of respect for his opponent or lets second-tier campaign underlings release boilerplate disavowals after ugly incidents like the chilling Jim Crow-era flashback last week when a Florida sheriff ranted about “Barack Hussein Obama” at a Palin rally while in full uniform.

From the start, there have always been two separate but equal questions about race in this election. Is there still enough racism in America to prevent a black man from being elected president no matter what? And, will Republicans play the race card? The jury is out on the first question until Nov. 4. But we now have the unambiguous answer to the second: Yes.

McCain, who is no racist, turned to this desperate strategy only as Obama started to pull ahead. The tone was set at the Republican convention, with Rudy Giuliani’s mocking dismissal of Obama as an “only in America” affirmative-action baby. We also learned then that the McCain campaign had recruited as a Palin handler none other than Tucker Eskew, the South Carolina consultant who had worked for George W. Bush in the notorious 2000 G.O.P. primary battle where the McCains and their adopted Bangladeshi daughter were slimed by vicious racist rumors.

No less disconcerting was a still-unexplained passage of Palin’s convention speech: Her use of an unattributed quote praising small-town America (as opposed to, say, Chicago and its community organizers) from Westbrook Pegler, the mid-century Hearst columnist famous for his anti-Semitism, racism and violent rhetorical excess. After an assassin tried to kill F.D.R. at a Florida rally and murdered Chicago’s mayor instead in 1933, Pegler wrote that it was “regrettable that Giuseppe Zangara shot the wrong man.” In the ’60s, Pegler had a wish for Bobby Kennedy: “Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow falls.”

This is the writer who found his way into a speech by a potential vice president at a national political convention. It’s astonishing there’s been no demand for a public accounting from the McCain campaign. Imagine if Obama had quoted a Black Panther or Louis Farrakhan — or William Ayers — in Denver.

The operatives who would have Palin quote Pegler have been at it ever since. A key indicator came two weeks after the convention, when the McCain campaign ran its first ad tying Obama to the mortgage giant Fannie Mae. Rather than make its case by using a legitimate link between Fannie and Obama (or other Democratic leaders), the McCain forces chose a former Fannie executive who had no real tie to Obama or his campaign but did have a black face that could dominate the ad’s visuals.

There are no black faces high in the McCain hierarchy to object to these tactics. There hasn’t been a single black Republican governor, senator or House member in six years. This is a campaign where Palin can repeatedly declare that Alaska is “a microcosm of America” without anyone even wondering how that might be so for a state whose tiny black and Hispanic populations are each roughly one-third the national average. There are indeed so few people of color at McCain events that a black senior writer from The Tallahassee Democrat was mistakenly ejected by the Secret Service from a campaign rally in Panama City in August, even though he was standing with other reporters and showed his credentials. His only apparent infraction was to look glaringly out of place.

Could the old racial politics still be determinative? I’ve long been skeptical of the incessant press prognostications (and liberal panic) that this election will be decided by racist white men in the Rust Belt. Now even the dimmest bloviators have figured out that Americans are riveted by the color green, not black — as in money, not energy. Voters are looking for a leader who might help rescue them, not a reckless gambler whose lurching responses to the economic meltdown (a campaign “suspension,” a mortgage-buyout stunt that changes daily) are as unhinged as his wanderings around the debate stage.

To see how fast the tide is moving, just look at North Carolina. On July 4 this year — the day that the godfather of modern G.O.P. racial politics, Jesse Helms, died — The Charlotte Observer reported that strategists of both parties agreed Obama’s chances to win the state fell “between slim and none.” Today, as Charlotte reels from the implosion of Wachovia, the McCain-Obama race is a dead heat in North Carolina and Helms’s Republican successor in the Senate, Elizabeth Dole, is looking like a goner.

But we’re not at Election Day yet, and if voters are to have their final say, both America and Obama have to get there safely. The McCain campaign has crossed the line between tough negative campaigning and inciting vigilantism, and each day the mob howls louder. The onus is on the man who says he puts his country first to call off the dogs, pit bulls and otherwise.

Nonsense........... A bit of Fry and Laurie, Jeff Bonham & Peanuts

Privatization of the Police force:


Marjories Fall:


Achmed the dead Terrorist:


Drugs....In the strip club and "The Gayman"

A bit of Fry and Laurie: Safer sex .... (lawyers rule the world!)

Dire Times - so have a laugh! :-D

New York Times: Thomas L. Friedmann on Paying Taxes

The New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist
Palin’s Kind of Patriotism
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: October 7, 2008

Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”


The New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist
Palin’s Kind of Patriotism
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: October 7, 2008

Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”

What an awful statement. Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.

I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.

Sorry, I grew up in a very middle-class family in a very middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, and my parents taught me that paying taxes, while certainly no fun, was how we paid for the police and the Army, our public universities and local schools, scientific research and Medicare for the elderly. No one said it better than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: “I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.”

I can understand someone saying that the government has no business bailing out the financial system, but I can’t understand someone arguing that we should do that but not pay for it with taxes. I can understand someone saying we have no business in Iraq, but I can’t understand someone who advocates staying in Iraq until “victory” declaring that paying taxes to fund that is not patriotic.

How in the world can conservative commentators write with a straight face that this woman should be vice president of the United States? Do these people understand what serious trouble our country is in right now?

We are in the middle of an economic perfect storm, and we don’t know how much worse it’s going to get. People all over the world are hoarding cash, and no bank feels that it can fully trust anyone it is doing business with anywhere in the world. Did you notice that the government of Iceland just seized the country’s second-largest bank and today is begging Russia for a $5 billion loan to stave off “national bankruptcy.” What does that say? It tells you that financial globalization has gone so much farther and faster than regulatory institutions could govern it. Our crisis could bankrupt Iceland! Who knew?

And we have not yet even felt the full economic brunt here. I fear we may be at that moment just before the tsunami hits — when the birds take flight and the insects stop chirping because their acute senses can feel what is coming before humans can. At this moment, only good governance can save us. I am not sure that this crisis will end without every government in every major economy guaranteeing the creditworthiness of every financial institution it regulates. That may be the only way to get lending going again. Organizing something that big and complex will take some really smart governance and seasoned leadership.

Whether or not I agree with John McCain, he is of presidential timber. But putting the country in the position where a total novice like Sarah Palin could be asked to steer us through possibly the most serious economic crisis of our lives is flat out reckless. It is the opposite of conservative.

And please don’t tell me she will hire smart advisers. What happens when her two smartest advisers disagree?

And please also don’t tell me she is an “energy expert.” She is an energy expert exactly the same way the king of Saudi Arabia is an energy expert — by accident of residence. Palin happens to be governor of the Saudi Arabia of America — Alaska — and the only energy expertise she has is the same as the king of Saudi Arabia’s. It’s about how the windfall profits from the oil in their respective kingdoms should be divided between the oil companies and the people.

At least the king of Saudi Arabia, in advocating “drill baby drill,” is serving his country’s interests — by prolonging America’s dependence on oil. My problem with Palin is that she is also serving his country’s interests — by prolonging America’s dependence on oil. That’s not patriotic. Patriotic is offering a plan to build our economy — not by tax cuts or punching more holes in the ground, but by empowering more Americans to work in productive and innovative jobs. If Palin has that kind of a plan, I haven’t heard it.

Jon Stewart on the US election and Bill Maher on his movie "Religulous"

Jon Steward and The Daily Show! Real News!
The Daily Show from Sept. 30th 2008
enjoy!
:-)
(ignore the ads, and click on "Verweigern" when you are asked to give the flash player more memory.)

Paul Krugmann in the NYT on health care

The New York Times
October 6, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Health Care Destruction
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Sarah Palin ended her debate performance last Thursday with a slightly garbled quote from Ronald Reagan about how, if we aren’t vigilant, we’ll end up “telling our children and our children’s children” about the days when America was free. It was a revealing choice.


The New York Times
October 6, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Health Care Destruction
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Sarah Palin ended her debate performance last Thursday with a slightly garbled quote from Ronald Reagan about how, if we aren’t vigilant, we’ll end up “telling our children and our children’s children” about the days when America was free. It was a revealing choice.

You see, when Reagan said this he wasn’t warning about Soviet aggression. He was warning against legislation that would guarantee health care for older Americans — the program now known as Medicare.

Conservative Republicans still hate Medicare, and would kill it if they could — in fact, they tried to gut it during the Clinton years (that’s what the 1995 shutdown of the government was all about). But so far they haven’t been able to pull that off.

So John McCain wants to destroy the health insurance of nonelderly Americans instead.

Most Americans under 65 currently get health insurance through their employers. That’s largely because the tax code favors such insurance: your employer’s contribution to insurance premiums isn’t considered taxable income, as long as the employer’s health plan follows certain rules. In particular, the same plan has to be available to all employees, regardless of the size of their paycheck or the state of their health.

This system does a fairly effective job of protecting those it reaches, but it leaves many Americans out in the cold. Workers whose employers don’t offer coverage are forced to seek individual health insurance, often in vain. For one thing, insurance companies offering “nongroup” coverage generally refuse to cover anyone with a pre-existing medical condition. And individual insurance is very expensive, because insurers spend large sums weeding out “high-risk” applicants — that is, anyone who seems likely to actually need the insurance.

So what should be done? Barack Obama offers incremental reform: regulation of insurers to prevent discrimination against the less healthy, subsidies to help lower-income families buy insurance, and public insurance plans that compete with the private sector. His plan falls short of universal coverage, but it would sharply reduce the number of uninsured.

Mr. McCain, on the other hand, wants to blow up the current system, by eliminating the tax break for employer-provided insurance. And he doesn’t offer a workable alternative.

Without the tax break, many employers would drop their current health plans. Several recent nonpartisan studies estimate that under the McCain plan around 20 million Americans currently covered by their employers would lose their health insurance.

As compensation, the McCain plan would give people a tax credit — $2,500 for an individual, $5,000 for a family — that could be used to buy health insurance in the individual market. At the same time, Mr. McCain would deregulate insurance, leaving insurance companies free to deny coverage to those with health problems — and his proposal for a “high-risk pool” for hard cases would provide little help.

So what would happen?

The good news, such as it is, is that more people would buy individual insurance. Indeed, the total number of uninsured Americans might decline marginally under the McCain plan — although many more Americans would be without insurance than under the Obama plan.

But the people gaining insurance would be those who need it least: relatively healthy Americans with high incomes. Why? Because insurance companies want to cover only healthy people, and even among the healthy only those able to pay a lot in addition to their tax credit would be able to afford coverage (remember, it’s a $5,000 credit, but the average family policy actually costs more than $12,000).

Meanwhile, the people losing insurance would be those who need it most: lower-income workers who wouldn’t be able to afford individual insurance even with the tax credit, and Americans with health problems whom insurance companies won’t cover.

And in the process of comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted, the McCain plan would also lead to a huge, expensive increase in bureaucracy: insurers selling individual health plans spend 29 percent of the premiums they receive on administration, largely because they employ so many people to screen applicants. This compares with costs of 12 percent for group plans and just 3 percent for Medicare.

In short, the McCain plan makes no sense at all, unless you have faith that the magic of the marketplace can solve all problems. And Mr. McCain does: a much-quoted article published under his name declares that “Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.”

I agree: the McCain plan would do for health care what deregulation has done for banking. And I’m terrified.

Stephen Colbert on: Faith in the free market!

Type rest of the post here

Financial Crisis: Paul Krugmann (NYT) : Cash for Trash

The New York Times
September 22, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Cash for Trash
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Some skeptics are calling Henry Paulson’s $700 billion rescue plan for the U.S. financial system “cash for trash.” Others are calling the proposed legislation the Authorization for Use of Financial Force, after the Authorization for Use of Military Force, the infamous bill that gave the Bush administration the green light to invade Iraq.

The New York Times
September 22, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Cash for Trash
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Some skeptics are calling Henry Paulson’s $700 billion rescue plan for the U.S. financial system “cash for trash.” Others are calling the proposed legislation the Authorization for Use of Financial Force, after the Authorization for Use of Military Force, the infamous bill that gave the Bush administration the green light to invade Iraq.

There’s justice in the gibes. Everyone agrees that something major must be done. But Mr. Paulson is demanding extraordinary power for himself — and for his successor — to deploy taxpayers’ money on behalf of a plan that, as far as I can see, doesn’t make sense.

Some are saying that we should simply trust Mr. Paulson, because he’s a smart guy who knows what he’s doing. But that’s only half true: he is a smart guy, but what, exactly, in the experience of the past year and a half — a period during which Mr. Paulson repeatedly declared the financial crisis “contained,” and then offered a series of unsuccessful fixes — justifies the belief that he knows what he’s doing? He’s making it up as he goes along, just like the rest of us.

So let’s try to think this through for ourselves. I have a four-step view of the financial crisis:

1. The bursting of the housing bubble has led to a surge in defaults and foreclosures, which in turn has led to a plunge in the prices of mortgage-backed securities — assets whose value ultimately comes from mortgage payments.

2. These financial losses have left many financial institutions with too little capital — too few assets compared with their debt. This problem is especially severe because everyone took on so much debt during the bubble years.

3. Because financial institutions have too little capital relative to their debt, they haven’t been able or willing to provide the credit the economy needs.

4. Financial institutions have been trying to pay down their debt by selling assets, including those mortgage-backed securities, but this drives asset prices down and makes their financial position even worse. This vicious circle is what some call the “paradox of deleveraging.”

The Paulson plan calls for the federal government to buy up $700 billion worth of troubled assets, mainly mortgage-backed securities. How does this resolve the crisis?

Well, it might — might — break the vicious circle of deleveraging, step 4 in my capsule description. Even that isn’t clear: the prices of many assets, not just those the Treasury proposes to buy, are under pressure. And even if the vicious circle is limited, the financial system will still be crippled by inadequate capital.

Or rather, it will be crippled by inadequate capital unless the federal government hugely overpays for the assets it buys, giving financial firms — and their stockholders and executives — a giant windfall at taxpayer expense. Did I mention that I’m not happy with this plan?

The logic of the crisis seems to call for an intervention, not at step 4, but at step 2: the financial system needs more capital. And if the government is going to provide capital to financial firms, it should get what people who provide capital are entitled to — a share in ownership, so that all the gains if the rescue plan works don’t go to the people who made the mess in the first place.

That’s what happened in the savings and loan crisis: the feds took over ownership of the bad banks, not just their bad assets. It’s also what happened with Fannie and Freddie. (And by the way, that rescue has done what it was supposed to. Mortgage interest rates have come down sharply since the federal takeover.)

But Mr. Paulson insists that he wants a “clean” plan. “Clean,” in this context, means a taxpayer-financed bailout with no strings attached — no quid pro quo on the part of those being bailed out. Why is that a good thing? Add to this the fact that Mr. Paulson is also demanding dictatorial authority, plus immunity from review “by any court of law or any administrative agency,” and this adds up to an unacceptable proposal.

I’m aware that Congress is under enormous pressure to agree to the Paulson plan in the next few days, with at most a few modifications that make it slightly less bad. Basically, after having spent a year and a half telling everyone that things were under control, the Bush administration says that the sky is falling, and that to save the world we have to do exactly what it says now now now.

But I’d urge Congress to pause for a minute, take a deep breath, and try to seriously rework the structure of the plan, making it a plan that addresses the real problem. Don’t let yourself be railroaded — if this plan goes through in anything like its current form, we’ll all be very sorry in the not-too-distant future.

US Elections: Frank Rich (New York Times) on McCain and Truthiness

The New York Times
September 21, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Truthiness Stages a Comeback
By FRANK RICH

NOT until 2004 could the 9/11 commission at last reveal the title of the intelligence briefing President Bush ignored on Aug. 6, 2001, in Crawford: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” No wonder John McCain called for a new “9/11 commission” to “get to the bottom” of 9/14, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers set off another kind of blood bath in Lower Manhattan. Put a slo-mo Beltway panel in charge, and Election Day will be ancient history before we get to the bottom of just how little he and the president did to defend America against a devastating new threat on their watch.

The New York Times
September 21, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Truthiness Stages a Comeback
By FRANK RICH

NOT until 2004 could the 9/11 commission at last reveal the title of the intelligence briefing President Bush ignored on Aug. 6, 2001, in Crawford: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” No wonder John McCain called for a new “9/11 commission” to “get to the bottom” of 9/14, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers set off another kind of blood bath in Lower Manhattan. Put a slo-mo Beltway panel in charge, and Election Day will be ancient history before we get to the bottom of just how little he and the president did to defend America against a devastating new threat on their watch.

For better or worse, the candidacy of Barack Obama, a senator-come-lately, must be evaluated on his judgment, ideas and potential to lead. McCain, by contrast, has been chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, where he claims to have overseen “every part of our economy.” He didn’t, thank heavens, but he does have a long and relevant economic record that begins with the Keating Five scandal of 1989 and extends to this campaign, where his fiscal policies bear the fingerprints of Phil Gramm and Carly Fiorina. It’s not the résumé that a presidential candidate wants to advertise as America faces its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. That’s why the main thrust of the McCain campaign has been to cover up his history of economic malpractice.

McCain has largely pulled it off so far, under the guidance of Steve Schmidt, a Karl Rove protégé. A Rovian political strategy by definition means all slime, all the time. But the more crucial Rove game plan is to envelop the entire presidential race in a thick fog of truthiness. All campaigns, Obama’s included, engage in false attacks. But McCain, Sarah Palin and their surrogates keep repeating the same lies over and over not just to smear their opponents and not just to mask their own record. Their larger aim is to construct a bogus alternative reality so relentless it can overwhelm any haphazard journalistic stabs at puncturing it.

When a McCain spokesman told Politico a week ago that “we’re not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say” about the campaign’s incessant fictions, he was channeling a famous Bush dictum of 2003: “Somehow you just got to go over the heads of the filter.” In Bush’s case, the lies lobbed over the heads of the press were to sell the war in Iraq. That propaganda blitz, devised by a secret White House Iraq Group that included Rove, was a triumph. In mere months, Americans came to believe that Saddam Hussein had aided the 9/11 attacks and even that Iraqis were among the hijackers. A largely cowed press failed to set the record straight.

Just as the Bushies once flogged uranium from Africa, so Palin ceaselessly repeats her discredited claim that she said “no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. Nothing is too small or sacred for the McCain campaign to lie about. It was even caught (by The Christian Science Monitor) peddling an imaginary encounter between Cindy McCain and Mother Teresa when McCain was adopting her daughter in Bangladesh.

If you doubt that the big lies are sticking, look at the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll. Half of voters now believe in the daily McCain refrain that Obama will raise their taxes. In fact, Obama proposes raising taxes only on the 1.9 percent of households that make more than $250,000 a year and cutting them for nearly everyone else.

You know the press is impotent at unmasking this truthiness when the hardest-hitting interrogation McCain has yet faced on television came on “The View.” Barbara Walters and Joy Behar called him on several falsehoods, including his endlessly repeated fantasy that Palin opposed earmarks for Alaska. Behar used the word “lies” to his face. The McCains are so used to deference from “the filter” that Cindy McCain later complained that “The View” picked “our bones clean.” In our news culture, Behar, a stand-up comic by profession, looms as the new Edward R. Murrow.

Network news, with its dwindling handful of investigative reporters, has barely mentioned, let alone advanced, major new print revelations about Cindy McCain’s drug-addiction history (in The Washington Post) and the rampant cronyism and secrecy in Palin’s governance of Alaska (in last Sunday’s New York Times). At least the networks repeatedly fact-check the low-hanging fruit among the countless Palin lies, but John McCain’s past usually remains off limits.

That’s strange since the indisputable historical antecedent for our current crisis is the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal of the go-go 1980s. When Charles Keating’s bank went belly up because of risky, unregulated investments, it wiped out its depositors’ savings and cost taxpayers more than $3 billion. More than 1,000 other S.&L. institutions capsized nationwide.

It was ugly for the McCains. He had received more than $100,000 in Keating campaign contributions, and both McCains had repeatedly hopped on Keating’s corporate jet. Cindy McCain and her beer-magnate father had invested nearly $360,000 in a Keating shopping center a year before her husband joined four senators in inappropriate meetings with regulators charged with S.&L. oversight.

After Congressional hearings, McCain was reprimanded for “poor judgment.” He had committed no crime and had not intervened to protect Keating from ruin. Yet he, like many deregulators in his party, was guilty of bankrupt policy-making before disaster struck. He was among the sponsors of a House resolution calling for the delay of regulations intended to deter risky investments just like those that brought down Lincoln and its ilk.

Ever since, McCain has publicly thrashed himself for his mistakes back then — and boasted of the lessons he learned. He embraced campaign finance reform to rebrand himself as a “maverick.” But whatever lessons he learned are now forgotten.

For all his fiery calls last week for a Wall Street crackdown, McCain opposed the very regulations that might have helped avert the current catastrophe. In 1999, he supported a law co-authored by Gramm (and ultimately signed by Bill Clinton) that revoked the New Deal reforms intended to prevent commercial banks, insurance companies and investment banks from mingling their businesses. Equally laughable is the McCain-Palin ticket’s born-again outrage over the greed of Wall Street C.E.O.’s. When McCain’s chief financial surrogate, Fiorina, was fired as Hewlett-Packard’s chief executive after a 50 percent drop in shareholders’ value and 20,000 pink slips, she took home a package worth $42 million.

The McCain campaign canceled Fiorina’s television appearances last week after she inadvertently admitted that Palin was unqualified to run a corporation. But that doesn’t mean Fiorina is gone. Gramm, too, was ostentatiously exiled after he blamed the economic meltdown on our “nation of whiners” and “mental recession,” but he remains in the McCain loop.

The corporate jets, lobbyists and sleazes that gravitated around McCain in the Keating era have also reappeared in new incarnations. The Nation’s Web site recently unearthed a photo of the resolutely anticelebrity McCain being greeted by the con man Raffaello Follieri and his then girlfriend, the Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway, as McCain celebrated his 70th birthday on Follieri’s rented yacht in Montenegro in August 2006. It’s the perfect bookend to the old pictures of McCain in a funny hat partying with Keating in the Bahamas.

Whatever blanks are yet to be filled in on Obama, we at least know his economic plans and the known quantities who are shaping them (Lawrence Summers, Robert Rubin, Paul Volcker). McCain has reversed himself on every single economic issue this year, often within a 24-hour period, whether he’s judging the strength of the economy’s fundamentals or the wisdom of the government bailout of A.I.G. He once promised that he’d run every decision past Alan Greenspan — and even have him write a new tax code — but Greenspan has jumped ship rather than support McCain’s biggest flip-flop, his expansion of the Bush tax cuts. McCain’s official chief economic adviser is now Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who last week declared that McCain had “helped create” the BlackBerry.

But Holtz-Eakin’s most telling statement was about McCain’s economic plans — namely, that the details are irrelevant. “I don’t think it’s imperative at this moment to write down what the plan should be,” he said. “The real issue here is a leadership issue.” This, too, is a Rove-Bush replay. We want a tough guy who will “fix” things with his own two hands — let’s take out the S.E.C. chairman! — instead of wimpy Frenchified Democrats who just “talk.” The fine print of policy is superfluous if there’s a quick-draw decider in the White House.

The twin-pronged strategy of truculence and propaganda that sold Bush and his war could yet work for McCain. Even now his campaign has kept the “filter” from learning the very basics about his fitness to serve as president — his finances and his health. The McCain multihousehold’s multimillion-dollar mother lode is buried in Cindy McCain’s still-unreleased complete tax returns. John McCain’s full medical records, our sole index to the odds of an imminent Palin presidency, also remain locked away. The McCain campaign instead invited 20 chosen reporters to speed-read through 1,173 pages of medical history for a mere three hours on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. No photocopying was permitted.

This is the same tactic of selective document release that the Bush White House used to bamboozle Congress and the press about Saddam’s nonexistent W.M.D. As truthiness repeats itself, so may history, and not as farce.

«Die Schweiz wäre später behandelt worden»

13. September 2008, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
«Die Schweiz wäre später behandelt worden»
Keine Rücksicht auf die Neutralität bei einem Vorstoss nach Westen

hr./mr. Welche Bedeutung haben die Erkenntnisse über die Kriegsplanung des Warschaupakts für die Schweiz? Zunächst ist festzustellen, dass die bisher zugänglichen Dokumente keinen Angriff auf das Territorium der Schweiz enthalten. Dies hatte ausschliesslich operative Gründe. Einerseits galt die Schweizer Armee als ernsthafter Gegner, der zumindest eine Verzögerung des konventionellen Vormarsches des Warschaupakts in Richtung Westen bedeutet hätte. Anderseits war das Schweizer Territorium für die östlichen Angriffsoperationen ohne Bedeutung.


13. September 2008, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
«Die Schweiz wäre später behandelt worden»
Keine Rücksicht auf die Neutralität bei einem Vorstoss nach Westen

hr./mr. Welche Bedeutung haben die Erkenntnisse über die Kriegsplanung des Warschaupakts für die Schweiz? Zunächst ist festzustellen, dass die bisher zugänglichen Dokumente keinen Angriff auf das Territorium der Schweiz enthalten. Dies hatte ausschliesslich operative Gründe. Einerseits galt die Schweizer Armee als ernsthafter Gegner, der zumindest eine Verzögerung des konventionellen Vormarsches des Warschaupakts in Richtung Westen bedeutet hätte. Anderseits war das Schweizer Territorium für die östlichen Angriffsoperationen ohne Bedeutung.

Österreich als Beispiel

Die Neutralität der Schweiz spielte in diesem Kontext keine Rolle. Das zeigt sich am Schicksal, das Österreich zugedacht war. Schon in den sechziger Jahren sah die sowjetische Planung vor, die Neutralität Österreichs sofort nach Kriegsbeginn durch eine schnelle Besetzung «zu sichern». Daran hat sich nie etwas geändert. Alle verfügbaren Unterlagen – aus der echten Kriegsplanung, aus Übungen, aus vielfältigem Kartenmaterial – zeigen, dass die Stossgruppe Österreich/Bayern von Ungarn aus durch Österreich nach Bayern hätte vorrücken und sich dann entlang der Schweizer Grenze nach Frankreich bewegen sollen. Ein Teil der Truppen hätte, über Oberitalien angreifend, die Schweiz im Süden passiert.

Die Schweiz also kein Angriffsziel des Warschaupakts? Formal ist diese Feststellung des einschlägigen Schweizer Buchautors Peter Veleff richtig. Und doch ist diese Aussage weitgehend irrelevant. Nach der Kriegsplanung des Warschaupakts wären allein auf dem Territorium der Bundesrepublik etwa 1000 Nuklearwaffen detoniert. Danach wäre Westeuropa konventionell überrannt worden. Die Vorstellung, dass man sich angesichts totaler sowjetischer Herrschaft in Europa und unter dem grenzüberschreitenden nuklearen Fallout – das Zitat Jaruzelskis auf die Schweiz übertragend – in der Zürcher Bahnhofstrasse in Ruhe ein Cüpli hätte gönnen können, ist nicht mehr nachvollziehbar. Die richtige und auch folgenschwere Antwort auf die Frage, was mit der Schweiz im geplanten Krieg geschehen wäre, hat Petr Lunak jüngst gegeben: «Mit der Schweiz hätte man sich später beschäftigt.» Die Schweiz war zwar kein direktes Angriffsziel, ihre spätere Vereinnahmung aber sehr wohl ein Kriegsziel. Nach einer nuklear vorbereiteten Besetzung Westeuropas durch den Warschaupakt wäre der Schweiz kaum etwas anderes übrig geblieben, als bedingungslos zu kapitulieren.

Verteidigung wäre aussichtslos gewesen

Eine aktive Verteidigung der Schweiz wäre aussichtslos gewesen – und wäre vermutlich mit einem nuklearen «Demonstrationsschlag» beantwortet worden. Der Warschaupakt hätte in diesem Krieg auf nichts und niemanden Rücksicht genommen, nicht einmal auf seine eigenen Soldaten, gingen die sowjetischen Planungen doch davon aus, dass bei Erreichen des Rheins nach spätestens einer Woche fast alle Soldaten der ersten Welle durch Verstrahlung kampfunfähig wären.

Warschaupakt plante nuklearen Überfall auf Westeuropa

13. September 2008, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Warschaupakt plante nuklearen Überfall auf Westeuropa
Pläne eines präemptiven Kriegs im Spiegel freigegebener Ostblock-Dokumente

Jahrzehntelang verfügte der Westen nur über bruchstückhafte Erkenntnisse über die Kriegsplanung des Warschaupakts. Erst jetzt beginnt sich die Lage zu ändern. Früher geheime Quellen werden zugänglich


13. September 2008, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Warschaupakt plante nuklearen Überfall auf Westeuropa
Pläne eines präemptiven Kriegs im Spiegel freigegebener Ostblock-Dokumente

Jahrzehntelang verfügte der Westen nur über bruchstückhafte Erkenntnisse über die Kriegsplanung des Warschaupakts. Erst jetzt beginnt sich die Lage zu ändern. Früher geheime Quellen werden zugänhlich

Von Hans Rühle und Michael Rühle*

Jahrzehntelang verfügte der Westen nur über bruchstückhafte Erkenntnisse über die Kriegsplanung des Warschaupakts. Zwar gelangten im Zuge der deutschen Wiedervereinigung gegen 25 000 Dokumente der Nationalen Volksarmee (NVA) der DDR in den Besitz des deutschen Verteidigungsministers, aus denen sich die operative Planung mit hoher Genauigkeit ableiten liess. Das Fehlen der konkreten Kriegspläne relativierte jedoch alle Aussagen über die militärischen Planungen des östlichen Bündnisses.

Geheime Quellen werden zugänglich

Erst jetzt beginnt sich die Lage zu ändern. Während Russland jede Einsicht in einschlägige Dokumente noch verweigert, haben andere osteuropäische Staaten Unterlagen freigegeben, aus denen sich die Kriegsplanung des Warschaupakts, die de facto eine sowjetische war, erschliessen lässt. So wartet der tschechische Historiker Petr Lunak, dessen vielbeachtetes Buch über die tschechoslowakische Kriegsplanung von 1950 bis 1990 demnächst in einer englischen Übersetzung erscheinen wird, mit zahlreichen neuen Erkenntnissen auf. Dabei ist die von Lunak korrekterweise vorgenommene Einschränkung auf tschechoslowakische Pläne richtig und wichtig, die Dokumente geben jedoch so umfassend Einblick in den militärischen Gesamtkontext, dass alles Übrige mühelos erschlossen werden kann.

Die Quellenlage dürfte sich weiter verbessern, wenn die rund 1700 Dokumente, die die polnische Regierung zur wissenschaftlichen Auswertung freigegeben hat, übersetzt sein werden. Hinzu kommt, dass die echten Kriegspläne vielfach dicht an den Übungsszenarien liegen, die dem Westen in Ostberlin in die Hände gefallen waren. Die wichtigste Erkenntnis aus diesen Dokumenten: Der Warschaupakt plante bis in die späte Hälfte der achtziger Jahre einen präventiven, regional begrenzten Nuklearkrieg in Europa. Das östliche Militärbündnis hätte den Krieg nicht konventionell eröffnet, sondern nuklear – und dies so frühzeitig, dass die eigene Aussage von einem präemptiven Verteidigungskrieg (d. h. einem Angriff in die laufenden Kriegsvorbereitungen der Nato hinein) ad absurdum geführt worden wäre.

Vorbeugender Einsatz der Kernwaffen

Auf den ersten Blick widerspricht ein solches Ergebnis allen Erwartungen. Gingen nicht alle Annahmen der Nato von einem Angriff des Warschaupakts mit konventionellen Streitkräften aus, die rasch nach Westen vorstossen, die nukleare Infrastruktur der Nato zerstören und damit die nukleare Ersteinsatzoption der Allianz unterlaufen könnten? Und war dies nicht der Grund für die wachsende Bedeutung, die man den konventionellen Kräften des Westens zubilligte?

Die Antworten auf diese Fragen ergeben sich, wenn man sich vorbehaltlos auf das militärstrategische Kalkül der Sowjetunion einlässt, wie es sich aus den Kriegsplänen ergibt. Dann wird nicht nur deutlich, dass die Strategie eines präventiven, also unprovozierten nuklearen Überraschungsangriffs aus sowjetischer Sicht durchaus rational war; man erkennt auch, dass die Ideologie die militärische Planung weitaus stärker beeinflusste, als man im Westen glaubte.

Der präemptive Krieg war schon früh in der sowjetischen Strategie etabliert. Diese sah auch die Möglichkeit vor, ihn von Anfang an auf gegnerischem Territorium auszutragen. Die entscheidende Wende in der Kriegsplanung des Warschauer Pakts vollzog sich jedoch zu Beginn der sechziger Jahre mit der nuklearen Revolution in der sowjetischen Militärstrategie. Nukleare Gefechtsfeldwaffen galten nun als die moderne Artillerie, mit der man sich den Weg durch die feindlichen Kräfte freischiessen würde. Zwar zeigte die Kubakrise von 1962, dass ein strategisch-nuklearer Schlagabtausch zwischen den Vereinigten Staaten und der Sowjetunion nicht beherrschbar wäre. Für möglich hielt man aber einen begrenzten Nuklearkrieg in Europa, der natürlich ebenfalls präemptiv hätte geführt werden müssen.

Dem Gegner zuvorkommen

Diese Überzeugung, verbunden mit dem seit Stalin für die sowjetische Militärstrategie konstitutiven Prinzip, einen künftigen Krieg durch frühzeitige Reaktion auf kriegsvorbereitende Massnahmen des Gegners selbst auszulösen, verdichtete sich zunächst zu einer konsequenten Planung eines nuklearen Präemptivkriegs. Einige Verbündete der Sowjetunion vermuteten daher schon damals, dass die Planer in Moskau ein Grossmanöver der Nato zum Anlass nehmen würden, präemptiv aktiv zu werden und auch massive Nuklearschläge gegen Ziele in Westeuropa auszulösen.

Die Grossübung «Buria» von 1961 spiegelt diesen Ansatz beispielhaft wider. Wie sich aus einem Sprechzettel des DDR-Verteidigungsministers Hoffmann ergibt, signalisierten konkrete Erkenntnisse der Aufklärung, dass der Westen den Krieg am 6. Oktober um 12 Uhr 08 beginnen würde. Dies «beantwortete» der Osten mit einem präemptiven nuklearen Erstschlag bereits um 12 Uhr 05 Uhr, also drei Minuten früher. Dabei sollten 422 nukleare Gefechtsköpfe allein auf westdeutschem Territorium detonieren.

Doch auch dabei sollte es nicht bleiben. Bereits die gut dokumentierte Planung von 1964 zeigt eindeutig den Übergang zum begrenzten präventiven Nuklearkrieg in Europa. Zwar deutet das Dokument die Möglichkeit eines westlichen Überraschungsangriffs unter Einsatz nuklearer Waffen an. Die Tatsache jedoch, dass in der konkreten Kriegsplanung davon nicht die Rede ist und auch keinerlei Folgewirkungen beschrieben werden, sagt alles. Einmal mehr zeichneten die sowjetischen Planer die westliche «Aggression» als so hoffnungslos dilettantisch, dass sie grenznah gestoppt werden konnte und keinen Einfluss auf die weitere Kriegsführungsfähigkeit des Warschaupakts hatte.

Nur so war eine Planung möglich, bei der der Warschaupakt nach Abwehr einer Aggression der Nato sofort mit allen nuklearen Angriffsmitteln und kampffähigen konventionellen Streitkräften zum nuklearen und konventionellen Grossangriff in Richtung Westeuropa übergehen konnte. Die Annahme eines westlichen Überraschungsangriffs war also nie mehr als eine schlecht erdachte Fiktion. Tatsächlich geübt wurde offensive Landkriegführung in Westeuropa.

Hätte die Nato noch reagieren können?

Der Krieg würde also mit einem nuklearen Überraschungsschlag gegen Ziele in Westeuropa beginnen, um die Nato nuklear zu entwaffnen und konventionell entscheidend zu schwächen. Der anschliessende Kriegsverlauf sah eine schnelle Westbewegung der eigenen Truppen vor, die nur erreicht werden konnte, wenn kein ernsthafter Widerstand mehr gebrochen werden musste.

Daneben aber gab es immer eine Alternative zum möglichen Kriegsverlauf. Wie Prof. Tsygichko, der zwischen 1962 und 1971 an der Erarbeitung der Kriegspläne in Moskau mitgewirkt hatte, jüngst erklärte, bestand ernsthaft die Aussicht, dass der Feind nach einem präventiven Nuklearschlag kapitulieren würde. Diese Möglichkeit bestand durchaus. Wie westdeutsche Spitzenmilitärs Anfang der sechziger Jahre in einer vertraulichen Analyse feststellten, würde nach einem massiven Nuklearschlag des Warschaupakts die Aufnahme von zusammenhängenden, geordneten Verteidigungsoperationen auf westdeutschem Territorium nicht mehr möglich sein.

Warum also sollte der Warschaupakt in einem Krieg bis zum nuklearen Ersteinsatz der Nato warten, wenn doch die Möglichkeit bestand, durch den frühzeitigen eigenen nuklearen Ersteinsatz die Nato zumindest teilweise nuklear zu entwaffnen? Warum sollte der Warschaupakt trotz konventioneller Überlegenheit überhaupt einen konventionellen Beginn des Krieges planen, wenn durch einen in jedem Falle notwendigen Kernwaffeneinsatz der Nato der Krieg ohnehin ein nuklearer werden würde?

Der Präventivkrieg bereitete keine Rechtfertigungsprobleme. Auch er war per definitionem ein Verteidigungskrieg. Natürlich würde der massive Einsatz von Nuklearwaffen Teile Westeuropas verwüsten. Doch der Sowjetunion ging es ohnehin nicht in erster Linie um die Besetzung möglichst unversehrten Territoriums, sondern zuerst und vor allem um die Zerschlagung des militärischen und politischen Gegners. Diese ideologisch geprägte Sicht erklärt zugleich, weshalb politische Entwicklungen wie die Entspannung keinen Einfluss auf die Kriegsplanung hatten. Nicht wenige hielten sie ohnehin für eine Finte des Westens.

Am 9. Tag in Lyon

Wie man sich den Krieg gegen die Nato konkret vorstellte, lässt sich zurzeit im Detail nur für den Gefechtsstreifen der durch sowjetische Verbände verstärkten tschechoslowakischen Armee illustrieren. Dieser umfasste grosse Teile Bayerns, Baden-Württemberg bis zur Schweizer Grenze und weiter beiderseits der Achse Strassburg–Epinal–Dijon–Langres–Besançon–Lyon. Für den nuklearen Überraschungsschlag waren 131 Nuklearwaffen vorgesehen, davon 41, um die zwischen der tschechoslowakischen Grenze und der Linie Würzburg–Erlangen–Regensburg–Landshut stationierten Nato-Truppen zu zerschlagen. Die restlichen 90 Nuklearwaffen hatten zwei weitere Ziele: die nuklearen Angriffsmittel und die Führungszentren der amerikanischen 7. Armee. Abhängig von der konkreten Lageentwicklung war ein weiterer Einsatz von knapp 100 Nuklearwaffen vorgesehen, um die strategischen und operativen Reserven der Nato entscheidend zu schwächen und bisher nicht erkannte nukleare Angriffsmittel zu zerstören. Am 7. oder 8. Tag hätten die Streitkräfte des Warschaupakts den Rhein überschritten und den Raum Langres - Besançon erreicht, am 9. Tag Lyon.

Überträgt man die Planungen für die «Stossgruppe Bayern» auf den Norden und legt die Erkenntnisse aus Übungsunterlagen des Warschaupakts zugrunde, die die ostdeutsche Armee vor ihrer Auflösung nicht mehr vernichten konnte, so dürften die Annahmen über die Stossgruppen 1 bis 3 der Realität ziemlich nahe kommen. Danach waren für den Zielraum Schleswig-Holstein 62, für Ostniedersachsen 115 und für den Zielraum Nordkassel 175 Nuklearwaffeneinsätze vorgesehen. Diese Zahlen stammen ausschliesslich aus Übungen, die in den achtziger Jahren durchgeführt wurden. Damit ist zugleich festgestellt, dass sich die tatsächliche Kriegsplanung nach 1964 nicht wesentlich veränderte.

Zwar wurde in Übungen und Manövern ausschliesslich und facettenreich die offensive Landkriegführung in Westeuropa nach einem nuklearen Ersteinsatz durchgespielt; die scheinbare Tendenz zur Annahme einer längeren konventionellen Phase im künftigen europäischen Kriegsgeschehen hatte jedoch nur insoweit mit der planerischen Realität zu tun, als schlicht das geübt wurde, was sinnvollerweise geübt werden konnte: die zweite Phase eines nuklear begonnenen Krieges. Petr Lunak stellt fest: «. . . bis zu Gorbatschews strategischer Revolution setzte der Warschaupakt seine bizarre Planung fort, einen Nuklearkrieg in Europa zu führen und zu gewinnen . . .»

Mehr noch. Zwischen 1975 und 1988 häuften sich die Forderungen der sowjetischen Militärführung, einer technologischen Überlegenheit des Westens militärisch zuvorzukommen. Im September 1982 verglich Marschall Ogarkow anlässlich des Treffens der Generalstabschefs des Warschaupakts die politische Situation mit der Zeit vor dem Ausbruch des Zweiten Weltkrieges. In Wirklichkeit hätten die USA der Sowjetunion und deren Verbündeten den Krieg bereits erklärt. Allen Anwesenden war klar, was gemeint war und was möglicherweise bevorstand.

Gorbatschew setzt dem Spuk ein Ende

Die Wende kam erst mit Gorbatschew im Laufe des Jahres 1986. In dessen Beisein sagte der polnische Staatspräsident Jaruzelski: «Niemand soll glauben, dass man in einem Nuklearkrieg nach fünf oder sechs Tagen in Paris eine Tasse Kaffee schlürfen kann.» Die Kriegspläne wurden geändert. Einzig die DDR arbeitete auf alter Grundlage weiter. Noch in der Übung «Stabstraining 1989» plante sie die Verwüstung grenznaher Landstriche Schleswig-Holsteins durch 76 teilweise grosskalibrige Nuklearwaffen.

Natürlich erkannten die Nato-Planer schon frühzeitig, dass es wahrscheinlich zu einem nuklearen Ersteinsatz durch den Warschaupakt kommen würde. Doch welche Alternative hatte die Nato? Eine Eskalation hätte die Perspektive eines unkalkulierbaren nuklearen Schlagabtausches in Mitteleuropa bedeutet – ein Szenario, das in den Nato-Staaten zu keiner Zeit vermittelbar war.

Angesichts dieser Fakten verwundert es nicht, wenn manche ehemalige Offiziere des Warschaupakts das tradierte Bild von der reinen Verteidigungsplanung des östlichen Bündnisses um jeden Preis zu bewahren versuchen. Doch ihr Ansatz, unter Hinweis auf die zahlreichen Nuklearwaffen der Nato eine Parallelität der Planungen von Ost und West zu postulieren, überzeugt nicht. Wie ein ehemaliger ostdeutscher Offizier sichtlich enttäuscht feststellt, gibt es bis heute keinerlei Hinweise auf die Existenz klassischer Aggressionsplanungen der Nato. Es wäre auch seltsam, wenn es sie gäbe. Denn dann hätte die atlantische Allianz wohl kaum jahrzehntelang ausschliesslich die Defensive geübt, während der Warschaupakt unentwegt Offensivoperationen einstudierte. An dem Versuch, diesen Sachverhalt umzudeuten, scheitern selbst die talentiertesten Dialektiker.


* Hans Rühle ist ehemaliger Chef des Planungsstabes im Bonner Verteidigungsministerium; Michael Rühle leitet den Planungsstab in der politischen Abteilung der Nato in Brüssel.

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New York Times
August 25, 2008
In Nuclear Net’s Undoing, a Web of Shadowy Deals
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER

The president of Switzerland stepped to a podium in Bern last May and read a statement confirming rumors that had swirled through the capital for months. The government, he acknowledged, had indeed destroyed a huge trove of computer files and other material documenting the business dealings of a family of Swiss engineers suspected of helping smuggle nuclear technology to Libya and Iran.


New York Times
August 25, 2008
In Nuclear Net’s Undoing, a Web of Shadowy Deals
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER

The president of Switzerland stepped to a podium in Bern last May and read a statement confirming rumors that had swirled through the capital for months. The government, he acknowledged, had indeed destroyed a huge trove of computer files and other material documenting the business dealings of a family of Swiss engineers suspected of helping smuggle nuclear technology to Libya and Iran.

The files were of particular interest not only to Swiss prosecutors but to international atomic inspectors working to unwind the activities of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani bomb pioneer-turned-nuclear black marketeer. The Swiss engineers, Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, were accused of having deep associations with Dr. Khan, acting as middlemen in his dealings with rogue nations seeking nuclear equipment and expertise.

The Swiss president, Pascal Couchepin, took no questions. But he asserted that the files — which included an array of plans for nuclear arms and technologies, among them a highly sophisticated Pakistani bomb design — had been destroyed so that they would never fall into terrorist hands.

Behind that official explanation, though, is a far more intriguing tale of spies, moles and the compromises that governments make in the name of national security.

The United States had urged that the files be destroyed, according to interviews with five current and former Bush administration officials. The purpose, the officials said, was less to thwart terrorists than to hide evidence of a clandestine relationship between the Tinners and the C.I.A.

Over four years, several of these officials said, operatives of the C.I.A. paid the Tinners as much as $10 million, some of it delivered in a suitcase stuffed with cash. In return, the Tinners delivered a flow of secret information that helped end Libya’s bomb program, reveal Iran’s atomic labors and, ultimately, undo Dr. Khan’s nuclear black market.

In addition, American and European officials said, the Tinners played an important role in a clandestine American operation to funnel sabotaged nuclear equipment to Libya and Iran, a major but little-known element of the efforts to slow their nuclear progress.

The relationship with the Tinners “was very significant,” said Gary S. Samore, who ran the National Security Council’s nonproliferation office when the operation began. “That’s where we got the first indications that Iran had acquired centrifuges,” which enrich uranium for nuclear fuel.

Yet even as American officials describe the relationship as a major intelligence coup, compromises were made. Officials say the C.I.A. feared that a trial would not just reveal the Tinners’ relationship with the United States — and perhaps raise questions about American dealings with atomic smugglers — but would also imperil efforts to recruit new spies at a time of grave concern over Iran’s nuclear program. Destruction of the files, C.I.A. officials suspected, would undermine the case and could set their informants free.

“We were very happy they were destroyed,” a senior intelligence official in Washington said of the files.

But in Europe, there is much consternation. Analysts studying Dr. Khan’s network worry that by destroying the files to prevent their spread, the Swiss government may have obscured the investigative trail. It is unclear who among Dr. Khan’s customers — a list that is known to include Iran, Libya and North Korea but that may extend further — got the illicit material, much of it contained in easily transmitted electronic designs.

The West’s most important questions about the Khan network have been consistently deflected by President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, who resigned last Monday. He refused to account for the bomb designs that got away or to let American investigators question Dr. Khan, perhaps the only man to know who else received the atomic blueprints. President Bush, eager for Pakistan’s aid against terrorism, never pressed Mr. Musharraf for answers.

“Maybe that labyrinth held clues to another client or another rogue state,” said a European official angered at the destruction.

The Swiss judge in charge of the Tinner case, Andreas Müller, is not terribly happy either. He said he had no warning of the planned destruction and is now trying to determine what, if anything, remains of the case against Friedrich Tinner and his sons, Urs and Marco.

Some details of the links between the Tinners and American intelligence have been revealed in news reports and in recent books, most notably “The Nuclear Jihadist,” a biography of Dr. Khan by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins. But recent interviews in the United States and Europe by The New York Times have provided a fuller portrait of the relationship — especially the involvement of all three Tinners, the large amounts of money they received and the C.I.A.’s extensive efforts on their behalf. Virtually all the officials interviewed spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss matters that remain classified.

The destroyed evidence, decades of records of the Tinners’ activities, included not only bomb and centrifuge plans but also documents linking the family to the C.I.A., officials said. One contract, a European intelligence official said, described a C.I.A. front company’s agreement to pay the smugglers $1 million for black-market secrets. The front company listed an address three blocks from the White House.

The C.I.A. declined to comment on the Tinner case, but a spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, called the disruption of Dr. Khan’s network “a genuine intelligence success.”

With the evidence files destroyed and a trial in question, it is unlikely that the full story of the Tinners will be told any time soon. If it is, it is unlikely to come from the elder Mr. Tinner.

Approached at his home in Haag, Switzerland, near the Liechtenstein border, Mr. Tinner, 71, was polite but firm in his silence. “I have an agreement not to talk,” he told a reporter.

Beginning a Double Life

An inventor and mechanical engineer, Friedrich Tinner got his start in Swiss companies that make vacuum technology, mazes of pipes, pumps and valves used in many industries. Mr. Tinner received United States patents for his innovative vacuum valves.

By definition, his devices were so-called dual-use products with peacetime or wartime applications. Governments often feel torn between promoting such goods as commercial boons and blocking them as security risks.

As recounted in books and articles and reports by nuclear experts, Mr. Tinner worked with Dr. Khan for three decades, beginning in the mid-1970s. His expertise in vacuum technology aided Dr. Khan’s development of atomic centrifuges, which produced fuel for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, now variously estimated at 50 to 100 warheads.

Yet while Mr. Tinner repeatedly drew the attention of European authorities, who questioned the export of potentially dangerous technology, he never faced charges. Mr. Tinner’s involvement with Dr. Khan deepened beginning in the late 1990s, when, joined by his sons, he helped supply centrifuges for Libya’s secret bomb program.

In 2000, American officials said, Urs Tinner was recruited by the C.I.A., and American officials were elated. Spy satellites can be fooled. Documents can lie. Electronic taps can mislead. But a well-placed mole can work quietly behind the scenes to get at the truth.

For instance, the United States had gathered circumstantial evidence that Iran wanted an atom bomb. Suddenly it had a direct view into clandestine Iranian procurement of centrifuges and other important nuclear items.

“It was a confirmation,” recalled Dr. Samore, the former national security official who is now director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “That was much more significant than Libya,” because that country’s atomic program was in its infancy whereas Iran’s was rushing toward maturity.

Despite considerable income from their illicit trade, the Tinners had money problems, a European intelligence official said. Eventually, Urs Tinner persuaded his father and younger brother to join him as moles, and they began double lives, supplying Dr. Khan with precision manufacturing gear and helping run a centrifuge plant in Malaysia even as their cooperation with the United States deepened.

At the time, Washington was stepping up efforts to penetrate Libya’s bomb program. In early 2003, the European official said, the Tinners and C.I.A. agents met at a hotel in Innsbruck, Austria, to discuss cooperative terms. Several months later, in Jenins, a Swiss mountain village, Marco Tinner signed a contract dated June 21, 2003, with two C.I.A. agents, the official said.

The contract outlined the sale of rights that the Tinners held for manufacturing vacuum gear, and of proprietary information about the devices. In exchange, $1 million would be paid to Traco Group International, a front company Marco Tinner had established in Road Town, the capital of the British Virgin Islands, on the island of Tortola.

In the contract, according to the European intelligence official, the two C.I.A. agents used cover names — W. James Kinsman and Sean D. Mahaffey — and identified their employer as Big Black River Technologies Inc. In military and intelligence work, “black” means clandestine. In the contract, Black River gave an address on I Street in Washington, the intelligence official said. But no business directory lists the company, and employees in the mailroom at the address said they had no records for a company of that name.

Four months after the signing of the contract, American and European authorities seized cargoes of centrifuge parts bound for Libya. “The Tinners were a source,” a former Bush administration official said.

Two other officials credited the Tinners with helping end the Libyan bomb program. In Libya, investigators found the rudiments of a centrifuge plant and a blueprint for a basic atom bomb, courtesy of Dr. Khan’s network. The Bush administration celebrated Libya’s abandonment as a breakthrough in arms control.

But the secret lives of the Tinners began to unravel. The Malaysian police issued a report naming them as central members of Dr. Khan’s network. An official of VP Bank Ltd., Traco’s business agent in the Virgin Islands, said it ended that relationship in early 2004, when Marco Tinner was exposed.

Under growing pressure, Dr. Khan confessed. His clients turned out to include not only Libya but Iran and North Korea, and his collaborators turned out to be legion.

“We will find you,” Mr. Bush said in February 2004 of Dr. Khan’s associates, “and we’re not going to rest until you are stopped.”

Acts of Sabotage

After the Tinners were arrested, Swiss and other European authorities began to scrutinize their confiscated files and to conduct wide inquiries. European investigators discovered not only that the Tinners had spied for Washington, but that the men and their insider information had helped the C.I.A. sabotage atomic gear bound for Libya and Iran. A former American official confirmed the disruptions, saying the technical architect of the operation was “a mad-scientist type” who took pleasure in devising dirty tricks.

An American intelligence official, while refusing to discuss specifics of the sabotage operation or the Tinners’ relationship with the C.I.A., said efforts to cripple equipment headed to rogue nuclear states “buy us some time and space.” With Iran presumably racing for the capability to build a bomb, he added, “that may be the best we can hope for.”

The sabotage first came to light, diplomats and officials said, when inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency traveled to Iran and Libya in 2003 and 2004 and discovered identical vacuum pumps that had been damaged cleverly so that they looked perfectly fine but failed to operate properly. They traced the route of the defective parts from Pfeiffer Vacuum in Germany to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the birthplace of the bomb. There, according to a European official who studied the case, nuclear experts had made sure the pumps “wouldn’t work.”

A more serious disruption involved a power supply shipped to Iran from Turkey, where Dr. Khan’s network did business with two makers of industrial control equipment.

The Iranians installed the power supply at their uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. But in early 2006, it failed, causing 50 centrifuges to explode — a serious, if temporary, setback to Iran’s efforts to master the manufacture of nuclear fuel, the hardest part of building a bomb. (Iran says its nuclear efforts are for electricity, not weapons.)

Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, told a reporter last year that Iranian investigators found that the power supply had been manipulated.

After the episode, he added, “we checked all the imported instruments.”

Discussions With Washington

In 2005, Swiss authorities began asking the United States for help in the Tinner case. Among other things, they wanted information about the Libyan centrifuge program to press charges of criminal export violations. For more than a year, the Swiss made repeated requests. Washington ignored them.

“Its lack of assistance needlessly complicates this important investigation,” David Albright, of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington, told Congress in May 2006. Mr. Albright said he had helped Swiss prosecutors write to the State Department.

The Swiss turned to the I.A.E.A. for help in assessing the Tinner cache. European officials said the agency was surprised to find multiple warhead plans and judged that most had originated in Pakistan. The country denied that Dr. Khan had access to nuclear weapon designs and questioned the agency’s conclusions.

In late July 2007, according to Swiss federal statements, the justice minister, Christoph Blocher, flew to Washington for talks with Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence; Alberto R. Gonzales, then the attorney general; and Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director.

Officially, the statements said, the main topic was “cooperation in the criminal prosecution of terrorist activities.” But the real agenda was what to do about the Tinners.

A former Bush administration official said different government agencies had differing views of the case. The State Department wanted the bomb plans destroyed as a way to stem nuclear proliferation, while the C.I.A. wanted to protect its methods for combating illicit nuclear trade.

The C.I.A. also wanted to help the Tinners. “If a key source is prosecuted,” a former senior official involved in the case said, “what message does that send when you try to recruit other informants?”

American officials discussed a range of possible outcomes with the Swiss and expressed their clear preferences. The best result, they said, would be turning over the family’s materials to the United States. Acceptable would be destroying them. Worst, according to the former administration official, would have been making them public in a criminal trial, where defense lawyers would have probably exposed as much American involvement as possible in hopes of getting their clients off the hook.

A Furor Over Destroyed Files

Last March, Mr. Müller became the examining magistrate in the Tinner case, charged with assessing if a trial was warranted. Soon after, he was quoted as saying the evidence files contained “obvious holes.” Sketchy reports of deleted computer files and shredded documents had been circulating, but he was the first identified official to hint at a widespread destruction. Then, on May 23, the Swiss president, Mr. Couchepin, revealed that Switzerland had begun a series of extraordinary actions just days after Mr. Blocher, the justice minister, returned from Washington.

Swiss citizens are prohibited from aiding foreign spies. But in his statement, the president said that in late August 2007, the government canceled a criminal case against the Tinners for suspicions of aiding a foreign government. Though unmentioned, the C.I.A. seemed to peer out from his statement.

On Nov. 14, his statement continued, the government decided to destroy “the comprehensive holding of the electronic files and documents” seized from the Tinners. The most dangerous items, the president said, included “detailed construction plans for nuclear weapons, for gas ultracentrifuges for the enrichment of weapons-grade uranium, as well as for guided missile delivery systems.” International atomic inspectors, he added, supervised the destruction.

Mr. Couchepin said keeping the documents “was incompatible with Switzerland’s obligations” under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and added, “Under all circumstances, this information was not to reach the hands of a terrorist organization or an unauthorized state.”

The statement provoked a political furor. Some politicians and columnists accused Switzerland of surrendering to Washington’s agenda and violating Swiss neutrality. Among the strongest critics was Dick Marty, a prominent Swiss senator. “We could have respected the treaty by avoiding their publication and putting them under lock and key,” he was quoted as saying on Swissinfo, the Web site of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. Destroying them, he added, “ could lead to the collapse of the legal case.”

Many European officials dismissed the government’s arguments about terrorists and rogue states as empty.

“If they had kept the material in federal possession for years, why not keep holding it?” asked Victor Mauer, a senior official at the Center for Security Studies of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. “Their explanation is not convincing.”

An Action’s Repercussions

In an interview, a senior European diplomat familiar with the I.A.E.A. said the destruction could have repercussions far beyond the criminal case.

For one thing, he said, the international atomic agency had been allowed to examine only parts of the archive. He called it “a good sample” and judged that the agency had missed no significant clues. Even so, he said, the agency might “come to regret” its inability to examine the materials further for insights into hidden remnants of Dr. Khan’s network.

And while the Swiss president made much of the proliferation danger, the diplomat insisted that the warhead designs were in many respects sketchy and incomplete. “These are almost like studies — bits and pieces,” he said, adding that they “wouldn’t be enough to let you build a replica.”

So while they might have little or no value for a terrorist with no atomic experience, the plans might prove quite helpful for an ambitious state intent on building a nuclear arsenal. He said the agency had no evidence that Iran had acquired the bomb plans.

The diplomat added that the Swiss had “lots of possibilities” other than destruction. He said they had no legal obligation to destroy the files under the nonproliferation treaty, and could have put them under I.A.E.A. seal in Vienna or Switzerland.

Several European officials speculated that Washington might actually have kept secret copies of the archive. A senior American official said the United States had reviewed the material but declined to say if there were copies.

As for the Tinners, the father was released in 2006, pending legal action. In a brief interview at his home, Mr. Tinner pleaded ignorance about basic aspects of the criminal case, such as where the authorities kept the materials that had belonged to him and his sons. “The newspapers know more about these things than I do,” he insisted.

Should the case fall apart, the Tinners would join a growing list of freed associates of Dr. Khan. In June, Malaysia released the network’s chief operating officer, B. S. A. Tahir, saying he was no longer a national security threat. The authorities have kept the Tinner brothers in jail for fear that they might flee the country. In late May, a Swiss court rejected their bail application, and early this month, the ruling was upheld. But the judges also told the authorities that they could not hold the brothers indefinitely without charging them.

With much of the evidence gone, the magistrate, Mr. Müller, expressed frustration at finding “no answers to the really interesting questions in this case.” He declined to predict how it might turn out.

“At the moment,” he said, “it is impossible to make any schedule, since the case is in many aspects extraordinary.”

Souad Mekhennet contributed reporting from Frankfurt, and Uta Harnischfeger from Zurich.

Not yet up to olympic standard - Pump pump........

keep on pumping..... watch closely!
;-)
(better with sound on)

NYT: Mikhail Gorbachev on Georgia

New York Times
August 20, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Russia Never Wanted a War
By MIKHAIL GORBACHEV

Moscow

THE acute phase of the crisis provoked by the Georgian forces’ assault on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, is now behind us. But how can one erase from memory the horrifying scenes of the nighttime rocket attack on a peaceful town, the razing of entire city blocks, the deaths of people taking cover in basements, the destruction of ancient monuments and ancestral graves?


New York Times
August 20, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Russia Never Wanted a War
By MIKHAIL GORBACHEV

Moscow

THE acute phase of the crisis provoked by the Georgian forces’ assault on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, is now behind us. But how can one erase from memory the horrifying scenes of the nighttime rocket attack on a peaceful town, the razing of entire city blocks, the deaths of people taking cover in basements, the destruction of ancient monuments and ancestral graves?

Russia did not want this crisis. The Russian leadership is in a strong enough position domestically; it did not need a little victorious war. Russia was dragged into the fray by the recklessness of the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili. He would not have dared to attack without outside support. Once he did, Russia could not afford inaction.

The decision by the Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, to now cease hostilities was the right move by a responsible leader. The Russian president acted calmly, confidently and firmly. Anyone who expected confusion in Moscow was disappointed.

The planners of this campaign clearly wanted to make sure that, whatever the outcome, Russia would be blamed for worsening the situation. The West then mounted a propaganda attack against Russia, with the American news media leading the way.

The news coverage has been far from fair and balanced, especially during the first days of the crisis. Tskhinvali was in smoking ruins and thousands of people were fleeing — before any Russian troops arrived. Yet Russia was already being accused of aggression; news reports were often an embarrassing recitation of the Georgian leader’s deceptive statements.

It is still not quite clear whether the West was aware of Mr. Saakashvili’s plans to invade South Ossetia, and this is a serious matter. What is clear is that Western assistance in training Georgian troops and shipping large supplies of arms had been pushing the region toward war rather than peace.

If this military misadventure was a surprise for the Georgian leader’s foreign patrons, so much the worse. It looks like a classic wag-the-dog story.

Mr. Saakashvili had been lavished with praise for being a staunch American ally and a real democrat — and for helping out in Iraq. Now America’s friend has wrought disorder, and all of us — the Europeans and, most important, the region’s innocent civilians — must pick up the pieces.

Those who rush to judgment on what’s happening in the Caucasus, or those who seek influence there, should first have at least some idea of this region’s complexities. The Ossetians live both in Georgia and in Russia. The region is a patchwork of ethnic groups living in close proximity. Therefore, all talk of “this is our land,” “we are liberating our land,” is meaningless. We must think about the people who live on the land.

The problems of the Caucasus region cannot be solved by force. That has been tried more than once in the past two decades, and it has always boomeranged.

What is needed is a legally binding agreement not to use force. Mr. Saakashvili has repeatedly refused to sign such an agreement, for reasons that have now become abundantly clear.

The West would be wise to help achieve such an agreement now. If, instead, it chooses to blame Russia and re-arm Georgia, as American officials are suggesting, a new crisis will be inevitable. In that case, expect the worst.

In recent days, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President Bush have been promising to isolate Russia. Some American politicians have threatened to expel it from the Group of 8 industrialized nations, to abolish the NATO-Russia Council and to keep Russia out of the World Trade Organization.

These are empty threats. For some time now, Russians have been wondering: If our opinion counts for nothing in those institutions, do we really need them? Just to sit at the nicely set dinner table and listen to lectures?

Indeed, Russia has long been told to simply accept the facts. Here’s the independence of Kosovo for you. Here’s the abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, and the American decision to place missile defenses in neighboring countries. Here’s the unending expansion of NATO. All of these moves have been set against the backdrop of sweet talk about partnership. Why would anyone put up with such a charade?

There is much talk now in the United States about rethinking relations with Russia. One thing that should definitely be rethought: the habit of talking to Russia in a condescending way, without regard for its positions and interests.

Our two countries could develop a serious agenda for genuine, rather than token, cooperation. Many Americans, as well as Russians, understand the need for this. But is the same true of the political leaders?

A bipartisan commission led by Senator Chuck Hagel and former Senator Gary Hart has recently been established at Harvard to report on American-Russian relations to Congress and the next president. It includes serious people, and, judging by the commission’s early statements, its members understand the importance of Russia and the importance of constructive bilateral relations.

But the members of this commission should be careful. Their mandate is to present “policy recommendations for a new administration to advance America’s national interests in relations with Russia.” If that alone is the goal, then I doubt that much good will come out of it. If, however, the commission is ready to also consider the interests of the other side and of common security, it may actually help rebuild trust between Russia and the United States and allow them to start doing useful work together.

Mikhail Gorbachev is the former president of the Soviet Union. This article was translated by Pavel Palazhchenko from the Russian.

NYT's Maureen Dowd on G.W. Bush and Russia

New York Times
August 17, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Russia Is Not Jamaica
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

America’s back in the cold war and W.’s back on vacation.

Talk about your fearful symmetry.

After eight years, the president’s gut remains gullible. He’ll go out as he came in — ignoring reality; failing to foresee, prevent or even prepare for disasters; misinterpreting intelligence reports; misreading people; and handling crises in ways that makes them exponentially worse.


New York Times
August 17, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Russia Is Not Jamaica
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

America’s back in the cold war and W.’s back on vacation.

Talk about your fearful symmetry.

After eight years, the president’s gut remains gullible. He’ll go out as he came in — ignoring reality; failing to foresee, prevent or even prepare for disasters; misinterpreting intelligence reports; misreading people; and handling crises in ways that makes them exponentially worse.

He has spent 469 days of his presidency kicking back at his ranch, and 450 days cavorting at Camp David. And there’s still time to mountain-bike through another historic disaster.

As Russian troops continued to manhandle parts of Georgia on Friday, President Bush chastised Russian leaders that “bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century” — and then flew off to Crawford.

His words might have carried more weight if he, Cheney and Rummy had not kicked off the 21st century with a ham-fisted display of global bullying and intimidation modeled after Sherman’s march through the other Georgia.

We knew we could count on the cheerleader in chief to be jumping around like a kid in Beijing with bikini-clad beach volleyball players while the Re-Evil Empire was sending columns of tanks into its former republic. (Georgia made the mistake of baiting the bear.)

If only W. had taken the rest of his presidency as seriously as he’s taken his sports outings.

When I interviewed him at the start of his first presidential run in 1999, he took an obvious shot and told me, “I believe the big issues are going to be China and Russia.”

But after 9/11, he let Cheney, Rummy and the neocons gull him into a destructive obsession with Iraq. While America has been bogged down and bled dry, China and Russia are plumping up. China has bought so much of America that we’d be dead Peking ducks if they pulled their investments out of our market, and Russia has transformed itself from a pauper nation to a land filled with millionaires — all through our addiction to oil.

What was so galling about watching W.’s giddy sightseeing at the Olympics was that it underscored China’s rise as a superpower and, thanks to the administration’s derelict foreign and economic policies, America’s fade-out. It’s as though China has become us and we’ve become Europe. Like Russia, China has also been showing jagged authoritarian ways and ignoring America’s preaching, including W.’s tame criticism as he flew into Beijing to revel in the spectacle of China’s ascension.

Despite his 1999 prediction that Russia and China would be key to security in the world, W. never bothered to study up on them. In 2006, at the Group of Eight summit meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, a microphone caught some of the inane remarks of W. to the Chinese president, Hu Jintao.

“This is your neighborhood,” W. said. “It doesn’t take you long to get home. How long does it take you to get home? Eight hours? Me, too. Russia’s a big country and you’re a big country.”

President Bush and his Russian “expert” Condi have played it completely wrong with Russia from the start. W. saw a “trustworthy” soul in a razor-eyed K.G.B. agent who has never been a good guy for a single hour. Now the Bush crowd, which can do nothing about it, is blustering about how Russian aggression “must not go unanswered,” as Cheney put it. (W.’s other Russian expert, Bob Gates, was, as always, the only voice of realism, noting, “I don’t see any prospect for the use of military force by the United States in this situation.”)

The Bush administration may have a sentimental attachment to Georgia because it sent 2,000 troops to Iraq as part of the fig-leaf Coalition of the Willing, and because Poppy Bush and James Baker were close to Georgia’s first president, Eduard Shevardnadze.

But with this country’s military and moral force so depleted, the Bushies can hardly tell Russia to stop doing what they themselves did in Iraq: unilaterally invade a country against the will of the world to scare the bejesus out of some leaders in the region they didn’t like.

W. and Condi are suddenly waking up to how vicious Vladimir is. In a press conference with Condi on Friday, Mikheil Saakashvili, the president of Georgia, chided the West for enabling Russia to resume its repressive tactics.

“Unfortunately, today we are looking evil directly in the eye,” he said. “And today this evil is very strong, very nasty and very dangerous, for everybody, not only for us.”

As Michael Specter, the New Yorker writer who has written extensively about Russia, observed: “There was a brief five-year period when we could get away with treating Russia like Jamaica — that’s over. Now we have to deal with them like grown-ups who have more nuclear weapons than anybody except us.”

Müller Tauscher; Zürich: Wandmalerei Indoor und Outdoor!

Die Damen sind empfehlenswert!
Darum:
http://www.muellertauscher.ch/index.html

NYT's Maureen Dowd on G.W. Bush and Russia

New York Times
August 17, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Russia Is Not Jamaica
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

America’s back in the cold war and W.’s back on vacation.

Talk about your fearful symmetry.

After eight years, the president’s gut remains gullible. He’ll go out as he came in — ignoring reality; failing to foresee, prevent or even prepare for disasters; misinterpreting intelligence reports; misreading people; and handling crises in ways that makes them exponentially worse.


New York Times
August 17, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Russia Is Not Jamaica
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

America’s back in the cold war and W.’s back on vacation.

Talk about your fearful symmetry.

After eight years, the president’s gut remains gullible. He’ll go out as he came in — ignoring reality; failing to foresee, prevent or even prepare for disasters; misinterpreting intelligence reports; misreading people; and handling crises in ways that makes them exponentially worse.

He has spent 469 days of his presidency kicking back at his ranch, and 450 days cavorting at Camp David. And there’s still time to mountain-bike through another historic disaster.

As Russian troops continued to manhandle parts of Georgia on Friday, President Bush chastised Russian leaders that “bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century” — and then flew off to Crawford.

His words might have carried more weight if he, Cheney and Rummy had not kicked off the 21st century with a ham-fisted display of global bullying and intimidation modeled after Sherman’s march through the other Georgia.

We knew we could count on the cheerleader in chief to be jumping around like a kid in Beijing with bikini-clad beach volleyball players while the Re-Evil Empire was sending columns of tanks into its former republic. (Georgia made the mistake of baiting the bear.)

If only W. had taken the rest of his presidency as seriously as he’s taken his sports outings.

When I interviewed him at the start of his first presidential run in 1999, he took an obvious shot and told me, “I believe the big issues are going to be China and Russia.”

But after 9/11, he let Cheney, Rummy and the neocons gull him into a destructive obsession with Iraq. While America has been bogged down and bled dry, China and Russia are plumping up. China has bought so much of America that we’d be dead Peking ducks if they pulled their investments out of our market, and Russia has transformed itself from a pauper nation to a land filled with millionaires — all through our addiction to oil.

What was so galling about watching W.’s giddy sightseeing at the Olympics was that it underscored China’s rise as a superpower and, thanks to the administration’s derelict foreign and economic policies, America’s fade-out. It’s as though China has become us and we’ve become Europe. Like Russia, China has also been showing jagged authoritarian ways and ignoring America’s preaching, including W.’s tame criticism as he flew into Beijing to revel in the spectacle of China’s ascension.

Despite his 1999 prediction that Russia and China would be key to security in the world, W. never bothered to study up on them. In 2006, at the Group of Eight summit meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, a microphone caught some of the inane remarks of W. to the Chinese president, Hu Jintao.

“This is your neighborhood,” W. said. “It doesn’t take you long to get home. How long does it take you to get home? Eight hours? Me, too. Russia’s a big country and you’re a big country.”

President Bush and his Russian “expert” Condi have played it completely wrong with Russia from the start. W. saw a “trustworthy” soul in a razor-eyed K.G.B. agent who has never been a good guy for a single hour. Now the Bush crowd, which can do nothing about it, is blustering about how Russian aggression “must not go unanswered,” as Cheney put it. (W.’s other Russian expert, Bob Gates, was, as always, the only voice of realism, noting, “I don’t see any prospect for the use of military force by the United States in this situation.”)

The Bush administration may have a sentimental attachment to Georgia because it sent 2,000 troops to Iraq as part of the fig-leaf Coalition of the Willing, and because Poppy Bush and James Baker were close to Georgia’s first president, Eduard Shevardnadze.

But with this country’s military and moral force so depleted, the Bushies can hardly tell Russia to stop doing what they themselves did in Iraq: unilaterally invade a country against the will of the world to scare the bejesus out of some leaders in the region they didn’t like.

W. and Condi are suddenly waking up to how vicious Vladimir is. In a press conference with Condi on Friday, Mikheil Saakashvili, the president of Georgia, chided the West for enabling Russia to resume its repressive tactics.

“Unfortunately, today we are looking evil directly in the eye,” he said. “And today this evil is very strong, very nasty and very dangerous, for everybody, not only for us.”

As Michael Specter, the New Yorker writer who has written extensively about Russia, observed: “There was a brief five-year period when we could get away with treating Russia like Jamaica — that’s over. Now we have to deal with them like grown-ups who have more nuclear weapons than anybody except us.”

NZZ Online: Forscher warnen vor Erdölknappheit

NZZ
7. August 2008, 13:10, NZZ Online
Forscher warnen vor Erdölknappheit
Die Schweiz soll ihren Treibstoffverbrauch mit griffigen Massnahmen senken

Die Schweiz sollte sich schon heute auf eine Erdölknappheit einstellen und den Treibstoffverbrauch rasch reduzieren. Das rät die Schweizerische Akademie der Technischen Wissenschaften in einer neuen Studie. Denn die Schweiz verbrauche überdurchschnittlich viel Treibstoff.

NZZ
7. August 2008, 13:10, NZZ Online
Forscher warnen vor Erdölknappheit
Die Schweiz soll ihren Treibstoffverbrauch mit griffigen Massnahmen senken

Die Schweiz sollte sich schon heute auf eine Erdölknappheit einstellen und den Treibstoffverbrauch rasch reduzieren. Das rät die Schweizerische Akademie der Technischen Wissenschaften in einer neuen Studie. Denn die Schweiz verbrauche überdurchschnittlich viel Treibstoff.

(chs/ap) Immer deutlicher zeichne sich ab, dass die globale Erdölproduktion in absehbarer Zeit ihren Zenit erreichen und danach unwiederbringlich zurückgehen werde, schreibt die Schweizerische Akademie der Technischen Wissenschaften (SATW). Sie geht davon aus, dass das die höchst mögliche Fördermenge an Erdöl innerhalb der nächsten 20 Jahre erreicht wird.

Im Vergleich zu anderen Ländern ist die Schweiz laut SATW überdurchschnittlich stark von Erdöl abhängig. Sie deckt 57 Prozent ihres gesamten Energiebedarfs mit Erdöl. Deshalb müsse sich die Schweiz schon jetzt auf mögliche Engpässe in der Erdölversorgung einstellen und den Verbrauch so weit als möglich reduzieren.

Es sei erst ansatzweise zu erkennen, welche Konsequenzen der Kampf um die begrenzten Ressourcen haben werde. Fest stehe jedoch, dass sich die grossen Erdölfirmen und die geostrategischen Akteure bereits jetzt auf die Zeit nach dem so genannten «Peak Oil» vorbereiteten.

Verbrauch jährlich um zwei Prozent senken

Vor allem der Umgang mit Treibstoffen sei zu überdenken, verlangen die Forscher. Denn anders als bei den Brennstoffen sei ein vollständiger Ersatz für Benzin und Diesel in absehbarer Zeit nicht zu erwarten. Die fossilen Energieträger für Heizungen lassen sich heute schon vollständig ersetzen.

Laut der Studie verbrauchen die Autofahrer in der Schweiz im europäischen Vergleich überdurchschnittlich viel Treibstoff. Hier könnt in den kommenden Jahren viel gespart werden, erklären die Forscher der SATW. Sie schlagen als verbindliches Ziel vor, den Treibstoffverbrauch jährlich um mindestens zwei Prozent zu senken, statt jedes Jahr mehr Treibstoff zu verbrauchen.

Treibstoffpreise erhöhen

Die Studie «Erdölknappheit und Mobilität in der Schweiz» kommt zum Schluss, dass grundsätzlich bis zu 60 Prozent des Treibstoffs eingespart werden könnten. Dazu brauche es aber griffige marktwirtschaftliche Instrumente, hohe Treibstoffpreise und strengere staatliche Vorschriften. Die bisherigen Erfahrungen zeigten nämlich, dass freiwillige Massnahmen und Anreizsysteme kaum Wirkung zeigten.

Die Studie wird Ende August im Rahmen der Veranstaltung «Mobilität 2030» im Detail vorgestellt. Die SATW ist ein Netzwerk von Persönlichkeiten, die sich seit 1981 dafür einsetzen, die Technik zum Wohl der Gesellschaft zu fördern und das Verständnis für Technik zu stärken. Ihr gehören rund 240 Einzelmitglieder und 60 Mitgliedgesellschaften an.