Forum

Une sorte de classique: article de martin van ceveld en 2001 sur l’évolution de la puissance militaire depuis 1945.
http://www.ifri.org/files/politique_etrangere/PE_1_03_CREVELD.pdf

http://www.theresistancemanifesto.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=234#234

Certes, mais il y une grande diffrérence à se battre des mois dans les tranchées, et piloter ponctuellement un A-10 ou un F-16.

Trade wars have always existed, and I suppose, they always will.
But the war Airbus-Boeing is a trade war unlike any other because the countries that will prevail will be controling that market for a long time to come

Bonjour,

Juste pour vous signaler qu’un de vos articles est cités par “le grand soir”:
http://www.legrandsoir.info/article.php3?id_article=2290

C’est trop rare…

Encore merci pour votre fabuleux travail

Ceci n’est pas nouveau ,
lors des combats de tranchée ,(1914 -1918 ) , les “poilus” étaient presque tous imbibés d’alcool ....et subissaient des pertes énormes ...

April 29, 2005
Blair, on Defensive, Releases a Secret Memo on Iraq War
By ALAN COWELL

LONDON, April 28 - In an about-face, Prime Minister Tony Blair on Thursday published the full text of the advice he received on the legitimacy of the Iraq war, as he tried to defuse a dispute that has derailed his re-election strategy just one week before British elections.

Parts of the 13-page document, written by Lord Goldsmith, Britain’s attorney general, on March 7, 2003, were made public Wednesday by the BBC and Channel 4, prompting a new furor about whether Mr. Blair misled the nation by depicting the war as unequivocally lawful.

The full document showed that while Lord Goldsmith said in public on March 17, 2003, that the imminent invasion of Iraq was unambiguously legal, the private advice he gave to Mr. Blair 10 days earlier showed far greater concerns about the legal consequences of going to war.

“There are a number of ways in which the opponents of military action might seek to bring a legal case, internationally or domestically, against the United Kingdom, members of the Government or U.K. military personnel,” the document said, as it laid out the legal landscape. It concluded with a discussion of the level of force permitted by United Nations resolutions concerning Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

“But regime change cannot be the objective of military action,” it concluded. “This should be borne in mind in considering the list of military targets and making public statements about any campaign.”

Mr. Blair portrayed the war’s objective as disarming Mr. Hussein of chemical and biological weapons, an argument that brought him severe criticism when no banned weapons were found in Iraq after the invasion.

Before Thursday, Mr. Blair had refused to make Lord Goldsmith’s advice public, saying it was covered by legal confidentiality conventions.

Even as the document, still marked “Secret,” was released by his office, Mr. Blair sought to minimize its impact, saying “this smoking gun has turned out to be a damp squib” - a British term for a small firecracker that fails to ignite - because it showed that Lord Goldsmith had established a legal basis for the invasion.

But Mr. Blair’s adversaries, who were trailing the prime minister’s Labor Party in the latest polls, turned on him with renewed vigor.

Michael Howard, the Conservative Party leader, said, “If you can’t trust Mr. Blair on the decision to take the country to war - the most important decision a prime minister can take - how can you trust Mr. Blair on anything else ever again?”

And Charles Kennedy, the head of the Liberal Democrats - the only one of the three mainstream parties to oppose the invasion - declared, “This is not a damp squib for those who have lost loved ones in the service of the British armed forces or for the families of thousands of Iraqi innocents who have been killed.”

The recurrent focus on Iraq has stymied Mr. Blair’s re-election campaign since Sunday, when the first leaks of Lord Goldsmith’s advice appeared in The Mail on Sunday newspaper. Mr. Blair and his political allies had wanted to steer the campaign’s closing week onto domestic issues - particularly the economy, where the Labor Party sees its main strength.

“The public’s concern is with health care, education, law and order, pensions and taxation,” Sir Robert Worcester, the American head of Britain’s MORI polling institute, said on BBC television. As for Iraq, he said, “I don’t think it’s going to have much impact on the election.”

The invasion of Iraq was deeply unpopular with many Britons and Mr. Blair’s detractors have argued that he took the nation to war on false premises. But Mr. Howard, the Conservative leader, supported the invasion as well, and is remembered by many voters as a member of an unpopular Conservative government that was rejected in 1997 when Mr. Blair first won power.

In a live television appearance in which the three candidates took questions from a largely youthful audience Thursday night, Mr. Blair faced hostile questioning about his decision to go to war, but repeated the argument that he faced a difficult decision in March 2003, and was prepared to be judged on it.

The BBC program featured all three party leaders - Mr. Blair, Mr. Howard and Mr. Kennedy - but they did not debate one another directly because Mr. Blair declined to appear on the same stage as his adversaries.

The document released Thursday also discussed differences among the Western allies during a period in March 2003, when Mr. Blair was under pressure from President Bush to join the invasion whether or not the United Nations Security Council approved a second resolution specifically authorizing the war.

In the document, Lord Goldsmith wrote that since the cease-fire terms ending the first Iraqi war in 1991 had been set by the Security Council, Britain believed “it is for the Council to assess whether any such breach of those obligations has occurred.”

Lord Goldsmith further wrote that the United States had “a rather different view: they maintain that the fact of whether Iraq is in breach is a matter of objective fact which may therefore by assessed by individual member states.”

“I am not aware of any other state which supports this view,” he added.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/29/international/europe/29britain.html?th&emc=th

la fin des héros (1987 , Richard A Gabriel )

.......Sans parler de la répugnance morale qu’il y a à trans-
former le soldat-citoyen en un véritable sociopathe pour
lui permettre de remplir pleinement son devoir, reste la
question des droits fondamentaux. L’obligation faite au
citoyen de défendre son pays s’étend-elle à la mise en
péril de sa santé mentale? Demander au soldat de trans-
former sa nature profonde afin d’exécuter sa mission a-
t-il vraiment un sens? Quelles sont les finalités militaires
susceptibles de justifier un tel échange? Sans nul doute,
il existe bien des personnes pour affirmer que seule l’ad-
ministration d’une drogue préventive contre le stress per-
mettra au combattant de garder une véritable chance de
survie dans la guerre moderne. Tout en relançant le débat,
cette affirmation est loin de répondre à la question plus
vaste de savoir si oui ou non le prix de la survie physique
vaut légitimement le coût de la destruction mentale.
Quelles sont les valeurs sur lesquelles reposent des sociétés
qui envoient leurs hommes au combat pour que ceux-ci
s’y distinguent de manière singulière si ces combattants
sont, de part et d’autre, rendus chimiquement semblables?
Et quand bien même les distinctions existeraient-elles que
ces soldats, transformés par des moyens chimiques en
sociopathes incapables de ressentir un attachement émo-
tionnel à ces valeurs, seraient dans l’impossibilité de les
identifier.
  Le choix sera probablement donné au soldat d’absorber
ou non une substance antistress; en vérité, ce choix sera
factice. L’aliénation par la peur ou la diminution de celle-
ci par l’absorption quotidienne d’une simple pilule : telle
sera l’alternative. Deux facteurs viendront s’y greffer : la
pression des camarades de l’unité (comment faire confiance
à un individu susceptible de s’effondrer sous la tension
nerveuse alors que les autres ne ressentent pas la même
peur?) et la révélation de ses propres sensations devant
l’horreur du champ de bataille, qui se conjugueront pour
rendre illusoire le libre choix du combattant. En effet, un
jour ou deux de combat - s’il survit - lui suffiront pour
réaliser son erreur, dans l’hypothèse où il aura initialement
résisté à la tentation de prendre une pilule « antianxiété ».
  A ce stade de la recherche, il n’existe non plus aucun
moyen de savoir si une telle drogue comporterait des
conséquences psychiatriques à long terme. On peut faci-
lement imaginer que le produit se fixera dans l’organisme
du combattant pendant au moins plusieurs semaines après
usage prolongé, mais il n’y a aucune possibilité de déter-
miner jusqu’à quel degré, et pour combien de temps, des
centaines de milliers d’hommes seront affectés par l’usage
soutenu de ce produit. La perspective d’avoir à réinsérer
des milliers d’individus, émotionnellement handicapés,
dans la société civile après la guerre, est pourtant trop
cruciale - et trop affolante - pour qu’on puisse l’ignorer.
  Compte tenu des préoccupations de la société améri-
caine au sujet du stress et des possibilités offertes par la
libre entreprise, un tel produit ne mettrait pas longtemps
à pénétrer - légalement ou non - dans la population
civile.  N’existe-t-il pas,  après tout,  un grand nombre
d’activités, en milieu civil, génératrices de stress? La ten-
tation de parer quotidiennement à son déferlement devien-
drait quasi irrésistible. Pire encore : étant donné le nombre
déjà ahurissant de produits antidépresseurs en circulation
dans le grand public, tels le Librium, le Valium, l’alcool
auxquels il convient d’ajouter la cocaïne et l’héroïne, il
n’y a aucune raison de penser qu’une substance chimique
  permettant une vigilance et un fonctionnement mental
  normaux et même accrus, ne deviendrait pas bientôt la
  « drogue de choix » pour des millions de personnes La
  perspective d’une société largement sociopathe prend alors
  les allures d’une terrible réalité.
    D’évidence, l’homme est parvenu au point où ses
  instruments de guerre, même de type classique, sont
  devenus si dangereux que son mental n’est plus en mesure
  de supporter la bataille. Soit il lui faut sombrer dans la
  démence s’il veut combattre, soit il doit trouver d’autres
  voies pour régler ses conflits. La destruction physique de
  mi lions d’êtres humains n’est-elle pas, au fond, préférable
  a leur survie si le prix à payer pour celle-ci est la
denaturation totale de leur esprit - et de leur âme - tels
que nous les avons toujours connus? La question reste
ouverte. Une société composée de sociopathes dépourvus
de toute vie émotionnelle constitue peut-être un prix trop
lourd a payer pour sa survie : ceux qui refusent de
collaborer à une solution chimique en paraissent convain-
cus…....
                                                                 
Le livre m’avait paru sensationnaliste à l’époque .

Merci de m’avoir répondu. Je voudrais juste attirer votre attentionn sur l’accumulation de mauvaises nouvelles qui commence doucement à me “courir sur le haricot”. Malgré que l’an 2000 soit derrière nous depuis 5 ans, le millénarisme n’est pas mort. Les mauvaises nouvelles continuent à s’accumuler, et se contredisent parfois.
L’exemple que vous citez ici est assez amusant: le changement climatique dont tout le monde parle, et dont j’aimerais qu’on arrive à me prouver qu’il s’agit d’un mal absolu est eseentiellement causé par les flatulences des ruminants et la combustion des combustibles fossiles (nous frôlons le pléonasme: que peut-on faire d’un combustible, sinon le brûler).
Vous nous annoncez également la fin du pétrole. Mais c’est Byzance: plus de pétrole, plus de dioxyde de carbone, plus de réchauffement climatique et c’est la fin de tous nos problèmes. Les pingouins et manchots de tous les continents glacés vont à nouveau proliférer dans leurs splendeurs glacées, comme aurait dit le maire de Champignac.
En bref, je me réjouis qu’on en revienne un jour à la raison. Oui, le manque d’énergie nous guette. Oui, nous avons des solutions à court terme (l’énergie nucléaire de fission) et peut-être à long terme (la fusion, si on investit suffisamment dans la recherche). On en fait pas de bonne politique avec de bons sentiments. Ce que les chinois ont bien compris, qui investissent dans la construction de centrales nucléaires. Les iraniens aussi…

Tony Blair accepte finalement de publier l’avis sur la “légalité” de la guerre

LEMONDE.FR | 28.04.05 | 08h46 •  Mis à jour le 28.04.05 | 16h37

A une semaine des législatives du 5 mai, Tony Blair, contraint et forcé, a finalement publié jeudi 28 avril l’avis du procureur général sur la légalité de la guerre en Irak, ce qu’il avait toujours refusé de faire. La publication dès mercredi soir par les médias d’extraits de cet avis confidentiel, rédigé par l’attorney général Lord Goldsmith et donné au gouvernement le 7 mars 2003, a provoqué cette étonnante volte-face du leader travailliste.
Dans ses recommandations, envoyées deux semaines avant l’intervention américano-britannique, Lord Goldsmith se montrait sceptique sur la légalité de l’invasion de l’Irak sans nouvelle résolution de l’ONU. Dans un résumé de son avis, rendu public dix jours plus tard et transmis au Parlement, l’attorney général jugeait pourtant légale une invasion de l’Irak.
Les responsables de l’opposition ont aussitôt pointé la différence entre les deux documents, demandant des explications et appelant à la publication intégrale de cet avis légal, requête à laquelle Tony Blair a finalement accédé jeudi en fin de matinée. “Nous avons aujourd’hui la confirmation que, en dix jours, l’attorney général a changé d’avis de façon significative”, a lancé le chef du Parti libéral-démocrate, Charles Kennedy. Le porte-parole conservateur aux affaires étrangères Michael Ancram a pour sa part accusé Tony Blair d’avoir “menti”  sur l’Irak. “C’est un nouvel exemple du premier ministre disant une chose, pour découvrir après coup que ce n’était pas vrai”, a-t-il dit.
“VÉTO DÉRAISONNABLE”
L’Irak, qui colle décidément à la peau de Tony Blair, se réinvite donc une fois de plus dans la campagne électorale. L’impact de ce mini-coup de théâtre est cependant difficile à mesurer. En tant que tel, l’Irak importe peu aux électeurs, même si quelque 7 500 soldats britanniques y sont toujours stationnés; seuls 3 % des Britanniques affirmaient dans un récent sondage que c’était, pour eux, le facteur déterminant dans le scrutin.
Jeudi, le ministre des affaires étrangères Jack Straw a tenté de justifier la guerre, affirmant que Lord Goldsmith n’avait pas changé d’avis. L’attorney général “a toujours dit clairement qu’une intervention militaire sans deuxième résolution était justifiée dans certaines circonstances”, a insisté M. Straw.
L’un des points les plus intéressants de l’avis de Lord Goldsmith est le fait qu’il n’y avait pas, selon lui, de veto “raisonnable” ou “déraisonnable” de la part des membres du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU, démolissant ainsi l’un des arguments du gouvernement.
Tony Blair avait, pour justifier une intervention en Irak sans un feu vert préalable de l’ONU, affirmé à l’époque qu’il renonçait à obtenir une deuxième résolution en raison de la menace de “veto déraisonnable” de la France. “(...) si la majorité de l’opinion mondiale reste opposée à l’action militaire, il risque d’être difficile de qualifier le veto français de ‘déraisonnable’ “, estimait Lord Goldsmith.
SOUTIEN DES MINISTRES
Plusieurs ministres de Tony Blair ont volé jeudi à son secours. Dans une conférence de presse commune, le ministre des finances, Gordon Brown, a ainsi affirmé que, en 2003, il aurait agi de la même façon que le premier ministre. “Oui”, a-t-il répondu à la question d’un journaliste qui lui demandait si, dans les mêmes circonstances, il aurait agi comme M. Blair. “Non seulement je lui fais confiance, mais je respecte Tony Blair pour la façon dont il a pris cette décision”, a déclaré M. Brown.
La ministre du commerce et de l’industrie, Patricia Hewitt, a expliqué de son côté que Lord Goldsmith avait déclaré aux principaux ministres avant la guerre que “le conflit serait légal. Il nous a dit qu’une seconde résolution (de l’ONU) aurait été préférable, mais n’était pas essentielle. Une absence (de 2e résolution) ne rendait pas le conflit illégal”, a-t-elle insisté.
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3214,36-643718@51-627461,0.html

Attorney General note to the PM
This is the note to the PM from the Attorney General on 7 March 2003.

http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page7443.asp

NYTimes April 26, 2005

Ex-Officials Say Bolton Inflated Syrian Danger
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, April 25 - John R. Bolton clashed repeatedly with American intelligence officials in 2002 and 2003 as he sought to deliver warnings about Syrian efforts to acquire unconventional weapons that the Central Intelligence Agency and other experts rejected as exaggerated, according to former intelligence officials.

Ultimately, the former intelligence officials said, most of what Mr. Bolton, then an under secretary of state, said publicly about Syria hewed to the limits on which the C.I.A. and other agencies had insisted. But they said that the prolonged and heated disputes over Mr. Bolton’s proposed remarks were unusual within government, and that they reflected what one former senior official called a pattern in which Mr. Bolton sought to push his public assertions beyond the views endorsed by intelligence agencies.

The episodes involving Syria are being reviewed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as part of its inquiries related to Mr. Bolton’s nomination to become ambassador to the United Nations. Some of the former intelligence officials said they had discussed the issue with the committee, while declassified e-mail messages from 2002 provided to the committee by the State Department allude to one previously unknown episode.

One newly declassified message, dated April 30, 2002, and sent by a senior State Department intelligence official, dismissed as “a stretch” language about a possible Syrian nuclear program that had been spelled out in a draft speech circulated by Mr. Bolton’s aides for approval. In the speech itself, delivered five days later, Mr. Bolton made no reference to a Syrian nuclear program.

Until now, Senate Democrats leading the opposition to Mr. Bolton’s nomination have focused mostly on a 2002 dispute related to Cuba, in which Mr. Bolton has acknowledged seeking the transfer of two intelligence officials with whom he had differed. But a top Democratic staff member on Monday described the clashes over Syria as “an example, perhaps the most serious one, not of Mr. Bolton’s abusing people, but of trying to exaggerate the intelligence to fit his policy views.”

In one Congressional appearance, in June 2003 before the House International Relations Committee, Mr. Bolton offered a considerably darker view of Syria’s nuclear program than the C.I.A. had in a report to Congress two months earlier. Among other things, Mr. Bolton said American officials were “looking at Syria’s nuclear program with growing concern and continue to monitor it for any signs of nuclear weapons intent.” The C.I.A. report to Congress in April said only, “In principle, broader access to Russian expertise provides opportunities for Syria to expand its indigenous capabilities, should it decide to pursue nuclear weapons.”

In a third episode, in July 2003, the sharp objections raised by intelligence officials from several agencies to proposed Congressional testimony by Mr. Bolton on Syria included a 35-page memorandum from the Central Intelligence Agency. The incident became public at the time, and the government said the assertions spelled out in Mr. Bolton’s prepared testimony went well beyond what the United States had previously said about Syria’s weapons programs.

In particular, intelligence officials say, Mr. Bolton had planned to say in a classified portion of his testimony that Syria’s development of chemical and biological weapons posed a threat to stability in the Middle East. In the face of the objections, Mr. Bolton postponed the testimony until September, though Mr. Bolton has said the main reason for the postponement of the speech is that he was summoned to a White House meeting.

“There were a lot of disagreements about the speech,” Mr. Bolton said on April 11, when he was asked about the episode during a confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “It was clear to me that more work needed to be done on it.” But Mr. Bolton noted that the testimony he ultimately gave to the House committee in September 2003 had been fully cleared by American intelligence agencies.

Mr. Bolton’s office declined to comment Monday, and a State Department spokesman, Tom Casey, referred a reporter to Mr. Bolton’s Congressional testimony.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has asked the C.I.A. to provide the committee with a copy of its objections to Mr. Bolton’s prepared testimony in 2003.

In the versions most recently supplied by the State Department to the Senate committee, the e-mail messages from 2002 included a subject line that said “Clearance Request: Speech by Under Secretary Bolton - New [ ] Language,” with the word between the brackets deleted, as were the names of most senders and recipients. But earlier, unredacted copies of the message provided to Congress by the State Department had shown that the messages, including the response that criticized some language as a “stretch,” referred to Syria, according to Congressional and intelligence officials.

In a letter to the Senate committee on April 22, Matthew A. Reynolds, the acting assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, said country names had been “inadvertently included” in the documents previously released to the committee, and he asked that the Senate disregard them.

The exchanges on Syria in 2002 were part of a broader debate on an address that Mr. Bolton ultimately delivered to the Heritage Foundation on May 5. Sharp differences over the assertions on Cuba that Mr. Bolton had sought to make led to a rift between the under secretary and the State Department’s intelligence bureau. Mr. Bolton’s supporters have said the exchanges were part of the customary back-and-forth in government in advance of such speeches, but his critics say they were unusual in scope and intensity, and reflected the degree to which Mr. Bolton sought in his remarks to go beyond previous intelligence assessments.

In the speech itself, Mr. Bolton pointed to Cuba, Syria and Libya as “rogue states intent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction,” a trio that extended “beyond the axis of evil” of Iran, Iraq and North Korea that President Bush had described in his State of the Union address several months earlier. On Syria, Mr. Bolton said in the 2002 speech that the government in Damascus “is pursuing the development of biological weapons and is able to produce at least small quantities of biological warfare agents.”

In testimony to Congress in June 2003, Mr. Bolton said American officials “know that Syria is pursuing the development of biological weapons.” But a report sent to Congress by the C.I.A. in April 2003 was more guarded in its assessment than Mr. Bolton had been. Using an abbreviation for biological warfare, it said only that it was “highly probable that Syria is also continuing to develop an offensive B. W. capability.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/26/politics/26bolton.html?th&emc=th

NY Times – Opinion April 26, 2005
The Disappearing Wall

To the dismay of many mainstream religious leaders, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, participated in a weekend telecast organized by conservative Christian groups to smear Democrats as enemies of “people of faith.” Besides listening to Senator Frist’s videotaped speech, viewers heard a speaker call the Supreme Court a despotic oligarchy. Meanwhile, the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, has threatened the judiciary for not following the regressive social agenda he shares with the far-right fundamentalists controlling his party.

Apart from confirming an unwholesome disrespect for traditional American values like checks and balances, the assault on judges is part of a wide-ranging and successful Republican campaign to breach the wall between church and state to advance a particular brand of religion. No theoretical exercise, the program is having a corrosive effect on policymaking and the lives of Americans.

The centerpiece is President Bush’s so-called faith-based initiative, which disregards decades of First Amendment law and civil rights protections. Mr. Bush promised that federal money would not be used to support religious activities directly, but it is. The program has channeled billions of taxpayers’ dollars to churches and other religion-based providers of social services under legally questionable rules that allow plenty of room for proselytizing and imposing religious tests on hiring. The initiative even provides taxpayers’ money to build and renovate houses of worship that are also used to offer social services.

Offices in the White House and federal departments pump public money to religious groups, but provide scant oversight or accountability to make sure that the money is spent on real services, not preaching. Indeed, Mr. Bush’s goal is to finance programs that are explicitly religious.
A recent want ad posted by a taxpayer-financed vocational program of the Firm Foundation for inmates in a Pennsylvania jail stipulated that a job seeker must be “a believer in Christ and Christian Life today” and that the workday “will start with a short prayer.” A major portion of inmates’ time is spent on religious lectures and prayer, according to a lawsuit filed by two civil liberties groups.

The Bush administration and Congress have turned over issues bearing on women’s reproductive rights to far-right religious groups opposed not just to abortion, but to expanded stem-cell research, effective birth control and AIDS prevention programs. The Food and Drug Administration continues to dawdle over approving over-the-counter access to emergency contraception for fear of inflaming members of the religious right who deem any interference with the implantation of a fertilized egg to be an abortion. This foot-dragging may be good politics from one narrow view, but it harms women and drives up the nation’s abortion rate.

The result of this open espousal of one religious view is a censorious climate in which a growing number of pharmacists feel free to claim moral grounds for refusing to dispense emergency contraception and even birth control pills prescribed by a doctor. Public schools shy away from teaching about evolution, and science museums reject scientifically sound documentaries that may offend Christian fundamentalists. Public television stations were afraid to run a children’s program in which a cartoon bunny met a lesbian couple.

In a recent Op-Ed article in The Times, John Danforth, the former Republican senator and U.N. ambassador who is also a minister, said his party was becoming a political arm of the religious right. He called it a formula for divisiveness that ultimately threatened the party’s future. With the nation lurching toward the government sponsorship of religion, and the Senate nearing a showdown over Mr. Bush’s egregious judicial nominees, it is a warning well worth heeding.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/26/opinion/26tue1.html?th&emc=th

Under Democrats’ fire, DeLay isn’t flinching
By Brian Knowlton International Herald Tribune TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 2005
WASHINGTON When President George W. Bush travels Tuesday to the Gulf Coast city of Galveston, Texas, to press again for Social Security changes, one man on the stage is likely to be particularly eager to bask in the president’s glow.
The House Republican leader, Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, has found himself under unceasing assault by Democrats and the subject of dozens of news reports raising questions about his alleged ethical shortcomings and his controversial views on the judiciary.
DeLay is a feisty, focused, aggressive and effective politician - his nickname is “the Hammer” - and he has not exactly wilted under the criticism. While he holds the title of majority leader, DeLay is actually the second-most-powerful House Republican, after the speaker, Dennis Hastert of Illinois.
With the full expectation that the hostile fire will not soon grow still, he has marshaled supporters to question Democrats’ ethics and to denounce various charges as politically motivated.
One of the potentially more serious charges arose Sunday, when The Washington Post reported that a trip DeLay took to England and Scotland in May 2000, including a golf round at the famous St. Andrews course, had been paid for by a lobbyist, in apparent violation of House ethics rules.
So even if the Galveston visit was planned some time ago, and DeLay’s expected presence a matter of routine protocol - his district includes Galveston - it comes at a welcome time for him, offering the implication of presidential-support-by-proximity.
DeLay and Bush are said by other Republicans to have a less than close relationship - they have clashed at times - but the president is said to feel he needs the Texan’s political support, particularly on issues like Social Security.
DeLay has seemed to find himself drifting into a new maelstrom of controversy each week. While Republican leaders have mostly stood by him, some Republicans are said to be asking quietly whether his presence is beginning to do them more harm than good.
In the middle of the ethics charges, DeLay infuriated some Democrats and judges - and raised some Republican eyebrows - by saying that the courts’ refusal to intervene to keep alive Terry Schiavo, the Florida woman declared years ago to be in a vegetative state, was “outrageous” and should be investigated.
Polls showed that most Americans disagreed with his position. But DeLay - a committed conservative who pressed the Clinton impeachment without regard for political price - has not backed down.
Democrats, meanwhile, seem determined as well, having drawn new energy from their ability to stand up to Bush on Social Security; to hold up his choice as chief delegate to the United Nations, John Bolton, and delay his judicial picks; and now, to keep DeLay off stride.
The majority leader, in turn, has seized on the Democrats’ patent antipathy to tar the complaints as political. He contends that the breaches he is accused of do not violate House rules; some involve legal practices engaged in by dozens of other legislators, such as putting relatives on the payroll of his political action committee.
DeLay’s re-election organization sent a letter last week to voters in his district denying that any laws had been violated. He attributed the unrelenting scrutiny to a hostile “syndicate” comprising Democrats, issue groups and a “legion of Democrat-friendly press.”
The latest reports, regarding the May 2000 trip, raise questions about DeLay’s insistence that the visit to Britain was paid for by the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative group. Such groups are allowed to pay for congressional trips, so long as the expenditures are reported. But lobbyists and foreign agents are not allowed to do so.
The Post reported Sunday that DeLay’s airfare of $6,938 was charged to a credit card issued to the Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and other expenses to a card belonging to a second lobbyist, Edwin Buckham.
The FBI is investigating Abramoff in connection to gifts to lawmakers.
DeLay has worked closely with lobbyists in the past, involving some in the drafting of legislation.
DeLay, defiantly, has called for the House ethics committee to review his overseas trips.
But part of Democrats’ ire stems from the way the committee’s Watergate-era rules have been weakened in the Republican-dominated House to make it harder to investigate members like DeLay, whom the committee admonished three times last year.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/04/26/news/delay.php

Il est sibyllin, ce message.
Qui diviserait ?
Le béni-oui-ouiste ou son contraire ?
Qui veut régner ?

Trop relu la “constitution” ?

Merci pour ce site tres interessant.

Une petite suggestion: pourriez-vous faire en sorte que les articles paraissent correctement a l’impression?  Si je clique sur “Imprimer” depuis ma fenetre Explorer la marge de droite est coupee…  Pas moyen d’imprimer correctement.

Merci encore,

L. El Ghaoui

En fait il est tres difficile d’avoir une exactitude sur les chiffres americains surtout dans ce que vous appelez les crimes de sang (hate crimes). Apres le 11 septembre il y a 7 Etats qui ont change leur loi pour ne pas rapporter leur chiffre:
Arkansas, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Wyoming.
Dans le district de Columbia par exemple on trouve seulement 1 crime haineux, meme chose pour l’Arkansas d’apres les donnees du FBI.
Ce qui est tres deconcertant c’est que meme si les emprisonnements sont en baisse, je me demande si il n’y a pas eu un lien dans la violence issue du 11 septembre, helas il n’y a pas de donnees mensuelles de la part du FBI, juste des donnees annuelles:

in 1995: 8,433
in 2000: 9,562
in 2002: 9,222
in 2003: 9,100

La plupart des crimes raciaux aux USA sont perpetres par des adolescents de moins de 20 ans. Il y a environ 6 millions de personnes dans leur vie qui seront touchees par un crime haineux oriente en priorite sur la race, ethnicite puis la religion en 2ieme place.