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Bravo pour le commentaire. Il est vrai que les Français ont une vue idyllique des Etats-Unis, je pense cependant que cela est due à la confusion entretenue entre l’Amérique et les Etats-Unis. On pense à l’Amérique du noble sauvage, des grands espaces, de la nature en discourant sur les Etats-Unis. D’ailleurs, dans le film ”Mon oncle d’Amérique” un des personnages a eu cette remarque très frappante (pour moi au moins): l’Amérique n’exite pas, j’y étais.

Nos amis états-uniens ont l’air décidés à tuer le logiciel libre Linux.

Le Parlement Européen semble (étonnamment ?) décidé à soutenir Linux.

Mais le Conseil des Ministres semble préférer, pour on ne sait quelle obscure raison, faire plaisir à l’Oncle Sam. Probablement parce qu’ils sont tout autant inféodés au capitalisme néo-libéral que le sont les membres de l’establishment US.

Une pétition est lancée pour sauver Linux sur le site http://petition.eurolinux.org/index_html?LANG=en

Voici ce que l’on trouve sur le site ZDnet sur la question :

http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/business/0,39020715,39163808,00.htm?feed

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Le noyau Linux sous la menace de 283 brevets de logiciels déposés aux États-Unis

Par Estelle Dumout

ZDNet France

Lundi 2 août 2004

Selon une étude réalisée pour le compte d’une société d’assurances, quelque 280 brevets, encore non validés par les tribunaux, pourraient être utilisés contre les utilisateurs de solutions Linux.

Le noyau Linux pourrait potentiellement enfreindre 283 inventions validées comme telles par l’Office américain des brevets et des marques (US PTO). Telle est la principale conclusion d’une enquête publiée le 2 août par Open Source Risk Management (OSRM), une compagnie d’assurances spécialisée dans la gestion des risques juridiques liés à l’utilisation de logiciels à “code source ouvert”, et en particulier ceux soumis à la licence GPL des “logiciels libres”.

Cette étude aux conclusions radicales a été réalisée par Dan Ravicher, un avocat américain spécialiste des questions de propriété intellectuelle. Fondateur de la Public Patent Foundation aux États-Unis, il est aussi le principal conseiller juridique de la Free Software Foundation (FSF), le groupe de militants historique des solutions GNU/Linux et de la GPL.

«J’ai une bonne et une mauvaise nouvelle», lance Dan Ravicher dans un communiqué. Côté positif, il a passé en revue tous les brevets logiciels validés en appel par les tribunaux américains: selon son analyse, les versions 2.4 et 2.6 du noyau ou “kernel” Linux ne contreviennent à aucun d’entre eux.

Toutefois, la médaille a son revers. «La mauvaise nouvelle est que nous avons identifié 283 brevets logiciels publiés, mais non encore validés par les tribunaux, qui contiennent des détails pouvant être raisonnablement utilisés contre les utilisateurs professionnels de logiciels à base de noyau Linux», souligne Dan Ravicher. «Ces derniers s’exposeraient, si ces brevets venaient à être validés, à de lourdes conséquences financières.»

Un tiers des brevets aux mains des amis de Linux

L’avocat refuse cependant de dresser un tableau alarmiste de la situation: environ un tiers de ces brevets sont détenus «par de grandes entreprises qui sont favorables à Linux, certaines d’entre elles ayant même des intérêts financiers à voir l’adoption de ces solutions se développer: Cisco Systems, HP, IBM, Intel, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat, Sony…» Reste une ombre au tableau: Microsoft, adversaire déclaré des solutions open source en général, et des logiciels libres GPL en particulier, détient 27 de ces 283 inventions, le reste étant entre les mains de particuliers ou de sociétés «qui n’ont rien à perdre à entamer des procédures légales contre les utilisateurs professionnels de Linux, à la recherche de compromis lucratifs».

«Au final, nous avons confirmé ce que la communauté savait déjà: [l’utilisation de] Linux, comme n’importe quel autre produit à succès, comporte des risques au niveau des brevets», poursuit Dan Ravicher. La question est au cœur de toutes les polémiques depuis que la société SCO, qui détient des droits sur le système propriétaire Unix System V, prétend que le noyau Linux et les distributions complètes qui l’utilisent ont en quelque sorte “plagié” Unix. SCO s’en est pris à des poids lourds de l’informatique, dont IBM, puis a tenté d’imposer des licences aux autres utilisateurs; avec un relatif insuccès pour l’instant.

OSRM profite opportunément de la publication de cette étude pour présenter sa nouvelle police d’assurance, qui devrait être lancée d’ici le début de 2005. Pour 150.000 dollars par an, cette police couvre, dans la limite de 5 millions de dollars, tous les coûts d’une entreprise qui serait poursuivie pour son utilisation des solutions à base du noyau Linux.

Avec Stephen Shankland, CNET News.com

Une dépêche de Reuters nous apprend que l’on trouve à présent du Prozac, l’antidépresseur le plus connu, dans l’eau des robinets britanniques. Serait-ce le moyen trouvé par Tony Blair pour remonter le moral de ses concitoyens déprimés par son affligeante politique ? Non, il semble plutôt que ce qui se passe dans la vie de tous les jours les déprime tant qu’ils prennent leur Prozac en telle quantité que celui-ci se retrouve dans leurs excrétions et fini par se retrouver dans l’eau retraitée. Cela en dit long sur notre merveilleuse société occidentale de libre-échange. La logique capitaliste néo-libérale ne semble pouvoir fonctionner qu’en détruisant les liens entre les êtres humains, et donc en détruisant ceux-ci, comme le montrent par exemple les films lucides de Ken Loach (Navigator et d’autres…)

On pourrait aussi voir dans cette “prozacisation” de l’eau courante une illustration singulière du virtualisme : on prend du Prozac pour mener une existence somme toute artificielle, permettant de peindre en rose tous les aspects effroyablement noirs de notre condition d’esclaves du capitalisme avancé et nous nous le refilons les uns aux autres par l’anus et la vessie. Nous permettant ainsi mutuellement de continuer à prendre, toujours davantage… des vessies pour des lanternes.

Question subsidiaire : quelle quantité de Prozac y a-t-il dans l’eau des robinets des autres pays ? En France et en Belgique ? Aux Etats-Unis ?

Amusons-nous un peu, même s’il n’y a vraiment pas de quoi rire : pourrait-on élaborer une mesure du degré de virtualisme d’un pays à partir de ce paramètre ?

Dernière réflexion qui montre à quel point on est bien en plein virtualisme dans toute cette affaire : des méta-analyses statistiques effectuées par Irving Kirsch (Université du Connecticut) montreraient que l’efficacité du Prozac est à peine supérieure à celle de l’Effet Placebo. Pour ceux que cela intéresse, son texte “Listening to Prozac but Hearing Placebo:
A Meta-Analysis of Antidepressant Medication” se trouve en ligne à l’adresse :

http://www.journals.apa.org/prevention/volume1/pre0010002a.html

Cette analyse est par ailleurs congruente aux réflexions de Philippe Pignarre dans son excellent livre “Comment la dépression est devenue une épidémie” (Editions La Découverte). L’auteur y met l’accent sur les effets en boucle de contagion mentale et d’imitation. Bref, sur le virtualisme…

Report: Prozac Found in Britain’s Drinking Water

8/8/2004

“LONDON (Reuters) - Traces of the anti-depressant Prozac have been found in Britain’s drinking water supply, setting off alarm bells with environmentalists concerned about potentially toxic effects.

The Observer newspaper said Sunday that a report by the government’s environment watchdog found Prozac was building up in river systems and groundwater used for drinking supplies.

The exact quantity of Prozac in the drinking water was unknown, but the Environment Agency’s report concluded Prozac could be potentially toxic in the water table.

Experts say that Prozac finds its way into rivers and water systems from treated sewage water, and some believe the drugs could affect reproductive ability.

A spokesman for Britain’s Drinking Water Inspectorate said Prozac was likely to be found in a considerably watered down form that was unlikely to pose a health risk.
“It is extremely unlikely that there is a risk, as such drugs are excreted in very low concentrations,” the spokesman said. “Advanced treatment processes installed for pesticide removal are effective in removing drug residues.”

But environmentalists called for an urgent investigation into the findings.

Norman Baker, environment spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said it looked “like a case of hidden mass medication upon the unsuspecting public.”
“It is alarming that there is no monitoring of levels of Prozac and other pharmacy residues in our drinking water,” he told the Observer.

The Environment Agency has held a series of meetings with the pharmaceutical industry to discuss any repercussions for human health or the ecosystem, the Observer said.

Prescription of anti-depressants has surged in Britain. In the decade up to 2001, overall prescriptions of antidepressants rose from 9 million to 24 million a year, the paper said. “

source: courrier international.

Un haut fonctionnaire de l’administration américaine a proposé, quelques jours après les attentats du 11 septembre 2001, de “surprendre les terroristes” en attaquant l’Amérique du Sud ou l’Asie du Sud-Est au lieu de l’Afghanistan qui, selon lui, “manquait de bonnes cibles”, rapporte l’hebdomadaire américain Newsweek.

L’idée, révélée dans le récent rapport de la commission d’enquête sur le 11 septembre 2001, dans une volumineuse note de bas de page, recommandait “une attaque envers des groupes terroristes en Amérique du Sud, par exemple à la jonction des trois frontières du Brésil, de l’Argentine et du Paraguay, où la présence d’Iraniens soutenus par le Hezbollah a été enregistrée”. L’objectif était de capturer des terroristes en dehors des zones surveillées comme l’Afghanistan, là où aucune attaque n’était redoutée, et “également de provoquer un effet boule de neige sur d’autres opérations terroristes”, relate Newsweek.

La note de bas de page reprend le contenu d’un mémo top secret et anonyme, néanmoins attribué au sous-secrétaire à la Défense Douglas Feith. Dans ce mémo figuraient “de nombreux documents du Pentagone avançant des idées peu orthodoxes sur la guerre contre la terreur”, soutient Newsweek. Certaines de ces idées suggérait d’attaquer “des cibles en dehors du Moyen-Orient comme première riposte” ou “des cibles qui ne sont pas liées à Al Qaida, comme par exemple l’Irak.”

Les suggestions concernant les attaques en Amérique du Sud, informe le journal, seraient le fruit des réflexions de Michael Maloof et David Wurmser, deux membres des services secrets du Pentagone. David Wurmser est maintenant un proche conseiller de Dick Cheney en politique extérieure.

Les démocrates haussent le ton contre George W. Bush

LEMONDE.FR | 06.08.04 | 08h44

La campagne électorale a pris un ton plus offensif jeudi 5 août aux Etats-Unis. John Kerry, mais aussi Bill Clinton, s’en sont durement pris au président George W. Bush. Le candidat démocrate lui reproche de ne pas avoir réagi immédiatement le 11 septembre après avoir eu connaissance des attentats. L’ancien président a sévèrement critiqué l’hôte de la Maison Blanche, sans le nommer, en l’accusant d’avoir affaibli la lutte contre le terrorisme en renversant Saddam Hussein, qui ne représentait qu’une “menace de cinquième ordre” pour les Etats-Unis.
Le ton monte dans la campagne présidentielle aux Etats-Unis, comme si quelques semaines après la convention démocrate et à quelques jours de celle des républicains, on s’était passé le mot pour durcir le discours et déstabiliser l’adversaire entre deux conventions, période propice pour affûter les armes.  Côté démocrate, c’est d’abord l’ancien président, Bill Clinton, qui a ouvert le feu contre son successeur sans le nommer, en l’accusant d’avoir affaibli la lutte contre le terrorisme en renversant Saddam Hussein, qui ne représentait qu’une “menace de cinquième ordre” pour les Etats-Unis.

En visite au Canada pour faire la promotion de son autobiographie, l’ancien président a déclaré dans une interview télévisée que la guerre en Irak avait drainé des ressources vitales pour la guerre contre Al-Qaida. Il a reproché M. Bush de n’avoir pas mis suffisamment d’hommes et de fonds dans la bataille engagée pour capturer Oussama Ben Laden et détruire les caches d’Al-Qaida et des talibans le long de la frontière pakistano-afghane.

“Nous ne saurons jamais si nous aurions pu attraper [Ben Laden] car nous n’en avons jamais fait une priorité”, a déclaré Bill Clinton dans cette interview à la télévision canadienne (CBC). Clinton, qui soutient l’adversaire démocrate de Bush, le sénateur John Kerry, dans la campagne électorale américaine, a estimé qu’au moment de la guerre, Saddam Hussein n’était qu’une “menace du cinquième ordre”. “Pourquoi a-t-on confié aux Pakistanais le soin de lutter contre ce qui représente la menace la plus importante pour la sécurité des Etats-Unis en se contentant d’un rôle américain d’appoint, pendant que nous placions toutes nos ressources militaires en Irak, qui ne représentait au pire qu’une menace de cinquième ordre?”, s’est demandé l’ancien président démocrate. “Comment en est-on arrivé au point d’avoir 130 000 hommes en Irak et 15 000 en Afghanistan ?” a-t-il ajouté.

Selon l’ancien président, George W. Bush aurait dû se concentrer sur d’autres menaces plus importantes pour les Etats-Unis comme le conflit au Proche-Orient, la tension pakistano-indienne et la Corée du Nord, plutôt que de s’en prendre au régime de Saddam Hussein. Il s’est interrogé sur le bien-fondé stratégique “de prendre tous ces engagements en Irak, puis de mettre la sécurité de notre pays de fait entre les mains des Pakistanais en Afghanistan et en ce qui concerne Ben Laden et Al-Qaida, car c’est incontestablement ce qui est arrivé”. Clinton a aussi estimé que, eût-il été président dans les mois précédant la guerre en Irak, il aurait cru l’ancien inspecteur des Nations unies, Hans Blix, s’il lui avait indiqué que Saddam Hussein n’avait pas d’armes de destruction massive, et ce malgré les informations américaines affirmant le contraire.

“La question n’est pas de le croire lui (Hans Blix) plutôt que les agences de renseignement américaines, mais les renseignements (fournis par les services américains) étaient véritablement ambigus sur ce point”, a-t-il estimé.

KERRY CRITIQUE VIVEMENT BUSH

Puis c’est au tour du candidat démocrate, John Kerry, de prendre le relais des critiques. Il a vivement critiqué jeudi son adversaire républicain, pour ne pas avoir réagi immédiatement le 11 septembre 2001 après avoir eu connaissance des attentats.

“En premier lieu, si j’avais été en train de lire un livre à des enfants et que mon conseiller m’avait murmuré à l’oreille l’Amérique est attaquée, j’aurais dit très poliment et très gentiment à ces enfants que le président des Etats-Unis avait à s’occuper de quelque chose”, a-t-il dit à Washington, lors d’une conférence de l’Association des journalistes de couleur. Le 11 septembre 2001, M. Bush lisait un livre à des enfants dans une école de Floride (sud-est) quand il a été avisé que des avions avaient percuté les tours du World Trade Center à New York. Il a ensuite continué à lire pendant sept minutes.

John Kerry estime disposer, au contraire de George W. Bush, d’une crédibilité pour être chef des armées, du fait de sa participation à la guerre du Vietnam. “Je prends la fonction de commandant en chef avec une expérience rare, heureusement, mais importante, celle d’avoir combattu dans une guerre,” a-t-il dit, ajoutant qu’il n’enverrait de troupes américaines au feu que si toutes les autres options avaient été épuisées.

“Et je crois que nous avons besoin d’un commandant en chef qui comprend l’épreuve avant d’envoyer des jeunes gens à la guerre. Vous devez pouvoir regarder des parents dans les yeux s’ils perdent leur fils ou leur fille, et leur dire : J’ai tenté de faire tout ce qui était en mon pouvoir pour éviter ça, mais nous n’avions pas le choix en tant que nation, en tant que peuple”, a-t-il ajouté.

Aussitôt, les responsables de la campagne du président américain George W. Bush et de la Maison Blanche ont vivement réagi jeudi aux attaques de son adversaire démocrate John Kerry. “Je veux regarder plus attentivement ce qu’il a dit, mais cela ressemble aux genres d’attaques politiques auxquelles il se livre plutôt que d’essayer de justifier ses décisions passées et de débattre des véritables questions et de nos différences sur ces questions”, a affirmé le porte-parole de la Maison Blanche Scott McClellan en marge d’un déplacement de M. Bush à Colombus (Ohio, nord).

“John Kerry va avoir des désillusions s’il prend conseil auprès de Michael Moore. John Kerry est un candidat faisant preuve d’indécision, qui a montré cette indécision dans la guerre contre le terrorisme, qui n’a pas voté pour financer nos troupes en guerre et ne peut exposer clairement sa position sur la décision de renverser Saddam Hussein”, a affirmé pour sa part Rudy Giuliani, ancien maire de New York.

Avec AFP
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3222,36-374673,0.html

M. Bush userait de la menace terroriste comme “carte” électorale

LE MONDE | 04.08.04 | 13h32 •  MIS A JOUR LE 04.08.04 | 16h18

Depuis l’alerte décrétée dimanche, la polémique enfle sur l’usage de la peur à des fins politiques en vue du scrutin présidentiel de novembre. L’actualité des plans d’attaque de centres financiers à New York et Washington par Al-Qaida est mise en doute par la presse et des démocrates.
George Bush exploite-t-il plus que de raison le filon de la peur à des fins électorales ? La question, qui a toujours trotté dans la tête de certains démocrates sans qu’ils osent s’en inquiéter trop haut, est désormais ouvertement posée aux Etats-Unis. 

Le doute a commencé à s’installer dès la nouvelle alerte lancée dimanche 1er août par le secrétaire à la sécurité intérieure, Tom Ridge, sur de possibles attentats terroristes contre les institutions financières sur le territoire américain. Trois jours après la clôture de la convention démocrate, avec en point d’orgue un discours très ferme et très médiatisé de John Kerry sur la force de l’Amérique, la date tombait en effet à pic pour permettre à l’administration Bush de reprendre l’initiative en matière de sécurité. Certains sondages donnaient un léger avantage à M. Kerry sur M. Bush, et l’un d’entre eux, en particulier, révélait que le problème de crédibilité dont souffrait le candidat démocrate en matière de lutte contre le terrorisme était presque surmonté.

“DÉTAIL ET PRÉCISION”

Mais les renseignements “nouveaux” et “alarmants” sur lesquels Tom Ridge déclarait fonder cette nouvelle alerte dissuadaient, dans un premier temps, les mauvais esprits de s’exprimer. “Sur une échelle de 1 à 10, la qualité de ces renseignements est de 10”, avait proclamé Tom Ridge sur l’un des shows télévisés les plus regardés du dimanche matin. Habitués à franchir différents paliers d’anxiété depuis le 11 septembre 2001 au gré des couleurs des alertes - orange, rouge -, les Américains renouaient avec la peur et les mesures de sécurité accrues.

Lundi 2 août pourtant, c’est de la bouche même d’une collaboratrice de la Maison Blanche que les interrogations les plus légitimes sont sorties. Questionnée par le présentateur de l’émission d’information “The News Hour” sur la chaîne publique PBS, Frances Townsend, conseillère en sécurité intérieure auprès du président Bush, explique sereinement que les renseignements sur la base desquels cette nouvelle alerte a été lancée “ont été collectés en 2000 et 2001”. “Il semble que certains d’entre eux aient été actualisés en janvier, mais ce n’est pas clair, ajoute-t-elle. Il est impossible de dire, à partir de ces renseignements, si les individus - soupçonnés de vouloir commettre des attentats - sont encore là”. Le journaliste, Jim Lehrer, se fait plus pressant, demande des précisions, que Mme Townsend est incapable de fournir. “Alors, s’étonne-t-il, vous n’avez donc aucune information sur des noms, des visages, ou d’autres choses concrètes ?”

Conscient des risques que comportent des attaques frontales contre la politique antiterroriste de l’équipe Bush, John Kerry s’abstient d’intervenir directement dans le débat. Il laisse ce soin à Howard Dean, son concurrent malheureux à l’investiture démocrate, qui souligne, sur CNN, la troublante coïncidence de l’alerte avec le traditionnel “rebond” dont bénéficie un candidat à l’élection présidentielle à l’issue de la convention de son parti : chaque fois que le contexte politique l’exige, lance-t-il, “Bush sort sa carte maîtresse, et sa carte maîtresse, c’est le terrorisme”. Plus simplement, accuse M. Dean, l’équipe Bush “manipule la diffusion de l’information en fonction de la campagne présidentielle”.

Le lendemain, mardi 3 août, plusieurs journaux, le New York Times et le Washington Post en tête, s’inquiètent à leur tour de la faiblesse et de l’ancienneté de ces fameux renseignements venus du Pakistan, où plusieurs arrestations de responsables présumés d’Al-Qaida ont été opérées ces dernières semaines. Déjà, la semaine dernière, l’hebdomadaire indépendant The New Republic avait fait état de pressions américaines pour que l’arrestation d’un important suspect d’Al-Qaida soit annoncée pendant la grand-messe des démocrates, histoire de leur voler la vedette.

Cette fois-ci, Tom Ridge est contraint de se justifier, pendant que le président Bush, en tournée électorale au Texas, tente de rester à l’écart de la polémique : “Nous ne faisons pas de politique au département de la sécurité intérieure, répond-il, mardi, lors d’une intervention publique à New York. Le détail, la précision, le sérieux des renseignements vous frapperaient aussi bien que moi si vous y aviez accès. Il est du devoir des autorités de l’Etat de porter de telles situations à la connaissance du public.” Plusieurs experts des services de renseignement, interrogés sous couvert de l’anonymat par divers journaux américains, montent au créneau : il s’agit bien, disent-ils, de renseignements de valeur, mentionnant des cibles spécifiques ; les fichiers et documents saisis remontent bien à trois ou quatre ans, mais certains ont été mis à jour aussi récemment que janvier, prouvant que les terroristes n’ont pas abandonné leurs projets.

LES FAILLES DE LA RÉFORME

L’autre volet sur lequel M. Bush a essuyé, mardi, de sérieuses critiques porte sur sa décision de créer un poste de directeur fédéral du renseignement, suivant en cela les recommandations de la commission sur les attentats du 11 Septembre. Là aussi, l’effet d’annonce, lundi 2 août, a joué à fond. Mais, dès le lendemain, experts et commentateurs soulignent les failles du plan du président, qui renonce à adopter les suggestions les plus audacieuses et les plus contraignantes de la commission : le poste qu’envisage de créer M. Bush n’est pas doté, en effet, des pouvoirs nécessaires pour lui garantir une quelconque efficacité. Le New York Times dénonce là “la marque inimitable de Donald Rumsfeld”, le secrétaire à la défense, qui refuse d’abandonner la moindre de ses prérogatives.

A l’approche de la convention républicaine, qui s’ouvre fin août à New York - un choix déjà hautement symbolique -, la controverse ne peut que rebondir dans les semaines qui viennent. Elle fait en tout cas apparaître un fait politique nouveau aux Etats-Unis : la sécurité, intérieure et extérieure, est en passe de détrôner l’économie comme thème électoral numéro un.

Sylvie Kauffmann

• ARTICLE PARU DANS L’EDITION DU 05.08.04

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3222,36-374483,0.html
——

L’éditorial du Monde
La peur et les urnes
LE MONDE | 04.08.04 | 14h28

Il est toujours risqué de jouer avec le terrorisme et avec la crainte qu’il suscite, de l’agiter ou de l’instrumentaliser dans des buts politiques ou électoraux. Les électeurs espagnols ne s’y étaient pas laissé prendre, qui avaient sanctionné le gouvernement Aznar pour avoir tenté de manipuler à son avantage l’attentat du 11 mars à Madrid et avaient donné la victoire au socialiste Zapatero. 

Ce qui se passe aujourd’hui aux Etats-Unis appelle également à s’interroger. Depuis ce week-end, peu après la clôture de la convention démocrate qui a intronisé son candidat à la présidence, John Kerry, et les critiques émises par la commission du Congrès sur le 11-Septembre, l’administration Bush agite à nouveau le spectre de la menace terroriste. Le niveau d’alerte a été relevé à New York et à Washington. Or le gouvernement a été contraint de reconnaître que les renseignements invoqués étaient vieux de plusieurs années, dataient même d’avant le 11 septembre 2001, avant d’assurer qu’ils auraient été remis à jour récemment.

Dans ces circonstances, on ne peut que se demander s’il s’agit d’une coïncidence, ou bien si cette menace a été à nouveau mise en avant pour briser l’élan de la candidature Kerry. En effet, comme l’a remarqué le New York Times qui, avec le Washington Post, a été le premier à émettre des doutes, les sondages montrent que sa gestion du risque terroriste est l’unique avantage de George Bush dans une élection extrêmement disputée. Ce dernier sait qu’il joue sur du velours. L’opinion américaine, encore traumatisée par les attentats du 11 septembre 2001, est prête à beaucoup croire. L’opposition démocrate ne peut se permettre d’attaquer le “commandant en chef” sur un sujet aussi délicat et a dû abandonner l’initiative au président sortant, de peur d’être - si un incident devait arriver - taxée d’antipatriotisme.

Mais, quand la crédibilité d’un gouvernement est mise en doute sur un sujet aussi grave, c’est toute sa politique qui risque de l’être. Et, depuis son arrivée au pouvoir en janvier 2001, l’administration Bush n’a jamais cessé de jouer la politique de la tension, et de la peur. Au point d’intoxiquer l’opinion, comme l’a montré le débat sur les introuvables armes de destruction massive dans le dossier irakien. Le 11-Septembre et la guerre en Afghanistan avaient permis fort opportunément à un président mal élu de geler le débat politique et d’adopter une série de mesures d’exception. La guerre en Irak - envisagée bien avant les attentats d’Al-Qaida - a, dans un premier temps, forcé cet avantage.

On aimerait croire que George Bush n’a pas décidé d’utiliser Al-Qaida comme son meilleur agent électoral. Mais la mise en scène de ces derniers jours, après tant d’autres, semble dire le contraire. Certes, la menace terroriste existe et des attentats sont toujours possibles, aux Etats-Unis ou ailleurs. Mais, loin d’armer une démocratie, la manipulation de l’opinion, cette politique de la peur, la fragilise.

• ARTICLE PARU DANS L’EDITION DU 05.08.04
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3208,36-374513,0.html

A Low Profile For the Big Issue
Kerry Treads Lightly on War in Iraq

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 5, 2004; Page A06

In the early days of the general-election campaign, Democrat John F. Kerry has mounted a strong effort to erode President Bush’s advantage on national security. But on the defining issue of war in Iraq, his shots have appeared oblique at best.

The war received relatively short shrift at last week’s Democratic National Convention—Kerry devoted only six sentences to Iraq policy in his 45-minute acceptance speech—and on the stump he seldom discusses his plans for bringing the U.S. occupation to a close and stabilizing the country.

Kerry has strongly criticized the Bush administration’s competence in handling the war, principally its failure to enlist other nations to its cause in Iraq. But he has not questioned the basic tenets of the policy, nor has he outlined a course of action substantially different from the one Bush is pursuing to shore up the interim government and prepare for national elections.

While he has said he would substantially cut troop strength in Iraq by the end of his first term, he has not provided details on how.

And when Kerry does raise questions about Bush’s Iraq policies, they seem to be suggestive, not pointed. Surrounding the nominee on stage in Boston were his former Swift boat crewmates in Vietnam, the subtext being that Kerry knew all about the horrors of war—unlike Bush, who served stateside in the National Guard—and is better capable to extricate the United States from that troubled nation.

“I defended this country as a young man,” Kerry told the convention, “and I will defend it as president.”

Kerry’s careful approach on Iraq is born from something of necessity. As senator, after all, he voted to give Bush authorization to conduct the war. But Kerry campaign officials also say the candidate has chosen not to address Iraq in detail at this point because of their desire to introduce the Massachusetts senator to the American public, over a range of domestic and international themes.

Polls have suggested voters do not know Kerry well.
“The acceptance speech was clearly intended to be thematic,” said Richard C. Holbrooke, a senior foreign policy adviser to Kerry. “It was not just about Iraq.”

Holbrooke and other Kerry advisers point out that Kerry has spoken about Iraq in detail before and will do so again. In a July 4 op-ed article in The Washington Post, for instance, Kerry said he would bring in allies to share more of the burden by giving them access to reconstruction contracts and helping to repair Iraq’s oil industry, if they forgave Iraq’s debt and helped pay reconstruction costs. He also called for a conference with Iraq’s neighbors and a potential deployment of NATO forces in Iraq.

Indeed, his advisers say, it is Bush who has followed Kerry’s calls for more international support and a United Nations imprimatur for U.S. policies in Iraq. “Kerry’s been the consistent one, and Bush is the one who has changed his position,” Holbrooke said.
Bush and his surrogates are working hard to use Iraq to frame Kerry as a flip-flopper, seizing repeatedly on his opposition last year to an $87 billion spending measure to support the troops and provide reconstruction money for Iraq—a Senate vote cast in the midst of the Democratic presidential primary contests when antiwar candidate Howard Dean was riding high.

Kerry has said he voted against the measure because it was not funded—he supported the request if tax cuts for the wealthy were trimmed to pay for it—but one of his closest advisers, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), has told other Democrats that he begged Kerry not to vote against the $87 billion.

Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt said Kerry’s inability to “talk straight about that vote on Iraq” will haunt him. “He voted for the war and voted against funding for Iraq,” Holt said. “As long as you look at John Kerry through a gauzy haze of images and rhetoric, they have a chance. You have to look at his record.”

In Bush’s revamped stump speech Friday, he drew particular glee in focusing on the vote over the $87 billion. “He tried to explain his vote by saying: I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it. End quote,” Bush said to laughter. “He’s got a different explanation now. One time he said he was proud he voted against the funding, then he said that the whole thing was a complicated matter.” Bush then added: “There is nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat!”

There is some precedent for Kerry’s approach on Iraq. In 1968, Republican challenger Richard M. Nixon took virtually the same tack as Kerry when he accepted the GOP nomination. Despite mass protests against the Vietnam War, Nixon only briefly touched on the conflict in his speech, criticizing the Democrats for incompetence in conducting the war, pledging to bring it to an “honorable end,” and calling on allies to bear more of “the burden of defending peace and freedom around this world.” Nixon, who had been Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice president, also said he had experience in ending wars, pointing to the conclusion of the Korean War during the Eisenhower administration.

The Vietnam War did not end for another seven years.
Much like Nixon, Democrats plan to use Bush’s handling of war—particularly what they call poor planning, the violence and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction that followed the lightning victory by U.S. and British forces—as a broader metaphor for his competence to continue as president. While Kerry did not speak much about Iraq specifically, his speech was sprinkled with indirect references to the protracted struggle the United States faces in Iraq.

“The American people know that whatever you thought about going into the war, that there could have been a better way to go about executing it,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “Because of the lack of preparation and understanding as to what to expect, many more men and women have died and been wounded. . . . The administration will be held accountable for its policy.”

The Bush campaign brushes aside those questions and focuses instead on the threat ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein might have posed to the United States before the war, implicitly contrasting Bush’s certainty against Kerry’s more protracted decision making. “When he [Hussein] continued to deceive the weapons inspectors, I had a decision to make: to hope for the best and to trust the word of a madman and a tyrant or remember the lessons of September the 11th and defend our country,” Bush said Friday. “Given that choice, I will defend America every time.”

While Republicans strongly favor Bush’s decision to attack Iraq, Kerry also must energize a Democratic base that is deeply split over the war. Nine out of 10 delegates to the convention opposed the war, surveys indicated.

That balancing act was on display at the convention. Kerry’s running mate, John Edwards, in his acceptance speech, said a Kerry administration would work for a stable, democratic Iraq, which he called “a real chance for freedom and peace in the Middle East.” He also said Kerry would bring NATO forces into Iraq and win debt relief for Iraq from balking allies.

But unlike Edwards, Kerry did not say his goal was a stable, democratic Iraq. Instead, he spoke only of bringing allies into the coalition. “I know what we have to do in Iraq,” Kerry said. “We need a president who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers, reduce the risk to American soldiers. That’s the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home.”

Some experts, such as Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, felt Kerry’s language came very close to suggesting that he would pull the 140,000 U.S. troops out of Iraq. “I was a bit surprised,” said Kagan, who strongly supported the invasion of Iraq but has been critical of the administration’s postwar policy. “Edwards was pretty straightforward and clear about the commitment to Iraq. Kerry was far more tentative. He held out hope that he would get out.”

His advisers, however, denied Kerry meant to leave that impression. “John Kerry has resisted left-wing pressure to set a date certain for withdrawal because he knows the consequences would be catastrophic,” Holbrooke said. “But he believes . . . he will do better to create international support to deal with this problem.”
Staff writer Charles Babington contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40925-2004Aug4.html

Insurgency Not Anticipated
Chicago Tribune
August 3, 2004

WASHINGTON - According to the General in command, the U.S. went to war in Iraq without expectation of the violent insurgency that followed or a clear understanding of the psychology of the Iraqi people.

“We had a hope the Iraqis would rise up and become part of the solution,” said former Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the U.S. military’s Central Command until his retirement last August. “We just didn’t know (about the insurgency).”

Interviewed Monday in connection with the publication of his memoir, “American Soldier,” Franks also said he had expected large numbers of foreign troops to join the U.S. in its Iraq effort. Franks attributes the stresses on American forces in Iraq now, in part, to the failure of that to happen.

A product of officer candidates school instead of West Point, Franks is a 37-year Army veteran who was wounded three times as an artillery officer in Vietnam and served as assistant commander of the 1st Cavalry Division in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. He is considered the architect of the U.S.‘s initial victories in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he pioneered tactics involving heavy use of special operations troops.

In both book and interview, the retired general largely supported the administration’s conduct of the war, and he said he admired President Bush for his leadership in both the Afghan and Iraq conflicts.

A Texan who attended the same high school as First Lady Laura Bush, Franks held out the possibility of campaigning for the president. Several prominent retired generals have begun doing so for Democratic nominee John Kerry.

As he noted in his book, Franks initially projected that troop strength in Iraq might have to rise to 250,000 for the U.S. to meet all of its objectives, but it never got higher than 150,000.

“The wild card in this was the expectation for much greater international involvement,” he said in the interview. “I never cared whether the international community came by way of NATO or the United Nations or directly. ... We started the operation believing that nations would provide us with an awful lot of support.”

Instead, the other members of the coalition the administration assembled have only about 22,000 soldiers in Iraq, and several nations have pulled out. Franks said he thinks the U.S. will have to maintain substantial numbers of troops in Iraq for three to five years.

Initial planning for the war centered on achieving a speedy victory in the major combat phases of the conflict followed by rapid reconstruction of the country, he said.

Though an insurgency was feared, there was no assumption it would happen, he said.

“I think there was not a full appreciation of the realities in Iraq - at least of the psychology of the Iraqis,” he said.

“On the one hand,” he continued, “I think we all believed that they hated the regime of Saddam Hussein. Over the last year, we have seen that come to pass. That’s where the intelligence came from that allowed us to get the sons of Saddam Hussein.

“On the other hand, the psychology of the people - the mix of the Sunnis, the Shiites, the tribal elements and the Kurds - and what they would expect and tolerate in terms of coalition forces, their numbers, where they are and what they’re doing in Iraq, I don’t know that we made willful assumptions with respect to that.”

Franks said he was not surprised when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked him to “dust off” Iraq war planning while the U.S. was still embroiled in fighting al-Qaida terrorists and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“At the same time we were conducting military operations in (Afghanistan), we were continuing to fly Operation Southern Watch and Operation Northern Watch and our young pilots flying over Iraq were being shot at on virtually ever occasion,” he said. “Sen. John McCain, a man I respect, asked why in the world would we continue to let our pilots be shot at without taking more stringent action against Iraq.”

Franks said he fully expected Hussein to use some form of weapons of mass destruction against the American-led invasion. He said he was told personally by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah that they existed.

In his book, Franks quotes Mubarak as saying: “We have spoken with Saddam Hussein. He is a madman. He has WMD-biologicals, actually - and he will use them on your troops.”

Franks quotes Abdullah as telling him: “General, from reliable intelligence sources, I believe the Iraqis are hiding chemical and biological weapons.”

On Monday, wire services reported that spokesmen for both rulers denied there were such warnings. “Such a claim is void of truth,” said Mubarak spokesman Magad Abdel Fattah. A Royal Palace official in Jordan said, “His Majesty did not have information that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.”

Franks wrote that U.S. troops occupying Iraq discovered large supplies of raw materials and chemicals that could be used to manufacture weapons of mass destruction - likening them to “the equivalent of a disassembled pistol, lying on a table beside neatly arranged trays of bullets.”

Franks had terse words for some in the administration.

He used an expletive in the book to describe the Joint Chiefs of Staff because of what he called their insistence on championing their individual services rather than thinking of the military as a whole.

In his book, Franks referred to Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy and one of Rumsfeld’s close advisors, as “a theorist whose ideas were often impractical.”

“I generally ignored his contributions,” Franks wrote of one meeting.

He was critical of former White House terrorism advisor Richard Clarke, saying in the book he “was better at identifying a problem than at finding a workable solution.”

According to Franks, Secretary of State Colin Powell contacted him directly, without going through the chain of command, to voice his concern that the U.S. was invading Iraq with a comparatively small, highly-mobile force, instead of the kind of overwhelming massive force such as Powell deployed when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Persian Gulf War.

Franks said he considered Powell’s views as from a different time and situation.
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_franks_080304,00.html?ESRC=dod.nl

Washington Suffocates for Sake of Security, City Officials Argue

Local leaders say street closures and other federal anti-terrorism precautions are too much and regard citizens too little.

By Johanna Neuman
LA Times Staff Writer

August 4, 2004

WASHINGTON — As a target for terrorists, the nation’s capital is at the top of the list, a city of such world-famous symbols of political and economic might as the White House, the Capitol and the World Bank.

But in the eyes of local officials, security-obsessed federal authorities may kill the city before America’s enemies get the chance.

Furious at the latest street closings and checkpoints, imposed by Senate edict Monday night, city officials took to the streets Tuesday to express their outrage that congressional law enforcement officials were turning Washington into a fortress without regard for the people who live and work there — or the officials elected to govern it.

“We concede this certainly makes it easier for security,” Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s congressional representative, said as she stood on 1st Avenue N.E., now closed between the Capitol and Union Station. “You want to really make it easier? Close down all the streets! Close down the city! You can make it real safe.”

A member of the Homeland Security Committee, Norton emphasized her commitment to fighting terrorism. “I recognize this is perhaps the highest-target city in the world,” said Norton, a Democrat who serves on committees but is not entitled to vote on the House floor because the District of Columbia is not a state. “But we have to remember that we are fighting to preserve security and freedom, not one or the other.”

Washington Mayor Anthony Williams, a normally low-key former accountant, raised his voice when meeting with reporters Tuesday.

“This is a living, breathing city; this isn’t just a dead, static piece of concrete,” he said, straining to be heard above the noise of an ambulance siren a block away. “We can’t continue to close streets without doing death to commerce in this city, to tourism in this city, to a tax base in this city that provides all the services people need…. If someone hiccups in this city, traffic already backs up into Maryland and Virginia. You start closing streets like this, it will be backed up to Delaware.”

Part of the anger comes from the city’s efforts to recover from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, which killed 189 people at the Pentagon and devastated the city’s tourism industry.

“We worked so … hard to get the city’s economy back up after Sept. 11, against all these obstacles,” Williams said, referring to the lengthy shutdown of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the shuttering of the White House and the Capitol to visitors that finally yielded, this year, to a tourist turnaround.

“Now here we are reversing ground again. Yeah, it makes me angry,” he said.

Last week, Williams and other city officials were at the Democratic National Convention, dumping tea in Boston Harbor to protest their status as a city that paid taxes but had no vote in Congress.

That status is unlikely to change as long as Republicans are in charge on Capitol Hill, where the District of Columbia’s historically liberal politics would probably mean two more Democratic votes in the Senate and one in the House.

“To me, this feels like another glaring manifestation of lack of representation,” Williams said. “If we had two senators representing the district … there is no way they would just do this.”

Sharon Ambrose, the city councilwoman who represents the Capitol Hill area, was even more suspicious of federal motives. Noting Sunday’s decision by the Department of Homeland Security to raise the terrorist threat alert here from “yellow” (elevated) to “orange” (high), she accused congressional leaders of using “a sneak attack in the dead of night, under an orange blanket,” to “do something they wanted to do for several years.”

Congressional officials acknowledged Tuesday that they had long wanted to close 1st Street N.E. between Constitution Avenue and D Street, which allows traffic to pass by the Dirksen and Russell Senate Office Buildings.

“Yes, the Senate leadership made a deliberate decision to close 1st Street, based on intelligence and the advice of security officials,” Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle said in an interview.

“We discussed it for several weeks. We had to speed it up because of the orange alert.”

Agreeing with city officials that “no one likes closing streets,” Pickle said that congressional leaders opted to “err on the side of safety, to ensure the institution survives.”

Still, the symbolism of Washington’s city officials ruffled by federal edict — and by traffic jams around Capitol Hill — was lost on no one, particularly in a week when New Yorkers showcased a seemingly united front. New York City authorities banned commercial traffic on several bridges and from the inbound Holland Tunnel and conducted random searches of vans and service vehicles. Amid planning for the Republican National Convention at the end of the month and increasing security at the perimeter of Wall Street, city officials also reopened the Statue of Liberty on Tuesday — at least its pedestal.

Elsewhere in Washington, city police instituted heightened security measures around the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, cited by Homeland Security officials in their alert Sunday, and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the Federal Reserve buildings. The mayor had no comment about those measures. But Norton did.

Asked if the orange alert was politically motivated by the Bush administration to increase voter concern about terrorism, Norton dismissed the idea. “In the District of Columbia we can’t afford to speculate that maybe it’s politics and maybe it’s not,” she said. “We’ve got a whole city to defend here…. We’re not going to second-guess them. But they sure are second-guessing us.”

Privately, city officials scoffed at federal explanations. One observer noted that after a farmer drove his tractor into a pond on the National Mall in a 2003 protest over reduced tobacco subsidies — and sat there for two workdays — federal law enforcement officials diverted traffic, snarling commutes. Publicly, city officials raised the concern that new traffic jams radiating from the Capitol to all parts of the city could impede emergency trips to the hospital or swift reaction by first responders to a terrorist attack.

Mostly, they expressed anguish that, once again, federal officials had ignored the city’s autonomy and its interests.

“They are turning what are supposed to be symbols of democracy — the Capitol, the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court — into a fortress of fear,” Tony Bullock, the mayor’s press secretary, said.

“That sends entirely the wrong message. It’s just wrong. It’s the wrong optics. It looks like a war zone.”

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-dcsecurity4aug04.story

August 4, 2004
NEWS ANALYSIS

War and Peace, and Politics
By TODD S. PURDUM
WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 - In an election that could well turn on questions of war and peace, danger and safety, all politics sometimes seem to be security these days. And all security has an unmistakable overtone of politics, whatever the reality or immediacy of any announced threat.

“We don’t do politics in the Department of Homeland Security,” Secretary Tom Ridge said on Tuesday in dismissing any suggestion that his latest threat warning had a political motive. But on Sunday, Mr. Ridge, a former Republican congressman and governor of Pennsylvania, did do some politics all the same, when he declared that the intelligence behind his alert was “the result of the president’s leadership in the war against terror.”

John Kerry may not share that view, of course, but it is hard for him to say so, and the biggest thing the Democrats may have to fear in this campaign is the power of fear itself.

Polls show that Mr. Bush’s handling of terrorism remains his only clear advantage over Mr. Kerry in a razor-close race, and the president would not be either human or the canny politician he has proved himself to be in the past if he did not do all he could to remind the public of that strong suit - and to reinforce it.

That is why Mr. Bush chose to hold the Republican National Convention this month in Madison Square Garden, a short subway ride from ground zero, and why he released a new campaign advertisement on Tuesday with images of the firefighters and the flag, proclaiming, “The last few years have tested America in many ways, but together, we’re rising to the challenge: standing up against terrorism and working to grow our economy.”

But Mr. Bush must also take pains not to be seen as letting the political tail wag the terrorism dog. Word that much of the newly discovered intelligence that prompted the latest alert was years old led even some law enforcement officials to wonder why Mr. Ridge had raised the threat level just now.

“My own view is that the White House will be granted huge latitude by the public on matters involving potential terrorist attacks,” said Don Sipple, a longtime Republican political consultant. “Only the most cynical would view any political motivation. They have up to this point erred on the side of caution. It so happens he’s a candidate for re-election, but first and foremost he’s the president of the United States, fulfilling that role in dangerous times and a dangerous world. Shame on anybody who challenges that.”

The political risk for Mr. Kerry is clearer. Last week, when he wanted to show himself as a qualified commander in chief, he imported a parade of veterans, admirals and generals to the Democratic convention to praise him, then spoke passionately about his own combat service in Vietnam.

On Monday, Mr. Bush reminded Mr. Kerry and anyone else who was watching that he is already commander in chief, as he stepped into the White House Rose Garden with the gravitas that only the president can grasp - flanked by the secretaries of state, defense and homeland security and the attorney general - to announce support for creation of a new national intelligence director and comment on the latest terror alert.

“What this last 48 hours has shown is that the incumbent president really can dictate the agenda of a presidential campaign, and all of Kerry’s efforts on the road can be derailed by a morning press conference in Washington,” said Scott Reed, who ran Bob Dole’s unsuccessful campaign against Bill Clinton in 1996. “That’s just the challenge of running against an incumbent president. It’s tough. Take it from me.”

Polls show that while handling terrorism remains the one area where Mr. Bush is seen as a surer hand than Mr. Kerry, he has lost considerable ground in recent months, and the Democratic convention closed the gap even more.

In a CBS News poll conducted over the weekend, a majority of Americans, 51 percent, said they approved of the way Mr. Bush was handling the campaign against terrorism while 43 percent disapproved, down from March, when 60 percent approved and 32 percent disapproved.

Kenneth M. Duberstein, who was President Ronald Reagan’s last White House chief of staff, said that Mr. Bush and his aides “have to play this absolutely straight, and I think they are.” He added, “I think they have an imperative to explain to the American people not only the danger, but also enough of the background so that people are convinced this is for real.”

Mr. Bush is all too aware of the price he would pay if he had information about a possible attack and failed to share it. The report of the Sept. 11 commission detailed the missed clues and miscues that might have foiled the hijackers’ plot. So the president’s advisers make it clear that they are more than willing to suffer some second-guessing of their motives as they go about doing what they see as their jobs, and they insist that politics plays no part.

“We wouldn’t be, you know, contacting authorities at the local level unless something was real,” Mr. Bush said on Monday.

Among Democrats, only former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont has gone so far as to say out loud that he believes the administration is “manipulating the release of information in order to affect the president’s campaign.”

And even those remarks, barbed as they are, are no sharper than the comments some Republicans leveled at President Bill Clinton six years ago, when he ordered cruise missile strikes against Qaeda outposts in retaliation for the bombing of American embassies in East Africa days after confessing to his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Daniel R. Coats, then a Republican senator from Indiana and now Mr. Bush’s ambassador to Germany, summed up his feeling at the time.

“The danger here,” Mr. Coats said then of Mr. Clinton, “is that once a president loses credibility with the Congress, as this president has through months of lies and deceit and manipulations and deceptions, stonewalling, it raises into doubt everything he does and everything he says, and maybe everything he doesn’t do and doesn’t say.” He added: “I just hope and pray the decision that was made was made on the basis of sound judgment, and made for the right reasons, and not made because it was necessary to save the president’s job.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/04/politics/campaign/04assess.html?th

Je découvre à peine ce site, et je n’ai pas mis longtemps à l’adopter.

En lisant il y a deux heures ce papier mettant en exergue la façon dont la Maison Blanche compte user de l’effet “menace terroriste” durant cette campagne, je me suis dit : “il y a des chances pour que les documents exhumés de l’ordinateur du terroriste pakistanais arrêté la semaine dernière soient vieilles de plusieurs années”. A cet instant, je n’avais pas encore lu le compte rendu des enquêtes du Post et du NYT par Le Monde (cf : http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3222,36-374389,0.html).

D’après ces deux enquêtes, de haut responsables impliqués dans les officines américaines chargées de la sécurité estime que les données dont a fait état Tom Ridge, et à sa suite G.W. Bush lors de sa conférence de presse de dimanche dernier, daterait de plusieurs années. Ci fait.

Au-delà de tout cela, qui a un irresistible caractère cocasse, la question que je me pose est la suivante : Si l’intoxication du citoyen à l’effet “menace terroriste permanente’ a bel et bien fonctionné à plein durant la préparation de la guerre en Irak et durant les premiers mois de l’offensive, il semble qu’une fois détaché du conflit le risque d’un effet boomerang à la Aznar soit de plus en plus grand, d’où ma question : les armes de communication massive de Bush (Guerre en Irak, sureté nationale, risque permanent d’une attaque terroriste, etc.) ne sont-elles pas devenues tellement instables qu’il ne pourra plus les manipuler ? Le cas échéant, de quelles armes dispose-t-il ?

Certes Kerry se fait coincer par la logique médiatique quand il approuve le relèvement de l’état d’alerte au bénéfice du doute provoqué par l’annonce de GWB, mais puisque les grands quotidiens ont eux décidé de s’affranchir de l’esprit de mobilisation générale (cf le mea culpa du NYT), les campagnes d’intoxication vont faire long feu et Kerry retrouvera une sorte de légitimité sans prendre le risque majeur de contredire Bush le jour où ce dernier aura eu raison (ce qui peut arriver, à force de crier au loup…).

Reste une interrogation plus profonde que toutes les autres : les Américains feront-ils payer ou non à Bush d’avoir menti sans cesse avec la sincérité d’un bon Américain dévoué corps et âme (et portefeuille) à son pays ? Partagent-ils ou non, ce sens de la démocratie et de la vérité qui a si souvent (mais pas tout le temps, loin s’en faut) fait l’honneur de ce pays ?

C’est là que la portée d’un film comme F911 a une dimension historique que l’on pourrait rapprocher de Thoreau le jour où il a refusé de payer ses impôts à cause des états esclavagistes du sud, provoquant indirectement la guerre civile.

Nous verrons bien, en tous cas, la présidence de Bush restera dans les annales comme un tournant majeur dans l’histoire de la démocratie de masse.

washingtonpost.com

Intelligence Reform And False Urgency

By Chuck Hagel

Tuesday, August 3, 2004; Page A17

We stand at a moment filled with potential for bringing about the responsible intelligence reforms needed to meet the threats of the 21st century. But if we allow the current national consensus for intelligence reform to become a tool in the partisan rancor of presidential politics, we risk doing enormous damage to our intelligence community. We must not allow false urgency dictated by the political calendar to overtake the need for serious reform. This is an enormous undertaking filled with consequences that will last a generation.

There is no debate about the need to reform our 20th century intelligence infrastructure. Yesterday President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry publicly discussed several reform ideas that Congress will consider. But there is much work to be done to bring about the right reforms. Policymakers must not shy away from this responsibility; we must embrace it. The stakes could not be higher. While inaction is unacceptable, serious consequences will come with reform. Policymakers owe it to the American people to understand these consequences before they act.

A mistaken impression has developed that since Sept. 11, 2001, little has been done to improve our intelligence capabilities. This is not true. We are unquestionably a safer nation today than we were three years ago. The legislative and executive branches of government have been reviewing and adjusting our intelligence—the gathering, processing and management of it—since Sept. 11. We are vastly more prepared to respond to biological or chemical terrorist attacks than before Sept. 11. Our border security, documentation, information sharing and coordination among government agencies have all been improved. Last month, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, on which I serve, issued the first part of our report on intelligence failures prior to the war in Iraq. We have begun the second phase of our report, which will include recommendations on reform of our intelligence community. We have heard and will continue to hear from current and former members of that community, intelligence experts and policymakers responsible for making decisions based on the intelligence they are provided.

In 2001 the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, chaired by former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, provided the president with a comprehensive review of the intelligence community and recommendations.

Last month the Sept. 11 commission, led by former New Jersey governor Tom Kean and former Indiana representative Lee Hamilton, produced a remarkable bipartisan document that offered recommendations for improving our intelligence and security structures. All Americans owe them a debt of gratitude for their work.

This year President Bush designated a bipartisan panel to examine U.S. intelligence capabilities. The commission, led by former senator and governor Chuck Robb of Virginia and federal appellate judge Laurence Silberman, has been given a broad mandate to “assess whether the Intelligence Community is sufficiently authorized, organized, equipped, trained and resourced to . . . support United States Government efforts to respond to . . . the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, related means of delivery, and other related threats of the 21st Century.” They are to report their findings to the president by March 31.

In addition to the intelligence committees, Senate and House committees are studying reform of our intelligence community. Some will hold hearings during the August congressional recess. The work of intelligence reform cuts a wide swath across our government. All these hearings in committees of jurisdiction are critical for any reforms to succeed.

The American people should have confidence that our intelligence system is the finest in the world. This is no reason to ignore the reforms needed to meet the threats we face, but it is reason for the American people to feel secure. They should not be misled into believing that they are at risk because of an incompetent, inadequate intelligence system. Panic is not the order of the day. Responsible reform is the objective.

Our society is the most open, transparent and free society in history. Because of this, we will always face risks. The leaders charged with keeping this country safe should never be satisfied that we have done enough. There will always be room to improve our intelligence and security systems.

We will reform our intelligence community. The responsibilities of leadership require our action. But we must not rush haphazardly through what may be the most complicated and significant government reorganization since World War II. By the time the commission that President Bush empaneled to examine U.S. intelligence reports to him next March, we will have completed a massive series of investigations and hearings and a decisive presidential election.

The consequences of the decisions we make regarding intelligence reform will ripple far beyond our shores. The security of the next generation of Americans and global stability depend on our ability to wisely answer history’s call. We must match the timeliness of our actions with wisdom and reason. This requires responsible reform.

The writer is a Republican senator from Nebraska.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

washingtonpost.com

Pre-9/11 Acts Led To Alerts
Officials Not Sure Al Qaeda Continued To Spy on Buildings

By Dan Eggen and Dana Priest
Washington Post
Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 3, 2004; Page A01

Most of the al Qaeda surveillance of five financial institutions that led to a new terrorism alert Sunday was conducted before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and authorities are not sure whether the casing of the buildings has continued, numerous intelligence and law enforcement officials said yesterday.

More than half a dozen government officials interviewed yesterday, who declined to be identified because classified information is involved, said that most, if not all, of the information about the buildings seized by authorities in a raid in Pakistan last week was about three years old, and possibly older.

“There is nothing right now that we’re hearing that is new,” said one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. “Why did we go to this level? . . . I still don’t know that.”

One piece of information on one building, which intelligence officials would not name, appears to have been updated in a computer file as late as January 2004, according to a senior intelligence official. But officials could not say yesterday whether that piece of data was the result of active surveillance by al Qaeda or came instead from information about the buildings that is publicly available.

Many administration officials stressed yesterday that even three-year-old intelligence, when coupled with other information about al Qaeda’s plans to attack the United States, justified the massive security response in the three cities. Police and other security teams have been assigned to provide extra protection for the surveilled buildings, identified as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank headquarters in Washington; the New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup Center in New York; and the Prudential Financial building in Newark.

Intelligence officials said that the remarkably detailed information about the surveillance—which included logs of pedestrian traffic and notes on the types of explosives that might work best against each target—was evaluated in light of general intelligence reports received this summer indicating that al Qaeda hopes to strike a U.S. target before the November presidential elections.

Several officials also said that much of the information compiled by terrorist operatives about the buildings in Washington, New York and Newark was obtained through the Internet or other “open sources” available to the general public, including some floor plans.

The characterization of the age of the intelligence yesterday cast a new light on Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge’s announcement Sunday that the terrorism threat alert for the financial services sectors in the three cities had been raised. Ridge and other officials stressed Sunday the urgency of acting on the newly obtained information, but yesterday a range of officials made clear how dated much of the intelligence was.

One senior intelligence official said the information is still being evaluated.

A number of other buildings were mentioned in the seized computer files, but only in vague references, so officials decided not to issue alerts about them, an intelligence official said. They included the Bank of America building in San Francisco; the Nasdaq and American Stock Exchange buildings in New York, as well as two other sites in that city; and an undisclosed building in Washington and another in New Jersey.

“We chose not to release it because we decided they weren’t anywhere near the same level of danger as the others,” the official said.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney said in separate appearances yesterday that the new alert underscores the continuing threat posed by al Qaeda. At a news conference announcing his proposed intelligence reforms, Bush said the alert shows “there’s an enemy which hates what we stand for.”

“It’s serious business,” Bush said. “I mean, we wouldn’t be, you know, contacting authorities at the local level unless something was real.”

Employees at announced targets in New York and New Jersey arrived at work yesterday with a mix of defiance and jitters. Some said they wanted to send a message that terrorists could not deter them from living their lives as usual. Others were visibly shaken by the presence of heavily armed police officers and new barricades.

At the New York Stock Exchange, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg rang the opening bell. Exchange chief executive John A. Thain and Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) greeted arriving workers. “I wouldn’t be surprised if attendance weren’t higher today,” Schumer said. “We are winning the war of nerves.”

Much of the information about the targeted buildings is contained on a laptop computer and computer disks recovered during recent raids in Pakistan. A senior intelligence official said the cache also includes about 500 photographs, diagrams and drawings, some of them digital.

Two senior intelligence officials who briefed reporters on Sunday said the material showed al Qaeda operatives had cased the buildings both before and after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“I think the indications are that this has been a very longstanding effort on the part of al Qaeda,” one official said Sunday, “that it dates from before 9/11, it continued after 9/11 and based on what it is that we are concerned about, we know about in terms of al Qaeda’s plans and intentions that it probably continues even today.”

Speaking about the five buildings, one official said, “I believe that since 9/11 they have been able to acquire additional information on these targets here in the United States, yes, I do.”

Numerous officials said yesterday, however, that most of the information was compiled prior to the Sept. 11 attacks and that there are serious doubts about the age of other, undated files. One senior counterterrorism official said many of the documents include dates prior to Sept. 11, 2001, but there are no dates after that.

“Most of the information is very dated but you clearly have targets with enough specificity, and that pushed it over the edge,” the counterterrorism official said. “You’ve got the Republican convention coming up, the Olympics, the elections. . . . I think there was a feeling that we should err on the side of caution even if it’s not clear that anything is new.”

One federal law enforcement source said his understanding from reviewing the reports was that the material predated Sept. 11 and included photos that can be obtained from brochures and some actual snapshots. There also were some interior diagrams that appear to be publicly available.

Other officials also stressed that, however long ago al Qaeda operatives compiled the surveillance details, the information was new to U.S. intelligence agencies and was almost unprecedented in the depth of its details. “All this stuff was fresh to us,” one official said.

At the CIA’s daily 5 p.m. counterterrorism meeting Thursday, the first information about the detailed al Qaeda surveillance of the five financial buildings was discussed among senior CIA, FBI and military officials. They decided to launch a number of worldwide operations, including the deployment of increased law enforcement around the five buildings.

A senior intelligence official said translations of the computer documents and other intelligence started arriving on Friday. “We worked on it late, and through that night,” he said. “We had very specific, credible information, and when we laid it in on the threat environment we’re in,” officials decided they had to announce it.

“It’s not known whether the plot was active and ongoing,” the official added. “It could have been planned for tomorrow, or it could have been scrapped. Maybe there were other iterations of it. In this environment, this was seen as pertinent information to get out to the public. There was discussion over the weekend, should we wait until Monday?”

Initially, top administration officials had decided to wait until yesterday to announce the alert, but more intelligence information was coming in—both new translations of the documents, and analysis of other sources’ statements—that deepened their concern about the information, and persuaded them to move ahead swiftly. “There was a serious sense of urgency to get it out,” the senior intelligence official said.

On Saturday, officials from the CIA, the FBI, the Homeland Security and Justice departments, the White House, and other agencies agreed with Ridge to recommend that the financial sectors in New York, Washington and North Jersey be placed on orange, or “high,” alert. Ridge made the recommendation to Bush on Sunday morning, and Bush signed off on it at 10 a.m.

In a signal of how seriously the administration took the information, officials briefed senior media executives, including network anchors, before a Sunday news conference and briefing for reporters.

In New York yesterday, traffic backed up at tunnels and bridges into the city, Hercules and Atlas police teams toting rifles and machine guns checked vehicles, police helicopters crisscrossed the skies, and employees throughout the financial district stood in long security queues, showing their corporate identifications and bags to guards.

Around the NYSE in Lower Manhattan, rows of concrete and metal barricades were in place and side streets were blocked off.

In Newark, officials set up concrete barriers and police teams around the 24-story Prudential building, where about 1,000 employees work. “I’m a little nervous,” analyst Tracy Swistak, 27, told the Associated Press. “But I’m confident Prudential’s doing everything they can to ensure our safety.”

Staff writers John Mintz, Allan Lengel and Spencer S. Hsu in Washington and Michael Powell, Michelle Garcia and Ben White in New York contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35466-2004Aug2.html

August 3, 2004

Reports That Led to Terror Alert Were Years Old, Officials Say

By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID JOHNSTON
ASHINGTON, Aug. 2 -Much of the information that led the authorities to raise the terror alert at several large financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas was three or four years old, intelligence and law enforcement officials said on Monday. They reported that they had not yet found concrete evidence that a terrorist plot or preparatory surveillance operations were still under way.

But the officials continued to regard the information as significant and troubling because the reconnaissance already conducted has provided Al Qaeda with the knowledge necessary to carry out attacks against the sites in Manhattan, Washington and Newark. They said Al Qaeda had often struck years after its operatives began surveillance of an intended target.

Taken together with a separate, more general stream of intelligence, which indicates that Al Qaeda intends to strike in the United States this year, possibly in New York or Washington, the officials said even the dated but highly detailed evidence of surveillance was sufficient to prompt the authorities to undertake a global effort to track down the unidentified suspects involved in the surveillance operations.

“You could say that the bulk of this information is old, but we know that Al Qaeda collects, collects, collects until they’re comfortable,’’ said one senior government official. “Only then do they carry out an operation. And there are signs that some of this may have been updated or may be more recent.’‘

Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser, said on Monday in an interview on PBS that surveillance reports, apparently collected by Qaeda operatives had been “gathered in 2000 and 2001.’’ But she added that information may have been updated as recently as January.

The comments of government officials on Monday seemed softer in tone than the warning issued the day before. On Sunday, officials were circumspect in discussing when the surveillance of the financial institutions had occurred, and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge cited the quantity of intelligence from “multiple reporting streams’’ that he said was “alarming in both the amount and specificity of the information.’‘

The officials said on Monday that they were still analyzing computer records, photos, drawings and other documents, seized last month in Pakistan, which showed that Qaeda operatives had conducted extensive reconnaissance.

“What we’ve uncovered is a collection operation as opposed to the launching of an attack,” a senior American official said.

Still, the official said the new trove of material, which was being sifted for fresh clues, combined with more recent flows of intelligence, had demonstrated that Al Qaeda remains active and intent on attacking the United States.

The concern about the possibility of an attack was apparent on Monday. Armed guards were positioned at the five targets listed by Mr. Ridge: the New York Stock Exchange and the Citigroup buildings in Manhattan, the headquarters of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Washington and Prudential Financial in Newark. The buildings were subjected to their highest level of security since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, with barricades, rapid-response teams and bomb-sniffing dogs providing rings of protection.

With intelligence reports specifying a possible truck bombing, police stopped and searched vehicles in the Wall Street area, while vans and trucks were banned from bridges and tunnels entering lower Manhattan.

In Washington, President Bush said the alert issued on Sunday reflected “a serious business.’’ He said at a White House news conference, “We wouldn’t be contacting authorities at the local level unless something was real.’‘

Despite the new terror warnings, the stock market gained ground, denting expectations that it would drop with the heightened security alert. The Dow Jones industrial average was up 39 points.

A sizable part of the information seized in Pakistan described reconnaissance carried out before the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said. The documents do not indicate who wrote the detailed descriptions of security arrangements at the financial buildings or whether the surveillance was conducted for a current operation or was part of preparations for a plan that was later set aside.

In a briefing on Sunday, a senior intelligence official said that the threat to the financial institutions “probably continues even today.”

Federal authorities said on Monday that they had uncovered no evidence that any of the surveillance activities described in the documents was currently under way. They said officials in New Jersey had been mistaken in saying on Sunday that some suspects had been found with blueprints and may have recently practiced “test runs’’ aimed at the Prudential building in Newark.

Joseph Billy Jr., the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.‘s Newark office, said a diagram of the Prudential building had been found in Pakistan. “It appears to be from the period around 9/11,’’ Mr. Billy said. “Now we’re trying to see whether it goes forward from there.’’

Another counterterrorism official in Washington said that it was not yet clear whether the information pointed to a current plot. “We know that Al Qaeda routinely cases targets and then puts the plans on a shelf without doing anything,’’ the official said.

The documents were found after Pakistani authorities acting on information supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency arrested Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, an engineer who was found to have served as a middleman in facilitating Qaeda communications. His capture led the C.I.A. to laptop computers, CD-ROM’s, and other storage devices that contained copies of communications describing the extensive surveillance.

Mr. Khan had been essentially unknown to the United States as recently as May, according to information provided by a Pakistani intelligence official, who said the C.I.A. had described him to Pakistani authorities that month only as a shadowy figure identified by his alias, Abu Talha.

The lack of knowledge about Mr. Khan reflected how hard it has been for American authorities to penetrate Al Qaeda. He operated successfully without the government learning of his existence even after three years of an intensive intelligence war against Qaeda that has emphasized efforts to intercept the terror network’s communications traffic.

In pursuing the new leads, intelligence and law enforcement authorities were working at several different levels, American officials said, in trying to make sense of what some described as a “jigsaw puzzle” that included first names, aliases, and temporary email addresses but little hard identifying material that could lead to suspects in the United States or overseas.

The scope of the inquiry ranged from “individuals who were orchestrating it from far-off lands to individuals who were in charge of different cells, to the actual operating of cells,” a senior intelligence official said. The priority effort to identify people connected to the surveillance of the financial institutions has been under way since counterterrorism officials received the new information from Pakistan beginning Thursday evening, counterterrorism officials said on Monday.

The information, which officials said was indicative of preparations for a possible truck- or car-bomb attack, left significant gaps. It did not clearly describe the suspected plot, indicate when an attack was to take place nor did it describe the identities of people involved.

As a result, federal and local authorities began an effort to locate possible suspects who might have carried out the surveillance. Intelligence officers began interviewing Qaeda detainees asking whether they knew Mr. Khan or anyone who might have been involved in monitoring the targeted buildings and allied foreign intelligence services were asked if they had any information about the suspected plot.

At the same time, federal agents and local police began canvassing the buildings regarded as likely targets seeking to determine whether anyone recalled seeing people who appeared to be conducting surveillance. They sought lists of employees to determine whether anyone suspicious might have worked at any of the buildings and names of vendors, searching for anyone who might have visited the buildings to study security arrangements.

Senior counterterrorism and intelligence officials based in Europe said the information targeting the five buildings was developed by Qaeda operatives before Sept. 11, 2001. But a senior European counterterrorism official cautioned that “some recent information’’ indicated that the buildings might remain on a list of Qaeda targets.

“Al Qaeda routinely comes up with ways to hit targets for years at a time, so it may not mean much that these buildings were first targeted more than three years ago,’’ the official said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/03/politics/03intel.html?th

President Says War Was ‘Right’

By Edwin Chen
LA Times Staff Writer

August 3, 2004

WASHINGTON — President Bush declared Monday that “knowing what I know today, we still would have gone on into Iraq,” signaling that revelations of flaws in the prewar intelligence had not changed his mind about the wisdom of attacking and removing Saddam Hussein from power.

Bush acknowledged that no banned weapons had been found in Iraq, but he said they might still turn up. “We still would have gone to make our country more secure,” he said, adding that Hussein “had the capability of making weapons.”

“He had terrorist ties,” Bush said. “The decision I made was the right decision.”

The comments, which the president offered during a brief White House news conference, marked something of a political gamble. Polls suggest that up to half the American public now believes that the war was a mistake, given that no weapons of mass destruction have turned up in Iraq.

“I don’t think the president is helping himself when he says things like this. It’s a real stretch to think that a majority of Americans would have been supportive of attacking Iraq in the absence of either a clear connection to Sept. 11 or an imminent WMD threat,” said political analyst Charlie Cook, referring to weapons of mass destruction.

“Statements like this by the president only lend credence to the charges that he was determined to attack, no matter what,” Cook said.

Political experts also said that Bush’s comments showed he was eager to push back at Democratic claims that he had mishandled national security and the war in Iraq, considered to be the president’s strongest suits. At the Democratic National Convention in Boston last week, Bush’s opponents tried to build the case that the nation needed new leadership on those issues.

The president repeatedly has called Iraq a “central front” in the war on terrorism and says that a free Iraq would help spread democracy throughout the Middle East. He also has said that Hussein’s capacity to make dangerous weapons, and to pass them on to terrorists, presented a security risk.

But his comments Monday were noteworthy in the wake of a Senate Intelligence Committee report last month that said the prewar warnings about Iraq’s illicit weapons programs were largely unfounded. The report said the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies had made a series of errors that led to incorrect conclusions that Iraq had stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons and was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program.

Before the war, Bush said repeatedly that Hussein had stockpiled biological and chemical weapons and that the Iraqi leader had not complied with U.N. requirements that he disclose his weapons programs and take other required actions.

“If the Iraqi regime wishes peace,” Bush told the United Nations General Assembly in September 2002, “it will immediately and unconditionally forswear, disclose and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction, long-range missiles and all related material.”

Now, Bush faces a political problem as he revisits the reasons for war, said Stuart Rothenberg, an independent analyst.

“He’s caught between a rock and a hard place,” Rothenberg said. “An acknowledgment of error would undercut the whole message of strength and toughness and leadership,” possibly eroding the president’s base of support.

On the other hand, he said, Bush’s recent comments about the rationale for war may prompt some to view him as obstinate to the point of being unwilling to admit a mistake.

In a Times Poll of more than 1,500 registered voters last month, 45% said the war in Iraq was justified, while 51% said it was a mistake. The respondents answered after being told that the Senate Intelligence Committee had found no evidence that Iraq was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction or rebuilding its nuclear program, but that Bush had maintained that the war was justified because it would make the Mideast more stable and the United States safer.

The president spoke with reporters Monday after announcing that he would urge Congress to create the job of national intelligence director to oversee a function now scattered among more than a dozen agencies.

Democratic challenges to Bush’s performance on national security matters and the Iraq war were a main feature of the party’s convention. In accepting the party’s nomination for president, Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry promised “to bring back this nation’s time-honored tradition: The United States of America never goes to war because we want to; we only go to war because we have to.”

Bush’s comments were a firmer statement of an argument he had outlined previously.

On July 12, three days after the Senate Intelligence Committee issued its report faulting the prewar intelligence, Bush told workers at a nuclear weapons laboratory: “Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq. We removed a declared enemy of America who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them.”

Bush also turned aside a suggestion from Kerry on Monday that his policies had fueled the recruitment of terrorists.

Kerry, in an interview with CNN, said the Bush administration, “in its policies, is actually encouraging the recruitment of terrorists.”

“We haven’t done the work necessary to reach out to other countries,” Kerry said. “We haven’t done the work necessary with the Muslim world.”

The president responded: “That’s a misunderstanding of the war on terror. Obviously, we have a clear — a difference of opinion, a clear difference of opinion about the stakes that face America.

“The best way to protect the American homeland is to stay on the offense. It is a ridiculous notion to assert that because the United States is on the offense, more people want to hurt us. We’re on the offense because people do want to hurt us.”

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush3aug03.story