Thursday 06/13/02 06:30pm

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Life is a state of mind. As a tickler, here are some quotes from the sanitized transcript of Mr. Bush's talk at the 21st Century High Tech Forum today. We start with the now-classic lie:

I remember campaigning and somebody said, would you ever deficit spend? I said, only if there was a war, or a recession, or a national emergency. (Laughter.) I didn't think we were going to get the trifecta. (Laughter.)

We fight an enemy which is cruel and heartless and relentless. You just need to know that. And even though we've made some progress -- and we have; as I said the other night, we and our friends have hauled in about 2,400 of them -- there's still a lot of them out there, which means this country is in for a long war. Particularly -- and it's necessary because we're defending freedom. That's what you've got to know.

We talk about weapons of war, but I want you to know, they are used to keep the peace. That's the dream of this administration, is to make the world more peaceful. And we're going to have to continue to use high-tech means and high-tech equipment to chase the killers down one by one.

Chauncey Gardiner

We're also spending a lot of money on research and development, which I believe is a legitimate federal function.

We've raised the control limits for computer systems, and I'm eliminating outmoded controls on computer chips.

The death tax is a bad tax. It's a bad tax for entrepreneurial America. It's a bad tax for people from all walks of life. It's a bad tax if you're worried about urban sprawl. It's a bad tax if you're a farmer or a rancher. And yet they don't want to make it permanent. I don't know why; I guess it's politics.

Wednesday 06/12/02 1:15pm

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Don Rumsfeld

The Rumsfeld way vs. the Ashcroft way. Philosopher and vaudevillian-cum-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is making sense. This is what he said about terror suspect Abdullah al Muhajir:

We are not interested in trying him at the moment or punishing him at the moment. We are interested in finding out what he knows.

John Ashcroft

Attorney General John Ashcroft has different priorities. To satisfy what must be an intense lust to convert a living Zacarias Moussaoui into a corpse, Mr. Ashcroft is willing to forgo important information about the accused terrorist. This is information that our Europeans allies would be glad to provide us, but for reasons of law and morality they cannot do so as long as Mr. Ashcroft insists on killing Mr. Moussaoui upon conviction.

Germany is only the latest country to balk at the prospect of cooperating with Mr. Ashcroft's plan to have Mr. Moussaoui legally slaughtered:

The death penalty "does not correspond to the ideals of our legal system," said Thomas Weber, a spokesman for the German Justice Ministry, explaining why his country is reluctant to hand over evidence that U.S. prosecutors in Alexandria want for their case against Moussaoui. "So for this reason it would be largely impossible" to turn over evidence, Weber said.

Everyone must choose. You're either with the civilized world or you're with the terrorists.

06/11/02 12:45pm

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Backing away from a story. While assembling the previous article, our intrepid research team found at the CBS News site a page featuring as its top and only item a report headlined "What Was Terror Suspect Up To?":

(CBS) U.S. officials are backing away from assertions that a man arrested last month in Chicago was plotting a 'dirty' bomb attack on the United States, CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart reports.

U.S. officials now admit they're not sure what American-born Abdullah al Muhajir's plans were when he returned to the U.S. last month.

But CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart reports some U.S. officials now admit they're not sure what Padilla's plans were when he returned to the U.S. last month.

(CBS) The FBI gave serious consideration to letting suspected al Qaeda member Jose Padilla walk out of Chicago's O'Hare International Airport last month to see where he would lead them and who he might meet. But after determining there was no one to meet him in the airport, and no one waiting outside, agents made the arrest because they simply didn't want to take the chance of losing him, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart.

06/11/02 10:30am

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Herbert Hans Haupt

Shoe two still due? Both long-time readers of this column may recall that contrary to popular perception, the original WWII secret military tribunal that formed the precedent for the current model did, in fact, try and convict at least one US citizen, Herbert Haupt. This was noted in these pages last November, with the prediction that there may be another shoe yet to drop.

The labeling of the American citizen and accused terrorist formerly known as Jose Padilla an "enemy combatant", and his solitary confinement in a military brig in Charleston, S.C. without access to legal assistance, leaves that second shoe still hovering. But just barely.

Abdullah al Muhajir

Our interest is not in trying him and punishing him, our interest is in finding out what he knows.

Federal officials said Monday that Padilla, 31 -- who also goes by the name Abdullah Al Muhajir -- was captured May 8 as he flew into O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, from Pakistan. Officials described the flight as a reconnaissance mission, saying Padilla had been tracked flying between Pakistan, Egypt and Switzerland in the weeks before he arrived in Chicago.

Officials said the plot had not advanced beyond the discussion stage. Padilla has not been charged with any crime. He is being held at the Consolidated Naval Brig in Charleston, South Carolina, apart from the regular brig population.

"This was still in the initial planning stages," said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. "It certainly wasn't at the point of having a specific target. He had indicated some knowledge of the Washington, D.C., area, but I want to emphasize again there was not an actual plan. We stopped this man in the initial planning stages."