Retired U.S. Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, expresses doubt that Osama bin Laden will ever be found. However, he is confident Saddam Hussein will be captured or killed.
In his first in-depth interview since his retirement, with Marvin Shanken, editor and publisher of Cigar Aficionado, Gen. Franks says there "is no question that Saddam Hussein had the intent to do harm to the Western alliance and to the United States of America."
He says there's already enough evidence to suggest Iraq had the capability and intent to produce weapons of mass destruction. He also views Iraq and Afghanistan as "part of a global war on terrorism," voicing a three-word formula on dealing with terrorists and terrorist states: "Convince. Coerce. Compel."
As for ranking President Bush, the 58-year-old Gen. Franks says: "I think he's very, very bright" and will "ultimately be judged as a man of extremely high character."
The retired general is currently writing his memoirs for ReganBooks.
WHY EAT OUT?
The multimillion-dollar renovation of the State Department's headquarters continues, with the cafeteria reopening last week and touting several fancy new menu items: oysters Rockefeller, clams casino, shrimp, mussels, calamari, stuffed crab, crab cakes, souvlaki, Greek salads and stromboli baked in a "state-of-the-art" brick oven.
"Complete your meal or take an afternoon break with a cup of coffee from Starbucks," adds a State Department memo to employees.
FISCAL BEHAVIOR
Here's an interesting tidbit for Republican lawmakers to cite on the campaign trail: House Democrats in the last Congress called for an average of $417.6 billion in new spending - nearly 13 times more than the House Republican total of $32.3 billion.
In fact, some lawmakers today who are putting a frightful face on federal deficits are "masking" high-spending legislative agendas that would actually worsen the problem.
So concludes the latest BillTally study released by the nonpartisan National Taxpayers Union Foundation, finding that only 26 lawmakers in the previous Congress had legislative agendas that would reduce overall federal spending, while 32 lawmakers would raise the annual budget by more than $1 trillion - the most lopsided levels ever recorded in the project's history.
"Taxpayers hoping to see federal spending restraint will be disappointed to learn that the 107th Congress took a long holiday from this task," said NTUF senior policy analyst Demian Brady.
The foundation's cost-accounting system computes a net annual agenda for each member of Congress. Within the 107th Congress, a record-high number of bills were identified as having a fiscal impact of at least $1 million (1,186 in the House and 851 in the Senate).
A record-low of 26 representatives sponsored bills that, if enacted all at once, would reduce federal spending. And get this: not a single senator had a net cutting agenda.
BEING SECOND
Vice President Dick Cheney says "the only real assignment I have in any formal constitutional sense is as the president of the Senate."
"When they wrote the Constitution, they created the job of vice president, then they went all the way through the Constitutional Convention, got down to the end, (and) suddenly discovered they hadn't given him anything to do," Cheney notes.
"So somebody said, well, we'll make him the president of the Senate, and let him preside over the Senate and let him cast the tie-breaking vote whenever the Senate is evenly balanced."
Cheney is envious of predecessor John Adams, the first vice president, because he was allowed floor privileges and joined in the debate of the day.
DID YOU KNOW? Continued... |