>you were far, far more concilatory toward the previous administration:
>
>> I go back and forth on this whole thing. On the one hand,
>> I think the atrocities against the Albanian population *have*
>> to be answered, and they *have* to be stopped, and the only
>> voice the Serbian leaders seem to listen to is the voice of
>> force. (Though so far that doesn't seem to have happened.)
>
>Where was the United Nations permission for that pre-emptive
>79-day bombing campaign?

1) Again, we're talking apples and cumquats, similar but not the same. First,
a bombing is not an outright invasion. Second, there were people on the ground
on both sides pleading for US intervention and assistance, even in the face of
intimidation. But again, and primarily, it was NOT an invasion of a separate
nation for the purposes of toppling a regime and installing one of our
choosing. Saying it's the same doesn't make it so.

>And here in the US, $400 billion is being spent on the military
>>just this year, while social programs that feed and clothe the
>>homeless, that help malnourished children, are being cut back to
>>make room for the war machine.
>
>Hm.... Could you name one (1) such program on which fewer dollars
>are being spent this year than were spent previously? Slightly
>decreasing the exponential on the rate of increase doesn't count.

Where have you *been* lately? There has been pretty widespread coverage of
cuts in Medicaid and Project Head Start, just for starters. A memo from the
Bush administration's health officials to hospitals about a month ago severly
limiting the sorts of patients who should be treated under medicaid, and
another memo from the Veteran's Administration to providors of VA health
services stipulated that doctors should *not* make patients aware of services
not currently being used by them in order to help reduce costs while the war is
on.

The National Governor's Association met recently and said, quite loudly and
clearly, both republicans and democrats alike, that the monies drained from
their books by the needs of this administration and Homeland Security have
resulted in severe cutbacks across the board in social services, with some even
having to cut back on regular police force allocations. In Illinois, according
to a variety of reports, the entire $2.5 million State of Illinois budget for
AIDS minority outreach was wiped out in cuts directly related to the Homeland
Security/war effort.

Bush economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey has been quite starightforward in
talking about the need to cut back (or as he puts it, "streamline") social
programs, education, health care, social security and housing. That great
bastion of liberalism, the Wall Street Journal, has published any number of
articles about how the administration is cutting social programs to pay for the
war, most recently citing $574 million eliminated from the program to refurbish
lower-income housing.

I could go on but it just gets freaking depressing after a while.

jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
(all message content (c) 2003 by synthetic worlds, ltd.,
permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine
and don't send me story ideas)