Saturday, January 4, 2003
"In early December, we dispatched an Al Qaeda official in Yemen. Before the CIA's drone fired its lethal rocket, unidentified intelligence sources had clearly identified him. Five others died in the car with him. Collateral damagein the war on terrorism! To get one bad guy, you may have to kill five others. Yes, the evolution of our democracy may have roots in the wild west.
Bush has cleverly stretched the meaning of democracy to attune it to concepts once considered undemocratic. For example, he and his advisors discovered "enemy combatants" a term designed to strip people of all human rights. Later, we confirmed that some of those reptiles were actual human beings. The December 22 Los Angeles Times reported that "The United States is holding dozens of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay who have no meaningful connection to al Qaeda or the Taliban, and were sent to the maximum-security facility over the objections of intelligence officers in Afghanistan who had recommended them for release, according to military sources with direct knowledge of the matter."
When civil liberties lawyers tried to get them released, or when judges objected to their incarceration without access to habeas corpus, government officials sneered because they knew these men were hardened Al Qaeda terrorists. Okay, mistakes happen!
"You didn't have to be a fortune-teller to see that the October meeting of the Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention was going to be more controversial than usual. The panel, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), had been gearing up for a few months to consider whether the federal standard for lead poisoning, set in 1991, should be even tougher. The answer was likely to be yes, given new research linking even modest lead exposure to developmental problems in children.
"But, just a few weeks before the meeting, the Bush administration shook up the advisory committee's membership. When it came time to fill a group of vacancies on the panel this year, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Tommy Thompson rejected several nominees recommended by the staff scientists at the CDC in favor of five people who seemed likely to look upon further tightening of lead regulations skeptically, if not to oppose it outright....
"Admittedly, the CDC's panel doesn't have the power to make policy. It merely makes recommendations based on its understanding of available science. But that's precisely the point: To provide lawmakers with disinterested scientific expertise, such panels need to be insulated from politics. That's why the law authorizing the CDC panels says they should "not be inappropriately influenced by the appointing authority or by any special interest." Yet, as a recent Science magazine editorial noted, this administration--unlike its predecessors--has largely dispensed with that notion. "Every administration advances its agenda by making political appointments of scientists and managers to direct its agencies. But disbanding and stacking these public committees ... devalues the entire federal advisory committee structure." Alas, that may be exactly what the Bush White House wants.
