Sizing Up The US Electorate

George W. Bush's approval rating has dipped to 50 per cent, and the US electorate is evenly split heading into the 2004 presidential election year, a new poll has found.

Given a choice between Bush and an unnamed Democratic candidate, 43 per cent would vote for Bush and 45 per cent would vote for the Democrat, according to the New York Times/CBS News poll published today.

Ironically, Bush was seen as strong on terrorism and national security, but Americans were lukewarm about many of his domestic initiatives. An astonishing sixty-eight per cent said they approved of his campaign against terrorism. Forty-eight per cent even gave him a thumbs-up on his handling of Iraq and just 46 per cent gave him a thumbs-down.

Are Americans really, as Ted Rall's recent comic says, "As dumb as rocks?"

As the US election campaign notches up a gear, it appears that Bush & Co are betting on just that.

The first Republican television ads forcefully - and unfairly - accuse Democrats of "attacking the President for attacking terrorists", and the Republican National Committee is urging voters to call their congressmen "to support the President's policy of pre-emptive self-defence".

As Bill Clinton's former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright says, this year's election will constitute a virtual referendum on whether Americans want to puruse an increasingly unilateral and pre-emptive international policy, or attempt to repair damage to the long-standing trans-Atlantic partnership.

"If the Republicans pursue an ideological campaign and win, the world will change in highly combustible ways. It is one thing for an American administration to depart from traditional policies under stress and for a limited time, but it would be quite another for a president to win an election with a mandate to make that departure permanent."

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Electing Chaos

There are two election scenarios that could lead to disastrous outcomes for the Iraqis and ourselves: (1) the Shiites win and (2) the Shiites lose.

The Washington Post explores the looming lose-lose scenario in Iraq.

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Another Media-fed lie

Three dozen mortar shells uncovered in Iraq earlier this month had no chemical agents, the Danish army says. It is not clear why initial tests first showed they could contain blister gas.

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Katharine Gun

At the time of her arrest for exposing American corruption in the run-up to war on Saddam, Katharine Gun said:

'Any disclosures that may have been made were justified on the following grounds: because they exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the US government who attempted to subvert our own security services; and to prevent wide-scale death and casualties among ordinary Iraqi people and UK forces in the course of an illegal war.'

She added: 'I have only ever followed my conscience.'

Katharine Gun was an anonymous junior official toiling away with 4,500 other mathematicians, code-breakers and linguists at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham, UK.

Now while the real criminals control the White House, Gun is going on trial. Legal experts believe that her case is potentially more explosive for the Blair Government than the Hutton inquiry because it could allow her defence team to raise questions about the legality of military intervention in Iraq.