JOHN LEBOUTILLIER TO BE ON CNN

On Monday, Feb. 18, live at 8:45 AM Eastern time I will be a guest on Paula Zahn's AMERICAN MORNING show. I am going to be debating about the huge new cigarette tax increases proposed yesterday here in New York City by new Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

The question is: is this tax merely to raise money to alleviate the huge deficit the city budget is experiencing? Or is this tax aimed at influencing social behavior?

Is the role of government in our society to 'influence' behavior?

Should taxes be used to bring about social changes?

If a huge - $3.00 per pack, city and state combined - tax is aimed at stopping smoking, as Mr. Bloomberg claims, then why not tax high-fat foods to stop the epidemic of obesity sweeping this nation? How about taxing sugar which is the main culprit in the explosion of diabetes? How about taxing the hell out of beer and booze because of all the auto deaths and problems from alcoholism?

All of these things - and more - will be debated Monday morning.

Please watch - and then email your comments to CNN (at the address they flash on the screen) and to me at johnlebout@johnlebout.com.

Please have a Happy 3-day holiday weekend.

A CULTURE OF LYING







In the current issue of NEWSWEEK, Jeffrey Skilling’s mother says, “When you are the CEO and you are on the board of Directors, you are supposed to know what is going on with the rest of the company. You can’t get off the hook with me there…He’s going to have to beat this the best way he can.”

Sure sounds like Skilling’s mother didn’t believe her son’s lame explanations and dodges last week when he testified before a House Committee.

As many have said since then, Skilling used the “Sgt. Schultz” defense: “I know nothing!”

Indeed, the ENRON fiasco is indicative of an epidemic in our country: lying.

Skilling, Ken Lay, Andrew Fastow and dozens of other senior executives lied to their employees, their shareholders – maybe even to each other.

We need to ask: how could so many liars end up together in the same company?

Perhaps the answer is that in our country today we simply have become a culture of lying. And maybe the election – and re-election – of Bill Clinton is indicative of this awful development. Furthermore, the fact that more people voted for Al Gore – another liar – shows that for the third straight national election the nation knowingly picked a liar for President.

What does that say about the lack of morals in our society?

We have a long, long way to go to re-establish our country as a moral “City on a Hill.” It begins with the so-called ‘elites’ – those who have a better education, more money and more abilities to influence others. In fact, the “lying quotient” is much higher among these ‘higher educated’ people than it is among average people.

Greed and a desire to acquire wealth immediately have made many of these people lose sight of what is important in life: balance, caring for and helping others, a relationship with God – and a faith that, with patience, you can and will achieve your dreams.

There is no need to bulldoze your way over others. Because when you behave that way, one thing is inevitable: many of those you trampled on the way up will be ready to kick you on your way down. Even your mother!

Jeff Skilling and the entire Enron mess should serve as an example of all that is wrong in our present day society. Young people all need to learn about this case – so that they won’t even be tempted to live a life devoted to material gain at the expense of human kindness and generosity.

Avaricious sharks like these Enron execs - if they are found to have broken laws - must be punished with long jail terms and heavy fines. Otherwise they will have gotten away with the biggest scam – ever.

How does a young teenager who has nothing and who robs a grocery store for $50 get 10-12 years in jail while a ‘white collar crook’ who steals $200 million gets 18 months in a cushy Club Fed?

This is the main reason we, as a society, are beset with distrust and doubt about each other.

Until we attack – head on – the culture of lying, we remain a sick society.

MAYBE IT BEGAN HERE


In today's New York Times, one of the US hostages held by the Iranians in 1979-1981 - 444 days, to be exact - explains how he now wishes he and his fellow Marine guards had been allowed to shoot and kill the so-called 'students' who seized the US Embassy. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/10/politics/10HOST.html. This heroic man has hit on a long-ignored theme: when attacked, the US never really punishes the attackers. He is right; this 'soft' attitude began in the Vietnam Era - maybe even during the Korean 'police action' - and has become a a staple of American diplomatic behavior. In Vietnam, our pilots were ordered to only destroy half a bridge so that it could be rebuilt easily! In other words, the bombing was to "send a message" - not to punish the enemies of America.

And that type of thinking has been the root cause of the continued attacks on the US - and its troops/ships/barracks/bases - ever since.

We need to 'kill' our enemies - not send them messages.

EVEN THE BRITS HAVE GONE SOFT - AND FAT!


Check out this article today - http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,647554,00.html - where the last British Governor of Hong Kong and the former Chairman of the British Conservative Party, Chris "Fat" Patten dumps all over Bush for the "Axis of Evil" speech. What is going on with the English? Why are they sucking up to Tehran and Pyongyang? (In the piece, Patten does not defend Baghdad.) "Fat" Patten was a hero of mine! He took on the Red Chinese and told them to stuff it - and even pro-Beijing Rupert Murdoch withdrew from a book contract with Patten because he, Murdoch, was afraid of the Chicoms' reaction to Patten's book. WHen I heard that I thought Patten was our kind of guy: a stand up, no-nonsense anti-communist! But now, here he is blasting the USA for telling it like it is. What has happened to this fellow? And to the British conservatives? They've gone soft - and fat!

BUSH VS. SADDAM: WHO WILL BLINK?





Are we really going to go to war with Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein and his regime?

That question has dominated the news since last week’s State of the Union speech. And Secretary of State Colin Powell’s testimony in the Congress this week only further reinforced the belief that an attack could come sometime this year. Powell even said the US would go to war with Iraq – alone, if need be - and shun the so-called ‘Coalition’ that supported our Afghan campaign and our Desert Storm effort 11 years ago.

But Iraq thinks otherwise.

Saddam thinks he can “talk” his way out of this pickle.

As reported in Wednesday’s New York Daily News column by Michael Kramer, Baghdad sent Kramer an email. It read, “Watch us again. It’s worked for us in the past. It’ll work for us again.”

Sure enough, Baghdad – clearly reacting to President Bush’s speech – sent a message through Arab League chief Amr Moussa that it is ready to talk with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan – “without preconditions.”

Annan, who has been regularly used and duped by Saddam in the late 1990’s, replied that he’d “check his calendar.” He then indicated that he is prepared to talk to Iraq.

What does this all mean?

It means that Saddam is going to use ‘talks’ with the UN to divide the US from the rest of the Coalition.

He is gambling that Bush-Cheney-Powell will not go to war alone.

And he believes that by talking to the United Nations he might even get what he really wants: sanctions either totally lifted or at least relaxed. These are restrictions on how much oil Saddam can sell – legally – for invaluable hard currency which he then uses to secretly buy military equipment and materials to construct nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

The key question is: How long can Saddam stall, filibuster and delay the inevitable realization that he will never really allow us to monitor his weapons programs?

He is behind all the terrorist attacks against the US. From the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to the Embassy attacks, the USS Cole – and, finally, to September 11, Saddam’s security forces have waged a war against America to avenge his massive defeat in the Gulf War.

For some reason our government in DC – under both Clinton and G.W. Bush – does not want to admit this, at least not publicly.

Sure, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda are – and were – involved. But they carry out Saddam’s wishes. Osama and his followers are the perfect ‘fanatics’ – ‘true believers’ – who, in Saddam’s eyes are just crazy enough to kill themselves while killing Americans. How can you beat it? No surviving witnesses to tell who really orchestrated the attacks.

We should all fear two things: 1) that Saddam will hit us again; and 2) that the Bush Administration will ‘wimp’ out yet again when it comes to finishing the job begun in 1991.

If Saddam Hussein – or his family or Ba’th Party remain in power when G.W. Bush finishes his term as President, then his presidency will have been a failure. Period. This isn’t my judgement; it is based on Bush’s own words and promises. Having ID’d the Axis of Evil last week, how can we tolerate its continued existence?

And if you think a tiger can change its stripes, you are very naïve.

CIA: SCANDAL WAITING TO EXPLODE




CIA Director George Tenet is testifying today before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Mr. Tenet – the only Clinton Cabinet officer remaining in his original post – has been able to artfully avoid having the CIA take the blame for sloppy and poor intelligence work leading up to 9-11.

In fact, because of his good personal relationship with both George Bushes, Tenet has twice since 9-11 been able to secure increases in the CIA budget.

In October, President Bush granted an emergency budget increase of $1 billion to the CIA. And now, in his fiscal 2003 budget, the President has proposed another $1.5 billion increase – that we know of. In fact, the overall intelligence budget is highly classified – and ‘hidden’ in the budgets of other federal departments. Only a handful of Congressmen and Senators know the ‘actual’ amount.

It is also believed that even more money is secretly spent on intelligence than even these select members of the House and Senate are aware of. ‘Black funds’ exist – off-the-books accounts that CIA, NSA, DIA and the service Intel agencies have access to.

All of this is to point out that whatever happened on 9-11 is not the result of too little money being spend on intelligence gathering. No, the problem is how that money is spent.

Over the past thirty years our Intel agencies have fallen in love with satellites, eaves-dropping equipment and high tech means of ‘listening’ to our enemies – and our friends, too.

‘HUMINT’ – the gathering of intelligence through human beings on-the-ground infiltrating and getting up-close-and-personal – has taken a back seat to this fascination with high tech means.

Thus you get the odd occurrence: John ‘Taliban’ Walker can get into the Taliban and Al Qaeda – even meet Osama bin Laden – and yet our own agents could not get any where near Osama, Mullah Omar or the Taliban/Al Qaeda leadership before 9-11.

What has happened over the years to the CIA?

They have become a government inside a government.

The CIA – and this may shock many of you - spies on its own government!

Yes, for a fact, CIA places ‘agents’ into other federal departments and on the staffs of House and Senate committees to “keep an eye on things.”

Every congressional committee that oversees intelligence activities has CIA staff on its staff! That way Langley can keep track of trouble brewing it its own backyard.

That’s like having the fox ‘guarding’ the chicken coop.

This is the biggest – and so far unreported – scandal in the US today. Bigger than Enron, bigger than anything else. The very fact that the CIA is an uncontrollable agency operating outside the Constitution – and getting away with it – is something that one day is going to blow open and cause big trouble.

A small – but meaningful – example: in the mid-1980’s, then-Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage personally arranged for a uniformed military officer to be detailed to temporary White House duty. This officer had some innocuous job description. In reality his assignment was simple: to spy on the inner workings of the presidential office. Get the daily schedule of the senior staff, listen in on as many conversations as possible, find out what was ‘brewing’ before others knew – and then report all of this daily back to Armitage.

A career CIA man, Armitage wanted to know what was happening at the White House so that the Pentagon – and the CIA – could be ‘ahead of the curve.’

Armitage today is Deputy Secretary of State and may very well have a similar ‘operative’ placed in the White House and National Security Council.

This is plain out-and-out wrong.

Federal agencies should not be expending taxpayers’ money ‘spying’ on each other. But they do!

And that is but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the enormous leeway the CIA has – because of the very nature of its’ ‘secretive’ mission – to do what it wants.

It is also protected by federal judges strategically placed on the federal bench who are pro-CIA – (some used to work for the CIA) – who will always get the CIA off the hook in case something bad happens. A case in point involved 7 World Trade Center. Crushed in the 9-11 attack, this building housed several federal offices, including CIA’s NY office. Furthermore, CIA was performing an illegal domestic operation on September 11 when the attack occurred. (By law, the CIA is prohibited from operating inside the US other than recruiting.)

When the building was smashed, CIA lost control of the evidence of their illegal activity. They rushed to a ‘friendly’ federal judge who granted a secret motion that has placed the CIA in charge of the excavation and search of 7 World Trade Center. All the workers, bulldozer operators and diggers on that particular site work for the CIA, not New York City or anyone else.

The so-called mainstream news media has missed this story.

My source: a federal judge in New York.

We are left to wonder what the ‘illegal domestic operation’ was – and how we have come to allow a secret US agency to have such unbridled power.

This is a huge scandal waiting to explode.

THE REAL AXIS OF EVIL

President Bush made the headlines last week with his "Axis of Evil"
phrase in his State of the Union Address. It was probably inspired by former
President Reagan's 'Evil Empire' speech almost 20 years ago.

In both cases the squishy, soft-headed diplomats whined about the
"inappropriateness" of such a phrase, and the countries involved – Iran,
Iraq and North Korea – squawked about their innocence.

The real story here is that these three rogue states should be
known as only the 'Sub-Axis of Evil.' The real evil nations are – and have
been for half a century – Russia and Red China. Period!

G.W. Bush can sit with career-KGB man Vladimir Putin and proclaim him
a man "with a good soul." But KGB men are selected primarily because they
do not have a soul!

Putin's Russia is more dangerous than at any time since the
fall of the Berlin Wall 12 years ago. Russia is re-arming its own military
and also manufacturing 'weapons of mass destruction' for its allies –
including Iran, Iraq and North Korea – to earn hard currency.

It is a plain fact that Moscow is helping Tehran build a nuclear
facility from which the Iranians will eventually be able to extract the
materials necessary to build a nuclear weapon. Russian scientists and
military advisers are frequently dispatched to Iran to help guide this
project.

Similarly, Moscow has long been a defender of Saddam's regime.
Longtime Soviet/Russian leader and one-time Prime Minister Primakov is a
great personal friend of the Iraqi strongman. Russia has equipped – and
re-equipped after the 1991 Gulf War defeat – the Iraqi military. Russian
military advisers frequently 'help' their Iraqi counterparts. Soviet/Russian
military doctrine is the 'order of the day' in the Iraqi military.

North Korea has – since its inception – been a Soviet/Russian 'client
state.' During the Korean War the Soviets supplied Pyongyang with military
technology, MiG jets and fuel. In return, the Soviets were given access to U.S.

POWs for drug experiments, brainwashing practice and tortured
'debriefings' about U.S. military technology.

In the 50 years since the Korean War, Moscow has kept a close
relationship with Kim Song-il – the longtime dictator of North Korea – and
now with his son, Kim Jong-il. (Moscow is not stupid; it wants allies next
to its simmering archenemy, Red China, despite any short-term
rapprochements that seem to occur from time to time.)

Beijing, too, has an equally close relationship with all three "Axis
of Evil" countries. Chinese missile technology has been sent to all three.
So, too, have Chinese scientists in hopes of expanding biological and
chemical weapons programs.

It is a shame that the Bush administration cozies up to Moscow and
Beijing at a time when those two nations are arming, supplying, supporting –
and encouraging – the very terrorist activities we have declared war
against.

We need to call a spade a spade. The "evildoers" that G.W. Bush
loves to lambaste are headquartered in Moscow and Beijing. They are not our
"friends." They have no "souls." They are just evil.

American foreign policy should not be cowed by the angry rhetoric
sure to come if we tell the world the truth about these two enemies of
freedom. Leadership means telling the world the truth. What good does it do
to hide from it?

That is not to say that Iran, Iraq and North Korea do not need to
have their governments removed; they most certainly do.

But it is like fighting cancer. Until you remove the main tumors, the
disease is still inside the body.

We have the unprecedented opportunity now – as the only superpower
– to use our influence and might to 'force' these evil governments out of
business. Through our economic power we can almost buy a change.
Through our trade power we can induce a change. And through our military
might we can demand a change.

This opportunity will not last forever. China is racing to become a
military superpower. Moscow is rebuilding quickly.

Now is not the time to squander this opportunity by lowered goals and
fear of a hostile reaction among the chattering classes and the striped-pants
diplomatic set.

Now is the time for America to attack the cancer of evil – wherever
it may reside.