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Cato Daily Dispatch for January 20, 2004

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Bush Expected to Recommit to Social Security Reform
Lack of WMDs Hurting U.S. Reputation
Martha Stewart Pleads Not Guilty

Bush Expected to Recommit to Social Security Reform

President Bush tonight is expected to reaffirm his commitment to Social Security reform in his State of the Union address before Congress and the nation. Michael Tanner, director of Cato's Project on Social Security Choice, said he is "delighted to see confirmation that the president will again be taking up the banner of Social Security reform. This is one of the most important domestic issues facing Americans, and I commend President Bush for having the courage to tackle it." Tanner is the author of a new paper on the benefits of private accounts, "The Better Deal: Estimating Rates of Return under a System of Individual Accounts".

Social Security reform has been a signature issue of the Cato Institute since its founding in 1977. Day-to-day analysis and a complete archive of Cato's publications on the subject are available on the Web.

Following the president's speech, Cato.org will feature an analysis of the new initiatives proposed in the address. Last year's analysis is available here.

Lack of WMDs Hurting U.S. Reputation

"The Bush administration's inability to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq--after public statements declaring an imminent threat posed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein--has begun to harm the credibility abroad of the United States and of American intelligence," The Washington Post reports. "In last year's State of the Union address, President Bush used stark imagery to make the case that military action was necessary. Among other claims, Bush said that Hussein had enough anthrax to 'kill several million people,' enough botulinum toxin to 'subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure' and enough chemical agents to 'kill untold thousands.'

"Now, as the president prepares for this State of the Union address Tuesday, those frightening images of death and destruction have been replaced by a different reality: Few of the many claims made by the administration have been confirmed after months of searching by weapons inspectors."

In "Weapons of Mass Distraction," Cato Director of Defense Policy Studies Charles V. Peņa asks: "[I]f the Iraqis had chemical or biological weapons but did not use them to defend their own country against a foreign invader, how and when were they ever going to use such weapons? Indeed, Saddam appears to have been deterred from using WMD to defend himself even as his regime was crumbling around him."

Peņa adds: "The discovery of such weapons would not justify the war. Nor would it vindicate the administration because the administration will still have to explain how Iraq posed a direct and imminent threat to the United States. Defeating Iraq's military in three weeks is evidence that Iraq did not pose a military threat."

Martha Stewart Pleads Not Guilty

"With a wave to a pair of supporters outside and a barely audible plea of not guilty inside, Martha Stewart went on trial in earnest Tuesday at a Manhattan federal courthouse," The Associated Press reports. "The trial is to determine whether Stewart, 62, is a criminal who lied to the government about unloading stock based on an inside tip about a well-placed friend--or simply a shrewd investor who saved money with a smart bet on the market."

In "The Sleazy Political Persecution of Martha," Cato Senior Fellow Alan Reynolds writes: "In reality, Martha Stewart stands accused of saying she could not recall details of a two-minute phone conversation on Dec. 27, 2001, while the government claims to know precisely what she recalled. She also stands accused of sometimes confusing her broker with her broker's assistant."

He goes on to say: "Prosecutorial bullies are accustomed to trying such cases in the press and then intimidating their victims into 'settling' (writing big checks) without bothersome due process. In this non-case, however, the government would be smarter to settle out of court by handing Martha Stewart a big check to compensate for a year of slanderous lies and leaks about her."

Wyatt Dubois, editor, wdubois@cato.org