The lights have been turned out at the state capitol and lawmakers have scurried home to escape the fall out of their actions and now it is up to the governor to deal with the mess left behind by lawmakers. Unfortunately, it seems that many, and in particular the business community, have put their bets on the governor to stop bad legislation from becoming law. Among the measures that may be vetoed is the proposal to impose a new tax on everyone in the state for the purpose of funding a long-term care insurance program.

It is amazing that lawmakers would support raising nearly $100 million in new taxes through the long-term care proposal while fiddling with all kinds of schemes to balance the state budget. On one hand, lawmakers decried the loss of services for the poor, cuts to education, and reductions to public safety. They raided special funds to help balance the budget, took the proceeds of fees paid by professionals for licensing and sapped the fund that is supposed to help people acquire their first home.

The long-term care proposal is patterned somewhat after Social Security, but instead of the contribution being based on a percentage of a person’s wages, it is a flat dollar amount per month — initially $10 per month rising to $23 per month by 2011. As a result, it is a regressive tax, that is $10 to a low-income family is a larger percentage than it is for a high-income wage earner. Indeed, the new tax will be a true burden on the poor and middle-income families of the state as any single person earning more than $10,000 in gross income or a couple earning more than $16,000 will be subject to the new tax.

And in their drive to make the proposal more palatable, the proponents added features like making the amount paid into the program tax deductible and providing a tax credit to those who buy their own private long-term care insurance. Those features favor largely upper-income taxpayers as middle- to low-income taxpayers probably are better off taking the standard deduction at the federal level and barely have enough deductions to make it attractive to itemize deductions at the state level.

As for the tax credit, if a person has the means to afford long-term care insurance on his or her own, they would probably be in a higher income bracket. Thus, the tax benefits of the bill favor upper income taxpayers while those at the lower end of the income scale will just end up paying the tax and having no tax benefits.

And speaking of benefits, it should be remembered that any income tax benefit means that it is that much less that will accrue to the state general fund, the fund where the state is having all of these shortfalls. So the tax benefits created by the long-term care proposal will mean less money for schools and less money for human services. The net effect is that the general fund will be subsidizing the long-term care fund.

As noted earlier, the proposal is patterned after the Social Security model where there are enough contributors to the fund to match and cover the benefits paid out. However, as anyone who was around in the 1970’s knows Social Security has needed several fixes and a number of tax increases to keep up with the benefits paid out. As the baby-boomer generation ages, the prospect that Social Security will be able to pay the benefits grows even more doubtful. This long-term care plan will eventually become the big black hole that Social Security is.

Proponents might argue that future rate increases won’t be necessary because the money will be invested and should produce enough income to forgo rate increases in the future. First of all, the rate increases are already established by the legislation, rising to $23 a month by the year 2011. Second, if the contributions are to earn any kind of decent return, it is a certainty that they will have to be invested outside the state. Think about it, $100 million or more a year will have to be sent outside the state to earn the money to pay for the benefits. That’s $100 million that could have been spent and invested in Hawaii. So instead of bettering the economy, proponents have driven another stake into the heart of the economy.

And the economy? Well, here is one more thing with which employers will have to contend. Proponents believe that this new tax will just be filed like any other income tax. Not so, the employer will have to keep track of which employee worked enough hours this month in order to make the $10 contribution, attach that record to a Social Security number and reconcile it at the end of the year. Yes, it will add to the cost of doing business.

The long-term care issue needs to be addressed. The problem with the proposal currently on the governor’s desk is that it will ensure that there will be automatic tax increases in the future as the funding scheme fails. It deserves to be vetoed.

”’Lowell L. Kalapa is the president of the Tax Foundation of Hawaii, a private, non-profit educational organization. For more information, please call 536-4587 or log on to”’ https://www.tfhawaii.org

”Findings and Recommendations”

The Department of Design and Construction was established by the 1998
reorganization to centralize the City’s construction function. At the
close of FY 2002, the department managed over 1,000 ongoing projects
and construction contracts totalling $579 million in value.

The objective of this in-house audit by the Office of Council Services
was to assess the management of capital projects by the department and
develop recommendations to address any weaknesses identified.

*1. The Department Manages Its Projects in an Ad Hoc Manner. Policies and procedures for managing projects have not been established, resulting in questionable change orders, inconsistent project oversight, and problems for client agencies.

Recommendation: the department should adopt written policies and
procedures on project management, provide training, and monitor
compliance. The policies should minimize change orders during
construction, require the work authorized pertain to the project, and
preclude change orders after project completion. The department
should consider enabling a single project manager to oversee all
phases of a project through completion. The policies should also
define the role of client agencies in approving project plans and
designs.

*2. The Department’s Project Information is Incomplete and Inaccurate.

Incomplete and inaccurate information in the department’s project
files and in reports on capital projects hinders project oversight by the department, City Administration, the Council, and the public.
Recommendation: the department should establish written policies and
procedures controlling project documents and controlling record
keeping by both employees and contracted project managers. Project
files should include a project summary identifying all project
managers and other participants, initial budgets and timetables, current
status, appropriations and expenditures to date, and all required studies
for the project.

”Agency Response”

The Department of Design and Construction generally agreed with our
report. However, it maintained that it was not responsible for budgeting
capital projects, approving change orders, selecting project consultants,
and reporting project status or expenditures. It also stated that it does
hold consultants responsible for any errors or omissions. We stand by
our report.

*3. The Department’s Workload, Coupled with the City’s Appropriation Deadline, Leads to Rushed Plans, Impaired Bids, and Unnecessary Change Orders.

The heavy workload has delayed the start of work on each year’s new
projects, so design work is rushed, plans and specifications go out to
bid that are incomplete or contain obvious errors, consultants are not
held responsible for mistakes, and ad hoc methods are used to prevent
funds from lapsing.

Recommendation: Construction funding should be budgeted in the
year following the budgeting of planning and design funding,
consultants should be held responsible for their work, and the City
Administration should exercise its existing budget allotment authority
to match project workload to the existing project management
resources.

*4. The Department Failed to Provide Complete and Accurate Information for this Audit.

During this audit, departmental staff denied current involvement with
the projects audited even though documents, client agency staff, and
written approvals of contract amendments showed otherwise.
Requested information was denied to the auditor and official City
project documents were discarded.

Recommendation: The department should adopt a policy ensuring
auditors have access to all files, records, staff, and contractors, that
employees and contractors are familiar with laws and policies relating
records tampering, records retention, and audits, and that serious
consequences result for employees and contractors who violate those
laws and policies.

”’Audit reports of the Office of Council Services (OCS) are available at the City Clerk, City library, state library, state archives, and the University of Hawaii library. An electronic copy of the report is also published on the OCS audit section Web page:”’
https://www.co.honolulu.hi.us/council/ocs/audit

“Dick Rowland Image”

”Shoots (News, Views and Quotes)”

– Rule Doesn’t Aid Privacy

By Sue A. Blevins

Source: USA Today, 4/10/03

“What would you call a federal regulation that gives more than 600,000
doctors, insurers, and data-processing companies permission to share
your medical records without your consent?” asks Sue Blevins, president
of the Institute for Health Freedom. “The U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services (HHS) calls it a medical privacy rule.” Her recommendation: “Rather than implement a new rule that eliminates patient consent and gives greater decision-making power to the federal government, medical privacy should be ensured through private contracts between patients, doctors and hospitals. Such contracts should be enforceable under state laws, with damages awards going to patients – not governments.”
Full text:

https://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2003-04-10-oppose_x.htm

For a good history of how the medical privacy rule evolved, see Blevins’ article in the Christian Science Monitor. Full text:

https://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0415/p09s01-coop.html

– FDA Chief’s Novel Mission: Cut Americans’ Drug Costs

By Leila Abboud and Laurie McGinley

Source: The Wall Street Journal, 4/16/03

Dr. Mark McClellan, a physician and the first PhD economist to serve as
commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, ” is trying to make
health care, especially prescription drugs more affordable” by speeding
the approval process, The Wall Street Journal reports. “His goal, he
says, is to make the FDA’s drug-review process quicker and more
efficient, thereby reducing the escalating costs of drug development.”
Toward that goal, he is bringing in more economists to assess the costs
and benefits of FDA regulations, moving quickly to have an independent
review of the drug-review process, and changing the guidance for reviews
of cancer products. Full text online at Wall Street Journal, subscription required.

Above articles are quoted from Galen Institute, Health Policy Matters, April 18, 2003 https://www.galen.org

”Roots (Food for Thought)”

– Teaching the Virtues

By William J. Bennett

William J. Bennett is a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation,
co-director of Empower America and chairman and co-founder of K12, an
Internet-based elementary and secondary school. He has a B.A. from
Williams College, a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Texas and
a law degree from Harvard. In 1981, President Reagan chose him to head
the National Endowment for the Humanities, and in 1985 he was named
Secretary of the Department of Education. In 1989, President Bush
appointed him director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. He
has written and edited 14 books, two of which — The Book of Virtues and
The Children’s Book of Virtues — rank among the most successful of the
past decade. His latest book is Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War
on Terrorism.

Teaching the Virtues

When I was Secretary of Education under President Reagan, I visited an
elementary school in Raleigh, North Carolina. As I did at many of the
120 schools I visited during that period, I taught a lesson there on
George Washington. Afterwards, I asked the kids if they had any
questions, and one little guy raised his hand and asked, “Mr. Secretary,
when you and President Reagan and the other people get together at
meetings of the Cabinet, do you really eat Jelly Bellys?” He’d heard
about Reagan’s penchant for Jelly Belly jelly beans. I answered, “Yes,
the president has a bowl of jelly beans at the meetings, and he eats
some and passes them around, and I’ve had a few.” And this kid looked me
in the face and said, “I think you’ve had more than a few, Mr.
Secretary.”

This was quite funny, and I remember President Reagan laughing when I
told him about it. But the story also makes an important point. Do you
recall when Gorbachev was visiting the U.S. and trying to figure out
what America was like? He went walking up and down Connecticut Avenue,
and he went over to the National Archives to look at documents. But he
should have gone to that elementary school in Raleigh. I can guarantee
you that never in the history of the Soviet Union did an eight-year-old
look into the eyes of a heavyset minister of education and say, “I’ll
bet you eat all the caviar you can get your hands on.” Maybe the kid’s
comment was a little fresh — a little over the top — but it showed that
the ethos of liberty is in our hearts, and that is a good and important
thing. But of course it’s not the only good and important thing.

Later, when I was director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy
— or Drug Czar, as some called me — I visited about 140 communities and
heard over and over a much different concern. Whether I was talking to
teachers, school administrators, parents, cops or judges, they wanted to
know: Who’s raising the children? What kind of character do our kids
have? Who’s paying attention to their morals? A judge in Detroit once
said to me: “When I ask young men today, ‘Didn’t anyone ever teach you
the difference between right and wrong?’ they answer, ‘No sir.’ And you
know, Mr. Bennett, I believe them. It is a moral vacuum out there.” I
remember teachers in the public schools asking, “Can you help us develop
some materials that we can use with our kids to teach them right from
wrong?” Isn’t that ironic? The public schools of this country, which
were established principally to provide common moral instruction for a
nation of immigrants, were now wondering if this was possible. Many
people expressed the concern that we had become so enamored of our
economic and material success that we were neglecting more important
things. Someone wrote me a letter and said, “If we have streets of gold
and silver, but our children do not learn to walk with God, what will we
have gained?”

Three Ways of Teaching Virtue

Some of us, frankly, had our doubts about whether this moral dilemma
could be solved. I authored a series of studies called the “Index of
Leading Cultural Indicators,” which, instead of measuring inflation or
interest rates, measured things like school dropout rates, drug
addiction, illegitimacy, divorce, SAT scores and crime. A lot of the
numbers were quite alarming. I wrote in the introduction to one of the
studies that if we kept moving in the direction we were going, this
great republic — this great experiment in self-government — could
conceivably unravel. So “teaching the virtues” seemed very much to me
then, and still seems to me today, a concern of prime importance for the
American people. And I think the answer regarding how to teach the
virtues is pretty straightforward. Aristotle had a good read on it, and
modern psychology and other contemporary studies back him up: We teach
by habit, we teach by precept, and we teach by example.

Aristotle says that habituation at an early age makes more than a little
difference; it can make almost all the difference. So if you want kids
to learn what work is, you should have them work. If you want them to
learn what responsibility means, you should hold them responsible. If
you want them to learn what perseverance is, you should encourage them
to persevere. And you should start as early as possible. Of course, this
is harder to do than to say. Being a parent and teaching these things is
a very rigorous exercise.

Precepts are also important. The Ten Commandments, the principles of
American democracy, rules of courteous behavior – these and other lists
of rights and wrongs should be provided to young people. But as we
provide them, young people need to know that we take these precepts
seriously. That leads to the third part of teaching virtue that
Aristotle talked about, which is example. And that, probably, is the one
we should emphasize the most. I have been to school after school where
the administration thinks it can solve its “values problem” by teaching
a course in values. I don’t believe in courses in values. I don’t think
that’s the way to go about solving the problem. If we want young people
to take right and wrong seriously, there is an indispensable condition:
They must be in the presence of adults who take right and wrong
seriously. Only in this way will they see that virtue is not just a
game, not just talk, but rather that it is something that grown-up
people, people who have responsibilities in the world and at home, take
seriously.

Let me give you an extreme example of the futility of precept in the
absence of example. More than once I’ve been in schools where they are
teaching a “virtue of the week.” In one such school, the virtue of the
week was honesty. There had been a test on honesty, and the teacher told
me that she had had to prepare a second test because she had caught so
many students cheating on the first. We are missing the point of the
enterprise here. Our children won’t take honesty seriously until we
grown-ups demand honesty of ourselves and others, including our leaders.
Needless to say, the Clinton years were not good years for impressing
the virtue of honesty on our kids.

The Lessons of 9/11

Along these same lines, there are many lessons to be drawn, it seems to
me, from the events of September 11, 2001. They are teachable events,
and there is much in them for young people to learn. Many sophisticated
or pseudo-sophisticated people have been nursing the idea for years that
concepts like right and wrong and good and evil are outmoded. But we saw
these things in full force on 9/11. We saw the face of evil and felt the
hand of evil, but we also saw the face of good and felt the many hands
of good, and our kids saw and felt these things, too.

We also saw the sinew, the fiber, the character of the American people.
I am not just talking about the firefighters and the cops. I’m talking
about the people associated with Xavier High School who died trying to
rescue and help people. I’m talking about those folks on American Flight
93 – the American businessmen traveling across the country with their
laptops. These are the guys who are the butt of humor for every aspiring
pseudo-intellectual and every Hollywood filmmaker who wants to run down
America. Life in the suburbs, according to these so-called elites, is
full of emptiness and desolation and misery. Perhaps I am overstating
this, but the middle-class American businessman has been the target of
an awful lot of criticism from an awful lot of directions for an awful
lot of years. When the chips were down, though, these businessmen did
pretty well, didn’t they?

I was reading an updated transcript a couple of weeks ago in which one
of the four men who rushed the cockpit on Flight 93 said to the person
on the other end of the phone line, “We are waiting until we get over a
rural area.” They knew what was likely to happen, so they were waiting
in order to minimize the death toll. What extraordinary human beings
these ordinary Americans turned out to be.

In the aftermath of 9/11, I am re-thinking some of the things I wrote a
couple years ago about the American character. I had feared, frankly,
that we had drifted so far from the ideas and principles of our Founding
Fathers that their understanding of nobility had become but a dim
memory. Certainly it remains true that the words and deeds of George
Washington and of the other great figures of American history are not
sufficiently vivid in the minds of our kids, or even of too many of our
adults. Nevertheless, 9/11 provided pretty compelling evidence of the
solid virtues we Americans retain.

The Importance of Learning

In conclusion, let me connect my point about teaching by example to
another 9/11 story. You have probably seen Mrs. Beamer on television –
Lisa Beamer, the wife of Todd Beamer, who was one of the heroes on
Flight 93. She has said that her children will look at the picture of
her husband every day, and that she will tell them daily that he is a
hero and that they are to try to be like him. This reminded me of a
statistic I uncovered in a book that I wrote on the American family a
few years back. We all know, based on countless studies as well as
common sense, that if you want to raise happy and successful children,
the best formula is a two-parent family. Despite the fact that not all
of us have that opportunity – my brother and I were raised by a single
parent who was married several times – it’s nevertheless true. But the
statistic I discovered when writing my book was that children who lose a
father in the line of duty – because the father is a police officer or a
soldier, for example – are indistinguishable from children who grow up
in intact two-parent families. Why is that? It is because the moral
example doesn’t have to be there physically. It can be in the mind and
in the heart. As a result of Lisa Beamer saying, “Be like him,” then,
Todd Beamer will be in the minds and hearts of his kids.

This illustrates one of my favorite themes: the importance of the things
we can’t see, of non-material things. Moral examples can exist in the
memory of a father or in the memory of the Founding Fathers or in the
memory of any of the marvelous heroes in the long history of humankind.
The historian Tacitus wrote, “The task of history is to hold out for
reprobation every evil word and deed, and to hold out for praise every
great and noble word and deed.” So we don’t need courses in values. We
need good courses in history. We need to revive the reading of good
books. We need to provide good precepts and encourage good habits. Above
all we have to teach by example. Nor is this to say that we need to be
perfect to be good examples. Our children can see us try and fail from
time to time. But then they can see us try again and do better, or get
it right, the second time. Thus they learn about human limitations, but
also about human perseverance.

It’s an old notion and an old responsibility, the teaching of virtues.
Virtues don’t come in our genes, so it is the duty of every generation
to pass them on. It is a duty we are not allowed to surrender.

Above is quoted from Hillsdale College, Imprimis February 2003
https://www.hillsdale.edu “Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, the national
speech digest of Hilldale College (www.hillsdale.edu).”

”Evergreen (Today’s Quotes)”

“Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.”
— Albert Einstein

“We need to restore the full meaning of that old word, duty. It is the
other side of rights.” — Pearl Buck

”’Edited by Richard O. Rowland, president of Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. He can be reached at (808) 487-4959 or by email at:”’ mailto:grassroot@hawaii.rr.com ”’For more information, see its Web site at:”’ https://www.grassrootinstitute.org/

”’Remarks by the President from the USS Abraham Lincoln At Sea Off the Coast of San Diego, California”’

Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.

And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country. In this battle, we have fought for the cause of liberty, and for the peace of the world. Our nation and our coalition are proud of this accomplishment — yet, it is you, the members of the United States military, who achieved it. Your courage, your willingness to face danger for your country and for each other, made this day possible. Because of you, our nation is more secure. Because of you, the tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free.

Operation Iraqi Freedom was carried out with a combination of precision and speed and boldness the enemy did not expect, and the world had not seen before. From distant bases or ships at sea, we sent planes and missiles that could destroy an enemy division, or strike a single bunker. Marines and soldiers charged to Baghdad across 350 miles of hostile ground, in one of the swiftest advances of heavy arms in history. You have shown the world the skill and the might of the American Armed Forces.

This nation thanks all the members of our coalition who joined in a noble cause. We thank the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom, Australia, and Poland, who shared in the hardships of war. We thank all the citizens of Iraq who welcomed our troops and joined in the liberation of their own country. And tonight, I have a special word for Secretary Rumsfeld, for General Franks, and for all the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States: America is grateful for a job well done.

The character of our military through history — the daring of Normandy, the fierce courage of Iwo Jima, the decency and idealism that turned enemies into allies — is fully present in this generation. When Iraqi civilians looked into the faces of our servicemen and women, they saw strength and kindness and goodwill. When I look at the members of the United States military, I see the best of our country, and I’m honored to be your Commander-in-Chief.

In the images of falling statues, we have witnessed the arrival of a new era. For a hundred of years of war, culminating in the nuclear age, military technology was designed and deployed to inflict casualties on an ever-growing scale.

In defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, Allied forces destroyed entire cities, while enemy leaders who started the conflict were safe until the final days. Military power was used to end a regime by breaking a nation.

Today, we have the greater power to free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime. With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians.

No device of man can remove the tragedy from war; yet it is a great moral advance when the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent.

In the images of celebrating Iraqis, we have also seen the ageless appeal of human freedom. Decades of lies and intimidation could not make the Iraqi people love their oppressors or desire their own enslavement. Men and women in every culture need liberty like they need food and water and air. Everywhere that freedom arrives, humanity rejoices; and everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.

We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We’re bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We’re pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. We’ve begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated. We’re helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people.

The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time, but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done. Then we will leave, and we will leave behind a free Iraq.

The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 — and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men — the shock troops of a hateful ideology — gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the “beginning of the end of America.” By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation’s resolve, and force our retreat from the world. They have failed.

In the battle of Afghanistan, we destroyed the Taliban, many terrorists, and the camps where they trained. We continue to help the Afghan people lay roads, restore hospitals, and educate all of their children. Yet we also have dangerous work to complete. As I speak, a Special Operations task force, led by the 82nd Airborne, is on the trail of the terrorists and those who seek to undermine the free government of Afghanistan. America and our coalition will finish what we have begun.

From Pakistan to the Philippines to the Horn of Africa, we are hunting down al Qaeda killers. Nineteen months ago, I pledged that the terrorists would not escape the patient justice of the United States. And as of tonight, nearly one-half of al Qaeda’s senior operatives have been captured or killed.

The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We’ve removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more.

In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused and deliberate and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th — the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got. Our war against terror is proceeding according to principles that I have made clear to all: Any person involved in committing or planning terrorist attacks against the American people becomes an enemy of this country, and a target of American justice. Any person, organization, or government that supports, protects, or harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent, and equally guilty of terrorist crimes.

Any outlaw regime that has ties to terrorist groups and seeks or possesses weapons of mass destruction is a grave danger to the civilized world — and will be confronted.

And anyone in the world, including the Arab world, who works and sacrifices for freedom has a loyal friend in the United States of America. Our commitment to liberty is America’s tradition — declared at our founding; affirmed in Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms; asserted in the Truman Doctrine and in Ronald Reagan’s challenge to an evil empire. We are committed to freedom in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in a peaceful Palestine. The advance of freedom is the surest strategy to undermine the appeal of terror in the world. Where freedom takes hold, hatred gives way to hope. When freedom takes hold, men and women turn to the peaceful pursuit of a better life. American values and American interests lead in the same direction: We stand for human liberty. The United States upholds these principles of security and freedom in many ways — with all the tools of diplomacy, law enforcement, intelligence, and finance. We’re working with a broad coalition of nations that understand the threat and our shared responsibility to meet it. The use of force has been — and remains — our last resort. Yet all can know, friend and foe alike, that our nation has a mission: We will answer threats to our security, and we will defend the peace.

Our mission continues. Al Qaeda is wounded, not destroyed. The scattered cells of the terrorist network still operate in many nations, and we know from daily intelligence that they continue to plot against free people. The proliferation of deadly weapons remains a serious danger. The enemies of freedom are not idle, and neither are we. Our government has taken unprecedented measures to defend the homeland. And we will continue to hunt down the enemy before he can strike.

The war on terror is not over; yet it is not endless. We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide. No act of the terrorists will change our purpose, or weaken our resolve, or alter their fate. Their cause is lost. Free nations will press on to victory.

Other nations in history have fought in foreign lands and remained to occupy and exploit. Americans, following a battle, want nothing more than to return home. And that is your direction tonight.

After service in the Afghan — and Iraqi theaters of war — after 100,000 miles, on the longest carrier deployment in recent history, you are homeward bound.

Some of you will see new family members for the first time — 150 babies were born while their fathers were on the Lincoln. Your families are proud of you, and your nation will welcome you.

We are mindful, as well, that some good men and women are not making the journey home. One of those who fell, Corporal Jason Mileo, spoke to his parents five days before his death. Jason’s father said, “He called us from the center of Baghdad, not to brag, but to tell us he loved us. Our son was a soldier.”

Every name, every life is a loss to our military, to our nation, and to the loved ones who grieve. There’s no homecoming for these families. Yet we pray, in God’s time, their reunion will come. Those we lost were last seen on duty. Their final act on this Earth was to fight a great evil and bring liberty to others. All of you — all in this generation of our military — have taken up the highest calling of history.

You’re defending your country, and protecting the innocent from harm. And wherever you go, you carry a message of hope — a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, “To the captives, ‘come out,’ — and to those in darkness, ‘be free.'” Thank you for serving our country and our cause.

May God bless you all, and may God continue to bless America.

TEHRAN, April 25 (UPI) — Iran officially announced Thursday that all remaining five Jews jailed for spying for Israel in 2000 had been freed, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

“They are free now,” Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said during a news conference with the visiting foreign minister of France. Dominique de Villepin called the news “very pleasant to us.”

The five men were the last of 13 Jews who, along with eight Muslims, were arrested in the southern city of Shiraz in 1999. In July 2000, amid widespread controversy that surrounded the closed-door hearings, 10 of the Jews and two of the Muslims were convicted of spying for Israel, specifically for gathering intelligence at the state’s request about military sites and other sensitive areas. The dozen convicted received jail terms of between four and 13 years.

In September 2000, however, an appeals court reduced the sentences by nearly half, resulting in the release of two Jews who had served out their terms. Three others were pardoned last October, leaving the fate of the last five to be determined.

Jews, like the other religious minorities of Christians, Zoroastrians and Armenians residing in Iran, have representatives in the Iranian parliament, and government officials say that each group is free to practice its own religion. Some 30,000 Jews live in Iran, the biggest community in the Middle East outside Israel.

De Villepin arrived in Iran early Thursday on the third leg of a Middle East tour that had already taken him to Turkey and Jordan. While in Tehran, de Villepin met with Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former president and now head of Iran’s Expediency Council.

De Villepin said: “I am here to discuss the strengthening of bilateral ties, continue the two capitals’ consultations on regional and international issues, and focus on the Palestinian-Israeli crisis.”

France and Iran were among opponents of the U.S.-British war on Iraq, arguing that any military action in that country should bear U.N. sanctions.

Rafsanjani — a powerful figure in Iran as head of the council that arbitrates in disputes between Iran’s two main governmental bodies, the legislative Majlis and the watchdog Guardian Council — criticized the United States for replacing Saddam Hussein with a retired U.S. general instead of allowing the United Nations to take charge of developing a new government for Iraq. All Iran wants with regard to Iraq is its independence, territorial integrity and freedom of the Iraqi people, Rafsanjani insisted. On Wednesday, Washington reprimanded Iran for allowing Iranian agents to enter southern Iraq and foment anti-U.S. sentiment among Shiite Muslims there — an accusation Tehran vigorously denied. Only in Iran, Iraq and Bahrain do Shiites, a sect of Islam opposed to the more common Sunni, represent the majority of the Muslim population.

Copyright 2003 by United Press International. All rights reserved.