==> The Truth About Political Stuff <==

Everything you ever needed to know about Republicans

2010-12-08T23:28:00.003-05:00

Republicans vote NO to provide seniors $250.00 to help with increased costs for living.
Republicans vote YES to extending large tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans.

Re: Ignore SPAM - This email id has been compromised!

2010-01-15T14:32:00.002-05:00

I've been informed that this email id has been compromised and that it has apparently sent spam to a whole lot of people, including you. You do not need to report this to me, but do please report to yahoo that they have allowed this email id to be compromised.
Delete any email that you may have received today from this email address.
Thank you.

Overqualified

2008-11-29T17:46:00.001-05:00

Pardons All Around

2008-11-29T17:44:00.000-05:00

President-Elect Barack Obama Discusses the Meaning of Thanksgiving

2008-11-29T17:40:00.000-05:00

Myanmar jails comedian who helped aid victims of cyclone

2008-11-23T13:05:00.003-05:00

NY Times
Nov 21, 2008

A secret court run by Myanmar’s military leadership on Friday sentenced a prominent Burmese comedian and activist to 45 years in prison, continuing a recent crackdown on dissidents.

The comedian, U Maung Thura, 47, better known by his stage name Zarganar, or the Tweezers, was detained in June after he organized a private assistance effort to help victims of the May cyclone, which killed more than 130,000 Burmese. With aid organizations and Western governments, he criticized Myanmar’s handling of the disaster.

Full article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/world/asia/22myanmar.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

The 44th President of the United States

2008-11-05T00:01:00.003-05:00

President-elect Barack Obama
Vice President-elect Joe Biden

A plea to the press on election day

2008-11-03T18:58:00.001-05:00

Dear Press,

Please refrain from calling any states electoral votes until ALL THE POLES HAVE CLOSED.

Thank you.

Colin Powell Endorses Barack Obama

2008-10-19T23:00:00.003-04:00

Undecided Voters Try To Decipher McCain's Message

2008-10-19T22:59:00.001-04:00

Mission Almost Accomplished

2008-10-19T22:58:00.000-04:00

Best and Brightest?

2008-10-19T22:56:00.000-04:00

The Acorn Story - the facts

2008-10-17T18:43:00.001-04:00

You've heard the hype from McCain and others.
Here are the basic facts:
Yes, there are some questionable registration forms. There always are no matter who is doing the registration (any company).
What McCain and others are not telling you is that Acorn is required by law in many states to turn in ALL collected ballots, those that appear to be valid and those that don't. In some states they are allowed to help the state by flagging the ones in question. In other states, they are required to just turn them all in and the state tries to figure out which are valid and which are not.
So clearly much ado about nothing (other than yet another distraction rather than discussing the issues voters care about).

The Man Behind the Whispers About Obama

2008-10-13T09:54:00.002-04:00

From The NY Times:

The Man Behind the Whispers About Obama
By JIM RUTENBERG

The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obama's background first hit in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that helped set him on the path to his presidential candidacy: "Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion."

That statement, contained in a press release, spun a complex tale about the ancestry of Mr. Obama, who is Christian.

The press release was picked up by a conservative Web site, FreeRepublic.com, and spread steadily as others elaborated on its claims over the years in e-mail messages, Web sites and books. It continues to drive other false rumors about Mr. Obama's background.

Just last Friday, a woman told Senator John McCain at a town-hall-style meeting, "I have read about him," and "he's an Arab." Mr. McCain corrected her.

Until this month, the man who is widely credited with starting the cyberwhisper campaign that still dogs Mr. Obama was a secondary character in news reports, with deep explorations of his background largely confined to liberal blogs.

But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government.

An examination of legal documents and election filings, along with interviews with his acquaintances, revealed Mr. Martin, 62, to be a man with a history of scintillating if not always factual claims. He has left a trail of animosity — some of it provoked by anti-Jewish comments — among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over more than 30 years.

He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of "moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character."

Full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/us/politics/13martin.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

Speaking In Tongues

2008-09-21T01:49:00.002-04:00

Hipnotized

2008-09-21T01:46:00.002-04:00

Not Interested

2008-09-21T01:42:00.001-04:00

The Push to 'Otherize' Obama

2008-09-21T01:33:00.000-04:00

The Push to 'Otherize' Obama

Distractions and Smear Tactics

2008-09-14T09:39:00.000-04:00

You call this change?

2008-09-14T09:34:00.000-04:00

Contract is already awarded to ...

2008-09-14T09:32:00.000-04:00

The surge they don't talk about

2008-09-14T09:30:00.002-04:00

Rubes

2008-09-14T09:25:00.001-04:00

How's it going?

2008-09-14T09:21:00.001-04:00

Just Your Average Hockey Mom

2008-09-14T09:09:00.003-04:00

Just Your Average Hockey Mom

Check the Facts

2008-09-14T08:56:00.003-04:00

If you want more facts than are posted here,
or if you have friends or relatives that don't believe what you tell them,
then, in addition to TheTruthAboutPoliticalStuff.com go (and send them) to the totally non-partisan site, http://FactCheck.org

You will find that the facts are that McCain and Palin and the Republicans in general have lied and stretched the truth quite extensively. Yes, you will also find fact errors and exaggerations that have come from the Democratic side as well, but if you pay close attention, you will see that the difference if extreme.

Republicans about qualifications (flip-flop)

2008-09-07T13:20:00.001-04:00

Must Watch TV

2008-09-07T13:12:00.002-04:00

Must watch TV: Sept 5 2008 episode of The Daily Report

Palin Coward Clock Starts Ticking

2008-09-07T11:39:00.001-04:00

Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time Palin

Palin Coward Clock Starts Ticking

Don't Dis Community Organizers

Sarah Palin: Not My Role Model

2008-09-07T01:59:00.001-04:00

2008-09-07T01:57:00.001-04:00

News you need to know

2008-09-07T01:45:00.002-04:00

Sarah Palin: Earmark Queen Of The Earmark State

verified at snopes.com: A Note to All (About Sarah Palin) by Anne Kilkenny

FactCheck Article: FactChecking McCain

Palin: wrong woman, wrong message - by Gloria Steinem

Great video clip responding to Palin speech

Running From Reality

News article from May 7 2008: Alaska Rates for high school dropouts, college completion among worst

Sarah Palin: Iraq war 'a task that is from God'

Sarah Palin accepted at least $4,500 in campaign contributions in the same fundraising scheme at the center of a public corruption scandal that led to the indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens

John McCain foreign policy flip-flops

Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad

2008-08-05T21:43:00.002-04:00

Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Adfunny videosFunnyOrDie.com

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

McCain Flips At Legit Question

2008-07-03T19:59:00.000-04:00

McCain Flips At Legit Question
http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20080703/cm_huffpost/110681_200807031142

Voting Republican

2008-06-18T22:30:00.000-04:00

McCain’s confusion has nothing to do with his age

2008-06-14T08:02:00.001-04:00

McCain’s confusion has nothing to do with his age

Rudy's Bogus Cancer Statistic

2007-11-02T00:56:00.000-04:00

Bogus Cancer Statistic
factcheck.org

Giuliani falsely claims that only 44 percent of prostate cancer patients survive under "socialized medicine" in England.
Summary
In a new radio ad, Rudy Giuliani falsely claims that under England’s “socialized medicine” system only 44 percent of men with prostate cancer survive.

We tracked down the source of that number, which turns out to be the result of bad math by a Giuliani campaign adviser, who admits to us that his figure isn’t "technically" a survival rate at all. Furthermore, the author of the study on which Giuliani’s man based his calculations tells us his work is being misused, and that the 44 percent figure is both wrong and “misleading.”

It’s true that official survival rates for prostate cancer are higher in the U.S. than in England, but the difference is not nearly as high as Giuliani claims. And even so, the higher survival rates in the U.S. may simply reflect more aggressive diagnosing of non-lethal cancers, according to the American Cancer Society.

Actually, men with prostate cancer are more likely to die sooner if they don’t have health insurance, according to a recent study published in one of the American Medical Association’s journals. Giuliani doesn’t mention that.

Note: This is a summary only. The full article with analysis, images and citations may be viewed on www.factcheck.org

Major White House Blunder Severely Damages Al-Queda Intelligence Gathering Efforts

2007-10-09T15:26:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! News
White House denies leaking info that hurt Al-Qaeda spying

The White House on Tuesday denied being the source of a leak involving an Osama bin Laden video that a private intelligence firm said had sabotaged its secret ability to intercept Al-Qaeda messages.

Asked if the White House was the source of the leak, spokeswoman Dana Perino said: "No, we were not ... We were very concerned to learn about it."

The SITE Intelligence Group said it lost access that it had covertly acquired to Al-Qaeda's communications network when the administration of President George W. Bush let out that the company had obtained a bin Laden video early last month ahead of its official release, the Washington Post said.

"Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless," SITE founder Rita Katz told the newspaper.

SITE monitors websites and public communications linked to radical Islamist groups and organizations deemed terrorist by US authorities and provides the information to clients, including news media companies.

It got hold of the bin Laden video before its release and provided it for free to the White House on the morning of September 7 but insisted that the video's existence remain secret until it spotted the official release, in order to protect its own work.

"Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's website," the Post said.

By that afternoon the video and a transcript from it had been leaked to a cable television news network and broadcast worldwide, the Post reported.

According to Katz, this tipped off Al-Qaeda that its communications security had been breached by SITE.

White House officials said the matter would be referred to the Director of National Intelligence, and that the White House was not planning any internal investigation.

"When the White House receives information from an individual or a company, we refer that appropriately to the intelligence community. That's what happened here," Perino said.

"And I'll have to refer you to the Director on National Intelligence for any process problem they had in that regard."

Homeland security adviser Fran Townsend echoed Perino's "concern" and referred the matter to the nation's spy chief.

"This is going to be an issue for the DNI to look at so that we can understand what, if anything, happened, and how to deal with it to ensure that we fully protect those who cooperate with us," Townsend said.

"I haven't looked at the internal White House emails, so what I can tell you is the DNI and the Intelligence Committee will need to look at who had access to it.

She added: "We are only going to be successful in the war on terror with the help of the American people."

The video appeared to be timed to coincide with the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States, and was bin Laden's first video appearance since October 2004.

In it, the elusive Al-Qaeda chief mocked the United States as "weak" and vowed to escalate fighting in Iraq.

Another US-based organization that monitors Islamic militant websites, IntelCenter, said its "sources, methods and techniques ... to collect terrorist video material remain intact," according to CEO Ben Venzke, who added that the focus on rushing videos to the public could have dangerous consequences.

"Simply getting the video first but not having the professional knowledge and responsibilities to know what to do with it can not only result in the loss of valuable intelligence but it can actually harm ongoing activities within the official counterterrorism community," he said.

This "has happened time and time again when private citizens and organizations outside of the IC (intelligence community) play in fields where they lack the depth and experience."

Patriot Act Provisions Unconstitutional

2007-09-28T02:14:00.000-04:00

washingtonpost.com
Patriot Act Provisions Voided
Judge Rules Law Gives Executive Branch Too Much Power
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer

A federal judge in Oregon ruled yesterday that two provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional, marking the second time in as many weeks that the anti-terrorism law has come under attack in the courts.

In a case brought by a Portland man who was wrongly detained as a terrorism suspect in 2004, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the Patriot Act violates the Constitution because it "permits the executive branch of government to conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without satisfying the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment."

"For over 200 years, this Nation has adhered to the rule of law -- with unparalleled success," Aiken wrote in a strongly worded 44-page opinion. "A shift to a Nation based on extra-constitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill-advised."

The ruling in Oregon follows a separate finding on Sept. 6 by a federal judge in New York, who struck down provisions allowing the FBI to obtain e-mail and telephone data from private companies without a court-issued warrant. The decision also comes amid renewed congressional debate over the government's broad powers to conduct searches and surveillance in counterterrorism cases. Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said last night that the administration "will consider all our options" in responding to yesterday's ruling.

Aiken's ruling came in the case of Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer who was arrested and jailed for two weeks in 2004 after the FBI bungled a fingerprint match and mistakenly linked him to a terrorist attack in Spain. The FBI used its expanded powers under the Patriot Act to secretly search Mayfield's house and law office, copy computer files and photos, tape his telephone conversations, and place surveillance bugs in his office using warrants issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

In a settlement announced in November 2006, the U.S. government agreed to pay $2 million to Mayfield and his family and it apologized for the "suffering" that the case caused him. But the pact allowed Mayfield to proceed with a legal challenge to the constitutionality of the Patriot Act, resulting in yesterday's ruling by Aiken, who was nominated to the bench by President Bill Clinton in 1997.

Mayfield's attorneys said in a statement that Aiken "has upheld both the tradition of judicial independence, and our nation's most cherished principle of the right to be secure in one's own home."

The Oregon and New York rulings are the latest in a series of lower-court rulings that have called into question provisions of the Patriot Act, which Congress approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Lawmakers have since amended the law, partly in reaction to some earlier rulings.

Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

"Is our children learning?" "Childrens do learn."

2007-09-28T02:12:00.000-04:00

washingtonpost.com
An Extra 'S' on the Report Card
Hailing a Singular Achievement, President Gets Pluralistic
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer

NEW YORK, Sept. 26 -- As a candidate, George W. Bush once asked, "Is our children learning?"

Now he has an answer.

"Childrens do learn," he said Wednesday.

The setting was, yes, an education event where the president was taking credit for rising test scores and promoting congressional renewal of his signature education law. To create the right image, the White House summoned the city's chancellor of schools, a principal, some teachers and about 20 eager students from P.S. 76.

The visual worked fine. The oral? Not so much. For Bush, it was a classic malapropism, the sort of verbal miscue that occasionally bedevils him in public speaking and provides critics and the media easy fodder for ridicule. Subject-verb agreement actually is taught at Andover, Yale and Harvard, the president's alma maters, but in an unforgiving job that requires him to speak hundreds of thousands of words with cameras rolling, the tongue sometimes veers off in mysterious ways -- and someone always seems to notice.

His latest misstatement masked a serious issue, of course. As Bush's first-term No Child Left Behind law comes up for reauthorization, many in Congress are attacking it from both the left and the right. The president is trying to preserve what he sees as one of his most significant domestic achievements, an effort to increase accountability through rigorous standardized testing. The latest report card released by the National Assessment of Educational Progress gave him some ammunition.

"The No Child Left Behind Act is working," Bush said with first lady Laura Bush, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein at his side. "I say that because the nation's report card says it's working. Scores are improving, in some instances hitting all-time highs."

Bush said that lawmakers should pay attention and not mess with success. "My call to the Congress is: Don't water down this good law," he said. "Don't go backwards when it comes to educational excellence. Don't roll back accountability. We've come too far to turn back."

Others offered a more measured assessment. "Unfortunately, this administration has dropped the ball on education reform by shortchanging this law to the tune of $56 billion since its enactment," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate education committee. He vowed "to provide the solutions and the resources needed to ensure that students and schools can succeed."

The test results released Tuesday are not the ones used under No Child Left Behind, but the administration said that they show the progress since the law was passed with bipartisan support. Math scores improved among fourth- and eighth-graders, and black and Hispanic students made gains, although they still trailed their white counterparts. Eighth-grade reading scores, on the other hand, have not changed much since 1998.

Education specialists are divided on whether the federal law has succeeded in raising achievement for all students or in narrowing the historic achievement gaps between demographic groups. Passage rates are rising on many tests given to satisfy the law, including those in Maryland, Virginia and the District. The gap between white and black students is shrinking in some places.

But some scholars do not credit the education law. NAEP scores, for example, rose in some states and fell in others, and the general upward trend began well before No Child Left Behind. "My general view of this is that the president has been serially dishonest in claiming that No Child is accomplishing its mission," said Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley.

Perhaps the law's greatest success, according to educators, is its requirement that students of all racial and demographic "subgroups" attain the same proficiency, which has focused schools on closing achievement gaps. The gap "is starting to narrow," said Amy Wilkins, a vice president of the Education Trust, who helped draft the law. "But not fast enough."

The education innovators, however, have not come up with a solution to the gap that sometimes separates the president's meaning from his words. Bush's grammatical goof here Wednesday seemed to track neatly perhaps his most famous verbal faux pas. While in South Carolina in January 2000, he said: "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" Democratic strategist Paul Begala gleefully used it as the title of a Bush-bashing book he wrote.

At Wednesday's event, Bush was pointing to the test results when he stumbled. "As yesterday's positive report card shows," he said, "childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured." Bush pushed on without pausing to correct himself, but the official White House transcript released later cleaned up the sentence for him by making it "children."

The gaffe came a day after a White House draft of his speech to the U.N. General Assembly was mistakenly posted on the U.N. Web site, complete with phonetic guides to the names of various foreign countries and leaders -- "KEYR-geez-stan" (Kyrgyzstan), "moor-EH-tain-ee-a" (Mauritania), "sar-KO-zee" (French President Nicolas Sarkozy). A White House spokeswoman said it was "offensive" to ask if that indicated Bush has problems pronouncing foreign names.

Still, during his trip to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Australia last month, Bush did seem to have a bit of a pronunciation problem. "Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit," he told the prime minister of Australia, which like the United States is not actually a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. He also thanked the Australian leader for visiting "Austrian troops" in Iraq.

While such moments amount to a Full Employment Act for Late-Night Comedians, Bush has effectively played them off, regularly telling audiences that he was only a C student and casting himself as an ordinary fellow and not some elite intellectual, never mind his Ivy League education. Supporters see such moments as humanizing -- who wouldn't lose his verbal footing from time to time?

At a dinner with broadcast journalists in 2001, Bush poked fun of himself for his "Is our children learning?" statement. "Let us analyze that sentence for a moment," he said. "If you're a stickler, you probably think the singular verb 'is' should have been the plural 'are.' But if you read it closely, you'll see I'm using the intransitive plural subjunctive tense. So the word 'is' are correct."

Staff writer Daniel de Vise in Washington contributed to this report.

Runaway (Spending) Train

2007-09-28T02:10:00.000-04:00

The New York Times
Runaway (Spending) Train

If, as he says, President Bush is going to start withdrawing troops from Iraq, why on earth does he need vastly more money from Congress to wage war? The staggering, ever escalating numbers tell the real story: As long as it’s up to Mr. Bush, the American presence in Iraq will be endless and ever more costly, diverting resources from other national priorities that are being ignored or shortchanged.

The administration showed its cards on Wednesday when it asked Congress for an additional $42.3 billion in “emergency” funding for Iraq and Afghanistan. This comes on top of the original 2008 spending request, which was made before Mr. Bush announced his so-called “new strategy” of partial withdrawal. It would bring the 2008 war bill to nearly $190 billion, the largest single-year total for the wars and an increase of 15 percent from 2007.

And here are a few more facts to put the voracious war machine in context: By year’s end, the cost for both conflicts since Sept. 11, 2001, is projected to reach more than $800 billion. Iraq alone has cost the United States more in inflation-adjusted dollars than the Gulf War and the Korean War and will probably surpass the Vietnam War by the end of next year, according to the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

For officials and politicians used to dealing with eye-popping numbers, the additional $42.3 billion may just register as a few more zeros on the bottom line of a staggeringly big bill. But it’s more than enough to cover the five-year $35 billion proposal for children’s health-care coverage that Mr. Bush has threatened to veto.

This for a war that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once said would cost under $50 billion while his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, predicted Iraqi oil revenues would largely pay for Iraq’s reconstruction.

It’s not that Americans don’t want to pay and equip the courageous men and women who defend their freedom. In fact, since 9/11, taxpayers have been remarkably stalwart in underwriting massive war-fighting increases. But the Pentagon budget has to make sense within the larger context of national security. Mr. Bush seems to be placing no financial check whatsoever on military spending, most of it devoted to a war in Iraq that is peripheral to the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, who are most active in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Americans also should ask why the Pentagon should be entrusted with more tax dollars when it can’t seem to spend what it has wisely. Military officials recently revealed that contracts worth more than $90 billion are being investigated — $6 billion for possible criminal charges, the rest for financial irregularities. According to the vague details made public, the new money would pay for the continued American troop presence in Iraq, the purchase of armored vehicles and training Iraq’s new army. But it also contains funds for longer-term goals, such as replacing outdated equipment.

Congress must dissect this request carefully, find out why Mr. Bush suddenly needed to ask for the extra money and use the chance to reshape the failed strategy in Iraq. In other words, lawmakers should join Democrat Robert C. Byrd, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, in pledging there will be “no more blank checks for Iraq.”

A Step Away From the Imperial Presidency

2007-09-28T02:08:00.000-04:00

The New York Times
A Step Away From the Imperial Presidency

The Democratic Congress has yet to muster the votes or courage to repeal a series of noxious measures — rubber-stamped by the previous Republican majority — that pushed presidential power to dangerous extremes in the name of fighting terrorism. In a disappointing showdown earlier this month, Senate Republicans blocked an effort to reverse one of the most ignominious aspects of last year’s Military Commissions Act — the suspension of the right of habeas corpus to block foreign detainees from challenging their imprisonment in federal courts.

Fortunately, the prospects are better for undoing a lesser-known example of presidential overreaching. The defense budget bill heading for Senate passage contains a bipartisan measure to repeal wording that made it easier for a president to override local control of the National Guard and declare martial law. That language was slipped into last year’s defense bill.

The revision is sponsored by Senators Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri, and is backed unanimously by the nation’s governors. It repeals a major weakening of two protective doctrines of liberty. One of them, called posse comitatus, was enacted after the Civil War to bar military forces, including a federalized National Guard, from engaging in domestic law enforcement.

The other, the Insurrection Act of 1807, long contained a limited exception to posse comitatus for putting down lawlessness, insurrection and rebellion, where a state is violating federal law or depriving people of constitutional rights. Under last year’s revision, the exception was unnecessarily broadened to allow the president to use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or to any “other condition.”

In June, Congress reversed its acquiescence to another sneaky rider designed to bypass Senate confirmation of the administration’s choices for U.S. attorney jobs. If this defense bill is enacted, that will make at least two instances where Congress has lived up to its duty to rescind excessive power grants to the Bush White House.

For democracy’s sake, there will need to be many more.

U.S. to Allow 14 Key Detainees to Request Lawyers

2007-09-28T02:06:00.000-04:00

U.S. to Allow Key Detainees to Request Lawyers
14 Terrorism Suspects Given Legal Forms at Guantanamo
By Josh White and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers

Fourteen "high-value" terrorism suspects who were transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from secret CIA prisons last year have been formally offered the right to request lawyers, a move that could allow them to join other detainees in challenging their status as enemy combatants in a U.S. appellate court.

The move, confirmed by Defense Department officials, will allow the suspects their first contact with anyone other than their captors and representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross since they were taken into custody.

The prisoners, who include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, have not had access to lawyers during their year at Guantanamo Bay or while they were held, for varying lengths of time, at the secret CIA sites abroad. They were entitled to military "personal representatives" to assist them during the administrative process that determined whether they are enemy combatants.

U.S. officials have argued in court papers against granting lawyers access to the high-value detainees without special security rules, fearing that attorney-client conversations could reveal classified elements of the CIA's secret detention program and its controversial interrogation tactics.

washingtonpost.com
Defense officials gave the detainees "Legal Representation Request" forms during the last week of August and the first week of September, and sources familiar with the process said at least four detainees have requested attorneys.

The form, referring to the Combatant Status Review Tribunal, allows the detainees to say whether they "wish to have a civilian lawyer represent me and assist me with filing a petition to challenge the CSRT determination that I am an Enemy Combatant." The Detainee Treatment Act, enacted in late 2005, gives Guantanamo Bay captives the right to challenge their enemy-combatant designations in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The form distributed to the high-value suspects also allows them to request that the American Bar Association "find a lawyer who will represent my best interests, without charge."

William H. Neukom, the association's president, criticized the use of the organization's name on the form, telling government lawyers yesterday that his organization does not want to "lend support and credibility to such an inadequate review scheme."

A Pentagon spokesman said this week that the detainees, like all others at Guantanamo, are provided information on how to request counsel.

"These counsel will be permitted to visit the detainee and engage in confidential written communications with the detainee once the counsel has obtained the necessary security clearance" and agrees to certain special court rules, said Navy Cmdr. J.D. Gordon. One Pentagon official warned that those lawyers will have to undergo especially thorough background checks before they are allowed to see the high-value captives.

Defense and intelligence officials said the decision to allow legal representation does not represent a shift in policy.

"It was the intent and the plan all along that they would have a right to counsel," said a senior intelligence official, who insisted on anonymity because many details of the detention program remain classified. The official said the concerns about protecting sensitive government information apply equally to the 14 men and the approximately 325 other detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

"The goal here is to have the trials open and public to the greatest extent consistent with protecting classified information," the official said.

But lawyers and advocacy groups pressing for legal rights for the detainees contend that there has been a change in tone since last fall, when Justice Department lawyers argued that the detainees might reveal details about their captivity that may "reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage" to national security, according to an Oct. 26 court filing.

One of the 14 special detainees, Majid Khan, 27, who went to high school in the Baltimore area, filled out his form on Sept. 5. He signed the document and added a short handwritten note at the bottom of the page. That note and the fact that the U.S. military had him sign the document have riled defense lawyers who have been attempting to represent Khan for more than a year at the request of his family but who have been denied access to him.

In the note, Khan said that he believes he already has an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights but that he has never received any official correspondence from that lawyer. The lawyer, Gitanjali Gutierrez, said yesterday that she has written Khan letters over the past year that clearly did not reach him.

"Please send me a lawyer or representative who can brief me with my options," Khan wrote, according to a copy of the form provided to The Washington Post by the Center for Constitutional Rights. "Also please, if you can send me basic introduction criminal law books with all law terms, etc. Also I would like to know what has media said about me and full copy of tribunal CSRT about me, which was available on the Internet. (Thanks in advance)."

The government alleges that Khan took orders from Mohammed, and was asked to research how to poison U.S. reservoirs and how to blow up U.S. gas stations.

Gutierrez said she thinks the effort to connect detainees with lawyers is the Defense Department "trying to put some gloss on the idea that this review process is legitimate and the high-value detainees are being given access to the courts."

"Now it's their opportunity to turn it from a gloss to a reality," Gutierrez said. "But we'll see if they come through."

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

New Test Asks: What Does ‘American’ Mean?

2007-09-28T02:04:00.000-04:00

The New York Times
New Test Asks: What Does ‘American’ Mean?
By JULIA PRESTON

Patrick Henry and Francis Scott Key are out, but Susan B. Anthony and Nancy Pelosi are in. The White House was cut, but New York and Sept. 11 made the list.

Federal immigration authorities yesterday unveiled 100 new questions immigrants will have to study to pass a civics test to become naturalized American citizens.

The redesign of the test, the first since it was created in 1986 as a standardized examination, follows years of criticism in which conservatives said the test was too easy and immigrant advocates said it was too hard.

The new questions did little to quell that debate among many immigrant groups, who complained that the citizenship test would become even more daunting. Conservatives seemed to be more satisfied.

Bush administration officials said the new test was part of their effort to move forward on the hotly disputed issue of immigration by focusing on the assimilation of legal immigrants who have played by the rules, leaving aside the situation of some 12 million illegal immigrants here.

Several historians said the new questions successfully incorporated more ideas about the workings of American democracy and better touched upon the diversity of the groups — including women, American Indians and African-Americans — who have influenced the country’s history.

Would-be citizens no longer have to know who said, “Give me liberty or give me death,” or who wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But they do have to know what Susan B. Anthony did and who the speaker of the House of Representatives is.

Alfonso Aguilar, a senior official at Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that designs and administers the test, said it was not intended to be punitive.

“We don’t seek to fail anyone,” said Mr. Aguilar, an architect of the test.

Immigration officials said they sought to move away from civics trivia to emphasize basic concepts about the structure of government and American history and geography. In contrast to the old test, which some immigrants could pass without any study, the officials said the new one is intended to force even highly educated applicants to do reviewing.

“This test genuinely talks about what makes an American citizen,” said Emilio Gonzalez, the director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, speaking at a news conference in Washington.

The $6.5 million redesign was shaped over six years of discussions with historians, immigrant organizations and liberal and conservative research groups. The questions were submitted to four months of pilot testing this year with more than 6,000 immigrants who were applying for naturalization.

The agency will begin to use the revised test on Oct. 1, 2008, leaving a year for aspiring citizens to prepare and for community groups to adjust their study classes.

The overall format has not changed. Legal immigrants who are eligible to become citizens must pass the civics exam as well as a test of English proficiency in reading and writing. In a one-on-one oral examination, an immigration officer asks the applicant 10 questions of varying degrees of difficulty selected from the list of 100. To pass, the applicant must answer 6 of those 10 questions correctly. The questions released yesterday will remain public along with their answers.

Immigrants are eligible to become citizens if they have been legal permanent residents for at least five years (or three years if they are married to a citizen) and have “good moral character” and no criminal record.

In the pilot runs of the revised test, Mr. Aguilar said, the pass rates improved over the current tests, with 92 percent of participants passing on the first try, as opposed to 84 percent now. At least 15 questions were eliminated as a result of the pilot because they proved too difficult. For example, a question about the minimum wage was dropped because test takers were confused between federal and state rates, Mr. Aguilar said.

In the new test, the pilgrims have been replaced by “colonists,” and they are the subject of fewer questions, while slavery and the civil rights movement are the subject of more. A question was added asking what “major event” happened on Sept. 11, 2001.

The new test drops questions about the 49th and 50th states, but adds one about the political affiliation of the president. There are no questions about the White House. Instead, one question asks where the Statue of Liberty is.

In a statement today, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, one of the groups consulted in shaping the new test, denounced it as “the final brick in the second wall.” The group said the test included “more abstract and irrelevant questions” that tended to stump hard-working immigrants who had little time to study.

But several historians said the test appeared to be fair.

“People who take this seriously will have a good chance of passing,” said Gary Gerstle, a professor of American history at Vanderbilt University. “Indeed, their knowledge of American history may even exceed the knowledge of millions of American-born citizens.”

John Fonte, a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, called the new test “a definite improvement.” But he said it should have included questions about the meaning of the oath of allegiance that new citizens swear. “I would like to see an even more vigorous emphasis on Americanization,” he said.

About 55 percent of the applicants who participated in the pilot test were from Latin American countries. Some Latino groups noted yesterday that no question on the new test refers to Latinos.

Mr. Aguilar said that the test was not intended to be a comprehensive review, but rather to include “landmark moments of American history that apply to every single citizen.”

Naturalizations have surged in recent years, to 702,589 last year from 537,151 in 2004, according to official figures. In July the fees to become a citizen increased sharply, to $675 from $405.

Top Republicans scolded for skipping black debate

2007-09-28T01:55:00.000-04:00

Top Republicans scolded for skipping black debate
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent

BALTIMORE (Reuters) - The lesser-known Republican presidential candidates condemned their top rivals on Thursday for skipping a debate on minority issues and said their absence hurt the party's image and amplified racial divisions.

Four empty podiums highlighted the decisions of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson to skip the debate at historically black Morgan State University in Maryland.

"Frankly, I'm embarrassed. I'm embarrassed for our party and I'm embarrassed for those who did not come, because there's long been a divide in this country and it doesn't get better when we don't show up," former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said in the nationally televised debate.

The missing candidates -- the top four Republicans in the 2008 presidential race -- cited scheduling conflicts in skipping the forum designed to address issues of interest to blacks, traditionally the most loyal Democratic voters.

Their absence sparked criticism from some Republicans, particularly after the cancellation of a Spanish-language debate aimed at Hispanics earlier this month when all of the 2008 Republicans except McCain backed out.

"I apologize for the candidates that aren't here," said Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback. "I think it's a disgrace for our country, I think it's bad for our party and I don't think it's good for our future."

Blacks traditionally support the Democratic Party, with nearly 90 percent backing the party's nominee in recent presidential elections. But Republicans launched a concerted effort to win their vote after President George W. Bush's re-election in 2004, and Brownback said the missing candidates sent the wrong message.

'EXPAND YOUR BASE'

"You grow political parties by expanding your base, by reaching out to people and getting more people. What they're doing is sending the message of narrowing the base, and that's not the right way to go," Brownback said.

Republican Alan Keyes, a black commentator and frequent presidential and Senate candidate who recently joined the presidential race, noted the top candidates had also skipped a "values voters" debate in Florida aimed at religious conservatives that he participated in.

But they were all going to appear at a Michigan debate next month to which he has not been invited, Keyes said.

"That suggests that they may or may not be afraid of all black people, but there seems to be at least one black person they're afraid of," Keyes said.

"They don't believe that it's possible to address a significant portion of the black community on the basis of solid Republican principles, and I do," he said.

California Rep. Duncan Hunter likened the debate to a family gathering. "You know, when we have family reunions and some of the family members don't show up, we do talk about them," Hunter said.

Giuliani, Romney, Thompson and McCain were on the campaign trail in California, New York and Tennessee on Thursday, raising money as the end of the third-quarter fund-raising

period approaches.

Asked to name a Republican president since Abraham Lincoln who had created a positive legacy for black Americans, Huckabee mentioned President Dwight Eisenhower's efforts to ensure the safety of the nine black students who desegregated schools in his home state of Arkansas in 1957.

Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo said Ronald Reagan had done something positive for all Americans by increasing liberty.

"I think it is destructive to only talk about the politics of race, and suggest that all of the actions taken, or all of the specific programs that we identify and talk about tonight should be focused on race," he said.

Former US President Bill Clinton has attended a ceremony in Arkansas to mark 50 years since an integration crisis at Little Rock Central High School.

2007-09-26T01:27:00.000-04:00

BBC NEWS
US marks 1957 integration crisis
Former US President Bill Clinton has attended a ceremony in Arkansas to mark 50 years since an integration crisis at Little Rock Central High School.

The crisis lasted for three weeks in 1957, as an angry mob tried to stop a group of nine black students attending the all-white school.

The confrontation was only ended when former President Dwight D Eisenhower sent in troops to control the crowds.

The event became a seminal moment in the civil rights movement in the US.

The anniversary comes a week after thousands marched through the town of Jena, Louisiana to protest about allegations of unequal racial justice in a case which has seen several black high-school children jailed.

'Overcome adversity'

In Little Rock, about 4,500 people gathered in front of the Central High School on Tuesday to honour the bravery of the group of black teenagers - now in their sixties - who have become known as the "Little Rock Nine".

Mr Clinton, a former governor of Arkansas, held open the school's doors in a symbolic gesture.

You can overcome adversity if you know you are doing the right thing
Carlotta Walls Lanier
Member of the Little Rock Nine

"I am grateful we had a Supreme Court that saw 'separate but equal' and 'states' rights' for the shams they were, hiding our desire to preserve the oppression of African-Americans," he said.

"I am grateful more than I can say that we had a president who was determined to enforce the order of the court."

One of the nine, Carlotta Walls Lanier, urged the school's current generation of students to have the courage to act on their convictions.

"You can overcome adversity if you know you are doing the right thing," she said.

Another, Ernest Green, said the group had believed the school was "the place that would accept us, that we'd belong".

"We saw it as a building that offered opportunity and options for us. And you know what? Fifty years later, I think we were right," he told the crowd.

Showdown

The Little Rock crisis started on 4 September 1957 when a 15-year-old black schoolgirl named Elizabeth Eckford arrived at the gates of the all-white Central High School.

On reaching the school gates, she was blocked by a member of the Arkansas National Guard.

They had been stationed there by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus as part of a campaign of "massive resistance" to a 1954 Supreme Court ruling that segregated classrooms were unconstitutional.

Ms Eckford was later joined by eight other pupils.

The confrontation at the school quickly escalated into a showdown between the state and the federal government.

President Eisenhower eventually sent in troops from the 101st Airborne division to escort the group to class on 25 September 1957, dealing a crushing blow to opponents of the black civil rights movement.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7011991.stm

The price of existing homes in the 10 largest US cities fell by 0.6% in July - the steepest drop in 16 years - a survey has found.

2007-09-26T01:20:00.000-04:00

BBC NEWS
Further price drop for US homes
The price of existing homes in the 10 largest US cities fell by 0.6% in July - the steepest drop in 16 years - a survey has found.

The data, from S&P/Case-Shiller home price index, put the annual price fall in those cities at 4.5%.

A broader survey of 20 cities found that prices fell in 15 of them, dropping an average of 0.4% from June to July, and down 3.9% on July 2006.

Large numbers of unsold existing and new homes have hit prices.

"The further deceleration in prices is still apparent across the majority of regions," said Robert Shiller, chief economist at MacroMarkets LLC.

Recession risk

The cities where prices are still rising are Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Portland and Seattle.

However, these have reported that growth is slowing, the index compilers said, with Atlanta and Dallas moving closer to negative territory.

Analysts say that tight credit conditions - making it harder for people to get mortgages - are continuing to dent the market for house sales, which is already weak.

The housing slowdown and decline in credit availability have triggered worries that the economy could go into a recession - prompting the US Federal Reserve to slash interest rates earlier this month from 5.25% to 4.75%.

Last week, Mr Shiller told politicians that the loss of a boom mentality among consumers posed a "significant risk" of a recession within the next year.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/7012639.stm

House Votes to Expand Insurance for Kids

2007-09-26T01:19:00.000-04:00

House Votes to Expand Insurance for Kids
CHARLES BABINGTON

WASHINGTON — The House voted Tuesday to expand health insurance for children, but the Democratic-led victory may prove short-lived because the margin was too small to override President Bush's promised veto.

Embarking on a health care debate likely to animate the 2008 elections, the House voted 265-159 to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, by $35 billion over five years. Bush says he will veto the bill due to its cost, its reliance on a tobacco tax increase and its potential for replacing private insurance with government grants.

SCHIP is a state-federal program that provides coverage for 6.6 million children from families that live above the poverty level but have trouble affording private health insurance. The proposed expansion, backed by most governors and many health-advocacy groups, would add 4 million children to the rolls.

The bill drew support from 45 House Republicans, many of them moderates who do not want to be depicted as indifferent to low-income children's health needs when they seek re-election next year. But 151 Republicans sided with Bush, a move that Democrats see as a political blunder.

It hardly matters that the expansion would be expensive or a step toward socialized health care, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said during the House debate. When lawmakers go home, he said, "the question is, Were you with the kids or were you not?"

To overturn a presidential veto, both chambers of Congress must produce two-thirds majorities. The 265 yes votes in the House are two dozen fewer than Democrats would need to override Bush's veto, and House leaders expect few members to switch positions.

The Senate appears poised to pass the SCHIP expansion by a large margin later this week, but a Senate bid to override a veto would be pointless if the House override effort falls short.

Despite the expected veto, many congressional Democrats welcomed the SCHIP debate as a way to open a second political front _ in addition to Iraq _ on which they feel Bush and his allies are out of step with voters. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., said the president willingly pours billions of dollars into the war but resists a significant expansion of a health program for modest-income children.

"It's no surprise the president finds himself isolated," Emanuel said at a Democratic event that included a Maryland mother who relied on SCHIP coverage when two of her children were badly injured in a car wreck.

Some Republicans agreed that the debate over a greater government role in health care will resonate far beyond Capitol Hill this week.

"This vote is huge for the next president, regardless of who it is," Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., said in an interview during the floor debate. "I don't think anybody underestimates the philosophical importance."

Eight Democrats opposed the bill. Some, from tobacco-growing districts, object to raising the federal cigarette tax to $1 a pack, a 61-cent increase. Some Hispanic members complained that the bill would make legal immigrant children wait five years to qualify for SCHIP, but voted for it anyway.

A Republican-controlled Congress and President Clinton created SCHIP in 1997 to provide health coverage for families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid but not high enough to pay for private coverage. Under the expansion proposal, states could seek federal waivers to steer funds to some families earning at least triple the official poverty-level income, provided the states showed progress enrolling the main target: children in families earning up to double the poverty rate. That would be $34,340 for a family of three, or $41,300 for a family of four.

The Bush administration says the legislation could qualify some New York families of four making about $83,000 a year, or four times the poverty level. Such a scenario is unlikely, the bill's proponents say, because it would require waivers the administration has rejected.

Bush proposes a smaller increase in SCHIP _ $5 billion over five years _ although some Republican lawmakers say he might agree to a larger increase later.

In a statement of administration policy Tuesday, the White House said the bill "goes too far toward federalizing health care." Republicans said a veto was certain. In his nearly seven years in office, Bush has vetoed three bills. One would have withdrawn troops from Iraq, and two would have expanded federal research involving embryonic stem cells.

After the vote, White House press secretary Dana Perino issued a statement saying: "Unfortunately, the House of Representatives today passed SCHIP legislation that pushes many children who now have private coverage into a government-run system, part of the Democrats' incremental plan toward government-run health care for all Americans."

SCHIP is set to expire Sunday. To avert that, congressional Democrats plan to extend it temporarily with a larger spending bill to keep the government running when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1. The strategy would prevent Democrats from being blamed for letting the health program lapse by not reaching an accord with Bush, lawmakers said.

House Republican leaders berated Democrats for including several targeted spending items, known as "earmarks," in the 299-page SCHIP bill, which was not available for public review until Monday night. Democrats had declared the bill earmark-free. But Republicans found language directing funds to programs in Tennessee, California and Michigan.

After the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she was disappointed that Bush "has issued a veto threat against a bill that has so much bipartisan, indeed nonpartisan, support."

___

The bill is Senate amendments to HR 976.

Democrat challenges spy chief's credibility

2007-09-26T01:17:00.001-04:00

Democrat challenges spy chief's credibility
By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top U.S. senator on Tuesday joined a list of Democrats challenging the credibility of spy chief Michael McConnell, and accused the national intelligence director of unfairly criticizing lawmakers.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy blasted McConnell for suggesting some members of the Democratic-led Congress fail to appreciate the threat of attack. Leahy also criticized McConnell for telling Congress earlier this month that open debate about U.S. surveillance endangered lives.

"I hope we will not hear anymore irresponsible rhetoric about congressional inquiries risking Americans' safety," Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, told McConnell at a hearing. "Our job is to protect Americans' security and Americans' rights."

Congress last month passed a law to expand for six months the power of the government to conduct surveillance without court approval while tracking suspected enemy targets.

The White House wants to make the law permanent, but critics argue the measure must be revised to protect the rights of law-abiding U.S. citizens.

Some congressional Democrats, including Reps. Rush Holt of New Jersey and Anna Eshoo of California, have complained that misstatements by McConnell have eroded his credibility, particularly regarding the expanded surveillance power.

McConnell drew Leahy's ire for declaring in a prepared opening statement, "I heard a number of individuals -- some from within the government, some from outside -- assert that there really was no substantial threat to our nation justifying this authority."

"I have been accused of exaggerating the threats," McConnell said. "Allow me to dispel that notion. The threats we face are real, and they are serious."

Leahy, referring to McConnell's earlier appearances before other committees, told him, "I have concerns about some of the statements you made."

He said McConnell had suggested the new law had helped expose a suspected German bomb plot, but later was forced to clarify he was referring to the overall spy program, based on the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Leahy also said McConnell earlier offered conflicting estimates of how much intelligence-gathering capability would be lost without the new law.

FDA slow to improve import food safety: ex officials

2007-09-26T01:15:00.000-04:00

FDA slow to improve import food safety: ex officials
By Christopher Doering

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration ignored hundreds of proposals that could have improved the safety of food imported into the United States, former FDA officials told a House Appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday.

The FDA is in charge of 80 percent of the U.S. food supply, mostly fruits and vegetables, and has been criticized as being too passive in handling the growing surge of imports into the United States. Total imports, including food, total $2 trillion annually.

"FDA has failed to implement literally hundreds of proposed solutions to specific import problems, which would have enabled the FDA to begin to progressively focus its limited resources where the risks are indeed the greatest," said Benjamin England, a former FDA official who co-founded a consulting firm that helps foreign and U.S. companies meet FDA import rules.

The proposals were made more than four years ago in FDA's Import Strategic Plan that deals with the import of food, drugs and products from other countries.

Rosa DeLauro, who chairs the U.S. House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the FDA, said she was surprised by how "frivolously (FDA) allowed these recommendations to go by the board."

"It was alarming to discover today that even with the significant problems the country is facing with imported foods, the FDA lacks a formal process that evaluates the food safety systems of other countries," said the Connecticut Democrat.

England and former FDA employee Carl Nielsen said the pressure is on FDA to direct most of its resources toward domestic food safety. They said FDA lacks enough real-time data on imports and relies mostly on invoices, shipping manifests and other documents that lack information such as where the product was made, the ingredients or process used.

Although food imports grow at 15 percent a year, FDA inspected just 1.3 percent of the goods under its purview in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2006.

In particular, the safety of food and other Chinese products have come under attack in recent months after reports of seafood containing banned antibiotics, contaminated toothpaste and melamine, a chemical used in plastics and fertilizers, being found in U.S. pet food.

Asked by DeLauro whether the FDA needed more authority to do its job, Dr. David Acheson, FDA's assistant commissioner for food protection, responded: "I believe we do."

U.S. food companies, concerned the recent import scares may turn away consumers, have asked for tougher government guidelines on how companies verify imported foods or inputs; along with more money given to the FDA, widely seen as understaffed and underfunded.

"The food supply has become so globalized," said Joseph Levitt, a former 25-year veteran of the FDA, who now represents the Grocery Manufacturers Association/Food Products Association. "Our unique problem is just how large we are."

The Bush administration also has established a panel to recommend steps to ensure the safety of imports in an effort to restore public confidence. The detailed recommendations are expected in November.

"The time is right for Congress to act on reforming the country's food safety laws," said Caroline Smith DeWall, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest's food safety program.

She noted a survey by the Food Marketing Institute that showed consumer confidence in food they got from stores and restaurants last year declined 16 percent.

Popcorn lung bill heads for House

2007-09-26T01:13:00.000-04:00

Popcorn lung bill heads for House
By Kevin Drawbaugh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration said on Tuesday it opposed a House of Representatives bill that would require federal regulation of exposure to a microwave popcorn additive linked to lung disease.

The chemical, diacetyl, gives microwave popcorn a buttery flavor and has been linked to bronchiolitis obliterans, or "popcorn lung," a disorder found in popcorn workers and possibly in one popcorn-eating consumer.

The bill orders quick action by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and is expected to come to the House floor for a vote on Wednesday.

"It's a travesty that OSHA has done nothing to regulate this chemical, while workers have fallen seriously ill and some have actually died," said Democratic California Rep. Lynn Woolsey, the bill's sponsor.

But the White House said in a statement that it would be "premature" to regulate diacetyl as proposed by Woolsey.

Her bill would require the Labor Department to develop interim standards limiting diacetyl exposure by workers in flavor manufacturing plants and microwave popcorn factories. The interim standard would be effective until a final regulation takes effect within a two-year deadline.

No similar bill has been filed in the Senate.

The Bush administration said it wants to protect workers, but regulators need more time to figure out the causes of the disease, how much exposure is hazardous, and control measures.

"The administration does not believe that (the bill) in its present form is the best regulatory approach for protecting workers," the White House said.

Sen. Mike Enzi said OSHA is taking the right steps in conducting a thorough review of the matter. "We need a science-based solution, not a hasty legislative quick-fix," said the Wyoming Republican in a statement.

The Food and Drug Administration said September 5 it was investigating a report of a man who came down with the life-threatening disease after eating several bags of butter-flavored microwave popcorn each day.

In April, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said workers at factories making food flavorings and popcorn run the risk of contracting the disease, which causes coughing and shortness of breath and steadily worsens.

ConAgra Foods Inc, maker of Orville Redenbacher and Act II microwave popcorn brands, said earlier this month it would drop diacetyl from its butter-flavored microwave popcorn in the "near future" to safeguard its employees.

Weaver Popcorn Co Inc, maker of Pop Weaver microwave popcorn, said in August it removed diacetyl from its microwave popcorn, in part to address consumers' concerns.

Lawmaker says Rice interfered with Iraq inquiry

2007-09-26T01:12:00.000-04:00

Lawmaker says Rice interfered with Iraq inquiry
By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A leading Democratic lawmaker on Tuesday accused Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of interfering in congressional inquiries into corruption in Iraq's government and the activities of U.S. security firm Blackwater.

Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman said State Department officials had told the Oversight and Government Reform Committee he chairs they could not provide details of corruption in Iraq's government unless the information was treated as a "state secret" and not revealed to the public.

"You are wrong to interfere with the committee's inquiry," Waxman said in a letter to Rice. "The State Department's position on this matter is ludicrous," added Waxman, a vocal opponent of the Bush administration's Iraq policies.

But State Department spokesman Tom Casey said there seemed to have been a "misunderstanding" over the issue and all the information requested by Congress had either been provided or was in the process of being provided.

Waxman said security contractor Blackwater, which was involved in an incident in which Iraqi civilians were killed last week, said they could not hand over documents relevant to an investigation without State Department approval.

But Casey said later Blackwater had been informed the State Department had no objection to it providing information to Waxman's committee.

Blackwater provides security for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and has a contract with the State Department.

The company was involved in a September 16 shooting in which 11 people were killed while Blackwater was escorting a convoy through Baghdad. The State Department is investigating the incident along with the Iraqis.

Waxman, who has called a hearing on Blackwater for October 2, released a letter his staff received from the security contractor's attorneys dated September 24.

"It (the State Department) directs Blackwater USA not to disclose any information concerning the contract without DOS (Department of State) preauthorization in writing."

Blackwater also urged the committee not to ask questions at the hearing that could reveal sensitive information "that could be utilized by our country's implacable enemies in Iraq."

Such information included the size of their security staff in Baghdad, weaponry and the operation of convoys.

Waxman also released a letter signed by State Department contracting officer Kiazan Moneypenny to Blackwater.

"I hereby direct Blackwater to make no disclosure of documents or information ... unless such disclosure has been authorized in writing by the contracting officer," wrote Moneypenny.

Waxman also complained Rice was refusing to testify at any hearings his committee planned to look at political reconciliation in Iraq, corruption or the Blackwater incident.

"We have offered to make available for testimony those officials in the best position to respond to the specific issues the committee has raised," said Casey.

Bush: Kids' health care will get vetoed

2007-09-23T01:02:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! News
Bush: Kids' health care will get vetoed
By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer

President Bush again called Democrats "irresponsible" on Saturday for pushing an expansion he opposes to a children's health insurance program.

"Democrats in Congress have decided to pass a bill they know will be vetoed," Bush said of the measure that draws significant bipartisan support, repeating in his weekly radio address an accusation he made earlier in the week. "Members of Congress are risking health coverage for poor children purely to make a political point."

In the Democrat's response, also broadcast Saturday, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell turned the tables on the president, saying that if Bush doesn't sign the bill, 15 states will have no funding left for the program by the end of the month.

At issue is the Children's Health Insurance Program, a state-federal program that subsidizes health coverage for low-income people, mostly children, in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private coverage. It expires Sept. 30.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers announced a proposal Friday that would add $35 billion over five years to the program, adding 4 million people to the 6.6 million already participating. It would be financed by raising the federal cigarette tax by 61 cents to $1 per pack.

The idea is overwhelmingly supported by Congress' majority Democrats, who scheduled it for a vote Tuesday in the House. It has substantial Republican support as well.

But Bush has promised a veto, saying the measure is too costly, unacceptably raises taxes, extends government-covered insurance to children in families who can afford private coverage, and smacks of a move toward completely federalized health care. He has asked Congress to pass a simple extension of the current program while debate continues, saying it's children who will suffer if they do not.

"Our goal should be to move children who have no health insurance to private coverage — not to move children who already have private health insurance to government coverage," Bush said.

The bill's backers have vigorously rejected Bush's claim it would steer public money to families that can readily afford health insurance, saying their goal is to cover more of the millions of uninsured children. The bill would provide financial incentives for states to cover their lowest-income children first, they said.

Many governors want the flexibility to expand eligibility for the program. So the proposal would overturn recent guidelines from the administration making it difficult for states to steer CHIP funds to families with incomes exceeding 250 percent of the official poverty level.

Rendell said thousands of children will lose health care coverage if Bush doesn't sign the bill.

"The administration has tried to turn this into a partisan issue and has threatened to veto. The health of our children is far too important for partisan politics as usual," he said. "If the administration is serious about solving our health care crisis, it should be expanding, not cutting back, this program which has made private health insurance affordable for millions of children."

Senate Republicans bar bill to restore detainee rights

2007-09-19T23:57:00.000-04:00

Senate bars bill to restore detainee rights
By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate voted on Wednesday against considering a measure to give Guantanamo detainees and other foreigners the right to challenge their detention in the U.S. courts.

The legislation needed 60 votes to be considered by lawmakers in the Senate, narrowly controlled by Democrats; it received only 56, with 43 voting against the effort to roll back a key element of President George W. Bush's war on terrorism.

The measure would have granted foreign terrorism suspects the right of habeas corpus, Latin for "you have the body," which prevents the government from locking people up without review by a court.

Congress last year eliminated this right for non-U.S. citizens labeled "enemy combatants" by the government. The Bush administration said this was necessary to prevent them from being set free and attacking Americans.

The move affected about 340 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban captives held at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. It also affects millions of permanent legal residents of the United States who are not U.S. citizens, said one of the sponsors of the bipartisan measure, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

"Any of these people could be detained forever without the ability to challenge their detention in federal court" under the changes in law Congress made last year, Leahy said on the Senate floor. This was true "even if they (authorities) made a mistake and picked up the wrong person."

"This was a mistake the last Congress and the (Bush) administration made, based on fear," Leahy said.

But Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican opposing the measure, said lawmakers should not allow "some of the most brutal vicious people in the world to bring lawsuits against their own (U.S.) troops" who had picked up the detainees on the battlefield.

Giving habeas corpus to Guantanamo detainees would "really intrude into the military's ability to manage this war," Graham said, adding that it was "something that has never been granted to any other prisoner in any other war."

"Our judges don't have the military background to make decisions as to who the enemy is," Graham told the Senate.

Congress eliminated habeas rights as part of the Military Commissions Act, which also created new military tribunals to try the Guantanamo prisoners on war crimes charges.

Congress was led by Republicans when the act was rushed through, shortly before new elections put Democrats in control.

Sen. Arlen Specter, another sponsor of the bill and a Pennsylvania Republican, noted that the right to habeas corpus was a protection against arbitrary arrest enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215.

Later this year, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments from lawyers from Guantanamo prisoners challenging the law to eliminate the habeas right.

Senate Republicans block bill on Iraq combat tours

2007-09-19T23:47:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! News
Senate blocks bill on Iraq combat tours
By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer

Democrats' efforts to challenge President Bush's Iraq policies were dealt a demoralizing blow Wednesday in the Senate after they failed to scrape together enough support to guarantee troops more time at home.

The 56-44 vote — four short of reaching the 60 needed to advance — all but assured that Democrats would be unable to muster the support needed to pass tough anti-war legislation by year's end. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., was seen as the Democrats' best shot because of its pro-military premise.

"The idea of winning the war in Iraq is beginning to get a second look," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who led opposition to the bill alongside Sen. John McCain.

Webb's legislation would have required that troops spend as much time at home training with their units as they spend deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Members of the National Guard or Reserve would be guaranteed three years at home before being sent back.

Most Army soldiers now spend about 15 months in combat with 12 months home.

"In blocking this bipartisan bill, Republicans have once again demonstrated that they are more committed to protecting the president than protecting our troops," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Wednesday's vote was the second time in as many months that Webb's bill was sidetracked. In July, a similar measure also fell four votes short of advancing.

Democrats said they were hopeful additional Republicans, wary of the politically unpopular war, would agree this time around to break party ranks. It had already attracted three dozen co-sponsors including Republicans Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Gordon Smith of Oregon.

But momentum behind the bill stalled Wednesday after Sen. John Warner, R-Va., announced he decided the consequences would be disastrous. Warner, a former longtime chairman of the Armed Services Committee, had voted in favor of the measure in July but said he changed his mind after talking to senior military officials.

Webb later told reporters there was no doubt Warner's opposition threw cold water on the bill.

Hagel, R-Neb., said the White House also "has been very effective at making this a loyalty test for the Republican Party."

Of the 56 senators voting to advance the measure were 49 Democrats, six Republicans and Vermont Independent Bernard Sanders. Voting against it were 43 Republicans and Connecticut Independent Joseph Lieberman.

The vote "means Congress will not intervene in the foreseeable future" in the war's execution, Lieberman told reporters.

In coming days, the Senate plans to vote on legislation by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., that would order combat troops home in nine months. Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said his bill would allow some troops to remain behind to conduct such missions as counterterrorism and training the Iraqis; he estimated the legislation, if enacted, would cut troop levels in Iraq by more than half.

The Senate also planned to vote on legislation by Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Reid, D-Nev., that would cut off funding for combat next year.

The firm deadlines reflect a shift in strategy for Democrats, who had been pursuing a bipartisan compromise on war legislation. But after last week's testimony by Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, Democrats calculated not enough Republicans were willing to break party ranks and support more tempered legislation calling for combat to end next summer.

McCain, R-Ariz., the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee and a Vietnam veteran, said Webb's bill was a "backdoor method" by Democrats to force troop withdrawals.

"We have a new strategy. We have success on the ground," said McCain. Pulling out troops would spark "chaos and genocide in the region, and we will be back," he said.

McCain offered an alternative resolution that would identify equal deployment and training times as a goal, but would not mandate deployment restrictions. The resolution was aimed at peeling off Republican support and lessening the prospects of passage for Webb's bill.

That resolution fell five votes shy of advancing, in a 55-45 vote.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he would have recommended that President Bush veto Webb's legislation if it is passed. The bill could force the military to extend tours, rely more heavily on reservists, or not replace units right away, even if they are needed, Gates said.

Webb and his supporters say the bill provides flexibility to avoid those pitfalls, including a presidential waiver if Bush can certify to Congress that ignoring the limitation was necessary to national security.

Webb amended the bill, after consultation with Gates, to exempt special operations forces and give the military 120 days to comply.

Greenspan: Bush, congressional Republicans abandoned fiscal discipline; put politics ahead of sound economics

2007-09-16T01:56:00.000-04:00

Former Fed chair Greenspan criticizes Bush in book
By Mark Felsenthal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in a memoir to be released on Monday criticized President George W. Bush and congressional Republicans for abandoning fiscal discipline and for putting politics ahead of sound economics.

In his book, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," Greenspan said he was surprised Bush was unwilling to temper his campaign promises with fiscal reality once elected in 2000, as previous Republican administrations had done.

"Little value was placed on rigorous economic policy debate or the weighing of long-term consequences," he said. The book was made available by its publisher, The Penguin Press.

"Much to my disappointment, economic policymaking in the Bush administration remained firmly in the hands of White House staff," he said.

Greenspan, now 81, was the second longest-serving chairman in the Fed's 93-year history when he stepped down in January 2006.

Praise has been heaped on the New York native and self-described "libertarian Republican" for overseeing the longest U.S. economic expansion on record.

Greenspan built his reputation as Fed leader with his calm handling of the stock market crash of 1987, the 1997-1998 Asian and Russian financial crises, and the economic turbulence that followed the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

But he has also come under fire for policies that some say led to bubbles in technology and housing. His successor, Ben Bernanke, is coping with a prolonged housing downturn and credit-market turbulence.

Greenspan's long association with Republican administrations and his reputation for independence add clout to his criticism of Bush and of other Republicans who led Congress until 2006.

TAX CUTS AND SPENDING

Greenspan said Bush's combination of tax cuts and spending on the military and prescription drug benefits, while not "unrealistic" in 2000 after several years of federal budget surpluses, was not appropriate with growing deficits that returned in 2002.

The former Fed chair said he urged Bush to veto a string of "out-of-control" spending bills, but to no avail. He was told the president wanted to avoid antagonizing Republican political leadership.

"To my mind, Bush's collaborate-don't-confront approach was a major mistake -- it cost the nation a check-and-balance mechanism essential to fiscal discipline," Greenspan said.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said on Saturday the administration conducted "rigorous" analysis and that tax cuts sped up the U.S. economic recovery after the 2001 recession.

"Because Congress worked with us, vetoes weren't necessary. We're not going to apologize for increased spending to protect our national security," Fratto said.

But Greenspan said Republican lawmakers sowed the seeds of their political defeat in 2006 by abandoning fiscal prudence.

"They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose," he added.

A consummate Washington political insider linked to former presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford before becoming Fed chairman in 1987, Greenspan also has been criticized for backing Bush's tax cuts plan before Congress in January 2001.

Greenspan said that position was balanced with a call for safeguards in case the fiscal situation deteriorated. But in his memoir, he ruefully acknowledged he underestimated how his words would be selectively interpreted.

"While politics had not been my intent, I'd misjudged the emotions of the moment," he said.

Fending off criticism that rock-bottom borrowing costs early this decade fueled the housing bubble that has caused a burst of foreclosures, Greenspan said the unusual risk of a downward price spiral was serious and had to be dealt with.

"We wanted to shut down the possibility of corrosive deflation; we were willing to chance that by cutting rates we might foster a bubble ... It was a decision done right," he wrote.

Looking at the U.S. economic future, Greenspan warned that to keep the inflation rate between 1 percent and 2 percent in coming years the Fed may need to force interest rates into double digits.

If the Fed succumbs to political pressure to keep interest rates low, inflation rates could rise to an average of 4 percent to 5 percent by 2030, and yields on 10-year Treasury notes would rise to at least 8 percent, he wrote.

Bush: U.S. military role in Iraq will stretch beyond his presidency

2007-09-16T01:53:00.000-04:00

Bush agrees to limited troop cuts in Iraq
By Matt Spetalnick and Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Thursday ordered gradual troop reductions in Iraq but defied calls for a dramatic change of course, telling war-weary Americans the U.S. military role there will stretch beyond his presidency.

Trying to secure more time to allow his strategy to work, Bush -- in a televised prime-time address -- embraced recommendations by his top commander in Iraq for a limited withdrawal of about 20,000 troops by July.

But Bush also made clear his view that the United States would require a major involvement in Iraq for years to come and said the Baghdad government needed "an enduring relationship with America."

That assessment will make Bush's speech an even tougher sell with anti-war Democrats in control of Congress and with the large majority of Americans opposed to his Iraq policy.

"Because of the measure of success we are seeing in Iraq, we can begin seeing troops come home," Bush said after Gen. David Petraeus delivered two days of congressional testimony that underscored deep partisan divisions over the war.

Speaking in a sober, measured tone, Bush acknowledged Americans' frustration with the war but insisted progress was being made. His 18-minute speech was the centerpiece of a public relations offensive aimed at blunting demands for a faster, wider withdrawal from Iraq.

The partial drawdown will roll back troop strength from the current 169,000 to around the same levels the United States had in Iraq before Bush ordered a major buildup in January.

That prompted Bush's Democratic critics to accuse the administration of trying to fool the American people into thinking he was responding to growing anti-war sentiment when he was actually making no fundamental change in approach.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi said Bush had announced "a stay-the-course strategy that puts us on a path for 10 years of war," and Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean called it a "PR stunt to buy more time" for a failed policy.

ONE BRIGADE OUT BY CHRISTMAS

Bush said he had accepted Petraeus's proposal for the removal by mid-2008 of five of 20 U.S. military brigades now in Iraq, and that the pace of reductions would hinge on the level of success on the ground. He said 5,700 Marines and soldiers would be home by the end of the year.

U.S. officials refused to say exactly how many troops would be involved in the eventual withdrawal, though Petraeus had recommended that force levels return to where they stood before Bush boosted forces earlier this year.

An army brigade is typically made up of roughly 4,000 soldiers plus an unspecified number of support troops, which would make for a total withdrawal of more than 20,000 under Petraeus's plan. The so-called "surge" over the past eight months involved deployment of about 21,500 combat troops.

"The more successful we are, the more American troops can return home," Bush said. He said Petraeus would report to Congress again in March.

Bush cited Iraq's western Anbar province as evidence his strategy was making headway.

But underscoring the fragility of the situation, a Sunni tribal leader instrumental in battling al Qaeda in the area was assassinated on Thursday. Bush, who met Abdul Sattar Abu Risha during a visit to Anbar last week, praised his bravery in his speech.

Bush also acknowledged that the Iraqi government "has not met its own legislative benchmarks," and pressed it to do more to achieve national reconciliation.

He said U.S. engagement in Iraq would continue past the end of his term in January 2009, suggesting the job of ending the war would fall to his successors.

"This vision for a reduced American presence also has the support of Iraqi leaders from all communities. At the same time, they understand that their success will require U.S. political, economic, and security engagement that extends beyond my presidency," he said.

The drawdown would not be as fast or extensive as critics demand, but it could buy time for Bush to pursue the war by undermining a Democratic-led push for a broader disengagement 4-1/2 years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Some of Bush's fellow Republicans have also voiced doubts over his strategy. Republicans lost control of Congress in last November's election, largely due to public disenchantment over Iraq. Recent polls show Americans two-to-one against the war.

Democrats say the White House was putting the best political spin on what Pentagon officials have been saying for months -- that the buildup of forces in Iraq faces a time limit because of the risk of overstretching the U.S. military.

(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan, Deborah Charles and Kristin Roberts)

Thousands March to End the Iraq Invasion; over 190 Arrested

2007-09-16T01:48:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! News
More than 190 arrested at D.C. protest
By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press Writer

Several thousand anti-war demonstrators marched through downtown Washington on Saturday, clashing with police at the foot of the Capitol steps where more than 190 protesters were arrested.

The group marched from the White House to the Capitol to demand an end to the Iraq war. Their numbers stretched for blocks along Pennsylvania Avenue, and they held banners and signs and chanted, "What do we want? Troops out. When do we want it? Now."

Army veteran Justin Cliburn, 25, of Lawton, Okla., was among a contingent of Iraq veterans in attendance.

"We're occupying a people who do not want us there," Cliburn said of Iraq. "We're here to show that it isn't just a bunch of old hippies from the 60s who are against this war."

Counterprotesters lined the sidewalks behind metal barricades. There were some heated shouting matches between the two sides.

The arrests came after protesters lay down on the Capitol lawn in what they called a "die in" — with signs on top of their bodies to represent soldiers killed in Iraq. When police took no action, some of the protesters started climbing over a barricade at the foot of the Capitol steps.

Many were arrested without a struggle after they jumped over the waist-high barrier. But some grew angry as police with shields and riot gear attempted to push them back. At least two people were showered with chemical spray. Protesters responded by throwing signs and chanting: "Shame on you."

The number of arrests by Capitol Police on Saturday was much higher than previous anti-war rallies in Washington this year. Five people were arrested at a protest outside the Pentagon in March when they walked onto a bridge that had been closed off to accommodate the demonstration, then refused to leave. And at a rally in January, about 50 demonstrators blocked a street near the Capitol, but they were dispersed without arrests.

The protesters gathered earlier Saturday near the White House in Lafayette Park with signs saying "End the war now" and calling for President Bush's impeachment. The rally was organized by the ANSWER Coalition and other groups.

Organizers estimated that nearly 100,000 people attended the rally and march. That number could not be confirmed; police did not give their own estimate. A permit for the march obtained in advance by the ANSWER Coalition had projected 10,000.

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan told the crowd is was time to be assertive.

"It's time to lay our bodies on the line and say we've had enough," she said. "It's time to shut this city down."

About 13 blocks away, nearly 1,000 counterprotesters gathered near the Washington Monument, frequently erupting in chants of "U-S-A" and waving American flags.

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Robert "Buzz" Patterson, speaking from a stage to crowds clad in camouflage, American flag bandanas and Harley Davidson jackets, said he wanted to send three messages.

"Congress, quit playing games with our troops. Terrorists, we will find you and kill you," he said. "And to our troops, we're here for you, and we support you."

___

Associated Press writer Christine Simmons contributed to this report.

No more Iraq funds without limits: key Democrat

2007-09-09T00:34:00.000-04:00

No more Iraq funds without limits: key Democrat
By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The No. 2 Democrat in the U.S. Senate said on Friday he could no longer vote for funding the war in Iraq unless restrictions were attached that would begin winding down American involvement there.

"This Congress can't give President (George W.) Bush another blank check for Iraq," said Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin, who has always opposed the war but until now voted to fund it.

"I can't support an open-ended appropriation which allows this president to continue this failed policy," he said in a speech at the left-leaning Center for National Policy.

Durbin, from Illinois, said he and Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin were working on limits that could be attached to the next war funding bill, such as limiting troops to conducting counterterrorism operations and training Iraqi security forces.

"I believe Congress should strictly tie future funding for the war in Iraq to a new role for our troops there," he said.

Congress this fall takes up legislation on Pentagon policy and spending, in addition to a separate war funding bill.

The White House is expected to ask for some $200 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the fiscal year that starts on October 1. Durbin said he thought the Senate would take up the war funding bill by early October.

Since September 2001, Congress has provided $602 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with about 70 percent of that going to Iraq. The most recent funding bill, approved by Congress in May, took months to pass. Bush vetoed the first version after Democrats attached a withdrawal timeline.

Although he was one of 23 senators who voted against the use of force in Iraq in 2002, Durbin said he was increasingly troubled by his votes to pay for military operations there.

"Now I just realized I can't do this. It's perpetuating a policy that is taking more American lives. We have to wind this war down," Durbin said, adding he would not use his leadership post to demand other Democrats follow his lead.

How Hillary Clinton Can End the Iraq War, Speak for the American Military and Kill Osama Bin Laden

2007-09-09T00:32:00.000-04:00

thehill.com
How Hillary Clinton Can End the Iraq War, Speak for the American Military and Kill Osama Bin Laden
-Brent Budowsky

First, let us cut through the propaganda, lies, disinformation, media misrepresentations and political cowardice that may well be leading Democrats, John Warner Republicans and so-called moderates to another shameless surrender to George W. Bush that will extend the catastrophe and tragedy of the Iraq war.

Here is a short list of those who believe that President Bush and Gen. David Petraeus are dead flat wrong in their obsession to continue the long-term escalation of the Iraq war:

1. The Joint Chiefs of Staff.

2. Admiral Fallon, head of Central Command, Gen. Petraeus’s boss.

3. Former NATO Supreme Commander and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Jones and the members of the commission he leads, who argue that American troop strength in Iraq should be reduced, that American forces should be redeployed, that the American footprint of being an occupation force in Iraq should be ended, and that the current escalation in fact will discourage, not advance, the political solution the “surge” was intended to bring about, but obviously has not.

4. Most and possibly all of the global command structure of the United States Army, which has been decimated by the Iraq war and the long-term escalation, and the United States Marine Corps.

5. The weight of opinion throughout the American intelligence community, which, despite political pressure, threats of retribution and political editing of intelligence reports, has produced one national intelligence estimate after another that have directly contradicted the views of the president and vice president.

The truth is, on the matter of reversing the escalation of the Iraq war, reducing American troop strength in Iraq significantly in the coming months, ending what has been one of the most corrupt and ill-considered occupations in world history, ending torture and closing Guantanamo, the views of the leadership of the U.S. military and the majority of the strongest critics of the Iraq war policy are indeed very much in line.

It is Petraeus, Bush, Cheney and their allies in the Congress who most substantially differ from all of the above.

My view of the matter, rejected by Democratic leaders and Republican leaders alike, from the beginning of this war until today, is that when we send our troops to war, we should never allow partisan or political considerations to be put above the lives of our troops and the honor and security of our nation.

History will judge harshly the current president and Congress, who from Sept. 11, 2001 until Sept. 11, 2007 have shared for their own reasons complicity in one of the greatest disasters in American military history, and have shared for their own reasons complicity in the international and domestic crimes of torture that violate cardinal rules of Americanism and international law that have been commonly accepted from the days of George Washington until the origin and execution of the Iraq war.

On one issue after another — there is no need to fully recapitulate them all here — things have been done in the name of God, country and the American troops that have in truth been opposed by a strong majority of American military leaders, and are so far out of the traditions of American values and American history that they have never, not once, been pursued by any American president or so submissively accepted by any American Congress on such a morally and militarily grotesque scale.

For Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), the current crisis offers a golden moment for her to act as a true commander in chief would act, to lead as a great president would lead, and to make her voice and her actions those of the true leader of the Loyal Opposition and — this is the central point — the authentic voice of the majority of American military leaders, American troops in combat, American military families and American veterans.

She should speak loudly, forcefully, and clearly the central truth of the debate, which is this: The overwhelming majority of American military leaders favor dramatic changes in the current Iraq policy and they, not Gen. Petraeus, are the true voice for what is best for our security, our country and our troops.

She should offer a comprehensive policy for a new strategy in Iraq that would follow the advice of the majority of American generals, and advocate the proposal of Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) for troop reductions of approximately 5,000 before Christmas 2007, and additional troop reductions to leave 120,000 American troops in Iraq by April 2008, at which time the president and Congress would confer before a new congressional vote to determine the feasibility of further American withdrawals at that time.

Under this plan, Sen. Clinton would offer an amendment that would zero out all new money from Guantanamo effective June 1, 2008, and would require either in the defense bill, or as condition for confirmation of a new attorney general an independent investigation of the Abu Ghraib crimes and any potential cover-up of those crimes.

Under this plan, Sen. Clinton would state during the September debate that when the Senate considers the supplemental war money vote, probably in October, if there is a majority of the House in favor of this binding proposal, she will lead a filibuster in the Senate in which 41 senators will put a stop to this escalation then and forever, once and for all, and force the president to negotiate in good faith with the Congress — or there will be no further funding for this war.

Finally, under this plan, Sen. Clinton would become the authentic voice of American troops and American veterans and demand that the Congress call on every American to meet the $500 billion of unmet, unplanned, unbudgeted long-term medical, health, research, financial, psychological, disability and veterans’ centers needs financed either through a Soldier Bond or a tax increase because this is what we owe our troops and vets as a matter of national patriotism and honor.

The sound you hear would be the applause of military families throughout America and, yes, veterans joining progressives in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary and a march to the next presidential inaugural with an iron commitment that it is high time and long overdue that Americans be treated like Americans, that veterans be treated with the respect due veterans, and that America once again act the way America should act, and has acted, until the presidency of George W. Bush.

In this program, Sen. Clinton would lead the Congress and the nation to reverse the catastrophe of the Iraq war and launch the war that should have been launched long ago, to unite the nation in the single-minded drive to kill Osama Bin Laden instead of the simple-minded and disastrous drive to do everything but that in the pursuit of a war that most generals now realize must be wound down, to achieve the best outcome.

Enough discussion of the United States being virtually blackmailed by an obstinate, disastrous president and an obstructionist minority of Senate Republicans into the elimination of the United States Senate from its constitutional mission that has been shamefully and catastrophically allowed since Sept. 11, 2001, a tragic day so brazenly and dishonorably exploited to create fears though lies and drive the country to a war that should never have been fought, whose major beneficiary was the criminal who killed our brothers and sisters seven years ago in lower Manhattan and Northern Virginia.

Sen. Clinton has an extraordinary golden moment to be the voice for the true America, the voice of our national honor, the voice of the majority of American military leaders, the voice of saving the United States Army from further destruction, the voice American troops and veterans who should never be asked to die preventable deaths, suffer preventable wounds, or endure preventable humiliation or injustice from politicians who wave the flag while they treat heroes like second class citizens and use their pictures in partisan ads while they shortchange wounded troops and tolerate scandals for disabled vets.

In a new book David Addington, the Chief of Staff for Vice President Cheney, is quoted as
saying: “We’re going to push and push and push until some larger forces make us stop”.

Senator Clinton should lead the Democrats, the Congress, the majority of Americans, the vast army of civilians and military leaders who hunger for a new day and new policy, and say to one and all: here it ends, now it stops, and in the coming weeks she will take the floor of the United States Senate and force a rendezvous with destiny.

US Companies Flock to the Caribbean for Low-Cost, 'Nearshore' Services

2007-09-08T00:48:00.000-04:00

ABC News
Forget India; Call Centers Boom in Caribbean
US Companies Flock to the Caribbean for Low-Cost, 'Nearshore' Services
By MICHAEL MELIA
The Associated Press

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico

In a global search for low-cost customer service, AOL considered call centers in India and other hotspots then settled on the tiny island of St. Lucia.

In choosing the Caribbean island, AOL a unit of Time Warner Inc. joined other U.S. companies that have made the region a new global hub for call centers.

Plunging communication costs, workers who relate easily to American customers and the region's famed hospitality are attracting American corporations, boosting the work force in the "nearshore" service industry in the Caribbean.

Jamaica is one of the leaders with about 14,000 employees in the sector. In the Dominican Republic, 18,000 agents, many of them bilingual, are handling calls in English and Spanish. Call centers dedicated to customer service have also opened in Barbados, Trinidad, and Dominica.

"The islands all seem to be really positive as opposed to the surly attitudes you have in some of the other places. It's cheery weather, it's cheery people," Robert Goodwin, the AOL manager who chose a call center in St. Lucia, said from his company's headquarters in Dulles, Va.

AOL still uses call centers in India and elsewhere for technical support and other services taking advantage of that country's large numbers of workers with technical and advanced degrees.

But the Caribbean is becoming increasingly competitive in the call center industry, with island governments offering tax and other incentives to lure companies to their shores. Jamaica, for example, granted call centers "free zone" status that allows owners to repatriate 100 percent of their earnings tax-free.

The Caribbean has taken only a tiny share of the market from still-hot India and the Philippines, but the impact is huge on islands with tiny populations, said Philip Cohen, an industry consultant based in Sweden.

In Montego Bay, a resort area on Jamaica's north coast that accounts for about half the island's call center jobs, developers have rapidly built thousands of concrete, single-family homes to accommodate the workers.

"You put a call center with 100 people in Barbados and that's a God's gift. With 100 people in India, you can't even see it," he said.

The industry owes much of its success to a telecommunications liberalization that began sweeping former British colonies in the Caribbean about six years ago. As new suppliers have challenged the monopoly of Britain-based Cable & Wireless PLC, lower prices allowed the region to compete.

The collections and call-center firm KM2, which holds the AOL contract in St. Lucia, has opened a site in Barbados and owner David Kreiss said he is looking to expand again as new telecoms install fiber optic cable.

"Whichever island they go to we follow," Kreiss said from his office in Atlanta.

The number of people working at Caribbean call centers has increased from 11,300 in 2002 to a current total of 55,000, with an annual economic impact of $2.5 billion (1.83 billion euros), according to Philip Peters, chief executive of Coral Gables, Florida-based Zagada Markets.

Peters, whose company surveys the call center industry in regions around the world, said the Caribbean has set itself apart with high service, a quality he attributes to cultural similarities and the influence of the tourism industry.

"They have a history of troubleshooting with Americans without getting upset," he said.

Large American companies including Verizon, AT&T, Delta Air Lines, AIG and Nortel have used Caribbean call centers, while often keeping operations in Asia or elsewhere in case of a hurricane or other disaster, Peters said.

While much of the profits go to U.S.-owned operators, the islands welcome the business to diversify their economies and counter high unemployment.

In Jamaica, where the vast majority of 18 call centers are owned by people outside the island, the starting wage is $2.75 (2.01 euros) to $3.20 (2.34 euros) an hour, according to Christopher McNair of Jamaica's investment promotion agency. "In Jamaica it's quite an attractive salary," he said.

In Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory subject to the federal minimum wage of $5.85 (4.28 euros) an hour, about 4,000 people work in call centers.

One leading advocate is Dominican President Leonel Fernandez, who said call centers are key to transforming his nation from a low-end assembly center to a knowledge-based economy.

"I see the digital economy as the best opportunity we in the Dominican Republic have ever had of leapfrogging to a new level of economic development," Fernandez told a business conference recently.

Many of the jobs involve simple, repetitive tasks, such as handling phone orders but governments describe the goal as gradually evolving to offer more demanding, expensive services such as technical support.

One Jamaican company, e-Services Group, began as a data entry operation but now also provides a range of support including help building Web sites and processing insurance claims.

"We've started with customer service, and as we proved we could do more, they've started driving more business in," said Patrick Casserly, the chief executive officer.

Unexpected Loss of Jobs Raises Risk of Recession

2007-09-08T00:43:00.000-04:00

The New York Times
Unexpected Loss of Jobs Raises Risk of Recession
By DAVID LEONHARDT and JEREMY W. PETERS

The job market took a serious and unexpected turn for the worse last month, raising the risk of a recession and putting added pressure on the Federal Reserve to move more aggressively to keep the ailing housing industry from infecting the rest of the economy.

The Labor Department reported yesterday that 4,000 jobs were lost from July to August, and the deepest cuts were in industries that are connected to the housing market, like construction and manufacturing. It was the first employment decline since 2003, when the job market was still struggling to emerge from the slump after the 2001 recession.

The jobs report all but guarantees that the Fed will cut its benchmark short-term interest rate when its policy-making committee meets on Sept. 18. A quarter-point reduction, to 5 percent, remains the most likely move, although a half-point cut now cannot be ruled out, economists said.

The unexpected weakness in employment changed the terms of the debate over the health of the economy. Before the report was released, most economists were predicting that the economy had added about 100,000 jobs in August and that growth had slowed but continued.

But now, the odds of a recession in the next year have risen, to 25 to 50 percent, economists interviewed yesterday said. A recession is typically defined as an extended period in which the economy shrinks, leading to a rise in unemployment and a drop in consumer spending and business investment.

“People need to start thinking about the housing market not just as some ring-fence problem which is off on its own,” said Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at Global Insight, an economic research firm in Lexington, Mass. “They need to start worrying about the health of the broader economy.”

Stocks fell broadly and sharply, as investors digested the idea that the economy had been weakening significantly even before the mortgage crisis hit financial markets last month. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was down more than 1.5 percent. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped almost 250 points.

The unemployment rate held steady at 4.6 percent in August, but economists said that was at least in part a fluke of the survey as more people stopped looking for work and were therefore not counted by the government as unemployed.

“If the economy is not headed toward recession, it is very close to one,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com.

The Bush administration tried to defuse concerns that the weak jobs numbers hinted at a wider economic slowdown. In an interview with Bloomberg Television yesterday, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said the report was “not totally surprising.”

“There will be news that is not always good news,” he said. “But I feel quite strongly that we have a resilient economy.”

For months, Fed officials and Wall Street forecasters have been predicting that the housing slump would slow the economy and that other factors, like corporate earnings, growth in other countries and strong wage advances, would keep the slowdown from being severe.

That could still happen; in the economic expansions of both the 1980s and the 1990s, employment fell at least once before quickly reversing course.

“The financial turmoil and extended problems in housing put the risks for the economy clearly to the downside, no question,” said Mickey D. Levy, chief economist at Bank of America. “But there are also factors that suggest a longer period of slower growth, but not recession.”

One of the most worrisome signs in the jobs report released yesterday was the government’s revision to its employment data for June and July. The new numbers show just under 70,000 jobs being created in each of the two months. Initial estimates had been an average of almost 110,000 a month.

In 2005 and 2006, the average monthly job growth was slightly above 200,000.

The sharp slowdown this year suggests that some employers have already begun to see a downturn in their business and that others think one is on the way. With house prices falling in most of the country and oil prices having risen, consumer spending has slowed modestly in recent months.

State and local government agencies, many of them dealing with budget shortfalls connected to the housing slump, have also cut an average of 27,000 jobs a month over the last three months. But economists said the declines in government employment, especially in schools, may have reflected seasonal quirks that made the job market look worse last month than it was.

Hospitals, doctors’ offices, restaurants and retail stores added jobs in August.

But the bright spots were few. Employment in the finance sector, which includes real estate agencies and accounts for about 8.5 million of the country’s 138 million jobs, was flat in August, which could be a sign that the government numbers have not yet captured some of the mortgage-related job cuts now occurring.

The surveys that made up the Labor Department report measured employment from Aug. 12 to Aug. 18, when the credit squeeze and subsequent stock market turmoil were under way but not yet fully felt. Since then, some large lenders like Lehman Brothers have continued to lay off workers.

And just yesterday, two mortgage lenders, Countrywide Financial and IndyMac Bancorp, said they would shrink their work forces. Countrywide said it would cut as many as 12,000 jobs over the next three months, and IndyMac Bancorp said it would trim 1,000.

“There probably was not that much influence in the data from the credit shock,” said Richard Berner, chief United States economist at Morgan Stanley. “So I think more weakness in the economy is likely. The economy is clearly losing momentum.”

The extent to which that continues will determine the Fed’s course of action. The price of a futures contract tied to Fed policy indicates that the central bank will probably cut the benchmark rate, now 5.25 percent, to 4.5 percent by the end of the year. But a growing number of economists are saying that may not be soon enough.

Mr. Gault of Global Insight, who is forecasting a cut of half a point on Sept. 18, said it would send “an important message that the Fed sees there are real problems here, there’s a real threat, and it needs to have a response that’s commensurate to that threat.”

Although the unemployment rate held steady at 4.6 percent, the percentage of adults with jobs fell to 62.8, from 63 percent in July and a peak of 63.4 percent in December. The number of people who were neither working nor looking for work, and therefore were not classified as employed or unemployed, rose by almost 600,000 in August.

“That’s a sign of economic weakness,” said Scott Anderson, a senior economist at Wells Fargo. “Perhaps people just gave up trying to find jobs.”

The number of people with part-time jobs who said they would prefer to work full time has also been rising in recent months. In August, the Labor Department classified 4.5 million workers as “part time for economic reasons,” up from 4.3 million in July.

Wage growth, which often lags behind job growth, continued at roughly its recent pace. Average hourly earnings for rank-and-file workers, who make up about four-fifths of the work force, have increased 3.9 percent over the last year, to $17.50. Inflation has been running at about 2.5 percent a year.

Wall Street had awaited the jobs report because it was the most significant economic data released since financial markets began to tumble in early August. If the jobs report had shown merely lackluster growth, investors might have welcomed it as a sign that a Fed rate cut was all but certain and that the economy was still growing at a healthy pace.

The reversal in employment, however, was far different from the gain of roughly 100,000 jobs that Wall Street had been expecting, raising worries that corporate profits and wage gains could weaken as the market upheaval moves beyond the housing and financial sectors.

“The big question on all of our minds is whether the financial market contagion would reach the labor market,” said Jared Bernstein, an economist with the liberal Economic Policy Institute. “And it appears it has with a vengeance.”

A Tale of Two Parties

2007-09-08T00:35:00.000-04:00

A Tale of Two Parties
Two gatherings in the nation's capital help point up the difference between theorizing about war--and fighting one.
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek

Sept. 7, 2007 - Washington was out in force--right, left and center--this week for a party to toast the publication of a new book by Mark Penn, the pollster credited with re-electing Bill Clinton in 1996 who is now the principle strategist for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. “Isn’t he dangerously DLC?” asked antitax conservative Grover Norquist, referring to the centrist group that launched Bill Clinton’s candidacy. As fellow editors at the Harvard Crimson a couple and a half decades ago, Penn was Norquist’s soul mate, a right-wing radical in the eyes of the “Harvard socialists,” says Norquist with a laugh, implying that Penn is suspiciously centrist.

Wherever Penn is on the ideological spectrum, he’s positioning Hillary for a general election, bucking up her centrist credentials while moving her to the left enough on the war to quiet critics. His book is avowedly nonpolitical, a breezy look at societal ripples entitled “Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Big Changes.” It’s the latest blending of marketing and politics, a way to identify social changes and tap into them for a big payoff on Election Day.

Chatting with partygoers over the salmon and cucumber canapés, the mention of one trend in Penn’s book, “red-shirting,” triggered a burst of conversation. The phrase refers to the growing phenomenon of mostly upscale parents holding their children back a year from entering kindergarten.

At Georgetown Day School, a top-flight private school in Washington, there are kids 13 months apart in age in his child’s class, one father exclaimed. The practice originated in college sports with student athletes postponing enrollment to spread their eligibility to play over five years, when they’re bigger and stronger. High-achieving parents who struggled up the greasy pole of meritocracy to reach the finest institutions consider it a defeat if their children don’t make it to the Ivies, and they want to give them any edge they can. The extra year is supposed to give them a better chance to excel. It’s a crazy elitist trend that has little to do with the world most people live in.

Four blocks away from the Corcoran Museum of Art, where the Penn party was held, a very different event was unfolding at the Reagan Building. Actor James Gandolfini, best known as Tony Soprano, mingled with another cross-section of Washington for the premiere of a new HBO documentary, “Alive Day Memories,” about the wounded of Iraq, and the challenges they face. I slipped in late, right behind Paul Wolfowitz, one of the major promoters of the Iraq War and arguably its intellectual godfather. Seated to my left was a young woman, Robin Cleveland, whose husband, Tai, is in a wheelchair owing to spinal-cord and brain injuries he received in Iraq. “You have no idea how many people are suffering from this war,” she said. On my right was a young man in a wheelchair who had lost a leg and who knows what else. As I looked around before the lights dimmed for the film, I saw many more young men and some women with metal limbs and prostheses.

When John Edwards talks about the “two Americas,” he means the growing gulf caused by poverty, but the phrase could just as well refer to the divide between the people who do the theorizing about war and the America that does the fighting, the people who have the luxury of red-shirting their kids and the kids trying to reclaim their lives in hospital wards. The wounded from Iraq, now numbering more than 20,000, all have two birthdays--the day they were born and their “Alive Day,” the term of art given to the day they were wounded. Gandolfini interviews 10 returning soldiers, posing simple questions, keeping his back mostly to the camera as he lets them talk. Their stories carry the film. It’s hard to separate the character of Tony Soprano from the real-life Gandolfini. But the role he plays here is more like Dr. Melfi, Tony’s therapist, eliciting what happened, saying little and serving as a sympathetic sounding board.

The result is as compelling as it is graphic and hard to watch.

The therapists at Walter Reed make a big deal out of your “Alive Day,” says Sgt. Bryan Anderson, 25. “But from my point of view, we’re celebrating the worst day of my life. Great! Let’s just remind me of that every year.” Anderson recounts how he was smoking a cigarette right before the bomb went off. He knew he was hurt, and when he went to wipe the blood and the flies off his face, he noticed a fingertip was gone. He thought, that’s not so bad, as he continued assessing himself. A chunk of his other hand was gone. I can live with that, he thought. Then he saw that both his legs were gone. “What did you think then?” Gandolfini asked gently. “I thought, ‘Oh, Shit’.”

In any other war, Anderson would be dead. The number of wounded relative to casualties was 3 to 1 in Vietnam; it is 7 to 1 in Iraq, according to the film. Once a star gymnast, Anderson endured 40 surgeries and found the will to live in the hand surgeons saved. “I can still pick up a fork and feed myself,” he said. “Alive Day” brings the wounded home to America with unblinking realism. “Now the rest of the world can see,” said the woman next to me. And Wolfowitz? Give him credit for attending. “Fantastic,” he told reporters as he hurried out. “Very realistic, unfortunately.” If the sheer number of these wounded warriors among us don’t bring the “two Americas” together, shame on us all.

Employers Cut Payrolls by 4,000 in August; economists were were forecasting payrolls to grow by 110,000

2007-09-07T09:36:00.000-04:00

AP
Employers Cut Jobs in August
By Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer
Employers Cut Payrolls by 4,000 in August, the First Drop in US Jobs in 4 Years

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Employers sliced payrolls by 4,000 in August, the first drop in four years, a stark sign that a painful credit crunch that has unnerved Wall Street is putting a strain on the national economy.

The latest snapshot of the employment climate, released by the Labor Department on Friday, also showed that the unemployment rate held steady at 4.6 percent, mainly because hundreds of thousands of people left the work force for any number of reasons.

Job losses in construction, manufacturing, transportation and government swamped gains in education and health care, leisure and hospitality, and retail. Employment in financial services was flat. The weakness in payrolls reflected fallout from a deepening housing slump, a credit crisis and financial turbulence that has made businesses more cautious in their hiring.

"I think a lot of businesses are moving to the sidelines to wait and see how things shake out," said Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics.

The report was much weaker than economists were expecting. They were forecasting payrolls to grow by 110,000.

The drop of 4,000 jobs in August was the first decline since August 2003.

The surprisingly weak report provides the Federal Reserve with a reason to lower interest rates when it meets next on Sept. 18.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, in a speech last week, said the Fed stands ready to do all that is needed to keep the credit crunch that has rocked Wall Street from damaging the economy.

Economists increasingly believe the Fed will lower a key interest rate, now at 5.25 percent, by at least one-quarter percentage point on Sept. 18, its next meeting. The Fed has not lowered this rate in four years.

"Clearly the economy is struggling, and this is the kind of evidence that really makes a strong case for a Fed easing move," Mayland said.

Those with jobs, however, did see modest wage gains.

Average hourly earnings rose to $17.50 in August, a 0.3 percent increase from July. That matched economists' forecasts. Over the past 12 months, wages are up 3.9 percent. Wage growth supports consumer spending, a major ingredient for a healthy economy. If the job markets continues to lose steam, however, wage growth will eventually slow, too, economists said.

The modest wage growth could ease inflation fears, giving the Fed more leeway to cut interest rates.

On the payrolls front, job gains in June and July turned out to be smaller. The economy added 68,000 new jobs in July compared with 92,000 reported a month ago. For June, 69,000 new jobs were created, less than the 126,000 previously reported.

The 4,000 jobs cut in August are from both private and government employers. The government actually cut 28,000 jobs, while all private employers added 24,000.

Credit problems began with "subprime" mortgages held by people with spotty credit histories or low incomes. The problems have spread to some more creditworthy borrowers and intensified in August, unnerving Wall Street. In reaction, the Fed has pumped tens of billions of dollars into the financial system and lowered an interest rate that it charges banks for loans.

Credit is the economy's life blood. If it becomes more difficult to obtain, people might tighten their belts and companies might spend and invest less, including cutting back on hiring. That would crimp overall economic activity.

The economy, which grew at a brisk 4 percent pace in the April-to-June period, is expected to slow to half that pace in the three months from July through September. Against this backdrop, the unemployment rate is expected to creep higher, reaching close to 5 percent by the end of the year.

The unemployment rate, which is derived from a different statistical survey than the payroll figures, held steady as 340,000 people left the work force. Fewer people in that survey reported finding employment in August compared with July.

President Bush's handling of the economy has gotten lukewarm ratings from the public. Only 41 percent approved of the president's economic stewardship in early August, according to an AP-Ipsos poll.

Mindful of political backlash heading into the 2008 elections, the administration and Democrats on Capitol Hill have been scrambling to help millions of homeowners in danger of losing their homes and looking for other ways to limit the fallout.

Judge strikes down part of Patriot Act

2007-09-07T01:34:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! News
Judge strikes down part of Patriot Act
By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer

A federal judge struck down a key part of the USA Patriot Act on Thursday in a ruling that defended the need for judicial oversight of laws and bashed Congress for passing a law that makes possible "far-reaching invasions of liberty."

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero immediately stayed the effect of his ruling, allowing the government time to appeal. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said: "We are reviewing the decision and considering our options at this time."

The ruling handed the American Civil Liberties Union a major victory in its challenge of the post-Sept. 11 law that gave broader investigative powers to law enforcement.

The ACLU had challenged the law on behalf of an Internet service provider, complaining that the law allowed the FBI to demand records without the kind of court supervision required for other government searches. Under the law, investigators can issue so-called national security letters to entities like Internet service providers and phone companies and demand customers' phone and Internet records.

In his ruling, Marrero said much more was at stake than questions about the national security letters.

He said Congress, in the original USA Patriot Act and less so in a 2005 revision, had essentially tried to legislate how the judiciary must review challenges to the law. If done to other bills, they ultimately could all "be styled to make the validation of the law foolproof."

Noting that the courthouse where he resides is several blocks from the fallen World Trade Center, the judge said the Constitution was designed so that the dangers of any given moment could never justify discarding fundamental individual liberties.

He said when "the judiciary lowers its guard on the Constitution, it opens the door to far-reaching invasions of liberty."

Regarding the national security letters, he said, Congress crossed its boundaries so dramatically that to let the law stand might turn an innocent legislative step into "the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values."

He said the ruling does not mean the FBI must obtain the approval of a court prior to ordering records be turned over, but rather must justify to a court the need for secrecy if the orders will last longer than a reasonable and brief period of time.

A March government report showed that the FBI issued about 8,500 national security letter, or NSL, requests in 2000, the year prior to passage of the USA Patriot Act. By 2003, the number of requests had risen to 39,000 and to 56,000 in 2004 before falling to 47,000 in 2005. The overwhelming majority of the requests sought telephone billing records information, telephone or e-mail subscriber information or electronic communication transactional records.

The judge said that through the NSLs, the government can unmask the identity of Internet users engaged in anonymous speech in online discussions, can obtain an itemized list of all e-mails sent and received by someone and can then seek information on those communicating with the individual.

"It may even be able to discover the web sites an individual has visited and queries submitted to search engines," the judge said.

Marrero's lengthy judicial opinion, akin to an eighth-grade civics lesson, described why the framers of the Constitution created three separate but equal branches of government and delegated to the judiciary to say what the law is and to protect the Constitution and the rights it gives citizens.

Marrero said the constitutional barriers against governmental abuse "may eventually collapse, with consequential diminution of the judiciary's function, and hence potential dire effects to individual freedoms."

In that event, he said, the judiciary could become "a mere mouthpiece of the legislature."

Marrero had ruled in 2004, on the initial version of the Patriot Act, that the letters violate the Constitution because they amounted to unreasonable search and seizure. He found free-speech violations in the nondisclosure requirement, which for example, disallowed an Internet service provider from telling customers their records were being turned over to the government.

After he ruled, Congress revised the Patriot Act in 2005, and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals directed that Marrero review the law's constitutionality a second time.

August private sector job growth lowest in 4 yrs

2007-09-05T11:22:00.000-04:00

Reuters
Aug private sector job growth lowest in 4 yrs

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Private employers likely added 38,000 jobs in August, far fewer than analysts had expected and the slowest rate of growth in four years, a report by a private employment service said on Wednesday.

The report also revised July's private sector job growth downward to 41,000 from the originally reported 48,000 jobs. The employment report was developed jointly by ADP and Macroeconomic Advisers LLC.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 83,000 new jobs for August. The 38,000 result was the smallest increase since June 2003 and could reinforce market expectations for an interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve.

U.S. stock index futures extended their losses on the report. U.S. government bonds, which are usually boosted by soft economic data, extended their gains.

The ADP result followed a separate survey by Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. that showed planned U.S. lay-offs rocketed in August. The housing slowdown and subprime mortgage debacle led to record job cuts in the financial sector, the independent group said. Markets were awaiting the government's monthly employment report for August scheduled on Friday.

Giuliani calls for more disaster prep

2007-09-05T01:48:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! News
Giuliani calls for more disaster prep
By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS, Associated Press Writer

Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday called for less federal control and more regional training to prepare U.S. communities for terrorist attacks and other disasters.

Visiting Mississippi, portions of which were devastated in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina, Giuliani pledged to prepare every community in the United States for such a disaster. And for those caused by man, as well.

"When you're preparing for a natural disaster, you're preparing for a terrorist attack," Giuliani said as he stood before a backdrop of firefighters' helmets and coats.

To be ready, states and cities need more regional training and coordination and less federal meddling, Giuliani said.

The former New York mayor proposes to make the federal Department of Homeland Security — created in response to the Sept. 11 attacks — more regional. He also said the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is now part of the Homeland Security department, should have a regional structure instead of a central one.

"We are vulnerable in our smallest community (and) in our largest city," Giuliani said.

He praised Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour for the state's response to Hurricane Katrina. Barbour was Republican National Committee chairman during the 1990s when Giuliani was elected mayor of New York.

After touring the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Pearl, Giuliani attended a $1,000-per-ticket fundraising luncheon at the home of a supporter in Jackson.

He then spoke to about 200, including two dozen trainers from the Mississippi Fire Academy, at the Rankin County branch of Hinds Community College. Giuliani was to attend another fundraiser Tuesday night in Jackson.

Among Giuliani's proposals are:

• Boosting local and state training and creating regional response teams like FEMA's Urban Search and Rescue Teams.

• Giving FEMA updated technology to track relief supplies and aid.

• Cutting off federal money for congressional pet projects, and instead mapping out long-term infrastructure needs such as bridge improvements.

Along with his plan, Giuliani also released a list of his high-profile homeland security advisers.

Some names, such as the group's leader, former FBI director Louis Freeh, and New York Rep. Peter King, have already been announced.

Advisers also include Robert Bonner, former commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and others connected mostly to the Department of Homeland Security and city of New York.

Also on the list is Daniel Johnson, former homeland security director for Minnesota, site of last month's interstate bridge collapse.

Democrats criticized Giuliani's advisers, saying the list includes officials on the job during the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina as well as officials faulted by the Sept. 11 commission for being ill-prepared for the terrorist attacks.

"As mayor, Rudy failed to prepare New York City for 9/11," said Karen Finney, spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee. "Now as a presidential candidate, he's proposing to create a homeland security team that includes many of the same folks who did a `heckuva job' on the Katrina response?"

In response, Giuliani spokeswoman Katie Levinson said: "More ridiculous comments from the DNC come as no surprise."

____

Associated Press writer Libby Quaid in Washington contributed to this report.

Calif. ballot proposal's GOP ties

2007-09-05T01:45:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! News
Calif. ballot proposal's GOP ties
By MICHAEL R. BLOOD, Associated Press Writer

Lawyers behind a California ballot proposal that could benefit the 2008 Republican presidential nominee have ties to a Texas homebuilder who financed attacks on Democrat John Kerry's Vietnam War record in the 2004 presidential campaign.

Charles H. Bell and Thomas Hiltachk's law firm banked nearly $65,000 in fees from a California-based political committee funded almost solely by Bob J. Perry that targeted Democrats in 2006. Perry, a major Republican donor, contributed nearly $4.5 million to the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that made unsubstantiated but damaging attacks on Kerry three years ago.

Hiltachk has been pushing a proposal to revamp the way California awards its electoral votes, a change Democrats claim would rig the 2008 race. He and Bell are the sole officers of a new political committee, Californians for Equal Representation, that is raising money to place the plan on the ballot in June.

Their success could hinge on whether they get the financial backing to collect more than 400,000 petition signatures needed to qualify the proposal for the ballot. And while Perry has not donated to their cause, his wealth and connections make him a potential financier for a drive that could cost more than $1 million. Running a statewide campaign would cost millions more.

Democrats are working to defeat the effort and already have lined up supporters such as Hollywood producer Stephen Bing.

Supporters say the vote-change plan could open a new era of fairness in presidential contests. But the law firm's link to Perry and other Republican candidates and causes will make it difficult to separate the proposal from partisan politics.

Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk is one of the most politically involved law firms in the state. According to a news story on its Web site, Bell keeps a life-sized cardboard image of President Bush in his office.

The push to alter the division of electoral votes in California — a change with national implications — "is nothing more than an attempt by right-wing Republicans to change the rules in ways that benefits them," said the spokesman, Roger Salazar.

The fight over California's electoral votes is shaping up as an important subplot in the national campaign.

Like most states, California awards all 55 of its electoral votes to the statewide winner in presidential elections — the largest single prize in the nation.

Under the ballot proposal, the statewide winner would get only two electoral votes. The rest would be distributed to the winning candidate in each of the state's congressional districts.

In effect that would create 53 races, each with one electoral vote up for grabs. President Bush carried 22 of those districts in 2004, while losing the statewide vote by double digits.

Advisers tell Bush to stand pat on Iraq

2007-09-05T01:43:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! News
Advisers tell Bush to stand pat on Iraq
By MATTHEW LEE and ANNE GEARAN, Associated Press Writers

President Bush's senior advisers on Iraq have recommended he stand by his current war strategy, and he is unlikely to order more than a symbolic cut in troops before the end of the year, administration officials told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The recommendations from the military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker come despite independent government findings Tuesday that Baghdad has not met most of the political, military and economic markers set by Congress.

Bush appears set on maintaining the central elements of the policy he announced in January, one senior administration official said after discussions with participants in Bush's briefings during his surprise visit to an air base in Iraq on Monday.

Although the addition of 30,000 troops and the focus on increasing security in Baghdad would not be permanent, Bush is inclined to give it more time in hopes of extending military gains in Baghdad and the formerly restive Anbar province, officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to describe decisions coming as part of the White House report on Iraq due to Congress next week.

The plan they described is fraught with political risk. While Republican leaders on Tuesday suggested the GOP may be willing to support keeping troops in the region through spring, it is unclear whether rank-and-file party members who face tough elections next year will be willing to follow their lead.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told reporters he would like to ensure a long-term U.S. presence in the Middle East to fight al-Qaida and deter aggression from Iran.

"And I hope that this reaction to Iraq and the highly politicized nature of dealing with Iraq this year doesn't end up in a situation where we just bring all the troops back home and thereby expose us, once again, to the kind of attacks we've had here in the homeland or on American facilities," said McConnell, R-Ky.

With Monday's back-to-back review sessions in Iraq, Bush has now heard from all the military chiefs, diplomats and other advisers he planned to consult before making a widely anticipated report to Congress by Sept. 15. Petraeus and Crocker are to testify before Congress on their recommendations next week.

The United States would be hard-pressed to maintain the current level of 160,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely, but Bush is not expected to order more than a slight cut before the end of the year, officials said.

Bush himself suggested that modest troop cuts may be possible if military successes continue, but he gave no timeline or specific numbers. Options beyond a symbolic cut this year include cutting the tour of duty for troops in Iraq from 15 months back to the traditional 12 months, one official said. If adopted, that change would not come before the spring.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday during a trip to Australia, Bush restated his view that decisions about troop levels should be based on recommendations from military commanders and noted that Petraeus and Crocker would be delivering reports soon enough.

"Whether or not that's part of the policy I announce to the nation ... why don't we see what they say and then I'll let you know," Bush said.

Adm. William Fallon, the head of U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, said Tuesday he saw signs of broad progress in Iraq.

"In the less than six months I've been in this job, I have seen a substantial change and it gives me some significant optimism that this place may just work out the way we had envisioned, or some had envisioned, when the tasks were undertaken," Fallon said in remarks to the Commonwealth Club of California, a public affairs forum.

A Pentagon official said Petraeus has not specifically recommended trimming tours by three months. Bush's troop increase will end by default in April or May, when one of the added brigades is slated to leave, unless Bush makes other changes to hold the number steady.

In an interview with ABC News, Petraeus suggested a drawdown next spring would be needed to avoid further strain on the military. Asked if March would be that time, he said, "Your calculations are about right."

Republican support could hinge on Petraeus' testimony next week. If he can convince lawmakers that the security gains won in recent months are substantial and point toward a bigger trend, GOP members might be more likely to hold out until next spring. They also might be more easily persuaded if Bush promises some small troop drawdowns by the end of the year, as was suggested to the White House by Sen. John Warner of Virginia, an influential Republican on security matters.

Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., returning from a weekend trip to Iraq, said Tuesday a small round of troop withdrawals might be the ticket to forcing political progress in Iraq. The position was a new one for the senator, who faces a tough election next year.

"I think the unmistakable message has to be sent to the Shiite leadership that there is no blank check for Iraq," Coleman told reporters on a conference call.

Also Tuesday, the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative and auditing arm, reported that Iraq has failed to meet 11 of its 18 political and security goals.

The study was slightly more upbeat than initially planned. After receiving substantial resistance from the White House, the GAO determined that four benchmarks — instead of two — had been partially met.

But the GAO stuck with its original contention that only three goals out of the 18 had been fully achieved. The goals met include establishing joint security stations in Baghdad, ensuring minority rights in the Iraqi legislature and creating support committees for the Baghdad security plan.

U.S. Comptroller David Walker said the GAO did not soften its report due to pressure from the administration and reached its conclusions on its own. Walker said Congress should ask itself what it wants to achieve in Iraq and can do so realistically.

"After we answer that, we can reassess what the appropriate goal is of U.S. forces," he said in an interview Tuesday.

Democrats said the GAO report showed that Bush's decision to send more troops to Iraq was failing because Baghdad was not making the political progress needed to tamp down sectarian violence.

"No matter what spin we may hear in the coming days, this independent assessment is a failing grade for a policy that simply isn't working," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

The report does not make any substantial policy recommendations, but says future administration reports "would be more useful to the Congress" if they provided more detailed information.

___

Associated Press writers Anne Flaherty and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.

Who's profiting from the Iraq war?

2007-09-03T15:18:00.000-04:00

MSN Money
Who's profiting from the Iraq war?
By Michael Brush

Military contractors that set up utilities, prepare food or make bulletproof vests are getting a big boost from the conflict. Here's who's getting the most money.

In a few weeks, Gen. David Petraeus and the Bush administration will report to Congress on the progress of the U.S. military's troop surge in Iraq.

But some of the war's winners are already clear: military contractors who supply everything from bodyguards to bombs, clean socks to ready-to-eat meals. "For the companies involved, this has been a real gravy train," says William Hartung, who tracks defense spending for the New America Foundation.

The White House has proposed military spending of $647 billion in 2008. Adjusted for inflation, that would be the highest level since World War II -- topping even expenditures during Vietnam and the Reagan years, calculates Hartung. The current request for Iraq-related spending for 2008 is $116 billion, which would raise total Iraq war spending to $567 billion.

Who's getting all that money? Sometimes it can be difficult to tell. "There isn't good visibility on where the money goes," says Steven Kosiak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. But you can get a snapshot of who's been getting a good chunk of the Iraq-related spending in two ways.

The first step is to scour a vast database of more than $400 billion in annual government contracts, more than 70% of which are from the Department of Defense. It's called the Federal Procurement Data System. I turned to a private contractor of my own, Eagle Eye, for some (free) expert assistance in navigating the database.

Eagle Eye mined the database for all Iraq-related contracts from 2003 through 2006 (the most recent year for which numbers are available). That catches everything from spending on base maintenance and bulletproof vests to ammo and combat boots. We tallied the numbers to find the top 10 companies out of thousands of contractors.

The second step is to look at the Pentagon's own budget to see which companies are building the major weapons systems that support the war in Iraq.

The Top 10

It's no surprise that KBR Inc. (KBR, news, msgs), a division of Halliburton (HAL, news, msgs) during the years we examined, tops the first list, compiled by Eagle Eye, with $17.2 billion in Iraq-related war revenue for 2003-2006. KBR is one of the largest construction and energy field-service companies in the world. It has a long history of collaborating with the U.S. government on war-related construction.

Videos: Recent news on Halliburton

In Iraq, KBR has been working on base construction and maintenance, oil-field repairs, infrastructure projects and logistics support. KBR got about a fifth of its revenue from the Iraq war in 2006, according to our calculations.

"We are proud to serve the troops," says a KBR spokeswoman. "We are providing the troops with essential services and the comforts of home that allow them to stay focused on the dangerous and important missions they face daily."

Continued: The No. 2 slot

But why does a private-equity shop called Veritas Capital Fund take the No. 2 slot? That's easy. It specializes in investing in defense and aerospace companies. So Veritas owns a portfolio of companies -- and has a stake in others -- that pull down big Iraq-related contracts.

DynCorp International (DCP, news, msgs), which Veritas bought in 2005 and spun out last year, offers security services and police training, as well as logistical services. Veritas' McNeil Technologies provides interpreter and translation services to the military and U.S. government agencies in Iraq. Another of its companies, Wornick, supplies military rations.

It's also no big surprise that U.S.-based companies like Washington Group International (WNG, news, msgs), Fluor (FLR, news, msgs), Perini (PCR, news, msgs) and Parsons are on our top 10 list. They've landed many of the contracts to restore, repair and maintain oil fields, power plants, schools, public water systems and military bases. But the award of contracts to build the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting left many analysts scratching their heads.

Environmental Chemical does munitions disposal, while International American Products sets up systems that deliver electricity to military camps. L3 Communications (LLL, news, msgs) offers security screening services, linguists, training and law-enforcement services, and some equipment replacement.

10 companies making the most in Iraq* (millions of dollars)
Rank	Company		Amount
		2003	2004	2005	2006	Total
1.	KBR Inc. (KBR, news, msgs) and Halliburton (HAL, news, msgs)	$2,550	$5,809	$4,505	$4,362	$17,226
2.	Veritas Capital Fund	0.7	208	850	386	1,444
3.	Washington Group International (WNG, news, msgs)	111	205	533	82	931
4.	Environmental Chemical	0	192	360	326	878
5.	International American Products	58	283	310	108	759
6.	Fluor (FLR, news, msgs)	116	413	123	105	757
7.	Perini (PCR, news, msgs)	72	312	185	81	650
8.	Parsons	0	248	120	172	540
9.	First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting	0	7	469	24	500
10.	L-3 Communications (LLL, news, msgs)	1	9	148	201	359

*Goods and services contracted specifically for Iraq. Source: Eagle Eye

Two companies that have seen their revenue shoot up the most in the ongoing military buildup -- largely because of Iraq-related spending -- are Armor Holdings and Renco, according to Hartung's calculations. They don't make our list because their overall defense-related revenue is too small. But they have done phenomenally well.

Armor Holdings, which sells vehicle and personnel armor, saw defense-related revenue shoot up 2,747% between 2001 and 2006, to $634.9 million. Armor is now a division of BAE Systems (BAESY, news, msgs).

Renco, which makes the extra-wide all-terrain vehicle known as the Humvee, saw Defense Department revenue rise 1,260% over the same period, to $1.9 billion.

Misspent funds

Not all of the Iraq-war money is well spent. "Because of the urgency of the war, a lot of these contracts have been subject to less scrutiny," says Hartung. Another problem is that the war has been funded outside of the regular defense budget process. Instead, it gets funded through "emergency" spending bills called supplementals, which offer much less detail and get less scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

Hartung believes we've only seen the tip of the iceberg in allegations of fraud and corruption related to Iraq war spending. "Congress is starting to look into it, but it has not yet gotten down to specific questions," says Hartung.

Details of wrongdoing are being uncovered by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, and you can also find summaries of misconduct here.

Hidden winners

Of course, there's a vast collection of military hardware and technology from fighter jets and naval vessels to spy satellites that are used in the Iraq war effort. But they're paid for by the broader Pentagon budget, so they won't show up in a scan of the federal procurement database for Iraq-related spending.

To see who has benefited from the underlying buildup in defense spending under the Bush administration for the Iraq war and other anti-terror and defense efforts, I calculated who got the most in Department of Defense contracts from 2002 through 2006. You can see the top seven in my second chart.

U.S. Department of Defense contracts* (billions of dollars)
		2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	Total
1	Lockheed Martin (LMT, news, msgs)	$17	$22	$20.7	$19.4	$26.6	$105.7
2	Boeing (BA, news, msgs)	16.5	17.3	17	18.3	20.3	89.4
3	Northrop Grumman (NOC, news, msgs)	8.7	11.1	11.9	13.5	16.6	61.8
4	General Dynamics (GD, news, msgs)	6.9	8.2	9.6	10.6	10.5	45.8
5	Raytheon (RTN, news, msgs)	7	7.9	8.5	9.1	10	42.5
6	KBR Inc. (KBR, news, msgs)	0.5	3.9	8	5.8	6	24.2
7	United Technologies (UTX, news, msgs)	3.6	4.5	5	5	4.4	22.5
	Total defense contracts	171	209	230.7	269	295	1,174.70

*More than $25,000 for any field of operation. Source: Department of Defense

While all of these companies have benefited from the Bush administration's defense spending ramp-up since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, not all are equally exposed to the Iraq war effort, says defense sector analyst Paul Nisbet of JSA Research.

In addition to ships and Gulfstream planes, General Dynamics (GD, news, msgs) makes ground vehicles and ammunition, so it generates a fair amount of revenue directly from Iraq war spending. But Lockheed Martin (LMT, news, msgs), which is working on next-generation military aircraft and also makes military electronics and satellites, has little direct exposure to the war, says Nisbet. Neither does Northrop Grumman (NOC, news, msgs), which makes ships designed to last three decades or more.

Videos: Recent news on Lockheed Martin

Of all the companies on my second list, KBR saw some of the biggest revenue gains from the Iraq war. It was No. 37 on the Defense Department's top-100 list of military contractors in 2002. By 2006, KBR had climbed to No. 6.

At the time of publication, Michael Brush did not own or control shares of companies mentioned in this column.

British troops leave Basra base in Iraq

2007-09-03T00:23:00.000-04:00

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British troops leave Basra base in Iraq
By DAVID STRINGER, Associated Press Writer

British soldiers began withdrawing Sunday from their last base in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, paving the way for fresh troop cuts and fueling worries about the security of the country's second-largest city and the surrounding region.

U.S. and Iraqi authorities have expressed concern that a broader British drawdown could jeopardize the region's rich oil resources and the land supply line from Kuwait to Baghdad and beyond. Some analysts also fear that British withdrawal could exacerbate a violent power struggle between rival Shiite groups in the sect's southern heartland.

Around 550 soldiers were leaving the downtown Basra Palace, one of deposed President Saddam Hussein's former compounds, to join 5,000 other personnel at an air base 7 miles away on the fringes of the city. Defense officials said the withdrawal was going well but could take days to complete.

The Iraqi military sent hundreds of reinforcements to the city to prevent Shiite militias and criminal gangs from expanding their influence once the British have gone.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair reduced the number of British troops in Iraq from 7,000 to 5,500 in February and left open the option of pulling out around 500 more personnel once Basra Palace was handed back to Iraqis.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is due to set out future strategy for British operations in Iraq in a speech to parliament next month.

The British defense ministry said forces operating from Basra Air Station will "retain security responsibility for Basra until we hand over to provincial Iraqi control, which we anticipate in the autumn."

Basra Palace was to house British soldiers and diplomatic staff after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and has come under daily mortar and rocket attack in recent months.

"This is a thoroughly sensible military decision," said opposition Conservative lawmaker Patrick Mercer. "It will allow more troops to be withdrawn from Iraq in the autumn, just as Britain increases its numbers of troops in Afghanistan."

In Basra, Major Mike Shearer, Britain's military spokesman, told reporters: "I can confirm that an operation is ongoing, but we will not give any further details."

U.S. officials have raised concerns about the prospect of British troops leaving the city, which fell under the influence of Shiite religious parties and militias, some with ties to Iran, after the January 2005 election that brought Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to power.

The police force is heavily infiltrated by militias. Political rivals, liquor dealers, DVD shop owners and anyone who violated different groups' interpretations of Islam was subject to assassination by death squads.

Retired U.S. Army Gen. Jack Keane, who was vice chief of staff at the time the Iraq war was launched, said in an interview last week that Britain had never deployed enough troops to properly stabilize the region and allowed a bad security situation deteriorate.

"It has always been our intention to draw down troops in Basra" as Iraqi army and police become ready to handle security duties, said a spokesman for Brown's Downing Street office, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The International Crisis Group, a Brussels based think-tank, said in a June report that unconstrained militias were destabilizing Basra and that locals believed British forces had been driven out.

"Relentless attacks against British forces in effect had driven them off the streets into increasingly secluded compounds," the report said. "Basra's residents and militiamen view this not as an orderly withdrawal but rather as an ignominious defeat."

With additional Iraqi soldiers in the streets, residents say things have quieted in recent weeks.

But last week, the head of the security committee on the Basra city council, Hakim al-Miyahi, predicted "some disorder" after the British pullout from the city because he feared that Iraqi forces were incapable of maintaining order.

More than 1,800 Iraqis killed in August

2007-09-02T00:40:00.000-04:00

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More than 1,800 Iraqis killed in August
By DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writer

Civilian deaths rose slightly in August as a huge suicide attack in the north two weeks ago offset security gains elsewhere, making it the second deadliest month for Iraqis since the U.S. troop buildup began, according to figures compiled Saturday by The Associated Press.

U.S. deaths remained well below figures from last winter when the U.S began dispatching 30,000 additional troops to Iraq.

At least 1,809 civilians were killed in the month, compared to 1,760 in July, based on figures compiled by the AP from official Iraqi reports. That brings to 27,564 the number of Iraqi civilians killed since AP began collecting data on April 28, 2005.

The August total included 520 people killed in quadruple suicide bombings on Yazidi communities near the Syrian border. The horrific attacks made Aug. 14 the single deadliest day since the war began in March 2003.

Eighty-five coalition troops — 81 American and four British — died in August, down from 88 the month before, including 79 Americans. The average rate of 2.74 coalition deaths per day was the second lowest since the surge began, and down from a peak of 4.23 per day in May.

May also saw the highest number of civilian deaths since the start of the year, with 1,901.

U.S. officials have maintained that violence is declining in Iraq in the run-up to a series of reports to Congress this month that will decide the course of the U.S. military presence here.

The top U.S. commander, Gen. David Petraeus, was quoted Friday as saying the troop increase has sharply reduced sectarian killings in Baghdad. Petraeus is expected to make the same point when he reports to Congress in about two weeks.

"If you look at Baghdad, which is hugely important because it is the center of everything in Iraq, you can see the density plot on ethno-sectarian deaths," the Australian newspaper quoted him as saying during an interview in the Iraqi capital.

"It's a bit macabre but some areas were literally on fire with hundreds of bodies every week and a total of 2,100 in the month of December '06, Iraq-wide. It is still much too high but we think in August in Baghdad it will be as little as one quarter of what it was," the newspaper quoted Petraeus, who gave no specific figures.

American hopes brightened this week when the most powerful Shiite militia leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, ordered a halt to attacks by his Mahdi Army for up to six months to reorganize and purge it of unruly factions that the U.S. maintains are armed and trained by Iran.

"If implemented, Sadr's order holds the prospect of allowing coalition and Iraqi security forces to intensify their focus on al-Qaida-Iraq and on protecting the Iraqi population," the U.S. military said in a statement Saturday.

The statement said an end to Mahdi Army violence "would also be an important step in helping Iraqi authorities focus greater attention on achieving the political and economic solutions necessary for progress and less on dealing with criminal activity, sectarian violence, kidnappings, assassinations, and attacks on Iraqi and coalition forces."

The government-run newspaper Sabah published a front-page editorial Saturday praising al-Sadr's declaration as "a correct decision" and urged other militia leaders to follow suit.

Despite those comments, U.S. and Iraqi forces have not let up on raids against extremists in Shiite areas.

Before daybreak Saturday, Iraqi and American forces raided Sadr City, the Baghdad stronghold of the Mahdi Army. Several cars were demolished during the operation by U.S. tanks, according to a police officer speaking on condition of anonymity and Associated Press Television News video from the scene showed several crushed cars on the street.

The U.S. military said American troops and Iraqi police were involved in the raid and searched two houses, detaining three suspects. On the way back to base the group was attacked with a roadside bomb but suffered no injuries, Spc. Emily Greene said in an e-mailed statement. There was no mention of the crushed cars or other collateral damage.

Leaflets scattered around Sadr City urged people to report on Shiite militants who are cooperating with the Iranians, providing a cell phone number and an e-mail address.

"The criminal Iraqis who work with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are toys under Persian control," read one of the leaflets, which pictured a puppet dancing on strings. "Iranian Revolutionary Guards are interfering in Iraq's affairs while Iraqis are dying."

Armed Shiite groups are locked in a struggle for power in Shiite areas of the capital and in the Shiite heartland of the south, which includes major religious shrines and vast oil wealth. Control of the shrines offers not only prestige but access to huge sums of money donated by Shiites from around the world.

As part of that power struggle, gunmen on a motorcycle assassinated Muslim al-Batat, an aide to the country's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, police said. The attack occurred in Basra, where numerous militias are competing for power.

U.S.: Military alone can't beat Taliban

2007-08-31T00:16:00.001-04:00

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U.S.: Military alone can't beat Taliban
By CHRIS BRUMMITT, Associated Press Writer

Military force alone is unlikely to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, a top U.S. commander said Thursday, noting that most insurgencies end with a political solution.

Maj. Gen. Robert Cone, who is in charge of equipping and training Afghan security forces to take over from international troops, said the local units were making good progress, but declined to say when they would be strong enough to allow foreign forces to go home.

Meanwhile, a senior Taliban leader was killed in a clash with Afghan and foreign troops in southern Afghanistan, an Afghan army officer said.

Violence is soaring in Afghanistan despite years of counterinsurgency operations by international troops and millions of dollars spent in equipping the country's army and police units.

Cone cautioned that military force alone would likely not be enough to beat the Taliban and other militants battling foreign and Afghan government troops.

"You can say you defeated them in a single campaign ... but again given the complex nature of this environment, they might be back again the very next year," he told a media conference in the capital Kabul. "I think the real issue is probably not a military solution in the long term."

President Hamid Karzai earlier this year said he had met with unspecified Taliban militants to try to reach a political settlement, but he did not elaborate on the extent of the contacts.

Cone, who arrived in Afghanistan in July, said the "military will have a significant impact on the overall solution, but in reality most insurgencies are dealt with by political solution in the end."

Hundreds of former members of the hard-line Taliban regime, including a sprinkling of former senior commanders and officials, have reconciled with the government since they were ousted from power in the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

But current rebel leaders have apparently refused to hold talks, and in the past year, thousands more fighters have joined the insurgency, which this year alone has left more than 3,900 people dead, especially in southern and much of eastern Afghanistan. The exact number of insurgents is unclear.

There are more than 42,000 Afghan Army soldiers, and some 75,000 police members, with plans to create a 70,000-man army and 82,000-strong police force by the end of 2008. There also are more than 50,000 foreign troops in the country, including U.S.-led coalition and NATO-led forces.

Formal talks with the Taliban would be politically very sensitive because of the close relationship top commanders are believed to have with al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden.

In the southern Helmand province, meanwhile, senior Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani, known as Mullah Brother, was reported killed during clashes with Afghan and foreign troops, said Maj. Gen. Ghulam Muhiddin Ghori, an Afghan army officer.

The report could not be independently verified, and a NATO official in southern Afghanistan said that they were not aware of the clash.

Ghani was one of the top leaders of all Taliban forces in the country, when the hard-line Islamist movement ruled Afghanistan, and a close associate of Taliban's reclusive leader Mullah Omar. His current role in within the reconstituted Taliban movement was not clear.

If confirmed, his death would deal a serious blow to the militants, who have made a comeback since their ouster.

In neighboring Uruzgan province, the U.S.-led coalition called in airstrikes to repeal an attack on their base by a large group of insurgents, leaving up to 11 suspected insurgents dead Thursday, a coalition statement said.

Also Thursday, unidentified assailants Thursday killed a British soldier and wounded two others in a routine patrol in the southern province of Kandahar, the British Ministry of Defense said. An Afghan interpreter working with the troops also was killed, it said.

On Wednesday, Afghan soldiers and coalition forces found and destroyed an insurgent-run drug lab after a brief fight in Helmand province, according to a statement. The opium lab was the second of its kind found in the past four days in the province.

A significant portion of the profits from Afghanistan's booming drug trade are thought to flow to Taliban fighters who tax and protect poppy farmers and drug runners.

___

Associated Press Writer Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.

Jobless claims show unexpected increase

2007-08-31T00:15:00.001-04:00

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Jobless claims show unexpected increase

The number of newly laid off workers filing for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that applications for unemployment benefits totaled 334,000, an increase of 9,000 from the previous week.

That gain caught analysts by surprise. They had been forecasting that jobless claims would fall by around 2,000.

Analysts are closely watching to see whether recent financial market turmoil will have an impact on business hiring decisions.

Arsenic in drinking water seen as threat

2007-08-31T00:13:00.000-04:00

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Arsenic in drinking water seen as threat

Arsenic in drinking water is a global threat to health, affecting more than 70 countries and 137 million people, according to new research.

Large numbers of people are unknowingly exposed to unsafe levels of arsenic in their drinking water, said Peter Ravenscroft, of the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge. He made his remarks at an annual conference of the Royal Geographical Society in London on Wednesday.

The country worst affected is Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of people are likely to die from cancers of the lung, bladder and skin caused by arsenic, the research said.

Arsenic, which is odorless and tasteless, enters water supplies from natural deposits in the Earth or from agricultural and industrial practices.

World Health Organization guidelines set a safe limit of 10 parts per billion of arsenic in water supplies, but 137 million people drink water with levels higher than that — and 57 million drink water with a level of more than 50 ppb, according to the research.

Arsenic poses long-term health risks "exceeding every other potential water contaminant," according to research presented by Allan Smith of the University of California, Berkeley, an adviser to the WHO on arsenic.

"Most countries have some water sources with dangerous levels of arsenic, but only now are we beginning to recognize the magnitude of the problem," Smith said. "It is the most dangerous contaminant of drinking water in terms of long-term health risks, and we must test all water sources worldwide as soon as possible."

Speakers at the conference predicted that new arsenic pollution would occur in parts of southeast and southwest Asia, the western parts of South and Central America, and some areas in Africa.

Arsenic has been found in water in the north of England, the Midlands and mid-Wales. But Ravenscroft said there was no major health risk in Britain and that tests carried out by water companies meant that public water supplies in this country were still safe to drink.

U.S. gives consumers day to sound off on bad imports

2007-08-31T00:12:00.000-04:00

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U.S. gives consumers day to sound off on bad imports

The Bush administration will conduct a meeting this fall to hear Americans' advice on how to stem a wave of unsafe imports from China and other countries, officials said on Thursday.

The all-day meeting on October 1 at the Agriculture Department in Washington is designed to gather suggestions about how the government and companies can better ensure the safety of imported food and other products.

U.S. consumers have been jarred in recent months by a spate of recalls of unsafe children's toys, chemical-laced toothpaste, and dangerous additives in pet food and seafood.

Most of the goods under scrutiny come from China. Beijing is taking steps to crack down on unscrupulous exporters, but it also is seeking to fend off some of the blame.

Bush's panel, headed by Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt and including officials from the Department of Homeland Security, the Food and Drug Administration, the Agriculture Department and other agencies, will present two reports this fall.

An Agriculture Department official said comments from October's meeting, made in person or teleconference, will contribute to the second report which will set out specific actions the government can take to safeguard against perilous products.

Comments can be submitted at http://www.fda.gov/dockets/ecomments or http://www.regulations.gov

Iraq war chemicals found stored in U.N. office

2007-08-31T00:11:00.000-04:00

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Iraq war chemicals found stored in U.N. office
By Evelyn Leopold

The United Nations found small amounts of a potentially lethal chemical warfare agent, removed from Iraq a decade ago, in offices near its New York headquarters but officials said on Thursday there was no danger.

The FBI and New York police were called and they had removed the substances by late afternoon on Thursday, said Marie Okabe, a U.N. spokeswoman.

The material was identified as phosgene, an older generation chemical warfare agent, which could have been lethal if it had evaporated, the officials said.

Phosgene was used extensively during World War One as a choking agent that attacks the lungs.

The phosgene was recovered in 1996 from a former Iraqi chemical weapons facility, al-Muthanna, north of Baghdad.

"It should not have come here," said Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, in whose offices the substance was found. Normally, such materials would be taken to a secure laboratory.

R.P. Eddy, executive director of the Manhattan Institute's Center for Policing Terrorism and a former U.N. adviser, agreed. "Did someone there make a stupid mistake that could have actually been catastrophic? Yes. Does that mean the U.N. is a flawed organization? No. This is one goofball error," he said.

In Washington, White House spokesman Tony Snow said, "I'm sure that there are going to be a lot of red-faced people over at the U.N. trying to just figure out how they got there."

The inspectors, searching for weapons of mass destruction, were thrown out of Iraq by Saddam Hussein in 1998 and came back in early 2002. The United States ordered them to leave shortly before the March 2003 invasion.

The Security Council on June 29 disbanded UNMOVIC. The inspectors were cleaning out their offices.

They discovered two small plastic packages with metal and glass containers, ranging in size from small vials to tubes the length of a pen with liquid substances, Buchanan said.

The vials were in a small sealed metal box, thought to contain papers. The container was discovered last Friday but only on Wednesday did the inspectors find a list of what the items were.

NO NERVE GAS

The chemicals are being taken to the U.S. Army laboratory in Edgewood, Maryland. They were brought to New York in 1996 by inspectors, Okabe said.

On the New York Stock Exchange, the Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard and Poor's 500 dropped after midday on an erroneous report the substance found was nerve gas and that U.N. headquarters had been evacuated. The market recovered after the world body said there was no danger.

Okabe, who announced the news at her regular U.N. briefing. said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had been informed and "there will be an investigation."

No office was evacuated until the FBI came to collect the materials and ordered the staff to leave temporarily.

The experts believe "the packages are properly secured and pose no immediate risk or danger to the immediate public," Buchanan said, adding the materials were isolated in a secured room and no toxic vapors had escaped.

"We made a determination based on what it was ... that it was safe for us to come back to work, so we're working in the premises," Brian Mullady, an UNMOVIC expert said. "We feel perfectly safe."

(Additional reporting by Patrick Worsnip and Michele Nichols)

White House pushes back on Iraq report

2007-08-31T00:10:00.000-04:00

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White House pushes back on Iraq report
By ANNE FLAHERTY and ANNE GEARAN, Associated Press Writers

An independent assessment concluding that Iraq has made little political progress in recent months despite an influx of U.S. troops drew fierce objections from the White House on Thursday and provided fresh ammunition for Democrats who want to bring troops home.

The political wrangling came days before the report was to be officially released and while most lawmakers were still out of town for the August recess, reflecting the high stakes involved for both sides in the Iraq war debate. President Bush, who planned to meet Friday at the Pentagon with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is nearing a decision on a way forward in Iraq while Congress planned another round of votes this fall to end the war.

A draft report by the Government Accountability Office concluded Iraq has satisfied three of 18 benchmarks set by Congress and partially met two others, a senior administration official said Thursday. None of those are the high-profile political issues such as passage of a national oil revenue sharing law that the Bush administration has said are critical to Iraq's future.

The State Department, Pentagon and White House dispute some GAO findings, including the conclusion that Iraq has only partially met tests involving its budget process and legislation dealing with semiautonomous regions in the large, multiethnic country, two officials said.

Administration officials also disputed that Iraq has failed to provide three trained and ready Iraqi brigades to support Baghdad operations or to ensure that the security plan will not provide a safe haven for outlaws.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations that included lengthy meetings Thursday at the White House. The GAO may alter some of its findings in response to administration arguments, one official said.

Administration officials also said the draft report is unrealistically harsh because it assigned pass-or-fail grades to each benchmark.

The GAO found that Iraq had fully met requirements to:

_Establish political, media, economic, and services committees in support of the Baghdad security plan. That plan involves many of the 30,000 U.S. troops Bush sent to Iraq this year.

• Establish joint security stations in neighborhoods across Baghdad.

• Ensure the rights of minority political parties in the Iraqi legislature are protected.

Bush has suggested he intends to stick to his Iraq strategy, but in his meeting Friday at the Pentagon he's expected to hear some of the Joint Chiefs express deep concern at the long-term impact on the military of maintaining a heavy troop presence in Iraq in 2008 and beyond. Now, there are more than 160,000 troops in Iraq, the most since the war began in 2003.

The Army and the Marine Corps have shouldered most of the burden, creating strains that service leaders fear could hurt their recruiting as well as their preparedness for other military emergencies. The Joint Chiefs are not, however, expected to urge Bush to withdraw from Iraq entirely as many Democrats want.

"It is clear that every objective expert keeps providing the American public with the same facts: that the president's flawed Iraq strategy is failing to deliver what it needs to — a political solution for Iraq," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

GAO officials briefed congressional staff behind closed doors, promising an unvarnished assessment when an unclassified version of the report is publicly released on Sept. 4.

"The real question that people have is: What's going on in Iraq? Are we making progress? Militarily, is the surge having an impact?" said White House spokesman Tony Snow. "The answer is yes. There's no question about it."

But Democrats and even some Republicans say military progress made in recent weeks is not the issue. If Baghdad politicians refuse to reach a lasting political settlement that can influence the sectarian-fueled violence, the increase in troops is useless, they said.

The Pentagon and State Department provided detailed and lengthy objections to the findings by the congressional auditors.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Thursday that after reviewing a draft of the GAO report, policy officials "made some factual corrections" and "offered some suggestions on a few of the actual grades" assigned by the GAO.

"We have provided the GAO with information which we believe will lead them to conclude that a few of the benchmark grades should be upgraded from 'not met' to 'met,'" Morrell said.

State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said the GAO should at least note progress made when ruling that Iraq has failed to meet a specific benchmark.

Democrats are expected to try to use money needed to support the war as leverage to bring troops home. The Pentagon has requested $147 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan for the 2007 budget year, which begins Oct. 1. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday suggested Bush should not be asking Congress to approve "tens of billions more dollars" when independent voices like GAO find the Iraqis are failing to reach a political accord.

"With the president continuing to stay the course in Iraq, Republicans will have to decide whether they will continue to vote with him or join Democrats and the vast majority of Americans who are demanding a new direction in Iraq and refocusing America's efforts on fighting the real threats of terrorism around the world," said Pelosi, D-Calif.

The GAO report is one of several assessments called for in May legislation that funded the war: Retired Gen. James Jones briefs Congress next week on his assessment of the Iraqi security forces; Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, testify the week of Sept. 10. Bush will deliver his own progress report by Sept. 15.

Bush is meeting Friday with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Defense Secretary Robert Gates in a secure conference room at the Pentagon known as "the Tank."

Maj. Gen. Richard Sherlock, director of operational planning for the Joint Chiefs, told reporters this would be the Joint Chiefs' opportunity to "provide the president with their unvarnished recommendations and their assessments of current operations."

It did not appear that the session was intended to work out a consensus military view on how long Bush should maintain the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq or how soon to transition to Iraqi control of security.

Bush will be hearing from Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs; Adm. William Fallon, the senior commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East; and top commanders in Baghdad.

___

Associated Press writers Robert Burns, Matthew Lee, Kimberly Hefling, Terence Hunt and Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.

A Sobering Census Report: Americans’ Meager Income Gains

2007-08-30T01:46:00.000-04:00

NY Times
A Sobering Census Report: Americans’ Meager Income Gains

The economic party is winding down and most working Americans never even got near the punch bowl.

The Census Bureau reported yesterday that median household income rose 0.7 percent last year — it’s second annual increase in a row— to $48,201. The share of households living in poverty fell to 12.3 percent from 12.6 percent in 2005. This seems like welcome news, but a deeper look at the belated improvement in these numbers — more than five years after the end of the last recession — underscores how the gains from economic growth have failed to benefit most of the population.

The median household income last year was still about $1,000 less than in 2000, before the onset of the last recession. In 2006, 36.5 million Americans were living in poverty — 5 million more than six years before, when the poverty rate fell to 11.3 percent.

And what is perhaps most disturbing is that it appears this is as good as it’s going to get.

Sputtering under the weight of the credit crisis and the associated drop in the housing market, the economic expansion that started in 2001 looks like it might enter history books with the dubious distinction of being the only sustained expansion on record in which the incomes of typical American households never reached the peak of the previous cycle. It seems that ordinary working families are going to have to wait — at the very minimum — until the next cycle to make up the losses they suffered in this one. There’s no guarantee they will.

The gains against poverty last year were remarkably narrow. The poverty rate declined among the elderly, but it remained unchanged for people under 65. Analyzed by race, only Hispanics saw poverty decline on average while other groups experienced no gains.

The fortunes of middle-class, working Americans also appear less upbeat on closer consideration of the data. Indeed, earnings of men and women working full time actually fell more than 1 percent last year.

This suggests that when household incomes rose, it was because more members of the household went to work, not because anybody got a bigger paycheck. The median income of working-age households, those headed by somebody younger than 65, remained more than 2 percent lower than in 2001, the year of the recession.

Over all, the new data on incomes and poverty mesh consistently with the pattern of the last five years, in which the spoils of the nation’s economic growth have flowed almost exclusively to the wealthy and the extremely wealthy, leaving little for everybody else.

Standard measures of inequality did not increase last year, according to the new census data. But over a longer period, the trend becomes crystal clear: the only group for which earnings in 2006 exceeded those of 2000 were the households in the top five percent of the earnings distribution. For everybody else, they were lower.

This stilted distribution of rewards underscores how economic growth alone has been insufficient to provide better living standards for most American families. What are needed are policies to help spread benefits broadly — be it more progressive taxation, or policies to strengthen public education and increase access to affordable health care.

Unfortunately, these policies are unlikely to come from the current White House. This administration prefers tax cuts for the lucky ones in the top five percent.

New Orleans marks Katrina anniversary

2007-08-30T01:00:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! News
New Orleans marks Katrina anniversary
By MARY FOSTER, Associated Press Writer

Prayers, protests and a lingering disgust with the government's response to Hurricane Katrina marked the disaster's second anniversary Wednesday, with a presidential visit doing little to mollify those still displaced by the storm.

Clarence Russ, 64, took a dim view of politicians' promises as he tried to put the finishing touches on his repaired home in the city's devastated Lower 9th Ward.

"There was supposed to be all this money, but where'd it go? None of us got any," said Russ, whose house was the only restored home on an otherwise desolate block.

Not far away, President Bush visited a school. "We're still paying attention. We understand," he said before heading to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, also devastated by Katrina.

But Gina Martin, who is still living in Houston after Katrina destroyed her New Orleans home, was unconvinced. "Bush was down here again making more promises he isn't going to keep. The government has failed all of us. It's got to stop," she said.

Martin was among an estimated 1,000 people taking part in a protest march that started in the Lower 9th Ward. It was a uniquely New Orleans-style protest: There were signs accusing the Bush administration of murder and angry chants about the failure of government. But marchers also danced in the street accompanied by two brass bands.

Katrina was a powerful Category 3 hurricane when it hit the Gulf Coast the morning of Aug. 29, 2005, broke through levees in New Orleans and flooded 80 percent of the city.

By the time the water dried up weeks later, more than 1,600 people across Louisiana and Mississippi were dead, and a shocked nation saw miles of wrecked homes, mud and debris from one of the worst natural disasters in its history.

In New Orleans, recovery has been spotty at best. The historic French Quarter and neighborhoods close to the Mississippi River did not flood and have bounced back fairly well. The city's population has reached an estimated 277,000, about 60 percent its pre-storm level of 455,000. Sales tax revenues are approaching normal, and tourism and the port industry are recovering.

But vast stretches of the city show little or no recovery. A housing shortage and high rents have hampered business growth. The homeless population has almost doubled since the storm, and many of those squat in an estimated 80,000 vacant dwellings. Violent crime is also on the rise, and the National Guard and state troopers still supplement a diminished local police force.

Bells pealed amid prayers, song and tears at the groundbreaking for a planned Katrina memorial at a New Orleans cemetery.

"We ring the bells for a city that is in recovery, that is struggling, that is performing miracles on a daily basis," said Mayor Ray Nagin, who famously cursed the federal response in a radio interview days after the storm.

The memorial will be the final resting place for more than two dozen unclaimed bodies.

"The saddest thing I've seen here is that there are 30 human beings who will be buried here one day that nobody ever called about," David Kopra, a volunteer from Olympia, Wash., said, holding back tears. "It says something to my heart. This city needs so much care, and that's why I'm here."

Churches throughout the region, including historic St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter, held services. At the Claiborne Avenue bridge over the Industrial Canal, mourners tossed a wreath into the water near the spot where a levee breach led to the inundation of the Lower 9th Ward.

In Mississippi, about 100 people prayed and sang in the shadow of a Katrina monument on the neatly manicured town green of Biloxi.

"God has been good to Biloxi and its people of the Mississippi Gulf Coast," Mayor A.J. Holloway said. "We have a new outlook on life and a new appreciation for what's really important in life. It's not your car or your clothes or your possessions. It's being alive and knowing the importance of family and friends and knowing that we all have a higher power."

In Gulfport, Miss., Gov. Haley Barbour urged people to see the positive. About 13,000 of his state's families are still living in FEMA trailers, but that's down from a peak of 48,000, and he expects they could all be out of the temporary housing in a year.

Some let the day pass without fanfare. James Chaney, working on his sister's washed-out house in New Orleans, had no use for the protesters.

"They've done that stuff and done that stuff. It doesn't help us. It doesn't get us anything. It doesn't get anyone to help us."

___

Associated Press writers Cain Burdeau, Alan Sayre and Stacey Plaisance in New Orleans and Becky Bohrer in Biloxi, Miss., contributed to this story.

Number of Americans without health insurance hits new high

2007-08-29T00:52:00.000-04:00

Number of Americans without health insurance hits new high
By Tony Pugh | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The continued loss of job-based coverage helped push the number of Americans without health insurance to 47 million last year, the highest total on record and the sixth straight year that the ranks of the uninsured have grown.

New annual Census Bureau survey data released Tuesday showed that the number of uninsured Americans jumped by 2.2 million in 2006, from 15.3 percent of Americans in 2005 to a record-tying 15.8 percent last year. The number of uninsured children increased for the second straight year as well, spiking by more than 611,000 last year to nearly 8.7 million.

Tuesday's annual census report also had some upbeat news. The nation's median household income - half of households earn more than the median and half earn less - increased by $356 to $48,200 last year. The amount increased more than inflation for the second straight year.

The significant increases in the number of Americans without health insurance are unprecedented because they occurred in a fairly strong economy and at a time when health-care premium increases have been moderating, said Diane Rowland, executive vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies health-care issues.

"I think the bad news from the statistics today is that when the economy is doing fairly well, we're still seeing a continued erosion in the ability of working families to get health coverage through the workplace, which places more and more people at risk of being uninsured," Rowland said.

With health care a top concern going into the 2008 elections, America's health-care system and the growing numbers of uninsured also have become political issues.

Each Democratic presidential candidate has offered a plan to address both concerns and Republican candidates have begun tackling the problem too. Congress, the nation's governors and state officials from both political parties want to reauthorize and greatly expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which has reduced the number of low-income uninsured children dramatically since its inception in 1998.

About 6.6 million children are covered through SCHIP. Of the 8.7 million uninsured youngsters in the United States, 5 million to 6 million are eligible for coverage through Medicaid or SCHIP.

The Bush administration opposes the efforts to cover more children under SCHIP. In addition to President Bush's vows to veto funding increases for the program that both houses of Congress have approved, the administration recently adopted tough new requirements that make it nearly impossible for states to expand eligibility for children from higher-earning families.

Tuesday's census numbers sparked a torrent of calls for Bush to drop his veto threat and support expanding SCHIP.

In a letter to the president this week, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama urged Bush to rescind the new requirements and commit to supporting the bills in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Apparently unmoved, Bush issued a statement Tuesday criticizing the House and Senate proposals because they'd be funded by stiff increases in taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products. He said the taxes would undermine the economy. The president also has said that both bills would lead people who can afford private coverage to opt for cheaper government coverage through SCHIP.

"What American workers do not need right now are tax increases to fuel excess spending by the Congress. I encourage Democratic leaders in Congress to resist their urge to increase taxes on Americans and to live within the budget limits I've proposed," Bush said in a statement.

The Senate's bipartisan bill increases SCHIP funding by $35 billion over five years and would cover another 3 million youngsters. The House approved a Democratic bill that boosts funding by nearly $50 billion and would cover an additional 6 million children.

The president supports a $5 billion funding increase, which isn't enough to maintain current levels and could force hundreds of thousands of children out of the program over five years.

Congressional negotiators will merge both bills and send the final product to the president for his signature. The amount of the spending increase is to be determined. A presidential veto probably would face an override vote in the Democratic-controlled Congress.

Bush has said that allowing states to cover more affluent children in the program, which both bills do, would be the first step toward government-funded universal health coverage. He supports tax incentives to help people buy health insurance in the private market.

The growing number of uninsured Americans during Bush's two terms in office reflects the administration's limited attention to the problem and its misguided policy proposals to address it, charged Cindy Mann, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families.

While the president has pushed for health savings accounts and tax incentives to help people buy private coverage, those measures haven't taken off in the marketplace or won approval in Congress, Mann said.

While the problem of the uninsured predates Bush's time in the White House, the fact that the president hasn't mustered a major initiative to address it "may well be part of his legacy," Kaiser's Rowland said.

Although the census report found that median household income grew last year, the concentration of America's wealth remained at the top of the earnings totem pole. The top 20 percent of earners accounted for slightly more than half of aggregate income, while the lowest 40 percent of earners accounted for only 12 percent of aggregate income.

The median income for men who work full time declined for the third straight year, from $42,743 in 2005 to $42,261 last year. Full-time working women saw their average incomes fall for the fourth straight year, from $32,903 to $32,515.

The nation's poverty rate declined from 12.6 percent in 2005 to 12.3 percent in 2006. However, the number of people in poverty held steady at about 36.5 million.

To see a copy of the new census report on health insurance, income and poverty in 2006, go to Census report on insurance.

A Scandal-Scarred G.O.P. Asks, ‘What Next?’

2007-08-29T00:50:00.000-04:00

The New York Times
A Scandal-Scarred G.O.P. Asks, ‘What Next?’
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Aug. 28 — Scott Reed, a Republican strategist, was at a dinner in Philadelphia on Monday night when his cellphone and Internet pager began beeping like crazy. Only later did he learn why. His party was buzzing with news of a sex scandal involving a Republican United States senator — again.

Just when Republicans thought things could not get any worse, Senator Larry E. Craig of Idaho confirmed that he had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct after an undercover police officer accused him of soliciting sex in June in a Minneapolis airport restroom. On Tuesday, Mr. Craig, 62, held a news conference to defend himself, calling the guilty plea “a mistake” and declaring, “I am not gay” — even as the Senate Republican leadership asked for an Ethics Committee review.

It was a bizarre spectacle, and only the latest in a string of accusations of sexual foibles and financial misdeeds that have landed Republicans in the political equivalent of purgatory, the realm of late-night comic television.

Forget Mark Foley of Florida, who quit the House last year after exchanging sexually explicit e-mail messages with under-age male pages, or Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist whose dealings with the old Republican Congress landed him in prison. They are old news, replaced by a fresh crop of scandal-plagued Republicans, men like Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, whose phone number turned up on the list of the so-called D.C. Madam, or Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska and Representative Rick Renzi of Arizona, both caught up in F.B.I. corruption investigations.

It is enough to make a self-respecting Republican want to tear his hair out in frustration, especially as the party is trying to defend an unpopular war, contain the power of the new Democratic majority on Capitol Hill and generate some enthusiasm among voters heading toward the presidential election in 2008.

“The real question for Republicans in Washington is how low can you go, because we are approaching a level of ridiculousness,” said Mr. Reed, sounding exasperated in an interview on Tuesday morning. “You can’t make this stuff up. And the impact this is having on the grass-roots around the country is devastating. Republicans think the governing class in Washington are a bunch of buffoons who have total disregard for the principles of the party, the law of the land and the future of the country.”

Then again, Washington does not have a monopoly on the latest trend among Republicans. Just ask Thomas Ravenel, the state treasurer of South Carolina, who had to step down as state chairman of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s presidential campaign after he was indicted on cocaine charges in June.

Or Bob Allen, a state representative in Florida who was jettisoned from the John McCain campaign last month after he was arrested on charges of soliciting sex in a public restroom.

Mr. Craig, for his part, has severed ties with the Mitt Romney campaign, despite his public declaration on Tuesday that “I did nothing wrong.”

In an interview Tuesday on “Kudlow and Company” on CNBC, Mr. Romney could not distance himself fast enough. “Once again, we’ve found people in Washington have not lived up to the level of respect and dignity that we would expect for somebody that gets elected to a position of high influence,” Mr. Romney said. “Very disappointing. He’s no longer associated with my campaign, as you can imagine.”

Republicans, of course, do not have an exclusive hold on scandal. As Democrats accused Republicans of engaging in a “culture of corruption” during the 2006 midterm elections, Republicans eagerly put the spotlight on Representative William J. Jefferson, the Louisiana Democrat who stashed $90,000 in his freezer — ill-gotten gains, the authorities said.

Still, there is a sort of “here we go again” sense among Republicans these days, especially since news of the Craig arrest broke on Monday afternoon. It is tough enough being in the minority, weighed down by the burden of the war in Iraq. Now Republicans have an even more pressing task: keeping their party from being portrayed not just as hypocritical and out of touch with the values of people they represent, but also as a laughingstock — amid headlines like “Senator’s Bathroom Bust,” which ran all Tuesday afternoon on CNN. The story also ran at the top of all the network evening newscasts on Tuesday.

“I’m hoping it’s a big mistake,” said one of Mr. Craig’s Republican colleagues, Senator Lamar Alexander, traveling Tuesday in Tennessee, his home state. “But it certainly does nothing to increase confidence in the United States Senate.”

With President Bush hobbled by his own political difficulties, the party can hardly look to him to lead them out of the morass. “If we had a coach,” said John Feehery, who was press secretary to Representative J. Dennis Hastert when Mr. Hastert was the House speaker, “the coach would take us in the locker room and scream at us.”

Some Republicans are indeed screaming, particularly the party’s social conservative wing, which places a high priority on ethics and family values. Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, a conservative advocacy group in Washington, said the elections of November 2006, in which Republicans lost control of the House and the Senate, proved that voters want politicians in Washington to clean up their act.

“Exit polls show that was the No. 1 factor in depressing Republican enthusiasm,” Mr. Perkins said in an interview Tuesday. “There is an expectation that leaders who espouse family values will live by those values. And while the values voters don’t demand perfection, I do believe they want leaders with integrity.”

The perception that Mr. Craig is not living up to his own values is causing problems for him, and after his appearance on Tuesday, with his wife standing by his side, some Republicans confessed they did not know what to think.

“He sounded almost as convincing as, ‘I did not have sex with that woman,’ ” said Gary Bauer, a Christian conservative and onetime Republican presidential candidate, reprising President Bill Clinton’s remark initially denying involvement with Monica S. Lewinsky.

Mr. Craig is up for re-election next year and has promised to announce next month whether he is running again. Some, like Mr. Bauer, say he is unlikely to survive the current scandal; others, noting that Senator Vitter seems to have weathered his storm, say Mr. Craig might be able to tough it out. And at the rate things are going, says Mr. Reed, the Republican strategist, it might be only a matter of time before a new scandal pushes Mr. Craig’s woes off the front page.

“I’m a little afraid to say anything, because you don’t know what happens tomorrow,” Mr. Reed said. “That Vitter thing, that’s like ancient history now.”

Carl Hulse in Nashville contributed reporting.

Bush Heads to Gulf Coast, Still Misleading on How Little He Sent to Rebuild

2007-08-29T00:48:00.000-04:00

The Huffington Post
Jeffrey Buchanan
Bush Heads to Gulf Coast, Still Misleading on How Little He Sent to Rebuild

AP reported on Friday that President Bush intended to head back to the Gulf Coast this week and visit with survivors on the second anniversary Hurricane Katrina and the man-made disaster that followed. He will see what little progress has been made in some areas two years after his administration horrible bungled the disaster response and he made a commitment in a national speech from Jackson Square to "do whatever it takes" to rebuild and help families to return, confronting long standing issues poverty and race to really restore the region.

Fast forward two months and we hear a whole different story from the Bush administration.

When confronted with the failing Katrina recovery, President Bush and his various spokespeople continue to insist the federal government has done its job. The proof, they say, is "the big check" Washington has allegedly signed for the Gulf Coast, allegedly more than $114 billion.

Chris Kromm, executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies and I just issued a report to get to the truth and weed our way through the White House talking point on Gulf Coast rebuilding and why alleged federal funds had not made a greater impact. You can read it as part of the report Blueprint for Gulf Renewal. We found less then $35 billion in federal funds actually available to rebuild the region. Most of the $114 billion Bush administration officials refer to was for the emergency response, not to help rebuild the region. Still the White house continues to mislead the public about our country's investment in rebuilding the Gulf Coast and New Orleans to avoid its obligations to aid in recovery and help families and communities rebuild.

The region suffered $150 billion in damages, more damage then the September 11th attacks, Hurricane Andrew and the Northridge Earthquake combined, and displaced over 400,000 people (the largest displacement in U.S. history) yet our federal government has relied on old systems and paradigms meant to repair damage from much smaller disasters.

Even more shocking: less then 42% of the money set aside for rebuilding has even been spent, much less gotten to those most in need. For example:

* Washington set aside $16.7 billion for Community Development Block Grants, one of the two biggest sources of rebuilding funds. But as of March 2007, only $1 billion -- just 6 percent -- had been spent, almost all of it in Mississippi. Following bad publicity, another $3.8 billion was spent between March and July -- but 70 percent of the funds remain unused.

* The other major pot of money for rebuilding, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Public Assistance Program, received $8.2 billion. But only $3.4 billion was meant for non-emergency projects like fixing up schools and hospitals, and only a fraction has been spent.

* After the failure of federal levees flooded 80 percent of New Orleans, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers received $8.4 billion to restore storm defenses. But as of July 2007, less than 20 percent of the funds have been spent, even as the Corps admits that levee repair won't be completed until as late as 2011.

Even the money allocated will likely come nowhere near the cost of rebuilding the Gulf Coast. For example, the $3.4 billion FEMA has available to rebuild local public infrastructure would only cover about one-eighth of the damage suffered in Louisiana alone. But this money is spread across five states -- Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas--and covers damage from three 2005 hurricanes, Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

The White House has not done enough to make sure the funds get to the places that need it quickly and efficiently, instead choosing to take a hands off attitude leaving itself in a position to point fingers at overwhelmed state and local officials who have had to deal with significant federal red tape while rebuilding their communities from the ground up without the logistical and operations help of their federal government.

The final result has been a slowed rebuilding, putting the burden on the storm's survivors to find a way to return, rebuild their homes and help support their neighbors in rebuilding their communities, largely without the help of federal funding. Civic groups like ACORN and churches across the region have been left with the job of rebuilding communities, filling in where their governments have left off. Their charitable good works are definitely something to behold but because the the historic scale of the destruction without meaningful partnerships with the federal government and those significant resources they will never be able to rebuild the entire region to its former size. The people of the Gulf Coast deserve enormous credit for all they have done to date to rebuild the region with so little assistance.

In New Orleans especially, schools remain closed, the healthcare system remains inaccessible, public infrastructure in shambles and affordable housing remains out of reach to most still displaced survivors. The flood protection system threatens even those with the courage to return. Without a renewed federal investment and partnership people will not be able to realize their human right to return home and participate in rebuilding their communities.

Much of this article is taken from the new report by the Institute for Southern Studies, RFK Center for Human Rights and other Gulf Coast advocates called, "Blueprint for Gulf Renewal," giving a voice to grassroots advocates calling for greater federal accountability in the Gulf Coast rebuilding process. The report is available here.

History Will Not Absolve Us; Leaked Red Cross report sets up Bush team for international war-crimes trial

2007-08-29T00:40:00.000-04:00

The Village Voice
Nat Hentoff
History Will Not Absolve Us
Leaked Red Cross report sets up Bush team for international war-crimes trial
by Nat Hentoff

If and when there's the equivalent of an international Nuremberg trial for the American perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Guantánamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the CIA's secret prisons, there will be mounds of evidence available from documented international reports by human-rights organizations, including an arm of the European parliament—as well as such deeply footnoted books as Stephen Grey's Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program (St. Martin's Press) and Charlie Savage's just-published Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy (Little, Brown).

While the Democratic Congress has yet to begin a serious investigation into what many European legislators already know about American war crimes, a particularly telling report by the International Committee of the Red Cross has been leaked that would surely figure prominently in such a potential Nuremberg trial. The Red Cross itself is bound to public silence concerning the results of its human-rights probes of prisons around the world—or else governments wouldn't let them in.

But The New Yorker's Jane Mayer has sources who have seen accounts of the Red Cross interviews with inmates formerly held in CIA secret prisons. In "The Black Sites" (August 13, The New Yorker), Mayer also reveals the effect on our torturers of what they do—on the orders of the president—to "protect American values."

She quotes a former CIA officer: "When you cross over that line of darkness, it's hard to come back. You lose your soul. You can do your best to justify it, but . . . you can't go back to that dark a place without it changing you."

Few average Americans have been changed, however, by what the CIA does in our name. Blame that on the tight official secrecy that continues over how the CIA extracts information. On July 20, the Bush administration issued a new executive order authorizing the CIA to continue using these techniques—without disclosing anything about them.

If we, the people, are ultimately condemned by a world court for our complicity and silence in these war crimes, we can always try to echo those Germans who claimed not to know what Hitler and his enforcers were doing. But in Nazi Germany, people had no way of insisting on finding out what happened to their disappeared neighbors.

We, however, have the right and the power to insist that Congress discover and reveal the details of the torture and other brutalities that the CIA has been inflicting in our name on terrorism suspects.

Only one congressman, Oregon's Democratic senator Ron Wyden, has insisted on probing the legality of the CIA's techniques—so much so that Wyden has blocked the appointment of Bush's nominee, John Rizzo, from becoming the CIA's top lawyer. Rizzo, a CIA official since 2002, has said publicly that he didn't object to the Justice Department's 2002 "torture" memos, which allowed the infliction of pain unless it caused such injuries as "organ failure . . . or even death." (Any infliction of pain up to that point was deemed not un-American.) Mr. Rizzo would make a key witness in any future Nuremberg trial.

As Jane Mayer told National Public Radio on August 6, what she found in the leaked Red Cross report, and through her own extensive research on our interrogators (who are cheered on by the commander in chief), is "a top-down-controlled, mechanistic, regimented program of abuse that was signed off on—at the White House, really—and then implemented at the CIA from the top levels all the way down. . . . They would put people naked for up to 40 days in cells where they were deprived of any kind of light. They would cut them off from any sense of what time it was or . . . anything that would give them a sense of where they were."

She also told of the CIA interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, who was not only waterboarded (a technique in which he was made to feel that he was about to be drowned) but also "kept in . . . a small cage, about one meter [39.7 inches] by one meter, in which he couldn't stand up for a long period of time. [The CIA] called it the dog box."

Whether or not there is another Nuremberg trial—and Congress continues to stay asleep—future historians of the Bush administration will surely also refer to Leave No Marks: Enhanced Interrogation Techniques and the Risk of Criminality, the July report by Human Rights First and Physicians for Social Responsibility.

The report emphasizes that the president's July executive order on CIA interrogations—which, though it is classified, was widely hailed as banning "torture and cruel and inhuman treatment"—"fails explicitly to rule out the use of the 'enhanced' techniques that the CIA authorized in March, 2002, "with the president's approval (emphasis added).

In 2002, then–Secretary of State Colin Powell denounced the "torture" memos and other interrogation techniques in internal reports that reached the White House. It's a pity he didn't also tell us. But Powell's objections should keep him out of the defendants' dock in any future international trial.

From the Leave No Marks report, here are some of the American statutes that the CIA, the Defense Department, and the Justice Department have utterly violated:

In the 1994 Torture Convention Implementation Act, we put into U.S. law what we had signed in Article 5 of the UN Convention Against Torture, which is defined as "an act 'committed by an [officially authorized] person' . . . specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering . . . upon another person within his custody or physical control."

The 1997 U.S. War Crimes Act "criminalizes . . . specifically enumerated war crimes that the legislation refers to as 'grave breaches' of Common Article 3 [of the Geneva Conventions], including the war crimes of torture and 'cruel or inhuman treatment.'"

The Leave No Marks report very valuably brings the Supreme Court— before Chief Justice John Roberts took over—into the war-crimes record of this administration. I strongly suggest that Human Rights First and Physicians for Social Responsibility send their report—with the following section underlined—to every current member of the Supreme Court and Congress:

"The Supreme Court has long considered prisoner treatment to violate substantive due process if the treatment 'shocks the conscience,' is bound to offend even hardened sensibilities, or offends 'a principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental.'"

Among those fundamental rights cited by past Supreme Courts, the report continues, are "the rights to bodily integrity [and] the right to have [one's] basic needs met; and the right to basic human dignity" (emphasis added).

If the conscience of a majority on the Roberts Court isn't shocked by what we've done to our prisoners, then it will be up to the next president and the next Congress—and, therefore, up to us—to alter, in some respects, how history will judge us. But do you see any considerable signs, among average Americans, of the conscience being shocked? How about the presidential candidates of both parties?

Edwards wants law against "Brownies"

2007-08-29T00:36:00.001-04:00

Edwards wants law against "Brownies"
By Jeff Franks

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Former Sen. John Edwards said at a Hurricane Katrina conference he would propose what he called "Brownie's Law" requiring that qualified people, not political hacks, lead key federal agencies.

Edwards, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, drew laughter when he spoke on Monday of the proposal at the "Hope and Recovery Summit" ahead of the two-year anniversary of the storm on Wednesday.

"It's an absolute travesty to have people who are essentially political hacks in a very responsible position," he told the audience at the University of New Orleans.

"Brownie" refers to Michael Brown, who was head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency when Katrina struck the United States on August 29, 2005. He was criticized as being a political appointee unprepared to lead FEMA when a floundering government effort stranded thousands for days in flooded New Orleans.

He resigned shortly after President George W. Bush, who appointed him to the post, told him publicly, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" as chaos reigned in the devastated city.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican presidential hopefuls Mike Huckabee and Duncan Hunter also spoke at Monday's summit. All candidates for the two major parties were invited, but only these four could attend, a summit spokeswoman said.

Clinton, Edward's Democratic rival, blasted the Bush administration's response to Katrina, saying the government has not done enough to help New Orleans recover from the storm that killed more than 1,400 people and destroyed thousands of homes.

"We act like we're not a rich country. I don't understand that," Clinton said.

Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor whose finished second in a recent Iowa Republican presidential straw poll, gave the government a "mixed review" on Katrina and said he would make sure federal aid money was well spent.

After Katrina, "there was a lot of guilt and so the guilt resulted in just putting (in) money, not necessarily strategic money," he said.

Hunter, a U.S. representative from California, said Katrina had proven that "government is inept."

He praised the efforts of average citizens to help storm victims, saying: "I see rising from the destruction of Katrina a new and profound appreciation for freedom."

Why Gonzales Finally Caved

2007-08-29T00:32:00.000-04:00

Time
Why Gonzales Finally Caved
By Massimo Calabresi

The Administration line on Alberto Gonzales's resignation is that he made the decision on his own, after weeks of consideration. On Friday, at the end of a two-week vacation in Texas, the Attorney General called President Bush and told him "that he felt it would be in the best interest of the [Justice] department," if he stepped down, according to a senior Administration official. The President "reluctantly accepted that decision," the official says, and later asked Gonzales and his wife, Becky, to come down to Crawford, Texas, where Bush has been on vacation. Arriving for an informal lunch with the President and First Lady there on Sunday, Gonzales handed over his resignation in writing and told the President that he'd be able to stay in the job only for another three weeks.

That timing fit with Josh Bolten's deadline for resignations: Bush's chief of staff has asked anyone in the Administration who is planning to leave before the end of Bush's presidency to let him know before Labor Day this year. And the departure also comes conveniently at the tail end of the August doldrums, with Washington still on summer recess and much of the country on vacation. Better to make the move now, the White House figured, than wait for Congress to return and perhaps renew its campaign to oust Gonzales. "You're not going to make a decision with the tip of a bayonet in your face," says a former senior official.

Some White House watchers are pointing to another factor in Gonzales's departure: the resignation earlier this month of Bush's longtime adviser, Karl Rove. Rove had argued that letting Gonzales go would only make matters worse for Bush in the final months of his presidency. "Karl has concerns about a confirmation process where Democrats will try to exploit unfairly that process," says the former senior Administration official. But that official and others say Rove's departure had nothing to do with Bush's decision to accept Gonzales' resignation.

Rove's concerns are not unfounded: Both camps on Capitol Hill saw Gonzaels's departure as an opportunity to dial up the spin to please their respective bases. Texas Senator John Cornyn lamented that the departure would "lead to more posturing and more controversy" in Congress as the Senate debates whomever Bush nominates as a successor. And hints that Gonzales's tenure at Justice may be at the center of a confirmation battle have already emerged in statements from key Democrats. Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy said, "I hope the Attorney General's decision will be a step toward getting to the truth about the level of political influence this White House wields over the Department of Justice." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Gonzales replacement must commit "to cooperate with ongoing congressional oversight into the conduct of the White House in the politicization of federal law enforcement."

Nevertheless, key players in the Administration felt that Gonzales's continued presence in the cabinet was a drag on the department and the White House during a key period of vulnerability for the President, eating up what little political capital the President has to spend on the Hill. For his part, Gonzales was growing increasingly frustrated that issues he cared about, such as stopping gang violence and combating child pornography, have been overshadowed by the controversy surrounding him. "This is not the first time the Attorney General has thought about leaving," says the senior Administration official.

With reporting by Brian Bennett/Washington

Gonzales is Gone, But the Disease Remains

2007-08-29T00:30:00.000-04:00

Huffington Post
Steven G. Brant
Gonzales is Gone, But the Disease Remains

At the conclusion of "The House Lawyer Departs," its lead editorial on the subject, The New York Times says, "Mr. Gonzales, for all of his undeniable deficiencies, merely reflected the principles of this administration. His resignation is a necessary but hardly sufficient step in restoring the nation's commitment to the rule of law."

Contrast this with the words of President Bush, who -- when he went before the cameras to report Attorney General Gonzales's resignation -- said "Al Gonzales is a man of integrity, decency and principle. And I have reluctantly accepted his resignation, with great appreciation for the service that he has provided for our country....After months of unfair treatment that has created a harmful distraction at the Justice Department, Judge Gonzales decided to resign his position, and I accept his decision. It's sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons."

The Rule of Law vs. The Rule of Bush. It doesn't get any clearer than that, folks. President Bush's world remains untouched, unfazed, and undisturbed by the very bipartisan "mud" through which his friend's name was dragged. All that counts are Bush's feelings. Facts? Bush doesn't care about facts.

Having said this, I hope it's clear to you all that we should not really celebrate Gonzales' departure. Why? Because we are dealing with a problem far more pervasive than the work of any one man... far worse than the work, even, of a team led by Bush, Cheney, and Rice... worse, even, than the cancer on the presidency that America cured itself of over 30 years ago.

We are dealing with a systemic condition within our country. For lack of a better term (and with apologies to Walt Disney), I will call it "Living In Fantasyland".

It is a condition that exists in ways big and small throughout our society. From the Enron Fantasyland of Ken Lay...to the "dog-fighting as sport" Fantasyland of the Atlanta Falcons' Michael Vick... from the "I spent as much time as the rescue workers" Fantasyland of Rudy Giuliani... to the "I was lied to by President Bush" Fantasyland of Hillary Clinton (who chose not to read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq before her vote).

People we want to trust -- with our money, our cheers, the future of our country -- are just making stuff up as they go along. Facts? They don't care about facts!

As I said, the cancer on the presidency of Richard Nixon was of limited scope. We were able to contain and eliminate it. And the 93rd Congress -- contrary to popular opinion -- actually got a lot done while it conducted Nixon's impeachment hearings.

But a lot has happened to the American psyche since the 1970s. The "Greed is good" me generation of the 1980s (and the updated version brought to us by the current Bush administration and today's Wall Street) along with the pervasive "you create your own reality" transformational technology personal development trainings (such as est and Landmark Education created by Werner Erhard) launched in the early 1970s are just two of the major cultural trends steering America towards a "You can have it your way no matter what the existing reality tells you is possible" mental belief system.

We know this is how George Bush and his team think, from Ron Suskind's amazing Octboer 17, 2004 article in The New York Times. But what not enough of us seem to realize is that this is a society-wide disease. Al Gore knows the magnitude of this problem. It's the subject of his book The Assault on Reason.

So, what to do? How can truth and facts defend themselves in the face of this very virulent disease? Well, here's my suggestion:

Truth and facts can become known for being about more than what the real bad stuff is. Truth and facts can become know for showing us -- all of us -- the real... honest to God... exciting and adventurous road forward. If I told you that the true nature of what's possible is quite literally "Heaven on Earth," that would get your attention... wouldn't it?

Yes, there are truths and facts about Ken Lay's business dealings, Michael Vicks' leisure activities, and Rudy and Hillary's post-9/11 political calculations. But there are also truths and facts about how much better our world could be, especially if the majority of Americans were to learn what certain research scientists and international development theorists know. And what is there that we all could learn from them?

That it is now scientifically possible to build -- with the support of enlightened business and political leadership, of course -- a world beyond war in our lifetimes!

Now that's something that no pack of lies can give us, no matter how well packaged they are. A world beyond war in our lifetimes can only be the product of the truth.

This brave new world -- if we choose to build it -- will be built on the facts, research, and hard won wisdom of those on the front lines of the sustainable international development movement. For proof that these facts exist, I invite you to explore the work of Amory Lovins, Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart, Business for Social Responsibility, The UN Global Compact, and The Next Great Transformation conference taking place at The Eden Project in October.

There's more to truth and facts than most people know. It can be a great world in which to spend your time... and it's no Fantasyland, either!

Gonzales' Troubling Legacy

2007-08-28T00:29:00.001-04:00

jurist.law.pitt.edu
Gonzales' Troubling Legacy

JURIST Contributing Editor Peter Shane of Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University, says that the resignation of Alberto Gonzales as US Attorney General creates welcome potential for a new direction at a Justice Department politicized and tainted by his fervent embrace of executive power...

One can only hope that today's resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales marks a turning point back to the rule of law in the regulation of executive branch affairs.

Administration backers may hope that Gonzales's successor will be equally fervent in his assertion of presidential prerogative, equally stubborn in the practice of executive branch secrecy, and equally partisan in his willingness to politicize all levels of the Department of Justice. That scenario is unlikely.

The President will not be able to get a Gonzales clone confirmed as Attorney General with the Senate under Democratic control. The Judiciary Committee will insist on a level of openness and cooperation that the Administration has so far been unwilling to provide.

The President could fill the post through a recess appointee, but only at some serious political cost. Congress will not give a recess appointee either the informal deference or the formal legal authority that the White House would want. Especially with a permanent rewrite of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act under discussion, a recess appointee would seriously weaken the Justice Department's position.

As for Gonzales himself, it seem unlikely that his resignation will either increase or decrease his legal vulnerability to congressional subpoenas or his legal capacity to assert executive privilege on particular matters. If possible, however, he now finds himself in an even weaker political position, which could affect the public positions he is able to advocate with any force.

Perhaps the best development for Gonzales is that his resignation likely makes his impeachment a political non-starter. He is not technically immune from impeachment. The only other cabinet official ever impeached, Secretary of War William Belknap, was tried after he had resigned. Because a potential penalty for impeachment is disqualification from federal office, in addition to removal, such a proceeding would not be legally meaningless. Yet, it surely will not happen.

Alberto Gonzales is likely to be remembered for his double-barreled disservice to the law. First, his lack of awareness, concern, or both with respect to the politicization of the Justice Department, combined with his inability to provide a candid, cogent, and consistent explanation for the Department's behavior has demoralized the career lawyers and line prosecutors who are the Department's heart and soul. It will take years to repair the damage.

Second, as White House Counsel and, then, as Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales was a central figure in advancing the most audacious and unjustified claims in American history on behalf of inherent presidential authority. When the two words most likely associated in the public mind with your government service are "torture memo," your legacy is not a good one.

Peter M. Shane is the Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E.
Davis II Chair in Law at Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law.

More Enemies = Greater Profits

2007-08-25T01:25:00.000-04:00

Huffington Post
Robbie Gennet
More Enemies = Greater Profits

What is the psychology of an administration that creates more enemies? Everybody marvels at how we've somehow created more terrorists out of the Iraqupation yet nobody realizes that may be the truest sign of success for BushCo. Wait, you say- I thought we were supposed to make the US safer and reduce the number of terrorists? Yet we now have a rising number of enemies and are currently firing more than 1 BILLION bullets a year at them. This is actually creating a shortage of ammunition for our own police departments at home. As with any situation, if you follow the money, you get the answers, and the answer is this: the Defense and Munitions industries are making a killing (pun intended) on this war. They have made profits on every war because their greatest customers are enemies. Hence, two important facts: one, the more war and number of enemies, the greater the profits. Two, without war and enemies, there are no profits. Therefore, endless war and increasing enemies because it's all about the bottom line.

We have kept ourselves in military operations since WWII not to make us safer or to bring freedom to the world, but chiefly to keep our Defense and Munitions industries alive and profitable. I'm not saying that there haven't been reasonable and righteous reasons for us to be involved in military conflict at certain times since WWII. But the Iraqupation may be the greatest misuse of our military power in our nations history and contrary to popular belief, it has not backfired, at least not for those making money off it. Aside from Defense and Munitions, don't forget the outsourcing of security to companies like Blackwater, creating a parallel army larger than our official one but without the accountability and honor (lest you think that any Blackwater employee killed will be buried at Arlington with a ceremony and a medal). And do not forget Halliburton and KBR, who have not just made tons of money but have actually managed to lose a bunch of it. They are under investigation for bribery, bid rigging, defrauding the military and illegally profiting in Iran. Their answer? Move their headquarters to the UAE. And did you happen to know that the UAE has no extradition treaty? Check it out. How patriotic of Dick Cheney's favorite nation-building company.

It is too idealistic to hope that the people running the Defense industry would have some sort of act of conscience that would make them more concerned with good policy than with obscene profiteering. And it is also too idealistic to hope that Congress can stop BushCo from this great and treacherous collusion with the Media Industrial Complex. Those of us who voted for Democrats who would put an end to this madness are hugely disappointed that they have been unable to make it happen. Truth is, we need 60 votes for that kind of change and we don't have it. Yet. But more than that, we need outrage from American citizens to build into a roar that our government cannot ignore. And until this government of the people is truly reclaimed, endless war will continue. And enemies will increase in size and animosity towards us.

If you are a Democrat living in a district represented by a Republican still supporting the war, you are in a greater position to make a difference than someone living in a Blue state. Are you mad as hell yet? Get madder. Write, call, petition, canvas and start pushing for the change necessary to make the tide turn. Let your representative know that their next election will depend on their vote in Congress and that as of now, they have failed you, failed America and failed our brave troops fighting overseas for a Defense industry that cares nothing about them. The shame is not on those who want to end this war but on those who sent our men and women into a war that will never be won. It is not just about ending this war but ending the illusion about why we are fighting. And until we care enough to stop this madness, we are all complicit in it's inherent evils.

Please do check out my previous post Enemies and Customers about this issue.

Giuliani Boasts of Surplus; Reality Is More Complex

2007-08-25T01:22:00.000-04:00

The New York Times
Giuliani Boasts of Surplus; Reality Is More Complex
By MICHAEL COOPER

Rudolph W. Giuliani has been broadcasting radio advertisements in Iowa and other states far from the city he once led stating that as mayor of New York, he “turned a $2.3 billion deficit into a multibillion dollar surplus.”

The assertion, which Mr. Giuliani has repeated on the trail as he has promoted his fiscal conservatism, is somewhat misleading, independent fiscal monitors said. In fact, Mr. Giuliani left his successor, Michael R. Bloomberg, with a bigger deficit than the one Mr. Giuliani had to deal with when he arrived in 1994. And that deficit would have been large even if the city had not been attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

“He inherited a gap, and he left a gap for his successor,” Ronnie Lowenstein, the director of the city’s Independent Budget Office, a nonpartisan agency that monitors the city budget, said of Mr. Giuliani. “The city was budgeting as though the good times were not going to end, but sooner or later they always do.”

The Giuliani campaign defended the advertisement, noting that it merely states that Mr. Giuliani created a multibillion-dollar surplus, not that he passed one on to his successor.

Mr. Giuliani’s eight years of fiscal stewardship of the city was initially marked by a new brand of conservative budgeting principles in which he cut spending, cut taxes and cut the payroll. Later, when the booming stock market of the late 1990s pumped revenues into the city’s coffers, Mr. Giuliani was able to cut taxes, increase spending above the rate of inflation, and still post big surpluses.

But the economy cooled near the end of Mr. Giuliani’s second term, and he spent most of the roughly $3 billion surplus he had accumulated to balance his final budget, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2002. Even before the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Giuliani projected that his successor would face a $2.8 billion gap the next year. After the attacks, that gap climbed to $4.8 billion in a $42.3 billion budget.

Faced with such a huge deficit, which continued to grow as the economic aftershocks of the attacks continued and the costs of some of the Giuliani administration’s policies came due, the next mayor, Mr. Bloomberg, was forced to take the extraordinary steps of borrowing to pay for operating expenses, cutting programs, and raising property taxes by 18.5 percent to balance the budget.

Joseph J. Lhota, a former budget director and deputy mayor to Mr. Giuliani, said that Mr. Giuliani kept the rate of spending growth during his eight years in office below that of the state and federal governments, and most other states. Mr. Lhota credited Mr. Giuliani with making tax cuts a priority for the city — Mr. Giuliani often speaks of having cut taxes 23 times — and of using the budget to push his priorities, like beefing up public safety.

“Prior to Mayor Giuliani, there never was a discussion of lowering taxes in New York,” Mr. Lhota said. “By the end the debate became, ‘Which taxes should we cut?’ ”

Mr. Lhota said that the Giuliani administration cut the budget shortly before leaving office to leave the city in a better position. He noted that the fiscal year in which Mr. Bloomberg took over from Mr. Giuliani ended with a surplus of $677 million. But that surplus was fed in part by nearly $500 million in borrowing by the Bloomberg administration. And it made only a small dent in the huge gap Mr. Bloomberg had to close that June in his first budget — a gap inherited from the Giuliani administration, much of which was expected even before Sept. 11.

Mr. Giuliani often promotes his fiscal conservatism on the campaign trail to try to appeal to Republican voters who might be wary of his support of abortion rights, gun control and gay rights. But an examination of his fiscal record as mayor of New York City shows that his legacy defies easy ideological labeling.

Mr. Giuliani took office in 1994 and immediately administered a strong dose of fiscally conservative policies on a city known for generous social services programs and union contracts. The city was near the end of a long economic downturn, and Mr. Giuliani cut taxes while slashing the work force and curbing spending to close the $2.3 billion budget gap he inherited.

Mr. Lhota said the administration faced a severe cash crunch when it took office. Abraham M. Lackman, Mr. Giuliani’s first budget director, said that in addition to having to close a $2.3 billion deficit in its first budget, the administration took office worrying that it might not have enough cash on hand to meet payroll because some of the revenues that were counted on in the inherited budget were not likely to materialize.

Mr. Giuliani pushed through an austere budget that year. He went on to push mergers of city agencies, incorporating the old transit and housing police forces into the New York Police Department. He sold the city’s television station. And he cut taxes.

But Mr. Giuliani eased up on the reins of spending during his second term, as the stock market boom pumped tax revenues into the city coffers. An analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission, a business-backed fiscal watchdog group, found that spending rose an average of 6.3 percent a year during Mr. Giuliani’s second term — well above the rate of inflation. And Mr. Giuliani went on a hiring spree, in the end leaving the city work force slightly bigger than he found it, but changing its composition by adding more teachers and police officers while shedding jobs in social services agencies.

In 2000, near the height of the stock market boom, Mr. Giuliani supported a measure to put less money in the pension funds for the city’s retirees. By recognizing the funds’ investment gains at once — instead of phasing them in over years to smooth out sharp gains and losses — he was able to spend $800 million over two years that the city otherwise would have had to invest in its pension funds. Fiscal monitors, including the city comptroller’s office, warned that the practice was irresponsible, because the money could be needed to cushion the blow of a market downturn.

To win the support of the city’s unions, which needed to sign off on the pension change, Mr. Giuliani agreed to sweeten the pensions of city workers, eliminating the payments that some were required to contribute to the pension system and giving others up to two years of credit toward their retirements.

“I’ve never had a negotiation that went so smoothly or so effectively,” recalled Randi Weingarten, who had a seat at the table as the chairwoman of the Municipal Labor Committee, an umbrella group of city unions.

But when Mr. Bloomberg took office amid a deteriorating economy, the value of the pension funds dropped significantly, forcing the new mayor to pump more money into them when the city could least afford to.

Long before Sept. 11, fiscal monitors warned that Mr. Giuliani’s last budget would leave his successor facing a big gap. In the spring of 2001, the state comptroller’s office said that the city was projecting the largest out-year gaps in a generation.

E. J. McMahon, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research organization that has often been supportive of Mr. Giuliani, wrote an article that July warning that “Seven years after Mayor Giuliani led New York out of its last fiscal crisis, the city’s budget has now come almost full circle.”

Bush's Bogus Vietnam History Kills

2007-08-25T01:19:00.000-04:00

middle-east-online.com
Bush's Bogus Vietnam History Kills

The specter of Vietnam has returned to hover over the deserts of Iraq, this time conjured up by the younger George Bush to justify an open-ended war, a war he is determined to pursue regardless of the number of US soldiers and Iraqis who die and the number of new terrorists it creates, says Robert Parry.

It is often said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. But a much worse fate may await countries whose leaders distort and falsify history. Such countries are doomed to experience even bloodier miscalculations.

That was the case with Germany after World War I when Adolf Hitler’s Nazis built a political movement based in part on the myth that weak politicians in Berlin had stabbed brave German troops in the back when they were on the verge of victory.

And it appears to be the case again today as President George W. Bush presents the history of the Vietnam War as a Rambo movie with the heroic narrative that if only the US military had stuck it out, the war would have been won.

Or, more likely, the black wall of the Vietnam War Veterans Memorial would stretch most of the way to the US Capitol.

After hearing his selective historical rendition of the Vietnam experience in his Aug. 22 address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, one is tempted to ask Bush what he would have done as President in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Presumably, Bush would have prolonged or escalated the Vietnam War, although it’s doubtful he would have called up the Texas Air National Guard where he was safely ensconced, while skipping his flight physical and seeking an early discharge.

In his speech, Bush justified an open-ended Vietnam War by citing the carnage that followed the US military withdrawal.

“One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like ‘boat people,’ ‘re-education camps,’ and ‘killing fields,’” Bush said.

In Bush’s version of history, condemnation should fall on Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford for making the painful decisions that eventually extricated the United States from the Vietnam quagmire – rather than on Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon for inserting or keeping US troops in the middle of the Indochinese civil war.

Bush also ignores the carnage that was inflicted by US aerial bombings and massive firepower. Historians estimate that some two million Indochinese were killed during the war, along with about 57,000 American soldiers.

Also, by invading Cambodia and authorizing secret carpet-bombing of the countryside, President Nixon spread the chaos into that politically fragile country, opening the door first to a military dictatorship and then to the rise of the fanatical Khmer Rouge.

Friends, Not Enemies

In his historical account, Bush leaves out, too, the longer-term reality and the fact that the great communist enemies of Asia – China and Vietnam – did not turn out to be the strategic threats to the United States that Cold Warriors insisted they would be. Dominoes did not fall all across Asia.

Indeed, today’s biggest threats from China appear to be the quality of the cheap goods it manufactures for American companies and its ownership of large quantities of US government bonds. Bush also has exchanged friendly visits with the leaders of Vietnam.

But that history and reality disappear in Bush’s selective account. Just as he cherry-picked intelligence on Iraq to justify his 2003 invasion, he is selecting what facts from history serve his political ends now.

In his VFW speech, Bush also continued his practice of baiting critics of his Iraq War policy as essentially imbecilic and anti-American. He accused them of believing “that if the United States would just leave a place like Iraq those who kill our troops or target civilians would no longer threaten us.”

In truth, Iraq War critics have argued not that al-Qaeda would stop being a threat but that Bush’s policies are playing into al-Qaeda’s hands. Not only did the US invasion of Iraq divert US forces from their pursuit of Osama bin Laden, but the Iraq War has proved to be a boon to al-Qaeda in recruiting, fundraising and regrouping for new terrorist attacks.

The evidence is that al-Qaeda actually wants the United States to remain bogged down in Iraq indefinitely so the organization can continue to exploit the American occupation.

In letters to Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda leaders, holed up along the Pakistani-Afghan border, warned that al-Qaeda’s position in Iraq might collapse if the United States left, removing both the magnet attracting young recruits and the glue holding together the fragile coalition between foreign jihadists and Iraqi nationalists.

A July 2005 letter attributed to al-Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri urged Zarqawi to talk up the idea of an Islamic “caliphate,” so the young jihadists, drawn to Iraq to fight the Americans, wouldn’t just “lay down their weapons and silence the fighting zeal” once the Americans left.

The “Zawahiri letter,” which was intercepted by US intelligence, also predicted that an American departure would force the depleted force of al-Qaeda fighters into a desperate battle simply to carve out an enclave inside Iraq.

In a December 2005 letter, another top aide to Osama bin Laden, known as “Atiyah,” lectured Zarqawi on the need to act more respectfully toward Iraqi Sunni leaders so al-Qaeda could put down deeper roots in Iraq.

Atiyah emphasized the importance of keeping US forces trapped in Iraq. “Prolonging the war is in our interest,” Atiyah wrote in a letter that was discovered by US forces after Zarqawi’s death in June 2006. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Al-Qaeda’s Fragile Foothold.”]

Bush-bin Laden Symbiosis

By prolonging the Iraq War now, Bush is doing exactly what al-Qaeda wants. “As long as I’m Commander in Chief, we will fight to win,” Bush told the cheering VFW crowd.

In other words, Bush and the terrorists share a symbiotic relationship with Bush using the “war on terror” to expand his presidential powers at home and bin Laden exploiting the US occupation of Iraq to enhance his standing in the Islamic world.

Now Bush has mixed in the emotional issue of the Vietnam War, as his father did during the first Persian Gulf War in 1991.

Near the end of that standoff with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, President George H.W. Bush spurned a Russian plan for getting Iraqi forces to withdraw peacefully from Kuwait. Instead, Bush wanted a successful ground war to exorcise the demons of Vietnam from the American psyche.

After US ground forces administered a 100-hour drubbing to the overmatched Iraqi troops, the elder George Bush declared in his first post-war remarks, “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.” [For details, see our new book, Neck Deep.]

Still, the elder George Bush stopped US forces before they could march up the Euphrates River and capture Baghdad. He recognized that a military occupation of Iraq would alienate the Arab world and would sink the United States into another Vietnam-style quagmire, which could again embitter the American people about military adventures.

Sixteen years later, however, the specter of Vietnam has returned to hover over the deserts of Iraq, this time conjured up by the younger George Bush to justify an open-ended war, a war he is determined to pursue regardless of the number of US soldiers and Iraqis who die and the number of new Islamic terrorists it creates.

Hezbollah exhibits 'victory' over Israel

2007-08-24T00:48:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! News
Hezbollah exhibits 'victory' over Israel
By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer

A replica of a long-range missile greets visitors, and posters mock Israel and the United States.

Welcome to "Spider's Web," a museum south of Beirut that has become Hezbollah's latest propaganda tool — showcasing what it says was a divine victory over Israel in last summer's war.

The museum exhibits war souvenirs — helmets, boots, ammunition and armored vehicles captured from the Israelis or left on Lebanon's battlefields. And it has gruesome photos of Lebanese civilians killed in Israeli airstrikes.

The exhibit has drawn condemnation from Israel. In Lebanon, there has been no overt criticism, although the war deepened divisions among Lebanese, many of whom opposed Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers that set off the conflict on July 12, 2006.

The museum opened last month in the Dahieh district, a Hezbollah stronghold pounded to rubble by missiles during the war, and runs until Sept. 10.

Its name was inspired by a speech in which Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said Israel's military might was flimsy and weaker than a spider's web — staple rhetoric from a militant group facing an enemy armed with a powerful air force and thought to hold nuclear weapons.

The idea is to "commemorate Hezbollah's historic, strategic and divine victory in an honest and artistic way," Ali Ahmed, a spokesman for Hezbollah's media activities unit.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said the exhibit "glorifies hatred, extremism and violence, and should be condemned as such."

During the war, more than 1,000 Lebanese were killed in 34 days of Israeli airstrikes. Hezbollah launched nearly 4,000 rockets at Israel; the Israeli death toll was 119 Israeli soldiers and 39 civilians. Most experts agree that Israel failed to achieve its declared objectives of crushing Hezbollah and freeing its soldiers — a point the museum plays off heavily.

A replica of a Hezbollah Khaibar missile is at the museum entrance. Inside, Hezbollah guides walk visitors past mannequins depicting Hezbollah guerrillas and dead Israeli soldiers.

"See here how Israel was defeated and humiliated by the resistance," said one guide, pointing out a large metal chunk from the wreckage of an Israeli Yasur CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter.

The guide, who goes by the name Abu Ali, carried a walkie-talkie as he eagerly lectured visitors. "What you see here constitutes only 1 percent of what we have," he said.

A French woman touring the museum said she had mixed feelings.

"They are using modern ways of communication to get their message across," said the woman, who would only identify herself by her middle name, Marie, for security concerns. "Who knows if that's good or not?"

The museum displays a poster ridiculing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for saying during the war that the fighting was part of the "birth pangs of a new Middle East."

Another poster mocks Israel's former chief of staff, Dan Halutz, quoting him as saying at the war's start: "We will eradicate Hezbollah within three days." Halutz resigned in January after widespread criticism of his performance.

The Israeli-made Merkava tank features prominently in the museum. One tank seized by the guerrillas is displayed in a huge crater, surrounded by mannequins of dead Israeli soldiers.

The exhibit is not the first organized by Hezbollah, but new elements have been added this time, including replicas of sandbagged Hezbollah bunkers.

One section is devoted to a new computer game, "Special Force 2: Tale of the Truthful Pledge," that allows players to shoot mock Israeli soldiers and blow up tanks. "Be one of God's men," says the advertisement for the game, shown on Hezbollah's Al-Manar television.

The game sells for $10 at a shop at the exhibit, along with Hezbollah DVDs and key chains.

The exhibit ends with an audiovisual presentation featuring what are said to be the cries of dying and wounded Israeli soldiers, followed by Nasrallah saying: "The time of victories has started and the time for defeats is over."

That show left Roula Sabra, a 36-year-old mother of three, clapping tearfully.

"I've come to show my children what victory and dignity is," she said. "You feel such pride and security."

Bush: there will be no pullout from Iraq while I'm president

2007-08-23T02:00:00.000-04:00

guardian.co.uk
Bush: there will be no pullout from Iraq while I'm president
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
The Guardian

President George Bush sought to buy more time for his Iraq "surge" strategy yesterday by making a risky comparison for the first time with the bloodshed and chaos that followed the US pullout from Vietnam.

Making it clear he will resist congressional pressure next month for an early withdrawal, he signalled that US troops, whom he hailed as the "greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known", will be in Iraq as long as he is president. He also said the consequences of leaving "without getting the job done would be devastating", and "the enemy would follow us home".

Mr Bush's speech came on the day that the US suffered one of its highest daily death tolls since the 2003 invasion, with 14 troops killed when a Black Hawk helicopter crashed.

In a speech to army veterans in Kansas City, Mr Bush invoked one of the US's biggest military disasters in support of keeping troops in Iraq: "One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people', 're-education camps' and 'killing fields'."

The speech was aimed primarily at what White House officials privately describe as the "Defeatocrats", the Democratic congressmen trying to push Mr Bush into an early withdrawal. The issue is set to come to a head next month when the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, gives a progress report to Congress.

Gen Petraeus is expected to say that the surge has produced military successes but that there has only been limited progress on the political front.

In relation to the latter, Mr Bush was forced yesterday to backtrack after 24 hours earlier expressing frustration with the Iraqi prime minister, Nour al-Maliki. Alarmed by the harsh reaction of Mr Maliki, Mr Bush hurriedly rewrote his speech to praise him: "Prime Minister Maliki's a good guy, a good man with a difficult job and I support him."

The speech overall reflected the White House belief that it is shifting American public opinion behind the surge - the injection of 30,000 extra US troops into Iraq that has brought the total US force in the country to its highest level, 165,000.

The Bush administration wants to keep the surge going until at least next April, at which point the overstretched military will be forced to begin reducing troop numbers anyway.

Although Gen Petraeus has not yet completed his report, a Pentagon source said the US presence could be down to 110,000 by the end of next year. The army, as of yesterday, had no plans to replace five brigades, each consisting of 3,400 to 4,000 soldiers, when their 15-month tours expire next summer.

Freedom's Watch, a conservative group, yesterday launched a $15m (£7.5m) advertising campaign in 20 states saying: "It's no time to quit. It's no time for politics."

Mr Bush's former White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, who works for the group, said: "We want to get the message to both Democrats and Republicans: don't cut and run, fully fund the troops, and victory is the only objective."

The White House has been emboldened by a Gallup poll published yesterday showing approval ratings for the Democratic-led Congress had dropped to 18%, the lowest since the survey of the public views of the legislature began in 1974, and an earlier Gallup poll showing support for the surge had jumped in a month from 22% to 31%.

Two of the most influential senators on military affairs, the Democratic chairman of the armed services committee, Carl Levin, an advocate of an early withdrawal, and John Warner, a veteran Republican who recently broke ranks with Mr Bush over the war, issued a statement this week lauding the surge's "tangible results".

Mr Bush, until yesterday, had strenuously avoided making explicit references to Vietnam. It is a gamble, risking reminding Americans that Vietnam was a military quagmire and reminding them of the shambolic retreat from the embassy rooftop in Saigon on the day that a Black Hawk crashed in Iraq killing 14 US soldiers.

But Mr Bush tried to turn the argument around as he made a series of contentious political parallels. He argued that US involvement in the far east had turned it from a continent in 1939 with only two democracies - Australia and New Zealand - into one where democracy was the norm: he mentioned Japan, South Korea and Vietnam.

"In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule, in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation and torture and execution," Mr Bush said.

Some historians argue that it was the US covert bombing of Cambodia that produced the Khmer Rouge rather than US withdrawal from Vietnam.

Mr Bush added: "In Vietnam, former allies of the United States and government workers and intellectuals and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousand perished. Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea."

He said that there had been lots of critics of US involvement in Vietnam at the time. But he quoted from Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American, the words "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused", implying that, with the benefit of hindsight, they were wrong, just as critics of the Iraq war will later seen to be misguided.

He will expand on that in a speech next week in which he will say he has not abandoned his ambitious idea that Iraq could be in the vanguard of bringing democracy to the Middle East.

Since the British government hinted recently that it planned an early pullout from Iraq, it has come under increasing pressure from the White House. US general Jack Keane yesterday became the latest American to criticise the proposed British move.

He told the BBC that the situation in Basra was deteriorating. "From a military perspective I know what the [US] commanders are trying to avoid is having to send reinforcements to the south from forces that are needed in the central part of Iraq. That situation could arise if the situation gets worse in Basra if and when British troops leave," he said.

Literary allusions

Bush's "better motives" quote comes from Graham Greene's The Quiet American, a searing attack on US foreign policy set in Saigon in 1952. It is the story of jaded British reporter Thomas Fowler and his relationship with younger US spy Alden Pyle, told against the backdrop of the French battle with the Viet Minh - precursor to the Vietnam war. "Innocence is a kind of insanity," says Fowler of Pyle as he blunders into the conflict, sponsoring a corrupt militia leader based on real nationalist Trinh Minh Thé. Fowler's jealousy over Pyle's interest in his Vietnamese mistress and distaste for his methods culminate in a bomb attack in Saigon. A film version was scheduled for release in 2001, starring Michael Caine. It was test screened on September 10 but postponed for a year after the 9/11 attacks.

U.S. Army major, his wife and sister indicted on Iraq bribery charges

2007-08-23T01:59:00.000-04:00

U.S. Army major indicted on Iraq bribery charges

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Army major, his wife and sister were indicted on Wednesday in a suspected scheme to accept millions of dollars in bribes for Defense Department contracts in Iraq and Kuwait.

The indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Texas charges John Cockerham, his wife, Melissa, and his sister Carolyn Blake, with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, commit bribery and obstruct justice while Cockerham was a contracting officer in Kuwait in 2004 and 2005.

All three were also indicted on money-laundering conspiracy charges. Cockerham was additionally charged with three counts of bribery.

The Justice Department said that Cockerham, his wife, Blake, and unidentified co-conspirators accepted payments totaling $9.6 million in exchange for contracts for bottled water and other goods and services for U.S. troops in Iraq and Kuwait.

Cockerham guaranteed that a contractor would receive a contract in return for a payment, according to the Justice Department. It added that his wife and sister collected millions of dollars on his behalf and deposited the money in bank accounts and safe deposit boxes in Kuwait and Dubai.

If convicted on all the conspiracy charges, all three could face up to 20 years in prison and fines totaling $750,000 each.

Cockerham could receive an additional sentence of up to 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if found guilty of bribery.

The Cockerhams' attorney, Jimmy Parks, could not be immediately reached for comment. Parks said last month that Cockerham was a decorated Army veteran and the charges against them "just don't compute."

Cockerham and his wife have been held since July 22 when they were arrested at their home at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. Blake was arrested three days later in Dallas.

CIA missed chances to tackle al-Qaida

2007-08-22T00:05:00.000-04:00

Yahoo! News
CIA missed chances to tackle al-Qaida
By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer

The CIA's top leaders failed to use their available powers, never developed a comprehensive plan to stop al-Qaida and missed crucial opportunities to thwart two hijackers in the run-up to Sept. 11, the agency's own watchdog concluded in a bruising report released Tuesday.

Completed in June 2005 and kept classified until now, the 19-page executive summary finds extensive fault with the actions of senior CIA leaders and others beneath them. "The agency and its officers did not discharge their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner," the CIA inspector general found.

"They did not always work effectively and cooperatively," the report stated.

Yet the review team led by Inspector General John Helgerson found neither a "single point of failure nor a silver bullet" that would have stopped the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

In a statement, CIA Director Michael Hayden said the decision to release the report was not his choice or preference, but that he was making the report available as required by Congress in a law President Bush signed earlier this month.

"I thought the release of this report would distract officers serving their country on the front lines of a global conflict," Hayden said. "It will, at a minimum, consume time and attention revisiting ground that is already well plowed."

The report does cover terrain heavily examined by a congressional inquiry and the Sept. 11 Commission. However, the CIA watchdog's report goes further than previous reviews to examine the personal failings of individuals within the agency who led the pre-9/11 efforts against al-Qaida.

Helgerson's team found that no CIA employees violated the law or were part of any misconduct. But it still called on then-CIA Director Porter Goss to form accountability boards to look at the performance of specific individuals to determine whether reprimands were called for.

The inquiry boards were recommended for officials including former CIA Director George Tenet, who resigned in July 2004; his Deputy Director for Operations Jim Pavitt; Counterterrorism Center Chief Cofer Black and the agency's executive director, who was not further identified. Other less senior officials were also tagged for accountability reviews, but identifying information was removed from the report's public version.

In a statement, Tenet said the inspector general is "flat wrong" about the lack of plan.

"There was in fact a robust plan, marked by extraordinary effort and dedication to fighting terrorism, dating back to long before 9/11," he said. "Without such an effort, we would not have been able to give the president a plan on Sept. 15, 2001, that led to the routing of the Taliban, chasing al-Qaida from its Afghan sanctuary and combating terrorists across 92 countries."

In October 2005, Goss rejected the recommendation for the inquiry boards. He said he had spoken personally with the current employees named in the report, and he trusted their abilities and dedication. "This report unveiled no mysteries," Goss said.

Hayden stuck by Goss's decision.

Providing a glimpse of a series of shortfalls laid out in the longer, still-classified report, the executive summary says:

• U.S. spy agencies, which were overseen by Tenet, lacked a comprehensive strategic plan to counter Osama bin Laden prior to 9/11. The inspector general concluded that Tenet "by virtue of his position, bears ultimate responsibility for the fact that no such strategic plan was ever created."

• The CIA's analysis of al-Qaida before Sept. 2001 was lacking. No comprehensive report focusing on bin Laden was written after 1993, and no comprehensive report laying out the threats of 2001 was assembled. "A number of important issues were covered insufficiently or not at all," the report found.

• The CIA and the National Security Agency tussled over their responsibilities in dealing with al-Qaida well into 2001. Only Tenet's personal involvement could have led to a timely resolution, the report concluded.

• The CIA station charged with monitoring bin Laden — code-named Alec Station — was overworked, lacked operational experience, expertise and training. The report recommended forming accountability boards for the CIA Counterterror Center chiefs from 1998 to 2001, including Black.

• Although 50 to 60 people read at least one CIA cable about two of the hijackers, the information wasn't shared with the proper offices and agencies. "That so many individuals failed to act in this case reflects a systemic breakdown.... Basically, there was no coherent, functioning watch-listing program," the report said. The report again called for further review of Black and his predecessor.

While blame is heaped on Tenet and his deputies, the report also says that Tenet was forcefully engaged in counterterrorism efforts and personally sounded the alarm before Congress, the military and policymakers. In a now well-known 1998 memo, he declared, "We are at war."

The trouble, the report said, was follow-up.

The inspector general did take exception to findings of Congress' joint inquiry into 9/11. For instance, the congressional inquiry found that the CIA was reluctant to seek authority to assassinate bin Laden. Instead, the inspector general believed the problem was the agency's limited covert-action capabilities.

The CIA's reliance on a group of sources with questionable reliability "proved insufficient to mount a credible operation against bin Laden," the report said. "Efforts to develop other options had limited potential prior to 9/11."

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, said the CIA has learned from the past and has corrected many of these shortcomings, but has to do more.

"Sadly, the CIA's 9/11 accountability review serves as a sobering reminder that the Bush Administration policies for the past six years have failed to capture or kill Osama bin Laden," the West Virginia Democrat said. "Nor have the administration's policies deprived Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaida leaders of the safe haven they need to plot against the United States."

Financial job cuts soar on housing woes

2007-08-22T00:04:00.000-04:00

Reuters
Financial job cuts soar on housing woes
By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A deepening U.S. housing slump has caused an alarming surge in job losses at U.S. financial services companies, and the end is nowhere in sight, consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said on Tuesday.

The industry has announced 87,962 job cuts so far this year, 75 percent more than the 50,327 recorded for all of 2006, Challenger said. Nearly one-fourth of this year's cuts have been announced in August alone.

Of this year's cuts, 35,830, or 41 percent, were tied to housing market troubles, including riskier subprime mortgages. Job cuts by real estate and construction firms totaled 21,620, more than twice the number for all of 2006, Challenger said.

"Many companies expected the mortgage situation to implode; they've just been wondering when the bubble would burst," Chief Executive John Challenger said in an interview. "But many are stopping on a dime, shutting down operations.

"Companies are not surprised by what's happening, but the reality of the situation and the speed with which it occurred is shocking," Challenger added. He said it could be months before housing-related job cuts peak.

In the last week, investment bank Bear Stearns Cos, credit card issuer Capital One Financial Corp and mortgage lenders Countrywide Financial Corp and First Magnus Financial Corp announced 8,640 mortgage-related job cuts, Challenger said.

Another 2,400 cuts were announced by SunTrust Banks Inc as part of the bank's existing cost-cutting program.

Many companies exposed to the housing market have struggled with rising delinquencies and foreclosures as mortgage rates have reset higher and housing price appreciation has slowed.

Meanwhile, credit conditions have tightened as investors have grown unwilling to buy home loans once thought safe, starving many lenders of cash they need to operate normally. Dozens of mortgage lenders have quit the industry this year.

April has been the year's busiest month for financial job cuts, Challenger said. That month, companies announced 33,789 cuts, including 17,000 by Citigroup Inc and 3,200 by bankrupt mortgage lender New Century Financial Corp.

Job cuts are mounting as credit losses widen.

On Tuesday, the government's Office of Thrift Supervision said troubled assets, or loans at least 90 days past due, rose at savings and loans it regulates to $14.2 billion in the second quarter from $9.5 billion a year earlier.

Meanwhile, home foreclosure filings in July surged 93 percent from a year earlier and rose 9 percent from June, to 179,599, according to a Tuesday report by research firm RealtyTrac.

John Challenger said it's understandable for mortgage workers to feel whipsawed. Countrywide, for example, cut 500 jobs last week after having added 6,931 jobs from January to July, with increases in every calendar month.

"It's devastating (for morale)," he said. "It's hard to keep morale up, given the boom-bust nature of the mortgage sector."

(Additional reporting by John Poirier and Patrick Rucker in Washington, D.C.)

Matt Cooper Says Rove DID Leak Valerie Plame’s Identity To Him

2007-08-20T00:51:00.000-04:00

CrooksandLiars.com
Matt Cooper Says Rove DID Leak Valerie Plame’s Identity To Him: UPDATED!
By: Logan Murphy

Following Karl Rove’s appearance this morning on “Meet The Press” David Gregory (who is involved in the Plame scandal. More on that later.) held a round table discussion which included former Time Magazine reporter Matt Cooper. Cooper, who was dead center in the Valerie Plame scandal, stops just short of calling Karl Rove a liar, insisting that he did, in fact, leak Valerie Plame’s name to him in 2003.

Play

Karl Rove’s denial from earlier in the program:

Play

Gregory: Matt Cooper, let’s pick up on an aspect of the interview with, with Karl Rove having to do with the leak case, the CIA leak case, that you were part of as well. And something’s that’s very interesting, he, he went out of his way to say, “I would not have been a confirming source on this kind of information” and taking issue with, with Novak’s testimony in his column that he knew who Valerie Plame was. He said he would never confirm that information. That’s different from your experience with him.

Cooper: Yeah, I, I think he was dissembling, to put it charitably. Look, Karl Rove told me about Valerie Plame’s identity on July 11th, 2003. I called him because Ambassador Wilson was in the news that week. I didn’t know Ambassador Wilson even had a wife until I talked to Karl Rove and he said that she worked at the agency and she worked on WMD. I mean, to imply that he didn’t know about it or that this was all the leak…

Gregory: Or that he had heard it from somebody else…

Cooper: …by someone else, or he heard it as some rumor out in the hallway is, is nonsense.

Gregory: But he makes no apologies to Valerie Plame.

Cooper: Karl Rove never apologizes. That’s not what he does..

John Amato: Cooper calls Rove a liar, plain and simple—in a dissembling way of course…

The Transformation of the Vice Presidency

2007-08-20T00:49:00.000-04:00

The Huffington Post
Bruce Schulman
The Transformation of the Vice Presidency

Dick Cheney is widely acknowledged as the most influential vice president in the nation's history. His tenure as No. 2 represents the culmination of a half-century long transformation of the nation's second highest office.

Remaking what had been an essentially political position -- useful in the campaign but empty after Inauguration Day -- into a central institution of government, Cheney and President George Bush have crafted a new power center in American politics, a reservoir of executive power free not only from congressional oversight and public scrutiny, but also from the Cabinet departments and even the normal workings of the White House.

Late night talk show hosts had a field day with Cheney's recent claims that his office belonged to neither the executive nor the legislative branch. But the vice president seemed to have the last laugh. By insulating his office from political influence -- from accountability of any kind, Cheney has helped create a novel institution in American governance.

Certainly, few of his predecessors could have anticipated Cheney's role. For most of the nation's history, the vice presidency was regarded as a cipher, and many of the office's occupants deserved Johnny Carson's jibe that in America anyone can grow up to be president and anyone who doesn't grow up can be vice president.

John Adams, the first man to hold the office, called the post "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." Adams liked to joke about a poor, bereaved mother with two sons. One went off to sea, the other became vice president... and neither was heard from again.

Nearly every one of Adams's successors shared his opinion. Woodrow Wilson's vice president, Thomas R. Marshall, claimed that the vice president "is like a man in a cataleptic state. He cannot speak. He cannot move. He suffers no pain. And yet he is conscious of all that goes on around him."

From the 19th century through the 1960s, the vice presidency mattered only during presidential campaigns, in the brief window between the party nominating conventions and the election in November. Presidential candidates selected running mates to strengthen the ticket outside their home region.

In 1960, for example, Democrat John F. Kennedy chose Lyndon B. Johnson to strengthen his candidacy in Texas and across the South, while Republican Richard M. Nixon selected Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge to blunt his rival's strength in the Northeast. Lodge helped Nixon hold normally Republican New Hampshire and Vermont against the New Englander Kennedy, but it was L.B.J.'s ability to deliver Texas that won the narrow election for J.F.K.

Vice presidential nominations could also heal breeches within the parties. The 1880 GOP ticket paired Chester Arthur, a representative of the Republican "Stalwarts" who opposed civil service reform and looked askance on reconciliation with the defeated South, with the "Half-Breed" James Garfield.

In 1976, Ronald Reagan updated this tradition when he named Richard Schweiker as his running mate weeks before the Republican convention. Reagan tapped the liberal Pennsylvania senator in an unsuccessful effort to reach out to moderates in his party and wrest the nomination from the incumbent President Gerald R. Ford.

Since the 1960s, however, the vice presidency has all but lost this political role. While some candidates have selected running mates to make a splash that might generate favorable publicity -- for example, Walter F. Mondale's selection of the first woman nominee to run on a major party ticket, Geraldine Ferraro, in 1984, or Al Gore's tapping the first Jew, Joseph Lieberman -- campaigns no longer expect vice presidential candidates to deliver specific regions or constituencies.

Rather than balancing the ticket, presidential nominees often use running mates to reinforce their own message. Bill Clinton, a white Protestant Southern New Democrat chose Gore, another white Protestant Southern New Democrat, in 1992. Certainly, no one today expects the veep to affect the outcome of the general election.

But while the vice presidency has lost its political importance, the office has become steadily more important. Historically, the position had been at nest a ceremonial post, often even less. Vice presidents rarely attended important meetings, saw secret materials, or even entered the White House. Harry Truman, for example, did not learn about the atomic bomb until he became president. For L.B.J., the office was "filled with trips around the world, chauffeurs, men saluting, people clapping, chairmanships of councils, but in the end it is nothing." He "detested every minute of it."

That began to change during the 1970s, when Jimmy Carter created the modern vice presidency. Carter installed Mondale in the West wing (no previous VP had a White House office), granted him access to classified materials, and met with him privately every week. Clinton and Gore extended this role; the vice president became an influential advisor shaping policies such as the deficit reduction package and the NATO intervention in Kosovo. Gore also directed the president's "reinventing government" initiative and was able to install his own people in key administration positions, like former aide Carol Browner as EPA Director and longtime friend Reed Hundt as FCC Chairman.

Cheney marks the culmination of these trends. Not only did Cheney do little to balance the ticket with George W. Bush, he is the first sitting vice president since 1952 not to seek the presidency after his boss bows out. Immune to political pressure, the vice president works in unprecedented secrecy. He rarely publishes his calendar, destroys his visitor logs, and even refuses to release the size and names of his staff.

Within this insulated bubble, taking advantage of that privileged position, the president has granted Cheney wide authority in matters ranging from treatment of captured terror suspects to energy policy, supreme court nominations to water rights disputes. More than anything else, Cheney has used his position to expand the unchecked authority of the White House, reclaiming some of the perquisites of the imperial presidency that Congress had removed back when a younger Cheney served under President Ford.

Cheney has dramatically completed the transformation of the vice presidency from running mate into surrogate chief of staff. To be sure, it is unlikely that future VPs will not harbor ambitions to seek the presidency in their own right and care so little about public approval (though some presidential candidates might emulate the model of choosing an elder statesman running mate immune to political influence).

But future presidents will likely desire the expanded authority, freedom of movement and the freedom from scrutiny they derive from such a powerful asset. For better or worse, the vice presidency is likely to be a power center for years to come.

TV Ads: Bush-Petraeus 10-Year Plan Means a Draft

2007-08-20T00:46:00.000-04:00

Huffington Post
TV Ads: Bush-Petraeus 10-Year Plan Means a Draft
Tom Matzzie

Americans have seen some news reports over the last few days suggesting that the White House "might-maybe-could-possibly" bring some troops home from Iraq next year. If this happens, that's great. But don't break out the confetti just yet.

Every other indicator is that these are fairy tales cooked up by the White House PR machine to try to cauterize their bleeding support. Almost like clock-work the White House breaks the glass of their magical PR machine every time they're about to lose it.

The story hasn't changed. This is still an endless war. And, now a military draft is on the table.

As part of Iraq Summer, a project of Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, a new TV ad called "DRAFT" blows the whistle on this double-talk from the Bush administration.

The ad makes three points.

1. The Republicans targeted in the ads continue to rubber-stamp whatever Bush wants in Iraq -- despite what they might be saying to their constituents.

2. Bush's general, Gen. David Petraeus, says the mission he has been given by the president could take 10 years. (Probably why the White House is trying to sideline Petraeus from the PR war.)

3. An endless war means a military draft is on the table. Your kids could be drafted.

This is so far outside of what the American public would find acceptable that political leaders need to be held accountable. That's why Iraq Summer is running new TV ads.

The ad will be running in the home state of Republican Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (KY)--who has been obstructing a vote on any exit plan from Iraq. Also, Rep. Phil English (R-PA), Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) and Rep. Thelma Drake (R-VA) are targets of this specific ad campaign.

We also learned last week that the much-anticipated "Petraeus Report" will actually be written by White House political hacks in their PR and spin operation. (Link)

Check out the ads and show them around.

Let's make it clear that: Bush-Petraeus 10 Year War = Endless War and a Draft.

Rove keeps up heat on Clinton

2007-08-20T00:44:00.000-04:00

Rove keeps up heat on Clinton
By DEB RIECHMANN
Associated Press Writer

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- Master GOP strategist Karl Rove won't let up in his attacks on Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton, but the intriguing question is why.

Is it a sign that Rove, who masterminded Bush's two presidential victories, is worried about Clinton? Or a calculation that the GOP attacks will get Democrats to rally to her side because the GOP would prefer not to take on Democrats John Edwards or Barack Obama?

"The Democrats are going to choose a nominee. I believe it's going to be her," President Bush's departing political adviser said Sunday, noting her negative rating with the public is very high.

He appeared on three Sunday talk shows after announcing last week he was leaving the White House at the end of the month to spend more time with his family.

Asked why he was helping Clinton by saying she would headline the ticket, Rove said: "Didn't know that I was. Don't think that I am."

Then he harshly criticized Clinton, saying more people have an unfavorable than favorable opinion of the New York senator and former first lady.

"She enters the general election campaign with the highest negatives of any candidate in the history of the Gallup poll," Rove said.

"It just says people have made an opinion about her. It's hard to change opinions once you've been a high-profile person in the public eye, as she has for 16 or 17 years." In a USA Today-Gallup poll this month, 49 percent viewed Clinton unfavorably compared to 35 percent unfavorable for Obama and 34 percent unfavorable for Edwards. Clinton's favorable score in that poll was 47 percent.

Rove might be revisiting his 2004 play book. Bush's re-election team aimed its harshest comments at Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the eventual nominee, because it wanted Bush to take on Kerry rather than Edwards, then a senator from North Carolina.

The Los Angeles Times on Sunday reported that Bush's former pollster and strategist Matthew Dowd said at a 2004 Harvard University conference that Bush's re-election team went after Kerry because they were more afraid of Edwards.

Asked whether he was attacking Clinton because the GOP feared Obama, Rove replied: "I read that in the LA Times this morning. Those, those guys out in LA have got to get clued in. I mean, come on."

Asked for his opinions on Obama, Rove demurred.

"I've said enough," he said.

Rove said the GOP's chances in 2008 may be helped by the high negative ratings for Clinton and for the Democratic-led Congress. Congress' approval in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll this month stood at 25 percent, compared with 35 percent for Bush.

After Rove announced he was leaving the White House, he had traveled with Bush to his Texas ranch Monday, then left Friday after a GOP barbecue for more than 300 big donors from around the nation.

At a Democratic debate in Iowa on Sunday, Clinton responded to Rove's criticism.

"I don't think Karl Rove is going to endorse me, but I find it interesting that he's obsessed with me," she said.

She said no candidate will escape the "Republican attack machine," and added: "I know how to beat them."

Last week, Clinton's campaign ran a television ad saying struggling families and U.S. troops are "invisible" to Bush. White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino called that "unconscionable." Rove said that was laughable.

On other issues, Rove:

-Blamed congressional Democrats for standing in the way of changing Social Security and immigration law, two important pieces of Bush's second-term domestic policy that fizzled. Democratic leaders didn't want to give Bush a "political victory," Rove said.

-Said he doesn't think he owes an apology to Valerie Plame whose CIA employment was revealed by newspaper columnist Robert Novak's in 2003, shortly after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, began criticizing the administration's march to war in Iraq. Rove said he talked to Novak about Plame, but said he did not confirm that she worked for the CIA - only that he, too, had heard that she did.

-Predicted that Democratic-led investigations into U.S. attorney firings and other matters would follow him after he departs the White House - a decision he insisted was not in response to probes on Capitol Hill. "They'll keep after me," he said.

-Admitted that the GOP is suffering. "Is the Republican Party a little bit behind the curve? You bet," he said.

Rove appeared on "Fox News Sunday," NBC's "Meet the Press" and CBS' "Face the Nation."