Thursday, September 29, 2005

Arctic ice 'disappearing quickly'

BBC NEWS
Arctic ice 'disappearing quickly'
By Richard Black
Environment Correspondent, BBC News website

======
Part of what we're seeing is the increased greenhouse effect; I'd bet the mortgage on it - Mark Serreze, NSIDC

The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk for a fourth consecutive year, according to new data released by US scientists.

They say that this month sees the lowest extent of ice cover for more than a century.

The Arctic climate varies naturally, but the researchers conclude that human-induced global warming is at least partially responsible.

They warn the shrinkage could lead to even faster melting in coming years.
======

"September 2005 will set a new record minimum in the amount of Arctic sea ice cover," said Mark Serreze, of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Boulder, Colorado.

"It's the least sea ice we've seen in the satellite record, and continues a pattern of extreme low extents of sea ice which we've now seen for the last four years," he told BBC News.

September lows

September is the month when the Arctic ice usually reaches a minimum.

The new data shows that on 19 September, the area covered by ice fell to 5.35 million sq km (2.01 million sq miles), the lowest recorded since 1978, when satellite records became available; it is now 20% less than the 1978-2000 average.

=====
ARCTIC SEA ICE EXTENT - SEPTEMBER TREND, 1978-2005
The straight line tracks a more than 8% decline per decade
The current rate of shrinkage they calculate at 8% per decade; at this rate there may be no ice at all during the summer of 2060.
=====

An NSIDC analysis of historical records also suggests that ice cover is less this year than during the low periods of the 1930s and 40s.

Mark Serreze believes that the findings are evidence of climate change induced by human activities.

"It's still a controversial issue, and there's always going to be some uncertainty because the climate system does have a lot of natural variability, especially in the Arctic," he said.

"But I think the evidence is growing very, very strong that part of what we're seeing now is the increased greenhouse effect. If you asked me, I'd bet the mortgage that that's just what's happening."

Confusing movement

One of the limitations of these records is that they measure only the area of ice, rather than the volume.

"One other factor could be movements of sea ice," said Liz Morris, of the British Antarctic Survey, currently working at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, UK.

"If it all piles up in one place, you might have the same total amount of ice," she told the BBC News website, "and there is some evidence that ice is piling up along the north Canadian coast, driven by changes in the pattern of winds and perhaps ocean currents."

Most data on sea ice thickness comes from records of military submarines, which regularly explored passages under the Arctic ice cap during the Cold War years.

Submarines can cross the Arctic Ocean along tracks taken decades before, and note differences in the ice thickness above; but that may mean little if the ice itself has moved.

Professor Morris is involved in a new European satellite, Cryosat, which should be able to give definitive measurements of ice thickness as well as extent; its launch is scheduled for 8 October.

But she also believes that the NSIDC data suggests an impact from the human-enhanced greenhouse effect.

"All data goes through cycles, and so you have to be careful," she said, "but it's also true to say that we wouldn't expect to have four years in a row of shrinkage.

"That, combined with rising temperatures in the Arctic, suggests a human impact; and I would also bet my mortgage on it, because if you change the radiation absorption process of the atmosphere (through increased production of greenhouse gases) so there is more heating of the lower atmosphere, sooner or later you are going to melt ice."

Arctic warming fast

Though there are significant variations across the region, on average the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, according to a major report released last year.


The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a four-year study involving hundreds of scientists, projected an additional temperature rise of 4-7C by 2100.

If the current trend can be ascribed in part to human-induced climate change, Mark Serreze sees major reasons for concern.

"What we're seeing is a process in which we start to lose ice cover during the summer," he said, "so areas which formerly had ice are now open water, which is dark.

"These dark areas absorb a lot of the Sun's energy, much more than the ice; and what happens then is that the oceans start to warm up, and it becomes very difficult for ice to form during the following autumn and winter.

"It looks like this is exactly what we're seeing - a positive feedback effect, a 'tipping-point'."

The idea behind tipping-points is that at some stage the rate of global warming would accelerate, as rising temperatures break down natural restraints or trigger environmental changes which release further amounts of greenhouse gases.

Possible tipping-points include

* the disappearance of sea ice leading to greater absorption of solar radiation
* a switch from forests being net absorbers of carbon dioxide to net producers
* melting permafrost, releasing trapped methane

This study is the latest to indicate that such positive feedback mechanisms may be in operation, though definitive proof of their influence on the Earth's climatic future remains elusive.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4290340.stm

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Posted by politicalstuff at 2:18 AM

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

FLASH: DeLay Indicted in Campaign Finance Probe

Yahoo! News
DeLay Indicted in Campaign Finance Probe

By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer

A Texas grand jury on Wednesday charged Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, an indictment that could force him to step down as House majority leader.

DeLay attorney Steve Brittain said DeLay was accused of a criminal conspiracy along with two associates, John Colyandro, former executive director of a Texas political action committee formed by DeLay, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay's national political committee.

GOP congressional officials said the plan was for DeLay to temporarily relinquish his leadership post and Speaker Dennis Hastert will recommend that Rep. David Dreier (news, bio, voting record) of California step into those duties.

Some of the duties may go to the GOP whip, Rep. Roy Blunt (news, bio, voting record) of Missouri. The Republican rank and file may meet as early as Wednesday night to act on Hastert's recommendation.

The indictment against the second-ranking, and most assertive Republican leader came on the final day of the grand jury's term. It followed earlier indictments of a state political action committee founded by DeLay and three of his political associates.

The grand jury action is expected to have immediate consequences in the House, where DeLay is largely responsible for winning passage of the Republican legislative program. House Republican Party rules require leaders who are indicted to temporarily step aside from their leadership posts.

However, DeLay retains his seat representing Texas' 22nd congressional district, suburbs southwest of Houston.

DeLay has denied committing any crime and accused the Democratic district attorney leading the investigation, Ronnie Earle, of pursuing the case for political motives.

Democrats have kept up a crescendo of criticism of DeLay's ethics, citing three times last year that the House ethics committee admonished DeLay for his conduct.

Earlier, DeLay attorney Bill White told reporters, "It's a skunky indictment if they have one."

As a sign of loyalty to DeLay after the grand jury returned indictments against three of his associates, House Republicans last November repealed a rule requiring any of their leaders to step aside if indicted. The rule was reinstituted in January after lawmakers returned to Washington from the holidays fearing the repeal might create a backlash from voters.

DeLay, 58, also is the center of an ethics swirl in Washington. The 11-term congressman was admonished last year by the House ethics committee on three separate issues and is the center of a political storm this year over lobbyists paying his and other lawmakers' tabs for expensive travel abroad.

Wednesday's indictment stems from a plan DeLay helped set in motion in 2001 to help Republicans win control of the Texas House in the 2002 elections for the first time since Reconstruction.

A state political action committee he created, Texans for a Republican Majority, was indicted earlier this month on charges of accepting corporate contributions for use in state legislative races. Texas law prohibits corporate money from being used to advocate the election or defeat of candidates; it is allowed only for administrative expenses.

With GOP control of the Texas legislature, DeLay then engineered a redistricting plan that enabled the GOP take six Texas seats in the U.S. House away from Democrats — including one lawmaker switching parties — in 2004 and build its majority in Congress.

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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:57 PM

Brown shifts blame for Katrina response

Brown shifts blame for Katrina response

By LARA JAKES JORDAN
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A combative Michael Brown blamed the Louisiana governor, the New Orleans mayor and even the Bush White House that appointed him for the dismal response to Hurricane Katrina in a fiery appearance Tuesday before Congress. In response, lawmakers alternately lambasted and mocked the former FEMA director.

House members' scorching treatment of Brown, in a hearing stretching nearly 6 1/2 hours, underscored how he has become an emblem of the deaths, lingering floods and stranded survivors after the Aug. 29 storm. Brown resigned Sept. 12 after being relieved of his onsite command of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's response effort three days earlier.

"I'm happy you left," said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn. "Because that kind of, you know, look in the lights like a deer tells me that you weren't capable to do the job."

"You get an F-minus in my book," said Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss.

At several points, Brown turned red in the face and slapped the table in front of him.

"So I guess you want me to be the superhero, to step in there and take everyone out of New Orleans," Brown said.

"What I wanted you to do is do your job and coordinate," Shays retorted.

Well aware of President Bush's sunken poll ratings, legislators of both parties tried to distance themselves from the federal preparations for Katrina and the storm's aftermath that together claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

Brown acknowledged making mistakes during the storm and subsequent flooding that devastated the Gulf Coast. But he accused New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, both Democrats, of fostering chaos and failing to order a mandatory evacuation more than a day before Katrina hit.

"My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional," Brown told a special panel set up by House Republican leaders to investigate the catastrophe. Most Democrats, seeking an independent investigation, stayed away to protest what they called an unfair probe of the Republican administration by GOP lawmakers.

"I very strongly personally regret that I was unable to persuade Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin to sit down, get over their differences and work together," Brown said. "I just couldn't pull that off."

Brown also said he warned Bush, White House chief of staff Andrew Card and deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin that "this is going to be a bad one" in e-mails and phone conversations leading up to the storm. Under pointed questioning, he said some needs outlined to the White House, Pentagon and Homeland Security Department were not answered in "the timeline that we requested."

Blanco vehemently denied that she waited until the eve of the storm to order an evacuation of New Orleans. She said her order came on the morning of Aug. 27 - two days before the storm - resulting in 1.3 million people evacuating the city.

"Such falsehoods and misleading statements, made under oath before Congress, are shocking," Blanco said in a statement.

In New Orleans, Nagin said that "it's too early to get into name-blame and all that stuff" but that "a FEMA director in Washington trying to deflect attention is unbelievable to me."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan urged Congress to undertake "a thorough investigation of what went wrong and what went right and look at lessons learned."

Brown, who remains on FEMA's payroll for two more weeks before he leaves his annual $148,000 post, rejected accusations that he was inexperienced for the job he held for more than two years during which he oversaw 150 presidentially declared disasters. Before joining FEMA in 2001, he was an attorney, held local government posts and headed the International Arabian Horse Association.

"I know what I'm doing, and I think I do a pretty darn good job of it," he said.

He said FEMA coordinates and manages disaster relief, but the emergency first response is the job of state and local authorities. Brown also said the agency was stretched too thin to respond to a catastrophe of Katrina's size. "We were prepared but overwhelmed is the best way I can put it," he said.

Brown described FEMA as a politically powerless arm of Homeland Security, which he said had siphoned more than $77 million from his agency over the past three years. Additionally, he said Homeland Security cut FEMA budget requests - including one for hurricane preparedness - before they were ever presented to Congress.

Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., who oversees House spending on homeland security operations, said Congress has approved spending levels for FEMA and other preparedness programs far above requests.

In Miami, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told reporters that Brown "speaks for himself and he's entitled to his point of view, and I don't have anything to add."

Brown's defiant demeanor Tuesday mirrored his comments after being dismissed from overseeing the Katrina response, when he accused the news media of making him a scapegoat and blamed local officials for the uncoordinated response.

He had been "just tired and misspoke" when a television interviewer appeared to be the first to tell him that there were desperate residents at the New Orleans Convention Center, and testified he had already learned the day before that people were flocking there.

No longer needing to maintain a cordial relationship with Congress, Brown didn't hesitate to punch back at lawmakers who questioned whether the government would learn from mistakes before the next disaster strikes.

"I know what death and destruction is and I know how much people suffer," Brown told Taylor. "And it breaks my heart. I pray for these people every night. So don't lecture me about knowing what disaster is like."

Yet Brown struck a conciliatory tone with Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, who chastised him for not seeking fiscal or oversight help from Congress before the storm.

"I don't know how you can sleep at night," Granger said. "You lost the battle."

Brown, his voice dropping slightly, responded: "I probably should have just resigned my post earlier and gone public with some of these things because I have a great admiration for the men and women of FEMA and what they do, and they don't deserve what they've been getting."

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Posted by politicalstuff at 1:56 AM

God versus science debate continues in court

Reuters

God versus science debate continues in court

By Jon Hurdle

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Members of a Pennsylvania school board were motivated by their religious beliefs when they decided "intelligent design" should be taught to biology students along with Darwin's theory of evolution, witnesses testified in federal court on Tuesday.

Eleven parents are suing the Dover Area School District to stop the teaching of intelligent design, saying it violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

Proponents of the intelligent design theory say life is so complex it could only have been designed by a higher, intelligent being and not via the Darwinian natural selection theory widely accepted by scientists. Critics argue it is a thinly veiled version of creationism.

Bryan Rehm, a Dover physics teacher until June 2004, told the court about a meeting where former school board member Bill Buckingham championed the introduction of the alternative to evolution.

Buckingham complained the ninth-grade biology textbook being used was "laced with Darwinism," Rehm testified in U.S. District Court.

Rehm recalled Buckingham making a reference to Jesus' crucifixion: "Two thousand years ago, somebody died on a cross. Can't somebody stand up and do something for him?"

Aralene Callahan, a former school board member and one of the plaintiffs, said Buckingham told a board meeting, "You can't expect me to believe that I was ever descended from apes and monkeys."

The trial over teaching man's origins in U.S. schools pits Christian conservatives against teachers and scientists in what is seen as the biggest test of the issue since the late 1980s. It also echoes the famous Scopes Monkey trial of 1925, when lawyers squared off in a Tennessee courthouse over the teaching of Darwin's work.

Callahan also said another board member, Alan Bonsell, had argued the biology curriculum should contain equal measures of evolution and creationism.

CREATIONISM RULING

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that creationism -- the belief that Earth and its beings were created by God and not by natural selection -- could not be taught in public schools since it violated the separation of church and state.

More than 30 U.S. states are considering measures to teach alternatives to evolution. The Harrisburg case is the first to challenge such initiatives in court and is widely expected to end up at the U.S. Supreme Court, regardless of the outcome.

President George W. Bush has said schools should teach both evolution and intelligent design.

The Dover school board's policy, implemented in January, requires that students are read a four-paragraph statement saying there are "gaps" in the theory of evolution and that students should consider alternative explanations of the origins of life, including intelligent design. The statement advises them of a textbook available in the school library that delves into intelligent design.

The board argues its policy does not amount to teaching intelligent design, but merely makes students aware of an alternative to evolution.

"This had absolutely nothing to do with balance or fairness," Callahan said during the second day of the trial. "It was merely intended to introduce religion into the biology curriculum and to pretend otherwise is preposterous."

Another of the Dover parents, Tammy Kitzmiller, told the court that she allowed her 14-year-old daughter to drop the biology class because she was concerned over the policy.

The trial is expected to last five weeks.

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Posted by politicalstuff at 1:52 AM

Green rules seen on "chopping block" post-Rita

Reuters

Green rules seen on "chopping block" post-Rita

By Chris Baltimore

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House Republicans on Wednesday will launch a rapid-fire assault against environmental protections on the pretext of helping the U.S. oil and gas industry recover from hurricane damage, environmental groups charge.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Resources Committee are holding separate meetings to finalize legislation on Wednesday, with the aim of combining them into a single energy bill for the full House to debate next week.

The resources panel, led by Richard Pombo of California, wants to lift a ban on Florida offshore drilling, promote oil shale and sell a dozen national parks for energy development.

"This really has very little to do with the hurricanes or relief efforts or even refiners. This is deregulation pure and simple," said John Walke of Natural Resources Defense Council.

Texan Joe Barton's energy committee wants to expand U.S. gasoline production by loosening federal rules that limit pollution when refineries or coal-fired power plants are expanded. U.S. gasoline supplies have tightened since hurricanes Katrina and Rita roared across the U.S. Gulf Coast, closing up to one-fourth of the nation's refining capacity.

House Republicans received a thumbs up from President George W. Bush on Monday when he said environmental rules and paperwork are obstacles holding up U.S. refinery expansions.

Bush specifically criticized the relatively obscure "new source review" rule administered by the Environmental Protection Agency as part of the Clean Air Act. It aims to protect public health by ensuring that refinery expansions do not increase acid rain and smog.

Environmentalists perked up their ears at Bush's remarks, noting that he rarely mentions the program.

"You know darn well that the president doesn't have a clue what new source review is," said Frank O'Donnell of Clean Air Watch. "It's clear that there's a coordinated effort between the White House and Congress to put key environmental protections on the chopping block."

Barton said his bill would help U.S. refiners gird against another natural disaster like the recent hurricanes, which highlighted the U.S. dearth of refining capacity.

In an interview, Barton said new source review "was a tool to blackmail industry" into deferring plant upgrades.

"We don't want more emissions but we do want to give existing industrial facilities the ability to retrofit and modernize without going through a laborious permitting process," Barton said.

A draft copy of Barton's bill would codify an EPA proposal that allows plants to expand their facilities without triggering anti-pollution rules, NRDC'S Walke said. That proposal was frozen by a federal judge in a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

"If the new Barton rule were adopted it would set us back 40 or 50 years," said Judith Enck, a Spitzer aide.

It would also adopt a utility-friendly strategy that says the anti-pollution rules only apply if expansion projects boost hourly emission rates, not overall plant emissions. Using that test, a federal appeals court in June ruled that Duke Power did not violate the law by expanding eight North Carolina plants without adding expensive anti-pollution devices.

Pombo's separate bill would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling as well as letting states opt out of an offshore oil leasing ban. He also wants to sell 15 national parks for energy or commercial development, including the Mary McLeod Bethune House in Washington, D.C.

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Posted by politicalstuff at 1:49 AM

Stressed Out

MSNBC.com
'Stressed Out'
Hurricane Rita, like Katrina before her, made clear that government preparedness plans are hardly up to snuff.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Tom Masland
Newsweek

Sept. 24, 2005 - Americans often assume that taking steps to be ready for unforeseen emergencies is a deeply-rooted tradition, like the Scout motto: “be prepared." The organization's Web site reports that someone once asked Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting, "Be prepared for what?" Baden-Powell replied: "Why, for any old thing." But now two hurricanes on the Gulf Coast have shredded the assumption that government officials necessarily share that view. Part of the long aftermath to this hurricane season will be new attention to what went wrong--and to the adequacy of preparations for threats of all kinds that could lie ahead.

As if nearly 1,000 deaths to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans weren’t sobering enough, the chaotic flight before Hurricane Rita on Friday offered a fresh object lesson in disaster planning. As Rita neared the Texas coastline, some three million residents got in their cars and made a run for it. Among the results: a 100-mile-long traffic jam outside Houston, hundreds of motorists stranded when their gas ran out, and a deeply peeved public. “This has been a nightmare,” said evacuee Lillian Brown, 46, of Beaumont, whose family was stranded along I-45 for two hours Friday afternoon before rescue workers brought her gas. “This is sad. It should have been better organized.”

Once again, public officials mainly pleaded guilty. “Clearly, the evacuation did not work as the plan was designed,” Harris Country Judge Robert Eckels, the highest elected official in Harris County surrounding Houston, told MSNBC. “There are things we have learned that we need to do differently next time.”

This was no cataclysm. Even in Houston, where the snafus were worst, the job of evacuating the city ultimately got done. The main problem was that far more people heeded warnings to evacuate low-lying areas than authorities expected. The question still remained, though: if things came so unstuck because of a storm that officials had seen coming for three days, what happens when a terrorist sets off a dirty bomb in downtown Cleveland? Or in Times Square. What if there’s a major San Francisco earthquake? Or a rocket attack on the refineries and tank farms massed around Elizabeth, N.J.?

Many put-out residents in places like Houston are likely to focus their anger on local officials. Undoubtedly pulp trees will die as experts revamp their disaster-preparedness studies in the aftermath of the storms. But the federal government’s new super-agency for such matters, which bears the reassuring title Homeland Security, remains in the crosshairs. The director of FEMA, a Homeland agency, resigned after Katrina left hundreds of New Orleans refugees on their own in an increasingly fetid public arena. American voters know how to complain. Ian Porsche, 22, endured five days in the New Orleans Superdome before leaving with his girlfriend-for Houston. Stuck by the side of the road on I-45 Friday, he turned down a Conroe school bus driver who offered him a lift to another shelter. “I’m not gong to another shelter after what I’ve seen,” he said. “I’m just really stressed out.” Undoubtedly, his congressman feels his pain.

With Staci Semrad in Houston

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9465360/site/newsweek/?rf=nwnewsletter

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Posted by politicalstuff at 1:41 AM

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Able Danger as elusive as ever

isn.ethz.ch
Able Danger as elusive as ever

As the story of the Pentagon’s top secret mining program that some claim linked the 9/11 ringleader to al-Qaida well before the attacks on the US becomes increasing foggy, reporters are having a hard time getting the truth to the public.

Commentary by Shaun Waterman in Washington, DC for ISN Security Watch (25/09/05)

The story of Able Danger - a top secret Pentagon data-mining program that some claim linked the 9/11 plot ringleader to al-Qaida more than a year before the attack - is the kind conspiracy-mongers love.

It has everything: the destruction or loss of important documents, an inquiry accused of ignoring evidence, and a gag on key witnesses.

Did a secret data-mining project really link 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and three of the other hijackers to Islamic extremists in Brooklyn - and from there to al-Qaida - in early 2000?

Did the project - which used proprietary software to trawl through massive amounts of information culled from the internet, purchased from data brokers or, like certain travel and other records, obtained in some cases by means that are still classified - really fall afoul of some legal interpretation of the protections against spying on Americans or military involvement in law enforcement? And was it closed down, and all its data destroyed, as a result?

Did Representative Curt Weldon (Republican-Pennsylvania), who first made Able Danger public this summer, really hand the last copy of a “proof of concept” chart from that time, bearing Atta’s name and likeness - the key document that would prove the truth of the allegations - to National Security Advisor Steven Hadley at a White House meeting on 25 September 2001?

And did the 9/11 Commission, charged with providing an unassailable official account of the failures of the US government to protects its citizens from the attacks, ignore evidence of Able Danger’s success?

The story is also long on colorful characters and heated rhetoric.

“I have witnessed denial, deception, threats to (Department of Defense) employees, character assassination, and now silence,” Weldon said at this week’s hearing on Able Danger held by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

This reporter, who had been tracking the story all summer, was looking forward to the Senate hearings.

From a reporter’s point of view, the story has been a nightmare: the sources initially anonymous and now silent, with cagey lawyers; the whole tale shot through with misinformation, much of it the product of careless retellings. But worst of all, the inevitable struggle between the fourth estate and the executive branch over information was waged on the bureaucratic terrain of the Pentagon - the most vast, labyrinthine, and secretive organ of the US government.

In common with others, I had been hoping to get some ground truth from the hearings – “Just one actual fact that I can check”, in the words of a colleague.

Instead, the “X-Files” plotline thickened.

Judiciary Chairman Senator Arlen Specter (Republican-Pennsylvania), told the hearing he was “surprised to find that the Department of Defense has ordered five key witnesses not to testify”. The five were serving and reserve military officers and civilian contractors who had worked on Able Danger and who say they remember the chart.

Specter added that his staff had been in negotiations with Pentagon officials, and that many of the documents that they had requested had only arrived the previous evening.

“That looks to me as if it may be obstruction of the committee’s activities,” Specter warned, “something we will have to determine.”

Friday afternoon, Specter’s committee announced it would hold another hearing in October, at which the five would testify. But in another twist, Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters later that day, that the department was still insisting that the five could only testify in a closed hearing.

One of the senior Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Joseph Biden (Democrat-Delaware), said he was disappointed at the Defense Department’s decision.

“I think that’s a big mistake,” he said.

Why the witnesses had been denied permission to testify was unclear, Specter said. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, asked later that day by reporters about the decision, referred to the issue of jurisdiction. The Defense Department jealously guards its relationship with the Armed Services Committees in both chambers - and only grudgingly cooperates with other panels. One Pentagon tactic is to use the turf conflicts between competing chairmen to play their committees off against each other.

“The Senate Intelligence Committee, as I understand it, has jurisdiction over this matter and is looking into it,” said Rumsfeld, adding: “The department, I'm told, offered a classified briefing because the subject matter is classified. And as I understand it, the Judiciary Committee preferred to have an open hearing on a classified matter, and therefore the department declined to participate.”

But Specter told the hearing that, on legal advice he was “instructing the witnesses not to disclose any classified information”, adding that if they had secrets they wished to discuss, the committee could go into closed session.

He needn’t have bothered. As they were all keen to stress, none of the witnesses who actually testified knew any of the classified details of the Able Danger program.

“I have not had access to classified information on this,” said Mark Zaid, an attorney who represents and testified on behalf of two of the former Able Danger operatives. “I haven’t even had access to the full scope of unclassified information,” he added.

“My knowledge of Able Danger is very limited,” said the sole Pentagon witness, William Dugan, Rumsfeld’s special assistant for intelligence oversight.

“He’s a piñata,” said one congressional staffer, referring to Dugan and the hollow papier-mâché animals filled with sweets which are hung from trees and beaten with sticks until they break open.

“I understand that you were sent over in a very limited capacity with perhaps a calculation that you didn’t have this information,” Specter told Duggan at one point.

Instead of witnesses, the committee took hearsay evidence about what they might have said had they been allowed to testify, from Weldon and Zaid.

As a result, not much of the “ground truth” some reporters had hoped for ever materialized.

Zaid told Senators he would try to put the record straight on some issues. He said, for instance, that the project had never identified Atta as being in the US in early 2000 - only linked him with US-based Islamic extremists in that timeframe.

But that only begs another question, and reveals that there was a problem with the Judiciary Committee inquiry that could not have been solved by more or different witnesses. Zaid was never asked how it came to be reported - in at least three different places - that the project had identified Atta as being in the country at that time.

Weldon even said - on the floor of the US Congress - that military intelligence had been barred from keeping information on Atta because he had a green card.

He actually did not have a green card, but Weldon has never admitted his error.

We’ll have to hope for better next month.

Shaun Waterman, a British journalist based in Washington, DC covers homeland and national security for United Press International. In June, he won the Society of Professional Journalists' Dateline Washington award for his coverage of last year's intelligence reform debate.

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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:15 AM

Probing Able Danger

(And this one is from the Washington Times!! Have conservative news organizations [the majority of news organizations in the USA] finally awakened after a 5 year coma?)

The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com
Probing Able Danger
originally published September 20, 2005

Tomorrow's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Pentagon's top-secret military intelligence unit known as Able Danger should be quite a show. Rep. Curt Weldon, who deserves most of the credit for bringing the formerly forgotten unit to public attention, is promising as much with a list of potential witnesses who he says will be able to testify that Able Danger identified ringleader Mohamed Atta and several other terrorists inside the United States at least a year before the September 11 attacks.
The list includes:
• Naval Capt. Scott Philpott, an Able Danger team leader, according to the Pentagon, who approached the September 11 commission with what he knew about Atta in 2004.
• Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, the Defense Intelligence Agency employee who acted as liaison with Able Danger team members. Col. Shaffer was the first to come forward with allegations that Pentagon lawyers rebuffed his attempts to coordinate a meeting between Able Danger analysts and the FBI.
• An FBI agent, who, according to Mr. Weldon, will testify under oath that she organized the meetings between the FBI and Able Danger analysts to discuss Atta.
• A Pentagon employee, who will testify that he was ordered to destroy 2.5 terabytes of information Able Danger had compiled, which is roughly equivalent to one-fourth of all the printed material in the Library of Congress. According to Mr. Weldon, this person, as yet unidentified, will also name the officer who gave the order.

As the Pentagon acknowledged earlier this month, destroying sensitive intelligence is not in itself unusual, because the Pentagon is forbidden to spy on Americans. "In a major data-mining effort like [Able Danger], you're reaching out to a lot of open sources and within that there could be a lot of information on U.S. persons," said Pat Downs, a senior policy analyst in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense. We can only assume that the Able Danger chart identifying 60 known terrorists including Atta was lost in this destruction. So far, this chart is the only known material evidence that would corroborate Mr. Weldon's claims. The Pentagon has found similar charts, but none which include Atta.
However, as with nearly everything related to Able Danger, there is some confusion. The employee who will testify that he destroyed the data will apparently also allege that a Special Operations Command general, who was in the Able Danger chain of command, was "incensed when he found out that material that he was a customer for was destroyed without his approval," said Mr. Weldon. If true, this might mean that the order to destroy the Able Danger data came from elsewhere in the Pentagon, which could lead one to speculate that it was not part of normal procedure.
We hoped the Pentagon would clarify some of the particulars regarding Able Danger, and so it has. It has acknowledged that Able Danger existed as well as discovered three other defense employees who recall the unit's identification of Atta before the September 11 attacks. Its confirmation of Able Danger, the existence of similar charts and Mr. Weldon's witness list, do, however, place further pressure on the September 11 commissioners to explain why they didn't mention the unit in their final report.
A new thread concerning the worst attack on U.S. soil is beginning to come to light. Although it is far too soon to conclude that this is a major scandal, it should be pursued with vigor and complete transparency.

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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:11 AM

'Able Danger' Could Rewrite History

Fox News
'Able Danger' Could Rewrite History

This article was originally published August 12, 2005
(and yes, believe it or not, this is from Fox News!
Also see additional articles on this subject in this blog.)

WASHINGTON — The federal commission that probed the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks was told twice about "Able Danger," a military intelligence unit that had identified Mohamed Atta and other hijackers a year before the attacks, a congressman close to the investigation said Wednesday.

Rep. Curt Weldon (search), R-Pa., a champion of integrated intelligence-sharing among U.S. agencies, wrote to the former chairman and vice-chairman of the Sept. 11 commission late Wednesday, telling them that their staff had received two briefings on the military intelligence unit — once in October 2003 and again in July 2004.

Weldon said he was upset by suggestions earlier Wednesday by 9/11 panel members that it had been not been given critical information on Able Danger's capabilities and findings.

"The impetus for this letter is my extreme disappointment in the recent, and false, claim of the 9/11 commission staff that the commission was never given access to any information on Able Danger," Weldon wrote to former Chairman Gov. Thomas Kean (search) and Vice-Chairman Rep. Lee Hamilton (search). "The 9/11 commission staff received not one but two briefings on Able Danger from former team members, yet did not pursue the matter.

"The commission's refusal to investigate Able Danger after being notified of its existence, and its recent efforts to feign ignorance of the project while blaming others for supposedly withholding information on it, brings shame on the commissioners, and is evocative of the worst tendencies in the federal government that the commission worked to expose," Weldon added.

On Wednesday, a source familiar with the Sept. 11 commission — formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (search) — told FOX News that aides who still had security clearances had gone back to the National Archives outside Washington, D.C., to review notes on Atta and any information the U.S. government had on him and his terror cell before the Sept. 11 attacks.

The source acknowledged that the aides were looking for a memo about a briefing given to four staff members by defense intelligence officials during an overseas trip to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in the fall of 2003.

Staffers apparently did not recall being told of the Able Danger information at that meeting and wanted to double-check their records.

Former commission spokesman Al Felzenberg told The New York Times in Thursday editions that Atta was mentioned to panel investigators during at least one meeting with a military officer. That briefing came in July 2004, less than two weeks before the commission's final report was issued to the public.

Felzenberg said the information about Atta was considered suspect because it didn't jibe with many other findings. For example, the intelligence officer said Atta was in the United States in late 1999, but travel records confirmed that he did not enter the country until late 2000.

"He wasn't brushed off," Felzenberg told The Times about the military officer's briefing. "I'm not aware of anybody being brushed off. The information that he provided us did not mesh with other conclusions that we were drawing."

But Weldon said that argument was not good enough.

"The 9/11 commission took a very high-profile role in critiquing intelligence agencies that refused to listen to outside information. The commissioners very publicly expressed their disapproval of agencies and departments that would not entertain ideas that did not originate in-house," Weldon wrote in his letter Wednesday night.

"Therefore it is no small irony," Weldon pointed out, "that the commission would in the end prove to be guilty of the very same offense when information of potentially critical importance was brought to its attention."

On Thursday, Weldon told FOX News that the military official, who was under cover when he was in Afghanistan for the October 2003 briefing, is certain he told the staffers about Atta at that time.

The military intelligence officer who attended that meeting with staffers "kept notes of that meeting and will testify under oath that he not only told" the staffers about Able Danger's mission, but about Atta.

Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, told FOX News on Wednesday that if Atta's name had been mentioned in the October 2003 briefing, it would have jumped out at staffers.

He said that the commission did not include the claims by Able Danger in the definitive report of the events leading up to Sept. 11 because it had no "information that the United States government had under surveillance or had any knowledge of Mohamed Atta prior to the attacks.

"It could be a very crucial incident in terms of the lead-up to 9/11. It could reveal flaws in the intelligence sharing or the lack of intelligence that we have not yet focused on," Hamilton said of the military's tracking of Atta and its inability to get domestic intelligence agencies to follow up.

Hamilton told FOX News that the commission team would get to the bottom of the confusion over what the United States knew about Atta and whether it played into the commission's investigation.

"I think the 9/11 commission's obligation at this point is to review our records very, very carefully and make very soon — we hope within the next few days — a complete statement about what happened during our investigation," Hamilton said.

Weldon said that he personally knows five members of the commission and is not attacking the integrity of any of them. He said he discussed the matter with two commissioners who told him they were never briefed about Able Danger.

"I have to ask why. I would hope there was not a deliberate attempt by someone on the 9/11 commission staff to keep this information" from the commissioners, Weldon said, adding "I find no fault right now with the commissioners."

A commission spokesman told FOX News that the panel expected to issue a statement before the end of the week.

Among the most critical facts to be determined, if the information about Atta did exist in 2000, would be who then blocked the intelligence from going to the FBI, which could have tracked down the terror cell.

"Team members believed that the Atta cell in Brooklyn should be subject to closer scrutiny, but somewhere along the food chain of administration bureaucrats and lawyers, a decision was made in late 2000 against passing the information to the FBI," Weldon wrote.

"Fear of tarnishing the commission's legacy cannot be allowed to override the truth. The American people are counting on you not to 'go native' by succumbing to the very temptations your commission was assembled to indict," he added.

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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:09 AM

Monday, September 26, 2005

Faulty Body Armor May Have Endangered Bush

Yahoo! News
Faulty Body Armor May Have Endangered Bush

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether a maker of bulletproof vests endangered lives, including President Bush's, by concealing potentially deadly flaws in the body armor sold to the government and police agencies.

A whistle-blower from the company, Second Chance Body Armor Inc., of Central Lake, Mich., testified this month that the Secret Service tested and bought some of the defective vests for the president and first lady Laura Bush.

The Pentagon also obtained the same armor for elite troops who guard generals, according to transcripts obtained by The Associated Press.

Many sales occurred well after Second Chance had been alerted that the Japanese-made Zylon synthetic material in the vests was degrading faster than expected from heat, light and moisture exposure, allowing bullets to potentially penetrate the armor, according to the whistle-blower's testimony and other company documents.

Prosecutors have gathered documents showing that Second Chance was alerted as early as 1998 by the Japanese material maker, Toyobo Co., that Zylon had trouble maintaining its protective properties.

By 2001, Second Chance's research chief, Aaron Westrick, was pleading unsuccessfully with his company's president to replace the vests after his own tests showed them degrading, the memos show.

"Lives and our credibility are at stake," Westrick wrote then-Second Chance president Richard Davis in a Dec. 18, 2001, memo. "We will only prevail if we do the right things and not hesitate. This issue should not be hidden for obvious safety issues and because of future litigation."

Westrick urged Davis to "immediately notify our customers of the degradation problems," let those with pending orders cancel them and cease all executive bonuses to save money so the company could pay for a replacement initiative, the memo shows.

But Second Chance customers were not alerted to the problems until September 2003 — after a California police officer was shot to death wearing the vest and a Pennsylvania officer was seriously wounded.

In the interim, the Secret Service paid $53,000 in 2002 to Second Chance for body armor, enough to equip the president and the security detail that protects him and other VIPs, federal procurement records show.

Legal professionals and government officials familiar with the inquiry confirmed Westrick's account about the Secret Service and Bush. They said the criminal investigation is in addition to a Justice Department lawsuit filed last summer that accuses Second Chance and Toyobo of fraud. The officials spoke only on condition of anonymity, citing grand jury secrecy.

Robert H. Skilton, Second Chance's lawyer, did not return calls to his office last week. Some of the company's non-Zylon assets have been sold and others are in bankruptcy.

Westrick's lawyer, Stephen M. Kohn, said Sunday his that client is cooperating with the criminal investigation.

"Greed prevailed over the safety of police, soldiers and even the president of the United States," Kohn said. "The officials who personally profited from selling the defective vests to law enforcement must be held accountable to the fullest extend of the criminal code."

Throughout 2001 and 2002, agencies from the Pentagon to local police bought vests from Second Chance, records show. The company now says more than 100,000 Zylon vests it sold are in question, and the government said it bought at least 40,000.

In summer 2002, company executives prepared a memo for their board of directors recommending two stark options.

"Solution 1: We continue to operate as though nothing is wrong until one of our customers is killed or wounded or Germany, Japan, Dupont or some other entity exposes the Zylon problem," the memo said.

Under a category "Downfalls" for that option, the memo warned an officer wearing one of the vests might be killed. "In the eyes of law enforcement, we will either be stupid for not knowing or greedy and uncaring for knowing and not doing anything about it," the memo said.

The second option recommended the company publish an ad "denouncing" the vests and "decline to make them" unless customers knew of the problem and still wanted them.

While it waited until fall 2003 to alert buyers, Second Chance arranged in the interim for Toyobo to begin paying it refunds in 2002 for the Zylon problems, promising to use the money to fix vests already sold in the United States, according to documents in Second Chance's bankruptcy case.

Toyobo told the bankruptcy court that Second Chance took the money but "failed to implement the corrective actions."

"It is apparent that Toyobo was duped by Second Chance," Kent Jarrell, a U.S. spokesman for Toyobo, said Sunday. "We were shocked by the level of Second Chance's deception when their behavior was finally uncovered because of documents that surfaced in litigation and through investigation."

The Justice Department's suit this summer accused both Second Chance and Toyobo of allowing vests to be sold to local, state and federal police even though they knew their ability to stop bullets was overstated.

But that suit, along with others filed by states, made no mention of a connection to the Secret Service and Bush. Westrick discussed that connection in a deposition earlier this month provided to investigators.

"The president had Zylon Ultima armor and his wife had it, if I recollect, and they took a look at it ... I believe it was the Secret Service put the armor through some special tests and went with it, bought it," Westrick testified in a Sept. 9 transcript obtained by The Associated Press.

Westrick said that while the vest had passed initial Secret Service testing, he warned his company that Zylon would soon degrade and allow bullets to pierce the armor. "I said it would be a problem," he testified.

Secret Service officials declined to say whether Bush ever wore the vest, saying they don't discuss presidential protective measures.

Westrick was told Bush wore Zylon-protection during the 2001 inauguration and during a 2002 event with police that his boss attended, according to legal professionals familiar with the case.

Westrick's testimony this month also identified another potential victim that federal prosecutors may explore — elite special forces who work for the Central Command in protecting generals overseas.

The former research director-turned whistle-blower testified he provided to Central Command several Zylon Ultima vests but warned he feared they were defective.

"Second Chance supplied them, but I also told them I thought the armor was problematic," Westrick said. " ... I thought it would degrade. My research showed that it degraded."

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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:25 PM

China Wants Only 'Healthy' News on Web

Yahoo! News
China Wants Only 'Healthy' News on Web

By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer

China said Sunday it is imposing new regulations to control content on its news Web sites and will allow the posting of only "healthy and civilized" news.

The move is part of China's ongoing efforts to police the country's 100-million Internet population. Only the United States, with 135 million users, has more.

The new rules take effect immediately and will "standardize the management of news and information" in the country, the official Xinhua News Agency said Sunday.

Sites should only post news on current events and politics, according to the new regulations issued by the Ministry of Information Industry and China's cabinet, the State Council. The subjects that would be acceptable under those categories was not clear.

Only "healthy and civilized news and information that is beneficial to the improvement of the quality of the nation, beneficial to its economic development and conducive to social progress" will be allowed, Xinhua said.

"The sites are prohibited from spreading news and information that goes against state security and public interest," it added.

While the communist government encourages Internet use for education and business, it also blocks material it deems subversive or pornographic. Online dissidents who post items critical of the government, or those expressing opinions in chatrooms, are regularly arrested and charged under vaguely worded state security laws.

Earlier this month, a French media watchdog group said e-mail account information provided by Internet powerhouse Yahoo Inc. helped lead to the conviction and 10-year prison sentence of a Chinese journalist who had written about media restrictions in an e-mail.

As part of the wider effort to curb potential dissent, the government has also closed thousands of cybercafes — the main entry to the Web for many Chinese unable to afford a computer at home.

Authorities in Shanghai have installed surveillance cameras and begun requiring visitors to Internet cafes to register with their official identity cards.

The government also recently threatened to shut down unregistered Web sites and blogs, the online diaries in which users post their thoughts for others to read.

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Posted by politicalstuff at 1:55 AM

Many Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions

The New York Times

Many Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions
By ERIC LIPTON and RON NIXON

WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 - Topping the federal government's list of costs related to Hurricane Katrina is the $568 million in contracts for debris removal landed by a Florida company with ties to Mississippi's Republican governor. Near the bottom is an $89.95 bill for a pair of brown steel-toe shoes bought by an Environmental Protection Agency worker in Baton Rouge, La.

The first detailed tally of commitments from federal agencies since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast four weeks ago shows that more than 15 contracts exceed $100 million, including 5 of $500 million or more. Most of those were for clearing away the trees, homes and cars strewn across the region; purchasing trailers and mobile homes; or providing trucks, ships, buses and planes.

More than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone were awarded without bidding or with limited competition, government records show, provoking concerns among auditors and government officials about the potential for favoritism or abuse.

Already, questions have been raised about the political connections of two major contractors - the Shaw Group and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - that have been represented by the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former leader of FEMA.

"When you do something like this, you do increase the vulnerability for fraud, plain waste, abuse and mismanagement," said Richard L. Skinner, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, who said 60 members of his staff were examining Hurricane Katrina contracts. "We are very apprehensive about what we are seeing."

Bills have come in for deals that apparently were clinched with a handshake, with no documentation to back them up, said Mr. Skinner, who declined to provide details.

"Most, if not all, of these people down there were trying to do the right thing," he said. "They were under a lot of pressure and they took a lot of shortcuts that may have resulted in a lot of waste."

Congress appropriated $62.3 billion in emergency financing after Hurricane Katrina struck. So far, a total of $15.8 billion has been allocated from a FEMA-managed disaster relief fund, of which $11.6 billion has been committed through contracts, direct aid to individuals or work performed by government agencies.

An examination of the contracts granted to date and interviews with state and federal officials raised concerns about some of the awards.

Some industry and government officials questioned the costs of the debris-removal contracts, saying the Army Corps of Engineers had allowed a rate that was too high. And Congressional investigators are looking into the $568 million awarded to AshBritt, a Pompano Beach, Fla., company that was a client of the former lobbying firm of Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi.

The investigators are asking how much money AshBritt will collect and, in turn, what it will pay subcontractors performing the work, said a House investigator who did not want her name used because she was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

The contracts also show considerable price disparities: travel trailers costing $15,000 to $23,000, housing inspection services that documents suggest could cost $15 to $81 per home, and ferries and ships being used for temporary housing that cost $13 million to $70 million for six months.

For some smaller companies, the recovery work will be an extraordinary test. For example, Aduddell Roofing and Sheet Metal, an Oklahoma City business run by a former steer wrestler, shares with a partner a $60 million contract to install temporary roofing on houses in Mississippi. Aduddell's single biggest contract before this was for $5 million, company executives said.

Some businesses awarded large contracts have long records of performing similar work, but they also have had some problems. CH2M Hill and the Fluor Corporation, two global engineering companies awarded a total of $250 million in contracts, were previously cited by regulators for safety violations at a weapons plant cleanup.

The Bechtel Corporation, awarded a contract that could be worth $100 million, is under scrutiny for its oversight of the "Big Dig" construction project in Boston. And Kellogg, Brown & Root, which was given $60 million in contracts, was rebuked by federal auditors for unsubstantiated billing from the Iraq reconstruction and criticized for bills like $100-per-bag laundry service. All of the companies have publicly defended their performance.

Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, complained that FEMA and other federal agencies were delivering too much of the work to giant corporations with political connections, instead of local companies or minority-owned businesses.

"There is just more of the good-old-boy system, taking care of its political allies," Mr. Thompson said. "FEMA and the others have put out these contracts in such a haphazard manner, I don't know how they can come up with anything that is accountable to the taxpayers."

As of last week, the federal government was spending more than $263 million a day on the recovery effort.

"There was a crisis situation and a lot of very quick contracting was done," said Greg Rothwell, the chief procurement officer at the Department of Homeland Security. "We will be looking at every invoice we get to make sure we were not paying extraordinary prices."

While several federal agencies have approved contracts, FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers, by design, have spent the most so far, according to the list of contracts from federal government agencies assembled by The New York Times.

Much of the spending has been in large amounts, but the contracts also include entries like $80,000 from a company called Bama Jama for clothing adorned with the E.P.A. logo and $3,300 for Doc's Laundry and Linen in Baton Rouge.

Rapidly buying the goods and services needed to respond to an emergency is difficult for any government agency. Federal contracting rules allow agencies to approve deals without standard competitive bidding in "urgent and compelling circumstances."

To provide some safeguards, federal agencies can hold an open competition in advance for products routinely needed in emergencies. Such agreements are known as "indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity," or I.D.I.Q. contracts.

The Defense Department relied on that type of contract in assigning Kellogg, Brown & Root to perform more than $45 million in repairs to levees in New Orleans and military facilities in the gulf region.

Records show, however, that FEMA did not use this approach for the blue sheeting used to cover holes in roofs, a standard item in the disaster tool kit. Instead, the agency bought $6.6 million of the material from All American Poly of Piscataway, N.J., on Sept. 13, without full competitive bidding.

Before signing contracts with mobile-home and travel-trailer makers worth in excess of $1 billion, FEMA said it did solicit bids. But the awards were made without the standard open competition required for government contracts.

Mr. Rothwell, of the Homeland Security Department, said FEMA needed to expand its number of I.D.I.Q. agreements so that when disasters struck it could bring in contractors more quickly and at a competitive price.

The two most expensive services the government has signed contracts for so far are manufactured housing and debris removal, which alone have totaled $2 billion, according to contracting records.

The debris contracts have attracted the scrutiny of investigators from the House Homeland Security Committee, in part because of the price agreed to by the Army Corps of Engineers.

AshBritt, which has won the biggest share of those contracts, is being paid about $15 per cubic yard to collect and process debris, federal officials said. It is also being reimbursed for costs if it has to dispose of material in landfills.

But three communities in Mississippi, which found their own contractors rather than accept the terms offered by AshBritt, have negotiated contracts of $10.64 a cubic yard to $18.25 a cubic yard, including collection, processing and disposal.

And other experts have questioned AshBritt's fees. "Let me put it to you this way: If $15 was my best price, I would rebid it," said Mike Carroll, a municipal official in Orlando, Fla., with experience in hurricane cleanup.

AshBritt has cleaned up debris for FEMA and other government agencies after other hurricanes. Besides possessing a huge roster of subcontractors and the logistics expertise to route hundreds of trucks, the company is also politically well connected.

According to Senate filings, AshBritt paid about $40,000 in the first half of 2005 to Barbour Griffith & Rogers, the Washington lobbying firm co-founded by Governor Barbour of Mississippi, who is also a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

AshBritt officials declined to comment on the Hurricane Katrina contracts. Jean Todd, a federal contracting officer who helps oversee the AshBritt deal for the Army Corps of Engineers, said she was determined to ensure that the price was fair.

"We have auditors that will be looking at all of this," Ms. Todd said.

FEMA has led the effort to line up contractors to install tens of thousand of temporary homes. The scale of the job is still unclear - depending on demand, FEMA may downsize its plans - but the agency has been rushing to buy as many travel trailers and mobile homes as it can. It has signed five contracts each worth more than $100 million with major manufacturers. And it has scoured the country, buying up whatever it can find on dealers' lots.

That has turned into a bonanza for businesses like Wagner's RV Center in Suamico, Wis., which sold 69 trailers to FEMA for $1.3 million.

"In a single sale, we cleared out most of our leftover inventory from the 2005 model year," said Leonard Wagner, the owner of the RV center. "That does not happen very often."

For some small businesses, what started off as big contracts have quickly grown into giant ones. Aduddell Roofing, the Oklahoma City business, was first hired with a partner on a $10 million contract. In a matter of weeks, that deal had grown into a $60 million contract.

The project is being run by Timothy Aduddell, the company's president, who until recently was on the professional rodeo circuit, said Ron Carte, the chief executive of Zenex International, the company that owns Aduddell.

"You have to be there to see it," Mr. Carte said of the hurricane work. "As Mr. Aduddell says, 'It's pretty cowboy.' "

Eric Dash and Leslie Eaton contributed reporting from New York for this article.

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Posted by politicalstuff at 1:54 AM

A Web of Faith, Law and Science in Evolution Suit

The New York Times

A Web of Faith, Law and Science in Evolution Suit
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

DOVER, Pa., Sept. 23 - Sheree Hied, a mother of five who believes that God created the earth and its creatures, was grateful when her school board here voted last year to require high school biology classes to hear about "alternatives" to evolution, including the theory known as intelligent design.

But 11 other parents in Dover were outraged enough to sue the school board and the district, contending that intelligent design - the idea that living organisms are so inexplicably complex, the best explanation is that a higher being designed them - is a Trojan horse for religion in the public schools.

With the new political empowerment of religious conservatives, challenges to evolution are popping up with greater frequency in schools, courts and legislatures. But the Dover case, which begins Monday in Federal District Court in Harrisburg, is the first direct challenge to a school district that has tried to mandate the teaching of intelligent design.

What happens here could influence communities across the country that are considering whether to teach intelligent design in the public schools, and the case, regardless of the verdict, could end up before the Supreme Court.

Dover, a rural, mostly blue-collar community of 22,000 that is 20 miles south of Harrisburg, had school board members willing to go to the mat over issue. But people here are well aware that they are only the excuse for a much larger showdown in the culture wars.

"It was just our school board making one small decision," Mrs. Hied said, "but it was just received with such an uproar."

For Mrs. Hied, a meter reader, and her husband, Michael, an office manager for a local bus and transport company, the Dover school board's argument - that teaching intelligent design is a free-speech issue - has a strong appeal.

"I think we as Americans, regardless of our beliefs, should be able to freely access information, because people fought and died for our freedoms," Mrs. Hied said over a family dinner last week at their home, where the front door is decorated with a small bell and a plaque proclaiming, "Let Freedom Ring."

But in a split-level house on the other side of Main Street, at a desk flanked by his university diplomas, Steven Stough was on the Internet late the other night, keeping track of every legal maneuver in the case. Mr. Stough, who teaches life science to seventh graders in a nearby district, is one of the 11 parents suing the Dover district. For him the notion of teaching "alternatives" to evolution is a hoax.

"You can dress up intelligent design and make it look like science, but it just doesn't pass muster," said Mr. Stough, a Republican whose idea of a fun family vacation is visiting fossil beds and natural history museums. "In science class, you don't say to the students, 'Is there gravity, or do you think we have rubber bands on our feet?' "

Evolution finds that life evolved over billions of years through the processes of mutation and natural selection, without the need for supernatural interventions. It is the foundation of biological science, with no credible challenges within the scientific community. Without it, the plaintiffs say, students could never make sense of topics as varied as AIDS and extinction.

Advocates on both sides of the issue have lined up behind the case, often calling it Scopes II, in reference to the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial that was the last century's great face-off over evolution.

On the evolutionists' side is a legal team put together by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. These groups want to put intelligent design itself on trial and discredit it so thoroughly that no other school board would dare authorize teaching it.

Witold J. Walczak, legal director of the A.C.L.U. of Pennsylvania, said the plaintiffs would call six experts in history, theology, philosophy of science and science to show that no matter the perspective, "intelligent design is not science because it does not meet the ground rules of science, is not based on natural explanations, is not testable."

On the intelligent design side is the Thomas More Law Center, a nonprofit Christian law firm that says its mission is "to be the sword and shield for people of faith" in cases on abortion, school prayer and the Ten Commandments. The center was founded by Thomas Monaghan, the Domino's Pizza founder, a conservative Roman Catholic who also founded Ave Maria University and the Ave Maria School of Law; and by Richard Thompson, a former Michigan prosecutor who tried Dr. Jack Kevorkian for performing assisted suicides.

"This is an attempt by the A.C.L.U. to really intimidate this small-town school board," said Mr. Thompson, who will defend the Dover board at the trial, "because the theory of intelligent design is starting to gain some resonance among school boards across the country."

The defense plans to introduce leading design theorists like Michael J. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, and education experts who will testify that "allowing students to be aware of the controversy is good pedagogy because it develops critical thinking," Mr. Thompson said.

The case, Kitzmiller et al v. Dover Area School District, will be decided by Judge John E. Jones III of the United States District Court, who was nominated by President Bush in 2002 and confirmed by a Senate vote of 96 to 0. The trial is expected to last six weeks and to draw news coverage from around the world.

The legal battle came to a head on Oct. 18 last year when the Dover school board voted 6 to 3 to require ninth-grade biology students to listen to a brief statement saying that there was a controversy over evolution, that intelligent design is a competing theory and that if they wanted to learn more the school library had the textbook "Of Pandas and People: the Central Question of Biological Origins." The book is published by an intelligent design advocacy group, the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, based in Texas.

Angry parents like Mr. Stough, Tammy Kitzmiller, and Bryan and Christy Rehm contacted the A.C.L.U. and Americans United. The 11 plaintiffs are a diverse group, unacquainted before the case, who say that parents, and not the school, should be in charge of their children's religious education.

Mr. Rehm, a father of five and a science teacher who formerly taught in Dover, said the school board had long been pressing science teachers to alter their evolution curriculum, even requiring teachers to watch a videotape about "gaps in evolution theory" during an in-service training day in the spring of 2004.

School board members were told by their lawyer, Mr. Thompson, not to talk to the news media. "We've told them, anything they say can be used against them," Mr. Thompson said.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that teaching creation science in public schools was unconstitutional because it was based on religion. So the plaintiffs will try to prove that intelligent design is creationism in a new package. Richard Katskee, assistant legal director of Americans United, said the "Pandas" textbook only substituted references to "creationism" with "intelligent design" in more recent editions.

Mr. Thompson said his side would prove that intelligent design was not creationism because it did not mention God or the Bible and never posited the creator's identity.

"It's clear they are two different theories," Mr. Thompson said. "Creationism normally starts with the Holy Scripture, the Book of Genesis, then you develop a scientific theory that supports it, while intelligent design looks at the same kind of empirical data that any scientist looks at," and concludes that complex mechanisms in nature "appear designed because it is designed."

A twist in the case is that a leading proponent of intelligent design, the Discovery Institute, based in Seattle, removed one of its staff members from the Dover school board's witness list and opposed the board's action from the start.

"We thought it was a bad idea because we oppose any effort to require students to learn about intelligent design because we feel that it politicizes what should be a scientific debate," said John G. West, a senior fellow at the institute. However, Professor Behe, a fellow at the institute, is expected to be the board's star witness.

Parents in Dover appear to be evenly split on the issue. School board runoffs are in November, with seven candidates opposing the current policy facing seven incumbents. Among the candidates is Mr. Rehm, the former Dover science teacher and a plaintiff. He said opponents had slammed doors in his face when he campaigned and performed a "monkey dance" when he passed out literature at the recent firemen's fair.

But he agrees with parents on the other side that the fuss over evolution has obscured more pressing educational issues like school financing, low parent involvement and classes that still train students for factory jobs as local plants are closing.

"There's no way to have a winner here," Mr. Rehm said. "The community has already lost, period, by becoming so divided."

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Posted by politicalstuff at 1:52 AM

Bush mulls lead role for military in disasters

Reuters

Bush mulls lead role for military in disasters

By Caren Bohan

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush said on Sunday that Congress ought to consider giving the U.S. military the lead role in responding to natural disasters, as he heard one general describe the Hurricane Katrina rescue effort as a "train wreck."

Bush spent the last three days monitoring Hurricane Rita's high winds and flooding from military bases and emergency centers in Colorado, Texas and Louisiana. The president, whose poll numbers have slumped to new lows, was widely criticized over the slow federal response to Katrina.

His meetings with military brass and disaster coordinators were aimed at showing a hands-on approach to Rita -- in contrast to when Katrina struck on August 29 and he was in Arizona and California pitching his Medicare prescription drug benefit.

But in his sixth Gulf Coast tour, Bush steered clear of visiting devastated areas or meeting with displaced victims, saying he did not want to disrupt the relief effort.

"The last thing we want to do is get in the way of the ongoing immediate response efforts. That's something we have never done before and we had no intention of doing on this initial trip to the region," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

Maj. Gen. John White, who briefed Bush at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, urged him to create a national plan for large-scale disasters like Katrina.

Illustrating the disorganization in Katrina's wake, White recounted an incident in New Orleans in which five helicopters showed up at the same time to rescue one person.

"That's the sort of simplistic thing we'd like to avoid," White told Bush. "That was a train wreck that we saw in New Orleans."

'VERY CLEAR LINE OF AUTHORITY'

Bush said Congress would have to consider under what circumstance the Department of Defense should become the lead agency in coordinating and responding to a disaster.

"Clearly, in the case of a terrorist attack, that would be the case. But is there a natural disaster ... of a certain size that would then enable the Defense Department to become the lead agency in coordinating and leading the response effort? That's going to be a very important consideration for Congress to think about," Bush said.

McClellan said Bush's goal was to make sure "there's a very clear line of authority" in the event of another major catastrophe, whether it is another storm like Katrina or an avian flu outbreak.

"You need to mobilize assets and resources and logistics and communications very quickly to help stabilize or contain the situation," McClellan said. "The organization, in the president's mind, that has the capability to do that is the Department of Defense."

McClellan said Bush has already discussed some of these issues with the secretary of Homeland Security and some top military leaders, and that the next step was to hold talks with congressional leaders.

McClellan acknowledged the proposal faced legal hurdles, and that a major issue would be determining what type of disaster would "trigger" a shift in authority to the Pentagon.

Putting the military in the lead role would sideline the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA, which now works with local and state officials to coordinate disaster response.

Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, expressed reticence about that approach on CNN's "Late Edition."

Landrieu said the military has a strong role to play "but so do our governors and our local elected officials."

"I mean we do have a democracy and a citizenship that has elected mayors, county commissioners and governors particularly. I'm not sure the governors association or all the mayors in America would be willing to step aside," she said.

ACTIVE-DUTY MILITARY NOW CONSTRAINED

In Baton Rouge, Bush said at a Federal Emergency Management Agency hub that he had had an upbeat report from the Army Corps of Engineers on work to contain the latest flooding in New Orleans.

"I would say it's an optimistic appraisal in the sense that work has started now and they can start draining that part of the city again," Bush said.

Rita, while dealing a punishing blow to an already stricken region, appears to have been far less destructive than Katrina, which killed more than 1,000 people and left New Orleans in ruins. Bush has praised the federal response to Rita and taken responsibility for flaws in the Katrina recovery.

Bush headed back to Washington after the Baton Rouge stop but may return to the Gulf Coast as early as Tuesday.

(Additional reporting by Adam Entous)

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Posted by politicalstuff at 1:50 AM

Sunday, September 25, 2005

The Bush Voters

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Posted by politicalstuff at 1:11 AM

The Spirit of Entrepreneurship in Afghanistan

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Posted by politicalstuff at 1:10 AM

Money Trees

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Posted by politicalstuff at 1:10 AM

Nice Pen

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Posted by politicalstuff at 1:09 AM

Back-up Nominations

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Posted by politicalstuff at 1:08 AM

Executive Compensation

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Posted by politicalstuff at 1:08 AM

Why Is the USA Going To The Moon?

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Posted by politicalstuff at 1:07 AM

You Can't Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

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Posted by politicalstuff at 1:03 AM

The Choice Is Yours

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Posted by politicalstuff at 1:02 AM

Evacuees have a problem

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Evacuees have a problem
BY JOSE MARTINEZ
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

HOUSTON - More than 1 million people bailed out on the Texas Gulf Coast in advance of Hurricane Rita, prompting officials here to proclaim the evacuation a success. But try telling that to Antonio Galvan.

The 31-year-old Houston man was among 2 million or so residents who failed to make it out in time, despite a mandatory evacuation order.

Behind the wheel of a Cadillac Escalade, Galvan, his wife, kids and parents tried to evacuate yesterday for the third time in as many days. The gas-guzzling SUV had been pressed into service after two other cars broke down, and as the storm lumbered toward landfall, the Escalade was stuck in a seven-hour-long line at a Texaco station alongside Interstate 45.

"I'm just going to turn around and go home," said Galvan, who lives in Houston. "I would rather have a roof over my head during a hurricane than a car flipping over on me."

Just weeks after Hurricane Katrina engulfed New Orleans, state and local officials tried to get a jump on Hurricane Rita, ordering residents out of areas in the storm's path. Airlifts were organized, thousands of troops were at the ready and a Navy ship deployed off the coast.

But with vehicles overwhelming roads and gas nearly impossible to find, escape, for many, was no longer an option.

"Where're the trucks at, man?" fumed Arthur Smith, 34, of Houston, whose vehicle stalled as he tried to flee. "All those oil refineries and we can't go anywhere."

Gov. Rick Perry acknowledged the evacuation was not perfect.

"I wish I could wave a magic wand and transport people magically from Houston to Dallas," Perry said. "[But] it is almost miraculous that this many people were moved out of harm's way."

Gas trucks were dispatched to roam freeways and provide 5-gallon bursts of fuel to stalled motorists. The state yesterday reversed the traffic flow along portions of two interstates, finally breaking the gridlock. City cops were posted at Houston's few working gas pumps.

"When the cops came, things got in tune," said Michele Trevino, 37, who waited five hours to fill up.

At a Mobil station next to Interstate 45, shoving matches broke out when some drivers tried to cut the long line by paying off someone at the pump to fill their plastic tanks.

"I'll take your money, I don't care," said one woman who was accepting $20 for $5 worth of gas. "I already made $60 this way."

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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:59 AM

Frist Received Many Updates on Blind Trust

ABC News
Frist Received Many Updates on Blind Trust
Senate Leader Frist Received Nearly Two Dozen Communications From Administrators of Blind Trust
By LARRY MARGASAK
The Associated Press

Sep. 24, 2005 - Blind trusts are designed to keep an arm's-length distance between federal officials and their investments, to avoid conflicts of interest. But documents show that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist knew quite a bit about his accounts from nearly two dozen letters from the trust administrators.

Frist, R-Tenn., received regular updates of transfers of assets to his blind trusts and sales of assets. He also was able to initiate a stock sale of a hospital chain founded by his family with perfect timing. Shortly after the sale this summer, the stock price dived.

A possible presidential contender in 2008, Frist now faces dual investigations by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and the Securities and Exchange Commission into his stock sales.

Sheldon Cohen, who was the trustee for Democrat Walter Mondale's blind trust when he was vice president, and drafted Democrat Lyndon Johnson's blind trust for Johnson's presidency, said that in the executive branch,"You don't tell them how it's composed." He said Frist, like any federal official, "absolves himself of conflict by not knowing what he owns."

Cohen said that when Mondale left office, he told Cohen to sell his assets. "He had no idea what I was holding," the Washington attorney and former Internal Revenue Service commissioner said.

Frist spokesman Bob Stevenson said the senator received approval from the Senate Ethics Committee before he initiated the stock sale. All the information Frist received complied with federal law and Senate ethics rules, Stevenson added.

The stock was in HCA Inc., a chain of hospitals founded in the late 1960s by Frist's father and brother. At the time of the sale, insiders also were selling. Shortly after that sale, the stock price dipped because of a warning that earnings would not meet Wall Street expectations.

"If, in fact, Frist was actively involved in this decision, he certainly has to supply an explanation of how that's consistent with a blind trust," said Bob Bauer, a Washington attorney who has set up blind trusts for Democratic members of Congress.

Bauer said he has no knowledge of Frist's dealings with the trustees of his investments.

Whether Frist knew too much about his investments, or took advantage of insider trading, is not known. But the potential political damage increased in recent days.

Frist also knows first hand how a Senate leader's career can suddenly roll downhill. His predecessor, Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., lost his leadership post after praising the late Sen. Strom Thurmond's segregationist campaign for the presidency in 1948.

Documents on file with the Senate show the trustees for Frist and his immediate family wrote the senator nearly two dozen times between 2001 and July 2005.

The documents list assets going into the account and assets sold. Some assets have a dollar range of the investment's value and some list the number of shares.

The trust is considered blind because eventually, through the sale of transferred assets and the purchase of new assets, the official will be shielded from knowing the assets he owns. The knowledge Frist learned about his holdings potentially makes it more difficult to avoid a conflict of interest.

Frist's 2005 financial disclosure form lists blind trusts valued between $7 million and $35 million.

Fist, a heart surgeon, has been the Senate's leader as the chamber has considered Medicare legislation and many other issues that would affect HCA's hospitals and doctors.

Another political problem for Frist: His own statements suggest he had no knowledge of his blind trust investments.

Asked in a television interview in January 2003 whether he should sell his HCA stock, responded, "Well, I think really for our viewers it should be understood that I put this into a blind trust. So as far as I know, I own no HCA stock"

Frist, referring to his trust and those of his family, also said in the interview, "I have no control. It is illegal right now for me to know what the composition of those trusts are. So I have no idea."

Stevenson, the Frist spokesman, said there limited instances "where federal law and Senate ethics regulations call for the disclosure of certain transactions or events to the Ethics Committee and to Senator Frist as the trust's owner.

"Except in these very limited instances, Senator Frist does not receive information related to the disposition of his assets under the control of the trustee."

Frist sold the HCA stock at a time when insiders in the company also were selling off shares worth $112 million from January through June of this year. Aides to the senator said he acted to avoid a conflict of interest, and that he had no information about the company that wasn't available to the public.

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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:52 AM

3 in 82nd Airborne Say Beating Iraqi Prisoners Was Routine

The New York Times

3 in 82nd Airborne Say Beating Iraqi Prisoners Was Routine
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 - Three former members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division say soldiers in their battalion in Iraq routinely beat and abused prisoners in 2003 and 2004 to help gather intelligence on the insurgency and to amuse themselves.

The new allegations, the first involving members of the elite 82nd Airborne, are contained in a report by Human Rights Watch. The 30-page report does not identify the troops, but one is Capt. Ian Fishback, who has presented some of his allegations in letters this month to top aides of two senior Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, John W. Warner of Virginia, the chairman, and John McCain of Arizona. Captain Fishback approached the Senators' offices only after he tried to report the allegations to his superiors for 17 months, the aides said. The aides also said they found the captain's accusations credible enough to warrant investigation.

An Army spokesman, Paul Boyce, said Friday that Captain Fishback's allegations first came to the Army's attention earlier this month, and that the Army had opened a criminal investigation into the matter, focusing on the division's First Brigade, 504th Parachute Infantry. The Army has begun speaking with Captain Fishback, and is seeking the names of the two other soldiers.

In separate statements to the human rights organization, Captain Fishback and two sergeants described systematic abuses of Iraqi prisoners, including beatings, exposure to extremes of hot and cold, stacking in human pyramids and sleep deprivation at Camp Mercury, a forward operating base near Falluja. Falluja was the site of the major uprising against the American-led occupation in April 2004. The report describes the soldiers' positions in the unit, but not their names.

The abuses reportedly took place between September 2003 and April 2004, before and during the investigations into the notorious misconduct at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Senior Pentagon officials initially sought to characterize the scandal there as the work of a rogue group of military police soldiers on the prison's night shift. Since then, the Army has opened more than 400 inquiries into detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, and punished 230 enlisted soldiers and officers.

The trial of a soldier charged in an investigation into Abu Ghraib, Pfc. Lynndie R. England, continued Friday in Fort Hood, Tex. [Page A16.]

In the newest case, the human rights organization interviewed three soldiers: one sergeant who said he was a guard and acknowledged abusing some prisoners at the direction of military intelligence personnel; another sergeant who was an infantry squad leader who said he had witnessed some detainees' being beaten; and the captain who said he had seen several interrogations and received regular reports from noncommissioned officers on the ill treatment of detainees.

In one incident, the Human Rights Watch report states, an off-duty cook broke a detainee's leg with a metal baseball bat. Detainees were also stacked, fully clothed, in human pyramids and forced to hold five-gallon water jugs with arms outstretched or do jumping jacks until they passed out, the report says. "We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs and stomach, and pull them down, kick dirt on them," one sergeant told Human Rights Watch researchers during one of four interviews in July and August. "This happened every day."

The sergeant continued: "Some days we would just get bored, so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid. This was before Abu Ghraib but just like it. We did it for amusement."

He said he had acted under orders from military intelligence personnel to soften up detainees, whom the unit called persons under control, or PUC's, to make them more cooperative during formal interviews.

"They wanted intel," said the sergeant, an infantry fire-team leader who served as a guard when no military police soldiers were available. "As long as no PUC's came up dead, it happened." He added, "We kept it to broken arms and legs."

The soldiers told Human Rights Watch that while they were serving in Afghanistan, they learned the stress techniques from watching Central Intelligence Agency operatives interrogating prisoners.

Captain Fishback, who has served combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, gave Human Rights Watch and Senate aides his long account only after his efforts to report the abuses to his superiors were rebuffed or ignored over 17 months, according to Senate aides and John Sifton, one of the Human Rights Watch researchers who conducted the interviews. Moreover, Captain Fishback has expressed frustration at his civilian and military leaders for not providing clear guidelines for the proper treatment of prisoners.

In a Sept. 16 letter to the senators, Captain Fishback, wrote, "Despite my efforts, I have been unable to get clear, consistent answers from my leadership about what constitutes lawful and humane treatment of detainees. I am certain that this confusion contributed to a wide range of abuses including death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment."

Reached by telephone Friday night, Captain Fishback, who is currently in Special Forces training at Fort Bragg, N.C., referred all questions to an Army spokesman, adding only that, "I have a duty as an officer to do this through certain channels, and I've attempted to do that."

The two sergeants, both of whom served in Afghanistan and Iraq, gave statements to the human rights organization out of "regret" for what they had done themselves at the direction of military intelligence personnel or witnessed but did not report, Mr. Sifton said. They asked not to be identified, he said, out of fear they could be prosecuted for their actions. They did not contact Senate staff members, aides said.

One of the sergeants has left the Army, while the other is no longer with the 82nd, Mr. Sifton said. Both declined to talk to reporters, he said.

A spokeswoman for the 82nd Airborne, Maj. Amy Hannah, said the division's inspector general was working closely with Army officials in Washington to investigate the matter, including the captain's assertion that he tried to alert his chain of command months ago.

John Ullyot, a spokesman for Senator Warner, said Captain Fishback had spoken by telephone with a senior committee aide in the last 10 days, and that his allegations were deemed credible enough that the aide recommended he report them to his new unit's inspector general.

While they also witnessed some abuses at another forward base near the Iraqi border with Syria, the three said most of the misconduct they witnessed took place at Camp Mercury, where prisoners captured on the battlefield or in raids were held for up to 72 hours before being released or transferred to Abu Ghraib.

Interrogators pressed guards to beat up prisoners, and one sergeant recalled watching a particular interrogator who was a former Special Forces soldier beating the detainee himself. "He would always say to us, 'You didn't see anything, right?' " the sergeant said. "And we would always say, 'No, sergeant.' "

One of the sergeants told Human Rights Watch that he had seen a soldier break open a chemical light stick and beat the detainees with it. "That made them glow in the dark, which was real funny, but it burned their eyes, and their skin was irritated real bad," he said.

A second sergeant, identified as an infantry squad leader and interviewed twice in August by Human Rights Watch, said, "As far as abuse goes, I saw hard hitting." He also said he had witnessed how guards would force the detainees "to physically exert themselves to the limit."

Some soldiers beat prisoners to vent their frustrations, one sergeant said, recalling an instance when an off-duty cook showed up at the detention area and ordered a prisoner to grab a metal pole and bend over. "He told him to bend over and broke the guy's leg with a mini-Louisville Slugger that was a metal bat."

Even after the Abu Ghraib scandal became public, one of the sergeants said, the abuses continued. "We still did it, but we were careful," he told the human rights group.

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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:35 AM

Thousands protest Iraq war, globalization

Reuters

Thousands protest Iraq war, globalization

By Lisa Lambert



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 100,000 protesters flooded Washington on Saturday to stage dual demonstrations against the U.S.-led war in Iraq and economic globalization, before coming together to demand President George W. Bush bring troops home.

"We need a people's movement to end this war," said Cindy Sheehan, an anti-war protester whose son was killed in fighting in Iraq. Camping out in Crawford, Texas, during much of August while Bush was vacationing there, Sheehan's rallies drew crowds there that sometimes numbered in the hundreds as she demanded a meeting with Bush.

Bush, who met with Sheehan in 2004 after her son was killed, refused to meet with her again.

"We'll be the checks and balances on this out-of-control criminal government," Sheehan, who has become the anti-war movement's best-known face, told the group gathered at the Ellipse, a park behind the White House.

In Los Angeles, about 15,000 people protested peacefully, while thousands more marched in San Francisco and in London urging an end to military action in Iraq nearly 30 months after an invasion ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The crowds in Washington swelled through the day, and by late afternoon organizers of the anti-war demonstration said 300,000 people had assembled -- exceeding an anticipated 100,000. Washington police declined to comment on the size of the rally.

Meanwhile, 1,000 to 3,000 people, as estimated by demonstration organizers, gathered a few blocks away to protest the autumn meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, saying policies that promote globalization and reduce trade barriers hurt the world's poor.

CIRCLING THE WHITE HOUSE

Many of them joined the anti-war march that circled a wide swath of downtown Washington, including the White House. They walked slowly, and often silently, and carried a blocks-long string of pictures of the 1,900 U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq.

"We're here to bring a dose of reality to the American public," said Chad Hetman, a member of an anti-war veterans' group. "This war was based on lies."

The protesters were graying baby boomers who had railed against the Vietnam War, parents pushing strollers with toddlers, college students and a few adults in wheelchairs.

On Washington's National Mall, they set up a faux military cemetery of hundreds of small, white crosses in neat lines. In Los Angeles, 60 mock coffins draped in American flags were laid out in rows on a downtown street.

"This is what we are losing every day," said Vickie Castro, of Riverside, California, standing in front of the coffins with a picture of her son, Cpl. Jonathan Castro, who was killed in action in Mosul, Iraq, in 2004.

Demonstrations in Washington and London took aim at the Bush administration, calling its policies and actions "criminal."

Some protesters carried signs calling Bush and Cheney "Liars." One sign said, "Bush is a Cat 5 Disaster," in a reference to the recent hurricanes that have hammered the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Another said, "Make Levees, Not Humvees" -- referencing the New Orleans levees that Katrina breached and recalling the "Make Love, Not War" chant of 1960s Vietnam war protesters.

VARIED CAUSES

The demonstrations also drew anarchists, communists and environmentalists. Others called for an end to the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba and expressed solidarity with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the Palestinians.

Protesters tried to link their separate causes under the umbrella of a fight against global poverty.

Some at the IMF/World Bank protest said they were fighting for the rights of the poor in Louisiana displaced by Hurricane Katrina, the poor in Iraq who are being hurt by war and those that protesters say are forced into poverty by IMF policies.

A U.S. veterans' group criticized the protesters.

"The political protesters of the '60s didn't end their war and neither will this new generation," Jim Mueller, head of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said in a statement. "They will, however, achieve the same result -- they will devastate troop morale."

A veteran of the Iraq war at the Washington march disagreed.

"People join the military to defend their country, not lies," said Adam Reuter, a 22-year-old Georgia resident who was given a medical discharge from the Army four months ago.

Washington police said they made two arrests by Saturday afternoon.

(Additional reporting by Paritosh Bansal in Los Angeles)

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Posted by politicalstuff at 12:18 AM

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