Army recalling 300 troops to Iraq who just arrived home in Alaska

USA TODAY
Army recalling 300 troops to Iraq who just arrived home in Alaska

WASHINGTON (AP) — About 300 Alaska-based soldiers sent home from Iraq just before their unit's deployment was extended last month must now go back, the Army said Monday, setting up a wrenching departure for troops and families who thought their service there was finished.

About 300 Alaska-based soldiers sent home from Iraq just before their unit's deployment was extended last month must now go back, the Army said Monday, setting up a wrenching departure for troops and families who thought their service there was finished.

The soldiers — all from the 172nd Stryker Brigade — are among the close to 380 troops who had gotten home to Fort Wainwright and to Fort Richardson when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered the unit to serve four more months. The remaining 80 will not have to return to Iraq.

Army officials sent a team of personnel and pay experts to Alaska to help sort out all of the soldiers' vacations, school enrollments and other plans torn apart by the decision to return them to Iraq. The unit is now being stationed in Baghdad, one of the most violent parts of the country.

Maj. Gen. Charles Jacoby, commander of U.S. Army Alaska, said 301 soldiers will be returning to Iraq, and most are either infantry troops or cavalry scouts needed for the Baghdad mission.

"From a military standpoint, it makes all the sense in the world," said Jacoby, speaking to Pentagon reporters from Alaska, where he was surrounded by a few soldiers and family members affected by the decision. "The brigade needs these soldiers back."

Mary Cheney — no relation to the vice president — was sitting nearby and said she wasn't happy when she learned her husband, Staff Sgt. Anthony Cheney, would be in Iraq for another four months. But she said she knew when she married him that things like this could happen.

"I would never question his dedication to his career," said Cheney, who had a baby just a few weeks ago and has three other children. "His heart is with his family, but his mind and his dedication" are with his extended family of fellow soldiers.

The bulk of the 172nd Brigade was still in Iraq when Rumsfeld extended their deployment as part of a plan to quell the escalating violence in Baghdad. Overall, the brigade has about 3,900 troops.

Another 300 soldiers from the unit had left Iraq and gotten to Kuwait, and were about to board flights home when they were called back.

Before Monday's announcement, the troops who had already returned home to Alaska had been told that decisions on their fates would be made on a case-by-case basis.

Army officials said they recalled just one other time during the three-year-long Iraq war when the Pentagon so quickly recalled soldiers who had served a year on the battlefront and gotten home.

Other units have had their deployments extended anywhere from a week or two to a few months.

The 300 soldiers recalled from Alaska on Monday got to spend between three and five weeks at home, and will head back to Iraq in the next week or so. Most of the brigade is expected to leave Iraq by the end of the year, although Army spokesman Paul Boyce said Monday there are no assurances the unit's stay will not be extended again.

A second extension, however, would be very rare.

For some, the return to Iraq may mean they will miss the holidays or much-anticipated vacations. For others, it means rescheduling military or civilian college classes, or postponing long-planned moves out of state or to different Army units.

Soldiers who serve more than 365 days on the warfront will receive $1,000 more per month — $800 for incentive pay and $200 for additional hazardous duty pay.

Last week eight Army officials went to Alaska to meet with the soldiers and their families to work out scheduling conflicts and other problems brought on by the sudden change. Hotlines also have been set up to assist family members.

About 50 of the approximately 80 soldiers who do not have to return to Iraq were the advance team that headed back to Alaska early to prepare for the unit's return. They will stay in Alaska and plan for the unit's eventual return late this year.

The other 30 or so included soldiers who were not sent back for a variety of reasons, including medical conditions, school requirements or emergency leave.

Sectarian violence has rocked Baghdad, bringing it to what some believe is the brink of civil war. In response, U.S. and Iraqi military leaders have shifted thousands of troops into Baghdad, targeting four critical regions wracked by attacks between Sunni insurgents and Shiite extremists.

The new offensive has driven the number of U.S. troops in Iraq up to 135,000 — reversing a trend of declining personnel levels that had begun earlier this year. And, the increased level dampens hopes of a significant withdrawal of U.S. troops by the end of the year, just as members of Congress returned to their home districts to voters growing increasingly weary of the war.

Rumsfeld must approve any deployment that is longer than a year on the ground in Iraq.

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FEMA: Same key could open as many as 118,000 hurricane evacuee trailer homes

USA TODAY
FEMA: Same key could open many hurricane evacuee trailer homes

WASHINGTON (AP) — FEMA will replace locks on as many as 118,000 trailers used by Gulf Coast hurricane victims after discovering that the same key could open multiple mobile homes, the agency said Monday.

Some keys could open as many as 50 different locks — causing a security risk in heavily populated trailer parks in Louisiana and Mississippi.


"We're aggressively stepping out to minimize the risk," said Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman Pat Philbin. He said FEMA worked though the weekend after discovering the problem last Friday at a Baton Rouge, trailer park that has hurricane victims.

It is unknown how many trailers will need to have their locks replaced, Philbin said.

In all, FEMA has issued about 150,000 travel trailers and mobile homes to evacuees since hurricanes Katrina and Rita slammed into the Gulf Coast last year. But about 32,000 have been taken out of service, Philbin said.

The snafu stems from a limited number of lock makers — three — that trailer manufacturers use when building mobile homes, FEMA officials said. That increases the likelihood of locks being the same, they said.

FEMA bought 13 different kinds of travel trailers for hurricane evacuees, the officials said.

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$400 Million FEMA Contracts Now Total $3.4 Billion

washingtonpost.com
$400 Million FEMA Contracts Now Total $3.4 Billion
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer

Four no-bid contracts awarded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to house Hurricane Katrina evacuees have ballooned in value from $400 million to about $3.4 billion, prompting renewed scrutiny from Congress and federal auditors about the disaster agency's management of the aftermath of the storm.

The Department of Homeland Security's inspector general is, for at least a second time, reviewing the contracts with construction and engineering firms Bechtel Corp., CH2M Hill Inc., Fluor Corp. and the Shaw Group Inc. to provide 150,000 trailers for hurricane victims, even as FEMA expects to competitively award at least $1 billion for similar work in future contingencies within days.

A review is underway into how the contracts were awarded, the parties involved and their documentary support, according to Marta Metelko, spokeswoman for Inspector General Richard L. Skinner. She cited the "dollars and risk associated with sole source contracts."

The contracts, which were quickly awarded as Katrina approached and hit the Gulf Coast, have been repeatedly faulted by Skinner's office, congressional auditors and a Senate investigation for poor safeguards and high costs. FEMA valued the contracts at $2 billion last fall and winter, but the agency has raised the limit for each firm over the past several months.

FEMA Director R. David Paulison and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff promised Congress last October to re-bid the pacts and spun off $3.6 billion in maintenance and future dismantling of the trailers to 36 small and minority-owned firms in March. But the agency's critics say that has not addressed the entire problem.

Members of Congress say FEMA is unresponsive to complaints and warnings of mismanagement. Outside analysts say that the Department of Homeland Security's staffing shortages and increasing dependence on larger contracts to handle complex new missions feeds an unhealthy cycle, in which firms vying for an ever-growing flow of taxpayer dollars raid agency staff for expertise, weakening FEMA's ability to independently carry out its missions.

Coast Guard Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson Jr., FEMA's deputy director since April, said he tracks reports every week of how quickly FEMA is hiring and filling contract management jobs, and said the contracts are large and extremely complex. "I understand . . . how complex [the issues] are, and how many contracts our small staff is asked to complete," he said. "I see nothing that indicates there is any favoritism whatsoever."

FEMA deputy operations director Deidre Lee said the contracts' growth was justified "given the scope of Katrina. We ended up putting over 150,000 trailers and this for all the work, hauling, installing, prepping and set-up."

Spokesmen for Bechtel, which has its headquarters in San Francisco; CH2M Hill, of Englewood, Colo.; Fluor, of Irving, Tex.; and Shaw, of Baton Rouge, La., said they had received no information or requests from the DHS inspector general's office about a review, but routinely cooperate with audits by the office.

"We have delivered on every task they asked us to perform," CH2M Hill spokesman John Corsi said.

Shaw spokesman Chris D. Sammons said: "We are confident that our activities are fully in compliance with respect to all of those [federal and state] regulations."

In May, numerous protests of inflated prices and awards to a Fluor subsidiary led Sens. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.) to call on Skinner to begin another inquiry.

"It's hard to overstate the incompetence involved in all of these contracts," Dorgan said. "We have repeatedly asked them for information, and you get nothing."

The initial contracts began under murky circumstances. Two FEMA officials have said the four firms were tapped even before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, and the Shaw Group announced on Aug. 30, one day after the hurricane struck, that it was in contact with FEMA to mobilize assistance. Its stock rose 21 percent in two days and 32 percent that week after the news.

FEMA publicly announced contracting with the firms for housing on Sept. 8, in what company and government officials have said were letter contracts or agreements worth as much as $100 million. FEMA this week said that the initial contracts had a ceiling of $500 million each, and were awarded Sept. 3 to Fluor and Sept. 30 to the other three companies.

FEMA raised the ceilings of the contracts -- to $950 million for Shaw in February, to $1.4 billion for Fluor in March and to $575 million for Bechtel last month. It expects to raise the CH2M Hill contract to $530 million. FEMA has paid the firms $1.9 billion, and obligated $1 billion based on company charges, whose payment is subject to negotiation.

Skinner told Congress in February that the initial awarding of the housing contracts appeared justified by the emergency, but he concluded in a formal March report that "FEMA had not adequately defined the roles, responsibilities, expectation for deliverables, or performance measures for contractors," leaving taxpayers vulnerable to poor performance and abuse.

Shaw has installed 34,500 of 35,700 housing units expected to be completed by Sept. 30; Fluor, 49,000 of 53,000 units; Bechtel, all 36,000 units; and CH2M Hill, 23,000 of 28,000 units, FEMA said last week. The contracts will end "a couple of months" later, FEMA said.

In total, FEMA has contracted to pay as much as $7 billion for the 150,000 trailers, or about $46,000 per trailer. By law, the agency is required to provide storm victims housing for 18 months, although that term could grow.

Steven L. Schooner, co-director of George Washington University Law School's Government Procurement Law Program, said Homeland Security's high visibility and urgent needs dramatize a government-wide failure by Congress and recent administrations to solve a worsening contract workforce crisis.

"In both gulfs, Iraq and Louisiana, Congress seems to be able to find money to send auditors and inspector generals onto the battlefield after the fact to bayonet the wounded," Schooner said. "But nobody seems to find money to put contracting officers on the ground to do it right the first time."

Chertoff has championed the re-engineering of FEMA to tap private expertise for tasks including registering victims and clearing debris. Prearranging contracts, for example, could have avoided FEMA's post-Katrina spending of $1.8 billion to provide hotel rooms and cruise ship cabins to storm victims at three to six times the cost of what it paid them to rent apartments, and to buy 26,000 mobile homes, many of which could not be used under agency rules.

Nevertheless, the agency has been slow to carry out such changes, even though its housing needs were identified after four hurricanes hit Florida in 2004.

FEMA's Johnson acknowledged, "We do need more contracting staff and more procurement staff."

Since Katrina, FEMA has boosted the number of contracting officers from 50 to 90, aiming for a total of 134, plus 30 more who may be available in emergencies, said Lee, who joined FEMA in April.

DHS procurement chief Elaine C. Duke said FEMA is working on 70 new contracting projects to help with emergencies, dealing with logistics, government aid, housing inspections and more. "If you look at all that's been done, a year -- or, really, 10 months -- had been a really short time," she said.

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White House Vague About Bush Support for GOP Senate Candidate in Connecticut

ABC News
White House Vague on Conn. Senate Race
White House Vague About Bush Support for GOP Senate Candidate in Connecticut
By ANDREW MIGA
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - President Bush isn't exactly eager to lend his support to the Republican nominee in Connecticut's tumultuous Senate race.

The White House was circumspect on Monday when asked whether Bush would support Republican Alan Schlesinger in the three-way fall contest that includes Democratic nominee Ned Lamont and three-term incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman.

"The president supports the democratic process in the state of Connecticut and wishes them a successful election in November," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

Bush routinely backs Republican candidates in races all across the country.

Lieberman has won praise from the Bush team for his unwavering support of the Iraq war and is seen by some Democrats as too close to the president. He began an independent bid to keep his seat after losing the Democratic primary last week to anti-war challenger and political newcomer Lamont.

Snow was asked whether Bush was balking at supporting Schlesinger because he liked Lieberman or wanted to stay out of the contest because Schlesinger was trailing badly in the polls.

"There may be a whole host of reasons the president I'm just not going to play," Snow replied.

He suggested the Connecticut race was unique.

"I think that there are some peculiar characteristics going on in the Republican Party with the Republican candidate," Snow said. "And why don't you wait and see what happens?"

Schlesinger said he wasn't surprised by the White House's hesitancy. Republican leaders have been praising Lieberman and now they can't suddenly abandon him, he said.

"I don't think the Republican Party can turn around and say, 'Don't vote for Joe,'" Schlesinger said in a telephone interview. "We've got to let this thing die down a little."

Schlesinger said he was confident he could move up in the polls once some of the attention shifted away from the Lieberman-Lamont primary fight.

"When the Republican leadership in Washington also starts believing I have a shot, you'll see some support coming in," Schlesinger said.

Schlesinger is considered a longshot candidate. There has been speculation that Republicans might try to find a stronger candidate, but no names have emerged.

Schlesinger's campaign stumbled in July after it was learned that he used a fake name to gamble at a Connecticut casino and had been sued over gambling debts at New Jersey casinos. Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell, a Republican, urged him to drop out of the Senate race, but Schlesinger called the gambling a "non-issue" and stayed in.

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Poll Shows Republicans Don't Trust Bush

Huffington Post
Rick Jacobs
Poll Shows Republicans Don't Trust Bush

With all of the sturm and drang (that's Joe Lieberman talk for hand wringing) over Iraq as some sort of twisted Achilles heel for the Democrats, we now have news that even Republicans don't trust their own party to tell them the truth about Iraq or to ask the right questions about it.

In a poll conducted 2-3 August by Courage Campaign and MyDD.com following up on research we did last month to find out just why Francine Busby lost in the 50th Congressional District in California, we learned the following.

1. 63% of Republican voters believe that Bush has made some or a lot of mistaks in Iraq and fully 24% believe he has made "a lot of mistakes" in Iraq . (Makes you kind of wonder who the rest are.)

2. One third of Republicans think Bush has not told the truth about Iraq and should be held accountable for what he has done there.

3. Interestingly, nearly a half (48%) believes that the Democratic Party will hold Bush accountable for what he has done in Iraq, versus only 19% who believe that the Republicans will do so.

National polls continue to show that the American people have lost patience with President Bush's occupation of Iraq. This poll, focused on one single district where Republican registration exceeds Democratic registration by fourteen points, puts a very fine point on the "message question" that plagues many Democrats and that brought down Joe Lieberman. Quite simply, the people again lead the politicians. While incumbents distance themselves from a president whom they did not have the courage to question, their own party loyalists stand up first for patriotism rather than partisanship.

Jim Webb, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Virginia, a man who understands first hand better than anyone in the Bush White House when and how to use the military for national defense, puts it best: "How long does the president plan to continue the occupation of Iraq?" So far, neither his opponent George Allen nor the president nor any of the party in power has figured out how to answer that question.

In the meantime, the good people of San Diego County set the trend, telling us that they want answers. The current one party regime has neither the capacity nor the confidence of the American people to answer those questions. If the Republicans and Independents of a "red" county think this way, it's time for the Democrats to lead this way.

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Fraudulent Words and Images: The Accountability Double Standard

Huffington Post
Arianna Huffington
Fraudulent Words and Images: The Accountability Double Standard

Accountability -- it's all the rage. At least you'd think so if you've been following the story of the Reuters photographer Adnan Hajj, who doctored photos from the war in Lebanon. Once a fraudulent image of Beirut was first exposed by Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, Reuters canned the photographer.

Hooray for accountability.

But before we start popping champagne corks, let's take a look at the gigantic double standard when it comes to journalistic deceit.

I brought up the latest instance -- a particularly odious one -- this morning on CNN's Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz and Charles Johnson:

KURTZ: Arianna Huffington, you're obviously on a different side of the political fence than Charles Johnson, but do you think this is another example of bloggers, you know, holding the mainstream media accountable?

HUFFINGTON: Absolutely. In fact, I want to congratulate Charles. That is exactly what bloggers should be doing. It was outrageous what Reuters allowed to appear. And the fact that they fired the photographer, it was the only legitimate response.

And I want to take this a step further and say that we should hold all journalists accountable, whether they are photojournalists or not, for deceptive statements, whether they're images or words.

I mean, you had your own headline anchorman, Chuck Roberts, describe Lamont as the al Qaeda candidate. This is an equally deceitful, fraudulent, fabricated statement. There should be zero tolerance for all those deceits, whether in images or words.

KURTZ: Well, what Chuck Roberts said, according to the transcript, was that some are calling Ned Lamont the al Qaeda candidate. But it's certainly not a formulation I would have used.

HUFFINGTON: You cannot find a single person who called Lamont the al Qaeda candidate, except Chuck Roberts. And what have been the consequences when it comes to Chuck Roberts? Has he been demoted to be covering Paris Hilton or entertainment news? … It's about time that there is that same kind of accountability that Charles is demanding from photojournalists from journalists, as well.

Indeed, an exhaustive Lexis Nexis search confirms that no one has called Lamont "the Al Qaeda candidate." Except for Chuck Roberts. In fact, you know what you find if you Google “Al Qaeda candidate”? A lot of references to John Kerry being smeared by the RNC and its cronies during the 2004 election. Clearly, Lamont as “tha Al Qaeda candidate” is the latest rendition of an old G.O.P. tune.

The question is: why do the media play along?

Sure, it's great that Reuters will no longer be using Hajj, but it's not just fraudulent images that are damaging but fraudulent statements as well, fabrications claiming to reflect reality.

A subtler example is the headline on the August 11th New York Times story by Adam Nagourney:

"Arrests Bolster G.O.P. Bid To Claim Security as Issue"

Really? Do they? How do we know they do?

When you read the story you find out that the reason we know they do is because, yes, the G.O.P. told us so. Nagourney writes: "The developments played neatly into the White House-led effort, after Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, lost on Tuesday to an antiwar primary challenger, to remind voters of the threats facing the nation and to cast Democrats as timid on national defense."

No, it's not “the developments" that played neatly into "the White House-led effort," it's Adam Nagourney who did.

The White House fabricated a connection and a neat fit between the “developments” and the “Democrats.” But isn’t it up to the mainstream media to expose fraudulent connections instead of endorsing them as fact?

The truth, which, sadly, you won't find in the New York Times story, is that in no way do the arrests in Britain bolster the GOP's claims to be the party to best defend America. And the only way they will is if the media swallow Ken Mehlman's talking points and turn them into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In fact, given that we know for a fact that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and that we currently have over 130,000 troops in Iraq, and have spent over three hundred billion dollars there, the Occam's Razor interpretation of these “developments" would be that they demonstrate how badly the White House has squandered our resources and how much the War on Terror is, as even George Will admitted today on This Week, “primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation.”

When will the mainstream media finally start holding elected officials and fellow journalists accountable for fraudulent words the way they rightly held Hajj, Reuters, and others accountable for fraudulent images?

And how about starting by holding Chuck Roberts accountable?

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"Swift Boat" Veterans Set Sights on Rep. Murtha

"Swift Boat" Veterans Set Sights on Rep. Murtha

The Iraq war looms over another race, as the group that helped defeat John Kerry targets the antiwar lawmaker.

By Noam N. Levey / Los Angeles Times

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Two years after a cadre of veterans helped sink the presidential campaign of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), they have found a new target in the old steel country of southwestern Pennsylvania: Democratic Rep. John P. Murtha.

In a fight that organizers say will feature rallies, TV ads and an aggressive Internet campaign, these activists are promising to make Murtha pay for his criticism of the Iraq war.

"I will do my best to 'Swift boat' John Murtha," retired Navy Capt. Larry Bailey said at a recent news conference here, invoking the 2004 campaign against Kerry that took its name from Vietnam War-era Navy vessels.

Few believe that Murtha, a Vietnam veteran who has represented his district since 1974, is in much danger of being driven from office.

But in the wake of Sen. Joe Lieberman's defeat in Connecticut's Democratic primary last week, Murtha's showdown with an increasingly vocal group of opponents provides more evidence of the prominent role the Iraq war is playing in this year's midterm campaign.

Unlike Lieberman, whose support for the war cost him Democratic voters, Murtha confronts a challenge sparked by his repeated calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

Long among the most hawkish Democrats in Congress, the once media-shy Murtha has become a standard bearer for the party's antiwar wing since airing his criticism of the Bush administration's commitment in Iraq. And on street corners and town squares of this Rust Belt district, a small but committed corps of volunteers has joined Bailey, a North Carolina resident, in trying to make sure Murtha's constituents remember it — and vote against him in November.

Murtha has brushed aside the attacks.

"It's ludicrous," he said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times last week. "What they are trying to do is distract from the [Iraq] issue…. There is no one who supports the military more than me."

Murtha's allies, led by a veterans group based in Richmond, Va., held a counter-rally in Johnstown that largely overshadowed Bailey's news conference. The pro-Murtha event featured former Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.), who lost three limbs while serving in Vietnam.

The battle over Murtha's opposition to the Iraq war is unfolding in a place where support for the military has been an article of faith at least since the Civil War. The communities that form Murtha's district were among the first to send volunteers for the Union war effort — a distinction proudly noted on a memorial in Johnstown's town square.

Today, 15.3% of the district's residents are veterans, slightly above the national average of 12.6%, according to the Almanac of American Politics.

And when a Pennsylvania National Guard battalion stationed outside Johnstown returned in June from a yearlong deployment in Iraq's Anbar province, some 1,000 well-wishers turned out to show their support, according to a unit spokesman.

For years, Murtha has been the embodiment of that spirit, many locals say.

A decorated Marine wounded in action, Murtha became the first Vietnam veteran elected to Congress. He backed the first Persian Gulf War and has been a longtime champion of robust defense spending.

Perhaps most critically for Johnstown, the congressman helped bring home defense-related jobs. Firms such as Lockheed Martin, DRS Technologies and Concurrent Technologies have opened facilities in the new industrial park on the hills above the city.

"What you find here is a tradition that goes way back with the military," said Robert Layo, president of the Greater Johnstown/Cambria County Chamber of Commerce. "His position has always been in line with that."

But Murtha, 74, established a new persona on Nov. 17, when he called a news conference to declare that, in his view, U.S. troops had become "the primary target of the insurgency" in Iraq and that it was "time to bring them home."

Murtha almost immediately became an antiwar icon — a role he has embraced in the months since.

Now a regular on news talk shows, Murtha made headlines again in May when he said that Marines in Iraq had killed more than a dozen civilians "in cold blood." His comments caused one Marine under investigation in the Haditha killings to file a libel and invasion of privacy lawsuit against him last week.

With Congress on its summer break, Murtha is spending much of his time crisscrossing the country, headlining the nationwide Democratic push to take control of Congress in November's election. And he recently contributed an item on the war to the Huffington Post, a leading liberal website edited by Brentwood's Arianna Huffington.

Murtha's new identity has made him a prime target in a national Republican campaign to portray Democrats as defeatists. Some Pennsylvanians in Murtha's 12th Congressional District agree with that assessment.

In tiny Charleroi, Pa., Nikki A.C. Sheppick, a 54-year-old housewife who served as an Army personnel officer in 1972-73, has made a series of dining-table-sized panels with cartoons, text and photos attacking Murtha for his comments about the alleged civilian massacre in Iraq.

"You just don't talk about the troops that way," said Sheppick, who recalled how hurtful criticism of soldiers was during the Vietnam era.

She is helping organize an effort called "Operation Street Corner," in which volunteers are to take the cartoon panels to fairs, shopping centers and other public places.

About 75 miles away in Johnstown, Murtha foes are working on plans for a rally in October, which they hope will draw thousands.

The organizers stress that theirs is largely a local campaign. But they have linked with Bailey, who from his North Carolina home is reassembling members of the national team that took on Kerry, including a Web expert in Texas and a Georgia developer who is helping bankroll the "Boot Murtha" effort.

For fundraising help, Bailey also has joined with an Iowa political action committee — Iowa Presidential Watch — that touts its efforts to "hold accountable" Democratic presidential candidates.

And he has invited the participation of John O'Neill, the Houston lawyer who was a founder of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group that ran ads questioning Kerry's military record in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, Murtha's Republican challenger, county commissioner Diana Irey, is making Murtha's comments on the war a focal point of her campaign. "That's the issue that people come up to me and talk about," she said in a recent interview.

At Point Stadium in Johnstown, where thousands converge every summer for the All American Amateur Baseball Association championships, Jeff Katarski said the issue bothers him.

"I think [Murtha's] talking out of both sides of his mouth," said Katarski, who served in the Navy for five years in the late 1970s and early '80s. "To me, he should know better than to criticize the administration and the troops during war, at least openly…. It hurts morale."

But even Katarski concedes that Murtha's opponents will have a hard sell.

At the VFW post in Uniontown, another aging industrial city that was the birthplace of World War II hero Gen. George C. Marshall, retiree Joe Hawkins said he doesn't know many people who question Murtha's judgment.

"I think he's doing a hell of a job," Hawkins said.

Murtha may reflect the feelings of a large portion of his constituents, said Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the polling institute at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, which polls extensively across the Northeast.

Opposition to the war "emerged earlier [in the region] than it did in other parts of the country," Richards said.

Murtha, who was in San Francisco on Friday visiting House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) after campaigning for Democrats in Connecticut and New York, said he is confident the public is with him.

"The average person goes out of their way to tell me they want change…. What am I supposed to do? Say everything is all right?" Murtha asked before flying to Tennessee to attend a dinner for former Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore.

"I'm not going to say everything is all right if everything isn't all right."

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Republicans are using the terror plot news and Lieberman’s defeat to paint Dems as weak. But the Connecticut result doesn’t bode well for Republicans

Fear Factor
Republicans are using the terror plot news and Lieberman’s defeat to paint Dems as
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek

Aug. 11, 2006 - The foiled terrorist plot to explode airliners over the Atlantic reminds voters that the horrors of warfare they see unfolding on their television screens in Iraq and Lebanon could yet come home to America. There is no doubting the seriousness of the threat the British security forces uncovered, yet there is something disquieting about the way Republicans jumped on the story to reinforce their message coming out of the Connecticut primary that anti-war Democrats can’t be trusted with national security.

This week’s victory of political unknown Ned Lamont over Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman prompted a familiar refrain from the GOP playbook about a party hijacked by its left wing, too weak to respond to terrorism, stuck in the Vietnam era of George McGovern. Never mind that more than 30 years have passed since McGovern ran for president on an anti-war platform. His name is still a potent symbol along with such phrases as cut and run, which the GOP is hammering home to voters in a lame defense of the Iraq war.

“They’ve been playing that angle so long, the politics of fear,” McGovern told NEWSWEEK in a telephone interview from Montana, where he is spending the summer. “Nixon used to say people don’t vote on faith; they vote on fear. For 50 years, they used the fear of communism to beat Democrats and liberals and to discourage any kind of dissent. I hope we don’t have 50 years of terrorism for them to do the same thing.” If Lieberman stays in the race as an Independent, he will carry the GOP’s message that the Democrats have returned to the days of McGovern, and that there is no room in the party for a pro-war, muscular Democrat. “They’ve done that for 50 years—saying Democrats are soft on communism, now they’re saying Democrats aren’t tough enough on terrorism. That argument is beginning to wear thin,” says McGovern, who served in World War Two as a bomber pilot.

Republicans are whistling past the proverbial graveyard if they think the Connecticut results bode well for them. The high turnout reflects voter anger with the war and with President Bush and the GOP-controlled Congress, meaning that Rep. Chris Shays and two other moderate Republicans in the state will likely be swept away in the tide of anger come November. “Bush is poison; that’s the overarching message of this election,” says Paul Equale, a Democratic lobbyist. “Everything else is parlor talk.” Illinois Democrat Rahm Emanuel, who chairs the Democratic congressional campaign committee, called Lieberman Bush’s “love child.” His point is that the election is a referendum on George Bush, “and the person standing closest to Bush gets burned,” a spokesman explained.

Democrats desperately want Lieberman to step aside and not create a sideshow that diverts attention from Bush. But that will take finesse backed up by poll numbers. “Democrats need to take it easy on Lieberman, not go and hammer on him 12 hours after he’s eked out a defeat that’s much narrower than was forecast,” a party strategist told NEWSWEEK. “Better to wait for the court of public opinion and build a prima facie case with the right messenger [to deliver it]: Bill Clinton, [Connecticut Senator] Chris Dodd—or better yet, someone who has resonance with Hadassah [Lieberman’s wife.] She’s got a major say in this.” That will take time as well as Lieberman’s realization that winning as a pro-war Independent is unlikely in the current climate. “Some things in politics are done in a flash; some are done more glacially; this is closer to glacial,” says the strategist.

Hillary Clinton got out ahead of the storm with her sharp attack last week on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Critics on the left called her an opportunist, but in the world of politics, is there anybody who isn’t? “The way she took on Rumsfeld was great for her,” says Republican pollster Frank Luntz. “She took on the manager rather than the war itself—how it’s administered. “You criticize the process rather than putting out an alternative.” Luntz says if he were strategizing for the Democrats, he would keep the party’s more strident anti-war voices in the background and put [Illinois Senator] Barack Obama on television. “It’s one thing to be anti-war and another to be seen on the fringe,” he says.

Hillary supported Lieberman in the primary, but wrote Lamont a $5,000 check from her HILLPAC the day after the election. “Maybe this will put a little spine in the backs of Democrats,” says McGovern. Hillary and Bill worked on McGovern’s presidential campaign in ’72, and he says he has “lasting personal affection for her,” but doesn’t like her careful positioning on the war and wishes she were “a little more gutsy.” What Hillary is doing works for now; it won’t work for the primaries in ’08. A lot will change by then, and if the Bush administration gets the message, there may not be a war for Democrats to kick around.

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Conn. Senate Hopeful Lamont Says Lieberman, Cheney Playing Terrorism for 'Partisan Advantage'

ABC News
Lamont Decries Lieberman Terror Remarks
Conn. Senate Hopeful Lamont Says Lieberman, Cheney Playing Terrorism for 'Partisan Advantage'
By ANDREW MIGA
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Democratic Senate nominee Ned Lamont, the anti-war candidate who toppled Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut primary, says he was surprised by Lieberman and Vice President Dick Cheney's claims that his victory could embolden terrorists.

"My God, here we have a terrorist threat against hearth and home and the very first thing that comes out of their mind is how can we turn this to partisan advantage. I find that offensive," Lamont said in an interview Sunday with The Associated Press.

After British officials disclosed they had thwarted a terrorist airline bombing plot on Thursday, Lieberman warned that Lamont's call for a phased withdrawal of troops from Iraq would be "taken as a tremendous victory" by terrorists.

Cheney suggested Wednesday that Lamont's victory might encourage "the al-Qaida types" who want to "break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task."

Lamont said Lieberman's swipe at his candidacy "sounded an awful lot" like Cheney.

"It surprised me," he said. "It seemed almost orchestrated. It's sort of demeaning to the people of Connecticut. ... I thought the senator and the vice president were both wrong to use that attack (strategy) on the voters of Connecticut."

The Lieberman camp Sunday brushed aside Lamont's comments.

"All Lieberman did was point out an important difference between his approach to national security and Ned Lamont's, which is what campaigns are all about," said Lieberman spokesman Dan Gerstein.

Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said Lamont was the one seeking to score political points with the terror war.

"Sounds like he's the one playing politics at a time the president is trying to build national unity and cooperation in fighting a determined and murderous enemy an enemy whose tactics and hatred we got to glimpse again last week, an enemy that continues to plot in the shadows and to probe weaknesses," McBride said.

Lamont's upset victory last week, fueled in part by liberal bloggers, was viewed by many as a referendum on Iraq and President Bush's handling of the war. The debate has placed his candidacy in the national spotlight.

Lamont, who was in Washington for appearances on two Sunday TV news talk shows, is reaching out to the Democratic Party establishment for help in what is expected to be a bruising general election fight against Lieberman.

Many top Democrats, including national party chairman Howard Dean and leading senators, have abandoned Lieberman, the party's 2000 vice presidential nominee. They have lined up behind Lamont in the general election, a three-way fight that also includes Republican Alan Schlesinger.

Some Democrats are urging Lieberman to drop his independent bid to clear a path for Lamont.

"It would be better for the Democratic Party, it would be better for the people of Connecticut, it would be better for the country" if Lieberman got out of the race, Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., said on ABC's "This Week."

Lamont said he had no idea whether Lieberman might reconsider his candidacy.

"It's not helpful," he said of the possibility Lieberman could play the role of the spoiler.

Lamont also said he doubted that Republicans would find a stronger candidate than Schlesinger, who trails far behind both Lamont and Lieberman in recent polls.

"My hunch is they're not going to do that," Lamont said.

Lamont's previous political experience was serving in local offices such as selectman in Greenwich, Conn. He said he had no plans to tailor his campaign message in the fall race to appeal to independents or moderates in both parties.

"I'm not changing my message one iota now," Lamont said. "It is a message that resonates. It's not just Democrats who think that we need real change in Washington, D.C."

Lamont, 52, is a great-grandson of the former chairman of JP Morgan & Co. He has estimated that he's worth $90 million to $300 million. In 1984 he founded a company that wires college campuses for cable television.

Lamont spent about $4 million of his own money in the primary. He said he doubted he would have to provide a similar-sized cash infusion for the general election, but he vowed to remain competitive in terms of fundraising.

"We're not going to be badly outspent," said Lamont.

Lieberman has about $2 million in campaign funds for the fall race after spending roughly $5 million during the primary, according to campaign spokesman Gerstein. "We will raise enough to win," Gerstein said.

On the Net:

Ned Lamont: http://www.nedlamont.com/

Joe Lieberman: http://www.joe2006.com/

Alan Schlesinger: http://www.schlesinger2006.com/

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Crucial Lebanese cabinet talks on disarming Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon under a UN-brokered ceasefire have been put off

BBC NEWS
Lebanon falters over truce detail
Crucial Lebanese cabinet talks on disarming Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon under a UN-brokered ceasefire have been put off.

A truce between Israel and Hezbollah is due to come into force at 0500 GMT.

The postponement, amid reported divisions, seriously complicates the establishment of a stable ceasefire, the BBC's Nick Childs in Beirut says.

Israel's cabinet has backed the truce, but says its forces will not leave until peacekeepers are deployed.

Mark Malloch Brown, the UN's Deputy Secretary General, said it might take a month before a joint UN-Lebanese force was fully in place.

"It's going to be weeks, not days and may even, before you hit the full total, be a month or so," he told the BBC's Have Your Say programme.

An unrelenting barrage of rockets and shells from both sides of the border on Sunday suggest that Israel and Hezbollah will continue to attack each other until the deadline, the BBC's Adam Mynott reports.

The Israeli military have intensified their assault, determined to try to achieve a military success at the eleventh hour, our correspondent says.

Major tensions

Lebanon's cabinet indefinitely postponed its meeting.

The Security Council... emphasises the need to address urgently the causes that have given rise to the current crisis
UN resolution text

After five hours of discussions on Saturday, it had agreed to accept a UN Security Council ceasefire resolution with reservations.

The second gathering was meant to consider the details of implementation.

However, the issue of Hezbollah's disarmament and its military presence in southern Lebanon continues to cause major tensions within the fragile government, our correspondent reports.

He says that without a meeting and an agreed plan, it seems that the deployment of 15,000 Lebanese army troops to the south is unlikely to go ahead.

Even if the planned ceasefire happens, the prospects of continuing skirmishes on the ground will remain high, he adds.

Hezbollah, a member of the government, says it will abide by the resolution but retains the right to continue attacks until the last Israeli soldier has left Lebanese soil.

Crescendo of violence

At least 19 Lebanese people, including a mother and her three children, were killed in Israeli attacks on Sunday, Lebanese officials said.

Israeli emergency services reported that a Hezbollah rocket - one of some 250 fired during the day - had killed a civilian in northern Israel.

And the Israeli military said that five of its soldiers had died in fighting on Sunday.

The son of David Grossman, a well-known Israeli novelist and peace activist, was killed on Saturday while serving in Lebanon.

Staff Sgt Uri Grossman, 20, was killed by an anti-tank missile just days after his father joined an appeal by leading Israeli intellectuals for an end to the war.

Sunday's Israeli assault saw warplanes bomb petrol stations in Tyre, sending up thick clouds of smoke.

The BBC's Jim Muir described a crescendo of violence in the hills near the city as shells, bombs and rockets smashed into their targets.

And the sound of huge explosions reverberated across Beirut as the Israeli air force carried out a new raid on southern districts of the city.

Rescue workers said that several multi-storey buildings had collapsed.

News also came in of air strikes on targets in eastern Lebanon late on Sunday.

'Parallel withdrawal'

Hezbollah rockets hit Yaara in northern Israel, killing the civilian, and Haifa's city centre and suburbs also came under bombardment.


HAVE YOUR SAY
All Olmert has, like his fellow appeaser Chamberlain before him, is a piece of paper
Mark Robertson, Lisbon, Portugal

Earlier, Israel's cabinet voted 24-0 with one abstention to accept the UN resolution.

Speaking after the meeting, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni stressed that Israeli forces would not leave Lebanon until the international force had been deployed.

"We desire... to leave parallel to the move south of the international forces with the Lebanese army," she told reporters.

More than 1,000 Lebanese have been killed in the conflict since Hezbollah militants captured two Israeli soldiers on 12 July in a cross-border raid. Israel's official death toll stood at 163 on Sunday, including 43 civilians.

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British airliner turned back over security scare

Reuters
British airliner turned back over security scare
By Michael Smith

LONDON (Reuters) - A British Airways flight to New York was turned back to London's Heathrow airport on Sunday because of a security scare over a mobile phone that did not belong to any of the passengers, officials said.

The phone was later found to be safe, as the government said the threat to Britain of a terrorist attack had been downgraded to severe from the critical level last week when police said they had foiled a plot to blow up transatlantic airliners.

Despite the downgrading, the Transport Department warned in a statement: "This (still) means that a terrorist attack is still highly likely."

British Airways said the captain of the airliner, which was carrying 217 passengers, had decided to return to London as a precautionary measure.

"A mobile phone was located on board the aircraft which none of the passengers appeared to own," it said in a statement.

Mobile phones were banned from flights departing from British airports under new tough security measures introduced after the disclosure of the alleged plot to smuggle bombs on to aircraft disguised as drinks.

Police said on Thursday they had foiled an attempt by would-be suicide bombers to blow up simultaneously up to 10 airlines flying to the United States. Twenty-four people were arrested.

Home Secretary (interior minister) John Reid said on Sunday another attempted terrorist attack on Britain was highly likely.

"We think we have the main suspects in this particular plot, but there could be others out there, perhaps people we don't know," Reid told BBC television.

"It is highly likely there will be another terrorist attempt. The threat of a terrorist attack in the United Kingdom is still very substantial," he said.

Reid said at least four plots had been thwarted since July last year when four Islamist suicide bombers killed 52 people on London buses and trains.

The new security measures have caused chaos at airports on both sides of the Atlantic.

British Airways canceled 30 percent of its flights from Heathrow on Sunday in a growing dispute with airport authorities over how to apply the tougher security.

Airlines said cancellations and disruptions showed no sign of easing.

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US eases flight rules but says threat remains

Reuters
US eases flight rules but says threat remains
By John Crawley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Restrictions on U.S. airline travelers were eased slightly on Sunday, but Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the threat of an attack on airliners remained.

The Transportation and Security Administration, or TSA, said on its Web site it would allow passengers to bring up to 4 ounces (118 ml) of nonprescription liquid medication on board, including pain relievers and cough medicine.

It also said it would allow on board glucose gel and other medicines for low blood sugar treatments for diabetics.

The TSA had barred all liquids, except baby formula and breast milk, from flights last week because of a plot to bring down jetliners as they flew from London to the United States.

Plotters planned to use common chemicals often found in liquids to make explosives and detonate them using a common electronic device -- all of which were normally allowed on aircraft.

On Sunday, the TSA also said it would require all passengers traveling on domestic and international flights to remove their shoes for screening.

Until now, it had been recommended that passengers be asked to remove their shoes for X-ray screening before boarding. But the practice will become mandatory at all airports, the TSA said.

Since convicted "shoe bomber" Richard Reid of Britain tried to blow up a transatlantic American Airlines flight shortly after the September 11, 2001, hijack attacks, U.S. airport officials have paid closer attention to passengers' shoes.

But while the United States moved quickly last week to tighten security, Chertoff told CBS's news program "Face the Nation" that he knew of no suspects in the United States connected with the plot uncovered in Britain.

"As we speak right now we've not found any indication of active planning in the U.S. or plans to conduct operations within the U.S.," he said. "Nothing so far."

Britain has arrested about two dozen people in connection with the plot.

"Obviously, they believe they've picked up the main players, but it's a plot that's international in scope," Chertoff said on "Fox News Sunday." "We're still concerned there may be some plotters who are out there."

WAS IT AL QAEDA?


Chertoff said that although the plot to bring down multiple planes nearly simultaneously looked like an al Qaeda plot, it was not clear precisely what role the organization may have played in planning or organizing it.

"I think even traditionally, al Qaeda has not always carried out its plots with that kind of centralized control," he said on ABC's "This Week." "But if you look at this plot, it has the hallmarks of an al Qaeda-type plot -- very sophisticated. The idea of multiple terrorist attacks at the same time."

The homeland security chief also defended two controversial programs -- warrantless wiretapping and the SWIFT program to track financial transfers -- as necessary.

"Surveillance of communications, tracking the flow of money and transactions, that is -- those are the weapons of the modern war against terror," he said.

Chertoff said the latest efforts to protect airplanes would focus less on technology to detect explosives and more on intelligent questioning of air passengers by screeners. He said authorities have been honing screeners' skills in finding liquid explosives but the task is daunting.

"We've run six pilots on liquid explosive detection," he told "Fox News Sunday. "We have retrained 38,000 screeners in up-to-date techniques for spotting detonators and modern types of explosive devices. So it's not that we can't detect the chemicals. It's that the chemicals are very common, and there would be a lot of false positives."

(Additional reporting by Diane Bartz)

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Lieberman should drop out of election race: Dean

Reuters
Lieberman should drop out of election race: Dean

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman should bow out of the November's congressional race altogether after his defeat in Connecticut's Democratic primary, a top Democrat said on Sunday.

Lieberman, a three-term senator and Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000, lost to political newcomer Ned Lamont in Connecticut on Tuesday and said he plans to run as an independent in the November election.

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said Lieberman should support his party -- and Lamont -- rather than running against him to defeat the Republicans.

"I know how hard this is for Joe, and he is a good person, but the truth is I lost one of these races and I got behind my party's nominee and I think that is what you have to do if you want to help this country," Dean, former governor of Vermont, said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"The way to help this country is to limit Republican power."

Democrats see Lieberman's loss as a referendum on President George W. Bush and the Iraq war, while Republicans says it shows that Democrats are soft on national security issues.

Lamont defeated Lieberman by 52 percent to 48 percent in the August 8 primary but polls taken around that time showed Lieberman ahead in a three-way race with Lamont and the Republican candidate, former state legislator Alan Schlesinger, who is not seen as a strong threat.

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Ultimate Airline Security

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Every 10 Minutes, Every Hour, Every 12 Hours, Every 2 Years

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Price Seems Better When It Is Sold By The Quart

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How A Bill Becomes A Law in the Bush 43 Era

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US Health Care

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Bush Administration Knew About Liquid Explosive Threat, Yet Bush Still Calls It "New"

Huffington Post
Bush Administration Knew About Liquid Explosive Threat, Yet Bush Still Calls It "New"

From the President's Radio Address, August 12, 2006:

This plot is further evidence that the terrorists we face are sophisticated, and constantly changing their tactics... We're dealing with a new enemy that uses new means of attack and new methods to communicate.

From today's New York Times:

In 1995, a plot to bomb 12 American jumbo jets over the Pacific with a liquid explosive was discovered when the bomb makers accidentally set fire to their laboratory in Manila.

From the Associated Press:

As the British terror plot was unfolding, the Bush administration quietly tried to take away $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new explosives detection technology....Rep. Martin Sabo, D-Minn., who joined Republicans to block the administration's recent diversion of explosives detection money, said research and development is crucial to thwarting future attacks, and there is bipartisan agreement that Homeland Security has fallen short. ''They clearly have been given lots of resources that they haven't been using,'' Sabo said.

Thousands of YouTube viewers know about Mentos and Diet Coke — it's certainly not surprising that the Bush Administration should be aware of the explosive potential of certain liquids, even as we've been studiously taking our shoes off in airports. Now, in his first radio address since the terror plot was thwarted, Bush is calling the planned methods of execution "new." How many people out there listening will believe him? How many of them will be in the media?

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When President Bush described a war against ‘Islamic fascists,’ some American Muslims became very angry

Escalation in Terminology
When President Bush described a war against ‘Islamic fascists,’ some American Muslims became very angry.
By Lisa Miller
Newsweek

Aug. 12, 2006 - In our collective relief at having dodged a bullet this week, some of us may have missed the rhetorical bomb in our midst. Just hours after Tony Blair announced the arrest of two-dozen Britons on charges that they were planning to blow up planes using liquid explosives, President Bush made remarks of his own, thanking British authorities for their swift work and assuring Americans that their safety was his primary concern. “This nation is at war with Islamic fascists,” he said somberly, “who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.” Our terrorist enemy has been described in so much colorful language by so many, one more escalation in terminology may have been easy to overlook.

Except that this time Parvez Ahmed got really mad. That same afternoon, Ahmed, who is chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based advocacy group, released an open letter to the president, a letter that excoriated Bush for using language that “contributes to a rising level of hostility to Islam and the American-Muslim community.” He wrote, “The use of ill-defined hot-button terms such as ‘Islamic fascists’ harms our nation’s image and interests worldwide.” he wrote. The blogs went wild.

“Islamic fascist”—or “Islamofascist” as it’s popularly spelled on the Internet—is the latest explosive in the right’s semantic arsenal. It’s explosive because it instantly brings to mind the 20th century’s greatest horror, the Holocaust, because it offends the sensibilities of millions of people like Ahmed who hold Islam sacred, and because it infuriates people who believe that the Middle East conflict can be resolved at least partially through talking. It has been in wide use for about a year, mostly by hawkish conservatives who feel that five years of “war on terror” rhetoric has not gone far enough to identify who the enemy is—that is, terrorists who are Muslim—or to describe the radical Islamic movement in the Middle East as a global threat to a democratic way of life. To compare today’s terrorists to the last century’s fascists “gets at the incredibly aggressive nature of the conflict, the craziness of it,” explains William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard. “You imply that these are not rationally calculating people in the way that we have become accustomed to.”

Republican Senator Rick Santorum, who will be fighting for his seat in November, uses the phrase repeatedly. “Islamic fascism,” he told the National Press Club in July “is the great test of this generation.” In June, political consultant Mary Matalin told Fox News that “You either believe we’re going to fight Islamic fascism or you don’t,” and a week later, after an Israeli soldier was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists, Rep. Eric Cantor (R- Va.) issued a statement saying that Israel “has every right to secure its citizens from these Islamic fascists.”

Even the president is more than a little familiar with the term. Nearly a year ago, in a speech before the National Endowment for Democracy, Bush defined “Islamofascism” as “a form of radicalism [that] exploits Islam to serve a violent, political vision” and several months later he spoke of the Islamofascists becoming emboldened. On the extreme end of the spectrum, on the right-wing radio talk shows and blog circuit, “Islamofascist” has the flavor of an epithet.

Like many powerful weapons, this one had an inauspicious birth. Most academics trace the genesis of the term to the mid-1990s, when an historian named Walter Laqueur wrote a book called “Fascism: Past, Present, Future,” in which he suggested that the radical Islamic movements of the developing world resembled in some ways the facism of the mid-20th century. There followed, in the scholarly press and in European newspapers, a debate of this issue among political scientists. Yes, some agreed, elements of radical Islamic fundamentalism can look like fascism, the term born in Italy to describe a political movement that, according to Webster’s, “exalts nation above the individual,” stands for a centralized government and suppresses opposition. But in many important ways the two phenomena are very different. “What politicized Islam is doing,” explains Roger Griffin, professor of History at Oxford Brookes University in England and an expert on fascism, “is to preserve religion in a secular world. What Nazism was doing was to create an alternative to religion in a secular world.” In any case, the scholars agreed, the term “Islamic fascist” was touchy and should be used with great care.

Then 9/11 happened. Not a month later, the term made its mainstream debut with a column in The Nation by Christopher Hitchens, who wrote, “The bombers of Manhattan represent fascism with an Islamic face.” Soon the phrase was circulating.

Parvez Ahmed is angry because he feels the president is being disrespectful to the millions of moderate Muslims who live in this country, who condemn terrorism and who seek the government’s protection. But he’s especially angry because he thinks that the right’s adoption of the term at this particular juncture is not just historically inaccurate, it’s a cynical bid for votes. “This is an election year,” he told NEWSWEEK. “The president is down in the polls, he’s trying to appease his base. It’s a moment of political opportunism. It goes back to the idea that in some quarters it is good to perpetuate the myth of a clash between civilizations.”

Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a progressive think tank near Boston, has a related theory. Some of the right-wing evangelicals who voted for Bush have an apocalyptic world view—that is, they are expecting the end of the world based on Biblical prophesy. Santorum, Matalin, Cantor, even the president himself—they all know this, Berlet believes, and are positioning Islam as the evil force that will bring about the End. “I am creeped out” by the term “Islamofascism,” says Berlet. The term itself is creepy, no doubt, but, however you look at it, the reality it stands for is downright terrifying.

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The Better Way of Fighting Terrorism

Huffington Post
The Better Way of Fighting Terrorism
Cenk Uygur

There are two schools of thought in the country right now. One is the Republican idea that we are fighting against Islamic fascism (whatever that is) and that we need to go on the offense against Muslim states that support the Islamofascist terrorists. It's hard not to laugh as you say it.
Islamofascists?

The second school of thought is that we can fight terrorism better by isolating the terrorists from the rest of the Muslim population, finding them and neutralizing them. The idea here is that instead of fanning the flames of hate and helping the Muslim fundamentalists spread their ideology to others, we work with the majority of Muslims in rooting out the extremists in their midst.

I can see Republicans reflexively getting ready to shout now - you can't work with Muslims, they're all Islamofascists looking to destroy our way of life. Other than being painfully stupid, that is incomprehensibly wrong. A great majority of Muslims have nothing against our way of life. They have no desire to take over Kentucky or to make sure the people of Alaska don't have freedom.

The idea that Muslims are looking to take over the world and are on the precipice of dominating militarily as the Nazis did is so laughable that I can't quite believe they're saying it out loud. Nazi Germany took France in five days. Are Islamic fundamentalists about to roll their tanks in to Paris and Prague?

These conservatives want to pick a fight - not just with the Muslim terrorists - but with all of Islam. Hardly has there been a more dangerous idea. A majority of Muslim countries have absolutely no intention of taking over the West, even if it was remotely possible. But they will fight to the death if you needlessly invade them.

But there is a better way. And ironically, we are implementing the better way right now in Pakistan. Pakistan is a country that probably has more Muslim fundamentalists than any other nation on earth. They don't just have a WMD program, they have nuclear weapons. And they have spread their nuclear weapon technology to other countries. And to top it all off, Osama bin Laden is sitting comfortably in northern Pakistan.

If the Republicans were honest and they actually believed in their own so-called principles, the most ideal country on earth to attack would be Pakistan. They have a thousand times more WMD than Iraq and Iran combined (which is pretty simple, since that number is just about zero). And they shelter the biggest terrorists in the world. On the other hand, they don't have much oil and they are not a direct threat to Israel.

But the reality is our strategy in Pakistan, while lacking in intensity and focus, is roughly the correct one. We are trying to isolate the Taliban and Al Qaeda sympathizers in northern Pakistan while working with the Pakistani government. If we invaded, we would have nuclear war with a country that has hundreds of millions of Muslims. Instead, we cooperate with them and they help us to foil the bombings in the London airport.

If we had chosen the route of "going on the offense" against Pakistan, there is an excellent chance we would have lost ten airplanes full of passengers this week.

This strategy has its clear downsides. We have to put more pressure on Pakistan to find and turn over Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. We have to have tighter controls over their nuclear technology. But at least, this path is smart and doable.

And ironically, it is being pulled off by the very administration that is touting this nonsense war against Islamic fascists. It is clear that the administration doesn't even believe its own talking points. Otherwise, the 101st Airborne would be in Waziristan right now. So, why don't they apply this smarter strategy with the rest of the Muslim world?

I'm afraid it's because there are hardliners inside the administration that want to invade Iran - no matter what. So, they paint them as Islamic fascists and try to stir up more war fever. Just look at this ridiculous clip from Hannity and Colmes. It appears that Sean Hannity believes there is only one strategy for fighting against a couple of thousand terrorists spread out throughout the world - start a war with a couple of hundred million Muslims in select countries.

But, of course, there is a better way. The Democrats need to explain to Americans that war is not the only answer. The smarter strategy is to isolate the extremists and build up our relationship with moderate Muslims. Enlist the moderates to help us locate the terrorists and neutralize them - just like we did in the London plot we just foiled.

The American people are sick of war, just as the conservatives plot for even more wars. Democrats have to realize that pursuing the "isolate and neutralize" strategy against terrorists is not only sound policy but, at this point, also sound politics. People are eager for a better, smarter way of fighting terrorism. This is the time to finally offer it as an alternative to the endless wars the Republicans promise instead.

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Increasingly, Bush Escapes the Media Pack; Press Cuts Converge With Closed Events

washingtonpost.com
Increasingly, Bush Escapes the Media Pack
Press Cuts Converge With Closed Events
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer

GREEN BAY, Wis. -- On one of the scariest days yet in the five-year battle with terrorists, President Bush prepared to make a speech to reassure the American people. But the White House press corps was 1,000 miles away in Texas.

Bush had left his ranch vacation and jetted north for a scheduled closed-door fundraiser. No press plane accompanied him. And so when news broke that Britain had broken up a major terrorist plot, the only ones there to convey the president's reaction were a handful of local reporters and a few pool journalists who ride in the back of Air Force One.

The idea that Bush could travel across the country without a full contingent of reporters, especially in the middle of a war, highlights a major cultural shift in the presidency and the news media. In the four decades since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, presidents traditionally have taken journalists with them wherever they traveled on the theory that when it comes to the most powerful leader on the planet, anything can happen at any time.

But increasingly in recent months, Bush has left town without a chartered press plane, often to receptions where he talks to donors chipping in hundreds of thousands of dollars with no cameras or tapes to record his words for the public. Barred from such events, most news organizations will not pay to travel with him. And so a White House policy inclined to secrecy has combined with escalating costs for the strapped news media to let Bush fly under the radar in a way his predecessors could not.

"A lot of it is a reflection of the times," said C-SPAN's Steve Scully, president of the White House Correspondents' Association. "The whole thing is changing."

For veterans of past administrations, the changes are striking. "When the president moved it was a big deal, and I can't even remember an occasion when we didn't take a charter," said Ed Rollins, who was Ronald Reagan's White House political director.

"Go back 20 or 25 years and say we're at war and the president is traveling around the country and there are only, what, three people with him?" asked Joe Lockhart, who was Bill Clinton's White House press secretary. "That would have been unthinkable."

In some ways, it may not seem to make much difference. Like presidents before him, Bush still always travels with a small media pool that includes wire services, television cameras and a single newspaper reporter who files a report to others left behind. The advent of instant video feeds, cable television, the Internet, e-mail and transcripts of the president's every public word has made it possible to cover Bush without being anywhere near him.

Yet fewer eyeballs on a president means less scrutiny, in the view of some media and government watchdog groups. Fewer reporters, they say, means fewer questions and fewer versions of what happens available to the public. News accounts written from a different time zone invariably miss context and texture. And in closing the doors of some fundraisers, the White House has reversed a policy adopted under Clinton after fundraising scandals raised questions about what donors are seeking when they hobnob with presidents.

Patrice McDermott, director of OpenTheGovernment.org, a coalition formed three years ago that includes groups such as the American Library Association, Common Cause, the League of Women Voters and the Society of Professional Journalists, called the changing pattern of coverage "quite disturbing" and part of a "rising tide of secrecy" in Washington.

"It's another way of closing off responsibility and accountability and shutting themselves off from public view," she said. "I think the public would prefer that somebody be in the room who is not there for their own interests to be served."

White House spokesman Tony Snow said there is nothing insidious about closing fundraisers in private homes and noted that news organizations choose whether to pay for a plane follow the president. "It's really all about money," he said. "It used to be that media organizations had more dough."

Given the changes in communication technology, he added, "I think presidents are more widely available than at any point in American history." And he said he makes a point of finding ways for at least some reporters to see Bush when there are major developments. "If there is big news, we make sure the president's available," Snow said.

The cost of covering the president has risen dramatically at a time when the news media, anxious about economic pressures, are aggressively cutting costs. For a one-day trip to St. Louis, for instance, the White House billed The Washington Post $3,317. To go to Yuma, Ariz., for a day, the bill came to $3,795. A two-day trip to Europe cost $8,283, not counting hotel charges.

And so even for trips where there is a press plane, sometimes only a handful of journalists are on board. Newspapers that used to travel regularly, including USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune and others, now do so more sporadically. The Boston Globe no longer even has a White House correspondent, focusing on breaking exclusive stories rather than writing about the president's everyday activities.

"It's not like we're ignoring it completely," said Joe Williams, the Globe's deputy Washington bureau chief. "But the lineup we're using right now gives us flexibility to attack a broader range of stories than we would if we had a designated White House correspondent."

Bush is not the only one to find ways of escaping much public notice as he flies around the country. Vice President Cheney manages to leave Washington for days, and sometimes weeks, at a time without public announcement. Few in the capital even knew he was in Texas in February, for instance, until he accidentally shot a companion while hunting quail. And he has been in Jackson, Wyo., since July 29 without any national news media mentioning it.

The Jackson Hole News & Guide found out Cheney was there only because it spotted his plane and the radar dish that serves an anti-missile battery that protects his house when he's in town. "In the past, they've been kind of weird about it," said Thomas Dewell, the paper's co-editor. "They'd say, 'His airplane's here and the missile base is here, but we can't tell you if he's here.' " This time, he said, Cheney's office confirmed his presence when asked.

Cheney aides said they announce his movements only when he makes public appearances but will provide his whereabouts if reporters call to ask. The vice president, who has already headlined 81 fundraisers in this election cycle, plans to return to Washington on Sunday before heading out to events in Arizona, New Mexico, Montana and Idaho next week, his office said.

Clinton agreed to stop holding closed fundraisers in response to criticism of his campaign finance tactics. When a fundraiser was held in a private home, the White House permitted a single print reporter into the room to record the scene and the president's words for the rest of the pack. The Bush White House changed that, leaving fundraisers open if located in hotels or public spaces but closing them in private homes. "The thought was having the presence of reporters would disrupt the intimacy of the events," said Ari Fleischer, who was then White House press secretary.

Lanny J. Davis, who was White House special counsel during the Clinton fundraising scandals, expressed surprise that the change has not generated more criticism. "I marvel at their ability to get away with it," he said. "I have to grudgingly admit to some envy. I admire their chutzpah."

Bush has traveled out of the Washington area at least seven times this year without a press plane, including four times in the past month to closed Republican fundraisers -- in Milwaukee, in Cleveland, in Charleston, W.Va., and on Thursday here to Green Bay to raise $500,000 for House candidate John Gard. He also headlined a fundraiser in Texas yesterday that was closed to the media. That may serve the interests of candidates who want the money Bush can raise but don't want a public embrace with a president suffering low approval ratings.

Scully said he may raise the issue of closed fundraisers with Snow. "As we move into the fall campaign, if this happens more often, we're going to put pressure on Tony and others to open these events," Scully said. "He is the president. He is traveling at government expense. . . . We should be in there to hear what he has to say."

In the past, major media organizations felt it was important to be near the president even if they were kept out of the room, a "body watch" mentality sparked by the Kennedy assassination and reinforced over the years by any number of unexpected crises, including the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"There's going to be a time when something's going to happen and the major national media's not going to be there," Lockhart said. "They're going to have to rely on technology. Will this have a major impact on our democracy? Smarter people than me will have to answer that."

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Ex-Attorney General John Ashcroft Helps Firms Get Homeland Security Deals

washingtonpost.com
Ashcroft Finds Private-Sector Niche
Ex-Attorney General Helps Firms Get Homeland Security Deals
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer

Former U.S. attorney general John D. Ashcroft, whose tenure saw the creation of a burgeoning homeland security industry, has emerged as the highest-ranking former Bush administration official to lobby for and invest in companies in that field.

Nearly two years after he left the Justice Department for a glass-and-marble office tower six blocks away, Ashcroft is building a lucrative consulting company helping security and other firms find business with federal agencies. Federal spending on homeland security is expected to reach nearly $60 billion in fiscal 2007, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

"It's a continuation of the aspiration I have that our nation have access to the best possible resources to fight terror, whether domestic or international," Ashcroft, founder of the Ashcroft Group LLC, said during a phone interview from his 150-acre cattle farm in rural Missouri, where he was spending a working vacation.

During his tenure, Ashcroft championed expanded federal powers to conduct surveillance in counterterrorism investigations. Now, he said, he wants the intelligence and law enforcement agencies to be aided by the tech world's "best of breed."

In all, Ashcroft's firm has 30 clients, many of which make products or technology aimed at homeland security, and about a third of which the firm has not disclosed, to protect client confidentiality. The firm also has equity stakes in eight client companies, a trend the company plans to continue as it gradually turns its focus toward venture capital.

Privacy experts and civil libertarians, who battled Ashcroft's policies to enlarge surveillance powers, warned that the types of businesses promoted by the former attorney general and other lobbyists are fast becoming a de facto branch of the government, beyond traditional oversight. They question whether the security offered by these firms, some of which specialize in analysis of government and private data, is balanced by adequate protection for civil liberties.

In an era of unprecedented collection and sharing of data between the government and the private sector, "we need checks and balances to match that paradigm shift," said Peter Swire, who served as a privacy counselor for the Clinton administration and now teaches law at Ohio State University.

Ashcroft's client list includes Nanodetex Corp. in New Mexico, which offers technology that can detect airborne pathogens such as anthrax or liquid explosives such as the type authorities say a group of terror suspects planned to use to blow up passenger jets between Britain and the United States. Another is Exegy Inc., a Missouri firm that does high-speed data mining.

Innova Holdings Inc. makes software that can remotely command robots and drones, or unmanned vehicles, the sort that police borders or fly above the mountains and valleys of Pakistan and Afghanistan searching for al-Qaeda cells. The company, which signed with Ashcroft's firm last week, has developed a technology for robots that will undertake a NASA repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.

Still another client is Dulles Research LLC, a small Northern Virginia firm that claims its technology can detect illicit networks like the group of men who went on to hijack four planes on Sept. 11, 2001. The firm says its technology detects the threat of terrorist behavior by analyzing people's actions -- not their identities, an effort to safeguard individuals' privacy.

"What network-analysis technology does is not look at the individual, but rather at the gravity and weight of relationships between people who appear to be doing something harmful to our interests or in opposition to the law," said Drew Eginton, Dulles Research's founder and chief executive.

For instance, he said, out of a data set that includes transactions of 20 million people with one another, "What you're looking for are the seven people who are doing something normal people don't do, simultaneously buying tickets to the same town with money orders, or sequentially visiting the same place one month apart using airline tickets that were paid with cash, or switching cellphones and every 60 days placing a 10-second voice mail to a person who went to that individual's school in Malaysia. We're looking for these very shadowy and unusual interactions that, based on a prior statistical case, predict the likelihood of trouble.''

Behavioral pattern analysis has a good track record in the world of credit card fraud, where "millions" of transactions can be analyzed to extract patterns of illicit behavior, said Jim Dempsey, policy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

The problem with detecting terrorist patterns of behavior is that there are not millions of terrorist transactions that can be analyzed on which to base a reliable model, he said.

What is the recourse, Dempsey asked, for people who are wrongly identified and targeted?

But Eginton said the point of using statistical analysis is to avoid the "false positive."

"We do not have a mature and complete mathematical understanding of what these people and networks will do," he said. "But we do have an understanding."

Another Ashcroft client is ChoicePoint Inc., a data marketer that gathers public records and sells access to them. Though the company already had a contract with the Justice Department dating to 1998, last year it signed on with Ashcroft's firm to help it connect with "the right people within the agencies who could match up our capabilities with their needs," said James Lee, ChoicePoint's chief marketing officer.

When it comes to privacy, Ashcroft, a 54-year-old Republican and former U.S. senator and Missouri governor, said there are "real reasons" why the government should not be in the business of warehousing information. "The private sector does a better job of maintaining and developing information," he said. Another reason, he said, is Americans "don't want government to have access to any more information than necessary."

The Ashcroft Group complies with federal disclosure rules, Ashcroft said. It has disclosed the identities of 17 companies and two trade groups that it represents before Congress or the executive branch. The other clients, for which the firm does not do government work, are covered by non-disclosure agreements.

The firm reported receiving $1.4 million in lobbying fees in the past six months. But that is a small fraction of its earnings. It offers strategic consulting and is set to launch a service to help companies prevent and clean up data breaches.

These days, Ashcroft, whose forthcoming book discusses his experience as attorney general, is relaxed and energized. "Ninety percent" of the people who approach him, he said, thank him for his service. "I think that people have the sense," he said, "that regardless of whether they agree with me or not, they knew that I was doing what I thought I ought to do."

Staff researchers Richard Drezen and Robert Lyford contributed to this report.

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Republicans losing claim on terrorism issue due to failed policies and Bush making us less secure

washingtonpost.com
Whose Issue Is Terrorism?
The Parties Maneuver for Advantage on National Security
By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer

The aggressive Democratic response to this week's foiled terrorist plot reflects a widely shared view among party strategists that intensified attacks against President Bush represent the best chance to offset what historically has been a clear Republican advantage whenever national security issues become more prominent, Democratic officials said yesterday.

Less than three months before midterm congressional elections, many Democrats are trying to simultaneously express skepticism about Bush's Iraq war policy and project a message of resolve and strength against terrorism.

This was a feat that Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry did not accomplish in 2004. Democratic strategists said the combative rhetoric of the past 48 hours -- with party leaders saying that the Iraq war has left the country less prepared to meet the type of threats represented by the London plotters -- reflects lessons learned from studying the Massachusetts senator's defeat.

More than a dozen Democrats, for instance, criticized the GOP yesterday for refusing to implement all of the recommendations put forth by the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission. At the same time, Democratic leaders in Washington moved on several fronts to accuse Republicans of exploiting terrorism fears for political gain -- and to warn that Democrats will respond to weak-on-security attacks of the sort launched by Vice President Cheney on Wednesday.

In a conference call with reporters yesterday, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) said terrorism no longer works as a GOP issue. "If they are going to throw political bombs on the issue, we are going to answer loud and clear," Schumer said. Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), in the same call, said Bush's policies on North Korea and the Middle East have made the United States less secure.

After Sept. 11, 2001, and again in the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003, most Democrats calculated that the safest political ground was next to Bush, supporting his policies. Even after many Democrats had turned sour on the war, in December 2003 most elected officials struck a bipartisan note in hailing the capture of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. But many Democrats have concluded that that strategy on national security offered little protection and merely helped Republicans reinforce their reputation as the stronger party in meeting foreign threats. This view was bolstered in 2004, when many Democrats thought Kerry waited too long as his personal credibility and national security credentials alike were challenged by the attacks of the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Democratic campaign aide Phil Singer, who helped organize the Schumer-Reid attack, said: "In the past, Democrats have not responded vigorously when attacked on security. . . . We will not let them Swift Boat us again."

Party strategists also concluded that voters want clarity, which has been elusive for Democrats. Democrats remain divided on many terrorism-related issues, but the twin calls for a new approach in Iraq and the implementation of the Sept. 11 panel's recommendations represent efforts to find common ground.

The politics of terrorism, however, remain uncertain this fall. The latest Washington Post-ABC News polls indicated that terrorism had dropped lower on the list of voters' concerns heading into the final three months of the campaign, trumped by such issues as gas prices and Iraq. Few candidates were talking about terrorism as a major part of their campaign plan before the London plot, other than to tout support for stronger homeland security measures, which virtually every lawmaker backs. Schumer twice cited the Washington Post-ABC poll -- which showed Democrats with an edge when people were asked which party they trusted to handle terrorism issues -- as evidence the political tide has turned.

Still, some Democrats are worried. For starters, as one strategist noted, many high-profile Democrats are seen as doves. Guests planned for tomorrow's morning political shows include Connecticut Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont, who vaulted from obscurity on an antiwar message; Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), the first senator to call for the United States to pull out of Iraq; and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, an outspoken critic of the Iraq war since the early days of the 2004 presidential campaign.

Other Democrats said the bigger problem may be that Republicans are more skilled in using terrorism for political gain. Earlier this year, Karl Rove, Bush's top political adviser, telegraphed that national security issues would be the foundation of the 2006 GOP strategy. The past week showed how Republicans intend to execute the Rove plan.

The Republican National Committee circulated a memo last weekend saying no issue motivates conservative voters more than terrorism. It also stated that nothing generates "more negative feelings" among these voters than mentioning Democratic positions on fighting terrorism. At the same time, RNC officials were polishing fundraising appeals that, using the name of former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and appealing to patriotism, asked for as much as $500 per person.

"Based on what we have seen, our base is very energized on this issue," said Brian Jones, an RNC spokesman.

Instantly upon Lamont's victory over incumbent Joseph I. Lieberman, a defender of the war, they began invoking the outcome of the Lamont-Lieberman primary to paint Democrats as defeatists and weak. The next day, Bush, Cheney and other administration officials were aware of the soon-to-be-thwarted plot in Britain.

Once the plot was revealed Thursday, Republicans pounced. National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds said last night that "national Democrats are stone-cold guilty of engaging in a reckless and irresponsible pattern of neglect for the security of citizens." In a memo sent moments later, GOP candidates were told that "in the days to come, you should move to question your opponent's commitment to the defeat of terror."

Also yesterday, drawing a clear link between Iraq and terrorism, Bush condemned the deadly bombing in Najaf. "The terrorists in Iraq have again proven that they are enemies of all humanity," Bush said. Bush has not commented on most previous terrorist strikes in Iraq. Taken together, the week's events seemed designed to highlight the continued threat to the United States and to question the Democratic commitment to defending the country, said a top GOP strategist who would speak only anonymously about internal planning.

The strategist, who is involved in GOP efforts to capitalize on the issue of national security, said one of the big challenges in the months ahead will be "making sure the terrorism issue sticks to Iraq." With some GOP candidates distancing themselves from Bush's Iraq policy, the strategist said, it has been difficult marrying the issues of terrorism and Iraq. This is disturbing to top GOP officials because support for the war is low, and dropping, and Iraq is a bigger issue in many of the campaigns than the less-defined effort against terrorism, the strategist said.

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Ceasefire agreed for Monday

Reuters
Ceasefire agreed for Monday
By Yara Bayoumy

BEIRUT (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said Israeli and Lebanese leaders had agreed to a ceasefire at 0500 GMT on Monday to end a month-long war between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas.

Israeli forces pushed deeper into Lebanon on Saturday and up to 17 soldiers were reported killed in what would be Israel's worst single day for deaths, as the United Nations prepared to deploy a force of up to 15,000 to help enforce the truce.

The Israeli YNET News Internet site quoted an official in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office as saying Israeli troops would start withdrawing from south Lebanon within a week or two when the U.N. force and the Lebanese army arrived in the area.

Olmert has backed a U.N. Security Council resolution passed on Friday that called for a ceasefire and set out proposals to implement it. He was expected to ask his cabinet on Sunday to formally approve the resolution.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said his government unanimously approved the resolution on Saturday, and Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said his fighters would abide by it once Israeli forces also adhered to it.

"I am very happy to announce (Olmert and Siniora) have agreed that the cessation of hostilities and the end of the fighting will enter into force on 14 August at 0500 hours GMT," Annan said in a statement in New York.

"Preferably, the fighting should stop now to respect the spirit and intent of the Security Council decision, the object of which was to save civilian lives, to spare the pain and suffering that the civilians on both sides are living through."

At least 1,061 people in Lebanon and 135 Israelis have been killed in the war, triggered on July 12 when Hizbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid.

Helicopters lifted hundreds of Israeli troops into south Lebanon on Saturday as part of an expanding offensive. Israel's top military commander, Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz, said the Jewish state had tripled its forces in Lebanon since Thursday.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said at least 11 soldiers were killed by Hizbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon on Saturday. The army said it had killed more than 40 guerrillas in 24 hours. Hizbollah denied it had lost 40 fighters.

ISRAELI HELICOPTER SHOT DOWN

Hizbollah guerrillas shot down an Israeli helicopter in southern Lebanon, the Israeli army said. Israeli media said there were casualties but did not specify how many.

Arab television stations said 17 Israeli soldiers were killed on Saturday.

Israeli air strikes on southern Lebanon killed up to 15 people in the village of Rshaf and four civilians in Kharayeb, security sources said. Raids in the eastern Bekaa Valley killed one civilian.

Hizbollah fired at least 65 rockets into Israel, wounding several people, Israeli officials said.

Nasrallah said Hizbollah would abide by the U.N. resolution and cooperate with the U.N. and Lebanese troops, but would carry on confronting any Israeli soldiers on Lebanese soil.

"As long as there is Israeli military movement, Israeli field aggression and Israeli soldiers occupying our land ... it is our natural right to confront them, fight them and defend our land, our homes, and ourselves," Nasrallah said.

President Bush welcomed the U.N. resolution, saying Hizbollah and its main allies Iran and Syria had brought an "unwanted" war to the region.

"(The resolution was designed) to put an end to Iran and Syria's efforts to hold the Lebanese people hostage to their own extremist agenda," said Bush.

France is widely expected to lead the planned U.N. force, which will expand the existing U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) but have a stronger mandate.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy made clear in an interview with Le Monde newspaper the mission of the new force would not include disarming Hizbollah by force.

Major General Udi Adam, head of Israel's northern military command, said some Israeli forces had reached as far as the Litani river in Lebanon.

Adam said at least 500 Hizbollah guerrillas had been killed in the war. Hizbollah has announced less than 100 deaths.

(Additional reporting by Jerusalem and United Nations bureaux)

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