It's Wrong to Censor O.J.

Huffington Post
Jeff Norman
It's Wrong to Censor O.J.

When news broke on June 12, 1994 that Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson had just been killed in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, countless media organizations began to cover this double-murder relentlessly. Although the reportage has since become less ubiquitous, it never completely stopped, even though much of the attention has probably been very upsetting to the next of kin.

So nobody should believe News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch's claim that it was out of respect for the Brown and Goldman families he squashed "If I Did It," the television/book combo which was to have been marketed as O.J. Simpson's confession. The notorious mogul reversed his plans only to remedy a public relations crisis, and because he realized a flight of sponsors and affiliates would financially impair his Fox Broadcasting Company if Judith Regan's interview with Simpson were to air. Murdoch's decision, a shrewd response to a barrage of shallow complaints by influential elitists, indicates no new trend toward excellence in journalism.

It would be nice if the masses weren't so obsessed with O.J. and his worldview, but those who crave constant Juice shouldn't be deprived of their fix simply because the dictators of decency are offended. Yes, Fred Goldman and Denise Brown endured a terrible tragedy. No, their grief does not entitle them to be gatekeepers of public information. Likewise, celebrity commentators who for years profited from this ongoing soap opera, possess no moral authority to shriek in indignation over a book based on the leading man's perspective. Nonetheless, now that he has entered their field, pundits who gladly accept generous wages for producing sordid infotainment and sensationalism, are openly conspiring to deny Simpson a livelihood, as if he is beneath them, and they are official stewards of an honorable profession. What could be more unctuous than Geraldo Rivera, who conducted an infamous TV interview with convicted murderer Charles Manson, calling for O.J. to be silenced in the name of good taste?

Like it or not, O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder charges. The judgment in a subsequent civil lawsuit obligates him to pay $33.5 million to the Brown and Goldman families, but it does not authorize anyone to blacklist the famous defendant or suppress his speech. Even so, self-appointed arbiters of propriety have managed to severely restrict Simpson's mass communication options, citing his receipt or potential receipt of cash as the factor that somehow distinguishes "If I Did It" from lowbrow material deemed acceptable. Of course the financial terms of O.J.'s book deal are mostly unknown, but vague rumors about an unusual payment scheme are enough for disparagers to insist this project is where the line should be drawn.

Those who now advocate blocking Simpson's revenue source haven't bothered to articulate a standard that could be applied to other situations. Without revealing how the former star might be eligible for income, detractors have announced only their disapproval of him making money from one particular book most of them haven't read. Apparently, these vigilantes are holding him accountable for breaking a rule, but it's not clear what the rule is, or what Simpson needs to do to be in compliance. May he receive funds for labor performed under some circumstances? May he discuss his criminal and civil trials in any way? For whom may he work?

The stifling of "If I Did It" is nothing to cheer. No matter how much the relatives of murder victims engender sympathy, it is not the role of media professionals to censor or otherwise punish O.J. Simpson, especially when the cognoscenti aren't even forthright about the code of conduct they wish to enforce.

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Senior Rice aide, Philip Zelikow resigns from post

Reuters
Senior Rice aide, Philip Zelikow resigns from post
By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Philip Zelikow, one of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's closest advisers on Iraq and the Middle East, will quit his post to return to university teaching, a State Department official said on Monday.

In his resignation letter to Rice which was made available to Reuters, Zelikow said "family and professional concerns" led to his decision to return to the University of Virginia next year.

Zelikow, who was counselor to Rice and had an office down the hall from the top U.S. diplomat, was involved in many of the major issues facing the United States and also acted as a trouble-shooter for Rice.

He spent months examining U.S. policy toward Iraq and the reconstruction effort, saying in a confidential memorandum after a visit to Iraq that it had the potential to be a "catastrophic failure," according to the recent book "State of Denial" by Washington Post editor Bob Woodward.

In addition to Iraq and the Middle East, Zelikow also helped craft U.S. policy on terrorism suspects held without trial at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.

"To an extent that few can appreciate, you have given me an extraordinary opportunity to contribute what I could on many matters of high importance," said Zelikow in the letter.

But that contribution was not without its controversy.

In September, Zelikow caused some ripples in the Bush administration when he suggested during a speech at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy that to build a coalition for dealing with Iran, the United States needed to make progress on solving the Arab-Israeli dispute.

"For the Arab moderates and for the Europeans, some sense of progress and momentum on the Arab-Israeli dispute is just a sine qua non for their ability to cooperate actively with the United States on a lot of other things that we care about," he said in the speech.

The Bush administration sought afterward to reassure the Israelis that there had not been a change in policy.

Asked whether his speech had contributed to the decision to leave on January 2, a State Department official said this was not the case. "This is one of those rare cases in Washington where someone is leaving on their own terms," said the official.

Before joining Rice's staff last year, Zelikow was director of the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. He was also executive director of the commission investigating the September 11 attacks against the United States.

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Justice Department eyes spy program

Yahoo! News
Justice Department eyes spy program
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer

The Justice Department has begun an internal investigation into its handling of information gathered in the government's domestic spying program. However, Democrats criticized the review as too narrow to determine whether the program violated federal law.

The inquiry by Glenn A. Fine, the department's inspector general, will focus on the role of Justice prosecutors and agents in carrying out the warrantless surveillance program run by the National Security Agency.

Fine's investigation is not expected to address whether the controversial program is an unconstitutional expansion of presidential power, as its critics and a federal judge in Detroit have charged.

"After conducting initial inquiries into the program, we have decided to open a program review that will examine the department's controls and use of information related to the program," Fine wrote in a letter dated Monday to House Judiciary Committee leaders. The four-paragraph letter was obtained by The Associated Press.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the agency welcomes the review: "We expect that this review will assist Justice Department personnel in ensuring that the department's activities comply with the legal requirements that govern the operation of the program."

In January, Fine's office rejected a request by more than three dozen Democrats to investigate the secret program, which monitors phone calls and e-mails between people in the U.S. and abroad when a link to terrorism is suspected.

Fine's letter outlining his review was welcomed by congressional Democrats. At the same time, they said it falls short of examining issues at the heart of the debate — how the spying program evolved, and whether its creation violated any laws.

"A full investigation into the program as a whole, not just the DOJ's involvement, will be necessary," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif.

The review could include whether the spying program complies with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires judicial authorization for electronic surveillance and physical searches of people suspected of espionage or international terrorism on behalf of a foreign power. The Justice Department requests surveillance approval from the FISA court.

Democrats also questioned the timing of the review. Fine's letter noted that his office asked the White House on Oct. 20 for additional security clearances that were approved just last week — following the Nov. 7 elections that gave Democrats control of Congress.

Noting Democrats' renewed power to subpoena Bush administration officials next year, Rep. Maurice Hinchey (news, bio, voting record), D-N.Y., questioned that Fine's investigation "is only coming now after the election as an attempt to appease Democrats" who have been critical of the NSA program.

The letter was sent to House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and the panel's top Democrat and incoming chairman, Rep. John Conyers (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich. Sensenbrenner had no comment. Conyers called the review "a long overdue investigation of a highly controversial program."

The Justice Department has called the program a necessary tool in the fight against terrorism, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pushing congressional Republicans to authorize it by law before they cede power at the year's end — a prospect with at best a slim shot of approval.

Former Reagan administration national security official Robert F. Turner, now associate director at the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia, said congressional demands for sensitive information about the program puts them at odds with long-standing presidential powers over the collection of foreign intelligence.

"It's good that the executive branch, on its own, is making sure that someone's not abusing this power," Turner said. "But when Congress usurps power vested in the president by the people through the Constitution, then it becomes the lawbreaker."

Countering, Caroline Fredrickson, the director of the ACLU's office in Washington, urged Fine "to seek the hidden truth about this program. ... No one, not even the president, is above the law."

___

On the Net:

Justice Department: http://www.usdoj.gov/

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Stress disorders, drug abuse, little help for troops

Austin American-Statesman
Stress disorders, drug abuse, little help for troops

As repeat tours of Iraq wear on U.S. forces, government struggles to provide mental health care; many say they take refuge in drugs.

By Anne Usher

WASHINGTON — Military personnel on multiple and extended tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan are being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder at rates that probably will match or exceed the rate among Vietnam veterans, government officials and veterans groups say.

The war in Iraq, with often-hidden enemies and explosives, has left many service members particularly vulnerable to combat stress and is driving the abuse of drugs and alcohol both in Iraq and at home, military health experts say.

Yet many veterans and on-duty troops are not getting the treatment they need.

As of August, more than 184,500 returning veterans had sought care of all kinds through the Department of Veterans Affairs, and about one in six of those had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, a rate expected to climb since it can take months and sometimes years for the condition to manifest itself.

Symptoms include anxiety, sleeplessness, flashbacks and extreme wariness, a recipe that can strain relationships and make it hard for those suffering to get or keep jobs.

Jesus Bocanegra, a 24-year-old former Army sergeant with an infantry company based at Fort Hood, says he is haunted by countless shots he fired at Iraqis while serving as a scout in Tikrit in 2003-04.

The McAllen native says he lost track of how many civilians died in the crossfire when he squeezed off rounds at Iraqi insurgents.

"How the hell was I capable of that?" he says now.

Back home and plagued with anxiety attacks, he said he tried to close himself off from the world by drinking to the point of passing out. He said he progressed to marijuana use and then cocaine.

"The only way to sustain yourself day to day is to keep yourself drugged up," he said. But "it made it worse."

Eventually, he said, he stopped taking drugs and visited a VA clinic. Seven months later, a psychiatrist there diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder and gave him pills, dispensing medications in five-minute meetings every three to four months. A clinic employee verified his diagnosis and said that with 400 to 600 patients a day, "every doctor is overbooked."

With no VA psychotherapists in his area at the time — one has since been added — Bocanegra sought help from a support group called Vets for Vets.

"It's good to have someone to talk to," he said. "It's the only thing that keeps me going."

Married for just under a year, he is unemployed but hopes to return to school.

He said he is focused now on his mental health and on touring with other veterans to push for improved services for vets, many of whom he says are also suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Disability benefits of $2,500 a month help keep him afloat.

Up to 29 percent of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, predicts Col. Charles Engel, a clinician at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. As of August, the VA had diagnosed 63,767 discharged veterans with a mental disorder and 34,380 with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Experts say the rate of the disorder among Iraq veterans could well eclipse the 30 percent lifetime rate found in a 1990 study of Vietnam veterans because military personnel are being deployed longer and more often to Iraq and because greater awareness of the disorder among doctors will lead to more diagnoses.

Some statistics show the cases climbing fast. The number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have sought help for readjustment concerns including post-traumatic stress disorder doubled between October 2005 and June 2006, according to a recent survey of 60 VA-run centers by the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs.

That increase has made it only more difficult to get quality care, the survey found.

Among active-duty military personnel who served in Iraq, 35 percent used military mental health care services in the year after coming home and 12 percent were diagnosed with a mental health problem, a study published in March in the Journal of the American Medical Association found.

Veterans groups fear that the VA won't be able to handle the high proportion of service members seeking such help once they are discharged. They note studies showing that though post-traumatic stress disorder can resolve itself in some people over time, its symptoms can worsen if not treated quickly.

The Department of Veterans Affairs says it has enough resources to offer treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse to all of the roughly 160,000 service members now in Iraq and Afghanistan once they are home.

Dr. Ira Katz, deputy chief patient care officer for mental health for the VA, noted that there are 200 veteran readjustment centers nationwide and that mental health counseling is available over the Internet.

As part of unprecedented efforts on its part, the military in September 2005 began giving returning troops a questionnaire aimed at catching early signs of the disorder. Questions include whether they have nightmares, are feeling emotionally numb or super alert, or have physical reactions such as breathing trouble when reminded of a stressful experience. In January, the military put in place a secondary screening test to check for similar symptoms.

But nearly four in five returning troops who may have been at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder were not referred for further mental health evaluation, according to a study released in May by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. About half of those diagnosed with a mental health problem got care, but fewer than 10 percent were referred through the military's new screening program, the JAMA study in March showed.

The Pentagon told the GAO that it generally concurred with the its recommendations and that a systemic evaluation of referrals is planned. After the study's publication, however, the Pentagon said it was flawed because it did not include troops referred to chaplains, primary care physicians and group counseling. The GAO says the Defense Department was not able to provide any evidence that those referrals occurred and still has not provided figures on personnel who may have since received treatment.

After his first Iraq tour ended in August 2005, former Pfc. Josh Revak said, a large number of soldiers in his 1st Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder on the test, but the commanders "just took it as a joke, and I think barely anybody received treatment."

The 25-year-old said he asked for help but didn't get psychological counseling until after a 120 mm mortar landed near him on his second tour in Iraq in June, sending him back to their base in Germany with shrapnel through his foot.

By that time, Revak said, several men in his unit had been disciplined for Valium use.

Medical experts say mental health problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse are often intertwined.

"When they don't get the kind of mental health screening — or physical — history tells us they will turn to coping mechanisms," said Steve Robinson, director of government relations for Veterans for America, a 35,000-member organization.

He says many of the hundreds of troops he has interviewed at post-deployment sites are addicted to medications given to them in the field, such as painkillers and sleeping pills. But they are not getting the therapy that normally goes with such medications, Robinson said.

Adam Reuter, a 23-year-old former Army specialist, said that after he was tossed out of a Humvee in an accident in Iraq, a medic handed him a plastic bag filled with pills and gave him no instructions.

The bag contained four kinds of painkillers, an anti-inflammatory drug and a muscle relaxant, said Reuter, an Atlanta native who served with the 3rd Squadron of the 3rd Armored Company from May 2003 until February 2004. He said he went back for more and developed a dependency that he is still trying to shake.

Military personnel said they used banned substances as a way to mentally escape the violence around them. Drugs ranging from marijuana to prescription anti-depressants are easily accessible in Iraq, according to interviews with more than a dozen soldiers who served there.

John Crawford, a 28-year-old former Florida National Guardsman with the Army's 101st Airborne Division, said soldiers in his unit drank alcohol, some took steroids, "pretty much everyone took Valium," and "some did all three."

Crawford said he bought 200 to 300 Valium pills on the street in Baghdad for $2 as a way to get some sleep between patrols. After eight months, he built up a tolerance and was taking seven or eight at a time.

The extent of alcohol and drug abuse among combat veterans is difficult to quantify. The Pentagon declined to release the results of announced drug tests specifically for Iraq. The tests are usually done just once a year.

Army Maj. James Weeden directed a team of 200 specialists dealing with combat stress in Iraq until he left the country in September.

He says senior officers recognize the strain their troops are under and in the past year have assigned specialists to address the issue at remote forward operating bases.

But seeking treatment in a combat environment is difficult. All travel is risky, and asking for help is seen as a sign of weakness.

Weeden and other medical specialists say that they can treat only the symptoms of combat stress — with anti-depressant drugs and rest, for example — and that troops are sent out of Iraq only when they have clearly disabling cases of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Commanders want to keep troops in the field, and most service members say that they don't want to abandon their units.

"We strengthen (combat readiness) because we get them back," Weeden said.

That desire to keep medicated troops in combat troubles Joyce Raezer, director of government relations at the National Military Family Association.

She says U.S. troops — some now on their fourth or fifth tour — are bringing "all the baggage from the last deployment into the next."

"The stress is cumulative," she said.

Families are alarmed by military statistics showing that 80 percent of soldiers who have been flagged with mild symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder have been sent back to Iraq and Afghanistan, many with anti-depressant pills aimed at ensuring they can still fight. Experts say repeated exposure to combat is the greatest predictor of whether a person will get post-traumatic stress disorder and how severe it will be.

When they come home, many seeking treatment say they face steep hurdles getting help from the government. With a wave of post-traumatic stress disorder cases arriving, outreach groups fear the VA will not have adequate resources to treat them and to pay disability benefits.

The VA is proposing a $339 million increase in mental health care spending next year, Katz said Tuesday. That would bring total annual spending on those programs to about $3.2 billion.

Implementation is another question. As of late September, about $42 million of $200 million directed for initiatives to close gaps in VA mental health care in 2006 had not been spent, the GAO found.

"Requesting more money is a step in the right direction," said Paul Sullivan, director of programs for Veterans for America, who was a senior analyst at the VA until he left six months ago.

But he added, "The VA's problems are systemic, and the solutions must be more comprehensive than simple increases in funding."

He noted the GAO findings that the VA lacked a comprehensive plan to implement the funding in last year's budget.

About 144,000 of the 589,000 veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan have already been seen at VA-run Vet Centers for "readjustment concerns" ranging from depression and marital problems to full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder.

Forty percent of the 60 centers surveyed in the study by the Democratic House staff have directed veterans for whom individualized therapy would be appropriate to group therapy instead.

Dr. Frances Murphy, undersecretary for Health Policy Coordination at the VA, told a mental health commission in March that the growing numbers of veterans seeking mental health care has revealed areas in which improvement is needed.

Some VA clinics, she said, do not provide mental health or substance abuse care, or if they do, "waiting lists render that care virtually inaccessible."

"The VA needs more capacity so that vets can get treatment and don't have to wait," Sullivan said.

If they are able to see a VA doctor, hundreds of veterans with severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are being denied disability benefits because their condition is obscured by drug or alcohol abuse, which is labeled "willful misconduct," said Elinor Roberts, legal director for Swords to Plowshares, a San Francisco-based veterans organization.

The military maintains a zero tolerance policy for drug use on all but prescription medications.

Some service members have lost their military benefits, regardless of their combat citations, after they have been found to have used banned substances.

But many commanders offer leeway in such cases, choosing nonjudicial punishments such as demotions to keep soldiers on duty, said Army Col. Bill Buckner, a public affairs officer at Fort Bragg, N.C.

The VA is allowed to give benefits to veterans dealing with alcohol abuse but not illicit drugs, and only if a clinician finds that the veteran also has post-traumatic stress disorder. VA officials say many vets with the condition have trouble making appointments to get that diagnosis in the first place.

Amy Fairweather, who has counseled about 50 Iraq vets for Swords to Plowshares, said the impact of repeated deployments "is enormous."

"It contributes to all the elements for substance abuse, mental illness and family dissolution," she said. "There's only so many times you can be uprooted from family and work. Not to mention that they're over there in hell."

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Lawmakers Criticize Training And Deployment of Iraqi Forces; Report Casts Doubt on Ability to Replace U.S. Troops

Washington Post
Lawmakers Criticize Training And Deployment of Iraqi Forces
Report Casts Doubt on Ability to Replace U.S. Troops
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer

Two senior members of the House Armed Services Committee and several former Defense Department officials yesterday criticized poor U.S. training and deployment of the Iraqi army and police as a major reason the Baghdad government cannot provide security to its people.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the panel, said that 33 trained Iraqi army battalions, now serving in provinces that are relatively peaceful, should be moved into Baghdad or other areas where there is fighting. "Saddle those guys up, move them into the fight," Hunter said on NBC's "Meet the Press." He added, "Nothing trains a combat unit better than actually being in military operations."

Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), who next year will take over as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, focused on the Army training of Iraqi units. He said that in many instances "the wrong types" of trainers were given the job.

"I would hope we could stand up their brigades, their battalions, and that they would be effective, and the way to do this is for us to train them better, to have advisers that understand them," Skelton said on NBC.

"What's really fallen down . . . has been the police," said retired Gen. Wayne A. Downing, who headed the Army's Special Operations Command and briefly served after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the Bush White House handling counterterrorism.

"We reconstituted the Iraqi police pretty much in their old image," he told NBC's Tim Russert. "They are corrupt, they are feared by the people, and we recognize this." Downing said that once a Baghdad neighborhood is cleaned up, "we turn it over to the Iraqi police, Tim, and within weeks it's right back to the way it was before."

"We've got to get the Iraqi army and police better equipped, better trained, and into the fight. And I think we've got 24 months," said retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, also on "Meet the Press." He said the Iraqis, now armed with light trucks and small arms, need armored vehicles and air force and support helicopters "to sustain a major internal battle."

Yesterday's criticisms were expanded upon in the latest study by Anthony H. Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. A Pentagon official in the Reagan administration and a specialist in Middle East intelligence and military matters, Cordesman just returned from Iraq, where he received briefings from military and civilian officials.

One of Cordesman's central issues is that public statements by the Defense Department "severely distorted the true nature of Iraqi force development in ways that grossly exaggerate Iraqi readiness and capability to assume security tasks and replace U.S. forces." He also writes that "U.S. official reporting is so misleading that there is no way to determine just how serious the problem is and what resources will be required."

Cordesman says the Pentagon's Aug. 31 status report, which was sent to Congress, lists 312,400 men "trained and equipped" among the Iraqi army and national and regular police. But it adds that "no one knows how many . . . are actually still in service." At the same time, he writes, "all unclassified reporting on unit effectiveness has been cancelled."

Criticizing statements about how many Iraqi army units are "in the lead," Cordesman notes that the Iraqi army "lacks armor, heavy firepower, tactical mobility and an Iraqi Air Force capable of providing combat support" -- the same points McCaffrey made yesterday.

"No administration official has presented any plan to properly equip the Iraqi forces to stand on their own or give them the necessary funding to phase out U.S. combat and air support in 12 to 18 months," Cordesman says. He writes that the Iraqi army could need U.S. support through 2010.

The August Pentagon report says that the Iraqi Ministry of Interior (MOI), which controls the National Police, does not have "an effective management system" and therefore "it is unknown how many of the forces . . . are still employed by the MOI."

Cordesman says attrition is put at "at least 20 percent per year." The Pentagon report also notes problems with the police having ties to militias and warns about "unprofessional and at times criminal behavior" by some units.

Cordesman described the situation as "far worse" with the regular police, where "desertion rates are far higher than with the regular [Army] forces and National Police. He cites the Pentagon report as saying "there is currently no screening process to ascertain militia allegiance" and "no method exists to track the success rate of these or other police officers."

As with the army, Cordesman says he believes it will take three to five years to adequately train Iraqi police officers. He notes, though, that the Pentagon report "makes clear there is no meaningful database on where the maintained and equipped for the regular police actually are, or on the effectiveness of individual units."

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Scalia the Civil Libertarian?

The New York Times
Scalia the Civil Libertarian?
By SCOTT TUROW

The conservative ideological majority on the U.S. Supreme Court that determined the 2000 election in favor of President Bush should have grown stronger when Bush chose Justice Samuel Alito to replace the moderate Sandra Day O’Connor. Yet in carrying out its first priority, the war on terror, the White House has encountered unwelcome resistance from the court. Objections to Bush’s sweeping view of executive power have come not only from liberals and centrists, like Justice Anthony Kennedy but, more remarkably, from Justice Antonin Scalia, who may end up playing a pivotal role in future war-on-terror cases.

Scalia has long been regarded as an administration favorite. Bush suggested during the 2000 campaign that Scalia was his idea of a model justice. In the court’s Bush v. Gore decision, which brought that campaign to an end, Scalia ventured the opaque claim that candidate Bush would experience “irreparable harm” if the recount continued in Florida. Not long after, the justice’s son was appointed by the president to a top position in the Labor Department. In January 2004, Scalia took a free ride on Vice President Cheney’s plane to go duck hunting with him; later he refused to step aside in a major case involving Cheney.

Even beyond these affiliations, Justice Scalia’s flamethrowing rhetoric and his hostility to whole chapters of 20th-century jurisprudence have made him a conservative icon and a favorite face on liberal dart boards. The justice has declared that the Constitution not only creates no right to abortion but does not even protect private adult sexual conduct, blasting the court’s 2003 decision to strike down a Texas sodomy law as “largely sign[ing] on to the so-called homosexual agenda.” He has scaled back the exclusionary rule, which bars evidence obtained by unlawful police searches, and made it clear that he would like to do away with Miranda warnings.

Less noted, however, is the fact that Justice Scalia, especially in the last decade, has frequently taken an expansive view of the Bill of Rights, thus supporting defendants in criminal cases. Scalia is one of the intellectual godfathers of a strand of Supreme Court decisions, crystallized by Apprendi v. New Jersey, that revolutionized sentencing laws. Following a strict interpretation of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process of law and the Sixth Amendment’s right to trial by jury, Scalia has insisted that any fact used to extend punishment beyond normal statutory limits must be specified and proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Despite his fevered support for capital punishment, Scalia also joined a court majority in holding that the Constitution requires a death sentence to be decided by a jury, rather than by a judge, effectively setting aside every capital sentence still on direct appeal in five states.

Nor are Scalia’s pro-rights decisions limited to one arcane area.

In Kyllo v. U.S. (2001), Justice Scalia, writing for the court, deemed police use of heat-seeking technology to detect whether marijuana was being grown inside a house a violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches. In a 2004 opinion, Scalia spoke for a court majority in finding unconstitutional the widespread practice of using recordings or prepared statements to the police as a substitute for the testimony of unavailable witnesses. And last term, supported by the court’s four more liberal justices, Scalia held that a defendant wrongly deprived of the lawyer of his choice gets a new trial, no matter how overwhelming the evidence of his guilt.

Justice Scalia is led to these seemingly divergent positions by his unyielding adherence to a school of constitutional interpretation called originalism. To Scalia, the Bill of Rights means exactly what it did in 1791, no more, no less. The needs of an evolving society, he says, should be addressed by legislation rather than the courts.

In all of this, Scalia is first and foremost a legal formalist — meaning that to him, the rules are the rules. He did not sign on to the Apprendi cases out of any special sympathy for criminal defendants — indeed, he once wrote an opinion refusing to uphold an acquittal on the grounds that the defendant’s motion for acquittal was filed one day too late. Rather, he was motivated by the assumption that, as he put it in the capital-punishment case, “the right of trial by jury is in perilous decline.” In other words, over the years the right had come to be interpreted more narrowly than in 1791.

In adjudicating the war on terror, Scalia has come down strongly on behalf of the administration and its prisoners in a number of cases. The extensive powers claimed by the Bush administration would seem to pose a problem for originalists, because the Bill of Rights was indubitably added to the Constitution to keep the new American executive from repeating the monarchal abuses of King George. Yet in a speech in suburban Cleveland in March 2003, just before the invasion of Iraq (where one of his sons would serve), Justice Scalia told his audience that “most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires” and predicted that in war time “the protections will be ratcheted right down to the constitutional minimum.” In one of the first war-on-terror cases to reach the court, Rasul v. Bush, a majority agreed that the foreign detainees at Guantánamo had a right to file habeas corpus petitions. Scalia strongly dissented, as one might have expected given the fact that the Constitution’s protections are generally intended for only American citizens.

It thus verged on the breathtaking when Justice Scalia wrote in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld: “Many think it not only inevitable but entirely proper that liberty give way to security in times of national crisis. ... Whatever the general merits of the view that war silences law or modulates its voice, that view has no place in the interpretation and application of a Constitution designed precisely to confront war and, in a manner that accords with democratic principles, to accommodate it.”

Hamdi, an American citizen, was supposedly captured among Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Four justices thought that the Congressional resolution passed immediately after 9/11, authorizing the use of force against Al Qaeda, permitted the president to detain Hamdi as an enemy combatant. A majority ruled, however, that Hamdi could not be held indefinitely simply on the president’s say-so and was entitled to a meaningful hearing. Justice Scalia would not even concede the first point. Instead, he declared Congress has not given the president the power to hold any American, even one who has taken up arms against his country, as an enemy combatant and instead must press criminal charges or let him go.

Now the looming question is where Scalia will settle as future war-on-terror cases come before the court, and whether his unique jurisprudence will accord him a leading role. The court’s centrists, most notably Justices Kennedy and Breyer, are inclined to apply nuanced balancing tests. Weighing, for example, the need to hold battlefield captives like Hamdi against the reality that such a detention could last most of the detainee’s lifetime, both justices voted to create a right to a hearing for citizen-combatants. Yet their war-on-terror decisions have been so factbound that they offer little future guidance on the meaning of the rights involved. For instance, what happens when a citizen who is a supposed enemy combatant is captured in this country rather than on the battlefield? The other conservatives on the court — Justice Thomas and, in their limited times, Justices Alito and Roberts — have shown an inclination to defer blankly to executive power. Scalia’s originalism, too, tends to view executive power expansively, but only when it is applied to the many areas beyond the narrow preserves created by the Bill of Rights. As the Apprendi cases demonstrate, Scalia is more like the court’s liberal members in seeing the Bill of Rights as a constitutional trump when it collides with government power.

Apparently unsure about what the future holds, the administration recently has been trying to sidestep the Supreme Court altogether. It persuaded Congress to remove the habeas corpus rights the court had previously granted foreign detainees at Guantánamo. The White House also wants to rewrite the wiretapping laws to bolster the president’s assertions that he had the constitutional power to wiretap certain calls without a warrant. The president has asked the lame-duck Republican Congress to push through the change, but the newly emboldened Senate Democrats say they will block it. It appears most likely that when the wiretapping program inevitably reaches the court, the justices will have to weigh the president’s claim of inherent authority against the statute in place when the program began. The statute explicitly says its warrant procedure is “the exclusive means” to wiretap calls to or from the U.S. for national security reasons.

Scalia has seldom been a consensus builder on the court, preferring to stick with his own views rather than troll for votes. But his occasional alliance with the court’s more liberal justices could be struck again in future terror cases. The result would be an unequivocal declaration that executive power must yield to constitutional liberties, even when the nation is on the prolonged war footing we seem to have adopted.

Scott Turow is the author most recently of the novella “Limitations,” which first appeared in a different form as a serial in the magazine.

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CNN Iraq Correspondent: Iraq Is "An Absolute Mess"...TV, Print "Can't Fully Capture The Scope"

Huffington Post
CNN Iraq Correspondent: Iraq Is "An Absolute Mess"...TV, Print "Can't Fully Capture The Scope"...
From youtube.com

Excerpted from a transcript of CNN's "Reliable Sources":

KURTZ: If you're sitting at home watching it on TV, you see mass kidnappings, suicide bombings, mosque bombings, death squads. When you're there as a journalist, does the situation seem as chaotic to you as it does to a viewer?

ROBERTS: You know, Howie, I had a perception of Iraq going in, and it was the first time I'd been there in three-and-a-half years. I got out a couple of days after the Saddam statue fell, after the initial invasion. So it was quite a shock to go back and see the chaotic state that the country was in. And as -- I guess you could say as realistic as my perceptions were about going in there, the reality on the ground far exceeded that.

The place is a mess. It's an absolute mess. There is nowhere you can go in the Baghdad area as a Western journalist without an escort, where you could feel safe from being kidnapped, shot at, whatever. The amount of death that's on the streets of Baghdad for U.S. forces and for the Iraqi people is at an astronomical level...

ROBERTS: Because television can't -- and even print -- can't fully capture the scope of what's going on in Iraq. And to some degree, too, over the last three-and-a-half years, Howie, it's become the daily traffic report, the daily drumbeat.

Read the full transcript here.

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Iraqi Minefield

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McCain's Plan

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John McCain's Hair of the Dog Strategy

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Hot Air

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Food Insecurity

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If I Did It

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On the Move to Outrun Climate Change; Self-Preservation Forcing Wild Species, Businesses, Planning Officials to Act

Washington Post
On the Move to Outrun Climate Change
Self-Preservation Forcing Wild Species, Businesses, Planning Officials to Act
By Blaine Harden and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers

SEATTLE -- As the Bush administration debates much of the world about what to do about global warming, butterflies and ski-lift operators, polar bears and hydroelectric planners are on the move.

In their separate ways, wild creatures, business executives and regional planners are responding to climate changes that are rapidly recalibrating their chances for survival, for profit and for effective delivery of public services.

Butterflies are voting with their wings, abandoning southern Europe and flying north to the more amenable climes of Finland. Ski-lift operators in the West are lobbying for leases on federal land higher up in the Rockies, trying to outclimb snowlines that creep steadily upward.

Polar bears along Hudson Bay are losing weight and declining in number as the ice shelf melts and their feeding season shrinks. Power planners in the Pacific Northwest, which gets three-quarters of its electricity from hydroelectric dams, are meeting in brainstorming sessions and making contingency plans for early snow melts, increased wintertime rainfall, lower summertime river flows and electricity shortfalls during hotter, drier summers.

With the issue of a warming planet shifting rapidly from scientific projection to on-the-ground reality, animals and plants are being compelled, along with businesses and bureaucracies, to take action aimed at self-preservation. They are doing so even as the Bush administration eschews regulations, laws or international treaties that would require limits on carbon dioxide emissions, which scientists say are the main cause of global warming.

A newly published synthesis of 866 peer-reviewed studies of the effect of climate change on wild plants and animals has found what its author, Camille Parmesan, an assistant professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin, describes as a "clear, globally coherent conclusion."

Flora and fauna are migrating north or climbing to higher ground if they can, said Parmesan, whose paper appears in the December issue of the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. If they cannot move, she said, their numbers are often declining, their health is getting worse, and some are disappearing altogether.

"Wild species don't care who is in the White House," Parmesan said. "It is very obvious they are desperately trying to move to respond to the changing climate. Some are succeeding. But for the ones that are already at the mountaintop or at the poles, there is no place for them to go. They are the ones that are going extinct."

Among the most affected species, Parmesan said, are highland amphibians in the tropics. She said more than two-thirds of 110 species of harlequin frogs, which occupy mountain cloud forests in Central America, have become extinct in the past 35 years.

Meanwhile, many pest species -- including roaches, fleas, ticks and tree-killing beetles -- are surviving warming winters in increasing numbers. "We are seeing throughout the Northern Hemisphere that pests are able to have more generations per year, which allows them to increase their numbers without being killed off by cold winter temperatures," said Parmesan.

Federal scientists say that the first six months of this year were the warmest on record in the United States and that the five warmest years over the past century have occurred since 1998. In her review of studies measuring the impact of climate change on wild plants and animals, Parmesan said this "sudden increase" in temperatures appears to have been a tipping point, triggering substantial responses from a broad range of species.

"The magnitude of impacts is so overwhelming that many biologists are now calling this the single most important problem they need to work on," said Parmesan. "You can save all the habitat you want, but if it is not any good climatically, what is the point?"

Though President Bush has said that human activity has contributed to climate change, he has consistently rejected the idea of imposing mandatory curbs on carbon dioxide emissions.

In an interview shortly after this month's congressional elections, James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the country would be better off setting a voluntary goal -- such as increasing the use of renewable fuels -- than dictating industrial greenhouse-gas emission levels.

"Setting a reasonably ambitious target and then exceeding it is a good way to make reasonable progress," Connaughton said.

The Bush administration has outlined a strategic plan that calls for developing technology that would reduce carbon dioxide pollution. It now spends $3 billion a year on energy research and development. But when adjusted for inflation, this money is a fraction of what the federal government spent in the past. Researchers such as Reuel Shinnar and Francesco Citro, two chemical engineers at the Clean Fuels Institute at the City College of New York, estimate the country would have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year to make the transition to a carbon-free society.

From the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Northwest, the effects of global warming -- along with the responses of animals, people, businesses and bureaucracies -- are being woven into the fabric of everyday life.

On Cape Sable, on the far southwestern edge of Florida, boaters, sportsmen and scientists have watched as a rising sea level has transformed a freshwater marsh into a portion of the sea.

Where there had been saw grass, the distinctive vegetation of the Everglades, there are now mangrove trees, which thrive in salt water and open water. Redfish inhabit areas that once had been wetland. The endangered bird named after the area, the Cape Sable seaside sparrow, has fled northward.

Using historic photos and tidal gauge records, University of Miami professor Harold Wanless, chairman of the geology department, has studied the changes. Between the sinking of the land and the rise of the seas since the 1930s, the relative water level has risen nine inches, he said.

"Freshwater marshes on Cape Sable are now evolving into more or less open marine waters," he said. "We're not talking about global warming as something that will happen in the future. Its happening right now. All the king's horses and all the king's men won't be able to put Cape Sable together again."

In the high country of western Montana, ski resort manager Tom Maclay is trying to outrun climate change by persuading the U.S. Forest Service to lease 12,000 acres across Carlton Ridge and Lolo Peak. The land, which lies above property he owns, would allow his resort to reach a top elevation of 9,100 feet.

Maclay is well aware how climate change is transforming his business and how nearby resorts have suffered from a lack of snow in recent years. At nearby Glacier National Park, the U.S. Geological Survey quantifies the change, noting that there has been a 73 percent decline since 1850 in the area of the park covered by glaciers. Many smaller glaciers are now gone, it says, and larger ones have shrunk by about two-thirds.

Maclay and his resort's chief executive, Jim Gill, are negotiating with snowmaking manufacturers who are asking for tens of millions of dollars for their services.

"Now with the snowline creeping up the hill, it's tougher and tougher for the areas that are struggling at the margins to keep their base areas full of snow," Gill said. "If you don't have a good snowmaking operation, you're not going to be able to compete."

In the Pacific Northwest, which depends far more on hydroelectricity than any region of the country, research findings on global warming from the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group have prompted utilities, federal agencies and regional planning groups to convene brainstorming sessions in the past year.

They are looking at possible ways of mitigating power shortages as the summer flows of the region's rivers decline -- a result of less snow in the mountains and early melt.

For decades, the Pacific Northwest has had a surplus of power to send south to California during hot summer months. But if Northwest rivers run low as summers get hotter, the region could end up competing with California for power, said John Fazio, a senior power systems analyst for the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, a regional planning group.

"More and more, global warming is becoming a serious part of the planning process," said Fazio.

Eilperin reported from Missoula, Mont. Staff writer Peter Whoriskey in Miami contributed to this report.

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Robert Kupperman, Expert on Terrorism, Is Dead at 71

The New York Times
Robert Kupperman, Expert on Terrorism, Is Dead at 71
By TIM WEINER

Robert H. Kupperman, who more than 30 years ago was among the first officials to tell the White House of the dangers of a terrorist attack on the United States, died Friday at his home in Washington. He was 71.

The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, first diagnosed in 1990, said his daughter, Tamara Kupperman Thorp.

From 1975 onward, as an author of top-secret studies, a chairman of task forces and a lonely voice of warning, Mr. Kupperman consistently predicted that the United States would someday be the target of a major terrorist attack.

David M. Abshire, a founder of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote in an August 2002 letter to Mr. Kupperman that “we might have prevented 9/11” had presidents and policymakers listened more closely to him.

Airplane hijackings and transnational terrorism were on the rise when Mr. Kupperman became the chief scientist at the federal Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in 1975. In that role, he led a task force that produced two top-secret studies, at the end of that year and in early 1976.

The studies looked at the likely effects of a spectacular terrorist assault on the United States. They investigated the possible consequences of an attack with a weapon of mass destruction and the readiness of the government to deal with a cascade of conventional terrorist assaults.

No one at the White House paid any attention, according to a study by the 9/11 Commission.

For the next 20 years, Washington “essentially ignored the issue of domestic terrorism,” Mr. Kupperman wrote in 1995. Nevertheless, the question of preventing terrorist attacks preoccupied him for the rest of his life. From 1979 on, he pursued answers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, one of Washington’s leading research institutions.

“Terrorists are undergoing a dangerous metamorphosis — from technological clods relying on fanaticism to skilled tacticians,” he warned in a 1988 Op-Ed article in The New York Times, written with a journalist, Jeff Kamen. “The Reagan administration and its successor should prepare themselves and the public for devastating attacks.”

Seven years later, Mr. Kupperman told a Senate committee that the nation was “only marginally prepared to deal with one major terrorist incident, let alone a cascading sequence of events.”

Born in New York City on May 12, 1935, Robert Harris Kupperman was educated at New York University, where he received his doctorate in applied mathematics in 1960. His first wife, Helen Slotnick, died in 1966. Besides his daughter, Tamara, of Alexandria, Va., a White House producer for NBC News, he is survived by his wife, Barbara Norris Kupperman, and a sister, Ina Brown of Bradenton, Fla.

He taught at the California Institute of Technology and worked at the Institute for Defense Analyses before becoming the assistant director for the federal Office of Emergency Preparedness from 1967 to 1973. That year, President Richard M. Nixon abolished the office. It was resurrected in 1978 as the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

In 1992, Mr. Kupperman wrote that FEMA’s “lackluster response” to the devastations of Hurricane Andrew in Florida had made it clear that it, too, should be abolished. He proposed to replace it with a small and highly professional group with the power to mobilize the American military to meet a catastrophe on American soil.

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Democrats promise "new direction" in Iraq

Reuters
Democrats promise "new direction" in Iraq
By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats on Saturday promised to help "forge a new direction" in the Iraq war when they take control of the U.S. Congress in January from President George W. Bush's Republicans.

They also vowed to clean up the scandal-rocked Congress, raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade and address such concerns as the rising cost of education, health care and energy.

"This we will do, and much more -- not because we believe in the infinite wisdom of government, but because we believe in the innate goodness of our people and the promise of a brighter future in the land that we all love," Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland said in delivering his party's weekly radio address.

Hoyer, elected by Democratic colleagues to be House majority leader in the 110th Congress that convenes on January 4, said his party would reach out to Republicans as it seeks to help all Americans.

"More than 40 years ago, our 35th President -- John F. Kennedy -- perhaps said it best: 'Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future,'" Hoyer said.

Democrats won control of the House and Senate on November 7 in elections that saw voters demand change, particularly in Iraq, which slid further toward civil war this week after bombs killed 202 people in a Shi'ite area.

Democrats have promised to push for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq beginning within months. Bush has opposed any timetables, but has agreed to consider a new approach.

Hoyer said, "We will work with the president and our Republican colleagues in Congress to forge a new direction in Iraq -- because, clearly, the current strategy is not working."

"Sectarian violence continues to rage," Hoyer said. "Our brave servicemen and women continue to be maimed and killed. And the war is not making our nation safer or more secure."

"In the days ahead, the Iraqis must make the tough decisions and accept responsibility for their future. And, the Iraqis must know: Our commitment, while great, is not unending," Hoyer said.

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GOP's Specter On Unchanged Bush Wiretapping Program: "For Every Day That Passes, There's An Invasion Of Privacy That Could Be Cured"

The New York Times
Despite a Year of Ire and Angst, Little Has Changed on Wiretaps
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 — When President Bush went on national television one Saturday morning last December to acknowledge the existence of a secret wiretapping program outside the courts, the fallout was fierce and immediate.

Mr. Bush’s opponents accused him of breaking the law, with a few even calling for his impeachment. His backers demanded that he be given express legal authority to do what he had done. Law professors talked, civil rights groups sued and a federal judge in Detroit declared the wiretapping program unconstitutional.

But as Democrats prepare to take over on Capitol Hill, not much has really changed. For all the sound and fury in the last year, the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program continues uninterrupted, with no definitive action by either Congress or the courts on what, if anything, to do about it, and little chance of a breakthrough in the lame-duck Congress.

While the Democrats have vowed to press for more facts about the operation, they are of mixed minds about additional steps.

Some favor an aggressive strategy that would brand the program illegal and move to ban it even as the courts consider its legality. Others are more cautious, emphasizing the rule of law but not giving Republicans the chance to accuse them of depriving the government of important anti-terrorism tools.

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who will take over as House speaker in January, favors an investigation to determine how the security agency’s program actually operated and what its legal framework is under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, a senior aide to Ms. Pelosi said. Administration officials said they were concerned they could have to shut down a program they deemed vital to national security.

The 1978 law requires counterterrorism officials to obtain court orders to eavesdrop on people inside the United States. But the security agency’s program involved eavesdropping without warrants on the international telephone and e-mail communications of Americans and others in this country suspected of links to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Congressional Republicans, for their part, see a missed opportunity to resolve the many questions hovering over the operation during a year in which they still commanded majorities in the House and Senate.

“We could’ve fixed this early on,” said Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a believer that the surveillance program violates the 1978 law.

“For every day that passes,” Mr. Specter said in an interview, “there’s an invasion of privacy that could be cured.”

To understand the helter-skelter nature of the debate over the wiretapping program, one need look no further than Mr. Specter.

After the program was publicly disclosed last Dec. 15, the senator called it an “inappropriate” usurpation of presidential authority that “can’t be condoned.” He signed onto a bill last summer written by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, that would effectively ban the program as it is now operated and require a court order for all wiretapping of Americans.

Then, after a series of confidential meetings with the White House, Mr. Specter worked out a compromise to bring the program before a secret intelligence court to test its constitutionality. He was promptly pummeled by Democrats and editorial writers for giving away too much to the White House.

Mr. Specter changed course again last week and submitted yet another proposal that would require warrants for eavesdropping on communications coming out of, but not into, the United States, and would put the whole issue on a fast track to the Supreme Court. Its fate, like its predecessors’, is unclear.

Along the way, Mr. Specter has clashed with politicians on the left and the right. He got into a public spat with Vice President Dick Cheney when the latter succeeded in keeping Mr. Specter from subpoenaing telecommunications executives to testify about cooperation with the security agency, and he traded terse words with Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, over Mr. Feingold’s efforts to have the Senate vote to censure the president over the wiretapping.

“It’s always difficult,” Mr. Specter said, “to get legislation on a controversial issue that has such political overtones.”

The lack of a resolution has left many shaking their heads. Some officials said the unanswered questions had cast doubt on the public credibility of broader intelligence operations and created occasional confusion among intelligence agents over what was and was not allowed in tracking terrorism suspects.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty over this program,” said a former senior intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the wiretapping program is classified.

“We’ve had a wasted year at this point,” the former official said, “and nothing has been done to try to really figure out how or whether we should amend the process.”

The program was secretly approved by Mr. Bush weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. Since then, the security agency, which has historically been restricted from spying within the United States, has monitored thousands of international telephone calls and e-mail messages to and from people in this country, people with knowledge of the operation say. Senior administration officials say it has been critical in helping to identify previously unknown plots, but other government officials involved in the operation have said that it has often led to dead ends and to people with no clear links to terrorism.

The administration has steadfastly defended the program and has warned of a serious threat to national security were it stopped.

In a speech last week, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales labeled as “myth” the idea that the program “is an invasion of privacy and an unlawful eavesdropping tool.” The program, he said, “does not invade anyone’s privacy, unless you are talking to the enemy in this time of war.”

The legal authority, the administration argues, rests on both the president’s inherent constitutional authorities as commander in chief as well as a Congressional resolution passed days after Sept. 11 that authorized the use of military force against Al Qaeda.

The only judge to rule directly on the question, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of Federal District Court in Detroit, rejected the administration’s claims to broad executive authority, ruling the program illegal in August and ordering it shut down.

“There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution,” the judge wrote.

The Justice Department is appealing that decision, as well as a separate ruling in San Francisco allowing lawsuits against telecommunication companies to proceed. In that case, Judge Vaughn Walker of Federal District Court rejected the government’s assertion that the lawsuits should be quashed because they touched on “state secrets” and risked harming national security.

Justice Department officials said they were hopeful they would succeed in overturning the Detroit ruling, but they acknowledged they were concerned over where the courts would ultimately come down.

“It would certainly be good to have clarity on this,” said a senior Justice Department official, who was given anonymity to discuss the department’s internal thinking. “Do people want resolution on a program this important? Sure.”

Even after the Democrats won control of Congress this month, Mr. Bush pushed the passage of wiretapping legislation as a priority for the lame-duck session that concludes next month. During that brief window before Democrats take power, administration officials also hope to push through related measures that would effectively insulate telecommunications and government officials from legal liability growing out of the wiretapping.

But Republicans and Democrats alike give the White House virtually no chance of moving substantive wiretapping legislation before January.

An aide to Ms. Pelosi noted that the White House has until now agreed only to limited briefings on the program.

“There is bipartisan interest in seeing whether the administration’s claims that the program can’t comply with F.I.S.A. are indeed so,” the aide said. “We were legislating on an issue where the full parameters were not known or well understood.”

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New push to allow imported drugs expected in Congress

USA Today
New push to allow imported drugs expected in Congress

WASHINGTON (AP) — Efforts to allow Americans access to cheaper prescription drugs from abroad should blossom once Democrats assume control in Congress, but it won't be a top priority, lawmakers and health care experts said.

Members of the House and Senate are gearing up for a renewed push to change federal law and permit broader imports of prescription drugs from Canada and elsewhere, where certain medicines can cost less than two-thirds what they do in the United States. Their hope is the imports will drive down prices at home.

"The pressure is not to tell people you have to go outside this country to buy prescription drugs. The pressure is to force the pharmaceutical companies to re-price their drugs in the U.S.," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat who has introduced with Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, a bill to make importation of prescription drugs legal.

The issue remains overwhelmingly popular with voters, even though the government estimates it would do little to actually cut the prices Americans pay for prescription drugs. And there is continued opposition to imported drugs as well.

Still, Republicans and Democrats alike see the shift in control of Congress as an opportunity to advance previously blocked legislation. The issue generally is called reimportation, since many of the medicines are made in the United States or by U.S. companies.

"Things were headed in the right direction with reimportation to begin with, but the election will speed up that process because it's removed leadership that was opposed to reimportation. I am a Republican and support leadership in general, but on reimportation they were opposed to it," said Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana.

Vitter and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., recently sponsored legislation to halt the seizures of imported Canadian drugs for personal use — something the government now allows only on a limited basis.

And Vitter continues to block confirmation of Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, President Bush's nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration, until federal drug import laws are further relaxed.

As for the FDA, the agency says it can't vouch for the safety or efficacy of imported drugs. This summer, the FDA said testing revealed fake versions of Lipitor and other widely used prescription drugs ordered through websites linked to a Canadian pharmacy but shipped from other countries.

Nelson, too, intends to make such legislation a priority. He wants to either bar the use of government funds to enforce the rules or authorize the import of drugs certified as safe from Canada and select other countries on a case-by-case basis, spokesman Dan McLaughlin said.

The drug industry, which generally opposes such legislation, is bracing for an onslaught.

"I don't think there's any question there will be renewed attempts to pass reimportation legislation in the new Congress. It's a fight that's been going on for years now. Given the new leadership and its priorities, we expect it to pop up again," said Ken Johnson, senior vice president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

But don't hold your breath, said Drew Altman, president and chief executive officer of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health care research organization. Imported drug legislation is not at the top of Democratic leadership's list of priorities. And Bush, who's also raised questions about the safety of imported drugs, could veto legislation to make it happen.

Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has made cheaper prescription drugs part of her immediate plans for the House. Yet Pelosi's focus is on negotiating lower prices with drug companies for Medicare beneficiaries. The same goes for Sen. Harry Reid, the next Senate majority leader. Reid spokesman Jim Manley said reimportation was among "a whole host of other issues."

"Timing is another thing," said David Certner, legislative policy director for the AARP. "This would be presumably something we see later in the day."

If and when it does come to the fore, not everyone is taking Democratic support as a given.

"A lot of people say, 'Oh, it's just the Democrats,' but it's not. It depends on where you're from, and who are your constituents," said Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., a key sponsor of previous reimportation legislation.

Still, Emerson says the issue will have a "fighting chance" in the new Congress, even without a veto-proof majority. Others are less sanguine.

"This is one of those things where I think that the conventional wisdom may not be accurate. I personally think reimportation has a much tougher prospect of moving with the Democrats in charge, particularly in the House," said Ira Loss, an analyst at Washington Analysis.

Loss points to the potential opposition of Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., who will take over as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that oversees the FDA. Dingell previously has warned of the safety risks posed by imported drugs — as do both the FDA and pharmaceutical industry.

Reimportation advocates believe Canada could provide the U.S. with prescription drugs that are both cheap and safe. Canadians, for instance, pay on average just 62% as much for prescription drugs as do Americans, according to the 2005 annual report from that country's Patented Medicine Prices Review Board.

But lower prices overseas wouldn't automatically translate into massive savings for U.S. consumers, according to a 2004 study by the Congressional Budget Office.

The study found that allowing drug imports from a broad set of countries would cut drug spending by $40 billion over 10 years, or by about 1%. Limiting it to Canada would produce a "negligible reduction" in drug spending, it found.

Despite such estimates, public support remains strong, according to polls by the Kaiser Family Foundation and others.

"It's an issue whose popularity with the public is out of proportion to its potential benefit in terms of driving down drug costs," Altman said.

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US Interference Allowed UK Liquid Terror Plot Suspects To Escape

The Independent
US interference 'allowed terror gang to escape'
By Jason Bennetto, Crime Correspondent

A team of suspected terrorists involved in an alleged UK plot to blow up trans-atlantic airliners escaped capture because of interference by the United States, The Independent has been told by counter-terrorism sources.

An investigation by MI5 and Scotland Yard into an alleged plan to smuggle explosive devices on up to 10 passenger jets was jeopardised in August, when the US put pressure on authorities in Pakistan to arrest a suspect allegedly linked to the airliner plot.

As a direct result of the surprise detention of the suspect, British police and MI5 were forced to rush forward plans to arrest an alleged UK gang accused of plotting to destroy the airliners. But a second group of suspected terrorists allegedly linked to the first evaded capture and is still at large, according to security sources.

The escape of the second group is said to be the reason why the UK was kept at its highest level - "critical" - for three days before it was decided that the plotters no longer posed an imminent threat.

The alleged airliner plot caused chaos and fear at airports throughout Britain when details emerged in August of an alleged plan to smuggle liquid explosives on board up to 10 flights and destroy them after take-off.

As a result of the alert, airports banned passengers from carrying liquids in their hand luggage and imposed tough new security checks.

The operation was one of the largest undertaken by the police and MI5, yet two counter-terrorism sources suggested that the intervention of the Americans was due to "inexperience and naivety" and that they were after a "short-term success".

American intelligence chiefs are understood to have persuaded the Pakistani authorities to arrest a British citizen, called Rashid Rauf, on Wednesday 9 August this year.

Mr Rauf was suspected of being closely linked to group of men and women in Britain who were allegedly involved in the airliner terror plot, and the arrest prompted emergency meetings involving ministers, police and intelligence chiefs - who were still investigating the case.

Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman, who has overall responsibility for the Metropolitan Police's anti-terrorist investigations, was forced to abandon a family holiday in Spain and catch an easyJet flight to Britain, arriving at 3am on Thursday 10 August.

Fearful that the arrest might tip off the alleged plotters, Scotland Yard, in consultation with MI5, decided to act and sanctioned a series of raids in the early hours of Thursday. The police arrested 24 men and women and later charged 13 in connection with the alleged terror plan. Britain has requested the extradition of Mr Rauf.

Scotland Yard has declined to comment about any other groupings who may have been involved in the alleged plot.

John Reid, the Home Secretary, downgraded the threat after three days from "critical" to "severe", meaning an attack was "highly likely", but not imminent.

It is understood that one of the main reasons why the highest level of alert was maintained was that authorities were trying to establish whether the second group was capable of an attack. After they satisfied themselves that it did not have the equipment to launch an assault, the threat level was downgraded.

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Gates advocated airstrikes against Nicaragua in '84, documents say

USA Today
Gates advocated airstrikes against Nicaragua in '84, documents say
By George Gedda, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — In 1984, Robert Gates, then the No. 2 CIA official, advocated U.S. airstrikes against Nicaragua's pro-Cuban government to reverse what he described as an ineffective U.S. strategy to deal with communist advances in Central America, previously classified documents say.

Gates, President Bush's nominee to be defense secretary, said the United States could no longer justify what he described as "halfhearted" attempts to contain Nicaragua's Sandinista government, according to documents released Friday by the National Security Archive, a private research group.

In a memo to CIA Director William Casey dated Dec. 14, 1984, Gates said his proposed airstrikes would be designed "to destroy a considerable portion of Nicaragua's military buildup" and be focused on tanks and helicopters.

He also recommended that the United States prevent delivery to the Sandinistas of such weapons in the future. The administration, he said, should make clear that a U.S. invasion of the country was not contemplated.

The target of Gates' anxieties was Nicaragua's leftist president, Daniel Ortega.

Ironically, Gates' nomination to succeed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was announced just days after Ortega capped off a surprise political comeback by winning election as Nicaraguan president after three previous bids were rejected by the voters.

Ortega has recast himself as a moderate, assuring Nicaraguans that his Marxist-Leninist days are over.

Gates saw a calamitous situation in Central America in December 1984. Congress had ordered a halt to U.S. support for the Contra rebels, leaving Ortega free, as Gates saw it, to establish Nicaragua as a "permanent and well-armed" ally of the Soviet Union and Cuba.

He said the United States should acknowledge that the existence of a Marxist-Leninist regime in Nicaragua closely allied to Moscow and Havana "is unacceptable to the United States and that the United States will do everything in its power short of invasion to put that regime out."

In addition to airstrikes, he recommended withdrawal of U.S. recognition of the Nicaraguan government and recognition of a Nicaraguan government in exile that would be entitled to U.S. military support.

Economic sanctions should be considered, "perhaps even including a quarantine," Gates wrote.

His proposals were never adopted, but the administration attempted to circumvent the Contra aid ban by secretly funneling money to the rebels that had been obtained through arms sales to Iran. Democrats say they will question Gates during his Senate confirmation about his knowledge of the Iran-Contra scandal, which erupted two years after he sent his memo to Casey.

Gates' grim prediction in the memo of disaster in Central America did not come to pass. Congress renewed aid to the Contras in 1986. In February 1990, Nicaraguans dealt a blow to the Soviet Union and Cuba by voting Ortega out of office. And within two years, the Soviet Union had disappeared.

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Press Freedom: US Drops To 53rd Place

Huffington Post
Blake Fleetwood
Press Freedom: US Drops To 53rd Place.

The US dropped 9 places in the 2006 Index of Press Freedom by Reporters Without Borders issued last month.

52 countries ranked higher and 115 ranked lower.

Finland, Iceland, Ireland and the Netherlands tied for first, with no recorded censorship, threats, intimidation or physical reprisals -- criterion that the Paris-based group uses to rank countries.

The US was outranked by most of the European counties, but also by such unlikely nations as Slovakia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Estonia, Namibia, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Botswana.

As you might expect, the three worst violators of free expression were North Korea, at the bottom of the Index at 168th place, Turkmenistan (167th) and Eritrea (166th).

One particularly egregious US case cited is the jailing of Josh Wolf, a freelance journalist and blogger, who has been imprisoned more than four months for refusing to hand over video tapes he filmed in San Francisco of a protest against the G8 Summit last year.

"As journalists we use our cameras and words to share the world around us," Josh Wolf wrote from jail.

"We hope that shedding light on the situation will help to bring about change and that having a camera rolling will help curtail injustice. As they say, 'The whole world is watching.'"

Earlier this week the Ninth Federal Appeals Court ruled that Wolf might be imprisoned until July 2007 when the Grand Jury expires. The video footage of the attack on a police car was aired by a cable TV station and then picked up by local affiliates of the national networks.

"He's not a criminal," said Lucie Morillion of Reporters Without Borders. "He was just protecting his sources, which is something many journalists have to do. The court decision is absurd."

"This young blogger does not represent any threat to national security, so keeping him in custody is a completely disproportionate step," said a representative of the worldwide press freedom organization -- a.k.a. Reporters Sans Frontiers -- after the November 16th ruling.

"The judges seem to want to teach a lesson to Wolf, a young man whose insolence exasperated them."

Wolf's only hope would be a successful appeal to the US Supreme Court, which does not look promising in this climate.

Other cases of US press intimidation include Sudanese cameraman Same al-Hajj, who works for the pan-Arab broadcaster Al-Jazzeera, who has been held without trial since June 2002 at the US military base at Guantanamo; and Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, who has been held by US authorities in Iraq since April. The AP has been trying to secure his release for seven months.

During the first year of the index, in 2002, the US was ranked 17th. The US has fallen nine places since last year's ranking of 44, and 36 places since 2002.

Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the Justice Department increasingly used "national security" and the Patriot Act to intimidate journalists who questioned "the war on terrorism," according to the group.

33 US state courts recognize some form of Shield Law, but the Federal Courts have consistently refused to recognize the media's right not to reveal its sources. In recent years the US government has shown renewed zeal, threatening journalists whose investigations have no connection at all with terrorism.

Bloggers -- including us at the Huffington Post -- and websites, as well as grassroots journalists, are becoming increasingly vulnerable. They do not seem to be protected by any US laws at all, since they are not paid MSM staff professionals. But as the Judith Miller case shows, even New York Times reporters are not immune.

Other countries' rankings include: Canada (16), Israel (50), Mexico (132), Iraq (154), China (163) and Cuba (165).

In addition to the US, other developed nations that also fell in the rankings are France, Japan, and Denmark.

France (35th) slipped five places during the past year, to make a loss of 24 places in five years. The increase in searches of media offices and journalists' homes is disturbing media organizations and trade unions.

Rising nationalism and the system of exclusive press clubs (kishas) threatened democratic gains in Japan, which fell 14 places to 51st. The newspaper Nihon Keizai was firebombed and several journalists physically attacked by far-right activists (unyoke).

Fallout from the row over the "Mohammed cartoons"

Denmark (19th) dropped from first place because of serious threats against the authors of the Mohammed cartoons published in 2005. For the first time in recent years in a country that is very observant of civil liberties, journalists have needed police protection due to threats against them.

Currently about 120 journalists and 53 bloggers are in jail worldwide for attempting to provide news and opinion.

Without press freedom, there can be no democracy, and without democracy......

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October deadliest month ever in Iraq

October deadliest month ever in Iraq
AP

BAGHDAD, Iraq - At least 101 Iraqis died in the country's unending sectarian slaughter Wednesday, and the U.N. reported that 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October, the highest monthly toll of the war and one that is sure to be eclipsed when November's dead are counted. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq also said citizens were fleeing the country at a pace of 100,000 each month, and that at least 1.6 million Iraqis have left since the war began in March 2003.

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What the Technology Industry Can Expect from a New Democratic Congress

Huffington Post
Jason Pontin
What the Technology Industry Can Expect from a New Democratic Congress

What should technologists--entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, researchers, employees of publicly traded technology companies, and any one who depends on their products and services--expect from a Democratic Congress? If history and ideology is any guide, something from very different from the mixture of neglect and wariness that characterized recent Republican attitudes.

For ideological reasons, Republican legislators and administrations have been reluctant to regulate emerging technologies: they see it as a violation of the principle of economic liberty.

For geographic reasons, Republicans have been closely tied to established, traditional industries, and tend to favor these industries with tax and other benefits: the reddest of American states are dominated by oil, agriculture, and the defense industries. For historical reasons, and perhaps because of a barely suppressed hostility to academic culture, Republicans have been disinclined to fund research whose only end is discovery: for the last six years, funding for basic research has declined, unless researchers could demonstrate that their work would contribute to the War on Terror. For instance, funding for the National Institutes of Health has declined in the past three years.

By contrast, Democrat legislators have seen regulation of new technologies as not only a proper function of government, but as a necessary contribution to technology ventures: they think that in the absence of common, universal standards, technologies fracture into rival, proprietary camps. Democrats are comfortable with the curious ecologies of technology industries, and are eager to be associated with the glamour of startups: in California , Washington State, New York, and Massachusetts , entrepreneurs and venture capitalists regularly contribute to Democratic candidates and freely offer their advice and support.

Lastly, Democrats want to fund long-term research: they understand that new technologies never emerge only because they are pulled into the market by consumer demand, but also because academic and government research has supported basic research for which there was no immediate economic benefit.

In consequence, a Democratic Congress will be friendly towards technology ventures, will fund discovery-based research that will create more, new technologies, but will at the same time be much more ready to regulate emerging technologies.

In coming weeks, I will describe specifically what this will mean for specific technologies. But at the very least, we can anticipate some useful and also some not-so-useful new developments. More stem-cell research will be funded at the state level, and Democratic legislators will challenge the federal ban on funding of new stem cell lines. Net neutrality, which would protect an Internet that did not favor any particular class of applications, and which was defeated six times during the years of Republican rule, will be revisited and might very easily pass.

On the other hand, a Democratic Congress might feel empowered to invest in a particular technology in preference to another, something that is usually better decided by the pull of markets. Worse, Democrats might want to regulate emerging social networks like MySpace in the interests of protecting minors.

But at the least, we will see something we've not seen since for years: a federal government that is not baffled by new technologies and technology ventures, but appreciates their capacity to grow existing markets, to create businesses where none existed before, and to expand human possibilities.

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Stupidity, Ignorance, Lies, Myths, Panic & Fear

Huffington Post
Larry Beinhart
Stupidity, Ignorance, Lies, Myths, Panic & Fear

George Bush went to Vietnam. He was asked how that war compared to this war and his answer was, "We'll succeed unless we quit."

It is time to get serious about the history of the war in Vietnam. The failure to do so is part of what permits idiocies like this war.

The great myth, and it's clearly the myth that George Bush believes, is that the US lost the war in Vietnam because liberals, Hollywood actresses, hippies and CBS News subverted our will to fight.

That's not true.

We lost the war in Vietnam because we were fighting for something we could not achieve.

We were fighting to convince the Vietnamese to accept a variety of Western backed dictators, crooks, and cowboy colonels as their leaders. We were opposed by an idealistic, disciplined, organized and relative uncorrupt movement with a charismatic leader.

That was our goal in the conflict. It's not the reason we went to war.

We went to war because of a mythology.

It was a mythology very like the one that George Bush has created as the context for the War in Iraq.

Back then, we saw the world in bi-polar terms. The Free World vs. Communism.

Because the world was bi-polar we had to count anyone who was anti-Communist as good and support them. So dictators and juntas and mini-fascists all over the globe got to be counted as members of the Free World.

It also meant that all Communists had to be the enemy, and, indeed were part of a world that was united against. Any step forward for any one of them was a loss for us in the overall war.

It was clear that Vietnam could never invade the United States. They were no direct threat to us. Indeed, Ho Chi Minh expressed a great deal of admiration for the United States and offered friendship.

But we had to stop South Vietnam from going Communist because if we didn't lots of bad things would happen. All of South East Asia would fall like dominoes. After that, Indonesia, the Phillipines, Australia, India, and soon we would be surrounded and alone.

So we went to war. We fought for ten years. 58,000 Americans died.153,000 were wounded. At least 1,000,000 Vietnamese died.

Then we withdrew.

What happened? Was the vast Communist bloc strengthened?

Not exactly. Within five years, China went to war with Vietnam.

It was fairly short war. Vietnam won.

Meantime, Cambodia had been taken over by the Khmer Rouge. They were communists too, but too extreme for the Vietnamese. So Vietnam invaded Cambodia to get rid of Pol Pot and his madmen. That went on for nine years.

We continued to treat Vietnam as a pariah nation for twenty years.

Finally in 1995 we 'normalized relations.'

When George Bush got there in 2006 he found a Communist country. But a friendly one. Willing to do business. A great tourist destination.

In short, what he found, was what we could have had for the asking back in 1961. Or in 1947 for that matter.

It's easy to say that's 20-20 hindsight.

Could that have been known before we went to war in Vietnam?

The answer is that, yes, it could.

Was that known to the people in power, before we went to war? Or, if not then, early in the course of the war?

The answer to that is also yes.

Not, perhaps, with absolute certainty, but certainly it was known.

So why do we go ahead? Why were we trapped in the myths?

Fear.

Not fear of communism. The fear on the part of our politicians of being called, "soft on Communism."

Both Kennedy and Johnson, at least at times, knew we couldn't win. Yet said they were afraid to be a president who "lost Vietnam." Then Richard Nixon came into power and lost Vietnam.

Nixon never got blamed for it. That's because he sort of owned the "soft on communism" franchise and he wasn't about to use it on himself.

Is this an argument that somehow we should not have fought Communism then and we should not fight terrorism or Islamo-fascism now or whatever else threatens us in the future?

No, it's not.

Actually, there were many places where we stood up to, subverted, or acted against the communists where we were very successful. And those countries are almost certainly better off for it.

Yet here's a real oddity. There are only five countries that remain Communist today: Vietnam, Laos, North Korea, Cuba and China.

We fought wars in the first three.

We should divide the Korean into two parts, two separate wars even. In the first part the North invaded the South and we entered the war to repel the invasion. That was very successful. In the second part, we invaded the North to make the whole country non-Communist. That was a great failure.

We backed an invasion of Cuba, we attempted numerous assassinations, and we have it embargoed to this day.

As for China, we backed the Nationalists against the Reds. Then we defended Taiwan (a success story) and tried to keep Red China isolated and ostracized.

Roughly speaking, the countries we fought the hardest are the ones that remain Communist today.

People will unite against a common enemy. Left to their own devices, they will, slowly, begin to question what's wrong with themselves.

The next lesson is this. Even if we agree to think of the War on Terror as something like the Cold War, we still have to think of the various battles one at a time. They are separate events and require separate responses.

The threat of force, as a deterrent, is extremely useful.

Actual force, going to war, is extremely good for repelling an invader and restoring a regime. It worked in South Korea. It worked when Saddam invaded Kuwait.

But actual force has it's limits. It's very dangerous to invade a country.

It can be done. But only if there's a viable replacement and we can get in and get out, as we did in Panama and Grenada.

But if we have to stay and put in or prop up a regime and become an occupying power, then it's a disaster.

But if there isn't one, it's Vietnam. Or Iraq.

There, very briefly, are some of the lessons that George Bush should have learned by comparing the two. The strictly practical ones, this does not address moral or legal issues.

Since he failed, the media which surrounds him should have done the job and pointed it out to us. Particularly since he failed. They were skeptical of him. They raised their eyebrows. Some even said quagmire. But they didn't attack the myths, the lies and the ignorance.

There are real threats in the world. But they need real solutions. Our guide to real solutions, is real history. Otherwise, we are led by panic and fear into stupidity.

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GOP's Hagel: ‘The Time For More Troops Is Past,’ McCain’s Plan Is ‘Not Realistic,’ ‘The Wrong Approach’

thinkprogress.org
Hagel: ‘The Time For More Troops Is Past,’ McCain’s Plan Is ‘Not Realistic,’ ‘The Wrong Approach’

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), a prominent conservative member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said today on MSNBC that Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) plan to send 20,000 more troops to Iraq is “not realistic.”

“The time for more troops is past,” he said. “We don’t want to put more troops in now. Even if we had them, that’s the wrong approach.” Watch it:

Full transcript:

MITCHELL: Let’s talk a bit about some of the plans that the Pentagon is supposedly considering, first of all, sending 20,000 more troops into Iraq, a short-term surge, an effort to try to stabilize Baghdad. Is that realistic? And is that cover for more quickly phasing out and withdrawing?

HAGEL: Andrea, it is not realistic. General Abizaid noted that when he was here last week before the Senate Armed Services Committee. We don’t have the troops. That’s number one.

Number two, even if we did, it’s the wrong approach. The time for more troops is past.

We’ve been in Iraq now almost four years. We went in completely undermanned, under-managed. We didn’t understand what we were getting into. We didn’t have the plans. We should have gone in with three times the troops that we had.

Those days are over. We’re not going to recapture that and go back and unwind those bad decisions.

We don’t want to put more troops in now. Even if we had them, that’s the wrong approach.

There’s not going to be a military resolution that decides the outcome of Iraq. It will be a political solution. It will include the Iraqi people, countries like Iran, Syria, Jordan and other countries around it.

Our options there are very limited right now. I hope that the president will be able to use the Baker-Hamilton commission to build a new bipartisan foundation in order to start moving this country, the United States, out of Iraq.

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Democrats call for ouster of health official

Reuters
Democrats call for ouster of health official
By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Several Democratic lawmakers asked the Bush administration on Monday to replace its new family-planning chief because he has worked for a health provider that opposes the use of birth control.

Dr. Eric Keroack's record as an opponent of birth control and abortion makes him a poor choice to oversee a $280 million reproductive-health program, seven House of Representatives Democrats said in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt.

"We are concerned that Dr. Keroack has promoted policies -- including the refusal to distribute contraception even to married women -- that directly conflict with the mission of the federal program," the letter said.

Keroack last week was named head of HHS's Office of Population Affairs, which funds birth control, pregnancy tests, breast-cancer screening and other health services for 5 million poor people annually. HHS estimates that the program helps to prevent 1.3 million unwanted pregnancies each year.

The office also oversees a $30 million program that encourages sexual abstinence among teens.

An HHS spokeswoman said Keroack is a skilled doctor and a nationally recognized expert on preventing teen pregnancy.

"We have confidence that he'll perform his duties effectively and in accordance with the law," HHS spokeswoman Christina Pearson said by e-mail.

Keroack previously served as medical director for A Woman's Concern, a chain of Boston-area pregnancy clinics that advise against the use of contraception and advocate abstinence as a way to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Keroack has spoken at abstinence conferences across the country and has written that people who have more than one sex partner have a diminished neurological capacity to experience loving relationships.

His appointment does not need to be approved by the Senate, but Democrats will have the power to force him to testify when they control Congress next year.

One of those who signed the letter, California Rep. Henry Waxman, will be chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, while New York Rep. Louise Slaughter is expected to chair the Rules Committee. Others sit on committees that oversee HHS and control its budget.

"Less than two weeks ago the American public made it clear that they want a middle ground approach to our nation's most pressing problems," New York Democratic Rep. Nita Lowey said in a statement. "Unfortunately, this appointment says loudly and clearly that the president simply did not get that message."

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