Powell advised Bush to send more troops to Iraq

Reuters
Powell advised Bush to send more troops to Iraq
By Vicki Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday defended the Bush administration's Iraq war planning after her predecessor, Colin Powell, said he had made a case to send more troops to deal with the war's aftermath.

Rice also said she did not "remember specifically" what instance Powell was referring to on his recommending to President George W. Bush that more troops be sent.

In an interview with a private British television station on Sunday, Powell said there had been debates about the size of the force and how to deal with the aftermath.

"I don't think we had enough force there to impose order," he said on ITV's Jonathan Dimbleby program.

"The aftermath turned out to be much more difficult than anyone had anticipated," said Powell, adding he had favored a larger military presence to deal with the unforeseen.

"I made the case to General (Tommy) Franks, to (Defense) Secretary (Donald) Rumsfeld and to the president that I was not sure we had enough troops," Powell said. But he said the military leaders felt they had the appropriate number.

Powell's comments come amid concern about the rising death toll in Iraq, which has been a factor in driving Bush's approval ratings to the lowest of his presidency.

Since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, the U.S. military death toll in Iraq has grown to 2,400. Iraqi military deaths are estimated at up to 6,370 and Iraqi civilian deaths at up to 38,600.

Rice, appearing on several Sunday talk shows, was responding to the Powell's comments that fanned the controversy over the administration's plans for the invasion's immediate aftermath. Critics say violence and looting set the stage for a bloody insurgency and sectarian killings over the last three years.

Asked on CNN's Late Edition if she remembered Powell's dissent, Rice said, "I don't remember specifically what Secretary Powell may be referring to, but I'm quite certain that there were lots of discussions about how best to fulfill the mission when we went into Iraq."

She said Bush relied on his military advisers, and that he "asked time and time again" whether everything needed to execute the plan was available, "and he was told 'yes'."

Rice added that there would have been "potentially a lot of problems with a very, very big footprint of coalition forces at the time of the liberation of Iraq."

On CBS' Face the Nation, she said, "I'm quite certain that there are things that, in retrospect, we would do differently. But that's the nature of any big complicated operation."

After the invasion, Rumsfeld said U.S. military commanders believed there were sufficient troops to contain insurgents and establish peace.

However, troop levels were later increased amid escalating violence and to establish security in time for elections.

Bush has not set a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal, saying American soldiers will pull out as Iraqi forces take over fighting Sunni rebels and sectarian violence which has pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.

Rice praised progress made by Iraq's own forces. But to start withdrawing troops, she said on CNN, "We really do want it to be based on conditions on the ground; so do the Iraqis. If there is anything that they recognize, it's that they are not quite ready for these tasks. But they want to take that responsibility, and we should want them to take it.

(Additional reporting by Madeline Chambers in London)

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ID Law Stirs Passionate Protest in N.H.

washingtonpost.com
ID Law Stirs Passionate Protest in N.H.
With Costumes and Quotations, State Opposes Federal Plan
By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer

CONCORD, N.H. -- Those concerned about a new federal plan to overhaul the issuing of driver's licenses have two fairly distinct ways of showing it. One of them involves task forces, letter-writing and groups such as the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. The other involves protesters dressed like Nazis and politicians quoting Patrick Henry.

Anyone familiar with the revolution-tinged politics of New Hampshire can guess which one is happening here.

"The war on our civil liberties is actually begun," New Hampshire state Rep. Neal M. Kurk (R) told his colleagues recently, borrowing from Henry's famous "Liberty or Death" speech to condemn the license plan and the U.S. government in place of the British crown. He continued: "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?"

Now, this state legislature is poised to formally reject the new license rules, which are aimed at screening out terrorists and illegal immigrants, but have been criticized as a logistical nightmare and the beginning of a national ID card. As a political circus has unfolded here in Concord, everyone, including libertarians, evangelical Christians and state bureaucrats, has been paying attention.

"Everybody's watching," said Jim Harper at the Cato Institute in Washington, who objects to the new rules as a federal intrusion into personal privacy. His hope: "Even one state refusing to participate basically will cause the system to crumble."

The controversy in New Hampshire surrounds a federal law called the Real ID Act, which was approved last year after it was tacked on to a bill funding the war in Iraq and relief for tsunami victims. Its principal backer, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), said he wanted to close the kinds of loopholes that allowed some of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers to obtain official identification.

The bill requires states to check whether driver's license applicants are in the country legally, and to require documents showing their birth date, Social Security number and home address. The act also requires that states find a way to verify that the documents are valid.

The deadline is May 2008. If states cannot meet the new requirements by then, the bill says, their licenses may not be accepted as identification at airport security screenings, federal buildings and nuclear plants.

Groups of state-level officials have protested that the act requires sophisticated computer networks that don't exist now and that meeting the deadline could be overwhelmingly expensive or simply impossible.

For now, their criticism has been measured while they wait for the Department of Homeland Security to work out key details of the license plan. It's still unclear, for instance, whether drivers who have a license already will have to be rescreened, or whether there will need to be a single federal computer database containing everyone's license information.

New Hampshire, though, is not the waiting kind of state.

In January, several legislators here introduced a bill that called the Real ID measure "contrary and repugnant" to both the U.S. and New Hampshire constitutions, and vowed that "New Hampshire shall not participate in a national identification card system."

At first, the bill seemed destined to fail, voted down in committee. But then, in early March, Kurk stood up to defend it on the House floor, citing the new federal rules as the beginning of creeping federal intrusions.

"We care more for our liberties than to meekly hand over to the federal government the potential to enumerate, track, identify and eventually control," he said, before quoting Henry and his state's defiant motto, "Live Free or Die."

That brought the house down, and the bill up: State representatives voted 217 to 84 in favor.

Emboldened by that success, groups opposed to Real ID staged a rally last weekend in front of the statehouse where, according to a report in the Concord Monitor, some wore "666" on their foreheads -- indicating their belief that a national system of rules for driver's licenses is a step toward the "mark of the beast" prophesied in the Book of Revelation.

Lauren Canario dressed up in a Nazi-esque khaki uniform and helped run a fake checkpoint where she demanded people's identification.

Real ID "sounds a lot like the old Nazi movies, and we just wanted to illustrate that," she said in an interview last week.

Someplace else, a movement with this kind of stagecraft might be on the political fringe. Here, it has momentum: A spokeswoman for Gov. John Lynch (D) said this week that he will sign the anti-Real ID bill if it gets to him. And on Wednesday morning, a Senate committee unanimously approved the bill, electrifying its supporters in the audience. "This is a wave of freedom that's going to roll across the country," Joel Winters, a leader in the Real ID opposition movement, said afterward.

First, though, it has to roll across the full New Hampshire Senate. There, Senate President Theodore L. Gatsas (R) said he's worried about what will happen if the rest of the country doesn't follow New Hampshire's lead and his state's residents suddenly need a passport to get on domestic flights.

Arguments against the new federal licensing rules "are great things to say," said Gatsas. "But it's an awful jeopardy to put the state in."

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Antiwar Democrat Mounts a Major Challenge to Connecticut's 3-Term Senator

washingtonpost.com
Tough Primary Race Confronts Lieberman
Antiwar Democrat Mounts a Major Challenge to Connecticut's 3-Term Senator
By Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writer

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- With his ruddy tan and dark gray suit, Ned Lamont is an antiwar liberal with a twist. Rather than targeting a Republican, the millionaire Greenwich businessman is challenging a fellow Democrat, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, one of President Bush's strongest supporters on the war in Iraq.

When Lamont announced his primary challenge in mid-March, he was viewed as the longest of long shots, a quixotic blueblood who was scratching a political itch. While many Connecticut Democrats had soured on Lieberman over his war stance, a poll showed that voters backed the three-term senator over Lamont by 5 to 1.

But in the space of six weeks, the newcomer has come on strong. Lamont raised $344,111 from 4,337 online donors and added $371,500 of his own money. He hired a staff of seasoned professionals and signed up several thousand volunteers. The 52-year-old cable television entrepreneur is blitzing the state, hitting as many as three events per evening.

Now, Lamont has turned the Democratic primary into a horse race, giving Lieberman his first real test since he joined the Senate 18 years ago, according to Democratic operatives and analysts in Connecticut. Party leaders were so rattled by the challenge that Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) called Lamont asking him to back off.

"Some of the party brass said, 'Ned, don't jeopardize a safe seat,' " Lamont recently told students at Southern Connecticut State University, who gathered for a meet-and-greet session. "But you're not going to lose a senator. You're going to gain a Democrat."

The race is one of the few in the country in which a well-established incumbent is being threatened by a challenger from his own party. It suggests that no member of the House or Senate can take reelection for granted, given the voter disenchantment with Iraq and a Congress weakened by a corruption scandal and a meager record of accomplishments.

"I'm not surprised that there's a primary challenge," Lieberman conceded. According to a February poll by Quinnipiac University, 61 percent of state voters said invading Iraq was the wrong thing to do. But the former Democratic vice presidential nominee said he will not back down from his position.

"It's one that I believe is in the best interests of the country," Lieberman said recently, after a trip to the Middle East. If he has put his job at risk, he said, so be it. "We're having a good healthy debate up here," Lieberman said.

Lamont asserts -- usually to a sea of nodding heads -- that the United States should continue providing support to the Iraqis, but that "our front-line military troops should begin to be redeployed and our troops should start heading home."

Voters greet him with a mixture of curiosity and relief. "This is the first I've heard of him," said Kylie Welsh, a 27-year-old student who said she is tired of Lieberman's pro-war views. "I need to do some more research, but I think it's time for somebody new."

Despite Lamont's strong early push, Lieberman enjoys major advantages, including national name recognition and a formidable fundraising ability. Lieberman entered politics in 1970 and served as a state senator and attorney general before winning election to the U.S. Senate in 1988. He was Al Gore's vice presidential running mate in 2000, and he waged an unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination four years later.

With nearly $4.8 million of campaign funds in the bank as of March 31, Lieberman rolled out two statewide ads about a week ago, including one that directly confronts the war. "I already know that some of you feel passionately against my position on Iraq," Lieberman says in the ad. "I respect your views, and while we probably won't change each other's minds, I hope we can still have a dialogue and find common ground on all the issues where we do agree."

Mild-mannered and thoughtful, Lamont has a pedigree that blends old money with noblesse oblige. His great-grandfather Thomas W. Lamont, a chairman of J.P. Morgan & Co., commuted to Wall Street by yacht and helped to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles. His family tree also includes Corliss Lamont, a socialist philosopher and civil libertarian, and an assortment of ministers and adventurers. Lamont served as a Greenwich selectman during the 1980s and lost a 1990 state Senate bid.

In his official biography, Lamont describes the lively, politically charged family dinner conversations that punctuated his childhood. "The underlying theme was public service," he recalled.

His main challenge is to get his name on the Aug. 8 Democratic ballot. Lamont has two ways of doing that: collect 15,000 voters' signatures or persuade 15 percent of the state's 1,608 Democratic delegates to support him at the party's May 20 nominating convention. Even Lieberman's camp has little doubt that Lamont will clear at least one of the hurdles.

Lieberman caused a stir recently by floating the possibility that he might enter the general-election race as an independent, were he to lose the Democratic primary. To do that, he would have to collect 7,500 signatures and file them by Aug. 9, a day after the primary. That means he would have to start the petition process even as he is campaigning for the Democratic nomination against Lamont.

But now Lieberman describes speculation of an independent candidacy as "greatly overblown." He said his focus is to win "a good solid victory at the convention."

Lamont said he supported Lieberman for years but that he grew irritated with the senator for supporting federal intervention in the Terri Schiavo right-to-die Senate debate. "To me, that was symbolic of someone who was fundamentally off," Lamont explained.

Then came Lieberman's Nov. 29 Wall Street Journal opinion piece, titled "Our Troops Must Stay." It scolded Democrats for focusing "on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq," instead of on how "we continue the progress in Iraq in the months and years ahead." The senator also took Democrats to task for saying the Bush administration has no strategy for victory in Iraq. "Yes, we do," Lieberman wrote.

The column was published shortly after Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.), one of the Democrats' most respected voices on military issues, called the war "a flawed policy wrapped in illusion" and advocated that U.S. troops be withdrawn from Iraq. Lamont applauded Murtha's pronouncement as an opening for Democrats to start publicly criticizing the war, and was angered by Lieberman for chastising his own party.

Lieberman's op-ed piece became the focus of a rallying cry for disillusioned liberals, and Lamont participated in conversations around the state about a possible primary challenge. So did Lowell P. Weicker Jr., the former GOP senator and governor who is now a staunch antiwar independent. Weicker had been weighing his own challenge to Lieberman but, for now, says, "I want to do everything I can to help Ned Lamont win."

Nancy DiNardo, Connecticut's Democratic Party chairman, worries that the Lieberman-Lamont battle will detract from the primary showdown between two Democrats vying to challenge the state's popular Republican governor, M. Jodi Rell. "I think we should focus on beating Republicans," DiNardo said.

For the next three weeks, Lamont and Lieberman will be concentrating on wooing state delegates. Lamont has been greeted warmly at Democratic town committee meetings.

John McNamara, who heads the New Britain Democratic Town Committee with its 31 delegates, is a big Lamont booster. Lieberman, he said, has "been a good senator for most of 18 years." But McNamara prefers Lamont's stance on the war and likes his economic development ideas for Connecticut.

Lieberman showed his political resilience in Manchester, where earlier this year the Democratic Town Committee passed a resolution criticizing his war views. About two weeks ago, a majority of members supported the senator in an informal vote, which tested where delegates stand before the convention. Chairman Ted Cummings urged the town's 27 delegates to split their votes. "We have our self-respect to come to grips with," Cummings said after the meeting, according to local news reports. "Joe Lieberman ought to have to work."

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Thousands rally against Darfur killing

Reuters
Thousands rally against Darfur killing
By Karey Wutkowski

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Thousands of Americans, led by religious leaders, entertainers and politicians, rallied on Sunday to urge the United States to halt "genocide" in Sudan's Darfur region.

"Darfur deserves to live. We are its only hope," Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel told the crowd that converged on the National Mall in Washington, near the U.S. Capitol.

Other speakers at the rally included Washington's Roman Catholic Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, and actor George Clooney, who visited Darfur last week.

"If we turn our heads and look away and hope that it will all disappear, then they will, all of them, a whole generation, and we will only have history to judge us," Clooney told the protesters.

Beating African drums and waving posters saying "Stop Genocide Now," the mostly white crowd had responded to a call from 160 religious, political and humanitarian organizations representing virtually all shades of U.S. opinion.

Smaller rallies also took place in 18 other U.S. cities, making this the largest public demonstration on the issue since the conflict in Darfur began three years ago.

"We know the march is not the beginning and end of it but it's an improvement," said Rabbi Shawn Zevit, director of outreach for the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation.

"It is a show of solidarity, given the United States is one of few countries trying to exert pressure. There is momentum right now and the feeling we can influence things," he said.

DEATH AND DISPLACEMENT

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice complained on the ABC's television show This Week that Washington was not getting enough support from some other members of the U.N. Security Council to take more decisive action against Sudan.

"We also do need more support, frankly, from members of the international community -- from China, from Russia," she said.

Arab militia, backed by the Sudanese government, have terrorized non-Arab tribes in the region in western Sudan over the past three years, murdering and raping tens of thousands, burning villages and driving more than 2 million people into squalid camps in Darfur and neighboring Chad.

Peace talks on the conflict in Abuja, Nigeria, which faced a deadline on Sunday to reach an agreement, appeared to be at an impasse, after two Sudan rebel groups said they would refuse to sign a proposed Darfur peace agreement in its current form.

"We are not going to accept this document for signature unless there are fundamental changes made to the document," Ahmed Tugod, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) chief negotiator, told Reuters.

The African Union said it would not reopen substantial negotiations on the proposed text after Sunday, following two years of talks.

The government of Sudan has said it was ready to sign the agreement.

A faction of another rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Army, said it would not sign the proposed deal unless its demands were met in full.

The United States has labeled the violence in Darfur a genocide of the mainly African Muslim tribes by the government-backed militias known as Janjaweed.

President George W. Bush on Thursday issued an executive order freezing the assets of four Sudanese deemed to have posed a threat to the peace process in Darfur. But demonstrators called on the administration to do more.

Elamin Wadi, a refugee from Darfur who came to the United States in 2004, said: "We hope to send a message to the American government and then have the American government send a message to the Sudan government," he said.

Public pressure on Sudan has been building in recent months, with several universities and some states divesting assets from companies doing business with Sudan.

Jewish organizations had been particularly active in speaking out and some rabbis preached on the subject on Saturday. At B'nai Tzedek conservative congregation in Potomac, Maryland, just outside Washington, Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt told worshipers that Jews, as victims of the Nazi Holocaust, owed it to the world to stand up for the victims.

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You Can't Afford It!

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You Build Them, They'll Come

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Hand Over Your Wallet

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Pretend You Don't Know Me

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They've Just Shrunk A Bit Over The Last 5 Years

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Government Business: Jack Anderson Professional Files

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Cheap Chinese Arms Flood African Genocide Wars

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New Tony Snow Column

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The First Stone

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"Had Enough? Vote Democratic!"

The New York Times
Enough Already
By TIM ROEMER

Washington

AMERICANS have clearly had enough of the Bush administration's record: 7 in 10 say the nation is headed in the wrong direction. But with the 2006 Congressional elections fast approaching, Democrats must not get so irrationally exuberant that they lapse into old, bad habits.

In January, President Bush's adviser Karl Rove outlined the issues he believes will lead Republican candidates to victory in November: national security, the economy and taxes, and the courts. Democrats cannot allow Republicans to define the terms of the debate. Instead, they should take a page from history and from a different Karl.

In 1946, Karl Frost, an advertising executive, suggested a simple slogan to the Massachusetts Republican Committee: "Had Enough? Vote Republican!" Frost recognized that these simple words could unite his national party and blame its opponents, who controlled Congress, for causing or failing to solve the many problems facing the country, including meat shortages, economic difficulties and labor unrest. The strategy worked: in 1946, both houses of Congress flipped.

Sixty years later, Democrats would be smart to turn Karl Frost's slogan on Karl Rove's strategy.

"Had Enough? Vote Democratic!" is a slogan that spotlights the many mistakes in Iraq, the mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina and the mangling of fiscal responsibility with "bridges to nowhere." Indeed, you can see and hear Democratic candidates rallying their voters at Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinners with a passionate and rhythmic chorus:

"The administration said Iraqis would greet us with roses as liberators, yet our soldiers are attacked with homemade bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. Had Enough? Vote Democratic.

"The administration said it was prepared for a hurricane in New Orleans, yet our government's feeble response prompted Bangladesh to offer us $1 million in aid. Had Enough? Vote Democratic!

"The administration said it would bring competency to our federal budget, yet our nation faces catastrophic deficits. Had Enough? Vote Democratic!"

And if you want to fire up the base, you can string together references to Jack Abramoff, Abu Ghraib and the Dubai ports deal. "Had Enough?" works well on classic campaign materials like buttons and bumper stickers while its simplicity makes it a cinch to "go viral" on the Internet.

"Had enough?" will speak to both Democrats and disillusioned Republicans. Liberals can use "Had Enough?" to reach out to voters enraged over the incompetent management of Iraq. Moderates might use "Had Enough?" to persuade swing voters on fiscal issues. And the implicit rejection of neoconservative politics will appeal to all voters who seek to spurn tainted Republican candidates.

"Had Enough?" also pre-empts Democrats' worst habits. Too often we've made campaigns complicated and policy-heavy. We love to unveil 40-page position papers and wonky diagrams. "Had Enough?" clears a broad path through such minutiae. "Public sentiment is everything," Abraham Lincoln said 150 years ago. "With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed."

Karl Frost's simple words can serve as the cavalry charge to help win the coming electoral battles — something Democrats are in an incredibly strong position to do. But make no mistake: new ideas matter. Democrats will also need the artillery of a disciplined, focused set of core proposals to complement their criticism of Republican excesses.

As we head into the midterm elections, Democrats should finally understand, as Lincoln and Frost did before, that you must win the majority before you can make public policy.

Tim Roemer is a former Democratic congressman from Indiana.

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Bush approves Dubai defense purchase

Reuters
Bush approves Dubai defense purchase
By Caren Bohan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush approved Dubai's $1.24 billion takeover of Doncasters, a British engineering company with U.S. plants that supply the Pentagon, the White House said on Friday.

The decision, announced by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, followed a congressional uproar over security fears that scuttled another Dubai state-owned company's plan to acquire operations at major U.S. ports.

The interagency Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States sent its confidential recommendation on the Dubai takeover of Doncasters to Bush on April 13.

"The president this morning accepted the committee's recommendation," McClellan said. "The committee recommended approval of the transaction after closely scrutinizing it and concluding that it would not compromise our national security."

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President Bush Nixes Calls for Tax on Oil Profits, Says It's Not the Way to Calm U.S. Anxieties

ABC News
Bush Rejects Calls for Tax on Oil Profits
President Bush Nixes Calls for Tax on Oil Profits, Says It's Not the Way to Calm U.S. Anxieties
By JENNIFER LOVEN
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Friday that taxing enormous oil industry profits is not the way to calm Americans' anxieties about pain at the gas pump, and that his "inclination and instincts" are that major oil companies are not intentionally overcharging drivers.

Bush's remarks suggested the former Texas oilman is unlikely to take harsh action against oil companies despite public anger about the rising cost of fuel. Gasoline is averaging $2.92 a gallon across the country, up 69 cents from a year ago, according to AAA's daily fuel gauge report.

With politicians concerned the issue could tilt what are expected to be close midterm elections this fall, the president and many in Congress have been rushing to offer solutions, most of which would offer little immediate relief.

Some Democrats have viewed this week's announcement by major oil companies of huge first-quarter profits as a chance to renew their push for a windfall profits tax. But though a few Republicans, including Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, have said the idea ought to be examined, Bush and most GOP lawmakers strongly oppose it.

"The temptation in Washington is to tax everything," the president said in a wide-ranging news conference.

Instead, Bush called on Congress to ease regulations that make it difficult to expand the nation's refining capacity. He also urged oil companies to plow their profits into finding and producing more energy, such as by building natural gas pipelines or pursuing renewable energy sources all ventures that could further boost the companies' bottom lines.

Three days ago, the president announced a series of steps, including calling on his administration to investigate possible price gouging. But he admitted Friday that he thinks it's probably not happening.

"I have no evidence that there's any rip-off taking place," Bush said. "It's the role of the Federal Trade Commission to assure me that my inclination and instincts is right."

The president has supported the rolling back of some oil industry tax breaks that were enacted with his support just eight months ago. That tax break recission is part of a broader gas price-relief plan offered by the Senate GOP leadership, but House Republicans signaled this week they won't go along.

Bush called reporters to the Rose Garden to trumpet recent positive economic reports. But, aware that high gas prices are one of the reasons that good news hasn't sunk in with much of the public, he acknowledged fuel costs threaten to derail economic progress and used a driving metaphor to make the point that tax cuts are the key to continued strength.

"With gas prices on the minds of Americans, we need to keep our foot on the pedal of this strong economy," the president said.

Iran's suspected desire to build nuclear weapons dominated the president's half-hour session with reporters, during which Bush and his two top economic advisers stood facing a blazing sun.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday that Tehran had ignored the U.N. Security Council's deadline for it to stop all activities related to enriching uranium. But Iran pledged anew to continue with its nuclear program, which it insists is only for peaceful energy production, with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad saying his nation "won't give a damn" about Security Council resolutions.

"Today's IAEA report should remind us all that the Iranian government's intransigence is not acceptable," Bush said.

The Bush administration wants the Council to impose economic or political sanctions on Iran for its defiance. But with Council members Russia and China opposing such a move, the president would not discuss sanctions.

He merely stressed that "the diplomatic process is just starting" on devising a strategy for dealing with Iran, and noted he talked earlier Friday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is also due back at the White House next week. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns plans to meet in Paris next Tuesday with counterparts from Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia, while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to confer at U.N. headquarters May 9 with those countries' foreign ministers.

Bush also declined an opportunity to be directly critical of Ahmadinejad's escalating rhetoric. Bush's aides believe Iran is digging an international hole for itself with such statements, and that it will help the U.S. case with its allies to let it do so without reciprocating.

Turning to problems at home, Bush promised his administration is using the lessons of Hurricane Katrina to prepare for June 1 start of the next hurricane season. "I feel pretty good about the coordination," he said.

Though his advisers have rejected, at least for now, abolishing FEMA as a Senate panel proposes, Bush left the door open. Of the numerous recommendations from White House and congressional inquiries, Bush said "we ought to take them all seriously. The objective is to respond to these natural disasters as well as we possibly can. ... My attitude is, let's make it work."

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Federal Govt's disastrous handling of the Katrina housing crisis is looking more and more like an attempt to force displaced families into the streets

The New York Times
Still Battering the Katrina Homeless

The federal government's disastrous handling of the Katrina housing crisis is looking more and more like an attempt to force displaced families into the streets. The latest chapter came when the Federal Emergency Management Agency informed many families who had expected to have their rent paid for a year that they would soon be forced to assume their own housing costs or to leave their homes and apartments.

This is not the first time the families and the communities that have struggled to house them have been whipsawed by the federal government. They have been peppered with policy changes and letters written in clotted bureaucratese.

Things got off to a disastrous start soon after the hurricane, when the federal government concentrated on grotesquely expensive trailer parks and hotel housing — and then on short-term leases for private housing that frightened away potential landlords. The common-sense approach would have been to furnish displaced families with at least 12 months' worth of rent vouchers through the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as was done after other disasters. That way, the families could have settled into functioning communities, where they could have found schools for their children and perhaps gotten jobs.

The Bush administration avoided making HUD the star of the resettlement effort because that would have built a constituency for the voucher program, which ideologues in Congress have been busy trying to destroy. This result was on display this week in a Times article by Shaila Dewan, which showed deepening confusion among already devastated families who fear that the next stop will be a homeless shelter.

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U.S. Steps Into Wiretap Suit Against AT&T

The New York Times
U.S. Steps Into Wiretap Suit Against AT&T
By JOHN MARKOFF

SAN FRANCISCO, April 28 — The government asked a federal judge here Friday to dismiss a civil liberties lawsuit against the AT&T Corporation because of a possibility that military and state secrets would otherwise be disclosed.

The lawsuit, accusing the company of illegally collaborating with the National Security Agency in a vast surveillance program, was filed in February by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group.

The class-action suit, which seeks an end to the collaboration it alleges, is based in part on the testimony of Mark Klein, a retired technician for the company who says Internet data passing through an AT&T switching center in San Francisco is being diverted to a secret room. There, Mr. Klein says, the security agency has installed powerful computers to eavesdrop without warrants on the digital data and forward the information to an undisclosed place.

The foundation has filed documents obtained by Mr. Klein that ostensibly show detailed technical information on N.S.A. technology used to divert Internet data. He has also said in a deposition that employees of the agency went to the switching center to oversee special projects.

The company has declined to address the suit publicly, saying it will have no comment on matters of national security or customer privacy.

In its action Friday, the government filed a statement of interest asserting military and state secret privilege in asking the judge, Vaughn R. Walker, to dismiss the suit. Separately on Friday, AT&T also filed two motions to dismiss.

The government's filing said the authorities "cannot disclose any national security information that may be at issue in this case." The document went on to say that the filing should not be construed as either a confirmation or a denial of any of the claims made by the civil liberties group about government surveillance activities.

Elsewhere in the document, however, the government said President Bush had explained that after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he authorized the security agency to intercept communications into and out of the United States by people linked to Al Qaeda and related organizations. The agency is ordinarily prohibited from intercepting the telephone and digital communications of American citizens without a warrant from a special intelligence court.

Responding to the filing, Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said, "We think the government's right to conduct this program should be considered separately from the issue of whether a telecommunications firm has the right to break the law."

The government's interest, Ms. Cohn said, is an indication that the lawsuit is not frivolous.

The court plans to hear the various motions on May 17.

Earlier this year, the foundation asked the government to examine the documents that the group was preparing to submit to the court related to Mr. Klein's testimony. At the time, the government chose not to intervene, and the documents were filed under seal.

The documents, which include affidavits, lists of equipment and technical specifications related to tapping fiber-optic network links, have been obtained independently by a number of news organizations. They refer to a similar installation in an AT&T facility in Atlanta, and Mr. Klein has said he believes there are related eavesdropping facilities attached to AT&T centers in San Jose, Los Angeles, San Diego and Seattle.

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Ohio lawmaker Robert Ney focus of probe

Reuters
Ohio lawmaker focus of probe: paper

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors this week indicated they would pursue a wide range of allegations involving Republican lawmaker Robert Ney of Ohio and his dealings with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the Washington Post reported in its Saturday edition.

The lawmaker also faces another challenge next week because for the first time since his 1994 election to Congress, he will have to compete for his party's nomination, the paper wrote.

Ney, of the eastern district of Ohio, has been under investigation by federal authorities in Florida and in Washington, D.C., over business that helped Abramoff and two partners buy a Fort-Lauderdale-based casino cruise line.

The congressman has not been named, but law enforcement sources have confirmed that he is the "Representative No. 1" identified in plea agreements with Abramoff and others.

In those court documents, the unnamed lawmaker, who denies any wrongdoing, is accused of accepting "a stream of things of value" in exchange for official actions," the Post reported.

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Army colonel charged in Abu Ghraib scandal

Reuters
Army colonel charged in Abu Ghraib scandal
By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army on Friday charged Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, who headed the interrogation center at Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail, with maltreatment of detainees, interfering with investigators and other counts, making him the highest-ranking person charged in the scandal.

The Army Military District of Washington said Jordan faced 12 criminal counts relating to seven different charges. Prosecutors said he subjected detainees to forced nudity and intimidation by military working dogs and later lied about it to investigators.

Ten low-ranking soldiers have been convicted in military courts in connection with the physical abuse and sexual humiliation of detainees at Abu Ghraib. Two officers senior to Jordan at Abu Ghraib have been disciplined by the Army, but neither faced criminal charges.

The charges against Jordan include cruelty and maltreatment of detainees, dereliction of duty, wrongful interference with an investigation, making false official statements, willfully disobeying a superior officer and others. Jordan is a reservist currently on active duty assigned to the Army Intelligence and Security Command, the Army said.

Images of the abuse, including naked detainees stacked in a pyramid and others cowering before snarling dogs, first became public on April 28, 2004 -- two years ago to the day before the charges were brought against Jordan.

Jordan was in charge of the military's Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib in the fall and winter of 2003 at the height of the detainee abuse. It was a chaotic time when the jail's detainee population was ballooning and the insurgency was intensifying.

WIDER PROBE URGED

"It's gratifying that the military is beginning to focus on the role of more senior officers in the torture scandal. But this is but a step. The problems are just so clearly systemic that they need to be looked at more comprehensively," said Hina Shamsi, a lawyer with the rights group Human Rights First.

The Abu Ghraib scandal triggered international condemnation of the United States and undermined America's public image as it waged the war in Iraq. Abu Ghraib, located outside Baghdad, previously was a notorious torture center under deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Prosecutors said Jordan disobeyed orders from generals during the investigation not to have contact with others involved in the scandal, failed to properly train and supervise subordinates and ensure that they acted lawfully, and used methods on prisoners without higher approval. They also accused him of filing fraudulent receipts for car repairs.

Shamsi called for close scrutiny of the roles of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior Pentagon civilian leaders in crafting policies that may have led to torture and abuse, as well as on Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq at the time whom last year the Army cleared of wrongdoing in the Abu Ghraib scandal.

"One of the critical remaining questions is the doctrine of command responsibility that says that commanders are responsible for the acts of their subordinates if they knew or should have known that wrong was occurring and didn't do anything to prevent it," Shamsi said.

The Army last year removed from command, fined and reprimanded Col. Thomas Pappas, former military intelligence chief at Abu Ghraib. Also last year, it demoted to colonel and relieved of her command former Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the former top officer at the prison.

The next step in the military justice system for Jordan is a hearing to decide whether the case should proceed to a court-martial.

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