U.S. Wants Polar Bears Listed as Threatened; Designation May Force Action on Global Warming

washingtonpost.com
U.S. Wants Polar Bears Listed as Threatened
Designation May Force Action on Global Warming
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer

The Bush administration has decided to propose listing the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, putting the U.S. government on record as saying that global warming could drive one of the world's most recognizable animals out of existence.

The administration's proposal -- which was described by an Interior Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity -- stems from the fact that rising temperatures in the Arctic are shrinking the sea ice that polar bears need for hunting. The official insisted on anonymity because the department will submit the proposal today for publication in the Federal Register, after which it will be subject to public comment for 90 days.

Identifying polar bears as threatened with extinction could have an enormous political and practical impact. As the world's largest bear and as an object of children's affection as well as Christmastime Coca-Cola commercials, the polar bear occupies an important place in the American psyche. Because scientists have concluded that carbon dioxide from power-plant and vehicle emissions is helping drive climate change worldwide, putting polar bears on the endangered species list raises the legal question of whether the government would be required to compel U.S. industries to curb their carbon dioxide output.


"We've reviewed all the available data that leads us to believe the sea ice the polar bear depends on has been receding," said the Interior official, who added that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials have concluded that polar bears could be endangered within 45 years. "Obviously, the sea ice is melting because the temperatures are warmer."

Northern latitudes are warming twice as rapidly as the rest of globe, according to a 2004 scientific assessment, and by the end of the century, annual ocean temperatures in the Arctic may rise an additional 13 degrees Fahrenheit. As a result, researchers predict that summer sea ice, which polar bears use as a platform to hunt for ringed seals, will decline 50 to 100 percent. Just this month, researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research outlined a worst-case scenario in which summer sea ice could disappear by 2040.

By submitting the proposal today, the Interior Department is meeting a deadline under a legal settlement with three environmental advocacy groups -- the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace -- that argue the government has failed to respond quickly enough to the polar bear's plight. The department has been examining the status of polar bears for more than two years.

NRDC senior attorney Andrew Wetzler, one of the lawyers who filed suit against the administration, welcomed the proposal for listing.

"It's such a loud recognition that global warming is real," Wetzler said. "It is rapidly threatening the polar bear and, in fact, an entire ecosystem with utter destruction."

There are 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears worldwide, 4,700 of which live in Alaska and spend part of the year in Canada and Russia. The other countries with polar bears in their Arctic regions are Denmark and Norway.

Although scientists have yet to fully assess many of the 19 separate polar bear populations, initial studies suggest that climate change has already exacted a toll on the animals.

The ice in Canada's western Hudson Bay is now breaking up 2 1/2 weeks earlier than it did 30 years ago, giving polar bears there less time to hunt and build up fat reserves that sustain them for eight months before hunting resumes. As local polar bears have become thinner, female polar bears' reproductive rates and cubs' survival rates have fallen, spurring a 21 percent population drop from 1997 to 2004.

Scientists have not charted the same rapid decline within the U.S. polar bear populations, but federal scientists have observed a number of troubling signs as the bears have resorted to open-water swimming and even cannibalism in an effort to stay alive.

Polar bears normally swim from one patch of sea ice to another to hunt for food, but they are not accustomed to going long distances. In September 2004, government scientists observed 55 polar bears swimming offshore in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea, an unprecedented spike, and four of those bears died. In a separate study that year, federal scientists identified three instances near the Beaufort Sea in which polar bears ate one another.

The Interior official said government officials studying Alaskan polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea area have observed thinner adult bears and a lower rate of survival among cubs. Although the population has yet to dip, "unless the polar cub survival rate goes up, it would have to happen," the official said.

Still, the official added that the decision to propose polar bears as threatened with extinction "wasn't easy for us" because "there is still some significant uncertainty" about what could happen to bear populations in the future.

"This proposal is sort of like a scientific hypothesis. You put this out there and say to the world, 'Tell us, is this right or is this wrong?' " the official said, adding that Interior will hold several public hearings about its proposal. "We're projecting what we think will happen in the future, not just what's happening at this moment."

The department could take up to a year to complete its proposal, and it could abandon the listing if it unearths new scientific projections about the bears' fate. But that appears unlikely, as recent models have consistently pointed to a faster deterioration of Arctic sea ice.

Although federal officials cited rising sea temperatures once before in a threatened species proposal -- in May, when they called them a "major stressor" on Caribbean elkhorn and staghorn corals -- today's proposal will mark the first time the administration has identified climate change as the driving force behind the potential demise of a species.

Robert Correll, the scientist who chaired the international Arctic Climate Impact Assessment in 2004 and now directs the global change program at the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, said in an interview that the proposal to place polar bears on the endangered species list is "highly justified."

Correll added that he is participating in an administration-funded study at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on how climate change could affect national security and foreign policy.

That, along with the proposal on polar bears, he said, "plays into a reality that, in my opinion, they're going to be rethinking their position" on global warming.

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Nuclear trafficking reports double in 5 years: official

Reuters
Nuclear trafficking reports double in 5 years: official

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Reported incidents of trafficking and mishandling nuclear material worldwide doubled between 2000 and 2005, mainly because of heightened awareness and more extensive screening, the Department of Homeland Security said on Tuesday.

The department received 215 reports of nuclear trafficking and related criminal activity worldwide in 2005, versus 100 incidents in 2000, said Jarrod Agen, a Homeland Security spokesman. The incidents included illegal diversion, purchase, sale, transport or storage of nuclear material.

"Only a handful of the known illicit nuclear/radiological trafficking incidents involved weapons-usable nuclear materials," Agen said. "Of the known smuggling incidents to date, the vast majority were profit-motivated scams involving bogus materials."

The number of trafficking incidents recorded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was more than double that reported in August by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The Geneva-based U.N. nuclear watchdog said it had received reports of 103 incidents of illicit trafficking and other unauthorized activities involving nuclear and radioactive materials in 2005.

It cited a 2005 New Jersey case in which a lab inadvertently disposed of 0.1 ounce (3.3 grams) of highly enriched uranium. A lab worker failed to locate one of several samples in a shipment and apparently threw it away with the packaging, which was buried at a landfill. The lab was later fined $3,250 by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The Homeland Security figures include IAEA reporting as well as other information obtained by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, Agen said.

"What has doubled is the number of reported events," he said. "This is due mainly to an increase in awareness, more comprehensive reporting and an increase in the number of number of detection devices."

Since the September 11 attacks, security awareness has become higher worldwide, and the United States has increased the number and sophistication of screening machines across the country.

"We screen about 80 percent of all cargo that comes into the U.S. through radiation portal monitors, and by the end of next year we will be at 100 percent," Agen said. "That gives you an indication of how seriously we take screening for radioactive material."

Authorities will begin scanning U.S.-bound freight for nuclear and radiological materials in seven overseas ports early next year as part of the U.S. Secure Freight Initiative. Ports in Pakistan, Honduras, Britain, South Korea and Singapore are participating, Agen said.

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Churchill and Thatcher left off Tories' great Britons list

The Times
Churchill and Thatcher left off Tories' great Britons list
Philip Webster, Political Editor

Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher are conspicuous by their absence in a list of 12 great Britons who created the institutions that shaped the country’s history, compiled by the Conservatives and eminent historians.

The ranking was prompted as part of the Tory party’s review of the teaching of history in schools and comes after surveys showing that many children lack a basic knowledge of history.

The review is looking at ways of increasing the emphasis on narrative history, which children find more interesting and which helps to make the past more accessible to them. But the debate it stokes is likely to consume the adult population as well.

As David Willetts, the Shadow Education Secretary, said yesterday, history is always a matter of interpretation and the list is neither definitive nor exhaustive. If the aim is to provoke debate, as Mr Willetts said, it seems certain to succeed.

The list is in chronological order, and begins with Saint Columba for bringing Christianity to Britain, and ends with Nye Bevan (1897-1960), who is included for his role in creating the National Health Service.

That his is the last name on the list suggests that the historians and the Conservatives do not regard any of the institutions founded since the middle of the last century as comparable to those that came before.

Mr Willetts commented: “The loss of national memory means a loss of national identity. Britain needs to be one country — and this means that all British people must share a knowledge and understanding of the events which have made us what we are as a people.

“A country is more than an aggregation of individuals. It consists of the associations that individuals form — the institutions which bind us together in common and overlapping memberships. These institutions are the inheritance of every British child, and all British children should know about them.”

He added: “History is always a matter of interpretation, and this list is intended as neither definitive nor exhaustive. But this list should provoke thought and debate.”

The selection differs considerably from the findings of the 2002 BBC Great Britons poll in which the public voted to place 100 figures in order of greatness. Only two of those on the Tory list were selected by the public to take places in the BBC Top Ten — Isaac Newton and Oliver Cromwell.

In the BBC vote, Churchill, whose cause was advocated by Mo Mowlam in a BBC Two debate, was victorious after 1.6 million votes were cast, beating the engineer Isambard Brunel by 456,498 votes to 398,526. Diana, Princess of Wales, came in third with 225,584 votes.

Charles Darwin was fourth, followed by William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Queen Elizabeth I, John Lennon, Horatio Nelson and Oliver Cromwell. The BBC was surprised that Shakespeare, voted Man of the Millennium in 2000, struggled to secure 10 per cent of the vote. He is not included in the Tory list.

The Conservatives have also invited people who would like to contribute their ideas on how history should be taught, and who they think have shaped Britain’s institutions, to e-mail their thoughts to the public services website: www.publicserviceschallenge.com.

The list was compiled from suggestions by Neil McKendrick, Emeritus Reader in History and former Master, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge; David Starkey, author of The Monarchy of England; and Michael Burleigh, the historian and author of Earthly Powers: The Conflict Between Religion & Politics.

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Interior, Pentagon Faulted In Audits; Effort to Speed Defense Contracts Wasted Millions

washingtonpost.com
Interior, Pentagon Faulted In Audits
Effort to Speed Defense Contracts Wasted Millions
By Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Scott Higham
Washington Post Staff Writers

The Defense Department paid two procurement operations at the Department of the Interior to arrange for Pentagon purchases totaling $1.7 billion that resulted in excessive fees and tens of millions of dollars in waste, documents show.

Defense turned to Interior, which manages federal lands and resources, in an effort to speed up its contracting. Interior is one of several government agencies allowed to manage contracts for other agencies in exchange for a fee.

But the arrangement between Interior and Defense "routinely violated rules designed to protect U.S. Government interests," according to draft audit documents obtained by The Washington Post.

More than half of the contracts examined were awarded without competition or without checks to determine that the prices were reasonable, according to the audits by the inspectors general for Defense (DOD) and Interior (DOI). Ninety-two percent of the work reviewed was awarded without verifying that the contractors' cost estimates were accurate; 96 percent was inadequately monitored.

In one instance, Interior officials bought armor to reinforce Army vehicles from a software maker. In another, Interior bought furniture for Defense from a company that apparently had not previously been in the furniture business. One contract worth $100 million, to lease office space for a top-secret intelligence unit in Northern Virginia, was awarded without competition. Defense auditors said that deal cost taxpayers millions more than necessary, and they have referred the matter for possible criminal investigation.

"These poor contracting practices have left DOD vulnerable to fraud, waste and abuse and DOI vulnerable to sanctions and the loss of the public trust," the Interior auditors concluded in their report.

They examined 49 deals and concluded that 61 percent had evidence of "illegal contracts, ill advised contracts, and various failings of contract administration procedures."

The auditors' findings underscore the difficulties that have come with efforts over the past decade to streamline government by outsourcing work, simplifying contracting procedures and cutting back on the procurement workforce. Agencies such as Interior are allowed to handle contracts for other agencies under the theory that they can perform some services more efficiently. But in this case, auditors found that Interior did not follow through on oversight and collected $22.8 million in fees for work the Pentagon could have done itself.

Officials at Defense and Interior said they have been working to fix contracting problems cited in the audits.

"We are currently reviewing the findings of the DOD IG, and we have been meeting with representatives of the DOI regarding the specifics of the draft report," said Shay Assad, director of defense procurement and acquisition policy at the Pentagon. "It would be premature to comment specifically except to say that we understand DOI is actively taking actions to improve their contracting practices in response to a number of the draft findings."

Interior officials said they are adopting many of the auditors' recommendations and have made "giant strides." They said they are examining "specific contracts of concern" as well as reviewing the qualifications of their contracting officers and improving their training.

"We believe that many of your recommendations can help us further improve our internal controls related to the acquisition environment," R. Thomas Weimer, Interior's assistant secretary for policy, management and budget, wrote in a Nov. 30 response to his department's inspector general.

Unnamed contracting officials were quoted in the Defense audit as saying that they went to Interior to save time.

"We used DOI because they are able to expedite the contracting process," one Defense official said.

Another said that the Defense office "did not have enough contracting people to handle the requirements."

The Interior procurement operations were allowed to charge fees for managing contracts on behalf of other government agencies. One of the operations, GovWorks, is located in Herndon. The other is the Southwest Acquisition Branch of the National Business Center at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., an Army base.

Defense paid Interior management fees of up to 4 percent for everything from pistol holsters to intelligence consultants to office leases. The Defense inspector general said the Pentagon could have saved $22.8 million by using the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA).

The Interior inspector general said Defense "could have used these monies to purchase as many as 50,000 sets of body armor to protect our soldiers."

At the Southwest Acquisition Branch office in Arizona, the auditors concluded, $411 million worth of deals were struck without a fundamental step in government contracting: review and approval by properly trained and certified contracting officers.

The Defense auditors found that nearly half of the 49 contract files they reviewed failed to document that the prices "were fair and reasonable." Contracting officials relied upon e-mailed statements and cursory reviews from the Pentagon, rather than "documenting a detailed analysis of the contractor's proposal."

At Interior, there was little supervision of the work. The Defense inspector general "questioned the adequacy of government surveillance for 23 of the 24 contracts" -- or 96 percent of the total reviewed in one analysis.

Key documents were missing from contract files. "Lack of good documentation can create serious problems," the auditors noted. "If it is not documented, it never happened."

The findings prompted the inspector general's office to demand that the Pentagon stop using Interior's contracting shops.

The auditors singled out two contracting arrangements for particularly sharp criticism. In 2002, the Pentagon opened a new office called Counterintelligence Field Activity, known as CIFA, which supervises protection at Defense facilities against terror attacks.

When CIFA needed office space in Northern Virginia, Defense officials turned to Interior's GovWorks program instead of the GSA, which manages office space for the government, the audit said. GovWorks awarded a 10-year, no-bid deal worth $100 million to a private company based in Anchorage to acquire and manage the space, the auditors said.

The auditors said Defense officials violated regulations by not using the GSA for their office space.

"CIFA and DOI circumvented numerous laws in contracting for leased space," the auditors said. "By not following the proper procedures, they entered into a lease without the legal authority to do so."

Auditors found that the lease cost taxpayers up to $2.7 million more than it should have. Auditors also found that the deal violated procedures because it was not cleared by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

In May, members of the Defense inspector general's office told senior CIFA staffers that they could be in violation of the law if they continued to make payments on the lease.

"Subsequently, we learned that CIFA had continued to make lease payments, totaling $2.9 million," the auditors wrote.

The auditors referred the matter for possible criminal investigation to the deputy inspector general for investigations.

Weimer, Interior's policy and budget chief, disputed the auditor's findings on the lease arrangement. In his written response, he argued that CIFA did not have to go through the GSA to obtain the office space. Weimer also said CIFA did not enter into an improper lease because the lease was between CIFA's contractor and the managers of the office building. Moreover, he said, the chief counsel for the Justice Department's Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force advised CIFA that the arrangement was appropriate.

The other arrangement that received sharp criticism from the auditors involved the Open Market Corridor, an online buying program billed as a way to save tax money.

Built by a California company, the Open Market Corridor began as a research project for the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. In 2002, management of the contract was handed to officials at Interior's Fort Huachuca operation. The California company, the Naval school and Interior all received a small percentage when the system was used to order goods and services.

Auditors found that select companies were favored, in violation of federal regulations. The contracting officer responsible for overseeing the online purchases "was unable to provide a list of either the customers or participating vendors who were using the system," the auditors said.

Sixteen vendors "appeared to be Government employees or firms that appeared to be affiliated with Government employees," another apparent violation of regulations and a possible violation of federal criminal statutes, auditors said.

One official who processed 1,616 "contract actions" worth nearly $135 million was a lecturer at the Naval school who did not have the authority to award government work.

Senior Interior officials were not even "aware that the system existed" or that it was processing tens of millions of dollars in deals each year without approval, the audit said.

In March, after auditors reported the abuses, officials at the Naval school took the system offline.

The auditors concluded that Defense should not continue to manage or use the Open Market Corridor "because of the serious legal and other problems we found."

They referred their findings to the deputy inspector general and the Navy Acquisition Integrity Office for further investigation.

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Egyptian woman dies of bird flu

BBC NEWS
Egyptian woman dies of bird flu
An Egyptian woman has died of bird flu just hours after testing positive for the H5N1 strain of the virus.

The 30-year-old was first treated on 17 December, before a brother and sister, aged 26 and 15, also fell ill.

The World Health Organization confirmed the test results on the three, who live with 30 other family members raising poultry in a town north of Cairo.

She is the eighth person to die of bird flu in Egypt. The positive tests raise to 17 the total number of human cases.

The two siblings are in hospital in Cairo and have been treated. The rest of the family is under close medical surveillance, a WHO official said.

Family farm

The extended family share one house in the town of Zifta in Gharbiya province, about 80km (50 miles) north of Cairo.

A WHO official said the family raised ducks, and the brother and sister had become infected after slaughtering the flock in an effort to stem the spread of the H5N1 virus.

Three of the family's ducks had died of the virus, WHO confirmed.

Egypt is a major route for migratory birds and is one of the countries worst hit by the virus outside Asia.

Government officials had hoped an initial outbreak of H5N1 among poultry in February had been contained and would not further affect the country's food supply.

In the Middle East, the disease is also known to be present in Iran, Iraq, Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.

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Report Rebukes FBI Over Okla. City Probe

Report Rebukes FBI Over Okla. City Probe
By JOHN SOLOMON
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI failed to fully investigate information suggesting other suspects may have helped Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, allowing questions to linger more than a decade after the deadly attack, a congressional inquiry concludes.

The House International Relations investigative subcommittee will release the findings of its two-year review as early as Wednesday, declaring there is no conclusive evidence of a foreign connection to the attack but far too many unanswered questions remain.

The subcommittee's report will conclude there is no doubt McVeigh and Nichols were the main perpetrators, and it discloses for the first time that Nichols confirmed to House investigators he participated in the robbery of an Arkansas gun dealer that provided the proceeds for the attack.

There have long been questions about that robbery because the FBI concluded McVeigh was in another state at the time it occurred.

The report also sharply criticizes the FBI for failing to be curious enough to pursue credible information that foreign or U.S. citizens may have had contact with Nichols or McVeigh and could have assisted their plot.

"We did our best with limited resources, and I think we moved the understanding of this issue forward a couple of notches even though important questions remain unanswered," Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., the subcommittee chairman, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Rohrabacher's subcommittee saved its sharpest words for the Justice Department, saying officials there exhibited a mindset of thwarting congressional oversight and did not assist the investigation fully.

The report rebukes the FBI for not fully pursuing leads suggesting other suspects may have provided support to McVeigh and Nichols before their truck bomb killed 168 people in the main federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.

The report says the inadequacy of the bureau's work was exposed two years ago when some bombing evidence overlooked for 10 years was discovered in a home linked to Nichols that had been searched repeatedly by agents.

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said Sunday, "Having not yet read the report, it would be inappropriate to comment on its contents."

Nonetheless, Kolko said: "The Oklahoma City bombing case was the largest case the FBI worked on before 9/11. Agents at virtually every office, domestically and overseas, covered thousands of leads. Every bit of information was investigated and reviewed. The FBI worked tirelessly to cover all of the leads and conducted a thorough and complete investigation."

Previously, the bureau has said it believes its investigation of the bombing was exhaustive and there is no credible evidence that other people were involved.

The subcommittee concludes the Justice Department should not have rushed to execute McVeigh in 2001 after he dropped his court appeals, and officials should have made more efforts to interview and question him about evidence suggesting he might have gotten help from other people who remain unpunished.

The former lead FBI agent in the case, Dan Defenbaugh, told AP a few years ago he was trying to get one last interview with McVeigh to go over unanswered questions in the case but could not get it arranged before McVeigh was executed.

Rohrabacher's report cites several leads the subcommittee believes were not fully investigated, including:

-Information that McVeigh called a German citizen living at a white supremacist compound in Oklahoma two weeks before the bombing and that two witnesses saw the men together before the bombing.

-Witness accounts that another man was seen with McVeigh around the time of the bombing. The FBI originally looked for another suspect it named John Doe 2, even providing a sketch, but abruptly dropped that line of inquiry. The subcommittee concludes that decision was a mistake.

-Findings in AP articles in 2003 and 2004 that indicated the FBI had gathered some evidence suggesting a group of neo-Nazi bank robbers may have been tied to McVeigh. The subcommittee interviewed three of those robbers, and all denied a connection. A fourth member of the gang died and a fifth member could not be located by Congress.

-Phone record and witness testimony that persons associated with Middle Eastern terrorism in the Philippines may have had contact with Nichols, and that Nichols took a book about explosives to the Philippines. The FBI and Filipino police spent months investigating such a connection, but ruled it out.

-Information from a former TV reporter concerning an Iraqi national who was in Oklahoma around the time of the bombing.

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Candidates Turn to Web to Reach Voters

Candidates Turn to Web to Reach Voters
By PHILIP ELLIOTT
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Al Gore claimed he invented it. John McCain predicted it would revolutionize political campaigning. Howard Dean made it pay - and then some.

Ah, the Internet.

As candidates prepare for the 2008 presidential campaign, the Internet is the new Main Street. An estimated 70 percent of adults in the United States travel the digital highway, still a cheap and largely unregulated medium.

Reaching those potential voters and donors has become an important part of modern politicking. Candidates aggressively compete for the talents of the most creative geeks in politics and develop new ways to exploit the Net.

Republicans have mastered e-mail as the new form of direct-mail campaigns, raising money and pushing a GOP message. Democrats have excelled at raising cash through small-scale donations and making the Net their version of talk radio.

"You have an inexpensive way to have a conversation with people with the propensity to turn out and vote," said Rick Davis, a McCain adviser who managed the Arizona Republican's 2000 presidential campaign.

In that race, McCain predicted that "in the next few years the Internet will completely turn political campaigns upside down."

McCain, the potential front-runner for the 2008 GOP nomination, is among the most tech-savvy could-be White House candidates today. He has retained many hands from his 2000 bid and has recruited some of the top names in online campaigning.

The model for many presidential wannabes is former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. True, Dean was soundly defeated in his race for the 2004 Democratic nomination. But his campaign relied on the Internet to raise an enviable $53 million; more than 60 percent of donors gave less than $200 each.

Lesson learned, potential 2008 campaigns say.

Former Democratic Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, the first major candidate to do podcasts when he was running for president in 2004, has recruited Dean's Internet communications director.

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who leads the Democratic pack of prospective candidates, hired a pair of online writers for her successful Senate re-election campaign this year and has amassed an e-mailing list.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is quickly building his own mailing list and using others' lists to raise campaign cash. He raised $800,000 for Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., this year using a MoveOn.org list.

But the recognized Democratic leader when it comes to the Internet is Sen. John Kerry, his party's 2004 nominee. He has a 3 million-plus e-mail list of supporters, donors and activists.

The Massachusetts senator sent e-mails to supporters more than 300 times between Election Day 2004 and Election Day 2006. He also has used his campaign apparatus to give away $14 million in donations to candidates last cycle. During a two-day period this year, he used his e-mail contacts to raise $900,000 for four Senate candidates.

"This represents the community of activists," said David Thorne, who organized Kerry's 2004 Web strategy and remains an adviser. "These are people who want to be active and supportive of progressive causes. There was no more important progressive cause than getting Bush out of the White House in '04."

Without a major polarizing figure among Republicans in 2008, Thorne doubts Democrats could recreate their Web success.

"I am dubious anyone can build the same kind of list in '08," Thorne said. "There won't be anyone that will create the passion and the intensity that George Bush did in '04."

Among Republicans, the enemy is Sen. Clinton. Anti-Clinton Web sites are popping up on the Internet even though Clinton has not announced she is running.

One site, StopHerNow.com, is devoted to "rescuing America from the radical ideas of Hillary Clinton." Its financial backer is a donor to New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a potential GOP candidate.

"It's an oldie. It's just not golden," said Ann Lewis, Clinton's Senate campaign communications director. "We've never doubted there are people on the other side who will try (to use the Web against us). The Web gives you an ability to respond quickly."

If past is prologue, Clinton will do more than play defense. The Web talent for her Senate campaign included Salon.com's Peter Daou, blogger Jesse Berney and former Democratic National Committee grassroots director Nancy Eiring.

"The way to look at what we might do is what we just finished doing," Lewis said.

Mike Connell, who ran President Bush's Web strategy in 2000 and 2004, said campaigns still do not spend enough on online efforts despite the obvious returns.

"Too many dollars are being wasted on traditional broadcast advertising," he said. "It used to be three major broadcast networks ... Now we've got an entirely fragmented market, people spread across the entire spectrum of content."

Campaigns are eager to substitute online video for a broadcast version.

"Clearly online video is rapidly chewing away at traditional TV time," said Nikko Mele, Dean's campaign webmaster from 2004. "We are taking time usually spent watching television and watching the Web. It's not clear how campaigns are going to take advantage of that."

The heaviest users of the online video are people age 18-34, according to an Associated Press-AOL poll from this summer. It is an age group with a low, not high, voter turnout record. Also people in this group generally do not give major donations to campaign. But they are the ones who can create a buzz.

"Every trend that existed four years ago exists double-so, triple-so now," Mele said. "There is plenty of opportunity online. It's going to require innovation, risk taking."

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A Wish For Peace On Earth

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I get my advice from a higher father!

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I can win it all back!

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Iraqalypto

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The Road Ahead

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Spending vs Income

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Bush's Worst Lies of 2006

Newsweek.com
Eleanor Clift: Bush's Worst Lies of 2006
A look back at some of the biggest falsehoods of 2006.
By Eleanor Clift

Dec. 22, 2006 - In the spirit of holding our political leaders accountable, this year-end review will tabulate the worst lies told by Bush and company, along with several stories that were underreported in the media. Much of what was generated got lost in the fog of war, but the long arm of history will retrieve these moments. As the president said in his news conference this week, if they’re still writing about No. 1—George Washington—there’s plenty of time before the historians can properly evaluate No. 43. Judging by the mess in Iraq, it could be 200 or 300 years—if ever—before Bush is vindicated.

Bush has shifted his rhetoric in deference to the grim and deteriorating reality on the ground in Iraq. Asked by a reporter on Oct. 25 if we are winning the war, Bush said, “Absolutely, we’re winning.” Offered the opportunity at his press conference to defend that statement, Bush has adopted a new formulation. He now says, “We’re not winning, but we’re not losing.” That sounds like the definition of a quagmire.

Exploitation of the war gained Republicans seats in ’02 and got Bush a second term in ’04, but it wasn’t enough in ’06. Karl Rove decided the best way for Republicans to retain control of the House and Senate was to embrace the war in Iraq and run against the Democrats as “Defeatocrats” and “Cut and Runners.” It might have worked, had not most Americans decided they did indeed want to cut and run. Not right away—the voters want an orderly exit—but they weren’t buying Bush’s big lie about the Democrats.

Bush campaigned this fall as though the Democrats were the real enemy, not the terrorists. “They [Democrats] think the best way to protect the American people is wait until we’re attacked again…If you don’t want your government listening in on terrorists, vote for the Democrats.” Now that the Democrats have won, watch Bush try to off-load blame for the failure in Iraq. If the Democrats won’t go along with whatever cockamamie scheme he comes up with, he can always accuse them of losing the war.

Days after giving Defense Secretary Rumsfeld a ringing endorsement, declaring he would be there until the end, Bush fired him. It was the most obvious lie of his presidency. And it tripped so easily off Bush’s tongue. There was none of the stammering that usually accompanies his public utterances. It was as big a lie as Rove’s assertion on National Public Radio that all the public polls pointing toward a rout for the GOP were wrong. “I have the math,” Rove proclaimed. A lot of people believed Rove, but the voters didn’t.

The administration had the media snookered much of the time. Stories that were underreported largely because they ran counter to administration spin include:
# A study that shows the death toll among Iraqis has reached as high as 655,000. Extensively researched by teams of doctors commissioned by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Md., the study—and the controversy over its sampling methodology—was given scant attention by the media because it was so far out of line from the administration’s projection of perhaps 50,000 civilian deaths. That’s still a horrendous death toll of innocents in a country the size of Iraq. Now, 100 bodies routinely turn up every day in Baghdad’s morgues, the victims of sectarian violence, and the report, published in October in The Lancet medical journal, seems to be closer to the truth than anything the Bush administration has acknowledged.

# Private contractors in Iraq. There are 100,000 government contractors in Iraq, a number that rivals the 140,000 U.S. soldiers in the country. It’s dangerous work; some 650 contractors have died there. They do a lot of the jobs the military used to do, everything from providing security and interrogating prisoners to cooking meals for the soldiers. They work for military contractors like KBR and DynCorp International, which are helping train the Iraqi police force. This is the largest contingent of civilians ever operating in a battlefield environment, and there’s been no congressional oversight or accountability. That should change with the Democrats taking over the investigative committees on Capitol Hill. The abuses may be just waiting to be uncovered.
# America’s secret torture prisons, whose existence Bush acknowledged as part of his tough-guy campaigning this fall. Set up in the aftermath of 9/11 to hold suspected terrorists indefinitely, the legality, morality and practicality of these so-called “black sites” have come under scrutiny. After a brief flurry about the use of torture tactics like “water boarding,” where a prisoner is made to feel he’s drowning, the story of these CIA-operated overseas prisons faded. Yet they contributed to the central tragedy of the Bush administration, the collapse of America’s standing around the world.

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How could George W. Bush have blown the aftermath of Katrina? It's not as if he lacks confidence in the power of his office

Newsweek.com
Alter: Feds Still Blind to Region's Poverty
How could George W. Bush have blown the aftermath of Katrina? It's not as if he lacks confidence in the power of his office.
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek

Sept. 4, 2006 issue - A year ago, in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, NEWSWEEK published a cover story called "Poverty, Race and Katrina: Lessons of a National Shame." The article suggested that the disaster was prompting a fresh look at "The Other America"—the 37 million Americans living below the poverty line. "It takes a hurricane," I wrote. "It takes the sight of the United States with a big black eye—visible around the world—to help the rest of us begin to see again." I ended on a hopeful note: "What kind of president does George W. Bush want to be? ... If he seizes the moment, he could undertake a midcourse correction that might materially change the lives of millions. Katrina gives Bush an only-Nixon-could-go-to-China opportunity, if he wants it."

Some readers told me at the time that this was naive—that the president, if not indifferent to the problems of black people, as the singer Kanye West charged, was not going to do anything significant to help them. At first this seemed too cynical. The week after the article appeared, Bush went to Jackson Square in New Orleans and made televised promises not only for Katrina relief but to address some of the underlying struggles of the poor. He proposed "worker recovery accounts" to help evacuees find work by paying for job training, school and child care; an Urban Homesteading Act that would make empty lots and loans available to the poor to start over, and a Gulf Enterprise Zone to spur business investment in poor areas. Small ideas, perhaps, but good ones.

Well, it turned out that the critics were largely right. Not only has the president done much less than he promised on the financing and logistics of Gulf Coast recovery, he has dropped the ball entirely on using the storm and its aftermath as an opportunity to fight poverty. Worker recovery accounts and urban homesteading never got off the ground, and the new enterprise zone is mostly an opportunity for Southern companies owned by GOP campaign contributors to make some money in New Orleans. The mood in Washington continues to be one of not-so-benign neglect of the problems of the poor.

"This is the greatest lost opportunity I've ever seen in public life," Sen. John Kerry told me last week. "The Jackson Square speech ought to stand as one of the all-time monuments to hollow rhetoric and broken promises." Kerry depicted the response during the last year as a slow-motion Superdome II, where the federal government once more walked right past people in distress.

If the president was MIA, Congress hasn't been much better.

Consider the estate tax and the minimum wage. The House in June passed a steep reduction of the estate tax (so as to apply only to couples leaving more than $10 million to their heirs) that would cost the Treasury three quarters of a trillion dollars over the next decade. Last time I checked, that was real money. Senate Republicans tried to push it through by linking the bill to an increase in the minimum wage, which has not been raised in nine years. The idea was to get credit for giving crumbs to the working poor—but only if the superrich receive hundreds of billions of dollars. Fortunately, the bill failed. Unfortunately, other tax cuts for the wealthy keep moving through the system, ballooning the deficit and drying up money for everything else. Meanwhile, the GOP wants to make welfare reform (now 10 years old) more punitive, which will increase suffering.

There are a couple of bright spots. Congress passed $1 billion to help the poor avoid freezing in the winter. And a bipartisan coalition added $7 billion this year in appropriations for health, education and other social programs. As the Shriver National Center on Poverty Law points out in a midterm congressional scorecard, this victory reflected widespread concern that the budget had shortchanged the poor.

But that was no thanks to the president. After all the heat he took last year, how could Bush have blown the aftermath of Katrina? It's not as if he lacks confidence in the power of his office. He believes he can fix Iraq and transform the Middle East. He aspires to spread democracy to the far corners of the globe. But the fate of an American city and millions of his impoverished countrymen are apparently beyond his control, or perhaps just his interest

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A new study about ‘embryo-safe’ stem-cell research may be a gift for Republicans, but it doesn’t change their hypocrisy on the issue

Newsweek.com
Alter: GOP Gets Escape Hatch on Stem Cells
A new study about ‘embryo-safe’ stem-cell research may be a gift for Republicans, but it doesn’t change their hypocrisy on the issue.
By Jonathan Alter

Aug. 26, 2006 - Last year I had a little encounter with Karl Rove in a hallway outside a conference. I asked him why he wanted the president to veto a bill allowing surplus embryos from fertility clinics to be used for stem-cell research instead of thrown away. “Because it’s the right thing to do,” Rove said emphatically.

When I suggested this policy might be a political loser for Republicans, the conversation got a little hot. Probably so, Rove said, his voice rising, but this wasn’t about politics. I told him the issue was personal for me; I’d had lymphoma, and embryonic stem cells offer the potential for a cure some day that adult stem cells do not. Rove said he had a close family member with a bad disease. He wasn’t about to be trumped in that department. The message was clear: Not gonna happen on my guy’s watch.

That exchange came to mind this week with news that stem-cell lines can be established from part of an early human embryo—a blastomere—without destroying the embryo itself. This doesn’t change my view of embryonic stem-cell research. To save lives, science needs to push through on many fronts simultaneously. Dr. Irving Weissman of Stanford, a leading stem-cell researcher, says that limiting research to these tiny eight-cell embryos would seriously handicap progress on many diseases. But politically, the breakthrough opens an escape hatch for Republicans. They can now muddy the issue by saying they favor only research that keeps embryos intact.

In their imaginative new book, “The Plan,” Rep. Rahm Emanuel and Bruce Reed, president of the Democratic Leadership Council, says that the historical equilibrium in Washington between “Wonks” and “Hacks” has broken down, with wonks (those devoted to policy) practically extinct and party hacks ascendant: “The Bush years have been beset by “an outbreak of what might be called Rove flu—a virus that destroys any part of the brain not devoted to partisan political manipulation.”

This is a sound anthropological analysis, but incomplete. Buried beneath every Hack and Wonk is a Mom or Dad. (For the childless, an Aunt or Uncle). Even the proudest hack—the cynic who is obsessed with playing all the political angles—wants his children to think that he stands for something. In the movie “Thank You for Smoking,” the star is a lobbyist for the tobacco industry who hopes his kid remembers him for holding his ground even when he was making the case for cancer.

That’s Rove, or at least the one I saw at the conference. Despite his political prescience, he wasn’t smart enough to see this latest research coming. Even when he genuinely thought stem-cell politics were moving against Republicans, he dug in. It was a legacy play—a way of convincing historians (at least conservative ones) that Bush was a man of principle, standing up to political pressures on a moral issue. This seems a more plausible explanation than that he was simply pandering to the base again.

Bush and Rove are still “Hacks”—and hypocrites to boot. Otherwise, they’d call for shutting down the fertility clinics that destroy far more embryos than stem-cell researchers ever would. But they’re true believers, too. And by following their convictions—however injurious that might be to my health and that of millions of others—they might just end up with the best of both worlds: credit from religious conservatives and a fig leaf to protect them from Democrats. How ironic it would be for Bush and Rove to be rescued by the very scientific progress their original position did so much to restrict.

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Growth trends could mean power shift in Congress after 2010 Census

USA TODAY
Growth trends could mean power shift in Congress after 2010 Census
By Kathy Kiely, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Two weeks before Democrats take control of the U.S. House for the first time in 12 years, new Census estimates suggest they may have to battle demographic tides to keep it.

Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Texas and Utah are projected to gain seats in Congress after the 2010 Census, according to an analysis by Election Data Services. All six tilt Republican: President Bush won all in 2004, ranging from 50% of the vote in Nevada to 72% in Utah.

CENSUS FIGURES RELEASED: Southern growth leads USA

Even more significant, Republicans control both chambers of the state legislature and the governor's office in five of those states, which gives the party the upper hand when state elected officials redraw congressional district lines every decade. (Arizona relies on a non-partisan commission.)

"It's always about exactly how the lines are drawn and who's drawing the lines," said Stuart Rothenberg, a non-partisan political analyst. He said the latest Census figures showing population growth in the South "have got to please Republicans and strike fear into the hearts of Democrats."

The picture may not be entirely bleak for Democrats in the long term, said Charles Cook, another independent political analyst.

"Arizona is trending less Republican; Nevada is becoming less Republican. Within a decade, Texas will be a purple state," Cook said. He was referring to the color codes used to describe states' leanings: red for Republican, blue for Democratic and purple for swing states.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who will head his party's House campaign committee next year, said he's not dismayed by the Census projections. He said 21 freshman Democrats who won in the elections Nov. 7 did so in districts Bush carried in 2004.

"Democrats have shown they can compete in red states," he said. Van Hollen also noted that the population growth in boom states such as Florida and Texas has been fueled by Hispanic immigration. "Hispanics have voted in large numbers for Democrats," he said.

Gerald Hebert, a Democratic redistricting expert, said Republicans have drawn such unfavorable congressional boundaries for Democrats in Florida and Texas that "it's hard for me to imagine how Democrats could do worse."

Hebert said efforts are underway in several states, including Texas, California and Florida, to take redistricting out of the hands of politicians and assign it to a non-partisan commission, as Arizona and five other states do. "I think Americans want voters to choose the politicians and not the politicians choosing which voters they want," Hebert said.

The new Census figures may also provide momentum for legislation that would give Utah an additional House seat before 2010. In return, residents of the predominantly Democratic District of Columbia, now without a House vote, would get one. The proposal by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., would permanently increase the size of the House of Representatives by two seats, from 435 to 437.

Utah barely missed qualifying for an additional House seat after the last Census. Gov. Jon Huntsman said the federal government did not count some Mormon missionaries who were out of state. At his urging, the state Legislature approved a redistricting plan this month that would be used if the state was given another House seat.

The Utah-District of Columbia deal is in limbo because House Republican leaders did not take up the legislation before adjourning. Davis intends to make the measure the first bill he introduces when the new Congress convenes Jan. 4, and hopes incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be more sympathetic, said David Marin, Davis' chief of staff.

Mike Mower, a spokesman for Huntsman, said the governor shares that hope. "We feel the new Census numbers underscore the fact that Utah should have had a seat in the last count," he said.

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U.S. Gives Grants to 4 Gulf Coast States to Upgrade Disaster Housing

The New York Times
U.S. Gives Grants to 4 Gulf Coast States to Upgrade Disaster Housing
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 — FEMA trailers, the cramped, impersonal housing units that have come to define the federal response to major disasters, may be on the way out, thanks to $388 million in federal grants, announced Friday, that will test half a dozen cozier, more permanent models of postdisaster housing.

The program will offer new housing from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to thousands of families, among the 100,000 still living in trailers across the Gulf Coast, by placing them over the coming year in these studier, roomier, better ventilated homes, many of which have front porches, large windows and even small attics.

Mississippi came out on top in the contest for the grants, receiving $280.8 million, compared with $74.5 million for Louisiana, $16.5 million for Texas and $15.7 million for Alabama.

Officials in Louisiana were furious, saying their state, which suffered the greatest losses in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year, had been shortchanged.

“FEMA has clearly learned very little from its mistakes, let alone basic math or a sense of fundamental fairness,” Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, said in a statement.

But officials of the agency said Mississippi’s big share simply reflected the creativity of its plans, as the financing was awarded competitively, based on how quickly the new models could be set up, how comfortable and safe they would be and how much they would cost, among other factors.

The grants come from an appropriation in which Congress directed FEMA to take an alternative approach to the customary trailers. The biggest single grant will finance the construction of units in Mississippi that like look like A-roofed cottages, featuring a compact front porch, windows on three sides, more storage space and better ventilation. Like the existing trailers, they will be set up on wheels, so they can be driven into a disaster zone.

Louisiana officials, meanwhile, intend to use their grant to build what they are calling Katrina Cottages — compact single-family homes made of prefabricated panels, with a porch and up to three bedrooms — in heavily hit areas of New Orleans like Jackson Barracks.

The one model planned in Texas is based on a design that is already used by some 90,000 troops in Iraq. A small house made of prefabricated parts that can be moved by flatbed truck, it can be set up in eight hours by six people. It offers more living space than the trailers and is capable of being elevated so that it can be lifted out of the flood plain.

“It is not going to make the front of Architectural Digest,” said Gil H. Jamieson, a deputy director of FEMA, “but it is aesthetically pleasing.”

In some cases, these homes can be built on formal foundations, making them permanent or at least semipermanent housing, unlike the travel trailers, which are not considered sturdy enough to survive winds that could be produced by a tropical storm.

Federal officials said they could not yet predict how many new homes would be built with the available grant money or how many of the 101,000 families still in FEMA travel trailers or mobile homes across the Gulf Coast would be able to move into these new units.

The government will evaluate each of the six types of new homes to be built, to see whether they should be adopted permanently.

Mr. Jamieson said it was unlikely that FEMA would be able to replace the travel trailers completely. But it hopes that by the next major disaster, it will have cut the numbers significantly.

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FEMA Not Required to Restore Aid to Evacuees, Court Rules

The New York Times
FEMA Not Required to Restore Aid to Evacuees, Court Rules
By SHAILA DEWAN

The Federal Emergency Management Agency does not have to reinstate immediately rental assistance to evacuees from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled yesterday, reversing a decision that a lower court judge had said he hoped would “get these people a roof over their heads before Christmas.”

But FEMA still has to comply with part of the earlier order by the judge, Richard J. Leon of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, by providing families with clear explanations why they were denied assistance.

Responding to the ruling by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, FEMA officials said they would immediately suspend plans to provide the money, leading to criticism from evacuees and their advocates.

“It’s another setback,” Wanda Jones, an evacuee in Houston, said in a statement issued by Acorn, the housing advocacy group that filed the lawsuit. “It’s like a terrible roller coaster ride. Every time we go up, when we come down we lose more people.”

Last spring, FEMA began notifying thousands of families who were given emergency shelter after the storms that they did not qualify for long-term help in the form of rent and utility payments, shocking many families who had been given housing vouchers good for a year.

Those families were allowed to appeal the agency’s decision, but many said they received confusing, contradictory or incomplete instructions as they tried to do so.

In a preliminary injunction, issued on Nov. 29, Judge Leon said the agency’s appeals process was so confusing that it denied evacuees their constitutional right to due process, and he ordered FEMA to immediately restore benefits, make retroactive payments and improve the appeals process. The appeals court stayed the first two parts of the injunction.

Aaron Walker, FEMA’s chief spokesman, said the agency had already complied with the other part of the order. The agency “reached out to every household affected by the district court’s order to more clearly identify their reason for ineligibility, outline the required remedies and allow them an additional 60 days to file an appeal with FEMA,” he said.

The new order is temporary because the case has not yet gone to trial.

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5 soldiers killed by Iraqi insurgents making December the second deadliest month for U.S. servicemen in 2006

5 soldiers killed by Iraqi insurgents
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA
Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Insurgent attacks killed five more American troops west of the Iraqi capital, the military said Friday, making December the second deadliest month for U.S. servicemen in 2006.

So far this month, 76 American troops have died in Iraq, the same number that were killed in all of April. With nine days remaining in December, the monthly total of U.S. deaths could meet or exceed the death toll of 105 in October.

As American deaths in the war pushed closer to 3,000, Iraqis continued to fall victim to sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis. Police recovered 21 more bodies in the cities of Baghdad, Baqouba and Kut. With 140,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq, President Bush is considering whether to send thousands more to control the bloodshed.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates flew back to Washington on Friday to give Bush his advice on transforming U.S. policy in Iraq after holding three days of talks in the war zone with military and political leaders. Gates was scheduled to see the president at the mountain retreat of Camp David, Md., on Saturday.

The White House said Bush would meet with his full National Security Council next Thursday during a stay at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. That session is designed to whittle down the options rather than make final decisions, said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman.

Before leaving Baghdad, Gates declined to say whether he plans to recommend a short-term increase in U.S. troop levels, but said he believes there is "a broad strategic agreement between the Iraqi military and Iraqi government and our military."

"There is still some work to be done," Gates said. "But I do expect to give a report to the president on what I've learned and my perceptions."

Britain's Defense Secretary Des Browne acknowledged Friday he may have to increase the size of Britain's armed forces as a result of commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan - echoing military expansion plans being considered in Washington.

Browne told the Times of London he could consider increasing the size of the armed forces from 95,560 because current deployments had left too little time for training exercises.

"People imagine that the best form of training is to be in Iraq or Afghanistan, but it's not true," Browne was quoted as saying by the newspaper. "While we are deploying troops in their thousands, we lose the chance to build up their basic skills."

Poland, which has 900 soldiers in Iraq, agreed Friday to extend its mission in Iraq until the end of 2007. The Poles focus mainly on training Iraqi security forces and are based in an area south of Baghdad that is calmer than the capital.

Also Friday, South Korean lawmakers endorsed a motion to extend the country's deployment in Iraq for another year, but cut the number of troops in half. The motion calls on the South Korean government to withdraw 1,100 troops of its 2,300-strong contingent in the relatively peaceful, northern city of Irbil by April.

The five U.S. deaths announced Friday took place over two days. One soldier died and another was wounded Friday when their patrol came under fire west of Baghdad, the military said. On Thursday, three Marines and one U.S. sailor died from wounds sustained in combat in western Anbar province.

At least 2,964 American troops have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Meanwhile, Shiites from parliament's largest bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, met Friday in Najaf amid efforts to craft a new coalition that would also include and Kurds and one Sunni party. They had traveled to the holy city to seek approval for the plan from the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a revered Shiite cleric who is said to be alarmed at the bloodshed sweeping swathes of the country.

It was unclear whether such a coalition would be able to govern effectively without the backing of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's 30 loyalists in the 275-member parliament, and his six ministers in the 38-member Cabinet.

The builders of the new coalition are trying to exclude al-Sadr, whose faction has been an integral part of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government but has been boycotting the parliament and Cabinet to protest al-Maliki's recent meeting with Bush.

Officials close to the militia leader said he has agreed to end the three-week boycott and allow supporters to rejoin the government. The anti-American cleric's followers appear to have decided to go back to parliament to strengthen their bargaining power - backed up by a militia army - and avoid political isolation.

The Sadrist walkout has prevented the government from passing laws, contributing to a sense of political crisis alongside a deteriorating security situation.

On Friday, a car bomb killed two people and wounded four in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, police said. A roadside bomb struck a police patrol near the national theater in Baghdad, wounding two policemen.

U.S.-led forces launched raids across the country, killing one militant and capturing several dozen other suspects, the military said.

The operations targeted foreign fighters and al-Qaida in Iraq, the military said. The suspects were believed to be responsible for the movement of foreign fighters, car bombs and other attacks, it said. An al-Qaida in Iraq financier was captured, the statement said.

The purported leader of an al-Qaida-linked militant group offered U.S. troops a one-month truce to withdraw from Iraq without being attacked, according to a speech posted on an Islamic Web site Friday.

The leader of the "Islamic State of Iraq," Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, also called on former officers in Saddam Hussein's disbanded army to join his militia, promising to provide them with a salary and house so long as they could recite Quranic verses.

The authenticity of the audiotape could not be verified but it appeared on a Web site known for displaying militant groups' statements. The "Islamic State of Iraq" is believed to be an umbrella group for militant organizations, including al-Qaida in Iraq.

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