Revised Army Data Significantly Ups Number Of Desertions

The New York Times
Army Revises Upward the Number of Desertions
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

A total of 3,196 active-duty soldiers deserted the Army last year, or 853 more than previously reported, according to revised figures from the Army.

The new calculations by the Army, which had about 500,000 active-duty troops at the end of 2006, significantly alter the annual desertion totals since the 2000 fiscal year.

In 2005, for example, the Army now says 2,543 soldiers deserted, not the 2,011 it had reported. For some earlier years, the desertion numbers were revised downward.

National Public Radio first reported on Tuesday that the Army had been inaccurately reporting desertion figures.

A soldier is considered a deserter if he leaves his post without permission, quits his unit or fails to report for duty with the intent of staying away permanently. Soldiers who are absent without leave — or AWOL, a designation that assumes a soldier still intends to return to duty — are automatically classified as deserters and are dropped from a unit’s rolls if they remain away for more than 30 days.

Some Army officers link the recent uptick in annual desertion rates to the toll of wartime deployments and point to the increasing percentage of troops who are on their second or third tours in Iraq or Afghanistan.

But an Army spokeswoman, Maj. Anne Edgecomb, gave different reasons. Most soldiers desert because of personal, family or financial problems, Major Edgecomb said, adding, “We don’t have any facts to indicate that soldiers who desert now are doing so for reasons different from why soldiers deserted in the past.”

Lt. Col. Brian C. Hilferty, an Army spokesman, said the desertion data errors were caused by confusion among employees who tally them. “They were counting things wrong, and doing it inconsistently,” Colonel Hilferty said in an interview.

He added, “We are looking at the rise in desertions, but the numbers remain below prewar levels, and retention remains high. So the force is healthy.”

The failure to count deserters accurately is inexcusable, said Derek B. Stewart, director for Defense Department personnel issues for the Government Accountability Office.

“It is just unbelievable to the G.A.O. to hear that the Army does not know what that number is,” Mr. Stewart said in an interview Thursday.

Noting that the problem with the desertion numbers arises when the service cannot find enough recruits to fill certain crucial specialties like medical experts and bomb defusers Mr. Stewart said, “In the context of their current recruiting problems for certain occupations, these desertion numbers are huge.”

The new figures also show a faster acceleration in the rate of desertions over the previous two fiscal years than announced. In 2006, for instance, desertions rose by 27 percent, not 17 percent, as the Army had previously reported, a spokesman said.

The revised figures show 2,543 desertions in the fiscal year 2005, an 8 percent increase from the 2,357 the year before. Previously, the service said 2005 desertions dropped by 17 percent, to 2,011 from 2,432.

But from the fiscal year 2000 through 2003, there were hundreds fewer desertions than the Army had previously reported. The Army’s revised data, while reflecting significant errors in year-to-year desertions, showed a total of 22,468 desertions since the fiscal year 2000, nearly the same as the old count of 22,586.

Over all, desertions, a chronic problem in the Army but hardly pervasive, now account for less than 1 percent of active-duty soldiers. The current annual rates pale in comparison with the 33,094 soldiers — 3.41 percent of the total force — who deserted the Army in 1971, during the Vietnam War.

The Army’s data does not reflect deserters from the 63,000 currently activated National Guard and Reserve soldiers, and Colonel Hilferty said that data was not available yesterday. But he said few soldiers from those units deserted.

In an e-mail statement yesterday, Colonel Hilferty also said that the record keeping was damaged in the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon, which destroyed personnel records.

“Unfortunately, for the past several years,” he said, “our methodology for tracking deserters at the macro level has been flawed.”

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Gonzales, Cheney Blocked Call For Guantanamo Closing

The New York Times
New to Pentagon, Gates Argued for Closing Guantánamo Prison
By THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, March 22 — In his first weeks as defense secretary, Robert M. Gates repeatedly argued that the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had become so tainted abroad that legal proceedings at Guantánamo would be viewed as illegitimate, according to senior administration officials. He told President Bush and others that it should be shut down as quickly as possible.

Mr. Gates’s appeal was an effort to turn Mr. Bush’s publicly stated desire to close Guantánamo into a specific plan for action, the officials said. In particular, Mr. Gates urged that trials of terrorism suspects be moved to the United States, both to make them more credible and because Guantánamo’s continued existence hampered the broader war effort, administration officials said.

Mr. Gates’s arguments were rejected after Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and some other government lawyers expressed strong objections to moving detainees to the United States, a stance that was backed by the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, administration officials said.

As Mr. Gates was making his case, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined him in urging that the detention facility be shut down, administration officials said. But the high-level discussions about closing Guantánamo came to a halt after Mr. Bush rejected the approach, although officials at the National Security Council, the Pentagon and the State Department continue to analyze options for the detention of terrorism suspects.

The base at Guantánamo holds about 385 prisoners, among them 14 senior leaders of Al Qaeda, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who were transferred to it last year from secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency. Under the Pentagon’s current plans, some prisoners, including Mr. Mohammed, will face war crimes charges under military trials that could begin later this year.

“The policy remains unchanged,” said Gordon D. Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

Even so, one senior administration official who favors the closing of the facility said the battle might be renewed.

“Let’s see what happens to Gonzales,” that official said, referring to speculation that Mr. Gonzales will be forced to step down, or at least is significantly weakened, because of the political uproar over the dismissal of United States attorneys. “I suspect this one isn’t over yet.”

Details of the internal discussions on Guantánamo were described by senior officials from three departments or agencies of the executive branch, including officials who support moving rapidly to close Guantánamo and those who do not. One official made it clear that he was willing to discuss the internal deliberations in part because of Mr. Gonzales’s current political weakness. The senior officials discussed the issue on ground rules of anonymity because it entailed confidential conversations.

The officials said Mr. Gates and Ms. Rice expressed their concerns about Guantánamo in conversations with Mr. Bush and others, including Mr. Gonzales, beginning in January and onward. One widely discussed alternative would move the prisoners to military brigs in the United States, where they would remain in the custody of the Pentagon and would be subject to trial under military proceedings. There is widespread agreement, however, that moving any detainees or legal proceedings to American territory could bring significant complications.

Some administration lawyers are deeply reluctant to move terrorism suspects to American soil because it could increase their constitutional and statutory rights — and invite an explosion of civil litigation. Guantánamo was chosen because it was an American military facility but not on American soil.

Placing the detainees in military brigs on United States territory might fend off some of those challenges. The solution may eventually require a new act of Congress establishing legal standing for the detainees and new rules for their trial and incarceration if brought to the United States.

Mr. Gates’s criticism of Guantánamo marks a sharply different approach than the one taken by his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld. It also demonstrated a new dynamic in the administration, in which Mr. Gates was teaming up with Ms. Rice, who often was at loggerheads with Mr. Rumsfeld. The State Department has long been concerned about the adverse foreign-policy impact of housing prisoners at Guantánamo.

In the end, Mr. Gates did succeed in killing plans to build a $100 million courthouse and detention complex at Guantánamo, after he argued that the large and expensive project would leave the impression of a long-lasting American detainee operation there and that the money could be more effectively spent elsewhere by the Pentagon. Mr. Gates approved a far more modest facility at one-tenth of the cost.

The setback in his effort to close Guantánamo was described by senior Pentagon officials as Mr. Gates’s only significant failure during an effort in his first three months in office to shift course from policies pursued by Mr. Rumsfeld. The outcome suggests that Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Gonzales remain committed to a detention plan that has become one of the most controversial elements of the administration’s counterterrorism program.

Mr. Cheney’s spokeswoman, Lee Anne McBride, said via e-mail that “we don’t discuss internal deliberations.”

Mr. Bush has repeatedly said he ultimately wants to shutter the detention operations at Guantánamo. But he has also said it is not possible to do so any time soon.

State Department and Pentagon officials have said that even close allies are uncomfortable with American policies toward Guantánamo, making it more difficult in some cases to coordinate efforts in counterterrorism, intelligence and law enforcement.

More than 390 detainees have been transferred abroad from the Guantánamo facility since it was opened amid global controversy in 2002. Last year, 111 detainees were transferred out, and 12 more have been this year. About 20 of those repatriated to home countries have been picked up again in sweeps of terrorism suspects or have been killed or captured in battle, Pentagon officials say.

Many countries do not want to take back the detainees held at Guantánamo. Some home nations will not guarantee that returning detainees would be assured humane treatment and fair trials, while others will not guarantee that detainees viewed by American officials as still dangerous would not be set free.

Mr. Gates’s challenge has sent a ripple through the White House, because it forced officials to confront the question of whether Mr. Bush was actually moving to fulfill his stated desire to close the detention facility. Officials who advocate shutting down Guantánamo, including some at the Pentagon and the State Department, said an underlying motivation of those who want to keep the center open is that closing it would be seen as a public admission of an incorrect policy — something the Bush administration is loath to do.

Neither Mr. Gates nor Ms. Rice have made public their comments to Mr. Bush. “Nobody is going to be insubordinate with the president,” said one senior administration official involved in the discussions. “You know the saying: ‘One war, one team.’ ”

But in a recent Pentagon news conference, Mr. Gates did speak about his concerns over Guantánamo in general terms.

“I think that Guantánamo has become symbolic, whether we like it or not, for many around the world,” Mr. Gates said at the time. “The problem is that we have a certain number of the detainees there who often by their own confessions are people who if released would come back to attack the United States. There are others that we would like to turn back to their home countries, but their home countries don’t want them.”

He said officials “are trying to address the problem of how do we reduce the numbers at Guantánamo and then what do you do with the relatively limited number that would be irresponsible to release.”

“And I would tell you that we’re wrestling with those questions right now,” he continued.

In an interview on Thursday, Gordon England, the deputy secretary of defense who is Mr. Gates’s point man on detention issues, suggested that the long-term answer to Guantánamo might be creating some new international legal structure or set of multilateral agreements to manage captured members of global terrorist organizations.

“I don’t know the alternative unless the international community, frankly, develops an alternative,” Mr. England said. “It is not a U.S. problem. It is an international problem to be dealt with.”

Mr. England said American government officials had “an extraordinarily high degree of confidence from the information available” that many Guantánamo detainees were “going to damage the country, so you just can’t let them go.”

“So,” he added, “this is difficult. I know it’s onerous. I know there are a lot of questions about it. We deal with it the best we can. But at the end of the day, we are not going to put the country or our citizens in jeopardy.”

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The New iRack

The New iRack

Good political humor:


http://www.iranian.com/Anyway/2007/March/i.html

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Don't Take the Offer!

Huffington Post
Cenk Uygur
Don't Take the Offer!

The president has said he will allow his top aides to talk to the Senate if they are not in public, under oath or on the record. Under no circumstances should the Democrats take this offer! None. It's not even close.

Why on God's green earth would the Senate allow anyone to testify without being sworn in?

There is no national security on the line here. It's not even the president or the vice-president (not that I think that's a good excuse). It's the president's political advisers. Of course they should be sworn in.

There is one and only one reason why someone wouldn't want to be sworn in under these circumstances - they want to be able to lie. Only the world's biggest sucker would let them.

No transcript? Are they kidding? Not only do they not want to be criminally liable for their testimony, they don't even want a record of it. How desperate are they to lie?

Finally, politically speaking the Democrats lose nothing by demanding the normal course of business. You get a subpoena, you follow it. Period. The Bush administration looks like they are trying to dodge legitimate questions on this - because they are. They keep getting pounded by the press and the public - because they should.

There is no downside for the Democrats. They are asking perfectly legitimate questions through perfectly legitimate channels. Meanwhile the Bush administration is running from the law and offering no clear explanation for their actions.

If this administration keeps this kind of obstructionist politics and wanton rule-breaking up, they are going to drive their party into the ground. If they refuse to give in to any form of accountability, the only people who will pay a steep price is their own party.

It's not the Democrats that should be pleading with the White House to let the aides testify in public, it's the Republicans. After all, it's their ass on the line in 2008.

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Bush v. Checks and Balances

Huffington Post
Bryan Young
Bush v. Checks and Balances

Bush himself finally held a press conference today to outline his stance on the Attorney General scandal. His stance is essentially this: "Maybe there was some wrong-doing, but if you start investigatin' it, then you're guilty of partisanship. If you hand out subpoenas, I'll be sure to block 'em."

This is most troubling for me because this is essentially Bush thumbing his nose at us, the Congress and Democracy itself.

Here's what he actually said:

"If the Democrats truly do want to move forward and find the right information, they ought to accept what I proposed," Bush said. "If scoring political points is the desire, then the rejection of this reasonable proposal will really be evident for the American people to see."

Bush said he would aggressively fight in court any attempt to subpoena White House aides.

"If the staff of a president operates in constant fear of being hauled before congressional committees ... the president would not receive candid advice and the American people would be ill-served," he said. "I'm sorry the situation has gotten to where it's got, but that's Washington, D.C., for you. You know there's a lot of politics in this town."

Reading this scares the hell out of me and it should scare the hell out of you, too. The staff of a president and the president himself should operate in constant fear of being hauled before a congressional committee. That's pretty much what Congress is for, isn't it? I mean, aside from legislating, they're there at the pleasure of the population to provide oversight into the potential wrong-doing of any other branch of government. That's why they've been given powers of impeachment and oversight in the Constitution. Everyone should operate under the fear that if they do something wrong or illegal in their job that they will be held accountable. Public servants, who serve at the pleasure (or displeasure in Bush's case) of the people absolutely need to worry about what they say and do in the name of the American people. And so for Bush to say that his people will talk to Congress but not under oath or in public, means that they are not confident in the legality of their dealings. It has nothing to do with the fear of losing "candor in advising the President" and it has everything to do with the fact that they've done something wrong.

All I can say is that I hope that Congress does go to the mat with Bush over this because I want every presidency, Republican or Democratic, to have as much transparency in their decision-making process as possible short of risking national security. And I want every Congress, regardless of majority, to have the ability to demand that transparency.

It seems to me to be the best way for Democracy for to thrive and it's no surprise to me that George Bush clearly disagrees with that philosophy.

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Anti-war protesters arrested on Wall Street

Anti-war protesters arrested on Wall Street

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Police arrested 44 anti-war protesters outside the New York Stock Exchange on Monday after they lay down in front of the entrance to mark the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

There was no impact on trade.

Uniformed police outnumbered the fewer than 100 protesters outside the stock exchange building at the corner of Broad and Wall streets in New York's historic financial district.

"Stop the money, stop the war," people chanted as police hauled away limp-bodied protesters.

Protesters said there had been four separate but coordinated acts of civil disobedience. A police spokesman said 44 people were arrested.

Demonstrators said they were directing their protest at major defense contractors Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Halliburton, General Electric and others.

"U.S. service members and Iraqi civilians are dying so that an elite few can profit," said Fabian Bouthillette, 26, a high school teacher who served for two years in the U.S. Navy.

The demonstrators began the day at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, several blocks from the stock exchange, where they were met by seven Vietnam War veterans who said they were guarding the monuments.

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A Mother's Crusade Against the Iraq War

Newsweek.com
A Mother's Crusade Against the Iraq War
Tina Richards came to Congress seeking to save her son, a Marine corporal, from redeployment to Iraq. A chance encounter with Rep. David Obey that was caught on film became an overnight YouTube sensation. Richards speaks out—on her son’s health, the politics of war and what it’s like to be thrust into the limelight.
By Eve Conant

March 19, 2007 - You might not know her name, but she’s fast become a fresh face of the antiwar left. Missouri mom Tina Richards became an overnight YouTube sensation last week, when an encounter she had with Rep. David Obey in a Capitol Hill corridor went viral—just as Congress was debating a bid to rein in spending for President Bush’s surge in Iraq. During the encounter, Richards approaches Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, to discuss her son, Marine Cpl. Cloy Richards—who suffers from undiagnosed traumatic brain injuries following two tours of duty in Iraq and a failure by the military health-care system to provide adequate treatment, his mother says. Obey responds patiently, at first, but the congressman grows agitated as the conversation continues, and he tells Richards that “liberal idiots” were pushing Congress to defund the war—which, Obey argues, would further hurt the cause of veterans whose health-care needs are already being shortchanged.

Richards, the CEO of Grassroots America, a nonprofit devoted to social-justice issues, has continued walking the halls of Congress since then, pushing members to end the war in Iraq. Cloy is due to be deployed to Iraq later this month despite his injuries, she says, and has threatened suicide if he is to be deployed again. She spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Eve Conant about her son, the politics of the war and her newfound place in the antiwar limelight.

NEWSWEEK: How did this run-in with Obey take place? Was that planned?
Tina Richards: People seem to think it was a setup—that it was specially planned with cameras. But Kathleen Gable and Tyler Westbrook are filmmakers who’ve been documenting all peace-movement activities on the Hill, and we had all heard there was going to be a sit-in at Obey’s office. I thought I’d better hurry, not to the sit-in, but to put in my request for an interview with him before it started. Mondays are usually the day I go asking for meetings with everyone on the Subcommittee for Defense Appropriations, Obey is the chair for all appropriations. I try to get to all of the offices of the representatives dealing with defense by Friday. Every Monday I start all over again. What you hear about the failures at the VA and at Walter Reed; these are all affecting my daily life.

How’s that? Why are you making the rounds in Congress?
I went to Obey’s office to drop off letters about my son and some of his poems. I know it sounds stupid, but if you read those poems you’d understand the pain of what this war has done to him and to our families. I never in my dreams thought I’d actually come across Obey in the hallway. I hadn’t actually studied his record before, but I was going to drop off my letter and I knew he had the power to vote against the supplemental. Call me naïve, but I’m just trying to save my son. I see very few people going up there to Congress to say that they are against the war. I talk to staff, to aides, congressmen and congresswomen, and they say the American people are not calling or writing them and don’t seem to care about what’s going on in Iraq. When Obey was yelling, I was trying to remain calm; I didn’t want to aggravate the situation. But I was hoping there’d be a chance for him to listen to my side.

You’ve been getting death threats now, is that right?

Yes. I never attacked or accosted anybody. But I’m getting all these e-mails, some saying I should use the gun my son wants to use on myself. Some on the left are saying I raised a murderer and I deserve this. I’ve read 30 or 40 of these e-mails, and my son has read the rest and is deleting them. I grew up in the military, I believe in a standing army to defend our country. [Richards’s father was in the Marines; her brother was in the Air Force. In addition to Cloy, she has a 13-year-old daughter and a foster son who is currently serving in the California National Guard.] I don’t believe that there’s never a time for war. But diplomacy should come first, and that didn’t happen. Not all the e-mails are bad. One person serving in the military actually sent me $50 to thank me for what I was doing and help me out.

If people came up to the Hill, would they be heard?
Only 1.4 percent of the American population is fighting this war. That means troops and their families. I’ve been criticized [by people saying] that I should know more before I go up there. But I’m just trying to save my son and stop this stupid war, so others don’t have to go through the pain and suffering we’ve had to.

You seem to be following in the footsteps of documentary filmmaker Michael Moore when it comes to corralling lawmakers. How did all this start for you?
I came to D.C. from Missouri on Jan. 27 for the peace march. I coordinated for the state of Missouri for the United for Peace and Justice Coalition, and they had scheduled appointments to discuss their concerns with Congress. I saw that common people were allowed into the halls of Congress—that these are our halls, too. Even if we’re not in all their districts, their votes affect our lives. While I was there, my son called on Jan. 29 to say that the Marine mobilization had called to check again whether he was ready to deploy. He said he had to decide whether to go or to kill himself. I promised him he wouldn’t have to make that choice. I said to him, your voice will be heard in the halls of Congress. I thought the best way would be through his poems.

Why does your son want to kill himself?
Back in September the Marine mobilization unit had contacted him to check where he was and whether he was qualified for redeployment, again. He does qualify because we don’t have forms from the VA for his disability, because they keep sending us letters saying, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you,” and “We’re too busy.’ Back in September I found him sitting in the driveway in the car. He doesn’t drive anymore because he thinks there are roadside bombs everywhere so he can’t actually drive. I thought—why is he in the car? I sat down with him in the car and asked him what was wrong. I saw he’d been crying. He said, “Mom, I can’t go back. I thought I was defending a country, but this war is illegal and immoral and I can’t just go back there and kill innocent Iraqis.” I told him I would take him to Canada. He said he couldn’t leave his duty, but that his choice was either to kill himself or kill innocent Iraqis. I promised him he’d never have to make that decision, and for six weeks now I’ve been going to Congress people to help him….So I’m here and I’ve been walking the halls and that’s where I ran into Kathleen and Tyler [the film crew]. We’ve gone to press conferences of military families who want the troops back home, and no press showed up but them. That’s where we met. These are just two citizens—Kathleen is on the fourth mortgage of her home to be here to film the peace movement, and Tyler left behind his wife and kid to come out here, sleeping on back porches at friends’ houses at first. The American people don’t care about what’s happening to our soldiers like we do. They can put a yellow ribbon on the back of their car, they can turn the TV or radio off, and the war is over for them for the day. We live with this 24 hours a day and can’t shut it out.

What is your son Cloy’s disability?
He has undiagnosed traumatic brain injury: memory loss, severe depression … a rocket exploded near him and he has neck and back injuries. He’s had six or eight concussions while serving in Iraq, and he was never treated for any of them and never diagnosed because the VA system is too broken to do it. I can’t think of all of his symptoms right now, but there are a lot more. I’m sorry, I haven’t slept in a week. I haven’t slept much these past four years. I will sleep when this war is over.

What should the Democratic Party do? Do you have any heroes on the Hill?
Well, the Democratic Party needs to stand up and start being strong. They were given a mandate by the people in the last elections, and polls show people want the war over and they want our troops home. I’d want them to stop using Republican talking points, like to support troops you need to fund the war. In 2004, Bush said that anyone who voted against the supplemental was voting against body armor. The Democrats are so afraid of being viewed as not supporting the troops that they won’t stand up and reframe the debate. I didn’t believe it in ’04 and a lot more people don’t believe it now, so why are they using the same language as George Bush and Dick Cheney? [Rep.] Lynne Woolsey [of California] read my son’s poem and talked about him on the House floor; that gave me a lot of heart. Same goes for Rep. Barbara Lee, Rep. Maxine Waters and Rep. John Conyers. I just ran into Rep. [John] Murtha and told him I’d been trying to get an appointment with him for three weeks. He said that was horrible and rushed into a hearing. And then half an hour into that hearing I got a call from his office to set up an appointment.

Do you see yourself as perhaps the next Cindy Sheehan?
I disagree with Cindy Sheehan on a lot of issues, but I have a great amount of respect for her. Her son sacrificed his life for this war. I know that she stood up at a time when the country was not talking about Iraq. Back then I didn’t even know a peace movement existed. Where I live—in Salem, Mo., a small town in the Ozarks—there is nothing like that. But when I saw her on TV, I thought, wow, there are other people out there who want this war to end, not just me. But she’s also outspoken about her views on issues that are not related to the war, and I don’t agree with some of those views.

There’s been something of a backlash against you, even though Obey made an apology. What’s that feel like?
As for the apology: I left a business card and a letter and my son’s poems all in Obey’s office. I know they can reach me. The incident happened on a Monday, and I have never received a call, and still don’t have an appointment with him because I’m not a constituent. I hear on the news there’s an apology, but I don’t have a TV or radio where I am and I wouldn’t even have known it happened. Maybe it’s just the way I was raised, but when you make an apology you usually talk to the other person.

That said, doesn’t Obey have a point—that defunding might hurt the cause of veterans, like Kane, who are already being shorted by the military health-care system?
A lot of articles and organizations and people a lot smarter than me have debunked that idea. He told me that it took 31 resolutions and the will of the people to end Vietnam. Well, this war won’t be ended by the will of the people. George Bush has had nothing but political pressure on this, but he doesn’t care. After the election he’s sending in more troops. What does 31 resolutions mean, anyway? Think two, three, seven years down the line, how many troops will die by then? Problems with that idea are stated clearly by political analysts. I’m just a mom trying to save her son. You can’t pay for Walter Reed or the VA unless you pay for the continuation of the war? That doesn’t make any sense. I don’t understand why George Bush’s supplemental wasn’t DOA. Democrats now have the support and power to reclaim the debate. And instead of using it, they are using Republican language to justify continuing the war. They are setting themselves up by putting Walter Reed and VA funding on the supplemental.

Are you just going after the Democrats?
People ask me why I’m not going after the Republicans. I’ve been going after them for four years and they don’t listen. I hoped that if I went to Democrats who see this war as illegal and immoral, there would be some dialogue. I’ll keep going through the halls of Congress until I get it, but they keep shutting people out.

Will you go home at some point, perhaps to see your son?
He’s coming to join me in D.C. this week, starting on Monday as I go through the halls of Congress. He wanted to come up and try it for himself. This isn’t easy. I don’t even have rent money right now for my house in Missouri. I’ve been sleeping on a couch in Maryland. But I can’t just go home to my son and make him decide whether to kill himself or be deployed again. I refuse to live with that. [She starts to cry]. I get apologies or people refuse to meet with me, but meanwhile on March 24 he has to report to his Marine Mobilization Unit with documentation that he doesn’t have to prove he’s disabled, because the VA system is too broken to give it to him. I’m looking right now at the Capitol building, and these people have the power to end this and they are not listening. They are shutting us out, the people who are hurting from this war. Maybe I’m stupid or idealistic, but I believe these halls are for the people. This breaks my heart. This is the country and the government I believe in. Maybe this is politics as usual, but I want to finish what I’ve started. Maybe more doors will be slammed in my face, but this isn’t right.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17693308/site/newsweek/?from=rss

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NIH chief: Stem cell ban hobbles science

USA TODAY
NIH chief: Stem cell ban hobbles science

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lifting the ban on taxpayer funding of research on new stem cells from fertilized embryos would better serve both science and the nation, the chief of the National Institutes of Health told lawmakers Monday.

Allowing the ban to remain in place, Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni told a Senate panel, leaves his agency fighting "with one hand tied behind our back."

"It is clear today that American science will be better served — the nation will be better served — if we allow our scientists to have access to more cell lines," Zerhouni told two members of the Senate health appropriations subcommittee during a hearing on the NIH's proposed 2008 budget. The NIH, with a nearly $29 billion annual budget, is the main federal agency that conducts and funds medical research.

Zerhouni's comments appear to be his strongest yet in support of lifting President Bush's 2001 ban that restricted government funding to research using only embryonic stem cell lines then in existence. There are just 21 such lines now in use.

Bush issued the first and so far only veto of his presidency last year when he killed legislation that would have expanded federal funding of stem-cell research. In January, the House passed a revived proposal.

Stem cells are created in the first days after conception and typically are culled from frozen embryos, destroying them in the process. Because they go on to form the body's tissues and cells — Zerhouni called them "software of life" — scientists say they could unlock the mysteries of many diseases and one day lead to cures.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said contamination of the 21 embryonic lines available under the ban make it unlikely they ever will be used in treating humans.

Zerhouni, in answering questions from Harkin and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the only subcommittee members present for his testimony, said the limited number of cell lines aren't sufficient to do needed research.

"We cannot, I do not think, be second best in this area," Zerhouni told the two, both ardent supporters of stem-cell research. He later said other countries, including China and India, are increasing their spending on overall medical research.

Congress doubled the NIH's budget between 1998 and 2003, but it has remained essentially flat since then, when adjusted for inflation.

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2008 Campaign Goes Negative on YouTube; Unauthorized Anti-Clinton Ad Shows YouTube's Potential '08 Influence

ABC News
2008 Campaign Goes Negative on YouTube
Unauthorized Anti-Clinton Ad Shows YouTube's Potential '08 Influence
By JENNIFER PARKER

March 19, 2007 — - A striking, new and unauthorized negative campaign ad for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., that attacks his presidential nomination rival Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., is the latest sensation on the popular video sharing site You Tube.

The 74-second ad is a creative take on director Ridley Scott's controversial 1984 Super Bowl commercial that launched Apple as a brash alternative to market leader IBM.

But this time, the blond female athlete running away from riot-gear clad police and carrying a sledgehammer is wearing an Obama tank top and listening to an iPod.

The ad's protagonist runs past zombie-like citizens watching a grainy, widescreen television image of Clinton talking about her presidential campaign.

Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, is likened to an Orwellian Big Brother, and the female athlete smashes her sledgehammer into the widescreen television and destroys it, shocking the citizens out of their complacency.

"On Jan. 14, the Democratic primary will begin," the ad's tagline reads, "and you'll see why 2008 won't be like 1984."

In the final scenes, the familiar Apple computer symbol is in the shape of an "O" for Obama, which morphs into the Web site address www.barackobama.com.

The website may be Obama's official campaign website, however the ad's creator is a mystery.

The Obama campaign claims it had nothing to do with the video. And today, the Clinton campaign declined to comment on the ad.

The question remains whether this is an attempt for Clinton's rivals to critique her anonymously, or whether it was created independently by political activists.

'Brave New World' of Political Advertising

"This ad represents the emergence of a new era in political advertising," said Simon Rosenberg, president of the Washington-based New Democrat Network, an influential party advocacy group.

"It's a condition of 21st century politics," said Rosenberg. "It's a brave new world...the barrier to entry for politics has been lowered and it's much easier for average Americans to participate and engage."

The ease of new technology is enabling political activists to make their own media and post it online. Using a simple laptop and software, ordinary Americans can garner attention that political campaigns are spending millions of dollars of advertising to get.

"It used to be that unless they bought tens of millions of dollars in advertising, you weren't going to be heard," said Rosenberg. "Now, if an ad catches on, on YouTube or wherever, and becomes trendy and exciting, it could have just as much impact," he said.

Negative Attack Ads Are Nothing New in Campaigns

Experts say negative attack ads have become so prevalent because they have been shown to work. However in this new era of presidential politics, attacks don't have to necessarily come from candidates, and they don't have to air on television to create a stir.

"While these ads effectively push the envelope, they are a double-edged sword," said Matthew Felling, Media Director for the Center for Media and Public Affairs.

"They do cut through the tedious noise of traditional ads, but they also have no rules and can slice up a candidates' credibility," said Felling.

Going negative in a presidential campaign ad is nothing new.

Perhaps the best-remembered example of negative advertising during a presidential campaign was the 1964 "Daisy" ad by President Lyndon B. Johnson's campaign.

The ad aired only once, depicting a 6-year-old girl plucking petals from a daisy -- along with a missile launch countdown and then a nuclear mushroom cloud.

The suggestion was that if elected president, Republican candidate Barry Goldwater might lead the United States to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Goldwater lost by a wide margin.

New Technology May Level Political Playing Field

Experts say the emergence and popularity of YouTube could level the playing field when it comes to third-party attack ads.

In 2004, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth successfully ran a series of negative television ads attacking Sen. John Kerry's, D-Mass., character with half-truths.

The ads were publicly denounced by the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign and officially lambasted by Republicans and Democrats alike.

Initially financed by a wealthy, Republican donor from Texas, the ads had a lasting, damaging effect to Kerry's campaign.

Today, experts say the ease and availability of media technology, and the accessibility and popularity of YouTube, means that political activists with an eye-catching ad don't need big money to make a big impact.

"This is unsettling, particularly for the candidate," said Rosenberg. "It means that increasingly, the political campaigns are going to be one voice among many, albeit a very loud one," he said.

"They're not going to be in control and there's nothing they can do about that," said Rosenberg.

Digital Age of Politics

In addition to the explosion of social networking sites like My Space and Face book, experts say new technology will make independently produced political ads even more accessible. "The next big thing to watch is broadcast quality video becoming available on mobile phones," said Rosenberg, noting that the Apple iPhone is scheduled for launch in June 2007.

"Broadband video will be in 80-million phones by 2009," said Rosenberg, "You Tube is going mobile by the end of the year. Tivo will soon allow you to record things off the internet. Media, including these viral political ads are going to be viewed in a rapidly accelerated way," he said.

More and More People Online Seeking Political Information

While most people continue to turn to traditional news outlets for political news, a majority of Internet users now say they get their political information from alternative Web sites, candidate sites, blogs and comedy sites like Jon Stewart's "Daily Show", according to a January 2007 Pew report.

With more and more people online turning to the internet for political information, and the ability of sites like You Tube to increasingly be able to get video into voters' hands, political watchers say the 2008 campaign is reaching into unchartered digital territory.

"We have no idea what the campaigns are going to look like in Fall 2008 because the velocity of change is increasing," said Rosenberg.

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Material Shows Weakening of Climate Reports

The New York Times
Material Shows Weakening of Climate Reports
By ANDREW C. REVKIN and MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON, March 19 — A House committee released documents Monday that showed hundreds of instances in which a White House official who was previously an oil industry lobbyist edited government climate reports to play up uncertainty of a human role in global warming or play down evidence of such a role.

In a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the official, Philip A. Cooney, who left government in 2005, defended the changes he had made in government reports over several years. Mr. Cooney said the editing was part of the normal White House review process and reflected findings in a climate report written for President Bush by the National Academy of Sciences in 2001.

They were the first public statements on the issue by Mr. Cooney, the former chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Before joining the White House, he was the “climate team leader” for the American Petroleum Institute, the main industry lobby.

He was hired by Exxon Mobil after resigning in 2005 following reports on the editing in The New York Times. The White House said his resignation was not related to the disclosures.

Mr. Cooney said his past work opposing restrictions on heat-trapping gases for the oil industry had had no bearing on his actions once he joined the White House. “When I came to the White House,” he testified, “my sole loyalties were to the president and his administration.”

Mr. Cooney, who has no scientific background, said he had based his editing and recommendations on what he had seen in good faith as the “most authoritative and current views of the state of scientific knowledge.”

Mr. Cooney was defended by James L. Connaughton, chairman of the environmental council and his former boss.

The hearing was part of an investigation, begun under the committee’s Republican chairman last year, into accusations of political interference in climate science by the Bush administration.It became a heated and largely partisan tug of war over the appropriate role of scientists and political appointees in framing how the government conveys information on global warming.

The hearing also produced the first sworn statements from George C. Deutsch III, who moved in 2005 from the Bush re-election campaign to public affairs jobs at NASA. There he warned career press officers to exert more control over James E. Hansen, the top climate expert at the space agency.

Testifying at the hearing, Dr. Hansen said editing like that of Mr. Cooney and efforts to limit scientists’ access to the news media and the public amounted to censorship and muddied the public debate over a pressing environmental issue. “If public affairs offices are left under the control of political appointees,” he said, “it seems to me that inherently they become offices of propaganda.”

Republicans criticized Dr. Hansen for what they described as taking political stances, for spending increasing amounts of time on public speaking and for accepting a $250,000 Heinz Award for environmental achievement from the Heinz Family Philanthropies, run by Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts.

Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, proposed that Dr. Hansen, by complaining about efforts to present two sides on global warming research, had become an advocate for limiting the debate.

Dr. Hansen replied, “What I’m an advocate for is the scientific method.”

Mr. Deutsch said his warnings to other NASA press officials about Dr. Hansen’s statements and news media access were meant to convey a “level of frustration among my higher-ups at NASA.”

Mr. Deutsch resigned last year after it was disclosed that he had never graduated from Texas A&M University, as his résumé on file at NASA said. He has since completed work for the degree, he said Monday.

Democrats focused on fresh details that committee staff members had compiled showing how Mr. Cooney made hundreds of changes to government climate research plans and reports to Congress on climate that raised a sense of uncertainty about the science.

The documents “appear to portray a systematic White House effort to minimize the significance of climate change,” said a memorandum circulated by the Democrats under the committee chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California.

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Kristol & Co. Got It Soooo Wrong Back in 2003 That It Isn't Even Funny

Huffington Post
Jackson Williams
Kristol & Co. Got It Soooo Wrong Back in 2003 That It Isn't Even Funny

The following comes from The Weekly Standard, the well known conservative magazine that FOX News contributor William Kristol edits.

Back on April 21, 2003 they published "The Cassandra Files" (in full here) to crow about the wonderful success of their Iraq war. The subhead of the piece was "The stupidity of the antiwar doomsayers." I looked up the date of this piece, and just to refresh your memory, it ran a mere nine days before President Bush landed on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on May 1 and gave a speech under a banner reading "Mission Accomplished."

In other words, the whole neocon Bush gang was in a very serious and well coordinated "strutting" mode at the time, classically counting their chickens before they'd hatched. The Standard took what it saw as the most off-the-wall and egregious anti-war predictions and then made pithy fun of them. My favorite example is this one:

They don't call it "conventional wisdom" for nothing. Mere days before the fall of Baghdad, one of America's newsweeklies, the "hip" one, makes a fatuous blunder for the ages:

"Cheney [down arrow] tells Meet the Press just before war, 'We will be greeted as liberators.' An arrogant blunder for the ages."

--Newsweek, April 7, 2003 edition

You gotta love that! The Weekly Standard is saying that calling Cheney's "greeted as liberators" comment a blunder was, in fact, itself a blunder for the ages! Here's some other examples the Standard cited as inane in early 2003:

"This invasion of Iraq, if it goes off, will join the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Desert One, Beirut, and Somalia in the history of military catastrophe. What will set it apart, distinguishing it for all time, is the immense--and transparent--political stupidity."

--Chris Matthews, San Francisco Chronicle, August 25, 2002

"Iraqis hate the United States government even more than they hate Saddam, and they are even more distrustful of America's intentions than Saddam's. . . . [I]f President Bush thinks our invasion and occupation will go smoothly because Iraqis will welcome us, then [he] is deluding himself."

--New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, October 4, 2002

But being the soul of magnanimity and restraint, we're not going to do any such thing. Instead, THE SCRAPBOOK is going to run through the streets, laughing hysterically at all the people who were so blinded by hatred of President Bush--or general anti-Americanism, or their own sheer foolishness--that they continued to prophesy doom even after the war had begun and was already being won. People like a certain former U.N. weapons inspector turned Baath party apologist turned peace-movement celebrity:

"The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated....We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of the United States in this war is inevitable. . . . [W]e will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost."

--Scott Ritter, on a South African radio station, March 25, 2003

It takes all kinds, of course. You've got your late-career journalist gasbag, phoning it in from the dinner-party front lines:

"With every passing day, it is more evident that the allies made . . . gross military misjudgments. . . . The very term 'shock and awe' has a swagger to it, no doubt because it was intended to discourage Mr. Hussein and his circle. But it rings hollow now."

--New York Times "news analyst" R.W. Apple Jr., March 30, 2003

You've got your war novelist, phoning it in from his experiences in Vietnam, 30 years ago:

"Visions of cheering throngs welcoming them as liberators have vanished in the wake of a bloody engagement whose full casualties are still unknown. . . . Welcome to hell. Many of us lived it in another era. And don't expect it to get any better for a while."

--James Webb, in the New York Times, March 30, 2003

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2,000 Pages Of Justice Dept. Docs, Emails Released: "You Have No Idea How Bad It Is Here"

US News
Paralysis Sets In as DOJ Faces Crisis
More from chief legal affairs correspondent Chitra Ragavan:

The Justice Department is expected to release more than 400 pages of E-mails and documents by close of business today to comply with a demand from Democrats in Congress over the growing crisis regarding the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year. The crisis has engulfed the department and threatens to cut short Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's tenure.

Update: The Justice Department now says the document dump will contain closer to 2000 documents.

"You have no idea," said one Justice official, "how bad it is here."

The fear that virtually any piece of communication will have to be turned over has paralyzed department officials' ability to communicate effectively and respond in unison to the crisis, as has the fact that senior Justice officials themselves say they still don't know the entire story about what happened that led to the crisis. So they are afraid that anything they put down on paper could be viewed as lies or obfuscation, when in fact, the story is changing daily as new documents are found and as the Office of Legal Counsel conducts its own internal probe into the matter.

The paralysis will affect the calculations that Gonzales must make this week as to whether he should stay or go. If Gonzales doesn't resign, there's little doubt that he will get few of his initiatives through for the rest of his tenure and that his people will spend months churning out documents at the behest of angry Democrats who will be investigating virtually anything that moves. But this could also give Gonzales an exit strategy, officials say. He could say that while neither he nor his subordinates did anything wrong, he has decided to resign for the greater good of the department and for justice at large.

The Bush administration is making its own calibrated calculations. A stubbornly loyal individual, the president has had trouble cutting his ties to his embattled cabinet secretaries. However, if he chooses to keep Gonzales on, he is at risk of seriously eroding political capital at a time when his administration is being criticized even by party loyalists.

But if he decides to let him go, then who can fill Gonzales's place? For one thing, who would want the job? And who could Bush find that could get Senate confirmation, since Democrats now run the show? It would have to be a seasoned insider, a consummate veteran or an elder statesman who has bipartisan respect and acceptance and a squeaky-clean record.

"The trouble," says one former official, "is that no one comes to mind."

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In March, Protesters Recall War Anniversaries

The New York Times
In March, Protesters Recall War Anniversaries
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and SARAH ABRUZZESE

WASHINGTON, March 17 — Thousands of demonstrators marched to the Pentagon on Saturday to mark both the fourth anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq and the 40th anniversary of the march along the same route to protest the Vietnam War.

The march coincided with other demonstrations in Washington, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and elsewhere in advance of the March 20 anniversary of the invasion. The liberal group MoveOn.org has held many small protest vigils around the country. And in Washington on Friday night a coalition of liberal Christian groups, including Sojourners/Call to Renewal, led several thousand people in a march that began with a service at the National Cathedral. More than 200 participants were arrested praying in front of the White House, the police said.

Saturday’s march was organized by the Answer Coalition — named for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism — an organization that was initially associated with the Workers World Party and now affiliated with a breakaway faction of that party called the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

The turnout for the march was much smaller than the crowd that gathered two months ago on the National Mall for a demonstration opposing President Bush’s plan to send more troops to Iraq. That event featured speeches by a members of Congress who opposed the war as well as a handful of Hollywood stars.

Judging by the speeches and placards, the marchers on Saturday set their sights on sweeping goals, including not only ending the war but also impeaching President Bush and ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Many carried Answer Coalition signs bearing the image of the Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara.

Brian Becker, the national coordinator of the Answer Coalition and a member of the Party of Socialism and Liberation, said the group held out little hope of influencing either the president or Congress. “It is about radicalizing people,” Mr. Becker said in an interview. “You hook into a movement that exists — in this case the antiwar movement — and channel people who care about that movement and bring them into political life, the life of political activism.”

In a speech before the march, Cindy Sheehan, who made headlines in 2005 camping outside the Mr. Bush’s Texas ranch after her son was killed in Iraq, called the president and his military advisers “war criminals.”

“We want the people in the White House out of our house and arrested for crimes against humanity,” Ms. Sheehan said.

As they gathered before the march, the protesters met what several veterans of the antiwar movement described as an unusually large contingent of several hundred counterdemonstrators. Many were veterans in biker jackets who said they had come to protect the nearby Vietnam Memorial, citing rumors that had circulated among veterans groups that the demonstrators planned to deface it.

Crossing the bridge toward the Pentagon, the marchers met another group of about 50 counterdemonstrators by the Arlington Cemetery, one holding a sign that said: “Go to hell traitors. You dishonor our dead on hallowed ground.”

Near the Pentagon, police officers in riot gear spread across the road, effectively blocking the demonstrators from approaching the building. Five people were arrested by the Pentagon Force Protection Agency for “failure to obey a lawful order,” said Cheryl Irwin, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

Many in the crowd said they were unfamiliar with the Answer Coalition and puzzled by the many signs about socialism. Several said they had come from across the country for a chance to voice their dismay at the war.

Alan Rainey, an adjunct professor and small publisher from West Lafayette, Ind., said he had not attended a protest since 1973, not long after he had returned from military duty in Vietnam. On Saturday, he carried a sign with green clover and a St. Patrick’s Day theme. “Help drive the snakes out of the White House,” it said, depicting snakes with the faces of Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

“This war is criminal,” Mr. Rainey said. “We impeached Clinton for a little indiscretion with an adult.”

Judy Creville, who came from Michigan, said she had opposed the war from the start but never attended a protest before. “They got on my last nerve,” Ms. Creville said. She came with two sisters from Michigan and Iowa, and all three wore pictures of their school-age grandchildren.

Zohrea Whitaker said she came from Sacramento for the protest. “I have a son serving over there, and I want him home,” Ms. Whitaker said.

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The Lessons of Iraq

Huffington Post
Gary Hart
The Lessons of Iraq

Very soon a new industry called "The Lessons of Iraq" will be born, even as the search for the end-game continues against the back-drop of the theme "who lost Iraq." Partisan strategists will be allocating blame while more thoughtful citizens will try to draw lessons for future generations.

Some lessons are apparent.
Do not manufacture justification for invasions. Plan for all eventualities, including the most unpleasant. Do not pay exiles to tell you what you want to hear. Deal honestly with Congress and the American people. Be candid about possible costs in lives and money. And an endless list of common sense, and Constitutional, dos and don'ts.

The second kind of lessons are less obvious and have to do with the new realities of the 21st century:

First, treat jihadist terrorism more like organized crime than traditional warfare. By declaring "war on terrorism" we made the fatal mistake that it could be crushed using conventional warfare and massed armies. We clearly had the legal and moral right to overturn the Taliban government in Afghanistan that harbored al Qaeda as it planned and carried out the 9.11 attacks. Even so, the democratization of an ancient tribal society is proving hugely more difficult than driving the Taliban out of Kabul. Indeed, it seems set on returning.
Instead, we should create NATO II, an organization combining the intelligence services, law enforcement agencies, and special forces of Western democracies to coordinate the crushing of jihadist cells.

Second, liberate the U.S. from dependence on Persian Gulf oil. We can then sharply reduce the U.S. military presence in the region and remove the single most important iincentive for jihadism. A consortium of oil consuming nations can agree with regional oil producers to protect the continued flow of oil to world markets. The U.S. should not be the default guarantor of oil supplies. We would also help rid ourselves of the hypocrisy of "bringing democracy to the Middle East" even as we support Saudi Arabia and other oligarchies, and we would be at greater liberty to support genuine democratic voices in the region.

Third, restore principle to American foreign policy. Neoconservatives who dominate the Bush administration have used the Wilsonian rhetoric of "democratic idealism" even as they pursue the most cynical and dishonest policies. These policies, including covert support for highly undemocratic regimes and factions, repression of dissent, and cynical manipulation of local politics, are hidden from the American people but are well known to the people of the countries where we carry them out. We must regain our moral authority in the world by living up to our own high ideals and Constitutional principles.

Fourth, engage the nations of the world in achieving security for the global commons.

Security in the 21st century now means much more than it did in the Cold War 20th century. It includes security and openness of markets, security of the environment and reversal of global warming, security of energy supplies, security of livelihood, and the security of healthy communities. The U.S. is expected to understand the new century and lead the world in replacing narrow notions of national security with the much greater appreciation for the security of the global commons.

Too little sober thought was given to the real lessons of Vietnam. Instead, three decades of recriminations prevented serious reflection and mature judgment. Liberal forces were seen by too many Americans as unconcerned for our security and suffered political defeat as a result. Those same forces should now take the lead in framing the debate about the true lessons of Iraq and the creation of a new definition of America's role in the world of the 21st century.

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Leahy Wants Bush Aides to Testify on Fired Prosecutors

The New York Times
Leahy Wants Bush Aides to Testify on Fired Prosecutors
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, March 18 — The Democratic senator leading the inquiry into the dismissal of federal prosecutors insisted today that Karl Rove and other top aides to President Bush must testify publicly and under oath, setting up a confrontation between Congress and the White House, which has said it is unlikely to agree to such a demand.

Some Republicans have suggested that Mr. Rove, as well as Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, and William Kelley, the deputy White House counsel, testify privately, if only to tamp down the political uproar.

But Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, seemed to rule out such a move today, saying that his committee would vote Thursday to issue subpoenas in the inquiry, which centers on whether the White House allowed politics to interfere with law enforcement.

“I do not believe in this, ‘we’ll have a private briefing for you where we’ll tell you everything,’ and they don’t,” Mr. Leahy said on the ABC News program “This Week.” adding: “I want testimony under oath. I am sick and tired of getting half-truths on this.”

Lawmakers of both parties agree that the fate of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales may rest on what happens this week, as the White House and Congress either come to blows — or finds a compromise — over the testimony lawmakers are demanding. With Mr. Bush out of town at Camp David, the White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding, spent the weekend in Washington weighing whether to allow Mr. Rove and the others to talk and, if so, under what conditions.

In response to Mr. Leahy’s comments today, Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, said the Bush administration was standing by its earlier promise that Mr. Fielding would give Democrats an answer on Tuesday.

“Fred has been talking with folks on Capitol Hill, analyzing various statements and conversations with folks on the Hill, and we will get back to them,” Mr. Snow said in a brief telephone interview.

He would not say which way White House officials are leaning.

“This is a complex matter and deserves careful consideration,” Mr. Snow added.

Dan Bartlett, counselor to Mr. Bush, has said it is “highly unlikely” that the president would waive executive privilege to allow his top aides to testify publicly. One Republican strategist close to the White House, speaking on condition of anonymity so as not to appear to be representing the administration, said: “No president is going to let their senior staff assistant to the president go testify. Forget that. They might agree to do an informal interview, but they’ll never testify.”

Democrats, citing a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, say presidential advisers, including 47 from the Clinton administration alone, have frequently testified before Congressional committees, both while serving the president and after they had left the White House.

Even so, legal experts say precedent does not play a role in decisions about whether to waive executive privilege; each administration, in effect, writes its own rules. The Bush administration has been particularly protective of executive privilege, and Republicans close to the White House say the decision about whether, or how much, to cooperate will come down to a calculation of the political risks and rewards.

Television news programs today were filled with talk of the prosecutors’ dismissals, and whether they would cost Mr. Gonzales his job. While Mr. Gonzales did not appear on any of the programs — he declined requests from at least two networks — two of the fired prosecutors spoke out, as did at least five senators, including Mr. Leahy and his Republican colleague on the Judiciary Committee, Senator John Cornyn of Texas.

None of the Republicans who took to the airwaves today offered a spirited defense of the Bush administration, but Mr. Cornyn and others did take exception to the Democratic vow to subpoena White House officials and accused some Democrats of trying to turn the issue to their political advantage.

“I’ll join Senator Leahy in getting to the facts and following the facts where they may lead,” Mr. Cornyn said. But he accused some Democrats of crossing this line “into basically a political witch hunt,” citing the role of Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, as head of the subcommittee running the investigation into the dismissals of the prosecutors.

He accused Mr. Schumer of “a conflict of interest.”

“They’re raising money on the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Web site over this issue,” Mr. Cornyn said.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Mr. Leahy’s counterpart on the Judiciary Committee, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania sounded cautious when asked if he still had confidence in Mr. Gonzales. The Pennsylvania senator, a former Philadelphia district attorney, has clashed with the attorney general on a range of issues — including the administration’s domestic eavesdropping program — but said today that he was “reserving judgment” until the inquiry is complete.

Already, the uproar over the dismissals has led to the resignation of Mr. Gonzales’ chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, whose plan to remove seven of the nation’s 93 United States attorneys was detailed in e-mail messages made public last week. The e-mails showed that over the last two years, Mr. Sampson had consulted extensively with the White House about planning for the firings — information that contradicted earlier assertions by Justice Department officials that the White House was not involved.

Mr. Schumer said his aides had spoken Saturday night to Mr. Sampson’s lawyer, and had received indications that Mr. Sampson “wants to come forward.” Speaking on “Meet the Press” on NBC, Mr. Schumer said, “It’s a real possibility that he will voluntarily testify.”

The lawyer, Brad Berenson, said in an e-mail message today that he had no comment on his client’s plans.

Democrats want to know who hatched the plan to remove the prosecutors, and why. They are suspicious that the prosecutors were removed for either pursuing or failing to pursue politically charged cases, including ethics scandals and voter fraud investigations. One of the seven prosecutors, David Iglesias of New Mexico, told “Fox News Sunday” that he considered his dismissal “a political hit.”

Mr. Iglesias was removed after a Republican senator, Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, complained to President Bush about lax prosecution of voter fraud cases in his home state. Mr. Bush has said he passed on the complaint, in general terms and without mentioning any prosecutors’ names, to Mr. Gonzales.

Another of the fired prosecutors is Carol Lam, whose work as the United States attorney in San Diego resulted in the conviction of Randy Cunningham, a former Republican congressman now serving eight years in prison. Today, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat and a member of the Judiciary Committee, cited Ms. Lam’s dismissal in echoing Mr. Leahy’s demand for public testimony from Mr. Rove.

“I think he should come up to the committee and speak under oath about it,” Ms. Feinstein said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”

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Senate may subpoena White House aide Karl Rove

Reuters
Senate may subpoena White House aide Karl Rove

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House political strategist Karl Rove will face a Senate subpoena this week if he does not agree to testify in a dispute over fired prosecutors that has put pressure on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to quit, a Senate committee head said on Sunday.

But minority Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee stopped short of seeking to compel members of the White House staff to testify under oath. They have called for Gonzales to come to Congress to explain the firing of eight U.S. attorneys and clear up the varying reasons given for their ouster.

The White House is in talks with Congress over whether to allow testimony by officials including Rove -- whose former aide had been selected to replace one of the fired prosecutors. The replacement helped fuel charges the dismissals were politically motivated.

But one way or another, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Judiciary Committee chairman, made it clear he wanted the officials to testify at the Senate under oath.

"The final decision on putting on the agenda subpoenas is mine," Leahy said on ABC's "This Week." "And it will be on Thursday this week, among the subpoenas that will be voted on, will be one for Karl Rove and one for (former White House counsel) Harriet Miers, another one for her deputy."

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, one of Bush's strongest Republican supporters in Congress, agreed on the same show that the committee needed to hear Justice Department officials.

But he said he feared Democrats "want to cut to the chase and let's get Karl Rove there and have a political circus."

As far as subpoenas for the White House, Cornyn said he was worried about violating the constitutional separation of powers between Congress and the White House.

"This is what I'm talking about when I say a legitimate investigation can be overreached," Cornyn said, saying he did not want the probe to become "a political witch hunt."

Critics say the Bush administration fired the prosecutors to make room for Republican allies. Democrats say the attorneys angered powerful Republicans, partly by pursuing corruption probes against Republican lawmakers, and Gonzales fired them in retaliation.

RESIGNATION CALLS

Gonzales is trying to fend off resignation calls from Democrats and some Republicans. He has previously drawn fire for policies that critics say eroded U.S. civil liberties and contributed to abuse of foreign detainees.

A Newsweek poll on Saturday said 58 percent of the U.S. public believed the prosecutors' firings were driven by political concerns.

Gonzales called all the U.S. attorneys on Friday, a Justice Department official said. "He apologized not for the dismissals, but rather for the handling of the situation including that the suggestion the prosecutors had performed poorly was ultimately discussed publicly," he said.

The White House first said the idea of firing all the federal prosecutors at the beginning of Bush's second term came from Miers.

But e-mails last week brought up the involvement of Rove.

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Thousands march to protest Iraq war

Reuters
Thousands march to protest Iraq war
By Caren Bohan

ARLINGTON, Virginia (Reuters) - Thousands of anti-war demonstrators, some carrying yellow and black signs reading "U.S. out of Iraq now!" marched on the Pentagon on Saturday, one of several protests worldwide to mark four years of war.

The march, on a cold, cloudy and windy St. Patrick's Day, comes just before the fourth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war on Tuesday and 40 years after a similar protest at the Pentagon over the Vietnam War.

On a stage in the Pentagon parking lot, speaker after speaker demanded the end of the war in Iraq and some called for President George W. Bush's impeachment. A flag-draped coffin was displayed near the stage bearing a picture of a young soldier killed in Iraq.

"We're here in the shadow of the war machine," peace activist Cindy Sheehan said. "We need to shut it down."

Wearing a black ski cap, Sheehan said soldiers like her son, Casey, who was killed in Iraq, were being sent "to die for nothing."

A woman for the group that organized the protest told the cheering crowd, "Impeach Bush, impeach Cheney, impeach Gates." The latter references were to Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Jonathan Hutto, a 29-year-old active-duty sailor who served in Iraq, urged the demonstrators to tell lawmakers "to get a backbone and spine" and stop the war.

The march began near the Vietnam War Memorial, just a few blocks from the White House, and proceeded across the Potomac River toward the Pentagon.

A smaller group of war supporters held a counter-demonstration with signs that said: "Win the war or lose to jihad," "Our troops are shedding their blood to keep terrorists from America," and "St. Patrick: Drive the Democrats from our land."

One of the supporters, Vietnam War veteran David Warne, 57, said, "What you need to have is the military fight a war, not a bunch of politicians," referring to efforts by Democrats in Congress to limit the war.

"JAIL TO THE CHIEF"

In the anti-war protest, one sign near the front read, "The worst tyrants ever: Napoleon, Hitler and Bush." Others read, "Jail to the chief" and "Impeach Bush for war crimes." Many protesters chanted "Troops out now."'

Frustration over the Iraq war cost Bush's Republicans control of Congress in elections last year and is the main reason his poll numbers are stuck near 30 percent, the lowest of his presidency.

Bush also faces other problems, including complaints of poor health care for U.S. veterans, the perjury conviction of a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and an uproar over the firing of U.S. prosecutors that has prompted calls for the ouster of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Bush announced in January he was sending 21,500 additional troops to Iraq, further stoking anger over the war. The number of extra troops being sent has climbed to around 30,000 with the addition of support troops. His plan aims to quell violence in Baghdad and the western province of Anbar.

The march marked the latest protest in Washington against the war in which more than 3,200 U.S. troops have died.

Police in Los Angeles said 5,000 to 6,000 protesters turned out for an anti-war rally there. In downtown Hollywood, many protesters carried signs in Spanish and there were at least 12 fake coffins covered with the American flag.

One sign read "Iraq is Bush's Vietnam" and another read, "Bush lies, soldiers die." People chanted "Bring the troops home now" and "No more war."

Other demonstrations were planned for Austin, Texas, San Francisco and Seattle. Protests were also staged or planned in Australia, Britain, and Canada.

Democrats in Congress are wrestling with legislation to set deadlines on the U.S. military presence in Iraq. A proposal to be debated soon in the House of Representatives would tie approval of $124 billion in emergency war funds to a troop pullout by September 2008.

Warning that a U.S. withdrawal would worsen the violence in Iraq, Bush has labeled such proposals an attempt by lawmakers to "micromanage" the war and has threatened a veto.

"The consequences of imposing such an artificial timetable would be disastrous," Bush said in his weekly radio address on Saturday.

(Additional reporting by Nichola Groom in Los Angeles and James Vicini in Washington)

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10 Detainees Pull Off Escape as Visitors Take Their Place

10 Detainees Pull Off Escape as Visitors Take Their Place
By Alissa J. Rubin
New York Times

BAGHDAD, March 16 — Ten Iraqis being held in a British military detention center in Basra carried out an audacious escape plan over the past several days: they switched places with visitors, British authorities said Friday.

An 11th detainee was missing, but no one appeared to have been substituted for him, British authorities said. The detention center is at a British base on the outskirts of Basra.

The escape came to light on Thursday, when it became apparent that “one person was not who he said he was,” said a spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity. The military began to investigate and found that nine other detainees were also substitutes. The real ones had walked out the door, apparently after swapping clothes with their willing stand-ins, British officials said.

The substitutions were carefully plotted, and the imposters “were remarkably well prepared,” the spokesman said.

“They looked the same,” he said. “They knew the stories of the people they were substituting for. It was quite a sophisticated effort, very carefully planned.”

Because none of the detainees who escaped had yet been charged with a crime, the British military would not provide any details about their cases or the facility in which they were held, including its size or the length of time that they had been held there.

British officials said that security was now tighter, but that when detainees received visitors before, there had been little monitoring.

“They are allowed a large number of visitors, and we are not allowed to stand over them when they are visiting them,” the spokesman said.

There has been no decision how to deal with the imposters, but they are likely to be charged with having assisted the escape, the military spokesman said.

“I’m afraid that there are now people inside who shouldn’t be,” he said. “We are very unhappy about it all.”

Thousands of Iraqis are held in American and British facilities in Iraq awaiting determinations on whether they will be charged with crimes. Some have been detained for more than two years.

Across Iraq, 12 bodies were found on Friday: nine in Diyala Province and three in Kirkuk, according to local police reports and the Ministry of Interior. On Thursday, the bodies of five people were found in Tikrit, including of two women and two policemen; all five had been shot.

A tanker truck exploded late Friday near Ameriya al Falluja, outside the city of Falluja, west of Baghdad, according to reports by the satellite network Al Arabiya. The news report described the explosion as a terrorist attack and said that three people had died and 79 had been wounded. There were few details and it was not possible to verify the report.

The United States Army announced Friday that it was speeding up the deployment to Iraq of some 2,600 soldiers from a combat aviation unit. They are among the support troops that the Pentagon has said are needed to back the additional combat troops President Bush has sent to the region.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates approved the deployment of the soldiers, from the Army’s Third Infantry Division combat aviation brigade, 45 days earlier than planned, meaning they will go around May, the military told Pentagon reporters.

Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in the vast Sadr City district of Baghdad to rally against the deployment of American troops in the neighborhood. A similar demonstration was planned for the city of Hilla, south of Baghdad, but was prevented by a government curfew.

The objections, coming after nearly two weeks in which supporters of the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr appeared to have tacitly approved the establishment of security centers for Iraqi and American troops, seem to have been prompted by an attack that seriously wounded Sadr City’s mayor on Thursday.

After Friday Prayer, the Sadr City crowds chanted, “We swear by God we shall burn your bases if you install them,” and they carried banners that said “Down, down U.S.A.”

Mr. Sadr sent a statement to his followers urging them to protest the American presence. “I’m very sure that you consider them as enemies,” the statement said, and it asked his followers to shout: “No, no, America. No, no, Israel. No, no, Satan.”

However, the tone was far less angry than at other times Mr. Sadr has urged opposition to the military. Instead, the statement mostly seemed to be an effort by the cleric to distance himself from the security plan without making any substantial effort to thwart it.

Also Friday, Saddoun Humadi, one of the most senior Shiites in the government of Saddam Hussein, died in Jordan, according to Jordanian news reports. Mr. Humadi, a former prime minister and speaker in the Iraqi Parliament, was arrested by the United States after the invasion, but was later released and went to Jordan.

Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting from Washington, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Diyala, Kirkuk, Hilla and Baghdad.

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Chlorine bombs poison hundreds in Iraq

Reuters
Chlorine bombs poison hundreds in Iraq
By Waleed Ibrahim

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Insurgents in western Iraq set off three chlorine gas car bombs, U.S. forces said on Saturday, weeks after two similar attacks sparked fears of a new campaign using unconventional weapons in Iraq.

The Friday attacks, which the U.S. military said made hundreds ill and killed at least two, came a month into a U.S.- Iraqi security crackdown in Baghdad aimed at stemming sectarian violence that threatens to pitch Iraq into outright civil war.

In Washington, thousands of anti-war demonstrators, some carrying signs reading "U.S. out of Iraq now!" marched toward the Pentagon. Police said about two dozen had been arrested in front of the White House late on Friday, just days ahead of the fourth anniversary of the start of the war.

Tens of thousands protested against the war across Spain, in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville and other cities. In the capital, left-wing political leaders and Spanish celebrities such as film director Pedro Almodovar marched behind a banner reading "End the occupation in Iraq, shut down Guantanamo".

The U.S. military said two suicide bombers driving dump trucks carrying chlorine made 350 people ill near the town of Falluja on Friday, and a smaller car bomb near Ramadi also released chlorine, though there were few casualties.

The U.S. statement reported two deaths in one of the attacks but hospital sources said earlier eight people were killed and dozens became ill after the two bombings in the Falluja area.

The U.S. military announced the combat deaths of six soldiers, four killed by a roadside bomb in western Baghdad and one shot dead in Baquba, north of the capital on Saturday. Another died in a bomb blast south of Baghdad on Friday.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard, one of Washington's most loyal allies in the war, visited Baghdad on Saturday and told Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that Australia would keep its troops in Iraq as long as they were needed.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation said Howard's plane made an emergency landing after a visit to Australian troops in southern Iraq. The plane's loading bay filled with smoke, forcing it to return to Talil airbase. The cause of the incident was not immediately clear. Howard disembarked safely.

Chlorine gas was widely used in World War One but its use in insurgent attacks in Iraq has particular resonance there. Saddam Hussein attacked Kurdish areas with chemical weapons in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.

Two bombs with chlorine killed eight people earlier this year. It causes severe burns when inhaled and can cause death.

The U.S. military said they discovered an al Qaeda car bomb factory last month near Falluja with chlorine tanks.

Anbar, a mainly Sunni Arab province in which Falluja lies, has long been among the most troublesome areas of Iraq for U.S. forces.

HOUSING HIT

Friday's two bombs near Falluja exploded within 40 minutes of each other.

In the first, near the town of Amiriya, two Iraqi police were killed and up to 100 Iraqis showed signs of chlorine exposure, with symptoms ranging from minor skin and lung irritation to vomiting, the U.S. statement said.

Soon afterwards, a suicide bomber detonated a dump truck carrying a 200-gallon (900-liter) chlorine tank rigged with explosives south of Falluja. Around 250 civilians became ill.

Earlier on Friday, a smaller bomb using chlorine detonated at a checkpoint northeast of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, wounding one U.S. soldier and one Iraqi civilian.

Hospital sources said one of the Falluja attacks targeted a large housing complex, killing six people including policemen, while the second targeted a tribal leader opposed to al Qaeda.

U.S. commanders say a growing number of tribes in Anbar have joined forces to take on al Qaeda, which has hit back with major bombs targeting civilians.

Baghdad was relatively quiet on Saturday, but a suicide car bomb in the west of the city killed two people, including one policeman, and wounded five.

There were no reports of further trouble in Sadr City, a Shi'ite militia stronghold where about 2,000 supporters of radical anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr gathered on Friday to demand U.S. forces withdraw.

Sadr City, a stronghold of Sadr's Mehdi Army militia, is seen as a crucial test of Maliki's plan to crack down on violence by both Shi'ite militias and Sunni Arab insurgents.

(Additional reporting by Mussab Al-Khairalla, Claudia Parsons and Ibon Villelabeitia in Baghdad and Caren Bohan in Washington)

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Former Bush education official admits ethics breach

Reuters
Former Bush education official admits ethics breach

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The former No. 2 official at the U.S. Education Department has agreed to pay $50,000 for violating conflict-of-interest rules by not selling bank stock while in office, the Justice Department said on Friday.

Eugene Hickok, who resigned as deputy education secretary in January 2005, also admitted liability in the case, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor and Education Department Inspector General John Higgins said in a statement.

Hickok became deputy education secretary in a recess appointment by President George W. Bush in April 2004 after having been under secretary since July 2001.

During that time, he and his wife owned stock in several banks, including Bank of America Corp., according to settlement documents.

Because the banks participate in a program in which they receive government guarantees for lending money to students, Education Department and White House ethics officials told Hickok in January 2004 that he and his family would have to divest their bank holdings, the documents said.

Although Hickok said he and his wife divested their bank holdings and did actually sell most of them in June 2004, he held on to more than 800 Bank of America shares, even though "several issues" came before him "that may have had a direct and predictable effect on the company," the documents said.

Before joining the Bush administration, Hickok served for six years as Pennsylvania's education secretary.

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