Flag-desecration amendment needs 1 more vote

USA TODAY
Flag-desecration amendment needs 1 more vote
By Andrea Stone, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The Senate is one vote away from passing a constitutional amendment that would ban desecration of the U.S. flag, the closest that amendment supporters have been to passage.

The American Legion, which supports the amendment, and the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes it, both say there are 66 votes to pass it.

Whether advocates can find the 67th vote to send the flag amendment to the states for ratification remains unclear. A Senate vote is set for the week of June 26.

Elections, post-9/11 patriotism and the Iraq war have improved the measure's prospects since the Senate last voted in 2000, says Patrick Brady of the Citizens Flag Alliance. "We're very hopeful we'll get it," he says.

The House of Representatives last year approved the flag amendment 286-130. It was the seventh time it had done so since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Texas law banning flag burning in 1989. The next year, the court ruled that the federal Flag Protection Act violated the First Amendment's free speech guarantee.

"The American flag is a unique symbol that should be protected," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the chief sponsor.

Paul McMasters of the non-partisan First Amendment Center, which works to protect that amendment's freedoms, says the Senate is trying to provide "a radical solution to a non-problem. It's unwise, unnecessary and un-American."

Four times in the Senate, the flag measure has failed to receive the two-thirds majority required of constitutional amendments. In 2000, the amendment came up four votes short with 63.

But as Flag Day approaches Wednesday, advocates on both sides of the issue say momentum has shifted. Reasons:

•Republican gains. Sens. George Allen of Virginia, John Thune of South Dakota, John Ensign of Nevada and Richard Burr of North Carolina, all supporters of an amendment, replaced Democrats who opposed one.

•Supportive Democrats. Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and at least 13 other Democrats have voted for or voiced support for the amendment. New Jersey's Robert Menendez voted for it as a House member, and his spokesman, Allyn Brooks-LaSure, says his "current intention" is to do so as a senator. Menendez replaced now-Gov. Jon Corzine, who had opposed it.

•State resolutions. All 50 states have approved non-binding resolutions endorsing an amendment. "That is unprecedented and shouldn't be ignored," American Legion legislative director Steve Robertson says. "We will see if the senators are listening to their constituents or not."

Thirty-eight, or three-fourths, of the 50 states must ratify the measure to make it the 28th Amendment.

It took a record 202 years for states to ratify the 27th Amendment, which says a congressional pay raise can't take effect until after the next election has been held. The 26th Amendment, guaranteeing 18-year-olds the right to vote, was the quickest to be ratified: It took 100 days in 1971.

For now, enough senators — including three Republicans — remain opposed to the flag amendment to keep it from getting to the states. Sen. Robert Bennett of Utah wants to write a law instead of rewriting the Constitution. Majority Whip Mitch McConnell of Kentucky objects to altering the First Amendment. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island also voted no in 2000.

John Vile, a constitutional law expert at Middle Tennessee State University, says some believe that the amendment "would be the first in U.S. history to restrict the Bill of Rights."

Despite ads by the Citizens Flag Alliance urging his support, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., has no plans to vote yes and does not believe his re-election will be affected. Says spokesman Chris Thorne: "This is not an issue that people are talking to us about."



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A Bush Aide's Blunt Words

washingtonpost.com
A Bush Aide's Blunt Words
New Adviser Pulled No Punches in His Magazine Pieces
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer

Bill Clinton is a "virtuoso deceiver" and Hillary Rodham Clinton a "true chameleon" guilty of "self-serving behavior, comparative radicalism, and dubious personal morality."

Al Gore is a "mad dog" known to "foam at the mouth." John McCain is given to "showboating." And Jacques Chirac, Nelson Mandela, Gerhard Schroeder and Kofi Annan are all "feckless fools."

Says who? President Bush's new chief domestic policy adviser. While most White House aides carefully trim their public commentary, they can't take back what they said before arriving in the West Wing, and few in this day and age arrive with a more provocative paper trail than Karl Zinsmeister, who started his new job yesterday.

For a dozen years until his appointment, Zinsmeister held forth on all manner of issues and personalities as editor in chief of the American Enterprise Institute's magazine. With a sharp pen, he skewered the left, taking special aim at environmentalists, anti-globalists, feminists, contemporary artists, university faculties, Hollywood, Broadway and particularly the media, composed mainly of "left-wing, cynical, wiseguy Ivy League types, with a high prima donna quotient."

A review of years of articles reveals a formidable thinker with a powerful sense of what he considers right and wrong. As Zinsmeister sees it, racial profiling by the police makes sense; the military, if anything, treats terrorist suspects too gently; and casual sex has led to wrecked cities, violence and "endless human misery." In a "soft, often amoral, and self-indulgent age," he warned, some children "will be ruined without a whip hand," and he assured that "things generally go better with God."

Although Zinsmeister wrote admiringly of Bush, his future boss was not exempt from remonstration when he seemed to stray. Zinsmeister chided candidate Bush for promising he would make it easier for legal immigrants to bring in relatives and questioned whether incumbent Bush "actually has a soft spot for big government."

"Though he talks a good line about battling government bloat," he wrote this year, "our current President has shown an eerie lackawanna when it comes to actually keeping a lid on the federal Pandora's box. Quite apart from Katrina or the war on terror, there has been a pattern of troublesome spending spikes right from the beginning of the Bush Administration."

For Zinsmeister, provocation has been his stock in trade. "That's kind of my M.O., for better or worse," he said by phone last week. "My main beef with much of the Washington discussion is you're forced to be so mealy-mouthed. I had the luxury as an outsider of being as blunt as I wanted. When you're outside trying to push the elephant even an inch, you have to be very crisp and uncouched."

But Zinsmeister said he understands that must change now that he advises the president. "When you're inside the tent, you have to shift gears. That's a double standard, but it's an appropriate one."

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joel D. Kaplan said he believes that Zinsmeister will be able to make that transition. "He's here because of his powerful intellect and reputation for outside-the-box solutions to public policy problems," Kaplan said. "An outside-the-Beltway perspective, we thought, would be helpful."

In his new post, Zinsmeister will oversee the president's domestic policy process and help shape White House positions on a wide array of issues, including immigration, Social Security and energy. The position has been key in past administrations, although in this White House, it has at times been overshadowed by other aides such as Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove. Zinsmeister's predecessor, Claude A. Allen, resigned after being accused of trying to fleece retail stores in a product-exchange scam.

With scant experience in government or campaigns, Zinsmeister seemed an unlikely choice for White House domestic policy chief. Until his appointment, he was little known in Washington. At 6 feet 5, he would have stood out in the capital, but he edited the American Enterprise magazine from Cazenovia in Upstate New York. He finds Washington so distasteful that even for his new job he plans to move his family no closer than Baltimore.

In fact, his antipathy for Washington got him in trouble when he was appointed. In a 2004 profile by the Syracuse New Times, Zinsmeister was quoted as saying, "People in Washington are morally repugnant, cheating, shifty human beings." But the New York Sun discovered last month that he doctored that and other quotes when he posted the profile on the AEI Web site. The edited quote said, "I learned in Washington that there is an 'overclass' in this country stocked with cheating, shifty human beings that's just as morally repugnant as our 'underclass.' "

Zinsmeister later said he was "foolish" to change the quotes and did so only because he had been misquoted. The New Times disputed that and denounced him for altering its account. White House spokesman Tony Snow defended him and described Zinsmeister as someone with "sharp elbows" who "expresses himself with a certain amount of piquancy."

Another question about Zinsmeister's past arose when the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, accused him of résumé padding. The White House release said he "founded" the American Enterprise, although the magazine had been around for four years when he took over in 1994. The White House took the blame, saying that Zinsmeister actually used the term "formulated" because he revamped the magazine but that a White House aide misunderstood and wrote "founded."

A native of Cazenovia, Zinsmeister, 47, is himself an "Ivy League type" who graduated from Yale University before working for Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) and serving on an Education Department advisory board. He has also worked as a writer, film producer and radio commentator.

At the American Enterprise Institute, Zinsmeister stood out in a think tank known for a more libertarian, economic conservatism. Beyond cultural and social issues, he also took a special interest in Iraq. Unlike most pundits, he embedded with U.S. troops four times to get a firsthand look. The result has been two books on the war, a Marvel Comics chronicle of soldiers in Iraq and a forthcoming PBS documentary.

His faith in U.S. power translated into an optimistic view of the war. In 2003, he mocked the BBC for asserting the United States "could take, bluntly, a couple to 3,000 casualties." Later that year, he wrote, "Not too far down the road, today's drumbeat about America's failure to bring instant recovery to Iraq may look quite rash."

A year later, he wrote a piece titled "How America Is Winning a Guerilla War." A year after that, he declared victory. "The War is Over, and We Won," announced a June 2005 piece. "With the exception of periodic flare-ups in isolated corners, our struggle in Iraq as warfare is over," he wrote. Although there will still be "egregious acts of terror," he said, "contrary to the impression given by most newspaper headlines, the United States has won the day in Iraq."

Media coverage of the war has been a favorite target. He called journalists who embedded in 2003 "whiny and appallingly soft," and later condemned the "relentlessly gloomy reporting." In March, he wrote, "More than perhaps any news event in a generation, coverage of the Iraq war has been unbalanced and incomplete."

Although Bush avoids casting terrorism as a battle with Islam, Zinsmeister has not been so reluctant. "First, let's recognize that we're in a full-blown war; that (contrary to mealy-mouthed platitudes) it is indeed a war against a considerable part of Islam," he wrote in 2001. Yet he fretted at American sensitivity. "Would you believe that the number of formal U.S. investigations of how terror detainees are being treated recently reached 189?" he wrote last fall. "What mad self-doubt and softness!"

Foreign policy won't fall under his new portfolio, but he has written extensively on social issues that will, such as race, class and culture. He has condemned "feminist absolutism," "Green irrationality," "limousine leftists" and "the dreary left-wing, homophilic P.C. propaganda that has dominated Broadway."

Zinsmeister lamented a "forced diversity crusade" that fuels more alienation than it solves and argued that "Americans should jettison affirmative action and all racial preferences." He dismissed reparations for slavery as "a clear absurdity" because "the U.S. already made a mighty payment for the sin of slavery. It was called the Civil War." He traces wrongheaded political correctness to colleges that have become "virtual one-party states, ideological monopolies, badly unbalanced ecosystems."

The Clintons in particular are anathema. He is "a chronic liar, an out-of-control adulterer, an obstructer of justice, a draft dodger, an all-round morally challenged sleazeball." She has shown "a disturbing pattern of reflexive truth-stretching and reality-doctoring."

At a time when Bush has lost support among some conservatives, Zinsmeister's appointment may reassure some of the disaffected in the party that a strong voice will be heard in the White House. Snow said Zinsmeister will be useful for his challenging viewpoints.

"You want interesting people who are smart, who have serious policy credentials and who are able to make other people think," Snow said. But not necessarily, he added, in public anymore. "I think he'll be careful with his words."

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"Karl Rove and New Hampshire GOP: Where criminals congregate."

ABC News
Rove: Republicans Should Address Iraq War
Karl Rove Says Republicans Facing Midterm Elections Should Discuss War in Iraq With No Qualms
By NORMA LOVE
The Associated Press

MANCHESTER, N.H. - White House adviser Karl Rove said Monday that Republicans facing midterm elections should campaign on the economy's strength and discuss the war in Iraq with no qualms.

"We have no excuses to make for it," Rove said during a fundraising dinner for New Hampshire Republicans. War supporters need not apologize for removing the threat of Saddam Hussein, and with so much work left to do, now is not the time to talk about leaving Iraq, he said.

Rove said Democrats pushing for the withdrawal of American troops should be the ones facing tough questions for wanting to "cut and run." He targeted Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha, both Democrats and vocal supporters of getting out of Iraq.

"They are profoundly wrong," he said.

More than 400 people paid $100 to have dinner and hear Rove rally the faithful to work to retain Republican dominance in a state now viewed as a swing state in presidential elections. Dinner and a private reception with Rove cost $250.

Democrats won New Hampshire in three of the last four presidential elections only narrowly losing in 2000. Also, Democrats have won four of the last five gubernatorial elections.

The shift at the top has raised hopes among Democrats and concerns among Republicans about eventual parity in the state House and Senate long Republican bastions.

Some are concerned President Bush's poor approval ratings will hurt Republicans in state races this fall.

At an event last month, Rove blamed the war in Iraq for hurting Bush's job approval ratings in national polls. Rove said people like Bush but don't like the war.

About two dozen to three dozen protesters gathered Monday across the street from the Center of New Hampshire, where the event was being held. Democratic protesters said New Hampshire Republicans needed a big draw like Rove to help pay legal fees in a phone jamming case. Three GOP officials have been convicted of charges stemming from the jamming of Democratic get-out-the-vote lines on Election Day 2002.

"Americans don't like cheaters, these people cheated," said Herb Moyer, 60, a Democrat from Exeter. The sign he carried read, "Karl Rove and New Hampshire GOP: Where criminals congregate."

State Democrats have sued Republicans, partly to try to force disclosure of who among national GOP officials might have had knowledge of the plot. Republicans insist the operation was strictly local.

State GOP Chairman Wayne Semprini said Friday the party will use half or more of Monday's proceeds to help candidates this fall. The rest of the money will pay for operating expenses, including legal fees racked up defending the Democratic lawsuit.

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Judges Press C.I.A. Lawyer Over Withheld Documents

The New York Times
Judges Press C.I.A. Lawyer Over Withheld Documents
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

A federal appeals court panel in Manhattan questioned a lawyer for the federal government yesterday as to whether the Central Intelligence Agency had a legitimate national security interest in refusing to confirm or deny the existence of documents authorizing it to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects overseas.

The tough questioning came in oral arguments by the American Civil Liberties Union and lawyers for the C.I.A. before the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The civil liberties group is trying to force the C.I.A. to disclose how much authority it has been given to interrogate detainees since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Through the Freedom of Information Act, the A.C.L.U. is seeking documents, including a directive said to have been signed by President Bush, giving the agency the authority to set up detention sites outside the United States and to interrogate prisoners. In its lawsuit, the group says the existence of these documents has been hinted at in news reports.

But the government has refused to confirm or deny the documents' existence, saying that to do so would jeopardize national security by revealing C.I.A. methods and activities. Last September, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of Federal District Court upheld that position, and yesterday's hearing was part of the A.C.L.U.'s appeal of his ruling.

The three-judge appeals panel seemed divided on the issue, with Judge John Gleeson asking the most forceful questions of the government lawyer, Peter Skinner. Judge Gleeson seemed to be trying to determine whether the A.C.L.U. was right in contending that the agency was acting to avoid political embarrassment, rather than out of national security interest.

The judge asked Mr. Skinner whether the C.I.A.'s position had "shifted a little bit" during the litigation. Initially, Judge Gleeson said, the government seemed to be refusing to disclose even whether the C.I.A. had an "interest" in the questioning of detainees abroad.

Now, he said, the C.I.A. seemed to be admitting it had an interest in helping other agencies question detainees. The government was arguing, he said, that the C.I.A. wanted to safeguard information about whether it had been granted any independent authority to set up detention centers and interrogate prisoners.

"Independent engagement as opposed to helping out other agencies," Judge Gleeson said.

Mr. Skinner denied that the government had shifted its argument, though he suggested that it had clarified it. The C.I.A., he said, acknowledged all along that it had helped other agencies in interrogations and that when it did so, it was governed by Justice Department rules.

But, Mr. Skinner said, the agency "never acknowledged an interest or ability to go beyond those legal limitations" and was not going to do so now.

Megan Lewis, the lawyer for the A.C.L.U., argued that any information that would be revealed by merely acknowledging the existence of the documents would be so general that it would not jeopardize national security or betray specific intelligence-gathering methods. To argue otherwise, Ms. Lewis said, is "tantamount to the C.I.A. attempting to deny its interest in spying."

Outside court later, she said the documents, if they existed — "and I believe they do" — might be revealing, but "that's another fight for another day."

The A.C.L.U. seeks disclosure of two documents. One is said to be a Justice Department memorandum "specifying interrogation methods that the C.I.A. may use against top Al Qaeda members." The second is the directive said to be signed by Mr. Bush authorizing the agency to set up detention facilities outside the United States "and/or outlining interrogation methods that may be used against detainees."

Although oral arguments in the appeals court are often delivered in legal shorthand, yesterday's seemed even more opaque than usual. Almost apologetically, Mr. Skinner told the judges he was "somewhat constrained" in his ability to explain his argument and "connect the dots" because some of the C.I.A.'s reasoning in the case was classified.

The agency has submitted papers to the court that even the plaintiffs have not been allowed to see.

As the hearing came to a close, Judge Joseph M. McLaughlin made a joke about the obscurity, quoting a Jesuit logician, Father John Gerard, who in 1597 told a British interrogator: "I do not know where he is. But if I did, I could not and would not tell you."

The Jesuit doctrine of equivocation, Judge McLaughlin said, "lives on."

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As Election Day Grows Nearer, Senior U.S. Commander Predicts Possible Troop Reductions in Iraq in Coming Months

ABC News
U.S. Gen. Sees Possible Troop Reductions
Senior U.S. Commander Predicts Possible Troop Reductions in Iraq in Coming Months
By NEDRA PICKLER
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The top U.S. commander in Iraq predicted Sunday that coalition troops gradually will return home in the months ahead as long as Iraq's government and security forces keep progressing.

Gen. George Casey would not say whether he will recommend a troop reduction plan during videoconference meetings with President Bush this week. Bush says he will make decisions about troop levels based on recommendations from commanders in Iraq, and Casey said he constantly evaluates the appropriate number necessary.

"I was waiting until we got a government seated before I gave the president another recommendation so we have some sense of what we've got," Casey said.

Iraq's new government is in place, with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki taking office last month and appointing key ministers last week.

"I think as long as the Iraqi security forces continue to progress and as long as this national unity government continues to operate that way and move the country forward, I think we're going to be able to see continued gradual reductions of coalition forces over the coming months and into next year," Casey said on "Face the Nation" on CBS.

With Baghdad's government in place, Bush plans to re-evaluate his Iraq policy this week with members of his national security team, along with Casey and other military commanders participating via videoconference.

Bush also plans to hear from outside experts and top ministers in Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's new government, participating via video from Baghdad.

White House officials have played down expectations of troop cutback announcements coming from the discussions, scheduled for Monday and Tuesday at Camp David.

Bush says he will make decisions about troops levels based on recommendations from Casey and other military commanders in Iraq. Although Casey said "it's not likely" that he would request more troops during the discussions, he did not rule out bringing in more to help secure Baghdad in the future.

"Right now we're not planning on it, but it's possible," Casey told "Fox News Sunday."

"I constantly evaluate the situation," Casey told Fox. "And if I think I need more, I'll ask for more. If I think I need less, I'll tell the president that I need less."

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Loophole a Spigot for E-Mail: Critics Fear Voters Will Be Deluged as Fall Elections Near

washingtonpost.com
Loophole a Spigot for E-Mail
Critics Fear Voters Will Be Deluged as Fall Elections Near
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer

A new loophole in election spending regulations is likely to produce a torrent of unsolicited e-mails to voters -- and widespread complaints about political spam -- as the midterm elections approach this fall, political consultants say.

Purveyors of private e-mail addresses and designers of campaign Web sites report that their businesses are booming this year as partisans take advantage of an exemption in election rules that allows wealthy individuals to pour unlimited sums into Internet communications without having to disclose their identities or total expenditures.

The loophole is "potentially breathtaking," said Roger Alan Stone of Advocacy Inc., an e-mail address retailer.

"It provides an enormous opportunity for political campaigns," agreed Max Fose of Integrated Web Strategy, which also sells e-mail addresses to political campaigns. Both men are expanding their staffs in anticipation of what they expect to be a multimillion-dollar surge in unregulated campaign spending via the Internet.

Critics worry that electoral e-mailing, which blossomed two years ago but is still in its infancy, could grow so quickly that millions of voters will be deluged with unwanted electronic messages before Election Day. Critics said the result could be a backlash against the candidates being advertised.

"I can't imagine this will be a particularly effective method of getting out the vote," said Jim Jordan of Thunder Road Group, a political consultancy. "It is spam after all, and there are few things that annoy us more than spam."

The e-mail exemption, which was approved by the Federal Election Commission in March, might become the next big avenue for campaign funding abuses, some experts warn. Heavy spenders, such as individuals or groups not affiliated with campaigns, could use mass e-mailings to alter the outcome of key congressional races and still remain anonymous, a result that runs counter to the intention of federal election laws.

Carol C. Darr, director of the nonpartisan Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, foresees "a complete free-for-all" because of the loophole. She added: "Sure, the FEC may still regulate the nickel-and-dime stuff. But . . . in the Hundred Years War against political money, big money has won."

The FEC voted unanimously March 26 not to regulate political communication on the Internet, including e-mails, blogs and the creation of Web sites. The commission had decided two years earlier to exempt all Internet activity from regulation, but that ruling was overturned by a federal judge who ordered the FEC to write rules that apply to at least some parts of cyberspace.

Bloggers, who are a fast-rising force in politics, pushed hard (with the help of their readers) to convince the commission that their writings should not be considered for the purposes of regulation the same as campaign contributions. In the end, they won. Only paid political advertisements placed on Web sites were ultimately subjected to campaign finance limitations.

Web site activists celebrated the decision as a significant advance for Internet freedom; political entrepreneurs recognized a commercial opportunity.

Fose, with offices in Virginia and Arizona, has more than doubled his staff to 12 people this year largely in response to the FEC ruling.

Advocacy Inc.'s Roger Alan Stone, who is not Republican media consultant Roger Stone, explained in a note to clients and associates why he is expecting a surge in revenue: "A wealthy individual could purchase all of the e-mail addresses for registered voters in a congressional district . . . produce an Internet video ad, and e-mail it along with a link to the campaign contribution page," he wrote. "Not only would this activity not count against any contribution limits or independent expenditure requirements; it would never even need to be reported."

Stone said that he is in discussions with representatives of wealthy individuals as well as state party officials about expanding their use of e-mails this year. He has contracted with at least three wealthy groups that e-mailed massively for primary campaigns this month.

Other political consulting groups are also feeling the impact of the FEC exemption. "We are hiring a new programmer or campaign specialist every three days," said John Aristotle Phillips, chief executive of Aristotle International Inc., which provides software and data services to electoral campaigns.

Voter Contact Services, which compiles lists of registered voters and matches them with e-mail addresses, expects its e-mail sales to double this year to more than 20 percent of its business, up from more than 10 percent in 2004.

The only impediments to growth, VSC chairman Bill Daly said, are increasingly sophisticated systems that block electronic spam and the dearth of middlemen to sell e-mail addresses for political uses. Campaigns can buy e-mail addresses for about 12 cents per name, retailers say.

"The e-mail loophole will be the vehicle that large donors will use at the last minute to get their message out this year," Fose predicted. "After they've put money everywhere else, the Internet will be the place where they will pour their funds at the end of the campaign season."

The election two years ago was the first in which a national list of registered voters was cross-referenced with multiple listings of e-mail addresses collected from magazine subscribers, catalogue shoppers, and online poll participants. As a consequence, lawmakers, candidates for office and interest groups were able to sell more than 25 million e-mail addresses of registered voters, and contact them at will.

SonicWall Inc., a California-based Internet security provider, estimated that more than 1.25 billion unsolicited political e-mails were sent to registered voters in 2004, up from virtually none during the presidential contest in 2000. SonicWall said it is too early to accurately predict the growth for this year, but for the presidential race in 2008, "there could be an exponential increase in the number of unsolicited political e-mails," SonicWall spokeswoman Mary McEvoy said.

With the FEC loophole, "everybody is looking at new ways to use the Internet to communicate," said R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "Not just us, but the unions and every interest group you can think of."

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Voices: Small-Govt. Conservative Rues Bush Years

ABC News
Voices: Small-Govt. Conservative Rues Bush Years
Grover Norquist Says His Drive to Cut the Size of Government Was Going Well -- Until Bush and the GOP Took Over

June 11, 2006 — - ABC News' George Will goes one-on-one with Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, on the Republican party's stance on spending and taxes.

George Will: Your aim was to cut in half the size of government relative to the size of the economy. That's not going so well.

Grover Norquist: We were doing very well from 1994 up until 2000.

Will: Until Republicans took the White House back?

Norquist: Yes, actually. And I think there are a couple of challenges. One, when you have a Republican House, Senate and president, they think that the other guys are keeping an eye on things. At least when Clinton was in the White House, the Republicans would not let Clinton have his spending, Clinton would not let the Republicans have their favorite spending, and you had a Mexican standoff where people kept an eye on each other. They are not policing spending as they need to in D.C.

Will: Under this administration, the last six years, the number of registered lobbyists in Washington has doubled. Why have lobbyists sprouted like dandelions under a conservative regime in Washington?

Norquist: Because spending has gone up too much. If you put a cake, a birthday cake under the sink, you will get cockroaches. Okay? And there's no point in saying, "Well, we'll build walls against the cockroaches," or, "We'll make the cockroaches fill out paperwork and tell us what they're doing." Okay? Remove the cake from under the sink.

Will: You're not calling lobbyists cockroaches.

Norquist: No. I'm drawing an analogy here.

Will: You have called the conservative movement the "leave us alone coalition" of people who want the government to go away. But there's this enormous social conservative group that wants to change the laws on marriage, and on abortion, and prayer in schools, and display of religious symbols. That doesn't sound like leaving people alone. Is this a fundamental incompatibility in the movement?

Norquist: No. But people do look at the traditional values wing of the party, or part of the party, and say, "They must be wanting to impose their values on the rest of society. They must be like the environmentalists that want to make everybody separate the green glass from the brown glass on Thursdays, or make your toilets too small to flush, or make your cars too small to have people in." Actually, if you look at the voting patterns of the traditional values conservatives Republicans, what they want -- it's a parents-rights movement -- they want to practice their faith, they want to raise their kids. If you ask them, do they think other people should do X, Y or Z, they do. Do they vote on that issue when they vote for candidates? Actually, they don't.

Will: Looking ahead to 2008, [it's] probably fair to say the frontrunner for the Republican nomination is John McCain, who you have accused of Caesarism in his approach to leadership, and [you] have called him "completely unstable."

Norquist: What McCain has done is flip-flopped on the gun issue, on the tax issue. He used to be a Reagan Republican on taxes. He's voted against every one of President Bush's tax cuts. He voted for the first one before he voted against it, but he's voted against all of them.

He's flip-flopped back and forth not because of where the American people are, but because of where the cameras are. And the challenge there, as an elected official who is -- the phototropism of going to the cameras is very damaging, from a conservative perspective, because that's unlikely to lead to conservative governance.

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The Deaths at Gitmo

The New York Times
The Deaths at Gitmo

The news that three inmates at Guantánamo Bay hanged themselves should not have surprised anyone who has paid the slightest attention to the twisted history of the camp that President Bush built for selected prisoners from Afghanistan and antiterrorist operations. It was the inevitable result of creating a netherworld of despair beyond the laws of civilized nations, where men were to be held without any hope of decent treatment, impartial justice or, in so many cases, even eventual release.

It is a place where secret tribunals sat in judgment of men whose identities they barely knew and who were not permitted to see the evidence against them. Inmates were abused, humiliated, tormented and sometimes tortured. Some surely are very dangerous men, committed to a life of terrorism and deserving of harsh justice. But only 10 of the roughly 465 men at the camp have been charged with crimes. The others, according to senior officers who served there, were foot soldiers of the Taliban or men who just happened to live in a country invaded by the United States after the 9/11 attacks.

Inmates at Guantánamo Bay have tried seeking help from the American courts, and one case has reached the Supreme Court. But most of these appeals were thwarted by claims of national security. Any new appeals will fall under a shocking new law that deprives the inmates of the centuries-old right to challenge their imprisonment. Government lawyers have even tried to use that law retroactively, to dismiss all pending appeals.

Guantánamo Bay and other American detention centers have sparked outrage around the world — deeply harming America's image as the defender of humanity against just these sorts of abuses. Last month a United Nations panel called for the prisons to be shut down. But the administration's response to all of this has been defiance.

When dozens of inmates went on hunger strikes last year, the authorities strapped them into metal "restraint chairs" and ordered doctors to force-feed them. Military officials said they did this only to inmates on the brink of death, but The Times has reported that the restraint chair was used on all hunger strikers, regardless of their condition.

Medical groups were overwhelmingly appalled by this practice, but the Pentagon issued new rules this month reaffirming that military doctors can be ordered to force-feed prisoners. The only role for psychiatrists at Gitmo seems to be to help prepare prisoners for interrogation.

So it was not surprising in the least when inmates attempted suicide. Twenty-three tried to kill themselves over eight days in August 2003, but the military covered it up for 18 months. Now, three inmates have succeeded. Camp officials say one was a mid- or high-level Qaeda operative. One was captured in Afghanistan (doing what, we're not sure), and the other was from something the camp commander, Rear Adm. Harry Harris Jr., called a splinter group.

Admiral Harris's response was as appalling as the suicides. "I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us," he said. The inmates, he said, "have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own."

These comments reveal a profound disassociation from humanity. They say more about why Guantánamo Bay should be closed than any United Nations report ever could.

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A Time and a Place

The New York Times
A Time and a Place
By KAREN SPEARS ZACHARIAS
Hermiston, Ore.

THE woman sitting across from me at a Chili's restaurant in Jacksonville, Fla., did not look old enough to be a widow. Twenty-seven years old, she had the just-cut bangs of a schoolgirl, a tattoo on her forearm and a trendy round purse at her side. How, she asked, would she tell her daughter, still a toddler, that her father had died in Iraq?

For the last few months, she told me, she has been replaying the moments of her husband's life, and his death. Antiwar protesters turned out at the funeral, the woman said. They lined the streets across from the service. Some carried signs and others shouted as her husband's flag-draped coffin was carried past.

The strange thing is that her husband, like many servicemen and women answering their country's call, did not support the Iraq war. That soldiers serve, and too often die, on the battlefield is a testament to their professionalism and character — virtues apparently lacking in the hundreds of antiwar protesters who appear at military hospitals and funerals, and at services like the one I attended at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington on Memorial Day.

During that ceremony, I looked up from my folding chair and saw a man on the sidewalk above the memorial wall's Panel 9 East, on which my father's name is etched. The man carried a sign calling for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and he was engaged in a debate with a couple of Vietnam veterans. Their bickering distracted me from the ceremony I had traveled 2,800 miles to attend. So I walked up to where they stood.

To the sign-holder, I said, I respect your right to protest; I even applaud your position on this war. But this is not the place. Not one of the people named on the wall voted to go to war.

The man lifted his sign higher and said he was a veteran who had lost many friends to the war. You're not respecting my feelings, he argued.

I turned and asked the other veterans present not to debate him. They nodded, expressed sympathy for my family's loss and walked away. The protester lowered his sign but stood his ground throughout the ceremony.

Earlier that day, spurred by noisy demonstrations by a group that claims the deaths in Iraq are God's punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality, President Bush signed into law a ban on protests near national cemeteries during funerals. Violators face a fine of up to a $100,000 and as much as a year in prison.

But this law and others like it passed by states do not solve the whole problem; they do not keep protestors away from military hospitals or sites like the Vietnam memorial.

As a daughter of the fallen and a friend to families of today's casualties, I implore antiwar protesters to show some respect. March to the steps of Congress and the White House. Shout your protests at the president who drummed up this war. But grant some peace to the men and women trying to heal in our military hospitals, and the families grieving at funerals and memorials. Haven't we earned a moment of silence?

Karen Spears Zacharias is the author of "After the Flag Has Been Folded," a memoir.

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Let Them Go Green

The New York Times
Let Them Go Green

Just last month, Goldman Sachs invested $27 million in Iogen, the Canadian ethanol producer. The little-noticed move was the latest piece of a larger strategy of enlarging the company's profile in environmentally conscious investments. Goldman has now risked over $1 billion on renewable energy projects, including solar and wind-energy projects and alternatives to gasoline like cellulosic ethanol.

Goldman is only one of a growing number of investment and manufacturing enterprises chasing emerging technologies that could help provide the alternative energy sources that politicians from President Bush on down say they want and that the country will certainly need in years to come. Meanwhile, more and more companies — including heavyweights like DuPont, Johnson & Johnson and United Technologies — have been busily cleaning up their own acts, using less energy by making themselves more efficient.

Over time, these efforts could place the United States in the forefront of an emerging global market for cleaner technologies. They are also essential to the effort to tackle the two big energy-related issues of the age, global warming and the world's dependence on precarious supplies of foreign oil.

If Washington is smart, it will throw its weight behind these efforts by providing the necessary incentives, whether as loans, direct grants or targeted tax breaks. But Washington is dawdling; several excellent bills designed to advance the development and wider use of various alternative fuels, cleaner cars and carbon-free power plants are languishing in the election-shortened legislative year.

It is no less important to preserve good programs already on the books. For example, a tax credit to encourage wind power is set to expire next year, at a time when high energy prices are raising interest in that clean technology.

There are plenty of interesting technologies out there, but the trick now is to catapult them from the laboratory to the marketplace. General Electric, for example, is already a producer of large wind turbines. And it is heartening to see investment houses, venture capital firms, hedge funds and pension plans — like Calpers, the big California pension fund — funneling money into environmentally sound investments.

Investing is about the next big thing, not the last one. Companies are looking for the sort of opportunity Detroit automakers missed when Toyota was ready with the Prius as gas prices began to skyrocket. No one wants to be left behind again.

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Perhaps Not All Affirmative Action Is Created Equal

The New York Times
Perhaps Not All Affirmative Action Is Created Equal
By JEFFREY ROSEN
Washington

NOW that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases challenging racial balancing in public schools, some conservatives hope the end of affirmative action is near.

After all, they say, why would the Supreme Court suddenly agree to hear cases about racial balancing in Seattle and Louisville when the court — with Sandra Day O'Connor still serving — refused last December to hear a similar case from Massachusetts? It must be, the thinking goes, that the court, with two new and more conservative justices, John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr., wants to overturn affirmative action.

That optimism may be premature, and not because there is a hidden liberal streak on the court. Instead, there is a vigorous debate among prominent Republican judges and legal scholars about whether racial balancing in public schools is an acceptable form of affirmative action. Some conservatives believe that racial balancing plans, while not colorblind, are still constitutional.

The unexpected fissures among conservatives about how colorblind the Constitution should be suggest that certain forms of affirmative action might be more acceptable to conservatives than liberals had feared.

The Seattle and Louisville cases, which the Supreme Court will hear next fall, involve challenges to plans known as "managed choice" or "open choice." In Seattle, parents can apply to send their children to any public high school in the district.

If a school is oversubscribed, students are chosen based on a number of "tie-breakers," including racial targets designed to ensure that each school's racial makeup doesn't differ by more than 15 percent from the racial composition of the Seattle public schools as a whole.

Last October, no one was surprised when the famously liberal United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the Seattle plan. It cited a 2003 Supreme Court opinion, by Justice O'Connor, which held that classroom diversity was a compelling governmental interest for law schools and universities.

But it was eye-opening that Judge Alex Kozinski, a conservative libertarian on the Ninth Circuit, wrote an unexpected concurring opinion. "That a student is denied the school of his choice may be disappointing, but it carries no racial stigma and says nothing at all about that individual's aptitude or ability," he wrote.

And Judge Kozinski quoted the opinion of Chief Judge Michael Boudin of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, another Republican judge, who upheld the use of racial balancing in a Massachusetts school choice plan. Unlike "modern affirmative action," Judge Boudin had written, these plans do not "seek to give one racial group an edge over another."

Some conservative scholars suggest that there may be significant differences between racial balancing for public elementary and high schools and racial preferences for competitive public universities.

"When you're talking about public schools, everybody's got to go somewhere, and it's not as if some schools are necessarily better than others," said Charles Fried, a conservative law professor at Harvard. "At some point, the government has to have some basis for breaking the tie."

Professor Fried said he had not made up his mind on the issue. "I think Roberts and Alito are both men who are open to arguments, and I would trust them to think long and hard about this," he said.

Conservatives have also long emphasized the importance of deferring to local school officials, a reaction in part to judicially imposed busing programs.

In the Seattle and Louisville cases, the plans were designed by local politicians.

"This is not the result of some liberal master plan; it was adopted from the ground up, " said Samuel Issacharoff, a liberal legal scholar at Columbia Law School. Judicial deference is as deeply held a conservative principle as the importance of a colorblind society, and conservative judges and activists are conducting a vigorous internal debate about how these principles should be reconciled.

Last year, for example, the Supreme Court, in another opinion by Justice O'Connor, struck down California's policy of racially segregating new prisoners to prevent gang violence. Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia, ordinarily fierce champions of colorblind policies, argued that an exception should be made in this case because of the importance of deferring to the expertise of local prison officials.

Opponents of affirmative action don't buy conservative arguments that racial balancing is acceptable. Parents don't view all public schools as equal, they argue, so racial tie-breakers force some parents to send their children to worse schools farther from home because of their race.

"In some ways, the damage may be greater than in the university context, since this may limit the ability of black families to escape inferior schools by transferring to schools where the authorities deem there to be too many blacks," says Peter H. Schuck of Yale Law School, author of "Diversity in America," a prominent critique of affirmative action.

In the Seattle case, the conservative dissenting judges wrote that the educational benefits of diversity for university students were less obvious for lower-school students. The dissenters quoted David J. Armor, a George Mason professor who has reported finding little connection between racial integration and student achievement.

"Where we have had very substantial long-term desegregation, we did not find the achievement gap changing significantly," Mr. Armor said in an interview. "I did find a modest association for math but not reading in terms of racial composition and achievement, but there's a big state variation."

Professor Armor estimated that "at least dozens or maybe hundreds of school districts still use race in some way" and said he hoped that the Supreme Court would put an end to all race-conscious assignment plans. "We have racially imbalanced neighborhoods and cities based on where people choose to live. What's wrong with racially imbalanced schools?"

IF the court agrees with him, it might require districts to consider "race-neutral alternatives," like a lottery, to decide which students gain admission to popular schools. But given segregated housing patterns, that might mean the end of integration.

Chief Justice Roberts, in his first term, has shown a skill in persuading his colleagues to join unanimous opinions decided on narrow grounds. The race cases may test his leadership abilities more than any he has confronted so far. And the fact that conservatives disagree so vigorously about how to apply the principle of colorblindness in different contexts makes the outcome especially hard to predict.

Jeffrey Rosen's latestbook is "The Most Democratic Branch: How the Courts Serve America."

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Warrants? We Don't Need No Steenking Warrants!

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There's No Egg. We Got Nothing But A Nest.

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Battling Terrorism: The Front Line

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Coulter - It's OK - I'm Insane!

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Where Are My 72 Virgins

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Persistence is critical to survival

The Times-Picayune
Persistence is critical to survival
Lolis Elie

It seemed like a big story. It was, for a day.

The Army Corps of Engineers Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force acknowledged that the flood control system that was supposed to protect our city was "a system in name only."

The report on which that finding was based took eight months, cost $20 million and has profound implications for every section of this country that relies on an Army Corps of Engineers structure to protect it.

"We say this was a system failure in that the system designed to protect New Orleans failed on many levels, but it also shows how the system -- the business model -- we use to build these things is so flawed," said Ed Link, the University of Maryland professor who headed the task force. "The way we determine need, assess risk and go about funding and approving these things is based on a model that might have been appropriate for the way we lived 50 years ago, but is sorely outdated today."

Often, when such a major report is issued, it discussed and dissected for days afterward. But, as with so much of the news from New Orleans, this story died a premature death.

American hearts and minds

The report was released on June 1, the first day of hurricane season. It was big news the next day. But by Sunday, four days later, the day when newspapers and broadcast networks tend to review the important stories of the week, the report wasn't among them.

On ABC's "This Week," it was news that the prolific author John Updike had released another book and Hillary Clinton, D-NY, was going to run for re-election to her U.S. Senate seat.

On CBS's Sunday morning offering, "Face the Nation," Bob Schieffer hosted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a discussion of the latest news from Iraq and Iran.

American troops have been accused of massacring Iraqi civilians in Haditha. On NBC's "Meet the Press," Tim Russert asked, "How will allegations that U.S. Marines killed innocent Iraqis in the town of Haditha affect the American effort to win over Iraqis' 'hearts and minds?' "

I figure that the news that failures by the United States Army Corps Engineers to protect American citizens in America is big news. We have hearts and minds too, but the talk shows don't seem to be interested in winning them.

Looking for progress

So much of our future depends on the willingness of our nation to live up to its responsibilities at home.

We can't build our own levees or reverse the erosion of our coast. And unless there's evidence of real progress on these two fronts, many New Orleans will lack the confidence that their hometown is a safe place to move back to.

Their hearts and minds may be remain with us, but their bodies may be forever dislocated.

. . . . . . .

Lolis Eric Elie can be reached at lelie@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3330.

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Reid Calls for More Intelligence Oversight

ABC News
Reid Calls for More Intelligence Oversight
Democratic Leader Rallies Bloggers, Plans to Ask Congress for Stiffer Intelligence Oversight
By KEN RITTER
The Associated Press

LAS VEGAS - Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid made a pitch Saturday to enlist bloggers as a Democratic force in upcoming elections, and said he'll ask Congress for stiffer reporting requirements for the president and the intelligence community.

"I know fighters when I see them. You're fighters," Reid said as he began a warmly received keynote speech to the YearlyKos Convention of Internet bloggers at a Las Vegas Strip resort.

Reid, D-Nev., said he intends to introduce legislation in coming days to hold senior Bush administration officials accountable for statements on Iran similar to the Democratic fight to hold them accountable for their statements about the Iraq war.

"The White House cherry-picked and politicized intelligence to sell the war," Reid said. "All of us as Americans need to know if we were intentionally misled, I think we were, to go to war in Iraq, so we can make sure it never, never happens again."

The audience of about 1,000 at the Riviera hotel-casino ballroom included members of a liberal blogosphere who became involved in politics during Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean's bid for president in 2004.

They cheered a video produced by a 15-year-old conference attendee that cast first-ever conventioneers as patriots, motivators and over images of headlines reporting President Bush's low approval ratings representatives of a national majority.

"This is a paradigm shift taking place," said Ann Reinhart, 45, a writer from Los Angeles who said she contributed money recently to campaigns in Montana and Connecticut. "People are finding their voice. People are doing it themselves."

Many waved placards that were provided reading "Give 'Em Hell, Harry," and applauded Reid's declaration that "Iran cannot and will not be another Iraq."

"Because of you, no attack will go unanswered," Reid told the audience. "Because of you, no lie will avoid the truth."

Reid's proposed bill, called the Iran Intelligence Oversight Act, would require an updated national intelligence estimate on Iran, with an unclassified summary made public.

It also would require the president to report to Congress his objectives and strategies for Iran.

The administration's national intelligence director would have to show Congress that he has a process in place for reviewing administration officials' statements and ensuring they are consistent with the work of professional intelligence analysts.

"I have no doubt the White House won't like this requirement," Reid said, "but after Iraq, the American people deserve nothing less."

Responding to Reid's remarks, the White House declined to address the senator's proposals directly.

"We are pursuing a diplomatic solution to the current situation with Iran," said Christie Parell, a White House spokeswoman. She pointed to the most recent European proposal calling for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment and reprocessing before entering talks aimed at defusing tensions over nuclear development.

"We look forward to a response from the Iranian regime," Parell said. "And we look forward to continuing to keep Congress informed as we pursue a diplomatic solution."

Reid, who lives about an hour south of Las Vegas, was the top Democrat among several at the convention. Others included Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., former presidential candidate and retired Gen. Wesley Clark, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Dean.

"Democrats may be a minority in Congress, but we speak for the majority of Americans," Reid said. "I believe that. Don't you?"

Republican party spokesman Tucker Bounds characterized the convention as proof that "the squeaky wheels, no matter how wobbly, get all the Democrats' oil."

Convention executive Gina Cooper dubbed the four-day gathering, "people-powered politics in action." Some attendees who spent four days putting faces to words posted by Internet Web log, or blog, authors and readers, saw strength in their numbers.

"I think what we've learned is, we've got a community," said P.Z. Myers, 49, a University of Minnesota biology professor from Morris, Minn. "It's more than people just sitting and chatting over the wires."

On the Net:

YearlyKos: http://www.yearlykos.org

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Blind Man's Bluff

The New York Times
Blind Man's Bluff

For more than six months, a few senators have been fumbling around in the dark, trying to write laws covering a domestic wiretapping operation that remains a mystery to most of them. Their ideas are far from radical; some just want to bring the White House back under the rule of law by making the spying retroactively legal. But Vice President Dick Cheney, who is in charge of both overseeing the spying and covering it up, has now made it crystal clear that the White House does not intend to let anything happen. It's time for the Senate to stop rolling over and start focusing on uncovering the extent of the spying and enforcing the law.

A good place to start is by compelling the executives of the major telecommunications companies to testify about reports that they have turned over data on the phone calls of millions of Americans without a court order. Those reports were a reminder that this is not a debate about whether the government should spy on terrorists by tapping their phone calls. President Bush wants Americans to believe that critics of the program oppose that, but nobody does. The real issue is that Mr. Bush does not want to bother with legal niceties like getting a warrant or to acknowledge Congress's power by accounting for his actions.

There are four bills on this matter before the Senate Judiciary Committee. One, from Mike DeWine of Ohio, deals with the evident illegality of the program by making it legal — a cynical notion that should be killed quickly. Senator Charles Schumer's bill would grant legal standing for people to sue the government over the wiretapping. At least that is aimed at allowing the courts to enforce a law passed three decades ago to cover precisely this sort of situation.

Senator Dianne Feinstein is proposing changes to that law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was intended to make it easy for the government to get quick court approval on wiretaps of suspected terrorists or spies. Ms. Feinstein wants to make it even easier for the administration to wiretap first and get permission later. But her bill leaves a gaping loophole for Mr. Bush to go on ignoring FISA, this time with the blessing of Congress. It's also absurdly early to amend the law, since 80 percent of the Senate still doesn't know much more about the spying operation than the average American. The administration has offered no evidence that existing warrant requirements are too restrictive. Mr. Bush is not even asking for changes. He simply thinks he's above this law.

Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the committee, has been working on a convoluted bill that he thinks will re-establish legal control over the spying. It has been improved but still leaves too much room to evade court scrutiny and may actually widen the range of eavesdropping that can be done with a warrant.

We're baffled by Mr. Specter's continuing efforts to appease the White House. Last week, Mr. Cheney organized a coup in the Judiciary Committee to kill Mr. Specter's plan to subpoena telecommunications executives and ask them about the USA Today report that their companies are turning over phone records without a court order. Mr. Cheney told the panel's Republicans to oppose subpoenas and said the executives had been ordered not to testify because they could expose "extremely sensitive classified information." That's odd, given that the phone companies keep denying the report.

Mr. Specter — who last week was bemoaning the fact that Mr. Cheney watched him pass by twice at a Senate buffet lunch without mentioning that he had just stabbed him in the back — still thinks it's a good sign that the vice president's office offered to review his legislation and suggest changes. Mr. Cheney and his underlings are the problem, not the solution, and Mr. Specter should realize that by now. Mr. Specter has the votes to subpoena the executives. All he has to do is drop his idea of meeting behind closed doors, and side with the panel's Democrats, who want to have the hearing in full view of the Americans whose rights are being violated.

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Saudi lawyer blames US for Guantanamo suicides

Reuters
Saudi lawyer blames US for Guantanamo suicides
By Souhail Karam

RIYADH (Reuters) - A lawyer for Saudi nationals imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay said on Sunday he held U.S. authorities responsible for the deaths of two Saudi prisoners who hanged themselves at the U.S. naval base.

Saudi Arabia, a staunch U.S. ally, said it was stepping up efforts to repatriate all nationals held at the base in Cuba.

An Interior Ministry statement identified the two Saudis as Manei al-Otaibi and Yasser al-Zahrani but gave no further details about them. A Yemeni man also committed suicide.

"We are doing all we can to bring the bodies of the two victims home," a Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman told Reuters, but declined to say if Riyadh would ask for an investigation into the deaths.

The three men, who hanged themselves with clothes and bedsheets, were the first prisoners to die at the base in Cuba since the United States began holding "terrorism" suspects there in 2002.

"Our priority now is to repatriate the bodies of the victims and to step up our efforts to bring back all Saudis detained there," the Interior Ministry spokesman said.

"Each Saudi has to be brought home where he can face up to charges he is accused of based on our laws and regulations."

He said there were up to 103 Saudis detained at the naval base, which holds about 460 foreigners captured mainly in Afghanistan where the United States has fought the Taliban and al Qaeda.

MISTREATMENT

The detainees' deaths renewed criticism of the base, which many human rights groups say should be closed. Nearly all the prisoners at Guantanamo, in Cuba, are being held without charge and some have been held for more than three years.

"The detainees' death reveals the mistreatment at Guantanamo and the extent human rights are breached," said Katib al-Shimary, lawyer for Saudi detainees at Guantanamo. "Their suicide, that is if they did commit suicide, is a response to the oppression and injustice they lived in."

"I hold the U.S. authorities responsible for their deaths," Shimary told Saudi-owned satellite television Al Arabiya.

The lawyer said U.S. authorities did not allow him or any other foreign lawyers to meet detainees, adding that he had not been informed of the death of the two Saudis.

The U.S. military said guards at the camp found the three Arab men not breathing in their cells shortly after midnight and attempts to resuscitate them failed.

The three detainees had taken part previously in extended hunger strikes and been force-fed. They all left suicide notes but no details were made public.

Saudi Arabia has freed at least eight detainees handed over to it from Guantanamo, saying they had completed their jail sentences. In May, the kingdom said it had received 15 Saudi detainees and that they would be put on trial in the kingdom if a review of their cases shows a trial was justified.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who carried out the September 11, 2001, attacks on U.S. cities were from Saudi Arabia, as is al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

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