Top News Article Reuters.com
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea wants bilateral discussions with the United States over a crackdown on its finances and cannot return to nuclear talks until Washington ends sanctions, an Indonesian envoy said on Friday.
The last round of talks on ending Pyongyang's nuclear programs, which involve the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States, was held in November.
Washington, Seoul and others have stressed the financial issue is a separate issue from the six-party talks.
"They indicated to me they are willing to resume the six-party talks provided the United States lift its financial sanctions that have been applied recently to North Korea," said Nana Sutresna, an Indonesian presidential envoy who visited North Korea earlier this week.
"North Korea has said they want to meet bilaterally on this issue," he told reporters.
Sutresna met top North Korean officials including Pyongyang's number two official Kim Yong-nam.
Washington has offered to brief North Korean officials on the legal basis of its crackdown on companies it suspects of helping North Korea in activities such as counterfeiting.
North Korea has indicated that a briefing was not a high-enough level for the discussions and has sought a meeting between U.S. and North Korean envoys to the six-party talks.
A spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in December the briefing offer amounted to "backtracking from the agreement on holding talks to find a solution to the issue."
Indonesia has long ties with North Korea and has been trying to work as a mediator between the two Koreas.
11.2.06
Israel, Russia clash over moves on Hamas
Top News Article Reuters.com
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel on Friday protested a plan by Russia to have talks in Moscow with Hamas, the Islamist militant group that swept recent Palestinian elections and whose charter calls for Israel's destruction.
But Russia stood its ground and predicted other countries would follow its lead in dealing with Hamas.
Israeli President Moshe Katsav and others said Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened peacemaking prospects if he followed through on his invitation to Hamas to visit after its victory in parliamentary elections on January 25.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni warned against what she called a "slippery slope" that could lead other international powers to compromise with Hamas.
Meir Sheetrit, an Israeli cabinet minister and political ally of interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said Israel should consider recalling its ambassador to Russia in protest, and accused Putin of "stabbing Israel in the back."
Putin's surprise overture to Hamas came as a blow to Israel, which wants major powers to boycott Hamas at least until it recognized the Jewish state and renounced violence.
Israel has ruled out negotiating with the group, which masterminded more than 60 suicide bombings against Israelis since 2000 but has largely adhered to a truce declared in March.
"Any weakness... will result in a negative effect -- not only for Israel, but also for the Palestinian people and for the international community," Livni said in an interview with The New York Sun.
Katsav told Israel Radio that Putin's invitation to Hamas was liable to undermine peace prospects.
Senior Israeli officials said Russia, as a member of the Quartet of major powers trying to broker Middle East peace, had a responsibility to shun Hamas.
"It's not just a slap in the face to Israel. It's a slap in the face to Western countries," said one Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity because talks with Russia were going on.
Continued ...
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel on Friday protested a plan by Russia to have talks in Moscow with Hamas, the Islamist militant group that swept recent Palestinian elections and whose charter calls for Israel's destruction.
But Russia stood its ground and predicted other countries would follow its lead in dealing with Hamas.
Israeli President Moshe Katsav and others said Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened peacemaking prospects if he followed through on his invitation to Hamas to visit after its victory in parliamentary elections on January 25.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni warned against what she called a "slippery slope" that could lead other international powers to compromise with Hamas.
Meir Sheetrit, an Israeli cabinet minister and political ally of interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said Israel should consider recalling its ambassador to Russia in protest, and accused Putin of "stabbing Israel in the back."
Putin's surprise overture to Hamas came as a blow to Israel, which wants major powers to boycott Hamas at least until it recognized the Jewish state and renounced violence.
Israel has ruled out negotiating with the group, which masterminded more than 60 suicide bombings against Israelis since 2000 but has largely adhered to a truce declared in March.
"Any weakness... will result in a negative effect -- not only for Israel, but also for the Palestinian people and for the international community," Livni said in an interview with The New York Sun.
Katsav told Israel Radio that Putin's invitation to Hamas was liable to undermine peace prospects.
Senior Israeli officials said Russia, as a member of the Quartet of major powers trying to broker Middle East peace, had a responsibility to shun Hamas.
"It's not just a slap in the face to Israel. It's a slap in the face to Western countries," said one Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity because talks with Russia were going on.
Continued ...
A 'Long War' Designed to Perpetuate Itself
A 'Long War' Designed to Perpetuate Itself
Paris -- The U.S. Defense Department and the White House have decided that the United States is now conducting "the Long War" rather than what previously was known as the War against Terror, then as the Global Struggle against Violent Extremism, and briefly - as one revealing Pentagon study described it - a war against "the Universal Adversary."
President George W. Bush said in his State of the Union address last month that the aim of his administration is to defeat radical Islam. This was a preposterous statement. Shortly afterward, radical Islam began burning embassies from Afghanistan and Indonesia to Damascus and Beirut. The United States is not going to defeat that.
There are a great many dismaying aspects of Bush's Washington, but nothing more so than this combination of the unachievable with the hortatory in giving a name and purpose to the military campaigns that already have the U.S. Army and Marine Corps near exhaustion, and a major part of the world in turmoil.
It is customary, politically desirable and morally indispensable to say seriously what a war is about, if only so that the public will know when it is over; when the declared and undeclared measures of exception that have accompanied it, justifying suspension of civil liberties, illegal practices and defiance of international law and convention, will be lifted; and when the killing may be expected to stop.
What was originally to be a matter of quick and exemplary revenge, with lightning attacks and acclaimed victories, has now become, we are told, the long war whose end cannot be foreseen. The citizen is implicitly told to expect the current suspension of constitutional norms, disregard for justice, and defiance of limits on presidential power as traditionally construed, to continue indefinitely. We are in a new age, America's leaders say. The Democratic opposition seems to agree.
What started as the war against terror, proclaimed by the president to Congress in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks, has undergone a metamorphosis. The initial interpretation was that the people responsible for the World Trade Center attacks and other terrorist outrages against Americans and their interests would be discovered, defeated and killed or brought to justice.
Surely that is what most Americans thought when the search began for Osama bin Laden, Mullah Mohammed Omar and members of Al Qaeda. Today bin Laden and Mullah Omar are somewhere in Waziristan, in Pakistan's tribal areas, tracked by the CIA and Pakistani soldiers (with different degrees of enthusiasm). There is an insurrection in Iraq, which had nothing to do with Al Qaeda when it started, but from which Al Qaeda and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi now draw global publicity.
Elsewhere, violent and alienated members of the Muslim diaspora in Europe claim the brand-identification of Al Qaeda to dramatize their own exploits, as do discontented sons of the Saudi Arabian and other Middle Eastern elites.
Yet even if you include the 9/11 casualties, the number of Americans killed by international terrorists since the late 1960s (which is when the State Department began counting them) is about the same as that killed by lightning - or by accident-causing deer, or by severe allergic reactions to peanuts.
"In almost all years, the total number of people worldwide who die at the hands of international terrorists is not much more than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States" wrote John Mueller of Ohio State University in last autumn's issue of the authoritative American journal Terrorism and Political Violence.
As Mueller concedes, there is a definitional issue: Few insurgents in Iraq are internationals; most are homegrown. And if aspirant terrorists in London or Paris had nuclear bombs, the numbers would become rather different.
Nonetheless, a phenomenon that is scattered, limited and under control, and inevitably transient, has been conflated by Washington with something that is huge and very serious: the desperation among the Muslim masses that is directed indiscriminately against Western nations, which are held responsible for Islamic society's backwardness, poverty and exploitation.
Al Qaeda and individual international terrorists are the object of worldwide intelligence and police operations. They are a marginal phenomenon. The Bush administration's conflation of them with the social upheaval in their world is exploited to perpetuate changes in American society that provide a much more sinister threat to democracy than anything ever dreamed by Osama bin Laden.
The radical threat to the United States is at home.
Paris -- The U.S. Defense Department and the White House have decided that the United States is now conducting "the Long War" rather than what previously was known as the War against Terror, then as the Global Struggle against Violent Extremism, and briefly - as one revealing Pentagon study described it - a war against "the Universal Adversary."
President George W. Bush said in his State of the Union address last month that the aim of his administration is to defeat radical Islam. This was a preposterous statement. Shortly afterward, radical Islam began burning embassies from Afghanistan and Indonesia to Damascus and Beirut. The United States is not going to defeat that.
There are a great many dismaying aspects of Bush's Washington, but nothing more so than this combination of the unachievable with the hortatory in giving a name and purpose to the military campaigns that already have the U.S. Army and Marine Corps near exhaustion, and a major part of the world in turmoil.
It is customary, politically desirable and morally indispensable to say seriously what a war is about, if only so that the public will know when it is over; when the declared and undeclared measures of exception that have accompanied it, justifying suspension of civil liberties, illegal practices and defiance of international law and convention, will be lifted; and when the killing may be expected to stop.
What was originally to be a matter of quick and exemplary revenge, with lightning attacks and acclaimed victories, has now become, we are told, the long war whose end cannot be foreseen. The citizen is implicitly told to expect the current suspension of constitutional norms, disregard for justice, and defiance of limits on presidential power as traditionally construed, to continue indefinitely. We are in a new age, America's leaders say. The Democratic opposition seems to agree.
What started as the war against terror, proclaimed by the president to Congress in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks, has undergone a metamorphosis. The initial interpretation was that the people responsible for the World Trade Center attacks and other terrorist outrages against Americans and their interests would be discovered, defeated and killed or brought to justice.
Surely that is what most Americans thought when the search began for Osama bin Laden, Mullah Mohammed Omar and members of Al Qaeda. Today bin Laden and Mullah Omar are somewhere in Waziristan, in Pakistan's tribal areas, tracked by the CIA and Pakistani soldiers (with different degrees of enthusiasm). There is an insurrection in Iraq, which had nothing to do with Al Qaeda when it started, but from which Al Qaeda and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi now draw global publicity.
Elsewhere, violent and alienated members of the Muslim diaspora in Europe claim the brand-identification of Al Qaeda to dramatize their own exploits, as do discontented sons of the Saudi Arabian and other Middle Eastern elites.
Yet even if you include the 9/11 casualties, the number of Americans killed by international terrorists since the late 1960s (which is when the State Department began counting them) is about the same as that killed by lightning - or by accident-causing deer, or by severe allergic reactions to peanuts.
"In almost all years, the total number of people worldwide who die at the hands of international terrorists is not much more than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States" wrote John Mueller of Ohio State University in last autumn's issue of the authoritative American journal Terrorism and Political Violence.
As Mueller concedes, there is a definitional issue: Few insurgents in Iraq are internationals; most are homegrown. And if aspirant terrorists in London or Paris had nuclear bombs, the numbers would become rather different.
Nonetheless, a phenomenon that is scattered, limited and under control, and inevitably transient, has been conflated by Washington with something that is huge and very serious: the desperation among the Muslim masses that is directed indiscriminately against Western nations, which are held responsible for Islamic society's backwardness, poverty and exploitation.
Al Qaeda and individual international terrorists are the object of worldwide intelligence and police operations. They are a marginal phenomenon. The Bush administration's conflation of them with the social upheaval in their world is exploited to perpetuate changes in American society that provide a much more sinister threat to democracy than anything ever dreamed by Osama bin Laden.
The radical threat to the United States is at home.
Reuters AlertNet - Annan pushes Bush on US troops for UN Darfur force
Reuters AlertNet - Annan pushes Bush on US troops for UN Darfur force
Its about time;
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 9 (Reuters) - The United States should contribute troops and equipment to a planned new U.N. force designed to stop the killings and rape in Sudan's Darfur region, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Thursday.
Annan said he would press President George W. Bush on the issue when the two meet on Monday in Washington, along with expected discussions on Iran, Iraq and the controversy over cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad.
Underfinanced African Union troops are now the only bulwark in Sudan against marauding militia and rebels, with some 7,000 monitors and soldiers on the ground. The U.N. Security Council this week authorized Annan to draw up contingency plans for U.N. peacekeepers to go into Darfur.
"It is not going to be easy for the big and powerful countries with armies to delegate (the job) to third world countries. They will have to play a part if we are going to stop the carnage that we see in Darfur," Annan told reporters.
"They will have to commit troops and equipment, or if they don't want to do it, help us find the troops and equipment to be able to undertake the mandate they give us," he said.
Asked if Bush would be asked to participate, Annan said, "I will share with him the facts that I have shared with you, the needs that we have, and the countries that I think can supply those needs, and that will include the U.S."
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormick was noncommittal and said the issue was still under discussion. "We are working very closely with the United Nations," he said. "We support a transition from a purely A.U. to a U.N. mission. It's not intended to supplant the great efforts of the A.U. mission. It's designed to augment what the A.U. has been able to do."
LOGISTIC SUPPORT
The United States has declared the Darfur conflict genocide and provided logistic support for the AU mission.
A U.N. force in Darfur would have to be very different from the current AU mission, said Annan, who will also have talks on Monday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Such a force would need to show the militias and others plundering villages and attacking refugee camps and humanitarian workers "that we have a force that is capable to respond, a force that is everywhere, and a force that will be there on time to prevent them from intimidating and killing the innocent civilians," he said.
The force would have to be highly mobile on the ground and also have air assets, so it could respond quickly and stop attacks rather than arrive "after the harm has been done," he said.
Civil war has raged in Darfur since February 2003, pitting Sudanese rebels against government forces and allied Arab militias. Tens of thousands have been killed and 2 million driven from their homes, forced to flee to miserable and vulnerable refugee camps in Sudan and Chad.
Russia's U.N. Ambassador Andrei Denisov said Moscow supported the transformation of the African Union operation to a U.N. peacekeeping force.
He told a news conference he favored a wider arms embargo on nongovernmental forces throughout the Sudan but denied Russia had "red lines" on how far it would push the Khartoum government.
(Added information from Evelyn Leopold at the United Nations)
Its about time;
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 9 (Reuters) - The United States should contribute troops and equipment to a planned new U.N. force designed to stop the killings and rape in Sudan's Darfur region, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Thursday.
Annan said he would press President George W. Bush on the issue when the two meet on Monday in Washington, along with expected discussions on Iran, Iraq and the controversy over cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad.
Underfinanced African Union troops are now the only bulwark in Sudan against marauding militia and rebels, with some 7,000 monitors and soldiers on the ground. The U.N. Security Council this week authorized Annan to draw up contingency plans for U.N. peacekeepers to go into Darfur.
"It is not going to be easy for the big and powerful countries with armies to delegate (the job) to third world countries. They will have to play a part if we are going to stop the carnage that we see in Darfur," Annan told reporters.
"They will have to commit troops and equipment, or if they don't want to do it, help us find the troops and equipment to be able to undertake the mandate they give us," he said.
Asked if Bush would be asked to participate, Annan said, "I will share with him the facts that I have shared with you, the needs that we have, and the countries that I think can supply those needs, and that will include the U.S."
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormick was noncommittal and said the issue was still under discussion. "We are working very closely with the United Nations," he said. "We support a transition from a purely A.U. to a U.N. mission. It's not intended to supplant the great efforts of the A.U. mission. It's designed to augment what the A.U. has been able to do."
LOGISTIC SUPPORT
The United States has declared the Darfur conflict genocide and provided logistic support for the AU mission.
A U.N. force in Darfur would have to be very different from the current AU mission, said Annan, who will also have talks on Monday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Such a force would need to show the militias and others plundering villages and attacking refugee camps and humanitarian workers "that we have a force that is capable to respond, a force that is everywhere, and a force that will be there on time to prevent them from intimidating and killing the innocent civilians," he said.
The force would have to be highly mobile on the ground and also have air assets, so it could respond quickly and stop attacks rather than arrive "after the harm has been done," he said.
Civil war has raged in Darfur since February 2003, pitting Sudanese rebels against government forces and allied Arab militias. Tens of thousands have been killed and 2 million driven from their homes, forced to flee to miserable and vulnerable refugee camps in Sudan and Chad.
Russia's U.N. Ambassador Andrei Denisov said Moscow supported the transformation of the African Union operation to a U.N. peacekeeping force.
He told a news conference he favored a wider arms embargo on nongovernmental forces throughout the Sudan but denied Russia had "red lines" on how far it would push the Khartoum government.
(Added information from Evelyn Leopold at the United Nations)
10.2.06
Ex-CIA Official: Bush Administration Misused Iraq Intelligence
Ex-CIA Official: Bush Administration Misused Iraq Intelligence
The Bush administration disregarded the expertise of the intelligence community, politicized the intelligence process and used unrepresentative data in making the case for war, a former CIA senior analyst alleged.
In an article published on Friday in the journal Foreign Affairs, Paul R. Pillar, the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, called the relationship between U.S. intelligence and policymaking "broken."
"In the wake of the Iraq war, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made," Pillar wrote.
Although the Clinton administration and other countries' governments also believed that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction, they supported sanctions and weapons inspections as means to contain the threat, he said.
The Bush administration's decision to go to war indicates other motivations, Pillar wrote, namely a power shake-up in the Middle East and a hastened "spread of more liberal politics and economics in the region."
The Bush administration "used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made," Pillar wrote. "It went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq."
Though Pillar himself was responsible for coordinating intelligence assessments on Iraq, "the first request I received from any administration policymaker for any such assessment was not until a year into the war," he wrote.
Pillar: Intelligence was right
Pillar said much of the intelligence on Iraq proved to have been correct.
Prior to the March 2003 invasion, the intelligence community concluded that the road to democracy in Iraq would be "long, difficult and turbulent" and forecast power struggles between Shiites and Sunnis, Pillar said.
Intelligence experts also predicted that an occupying force would be attacked "unless it established security and put Iraq on the road to prosperity" immediately after the fall of Hussein, he wrote.
As to whether Iraq pursued nuclear weapons, intelligence reports had concluded Iraq was years away from developing them and was unlikely to use such weapons against the United States unless cornered, Pillar said.
The biggest discrepancy between public statements by the Bush administration and judgments by the intelligence community centered on the relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, he said.
"The enormous attention devoted to this subject did not reflect any judgment by intelligence officials that there was or was likely to be anything like the 'alliance' the administration said existed."
Rather, "the administration wanted to hitch the Iraq expedition to the 'war on terror' and the threat the American public feared most, thereby capitalizing on the country's militant post-9/11 mood," Pillar wrote.
White House at odds with intelligence
Pillar cited an August 2002 speech by Vice President Dick Cheney that said "intelligence is an uncertain business" and that intelligence analysts had underestimated how close Iraq was to developing a nuclear weapon before the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
"His conclusion -- at odds with that of the intelligence community -- was that 'many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.'"
After such remarks, the intelligence community was left "to register varying degrees of private protest," he said.
Pillar also cited President Bush's claim, made in his 2003 State of the Union address, that Iraq was purchasing uranium ore from an African country.
"U.S. intelligence analysts had questioned the credibility of the report making this claim, had kept it out of their own unclassified products, and had advised the White House not to use it publicly," Pillar said.
"But the administration put the claim into the speech anyway, referring to it as information from British sources in order to make the point without explicitly vouching for the intelligence."
Reorganization criticized
Pillar described a "poisonous atmosphere" in which intelligence officers, including himself, were accused by administration officials of trying to sabotage the president's policies.
"This poisonous atmosphere reinforced the disinclination within the intelligence community to challenge the consensus view about Iraqi WMD programs; any such challenge would have served merely to reaffirm the presumptions of the accusers."
Pillar also criticized the December 2004 reorganization of the intelligence community that made intelligence leaders serve at the pleasure of the president, saying they need more independence.
Congress and the American people must get serious about "fixing intelligence," he said. "At stake are the soundness of U.S. foreign policymaking and the right of Americans to know the basis for decisions taken in the name of their security."
Pillar, now on the faculty of Georgetown University's Security Studies Program, called for experienced intelligence officers to lead nonpartisan oversight of U.S. intelligence efforts as well as inquiries at the request of members of Congress.
He also called for public discussion on how to improve the relationship between intelligence officials and policymakers, but said there is no clear fix.
"The current ill will may not be reparable, and the perception of the intelligence community on the part of some policymakers -- that Langley is enemy territory -- is unlikely to change," Pillar wrote, referring to CIA headquarters.
The Bush administration disregarded the expertise of the intelligence community, politicized the intelligence process and used unrepresentative data in making the case for war, a former CIA senior analyst alleged.
In an article published on Friday in the journal Foreign Affairs, Paul R. Pillar, the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, called the relationship between U.S. intelligence and policymaking "broken."
"In the wake of the Iraq war, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made," Pillar wrote.
Although the Clinton administration and other countries' governments also believed that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction, they supported sanctions and weapons inspections as means to contain the threat, he said.
The Bush administration's decision to go to war indicates other motivations, Pillar wrote, namely a power shake-up in the Middle East and a hastened "spread of more liberal politics and economics in the region."
The Bush administration "used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made," Pillar wrote. "It went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq."
Though Pillar himself was responsible for coordinating intelligence assessments on Iraq, "the first request I received from any administration policymaker for any such assessment was not until a year into the war," he wrote.
Pillar: Intelligence was right
Pillar said much of the intelligence on Iraq proved to have been correct.
Prior to the March 2003 invasion, the intelligence community concluded that the road to democracy in Iraq would be "long, difficult and turbulent" and forecast power struggles between Shiites and Sunnis, Pillar said.
Intelligence experts also predicted that an occupying force would be attacked "unless it established security and put Iraq on the road to prosperity" immediately after the fall of Hussein, he wrote.
As to whether Iraq pursued nuclear weapons, intelligence reports had concluded Iraq was years away from developing them and was unlikely to use such weapons against the United States unless cornered, Pillar said.
The biggest discrepancy between public statements by the Bush administration and judgments by the intelligence community centered on the relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, he said.
"The enormous attention devoted to this subject did not reflect any judgment by intelligence officials that there was or was likely to be anything like the 'alliance' the administration said existed."
Rather, "the administration wanted to hitch the Iraq expedition to the 'war on terror' and the threat the American public feared most, thereby capitalizing on the country's militant post-9/11 mood," Pillar wrote.
White House at odds with intelligence
Pillar cited an August 2002 speech by Vice President Dick Cheney that said "intelligence is an uncertain business" and that intelligence analysts had underestimated how close Iraq was to developing a nuclear weapon before the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
"His conclusion -- at odds with that of the intelligence community -- was that 'many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.'"
After such remarks, the intelligence community was left "to register varying degrees of private protest," he said.
Pillar also cited President Bush's claim, made in his 2003 State of the Union address, that Iraq was purchasing uranium ore from an African country.
"U.S. intelligence analysts had questioned the credibility of the report making this claim, had kept it out of their own unclassified products, and had advised the White House not to use it publicly," Pillar said.
"But the administration put the claim into the speech anyway, referring to it as information from British sources in order to make the point without explicitly vouching for the intelligence."
Reorganization criticized
Pillar described a "poisonous atmosphere" in which intelligence officers, including himself, were accused by administration officials of trying to sabotage the president's policies.
"This poisonous atmosphere reinforced the disinclination within the intelligence community to challenge the consensus view about Iraqi WMD programs; any such challenge would have served merely to reaffirm the presumptions of the accusers."
Pillar also criticized the December 2004 reorganization of the intelligence community that made intelligence leaders serve at the pleasure of the president, saying they need more independence.
Congress and the American people must get serious about "fixing intelligence," he said. "At stake are the soundness of U.S. foreign policymaking and the right of Americans to know the basis for decisions taken in the name of their security."
Pillar, now on the faculty of Georgetown University's Security Studies Program, called for experienced intelligence officers to lead nonpartisan oversight of U.S. intelligence efforts as well as inquiries at the request of members of Congress.
He also called for public discussion on how to improve the relationship between intelligence officials and policymakers, but said there is no clear fix.
"The current ill will may not be reparable, and the perception of the intelligence community on the part of some policymakers -- that Langley is enemy territory -- is unlikely to change," Pillar wrote, referring to CIA headquarters.
CHRIS LAU: XL could have used more Rice
CHRIS LAU: XL could have used more Rice
My favorite memory of Super Bowl week is simple.
I haven't watched football all season -- it got too painful for me to watch football games after my idol Jerry Rice retired, especially knowing that at 43, he could still help most of the teams in the league.
But having a gazillion televisions all over the media center forced me to watch football. It was the only thing on.
And, frequently, the football shows replayed and reflected on the career of "Mr. Flash 80."
It was the simple joy of watching clips of a younger Rice toasting NFL secondaries, combined with a news conference where his former quarterback, Steve Young, reminisced about throwing him the ball, that were my highlights for the week before XL.
Talking about the night before Super Bowl XXIX, Young said, "Quarterbacking with a great defense and a great offensive line and Jerry Rice, you sleep pretty good."
I know I'll never get to watch Rice play again, but this past week made me realize how far each of the Steelers and Seahawks receivers I saw on the field Sunday night still have to go to reach Rice's numbers.
And that reminded me of just how unbelievable a player my hero was.
Jerry Rice has recently become a new found hero in ballroom dancing on
Dancing With The Stars; Not only is he regarded as the best receiver to ever play the game, and arguably the greatest football player ever. Now he is doing an incredible job and working very hard with Professional dancer Anna Trebunskaya on prime time TV. I believe he is now working muscles he never knew he had.
Not being one who watches TV very often, this act caught my attention.
My favorite memory of Super Bowl week is simple.
I haven't watched football all season -- it got too painful for me to watch football games after my idol Jerry Rice retired, especially knowing that at 43, he could still help most of the teams in the league.
But having a gazillion televisions all over the media center forced me to watch football. It was the only thing on.
And, frequently, the football shows replayed and reflected on the career of "Mr. Flash 80."
It was the simple joy of watching clips of a younger Rice toasting NFL secondaries, combined with a news conference where his former quarterback, Steve Young, reminisced about throwing him the ball, that were my highlights for the week before XL.
Talking about the night before Super Bowl XXIX, Young said, "Quarterbacking with a great defense and a great offensive line and Jerry Rice, you sleep pretty good."
I know I'll never get to watch Rice play again, but this past week made me realize how far each of the Steelers and Seahawks receivers I saw on the field Sunday night still have to go to reach Rice's numbers.
And that reminded me of just how unbelievable a player my hero was.
Jerry Rice has recently become a new found hero in ballroom dancing on
Dancing With The Stars; Not only is he regarded as the best receiver to ever play the game, and arguably the greatest football player ever. Now he is doing an incredible job and working very hard with Professional dancer Anna Trebunskaya on prime time TV. I believe he is now working muscles he never knew he had.
Not being one who watches TV very often, this act caught my attention.
White House Knew of Levee's Failure on Night of Storm - New York Times
White House Knew of Levee's Failure on Night of Storm - New York Times
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.
But Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department's headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency official, Marty Bahamonde, first heard of a major levee breach Monday morning. By late Monday afternoon, Mr. Bahamonde had hitched a ride on a Coast Guard helicopter over the breach at the 17th Street Canal to confirm the extensive flooding.
He then telephoned his report to FEMA headquarters in Washington, which notified the Homeland Security Department."FYI from FEMA," said an e-mail message from the agency's public affairs staff describing the helicopter flight, sent Monday night at 9:27 to the chief of staff of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and recently unearthed by investigators.
Conditions, the message said, "are far more serious than media reports are currently reflecting. Finding extensive flooding and more stranded people than they had thought — also a number of fires."Michael D. Brown, who was the director of FEMA until he resigned under pressure on Sept. 12, said in a telephone interview Thursday that he personally notified the White House of this news that night, though he declined to identify the official he spoke to.
White House officials have confirmed to Congressional investigators that the report of the levee break arrived there at midnight, and Trent Duffy, the White House spokesman, acknowledged as much in an interview this week, though he said it was surrounded with conflicting reports.
But the alert did not seem to register. Lights are on nobody's home!
Even the next morning, President Bush was feeling relieved that New Orleans had "dodged the bullet," he later recalled. Mr. Chertoff, similarly confident, flew Tuesday to Atlanta for a briefing on avian flu. With power out from the high winds and movement limited, even news reporters in New Orleans remained unaware of the full extent of the levee breaches until Tuesday.The federal government let out a sigh of relief when in fact it should have been sounding an "all hands on deck" alarm, the investigators have found. DUH-bya
This chain of events, along with dozens of other critical flashpoints in the Hurricane Katrina saga, has for the first time been laid out in detail following five months of work by two Congressional committees that have assembled nearly 800,000 pages of documents, testimony and interviews from more than 250 witnesses.
Investigators now have the documentation to pinpoint some of the fundamental errors and oversights that combined to produce what is universally agreed to be a flawed government response to the worst natural disaster in modern American history.
On Friday, Mr. Brown, the former FEMA director, is scheduled to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He is expected to confirm that he notified the White House on that Monday, the day the hurricane hit, that the levee had given way, the city was flooding and his crews were overwhelmed.
"There is no question in my mind that at the highest levels of the White House they understood how grave the situation was," Mr. Brown said in the interview. The problem, he said, was the handicapping of FEMA when it was turned into a division of the Homeland Security Department in 2003.
"The real story is with this new structure," he said. "Why weren't more things done, or what prevented or delayed Mike Brown from being able to do what he would have done and did do in any other disaster?"
Although Mr. Bahamonde said in October that he had notified Mr. Brown that Monday, it was not known until recently what Mr. Brown or the Homeland Security Department did with that information, or when the White House was told.
Missteps at All Levels 1 2 3 Next Page >
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.
But Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department's headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency official, Marty Bahamonde, first heard of a major levee breach Monday morning. By late Monday afternoon, Mr. Bahamonde had hitched a ride on a Coast Guard helicopter over the breach at the 17th Street Canal to confirm the extensive flooding.
He then telephoned his report to FEMA headquarters in Washington, which notified the Homeland Security Department."FYI from FEMA," said an e-mail message from the agency's public affairs staff describing the helicopter flight, sent Monday night at 9:27 to the chief of staff of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and recently unearthed by investigators.
Conditions, the message said, "are far more serious than media reports are currently reflecting. Finding extensive flooding and more stranded people than they had thought — also a number of fires."Michael D. Brown, who was the director of FEMA until he resigned under pressure on Sept. 12, said in a telephone interview Thursday that he personally notified the White House of this news that night, though he declined to identify the official he spoke to.
White House officials have confirmed to Congressional investigators that the report of the levee break arrived there at midnight, and Trent Duffy, the White House spokesman, acknowledged as much in an interview this week, though he said it was surrounded with conflicting reports.
But the alert did not seem to register. Lights are on nobody's home!
Even the next morning, President Bush was feeling relieved that New Orleans had "dodged the bullet," he later recalled. Mr. Chertoff, similarly confident, flew Tuesday to Atlanta for a briefing on avian flu. With power out from the high winds and movement limited, even news reporters in New Orleans remained unaware of the full extent of the levee breaches until Tuesday.The federal government let out a sigh of relief when in fact it should have been sounding an "all hands on deck" alarm, the investigators have found. DUH-bya
This chain of events, along with dozens of other critical flashpoints in the Hurricane Katrina saga, has for the first time been laid out in detail following five months of work by two Congressional committees that have assembled nearly 800,000 pages of documents, testimony and interviews from more than 250 witnesses.
Investigators now have the documentation to pinpoint some of the fundamental errors and oversights that combined to produce what is universally agreed to be a flawed government response to the worst natural disaster in modern American history.
On Friday, Mr. Brown, the former FEMA director, is scheduled to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He is expected to confirm that he notified the White House on that Monday, the day the hurricane hit, that the levee had given way, the city was flooding and his crews were overwhelmed.
"There is no question in my mind that at the highest levels of the White House they understood how grave the situation was," Mr. Brown said in the interview. The problem, he said, was the handicapping of FEMA when it was turned into a division of the Homeland Security Department in 2003.
"The real story is with this new structure," he said. "Why weren't more things done, or what prevented or delayed Mike Brown from being able to do what he would have done and did do in any other disaster?"
Although Mr. Bahamonde said in October that he had notified Mr. Brown that Monday, it was not known until recently what Mr. Brown or the Homeland Security Department did with that information, or when the White House was told.
Missteps at All Levels 1 2 3 Next Page >
Why 2,245 Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg
Why 2,245 Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg
The number is now higher than 2,245
Cindy Sheehan and Beverly Young's arrests at the State of the Union for wearing opposing "protest" T-shirts is the latest illustration of how the Iraq War is the nation's most provocative issue. The attack on free speech for both sides was in fact outrageous. But lost in the T-shirt battle is what really matters: President George W. Bush's failure to tell the nation about the true costs of the war.
Any honest national discussion about the war must begin with the death of Sheehan's son Casey and the other 2,244 soldiers who have died because of this conflict.
The number of soldiers killed boldly written on Sheehan's shirt was a shocking, in-your-face accounting of the State of the Union over the last three years. As horrific as they are, those numbers are just the tip of the iceberg of the human costs of this war. Along those soldiers are 16,584 soldiers wounded in combat, and upwards of 100,000 needing mental health services, just to start with.
Bush didn't mention the human cost of war because in part gross mismanagement by the administration has inflated it. For example, both Bush and members of Congress have pledged to fix problems with body and vehicle armor year after year. But despite promises to fix the situation, the military recently reported that 80 percent of Marines killed by torso wounds could have lived if they had better body armor.
That's hard to swallow, especially when one of the makers of body armor, CEO David H. Brooks of DHB Industries, received $87,500 in compensation for "foregone vacation," almost three times what an Army private makes in an entire year of combat. With complete disregard for rampant war profiteering, Brooks earned $70 million in 2004.
Those veterans who return from Iraq are finding Washington's promises to care for them are violated with impunity. Last year, the Veterans Affairs Department suspended enrollment of 263,257 vets seeking health care. The VA underestimated the number of veterans needing care upon return from Iraq and Afghanistan by 300 percent, so qualified veterans were simply cut from the rolls. Maybe they thought no one would notice.
In addition to the war's human costs, Bush overlooked the financial costs. Three days after the State of the Union address, budget officials announced another $70 billion will be requested. Such a large initiative should have been highlighted for all of the nation. With these funds, the U.S. will spend more than $320 billion in the Iraq War.
As astonishing as this number is, it does not include many of the indirect and long-term costs. Adding in estimates for future Veterans Administration and ongoing health care costs along with the interest on the debt, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes recently estimated the long-term cost of the war at $1.3 trillion.
Instead of calling for a plan to pay for the shared sacrifice needed to cover the war's costs, Bush urged Congress to make his tax cuts permanent. Surely the government could use these funds to offset the looming Social Security crisis he highlighted. Or the sorely needed reconstruction of those cities destroyed by Hurricane Katrina could be accelerated.
The irony of the war's outrageous financial costs is that they hobble the very social and economic programs that keep this country strong. While Iraq staggers under the occupation-spurred violence, the war is exacting a huge toll at home.
The costs of war might be worthwhile if there was indeed a "plan for victory." But squeezing the same lemon again and again isn't producing very good lemonade. The lack of leadership and vision coupled with the tremendous loss of life and staggering economic costs make the Iraq War one of the nation's greatest tragedies.
Ignoring the real human and economic costs of the war, it was easy for Bush to use his State of the Union speech to vow to stay the course. But while Cindy Sheehan and her tell-the-truth shirt from the Capitol were quickly removed from public view, the reality of the war is not so easy to hide.
Erik Leaver is a research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and the policy outreach director for the Foreign Policy In Focus Project. He is the co-author of "The Iraq Quagmire: The Mounting Costs of War and the Case for Bringing Home the Troops." Online at www.ips-dc.org/iraq/quagmire/
© 2006 Sun-Sentinel Co. & South Florida Interactive Inc.
The number is now higher than 2,245
Cindy Sheehan and Beverly Young's arrests at the State of the Union for wearing opposing "protest" T-shirts is the latest illustration of how the Iraq War is the nation's most provocative issue. The attack on free speech for both sides was in fact outrageous. But lost in the T-shirt battle is what really matters: President George W. Bush's failure to tell the nation about the true costs of the war.
Any honest national discussion about the war must begin with the death of Sheehan's son Casey and the other 2,244 soldiers who have died because of this conflict.
The number of soldiers killed boldly written on Sheehan's shirt was a shocking, in-your-face accounting of the State of the Union over the last three years. As horrific as they are, those numbers are just the tip of the iceberg of the human costs of this war. Along those soldiers are 16,584 soldiers wounded in combat, and upwards of 100,000 needing mental health services, just to start with.
Bush didn't mention the human cost of war because in part gross mismanagement by the administration has inflated it. For example, both Bush and members of Congress have pledged to fix problems with body and vehicle armor year after year. But despite promises to fix the situation, the military recently reported that 80 percent of Marines killed by torso wounds could have lived if they had better body armor.
That's hard to swallow, especially when one of the makers of body armor, CEO David H. Brooks of DHB Industries, received $87,500 in compensation for "foregone vacation," almost three times what an Army private makes in an entire year of combat. With complete disregard for rampant war profiteering, Brooks earned $70 million in 2004.
Those veterans who return from Iraq are finding Washington's promises to care for them are violated with impunity. Last year, the Veterans Affairs Department suspended enrollment of 263,257 vets seeking health care. The VA underestimated the number of veterans needing care upon return from Iraq and Afghanistan by 300 percent, so qualified veterans were simply cut from the rolls. Maybe they thought no one would notice.
In addition to the war's human costs, Bush overlooked the financial costs. Three days after the State of the Union address, budget officials announced another $70 billion will be requested. Such a large initiative should have been highlighted for all of the nation. With these funds, the U.S. will spend more than $320 billion in the Iraq War.
As astonishing as this number is, it does not include many of the indirect and long-term costs. Adding in estimates for future Veterans Administration and ongoing health care costs along with the interest on the debt, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes recently estimated the long-term cost of the war at $1.3 trillion.
Instead of calling for a plan to pay for the shared sacrifice needed to cover the war's costs, Bush urged Congress to make his tax cuts permanent. Surely the government could use these funds to offset the looming Social Security crisis he highlighted. Or the sorely needed reconstruction of those cities destroyed by Hurricane Katrina could be accelerated.
The irony of the war's outrageous financial costs is that they hobble the very social and economic programs that keep this country strong. While Iraq staggers under the occupation-spurred violence, the war is exacting a huge toll at home.
The costs of war might be worthwhile if there was indeed a "plan for victory." But squeezing the same lemon again and again isn't producing very good lemonade. The lack of leadership and vision coupled with the tremendous loss of life and staggering economic costs make the Iraq War one of the nation's greatest tragedies.
Ignoring the real human and economic costs of the war, it was easy for Bush to use his State of the Union speech to vow to stay the course. But while Cindy Sheehan and her tell-the-truth shirt from the Capitol were quickly removed from public view, the reality of the war is not so easy to hide.
Erik Leaver is a research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and the policy outreach director for the Foreign Policy In Focus Project. He is the co-author of "The Iraq Quagmire: The Mounting Costs of War and the Case for Bringing Home the Troops." Online at www.ips-dc.org/iraq/quagmire/
© 2006 Sun-Sentinel Co. & South Florida Interactive Inc.
Doteasy - 100MB Free Web Hosting, Free Email, Domain Names for Business and Individuals
Doteasy - 100MB Free Web Hosting, Free Email, Domain Names for Business and Individuals
This is another fine american misleading company, claiming free hosting, blah blah until you fill out all the information and get to the last page and they want you to pay $90 for your domain.
Not once during the entire process does it state any charges until you waste your time filling out all their info, then they hit you with their terms and agreements.
RIP OFF. You can find cheaper domain hosting elsewhere.
This is another fine american misleading company, claiming free hosting, blah blah until you fill out all the information and get to the last page and they want you to pay $90 for your domain.
Not once during the entire process does it state any charges until you waste your time filling out all their info, then they hit you with their terms and agreements.
RIP OFF. You can find cheaper domain hosting elsewhere.
Citizens Concerned for the People of Iraq - working to end war and economic sanctions
Citizens Concerned for the People of Iraq - working to end war and economic sanctions
The mission of the Interfaith Network of Concern for the People of Iraq (INOC) is to join together and to act out of the teachings of our faith traditions to end the economic sanctions and war against the people of Iraq in a nonviolent manner.
Given the war in 2003, nothing has occurred which has lessened INOC's concerns for the 24 million people of Iraq. INOC will work towards:
a. Having humanitarian needs met, e.g. water, electricity, and food.
b. Establishment of a legitimate government respectful of human rights.
c. Education of Americans on the health effects of wars and the unacceptability of bombing civilian infrastructure and economic sanctions.
d. Role for U.N. including meeting humanitarian needs and formation of a government.
INOC was formed in February 1999 when former U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Denis Halliday and Middle East foreign affairs expert Phyllis Bennis gave presentations in Seattle to faith group leaders. In January 2000, INOC formally became a program unit of the Church Council of Greater Seattle.
While INOC is related to a Christian organization, it is interfaith in that participants are from the Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist faiths, as well as Catholic and Protestant. Non-religious participants are also welcome. INOC is a member of the Seattle International Human Rights Coalition and the National Network to End the War Against Iraq.
CCPI is a Seattle-based public awareness campaign and part of a nationwide and worldwide movement dedicated to ending the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by members of the United Nations Security Council. The sanctions were an embargo on all trade, except for humanitarian shipments specifically approved by the Security Council, and were initiated in 1990.
According to UNICEF, they have contributed to the deaths of half a million children under-five and continue to contribute to 'excess' deaths of over 5,000 children per month. The sanctions have been widely condemned as a form of warfare, a 'weapon of mass destruction', directed against the civilian population. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in May 2003, U.N. sanctions were lifted by the Security Council; but economic sanctions against Iraq remain in force under U.S. law.*
The mission of the Interfaith Network of Concern for the People of Iraq (INOC) is to join together and to act out of the teachings of our faith traditions to end the economic sanctions and war against the people of Iraq in a nonviolent manner.
Given the war in 2003, nothing has occurred which has lessened INOC's concerns for the 24 million people of Iraq. INOC will work towards:
a. Having humanitarian needs met, e.g. water, electricity, and food.
b. Establishment of a legitimate government respectful of human rights.
c. Education of Americans on the health effects of wars and the unacceptability of bombing civilian infrastructure and economic sanctions.
d. Role for U.N. including meeting humanitarian needs and formation of a government.
INOC was formed in February 1999 when former U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Denis Halliday and Middle East foreign affairs expert Phyllis Bennis gave presentations in Seattle to faith group leaders. In January 2000, INOC formally became a program unit of the Church Council of Greater Seattle.
While INOC is related to a Christian organization, it is interfaith in that participants are from the Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist faiths, as well as Catholic and Protestant. Non-religious participants are also welcome. INOC is a member of the Seattle International Human Rights Coalition and the National Network to End the War Against Iraq.
CCPI is a Seattle-based public awareness campaign and part of a nationwide and worldwide movement dedicated to ending the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by members of the United Nations Security Council. The sanctions were an embargo on all trade, except for humanitarian shipments specifically approved by the Security Council, and were initiated in 1990.
According to UNICEF, they have contributed to the deaths of half a million children under-five and continue to contribute to 'excess' deaths of over 5,000 children per month. The sanctions have been widely condemned as a form of warfare, a 'weapon of mass destruction', directed against the civilian population. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in May 2003, U.N. sanctions were lifted by the Security Council; but economic sanctions against Iraq remain in force under U.S. law.*
We Lost Iraqi Hearts and Minds Long Before the Current Occupation
We Lost Iraqi Hearts and Minds Long Before the Current Occupation
by Bert Sacks
I recently attended an alumni meeting in Seattle of a well-known East Coast college. The president of the college spoke and a hundred alumni came to listen. I used the chance to speak to several of them about something I know well from my nine trips to Iraq: the 12 years of U.N. and U.S. economic sanctions on Iraq, reinstated after the Gulf War in 1991 and ending with this war in 2003.
It was enlightening.
The first man, a doctor, knew about the 500,000 Iraqi children who had died from 1991 to 1998, as reported by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). He knew they died from epidemics of diseases caused by unsafe water. Perhaps he'd read about it in The New England Journal of Medicine, where the prime cause was described as our bombing of Iraq's electrical plants, water facilities and civilian infrastructure during the Gulf War. He was saddened by this but shrugged his shoulders: What can one do?!
Then I spoke with two more alumni, one a former Marine on his way to fish in the Caribbean. When I spoke about 500,000 dead Iraqi children, I felt I'd breached an unspoken rule of etiquette: One just doesn't talk about our responsibility for dead Iraqi children. The talk quickly went back to fishing.
I did find two people who were interested. And it was refreshing to talk to them, even though I learned they weren't alumni.
There is a personal irony in this. When I left to go to that college many years ago, I had the conscious thought that "now I am going to learn about the real world." Two years later, when I dropped out, I had the thought that I would not learn about the real world there.
In the question-and-answer period of the alumni meeting, the president of the college mentioned that he kept informed by reading both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. I thought to myself, "My God, he really doesn't know!" This man, who attends meetings with the U.S. president, thinks these papers will keep him well-informed of important world events.
The example that immediately came to my mind was the coverage by these two papers of a very significant story in 1999. On Aug. 12, 1999, UNICEF reported "that if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under 5 in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998."
The report continued, "Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war."
Here is the most credible children's organization in the world telling us that war and U.N./U.S. economic sanctions had contributed to the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children. How did these two papers report it?
The Wall Street Journal's entire coverage was two sentences: "The death rate for Iraqi children doubled in this decade, according to a UNICEF report sure to reignite debate over U.N. sanctions.
The U.S. blames Saddam Hussein's regime for hoarding food and medicine purchased under a program allowing limited oil sales." It isn't even listed as a news story in their news index.
The New York Times story said the same thing, but in 800 words: It failed to report the number of deaths and quoted only a U.S. spokesman who blamed everything on Saddam. Meanwhile, the three television networks never said one word.
It's often said there was a failure of intelligence leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. That is true. The most obvious failure is that so very few Americans knew the U.S. kept to a policy that devastated the civilian population of Iraq for 12 years. Thousands of its most vulnerable — the very young, very old and very sick — died needlessly every month.
We justified this by saying it was "to punish Saddam."
Can we begin to imagine someone doing the same here "to punish George W. Bush" for our invasion? How would we possibly feel? What piece of information better explains why U.S. troops never were received with open arms and flowers as predicted? Our invasion began with two strikes against it.
Congressman John Murtha recently said that we've already lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. What chance did we have for Iraqi hearts and minds after all those years and all those deaths? Not much at all.
Bert Sacks is a Seattle resident and retired engineer. Active with Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Interfaith Network of Concern for the People of Iraq, he has worked for the past 10 years to change U.S. policy toward Iraq, including the economic sanctions.
by Bert Sacks
I recently attended an alumni meeting in Seattle of a well-known East Coast college. The president of the college spoke and a hundred alumni came to listen. I used the chance to speak to several of them about something I know well from my nine trips to Iraq: the 12 years of U.N. and U.S. economic sanctions on Iraq, reinstated after the Gulf War in 1991 and ending with this war in 2003.
It was enlightening.
The first man, a doctor, knew about the 500,000 Iraqi children who had died from 1991 to 1998, as reported by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). He knew they died from epidemics of diseases caused by unsafe water. Perhaps he'd read about it in The New England Journal of Medicine, where the prime cause was described as our bombing of Iraq's electrical plants, water facilities and civilian infrastructure during the Gulf War. He was saddened by this but shrugged his shoulders: What can one do?!
Then I spoke with two more alumni, one a former Marine on his way to fish in the Caribbean. When I spoke about 500,000 dead Iraqi children, I felt I'd breached an unspoken rule of etiquette: One just doesn't talk about our responsibility for dead Iraqi children. The talk quickly went back to fishing.
I did find two people who were interested. And it was refreshing to talk to them, even though I learned they weren't alumni.
There is a personal irony in this. When I left to go to that college many years ago, I had the conscious thought that "now I am going to learn about the real world." Two years later, when I dropped out, I had the thought that I would not learn about the real world there.
In the question-and-answer period of the alumni meeting, the president of the college mentioned that he kept informed by reading both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. I thought to myself, "My God, he really doesn't know!" This man, who attends meetings with the U.S. president, thinks these papers will keep him well-informed of important world events.
The example that immediately came to my mind was the coverage by these two papers of a very significant story in 1999. On Aug. 12, 1999, UNICEF reported "that if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under 5 in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998."
The report continued, "Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war."
Here is the most credible children's organization in the world telling us that war and U.N./U.S. economic sanctions had contributed to the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children. How did these two papers report it?
The Wall Street Journal's entire coverage was two sentences: "The death rate for Iraqi children doubled in this decade, according to a UNICEF report sure to reignite debate over U.N. sanctions.
The U.S. blames Saddam Hussein's regime for hoarding food and medicine purchased under a program allowing limited oil sales." It isn't even listed as a news story in their news index.
The New York Times story said the same thing, but in 800 words: It failed to report the number of deaths and quoted only a U.S. spokesman who blamed everything on Saddam. Meanwhile, the three television networks never said one word.
It's often said there was a failure of intelligence leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. That is true. The most obvious failure is that so very few Americans knew the U.S. kept to a policy that devastated the civilian population of Iraq for 12 years. Thousands of its most vulnerable — the very young, very old and very sick — died needlessly every month.
We justified this by saying it was "to punish Saddam."
Can we begin to imagine someone doing the same here "to punish George W. Bush" for our invasion? How would we possibly feel? What piece of information better explains why U.S. troops never were received with open arms and flowers as predicted? Our invasion began with two strikes against it.
Congressman John Murtha recently said that we've already lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. What chance did we have for Iraqi hearts and minds after all those years and all those deaths? Not much at all.
Bert Sacks is a Seattle resident and retired engineer. Active with Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Interfaith Network of Concern for the People of Iraq, he has worked for the past 10 years to change U.S. policy toward Iraq, including the economic sanctions.
Ex-FEMA chief: I May Tell All about Katrina
Ex-FEMA chief: I May Tell All about Katrina
Michael Brown asks White House if they want him to stay quiet
Oh do tell. I think the people of the United States should know. Don't ask, just tell.
The White House will probably want you to lie. That's what they do.
WASHINGTON - Former disaster agency chief Michael Brown is indicating he is ready to reveal his correspondence with President Bush and other officials during Hurricane Katrina unless the White House forbids it and offers legal support. gimme a break
Brown's stance, in a letter obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, follows senators' complaints that the White House is refusing to answer questions or release documents about advice given to Bush concerning the August 29 storm.
Brown quit as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency days after Katrina struck. He left the federal payroll November 2.
In a February 6 letter to White House counsel Harriet Miers, Brown's lawyer wrote that Brown continues to respect Bush and his "presidential prerogative" to get candid and confidential advice from top aides. BU*SH*IT-wtf is that?
The letter from Andrew W. Lester also says Brown no longer can rely on being included in that protection because he is a private citizen.
"Unless there is specific direction otherwise from the president, including an assurance the president will provide a legal defense to Mr. Brown if he refuses to testify as to these matters, Mr. Brown will testify if asked about particular communications," the lawyer wrote.
Brown's desire "is that all facts be made public." a nice change
White House spokesman Trent Duffy declined to comment on the letter, instead pointing to remarks two weeks ago in which Bush avoided directly including Brown among his advisers.
At the time, Bush defended his administration's stance on withholding some information, saying that providing all the material would chill the ability of presidential advisers to speak freely. The White House said it has given 15,000 documents about the storm response to Senate investigators.
Brown is set to testify Friday at a Senate inquiry of the slow government response to Katrina.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Connecticut., who blasted the White House last month for what he called attempts to stonewall the Senate inquiry, said he expects Brown, now a private citizen, "to answer every question the committee puts to him truthfully."
"I see no basis for him to refuse to answer any of our questions, and I hope the White House will not try to direct him not to answer our questions," Lieberman said.
Contacted Wednesday, Brown referred questions about the letter to Lester. The lawyer described his client as "between a rock and a hard place" between the administration's reluctance to disclose certain high-level communications and Congress' right to demand it.
"Mr. Brown is going to testify before Congress. If he receives no guidance to the contrary, we'll do as any citizen should do -- and that is to answer all questions fully, completely and accurately," Lester said.
The letter set a 5 p.m. EST deadline Wednesday for the White House to reply to Brown. That passed without a response, Lester said.
Some administration officials have refused interviews by Senate investigators or have declined to answer even seemingly innocuous questions about times and dates of meetings and telephone calls with the White House.
The leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee have accused the White House of crippling their inquiry after FEMA lawyers prohibited Brown from responding to some questions during a January 23 staff interview.
At that interview, Brown told investigators he was aware of management problems at the agency that were highlighted in a consultant's report months before Katrina. He attributed some of the problems to the agency's merger with the Homeland Security Department in 2003.
"What I wish I had done was, frankly, just either quit earlier or whatever and gone to certain friends that I can't talk about and said we got to fix this -- I mean, what's going on is nuts," Brown said, according to a Senate transcript of the meeting.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said if the problems been addressed earlier, "the response to Hurricane Katrina could have been better organized and perhaps we could have lessened the devastating impact on the people of the Gulf Coast."
Michael Brown asks White House if they want him to stay quiet
Oh do tell. I think the people of the United States should know. Don't ask, just tell.
The White House will probably want you to lie. That's what they do.
WASHINGTON - Former disaster agency chief Michael Brown is indicating he is ready to reveal his correspondence with President Bush and other officials during Hurricane Katrina unless the White House forbids it and offers legal support. gimme a break
Brown's stance, in a letter obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, follows senators' complaints that the White House is refusing to answer questions or release documents about advice given to Bush concerning the August 29 storm.
Brown quit as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency days after Katrina struck. He left the federal payroll November 2.
In a February 6 letter to White House counsel Harriet Miers, Brown's lawyer wrote that Brown continues to respect Bush and his "presidential prerogative" to get candid and confidential advice from top aides. BU*SH*IT-wtf is that?
The letter from Andrew W. Lester also says Brown no longer can rely on being included in that protection because he is a private citizen.
"Unless there is specific direction otherwise from the president, including an assurance the president will provide a legal defense to Mr. Brown if he refuses to testify as to these matters, Mr. Brown will testify if asked about particular communications," the lawyer wrote.
Brown's desire "is that all facts be made public." a nice change
White House spokesman Trent Duffy declined to comment on the letter, instead pointing to remarks two weeks ago in which Bush avoided directly including Brown among his advisers.
At the time, Bush defended his administration's stance on withholding some information, saying that providing all the material would chill the ability of presidential advisers to speak freely. The White House said it has given 15,000 documents about the storm response to Senate investigators.
Brown is set to testify Friday at a Senate inquiry of the slow government response to Katrina.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Connecticut., who blasted the White House last month for what he called attempts to stonewall the Senate inquiry, said he expects Brown, now a private citizen, "to answer every question the committee puts to him truthfully."
"I see no basis for him to refuse to answer any of our questions, and I hope the White House will not try to direct him not to answer our questions," Lieberman said.
Contacted Wednesday, Brown referred questions about the letter to Lester. The lawyer described his client as "between a rock and a hard place" between the administration's reluctance to disclose certain high-level communications and Congress' right to demand it.
"Mr. Brown is going to testify before Congress. If he receives no guidance to the contrary, we'll do as any citizen should do -- and that is to answer all questions fully, completely and accurately," Lester said.
The letter set a 5 p.m. EST deadline Wednesday for the White House to reply to Brown. That passed without a response, Lester said.
Some administration officials have refused interviews by Senate investigators or have declined to answer even seemingly innocuous questions about times and dates of meetings and telephone calls with the White House.
The leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee have accused the White House of crippling their inquiry after FEMA lawyers prohibited Brown from responding to some questions during a January 23 staff interview.
At that interview, Brown told investigators he was aware of management problems at the agency that were highlighted in a consultant's report months before Katrina. He attributed some of the problems to the agency's merger with the Homeland Security Department in 2003.
"What I wish I had done was, frankly, just either quit earlier or whatever and gone to certain friends that I can't talk about and said we got to fix this -- I mean, what's going on is nuts," Brown said, according to a Senate transcript of the meeting.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said if the problems been addressed earlier, "the response to Hurricane Katrina could have been better organized and perhaps we could have lessened the devastating impact on the people of the Gulf Coast."
US Plans Massive Data Sweep
US Plans Massive Data Sweep
Little-known data-collection system could troll news, blogs, even e-mails. Will it go too far?
by Mark Clayton
The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity. Good can you hear me now???
The system - parts of which are operational, parts of which are still under development - is already credited with helping to foil some plots. It is the federal government's latest attempt to use broad data-collection and powerful analysis in the fight against terrorism. But by delving deeply into the digital minutiae of American life, the program is also raising concerns that the government is intruding too deeply into citizens' privacy.
"We don't realize that, as we live our lives and make little choices, like buying groceries, buying on Amazon, Googling, we're leaving traces everywhere," says Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We have an attitude that no one will connect all those dots. But these programs are about connecting those dots - analyzing and aggregating them - in a way that we haven't thought about. It's one of the underlying fundamental issues we have yet to come to grips with."
The core of this effort is a little-known system called Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE). Only a few public documents mention it. ADVISE is a research and development program within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), part of its three-year-old "Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment" portfolio. The TVTA received nearly $50 million in federal funding this year.
DHS officials are circumspect when talking about ADVISE. "I've heard of it," says Peter Sand, director of privacy technology. "I don't know the actual status right now. But if it's a system that's been discussed, then it's something we're involved in at some level."
Data-mining is a key technology
A major part of ADVISE involves data-mining - or "dataveillance," as some call it. It means sifting through data to look for patterns. If a supermarket finds that customers who buy cider also tend to buy fresh-baked bread, it might group the two together. To prevent fraud, credit-card issuers use data-mining to look for patterns of suspicious activity.
What sets ADVISE apart is its scope. It would collect a vast array of corporate and public online information - from financial records to CNN news stories - and cross-reference it against US intelligence and law-enforcement records. The system would then store it as "entities" - linked data about people, places, things, organizations, and events, according to a report summarizing a 2004 DHS conference in Alexandria, Va. The storage requirements alone are huge - enough to retain information about 1 quadrillion entities, the report estimated. If each entity were a penny, they would collectively form a cube a half-mile high - roughly double the height of the Empire State Building.
But ADVISE and related DHS technologies aim to do much more, according to Joseph Kielman, manager of the TVTA portfolio. The key is not merely to identify terrorists, or sift for key words, but to identify critical patterns in data that illumine their motives and intentions, he wrote in a presentation at a November conference in Richland, Wash.
For example: Is a burst of Internet traffic between a few people the plotting of terrorists, or just bloggers arguing? ADVISE algorithms would try to determine that before flagging the data pattern for a human analyst's review.
At least a few pieces of ADVISE are already operational. Consider Starlight, which along with other "visualization" software tools can give human analysts a graphical view of data. Viewing data in this way could reveal patterns not obvious in text or number form. Understanding the relationships among people, organizations, places, and things - using social-behavior analysis and other techniques - is essential to going beyond mere data-mining to comprehensive "knowledge discovery in databases," Dr. Kielman wrote in his November report. He declined to be interviewed for this article.
One data program has foiled terrorists (who dubya?)
Starlight has already helped foil some terror plots, says Jim Thomas, one of its developers and director of the government's new National Visualization Analytics Center in Richland, Wash. He can't elaborate because the cases are classified, he adds. But "there's no question that the technology we've invented here at the lab has been used to protect our freedoms - and that's pretty cool."
As envisioned, ADVISE and its analytical tools would be used by other agencies to look for terrorists. "All federal, state, local and private-sector security entities will be able to share and collaborate in real time with distributed data warehouses that will provide full support for analysis and action" for the ADVISE system, says the 2004 workshop report.
A program in the shadows
Yet the scope of ADVISE - its stage of development, cost, and most other details - is so obscure that critics say it poses a major privacy challenge.
"We just don't know enough about this technology, how it works, or what it is used for," says Marcia Hofmann of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. "It matters to a lot of people that these programs and software exist. We don't really know to what extent the government is mining personal data."
Even congressmen with direct oversight of DHS, who favor data mining, say they don't know enough about the program.
"I am not fully briefed on ADVISE," wrote Rep. Curt Weldon (R) of Pennsylvania, vice chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, in an e-mail. "I'll get briefed this week."
Privacy concerns have torpedoed federal data-mining efforts in the past. In 2002, news reports revealed that the Defense Department was working on Total Information Awareness, a project aimed at collecting and sifting vast amounts of personal and government data for clues to terrorism. An uproar caused Congress to cancel the TIA program a year later.
Echoes of a past controversial plan
ADVISE "looks very much like TIA," Mr. Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes in an e-mail. "There's the same emphasis on broad collection and pattern analysis."
But Mr. Sand, the DHS official, emphasizes that privacy protection would be built-in. "Before a system leaves the department there's been a privacy review.... That's our focus."
Some computer scientists support the concepts behind ADVISE.
"This sort of technology does protect against a real threat," says Jeffrey Ullman, professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford University. "If a computer suspects me of being a terrorist, but just says maybe an analyst should look at it ... well, that's no big deal. This is the type of thing we need to be willing to do, to give up a certain amount of privacy." Others are less sure.
"It isn't a bad idea, but you have to do it in a way that demonstrates its utility - and with provable privacy protection," says Latanya Sweeney, founder of the Data Privacy Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University. But since speaking on privacy at the 2004 DHS workshop, she now doubts the department is building privacy into ADVISE. "At this point, ADVISE has no funding for privacy technology."
She cites a recent request for proposal by the Office of Naval Research on behalf of DHS. Although it doesn't mention ADVISE by name, the proposal outlines data-technology research that meshes closely with technology cited in ADVISE documents.
Neither the proposal - nor any other she has seen - provides any funding for provable privacy technology, she adds.Some in Congress push for more oversight of federal data-mining
Amid the furor over electronic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, Congress may be poised to expand its scrutiny of government efforts to "mine" public data for hints of terrorist activity.
"One element of the NSA's domestic spying program that has gotten too little attention is the government's reportedly widespread use of data-mining technology to analyze the communications of ordinary Americans," said Sen. Russell Feingold (D) of Wisconsin in a Jan. 23 statement.
Senator Feingold is among a handful of congressmen who have in the past sponsored legislation - unsuccessfully - to require federal agencies to report on data-mining programs and how they maintain privacy.
Without oversight and accountability, critics say, even well-intentioned counterterrorism programs could experience mission creep, having their purview expanded to include non- terrorists - or even political opponents or groups. "The development of this type of data-mining technology has serious implications for the future of personal privacy," says Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists.
Even congressional supporters of the effort want more information about data-mining efforts.
"There has to be more and better congressional oversight," says Rep. Curt Weldon (R) of Pennsylvania and vice chairman of the House committee overseeing the Department of Homeland Security. "But there can't be oversight till Congress understands what data-mining is. There needs to be a broad look at this because they [intelligence agencies] are obviously seeing the value of this."
Data-mining - the systematic, often automated gleaning of insights from databases - is seen "increasingly as a useful tool" to help detect terrorist threats, the General Accountability Office reported in 2004. Of the nearly 200 federal data-mining efforts the GAO counted, at least 14 were acknowledged to focus on counterterrorism.
While privacy laws do place some restriction on government use of private data - such as medical records - they don't prevent intelligence agencies from buying information from commercial data collectors. Congress has done little so far to regulate the practice or even require basic notification from agencies, privacy experts say.
Indeed, even data that look anonymous aren't necessarily so. For example: With name and Social Security number stripped from their files, 87 percent of Americans can be identified simply by knowing their date of birth, gender, and five-digit Zip code, according to research by Latanya Sweeney, a data-privacy researcher at Carnegie Mellon University.
In a separate 2004 report to Congress, the GAO cited eight issues that need to be addressed to provide adequate privacy barriers amid federal data-mining. Top among them was establishing oversight boards for such programs.
Some antiterror efforts die - others just change names
Defense Department
November 2002 - The New York Times identifies a counterterrorism program called Total Information Awareness.
September 2003 - After terminating TIA on privacy grounds, Congress shuts down its successor, Terrorism Information Awareness, for the same reasons.
Department of Homeland Security
February 2003 - The department's Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announces it's replacing its 1990s-era Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS I).
July 2004 - TSA cancels CAPPS II because of privacy concerns.
August 2004 - TSA says it will begin testing a similar system - Secure Flight - with built-in privacy features.
July 2005 - Government auditors charge that Secure Flight is violating privacy laws by holding information on 43,000 people not suspected of terrorism.
Little-known data-collection system could troll news, blogs, even e-mails. Will it go too far?
by Mark Clayton
The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity. Good can you hear me now???
The system - parts of which are operational, parts of which are still under development - is already credited with helping to foil some plots. It is the federal government's latest attempt to use broad data-collection and powerful analysis in the fight against terrorism. But by delving deeply into the digital minutiae of American life, the program is also raising concerns that the government is intruding too deeply into citizens' privacy.
"We don't realize that, as we live our lives and make little choices, like buying groceries, buying on Amazon, Googling, we're leaving traces everywhere," says Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We have an attitude that no one will connect all those dots. But these programs are about connecting those dots - analyzing and aggregating them - in a way that we haven't thought about. It's one of the underlying fundamental issues we have yet to come to grips with."
The core of this effort is a little-known system called Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE). Only a few public documents mention it. ADVISE is a research and development program within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), part of its three-year-old "Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment" portfolio. The TVTA received nearly $50 million in federal funding this year.
DHS officials are circumspect when talking about ADVISE. "I've heard of it," says Peter Sand, director of privacy technology. "I don't know the actual status right now. But if it's a system that's been discussed, then it's something we're involved in at some level."
Data-mining is a key technology
A major part of ADVISE involves data-mining - or "dataveillance," as some call it. It means sifting through data to look for patterns. If a supermarket finds that customers who buy cider also tend to buy fresh-baked bread, it might group the two together. To prevent fraud, credit-card issuers use data-mining to look for patterns of suspicious activity.
What sets ADVISE apart is its scope. It would collect a vast array of corporate and public online information - from financial records to CNN news stories - and cross-reference it against US intelligence and law-enforcement records. The system would then store it as "entities" - linked data about people, places, things, organizations, and events, according to a report summarizing a 2004 DHS conference in Alexandria, Va. The storage requirements alone are huge - enough to retain information about 1 quadrillion entities, the report estimated. If each entity were a penny, they would collectively form a cube a half-mile high - roughly double the height of the Empire State Building.
But ADVISE and related DHS technologies aim to do much more, according to Joseph Kielman, manager of the TVTA portfolio. The key is not merely to identify terrorists, or sift for key words, but to identify critical patterns in data that illumine their motives and intentions, he wrote in a presentation at a November conference in Richland, Wash.
For example: Is a burst of Internet traffic between a few people the plotting of terrorists, or just bloggers arguing? ADVISE algorithms would try to determine that before flagging the data pattern for a human analyst's review.
At least a few pieces of ADVISE are already operational. Consider Starlight, which along with other "visualization" software tools can give human analysts a graphical view of data. Viewing data in this way could reveal patterns not obvious in text or number form. Understanding the relationships among people, organizations, places, and things - using social-behavior analysis and other techniques - is essential to going beyond mere data-mining to comprehensive "knowledge discovery in databases," Dr. Kielman wrote in his November report. He declined to be interviewed for this article.
One data program has foiled terrorists (who dubya?)
Starlight has already helped foil some terror plots, says Jim Thomas, one of its developers and director of the government's new National Visualization Analytics Center in Richland, Wash. He can't elaborate because the cases are classified, he adds. But "there's no question that the technology we've invented here at the lab has been used to protect our freedoms - and that's pretty cool."
As envisioned, ADVISE and its analytical tools would be used by other agencies to look for terrorists. "All federal, state, local and private-sector security entities will be able to share and collaborate in real time with distributed data warehouses that will provide full support for analysis and action" for the ADVISE system, says the 2004 workshop report.
A program in the shadows
Yet the scope of ADVISE - its stage of development, cost, and most other details - is so obscure that critics say it poses a major privacy challenge.
"We just don't know enough about this technology, how it works, or what it is used for," says Marcia Hofmann of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. "It matters to a lot of people that these programs and software exist. We don't really know to what extent the government is mining personal data."
Even congressmen with direct oversight of DHS, who favor data mining, say they don't know enough about the program.
"I am not fully briefed on ADVISE," wrote Rep. Curt Weldon (R) of Pennsylvania, vice chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, in an e-mail. "I'll get briefed this week."
Privacy concerns have torpedoed federal data-mining efforts in the past. In 2002, news reports revealed that the Defense Department was working on Total Information Awareness, a project aimed at collecting and sifting vast amounts of personal and government data for clues to terrorism. An uproar caused Congress to cancel the TIA program a year later.
Echoes of a past controversial plan
ADVISE "looks very much like TIA," Mr. Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation writes in an e-mail. "There's the same emphasis on broad collection and pattern analysis."
But Mr. Sand, the DHS official, emphasizes that privacy protection would be built-in. "Before a system leaves the department there's been a privacy review.... That's our focus."
Some computer scientists support the concepts behind ADVISE.
"This sort of technology does protect against a real threat," says Jeffrey Ullman, professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford University. "If a computer suspects me of being a terrorist, but just says maybe an analyst should look at it ... well, that's no big deal. This is the type of thing we need to be willing to do, to give up a certain amount of privacy." Others are less sure.
"It isn't a bad idea, but you have to do it in a way that demonstrates its utility - and with provable privacy protection," says Latanya Sweeney, founder of the Data Privacy Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University. But since speaking on privacy at the 2004 DHS workshop, she now doubts the department is building privacy into ADVISE. "At this point, ADVISE has no funding for privacy technology."
She cites a recent request for proposal by the Office of Naval Research on behalf of DHS. Although it doesn't mention ADVISE by name, the proposal outlines data-technology research that meshes closely with technology cited in ADVISE documents.
Neither the proposal - nor any other she has seen - provides any funding for provable privacy technology, she adds.Some in Congress push for more oversight of federal data-mining
Amid the furor over electronic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, Congress may be poised to expand its scrutiny of government efforts to "mine" public data for hints of terrorist activity.
"One element of the NSA's domestic spying program that has gotten too little attention is the government's reportedly widespread use of data-mining technology to analyze the communications of ordinary Americans," said Sen. Russell Feingold (D) of Wisconsin in a Jan. 23 statement.
Senator Feingold is among a handful of congressmen who have in the past sponsored legislation - unsuccessfully - to require federal agencies to report on data-mining programs and how they maintain privacy.
Without oversight and accountability, critics say, even well-intentioned counterterrorism programs could experience mission creep, having their purview expanded to include non- terrorists - or even political opponents or groups. "The development of this type of data-mining technology has serious implications for the future of personal privacy," says Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists.
Even congressional supporters of the effort want more information about data-mining efforts.
"There has to be more and better congressional oversight," says Rep. Curt Weldon (R) of Pennsylvania and vice chairman of the House committee overseeing the Department of Homeland Security. "But there can't be oversight till Congress understands what data-mining is. There needs to be a broad look at this because they [intelligence agencies] are obviously seeing the value of this."
Data-mining - the systematic, often automated gleaning of insights from databases - is seen "increasingly as a useful tool" to help detect terrorist threats, the General Accountability Office reported in 2004. Of the nearly 200 federal data-mining efforts the GAO counted, at least 14 were acknowledged to focus on counterterrorism.
While privacy laws do place some restriction on government use of private data - such as medical records - they don't prevent intelligence agencies from buying information from commercial data collectors. Congress has done little so far to regulate the practice or even require basic notification from agencies, privacy experts say.
Indeed, even data that look anonymous aren't necessarily so. For example: With name and Social Security number stripped from their files, 87 percent of Americans can be identified simply by knowing their date of birth, gender, and five-digit Zip code, according to research by Latanya Sweeney, a data-privacy researcher at Carnegie Mellon University.
In a separate 2004 report to Congress, the GAO cited eight issues that need to be addressed to provide adequate privacy barriers amid federal data-mining. Top among them was establishing oversight boards for such programs.
Some antiterror efforts die - others just change names
Defense Department
November 2002 - The New York Times identifies a counterterrorism program called Total Information Awareness.
September 2003 - After terminating TIA on privacy grounds, Congress shuts down its successor, Terrorism Information Awareness, for the same reasons.
Department of Homeland Security
February 2003 - The department's Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announces it's replacing its 1990s-era Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS I).
July 2004 - TSA cancels CAPPS II because of privacy concerns.
August 2004 - TSA says it will begin testing a similar system - Secure Flight - with built-in privacy features.
July 2005 - Government auditors charge that Secure Flight is violating privacy laws by holding information on 43,000 people not suspected of terrorism.
Expatica's German news in English: US and Germany to cancel Afghanistan's debts
Expatica's German news in English: US and Germany to cancel Afghanistan's debts
KABUL - The United States intends to cancel all of the debt owed to it by Afghanistan, approximately 108 million dollars, subject to domestic legal requirements, according to a press statement issued Wednesday by the US embassy in Kabul.
"The US action will be done through normal Paris Club procedures. Russia and Germany, Afghanistan's other Paris Club creditors, also intend to provide 100 per cent cancellation," the statement said.
The solution of the debt problem through the Paris Club process will strongly contribute to the development of Afghanistan's trade, investment, and other economic ties with its major creditors and with the rest of the world.
The United States is also calling on other bilateral creditors of Afghanistan to provide the same 100 per cent relief.
Interesting.
KABUL - The United States intends to cancel all of the debt owed to it by Afghanistan, approximately 108 million dollars, subject to domestic legal requirements, according to a press statement issued Wednesday by the US embassy in Kabul.
"The US action will be done through normal Paris Club procedures. Russia and Germany, Afghanistan's other Paris Club creditors, also intend to provide 100 per cent cancellation," the statement said.
The solution of the debt problem through the Paris Club process will strongly contribute to the development of Afghanistan's trade, investment, and other economic ties with its major creditors and with the rest of the world.
The United States is also calling on other bilateral creditors of Afghanistan to provide the same 100 per cent relief.
Interesting.
Iraq Utilities Are Falling Short of Prewar Performance - New York Times
Iraq Utilities Are Falling Short of Prewar Performance - New York Times
They have been, its nice the US media just got a clue.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 — Virtually every measure of the performance of Iraq's oil, electricity, water and sewerage sectors has fallen below preinvasion values even though $16 billion of American taxpayer money has already been disbursed in the Iraq reconstruction program, several government witnesses said at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday. (its spent on rebuilding military bases)
Of seven measures of public services performance presented at the committee hearing by the inspector general's office, only one was above preinvasion values.
Those that had slumped below those values were electrical generation capacity, hours of power available in a day in Baghdad, oil and heating oil production and the numbers of Iraqis with drinkable water and sewage service.
Only the hours of power available to Iraqis outside Baghdad had increased over prewar values.
In addition, two of the witnesses said they believed that an earlier estimate by the World Bank that $56 billion would be needed for rebuilding over the next several years was too low.
At the same time, as Iraq's oil exports plummet and the country remains saddled with tens of billions of dollars of debt, it is unclear where that money will come from, said one of the witnesses, Joseph A. Christoff, director of international affairs and trade at the Government Accountability Office.
And those may not be the most serious problems facing Iraq's pipelines, storage tanks, power lines, electrical switching stations and other structures, said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an independent office.
In one sense, focusing on the plummeting performance numbers "misses the point," Mr. Bowen said. The real question, he said, is whether the Iraqi security forces will ever be able to protect the infrastructure from insurgent attack.
"What's happened is that an incessant, an insidious insurgency has repeatedly attacked the key infrastructure targets, reducing outputs," Mr. Bowen said. He added that some of the performance numbers had fluctuated above prewar values in the past, only to fall again under the pressure of insurgent attacks and other factors.
The chairman of the committee, Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, began by billing the session as a way of deciphering how much of America's original ambitions in the rebuilding program are likely to be fulfilled with the amount of money that Iraq, the United States Congress and international donors are still prepared to spend on the task.
This downsizing of expectations was striking given that $30 billion American taxpayer money has already been dedicated to the task, according to an analysis by Mr. Christoff of the accountability office. Of that money, $23 billion has already been obligated to specific rebuilding contracts, and $16 billion of that amount has been disbursed, Mr. Christoff said.
Mr. Bowen's office has pointed out that another $40 billion in Iraqi oil money and seized assets of Saddam Hussein's regime was also made available for reconstruction and other tasks at one time or another. Last week, Robert J. Stein Jr., one of four former United States government officials in Iraq who have been arrested in a bribery and kickback scheme involving that money, pleaded guilty to federal charges.
Mr. Bowen pointed out in his testimony that the news on reconstruction in Iraq is not all bad. Despite the recent financing and performance shortfalls, the rebuilding program now seems to be much less ridden by fraud, corruption and chaos than it was in the early days when people like Mr. Stein were in charge.
James R. Kunder, assistant administrator for Asia and the Near East at the United States Agency for International Development, in the State Department, emphasized things like what he called a 30 percent "potential increase" in electricity output because of new and reconditioned power generators in Iraq.
"We have done a lot of reconstruction work in Iraq over the last couple of years," Mr. Kunder said. "We did not meet all of the goals, the ambitious goals, we originally intended," he conceded. BU*SH*IT
Mr. Christoff of the accounting office said the latest numbers may actually overstate how well Iraqis have been served by the reconstruction program.
Water numbers, for example, often focus on how much drinkable water is generated at central plants, he said. But he said 65 percent of that water was subject to leaking from porous distribution pipes, which often run next to sewage facilities.
"So we really don't know how many households get potable, drinkable water," Mr. Christoff said.
Mr. Christoff also brought another new figure to the hearing: he said that on a recent trip to Baghdad, the American forces there had told him that they would need another $3.9 billion to continue training and equipping Iraqi forces, in part so that they can better protect the infrastructure.
The money would presumably be included in a 2006 supplemental funding request in which the Bush administration has said it would ask for more money to support the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, an official at the Office of Management and Budget said. The administration "told us it would include this type of expenses," the official said, adding that no total for Iraqi security forces has yet come directly from the White House.
If the $3.9 billion that the American forces believe they need is actually appropriated, it would bring the total amount spent simply on training and equipping the Iraqi Army and the police to about $15 billion.
They have been, its nice the US media just got a clue.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 — Virtually every measure of the performance of Iraq's oil, electricity, water and sewerage sectors has fallen below preinvasion values even though $16 billion of American taxpayer money has already been disbursed in the Iraq reconstruction program, several government witnesses said at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday. (its spent on rebuilding military bases)
Of seven measures of public services performance presented at the committee hearing by the inspector general's office, only one was above preinvasion values.
Those that had slumped below those values were electrical generation capacity, hours of power available in a day in Baghdad, oil and heating oil production and the numbers of Iraqis with drinkable water and sewage service.
Only the hours of power available to Iraqis outside Baghdad had increased over prewar values.
In addition, two of the witnesses said they believed that an earlier estimate by the World Bank that $56 billion would be needed for rebuilding over the next several years was too low.
At the same time, as Iraq's oil exports plummet and the country remains saddled with tens of billions of dollars of debt, it is unclear where that money will come from, said one of the witnesses, Joseph A. Christoff, director of international affairs and trade at the Government Accountability Office.
And those may not be the most serious problems facing Iraq's pipelines, storage tanks, power lines, electrical switching stations and other structures, said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an independent office.
In one sense, focusing on the plummeting performance numbers "misses the point," Mr. Bowen said. The real question, he said, is whether the Iraqi security forces will ever be able to protect the infrastructure from insurgent attack.
"What's happened is that an incessant, an insidious insurgency has repeatedly attacked the key infrastructure targets, reducing outputs," Mr. Bowen said. He added that some of the performance numbers had fluctuated above prewar values in the past, only to fall again under the pressure of insurgent attacks and other factors.
The chairman of the committee, Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, began by billing the session as a way of deciphering how much of America's original ambitions in the rebuilding program are likely to be fulfilled with the amount of money that Iraq, the United States Congress and international donors are still prepared to spend on the task.
This downsizing of expectations was striking given that $30 billion American taxpayer money has already been dedicated to the task, according to an analysis by Mr. Christoff of the accountability office. Of that money, $23 billion has already been obligated to specific rebuilding contracts, and $16 billion of that amount has been disbursed, Mr. Christoff said.
Mr. Bowen's office has pointed out that another $40 billion in Iraqi oil money and seized assets of Saddam Hussein's regime was also made available for reconstruction and other tasks at one time or another. Last week, Robert J. Stein Jr., one of four former United States government officials in Iraq who have been arrested in a bribery and kickback scheme involving that money, pleaded guilty to federal charges.
Mr. Bowen pointed out in his testimony that the news on reconstruction in Iraq is not all bad. Despite the recent financing and performance shortfalls, the rebuilding program now seems to be much less ridden by fraud, corruption and chaos than it was in the early days when people like Mr. Stein were in charge.
James R. Kunder, assistant administrator for Asia and the Near East at the United States Agency for International Development, in the State Department, emphasized things like what he called a 30 percent "potential increase" in electricity output because of new and reconditioned power generators in Iraq.
"We have done a lot of reconstruction work in Iraq over the last couple of years," Mr. Kunder said. "We did not meet all of the goals, the ambitious goals, we originally intended," he conceded. BU*SH*IT
Mr. Christoff of the accounting office said the latest numbers may actually overstate how well Iraqis have been served by the reconstruction program.
Water numbers, for example, often focus on how much drinkable water is generated at central plants, he said. But he said 65 percent of that water was subject to leaking from porous distribution pipes, which often run next to sewage facilities.
"So we really don't know how many households get potable, drinkable water," Mr. Christoff said.
Mr. Christoff also brought another new figure to the hearing: he said that on a recent trip to Baghdad, the American forces there had told him that they would need another $3.9 billion to continue training and equipping Iraqi forces, in part so that they can better protect the infrastructure.
The money would presumably be included in a 2006 supplemental funding request in which the Bush administration has said it would ask for more money to support the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, an official at the Office of Management and Budget said. The administration "told us it would include this type of expenses," the official said, adding that no total for Iraqi security forces has yet come directly from the White House.
If the $3.9 billion that the American forces believe they need is actually appropriated, it would bring the total amount spent simply on training and equipping the Iraqi Army and the police to about $15 billion.
US secret court judges warned about NSA data: report
Top News Article Reuters.com
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Justice Department lawyer warned the judge of a secret U.S. court twice in the past four years that information from President George W. Bush's domestic spying program may have been used to obtain wiretap warrants from the court, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.
The presiding judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court knew about the National Security Agency's secret surveillance program, but had insisted that information obtained through it not form the basis for obtaining a warrant from the court, the Post reported, citing U.S. officials.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, and her predecessor as presiding judge, Royce Lamberth, had expressed serious doubts about whether the warrantless monitoring of telephone phone calls and e-mails ordered by Bush was legal.
The new report reveals the depth of their doubts and their efforts to protect the court from what they considered potentially tainted evidence, the newspaper said.
James Baker, a top lawyer in the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, alerted Kollar-Kotelly in 2004 that the government's failure to share information about the domestic spying program had rendered useless a screening system that the judges had insisted upon to shield the court from tainted information, the Post said.
Kollar-Kotelly complained to Justice, prompting a temporary suspension of the NSA spying program, the newspaper said, citing sources.
In 2005, Baker learned that at least one government application for a FISA warrant probably contained NSA information and that was not made clear to the judges, the newspaper said.
The secret NSA program, exposed in December by The New York Times, monitors telephone and e-mail exchanges between people in the United States and abroad when one party is suspected of links to al Qaeda.
Neither judge commented for the article and a Justice Department spokesman declined comment, the Post said.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Justice Department lawyer warned the judge of a secret U.S. court twice in the past four years that information from President George W. Bush's domestic spying program may have been used to obtain wiretap warrants from the court, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.
The presiding judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court knew about the National Security Agency's secret surveillance program, but had insisted that information obtained through it not form the basis for obtaining a warrant from the court, the Post reported, citing U.S. officials.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, and her predecessor as presiding judge, Royce Lamberth, had expressed serious doubts about whether the warrantless monitoring of telephone phone calls and e-mails ordered by Bush was legal.
The new report reveals the depth of their doubts and their efforts to protect the court from what they considered potentially tainted evidence, the newspaper said.
James Baker, a top lawyer in the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, alerted Kollar-Kotelly in 2004 that the government's failure to share information about the domestic spying program had rendered useless a screening system that the judges had insisted upon to shield the court from tainted information, the Post said.
Kollar-Kotelly complained to Justice, prompting a temporary suspension of the NSA spying program, the newspaper said, citing sources.
In 2005, Baker learned that at least one government application for a FISA warrant probably contained NSA information and that was not made clear to the judges, the newspaper said.
The secret NSA program, exposed in December by The New York Times, monitors telephone and e-mail exchanges between people in the United States and abroad when one party is suspected of links to al Qaeda.
Neither judge commented for the article and a Justice Department spokesman declined comment, the Post said.
9.2.06
Pentagon spells out strategy for global military aggression
Pentagon spells out strategy for global military aggression
This makes me sick. If the US is allowed to enhance its nuclear weapons, every other country should have the same right to build its own defense. Hypocrites!!
Only days before the Bush administration submitted its fiscal 2007 budget, which calls for a major increase in military spending, the Pentagon sent Congress a long-term strategy document that makes clear Washington’s intentions to use the additional billions to wage an aggressive campaign of global militarism.
Envisioned in the document, the Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), is a vaguely defined “long war” that will involve the use of military power all over the globe to suppress challenges to US interests both from popular insurgencies and geo-strategic rivals. In particular, the document singles out China as a potential military competitor that must be deterred.
President Bush’s budget calls for a 7 percent hike in military spending, to reach a total of $440 billion. The proposed increase has been coupled with calls for sweeping cuts in such core entitlement programs as Medicare and Medicaid.
With the increase, combined with tens of billions of dollars more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as funds separately allotted to the Energy Department to maintain America’s nuclear arsenal, US military spending will climb well above the half-trillion-dollar mark in the coming year. This is more than the amount spent by all other countries combined, accounting for more than half of the estimated $1 trillion in worldwide arms expenditures.
The bloated Pentagon budget includes $5.1 billion—a 20 percent increase—for special operations, i.e., to expand elite killing squads, such as the Army’s Special Forces and the Navy Seals, which are trained for use in far-flung counterinsurgency interventions, including the deployment of assassination squads to kill insurgent leaders. The plan envisions adding 14,000 more troops to these units by 2011, bringing the ranks of such forces up to 64,000.
Another $6.1 billion is to be allotted to the Army to transform its forces into a more mobile brigade-based force, better suited for rapid deployment in counterinsurgency warfare.
Notwithstanding Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s advocacy of “military transformation”—a supposed shift from the Cold War military colossus to a more agile and leaner force—the Pentagon budget is laden with $84.2 billion in weapons procurement. The bulk of this is in multi-billion-dollar arms programs initiated during the Cold War which critics both within and outside the US military now view as largely superfluous.
By far the largest of these projects is the “Star Wars” missile defense program, which is allotted $10.4 billion—a 20 percent increase over last year. The program has failed in repeated tests and there is widespread skepticism that it can ever be effectively deployed.
Another $5.3 billion is slated for building the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and $2.8 billion for the F-22A aircraft, another “stealth” fighter designed in anticipation of air-to-air combat with an advanced Soviet fighter that was never built. The Air Force already has 100 of these planes, which are ill-suited for any current military uses.
The Navy is to get $2.6 billion to build another nuclear-powered attack submarine, on top of the existing fleet of 60 such vessels. Another $3.4 billion is to be spent on new DD(X) class destroyers, and $1.1 billion for a CVN-21 aircraft carrier (this is merely a down payment, as the total cost of such a carrier is expected to top $12 billion).
These proposals are a demonstration of the enduring power—and massive expansion—of what then-President Dwight Eisenhower warned against nearly 50 years ago, when he spoke of a growing “military-industrial complex.” Defense contractors such as General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and Lockheed Martin saw their stock prices increase sharply in the wake of the budget announcement.
The administration is continuing its stealth funding of the war in Iraq, which is excluded from the Pentagon’s annual budget and procured under “emergency supplemental requests”—seven thus far. It has already gotten $50 billion more from Congress this year and is expected to return within the next two weeks for another $70 billion to finance its Iraq intervention for the rest of the current fiscal year. This will bring the total cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan thus far to $440 billion, rapidly approaching the cost (when adjusted for inflation) of the 13-year-long war in Vietnam.
The anticipated spending rate of $10 billion a month is 50 percent higher than last year. The Pentagon said the dramatic hike was due, in part, to the inclusion of funding to repair and replace the large amount of military equipment that has been damaged or destroyed in Iraq.
This massive spending proposal is driven ultimately by a policy, supported by the decisive sections of the American ruling elite and both major parties, of utilizing US military superiority as a means of countering the relative decline of American capitalism on the world market. The buildup of the US armed forces is aimed not at countering some ubiquitous terrorist menace, but at defending American economic and political hegemony against challenges from both popular movements and powerful economic rivals.
This strategy is spelled out in the QDR document released in conjunction with the budget request. That the document uses the term “long war,” a phrase that is increasingly replacing the “global war on terrorism” in Washington official-speak, has ominous implications. The term is aimed at accustoming US military personnel and the American public at large to a state of permanent warfare that will continue regardless of the outcome of the current interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As the document states: “Currently, the struggle is centered in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we will need to be prepared and arranged to successfully defend our Nation and its interests around the globe for years to come.”
In another significant terminological shift, the Pentagon document defines the main enemy not as terrorists, but rather as “violent extremists” or merely “extremists.” This choice of words is not accidental. The thrust of the strategic conceptions outlined by the Pentagon review is the organization of the US military to violently quell any and all opposition to US domination. FU
Those who resist Washington’s economic and political hegemony are to be branded “extremists,” no matter what their ideological conceptions, and ruthlessly suppressed. The counterinsurgency methods elaborated in the document are aimed not merely at Islamist terrorist groups, but at any popular movement that emerges against US imperialism and its client regimes.
Significantly, the QDR includes repeated references to both Latin America and Africa. In its sections on Special Operations Forces (SOF), the document states: “SOF will increase their capacity to perform more demanding and specialized tasks, especially long-duration, indirect and clandestine operations in politically sensitive environments and denied areas. For direct action, they will possess an expanded organic ability to locate, tag and track dangerous individuals and other high-value targets globally... For unconventional warfare and training foreign forces, future SOF will have the capacity to operate in dozens of countries simultaneously... while increasing regional proficiency specific to key geographic operational areas: the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America.”
In regards to Latin America, the document presents as a growing concern in US military planning the “resurgence of populist authoritarian political movements in some countries, such as Venezuela,” which it says “threaten gains achieved and are a source of economic and political instability.”
The document spells out the now well-established US doctrine of “preemptive war,” i.e., military aggression. It declares that the Pentagon has “set about making US forces more agile and more expeditionary.”
Listing a series of ongoing changes being made by the US military to meet “the new strategic environment,” the document includes the following: “From conducting war against nations—to conducting war in countries we are not at war with;” “From responding after a crisis starts (reactive)—to preventive actions so problems do not become crises (proactive);” “From static defense, garrison forces—to mobile, expeditionary operations;” and “From a battle-ready force (peace)—to battle-hardened forces (war).”
The document likewise spells out Washington’s intentions to increasingly deploy the US military for domestic purposes. The Pentagon, it states, will, on the order of the White House, use military forces to support “civil authorities for designated law enforcement and/or other activities.” It adds that it intends to “provide US NORTHCOM [the military command created in 2002 to oversee the US itself] with authority to stage forces and equipment domestically prior to potential incidents when possible.”
In a section entitled “Shaping the choices of countries at strategic crossroads,” the document makes clear that the buildup of the US military is aimed at deterring any country from challenging US domination in any region of the world.
It warns that Washington “will attempt to dissuade any military competitor from developing disruptive or other capabilities that could enable regional hegemony,” adding the explicit threat that “should deterrence fail, the United States would deny a hostile power its strategic and operational objectives.”
In particular, the document singles out China, describing it as “having the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that could over time offset traditional US military advantages.”
This marks a significant change over the last such QDR, issued in 2001, in which China was not even mentioned by name, though indirectly referred to as “a military competitor with a formidable resource base.”
The current review clearly suggests that the spending on new long-range weapons programs is aimed at preparing for a future military confrontation with China. Increased Chinese military capabilities, the documents states, as well as “the vast distances of the Asian theater, China’s continental depth, and the challenge of en route and in-theater US basing place a premium on forces capable of sustained operations at great distances into denied areas.”
This overt military threat provoked angry protests from the Chinese government. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said that his government had “lodged serious representation” with Washington over the Pentagon document, charging that it “interferes in China’s internal affairs.” He demanded that the US “stop its random and irresponsible remarks on China’s normal defense construction.”
A Chinese foreign policy spokesperson writing in the China Daily called the references to China in the document “anxiety on the part of the US that borders on the illusionary.”
“The speedup of China’s military modernization has its own logic, which is completely reasonable,” wrote Yuan Peng, vice director of the Institute of American Studies of China’s Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. “It is a necessary step for a major power in a new phase of development, just like the US did at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, when it invested heavily in its naval power.”
No opposition to the escalation in military spending—or the growing threat of new wars and interventions—can be anticipated from the Democratic leadership in Congress. Many of the congressional Democrats have welcomed the multi-billion arms programs as a favor to defense contractors in their districts—such as Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, who praised the Pentagon for budgeting for yet another nuclear submarine, to be built at the General Dynamics shipyard in Groton.
The Democratic Party intends to contest the 2006 midterm election not as an opponent of the Iraq war and global US militarism, but as a critic of the administration’s performance in these pursuits. Some Democrats in Congress have criticized the Pentagon budget for its failure to fund a proposal approved by Congress last year to recruit an additional 30,000 troops to bolster the badly overstretched US ground forces in Iraq.
See Also:Bush proposes $2.8 trillion budget to boost military spending and slash social programs
This makes me sick. If the US is allowed to enhance its nuclear weapons, every other country should have the same right to build its own defense. Hypocrites!!
Only days before the Bush administration submitted its fiscal 2007 budget, which calls for a major increase in military spending, the Pentagon sent Congress a long-term strategy document that makes clear Washington’s intentions to use the additional billions to wage an aggressive campaign of global militarism.
Envisioned in the document, the Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), is a vaguely defined “long war” that will involve the use of military power all over the globe to suppress challenges to US interests both from popular insurgencies and geo-strategic rivals. In particular, the document singles out China as a potential military competitor that must be deterred.
President Bush’s budget calls for a 7 percent hike in military spending, to reach a total of $440 billion. The proposed increase has been coupled with calls for sweeping cuts in such core entitlement programs as Medicare and Medicaid.
With the increase, combined with tens of billions of dollars more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as funds separately allotted to the Energy Department to maintain America’s nuclear arsenal, US military spending will climb well above the half-trillion-dollar mark in the coming year. This is more than the amount spent by all other countries combined, accounting for more than half of the estimated $1 trillion in worldwide arms expenditures.
The bloated Pentagon budget includes $5.1 billion—a 20 percent increase—for special operations, i.e., to expand elite killing squads, such as the Army’s Special Forces and the Navy Seals, which are trained for use in far-flung counterinsurgency interventions, including the deployment of assassination squads to kill insurgent leaders. The plan envisions adding 14,000 more troops to these units by 2011, bringing the ranks of such forces up to 64,000.
Another $6.1 billion is to be allotted to the Army to transform its forces into a more mobile brigade-based force, better suited for rapid deployment in counterinsurgency warfare.
Notwithstanding Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s advocacy of “military transformation”—a supposed shift from the Cold War military colossus to a more agile and leaner force—the Pentagon budget is laden with $84.2 billion in weapons procurement. The bulk of this is in multi-billion-dollar arms programs initiated during the Cold War which critics both within and outside the US military now view as largely superfluous.
By far the largest of these projects is the “Star Wars” missile defense program, which is allotted $10.4 billion—a 20 percent increase over last year. The program has failed in repeated tests and there is widespread skepticism that it can ever be effectively deployed.
Another $5.3 billion is slated for building the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and $2.8 billion for the F-22A aircraft, another “stealth” fighter designed in anticipation of air-to-air combat with an advanced Soviet fighter that was never built. The Air Force already has 100 of these planes, which are ill-suited for any current military uses.
The Navy is to get $2.6 billion to build another nuclear-powered attack submarine, on top of the existing fleet of 60 such vessels. Another $3.4 billion is to be spent on new DD(X) class destroyers, and $1.1 billion for a CVN-21 aircraft carrier (this is merely a down payment, as the total cost of such a carrier is expected to top $12 billion).
These proposals are a demonstration of the enduring power—and massive expansion—of what then-President Dwight Eisenhower warned against nearly 50 years ago, when he spoke of a growing “military-industrial complex.” Defense contractors such as General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and Lockheed Martin saw their stock prices increase sharply in the wake of the budget announcement.
The administration is continuing its stealth funding of the war in Iraq, which is excluded from the Pentagon’s annual budget and procured under “emergency supplemental requests”—seven thus far. It has already gotten $50 billion more from Congress this year and is expected to return within the next two weeks for another $70 billion to finance its Iraq intervention for the rest of the current fiscal year. This will bring the total cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan thus far to $440 billion, rapidly approaching the cost (when adjusted for inflation) of the 13-year-long war in Vietnam.
The anticipated spending rate of $10 billion a month is 50 percent higher than last year. The Pentagon said the dramatic hike was due, in part, to the inclusion of funding to repair and replace the large amount of military equipment that has been damaged or destroyed in Iraq.
This massive spending proposal is driven ultimately by a policy, supported by the decisive sections of the American ruling elite and both major parties, of utilizing US military superiority as a means of countering the relative decline of American capitalism on the world market. The buildup of the US armed forces is aimed not at countering some ubiquitous terrorist menace, but at defending American economic and political hegemony against challenges from both popular movements and powerful economic rivals.
This strategy is spelled out in the QDR document released in conjunction with the budget request. That the document uses the term “long war,” a phrase that is increasingly replacing the “global war on terrorism” in Washington official-speak, has ominous implications. The term is aimed at accustoming US military personnel and the American public at large to a state of permanent warfare that will continue regardless of the outcome of the current interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As the document states: “Currently, the struggle is centered in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we will need to be prepared and arranged to successfully defend our Nation and its interests around the globe for years to come.”
In another significant terminological shift, the Pentagon document defines the main enemy not as terrorists, but rather as “violent extremists” or merely “extremists.” This choice of words is not accidental. The thrust of the strategic conceptions outlined by the Pentagon review is the organization of the US military to violently quell any and all opposition to US domination. FU
Those who resist Washington’s economic and political hegemony are to be branded “extremists,” no matter what their ideological conceptions, and ruthlessly suppressed. The counterinsurgency methods elaborated in the document are aimed not merely at Islamist terrorist groups, but at any popular movement that emerges against US imperialism and its client regimes.
Significantly, the QDR includes repeated references to both Latin America and Africa. In its sections on Special Operations Forces (SOF), the document states: “SOF will increase their capacity to perform more demanding and specialized tasks, especially long-duration, indirect and clandestine operations in politically sensitive environments and denied areas. For direct action, they will possess an expanded organic ability to locate, tag and track dangerous individuals and other high-value targets globally... For unconventional warfare and training foreign forces, future SOF will have the capacity to operate in dozens of countries simultaneously... while increasing regional proficiency specific to key geographic operational areas: the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America.”
In regards to Latin America, the document presents as a growing concern in US military planning the “resurgence of populist authoritarian political movements in some countries, such as Venezuela,” which it says “threaten gains achieved and are a source of economic and political instability.”
The document spells out the now well-established US doctrine of “preemptive war,” i.e., military aggression. It declares that the Pentagon has “set about making US forces more agile and more expeditionary.”
Listing a series of ongoing changes being made by the US military to meet “the new strategic environment,” the document includes the following: “From conducting war against nations—to conducting war in countries we are not at war with;” “From responding after a crisis starts (reactive)—to preventive actions so problems do not become crises (proactive);” “From static defense, garrison forces—to mobile, expeditionary operations;” and “From a battle-ready force (peace)—to battle-hardened forces (war).”
The document likewise spells out Washington’s intentions to increasingly deploy the US military for domestic purposes. The Pentagon, it states, will, on the order of the White House, use military forces to support “civil authorities for designated law enforcement and/or other activities.” It adds that it intends to “provide US NORTHCOM [the military command created in 2002 to oversee the US itself] with authority to stage forces and equipment domestically prior to potential incidents when possible.”
In a section entitled “Shaping the choices of countries at strategic crossroads,” the document makes clear that the buildup of the US military is aimed at deterring any country from challenging US domination in any region of the world.
It warns that Washington “will attempt to dissuade any military competitor from developing disruptive or other capabilities that could enable regional hegemony,” adding the explicit threat that “should deterrence fail, the United States would deny a hostile power its strategic and operational objectives.”
In particular, the document singles out China, describing it as “having the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that could over time offset traditional US military advantages.”
This marks a significant change over the last such QDR, issued in 2001, in which China was not even mentioned by name, though indirectly referred to as “a military competitor with a formidable resource base.”
The current review clearly suggests that the spending on new long-range weapons programs is aimed at preparing for a future military confrontation with China. Increased Chinese military capabilities, the documents states, as well as “the vast distances of the Asian theater, China’s continental depth, and the challenge of en route and in-theater US basing place a premium on forces capable of sustained operations at great distances into denied areas.”
This overt military threat provoked angry protests from the Chinese government. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said that his government had “lodged serious representation” with Washington over the Pentagon document, charging that it “interferes in China’s internal affairs.” He demanded that the US “stop its random and irresponsible remarks on China’s normal defense construction.”
A Chinese foreign policy spokesperson writing in the China Daily called the references to China in the document “anxiety on the part of the US that borders on the illusionary.”
“The speedup of China’s military modernization has its own logic, which is completely reasonable,” wrote Yuan Peng, vice director of the Institute of American Studies of China’s Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. “It is a necessary step for a major power in a new phase of development, just like the US did at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, when it invested heavily in its naval power.”
No opposition to the escalation in military spending—or the growing threat of new wars and interventions—can be anticipated from the Democratic leadership in Congress. Many of the congressional Democrats have welcomed the multi-billion arms programs as a favor to defense contractors in their districts—such as Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, who praised the Pentagon for budgeting for yet another nuclear submarine, to be built at the General Dynamics shipyard in Groton.
The Democratic Party intends to contest the 2006 midterm election not as an opponent of the Iraq war and global US militarism, but as a critic of the administration’s performance in these pursuits. Some Democrats in Congress have criticized the Pentagon budget for its failure to fund a proposal approved by Congress last year to recruit an additional 30,000 troops to bolster the badly overstretched US ground forces in Iraq.
See Also:Bush proposes $2.8 trillion budget to boost military spending and slash social programs
Sweden Plans to Be World's First Oil-Free Economy
Sweden Plans to Be World's First Oil-Free Economy
Published on Wednesday, February 8, 2006 by the Guardian / UK
Sweden Plans to Be World's First Oil-Free Economy· 15-year limit set for switch to renewable energy· Biofuels favoured over further nuclear power
by John Vidal
Sweden is to take the biggest energy step of any advanced western economy by trying to wean itself off oil completely within 15 years - without building a new generation of nuclear power stations.
Sweden...gets almost all its electricity from nuclear and hydroelectric power, and relies on fossil fuels mainly for transport. Almost all its heating has been converted in the past decade to schemes which distribute steam or hot water generated by geothermal energy or waste heat.
The attempt by the country of 9 million people to become the world's first practically oil-free economy is being planned by a committee of industrialists, academics, farmers, car makers, civil servants and others, who will report to parliament in several months.
The intention, the Swedish government said yesterday, is to replace all fossil fuels with renewables before climate change destroys economies and growing oil scarcity leads to huge new price rises.
"Our dependency on oil should be broken by 2020," said Mona Sahlin, minister of sustainable development. "There shall always be better alternatives to oil, which means no house should need oil for heating, and no driver should need to turn solely to gasoline."
According to the energy committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, there is growing concern that global oil supplies are peaking and will shortly dwindle, and that a global economic recession could result from high oil prices.
Ms Sahlin has described oil dependency as one of the greatest problems facing the world. "A Sweden free of fossil fuels would give us enormous advantages, not least by reducing the impact from fluctuations in oil prices," she said. "The price of oil has tripled since 1996."
A government official said: "We want to be both mentally and technically prepared for a world without oil. The plan is a response to global climate change, rising petroleum prices and warnings by some experts that the world may soon be running out of oil."
Sweden, which was badly hit by the oil price rises in the 1970s, now gets almost all its electricity from nuclear and hydroelectric power, and relies on fossil fuels mainly for transport. Almost all its heating has been converted in the past decade to schemes which distribute steam or hot water generated by geothermal energy or waste heat. A 1980 referendum decided that nuclear power should be phased out, but this has still not been finalised.
The decision to abandon oil puts Sweden at the top of the world green league table. Iceland hopes by 2050 to power all its cars and boats with hydrogen made from electricity drawn from renewable resources, and Brazil intends to power 80% of its transport fleet with ethanol derived mainly from sugar cane within five years.
Last week George Bush surprised analysts by saying that the US was addicted to oil and should greatly reduce imports from the Middle East. The US now plans a large increase in nuclear power.
The British government, which is committed to generating 10% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2012, last month launched an energy review which has a specific remit to consider a large increase in nuclear power. But a report by accountants Ernst & Young yesterday said that the UK was falling behind in its attempt to meet its renewables target.
"The UK has Europe's best wind, wave and tidal resources yet it continues to miss out on its economic potential," said Jonathan Johns, head of renewable energy at Ernst & Young.
Energy ministry officials in Sweden said they expected the oil committee to recommend further development of biofuels derived from its massive forests, and by expanding other renewable energies such as wind and wave power.
Sweden has a head start over most countries. In 2003, 26% of all the energy consumed came from renewable sources - the EU average is 6%. Only 32% of the energy came from oil - down from 77% in 1970.
The Swedish government is working with carmakers Saab and Volvo to develop cars and lorries that burn ethanol and other biofuels. Last year the Swedish energy agency said it planned to get the public sector to move out of oil. Its health and library services are being given grants to convert from oil use and homeowners are being encouraged with green taxes. The paper and pulp industries use bark to produce energy, and sawmills burn wood chips and sawdust to generate power.
That's a beautiful thing.
Published on Wednesday, February 8, 2006 by the Guardian / UK
Sweden Plans to Be World's First Oil-Free Economy· 15-year limit set for switch to renewable energy· Biofuels favoured over further nuclear power
by John Vidal
Sweden is to take the biggest energy step of any advanced western economy by trying to wean itself off oil completely within 15 years - without building a new generation of nuclear power stations.
Sweden...gets almost all its electricity from nuclear and hydroelectric power, and relies on fossil fuels mainly for transport. Almost all its heating has been converted in the past decade to schemes which distribute steam or hot water generated by geothermal energy or waste heat.
The attempt by the country of 9 million people to become the world's first practically oil-free economy is being planned by a committee of industrialists, academics, farmers, car makers, civil servants and others, who will report to parliament in several months.
The intention, the Swedish government said yesterday, is to replace all fossil fuels with renewables before climate change destroys economies and growing oil scarcity leads to huge new price rises.
"Our dependency on oil should be broken by 2020," said Mona Sahlin, minister of sustainable development. "There shall always be better alternatives to oil, which means no house should need oil for heating, and no driver should need to turn solely to gasoline."
According to the energy committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, there is growing concern that global oil supplies are peaking and will shortly dwindle, and that a global economic recession could result from high oil prices.
Ms Sahlin has described oil dependency as one of the greatest problems facing the world. "A Sweden free of fossil fuels would give us enormous advantages, not least by reducing the impact from fluctuations in oil prices," she said. "The price of oil has tripled since 1996."
A government official said: "We want to be both mentally and technically prepared for a world without oil. The plan is a response to global climate change, rising petroleum prices and warnings by some experts that the world may soon be running out of oil."
Sweden, which was badly hit by the oil price rises in the 1970s, now gets almost all its electricity from nuclear and hydroelectric power, and relies on fossil fuels mainly for transport. Almost all its heating has been converted in the past decade to schemes which distribute steam or hot water generated by geothermal energy or waste heat. A 1980 referendum decided that nuclear power should be phased out, but this has still not been finalised.
The decision to abandon oil puts Sweden at the top of the world green league table. Iceland hopes by 2050 to power all its cars and boats with hydrogen made from electricity drawn from renewable resources, and Brazil intends to power 80% of its transport fleet with ethanol derived mainly from sugar cane within five years.
Last week George Bush surprised analysts by saying that the US was addicted to oil and should greatly reduce imports from the Middle East. The US now plans a large increase in nuclear power.
The British government, which is committed to generating 10% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2012, last month launched an energy review which has a specific remit to consider a large increase in nuclear power. But a report by accountants Ernst & Young yesterday said that the UK was falling behind in its attempt to meet its renewables target.
"The UK has Europe's best wind, wave and tidal resources yet it continues to miss out on its economic potential," said Jonathan Johns, head of renewable energy at Ernst & Young.
Energy ministry officials in Sweden said they expected the oil committee to recommend further development of biofuels derived from its massive forests, and by expanding other renewable energies such as wind and wave power.
Sweden has a head start over most countries. In 2003, 26% of all the energy consumed came from renewable sources - the EU average is 6%. Only 32% of the energy came from oil - down from 77% in 1970.
The Swedish government is working with carmakers Saab and Volvo to develop cars and lorries that burn ethanol and other biofuels. Last year the Swedish energy agency said it planned to get the public sector to move out of oil. Its health and library services are being given grants to convert from oil use and homeowners are being encouraged with green taxes. The paper and pulp industries use bark to produce energy, and sawmills burn wood chips and sawdust to generate power.
That's a beautiful thing.
8.2.06
Vermont Town Meeting to Consider Impeaching Bush
Vermont Town Meeting to Consider Impeaching Bush
Saturday, February 04, 2006 - NEWFANE -- Among votes to approve the budget and education spending at Town Meeting, residents will wade into national waters and vote from the floor for the impeachment of President George W. Bush.
Selectboard member Dan DeWalt wrote the Town Meeting resolution and gathered enough signatures to get the question on to the ballot.
The vote for impeachment will be taken from the floor.
DeWalt said he was not going to bring any evidence to Newfane's meeting, claiming that the people of the town know enough about Bush's presidency to vote on the resolution.
If voters approve the resolution, DeWalt said he is going to ask U.S. Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., to file the articles of impeachment to remove the president from office.
"We have an immoral government operating illegally," DeWalt said. "I feel morally compelled to act."
According to the wording of the Town Meeting article President Bush has misled the nation about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, misled the nation about ties between Iraq and al-Qaida, used these falsehoods to lead our nation into a war unsupported by international law, not told the truth about American policy with respect to the use of torture, and has directed the government to engage in domestic spying in direct contravention of U.S. law.
DeWalt said he did not know if other towns in Vermont had such an article on their Town Meeting ballots. He said if the question passes in Newfane, and Bush is not impeached before next year, he will try to have other towns in the state take up the question next year.
"This is just a red flag that says we in Newfane notice," said DeWalt. "All I can do at this moment is do something here in our town." Just do it ;)
Saturday, February 04, 2006 - NEWFANE -- Among votes to approve the budget and education spending at Town Meeting, residents will wade into national waters and vote from the floor for the impeachment of President George W. Bush.
Selectboard member Dan DeWalt wrote the Town Meeting resolution and gathered enough signatures to get the question on to the ballot.
The vote for impeachment will be taken from the floor.
DeWalt said he was not going to bring any evidence to Newfane's meeting, claiming that the people of the town know enough about Bush's presidency to vote on the resolution.
If voters approve the resolution, DeWalt said he is going to ask U.S. Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., to file the articles of impeachment to remove the president from office.
"We have an immoral government operating illegally," DeWalt said. "I feel morally compelled to act."
According to the wording of the Town Meeting article President Bush has misled the nation about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, misled the nation about ties between Iraq and al-Qaida, used these falsehoods to lead our nation into a war unsupported by international law, not told the truth about American policy with respect to the use of torture, and has directed the government to engage in domestic spying in direct contravention of U.S. law.
DeWalt said he did not know if other towns in Vermont had such an article on their Town Meeting ballots. He said if the question passes in Newfane, and Bush is not impeached before next year, he will try to have other towns in the state take up the question next year.
"This is just a red flag that says we in Newfane notice," said DeWalt. "All I can do at this moment is do something here in our town." Just do it ;)
Secret Code
After numerous rounds of "We don't even know if Osama is still alive,"
Osama himself decided to send George Bush a letter in his own handwriting to let him know he was still in the game.
Bush opened the letter and it appeared to contain a coded message:
370HSSV-0773H
Bush was baffled, so he e-mailed it to Condi Rice. Condi and her aides had no clue either, so they sent it to the FBI.
No one could solve it so it went to the CIA, then to the NSA.
With no clue as to its meaning, they eventually asked Britain's MI-6 for help.
MI-6 cabled the White House:
"Tell the president he's holding the message upside down."
Osama himself decided to send George Bush a letter in his own handwriting to let him know he was still in the game.
Bush opened the letter and it appeared to contain a coded message:
370HSSV-0773H
Bush was baffled, so he e-mailed it to Condi Rice. Condi and her aides had no clue either, so they sent it to the FBI.
No one could solve it so it went to the CIA, then to the NSA.
With no clue as to its meaning, they eventually asked Britain's MI-6 for help.
MI-6 cabled the White House:
"Tell the president he's holding the message upside down."
Expatica's German news in English: Holocaust cartoon contest is a 'provocation': Steinmeier
Expatica's German news in English: Holocaust cartoon contest is a 'provocation': Steinmeier
BERLIN - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Wednesday sharply attacked plans by an Iranian newspaper for a Holocaust cartoon contest.
"To ignore the Holocaust in this way and to denigrate the victims is not just tasteless but also a provocation," said Steinmeier in remarks to reporters. agreed
Steinmeier said he could neither comprehend nor understand such a move.
German law bans denying the Holocaust or causing offence to the memory of Holocaust victims.
Earlier, the German government said it would not close its embassies in Islamic countries which have been hit by violent protests over the publication of cartoons deemed insulting to Muslims.
"Closing of embassies is absolutely out of the question," said deputy government spokesman Thomas Steg at a news conference. Steg said Germany wanted to use its diplomats to promote both a "dialogue of cultures" and economic cooperation with the Islamic world.
"We have to use existing contacts to contribute to de-escalation," said Steg, who underlined that Germany would not reduce aid to any of the Muslim countries which had been hit by violent protests.
Cartoons depicting the Muslim Prophet Mohammed, first published in Denmark, have been printed in many European newspapers including several in Germany.
The cartoons have enraged many Muslims. Depiction of the Prophet is barred under the Islamic faith. One of the cartoons published showed Mohammed with a bomb wrapped in his turban.
I really have refused to comment on this outrageous overreaction, but the conduct of those provoking violence is deplorable
BERLIN - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Wednesday sharply attacked plans by an Iranian newspaper for a Holocaust cartoon contest.
"To ignore the Holocaust in this way and to denigrate the victims is not just tasteless but also a provocation," said Steinmeier in remarks to reporters. agreed
Steinmeier said he could neither comprehend nor understand such a move.
German law bans denying the Holocaust or causing offence to the memory of Holocaust victims.
Earlier, the German government said it would not close its embassies in Islamic countries which have been hit by violent protests over the publication of cartoons deemed insulting to Muslims.
"Closing of embassies is absolutely out of the question," said deputy government spokesman Thomas Steg at a news conference. Steg said Germany wanted to use its diplomats to promote both a "dialogue of cultures" and economic cooperation with the Islamic world.
"We have to use existing contacts to contribute to de-escalation," said Steg, who underlined that Germany would not reduce aid to any of the Muslim countries which had been hit by violent protests.
Cartoons depicting the Muslim Prophet Mohammed, first published in Denmark, have been printed in many European newspapers including several in Germany.
The cartoons have enraged many Muslims. Depiction of the Prophet is barred under the Islamic faith. One of the cartoons published showed Mohammed with a bomb wrapped in his turban.
I really have refused to comment on this outrageous overreaction, but the conduct of those provoking violence is deplorable
ABC News: Soldier Says He Was Charged for Armor
ABC News: Soldier Says He Was Charged for Armor
CHARLESTON, W.Va. Feb 8, 2006 (AP)— A former U.S. soldier injured in Iraq says he was forced to pay $700 for a blood-soaked Kevlar vest that was destroyed after medics removed it to treat shrapnel wounds to his right arm.
First Lt. William "Eddie" Rebrook IV, 25, of Charleston had to leave the Army because of his injuries. But before he could be discharged last week, he had to scrounge up cash from his buddies to pay for the body armor or face not being discharged for months all because a supply officer failed to document that the vest had been destroyed more than a year ago as a biohazard. BU*SH*IT
"I last saw the (body armor) when it was pulled off my bleeding body while I was being evacuated in a helicopter," Rebrook told The Charleston Gazette for Tuesday's edition. "They took it off me and burned it."
Rebrook's story spurred action Tuesday from U.S. Sens. Robert C. Byrd and Jay Rockefeller, both D-W.Va. "I've been in touch with his family, and I've already written (Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld) to request that they immediately refund his money and review this horrendous policy," said Rockefeller, who is a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. "I'm shocked that he has been treated this way by our military."
Byrd questioned Gen. Peter Schoomaker, chief of staff of the Army, on Tuesday during a Senate Armed Services Committee budget hearing in Washington.
"How can it be that the Defense Department, which is requesting $439 billion in this budget, has to resort to dunning a wounded soldier for $700 to replace a piece of body armor?" Byrd asked.
Schoomaker called Rebrook's story unusual and promised Byrd to "correct it if there's any truth to it."
Rockefeller said he first met Rebrook when he was an ROTC cadet at George Washington High School in Charleston and later nominated him to the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., where he graduated with honors. Rebrook then spent four years on active duty, including six months in Iraq.
Rebrook's mother, Beckie Drumheler, said she was angry when she learned about the $700 bill. Soldiers who serve their country, those who put their lives on the line, deserve better, she said.
Continued1. 2. 3. NEXT»
CHARLESTON, W.Va. Feb 8, 2006 (AP)— A former U.S. soldier injured in Iraq says he was forced to pay $700 for a blood-soaked Kevlar vest that was destroyed after medics removed it to treat shrapnel wounds to his right arm.
First Lt. William "Eddie" Rebrook IV, 25, of Charleston had to leave the Army because of his injuries. But before he could be discharged last week, he had to scrounge up cash from his buddies to pay for the body armor or face not being discharged for months all because a supply officer failed to document that the vest had been destroyed more than a year ago as a biohazard. BU*SH*IT
"I last saw the (body armor) when it was pulled off my bleeding body while I was being evacuated in a helicopter," Rebrook told The Charleston Gazette for Tuesday's edition. "They took it off me and burned it."
Rebrook's story spurred action Tuesday from U.S. Sens. Robert C. Byrd and Jay Rockefeller, both D-W.Va. "I've been in touch with his family, and I've already written (Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld) to request that they immediately refund his money and review this horrendous policy," said Rockefeller, who is a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. "I'm shocked that he has been treated this way by our military."
Byrd questioned Gen. Peter Schoomaker, chief of staff of the Army, on Tuesday during a Senate Armed Services Committee budget hearing in Washington.
"How can it be that the Defense Department, which is requesting $439 billion in this budget, has to resort to dunning a wounded soldier for $700 to replace a piece of body armor?" Byrd asked.
Schoomaker called Rebrook's story unusual and promised Byrd to "correct it if there's any truth to it."
Rockefeller said he first met Rebrook when he was an ROTC cadet at George Washington High School in Charleston and later nominated him to the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., where he graduated with honors. Rebrook then spent four years on active duty, including six months in Iraq.
Rebrook's mother, Beckie Drumheler, said she was angry when she learned about the $700 bill. Soldiers who serve their country, those who put their lives on the line, deserve better, she said.
Continued1. 2. 3. NEXT»
The Death of a Presidency
History News Network
John K. White: The Death of a Presidency
Source: The Forum Vol. 3, Issue 4 (ed. Nelson Polsby) (1-30-06)
[John Kenneth White is a professor of Politics at the Catholic University of America. He is the author of The Values Divide: American Politics and Culture in Transition (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2003).
The George W. Bush presidency is finished....
... George W. Bush’s troubles are profound. And when presidents are beleaguered, they often look to their predecessors for guidance. At first glance, Bush can take heart from their experiences. Since Franklin D. Roosevelt, three other presidents have faced poorly in public opinion polls and have recovered their standing. Harry S. Truman’s first term is a case in point. In 1946, Truman’s approval rating dipped to just 27 percent, as Americans were fed up with labor strikes, meat shortages, and Truman’s inability to cope.42 Nearly forty years later, Ronald Reagan was rocked by the Iran-Contra affair, and his approval ratings fell from 62 percent to 47 percent.43 Bill Clinton took a similar tumble: he began his presidency with 58 percent support, but by 1994 his approval rating fell to 41 percent.44 Clinton’s big government health care plan along with his “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy allowing gays to serve in the military left voters thinking that instead of electing a New Democrat, they might just have chosen George McGovern.
Yet, Truman, Reagan, and Clinton recovered because they could change the subject. Harry Truman’s failure to keep the Democrats in control of Congress in 1946, gave him a perfect opportunity to rail against a “Do-Nothing Congress” in 1948. Suddenly, the focus was back to the domestic New Deal-Fair Deal issues that always worked for Democrats. And—much to everyone’s surprise—Truman kept his job.
Ronald Reagan learned from the Truman experience. While the Contras may have been important to Reagan personally, effecting a regime change in Nicaragua was never central to his presidency. What mattered to Reagan’s followers was reducing taxes and winning the Cold War against the hated Soviet “evil empire.” After the Iran-Contra scandal became known, Reagan dropped most references to the Sandinistas and returned to familiar themes. Also sustaining Reagan was the public’s affection for him. At the height of the Iran- Contra affair, 75 percent said they liked Reagan personally, while a mere 18 percent did not.
Perhaps no president knew better how to change the subject than Bill Clinton. After the drubbing he took in the 1994 midterm elections, Clinton ditched Hillary’s health care proposals and opted to enact bite-sized portions of them—e.g. insuring the children of the unemployed. Gays in the military were also forgotten, as Clinton turned his laser-like attention to family and values issues, including the desirability of having children wear school uniforms. In 1996, Clinton famously noted that “the era of big government is over,” and he signed a welfare reform bill over the objections of many Democrats. By echoing Reagan’s themes and keeping his focus on the middle class, Clinton won an easy victory over Bob Dole.
On the other hand, six presidents since FDR have failed to recoup their public standing: Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush. In 1952, Harry Truman saw his approval rating fall to a mere 22 percent after his administration became mired in the Korean War.47 Day after day, U.S. soldiers battled the North Koreans and Chinese for control of one small hill after another, without either side winning a decisive victory. Americans tired of Truman and felt he had no plan for resolving the conflict. Frustrated, they turned to Dwight D. Eisenhower—especially after the World War II general told voters, “I shall go to Korea.”
Lyndon B. Johnson had a similar experience as he saw his landslide victory melt in the Vietnamese tropical heat. A Gallup poll taken in August 1968 found just 35 percent giving him positive marks.49 In many ways, LBJ foresaw his political demise, telling columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak after the 1964 election:
I was just elected by the biggest popular margin in the history of the country, fifteen million votes. Just by the natural way people think and because Barry Goldwater scared the hell out of them, I have already lost two of these fifteen and am probably getting down to thirteen. If I get into any fight with Congress, I have already lost another couple of million, and if I have to send any more boys into Vietnam, I may be down to eight million by the end of the summer.
In 1973, Richard M. Nixon’s presidency was caught in the web of Watergate. Opinion polls showed Nixon with a dismal approval rating of 30 percent.51 Repeatedly, he tried to change the focus to other issues, at one point telling Congress in 1974, “One year of Watergate is enough.”52 But the Watergate tapes only intensified the media and public focus on Nixon’s wrongdoing. By the time he left office, just 24 percent approved of his performance.
Gerald R. Ford, too, suffered a crippling blow to his public esteem. Starting with a breathtaking 71 percent job approval, his support dropped 21 points after his decision to pardon Nixon.54 Declaring that Watergate had been “an American tragedy” and “someone must write the end to it,” Ford hoped the pardon would turn attention away from Nixon and toward more pressing matters—including high energy prices and a stubbornly persistent inflation rate.55 But 60 percent of the public thought Ford was wrong to issue the pardon, and 62 percent said it condoned two standards of justice: one for the rich and powerful; another for the ordinary citizen.56 Ford could not escape the political fallout: a 1976 exit poll found 14 percent cited Watergate and the Nixon pardon as important issues in making their presidential decision, and an overwhelming percentage of these disenchanted voters backed Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter was the fifth president to suffer a fatal blow in public support. At the onset of his presidency, Carter received a 66 percent job approval rating.58 Just three years later, Carter’s positive grades had plummeted to 29 percent.59 In response, Carter delivered his famous “malaise speech” and proclaimed a “crisis of confidence” in government.60 Voters disagreed, thinking the constitutional mechanisms still worked and that nothing was wrong with their character. But they thought something was decidedly wrong with Carter, and they ousted him in a landslide. The Iranian hostage crisis only served to emphasize Carter’s impotence and inability to change the subject. So great was the distaste for Carter that public disdain for him persisted long after his presidency ended: a 1988 Harris poll gave Carter the dubious distinction of being first (with 46 percent) in the category “least able to get things done.”61 Only recently has Carter recouped his public esteem thanks to an unusually effective post-presidency and a public longing for truth in government that has powered his latest book, Our Endangered Values, to the top of the New York Times best-seller list.
George H. W. Bush also suffered a fatal fall in public esteem. Shortly after the Persian Gulf War, the elder Bush won plaudits and an 89 percent approval rating.63 But Americans are a restless people, and after the quick war the economy remained foremost on their minds. By 1992, voters thought Bush was inattentive to their concerns and he received a dismal 37 percent of the vote—exactly his approval rating in a pre-election Gallup poll.
What unites these six failed presidencies is each man’s inability to change the subject. Harry Truman could not get the public’s mind off the Korean War. Lyndon Johnson could not get people to focus on anything except Vietnam and race riots. Richard Nixon could not erase the airing of the Watergate tapes (even as he tried to erase them in fact). Gerald Ford could not ameliorate voter anger over the Nixon pardon. Jimmy Carter became identified with his malaise speech and the Iranian hostages. And George H. W. Bush was a foreign policy president at a time when voters could have cared less.
George W. Bush is likely to share the fates of his predecessors for one reason: he can’t change the subject. Bush cannot take the focus away from Iraq, which continues to drain U.S. lives and resources with no end in sight.
Moreover, thanks to Iraq and the hurricanes, the fiscal crisis facing the next president has come four years early.
Even when Bush has tried to refocus attention elsewhere, voters have answered with a resounding “NO!” For example, a Gallup poll taken in July found 62 percent saying they disapproved of George W. Bush’s Social Security proposals.65 Even the public thinks Bush cannot recover: a Time magazine survey finds 49 percent saying Bush cannot recoup from his low public approval scores; 46 percent believe he can.... He has to GO
John K. White: The Death of a Presidency
Source: The Forum Vol. 3, Issue 4 (ed. Nelson Polsby) (1-30-06)
[John Kenneth White is a professor of Politics at the Catholic University of America. He is the author of The Values Divide: American Politics and Culture in Transition (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2003).
The George W. Bush presidency is finished....
... George W. Bush’s troubles are profound. And when presidents are beleaguered, they often look to their predecessors for guidance. At first glance, Bush can take heart from their experiences. Since Franklin D. Roosevelt, three other presidents have faced poorly in public opinion polls and have recovered their standing. Harry S. Truman’s first term is a case in point. In 1946, Truman’s approval rating dipped to just 27 percent, as Americans were fed up with labor strikes, meat shortages, and Truman’s inability to cope.42 Nearly forty years later, Ronald Reagan was rocked by the Iran-Contra affair, and his approval ratings fell from 62 percent to 47 percent.43 Bill Clinton took a similar tumble: he began his presidency with 58 percent support, but by 1994 his approval rating fell to 41 percent.44 Clinton’s big government health care plan along with his “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy allowing gays to serve in the military left voters thinking that instead of electing a New Democrat, they might just have chosen George McGovern.
Yet, Truman, Reagan, and Clinton recovered because they could change the subject. Harry Truman’s failure to keep the Democrats in control of Congress in 1946, gave him a perfect opportunity to rail against a “Do-Nothing Congress” in 1948. Suddenly, the focus was back to the domestic New Deal-Fair Deal issues that always worked for Democrats. And—much to everyone’s surprise—Truman kept his job.
Ronald Reagan learned from the Truman experience. While the Contras may have been important to Reagan personally, effecting a regime change in Nicaragua was never central to his presidency. What mattered to Reagan’s followers was reducing taxes and winning the Cold War against the hated Soviet “evil empire.” After the Iran-Contra scandal became known, Reagan dropped most references to the Sandinistas and returned to familiar themes. Also sustaining Reagan was the public’s affection for him. At the height of the Iran- Contra affair, 75 percent said they liked Reagan personally, while a mere 18 percent did not.
Perhaps no president knew better how to change the subject than Bill Clinton. After the drubbing he took in the 1994 midterm elections, Clinton ditched Hillary’s health care proposals and opted to enact bite-sized portions of them—e.g. insuring the children of the unemployed. Gays in the military were also forgotten, as Clinton turned his laser-like attention to family and values issues, including the desirability of having children wear school uniforms. In 1996, Clinton famously noted that “the era of big government is over,” and he signed a welfare reform bill over the objections of many Democrats. By echoing Reagan’s themes and keeping his focus on the middle class, Clinton won an easy victory over Bob Dole.
On the other hand, six presidents since FDR have failed to recoup their public standing: Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush. In 1952, Harry Truman saw his approval rating fall to a mere 22 percent after his administration became mired in the Korean War.47 Day after day, U.S. soldiers battled the North Koreans and Chinese for control of one small hill after another, without either side winning a decisive victory. Americans tired of Truman and felt he had no plan for resolving the conflict. Frustrated, they turned to Dwight D. Eisenhower—especially after the World War II general told voters, “I shall go to Korea.”
Lyndon B. Johnson had a similar experience as he saw his landslide victory melt in the Vietnamese tropical heat. A Gallup poll taken in August 1968 found just 35 percent giving him positive marks.49 In many ways, LBJ foresaw his political demise, telling columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak after the 1964 election:
I was just elected by the biggest popular margin in the history of the country, fifteen million votes. Just by the natural way people think and because Barry Goldwater scared the hell out of them, I have already lost two of these fifteen and am probably getting down to thirteen. If I get into any fight with Congress, I have already lost another couple of million, and if I have to send any more boys into Vietnam, I may be down to eight million by the end of the summer.
In 1973, Richard M. Nixon’s presidency was caught in the web of Watergate. Opinion polls showed Nixon with a dismal approval rating of 30 percent.51 Repeatedly, he tried to change the focus to other issues, at one point telling Congress in 1974, “One year of Watergate is enough.”52 But the Watergate tapes only intensified the media and public focus on Nixon’s wrongdoing. By the time he left office, just 24 percent approved of his performance.
Gerald R. Ford, too, suffered a crippling blow to his public esteem. Starting with a breathtaking 71 percent job approval, his support dropped 21 points after his decision to pardon Nixon.54 Declaring that Watergate had been “an American tragedy” and “someone must write the end to it,” Ford hoped the pardon would turn attention away from Nixon and toward more pressing matters—including high energy prices and a stubbornly persistent inflation rate.55 But 60 percent of the public thought Ford was wrong to issue the pardon, and 62 percent said it condoned two standards of justice: one for the rich and powerful; another for the ordinary citizen.56 Ford could not escape the political fallout: a 1976 exit poll found 14 percent cited Watergate and the Nixon pardon as important issues in making their presidential decision, and an overwhelming percentage of these disenchanted voters backed Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter was the fifth president to suffer a fatal blow in public support. At the onset of his presidency, Carter received a 66 percent job approval rating.58 Just three years later, Carter’s positive grades had plummeted to 29 percent.59 In response, Carter delivered his famous “malaise speech” and proclaimed a “crisis of confidence” in government.60 Voters disagreed, thinking the constitutional mechanisms still worked and that nothing was wrong with their character. But they thought something was decidedly wrong with Carter, and they ousted him in a landslide. The Iranian hostage crisis only served to emphasize Carter’s impotence and inability to change the subject. So great was the distaste for Carter that public disdain for him persisted long after his presidency ended: a 1988 Harris poll gave Carter the dubious distinction of being first (with 46 percent) in the category “least able to get things done.”61 Only recently has Carter recouped his public esteem thanks to an unusually effective post-presidency and a public longing for truth in government that has powered his latest book, Our Endangered Values, to the top of the New York Times best-seller list.
George H. W. Bush also suffered a fatal fall in public esteem. Shortly after the Persian Gulf War, the elder Bush won plaudits and an 89 percent approval rating.63 But Americans are a restless people, and after the quick war the economy remained foremost on their minds. By 1992, voters thought Bush was inattentive to their concerns and he received a dismal 37 percent of the vote—exactly his approval rating in a pre-election Gallup poll.
What unites these six failed presidencies is each man’s inability to change the subject. Harry Truman could not get the public’s mind off the Korean War. Lyndon Johnson could not get people to focus on anything except Vietnam and race riots. Richard Nixon could not erase the airing of the Watergate tapes (even as he tried to erase them in fact). Gerald Ford could not ameliorate voter anger over the Nixon pardon. Jimmy Carter became identified with his malaise speech and the Iranian hostages. And George H. W. Bush was a foreign policy president at a time when voters could have cared less.
George W. Bush is likely to share the fates of his predecessors for one reason: he can’t change the subject. Bush cannot take the focus away from Iraq, which continues to drain U.S. lives and resources with no end in sight.
Moreover, thanks to Iraq and the hurricanes, the fiscal crisis facing the next president has come four years early.
Even when Bush has tried to refocus attention elsewhere, voters have answered with a resounding “NO!” For example, a Gallup poll taken in July found 62 percent saying they disapproved of George W. Bush’s Social Security proposals.65 Even the public thinks Bush cannot recover: a Time magazine survey finds 49 percent saying Bush cannot recoup from his low public approval scores; 46 percent believe he can.... He has to GO
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
