Extended Presence of U.S. in Iraq Looms Large

Extended Presence of U.S. in Iraq Looms Large

$1 billion for construction of American military bases and no public plans.

BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq - The concrete goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab that’s now the home of up to 120 U.S. helicopters, a “heli-park” as good as any back in the States.

At another giant base, al-Asad in Iraq’s western desert, the 17,000 troops and workers come and go in a kind of bustling American town, with a Burger King, Pizza Hut and a car dealership, stop signs, traffic regulations and young bikers clogging the roads.

At a third hub down south, Tallil, they’re planning a new mess hall, one that will seat 6,000 hungry airmen and soldiers for chow.

Are the Americans here to stay? Air Force mechanic Josh Remy is sure of it as he looks around Balad.

“I think we’ll be here forever,” the 19-year-old airman from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., told a visitor to his base.

The Iraqi people suspect the same. Strong majorities tell pollsters they’d like to see a timetable for U.S. troops to leave, but believe Washington plans to keep military bases in their country.

Future of U.S. in Iraq

The question of America’s future in Iraq looms larger as the U.S. military enters the fourth year of its war here, waged first to oust President Saddam Hussein, and now to crush an Iraqi insurgency.

Ibrahim al-Jaafari, interim prime minister, has said he opposes permanent foreign bases. A wide range of American opinion is against them as well. Such bases would be a “stupid” provocation, says Gen. Anthony Zinni, former U.S. Mideast commander and a critic of the original U.S. invasion.

But events, in explosive situations like Iraq’s, can turn “no” into “maybe” and even “yes.”

The Shiite Muslims, ascendant in Baghdad, might decide they need long-term U.S. protection against insurgent Sunni Muslims. Washington might take the political risks to gain a strategic edge — in its confrontation with next-door Iran, for example.

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and other U.S. officials disavow any desire for permanent bases. But long-term access, as at other U.S. bases abroad, is different from “permanent,” and the official U.S. position is carefully worded.

Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, a Pentagon spokesman on international security, told The Associated Press it would be “inappropriate” to discuss future basing until a new Iraqi government is in place, expected in the coming weeks.

‘Permanent duty stations’

Less formally, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, asked about “permanent duty stations” by a Marine during an Iraq visit in December, allowed that it was “an interesting question.” He said it would have to be raised by the incoming Baghdad government, if “they have an interest in our assisting them for some period over time.”

In Washington, Iraq scholar Phebe Marr finds the language intriguing. “If they aren’t planning for bases, they ought to say so,” she said. “I would expect to hear ‘No bases.”’

Right now what is heard is the pouring of concrete.Image: U.S. soldiers

In 2005-06, Washington has authorized or proposed almost $1 billion for U.S. military construction in Iraq, as American forces consolidate at Balad, known as Anaconda, and a handful of other installations, big bases under the old regime.

They have already pulled out of 34 of the 110 bases they were holding last March, said Maj. Lee English of the U.S. command’s Base Working Group, planning the consolidation.

“The coalition forces are moving outside the cities while continuing to provide security support to the Iraqi security forces,” English said.

The move away from cities, perhaps eventually accompanied by U.S. force reductions, will lower the profile of U.S. troops, frequent targets of roadside bombs on city streets. Officers at Al-Asad Air Base, 10 desert miles from the nearest town, say it hasn’t been hit by insurgent mortar or rocket fire since October.

Building in no-man’s land

Al-Asad will become even more isolated. The proposed 2006 supplemental budget for Iraq operations would provide $7.4 million to extend the no-man’s-land and build new security fencing around the base, which at 19 square miles is so large that many assigned there take the Yellow or Blue bus routes to get around the base, or buy bicycles at a PX jammed with customers.

The latest budget also allots $39 million for new airfield lighting, air traffic control systems and upgrades allowing al-Asad to plug into the Iraqi electricity grid — a typical sign of a long-term base.

At Tallil, besides the new $14 million dining facility, Ali Air Base is to get, for $22 million, a double perimeter security fence with high-tech gate controls, guard towers and a moat — in military parlance, a “vehicle entrapment ditch with berm.”

Here at Balad, the former Iraqi air force academy 40 miles north of Baghdad, the two 12,000-foot runways have become the logistics hub for all U.S. military operations in Iraq, and major upgrades began last year.

Army engineers say 31,000 truckloads of sand and gravel fed nine concrete-mixing plants on Balad, as contractors laid a $16 million ramp to park the Air Force’s huge C-5 cargo planes; an $18 million ramp for workhorse C-130 transports; and the vast, $28 million main helicopter ramp, the length of 13 football fields, filled with attack, transport and reconnaissance helicopters.

Turkish builders are pouring tons more concrete for a fourth ramp beside the runways, for medical-evacuation and other aircraft on alert. And $25 million was approved for other “pavement projects,” from a special road for munitions trucks to a compound for special forces.

The chief Air Force engineer here, Lt. Col. Scott Hoover, is also overseeing two crucial projects to add to Balad’s longevity: equipping the two runways with new permanent lighting, and replacing a weak 3,500-foot section of one runway.

Once that’s fixed, “we’re good for as long as we need to run it,” Hoover said. Ten years? he was asked. “I’d say so.”

Life improves for personnel

Away from the flight lines, among traffic jams and freshly planted palms, life improves on 14-square-mile Balad for its estimated 25,000 personnel, including several thousand American and other civilians.

They’ve inherited an Olympic-sized pool and a chandeliered cinema from the Iraqis. They can order their favorite Baskin-Robbins flavor at ice cream counters in five dining halls, and cut-rate Fords, Chevys or Harley-Davidsons, for delivery at home, at a PX-run “dealership.” On one recent evening, not far from a big 24-hour gym, airmen hustled up and down two full-length, lighted outdoor basketball courts as F-16 fighters thundered home overhead.

“Balad’s a fantastic base,” Brig. Gen. Frank Gorenc, the Air Force’s tactical commander in Iraq, said in an interview at his headquarters here.

Could it host a long-term U.S. presence?

“Eventually it could,” said Gorenc, commander of the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing. “But there’s no commitment to any of the bases we operate, until somebody tells me that.”

A strategic advantage

In the counterinsurgency fight, Balad’s central location enables strike aircraft to reach targets in minutes. And in the broader context of reinforcing the U.S. presence in the oil-rich Mideast, Iraq bases are preferable to aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, said a longtime defense analyst.

“Carriers don’t have the punch,” said Gordon Adams of Washington’s George Washington University. “There’s a huge advantage to land-based infrastructure. At the level of strategy it makes total sense to have Iraq bases.”

A U.S. congressional study cited another, less discussed use for possible Iraq bases: to install anti-ballistic defenses in case Iran fires missiles.

‘Inviting trouble’

American bases next door could either deter or provoke Iran, noted Paul D. Hughes, a key planner in the early U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Overall, however, this retired Army colonel says American troops are unwanted in the Middle East. With long-term bases in Iraq, “We’d be inviting trouble,” Hughes said.

“It’s a stupid idea and clearly politically unacceptable,” Zinni, a former Central Command chief, said in a Washington interview. “It would damage our image in the region, where people would decide that this” — seizing bases — “was our original intent.”

‘People don’t like bases’

Among Iraqis, the subject is almost too sensitive to discuss.

“People don’t like bases,” veteran politician Adnan Pachachi, a member of the new Parliament, told the AP. “If bases are absolutely necessary, if there’s a perceived threat ... but I don’t think even Iran will be a threat.”

If long-term basing is, indeed, on the horizon, “the politics back here and the politics in the region say, ‘Don’t announce it,”’ Adams said in Washington. That’s what’s done elsewhere, as with the quiet U.S. basing of spy planes and other aircraft in the United Arab Emirates.

Army and Air Force engineers, with little notice, have worked to give U.S. commanders solid installations in Iraq, and to give policymakers options. From the start, in 2003, the first Army engineers rolling into Balad took the long view, laying out a 10-year plan envisioning a move from tents to today’s living quarters in air-conditioned trailers, to concrete-and-brick barracks by 2008.

In early 2006, no one’s confirming such next steps, but a Balad “master plan,” details undisclosed, is nearing completion, a possible model for al-Asad, Tallil and a fourth major base, al-Qayyarah in Iraq’s north.

Death Raises Concern at Police Tactics

Death Raises Concern at Police Tactics

The recent killing of an unarmed Virginia doctor has raised concerns about what some say is an explosion in the use of military-style police Swat teams in the United States.

Some say police units increasingly resemble military teams.

Armed with assault rifles, stun grenades - even armoured personnel carriers - units once used only in highly volatile situations are increasingly being deployed on more routine police missions.

Dr Salvatore Culosi Jr had come out of his townhouse to meet an undercover policeman when he was shot through the chest by a Special Weapons and Tactics force.

It was about 2135 on a chilly January evening. The 37-year-old optometrist was unarmed, he had no history of violence and displayed no threatening behaviour.

But he had been under investigation for illegal gambling and in line with a local police policy on "organised crime" raids, the heavily armed team was there to serve a search warrant.

As officers approached with their weapons drawn, tragedy struck. A handgun was accidentally discharged, fatally wounding Dr Culosi.

Two months on, investigations into the incident are still continuing, a delay which Dr Culosi's family says is compounding the "horror and burden of it all".

Dr Salvatore Culosi was unarmed when he was accidentally shot.

Salvatore Culosi Sr, the dead man's father, told the BBC: "I never knew him to carry so much as a pocket knife so it bewilders me how a detective could spend three months investigating my son and not know he is a pussy cat.

"If anything comes out of this it must be that another family does not experience this pain and anguish for absolutely no reason.

"Policy needs to change so these kinds of accidents never occur again."

'Excessive force'

Peter Kraska, an expert on police militarisation from Eastern Kentucky University, says that in the 1980s there were about 3,000 Swat team deployments annually across the US, but says now there are at least 40,000 per year.

"I have no problem with using these paramilitary style squads to go after known violent, armed criminals, but it is an extreme tactic to use against other sorts of suspects," he said.

Mr Kraska believes there has been an explosion of units in smaller towns and cities, where training and operational standards may not be as high as large cities - a growth he attributes to "the hysteria" of the country's war on drugs.

"I get several calls a month from people asking about local incidents - wrong address raids, excessive use of force, wrongful shootings - this stuff is happening all the time," he adds.

Every wrongful death of a civilian, or criminal killing of a police officer, fuels the complex and emotive argument over the way the United States is policed.

Those who reject criticism of the use of Swat teams argue that the presence of the units actually prevents violence through the credible threat of overwhelming force.

John Gnagey, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association, told the BBC: "What we find is that when Swat teams go out, shootings go down.

"We don't see it as escalating anything. We see it as reducing violence."

The NTOA rejects Mr Kraska's figures and says the actual number of deployments is far lower, but says there is a need for national training standards.

An NTOA study of 759 Swat team deployments across the US, found half were for warrant service and a third for incidents where suspects had barricaded themselves in a building - 50 were for hostage situations.

When criminology professor David Klinger looked at 12 years of data on Swat teams in 1998, he also found the most common reason for calling out teams was serving warrants, but that the units used deadly force during warrant service only 0.4% of the time.

Recruitment video

Last year the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) commissioned music video director JC Barros to make them a 10-minute film - To Protect and Serve - that would "get young men and women excited" about a career with the force.

More action film than recruitment video, it follows two LAPD officers who - in one day - capture a robbery suspect, are first on the scene when a gun-toting man takes a woman hostage, mediate a fight, and help to find a young kidnap victim.

Along the way they are supported by colleagues from bike patrol, K-9 dog teams, air support and, of course, the Swat team.

But Mr Kraska sees such initiatives as reflecting a changing culture of police work.

"These elite units are highly culturally appealing to certain sections of the police community. They like it, they enjoy it," he says.

"The chance to strap on a vest, grab a semi-automatic weapon and go out on a mission is for some people an exciting reason to join - even if policing as a profession can - and should - be boring for much of the time.

"The problem is that when you talk about the war on this and the war on that, and police officers see themselves as soldiers, then the civilian becomes the enemy."

Iraqi Diplomat Gave U.S. Prewar WMD Details

Iraqi Diplomat Gave U.S. Prewar WMD Details

Saddam’s foreign minister told CIA the truth, so why didn’t agency listen?

by Aram Roston, Lisa Myers & the NBC Investigative Unit

In the period before the Iraq war, the CIA and the Bush administration erroneously believed that Saddam Hussein was hiding major programs for weapons of mass destruction. Now NBC News has learned that for a short time the CIA had contact with a secret source at the highest levels within Saddam Hussein’s government, who gave them information far more accurate than what they believed. It is a spy story that has never been told before, and raises new questions about prewar intelligence. Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri attends a meeting at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo, in March 2003. Iraq's foreign minister under Saddam Hussein spied for the CIA before the US-led invasion in 2003 in return for a 100,000 dollar payment, a US television station reported.(AFP/File/Marwan Naamani) What makes the story significant is the high rank of the source. His name, officials tell NBC News, was Naji Sabri, Iraq’s foreign minister under Saddam. Although Sabri was in Saddam's inner circle, his cosmopolitan ways also helped him fit into diplomatic circles. In September 2002, at a meeting of the U.N.’s General Assembly, Sabri came to New York to represent Saddam. In front of the assembled diplomats, he read a letter from the Iraqi leader. "The United States administration is acting on behalf of Zionism," he said. He announced that there were no weapons of mass destruction and that the U.S. planned war in Iraq because it wanted the country’s oil. But on that very trip, there was also a secret contact made. The contact was brokered by the French intelligence service, sources say. Intelligence sources say that in a New York hotel room, CIA officers met with an intermediary who represented Sabri. All discussions between Sabri and the CIA were conducted through a "cutout," or third party. Through the intermediary, intelligence sources say, the CIA paid Sabri more than $100,000 in what was, essentially, "good-faith money." And for his part, Sabri, again through the intermediary, relayed information about Saddam’s actual capabilities. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case. The sources say Sabri’s answers were much more accurate than his proclamations to the United Nations, where he demonized the U.S. and defended Saddam. At the same time, they also were closer to reality than the CIA's estimates, as spelled out in its October 2002 intelligence estimate. For example, consider biological weapons, a key concern before the war. The CIA said Saddam had an "active" program for "R&D, production and weaponization" for biological agents such as anthrax. Intelligence sources say Sabri indicated Saddam had no significant, active biological weapons program. Sabri was right. After the war, it became clear that there was no program. Another key issue was the nuclear question: How far away was Saddam from having a bomb? The CIA said if Saddam obtained enriched uranium, he could build a nuclear bomb in "several months to a year." Sabri said Saddam desperately wanted a bomb, but would need much more time than that. Sabri was more accurate. On the issue of chemical weapons, the CIA said Saddam had stockpiled as much as "500 metric tons of chemical warfare agents" and had "renewed" production of deadly agents. Sabri said Iraq had stockpiled weapons and had "poison gas" left over from the first Gulf War. Both Sabri and the agency were wrong. In the weeks following September 2002, after first contact with Sabri was made in New York, the agency kept much of his information concealed within its ranks. Sabri would have been a potential gold mine of information, according to NBC News analyst retired Gen. Wayne Downing. "I think it’s very significant that the CIA would have someone who could tell them what’s on the dictator’s mind," says Downing. But, intelligence sources say, the CIA relationship with Sabri ended when the CIA, hoping for a public relations coup, pressured him to defect to the U.S. The U.S. hoped Sabri would leave Iraq and publicly renounce Saddam. He repeatedly refused, sources say, and contact was broken off. When war broke out, Sabri was defiant and outspoken. "Those aggressors are war criminals, colonialist war criminals. Crazy people led by a crazy, drunken, ignorant president," he said. He was right again. After the war, former CIA director George Tenet once boasted of a secret Iraqi source. "A source," he said in a speech on Feb. 5, 2004, "who had direct access to Saddam and his inner circle." Sources tell NBC News Tenet was alluding to Sabri. Tenet said that the source — meaning Sabri — had said Iraq was stockpiling chemical weapons and that equipment to produce insecticides, under the oil-for-food program, had been diverted to covert chemical weapons production. However, in that speech, Tenet also laid out what Sabri had disclosed: that there was no biological program, that Saddam wanted nuclear weapons but had none. After the war, Sabri was not arrested or put on the notorious "deck of cards." He lives in the Middle East and NBC News is not revealing his location for security reasons. According to Downing, that he is living in the Middle East may be significant. "The fact that he was there, that he was able to get out, live openly, like he is, says that for some reason he received some special status," says Downing. NBC News repeatedly requested comments about this report from Sabri, either in written form, by telephone or in person. NBC News contacted Sabri several times by phone, and hand delivered a letter to a representative of his, explaining in detail the substance of this report, including the details about weapons of mass destruction. Sabri confirmed he received the letter, but repeatedly refused to comment in any way, neither confirming nor denying any of the information in this report. So did the CIA. The agency also would not comment on Sabri, or answer why it discounted or ignored Sabri's assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. Bush & Cheney were going to wage war with Iraq no matter what. There would have been nothing that would have stopped him, or else he wouldn't have gone through the finite orchestration of September 11th to rouse public appeal to go to war to fight something that may not have ever existed. It had everything to do with OIL.

Agent Faults FBI on 9/11

Agent Faults FBI on 9/11

The man who caught Zacarias Moussaoui testifies that higher-ups blocked his efforts to determine whether there was a larger plot.

by Richard A. Serrano Indeed there was: Unfolding the Truth-9/11

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia - The FBI agent who arrested Zacarias Moussaoui weeks before Sept. 11 told a federal jury Monday that his own superiors were guilty of "criminal negligence and obstruction" for blocking his attempts to learn whether the terrorist was part of a larger cell about to hijack planes in the United States. During intense cross-examination, Special Agent Harry Samit — a witness for the prosecution — accused his bosses of acting only to protect their positions within the FBI. His testimony appeared to undermine the prosecution's case for the death penalty. Prosecutors argue that had Moussaoui cooperated by identifying some of the 19 hijackers, the FBI could have alerted airport security and kept them off the planes. Moussaoui is the only person to have been convicted in the United States on charges stemming from Sept. 11. His sentencing trial began several weeks ago, but the prosecution's case was nearly gutted when it was learned that a lawyer for the Transportation Security Administration had improperly coached key aviation security witnesses. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema decided to allow the government to present a limited amount of aviation testimony and evidence. Samit's recollections Monday were the first ground-level account of how FBI agents in Minneapolis — where Moussaoui was arrested on a visa violation 3½ weeks before the attacks — were appalled that their Washington supervisors denied their requests for search warrants in the effort to find out why the Frenchman was taking flying lessons and what role he might have in a wider plan to attack America. "They obstructed it," a still-frustrated Samit told the jury, calling his superiors' actions a calculated management decision "that cost us the opportunity to stop the attacks." The government considers Samit's testimony essential to its case. On March 9, the agent told the court about his arrest of Moussaoui, now 37, and his desperate efforts to win the suspect's cooperation. Yet much of his testimony Monday might have backfired on the government. The jury easily could have been left with the impression of an FBI so at odds with itself that it not only missed critical clues of an impending terrorist attack, but did not even know how best to coordinate efforts to stop it. Samit was not alone in his contempt for his superiors. His suspicions were backed up by Coleen Rowley, then an FBI lawyer in Minneapolis, who in a May 2002 memo to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III complained that Washington had blocked efforts to determine what Moussaoui was really doing. Rowley is not scheduled to testify during the sentencing phase. Moussaoui pleaded guilty last year to being a part of the Sept. 11 conspiracy. His lawyers maintain that the government had plenty of leads in the summer of 2001 that a major terrorist action was afoot, even without Moussaoui's cooperation. They point to a memo by an FBI agent in Phoenix warning of Middle Eastern men taking flying lessons, and the fact that then-CIA Director George J. Tenet was apprised of Moussaoui's arrest. Samit testified Monday that he never knew of the Phoenix memo or of Tenet's interest in the case. He also said he was kept in the dark about the Aug. 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing given to Bush during his vacation in Texas. That briefing, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," noted "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks." "I didn't see it," Samit testified. "I did not see anything like that." Defense lawyer Edward B. MacMahon Jr. also used his cross-examination of Samit to suggest that law enforcement officials never took such threats seriously then anyway. Under MacMahon's daylong questioning, Samit said that officials at the FBI headquarters in Washington rejected a series of attempts to obtain a warrant to search Moussaoui's personal belongings. Had the belongings been opened before Sept. 11, agents would have found numerous small knives, jumbo-jet pilot manuals, rosters of flight schools and other clues that might have helped them understand the Sept. 11 plot. Samit wanted to seek a criminal search warrant, and later one from a special intelligence court. But officials at the FBI headquarters refused to let him, because they did not believe he had enough evidence to prove Moussaoui was anything but a wealthy man who had come to this country to follow his dream of becoming a pilot. He said that as Washington kept telling him there was "no urgency and no threat," his FBI superiors sent him on "wild goose chases." For a while, Samit said, they did not even believe Moussaoui was the same person whom French intelligence sources had identified as a Muslim extremist. Samit said that FBI headquarters wanted him and his fellow agents to spend days poring through Paris phone books to make sure they had the right Moussaoui. Samit said that when he asked permission to place an Arabic-speaking federal officer as a plant inside Moussaoui's cell to find out what Moussaoui was up to, Washington said no. And he said that when he prepared a lengthy memo about Moussaoui for Federal Aviation Administration officials, Washington deleted key sections, including a part connecting Moussaoui with Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Samit said he was so frustrated and so convinced that attacks were imminent that he bypassed FBI officials in Washington and met with an FAA officer he knew in Minneapolis. But he said FAA agents never got back to him, and never asked to see a pair of small knives, similar to box cutters, that Samit had found in Moussaoui's pocket and in his car. Samit further described how he took it upon himself to cable the Secret Service that the president's safety might be in jeopardy. He recounted in the cable how Moussaoui had told him he hoped to be able to one day fly a Boeing 747 from London's Heathrow Airport to New York, and how he also hoped to visit the White House one day. Samit said he warned the Secret Service that those desires could spell disaster. "If he seizes an airplane from Heathrow to New York City," Samit alerted the Secret Service, "it will have the fuel on board to reach D.C." Samit said he never heard back from the Secret Service either. And yet, the agent said, he never officially complained to the FBI hierarchy. "Street agents don't call headquarters and request that supervisors be removed from cases," he said. "I didn't agree with them, but they are in charge." But Samit said his immediate boss in Minneapolis, FBI Special Agent Greg Jones, did urge Washington to be more receptive. Samit said he once overheard Jones on the phone with headquarters, telling FBI superiors that Minneapolis was trying to keep Zacarias Moussaoui "from flying an airplane into the World Trade Center." After the Sept. 11 attacks, Samit said he asked Jones about that conversation, and Jones said he had just made up the scenario as a hypothetical to try to get Washington moving. "He pulled it out of the air," Samit said. "It was a lucky guess."

'Incompetence' is New Label Used by White House Critics

'Incompetence' is New Label Used by White House Critics

I've been using it for ages.

The war in Iraq, budget deficits, the damaged case against Zacarias Moussaoui, port security -- all the bad news that is sapping American morale and undercutting President George W. Bush's popularity comes from one source, according to opposition Democrats: incompetence.

The word figures prominently in speeches delivered by leading members of the opposition, who have turned charges of incompetence into a common refrain that can be heard in discussion of any issue at hand.

The charge has even eclipsed accusations of corruption that had been used for months to describe Republican legal woes, from the indictment of Lewis Libby, a former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, to the eight-year prison sentence handed down to Republican former congressman Randy Cunningham for accepting bribes.

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid mentioned "incompetence" three times in two sentences when he spoke to reporters last week.

Commenting on the trial of French national Moussaoui, the only US case linked to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Reid exclaimed: "Think about this, to show the incompetence of what's going on in Washington with this administration."

Reid was referring to a mistake committed by a government lawyer that almost saw the death penalty trial thrown out.

Charges of incompetence resonate even more because they are repeated by commentators of every political stripe.

"They made a whole series of mistakes," argued Stephen Hess, an analyst with the Brookings Institution, who worked for the Republican administrations of presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.

"In some cases, it's managerial incompetence," said Hess, commenting on the Bush administration's fiasco in managing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that hit last August.

"In other instances, it's political incompetence," said Hess, referring to the administration's inability to anticipate fallout from a port management deal with DP World, a company based in the United Arab Emirates.

The mistake was even more surprising because the Bush team was credited with an infallible political sense following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, which consolidated Republican control in both chambers of Congress.

The charges of "incompetence" that are being so widely aired are reminiscent of those heard in the months before the 2001 attacks, when opponents accused the Bush administration of "incompetence" and "arrogance."

Analysts considered the team that Bush, a former Texas governor, assembled when he took office in January 2001 extremely competent. But Bush's political honeymoon was a short one.

When Republicans lost control of the US Senate in May 2001 following the defection of Jim Jeffords, upset at the administration's decision to spurn the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases, commentators began to question the White House's political skills.

Approval ratings plummeted, and an economic slowdown coupled with charges that the president was taking too many vacations put the White House of the defensive.

In July 2001 then White House spokesman Ari Fleischer insisted it was absurd to say the president was losing control. At the time, Bush's approval rating was slightly above 50 percent.

Then came the September 11 terror attacks and the country rallied around the president. Bush's ratings shot up to around 80 percent.

These days the president's poll numbers have sunk to an all-time low: only 36 percent of those surveyed said they were satisfied with his performance, while 60 percent gave him a thumbs-down, according to recent polls.

Iraqi Police Report Details Civilians' Deaths at Hands of U.S. Troops

Iraqi Police Report Details Civilians' Deaths at Hands of U.S. Troops

Why should I support US troops?

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi police have accused American troops of executing 11 people, including a 75-year-old woman and a 6-month-old infant, in the aftermath of a raid last Wednesday on a house about 60 miles north of Baghdad.

The villagers were killed after American troops herded them into a single room of the house, according to a police document obtained by Knight Ridder Newspapers. The soldiers also burned three vehicles, killed the villagers' animals and blew up the house, the document said.

A U.S. military spokesman, Major Tim Keefe, said that the U.S. military has no information to support the allegations and that he had not heard of them before a reporter brought them to his attention Sunday.

"We're concerned to hear accusations like that, but it's also highly unlikely that they're true," he said. He added that U.S. forces "take every precaution to keep civilians out of harms' way. The loss of innocent life, especially children, is regrettable."

Accusations that U.S. troops have killed civilians are commonplace in Iraq, though most are judged later to be unfounded or exaggerated. Navy investigators announced last week that they were looking into whether Marines intentionally killed 15 Iraqi civilians - four of them women and five of them children - during fighting last November.

But the report of the killings in the Abu Sifa area of Ishaqi, eight miles north of the city of Balad, is unusual because it originated with Iraqi police and because Iraqi police were willing to attach their names to it.

The report, which also contained brief descriptions of other events in the area, was compiled by the Joint Coordination Center in Tikrit, a regional security center set up with United States military assistance. An Iraqi police colonel signed the report, which was based on communications from local police.

Brig. Gen. Issa al-Juboori, who heads the center, said that his office assembled the report on Thursday and that it accurately reflects the direction of the current police investigation into the incident.

He also said he knows the officer heading the investigation. "He's a dedicated policeman, and a good cop," he said when reached by phone in Tikrit from Baghdad. "I trust him."

The case involves a U.S. raid conducted, according to the official U.S. account, in response to a tip that a member of al-Qaida in Iraq was at the house.

Neighbors, interviewed by a special correspondent for Knight Ridder, agreed that the al-Qaida member was at the house. They said he was visiting the home's owner, a relative. The neighbors said the homeowner was a schoolteacher.

According to police, military and eyewitness accounts, U.S. forces approached the house at around 2:30 a.m. and a firefight ensued. By all accounts, in addition to exchanging gunfire with someone inside the house, U.S. troops were supported by helicopter gunships, which fired on the house.

But the accounts differ on what took place after the firefight.

According to the U.S. account, the house collapsed because of the heavy fire. When U.S. forces searched the rubble they found one man, the al-Qaida suspect, alive. He was arrested. They also found a dead man they believed to be connected to al-Qaida, two dead women and a dead child.

But the report filed by the Joint Coordination Center, which was based on a report filed by local police, said U.S. forces entered the house while it was still standing.

"The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 persons, including five children, four women and two men," the report said. "Then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles and killed their animals."

The report identified the dead by name, giving their ages. The two men killed were 22 and 28. Of the women, two were 22 years old, one was 30 and one was 75. Two of the children were 5 years old, two were 3, and the fifth was 6 months old, the document said.

The report was signed by Col. Fadhil Muhammed Khalaf, who was described in the document as the assistant chief of the Joint Coordination Center.

A local police commander, Lt. Col. Farooq Hussain, interviewed by a Knight Ridder special correspondent in Ishaqi, said autopsies at the hospital in Tikrit "revealed that all the victims had bullet shots in the head and all bodies were handcuffed." Efforts to reach hospital spokesmen Sunday were unsuccessful.

Keefe, the U.S. military spokesman, said that he had seen photographs of the victims and had not seen handcuffs, which caused him to doubt the validity of the report.

He said, however, that he has no reason to doubt the body count provided by local police.

"We conducted a preliminary investigation," he said. "They were the investigating officers on the ground."

Keefe said that he didn't know which U.S. unit conducted the raid. An official account of the raid provided Sunday by the military also did not mention the unit involved by name.

Ibraheem Hirat Khalaf, whose brother Faiz owned the house and was among the dead, said he watched and heard the assault from his home 100 yards away. He said that U.S. troops used six missiles from helicopters to destroy the house as they were leaving.

Abu Hijran, 38, and a neighbor, said those in the house were liked and respected, though the wanted al-Qaida member was not as well known.

Rasheed Thair, an employee of Ishaqi, said that the town was in a state of shock over the killings.

"Everyone attended the funeral," he said. "We want the Americans to give an explanation for this horrible crime which took the smile and the dream of a spring night from 11 people, and destroyed even the simple toys of children."

Three Knight Ridder Newspapers special correspondents contributed to this report. Their identities are being withheld for security reasons.

---

POLICE REPORT

This is a translation of the Iraqi police report obtained by Knight Ridder, including accounts of events not related to the Ishaqi raid.

In the name of God, the most merciful

This is the morning and afternoon events of 15/3/2006

1. Interior Ministry Operations:

All forces belonging to the Interior Ministry will go on 100 percent alert status starting Wednesday 15/3/2006 until 1000 hours Friday 17/3/2006.

2. Coordination Center of Beji

At 810 gunmen in a white vehicle, duck type (a reference to the local name for a Toyota model) kidnapped the child Mohamed (Badei Khaled) from Samaha school in Beji (map coordinates 617667).

3. Coordination Center of Dujail

At 730 a benzene truck burned near Gassem al Queisy fuel station after one of its tires caught fire. The incident burned the driver (Hamed Abdalilah) and he was transported to the hospital (map coordinates 263519).

4. Coordination Center of Balad

At 230 of 15/3/2006, according to the telegram (report) of the Ishaqi police directorate, American forces used helicopters to drop troops on the house of Faiz Harat Khalaf situated in the Abu Sifa village of the Ishaqi district. The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 people, including 5 children, 4 women and 2 men, then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles and killed their animals (map coordinates 098702).

They were:

Turkiya Muhammed Ali, 75 years

Faiza Harat Khalaf, 30 years

Faiz Harat Khalaf, 28 years

Um Ahmad, 23 years

Sumaya Abdulrazak, 22 years

Aziz Khalil Jarmoot, 22 years

Hawra Harat Khalaf, 5 years

Asma Yousef Maruf, 5 years

Osama Yousef Maruf, 3 years

Aisha Harat Khalaf, 3 years

Husam Harat Khalaf, 6 months

(Signed)
Staff Colonel
Fadhil Muhammed Khalaf
Assistant Chief of the Joint Coordination Center

3/16/2006

Three Knight Ridder special correspondents contributed to this report. Their identities are being withheld for security reasons.

© 2006 KR Washington Bureau and wire service sources

Saddam's foreign minister was CIA source: NBC

Top News Article | Reuters.com

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In the period before the Iraq war, Saddam Hussein's foreign minister Naji Sabri, was a secret paid source of the CIA, "NBC Nightly News" reported on Monday.

Citing unnamed current and former U.S. intelligence officials, NBC said Sabri provided details of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be more accurate than CIA estimates.

Intelligence sources said Sabri was paid more than $100,000 through an intermediary in a September 2002 deal brokered by the French, NBC reported.

Sabri may have thought he was working with the French, but some U.S. intelligence officials believe he knew it was the CIA, NBC said.

The CIA questioned Sabri through a go-between about Saddam's WMD program, the report said.

According to the intelligence sources, Sabri indicated that Saddam had no significant weapons program and that while the deposed Iraqi leader desperately wanted a nuclear bomb it would have taken more time for him to build one than the CIA's several-months-to-a-year estimate, NBC reported.

Both the CIA and Sabri said Saddam had stockpiled chemical weapons, but both were wrong, NBC said.

WMD were the main justification for President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq three years ago, but no such weapons have been found.

Citing intelligence sources, NBC said the CIA's brief relations with Sabri ended after he refused to defect to the United States. The agency had been hoping for a public relations coup, the network said.

Sabri was not named among the former senior Iraqi officials on the U.S. most-wanted list of 55 Iraqi fugitives.

NBC said it found Sabri teaching at a university in the Middle East, but was not revealing his location for security reasons.

Sabri declined to be interviewed or to comment as did the CIA, NBC said, adding that the agency also would not say why it did not listen to Sabri's warnings.

A CIA representative had no comment on the report.

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

Military probes killing of Iraqi family

Top News Article | Reuters.com

By Alastair Macdonald

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Tuesday it was investigating Iraqi police allegations that its soldiers shot dead a family of 11 in their home last week.

Soldiers said they killed four people, including a militant.

The probe comes a day after a magazine published allegations that U.S. Marines killed 15 civilians in another town last year. A criminal inquiry into those deaths was launched last week.

Time magazine ran accounts by townspeople saying troops went on a rampage after a Marine was killed by a roadside bomb in Haditha, west of Baghdad, in November. The witnesses rejected an original U.S. account that the 15 also died in the bomb blast.

"I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head," one child said. "Then they killed my granny."

In one of their biggest attacks on Iraqi forces, insurgents stormed the police headquarters and another official building in the town of Miqdadiya, 80 km (50 miles) northeast of Baghdad, on Tuesday, killing at least 22 people, mostly policemen.

Ten suspected Sunni Arab insurgents were also killed, but the attackers freed 33 prisoners, an Interior Ministry source said, adding that 15 police and nine civilians had been killed.

A police source put the death toll at 18 police, four civilians and one gunman.

The governor of Diyala province, which has a volatile ethnic and sectarian mix and has seen many al Qaeda attacks in recent months, had the police chief and other officers arrested.

He suspected them of complicity in the dawn raid, which police said involved about 100 fighters and lasted an hour.

Forces scrambling to the aid of the besieged units were also targeted. Two policemen were killed when a roadside bomb blasted their patrol as it raced from nearby Baquba. In a separate bombing in that city, two other policemen were killed. Continued ...

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

1 | 2 | 3 Next

Pentagon Hired Contractor to Advise on Collecting Information on Churches, Mosques, Other US Site

Pentagon Hired Contractor to Advise on Collecting Information on Churches, Mosques, Other US Site

so what do the neo-commies do with this information/

WASHINGTON - A Pentagon intelligence agency that kept files on American anti-war activists hired one of the contractors who bribed former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., to help it collect data on houses of worship, schools, power plants and other locations in the United States.

MZM Inc., headed by Mitchell Wade, also received three contracts totaling more than $250,000 to provide unspecified "intelligence services" to the White House, according to documents obtained by Knight Ridder. The White House didn't respond to an inquiry about what those intelligence services entailed.

MZM's Pentagon and White House deals were part of tens of millions of dollars in federal government business that Wade's company attracted beginning in 2002.

MZM and Wade, who pleaded guilty last month to bribing Cunningham and unnamed Defense Department officials to steer work to his firm, are the focus of ongoing probes by Pentagon and Department of Justice investigators.

In February 2003, MZM won a two-month contract worth $503,144.70 to provide technical support to the Pentagon's Joint Counter-Intelligence Field Activity, or CIFA. The top-secret agency was created five months earlier primarily to protect U.S. defense personnel and facilities from foreign terrorists.

The job involved advising CIFA on selecting software and technology designed to ferret out commercial and government data that could be used in what's called a Geospatial Information System. A GIS system inserts information about geographic locations, such as buildings, into digital maps produced from satellite photographs.

According to a "statement of work," the data that CIFA was interested in obtaining included "maps, street addresses, lines of communication, critical infrastructure elements, demographic and other pertinent sources that would support geocoding and multi-level analysis."

Geocoding involves assigning latitudes and longitudes to locations, such as street addresses, so they can be displayed as points on maps. Such tools increasingly are being used by U.S. corporations and law enforcement agencies.

MZM was to "assist the government in identifying and procuring data" on maps, as well as "airports, ports, dams, churches/mosques/synagogues, schools (and) power plants," said the statement of work.

"In many cases, the government already owns such data, and for reasons of economy, government-owned data is preferred," said the statement. It isn't clear why U.S. intelligence agencies couldn't do the work themselves.

Navy Cmdr. Gregory Hicks, a Pentagon spokesman, said MZM began working on the project in October 2002, when the agency was created.

Its job was to help the agency integrate technology into its "information architecture to help CIFA use available (satellite) imagery, which is produced legally by other commercial and government agencies," Hicks said.

"GIS software ... is designed to allow integration of geographic and imagery data with threat information to provide complex analytic products," he said. "Not knowing the location of key infrastructure and points of interest, such as bridges, chemical plants, schools, parks, and even religious facilities, as they relate to threat information, could significantly affect the accuracy of such analysis and plans and lead to disastrous results."

He was unable to discuss further details of CIFA's dealings with MZM, citing the ongoing investigations into Wade's dealings with the Pentagon.

CIFA recently has come under fire following disclosures that it maintained information on individuals and groups involved in peaceful anti-war protests at defense facilities and recruiting offices.

The information was stored in a database that was supposed to be reserved for reports related to potential foreign terrorist activity.

In a March 8 letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., a senior Pentagon official said that a review of the Cornerstone database had identified 186 "protest-related reports" containing the names of 43 people that were mistakenly retained in the database.

"These reports have since been removed from the Cornerstone database and refresher training on intelligence oversight and database management is being given to all CI (counter-intelligence) and intelligence personnel," said the letter from Robert W. Rogalski, an acting deputy undersecretary of defense.

The disclosure that CIFA was storing information on anti-war activities added to concerns that the Bush administration may have used its war on terrorism to give government agencies expanded power to monitor Americans' finances, associations, travel and other activities.

The administration's domestic eavesdropping program and FBI monitoring of environmental, animal rights and anti-war groups have also fueled such fears. The administration contends that its programs are legal and insists that they're designed to ensure civil liberties while protecting national security.

A Washington Post story last year contained a brief reference to the White House contracts in a report on the company's dealings with the Pentagon.

Wade, who faces up to 20 years in prison, was one of four men charged in the Cunningham case. Cunningham, who resigned from Congress in November after serving for 15 years, was sentenced to eight years and four months in prison earlier this month.

Hints of Corruption Lead Some to Urge Blair to Resign

Hints of Corruption Lead Some to Urge Blair to Resign

Its not happening fast enough here...

LONDON — Compounding woes for Prime Minister Tony Blair, his Labor Party acknowledged Friday that it had received more than three times the amount it had previously reported in secret campaign loans.

The disclosure fed a debate swirling around Mr. Blair's political future, as did an unusual editorial in The Economist reversing the weekly's support for him in last year's election.

It would be "better, surely, for him to quit while he is still ahead," The Economist said, echoing remarks from other publications on the left and the right.

The newly disclosed loans have many Britons wondering whether Mr. Blair's party has fallen into the same kind of quagmire of sleaze that contributed to the defeat of the Conservatives in 1997.

Mr. Blair, who has been prime minister since then, has said he will not fight a fourth campaign, indicating that he will hand over power to Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer, before the next elections, which will be in 2010 at the latest.

In a statement on Friday, the Labor Party said it had taken loans worth $24.5 million from individuals, more than three times the $7 million it had previously reported. It did not say who had made the loans, which accounted for most of the $31 million Labor said it spent on last May's elections.

News reports had identified three of the lenders as wealthy businessmen who had been recommended by Mr. Blair for peerages, an honor that brings a title and membership in the House of Lords. Each had made a loan worth more than $1.75 million.

At a news conference on Thursday, Mr. Blair denied suggestions that his party had traded honors for the loans, which, under current campaign financing laws, do not have to be publicly declared in the same way as donations.

"It shouldn't be one in exchange for the other, and it wasn't," Mr. Blair said. "I am completely satisfied that there has been no breach of the rules in relation to Labor Party nominations" for peerages.

All major political parties in Britain are entitled to nominate members for the House of Lords, but the final selection is made by an independent commission.

The questions surfaced at a difficult time for Mr. Blair. His parliamentary majority was more than halved in May and he now faces regular challenges by dissidents within his party.

Those difficulties may now have been overtaken by the allegations of influence-trading, which contrast sharply with Mr. Blair's pledge when he took office almost nine years ago that his party would be "purer than pure."

Since then, a procession of questions have emerged about the financial dealings of both the party and personalities, ranging from the prime minister and his wife, Cherie Booth, to a former minister, Peter Mandelson, and to donors, including Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One racing magnate.

In an editorial on Friday, a liberal daily, The Independent, said that of 23 people who had donated more than $175,000 to Labor, "17 have been granted a peerage or a knighthood."

"This tacky trade would arguably be less damaging to the public good were it not for the fact that a peerage comes with substantial political influence," the editorial said.

In The Guardian, a left-of-center newspaper, the columnist Polly Toynbee observed, "Whatever he does, Blair still has to answer the embarrassing question: did he offer peerages for cash?" She also suggested an early departure for the prime minister.

In The Daily Mail, whose politics are on the right wing, the columnist Max Hastings wrote Friday, "This is the world not of British politics but of Tammany Hall," adding that Mr. Blair's dealings "convey a stench that would cause an American congressman to hold his nose."