Rumsfeld Memo Proposed ‘Major Adjustment’ in Iraq - New York Times

Rumsfeld Memo Proposed ‘Major Adjustment’ in Iraq - New York Times

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 — Two days before he resigned as defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld submitted a classified memo to the White House that acknowledged that the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq was not working and called for a major course correction.

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Ron Edmonds/Associated Press

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld arrived at the White House on Nov. 13 to meet with the Iraq Study Group and President Bush.

The Reach of War

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Rumsfeld’s Memo of Options for Iraq War (December 3, 2006)

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“In my view it is time for a major adjustment,” wrote Mr. Rumsfeld, who has been a symbol of a dogged stay-the-course policy. “Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.”

Nor did Mr. Rumsfeld seem confident that the administration would readily develop an effective alternative. To limit the political fallout from shifting course, he suggested the administration consider a campaign to lower public expectations.

“Announce that whatever new approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so on a trial basis,” he wrote. “This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course, if necessary, and therefore not ‘lose.’ ”

“Recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) — go minimalist,” he added. The memo suggests frustration with the pace of turning over responsibility to the Iraqi authorities; in fact, the memo calls for examination of ideas that roughly parallel troop withdrawal proposals presented by some of the White House’s sharpest Democratic critics. (Text of the Memo)

The memo’s discussion of possible troop reduction options offers a counterpoint to Mr. Rumsfeld’s frequent public suggestions that discussions about force levels are driven by requests from American military commanders.

It also puts on the table several ideas for troop redeployments or withdrawals, even as there have been recent pronouncements from American commanders emphasizing the need to maintain troop levels for the time being.

The memorandum sometimes has a finger-wagging tone, as Mr. Rumsfeld says that the Iraqis must “pull up their socks,” and suggests that reconstruction aid should be withheld in violent areas to avoid rewarding “bad behavior.”

Other options called for shrinking the number of bases, establishing benchmarks that would mark the Iraqis’ progress toward political, economic and security goals and conducting a “reverse embeds” program to attach Iraqi soldiers to American squads.

The memo was finished one day after President Bush interviewed Robert M. Gates, the president of Texas A&M University, as a potential successor to Mr. Rumsfeld and one day before the midterm elections. By then it was clear that the Republicans appeared likely to suffer a setback at the polls and that the administration was poised to begin reconsidering its Iraq strategy.

The memo provides no indication that Mr. Rumsfeld intended to leave his Pentagon post. It is unclear whether he knew at that point that he was about to be replaced, though the White House has said that Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld had a number of conversations on the matter.

Told that The New York Times had obtained a copy of it, a Pentagon spokesman, Eric Ruff, confirmed its authenticity. “As it became clear that people were considering options for the way forward, the secretary had some views on the subject, and this memo reflects those views,” he said.

At the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld has been famous for his “snowflakes” — memos that drift down to the bureaucracy from on high and that are used to ask questions, stimulate debate and shape policy. Mr. Rumsfeld’s Nov. 6 memorandum, circulated as part of the administration’s review of Iraq policy, is written in that spirit and with the same blunt aphorisms that Mr. Rumsfeld frequently uses in public.

Unlike the lawyerly memo on Iraq policy submitted Nov. 8 by Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, Mr. Rumsfeld’s listed more than a dozen “illustrative options” that the defense secretary did not endorse, but suggested merited serious consideration. “Many of these options could, and in a number of cases, should be done in combination with others,” Mr. Rumsfeld advised.

With Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation, the options no longer have the same weight. In recent weeks, some have been discarded as the Bush administration tries to adjust its military and political strategy in Iraq. But others, like increasing the number of advisers attached to Iraqi forces, live on and have also been recommended by others.

Mr. Rumsfeld, who has presided over two wars and is one of the longest-serving Pentagon chiefs, is scheduled to leave when his designated successor, Mr. Gates, is confirmed by the Senate, expected later this month.

Titled “Iraq — Illustrative New Courses of Action,” the memo reflects mounting concern over a war that, as Mr. Rumsfeld put it, has evolved from “major combat operations to counterterrorism, to counterinsurgency, to dealing with death squads and sectarian violence.”

The first section of the memo contains two pages of options that Mr. Rumsfeld describes as “above the line” ideas worthy of consideration. Some that Mr. Rumsfeld found intriguing appear to reflect his long-held view that the United States should use relatively modest force in intervening in foreign countries to avoid creating a dependency on American power. That approach, critics have charged, left the United States unprepared to deal with the chaos that followed the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

Mr. Rumsfeld has frequently emphasized the difficulty of stabilizing Iraq and the need to turn over responsibility to Iraqi authorities as quickly as possible. But he has also been a forceful, even cantankerous, defender of American policy, often insisting his critics were unduly pessimistic. On Oct. 31, just a week before finishing the memo, Mr. Rumsfeld told a radio interviewer, “I feel that we are making good progress with the piece of it the Defense Department has.”

One option Mr. Rumsfeld offered calls for modest troop withdrawals “so Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country.”

Another option calls for redeploying American troops from “vulnerable positions” in Baghdad and other cities to safer areas in Iraq or Kuwait, where they would act as a “quick reaction force.” That idea is similar to a plan suggested by Representative John P. Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat, a plan that the White House has soundly rebuffed.

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Can Bush find an exit?

If not we can help him significantly- and I am not only referring to americans, who at this stage of the game (myself and a few others exempt) deserve no respect and should have removed Both Bush and Cheney after the ludicrous 9/11 report was completed and public.

The following is a summary of this week's Time magazine cover story.

(Time.com) -- George Bush has a history of long-overdue U-turns.

He waited until he woke up, hung over, one morning at 40 before giving up booze cold. He fought the idea of a homeland-security agency for eight months after 9/11 and then scampered aboard and called it his idea.

But Bush has never had to pull off a U-turn like the one he is contemplating now: to give up on his dream of turning Babylon into an oasis of freedom and democracy and instead begin a staged withdrawal from Iraq, rewrite the mission of the 150,000 U.S. troops there as they begin to draw down, launch a diplomatic Olympics across the Middle East and restart the flagging peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Even calling all that a reversal is misnomer; it would be more like a personality transplant.

But Bush will soon begin the biggest foreign policy course correction of his presidency.

No matter what else may get stapled onto it, the maneuver will be based on what the bipartisan, congressionally mandated commission led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton reached agreement on last week.

The Baker-Hamilton commission's work has been compared to family interventions for a substance-addicted cousin, but unlike those encounters, this one won't remain behind closed doors. The entire 10-person commission will brief the president Wednesday and then repeat the lesson for congressional leaders, both incoming and outgoing, later the same day.

The Iraq Study Group will call for a massive diplomatic push in two areas in which the White House has never put its shoulder to the grindstone: rekindling peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis and holding an international conference that would lead to direct talks between Washington and Tehran and Damascus.

The Study Group's military proposals are performance-based: they would link a staged withdrawal from Iraq by U.S. forces to stronger actions by the struggling Iraqi government.

Realism was exactly what the people who cooked up the commission had in mind when they set the bipartisan operation in motion more than a year ago. The review began as a $1 million insertion into an appropriations bill by Republican Representative Frank Wolf of Virginia, who had gone to Iraq last year and decided the policy wasn't working.

He slotted the money to the U. S. Institute of Peace, whose president, Richard Solomon, approached the one person in Bushland who still had a reputation for realism and who could command the president's ear, alone: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Would she propose the commission to the president?

Rice's request: Don't look back

After some hesitation, Rice agreed, but made one request: the commission had to look forward, not backward, in part because she knew the dysfunctional Bush foreign policy operation, tilted so heavily along the Cheney-Rumsfeld axis, would not permit, much less sustain, scrutiny.

Rice got through to Bush the next day, arguing that the thing was going to happen anyway, so he might as well get on board. To his credit, Bush agreed.

Baker and Hamilton were left to choose their own panelists, and the commission went to work, gathering evidence, making a trip to Baghdad and hearing from more than 100 experts.

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor developed a reputation for asking the best questions. Democratic power broker Vernon Jordan emerged as the group's political sage. Clinton defense chief William Perry cornered the military options -- and would be a holdout on the final deal.

When Democrats swept the November elections, aides to several panelists told Time that the commission would have more room to make sweeping proposals. Rumsfeld's resignation the next day cemented that feeling.

But the election, instead of making things easier, actually made them harder.

Psychoanalysis and the prodigal son

When Bush replaced Rumsfeld with Robert Gates, a member of the Baker-Hamilton commission who had served the first President Bush as head of the Central Intelligence Agency, the psychoanalysis rampant in the media about daddy's team coming back to save the prodigal son steamed everyone at the White House, from the president on down, and led the administration to dig in its heels.

Meanwhile, the situation in Iraq itself kept deteriorating and there was a risk that the panel's proposals would be obsolete before consensus was reached.

Baker turned up last Monday with a draft report he wanted panel members to consider or amend and then get into the president's hands. Democrats led by Hamilton, Perry and Leon Panetta, Bill Clinton's ex-chief of staff, were adamant that the report recommend a firm starting point for troop withdrawals. When the Republicans again refused, members agreed on language that would leave the date vague but the vector clear. And then the group adjourned.

'No idea how things will look in February'

Bush will put a few weeks between the big Baker-Hamilton rollout and his own restart -- White House officials worry that anything faster would look too reactive -- but one official told Time that the new path the president will outline in coming weeks is "significantly different than what we've been doing. ...When the president says we're going to get the job done, that doesn't suggest it is an open-ended commitment forever."

Whether it is the Baker approach or whatever the White House decides to call its own, events in Iraq could easily make any plan for diplomacy and withdrawal irrelevant in the face of a weak central government, a deepening civil war and widespread violence.

A commission official put it this way, "What we have produced is a plan for December. We have no idea what things are going to look like in February."

Click here for the entire cover story on Time.

Russian spy poison plot thickens

LONDON: The bizarre Russian spy poison plot thickened with an autopsy on Alexander Litvinenko's poison-wracked body on Friday, confirmation that at least two British Airways planes had been contaminated by the deadly isotope Polonium 210 and the British government telling parliament that 12 of 24 London locations showed traces of radioactivity.

Even as another Russian poison mystery emerged with the family of former prime minister Yegor Gaidar alleging he too had been poisoned while attending a conference in Ireland last week, the post mortem on Litvinenko's body set out to establish the sequence and chronology of events that ended in his mysterious death in London.

The widening investigation into the former KGB colonel's death has already seen British Airways embark on the difficult process of contacting at least 33,000 passengers and 3,000 staff because they flew on planes thought to be contaminated. Amid raging speculation about the radioactive trail left by Litvinenko's alleged assassins, experts suggested that the polonium-210 traces found at various London locations could have leaked from a container.

Alternatively, they say, the highly-toxic alpha-emitting radioactive poison could have been present in people's bodily fluids. But even as the public health scare reached bizarre and unsustainable levels and the British home secretary made a statement in Parliament confirming that half of the 24 crime-scene locations in London were radioactive, Litvinenko's alleged killers were said to have most likely dropped the polonium on the floor of a leading London hotel.

According to reports in the British press, Scotland Yard is focusing on "rogue elements" in the Russian state and tentatively ruling out involvement by the Kremlin and President Putin. Police are said to be interested in the movements of five or more Russian men who are alleged to have arrived in London from Moscow to watch a football match.

Friday's post mortem comes exactly 24 hours after the inquest into Litvinenko's death opened and was adjourned at a London court with the coroner darkly confirming that the level of polonium-210 in his system showed it had come from a source "other than a natural one".

Litvinenko's friend Alex Goldfarb, also a Russian dissident and London-based exile, told the inquest that the flights being investigated by BA and by police "reinforces the theory that the origin of this material (Polonium 210) that killed Alexander was in Moscow".

Meanwhile, it has emerged that Britain's culture secretary Tessa Jowell and the head of London's 2012 Olympics bid, Lord Sebastian Coe travelled on one of the radiation-contaminated aircraft in the course of their official work.

Scotland Yard's tentative all-clear for Putin comes after more than a week of hysterical speculation over Moscow's dark and deadly deeds.

Why America Will Fail in Iraq

The future of Iraq may depend more on the policies of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr than those of U.S. President George W. Bush. The young firebrand’s views remain clouded in mystery, in part because he and his loyalists usually refuse to speak to the Western media. In a rare interview, his spokesman, Baha al-Araji, sounds off on Iraq’s troubled past, present, and future.

FOREIGN POLICY: Was Iraq better off under Saddam Hussein than it is today?

Baha Al-Araji: The Iraqi people knew terrible oppression and prejudice from the dictator Saddam Hussein, and the Iraqi people once thought that the American project would end that. But because the American commanders lack any awareness of the nature of the Iraqi people, their presence has actually increased the level of oppression.

Saddam Hussein killed my father and my elder brother and jailed one of my brothers and my mother for a long time. Some of my family escaped Iraq and lived in exile, while others remained in the country. Now we are able to see, unfortunately, that the situation during Saddam’s reign was better than today because then, the oppression was targeted and predictable. Today, danger and oppression overwhelm all Iraqi people without exception.

FP: Why are the Americans failing in Iraq?

BAA: The situation in Iraq differs from that in the United States. There is bureaucratic competition for power [in the United States]. The Department of Defense took control for a certain period, and then the State Department did. And this kind of alternating power and influence is good. But that is the United States. The same is not true in Iraq. Thus, the American project in Iraq will fail.

Sometimes, the Iraqi government reaches a good agreement with the political advisor of the U.S. embassy here in Baghdad. But, then, suddenly, in the night, some military commander will [attack] a certain local community. And so negates the accord that was reached between the Iraqi government and the U.S. embassy’s political advisor.

The Americans should look at the Iraqis as Iraqis, not [as] Americans in training.

FP: Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki wants to disband the militias or find some way to incorporate them into the government. What does this mean for Sadr’s movement and the Mahdi Army?

BAA: I personally disagree with [that]. Whether or not these militias undermine the sovereignty of the Iraqi government is an open question. This question was provoked by the Maliki government. [They] raised it for purely political reasons in an effort to provoke a clash between the Sadr movement and the current government.

The emergence of militias in Iraq is a natural response to the situation here. There is a principle which says that for every action, there is a reaction. So, when there are occupation forces on the ground, there should naturally be a resistance to that occupation. We choose peaceful and diplomatic resistance, so the government and the coalition forces should not exaggerate our activities. Because those of us who are affiliated with the Sadr movement are sensitive, we don’t like to provoke this contentious question.

Do you know that 60 percent of the Mahdi Army already serves in government programs and installations? One of our biggest challenges with this issue is getting the Americans to understand it. The problem is that the U.S. leaders in Iraq, even though they are here, still think in an American way. But Iraq totally differs in its nature, its economy, and its culture from the United States.

FP: Many people in the American government blame the Mahdi Army for some of the insecurity. How do you respond to these critics?

BAA: There are many terrorists who can acquire and get this green badge [pointing to his Green Zone credential]. Terrorists can easily gain access to the Green Zone. And they enter with weapons. This highly protected area is already penetrated. Some of these activities have been disclosed by the Iraqi government and the Americans as the actions of the Mahdi Army. But these actions are actually not linked to [us], because our army is ideological.

FP: In the elections in December 2005, the Sadr movement was part of the United Iraqi Alliance. But now you’re saying that you’re anti-government. What are the relations like between the parties in the UIA?

BAA: Because I am affiliated with the Sadr movement, I received 40,000 votes. If I had run as an individual candidate, I would only have received 3,000 votes.... But 70 percent of these attacks, and this is my personal viewpoint, derive from disputes between the leadership of the political parties, whether they are in the council of representatives or the government. This is unacceptable.

FP: What should be the role of Iraq’s neighbors?

BAA: We have problems, unfortunately, with all of Iraq’s neighbors. Some are historical problems. Some are ethnic problems … The Shiites are the majority in Iraq. But, in the Islamic world, they are the minority. And our neighbors, the Arab countries that border us, are 100 percent Sunni. So they fear the situation in Iraq. To be sure, some of the problems we face today in Iraq are of our own making. But the biggest challenges derive from Iraq’s neighbors. Our mistake is that we didn’t go to them in the beginning and tell them about the nature of Shiites in Iraq, that we are peaceful. But the real problem—the enduring challenge—is that Iraq’s neighbors won’t tolerate a Shiite-governed Iraq. They think that there is major collaboration between Iraqi Shia and Iran, but we will control this. It is a very big mistake to think that our community works at the behest of Iranian allies and friends.

I don’t think Iran likes Iraq. Iran is the beneficiary of this current situation. Iran’s enemy is the United States, so Iran does everything in its power to fuel instability in the new Iraq so that Iran can remain strong and keep the United States distracted. The reason nobody is doing anything about Iran’s nuclear program is that they are all too busy trying to salvage Iraq.

We also have a small problem with Syria. Saddam’s regime was affiliated with the same school and political party that rules Syria. In Syria, there are many in the local Baath Party leadership who think that the situation in Iraq is a big loss for the Baath Party. Though the Syrian Baathist ideology differs from Saddam’s, there is still a desire [there] to see him reinstated. And this sense of party solidarity has led them to incite instability in Iraq in order to ensure that the occupiers—and the new government they support—fail.

FP: Do you think Kurdistan will split off from Iraq? Will the south also secede?

BAA: Of course other regions want to secede. Would you want to be part of this mess by choice? If you believed that you could build a prosperous life and leave the forces of violence to fight their own petty wars of attrition on the streets of Baghdad, you would do it. These threats of secession say nothing of Iraqi unity or fragmentation. People just want a normal life.

This interview is excerpted from an upcoming volume of the Oxford International Review.

Bush Blames Al Qaeda for Rising Iraq Violence

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Published: November 28, 2006

No DUH-bya, its the unwanted occupation and take over of their country by american troops

TALLINN, Estonia, Nov. 28 — President Bush today blamed al Qaeda for the rising wave of sectarian violence in Iraq, and refused to label the recent surge in killings there a civil war.

"There's a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of the attacks by al Qaeda causing people to seek reprisal," Mr. Bush said. Referring to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al Qaeda leader in Iraq who was killed by American forces over the summer, he added, "The plan of Mr. Zarqawi was to foment sectarian violence."

The remarks, at a press conference here with President Toomas Hendrik Ilves of Estonia, were Mr. Bush's first on the situation in Iraq since a series of bombings last Thursday killed more than 200 people in a Shiite district of Baghdad.

Mr. Bush also had harsh words for Syria and Iran, and reiterated his stance that he does not intend to negotiate directly with those nations to enlist their help in ending the violence in Iraq. He said he would leave such talks to the government of Iraq, "a sovereign nation which is conducting is own foreign policy."

Last week's bombings in Baghdad constituted the deadliest single attack since the American invasion. The following day, Shiite militiamen staged a vengeful reprisal, attacking Sunni mosques in Baghdad and in the nearby city of Baquba. The growing cycle of violence have prompted warnings from world leaders, including Jordan's King Abdullah and Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, that the region is at the brink of civil war.

But Mr. Bush, who heads to Jordan on Wednesday for two days of meetings with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq, dismissed a question about whether a civil war has indeed erupted. "There's all kinds of speculation," he said, adding, "No question about it, it's tough."

As the tensions in Iraq have escalated, so have the tensions between the Bush and Maliki governments. The president said today that he would be asking Mr. Maliki to lay out a strategy for controlling the violence. "I will ask him what is required, and what is your strategy," Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Bush arrived here in Tallinn late Monday night, becoming the first sitting United States president to visit Estonia, a tiny Baltic nation sandwiched between Russia and the Baltic Sea. The president is here on his way to Riga, Latvia, where he is to attend a N.A.T.O. summit before his Jordan trip.

Afghanistan will top the agenda at the N.A.T.O. meeting. The alliance has committed 32,000 troops to that country, but many nations have imposed restrictions on their troops that N.A.T.O. commanders say are hampering the mission. Mr. Bush is expected to press for the lifting of those restrictions.

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Big Brother, Big Business

Big Brother, Big Business

Video Broadcast 11/01/06 - Runtime 120 Minutes

Big Brother, Big Business

CNBC Special Report:

Technology is being used to monitor Americans more than ever before.

"Big Brother Big Business," CNBC takes a look at the companies behind the powerful business of personal information and the people whose lives are affected by it, including: a woman who lost her job due to mistaken identity; a man whose cell phone records were stolen by his former employer; a woman whose personal information was stolen from a company she had never heard of; a man who discovered his rental car company was tracking his every move.

The documentary also looks at how the FBI, the Border Patrol, police departments and schools are using biometric technologies to establish identity as well as an inside peek at an AOL division that works solely to satisfy the requests of law enforcement for information about AOL's members.

Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq

Video Description

This is a brief excerpt from John Pilger's "Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq" (2000 - UK). The fact that NOT ONE U.S. television station - "public" or private - aired and discussed superb films such as this documentary or "Hidden Wars of Desert Storm" (Ungerman/Brohy 2000) in the run up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq proves, perhaps more than any other single thing, that America's media system is a failure.

bio: http://about-scott-sanders.blogspot.com/

blog: http://www.chicagomediaaction.org/

Personal Message

Hey! If you ever wonder why I do this...This is why I do this...

Last Summer I saw oo much broken kids bodies and broken sculs...
Here you can find the truth:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info

Civil rights leaders moved by King memorial groundbreaking

Civil rights leaders moved by King memorial groundbreaking

Washington — A scant half-mile from where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and urged a divided nation to complete the work of the great emancipator, ground was broken Monday for a monument to King's place in American history.

From across the political spectrum, dignitaries gathered to mark the moment and reflect on King's legacy. They included former President Bill Clinton, who signed legislation to create the monument, and President Bush, who declared, "An assassin's bullet cannot shatter the dream. It continues to inspire millions around the world."

But among the most visibly moved among the thousands at the site on the National Mall was one who shared the podium with King when his "I Have a Dream" speech gave momentum to the movement for new civil rights laws.

U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a leader of the 1963 March on Washington that culminated in King's speech, broke down in tears as he held a groundbreaking shovel.

"It's unreal. It's so fitting and appropriate," the Atlanta Democrat said of the ceremony. "Out of all the people that spoke that day, I'm the only one who is still around."

Also on hand were several of King's children, who this year laid to rest their mother, Coretta Scott King, near their father's tomb at the King Center in Atlanta.

"My mother reminded us on so many occasions that my father just wanted to be a great pastor," the Rev. Bernice A. King, the civil rights leaders' daughter. "Little did he know he would be a great pastor to the world."

Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, both former King deputies, and other leaders of the civil rights movement listened as Bush spoke of the importance of the monument's location, flanked by the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial.

"It will unite a man who declared the promise of America and the man who defended the promise of America with the man who redeemed the promise of America," Bush said.

Also attending the ceremony were luminaries such as Oprah Winfrey, poet Maya Angelou, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, Rep. Harold Ford Jr. of Tennessee, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and fashion mogul Tommy Hilfiger — a major donor to the project.

"I am who I am because of Dr. King and his hope for this country," Winfrey, the billionaire talk-show queen, said as she arrived at the ceremony.

Fifty students from across the country who won an essay contest, including 18-year-old Natasha Lawson of Augusta State University, also took part in the event.

"He's done so much [for America]," Lawson said. "He would really appreciate this."

The 4-acre monument has been in the works for more than a decade. In 1996, Clinton signed legislation proposing creation of the monument, and in 1999, it won a coveted place on the Mall.

In 2003, concerns about plans for a host of new memorials led Congress to declare the Mall a completed work of civic art, and lawmakers imposed a moratorium on new construction. But the effort for the King memorial overcame the objections, and in 2005, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Project Foundation launched a drive that has so far raised at least $65.5 million.

One more obstacle remains to the construction of the monument: raising the remainder of the estimated $100 million cost, a project Hilfiger and hip-hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons are helping to lead.

Harry Johnson, president of the foundation, said he hopes construction will be completed by spring 2008.

The entrance to the memorial will include a central sculpture called "The Mountain of Despair." Recalling King's call in his 1963 speech to "hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope," it is split to signify the racially and socially divided American that inspired King's nonviolent efforts.

Obama, who has said he is considering a presidential run in 2008, imagined bringing his two young children to the memorial when it is completed and passing through the mountain.

"He never did live to see the promised land from that mountaintop," Obama said. "But he pointed the way for us."

Niches around the monument grounds will honor others who, like King, gave their lives to the cause of equality.

"This is not a one-man movement," said Young as those gathered around him gripped shovels. "As we turn the dirt on this ground, let us go back to our communities and turn the dirt."

The Associated Press contributed comments from Sen. Barack Obama.

Pakistan Link Seen in Afghan Suicide Attacks - New York Times

Pakistan Link Seen in Afghan Suicide Attacks - New York Times

Pakistan has been looming in the background since BEFORE 9/11.
Why their role has not been further investigated...may have something to do with the pre-9/11 wining and dining of Pakistani ISI.

Pakistan Link Seen in Afghan Suicide Attacks

Allauddin Khan/Associated Press

A suicide bomber hit a NATO convoy in October in southern Afghanistan. Recent attacks aimed at civilians.

By CARLOTTA GALL

Published: November 14, 2006

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Nov. 13 — Afghan and NATO security forces have recently rounded up several men like Hafiz Daoud Shah, a 21-year-old unemployed Afghan refugee who says he drove across the border to Afghanistan in September in a taxi with three other would-be suicide bombers.

The Reach of War

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Enlarge This Image

Akhtar Soomro for The New York Times

Ahmed Shah, right, father of an Afghan who returned to Kabul as a suicide bomber, at his home in Karachi, Pakistan, with another son, Nadir.

Every case, Afghan security officials say, is similar to that of Mr. Shah, who repeated his story in a rare jailhouse interview with a reporter in Kabul, the Afghan capital. The trail of organizing, financing and recruiting the bombers who have carried out a rising number of suicide attacks in Afghanistan traces back to Pakistan, they say.

“Every single bomber or I.E.D. in one way or another is linked to Pakistan,” a senior Afghan intelligence official said, referring to improvised explosive devices like roadside bombs. “Their reasons are to keep Afghanistan destabilized, to make us fail, and to keep us fragmented.” He would speak on the subject only if not identified.

A senior United States military official based in Afghanistan agreed for the most part. “The strong belief is that recruiting, training and provision of technical equipment for I.E.D.’s in the main takes place outside Afghanistan,” he said. By I.E.D.’s he meant suicide bombers as well. He, too, did not want his name used because he knew his remarks were likely to offend Pakistani leaders.

The charge is in fact one of the most contentious that Afghan and American officials have leveled at the Pakistani leadership, which frequently denies the infiltration problem and insists that the roots of the Taliban insurgency lie in Afghanistan.

The dispute continues to divide Afghan and Pakistani leaders, even as the Bush administration tries to push them toward greater cooperation in fighting the Taliban, whose ranks have swelled to as many as 10,000 fighters this year.

A year ago, roadside bombs and suicide attacks were rare occurrences in Afghanistan. But they have grown more frequent and more deadly. There have been more than 90 suicide attacks in Afghanistan this year. In September and October, nearly 100 people were killed in such attacks.

Afghan security forces say that in the same period, they captured 17 suspected bombers, two of them would-be suicide bombers; NATO forces say they caught 10 people planning suicide bomb attacks in recent weeks.

Last week, for the first time, a Pakistani intelligence official acknowledged that suicide bombers were being trained in Bajaur, a small Pathan tribal area along the border. In a briefing given only on condition of anonymity, the official cited the training as one reason for an airstrike this month on a religious school there that killed more than 80 people.

The arrests of Mr. Shah and others like him, Afghan and NATO officials say, show that groups intent on carrying out attacks in Afghanistan continue to operate easily inside Pakistan.

Mr. Shah said he was one of four would-be suicide bombers who arrived in Kabul from Pakistan on Sept. 30. One of them killed 12 people and wounded 40 at the pedestrian entrance to the Interior Ministry the same day.

The attack was the first suicide bomb aimed not at foreign troops but at Afghans, and it terrified Kabul residents. The dead included a woman and her child.

By Mr. Shah’s account, it could have been far worse. Mr. Shah said he and his cohort had planned to blow themselves up in four separate attacks in the capital. That they failed was due partly to luck and partly to vigilance by Afghan and NATO security forces. But their plot represented a clear escalation in the bombers’ ambitions in Afghanistan.

Wearing a black prayer cap and long beard, Mr. Shah recounted his own involvement in the presence of two Afghan intelligence officers at a jail run by the National Directorate of Security. The Afghan intelligence officers offered up Mr. Shah because, unlike others in custody facing similar charges, his investigation was over. He is now awaiting trial.

Mr. Shah showed no signs of fear or discomfort in front of his guards. But after two weeks in detention, he complained of tiredness and headaches from a longstanding but unspecified mental ailment, something his father confirmed in a separate interview at the family home in Karachi, the southern Pakistani port city.

At first Mr. Shah, who was educated through the sixth grade, denied that he intended to be a suicide bomber, but said he had gone to Afghanistan only to fight a jihad, or holy war. “I was just thinking of fighting a jihad against the infidels,” he said. “I was hearing there was fighting in Afghanistan and seeing it in the newspapers.”

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War Crimes Suit Filed Against Rumsfeld in Germany

War Crimes Suit Filed Against Rumsfeld in Germany

BRAVO!

By Joshua Daniel Hershfield 11/14/06

An international grouping of lawyers has filed a 220-page lawsuit, calling on German prosecutors to investigate Donald Rumsfeld for sanctioning torture. The complaint asks Germany's federal prosecutor Monika Harms to open an investigation and criminal prosecution that will examine the responsibility of high ranking US officials in the authorization of war crimes in the context of the so-called "War on Terror."

As Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld has presided over these crimes and many more: Torture at Abu Ghraib

The suit is being brought on behalf of 11 detainees from Abu Ghraib and 1 detainee from Guantanamo Bay. The detainees, under the control of the US military, suffered electric shock, severe beatings, sleep and food deprivation, and sexual abuse.

German law allows the pursuit of war crimes cases regardless of where in the world they occur.

Torture Suit Star Witness, Former. Abu Ghraib Head Janis Karpinski Points to Signed Rumsfeld Memo Listing Harsh Interrogation Techniques read or listen

The Center for Constitutional Rights: Please join our effort! The letter appears below, first in German and then in English. The German Prosecutor has discretion to decide whether to initiate an investigation. It is critical that he hear from you so he knows that people around the world support this effort.

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A Trucker’s View from the Road

Kim, long distance trucker and mom, writes about Marine returned form Fallujah, working at a Denny’s in Rollo MO:

In Fallujah, it was like in the Bible,” he began slowly. “When they marked the houses with lamb’s blood, and the Angel of Death flew over and killed the firstborn sons in all the houses that weren’t marked. They marked the houses…and the ones that weren’t marked, they had us go in and open fire and…” He stopped speaking and only made gestures.

“The kids?” asked my co-driver.

“Yes.”

The waiter’s words came a little faster now. “If people knew what was really happening over there, they’d rise up and say, ‘bring our kids home NOW!’ If people knew, they wouldn’t stand for it.”

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Also in the Center for Constitutional Rights:

If Donald Rumsfeld is going to be held accountable for authorizing torture and other human rights abuses, we need your help .

Today, CCR filed a criminal complaint in Germany under their universal jurisdiction law charging Rumsfeld, Gonzales and other high-ranking officials in the Bush administration with war crimes . The complaint was filed on behalf of 11 former detainees who were victims of severe beatings, sleep and food deprivation, hooding and sexual abuse in Abu Ghraib, and one detainee at Guantnamo Bay subjected to torture and abuse there under Rumsfelds specific authorization.

By clicking on the link here, you can send a letter to the German Prosecutor and show your support for justice for torture victims and accountability for perpetrators.

WHY RUMSFELD?
CCR has reviewed new evidence and documentation that lays the responsibility for U.S. torture program directly at Rumsfelds feet. Rumsfeld himself authorized severe special interrogation techniques and other abusive, unlawful treatment of detainees. Rumsfelds resignation last week means that he can no longer claim immunity from international prosecution as a sitting government official.

WHY GERMANY?
Germany appears to be the court of last resort for a war crimes prosecution of Rumsfeld because the United States has tried to close the door to accountability. For example, the United States has failed to take any action to investigate high-level involvement in the torture program; Congress passed the Military Commissions Act last month, which tries to shield American officials from being prosecuted for war crimes here; and the United States has refused to join the International Criminal Court and has barred the Iraq from prosecuting U.S. officials in that country.

On the other hand, as a signatory to the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, German law recognizes the principle of universal jurisdiction: that grave breaches of international law like the U.S. torture program authorized by Rumsfeld, must be investigated and, where called for, prosecuted no matter where the crime was committed or the nationality of those involved. CCR has filed this complaint in Germany because we represent torture victims who have yet to see justice, the truth has yet to be investigated and the United States is evading accountability.

Together we can make a difference. Stand with our plaintiffs who include Nobel Peace Prize winners and the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and tell the German Prosecutor that you support opening an investigation. With your support, we can show the world community that Americans think torture is immoral and illegal, and that its perpetrators -- wherever they are found -- must be held accountable. Act now.


Sincerely,

Vincent Warren
Executive Director

For more information, please visit our website at www.ccr-ny.org .