.

Web Of Terror

2006-09-28T12:06:00.000+02:00

"Five years later, George W. Bush’s “war on terror” has morphed into (as he calls it) a “War on Terra”—an assault on the life and values of the United States and the planet—including our judicial system. Take for example, the sweeping scope of the “terror cases” that have surfaced so far. As the Washington Post noted recently, nine out of 10 of the terror cases brought by the Justice Department since 9/11 did “not result in prosecutions." In these cases, “most charges [were] not related to terrorism and … only about a third of those prosecuted end up in prison.”

As ordinary people without any connection to terrorist organizations are swept up into George Bush’s war, there are three specific cases that should be carefully watched as especially troubling bellwethers. They are emblematic of how much ground has already been ceded to Bush’s attack on our liberties, and as it happens, the latest developments will be unfolding this month even as the fifth anniversary of the “attack on our freedoms” is commemorated."

Negroponte Tries to Cloud Intelligence Analysis on the War on Terror

2006-09-28T11:59:00.000+02:00

"John D. Negroponte, President Bush’s Director of National Intelligence, is now busy undermining a National Intelligence Estimate which concluded that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has worsened radical Islamic terrorism around the world. He previously had approved the document. According to the New York Times, the highly classified estimate, a consensus view of the 16 spy agencies of the U.S. intelligence community, finds that the U.S. invasion of a Muslim land has motivated the radical Islamic jihadist movement to metastasize and spread around the world. Yet, Negroponte, the president’s political appointee who is in charge, nominally at least, of the 16 agencies, came up with the usual twisted Bush administration phraseology to undercut his own estimate.

Negroponte, in what can only be termed Washington gobbledygook, said of the estimate, “The conclusions of the intelligence community are designed to be comprehensive, and viewing them through the narrow prism of a fraction of judgments distorts the broad framework they create.” That fraction of judgments appears to be 100 percent of the 16 intelligence agencies, because the National Intelligence Estimate represents the consensus view of that community. If instead Negroponte means that leaks of the report by intelligence officials misrepresent the actual classified report, such distortion is unlikely, because the New York Times interviewed more than a dozen officials from various government agencies and outside experts, a sampling of both supporters and critics of the Bush administration.

In reality, Negroponte, without much of a defense for the colossally horrendous ill–effects of the Iraq invasion, is attempting the age–old Washington trick of throwing out arguments, no matter how lame or twisted, to muddy the waters when really bad news has hit the media.

Although the intelligence estimate is nonpolitical, those in the intelligence community who leaked were not behaving as such. The estimate was completed last April, but was leaked, strategically, just before an important mid–term election that will decide who’s in charge of the House of Representatives, and maybe even the Senate. Most of the U.S. intelligence community has an intense distaste for the Bush administration—arising from pressure on spy agencies by Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials before the war, to make the Iraqi threat “larger than life,” and from the administration’s leaking of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Also, when deciding whether to invade Iraq, the administration refused to pay attention to an analysis from intelligence agencies, which concluded that even if Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, he was unlikely to use them or give them to terrorists, unless the United States were to back him into a corner by threatening the existence of his regime. Finally, the administration did not heed the intelligence community warning made in January 2003, before the war, that a U.S. invasion could cause internal strife in Iraq for a long time."

The Facts Behind the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)

2006-09-27T14:03:00.000+02:00

A Case for Impeachment

2006-09-27T13:52:00.000+02:00

"I want to start with a point I made in my new book, The Impeachment of George W. Bush , about why the framers of the Constitution created the impeachment power.

They were afraid that despite the system of checks and balances, a president could subvert the constitution and threaten our democracy.

In other words, the framers anticipated George W. Bush. They knew that sooner or later someone like him--someone who tramples on the rule of law--would appear on the scene. The framers told us what to do about such a president: Impeach him.

Two recent events provide more support for impeachment. First is the recently released National Intelligence Estimate, which shows that the Iraq war has created more terrorism than there was before the war.

Iraq was not related to the terrorism of 9/11. President Bush personally knew this. Nonetheless, he repeatedly suggested that Saddam and 9/11 were connected and most Americans believed that. It was one of the deliberate falsehoods used by President Bush and his team to drive us into the Iraq war--and it is ground for impeachment.

Now, our intelligence agencies agree that instead of ending terrorism, the Iraq war has inflamed it. This confirms that Bush's justification for the war was flat-out wrong.

In addition, yesterday, several high level generals excoriated Secretary Rumsfeld for failing to provide our troops with proper equipment and for invading Iraq without a plan for the occupation. While they are correct, these failings are not Rumsfeld's alone. President Bush is ultimately responsible.

Every day brings a new justification for impeachment."

US Intel Report: Iraq “Cause Celebre” For Extremists

2006-09-27T13:47:00.000+02:00

"The war in Iraq has become a “cause célèbre” for Islamic militants, “breeding a deep resentment” of the United States in the Muslim world, according to declassified excerpts from a major intelligence report that were released late this afternoon.

“The Iraqi jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives; perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere,” the excerpts said.

The excerpts — just over three pages from a document said to be 30 pages — were ordered declassified by President Bush. Mr. Bush said earlier today that he was loath to declassify any classified document, but that news reports about the intelligence assessment could have led to “confusion” about its findings. The New York Times disclosed some of the findings over the weekend, showing that the Iraq war had invigorated Islamic radicalism and worsened the global terrorist threat.

The excerpts from the intelligence report pointed to a spread of terrorist activity globally for at least the next five years and said terrorists were adapting to the tactics used against them. “If this trend continues, threats to U.S. interests at home and abroad will become more diverse, leading to increasing attacks worldwide,” they said.

“Jihadists, although a small percentage of Muslims, are increasing in both number and geographic dispersion,” said the excerpted document, representing the key judgments of a National Intelligence Estimate completed in April 2006 and reflecting the consensus of the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies.

“The Iraq conflict has become the ‘cause célèbre’ for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement,” the declassified document said. "

Musharraf: Iraq war makes world more dangerous

2006-09-27T13:25:00.000+02:00

"The war in Iraq has not made the world safer from terror, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has told CNN, saying he stands by statements on the subject he makes in his new book, "In the Line of Fire."

In the book, Musharraf -- a key ally who is often portrayed as being in complete agreement with U.S. President George W. Bush on the war on terror and other issues -- writes he never supported the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

"I stand by it, absolutely," Musharraf told CNN's "The Situation Room." Asked whether he disagreed with Bush, he said, "I've stated whatever I had to ... it [the war] has made the world a more dangerous place."

He also addressed allegations that Pakistan was a less-than-enthusiastic recruit into the war on terror and that former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told a Pakistani official that the United States would bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age" if it did not cooperate with Washington after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."

Vermont Congress candidate calls on Pentagon to arrest Bush, Cheney

2006-09-27T13:09:00.000+02:00

"Saturday, Septmber 23— Former Army Lieutenant and candidate for Congress in Vermont, Dennis Morrisseau, today called for the arrest of President Bush and Vice President Cheney by the American military "if necessary" to prevent an unauthorized attack upon the nation of Iran.

The antiwar Vietnam vet is a Republican, but he has won approval from the State of Vermont to run on the ballot line “Impeach Bush Now,” rather than Democrat or Republican.

"American forces are apparently already active inside Iran, and Naval forces have received orders to deploy to that country," Morrisseau said. "The President has NO AUTHORITY to attack the nation of Iran whatsoever, in the absence of a full, formal Declaration of War on Iran by the sitting Congress."

Morrisseau said any order for an attack upon Iran or to deploy naval forces to its coastal waters is illegal, and called upon officers of the American military to "First, refuse to obey such an order. If the president persists and insists on ordering our forces into combat in or over Iran without a formal Declaration of War, then I call upon you, General Pace, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and upon such other military officers as clearly see their duty in these circumstances to detain both the President and Vice President, until such time as the Congress shall act."

October Surprise

Morrissaeu's website notes that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have issued orders for a major "strike group" of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran's western coast.

This information follows a report in the current issue of Time, that a group of ships capable of mining harbors has received orders to be ready to sail for the Persian Gulf by October 1st.

As Time writes in its cover story "What Would War Look Like?" evidence of the forward deployment of minesweepers and word that the chief of naval operations had asked for a reworking of old plans for mining Iranian harbors "suggest that a much discussed—but until now largely theoretical—prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran."

British troops suspected of 'guns for cocaine' trade

2006-09-27T13:05:00.000+02:00

"BRITISH soldiers are being investigated for smuggling guns out of Iraq and allegedly exchanging them for cocaine in illicit black market deals.

Security officials have confirmed that soldiers from the third battalion the Yorkshire Regiment are at the centre of a criminal probe by the Royal Military Police, who are investigating a "guns for drugs" network.

According to a newspaper report, the alleged illegal deals are the latest blow to the British military, coming in the wake of a week when a corporal from the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment admitted he had committed a war crime against an Iraqi civilian."

Big News: The War Failed

2006-09-27T12:58:00.000+02:00

""Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat: U.S. Intelligence Assessment Is Said to Find a Rise in Global Islamic Radicalism."

Just so that we are clear on this, we should be reminded that the stated policy of the Bush administration, just before bombing Iraq's cities and overthrowing its Sunni government, was to bring freedom, democracy, and pluralistic happiness to the country.

Five years later, the puppet government in Baghdad is still in a bunker, tanks patrol streets, there are curfews and speech controls, major parts of the country have effectively seceded, the water is dirty and disease ridden, electricity is still off, migration out increases exponentially, tribal war is routine, American soldiers' heads are blown off if they so much as poke them out of the foxhole, and religious and ethnic hatreds grow.

We keep hearing that Iraq is "on the brink" of civil war, but how will we know when we move from brink to reality? The Sunnis hate the ruling Shiites, the Kurds hate them both, and everyone hates the Christians and Jews. It's all about a struggle for power: who gets to twist the thumbscrews, and whose thumbs are screwed. If this is the brink, the reality will be unbearable.

Can you imagine that anyone in the US believed that the answer to these problems was to put George Bush in charge?

But it was indeed Bush's idea that he would quell Islamic radicalism by smashing the world that the relative moderates had created, and acting precisely as the fundamentalists always claimed he would act. It's as if the fundies themselves had written the script, and George played the leading role in a play they were directing.

Hence, even by the Bush administration's own standards, the war on terror has increased the problem rather than diminished it.

Students of government can hardly be surprised that a government program ends up creating the very opposite of what it purported to accomplish. Welfare increases poverty, the minimum wage boosts unemployment, prohibition promotes the banned behavior, and, just as we would expect once we understand the logic, the war on terror has created and encouraged the rise of more terrorism and the ideology that backs it.

We hardly need a National Intelligence Estimate to demonstrate it to us. What this intelligence estimate really shows is that the reality has become too obvious for even the government to deny. The report cites gobs of secret data that can't be divulged to the public. Oh sure. Anyone with a modicum of knowledge of the effects of all government policy, along with a bit of understanding of human nature, would have predicted this very thing.

After all, Iraq was never a hotbed of terror. The Bush administration just pretended that it was because Bush wanted to get Saddam. It wasn't even a campaign theme. But it was first on the agenda when he came into office. 9-11 helped by whipping up the public for war, even though there was no relationship between 9-11 and Iraq. But it does appear that Bush got more than he bargained for. He can't win this war, no matter how many Americans and Iraqis he sends to their deaths.

But who precisely benefits in the end? Fundamentalists, to be sure, but also the federal government, which gets more power and control. There is also a critical financial factor. The tens of billions that have been shoveled out by the public sector to the private sector in this war have gone mainly to Bush-connected corporations and elites. They are the ones who have benefited from the "privatization" of the war, in the name of efficiency."

The diminished dividends of war

2006-09-27T12:50:00.000+02:00

"With the US intelligence community agreed that the invasion and occupation of Iraq have made the United States less safe from terrorist threats, President George W Bush appears to be facing a growing revolt among top military commanders who say their ground forces are stretched close to breaking point.

According to Monday's Los Angeles Times, the US Army's top officer, General Peter Schoomaker, has called for a nearly 50% increase in spending, to nearly US$140 billion, in 2008 to cope with the situation in Iraq and maintain minimal readiness for emergencies.

To convey his seriousness, Schoomaker reportedly withheld the army's scheduled budget request last month in what the Times called an "unprecedented ... protest" against previous rejections by the White House of funding increases.

And this week, several retired senior military leaders told Senate Democrats that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should go, arguing that he had mishandled the war in Iraq. The former soldiers claimed that Rumsfeld had ignored advice for more troops, failed to make a post-invasion plan or equip troops properly, and hid information from the public.

The news of Schoomaker's action, which is almost certain to intensify the debate over what to do in Iraq just seven weeks before the November 7 mid-term congressional elections, comes just days after the New York Times reported that the army was considering activating substantially more National Guard troops or reservists.

Such a decision, which would run counter to previous Bush administration pledges to limit overseas deployments for the Guard, would pose serious political risks for the Republicans if it were made before the elections."

UN: 'Million bomblets' in South Lebanon

2006-09-27T12:44:00.000+02:00

"Up to a million cluster bomblets discharged by Israel in its conflict with Hezbollah remain unexploded in southern Lebanon, the UN has said.

The UN's mine disposal agency says about 40% of the cluster bombs fired or dropped by Israel failed to detonate - three times the UN's previous estimate.

It says the problem could delay the return home of about 200,000 displaced people by up to two years.

The devices have killed 14 people in south Lebanon since the August truce.

The manager of the UN's mine removal centre in south Lebanon, Chris Clark, said Israel had failed to provide useful information of its cluster bomb strikes, which could help with the clearance operation.

Last month, the UN's humanitarian chief, Jan Egeland, accused Israel of "completely immoral" use of cluster bombs in the conflict.

Mr Clark said Israel fired up to 6,000 bombs, rockets and artillery a day into Lebanon during the 34-day conflict.

He said more than 40,000 cluster bomblets had been cleared since the fighting ended on 14 August, but many more remained scattered "in bushes, trees, hedges and wire fences".

Mr Clark said information Israel had provided to help with the bomblets' clearance had been "useless".

"We have asked for grid references for [cluster bomb] strikes," he said.

"We have not received them so far.""

UN envoy: Israel turned Gaza into prison

2006-09-27T12:42:00.000+02:00

"United Nations Human rights envoy to the Palestinian territories John Dugard has published a report Tuesday where he does not shy away from sharply criticizing Israel and the West for the situation in Gaza. "Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into a prison for Palestinians and have thrown away the key," he said, adding that "in other countries this process might be described as ethnic cleansing.

In the report handed to the UN Human Rights Council Dugard wrote that "life in Gaza has turned to be intolerable, appalling and tragic." According to him, 75 percent of Gaza's population is dependant on food aid for survival, and the destruction left from Israeli bombings is "intolerable."

Dugard also mentions the situation in the West Bank where there is a danger of a humanitarian crisis because of the security fence which is as bad as in Gaza.

The South African lawyer, who has been a special UN investigator since 2001, repeated earlier accusations that Israel is breaking international humanitarian law with security measures which amount to "collective punishment."

Dugard also attacked the United States, the European Union and Canada for withdrawing funding for the Palestinian Authority in protest at the governing party Hamas' refusal to accept Israel's right to exist."

Benjamin Franklin's Great Virtues

2006-09-27T12:33:00.000+02:00

'Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety’

On religious and social tolerance:

‘It is important to remember that America was not born with the virtue of religious tolerance, but had to acquire it. One of the myths is that the first settlers were advocates of religious freedom. In fact, the Puritans were very intolerant, not only of witches but also of any deviation from the tribal orthodoxy. The most arcane antinomian dispute ended up forcing people to move and found a new state like Rhode Island.

Among those who ran away from the intolerant orthodoxy of Boston was Franklin. He ended up in Philadelphia, a place unlike much of the world. There were Lutherans and Moravians and Quakers and even Jews, as well as Calvinists, living side by side in what became known as the City of Brotherly Love. Franklin helped formulate the creed that they would all be better off, personally and economically, if they embraced an attitude of tolerance. Franklin believed in God and in the social usefulness of religion, but he did not subscribe to any particular sectarian doctrine. This led him to help raise money to build a new hall in Philadelphia that was, as he put it, “expressly for the use of any preacher of any religious persuasion who might desire to say something.” He added, “Even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.”’

On tryanny:

The literary character Franklin invented was a triumph of imagination. Silence Dogood was a slightly prudish widow from a rural area, created by a spunky unmarried Boston 16-year-old who had never spent a night outside of the city. He imbued Mrs. Dogood with that spirited aversion to tyranny that he would help to make part of the American character. “I am,” she wrote, “a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power. I am naturally very jealous for the rights and liberties of my country; and the least appearance of an encroachment on those invaluable privileges is apt to make my blood boil exceedingly.” It was as good a description of the real Benjamin Franklin—and, indeed, of a typical American—as is likely to be found anywhere.

Franklin used Mrs. Dogood to attack the theocratic rule of the Puritan establishment and the link between church and state that was then the very foundation of Massachusetts government. At one point she asks, “Whether a Commonwealth suffers more by hypocritical pretenders to religion or by the openly profane?” Unsurprisingly, she concludes the former is worse, and singles out the Governor, a minister who had become a politician, as an example. “The most dangerous hypocrite in a Commonwealth is one who leaves the gospel for the sake of the law. A man compounded of law and gospel is able to cheat a whole country with his religion and then destroy them under color of law.” Throughout his life, Franklin would be willing to compromise on many matters but not on his aversion to tyranny.

And on heated elections:

‘The surest guard against tyranny and arbitrary power, Franklin came to believe, was free expression, the free flow of ideas and a free press. No tyrannical society can long exist, he felt, when it cannot control the flow of information and ideas.

It is important to remember, when people complain about the irresponsibility of the press today, that back then it was much more raucous. In the Pennsylvania Assembly election of 1764, for example, all sorts of vicious articles and pamphlets were printed attacking Franklin, who was a candidate. One such piece, titled “What is Sauce for a Goose is also Sauce for a Gander,” raked up every possible allegation against Franklin—including that he had bought his honorary degrees, sought a royal governorship and stolen his electricity experiments from others, all of which were false. It also alleged that his son William was the bastard child of a “kitchen wench,” which had some truth to it. Another broadside painted him as an excitable lecher:

Franklin, though plagued with fumbling age,

Needs nothing to excite him,

But is too ready to engage,

When younger arms invite him.

Modern election campaigns are often criticized for being negative, and today’s press is slammed for being scurrilous. But the most brutal of modern attack ads pale in comparison with the barrage of pamphlets in the 1764 Assembly election. Pennsylvania survived them, as did Franklin, who never considered suing. And America’s democracy learned that it could thrive in an atmosphere of unrestrained, even intemperate, free expression. Indeed, its democracy was built on a foundation of unbridled free speech. In the centuries since then, the nations that have thrived, economically and politically, have been those, like America, that are most comfortable with the cacophony, and even occasional messiness, that come from robust discourse.’"

Iraq: A boost for Bin Laden

2006-09-26T11:59:00.000+02:00

"It is absurd for our leaders to go on denying that the Iraq invasion increased the terrorist threat

A month before the invasion of Iraq, Tony Blair was privately warned by his top intelligence advisers that an invasion would increase the terrorist threat against Britain. The joint intelligence committee advised in February 2003 that "al-Qaida and associated groups continue to represent by far the greatest threat to western interests, and that threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq".

The JIC would have provided a better service to the British public and the country's national interest had it not connived in the misleading intelligence dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons programme and allowed Blair to persuade MPs and military chiefs to go to war.

Now, more than three and a half years later, in their first official assessment of global terrorism since the invasion of Iraq, 16 separate US intelligence agencies have agreed what was obvious then. Their National Intelligence Estimate, leaked last weekend, says the Iraq invasion has indeed increased the terrorist threat by encouraging the spread of Islamic radicalism across the world.

The CIA also admitted recently what its more competent officers had known from the start: there never was any link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. It is a sad irony that, having exaggerated the influence of Osama bin Laden's network, by their actions the US and Britain have succeeded in increasing it."

Retired General: “Rumsfeld's Dismal Strategic Decisions Resulted In The Unnecessary Deaths Of American Soldiers And Good Iraqis

2006-09-26T11:47:00.000+02:00

"Three retired military officers who served in Iraq called today for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, telling a Democratic "oversight hearing" on Capitol Hill that the Pentagon chief bungled planning for the U.S. invasion, dismissed the prospect of an insurgency and sent American troops into the fray with inadequate equipment.

The testimony by the three --two retired Army major generals and a former Marine colonel -- came a day after disclosure of a classified intelligence assessment that concluded the war in Iraq has fueled recruitment of violent Islamic extremists, helping to create a new generation of potential terrorists around the world and worsening the U.S. position."

One Hundred Iraqi MPs Try to Force a US Withdrawal Plan

2006-09-26T11:45:00.000+02:00

"While the current buzz in Washington is about partitioning Iraq into ethnic enclaves, completely ignored is the fact that most Iraqis, and perhaps a majority of the Iraqi parliament, wants America to set an immediate deadline for military withdrawal."

Poll: Nearly a third of Americans still believe Saddam personally involved in 9/11

2006-09-26T11:42:00.000+02:00

"A recent New York Times/CBS poll reveals among other things that nearly one-third of Americans still believe that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 terror attacks.

Last month, President Bush stated in a press conference that the former Iraqi dictator had "nothing" to do with the attacks. This was despite previous statements by Vice President Cheney, who said in 2003 that the administration was learning "more and more" about connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq before the Sept. 11 attacks. At the time, this surprised analysts and officials who had reviewed Iraq intelligence reports."

Clark: Bush 'derelict in his duty'

2006-09-26T11:40:00.000+02:00

"Former NATO commander Wesley Clark told Kentucky Democrats yesterday that President Bush has been "derelict in his duty as commander in chief."

Speaking to a gathering at the Kentucky Democratic Party's second annual "family day" event in Frankfort, Clark said former President Bill Clinton warned Bush personally during the presidential transition about Osama bin Laden.

"For eight months, Bush did nothing -- nothing. No plan. No action. No diplomacy. No intelligence. No meetings," Clark said.

Clark also said Bush has mismanaged Iraq and blocked efforts to impose accountability.

"The truth is, the Republicans have got us stuck in a mess and they don't have a way out," Clark said.

Democrats have proposed turning over the country to the Iraqis and starting a troop withdrawal this year, Clark said. They also support stronger diplomatic efforts in the region, and efforts to provide sufficient equipment and armor for the troops, he said.

Newsweek features 'Losing Afghanistan' in international edition, celebrity photographer in U.S.

2006-09-26T11:37:00.000+02:00

"The United States edition of the October 2, 2006 issue of Newsweek features a radically different cover story from its International counterparts, RAW STORY has learned.

The cover of International editions, aimed at Europe, Asia, and Latin America, displays in large letters the title "LOSING AFGHANISTAN," along with an arresting photograph of an armed jihadi.

The cover of the United States edition, in contrast, is dedicated to celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz and is demurely captioned "My Life in Pictures."

The International cover story begins:

"You don't have to drive very far from Kabul these days to find the Taliban. In Ghazni province's Andar district, just over a two-hour trip from the capital on the main southern highway, a thin young man, dressed in brown and wearing a white prayer cap, stands by the roadside waiting for two NEWSWEEK correspondents. It is midday on the central Afghan plains, far from the jihadist-infested mountains to the east and west. Without speaking, the sentinel guides his visitors along a sandy horse trail toward a mud-brick village within sight of the highway. As they get closer a young Taliban fighter carrying a walkie-talkie and an AK-47 rifle pops out from behind a tree. He is manning an improvised explosive device, he explains, in case Afghan or U.S. troops try to enter the village.""

Torture Victim Had No Terror Link, Canada Told U.S.

2006-09-26T11:27:00.000+02:00

"When the United States sent Maher Arar to Syria, where he was tortured for months, the deportation order stated unequivocally that Mr. Arar, a Canadian software engineer, was a member of Al Qaeda. But a few days earlier, Canadian investigators had told the F.B.I. that they had not been able to link him to the terrorist group.

That is one of the disclosures in the 1,200-page report released last week after a two-year Canadian investigation of Mr. Arar’s case found him to be innocent of any terrorist ties.

A close reading of the Arar Commission report offers a rare window on American actions in the case, describing seemingly flimsy evidence behind the American decision in 2002 to send Mr. Arar to a country notorious for torture; a deliberate attempt by American officials to deceive Canada about where Mr. Arar was; and lingering confusion among top American officials about the two countries’ roles in the case.

President Bush earlier this month acknowledged for the first time that high-level people suspected of being terrorists had been held in secret prisons overseas by the Central Intelligence Agency. But he and other officials have said nothing publicly about the American practice of rendition, in which dozens of suspects have been seized and turned over for interrogation to other countries, including several known to engage routinely in torture."

'Dummy vendors' reap $362m in Iraq

2006-09-26T11:25:00.000+02:00

"US government agencies charged with the reconstruction of Iraq allocated $362m to non-existent "dummy vendors", according to a report by the watchdog overseeing the reconstruction effort.

Stuart Bowen, the special inspector-general, said his review of the government's allocation of the $18.2bn fund found 96 incidents of cash being earmarked for projects that did not identify a vendor or contractor. The findings come just one week before the expiration of the reconstruction fund, at which point whatever remains will be returned to the Treasury."

White House admits Iraq fuels extremism

2006-09-26T11:23:00.000+02:00

"The White House acknowledged that Iraq was among several factors that "fuel the spread of jihadism," but said that winning the war would dishearten potential terrorists.

Spokesman Tony Snow sought to challenge news reports on Sunday about the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq and terrorism, which represents the comprehensive consensus findings of the 16 US intelligence agencies.

"It assesses that a variety of factors, in addition to Iraq, fuel the spread of jihadism, including longstanding social grievances, slowness of the pace of reform, and the use of the Internet," he told reporters.

"And it also notes that should jihadists be perceived to have failed in Iraq, fewer will be inspired to carry on the fight," the spokesman said as US President George W. Bush traveled here for a political fundraiser.

On Sunday, the New York Times quoted an official familiar with the report, entitled Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States, as saying that "the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse."

Bush has been saying that the war made Americans safer as he campaigns ahead of November 7 legislative elections, in which the unpopular war in Iraq may cost his Republican party control of one or both houses of the US Congress.

The Washington Post said the report described the Iraq conflict as the primary recruiting vehicle for violent Islamic extremists."

FORBES: Secrets Of The Self-Made

2006-09-25T16:35:00.000+02:00

"“Invest in what you know.” — Arthur Blank

“Follow your gut feelings and do not listen to the critics.” — Tim Blixseth

“Diversification is dilutive of superior investment results.” — Franklin Otis Booth Jr.

“When you look at an investment, always look for the sucker. If you don’t see one, it’s you.” — Mark Cuban

“Leverage is a two-way street.” — Gerald Ford

“Believe in yourself and take the path less traveled.” — Kim Hendricks

“Cash flow.” — Wayne Huizenga

“First understand the conventional wisdom, and then carefully articulate to yourself where it is in error and ‘arbitrage’ the difference.” — George Kaiser

“Sitting next to an oil man on an airplane, he told me ‘royalties in business is the way to go.’” — Michael Ilitch

“My daddy told me to ’stick to my bush’; i.e. my oil and gas business.” — William Moncrief

“Always be willing to take a major risk.” — Phillip Ruffin

“‘You never go broke from making a profit.’ Meaning not to look for the last cent but always leave money on the table and overspend to give the customer more than what he expects.” — Jorge Perez

“Invest in yourself and in your own vision.” — James Sorenson"

Fighting the wrong (oil) war

2006-09-25T16:18:00.000+02:00

"George Bush's battle to control the world's oil supply has cost billions of dollars, much more than it would have cost to discover new sources of energy.

It always comes back to oil. The continuing misguided interventions in the Middle East by the United States and the United Kingdom have their roots deep in the Arabian sand. Ever since Winston Churchill led the conversion of Britain's navy from coal to oil at the start of the last century, the Western powers have meddled incessantly in the affairs of Middle Eastern countries to keep the oil flowing, toppling governments and taking sides in wars in the supposed "great game" of energy resources. But the game is almost over, because the old approaches are obviously failing.

Just when one is lulled into thinking that something other than oil is at the root of current US and UK action in Iraq, reality pulls us back. Indeed, President Bush recently invited journalists to imagine the world 50 years from now. He did not have in mind the future of science and technology, or a global population of nine billion, or the challenges of climate change and biodiversity. Instead, he wanted to know whether Islamic radicals would control the world's oil.

Whatever we are worrying about in 50 years, this will surely be near the bottom of the list. Even if it were closer to the top, overthrowing Saddam Hussein to ensure oil supplies in 50 years ranks as the least plausible of strategies. Yet we know from a range of evidence that this is what was on Bush's mind when his government shifted its focus from the search for Osama bin Laden to fighting a war in Iraq.

The overthrow of Saddam was the longstanding pet idea of the neoconservative Project for a New American Century, which was already arguing in the 1990's that Saddam was likely to achieve a stranglehold over "a significant proportion of the world's oil supplies." Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated these fears in the run-up to the Iraq war, claiming that Saddam Hussein was building a massive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction to "take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies".

Cheney's facts were obviously wrong, but so was his logic. Dictators like Saddam make their living by selling their oil, not by holding it in the ground. Perhaps, though, Saddam was too eager to sell oil concessions to French, Russian, and Italian companies rather than British and US companies.

In any event, the war in Iraq will not protect the world's energy supplies in 50 years. If anything, the war will threaten those supplies by stoking the very radicalism it claims to be fighting. Genuine energy security will come not by invading and occupying the Middle East, or by attempting to impose pliant governments in the region, but by recognizing certain deeper truths about global energy.

First, energy strategy must satisfy three objectives: low cost, diverse supply, and drastically reduced carbon dioxide emissions. This will require massive investments in new technologies and resources, not a "fight to the finish" over Middle East oil. Important energy technologies will include conversion of coal to liquids (such as gasoline), use of tar sands and oil shale, and growth in non-fossil-fuel energy sources.

It is ironic that an administration fixated on the risks of Middle East oil has chosen to spend hundreds of billions - potentially trillions - of dollars to pursue unsuccessful military approaches to problems that can and should be solved at vastly lower cost, through R&D, regulation, and market incentives. The biggest energy crisis of all, it seems, involves the misdirected energy of a US foreign policy built on war rather than scientific discovery and technological progress."

Tony Blair's sister-in-law leads mass protest over British foreign policy

2006-09-25T13:47:00.000+02:00

"Tens of thousands of people, led by Prime Minister Tony Blair's sister-in-law, held a march on the eve of the ruling Labour Party's conference in protest at British policy over Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel.

Booth, a journalist and commentator, told the crowds: "By chance of marriage, I'm related to Tony Blair, a fact that makes neither of us very happy today, I can tell you that."

She denied that she wanted to embarrass him, saying she wanted to make him feel "ashamed" over deaths of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan and that he did not call for a ceasefire during the recent conflict in Lebanon sooner.

Earlier, Booth told reporters Blair's foreign policy overall had been "calamitous", while he had been "a disaster" in the Middle East.

Drums, whistles and chants rang out around the heavily-policed route in Manchester, which in the 19th century was a hotbed for the trade union activism that led to Labour's creation.

Protestors called for Blair to resign immediately or be impeached over his role justifying military action in Iraq.

In the crowd was retired British airman Christopher Rydon, 71, who accused Blair of tarnishing the reputation of Britain's armed services, with which he served for 12 years.

On Iraq and Afghanistan, he told AFP: "We've no business in these wars at all. It was based on lies. It's been proved to be lies and he's spoiled our good name," he added."

List of accusations of GIs in Iraq stuns experts

2006-09-25T12:29:00.000+02:00

"The accounts are brutal: An Iraqi man dragged from his home, executed and made to look as if he were an insurgent. Three prisoners killed by their Army captors. A team of revenge-seeking Marines going home to home, shooting down unarmed Iraqi men, women, children.

The recent flurry of accusations against U.S. servicemen has stunned military analysts and experts. Many see a critical new point in the war — though few agree whether it shows the toll of combat stress, commanders resolved to stamp out war crimes, or, as some claim, an overzealous second-guessing of the troops.

But the number and gravity of the latest allegations have drawn the greatest outcry against U.S. military actions since the Abu Ghraib prison abuses."

SPINELESS DEMOCRATS MISS ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY

2006-09-25T12:26:00.000+02:00

"" There is almost no kind of outrage, torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians which does not change its moral color when it is committed by 'our' side. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them:" George Orwell

So now we have President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela telling the world, from the podium of the United Nations, what the whole world clearly sees ~ the obvious moral corruption and hypocrisy of the Cheney/Bush administration ~ and then Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi comes to Bush's defense and calls Chavez " a thug " .

Where is the opposition party when we need it ? Where is the legitimate outrage toward a Republican party that has led us to humiliation in Iraq and has destroyed our moral standing as a beacon of light in the world. Bush deserves to be laughed at, scorned and ridiculed for his blatant lies, deceits and abuses of power. The rest of the world can clearly see that Bush is a moral coward and bully."

Our Torturer-in-Chief

2006-09-25T12:16:00.000+02:00

"Until Bush took office, the U.S. had no problem defining what is cruel and inhuman.

WE DON'T torture detainees, President Bush has repeatedly insisted; we just make use of lawful "alternative procedures" of interrogation.

But if everything we've done is lawful, why is the White House suddenly so desperate to get a deal with Congress that would "clarify" Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention and amend the War Crimes Act, which criminalizes violations of the article?

Behind the antiseptic talk of "alternatives," "dietary modification" and "stress positions" lie methods designed to break human bodies and human minds. Legally and morally, many of the alternative interrogation methods championed by our president are torture, plain and simple. And there is no doubt at all that they're cruel, inhuman and degrading.

That's what the president is so worried about. He knows, too well, that the practices he authorized or ordered violate Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. The recent Supreme Court decision in Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld made that explicit, but the court's holding shouldn't have come as a surprise. It only confirmed what most legal scholars (and military lawyers) have been telling the White House for years.

Today, the chickens are coming home to roost. But though the word "accountability" isn't in the White House dictionary, there's a long entry under "CYA — covering your ass."

Bush isn't stupid. He understands that it's far too late for him to leave a legacy that won't be a source of shame to future generations. So he's going for second best: a congressionally delivered "get-out-of-jail-free" card.

Wave of Party Switchers Hits Republicans

2006-09-25T12:12:00.000+02:00

"Citing extremism, more GOPers are joining the Democrats

A trend of local, below-the-radar party-switches is undercutting Republicans as they face the sternest challenge in a decade to one-party control of Congress and several state legislatures. Such party-switching by elected officials often indicates that the label they are shedding has lost appeal and foreshadows poor performance at the polls.

Some recent switchers are exiting GOP ranks with a bang. Distorted priorities, the federal deficit and the Iraq war are common themes in their announcements. And in a direct swipe at the far-right ideology that has become a governing credo in the Bush years, they cite intolerance in the party as the chief reason for leaving.

“The moderate Republican has been pushed aside for the extreme right wing,” Oklahoma state Senator Nancy Riley told the Associated Press in August, when she became a Democrat. Riley represents a district in suburban Tulsa and has served as minority whip in a chamber that her former party was looking to take over in the fall election. She announced her defection after years of what she described as “abhorrent” treatment by Republican leaders who suffer a “lack of compassion for people.”

Chavez: U.S. Detained Foreign Minister

2006-09-25T12:09:00.000+02:00

"President Hugo Chavez said his foreign minister was detained by U.S. authorities at a New York airport Saturday for more than hour as he tried to return to the South American country.

Chavez told Venezuela's state TV broadcaster that U.S. officials alleged that Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro had links to a failed coup that Chavez led in Venezuela in 1992.

"They have held him accusing him of participating in terrorist acts here," Chavez said in Venezuela. "He didn't even participate in that patriotic rebellion."

Both Venezuelan politicians were in New York this week attending the yearly U.N. General Assembly, where Chavez attracted attention with a speech calling President Bush "the devil." He later criticized the U.S. leader during a stop in Harlem before returning home.

Maduro told CNN Espanol shortly after being released that he was confined to a small room and told to remove his clothes.

Maduro said that when he explained that he was the Venezuelan foreign minister and showed his diplomatic passport, he said he was threatened, pushed and yelled at by immigration and police officials.

"They were violating diplomatic conventions," he said."

Report Stirs Debate on Terror Fight

2006-09-25T11:52:00.000+02:00

"An American intelligence assessment that the war in Iraq has increased Islamic radicalism, worsening the terror threat, set off a sharp debate today among lawmakers and other political figures over credit and blame for the war and the broader fight against terrorism.

“The National Intelligence Estimate provides jarring confirmation that the disastrous policy in Iraq is a giant recruiting poster for terrorists,” Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a statement.

The new intelligence report implicitly questioned assertions from Bush administration officials that the United States is now safer from terrorism than it was before Sept. 11, 2001, if not yet entirely safe, and that it would be less so under Democratic leadership.

Democrats seized on the intelligence assessment for new ammunition to criticize the Iraq war and Mr. Bush.

The assessment “should put the final nail in the coffin for President Bush’s phony argument about the Iraq war,” Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a statement."

Lamont Letter to Lieberman on Iraq Intelligence Report

2006-09-25T11:43:00.000+02:00

Senator Joseph Lieberman
United States Senate
Washington, D.C.

Dear Senator Lieberman:

As I am sure you have seen, the New York Times today reported that the National Intelligence Estimate in April concludes “that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.” The NIE represents the consensus view of the U.S. government’s 16 major intelligence agencies. The Times notes that the Iraq War is a major “reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology” and cites one intelligence official acknowledging that the NIE “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse.” 1 Let me put this news in terms that you can clearly understand: Our own intelligence agencies now confirm that the Iraq War is undermining America’s security and credibility at our nation’s peril.

With this report being released on the eve of your major address on Iraq, I and thousands of other citizens in Connecticut expect to hear your response to this news in your speech, considering you have echoed President Bush’s claim that the Iraq War has made our country safer, and that staying the course will help keep us safe. As the NIE now shows, that is absolutely not the case – in fact, the Iraq War has and continues to unnecessarily endanger U.S. national security. Never again can a political leader claim otherwise, lest they deliberately ignore the concrete facts presented to us by our intelligence agencies.

Senator Lieberman, I sincerely hope you will provide answers to these questions in your speech, because there are many who feel that Time Magazine was correct when it wrote that when it comes to Iraq, “Either Senator Lieberman is so divorced from reality that he’s completely lost the plot or he knows he’s spinning a line.” 2 Clearly, Iraq is the most pressing national issue of our time and like many others, I was perplexed a few weeks ago when you gave a major speech on national security but failed to publicly explain your position on Iraq. As one newspaper editorial said, “Any politician worth his salt should know what he thinks about Iraq, off the top of his head – and he should be willing and able to articulate it.” 3 Similarly, thousands of Connecticut citizens are perplexed that you have skipped half of all U.S. Senate votes on the subject, including votes that occurred while you were in Washington, D.C.

At a time of war, our state and our country needs leaders in Congress who are willing to speak frankly with the public and who are willing to fulfill their constitutional obligations to hold the executive branch accountable. Our troops serving in combat and the millions of citizens concerned about this war deserve no less.

Governor Tom Kean and former Rep. Lee Hamilton – bipartisan chairs of the 9-11 commissions – both agree that Iraq has diverted attention from the war on terror. USA Today and the Washington Post have both reported that the Iraq War diverted critical resources from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. And now, as mentioned above, the National Intelligence Estimate states that the Iraq War has caused terrorism to increase and spread throughout the world. Do you accept these conclusions? If so, why do you continue to insist we need no change in Iraq policy and that our military resources must stay in Iraq indefinitely? And in light of all of this, how can you still claim Iraq is the central front in the War on Terror?

In recent weeks, your campaign has told reporters that you have “repeatedly and harshly criticized the Bush administration” for its Iraq policy. Yet, you were the primary author of the Senate resolution backing the Iraq War policy, and, as the New Yorker noted just last year, you have since been “unapologetic about [your] defense of Bush’s Iraq policy.” 4 As you told that magazine, “Bottom line, I think Bush has it right.” 5 At the time the article was printed, Iraq had just experienced two of the deadliest attacks in the growing insurgency, and its neighbors told international media that they feared a civil war was already underway inside the country. 6 Can you explain why you are now claiming to have always been a critic of this war, when the facts show otherwise? And can you explain why you continue to defend the Bush administration’s conduct of this war, when it’s execution has been so severely flawed and as a result severely compromised our national security?

Few argue that one way a U.S. Senator can honor our troops is to fulfill his/her most basic responsibility by casting votes on the Iraq War. 7 Yet, Senate records show you have skipped roughly half of all U.S. Senate votes on the Iraq War – even when they were on the most critical life-and-death issues. As just one example, you skipped a critical vote on legislation by Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd that would have provided critical funding for protective gear for troops serving in combat. 8 This was especially critical, considering Newsweek now reports that up to “one in four of those killed in combat in Iraq might be alive if they had had stronger armor around them” and “thousands more who were unprotected have suffered grievous wounds, such as the loss of limbs.” 9 Your campaign has explained that you decide whether to show up to vote based on whether your vote sways the outcome. Do you agree that your logic is flawed and detrimental to our troops given the incredible power each vote yields in holding the President accountable? Do you agree that if every senator followed your logic that the Senate would be a useless entity in terms of standing up for the citizens they are meant to serve?

As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, you heard first hand the testimony from the former Generals from the first Gulf War about the incredible dangers of invading Iraq, overthrowing Saddam, and becoming occupiers in a hostile land. Yet, in 2005, you publicly attacked those who raised questions about the conduct of the war for supposedly “undermin[ing] presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.” 10 Do you agree now that their predictions have held true and do you bear any special responsibility for ignoring those warnings and attacking those who want Congress to hold this administration accountable?

In your first campaign commercial after losing the Democratic primary in 2006, you said “I want to help end the war in Iraq.” 11 Yet, you have opposed every single resolution in Congress that would urge an end to the Iraq War. In fact, you cast the deciding vote against legislation to merely demand the Bush administration better inform Congress of its strategy for victory in Iraq. How can you tell Connecticut citizens that you “want to help end the war in Iraq” when you have used Connecticut’s Senate seat to oppose ending the war in Iraq and continue to stifle any responsible debate about America’s future course in Iraq?

In the lead up to the war, you said you supported invasion because Saddam Hussein supposedly had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). 12 After reports in 2004 and 2005 showed that was not the case, you repeated the baseless assertion that he did have WMD and was cited by one Connecticut paper for “dancing” around the issue. 13 Now, just a few weeks ago, you told a national radio host that the WMD argument for war was merely “a nice side benefit” and that you would have supported the invasion even if the public knew there were no WMD. 14 Why did you use WMD to publicly justify your support for the war, and now say you would have supported the war even if there were no WMD? If we didn’t go to war over WMD, why exactly did we go to war with Saddam when he was not working with terrorists, had no WMD, and therefore presented no imminent threat? And, would you now support invading other countries that do have WMD and pose a more imminent threat?

Last week on statewide television, you said “I have seen no evidence that Iraq was tied to 9/11.” Your comments came after you refused to answer questions about the recent U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report finding absolutely no collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein’s government and Al Qaeda. 15 Yet, in 2003, you appeared on national television justifying your strong support of the war by saying: “I want to be real clear about the connection with terrorists – I’ve seen a lot of evidence on this. There are extensive contacts between Saddam Hussein’s government and al Qaeda.” Why did you make this explosive charge in 2003 and say you had evidence to back it up, but now admit you have no evidence to support it?

Senator Lieberman, I sincerely hope you will provide answers to these questions in your speech. Clearly, Iraq is the most pressing national security issue of our time and like many others, I was perplexed a few weeks ago when you told reporters you were that you were still refusing to publicly explain your position on Iraq. As one newspaper editorial said, “Any politician worth his salt should know what he thinks about Iraq, off the top of his head – and he should be willing and able to articulate it.” 16 Similarly, thousands of Connecticut citizens are perplexed that you have skipped half of all U.S. Senate votes on the subject, including votes that occurred while you were in Washington, D.C.

At a time of war, our state and our country needs people in Congress who are willing to speak frankly with the public and who are willing to fulfill their constitutional obligations to hold the executive branch accountable. Our troops serving in combat and the millions of citizens concerned about this war deserve no less.

Sincerely,

Ned Lamont

Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate

Karl Rove's Promised "October Surprise"

2006-09-25T11:37:00.000+02:00

"It should come as no surprise if the Bush Administration undertakes a preemptive war against Iran sometime before the November election.

Were these more normal times, this would be a stunning possibility, quickly dismissed by thoughtful people as dangerous, unprovoked, and out of keeping with our national character. But we do not live in normal times.

And we do not have a government much concerned with our national character. If anything, our current Administration is out to remake our national character into something it has never been.

The steps will be these: Air Force tankers will be deployed to fuel B-2 bombers, Navy cruise missile ships will be positioned at strategic points in the northern Indian Ocean and perhaps the Persian Gulf, unmanned drones will collect target data, and commando teams will refine those data. The latter two steps are already being taken.

Then the president will speak on national television. He will say this: Iran is determined to develop nuclear weapons; if this happens, the entire region will go nuclear; our diplomatic efforts to prevent this have failed; Iran is offering a haven to known al Qaeda leaders; the fate of our ally Israel is at stake; Iran persists in supporting terrorism, including in Iraq; and sanctions will have no affect (and besides they are for sissies). He will not say: ...and besides, we need the oil.

It does not involve much imagination to understand the timing. The U.S. is poised to adopt a Congressional regime change of its own in November. A political strategy totally based on fear can offer few other options to prevent this. Besides, occupation by Democrats of even one house of Congress in January would make this scheme more difficult (one would certainly hope).

Further, time for super-power military conquest may be running short in the emerging age of fourth generation warfare. "...the age of Western military ascendancy is coming to an end." ("No Win," Andrew Bacevich, The Boston Globe, August 27, 2006).

In more rational times, including at the height of the Cold War, bizarre actions such as unilateral, unprovoked, preventive war are dismissed by thoughtful, seasoned, experienced men and women as mad. But those qualities do not characterize our current leadership."

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat

2006-09-25T11:31:00.000+02:00

"A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official."

U.N. expert: Iraq torture worse than under Saddam

2006-09-22T10:34:00.000+02:00

" Torture in Iraq may be worse now than it was under Saddam Hussein, with militias, terrorist groups and government forces disregarding rules on the humane treatment of prisoners, the U.N. anti-torture chief said Thursday.

Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special investigator on torture, made the remarks as he was presenting a report on detainee conditions at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay as well as to brief the U.N. Human Rights Council, the global body's top rights watchdog, on torture worldwide.

Reports from Iraq indicate that torture "is totally out of hand," he said. "The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein."

Nowak added, "That means something, because the torture methods applied under Saddam Hussein were the worst you could imagine."

"You have terrorist groups, you have the military, you have police, you have these militias. There are so many people who are actually abducted, seriously tortured and finally killed," Nowak told reporters at the U.N.'s European headquarters."

Civilian deaths soar to record high in Iraq in 2006

2006-09-22T10:19:00.000+02:00

"The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July and August hit 6,599, a record-high number that is far greater than initial estimates suggested, the United Nations said Wednesday.

The report from the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq's Human Rights office highlighted the sectarian crisis gripping the country, offering a grim assessment across a range of indicators - worrying evidence of torture, unlawful detentions, growth of sectarian militias and death squads, and a rise in "honor killings" of women.

"These figures reflect the fact that indiscriminate killings of civilians have continued throughout the country while hundreds of bodies appear bearing signs of severe torture and execution style killing," the report said. "Such murders are carried out by death squads or by armed groups, with sectarian or revenge connotations.

The report said torture was a major concern in Iraq and the bodies showed significant evidence of it.

"Bodies found at the Medico-legal Institute often bear signs of severe torture including acid-induced injuries and burns caused by chemical substances, missing skin, broken bones (back, hands and legs), missing eyes, missing teeth and wounds caused by power drills or nails," the report said."

Justice Dept. Corrects Gonzalez on Torture Case

2006-09-22T10:16:00.000+02:00

"In an embarrassing turnabout, the Department of Justice backed away Wednesday from a denial by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales of responsibility for the treatment of a Canadian who was seized by American authorities in 2002. The man was deported to Syria, where he was imprisoned and beaten.

Asked at a news conference on Tuesday about a Canadian commission’s finding that the man, Maher Arar, was wrongly sent to Syria and tortured there, Mr. Gonzales replied, “Well, we were not responsible for his removal to Syria.” He added, “I’m not aware that he was tortured.”

The attorney general’s comments caused puzzlement because they followed front-page news articles of the findings of the Canadian commission. It reported that based on inaccurate information from Canada about Mr. Arar’s supposed terrorist ties, American officials ordered him taken to Syria, an action documented in public records.

Karl Rove Promises October Surprise

2006-09-22T10:07:00.000+02:00

"In the past week, Karl Rove has been promising Republican insiders an "October surprise" to help win the November congressional elections.

President Bush's political strategist is also saying that the final two weeks before the elections will see a blitz of advertising, and the Republican National Committee is deploying an army of volunteers to key locations to help the grass-roots effort and monitor the elections.

The RNC is offering to fly in volunteers and cover their expenses.

Rove is not saying what the October surprise will be."

Iraqis Endure Worse Conditions Than Under Saddam, UN Survey Finds

2006-09-22T10:06:00.000+02:00

"A new 370-page report published by the UN and Iraqi officials states that life in Iraq has declined radically since the US invasion, with huge numbers of people lacking basic rights such as access to clean water, food, health care, electricity, sanitation and jobs. According to this report, 23 percent of Iraqi children suffer from chronic malnutrition, 12 from general malnutrition and 8 percent from acute malnutrition. Open sewers are everywhere, with accompanying health and disease issues. Iraq's health care system, once the best in the Middle East, has been reduced to rubble, with no medicine, no medical supplies, high infant mortality rates and high mortality of mothers during labor."

“Torture, abuses worse than under Saddam”

2006-09-22T10:02:00.000+02:00

"Human rights abuses in Iraq are worse than they were under Saddam Hussein, John Pace, the UN’s outgoing human rights chief in Iraq said Thursday.

Pace, who left his post last month, said that there is an increase in the level of extra-judicial executions and torture in Iraq.

"Under Saddam, if you agreed to forgo your basic right to freedom of expression and thought, you were physically more or less OK," Pace said in an interview with The Associated Press. "But now, no. Here, you have a primitive, chaotic situation where anybody can do anything they want to anyone."

The scale of atrocity now "extends over a much wider section of the population than it did under Saddam.""

Why Bush's Iraq is Worse Than Saddam's

2006-09-22T09:58:00.000+02:00

"National Public Radio foreign correspondent Loren Jenkins, serving in NPR's Baghdad bureau, met earlier this month with a senior Shiite cleric, a man who was described in the NPR report as "a moderate" and as a person trying to lead his Shiite followers into practicing peace and reconciliation. He had been jailed by Saddam Hussein and forced into exile. Jenkins asked him: "What would you think if you had to go back to Saddam Hussein?" The cleric replied that he'd "rather see Iraq under Saddam Hussein than the way it is now."

When one considers what the people of Iraq have experienced as a result of the American bombings, invasion, regime change, and occupation since 2003, should this attitude be surprising, even from such an individual? I was moved to compile a list of the many kinds of misfortune which have fallen upon the heads of the Iraqi people as a result of the American liberation of their homeland. It's depressing reading, and you may not want to read it all, but I think it's important to have it summarized in one place.

Loss of a functioning educational system. A 2005 UN study revealed that 84% of the higher education establishments have been "destroyed, damaged and robbed".

The intellectual stock has been further depleted as many thousands of academics and other professionals have fled abroad or have been mysteriously kidnapped or assassinated in Iraq; hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million, other Iraqis, most of them from the vital, educated middle class, have left for Jordan, Syria or Egypt, many after receiving death threats.

"Now I am isolated," said a middle-class Sunni Arab, who decided to leave. "I have no government. I have no protection from the government. Anyone can come to my house, take me, kill me and throw me in the trash."[1]

Loss of a functioning health care system. And loss of the public's health. Deadly infections including typhoid and tuberculosis are rampaging through the country. Iraq's network of hospitals and health centers, once admired throughout the Middle East, has been severely damaged by the war and looting.

The UN's World Food Program reported that 400,000 Iraqi children were suffering from "dangerous deficiencies of protein". Deaths from malnutrition and preventable diseases, particularly amongst children, already a problem because of the 12 years of US-imposed sanctions, have increased as poverty and disorder have made access to a proper diet and medicines ever more difficult.

Thousands of Iraqis have lost an arm or a leg, frequently from unexploded US cluster bombs, which became land mines; cluster bombs are a class of weapons denounced by human rights groups as a cruelly random scourge on civilians, particularly children.

Depleted uranium particles, from exploded US ordnance, float in the Iraqi air, to be breathed into human bodies and to radiate forever, and infect the water, the soil, the blood, the genes, producing malformed babies. During the few weeks of war in spring 2003, A10 "tankbuster" planes, which use munitions containing depleted uranium, fired 300,000 rounds.

And the use of napalm as well. And white phosphorous.

The American military has attacked hospitals to prevent them from giving out casualty figures of US attacks that contradicted official US figures, which the hospitals had been in the habit of doing.

Numerous homes have been broken into by US forces, the men taken away, the women humiliated, the children traumatized; on many occasions, the family has said that the American soldiers helped themselves to some of the family's money. Iraq has had to submit to a degrading national strip search.

Destruction and looting of the country's ancient heritage, perhaps the world's greatest archive of the human past, left unprotected by the US military, busy protecting oil facilities.

A nearly lawless society: Iraq's legal system, outside of the political sphere, was once one of the most impressive and secular in the Middle East; it is now a shambles; religious law more and more prevails.

Women's rights previously enjoyed are now in great and growing danger under harsh Islamic law, to one extent or another in various areas. There is today a Shiite religious ruling class in Iraq, which tolerates physical attacks on women for showing a bare arm or for picnicking with a male friend.

Men can be harassed for wearing shorts in public, as can children playing outside in shorts.

A gulag of prisons run by the US and the new Iraqi government feature a wide variety of torture and abuse -- physical, psychological, emotional; painful, degrading, humiliating; leading to mental breakdown, death, suicide; a human-rights disaster area."

UK suspects in new claims of torture at Guantanamo

2006-09-22T09:54:00.000+02:00

"The extent of the torture and abuse that British residents held at Guantanamo Bay claim to have suffered is revealed for the first time in a series of recently declassified interviews between the detainees and their human rights lawyers.

Documents submitted to the American courts allege that one of the detainees was strapped to a chair by prison guards and beaten and tortured to the point of death.

Other British suspects are still being held in solitary confinement, four years after their capture, where they are subjected to extreme temperatures, sleep deprivation and the confiscation of the most basic necessities, including lavatory paper and blankets.

None has been charged with any crime.

Some of the most serious allegations of torture concern the treatment of Shaker Aamer, a Saudi national who until his arrest four years ago had been living in London with his wife and four children.

In June this year, Mr Aamer claims he was badly beaten and tortured because he failed to provide a retina scan and fingerprints to the camp authorities. He says he was strapped to a chair, fully restrained at the head, arms and legs.

The habeas corpus motion filed in the court of the District of Columbia states: "The MPs [military police] inflicted so much pain, Mr Aamer said he thought he was going to die. The MPs pressed on pressure points all over his body: his temples, just under his jawline, in the hollow beneath his ears. They choked him. They bent his nose so hard he thought it would break.

"They pinched his thighs and feet constantly. They gouged his eyes. They held his eyes open and shined a Maglite [torch] in them for minutes on end, generating intense heat. They bent his fingers until he screamed. When he screamed, they cut off his airway, then put a mask on him so he could not cry out.""

Financial Times: CIA refused to run secret jails

2006-09-21T17:08:00.000+02:00

"The Bush administration had to empty its secret prisons and transfer terror suspects to the military-run detention centre at Guantánamo this month in part because CIA interrogators had refused to carry out further interrogations and run the secret facilities, according to former CIA officials and people close to the programme.

The administration publicly explained its decision in light of the legal uncertainty surrounding permissible interrogation techniques following the June Supreme Court ruling that all terrorist suspects in detention were entitled to protection under Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions.

But the former CIA officials said Mr Bush’s hand was forced because interrogators had refused to continue their work until the legal situation was clarified because they were concerned they could be prosecuted for using illegal techniques. One intelligence source also said the CIA had refused to keep the secret prisons going."

U.S. military is battling against Bush's torture policy and for the rule of law

2006-09-21T11:24:00.000+02:00

"The U.S. military is battling against Bush's torture policy and for the rule of law

President Bush's war on terror now exists outside the law. His great struggle for "freedom" and "democracy" has turned into a crusade for lawlessness. After the Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v Rumsfeld that his policy of denying rights to detainees and practicing torture was illegal he could have agreed to uphold the Geneva Conventions, especially Article 3 against torture.

Instead he has tried to force the Congress to legitimate the conditions the Supreme Court has outlawed. His insistence on torture has aroused the intense opposition of the senior military. The counter-proposal of senators John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham that adheres to the Geneva Conventions reflects the military's resistance to Bush's illegal regime. In this fight, the military stands against torture and for the rule of law.

In my new book "How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime," I have reported on the revolt of the generals. Their alienation was unexpected, a surprise perhaps most of all to themselves. As I write:

The analogy between Iraq and Vietnam has proved to be most compelling to the generals who planned and conducted the invasion of Iraq. They kept to themselves their profound disquiet about the rapid rejection of the original plan for invasion that had taken 10 years to develop, the inadequate downsized force, the absence of preparation for the occupation, and the disastrous decision to disband the Iraqi military. Almost all these generals voted for George W. Bush in 2000 as a statement of conservatism; they never expected radicalism. Serving their civilian neoconservative superiors, they endured contempt.

With the debate over torture intensifying the long war between Bush and the military has entered a new phase. Not only has former Secretary of State Colin Powell stepped forward to declare that Bush's support of torture has thrown into "doubt" the "moral basis" of his "war on terror"; not only have more than three dozen retired generals and admirals signed a letter denouncing Bush's policy; but now five former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have warned that Bush's effort is an "egregious mistake.""

Blair's 'war on terror' has made Britain more dangerous say voters

2006-09-21T11:22:00.000+02:00

"More than half of voters believe Tony Blair's 'war on terror' has made Britain a more dangerous place, according to a devastating new poll.

Some 55 per cent said they felt the Government had made the UK more dangerous through its anti-terror policies and 30 per cent said the Government was encouraging global instability."

Americans Overwhelmingly Disapprove Of The Republican-Controlled Congress

2006-09-21T11:19:00.000+02:00

"With the midterm elections less than seven weeks away, Americans have an overwhelmingly negative view of the Republican-controlled Congress, with substantial majorities saying that they disapprove of the job it is doing and that its members do not deserve reelection, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll."

Colin Powell: America is alienating rest of world

2006-09-21T11:12:00.000+02:00

"The former US secretary of state Colin Powell has accused the White House of pursuing policies in the "war on terror" that have put America out of step with the rest of the world.

In a rare public breach with the administration, Mr Powell told an audience in Norfolk, Virginia, on Tuesday that he opposed White House plans to redefine America's commitment to sections of the Geneva convention protecting detainees from torture and degrading treatment."

US may ban sale of cluster bombs to Israel

2006-09-21T11:04:00.000+02:00

" The discovery of hundreds of US-made cluster bombs among the tens of thousands of unexploded munitions carpeting the south of Lebanon, has led to calls on Washington to impose a moratorium on sales of the weapons to Israel.

Bomb disposal experts are working around the clock to clear the lethal leftovers after Israel fired 1.2 million bomblets in the last three days of the war. The pods containing the 650 bomblets, which burst apart at a pre-determined height, have a failure rate of up to 30 per cent, leaving clear evidence of their American origin.

The US State Department is investigating Israel's use of American-made cluster bombs during the war in Lebanon. In particular, whether or not Israel broke a secret agreement with the United States not to use cluster bombs against civilians.

Nick Guest, a former British Army bomb disposal officer working for MAG, says the most common bomblets - the M42 and the M77 - are of American manufacture. Some of the bombs are round like a metallic orange and others are like a can of fruit juice. They are small enough to be difficult to detect and may go on killing children and farmers for years."

Human Rights Watch: Bush's torture plans betray basic US, global standards

2006-09-21T11:00:00.000+02:00

" President George W. Bush’s defense of abusing detainees betrays basic American and global standards, Human Rights Watch said today.

Detainees in the custody of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have been “disappeared,” and by numerous credible reports, tortured. While the Bush administration’s announcement that it transferred 14 so-called high-value detainees from CIA to military custody is an important step forward – one that Human Rights Watch has long called for – this advance is limited by the president’s stated intention of leaving the door open for future CIA detentions.

“President Bush’s speech was a full-throated defense of the CIA’s detention program and of the ‘alternative procedures’ – read torture – that the CIA has used to extract information from detainees,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

n his speech, President Bush claimed that useful information has been obtained using such “alternative” techniques, but he pointedly omitted mentioning the information obtained from Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, one of the first top suspects placed in CIA detention. Al-Libi was excluded from President Bush’s long narrative of successful detainee captures because under “enhanced interrogation” al-Libi reportedly told interrogators that Iraq had provided chemical and biological weapons training to al Qaeda. This information – which turned out to be entirely wrong – was used in Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations to justify war with Iraq. Sources later told ABC News that al-Libi “had no knowledge of such training or weapons and fabricated the statements because he was terrified of further harsh treatment.”

MBA students likelier to cheat

2006-09-21T10:57:00.000+02:00

"MBA students in Canada and the United States are more likely to cheat than students in other disciplines because they believe it is how the business world operates — and because they believe their peers cheat, according to a new study.

The study found that 56 per cent of graduate business students admitted to cheating in the last year, compared with 47 per cent of non-business students."

Ted Turner says Iraq war among history's "dumbest"

2006-09-21T10:53:00.000+02:00

"The U.S. invasion of Iraq was among the "dumbest moves of all time" that ranks with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the German invasion of Russia, billionaire philanthropist Ted Turner said on Tuesday.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq has caused "incalculable damage" that will take 20 years to overcome "if we just act reasonably intelligently."

Often contrarian, Turner called it a "joke" that Bush demanded that Iran abandon any ambitions for nuclear weapons while at the same time hoping to ban all such bombs.

"They're a sovereign state," Turner said of Iran. "We have 28,000. Why can't they have 10? We don't say anything about Israel -- they've got 100 of them approximately -- or India or Pakistan or Russia. And really, nobody should have them.

One way to reduce such dangers in the world would be to leave women in charge, said the former husband of Jane Fonda.

"Men should be barred from public office for 100 years in every part of the world. ... It would be a much kinder, gentler, more intelligently run world. The men have had millions of years where we've been running things. We've screwed it up hopelessly. Let's give it to the women."

In the meantime, the United Nations represents the best hope, Turner said.

While the world body is ridiculed as ineffective and irrelevant by its harshest critics and often criticized by its strongest advocates, Turner offered what was then one-third of his net worth to the world body nine years ago.

"I am absolutely certain we would not have made it through the Cold War without the U.N.," Turner said. "When Khrushchev at the U.N. took his shoe off and hit podium he was so mad, but he had a place to let off steam. If the U.N. hadn't been there, that would have been war right then."

When a questioner from the audience challenged Turner on the United Nations's value, Turner shot back.

"The war between Lebanon and Israel and Hizbollah would still be going on if it hadn't been for the U.N., and that's only in the last two weeks, Bubba."

The "Iraq Scenario" in Iran

2006-09-21T10:49:00.000+02:00

"Is Iran secretly building an atomic bomb? The International Atomic Energy Agency wants to shed light on the core issue behind Tehran's nuclear dispute with the West. While the United States doubts the IAEA's efficacy, the UN inspectors fear hawks are trying to make them irrelevant -- just like before the Iraq war.

There are already the first attempts to shape the debate surrounding the dispute with Iran. In recent weeks, an IAEA letter has surfaced that harshly criticized a report by a US Congressional intelligence committee. The 29-page document supposedly grossly exaggerated the state of Iran's nuclear research and claimed ElBaradei had caved to Iranian pressure to remove a particularly critical IAEA expert from the list of inspectors. The report even went so far as to infer that Nobel Peace Prize winner ElBaradei was more interested in having good ties with Tehran than finding out the truth.

The IAEA called the report "upsetting and misleading" and Heinonen and his experts found at least five fundamental mistakes in it. The worst was the claim that Iran had enriched uranium to 90 percent -- that is, weapons grade. But the IAEA had only found uranium enriched to 3.5 percent in Natanz.

Such hyperbole can't be explained as simple sloppiness. One of the authors of the report is the former CIA official Frederick Fleitz, a hawk who's previously worked for John Bolton, US ambassador to the United Nations. "It's just like before the Iraq war," says David Albright, a respected US nuclear expert. "They blow up the threat with windy information and attack the IAEA."

Kerry Calls Lieberman the New Cheney

2006-09-20T18:27:00.000+02:00

"Senator Labels Bush Iraq Policy 'Disaster,' Lieberman Bid 'Huge Mistake'

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., blasted a fellow Democrat, Sen. Joe Lieberman, for continuing his bid in the Connecticut Senate race despite a narrow loss to newcomer Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary earlier this month.

"I'm concerned that [Lieberman] is making a Republican case," Kerry told ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" in an exclusive appearance.

Kerry accused the 2000 Democratic vice presidential candidate of "adopting the rhetoric of Dick Cheney," on the issue of Iraq.

"Joe Lieberman is out of step with the people of Connecticut," Kerry added, insisting Lieberman's stance on Iraq, "shows you just why he got in trouble with the Democrats there."

Kerry called Lieberman's independent bid a "huge mistake" and applauded businessman-turned-politician Lamont as "courageous" for challenging Lieberman on the war.

Of his own views on Iraq, Kerry stated forthrightly, "The course of this country in Iraq is making the world more dangerous.""

No One Left for Joe to Lie To

2006-09-20T18:02:00.000+02:00

"I’m just getting back from a weekend up at Glacier National Park, and in perusing the news, it’s very clear: Joe Lieberman is spinning so many lies and so completely embracing the Republican Party establishment its becoming nearly impossible to keep track of it all. In all honesty, I have never seen a politician - any politician - lie so brazenly and with such open disdain for the public he is lying to. Usually, the lies come packaged with the veneer of truth - but in desperation, Lieberman has stopped even pretending he’s being consistent or telling the truth."

Joe lies...Joe lies...Joe lies, when he cries...

2006-09-20T17:59:00.000+02:00

"There's a hilarious moment in the movie "Say Anything" where Lili Taylor sings melodramatically about her ex-boyfriend, "Joe lies...Joe lies...Joe liiiieeeeessssss when he cries..." I kept hearing that song in my head tonight when I watched clips of the debate between Sen. Joe Lieberman and his Democratic challenger Ned Lamont.

I'll defer to Matt Stoller, who nails Lieberman's two biggest lies here, one on Social Security (which I highlighted in my Hartford Courant op-ed), and another on Iraq.

One other meta-lie that Lieberman kept telling that I found particularly offensive was his repeated attempts to claim he cares about preserving Connecticut jobs. I mean, really, where does this guy get the nerve? He kept taking credit for personally preserving 31,000 jobs in New London at a military base - yet never once explained why he has consistently voted for corporate-written trade deals that he knew was selling out Connecticut blue-collar workers. Between 1998 and 2003 - the years when Joe happily cast his vote in favor of the China free trade pact - Connecticut lost more than 50,000 manufacturing jobs. That was on top of tens of thousands of other jobs lost to NAFTA.

Lieberman claims these deals have helped Connecticut - but to even make such a dishonest claim is to once again expose himself as totally out of touch with Connecticut, and totally focused on making Washington corporate lobbyists happy."

Pollster Pleads Guilty To Faking Results For Bush, Lieberman Campaigns

2006-09-20T17:58:00.000+02:00

"The owner of DataUSA Inc., a company that conducted political polls for the campaigns of President Bush, Sen. Joe Lieberman and other candidates, pleaded guilty to fraud for making up survey and poll results.

Tracy Costin pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Costin, 46, faces a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 when she is sentenced Nov. 30."

Bush blocks campaign to put pressure on Sudan over Darfur

2006-09-20T15:10:00.000+02:00

"The Bush administration and big business interests have been accused of undermining efforts to exert financial pressure on the Sudanese government to stop the killing in Darfur."

BUSH DEFENDS TORTURE

2006-09-20T15:05:00.000+02:00

"Give torture a chance. And grant me a law to justify anything I have done or will do. By the way, I, the commander in chief, the supreme decider, the great protector, need the Congress to give me their blessings for any damn thing I want to do.

That is essentially what President George W. Bush is saying. He endured -- for him -- a humiliating visit to Capitol Hill, where he actually had to deal with our national legislature. Congress, a co-equal branch of government as framed in the Constitution, is merely a subordinate nuisance in Bush's perverted sense of our national traditions and in his own debilitating megalomania."

UN: Israel's cluster bomb use "outrageous"

2006-09-20T15:03:00.000+02:00

"Israel dropped at least 350,000 cluster bomblets on south Lebanon in its war with Hizbollah guerrillas, mostly when the conflict was all but over, leaving a deadly legacy for civilians, a U.N. official said on Tuesday.

"The outrageous fact is that nearly all of these munitions were fired in the last three to four days of the war," David Shearer, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, told a news conference in Beirut.

U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland has called Israel "completely immoral" for using them in residential areas.

The United Nations has so far identified 516 cluster bomb strike locations and says 30 to 40 percent of the bomblets they scattered over the south failed to explode at the time.

Only about 17,000 bomblets have been defused so far and the United Nations says it could take up to 30 months to destroy most of the unexploded sub-munitions. The British-based Land mine Action group has said clearing the south could take a decade.

Shearer said cluster bombs had killed or wounded an average of three people a day since the war ended, with 15 killed, including a child, and 83 wounded, of whom 23 are children.

"We know these (cluster) munitions have a failure rate and it seems to me extraordinary that they were fired off in the last hours of the war into areas where civilian populations were known to be going," Shearer said.

"For a humanitarian person, it defies belief that this would happen."

Next Stop: Conscription

2006-09-20T15:01:00.000+02:00

"In early August, about 300 Alaska-based soldiers of the 172nd Stryker Brigade, shortly after returning from Iraq, were ordered to return to Iraq immediately. Because of a bureaucratic bungle, the unit was not informed while in Iraq that its tour of duty had been extended. As a result, the soldiers and their families, relieved and grateful for their safe return, were torn apart once again without adequate time to prepare.

Shortly thereafter the Bush administration announced that at least 2,500 discharged Marines would be involuntarily reactivated for combat duty through the Marine Corps’ Individual Ready Reserves (IRR) program. Both of these developments illustrate just how over-extended the military has become as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and how desperate it has become in seeking personnel to fill current needs — let alone those that will come if, as expected, military action is taken against Lebanon, Syria, Iran, or North Korea."

Bush supports biologocal warfare

2006-09-20T14:58:00.000+02:00

"Trust me, George Bush says, perched on the remains of Geneva Conventions, the Constitution and habeas corpus.

From this moral high ground, the United States is assuring the world that a new facility for researching a horror shop of weaponized infectious diseases will be used purely for defensive purposes. The National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center’s (NBACC) $128 million, 160,000-square-foot facility is under construction at Fort Detrick, Md. There, the United States has already weaponized more than a dozen diseases—including anthrax, plague, botulism and ebola—and bioengineered war-friendly “improvements.” Scientists are also using DNA-synthesizing techniques to fabricate genetically altered or man-made viruses, and to study the feasibility of creating germ weapons targeting particular ethnicities.

The possibilities for disaster are plentiful. By undermining the treaty, the United States greenlights other nations and groups to similarly “defend” themselves. And compared with making and delivering nukes, creating and distributing biowarfare agents is dead simple. A competent scientist with a good lab can cook up enough to sicken and kill thousands, perhaps millions.

Second, the lesson taught by recent dealings with Iran and North Korea is that possession of weapons of mass destruction tends to inoculate against U.S. attack. Secret expansion of U.S. bioterrorism research—without monitoring through the CBW treaty—could spark a bioarms race.

And then there is the risk of accident. On its Web site, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a lead government agency on bioterrorism, asks: “Has there ever been an accident at a BSL-3 or BSL-4 facility?” (Bio Safety Level-4 labs hold the most dangerous infectious agents.)"

Iraq: Trying to spin the unspinnable

2006-09-20T14:54:00.000+02:00

"In the modern age, politicians are accustomed to being rescued from the tar pit of failed policies by the wondrous powers of spin.

The administration of US President George W Bush, for example, when faced with a public outcry over Iraq, has with great effectiveness disseminated expertly crafted, razor-sharp talking points into the ether to persuade voters to believe what they hear and not what they see.

The power of spin is not infinite, however, as the administration is
now discovering. The consequences of its invasion of Iraq are now so transparently catastrophic that Republican control of Congress is threatened in the November 7 mid-term elections, in which Iraq is the hot-button issue.

Bad news has cascaded out of Iraq at such an astonishing pace that it defies credulity to suggest that the war has not drastically worsened the lives of Iraqis. At the same time, the initial rationale for the war has itself been further undermined.

The administration has nevertheless tried to spin the unspinnable as the elections near, with many Republican candidates fighting for their political lives and choosing to distance themselves from the White House on Iraq. Only the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the US has offered the administration any respite, providing an opportunity it did not squander to tell voters, ad nauseam, that Iraq is the front line of its "war on terror".
The most immediate public relations challenge facing the administration is Iraq's civil war. The United Nations now estimates that 100 Iraqis at least are dying every day in sectarian violence. Dozens of bodies turn up daily in Baghdad, the victims of torture and execution by death squads, and bombs in public spaces turn everyday life into slaughter. Baghdad's central morgue alone counted 1,536 violent deaths in August.

President Bush's feeble response has been to split hairs, calling Iraq a "bloody campaign of sectarian violence" but not a civil war. The American people err on the other side of the semantic fence, however. A CBS News poll in June showed that 82% believed civil war was under way."

Ramadi caught in US street fight

2006-09-20T14:52:00.000+02:00

"US forces are taking to collective punishment of civilians in several cities across al-Anbar province west of Baghdad, residents and officials say.

"Ramadi, the capital of al-Anbar province, is still living with the daily terror of its people getting killed by snipers and its infrastructure being destroyed," said Ahmad, a local doctor who withheld his last name for security purposes. "This city has been facing the worst of the American terror and destruction for more than two years now, and the world is silent."

Destroying infrastructure and cutting water and electricity "for days and even weeks is routine reaction to the resistance", he said. "Guys of the resistance do not need water and electricity, it's the families that are being harmed, and their lives which are at stake."

This month, a classified report written by the chief of intelligence for the US Marine Corps in Iraq concluded that the United States had lost control of Anbar, at least politically."

Canadian Was Falsely Accused, Panel Says

2006-09-20T14:50:00.000+02:00

"Canadian intelligence officials passed false warnings and bad information to American agents about a Muslim Canadian citizen, after which U.S. authorities secretly whisked him to Syria, where he was tortured, a judicial report found Monday.

The report, released in Ottawa, was the result of a 2 1/2-year inquiry that represented one of the first public investigations into mistakes made as part of the United States' "extraordinary rendition" program, which has secretly spirited suspects to foreign countries for interrogation by often brutal methods."

Afghanistan: Time for Truth

2006-09-20T14:49:00.000+02:00

" Do not believe what OUR media and politicians are telling us about Afghanistan. Nearly all the information we get about the five-year-old war in Afghanistan comes from US and NATO public relations officers or "embedded" journalists who merely parrot military handouts. Ask yourself, when did you last read a report from a journalist covering Taliban and other Afghan resistance forces?

Now, the official rosy view is being flatly contradicted by impartial observers.

The respected European think-tank, Senlis Council, which focuses on Afghanistan, just reported the Taliban movement is "taking back Afghanistan" and now controls that nation’s southern half."

Bill Would Remove Grounds for Impeachment, Bush Critics Suggest

2006-09-20T14:47:00.000+02:00

"A bill now pending in the Senate would make the Bush administration's enemy wiretapping program more practical and flexible, removing all doubt about its legality. But that worries some of Bush's fiercest critics.

According to one anti-Bush group, the bill "would pardon President Bush for breaking the law by illegally wiretapping innocent Americans without warrants."

MoveOn.org's political action committee has accused Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) of caving in to pressure when he introduced a bill that "justifies everything the president did.""

Democrats' spending gives edge to GOP

2006-09-20T14:45:00.000+02:00

"Republicans how have five times as much for ads, get out the vote effort

The national Democratic Party has spent millions on raising money, consultants and building state parties, entering the weeks before Election Day with only about one-fifth as much as the Republicans for races that could decide control of Congress.

The Republican National Committee is prepared to spend $60 million over the next seven weeks on advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts to protect the GOP's narrow majorities in the House and Senate.

The Democratic National Committee plans to use about $12 million, all devoted to getting voters to the polls. Even in that effort, though, it has set aside only an average of $60,000 in each of the 40 most competitive congressional races in the country."

GQ on the Senate race between Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont

2006-09-20T13:49:00.000+02:00

"Kids in bright Lieberman T-shirts, some paid to be there, array themselves around the perimeter, at the unsubtle directions of Joe’s advance staff, and wait for the signal to simulate spontaneous enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, Ned’s campaign manager, Tom Swan, is in the middle of the crowd, surrounded by Lieberman supporters. Tom’s a rugby player, one of those Irish guys who are happiest when they’re in a fight, and for the past six months he’s built Ned’s operation from the ground up, so he takes this fight personally. A guy in a banana suit with a sign that says ANYONE WHO VOTES FOR LAMONT IS BANANAS jostles Tom on his left, and a big guy with a beard but no mustache jostles him on the right. I’m twenty feet away, but I can see the anger in Tom’s eyes. The big guy fronts Tom and says, “Hit me. C’mon, hit me.” They square off, arms down but chins up. “Hit me,” the guy says again into Tom’s face. “Do it.” This all seems too well choreographed to be random.

Earlier in the campaign, Ned made several stops at the Rajun Cajun, a famous bar and diner in a black neighborhood in Hartford, where he was told that they hadn’t seen Joe in a long, long time. But Joe finds his way there today. The place is flooded with field staff, vans, placards, postcards. Hartford has magically become carpeted with red-and-white vote for joe signs overnight. A soundmobile races around and around the neighborhood with amplified recorded messages from Joe, Bill Clinton, and Senator Chris Dodd. Joe is omnipresent; his face and disembodied voice are everywhere. It feels like a Dear Leader rally in North Korea. How much cash did they spend to pull this off?

Ninety percent of what passes for campaigning on the trail is unadulterated, pandering bullshit. But every once in a while, there’s a moment that snaps your head back and reaffirms your faith that connection and transformation are still possible in American politics. You just have to have the good luck to be there when it happens. Ned’s appearance at the Bethel AME Church, six days before election day, is one of those times."

150 injured as Hungarians riot over Prime Minister's lies

2006-09-19T19:44:00.000+02:00

"Gutted cars, shattered glass and smashed paving stones littered Budapest's Freedom Square today after protesters stormed the headquarters of Hungarian state television to demand the resignation of the prime minister.

Hundreds of people, most of them young men, burst though police lines to attack the station, having broken away from a much larger, peaceful demonstration against the country's Socialist leader Ferenc Gyurcsany, who admitted to lying to the nation about the state of the economy to retain power."

British soldier admits war crime

2006-09-19T19:30:00.000+02:00

" Corporal Donald Payne today became the first member of the British armed forces to admit a war crime when he pleaded guilty to inhumanely treating civilians detained in Iraq.

He is one of seven British troops who went on trial today.

The charges against all the defendants - which include two officers - relate to the death in custody of Baha Mousa, 26, an Iraqi civilian, in Basra, southern Iraq, in September 2003, and to the alleged ill-treatment of other detainees."

Colin Powell to publicly oppose Bush's torture plans

2006-09-19T19:21:00.000+02:00

"Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell said yesterday that he decided to publicly oppose the Bush administration's proposed rules for the treatment of terrorism suspects in part because the plan would add to growing doubts about whether the United States adheres to its own moral code.

Powell, elaborating on a position first expressed last week in a letter to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), also argued that the administration's plan to "clarify" U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions would set a precedent for other nations that would endanger U.S. troops.

"Suppose North Korea or somebody else wants to redefine or 'clarify' " Geneva Conventions provisions prohibiting "outrages against personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment" of prisoners, he said.

"If you just look at how we are perceived in the world and the kind of criticism we have taken over Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and renditions," Powell said in an interview, "whether we believe it or not, people are now starting to question whether we're following our own high standards."

Powell strenuously objected to Bush's February 2002 decision that the United States was not obliged to adhere to Geneva Conventions rules in its treatment of captured al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners. Subsequent scandals over military treatment of prisoners at the U.S. facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and over the CIA's establishment of secret prisons abroad, further cemented his views that the decision was unnecessary in terms of prisoner interrogation and is harmful to the armed forces.

Last fall, over administration opposition, Powell publicly supported McCain's successful effort to ensure that restrictions in the Army Field Manual outlawing torture be adopted as the definitive guidance for military treatment of detainees. His position owed as much to his 35 years as an Army officer as to his tenure as the nation's chief diplomat.

Yesterday, another prominent Republican weighed in. In a statement released by his office in California, former secretary of state George P. Shultz said he believes that a compromise can be reached that "leaves the Geneva Convention alone and achieves the specificity that the administration wants."

Meanwhile, former president Jimmy Carter, a leading voice on human rights, said yesterday that he is "filled with admiration" for McCain, Powell and others who have joined in opposition. The Bush administration, Carter told Reuters, has "redefined torture to make it convenient for them," adding: "Things that are . . . globally assumed to be torture they claim . . . [are] not torture.""

Thai military takes control

2006-09-19T19:18:00.000+02:00

"The Thai military today launched a coup against the country's prime minister, surrounding government buildings with tanks and announcing it had formed an interim regime loyal to the King.

The country's prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra - who is in New York for the UN general assembly - responded by declaring a state of emergency and dismissing the head of the army, Lieutenant General Sonthi Boonyaratglin.

Mr Thaksin, a multi-millionaire telecoms tycoon, took power in 2001 and was re-elected in 2005.

He faced mass demonstrations over corruption and tax avoidance allegations earlier this year, connected to relatives' sale of their controlling stake in Shin Corp, the telecoms empire he founded.

Thailand has experienced 17 military coups since 1932, when the then absolute monarchy was deposed. The last coup happened in 1991."

How Giant Bets on Natural Gas Sank Brash Hedge-Fund Trader

2006-09-19T15:25:00.000+02:00

"Up in Summer, Brian Hunter Lost $5 Billion in a Week As Market Turned on Him

A Low-Profile Life in Calgary

CALGARY, Alberta -- Of all the traders gambling big sums on energy, a 32-year-old Canadian named Brian Hunter made some of the brashest bets and the fastest money.

Last week, he fell hard, proof of how quickly fortunes can reverse in gyrating commodities markets.

Here in this bustling new energy frontier, Mr. Hunter headed the energy desk for a Connecticut hedge fund called Amaranth Advisors. At the end of August, trading natural gas, he was up approximately $2 billion for the year. Then Mr. Hunter lost roughly $5 billion, in about a week.

His losses savaged returns for Amaranth, dragging its assets under management down to $4.5 billion from $9 billion at the start of September. In disclosing the losses to investors in a letter yesterday, the fund said it was "aggressively reducing" its natural-gas bets, though Mr. Hunter remains at the fund.

What hurt Mr. Hunter is what he had ridden to glory for the past year or so: volatility."

The Hedge-Fund King Is Getting Nervous

2006-09-19T14:58:00.000+02:00

"Inside billionaire Steven Cohen's hidden world of massive trading and lavish art. Is the party over?

At home with Van Gogh, Gauguin and a skating rink

STAMFORD, Conn. -- It was the kind of day that can give a hedge-fund tycoon nightmares. As stocks fell on the afternoon of June 12, the largest holdings of Steven Cohen's more than $10 billion hedge fund were falling even harder.

Mr. Cohen, whose trading acumen, monumental compensation and sprawling art-laden home had made him a trailblazing star of the hedge-fund boom, watched the carnage unfold on eight computer screens arrayed around his desk. From time to time, he leaned back and rubbed his face. "Oh, boy," he said to himself.

The 20,000-square-foot trading room at SAC Capital Advisors, chilled to 70 degrees to keep traders alert, was hushed. Mr. Cohen, who sits at its center, likes it that way. Phones blink rather than ring. Computer hard drives had been moved off the trading floor to eliminate hum. Rows of traders wearing SAC fleece jackets watched Mr. Cohen nervously, waiting for an order to sell shares.

But Mr. Cohen wasn't budging. Less than an hour before the stock markets closed, Mr. Cohen, biting his nails, compared his sinking stocks to a plunging department-store elevator. "There goes ladies lingerie," he said, to no one in particular. By day's end, his firm had lost $150 million, or 1.5% of its assets -- one of its worst one-day showings ever.

Mr. Cohen's reputation rests on an investing style altogether different from the buy-and-hold strategy espoused by influential investors such as Warren Buffett. Mr. Cohen believes that by scrutinizing trading patterns of a stock -- by "watching the tape" -- it is often possible to predict how the stock will move in the coming hours or even days. For years, he jumped in and out of stocks -- sometimes without any knowledge of a company's fundamentals, or even what it did. It was akin to picking out rocks in a river by watching the currents swirl around them."

Better paid, better armed, better connected - Taliban rise again

2006-09-19T11:25:00.000+02:00

""I had warned the government this might happen. I told them Taliban was taking over. Why can't they stop them?"

That question is resounding across Afghanistan following a summer of chaos. In the south war has gripped Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where British and Canadian troops are stationed. In the past fortnight Nato has launched a blistering offensive, killing more than 500 Taliban, to stave off an attack on Kandahar city - a previously unthinkable notion.

Elsewhere, suicide bombers are striking with Baghdad-like brazenness. In the boldest attack yet, last week two American soldiers and 14 Afghans were shredded by a huge blast outside the US embassy in Kabul, one of the country's most tightly guarded areas.

Opium cultivation has soared. This year Afghanistan will produce more heroin than western addicts can consume."

Iraq in danger of civil war, warns Annan ahead of crucial UN assembly

2006-09-19T11:24:00.000+02:00

"The UN secretary general warned yesterday that Iraq was in danger of sliding into anarchy and civil war. Addressing an international aid conference at the UN, Kofi Annan said: "If current patterns of alienation and violence persist much longer, there is a grave danger that the Iraqi state will break down, possibly in the midst of full-scale civil war."

Billionaire speculator Soros says Democrats should subpoena the president

2006-09-19T11:20:00.000+02:00

"Should Democrats retake the House in November, George Soros says they should have one priority: Subpoena President George W. Bush.

The billionaire currency speculator, who poured more than $20 million of his personal fortune into efforts to unseat Bush in 2004, offered his opinions on American politics and foreign policy in a wide-ranging interview with RAW STORY last week. In the exchange, he responded to questions on domestic politics, while criticizing the war in Iraq and efforts to contain nuclear technologies in Iran and Pakistan.

Soros wouldn’t say who he favored for the 2008 presidential race, but he did say Democrats should take bold moves should they win back the House of Representatives in November.

“Clearly,” he said, “using the subpoena power to bring to light the misdeeds by the administration would have to be, I think, a top priority.”

Protests, violence rattle Hungary

2006-09-19T11:06:00.000+02:00
" Militant government opponents forced the state- owned Hungarian television to shut down broadcasts on its two public channels early Tuesday after muscling their way into its headquarters building and setting part of it on fire. In clashes described as the country's most violent in decades, angry government protestors lobbed rocks and torches at the headquarters of public television and set vehicles on fire.

The protestors are demanding the resignation of socialist-liberal Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, who triggered outrage with his leaked taped remarks that his party had lied before April general elections.

Gyurcsany triggered public outrage with his remarks, peppered liberally with swear words, that admitted his party lied before the April general elections. The recorded speech was made in May at a meeting of his Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) and was posted on Hungarian Radio's website on Sunday.

"Obviously we have lied over the last ... two years. It is clear that what we were saying was not true," Gyurcsany said in the speech.

"We haven't done anything for the last four years. I can't mention a single political step we can be proud of apart from finally pulling the government out of the shit," he added."

Navy told: Ready for Iran blockade

2006-09-19T11:04:00.000+02:00
"What War With Iran Would Look Like (And How To Avoid It)

A flurry of military maneuvers in the Middle East increases speculation that conflict with Iran is no longer quite so unthinkable. Here's how the U.S. would fight such a war--and the huge price it would have to pay to win it."

Judgment Day coming – for the neocons

2006-09-19T10:57:00.000+02:00
"The Democrats are determined to make the election of 2006 a referendum on Bush and the war in Iraq. And, as of now, that is how history will likely record it.

The altarpiece of the Bush foreign policy is Iraq. American dead are at 2,600, the wounded at 18,000. Three hundred billion dollars has been plunged into the war. Yet Iraq is a bloodier, more dangerous place than it has been since the fall of Baghdad. One hundred are being killed every day, half of them in the capital. IED attacks on U.S. troops are at record levels – three and a half years after Baghdad fell.

The Bush democracy campaign brought stunning electoral gains for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Moqtada al-Sadr in Iraq. Our ally Hamid Kharzai is today little more than mayor of Kabul, as the Taliban roam the southeast and coalition casualties reach the highest levels since liberation five years ago.

North Korea and Iran remain defiant on their nuclear programs. Vladimir Putin is befriending every regime at odds with Bush, from Tehran to Damascus to Caracas. Neocon meddling in the Bear's backyard has gotten us bit.

Bush's trade policy has left us with annual deficits of $800 billion with the world and $200 billion with Beijing. Once the greatest creditor nation in history, we are now the greatest debtor. U.S. manufacturing has been hollowed out with thousands of plants closed and 3 million industrial jobs vanishing since Bush took office.

While the economy has been running well since 2003, creating jobs, and the markets are performing well, the real wages of working Americans have not kept pace with the portfolios of the clients of Lawrence Kudlow. Industrial states, like Ohio, could be killing fields of the GOP in November."

Halliburton and Cheney: War Profiteers in Chief Fight to Keep Their Wallets Fat

2006-09-19T10:34:00.000+02:00
"Iraq For Sale tells the story of that gruesome ride for profits, probably the most egregious example of out right war profiteering that we have yet seen in a killing field where the likes of Halliburton/KBR reap money with men's lives. Halliburton's stock has risen 200% since the invasion of Iraq three and a half years ago. David Lesar, its CEO, made over $40,000,000 (that's forty million dollars) in 2004 alone and by some calculations, has made at least $150,000,000 (one hundred fifty million) since the war began. It's hard to tell just how rich he has gotten on the intestinal tracts of our soldiers and the bodies of his former employees, but it's probably enough money for him to live happily ever after in several countries outside the U.S."

Attorney General Lord Goldsmith warns US on detainees

2006-09-19T10:28:00.000+02:00
"Terrorist suspects detained at Guantanamo Bay should not be subject to humiliating and degrading treatment, the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, warned the US government at the weekend.

Speaking in Chicago, Lord Goldsmith told the Bush administration that it should not try to water down the standards in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

This provision, he said, "prohibits outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" of those detained in combat. It was "an international standard of very considerable importance and its content must be the same for all nations", he stressed.

In a speech that received a standing ovation from members of the American Bar Association and the International Bar Association, Lord Goldsmith acknowledged that he was interfering in a "live, and sensitive, domestic political debate".

But he said it was not purely domestic. "The detainees to whom these procedures apply are non-US citizens and are detained outside the US.""

IMF's fears must be heeded: US borrowing, trade deficits are unsustainable

2006-09-19T10:22:00.000+02:00
"You can't expect the International Monetary Fund to come out and say the world is headed for a global financial crash. And it isn't saying that.

But what it is saying, in its own careful way, is that the risk of such a calamity is increasing."

On Constitution Day: Talk of Impeachment and Rumors of War

2006-09-19T10:19:00.000+02:00
"The talk on the the weekend of Sept. 16-17 at Camp Democracy in the shadow of the Washington Monument on the National Mall was of impeaching the president--and of looming war with Iran.

I spoke on the morning of Sept. 17, along with John Nichols of the Nation, David Green of Hofstra, former federal prosecutor and author Elizabeth de la Vega, and long time anti-war activist Marcus Raskin. Later, in the afternoon, a second group of people spoke on the same topic, including veteran former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, Jennifer van Bergen (who first exposed Bush's secret "signing statements"), Michael Avery, president of the National Lawyers Guild, and former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman (D-NY).

Speaking of arms, Ray McGovern announced at the session the electrifying, if not wholly unexpected news that Naval officers had notified his organization of former intelligence officers about secret orders that had gone out for a Naval battle group to set sail immediately for the Persian Gulf, with a planned ETA off the coast of Iran of Oct. 21--less than three weeks before Election Day. (McGovern, before he resigned in disgust during the Bush first term of office, had been in charge of threat assessment at the CIA.)

"It would appear," one well-connected Washington source informed me after hearing about the Naval maneuvers, "that the Bush administration's internal polling is telling them that they are in serious trouble in November and that they are getting desperate."

If Bush and his gang cannot get all their crimes retroactively approved by the current compliant Republican Congress, he and Cheney, fearing impeachment and war crimes prosecution, may have decided to go with a "Hail Mary" strategy--an aerial bombardment of Iran's nuclear facilities just before Election Day designed to rally Americans once more around the already abased and abused Flag.

Maybe so. If Bush and his gang cannot get all their crimes retroactively approved by the current compliant Republican Congress, he and Cheney, fearing impeachment and war crimes prosecution, may have decided to go with a "Hail Mary" strategy--an aerial bombardment of Iran's nuclear facilities just before Election Day designed to rally Americans once more around the already abased and abused Flag."

Halliburton to Wounded Employee: You'll Get a Medal -- If You Don't Sue

2006-09-19T10:16:00.000+02:00
"Halliburton will help its combat-zone employees get the honors and recognition they deserve -- if they promise not to sue the company. That's according to new documents released today by Senate Democrats.

Ray Stannard was a truck driver in Iraq for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. In 2003, he was part of a fuel convoy that was ambushed by insurgents. Seven Americans died in the attack and 26 were injured, including Stanner. He is suing the company.

His company knew the convoy's route was dangerous and unprotected, he says, but sent the convoy through anyway. "What they did was murder," Stannard told CBS News recently. "And I stick by that.""

Hungary PM: we lied to win election

2006-09-18T14:50:00.000+02:00
"The prime minister of Hungary has confirmed the legitimacy of a leaked tape recording in which he says his government lied to win April's election and "lied in the morning; lied in the evening" during office.

In the leaked speech, parts of which have been played on Hungarian state radio, he argued that major economic reforms were needed. "There is not much choice. There is not, because we screwed up," he said. "Not a little: a lot. No European country has done something as bone-headed as we have," he continued.

"Evidently, we lied throughout the last year and a half, two years. It was totally clear that what we are saying is not true."

"You cannot quote any significant government measure we can be proud of, other than at the end we managed to bring the government back from the brink. Nothing. If we have to give account to the country about what we did for four years, then what do we say?"

"We lied in the morning; we lied in the evening," he said."

In a replay of Iraq, a battle is brewing over intelligence on Iran

2006-09-18T11:09:00.000+02:00
" In an echo of the intelligence wars that preceded the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a high-stakes struggle is brewing within the Bush administration and in Congress over Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program and involvement in terrorism.

U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials say Bush political appointees and hard-liners on Capitol Hill have tried recently to portray Iran's nuclear program as more advanced than it is and to exaggerate Tehran's role in Hezbollah's attack on Israel in mid-July.

The struggle's outcome could have profound implications for U.S. policy.

President Bush, who addresses the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, has said he prefers diplomacy to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, but he hasn't ruled out using military force.

Several former U.S. defense officials who maintain close ties to the Pentagon say they've been told that plans for airstrikes - if Bush deems them necessary - are being updated.

The leader of a Persian Gulf country who visited Washington recently came away without receiving assurances he sought that the military option was off the table, said a person with direct knowledge of the meetings.

"It seems like Iran is becoming the new Iraq," said one U.S. counterterrorism official.

This official and others spoke on condition of anonymity because the information involved is classified.

But one facet of the dispute broke into public view in recent days.

The International Atomic Energy Agency complained in an unusual letter made public on Thursday that a House intelligence committee report on Iran contains "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated information."

Call It What It Is - Bush Wants to Torture People

2006-09-18T11:07:00.000+02:00
"It's so annoying to read mainstream press articles where they dance around what the real issue is on "terror suspect interrogations." They use every euphemism in the book. Bush seeks "clarity" on interrogations. Bush wants "wider leeway" in interrogations. Bush wants "tougher interrogations."

Tougher interrogations, my ass. Bush wants to torture people.

Every single person writing those stories knows what this is really about. They are so queasy about writing the word down on paper, but they're perfectly willing to have a legitimate debate on whether we should actually do it. That makes no sense. I wish the late Sam Kinison was around now to shout at the reporters, "Say it!!! Just say it!!!!" It's torture."

False Reports on Iran a Replay of Run-Up to Iraq War?

2006-09-18T11:04:00.000+02:00
"A report today by veteran McClatchy (formerly Knight Ridder) reporters John Walcott and Warren P. Strobel warns that some of the same type of shaky intelligence that proved false in the run up to the Iraq war may be rearing its head again in regard to Iran.

"U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials say Bush political appointees and hard-liners on Capitol Hill have tried recently to portray Iran's nuclear program as more advanced than it is and to exaggerate Tehran's role in Hezbollah's attack on Israel in mid-July," they write."

The Longer the War, the Larger the Lies

2006-09-18T10:58:00.000+02:00
"The Bush administration is carpet-bombing America with still more fictions about Iraq.

RARELY has a television network presented a more perfectly matched double feature. President Bush's 9/11 address on Monday night interrupted ABC's "Path to 9/11" so seamlessly that a single network disclaimer served them both: "For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression."

No kidding: "The Path to 9/11" was false from the opening scene, when it put Mohamed Atta both in the wrong airport (Boston instead of Portland, Me.) and on the wrong airline (American instead of USAirways). It took Mr. Bush but a few paragraphs to warm up to his first fictionalization for dramatic purposes: his renewed pledge that "we would not distinguish between the terrorists and those who harbor or support them." Only days earlier the White House sat idly by while our ally Pakistan surrendered to Islamic militants in its northwest frontier, signing a "truce" and releasing Al Qaeda prisoners. Not only will Pakistan continue to harbor terrorists, Osama bin Laden probably among them, but it will do so without a peep from Mr. Bush.

You'd think that after having been caught concocting the scenario that took the nation to war in Iraq, the White House would mind the facts now. But this administration understands our culture all too well. This is a country where a cable news network (MSNBC) offers in-depth journalism about one of its anchors (Tucker Carlson) losing a prime-time dance contest and where conspiracy nuts have created a cottage industry of books and DVD's by arguing that hijacked jets did not cause 9/11 and that the 9/11 commission was a cover-up. (The fictionalized "Path to 9/11," supposedly based on the commission's report, only advanced the nuts' case.) If you're a White House stuck in a quagmire in an election year, what's the percentage in starting to tell the truth now? It's better to game the system.

The untruths are flying so fast that untangling them can be a full-time job. Maybe that's why I am beginning to find Dick Cheney almost refreshing. As we saw on "Meet the Press" last Sunday, these days he helpfully signals when he's about to lie. One dead giveaway is the word context, as in "the context in which I made that statement last year." The vice president invoked "context" to try to explain away both his bogus predictions: that Americans would be greeted as liberators in Iraq and that the insurgency (some 15 months ago) was in its "last throes."

The other instant tip-off to a Cheney lie is any variation on the phrase "I haven't read the story." He told Tim Russert he hadn't read The Washington Post's front-page report that the bin Laden trail had gone "stone cold" or the new Senate Intelligence Committee report(PDF) contradicting the White House's prewar hype about nonexistent links between Al Qaeda and Saddam. Nor had he read a Times front-page article about his declining clout. Or the finding by Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency just before the war that there was "no evidence of resumed nuclear activities" in Iraq. "I haven't looked at it; I'd have to go back and look at it again," he said, however nonsensically.

Perhaps the only way to strike back against this fresh deluge of fiction is to call the White House's bluff. On Monday night, for instance, Mr. Bush flatly declared that "the safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad." He once again invoked Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, asking, "Do we have the confidence to do in the Middle East what our fathers and grandfathers accomplished in Europe and Asia?"

Rather than tune this bluster out, as the country now does, let's try a thought experiment. Let's pretend everything Mr. Bush said is actually true and then hold him to his word. If the safety of America really depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad, then our safety is in grave peril because we are losing that battle. The security crackdown announced with great fanfare by Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki in June is failing. Rosy American claims of dramatically falling murder rates are being challenged by the Baghdad morgue. Perhaps most tellingly, the Pentagon has now stopped including in its own tally the large numbers of victims killed by car bombings and mortar attacks in sectarian warfare.

And that's the good news. Another large slice of Iraq, Anbar Province (almost a third of the country), is slipping away so fast that a senior military official told NBC News last week that 50,000 to 60,000 additional ground forces were needed to secure it, despite our huge sacrifice in two savage battles for Falluja. The Iraqi troops "standing up" in Anbar are deserting at a rate as high as 40 percent.

"Even the most sanguine optimist cannot yet conclude we are winning," John Lehman, the former Reagan Navy secretary, wrote of the Iraq war last month."

Tourism slump worries US

2006-09-18T10:49:00.000+02:00
"While global travel has grown by a fifth, the the US travel industry’s share of the world tourism market has shrunk by a third, from 9% to 6%.

“Tourism is booming around the world, and we’re not participating in it,” said Jay Rasulo, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts and a leading figure in the Discover America Partnership.

The question is why America is missing out. The immediate obstacle is the stricter security introduced since September 2001. Airline and hotel executives groaned last month at the new limits imposed on hand luggage after the bomb plot scare at Heathrow.

The American tourist industry is painfully aware that many travellers are put off by the tough visa requirements and the hostile reception that can greet them at the country’s airports.

“We’re not a welcoming country,” said Geoff Freeman, executive director of the Discover America Partnership. “Most countries ask people to come visit them. We have more of a fortress appearance.”

Tough security measures are only part of the problem, however. Surveys show that America is becoming unpopular with the rest of the world, partly because of the Bush administration’s foreign policy."

Plastic Sheeting and Duct Tape: The keys to the midterm elections?

2006-09-18T10:46:00.000+02:00
"Anthrax. The president said anthrax.

If there was ever any doubt that President George Bush and the Republicans intend to win or lose the November midterm elections primarily on the terrorism issue, Bush put that to rest on Wednesday by interjecting the long-dormant issue of 2001's anthrax attacks into the 2006 campaign."

George Soros Slams Terror 'War,' Compares White House to Nazis

2006-09-18T10:44:00.000+02:00
"Billionaire philanthropist George Soros compared the Bush administration to socialist and communist regimes Thursday while criticizing America's war on terror.

The liberal political activist said the U.S. strategy of fighting a "war" against terrorism is "false" and a "dismal and disheartening situation."

Soros told an audience at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "We are working with a very false frame when we talk about a 'war on terror,' and yet it is universally accepted.

"Everybody now recognizes that invasion of Iraq was a real blunder, but the war on terror is still the frame that is accepted by Democrats and Republicans alike," Soros claimed. "It is a false, misleading, counterproductive, destructive frame."

Major Problems At Polls Feared

2006-09-18T10:42:00.000+02:00
"An overhaul in how states and localities record votes and administer elections since the Florida recount battle six years ago has created conditions that could trigger a repeat -- this time on a national scale -- of last week's Election Day debacle in the Maryland suburbs, election experts said.

In the Nov. 7 election, more than 80 percent of voters will use electronic voting machines, and a third of all precincts this year are using the technology for the first time. The changes are part of a national wave, prompted by the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 and numerous revisions of state laws, that led to the replacement of outdated voting machines with computer-based electronic machines, along with centralized databases of registered voters and other steps to refine the administration of elections.

But in Maryland last Tuesday, a combination of human blunders and technological glitches caused long lines and delays in vote-counting. The problems, which followed ones earlier this year in Ohio, Illinois and several other states, have contributed to doubts among some experts about whether the new systems are reliable and whether election officials are adequately prepared to use them.

In a polarized political climate, in which elections are routinely marked by litigation and allegations of incompetent administration or outright tampering, some worry that voting problems could cast a Florida-style shadow over this fall's midterm elections."

U.S. war prisons legal vacuum for 14,000

2006-09-18T10:40:00.000+02:00
"In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.

Disclosures of torture and long-term arbitrary detentions have won rebuke from leading voices including the U.N. secretary-general and the
U.S. Supreme Court. But the bitterest words come from inside the system, the size of several major U.S. penitentiaries.

"It was hard to believe I'd get out," Baghdad shopkeeper Amjad Qassim al-Aliyawi told The Associated Press after his release — without charge — last month. "I lived with the Americans for one year and eight months as if I was living in hell.""

Rumsfeld Unveils New Justification For Iraq War: High Gas Prices

2006-09-18T10:38:00.000+02:00
"Prior to the war, the administration stressed that the United States needed to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs and had connections to al-Qaeda. None of that turned out to be true.

Now, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has introduced a new rationale for the invasion of Iraq, high gas prices. From a radio interview last week:

SECRETARY RUMSFELD: The fact of the matter is - if Saddam Hussein were still in power in Iraq, he would be rolling in petrol dollars. Think of the price of oil today. He would have so much money. And he would be seeing the Iranians interested in a nuclear program, he would be seeing the North Koreans developing a nuclear program, and he’d say well why shouldn’t he - and he would. So we’re fortunate that he’s gone.

Of course, one of the reason gas prices are high is instability in the Middle East — created, in part, by the invasion of Iraq."

Ten anti-Castro "journalists" in South Florida on US government payroll

2006-09-18T10:35:00.000+02:00
"During the Mercosur summit in Argentina, WJAN-TV South Florida reporter, Manuel Cao, asked Cuban President Fidel Castro why his government didn't allow a prominent doctor and dissident to leave the country. Quick as lightning, Castro shot back, "Who pays you?"

Now we find that Cao's paymaster was the US government: he received $10,400 in payments so far this year. Cao is one among 10 South Florida journalists to have been found accepting money in exchange for touting propaganda intended to undermine the Cuban government via Radio and TV Marti (both bankrolled by the US government to the tune of $37 million to broadcast anti-Cuban propaganda from the States onto Cuban soil)."

Hedge Fund Heresy

2006-09-15T17:26:00.000+02:00
"Hedge funds -- fast-growing private investment pools of capital -- are known for their secrecy.

That is partly because federal regulations prohibit them from advertising or talking to anyone but their investors. But being private and secretive also enables them to develop investment strategies and manage their business, big fees included, without the Corporate Library criticizing their outsize pay.

So it is not without some irony that a hedge fund named the Fortress Investment Group may be the first to tear down those walls of secrecy. Fortress is considering an initial public offering this fall in a deal that could value the company from $5 billion to $7 billion, according to people who have been briefed on the plans."

Why Bad Trades Happen to Good People

2006-09-15T17:15:00.000+02:00
"A long feature in the latest issue of the New Yorker examines the field of "neuroeconomics," which is based on the theory that our economic decisions may be, at least in part, hardwired into our brains.

For instance, the idea of "loss aversion" may explain why some people decide to hold on to losing investments, even when logic would recommend otherwise. New Yorker writer John Cassidy writes:

If you present people with an even chance of winning a hundred and fifty dollars or losing a hundred dollars, most refuse the gamble, even though it is to their advantage to accept it: if you multiply the odds of winning—fifty per cent—times a hundred and fifty dollars, minus the odds of losing—also fifty per cent—times a hundred dollars, you end up with a gain of twenty-five dollars. If you accepted this bet ten times in a row, you could expect to gain two hundred and fifty dollars. But, when people are presented with it once, a prospective return of a hundred and fifty dollars isn’t enough to compensate them for a possible loss of a hundred dollars. In fact, most people won’t accept the gamble unless the winning stake is raised to two hundred dollars.

You might think that, unlike your average test subject in a psychological experiment, professional traders or corporate executives would crunch the numbers thoroughly before making a big stock trade, for example, or rejecting a billion-dollar buyout deal.

But there is evidence that even the pros show irrational behavior as well."

Bush Sr.In 1996: War With Iraq `Would Turn Entire Arab World Against Us’

2006-09-15T16:05:00.000+02:00
"Former President George Bush predicted in 1996 that if the United States were to engage in another war with Iraq, one aimed at overthrowing Saddam Hussein, the “entire Arab world would turn against us” and the U.S. would alienate its allies in the international community.

“To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us, and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero," Bush said in an interview with the BBC marking the five-year anniversary of the Gulf War."