Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

• Kos catches the media screwing up the preview (one word, kid: "healthcare!"


• Another Kos kid enjoyed Bush's call for more science and "ejumacation"


• Another Kos kid enjoyed Bush's call for more Think Progress has lots of debunkery on the whole speech plus this little bout of "truthiness" on Bush's science spending vs. his rhetoric...


• Michelle Malkin's son had a stomach ache, but she links to all the winger chat-back here

• Make that Bush 42...

• Pretty cowboys in love (or, last gasp of gay chic?)

Tags: Movies, Oscars, academy awards, Brokeback Mountain

The thing about icons is that they're also human beings, flawed and occasionally phenomenal. God rest the souls of this invaluable couple. They're together now in peace. Here's a timeline of Mrs. King's life, and link to some of the King papers (including one of the best pictures I've seen of a young Mrs. King), and a link to the current TIME story.

Cross -posted on the Reid Report Juicecast.

Tags: People, Coretta King, MLK

The second part of the Senate investigation into bungled pre-war Iraq intelligence is still being held up by an internal Pentagon investigation of Douglas Feith, one of the war's leading architects, RAW STORY has learned.

As previously reported by Raw Story, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) inquiry -- titled Phase II -- is waiting on a report from the Pentagon inspector general as to Feith's alleged role in manipulating pre-war intelligence to support a case for war. Feith, who is also being probed by the FBI for his role in an Israeli spy case, resigned in January 2005.

More broadly, a RAW STORY investigation has found that Feith's access to classified information and his alleged wrongdoing can likely be laid at the feet of more senior officials in the Bush Administration -- namely Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- who would have had to have overruled Pentagon background checks to reissue Feith's clearances after he was booted from the National Security Council for allegations of espionage in the mid 1980s ...

Last week, I brought up a really stupid "survey" one leftist whacko cooked up in his fried little brain to "test" the depths of their support. I turned it around, taking an almost-as-hyperbolic hypothetical situation and asked anti-Bush readers to answer that one.

In the comments, though, they wouldn't take the bait. But a couple of them in particular proved my point in their refusal. jreid (mentioned earlier today and No Exit both exhibited the frothing moonbat mentality in fine fettle. In fact, No Exit so captured the lunacy, his remarks ought to be printed out and saved in the Smithsonian as an examplar of the species.

But one recurring theme was that the Bush backers (like me, presumably) are mindless automatons, unthinking, willing puppets who just voice their support regardless of whatever he does, and defend his decisions, policies, and actions without any thought for themselves.

This is a load of crap, and sheerest projection. As Synova pointed out, Bush supporters tend to be far more issue-oriented than focusing on the individual. It's the Left that automatically denounces and gainsays Bush.

You want proof? Fine. Let's do a little compare and contrast.

A few months ago, Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. At that time, a lot of his traditional base differed with him -- and quite vocally, to the point where he had to withdraw her and replace her with Samuel Alito. I was one of those voices. Also, when I endorsed Bush for re-election, I specifically cited several instances where I disagreed with his positions.

So, let's see how things are on the other foot. I challenge liberal bloggers to go back and find a single posting where they -- no matter how reluctantly -- supported a single Bush policy, decision, statement, or action. If you don't have a blog of your own, go poking through the archives of some of the bigger left-lurching blogs and find one there. Kos, Atrios, TPM, Cousin Oliver Willis -- find ONE INSTANCE where they didn't just mindlessly oppose Bush.

I'm betting you won't.

Sweet Jesus, Jay. You cite THIS as your example of disagreeing with George Bush?:

"For just a few examples, I think he's wrong on the issues of abortion, stem-cell research, and gay marriage. But I also believe that he has derived his positions from sincere beliefs and ethical principles, and that is something I can respect."

Why not add that you also love him desperately, just the same? As one of the supposed "frothing moonbats" who can't stop hating George W. Bush, permit me to say that it IS the issues, man! If Mr. Bush (whatever my personal feelings about his intellectual candle wattage or other personal characteristics -- the inarticulateness, the smirk, the radio pack on his back... oh, sorry, frothing again...) were to suddenly espouse a policy I agreed with, I would certainly say so (and I wouldn't feel the need to qualify my support).

However, my problem with Mr. Bush is the very "principles" (your word) by which he seems to have come to all of his policy prescriptions: like hiring corporate cronies to oversee their former industries and then having the PR flaks massage the cronies' boosterism for their former industries into good governance talking points for the regurgitating devices on MSNBC, Fox and CNN to read. Or his habit of hiring campaign flaks (to run the Iraq CPA, FEMA, and now ICE) and shrugging off their clear incompetence and lack of qualifications. Without those things, Mr. Bush's proposals for New Orleans, his stewardship of the mining industry, his ideas for healthcare, social security etc. would be coming from a very different place, and I might even be able to support those ideas.

Then there's this habit Bush has ... or rather, that Cheney has for him ... of discovering new and expansive powers for the president that aren't in the Constitution. I dunno, somehow that bothers me, man...

On Iraq, we have the same problem. Mr. Bush began with a principle I cannot accept (and that other non-Moonbats like George Will and Pat Buchanan don't accept either): namely that it is a proper use of America's military to attack a country that didn't attack or threaten us, and which we have failed to prove could do so in the forseeable future. And then to do it BADLY, without enough troops to pacify the damned country and hand it back to its people in one, rather than a million little pieces? I should support that, why? Bush's roll of the dice with the mad neocons has doomed his presidency, shattered America's prestige, soiled its good name with the dregs of torture, prisoner abuse, secret jails and other Saddam-lite crap, and has brought his fundamental judgment into such question for me, that I really can't see how I support his foreign policy ideas going forward. And Bush seems to be making the same bad judgment calls on everything from Iran to North Korea to Latin America. Am I just supposed to support him because he's the president? (didn't work for Clinton) Because you say he's "principled?" ... or just because you say so?

In other words, I think your question is rather absurd. My disagreements with Mr. Bush ARE about issues -- they're about his POLICIES. His personal attributes are simply made more galling and annoying because he is a total incompetent as president. And by the way, why is it required that opponents of the president, who by definition oppose his methods of arriving at policy, "find something to agree with?" What's the point? To prove that we can? If you ask me, it's far more alarming to watch Bush bot types like yourself prostrate yourselves before the man and insist that he must be supported, even when his policies violate your own supposedly conservative principles (on immigration, for instance).

Trust me, Jay, if Dubya manages to do something -- anything -- right over the next three years, I'll be the first to stand up and cheer.

...oh wait! Marriage. ... I support Bush on marriage. Yes! I KNEW I could do it!

Okay, so I got a bit off topic. But you get my point.

Upate: To be fair, I decided that I really should take Jay up on his challenge. So I'm searching my archives to see if I can find anything -- a single post -- in which I agreed with George W. Bush. Okay Jay? Happy?

... searching ... searching ... (developing...)

Previous:

• Les Encompetents

Tags: politics, Bush, blogs, Moonbats,

• the Fallujah Marlboro Man is stressed the hell out...
• Australia's Prime Minister John Howard says he don't no nothing 'bout no stinkin' Saddam bribes...
• ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff has been medivac'd to Germany after being injured along with his cameraman, by a roadside bomb. Iraqi, btw, is officially the most deadly place for journalists worldwide.
• Still no word from reporter Jill Carroll's captors, but there is word from the group holding four peace activists -- and ain't good news...

Tags: Iraq war, Iraq, corruption

Caracas, Venezuela – Gold star mother Cindy Sheehan has decided to run against California Senator Diane Feinstein if Feinstein does not filibuster the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel Alito. While in Venezuela attending the World Social Forum, Sheehan learned that several Democratic Senators had announced their plans for a filibuster but that Senator Feinstein, who’s up for re-election in November, had stated she would vote against the nomination but not filibuster it. "I’m appalled that Diane Feinstein wouldn’t recognize how dangerous Alito’s nomination is to upholding the values of our constitution and restricting the usurpation of presidential powers, for which I’ve already paid the ultimate price," Sheehan said.

Mr. Bush made himself the judge of the proper balance between national security and Americans' rights, between the law and presidential power. He wants Americans to accept, on faith, that he is doing it right. But even if the United States had a government based on the good character of elected officials rather than law, Mr. Bush would not have earned that kind of trust.

• It talks!

• He originally wanted to call the book "The insurgent president" ... unfortunately the Iraq totally freaking sucking as a war messed that up...


• His biggest surprises in doing his "research" for the book: Bush really, really IS in charge! And "he's a reader" -- reads five books for every one Condi Rice does (and two of five those books aren't even about fart jokes! In your face, Bush haters!)


• The inspiration for the book was a 1,000 word article Barnes wrote for the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Luckily all he needed to add was another 400 words and little hearts over all the i's and it was straight to press!!!

• Down with democracy?
• Holy crap...
• The ballot or the bullet

1. Whatever else you want to say about her, Oprah knows how to do an apology. She comes off as a stand-up gal despite the million little screwup...

2. George W. Bush needs a thesaurus and a dictionary ... now... (and apparently he's afraid of little old Helen Thomas...)

3. John Kerry is trying too hard. And his entire soul-crushing PR ineptitude is encapsulated in the following passage:

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, is cutting short a trip to Switzerland to fly back to Washington Friday to lead the filibuster effort.

Mr. Kerry, you have a fascinating back story and clearly you would have done a better job as president than the current clod prince of Pennsylvania Avenue. Now kindly go away.

4. Actually, there is no honor among thieves...

5. There's more than one way to skin an investigation...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 — The investigation of Jack Abramoff, the disgraced Republican lobbyist, took a surprising new turn on Thursday when the Justice Department said the chief prosecutor in the inquiry would step down next week because he had been nominated to a federal judgeship by President Bush.

The prosecutor, Noel L. Hillman, is chief of the department's public integrity division, and the move ends his involvement in an inquiry that has reached into the administration as well as the top ranks of the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill.

The administration said that the appointment was routine and that it would not affect the investigation, but Democrats swiftly questioned the timing of the move and called for a special prosecutor.

Good luck Dems, you guys are like farm team players going up against the Evil All Stars...

Tags: News, Opinion, Current Affairs, Republicans, Bush, Corruption, GOP, Oprah, James Frey, Abramoff, John Kerry

• Absurdum this
• It ain't over till the fat man squeals
• Bill Bennett: Spokesman for the absurd
• Stop or I'll abort!
• Moroning in America
• From the mind of Bill Bennett
• More proof of insanity in the present age...

Tags: Bill Bennett, CNN, gambling

Hamas ... won ...??? outright...???

hmm...

Allow me to adjust what I said before. Hamas winning some seats -- even lots of seats -- would have been a tidal wave, and one which would have clearly changed the negotiating posture of the Quartet and the Israelis. This is more like a tsunami. The very real possibility now exists that Hamas will be the only biggest negotiating game in town (The Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas (of the Fatah party), is still in power, and will be the big man in the new coalition government, so Fatah still has his voice, plus 43 out of 132 seats in Parliament. Also, turns out the U.S. spent $2 million in USAID money to try and help Abbas' party out, boosting the party founded by the man Bush wouldn't even talk to, Yasser Arafat. Not that it worked, Condi... and now Dr. Rice is scampering around trying to get Europe to bail us out again) And the hope that a Hamas that's heavy with the burden of governing will choose politics over war seems more like an imperative.

If the Palestinian people are smart, they will keep a firm hand on the mandate they've given to the new guys. The last thing the world needs -- and the Palestinians themselves -- is to have the desperate Palestinian Diaspora looked upon (by more than just the Likudnik Israelis and the neocons in the U.S.) as an Islamist/terrorist state in waiting. Arafat screwed up big time by not taking the deal at Camp David in 2000 (or the second shot at it at Taba in January 2001). And the Fatah crowed blew it by cuddling up to Saddam Hussein. It is now, apparently, Hamas' turn to have a go.

Here's hoping they get serious about helping their people get a state, renounce the blustery talk and the violence and come to the table.

Worth a re-read: Ian Black's prescient article in the day-before-the-election Guardian...

Update: Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian's main negotiator with Israel over the years and whom you frequently see on television as a very coherent spokesman for the Palestinian cause (he's a former journalist, it turns out), won his legislative seat, as did the person I have found the most compelling among the Palestinian leadership over the years, Hanan Ashrawi. Neither of them sounded too hopeful today:

Fatah legislator Saeb Erekat said the party does not want to join a Hamas government. "We will be a loyal opposition and rebuild the party," Erekat said, after meeting Abbas.

But Nabil Shaath, another senior Fatah lawmaker, said the party's leadership would make a decision later on Thursday. ...

... Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, who apparently was re-elected on a moderate platform, said the Hamas victory was a dramatic turning point. She said she is concerned the fighters will now impose their fundamentalist social agenda and lead the Palestinians into international isolation.

She said Fatah's corruption, Israel's tough measures and international indifference to the plight of the Palestinians were to blame for Hamas's strong showing.

Some in Hamas were trying to be reassuring:

"Don't be afraid," Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, told the BBC. "Hamas is a Palestinian movement, it is an aware and mature movement, one which is politically open in the Palestinian arena, and to its Arab and Islamic hinterland, and similarly open to the international arena."

And clearly, the people who voted for the new guys had one thing on their mind: change.

For Maher Riyad, 55, owner of an electrical store, Thursday was a day of celebration. He said Hamas worked for the people and not themselves, and this was why he had voted for them.

"Fatah had opportunity after opportunity, but they squandered them all," said Mr Riyad.

While some Palestinians are concerned that the Islamic nature of Hamas will lead to greater conservatism in Palestinian society, most seem happy that Fatah has been defeated.

This morning in Ramallah, it was almost impossible to find someone who had voted for Fatah.

The party seemed to have been swept from the streets, just as it has been swept from its dominant position in the Palestinian legislature.

Unfortunately, the history of "people powered" movements not turning into the same old corruption with different faces isn't too good. And earlier hopes that the PA could attract billions in investment are now teetering. God only knows what happens next.

Update:

The obligatory Who's who in Hamas (amazing how many of these guys have been Israeli assassination targets...) And a good analysis of the situation from the Times of London. By the way good luck to Israel trying to get the EU to ignore the new Palestinian parliament. Fixing the Balfour mess is a large part of what Britain is all about, and the Germans and other countries are keen to get a settlement as well, I'd guess Hamas or no Hamas, especially if Abbas stays on and tries to form a coalition. If he goes, I guess all bets are off... and Washington hasn't much credibility or sway over there anymore, so I can't see how the Bush administration can improve things. At the least, this election result probably strengthens the extreme right in Israel, and gives the expansionists reason not to negotiate... not good.

Tags: Middle East, Palestinian, Elections, Democracy, Fatah, Hamas

White House Dismissed '02 Surveillance Proposal

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 26, 2006; A04

The Bush administration rejected a 2002 Senate proposal that would have made it easier for FBI agents to obtain surveillance warrants in terrorism cases, concluding that the system was working well and that it would likely be unconstitutional to lower the legal standard.

The proposed legislation by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) would have allowed the FBI to obtain surveillance warrants for non-U.S. citizens if they had a "reasonable suspicion" they were connected to terrorism -- a lower standard than the "probable cause" requirement in the statute that governs the warrants.

The administration has contended that it launched a secret program of warrantless domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency in part because of the time it takes to obtain such secret warrants from federal judges under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

The wiretapping program, ordered by President Bush in 2001, is used when intelligence agents have a "reasonable basis to believe" that a target is tied to al Qaeda or related groups, according to recent statements by administration officials. It can be used on U.S. citizens as well as foreign nationals, without court oversight.

Democrats and national security law experts who oppose the NSA program say the Justice Department's opposition to the DeWine legislation seriously undermines arguments by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and others, who have said the NSA spying is constitutional and that surveillance warrants are often too cumbersome to obtain.

"It's entirely inconsistent with their current position," said Philip B. Heymann, a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration who teaches law at Harvard University. "The only reason to do what they've been doing is because they wanted a lower standard than 'probable cause.' A member of Congress offered that to them, but they turned it down."

The Ben Franklin quote that has been so misused and abused by the civil liberties absolutists since Sept. 11 originally appeared in 1755:

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

The version that appears on the Statue of Liberty's pedestal reads:

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

The omission of those key qualifiers--"essential" and "little"-- makes all the difference in the world. Ben Franklin has been hijacked to endorse an untenable and deadly view that no sacrifice of any liberty for any amount of safety at any time should ever be made.

es·sen·tial ( P) Pronunciation Key (-snshl)adj.
Constituting or being part of the essence of something; inherent.
Basic or indispensable; necessary: essential ingredients. See Synonyms at indispensable.

The misquotation of Franklin in the argument about "domestic wiretapping" strikes me as particularly amusing in light of Franklin's role as one of the premier intelligence agents during the Revolutionary War. The CIA has a nice summary of the intelligence activities undertaken in that war, and no one is so prominent as Franklin, including in covert activities. More to the point here, Franklin was a member of the original committee, appointed by the Continental Congress, to review and publish intercepted communications from England. Hmm, Benjamin Franklin: Domestic Spy! If he meant what the liberals think he meant, we're going to have to change his statues to read "Printer, Inventor, Statesman, Hypocrite"!

The Continental Congress regularly received quantities of intercepted British and Tory mail. On November 20, 1775, it received some intercepted letters from Cork, Ireland, and appointed a committee made up of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Johnson, Robert Livingston, Edward Rutledge, James Wilson and George Wythe "to select such parts of them as may be proper to publish." The Congress later ordered a thousand copies of the portions selected by the Committee to be printed and distributed. A month later, when another batch of intercepted mail was received, a second committee was appointed to examine it. Based on its report, the Congress resolved that "the contents of the intercepted letters this day read, and the steps which Congress may take in consequence of said intelligence thereby given, be kept secret until further orders." By early 1776, abuses were noted in the practice, and Congress resolved that only the councils or committees of safety of each colony, and their designees, could henceforth open the mail or detain any letters from the post.

"Who has deceiv'd thee so oft as thy self?"

Domestic Calls are calls inside the United States. International Calls are calls either to or from the United States.

Domestic Flights are flights from one American city to another. International Flights are flights to or from the United States.

Domestic Mail consists of letters and packages sent within the United States. International Mail consists of letters and packages sent to or from the United States.

Domestic Commerce involves business within the United States. International Commerce involves business between the United States and other countries.

Irrelevant is information having nothing to do with the problem at hand.

TITLE 50 > CHAPTER 36 > SUBCHAPTER I >
§ 1802. Electronic surveillance authorization without court order":

(1) Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year if the Attorney General certifies in writing under oath that—

(A) the electronic surveillance is solely directed at—

(i) the acquisition of the contents of communications transmitted by means of communications used exclusively between or among foreign powers, as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title; or [Bushbot cliff notes: that would mean both parties are "international..."]

(ii) the acquisition of technical intelligence, other than the spoken communications of individuals, from property or premises under the open and exclusive control of a foreign power, as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title; [Bushbot cliff notes: that's like an embassy or somethin' like 'at...]

(B) there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party; ...

• Contempt of Congress?
• Dwindling legal arguments for the Bush faithful

Tags: politics, News, Bush, national security, NSA, government, spying, president, impeachment

Incompetence is not one of the seven deadly sins, and it's hardly the worst attribute that can be ascribed to George W. Bush. But it is this president's defining attribute. Historians, looking back at the hash that his administration has made of his war in Iraq, his response to Hurricane Katrina and his Medicare drug plan, will have to grapple with how one president could so cosmically botch so many big things -- particularly when most of them were the president's own initiatives.

In numbing profusion, the newspapers are filled with litanies of screw-ups. Yesterday's New York Times brought news of the first official assessment of our reconstruction efforts in Iraq, in which the government's special inspector general depicted a policy beset, as Times reporter James Glanz put it, "by gross understaffing, a lack of technical expertise, bureaucratic infighting [and] secrecy." At one point, rebuilding efforts were divided, bewilderingly and counterproductively, between the Army Corps of Engineers and, for projects involving water, the Navy. That's when you'd think a president would make clear in no uncertain terms that bureaucratic turf battles would not be allowed to impede Iraq's reconstruction. But then, the president had no guiding vision for how to rebuild Iraq -- indeed, he went to war believing that such an undertaking really wouldn't require much in the way of American treasure and American lives.

It's the president's prescription drug plan (Medicare Part D), though, that is his most mind-boggling failure. As was not the case in Iraq or with Katrina, it hasn't had to overcome the opposition of man or nature. Pharmacists are not resisting the program; seniors are not planting car bombs to impede it (not yet, anyway). But in what must be an unforeseen development, people are trying to get their medications covered under the program. Apparently, this is a contingency for which the administration was not prepared, as it has been singularly unable to get its own program up and running.

In practice, the outcome of tomorrow's election, in which the Islamic Resistance Movement (to use its full name) is thought likely to win 30-40% of the vote, is going to require a subtle diplomatic response - especially as the US has been energetically, if selectively, promoting democracy in the Middle East since the Iraq war. Washington supported Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, in his decision to let Hamas run in this contest in the hope that it would be drawn away from violence into politics. The US also ensured that Israel did not sabotage the ballot.

Assuming that the election does produce a good result for Hamas - and barring surprises that now seems certain - governments will have to think again - hard.

It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware of the ''rendition'' of more than a hundred persons affecting Europe, according to Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty, whose interim assessment was made public today in an information memorandum. Citing statements made by American officials and others, Mr Marty also said there was ''a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of 'relocation' or 'outsourcing' of torture''. He welcomed the arrival yesterday of detailed information he had requested from Eurocontrol and the EU's Satellite Agency. At the opening of the debate this morning, Dick Marty expressed his concern at the pressure put on the media in the United States not to report on this affair. ''Our aim is to find out the truth that is being hidden from us today'', he said.

Blindly lending support to our soldiers, I fear, will keep them overseas longer by giving soft acquiescence to the hawks who sent them there — and who might one day want to send them somewhere else. Trust me, a guy who thought 50.7% was a mandate isn't going to pick up on the subtleties of a parade for just service in an unjust war. He's going to be looking for funnel cake.

Besides, those little yellow ribbons aren't really for the troops. They need body armor, shorter stays and a USO show by the cast of "Laguna Beach."

The real purpose of those ribbons is to ease some of the guilt we feel for voting to send them to war and then making absolutely no sacrifices other than enduring two Wolf Blitzer shows a day. Though there should be a ribbon for that.

I understand the guilt. We know we're sending recruits to do our dirty work, and we want to seem grateful.

After we've decided that we made a mistake, we don't want to blame the soldiers who were ordered to fight. Or even our representatives, who were deceived by false intelligence. And certainly not ourselves, who failed to object to a war we barely understood.

The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying. An army of people ignoring their morality, by the way, is also Jack Abramoff's pet name for the House of Representatives.

I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I'm tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.

But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam.

And sometimes, for reasons I don't understand, you get to just hang out in Germany.

Two bombs killed at least six people and wounded 35 others in the oil-rich Iranian city of Ahvaz in Khuzestan province, where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was due to give a speech today.

Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Pour Mohammadi said those responsible for the ``terrorist'' acts were trained ``outside'' Iran's borders. One explosion occurred in a bank in Kianpour district in the southwestern city, and the other in Manabe Tabiee, state television said. Ahvaz is near the Iraqi border.

President Ahmadinejad canceled his visit to Ahvaz because of bad weather, his press office said. The bombs didn't explode at the location where he was due to speak, the office said.

Iran holds the world's second-largest oil reserves and is the No. 2 producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Khuzestan, its largest oil-producing province, has witnessed unrest in recent months that the government attributes to ethnic Arab separatists. Arabs, who make up the majority in Ahvaz, account for 3 percent of Iran's population.

Most of Iran's crude oil reserves are in Khuzestan, which is located close to the border with Iraq and to the Persian Gulf. The province is also home to two of the country's largest undeveloped oil fields -- the Azadegan and Yadavaran deposits.

A story in the Jerusalem Post quotes Iran's official news agency as describing the city of Ahvaz as " a city in southwestern Iran with a history of violence involving members of Iran's Arab minority" and it adds:

Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi said the attacks were related to last year's bombings in the city and were foreign inspired.

"Today's explosions are a continuation of the same indiscriminate attacks directed from outside the country," IRNA quoted Pourmohammadi as saying.

Ahvaz, capital of the oil-rich province of Khuzestan, has been the scene of intermittent unrest among the predominantly Persian country's Arab minority.

A major bombing in the city in October that authorities blamed on Britain and on ethnic Arabs killed several people and injured scores.

A local journalist in Ahvaz, Mojtaba Gahestuni, suggested to Radio Farda that today's explosions resembled blasts that killed more than a dozen people and wounded more than 100 in the same city in June and October. Gahestuni noted that in each case an initial blast was followed shortly thereafter by a second explosion, and that the attacks took place in crowded parts of the city.

It is unclear if robbery was the sole motive for this latest attack, but it comes just days after militants who have kidnapped four foreign oil workers and attacked a Shell oil platform said they were preparing to carry out more raids.

The rebel group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, says it wants a share of the Niger Delta region's enormous oil wealth, and is demanding the release of two local leaders.

"I'm concerned about a non-transparent society's desire to develop a nuclear weapon. The world cannot be put in a position where we can be blackmailed by a nuclear weapon," Bush said during a speech in Manhattan, Kansas.

Notwithstanding the United States' overwhelming military superiority and the asymmetry of warfighting capabilities between Iran and the US, it makes perfect sense, strategically speaking, for Iran to resort to the remedial targeting of Israel, the United States' strategic partner in the region.

In other words, Iran's current expressions of hostilities toward Israel are better understood from the prism of the US and Iran and how Tehran benefits in its incessant search for regional allies to offset US power. This it does through its anti-Israel posturing, using threats against Israel as the United States' Achilles' heel.

This brings us to the notion that Tehran's road to Washington, that is detente between the two countries, goes through Tel Aviv, and that Iran's cessation of hostilities toward Israel is the sine qua non for Washington's willingness to normalize ties with Tehran.

This is wrong, and the sooner US politicians realize it the better. Iran's US policy goes first: its Israel policy is a component of this. Put simply, Tehran's road to Washington does not travel through Jerusalem; rather, indulging in metaphors for a moment, it is a straight highway with several exit lanes, one of which is Israel.

Consequently, should a war break out between Iran and Israel in the (near) future, retrospectively it will most likely be interpreted by future historians as yet another example of how misperceptions cause war. Robert Jervis, in his important book Perception and Misperception in International Politics, has aptly detailed how the 1967 war was instigated by an Israeli misperception of the intentions of Egypt's leader, Gemal Abdul Nasser, who was vilified then as an "Arab Hitler" out to destroy Israel.

It turns out that Nasser's fiery anti-Zionist rhetoric was mostly for domestic consumption and his decision to remove the United Nations buffer forces from the Sinai and the like were not in preparation for war but simply maneuvers meant to bolster Syria's position.

Sadly, it appears that the same misperceptions are sowing the seeds of yet another bloody conflict in the Middle East, and one only hopes that learning from the past can make a difference, much as it is currently difficult to distinguish facts from misperceptions, public postures from policies and intentions.

• Iran's options
• Iranscam
• Ahmadine...Jesus, Mary and Joseph!

In the 48 hours before Hurricane Katrina hit, the White House received detailed warnings about the storm's likely impact, including eerily prescient predictions of breached levees, massive flooding, and major losses of life and property, documents show.

A 41-page assessment by the Department of Homeland Security's National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC), was delivered by e-mail to the White House's "situation room," the nerve center where crises are handled, at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, the day the storm hit, according to an e-mail cover sheet accompanying the document.

The NISAC paper warned that a storm of Katrina's size would "likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching" and specifically noted the potential for levee failures along Lake Pontchartrain. It predicted economic losses in the tens of billions of dollars, including damage to public utilities and industry that would take years to fully repair. Initial response and rescue operations would be hampered by disruption of telecommunications networks and the loss of power to fire, police and emergency workers, it said.

In a second document, also obtained by The Washington Post, a computer slide presentation by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, prepared for a 9 a.m. meeting on Aug. 27, two days before Katrina made landfall, compared Katrina's likely impact to that of "Hurricane Pam," a fictional Category 3 storm used in a series of FEMA disaster-preparedness exercises simulating the effects of a major hurricane striking New Orleans. But Katrina, the report warned, could be worse. ...

...The documents shed new light on the extent on the administration's foreknowledge about Katrina's potential for unleashing epic destruction on New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities and towns. President Bush, in a televised interview three days after Katrina hit, suggested that the scale of the flooding in New Orleans was unexpected. "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did anticipate a serious storm," Bush said in a Sept. 1 interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."

In their collective wisdom, Canadian voters struck a cautious balance between determination to separate the Liberals from power and concerns about what the Conservatives would do with it. The result is a surprisingly weak Stephen Harper Conservative minority government with an uncertain future.

Putting an end to 13 years of what often felt like one-party rule, Canadians streamed to the polls on an unusually mild winter day first to toss out tired and tainted Liberals and then to impose onerous conditions on the Conservatives and their 46-year-old leader.

They gave the Liberals and the resurgent NDP the strength to defeat this minority, a fascinating dynamic that pushes the Bloc Quebecois toward the sidelines and should make Canadians breathe easier about any real or imagined neo-conservative threat to social values.

29 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
They didn't have a zero star rating., January 22, 2006
Reviewer: OGould - See all my reviews

I completely recommend this book if you like being underwhelmed, or if you want to be whipped into a catatonic stupor. If you must read it, get it from the library so you won't feel like you did when you bought the Ding King from the TV commercial. (As for the writing style, I'm not sure our president can push a subject against a predicate, at gunpoint.) If this was written by a ghostwriter, he or she should be taken out and shot.

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...To U.S. Army analysts at the top-secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), the peanut-butter protest was regarded as a potential threat to national security. Created three years ago by the Defense Department, CIFA's role is "force protection"—tracking threats and terrorist plots against military installations and personnel inside the United States. In May 2003, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy Defense secretary, authorized a fact-gathering operation code-named TALON—short for Threat and Local Observation Notice—that would collect "raw information" about "suspicious incidents." The data would be fed to CIFA to help the Pentagon's "terrorism threat warning process," according to an internal Pentagon memo.

A Defense document shows that Army analysts wrote a report on the Halliburton protest and stored it in CIFA's database. It's not clear why the Pentagon considered the protest worthy of attention—although organizer Parkin had previously been arrested while demonstrating at ExxonMobil headquarters (the charges were dropped). But there are now questions about whether CIFA exceeded its authority and conducted unauthorized spying on innocent people and organizations. A Pentagon memo obtained by NEWSWEEK shows that the deputy Defense secretary now acknowledges that some TALON reports may have contained information on U.S. citizens and groups that never should have been retained. The number of reports with names of U.S. persons could be in the thousands, says a senior Pentagon official who asked not be named because of the sensitivity of the subject. ...

Four months later, on Oct. 25, the TALON team reported another possible threat to national security. The source: a Miami antiwar Web page. "Website advertises protest planned at local military recruitment facility," the internal report warns. The database entry refers to plans by a south Florida group called the Broward Anti-War Coalition to protest outside a strip-mall recruiting office in Lauderhill, Fla. The TALON entry lists the upcoming protest as a "credible" threat. As it turned out, the entire event consisted of 15 to 20 activists waving a giant BUSH LIED sign. No one was arrested. "It's very interesting that the U.S. military sees a domestic peace group as a threat," says Paul Lefrak, a librarian who organized the protest.

The Justice Department's voting section, a small and usually obscure unit that enforces the Voting Rights Act and other federal election laws, has been thrust into the center of a growing debate over recent departures and controversial decisions in the Civil Rights Division as a whole.

Many current and former lawyers in the section charge that senior officials have exerted undue political influence in many of the sensitive voting-rights cases the unit handles. Most of the department's major voting-related actions over the past five years have been beneficial to the GOP, they say, including two in Georgia, one in Mississippi and a Texas redistricting plan orchestrated by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) in 2003.

The section also has lost about a third of its three dozen lawyers over the past nine months. Those who remain have been barred from offering recommendations in major voting-rights cases and have little input in the section's decisions on hiring and policy.

"If the Department of Justice and the Civil Rights Division is viewed as political, there is no doubt that credibility is lost," former voting-section chief Joe Rich said at a recent panel discussion in Washington. He added: "The voting section is always subject to political pressure and tension. But I never thought it would come to this." ...

... The 2005 Georgia case has been particularly controversial within the section. Staff members complain that higher-ranking Justice officials ignored serious problems with data supplied by the state in approving the plan, which would have required voters to carry photo identification.

Georgia provided Justice with information on Aug. 26 suggesting that tens of thousands of voters may not have driver's licenses or other identification required to vote, according to officials and records. That added to the concerns of a team of voting-section employees who had concluded that the Georgia plan would hurt black voters.

But higher-ranking officials disagreed, and approved the plan later that day. They said that as many as 200,000 of those without ID cards were felons and illegal immigrants and that they would not be eligible to vote anyway.

One of the officials involved in the decision was Hans von Spakovsky, a former head of the Fulton County GOP in Atlanta, who had long advocated a voter-identification law for the state and oversaw many voting issues at Justice. Justice spokesman Eric W. Holland said von Spakovsky's previous activities did not require a recusal and had no impact on his actions in the Georgia case.

Holland denied a request to interview von Spakovsky, saying that department policy "does not authorize the media to conduct interviews with staff attorneys." Von Spakovsky has since been named to the Federal Election Commission in a recess appointment by President Bush.

"Peppered for days with questions about Abramoff's visits to the White House, press secretary Scott McClellan said the now disgraced lobbyist had attended two huge holiday receptions and a few "staff-level meetings" that were not worth describing further. "The President does not know him, nor does the President recall ever meeting him," McClellan said.

The President's memory may soon be unhappily refreshed. TIME has seen five photographs of Abramoff and the President that suggest a level of contact between them that Bush's aides have downplayed. While TIME's source refused to provide the pictures for publication, they are likely to see the light of day eventually because celebrity tabloids are on the prowl for them. And that has been a fear of the Bush team's for the past several months: that a picture of the President with the admitted felon could become the iconic image of direct presidential involvement in a burgeoning corruption scandal like the shots of President Bill Clinton at White House coffees for campaign contributors in the mid-1990s. ...

... Abramoff was once in better graces at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, having raised at least $100,000 for the President's re-election campaign. During 2001 and 2002, his support for Republicans and connections to the White House won him invitations to Hanukkah receptions, each attended by 400 to 500 people. McClellan has said Abramoff may have been present at "other widely attended" events. He was also admitted to the White House complex for meetings with several staff members, including one with presidential senior adviser Karl Rove, one of the most coveted invitations in Washington.

Michael Scanlon, who is Abramoff's former partner and has pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe a Congressman, in 2001 told the New Times of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., that Abramoff had "a relationship" with the President. "He doesn't have a bat phone or anything, but if he wanted an appointment, he would have one," Scanlon said.

And by the way, one of the tribal leaders apparently pictured with Jack 'n Dubya at a meet and greet set up by Abramoff and Grover Norquist: he's under indictment for embezzling $200,000 from his tribe. Oh, the company you keep...

• Osama bin helpful

In a telephone interview with The Desert Sun this morning, Frank Abramoff said Clooney was “an idiot” and described the actions as “pure, unadulterated stupidity.”

“You want to make fun. You can do that, but you don't make fun of someone else's hardships and misery,” the 78-year-old Abramoff said. “We’ve gone through quite a bit in our family. But the political end of it and the media end of it and all the other areas are one thing. When you see something like that on a show for 500 million people, it was not only a slap in my son’s face but in my father’s.”

... a September 1 report by NBC speculated that the reason the Israelis may have broken their declared post-Pollard policy of not spying on the United States is because of Israel’s preeminent concern about Iran’s nuclear program, and its view that the United States may not be prepared to act assertively enough to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The Post piece seems to imply that Franklin is more of an anti-Tehran zealot than anything else and wasn’t engaging in espionage per se. But as the Post article and the June meeting between Green and the FBI seem to indicate, the FBI is looking into the possibility there's been communication between Israeli elements and U.S. officials, including several who work for Feith and have access to sensitive intelligence on Iran and its nuclear program.

Green, as the FBI agents knew, had a special expertise in the field of Israeli espionage in the United States. In the 1980s, he had taken time off from his job at the UN to look into the U.S.–Israeli "special relationship." He spent years combing through public records, filing and litigating Freedom of Information Act requests, and tracking down current and retired government officials. He eventually wrote two books, Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations With Israel and Living By The Sword: America and Israel in the Middle East. The Times of London and Foreign Affairs commended his work, describing it as "praised by those who believe the United States has damaged its own security, and Israel's too, by uncritical and often secret support of Israel's actions, no matter how extreme." Yet, as Foreign Affairs reported, Green's work also caused "sputter[ing] with indignation" among "those who believe… that American and Israeli interests are identical."

Green returned to the UN in 1990 and followed the subject from there. Earlier this year, he published a piece in the newsletter CounterPunch, recapping previously reported -- though long-forgotten -- government investigations of prominent neoconservatives for their suspected espionage or improper information-sharing with Israel. And that's where the FBI comes in.

According to the FBI agents who contacted Green, as he recounts, the article had come to their attention when one of Green’s sources -- a retired national security official they were interviewing -- shared it with them.

And so on June 22, Green found himself sitting across an oval-shaped conference table from two FBI agents at an undisclosed northern Virginia venue. The meeting lasted nearly four hours.

"They were extraordinarily well-informed; it was apparent they've been at this for awhile," Green says. "I asked them if there was a current reason for them asking questions about things that go back over 30 years, and they sort of looked at each other and said, 'Yes, it's a present issue,' but wouldn't say specifically what. Though they did ask very specific questions about one individual in particular."

Green said the agents asked about several current or former Pentagon officials such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Michael Ledeen, and Stephen Bryen.
"The tenor of their questions was such that it defined where these people were in terms of the nature of their focus," Green says. "They also asked about a couple other Office of Special Plans people, including Harold Rhode. Ironically, about the only name that didn't come up was Larry Franklin."

First, the indictment says that from "about April 1999 and continuing until on or about August 27, 2004" Franklin, Rosen and Weissman "did unlawfully, knowingly and willfully conspire" in criminal activity against the United States. So far, no one has explained what triggered an investigation that began more than six years ago. But it reveals how long the three indicted conspirators and "others, known and unknown to the Grand Jury," engaged in such criminal activity. In any case, what appeared at first to be a brief dalliance between Franklin and the two AIPAC officials now—according to the latest indictment, at least—spans more than five years and involves at least several other individuals, at least some of whom are known to the investigation. What triggered the investigation in 1999, and how much information has FBI surveillance, wiretaps and other investigative efforts collected?

Second, the indictment makes it absolutely clear that the investigation was aimed at AIPAC, not at Franklin. The document charges that Rosen and Weissman met repeatedly with officials from a foreign government (Israel, though not named in the indictment) beginning in 1999, to provide them with classified information. In other words, the FBI was looking into the Israel lobby, not Franklin and the Defense Department, at the start, and Franklin was simply caught up in the net when he made contact with the AIPACers. Rosen and Weissman were observed making illicit contact with several other U.S. officials between 1999 and 2004, although those officials are left unnamed (and unindicted). Might there be more to come? Who are these officials, cited merely as United States Government Official 1, USGO 2, etc.?

Third, Franklin was introduced to Rosen-Weissman when the two AIPACers "called a Department of Defense employee (DOD employee A) at the Pentagon and asked for the name of someone in OSD ISA [Office of the Secretary of Defense, International Security Affairs] with an expertise on Iran" and got Franklin's name. Who was "DOD employee A"? Was it Douglas Feith, the undersecretary for policy? Harold Rhode, the ghost-like neocon official who helped Feith assemble the secretive Office of Special Plans, where Franklin worked? The indictment doesn't say. But this reporter observed Franklin, Rhode and Michael Rubin, a former AEI official who served in the Pentagon during this period and then returned to AEI, sitting together side by side, often in the front row, at American Enterprise Institute meetings during 2002-2003. Later in the indictment, we learn that Franklin, Rosen and Weissman hobnobbed with "DOD employee B," too.

Fourth, Rosen and Weissman told Franklin that they would try to get him a job at the White House, on the National Security Council staff. Who did they talk to at the White House, if they followed through? What happened?

Fifth, the charging document refers to "Foreign Official 1," also known as FO-1, obviously referring to an Israeli embassy official or an Israeli intelligence officer. It also refers later to FO-2, FO-3, etc., meaning that other Israeli officials were involved as well. How many Israeli officials are implicated in this, and who are they?

Sixth, was AEI itself involved? The indictment says that "on or about March 13, 2003, Rosen disclosed to a senior fellow at a Washington, D.C., think tank the information relating to the classified draft internal policy document" about Iran. The indictment says that the think tank official agreed "to follow up and see what he could do." Which think tank, and who was involved?

The indictment is rich with other detail, including specific instances in which the indicted parties lied to the FBI about their activities. It describes how Franklin eventually set up a regular liaison with an Israeli official ("FO-3") and met him in Virginia "and elsewhere" to communicate U.S. secrets.

In August 2004, the FBI and the US Justice Department counter-intelligence bureau announced that they were investigating a top Pentagon analyst suspected of spying for Israel and handing over highly confidential documents on US policy toward Iran to AIPAC which in turn handed them over to the Israeli Embassy. The FBI had been covertly investigating senior Pentagon analyst, Larry Franklin and AIPAC leaders, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman for several years prior to their indictment for spying. On August 29, 2005 the Israeli Embassy predictably hotly denied the spy allegation. On the same day Larry Franklin was publicly named as a spy suspect. Franklin worked closely with Michael Ledeen and Douglas Feith, then Undersecretary for Defense in the Pentagon, in fabricating the case for war with Iraq. Franklin was the senior analyst on Iran, which is at the top of AIPAC’s list of targets for war.

As the investigation proceeded toward formal charges of espionage, the pro-Israeli think tanks and ‘Zioncon’ ideologues joined in a two-prong response. On the one hand some questioned whether “handing over documents” was a crime at all, claiming it involved “routine exchanges of ideas” and lobbying. On the other hand, Israeli officials and media denied any Israeli connection with Franklin, minimizing his importance in policy-making circles, while others vouched for his integrity.

The FBI investigation of the Washington spy network deepened and included the interrogation of two senior members of Feith’s Office of Special Plans, William Luti and Harold Rhode. The OSP was responsible for feeding bogus intelligence leading to the US attack of Iraq. The leading FBI investigator, Dave Szady, stated that the FBI investigation involved wiretaps, undercover surveillance and photography that document the passing of classified information from Franklin to the men at AIPAC and on to the Israelis.

The Franklin-AIPAC-Israeli investigation was more than a spy case, it involved the future of US-Middle East relations and more specifically whether the ‘Zioncons’ would be able to push the US into a military confrontation with Iran. Franklin was a top Pentagon analyst on Iran, with access to all the executive branch deliberations on Iran. AIPAC lobbying and information gathering was aggressively directed toward pushing the Israeli agenda on a US-Iranian confrontation against strong opposition in the State Department, CIA, military intelligence and field commanders.

Franklin’s arrest on May 4, 2005 and the subsequent arrest of AIPAC foreign policy research director Steve Rosen and Iran specialist and deputy director for foreign policy, Keith Weissman on August 4, 2005 was a direct blow to the Israeli-AIPAC war agenda for the US. The FBI investigation proceeded with caution accumulating detailed intelligence over several years. Prudence was dictated by the tremendous political influence that AIPAC and its allies among the Conference of the Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations wield in Congress, the media and among Fundamentalist Christians and which could be brought to bear when the accused spies were brought to trial.

But Robert Reinstein, dean of the law school at Temple University, said in an interview that he considered the eavesdropping program "a pretty straightforward case where the president is acting illegally," and he said there appeared to be a broad consensus among legal scholars and national security experts that the administration's legal arguments were weak.

The foreign intelligence law passed by Congress in 1978 represents the Bush administration's biggest legal hurdle, he said. "When Congress speaks on questions that are domestic in nature, I really can't think of a situation where the president has successfully asserted a constitutional power to supersede that," he said.

Two leading civil rights groups brought lawsuits this week aimed at ending the N.S.A. program, and several lawyers representing defendants in terrorism cases are also seeking to challenge the program on the grounds that it may have been improperly used in criminal prosecutions.

Mr. Reinstein predicted that the court would ultimately declare the program unconstitutional. "This is domestic surveillance over American citizens for whom there is no evidence or proof that they are involved in any illegal activity, and it is in contravention of a statute of Congress specifically designed to prevent this," he said.

• Not + legal = illegal
• What Gore said

I would like to tell you that the war is for you or for us to win. If we win it, it means your defeat and disgrace forever as the wind blows in this direction with God's help.

If you win it, you should read the history. We are a nation that does not tolerate injustice and seek revenge forever.

Days and nights will not go by until we take revenge as we did on 11 September, God willing, and until your minds are exhausted and your lives become miserable and things turn [for the worse], which you detest.

As for us, we do not have anything to lose. The swimmer in the sea does not fear rain. You have occupied our land, defiled our honour, violated our dignity, shed our blood, ransacked our money, demolished our houses, rendered us homeless, and tampered with our security. We will treat you in the same way. ...

... I swear not to die but a free man even if I taste the bitterness of death. I fear to be humiliated or betrayed.

The Bush administration appears to have violated the National Security Act by limiting its briefings about a warrantless domestic eavesdropping program to congressional leaders, according to a memo from Congress's research arm released yesterday.

The Congressional Research Service opinion said that the amended 1947 law requires President Bush to keep all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees "fully and currently informed" of such intelligence activities as the domestic surveillance effort.

The memo from national security specialist Alfred Cumming is the second report this month from CRS to question the legality of aspects of Bush's domestic spying program. A Jan. 6 report concluded that the administration's justifications for the program conflicted with current law.

Yesterday's analysis was requested by Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, who wrote in a letter to Bush earlier this month that limiting information about the eavesdropping program violated the law and provided for poor oversight. ...

... The only exception in the law applies to covert actions, Cumming found, and those programs must be reported to the "Gang of Eight," which includes House and Senate leaders in addition to heads of the intelligence panels. The administration can also withhold some operational details in rare circumstances, but that does not apply to the existence of entire programs, he wrote.

Unless the White House contends the program is a covert action, the memo said, "limiting congressional notification of the NSA program to the Gang of Eight ... would appear to be inconsistent with the law."

Iran is a serious country, not another two-bit post-imperial rogue waiting to be slapped about the head by a white man. It is the fourth largest oil producer in the world. Its population is heading towards 80 million by 2010. Its capital, Tehran, is a mighty metropolis half as big again as London. Its culture is ancient and its political life is, to put it mildly, fluid.

All the following statements about Iran are true. There are powerful Iranians who want to build a nuclear bomb. There are powerful ones who do not. There are people in Iran who would like Israel to disappear. There are people who would not. There are people who would like Islamist rule. There are people who would not. There are people who long for some idiot Western politician to declare war on them. There are people appalled at the prospect. The only question for Western strategists is which of these people they want to help. ...

...On Monday, Washington’s knee-jerk belligerence put this coalition under immediate strain. In two weeks the IAEA must decide whether to report Iran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. There seems little point in doing this if China and Russia vetoes it or if there is no plan B for what to do if such pressure fails to halt enrichment, which seems certain. A clear sign of Western floundering are speeches and editorials concluding that Iran “should not take international concern lightly”, the West should “be on its guard” and everyone “should think carefully”. It means nobody has a clue.

I cannot see how all this confrontation will stop Iran doing whatever it likes with its nuclear enrichment, which is reportedly years away from producing weapons-grade material. The bombing of carefully dispersed and buried sites might delay deployment. But given the inaccuracy of American bombers, the death and destruction caused to Iran’s cities would be a gift to anti-Western extremists and have every world terrorist reporting for duty.

Nor would the “coward’s war” of economic sanctions be any more effective. Refusing to play against Iranian footballers (hated by the clerics), boycotting artists, ostracizing academics, embargoing commerce, freezing foreign bank accounts — so-called smart sanctions — are as counterproductive as could be imagined. Such feel-good gestures drive the enemies of an embattled regime into silence, poverty or exile. As Timothy Garton Ash wrote in the Guardian pages after a recent visit, Western aggression “would drain overnight its still large reservoir of anti-regime, mildly pro-Western sentiment”.

By all accounts Ahmadinejad is not secure. He is subject to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His foe, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, retains some power. Tehran is not a Saddamist dictatorship or a Taleban autocracy. It is a shambolic oligarchy with bureaucrats and technocrats jostling for power with clerics. Despite a quarter century of effort, the latter have not created a truly fundamentalist Islamic state. Iran is a classic candidate for the politics of subtle engagement.

This means strengthening every argument in the hands of those Iranians who do not want nuclear weapons or Israel eliminated, who crave a secular state and good relations with the West. No such argument embraces name-calling, saber rattling, sanctions or bombs.

The government is secretly trying to stifle attempts by MPs to find out what it knows about CIA "torture flights" and privately admits that people captured by British forces could have been sent illegally to interrogation centres. A hidden strategy aimed at suppressing a debate about rendition - the US practice of transporting detainees to secret centres where they are at risk of being tortured - is revealed in a briefing paper sent by the Foreign Office to No 10.

The document shows that the government has been aware of secret interrogation centres, despite ministers' denials. It admits that the government has no idea whether individuals seized by British troops in Iraq or Afghanistan have been sent to the secret centres.
Dated December 7 last year, the document is a note from Irfan Siddiq, of the foreign secretary's private office, to Grace Cassy in Tony Blair's office. It was obtained by the New Statesman magazine, whose latest issue is published today.

It was drawn up in response to a Downing Street request for advice "on substance and handling" of the controversy over CIA rendition flights and allegations of Britain's connivance in the practice. ...

...The document advises the government to rely on a statement by Condoleezza Rice last month when the US secretary of state said America did not transport anyone to a country where it believed they would be tortured and that, "where appropriate", Washington would seek assurances.

The document notes: "We would not want to cast doubt on the principle of such government-to-government assurances, not least given our own attempts to secure these from countries to which we wish to deport their nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism: Algeria etc."

The document says that in the most common use of the term - namely, involving real risk of torture - rendition could never be legal. It also says that the US emphasised torture but not "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment", which binds Britain under the European convention on human rights. British courts have adopted a lower threshold of what constitutes torture than the US has.

the truth is that the government is involved in a cover-up, not so much of what it knows about this shady business, but what it doesn't know. The one thing it is pretty sure about, however, is that if it has happened, and if Britain had a role, then the government has broken the law.

the administration's resistance to setting and enforcing clear prohibitions on torture and inhumane treatment of detainees in the war on terrorism raises legitimate questions about its willingness to adhere to the rule of law. From the first days after Sept. 11, Bush has appeared to believe that he is essentially unconstrained. His oddly equivocal recent signing statement on John McCain's legislation banning such tactics seemed to say he could ignore the plain terms of the law.

If Judge Samuel Alito is right that no one is above the law, then Bush's supposition deserves to be challenged.

Gore's final example -- on which he has lots of company among legal scholars -- is the contention that Bush broke the law in ordering the National Security Agency to monitor domestic phone calls without a warrant from the court Congress had created to supervise all such wiretapping. If -- as the Justice Department and the White House insist -- the president can flout that law, then it is hard to imagine what power he cannot assert.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter has summoned Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to a hearing on the warrantless wiretap issue, and that hearing should be the occasion for a broad exploration of the willingness of this administration to be constrained by the Constitution and the laws.

At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA’s domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently.

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution – our system of checks and balances – was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said: “The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men.”

An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution – an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet, “On Common Sense” ignited the American Revolution, succinctly described America’s alternative. Here, he said, we intended to make certain that “the law is king.”

The President and I agree on one thing. The threat from terrorism is all too real. There is simply no question that we continue to face new challenges in the wake of the attack on September 11th and that we must be ever-vigilant in protecting our citizens from harm.

Where we disagree is that we have to break the law or sacrifice our system of government to protect Americans from terrorism. In fact, doing so makes us weaker and more vulnerable.

Once violated, the rule of law is in danger. Unless stopped, lawlessness grows. The greater the power of the executive grows, the more difficult it becomes for the other branches to perform their constitutional roles. As the executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws.

The President’s men have minced words about America’s laws. The Attorney General openly conceded that the “kind of surveillance” we now know they have been conducting requires a court order unless authorized by statute. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act self-evidently does not authorize what the NSA has been doing, and no one inside or outside the Administration claims that it does. Incredibly, the Administration claims instead that the surveillance was implicitly authorized when Congress voted to use force against those who attacked us on September 11th.

This argument just does not hold any water. Without getting into the legal intricacies, it faces a number of embarrassing facts. First, another admission by the Attorney General: he concedes that the Administration knew that the NSA project was prohibited by existing law and that they consulted with some members of Congress about changing the statute. Gonzalez says that they were told this probably would not be possible. So how can they now argue that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force somehow implicitly authorized it all along? Second, when the Authorization was being debated, the Administration did in fact seek to have language inserted in it that would have authorized them to use military force domestically – and the Congress did not agree. Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Jim McGovern, among others, made statements during the Authorization debate clearly restating that that Authorization did not operate domestically.

When President Bush failed to convince Congress to give him all the power he wanted when they passed the AUMF, he secretly assumed that power anyway, as if congressional authorization was a useless bother. But as Justice Frankfurter once wrote: “To find authority so explicitly withheld is not merely to disregard in a particular instance the clear will of Congress. It is to disrespect the whole legislative process and the constitutional division of authority between President and Congress.”

This is precisely the “disrespect” for the law that the Supreme Court struck down in the steel seizure case.

It is this same disrespect for America’s Constitution which has now brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of the Constitution. And the disrespect embodied in these apparent mass violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming indifference to the Constitution that is deeply troubling to millions of Americans in both political parties.

For example, the President has also declared that he has a heretofore unrecognized inherent power to seize and imprison any American citizen that he alone determines to be a threat to our nation, and that, notwithstanding his American citizenship, the person imprisoned has no right to talk with a lawyer—even to argue that the President or his appointees have made a mistake and imprisoned the wrong person.

The President claims that he can imprison American citizens indefinitely for the rest of their lives without an arrest warrant, without notifying them about what charges have been filed against them, and without informing their families that they have been imprisoned.

At the same time, the Executive Branch has claimed a previously unrecognized authority to mistreat prisoners in its custody in ways that plainly constitute torture in a pattern that has now been documented in U.S. facilities located in several countries around the world.

Over 100 of these captives have reportedly died while being tortured by Executive Branch interrogators and many more have been broken and humiliated. In the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, investigators who documented the pattern of torture estimated that more than 90 percent of the victims were innocent of any charges.

This shameful exercise of power overturns a set of principles that our nation has observed since General Washington first enunciated them during our Revolutionary War and has been observed by every president since then – until now. These practices violate the Geneva Conventions and the International Convention Against Torture, not to mention our own laws against torture.

The President has also claimed that he has the authority to kidnap individuals in foreign countries and deliver them for imprisonment and interrogation on our behalf by autocratic regimes in nations that are infamous for the cruelty of their techniques for torture.

Some of our traditional allies have been shocked by these new practices on the part of our nation. The British Ambassador to Uzbekistan – one of those nations with the worst reputations for torture in its prisons – registered a complaint to his home office about the senselessness and cruelty of the new U.S. practice: “This material is useless – we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful.”

Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is “yes” then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? If the President has the inherent authority to eavesdrop, imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can’t he do?

The Dean of Yale Law School, Harold Koh, said after analyzing the Executive Branch’s claims of these previously unrecognized powers: “If the President has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution.”

• Roberts' dissent in the Oregon assisted suicide case -- a case in which Roberts did not write an opinion but in which fellow dissenter Antonin Scalia asserted the Court's right to defend "public morality..." whatever that has to do with federal vs. state power... (more from Talkleft including the right's push to get the wingers in Congress to pass a John Ashcroft, MD law in response to the Oregon rout.) Recall that during his hearings, Roberts demurred on the "right to die" issue, which Jeralyn Merritt points out really wasn't the central issue in the Supco case -- it was more about the right of states to make their own laws regulating physicians.) More on Roberts and the Oregon case here.
  
• The Roberts Court's refusal to hear a case by NYC firefighters and other rescue workers who claim they were given faulty radios on 9/11...
  
• The Court's refusal to hear a case brought by a man who was arrested for protesting a visit by President Bush in an area designated by Secret Service agents as off-limits...
  
• And a case brought by a reputed mob associate accused of looting a printing company's pension fund, in which his lawyers argue that prosecutors withheld evidence found during a Miami raid...

U.S. Wins Support In Iran Dispute
China, Russia Join Call to Suspend Nuclear Program
By Mary Jordan and Dafna LinzerWashington Post Foreign ServiceTuesday, January 17, 2006; A01

LONDON, Jan. 16 -- China and Russia agreed with the United States, Britain, Germany and France on Monday that Iran must completely suspend its nuclear program, the British Foreign Office said. Although the countries failed to agree on whether Iran's case should be referred to the U.N. Security Council, the Europeans applied new pressure on the Iranian government by calling for an emergency meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency on Feb. 2.

With all six nations declaring that they sought a diplomatic solution to the escalating confrontation with Iran, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered a glimmer of hope for a compromise. Putin said the Iranian government was considering a proposal from Moscow that Russia would produce enriched uranium for Iran, to ensure the material could be used only for peaceful purposes.

Blair plays down international splits over IranBy Simon Freeman and agencies

Tony Blair today said that he remained hopeful of a diplomatic solution to the deadlock over Iran's nuclear programme, as efforts began to play down public divisions between world powers.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister said that the international community was united in its condemnation of Tehran for breaking the seals on its nuclear plants, and was working towards an acceptable solution. He said that the Islamic republic was slowly but surely becoming more isolated, despite the split in opinion abroad.

Germany, France and the UK - who comprise the E3 which has been in negotiations with the Middle Eastern country for two years - have voted to convene an emergency board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Commission on February 2, the first step in a referral to the UN Security Council and possible sanctions.

However, Russia and China, which both have major trade and energy links with Iran, today appeared to undermine the threat. Both countries wield a veto as permanent members of the Council and hinted that they could not support such measures.
The extent of the split emerged today as the various world leaders gave their pronouncements following a seven-hour meeting in London yesterday.

Sergei Lavrov, Russia's Foreign Minister, said: "Sanctions are in no way the best, or the only, way to solve the problem." Mr Lavrov referred to the ongoing instability in Iraq as an example of how international sanctions could fail to rein in a rogue state.

Russia has a $1 billion contract with Iran to build its first civil nuclear reactor and is also reluctant to risk its relations with the republic, which wields influence in the turbulent Caucasus.

A spokesman for the Chinese Government said that punitive measures would "complicate" the issue. China obtains 12 per cent of its oil from Iran.

Powers disagree over Iran crisis

The UK has taken a hard line on an Iranian offer to continue discussing its nuclear programme, indicating major powers disagree on how to proceed.

Russia says a compromise offer is still on the table, and China has urged all parties to continue negotiations. But the UK, France, Germany and the US want the UN Security Council to consider punishing Iran.

Iran broke seals on three nuclear facilities last week, but says it does not aim to build nuclear weapons.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says a compromise offer is still on the table which could see Iran sending uranium to Russia for enrichment - which would be an obstacle to Iran developing nuclear weapons of its own.

Iran has also offered to return to talks with the EU-3 of France, Germany and the UK.

But on Tuesday the UK Foreign Office appeared to reject both that offer and the Russian compromise. Unnamed Foreign Office officials were quoted by news agencies as saying the Iranians were stalling.

Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends
By LOWELL BERGMAN, ERIC LICHTBLAU, SCOTT SHANE and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.
But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.

As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for a program of eavesdropping without warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said.

President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping program as a "vital tool" against terrorism; Vice President Dick Cheney has said it has saved "thousands of lives."

But the results of the program look very different to some officials charged with tracking terrorism in the United States. More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.

"We'd chase a number, find it's a schoolteacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism - case closed," said one former F.B.I. official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. "After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration."

Some F.B.I. officials said they were uncomfortable with the expanded domestic role played by the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies, saying most intelligence officers lacked the training needed to safeguard Americans' privacy and civil rights. They said some protections had to be waived temporarily in the months after Sept. 11 to detect a feared second wave of attacks, but they questioned whether emergency procedures like the eavesdropping should become permanent.
That discomfort may explain why some F.B.I. officials may seek to minimize the benefits of the N.S.A. program or distance themselves from the agency. "This wasn't our program," an F.B.I. official said. "It's not our mess, and we're not going to clean it up."

The N.S.A.'s legal authority for collecting the information it passed to the F.B.I. is uncertain. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires a warrant for the use of so-called pen register equipment that records American phone numbers, even if the contents of the calls are not intercepted. But officials with knowledge of the program said no warrants were sought to collect the numbers, and it is unclear whether the secret executive order signed by Mr. President Bush in 2002 to authorize eavesdropping without warrants also covered the collection of phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Aside from the director, F.B.I. officials did not question the legal status of the tips, assuming that N.S.A. lawyers had approved. They were more concerned about the quality and quantity of the material, which produced "mountains of paperwork" often more like raw data than conventional investigative leads.

"It affected the F.B.I. in the sense that they had to devote so many resources to tracking every single one of these leads, and, in my experience, they were all dry leads," the former senior prosecutor said. "A trained investigator never would have devoted the resources to take those leads to the next level, but after 9/11, you had to."

The singer, his reputation in tatters at home after winning a grueling molestation trial in California last year, is negotiating a position as a consultant with a Bahrain-based company that plans to set up theme parks and music academies in the Middle East, according to a press release.

AAJ Holdings Ltd., owned by Bahraini businessman Ahmed Abu Bakr Janahi, said it wanted to hire the 47-year-old Jackson to give advice on setting up entertainment businesses.

AAJ, which focuses mainly on urban development projects, played a key role in designing Bahrain's ongoing Financial Harbor development and Oman's Blue City, a multibillion-dollar tourist resort with golf courses, hotels, and several dozen kilometers (miles) of sandy beaches.

According to the statement, Janahi believes Jackson could play an important role in the company.

"Stagnant architectural structures need content in the form of entertainment to revive them and that's where Michael Jackson will play an integral role," the statement said.

The Huffington Post has learned the Bush administration recently asked high ranking military leaders to denounce Congressman John Murtha. Congressman Murtha has called for the Bush Administration to withdraw US troops from Iraq.

The Bush Administration first attacked Rep. Murtha for his Iraq views by associating him with the filmmaker Michael Moore and Representative Jean Schmidt likened him to a coward on the floor of the House of Representatives. When those tactics backfired, Dick Cheney called Murtha "A good man, a marine, a patriot and he's taking a clear stand in an entirely legitimate discussion."

Though the White House has backed off publicly, administration officials have nevertheless recently made calls to military leaders to condemn the congressman. So far they have refused.

Having ascended to the national stage as one of the most vocal critics of President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman John Murtha has long downplayed the controversy and the bitterness surrounding the two Purple Hearts he was awarded for military service in Vietnam.

Murtha is a retired marine and was the first Vietnam combat veteran elected to Congress. Since 1967, there have been at least three different accounts of the injuries that purportedly earned Murtha his Purple Hearts. Those accounts also appear to conflict with the limited military records that are available, and Murtha has thus far refused to release his own military records.

A Cybercast News Service investigation also reveals that one of Murtha's former Democratic congressional colleagues and a fellow decorated Vietnam veteran, Don Bailey of Pennsylvania, alleges that Murtha admitted during an emotional conversation on the floor of the U.S. House in the early 1980s that he did not deserve his Purple Hearts.

"[Murtha] is putting himself forward as some combat veteran with serious wounds and he's using that and it's dishonest and it's wrong," Bailey told Cybercast News Service on Jan. 9. Murtha served in the Marines on active duty and in the reserves from 1952 until his retirement as a colonel in 1990. He volunteered for service in Vietnam and was a First Marine Regiment intelligence officer in 1966 and 1967.

Murtha and Bailey, once allies, were forced to run against each other in a Democratic congressional primary in 1982 following redistricting. Murtha won the election.

CNSNews.com) - Members of the press have given extensive and glowing coverage to Rep. John Murtha's criticism of the war in Iraq, but have overlooked a number of other controversies the Pennsylvania Democrat has experienced over the past 25 years. This includes his reported role as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the Abscam bribery scandal of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Murtha has denied any wrongdoing, but Cybercast News Service has learned that one of Murtha's former allies, a Democratic congressman who served on the House Ethics Committee in 1981 and says he lobbied colleagues not to censure Murtha, now believes Murtha lied to him about his role in Abscam. ...

... Since Murtha's Nov. 17, 2005, call for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, one CNN anchor has called him "one of the most highly respected members of Congress," the Associated Press has referred to Murtha as "one of Congress' most hawkish Democrats," and ABC News has noted that he is "a decorated marine who served in Vietnam."

But a search of the Nexis online database by Cybercast News Service found only three newspaper articles over the past two months connecting Murtha with the FBI's Abscam (short for "Arab scam") sting operation that led to the arrest of several congressmen for accepting bribes.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "Murtha was one of eight members of Congress lured to a Washington, D.C., townhouse by a team of FBI agents posing as representatives of a fictitious Arab sheik. They handed out briefcases filled with $50,000 in return for helping the sheik gain residency in the United States."

Noting that Murtha "is not squeaky clean," the Brattleboro, Vt., Reformer reported that the congressman "did not take the cash" offered by the agents. Instead, "he asked the fake sheik to consider investing some money in his struggling home town, Johnstown."

The Washington Post referred to the incident as "an ethical scrape" in which Murtha was "named as an unindicted co-conspirator and testified against two House colleagues."

But, a videotape of a Jan. 7, 1980 Abscam-related meeting involving Murtha shows that the congressman's rejection of the offered bribe was less than definite. "I'm not interested. I'm sorry," Murtha told the FBI agent, but added that he meant "at this point. See Video.

"You know, we do business for a while, maybe I'll be interested, maybe I won't," Murtha said on the FBI videotape.

The congressman told the undercover FBI agent that he was a member of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct and acknowledged: "If you get into heat with politicians, there's no amount of money that can help."

In November 1980, the Justice Department announced that Murtha would not face prosecution for his part in the scandal. "I did not consider that any money was offered, and certainly none was taken," Murtha told reporters. "The FBI who taped the entire conversation knows damn well no money changed hands."

Eight months later, the House ethics panel also chose not to file charges against the Pennsylvania Democrat. ...

"I worked hard, and I argued," and members of the committee "agreed with me," Bailey stated. "Part of my argument was that the FBI was overdoing it and there wasn't evidence that [Murtha] was doing anything wrong."

In 1982, as a result of congressional redistricting, Murtha and Bailey were forced to run against each other in a Democratic primary. Murtha emerged the winner.

In 2002, Murtha's ethics again became an issue in the congressional election. Bailey issued a public letter, the contents of which have been published on the Internet and confirmed by Bailey. In the letter, Bailey admits that his opinion about Murtha's involvement in Abscam had dramatically changed by 2002.

"I was, to be honest, critical about how you misled me about Abscam where you convinced me you had voluntarily told federal agents about the offer of money to you," Bailey wrote Murtha in the letter.

"I learned later, after I had successfully defeated the ethics charges against you, that you had merely manipulated the system to cooperate with federal agents to avoid prosecution," Bailey added.

On Jan. 9, Bailey told Cybercast News Service that he now believes Murtha was "pretty damn stupid" during the Abscam sting.

"The idea that somebody is going to trot out $50,000 in cash in front of you and you don't know that is wrong is pretty damn stupid to me," Bailey said. "What bankers or investors run around with $50,000 in cash?"

Just hours after the July 1981 House Ethic Committee vote sparing Murtha from charges, E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr., special counsel for the panel's Abscam investigation, abruptly resigned. At the time, Prettyman refused to discuss with the press his reasons for stepping down.

When contacted by Cybercast News Service regarding the investigation, Prettyman called the Murtha situation "very interesting," but declined further comment, citing the need to maintain attorney-client privilege.

The Washington Post yesterday morning gives major play to an attack of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) on the website of the (until now) obscure Cybercast News Service. It accuses Murtha -- who had won eight military awards, including a Bronze star, and a Distinguished Service Medal of the United States Marine Corps, for his 37 years of military service -- of purportedly saying that he had not deserved to win two Purple Hearts also awarded him for his service during the Vietnam war.

The Post story, by reporters Howard Kurtz and Shallagh Murray, quotes extensively David Thibault, the editor in chief of the (who ever heard of them before the Washington Post decided to give them such prominence?) Cybercast News Service, as saying that Murtha's medals from 1967 are relevant now "because the congressman has really put himself in the forefront of the antiwar movement."

But the article tells us very little about Thibault himself. Had the reporters done a simple Internet search, they would have discovered this biography of Thibault posted online which describes him as a "senior producer for a televised news magazine" broadcast and sponsored by the Republican National Committee. I dunno, but I for one, would have wanted to know that. ...

• We all knew it was coming

The drone, the CIA and a botched attempt to kill bin Laden's deputy

In the hunt for al-Qaeda, a missile attack on a mountain village killed women and children. The attack was precise, the intelligence was flawed, and the strained relation between Pakistan and the US has been pushed to breaking point

Jason Burke and Imtiaz Gul in Islamabad
Sunday January 15, 2006
The Observer


The missiles were deadly accurate. In the pitch dark of a night in Pakistan's sparsely populated North West Frontier Province, they not only located the three targeted houses on the outskirts of the village of Damadola Burkanday but squarely struck their hujra, the large rooms traditionally used by Pashtun tribesmen to accommodate guests.
Yesterday some of the results of the strike were very clear: three ruined houses, mud-brick rubble scattered across the steeply terraced fields, the bodies of livestock lying where thrown by the airblast, a row of newly dug graves in the village cemetery and torn green and red embroidered blankets flapping in the chilly wind. Four children were among the 18 villagers who died in the brutally sudden attack on their homes.

Yet evidence emerging appeared to indicate that, though the technology that guided the missiles to their targets at 3am on Friday was faultless, the intelligence that had selected those targets was not. Even as American military and intelligence sources spoke of the possible death of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command of al-Qaeda and the man considered to be the brains behind the militant group's strategy, Pakistani officials said that there was no evidence any 'foreigners', shorthand locally for al-Qaeda fighters, were among the 18 victims, though they said that 'according to preliminary investigations there was foreign presence in the area'.

In a bid to distance themselves from what was looking like a tragic and counter-productive tactical error that had cost many innocent lives, Pakistan announced it would file a formal protest with the Americans. Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told a news conference that the Pakistani government wanted 'to assure the people we will not allow such incidents to recur,' adding that the government had no information about al-Zawahiri. ...

In New Orleans, Bush Speaks With Optimism but Sees Little of Ruin

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 12 - President Bush made his first trip here in three months on Thursday and declared that New Orleans was "a heck of a place to bring your family" and that it had "some of the greatest food in the world and some wonderful fun."

Mr. Bush spent his brief visit in a meeting with political and business leaders on the edge of the Garden District, the grand neighborhood largely untouched by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina, and saw little devastation. He did not go into the city's hardest-hit areas or to Jackson Square, where several hundred girls from the Academy of the Sacred Heart staged a protest demanding stronger levees.

Mr. Bush's motorcade did pass some abandoned neighborhoods as it traveled on Interstate 10 into the city.

"It may be hard for you to see, but from when I first came here to today, New Orleans is reminding me of the city I used to come to visit," the president told the local leaders at the Convention and Visitors Bureau, an independent group set up to attract business and tourism to the city.

Mr. Bush added that "for folks around the country who are looking for a great place to have a convention, or a great place to visit, I'd suggest coming here to the great New Orleans."

Mr. Bush, who appeared to be trying to spread optimism in a city that is years away from recovery, did not tell the group or the city's residents what many were hoping to hear: that he would commit the federal government to building the strongest possible levees, a Category 5 storm protection system.

Instead, on a day when the Bush administration revised the deficit upward to more than $400 billion and blamed it largely on Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Bush restated his support for spending $3.1 billion of federal money on building "stronger and better" levees.

Local engineers say those levees would protect against the 100-mile-an-hour winds of a Category 2 hurricane and the low barometric pressure of a Category 3 or weak Category 4 storm. Hurricane Katrina peaked as a Category 5 storm in the Gulf of Mexico and hit land as a Category 3 storm.

The president ignored questions about the city's new rebuilding plan, introduced Wednesday night to enormous community criticism, and White House officials traveling with Mr. Bush declined to offer opinions. The plan, which depends on nearly $17 billion more from the federal government, gives neighborhoods in low-lying parts of the city from four months to a year to attract sufficient numbers of residents or be bulldozed.

The federal government has so far authorized $85 billion in relief to the Gulf Coast, with $25 billion spent. ... (deleted four graphs about Blanco not being in town and it supposedly not being a snub either way... OK, on to the best part...)

... From New Orleans, Mr. Bush traveled to Waveland and Bay St. Louis in Mississippi, where he viewed destruction along the Gulf Coast. He then headed for Palm Beach, Fla., for a closed-door $4 million fund-raiser for the Republican National Committee and Republican candidates at the home of Dwight Schar, a homebuilder and a co-owner of the Washington Redskins.

"This vote was never about health care," Hurst said. "In allowing a bad bill to become a bad law, the General Assembly took a giant step backward and placed the special interests of Washington, D.C., union leaders ahead of the well-being of the people they serve. And that's wrong."

• And the children of Israel looked upon Mad Marion, and gagged
• The Chronicles of Marion II: Fire in the Holy Land
• The chronicles of Mad Marion
• Crazy ole' Pat Robertson - PA hellfire edition
• It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world ... for Pat Robertson

Tags: pat robertson, crazy, Israel, Sharon

• I'd hate to be his kid
• Sam's Club: Orrin Hatch on 'magnificence'
• Brokeback Committee Room
• Is Bush the man to stop Alito?
• Sam Alito's creative memory

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, a central figure in the U.S. detainee-abuse scandal, this week invoked his right not to incriminate himself in court-martial proceedings against two soldiers accused of using dogs to intimidate captives at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to lawyers involved in the case.

The move by Miller -- who once supervised the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and helped set up operations at Abu Ghraib -- is the first time the general has given an indication that he might have information that could implicate him in wrongdoing, according to military lawyers.

Harvey Volzer, an attorney for one of the dog handlers, has been seeking to question Miller to determine whether Miller ordered the use of military working dogs to frighten detainees during interrogations at Abu Ghraib. Volzer has argued that the dog handlers were following orders when the animals were used against detainees.

Miller's decision came shortly after Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the commanding officer at Abu Ghraib, accepted immunity from prosecution this week and was ordered to testify at upcoming courts-martial. Pappas, a military intelligence officer, could be asked to detail high-level policies relating to the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib.

He also could shed light on how abusive tactics emerged, who ordered their use and their possible connection to officials in Washington, according to lawyers and human rights advocates who have closely followed the case. Pappas has never spoken publicly. Crawford said Miller was unaware of Pappas's grant of immunity. "This could be a big break if Pappas testifies as to why those dogs were used and who ordered the dogs to be used," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "It's a steppingstone going up the chain of command, and that's positive. It might demonstrate that it wasn't just a few rotten apples."

A senior British officer has criticised the US army for its conduct in Iraq, accusing it of institutional racism, moral righteousness, misplaced optimism, and of being ill-suited to engage in counter-insurgency operations.
The blistering critique, by Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, who was the second most senior officer responsible for training Iraqi security forces, reflects criticism and frustration voiced by British commanders of American military tactics.

What is startling is the severity of his comments - and the decision by Military Review, a US army magazine, to publish them.

American soldiers, says Brig Aylwin-Foster, were "almost unfailingly courteous and considerate". But he says "at times their cultural insensitivity, almost certainly inadvertent, arguably amounted to institutional racism".

The US army, he says, is imbued with an unparalleled sense of patriotism, duty, passion and talent. "Yet it seemed weighed down by bureaucracy, a stiflingly hierarchical outlook, a predisposition to offensive operations and a sense that duty required all issues to be confronted head-on."

Brig Aylwin-Foster says the American army's laudable "can-do" approach paradoxically led to another trait, namely "damaging optimism". Such an ethos, he says, "is unhelpful if it discourages junior commanders from reporting unwelcome news up the chain of command".

But his central theme is that US military commanders have failed to train and educate their soldiers in the art of counter-insurgency operations and the need to cultivate the "hearts and minds" of the local population.

While US officers in Iraq criticised their allies for being too reluctant to use force, their strategy was "to kill or capture all terrorists and insurgents: they saw military destruction of the enemy as a strategic goal in its own right". In short, the brigadier says, "the US army has developed over time a singular focus on conventional warfare, of a particularly swift and violent kind".

Such an unsophisticated approach, ingrained in American military doctrine, is counter-productive, exacerbating the task the US faced by alienating significant sections of the population, argues Brig Aylwin-Foster.

What he calls a sense of "moral righteousness" contributed to the US response to the killing of four American contractors in Falluja in the spring of 2004. As a "come-on" tactic by insurgents, designed to provoke a disproportionate response, it succeeded, says the brigadier, as US commanders were "set on the total destruction of the enemy".

He notes that the firing on one night of more than 40 155mm artillery rounds on a small part of the city was considered by the local US commander as a "minor application of combat power". Such tactics are not the answer, he says, to remove Iraq from the grip of what he calls a "vicious and tenacious insurgency".

Brig Aylwin-Foster's criticisms have been echoed by other senior British officers, though not in such a devastating way. General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the army, told MPs in April 2004 as US forces attacked Falluja: "We must be able to fight with the Americans. That does not mean we must be able to fight as the Americans."

Renee Seymour, director of NSA special access programs stated in a Jan. 9 letter to Russ Tice that he should not testify about secret electronic intelligence programs because members and staff of the House and Senate intelligence committees do not have the proper security clearances for the secret intelligence.

Miss Seymour stated that Mr. Tice has "every right" to speak to Congress and that NSA has "no intent to infringe your rights."

However, she stated that the programs Mr. Tice took part in were so secret that "neither the staff nor the members of the [House intelligence committee] or [Senate intelligence committee] are cleared to receive the information covered by the special access programs, or SAPs."

"The SAPs to which you refer are controlled by the Department of Defense (DoD) and ... neither the staffs nor the members ... are cleared to receive the intelligence covered by the SAPs," Miss Seymour stated.

Special access programs are the most sensitive U.S. intelligence and weapons programs and are exempt from many oversight mechanisms used to check other intelligence agencies.

Miss Seymour also said that Mr. Tice, who was dismissed in May, failed to notify either the Pentagon or NSA of the improper behavior that he is charging.

As a result, she stated that Mr. Tice must first give statements to the Defense Department and NSA inspectors general before he provides any classified information to Congress from the SAPs.

Miss Seymour also said Mr. Tice must first "obtain and follow direction" from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, through the inspectors general on the proper procedures for contacting the congressional oversight committees.

WOLF (paraphrasing): What are the chances that there will be some Democrats who are indicted in this case?

• The Chronicles of Marion II: Fire in the Holy Land
• The chronicles of Mad Marion
• Crazy ole' Pat Robertson - PA hellfire edition
• It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world ... for Pat Robertson

Tags: Tags: pat robertson, crazy, Israel, Sharon

Most Americans said they have paid close attention to the controversy over the program, and a bare majority of those surveyed, 51 percent, said it is an acceptable way to fight terrorism, while 47 percent said it is not. Beneath those overall findings, however, were sharp partisan divisions.

Among Republicans, 75 percent said the Bush program is acceptable, while 61 percent of Democrats said it is unacceptable.

Independents called the program unacceptable by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent.

More generally, two in three Americans said it is more important to investigate possible terrorist threats than to protect civil liberties. One-third said the respect for privacy should take precedence. [65%-32%]

Republicans overwhelmingly favored aggressive investigation, with more than four in five saying that is their preference, while Democrats were split 51 percent to 47 percent on which should take precedence. Independents favored relatively unfettered pursuit of possible terrorism by nearly 2 to 1.

The poll sample of 1,001 adults broke down this way: 31 percent Democrat, 30 percent Republican, 34 percent independent, 5 percent other and 1 percent absolute idiots with no opinion. The poll had more conservatives than in the past 10 or so polls, with 37 percent of respondents identifying themselves as such vs. 20 percent liberals and 40 percent moderates.

What's also interesting is that the percentage of those who "strongly disapprove" of "the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president" was 39 percent, ten points higher than the percentage who strongly approve. 52 percent disapprove of the way Bush is handling "ethics in government" vs. 45 percent who approve.

On the WOT, Bush gets better markes -- 53 percent approve and 45 percent do not. (55 percent disapprove of how Congress is doing its job and only 41 percent approve there). Read the tabs for the poll yourself here.

Previous:

• What the public wants

Tags: politics, News, Bush, national security, NSA, government, spying, polls

• Sam's Club: Orrin Hatch on 'magnificence'
• Brokeback Committee Room
• Is Bush the man to stop Alito?
• Sam Alito's creative memory

At number four: super-cyclist Lance Armstrong and girl rocker Cheryl Crow, who scooped up Lance before the ink was dry on his divorce from the wife that nursed him through brain cancer! Somebody call the cycling commission: this romance is on steroids!


At number three: Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck (otherwise known as Bennifer 1.0), for taking speed dating while married to a new level... J.Lo ditched husband number one, Ojani Noa, to hang with P. Diddy (sorry, P. Diddy's once and future live-in girlfriend, Kim Porter...), then dumped Diddy to marry Chris Judd, then skated on Judd to almost marry Ben Affleck! But Brad got the last laugh, jumping ship on La Lopez before the wedding to bust up those two cute kids from Alias (giving us Bennifer 2.0). It's enough to give you a brain freeze!


At number two: America's sweetheart, Julia Roberts, for snatching Danny Moder out from the deathgrip of that wife of his after going through more co-stars than a snuff-film actor... not so pretty, woman!


And at number one: who can top them? Britney and Kevin! Mr. Blackwell's tacky, over-the-hill Lolita traded in Justin Timberlake for the deadbeat on Shar Jackson's couch -- while Jackson was eight months pregnant with Kevin's second child! Now who got the short end of that stick...?


Congratulations, Shar! Whitney and Bobby may be bathing in crack water and Ashton Kutcher may be married to his mother, but you're having the best love-life ever...!


Tags: Celebrities, gossip, Brangelina

• Brokeback Committee Room
• Is Bush the man to stop Alito?
• Sam Alito's creative memory

Tags: Supreme Court, Politics, SCOTUS, Law, News, Alito, Sam Alito

"During wartime, some presidents have either received or assumed special war powers, which give the president more authority to act independently when he feels it is necessary. In the current campaign against terrorism, is it a good idea or a bad idea for the president to have the authority to make changes in the rights usually guaranteed by the Constitution?"