Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

Oh, the parallels of history:

"Iran is led by a Prime Minister who has a history of ordering and carrying out the executions of his enemies, both at home and abroad. He has been tied to the deaths of dozens, if not hundreds, of Iranian dissidents around the world. He has repeatedly proclaimed his belief in the Islamic version of Armageddon, has repeatedly called for Israel to be wiped off the map, and insists on unfettered research into nuclear physics -- saying it is strictly for peaceful purposes, but meanwhile asserting his nation's right to possess nuclear weapons. ..." [JT]

Meanwhile...

The United States is led by a president who has a history of ordering the indefinite detention and sanctioning the torture of individuals, including minors, many of whom were later found to be bystanders rather than al-Qaida terrorists, and others of whom were tortured into giving their interrogators false information later used to justify the misuse of American armed forces in Iraq. He has disappeared American citizens without trial, festooned the globe with secret prisons that are tied to the deaths of an uncounted number of people, and ordered the secret wiretapping and surveillance of political opponents and God only knows who else (journalists, maybe?). His administration outed a covert agent working on non-proliferation issues, threatening her safety and the safety of everyone she ever dealt with, simply because her husband criticized the political policy of invading Iraq. He has repeatedly proclaimed that the United States is spreading freedom around the world, and that democracies are peaceful, yet his "democratically elected" administration ordered the invasion of a country that had not attacked and did not threaten us. He and his administration manipulated intelligence to justify a war that has killed upwards of 100,000 Iraqis and more than 2,000 U.S. troops, and which has injured nearly 20,000 others.

Two-thirds of our troops now apparently believe the mission should be brought to an end (NYT poll today). And he has propped up a dictator in Pakistan, an oligarchy in Saudi Arabia, whom, along with the UAE, he and his family have repeatedly taken money from, and to whom he is now prepared to hand over operational control of 21 U.S. ports (after having thrown open the U.S. southern border to an unlimited hoarde of barely paid corporate slaves. He decries the search for nuclear weapons by countries seeking a deterrent against Israel, which is armed to the teeth with them, while continuing research on next-generation nuclear weapons for our use.

What a world.

Syria is weak and deterred by Israel. North Korea, having gone nuclear, is untouchable. That leaves Iran. What to do? There are only two things that will stop the Iranian nuclear program: revolution from below or an attack on its nuclear facilities.

The country should be ripe for revolution. The regime is detested. But the mullahs are very good at police-state tactics. The long-awaited revolution is not happening.

Which makes the question of pre-emptive attack all the more urgent. Iran will go nuclear during the next presidential term. Some Americans wishfully think that the Israelis will do the dirty work for us, as in 1981 when they destroyed Saddam's nuclear reactor. But for Israel, attacking Iran is a far more difficult proposition. It is farther away. Moreover, detection and antiaircraft technology are far more advanced than 20 years ago.

There may be no deus ex machina. If nothing is done, a fanatical terrorist regime openly dedicated to the destruction of the ``Great Satan'' will have both nuclear weapons and the terrorists and missiles to deliver them. All that stands between us and that is either revolution or pre-emptive strike.

"America's unilateral move to sever ties with the Islamic Republic was aimed at destroying the Islamic revolution...

"America was free to sever its ties with Iran, but it remains Iran's decision to re-establish relations with America."

Washington, August 8th, 2005 -- The announcement that Iran is to begin pricing its petroleum products in euros and create an "Iranian Oil Bourse" for trading oil, in direct competition with New York and London has sent the Oil Barons into a tail spin.

Convinced that their grab of Iraqi oilfields after Saddam dared to announce that he was moving to the Euro should have taught the Iranians a lesson, the NeoCons under Cheney and Rumsfeld seek to up the stakes in their "Old Mans Poker Game". Any moron who still believes that Iraq was either invaded for the threatening Weapons of Mass Destruction and to create a democratic state in the Middle East should stop reading now, and take their medication. But now the stakes are much higher, and the odds are not in our favor. NeoCon military planners even go so far as to contemplate using first strike nuclear weapons.

Others, outside of the carefully controlled mainstream media are warning against such folly. William Clark wrote:

"In essence, Iran is about to commit a far greater "offense" than Saddam Hussein's conversion to the euro for Iraq's oil exports in the fall of 2000. Beginning in March 2006, the Tehran government has plans to begin competing with New York's NYMEX and London's IPE with respect to international oil trades – using a euro-based international oil-trading mechanism.[7] The proposed Iranian oil bourse signifies that without some sort of US intervention, the euro is going to establish a firm foothold in the international oil trade. Given U.S. debt levels and the stated neoconservative project of U.S. global domination, Tehran's objective constitutes an obvious encroachment on dollar supremacy in the crucial international oil market.

From the autumn of 2004 through August 2005, numerous leaks by concerned Pentagon employees have revealed that the neoconservatives in Washington are quietly – but actively – planning for a possible attack against Iran. In September 2004 Newsweek reported:

Deep in the Pentagon, admirals and generals are updating plans for possible U.S. military action in Syria and Iran. The Defense Department unit responsible for military planning for the two troublesome countries is "busier than ever," an administration official says. Some Bush advisers characterize the work as merely an effort to revise routine plans the Pentagon maintains for all contingencies in light of the Iraq war. More skittish bureaucrats say the updates are accompanied by a revived campaign by administration conservatives and neocons for more hard-line U.S. policies toward the countries…'"

A PetroEuro would shatter the illusion, swallowed by the gullible voters, that all is just fine in the US Economy. At present the printing presses can churn out as many dollar bills as the President needs for his latest folly. It doesn't matter if all the US factories and workshops are closed down, and everyone is in paper debt up to their ears, just print more money and give them a tax break to keep them quiet. Then collect all the paper debt together and get another loan from China.

What is the Iranian Bourse and what has a Russian natural gas curtailment got to do with it?

Well, to answer the second question; in future, some gas delivered to Ukraine and perhaps on to Western Europe via pipeline will be Iranian.

And, according to Iranian officials, the Iranian Bourse will be a state-owned international oil, gas and refined products exchange, operating principally over the Internet, with transactions denominated principally in Euros.

The Iranian Bourse will be competing directly with London’s International Petroleum Exchange and New York’s Mercantile Exchange, both of which are owned by US corporations, and whose transactions are denominated in Dollars.

At present, the Dollar is the global monetary standard for petroleum exchange. Hence, all petroleum consuming countries – including China and Japan – must buy and keep a large cache of dollars in their central banks.

What would be the effect of an Iranian Bourse operating on petroeuros rather than petrodollars?

Well, back in 2000, Saddam Hussein converted Iraqi bank reserves from the Dollar to the Euro, and began demanding payments in Euro for Iraqi oil. Central banks of many countries – most notably Russia and China – began keeping Euros and Dollars as monetary "reserves" and as an exchange fund for oil.

And, perhaps at least partially because of Saddam’s conversion to it, by 2003 the Euro was stronger than the Dollar.

So, there are some observers who fervently believe that the real reason Bush-Cheney launched a war of aggression against Iraq was to restore the primacy of petrodollars and to demonstrate to any country – such as Iran, who had begun serious planning for the Iranian Bourse in 2000 – what would happen to them if they followed Saddam’s lead.

Of course, once occupied by the US-UK-Halliburton coalition, Iraqi oil sales were once again denominated in petrodollars.

The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse
by Krassimir Petrov

I. Economics of Empires

A nation-state taxes its own citizens, while an empire taxes other nation-states. The history of empires, from Greek and Roman, to Ottoman and British, teaches that the economic foundation of every single empire is the taxation of other nations. The imperial ability to tax has always rested on a better and stronger economy, and as a consequence, a better and stronger military. One part of the subject taxes went to improve the living standards of the empire; the other part went to strengthen the military dominance necessary to enforce the collection of those taxes. ...

...Early in the 20th century, the U.S. economy began to dominate the world economy. The U.S. dollar was tied to gold, so that the value of the dollar neither increased, nor decreased, but remained the same amount of gold. The Great Depression, with its preceding inflation from 1921 to 1929 and its subsequent ballooning government deficits, had substantially increased the amount of currency in circulation, and thus rendered the backing of U.S. dollars by gold impossible. This led Roosevelt to decouple the dollar from gold in 1932. Up to this point, the U.S. may have well dominated the world economy, but from an economic point of view, it was not an empire. The fixed value of the dollar did not allow the Americans to extract economic benefits from other countries by supplying them with dollars convertible to gold.

Economically, the American Empire was born with Bretton Woods in 1945. The U.S. dollar was not fully convertible to gold, but was made convertible to gold only to foreign governments. This established the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. It was possible, because during WWII, the United States had supplied its allies with provisions, demanding gold as payment, thus accumulating significant portion of the world’s gold. An Empire would not have been possible if, following the Bretton Woods arrangement, the dollar supply was kept limited and within the availability of gold, so as to fully exchange back dollars for gold. However, the guns-and-butter policy of the 1960’s was an imperial one: the dollar supply was relentlessly increased to finance Vietnam and LBJ’s Great Society. Most of those dollars were handed over to foreigners in exchange for economic goods, without the prospect of buying them back at the same value. The increase in dollar holdings of foreigners via persistent U.S. trade deficits was tantamount to a tax—the classical inflation tax that a country imposes on its own citizens, this time around an inflation tax that U.S. imposed on rest of the world.

When in 1970-1971 foreigners demanded payment for their dollars in gold, The U.S. Government defaulted on its payment on August 15, 1971. While the popular spin told the story of “severing the link between the dollar and gold”, in reality the denial to pay back in gold was an act of bankruptcy by the U.S. Government. Essentially, the U.S. declared itself an Empire. It had extracted an enormous amount of economic goods from the rest of the world, with no intention or ability to return those goods, and the world was powerless to respond— the world was taxed and it could not do anything about it.

From that point on, to sustain the American Empire and to continue to tax the rest of the world, the United States had to force the world to continue to accept ever-depreciating dollars in exchange for economic goods and to have the world hold more and more of those depreciating dollars. It had to give the world an economic reason to hold them, and that reason was oil.

In 1971, as it became clearer and clearer that the U.S Government would not be able to buy back its dollars in gold, it made in 1972-73 an iron-clad arrangement with Saudi Arabia to support the power of the House of Saud in exchange for accepting only U.S. dollars for its oil. The rest of OPEC was to follow suit and also accept only dollars. Because the world had to buy oil from the Arab oil countries, it had the reason to hold dollars as payment for oil. Because the world needed ever increasing quantities of oil at ever increasing oil prices, the world’s demand for dollars could only increase. Even though dollars could no longer be exchanged for gold, they were now exchangeable for oil.

The economic essence of this arrangement was that the dollar was now backed by oil. As long as that was the case, the world had to accumulate increasing amounts of dollars, because they needed those dollars to buy oil. As long as the dollar was the only acceptable payment for oil, its dominance in the world was assured, and the American Empire could continue to tax the rest of the world. If, for any reason, the dollar lost its oil backing, the American Empire would cease to exist. Thus, Imperial survival dictated that oil be sold only for dollars. It also dictated that oil reserves were spread around various sovereign states that weren’t strong enough, politically or militarily, to demand payment for oil in something else. If someone demanded a different payment, he had to be convinced, either by political pressure or military means, to change his mind.

The man that actually did demand Euro for his oil was Saddam Hussein in 2000. At first, his demand was met with ridicule, later with neglect, but as it became clearer that he meant business, political pressure was exerted to change his mind. When other countries, like Iran, wanted payment in other currencies, most notably Euro and Yen, the danger to the dollar was clear and present, and a punitive action was in order. Bush’s Shock-and-Awe in Iraq was not about Saddam’s nuclear capabilities, about defending human rights, about spreading democracy, or even about seizing oil fields; it was about defending the dollar, ergo the American Empire. It was about setting an example that anyone who demanded payment in currencies other than U.S. Dollars would be likewise punished.

Many have criticized Bush for staging the war in Iraq in order to seize Iraqi oil fields. However, those critics can’t explain why Bush would want to seize those fields—he could simply print dollars for nothing and use them to get all the oil in the world that he needs. He must have had some other reason to invade Iraq.

History teaches that an empire should go to war for one of two reasons: (1) to defend itself or (2) benefit from war; if not, as Paul Kennedy illustrates in his magisterial The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, a military overstretch will drain its economic resources and precipitate its collapse. Economically speaking, in order for an empire to initiate and conduct a war, its benefits must outweigh its military and social costs. Benefits from Iraqi oil fields are hardly worth the long-term, multi-year military cost. Instead, Bush must have went into Iraq to defend his Empire. Indeed, this is the case: two months after the United States invaded Iraq, the Oil for Food Program was terminated, the Iraqi Euro accounts were switched back to dollars, and oil was sold once again only for U.S. dollars. No longer could the world buy oil from Iraq with Euro. Global dollar supremacy was once again restored. Bush descended victoriously from a fighter jet and declared the mission accomplished—he had successfully defended the U.S. dollar, and thus the American Empire.

National Grid, the owner of Britain's gas and electricity transmission networks, yesterday became the third largest energy supplier in the US after buying one of America's leading gas distributors in a £6.8bn cash deal.

The debt-financed acquisition of KeySpan, which is based on the north-eastern seaboard, is Grid's fifth US takeover since 2000 and means that it will now make more of its profits in America than the UK. ...

... Steve Holliday, who takes over as Grid's chief executive at the end of the year, signalled there was more American expansion to come as the company added to its gas distribution business. He did not rule out moving beyond the north-east of the US, which Grid has made its home since the initial £2.6bn purchase of New England Electric System six years ago.

This latest deal will increase Grid's US customer numbers to 7.7 million - making it the country's third largest gas distributor and seventh biggest electricity supplier. KeySpan is the biggest gas supplier in the north-eastern US, with 2.6 million customers in New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. It also has an electricity transmission and distribution business in Long Island serving 1.1 million customers and 6,700 megawatts of electricity-generating capacity. ...

The company insisted that its empire building would not come unstuck in the same way as ScottishPower's disastrous acquisition of Pacificorp in the mid-west six years ago. The company was eventually sold to Warren Buffett last year for $5.1bn.

Steve Holliday, who will succeed Roger Urwin as chief executive in December, said this deal was different because National Grid already operates subsidiaries in neighbouring states and only a tiny minority of its workers - just 20 out of 10,000 - are expatriates. "It is run by Americans. This is very different from ScottishPower's model," he said. ...

...The deal is subject to five separate regulatory clearances and should be completed by summer 2007. Executives telephoned local politicians on Sunday evening, including New York senator Hillary Clinton, to explain the deal and ensure that it was politically acceptable.

The report details how the police unit, dressed in riot gear, was guarding a road outside the Gleneagles Hotel when Mr Bush cycled up on a damp road.

"As the president passed the junction at speed he raised his left arm from the handlebars to wave to the police officers present while shouting 'Thanks, you guys, for coming'.

"As he did this he lost control of the cycle, falling to the ground, causing both himself and his bicycle to strike [the officer] on the lower legs," it says.

The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high.

Americans are also overwhelmingly opposed to the Bush-backed deal giving a Dubai-owned company operational control over six major U.S. ports. Seven in 10 Americans, including 58 percent of Republicans, say they're opposed to the agreement. ...

...In a separate poll, two out of three Americans said they do not think President Bush has responded adequately to the needs of Katrina victims. Only 32 percent approve of the way President Bush is responding to those needs, a drop of 12 points from last September’s poll, taken just two weeks after the storm made landfall. ...

... For the first time in this poll, most Americans say the president does not care much about people like themselves. Fifty-one percent now think he doesn't care, compared to 47 percent last fall.

Just 30 percent approve of how Mr. Bush is handling the Iraq war, another all-time low.

By two to one, the poll finds Americans think U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq are going badly – the worst assessment yet of progress in Iraq.

Even on fighting terrorism, which has long been a strong suit for Mr. Bush, his ratings dropped lower than ever. Half of Americans say they disapprove of how he's handling the war on terror, while 43 percent approve.

In a bright spot for the administration, most Americans appeared to have heard enough about Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident.

More then three in four said it was understandable that the accident had occurred and two-thirds said the media had spent too much time covering the story.

Still, the incident appears to have made the public's already negative view of Cheney a more so. Just 18 percent said they had a favorable view of the vice president, down from 23 percent in January. ...

Just 39% of Americans know that the operating rights are currently owned by a foreign firm. Fifteen percent (15%) believe the operating rights are U.S. owned while 46% are not sure.

From a political perspective, President Bush's national security credentials have clearly been tarnished due to the outcry over this issue. For the first time ever, Americans have a slight preference for Democrats in Congress over the President on national security issues. Forty-three percent (43%) say they trust the Democrats more on this issue today while 41% prefer the President.

It is important to note that the question about trust on national security issues was asked first, before any mention was made of the Dubai Ports issue. [Source: Rasmussen Reports]

Let's go back to the beginning. At 2:40 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld gave military commanders their marching orders. "Judge whether good enough hit S. H. [Saddam Hussein] @ same time - not only UBL [Osama bin Laden]," read an aide's handwritten notes about his instructions. The notes were recently released after a Freedom of Information Act request. "Hard to get a good case," the notes acknowledge. Nonetheless, they say: "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

So it literally began on Day 1. When terrorists attacked the United States, the Bush administration immediately looked for ways it could exploit the atrocity to pursue unrelated goals - especially, but not exclusively, a war with Iraq.

But to exploit the atrocity, President Bush had to do two things. First, he had to create a climate of fear: Al Qaeda, a real but limited threat, metamorphosed into a vast, imaginary axis of evil threatening America. Second, he had to blur the distinctions between nasty people who actually attacked us and nasty people who didn't.

The administration successfully linked Iraq and 9/11 in public perceptions through a campaign of constant insinuation and occasional outright lies. In the process, it also created a state of mind in which all Arabs were lumped together in the camp of evildoers. Osama, Saddam - what's the difference?

Now comes the port deal. Mr. Bush assures us that "people don't need to worry about security." But after all those declarations that we're engaged in a global war on terrorism, after all the terror alerts declared whenever the national political debate seemed to be shifting to questions of cronyism, corruption and incompetence, the administration can't suddenly change its theme song to "Don't Worry, Be Happy." ...

...Mr. Bush shouldn't really be losing his credibility as a terrorism fighter over the ports deal, which, after careful examination (which hasn't happened yet), may turn out to be O.K. Instead, Mr. Bush should have lost his credibility long ago over his diversion of U.S. resources away from the pursuit of Al Qaeda and into an unnecessary war in Iraq, his bungling of that war, and his adoption of a wrongful imprisonment and torture policy that has blackened America's reputation.

But there is, nonetheless, a kind of rough justice in Mr. Bush's current predicament. After 9/11, the American people granted him a degree of trust rarely, if ever, bestowed on our leaders. He abused that trust, and now he is facing a storm of skepticism about his actions - a storm that sweeps up everything, things related and not.

Citing broad gaps in U.S. intelligence, the Coast Guard raised concerns weeks ago that it could not determine whether a United Arab Emirates-based company seeking a stake in some U.S. port operations might support terrorist operations.

The disclosure came during a hearing Monday on Dubai-owned DP World's plans to assume significant operations at six leading U.S. ports. It also clouded whether the Bush administration's agreement to conduct an unusual investigation into the pending takeover's security risks would allay lawmakers' concerns.

The administration said the Coast Guard's concerns were raised during its review of the deal, which it approved Jan. 17, and that all those questions were resolved. ...

..."There are many intelligence gaps, concerning the potential for DPW or P&O assets to support terrorist operations, that precludes an overall threat assessment" of the potential merger, an unclassified Coast Guard intelligence assessment said.

"The breadth of the intelligence gaps also infer potential unknown threats against a large number of potential vulnerabilities," said the half-page assessment. Officials said it was an unclassified excerpt from a larger document. ...

... The Coast Guard assessment raised questions about the security of the companies' operations, the backgrounds of people working for the companies, and whether other foreign countries influenced operations that affect security.

"We were never told about this and have no information about it," Michael Moore, DP World's senior vice president, said of the excerpt. However, he said it shows "serious and probing" questions were asked and that the initial approval of the deal indicates those questions were answered.

Senior GOP sources envision the retirement of Mr. Cheney in 2007, months after the congressional elections. The sources said Mr. Cheney would be persuaded to step down as he becomes an increasing political liability to President Bush.

The sources reported a growing rift between the president and vice president as well as their staffs. They cited Mr. Cheney's failure to immediately tell the president of the accidental shooting of the vice president's hunting colleague earlier this month. The White House didn't learn of the incident until 18 hours later.

The sources reported a growing rift between the president and vice president as well as their staffs. They cited Mr. Cheney's failure to immediately tell the president of the accidental shooting of the vice president's hunting colleague earlier this month. The White House didn't learn of the incident until 18 hours later.

Mr. Cheney's next crisis could take place by the end of the year, the sources said. They said the White House was expecting Mr. Cheney to defend himself against charges from his former chief of staff, Lewis Libby, that the vice president ordered him to relay classified information. Such a charge could lead to a congressional investigation and even impeachment proceedings.

"Nothing will happen until after the congressional elections," a GOP source said. "After that, there will be significant changes in the administration and Cheney will probably be part of that."

Already, senators expect Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate whether Mr. Cheney authorized Mr. Libby to divulge classified material. Mr. Libby has told a grand jury that unnamed "superiors" directed him to relay the content of a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in July 2003.

The GOP governors reluctantly acknowledge that the series of gaffes threatens to undermine public confidence in President Bush's ability to provide security, which has long been his greatest strength among voters.

"You've got solid conservatives coming up speaking like they haven't before, it's likely that something's going on at the grass roots," said Republican Mark Sanford of South Carolina. "Whether it's temporary or not remains to be seen."

The unease was clear in interviews with more than a dozen governors over the weekend, including nearly half of the Republicans attending the winter meeting of the National Governors Association. The annual conference was taking place in a capital enthralled by the political firestorm over government plans to approve takeover of operations at some terminals at six U.S. ports by a company owned by the United Arab Emirates government.

Democrats see opportunity, and even those in conservative states say the administration's missteps will have a ripple effect politically at home. "I do think there's a considerable degree of skepticism about what's been happening at the federal level," said Democrat Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas. "If you didn't pick it up on Katrina, you did when you tried to help your parents" get drugs through the new Medicare program.

But it wasn't Bush's political opponents alone who saw weaknesses. So did his allies — listing the days of chaos in New Orleans after the hurricane, the nationwide confusion over the drug prescription program that forced many states to step in to help seniors get medications, and the ports security debacle that has drawn criticism from leading Republicans in Congress and the states.

"I don't think he was well served on the port issue by the bureaucracy," said Republican Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho, who is leading a united front of governors pushing back on potential reductions to National Guard forces. "He's at the forefront on national security. When you combine this flap on the ports, and these potential cuts on the military, you need to make sure that issue doesn't slip away. It's one of his strengths."

He also said the lack of communication from the administration on the Guard issue has been a problem. "There has been too much we have learned outside the loop. It's time we be inside the loop."

Reporter Bill Sammon, who joins the WASHINGTON EXAMINER as Senior White House Correspondent, is set to launch his new book, STRATEGERY.

In the Book, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned, Rove is quoted on the-record and is unleashed on Hillary:

There is a “brittleness about her” that could prove a weakness in November 2008.

But Rove added that the “hard-driving” Clinton will easily vanquish Democratic primary rivals like New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, who are merely “preening for the vice presidential slot.”

President Bush cautioned that Hillary Clinton should not be underestimated.

“She is a smart person, and obviously has got a lot of experience,” the president said in an exclusive interview for the book STRATEGERY, which is being published Monday. “It is helpful, to a certain extent, to have seen the presidency and presidential campaigns firsthand.”

Why am I watching this again? Oh, yeah. So I can make an informed assessement of the “State of Black America.” ...

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan was quoting the Bible this weekend at the 2006 State of the Black Union Conference. He was talking about how the Bible calls for a “baptism of fire” and, in his judgment, “America must burn.” Isn’t the Bible the holy book of infidels – Christians and Jews? Why would a Muslim quote the Bible? Farrakhan also spoke of how Osama bin Laden may not have done what he’s “accused” of doing. Most rational people know Farrakhan is a lunatic. So who were those people applauding this guy?

If the majority of blacks find comfort in this kind of rhetoric, then it is they that need to experience a true baptism of fire. Unfortunately, black ministers of the Christian faith are busy cow-towing to the Democrat Party.

"…outline(s) how individuals, groups, communities and the body politic can move forward to make this nation better. When we make Black America better, we make all of America better. We all want an America as good as its promise."

At issue is a 1992 amendment to a law that requires a 45-day review if the foreign takeover of a U.S. company "could affect national security." Many members of Congress see that review as mandatory in this case.

But Bush administration officials said Thursday that review is only triggered if a Cabinet official expresses a national security concern during an interagency review of a proposed takeover.

"We have a difference of opinion on the interpretation of your amendment," said Treasury Department Deputy Secretary Robert Kimmitt.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, comprised of officials from 12 government departments and agencies, including the National Security Council and the Department of Homeland Security, approved the deal unanimously on January 17.

"The structure of the deal led us to believe there were no national security concerns," said Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Michael P. Jackson.

The same day, the White House appointed a DP World executive, David C. Sanborn, to be the administrator for the Maritime Administration of the Department of Transportation. Sanborn had been serving as director of operations for Europe and Latin America at DP World.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R- Va., said he will request from both the U.S. attorney general and the Senate committee's legal counsel a finding on the administration's interpretation of the 1992 amendment.

Adding to the controversy is the fact Congress was not notified of the deal. Kimmitt said Congress is periodically updated on completed CFIUS decisions, but is proscribed from initiating contact with Congress about pending deals. It may respond to congressional inquiries on those cases only.

Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley stated in a letter to Bush on Feb. 21 that he specifically requested to be kept abreast of foreign investments that may have national security implications. He made the request in the wake of a controversial Chinese proposal to purchase an oil company last year.

"Obviously, my request fell on deaf ears. I am disappointed that I was neither briefed nor informed of this sale prior to its approval. Instead, I read about it in the media," he wrote.

The Bush administration was ordered by Congress to shut down the Total Information Awareness data mining program two years ago, but according to a report in the National Journal, they have done no such thing... Exerpts from the NJ story below, with a HT to Rawstory:

A controversial counter-terrorism program, which lawmakers halted more than two years ago amid outcries from privacy advocates, was stopped in name only and has quietly continued within the intelligence agency now fending off charges that it has violated the privacy of U.S. citizens.

Research under the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program -- which developed technologies to predict terrorist attacks by mining government databases and the personal records of people in the United States -- was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency to another group, which builds technologies primarily for the National Security Agency, according to documents obtained by National Journal and to intelligence sources familiar with the move. The names of key projects were changed, apparently to conceal their identities, but their funding remained intact, often under the same contracts.

Two of the most important components of the TIA program were moved to the Advanced Research and Development Activity, housed at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., documents and sources confirm. One piece was the Information Awareness Prototype System, the core architecture that tied together numerous information extraction, analysis, and dissemination tools developed under TIA. The prototype system included privacy-protection technologies that may have been discontinued or scaled back following the move to ARDA.

A $19 million contract to build the prototype system was awarded in late 2002 to Hicks & Associates, a consulting firm in Arlington, Va., that is run by former Defense and military officials. Congress's decision to pull TIA's funding in late 2003 "caused a significant amount of uncertainty for all of us about the future of our work," Hicks executive Brian Sharkey wrote in an e-mail to subcontractors at the time. "Fortunately," Sharkey continued, "a new sponsor has come forward that will enable us to continue much of our previous work." Sources confirm that this new sponsor was ARDA. Along with the new sponsor came a new name. "We will be describing this new effort as 'Basketball,' " Sharkey wrote, apparently giving no explanation of the name's significance. Another e-mail from a Hicks employee, Marc Swedenburg, reminded the company's staff that "TIA has been terminated and should be referenced in that fashion."

Sharkey played a key role in TIA's birth, when he and a close friend, retired Navy Vice Adm. John Poindexter, President Reagan's national security adviser, brought the idea to Defense officials shortly after the 9/11 attacks. The men had teamed earlier on intelligence-technology programs for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which agreed to host TIA and hired Poindexter to run it in 2002. In August 2003, Poindexter was forced to resign as TIA chief amid howls that his central role in the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s made him unfit to run a sensitive intelligence program.

It's unclear whether work on Basketball continues.

Admiral John Poindexter, notorious for his role in Iran-Contra, says the new Pentagon system will provide DoD and other government agencies with instant access to E-mail, calling records and credit card and banking transactions -- as well as travel records. All of these "searches" will be conducted without a search warrant according to Markoff.

Poindexter has said it is necessary that the government "break down the stovepipes" that seperate commercial and government databases, as Markoff says. The DoD, once gaining access to the vast sea of data stored in airline, bank and hotel computers will then use "data mining" techniques to determine patterns that appear suspicious. If this plan goes into effect you can expect a visit from the FBI if you travel too much, or a friendly visit from an unidentified man in a suit if you use your credit cards in "strange" ways.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Homeland Security Department objected at first to a United Arab Emirates company's taking over significant operations at six U.S. ports. It was the lone protest among members of the government committee that eventually approved the deal without dissent.

The department's early objections were settled later in the government's review of the $6.8 billion deal after Dubai-owned DP World agreed to a series of security restrictions. ...

...A DP World executive said the company would agree to tougher security restrictions to win congressional support only if the same restrictions applied to all U.S. port operators. The company earlier had struck a more conciliatory stance, saying it would do whatever Bush asked to salvage the agreement.

"Security is everybody's business," senior vice president Michael Moore told The Associated Press. "We're going to have a very open mind to legitimate concerns. But anything we can do, any way to improve security, should apply to everybody equally."

The administration approved the ports deal on Jan. 17 after DP World agreed during secret negotiations to cooperate with law enforcement investigations in the future and make other concessions.

Some lawmakers have challenged the adequacy of a classified intelligence assessment crucial to assuring the administration that the deal was proper. The report was assembled during four weeks in November by analysts working for the director of national intelligence. ...

...The report concluded that U.S. spy agencies were "unable to locate any derogatory information on the company," according to a person familiar with the document. This person spoke only on condition of anonymity because the report was classified.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and others have complained that the intelligence report focused only on information the agencies collected about DP World and did not examine reported links between UAE government officials and al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Stewart Baker, a senior Homeland Security official, said he was the sole representative on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States who objected to the ports deal. Baker said he later changed his vote after DP World agreed to the security conditions. Other officials confirmed Baker's account.

"We were not prepared to sign off on the deal without the successful negotiation of the assurances," Baker told the AP.

Officials from the White House, CIA, departments of State, Treasury, Justices, and others looked for guidance from Homeland Security because it is responsible for seaports. "We had the most obvious stake in the process," Baker said.

Baker acknowledged that a government audit of security practices at the U.S. ports in the takeover has not been completed as part of the deal. "We had the authority to do an audit earlier," Baker said.

The audit will help evaluate DP World's security programs to stop smuggling and detect illegal shipments of nuclear materials at its seaport operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.

The administration privately disclosed the status of the security audit to senators during meetings about improving reviews of future business deals involving foreign buyers. Officials did not suggest the audit's earlier completion would have affected the deal's approval.

New Jersey's Democratic governor, who is suing to block the deal, said in his party's weekly radio address on Saturday that the administration failed to properly investigate the UAE's record on terrorism.

"We were told that the president didn't know about the sale until after it was approved. For many Americans, regardless of party, this lack of disciplined review is unacceptable," Jon Corzine said.

Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said there was no going back on the deal.

• Follow the money
• Another law ignored?
• Newsflash! The WSJ sides with Bush
• Port insecurity
• All in the family
• It's not you, it's me...
• Pimp my ports
• Crazy talk
• Save the Port of Miami
• Fun with outsourcing: guess who's guarding the ports?

“With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasn’t the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration one year ago. If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war.”

It Didn’t Work

"I can tell you the main reason behind all our woes — it is America." The New York Times reporter is quoting the complaint of a clothing merchant in a Sunni stronghold in Iraq. "Everything that is going on between Sunni and Shiites, the troublemaker in the middle is America."

One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. The same edition of the paper quotes a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Reuel Marc Gerecht backed the American intervention. He now speaks of the bombing of the especially sacred Shiite mosque in Samara and what that has precipitated in the way of revenge. He concludes that “The bombing has completely demolished” what was being attempted — to bring Sunnis into the defense and interior ministries.

Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols.

The Iraqis we hear about are first indignant, and then infuriated, that Americans aren't on the scene to protect them and to punish the aggressors. And so they join the clothing merchant who says that everything is the fault of the Americans.

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elucidates on the complaint against Americans. It is not only that the invaders are American, it is that they are "Zionists." It would not be surprising to learn from an anonymously cited American soldier that he can understand why Saddam Hussein was needed to keep the Sunnis and the Shiites from each others' throats. ...

Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here because to make the kind of concession that is strategically appropriate requires a mitigation of policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown pronouncements. His challenge is to persuade himself that he can submit to a historical reality without forswearing basic commitments in foreign policy.

He will certainly face the current development as military leaders are expected to do: They are called upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but to insist on the survival of strategic policies.

Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.

... Bush has long been successful in persuading Americans they were under constant threat and he was the best man to protect them, although polls reveal paradoxes in attitudes.

Last month, some 75 percent of Americans said in a Zogby survey that they expected the country to suffer a major terrorist attack within the next two years, but a CNN/Gallup/USA Today poll found that 64 percent of Americans had confidence in Bush's ability to prevent an attack.

Fears have not subsided, pollster John Zogby said, although the United States has not suffered a major attack since September 11, 2001. Bush two weeks ago revealed a plot foiled in 2002 to fly an airplane into the West Coast's tallest building and said the terrorist threat had not abated.

"That's what makes this story so ironic. I guess you can't have it both ways," Zogby said.

Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University, said, "Bush is a victim of his own rhetoric. This deal flies in the face of the Bush administration's general posture, which has been that there is much to fear out there and they have been vigilant in protecting the country."

Deep in the bowels of the Pentagon, military professionals privately admit what the Bush Administration publicly fails to recognize - the United States veers dangerously on the precipice of its worst wartime embarrassment since Vietnam as Iraq plunges into an irreversible civil war.

"The civil war has started and the U.S. planners had better get used to it," says retired Marine and military affairs expert H. Thomas Hayden, now a writer for Military.Com. "Shiites have always planned to align themselves with Iran but the Pentagon dominated planners in the Administration have never understood the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite and the great religious gulf between them that has existed for almost a thousand years."

Jeremy Bowen, Middle East editor for the British Broadcasting Corporation, agrees.

"The destruction of the al-Askari shrine takes the danger of a civil war in Iraq to a new level," Bowen says. "It has produced bigger protests than the killing of humans."

Pentagon professionals have long warned President Bush that if civil war erupts in Iraq the U.S. will have to admit failure in its efforts to create a stable, democratic government. As he has with most warnings from those who fight wars for a living, Bush ignored the advice.

"Because we have done the hard work, we are entering a season of hope," Bush added, pledging to continue economic progress, strengthen Social Security, make public schools "all they can be," uphold the country's "deepest values of family and faith" and help emerging democracies of Iraq and Afghanistan.

"With the good allies at our side, we will fight this War on Terror with every resource in our national power so our children can live in freedom and in peace," the president said before turning his remarks toward those who voted for his opponent.

"Reaching these goals will require the broad support of Americans so today I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent: to make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust. A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation. We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America." ...

AP -- yes, AP -- is now reporting the just released audit information obtained from Palm Beach County, Florida's 2004 Election. And the picture of the Sequoia paperless touch-screen voting machines used that night is not pretty. The information was obtained and released tonight by BlackBoxVoting.org...From the AP story...

BlackBoxVoting.org, which describes itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit citizens group, said it found 70,000 instances in Palm Beach County of cards getting stuck in the paperless ATM-like machines and that the computers logged about 100,000 errors, including memory failures.Also, the hard drives crashed on some of the machines made by Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems, some machines apparently had to be rebooted over and over, and 1,475 re-calibrations were performed on Election Day on more than 4,300 units, Harris said. Re-calibrations are done when a machine is malfunctioning, she said."I actually think there's enough votes in play in Florida that it's anybody's guess who actually won the presidential race," [BBV's Bev] Harris added.

[U.S. Amb. Zalmay] Khalilzad, in a conference call with reporters, said: "What we've seen in the past two days, the attack has had a major impact here, getting everyone's attention that Iraq is in danger."

The country's leaders, he added, "must come together, they must compromise with each other to bring the people of Iraq together and save this country."

Mr. Khalilzad's comments are the most explicit acknowledgment so far by an American official of the instability of the situation. The killings and assaults across Iraq that began Wednesday have amounted to the worst sectarian violence since the American invasion.

It is a measure of the degree of violence that seven American soldiers were killed by bombs on Wednesday in the separate struggle between the resistance and the US occupation. Although the presence of 130,000 American troops is justified by saying that they are preventing a civil war, it is not clear what they can do to prevent it happening.

Some critics have pointed out that the free elections in the Middle East have put political power in the hands of Islamics and extremists, in the case of the Palestinian elections, a notorious -- notorious terrorist organization. Critics argue that our policies of promoting democracy are backfiring and destabilizing the region...

Did the Bush administration "authorize" the leak of classified information to Bob Woodward? And did those leaks damage national security?

The vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) made exactly that charge tonight in a letter to John Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence. What prompted Rockefeller to write Negroponte was a recent op-ed in the New York Times by CIA director Porter Goss complaining that leaks of classified information were the fault of "misguided whistleblowers."

Rockefeller charged in his letter that the most "damaging revelations of intelligence sources and methods are generated primarily by Executive Branch officials pushing a particular policy, and not by the rank-and-file employees of intelligence agencies."

Later in the same letter, Rockefeller said: "Given the Administration's continuing abuse of intelligence information for political purposes, its criticism of leaks is extraordinarily hypocritical. Preventing damage to intelligence sources and methods from media leaks will not be possible until the highest level of the Administration cease to disclose classified information on a classified basis for political purposes."

Exhibit A for Rockefeller: Woodward's book, Bush at War.

Here is what Rockefeller had to say:

In his 2002 book Bush at War, Bob Woodward described almost unfettered access to classified material of the most sensitive nature. According to his account, he was provided information related to sources and methods, extremely sensitive covert actions, and foreign intelligence liaison relationships. It is no wonder, as Director Goss wrote, "because of the number of recent news reports discussing our relationships with other intelligence services, some of these partners have even informed the C.I.A. that they are reconsidering their participation of some of our most important antiterrorism ventures."

I wrote both former Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) George Tenet and Acting DCI John McLaughlin seeking to determine what steps were being taken to address the appalling disclosures contained in Bush at War. The only response I received was to indicate that the leaks had been authorized by the Administration. The CIA has still not responded to a follow-up letter I sent a year and half ago on September 1, 2004, trying to pin down which officials were authorized to meet with Mr. Woodward and by whom, and what intelligence information was conveyed during these authorized exchanges.

Were leaks of classified information "authorized" to Woodward? Rockefeller's letter says exactly that. And among other things, it is well known and has been reported long ago that one of Woodward's sources for both of his books about the Bush presidency was then-VicePresidential chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, who is portrayed in quite a flattering manner in both.

• All the president's bag men
• So when does he apologize to the rest of us?

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

CNN's Lou Dobbs on Bush Family Dealings with UAE; Dubai Co. Agrees to Delay US Port Take-Over

From the transcript of the February 22, 2006 broadcast of Lou Dobbs' program on CNN:

DOBBS: President Bush's family and members of the Bush administration have long-standing business connections with the United Arab Emirates, and those connections are raising new concerns and questions tonight in some quarters about why the president is defying his very own party leadership and his party in defending the Dubai port deal.

Christine Romans reports.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The oil-rich United Arab Emirates is a major investor in The Carlyle Group, the private equity investment firm where President Bush's father once served as senior adviser and is a who's who of former high-level government officials. Just last year, Dubai International Capital, a government-backed buyout firm, invested in an $8 billion Carlyle fund.

Another family connection, the president's brother, Neil Bush, has reportedly received funding for his educational software company from the UAE investors. A call to his company was not returned. ...

Then there is the cabinet connection. Treasury Secretary John Snow was chairman of railroad company CSX. After he left the company for the White House, CSX sold its international port operations to Dubai Ports World for more than a billion dollars.In Connecticut today, Snow told reporters he had no knowledge of that CSX sale. "I learned of this transaction probably the same way members of the Senate did, by reading about it in the newspapers."

Another administration connection, President Bush chose a Dubai Ports World executive to head the U.S. Maritime Administration. David Sanborn, the former director of Dubai Ports' European and Latin American operations, he was tapped just last month to lead the agency that oversees U.S. port operations."

After testy Senate Armed Forces Committee briefings today between a Treasury Department underling and the press, on the deal to cede US port control to the United Arab Emirates, C-SPAN hosted a call-in program for Americans to comment on the briefings. As is normal for C-SPAN call-in programs, separate phone numbers were provided for Republicans, Democrats and Independents. I was astonished during the 30 minutes I listened to the callers....

About 80% were Republicans, and every last one of them was fighting angry at the Bush Admnistration. One Republican senior threatened to switch to the Democratic Party for the first time in his life. Another conservative shouted that the Bush family cares only about money, and not national security. Every single caller, regardless of partisan affiliation, expressed fury at the deal and at George Bush. Many were livid with all Republicans..

Despite the entreaties of the administration, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said bipartisan legislation will be introduced next week -- when Congress reconvenes -- to scuttle the deal, or at least to force a 45-day investigation into the deal's national security implications.

The administration's refusal to conduct such an investigation was at the center of a debate yesterday during the first public briefing on the deal since it was approved Jan. 17. Under a 1992 amendment to the law that created the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the CFIUS panel "shall" conduct such an investigation if a company operating in the United States is purchased by a firm controlled by a foreign government, and if anyone in that company could affect national security.

Kimmitt said the Bush administration, like previous administrations, believes the law gives it the discretion to decide whether such a review takes place, even if the low threshold set by the law is met. Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England said that in a review that was "definitely not cursory" and "definitely not casual," no national security concerns were raised by the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency or the U.S. Transportation Command that would have triggered further investigation.

The administration's interpretation of the CFIUS law was met with skepticism during yesterday's briefing, attended by four Democratic senators and only one Republican.

"Ambiguity has been found in a statute that is unambiguous," said Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) asked Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to draft a memorandum explaining how the review of the ports deal was consistent with the law, and he requested a separate review by the Senate's legal counsel.

The rapid growth of DP World mirrors the swift expansion of Dubai into a commercial power that is less and less dependent on oil wealth, which is modest by Persian Gulf standards. The glittering city-state has the Middle East's leading airline, Emirates, and has been snapping up other foreign assets, including the Essex House hotel in New York.

Dubai's leader, Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktum, known as Sheik Mo, is the driving force behind the city's foreign investments and domestic building projects that include man-made islands shaped like palm trees, the world's tallest tower, an underwater hotel and a theme park to dwarf Disneyland.

• Newsflash! The WSJ sides with Bush
• Port insecurity
• All in the family
• It's not you, it's me...
• Pimp my ports
• Crazy talk
• Save the Port of Miami
• Fun with outsourcing: guess who's guarding the ports?

Tags: Outsourcing, War on terror, Bush, Middle East, UAE, Ports, Dubai

Survey Says Average U.S. Family Income Declines
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:57 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The average income of American families, after adjusting for inflation, declined by 2.3 percent in 2004 compared to 2001 while their net worth rose but at a slower pace.

The Federal Reserve reported Thursday that the drop in inflation-adjusted incomes left the average family income at $70,700 in 2004. The median, or point where half the families earned more and half less, did rise slightly in 2004 after adjusting for inflation to $43,200, up 1.6 percent from the 2001 level.

The median, or midpoint for net worth rose by 1.5 percent to $93,100 from 2001 to 2004. That growth was far below the 10.3 percent gain in median net worth from 1998 to 2001, a period when the stock market reached record highs before starting to decline in early 2000.

The Fed's results were published in the 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances, a document which provides a comprehensive view of how Americans are faring on such pocketbook issues as incomes and net worth.

Under a secretive agreement with the Bush administration, a company in the United Arab Emirates promised to cooperate with U.S. investigations as a condition of its takeover of operations at six major American ports, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The U.S. government chose not to impose other, routine restrictions.

In approving the $6.8 billion purchase, the administration chose not to require state-owned Dubai Ports World to keep copies of its business records on U.S. soil, where they would be subject to orders by American courts. It also did not require the company to designate an American citizen to accommodate requests by the government.

Outside legal experts said such obligations are routinely attached to U.S. approvals of foreign sales in other industries.

Dubai Ports agreed to give up records on demand about "foreign operational direction" of its business at the U.S. ports, according to the documents. Those records broadly include details about the design, maintenance or operation of ports and equipment. It also pledged to continue participating in programs to stop smuggling and detect illegal shipments of nuclear materials.

"They're not lax but they're not draconian," said James Lewis, a former U.S. official who worked on such agreements. If White House officials negotiating the deal had predicted the firestorm of criticism over it, "they might have made them sound harder."

The conditions over the sale of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. were detailed in U.S. documents marked "confidential." Such records are regularly guarded as trade secrets, and it is highly unusual for them to be made public. ...

Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., said she was "deeply concerned" about the deal even as it was announced that her husband, former Sen. Bob Dole, had been hired as a lobbyist for the United Arab Emirates -- the Middle Eastern country that owns the company that would run six U.S. ports unless the deal is blocked.

Mike Marshall, a spokesman for Bob Dole, said the former senator will be involved in lobbying Congress on the deal, but would not be lobbying his wife. ...

1) Well before Dubai Ports World purchased the port operation services over 6 U.S. ports, the management over those ports had already been outsourced to the British-owned Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company. China’s biggest state-owned shipper runs major ports inside the U.S. We should have a legitimate debate over whether the U.S. government should take control over all port operations as a matter of homeland security, but that is not the debate that is currently going on.

2) If Dubai Ports World had not won the ports deal, a Singaporean company would have won it. Would there have been a similar outrage about having outsourced our port operations to that country?

3) Not a single security violation or breach has been alleged against Dubai Ports World. It has had a good international track record for its port operations. The arguments against DPW’s acquisition consist mainly of guilt-by-association tactics, tying the ports operations of DPW to any and every act of terror associated with the UAE. The fact that the nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan was able to game the ports of Dubai should cause the ports deal to receive heightened scrutiny, but is not in itself a reason to reject the deal.

4) The UAE is not an official state sponsor of terror. It is not under U.S. sanctions. In fact, as James Dobbins documents, the record shows that the UAE has been a valuable ally in the war on terror since 9/11.

5) If we’re truly afraid of an Emirates company having direct access to import weapons or bombs into our country, shouldn’t we shut down Terminal 4 at JFK International Airport in New York? That’s where the Emirates Airlines operates out of and where it has the ability to direct cargo both on and off their planes. Should we also shut down the state-owned Saudi Arabian Airlines from sending flights into Washington, D.C. ?6) If Dubai Ports World were to finalize the port acquisition deal, Americans would work at these ports. DPW would not touch cargo, and it would not be in charge of port security. Coast Guard, Customs, and the respective state/local port commissions would manage the security. Dubai Ports World would have to follow the U.S. port regulations. There can and should be a serious inquiry into whether those regulations are being enforced. More generally, this should be an opening for us to debate the Bush administration’s poor record on port security.

Good points. Not sure they'll change the direction of the debate however. This ball is rolling, and I suspect Mr. Snow could be rolling out of the administration before too long.

Previous:

• All in the family
• It's not you, it's me...
• Pimp my ports
• Crazy talk
• Save the Port of Miami
• Fun with outsourcing: guess who's guarding the ports?

Tags: Outsourcing, War on terror, Bush, Middle East, UAE, Ports

Sheriff to shut boot camp

A Panama City juvenile boot camp will be shut down and Hillsborough County State Attorney Mark Ober will investigate the death of a teenager who had been beaten by guards at the camp.

In rapid-fire developments Tuesday, the treatment of another boy raised new questions about operations at the camp, and the medical examiner who concluded the teenager died of a blood disorder renewed his medical license, which expired last month.

Despite the controversy, Gov. Jeb Bush reaffirmed his support of Florida's five boot camps.

"I believe that boot camps are worth having," said Bush, who appointed Ober as special prosecutor. "We need to learn from this tragic case and make some standard, regulatory proposals to the Legislature."

Boot camps are military-style programs designed to shock juvenile delinquents into complying with the law and to teach them discipline, study skills and work habits. They require rigorous physical training such as pushups and running.

Several lawmakers want all the boot camps closed in light of a security video showing guards at the Bay County facility beating Martin Lee Anderson even as he gave little or no resistance.

Medical Examiner Charles Siebert concluded the teenager died of sickle cell trait, not from the beating. But even Bush questioned that conclusion.

"If he wasn't beat up, that undetected illness wouldn't have caused death," Bush said.

The governor appointed Ober to investigate the death. Bay County State Attorney Steve Meadows begged off because of his close ties to Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen.

Ober's investigation will include the autopsy, Bush said, "to take a look at that evidence and put some new eyes on it."

McKeithen operates the boot camp under contract with the state Department of Juvenile Justice. He has not spoken much about the tragedy, saying he wanted to wait for the investigation to conclude.

But Tuesday McKeithen announced he would cancel the boot camp contract with the state in 90 days. He declined comment, saying he would issue a written statement today.

"I believe the integrity of the boot camp in Bay County has been compromised, leaving the effectiveness of this program virtually paralyzed," he wrote to Anthony J. Schembri, who heads the Department of Juvenile Justice. He wrote that he decided to close the camp "after endless days of intense, thorough and careful consideration."

McKeithen, who said he has seen "some very positive results" from the boot camp, wrote that he wants to create a new juvenile program "which we have been working on for several months."

Local woman says son told her 'they killed that boy'
By Stephen D. Price

A Tallahassee mother said Tuesday her 14-year-old son was in juvenile boot camp with Martin Lee Anderson, and he described what guards did to Anderson as "murder."

That revelation came the same day Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen announced he would close the county's boot camp where guards struck 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson.

"I feel really bad for this lady and every other child that doesn't deserve this type of treatment," said Shauna Manning, referring to Anderson's mother, Gina Jones. "That's why I'm here, to speak out on behalf of her child." ...

... Manning visited her son, Aaron Swartz, at the Bay County boot camp three days after Anderson's incident with the guards, she said Tuesday in the law office of Tallahassee attorney Benjamin Crump, who represents Anderson's family.

"He said they killed that boy," Manning said.

She said her son told her guards had pegged Anderson for a troublemaker when he first arrived at the camp because he wore braids. The day the incident occurred, Anderson was being cooperative and had run 15 laps of the 16-lap run he was required to do, until he began having breathing problems.

The guards then confronted Anderson, Manning said her son told her, and began hitting him.

Manning's son was later transferred to another boot camp.

... When Siebert concluded Martin died of natural causes, he was practicing without a medical license. His license expired Jan. 31 and he did not renew it - until Tuesday.

He renewed it in person in Tallahassee, said Doc Kokol, spokesman for the Florida Department of Health. Siebert will be fined $385 for practicing without a license for a month.

First-time offenders like Siebert generally aren't disciplined further, Kokol said. Fewer than 3 percent of physicians whose licenses must be renewed fail to do so in an average year, Kokol said.

The teen's family is challenging his report, though they have not said how they will do so.

Options include filing a complaint with the state Medical Examiners Commission and asking an independent pathologist to review the files, photographs and slides that Siebert made during the autopsy. The family also could exhume the body for a new autopsy.

"We haven't ruled anything out," said Crump, the attorney.

The Medical Examiners Commission looks to see "if something was just blatantly overlooked, or somebody had drawn the wrong conclusions," said Stephen Nelson, commission chairman and Polk County's medical examiner.

• About Mr. Siebert...
• Death for joyriding?

Tags: Martin Lee Anderson, Florida, Juvenile Justice, Cover-ups

Dame Anita told the Standard: "A lot of people seem to think it's cool to be a pimp or a whore. It's not cool. The reality is dark and evil and appalling and unregulated. ..."

Bush to Veto UAE Port Legislation
Wow. And all this time I thought it was some Rovian plot just to make Bush look like a dumbass.

• It's not you, it's me...
• Pimp my ports
• Crazy talk
• Save the Port of Miami
• Fun with outsourcing: guess who's guarding the ports?

Tags: Outsourcing, War on terror, Bush, Middle East, UAE, Ports

Mrs Clinton's legislation would prevent US ports from being owned by any foreign government, but much of the concern in this case arises because DP World is owned by the government of the UAE. The country was used to wire money to the September 11 hijackers, say US officials, though it has been a staunch ally of President Bush in his war on terror. DP World said yesterday that it had exactly the same security certifications as P&O.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington group that seeks to promote a positive image of Islam and Muslims, said some of the reaction smacks of prejudice.

''No one seems to be criticizing the company itself, but they're most concerned with the religion and ethnicity of its owners,'' said spokesman Ibrahim Hooper. ``It's what we have to deal with in the post-9/11 era.''

• Pimp my ports
• Crazy talk
• Save the Port of Miami
• Fun with outsourcing: guess who's guarding the ports?

Tags: Outsourcing, War on terror, Bush, Middle East, UAE, Ports

Since 9/11, the priority number one has been to protect this country from another terrorist attack. President Bush rode our fear of that very thing to a second term in office. The War in Iraq is advertised as part of the War on Terror. A half a trillion dollars and 2300 dead Americans soldiers, so that we can quote “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here”. But what about over here?

Since a column raising an alarm about CFIUS' decision appeared in this space last week, three new factors have come to light that compound the strategic folly of the UAE deal:

# First, in addition to the six affected ports mentioned above, two others would also have part of their operations managed by DP World -- on behalf of none other than the U.S. Army. Under a newly extended contract, the owner of P and O will manage the movement of heavy armor, helicopters and other military materiel through the Texas seaports of Beaumont and Corpus Christie. How much would our enemies like to be able to sabotage such shipments?

# Second, while advocates of the stealthy CFIUS decision-making process point to the involvement of the Defense Department in its DP World decision, it is unclear at what level this bizarre proposition was reviewed in the Pentagon. Many top jobs remain unfilled by presidential appointees. Past experience suggests the job may have fallen to lower-level career bureaucrats who give priority to maintaining good relations with their foreign "clients," like the UAE.

# Then, there is the matter of financing the DP World takeover of Peninsula and Oriental. The UAE evidently intends to raise nearly all of the $6.8 billion price for P and O on international capital markets. It must be asked: Who will the foreign investors be, and might they have malign intentions towards the U.S.? If American sources of capital are being sought, will the possible danger this transaction may create for this country be properly disclosed? For that matter, will the underwriters, Barclays and Deutchebank, reveal to prospective funders the real risk that the deal will ultimately fall through? ...

...Call it a Harriet Meirs moment. Politics being the art of the possible, it is time to recognize that the Dubai Ports World deal is neither strategically sensible nor politically doable. It is time to pull the plug, and to reform the secretive interagency CFIUS process that allowed this fiasco in the first place.

• Crazy talk
• Save the Port of Miami
• Fun with outsourcing: guess who's guarding the ports?

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The medical examiner who ruled last week that a teenager died of natural causes after he was struck by Panama City boot camp guards earlier signed mistake-filled autopsy reports on a man and his adult daughter killed in a September 2004 tornado, their widow and mother said Monday.

Donna Faye Reed's autopsy report, which was signed by Dr. Charles F. Siebert Jr. , said "the prostate gland and testes are unremarkable" _ organs that are part of the male genitalia. The autopsy of her father, James Terry, failed to mention major wounds on his body that were obvious, his widow says.

"I was extremely upset about my daughter having testicles _ any mother or daddy would be," Frances Terry said. "And my husband not having any visible scars really upset me, too."

She said she has been complaining about Siebert to officials for a year, with little success.

Some state lawmakers have already called for Kristin Schmidt's job, saying she failed to take proper action when Martin Lee Anderson, 14, appeared to show signs of distress. Anderson later died.

Now, a review of public records shows the nurse was disciplined in 1993 by the state nursing board and fined $250. However, the documents do not say what she did wrong.

Schmidt has not been disciplined by the sheriff's office in connection with the Anderson case.

• Death for joyriding?

Tags: Martin Lee Anderson, Florida, Juvenile Justice, Cover-ups

"I'm a lifelong Republican and I think the President's gone insane," said Gadiel, 58, who heads 9/11 Families for a Secure America.

Two of the 19 9/11 hijackers were citizens of Dubai, the Arab emirate whose bid to run ports in New York, New Jersey and four other cities was okayed by the White House even though investigators have found signs that money used to finance terrorism flowed through Dubai banks.

"How the hell could this happen?" fumed Bill Doyle, 58, a retired Staten Island stockbroker whose son Joseph also died when the Trade Center fell.

"We're not securing our country in any way by selling our ports to foreigners," he said.

• Save the Port of Miami
• Fun with outsourcing: guess who's guarding the ports?

Tags: Tags: Outsourcing, War on terror, Bush, Middle East

The Little-Noticed Order That Gave Dick Cheney New Power
Have you ever heard of Executive Order 13292?

In addition to discussing his hunting accident, Vice President Dick Cheney, in his interview on the Fox News Channel Wednesday, also pointed to a little-known but enormously consequential expansion of vice-presidential power that has come about as a result of the Bush administration's war on terror. ...

...Near the end of the interview, Fox anchor Brit Hume brought up a controversy arising from the CIA-leak case, in which prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said in court papers that former top Cheney aide Lewis Libby testified he had been authorized "by his superiors" to disclose information about the classified National Intelligence Estimate to members of the press. "Is it your view that a Vice President has the authority to declassify information?" Hume asked.

"There is an executive order to that effect," Cheney said. ...

...Cheney was referring to Executive Order 13292, issued by President Bush on March 25, 2003, which dealt with the handling of classified material. That order was not an entirely new document but was, instead, an amendment to an earlier Executive Order, number 12958, issued by President Bill Clinton on April 17, 1995.

At the time, Bush's order received very little coverage in the press. What mention there was focused on the order's provisions making it easier for the government to keep classified documents under wraps. But as Cheney pointed out Wednesday, the Bush order also contained a number of provisions which significantly increased the vice president's power.

Throughout Executive Order 13292, there are changes to the original Clinton order which, in effect, give the vice president the power of the president in dealing with classified material. ...

In another part of the original Clinton order, there was a segment dealing with who was authorized to delegate the authority to classify material. In the Clinton order, the passage read:

(2) "Top Secret" original classification authority may be delegated only by the President or by an agency head or official designated...
(3) "Secret" or "Confidential" original classification authority may be delegated only by the President; an agency head or official designated...

In the Bush order, that segment was changed to read (emphasis added):

(2) "Top Secret" original classification authority may be delegated only by the President; in the performance of executive duties, the Vice President; or an agency head or official designated...
(3) "Secret" or "Confidential" original classification authority may be delegated only by the President; in the performance of executive duties, the Vice President; or an agency head or official designated...

-- On March 8, 2003, the intelligence report on my trip was disseminated within the U.S. Government according the Senate report (pg. 43). Further, the Senate report states that "in early March, the Vice President asked his morning briefer for an update on the Niger uranium issue." That update from the CIA "also noted that the CIA would be debriefing a source who may have information related to the alleged sale on March 5." The report then states the "DO officials also said they alerted WINPAC analysts when the report was being disseminated because they knew the high priority of the issue." The report notes that the CIA briefer did not brief the Vice President on the report and the Vice President let the matter drop.

• Ranchaquiddick, take 6: Fun with Dick and Pam
• Ranchaquiddick, take 5: Who shot ya?

The autopsy by county Medical Examiner Charles Siebert found bruises and scrapes on the boy's body but said they were linked to attempts to resuscitate him. It blamed his internal bleeding on sickle cell disorder, which is present in one in 12 African-Americans but doesn't show up in routine blood work.

The Anderson case is being investigated for possible civil rights violations by the Justice Department (though this is the same justice department that has all-but frozen its civil rights prosecution division.) The boy's parents want the guards and the nurse fired and tried for the teen's death, but don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen, either.

Has there been a cover-up in this case? Siebert apparently initially called the request for an autospy in Bay County (where the boot camp is located) rather than in Escambia County, where the hospital where the boy died is located,) "highly unusual", although he denies having said that, now. Why would it be unusual? Because it looks like the FDLE (Florida Department of Law Enforcement) asked that the death be examined in friendly Bay County, where the FDLE commissioner, Guy Tunnell, used to be sheriff. And the Escambia County M.E., a guy named Jeff Martin, says his county passed the autopsy back to Bay county as a "courtesy" to his counterparts in Bay County and to FDLE... By the way, Tunnell founded the boot camp where Anderson died. Unusual, indeed.

And how common are deaths from sickle cell trait, anyway? Not very. According to federal statistics, there were more than 2 million carriers for sickle cell trait in the U.S. in 1999. Of those, 72,000 actually had the more dangerous sickle cell anemia. And of those, 501 died in 1999. That's a ratio of 0.70% in terms of deaths vs. prevalence of the trait. And if deaths from sickle cell anemia are rare, deaths from simply carrying the trait are almost unheard of (fellow medical examiners and experts have called Siebert's conclusions "preposterous."

And what about the possible complications of sickle sell? Could Martin have died from one of those? They can include the following:

• Anemia
• Chronic anemia
• Painful crisis
• Retina damage
• Vision loss
• Jaundice
• Spleen damage
• Spleen enlargement
• Recurrent infections
• Pneumococcal infections
• Pneumonia - more common
• Recurrent pneumonia
• Stroke - especially in children.
• Acute chest syndrome (see Chest pain) - pneumonia-like complication with symptoms chest pain of fever and chest pain.
• Chest pain
• Back pain
• Gallstones
• Joint damage
• Hip joint damage
• Leg ulcers
• Blood vessel blockages
• Organ damage
• Nerve complications
• Lung complications
• Heart complications
• Kidney complications
• Stroke
• Bone deformity

... note that spontaneous internal bleeding isn't among them.

Experts who have talked to the Miami Herald have had lots to say about the exculpatory autopsy:

Two South Florida experts on sickle cell also expressed considerable doubt that a healthy teenager with only the trait, not the disease, would die abruptly unless he was seriously deprived of oxygen.

Dr. Stuart Toledano, director of the University of Miami medical school's division of pediatric hematology and oncology, has been studying sickle cell for more than three decades. He said he is not aware of any teen dying from sickle cell trait unless they were oxygen-deprived, such as in ''high-mountain climbing'' or on an unpressurized airplane.

[....]

''I've been in the field since the early '70s, and I cannot remember a child with sickle cell anemia, let alone sickle cell trait,'' who bled to death from exercise, Toledano said.

[Medical examiner] Siebert may have based his conclusion on findings that several of Martin's blood cells were ''sickling,'' a process in which healthy cells mutate into a sickle shape, Toledano said. But Toledano said he would expect that the blood cells of a youth with the trait would normally sickle upon the teen's death.

''Lacerations and contusions, that is not a part of sickle cell anything,'' Toledano said. ``I don't see how I can say that any more bluntly.''

Dr. Thomas Harrington, director of the Adult Sickle Cell Clinic at Jackson Memorial Hospital, said that for someone with the ''very common'' sickle cell trait to die abruptly of complications from the disease would mean that his body had to be under enormous stress, probably dehydrated and oxygen-deprived. ''I don't see where the natural causes come in,'' he said after having the report read to him. ``You have to be under pretty severe physical stress to die with sickle cell trait.''

Willie Lawrence Durden III of Jacksonville, Florida, was found unconscious in his cell at the Cypress Creek Juvenile Offender Corrections Centre in Citrus County, Florida, last October and Omar Paisley, also 17, died from a burst appendix that went untreated in June 2003 at a juvenile detention facility in Miami.

"We really thought he [Mr. Whittington] was way back behind us," said Pamela Willeford, the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland since October 2003.

She was on a brief vacation visiting her husband, Dr. George "Boots" Willeford III, a gastroenterologist in Austin. Dr. Willeford was also hunting at the Armstrong Ranch but in a different field at the time of the shooting about a mile away.

Mrs. Willeford said Mr. Whittington was perhaps 90 feet away when the vice president, who was tracking a quail that had flown up and dipped back down, shot him. She said only she, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Whittington were hunting at the time.

Two others were waiting in a car nearby – Ms. Armstrong and her sister, Serita Hixon – in keeping with a safety rule that limits the number of hunters to three at a time, she said.

"The three of us were out of the vehicle hitting a covey," she said. "Harry Whittington dropped back to pick up a bird he'd shot. The vice president and I moved on to shoot another covey, and unbeknownst to us, Harry had picked up a bird and caught up with us. He had walked up, and we didn't realize that he had caught up with us," she said.

"He was back behind us, and we turned off to the left to shoot another covey. ... The bird came up and was going back down, and you know how you swing on it, with your gun, following a bird," she said.

Mrs. Willeford said she'd hunted once before with Mr. Cheney and would do so again.
"Absolutely," she said. "He's a great shot. He's very safety-conscious. This is something that unfortunately was a bad accident, and when you're with a group like that, he's safe or safer than all the rest of us. He feels terrible about it." [Dallas Morning News, Feb. 14]

Attorney Alan Dershowitz speculates that Cheney may have stalled to cover up drunkenness. "One possibility is that it takes approximately that period of time for alcohol to dissipate in the body and no longer be subject to accurate testing," Dershowitz writes. "It is fairly common for people involved in alcohol-related accidents to delay reporting them until the alcohol has left the body." Cheney has a history of public intoxication, having been twice convicted of DUI.

Sirius Radio's Alex Bennett says that "Cheney and Whittington went hunting with two women (not their wives), there was some drinking, and Whittington wound up shot." Bob Cesca alleges that one of the two women, U.S. ambassador to Switzerland Pamela Willeford is rumored to be "Cheney's Lewinsky." (Major difference: Lewinsky is hot.) Cesca elaborates: "The vice president's Secret Service detail had to decide what to do with Willeford by way of perhaps covering up her relationship with Cheney, and thus the delay in reporting the news."

Who all was there? Well, Pamela Pitzer Willeford, ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, and her husband, a physician; the hostess, Katharine Armstrong, and her sister, and her husband. Also Nancy Negley, an art philanthropist; Ben Love, a West Texas rancher; and the victim, Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old lawyer, and his wife. Also several outriders, whose duty was to flush the birds. Also a dozen American pointers and Labrador retrievers. Close to 5:30 p.m., the two shooting groups had bagged about 40 quail each, and were working now on the last covey.

About 100 yards away from the Jeep carrying the hostess and her sister (daughters of the fabled Anne Armstrong, whom Gerald Ford had once asked to run for vice president), "Mr. Cheney, Mr. Whittington and Ms. Willeford were walking in a line in a low spot on gently sloping ground. After Mr. Whittington bagged his birds he dropped out of sight, along with one of Ms. Armstrong's bird dogs." (Her name -- not originally disclosed to the press -- is "Gertie.") "Then, suddenly, he was in a dip about 30 yards away against the sun just as Mr. Cheney fired a blast from his Italian-made 28-gauge Perazzi shotgun." That is when Mr. Whittington "caught the spray of birdshot on the right side of his face, neck and chest."

• Taylor Marsh (all the conspiracies fit to print)
• An interesting prediction from the Larouchies last year: Cheney will start making mistakes...
• Neal Gabler bites the hand that feeds him, and pulls off the quote of the week on Fox News Watch (how did I miss this!): "when the Vice-President shoots somebody in the face, it's big news. I don't care where you live, even on Fox News, it's a big story."
• "Hahvahd" proff Niall Fergusen writes in the conservative London Telegraph that "trigger happy Cheney is a dangerous man to have on your side"
• And R.J. Eskow writes about why the Whittington shooting will be Cheney's Chappaquiddick.

Indeed he is. So the question is, will the hunting incident be a prelude to seeing Dick out the door? After all, his scandals run deep, and the CIA leak case could bring them to a head, as could the "phase II" Senate Intelligence Committee investigation (if Pat Roberts ever lets it happen...) and as could other lingering scandals with Cheney written all over them -- scandals like this one... (background here).

Previous:

• Throw Cheney from the train
• Harry Pepper
• The ballad of Deadeye Dick, the remix...
• Ranchaquiddick, take 4: the magic BB theory
• Ranchaquiddick, take 3: Cheney's 'meltdown'
• 'Like Bonnie interviewing Clyde...'
• Ranchaquiddick, take 2
• Time to pray, Dick...
• The Ballad of Deadeye Dick
• Ranchaquiddick
• Perhaps if he'd had some practice during Vietnam...

Tags: politics, News, Cheney, Dick Cheney, Shooting, Hunting, Pamela Willeford

We have a tradition of satire when dealing with the royal family and other public figures, and that was reflected in the cartoons. The cartoonists treated Islam the same way they treat Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions. And by treating Muslims in Denmark as equals they made a point: We are integrating you into the Danish tradition of satire because you are part of our society, not strangers. The cartoons are including, rather than excluding, Muslims.

The cartoons do not in any way demonize or stereotype Muslims. In fact, they differ from one another both in the way they depict the prophet and in whom they target. One cartoon makes fun of Jyllands-Posten, portraying its cultural editors as a bunch of reactionary provocateurs. Another suggests that the children's writer who could not find an illustrator for his book went public just to get cheap publicity. A third puts the head of the anti-immigration Danish People's Party in a lineup, as if she is a suspected criminal.

One cartoon -- depicting the prophet with a bomb in his turban -- has drawn the harshest criticism. Angry voices claim the cartoon is saying that the prophet is a terrorist or that every Muslim is a terrorist. I read it differently: Some individuals have taken the religion of Islam hostage by committing terrorist acts in the name of the prophet. They are the ones who have given the religion a bad name. The cartoon also plays into the fairy tale about Aladdin and the orange that fell into his turban and made his fortune. This suggests that the bomb comes from the outside world and is not an inherent characteristic of the prophet.

• The cartoon riots continue
• So Michelle, should these photos be shown?
• First they come for the chicken
• Ignoranimals
• Stoking the cartoon wars (or, playing dirty with Denmark)
• Shoes dropping everywhere
• A triple-double ... standard
• Update on the cartoon protests
• Oh, here we go...
• The cartoon protests have spread...
• The sacred and the profane
• Danish cartoonists in hiding
• Muslim dissident sides with Denmark
• Who incited the riots?
• Righties (heart) secular humanism
• Clash of civilizations, take 15,342...

• 10 things I hate about Democrats... #1

Is there any aspect of President Bush's miserable record on intelligence that Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is not willing to excuse and help to cover up?

Roberts told the Times that he does not believe much support exists among lawmakers for exempting the program from the control of the FISA court. That is the approach Bush has favored and one that would be established under a bill proposed by Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio.

White House officials have said their bar for agreeing to any legislative changes would be high. They have signaled they are open only to legislation that would "further codify" in law the authority the president insists he already has without Congress' approval, something officials believe would be accomplished with DeWine's proposal.

[Editor’s note: A version of this story was posted briefly on Monday of this week. Within an hour, Jack Abramoff contacted the author, Washingtonian national editor Kim Eisler, and asked that the report be deleted from the Washingtonian.com Web site because public disclosure of his communications would damage his status as a witness and undermine his plea agreement with federal prosecutors. Abramoff has pleaded guilty to three felonies and could receive 31 years in prison for his part in the lobbying scandal. US District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle will decide the length of Abramoff’s prison term. The link was taken down while Mr. Abramoff’s concerns were investigated, but Mr. Eisler found no confirmation that publication of the item would damage any aspect of the wide-ranging probe. Thus we are posting this updated story.]

Some who have called for a reprinting of the cartoons--Tucker Carlson, for example--take a position that is forensic, not idealistic. Mr. Carlson said on his TV show: "[You] can't really understand what caused the outrage, you can't really understand the story itself, unless you know what's in the pictures, can you?" So a reproduction of the offending material, by his reasoning, would not be so much an affirmation of values as a straightforward act of information-conveyance, a way of giving readers or viewers the tools with which to tackle the fuss.
I have more time for this argument than for the one based on the imperative of ideals. But it is weakened by the fact that (a) the cartoons are already widely available on the Internet for those who wish to see them; and (b) there exists a way of conveying to readers the nature of the cartoons--i.e., by description--that informs sufficiently without giving offense to those Muslims among us who believe that graphic depiction of their main man (peace be upon him) is anathema. There is also the question of taste: Deciding against the cartoons is not unlike a refusal to publish anti-Semitic drawings or dodgy caricatures of black people--or of Koreans eating pups.

To the free-speech absolutists in the blogosphere, I say that making this episode the test of our Western manhood is not the right way to go--for a number of reasons. To start with, some points should be obvious: Every right--and here, specifically, the right of free speech--is not a duty; nor does discretion or good taste or a desire to be constructive amount to a spit in the eye of the First Amendment. Freedom of speech and imagery is sacrosanct; but it is not compulsory.

The First Amendment means that you can, but do not have to, exercise the freest lawful speech. It means that you are responsible for your speech, not the authorities. The absence of legal restrictions also means that institutional dispensers of speech--such as newspapers and TV channels--need to exercise their freedom wisely.

What does that wisdom involve in the current situation? The U.S. is fighting a propaganda war against bin Ladenism. Why hand our foes a gratuitous tactical advantage? Why not collectively deprive the enemy of a detonator?--not because we are forced to; not even because we agree with or respect the rioters' values; but because we want to make it easier for moderates in the Muslim world (our allies) to take on the obscurantists.

Acting responsibly also means knowing when discretion is the better part of valor. What do we gain by printing the cartoons? We are, by now, fully aware of the bomb in the turban. (These being Danish cartoons, the humor is on the heavy side.) What we gain by not printing them is the implied public declaration to Muslims in general, and to the Islamist provocateurs in particular, that the U.S. can unify behind a crucial purpose when need demands--even in the small gestures.
Muslims already know that we have free speech. So the idea that the cartoons should be published in the American press to make a point strikes me as both pedantic and theatrical. There is no need to display one's devotion to freedom in this gaudy way. We have the freedom and the will to publish the Abu Ghraib pictures--in effect, to take a hit for free speech. And this time, with the cartoons, we have largely chosen not to. The enemy will know that we will not always step onto the landmines he lays for us.

• So Michelle, should these photos be shown?
• First they come for the chicken
• Ignoranimals
• Stoking the cartoon wars (or, playing dirty with Denmark)
• The public's right to know
• Shoes dropping everywhere
• Karl Rove Blacklist Entry No. (unknown)
• Bush's head-hunter hunts heads
• Mideast mischief
• A triple-double ... standard

– The UAE was one of three countries in the world to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan (the others were also our allies: Pakistan and Saudi Arabia)...

– The UAE has been a key transfer point for illegal shipments of nuclear components to Iran, North Korea and Lybia.

– According to the FBI, money was transferred to the 9/11 hijackers through the UAE banking system.

– After 9/11, the Treasury Department reported that the UAE was not cooperating in efforts to track down Osama Bin Laden’s bank accounts.

There was a time when what's been called news judgment would deem some stories a five or six and run them on page 14, or deeper in the newscast. Back then the Senate minority leader wouldn't bother to look up from his desk. Not with this presidency. Every downside event--large, small, in between--plays above the fold on the front page now. And when Dick Cheney accidentally pops Harry Whittington, old Harry Reid jumps up from his Senate leader's desk faster than a Nevada jack rabbit to announce, one more time, that this "is part of the secretive nature of this administration."

Here are some of the political and media bonfires that have been lit on the White House lawn, stoked and reignited the past five years: the "stolen" 2000 election, Halliburton, "Fahrenheit 9/11," Cheney lives in an "undisclosed location," Abu Ghraib, torture at Guantanamo, Bush lied about WMD, secret CIA prison sites, Valerie Plame, the neocons, Rumsfeld, Cheney's "secret" energy task force, Cindy Sheehan, Bush is destroying Social Security, Hurricane Katrina, Jack Abramoff, illegal wiretaps, Bill Frist's stock sales, what else?

• The ballad of Deadeye Dick, the remix...
• Ranchaquiddick, take 4: the magic BB theory
• Ranchaquiddick, take 3: Cheney's 'meltdown'
• Once upon a time when we had inspectors
• 'Like Bonnie interviewing Clyde...'

Dear Sen. Specter,

Deputy Leader Cheney is in trouble for shooting an old man with a shotgun. Questions are being raised because his excuses don't fit the facts of the case. As the inventor of the Warren Commission's Magic Bullet Theory, you're the only person who can help him build a scenario where his excuses make sense.

The police report says that Whittington was 30 yards away when Dick shot him. It also notes that the elderly gentleman was hit in the face, chest and neck. Agents of the Ministry of Truth characterize the shooting as a "peppering." Taken all together, these things would suggest that the shot was fairly well dispersed.

Unfortunately, a more detailed look at the facts reveals something else. Our Deputy Leader was using 28 gauge shotgun shells loaded with 3/4 oz of #7-1/2 shot. That particular load carries approximately 262 BBs. The doctor caring for the wounded man said that he removed about 200 BBs. That means about 4/5ths of the shot in the load struck the man in an area no larger than about 18 inches in diameter.

That seems like an awfully tight pattern at 30 yards. It can only be explained by the existence of a magic BB that would ride herd on the other BBs, keeping them as bunched up as possible. ...

Rove Pushed Cheney to Talk

(Feb. 16) -- President Bush's top political aide, Karl Rove, pushed Vice President Dick Cheney to speak publicly about shooting a fellow hunter, sources tell CBS News.

Rove worried the vice president's silence on the issue was becoming a political problem, CBS News chief White House correspondent Jim Axelrod reports.

Cheney is in a "state of meltdown" over shooting his friend and the political fallout it has caused, a source close to the Cheney has told CBS News. On Wednesday, he accepted full blame for the incident and defended the decision to not publicly disclose the accident until the following day.

Cheney described when he shot 78-year-old Harry Whittington as "one of the worst days of my life."

"I'm the guy who pulled the trigger that fired the round that hit Harry," Cheney told Fox News Channel in his first public comments since the shooting Saturday in south Texas.

CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger reports another source within the White House said "you can imagine how upset the vice president is," adding that the Whittington family is worried about Cheney.

• 'Like Bonnie interviewing Clyde...'
• Ranchaquiddick, take 2
• Time to pray, Dick...

One of the most dramatic moments in the 12 hours of recordings comes when Saddam predicts — during a meeting in the mid-1990s — a terrorist attack on the United States. "Terrorism is coming. I told the Americans a long time before Aug. 2 and told the British as well … that in the future there will be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction." Saddam goes on to say such attacks would be difficult to stop. "In the future, what would prevent a booby-trapped car causing a nuclear explosion in Washington or a germ or a chemical one?" But he adds that Iraq would never do such a thing. "This is coming, this story is coming but not from Iraq."

Also at the meeting was Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, who said Iraq was being wrongly accused of terrorism. "Sir, the biological is very easy to make. It's so simple that any biologist can make a bottle of germs and drop it into a water tower and kill 100,000. This is not done by a state. No need to accuse a state. An individual can do it."

The tapes also reveal Iraq's persistent efforts to hide information about weapons of mass destruction programs from U.N. inspectors well into the 1990s. In one pivotal tape-recorded meeting, which occurred in late April or May of 1995, Saddam and his senior aides discuss the fact that U.N. inspectors had uncovered evidence of Iraq's biological weapons program — a program whose existence Iraq had previously denied.

At one point Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law and the man who was in charge of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction efforts can be heard on the tapes, speaking openly about hiding information from the U.N.

"We did not reveal all that we have," Kamel says in the meeting. "Not the type of weapons, not the volume of the materials we imported, not the volume of the production we told them about, not the volume of use. None of this was correct."

Shortly after this meeting, in August 1995, Hussein Kamel defected to Jordan, and Iraq was forced to admit that it had concealed its biological weapons program. (Kamel returned to Iraq in February 1996 and was killed in a firefight with Iraqi security forces.)

BLITZER: First of all, Jack, what did you make of Dick Cheney's interview today?

CAFFERTY: Well, I obviously didn't see it 'cause it hasn't been released in its entirety yet, but I -- I would guess it didn't exactly represent a profile in courage for the vice president to wander over there to the F-word network for a sit down with Brit Hume. I mean, that's a little like Bonnie interviewing Clyde, ain't it? I mean, where was the news conference? Where was the -- where was the access to all of the members of the media? I don't know. You know? Whatever.

BLITZER: You still think he needs to do a full-scale news conference in front of all of the cameras, all of the reporters, and ask whatever they want?

CAFFERTY: That's never going to happen. But, I mean, running over there to the Fox network to -- I mean that's -- talk about seeking a safe haven. He's not going to get any high, hard ones from anybody at the F-word network. I think we know that.

The next time a president asks Congress to pass something akin to what Congress passed on Sept. 14, 2001 -- the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) -- the resulting legislation might be longer than Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past." Congress, remembering what is happening today, might stipulate all the statutes and constitutional understandings that it does not intend the act to repeal or supersede.

But, then, perhaps no future president will ask for such congressional involvement in the gravest decision government makes -- going to war. Why would future presidents ask, if the present administration successfully asserts its current doctrine? It is that whenever the nation is at war, the other two branches of government have a radically diminished pertinence to governance, and the president determines what that pertinence shall be. This monarchical doctrine emerges from the administration's stance that warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency targeting American citizens on American soil is a legal exercise of the president's inherent powers as commander in chief, even though it violates the clear language of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was written to regulate wartime surveillance.

Administration supporters incoherently argue that the AUMF also authorized the NSA surveillance -- and that if the administration had asked, Congress would have refused to authorize it. The first assertion is implausible: None of the 518 legislators who voted for the AUMF has said that he or she then thought it contained the permissiveness the administration discerns in it. Did the administration, until the program became known two months ago? Or was the AUMF then seized upon as a justification? Equally implausible is the idea that in the months after Sept. 11, Congress would have refused to revise the 1978 law in ways that would authorize, with some supervision, NSA surveillance that, even in today's more contentious climate, most serious people consider conducive to national security.

Anyway, the argument that the AUMF contained a completely unexpressed congressional intent to empower the president to disregard the FISA regime is risible coming from this administration. It famously opposes those who discover unstated meanings in the Constitution's text and do not strictly construe the language of statutes.

The administration's argument about the legality of the NSA program also has been discordant with its argument about the urgency of extending the USA Patriot Act. Many provisions of that act are superfluous if a president's wartime powers are as far-reaching as today's president says they are. ...

... And if, as some administration supporters say, amending the 1978 act to meet today's exigencies would have given America's enemies dangerous information about our capabilities and intentions, surely FISA and the Patriot Act were both informative. Intelligence professionals reportedly say that the behavior of suspected terrorists has changed since Dec. 15, when the New York Times revealed the NSA surveillance. But surely America's enemies have assumed that our technologically sophisticated nation has been trying, in ways known and unknown, to eavesdrop on them.

Besides, terrorism is not the only new danger of this era. Another is the administration's argument that because the president is commander in chief, he is the "sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs." That non sequitur is refuted by the Constitution's plain language, which empowers Congress to ratify treaties, declare war, fund and regulate military forces, and make laws "necessary and proper" for the execution of all presidential powers . Those powers do not include deciding that a law -- FISA, for example -- is somehow exempted from the presidential duty to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

The administration, in which mere obduracy sometimes serves as political philosophy, pushes the limits of assertion while disdaining collaboration. This faux toughness is folly, given that the Supreme Court, when rejecting President Harry S Truman's claim that his inherent powers as commander in chief allowed him to seize steel mills during the Korean War, held that presidential authority is weakest when it clashes with Congress.

The public has seen enough, and while a simple description of the photos could have been satisfactory to the court of public opinion, the international media decided that graphic photos should be released instead. And the “hate America groups” are eating it up!

Indeed... Even the Bush administration has been more consistent than its base on this one, opposing the release of both the cartoons and these latest Abu Ghraib photos. But keep in mind that the administration has a good reason to want the photos held back: the torture accusations being leveled at the U.S. by the U.N. presently have to do, not with Abu Ghraib, but with Guantanamo, where many of the same practices seen in Iraq appear to have originated.

In other words, for all the right's braying about the U.S. having discovered and prosecuted the outliers behind Abu Ghraib, the fact remains that the outliers were not a bunch of kids from West Virginia, who somehow picked up the exact same interrogation and humliation techniques used at Gitmo, thousands of miles and a world, militarily, away -- but rather the top civilians in the Pentagon, who cooked up the atrocities with the help of virulently racist, anti-Arab pop psychology, neocon Stalinism (remember "they only understand force?") and Pentagon incompeteace in spinning a small black operation out of control. The roots of these abuses lie at the feet of the neocon cult of Cambone, Feith, Wolfowitz, Pearl, Rumsfeld and their three- and four-star underlings, plus useful idiots like Alberto Gonzalez, not with a bunch of part-time soldiers from the American South.

That's the real scandal here. And that's why the U.S. doesn't want you to see those prison pictures. The cartoons hurt the West more broadly. These pics are all about us.

Previous:

• Stoking the cartoon wars (or, playing dirty with Denmark)
• Shoes dropping everywhere
• A triple-double ... standard
• Update on the cartoon protests
• Oh, here we go...
• The cartoon protests have spread...
• The sacred and the profane
• Danish cartoonists in hiding
• Muslim dissident sides with Denmark
• Who incited the riots?
• Righties (heart) secular humanism
• Clash of civilizations, take 15,342...

Tags: Abu Ghraib, Torture, Pictures Muhammad cartoon, Cartoons, Religion, Islam, Muslims, Denmark, Jyllands-Posten,Right wing, Hypocrisy

Q: Describe the setting.

A: It's in south Texas, wide open spaces, a lot of brush cover, fairly shallow. But it's wild quail. It's some of the best quail hunting anyplace in the country. I've gone there, to the Armstrong ranch, for years. The Armstrongs have been friends for over 30 years. And a group of us had hunted all day on Saturday ...

Q: How many?

A: Oh, probably 10 people. We weren't all together, but about 10 guests at the ranch. There were three of us who had gotten out of the vehicle and walked up on a covey of quail that had been pointed by the dogs. The covey is flushed, we've shot, and each of us got a bird. Harry couldn't find his. It had gone down in some deep cover and so he went off to look for it. The other hunter and I then turned and walked about a hundred yards in another direction ...

Q: Away from him?

A: Away from him — where another covey had been spotted by an outrider. I was on the far right ...

Q: There was just two of you then?

A: Just two of us at that point. The guide or outrider between us, and of course, there's this entourage behind us, all the cars and so forth that follow me around when I'm out there. But the bird flushed and went to my right, off to the west. I turned and shot at the bird, and at that second, saw Harry standing there. Didn't know he was there ...

Q: You had pulled the trigger and you saw him?

A: Well, I saw him fall, basically. It had happened so fast.

Q: What was he wearing?

A: He was dressed in orange, he was dressed properly, but he was also ... There was a little bit of a gully there, so he was down a little ways before land level, although I could see the upper part of his body when ... I didn't see it at the time I shot, until after I'd fired. And the sun was directly behind him — that affected the vision, too, I'm sure.

But the image of him falling is something I'll never be able to get out of my mind. I fired, and there's Harry falling. And it was, I'd have to say, one of the worst days of my life, at that moment.

Q: Then what?

A: Well, we went over to him, obviously, right away ...

Q: How far away from you was he?

A: I'm guessing about 30 yards, which was a good thing. If he'd been closer, obviously, the damage from the shot would have been greater.

Q: Now, is it clear that — he had caught part of the shot, is that right?

A: Part of the shot. He was struck in the right side of his face, his neck and his upper torso on the right side of his body.

Q: And you — and I take it, you missed the bird?

A: I have no idea. I mean, you focused on the bird, but as soon as I fired and saw Harry there, everything else went out of my mind. I don't know whether the bird went down or didn't.

Q: So did you run over to him or ...

A: Ran over to him and ...

Q: And what did you see? He's lying there.

A: He was laying there on his back, obviously bleeding. You could see where the shot had struck him. And one of the fortunate things was that I've always got a medical team, in effect, covering me wherever I go. I had a physician's assistant with me that day. Within a minute or two he was on the scene administering first aid.

Q: And Mr. Whittington was conscious, unconscious, what?

A: He was conscious.

Q: What did you say?

A: Well, I said, "Harry, I had no idea you were there."

Q: What did he say?

A: He didn't respond. He was — he was breathing, conscious at that point, but he didn't — he was, I'm sure, stunned, obviously, still trying to figure out what had happened to him. The doc was fantastic.

Q: What did you think when you saw the injuries? How serious did they appear to you to be?

A: I had no idea how serious it was going to be. I mean, it could have been extraordinarily serious. You just don't know at that moment. You know he's been struck, that there's a lot of shot that had hit him. But you don't know — you think about his eyes. Fortunately, he was wearing hunting glasses, and that protected his eyes. You, you just don't know. And the key thing, as I say, initially, was that the physician's assistant was right there. We also had an ambulance at the ranch, because one always follows me around wherever I go. And they were able to get the ambulance there and within about 30 minutes we had him on his way to the hospital.
Q: What did you do then? Did you get up and did you go with him, or did you go to the hospital?

A: No, I had told my physician's assistant to go with him, but the ambulance is crowded and they didn't need another body in there. And so we loaded up and went back to ranch headquarters, basically. By then, it's about 7:00 p.m. at night.

(Click here for a larger map)

Kingsville is closer, and the veep states that Mr. Whittington was later flown to the larger hospital in Corpus Christie. Still, the question remains, could the Cheney team have decided it would be easier to control information at that smaller facility? I guess we'll never know... And then there's this wierd timeline -- the shooting at sometime after 5:00 p.m., then this four-hour chain of events:

And the key thing, as I say, initially, was that the physician's assistant was right there. We also had an ambulance at the ranch, because one always follows me around wherever I go. And they were able to get the ambulance there and within about 30 minutes we had him on his way to the hospital.

Q: What did you do then? Did you get up and did you go with him, or did you go to the hospital?

A: No, I had told my physician's assistant to go with him, but the ambulance is crowded and they didn't need another body in there. And so we loaded up and went back to ranch headquarters, basically. By then, it's about 7:00 p.m. at night.

Q: Did you have a sense then of how he was doing?

A: Well, we're getting reports, but they were confusing. Early reports are always wrong. The initial reports that came back from the ambulance were that he was doing well, his eyes were open. They got him into the emergency room at Kingsville.

Q: His eyes were open when you found him, then, right?

A: Yes. One eye was open. But they got him in the emergency room in the small hospital at Kingsville, checked him out further there, then lifted him by helicopter from there into Corpus Christi, which has a big city hospital and all of the equipment.

Q: So by now what time is it?

A: I don't have an exact time line, although he got there sometime that evening, 8:00 p.m., 9:00 p.m.

Q: So this is several hours after the incident?

A: Well, I would say he was in Kingsville in the emergency room probably within, oh, less than an hour after they left the ranch.

• Time to pray, Dick...
• The Ballad of Deadeye Dick
• Ranchaquiddick (take one)

Bush, younger brother of President Bush, spoke to about 1,000 people Monday at the Florida State Fair Governor's Day Luncheon. All guests, including the governor, were given stickers from the Florida Farm Bureau that read, ``No Farmers, No Food.''

Bush placed the bright orange sticker, the same color as a hunting jacket, on his chest.

''I'm a little concerned that Dick Cheney is going to walk in,'' he said.

• Ranchaquiddick
• Perhaps if he'd had some practice during Vietnam...

Tags: Dick Cheney, hunting, Shooting, Podcasts, Parody

• Why did it take so long for information about the shooting to be released to the public, and why didn't Cheney's staff do the releasing (rather than releasing it person-to-person from Cheney's lobbyist/rancher friend to the weekend health and fitness reporter at a small Texas daily...)
  
• Why did Cheney fly the coup (so to speak) after the shooting of his friend, and why did he faile to tell the president until several hours later?
  
• Why were Texas sheriff's prevented from interviewing the vice president immediately after the incident, as would have been done with any other citizen ... (oh, right, it would have tipped al-Qaida off to sources and methods...)
  
• Why is Dick Cheney so much funnier now that he has shot someone in the face... and yet, so much scarier...?
  
• What is the purpose of a hunting stamp, and might it have been helpful in relieving Cheney of one of his five Vietnam-era draft deferrments so he could get his jollies shooting Viet Cong rather than elderly GOP cronies? ... Just a thought...
  
• No, seriously, was Cheney drunk off his ass or what...?
  
• How much hard liquor does Scott McClellan have to drink every morning in order to remain in his job? Does he actually have any dignity left, and if so, are pills or intense psychotherapy involved?

Inquiring minds ... And now for some of the best headlines on the Texas Cheney-didn't saw that guy's face in his gun-sight massacre:

Big Cheese calls the posse on Deadeye Dick

Maine Democrat Holly Valero details Dick's creepy "canned hunting" fetish and announces that the Buckshot Stops Here ... oh, boy, I sure hope it doesn't exactly stop there... (that's gonna leave a mark...)

Bloggedyblog cribs the Andy Borowitz headline: Government unveils Cheney alert system

After weeks in which the White House has declined to release pictures of President Bush with Jack Abramoff, the disgraced lobbyist, the first photograph to be published of the two men shows a small, partly obscured image of Mr. Abramoff looking on from the background as Mr. Bush greets a Texas Indian chief in May 2001.

By itself, the picture hardly seems worthy of the White House's efforts to keep it out of the public eye. Mr. Abramoff, a leading Republican fund-raiser who pleaded guilty last month to conspiring to corrupt public officials, is little more than a blurry, bearded figure in the background at a gathering of about two dozen people.

But it provides a window, albeit an opaque one, into Mr. Abramoff's efforts to sell himself to Indian tribes as a man of influence who could open the most secure doors in Washington to them. And it leaves unanswered questions about how Mr. Abramoff and the tribal leader, whom he was trying to sign as a client, gained access to a meeting with the president on the White House grounds that was ostensibly for a group of state legislators who were supporting Mr. Bush's 2001 tax cut plan.

The White House confirmed the authenticity of the photograph. It was provided to The New York Times by the Indian chief, Raul Garza of the Kickapoo tribe of southwest Texas. Mr. Garza, who is under indictment on federal charges of embezzling money from his tribe, said he was eager to demonstrate that he had "nothing to hide" in his dealings with the White House and Mr. Abramoff.

• When a televangelist calls
• Coretta Scott King passes
• State of the union (ten things you need to know...)