7 March 2006

Amnesty Report on 14,000 Finds Prisoner Abuse Continues in Iraq
By ALAN COWELL
NYT, 7 March 2006
Amnesty International accused the United States and its allies on Monday of committing widespread abuses in Iraq, including torture and the continued detention of thousands of prisoners without charge or trial.
The accusations could fuel the debate over the treatment of detainees that flared after the publication of graphic photographs showing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad being mistreated by American guards. More recently, British forces in Iraq have been criticized after videotapes showed British soldiers beating Iraqi youths after demonstrations in southern Iraq.
In its report, "Beyond Abu Ghraib: Detention and Torture in Iraq," Amnesty International also said the level of abuse by Iraqi forces since the transfer of power in June 2004 was increasing.
The United States and its allies, the report said, have "established procedures which deprive detainees of human rights guaranteed in international law and standards."
"The record of these forces, including U.S. forces and their United Kingdom allies, is an unpalatable one," it said. In particular, coalition forces deny "detainees their right to challenge the lawfulness of their detention before a court."
Hassiba Hadj-Sahraoui, the deputy director of the group's Middle East and North Africa program, described the way prisoners are detained as "arbitrary and a recipe for possible abuse."
At the end of November 2005, the report said, quoting coalition figures, more than 14,000 prisoners were held in Iraq: about 4,850 in Baghdad, 7,365 at Camp Bucca (near Basra, in southern Iraq), and more than 1,100 in the north, at Sulaimaniya.
SEE ALSO:
Tracing the Trail of Torture
Embedding Torture as Policy from Guantanamo to Iraq
By Dahr Jamail
TomDispatch.com, 6 March 2006
"Since the start of the war on terror, the intelligence community, led by the CIA, has revived the use of torture, making it Washington's weapon of choice," writes Alfred McCoy in his new book, A Question of Torture.
When the infamous Abu Ghraib photo of the prisoner on a box draped in black, head covered with a sack, arms outstretched with electrical wires attached to his fingers, was made public, it had a deeper resonance for McCoy than simply documenting a war crime of the present moment.
"In that photograph you can see the entire 50-year history of CIA torture," McCoy told Amy Goodman in a Democracy Now! interview. "It's very simple. He's hooded for sensory disorientation, and his arms are extended for self-inflicted pain. And those are the two very simple fundamental techniques" that, as his book makes vividly clear, the CIA pioneered in breakthrough research on torture, funded to the tune of billions of dollars in the 1950s. In his book, he adds: "The photographs from Iraq illustrate standard interrogation practice inside the global gulag of secret CIA prisons that have operated, on executive authority, since the start of the war on terror."
Rather than placing blame merely on the handful of guards in Abu Ghraib who were reprimanded (and in a few cases jailed) for their crimes against humanity, McCoy believes that they -- and the interrogators there -- were simply "following orders" and, like Karpinski, considers that "responsibility for their actions lies higher, much higher, up the chain of command."
...Testifying at the same commission of inquiry as Karpinski, Michael Ratner, once head of the National Lawyers' Guild, now president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and an expert on international human rights law, caught the essence of our present situation:
"Let there be no doubt this administration is engaged in massive violations of the law. Torture is an international crime. What [George Bush] has done is basically lay the plan for what has to be called a coup-d'état in America. [His Presidential Signing Statement attached to the McCain anti-torture amendment] makes three points… First, speaking as the President, my authority as commander in chief allows me to do whatever I think is necessary in the war on terror including use torture. Second, the Commander in Chief cannot be checked by Congress. Third, the Commander in Chief cannot be checked by the courts. In other words… George Bush is the law."

Senior Iraqi General Killed in Ambush
At Least 20 Die, 50 Hurt in Renewed Violence
By John Ward Anderson and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post, 7 March 2006
The top commander of the Iraqi army division in Baghdad was killed Monday when his car came under small-arms fire while travelHis killing could set back security efforts in Baghdad, particularly following the recent outbreak of sectarian violence, according to a senior U.S. commander who worked closely with him.
"It could be a blow that takes a long time to overcome," said Maj. Gen. William G. Webster Jr., commander of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, who oversaw U.S. troops in Baghdad for a year ending in January. "Losing a strong commander for even a little while in Baghdad could cause a further power shift toward what looks like the Shia control of the city."
ing through the capital, the U.S. military said.
Maj. Gen. Mubdar Hatim Hazya al-Dulaimi was one of the highest-ranking members of the new Iraqi army to be killed in insurgent violence. Under his leadership, the 6th Iraqi Army Division has been gradually assuming control of parts of the capital from U.S. forces.

Envoy to Iraq Sees Threat of Wider War
He supports the White House view that an early pullout would backfire, but he is bleak about the Sunni-Shiite conflict and says it could spread.
By Borzou Daragahi
LA Times, 7 March 2006
The top U.S. envoy to Iraq said Monday that the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime had opened a "Pandora's box" of volatile ethnic and sectarian tensions that could engulf the region in all-out war if America pulled out of the country too soon.
In remarks that were among the frankest and bleakest public assessments of the Iraq situation by a high-level American official, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the "potential is there" for sectarian violence to become full-blown civil war.
For now, Iraq has pulled back from that prospect after the wave of sectarian reprisals that followed the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine in Samarra, he said. But "if another incident [occurs], Iraq is really vulnerable to it at this time, in my judgment," Khalilzad said in an interview with The Times.

Mr. Bush's Asian Road Trip
NYT, 7 March 2006
The nuclear deal that Mr. Bush concluded with India threatens to blast a bomb-size loophole through the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It would have been bad enough on its own, and disastrously ill timed, because it undercuts some of the most powerful arguments Washington can make to try to galvanize international opposition to Iran's nuclear adventurism.
But the most immediate damage was done on Mr. Bush's next stop, Pakistan. Washington is trying to persuade Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani military dictator, to defy nationalist and Islamic objections and move more aggressively against Pakistani-based terrorists. This is no small issue because both Osama bin Laden and the Taliban's leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, are now believed to operate from Pakistani soil.
But sticking Mr. Musharraf with the unwelcome task of explaining to Pakistanis why his friend and ally, Mr. Bush, had granted favorable nuclear terms to Pakistan's archrival, India, while withholding them from Pakistan left him less likely to do Washington any special, and politically unpopular, favors on the terrorism front.
It's just baffling why Mr. Bush traveled halfway around the world to stand right next to one of his most important allies against terrorists — and embarrass him. India and Pakistan are military rivals that have fought each other repeatedly. They have both developed nuclear weapons outside the nonproliferation treaty, which both refuse to sign. When India exploded its first acknowledged nuclear weapons eight years ago, Pakistan felt obliged to follow suit within weeks.
...Mr. Bush was right to say no to Pakistan. It would be an unthinkably bad idea to grant a loophole to a country whose top nuclear scientist helped transfer nuclear technology to leading rogue states. Granting India a loophole that damages a vital treaty and lets New Delhi accelerate production of nuclear bombs makes no sense either.
Mr. Bush should have just stayed home.

Where Killers Roam, the Poison Spreads
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NYT, 7 March 2006
For more than two years, the world has pretty much ignored the genocide unfolding in the Darfur region of Sudan, just as it turned away from the slaughter of Armenians, Jews, Cambodians and Rwandans in earlier decades.
And now, apparently encouraged by the world's acquiescence, Sudan is sending its proxy forces to invade neighboring Chad and kill and rape members of the same African tribes that have already been ethnically cleansed in Darfur itself.
I've spent the last three days along the Chad-Sudan border, where this brutal war is unfolding. But "war" doesn't feel like the right term, for that implies combat between armies.
What is happening here is more like what happens in a stockyard. Militias backed by Sudan race on camels and pickup trucks into Chadian villages and use machine guns to mow down farming families, whose only offense is that they belong to the wrong tribes and have black skin.
I found it eerie to drive on the dirt track along the border because countless villages have been torched or abandoned. Many tens of thousands of peasants have fled their villages, and you can drive for mile after mile and see no sign of life — except for the smoke of the villages or fields being burned by the Sudan-armed janjaweed militia.

Germans Set to Investigate Help to U.S. in Iraq Invasion
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
NYT, 7 March 2006
A German opposition party said Monday that it would vote for a formal parliamentary investigation into allegations that the German intelligence service provided help to the United States during the invasion of Iraq, which the government vehemently opposed.
An official of the Free Democratic Party, which has 61 seats in Parliament, said the party favored an investigation. Because the two other opposition parties, the leftist Greens and the new Left Party, have already declared their support, the Free Democrats' decision seems to ensure a formal investigation.
Germany's government, in which power is shared between the main left-of-center and right-of-center parties, has made vigorous efforts to head off an investigation, saying it could harm the functioning of Germany's intelligence service and efforts under way to improve relations with the United States.
Earlier the government had furnished a report on the allegation that two agents of the country's intelligence service were posted to Iraq starting shortly before the American military mounted the invasion.
That report was released some 10 days ago, but some in the opposition criticized it as falling short of a full, detailed disclosure of what the government may have been doing behind the scenes to support American policy.
In a full parliamentary investigation, rare in Germany, members of the Parliament would very likely publicly interrogate former and current members of the government under oath. In their comments on Monday, leaders of the Free Democrats said they wanted to investigate the roles of figures like Gerhard Schröder, the former chancellor; Joschka Fischer, the former foreign minister; and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the current foreign minister, who was Mr. Schröder's chief of staff at the time of the invasion.

Amid AIPAC's Big Show, Straight Talk With a Noticeable Silence
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post, 7 March 2006
Words are seldom minced at the annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
...AIPAC staff members note that, with Iran and the Palestinians to worry about, the indictments of Rosen and former deputy Keith Weissman have not been mentioned in any of the group's public meetings so far. And they say the pro-Israel lobby, unharmed by the Rosen flap, is putting on its biggest and best show ever this week: 4,500 participants, including more than 1,000 students, paying visits to at least 450 House and Senate offices.
Indeed, the scandal doesn't seem to have slowed down the group. At last night's dinner, AIPAC set aside 27 minutes for the reading of its annual "Roll Call" of lawmakers, diplomats and administration officials attending the gathering. As of midday yesterday, RSVPs had come in from 57 embassies, from Burundi to Turkey; a score of Bush administration officials; a majority of the Senate; and a quarter of the House. Even the ambassadors of Pakistan and Oman supped at AIPAC's table.
Any talk of Rosen is confined to private donor meetings and hallway conversations -- where opinions are split on AIPAC's decision to turn its back on Rosen and Weissman.
...Rosen and Weissman are the first nongovernment officials to be prosecuted under the all-but-forgotten Espionage Act of 1917. The law, amended in 1950, makes it a crime for an unauthorized person even to have classified information knowingly; if Rosen broke that law, so do hundreds of other lobbyists and journalists as part of their normal course of business.
The New Yorker magazine reported last year that AIPAC's lawyer, Nathan Lewin, recommended that the two officials be fired after he heard from prosecutors about an FBI-recorded telephone call between Rosen, Weissman and The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler, in which Rosen observed that "at least we have no Official Secrets Act." Lewin and the prosecutors may not have realized that the line -- referring to a British law about publishing classified information -- was a stock joke Rosen used in conversations with Kessler and other reporters.
AIPAC at first defended Rosen vigorously, then dismissed him in April over unspecified conduct "beneath the standards AIPAC sets for its employees." The group has advised members that it has not taken a position on whether Rosen acted legally.

Part-Time Congress
By Norman Ornstein
Washington Post, 7 March 2006
The House of Representatives returns this week to an overloaded agenda. A promise of aggressive oversight of the deal with Dubai to manage U.S. ports will compete with the following:
Renewal of the Patriot Act; the conflict with the White House over electronic surveillance; the need to hammer out a budget by the beginning of April; health care and pension reform (highlighted by the desire to find a fix for the bumpy rollout of the Medicare prescription drug law); Katrina relief and repair of a dysfunctional Department of Homeland Security; lobbying and ethics reform; and a host of other issues.
The House should be well-rested to take on its daunting workload, after a generous recess (known officially as a "district work period") over President's Day. That was preceded by a recess for the entire month of January and by a February in which voting was done on all of three days (along with another three days with no votes before 6:30 p.m.). And members had better be rested, because if their published schedule for the year ahead is followed, they'll have to compress their work into a tiny number of days. The House schedule for 2006, the second session of the 109th Congress, has a grand total of 71 days when votes are scheduled to take place, along with an additional 26 when no votes will occur before 6:30 p.m. The total of 97 calendar days, counted generously, is the smallest number in 60 years and the days of what Harry Truman derided as that "do-nothing 80th Congress."
During the 1960s and '70s, the average Congress was in session 323 days. In the 1980s and '90s, the average declined to 278. The days in session have plummeted since; it's likely that the average per two-year Congress for the first six years of the Bush presidency will be below 250.
...A part-time Congress in a country with a $13 trillion economy and federal budget near $3 trillion, in a globalized, technologically sophisticated world, is itself a danger to the checks and balances built into American democracy, and to high-quality, careful policymaking and oversight. It's not too much to ask Congress to commit to spending at least half the year -- 26 weeks -- working full-time, five days a week, thus providing at least a measure of the deliberation and attention to detail that are so lacking now.

House Conservatives Prepare Austere Alternative Budget
By CARL HULSE
NYT, 7 March 2006
With Congress heading into a politically perilous budget season, influential House conservatives plan this week to propose an austere alternative spending plan that would pare more than $650 billion over five years, balance the budget and drastically shrink three cabinet agencies.
The legislation, part of a push by some Republicans to re-establish themselves as champions of fiscal restraint, was taking shape as President Bush struck a similar theme on Monday by asking Congress to grant him line-item veto power to eliminate federal spending that he might judge wasteful.
"We can't be all things to all people when it comes to spending the taxpayers' money," Mr. Bush said at a ceremony installing a new chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.
But House conservative leaders would go far beyond the president's own budget proposal, illustrating the difficulty the White House and the Republican leadership have had in persuading the caucus to speak with one voice on the matter.
Senior aides say the conservatives' plan would wring about $350 billion from Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs and save $300 billion partly through a major reorganization of the Education, Commerce and Energy Departments.
"We are putting our money where our mouth is," said one of the officials, who would discuss the proposal only without being identified because it was still being prepared for release Wednesday by leaders of the Republican Study Committee.
The officials said it was particularly important for conservatives to lay down a marker because the Senate is facing an imminent vote on whether to increase the statutory debt limit, which will remind the public of the increasing deficits under the Bush administration.
Treasury Secretary John W. Snow warned Congress on Monday that the federal government risked default without an increase in the debt limit and that the Republican-controlled Congress would soon be forced to address that issue.
Conservatives contend that voters are disillusioned with Republicans over spending and that without a bold statement, the party faces potential losses in November. But some moderate Republicans are anxious about additional spending reductions, particularly after Congress enacted nearly $40 billion in cuts last year after a difficult fight.

Group Warns of Toxic Tuna
Tests on sushi from L.A.-area eateries raise questions about FDA mercury monitoring.
By Jerry Hirsch
LA Times, 7 March 2006
Tuna is arguably the most popular offering at sushi bars. Many customers like slices of blood-red fish slathered in a spicy wasabi sauce. Others prefer the more simple nigiri style, which is sliced tuna over rice.
But now a public health advocacy group is warning about the safety of tuna sushi and questioning the Food and Drug Administration's system of monitoring the mercury levels in fish, based on tests on a small sample of such delicacies at Los Angeles restaurants.

Now Repeal the Ban
Washington Post, 7 March 2006
The Supreme Court's unanimous decision yesterday upholding the Solomon Amendment is no surprise. It offers the correct answer to the legal question the case posed: Can the government deny federal money to universities that, in protest of the military's discrimination against homosexual service members, bar military recruiters from campus or grant them access on terms less welcoming than those given to other employers? As the court ruled, the universities don't have a right to that money. But the Pentagon's legal win should not obscure the indefensible nature of the policy that underlies the dispute. The gay ban still needs to be repealed.

Wal-Mart Parodist Sues to Sell Products
The creator of slogans bashing the retailer says it's a free-speech issue. The company calls it a trademark violation.
By Abigail Goldman
LA Times, 7 March 2006
Computer store owner Charles Smith is the first to admit the T-shirts and mugs he designed to lampoon Wal-Mart Stores Inc. are in bad taste.
But Smith had wanted to make a point by comparing the giant retail company to the Nazis. So he created slogans playing off the Bentonville, Ark., firm's familiar logo, including "I {heart} WAL*OCAUST. They have family values and their alcohol, tobacco and firearms are 20% off."
Wal-Mart wasn't amused. The company launched a legal battle by writing a cease-and-desist demand that led Smith to file suit Monday in federal court in Atlanta — with the help of Ralph Nader's legal aid group, Public Citizen — for the right to continue selling the products.
At stake, Smith said, is his right to publicly criticize the world's largest retailer — or any other company.
"It's about free speech and the right to comment on corporations and their images and their trademarks," said Paul Alan Levy, the Public Citizen lawyer representing Smith. "Just because the trademark owner doesn't like [it] doesn't mean it isn't a permissible use of language."
In his suit, Smith asks the court to rule that his products are protected by the 1st Amendment and do not infringe Wal-Mart's trademark because there is no likelihood someone might think they were sponsored by Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart said it was required by trademark law to protect its name and logo.

The Democrats' Real Problem
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Washington Post, 7 March 2006
It is now an ingrained journalistic habit: After a period of bad news for President Bush, media outlets invariably devote time and space to "balancing" stories that all say more or less: "Yes, the Republicans are in trouble, but the Democrats have no alternatives, no plans," etc.
The pattern began to fall in place this weekend in the wake of two truly miserable weeks for Bush.
The stories about the Democrats are by no means flatly false -- Democrats don't yet have a fully worked-out alternative program -- but they are based on a false premise, and they underestimate what I'll call the positive power of negative thinking.
The false premise is that oppositions win midterm elections by offering a clear program, such as the Republicans' 1994 Contract With America. I've been testing this idea with such architects of the 1994 "Republican revolution" as former representative Vin Weber and Tony Blankley, who was Newt Gingrich's top communications adviser and now edits the Washington Times editorial page.
Both said the main contribution of the contract was to give inexperienced Republican candidates something to say once the political tide started moving the GOP's way. But both insisted that it was disaffection with Bill Clinton, not the contract, that created the Republicans' opportunity -- something Bob Dole said at the time.
The Democrats' real problem is that they have failed to show how their critique of the Republican status quo is the essential first step toward the alternative program they will owe the voters in the presidential year of 2008.
...Thus the shortcoming of Democratic leaders is not that they don't have a program but that they have not yet convinced opinion makers that fighting bad policies is actually constructive -- and that, between presidential elections, keeping matters from getting worse is sometimes the most positive alternative on offer.

6 March 2006

Nuclear Madness
By BOB HERBERT
NYT, 6 March 2006
The key to understanding the Bush administration and its policies is contained in the widely cited New York Times Magazine article, "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush," by Ron Suskind.
That's the article in which Mr. Suskind described how a senior Bush adviser contemptuously dismissed the community that most of us live in, "the reality-based community."
The times have changed and reality isn't what it used to be. As the adviser explained, "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."
This mad-hatter thinking was on display again last week. President Bush, who used specious claims about a nuclear threat to launch his disastrous war in Iraq, agreed to a deal — in blatant violation of international accords and several decades of bipartisan U.S. policy — that would enable India to double or triple its annual production of nuclear weapons.
The president turned his back on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (dismissed, like reality-based thinking, as passé) and moved the world a step closer to an accelerated nuclear arms race in Asia and elsewhere. In the president's empire-based, otherworldly way of thinking, this was a good thing.
For decades, U.S. law and the provisions of the nonproliferation treaty have precluded the sale of nuclear fuel and reactor components to India, which has acquired an atomic arsenal and has refused to sign the treaty. President Bush turned that policy upside down last week, agreeing to share nuclear energy technology with India, even as it continues to develop nuclear weapons in a program that is shielded from international inspectors.
The attempt to stop the spread of nuclear weapons beyond the five original members of the so-called nuclear club — the U.S., Russia, Britain, France and China — has not been perfect by any means. But it hasn't been bad. Back in the 1960's there was a fear that before long there might be dozens of additional states with nuclear weapons. But so far the spread has been held to four — Israel, India, Pakistan and most likely North Korea.
A cornerstone of the nonproliferation strategy has been the refusal to share nuclear energy technology with nations unwilling to abide by the provisions of the nonproliferation treaty. Last week George W. Bush decided he would change all that by carving out an exception for India.
Presidents from both parties — from Richard Nixon through Bill Clinton — had refused to make this deal, which India has wanted for more than three decades.
"It's a terrible deal, a disaster," said Joseph Cirincione, the director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment. "The Indians are free to make as much nuclear material as they want. Meanwhile, we're going to sell them fuel for their civilian reactors. That frees up their resources for the military side, and that stinks."
With President Bush undermining the nonproliferation treaty, critics are worried that it's only a matter of time before other bilateral deals are made — say, China with Pakistan, which has already asked Mr. Bush for a deal similar to India's and been turned down.

Majority of Americans Believe Iraq Civil War is Likely
Washington Post-ABC News Poll Finds Sharp Decline in Optimism About Iraq War
By Richard Morin
Washington Post, 6 March 2006
An overwhelming majority of the public believe fighting between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq will lead to civil war and half say the U.S. should begin withdrawing its forces from that violence-torn country, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The survey found that 80 percent believed that recent sectarian violence made civil war in Iraq likely, and more than a third said such a conflict was "very likely" to occur. Expectations for an all-out sectarian war in Iraq extended beyond party lines. More than seven in 10 Republicans and eight in 10 Democrats and political independents believe civil war was likely.
In the face of the continuing violence, fully half--52 percent--of those surveyed said the United States should begin withdrawing forces. But only one in six favored immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq.
The new survey reflected a sharp decline in optimism sparked by the sectarian violence that flared in Iraq since the bombings of a revered Shiite mosque two weeks ago. Since then, deadly confrontations have occurred between Shiites and Sunni, who are a minority in Iraq but were favored under the regime of Saddam Hussein.
The poll found that 56 percent also say the United States is not making significant progress toward restoring civil order in Iraq while 43 percent believe that stability is being reestablished--a 17-point drop in optimism since December and the most pessimistic reading on this question since it was first asked in June, 2004.
And the country is split down the middle over whether the United States is moving ahead toward establishing a democratic government in that violence-torn country. Nearly half--49 percent--say the U.S. is making progress on the political front, down from 65 percent four months ago. And just as many--48 percent--say the U.S. and its allies are failing to make progress here, either.

Amnesty International Condemns Detention Without Trial in Iraq
Yahoo! News via Reuters, 5 March 2006
Amnesty International condemned the detention in Iraq of around 14,000 prisoners without charge or trial, saying on Monday the lessons of the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal had not been learned.
"As long as U.S. and U.K. forces hold prisoners in secret detention conditions, torture is much more likely to occur, to go undetected and to go unpunished," Amnesty's U.K. Director Kate Allen said.
In a 48-page-report entitled "Beyond Abu Ghraib," the London-based human rights group called for an end to the internment, which it said contravened international law.
"After the horrors of life under Saddam and then the fresh horror of U.S. prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, it is shocking to discover that the multinational forces are detaining thousands of people without charge or trial," Allen said.
"Not only have there been recent cases of prisoners being tortured in detention, but to hold this huge number of people without basic legal safeguards is a gross dereliction of responsibility on the part of both the U.S. and U.K. forces."
..."There are chilling signs that the lessons of Abu Ghraib have not been learned," Allen said. "Not only prisoners being held in defiance of international law, but the allegations of torture continue to pour out of Iraq."
Human rights activists and others have often criticized the United States over its treatment of prisoners in Iraq, where it is holding around 30 times as many prisoners as it is at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The U.S. military says it has a policy against torture, but has acknowledged using interrogation techniques that include placing detainees in stress positions.
SEE ALSO:
Guantanamo Inmates Despair of Ever Leaving
AP via NYT, 5 March 2006
Ahamed Abdul Aziz has been in the Guantanamo Bay prison for more than three years and, by his account, has been interrogated 50 times without being charged with any crime. He waits with anguish for freedom but fears it will never come.
''We are in a grave here,'' he told his lawyers, echoing the despair felt by many of the roughly 490 prisoners held as suspected terrorists at the U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba. Charges have been filed against only 10 of them.
Transcripts of hearings, which the Pentagon released Friday after a successful Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by The Associated Press, show the frustration among prisoners waiting for the military to decide whether to charge them, transfer them or release them.

Lawmakers Embrace Lobbyist Cash
There's talk on Capitol Hill of keeping an arm's length relationship, and then there's reality.
By Richard Simon and Mary Curtius
LA Times, 5 March2006
Capitol Hill is abuzz these days with talk about keeping lobbyists at a distance. But when it comes to the political cash they can generate, interest in keeping them near remains strong.
This weekend, Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) is hosting a $5,000-per-person gathering — which invitations said would feature golf, fishing, snorkeling and "much, much more" — in the Florida Keys. McKeon anticipated that many of the guests would be lobbyists.
Also this weekend, lobbyists are among those at "Winterfest '06," where supporters of Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) can ski and snowmobile at the exclusive Yellowstone Club in his home state.
And in Washington, scores of less flashy, but still lucrative, fundraisers will be held in the coming weeks for Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike. Lobbyists, along with clients and friends, will constitute many of those in attendance.
The expensive events are perfectly legal. But they have raised questions about whether Congress is missing the point as it responds to the scandal surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the once-powerful influence peddler who this year pleaded guilty to defrauding clients and conspiring to bribe lawmakers.
As has become clear in recent days, legislation with the best chance of passing does not tackle campaign finance issues, but would require members of Congress and lobbyists to more fully detail their contacts with each other.
Some lawmakers and many watchdog groups say a failure to address what they see as the source of lobbyists' greatest influence — political contributions — would be a glaring oversight.

AT&T to Buy BellSouth for $67 Billion
The phone giant would gain full control of Cingular Wireless. Consumer groups see the move as a step toward a monopoly.
By James S. Granelli
LA Times, 6 March 2006
Telephone giant AT&T Inc. said Sunday that it agreed to buy BellSouth Corp. for $67 billion in stock in a deal that would make AT&T the dominant carrier in 22 states, rekindling fears of a new Ma Bell monopoly.
If the transaction is completed, the seven regional Baby Bell companies created in the government's 1984 breakup of AT&T Corp. would be reduced to three. Industry analysts predicted that more mergers in telecommunications probably would follow.
SEE ALSO:
Huge Phone Deal Seeks to Thwart Smaller Rivals
By KEN BELSON
NYT, 6 March 2006
The AT&T Corporation, in announcing plans yesterday to buy BellSouth Corporation for $67 billion after months of speculation, took the offensive against low-cost rivals in the free-for-all for phone, wireless and television customers.
With cable providers and technology companies entering the phone business, the former Baby Bells starting to sell television programming and more and more services available on mobile phones and on the Internet, companies like AT&T are trying to bulk up and turn themselves into one-stop shops for all communications needs.
"We literally have hundreds of competitors coming in every day; it's nothing like the old days," said Edward E. Whitacre, Jr., the chairman and chief executive of AT&T, the country's largest phone company. "If we're going to have the strength to compete, we better get our companies together."
The new company, with $120 billion in sales, about 317,000 workers and 71 million local phone customers in 22 states, would recreate a big chunk of the former AT&T monopoly that was broken up a generation ago. With the deal, only three Baby Bells would remain: AT&T, the former SBC Communications that provided service in the Southwest and elsewhere; Qwest and Verizon, the $90 billion company which is AT&T's chief rival. The latter two might now face renewed pressure to build themselves up.
The merger, one of the dozen largest deals ever, was long the subject of speculation and got a major push in January when the chiefs of both companies went bird hunting together in Georgia.
The deal still must pass muster with regulators and it will probably face close scrutiny from consumer groups and AT&T's main competitors who argue the merger would give AT&T too much power and will ultimately lead to higher prices.
But while AT&T — which was formed last year when SBC bought the long-distance carrier, AT&T — might look much like its old self, the landscape where it competes is completely different. In 1984, when the old Ma Bell was broken up, the Internet and cellphone service barely existed and the cable industries was far smaller.
The new, more complex environment is a big reason why anti-trust watchdogs have not blocked large phone deals in recent years. Regulators in the Bush Administration have also been generally sympathetic to mergers, which has not escaped AT&T's attention, analysts said.
Indeed, AT&T and BellSouth consider themselves complementary partners because they compete very little for local phone and Internet customers, and they jointly own Cingular Wireless.
As a result, consumers buying services from AT&T, BellSouth and Cingular are unlikely to see much immediate impact. Ultimately, the companies hope that their new size will help them hold down their prices and potentially undercut cable and satellite companies with cheaper television programming, which they are just beginning to introduce.

Issues of Free Speech Arise After Teacher Criticizes Bush
By Nicholas Riccardi
LA Times, 4 March 2006
It was the day after President Bush's State of the Union address, and social studies teacher Jay Bennish was warning his world geography class not to be taken in.
"Sounds a lot like the things that Adolf Hitler used to say," Bennish told students at the suburban high school Feb. 2. " 'We're the only ones who are right, everyone else is backward and our job is to conquer the world.' "
The teacher quickly made clear that he wasn't equating Bush with Hitler, but the damage was done. A sophomore in the class had recorded the lecture on an MP3 player, and turned it over this week to a local conservative talk radio show.
Bennish, who has taught at Overland High School for five years, was placed on paid leave Wednesday by the Cherry Creek School District, sparking an uproar over issues of free speech and teacher conduct.
About 150 Overland students walked out of class Thursday to protest Bennish's absence, and the teacher's lawyer — who met with district officials Friday — has threatened a federal lawsuit.
Attorney David Lane contended on the Mike Rosen radio show, which originally played the tape, that his client's comments were not outlandish and were intended to get students to think about current events.
"Maybe it's not mainstream, middle-American opinion," Lane said Friday. "But the rest of the world agrees with him."
Lane added that if Bennish had spoken strongly in support of Bush, he would not be under investigation.

Feeling No Pain
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 6 March 2006
President Bush's main purpose in visiting India seems to have been to promote nuclear proliferation. But he also had some kind words for outsourcing. And those words help explain something that I know deeply puzzles the administration's political gurus: Mr. Bush's dismal polling on economic issues.
Now the American economy isn't doing as well as Bush partisans think it is. In fact, since the end of the 2001 recession, the recovery in jobs, output and especially wages has been unusually weak by historical standards. Still, the economy is expanding, so it's impressive just how large a majority of Americans disapproves of Mr. Bush's economic management.
Why doesn't Mr. Bush get any economic respect? I think it's because most Americans sense, correctly, that he doesn't care about people like them. We're living in a time when many Americans are feeling economically insecure, but a tiny elite has been growing incredibly rich. And Mr. Bush's problem is that he identifies so totally with the lucky, wealthy few that in unscripted settings he can't manage even a few sentences of empathy with ordinary Americans. He doesn't feel your pain, and it shows.
...The fact is that we're living in a time when most Americans are seeing little if any benefit from overall income growth, because their share of the economic pie is falling. Between 1979 and 2003, according to a recent research paper published by the I.R.S., the share of overall income received by the bottom 80 percent of taxpayers fell from 50 percent to barely over 40 percent. The main winners from this upward redistribution of income were a tiny, wealthy elite: more than half the income share lost by the bottom 80 percent was gained by just one-fourth of 1 percent of the population, people with incomes of at least $750,000 in 2003.
And those fortunate few are the only people Mr. Bush seems to care about. Look at what he had to offer after asserting, in effect, that workers get outsourced because they don't have the right education: lower taxes, deregulation and fewer lawsuits. Funny, that doesn't sound like "pro-growth" policy to me. Instead, it sounds like a wish list for wealthy individuals and big corporations.
Mr. Bush once joked that his base consisted of the "haves and the have-mores." But it wasn't much of a joke. His remarks in India show that he really can't imagine what it's like not to be a member of a privileged economic elite.

4-5 March 2006

[David Brooks has written an important opinion piece in the Sunday New York Times. He argues that it is a mistaken notion that the United States is moving into isolationism. He attributes 9/11 and the Iraq War with shifting the American concept of globalization toward a more bigoted view that Arab and Islamic dominated states make them an exception to the inclusiveness of global community and economic integration. .
He is correct in judging this to be less than an attractive outcome. But he is deluding himself that it is a result of the events on 9/11 and the Iraq War.
Racism and bigotry against Arab and Islamic states and culture is the logical outcome of Bush's War On Terrorism. It's an attitude of fear and the cruel, insensitive policies of Bush's America that have brought us to where we are. Americans generally knew that the irrationality and brutality of war is only sustained by demonizing the face of the enemy. And we knew this well before we allowed George Bush to declare himself "a wartime President." Wasn't it obvious in post-9/11 that by declaring war on terrorism the outcome would be racial profiling and an unabashed expression of racism and bigotry? - PK]
It's Not Isolationism, but It's Not Attractive
By DAVID BROOKS
NYT, 5 March 2006
This was going to be a column on the growing isolationism of the American people. I was going to argue that in the post-Iraq era, the quickest way for an unprincipled cynic to get to the White House is by running as a smiling Democratic-Buchananite.
Attack the Dubai ports deal to burnish your security credentials. Call for less foreign adventurism and more spending at home to win the Democratic base. Go hard against illegal immigration to win the working class. Rail against China and free trade deals to build support in the Midwest. Bash France just for the fun of it. Bingo! You're cruising to Inauguration Day.
Unfortunately, before I had finished that column, I looked at the facts. The bulk of the evidence suggests there is no rising tide of isolationism in this country, even with the bloodshed in Iraq.
...the chief effect of Iraq is not to move the U.S. toward isolationism; it has been to shift American opinion from one form of internationalism to another.
George Bush's brand was based on the premise that Arabs aren't very different from anybody else, and can be brought into the family of democratic nations. This brand is, sadly, fading.
The rising internationalism is based, by contrast, on Arab exceptionalism. This is the belief that while most of the world is chugging toward a globally integrated future, the Arab world remains caught in its own medieval whirlpool of horror. The Arab countries cannot become quickly democratic; their people aren't ready for pluralistic modernity; they just have to be walled off so they don't hurt us again.
People won't express such quasi-racial views directly to pollsters, but the attitude shows up in the mammoth reaction to the Dubai ports deal, in the spike of people who want the U.S. to eliminate its dependence on Middle East oil, in the reaction to the cartoon riots. A similar attitudinal shift is evident in Europe — in spades.
As I tried to argue in a column about the ports deal, this reaction is a crude overgeneralization, but it's there. As the election season progresses, voters are going to pull candidates in a gritty, bloody-minded direction. No more uplifting talk about freedom. Soon the contest will be over who can be toughest on the crescent menace.
America isn't growing more isolationist. Americans are going to be happy to integrate with the world, just not with the Arab world.

All British [and US?] Soldiers to be Out of Iraq in 12 Months
By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
Telegraph (UK), 3 March 2006
All British and United States troops serving in Iraq will be withdrawn within a year in an effort to bring peace and stability to the country.
The news came as defence chiefs admitted privately that the British troop commitment in Afghanistan may last for up to 10 years.
The planned pull-out from Iraq follows the acceptance by London and Washington that the presence of the coalition, mainly composed of British and US troops, is now seen as the main obstacle to peace.
According to a senior defence source directly involved in planning the withdrawal, Britain is the driving force behind the scheme. The early spring of next year has been identified as the optimum time for the start of the complex and dangerous operation.
...Iraq's national defence force will assume responsibility for security.

The Search for Illegal Immigrants Stops at the Workplace
By EDUARDO PORTER
NYT, 5 March 2006
It may seem that the United States government has declared all-out war against illegal immigration. During the last decade, the budget dedicated to enforcement of immigration laws has grown by leaps and bounds. The Border Patrol has about three times as many agents as it did in the early 1990's, and the southern border has been laced with high-tech surveillance gadgetry.
Yet a closer look reveals a very different portrait of immigration policy. It seems designed for failure. Most experts agree that a vast majority of illegal immigrants who make it across the border every year are seeking work. But the workplace is the one spot that is virtually unpoliced.

Pakistanis Revile Bush Visit
BY JAMES RUPERT
Newsday.com, 4 March 2006
Pakistanis shut down their country with a nationwide strike and protests Friday as President George W. Bush flew here from India for talks with President Pervez Musharraf.
After Air Force One landed at an air base in Rawalpindi Friday night -- with window shades down and running lights turned off -- Bush's entourage was whisked into a bubble of protection and official welcome.
The capital, Islamabad, and many other cities were eerily quiet throughout the day, although thousands of men marched in Peshawar, Multan and Karachi to condemn Bush and the United States, and Musharraf, for allying with them. The protests, plus Thursday's bombing in Karachi that killed an American consulate official, have overshadowed the White House's goal for the trip: to depict a friendly and broad U.S.-Pakistani relationship that reaches beyond simple joint defense in the "global war on terrorism."
Timing may be off
But if there is a good time for a presidential arrival to showcase such a broad friendship, it seems not to be seven weeks after U.S. forces fired missiles into a Pakistani village near the Afghan border. The attack, aimed at wiping out a top al-Qaida leader, instead killed at least 12 local residents, including women and children. Last month, when protests mushroomed against the publication in Europe of caricatures of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, anger at the missile strike helped militant Islamic politicians here convert the demonstrations into violent outbursts against the United States and Musharraf.
Even before the missile attack, Pakistani opinion polls and analysts have registered simmering anger at the United States for years over the deaths of Muslim civilians and abuse of Muslim prisoners at the hands of U.S. forces in Iraq or Afghanistan.
The mix of old anger and new was on display in the hours before Bush landed.
Pakistan's alliance of Islamic political parties, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, called a general strike Friday that left bazaars shuttered and streets empty in Islamabad and other cities. In Multan, in southern Punjab province, the alliance leader, Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, rallied 10,000 people and criticized Musharraf for inviting an American leader he said had abused Muslims. In Rawalpindi, next to Islamabad, as in Chaman on the Afghan border and Peshawar in the northwest, crowds ranging from 100 to several thousand shouted "Death to Bush," "Bush go home" and other condemnation.

Terrorist Growth Overtakes U.S. Efforts
By Sharon Behn
The Washington Times via WarInContext.org, 2 March 2006
Thirty new terrorist organizations have emerged since the September 11, 2001, attacks, outpacing U.S. efforts to crush the threat, said Brig. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, the Pentagon's deputy director for the war on terrorism.
"We are not killing them faster than they are being created," Gen. Caslen told a gathering at the Woodrow Wilson Center yesterday, warning that the war could take decades to resolve.
Gen. Caslen said that two years ago the Department of Defense had not settled on a clear definition of the nature of the war. Moreover, because each government department had its own perspective, "we all had different strategies," he said.
The Defense Department now has defined the nature of the war, he said. The enemy, he said, is "a transnational movement of extremist organizations, networks and individuals that use violence and terrorism as a means to promote their end." It is not a global insurgency, the general said.
"We do not go as far as to say it is a global insurgency, because it lacks a centralized command and control," he said.
Groups such as al Qaeda, though, are constantly trying to increase their capabilities, and in some cases are outstripping the United States, Gen. Caslen said.
"We in the Pentagon are behind our adversaries in the use of communications -- either to recruit or train," he said. Compared with historical jihads, or enduring Muslim wars, this one "is accelerated because of its capability in communications."
The Pentagon official said Muslim thought ranges from secular and mainstream to extremist and intolerant.
The takfir (infidel) view of the world that falls under the Salafist teachings of the Sunni sect -- such as al Qaeda in Iraq -- is an example of the extremist view that condones violence to accomplish ideological ends, he said.
The general said the extremists' goal is to remove U.S. troops from Iraq and establish a radical state under Shariah, or Islamic law, remove what they consider the apostate governments of Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt, and destroy Israel.
But the enemy has vulnerabilities.
"The ideology is not popular among most, even Muslims," he said. "We need to undermine support by amplifying the moderate forces and undermining the enemy's repressive and corrupt behavior."
Gen. Caslen said the government and military are working to integrate their strategies and plans, and that a national strategic presidential directive and homeland security presidential directive are being drafted to face the terrorist threat.

U.S. Commander Says Iraqi 'Crisis Has Passed'
By Rowan Scarborough
The Washington Times, 4 March 2006
The top U.S. commander in Iraq yesterday declared an end to a 10-day wave of sectarian violence that killed an estimated 350 civilians, asserting that many reports of violence were "exaggerated."
"It appears that the crisis has passed," said Army Gen. George Casey, giving a detailed public report card. "But we all should be clear that Iraqis remain under threat of terrorist attacks by those who will stop at nothing to undermine the formation of this constitutionally elected government. ... They tried to have this [be] the straw that broke the camel's back, and it failed."
Gen. Casey gave mixed reviews of the performance of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) that handled the bulk of street patrols and crowd control. This latest test will be a gauge by which to decide whether the ISF is maturing fast enough to allow thousands of American troops to come home later this year.
Asked how the violence will affect monthly analysis of troop needs, Gen. Casey said, "We'll see how this plays out over the coming weeks and months."
He also said the number of violent incidents turned out to be lower than press and security forces reported in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of the revered Shi'ite Askariya mosque in Samarra, north of Baghdad. Gen. Casey said that in a reported 30 attacks on mosques, only two were severely damaged. Of eight mosques that were reported damaged, inspections showed only one had damage -- a broken window.
"The overall levels of violence did not increase substantially as a result of the bombing," he said in a statement that seems at odds with the 10 days of television footage and commentary. "It took us a few days to sort our way through what we considered in a lot of cases to be exaggerated reports."
During the 10-day period, there were 20 demonstrations of 1,000 Iraqis or more.
"They were, by and large, all conducted peacefully with the support of the Iraqi Security Forces," Gen. Casey told Pentagon reporters via teleconference from Baghdad.
Outlawed militias also sprung into action during the chaos. In some cases, Iraqi police officers allowed Mahdi's Army militiamen controlled by firebrand cleric Muqtada al Sadr, a Shi'ite, to pass through checkpoints when they should have been stopped.
"This incident and its aftermath has highlighted for the Iraqi government the need to deal with the militia issue in the very near future," Gen. Casey said.

U.S. Isolated in Opposing Plan for a New U.N. Rights Council
By WARREN HOGE
NYT, 4 March 2006
The United States has found itself isolated in its opposition to a proposal to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission, and its pledge to vote against adoption of the plan has thrown the United Nations into turmoil.
Many delegations say they share the American misgivings about the proposal but fear that postponing or renegotiating it — the two options put forward by John R. Bolton, the United States ambassador — would doom the effort to produce a more credible rights body.
"If we reopen it to negotiations, there will be chaos, and if we postpone it, it will be a negative signal for the priority that human rights should have at the U.N.," Heraldo Muñoz, the Chilean ambassador, said Friday.
Mr. Muñoz, a promoter of democracy who was held as a political prisoner under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, said, "This is clearly a compromise and not what some countries would like, but we perceive that aside from the U.S., there are very few countries who oppose the text."
Human rights groups are lobbying actively for adoption, galvanized by the prospect of American rejection and by suspicion of Mr. Bolton's motives in objecting to the proposal.
"It's an open question whether Bolton's throwing all the cards up in the air is meant to improve the council or to prove that the U.N. can't reform itself and therefore should be abandoned," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

Pro-Israel Lobbying Group Roiled by Prosecution of Two Ex-Officials
By SCOTT SHANE and DAVID JOHNSTON
NYT, 4 March 2006
The annual gathering of the nation's top pro-Israel lobbying group [AIPAC], which starts here on Sunday, will be addressed by Vice President Dick Cheney and United Nations Ambassador John R. Bolton. Politicians are lined up to warn of the threat from Iran and Hamas. Workshops will offer advice on winning the legislative game on Capitol Hill.
But the official program omits a topic likely to be a major theme of corridor chatter: the explosive Justice Department prosecution of two former officials of the group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, that is ticking toward an April trial date.
The highly unusual indictment of the former officials, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, accuses them of receiving classified information about terrorism and Middle East strategy from a Defense Department analyst, Lawrence A. Franklin, and passing it on to a journalist and an Israeli diplomat. Mr. Franklin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12½ years in prison, though his sentence could be reduced based on his cooperation in the case.
The prosecution has roiled the powerful organization, known as Aipac, which at first vigorously defended Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman and then fired them last March. And it has generated considerable anger among American Jews who question why the group's representatives were singled out in the first place. [Could it be because Keith and Steve obtained classified information from Larry?]
But the case has set off alarms among the policy groups, lobbyists and journalists who swap information, often about national security issues, with executive-branch officials and Congressional staff members. They were not reassured by a remark from the federal judge hearing the case, at Mr. Franklin's sentencing in January, that the laws on classified information were not limited to government officials.
"Persons who have unauthorized possession, who come into unauthorized possession of classified information, must abide by the law," the judge, T. S. Ellis III, said. "That applies to academics, lawyers, journalists, professors, whatever."
...In August 2002, according to the indictment, the two Aipac officials first met Mr. Franklin, who supplied them with more information, much of it involving policy options toward Iran. In pleading guilty, Mr. Franklin said he did not intend to damage the United States but hoped the two lobbyists would be advocates for his views within the administration.

Prevalence of Fox News feeds on military installations may not be enough...
U.S. Troops in Iraq: 72% Say End War in 2006
Le Moyne College/Zogby Poll, 28 February 2006
Le Moyne College/Zogby Poll shows just one in five troops want to heed Bush call to stay “as long as they are needed”
--While 58% say mission is clear, 42% say U.S. role is hazy
--Plurality believes Iraqi insurgents are mostly homegrown
--Almost 90% think war is retaliation for Saddam’s role in 9/11, most don’t blame Iraqi public for insurgent attacks
--Majority of troops oppose use of harsh prisoner interrogation
--Plurality of troops pleased with their armor and equipment
An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and more than one in four say the troops should leave immediately, a new Le Moyne College/Zogby International survey shows.

The Gospel vs. H.R. 4437
NYT, 3 March 2006
It has been a long time since this country heard a call to organized lawbreaking on this big a scale. Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the nation's largest, urged parishioners on Ash Wednesday to devote the 40 days of Lent to fasting, prayer and reflection on the need for humane reform of immigration laws. If current efforts in Congress make it a felony to shield or offer support to illegal immigrants, Cardinal Mahony said, he will instruct his priests — and faithful lay Catholics — to defy the law.
The cardinal's focus of concern is H.R. 4437, a bill sponsored by James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin and Peter King of New York. This grab bag legislation, which was recently passed by the House, would expand the definition of "alien smuggling" in a way that could theoretically include working in a soup kitchen, driving a friend to a bus stop or caring for a neighbor's baby. Similar language appears in legislation being considered by the Senate this week.
The enormous influx of illegal immigrants and the lack of a coherent federal policy to handle it have prompted a jumble of responses by state and local governments, stirred the passions of the nativist fringe, and reinforced anxieties since 9/11. Cardinal Mahony's defiance adds a moral dimension to what has largely been a debate about politics and economics. "As his disciples, we are called to attend to the last, littlest, lowest and least in society and in the church," he said.
...Cardinal Mahony's declaration of solidarity with illegal immigrants, for whom Lent is every day, is a startling call to civil disobedience, as courageous as it is timely. We hope it forestalls the day when works of mercy become a federal crime.

3 March 2006

Bush Trades Nukes for Mangoes
Bush and India Reach Pact That Allows Nuclear Sales
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and SOMINI SENGUPTA
NYT, 3 March 2006
President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India announced here on Thursday what Mr. Bush called a "historic" nuclear pact that would help India satisfy its enormous civilian energy needs while allowing it to continue to develop nuclear weapons.
Under the agreement, the United States would end a decades-long moratorium on sales of nuclear fuel and reactor components and India would separate its civilian and military nuclear programs, and open the civilian facilities to international inspections. The pact fills in the broad outlines of a plan that was negotiated in July.
In Washington, Democratic and Republican critics said that India's willingness to subject some of its nuclear program to inspections was meaningless so long as the country had a secret military nuclear program alongside it, and that the pact would only encourage rogue nations like North Korea and Iran to continue to pursue nuclear weapons. They predicted a bruising fight in Congress over the pact, which needs its approval.
...In New Delhi, American and Indian negotiators working all night reached agreement on the nuclear deal at 10:30 a.m. Thursday local time — only two hours before Mr. Bush and Mr. Singh announced it — after the United States accepted an Indian plan to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities.
In the plan, India agreed permanently to classify 14 of its 22 nuclear power reactors as civilian facilities, meaning those reactors will be subject for the first time to international inspections or safeguards.
The other reactors, as well as a prototype fast-breeder reactor in the early stages of development, will remain as military facilities, and not be subject to inspections. India also retained the right to develop future fast-breeder reactors for its military program, a provision that critics of the deal called astonishing. In addition, India said it was guaranteed a permanent supply of nuclear fuel.
The separation plan, according to a senior Indian official, also envisions India-specific rules from the International Atomic Energy Agency, effectively recognizing India as a nuclear weapons state in "a category of its own."
...Critics also said keeping the fast-breeder reactors under military control, without inspections, would allow India to develop far more nuclear arms, and more quickly, than it has in the past. Fast-breeder reactors are highly efficient producers of the plutonium needed for nuclear weapons.
"It's not meaningful to talk about 14 of the 22 reactors being placed under safeguards," said Robert J. Einhorn, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who served as a top nonproliferation official in the Clinton administration and the early days of the Bush administration. "What's meaningful is what the Indians can do at the unsafeguarded reactors, which is vastly increase their production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. One has to assume that the administration was so interested in concluding a deal that it was prepared to cave in to the demands of the Indian nuclear establishment."
Critics of the deal also said it would now be more difficult for the United States to persuade Iran and other nations to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions.
"It will set a precedent that Iran will use to argue that the United States has a double standard," said Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, a leading opponent of the deal. "You can't break the rules and expect Iran to play by them, and that's what President Bush is doing today."
..."And oh, by the way, Mr. Prime Minister, the United States is looking forward to eating Indian mangoes," Mr. Bush said at the news conference.

The Precipice, the Brink, the Abyss -- Iraq
George's Inferno And Other Images from a No-Name War
By Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch.com, 32 March 2006
...If, by some miracle, the archives of the Bush administration are finally pried open, I have no doubt we'll discover, as with so much else that was named by these officials, that the decision not to name "the situation in Iraq" was carefully considered and fully discussed. After all, they (and various neocons supporters in or on the edges of the government) have spent parts of the last few years constantly experimenting with names for the "war" that counts for them: The Global War on Terror, acronymed GWOT, aka World War IV, the Millennial War, the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism, and (recently enshrined in the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review as well as attributed to Centcom commander and popularizer Gen. John Abizaid)) the Long War.
...[Note: For those of you interested in keeping up with the situation in Iraq, I would suggest the following: Make Juan Cole's Informed Comment blog your first stop of the day. (He even offers regular glimpses of how the Middle Eastern press is covering Iraq.) Then check out Antiwar.com, whose editors have a fine eye for the day's telling headlines and commentary; next, try Paul Woodward's the War in Context website. I like his quirky eye for what's important and his almost Koan-like comments. Finally, you might look from time to time at the always interesting Dreyfuss Report (though Dreyfuss posts relatively infrequently).]

Shiites Get Demand: Drop Jaafari From Race
By ROBERT F. WORTH
NYT, 3 March 2006
Leaders of Iraq's Kurdish, secular and Sunni Arab parties asked the main Shiite alliance on Thursday to withdraw the interim prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, as its candidate for prime minister in the next government, saying Mr. Jaafari failed to contain the sectarian violence that swept the country over the past week.
The leaders said that if Mr. Jaafari continued as prime minister, they might try to force his removal by forming an opposition group larger than the Shiites, in a move that could upend the political process and prolong efforts to form a government.
...The Sunni, Kurdish and secular leaders who are pushing to oust Mr. Jaafari cited his delay in imposing a curfew last week, thereby letting protests after the mosque bombing devolve into deadly attacks against Sunni mosques and civilians, as one reason for their new request.
Shiite officials responded dismissively to the request, with some saying it was only a ploy to gain control of more ministries when the next government is formed. As the largest bloc in the new Parliament, the Shiites have the right to select a prime minister, and Mr. Jaafari was chosen in a closely fought internal ballot among the Shiites last month.
"We hope they will review their position, because if they do not, it will damage the atmosphere of unity we have in this critical time," Jawad al-Maliki, a Shiite leader and member of Mr. Jaafari's Dawa Party, told reporters Thursday night.
Other Shiite officials said the alliance was very unlikely to agree to withdraw Mr. Jaafari. Mr. Jaafari won the internal ballot with the strong support of Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric whose followers have the largest single bloc of seats in the alliance, and whose Mahdi Army militia was accused of much of the violence against Sunnis over the past week.
Members of the Sunni, Kurdish, and secular parties said they had long been unhappy with Mr. Jaafari, and that the Samarra attack last Wednesday and its violent aftermath were the final straw.
"What happened last Wednesday and afterward led us to the conclusion that we cannot tolerate Jaafari for the next four years," said Tareq al-Hashimi, a leader of the Iraqi Concordance Front, the main Sunni Arab group in the new Parliament.
It remains to be seen whether the Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and secular parties, which together control 141 seats in the 275-member Parliament, would be willing to form a single bloc. Those parties have serious differences over policy. Even if they were to unify and unseat the Shiite bloc, which has 130 seats, they would still be far short of the two-thirds majority required to form a government. That could throw Iraqi politics into a lengthy and damaging stalemate, with Mr. Jaafari continuing to preside over a caretaker government until the standoff is resolved.
The dispute came as a wave of renewed violence continued across Iraq, leaving at least 25 people dead.

Outlook Worsens in Afghanistan
Seattle Times news services via Informed Comment, 1 March 2006
Fighting between U.S. forces and suspected Taliban rebels on Tuesday killed one American service member and wounded two others in southern Afghanistan, as military officials in Washington and Afghanistan said insurgent attacks rose sharply last year and are likely to worsen in 2006.
A military vehicle was damaged by a roadside bomb during the fighting in Afghanistan's central province of Uruzgan in which seven suspected Taliban guerrillas were captured. .
In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, appearing with Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, said attacks within Afghanistan were up 20 percent between 2004 and 2005, suicide bombings increased "almost fourfold" and makeshift bombs, similar to those used in Iraq, had "more than doubled."

'Last Throes' In Pakistan
CBS via Informed Comment, 2 March 2006
Authorities say four people, including a U.S. diplomat, were killed and 52 others were injured when a suicide bomber rammed the diplomat's car outside the Karachi Marriott – yards away from the U.S. consulate. The blast early Thursday came just two days before the scheduled visit of President and Mrs. Bush, who are now in India.
...Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, is a hotbed for Islamic militants who have targeted the U.S. Consulate several times before.

Bush Administration Cites Exception in Torture Ban
McCain Law May Not Apply to Cuba Prison
By Josh White and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post, 3 March 2006
Bush administration lawyers, fighting a claim of torture by a Guantanamo Bay detainee, yesterday argued that the new law that bans cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody does not apply to people held at the military prison.
In federal court yesterday and in legal filings, Justice Department lawyers contended that a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot use legislation drafted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to challenge treatment that the detainee's lawyers described as "systematic torture."
Government lawyers have argued that another portion of that same law, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, removes general access to U.S. courts for all Guantanamo Bay captives. Therefore, they said, Mohammed Bawazir, a Yemeni national held since May 2002, cannot claim protection under the anti-torture provisions.
Bawazir's attorneys contend that "extremely painful" new tactics used by the government to force-feed him and end his hunger strike amount to torture.
U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said in a hearing yesterday that she found allegations of aggressive U.S. military tactics used to break the detainee hunger strike "extremely disturbing" and possibly against U.S. and international law. But Justice Department lawyers argued that even if the tactics were considered in violation of McCain's language, detainees at Guantanamo would have no recourse to challenge them in court.

Gonzales Denies More Extensive Domestic Spying
By Charles Babington
Washington Post, 3 March 2006
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales told a key House Democrat yesterday that the administration is not conducting any warrantless domestic surveillance programs beyond the one that President Bush has acknowledged, the Democrat said in an interview.
Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) said Gonzales was responding to a fax she sent him Wednesday after she read a news account of his Feb. 28 letter to two senators. In the letter, Gonzales appeared to suggest there might be domestic wiretap operations that extend beyond the outlines Bush acknowledged in December. Gonzales asked to clarify his Feb. 6 testimony that the president's acknowledged use of the National Security Agency for domestic surveillance "is all that he has authorized." "I did not and could not address . . . any other classified intelligence activities," Gonzales wrote to the senators.
Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said she sent Gonzales a fax "seeking clarification about his written testimony, which has left room for the possibility of an additional program or a broader program" of surveillance without court approval.
White House counsel Harriet Miers called Harman on Wednesday, and Gonzales phoned yesterday, Harman said. She said both of them "assured me that there is not a broader program or an additional program out there involving surveillance of U.S. persons."

And in the category of 'Things that don't really matter in an era of the Unitary Executive'...
Senate Passes Legislation to Renew Patriot Act
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
NYT, 3 March 2006
The Senate overwhelmingly passed legislation renewing the sweeping antiterror law known as the USA Patriot Act on Thursday, ending a months-long impasse on Capitol Hill and virtually guaranteeing that the measure will go to President Bush to be signed.
The vote of 89 to 10, followed an agreement last month by the White House to add more protections for individual privacy. That deal mollified four Senate Republicans, who had joined with Democrats last year in blocking the bill, an extension of a law enacted after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
The measure's 16 major provisions were set to expire March 10, but if the House approves the bill, as expected, 14 of the 16 will become permanent.
The Senate action was a bit of good news for the president, who has been buffeted by dipping poll numbers and criticism from within his own party on matters including Hurricane Katrina, electronic eavesdropping and port security.
Renewing the Patriot Act was a major priority for Mr. Bush, but resistance from some lawmakers had resulted in a series of short-term extensions as the debate dragged on through the winter.
"The Patriot Act is vital to the war on terror and defending our citizens against a ruthless enemy," the president said in a statement from India.

George the Unready
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 3 March 2006
Iraqi insurgents, hurricanes and low-income Medicare recipients have three things in common. Each has been at the center of a policy disaster. In each case experts warned about the impending disaster. And in each case — well, let's look at what happened.
Knight Ridder's Washington bureau reports that from 2003 on, intelligence agencies "repeatedly warned the White House" that "the insurgency in Iraq had deep local roots, was likely to worsen and could lead to civil war." But senior administration officials insisted that the insurgents were a mix of dead-enders and foreign terrorists.
Intelligence analysts who refused to go along with that line were attacked for not being team players. According to U.S. News & World Report, President Bush's reaction to a pessimistic report from the C.I.A.'s Baghdad station chief was to remark, "What is he, some kind of defeatist?"
Many people have now seen the video of the briefing Mr. Bush received before Hurricane Katrina struck. Much has been made of the revelation that Mr. Bush was dishonest when he claimed, a few days later, that nobody anticipated the breach of the levees.
But what's really striking, given the gravity of the warnings, is the lack of urgency Mr. Bush and his administration displayed in responding to the storm. A horrified nation watched the scenes of misery at the Superdome and wondered why help hadn't arrived. But as Newsweek reports, for several days nobody was willing to tell Mr. Bush, who "equates disagreement with disloyalty," how badly things were going. "For most of those first few days," Newsweek says, "Bush was hearing what a good job the Feds were doing."
Now for one you may not have heard about. The new Medicare drug program got off to a disastrous start: "Low-income Medicare beneficiaries around the country were often overcharged, and some were turned away from pharmacies without getting their medications, in the first week of Medicare's new drug benefit," The New York Times reported.
How did this happen? The same way the other disasters happened: experts who warned of trouble ahead were told to shut up.
...In short, our country is being run by people who assume that things will turn out the way they want. And if someone warns of problems, they shoot the messenger.
Some commentators speak of the series of disasters now afflicting the Bush administration — there seems to be a new one every week — as if it were just a string of bad luck. But it isn't.
If good luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, bad luck is what happens when lack of preparation meets a challenge. And our leaders, who think they can govern through a mix of wishful thinking and intimidation, are never, ever prepared.

Amid Ports Furor, Lawmakers Plan for New Security Reviews
By CARL HULSE and HEATHER TIMMONS
NYT, 3 March 2006
Lawmakers promised on Thursday to change the way the government reviews the foreign acquisitions of companies with national security significance, saying the furor surrounding a Dubai company's effort to take over some major American port terminals was proof that the existing system had broken down.
House and Senate members, saying they were blindsided by the proposal, said the mishandling of the transaction and the disclosure of other sales under review were stark evidence that Congress needed to play a greater role. They called for a new approach in the post-Sept. 11 environment and said commercial benefits had to be weighed against the threat of terrorism.
"While I strongly support our investment policy and recognize that it is vital to our national economic interests, I do not believe it should stand at any cost," said Senator Richard C. Shelby, the Alabama Republican who leads the Senate Banking Committee. "Everything in this country can't be for sale."
In the House, Representative Duncan Hunter, the California Republican who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he would introduce a bill to force foreign governments to relinquish ownership of critical installations.
Mr. Hunter said Dubai's record on handling nuclear materials and other weaponry disqualified it from having one of its state-owned businesses operating port terminals.
"Their track record is terrifying," he said.
Other lawmakers said the disclosure that the administration had begun a security review of a proposal by another Dubai company to buy a British manufacturer of precision tank and aircraft parts in Georgia and Connecticut increased doubts.
At a Senate Banking Committee hearing, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, pressed administration officials to explain why the sale of the company, the Doncasters Group Ltd., merited a close review while the port deal covering a potentially greater vulnerability did not. "It just doesn't add up," Mr. Schumer said.
Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert M. Kimmitt said unresolved security questions on the Doncasters purchase by Dubai International Capital had l

Bush Not Interested in Finding Out How Policies Impact the Poor...and For Good Reasons
Market Place, 2 March 2006
Today more than 400 economists and other academics will call on US Census officials to spare a $40 million survey to find out how federal programs help needy families. Scott Tong reports.

Senators Threaten to Intervene to Improve Mine Safety
By IAN URBINA
NYT, 3 March 2006
Frustrated by delays in updating safety regulations and adopting new technology to protect miners, lawmakers told federal mining officials yesterday that it was time for Congress to intervene.
The federal mine safety agency "had the legal authority to require better equipment and better communication, but it didn't use it," Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, said at a Senate oversight hearing in response to a spate of fatal mining accidents this year.
"It had the legal authority to require higher fines," Mr. Byrd said. "It didn't use it."
"The case grows stronger every day for this Congress to adopt the West Virginia mine safety bill," he added, referring to legislation filed on Feb. 1 by the West Virginia delegation that would require mine operators to provide more emergency oxygen supplies, wireless communications equipment and devices to track miners.

USA becomes Xenophobic Central:
Recourse Grows Slim for Immigrants Who Fall Ill
By NINA BERNSTEIN
NYT, 3 March 2006
...Last year, about 80 bills in 20 states sought to cut noncitizens' access to health care or other services, or to require benefit agencies to tell the authorities about applicants with immigration violations. Arizona voters approved such a requirement in 2004 with Proposition 200. Virginia has barred adults without proof of citizenship or lawful presence from state and local benefits. Maryland's governor excluded lawful immigrant children and pregnant women from a state medical program for which they had been eligible.
Most proposed measures were not adopted, but new versions are expected. Ballot initiatives modeled on Arizona's Proposition 200 are circulating in California and Colorado. And in December, the United States House of Representatives passed a sweeping bill that would make "unlawful presence" in this country a felony and redefine "criminal alien smuggling" to include helping any immigrant without legal status.
"We've seen a real rise in anti-immigration measures across the country," said Tanya Broder, a public benefits lawyer in Oakland, Calif., for the National Immigration Law Center, "and it's engendered confusion and fear that prevent immigrant families from getting the care they need."
Some who had been drawn into medical treatment by outreach efforts have retreated, like Mr. Zhao, fearing the harder line toward immigrants, especially those without money or proper papers. Even legal immigrants and parents of children with legal status are more skittish about their health care, scared that medical bills and public medical insurance can hurt their chances for citizenship, bar relatives from coming to the United States or break up their families.
"I heard that if you go to the emergency room or go to the doctor, they were going to deport you," said Alejandra, a mother from Colombia living in Queens, referring to a rule proposed in 2004 by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that would have made hospitals report the immigration status of emergency-room patients in exchange for more federal money. "So then my four children are going to be without me because I don't have documents here."
...even in New York, a gateway of immigration, a national climate that makes immigrant patients more timid also emboldens some front-line workers to bar the way.
"If you have one renegade public-benefits worker who thinks they should be discouraging access because they believe it's a drain on taxes, the word on the street is it's too much of a hassle to apply," said Adam Gurvitch, director of health advocacy for the New York Immigration Coalition, an umbrella group for more than 150 immigrant organizations.
Problems getting insurance sometimes lead to risky decisions about children's health care. A legal immigrant from Russia, Oksana, confessed to academy researchers that she had delayed her daughter's vaccinations for months, keeping her out of school until she could borrow $300 to pay for them. Melosa, of Mexico, had so many problems with state-subsidized insurance that when her severely asthmatic son ran a high fever she resorted to rubs of pig lard and carbonate, instead of taking him to a doctor.
SEE ALSO:
U.S. Refuses to Give Visa to Sick Orphan
AP via NYT, 3 March 2006
Melvin Karges and his wife Cheryl know about helping southeast Asian orphans. Their daughter Claira, now 2 1/2 years old, was adopted from Cambodia with a hole in her heart that was successfully treated here in the United States.
Pam and Randy Cope of Neosho, friends of the Karges', adopted two children in Vietnam and started a nonprofit organization that helps orphanages and other shelters in Vietnam and Cambodia.
But even after successful adoptions and charity work, the Kargeses and the Copes have run into an unexpected barrier in their joint effort to help a Vietnamese orphan boy get urgent medical help in Missouri that he can't get in Vietnam.
The U.S. government has refused to issue a medical visa or a humanitarian waiver for 6-year-old Tuan Van Cao. The couples are confused and frustrated, saying they have lined up private funding to cover treatment for a botched operation on the boy's diseased left hip that left him with a potentially fatal bone infection.
Despite submitting written opinions from U.S. and Vietnamese doctors that Tuan needs urgent help that he cannot get in Vietnam, the families have been told to try the lengthy processing of international adoption, which can take a year or more.
''We're kind of reeling right now,'' said Karges, a physician. ''I'm puzzled, because if you read the guidelines for humanitarian (waiver), Tuan fits.''
Tuan was admitted to a Ho Chi Minh City hospital Sunday for emergency treatment because the infection in his hip bone has started spreading, said Pam Cope, who first discovered Tuan's case. He will have to undergo surgery that opens the bone to more infection, even though the hospital's orthopedic surgeon has said the treatment is too risky to perform in Vietnam.
''Tuan's case is black and white. He needs emergency medical treatment and we can give him free medical treatment here in the United States,'' Cope said.
The experience is all too common, especially since Congress in 1997 changed the law to make immigration more difficult, said Roy Petty, an immigration lawyer in Rogers, Ark., who has handled several similar cases but is not involved in Tuan's case.

Loss of Antarctic Ice Increases
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
NYT, 3 March 2006
Two new satellite surveys show that warming air and water are causing Antarctica to lose ice faster than it can be replenished by interior snowfall, and thus are contributing to rising global sea levels.
The studies differed significantly in estimates of how much water was being added to the oceans this way, but their authors both said that the work added credence to recent conclusions that global warming caused by humans was likely to lead to higher sea levels than previous studies had predicted.
The earlier projections presumed that snowfall over Antarctica, as well as Greenland, would increase as warming added moisture to the air, compensating for the losses of ice from crumbling or melting along coasts.
Several independent experts agreed with the new conclusions, saying they meshed both with more localized studies of trends in Antarctica and with evidence from warm spells before the last ice age.

2 March 2006

When in trouble, lie like hell...
Bush Is Warned on Katrina in Video
Footage of a briefing full of dire predictions renews criticism of the government's response.
By Nicole Gaouette
LA Times, 2 March 2006
Newly released video footage taken just hours before Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast shows that federal officials delivered stark warnings to President Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that the storm could lead to massive loss of life.
"We are fully prepared," Bush responded. [Bush asked no questions during the briefing.]
...Mayfield (Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami) tells the officials he wants "to make it absolutely clear to everyone that there is potential for large loss of life … in the coastal areas from the storm surge," and emphasizes that there is a "very, very grave concern" about the ability of the levees that separated Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans to stand up against the storm.
On Sept. 1, Bush said on ABC's "Good Morning America": "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

Spurt of Violence in Iraq Mutes Talk of U.S. Troop Cuts, but Decisions Loom
By DAVID S. CLOUD
NYT, 2 March 2006
Senior Pentagon officials said Wednesday that in the aftermath of a burst of sectarian violence in Iraq, it was unlikely that a decision would be made on a reduction in troop levels when top Army commanders meet with President Bush next week.
Officials also said it was possible a decision would be made but not announced immediately.
Their hesitancy reflected uncertainty over whether the sectarian bombings and insurgent attacks, which have killed hundreds of Iraqis in the past two weeks, might lead to a broader civil war, and whether Iraqi forces were up to the task of keeping order.
An announcement on American troop cuts, though widely expected for early March, could intensify the sectarian violence and persuade insurgents that attacks are succeeding in driving American troops out, the officials said.
"No decision on U.S. forces is likely, given conditions on the ground and the need to build Iraqi capacity," said a senior Pentagon official. "It would send the wrong strategic signal to the insurgents right now."
Even so, several officials said, the top American generals in Iraq, John P. Abizaid and George W. Casey Jr., will have to decide by the end of the month whether to send in the first of the combat units scheduled to replace troops due to depart this summer, or to hold them back, in effect lowering troop levels.

Taliban Rebels Still Menacing Afghan South
By CARLOTTA GALL
NYT, 2 March 2006
When Haji Lalai Mama, the 60-year-old tribal elder in these parts, gamely tried to organize a village defense force against the Taliban recently, he had to do it with a relative handful of men and just three rifles. "We were patrolling and ready," he recalled.
But they were not ready enough. The Taliban surprised them under cover of darkness by using a side road. One villager was killed, and 10 others were wounded by a grenade. Two Taliban fighters were captured in the clash. The rest disappeared into the night.
The men at Loy Karez were exceptional in making a stand at all. Few in southern Afghanistan are ready to stand up to the Taliban, at least not without greater support or benefits from the Afghan government.
In fact, four years after the Taliban were ousted from power by the American military, their presence is bigger and more menacing than ever, say police and government officials, village elders, farmers and aid workers across southern Afghanistan.
American and Afghan officials have said for months that the Taliban are no longer capable of fighting large battles, and in their weakness have changed tactics to roadside bombings or attacking soft targets, like harassing villagers, killing teachers and burning schools.
Yet despite its evident military supremacy, the American-led alliance has not been able to root out the insurgency. And the Taliban's tactics have succeeded in sowing fear, nearly all here agree.

The Dubai Ports Deal
NYT, 2 March 2006
President Bush is not doing any favors for America's Arab allies with his attitude toward the deal that would put a Dubai state-owned company in control of operations at terminals within six American ports. The administration initially stonewalled Congress when lawmakers demanded more information. Now that the company, Dubai Ports World, has wisely agreed to a 45-day review of potential security risks, the White House seems to feel that all it's required to do is lobby recalcitrant Republicans and "educate" the public about the rightness of the original decision.
The president can't get away with his usual "trust me" mantra now that Congress and the public have emphatically declared they don't believe that the administration's key committee in approving the takeover exercised appropriate care. Legitimate security questions have been raised that can be answered only by a genuinely fresh evaluation whose scope and results are transmitted to Congress and to a perplexed public as well.
...The president's supporters keep trying to brand all resistance to the deal as anti-Arab, but if the controversy is treated correctly, it should provide new security benchmarks that could be applied to any company that wishes to manage American ports. (The Coast Guard expressed concerns about intelligence even when a British company held the terminals contract.) A serious inquiry could also provide a basis for ensuring that port security, a notoriously weak spot in the nation's defenses against terrorism, is actually enhanced. The deal's opponents ought to use this opportunity to negotiate for additional, and much needed, financing for that purpose.
SEE ALSO:
U.S. Reviewing 2nd Dubai Firm
Israeli Deal Also Faces Security Check
By Jonathan Weisman and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post, 2 March 2006
The Bush administration, stung by the public outcry over the Dubai port deal, has launched a national security investigation of another Dubai-owned company set to take over plants in Georgia and Connecticut that make precision components used in engines for military aircraft and tanks.
The administration notified congressional committees this week that its secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is investigating the security implications of Dubai International Capital's $1.2 billion acquisition of London-based Doncasters Group Ltd., which has subsidiaries in the United States. It is also investigating an Israeli company's plans to buy the Maryland software security firm Sourcefire, which does business with Defense Department agencies.
Administration officials are privately briefing leaders of half a dozen House and Senate committees this week about the two planned transactions, concerned that both deals could stir controversy in a political climate that remains supercharged over the Dubai port deal.
SEE ALSO:
Business As Usual
Bush's strong support of the Dubai ports deal isn't so surprising in light of his family's many financial ties to Arab sheikdoms.
By Joe Conason
Salon.com, 24 February 2006 2006
...What seems worrisome even to some who might ultimately accept the Dubai ports deal is the "casual attitude" of the Bush administration in vetting the company, as Sen. Carl Levin put it. Considering the history of Bush entanglement with the oil despots of the Gulf, that lax indulgence was bad policy and worse politics.
For the president, his administration's lenience toward the Emirates recalls the unpleasant history of Harken Energy, the loser oil exploration firm that provided him with a handsome profit when he unloaded his shares during the summer of 1990. Years earlier, Harken had been rescued from bankruptcy by timely investments of millions of dollars from the scandal-ridden Bank of Credit and Commerce International, also known as the "bank of crooks and criminals." Although dominated by Saudi friends of Dubya's dad, BCCI was headquartered in the Emirates, specifically in Abu Dhabi.
That may seem like old history, but the first family's intimate connection with the UAE royals has continued without rupture over the past two decades.

U.S. Is Reducing Safety Penalties for Mine Flaws
By IAN URBINA and ANDREW W. LEHREN
NYT, 2 March 2006
In its drive to foster a more cooperative relationship with mining companies, the Bush administration has decreased major fines for safety violations since 2001, and in nearly half the cases, it has not collected the fines, according to a data analysis by The New York Times.
Federal records also show that in the last two years the federal mine safety agency has failed to hand over any delinquent cases to the Treasury Department for further collection efforts, as is supposed to occur after 180 days.
With the deaths of 24 miners in accidents in 2006, the enforcement record of the Mine Safety and Health Administration has come under sharp scrutiny, and the agency is likely to face tough questions about its performance at a Senate oversight hearing on Thursday.
"The Bush administration ushered in this desire to develop cooperative ties between regulators and the mining industry," said Tony Oppegard, a top official at the agency in the Clinton administration. "Safety has certainly suffered as a result."

Sen. Conrad Burns: Always Having to Say He's Sorry
By BOB HERBERT
NYT, 2 March 2006
If there were a trapdoor that was somehow rigged to open beneath the U.S. senators we really don't need, Conrad Burns of Montana would surely fall right through it.
Mr. Burns is a racially insensitive Republican whose re-election bid this year has been jeopardized by his dealings with the G.O.P. superlobbyist Jack Abramoff. Mr. Abramoff has pleaded guilty to charges of fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials. Among other things, he's admitted to bilking American Indians out of millions of dollars, and he's said to be singing louder than the fat lady to federal investigators.
Mr. Burns is reported to have received more money in the form of campaign contributions from Mr. Abramoff and his favor-strewing friends than any other member of Congress. This has delighted his political opponents, who have tried to show that Mr. Burns and Mr. Abramoff were as close as a pair of prisoners sharing a single set of handcuffs.
When The Times asked whether he or members of his staff might get caught up in the federal investigation, Mr. Burns said he didn't know. As he put it, "You can't say yes and you can't say no."
The Abramoff scandal is just the latest issue to raise questions about Senator Burns's fitness to hold high public office. You've heard of accidents waiting to happen? He's an accident that happens again and again and again.
Back in 1994, while campaigning for a second term, Senator Burns dropped by a local newspaper, The Bozeman Daily Chronicle, and told an editor an anecdote about one of his constituents, a rancher who wanted to know what life was like in Washington.
Mr. Burns said the rancher asked him, "Conrad, how can you live back there with all those niggers?"
Senator Burns said he told the rancher it was "a hell of a challenge."
The anecdote was published, and Senator Burns apologized. When he was asked why he hadn't expressed any disapproval when the rancher used the word nigger, the senator said: "I don't know. I never gave it much thought."
Maybe he didn't express any disapproval because he didn't particularly disapprove. On another occasion Senator Burns had to apologize after giving a speech in Billings about America's dependence on foreign sources of oil. In the speech, he referred to Arabs as "ragheads."
"I regret the use of such an inappropriate term," he said. "I hope I did not overshadow the serious substance of my remarks."
Mr. Burns's apologies have always been undermined by the serial nature of his offensive remarks.

Alito's Note to [Extreme Rightwing] Evangelist Is Called Just Thanks
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
NYT, 2 March 2006
In his first weeks on the Supreme Court, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. sent a note to Dr. James C. Dobson, the influential Christian conservative, thanking him for his support and vowing that "as long as I serve on the Supreme Court, I will keep in mind the trust that has been placed in me," Dr. Dobson said Wednesday in a radio broadcast.
Kathy Arberg, a spokeswoman for the court, said Justice Alito had written the note in response to a letter of congratulations from Dr. Dobson. "The justice has responded to scores of congratulatory letters from people of all walks of life, and he has included as a standard sentiment in the letters the hope that he will live up to the trust and confidence that has been placed in him," Ms. Arberg said.
She declined to identify who else had received such letters from Justice Alito.
Dr. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and host of its radio program, is one of the most popular evangelical Christian authors and speakers in the country, and he urged his millions of listeners to do everything they could to support Justice Alito's confirmation.
Justice Alito alluded to the response in his letter. "I would also greatly appreciate it if you would convey my appreciation to the good people from all parts of the country who wrote to tell me that they were praying for me and for my family," he wrote.
In his broadcast on Wednesday, Dr. Dobson indicated that he had taken that as a request to share the letter with his audience. Celebrating the Supreme Court confirmations of both Justice Alito and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Dr. Dobson said, "We do not yet know how these men will vote, but every indication is that they get it, they understand."

2 March 2006

Iraq's Worst Week -- and Bush's
As Americans finally begin to grasp the magnitude of the Iraq catastrophe, Bush's popularity hits a new low.
By Juan Cole
Salon, 1 March 2006
The catastrophe in Iraq, the scope of which is now apparent to even the most disengaged observer, and his mishandling of the Dubai port issue have sent President George W. Bush's public approval ratings to the lowest of his presidency. According to a Reuters poll, only 34 percent of Americans believe he is doing a good job overall. Only 30 percent, less than a third, think he is managing the Iraq situation well. A remarkable 72 percent of American troops polled in Iraq think the U.S. should leave Iraq within the next year. Nor is there any hope for Bush on the horizon. The bloody events in Iraq have undermined American authority in that country and in the Middle East more generally. The Shiite clergy of Iran and Iraq have bolstered their own authority at Bush's expense. This development has already severely limited his scope of action in Iran, and will doubtless have many other negative consequences in the months and years ahead.
Tactically, strategically and politically Bush now finds himself in the worst of all possible worlds. With Americans increasingly fed up with the Iraq debacle, he needs to start drawing down troops soon, but he can't do it while the country teeters on the brink of civil war. If civil war does break out, a U.S. withdrawal will look even more like cutting and running -- under these circumstances, not even Karl Rove will be able to figure out a way to get away with simply declaring victory and going home. Yet if American troops stay, they have no good options either. The U.S. desperately needs to keep the Sunnis in the government, but if Shiites launch reprisal attacks against Sunnis, Americans will not be able to respond for fear that the Shiites, too, will turn on them -- as indeed they have already begun to do. And as the shrine bombing shows, Iraq is a vial of nitroglycerine that can be set off with one shake. Imagine what would happen if one of the leading clerics, Sunni or Shiite, was assassinated. It is difficult to say how aware Bush is of the reality in Iraq, but some part of him must be cursing the day he decided to invade it.
...For the first three years of this colossal misadventure, Bush and his political advisors were able to obscure Iraq's harsh reality beneath a smoke screen of anti-terrorist fearmongering and patriotic fervor. But the smoke is blowing away. Bush emerged from this bloody week much feebler than ever before, both with regard to the U.S. public and with regard to that of Iraq. The problem for him is that Iraq has several more shrines, and if they are destroyed, he will again face the prospect of popular turbulence, and possibly calamity. Iraq, drifting toward theocracy and something approaching civil war, looks less and less like a model for the region, and more and more like an albatross around the neck of the Republican Party.

1 March 2006

Iraq on the Brink
NYT, 1 March 2006
Iraq has moved perilously close to civil war. Everyone who knows anything about the tortured history of that country, cobbled together from disparate parts by British colonial officials less than a century ago, has always dreaded such an outcome.
Fear of civil war stayed the hand of the first President George Bush, when he turned back American troops and left Saddam Hussein in power. It generated much of the opposition to the current President Bush's invasion in 2003. Yet many critics of the invasion, including this page, believed that the dangers from civil war were so dire that American troops, once in, were obliged to remain as long as there was a conceivable route to a just peace.
The only alternative to civil war is, and has always been, a national unity government of Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds. Unless these mutually suspicious groups can work together, the United States will be faced with the impossible task of trying to create a stable democracy that Iraqis have refused to create for themselves.
The chances of putting together such a government grew much smaller with the bombing of a major Shiite shrine in the largely Sunni city of Samarra last week, an attack that literally blew the lid off the simmering animosity between Iraq's two main religious factions. That hatred and distrust had been heated to a high boil by the sharp-shouldered and small-minded maneuvering over the formation of a new government.
SEE ALSO:
Shiites Told: Leave Home Or Be Killed
Sunnis Force Evictions As Iraq Tensions Grow
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post, 1 March 2006
...With sectarian violence rampant since last week's bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, the families have become symbols of an emerging trend in Iraq: the expulsion of Shiites from Sunni towns.
New, deadly attacks -- many of them apparently retaliatory sectarian assaults -- surged Tuesday, with 66 people killed, according to Iraqi police. The decision to lift a curfew in Baghdad on Monday appeared to have opened the way for a resumption of intense bombings, including explosions at three Shiite mosques that killed at least 19 people. Some of Tuesday's other victims included 23 people killed by a suicide bomber in Baghdad as they waited in line to buy kerosene; five Iraqi soldiers killed in a car bombing in the capital's Zayona district; and one U.S. soldier killed by small-arms fire west of the capital, authorities and news agencies said.
Attacks on Shiite and Sunni holy sites had been rare in Iraq until last Wednesday, when bombers blew the gold-plated top off the shrine in Samarra, a heavily Sunni city about 65 miles north of Baghdad. The attack unleashed what many people here vowed would never happen: sectarian warfare in Iraq.
"One of those men told me, 'You started this, by burning our mosques and killing our people,' " said Rashid's grown nephew, kneeling with other men from the displaced families. Around them, black-shrouded women drank tea and children napped or played.
At least 58 dislodged Shiite families have come to Shoula since late last week, said Raad al-Husseini, a cleric who is helping the families settle in.
Husseini credited the organization of Moqtada al-Sadr, an outspoken Shiite cleric and growing political force in Iraq -- along with the people of the neighborhood -- for coming to the refugees' aid with blankets, clothing, and pots of stew and rice.
SEE ALSO:
Riot Crushes Sense of Hope in Iraq Enclave
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
NYT, 1 March 2006
The sheik sat in a simple room and spoke quietly of his loss. A building was burned. Three worshipers were killed. He could not understand why.
"We did not discuss Sunni or Shiite inside this mosque," said the sheik, Abdel Rahman Mahmoud, 74, whose courtyard was strewn with crushed blue glass and charred scraps of paper from the fire that sectarian rioters set last week. "People thought of us as neutral."
Here in the mixed neighborhood of Zayuna, Sunnis, Shiites and Christians live side by side, and residents always felt immune to sectarian violence. So when it exploded last Thursday, so did many dearly held beliefs.
"I used to keep in my mind that Iraq will come back one day," said Shirouq Abayachi, a Zayuna resident who was pondering her country's fate with friends in a social club in central Baghdad on Tuesday. "Now the Iraq I wish to have cannot come back. There is no core left to rebuild."

Veterans Report Mental Distress
About a Third Returning From Iraq Seek Help
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post, 1 March 2006
More than one in three soldiers and Marines who have served in Iraq later sought help for mental health problems, according to a comprehensive snapshot by Army experts of the psyches of men and women returning from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places.
The accounts of more than 300,000 soldiers and Marines returning from several theaters paint an unusually detailed picture of the psychological impact of the various conflicts. Those returning from Iraq consistently reported more psychic distress than those returning from Afghanistan and other conflicts, such as those in Bosnia or Kosovo.

Intelligence Agencies Warned About Growing Local Insurgency in Late 2003
By WARREN P. STROBEL and JONATHAN S. LANDAY
Knight Ridder Newspapers, 28 February 2006
U.S. intelligence agencies repeatedly warned the White House beginning more than two years ago that the insurgency in Iraq had deep local roots, was likely to worsen and could lead to civil war, according to former senior intelligence officials who helped craft the reports.
Among the warnings, Knight Ridder has learned, was a major study, called a National Intelligence Estimate, completed in October 2003 that concluded that the insurgency was fueled by local conditions - not foreign terrorists- and drew strength from deep grievances, including the presence of U.S. troops.
The existence of the top-secret document, which was the subject of a bitter three-month debate among U.S. intelligence agencies, has not been previously disclosed to a wide public audience.
The reports received a cool reception from Bush administration policymakers at the White House and the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, according to the former officials, who discussed them publicly for the first time.
President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and others continued to describe the insurgency as a containable threat, posed mainly by former supporters of Saddam Hussein, criminals and non-Iraqi terrorists - even as the U.S. intelligence community was warning otherwise.

The Soldiers Speak. Will President Bush Listen?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NYT, 28 February 2006
When President Bush held a public meeting with troops by satellite last fall, they were miraculously upbeat. And all along, unrepentant hawks (most of whom have never been to Iraq) have insisted that journalists are misreporting Iraq and that most soldiers are gung-ho about their mission.
Hogwash! A new poll to be released today shows that U.S. soldiers overwhelmingly want out of Iraq — and soon.
The poll is the first of U.S. troops currently serving in Iraq, according to John Zogby, the pollster. Conducted by Zogby International and LeMoyne College, it asked 944 service members, "How long should U.S. troops stay in Iraq?"
Only 23 percent backed Mr. Bush's position that they should stay as long as necessary. In contrast, 72 percent said that U.S. troops should be pulled out within one year. Of those, 29 percent said they should withdraw "immediately."
That's one more bit of evidence that our grim stay-the-course policy in Iraq has failed. Even the American troops on the ground don't buy into it — and having administration officials pontificate from the safety of Washington about the need for ordinary soldiers to stay the course further erodes military morale.

Gonzales Seeks to Clarify Testimony on Spying
Extent of Eavesdropping May Go Beyond NSA Work
By Charles Babington and Dan Eggen
Washington Post, 1 March 2006
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales appeared to suggest yesterday that the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance operations may extend beyond the outlines that the president acknowledged in mid-December.
In a letter yesterday to senators in which he asked to clarify his Feb. 6 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales also seemed to imply that the administration's original legal justification for the program was not as clear-cut as he indicated three weeks ago.
At that appearance, Gonzales confined his comments to the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, saying that President Bush had authorized it "and that is all that he has authorized."
But in yesterday's letter, Gonzales, citing that quote, wrote: "I did not and could not address . . . any other classified intelligence activities." Using the administration's term for the recently disclosed operation, he continued, "I was confining my remarks to the Terrorist Surveillance Program as described by the President, the legality of which was the subject" of the Feb. 6 hearing.
At least one constitutional scholar who testified before the committee yesterday said in an interview that Gonzales appeared to be hinting that the operation disclosed by the New York Times in mid-December is not the full extent of eavesdropping on U.S. residents conducted without court warrants.
"It seems to me he is conceding that there are other NSA surveillance programs ongoing that the president hasn't told anyone about," said Bruce Fein, a government lawyer in the Nixon, Carter and Reagan administrations.
A Justice Department official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the program, said, however, that Gonzales's letter "should not be taken or construed to be talking about anything other than" the NSA program "as described by the president."

Data Lacking in Coast Guard Review of Port Deal
NTI: Global Security Newswire, 28 February 2006
...The portion of the report released by Collins raises questions on security operations, workers’ backgrounds and “foreign influence” at the companies. Carter said Dubai Ports and the current port operator are included because Peninsular and Oriental executives would remain involved in operating the ports if the deal is approved.
Collins [Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine)] said the report raises disturbing questions.
“This report suggests there were significant and troubling intelligence gaps,” she said.
Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other senators yesterday introduced legislation to give Congress the final say on approval of the deal (Stone/Hall, USA Today, Feb. 27).
Senators opposed to the deal held a rally yesterday in New Jersey, blasting President George W. Bush for being weak on national security, Agence France-Presse reported.
“We’re here to stand for a very simple proposition; our ports should not be in the operational hands of a foreign government,” said Senator Robert Menendez (D-N.J.).
“It’s about making sure we keep America safe. What we don’t want unloaded here is a chemical, biological or nuclear weapon,” he added (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Feb. 27).
SEE ALSO:
New Concerns on Port Deal Are Raised in Congress
By CARL HULSE
NYT, 28 February 2006
Lawmakers raised new objections on Tuesday to the proposed takeover of some terminal operations at six United States ports by a Dubai company, demonstrating that the administration-backed plan still faced significant obstacles despite an agreement for a more extensive review of any security risks posed by the change in control.
Senate Democrats seized on a report that the parent company of state-owned Dubai Ports World honors an Arab boycott of Israel, saying the United States should not be rewarding companies tied to discrimination against a major ally.
"This boycott not only violates at least the spirit of U.S. law," said Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, "it is inconsistent with everything we believe in as Americans."
A company official appearing at a Senate hearing acknowledged the boycott but said the firm worked with all customers at its facilities around the world.
After a Coast Guard intelligence memorandum made public on Monday showed that the agency had initial security concerns about the deal, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, joined on Tuesday with Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, in urging the Department of Homeland Security to reveal whether other agencies under its umbrella had raised questions.

Modern Miracle: Zygote Becomes 'Unborn Child'
When Politics Defeats Science
By Susan F. Wood
NYT, 1 March 2006
Since my resignation six months ago as assistant commissioner of women's health at the Food and Drug Administration, I have been traveling around the country meeting with men and women, fellow scientists and health care professionals. I have shared my concerns that our federal health agencies seem increasingly unable to operate independently and that this lack of independence compromises their mission of promoting public health and welfare.
At every stop I am reminded that whether it is the environment, energy policy, science education or public health, the American public expects our government to make the best decisions based on the best available evidence.

In Medicare Maze, Some Find They're Tangled in Two Drug Plans
By ROBERT PEAR
NYT, 1 March 2006
Having struggled to fathom Medicare's new drug coverage, tens of thousands of beneficiaries are perplexed to find themselves actively enrolled in two prescription drug plans at the same time.

Rivals Try to Tie G.O.P. Senator to Lobby Furor
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
NYT, 1 March 2006
At a meeting with Senator Conrad Burns here last weekend, the Little Shell Chippewa tribe presented him with ropes of woven sweetgrass, a ceremonial tobacco pouch and a traditional drum dance. But it was the blank envelope one speaker slipped to the senator that attracted the most attention.
"There is no money in it!" James Parker Shield, vice chairman of the tribe, protested to roars of laughter — a joke everyone knew referred to Mr. Burns's ties to Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist who has pleaded guilty to defrauding American Indians of millions of dollars and engaging in schemes to bribe members of Congress.
In the first salvo of the 2006 midterm elections, Democrats have battered Mr. Burns with a series of television commercials telling voters that he received more contributions from Mr. Abramoff and his associates than any other member of Congress — $150,000 — and accusing him of doing more for the lobbyist than he has for Montanans. The attacks have turned Montana into a closely watched test of efforts by Democrats to turn allegations of corruption among Republicans into the unifying theme of their Congressional campaigns.
Polls indicate the Democratic commercials have already erased any edge Mr. Burns may have had over the leading contenders in the Democratic primary.