7 April 2006

10 Are Killed in Bombing Near Shrine Holy to Shiites
By KIRK SEMPLE
NYT, 7 April 2006
Striking at the heart of Shiite Islam, a car bomb ripped through a crowd of worshipers and pedestrians near the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf on Thursday, killing at least 10 people and wounding 34, hospital officials said.
The bombing, which comes at a time of increasing violence between Shiite and Sunni Muslims in Iraq, struck a crowd of pilgrims and merchants at the entrance to Najaf's cemetery. The site is just a few hundred yards from the mosque, which is one of the most important Shiite shrines in the world and draws pilgrims on Thursdays and Fridays. The bomb exploded on a street connecting the mosque and the cemetery, a route along which Shiites from around the country carry relatives' bodies for burial.
Iraqi security forces immediately sealed off the neighborhood, which is at the center of the Shiite holy city and contains the headquarters of the powerful cleric Moktada al-Sadr and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most revered Shiite leader.
After the blast, lieutenants in the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to Mr. Sadr, gathered in Al Hay mosque in Najaf and urged their foot soldiers to be patient pending further guidance from their top commanders.
The bombing in February of another major Shiite holy site, the Askariya Shrine in Samarra, triggered a burst of sectarian violence that left hundreds dead and drove the country to the brink of civil war. Most of the victims were killed by Shiite death squads determined to avenge the shrine attack, and since then the country has been caught in a vicious cycle of sectarian killings.

Wary Iraqis Steer Clear of U.S. Troops
By ANTONIO CASTANEDA
AP via LA Times, 7 April 2006
Shakir Abdul-Hassan goes out of his way to avoid U.S. military convoys as he drives his minibus around town, fearing American soldiers will mistake him for a suicide bomber and open fire if he accidentally gets too close.
Atheer Kamal is just as cautious: When U.S. soldiers set up a checkpoint near his computer shop in east Baghdad, he locks up and heads home, worried about stray gunfire if the Americans shoot at approaching cars.
Such fears show the dilemmas created -- on both sides -- as U.S. soldiers struggle to differentiate between friend and foe when conducting raids, patrolling roads and traveling in convoys.
Frequent shootings at checkpoints, plus raids by U.S. troops and airstrikes resulting in Iraqi deaths, have angered many Iraqis, who contend that ignorance of their culture and the Arabic language hamper the Americans. Some say flatly that American soldiers act like "cowboys in Western movies," in Kamal's words.
Some U.S. commanders acknowledge the problem exists. But they blame it on insurgents who disguise themselves as civilians. U.S. officials insist soldiers and Marines are careful to identify targets before opening fire.
Nevertheless, a spate of deaths has badly strained relations between Americans and Iraqi leaders:
* In the most serious recent case, about 12 U.S. Marines are under investigation for possible war crimes in a Nov. 19 incident in western Iraq in which one Marine and 24 Iraqis, including women and children, were killed. The U.S. military launched an inquiry after Time magazine said last month that it obtained a video taken by a journalism student who disputed the Marines' initial account of the incident, which began after a Marine was killed in a car bombing.
* On Feb. 26, an Iraqi special forces team accompanied by American advisers killed 16 people, described by U.S. officials as insurgents, and rescued an Iraqi hostage in a gunbattle in northeastern Baghdad. U.S. officials said no American soldier fired a shot. Nevertheless, the Shiite governor of Baghdad suspended contacts with the United States, and Shiite lawmakers boycotted a planned meeting to discuss formation of the new government because they said the raid occurred at a mosque complex.
* Police accused American troops of killing 11 people, mostly civilians, in a March 15 shootout near Balad north of the capital. U.S. officials disputed the allegation, saying only one militant and three civilians were killed. They included two women and a child, and the case is under investigation.
No figures are available on how many Iraqi civilians, including women and children, have been killed in shootings, airstrikes and other violence involving American forces since the 2003 invasion.

Cheney's Aide Says President Approved Leak
By DAVID JOHNSTON and DAVID E. SANGER
NYT, 7 April 2006
Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff testified that he was authorized by President Bush, through Mr. Cheney, in July 2003 to disclose key parts of what until then was a classified prewar intelligence estimate on Iraq, according to a new court filing.
The testimony by the former official, I. Lewis Libby Jr., cited in a court filing by the government made late Wednesday, provides an indication that Mr. Bush, who has long criticized leaks of secret information as a threat to national security, may have played a direct role in authorizing disclosure of the intelligence report on Iraq.
The disclosure occurred at a moment when the White House was trying to defend itself against accusations that it had inflated the case against Saddam Hussein.
The president has the authority to declassify information, and Mr. Libby indicated in his testimony that he believed Mr. Bush's instructions — which prosecutors said Mr. Libby regarded as "unique in his recollection" — gave him legal cover to talk with a reporter about the intelligence.
Among the key judgments in the report, called a National Intelligence Estimate, was that Saddam Hussein was probably seeking fuel for nuclear weapons.
Mr. Libby did not assert in his testimony to a grand jury, first reported on the Web site of The New York Sun, that Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney had authorized him to reveal the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson. Mr. Libby is scheduled to go on trial next year on perjury and obstruction charges connected to the disclosure of Ms. Wilson's name.
The White House refused to discuss Mr. Libby's account, or say whether it differed with Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney's recollections of events, which the two men described in interviews with prosecutors. "We're not commenting on an ongoing legal proceeding," said Scott McClellan, Mr. Bush's press secretary.
SEE ALSO:
Leaker in Chief
LA Times, 7 April 2006
THE LATEST REVELATIONS in the investigation into the leak of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame raise a question that every Sunday school student is familiar with: Can God make a boulder so heavy that he himself cannot lift it?
For President Bush, the question is more like this: If information comes from the president, is it still a leak? And if that information is classified, by revealing it, has he declassified it? After all, the president has the legal power to declassify information. And a leak authorized by the president is — by most definitions, at least — not a leak, but an officially sanctioned release of public information.
The legal and political ramifications of the papers prosecutors filed late Wednesday in the case against former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby remain unclear. But if what Libby asserts is true, the president would be faced with an uncomfortable choice: He is either a leaker or a hypocrite.
In the filings, Libby says he was told by Vice President Dick Cheney that Bush had given presidential permission for Libby "to disclose certain information" to Judith Miller, then a reporter for the New York Times, about a classified prewar intelligence report. Libby has been charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in the investigation into who "outed" Plame.
The legal papers do not say exactly what Bush told Cheney, or what Cheney told Libby. And the administration is well within its rights to justify its policy in Iraq, which is what Libby was supposed to be doing when he was talking to Miller. It's entirely possible that Bush told Cheney to take the administration's case to the public, and that the vice president interpreted the mandate broadly, as is his wont. But he should have known, or the president should have told him, that such a mandate does not include the disclosure of classified information.
There also is the issue of Bush's numerous previous statements, now making their way across the Internet at the speed of a DSL line, about leaking. One of the most popular is from Sept. 30, 2003: "Let me just say something about leaks in Washington. There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. There's leaks at the executive branch; there's leaks in the legislative branch. There's just too many leaks. And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of."
Leave the legal issues about classified information and executive power to the constitutional scholars. The simpler question is whether Bush still believes, if he ever did, what he said in September 2003. If so, who in his administration needs to be taken care of?

Gonzales Suggests Legal Basis for Domestic Eavesdropping
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
NYT, 7 April 2006
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales suggested on Thursday for the first time that the president might have the legal authority to order wiretapping without a warrant on communications between Americans that occur exclusively within the United States.
"I'm not going to rule it out," Mr. Gonzales said when asked about that possibility at a House Judiciary Committee hearing.
The attorney general made his comments, which critics said reflected a broadened view of the president's authority, as President Bush offered another strong defense of his decision to authorize the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without warrants on international calls and e-mail messages to or from the United States.
Mr. Bush, in an appearance in North Carolina, told a questioner who attacked the program that he would "absolutely not" apologize for authorizing it.
...At the House hearing, Mr. Gonzales faced tough questioning from Democrats and Republicans but declined to discuss many operational details.
Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee and one of the administration's staunchest allies, accused the administration of "stonewalling."
"Mr. Attorney General, how can we discharge our oversight responsibilities if every time we ask a pointed question, we're told that the answer is classified?" Mr. Sensenbrenner asked. "Congress has an inherent constitutional responsibility to do oversight. We are attempting to discharge those responsibilities."

For Some Families, Notification of Army Deaths Repeats Pain
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
NYT, 7 April 2006
After Neil Santorello heard the news that his son, a tank commander, had been killed in Iraq, from the officer in his living room, he walked out his front door and removed the American flag from its pole. Then, in tears, he tore down the yellow ribbons from his tree.
Rather than see it as the act of a man unmoored by the death of his 24-year-old son, the officer, an Army major, confronted Mr. Santorello, saying,
"Don't be disrespectful," Mr. Santorello recalled. Then, the officer, whose job it is to inform families of their loss, quickly disappeared without offering any comfort.
Later, the Santorellos heard a piece of crushing but inaccurate news: They would not be allowed to look inside their son's coffin. First Lt. Neil Santorello, of Verona, Pa., had been killed by an improvised bomb. His body, the family was told, was unviewable.
The Santorellos eventually learned that families have the right to see a loved one's body.
"I asked them to open the casket a few inches so I could reach in and touch his hand," recalled Mr. Santorello, who is still struggling with his son's death, in large part because he was not allowed to see him.
"The government doesn't want you to see servicemen in a casket, but this is my son. He is not a serviceman. You have to let his mother and I say goodbye to him."
Scores of families whose loved ones have died fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan have gone head-to-head with a casualty system that, in their experience, has failed to compassionately and competently guide them through the harrowing process that begins after a soldier's death.

Hurricane Relief From Abroad Was Mishandled
By ERIC LIPTON
NYT, 7 April 2006
Confusion over how to handle the emergency supplies, offers of military assistance and $126 million in cash that poured in from foreign governments after Hurricane Katrina meant delays, and in some cases wasted opportunities, in aiding storm victims, federal officials acknowledged Thursday.
The assessment came at a hearing of the House Government Reform Committee, which pulled together representatives from the Departments of Homeland Security, Defense, State and Education, all part of a makeshift program to handle the foreign offers of storm aid.
Thousands of ready-to-eat meals donated by governments, as well as loads of medicine, were never used, because officials learned only after they arrived in the United States that they did not meet federal health standards. Instead of distributing the supplies, the federal government spent $60,000 to store them.
Of the $126 million in cash donations received, only about $10.5 million has been spent. Nearly half sat in a noninterest-bearing account until last month, when it was transferred to the Department of Education for a grant program to help damaged schools and colleges, although no grants have yet been awarded.
An additional $66 million was earmarked last October for United Methodist Committee on Relief, a charity based in New York City which promised, in an alliance with other nonprofit groups, to take on 2,060 paid and volunteer workers to provide counseling to 101,000 displaced families over the next two years.
Just over $10 million has been spent, an official of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said, and the charity's records show that only about half of the staff has been hired and that 3,100 families have signed up for help.
Linda Beher, a spokeswoman for the charity, said Thursday that the program was working "exactly as designed," and was rapidly adding new clients and staff members.
There was agreement that federal agencies need to be better prepared, should such offers arrive again.
"It looks here like we have bureaucratic jumble," said Representative Thomas M. Davis III, Republican of Virginia, the committee chairman. "A lot of things happened that in retrospect today we would all do differently."
The cash donations and emergency supplies — including food, clothing, blankets, tents and medicine — came in from nations, companies, individuals and organizations from around the globe. The single biggest source, representing three-quarters of the total cash received, was the United Arab Emirates, which contributed $100 million, according to the State Department.
The United States, at least in modern times, had never received such a large outpouring of foreign aid and no formal process existed to evaluate the offers, officials from the State Department and FEMA testified Thursday.
The Defense Department designated an Air Force base in Arkansas to receive deliveries from overseas and then the Agency for International Development, a State Department agency that usually handles foreign aid, was asked to work with FEMA on distribution.

House Republicans Abandon Budget Effort
By CARL HULSE
NYT, 7 April 2006
House Republican leaders on Thursday abandoned their efforts to win approval of a budget for the coming year after they were unable to bridge widening differences on fiscal policy in their party.
The decision to halt the budget debate hours after it had begun and send lawmakers home for a two-week spring recess was the latest and clearest illustration of the Republicans' difficulties in holding lawmakers together with a crucial election approaching.
After struggling all week to round up votes for the budget, House leaders abruptly threw in the towel when they could not find a compromise to appease conservatives who want new budget rules and members of the Appropriations Committee who see those rules as cutting into their power.
"We're hung up on the process right now," said Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois.
The decision also dashed Republican hopes of giving final approval to a $70 billion package of tax cuts before the recess, although reaching that deal quickly was always viewed as a long shot. Republican leaders said they would try again to reach a consensus on the budget when lawmakers return in late April.

IRS Investigating Political Violations of Tax Code by Activist Churches
By STEPHANIE STROM
NYT, 7 April 2006
A group of religious leaders accused the Internal Revenue Service yesterday of playing politics by ignoring its complaint that two large churches in Ohio are engaging in what it says are political activities, in violation of the tax code.
In a letter to Commissioner Mark W. Everson, the clergy members cited reports of political events involving Fairfield Christian Church in Fairfield and World Harvest Church in Columbus and groups affiliated with them that have occurred or been disclosed since they raised the issue in January.
The group argues that the churches may be violating prohibitions on political activities by charities and other tax-exempt organizations and has asked the I.R.S. to audit their political activities.
The group often notes that the agency is investigating All Saints Church, a large liberal Episcopal church in Pasadena, Calif., over a sermon in 2004 that imagined a debate among Jesus, President Bush and Senator John Kerry, then the Democratic presidential candidate, and asks why the agency has not begun a similar audit of the two Ohio churches, which are conservative.
All Saints has denied wrongdoing and said the tax agency had not responded to its lawyers' calls.
The Rev. Eric Williams of North Congregational United Church of Christ in Columbus has been coordinating the activities of the critical group and said it was sending a second letter to Mr. Everson because the troublesome activities were continuing. "The I.R.S. really needs to take a more proactive stance if it's truly concerned about the political activities of all churches," Mr. Williams said.
Last year, the inspector general of the Treasury Department said political considerations played no role in selecting charities for reviews.
"For the 2006 electoral season, we are poised to look into allegations quickly and get an agent involved promptly if there is a valid reason for concern," the I.R.S. said in a statement.

Colleges, Awash in Applications, Turning Away Even Top Students
By Jay Mathews and Susan Kinzie
Washington Post, 7 April 2006
It's not all in your head. It is harder to get into college this year.
Selective schools in the region and the country are reporting more rejections than ever. There has been a bulge in the number of college-age students, which is expected to continue until the end of the decade. Add in an increased desire among their baby boomer parents to enroll their kids in elite schools -- and the inflated number of applications from students trying to hedge their bets -- and you have the ingredients for a season of frustrated hopes and unexpected disappointments.

Run-Down Republicans
Where Is the GOP's Agenda?
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Washington Post, 7 April 2006
Imagine that: Tom DeLay speaking truth to power.
"We don't have an agreed agenda," DeLay told a group of sympathetic reporters this week. "Breaking up our leadership has taken its toll."
Self-serving? Absolutely. DeLay is saying the Republicans have been in a mess ever since he stopped being majority leader. But with his comment on the GOP's agenda shortfall, The Hammer hit the nail on the head.
DeLay's fall is not the moment's most striking political event. His departure could have been foreseen at least a year ago, when he apologized for his "inartful" attacks on the federal judiciary after Terri Schiavo's death. Once DeLay was forced to say he was sorry about anything , you knew his days were numbered.
No, the most important development is the collapse of purpose in the Republican Party and the sense of exhaustion at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Other than the desperate scramble to make something go right in Iraq, our national government seems to have no energy, no coherence and no sense of direction.

Liberal Denomination Fires Salvos at Right
By NEELA BANERJEE
NYT, 7 April 2006
After years of turning the other cheek, the United Church of Christ, among the most liberal of the mainline Protestant denominations, has recently staked out a more pugnacious stance toward the Christian right.
The Rev. John H. Thomas, the denomination's president, has sharply criticized the Institute for Religion and Democracy, a conservative religious watchdog and advocacy group, for supporting groups within mainline denominations that would further a conservative theological and political perspective. And the church has undertaken new advertising and e-mail campaigns to combat more conservative forces.
"I.R.D. is using church members, and even outside groups, to disrupt and ultimately control the mainline to promote its own political agenda," Mr. Thomas said last month in a speech at Gettysburg College.
In the e-mail campaign, the denomination is accusing the ABC News political program "This Week" of booking far more conservative Christian leaders than moderates for the Sunday morning broadcast. The network has called that assertion "unfounded and not based on fact."
And after stirring up publicity in late 2004 with an advertisement about tolerance, the church is distributing an even more pointed commercial that shows people who might not be considered mainstream, like a single mother and a gay couple, being shot through the roof of a church from an "ejector pew."
"God doesn't reject people," the commercial says. "Neither do we."
Critics of the United Church of Christ, including the Institute for Religion and Democracy, assert that the church tries to silence those who do not agree with its liberal interpretation of Scripture.

Decided or Not, Giuliani Charts a Path to 2008
By PATRICK HEALY
NYT, 7 April 2006
After four years of enjoying private life, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani is taking several steps that could lay the groundwork for a presidential bid, strengthening alliances with Republicans nationwide and especially with conservative leaders of the party.
Mr. Giuliani's advisers say he will decide around the end of the year whether to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2008.

6 April 2006

Exit With Honor
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 5 April 2006
...The problem with Kerry's and Greif's exit plans is that they are only that-- exit plans. It isn't hard to get a US exit. We just pull up stakes and go home. What is hard is not to leave chaos behind us, of a sort that will throw the whole Oil Gulf region into war.
A practical exit strategy has to stipulate what comes next. As regular readers know, I think where we start is by splitting the military command in Iraq, as we did in Afghanistan (there we have NATO ISAF and the US). We need a UN command in Iraq, and need a multinational force (probably in the main Arab League) that can go on helping the Iraqis maintain a minimum of social peace after the US is out.
The US needs to get out. Its troops are a constant provocation of the local population, stirring insurgency rather than quieting it. They have never developed the kind of local intelligence or even language skills that would allow them to do real counter-insurgency. When hot civil war nearly erupted in February, US troops could not intervene between Sunnis and Shiites anyway, without becoming a party to it. So what good are they in such a crisis? Better to get them out of harm's way. Moreover, the Bush administration is both incompetent and corrupt, and therefore cannot hope actually to accomplish anything good in Iraq. The longer the US is there virtually unilaterally, the worse the final crash and burn is going to be. But the US has a responsibility, having thrown Iraq into civil war, to make the best arrangements it can for the aftermath.
The six neighbors have the highest stakes in Iraq-- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Iran. They should immediately be called to a 6 + 3 meeting with the United States, Britain and the Arab League to begin the work of constituting a post-US multinational force that might hope to keep ethnic and religious militias from marching against one another in the thousands and killing milions.
Exit is easy. Exit with honor will be the hardest thing the United States of America has ever done in its over two centuries of history. Exit without honor will endanger the security of the United States for decades.

In Bid to Rebuild Razed Bridge, Recovery and War Vie in Iraq
By DAVID S. CLOUD
NYT, 6 April 2006
HUSAYBA, Iraq, April 2 — Last August, under daily attack from car bombs and mortars, the Marines took down the only bridge over the Euphrates River for miles around.
Now they are trying to rebuild it.
With the bridge down, marines say, insurgents and foreign fighters can no longer infiltrate as easily into this town near the Syrian border in western Anbar Province, the heavily Sunni Arab area that has formed the heart of the insurgency. But Iraqis who live on the river's northern bank grumble that they have no easy way to get to town to buy and sell goods or to see the doctor.
"The biggest complaint I hear is that we took down the bridge," said Lt. Col. Nick Marano, commander of the Marine battalion here. "We have to replace it and we will."
The shifting priorities illustrate the trade-off between combat and reconstruction that the American military is still grappling with, but especially in remote regions like this one, where the Iraqi government is still almost nonexistent.
The Marines' effort is also a test of the Bush administration's declaration that it will focus this year on holding and rebuilding Iraqi towns, rather than departing after military operations and allowing insurgents to return.
Though the orders from Washington are to clear, hold and build, accomplishing that on the ground is proving difficult.

Rumsfeld Challenges Rice on 'Tactical Errors' in Iraq
By Josh White
Washington Post, 6 April 2006
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he did not know what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was talking about when she said last week that the United States had made thousands of "tactical errors" in handling the war in Iraq, a statement she later said was meant figuratively.
Speaking during a radio interview on WDAY in Fargo, N.D., on Tuesday, Rumsfeld said calling changes in military tactics during the war "errors" reflects a lack of understanding of warfare. Rumsfeld defended his war plan for Iraq but added that such plans inevitably do not survive first contact with the enemy.

Al-Qaida's Gomer Pyle
Timothy Noah
Slate, 4 April 2006
On April 3, a jury ruled that Zacharias Moussoui was eligible for the death penalty for his role in the Sept. 11 bombings. But the weight of evidence continues to show that, despite Moussaoui's own claim that he was originally tasked that day with crashing a fifth plane into the White House—a mission he couldn't carry out because he was in jail—Moussaoui really didn't have any role in the Sept. 11 bombings. Anyone even casually familiar with Moussaoui's case has surely noticed that Moussaoui is mentally unstable, and eager to die for his cause. That doesn't oblige a United States court to grant his wish.
Obviously Moussaoui belongs in jail. Without question, he is an al-Qaida soldier; before his arrest, he was apparently on tap to participate in a second round of plane crashes. (Among the targets under consideration were the Sears Tower in Chicago and, yes, the White House.) But the following document, a summary by the Central Intelligence Agency of statements made by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operations chief for al-Qaida, argues persuasively that Moussaoui's advance knowledge of Sept. 11 was sketchy at best. Annotated excerpts appear on this page and on the following seven pages. To read the footnotes, roll your mouse over the portion highlighted in yellow. If you want to read the document in its entirety (and without my explication), click here. (The PDF file comes via the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which posted it on its Web site.)

Bush Wants Capacity to Make 125 Nukes a Year
The administration's proposal would modernize the nation's complex of laboratories and factories as well as produce new bombs.
By Ralph Vartabedian
LA Times, 6 April 2006
The Bush administration Wednesday unveiled a blueprint for rebuilding the nation's decrepit nuclear weapons complex, including restoration of a large-scale bomb manufacturing capacity.
The plan calls for the most sweeping realignment and modernization of the nation's massive system of laboratories and factories for nuclear bombs since the end of the Cold War.

Resolving the Wiretap Debate
NYT, 6 April 2006
Congress seems to lack the backbone to stop President Bush from authorizing wiretaps without court orders, and censuring him would probably not do much to make him follow the law. What could make a real difference would be a Supreme Court ruling that found his domestic surveillance program to be illegal.
A recently introduced bill would provide a good way to resolve the matter: putting the National Security Agency's secret spying program on a fast track to Supreme Court review.
Under the bill, which was introduced by Senator Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat, people who suspect that they are being subjected to warrantless electronic surveillance could challenge the spying in court. The bill would give people, like academics and journalists, who communicate regularly with people in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan standing to sue if they are refraining from communicating out of fear that the government is illegally listening.
The challenges would begin in a special three-judge court, then go on the fast track to the Supreme Court. Suits against the program have already been filed, but this would put challenges on a firmer legal footing and let them get to the Supreme Court more quickly. The courts are in a better position than Congress to take on this issue. Under its current leadership, Congress has failed to investigate the domestic spying program seriously or to pass the legislation that is needed to rein it in.
Even if Congress did pass strong legislation, there is a good chance that President Bush, who has a sweeping — and unjustified — view of presidential power, would ignore it. If the Supreme Court told him to stop breaking the law, however, it would be difficult for him to defy its order.
It is hard to say for certain how the Supreme Court would rule, particularly since it has two new members. But it has had a good record recently of interceding when the Bush administration has gone too far in the war on terror, and it showed appropriate skepticism last week in oral arguments in another case in this area.
Getting the courts involved would elevate the domestic spying debate from the level at which it has languished in Congress — where defenders of the program have been quick to charge critics with being politically motivated and unpatriotic. A ruling from the Supreme Court would keep the focus where it should be, on the law and the serious civil liberties issues presented by Mr. Bush's domestic espionage.

On Health Care, Massachusetts Leaders Invoke Action, Not Talk
By PAM BELLUCK
NYT, 6 April 2006
Massachusetts has more than its share of political egos per capita, so one of the most surprising aspects about the measure this week to create near-universal health care coverage is that it involved the cooperation of virtually every political stakeholder in the state.
The parties, though from different ends of the spectrum, were so committed that in January Gov. Mitt Romney personally delivered letters to the homes of legislative leaders urging them to break a logjam.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy frequently telephoned the leaders at home, once surprising the Senate president's daughter, who was convinced that Mr. Kennedy was an uncle playing a practical joke.
Mr. Romney, a Republican and a potential presidential candidate who increasingly emphasizes his conservative bona fides, supplied a template for the bill with some of the most innovative ideas. They include requiring every citizen who can afford health insurance to buy it or face income tax penalties, converting the money in the state's free health care pool into subsidies to help low-income people buy insurance and creating a way for more businesses and individuals to save on insurance by using pretax dollars.
The House speaker, Salvatore F. DiMasi, a Democrat, pressed for two liberal provisions that Mr. Romney opposed: a fee for employers who do not provide insurance and a Medicaid expansion. The final bill includes weaker versions of the two items.
The Senate president, Robert E. Travaglini, a Democrat and leader in calling for more health coverage, had sharp disagreements with Mr. DiMasi but worked for compromise.
Mr. Kennedy, the state's Democratic éminence grise, helped Mr. Romney with critical Medicaid negotiations in Washington.
"It's very unusual," Mr. Travaglini said, for Massachusetts politicians to reach such a compromise. "I believe what broke the stalemate was a series of events and a variety of different people all pulling in the same direction."

Report Faults Video Reports Shown as News
By DAVID BARSTOW
NYT, 6 April 2006
Many television news stations, including some from the nation's largest markets, are continuing to broadcast reports as news without disclosing that the segments were produced by corporations pitching new products, according to a report to be released today by a group that monitors the news media.
Television news directors have said that the segments, known as video news releases, are almost never broadcast, but the group assembled television videotape from 69 stations that it said had broadcast fake news segments in the past 10 months.
The new report was prepared by the Center for Media and Democracy, which is based in Wisconsin and which describes itself as dedicated to "exposing public relations spin and propaganda."
The report said none of the stations had disclosed that the segments were produced by publicists representing companies like General Motors, Capital One and Pfizer.
The center also said that many of the 69 stations took steps to blend the fake segments into their news broadcasts. Some had their news reporters or anchors read scripts supplied by corporations, the report said, and many had altered screen graphics to include the station's logo.
The report said that a few stations had introduced publicists as if they were their on-air reporters. Only a handful of stations added any independently gathered information or videotape, it said.
The 69 stations reach about half the population of the United States.
The report is noteworthy because the use of video news releases has come under fresh scrutiny in Congress and at the Federal Communications Commission.
Congress and the F.C.C. took up the issue last spring after The New York Times reported that the federal government had produced hundreds of video news releases, many of which were broadcast without a disclaimer of the government's role.
Congress passed legislation temporarily requiring videos from federal agencies to clearly disclose the government's authorship.
The F.C.C. warned that stations broadcasting video news releases "generally must clearly disclose to members of their audiences the nature, source and sponsorship of the material that they are viewing."
The agency threatened to fine violators and said it would study whether new regulations were needed.
Television news directors have resisted new rules. They have said that video news releases are an isolated problem. Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, has compared the releases to the Loch Ness monster. "Everyone talks about it, but not many people have actually seen it," The Washington Times quoted her as saying last summer.
SEE ALSO:
Fake TV News: See It and Stop It!
Center for Media and Democracy, April 6, 2006
Who's behind your news? Without disclosure, you just don't know if the report you're watching about a corporation was secretly funded by and produced for that corporation.
That's what the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) found in our groundbreaking exposé, "Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed." This multi-media report is the culmination of an intensive, ten month investigation by CMD. It provides the most extensive account to date of how corporate-funded video news releases -- fake TV news -- are routinely aired, without disclosure, as though they were independent news reports.
Learn which TV stations we caught and watch footage of the VNRs we tracked, plus see how TV newscasts incorporated them and/or related satellite media tour "interviews," by reading our online report, here: http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/execsummary
And then tell the Federal Communications Commission that fake news must stop, by taking part in a joint CMD / Free Press action, here: http://action.freepress.net/campaign/fakenews

GOP Unveils Revised Immigration Legislation
AP via NYT, 6 April 2006
Senate Republicans unveiled revised immigration legislation Wednesday night clearing the way for legal status and eventual citizenship for many of the estimated 11 million men, women and children living in the United States unlawfully.
Majority Leader Bill Frist outlined the proposal after efforts at a bipartisan compromise faltered earlier in the day and the Senate teetered between accomplishment and gridlock on the most sweeping immigration bill in two decades.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid pledged to review the GOP proposal overnight to see whether ''it could be something we could all support.'' The prospects appeared uncertain, however, since the provisions appeared similar to what he and other Democrats had earlier spurned.
The fate of the 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally hinged on the outcome of election-year maneuvering on an issue that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said had generated an unusual amount of emotion.
Three thousand miles distant from the Capitol, Cardinal Roger Mahony asked Catholics to pray the Senate passes legislation allowing illegal immigrants to gain citizenship. The Los Angeles-based prelate said the debate marked ''one of the most critical weeks in the history of our country.''

House Passes Limit on Cash for Groups in Campaigns
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
NYT, 6 April 2006
The House narrowly passed a bill on Wednesday that would sharply limit contributions to nonprofit advocacy groups like MoveOn.org and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which revolutionized politics during the 2004 elections with their ability to escape campaign finance rules by raising unlimited cash from private donors.
The vote was 218 to 209, with 18 Republicans and 7 Democrats defecting from their respective party positions. The measure would cap individual contributions to so-called 527 groups, which draw their name from a provision in the tax code, to $25,000 a year for activities intended to mobilize voters behind issues, as opposed to specific candidates.
The bill now goes to the Senate, where John McCain, the Arizona Republican who is the author of campaign finance legislation passed in 2002, is offering a similar measure. The measure is not on the Senate calendar, and Democrats would have an easier time blocking it there.
The vote was a victory for Republicans in an otherwise difficult week, marked by the announcement that Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the former Republican leader, would resign from Congress.
The new majority leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, was terse after the vote. Asked for a comment, Mr. Boehner said, "We won."
But even if the bill becomes law, it is unclear how much will change. Already, groups like MoveOn.org are operating under another section of the tax code, 501(c)4, which is not covered by the legislation passed Wednesday.
A Republican opponent of the bill, Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, has compared the exercise to whack-a-mole, a carnival game in which a player hits one mole with a hammer and another pops up.

5 April 2006

Noam Chomsky on War Crimes in Iraq
Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch.com, 4 April 2006
In the Vietnam era, the subject of war crimes was the last to arrive and the first to depart. When, in 1971 in Detroit, Vietnam Veterans Against the War convened its Winter Soldier Investigation into U.S. war crimes in Southeast Asia, it was roundly ignored by the media. Over 100 veterans gave firsthand testimony to war crimes they either committed or witnessed. Beyond the unbearable nature of their testimony, the hearings were startling for the fact that here were men who yearned to take some responsibility for what they had done. But while it was, by then, possible for Americans to accept the GI as a victim in Vietnam, it proved impossible for most Americans to accept him as a human being taking responsibility for a crime against humanity. There was no place for this in the American imagination, it seemed, no less for the thought that the planning and prosecution of the war were potential crimes committed by our leaders. Evidently there still is none, which is why it's important to follow Noam Chomsky back into the Iraq of recent years to consider the American occupation of that country in the context of war crimes.
The piece that follows is an excerpt from Chomsky's new book, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy, which is officially published on this very day. It is Chomsky at his best, a superb tour (de force) of a world in which the Bush administration has regularly asserted its right to launch "preventive" military interventions against "failed" and "rogue" states, while increasingly taking on the characteristics of those failed and rogue states itself. It will be an indispensable volume for any library. (You can check out a Chomsky discussion of it at Democracy Now!)

Democracy In Iraq Not A Priority in U.S. Budget
By Peter Baker
Washington Post, 5 April 2006
While President Bush vows to transform Iraq into a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, his administration has been scaling back funding for the main organizations trying to carry out his vision by building democratic institutions such as political parties and civil society groups.
The administration has included limited new money for traditional democracy promotion in budget requests to Congress. Some organizations face funding cutoffs this month, while others struggle to stretch resources through the summer. The shortfall threatens projects that teach Iraqis how to create and sustain political parties, think tanks, human rights groups, independent media outlets, trade unions and other elements of democratic society.
The shift in funding priorities comes as security costs are eating up an enormous share of U.S. funds for Iraq and the administration has already ratcheted back ambitions for reconstructing the country's battered infrastructure. While acknowledging that they are investing less in party-building and other such activities, administration officials argue that bringing more order and helping Iraqis run effective ministries contribute to democracy as well.
Jennifer Windsor, executive director of Freedom House, an advocacy group that hosted a Bush speech last week, called the situation "a travesty" and said she is "appalled" that more is not being done. "This is the time to show that democracy promotion is more than holding an election. If the U.S. can't see fit to fund follow-up democracy promotion at this time," then it is making a mistake, she said.
"The commitment to what the president of the United States will say every single day of the week is his number one priority in Iraq, when it's translated into action, looks very tiny," said Les Campbell, who runs programs in the Middle East for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, known as NDI.

Two Deadlines and an Exit
By JOHN F. KERRY
NYT, 5 April 2006
WE are now in the third war in Iraq in as many years. The first was against Saddam Hussein and his supposed weapons of mass destruction. The second was against terrorists whom, the administration said, it was better to fight over there than here. Now we find our troops in the middle of an escalating civil war.
Half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after America's leaders knew our strategy would not work. It was immoral then and it would be immoral now to engage in the same delusion. We want democracy in Iraq, but Iraqis must want it as much as we do. Our valiant soldiers can't bring democracy to Iraq if Iraq's leaders are unwilling themselves to make the compromises that democracy requires.
As our generals have said, the war cannot be won militarily. It must be won politically. No American soldier should be sacrificed because Iraqi politicians refuse to resolve their ethnic and political differences.
So far, Iraqi leaders have responded only to deadlines — a deadline to transfer authority to a provisional government, and a deadline to hold three elections.
Now we must set another deadline to extricate our troops and get Iraq up on its own two feet.
Iraqi politicians should be told that they have until May 15 to put together an effective unity government or we will immediately withdraw our military. If Iraqis aren't willing to build a unity government in the five months since the election, they're probably not willing to build one at all. The civil war will only get worse, and we will have no choice anyway but to leave.
If Iraq's leaders succeed in putting together a government, then we must agree on another deadline: a schedule for withdrawing American combat forces by year's end. Doing so will empower the new Iraqi leadership, put Iraqis in the position of running their own country and undermine support for the insurgency, which is fueled in large measure by the majority of Iraqis who want us to leave their country. Only troops essential to finishing the job of training Iraqi forces should remain.
For this transition to work, we must finally begin to engage in genuine diplomacy. We must immediately bring the leaders of the Iraqi factions together at a Dayton Accords-like summit meeting. In a neutral setting, Iraqis, working with our allies, the Arab League and the United Nations, would be compelled to reach a political agreement that includes security guarantees, the dismantling of the militias and shared goals for reconstruction.
To increase the pressure on Iraq's leaders, we must redeploy American forces to garrisoned status. Troops should be used for security backup, training and emergency response; we should leave routine patrols to Iraqi forces. Special operations against Al Qaeda and other foreign terrorists in Iraq should be initiated only on hard intelligence leads.
We will defeat Al Qaeda faster when we stop serving as its best recruitment tool. Iraqis ultimately will not tolerate foreign jihadists on their soil, and the United States will be able to maintain an over-the-horizon troop presence with rapid response capacity. An exit from Iraq will also strengthen our hand in dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat and allow us to repair the damage of repeated deployments, which flag officers believe has strained military readiness and morale.
For three years now, the administration has told us that terrible things will happen if we get tough with the Iraqis. In fact, terrible things are happening now because we haven't gotten tough enough. With two deadlines, we can change all that. We can put the American leadership on the side of our soldiers and push the Iraqi leadership to do what only it can do: build a democracy.

I, DeLay
The fall of Tom DeLay, the most powerful Republican leader in the Congress, creates a crisis for his party and the political machine he built.
The Guardian, 4 April 2006
The resignation of Tom DeLay is the crashing conclusion of his garish career but hardly the end of his legal troubles or the demise of the partisan political machine he constructed. The former majority leader of the House of Representatives has been the Republican strongman in the Congress, known as "The Hammer." As the party whip, he hung a bullwhip on his wall as a symbol of intimidation. The style of the former exterminator from Sugar Land, Texas was bullying and crude. He called the Environmental Protection Agency "the Gestapo," ran a smear operation out of his office that would have won the admiration of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and grabbed whatever he wanted as his right of lordship. When a meek restaurateur in a Capitol Hill steakhouse politely asked DeLay to put out his large cigar because of the city's no smoking law, DeLay bellowed, "I am the government!" And he was not wrong.
DeLay enforced harsh discipline on the Republicans, bondage they savoured as the essence of power. In return, anything a loyal House member wanted, he would provide. "The Hammer" was also known as "The Concierge." Rules, including the House's own, meant nothing to him, irritating hindrances to be broken at his will. In order to gain passage of a bill favouring the big drug companies - preventing the Medicare elderly prescription drug program from negotiating lower rates - he extended debate long past the deadline and was accused of offering the bribe of a campaign contribution to a wavering Republican. DeLay stomped on the Ethics committee, stopping it from meeting to investigate this episode until public outcry forced him to back off. He greeted slaps on his wrist as badges of honour.
DeLay walked over bodies in his own party to reach his pinnacle. He led coups against the Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, tribune of the right, yet too amenable to negotiation with President Clinton as far as DeLay was concerned.
DeLay most notable achievement was coercing the impeachment of President Clinton. Without his arm-twisting, impeachment would have certainly failed. There was a sizeable group of relatively moderate Republicans opposed. They saw no merits in the ridiculous charges and understood impeachment was being pressed out of crude partisanship. But DeLay threatened their financial supporters (whose business interests would be blackballed from receiving congressional relief), and threatened to bankroll rightwing candidates against the moderates in Republican primaries to bleed them white. So one by one, they caved in. A moderate Republican was a moderate when Tom DeLay told them they could be moderate. Under DeLay's thumb, the House Judiciary committee voted for impeachment after refusing to establish any constitutional standards for their action. The constitution was swept away in his exercise of power. President Clinton was acquitted by the Senate, but DeLay was unblemished by his abuse. Fear of him was never higher.
Over more than a decade, DeLay forged a political machine that he called the "K Street project," after the downtown avenue in Washington DC of steel and glass building housing the large law and lobbying firms. DeLay kept a black book in which he noted who gave money to and hired Republicans. When a trade association tried to employ a Democrat, it was issued a warning that it would be punished. From the "K Street project" to the Republicans flowed tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions. Meanwhile, the contracts from corporations for lobbying and legal work went to these Republican firms. It was a perfectly designed system of legal graft.
When President George W. Bush assumed office, one-party rule commenced. DeLay served as Bush's "Hammer." Back in Texas, between the political operations of both of them, the Democrats had been shattered as a party. Now DeLay and Bush worked together nationally to accomplish the same goal. Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, who had been instrumental in the Texas takeover, was the go-between in the relationship. And the go-between in the Rove-DeLay relationship was a lobbyist named Jack Abramoff.
While exercising absolute power in the House, DeLay was determined to augment it further by thoroughly rigging the outcome of congressional elections in Texas. He created a political action committee, raised millions from his K Street allies, and poured the money into the Texas legislature, which in turn redrew the lines of congressional districts to wipe out the existing Democrats. DeLay's scheme succeeded in giving him an even bigger Republican margin. But the district attorney of Travis County, Texas investigated and indicted two of his aides and finally DeLay himself for illegally using corporate campaign funds.
As this scandal unfolded, the many-sided corruption of Jack Abramoff came under scrutiny by federal prosecutors. The ring tightened around DeLay, whose dealings with Abramoff were extensive and who called him one of his "closest friends". DeLay's former press secretary turned state's evidence. And his former communications director, an Abramoff business partner, pleaded guilty in a deal with the prosecutors. Last week, DeLay's former deputy chief of staff, another lobbyist, pled, too, his sentence to be decided on the basis of his cooperation. Thus surrounded, DeLay quit. His worst days lie ahead.
The Republican machine and its "K Street project" hum without its conductor. But the Republicans face the most difficult election cycle since they took control of the Congress in 1994. DeLay's further tribulations will illustrate the corruption endemic to the operation he built. The Republicans must hang on the hope that the campaign funds they raise through the DeLay devised system will enable them to overcome his corrupt taint.

Senate Panel Adds Billions to Bush Plan for Storm Relief
By LESLIE EATON
NYT, 5 April 2006
Spurred by an influential Mississippi Republican, the Senate moved yesterday toward adding billions of dollars to the Bush administration's $19 billion hurricane relief request, which was approved by the House last month.
The additional money, voted by the Senate Appropriations Committee, means that Louisiana will most likely retain all of the $4.2 billion that the House approved for home rebuilding. Texas and Mississippi had been expected to vie for a share of those funds, but the provisions adopted by the committee yesterday, adding about $8 billion in hurricane relief that would also help other programs and states, heads off such a battle.
The committee is led by Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi, who added considerable aid for his state. The legislation includes $700 million to relocate a privately owned freight rail line in Mississippi, $1.2 billion for a pilot program favored by Mississippi's governor to replace trailers with cottages and $1 billion in block grants that are likely to go to Mississippi and Texas.
Quite apart from hurricane relief, the committee, at the request of Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, also added to the bill $4 billion to help farmers hurt by drought and high energy costs. Other provisions would provide more than $2 billion for fighting avian flu and $648 million for improving port security.
All this money is now part of a $106.5 billion supplemental spending bill, passed by the committee yesterday, the bulk of which — roughly $68 billion — is to pay for the war in Iraq. Like the House, the Senate committee included special funds for armored military vehicles.
The full Senate is likely to take up the bill after returning from a recess that begins at the end of the week. Eventually the additions, should they be approved on the floor, will have to be negotiated with the House. But some senators are pledging to fight the ballooning supplemental appropriation, which they say should be used for emergency spending only.

Big Gain for Rich Seen in Tax Cuts for Investments
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
NYT, 5 April 2006
The first data to document the effect of President Bush's tax cuts for investment income show that they have significantly lowered the tax burden on the richest Americans, reducing taxes on incomes of more than $10 million by an average of about $500,000.
An analysis of Internal Revenue Service data by The New York Times found that the benefit of the lower taxes on investments was far more concentrated on the very wealthiest Americans than the benefits of Mr. Bush's two previous tax cuts: on wages and other noninvestment income.
When Congress cut investment taxes three years ago, it was clear that the highest-income Americans would gain the most, because they had the most money in investments. But the size of the cuts and what share goes to each income group have not been known.
As Congress debates whether to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, The Times analyzed I.R.S. figures for 2003, the latest year available and the first that reflected the tax cuts for income from dividends and from the sale of stock and other assets, known as capital gains.
The analysis found the following:
--Among taxpayers with incomes greater than $10 million, the amount by which their investment tax bill was reduced averaged about $500,000 in 2003, and total tax savings, which included the two Bush tax cuts on compensation, nearly doubled, to slightly more than $1 million.
--These taxpayers, whose average income was $26 million, paid about the same share of their income in income taxes as those making $200,000 to $500,000 because of the lowered rates on investment income.
--Americans with annual incomes of $1 million or more, about one-tenth of 1 percent all taxpayers, reaped 43 percent of all the savings on investment taxes in 2003. The savings for these taxpayers averaged about $41,400 each. By comparison, these same Americans received less than 10 percent of the savings from the other Bush tax cuts, which applied primarily to wages, though that share is expected to grow in coming years.
--The savings from the investment tax cuts are expected to be larger in subsequent years because of gains in the stock market.
...Opponents say the cuts are too generous to those who already have plenty. Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, the senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said after seeing the new figures that "these tax cuts are beyond irresponsible" when "we're in a war; we haven't fixed Social Security or Medicare; we've got record deficits."
Because of the tax cuts, even the merely rich, making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, are falling behind the very wealthiest, particularly because another provision, the alternative minimum tax, now costs many of them thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars a year in lost deductions.

Feingold Backs Legalizing Same-Sex Marriages
By Dan Balz
Washington Post, 5 April 2006
Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), a prospective 2008 presidential candidate, said yesterday that he thinks bans on same-sex marriages have no place in the nation's laws.
Feingold said in an interview that he was motivated to state his position on one of the most divisive social issues in the country after being asked at a town hall meeting Sunday about a pending amendment to the Wisconsin state constitution to ban same-sex marriages.
Feingold called the amendment "a mean-spirited attempt" to single out gay men and lesbians for discrimination and said he would vote against it. But he went further, announcing that he favors legalizing same-sex marriages.
That puts him at odds with many prominent Democratic politicians who support gay rights but not same-sex marriage. Should Feingold decide to run for the party's presidential nomination in 2008, his position would put him to the left of many likely rivals.

Spitzer Sues Software Company Over Spyware
By VIKAS BAJAJ
NYT, 4 April 2006
New York's attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, filed a lawsuit against a software maker today that he alleges surreptitiously installed advertising programs on Internet users' computers.
Mr. Spitzer is asking that the company, Direct Revenue, based in New York, be prohibited from installing "spyware" software on computers without the permission of computer users and is seeking unspecified monetary damages against the company. It is the second such case Mr. Spitzer's office has taken on; the attorney general reached a $7.5 million settlement with Intermix Media, a software maker in Los Angeles, last year.
In a statement issued this afternoon, Direct Revenue called the suit "baseless" but went on to say that the case "focuses exclusively on the company's past practices — practices we and other industry leaders changed long ago — and says not a word about what we're doing today." The company said it would defend itself vigorously.
In September, the company said it would stop using pop-up ads generated by software programs installed on computers through third-party Web sites and would instead offer customers free software if they agreed to look at advertising. The move came after the company had been singled out by consumer advocates and regulators as a user of spyware.

4 April 2006

Americans in Iraq Face Their Deadliest Day in Months
By KIRK SEMPLE
NYT, 4 April 2006
In the deadliest day for American forces since the beginning of the year, at least nine members of the military were killed in the insurgent stronghold of Anbar Province, including four in a rebel attack and at least five when their truck accidentally flipped over, the American military command said Monday.
Three marines and one sailor were killed on Sunday in the rebel assault, the military reported, offering no further information. It was the largest number of American deaths in a single attack in more than a month.
In another part of Anbar on Sunday, a flash flood toppled a seven-ton truck, killing five marines riding inside it and wounding one, the military said. Two marines and one Navy corpsman in the truck were missing, officials said.
Wrapping up a quick visit here, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, pressed Iraqi leaders for a second day on Monday to form a coalition government as quickly as possible, in order to end a power vacuum in which insurgent attacks, sectarian violence and general lawlessness have flourished.
Underscoring their concerns, three car bombs exploded in predominantly Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad, killing 13 people and wounding at least 19. One car bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in the Shaab neighborhood, killing 10 people and wounding 13, an official at the Interior Ministry said. Another detonated in Talibiya, killing one civilian and wounding six, the official said.
And a third exploded in Sadr City, killing two people including a 9-year-old boy, the Associated Press reported.
The American command said the truck that rolled over in Anbar had been part of a logistics convoy. Two of the missing marines were assigned to the First Marine Logistics Group and the third was assigned to Regimental Combat Team 7, the military authorities said.
The death toll was the highest since Jan. 5, when 11 Americans were killed in several different attacks. At least 13 members of the American military have died so far this month, setting a pace that could interrupt a trend of steadily declining casualties over the past five months. The monthly tally of at least 31 deaths in March was the second lowest since the invasion of Iraq three years ago.
The declining American casualties have coincided with a sharp increase in Iraqi civilian deaths, reflecting a significant shift in the nature of the conflict as insurgent groups and sectarian death squads have focused primarily on civilian targets. The American military reported last week that from Feb. 22 to March 22, 1,313 civilians were killed, many in sectarian violence, while 173 civilians died in car bombings, a hallmark of the insurgency.
But the sudden spike in deaths among American troops in the past few days was a stark reminder that the American-led forces still remain a primary target. This situation is particularly true in the predominantly Sunni Arab region of Anbar, where the conflict is almost entirely a fight between the Sunni-led insurgency and American forces.

Civilians in Iraq Flee Mixed Areas as Attacks Shift
By EDWARD WONG and KIRK SEMPLE
NYT, 2 April 2006
The war in Iraq has entered a bloodier phase, with the killings of Iraqi civilians rising tremendously in daily sectarian violence while American casualties have steadily declined, spurring tens of thousands of Iraqis to flee from mixed Shiite-Sunni areas.
The new pattern, detailed in casualty and migration statistics from the past six months and in interviews with American commanders and Iraqi officials, has led to further separation of Shiite and Sunni Arabs, moving the country toward a de facto partitioning along sectarian and ethnic lines — an outcome that the Bush administration has doggedly worked to avoid over the past three years.
The nature of the Iraq war has been changing since at least the late autumn, when political friction between Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs rose even as American troops began implementing a long-term plan to decrease their street presence. But the killing accelerated after the bombing on Feb. 22 of a revered Shiite shrine, which unleashed a wave of sectarian bloodletting.
About 900 Iraqi civilians died violently in March, up from about 700 the month before, according to military statistics and the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an independent organization that tracks deaths. Meanwhile, at least 29 American troops were killed in March, the second-lowest monthly total since the war began.
The White House says that little violence occurs in most of Iraq's 18 provinces. But those four or five provinces where the majority of the killings and migrations take place are Iraq's major population centers, generally mixed regions that include Baghdad, and contain much of the nation's infrastructure — crucial factors in Iraq's prospects for stability.
The Iraqi public's reaction to the violence has been dramatic. Since the shrine bombing, 30,000 to 36,000 Iraqis have fled their homes because of sectarian violence or fear of reprisals, say officials at the International Organization for Migration, based in Geneva. The Iraqi Ministry of Displacement and Migration estimated that at least 5,500 families have moved, with the biggest group being 1,250 families settling in the Shiite holy city of Najaf after leaving Baghdad and Sunni-dominated towns in central Iraq. The families are living with relatives or in abandoned buildings, and a crisis of food and water shortages is starting to build, officials say.

Exclusive: Tom DeLay Says He Will Give Up His Seat
The embattled former Republican leader tells TIME that he will leave Congress and not seek reelection
By MIKE ALLEN/SUGAR LAND, TEXAS
Time.com, 4 April 2006
Rep. Tom DeLay, whose iron hold on the House Republicans melted as a lobbying corruption scandal engulfed the Capitol, told TIME that he will not seek reelection and will leave Congress within months. Taking defiant swipes at "the left" and the press, he said he feels "liberated" and vowed to pursue an aggressive speaking and organizing campaign aimed at promoting foster care, Republican candidates and a closer connection between religion and government.
"I'm going to announce tomorrow that I'm not running for reelection and that I'm going to leave Congress," DeLay, who turns 59 on Saturday, said during a 90-minute interview on Monday. "I'm very much at peace with it." He notified President Bush in the afternoon. DeLay and his wife, Christine, said they had been prepared to fight, but that he decided last Wednesday, after months of prayer and contemplation, to spare his suburban Houston district the mudfest to come. "This had become a referendum on me," he said. "So it's better for me to step aside and let it be a referendum on ideas, Republican values and what's important for this district."
SEE ALSO:
DeLay Is Quitting Race and House, Officials Report
By CARL HULSE
NYT, 4 April 2006
Representative Tom DeLay, the relentless Texan who helped lead House Republicans to power but became ensnared in a corruption scandal, has decided to leave Congress, House officials said Monday night.
Mr. DeLay, who abandoned his efforts to hold onto his position as majority leader earlier this year after the indictment of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a former ally, was seeking re-election as vindication. But he told selected colleagues that he had decided not to try to hold on to his House seat as he faced the possibility of defeat.
"He just decided that the numbers and the whole political climate were against him and that it was time to step side," said one Congressional official with knowledge of Mr. DeLay's plans. The official did not want to be identified because Mr. DeLay's formal announcement was scheduled for Tuesday in Houston.
His decision was first reported Monday by MSNBC and by the Web site of Time magazine, which had posted an interview with Mr. DeLay, as did The Galveston County Daily News. "I'm very much at peace with it," Mr. DeLay told Time of his decision.
He told the Galveston paper he planned to step down from his seat by late May or June.
Congressional aides said Mr. DeLay had informed his Texas colleagues and other Republican leaders, including Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, as well as President Bush.
One DeLay ally said that the lawmaker had been considering leaving Congress since he gave up his leadership post in January and that he had been persuaded to make the break last week, when his former deputy chief of staff, Tony Rudy, pleaded guilty to corruption charges. He was also said to have been influenced by troubling poll numbers in his district in the Houston area.
Mr. DeLay won a primary election last month. But the victory against a field of virtual unknowns was not overwhelming, and he faced a potentially well-financed Democratic opponent and a blizzard of opposition advertising from outside groups.
Officials said Mr. DeLay's decision to leave now could create complications in finding a Republican replacement, since he won the primary and would now have to be disqualified. He could accomplish that by changing his residence to his Virginia condominium.
SEE ALSO:
Welcome to K Street, Tom
Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo, 4 April 2006
So DeLay is out. But it's DeLay's House. DeLay's Republican DC machine. They built and fortified it with the money he brought in. The great majority of them voted for the "DeLay Rule" custom tailored for Majority Leader DeLay to avoid stepping down even after indictment. The current Republican membership of the House ethics committee was hand-picked to provide protection for DeLay and the old membership was purged. He's their guy. Their rule rests on his machine. They can run but they can't hide.
Here's the letter Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) sent out to constituents defending the DeLay Rule. Remember, on DeLay's say-so, he was interim Majority Leader for about three hours.
We've got a library of the letters Republican Reps sent out to their constituents little more than a year ago defending the DeLay Rule and DeLay's right to be free from "manipulation, disruption and political intimidation" from "partisan or self-serving district attorneys."
That was Denny Hastert's line too. The DeLay Rule was necessary because the old system "left elected officials vulnerable to politically motivated attacks by partisan attorney's hoping to remove them from their positions of leadership."
Reps. Beauprez, Cole, Frelinghuysen, Bilrakis and others. We've got their letters and many more.
They were all spouting the same line. DeLay owned them all. They did his bidding. Next.

Death to impudent clowns...
Jurors Permit Death Penalty for Moussaoui
By NEIL A. LEWIS
NYT, 4 April 2006
A federal jury on Monday found that Zacarias Moussaoui was responsible for some of the deaths that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, and was thus eligible to be executed. The unanimous verdict removes the greatest hurdle to the government's obtaining a death sentence.
The jury of nine men and three women will move into the next phase of the sentencing trial beginning Thursday in which they will decide whether Mr. Moussaoui, the only person to be tried in an American courtroom in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, should be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison.
Mr. Moussaoui sat silently as the verdict was read, seemingly mouthing prayers to himself. The jury was stoic as were most of the handful of relatives of Sept. 11 victims in the courtroom, although two quietly wiped away tears.
It was the first phase of the trial that ended Monday and that was viewed by lawyers and death penalty experts as the one in which Mr. Moussaoui had the greater chance to escape execution.
At the time of the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, Mr. Moussaoui was in jail in Minnesota, having been arrested three weeks earlier on immigration charges.
The Justice Department argued that even though he did not take part in the attacks, he deserved to die because at the time of his arrest he willfully concealed detailed knowledge of Al Qaeda's plans to use suicide hijackers to fly planes into buildings.

Justices, 6-3, Sidestep Ruling on Padilla Case
By DAVID STOUT
NYT, 4 April 2006
A sharply split Supreme Court today rejected an appeal from the terrorism suspect Jose Padilla, leaving undecided for now deeper questions about the Bush administration's handling of detainees since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Six justices were apparently persuaded, at least for the time being, that Mr. Padilla's appeal is moot, since he was transferred from military custody to a civilian jail several months ago and is to go on trial. The federal government indicted him last fall on terrorism charges that could bring him a sentence of life in prison if he is convicted.
The administration had argued that since Mr. Padilla was going to get a trial, there was no need for the Supreme Court to rule on his appeal of a lower court order upholding the administration's authority to keep him in open-ended military detention as an enemy combatant.
The six justices who agreed today to defer consideration of the finding of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices John Paul Stevens, Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
SEE ALSO:
The High Court Punts
NYT, 4 April 2006
The Supreme Court ducked its duty yesterday. It declined to review a notorious case testing President Bush's sweeping claim to have the power to seize American citizens on American soil and toss them into indefinite detention outside the normal legal process — simply by declaring them to be "enemy combatants."
The justices were asked to rule on the case of Jose Padilla, an American citizen who was held for more than three years at a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., supposedly on suspicion of being part of a plot by Al Qaeda to explode a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States. No such case was ever presented against Mr. Padilla, and just before the issue of his detention could reach the Supreme Court, the government transferred him to a civilian prison. It filed criminal charges accusing him of the far lesser conventional crime of conspiring to send money overseas for violent purposes.
The intent of that move was clear: to avoid what appeared to be an inevitable showdown in the Supreme Court over Mr. Bush's imperial vision of executive authority. And it worked. Shifting Mr. Padilla to a civilian court rendered the issue of the president's detention powers "at least for now, hypothetical," according to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote a rare statement setting forth the court's reasoning for denying a hearing on a case.
That statement, which was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justice John Paul Stevens, slid past the government's unseemly gaming of the justice system. It also ignored the urgency of checking once and for all the egregious overreaching by the president that led to Mr. Padilla's being locked up without any legal process in the first place. He was even denied access to a lawyer until court pressure forced the administration to back off.
This is far from a hypothetical matter, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in her dissent. As she observed, nothing prevents the administration from shifting direction again and returning Mr. Padilla to military custody. "A party's voluntary cessation does not make a case less capable of repetition or less evasive of review," she said. There is also nothing to stop Mr. Bush from applying his arrogated powers to another American citizen.
Fortunately, the court did not hand a total victory to the administration. Justice Kennedy made it clear that the case raises "fundamental issues respecting the separation of powers," and strongly signaled that the court would be ready to step in quickly if the government returned Mr. Padilla to military custody, or his basic rights were denied in his civilian trial.
We trust Justice Kennedy and his colleagues to stay true to that pledge.

Nuclear Agency Faulted After Easing Reactor Rules
By MATTHEW L. WALD
NYT, 4 April 2006
After consulting with the industry, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission weakened security regulations it had proposed for reactors, government auditors said in a report to be released on Tuesday.
The auditors said the process "created the appearance that the changes were made based on what the industry considered reasonable and feasible to defend against rather than an assessment of the terrorist threat itself."
The report, by the Government Accountability Office, stopped short of saying that the commission had made changes "based solely on industry views."
The study, requested by Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican who is the chairman of the subcommittee on national security of the House Government Reform Committee, did not draw any broad conclusions about the actual level of security at the plants, except to note that drills had not been held at most of the plants since the new requirements took effect on Oct. 29, 2004.

E.P.A. Emissions Plan Is Criticized as Harmful to the Environment
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
NYT, 4 April 2006
A draft regulation on emissions from oil refineries, chemical plants and other industrial operations has angered regional directors of the Environmental Protection Agency, who say they were not consulted on a change that they predicted would harm the environment.
Officials in 9 of the agency's 10 regional offices raised their concerns in an internal memorandum to E.P.A. officials that was dated Dec. 13 and made public Monday by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group.
The memorandum, written by Michael S. Bandrowski, chief of the air office in San Francisco, said he and his colleagues had "varying degrees of concern" about the proposal, which he characterized as a "drastic change in interpretation" of existing regulations under the Clean Air Act.
"The proposal, as written, would be detrimental to the environment," said the memorandum, which the defense council posted on its Web site.
The memorandum's disclosure comes two days before a Senate committee is to consider the confirmation of Bill Wehrum, President Bush's nominee to head the E.P.A.'s air office. As acting head of the office, Mr. Wehrum was in charge when the proposal was developed.

No End to McCain's Pandering: John and Jerry
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 4 April 2006
Well, I'll be damned. At least, that's what the Rev. Jerry Falwell says. Last month Mr. Falwell issued a statement explaining that, in his view, Jews can't go to heaven unless they convert to Christianity. And what Mr. Falwell says matters — maybe not in heaven, but here on earth. After all, he's a kingmaker in today's Republican Party.
Senator John McCain obviously believes that he can't get the Republican presidential nomination without Mr. Falwell's approval. During the 2000 campaign, Mr. McCain denounced Mr. Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance." But next month Mr. McCain will be a commencement speaker at Liberty University, which Mr. Falwell founded.
On "Meet the Press" yesterday, Mr. McCain was asked to explain his apparent flip-flop. "I believe," he replied, "that the Christian right has a major role to play in the Republican Party. One reason is because they're so active and their followers are. And I believe they have a right to be a part of our party."
So what has happened since the 2000 campaign to convince Mr. McCain that Mr. Falwell is not, in fact, an agent of intolerance?
Maybe it was Mr. Falwell's TV appearance with Mr. Robertson on Sept. 13, 2001, during which the two religious leaders agreed that the terrorist attack two days earlier was divine punishment for American immorality. "God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve," said Mr. Falwell, who also declared, "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the A.C.L.U., People for the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' "
Or maybe it was Mr. Falwell's appearance on "60 Minutes" in October 2002, when he declared, "I think Muhammad was a terrorist." Muhammad, he said, was "a violent man" — unlike Mr. Falwell, I guess, who said of terrorists that we should "blow them all away in the name of the Lord."
After each of these incidents, by the way, Mr. Falwell issued what were described as "apologies." But they weren't apologies — they were statements along the lines of, "I'm sorry that some people were upset by what I said." It's clear that in each case Mr. Falwell's offensive remarks were not a slip of the tongue; they reflected his deeply held beliefs.
And that's why it's important to hold someone like Mr. McCain — who is still widely regarded as a moderate, in spite of his extremely conservative voting record — accountable when he cozies up to Mr. Falwell. Nobody thinks that Mr. McCain shares all of Mr. Falwell's views. But when Mr. McCain said that the Christian right had a right to be part of the Republican Party, he was in effect saying that Mr. Falwell's statements were within the realm of acceptable political discourse.
...As for Mr. McCain: his denunciation of Mr. Falwell and Mr. Robertson six years ago helped give him a reputation as a moderate on social issues. Now that he has made up with Mr. Falwell and endorsed South Dakota's ban on abortion even in the case of rape or incest, only two conclusions are possible: either he isn't a social moderate after all, or he's a cynical political opportunist.

3 April 2006

Iraq Violence Kills at Least 50; 6 U.S. Personnel Reported Dead
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post, 3 April 2006
At least 50 people were killed Sunday in Iraq in a catalogue of violence that included a mortar attack, military firefights, roadside bombings and other explosions.
In addition, the U.S. military reported the deaths of six soldiers and airmen, including two who were killed when their helicopter apparently was shot down during a combat air patrol southwest of Baghdad on Saturday.

Iraq's Premier Is Asked to Quit as Shiites Split
By EDWARD WONG and JOEL BRINKLEY
NYT, 3 April 2006
Iraq's dominant Shiite political bloc fractured Sunday when its most powerful faction publicly demanded that the incumbent Shiite prime minister resign over his inability to form a unified government. The split came as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Jack Straw, the British foreign minister, paid an urgent visit to Iraqi leaders here to convey in the most forceful terms yet that their patience for the country's political paralysis was wearing thin.
It was not clear whether the joint visit by Ms. Rice and Mr. Straw, the top emissaries of the two countries that led the invasion of Iraq three years ago, played a direct role in the splintering of the Shiite bloc, and whether that schism would lead to forward movement on forming a new government, which has been stalled for months.
The developments suggested that a new phase in Iraq's convulsions might have started by opening a possibly violent battle for the country's top job between rival Shiite factions, which both have militias backing them. The incumbent prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, has said he will fight to keep his job, and his principal supporter is Moktada al-Sadr, a rebellious cleric whose Mahdi Army militia has resorted to violence many times to enforce his wishes.
SEE ALSO:
The Endgame in Iraq
NYT, 2 April 2006
Iraq is becoming a country that America should be ashamed to support, let alone occupy. The nation as a whole is sliding closer to open civil war. In its capital, thugs kidnap and torture innocent civilians with impunity, then murder them for their religious beliefs. The rights of women are evaporating. The head of the government is the ally of a radical anti-American cleric who leads a powerful private militia that is behind much of the sectarian terror.
The Bush administration will not acknowledge the desperate situation. But it is, at least, pushing in the right direction, trying to mobilize all possible leverage in a frantic effort to persuade the leading Shiite parties to embrace more inclusive policies and support a broad-based national government.
One vital goal is to persuade the Shiites to abort their disastrous nomination of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Mr. Jaafari is unable to form a broadly inclusive government and has made no serious effort to rein in police death squads. Even some Shiite leaders are now calling on him to step aside. If his nomination stands and is confirmed by Parliament, civil war will become much harder to head off. And from the American perspective, the Iraqi government will have become something that no parent should be asked to risk a soldier son or daughter to protect.
Unfortunately, after three years of policy blunders in Iraq, Washington may no longer have the political or military capital to prevail. That may be hard for Americans to understand, since it was the United States invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and helped the Shiite majority to power. Some 140,000 American troops remain in Iraq, more than 2,000 American servicemen and servicewomen have died there so far and hundreds of billions of American dollars have been spent. Yet Shiite leaders have responded to Washington's pleas for inclusiveness with bristling hostility, personally vilifying Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and criticizing American military operations in the kind of harsh language previously heard only from Sunni leaders. Meanwhile, Moktada al-Sadr, the radically anti-American cleric and militia leader, has maneuvered himself into the position of kingmaker by providing decisive support for Mr. Jaafari's candidacy to remain prime minister.
SEE ALSO:
Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal
By Peter N. Kirstein
HNN via Informed Comment, 3 April 2006
The Iraq War, as Vietnam was, is morally wrong, strategically a disaster and fueled by the notion of American exceptionalism: that America has the might and the ethnocentric right to shape the international community in its own image. The occupation of Iraq must end with the rapid withdrawal of American military forces. The justification for war was deliberately falsified and demonstrated an incompetence of such magnitude as to warrant criminal prosecution of the national-security elites including the president, vice president, secretary of defense and both the current and previous secretaries of state. I do not exclude the Democratic Party from guilt for this war. Most Democratic Senators voted for authorization to use force and, other than Congressperson John Murtha and Senator Russ Feingold, few Democrats have demanded disengagement from Iraq. They have not attempted to cut off funding and nominated Senator John Kerry, a vacillating, calculating, prowar presidential candidate, in 2004. My condemnation of this war is bi-partisan and extends beyond the Bush administration.
The Iraq war was vigorously promoted in 1998, five years before the March 19, 2003 invasion, by the Project for the New American Century in a letter to President Clinton. Among its many authors were Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad and John Bolton who assumed top-level positions in the Bush administration and orchestrated a war that the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department and Congress initially opposed. One of its authors, Francis Fukuyama, recently abandoned neoconservatism, the ideological worldview of the war’s senior advocates, which he now describes as “Leninist”: the effort to control history with power and will.
This was not a war of last resort, with just cause, with right intentions or with proportionality that are requirements of Just War Doctrine. This was an elective war to project American geostrategic dominance in the Persian Gulf, to encircle Iran, to control Iraqi oil and to reestablish western colonialism in Iraq. The British colonized Iraq under a League of Nations mandate following the demise of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, but withdrew its forces in 1927 due to its failure to overcome a sectarian insurgency.

U.S. Plan to Build Iraq Clinics Falters
Contractor Will Try to Finish 20 of 142 Sites
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post, 3 April 2006
A reconstruction contract for the building of 142 primary health centers across Iraq is running out of money, after two years and roughly $200 million, with no more than 20 clinics now expected to be completed, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says.
The contract, awarded to U.S. construction giant Parsons Inc. in the flush, early days of reconstruction in Iraq, was expected to lay the foundation of a modern health care system for the country, putting quality medical care within reach of all Iraqis.
Parsons, according to the Corps, will walk away from more than 120 clinics that on average are two-thirds finished. Auditors say the project serves as a warning for other U.S. reconstruction efforts due to be completed this year.
Brig. Gen. William McCoy, the Army Corps commander overseeing reconstruction in Iraq, said he still hoped to complete all 142 clinics as promised and was seeking emergency funds from the U.S. military and foreign donors. "I'm fairly confident," McCoy said.
Coming with little public warning, the 86 percent shortfall of completions dismayed the World Health Organization's representative for Iraq. "That's not good. That's shocking," Naeema al-Gasseer said by telephone from Cairo. "We're not sending the right message here. That's affecting people's expectations and people's trust, I must say."

IRAQ: More than 40,000 Displaced, Ministry Estimates
IRIN via Reuters, 2 April 2006
More than 40,000 people have been displaced countrywide as a result of ongoing sectarian violence, Ministry of Displacement and Migration officials said on Sunday.
"More than 40,000 Iraqis have been displaced in different areas. They lack supplies and require urgent help," said ministry spokesman Sattar Nawruz. "And with ongoing violence, we expect more families to be displaced in the coming days."
According to Nawruz, numerous families have been forced to leave their homes by militants who want to maintain the sectarian character, either Sunni or Shi'ite, of certain residential areas. "We now have sectarian problems never seen in Iraq before," he said. "Those who suffer are the innocent civilians who live in tents under deteriorating conditions."
Nawruz estimated that some 1,000 Iraqis were being displaced daily as a direct result of violence and intimidation. While the government has allocated nearly US $400,000 to support displaced families countrywide, Nawruz maintained that more funds were required to contain the situation.
On 29 March, the Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration (IOM) put the number of displaced at 30,000, noting that the situation could not improve in the reigning atmosphere of violence.
"People will continue leaving their homes due to sectarian violence," said IOM spokeswoman Dana Graber from Amman. "If no urgent action is taken, the displacement will run out of control."
According to IOM figures, more than one million people are now displaced countrywide as a result of three decades of conflict. Graber noted that the situation was generally much worse in central and southern Iraq, where episodes of sectarian violence have been the most frequent.

Paying the Price at the UN for Iraq
Ambassador Gerald B. Helman
Informed Comment, 3 April 2006
At some point, historians, scholars and foreign affairs practitioners will undertake an evaluation of the consequences for U.S. security of the invasion of Iraq, and the (eventual) U.S. withdrawal.
One specific consequence evident now is the failure by the U.S. to get a forceful statement from the President of the Security Council admonishing Iran to cease nuclear enrichment activities.
The U.S. fell short in two respects: first, a Presidential Statement, although it can signal more forceful action to come, is not binding and carries no legal implications. Moreover, the Statement obtained is weak on its face and falls far short of the hints of Chapter 7 enforcement action in the event of noncompliance that the U.S. sought. Such references were removed at the insistence of Russia, China and probably others because of the manner in which the U.S. in 2003 abused the Security Council and it's authority by invading Iraq and citing present and past resolutions as justifying and even authorizing the invasion.
There seems now a stubborn reluctance to allow the creation of a comparable legislative record regarding Iran. In turn, this will seriously impede whatever political leverage the U.S. hopes to exert over Iran to cease its enrichment activities. The stakes are real, but because of its Iraq adventure the ability of the U.S. to manage them short of force is diminished.

More Calls for Rumsfeld to Leave
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
NYT, 3 April 2006
For the second time in two weeks, a former general has called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over what both generals described as serious mistakes made in the war in Iraq.
In remarks Sunday on the NBC News program "Meet the Press," Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, who once led the United States Central Command and retired from the Marines in 2000, said Mr. Rumsfeld, among others, should be held accountable for tactical mistakes in Iraq.
When asked who should resign, General Zinni said, "Secretary of Defense, to begin with," adding that resignations should also come from others responsible for planning the war efforts and from military officials who sat by without pointing out potential problems.
On March 19, similar sentiments were expressed by Paul D. Eaton, a retired Army major general in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004. In an Op-Ed article in The New York Times, General Eaton criticized Mr. Rumsfeld's handling of the war and said that "President Bush should accept the offer to resign that Mr. Rumsfeld says he has tendered more than once."
Several days later, Mr. Bush dismissed calls for Mr. Rumsfeld to step down, saying he was satisfied with his job performance.
General Zinni was in charge of the Central Command from 1997 to 2000. In his television appearance, he was especially critical of what he said was the lack of "credible planning" for Iraq and "not adhering to the advice that was being given to us by others."
Referring to difficult choices made in wartime by other presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, General Zinni said: "You have to make tough choices. Integrity and getting on with the mission and doing it right are more important than loyalty. Both are great traits, but integrity, honesty and performance and competence have to outweigh, in this business, loyalty."

Rally Against War In Atlanta
AP via Washington Post, 3 April 2006
Organizers said as many as 4,000 people marched for two miles to an antiwar rally that also called for justice and compassion at home.
The Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, whose remarks against the Iraq war and the Bush administration at the funeral of Coretta Scott King in February drew criticism, spoke to a friendlier crowd Saturday. Lowery said the United States' role in the world should be to feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick, rehabilitate prisoners, educate the young and care for the aged -- "not to send smart bombs on dumb missions to kill innocent people in foreign lands."
"We cannot remain silent while the nation we love is transformed from protector to predator," said Lowery, known as the dean of the civil rights movement. "We come to reclaim America today."
Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) told the applauding crowd: "Bring our troops home now! The American people don't want war. The troops don't want war. Americans want peace! America has a lot more to give the world than a shock and awe bomb."
Among the participants in Saturday's rally -- which was endorsed by 150 organizations -- were veterans and military families, labor and faith groups, students and gay rights advocates.

How the GOP Became God's Own Party
By Kevin Phillips
Washington Post, 3 April 2006
Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W. Bush's conviction that God wanted him to be president, a deeper conclusion can be drawn: The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history.
We have had small-scale theocracies in North America before -- in Puritan New England and later in Mormon Utah. Today, a leading power such as the United States approaches theocracy when it meets the conditions currently on display: an elected leader who believes himself to speak for the Almighty, a ruling political party that represents religious true believers, the certainty of many Republican voters that government should be guided by religion and, on top of it all, a White House that adopts agendas seemingly animated by biblical worldviews.
Indeed, there is a potent change taking place in this country's domestic and foreign policy, driven by religion's new political prowess and its role in projecting military power in the Mideast.
The United States has organized much of its military posture since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks around the protection of oil fields, pipelines and sea lanes. But U.S. preoccupation with the Middle East has another dimension. In addition to its concerns with oil and terrorism, the White House is courting end-times theologians and electorates for whom the Holy Lands are a battleground of Christian destiny. Both pursuits -- oil and biblical expectations -- require a dissimulation in Washington that undercuts the U.S. tradition of commitment to the role of an informed electorate.
The political corollary -- fascinating but appalling -- is the recent transformation of the Republican presidential coalition. Since the election of 2000 and especially that of 2004, three pillars have become central: the oil-national security complex, with its pervasive interests; the religious right, with its doctrinal imperatives and massive electorate; and the debt-driven financial sector, which extends far beyond the old symbolism of Wall Street.
President Bush has promoted these alignments, interest groups and their underpinning values. His family, over multiple generations, has been linked to a politics that conjoined finance, national security and oil. In recent decades, the Bushes have added close ties to evangelical and fundamentalist power brokers of many persuasions.
Over a quarter-century of Bush presidencies and vice presidencies, the Republican Party has slowly become the vehicle of all three interests -- a fusion of petroleum-defined national security; a crusading, simplistic Christianity; and a reckless credit-feeding financial complex. The three are increasingly allied in commitment to Republican politics. On the most important front, I am beginning to think that the Southern-dominated, biblically driven Washington GOP represents a rogue coalition, like the Southern, proslavery politics that controlled Washington until Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860.

Tally Mon Come, Name Belafonte
The Singer's Latest Hits Find an Enthusiastic Audience in Washington
By David Montgomery
Washington Post, 2 April 2006
...At 79, the entertainer still knows his audience. He may discomfit -- in fact, he likes to discomfit -- but he never disappoints.
In January he led a delegation (Glover, Cornel West, Bloods, Crips) to Venezuela, met with leftist president Chavez for eight hours, and called President Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world." Back in the United States, he referred to "the Gestapo of Homeland Security." A few years ago, he compared then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to a slave who "was permitted to come into the house of the master."
After each rhetorical detonation, he was duly interrogated by the likes of Larry King and Wolf Blitzer, asked if he wanted to take anything back.
Here at the lunch, speaking for 39 minutes without notes, he takes nothing back.
"George W. Bush will not be in office forever, Mr. Ambassador," Belafonte says, addressing Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez. "It is hard to ask you and the rest of the world to be patient with our brutality . . . Be patient. America is awakening again."
A moment later, working his way into the rhetorical red zone, he adds, "I knew what I was saying when I referred to George W. Bush as the greatest terrorist in the world." (Pause for rising applause and cheers.) "And he has done nothing to try to improve his image."
...But if anything, Belafonte is crazy like a fox, and his critics have forgotten that the radical calypso singer has always staked out political ground on the edge of what the mainstream was ready to handle. The edge keeps moving, and Belafonte keeps moving one step ahead of it, afflicting the comfortable.
"It's always the same old thing," he says. "People feel jeopardized if ruling power speaks. When I took up the cause of Dr. King" -- as counselor, fundraiser and bail-poster -- "I was a threat for my middle class and white audience . . . White women ran through the house singing my songs while cooking dinner, their husbands came home and they danced all night to the calypso . . . [Then] I support the 'upheaval.' Oops."
But now look how far the mainstream edge has moved: "Dr. King is a holiday."

FEMA Calls, but Top Job Is Tough Sell
By ERIC LIPTON
NYT, 2 April 2006
The calls went out across the nation, as Bush administration officials asked the country's most seasoned disaster response experts to consider the job of a lifetime: FEMA director. But again and again, the response over the past several months was the same: "No thanks."
Unconvinced that the administration is serious about fixing the Federal Emergency Management Agency or that there is enough time actually to get it done before President Bush's second term ends, seven of these candidates for director or another top FEMA job said in interviews that they had pulled themselves out of the running.
"You don't take the fire chief job after someone has burned down the city unless you are going to be able to do it in the right fashion," said Ellis M. Stanley, general manager of emergency planning in Los Angeles, who said he was one of those called.
Now, with the next hurricane season only two months away, the Bush administration has finally come up with a convenient but somewhat embarrassing solution. Mr. Bush, several former and current FEMA officials said, intends to nominate R. David Paulison, a former fire official who has been filling in for the past seven months, to take on the job permanently.

1-2 April 2006

John Dean Blasts Warrantless Eavesdropping
By LAURIE KELLMAN Associated Press Writer
AP via Findlaw.com, 31 March 2006
Nixon White House counselor John Dean, testifying in favor of a Democratic resolution to censure President Bush, asserted Friday that Bush's conduct in connection with domestic spying exceeds the wrongdoing that toppled his former boss from power.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, fired back by telling Democrats: "Quit trying to score political points."
The Senate, Dean said, should censure or officially scold Bush as proposed by Sen. Russell Feingold's resolution. But if that action carries too much political baggage, some senatorial warning is in order, Dean said.
"The resolution should be amended, not defeated, because the president needs to be reminded that separation of powers does not mean an isolation of powers," Dean said in prepared remarks. "He needs to be told he cannot simply ignore a law with no consequences."
...At issue is whether Bush's secretive domestic spying program violates the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Bush has said the National Security Agency's secretive wiretapping program is aimed at finding terrorists before they strike on American soil by tapping the phones of people making calls overseas. He has launched a criminal investigation to find out who leaked the program's existence to the New York Times, saying it compromised national security.
Feingold told the panel that censure is not only an appropriate response, but Congress' duty.
"If we in the Congress don't stand up for ourselves and the American people, we become complicit in the lawbreaking," Feingold said. "The resolution of censure is the appropriate response."
...The title of Dean's 2004 book, "Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush," made his view of the administration clear even before the wiretapping program became public.
After The New York Times revealed the program in December, Dean wrote that "Bush may have outdone Nixon" and be worthy not just of censure but impeachment.
"Nixon's illegal surveillance was limited; Bush's, it is developing, may be extraordinarily broad in scope," Dean wrote in a column for FindLaw.com in December.

Jaded?
Kevin Drum
Political Animal in the Washington Monthly, 31 March 2006
....As Bob Somerby and Peter Daou and Media Matters have all pointed out, it really is remarkable how little attention the confirmation of David Manning's explosive prewar memo has gotten in the past week. Here's what the New York Times reported on Monday:

During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second [UN] resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons...."The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. "This was when the bombing would begin."

And this is in addition to the news that Bush was brainstorming ideas for deliberately provoking a war since it didn't appear that Saddam Hussein had any actual WMD to give him a legitimate reason for invasion.
And yet as near as I can tell from a search of both Nexis and Google News, a grand total of about a dozen U.S. newspapers bothered to even report this. This is despite the fact that Manning was Tony Blair's chief foreign policy advisor, the Times reviewed an actual copy of the memo, and two "senior British officials" confirmed its authenticity. What's more, the conversation between Bush and Blair took place on January 31, 2003, which means that Bush was flatly lying for six consecutive weeks when he pretended that war could be averted if only Saddam Hussein would cooperate with UN inspectors.
Is the "collective yawn" from the media because everyone figures this is old news? Because it comes from a competitor and no one wants to credit them? Because no one really cares anymore?
Or are we now so jaded by the relentless mendacity of the Bush administration that high level lying just isn't worth reporting these days? What other explanation is there for this not being front page news in Los Angeles and Washington DC as well as New York?

Shiite Clerics Call for Expulsion of US Ambassador
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 1 April 2006
Some prominent Shiite clerics used their Friday sermons to call for the expulsion from Iraq of US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. They have begun to see Khalilzad, a Sunni Pushtun, as too close to Sunni Iraqis and as anti-Shiite. I'm told they have started calling him "Abu Umar," a reference to the second Sunni Caliph, whom Shiites deride as a usurper of the office that rightfully belonged to Imam Ali, the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law.
Ayatollah Muhammad Ya`qubi is the spiritual guide for the Virtue (Fadhila) Party, which has 15 seats in the federal parliament and controls the provincial council of Basra. He described Khalilzad as "a sectarian who favors the Sunnis" and said that his statements "lack veracity and objectivity." He called on the Bush administration not to submit to the terrorists nor to fall into the snares of the sectarians and haters. He said that if the administration "wants to protect itself from failure and collapse, it must change its ambassador in Iraq."

Sistani Blows Off Bush
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 31 March 2006
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has blown off the president of the United States. Bush sent Sistani a letter asking him to intervene to help end the gridlock in the formation of a new Iraqi government. Asked about his response, an aide said that Sistani had not opened the letter and had put it aside in his office.
Sistani does not approve of the American presence in Iraq, and certainly disapproves of the Bush administration's attempt to unseat Ibrahim Jaafari as the candidate of the United Iraqi Alliance. Middle Easterners have had Western Powers dictate their politics to them for a couple of centuries and are pretty tired of it.