14 April 2006

President Could Not Reveal He Was Lying...Because of National Security
Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo, 13 April 2006
You probably saw the Post piece today that says the DIA had decided definitievely that those 'mobile labs' trailers were not for bio-weapons a couple days before the president went before the public and presented them as the conclusive evidence that the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction. McClellan seems to imply that the president and the White House is so fastidious about the proprieties of declassification that the president wasn't at liberty to tell the public that he was lying (emphasis added to main bamboozlement passage) ...
I think the CIA will tell you -- and I spoke to them earlier today -- that a finished product like this, a white paper like this, takes coordination, it takes debating, it takes vetting, and it's not something that they will tell you turns on a dime. It's a complex intelligence white paper and it's ... one derived from highly classified information takes a substantial amount of time to coordinate and to run through a declassification process. And they will tell you this. And the intelligence comes in many different forms -- human intelligence, signals intelligence, open source -- and it's not a trickle, it's a constant flood, is what they told me this morning. And weighing and assessing it is something that takes a lot of time and is a technology-intensive process. So you're making an assumption that something is immediately taken and assessed by your comments.
You can see the rest of what he said this morning here.

More Retired Generals Call for Rumsfeld's Resignation
By DAVID S. CLOUD and ERIC SCHMITT
NYT, 14 April 2006
The widening circle of retired generals who have stepped forward to call for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's resignation is shaping up as an unusual outcry that could pose a significant challenge to Mr. Rumsfeld's leadership, current and former generals said on Thursday.
Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., who led troops on the ground in Iraq as recently as 2004 as the commander of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, on Thursday became the fifth retired senior general in recent days to call publicly for Mr. Rumsfeld's ouster. Also Thursday, another retired Army general, Maj. Gen. John Riggs, joined in the fray.
"We need to continue to fight the global war on terror and keep it off our shores," General Swannack said in a telephone interview. "But I do not believe Secretary Rumsfeld is the right person to fight that war based on his absolute failures in managing the war against Saddam in Iraq."
Another former Army commander in Iraq, Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who led the First Infantry Division, publicly broke ranks with Mr. Rumsfeld on Wednesday. Mr. Rumsfeld long ago became a magnet for political attacks. But the current uproar is significant because Mr. Rumsfeld's critics include generals who were involved in the invasion and occupation of Iraq under the defense secretary's leadership.
There were indications on Thursday that the concern about Mr. Rumsfeld, rooted in years of pent-up anger about his handling of the war, was sweeping aside the reticence of retired generals who took part in the Iraq war to criticize an enterprise in which they participated. Current and former officers said they were unaware of any organized campaign to seek Mr. Rumsfeld's ouster, but they described a blizzard of telephone calls and e-mail messages as retired generals critical of Mr. Rumsfeld weighed the pros and cons of joining in the condemnation.
Even as some of their retired colleagues spoke out publicly about Mr. Rumsfeld, other senior officers, retired and active alike, had to be promised anonymity before they would discuss their own views of why the criticism of him was mounting. Some were concerned about what would happen to them if they spoke openly, others about damage to the military that might result from amplifying the debate, and some about talking outside of channels, which in military circles is often viewed as inappropriate.
The White House has dismissed the criticism, saying it merely reflects tensions over the war in Iraq. There was no indication that Mr. Rumsfeld was considering resigning.

3 U.S. Commanders Relieved of Duty as Iraqi Town Mourns Its Dead
By Nancy A. Youssef
Knight Ridder Newspapers, 8 April 2006
In the middle of methodically recalling the day his brother's family was killed, Yaseen's monotone voice and stream of tears suddenly stopped. He looked up, paused and pleaded: "Please don't let me say anything that will get me killed by the Americans. My family can't handle any more."
The story of what happened to Yaseen and his brother Younes' family has redefined Haditha's relationship with the Marines who patrol it. On Nov. 19, a roadside bomb struck a Humvee on Haditha's main road, killing one Marine and injuring two others.
The Marines say they took heavy gunfire afterwards and thought it was coming from the area around Younes' house. They went to investigate, and 23 people were killed.
Eight were from Younes' family. The only survivor, Younes' 13-year-old daughter, said her family wasn't shooting at Marines or harboring extremists that morning. They were sleeping when the bomb exploded. And when the Marines entered their house, she said, they shot at everyone inside.
The Navy Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) began an investigation in February after a Time Magazine reporter passed on accounts he had received about the incident. A second investigation was opened into how the Marines initially reported the killings - the Marines said that 15 people were killed by the roadside explosion and that eight insurgents were killed in subsequent combat.
On Friday, the Marines relieved of duty three leaders of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, which had responsibility for Haditha when the shooting occurred. They are Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, and two of his company commanders, Capt. James S. Kimber and Capt. Lucas M. McConnell. McConnell was commanding Kilo Company of the 3rd Battalion, the unit that struck the roadside bomb on Nov. 19 and led the subsequent search of the area.
The Marines' announcement didn't tie the disciplinary actions directly to Haditha, saying only that Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, commanding general of the 1st Marine Division, had lost confidence in the officers' ability to command.
They were relieved because of "multiple incidents that occurred throughout their deployment," said Lt. Lawton King, a spokesman at the Marines' home base at Camp Pendleton, Calif., to which they recently returned. "This decision was made independent of the NCIS investigation."

Debate Revives as 9/11 Dust Is Called Fatal
By ANTHONY DePALMA
NYT, 14 April 2006
In the cold, clinical language of the autopsy report of a retired New York City detective that was released this week, there were words that thousands of New Yorkers have come to anticipate and to fear.
"It is felt with a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the cause of death in this case was directly related to the 9/11 incident," stated the report from the medical examiner's office in Ocean County, N.J.
That "reasonable degree of medical certainty" — coroner language for "as sure as I can be" — provides the first official link made by a medical expert between the hazardous air at ground zero after the trade center collapse and the death of someone who worked in the rescue effort.
The report has reopened old wounds, giving lawsuits brought by first responders and downtown residents new evidence to back up allegations that the toxic mixture of dust and fumes at ground zero was deadly.
The report has also reignited a fierce debate over whether to classify deaths like that of Detective James Zadroga, 34 — who died on Jan. 5 of respiratory failure at his parents' New Jersey home — as being "in the line of duty," making survivors eligible for more benefits.
Dr. Robin Herbert, who has screened thousands of first responders through the World Trade Center Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program, called Detective Zadroga's autopsy report a "sentinel event" and a warning sign.
"It should be taken very seriously and investigated with great vigor," Dr. Herbert said.
But while acknowledging that those exposed to the dust may develop fatal diseases, many medical experts who have tracked the health effects of the trade center collapse have been reluctant to cross the line in between probability and certainty.
The autopsy report went further than any other medical document to link a death to the dust, but it by no means provides conclusive proof of the dust's general toxicity and its impact on other workers at the site. That, experts generally agree, may take 20 years to play out, depending on the latency period for many cancers and other diseases that could be linked to exposure to the toxic materials.
Proving the cause of a disease, even when the cause may seem obvious, is difficult. Dr. Michael M. Baden, former chief medical examiner of New York and a forensics expert, said the phrase "reasonable degree of certainty" is the standard term used in court to mean that given the available information, "it's very likely that that opinion is correct."
That said, Dr. Baden noted that given the impact of such a finding, he would have expected the medical examiner's office to consult with doctors who had tested or treated other first responders before coming to such a conclusion. Other experts said that tests should have been done on the particles found in Detective Zadroga's lungs to compare them with the dust from the trade center.
Neither step was taken. The autopsy was performed by Dr. Gerard Breton, a 73-year-old retired pathologist who has been on contract to the medical examiner's office in Ocean County for a decade.
Dr. Breton said in a telephone interview yesterday that he did not attempt to classify the "innumerable foreign body granulomas" containing "unidentified foreign materials" in Detective Zadroga's lungs. He also did not consult any doctors besides the detective's physician, who he said had informed him of Detective Zadroga's work at ground zero.
Nonetheless, Dr. Breton said what he found was unmistakable.
"I cannot personally understand that anyone could see what I saw in the lungs, and know that the person was exposed to ground zero, and not make the same link I made," said Dr. Breton.

2002 N.H. Scandal Shadows GOP Anew
By Thomas B. Edsall and David A Fahrenthold
Washington Post, 14 April 2006
A three-year-old political scandal in New Hampshire -- where Republican operatives conspired to jam Democratic get-out-the-vote phone lines on Election Day 2002 -- has suddenly become a national headache for GOP leaders, who are being pressed to explain why one author of the scheme was repeatedly calling the White House.
A Democratic activist group, combing through evidence from a trial last year in which the former New England regional director of the Republican National Committee was convicted, uncovered 22 calls from New Hampshire officials to the White House political office on Nov. 5-6, 2002. During the same time, according to prosecutors, state GOP officials started -- and then frantically sought to stop -- a plan to have a telemarketer bombard the phone banks of Democrats and a local firefighters association that was offering voters rides to the polls.
The nuisance calls were blamed for paralyzing part of the Democratic operation during the first hours of a close-fought Senate race that Republican John E. Sununu eventually won against then-Gov. Jeanne Shaheen (D). With the revelation of the calls, a state-level scandal has become a national issue, and a top political hand to President Bush has been pressed for answers.
Ken Mehlman, former director of the White House political office and current chairman of the Republican National Committee is fighting Democratic efforts to force him to testify under oath in a civil suit about the New Hampshire scandal. Mehlman said the calls from James Tobin -- a consultant who in 2002 led the RNC's New England effort -- were for the White House to get the latest information about a close race, which would be unexceptional on election night. He said none of the calls to him or his staff involved the phone-jamming operation.
While under no legal obligation to do so, the RNC has paid more than $2.5 million in legal fees incurred by Tobin, who in 2004 was the New England director for the Bush-Cheney campaign.

13 April 2006

Deaths of U.S. Soldiers Climb Again in Iraq
By EDWARD WONG
NYT, 12 April 2006
The death toll for American troops is rising steeply this month, with the military today announcing the deaths of three more soldiers, bringing the number of troops killed this month to at least 36. That figure already surpasses the American military deaths for all of March, and could signal a renewed insurgent offensive against the American presence here.
When 31 service members died last month, it was the second lowest monthly death toll of the war for the Americans, and the fifth month in a row of declining fatalities, according to statistics from the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an independent organization.
But deaths have begun to rise quickly. Many of the fatalities this month have taken place in the parched Anbar Province, the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency. The province was rated "critical" in a confidential report written recently by the American Embassy and the military command in Baghdad.
Though sectarian violence has recently overshadowed anti-American attacks in much of central Iraq, there are relatively few Shiites in Anbar, so much of the insurgency's venom is directed at the Americans there.
The capital also remains a virulently hostile place. The three soldiers who died today were killed in two separate roadside bomb explosions — two were hit by a blast south of Baghdad, and one to the east, the military said. Three soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb explosion north of Baghdad on Tuesday. A soldier died Monday from wounds sustained the previous day in combat in Anbar, and a soldier was killed Sunday by a roadside bomb near Balad.
[Political Update]
As the insurgency raged, political talks in the capital remained moribund. The temporary speaker of Parliament, Adnan Pachachi, announced today that he would convene the second session of the legislature next week, even in the absence of a new government. The venerable Mr. Pachachi made his statement at a news conference attended by many Iraqi reporters, even though a new meeting of Parliament by itself would mean little. Mr. Pachachi's symbolic gesture showed how desperate Iraqi officials are to convey a sense of movement in the stagnant political process.
The man at the center of the storm, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafaari, on Tuesday unleashed a tirade against what he called anti-Shiite remarks from the Egyptian president. Mr. Jafaari said that Iraq would boycott a conference of Middle East foreign ministers in Cairo being held today.At a news conference, Mr. Jafaari said that the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, had defamed Iraq and its majority Shiite population by saying in a television interview last Saturday that the Shiites here are more loyal to Iran than to Iraq.
"We hope that others would remind themselves to support the Iraqi people and never spoil the Arab identity of Iraq," Mr. Jaafari said. The Shiites in Iraq are mostly Arabs, while those in Iran are primarily Persians. Many Iraqi Shiites fought against Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war from 1980 to 1988. A million people died.
Even so, the Iranian government gave refuge to several prominent Shiite political parties that were oppressed during Saddam Hussein's rule. One was Mr. Jaafari's party, the Islamic Dawa Party. Another was Dawa's main rival, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is now trying to unseat Mr. Jaafari as the prime minister.
Moqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who is a key supporter of Mr. Jafaari, also released a statement today condemning Mr. Mubarak's remarks and stressing the loyalty of Iraqi's Shiite population.
"Iraq is going through a difficult phase," Mr. Sadr said, "and such statements serve only the enemy and contributes in starting the fire of civil and sectarian wars."
Iraqi Shiite officials said Tuesday that they had still not resolved the dispute over the post of prime minister. Talks to form a new government are deadlocked over the issue, because the Sunni Arab, Kurdish and secular blocs — as well as some Shiites — are demanding the withdrawal of Mr. Jaafari's nomination. The biggest bloc in the 275-member Parliament, in this case the Shiites, has the constitutional right to nominate a prime minister, who then must be approved by Parliament.
Mr. Jaafari won the nomination in February after a closely contested vote among the 130-member Shiite bloc. Now, in light of opposition to Mr. Jaafari, several Shiite groups have announced they are ready to put forward their own candidates. These groups include the Supreme Council and the Fadhila Party.
Shiite leaders met Tuesday but did not reach any agreement on the issue, said Redha Jowad Taki, a political officer for the Supreme Council.
One independent member of the Shiite bloc who declined to speak for attribution said that some Dawa officials were ready to withdraw Mr. Jaafari's nomination but that Mr. Jaafari insisted on keeping his job.
As the talks inch along, other Iraqi leaders say the country has already spiraled down into civil war. One of them is Ayad Allawi, the former prime minister and a White House ally. He told Reuters on Tuesday that the "new form of terrorism" here is "ideological, political and sectarian terror."
"We must be aware and not bury our head in the soil and say the situation in Iraq is good," he said.

The Disappearing President
Maybe good government could be good politics.
Washington Post, 12 April 2006
CAN THIS PRESIDENCY be saved? President Bush's approval rating has plummeted to a dismal 38 percent, according to the latest Post-ABC News poll. Democrats will rejoice at their improving prospects of recovering a majority in Congress. But a damaged president governing for nearly three more years in a dangerous world is no cause for rejoicing. With that in mind, we offer Mr. Bush, at no charge, some advice on a fresh start.
The president's two largest handicaps aren't going away. He's spending most of his political capital, as he noted recently, on the war in Iraq. He's right to do so: As long as there remains a chance of achieving a political settlement in Iraq, that must be the president's first priority. He could be more engaged and more open to fresh thinking; he could, for example, embrace the new bipartisan commission on Iraq policy established at the urging of Congress -- especially of Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) -- and led by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former representative Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.). But nothing he does on Iraq is likely to do him any good in the polls.

Lobbyists' Money Talks — Softly, But It's Heard
Lisa Sandberg and Kelly Guckian
San Antonio Express-News, 12 April 2006
Telephone giant SBC spent as much as $7 million last year hiring 112 Texas lobbyists — and ended up with a new law that allowed it to charge what it wants for no-frills phone options, and made it easier to offer television service.
Insurance interests have contributed more than $3.8 million in the past five years to the campaigns of the 18 legislative committee members who oversee insurance laws — and wound up with a homeowners' bill in 2003 widely seen as favoring the industry.
No one has proof that SBC's well-funded campaign to overhaul the state's telecommunications law, or the funneling of campaign contributions by insurance interests, led to victory at the Capitol.
But even the state's best-paid lobbyist says it would be naive to suggest that big bucks aren't effective.
Superlobbyist Russell "Rusty" Kelley knows special interest money often prevails. He represents those interests — and sometimes finds himself pitted against consumers.

Company Finds Clinton Useful, and Vice Versa
By MIKE McINTIRE and RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
NYT, 12 April 2006
Corning Inc., one of upstate New York's largest and oldest employers, has supported Republican candidates for so long that its chairman once joked that it had not raised money for a Democrat since 1812.
But since Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected to the Senate in 2000, Corning and its mainly Republican executives have become one of her largest sources of campaign contributions. And in that time, Mrs. Clinton has become one of the company's leading champions, delivering for it like no other Democratic lawmaker.
In April 2003, a month after Corning's political action committee gave $10,000 to her re-election campaign, Mrs. Clinton announced legislation that would provide hundreds of millions in federal aid to reduce diesel pollution, using, among other things, technology pioneered by Corning. It was one of several Congressional initiatives Mrs. Clinton has pushed that benefit the company.
And in April 2004, Mrs. Clinton began a push to persuade the Chinese government to relax tariffs on Corning fiber optics products, inviting the Chinese ambassador to her office and personally asking President Bush for help in the matter. One month after the beginning of that ultimately successful effort, Corning's chairman, James Houghton, held a fund-raiser at his home that collected tens of thousands of dollars for her re-election campaign.
It is part of a senator's job description to help a major employer in his or her home state, and it is not unusual for that employer to encourage that help or to reciprocate with campaign contributions. In Mrs. Clinton's case, her alliance with Corning provides a window into how she has used her singular clout as a former first lady on behalf of new constituents in her adopted home state, and how those efforts in turn have helped her to bolster her already powerful fund-raising machine and win over previously skeptical New Yorkers.

12 April 2006

5 in US Forces killed; Shi'ite Clans Vie Over Leadership
Rivalry snarls efforts to select prime minister
By Robert H. Reid
AP via Boston Globe, 12 April 2006
The US military announced the death of five American service members, including three killed yesterday north of Baghdad in a roadside bombing.
Another soldier assigned to the 2/28th Brigade Combat Team died Monday of wounds suffered the day before in fighting in Anbar Province west of the capital, the military said. Another soldier assigned to the 130th Engineer Brigade was killed Sunday when his vehicle was hit by a blast near Balad. Another service member was wounded.
The military did not identify those who died. The latest casualties raised the US death toll for this month to at least 31 -- the same for all of March, according to an Associated Press count. At least 2,359 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the war in 2003.
The deaths were reported as the bitter rivalry between two powerful clans for leadership of Iraq's Shi'ite Muslims snarled efforts to agree on the next prime minister, the key issue that is blocking a national unity government. Neither side showed any sign of compromise over Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, leaving negotiations deadlocked four months after elections for a new parliament that the Bush administration hopes can improve stability and lessen the need for US troops.
At least 23 Iraqis died in violence yesterday. A car bombing killed five people, and three others died when a bomb exploded on a minibus, both attacks in Shi'ite areas of the capital, police said.
Police also found the bodies of 24 people -- apparent victims of sectarian death squads. Most of the bodies were found in Baghdad, but it was unclear when they died, police said.
Sunni Arabs and Kurds, whom the Shi'ites need as coalition partners in parliament, blame Jaafari, a Shi'ite, for the rise in sectarian violence bloodying Iraq. They are demanding that he be replaced before they agree to join a new government.
Jaafari has repeatedly refused to step aside. His Dawa party and his key backer, radical anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, remained firm in their support for him during a meeting of the seven factions in the Shi'ite alliance yesterday.
Behind the scenes, Jaafari's bid to remain prime minister is opposed by the biggest Shi'ite party, which is led by a member of a family that has competed for decades with Sadr's clan to lead Shi'ites.
Shi'ite negotiators planned to meet again today, but officials said there was no hint an agreement was near.
Jaafari barely won nomination during a vote in February among Shi'ite lawmakers, who are the largest bloc in parliament.
Shi'ite officials said his supporters fear removing him would bolster the position of the biggest Shi'ite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI.
SCIRI is led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, whose family has long been a rival of Sadr's clan for leadership of the Shi'ite community, which constitutes an estimated 60 percent of Iraq's 27 million people.
Sadr was credited with engineering Jaafari's nomination victory in February, which he won by a single vote over Hakim's candidate, Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi.
Jaafari's supporters want assurances that if the prime minister steps aside, he will not be replaced by Abdul-Mahdi or someone else from Hakim's party, Shi'ite officials said.
''There are long-running tensions between SCIRI and the Sadrists," said Khalid al-Attiyah, an independent Shi'ite politician. ''There have been problems between them before. This generates a state of mutual mistrust."
The rivalry between Hakim's family and the Sadr clan goes back decades, when they began competing for power in Najaf, the seat of the Shi'ite religious leadership. Both families claim descent from the Prophet Mohammed and have produced distinguished figures.

Iraq Still in Political Limbo Four Months After Election
By Louise Roug
LA Times via Financial Times via Informed Comment, 11 April 2006
Gunmen waving their weapons out the windows of unmarked cars are the most distinct sign of what’s it’s like to live in a political limbo. Four months after the Iraqis went to the polls and elected a parliament, political bickering has stalled progress in the formation of a government.
There are other hints too: The squatters who have taken over an old air force building. The armed, illegal vendors who have staked out claims to sidewalks. The prospect of another hot summer with no new power plants to drive air conditioners.
In the wake of stalled government talks – hampered by disagreements over whether Ibrahim al-Jaafari, interim prime minister and a Shia nominee, should remain in place, Iraqi institutions have begun to drift – their lack of oversight and leadership seriously hampering efforts to curb militias, rebuild infrastructure and get on with the work of governing.
The long list of moribund projects has grown and public officials whose jobs are stymied by the word “interim” have begun to despair. “Summer is coming and we need to get started on many projects,” said Raad Haris, a Ministry of Electricity official. “They cannot be done unless a government is formed.”

Wag the Camel
By MAUREEN DOWD
NYT, 12 April 2006
Talk about a fearful symmetry.
Iran was whipping up real uranium while America was whipped up by fake uranium.
Obsessed with going to war against a Middle East country that had no nuclear weapon, the Bush administration lost focus on and leverage over a Middle East country hurtling toward a nuclear weapon.
That's after the Bush crew lost focus on and leverage over an Asian country that says it has now produced a whole bunch of nuclear weapons.
To paraphrase Raymond Chandler, if brains were elastic, these guys wouldn't have enough to make suspenders for a parakeet.
While Dick Cheney was getting booed as he threw out the first pitch for the Nationals — it bounced in the dirt and Scooter wasn't even there to catch it — Iran was jubilantly welcoming itself to the nuclear club and spitting in the eye of the U.S. and U.N.
Speaking before a mural of fluttering white doves, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bragged that his scientists had concocted enriched uranium. They will now churn out nuclear fuel as fast as they can.
Are they making a bomb? Nah, said the Iranian president, furthest thing from their minds.
Are we going to bomb them before they can get a bomb? Nah, said the American president, furthest thing from our minds.

Lacking Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War
Administration Pushed Notion of Banned Iraqi Weapons Despite Evidence to Contrary
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post, 12 April 2006
On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."
The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.
A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

Archives Kept a Secrecy Secret
Agencies Removed Declassified Papers From Public Access
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post, 12 April 2006
The National Archives helped keep secret a multi-year effort by the Air Force, the CIA and other federal agencies to withdraw thousands of historical documents from public access on Archives shelves, even though the records had been declassified.
In a 2002 memorandum, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and released yesterday by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research library housed at George Washington University, Archives officials agreed to help pull the materials for possible reclassification and conceal the identities of anyone participating in the effort. The Associated Press reported yesterday that it had requested a copy of the memo three years ago.
"[I]t is in the interest of both [redacted agency name] and the National Archives and Records Administration to avoid the attention and researcher complaints that may arise from removing material that has already been available publicly from the open shelves for extended periods of time," the Archives memo read, in part.
Thomas S. Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive, said the memo "shows that the National Archives basically aided and abetted a covert operation that whited out the nation's history by reclassifying previously released documents."

Wolfowitz's World Bank Stops Aid to Palestine/Hamas
Reuters, 11 April 2006
A push by the United States and its European allies to isolate the Hamas-led government posed an awkward dilemma for the World Bank, which has been a major distributor of aid and policy advisor to the Palestinian Authority.
World Bank officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said on Tuesday contact with the new Palestinian government has been "limited" until World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz decides how to proceed.
Although the World Bank insists on its political neutrality, the Palestinian issue is complicated by U.S and European Union views that Hamas, an Islamist organization blamed for dozens of suicide attacks in Israel, is a terrorist organization.
"As long as Hamas is branded by major donors as a terrorist-related organization it'll be very difficult for the bank staff to proceed, and if they would like to, they will also have to go to the board" of member countries, one senior bank official said.
"There is no formal stop in grant disbursements, but they are not going out, so it is a dilemma," the official added.
Although there has been no direct order to suspend contact with Hamas government officials, bank officials said they were also seeking legal advice on whether staff could be indicted under U.S. or other law for collaborating with a terrorist group.
"Even as an employee of the World Bank you may have some protection, but you'll think twice before you really engage because you could be indicted in the U.S. or in Europe," said another bank official.
"As long as it's unclear how much backing you will have from the senior levels and also from the board, it's best not to engage at all," the official added.
On Tuesday, the United Nations said it had advised its aid agencies to avoid meeting with Hamas political leaders and to limit contacts to technocrats in the new Palestinian government.
The bank has managed a multidonor trust fund for the Palestinians since 2004 that has been tied to economic reforms, in addition to grant funding for development projects.
Most of the aid in the trust fund is from the European Union, which together with the United States has cut off aid to the Hamas government until it accept demands to recognize Israel, end violence and accept past peace accords.
Since the Palestinian Authority is not a sovereign state, it cannot apply for membership of either the International Monetary Fund nor the World Bank and is therefore not eligible for loans normally available to member countries.

People Power
NYT, 12 April 2006
...The immigration rallies of recent weeks have drawn an astounding number of people around the country: Monday's "national day of action" was attended by an estimated 180,000 in Washington, 100,000 each in Phoenix and New York City, 50,000 each in Atlanta and Houston, and tens of thousands more in other cities.
Adding in the immense marches last month in Los Angeles and Chicago, the immigrants and their allies have carried off an amazing achievement in mass political action, even though many of them are here illegally and have no right to vote. Whether the rallies leave you inspired or unnerved, they are impossible to ignore.
This nation is deeply divided and undecided about illegal immigration. The ambivalence runs deep. Americans can hardly even agree on whom they are talking about. Listen to debates from talk radio to the Senate, and you will hear utterly incompatible descriptions of the same group of people. The nation's 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants are either an occupying army of thieves, snatching jobs and subverting our laws, or they are a wholesome community of strivers, eager to build families and chase the American dream.
Monday's rallies were a decisive victory for the more positive vision. In Washington, as elsewhere, the mood was as mellow as the crowd, which was dominated by parents of young children. (You can shout all the fiery slogans you want, but you will never be threatening with a baby in your arms.) An 86-year-old Salvadoran, Maria Guevara, sat in a folding chair and waved a plastic American flag as a friend, Ana Santos, held a placard to keep the sun out of her eyes. Ms. Guevara was as placid as if sitting beside a pond, though all around her it was noisier than a baseball stadium.
A recurrent complaint against new immigrants — particularly Latinos, the overwhelming majority at most rallies — is that they are slow to assimilate. But these crowds clearly had internalized at least one pillar of the American way: that peaceful dissent can spur a government to action.
Though recent immigration developments in Washington had been a discouraging mix of stalemate and cold political maneuvering, the marchers seemed motivated less by a sense of grievance than by hope, and the pure joy of seeing others like themselves rallying for a precious cause. They were venturing boldly from the shadows and daring the country to change its laws, but were doing so out of a desire to participate in the system, not to undermine it.

Comparison of Schizophrenia Drugs Often Favors Firm Funding Study
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post, 12 April 2006
Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co. recently funded five studies that compared its antipsychotic drug Zyprexa with Risperdal, a competing drug made by Janssen. All five showed Zyprexa was superior in treating schizophrenia.
But when Janssen sponsored its own studies comparing the two drugs, Risperdal came out ahead in three out of four.
In fact, when psychiatrist John Davis analyzed every publicly available trial funded by the pharmaceutical industry pitting five new antipsychotic drugs against one another, nine in 10 showed that the best drug was the one made by the company funding the study.
"On the basis of these contrasting findings in head-to-head trials, it appears that whichever company sponsors the trial produces the better antipsychotic drug," Davis and others wrote in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
Such studies make up the bulk of the evidence that American doctors rely on to prescribe $10 billion worth of antipsychotic medications each year. Davis pointed out the potential biases in design and interpretation that produced such contradictory results. Other experts note that industry studies invariably seek to boost the image of expensive drugs that are still under patent. Moreover, they say, the trials are relatively brief and test drugs on patients with simpler problems than doctors typically encounter in daily practice.
By contrast, when the federal government recently compared a broader range of drugs in typical schizophrenia patients in a lengthy trial, two medications that stood out were cheaper drugs not under patent. The medication that worked best for patients with severe, intractable schizophrenia was clozapine, whose sales lag well behind every other drug in its class. And an earlier leg of the study found that the largely unused drug perphenazine had about the same risks and benefits as far more expensive competitors that are widely assumed to be safer.

11 April 2006

Vietnam's Forgotten Lessons
By Richard Cohen
Washington Post, 11 April 2006
Back when Hugh Shelton was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he sent all 17 of his four-star generals "Dereliction of Duty" by H.R. McMaster and asked them to a Pentagon breakfast to discuss the book with the author. The book charges that the U.S. military was derelict in its duty by meekly allowing duplicitous and inept civilians from the president on down to lead the nation into a war (Vietnam) that it then fought unsuccessfully. Shelton vowed that this would not happen again.
We all know the cliche about generals fighting the last war, but in Iraq it is not the tactics that were duplicated -- certainly not compared to the Persian Gulf War -- but the tendency of the military to do what it was told and keep its mouth shut. Shelton, who retired in 2001, cannot be blamed for this and maybe no one but Donald Rumsfeld can, but the fact remains that the United States fought a war many of its military leaders thought was unnecessary, unwise, predicated on false assumptions and incompetently managed. Still, no one really spoke up.
Now, some have -- although from retirement. In recent days, three former senior officers have called for Rumsfeld to be sacked. The most recent is Marine Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold, who does not stop at faulting Rumsfeld but blames himself as well. "I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat -- al-Qaeda," he writes in a Time magazine article this month. He joins Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, who commanded the training of Iraqi security forces and who has also called on President Bush to fire Rumsfeld. "President Bush should accept the offer to resign that Mr. Rumsfeld says he has tendered more than once," Eaton wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece.
The third retired general is Anthony Zinni, a four-star Marine with vast experience in the Middle East. (He was Bush's Israeli-Palestinian negotiator for a while.) He goes further than (merely) recommending Rumsfeld's political defenestration. He also strongly suggests that something is broken in the American military, that its priories are misplaced. Too many senior officers put their careers first and candor or honesty second. One who did not, the then-Army chief of staff, Eric K. Shinseki, was rebuked by Rumsfeld and his career essentially ended. After that, the brass knew that the path to promotion was to get with the program. They saluted Rumsfeld and implemented a plan many of them thought was just plain irresponsible.
Zinni would be the first to concede that it is not easy for military men to express their own opinions. Officers have been trained to obey and respect civilian leadership -- and, as history instructs, it's a good thing, too. Moreover, they are inculcated with the virtue of loyalty -- to their superiors and to their service. Even in retirement, most of them are loath to speak up and Zinni, for one, says he has felt the opprobrium of former colleagues. "There are certainly generals out there who don't like me speaking out," Zinni told me.
No American institution can escape blame for the disaster of Iraq -- not Congress, not the CIA and certainly not the media. But the military has both a constitutional duty and a solemn obligation to its troops to be candid with the American people. Yet in testimony before Congress and in statements from the field and elsewhere, all we get are ridiculously optimistic assessments, no calls for more troops and no suggestion that Rumsfeld and Bush were mismanaging the war. The occasional peep of dissent is quickly reversed. From the very sound of it, you would be entitled to think that everything has gone swimmingly in Iraq. Instead, the military has participated in a debacle.

With One Filing, Prosecutor Puts Bush in Spotlight
By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID JOHNSTON
NYT, 10 April 2006
From the early days of the C.I.A. leak investigation in 2003, the Bush White House has insisted there was no effort to discredit Joseph C. Wilson IV, the man who emerged as the most damaging critic of the administration's case that Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear weapons.
But now White House officials, and specifically President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, have been pitched back into the center of the nearly three-year controversy, this time because of a prosecutor's court filing in the case that asserts there was "a strong desire by many, including multiple people in the White House," to undermine Mr. Wilson.
The new assertions by the special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, have put administration officials on the spot in a way they have not been for months, as attention in the leak case seems to be shifting away from the White House to the pretrial procedural skirmishing in the perjury and obstruction charges against Mr. Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr.
Mr. Fitzgerald's filing talks not of an effort to level with Americans but of "a plan to discredit, punish or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson." It concludes, "It is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish Wilson.' "
With more filings expected from Mr. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor's work has the potential to keep the focus on Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney at a time when the president is struggling with his lowest approval ratings since he took office.
Even on Monday, Mr. Bush found himself in an uncomfortable spot during an appearance at a Johns Hopkins University campus in Washington, when a student asked him to address Mr. Fitzgerald's assertion that the White House was seeking to retaliate against Mr. Wilson.
Mr. Bush stumbled as he began his response before settling on an answer that sidestepped the question.

All the President's Leaks
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Washington Post, 11 April 2006
What's amazing about the defenses offered for President Bush in the Valerie Plame leak investigation is that they deal with absolutely everything except the central issue: Did Bush know a lot more about this case than he let on before the 2004 elections?
But first, let's offer full credit to the Bush spin operation for working so hard and so effectively to change the subject.
The news was the court filing by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald reporting that Bush, through Vice President Cheney, had authorized I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to leak sensitive intelligence information in July 2003 to discredit claims made by former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.
Wilson had fired a direct shot at the White House's rationale for the war in Iraq by saying the administration had distorted intelligence concerning Saddam Hussein's supposed efforts to obtain nuclear materials. The threat that Hussein might go nuclear was an emotional centerpiece of the administration's case for war. Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's national security adviser, made the case with great dramatic effect on Sept. 8, 2002: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
The president's defenders want you to think that when it comes to leaking, every president does it. Why should Bush be held to a different standard? Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) told CNN on Sunday that the Bush administration was innocently asking itself, "How do we get the full story out there?"
Besides, since the president can authorize the declassification of anything he chooses to declassify, he can't be involved in anything untoward. "This was not a leak," Joseph diGenova, a top Republican lawyer, told the New York Sun's Josh Gerstein. "This was an authorized disclosure." Ah, yes, it depends on what the meaning of the word "leak" is. That sounds familiar, doesn't it?
These arguments merely distract attention from why Fitzgerald's disclosure was so important. When a fuss was kicked up in the fall of 2003 about the leaking of the name of Wilson's wife, former CIA operative Valerie Plame, to the media earlier in the year, the president spoke and acted as if he knew nothing and was incensed that any leaking was going on in his administration.
In its issue of Oct. 13, 2003, Time magazine quoted Bush as saying: "Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information." Then the magazine's writers made an observation that turns out to be prescient: "Bush," they wrote, "seemed to emphasize those last two words as if hanging on to a legal life preserver in choppy seas."
The key words here are classified information. Did Bush at the time he made that statement know perfectly well that Cheney and Libby were involved with the leak, but that it didn't involve "classified information" because the president himself had authorized them to act? Talk about a legalistic defense.
Could it be that Bush -- heading into what he knew would be a difficult election -- was creating the impression of wanting the full story out when he already knew what most of the story was?
Which leads to another question: What exactly did Attorney General John Ashcroft know when he recused himself from the leak investigation? Did he know the investigation was getting dangerously close to Bush, Cheney, Libby and White House senior political adviser Karl Rove?

Blowing Cheney's Cover
Ray McGovern
TomPaine.com, 10 April 2006
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. A 27-year veteran of the CIA, he is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
When you invest so much effort into tangling the web—in this case, corrupting intelligence analysis in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq—it becomes hard to know when to stop. Vice President Dick Cheney went to inordinate lengths, including 10 visits to CIA headquarters, to ensure that that crucial NIE on weapons of mass destruction was alarmist enough to scare Congress into authorizing war. And when the evidence turned out to be flimsy, Cheney had a back-up plan: The CIA made me do it.
Ever since their exaggerated claims about Iraq’s possession of WMD turned out to be baseless, the Bush administration’s defense has rested on blaming the government’s intelligence analysts. But one of the great revelations from Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s court filing last week is more evidence that the White House—not the CIA—distorted intelligence on Iraq. It was then-chief of staff I. Lewis Libby, acting on orders from Cheney, who presented evidence of Iraq seeking nuclear weapons material to reporters as a “key judgment” from the NIE, when in fact it was a subject of debate in the intelligence community.

Records Show People in Election Phone Jamming Called White House
By Larry Margasak,
AP via Boston Globe via TPM Muckraker, 10 April 2006
Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.
The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 -- as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.
The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was "preposterous" to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.
The Justice Department has secured three convictions in the case but hasn't accused any White House or national Republican officials of wrongdoing, nor made any allegations suggesting party officials outside of New Hampshire were involved. The phone records of calls to the White House were exhibits in Tobin's trial but prosecutors did not make them part of their case.
Democrats plan to ask a federal judge Tuesday to order GOP and White House officials to answer questions about the phone jamming in a civil lawsuit alleging voter fraud.
Repeated hang-up calls that jammed telephone lines at a Democratic get-out-the-vote center occurred in a Senate race in which Republican John Sununu defeated Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, 51 percent to 46 percent, on Nov. 5, 2002.
Besides the conviction of Tobin, the Republicans' New England regional director, prosecutors negotiated two plea bargains: one with a New Hampshire Republican Party official and another with the owner of a telemarketing firm involved in the scheme. The owner of the subcontractor firm whose employees made the hang-up calls is under indictment.
The phone records show that most calls to the White House were from Tobin, who became President Bush's presidential campaign chairman for the New England region in 2004. Other calls from New Hampshire senatorial campaign offices to the White House could have been made by a number of people.

DeLay Can Get Pension As Soon As He Resigns
He is eligible for $67,000 a year, which would be unaffected by state convictions
By SAMANTHA LEVINE
Houston Chronicle via TPM Muckraker, 7 April 2006
When he resigns in a few months, U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay immediately will be eligible for a congressional pension of nearly $67,000 a year.
The Sugar Land Republican, who will turn 59 on Saturday, would get a total of about $1.3 million in pension payouts in the next 20 years alone. DeLay also will be eligible to participate in the health plan available to all federal retirees.
His pension would be unaffected by any conviction on the campaign finance charges he faces in Travis County or any charges rising from the congressional lobbying scandal in which two of his former aides, and former ally and lobbyist Jack Abramoff, have pleaded guilty.

Across the U.S., `We Are America'
Immigrants and their supporters call for dignified treatment and, above all, legalization. Some recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
By Maura Reynolds and Faye Fiore
LA Times, 11 April 2006
Legal and illegal, carrying signs in English and Spanish, hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their supporters took to the streets Monday in the nation's capital and in dozens of cities around the country, spreading a sea of white T-shirts and American flags across city parks and TV screens in an effort to persuade lawmakers to grant foreign-born workers more rights.
Chanting, "Sí, se puede" — "Yes, we can" — and carrying signs declaring, "We Are America," marchers at the centerpiece rally on the National Mall in Washington said they hoped to send a message to Congress and the rest of the country that they wanted to be a part of the nation where they work.
"We came here to protest. They want to pass a law to treat immigrants like terrorists," said Gilberto Castro, 34, who came to the U.S. illegally in 1998, obtained a work permit and now makes a living selling vitamins. "I would like other people to have the same opportunity, like amnesty, for other people to get their papers."
Organizers said the Washington rally drew 500,000 protesters, though others said the crowd was much smaller.
The demonstrations across the nation were a culmination of a growing immigrant rights movement that began last month in response to House legislation passed in December that would make it a felony to be in the United States without a valid visa or to aid anyone who was.
Some rallies in recent weeks appeared to backfire, with Republican lawmakers and others complaining that marchers carried more Mexican flags than American, suggesting that immigrants did not want to integrate into U.S. society.
By contrast, organizers of Monday's demonstrations appeared to make special efforts to lead recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance and to discourage marchers from carrying flags from other countries, for example — to send the message that immigrants wanted to be Americans.
In most places, American flags dominated the crowds, although a sprinkling of flags of other countries, including Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras, was visible. The marchers wore white T-shirts, they said, as a sign of peace.

10 April 2006

Democracy in the Arab World, a U.S. Goal, Falters
By HASSAN M. FATTAH
NYT, 10 April 2006
Steps toward democracy in the Arab world, a crucial American goal that just months ago was cause for optimism — with elections held in Iraq, Egypt and the Palestinian areas — are slowing, blocked by legal maneuvers and official changes of heart throughout the Middle East.
Analysts and officials say the political rise of Islamists, the chaos in Iraq, the newfound Shiite power in Iraq with its implication for growing Iranian influence, and the sense among some rulers that they can wait out the end of the Bush administration have put the brakes on democratization.
"It feels like everything is going back to the bad old days, as if we never went through any changes at all," said Sulaiman al-Hattlan, editor in chief of Forbes Arabia and a prominent Saudi columnist and advocate. "Everyone is convinced now that there was no serious or genuine belief in change from the governments. It was just a reaction to pressure by the international media and the U.S."
In Egypt, the government of President Hosni Mubarak, which allowed a contested presidential election last year, has delayed municipal elections by two years after the Muslim Brotherhood made big gains in parliamentary elections late last year, despite the government's violent efforts to stop the group's supporters.
In Jordan, where King Abdullah II has made political change and democratization a mandate, reformers see their hand weakened, with a document advocating change put on the back burner. Plans for parliamentary elections in Qatar were postponed again, to 2007, while advocacy groups say that laws regulating the emergence of nongovernmental organizations have stymied their development.
In Yemen, the government has cracked down on the news media ahead of presidential elections later this year, intimidating journalists who had been considered overcritical of the government.
In Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah has refused calls that the country's consultative council be elected, while the arrest last month of Muhsin al-Awaji, a government critic, raised questions about how far the country's newfound openness would go. And in Syria, promises for reforms have been followed by a harsh crackdown on the opposition.
Administration officials do not deny that there have been setbacks in the promotion of democracy in the Middle East, but say that recent negative trends do not discredit their approach.

Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi
Jordanian Painted As Foreign Threat To Iraq's Stability
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post, 10 April 2006
The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program. The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The documents state that the U.S. campaign aims to turn Iraqis against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, by playing on their perceived dislike of foreigners. U.S. authorities claim some success with that effort, noting that some tribal Iraqi insurgents have attacked Zarqawi loyalists.
For the past two years, U.S. military leaders have been using Iraqi media and other outlets in Baghdad to publicize Zarqawi's role in the insurgency. The documents explicitly list the "U.S. Home Audience" as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.
Some senior intelligence officers believe Zarqawi's role may have been overemphasized by the propaganda campaign, which has included leaflets, radio and television broadcasts, Internet postings and at least one leak to an American journalist. Although Zarqawi and other foreign insurgents in Iraq have conducted deadly bombing attacks, they remain "a very small part of the actual numbers," Col. Derek Harvey, who served as a military intelligence officer in Iraq and then was one of the top officers handling Iraq intelligence issues on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an Army meeting at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., last summer.
In a transcript of the meeting, Harvey said, "Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will -- made him more important than he really is, in some ways."
"The long-term threat is not Zarqawi or religious extremists, but these former regime types and their friends," said Harvey, who did not return phone calls seeking comment on his remarks.

How Predictions for Iraq Came True
By John Simpson
BBC via Informed Comment, 9 April 2006
It was a few weeks before the invasion of Iraq, three years ago. I was interviewing the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, in the ballroom of a big hotel in Cairo.
Shrewd, amusing, bulky in his superb white robes, he described to me all the disasters he was certain would follow the invasion.
The US and British troops would be bogged down in Iraq for years. There would be civil war between Sunnis and Shias. The real beneficiary would be the government in Iran.
"And what do the Americans say when you tell them this," I asked? "They don't even listen," he said.
...Everything in Iraq changed in April 2004, with the American onslaught on Falluja. The town is small, but it took a long time to subdue - and it never has been subdued entirely. The ferocity of the American attack angered a broad swathe of Iraqi opinion.
At the same time, against the advice of many Iraqi politicians, the Americans also took on the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
After that, the towns and cities of central Iraq became markedly more dangerous. We started hearing more of the American acronym IED, or improvised explosive device (it simply means a bomb).

Iraq in 'Undeclared Civil War'
By MARIAM FAM
Guardian, 9 April 2006
A car bomb killed six people Saturday near a Shiite shrine south of Baghdad, and the death toll from the deadliest attack of the year rose to nearly 90. A senior official warned Iraq was in an ``undeclared civil war'' that can be curbed only by a strong government and greater powers for security services.
With sectarian tensions rising, U.S. Marines on Saturday beat back the largest attack in weeks by Sunni Arab insurgents in the western city of Ramadi - another sign of the crisis facing this country three years after Baghdad fell to U.S. forces.
The car bomb exploded at a small shrine in the Euphrates River town of Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad. Police said most of the six dead and 14 wounded were Shiite pilgrims visiting the shrine.
Fears of more attacks are running high in Shiite areas following the Thursday car bombing that killed 10 in the Shiite holy city of Najaf and the suicide attack the following day against a Shiite mosque in Baghdad - the deadliest attack in Iraq this year.
The attacks on houses of worship have stoked tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, especially after the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, an act that triggered reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques and clerics.
Despite the violence, U.S. officials have discounted talk of civil war. However, a senior Iraqi official said Saturday that an ``undeclared civil war'' had already been raging for more than a year.
``Is there a civil war? Yes, there is an undeclared civil war that has been there for a year or more,'' Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal told The Associated Press. ``All these bodies that are discovered in Baghdad, the slaughter of pilgrims heading to holy sites, the explosions, the destruction, the attacks against the mosques are all part of this.''
Kamal said the country would still be spared from all-out sectarian war ``if a strong government is formed, if the security forces are given wide powers and if they are able to defeat the terrorists.''
``Then we might be able to overcome this crisis,'' he said.
The death toll from the Friday bombing of the Buratha mosque in north Baghdad rose to 85 because some of the wounded died, Dr. Riyadh Abdul Ameer of the Health Ministry said. Officials said the death toll could rise because of severe injuries among the 156 people wounded in the attack by suicide bombers, including one dressed as a woman.
Also Saturday, Sunni insurgents launched their strongest attack in six weeks against the Anbar provincial government headquarters in Ramadi, 75 miles west of Baghdad. There were no U.S. casualties, Marines said.
A U.S. Air Force F-18 fighter bombed insurgent positions, unleashing thunderous explosions that shook the city. U.S. Marines guarding the government headquarters fought back with anti-tank rockets, machine guns and small arms fire.
Sporadic shooting occurred around the government building after sunset, and an Iraqi soldier was killed Saturday in a separate fight in Ramadi, U.S. officials said. Three Iraqi soldiers were wounded in a clash with insurgents in Fallujah, about 30 miles east of Ramadi, police said.
The U.S. military reported Saturday that a U.S. Marine died from wounds suffered in hostile action the day before in Anbar province but gave no further details.
The New York Times reported in its online edition Saturday that an internal staff report by the U.S. Embassy and the military command rated overall stability of six of Iraq's 18 provinces ``serious'' and one ``critical.'' The report was dated Jan. 31, the Times said.
SEE ALSO:
Iraq is in Midst of Civil War: Saudi FM
ZeeNews.com via Informed Comment, 9 April 2006
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said today that the violence in Iraq could only be described as a civil war and Arab states should try to bring Iraqis together to stop the strife.
"The definition of civil war is that the people (of a country) are fighting each other ... I don't know what we can call (what is happening) in Iraq except a civil war," he told reporters.
Prince Saud's remarks came a day after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned that Iraq was in the throes of a civil war that threatened the Middle East, comments that sparked anger in Iraq and Iran.
"This what we hope to overcome by having an effort undertaken by the Arab League to bring Iraqi sides together in the hope of halting this war, which can only bring calamities to the Iraqi people and disaster for the region," Prince Saud said.
But only "Iraqis themselves can stop this fighting," he added during the joint news conference with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos who is accompanying the King of Spain on a visit to Saudi Arabia.
A wave of sectarian violence pitting Sunni Muslims against Shiites has left hundreds dead in Iraq since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad, on February 22.

Third Retired General Wants Rumsfeld Out
By THOM SHANKER
NYT, 10 April 2006
The three-star Marine Corps general who was the military's top operations officer before the invasion of Iraq expressed regret, in an essay published Sunday, that he did not more energetically question those who had ordered the nation to war. He also urged active-duty officers to speak out now if they had doubts about the war.
Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, who retired in late 2002, also called for replacing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and "many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach." He is the third retired senior officer in recent weeks to demand that Mr. Rumsfeld step down.
In the essay, in this week's issue of Time magazine, General Newbold wrote, "I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat — Al Qaeda."
The decision to invade Iraq, he wrote, "was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions — or bury the results."
Though some active-duty officers will say in private that they disagree with Mr. Rumsfeld's handling of Iraq, none have spoken out publicly. They attribute their silence to respect for civilian control of the military, as set in the Constitution — but some also say they know it would be professional suicide to speak up.
"The officer corps is willing to sacrifice their lives for their country, but not their careers," said one combat veteran who says the Pentagon's civilian leadership made serious mistakes in Iraq, but has declined to voice his concerns for attribution.
Many officers who served in Iraq also say privately that regardless of flawed war planning or early mistakes by civilian and military officers, the American public would hold the current officer corps responsible for failure in Iraq. These officers do not want to discuss doubts about the mission publicly now. General Newbold acknowledged these issues, saying he decided to go public only after "the encouragement of some still in positions of military leadership" and in order to "offer a challenge to those still in uniform."
A leader's responsibility "is to give voice to those who can't — or don't have the opportunity to — speak," General Newbold wrote. "Enlisted members of the armed forces swear their oath to those appointed over them; an officer swears an oath not to a person but to the Constitution. The distinction is important."

Young Officers Leaving Army at a High Rate
By THOM SHANKER
NYT, 10 April 2006
Young Army officers, including growing numbers of captains who leave as soon as their initial commitment is fulfilled, are bailing out of active-duty service at rates that have alarmed senior officers. Last year, more than a third of the West Point class of 2000 left active duty at the earliest possible moment, after completing their five-year obligation.
It was the second year in a row of worsening retention numbers, apparently marking the end of a burst of patriotic fervor during which junior officers chose continued military service at unusually high rates.
Mirroring the problem among West Pointers, graduates of reserve officer training programs at universities are also increasingly leaving the service at the end of the four-year stint in uniform that follows their commissioning.
To entice more to stay, the Army is offering new incentives this year, including a promise of graduate school on Army time and at government expense to newly commissioned officers who agree up front to stay in uniform for three extra years. Other enticements include the choice of an Army job or a pick of a desirable location for a home post.
The incentives resulted in additional three-year commitments from about one-third of all new officers entering active duty in 2006, a number so large that it surprised even the senior officers in charge of the program. But the service's difficulty in retaining current captains has generals worriedly discussing among themselves whether the Army will have the widest choice possible for its next generation of leaders.
The program was begun this year to counter pressures on junior officers to leave active duty, including the draw of high-paying jobs in the private sector; the desires of a spouse for a calmer, civilian quality of life at a time when the officers can be expected to be starting their families; and, for the past two years, the concerns over repeated tours in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Army has had a far more difficult time in its recruiting than the other services, because the ground forces are carrying the heaviest burden of deployments — and injuries and deaths — in the war.

Rumsfeld Comes Out Swinging at Rice Over Iraq
Barbara Ferguson
Arab News, 9 April 2006
Just what a lame duck president does not need — a public spat between his top administration officials over the war in Iraq.
The Defense Department and State Department are involved in yet another power struggle, and this time it’s gone public. Previous Secretary of State Colin Powell quietly stepped down when he realized he was impotent in foreign policy matters — against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his team.
But Condoleezza Rice, current head at state, is not taking Rummie’s jostling in stride.
Evidence of the deepening longstanding tensions over Iraq between state and defense departments were made public and personal last week when Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said, during a radio interview, he didn’t know what Rice was talking about when she recently told a UK think tank that the United States had made “thousands of tactical errors” in its managing of the war in Iraq.
Rumsfeld then all but accused Rice of not being up to the job. Calling the changes in military tactics during the war ‘errors’ reflects her lack of understanding of warfare, he said.
“Why? Because the enemy’s got a brain; the enemy watches what you do and then adjusts to that, so you have to constantly adjust and change your tactics, your techniques and your procedures.”
Then in a direct swipe at Rice, Rumsfeld added: “If someone says that’s a tactical mistake, then I guess it’s a lack of understanding… of what warfare is about.”

Few Parts of Iraq are Stable, Report Finds
By Eric Schmitt and Edward Wong
NYT via Seattle Times via Informed Comment, 9 April 2006
An internal staff report by the U.S. Embassy and military command in Baghdad provides a snapshot of Iraq's political, economic and security situation in each of the 18 provinces, rating overall stability of six provinces "serious," one as "critical" and only three as "stable."
The report is a counterpoint to some recent upbeat public statements by top U.S. politicians and military officials.
In 10 pages of briefing slides, the report, titled "Provincial Stability Assessment," underscores the shift in the nature of the Iraq war three years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Warnings of sectarian and ethnic frictions are raised in many regions, even in provinces generally described as nonviolent by U.S. officials.
There also are alerts about the growing power of Iranian-backed religious Shiite parties, several of which the United States helped put into power, and rival militias in the south. And the authors describe the Arab-Kurdish fault line in the north as a major concern, with the two ethnicities vying for power in violence-strewn Mosul and in Kirkuk, which have oil fields critical to jump-starting economic growth in Iraq.
A copy of the unclassified report — dated Jan. 31, three weeks before the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra triggered reprisals that have killed more than 1,000 Iraqis — was provided to The New York Times by a government official who opposes the way the war is being conducted and said the confidential assessment provided a more realistic gauge of stability in Iraq than recent portrayals by senior military officers.

Senator Says Bush, Cheney Should Explain Leak
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post, 10 April 2006
President Bush and Vice President Cheney need to explain what classified information was authorized to be leaked to reporters in July 2003 and why, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said yesterday.
"I think that there has to be a detailed explanation precisely as to what Vice President Cheney did, what the president said to him, and an explanation from the president as to what he said so that it can be evaluated," Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) said. He was referring to last week's revelation in a court document that Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, testified that Cheney told him Bush approved leaking parts of a classified document about intelligence estimates of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Specter said on "Fox News Sunday" that he had heard yesterday morning about a report, first published by the Associated Press, that a lawyer close to the case said Bush "didn't tell the vice president specifically what to do, but just said get it out."
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Bush Ordered Declassification, Official Says
By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID JOHNSTON
NYT, 10 April 2006
A senior administration official confirmed for the first time on Sunday that President Bush had ordered the declassification of parts of a prewar intelligence report on Iraq in an effort to rebut critics who said the administration had exaggerated the nuclear threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
But the official said that Mr. Bush did not designate Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., or anyone else, to release the information to reporters.
The statement by the official came after the White House had declined to confirm, for three days, Mr. Libby's grand jury testimony that he had been told by Mr. Cheney that Mr. Bush had authorized the disclosure. The official declined to be named, because of an administration policy of not commenting on issues now in court. The disclosure appeared intended to bolster the White House argument that Mr. Bush was acting well within his legal authority when he ordered that key conclusions of the classified National Intelligence Estimate, which was completed in the fall of 2002, should be revealed to make clear that intelligence agencies believed Mr. Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa.
Moreover, the disclosure seemed intended to suggest that Mr. Bush may have played only a peripheral role in the release of the classified material and was uninformed about the specifics — like the effort to dispatch Mr. Libby to discuss the estimate with reporters.
Before the invasion of Iraq, the information from the intelligence report was used by both Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney to bolster their argument that Mr. Hussein posed a threat, and was reconstituting a nuclear program that was dismantled after the 1991 Gulf War.
The explanation offered Sunday left open several questions, including when Mr. Bush acted and whether he did so on the advice or at the request of Mr. Cheney. Still unclear is the nature of the communication between Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. Also unknown is whether Mr. Bush fully realized what information Mr. Cheney planned to disclose through Mr. Libby or was aware of the precise use that Mr. Cheney intended to make of the material.

Political Crackups
What Happens When Governments Don't Work
By Sebastian Mallaby
Washington Post, 10 April 2006
In the fall of 1992, when a different Bush administration was unraveling, Shin Kanemaru ran into a little trouble. Kanemaru was the Tom DeLay of politics in Japan; he was the gruff son of a rural sake maker who became a political kingmaker, and after he got busted for taking money from the mob, gold ingots were discovered under his floorboards. In the ensuing months, two things happened. Japanese politics underwent convulsive shifts -- the ruling party split, then lost its grip on power for the first time in four decades. But Japanese policymaking barely improved. However odious the old crony boss, the alternative proved nearly as imperfect.
Today the signs of a political crackup are all over Washington. Within the administration, the White House chief of staff is going, the Treasury secretary is rumored to be going, and the defense secretary argues publicly with the secretary of state about whether he made "tactical errors" in Iraq. The president's domestic policy has shriveled to pleas for expanded health savings accounts, whose shockingly muddled design speaks volumes about the administration's lack of economic talent. In a mark of desperation, Bush has gone off script to take questions from journalists and citizens. At a forum in North Carolina on Thursday, he confessed that the torture revelations from Abu Ghraib had been "disgraceful."

Yes He Would
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 10 April 2006
"But he wouldn't do that." That sentiment is what made it possible for President Bush to stampede America into the Iraq war and to fend off hard questions about the reasons for that war until after the 2004 election. Many people just didn't want to believe that an American president would deliberately mislead the nation on matters of war and peace.
Now people with contacts in the administration and the military warn that Mr. Bush may be planning another war. The most alarming of the warnings come from Seymour Hersh, the veteran investigative journalist who broke the Abu Ghraib scandal. Writing in The New Yorker, Mr. Hersh suggests that administration officials believe that a bombing campaign could lead to desirable regime change in Iran — and that they refuse to rule out the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
"But he wouldn't do that," say people who think they're being sensible. Given what we now know about the origins of the Iraq war, however, discounting the possibility that Mr. Bush will start another ill-conceived and unnecessary war isn't sensible. It's wishful thinking.
...Why might Mr. Bush want another war? For one thing, Mr. Bush, whose presidency is increasingly defined by the quagmire in Iraq, may believe that he can redeem himself with a new Mission Accomplished moment.
And it's not just Mr. Bush's legacy that's at risk. Current polls suggest that the Democrats could take one or both houses of Congress this November, acquiring the ability to launch investigations backed by subpoena power. This could blow the lid off multiple Bush administration scandals. Political analysts openly suggest that an attack on Iran offers Mr. Bush a way to head off this danger, that an appropriately timed military strike could change the domestic political dynamics.
Does this sound far-fetched? It shouldn't. Given the combination of recklessness and dishonesty Mr. Bush displayed in launching the Iraq war, why should we assume that he wouldn't do it again?

More bad news for the good news people...
Christian Coalition Shrinks as Debt Grows
By Alan Cooperman and Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post, 10 April 2006
In an era when conservative Christians enjoy access and influence throughout the federal government, the organization that fueled their rise has fallen on hard times.
The once-mighty Christian Coalition, founded 17 years ago by the Rev. Pat Robertson as the political fundraising and lobbying engine of the Christian right, is more than $2 million in debt, beset by creditors' lawsuits and struggling to hold on to some of its state chapters.
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Study, in a First, Explains Evolution's Molecular Advance
By KENNETH CHANG
NYT, 9 April 2006
By reconstructing ancient genes from long-extinct animals, scientists have for the first time demonstrated the step-by-step progression of how evolution created a new piece of molecular machinery by reusing and modifying existing parts.
The researchers say the findings, published today in the journal Science, offer a counterargument to doubters of evolution who question how a progression of small changes could produce the intricate mechanisms found in living cells.
"The evolution of complexity is a longstanding issue in evolutionary biology," said Joseph W. Thornton, professor of biology at the University of Oregon and lead author of the paper. "We wanted to understand how this system evolved at the molecular level. There's no scientific controversy over whether this system evolved. The question for scientists is how it evolved, and that's what our study showed."

8-9 April 2006

Suicide Bombers Kill at Least 71 at Shiite Mosque
By EDWARD WONG
NYT, 8 April 2006
Three suicide bombers, including at least one who appeared to be a woman, exploded in a sea of Friday worshipers at the main mosque of the most powerful Shiite political party in Iraq, killing at least 71 people and wounding at least 140.
Shiite and Sunni leaders called for restraint, fearful that the attack would unleash a wave of sectarian violence like the one that left hundreds dead following the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in February.
The attack came as the American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said in an interview with the BBC that if a unified government was not formed soon, a sectarian war could erupt in Iraq and that such a war could engulf the entire Middle East.

For President, First a Leak; Now, a Jam
By SCOTT SHANE
NYT, 8 April 2006
That President Bush authorized an aide to disclose classified intelligence on Iraqi weapons, as asserted in court papers, comes as no shock to official Washington. The leaking of secrets has long been a favored tool of policy debate, political combat and diplomatic one-upmanship.
"We've had leaking of this kind since the administration of George Washington," said Rick Shenkman, a presidential historian at George Mason University.
But the accusation that Mr. Bush, through Vice President Dick Cheney, authorized the aide, I. Lewis Libby Jr., to fight back against critics of the war by discussing a classified prewar intelligence estimate comes at a particularly awkward time for the administration.
And Mr. Libby's account, describing Mr. Bush's approving Mr. Cheney's request in 2003 that Mr. Libby, then the vice president's chief of staff, share reports on Iraqi weapons with a reporter for The New York Times, bares behind-the-scenes details that usually do not emerge until long after an administration has left office.
For months, Mr. Bush and his top aides have campaigned against leaks of classified information as a danger to the nation and as criminal acts. A Washington Post report on secret overseas jails run by the C.I.A. and a New York Times report on domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency have led to criminal investigations, and scores of intelligence officers have been ordered to take polygraph tests.
In that context, the report that the president was himself approving a leak may do serious political damage, said Mr. Shenkman, who has a blog on presidential politics. "It does give the public such a powerful example of hypocrisy that I think it might linger for a while," he said.

Give Rebuilding Lower Priority in Future Wars
By JOEL BRINKLEY
NYT, 8 April 2006
As factions in the Bush administration continue their bitter infighting over the reconstruction program in Iraq, the State Department has produced a draft planning document saying that after any future conflicts, the United States should not immediately begin a major rebuilding program.
Instead, it says, the first priorities should be to establish a secure, stable environment and begin political reconciliation. Otherwise, officials said, Washington and any local government that is formed are likely to suffer major political repercussions by making promises that cannot be kept.
In Iraq, "We set it up to fail," said Andrew S. Natsios, who was director of the United States Agency for International Development until January. He and some White House and State Department officials say they argued early on that a large-scale reconstruction program could never succeed in a hostile environment.

Kerry Sharply Criticizes Bush on Several Fronts
By PATRICK HEALY
NYT, 8 April 2006
Senator John Kerry made a slashing attack on the Bush administration yesterday, comparing it to the faltering government in Iraq and equating its war strategy with its planning for Hurricane Katrina, while also invoking Jesus as he criticized federal Medicaid policy.
Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat and his party's nominee for president in 2004, has been on a political and media blitz as he considers running for the White House again in 2008. In an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Wednesday, Mr. Kerry proposed telling Iraqi leaders to form a unity government by May 15 or the United States military would withdraw.
He spoke by telephone yesterday to a political conference in New York City that was organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton, his friend from when they both ran for president in 2004.
Mr. Kerry, who voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, repeated his deadline proposal and spoke of civil war there as a certainty that will be worse with no effective government.
Iraq served as a thematic framework for the speech, which challenged the administration's ability to manage crises on domestic and international fronts.
"The Bush administration is wondering when Iraq will have a functioning government. I want to know when we're going to have a functioning government," Mr. Kerry said...

Report: FDA Knew About Benzene in Soft Drinks
BY DAVID GOLDSTEIN
Knight Ridder Newspapers, San Jose Mercury News, 7 April 2006
A newly discovered Food and Drug Administration report shows the agency had data at least three years ago that some soft drinks had unsafe levels of cancer-causing benzene.
The Environmental Working Group, a private, nonprofit scientific research organization, found the data recently in a June 2003 FDA report chronicling the level of contaminants and nutrients in food and beverages.
Known as the Total Diet Study, the report shows that between 1995 and 2001, nearly 80 percent of the diet cola that the FDA sampled had benzene levels higher than the limit allowable in drinking water. Among 24 diet cola samples, 19 had levels that were on average four times higher.
The study did not identify brands.
Regular cola and some fruit drinks also showed excessive levels, although the number of samples tested as well as the levels detected in those products was lower.
The old report is significant because the FDA began testing for benzene recently after receiving evidence of unsafe amounts in some soft drinks. Food safety regulators had assumed the problem, which first surfaced in the early 1990s, had long ago been corrected.
"What it all means is the FDA is not being completely straight with the public," said Richard Wiles, the environmental group's senior vice president. "These data are surely available to FDA's scientists and officials. It raises questions about the sincerity of their efforts to keep benzene at safe levels in the food supply."
FDA officials have said there's no cause for alarm over the safety of soft drinks. Though results from current testing have yet to be made public, they said most samples show either very low levels or none at all.
"Everything we know suggests the levels we're getting now are reliable and reflect what is in the marketplace now," said Laura Tarantino, director of the Office of Food Additive Safety. "... The levels overall are very, very low."
Asked why the agency never acted on the 2003 findings, Tarantino said it had been relying on good test results from 1993. "There was just not a real focus on the issue," she said.
Benzene is a common industrial chemical found in gasoline, car exhaust and tobacco smoke. Long-term exposure can cause cancers of the blood, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Incredible Bad Day for Christian Fundamentalists
Fossil Called Missing Link From Sea to Land Animals
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
NYT, 7 April 2006
Scientists have discovered fossils of a 375-million-year-old fish, a large scaly creature not seen before, that they say is a long-sought missing link in the evolution of some fishes from water to a life walking on four limbs on land.
In two reports today in the journal Nature, a team of scientists led by Neil H. Shubin of the University of Chicago say they have uncovered several well-preserved skeletons of the fossil fish in sediments of former streambeds in the Canadian Arctic, 600 miles from the North Pole.
The skeletons have the fins, scales and other attributes of a giant fish, four to nine feet long. But on closer examination, the scientists found telling anatomical traits of a transitional creature, a fish that is still a fish but has changes that anticipate the emergence of land animals — and is thus a predecessor of amphibians, reptiles and dinosaurs, mammals and eventually humans.
In the fishes' forward fins, the scientists found evidence of limbs in the making. There are the beginnings of digits, proto-wrists, elbows and shoulders. The fish also had a flat skull resembling a crocodile's, a neck, ribs and other parts that were similar to four-legged land animals known as tetrapods.
Other scientists said that in addition to confirming elements of a major transition in evolution, the fossils were a powerful rebuttal to religious creationists, who have long argued that the absence of such transitional creatures are a serious weakness in Darwin's theory.
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In Ancient Document, Judas, Minus the Betrayal
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD and LAURIE GOODSTEIN
NYT, 7 April 2006
An early Christian manuscript, including the only known text of the Gospel of Judas, has surfaced after 1,700 years, and it portrays Judas Iscariot not as a betrayer of Jesus but as his favored disciple and willing collaborator.
In this text, scholars reported yesterday, the account of events leading to the Crucifixion differs sharply from the four gospels in the New Testament. Here Jesus is said to entrust Judas with special knowledge and ask him to betray him to the Roman authorities. By doing so, he tells Judas, "you will exceed" the other disciples.
"You will be cursed by the other generations, and you will come to rule over them," Jesus confides to Judas in the document, which was made public at a news conference at the National Geographic Society in Washington.
Though some theologians have hypothesized the "good Judas" before, scholars who have translated and studied the text said this was the first time an ancient document lent specific support to a revised image of the man whose name in history has been synonymous with treachery.