From American Progress:
Think Fast....
The U.S. military believes it has dealt a "devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq" in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a "declaration of victory" over the group. "I think it would be premature at this point," a senior intelligence official said of a victory declaration over AQI.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is sticking up for Donald Rumsfeld in a battle with students and professors at Stanford University. "Universities ought to be places where all views are welcomed," Rice told ABC News. "Stanford has always been a place that has been able to tolerate many different views."
"As the chief federal trial judge in Manhattan, Michael Mukasey approved secret warrants allowing government roundups of Muslims in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks." Confirmation hearings are set to begin on Wednesday, and detentions are likely to be a "hot topic."
On Friday, Justice Department officials indicated that they may hold "new hearings for some" Guantanamo Bay "detainees to decide whether they are being properly held." Lawyers for detainees say the move may be "a 'massive' repeat of the military's combatant-status hearings originally held in 2004 and 2005."
A new study by the Women's Campaign Forum finds that the number of top women aides on Capitol Hill is rising. The study found "that 23 percent of top Senate staffers and 31 percent of top aides in the House are women, compared with 16 percent of Senators who are women and 17 percent of House Members."
The Food and Drug Administration is "moving with unprecedented speed to launch a drug research center to be paid for by companies it regulates." Its goal is to "streamline and improve the development of drugs and medical devices, a goal long sought by regulators and the biggest players in the industry."
And finally: On Saturday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice turned down the chance to "show off her ice-skating talents" during a visit to a rink in Russia. "There is this theory that ice skating is like riding a bicycle: you just get back on it, you immediately know how to do it," she said. "I'm not going to take that chance -- just in case it's not true!" Rice was a competitive ice skater between the ages of 12 and 17, but hasn't skated for the past 10 years.
Wrap...
Monday, October 15, 2007
Spying on us....
From Secrecy News:
IMPLEMENTING DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE
Upon lawful request and for a thousand dollars, Comcast, one of the
nation's leading telecommunications companies, will intercept its
customers' communications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act.
The cost for performing any FISA surveillance "requiring deployment of
an intercept device" is $1,000.00 for the "initial start-up fee
(including the first month of intercept service)," according to a newly
disclosed Comcast Handbook for Law Enforcement.
Thereafter, the surveillance fee goes down to "$750.00 per month for
each subsequent month in which the original [FISA] order or any
extensions of the original order are active."
With respect to surveillance policy, the Comcast manual hews closely to
the letter of the law, as one would hope and expect.
"If your [FISA intercept] request pertains to individuals outside the
U.S., please be sure you have complied with all the requirements in 50
U.S.C. sections 105A and/or 105B," the manual says, referring to
provisions of the Protect America Act that was enacted last month.
"Requests such as these can not be honored after one year and must be
dated prior to February 5, 2008, unless extended by Congress."
Comcast will also comply with disclosure demands presented in the form
of National Security Letters. However, the manual says, "Attention
must be paid to the various court proceedings in which the legal status
of such requests is at issue."
In short, "Comcast will assist law enforcement agencies in their
investigations while protecting subscriber privacy as required by law
and applicable privacy policies."
At the same time, "Comcast reserves the right to respond or object to,
or seek clarification of, any legal requests and treat legal requests
for subscriber information in any manner consistent with applicable
law."
A copy of the manual was obtained by Secrecy News.
See "Comcast Cable Law Enforcement Handbook," September 2007:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/docs/handbook.pdf
The role of telecommunications companies in intelligence surveillance
is under increased scrutiny as the Bush Administration seeks to shield
the companies from any liability associated with their cooperation in
what may be illegal warrantless surveillance.
Also, there are new indications that the unauthorized warrantless
surveillance program pre-dated 9/11. The Rocky Mountain News, the
Washington Post, and others reported allegations that the government
may have penalized Qwest Communications for refusing to participate in
a pre-9/11 National Security Agency surveillance program that the
company believed might be illegal.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/AR2007101202485.html
The Washington Post editorialized yesterday that the telecommunications
companies should indeed be immunized against liability, as the Bush
Administration desires. Even though it is not known exactly what the
companies did, the Post said, they "seem to us to have been acting as
patriotic corporate citizens in a difficult and uncharted environment."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/13/AR2007101301069.html
Writing in Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald disputed that view, arguing that
patriotism lies in compliance with the law, not in mere obedience to
executive authority.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/10/14/rule_of_law/index.html
[Use links above to continue reading]
Wrap...
IMPLEMENTING DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE
Upon lawful request and for a thousand dollars, Comcast, one of the
nation's leading telecommunications companies, will intercept its
customers' communications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act.
The cost for performing any FISA surveillance "requiring deployment of
an intercept device" is $1,000.00 for the "initial start-up fee
(including the first month of intercept service)," according to a newly
disclosed Comcast Handbook for Law Enforcement.
Thereafter, the surveillance fee goes down to "$750.00 per month for
each subsequent month in which the original [FISA] order or any
extensions of the original order are active."
With respect to surveillance policy, the Comcast manual hews closely to
the letter of the law, as one would hope and expect.
"If your [FISA intercept] request pertains to individuals outside the
U.S., please be sure you have complied with all the requirements in 50
U.S.C. sections 105A and/or 105B," the manual says, referring to
provisions of the Protect America Act that was enacted last month.
"Requests such as these can not be honored after one year and must be
dated prior to February 5, 2008, unless extended by Congress."
Comcast will also comply with disclosure demands presented in the form
of National Security Letters. However, the manual says, "Attention
must be paid to the various court proceedings in which the legal status
of such requests is at issue."
In short, "Comcast will assist law enforcement agencies in their
investigations while protecting subscriber privacy as required by law
and applicable privacy policies."
At the same time, "Comcast reserves the right to respond or object to,
or seek clarification of, any legal requests and treat legal requests
for subscriber information in any manner consistent with applicable
law."
A copy of the manual was obtained by Secrecy News.
See "Comcast Cable Law Enforcement Handbook," September 2007:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/docs/handbook.pdf
The role of telecommunications companies in intelligence surveillance
is under increased scrutiny as the Bush Administration seeks to shield
the companies from any liability associated with their cooperation in
what may be illegal warrantless surveillance.
Also, there are new indications that the unauthorized warrantless
surveillance program pre-dated 9/11. The Rocky Mountain News, the
Washington Post, and others reported allegations that the government
may have penalized Qwest Communications for refusing to participate in
a pre-9/11 National Security Agency surveillance program that the
company believed might be illegal.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/AR2007101202485.html
The Washington Post editorialized yesterday that the telecommunications
companies should indeed be immunized against liability, as the Bush
Administration desires. Even though it is not known exactly what the
companies did, the Post said, they "seem to us to have been acting as
patriotic corporate citizens in a difficult and uncharted environment."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/13/AR2007101301069.html
Writing in Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald disputed that view, arguing that
patriotism lies in compliance with the law, not in mere obedience to
executive authority.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/10/14/rule_of_law/index.html
[Use links above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Crisis coming for HIllary Clinton's campaign....
From International Herald Tribune:
Letter from Washington: Hillary Clinton's hold on the reins awaits a severe shake
By Albert R. Hunt Bloomberg NewsPublished: October 14, 2007
WASHINGTON: During the past 15 years, I've been to three small dinners with Hillary Clinton. As expected, her substantive command of whatever the topic was impressive.
More surprising was that each time I came away struck by her ability to charm, and even by her decent sense of humor. So did the others, including a cadre of hack political journalists like myself who attended two of the sessions.
It is surprising because this isn't the Hillary Clinton, the leading presidential candidate for 2008, who most Americans see out on the stump.
Her campaign has been brilliant. It is great at small stuff like bracket scheduling - making sure she or a surrogate appears right before and after a major appearance by an opponent.
It is equally good on big stuff. Eight months ago, Clinton, 59, was bedeviled by the party's antiwar base for her initial support of the Iraq conflict; today it's practically a nonissue.
The Clinton campaign is efficient, effective, disciplined and tough. It also seems to be joyless, humorless and lacking in heart and soul.
A take-no-prisoners, us-versus-them mindset has served her well. She has widened her lead in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination; most polls show her defeating any Republican in the general election.
Still, there is unusual hostility from neutral, and even some ostensibly pro-Clinton, people, and especially in the press. The media has its sights on Hillary, and scrutiny during the next month promises to be more vigorous than the relatively easy ride she has gotten so far.
That naturally happens to a front-runner. It will be with more vehemence in this case because of greater enmity.
It may not matter now. But invariably there will be a crisis - losing the Iowa caucuses, perhaps a general election upheaval, or some cataclysm early in her presidency - and the sharks will be in the water.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/14/america/letter.php?WT.mc_id=newsalert
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Letter from Washington: Hillary Clinton's hold on the reins awaits a severe shake
By Albert R. Hunt Bloomberg NewsPublished: October 14, 2007
WASHINGTON: During the past 15 years, I've been to three small dinners with Hillary Clinton. As expected, her substantive command of whatever the topic was impressive.
More surprising was that each time I came away struck by her ability to charm, and even by her decent sense of humor. So did the others, including a cadre of hack political journalists like myself who attended two of the sessions.
It is surprising because this isn't the Hillary Clinton, the leading presidential candidate for 2008, who most Americans see out on the stump.
Her campaign has been brilliant. It is great at small stuff like bracket scheduling - making sure she or a surrogate appears right before and after a major appearance by an opponent.
It is equally good on big stuff. Eight months ago, Clinton, 59, was bedeviled by the party's antiwar base for her initial support of the Iraq conflict; today it's practically a nonissue.
The Clinton campaign is efficient, effective, disciplined and tough. It also seems to be joyless, humorless and lacking in heart and soul.
A take-no-prisoners, us-versus-them mindset has served her well. She has widened her lead in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination; most polls show her defeating any Republican in the general election.
Still, there is unusual hostility from neutral, and even some ostensibly pro-Clinton, people, and especially in the press. The media has its sights on Hillary, and scrutiny during the next month promises to be more vigorous than the relatively easy ride she has gotten so far.
That naturally happens to a front-runner. It will be with more vehemence in this case because of greater enmity.
It may not matter now. But invariably there will be a crisis - losing the Iowa caucuses, perhaps a general election upheaval, or some cataclysm early in her presidency - and the sharks will be in the water.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/14/america/letter.php?WT.mc_id=newsalert
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Some Bush cronies have brothers....
From Information Clearing House:
By Wajahat Ali
"Isn't it interesting that the same government individual, who has been reported by one investigative committee to have made the initial decision for Blackwater to get its first contract, is the brother of the current State Department Inspector General, who was found, by the same committee, to have intervened in preventing an investigation into Blackwater's illegal activity?"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18546.htm
[Use link to continue reading]
Wrap...
By Wajahat Ali
"Isn't it interesting that the same government individual, who has been reported by one investigative committee to have made the initial decision for Blackwater to get its first contract, is the brother of the current State Department Inspector General, who was found, by the same committee, to have intervened in preventing an investigation into Blackwater's illegal activity?"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18546.htm
[Use link to continue reading]
Wrap...
Friday, October 12, 2007
Blackwater...War Crimes....
From truthout.org :
Blackwater Faces War Crimes Inquiry
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101207C.shtml
Anne Penketh, reporting for The Independent, writes, "The American firm Blackwater USA has been served notice that it faces investigations for war crimes after 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians were killed in a hail of bullets by its security guards in Baghdad."
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Blackwater Faces War Crimes Inquiry
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101207C.shtml
Anne Penketh, reporting for The Independent, writes, "The American firm Blackwater USA has been served notice that it faces investigations for war crimes after 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians were killed in a hail of bullets by its security guards in Baghdad."
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Sharing Intelligence...
From Secrecy News:
INFORMATION SHARING, BY HOOK OR BY CROOK
The disclosure of a clandestine network of U.S. military officers that
diverted classified documents from military agencies and illegally
provided them to law enforcement agencies serves as a vivid reminder
that improved information sharing within the government is a goal that
has still not been achieved.
"Marine Gunnery Sgt. Gary Maziarz said patriotism motivated him to join
a spy ring, smuggle secret files from Camp Pendleton and give them to
law enforcement officers for anti-terrorism work in Southern
California," the San Diego Union-Tribune reported last Saturday.
Sgt. Maziarz and his men acted like Robin Hood in the forest of
national security information, taking classified documents from the
cleared and giving them to the uncleared.
"He knew his group was violating national security laws," the
Union-Tribune reported. "But he said bureaucratic walls erected by the
military and civilian agencies were hampering intelligence sharing and
coordination, making the nation more vulnerable to terrorists."
This is of course a self-serving story, and it doesn't explain the
stolen weapons or steroids found along with the pilfered documents by
military investigators.
But neither is there any evidence so far of espionage on behalf of a
foreign power, or any indication of a financial motive in stealing the
records.
Taken at face value, the rise of the interagency document smugglers
points to a continuing defect in government information policy. It
also suggests that the national security classification system may
break before it bends. In other words, it may fail catastrophically
before it can be substantially reformed.
See "Marine Took Files as Part of Spy Ring" by Rick Rogers, San Diego
Union-Tribune, October 6:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20071006-9999-1n6spies.html
The story was also picked up today by the Los Angeles Times.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-laspy12oct12,0,1983331.story
The failure to achieve optimal information sharing is not in dispute.
"Institutional rules and legacy culture continue to hamper effective
information sharing," a report from the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence admitted yesterday.
"There are outdated policy, customs, and technical constraints on
information access and dissemination that impede the production of
finished products our customers require."
See "500 Day Plan: Integration and Collaboration," Office of Director
of National Intelligence, October 2007:
http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/500-day-plan.pdf
[Use links above to continue reading]
Wrap...
INFORMATION SHARING, BY HOOK OR BY CROOK
The disclosure of a clandestine network of U.S. military officers that
diverted classified documents from military agencies and illegally
provided them to law enforcement agencies serves as a vivid reminder
that improved information sharing within the government is a goal that
has still not been achieved.
"Marine Gunnery Sgt. Gary Maziarz said patriotism motivated him to join
a spy ring, smuggle secret files from Camp Pendleton and give them to
law enforcement officers for anti-terrorism work in Southern
California," the San Diego Union-Tribune reported last Saturday.
Sgt. Maziarz and his men acted like Robin Hood in the forest of
national security information, taking classified documents from the
cleared and giving them to the uncleared.
"He knew his group was violating national security laws," the
Union-Tribune reported. "But he said bureaucratic walls erected by the
military and civilian agencies were hampering intelligence sharing and
coordination, making the nation more vulnerable to terrorists."
This is of course a self-serving story, and it doesn't explain the
stolen weapons or steroids found along with the pilfered documents by
military investigators.
But neither is there any evidence so far of espionage on behalf of a
foreign power, or any indication of a financial motive in stealing the
records.
Taken at face value, the rise of the interagency document smugglers
points to a continuing defect in government information policy. It
also suggests that the national security classification system may
break before it bends. In other words, it may fail catastrophically
before it can be substantially reformed.
See "Marine Took Files as Part of Spy Ring" by Rick Rogers, San Diego
Union-Tribune, October 6:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20071006-9999-1n6spies.html
The story was also picked up today by the Los Angeles Times.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-laspy12oct12,0,1983331.story
The failure to achieve optimal information sharing is not in dispute.
"Institutional rules and legacy culture continue to hamper effective
information sharing," a report from the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence admitted yesterday.
"There are outdated policy, customs, and technical constraints on
information access and dissemination that impede the production of
finished products our customers require."
See "500 Day Plan: Integration and Collaboration," Office of Director
of National Intelligence, October 2007:
http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/500-day-plan.pdf
[Use links above to continue reading]
Wrap...
From the richest Americans to Radiohead...
From American Progress:
Think Fast...
The "richest Americans' share of national income has hit a postwar record," with the "wealthiest 1% of Americans earn[ing] 21.2% of all income in 2005, according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service. ... The bottom 50% earned 12.8% of all income, down from 13.4% in 2004."
The New York Times's Paul Krugman covers the right-wing smear of Graeme Frost and his family, calling it "a perfect illustration of the modern right-wing political machine at work, and in particular its routine reliance on character assassination in place of honest debate."
"A comprehensive global study of abortion has concluded that abortion rates are similar in countries where it is legal and those where it is not, suggesting that outlawing the procedure does little to deter women seeking it." Additionally, abortion was found to be more dangerous where it is outlawed.
The ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked a federal judge yesterday to order the White House to preserve tapes used to back up its e-mail system. "The White House is refusing to confirm that they have maintained e-mail going back to the beginning of the administration as they are required by law to do," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW.
In an "unusual" and "unprecedented" move, CIA director Michael Hayden has ordered an "internal inquiry into the work of the agency's inspector general," who has been responsible for "aggressive investigations" of the CIA's detention and interrogation programs.
Time magazine asks, "Who will be punished for Haditha?" While few dispute the fact that "women and children were killed in their homes alongside adult males by U.S. Marines" in Hadith on Nov. 19, 2005, "the likelihood is" that none of the soldiers involved will be charged for murder.
The Sept. 16 shootout in Baghdad by Blackwater guards was a "criminal event," according to a report by the first U.S. soldiers to arrive on the scene. "It had every indication of an excessive shooting," said Lt. Col. Mike Tarsa, who led the troops who responded to the incident.
And finally: Even the White House has noticed Radiohead's new album. Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto is reportedly a "big fan" of the group and plans to download "In Rainbows." National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said that he is "90 percent sure" he has a few Radiohead songs on his iPod, but none from their 2003 album, "Hail to the Thief," which is considered a reference to President Bush.
Wrap...
Think Fast...
The "richest Americans' share of national income has hit a postwar record," with the "wealthiest 1% of Americans earn[ing] 21.2% of all income in 2005, according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service. ... The bottom 50% earned 12.8% of all income, down from 13.4% in 2004."
The New York Times's Paul Krugman covers the right-wing smear of Graeme Frost and his family, calling it "a perfect illustration of the modern right-wing political machine at work, and in particular its routine reliance on character assassination in place of honest debate."
"A comprehensive global study of abortion has concluded that abortion rates are similar in countries where it is legal and those where it is not, suggesting that outlawing the procedure does little to deter women seeking it." Additionally, abortion was found to be more dangerous where it is outlawed.
The ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked a federal judge yesterday to order the White House to preserve tapes used to back up its e-mail system. "The White House is refusing to confirm that they have maintained e-mail going back to the beginning of the administration as they are required by law to do," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW.
In an "unusual" and "unprecedented" move, CIA director Michael Hayden has ordered an "internal inquiry into the work of the agency's inspector general," who has been responsible for "aggressive investigations" of the CIA's detention and interrogation programs.
Time magazine asks, "Who will be punished for Haditha?" While few dispute the fact that "women and children were killed in their homes alongside adult males by U.S. Marines" in Hadith on Nov. 19, 2005, "the likelihood is" that none of the soldiers involved will be charged for murder.
The Sept. 16 shootout in Baghdad by Blackwater guards was a "criminal event," according to a report by the first U.S. soldiers to arrive on the scene. "It had every indication of an excessive shooting," said Lt. Col. Mike Tarsa, who led the troops who responded to the incident.
And finally: Even the White House has noticed Radiohead's new album. Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto is reportedly a "big fan" of the group and plans to download "In Rainbows." National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said that he is "90 percent sure" he has a few Radiohead songs on his iPod, but none from their 2003 album, "Hail to the Thief," which is considered a reference to President Bush.
Wrap...
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Intel Contractors...can't do without them now...
From Secrecy News:
MANAGING INTELLIGENCE CONTRACTORS
For better or worse, contractors are now an indispensable part of the
U.S. intelligence workforce, and greater attention is needed to manage
them effectively, argues a recent study by a military intelligence
analyst.
The author presents criteria for evaluating contractor support to
various intelligence functions, and applies them in a series of case
studies.
"This study assesses the value of current commercial activities used
within DoD elements of the Intelligence Community, particularly dealing
with operational functions such as analysis, collection management,
document exploitation, interrogation, production, and linguistic
support."
In the best case, interactions with contractors can serve as a spur
towards modernization of the intelligence bureaucracy itself, suggests
the author, Glenn R. Voelz, a U.S. Army Major.
"Collaborative effort with nongovernmental entities offers a powerful
mechanism to diversify and strengthen the IC's collection and
analytical capabilities, but to fully realize the benefit of these
resources the management and oversight of commercial providers must
become a core competency for all intelligence organizations."
A copy of the study, published by the Joint Military Intelligence
College, was obtained by Secrecy News.
See "Managing the Private Spies: The Use of Commercial Augmentation for
Intelligence Operations" by Maj. Glenn J. Voelz, Joint Military
Intelligence College, June 2006:
http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/voelz.pdf
Also on the general subject of contractors, there is a January 2003
U.S. Army Field Manual entitled "Contractors on the Battlefield," FM
3-100.21:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-100-21.pdf
Among the more or less successful intelligence collaborations with
industry that were examined by Maj. Voelz, there is nothing quite like
the Bush Administration's use of telephone companies to support the
warrantless interception of domestic communications, a probable
violation of the law for which the Administration is now urgently
seeking retroactive immunity.
[Use links above to continue reading]
Wrap...
MANAGING INTELLIGENCE CONTRACTORS
For better or worse, contractors are now an indispensable part of the
U.S. intelligence workforce, and greater attention is needed to manage
them effectively, argues a recent study by a military intelligence
analyst.
The author presents criteria for evaluating contractor support to
various intelligence functions, and applies them in a series of case
studies.
"This study assesses the value of current commercial activities used
within DoD elements of the Intelligence Community, particularly dealing
with operational functions such as analysis, collection management,
document exploitation, interrogation, production, and linguistic
support."
In the best case, interactions with contractors can serve as a spur
towards modernization of the intelligence bureaucracy itself, suggests
the author, Glenn R. Voelz, a U.S. Army Major.
"Collaborative effort with nongovernmental entities offers a powerful
mechanism to diversify and strengthen the IC's collection and
analytical capabilities, but to fully realize the benefit of these
resources the management and oversight of commercial providers must
become a core competency for all intelligence organizations."
A copy of the study, published by the Joint Military Intelligence
College, was obtained by Secrecy News.
See "Managing the Private Spies: The Use of Commercial Augmentation for
Intelligence Operations" by Maj. Glenn J. Voelz, Joint Military
Intelligence College, June 2006:
http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/voelz.pdf
Also on the general subject of contractors, there is a January 2003
U.S. Army Field Manual entitled "Contractors on the Battlefield," FM
3-100.21:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-100-21.pdf
Among the more or less successful intelligence collaborations with
industry that were examined by Maj. Voelz, there is nothing quite like
the Bush Administration's use of telephone companies to support the
warrantless interception of domestic communications, a probable
violation of the law for which the Administration is now urgently
seeking retroactive immunity.
[Use links above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Well, well, well. The truth comes out...FINALLY!!!
Was listening to the Stacey Taylor Show on KLSD AM, San Diego, this morn. The subject of smoking came up and all the laws against it. So Stacey tells the story of 20 years ago when he interviewed the US Surgeon General, Everett Coop, on his show. And of course Coop was raving and ranting about the dangers of smoking...until they stepped outside during a break.
Coop then asked Stacey to never reveal what he was about to tell him, and Stacey promised not to...until now.
Coop told Stacey that 98% of lung cancers were genetic, and not from smoking at all.
So naturally Stacey asked him why he was making such a big deal out of it, and Coop replied, "Because they told me to."
Now comes the latest smoking news:
Passive smoking doesn't cause cancer
Passive smoking doesn't cause cancer - official By Victoria Macdonald, Health Correspondent THE world's leading health organisation has withheld from publication a study which shows that not only might there be no link between passive smoking and lung cancer but that it could even have a protective effect. The astounding results are set to throw wide open the debate on passive smoking health risks. The World Health Organisation, which commissioned the 12-centre, seven-country European study has failed to make the findings public, and has instead produced only a summary of the results in an internal report. Despite repeated approaches, nobody at the WHO headquarters in Geneva would comment on the findings last week. At its International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, which coordinated the study, a spokesman would say only that the full report had been submitted to a science journal and no publication date had been set. The findings are certain to be an embarrassment to the WHO, which has spent years and vast sums on anti-smoking and anti-tobacco campaigns. The study is one of the largest ever to look at the link between passive smoking - or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) - and lung cancer, and had been eagerly awaited by medical experts and campaigning groups. Yet the scientists have found that there was no statistical evidence that passive smoking caused lung cancer. The research compared 650 lung cancer patients with 1,542 healthy people. It looked at people who were married to smokers, worked with smokers, both worked and were married to smokers, and those who grew up with smokers.
http://www.forces.org/articles/files/passive1.htm
NOW they tell us!
Wrap...
Coop then asked Stacey to never reveal what he was about to tell him, and Stacey promised not to...until now.
Coop told Stacey that 98% of lung cancers were genetic, and not from smoking at all.
So naturally Stacey asked him why he was making such a big deal out of it, and Coop replied, "Because they told me to."
Now comes the latest smoking news:
Passive smoking doesn't cause cancer
Passive smoking doesn't cause cancer - official By Victoria Macdonald, Health Correspondent THE world's leading health organisation has withheld from publication a study which shows that not only might there be no link between passive smoking and lung cancer but that it could even have a protective effect. The astounding results are set to throw wide open the debate on passive smoking health risks. The World Health Organisation, which commissioned the 12-centre, seven-country European study has failed to make the findings public, and has instead produced only a summary of the results in an internal report. Despite repeated approaches, nobody at the WHO headquarters in Geneva would comment on the findings last week. At its International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, which coordinated the study, a spokesman would say only that the full report had been submitted to a science journal and no publication date had been set. The findings are certain to be an embarrassment to the WHO, which has spent years and vast sums on anti-smoking and anti-tobacco campaigns. The study is one of the largest ever to look at the link between passive smoking - or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) - and lung cancer, and had been eagerly awaited by medical experts and campaigning groups. Yet the scientists have found that there was no statistical evidence that passive smoking caused lung cancer. The research compared 650 lung cancer patients with 1,542 healthy people. It looked at people who were married to smokers, worked with smokers, both worked and were married to smokers, and those who grew up with smokers.
http://www.forces.org/articles/files/passive1.htm
NOW they tell us!
Wrap...
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Coal mining...This is evil...
From truthout.org :
The Government Sanctioned Blasting of Appalachia
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/101007EC.shtml
Writing for AlterNet.org, Antrim Caskey says, "On a calm, clear morning in the forested mountains of southern West Virginia, 12-year-old Chrystal Gunnoe played outdoors in the green mountain valley where her family has lived for hundreds of years. It was Veterans Day and a school holiday. Chrystal's mother, Maria Gunnoe, 38, was inside when she heard her daughter yell for help."
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
The Government Sanctioned Blasting of Appalachia
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/101007EC.shtml
Writing for AlterNet.org, Antrim Caskey says, "On a calm, clear morning in the forested mountains of southern West Virginia, 12-year-old Chrystal Gunnoe played outdoors in the green mountain valley where her family has lived for hundreds of years. It was Veterans Day and a school holiday. Chrystal's mother, Maria Gunnoe, 38, was inside when she heard her daughter yell for help."
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
All about Security Contractors in Iraq...
From Stratfor:
Security Contractors in Iraq: Tactical -- and Practical -- Considerations
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
As Stratfor CEO George Friedman discussed Oct. 9, some specific geopolitical forces have prompted changes in the structure of the U.S. armed forces -- to the extent that private contractors have become essential to the execution of a sustained military campaign. Indeed, in addition to providing security for diplomats and other high-value personnel, civilian contractors conduct an array of support functions in Iraq, including vehicle maintenance, laundry services and supply and logistics operations.
Beyond the military bureaucracy and the geopolitical processes acting upon it, another set of dynamics is behind the growing use of civilian contractors to protect diplomats in Iraq. These factors include the type and scope of the U.S. diplomatic miss ion in the country; the nature of the insurgency and the specific targeting of diplomats; and the limited resources available to the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service (DSS). Because of these factors, unless the diplomatic mission to Iraq is dramatically changed or reduced, or the U.S. Congress takes action to radically enlarge the DSS, the services of civilian security contractors will be required in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Those contractors provide flexibility in tailoring the force that full-time security officers do not.
Civilians in a War Zone
Although it is not widely recognized, the protection of diplomats in dangerous places is a civilian function and has traditionally been carried out by civilian agents. With rare exceptions, military forces simply do not have the legal mandate or specialized training required to provide daily protection details for diplomats. It is not what soldiers do. A few in the U.S. military do posses s that specialized training, and they could be assigned to the work under the DSS, but with wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, they currently are needed for other duties.
For the U.S. government, then, the civilian entity responsible for protecting diplomatic missions and personnel is the DSS. Although the agency's roots go back to 1916, Congress dramatically increased its size and responsibility, and renamed it the DSS, in 1985 in response to a string of security incidents, including the attacks against the U.S. embassies in Lebanon and Kuwait, and the security debacle over a new embassy building in Moscow. The DSS ranks swelled to more than 1,000 special agents by the late 1980s, though they were cut back to little more than 600 by the late 1990s as part of the State Department's historical cycle of security booms and busts. Following 9/11, DSS funding was again increased, and cur rently there are about 1,400 DSS agents assigned to 159 foreign countries and 25 domestic offices.
The DSS protects more dignitaries than any other agency, including the U.S. Secret Service. Its list of protectees includes the secretary of state, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and the approximately 150 foreign dignitaries who visit the United States each year for events such as the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) session. It also provides hundreds of protective details overseas, many of them operating day in and day out in dangerous locations such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Colombia, the Gaza Strip, Pakistan and nearly every other global hot spot. The DSS also from time to time has been assigned by presidential directives to provide stopgap protection to vulnerable leaders of foreign countries who are in danger of assassination, such as the presidents of Haiti and Afghanista n.
The DSS is charged by U.S. statute with providing this protection to diplomats and diplomatic facilities overseas, and international conventions such as the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations permit civilian agents to provide this kind of security. Because of this, there has never been any question regarding the status or function of DSS special agents. They have never been considered "illegal combatants" because they do not wear military uniforms, even in the many instances when they have provided protection to diplomats traveling in war zones.
Practically, the DSS lacks enough of its own agents to staff all these protective details. Although the highest-profile protective details, such as that on the secretary of state, are staffed exclusively by DSS agents, many details must be augmented by outside personnel. Domestically, some protective details at the UNGA are staffed by a core group of DSS agents that is augmented by deputy U.S. marshals and a gents from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Overseas, local police officers who operate under the supervision of DSS agents often are used.
It is not unusual to see a protective detail comprised of two Americans and eight or 10 Peruvian investigative police officers, or even a detail of 10 Guatemalan national police officers with no DSS agents except on moves to dangerous areas. In some places, including Beirut, the embassy contracts its own local security officers, who then work for the DSS agents. In other places, where it is difficult to find competent and trustworthy local hires, the DSS augments its agents with contractors brought in from the United States. Well before 9/11 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the DSS was using contractors in places such as Gaza to help fill the gaps between its personnel and its protective responsibilities.
Additionally, for decades the DSS has used contract security officers to provide exterior guard se rvices for U.S. diplomatic missions. In fact, contract guards are at nearly every U.S. diplomatic mission in the world. Marine Security Guards also are present at many missions, but they are used only to maintain the integrity of the sensitive portions of the buildings -- the exterior perimeter is protected by contract security guards. Of course, there are far more exterior contract guards (called the "local guard force") at critical threat posts such as Baghdad than there are at quiet posts such as Nassau, Bahamas.
Over the many years that the DSS has used contract guards to help protect facilities and dignitaries, it has never received the level of negative feedback as it has during the current controversy over the Blackwater security firm. In fact, security contractors have been overwhelmingly successful in protecting those placed in their charge, and many times have acted heroically. Much of the current controversy has to do with the size and scope of the contrac tor operations in Iraq, the situation on the ground and, not insignificantly, the political environment in Washington.
The Iraq Situation
With this operational history in mind, then, we turn to Iraq. Unlike Desert Storm in 1991, in which the U.S. military destroyed Iraq's military and command infrastructure and then left the country, the decision this time was to destroy the military infrastructure and effect regime change, but stay and rebuild the nation. Setting aside all the underlying geopolitical issues, the result of this decision was that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has become the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in the world, with some 1,000 Americans working there.
Within a few months of the invasion, however, the insurgents and militants in Iraq made it clear that they would specifically target diplomats serving in the country in order to thwart reconstruction efforts. In August 2003, militants attacked the Jordanian Embassy and the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad with large vehicle bombs. The attack against the U.N building killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N.'s high commissioner for human rights in Iraq. The U.N. headquarters was hit again in September 2003, and the Turkish Embassy was attacked the following month. The U.S. Embassy and diplomats also have been consistently targeted, including by an October 2004 mortar attack that killed DSS Special Agent Ed Seitz and a November 2004 attack that killed American diplomat James Mollen near Baghdad's Green Zone. DSS Agent Stephen Sullivan was killed, along with three security contractors, in a suicide car bombing against an embassy motorcade in Mosul in September 2005. The people being protected by Sullivan and the contractors survived the attack.
And diplomatic targets continue to be atta cked. The Polish ambassador's motorcade was recently attacked, as was the Polish Embassy. (The embassy was moved into the Green Zone this week because of the continuing threat against it.) The Polish ambassador, by the way, also was protected by a detail that included contract security officers, demonstrating that the U.S. government is not the only one using contractors to protect diplomats in Iraq. There also are thousands of foreign nationals working on reconstruction projects in Iraq, and most are protected by private security contractors. The Iraqi government and U.S. military simply cannot keep them safe from the forces targeting them.
In addition to the insurgents and militants who have set their sights on U.S. and foreign diplomats and businesspeople, there are a number of opportunistic criminal gangs that kidnap foreigners and either hold them for ransom or sell them to militants. If the U.S. government wants its policy of rebuilding Iraq to have any chance of success, it needs to keep diplomats -- who, as part of their mission, oversee the contractors working on reconstruction projects -- safe from the criminals and the forces that want to thwart the reconstruction.
Practical motivations aside, keeping diplomats safe in Iraq also has political and public relations dimensions. The kidnappings and deaths of U.S. diplomats are hailed by militants as successes, and at this juncture also could serve to inflame sentiments among Americans opposed to the Bush administration's Iraq policy. Hence, efforts are being made to avoid such scenarios at all costs.
Reality Check
Due to enormity of the current threat and the sheer size and scope of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the DSS currently employs hundreds of contract security officers in the country. Although the recent controversy has sparked some calls for a withdrawal of all security contractors from Iraq, such drastic action is impossible in practical term s. Not only would it require many more DSS agents in Iraq than there are now, it would mean pulling agents from every other diplomatic post and domestic field office in the world. This would include all the agents assigned to critical and high-terrorism-threat posts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Lebanon; all agents assigned to critical crime-threat posts such as Guatemala and Mexico; and those assigned to critical counterintelligence-threat posts such as Beijing and Moscow. The DSS also would have to abandon its other responsibilities, such as programs that investigate passport and visa fraud, which are a critical part of the U.S government's counterterrorism efforts. The DSS' Anti-Terrorism Assistance and Rewards for Justice programs also are important tools in the war on terrorism that would have to be scrapped under such a scenario.
Although the current controversy will not cause the State Department to stop using private contractors, the department has mandated that one DSS agent be included in every protective motorcade.
Since 2003, contractors working for the DSS in Iraq have conducted many successful missions in a very dangerous environment. Motorcades in Iraq are frequently attacked, and the contractors regularly have to deal with an ambiguous opponent who hides in the midst of a population that is also typically heavily armed. At times, they also must confront those heavily armed citizens who are fed up with being inconvenienced by security motorcades. In an environment in which motorcades are attacked by suicide vehicle bombs, aggressive drivers also pose tactical problems because they clearly cannot be allowed to approach the motorcade out of fear that they could be suicide bombers. The nature of insurgent attacks necessitates aggressive rules of engagement.
Contractors also do not have the same support structure as military convoys, so they cannot call for armor support when their convoys are attacked. Although some private outfits do have light aviation support, they do not have the resources of Army aviation or the U.S. Air Force. Given these factors, the contractors have suffered remarkably few losses in Iraq for the number of missions they have conducted.
It is clear that unless the United States changes its policy in Iraq or Congress provides funding for thousands of new special agents, contract security officers will be required to fill the gap between the DSS' responsibilities and its available personnel for the foreseeable future. Even if thousands of agents were hired now to meet the current need in Iraq, the government could be left in a difficult position should the security situation improve or the United States drama tically reduced its presence in the country. Unlike permanent hires, the use of contractors provides the DSS with the flexibility to tailor its force to meet its needs at a specific point in time.
The use of contractors clearly is not without problems, but it also is not without merits.
Wrap...
https://www.stratfor.com/services/freesignup.php
Distribution and Reprints
This report may be distributed or republished with attribution to Strategic Forecasting, Inc. at www.stratfor.com. For media requests, partnership opportunities, or commercial distribution or republication, please contact pr@stratfor.com.
© Copyright 2007 Strategic Forecasting, Inc. All rights reserved.
Security Contractors in Iraq: Tactical -- and Practical -- Considerations
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
As Stratfor CEO George Friedman discussed Oct. 9, some specific geopolitical forces have prompted changes in the structure of the U.S. armed forces -- to the extent that private contractors have become essential to the execution of a sustained military campaign. Indeed, in addition to providing security for diplomats and other high-value personnel, civilian contractors conduct an array of support functions in Iraq, including vehicle maintenance, laundry services and supply and logistics operations.
Beyond the military bureaucracy and the geopolitical processes acting upon it, another set of dynamics is behind the growing use of civilian contractors to protect diplomats in Iraq. These factors include the type and scope of the U.S. diplomatic miss ion in the country; the nature of the insurgency and the specific targeting of diplomats; and the limited resources available to the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service (DSS). Because of these factors, unless the diplomatic mission to Iraq is dramatically changed or reduced, or the U.S. Congress takes action to radically enlarge the DSS, the services of civilian security contractors will be required in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Those contractors provide flexibility in tailoring the force that full-time security officers do not.
Civilians in a War Zone
Although it is not widely recognized, the protection of diplomats in dangerous places is a civilian function and has traditionally been carried out by civilian agents. With rare exceptions, military forces simply do not have the legal mandate or specialized training required to provide daily protection details for diplomats. It is not what soldiers do. A few in the U.S. military do posses s that specialized training, and they could be assigned to the work under the DSS, but with wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, they currently are needed for other duties.
For the U.S. government, then, the civilian entity responsible for protecting diplomatic missions and personnel is the DSS. Although the agency's roots go back to 1916, Congress dramatically increased its size and responsibility, and renamed it the DSS, in 1985 in response to a string of security incidents, including the attacks against the U.S. embassies in Lebanon and Kuwait, and the security debacle over a new embassy building in Moscow. The DSS ranks swelled to more than 1,000 special agents by the late 1980s, though they were cut back to little more than 600 by the late 1990s as part of the State Department's historical cycle of security booms and busts. Following 9/11, DSS funding was again increased, and cur rently there are about 1,400 DSS agents assigned to 159 foreign countries and 25 domestic offices.
The DSS protects more dignitaries than any other agency, including the U.S. Secret Service. Its list of protectees includes the secretary of state, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and the approximately 150 foreign dignitaries who visit the United States each year for events such as the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) session. It also provides hundreds of protective details overseas, many of them operating day in and day out in dangerous locations such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Colombia, the Gaza Strip, Pakistan and nearly every other global hot spot. The DSS also from time to time has been assigned by presidential directives to provide stopgap protection to vulnerable leaders of foreign countries who are in danger of assassination, such as the presidents of Haiti and Afghanista n.
The DSS is charged by U.S. statute with providing this protection to diplomats and diplomatic facilities overseas, and international conventions such as the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations permit civilian agents to provide this kind of security. Because of this, there has never been any question regarding the status or function of DSS special agents. They have never been considered "illegal combatants" because they do not wear military uniforms, even in the many instances when they have provided protection to diplomats traveling in war zones.
Practically, the DSS lacks enough of its own agents to staff all these protective details. Although the highest-profile protective details, such as that on the secretary of state, are staffed exclusively by DSS agents, many details must be augmented by outside personnel. Domestically, some protective details at the UNGA are staffed by a core group of DSS agents that is augmented by deputy U.S. marshals and a gents from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Overseas, local police officers who operate under the supervision of DSS agents often are used.
It is not unusual to see a protective detail comprised of two Americans and eight or 10 Peruvian investigative police officers, or even a detail of 10 Guatemalan national police officers with no DSS agents except on moves to dangerous areas. In some places, including Beirut, the embassy contracts its own local security officers, who then work for the DSS agents. In other places, where it is difficult to find competent and trustworthy local hires, the DSS augments its agents with contractors brought in from the United States. Well before 9/11 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the DSS was using contractors in places such as Gaza to help fill the gaps between its personnel and its protective responsibilities.
Additionally, for decades the DSS has used contract security officers to provide exterior guard se rvices for U.S. diplomatic missions. In fact, contract guards are at nearly every U.S. diplomatic mission in the world. Marine Security Guards also are present at many missions, but they are used only to maintain the integrity of the sensitive portions of the buildings -- the exterior perimeter is protected by contract security guards. Of course, there are far more exterior contract guards (called the "local guard force") at critical threat posts such as Baghdad than there are at quiet posts such as Nassau, Bahamas.
Over the many years that the DSS has used contract guards to help protect facilities and dignitaries, it has never received the level of negative feedback as it has during the current controversy over the Blackwater security firm. In fact, security contractors have been overwhelmingly successful in protecting those placed in their charge, and many times have acted heroically. Much of the current controversy has to do with the size and scope of the contrac tor operations in Iraq, the situation on the ground and, not insignificantly, the political environment in Washington.
The Iraq Situation
With this operational history in mind, then, we turn to Iraq. Unlike Desert Storm in 1991, in which the U.S. military destroyed Iraq's military and command infrastructure and then left the country, the decision this time was to destroy the military infrastructure and effect regime change, but stay and rebuild the nation. Setting aside all the underlying geopolitical issues, the result of this decision was that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has become the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in the world, with some 1,000 Americans working there.
Within a few months of the invasion, however, the insurgents and militants in Iraq made it clear that they would specifically target diplomats serving in the country in order to thwart reconstruction efforts. In August 2003, militants attacked the Jordanian Embassy and the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad with large vehicle bombs. The attack against the U.N building killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N.'s high commissioner for human rights in Iraq. The U.N. headquarters was hit again in September 2003, and the Turkish Embassy was attacked the following month. The U.S. Embassy and diplomats also have been consistently targeted, including by an October 2004 mortar attack that killed DSS Special Agent Ed Seitz and a November 2004 attack that killed American diplomat James Mollen near Baghdad's Green Zone. DSS Agent Stephen Sullivan was killed, along with three security contractors, in a suicide car bombing against an embassy motorcade in Mosul in September 2005. The people being protected by Sullivan and the contractors survived the attack.
And diplomatic targets continue to be atta cked. The Polish ambassador's motorcade was recently attacked, as was the Polish Embassy. (The embassy was moved into the Green Zone this week because of the continuing threat against it.) The Polish ambassador, by the way, also was protected by a detail that included contract security officers, demonstrating that the U.S. government is not the only one using contractors to protect diplomats in Iraq. There also are thousands of foreign nationals working on reconstruction projects in Iraq, and most are protected by private security contractors. The Iraqi government and U.S. military simply cannot keep them safe from the forces targeting them.
In addition to the insurgents and militants who have set their sights on U.S. and foreign diplomats and businesspeople, there are a number of opportunistic criminal gangs that kidnap foreigners and either hold them for ransom or sell them to militants. If the U.S. government wants its policy of rebuilding Iraq to have any chance of success, it needs to keep diplomats -- who, as part of their mission, oversee the contractors working on reconstruction projects -- safe from the criminals and the forces that want to thwart the reconstruction.
Practical motivations aside, keeping diplomats safe in Iraq also has political and public relations dimensions. The kidnappings and deaths of U.S. diplomats are hailed by militants as successes, and at this juncture also could serve to inflame sentiments among Americans opposed to the Bush administration's Iraq policy. Hence, efforts are being made to avoid such scenarios at all costs.
Reality Check
Due to enormity of the current threat and the sheer size and scope of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the DSS currently employs hundreds of contract security officers in the country. Although the recent controversy has sparked some calls for a withdrawal of all security contractors from Iraq, such drastic action is impossible in practical term s. Not only would it require many more DSS agents in Iraq than there are now, it would mean pulling agents from every other diplomatic post and domestic field office in the world. This would include all the agents assigned to critical and high-terrorism-threat posts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Lebanon; all agents assigned to critical crime-threat posts such as Guatemala and Mexico; and those assigned to critical counterintelligence-threat posts such as Beijing and Moscow. The DSS also would have to abandon its other responsibilities, such as programs that investigate passport and visa fraud, which are a critical part of the U.S government's counterterrorism efforts. The DSS' Anti-Terrorism Assistance and Rewards for Justice programs also are important tools in the war on terrorism that would have to be scrapped under such a scenario.
Although the current controversy will not cause the State Department to stop using private contractors, the department has mandated that one DSS agent be included in every protective motorcade.
Since 2003, contractors working for the DSS in Iraq have conducted many successful missions in a very dangerous environment. Motorcades in Iraq are frequently attacked, and the contractors regularly have to deal with an ambiguous opponent who hides in the midst of a population that is also typically heavily armed. At times, they also must confront those heavily armed citizens who are fed up with being inconvenienced by security motorcades. In an environment in which motorcades are attacked by suicide vehicle bombs, aggressive drivers also pose tactical problems because they clearly cannot be allowed to approach the motorcade out of fear that they could be suicide bombers. The nature of insurgent attacks necessitates aggressive rules of engagement.
Contractors also do not have the same support structure as military convoys, so they cannot call for armor support when their convoys are attacked. Although some private outfits do have light aviation support, they do not have the resources of Army aviation or the U.S. Air Force. Given these factors, the contractors have suffered remarkably few losses in Iraq for the number of missions they have conducted.
It is clear that unless the United States changes its policy in Iraq or Congress provides funding for thousands of new special agents, contract security officers will be required to fill the gap between the DSS' responsibilities and its available personnel for the foreseeable future. Even if thousands of agents were hired now to meet the current need in Iraq, the government could be left in a difficult position should the security situation improve or the United States drama tically reduced its presence in the country. Unlike permanent hires, the use of contractors provides the DSS with the flexibility to tailor its force to meet its needs at a specific point in time.
The use of contractors clearly is not without problems, but it also is not without merits.
Wrap...
https://www.stratfor.com/services/freesignup.php
Distribution and Reprints
This report may be distributed or republished with attribution to Strategic Forecasting, Inc. at www.stratfor.com. For media requests, partnership opportunities, or commercial distribution or republication, please contact pr@stratfor.com.
© Copyright 2007 Strategic Forecasting, Inc. All rights reserved.
Make $$$ with Blackwater USA?
From San Diego City Beat:
Good neighbor?
Blackwater keeps its eye on a tiny East County enclave.
By Pat Sherman 10/09/2007
Blackwater USA Vice President Brian Bonfiglio flashed a self-satisfied smile, gazing east across Round Potrero Road where, on Sunday, more than 200 Potrero residents and antiwar activists streamed onto an adjacent parcel of land. They had come-some from as far as Ventura-to protest the 824-acre paramilitary training facility the company hopes to open a mile down the snaky dirt road.
"I don't think the war profiteering signs are appropriate, quite frankly," Bonfiglio said. "At the end of the day, this will be determined as a land-use project by the [San Diego County] Board of Supervisors."
As the public face of the project-dubbed Blackwater West-it's Bonfiglio's job to sell the facility as a non-invasive windfall to the residents of Potrero, a rural hamlet 45 miles east of San Diego. Given his employer's image as a supplier of trigger-happy mercenary armies, unaccountable to neither the Iraqi nor American governments, wooing Potrero's 850 residents has been a dicey game. Five members of the Potrero Planning Board who voted in December to support the project are facing a recall election. Some 320 residents signed a petition opposing the project that was sent to the county Board of Supervisors and Congressman Bob Filner, the Democrat whose district includes Potrero.
Blackwater, whose private security guards are under fire for allegedly gunning down as many as 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad last month, has raked in more than $1 billion for its services in Iraq and Afghanistan since the start of the war.
Yet, the company maintains it's not a mercenary outfit. The Potrero facility, which will include 15 shooting ranges, an ammunition-storage armory, helicopter pad, 2.5-mile driving track and other military trappings, would be used only to train law enforcement and military personnel, Bonfiglio said.
"We will not train Blackwater independent contractors going to places like Iraq and Afghanistan," he said. "It's not in our proposal. We will not have facilities capable of training those people here in San Diego.... We have already discussed it and have made it known [to Filner], although we haven't submitted the letter yet."
Filner, who has introduced legislation requiring that mercenary training facilities be established only on military bases, told CityBeat he doesn't buy it.
"I don't trust whatever they say," Filner said. "I mean, they can be training cops who then become mercenaries.... They're not a good company. They've lied to the American people, they've lied to the state department, lied to the families of people who work for them. Unless it's ironclad, they'll change it the next day."
Communications consultant Terry Stephens, a Potrero resident of 22 years, is running for a seat on the planning board. Stephens said she is less concerned about Blackwater's alleged abuses than she is about the threat to her family's rural lifestyle.
"What we've come out here for is peace and quiet, the midnight skies and just less traffic and a place where you can raise your kids-and Blackwater doesn't fit any of that criteria," Stephens said.
"War from the beginning of time has always been about making money," she added. "Somebody's going to make money off of whatever war they're in. That's not my concern. My concern is my family and my community, and having a training camp, mercenary, pay-for-hire, whatever you want to call it, [in my backyard]."
Though Blackwater has been careful not to make concrete promises, it has intimated that the company would share its copious wealth with the community, as it has done for residents near its Moyock, N.C., training facility. Bonfiglio said Blackwater has provided "millions of dollars" in computers, recycling services, youth sports equipment, college scholarships and rental facilities there.
"We had a young child in Potrero whose mother works two or three jobs," Bonfiglio said. "This girl wrote a wonderful, wonderful essay, but her mother was afraid to take a donation from us, not because of Potrero residents, but outside groups potentially causing her unhappiness."
http://ww2.sdcitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/?id=6234
[ Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Good neighbor?
Blackwater keeps its eye on a tiny East County enclave.
By Pat Sherman 10/09/2007
Blackwater USA Vice President Brian Bonfiglio flashed a self-satisfied smile, gazing east across Round Potrero Road where, on Sunday, more than 200 Potrero residents and antiwar activists streamed onto an adjacent parcel of land. They had come-some from as far as Ventura-to protest the 824-acre paramilitary training facility the company hopes to open a mile down the snaky dirt road.
"I don't think the war profiteering signs are appropriate, quite frankly," Bonfiglio said. "At the end of the day, this will be determined as a land-use project by the [San Diego County] Board of Supervisors."
As the public face of the project-dubbed Blackwater West-it's Bonfiglio's job to sell the facility as a non-invasive windfall to the residents of Potrero, a rural hamlet 45 miles east of San Diego. Given his employer's image as a supplier of trigger-happy mercenary armies, unaccountable to neither the Iraqi nor American governments, wooing Potrero's 850 residents has been a dicey game. Five members of the Potrero Planning Board who voted in December to support the project are facing a recall election. Some 320 residents signed a petition opposing the project that was sent to the county Board of Supervisors and Congressman Bob Filner, the Democrat whose district includes Potrero.
Blackwater, whose private security guards are under fire for allegedly gunning down as many as 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad last month, has raked in more than $1 billion for its services in Iraq and Afghanistan since the start of the war.
Yet, the company maintains it's not a mercenary outfit. The Potrero facility, which will include 15 shooting ranges, an ammunition-storage armory, helicopter pad, 2.5-mile driving track and other military trappings, would be used only to train law enforcement and military personnel, Bonfiglio said.
"We will not train Blackwater independent contractors going to places like Iraq and Afghanistan," he said. "It's not in our proposal. We will not have facilities capable of training those people here in San Diego.... We have already discussed it and have made it known [to Filner], although we haven't submitted the letter yet."
Filner, who has introduced legislation requiring that mercenary training facilities be established only on military bases, told CityBeat he doesn't buy it.
"I don't trust whatever they say," Filner said. "I mean, they can be training cops who then become mercenaries.... They're not a good company. They've lied to the American people, they've lied to the state department, lied to the families of people who work for them. Unless it's ironclad, they'll change it the next day."
Communications consultant Terry Stephens, a Potrero resident of 22 years, is running for a seat on the planning board. Stephens said she is less concerned about Blackwater's alleged abuses than she is about the threat to her family's rural lifestyle.
"What we've come out here for is peace and quiet, the midnight skies and just less traffic and a place where you can raise your kids-and Blackwater doesn't fit any of that criteria," Stephens said.
"War from the beginning of time has always been about making money," she added. "Somebody's going to make money off of whatever war they're in. That's not my concern. My concern is my family and my community, and having a training camp, mercenary, pay-for-hire, whatever you want to call it, [in my backyard]."
Though Blackwater has been careful not to make concrete promises, it has intimated that the company would share its copious wealth with the community, as it has done for residents near its Moyock, N.C., training facility. Bonfiglio said Blackwater has provided "millions of dollars" in computers, recycling services, youth sports equipment, college scholarships and rental facilities there.
"We had a young child in Potrero whose mother works two or three jobs," Bonfiglio said. "This girl wrote a wonderful, wonderful essay, but her mother was afraid to take a donation from us, not because of Potrero residents, but outside groups potentially causing her unhappiness."
http://ww2.sdcitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/?id=6234
[ Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Will Dems bend over again? to Colbert's 1st book...
From American Progress:
Think Fast ....
"Two months after vowing to roll back broad new wiretapping powers won by the Bush administration," the New York Times writes, "Congressional Democrats appear ready to make concessions that could extend some of the key powers granted to the National Security Agency." Glenn Greenwald suggests that "the picture is more complicated and less depressing than this NYT article suggests."
In a new report, the Iraqi government wants the United States to "to sever all contracts in Iraq with Blackwater USA within six months and pay $8 million in compensation to each of the families of 17 people killed when the firm's guards" opened fire in a Baghdad last month. The Iraqis also want the United States to hand over the guards involved in the incident for possible trial in Iraqi court.
Army chief of staff Gen. George Casey said the Army "will need three or four years to recover from the strains of repeated deployments to Iraq even with a planned drawdown of US forces next year."
"Almost 40% of the people displaced from New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina" lived "below the poverty line last year," according to a Census Bureau survey. The survey also found that "nearly a third of those who fled the hurricane could not find jobs last year, and thousands more weren't trying."
President Bush's SCHIP veto has caused "fresh divisions" among Senate Republicans. "Because the president and Republican leaders are not pushing a positive health care agenda, a lot of people are not comfortable opposing anything that has children in it," Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) told Roll Call that the "lack of a forceful positive agenda" has "sort of split our caucus."
"Americans are hearing much less from the Bush administration about democracy for the Middle East than they did a year ago. As Shiite Iran rises, the White House has muted its calls for reform in the region as it redirects policy to reembrace Sunni Arab allies -- who run, to varying degrees, authoritarian regimes."
Six years after 9/11, "the 'war on terror' is failing and instead fueling an increase in support for extremist Islamist movements," according to the Oxford Research Group, a British think tank. The group stated that a "fundamental re-think is required" if al Qaeda is to be rendered ineffective.
And finally: In the introduction of his new book, "I Am America (And So Can You!)," Stephen Colbert writes, "I AM NO FAN OF BOOKS. AND CHANCES ARE, IF YOU'RE READING THIS, YOU AND I SHARE A HEALTHY SKEPTICISM ABOUT THE PRINTED WORD. WELL, I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT THIS IS THE FIRST BOOK I'VE EVER WRITTEN, AND I HOPE IT'S THE FIRST BOOK YOU'VE EVER READ. DON'T MAKE A HABIT OF IT."
Wrap...
Think Fast ....
"Two months after vowing to roll back broad new wiretapping powers won by the Bush administration," the New York Times writes, "Congressional Democrats appear ready to make concessions that could extend some of the key powers granted to the National Security Agency." Glenn Greenwald suggests that "the picture is more complicated and less depressing than this NYT article suggests."
In a new report, the Iraqi government wants the United States to "to sever all contracts in Iraq with Blackwater USA within six months and pay $8 million in compensation to each of the families of 17 people killed when the firm's guards" opened fire in a Baghdad last month. The Iraqis also want the United States to hand over the guards involved in the incident for possible trial in Iraqi court.
Army chief of staff Gen. George Casey said the Army "will need three or four years to recover from the strains of repeated deployments to Iraq even with a planned drawdown of US forces next year."
"Almost 40% of the people displaced from New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina" lived "below the poverty line last year," according to a Census Bureau survey. The survey also found that "nearly a third of those who fled the hurricane could not find jobs last year, and thousands more weren't trying."
President Bush's SCHIP veto has caused "fresh divisions" among Senate Republicans. "Because the president and Republican leaders are not pushing a positive health care agenda, a lot of people are not comfortable opposing anything that has children in it," Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) told Roll Call that the "lack of a forceful positive agenda" has "sort of split our caucus."
"Americans are hearing much less from the Bush administration about democracy for the Middle East than they did a year ago. As Shiite Iran rises, the White House has muted its calls for reform in the region as it redirects policy to reembrace Sunni Arab allies -- who run, to varying degrees, authoritarian regimes."
Six years after 9/11, "the 'war on terror' is failing and instead fueling an increase in support for extremist Islamist movements," according to the Oxford Research Group, a British think tank. The group stated that a "fundamental re-think is required" if al Qaeda is to be rendered ineffective.
And finally: In the introduction of his new book, "I Am America (And So Can You!)," Stephen Colbert writes, "I AM NO FAN OF BOOKS. AND CHANCES ARE, IF YOU'RE READING THIS, YOU AND I SHARE A HEALTHY SKEPTICISM ABOUT THE PRINTED WORD. WELL, I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT THIS IS THE FIRST BOOK I'VE EVER WRITTEN, AND I HOPE IT'S THE FIRST BOOK YOU'VE EVER READ. DON'T MAKE A HABIT OF IT."
Wrap...
Blackwater USA...Halliburton and KBR....
From Stratfor:
https://www.stratfor.com/services/freesignup.php
The Geopolitical Foundations of Blackwater
By George Friedman
For the past three weeks, Blackwater, a private security firm under contract to the U.S. State Department, has been under intense scrutiny over its operations in Iraq. The Blackwater controversy has highlighted the use of civilians for what appears to be combat or near-combat missions in Iraq. Moreover, it has raised two important questions: Who controls these private forces and to whom are they accountable?
The issue is neither unique to Blackwater nor to matters of combat. There have long been questions about the role of Halliburton and its former subsidiary, KBR, in providing support services to the military. The Iraq war has been fought with fewer active-duty troops than might have been expected, and a larger number of contractors relative to the number of troops. But how was the decision made in the first place to use U.S. nongovernmental personnel in a war zone? More important, how has that decision been implemented?
The United States has a long tradition of using private contractors in times of war. For example, it augmented its naval power in the early 19th century by contracting with privateers -- nongovernmental ships -- to carry out missions at sea. During the battle for Wake Island in 1941, U.S. contractors building an airstrip there were trapped by the Japanese fleet, and many fought alongside Marines and naval personnel. During the Civil War, civilians who accompanied the Union and Confederate armies carried out many of the supply functions. So, on one level, there is absolutely nothing new here. This has always been how the United States fights war.
Nevertheless, since before the fall of the Soviet Union, a systematic shift has been taking place in the way the U.S. force structure is designed. This shift, which is rooted both in military policy and in the geopolitical perception that future wars will be fought on a number of levels, made private security contractors such as KBR and Blackwater inevitable. The current situation is the result of three unique processes: the introduction of the professional volunteer military, the change in force structure after the Cold War, and finally the rethinking and redefinition of the term "noncombatant" following the decision to include women in the military, but bar them from direct combat roles.
The introduction of the professional volunteer military caused a rethinking of the role of the soldier, sailor, airman or Marine in the armed forces. Volunteers were part of the military because they chose to be. Unlike draftees, they had other options. During World War II and the first half of the Cold War, the military was built around draftees who were going to serve their required hitch and return to civilian life. Although many were not highly trained, they were quite suited for support roles, from KP to policing the grounds. After all, they already were on the payroll, and new hires were always possible.
In a volunteer army, the troops are expected to remain in the military much longer. Their training is more expensive -- thus their value is higher. Taking trained specialists who are serving at their own pleasure and forcing them to do menial labor over an extended period of time makes little sense either from a utilization or morale point of view. The concept emerged that the military's maintenance work should shift to civilians, and that in many cases the work should be outsourced to contractors. This tendency was reinforced during the Reagan administration, which, given its ideology, supported privatization as a way to make the volunteer army work. The result was a growth in the number of contractors taking over many of the duties that had been performed by soldiers during the years of conscription.
The second impetus was the end of the Cold War and a review carried out by then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin under then-President Bill Clinton. The core argument was that it was irrational to maintain a standing military as large as had existed during the Cold War. Aspin argued for a more intensely technological military, one that would be less dependent on ground troops. The Air Force was key to this, while the Navy was downsized. The main consideration, however, was the structure of the standing Army -- especially when large-scale, high-intensity, long-term warfare no longer seemed a likely scenario.
The U.S. Army's active-duty component, in particular, was reduced. It was assumed that in time of war, components of the Reserves and National Guard would be mobilized, not so much to augment the standing military, but to carry out a range of specialized roles. For example, Civil Affairs, which has proven to be a critical specialization in Iraq and Afghanistan, was made a primary responsibility of the Reserves and National Guard, as were many engineering, military-intelligence and other specializations.
This plan was built around certain geopolitical assumptions. The first was that the United States would not be fighting peer powers. The second was that it had learned from Vietnam not to get involved in open-ended counterinsurgency operations, but to focus, as it did in Kuwait, on missions that were clearly defined and executable with a main force. The last was that wars would be short, use relatively few troops and be carried out in conjunction with allies. From this it followed that regular forces, augmented by Reserve/National Guard specialists called up for short terms, could carry out national strategic requirements.
The third impetus was the struggle to define military combat and noncombat roles. Given the nature of the volunteer force, women were badly needed, yet they were included in the armed forces under the assumption that they could carry out any function apart from direct combat assignments. This caused a forced -- and strained -- redefinition of these two roles. Intelligence officers called to interrogate a prisoner on the battlefield were thought not to be in a combat position. The same bomb, mortar or rocket fire that killed a soldier might hit them too, but since they technically were not charged with shooting back, they were not combat arms. Ironically, in Iraq, one of the most dangerous tasks is traveling on the roads, though moving supplies is not considered a combat mission.
Under the privatization concept, civilians could be hired to carry out noncombat functions. Under the redefinition of noncombat, the area open to contractors covered a lot of territory. Moreover, under the redefinition of the military in the 1990s, the size and structure of the Army in particular was changed so dramatically that it could not carry out most of its functions without the Reserve/Guard component -- and even with that component, the Army was not large enough. Contractors were needed.
Let us now add a fourth push: the CIA. During Vietnam, and again in Afghanistan and Iraq, a good part of the war was prosecuted by CIA personnel not in uniform and not answerable to the military chain of command. There are arguments on both sides for this, but the fact is that U.S. wars -- particularly highly politicized wars such as counterinsurgencies -- are fought with parallel armies, some reporting to the Defense Department, others to the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The battlefield is, if not flooded, at least full of civilians operating outside of the chain of command, and these civilian government employees are encouraged to hire Iraqi or other nationals, as well as to augment their own capabilities with private U.S. contractors.
Blackwater works for the State Department in a capacity defined as noncombat, protecting diplomats and other high-value personnel from assassination. The Army, bogged down in its own operations, lacks the manpower to perform this obviously valuable work. That means that Blackwater and other contract workers are charged with carrying weapons and moving around the battlefield, which is everywhere. They are heavily armed private soldiers carrying out missions that are combat in all but name -- and they are completely outside of the chain of command.
Moreover, in order to be effective, they have to engage in protective intelligence, looking for surveillance by enemy combatants and trying to foresee potential threats. We suspect the CIA could be helpful in this regard, but it would want information in return. In order to perform its job, then, Blackwater entered the economy of intelligence -- information as a commodity to be exchanged. It had to gather some intelligence in order to trade some. As a result, the distinction between combat and support completely broke down.
The important point is that the U.S. military went to war with the Army the country gave it. We recall no great objections to the downsizing of the military in the 1990s, and no criticisms of the concepts that lay behind the new force structure. The volunteer force, downsized because long-term conflicts were not going to occur, supported by the Reserve/Guard and backfilled by civilian contractors, was not a controversial issue. Only tiresome cranks made waves, challenging the idea that wars would be sparse and short. They objected to the redefinition of noncombat roles and said the downsized force would be insufficient for the 21st century.
Blackwater, KBR and all the rest are the direct result of the faulty geopolitical assumptions and the force structure decisions that followed. The primary responsibility rests with the American public, which made best-case assumptions in a worst-case world. Even without Iraq, civilian contractors would have proliferated on the battlefield. With Iraq, they became an enormous force. Perhaps the single greatest strategic error of the Bush administration was not fundamentally re-examining the assumptions about the U.S. Army on Sept. 12, 2001. Clearly Donald Rumsfeld was of the view that the Army was the problem, not the solution. He was not going to push for a larger force and, therefore, as the war expanded, for fewer civilian contractors.
The central problem regarding private security contractors on the battlefield is that their place in the chain of command is not defined. They report to the State Department, not to the Army and Marines that own the battlefield. But who do they take orders from and who defines their mission? Do they operate under the Uniform Code of Military Justice or under some other rule? They are warriors -- it is foolish to think otherwise -- but they do not wear the uniform. The problem with Blackwater stems from having multiple forces fighting for the same side on the same battlefield, with completely different chains of command. Indeed, it is not clear the extent to which the State Department has created a command structure for its contractors, whether it is capable of doing so, or whether the contractors have created their own chain of command.
Blackwater is the logical outcome of a set of erroneous geopolitical conclusions that predate these wars by more than a decade. The United States will be fighting multidivisional, open-ended wars in multiple theaters, and there will be counterinsurgencies. The force created in the 1990s is insufficient, and thus the definition of noncombat specialty has become meaningless. The Reserve/Guard component cannot fill the gap created by strategic errors. The hiring of contractors makes sense and has precedence. But the use of CIA personnel outside the military chain of command creates enough stress. To have private contractors reporting outside the chain of command to government entities not able to command them is the real problem.
A failure that is rooted in the national consensus of the 1990s was compounded by the Bush administration's failure to reshape the military for the realities of the wars it wished to fight. But the final failure was to follow the logic of the civilian contractors through to its end, but not include them in the unified chain of command. In war, the key question must be this: Who gives orders and who takes them? The battlefield is dangerous enough without that question left hanging.
**********************************************************
Tell George what you think
Get your own copy
Distribution and Reprints
This report may be distributed or republished with attribution to Strategic Forecasting, Inc. at www.stratfor.com. For media requests, partnership opportunities, or commercial distribution or republication, please contact pr@stratfor.com.
Newsletter Subscription
To unsubscribe from receiving this free intelligence report, please click here.
© Copyright 2007 Strategic Forecasting, Inc. All rights reserved.
Wrap...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://www.stratfor.com/services/freesignup.php
The Geopolitical Foundations of Blackwater
By George Friedman
For the past three weeks, Blackwater, a private security firm under contract to the U.S. State Department, has been under intense scrutiny over its operations in Iraq. The Blackwater controversy has highlighted the use of civilians for what appears to be combat or near-combat missions in Iraq. Moreover, it has raised two important questions: Who controls these private forces and to whom are they accountable?
The issue is neither unique to Blackwater nor to matters of combat. There have long been questions about the role of Halliburton and its former subsidiary, KBR, in providing support services to the military. The Iraq war has been fought with fewer active-duty troops than might have been expected, and a larger number of contractors relative to the number of troops. But how was the decision made in the first place to use U.S. nongovernmental personnel in a war zone? More important, how has that decision been implemented?
The United States has a long tradition of using private contractors in times of war. For example, it augmented its naval power in the early 19th century by contracting with privateers -- nongovernmental ships -- to carry out missions at sea. During the battle for Wake Island in 1941, U.S. contractors building an airstrip there were trapped by the Japanese fleet, and many fought alongside Marines and naval personnel. During the Civil War, civilians who accompanied the Union and Confederate armies carried out many of the supply functions. So, on one level, there is absolutely nothing new here. This has always been how the United States fights war.
Nevertheless, since before the fall of the Soviet Union, a systematic shift has been taking place in the way the U.S. force structure is designed. This shift, which is rooted both in military policy and in the geopolitical perception that future wars will be fought on a number of levels, made private security contractors such as KBR and Blackwater inevitable. The current situation is the result of three unique processes: the introduction of the professional volunteer military, the change in force structure after the Cold War, and finally the rethinking and redefinition of the term "noncombatant" following the decision to include women in the military, but bar them from direct combat roles.
The introduction of the professional volunteer military caused a rethinking of the role of the soldier, sailor, airman or Marine in the armed forces. Volunteers were part of the military because they chose to be. Unlike draftees, they had other options. During World War II and the first half of the Cold War, the military was built around draftees who were going to serve their required hitch and return to civilian life. Although many were not highly trained, they were quite suited for support roles, from KP to policing the grounds. After all, they already were on the payroll, and new hires were always possible.
In a volunteer army, the troops are expected to remain in the military much longer. Their training is more expensive -- thus their value is higher. Taking trained specialists who are serving at their own pleasure and forcing them to do menial labor over an extended period of time makes little sense either from a utilization or morale point of view. The concept emerged that the military's maintenance work should shift to civilians, and that in many cases the work should be outsourced to contractors. This tendency was reinforced during the Reagan administration, which, given its ideology, supported privatization as a way to make the volunteer army work. The result was a growth in the number of contractors taking over many of the duties that had been performed by soldiers during the years of conscription.
The second impetus was the end of the Cold War and a review carried out by then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin under then-President Bill Clinton. The core argument was that it was irrational to maintain a standing military as large as had existed during the Cold War. Aspin argued for a more intensely technological military, one that would be less dependent on ground troops. The Air Force was key to this, while the Navy was downsized. The main consideration, however, was the structure of the standing Army -- especially when large-scale, high-intensity, long-term warfare no longer seemed a likely scenario.
The U.S. Army's active-duty component, in particular, was reduced. It was assumed that in time of war, components of the Reserves and National Guard would be mobilized, not so much to augment the standing military, but to carry out a range of specialized roles. For example, Civil Affairs, which has proven to be a critical specialization in Iraq and Afghanistan, was made a primary responsibility of the Reserves and National Guard, as were many engineering, military-intelligence and other specializations.
This plan was built around certain geopolitical assumptions. The first was that the United States would not be fighting peer powers. The second was that it had learned from Vietnam not to get involved in open-ended counterinsurgency operations, but to focus, as it did in Kuwait, on missions that were clearly defined and executable with a main force. The last was that wars would be short, use relatively few troops and be carried out in conjunction with allies. From this it followed that regular forces, augmented by Reserve/National Guard specialists called up for short terms, could carry out national strategic requirements.
The third impetus was the struggle to define military combat and noncombat roles. Given the nature of the volunteer force, women were badly needed, yet they were included in the armed forces under the assumption that they could carry out any function apart from direct combat assignments. This caused a forced -- and strained -- redefinition of these two roles. Intelligence officers called to interrogate a prisoner on the battlefield were thought not to be in a combat position. The same bomb, mortar or rocket fire that killed a soldier might hit them too, but since they technically were not charged with shooting back, they were not combat arms. Ironically, in Iraq, one of the most dangerous tasks is traveling on the roads, though moving supplies is not considered a combat mission.
Under the privatization concept, civilians could be hired to carry out noncombat functions. Under the redefinition of noncombat, the area open to contractors covered a lot of territory. Moreover, under the redefinition of the military in the 1990s, the size and structure of the Army in particular was changed so dramatically that it could not carry out most of its functions without the Reserve/Guard component -- and even with that component, the Army was not large enough. Contractors were needed.
Let us now add a fourth push: the CIA. During Vietnam, and again in Afghanistan and Iraq, a good part of the war was prosecuted by CIA personnel not in uniform and not answerable to the military chain of command. There are arguments on both sides for this, but the fact is that U.S. wars -- particularly highly politicized wars such as counterinsurgencies -- are fought with parallel armies, some reporting to the Defense Department, others to the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The battlefield is, if not flooded, at least full of civilians operating outside of the chain of command, and these civilian government employees are encouraged to hire Iraqi or other nationals, as well as to augment their own capabilities with private U.S. contractors.
Blackwater works for the State Department in a capacity defined as noncombat, protecting diplomats and other high-value personnel from assassination. The Army, bogged down in its own operations, lacks the manpower to perform this obviously valuable work. That means that Blackwater and other contract workers are charged with carrying weapons and moving around the battlefield, which is everywhere. They are heavily armed private soldiers carrying out missions that are combat in all but name -- and they are completely outside of the chain of command.
Moreover, in order to be effective, they have to engage in protective intelligence, looking for surveillance by enemy combatants and trying to foresee potential threats. We suspect the CIA could be helpful in this regard, but it would want information in return. In order to perform its job, then, Blackwater entered the economy of intelligence -- information as a commodity to be exchanged. It had to gather some intelligence in order to trade some. As a result, the distinction between combat and support completely broke down.
The important point is that the U.S. military went to war with the Army the country gave it. We recall no great objections to the downsizing of the military in the 1990s, and no criticisms of the concepts that lay behind the new force structure. The volunteer force, downsized because long-term conflicts were not going to occur, supported by the Reserve/Guard and backfilled by civilian contractors, was not a controversial issue. Only tiresome cranks made waves, challenging the idea that wars would be sparse and short. They objected to the redefinition of noncombat roles and said the downsized force would be insufficient for the 21st century.
Blackwater, KBR and all the rest are the direct result of the faulty geopolitical assumptions and the force structure decisions that followed. The primary responsibility rests with the American public, which made best-case assumptions in a worst-case world. Even without Iraq, civilian contractors would have proliferated on the battlefield. With Iraq, they became an enormous force. Perhaps the single greatest strategic error of the Bush administration was not fundamentally re-examining the assumptions about the U.S. Army on Sept. 12, 2001. Clearly Donald Rumsfeld was of the view that the Army was the problem, not the solution. He was not going to push for a larger force and, therefore, as the war expanded, for fewer civilian contractors.
The central problem regarding private security contractors on the battlefield is that their place in the chain of command is not defined. They report to the State Department, not to the Army and Marines that own the battlefield. But who do they take orders from and who defines their mission? Do they operate under the Uniform Code of Military Justice or under some other rule? They are warriors -- it is foolish to think otherwise -- but they do not wear the uniform. The problem with Blackwater stems from having multiple forces fighting for the same side on the same battlefield, with completely different chains of command. Indeed, it is not clear the extent to which the State Department has created a command structure for its contractors, whether it is capable of doing so, or whether the contractors have created their own chain of command.
Blackwater is the logical outcome of a set of erroneous geopolitical conclusions that predate these wars by more than a decade. The United States will be fighting multidivisional, open-ended wars in multiple theaters, and there will be counterinsurgencies. The force created in the 1990s is insufficient, and thus the definition of noncombat specialty has become meaningless. The Reserve/Guard component cannot fill the gap created by strategic errors. The hiring of contractors makes sense and has precedence. But the use of CIA personnel outside the military chain of command creates enough stress. To have private contractors reporting outside the chain of command to government entities not able to command them is the real problem.
A failure that is rooted in the national consensus of the 1990s was compounded by the Bush administration's failure to reshape the military for the realities of the wars it wished to fight. But the final failure was to follow the logic of the civilian contractors through to its end, but not include them in the unified chain of command. In war, the key question must be this: Who gives orders and who takes them? The battlefield is dangerous enough without that question left hanging.
**********************************************************
Tell George what you think
Get your own copy
Distribution and Reprints
This report may be distributed or republished with attribution to Strategic Forecasting, Inc. at www.stratfor.com. For media requests, partnership opportunities, or commercial distribution or republication, please contact pr@stratfor.com.
Newsletter Subscription
To unsubscribe from receiving this free intelligence report, please click here.
© Copyright 2007 Strategic Forecasting, Inc. All rights reserved.
Wrap...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, October 08, 2007
I do highly recommend....
...taking a look at the very talented scientist and Science Fiction writer's, David Brin, post today.
Find it at www.davidbrin.blogspot.com . You'll be glad you did.
Wrap...
Find it at www.davidbrin.blogspot.com . You'll be glad you did.
Wrap...
Outrageous!!!!
Read it and watch that video.
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Interpol_Director_weeps_at_lack_of_1007.html
Wrap...
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Interpol_Director_weeps_at_lack_of_1007.html
Wrap...
Dems need to pay some damned attention here...
From Star Telegram via Raw Story :
A retired lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve who served with the Navy's Supervisor of Salvage questioned in a little-noticed editorial Sunday why six active nuclear armed cruise missiles were being transferred to an active bomber base that "just happens to be the staging area for Middle Eastern operations."
"The United States also does not transport nuclear weapons meant for elimination attached to their launch vehicles under the wings of a combat aircraft," Navy veteran Robert Stormer wrote in the Texas-based Star-Telegram. "The procedure is to separate the warhead from the missile, encase the warhead and transport it by military cargo aircraft to a repository -- not an operational bomber base that just happens to be the staging area for Middle Eastern operations."
Six nuclear W80 nuclear-armed cruise missiles were flown to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana where they sat for ten hours undetected.
"Press reports initially cited the Air Force mistake of flying nuclear weapons over the United States in violation of Air Force standing orders and international treaties, while completely missing the more important major issues, such as how six nuclear cruise missiles got loose to begin with," writes Stormer.
"Let me be very clear here: We are not talking about paintball cartridges or pellet gun ammo. We are talking nuclear weapons."
Stormer doesn't buy reports that the missiles were simply lost. The title of his piece is "Nuke transportation story has explosive implications."
"There is a strict chain of custody for all such weapons," he said. "Nuclear weapons handling is spelled out in great detail in Air Force regulations, to the credit of that service. Every person who orders the movement of these weapons, handles them, breaks seals or moves any nuclear weapon must sign off for tracking purposes."
"All security forces assigned are authorized "to use deadly force to protect the weapons from any threat. Nor does anyone quickly move a 1-ton cruise missile -- or forget about six of them, as reported by some news outlets, especially cruise missiles loaded with high explosives.
"This is about how six nuclear advanced cruise missiles got out of their bunkers and onto a combat aircraft without notice of the wing commander, squadron commander, munitions maintenance squadron (MMS), the B-52H's crew chief and command pilot and onto another Air Force base tarmac without notice of that air base's chain of command -- for 10 hours."
At the end of his editorial, he poses the following questions.
The questions that must be answered:
1 Why, and for what ostensible purpose, were these nuclear weapons taken to Barksdale?
2 How long was it before the error was discovered?
3 How many mistakes and errors were made, and how many needed to be made, for this to happen?
4 How many and which security protocols were overlooked?
5 How many and which safety procedures were bypassed or ignored?
6 How many other nuclear command and control non-observations of procedure have there been?
7 What is Congress going to do to better oversee U.S. nuclear command and control?
8 How does this incident relate to concern for reliability of control over nuclear weapons and nuclear materials in Russia, Pakistan and elsewhere?
9 Does the Bush administration, as some news reports suggest, have plans to attack Iran with nuclear weapons?
10 If this was an accident, have we degraded our military to a point where we are now making critical mistakes with our nuclear arsenal? If so, how do we correct this?
Wrap...
A retired lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve who served with the Navy's Supervisor of Salvage questioned in a little-noticed editorial Sunday why six active nuclear armed cruise missiles were being transferred to an active bomber base that "just happens to be the staging area for Middle Eastern operations."
"The United States also does not transport nuclear weapons meant for elimination attached to their launch vehicles under the wings of a combat aircraft," Navy veteran Robert Stormer wrote in the Texas-based Star-Telegram. "The procedure is to separate the warhead from the missile, encase the warhead and transport it by military cargo aircraft to a repository -- not an operational bomber base that just happens to be the staging area for Middle Eastern operations."
Six nuclear W80 nuclear-armed cruise missiles were flown to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana where they sat for ten hours undetected.
"Press reports initially cited the Air Force mistake of flying nuclear weapons over the United States in violation of Air Force standing orders and international treaties, while completely missing the more important major issues, such as how six nuclear cruise missiles got loose to begin with," writes Stormer.
"Let me be very clear here: We are not talking about paintball cartridges or pellet gun ammo. We are talking nuclear weapons."
Stormer doesn't buy reports that the missiles were simply lost. The title of his piece is "Nuke transportation story has explosive implications."
"There is a strict chain of custody for all such weapons," he said. "Nuclear weapons handling is spelled out in great detail in Air Force regulations, to the credit of that service. Every person who orders the movement of these weapons, handles them, breaks seals or moves any nuclear weapon must sign off for tracking purposes."
"All security forces assigned are authorized "to use deadly force to protect the weapons from any threat. Nor does anyone quickly move a 1-ton cruise missile -- or forget about six of them, as reported by some news outlets, especially cruise missiles loaded with high explosives.
"This is about how six nuclear advanced cruise missiles got out of their bunkers and onto a combat aircraft without notice of the wing commander, squadron commander, munitions maintenance squadron (MMS), the B-52H's crew chief and command pilot and onto another Air Force base tarmac without notice of that air base's chain of command -- for 10 hours."
At the end of his editorial, he poses the following questions.
The questions that must be answered:
1 Why, and for what ostensible purpose, were these nuclear weapons taken to Barksdale?
2 How long was it before the error was discovered?
3 How many mistakes and errors were made, and how many needed to be made, for this to happen?
4 How many and which security protocols were overlooked?
5 How many and which safety procedures were bypassed or ignored?
6 How many other nuclear command and control non-observations of procedure have there been?
7 What is Congress going to do to better oversee U.S. nuclear command and control?
8 How does this incident relate to concern for reliability of control over nuclear weapons and nuclear materials in Russia, Pakistan and elsewhere?
9 Does the Bush administration, as some news reports suggest, have plans to attack Iran with nuclear weapons?
10 If this was an accident, have we degraded our military to a point where we are now making critical mistakes with our nuclear arsenal? If so, how do we correct this?
Wrap...
Right wing fundies infiltrate our military...
From truthout.org :
Jason Leopold | Report: Pentagon Facilitating Christian Evangelism
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100807J.shtml
Truthout's Jason Leopold, reports: "The Defense Department (DOD) allegedly provided two fundamentalist Christian organizations exclusive access to several military bases around the country. This access became official sanction for these groups to proselytize amid the ranks, despite the fact that such activities were in violation of federal law.
The evangelical Christian groups have posted detailed instruction guides on their web site that advises its members about tactics to use to win over soldiers, or 'pre-Christians,' to evangelical Christianity when visiting military installations around the country."
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Jason Leopold | Report: Pentagon Facilitating Christian Evangelism
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100807J.shtml
Truthout's Jason Leopold, reports: "The Defense Department (DOD) allegedly provided two fundamentalist Christian organizations exclusive access to several military bases around the country. This access became official sanction for these groups to proselytize amid the ranks, despite the fact that such activities were in violation of federal law.
The evangelical Christian groups have posted detailed instruction guides on their web site that advises its members about tactics to use to win over soldiers, or 'pre-Christians,' to evangelical Christianity when visiting military installations around the country."
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Get contractors in US courts. No? Why not?
From Secrecy News:
BILL ON CONTRACTOR LIABILITY RAISES INTEL AGENCY CONCERNS
Last week the House of Representatives passed a bill to extend federal
legal jurisdiction to crimes committed abroad by U.S. contractors in
war zones such as Iraq, so that such crimes could be prosecuted in U.S.
courts.
But before the bill (H.R. 2740) was passed, it triggered alarms by
those who were concerned that its provisions could undermine U.S.
intelligence activities.
"The bill would have unintended and intolerable consequences for
crucial and necessary national security activities and operations," the
White House said without elaboration in an October 3 statement outlining
its opposition to the bill.
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2007/10/sap100307.pdf
Congressman J. Randy Forbes (R-VA) spelled out those intelligence
agency concerns in more detail on the House floor.
For example, he said, "If a clandestine asset was implicated in a
crime, investigating and arresting that asset under traditional
criminal procedures could expose other assets and compromise critical
intelligence activities."
More fundamentally, he complained, the new bill "applies the entire
criminal code to the new category of potential offenders and could
implicate the authorized business of the intelligence community
employees and contractors."
Rep. Forbes therefore introduced a motion stating that "Nothing in this
Act shall be construed to affect intelligence activities that are
otherwise permissible prior to the enactment of this Act."
The motion was approved, but not without some critical commentary.
"The [Forbes] amendment raises serious questions about the activities
its proponents may be seeking to protect," said Rep. David Price
(D-NC), who authored the new bill.
"Given that my bill only targets activities that are unlawful, why do
my colleagues feel the need to clarify that it does not affect
activities that are permissible?"
"What activities are contractors carrying out that are permissible but
not lawful?" Rep. Price wondered aloud.
"If there are private, for-profit contractors tasked with duties that
require them to commit felony offenses, Congress needs to know about
it. Such a revelation would point to a need for a serious debate about
whether we are using contractors appropriately," he said.
See the October 4 House debate on the new bill, the "Military
Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act Expansion and Enforcement Act of
2007," which was passed by a large majority, here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/h-meja.html
The awkward fact is that intelligence collection operations are
routinely conducted in violation of established laws, including
international legal norms to which the United States Government is
formally committed.
"The CS [clandestine service] is the only part of the IC [intelligence
community], indeed of the government, where hundreds of employees on a
daily basis are directed to break extremely serious laws in counties
around the world in the face of frequently sophisticated efforts by
foreign governments to catch them," according to a 1996 House
Intelligence Committee staff report called IC21 (chapter 9, at page
205).
"A safe estimate is that several hundred times every day (easily
100,000 times a year) DO [Directorate of Operations] officers engage in
highly illegal activities (according to foreign law) that not only risk
political embarrassment to the US but also endanger the freedom if not
lives of the participating foreign nationals and, more than
occasionally, of the clandestine officer himself."
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1996_rpt/ic21/ic21009.htm
[Use links above to continue reading]
Wrap...
BILL ON CONTRACTOR LIABILITY RAISES INTEL AGENCY CONCERNS
Last week the House of Representatives passed a bill to extend federal
legal jurisdiction to crimes committed abroad by U.S. contractors in
war zones such as Iraq, so that such crimes could be prosecuted in U.S.
courts.
But before the bill (H.R. 2740) was passed, it triggered alarms by
those who were concerned that its provisions could undermine U.S.
intelligence activities.
"The bill would have unintended and intolerable consequences for
crucial and necessary national security activities and operations," the
White House said without elaboration in an October 3 statement outlining
its opposition to the bill.
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2007/10/sap100307.pdf
Congressman J. Randy Forbes (R-VA) spelled out those intelligence
agency concerns in more detail on the House floor.
For example, he said, "If a clandestine asset was implicated in a
crime, investigating and arresting that asset under traditional
criminal procedures could expose other assets and compromise critical
intelligence activities."
More fundamentally, he complained, the new bill "applies the entire
criminal code to the new category of potential offenders and could
implicate the authorized business of the intelligence community
employees and contractors."
Rep. Forbes therefore introduced a motion stating that "Nothing in this
Act shall be construed to affect intelligence activities that are
otherwise permissible prior to the enactment of this Act."
The motion was approved, but not without some critical commentary.
"The [Forbes] amendment raises serious questions about the activities
its proponents may be seeking to protect," said Rep. David Price
(D-NC), who authored the new bill.
"Given that my bill only targets activities that are unlawful, why do
my colleagues feel the need to clarify that it does not affect
activities that are permissible?"
"What activities are contractors carrying out that are permissible but
not lawful?" Rep. Price wondered aloud.
"If there are private, for-profit contractors tasked with duties that
require them to commit felony offenses, Congress needs to know about
it. Such a revelation would point to a need for a serious debate about
whether we are using contractors appropriately," he said.
See the October 4 House debate on the new bill, the "Military
Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act Expansion and Enforcement Act of
2007," which was passed by a large majority, here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_cr/h-meja.html
The awkward fact is that intelligence collection operations are
routinely conducted in violation of established laws, including
international legal norms to which the United States Government is
formally committed.
"The CS [clandestine service] is the only part of the IC [intelligence
community], indeed of the government, where hundreds of employees on a
daily basis are directed to break extremely serious laws in counties
around the world in the face of frequently sophisticated efforts by
foreign governments to catch them," according to a 1996 House
Intelligence Committee staff report called IC21 (chapter 9, at page
205).
"A safe estimate is that several hundred times every day (easily
100,000 times a year) DO [Directorate of Operations] officers engage in
highly illegal activities (according to foreign law) that not only risk
political embarrassment to the US but also endanger the freedom if not
lives of the participating foreign nationals and, more than
occasionally, of the clandestine officer himself."
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1996_rpt/ic21/ic21009.htm
[Use links above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Sunday, October 07, 2007
BushCo criminals walk away in 2009...leaving the US in their pigpen...
From The New York Times via truthout.org :
FOCUS | The New York Times | On Torture and American Values
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100707Z.shtml
The lead editorial in Sunday's New York Times says, "Once upon a time, it was the United States that urged all nations to obey the letter and the spirit of international treaties and protect human rights and liberties. The people in much of the world, if not their governments, respected the United States for its values. The Bush administration has dishonored that history and squandered that respect."
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
FOCUS | The New York Times | On Torture and American Values
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100707Z.shtml
The lead editorial in Sunday's New York Times says, "Once upon a time, it was the United States that urged all nations to obey the letter and the spirit of international treaties and protect human rights and liberties. The people in much of the world, if not their governments, respected the United States for its values. The Bush administration has dishonored that history and squandered that respect."
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Just what does the word "or" mean to you?
I just have to wonder if there's anyone who understands the meaning of the word "or". As used in Move-On's ad, which asked: General Petraeus OR General Betrayus. That's a choice!!! That is not calling the General names or putting him down in any way, shape or form, and it's damned ignorant to think otherwise.
Here came the General to the Congress, and on behalf of the people of this nation, Congress wanted to know the truth about how the occupation of Iraq was coming.
The General had a choice...to tell the unvarnished truth or to tell the Bush admin "truth". The General chose to tell the Bush "truth" and thus, chose to betray us.
Very simple. Should have learned about the meaning of "OR" in grade school...as in, "would you like ice cream OR whipped cream on your pie?" Even journalists should have learned this. Republicans and Democrats should have learned this.
But no. Hell no. Controversy sells. Therefore everyone chose to ignore the meaning of OR. Not only ignorant, but downright mean. Stupid. Therefore Move-On could safely be attacked because if the pundits and Congress could just spin that ad into an attack on a military officer...well hell...that's not supporting the troops, is it?
Low class and cheap.
Wrap...
Here came the General to the Congress, and on behalf of the people of this nation, Congress wanted to know the truth about how the occupation of Iraq was coming.
The General had a choice...to tell the unvarnished truth or to tell the Bush admin "truth". The General chose to tell the Bush "truth" and thus, chose to betray us.
Very simple. Should have learned about the meaning of "OR" in grade school...as in, "would you like ice cream OR whipped cream on your pie?" Even journalists should have learned this. Republicans and Democrats should have learned this.
But no. Hell no. Controversy sells. Therefore everyone chose to ignore the meaning of OR. Not only ignorant, but downright mean. Stupid. Therefore Move-On could safely be attacked because if the pundits and Congress could just spin that ad into an attack on a military officer...well hell...that's not supporting the troops, is it?
Low class and cheap.
Wrap...
Cowards are the Dem Congress...especially the House...
From Hearst Newspapers via truthout.org :
Go to Original
The Democrats Who Enable Bush
By Helen Thomas
Hearst Newspapers
Thursday 04 October 2007
Washington - President Bush has no better friends than the spineless Democratic congressional leadership and the party's leading presidential candidates when it comes to his failing Iraq policy.
Those Democrats seem to have forgotten that the American people want U.S. troops out of Iraq, especially since Bush still cannot give a credible reason for attacking Iraq after nearly five years of war.
Last week at a debate in Hanover, N.H., the leading Democratic presidential candidates sang from the same songbook: Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York, and Barack Obama of Illinois and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards refused to promise to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by 2013, at the end of the first term of their hypothetical presidencies. Can you believe it?
When the question was put to Clinton, she reverted to her usual cautious equivocation, saying: "It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting."
Obama dodged, too: "I think it would be irresponsible" to say what he would do as president.
Edwards, on whom hopes were riding to show some independence, replied to the question: "I cannot make that commitment."
They have left the voters little choice with those answers.
Some supporters were outraged at the obfuscation by the Democratic front-runners.
On the other hand, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., are more definitive in their calls for quick troop withdrawals.
But Biden wants to break up Iraq into three provinces along religious and ethnic lines. In other words, Balkanize Iraq.
To have major Democratic backing to stay the course in Iraq added up to good news for Bush.
Now comes a surprising Clinton fan.
President Bush told Bill Sammon - Washington Examiner correspondent and author of a new book titled "The Evangelical President" - that Clinton will beat Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination because she is a "formidable candidate" and better known.
Sammon says Bush revealed that he has been sending messages to Clinton to urge her to "maintain some political wiggle room in your campaign rhetoric about Iraq."
The author said Bush contends that whoever inherits the White House will be faced with a potential vacuum in Iraq and "will begin to understand the need to continue to support the young democracy."
Bush ought to know about campaign rhetoric. Remember how he ridiculed "nation building" in the 2000 presidential campaign? Now he claims he is trying to spread democracy throughout the Middle East.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is another Democratic leader who has empowered Bush's war.
Pelosi removed a provision from the most recent war-funding bill that would have required Bush to seek the permission of Congress before launching any attack on Iran. Her spokesman gave the lame excuse that she didn't like the wording of the provision. More likely, she bowed to political pressure.
Is it any wonder the Democrats are faring lower than the president in a Washington Post ABC approval poll? Bush came in at 33 percent and Congress at 29 percent.
Members of Congress seem to have forgotten their constitutional prerogative to declare war; World War II was the last time Congress formally declared war.
Presidents have found other ways to make end runs around the law, mainly by obtaining congressional authorization "to do whatever is necessary" in a crisis involving use of the military. That's the way we got into the Vietnam and Iraq wars.
So what are the leading Democratic White House hopefuls offering? It seems nothing but more war. So where do the voters go who are sick of the Iraqi debacle?
Wrap...
Go to Original
The Democrats Who Enable Bush
By Helen Thomas
Hearst Newspapers
Thursday 04 October 2007
Washington - President Bush has no better friends than the spineless Democratic congressional leadership and the party's leading presidential candidates when it comes to his failing Iraq policy.
Those Democrats seem to have forgotten that the American people want U.S. troops out of Iraq, especially since Bush still cannot give a credible reason for attacking Iraq after nearly five years of war.
Last week at a debate in Hanover, N.H., the leading Democratic presidential candidates sang from the same songbook: Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York, and Barack Obama of Illinois and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards refused to promise to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by 2013, at the end of the first term of their hypothetical presidencies. Can you believe it?
When the question was put to Clinton, she reverted to her usual cautious equivocation, saying: "It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting."
Obama dodged, too: "I think it would be irresponsible" to say what he would do as president.
Edwards, on whom hopes were riding to show some independence, replied to the question: "I cannot make that commitment."
They have left the voters little choice with those answers.
Some supporters were outraged at the obfuscation by the Democratic front-runners.
On the other hand, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., are more definitive in their calls for quick troop withdrawals.
But Biden wants to break up Iraq into three provinces along religious and ethnic lines. In other words, Balkanize Iraq.
To have major Democratic backing to stay the course in Iraq added up to good news for Bush.
Now comes a surprising Clinton fan.
President Bush told Bill Sammon - Washington Examiner correspondent and author of a new book titled "The Evangelical President" - that Clinton will beat Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination because she is a "formidable candidate" and better known.
Sammon says Bush revealed that he has been sending messages to Clinton to urge her to "maintain some political wiggle room in your campaign rhetoric about Iraq."
The author said Bush contends that whoever inherits the White House will be faced with a potential vacuum in Iraq and "will begin to understand the need to continue to support the young democracy."
Bush ought to know about campaign rhetoric. Remember how he ridiculed "nation building" in the 2000 presidential campaign? Now he claims he is trying to spread democracy throughout the Middle East.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is another Democratic leader who has empowered Bush's war.
Pelosi removed a provision from the most recent war-funding bill that would have required Bush to seek the permission of Congress before launching any attack on Iran. Her spokesman gave the lame excuse that she didn't like the wording of the provision. More likely, she bowed to political pressure.
Is it any wonder the Democrats are faring lower than the president in a Washington Post ABC approval poll? Bush came in at 33 percent and Congress at 29 percent.
Members of Congress seem to have forgotten their constitutional prerogative to declare war; World War II was the last time Congress formally declared war.
Presidents have found other ways to make end runs around the law, mainly by obtaining congressional authorization "to do whatever is necessary" in a crisis involving use of the military. That's the way we got into the Vietnam and Iraq wars.
So what are the leading Democratic White House hopefuls offering? It seems nothing but more war. So where do the voters go who are sick of the Iraqi debacle?
Wrap...
Friday, October 05, 2007
"Impeachment is off the table"
Was listening to the radio today when Ed Schultz said something to the effect that the minute the Dems got the Majority in Congress and Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader, announced that "impeachment is off the table" she and Stoney Hoyer as much as gave Bush/Cheney permission to do whatever the hell they wanted, break any laws, commit anything illegal, no punishment would be forthcoming.
Nice, huh? Even if I could vote for her, it would be a cold day before I would. I'd vote for a rock first. Be about as effective.
I am not happy with the Dems in Congress, and that's an understatement.
Wrap...
Nice, huh? Even if I could vote for her, it would be a cold day before I would. I'd vote for a rock first. Be about as effective.
I am not happy with the Dems in Congress, and that's an understatement.
Wrap...
From CIA secret prisons to McCain's joke...
From American Progress:
Think Fast...
The CIA's secret overseas prison system "remains active and has held at least one al Qaeda militant" since first being revealed last year, says a U.S. official. "The official confirmed the detention as the White House" refused to say "whether the agency had resumed holding prisoners at secret sites and insisted that the United States does not torture."
In light of the revelation yesterday of secret opinions giving the CIA approval in 2005 for harsh interrogation techniques, Senate Intel Chairman John (D-WV) "wrote to the acting attorney general, Peter D. Keisler, asking for copies of all opinions on interrogation since 2004."
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) has launched an online petition asking conservatives to "band together" and "stand with Rush Limbaugh against liberal attacks."
Alternet reports, "The truth of the matter is that only the presence of U.S. forces allows the group called 'al Qaeda in Iraq' (AQI) to survive and function, and setting a timetable for the occupation to end is the best way to beat them. You won't hear that perspective in Washington, but according to Iraqis with whom we spoke, it is the conventional wisdom in much of the country."
"Over and over, President Bush confidently promised to 'solve problems, not pass them on to future presidents and future generations.' As the clock runs out on his eight-year presidency, a tall stack of troubles remain and Bush's words ring hollow."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has "closed the door to negotiations with President Bush on a vetoed children's health bill." "We're not going to compromise," Reid said. "If he's hoping for that, he better hope for something else, like getting our troops home from Iraq."
"A record number of floods, droughts and storms around the world this year amount to a climate change 'mega disaster', the United Nation's emergency relief coordinator, Sir John Holmes, has warned." He said "dire predictions about the impact of global warming on humanity were already coming true. "
And finally: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) recycles jokes like it's 1999. Yesterday, he said that "as president he would appoint Alan Greenspan to lead a review of the nation's tax code." "If he's alive or dead it doesn't matter. If he's dead, just prop him up and put some dark glasses on him like, like 'Weekend at Bernie's,'" McCain joked. Funny joke...except that he's been telling it since 1999.
Wrap...
Think Fast...
The CIA's secret overseas prison system "remains active and has held at least one al Qaeda militant" since first being revealed last year, says a U.S. official. "The official confirmed the detention as the White House" refused to say "whether the agency had resumed holding prisoners at secret sites and insisted that the United States does not torture."
In light of the revelation yesterday of secret opinions giving the CIA approval in 2005 for harsh interrogation techniques, Senate Intel Chairman John (D-WV) "wrote to the acting attorney general, Peter D. Keisler, asking for copies of all opinions on interrogation since 2004."
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) has launched an online petition asking conservatives to "band together" and "stand with Rush Limbaugh against liberal attacks."
Alternet reports, "The truth of the matter is that only the presence of U.S. forces allows the group called 'al Qaeda in Iraq' (AQI) to survive and function, and setting a timetable for the occupation to end is the best way to beat them. You won't hear that perspective in Washington, but according to Iraqis with whom we spoke, it is the conventional wisdom in much of the country."
"Over and over, President Bush confidently promised to 'solve problems, not pass them on to future presidents and future generations.' As the clock runs out on his eight-year presidency, a tall stack of troubles remain and Bush's words ring hollow."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has "closed the door to negotiations with President Bush on a vetoed children's health bill." "We're not going to compromise," Reid said. "If he's hoping for that, he better hope for something else, like getting our troops home from Iraq."
"A record number of floods, droughts and storms around the world this year amount to a climate change 'mega disaster', the United Nation's emergency relief coordinator, Sir John Holmes, has warned." He said "dire predictions about the impact of global warming on humanity were already coming true. "
And finally: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) recycles jokes like it's 1999. Yesterday, he said that "as president he would appoint Alan Greenspan to lead a review of the nation's tax code." "If he's alive or dead it doesn't matter. If he's dead, just prop him up and put some dark glasses on him like, like 'Weekend at Bernie's,'" McCain joked. Funny joke...except that he's been telling it since 1999.
Wrap...
White House lie? Depend upon it....
From truthout.org :
Did White House Lie About Loss of Five Million Emails?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100507O.shtml
Daemon Poeter, of the CMP Channel, reports: "when Congress asked about 5 million executive branch e-mails that went missing, a White House lawyer pointed the finger at an outside IT contractor. The only problem? No such IT contractor exists, according to sources close to the investigation of a possible violation of the Federal Records and Presidential Records acts."
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Did White House Lie About Loss of Five Million Emails?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100507O.shtml
Daemon Poeter, of the CMP Channel, reports: "when Congress asked about 5 million executive branch e-mails that went missing, a White House lawyer pointed the finger at an outside IT contractor. The only problem? No such IT contractor exists, according to sources close to the investigation of a possible violation of the Federal Records and Presidential Records acts."
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Thursday, October 04, 2007
A vote for Richardson is a vote for our troops...
From Information Clearing House:
Richardson calls for immediate pullout from Iraq:
Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson criticized his rivals on Thursday for failing to support an immediate and complete U.S. troop pullout from Iraq, saying it is time to "get all our troops out
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N04330090.htm
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
Richardson calls for immediate pullout from Iraq:
Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson criticized his rivals on Thursday for failing to support an immediate and complete U.S. troop pullout from Iraq, saying it is time to "get all our troops out
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N04330090.htm
[Use link above to continue reading]
Wrap...
From Sadist Gonzales to Bono's roses for Pelosi...
From American Progress:
Think Fast...
Despite releasing a legal opinion in Dec. 2004 that declared torture is "abhorrent," the Alberto Gonzales-led Justice Department issued a secret opinion shortly after his arrival in Feb. 2005 that provided "an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used" by the CIA. A lengthy New York Times expose describes the Office of Legal Counsel, headed by Steven Bradbury, as having become a politicized tool for the Vice President's office.
There were "317,000 applications for unemployment benefits last week, an increase of 16,000 from the previous week," and the biggest jump in four months. Analysts believe the increase "could be a further sign that the labor market is slowing under the impact of the worst slump in housing in 16 years."
President Bush's veto of SCHIP has divided conservatives. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) said yesterday, "We've got to do what we can to try to override" the veto. "If we're truly compassionate, it seems to me, we'd want to endorse this program," added Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT).
The administration's "Anbar strategy" holds the perilous possibility "that we just end up arming the Sunnis, who still hate the Shi'a...and that eventually the Sunni tribes end up fighting it out with the central government." Echoing this concern, the largest Shiite political coalition in Iraq urged the U.S. military to "abandon its recruitment of Sunni tribesmen into the Iraqi police."
After initial reports that the FBI agents investigating Blackwater in Iraq would be guarded by Blackwater, the agency announced last night that it won't use security guards employed by that company. The action was taken "to avoid even the appearance of any conflict."
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), a watchdog group, is arguing that U.S. troops are being force-fed Christianity. MRFF is planning to file a series of lawsuits "to show there is a pattern and practice of constitutionally impermissible promotions of religious beliefs within the Department of Defense."
3,315: Number of people in Iraq infected with cholera, according to the World Health Organization. Cases of cholera were first detected in Kirkuk on Aug. 14 and have now spread to all of Iraq's 18 provinces.
Senate leaders "have developed a plan that would allow them to move the controversial nomination of Hans von Spakovsky to the FEC to the floor for a separate vote Thursday." Aides predict his nomination will pass, which would allow senators to "move to votes on the other three uncontested FEC nominees."
And finally: "U2 front man Bono strode through the U.S. Capitol bright and early Wednesday morning, carrying a large bouquet of white and pink long-stemmed roses." Sources report that he met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) about "Africa, global AIDS funding, etc."
Wrap...
Think Fast...
Despite releasing a legal opinion in Dec. 2004 that declared torture is "abhorrent," the Alberto Gonzales-led Justice Department issued a secret opinion shortly after his arrival in Feb. 2005 that provided "an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used" by the CIA. A lengthy New York Times expose describes the Office of Legal Counsel, headed by Steven Bradbury, as having become a politicized tool for the Vice President's office.
There were "317,000 applications for unemployment benefits last week, an increase of 16,000 from the previous week," and the biggest jump in four months. Analysts believe the increase "could be a further sign that the labor market is slowing under the impact of the worst slump in housing in 16 years."
President Bush's veto of SCHIP has divided conservatives. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) said yesterday, "We've got to do what we can to try to override" the veto. "If we're truly compassionate, it seems to me, we'd want to endorse this program," added Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT).
The administration's "Anbar strategy" holds the perilous possibility "that we just end up arming the Sunnis, who still hate the Shi'a...and that eventually the Sunni tribes end up fighting it out with the central government." Echoing this concern, the largest Shiite political coalition in Iraq urged the U.S. military to "abandon its recruitment of Sunni tribesmen into the Iraqi police."
After initial reports that the FBI agents investigating Blackwater in Iraq would be guarded by Blackwater, the agency announced last night that it won't use security guards employed by that company. The action was taken "to avoid even the appearance of any conflict."
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), a watchdog group, is arguing that U.S. troops are being force-fed Christianity. MRFF is planning to file a series of lawsuits "to show there is a pattern and practice of constitutionally impermissible promotions of religious beliefs within the Department of Defense."
3,315: Number of people in Iraq infected with cholera, according to the World Health Organization. Cases of cholera were first detected in Kirkuk on Aug. 14 and have now spread to all of Iraq's 18 provinces.
Senate leaders "have developed a plan that would allow them to move the controversial nomination of Hans von Spakovsky to the FEC to the floor for a separate vote Thursday." Aides predict his nomination will pass, which would allow senators to "move to votes on the other three uncontested FEC nominees."
And finally: "U2 front man Bono strode through the U.S. Capitol bright and early Wednesday morning, carrying a large bouquet of white and pink long-stemmed roses." Sources report that he met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) about "Africa, global AIDS funding, etc."
Wrap...
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Under BushCo, United States union falling apart...
From news.Yahoo.com :
Secessionists meeting in Tennessee By BILL POOVEY, Associated Press Writer
Wed Oct 3, 3:15 AM ET
In an unlikely marriage of desire to secede from the United States, two advocacy groups from opposite political traditions — New England and the South — are sitting down to talk.
Tired of foreign wars and what they consider right-wing courts, the Middlebury Institute wants liberal states like Vermont to be able to secede peacefully.
That sounds just fine to the League of the South, a conservative group that refuses to give up on Southern independence.
"We believe that an independent South, or Hawaii, Alaska, or Vermont would be better able to serve the interest of everybody, regardless of race or ethnicity," said Michael Hill of Killen, Ala., president of the League of the South.
Separated by hundreds of miles and divergent political philosophies, the Middlebury Institute and the League of the South are hosting a two-day Secessionist Convention starting Wednesday in Chattanooga.
They expect to attract supporters from California, Alaska and Hawaii, inviting anyone who wants to dissolve the Union so states can save themselves from an overbearing federal government.
If allowed to go their own way, New Englanders "probably would allow abortion and have gun control," Hill said, while Southerners "would probably crack down on illegal immigration harder than it is being now."
The U.S. Constitution does not explicitly prohibit secession, but few people think it is politically viable.
Vermont, one of the nation's most liberal states, has become a hotbed for liberal secessionists, a fringe movement that gained new traction because of the Iraq war, rising oil prices and the formation of several pro-secession groups.
Thomas Naylor, the founder of one of those groups, the Second Vermont Republic, said the friendly relationship with the League of the South doesn't mean everyone shares all the same beliefs.
But Naylor, a retired Duke University professor, said the League of the South shares his group's opposition to the federal government and the need to pursue secession.
"It doesn't matter if our next president is Condoleeza (Rice) or Hillary (Clinton), it is going to be grim," said Naylor, adding that there are secessionist movements in more than 25 states, including Hawaii, Alaska, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Texas.
The Middlebury Institute, based in Cold Spring, N.Y., was started in 2005. Its followers, disillusioned by the Iraq war and federal imperialism, share the idea of states becoming independent republics. They contend their movement is growing.
The first North American Separatist Convention was held last fall in Vermont, which, unlike most Southern states, supports civil unions. Voters there elected a socialist to the U.S. Senate.
Middlebury director Kirpatrick Sale said Hill offered to sponsor the second secessionist convention, but the co-sponsor arrangement was intended to show that "the folks up north regard you as legitimate colleagues."
"It bothers me that people have wrongly declared them to be racists," Sale said.
The League of the South says it is not racist, but proudly displays a Confederate Battle Flag on its banner.
Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, which monitors hate groups, said the League of the South "has been on our list close to a decade."
"What is remarkable and really astounding about this situation is we see people and institutions who are supposedly on the progressive left rubbing shoulders with bona fide white supremacists," Potok said.
Sale said the League of the South "has not done or said anything racist in its 14 years of existence," and that the Southern Poverty Law Center is not credible.
"They call everybody racists," Sale said. "There are, no doubt, racists in the League of the South, and there are, no doubt, racists everywhere."
Harry Watson, director of the Center For the Study of the American South and a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said it was a surprise to see The Middlebury Institute conferring with the League of the South, "an organization that's associated with a cause that many of us associate with the preservation of slavery."
He said the unlikely partnering "represents the far left and far right of American politics coming together."
Wrap...
Secessionists meeting in Tennessee By BILL POOVEY, Associated Press Writer
Wed Oct 3, 3:15 AM ET
In an unlikely marriage of desire to secede from the United States, two advocacy groups from opposite political traditions — New England and the South — are sitting down to talk.
Tired of foreign wars and what they consider right-wing courts, the Middlebury Institute wants liberal states like Vermont to be able to secede peacefully.
That sounds just fine to the League of the South, a conservative group that refuses to give up on Southern independence.
"We believe that an independent South, or Hawaii, Alaska, or Vermont would be better able to serve the interest of everybody, regardless of race or ethnicity," said Michael Hill of Killen, Ala., president of the League of the South.
Separated by hundreds of miles and divergent political philosophies, the Middlebury Institute and the League of the South are hosting a two-day Secessionist Convention starting Wednesday in Chattanooga.
They expect to attract supporters from California, Alaska and Hawaii, inviting anyone who wants to dissolve the Union so states can save themselves from an overbearing federal government.
If allowed to go their own way, New Englanders "probably would allow abortion and have gun control," Hill said, while Southerners "would probably crack down on illegal immigration harder than it is being now."
The U.S. Constitution does not explicitly prohibit secession, but few people think it is politically viable.
Vermont, one of the nation's most liberal states, has become a hotbed for liberal secessionists, a fringe movement that gained new traction because of the Iraq war, rising oil prices and the formation of several pro-secession groups.
Thomas Naylor, the founder of one of those groups, the Second Vermont Republic, said the friendly relationship with the League of the South doesn't mean everyone shares all the same beliefs.
But Naylor, a retired Duke University professor, said the League of the South shares his group's opposition to the federal government and the need to pursue secession.
"It doesn't matter if our next president is Condoleeza (Rice) or Hillary (Clinton), it is going to be grim," said Naylor, adding that there are secessionist movements in more than 25 states, including Hawaii, Alaska, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Texas.
The Middlebury Institute, based in Cold Spring, N.Y., was started in 2005. Its followers, disillusioned by the Iraq war and federal imperialism, share the idea of states becoming independent republics. They contend their movement is growing.
The first North American Separatist Convention was held last fall in Vermont, which, unlike most Southern states, supports civil unions. Voters there elected a socialist to the U.S. Senate.
Middlebury director Kirpatrick Sale said Hill offered to sponsor the second secessionist convention, but the co-sponsor arrangement was intended to show that "the folks up north regard you as legitimate colleagues."
"It bothers me that people have wrongly declared them to be racists," Sale said.
The League of the South says it is not racist, but proudly displays a Confederate Battle Flag on its banner.
Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, which monitors hate groups, said the League of the South "has been on our list close to a decade."
"What is remarkable and really astounding about this situation is we see people and institutions who are supposedly on the progressive left rubbing shoulders with bona fide white supremacists," Potok said.
Sale said the League of the South "has not done or said anything racist in its 14 years of existence," and that the Southern Poverty Law Center is not credible.
"They call everybody racists," Sale said. "There are, no doubt, racists in the League of the South, and there are, no doubt, racists everywhere."
Harry Watson, director of the Center For the Study of the American South and a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said it was a surprise to see The Middlebury Institute conferring with the League of the South, "an organization that's associated with a cause that many of us associate with the preservation of slavery."
He said the unlikely partnering "represents the far left and far right of American politics coming together."
Wrap...
Intelligence and Congressional Oversight...
From Secrecy News:
GAO SEEKS GREATER ROLE IN OVERSIGHT OF INTELLIGENCE
Congressional oversight of intelligence should be augmented by the
assistance of specially-cleared investigative teams from the Government
Accountability Office, say some congressional leaders, and GAO officials
appear eager to assume the task.
"The need for more effective oversight and accountability of our
intelligence community has never been greater," said Senator Daniel
Akaka (D-HI) earlier this year. "Yet the ability of Congress to ensure
that the intelligence community has sufficient resources and capability
of performing its mission has never been more in question."
Sen. Akaka introduced pending legislation (S. 82) that would reaffirm
the ability of the GAO to conduct audits and investigations of U.S.
intelligence agencies at the request of a congressional committee.
Similar legislation has been introduced in the House (H.R. 978).
Proponents say the legislation could receive favorable consideration
next year. (The 2008 intelligence authorization bill, passed in the
Senate today, does not address the matter.)
"I believe that there are many areas in which GAO can support the
intelligence committees in their oversight roles," said David M.
Walker, Comptroller General of the United States and head of the GAO.
Among the areas he identified are intelligence acquisition and contract
management, human capital management, information technology
architectures and systems, and business transformation efforts.
"We have significant knowledge and experience that can be of benefit to
the Intelligence Community in connection with a broad range of
transformation issues," he stated.
Mr. Walker expressed his support for the Akaka bill and for an enhanced
GAO role in intelligence oversight in a previously unpublished March 1,
2007 letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
http://www.fas.org/irp/gao/walker030107.pdf
But the idea of greater GAO involvement in intelligence oversight was
sharply discouraged by Director of National Intelligence J. Michael
McConnell, who argued that the GAO could damage delicate relations
between the intelligence agencies and the oversight committees.
"If not moderated, self-initiated action by the GAO or action on behalf
of non-oversight Committees could undermine the ability of Intelligence
Committee leadership to direct or stay abreast of oversight activities,
and could risk upsetting the historic balance struck between the two
branches of government in national security matters," DNI McConnell
wrote in a March 7 letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
http://www.fas.org/irp/gao/mcconnell030707.pdf
The DNI's concerns are groundless or else could be remedied by simple
modifications to the Akaka bill, responded Mr. Walker on March 16.
http://www.fas.org/irp/gao/walker031607.pdf
The GAO/DNI correspondence was entered into the record of a March 21,
2007 hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee which is soon to
be published. Copies were obtained in advance by Secrecy News.
The history of GAO attempts to engage in intelligence oversight dating
back to the 1950s was examined in depth by Frederick M. Kaiser in "GAO
Versus the CIA: Uphill Battles Against an Overpowering Force,"
International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence,
15:330-389, 2002.
[Use links above to read more]
Wrap...
GAO SEEKS GREATER ROLE IN OVERSIGHT OF INTELLIGENCE
Congressional oversight of intelligence should be augmented by the
assistance of specially-cleared investigative teams from the Government
Accountability Office, say some congressional leaders, and GAO officials
appear eager to assume the task.
"The need for more effective oversight and accountability of our
intelligence community has never been greater," said Senator Daniel
Akaka (D-HI) earlier this year. "Yet the ability of Congress to ensure
that the intelligence community has sufficient resources and capability
of performing its mission has never been more in question."
Sen. Akaka introduced pending legislation (S. 82) that would reaffirm
the ability of the GAO to conduct audits and investigations of U.S.
intelligence agencies at the request of a congressional committee.
Similar legislation has been introduced in the House (H.R. 978).
Proponents say the legislation could receive favorable consideration
next year. (The 2008 intelligence authorization bill, passed in the
Senate today, does not address the matter.)
"I believe that there are many areas in which GAO can support the
intelligence committees in their oversight roles," said David M.
Walker, Comptroller General of the United States and head of the GAO.
Among the areas he identified are intelligence acquisition and contract
management, human capital management, information technology
architectures and systems, and business transformation efforts.
"We have significant knowledge and experience that can be of benefit to
the Intelligence Community in connection with a broad range of
transformation issues," he stated.
Mr. Walker expressed his support for the Akaka bill and for an enhanced
GAO role in intelligence oversight in a previously unpublished March 1,
2007 letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
http://www.fas.org/irp/gao/walker030107.pdf
But the idea of greater GAO involvement in intelligence oversight was
sharply discouraged by Director of National Intelligence J. Michael
McConnell, who argued that the GAO could damage delicate relations
between the intelligence agencies and the oversight committees.
"If not moderated, self-initiated action by the GAO or action on behalf
of non-oversight Committees could undermine the ability of Intelligence
Committee leadership to direct or stay abreast of oversight activities,
and could risk upsetting the historic balance struck between the two
branches of government in national security matters," DNI McConnell
wrote in a March 7 letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
http://www.fas.org/irp/gao/mcconnell030707.pdf
The DNI's concerns are groundless or else could be remedied by simple
modifications to the Akaka bill, responded Mr. Walker on March 16.
http://www.fas.org/irp/gao/walker031607.pdf
The GAO/DNI correspondence was entered into the record of a March 21,
2007 hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee which is soon to
be published. Copies were obtained in advance by Secrecy News.
The history of GAO attempts to engage in intelligence oversight dating
back to the 1950s was examined in depth by Frederick M. Kaiser in "GAO
Versus the CIA: Uphill Battles Against an Overpowering Force,"
International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence,
15:330-389, 2002.
[Use links above to read more]
Wrap...
A really mixed selection of books upcoming....
From Publishers Lunch Weekly:
FICTION/DEBUT:
John Pipkin's WOODSBURNER chronicles the lives of a lovesick Norwegian immigrant farm hand, a struggling bookseller, a fire and brimstone preacher, and a pencil maker named Henry David Thoreau as their stories intersect over a fire Thoreau accidentally set which burned 800 acres near Walden Pond, to Janet Silver at Houghton Mifflin, in a pre-empt, by Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates (NA).
Professor of history at Brandeis Jane Kamensky and professor of history at Harvard University Jill Lepore's BLINDSPOT, an erotic romp about a fallen woman who disguises herself as a boy to serve as the apprentice to a portrait painter in Boston as the American Revolution is waged, to Cindy Spiegel at Spiegel & Grau, at auction, by Tina Bennett at Janklow & Nesbit (NA).
Nafisa Haji's THE WRITING ON MY FOREHEAD, the story of a free-spirited and rebellious Muslim-American of Indo-Pakistani descent who finds herself caught in a struggle between her family's traditions and her desire for independence, to Laurie Chittenden at William Morrow, by BJ Robbins at BJ Robbins Literary Agency (World).
BJRagency@aol.com Juliette.Shapland@harpercollins.com
MYSTERY/CRIME:
Tasha Alexander's TEARS OF PEARL, taking continuing heroine Lady Emily to Ottoman Constantinople where her visit is interrupted by the slaying of one of the sultan's harem girls, plunging her investigation into an alien world of luxury and deadly intrigue, to Andrew Martin and Charles Spicer at Minotaur, in a pre-empt, for two books, by Anne Hawkins at John Hawkins & Associates (world). ahawkins@jhalit.com
THRILLER:
NYT bestselling author and editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, Kate White's three new thrillers, the first a stand-alone set in New York with a new lead character, moving to Kathy Schneider at Harper, with Marjorie Braman editing, for publication beginning in 2009, by Sandra Dijkstra of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency (world English).
UK:
INCENDIARY author Chris Cleave's LITTLE BEE, about a Nigerian girl who fled to the UK after her family was killed and her village destroyed and goes looking for the couple who saved her, to Suzie Doore at Hodder, in a two-book deal, for publication in August 2008, by Peter Straus at Rogers, Coleridge & White.
NON-FICTION/BIOGRAPHY:
Younger brother of William F. Buckley, Jr., Reid Buckley's THE BUCKLEYS, a look at the iconic American conservative family, to Anthony Ziccardi for Threshold Editions, by Alex Hoyt of Alexander Hoyt Associates.
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
NYT Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of bestselling LEGACY OF ASHES: The History of the CIA, Tim Weiner's two additional books "on the American struggle for national security in an open democracy," THE ENEMY WITHIN: The FBI and the Search for National Security, about the Bureau's long practice of sweeping up loyal Americans in its dragnets and the deep disorganization within its own ranks, and THE MOST POWERFUL FORCE ON EARTH: How the American Military Shaped the World will be a narrative history of our armed forces and their civilian leaders since the end of WWII, to Bob Loomis at Random House, by Kathy Robbins at The Robbins Office (NA).
NPR foreign correspondent Deborah Amos' THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS, about the millions of Iraqi refugees spilling over into neighboring countries, and the impact this displacement will have upon the region and the world, to Clive Priddle at Public Affairs, by Larry Weissman at Larry Weissman Literary (world English).
MEMOIR:
Army Chaplain Roger Benimoff's FAITH UNDER FIRE, with Newsweek writer Eve Conant, a memoir centered on his struggles with his faith and post-traumatic stress disorder during his second tour of duty in Iraq and while working at Walter Reed Hospital after he returned home, to Mary Choteborsky at Crown, in a pre-empt, by Alice Martell at Alice Martell Agency.
Doreen Orion's QUEEN OF THE ROAD, the true tale of 22,000 miles, 200 shoes, two cats, a poodle, a husband and a bus -- a humorous, heart-felt account of two married mid-40's psychiatrists who have it all until they decide to squeeze it all into a 340-square-foot bus, taking a year-long road trip across the country, to Stacy Creamer at Doubleday, in a pre-empt, in a very nice deal, at Mollie Glick at Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency.
REFERENCE:
Eric Hanson's A BOOK OF AGES, an idiosyncratic miscellany of biographical facts of the famous and infamous, including failures, rejections, dead ends, as well as early masterpieces, second chances and lifetime achievements, organized by ages one to one hundred, to Shaye Areheart at Harmony, at auction, by Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates (NA).
Wrap...
FICTION/DEBUT:
John Pipkin's WOODSBURNER chronicles the lives of a lovesick Norwegian immigrant farm hand, a struggling bookseller, a fire and brimstone preacher, and a pencil maker named Henry David Thoreau as their stories intersect over a fire Thoreau accidentally set which burned 800 acres near Walden Pond, to Janet Silver at Houghton Mifflin, in a pre-empt, by Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates (NA).
Professor of history at Brandeis Jane Kamensky and professor of history at Harvard University Jill Lepore's BLINDSPOT, an erotic romp about a fallen woman who disguises herself as a boy to serve as the apprentice to a portrait painter in Boston as the American Revolution is waged, to Cindy Spiegel at Spiegel & Grau, at auction, by Tina Bennett at Janklow & Nesbit (NA).
Nafisa Haji's THE WRITING ON MY FOREHEAD, the story of a free-spirited and rebellious Muslim-American of Indo-Pakistani descent who finds herself caught in a struggle between her family's traditions and her desire for independence, to Laurie Chittenden at William Morrow, by BJ Robbins at BJ Robbins Literary Agency (World).
BJRagency@aol.com Juliette.Shapland@harpercollins.com
MYSTERY/CRIME:
Tasha Alexander's TEARS OF PEARL, taking continuing heroine Lady Emily to Ottoman Constantinople where her visit is interrupted by the slaying of one of the sultan's harem girls, plunging her investigation into an alien world of luxury and deadly intrigue, to Andrew Martin and Charles Spicer at Minotaur, in a pre-empt, for two books, by Anne Hawkins at John Hawkins & Associates (world). ahawkins@jhalit.com
THRILLER:
NYT bestselling author and editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, Kate White's three new thrillers, the first a stand-alone set in New York with a new lead character, moving to Kathy Schneider at Harper, with Marjorie Braman editing, for publication beginning in 2009, by Sandra Dijkstra of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency (world English).
UK:
INCENDIARY author Chris Cleave's LITTLE BEE, about a Nigerian girl who fled to the UK after her family was killed and her village destroyed and goes looking for the couple who saved her, to Suzie Doore at Hodder, in a two-book deal, for publication in August 2008, by Peter Straus at Rogers, Coleridge & White.
NON-FICTION/BIOGRAPHY:
Younger brother of William F. Buckley, Jr., Reid Buckley's THE BUCKLEYS, a look at the iconic American conservative family, to Anthony Ziccardi for Threshold Editions, by Alex Hoyt of Alexander Hoyt Associates.
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
NYT Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of bestselling LEGACY OF ASHES: The History of the CIA, Tim Weiner's two additional books "on the American struggle for national security in an open democracy," THE ENEMY WITHIN: The FBI and the Search for National Security, about the Bureau's long practice of sweeping up loyal Americans in its dragnets and the deep disorganization within its own ranks, and THE MOST POWERFUL FORCE ON EARTH: How the American Military Shaped the World will be a narrative history of our armed forces and their civilian leaders since the end of WWII, to Bob Loomis at Random House, by Kathy Robbins at The Robbins Office (NA).
NPR foreign correspondent Deborah Amos' THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS, about the millions of Iraqi refugees spilling over into neighboring countries, and the impact this displacement will have upon the region and the world, to Clive Priddle at Public Affairs, by Larry Weissman at Larry Weissman Literary (world English).
MEMOIR:
Army Chaplain Roger Benimoff's FAITH UNDER FIRE, with Newsweek writer Eve Conant, a memoir centered on his struggles with his faith and post-traumatic stress disorder during his second tour of duty in Iraq and while working at Walter Reed Hospital after he returned home, to Mary Choteborsky at Crown, in a pre-empt, by Alice Martell at Alice Martell Agency.
Doreen Orion's QUEEN OF THE ROAD, the true tale of 22,000 miles, 200 shoes, two cats, a poodle, a husband and a bus -- a humorous, heart-felt account of two married mid-40's psychiatrists who have it all until they decide to squeeze it all into a 340-square-foot bus, taking a year-long road trip across the country, to Stacy Creamer at Doubleday, in a pre-empt, in a very nice deal, at Mollie Glick at Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency.
REFERENCE:
Eric Hanson's A BOOK OF AGES, an idiosyncratic miscellany of biographical facts of the famous and infamous, including failures, rejections, dead ends, as well as early masterpieces, second chances and lifetime achievements, organized by ages one to one hundred, to Shaye Areheart at Harmony, at auction, by Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates (NA).
Wrap...
From Blackwater's Prince to Congress's Pelosi...
From American Progress:
Think Fast...
Though Blackwater USA CEO Erik Prince told a congressional committee yesterday that the company's guards opened fire on only 195 occasions in Iraq since 2005, "two former Blackwater security guards" stated they believe "employees fired more often than the company has disclosed. "The underreporting of shooting incidents was routine in Iraq," said one guard.
The Bush administration has made "seemingly inconsistent decisions" when releasing prisoners they deem "among America's most-hardened criminals" from Guantanamo Bay, according to Pentagon documents. "Human rights groups contend that the documents show" that the military panels are often "overridden by political expediency."
The State Department launched its own blog last week, called "Dipnote." People have already complained "that the white print on a black background makes it hard to read" Finally, "unbiased news directly from the federal government, a news source long noted for truthful, unbiased reporting," the Washington Post's Al Kamen mockingly writes.
The Army has met its stated recruiting goal of 80,000 new active-duty soldiers for FY2007. But to achieve this goal, "the Army rushed enlistees into its ranks more quickly than usual, depleting the number in the pipeline for next year to less than 7,000 -- the smallest in more than a decade."
The Polish ambassador to Iraq was wounded and a civilian was killed in a car bomb that went off in downtown Baghdad today. Approximately 900 Polish troops are currently stationed south of Baghdad training Iraqi personnel.
And finally: Final score: Boxer 3, Inhofe 0. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) has repeatedly challenged Sen. Barbara Boxer's (D-CA) authority over the Senate environmental committee. During one hearing, she had to inform him, "You don't make the rules anymore." Yesterday, Boxer slammed down Inhofe's assertion that she couldn't invite sitting senators to the hearings, pointing out that in Sept. 2006, he invited Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN). "I don't mind if we have disagreements, but...let's get the facts right," she admonished him.
Wrap...
Think Fast...
Though Blackwater USA CEO Erik Prince told a congressional committee yesterday that the company's guards opened fire on only 195 occasions in Iraq since 2005, "two former Blackwater security guards" stated they believe "employees fired more often than the company has disclosed. "The underreporting of shooting incidents was routine in Iraq," said one guard.
The Bush administration has made "seemingly inconsistent decisions" when releasing prisoners they deem "among America's most-hardened criminals" from Guantanamo Bay, according to Pentagon documents. "Human rights groups contend that the documents show" that the military panels are often "overridden by political expediency."
The State Department launched its own blog last week, called "Dipnote." People have already complained "that the white print on a black background makes it hard to read" Finally, "unbiased news directly from the federal government, a news source long noted for truthful, unbiased reporting," the Washington Post's Al Kamen mockingly writes.
The Army has met its stated recruiting goal of 80,000 new active-duty soldiers for FY2007. But to achieve this goal, "the Army rushed enlistees into its ranks more quickly than usual, depleting the number in the pipeline for next year to less than 7,000 -- the smallest in more than a decade."
The Polish ambassador to Iraq was wounded and a civilian was killed in a car bomb that went off in downtown Baghdad today. Approximately 900 Polish troops are currently stationed south of Baghdad training Iraqi personnel.
And finally: Final score: Boxer 3, Inhofe 0. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) has repeatedly challenged Sen. Barbara Boxer's (D-CA) authority over the Senate environmental committee. During one hearing, she had to inform him, "You don't make the rules anymore." Yesterday, Boxer slammed down Inhofe's assertion that she couldn't invite sitting senators to the hearings, pointing out that in Sept. 2006, he invited Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN). "I don't mind if we have disagreements, but...let's get the facts right," she admonished him.
Wrap...
Marines return from Iraq..not allowed in Oakland Airport!!!
From SFGate.com :
Oakland airport keeps Marines out of terminal in Oakland stopover
Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Marines arriving on a military charter flight on their way home from Iraq were barred from entering a passenger terminal at Oakland International Airport to greet family and friends because of security concerns, airport officials acknowledged Tuesday.
Airport authorities decided to keep the Marines at a remote location on the tarmac because the troops had not been screened and had their weapons on board when the plane landed about 1:30 p.m. Thursday, officials said.
Federal authorities, however, said the Marines had been screened when their flight out of Kuwait landed earlier in the day in New York.
"There was no disrespect that was intended," said Omar Benjamin, executive director of the Port of Oakland, which runs the airport. "There was confusion. There were mistakes that were made."
Some of the 200 Marines on board wanted to meet and greet family and friends at the Oakland passenger terminal before continuing on to their base in Hawaii, but that request wasn't made in advance by the military's charter airline, North American Airlines, or its ground handler, Hilltop Aviation, said airport spokeswoman Rosemary Barnes.
As a result, the Marines weren't allowed in the passenger terminal, although they were allowed to get out of the plane to smoke, stretch their legs or go to the restroom, said airport officials, who apologized for the incident. "With different information, there would have been a different outcome," Barnes said.
The incident has prompted outcry by conservative bloggers online who have questioned the airport's motives and patriotism.
"On the far-left coast (the Marines) were quarantined from civilians," John Gibson wrote on Theodore's World, a Web site that bills itself as "American first and conservative second."
"This smacks of the bad old days in the Bay Area when returning Vietnam vets were spat upon. Some high-ranking military person should make sure it never happens again. Our Iraq vets should be welcome anywhere and everywhere," Gibson wrote.
Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, a former Marine, agreed, saying the country's troops "deserve only the utmost respect for their service to our country."
"I want to be very clear, the city of Oakland does not condone this type of treatment of our troops," Dellums said. "I have directed our port to look into these matters and work closely with airport personnel to ensure that this type of situation never happens again."
Steve Forsyth, North American Airlines spokesman, said it appears that neither the airport nor the airline did anything wrong. He said the plan from the beginning was for the Boeing 767 to make a short layover in Oakland before returning the troops to their base at Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.
"Everything I've heard up to this point doesn't imply that there were any issues in the way it was handled, except apparently someone has complained," Forsyth said.
The airport said the Marines were not screened by Transportation Security Administration agents after they arrived in New York on a flight from Kuwait. That factored into the decision to exclude them from the passenger terminal, officials said. But the TSA said the Marines had been screened by U.S. Customs.
"At no time were servicemen and women prohibited from entering the sterile area of Oakland International Airport by TSA personnel or regulations," the federal agency said.
The plane left for Hawaii about two hours after landing in Oakland, Barnes said.
E-mail Henry K. Lee at hlee@sfchronicle.com.
Wrap...
Oakland airport keeps Marines out of terminal in Oakland stopover
Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Marines arriving on a military charter flight on their way home from Iraq were barred from entering a passenger terminal at Oakland International Airport to greet family and friends because of security concerns, airport officials acknowledged Tuesday.
Airport authorities decided to keep the Marines at a remote location on the tarmac because the troops had not been screened and had their weapons on board when the plane landed about 1:30 p.m. Thursday, officials said.
Federal authorities, however, said the Marines had been screened when their flight out of Kuwait landed earlier in the day in New York.
"There was no disrespect that was intended," said Omar Benjamin, executive director of the Port of Oakland, which runs the airport. "There was confusion. There were mistakes that were made."
Some of the 200 Marines on board wanted to meet and greet family and friends at the Oakland passenger terminal before continuing on to their base in Hawaii, but that request wasn't made in advance by the military's charter airline, North American Airlines, or its ground handler, Hilltop Aviation, said airport spokeswoman Rosemary Barnes.
As a result, the Marines weren't allowed in the passenger terminal, although they were allowed to get out of the plane to smoke, stretch their legs or go to the restroom, said airport officials, who apologized for the incident. "With different information, there would have been a different outcome," Barnes said.
The incident has prompted outcry by conservative bloggers online who have questioned the airport's motives and patriotism.
"On the far-left coast (the Marines) were quarantined from civilians," John Gibson wrote on Theodore's World, a Web site that bills itself as "American first and conservative second."
"This smacks of the bad old days in the Bay Area when returning Vietnam vets were spat upon. Some high-ranking military person should make sure it never happens again. Our Iraq vets should be welcome anywhere and everywhere," Gibson wrote.
Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, a former Marine, agreed, saying the country's troops "deserve only the utmost respect for their service to our country."
"I want to be very clear, the city of Oakland does not condone this type of treatment of our troops," Dellums said. "I have directed our port to look into these matters and work closely with airport personnel to ensure that this type of situation never happens again."
Steve Forsyth, North American Airlines spokesman, said it appears that neither the airport nor the airline did anything wrong. He said the plan from the beginning was for the Boeing 767 to make a short layover in Oakland before returning the troops to their base at Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.
"Everything I've heard up to this point doesn't imply that there were any issues in the way it was handled, except apparently someone has complained," Forsyth said.
The airport said the Marines were not screened by Transportation Security Administration agents after they arrived in New York on a flight from Kuwait. That factored into the decision to exclude them from the passenger terminal, officials said. But the TSA said the Marines had been screened by U.S. Customs.
"At no time were servicemen and women prohibited from entering the sterile area of Oakland International Airport by TSA personnel or regulations," the federal agency said.
The plane left for Hawaii about two hours after landing in Oakland, Barnes said.
E-mail Henry K. Lee at hlee@sfchronicle.com.
Wrap...
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Guliani backers try to mess up CA's electoral system...
From San Francisco Chronicle via truthout.org :
Democrats Want Federal Probe of California Ballot Effort
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100207T.shtml
The San Francisco Chronicle's Carla Marinucci writes: "Democratic Party activists said Monday that they have filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission charging connections between backers of Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani and a GOP-supported ballot measure that could have changed California's winner-take-all electoral college system to benefit Republican candidates."
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Wrap...
Democrats Want Federal Probe of California Ballot Effort
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100207T.shtml
The San Francisco Chronicle's Carla Marinucci writes: "Democratic Party activists said Monday that they have filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission charging connections between backers of Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani and a GOP-supported ballot measure that could have changed California's winner-take-all electoral college system to benefit Republican candidates."
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Wrap...
Bush ignores laws at his pleasure...what else is new?
From Reuters via truthout.org :
Court Reverses Bush on Archive Secrecy
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100207M.shtml
JoAnne Allen, of Reuters, writes: "a federal judge on Monday tossed out part of a 2001 order by President George W. Bush that lets former presidents keep some of their presidential papers secret indefinitely. US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the U.S. Archivist's reliance on the executive order to delay release of the papers of former presidents is 'arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and not in accordance with law.'"
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Wrap...
Court Reverses Bush on Archive Secrecy
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100207M.shtml
JoAnne Allen, of Reuters, writes: "a federal judge on Monday tossed out part of a 2001 order by President George W. Bush that lets former presidents keep some of their presidential papers secret indefinitely. US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the U.S. Archivist's reliance on the executive order to delay release of the papers of former presidents is 'arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and not in accordance with law.'"
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Monday, October 01, 2007
From Blackwater to Sen Byrd's black eye...
From American Progress:
Think Fast...
Blackwater contractors have alleged that a Sept. 16 deadly shooting in Iraq was initiated in response to hostile fire. But an "extensive evidence file" put together by the Iraqi National Police -- including documents, maps, sworn witness statements, and police video footage -- concludes that the Blackwater vehicles "opened fire crazily and randomly, without any reason."
"Congress again has extended funding for a core abstinence-education program, sparking protests from sex-education advocates who want Democrats to pull the plug on such programs."
Gen. David Petraeus said the United States is prepared to "reciprocate" if Iran halts shipments of arms to Iraq's Shia Muslim militias. Meanwhile, Ali Larijani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, rejected accusations that Iran is providing weapons. He added that Iran is ready to work with the U.S. to "help them materialize" a withdrawal from Iraq.
"For the fifth time since 2001, Congress is raising the debt limit, increasing it by $850 billion to $9.815 trillion. The Senate approved the plan on a 53-42 vote Thursday night. The House of Representatives has already signed off on the plan, without a direct vote."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates "told a group of U.S. House Democratic lawmakers that the multinational mission in Afghanistan is suffering from a lack of resources, citing the war in Iraq and the reluctance of U.S. allies to contribute more troops, participants at the meeting said."
Yesterday, the U.S. Embassy in Iraq "criticized a Senate resolution that could lead to a division" of the country "into sectarian or ethnic territories, agreeing with a swath of Iraqi leaders in saying the proposal 'would produce extraordinary suffering and bloodshed.'"
"Out of a political stalemate over Iraq, domestic policy is surging to prominence on Capitol Hill" this week, with "Republicans and Democrats preparing for a time-honored clash over health care, tax policy, the scope of government and its role in America’s problems at home." According to the Washington Post, Republicans view the shift away from Iraq as "a relief."
Defense contractor Brent Wilkes goes on trial tomorrow "to fight federal charges that he funneled more than $700,000 in bribes" to former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham "in the form of both cash and perks ranging from a Sea-Doo jet boat to the services of two prostitutes at a high-end Hawaiian resort."
And finally: Last week, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) was seen sporting an "icky" "bloodshot eye." A Byrd spokesman confirmed to Roll Call that the injury was not the result of a scuffle with Vice President Cheney, but an "all-out battle" with his grandchildren, who "challenged their 89-year-old great-grandpa to a game of 'how long can you hold your breath' in a swimming pool."
Wrap...
Think Fast...
Blackwater contractors have alleged that a Sept. 16 deadly shooting in Iraq was initiated in response to hostile fire. But an "extensive evidence file" put together by the Iraqi National Police -- including documents, maps, sworn witness statements, and police video footage -- concludes that the Blackwater vehicles "opened fire crazily and randomly, without any reason."
"Congress again has extended funding for a core abstinence-education program, sparking protests from sex-education advocates who want Democrats to pull the plug on such programs."
Gen. David Petraeus said the United States is prepared to "reciprocate" if Iran halts shipments of arms to Iraq's Shia Muslim militias. Meanwhile, Ali Larijani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, rejected accusations that Iran is providing weapons. He added that Iran is ready to work with the U.S. to "help them materialize" a withdrawal from Iraq.
"For the fifth time since 2001, Congress is raising the debt limit, increasing it by $850 billion to $9.815 trillion. The Senate approved the plan on a 53-42 vote Thursday night. The House of Representatives has already signed off on the plan, without a direct vote."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates "told a group of U.S. House Democratic lawmakers that the multinational mission in Afghanistan is suffering from a lack of resources, citing the war in Iraq and the reluctance of U.S. allies to contribute more troops, participants at the meeting said."
Yesterday, the U.S. Embassy in Iraq "criticized a Senate resolution that could lead to a division" of the country "into sectarian or ethnic territories, agreeing with a swath of Iraqi leaders in saying the proposal 'would produce extraordinary suffering and bloodshed.'"
"Out of a political stalemate over Iraq, domestic policy is surging to prominence on Capitol Hill" this week, with "Republicans and Democrats preparing for a time-honored clash over health care, tax policy, the scope of government and its role in America’s problems at home." According to the Washington Post, Republicans view the shift away from Iraq as "a relief."
Defense contractor Brent Wilkes goes on trial tomorrow "to fight federal charges that he funneled more than $700,000 in bribes" to former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham "in the form of both cash and perks ranging from a Sea-Doo jet boat to the services of two prostitutes at a high-end Hawaiian resort."
And finally: Last week, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) was seen sporting an "icky" "bloodshot eye." A Byrd spokesman confirmed to Roll Call that the injury was not the result of a scuffle with Vice President Cheney, but an "all-out battle" with his grandchildren, who "challenged their 89-year-old great-grandpa to a game of 'how long can you hold your breath' in a swimming pool."
Wrap...
Illegally arrested at Repub Nat'l Conv....
From truthout.org :
Nick Turse | Fortress Big Apple, 2007
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100107H.shtml
Nick Turse writes for TomDispatch.com: "I am one of the demonstrators who was illegally arrested by the New York City Police Department during the protests against the 2004 Republican National Convention. My crime had been -- in an effort to call attention to the human toll of America's wars -- to ride the subway, dressed in black with the pallor of death about me (thanks to cornstarch and cold cream), and an expression to match, sporting a placard around my neck that read: WAR DEAD."
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Wrap...
Nick Turse | Fortress Big Apple, 2007
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100107H.shtml
Nick Turse writes for TomDispatch.com: "I am one of the demonstrators who was illegally arrested by the New York City Police Department during the protests against the 2004 Republican National Convention. My crime had been -- in an effort to call attention to the human toll of America's wars -- to ride the subway, dressed in black with the pallor of death about me (thanks to cornstarch and cold cream), and an expression to match, sporting a placard around my neck that read: WAR DEAD."
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Wrap...
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