Property rights...global style....

From Stratfor:
Strategic Intelligence Inc.


The Global Evolution of Intellectual Property Rights
By Bart Mongoven

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) will hold its annual meeting beginning Sept. 24, at which time representatives of its 184 member countries will likely endorse the so-called WIPO Development Agenda. WIPO rejected the ideas expressed in the Development Agenda just two years ago, but leading industrialized countries appear rather suddenly to have changed their positions. As a result, this agenda will reflect a fundamental change in how intellectual property rights (IPR) will be viewed globally in the coming decades.

For the past 40 years, the world's largest economies have enforced their position globally that intellectual property rights are sacrosanct. The 1994 World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement on Trade on Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) added some exclusions for emergencies, but in general WIPO and TRIPS rules have been reflexively protective of patents and copyrights.

In the past 10 years, however, this approach has come under increasing fire from governments in developing countries (including WIPO members), human rights and humanitarian groups, relief organizations and anti-capitalist groups. These entities argue that the system retards the economic growth of developing countries and even results in deaths because citizens cannot access medicines and other patented life-saving technologies. Most detractors of the current regime argue that the absolute protection of intellectual property rights is doing far more harm than good -- economically and socially -- and some of them are calling for a radical shift that would essentially do away with recognition of IPR entirely.

As production of goods becomes more and more efficient, especially with modern industrial processes reaching low-wage countries such as China, goods are becoming less expensive. Intellectual property, on the other hand, is coming to be seen as expensive. Whether in drugs, music, seeds or even designer handbags, the price gap between patented products and the raw cost of the materials -- that is, the price of the intellectual property -- is growing. With that growth, intellectual property rights are more frequently being abrogated. Any government tax authority will attest that the amount of cheating is directly related to the perception that the cost of a product is unfairly high.

Though change is afoot, the world is nowhere near doing away with intellectual property protection. Still, the tide has shifted the WIPO stance, as well as the outlook of a number of other players. Most important, the fairly absolute approach to intellectual property protection looks shaky. The coming regime will likely give corporations a rationale for protecting IPR in some cases, but not others. In doing so, it will force changes in a number of industries and business models.

IPR Fundamentals

The global intellectual property system was designed to ensure a creator's monopoly on the use and sale of his or her invention. The inventor could be a writer or musician producing copyrighted material, or a chemist inventing a new paint color. Patents have been extended (with some controversy) to processes and to living organisms that have been developed through biotechnology. In all of these cases, the current legal structure allows the inventor to benefit from the monopoly for a certain amount of time, after which the property falls into the public domain.

Many advocates of changes to these laws argue that ownership of an idea is an absurd concept in many cultures -- and that it therefore is unfair to strictly enforce IPR protections in those cultures. They also argue that it is unfair to demand that people from these countries jump through the necessary hoops, such as hiring a patent lawyer, to secure patents on their own inventions (something they consider to be knowledge rather than property) -- particularly when the system requires that they buy from a company that has patented their traditional knowledge. For instance, they oppose allowing a foreign multinational to patent a seed that has been cultivated by indigenous groups for decades. (The United Nations on Sept. 13 adopted a declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples that mentions indigenous control over intellectual property, while WIPO has a separate working group on indigenous issues.)

In industrialized countries, meanwhile, patent and copyright protections are generally uncontroversial, and the patent system is long-standing and thoroughly engrained. The entry of the U.S. Patent Office, for example, bears a quote from Abraham Lincoln, who said the creation of the U.S. patent system "added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and useful things." Even the most ardent supporters of reform are not calling for an end to IPR protections, but rather for changes, such as expanding the extraordinary circumstances under which protections can be abrogated or further limiting the time the creator enjoys a monopoly.

In 1967, WIPO was formed to centralize the world's patent and copyright information. It operates a database of patents and awards internationally recognized patents to inventors. More than any other body, WIPO ensures an invention receives global patent protection the first time it is patented anywhere in the world. In addition, WIPO promotes adherence to IPR among its member countries, and thus has come to be seen as the global champion of intellectual property protection.

WIPO's hand was strengthened by the 1994 TRIPS regime. In agreeing to TRIPS, countries acknowledged that the protection of intellectual property rights is central to free trade, and each agreed to combat piracy and respect patent and copyright protection.

The Coming Revolution

Intellectual property protection has entered the public's mind through three very different spheres -- pharmaceuticals, expensive consumer products and media (especially music). City dwellers come into contact with intellectual property violations every time they pass a street vendor selling knockoff Prada, Gucci or Louis Vuitton products for $20 or pirated new-release DVDs for 75 cents or less. The designer bags look and feel very close to the "real" item, and the only thing their manufacturer failed to do was invent the style. The materials used in a Prada handbag cost a fraction of the bag's retail price.

Similarly, the music industry sells for around $16 a CD that is available for free on the Internet, yet the actual material in the CD and its packaging cost pennies. The rest of the cost is in intellectual property, marketing and distribution.

Though the music and movie industries and luxury brand name goods are besieged by IPR problems, their global importance pales in comparison to that of the pharmaceutical industry. At the center of the pharmaceutical industry's problem is compulsory licensing. Under the compulsory licensing clause in TRIPS, member countries can break a patent and manufacture a drug themselves in emergency situations, such as a malaria outbreak. Using this clause, however, some governments have actively encouraged the copying and selling of patented drugs without the payment of a royalty to the drug's inventor. As a result of increasing episodes of compulsory licensing, the pharmaceutical industry's core business model is under attack.

The current business model is fairly simple. Drug patents give the inventor a monopoly on the drug for a set number of years, during which time the maker charges a high price for the drug. Only a small percentage of new drugs that begin safety trials make it to market, so the high price allows the company to recoup not just the development and production costs of the drug, but also the development costs of all the failed drugs in the manufacturer's pipeline. The high prices also provide for salaries for managers and sales staff, for advertising and for enough profit to encourage shareholders to keep the company open.

Once the monopoly period is over, the drug's inventor loses the patent and anyone can make and market the drug. Companies that specialize in making drugs, but not inventing them -- the generics manufacturers -- step in and sell the drugs for a fraction of the name brand cost.

For the pharmaceutical business model to work, then, a drug must make a lot of money in seven years to satisfy the company's needs.

Pressure to Change

In the 1990s, the development of costly AIDS drugs initiated a chain of reactions that has led to changes in how IPR is viewed. These drugs severely stalled the outbreak of AIDS in patients who were HIV positive, and had an immediate impact on HIV mortality in the West. In part because they were expensive, however, they were slow to reach poorer countries, areas where AIDS happens to be more prevalent. As a result, countries began to demand access to free AIDS drugs. The pharmaceutical companies, however, hesitated. They had reasons beyond the IPR issue for not giving away AIDS drugs, but the fear of setting a precedent should they do so was a major concern. When it became clear that they could either give away AIDS drugs or face compulsory licensing, they chose to protect the integrity of IPR and began to sell the drugs at greatly reduced prices. Many read the drug companies' hesitation as insensitivity, which paved the way for a wide open discussion on where pharmaceutical companies' social responsibility begins and ends.

This conversation has altered the pharmaceutical companies' leverage in certain places, most visibly in two developing countries that have an increasingly large middle class but a large poor population as well: Thailand and India.

In Thailand, the government and the U.S.-based pharmaceutical lobby PhRMA have launched a public war of words. The Thai government says that, under the compulsory license clause of TRIPS, it should be allowed to break the patent on "essential" AIDS-related drugs and have its government-backed pharmaceutical agency produce generic versions of them. PhRMA said the compulsory licensing step was unwarranted because it already has been providing low-cost drugs to Thailand voluntarily. The most controversial case involved Abbot Laboratories, which ended up pulling its top AIDS and heart-related drugs from the Thai market after Bangkok, enacting a compulsory license law, began production on generic versions. Even the U.S. government became involved, adding Thailand to its list of countries that do not abide by the intellectual property rights of U.S. companies.

In India, Swiss-based Novartis lost a patent suit over what constituted a new or improved drug under Indian patent law. Novartis said that an update to its leukemia drug Gleevec (also called Glivec) regarding how the drug is absorbed into the body represented a major improvement of the drug and that the drug therefore should be subject to patent in India (earlier versions of the drug, which were not subject to patent in India, are now made generically in India). An Indian court in Chennai ruled against Novartis' claim that Indian patent law, which disallows patents to be placed on drugs on which only minor modifications have been made, did not comply with TRIPS requirements. The Indian court instead referred the issue back to the WTO -- a time-consuming and costly maneuver that Novartis sought to avoid by keeping the issue local. Nevertheless, drug-focused nongovernmental organizations, including Doctors without Borders, hailed the court's decision as a victory for essential drugs in the developing world. Novartis is trying to overturn the original patent refusal through other means, but the company's problems in India likely foreshadow growing battles in the developing world that could make it harder for major pharmaceuticals to obtain patents.

The Indian court decision and the activities of the Thai government show that the essential drugs argument is gaining traction, and that developing countries are becoming critical players in shaping how the pharmaceutical companies will conduct business in the future.

IPR Going Forward

The WIPO Development Initiative was born in 2005 with an eye toward addressing problems such as those raised by the patenting of drugs or living things. Most of the ideas expressed in the initiative were unobjectionable to IPR-dependent industrialized countries -- but some were very much objectionable. The plan, therefore, was twice scuttled by industrialized countries. Partly as a result of the recent spate of controversies surrounding pharmaceuticals, however, various industries dependent on IPR have come to see intellectual property in a different light.

WIPO's decision to give the new ideas a second look, then, reinforces a lesson the pharmaceutical companies learned in the AIDS-drug debate: maintaining the status quo will not work. The high cost of intellectual property is encouraging piracy and spurring resentment. The remaining question is how to find an intellectual property protection regime that will continue to add "the fuel of interest to the fire of genius," but remain flexible enough to restrain poorer countries from explicitly breaking it.

The corporations could have the answer, or at least part of it. The risk to a corporate brand from being seen as a bully or even a greedy killer is enormous. As the world increasingly demands that corporations be socially responsible, companies are under pressure to look at the social aspects of their businesses, including their patents. With this, they appear willing to endorse a WIPO initiative -- at least as a first step in exploring ways to protect IPR and avoid resentment.

The change that this portends is far more significant than the WIPO agenda suggests, however. The difficulty with IPR is that, for any system to work it must be absolute. Either an invention is property (and therefore patentable) or it is not. Once the ability to patent an invention becomes situational, the business models that depend on absolute protection of intellectual property rights are challenged.

This scenario could lead to dramatic changes in IPR-dependent industries, such as pharmaceuticals. Already the industry is finding ways to increase production in Asian countries, where costs are lower, and is developing the generic arms of their businesses so they can dominate the generics market once the drug is off patent. In the United States, the issue of universal health care coverage is gaining traction and insurance companies are successfully demanding that doctors prescribe cheaper generics rather than name brand drugs. Factor in the growing pressure from developing countries that have strengthening economies, and the playing field is ripe for change in how modern business deals with intellectual property rights on a global scale. The ideas behind the WIPO Development Agenda signal the changes to come.
> https://www.stratfor.com/services/freesignup.php

© Copyright 2007 Strategic Forecasting, Inc. All rights reserved

Wrap...

From Repub filibusters to Guiliani's boast in UK....

From American Progress:

Think Fast...

Senate conservatives' successful effort to obstruct the Webb amendment yesterday mark the "the eighth time this year" that they "blocked a Democratic move to challenge U.S. policy in Iraq."

71.1 percent: The increase last month in the numbers of Iraqis forced to abandon their homes, "the sharpest rise so far."

Mary Matalin, a former Cheney aide, is working to pay the legal bills of her old co-worker, "Scooter" Libby, to whom the President granted clemency earlier this year. "Make no mistake, Scooter's battle is not yet over," Matalin wrote in a recent fundraising letter. He "still has hundreds of thousands of dollars in outstanding legal bills from his trial" that "need to be paid immediately."

White House officials say that, after the attorney general confirmation, the nomination of Steven G. Bradbury to head the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) "is their next priority this fall, though they have nine major slots at a depleted Justice Department to fill." As acting OLC chief, Bradbury has been "advising President Bush on the extent of his terrorism-fighting powers," but several Democratic senators have placed secret holds on his official nomination.

An anonymous senator has placed a hold on the nomination of Rosa Emilia Rodriguez-Velez as U.S. attorney in Puerto Rico. Critics charge "she is leading a politically motivated investigation into Puerto Rico's Democratic governor" on possibly illegal campaign contributions he received in 2000.

Rep. Jerry Weller (R-IL), "dogged by ethics questions surrounding his Nicaraguan investments and his wife's finances, is set to announce his retirement in the near future, Republican sources said Wednesday."

Osama bin Laden will reportedly release a new message soon declaring war on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. A banner posted on a militant website previewed the release: "Urgent, Al Qaeda declares war on the tyrant Pervez Musharraf and his apostate army, in the words of Osama bin Laden."

And finally: Yesterday, Rudy Giuliani was "on the trans-Atlantic campaign trail...bragging about his international credentials. 'I'm probably one of the four or five best known Americans in the world,' Giuliani told a small group of reporters at a posh London hotel as onlookers gathered in the lobby to gawk at actor Dustin Hoffman, who was on a separate visit."

Wrap...

Conyers stands tall....

From Congressman Conyers:

I wanted to take the opportunity to update you on the status of the contempt of Congress resolution in the House of Representatives.

As you may know, the Judiciary Committee passed a resolution before the August recess holding the White House and Harriet Miers in contempt of Congress for their failure to provide documents and appear before the committee as legally required by subpoena.

The information we have received to date from the Justice Department from our U.S. Attorneys investigation indicates the White House played a central role in the firing of the nine federal prosecutors. Yet, the White House has stonewalled and consistently refused to cooperate with inquiries into this matter.

At the heart of our investigation is the evidence uncovered suggesting that the nine U.S. Attorneys were fired for politically-motivated reasons, while others may have been retained because they were pursuing partisan investigations.


We have also discovered that job candidates' political contributions and affiliations were considered in hiring decisions for nonpartisan positions in the Department of Justice. Our job has been made more difficult by apparent misleading testimony from the Attorney General and other Department of Justice officials.


This politicization of our judicial system cannot be tolerated. Our citizens have a right to expect that federal prosecutions will be conducted in a fair and nonpartisan manner.


There are many steps we can take in this confrontation with the White House. Some are more extreme than others. What we must first do is get the facts that show who made these decisions in the White House. Only once we have this evidence can we adequately pursue justice.


What is now required is for the House to pass these contempt of Congress citations and pursue legal action against the White House and Harriet Miers for their failure to meet the requirements of the subpoenas. Hopefully this contempt of Congress resolution will soon have a vote on the floor of the House. I am not prepared to allow this administration to operate above the law.


Thank you for your continued support for a better democracy.


Your Friend,

John Conyers, Jr.

Wrap...

Moderates...no help at all....

From David Sirota:

http://www.workingassetsblog.com/2007/09/moderation_extremist_refusal_t.html

"Moderation" = Extremist Refusal to End the War
By David Sirota
Working Assets, 9/19/07

Roll Call's headline today blares "House Centrists Seek a Little
Moderation on Iraq." The story is about "a small band of moderate
House Democrats and Republicans is hammering out a bipartisan
position on the Iraq War."

This story has been written over and over and over again on every
single issue. It is as if reporters have a template set up in
Microsoft Word, where they just fire up the story and change the
names and issues. You know how it goes. It starts out with a
declaration that the Brave And Serious "Moderates" are going to "put
partisanship aside" and rescue America. Typically, the plan to rescue
America is at best a non-binding gesture, and more likely one that
runs roughshod over what most Americans actually want - but that kind
of context isn't reported in the template.

Yet in this particular Roll Call story it actually is (although
perhaps inadvertently).

The article first informs us that the Brave And Serious Heroes "have
drafted a letter backing a series of proposals" - the diversionary
haze of paperwork about paperwork (letters about proposals??) being
one of Washington's tell-tale signs that this is much ado about
nothing. This paperwork suggests that the Brave And Serious Heroes
may be willing to support non-binding legislation "aimed at shifting
the Iraq mission." And then comes the giveaway:


"'None of this leads to the end of the war,' Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE)
said, but it would mark a departure from the polarized debate over
whether and when to withdraw troops."

The story goes on to trumpet the Brave And Serious Heroes who are
part of a bipartisan Washington dinner party circuit called the
"Center Aisle Caucus" spearheaded by New York Democratic Rep. Steve
Israel (D) - but the punchline has already been delivered.

As we can see so clearly here, the term "moderate" in Washington when
it comes to the war means guaranteeing that whatever bill takes center
stage in the war debate - well, that "none of this leads to the end of
the war." It means making sure that we "depart from the polarized
debate over whether and when to withdraw troops" - you know, the
debate over the actual issue, the debate that the latest Gallup Poll
shows almost two-thirds of America wants Congress to have - and want
Congress to conclude by passing binding timetables to end the war.

As I have written before, when you look at actual public opinion
data, you see that the terms "moderate" and "centrist" in Washington
are wholly and completely divorced from the terms "moderate" and
"centrist" out in the rest of the country. The term "moderate" may be
defined in the dictionary as "avoidance of extremes or excesses" but
in D.C. it means the opposite - embrace of extremes or excesses, in
grinning defiance of what the public wants.

And that's what it is. When it comes to the war, the so-called
"moderates" have taken on the qualities of the smiling Darth
Vader-ish poster boy for extremism - Dick Cheney. Remember, it was
our Vice President who told ABC News last year the Iraq War "may not
be popular with the public - it doesn't matter." I guess he's a
"moderate" now too.

Wrap...

If FBI uses confidential sources, then....

From Secrecy News:

GUIDELINES ON FBI CONFIDENTIAL SOURCES

Late last year the Attorney General approved revised guidelines for the
use of confidential informants by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The guidelines require that confidential human sources be subjected to
a new validation process to help ensure that their information is
reliable.

The guidelines also generally require that the FBI and prosecutors
inform responsible law enforcement authorities if they discover that an
FBI source is engaged in "unauthorized criminal activity."

"The FBI does not have any authority to make any promise or commitment
that would prevent the government from prosecuting a Confidential Human
Source for criminal activity that is not authorized....."

See "Attorney General Guidelines Regarding the Use of FBI Confidential
Human Sources," approved December 13, 2006:

http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fbi/chs-guidelines.pdf

The Guidelines were included in voluminous FBI answers to questions for
the record of a recently published Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on
"FBI Oversight," December 6, 2006 (14 MB PDF file):

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_hr/fbi120606.pdf

[Use links above to continue reading]

Wrap...

A choice selection of books...

From Publishers Lunch Weekly:

FICTION/DEBUT:

Sleeper Cell and The Bionic Woman screenwriter and debut novelist Kamran Pasha's SHADOW OF THE SWORDS, a love story set amidst the showdown between Saladin and Richard the Lionheart during the Crusades, and MOTHER OF THE BELIEVERS, the birth of Islam from the eyes of Muhammad's wife Aisha, a politician and warrior, to Suzanne O'Neill at Atria, by Rebecca Oliver at Endeavor (World English). Foreign: ROliver@endeavorla.com

SCI-FI/FANTASY:

Actress Amber Benson's DEATH'S DAUGHTER, the story of a young woman trying to make it as a young urban professional in NYC who slowly comes to realize that her father is actually the Grim Reaper and that she must rescue him after he's kidnapped by unknown forces in order to save her entire family (not to mention the world), to Ginjer Buchanan at Penguin, in a very nice deal, in a three-book deal, by Brendan Deneen at Objective Entertainment.
Brendan@ObjectiveEnt.com

GENERAL/OTHER:

James Frey's BRIGHT SHINY MORNING, to Jonathan Burnham at Harper, with Tim Duggan editing, for publication in summer 2008, by Eric Simonoff at Janklow & Nesbit (NA).

Author most recently of The Judas Field, Howard Bahr's first non-Civil War novel PELICAN ROAD, about an isolated stretch of railroad between Meridian (MS) and New Orleans and the men who risk their lives to keep the trains running, to Dave Adams at MacAdam/Cage, for publication in spring 2008, by Wendy Sherman at Wendy Sherman Associates.

HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:

DRESDEN and THE BERLIN WALL author Frederick Taylor's EXORCIZING HITLER, a new understanding of the cataclysmic end of WWII in Germany and its aftermath, marked by suffering, chaos, and Cold War politics, but ultimately the rebuilding of Germany as a democratic nation, to Bill Swainson at Bloomsbury, Peter Ginna at Bloomsbury and Ludger Ikas at Berlin Verlag, by Jane Turnbull in London and Dan Conaway at Writers House.

Richard Schickel and George Perry's YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS: THE WARNER BROTHERS STORY, a fully authorized history of the studio to be published in Fall 2008, in connection with its 85th anniversary and a TV documentary series, to Cindy De La Hoz at Running Press, for publication in fall 2008, by Peter Garlid at LibriSource, on behalf of Palazzo Editions UK (World English). peter@librisource.com

Former Rwandan Parliament Speaker Joseph Sebarenzi with Laura Mullane's GOD SLEEPS IN RWANDA: A Story of Survival and Reconciliation, the author's personal and political story of growing up Tutsi and surviving the massacre of his entire family in the 1994 Rwanda genocide, to Malaika Adero at Atria, in a very nice deal, for publication in Spring 2009, by Faith Hamlin at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates (NA).
Foreign: ttobias@sjga.com

Former US Senator from Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee's STANDING DOWN, a rare first-hand account of the feverish lead-up to and eventual fall-out from an ill-conceived war, seen from the halls of power of the United States Senate, to Thomas Dunne at Thomas Dunne Books, by John Silbersack at Trident Media Group (NA).

MEMOIR:
Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren's IN THE FRAME: My Life In Words and Pictures, an illustrated memoir covering her childhood, her early life as an actress, and her recent successes in theater, film, and television, to Peter Borland at Atria, for publication in February 2008, by Susan Howe at Orion (US).

POP CULTURE:

Peter Terzian, ed.'s JUST FOR THE RECORD: WRITERS ON THE ALBUMS THAT CHANGED THEIR LIVES, featuring such writers as Pankaj Mishra, Geoff Dyer, Daniel Handler, Ben Kunkel, Colm Toibin, and Stacey D'Erasmo, to Rakesh Satyal at Harper Perennial, in a pre-empt, by Anna Stein at the Irene Skolnick Agency (NA).

Wrap...

From no Repub support to Blitzer disses Ellen...

From American Progress:

Think Fast...

"Unable to garner enough Republican support, Senate Democratic leaders said yesterday that they are abandoning a bipartisan effort to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq by next spring." Instead, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is expected to push for a firm deadline, this time June 2008. "It's all definite timelines," Reid said.

Sen. John Warner (R-VA) suggested yesterday that he may pull his support for Sen. Jim Webb's (D-VA) measure to give the overstretched armed forces more rest. Warner voted for the measure last July, but he now claims to be appeased by the administration's token withdrawal. Call your Senators and demand their support for Webb's pro-troop amendment.

29: President Bush's approval rating in the latest Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday, which is "below his worst Zogby poll mark of 30 percent in March."

"A preliminary Iraqi report on a shooting involving" private security firm Blackwater USA says the company's employees "were not ambushed, as the company reported, but instead fired at a car when it did not heed a policeman's call to stop, killing a couple and their infant." The Iraqi Interior Ministry says it has revoked Blackwater's license over the incident.

The U.S. military has introduced "religious enlightenment" programs for Iraqi detainees. The commander of U.S. detention facilities said the effort is intended to "bend them back to our will." It is also an effort to identify "irreconcilables" and "put them away" in permanent detention facilities.

Iraq is the "bank robbery capital of the world," holding the record for the "first and second highest amounts taken in the history of bank robberies."

And finally: Ellen DeGeneres "has been trying in vain to get CNN's Wolf Blitzer on her show, even calling his studio during his broadcast." On Monday, Blitzer said on The Situation Room, "Of course I'll be on your show, and I'd love you to come on my show as well." But that wasn't enough. So yesterday, DeGeneres had MSNBC host Chris Matthews call in to her show, while the screen read, "Ellen's on the phone with Chris Matthews because Wolf Blitzer wouldn't take her call."

Wrap...

Blackwater et al...How much are they paid...

From The Atlantic Monthly:

The Atlantic Monthly Magazine
A buyer's guide to Private Military Contractors
by Matthew Quirk

The Iraq occupation—particularly the events in Fallujah and at Abu Ghraib—has introduced Americans to a newly prevalent kind of warrior: private corporate soldiers. Roughly 20,000 of them work alongside the coalition in Iraq—ten times as many per military soldier as served in the 1991 Gulf War. Blackwater USA and other private firms offer services ranging from feeding the troops to armed combat. According to P. W. Singer, the author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, their pay ranges from $250 a month for Kurdish fighters to $1,000 a day for former Green Berets. The growth of these companies over the past decade is attributable to several factors: a trend toward outsourcing in business and government, the overextension of the U.S. military, and the increased frequency of conflict in a post-Cold War world. Here are some notable private contracts from the past decade, ranked by cost.

Supplying and training the Saudi National Guard, the elite forces that protect the Saudi monarchy and maintain stability, $831 million for five years (1998): Vinnell Corp.

Providing security for the Program Management Office monitoring the reconstruction effort in Iraq, $293 million for three years (2004): Aegis Defense Services. The contract calls for up to 75 two-man security teams trained in "mobile vehicle warfare" and "counter-sniping," and puts Aegis in charge of coordinating all the private security contractors in Iraq.

Leading an attempt to overthrow the Nigerian government of General Sani Abacha, $100 million (1998): Executive Outcomes declined the offer. Abacha died of natural causes that same year.

Providing a security detail for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, $52 million (2003): DynCorp.

Creating a new Iraqi police force, $50 million for the first year (2003): DynCorp.

Training a new Iraqi army, $48 million (2003): Vinnell Corp. The contract called for Vinnell to train nine battalions; more than half of the first completed battalion later abandoned the army.

Protecting Iraq's oil pipeline, $39.2 million (2003-present): Erinys International. The job requires 14,500 guards.

Defending Sierra Leone's capital, repelling an invading rebel army, and storming its stronghold, $35 million (1995-1997): Executive Outcomes. While under contract Executive Outcomes defeated two violent coup attempts by the rebel army. Meanwhile, the firm allowed a quieter internal coup by a third party to succeed; this brought to power a head of state more sympathetic to Executive Outcomes.

Providing interrogation services in Iraq, $19.9 million (2003-present): CACI Systems. At least two contractors, one from CACI and one from Titan Corp., have been implicated in the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Providing a team of former New Zealand special-ops soldiers to rescue a businessman held hostage in East Timor, $220,000 (2000): Onix International.

Wrap...

One horrendous list of experiments US has done...on humans...

From Information Clearing House:

A History Of US Secret Human Experimentation

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3511.htm

[Use link above to see one horrendous list]

Wrap...

Fundies force religion on troops....

From truthout.org :

Pentagon Sued Over Mandatory Christianity

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091807R.shtml

Truthout's Jason Leopold reports on a lawsuit that was filed by a military watchdog organization today against the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and a US Army major on behalf of a soldier stationed in Iraq. The suit alleges that the Pentagon tried to force the soldier to embrace evangelical Christianity and retaliated against him when he refused.

[Use link above to continue reading]

Wrap...

From WH to Cabinet Secs: Don't take any $$$ to Rep. Al Green's cell phone...

From American Progress:

Think Fast....The White House has "told nearly a dozen Cabinet secretaries to send letters to Capitol Hill" rejecting Congress's proposed new funds for their agencies. The "carefully scripted letters" warn lawmakers that their moves could harm "agency operations" and the "integrity of the budget process." Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) responded that he was "disappointed" in their "rhetoric."

A week after he told U.S. lawmakers about "progress" in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus will be in Britain today, briefing Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO), who previously "has not supported Congress using its ability to stop war payments in order to force President Bush to change direction," said yesterday that Congress should look at cutting off funds. "If it could be done then I think we ought to take a look at it," Salazar said.

Thirteen senior House members "have been served with subpoenas from defense attorneys representing Brent Wilkes, the former defense contractor charged with bribing imprisoned ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.). None of the lawmakers will comply with the subpoena."

The Senate will vote today on a bill to provide the District of Columbia with voting rights. The legislation, which has passed the House, would give D.C. a full voting member of the U.S. House while also providing Utah an additional seat.

A day after Iraqi officials ordered Blackwater USA to leave the country, the government has announced that it will "review the status of all private security firms operating in the country."

Salon writes that Iraqis who seek redress for the deaths of the civilians at the hands of U.S. contractors in a criminal court are out of luck. Because of an order promulgated by the former Coalition Provisional Authority, "there appears to be almost no chance that the contractors involved would be, or could be, successfully prosecuted in any court in Iraq."

And finally: "Fashionistas all over Capitol Hill hailed Rep. Al Green Monday for rocking his cell phone earpiece during remarks on the House floor. The fashion-forward Texas Democrat may or may not be the first ever lawmaker to sport such a device during remarks on the floor, but he certainly turned heads from C-Span viewers everywhere."

Wrap...

Bush and the FAKE Anbar Sheik....

From Greg Palast:

Bush’s Fake Sheik Whacked:
The Surge and the Al Qaeda Bunny

A special investigative report from inside Iraq
by Greg Palast

Monday, September 17, 2007- Did you see George all choked up? In his surreal TV talk on Thursday, he got all emotional over the killing by Al Qaeda of Sheik Abu Risha, the leader of the new Sunni alliance with the US against the insurgents in Anbar Province, Iraq.

Bush shook Abu Risha's hand two weeks ago for the cameras. Bush can shake his hand again, but not the rest of him: Abu Risha was blown away just hours before Bush was to go on the air to praise his new friend.

Here's what you need to know that NPR won't tell you.

1. Sheik Abu Risha wasn't a sheik.
2. He wasn't killed by Al Qaeda.
3. The new alliance with former insurgents in Anbar is as fake as the sheik - and a murderous deceit.

How do I know this? You can see the film - of "Sheik" Abu Risha, of the guys who likely whacked him and of their other victims.

Just in case you think I've lost my mind and put my butt in insane danger to get this footage, don't worry. I was safe and dry in Budapest. It was my brilliant new cameraman, Rick Rowley, who went to Iraq to get the story on his own.

Rick's "the future of TV news," says BBC. He's also completely out of control. Despite our pleas, Rick and his partner Dave Enders went to Anbar and filmed where no cameraman had dared tread.

Why was "sheik" Abu Risha so important? As the New York Times put it this morning, "Abu Risha had become a charismatic symbol of the security gains in Sunni areas that have become a cornerstone of American plans to keep large numbers of troops in Iraq though much of next year."

In other words, Abu Risha was the PR hook used to sell the "success" of the surge.

The sheik wasn't a sheik. He was a fake. While proclaiming to Rick that he was "the leader of all the Iraqi tribes," Abu lead no one. But for a reported sum in the millions in cash for so-called, "reconstruction contracts," Abu Risha was willing to say he was Napoleon and Julius Caesar and do the hand-shakie thing with Bush on camera.

Notably, Rowley and his camera caught up with Abu Risha on his way to a "business trip" to Dubai, money laundering capital of the Middle East.

There are some real sheiks in Anbar, like Ali Hathem of the dominant Dulaimi tribe, who told Rick Abu Risha was a con man. Where was his tribe, this tribal leader? "The Americans like to create characters like Disney cartoon heros." Then Ali Hathem added, "Abu Risha is no longer welcome" in Anbar.

"Not welcome" from a sheik in Anbar is roughly the same as a kiss on both cheeks from the capo di capi. Within days, when Abu Risha returned from Dubai to Dulaimi turf in Ramadi, Bush's hand-sheik was whacked.

On Thursday, Bush said Abu Risha was killed, "fighting Al Qaeda" - and the White House issued a statement that the sheik was "killed by al Qaeda."

Bullshit.

There ain't no Easter Bunny and "Al Qaeda" ain't in Iraq, Mr. Bush. It was very cute, on the week of the September 11 memorials, to tie the death of your Anbar toy-boy to bin Laden's Saudi hijackers. But it's a lie. Yes, there is a group of berserkers who call themselves "Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia." But they have as much to do with the real Qaeda of bin Laden as a Rolling Stones "tribute" band has to do with Mick Jagger.

Who got Abu Risha? Nothing - NOTHING - moves in Ramadi without the approval of the REAL tribal sheiks. They were none-too-happy, as Hathem noted, about the millions the US handed to Risha. The sheiks either ordered the hit - or simply gave the bomber free passage to do the deed.

So who are these guys, the sheiks who lead the Sunni tribes of Anbar - the potentates of the Tamimi, Fallaji, Obeidi, Zobal and Jumaili tribes? Think of them as the Sopranos of Arabia. They are also members of the so-called "Awakening Council" - getting their slice of the millions handed out - which they had no interest in sharing with Risha.

But creepy and deadly or not, these capi of the desert were effective in eliminating "Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia." Indeed, as US military so proudly pointed out to Rick, the moment the sheiks declared their opposition to Al Qaeda - i.e. got the payments from the US taxpayers - Al Qaeda instantly diappeared.

This miraculous military change, where the enemy just evaporates, has one explanation: the sheiks ARE al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Just like the Sopranos extract "protection" payments from New Jersey businesses, the mobsters of Anbar joined our side when we laid down the loot.

What's wrong with that? After all, I'd rather send a check than send our kids from Columbus to fight them.

But there's something deeply, horribly wrong with dealing with these killers. They still kill. With new US protection, weapons and cash, they have turned on the Shia of Anbar. Fifteen thousand Shia families from a single district were forced at gunpoint to leave Anbar. Those moving too slowly were shot. Kids and moms too.

Do the Americans know about the ethnic cleansing of Anbar by our erstwhile "allies"? Rick's film shows US commanders placing their headquarters in the homes abandoned by terrorized Shia.

Rick's craziest move was to go and find these Shia refugees from Anbar. They were dumped, over a hundred thousand of them, in a cinder block slum with no running water in Baghdad. They are under the "protection" of the Mahdi Army, another group of cutthroats. But at least these are Shia cutthroats.

So the great "success" of the surge is our arming and providing cover for ethnic cleansing in Anbar. Nice, Mr. Bush. And with the US press "embedded," we won't get the real story. Even Democrats are buying into the Anbar "awakening" fairy tale.

An Iraqi government official frets that giving guns and cover to the Anbar gang is like adopting a baby crocodile. "A crocodile is not a pet," he told Rick. It will soon grow to devour you. But what could the puppet do but complain about his strings?

This Iraqi got it right: the surge is a crock.

********
Greg Palast is the author of "Armed Madhouse: from Baghdad to New Orleans - Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild." See Palast's reports for BBC Television's Newsnight, now filmed by Rick Rowley and partners, at www.GregPalast.com

Wrap...

Today is CONSTITUTION DAY...Impeach BushCo...

From truthout.org :

Rohde and Thottam | Hold Bush/Cheney Accountable on Constitution Day

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091707L.shtml

Stephen Rohde and Peter Thottam write for Truthout, "As we celebrate Constitution Day, we need to mourn how far our country will have strayed from its founding principles if the people themselves fail to take action to remove from office leaders who have so arrogantly abused their powers, failed to fulfill their duty to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed,' and have willfully violated their oath to 'preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.'"

[Use link above to continue reading]

Wrap...

Blackwater exempt from crimes committed in Iraq...

From American Progress:


IRAQ -- IRAQ INTERIOR MINISTRY BANS BLACKWATER AFTER FATAL CIVILIAN SHOOTING: Iraq's Interior Ministry has banned the American private security firm, Blackwater USA, from operating in Iraq after eight civilians were killed after Blackwater members guarding a State Department motorcade allegedly responded to gunshots with open fire.

In 2003, the Bush administration awarded the firm a $21.3 million no-bid contract to provide security for then-Amb. Paul Bremer. In 2006, the company moved from solely providing private security details "to a more 'overt combat role,' essentially becoming an army for hire."

Though dozens of Blackwater mercenaries have been killed or wounded in Iraq, notably the four guards who were killed in Fallujah in 2004, the Pentagon does not include these causalities in its official tally.

Iraq's Interior Ministry has indicated it will investigate Sunday's incident and press charges against the individuals involved. It is unclear whether the Iraqi government has the authority to prosecute Blackwater employees.

As the AP notes, "Unlike soldiers, they are not bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Under a special provision secured by American-occupying forces, they are exempt from prosecution by Iraqis for crimes committed there."

Wrap...

Petraeus...has to substitute troops for troops...

From Washington Post via truthout.org :

"Help Wanted" Ad Belies Report on Iraq Security

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091707C.shtml

Walter Pincus reports for The Washington Post: "A week ago today, Gen. David H. Petraeus started his rounds on Capitol Hill, reporting that security in Iraq was improving to the point that a small number of troops could begin coming home by year's end. But 10 days ago, his commanders in Baghdad began advertising for private contractors to work in combat-supply warehouses on U.S. bases throughout Iraq because half the soldiers who had been working in the warehouses were needed for patrols, combat and protection of US forces."

[Use link above to continue reading]

Wrap...

From more Sneak & Peek to Iraq's looters....

From American Progress:

Think Fast...

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell "heads to Capitol Hill this week" seeking to extend the government's surveillance authority. "McConnell is scheduled to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday and before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday."

While Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) predicts that a federal ban on job discrimination against GLBT workers "will win House approval in coming weeks," he and other gay rights supporters are "less optimistic" about the Senate, "where they would need 60 votes" to overcome stall tactics from conservatives, such as a filibuster.

In a "bluntly worded" cable, Amb. Ryan Crocker "said the admission of Iraqi refugees to the United States remains bogged down by 'major bottlenecks' resulting from security reviews. About 2 million Iraqis are displaced inside Iraq, and an estimated 2.2 million more have fled" to neighboring nations.

Joel A. Scanlon has been named director of strategic initiatives, taking over the 'think tank' within the White House long led by the departed Peter H. Wehner." Scanlon "is a former research assistant to syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer."

The UK Sunday Telegraph reports that the Pentagon is "taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran," developing a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in that country.

Today in Iraq, "almost every archaeological site in southern Iraq is under the control of looters." Many archaeological workers trained under Saddam Hussein are now "using their knowledge to join the looters in digging through the ancient cities."

And finally: The newest tourist attraction in Minneapolis is the airport bathroom made famous by Sen. Larry Craig's (R-ID) arrest. "People have been going inside, taking pictures of the stall, taking pictures outside the bathroom door -- man, it's been crazy," said Royal Zino, who owns a shoeshine shop next to the bathroom.

Wrap...

Danger: American Fundamentalism and War...

From TomDispatch.com :

Tomdispatch Interview: James Carroll, American Fundamentalisms
He's a man who knows something about the dangers of mixing religious fervor, war, and the crusading spirit, a subject he dealt with eloquently in his book Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews. A former Catholic priest turned antiwar activist in the Vietnam era, he also wrote movingly in a memoir of his relationship to his father, the founding director of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. Carroll essentially grew up in that five-sided monument to American imperial power. For him, as a boy, the Pentagon was "the largest playhouse in the world" and he can still remembering sliding down its ramps in his stocking feet, as he's written in the introduction to his recent, magisterial history of the Pentagon, House of War.

As a weekly columnist for the Boston Globe, he was perhaps the first media figure to notice -- and warn against -- a presidential "slip of the tongue" just after the assaults of 9/11, when George W. Bush referred to his new Global War on Terror as a "crusade." He was possibly the first mainstream columnist in the country to warn against the consequences of launching a "war" on Afghanistan in response to those attacks, now just another of the President's missions unaccomplished; and, in September 2003, possibly the first to pronounce the Iraq War "lost" in print. ("The war in Iraq is lost. What will it take to face that truth this time?") His stirring columns on the first years of our presidential attempts to bring "freedom" to the world at the point of a cruise missile were collected in Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War. In those years, Carroll was a powerful, moral voice from -- to use a very American phrase -- the (media) wilderness until much of our American world finally caught up to him.

He has most recently completed a stirring documentary film, also named Constantine's Sword, in which he explores the roots of religiously inspired violence in our present world. He submitted to a Tomdispatch interview back in August 2005 and when, this summer, I suggested that we try again, he agreed to discuss "American fundamentalisms," a subject that receives remarkably less coverage and consideration than the other fundamentalisms in our world.

We met on a warm day, just after a rare downpour in a dry summer, in the study of his house in Massachusetts. His many books dot the bookshelves. Out the window is a piney landscape, not quite the one the Puritans first saw when they arrived early in the seventeenth century to begin it all, but beautiful nonetheless. Carroll, his hair graying, has not so much a worn, as a well inhabited face. You can see him thinking as he speaks -- not so common a trait as you might imagine. As he warms up to the subject of American fundamentalisms, his voice gains the quiet, yet powerful passion that any reader of his columns has come to expect, a passion that nonetheless leaves room for reason and criticism, for further thought.

I put my two small tape recorders on a modest coffee table, turn them on, ask my first question, and discover that this is an interview in name only. It's more like being back in the most riveting classroom of my life. A single lecture, an hour's genuine education, stretching from our first Puritan moments to George Bush's Iraq, with hardly an interpolation needed on my part. So join me, kick back, and learn something about what's fundamental to us.


American Exceptionalism Meets Team Jesus
A Tomdispatch Interview with James Carroll

Tomdispatch: I recently heard this joke: How many neocons does it take to screw in a light bulb? The answer: Neocons don't believe in light bulbs, they declare war on evil and set the house on fire.

[Use link below to continue reading]

http://www.tomdispatch.com:80/post/174837/tomdispatch_interview_james_carroll_american_fundamentalisms

Wrap....

PSYOPS: Better know what you're doing....

From Secrecy News:

PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS TEST MILITARY APTITUDE

Psychological operations (PSYOP) -- military programs that seek to
influence the attitudes and shape the behavior of a target audience --
have the potential to increase the effectiveness of the armed forces
they support while minimizing violent conflict. But the U.S. military
is not notably good at conducting such programs.

To achieve their objective, PSYOP practitioners should ideally have a
clear understanding of the values and thought processes of their
audience (as well as their own), and they should have a credible and
compelling message to deliver. These have often been lacking.

According to a 2004 Army evaluation of PSYOP activities during the wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq, "it is clear that on the whole, PSYOP produced
much less than expected and perhaps less than claimed."

Two newly disclosed Army publications provide insight into Army PSYOP
planning and procedures.

"Psychological Operations Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures," U.S.
Army Field Manual FM 3-05.301, December 2003 (a revision was issued in
August 2007) (439 pages, 6.2 MB):

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-301.pdf

"Tactical Psychological Operations: Tactics, Techniques, and
Procedures," U.S. Army Field Manual 3-05.302, October 2005 (255 pages,
11.2 MB):

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-302.pdf

These documents have not been approved for public release, but copies
were obtained by Secrecy News.

A related document that was previously disclosed by Secrecy News is
"Psychological Operations," U.S. Army Field Manual 3-05.30, April 2005:

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-30.pdf

In the worst cases, poorly executed PSYOP activities are not merely
futile but may actually be counterproductive.

In 2003, a U.S. information operations officer produced posters
picturing Saddam Hussein as Homer Simpson and other figures of
ridicule. "The posters enraged Iraqis and led to conflict that
resulted in casualties for U.S. forces," according to a 2005 study of
PSYOP lessons learned.

See "Review of Psychological Operations: Lessons Learned from Recent
Operational Experience" by Christopher J. Lamb, National Defense
University Press, September 2005:

http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/lamb.pdf

[Use links above to read more]

Wrap...

Duty, Honor, and Nuremberg Principles....

From bestcyrano.org :

An Open Letter to the New Generation of Military Officers Serving and Protecting Our Nation

By Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret., National Commander, The Patriots

9/14/07

“The Nuremberg Principles says that we in the military have not only the right, but also the DUTY to refuse an illegal order. It was on this basis that we executed Nazi officers who were ‘only carrying out their orders’… The Constitution which we are sworn to uphold says that treaties entered into by the United States are the ‘highest law of the land,’ equivalent to the Constitution itself. Accordingly, we in the military are sworn to uphold treaty law, including the United Nations charter and the Geneva Convention… Based on the above, I contend that should some civilian order you to initiate a nuclear attack on Iran (for example), you are duty-bound to refuse that order. I might also suggest that you should consider whether the circumstances demand that you arrest whoever gave the order as a war criminal.”

Dear Comrades in Arms,

You are facing challenges in 2007 that we of previous generations never dreamed of.

[Use link below to continue reading]

http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=285

Wrap...

Watching you in your house...Big Brother....

From BBC News:

Big Brother is watching us all
By Humphrey Hawksley
BBC News, Washington


The US and UK governments are developing increasingly sophisticated gadgets to keep individuals under their surveillance. When it comes to technology, the US is determined to stay ahead of the game.


"Five nine, five ten," said the research student, pushing down a laptop button to seal the measurement. "That's your height."

"Spot on," I said.

"OK, we're freezing you now," interjected another student, studying his computer screen. "So we have height and tracking and your gait DNA".

"Gait DNA?" I interrupted, raising my head, so inadvertently my full face was caught on a video camera.

"Have we got that?" asked their teacher Professor Rama Challapa. "We rely on just 30 frames - about one second - to get a picture we can work with," he explained.

Tracking individuals

I was at Maryland University just outside Washington DC, where Professor Challapa and his team are inventing the next generation of citizen surveillance.

They had pushed back furniture in the conference room for me to walk back and forth and set up cameras to feed my individual data back to their laptops.

Gait DNA, for example, is creating an individual code for the way I walk. Their goal is to invent a system whereby a facial image can be matched to your gait, your height, your weight and other elements, so a computer will be able to identify instantly who you are.


"As you walk through a crowd, we'll be able to track you," said Professor Challapa. "These are all things that don't need the cooperation of the individual."
Since 9/11, some of the best scientific minds in the defence industry have switched their concentration from tracking nuclear missiles to tracking individuals such as suicide bombers.

Surveillance society

My next stop was a Pentagon agency whose headquarters is a drab suburban building in Virginia. The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) had one specific mission - to ensure that when it comes to technology America is always ahead of the game.

Its track record is impressive. Back in the 70s, while we were working with typewriters and carbon paper, Darpa was developing the internet. In the 90s, while we pored over maps, Darpa invented satellite navigation that many of us now have in our cars.

"We ask the top people what keeps them awake at night," said its enthusiastic and forthright director Dr Tony Tether, "what problems they see long after they have left their posts."

"And what are they?" I asked.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6995061.stm

[Use link above to continue reading]

Wrap...

Dems...had best not betray us...

From New York Times via truthout.org :

Frank Rich | Will the Democrats Betray Us?

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091607C.shtml

New York Times' columnist Frank Rich says it's time for the Democratic presidential candidates to stop bickering about who has the faster timeline for withdrawal from Iraq.

[Use link above to continue reading]

Wrap...

Repub no more: Lincoln Chafee. And now is..?????

From projo.com ... The Providence Journal:

Chafee quietly quits the GOP

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, September 16, 2007

By Bruce Landis

Journal Staff Writer

Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee attends an Eagle Scout ceremony in Providence earlier this year.
The Providence Journal / Glenn Osmundson

PROVIDENCE — Lincoln D. Chafee, who lost his Senate seat in the wave of anti-Republican sentiment in last November’s election, said yesterday that he has left the party.

Chafee said he disaffiliated with the party he had helped lead, and his father had led before him, because the national Republican Party has gone too far away from his stance on too many critical issues, from war to economics to the environment.

“It’s not my party any more,” he said.

Chafee’s departure is another step in the waning of the strain of moderate Republicanism that was once a winning political philosophy from Rhode Island and Connecticut to the Canadian border. For the first time since the Civil War, the six New England states combined now have only one Republican U.S. House member, Connecticut’s Christopher Shays.

Chafee said he disaffiliated from the party “in June or July,” making him an unaffiliated voter. He did so quietly, and until yesterday, he said, “No one’s asked me about it.” He said he made the move because “I want my affiliation to accurately reflect my status.”

“There’s been a gradual depravation of … the issues the party should be strong on,” and the direction of the national party, he said.

That’s no secret. In a Journal Op-Ed piece published on the Thursday before the election, Chafee himself laid out some of the ways he disagreed with his party, notably as one of only 23 senators and the only Republican to oppose the resolution supporting the invasion of Iraq. He went on to criticize the “permanent deficits” caused by Republican tax cuts.

Chafee referred yesterday to the broad-based, bipartisan Iraq Study Group that Congress created, a process Chafee approved of. The study group recommended a gradual pullback of American forces, and insistence that the Iraqi government take more responsibility for security. But he said that since the study group made its recommendations, which he agreed with, “no one’s paid any attention to them.”

As the election approached, Chafee cited his record opposing Republican initiatives like drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Yesterday, he criticized Republican leaders for abandoning fiscal conservatism, once a mainstay of Republican politics, by passing tax cuts without spending cuts to balance the resulting loss of revenue.

He said the “starve the beast” strategy that Republicans have used in an attempt to shrink government has undermined social programs that bolster a strong American middle class. He mentioned Pell grants, which help needy students attend college, and Head Start programs, which support the education of low-income children. Instead of supporting those “good social programs,” he said, the party’s approach was “squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.”

Ironically, after all of Chafee’s opposition to the Republican policies he disagreed with, the party helped him survive a primary challenge from the right, from former Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey. National Republican leaders supported Chafee, having concluded that even though Chafee had voted against many of President Bush’s initiatives, including authorizing the Iraq war, he was the only Republican who could win in Rhode Island.

Laffey has since attacked the national Republican leadership from the other side in a book saying that the party’s support for Chafee instead of himself was one of the reasons the Republicans were trounced in last year’s midterm elections.

But even a dissident Republican senator couldn’t satisfy voters when polls showed that President Bush was more unpopular here than in any other state. Chafee lost the Senate seat that he and his father, John H. Chafee, together held for 30 years. The victor was Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, who pounded on one issue: Chafee had supported the Republican leadership of the U.S. Senate.

Chafee said he’s happy with his current situation — in January, Brown University made him a distinguished visiting fellow at the Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies.

He said he regrets that leaving the Republican Party means leaving the Rhode Island Republican Party, where he said he admires politicians such as Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian and State Rep. Nicholas Gorham, R-Coventry, for “fighting the good fight.”

However, he said, “The national shadow just got too great for me.”

blandis@projo.com

Wrap...

Tunisia's opinion of BushCo and Iraq occupation....

From Watching America:

http://www.watchingamerica.com/tunishebdo000078.shtml

Tunis Hebdo, Tunisia

Corruption, American-Style

"Seeing the Bush Administration hand out key posts to ideologues and lackeys - one gets the impression of a powerful, democratic America being eclipsed by any banana republic on the dark continent [Africa] or Latin America."

By Oumar Diagana

Translated By Elise Nussbaum

September 3 to 9 Edition

Tunisia - Tunis Hebdo - Original Article (French)

Not since the U.S. Declaration of Independence in 1776 has an administration accumulated so many blunders and fiascos, piled up so many failures, but also and especially, experienced such "unpopularity." The least one can say about this phrase is that at the level of the daisy [basically or at its root], it's a nice euphemism for avoiding the phrase "an abyss of ill-repute."



Behind the failure of the brutal war carried out in Iraq - which is a painful thorn in the side of the Republican Party - hides the calamitous management of an uninterrupted string of scandals. Just 17 months from the end of his mandate, the U.S. President is wilted and despised, cruelly vilified, but also in the minority in both Houses of Congress and running out of steam with which to overcome the final tests of the Iraqi mud pit.



And as if Mesopotamia were not enough of a setback, the American people awake every day to discover that God has created corruption and incompetence amongst their elites, and that there are scandals involving the misappropriation of public funds, sprinkled with a shameless politicization that has had a gangrenous effect on many cabinet-level departments.



From the Department of Homeland Security to those of Education, Justice, the Environment, and Health, Housing and Urban Development ... rare is the department remaining untouched by the philosophy of corruption upheld by the blowhard Bush-Rove duo.



Seeing the Bush Administration hand out key posts to its heart's content, to ideologues and lackeys among its inner circle - all of whom are ready to bow down before the slightest order of their Oval Office master - one gets the impression of a powerful, democratic America being eclipsed by any banana republic of the dark continent or Latin America.



In the country of the Tigris and Euphrates, one needs a blind and simplistic faith to believe that life is better now than it was during the time of the dictator - who was sacrificed on the altar of "democracy." Enterprises designated by Bush have mightily sabotaged the reconstruction of a country that has been rendered unrecognizable amidst the ruins. Even the care of wounded GIs back from Iraq at the Walter Reed Military Hospital has been contracted out to a company with very highly-placed connections. Some time ago, this hospital created a general public outrage when a TV news team revealed the ordeal of these wounded veterans, who had been parked like cattle in moldy rooms with medieval care.



But in fact, for some time it has been the embezzlement taking place in the U.S. Army in Iraq that has monopolized most of these discussions. Dozens of investigations are being carried out in regard to American weapons that have vanished - "too much precaution can be dangerous" - into the hands of the insurrection. With a little help from corruption, the U.S. has just shot itself in the foot.



The number of weapons missing is estimated at 190,000, while about 70 criminal investigations are underway for fraud and the diversion of $5 billion under the table. The final straw is that, of the $19.2 billion that Washington had set aside since 2003 for the provision of Iraqi police and army recruits, only $2.8 billion has been used for the task. No one knows into whose accounts the rest of the cash has landed. And that's not all.



Setting aside a Republican Party whose image has been profoundly tarnished - it's the repeated resignations of the "bigwigs" in the presidential camp (Karl Rove and recently Alberto Gonzales) that has left this ship-of state-adrift, a million miles from completing a long list of projects yet to be announced. For example, the questions of security in Iraq, the method of withdrawal, immigration, the environment, energy independence, et cetera.



Given the devastation inflicted by this cowboy and his clique, it's not hard to understand Jimmy Carter, who said, “I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history.” At 81 years old, this former U.S. President and 2002 Nobel Prize winner knows, no doubt better than anyone, that of which he speaks.

[Use link above to see more articles from overseas]

Wrap...

Biofuels: Good or not good...

From Strategic Forecasting, Inc:
https://www.stratfor.com/services/freesignup.php

The Biofuel Backlash
By Bart Mongoven

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released a scathing report Sept. 11 calling for a dramatic drawdown in the subsidies and preferential trade laws granted to biofuel producers in OECD countries. In Europe, Friends of the Earth hailed the report, saying it has focused attention on the negative issues surrounding biofuels, while libertarian groups on both sides of the Atlantic applauded its call for a reduction in subsidies.

The report is one of a number of efforts designed to deflate support for biofuels in the United States and Europe. Increasing numbers of groups, especially in Europe, are beginning to question the wisdom of the current move toward biofuels as a replacement, at least in part, for gasoline and diesel in vehicles. They argue that these fuels offer little benefit and have serious drawbacks. Specifically, they question the wisdom of burning food crops for fuel. They point to a "tortilla crisis" in Mexico caused by rising corn prices and a "bread crisis" in France caused by rising wheat prices. Inflation in China is now running above 6 percent, largely due to increases in the price of foodstuffs.

In other words, the backlash against biofuels is in full swing. The critics, however, are running head on into the powerful agricultural lobbies in the United States and Europe that so successfully championed the issue in the first place. These advocates say that ethanol, biodiesel and other nonpetroleum-based transportation fuels reduce pollution, help fight climate change and improve national security by reducing dependence on foreign oil. Though many policymakers find these arguments compelling, the biofuels issue would not have achieved the political momentum it has without the intense lobbying by the agricultural sector.

In fact, the fate of the current wave of biofuel mandates and the pace at which industrialized countries offer biofuels at the pumps will largely be determined by agriculture interests. The implications are as strong and lasting for developing countries as for the industrialized countries involved. Moreover, advancements in biofuel technology over the next decade or so could convert some of the current critics to supporters.

Plant-based Fuels

The term "biofuels" refers to any number of combustible liquids derived from plants that can be used to create energy. Most biofuel development is directed at use in transportation, where biofuels are envisioned as a replacement for gasoline or diesel fuel. The most prevalent sources of biofuel now are corn ethanol (predominantly in the United States), sugar ethanol (mostly from Brazil) and rapeseed oil for biodiesel in Europe. Among the other current sources are palm and soy oil and various waste products (such as cooking waste) for diesel. In the future, researchers hope to make ethanol from unused portions of agriculture produce -- cellulosic ethanol from corn stalks and waste from wood processing.

The creation of biofuels produces dramatically different levels of pollution, depending on the plant used. Ethanol is the same and burns similarly regardless of its source, but the pollution and emissions associated with the specific plant's production cycle vary widely. Corn ethanol, for instance, produces 0 percent to 3 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline when the factors of planting, fertilizing and harvesting the corn are taken into consideration along with the processing and transportation of the fuel, which in the best case requires dedicated pipelines and currently requires overland transportation. Sugar ethanol from Brazil, over its lifecycle, produces 50 percent to 70 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline. Early indications are that the next generation of cellulosic ethanol will produce more than 90 percent less emissions than gasoline over its lifecycle, though there are significant infrastructural and technical obstacles to the realization of such breakthrough technology.

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the countries of Southeast Asia, Central Africa and South America, especially Brazil, have the highest potential for producing the fast-growing woody crops that will be used in the next generation of biofuels. Over the long term, biofuels could emerge as a way for the economies of many poor countries to gain a solid footing by increasing the agriculture sector generally and diversifying national economies. That is, of course, if major consumers will import their biofuels.

In the United States and Europe, corn currently provides the bulk of ethanol. Europe has recently adopted a stringent biofuel mandate that calls for an escalating percentage of biofuel in its transportation fuel mix. With this, it is looking beyond corn to other sources, such as Brazil's sugar-based ethanol -- though a solution that benefits Brazilian farmers but offers little to EU farmers is highly controversial. Meanwhile, in the United States, where imported ethanol is saddled with a 53-cent-per-gallon tax, biofuel produced outside of the United States is uncompetitive.

Politics of Ethanol

The energy bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives in August includes a call for more than 7.5 billion gallons of biofuels to be sold in the United States by 2009 and for the amount to escalate to 36 billion gallons by 2022. The catch is that most of the ethanol in 2022 will have to be from "advanced" sources, which is to say from next-generation cellulosic processes. (Europe's emerging policy has a similar clause.) The U.S. numbers will likely be scaled back in the conference committee, but some requirement to increase the use of biofuels will go forward. Once passed and signed, biofuels will be cemented in the national energy mix.

Among the most intriguing aspects of the political wrangling over the biofuel mandate in the United States has been the disappearance of the environmental lobby. When pressed, it says it generally supports a mandate and emphasizes the importance of next-generation sources. This is an important turn because for the past 20 years environmentalists have battled appeals by farm states to mandate the use of corn ethanol. Major environmental groups are among those that have commissioned and brought attention to studies showing negligible or negative environmental benefits from ethanol.

Environmentalists' support for biofuels is tied directly to their support for action on climate change. For environmentalists, imposing a cap on greenhouse gas emissions on the United States is their primary objective. They see a carbon cap as the prize, and they figure that anything done in the process of achieving that goal can be fixed later.

To achieve a carbon cap, supporters recognized that they needed not just the political backing of lawmakers from the West Coast and Northeast, but that they also needed a certain amount of political support from the middle of the country. Policymakers in Michigan, West Virginia and Colorado seemed unlikely to come on board because of the stake their states have in the automobile and coal industries. States such as Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota, however, have no clear stake in the climate issue so those battling for a carbon cap offered billions of dollars in subsidies and a guaranteed market for corn ethanol. That was something a farm-state senator could support.

The issues were similar in the European Union, though the politics were slightly different. While the EU environmental lobby is much stronger than its U.S. counterpart, it pales in Brussels compared to the farm lobby. In Europe, the important energy issues are energy security and climate change. Environmentalists were helpless when the farm lobby flexed its muscles in the most recent energy policy discussion and won a dramatic increase in biofuel use, having used both energy security and climate change as justification. Though environmentalists were livid, for EU politicians it was an easy decision: the policy supports farmers while dovetailing with the urgent call for a diversification of energy sources. As in the United States, support for biofuels addressed a problem rhetorically and allowed politicians and interest groups to score important political points.

The political support for biofuels already is paying dividends in both Europe and the United States. Corn prices are now more than 40 percent higher than they were a year ago, despite a 15 percent increase in planting. The rising price of corn meant reduced acreage of wheat planting, and this has coincided with a terrible drought in Australia and a falling dollar. As a result, wheat prices have doubled in the past year, to $9 per bushel for the first time ever (more than $10 in France). These are good times for farmers, and ethanol is playing a role in it.

In Europe, environmentalists are more outspoken in their frustration -- as Friends of the Earth's clear support for the OECD report suggests -- though many rest with the knowledge that they have at least reduced oil's share of the transportation fuels' market, which for many is better than a Pyrrhic victory.

Brazil's Challenge

For Brazil, the existing or proposed barriers to the importation of its biofuels present a severe challenge. It invested heavily in research and development of biofuels and has perfected a system that provides a replacement for gasoline at a competitive price and with a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (corn-based ethanol offers little to no greenhouse gas benefits). Brazil is moving its vehicle fleet to ethanol, which will take most of the country's output, but it has developed capacity to export ethanol as well.

Seeing its ethanol exports blocked by the United States and Europe, Brazil is learning that energy security and climate change were only a part of the reason countries looked to biofuels. Certainly, these arguments were important, but biofuel mandates would not have happened if not for the power of agriculture in both the United States and Europe.

Brazil's problem, then, is that it merely solved the problem politicians talked about -- it has developed a fuel that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and comes from a place that is politically stable and friendly to both the European Union and United States. In solving the rhetorical problem without offering a political fix, it has placed U.S. environmental activists and EU politicians in a difficult position, and has not necessarily won markets. The larger problem, a problem that the OECD suggests but does not explicitly state, is that there is little interest in either the United States or Europe in staring down the agricultural interests.

© Copyright 2007 Strategic Forecasting, Inc. All rights reserved.

Wrap...

Bush's failed speech on Iraq...

From International Herald Tribune:


No exit, no strategy, no truth on Iraq
Friday, September 14, 2007

This was the week in which Americans hoped they would get straight talk and clear thinking on Iraq. What they got was two exhausting days of congressional testimony by the American military commander, hours of news conferences and interviews, clouds of cut-to-order statistics and a speech from the Oval Office - and none of it either straight or clear.

The White House insisted that President George W. Bush had consulted intensively with his generals and adapted to changing circumstances.

But no amount of smoke could obscure the truth: Bush has no strategy to end his disastrous war and no strategy for containing the chaos that he unleashed.

The speech he gave on Thursday night could have been given any day in the last four years - and was delivered a half-dozen times already. Despite Bush's claim that he was offering a way for all Americans to "come together" on Iraq, he offered the same divisive policies - repackaged this time with the Orwellian slogan "return on success."

Bush's claim that things were going so well in Iraq that he could "accept" his generals' recommendation for a "drawdown" of forces was a carnival barker's come-on. The U.S. Army cannot sustain the 30,000 extra troops Bush sent to Iraq beyond mid-2008 without serious damage to its fighting ability. From the start, the president said that the increase would be temporary. That's why he called it a "surge."

Before he spoke, Iraq's brutal reality had debunked the claims of political and military success made by General David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the ambassador in Baghdad.

First, The New York Times reported that the only sliver of political progress - a tortuous compromise on sharing oil revenues - was evaporating. Then came news of the assassination of the Anbar tribal leader whose decision to fight alongside the Americans was cited by Bush as proof that the war's tide was turning - even though it had nothing to do with the increase in forces.

Bush's claims on Thursday night about how well the war is going are believable only if you use Pentagon numbers so obviously cooked that they call to mind the way Americans were duped into first supporting this war.

There will be a lot said in coming days about Bush's "new strategy," just as there was after each of his previous major addresses on the war. If there was a new strategy, it would be easy to recognize. Bush would drop the meaningless talk of victory and stop trying to sell Americans the fiction that the war keeps them safe from terrorism. (To his credit, Petraeus declined to adopt that bit of propaganda.) Instead, Bush would do what the vast majority of Americans want - plan an orderly withdrawal while doing what he can to mitigate the consequences of the war.

Bush was right when he said that the aftermath of withdrawal would be bloody and frightening, but that is a product of his invasion and his gross mismanagement of the aftermath. Bush's endless insistence on staying the course will only make Iraq more bloody and frightening.

If Bush had a new strategy, he would have talked to the American people about what he would do to draw Iraq's neighbors into a solution. Last January, when he announced the troop increase, Bush promised to "use America's full diplomatic resources to rally support for Iraq from nations throughout the Middle East." The world is still waiting.

A strategy for ending the war would include real efforts to hold Iraq's government to verifiable measures of political conciliation - and make clear to Iraq's leaders that they cannot count on America's indefinite and unquestioning protection.

A real shift in strategy would have included an effort to deal with the massive problem of refugees. Nine months after the surge began, ever more Iraqis are being driven from their homes - and Bush never even mentioned them on Thursday night.

If Bush were serious about ending the war, rather than threatening Iran and Syria, he would make a serious effort to persuade them that they too have a lot to lose from a disintegrating Iraq. And he would enlist the help of the leaders of Britain, France and Germany for serious negotiations. Then, perhaps, Bush's promise from January to stanch the flow of men and weapons into Iraq from Iran and Syria would not have sounded so hollow.

Once again, it is clear that Bush refuses to recognize the truth of his failure in Iraq and envisions a military commitment that has no end. Congress must use its powers to expose the truth and demand a real change in strategy. Democratic leaders, forever parsing polls, are backing away from proposals to impose a deadline for withdrawal and tinkering with small ideas that mostly sound like ways to enable the president's strategy of delay.

The presidential candidates, as well, have a duty to take Iraq head-on. Some Democrats have started to talk in some detail about how they would end the war, but the burden is not just on the war critics.

Republicans like Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, who love to proclaim their support for the president and hide behind the troops, need to explain their vision as well. What do they think would constitute victory in Iraq, and how, precisely, do they intend to achieve it?

After all, it seems the burden of ending the war will fall to the next president. Bush was clear on Thursday night - as he was when he addressed the nation in January, in September of last year, the December before that and in April 2004 - that his only real plan is to confuse enough Americans and cow enough members of Congress to let him muddle along and saddle his successor with this war that should never have been started.

Wrap...

From Sgt Mora's mother to a leaf in Condi's hair...

From American Progress:

Think Fast...

The mother of Sgt. Omar Mora, the soldier who co-authored a New York Times op-ed critical of the Bush administration's policies in Iraq, is calling on the Army to explain her son's death. "I want to know all the details of how he died. I want to know the truth," said Olga Capetillo.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is "leaving office quietly today with a low-key farewell address to Justice Department employees in Washington." One former senior official said that Gonzales had been "just sort of drifting off" and "minimizing his activity" for some time.

A new survey by a British polling agency suggests that the Iraqi civilian death toll from the war could be more than 1.2 million. The agency said it drew its conclusion from responses to the question about those living under one roof: "How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003?"

Bill Allen, the former head of Alaskan oil company VECO Corp., "admitted yesterday in court that he bribed three Alaska legislators," including Ben Stevens, the son of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK). The elder Stevens is currently the target of a federal investigation also involving VECO.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said that, while he was aware of "subprime" lending practices, he failed to see early on that "an explosion of mortgages to people with questionable credit histories could pose a danger to the economy." "I didn't get it" until later on, said Greenspan.

Consumer confidence dropped from 89.3 in August to 71.1 in September, its "lowest point in nearly 1 1/2 years as a deep housing slump and a credit crunch made people more worried about the country's economic health as well as their own."

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee announced Thursday that they will meet on Sept. 20 to consider "a bill to provide for limitations in certain communications between the Department of Justice and the White House."

The cost of health insurance in the United States climbed nearly twice as fast as wages in the first half of 2007. Kaiser vice-president Gary Claxton said, "In 2007, the increase in health insurance premiums was about twice the rate of inflation and not quite twice the increase in workers' pay."

Last week, California conservative activists' "bid to change the state's method for meting out its electoral votes was endorsed by the state GOP and cleared by the California secretary of state, moving it closer to a place on the June 2008 ballot." But Community Rights Counsel Doug Kendall writes that this referendum would be "patently unconstitutional."

And finally: At the White House remembrance ceremony for 9/11 victims on Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's outfit was "almost perfect -- except for that pesky leaf stuck in her hair. Fortunately, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Steve Johnson was there to clean up Condi's hair. After all, any EPA employee is supposed to be good at cleaning things up."

Wrap...

Congressional Dems lie in their teeth...

From truthout.org :

Media Misrepresent Democrats' Options on Iraq War

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091407N.shtml

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting reports: "Following a pattern set when Congress passed supplemental funding for the Iraq War last May, major media outlets continued to 'explain' the politics of the war in incomplete and misleading ways.... Congress does not have to pass legislation to bring an end to the war in Iraq - it simply has to block passage of any bill that would continue to fund the war. This requires not 67 or 60 Senate votes, or even 51, but just 41 ... the Democrats have more than enough votes to end the Iraq War - if they choose to do so."

[Use link above to continue reading]

Wrap...

Power grab: Homeland Security vs FEMA...

From International Herald Tribune:

Brazen bureaucracy
Published: September 13, 2007


The Bush administration seems intent on flouting Congress' mandate to restore the primacy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in dealing with disasters. At the core of the government's dreadful performance when Katrina crushed New Orleans two years ago was the confusion of responsibility in which the new and untested Department of Homeland Security superseded FEMA as the manager of disaster response.

To repair this problem, Congress passed a reform act last year specifying FEMA as the main coordinator for emergencies. Nevertheless, homeland security has issued its own disaster policy statement claiming the coordinator's role for its own department secretary.

The new homeland security policy amounts to a disaster on paper. It breezes past valuable proposals from state and local disaster managers and first responders. It threatens to compound bureaucratic inertia by creating 15 regional disaster areas with separate operational and strategic plans.

Homeland security officials defend their plan as merely a draft open to change. But they're throwing down the gauntlet before Congress. Some angry members are threatening to strip FEMA entirely from under the homeland umbrella. Far better that Congress defend its own primacy by firmly establishing that America is a nation of law, not runaway executives.

Wrap...

Needle in a haystack: Osama bin Laden....

From Stratfor:

The Obstacles to the Capture of Osama bin Laden
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

Al Qaeda's As-Sahab media arm released a video Sept. 11 to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Although the 47-minute video features a voice-over introduction by Osama bin Laden, the bulk of it is of Abu Musab Waleed al-Shehri, one of the suicide bombers who crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center's north tower. That recording was made prior to al-Shehri's travel to the United States in the spring of 2001.

There is nothing in bin Laden's audio segment to indicate it was recorded recently. The production does include a still photograph of him -- one taken from what appears to be a real bin Laden video released Sept. 7 (in which he sports a dyed beard), but bin Laden's comments about the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi suggest they were recorded during al Qaeda's 2006 media blitz.

The release of two successive bin Laden messages, however, has again focused attention on bin Laden, who before last week had not been seen on video since late October 2004. This increased attention has once again caused people to question why the United States has failed to find bin Laden -- and to wonder whether it ever will.

While the feds generally get their man in the movies or on television, it is very difficult in real life to find a single person who does not want to be found. It is even harder when that person is hiding in an extremely rugged, isolated and lawless area and is sheltered by a heavily armed local population.

The United States and Pakistan have not launched a major military operation to envelop and systematically search the entire region where bin Laden likely is hiding -- an operation that would require tens of thousands of troops and likely result in heavy combat with the tribes residing in the area. Moreover, this is not the kind of operation they will take on in the future. The United States, therefore, will continue intelligence and covert special operations forces efforts, but if it is going to catch bin Laden, it will have to wait patiently for one of those operations to produce a lucky break -- or for bin Laden to make a fatal operational security blunder.

Needle in a Haystack

Finding a single man in a large area with rugged terrain is a daunting task, even when a large number of searchers and a vast array of the latest high-tech surveillance equipment are involved. This principle was demonstrated by the manhunt for so-called "Olympic Bomber" Eric Rudolph, who was able to avoid one of the largest manhunts in U.S. history by hiding in North Carolina's Great Smoky Mountains. The task force looking for Rudolph at times had hundreds of federal, state and local law enforcement officers assigned to it, while some of its search operations involved thousands of law enforcement and volunteer searchers. The government also employed high-tech surveillance and sensor equipment and even offered a $1 million reward for information leading to Rudolph's capture.

However, Rudolph's capture in May 2003, more than five years after he was listed on the FBI's most-wanted list, was not the result of the organized search for him. Rather, he was caught by a rookie police officer on a routine patrol who found Rudolph rummaging for food in a dumpster behind a grocery store. The officer did not even realize he had captured Rudolph until he had taken him to the police station for booking.

Hostile Terrain

The terrain in the Smoky Mountains is tough and remote, but it is nothing compared to the terrain in the soaring, craggy Safed Koh range that runs along the Pakistani-Afghan border or in the Hindu Kush to the north. Some of the peaks in the Safed Koh range, including Mount Sikaram, are well over twice as high as any peak in the Smokies, while the Hindu Kush contains some of the highest peaks in the world.

But it is not only the terrain that is hostile. In the Great Smokies, there are some people who are not happy to see "revenuers" and other government agents -- or other strangers, for that matter -- but at least the area is under the federal government's control. The same cannot be said of the lawless areas along the Afghan-Pakistani border -- the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). The presence of Pakistani military forces is resented in these areas, and troops are regularly attacked by the heavily armed tribesmen living there.




This is not a new phenomenon by any means, though. The Pashtun tribes in the rugged area along the Durand Line (the line set to demarcate the border between the British Raj and Afghanistan, which later became the Afghan-Pakistani border) have always been difficult to control. Even before the establishment of Pakistan, the inhabitants of the area gave the British colonial authorities fits for more than a century. The Britons were never able to gain full control over the region, so they instead granted extensive power to tribal elders, called maliks. Under the deal, the maliks retained their autonomy in exchange for maintaining peace between the tribesmen and the British Raj -- thus allowing commerce to continue unabated.

However, some dramatic flare-ups of violence occurred against the Britons during their time in the region. One of the last of them began in 1936 when a religious leader known as the Faqir of Ipi encouraged his followers to wage jihad on British forces. (Jihad against invading forces is a centuries-old tradition in the region.) The faqir and his followers fought an extended insurgency against the British forces that only ended when they left Pakistan. The United Kingdom attempted to crush the faqir and his followers, but the outmanned and outgunned insurgents used the rugged terrain and the support of the local tribes to their advantage. Efforts to use spies to locate or assassinate the faqir also failed. Although the British and colonial troops pursuing the faqir reportedly numbered more than 40,000 at one point, the faqir was never captured or killed. He died a natural death in 1960.

A Modern Faqir?

Under U.S. pressure, the Pakistani military entered the FATA in force in March 2004 to pursue foreign militants -- for the first time since the country's creation -- but the operation resulted in heavy casualties for the Pakistani army, demonstrating how difficult it is for the Pakistani military to fight people so well integrated in the Pashtun tribal badlands. Following that failed operation, the Pakistani government reverted to the British model of negotiating with the maliks in an effort to combat the influence of the Taliban and foreign jihadists -- and has been harshly criticized because of it. Nowadays, jihadist insurgents are attacking Pakistani security and intelligence forces in the Pashtun areas in the Northwest.

The parallels between the hunt for the Faqir of Ipi and bin Laden are obvious -- though it must be noted that bin Laden is a Saudi and not a native-born Pashtun. However, many of the challenges that the United Kingdom faced in that operation are also being faced by the United States today.

Aside from the terrain -- a formidable obstacle in and of itself -- U.S. forces are hampered by the strong, conservative Islamic conviction of the people in the region. This conviction extends beyond the tribes to include some members of the Pakistani military and Pakistan's intelligence agencies -- especially those at the operational level in the region. It must be remembered that prior to 9/11 the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency and military openly supported the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies. In addition to the relationships formed between bin Laden and the so-called "Afghan Arabs" (foreign jihadists) during the war against the Soviets, Pakistani troops also trained and fought alongside the Taliban and al Qaeda in their battles against the Northern Alliance and other foes. Because of these deep and historic ties, there are some in the Pakistani government (specifically within the security apparatus) who remain sympathetic, if not outright loyal, to their friends in the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Additionally, and perhaps just as important, many in the Pakistani government and military do not want to kill their own people -- the Pashtuns, for example -- in order to destroy the much smaller subset of Pakistani and foreign militants. The challenge is to eliminate the militants while causing very little collateral damage to the rest of the population -- and some in the Pakistani government say the airstrikes in places such as Chingai and Damadola have not accomplished this goal. In August, Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri told television channel AAJ that Pakistan had done all it can in the war on terrorism and that, "No one should expect anything more from Islamabad."

In an operation such as the manhunt for bin Laden, intelligence is critical. However, the Taliban and al Qaeda so far have used their home-field advantage to establish better intelligence networks in the area than the Americans. According to U.S. counterterrorism sources, U.S. intelligence had gathered some very good leads in the early days of the hunt for bin Laden and other high-value al Qaeda targets, and they shared this intelligence with their counterparts in the Pakistani security apparatus to try to organize operations to act on the intelligence. During this process, people within the intelligence apparatus passed information back to al Qaeda, thus compromising the sources and methods being used to collect the information. These double agents inside the Pakistani government did grave damage to the U.S. human intelligence network.

Double agents within the Pakistani government are not the only problem, however. Following 9/11, there was a rapid increase in the number of case officers assigned to collect information pertaining to al Qaeda and bin Laden, and the CIA was assigned to be the lead agency in the hunt. One big problem with this, according to sources, was that most of these case officers were young, inexperienced and ill-suited to the mission. The CIA really needed people who were more like Rudyard Kipling's character Kim -- savvy case officers who understand the region's culture, issues and actors, and who can move imperceptibly within the local milieu to recruit valuable intelligence sources. Unfortunately for the CIA, it has been unable to find a real-life Kim.

This lack of seasoned, savvy and gritty case officers is complicated by the fact that, operationally, al Qaeda practices better security than do the Americans. First, there are few people permitted to see bin Laden and the other senior leaders, and most of those who are granted access are known and trusted friends and relatives. Someone else who wants to see bin Laden or other senior al Qaeda leaders must wait while a message is first passed via a number of couriers to the organization. If a meeting is granted, the person is picked up at a time of al Qaeda's choosing and taken blindfolded via a circuitous route to a location where he is stripped and searched for bugs, beacons and other tracking devices. The person then reportedly is polygraphed to verify that his story is true. Only then will he be taken -- blindfolded and via a circuitous route -- to another site for the meeting. These types of measures make it very difficult for U.S. intelligence officers to get any of their sources close to the al Qaeda leaders, much less determine where they are hiding out.

The areas where bin Laden likely is hiding are remote and insular. Visitors to the area are quickly recognized and identified -- especially if they happen to be blond guys named Skip. Moreover, residents who spend too much time talking to such outsiders often are labeled as spies and killed. These conditions have served to ensure that the jihadists maintain a superior human intelligence (and counterintelligence) network in the area. It is a network that also stretches deep into the heart of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, Islamabad's twin city and home to the Pakistani army's general headquarters.

The Price of Security

Although al Qaeda's operational security and the jihadist intelligence network have been able to keep bin Laden alive thus far, they have lost a number of other senior operatives, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Mohammed Atef, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Abu Faraj al-Libi and others. Most of these have been al Qaeda operational managers, people who, by the very nature of their jobs, need to establish and maintain communications with militant cells.

This drive to recruit new jihadists to the cause and to help continue operational activity is what led to the lucky break that resulted in the 1995 arrest of Abdel Basit, the operational planner and bombmaker responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Basit had tried to recruit a foreign student to assist him in one of the attempts to conduct "Operation Bojinka," a plan to bomb multiple U.S. airliners. Having gotten cold feet, the student revealed the plot, thus allowing Diplomatic Security special agents the opportunity to coordinate an operation to arrest Basit.

Al Qaeda has learned from the mistakes made by the men it has lost and has better secured the methods it uses to communicate with the outside world. This increased security, however, has resulted in increased insulation, which has adversely affected not only communications but also financial transfers and recruiting. Combined with U.S. efforts against al Qaeda, this has resulted in a reduction in operational ability and effectiveness.

The tension between operations and security poses a significant problem for an organization that seeks to maintain and manage a global militant network. By opting to err on the side of security, bin Laden and the others could escape capture indefinitely, though they would remain operationally ineffective. However, should they attempt to become more operationally active and effective -- and decrease their security measures to do so -- they will provide the United States with more opportunities to get the one break it needs to find bin Laden.

Wrap...

Pelosi to Bush and Pelosi's candle afire...

From American Progress:

Think Fast...

At a White House meeting this week, President Bush told Democratic leaders said he planned to "start doing some redeployment." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) immediately interjected: "No you're not, Mr. President. ... You're just going back to the presurge level."

Citing remarks about troop withdrawals by Gen. David Petraeus, "Democrats began a fresh campaign Wednesday to woo centrist Republicans on Iraq." "Petraeus assured me that he favors continuing reductions beyond the pre-surge levels," Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) said.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) blasted Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell yesterday for taking political orders from the White House. Harman ended her comments by saying, "Jane to Mike: please stop. You're undermining the authority of your office."

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is poised to reexamine "the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal in coming weeks." Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) "issued letters to a range of Abramoff associates seeking information about his contacts with the White House."

78 years: The life expectancy for Americans, according to new government figures from 2005. While the span is the longest in U.S. history, it is still "lower than the life span in more than three dozen other countries."

16,306: Number of species "near extinction" according to the World Conservation Union, up from 16,118 last year. Experts attributed the jump in endangered species to habitat loss, climate change, and infectious diseases.

At a Senate hearing yesterday, lawmakers investigated the influx of toys from China with lead paint and other defects. The Washington Post writes that instead of showing contrition, Nancy Nord -- the chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission -- "treated lawmakers as if they were impertinent children."

"A carefully constructed compromise on a draft law governing Iraq's rich oil fields, agreed to in February after months of arduous talks among Iraqi political groups, appears to have collapsed. The apparent breakdown comes just as Congress and the White House are struggling to find evidence that there is progress toward reconciliation and a functioning government."

"A bomb ripped through a crowd of civilians at a public square in eastern Baghdad on Thursday," shattering the calm on the first day of Ramadan -- the Muslim month of fasting -- and killing at least four people, Iraqi officials said.

And finally: On Monday, House members held candles to commemorate the 9/11 anniversary. All was "well and good" until House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) candle-card "caught on fire in the middle of her remarks. Ever the cool customer, the speaker threw it to the ground and stomped it out with her foot, never once breaking stride in her speech." Rep. Steve Cohen's (D-TN) candle-card also caught on fire. See pictures HERE.

http://www.examiner.com/blogs/Yeas_and_Nays/2007/9/12/Dont-play-with-Pelosi-cuz-youre-playin-with-fire

[Use link above to see pics, read further]

Wrap...

WWII Vets...Your comments?

From an email from Leif:

I haven't the faintest idea what WWII vets would think about what I wrote, but I'm pretty sure they'd agree that the maimed and destitute vets from Vietnam have been given a less than square deal. They were told they had a patriotic duty to put their lives on the line in a conflict those in charge knew perfectly well from the git-go was a scam, and they were told they were heros (by those in on the scam) all along the way. Then when the insiders figured the scam wasn't useful anymore, they said they'd won, and they left -- the country they said they were protecting from those commie badies, and they left the young men and women they scammed with that patriotic bullshit and left them without the resources to live decent lives. I suspect those WWII vets would agree with that.

I suspect they'd agree that WWII isn't analogous to the nonsense, and losing, testosterone contest in which our peanut president and his cohort have engaged other people's sons and daughters, nor to the previous felony that was lost from the first day because countries do not win wars of aggression in other people's forests and deserts, unless they're Genghis Khan, and we aren't and won't do what's necessary to become him, even with an oil prize at the end.

If those WWII vets are, in fact, the greatest generation, they're smart enough to distinguish a scam from a legitimate war, and they know perfectly well that the last legitimate war ended in 1945; with a two-minute argument, maybe, about the early fifties.

There are hundreds of people in the United States who would still have their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, husbands and wives if people understood that when the flag whips in the breeze and that song plays about bombs bursting in midair and raining flaming debris on women and children below, the first thing one with a functioning IQ does is ask, Against whom, For what reason(s), For how long, and Who benefits. And if the answers, based on dispassionate information sources, don't satisfy, run like hell.

I don't know if WWII vets would agree with me on that. I think maybe they would. People who have fought in wars are a lot smarter about those kinds of things than are people who have not.


Leif

Wrap...

Lieberman?!!! I was afraid he'd do this...

From Information Clearing House:

Gonzo Boogie - Easy as ABC

By Sheila Samples

It's likely Bush won't be able to resist ramming a political firecracker in the mouths of Democrats just to see their heads explode by nominating Connecticut donkey Sen. Joe Lieberman, who has spent the last six years selling his soul to prove to Bush he's a team player who really really wants to be attorney general.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18370.htm

[Use link above to continue reading]

Wrap...

Dems...Forget being the majority...

From TPM:

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), speaking to anti-war activists (via The Hill):

“You folks should go after the Democrats. . . . I’d hate to lose the majority, but I’m telling you, if we don’t stand up to our responsibility, maybe that’s the lesson to be learned.”

Wrap...