The Martin Report

Special Report: South Ossetia Wants Independence; West condemns any recognition of its sovereignty; Georgia is defeated

2008-08-28T00:41:00.004-04:00

By Gabriel Gatehouse
BBC News
Wednesday, August 27, 2008

As Russia announced it was recognising the Georgian breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states, the BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse was in South Ossetia witnessing the jubilation and dismay of the conflicting sides.

A Russian armoured personnel carrier raced down the road to where Georgian policemen were manning their checkpoint at the village of Mosabruni, just inside South Ossetia.

Accompanied by a helicopter gunship, the Russian soldiers told the Georgian police they had three minutes to get out. One of those minutes, an officer said ominously, had already passed.

The lightly armed Georgian policemen had no option but to obey.

Just 700m up the road, at the entrance to the town of Akhalgori, the South Ossetian militia had their own checkpoint.

They were better equipped than the Georgian police.

Aside from the ubiquitous AK-47 assault rifle, used by both sides, the separatists had concrete barriers, fox-holes, and - crucially - Russian-made armoured personnel carriers.

But they were taking it easy.

As the Russians chased the Georgians out of South Ossetia, the local militia were enjoying their lunch of Russian army rations - corned beef, liver pate and hunks of bread washed down with beer and shots of the local vodka, called chacha.

As a Russian helicopter gunship roared overhead, the Ossetian soldiers drained their glasses and drank to peace.

Civilians welcome

Later, we went into town.

Until the latest fighting, Akhalgori had been under Georgian control. Now the South Ossetians are in charge, and many ethnic Georgians have left.

But in their place, Ossetians are coming back.

One woman showed us the flat she said she had to leave the last time these two sides fought a war in the early 1990s.

Now she wants to reclaim her property.

Both the South Ossetian militia, and the government of the breakaway territory, insist they only want Georgian armed forces to leave. Georgian civilians, they say, are welcome to stay.

But while men with guns patrol the streets, most prefer to stay away.

Those who can, stay with friends and family away from the conflict zone.

Those less fortunate have ended up in temporary receptions centres in and around the capital, Tbilisi.

New reality

In Akhalgori's main square, a South Ossetian militiaman, calling himself Elbrus, chuckled when he heard the news of Russia's recognition of his homeland.

"It's a holiday!", he said as he picked up his walkie-talkie to inform his fellow soldiers, digesting their lunch back at the checkpoint on the way into town.

On the Georgian side of the border though, there was dismay.

"This is impossible," one local villager said. "You can't divide the people who live in this area."

Most Georgians regard South Ossetia and Abkhazia as historically part of their country.

Recognition of independence by Russia is not the same as being legally independent, but, with Russian support, the South Ossetians are forcing the Georgians to adapt to a new reality on the ground.

As the policemen settled into a new checkpoint just south of the de-facto border, what remained of Tbilisi's grip on its breakaway territories appeared to be slowly slipping away.

Special Report: "We were bombed for three days and nights. If Russia had not helped, we would have disappeared," says Ossetian resident

2008-08-27T23:16:00.004-04:00

By Sarah Rainsford
BBC News
Thursday, August 14, 2008

Barely a building in the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali escaped unscathed from the fighting that began last week, the BBC's Sarah Rainsford discovers.

Some, like the offices of the local administration, are smoke-blackened shells; in one residential area, a whole street has been reduced to rubble.

Everywhere, there are mountains of shattered glass. Those who didn't flee South Ossetia as refugees are now emerging from their basements to begin the clean-up.

There is no running water here now and no electricity.

One woman, Lusya, took me down into the basement of her apartment block to show me where she had hidden from the worst of the fighting. A small oil lamp threw the only light onto the dank, cramped cellar.

"We were here four days and nights. We couldn't sleep. Our whole building shook with the bombing," Lusya said. "I just sat here, with my 16-year-old son."

As soon as the fighting calmed down, Lusya sent her son across the border into Russia for safety.

She and her neighbours - and many Ossetians I met both in Tskhinvali and in the main refugee camp in Russia - are furious about what has happened to their city.

They are very clear who they blame: Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili, who sent troops to re-take control of this breakaway region. That effort has clearly backfired. The pro-Russian sentiment I experienced on my last visit four years ago has become far fiercer as a result of this conflict.

"They signed a ceasefire, but Saakashvili can start bombing us again any minute," Lusya said, referring to the OSCE/EU-brokered peace plan between Moscow and Tbilisi.

"Look how many people died here! We can never join Georgia after this. We'll cope on our own."

Russians remain

Moscow says that 1,600 civilians died in the fighting in Ossetia. In Tskhinvali, locals claimed bodies had lain in the streets for some time, and many are now buried in temporary graves in back yards. We saw no evidence to support - or dispute - the numbers.

"We were bombed for three days and nights. If Russia had not helped, we would have disappeared," Lusya's neighbour Elena said, visibly angry. "Only Russia takes us under its wing. We want to be with Russia."

On the next street, an armoured personnel carrier carrying Russian troops rolled past the mangled metal wreckage of two Georgian tanks. Other soldiers stopped to take trophy photographs.

We were escorted in South Ossetia by the Russian military, which now controls most of the territory here. Pointing out the tank wreckage, the deputy commander of Russian ground forces insisted that Georgia was the initial aggressor in this conflict - sending in tanks that targeted Russians and Ossetians.

"Half an hour before the tanks began firing, the Georgian peacekeepers disappeared from the base," said Igor Konashenkov. "They left their food uneaten and abandoned their kit. Then the shooting began."

Despite international calls for a withdrawal, there is no sign of Russia pulling its troops out of Ossetia. By Wednesday, they had received an order to cease fire, but not to leave.

Their presence is popular with many locals, who wave as soldiers drive past in the street.

Little left

On Wednesday, the military reported no serious breaches of the ceasefire, but a doctor at an emergency field hospital said 11 Russian soldiers had been wounded by Georgian snipers.

Heading out of Tskhinvali, we passed several houses in flames and many others that had already been burned out. At least two of the villages, including Kekhvi, were home to ethnic Georgians in Ossetia before this conflict, when, it appears, most of them fled. We met no Georgians at all on this trip.

"There were Georgian snipers in the villages and they were driven out," said the military spokesman we were travelling with. "Russian special forces will have used mortars and firebombs and the houses went up in flames. It's not revenge burnings."

But some suggest Ossetian militia are looting and burning in the Georgian villages.

We had no way to investigate that. Either way, there will soon be little left for the Georgians to return to.

This conflict has already destroyed any trust between Georgian and Ossetians. It now looks like any chance there was of reconciliation is burning along with the houses.

U.S. Sends Guided Missile Destroyer to Georgia; Also sends second Navy ship for "humanitarian assistance"

2008-08-21T18:29:00.003-04:00

Civil Georgia / Tbilisi

Two U.S. Navy ships, including a guided missile destroyer USS McFaul, and a U.S. Coast Guard cutter are getting underway to transport humanitarian assistance supplies to Georgia, U.S. European Command (EUCOM) said on August 21.

It said USS McFaul (DDG 74) departed from Souda Bay, Crete, on Wednesday and the cutter Dallas (WHEC 716) will depart later this week.

McFaul and Dallas are scheduled to transit into the Black Sea and arrive in Georgia within a week, according to the U.S. European Command.

The announcement comes after it was reported that Turkey gave its go-ahead to sail through its straits into the Black Sea.

“The ships will transport thousands of blankets, hygiene items, baby food and infant supplies to save lives and alleviate human suffering,” U.S. European Command said.

The Associated Press reported quoting unnamed U.S. official in Turkey that USS Mount Whitney would be among those three vessels expected to arrive in Georgia.

Anatoly Nogovitsin, deputy chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, said at a news conference in Moscow on August 21, that the Russia’s Black Sea fleet continued “providing security regime for maritime in the eastern part of the Black Sea.”

“There is no need to further reinforce it [the fleet],” he added.

Meanwhile, a team of U.S. European Command, led by Army Brig. Gen. John Miller, is already in Tbilisi “to assess the current humanitarian situation and make recommendations on continued humanitarian support to senior military leadership.”

“The EUCOM team will conduct a deliberate and focused assessment, encompassing variables such as transportation, infrastructure, manpower and many other life support considerations,” the U.S. European Command said.

And on August 21, the head of the U.S. European Command, Gen. John Craddock, who is also NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe, also arrived in Tbilisi.

Video: Fox News Censors Ossetian Survivors; 12-year-old & Aunt say Georgians burned their home, bombed Ossetians; Thanks Russia for Protecting Them

2008-08-21T18:13:00.006-04:00

Fox News
Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Video: Presidential Candidate Obama to Continue Bush Doctrine; Would invade Pakistan

2008-08-21T17:57:00.004-04:00

ABC News
BBC News
Al Jazeera
South Asia Newsline
CCTV News - China
Press News - Iran
Alalam News - Iran
August 1-3, 2007

NIST: Fires Caused WTC 7 Collapse on 9/11

2008-08-21T17:43:00.003-04:00

National Institute of Standards and Technology

GAITHERSBURG, Md.—The fall of the 47-story World Trade Center building 7 (WTC 7) in New York City late in the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001, was primarily due to fires, the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced today following an extensive, three-year scientific and technical building and fire safety investigation. This was the first known instance of fire causing the total collapse of a tall building, the agency stated as it released for public comment its WTC investigation report and 13 recommendations for improving building and fire safety.

“Our study found that the fires in WTC 7, which were uncontrolled but otherwise similar to fires experienced in other tall buildings, caused an extraordinary event,” said NIST WTC Lead Investigator Shyam Sunder. “Heating of floor beams and girders caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a fire-induced progressive collapse that brought the building down.”

“Video and photographic evidence combined with detailed computer simulations show that neither explosives nor fuel oil fires played a role in the collapse of WTC 7,” Sunder said. The NIST investigation team also determined that other elements of the building’s construction—namely trusses, girders and cantilever overhangs that were used to transfer loads from the building superstructure to the columns of the electric substation (over which WTC 7 was constructed) and foundation below—did not play a significant role in the collapse.

According to the report, a key factor leading to the eventual collapse of WTC 7 was thermal expansion of long-span floor systems at temperatures “hundreds of degrees below those typically considered in current practice for fire resistance ratings." WTC 7 used a structural system design in widespread use.

Citing its one new recommendation (the other 12 are reiterated from the previously completed investigation of the World Trade Center towers, WTC 1 and 2), the NIST investigation team said that “while the partial or total collapse of a tall building due to fires is a rare event, we strongly urge building owners, operators and designers to evaluate buildings to ensure the adequate fire performance of the structural system. Of particular concern are the effects of thermal expansion in buildings with one or more of the following features: long-span floor systems, connections not designed for thermal effects, asymmetric floor framing and/or composite floor systems.” Engineers, the team said, should be able to design cost-effective fixes to address any areas of concern identified by such evaluations.

The investigators also reported that if the city water main had not been cut by the collapse of World Trade Center towers 1 and 2 (WTC 1 and WTC 2), operating sprinklers in WTC 7 would likely have prevented its collapse. “Nevertheless,” Sunder said, “we recommend that building standards and codes be strengthened beyond their current intent to achieve life safety by preventing structural collapse even during severe fires like this one, when sprinklers do not function, do not exist or are overwhelmed by fire.”

Sunder identified several existing, emerging or even anticipated capabilities that could have helped prevent WTC 7’s collapse. He cautioned that the degree to which these capabilities improve performance remains to be evaluated. Possible options for developing cost-effective fixes include:

More robust connections and framing systems to better resist effects of thermal expansion on the structural system.
Structural systems expressly designed to prevent progressive collapse, which is the spread of local damage from a single initiating event, from element to element, eventually resulting in the collapse of an entire structure or a disproportionately large part of it. Current model building codes do not require that buildings be designed to resist progressive collapse.
Better thermal insulation (i.e., reduced conductivity and/or increased thickness) to limit heating of structural steel and to minimize both thermal expansion and weakening effects. Insulation has been used to protect steel strength, but it could be used to maintain a lower temperature in the steel framing to limit thermal expansion.
Improved compartmentation in tenant areas to limit the spread of fires.
Thermally resistant window assemblies to limit breakage, reduce air supply and retard fire growth.

The 12 recommendations reiterated from the WTC towers investigation address several areas, including specific improvements to building standards, codes and practices; changes to, or the establishment of, evacuation and emergency response procedures; and research and other appropriate actions needed to help prevent future building failures.

Determining the probable collapse sequence for WTC 7, NIST found that the impact of debris from the collapse of WTC 1 ignited fires on at least 10 floors of WTC 7, and the fires burned out of control on six lower floors. The heat from these uncontrolled fires caused thermal expansion of the steel beams on the lower floors of the east side of WTC 7, damaging the floor framing on multiple floors. Eventually, a girder on Floor 13 lost its connection to a critical interior column that provided support for the long floor spans on the east side of the building. The displaced girder and other local fire-induced damage caused Floor 13 to collapse, beginning a cascade of floor failures down to the fifth floor. Many of these floors had already been at least partially weakened by the fires in the vicinity of the critical column. This collapse of floors left the critical column unsupported over nine stories.

“When this critical column buckled due to lack of floor supports, it was the first domino in the chain,” Sunder explained. “What followed in rapid succession was a progression of structural failures. Failure first occurred all the way to the roof line—involving all three interior columns on the most eastern side of the building. Then, progressing from east to west across WTC 7, all of the columns in the core of the building failed. Finally, the entire façade collapsed.”

The investigation team considered the possibility of other factors playing a role in the collapse of WTC 7, including the possible use of explosives, fires fed by the fuel supply tanks in and under the building, and damage from the falling debris of WTC 1.

The team said that the smallest blast event capable of crippling the critical column would have produced a “sound level of 130 to 140 decibels at a distance of half a mile,” yet no noise this loud was reported by witnesses or recorded on videos.

As for fuel fires, the team found that they could not have been sustained long enough, could not have generated sufficient heat to fail a critical column, and/or would have produced “large amounts of visible smoke” from Floors 5 and 6, which was not observed.

Finally, the report notes that “while debris impact from the collapse of WTC 1 initiated fires in WTC 7, the resulting structural damage had little effect in causing the collapse of WTC 7.”

The investigation team found that the design of WTC 7 was generally consistent with the New York City building code in effect at the time. The estimated 4,000 occupants of WTC 7 on the morning of Sept. 11 were evacuated without any fatalities or serious injuries.

To reach the conclusions in its report, NIST complemented its in-house expertise with private-sector technical experts; accumulated an extensive collection of documents, photographs and videos related to the WTC events of 9/11; conducted first-person interviews of WTC 7 occupants and emergency responders; analyzed the evacuation and emergency response operations in and around WTC 7; and performed the most complex computer simulations ever conducted to model a building’s response behavior and determine its collapse sequence due to a combination of debris impact damage, fires and a progression of structural failures from local fire-induced damage to collapse initiation, and, ultimately, to global collapse.

Arsenic in Tap Water Linked to Gradual Sickness, Diabetes, Other Illnesses

2008-08-21T17:23:00.004-04:00

By Andrew Stern
Reuters
Tuesday, August 19, 2008

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Arsenic, a naturally occurring poison and carcinogen found in ground water, is strongly linked to adult-onset diabetes, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

Odorless, tasteless, colorless and easily soluble in water or wine, arsenic has long been a feared poison. A heavy dose is detectable in a corpse, but researchers say small amounts of arsenic may sicken people gradually.

Dr. Ana Navas-Acien and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore found a "relatively strong" association between commonly found levels of arsenic in urine and type 2 diabetes in a study of American adults.

"It seems there is may be no safe level of arsenic," Navas-Acien said in a telephone interview.

"Worldwide it's a huge problem," she said. "As water becomes a scarce resource, we need additional sources."

Arsenic raises the risk for cancers of the bladder, lung, kidney, skin and, possibly, the prostate, Navas-Acien said.

The 20 percent of nearly 800 study participants who had the most arsenic in their bodies, a tolerable 16.5 micrograms per liter of urine, had 3.6 times the risk of developing late-onset diabetes than those in the bottom 20 percent, who had 3 micrograms per liter.

Levels of arsenic were 26 percent higher in people with late-onset, or type 2, diabetes than those without the disease, the study found.

The U.S. government sets a limit for drinking water at 10 micrograms of arsenic per liter, which is exceeded in the water consumed by 13 million Americans who mostly live in rural areas that rely on wells to bring up ground water, the researchers wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Arsenic contaminates drinking water for millions of people in Bangladesh, parts of Central Europe, Chile, Argentina and the western United States, where ground water is the source of drinking water and the land has higher concentrations of arsenic.

The U.S. Geological Survey has published maps on its Web site showing levels of arsenic contamination of ground water across the United States.

Overall, 7.8 percent of Americans are believed to have diabetes, although some do not know it. At least 90 percent of cases are the type 2 variety, in which the body loses its ability to use insulin properly.

Navas-Acien said arsenic may play a significant role in diabetes incidence, but it is difficult to say how much.

Arsenic can accumulate in the body, and can ruin the body's ability to use insulin and perform the vital task of converting blood sugar into energy.

Normally, insulin fits into cells via molecular doorways called receptors, which in turn signal the cell to move glucose inside, but arsenic enters the cell and somehow blocks the activity.

Seafood is another source of arsenic, but the organic form found in shellfish and some fish has a carbon molecule attached and poses no risk to health, she said.

It is difficult to discern the difference between the harmful and benign forms of arsenic, though recent laboratory tests allow researchers to detect trace amounts that may pose risks to health, Navas-Acien said.

(Editing by Maggie Fox)

The Report Returns

2008-08-21T16:37:00.004-04:00

By Caroline Martin
The Martin Report

The highly anticipated return of The Martin Report is coming soon to pick up the pieces of what remains of American political insanity. The economy, social security, health care, immigration, education, terrorism, war and conflict, corruption, and opinion & commentary to be covered. Stay tuned.

FEMA Stages Press Conferences; Employees impersonate news reporters

2007-10-27T21:17:00.000-04:00

By Devlin Barrett
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (Oct. 27) - The homeland security chief on Saturday lashed into his own employees for staging a phony news conference at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"I think it was one of the dumbest and most inappropriate things I've seen since I've been in government," Michael Chertoff said.

"I have made unambiguously clear, in Anglo-Saxon prose, that it is not to ever happen again and there will be appropriate disciplinary action taken against those people who exhibited what I regard as extraordinarily poor judgment," he added.

Asked specifically if he planned to fire anyone at FEMA, which is part of his department, Chertoff declined to say, citing personnel rules.

"There will be appropriate discipline," he told reporters at a news conference with New York's governor where they announced an agreement on a driver's license plan.

Chertoff said he knew nothing about the matter until after it happened and that he "can't explain why it happened."

The White House on Friday scolded FEMA for the faux press conference about assistance to victims of wildfires in southern California.

The agency - much maligned for its sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina over two years ago - arranged to have FEMA employees play the part of reporters at the event Tuesday and question Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy director.

The questions were soft and gratuitous.

"I'm very happy with FEMA's response," Johnson said in reply to one query from an agency employee.

FEMA gave reporters only 15 minutes notice about Tuesday's news conference. But because of the short notice, the agency made available an 800 number so reporters could call in. Many did, although it was a listen-only arrangement.

Johnson said in a statement Friday that FEMA's goal was "to get information out as soon as possible and in trying to do so we made an error in judgment."

"Our intent was to provide useful information and be responsive to the many questions we have received," he said. "We can and must do better."

GAO: U.S. Defense and State Departments Squalor Taxpayers' Dollars 10x Above Authorized Limits; "They felt entitled to the perk"

2007-10-02T23:04:00.000-04:00

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal employees wasted at least $146 million over a one-year period on business- and first-class airline tickets, in some cases simply because they felt entitled to the perk, congressional investigators say.

A draft report by the Government Accountability Office, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, is the first to examine compliance with travel rules across the federal government following reports of extensive abuse of premium-class travel by Pentagon and State Department employees.

The review of travel spending by more than a dozen agencies from July 1, 2005, to June 30, 2006, found 67 percent of premium-class travel by executives or their employees, worth at least $146 million, was unauthorized or otherwise unjustified.

Among the worst offenders: the State Department, whose employees typically fly abroad on official business.

Many of the cases involved high-ranking senior officials or political appointees who claimed exceptions to federal travel rules by citing old medical records or questionable approval from a subordinate employee.

Investigators found that senior officials often flew business- or first-class because they felt entitled to the perk.

The higher airfare for traveling in one of the premium classes resulted in expenses often five to 10 times more than what was authorized under government travel rules.

"With the serious fiscal challenges facing the federal government, agencies must maximize their ability to manage and safeguard valuable taxpayers' dollars," investigators wrote, suggesting agencies recoup the extra cost from those who abuse travel policies.

Under federal rules, government employees generally must fly coach for both domestic and international travel unless the flight takes 14 hours or longer. A few exceptions apply when the employee receives agency approval based on a medical condition, security concerns, lack of availability of coach seats or when required "because of agency mission."

Government investigators found that employees openly flouted the rules and agencies did little to check their abuses. Among the waste cited:

An Agriculture Department executive took 25 premium-class flights costing $163,000 and said the extra expense had been authorized by a subordinate. In 10 of those trips, the traveler claimed exceptional circumstances to justify the pricier travel to western Europe, even though agency policy forbids premium-class travel unless the flight time is longer than 14 hours.

Thirty-two State Department employees flew from Washington to Liberia in premium class over a six-month period. Five of those travelers did not have authorization for premium class; three had duplicate tickets and no evidence that the duplicates were refunded; and 17 were not properly justified, as their trips did not meet the 14-hour rule. These flights cost $293,000 and comparable coach-class tickets would have cost $124,000 - a difference of $169,000.

At the Pentagon, a political appointee took 15 premium-class flights and cited a medical condition as justification for the $105,000 in expenses. However, the only evidence of a medical condition was a note signed by a fellow Pentagon employee, not a physician, attesting to surgery from several years earlier. The Pentagon did not have a doctor's certification from the employee as required by agency policy.

Nine Justice Department employees charged the agency $35,000 for premium-class air tickets to Frankfurt, Germany, claiming the flight time was over 14 hours. Investigators found the employees added a separate flight to their calculations to reach the 14-hour total, a practice not allowed under government travel rules. Also, two of the flights were not authorized.

The GAO, Congress ' investigative and auditing arm, said it was referring all cases it found of improper and abusive travel to the respective agencies and inspector general's offices for possible administrative action and repayment of the difference between premium-class and coach-class travel.

The report comes as some lawmakers are pressing to strengthen government sunshine laws by requiring agency disclosure of business-class travel to Congress. Currently, business-class travel accounts for 96 percent of the premium travel claimed by federal employees.

"No one disputes the fact that government officials need to travel, as not all work can be done behind a desk. Nor should all premium-class travel be eliminated. But the rules are there for a reason and the federal government should enforce them," said Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn.

Coleman noted that after a 2003 GAO report uncovered abuses in Pentagon travel, the department tightened policies and has since dramatically reduced its use of premium travel.

"We simply need the necessary oversight mechanisms in place to ensure that taxpayers' dollars are spent properly," he said.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who is seeking to provide greater accountability in the use of government-issued credit cards, agreed.

"The federal employees who like to stretch their legs while they fly need to realize they've already stretched the taxpayer's purse by $146 million," he said. "Agencies need to be more responsible with their travel programs and employees who violate the policy should be held accountable."

The latest GAO report noted that several government entities are not subject to government rules on premium-class travel - among them, the U.S. Postal Service, Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. - opening up more opportunities for unnecessary waste.

Those entities often allow members of their board of governors to travel business or first class for shorter flights overseas and sometimes domestically. In one case, a deputy director of FDIC flew business class from Washington to London and back at a cost of $7,200, while a coach- class ticket would have cost $800.

On the Net:

Government Accountability Office: www.gao.gov

Hugs Threaten 'Orderliness' at Middle School; Banned

2007-10-02T22:59:00.000-04:00

Associated Press

OAK PARK, Ill. (Oct. 2) - If you need a hug, you won't get it at Percy Julian Middle School. Principal Victoria Sharts banned hugging among the suburban Chicago school's 860 students anywhere inside the building. She said students were forming "hug lines" that made them late for classes and crowded the hallways.

"Hugging is really more appropriate for airports or for family reunions than passing and seeing each other every few minutes in the halls," Sharts said.

Another reason to institute the no-hugging policy was that some hugs could be too long and too close, she said.

"There is another side to the issue when a hug is either unwanted or becomes inappropriate as judged by one of the students involved," Sharts wrote in a statement to parents. "On occasion, we do deal with those incidents. The goal is always to promote safe and orderly hallways where everybody can get by, be safe, and be on time."

Iran Condemns U.S. Military and CIA as Terrorists

2007-09-30T14:55:00.000-04:00

BBC News

Iranian MPs have voted to classify the US armed forces and the CIA as terrorist groups.

A statement signed by 215 Iranian MPs cited the bombing of Japan during World War II, and the invasions of Vietnam and Iraq, as "terrorist actions".

The largely symbolic move comes days after the US Senate urged the White House to brand Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organisation.

The foreign ministry in Tehran said it backed the MPs' motion.

Correspondents say the ministry's support is significant because government bodies are generally not as hardline as the parliament.

While the Iranian motion is seen as largely symbolic, the labelling of a group as a terrorist organisation by the US could have financial implications for the guards.

Any assets within US jurisdiction would be frozen and the US Treasury Department could move against firms subject to US law that do business with the guards.

The Revolutionary Guards force was established after the Islamic revolution toppled the Shah and brought hard-line clerics to power in Iran in 1979.

It is estimated to have 125,000 active members and operates separately from Iran's main armed forces.

Anti-Bush Protesters Arrested

2007-09-30T13:47:00.000-04:00

By Karen Matthews
Associated Press
September 25, 2007

NEW YORK - About a dozen war protesters were arrested Tuesday morning during a peaceful demonstration against President Bush's speech before the U.N. General Assembly.

They were among about 400 protesters opposing the Bush administration's war in Iraq and its incarceration in Guantanamo Bay of more than 300 men on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida or the Taliban. Many in the crowd wore orange jumpsuits in solidarity with the Guantanamo detainees.

"I'm sick to my stomach about the war in Iraq," said Anastasia Gomes, 22, of Queens. "We as the youth are standing up and saying this president does not represent us."

Police took the arrested demonstrators into custody by police after they knelt on the sidewalk in an act of civil disobedience at the rally near the United Nations. One of them, 58-year-old Bill Ofenloch, said they were trying to serve an "arrest warrant" on Bush for "high crimes against humanity."

Members of the anti-war group Code Pink performed a bit of street theater where a person wearing a Bush mask was arrested.

"What do we say?" shouted Code Pink's Medea Benjamin. "Arrest the criminal!"

The crowd picked up the chant. Once the arrests were made, the rest of the group began marching downtown. The demonstrators, in orderly fashion, walked along the sidewalks because they lacked a permit for a street march.

In his speech, Bush announced sanctions against the military dictatorship in Myanmar, accusing it of imposing "a 19-year reign of fear" that denies basic freedoms of speech, assembly and worship.

A White House spokesman, asked to comment on the protest, issued a statement that said: "One of the most basic and precious rights our Constitution guarantees its citizens is the right to peacefully protest and express one's views."

Handcuffed Woman Killed in Holding Cell; Police cover-up begins

2007-09-30T13:33:00.000-04:00

Associated Press

NEW YORK (Sept. 30) - The daughter-in-law of the city's public advocate was found dead in a police holding cell in Arizona, where she had been taken in handcuffs after being arrested at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, authorities and relatives said.

"We are extraordinarily upset," said Betsy Gotbaum, the city's public advocate, in Sunday editions of the Daily News. She added that her daughter-in-law had three young children. "It's a very delicate matter."

Authorities were investigating if Carol Anne Gotbaum choked herself while trying to get free from the handcuffs.

The 45-year-old New Yorker was arrested Friday after a conflict with gate crews who refused to allow her to board a plane, said Sgt. Andy Hill, a Phoenix police spokesman.

The airline said the plane was already preparing to depart. She was rebooked on the next flight, but "she became extremely irate, apparently running up and down the gate area," US Airways spokesman Derek Hanna said Saturday.

Officers handcuffed her and took her to the holding room, where she kept screaming, authorities said. Hill said officers checked on her when she stopped screaming and found her unresponsive.

Hill said it appears Gotbaum may have tried to get out of her handcuffs, became tangled in the process and the cuffs ended up around her neck. A cause of death will be determined by the Maricopa County Medical Examiner.

"She was very agitated and irate and angry," Hill said. "These are the things that led to the disorderly conduct arrest."

Authorities said neither a Taser nor pepper spray was used on the woman.

CIA Ghost Plane Crashes in Mexico; Four tons of cocaine found

2007-09-28T20:59:00.000-04:00

By Jay Root and Kevin G. Hall
McClatchy Newspapers
Thursday, September 27, 2007

MEXICO CITY — U.S. authorities are assisting the Mexican government in the investigation of an American business jet that crashed near Cancun this week with four tons of cocaine on board, officials said Thursday.

One of the men listed as the registered owners of the plane, Joao Luiz Malago, said in a telephone interview from Brazil that his Florida-based company sold the aircraft for $2 million on Sept. 16 to a Lakeland, Fla., man and his partner, who Malago believed was from Miami.

Malago said he feared the man was dead because he hasn't been picking up the phone.

Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico had no information on any American citizens being killed or arrested in connection with the aircraft, a 1975 model Gulfstream II.

"We're in the process of a judicial investigation that the Mexican government is conducting and we are providing information,'' said an embassy official, who wasn't authorized to speak on the record. "Part of that investigation is to find out more about where this plane came from and who had it before.''

Some news reports have linked the plane to the transport of terrorist suspects to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but those reports cite logs that indicate only that the plane flew twice between Washington, D.C., and Guantanamo and once between Oxford, Conn., and Guantanamo. No terrorist suspects are known to have been transferred to Guantanamo directly from the United States.

The jet, carrying the tail number N987SA, changed hands twice in recent weeks. But how it ended up in the hands of suspected drug traffickers remains a mystery.

The Mexican attorney general's office said the blue and white Gulfstream II crashed on Monday in a remote jungle area on the Yucatan Peninsula. Authorities seized 132 bags of cocaine weighing four tons. Two men were arrested and jailed on drug trafficking charges in Merida, officials said. They declined to identify the men, however.

The aircraft was sold on Aug. 30 to Donna Blue Aircraft, owned by two Brazilians: Malago and his partner Eduardo Dias Guimaraes. In separate telephone interviews from different parts of Brazil, both men said they'd sold the aircraft to two Florida men on Sept. 16.

"We are not the owners of the plane," said Guimaraes, reached in Goiania in central Brazil.

He deferred most questions to his partner, Malago, who said from Sao Paulo that Donna Blue purchased the aircraft in July from a company that had owned it for 10 years, and then flipped it quickly to two Florida businessmen who paid for it in full.

McClatchy is withholding the names of the alleged new owners of the plane because they couldn't be reached for confirmation.

The Gulfstream was awaiting documentation when it departed on Sept. 18 at 5:10 pm from Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport to Toluca, outside Mexico City, Malago said. He said he learned of Monday's crash after receiving a call from an insurance company, but had been unable to reach the new owner by phone and feared he was dead.

He said he knew nothing of the plane's history or what use it had been put to previously. He said he'd been a pilot for 25 years and had bought and sold planes throughout Latin America. "Generally you don't know the history of the plane," he said.

At the time of the Guantanamo flights, the plane's operation was managed by Air Rutter International, a California-based air charter service, but was owned by someone else. Air Rutter's owner, Bill Cripe, refused to identify that owner, except to say he was a reputable businessman. Cripe also said he didn't know about any flights to Guantanamo.

(Root, of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, reported from Mexico City. Hall reported from Washington.)

Ahmadinejad: A mistake to attack Iran

2007-09-22T11:32:00.000-04:00

BBC News

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has issued a tough warning to any country considering an attack on Iran.

He said Iran's forces were just for defence, but that anybody who attacked would experience nothing but regret.

He urged those he called the occupiers in the region - an apparent reference to the US and its allies in Iraq - to admit defeat and withdraw their troops.

Mr Ahmadinejad was speaking at a huge annual military parade marking the anniversary of the Iran-Iraq War.

On display at the parade was Iran's latest military hardware, including new long-range missiles and Saegheh fighter jets.

According to the Associated Press news agency some of the lorries carrying Iranian missiles bore anti-US and anti-Israeli slogans.

"Those who prevented Iran, at the height of the [1980-88 Iran-Iraq] war from getting even barbed wire must see now that all the equipment on display today has been built by the mighty hands and brains of experts at Iran's armed forces," Mr Ahmadinejad said.

"Learn lessons from your past mistakes. Don't repeat your mistakes," he added.

UN address

His comments come ahead of his high-profile visit to the US next week, where he will address the UN General Assembly in New York, amid continuing tension over Iran's nuclear programme.

Mr Ahmadinejad said that neither threats nor economic sanctions would curb Iran's technological advances.

"Those [countries] who assume that decaying methods such as psychological war, political propaganda and the so-called economic sanctions would work and prevent Iran's fast drive toward progress are mistaken," the president said.

The speech comes at the end of a tense week, with the French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, warning of the danger of war with Iran over its nuclear programme.

The BBC's Jon Leyne in Tehran says Mr Ahmadinejad believes he is winning the battle for world opinion - a fight he is now taking to the UN General Assembly in New York.

The US has called for a third round of UN economic sanctions to pressure Iran into halting uranium enrichment, which it says is part of a secret plan to acquire nuclear weapons.

Iran has denied the charge, declaring that its nuclear programme is peaceful and solely aimed at producing energy.

U.S. Army SAMS: Mossad is "Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act"

2007-09-20T19:46:00.000-04:00

U.S. troops would enforce peace under Army study

By Rowan Scarborough
The Washington Times
Page A1, Second Edition

September 10, 2001

An elite U.S. Army study center has devised a plan for enforcing a major Israeli-Palestinian peace accord that would require about 20,000 well-armed troops stationed throughout Israel and a newly created Palestinian state.

There are no plans by the Bush administration to put American soldiers into the Middle East to police an agreement forged by the longtime warring parties. In fact, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is searching for ways to reduce U.S. peacekeeping efforts abroad, rather than increasing such missions.

But a 68-page paper by the Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) does provide a look at the daunting task any international peacekeeping force would face if the United Nations authorized it, and Israel and the Palestinians ever reached a peace agreement.

Located at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., the School for Advanced Military Studies is both a training ground and a think tank for some of the Army's brightest officers. Officials say the Army chief of staff, and sometimes the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ask SAMS to develop contingency plans for future military operations. During the 1991 Persian Gulf war, SAMS personnel helped plan the coalition ground attack that avoided a strike up the middle of Iraqi positions and instead executed a "left hook" that routed the enemy in 100 hours.

The cover page for the recent SAMS project said it was done for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But Maj. Chris Garver, a Fort Leavenworth spokesman, said the study was not requested by Washington.

"This was just an academic exercise," said Maj. Garver. "They were trying to take a current situation and get some training out of it."

The exercise was done by 60 officers dubbed "Jedi Knights," as all second-year SAMS students are nicknamed.

The SAMS paper attempts to predict events in the first year of a peace-enforcement operation, and sees possible dangers for U.S. troops from both sides.

It calls Israel's armed forces a "500-pound gorilla in Israel. Well armed and trained. Operates in both Gaza [and the West Bank]. Known to disregard international law to accomplish mission. Very unlikely to fire on American forces. Fratricide a concern especially in air space management."

Of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, the SAMS officers say: "Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act."

On the Palestinian side, the paper describes their youth as "loose cannons; under no control, sometimes violent." The study lists five Arab terrorist groups that could target American troops for assassination and hostage-taking.

The study recommends "neutrality in word and deed" as one way to protect U.S. soldiers from any attack. It also says Syria, Egypt and Jordan must be warned "we will act decisively in response to external attack."

It is unlikely either of the three would mount an attack. Of Syria's military, the report says: "Syrian army quantitatively larger than Israeli Defense Forces, but largely seen as qualitatively inferior. More likely, however, Syrians would provide financial and political support to the Palestinians, as well as increase covert support to terrorism acts through Lebanon."

Of Egypt's military, the paper says, "Egyptians also maintain a large army but have little to gain by attacking Israel."

The plan does not specify a full order of battle. An Army source who reviewed the SAMS work said each of a possible three brigades would require about 100 Bradley fighting vehicles, 25 tanks, 12 self-propelled howitzers, Apache attack helicopters, Kiowa Warrior reconnaissance helicopters and Predator spy drones.

The report predicts that nonlethal weapons would be used to quell unrest.

U.S. European Command, which is headed by NATO`s supreme allied commander, would oversee the peacekeeping operation. Commanders would maintain areas of operation, or AOs, around Nablus, Jerusalem, Hebron and the Gaza strip.

The study sets out a list of goals for U.S. troops to accomplish in the first 30 days. They include: "create conditions for development of Palestinian State and security of [Israel]"; ensure "equal distribution of contract value or equivalent aid" . . . that would help legitimize the peacekeeping force and stimulate economic growth; "promote U.S. investment in Palestine"; "encourage reconciliation between entities based on acceptance of new national identities"; and "build lasting relationship based on new legal borders and not religious-territorial claims."

Maj. Garver said the officers who completed the exercise will hold major planning jobs once they graduate. "There is an application process" for students, he said. "They screen their records, and there are several tests they go through before they are accepted by the program. The bright planners of the future come out of this program."

James Phillips, a Middle East analyst at the Heritage Foundation, said it would be a mistake to put peacekeepers in Israel, given the "poor record of previous monitors."

"In general, the Bush administration policy is to discourage a large American presence," he said. "But it has been rumored that one of the possibilities might be an expanded CIA role."

"It would be a very different environment than Bosnia," said Mr. Phillips, referring to America's six-year peacekeeping role in Bosnia-Herzegovina. "The Palestinian Authority is pushing for this as part of its strategy to internationalize the conflict. Bring in the Europeans and Russia and China. But such monitors or peacekeeping forces are not going to be able to bring peace. Only a decision by the Palestinians to stop the violence and restart talks could possibly do that."

Oil at Record Highs; Gold at 26 year highs; Dollar at lifetime lows against Euro

2007-09-20T15:37:00.000-04:00

Reuters

Oil surged over $83 per barrel on Thursday in the seventh straight record-breaking session as companies shut Gulf of Mexico output on forecasts a tropical depression churning through the region would become a storm.

U.S. light, sweet crude gained $1.44 to $83.37 per barrel in mid-afternoon trade, after hitting an all-time high of $83.60 earlier.

London Brent crude rose 40 cents to $78.87.

Oil has traded above $80 for the past week in part due to concerns about U.S. supplies after government data showed crude stocks in the top consumer fell for the fourth consecutive week.

A tropical depression blowing into the Gulf of Mexico exacerbated worries as companies shut offshore oil and natural gas output on expectations it would become a tropical storm.

Energy companies have shut over 360,100 barrels of oil per day, some 27.7 percent, of Gulf crude oil production and 16.7 percent of natural gas production on the storm threat, the U.S. Minerals Management Service said on Thursday.

"Energy companies shutting down Gulf of Mexico production and Fed Chief Bernanke's optimistic words on the economy were supportive for this latest record rise in crude futures," said Phil Flynn, analyst at Alaron Trading in Chicago.

Pressures On Prices

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said he expects rising defaults on U.S. mortgages but added the Fed was committed to preventing new lending problems after cutting interest rates sharply Tuesday.

The dollar fell to a lifetime low against the euro and reached parity with the Canadian currency Thursday on expectations more interest rate cuts could be made.

Oil has risen by a third this year, driven by worries of fuel shortages during the Northern Hemisphere winter, supply risks in producer countries, the weaker dollar and rising money flows from investors.

The recent surge to record prices came after producer group OPEC agreed to add 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) to global markets to help calm consumer nation concerns.

While analysts are divided over whether prices can sustain current levels, some OPEC officials said oil will not stay above $80 for long.

"This situation is not stable and cannot be permanent," said Hossein Kazempour Ardebili, Iran's OPEC governor.

Wednesday's rise to record highs came after data showed crude oil stocks in the United States fell by 3.8 million barrels last week, nearly twice the 2-million-barrel draw expected in a Reuters poll of analysts.

Woman in Wheelchair Killed by Police; Shocked ten times by tasers

2007-09-20T15:22:00.000-04:00

Local6.com
September 19, 2007

CLAY COUNTY, Fla. -- A Clay County woman's family said it's seeking justice after their loved one died shortly after being shocked 10 times with Taser guns during a confrontation with police.

The family of 56-year-old Emily Delafield said it would take the Green Cove Springs Police Department to court, according to a WJXT-TV report.

In April 2006, officers with the police department said they were called to a disturbance at a home in the 400 block of Harrison Street just before 5 p.m.

In a 911 call made to the Green Cove Springs, Delafield can be heard telling a dispatcher that she believed she was in danger:

Dispatcher: And what's the problem?

Delafield: My sister is waiting on my property.

Dispatcher: Your what?

Delafield: My sister (inaudible) is on my property trying to harm me.

Officers said they arrived to find Delafield in a wheelchair, armed with two knives and a hammer. Police said the woman was swinging the weapons at family members and police.

Within an hour of her call to 911, Delafield, a wheelchair-bound woman documented to have mental illness, was dead.

Family attorney Rick Alexander said Delafield's death could have been prevented and that there are four things that jump out at him about the case.

"One, she's in a wheelchair. Two, she's schizophrenic. Three, they're using a Taser on a person that's in a wheelchair, and then four is that they tasered her 10 times for a period of like two minutes," Alexander said.

According to a police report, one of the officers used her Taser gun nine times for a total of 160 seconds and the other officer discharged his Taser gun once for a total of no more than five seconds.

A medical examiner found Delafield died from hypertensive heart disease and cited the Taser gun shock as a contributing factor, the report said. On her death certificate, the medical examiner ruled Delafield's death a homicide.

The family said it plans to sue the Green Coves Springs Police Department now that it has all the reports regarding their loved one's death.

"We're going to try to compensate the estate and the family and try to get justice," Alexander said.

He said he believes the evidence weighs heavily in favor of Delafield's family and that justice will be served.

"I think that this evidence is going to show, along with some of the evidence we've collected outside of here, that there is no reason Emily Delafield should have died that day," Alexander said.

He said he plans to file a notice to sue sometime before the end of the year.

Clinton to Mandate Health Insurance; Requires proof of HI for employment

2007-09-20T15:13:00.000-04:00

By Beth Fouhy
Associated Press
September 18, 2007

WASHINGTON - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that a mandate requiring every American to purchase health insurance was the only way to achieve universal health care but she rejected the notion of punitive measures to force individuals into the health care system.

"At this point, we don't have anything punitive that we have proposed," the presidential candidate said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We're providing incentives and tax credits which we think will be very attractive to the vast majority of Americans."

She said she could envision a day when "you have to show proof to your employer that you're insured as a part of the job interview — like when your kid goes to school and has to show proof of vaccination," but said such details would be worked out through negotiations with Congress.

Clinton unveiled her health care plan Monday in Iowa, promising to bring coverage to every American by building on the current employer-based system and using tax credits to make insurance more affordable.

She told the AP she relished a debate over health care with her political opponents, including Republicans "who understood that we had to reform health care before they started running for president."

On Tuesday, Clinton began airing a 30-second ad statewide in Iowa and New Hampshire promoting her new health care plan. The ad reminds viewers of her failed effort to pass universal health care in the early 1990s, trying to portray a thwarted enterprise as one of vision.

"She changed our thinking when she introduced universal health care to America," the ad's announcer says.

The ad also highlights her support as senator for an expanded Children's Health Insurance Program and for more affordable vaccines.

Her health care plan would require every American to buy health insurance, offering tax credits and subsidies to help those who can't afford it. The mandatory aspect of her proposal, however, gets glossed over in the ad.

"Now she has a health care plan that lets you keep your coverage if you like it, provides affordable choices if you don't, and covers every American," the ad says.

The ad also continues her campaign's effort to appropriate the mantle of change away from rivals Barack Obama and John Edwards. The word change or its variations appears four times in the ad, which ends: "So, if you're ready for change, she's ready to lead."

Though her ads are airing in major markets in both states, they are appearing with greater frequency in Iowa. Polls of voters in New Hampshire show her with a double digit lead over Obama and Edwards, but polls in Iowa show the three of them clustered together.

Associated Press Writer Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report.

Nearly 200 Arrested at Mass Anti-War Protest in D.C.; 100,000 Strong

2007-09-16T03:59:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON (AP) - Several thousand anti-war demonstrators marched through downtown Washington on Saturday, clashing with police at the foot of the Capitol steps where more than 190 protesters were arrested.

The group marched from the White House to the Capitol to demand an end to the Iraq war. Their numbers stretched for blocks along Pennsylvania Avenue, and they held banners and signs and chanted, "What do we want? Troops out. When do we want it? Now."

Army veteran Justin Cliburn, 25, of Lawton, Okla., was among a contingent of Iraq veterans in attendance.

"We're occupying a people who do not want us there," Cliburn said of Iraq. "We're here to show that it isn't just a bunch of old hippies from the 60s who are against this war."

Counterprotesters lined the sidewalks behind metal barricades. There were some heated shouting matches between the two sides.

The arrests came after protesters lay down on the Capitol lawn in what they called a "die in" - with signs on top of their bodies to represent soldiers killed in Iraq. When police took no action, some of the protesters started climbing over a barricade at the foot of the Capitol steps.

Many were arrested without a struggle after they jumped over the waist-high barrier. But some grew angry as police with shields and riot gear attempted to push them back. At least two people were showered with chemical spray. Protesters responded by throwing signs and chanting: "Shame on you."

The number of arrests by Capitol Police on Saturday was much higher than previous anti-war rallies in Washington this year. Five people were arrested at a protest outside the Pentagon in March when they walked onto a bridge that had been closed off to accommodate the demonstration, then refused to leave. And at a rally in January, about 50 demonstrators blocked a street near the Capitol, but they were dispersed without arrests.

The protesters gathered earlier Saturday near the White House in Lafayette Park with signs saying "End the war now" and calling for President Bush's impeachment. The rally was organized by the ANSWER Coalition and other groups.

Organizers estimated that nearly 100,000 people attended the rally and march. That number could not be confirmed; police did not give their own estimate. A permit for the march obtained in advance by the ANSWER Coalition had projected 10,000.

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan told the crowd is was time to be assertive.

"It's time to lay our bodies on the line and say we've had enough," she said. "It's time to shut this city down."

About 13 blocks away, nearly 1,000 counterprotesters gathered near the Washington Monument, frequently erupting in chants of "U-S-A" and waving American flags.

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Robert "Buzz" Patterson, speaking from a stage to crowds clad in camouflage, American flag bandanas and Harley Davidson jackets, said he wanted to send three messages.

"Congress, quit playing games with our troops. Terrorists, we will find you and kill you," he said. "And to our troops, we're here for you, and we support you."

Associated Press writer Christine Simmons contributed to this report.

U.S. Dollar at Record Low Against Euro

2007-09-12T20:35:00.000-04:00

BBC News

The US dollar has fallen to a record low against the euro as investors bet that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates to help the economy.

At its nadir in European trading, it took $1.3914 to buy a euro, passing the last record of $1.3852 set on 24 July.

Many analysts are predicting that the Fed will cut interest rates next week as it looks to reassure markets and consumers amid a global credit crunch.

The dollar has weakened against the euro for six sessions in a row.

"The market's main focus remains on US economic fundamentals," said Tomohiro Iwata of Goldman Sachs.

He added that investors would be debating whether the Fed would cut rates by a quarter or a half of a percentage point, and what comments they might make following any move.

"Dollar weakness is still the story of the day," said David Jones of CMC Markets in London.

"Markets seem to be expecting a rate cut - I think half a percentage point - and that has been weighing on the dollar," he explained.

Rate spread

At the heart of the dollar's decline have been problems in the US housing market, caused by the Fed increasing interest rates in order to slow accelerating inflation.

As a result of the higher borrowing costs, an increasing number of borrowers have defaulted on loans, especially in the sub-prime mortgage market, which specialises in lending to people with poor or non-existent credit histories.

This, in turn, has spread to global credit markets, as many of the sub-prime mortgages were repackaged and sold on to European and UK banks as investment assets.

Analysts are now speculating that the Fed will cut its main interest rate to ease the pressure on consumers, and help reassure the global markets that it is willing to intervene to ensure financial stability.

The Fed's main interest rate is currently at 5.25% and any cut would be the first in four years.

At the same time, there is speculation that European rates may rise as the region's economy grows by more than 2% this year.

On Tuesday, Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank, said once again that the European economy was healthy.

However, he warned that market volatility could continue.

"We have seen a distinct possibility that the ongoing deterioration of credit worthiness of borrowers in the US sub-prime mortgage market could be a trigger for a more broad-based market correction," he said.

Mossad Agent Adam Pearlman Behind Latest OBL Tapes

2007-09-10T19:47:00.000-04:00

By Tim Shipman
Sunday Telegraph

A Californian heavy metal fan, who converted to Islam and became the first American to be charged with treason in half a century, has been fingered as the author of Osama bin Laden's latest video lecture - which left the terror chief sounding like an anti-globalisation protester.

The al-Qaeda leader's first video message for three years featured a bizarre rant against America, with references to global warming, "insane taxes", the US mortgage market meltdown and rising interest rates.

American spy chiefs were quick to name Adam Gadahn, the head of al-Qaeda's English language media operations, as the author of large sections of bin Laden's broadcast.

Last October, the 28-year-old "loner" became the first American charged with treason since 1952, for appearing in a succession of al-Qaeda videos under the guise of "Azzam The American", in which he condemned globalisation and made American cultural references.

He was charged in his absence, as he is thought to be near to bin Laden, almost certainly in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Gadahn, who as a teenager reviewed albums for a metal music magazine, moved to Pakistan in 1998 and became an associate of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks. In 2004, the FBI named him as one of seven al-Qaeda operatives planning attacks in the US.

The bin Laden video, timed to coincide with the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, shows the terror chief, his beard dyed black, condemning the "unjust" Iraq war and calling on Americans to "embrace Islam".

What surprised analysts was his use of the language of Left-wing protesters, which showed detailed knowledge of the economic travails of middle America.

Bin Laden referred to "the reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgage" and blamed "global warming and its woes" on "emissions of the factories the major corporations".

A former senior US intelligence official said: "It has Adam Gadahn written all over it." Mike Baker, a former CIA covert operations officer, said the tape left bin Laden with "the title of biggest gas bag in the terrorist world".

CIA officials said voice analysis of the tape proved it was definitely bin Laden.

References to the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as French president, Gordon Brown's appointment as prime minister and the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing on August 6 led them to conclude it was filmed as recently as four weeks ago.

President Bush used the release of the tape to reinforce his view that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror.

He said: "I found it interesting that on the tape Iraq was mentioned, which is a reminder that Iraq is a part of this war against extremists.

If al-Qaeda bothers to mention Iraq, it is because they want to achieve their objectives in Iraq, which is to drive us out and to develop a safe haven."

The tape contained no direct threats, but Michael Hayden, the CIA director, gave a speech on Friday, after he was briefed on its contents, in which he said: "Al-Qaeda is focusing on targets that would produce mass casualties, dramatic destruction, and significant economic aftershocks."

American officials said the US government had obtained a copy of the video even though it had not been posted on Islamist websites - sparking speculation that US intelligence has developed an informant or cracked al-Qaeda's cyber security.

Mohamed el-Sayed, of the Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, said bin Laden's words are proof the West cannot appease al-Qaeda by withdrawing from Iraq. "The message is much more threatening this time," he said. "It uses iconic language that suggests: 'The only way to get peace is to convert to Islam.' He's in a state of constant, unending war until he Islamises the world."

But other analysts said that the lack of specific threats is evidence that bin Laden cannot direct specific operations from his base in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Peter Bergen, a US journalist who has interviewed bin Laden, said producing the video was a risk, as were previous audio tapes. "Every time he releases tapes he lays himself open to detection," he said.

"They are taken out by couriers from the tribal areas in Pakistan. If you can trace the train of custody of these tapes you can find bin Laden. He's keenly aware of that."

Lies of 'Loose Change' Attacked, Again

2007-09-09T13:08:00.000-04:00

By Christopher Scanlon

SIX years since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, conspiracy theories about the events of that day continue to abound. One of the better known films is the 2006 "documentary" Loose Change, a "final cut" of which was released recently.

The film claims that a missile, not a plane, crashed into the Pentagon, bombs were used to collapse the World Trade Centre towers and that United 93 landed at Cleveland Airport. If that's not fantastic enough, the filmmakers throw in a subplot about a gold heist from the basement of the World Trade Centre carried out in the fog of the attacks.

The "evidence" presented by the makers of Loose Change is laughable. Almost no credible experts are interviewed, and many of the documentary and news sources are quoted selectively or use inaccurate reports that were later corrected. Many other claims are simply untrue and are easily refuted by both official and unofficial sources.

Nevertheless, the conspiracy theorists are winning converts. A 2006 poll of 1010 Americans conducted by researchers from Ohio University found that just more than a third of respondents suspect that the US Government promoted the attacks or intentionally did nothing to prevent them. Sixteen per cent thought that explosives were used to bring down the World Trade Centre and 12 per cent believed that a cruise missile hit the Pentagon.

The appeal of conspiracy theories isn't limited to a lunatic fringe. An otherwise rational and intelligent liberal-left American academic I met at a conference two years ago, for example, confidently assured me that September 11 was perpetrated by her own government. She didn't really have any evidence, but she was convinced that the whole thing had been a plot. My questions and counter-arguments to her claims were met with the kind of pitying smile reserved for the extremely gullible.

While most of those pushing September 11 conspiracy theories like to style themselves as opposed to President George Bush, their cavalier disregard for evidence and rational explanation places them far closer to the Bush camp than they'd like to think.

The September 11 conspiracy theories are like a left-liberal version of intelligent design. Just as the adherents of intelligent design invoke a great designer whenever they come across some part of the natural world that they personally can't explain, the September 11 conspiracy theorists invoke the White House whenever they can't account for the events of that day.

For example, the makers of Loose Change claim that explosions were used to collapse the twin towers. To support the claim, the filmmakers present footage of windows 20 and 30 floors below the impact site blowing out as the towers begin to collapse. They also play sound footage caught at the scene, in which small explosions can be heard.

More plausible explanations — that the air pressure exerted by the weight of the collapsing towers blew out offices and windows below, causing smaller "explosions", for example — are not considered.

Similarly, the apparently small size of the hole in the Pentagon's wall is used to prop up the claim that a missile hit the building. The filmmakers conveniently ignore the fact that many witnesses reported seeing the plane hit, whereas no one saw a missile.

In the world inhabited by conspiracy theorists, even the absence of evidence is itself turned into evidence of how large and how successful the cover-up has been.

In the same way that supporters of intelligent design lead away from an explanation of the natural world, the September 11 conspiracy theories lead us away from any deeper understanding of the attacks, into a fantasy world in which the US has no enemies — except its own leaders.

In doing so, the conspiracy theorists absolve both the terrorists and those responsible for the misdeeds of US and Western foreign policy. The September 11 conspiracy theorists draw on, and perpetuate, a deeply ingrained view of "orientals" as passive, incapable of acting except as puppets of "our" will. But in denying Middle-Eastern terrorists' agency, the September 11 conspiracy theorists also deny their moral culpability for mass murder.

It also ignores more than 50 years of short-sighted Western foreign policy, replacing it with a few bad apples in the Bush Administration.

In this regard, the conspiracy theorists' logic is close to President Bush who, unable to contemplate that the attacks may have been a response to years of frequently disastrous foreign policy in the Middle East, chooses to believe that "the enemy hates us because of what we love. We love freedom."

There's no doubt that there are things we don't know about the events of September 11, 2001, and that we'll never know.

It's likely that information has been withheld for both good and bad reasons. But an effective response to the events of September 11, 2001, begins with a rejection of the false choice between both the fantasies of conspiracy theorists and the Bush White House.

Israeli Neo-Nazis: "...I was a Nazi and I will stay a Nazi, until we kill them all I will not rest."

2007-09-09T12:53:00.000-04:00

The Associated Press

JERUSALEM — In a case that would seem unthinkable in the Jewish state, police on Sunday said they've cracked a cell of young Israeli neo-Nazis accused in a string of attacks on foreign workers, religious Jews, drug addicts and gays.

Eight immigrants from the former Soviet Union have been arrested in recent days in connection with at least 15 attacks, and a ninth fled the country, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said, in the first such known cell to be discovered in Israel.

All of the suspects are in their late teens or early 20s and have Israeli citizenship, Rosenfeld said. A court decided Sunday to keep them in custody.

News of the arrests came as a shock in Israel, which was founded nearly 60 years ago as a refuge for Jews in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust and remains a most sensitive subject. Any forms of anti-Semitism around the world outrage Israelis, and the discovery of such violence in the country's midst made the front pages of newspapers and dominated talk on morning radio shows.

The gang documented its activities on film and in photographs. Israeli TV stations showed grainy footage of people lying helpless on floors while several people kicked them, and of a man getting hit from behind on the head with an empty bottle.

Police found knives, spiked balls, explosives and other weapons in the suspects' possession, Rosenfeld said. One photo that was seized showed one suspect holding an M16 rifle in one hand and in the other, a sign reading "Heil Hitler," he added.

Police discovered the skinhead ring after investigating the desecration of two synagogues — which were sprayed with swastikas — in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva more than a year ago, Rosenfeld said. Police computer experts have determined they maintained contacts with neo-Nazi groups abroad, and materials seized include a German-language video about neo-Nazis in the U.S.

Group members wore tattoos of Celtic crosses — a symbol adopted by white supremacists — and barbed wire fences, and the number "88," code for "Heil Hitler" because "h" is the eighth letter of the alphabet. Another tattoo proclaimed "White Power," and they were photographed giving the Nazi salute.

The group planned its attacks, and its targets were foreign workers from Asia, drug addicts, homosexuals, punks and Jews who wore skullcaps. In one case they discussed planning a murder, Rosenfeld said, without providing details. Some of the victims filed official complaints with police, and other victims were identified after police viewed the films and photos.

"The level of violence was outrageous," Maj. Revital Almog, who investigated the case, told Israel's Army Radio.

Police identified the group leader as Eli Boanitov, 19, of Petah Tikva — known as "Eli the Nazi." Gang members were arrested in recent days, and a gag order on the case was lifted early Sunday.

"I won't ever give up, I was a Nazi and I will stay a Nazi, until we kill them all I will not rest," Boanitov was quoted as saying by a police statement.

In the past, there have been only isolated cases of neo-Nazi activity in Israel. "This is the first time that we've ... arrested such a large number of individuals who are part of an organized neo-Nazi group," Rosenfeld said.

Under Israeli law, a person can claim citizenship if a parent or grandparent has Jewish roots. Authorities say that formulation allowed many Soviets with questionable ties to Judaism to immigrate here after the Soviet Union disintegrated. About 1 million Soviets moved here in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Rosenfeld said all of the suspects had "parents or grandparents who were Jewish in one way or another."

Israel doesn't specifically have a hate crimes law, and suspects in past cases have been tried as Holocaust deniers, he said.

The Anti-Defamation League, a U.S.-based group that fights anti-Semitism, condemned the neo-Nazi cell, but urged Israelis not to stigmatize the entire Russian immigrant community based on the acts of what appeared to be a marginal group.

"The suspicion that immigrants to Israel could have been acting in praise of Nazis and Hitler is an anathema to the Jewish state and is to be repelled," the statement read. "The tragic irony in this is that they would have been chosen for annihilation by the Nazi they strive to emulate."

Amos Herman, an official with the semiofficial Jewish Agency, which works on behalf of the government to encourage immigration to Israel, said the phenomenon was not representative of the Russian immigration.

He called the gang a group of frustrated, disgruntled youths trying to strike at the nation's most sensitive core.

"We thought that it would never happen here, but it has and we have to deal with it," he said.

U.S. Suffers Major Job Loss; Denies Signs of Recession

2007-09-07T16:57:00.000-04:00

Reuters
CNBC

Bush administration officials Friday sought to ease fears the U.S. was tipping into recession after a government report showed the economy shed jobs for the first time in four years last month.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said he was not totally surprised about August's job decline given housing troubles and less government hiring, but viewed the U.S. economy as still healthy and growing.

The moribund housing sector "is going to extract a penalty on growth, and what we're going through in the credit markets is very apt to extract a penalty on growth, but the economy is going to continue to grow in the second half of the year," Paulson told Bloomberg television.

The Labor Department Friday said monthly payrolls fell by 4,000 jobs, sending shock waves through financial markets that were anticipating growth of 110,000 jobs.

Nonetheless, Paulson said the economy was fundamentally healthy, and that would provide a good backdrop for working through problems in the housing and credit markets, a process which would take time.

"There's always a chance of recession. We don't think it is likely," White House economic adviser Ed Lazear told CNBC television.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, in an interview with Reuters, said the economy was benefiting from rising exports and that consumer spending was holding up.

"The economic fundamentals are solid and they say that the likelihood of growth and of expansion is a lot greater than recession," he said.

The Treasury's assistant secretary for economic policy, Philip Swagel, joined the chorus, saying private forecasts showed housing and credit woes shaving "somewhere on the order of a couple tenths of a percentage point" off growth in the second half of 2007 to the 2 percent to 2.5 percent range.

"In part this reflects that so far the credit disruption has been important for people most affected by it, but it hasn't affected the entire economy yet. Larger corporations still have pretty good access to capital," Swagel said.

He said the biggest declines in housing have already occurred, so its effect on future growth rates may diminish.

Paulson ate breakfast with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke Friday, a meeting scheduled prior to the payrolls release. The Treasury chief declined to discuss Bernanke's reaction to the jobs data but added that he has "great confidence in what's going on at the Fed."

Talking to Bankers, Brokers

Paulson, a Wall Street investment banker for 32 years, said he is now spending a lot of time talking with market participants to try to find ways to help capital markets function properly after the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis sparked a broad pullback in lending.

"I'm focused on the asset-backed paper market, some of the more complex products, those parts of the credit markets and the capital markets that aren't functioning as normal, and we're vigilant there," Paulson said.

He said he has seen "some modest improvement" in these markets but it would take time to return them to normal. But Paulson cautioned against over-regulation in the subprime mortgage sector and other credit markets that could stifle financial innovation. He said the Treasury was studying these issues very carefully.

"Let's not overreact and do something that is going to make credit much more difficult to come by for a big sector of our population for which home ownership is very very important," he said.

Asked whether U.S. housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be allowed to expand their loan portfolios to buy up distressed subprime debt, Paulson said he was talking with the government-sponsored enterprises to find ways for them to help ease the current crisis.

Currently Fannie and Freddie invest in 30-year fixed mortgages that conform to strict guidelines and have a limit of $417,000. Some key U.S. lawmakers have called for their loan-size limits to be increased as well as for portfolio caps to be lifted.

Paulson repeatedly has opposed allowing Fannie and Freddie to expand their portfolios. He told Bloomberg Television that allowing them to expand into the subprime sector would require creation of a much stronger regulator, a process that has been stalled in Congress.

Gold Soars As Recession Becomes Imminent

2007-09-07T15:34:00.000-04:00

CNBC

Gold hit a 16-month high above $700 per ounce on Friday, boosted by a falling dollar after U.S. data showing a surprise contraction in U.S. non-farm payrolls for the first time in four years.

The August report showing a fall of 4,000 jobs dented the U.S. currency against the euro, making dollar-denominated gold cheaper for overseas investors.

The data looked certain to increase pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut U.S. interest rates.

Bullion had earlier tested resistance at $700 with fund buyers encouraged by strong oil prices, healthy physical demand and safe-haven buying against a backdrop of worries over problems on credit markets.

Gold traded as high $704.60 an ounce by 1301 GMT, closing in on a 26-year high of $730 hit in 2006 and up 1 percent from New York's late quote of $695.70/696.30 on Thursday.

"The latest rise is entirely related to the surprise drop in U.S. jobs data. I think the fixed income market has dramatically increased the chances of a 50-basis-point interest rate cut," said James Steel, HSBC metals analyst in New York.

"Consequently, liquidity is surging through the gold market -- there's all round buying," he added.

A cut in U.S. interest rates would put pressure on the dollar, making dollar-priced gold cheaper for other currency holders.

Simon Weeks, head of precious metal trading at Bank Nova Scotia, said gold was also starting to break out technically in other currencies.

Gold priced in euros rose to its highest since early March, which analysts consider to be a bullish sign.

Bullion is also generally seen as a hedge against oil-led inflation and benefited on Friday from crude prices rising towards a record peak.

Oil held above $76, within $3 of its all-time high, as tension in the Middle East compounded supply worries after further declines in U.S. fuel inventories.

Data also showed that gold held in New York-listed StreetTRACKS Gold Shares, the world's largest gold-backed ETF, reached record high of 542.35 tonnes, up 26.91 tonnes or 5 percent from the start of the month.

In other metals, platinum rose to a one-month high of $1,294.50 an ounce and was last quoted at $1,289.00/1,296.00, against $1,284.50/1,291.50 in New York.

Palladium was broadly steady at $333.65/337.65 an ounce, while silver rose to $12.64/12.67 an ounce.

Man-Made Global Warming Debunked; Ends fraud to promote an international Global Warming Tax

2007-09-04T18:50:00.000-04:00

By Marc Morano
U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
August 20, 2007

Washington DC – An abundance of new peer-reviewed studies, analysis, and data error discoveries in the last several months has prompted scientists to declare that fear of catastrophic man-made global warming “bites the dust” and the scientific underpinnings for alarm may be “falling apart.” The latest study to cast doubt on climate fears finds that even a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide would not have the previously predicted dire impacts on global temperatures. This new study is not unique, as a host of recent peer-reviewed studies have cast a chill on global warming fears.

“Anthropogenic (man-made) global warming bites the dust,” declared astronomer Dr. Ian Wilson after reviewing the new study which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research. Another scientist said the peer-reviewed study overturned “in one fell swoop” the climate fears promoted by the UN and former Vice President Al Gore. The study entitled “Heat Capacity, Time Constant, and Sensitivity of Earth’s Climate System,” was authored by Brookhaven National Lab scientist Stephen Schwartz.

“Effectively, this (new study) means that the global economy will spend trillions of dollars trying to avoid a warming of ~ 1.0 K by 2100 A.D.” Dr. Wilson wrote in a note to the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee on August 19, 2007. Wilson, a former operations astronomer at the Hubble Space Telescope Institute in Baltimore MD, was referring to the trillions of dollars that would be spent under such international global warming treaties like the Kyoto Protocol.

“Previously, I have indicated that the widely accepted values for temperature increase associated with a doubling of CO2 were far too high i.e. 2 – 4.5 Kelvin. This new peer-reviewed paper claims a value of 1.1 +/- 0.5 K increase for a doubling of CO2,” he added.

Climate fears reduced to ‘children’s games’

Other scientists are echoing Wilson’s analysis. Former Harvard physicist Dr. Lubos Motl said the new study has reduced proponents of man-made climate fears to “playing the children’s game to scare each other.”

“Recall that most of the 1.1 degree - about 0.7 degrees - has already occurred since the beginning of the industrial era. This fact itself is an indication that the climate sensitivity is unlikely to be much greater than 1 Celsius degree: the effect of most of the doubling has already been made and it led to 0.7 K of warming,” Motl wrote in an August 17, 2007 blog post.

“By the end of the (CO2) doubling i.e. 560 ppm (parts per million) expected slightly before (the year) 2100 -- assuming a business-as-usual continued growth of CO2 that has been linear for some time -- Schwartz and others would expect 0.4 C of extra warming only - a typical fluctuation that occurs within four months and certainly nothing that the politicians should pay attention to,” Motl explained.

“As far as I can say, all the people who end up with 2 or even 3 Celsius degrees for the climate sensitivity are just playing the children's game to scare each other, as [MIT climate scientist] Richard Lindzen says, by making artificial biased assumptions about positive feedbacks. There is no reasonable, balanced, and self-consistent work that would lead to such a relatively high sensitivity,” Motl concluded.

Overturning IPCC consensus ‘in one fell swoop’

The new study was also touted as “overturning the UN IPCC ‘consensus’ in one fell swoop” by the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) Joel Schwartz in an August 17, 2007 blog post.

“New research from Stephen Schwartz of Brookhaven National Lab concludes that the Earth’s climate is only about one-third as sensitive to carbon dioxide as the IPCC assumes,” wrote AEI’s Schwartz, who hold a master’s degree in planetary science from the California Institute of Technology.

The study’s “result is 63% lower than the IPCC’s estimate of 3 degrees C for a doubling of CO2 (2.0–4.5 degrees C, 2SD range). Right now we’re about 41% above the estimated pre-industrial CO2 level of 270 ppm. At the current rate of increase of about 0.55% per year, CO2 will double around 2070. Based on Schwartz’s results, we should expect about a 0.6 degrees C additional increase in temperature between now and 2070 due to this additional CO2. That doesn’t seem particularly alarming,” AEI’s Schwartz explained.

“In other words, there’s hardly any additional warming ‘in the pipeline’ from previous greenhouse gas emissions. This is in contrast to the IPCC, which predicts that the Earth’s average temperature will rise an additional 0.6 degrees C during the 21st Century even if greenhouse gas concentrations stopped increasing,” he added.

“Along with dozens of other studies in the scientific literature, [this] new study belies Al Gore’s claim that there is no legitimate scholarly alternative to climate catastrophism. Indeed, if Schwartz’s results are correct, that alone would be enough to overturn in one fell swoop the IPCC’s scientific ‘consensus’, the environmentalists’ climate hysteria, and the political pretext for the energy-restriction policies that have become so popular with the world’s environmental regulators, elected officials, and corporations. The question is, will anyone in the mainstream media notice?” AEI’s Schwartz concluded.

UK officially admits: Global warming has stopped!

Recent scientific studies may make 2007 go down in history as the "tipping point" of man-made global warming fears. A progression of peer-reviewed studies have been published which serve to debunk the United Nations, former Vice President Al Gore, and the media engineered “consensus” on climate change.

Paleoclimate scientist Bob Carter, who has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, noted in a June 18, 2007 essay that global warming has stopped.

“The accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this eight-year-long temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2. Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, show little if any global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 %).”

In August 2007, the UK Met Office was finally forced to concede the obvious: global warming has stopped. The UK Met Office acknowledged the flat lining of global temperatures, but in an apparent attempt to keep stoking man-made climate alarm, the Met Office is now promoting more unproven dire computer model projections of the future. They now claim climate computer models predict “global warming will begin in earnest in 2009” because greenhouse emissions will then overtake natural climate variability.

Meteorologist Joseph Conklin, who launched the skeptical website www.ClimatePolice.com in 2007, recently declared the “global warming movement [is] falling apart.”

“A few months ago, a study came out that demonstrated global temperatures have leveled off. But instead of possibly admitting that this whole global warming thing is a farce, a group of British scientists concluded that the real global warming won’t start until 2009,” Conklin wrote in an August 10, 2007 blog post on his website.

But the credibility of these computer model predictions took a significant hit in June 2007 when Dr. Jim Renwick, a top UN IPCC scientist, admitted that climate models do not account for half the variability in nature and thus are not reliable. In addition, Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, former CEO and director of research for the Netherlands Royal National Meteorological Institute, recently compared scientists who promote computer models predicting future climate doom to unlicensed “software engineers" who were "unqualified to sell their products to society."

Sampling of very recent inconvenient scientific developments for proponents of catastrophic man-made global warming: [continues here: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=84e9e44a-802a-23ad-493a-b35d0842fed8

Mobile Phones Trigger Brain Tumor Growth

2007-09-01T00:08:00.000-04:00

By Nic Fleming
Telegraph
August 31, 2007

Just five minutes of exposure to mobile phone emissions can trigger changes that occur during cancer development, according to new research.

Scientists found mobile signals can activate cell division – central to the growth of tumours - even at very low power levels.

Government guidance that mobile phone use is safe is based on the mainstream scientific assumption that electromagnetic radiation from devices such as mobiles could only cause health hazards as a result of heating.

The new research, highlighted in this week’s New Scientist, supports the position of some researchers who argue handsets can trigger potentially harmful changes to cells irrespective of temperature changes.

However other scientists said cell division is a natural process that occurs constantly in the body and does not usually signify health hazards.

Graham Philips, of the campaign group Powerwatch, said: "Current safety guidelines assume health effects from mobiles can only occur when significant heating of body tissue occurs.

"This study shows biological changes in response to low level mobile phone radiation - something that could potentially have implications for health.

"Further research is required, however guidance based purely on thermal effects is clearly out of date."

Prof Rony Seger, a cancer researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and colleagues exposed rat and human cells to electromagnetic radiation at a similar frequency to that emitted by mobiles. The power of the signal was around 1/10th of that from a mobile.

After just five minutes the researchers identified the production of extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERK1/2) – natural chemicals that stimulate cell division and growth.

Cancers develop when the body is unable to prevent excessive growth and division of cells in the wrong place.

Prof Seger said: "The real significance of our findings is that cells are not inert to non-thermal mobile phone radiation.

"We used radiation power levels that were around 1/10th of those produced by a normal mobile. The changes we observed were clearly not caused by heating."

The UK has adopted international safety standards for electromagnetic radiation set by the International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection (ICNRP).

These state the amount of energy absorbed from an electric field or radio wave cannot exceed two watts per kilogram (W/kg) when averaged over 10 grams of tissue.

Almost all mobile phone emit less that than one W/kg.

Other scientists pointed out cell division occurs naturally as tissue grows or rejuvenates within the body, and that the preliminary study did not prove any health effects.

Dr Simon Cook, a biochemist at the Babraham Institute near Cambridge, said: "The reason people are intrigued by this is this pathway is frequently activated in cancer.

"The research is certainly interesting, however they saw a very transient activation of this pathway, which we know is not sufficient to promote cell division.

"In cancer you see a much stronger, persistent and sustained activation and even this is just one of many changes required for cancer development."

Dr Simon Arthur, from the University of Dundee, said: "The ERK1/2 pathway can be turned on by a huge variety of different things such as natural compounds produced by the body that regulate cell growth, and various forms of environmental and chemical stress.

"The research shows the effect on cells in culture in the tightly controlled laboratory conditions, rather than cells in a person or animal.

"In a living person there are lots of different processes occurring at the same time, so we do not know whether the signal from radio waves would produce a similar measureable effect."

The Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme (MTHR), an £8.4 million Government and industry-funded investigation into the potential health dangers of mobiles launched in 2001, is expected to publish its final report next month.

D.C. Dept. of Public Works: Illegal to Post Signs Promoting Anti-War Mass March

2007-08-31T23:07:00.000-04:00

By Jenna Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 16, 2007; Page B01

An anti-war coalition yesterday defied the D.C. government and the National Park Service by refusing to take down dozens of signs advertising an upcoming march.

The D.C. Department of Public Works accused the ANSWER Coalition of breaking city rules by putting signs on utility boxes and using a glue that the agency said will make the posters difficult to remove. The Park Service said the signs are defacing federal property.

Coalition members said the adhesive won't create problems and accused the government of a "politically motivated" bid to silence their efforts against the war in Iraq.

The city and Park Service notified the coalition on Monday that it must remove the signs. The city gave ANSWER a 72-hour deadline and warned the group that it faces nearly $10,000 in fines -- $150 for each of the 65 posters. The Park Service set no deadline but told the group that it would have to pay for the cleanup if it did not comply.

ANSWER, which has sponsored numerous protests in Washington, kept the signs in place on utility boxes, lampposts and other objects across the city, including along the Mall and near the White House.

The signs promote an anti-war march set for Sept. 15, the date that Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is to provide a much-anticipated progress report to President Bush and Congress. Organizers are hoping that tens of thousands of people join the march, which is scheduled to begin at the White House and end at the Capitol.

D.C. officials said they identified other problems with the posters, such as more than three signs put up on one side of a single block, signs that did not state the date they were posted, and signs stuck on utility boxes. In addition, D.C. officials said, no one filed copies of the posters with the mayor's office as required, along with the name, address and phone number of the creator of the signs.

ANSWER organizers said they use legal, water-soluble paste to hang the signs and provide all sign-hangers with a copy of D.C. regulations. They argue that no one should have to notify the government of his or her political opinions.

"We don't consider these fines to have any legal basis," said Sarah Sloan, ANSWER's national staff coordinator. "So there is no need to remove the signs or pay the fines."

The group plans to appeal if fines are imposed and is considering legal action against the city, Sloan said.

The Department of Public Works decided to crack down two weeks ago when employees reported seeing large signs glued in improper places that would take 20 to 30 minutes each to remove, said spokeswoman Vera Jackson. The department often fines individuals or organizations that violate city regulations, she said, adding that this was aimed at keeping the city clean and had nothing to do with politics.

"The District hosts marches and protests all the time," Jackson said. "And the DPW never weighs in on the issues."

ANSWER'S attorney, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice, said such a government crackdown on political posters was unprecedented. If officials truly wanted to make the city clean, she said, they would fine politicians.

"During election season, there are thousands and thousands of posters hanging off every single inch of the city," she said.

More Iraqi Weapons found in Manhattan Than in Iraq

2007-08-30T21:44:00.000-04:00

By Edith M. Lederer

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - U.N. weapons inspectors discovered a potentially hazardous chemical warfare agent that was taken from an Iraqi chemical weapons facility 11 years ago and mistakenly stored in their offices in the heart of midtown Manhattan all that time, officials said Thursday.

The material, identified in inventory files as phosgene - a chemical substance used in World War I weapons - was discovered Aug. 24. It was only identified on Wednesday because it was marked simply with an inventory number, and officials had to check the many records in their vast archives, said Ewen Buchanan, a spokesman for the U.N. inspection agency.

A team of hazardous materials experts from the FBI and the New York City police went to the office on Manhattan's east side, about a block north of U.N. headquarters, on Thursday with two steel containers to remove the materials and take them to a military facility outside New York for disposal, officials said.

While the disposal team was in UNMOVIC's sixth-floor office, its small staff was evacuated along with other tenants from that floor, Buchanan said.

When the material was discovered in a shipping container last week, Buchanan said U.N. experts followed their established procedure in dealing with unknown material - putting the material in double zip-locked plastic bags, and securing it in a safe in a room that is double-locked.

U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said there was no danger to the public and staff continued to work in offices of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or UNMOVIC, which are in the process of being shut down. The U.N. called in U.S. authorities to remove the material, she said.

Tests conducted by U.N. personnel found no toxic vapors in the area where the material has been stored, police said. The materials have been in UNMOVIC apparently since 1996 when they were inadvertently shipped to United Nations administrative offices, instead of a chemical laboratory, police said.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the chemical agents should have been transported to an appropriately equipped lab for analysis.

"I'm sure that there are going to be a lot of red-faced people over at the U.N. trying to figure out how they got there,'' Snow said.

Phosgene can be used as a chemical weapon - and was used extensively in World War I - as a choking agent. Both phosgene gas and liquid can damage skin, eyes, nose, throat and lungs.

Okabe said the chemical state of the phosgene was unknown but "could be potentially hazardous.''

Buchanan said the phosgene was in liquid form, suspended in oil, in a soda-can-sized container that was sealed in a plastic bag.

Records indicated the material was from a 1996 excavation of the bombed-out research and development building at Iraq's main chemical weapons facility at Muthana, near Samarra. The entire facility was extensively bombed during the 1991 Gulf War, Buchanan said.

UNMOVIC has 1,400 linear feet of paper files and it took until Wednesday to find the inventory matching the number on the package of phosgene.

Also found at the UNMOVIC office was a second sealed package containing tiny samples of chemical agents in sealed glass tubes shaped like pens that calibrate analytical equipment which inspectors use to identify chemical agents, Buchanan said. Each of these reference standards contained less than a gram of chemical material, he added.

Okabe said the United Nations has launched an investigation to determine how and why the material was in UNMOVIC files. The Security Council and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon were informed, Okabe added.

The State Department said it had learned of the discovery late Wednesday and had immediately contacted the FBI to deal with the disposal.

Deputy spokesman Tom Casey also said a joint U.S.-U.N. investigation would be made into why the samples had been stored in the office but stressed that the chemicals had been there for at least a decade and did not pose any health risk.

"One of the things we want to do is make sure that the U.N., working with the FBI, does conduct a full investigation of this, so we're absolutely certain how they in fact got there, how long they were there, and the kind of exact nature of how this came about,'' he told reporters.

"There is no threat that these items currently or in the past have posed to public health and safety in the area,'' Casey said.

U.N. inspectors pulled out of Iraq just before the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion and were barred by the U.S. from returning. The U.S. and Britain said they were taking over responsibility for Iraq's disarmament. In June 2003, the Security Council voted to shut down UNMOVIC and the U.N. nuclear inspection operation in Iraq.

Brian Mullady, a senior UNMOVIC official, told reporters that the staff did an immediate sweep of the rest of its archives to see if there was any more material but there was none.

Pentagon to Investigate Weapons Sold to Iraq Insurgents by U.S. Army

2007-08-30T11:31:00.001-04:00

By Kristen Roberts

August 29, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon's independent watchdog has launched a probe into the military's inability to account for weapons in Iraq after reports that Kurdish militants were using U.S. arms to attack Turkey, the Defense Department said on Wednesday.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said the department's inspector general will go to Iraq next week with an 18-member assessment team to investigate the problem.

"Since January, the inspector general's office has been thoroughly investigating reports of unaccounted-for weapons as well as allegations of arms ending up in the wrong hands," Morrell said.

"Secretary Gates, who since May has twice received lengthy briefings on the progress of the probe, is deeply troubled by the reports and the allegations."

Turkey, an important ally for Washington in the Muslim world, has repeatedly said the U.S. government has not done enough to clamp down on Kurdish militants based in northern Iraq. In July, Turkey's ambassador said Kurdish leaders were diverting weapons meant for local Iraqi security forces to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants.

Morrell said he did not know if evidence existed to show U.S. weapons were being used by insurgents in Iraq.

"It is unclear, and that's why there's an investigation taking place."

CONTRACTING PROBES

Separately, the Army has launched two investigations into possible fraud involving thousands of contracts for services in Iraq and Kuwait after 20 civilian and military Army employees were indicted on charges that included bribery.

The scope of the fraud remains unknown, but Army Secretary Pete Geren called the problem significant.

More than 18,000 contracts valued at about $3 billion have been awarded by the Army to support the Iraq war since 2003. As of August 28, there were 76 ongoing criminal investigations involving possible contract fraud, the Army said.

A U.S. Army major, his wife and sister were indicted this month in a suspected scheme to accept $9.6 million in exchange for contracts for bottled water and other goods and services for troops in Kuwait and Iraq.

An Army captain also has been charged with accepting a $50,000 bribe to steer military contracts in Iraq, according to prosecutors.

"The reports suggest that we've got serious issues in this area, particularly coming out of the Kuwait contracting community," Geren told reporters. "I don't know how to describe the scale, but it's significant."

The first Army investigation will examine the overall contracting organization, which Army officials say lacks the resources needed to handle the sharp rise in contracts following the start of the Iraq war. A commission appointed to investigate the operation will deliver a report in 45 days.

The Army also charged a new task force with examining all 18,000 contracts awarded by its contracting office in Kuwait. Most of those covered support services at Army facilities in Kuwait, like laundry and dining services.

GAO: U.S. Failing in Iraq

2007-08-30T11:17:00.000-04:00

By Karen De Young and Thomas E. Ricks

Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 30, 2007; Page A01

Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration.

The strikingly negative GAO draft, which will be delivered to Congress in final form on Tuesday, comes as the White House prepares to deliver its own new benchmark report in the second week of September, along with congressional testimony from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. They are expected to describe significant security improvements and offer at least some promise for political reconciliation in Iraq.

The draft provides a stark assessment of the tactical effects of the current U.S.-led counteroffensive to secure Baghdad. "While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced," it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that "the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved."

"Overall," the report concludes, "key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," as promised. While it makes no policy recommendations, the draft suggests that future administration assessments "would be more useful" if they backed up their judgments with more details and "provided data on broader measures of violence from all relevant U.S. agencies."

A GAO spokesman declined to comment on the report before it is released. The 69-page draft, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is still undergoing review at the Defense Department, which may ask that parts of it be classified or request changes in its conclusions. The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, normally submits its draft reports to relevant agencies for comment but makes its own final judgments. The office has published more than 100 assessments of various aspects of the U.S. effort in Iraq since May 2003.

The person who provided the draft report to The Post said it was being conveyed from a government official who feared that its pessimistic conclusions would be watered down in the final version -- as some officials have said happened with security judgments in this month's National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. Congress requested the GAO report, along with an assessment of the Iraqi security forces by an independent commission headed by retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, to provide a basis for comparison with the administration's scorecard. The Jones report is also scheduled for delivery next week.

Asked to comment on the GAO draft, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said, "General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are there on the ground every day in Iraq, and it's important to wait to hear what they have to say." He disputed any suggestion that the July White House assessment did not consider all internal views, noting that it resulted from "a lengthy and far-reaching process throughout the State and Defense departments and other agencies."

Johndroe emphasized that "while we've all seen progress in some areas, especially on the security front, it's not surprising the GAO would make this assessment, given the difficult congressionally mandated measurement they had to follow."

President Bush signed legislation in May that requires him to submit by Sept. 15 an assessment of whether the government of Iraq is "achieving progress" toward the benchmarks. The interim July report determined that satisfactory progress was being made toward eight of the 18 benchmarks, most of them on the security front. It found unsatisfactory progress toward eight others and presented a mixed picture on the remaining two.

The May legislation imposed a stricter standard on the GAO, requiring an up-or-down judgment on whether each benchmark has been met. On that basis, the GAO draft says that three of the benchmarks have been met while 13 have not. Despite its strict mandate, the GAO draft concludes that two benchmarks -- the formation of governmental regions and the allocation and expenditure of $10 billion for reconstruction -- have been "partially met." Little of the allocated money, it says, has been spent.

One of eight political benchmarks -- the protection of the rights of minority political parties in the Iraqi legislature -- has been achieved, according to the draft. On the others, including legislation on constitutional reform, new oil laws and de-Baathification, it assesses failure.

"Prospects for additional progress in enacting legislative benchmarks have been complicated by the withdrawal of 15 of 37 members of the Iraqi cabinet," it says. An internal administration assessment this month, the GAO says, concluded that "this boycott ends any claim by the Shi'ite-dominated coalition to be a government of national unity." An administration official involved in Iraq policy said that he did not know what specific interagency document the GAO was citing but noted that it is an accurate reflection of the views of many officials.

Overall, the draft report, titled "Securing, Stabilizing and Rebuilding Iraq," says that the Iraqi government has met only two security benchmarks. It contradicts the Bush administration's conclusion in July that sectarian violence was decreasing as a result of the U.S. military's stepped-up operations in Baghdad this year. "The average number of daily attacks against civilians remained about the same over the last six months; 25 in February versus 26 in July," the GAO draft states.

Iraqi security forces are also assessed more severely in the GAO study than in the administration's July report. Although the White House found satisfactory progress toward the goal of deploying three Iraqi army brigades in Baghdad, the GAO disagrees, citing "performance problems" in some units. "Some army units sent to Baghdad have mixed loyalties, and some have had ties to Shiia militias making it difficult to target Shiia extremist networks," it says.

The GAO draft also says that the number of Iraqi army units capable of operating independently declined from 10 in March to six last month. The July White House report mentioned a "slight" decline in capable Iraqi units, without providing any numbers. The GAO also says, as did the White House in July, that the Iraqi government has intervened in military activities for political reasons, "resulting in some operations being based on sectarian interests." But its discussion of Iraqi security forces is often veiled, as when it states that the determination that the security forces benchmark was not met "was based largely on classified information."

The description of the Iraqi military's shortcomings contrasts with comments from many senior U.S. commanders who say that they are pleased with its progress. "Although we still have a ways to go, Iraqi security forces are making significant, tangible improvements," Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, said earlier this month.

But Army Lt. Gen. James Dubik, who in June became the commander of the U.S. troops training and advising Iraqi army and police units, struck a more somber note yesterday in a news conference in Baghdad. "The problems that the military commanders and the minister of defense have here in generating the Iraqi army are very significant, and they shouldn't be taken lightly," he said.

U.S. Denies Imminent Recession

2007-08-28T21:35:00.000-04:00

CNBC

WASHINGTON - Problems in the U.S. subprime mortgage market are unlikely to push the U.S. economy into a recession over the next 12 months, the top economist for a leading U.S. business group said on Tuesday.

"It's clear over the last year-and-a-half the economy has downshifted and things are not doing quite as well. But having said (that), I don't think we're on the precipice of a recession," said Martin Regalia, vice president for economic policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Regalia said that, in his opinion, problems caused by bad loans made in the subprime market were not spreading to broader housing or overall debt markets.

"I think given the actions of the Fed -- what they've done so far and what they're likely to do in the future -- we're not going to see that broad-based contagion and therefore we're going to see the economy weather that storm," Regalia told reporters in a briefing.

Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve cut the discount rate at which it lends to qualifying banks by a half percentage point to 5.75 percent amid worry that problems in the subprime mortgage market were shrinking credit market liquidity.

Regalia said he expected the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates at its regular monthly meetings in September and October, but concerns about inflation would prevent the Fed from embarking on a longer-term easing campaign.

He said mortgage market problems will help trim U.S. economic growth to an annual rate of around 2 percent by the fourth quarter from about 4 percent in the second quarter.

"We're not going to get back to the 3-plus percentage growth rate, I don't think, until this housing issue is behind us, and that's likely to be the beginning of next year to the middle of next year," Regalia said.

Investors Bet $500M+ on S&P Index Falling 5-11% By Sept. 21; Some Betting for 52% Decline

2007-08-28T01:49:00.000-04:00

By Jim Kingsland
August 27, 2007
CNBC

Not everyone on Wall Street is convinced that the worst is over.

In fact, some investors are betting tens of millions of dollars that the market is headed for a selloff -- a major selloff.

The reason: worries about a worsening credit crunch, along with speculation that the Federal Reserve may defy expectations and hold off on cutting interest rates at its Sept. 18 meeting.

So far, over $500 million in so-called put options have been purchased betting that the benchmark Standard and Poor's 500 index will tumble anywhere from 5% to 11% in September. Some investors are even buying put options calling for 52% decline. A "put" option increases in value as the underlying stock or index falls.

To put it in perspective, a 5% drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average would be the equivalent of 667 points. An 11% decline would equal 1,468 points. And a 52% drop? You don't even want to know.

The upshot is that some major investors are putting up big money that the market is facing a major decline.

"There is still fear and investors are buying crash protection," says Todd Salamone, senior vice president of research at Schaeffer's Investment Research.

Of course, there are always investors betting on big declines -- they're called bears. What's unusual is the amount of money being put up on such a doomsday scenario.

"The activity in those puts has been a lot more aggressive then we have seen in the past," said Bill Lefkowitz, options strategist at brokerage firm Finance Investments. "Part of it is the environment and volatility where the Dow Industrials can easily swing over a hundred points during the day, or session to session."

Salamone of Schaeffer's points out that the index options have been "put dominated over the last several months." And the bets may have as much to do with hedging portfolios -- basically an insurance policy you hope you don't need -- as much as outright speculation.

"We don't know who the end users of these options are and often they are specialists, pros looking at arbitrage plays, so the common man doesn't necessarily need to be concerned," adds Andrew Wilkinson, a senior market analyst at Interactive Brokers. "But it’s a legitimate build of people wanting protection against the next 10% down should it come."

Whatever the reason, Lefkowitz says worries about what the Fed will do about interest rates are spurring big investors to buy protection in case of a major market drop.

"If the Fed doesn't cut Fed funds, the options market is telling you that the overall stock market will come down hard," says Lefkowitz. "We could be quickly under the 1400 level of the S&P 500 if the Fed doesn't act."

Fed-fund futures and a variety of market pundits have been forecasting a 100% likelihood the Fed will lower the benchmark lending rate, now at 5.25%, meaning there's no room in the market from the Fed for a surprise.

Lefkowitz also says the activity isn't strictly driven by money managers looking to protect portfolios. The put options are tempting enough for speculators to jump in. He says even if the market doesn't fall to below S&P 1400, the put options could still easily rise in value by "20, 30, 40 percent if we saw another large down day."

DEA Robs Trucker of $24k; He sues for unlawful search and seizure

2007-08-27T03:59:00.000-04:00

The Associated Press
August 24, 2007

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A trucker has sued the Drug Enforcement Administration, seeking to get back nearly $24,000 seized by DEA agents earlier this month at a weigh station on U.S. 54 in New Mexico north of El Paso, Texas.

Anastasio Prieto of El Paso gave a state police officer at the weigh station permission to search the truck to see if it contained "needles or cash in excess of $10,000," according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the federal lawsuit Thursday.

Prieto told the officer he didn't have any needles but did have $23,700.

Officers took the money and turned it over to the DEA. DEA agents photographed and fingerprinted Prieto over his objections, then released him without charging him with anything.

Border Patrol agents searched his truck with drug-sniffing dogs, but found no evidence of illegal substances, the ACLU said.

The lawsuit alleges the defendants violated Prieto's right to be free of unlawful search and seizure by taking his money without probable cause and by fingerprinting and photographing him.

"Mere possession of approximately $23,700 does not establish probable cause for a search or seizure," the lawsuit said.

It said Prieto pulled into the weigh station about 10:30 a.m. Aug. 8 and was let go about 4 p.m.

DEA agents told Prieto he would receive a notice of federal proceedings to permanently forfeit the money within 30 days and that to get it back, he'd have to prove it was his and did not come from illegal drug sales.

They told him the process probably would take a year, the ACLU said.

The ACLU's New Mexico executive director, Peter Simonson, said Prieto needs his money now to pay bills and maintain his truck. The lawsuit said Prieto does not like banks and customarily carries his savings as cash.

"The government took Mr. Prieto's money as surely as if he had been robbed on a street corner at night," Simonson said. "In fact, being robbed might have been better. At least then the police would have treated him as the victim of a crime instead of as a perpetrator."

The DEA did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

Peter Olson, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, which oversees state police, said he could not comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit names DEA Administrator Karen P. Tandy, DEA task force officer Gary T. Apodaca, DEA agent Joseph Montoya and three state police officers identified only as John or Jane Doe.

Whistle Blowers of U.S. Corruption in Iraq: Tortured, Lives Ruined

2007-08-27T02:52:00.000-04:00

By Deborah Hastings
Associated Press
August 24, 2007

One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.

Or worse.

For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.

He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers - all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.

The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co.

"It was a Wal-Mart for guns," he says. "It was all illegal and everyone knew it."

So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn't know whom to trust in Iraq.

For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.

Also held was colleague Nathan Ertel, who helped Vance gather evidence documenting the sales, according to a federal lawsuit both have filed in Chicago, alleging they were illegally imprisoned and subjected to physical and mental interrogation tactics "reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants."

Corruption has long plagued Iraq reconstruction. Hundreds of projects may never be finished, including repairs to the country's oil pipelines and electricity system. Congress gave more than $30 billion to rebuild Iraq, and at least $8.8 billion of it has disappeared, according to a government reconstruction audit.

Despite this staggering mess, there are no noble outcomes for those who have blown the whistle, according to a review of such cases by The Associated Press.

"If you do it, you will be destroyed," said William Weaver, professor of political science at the University of Texas-El Paso and senior advisor to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.

"Reconstruction is so rife with corruption. Sometimes people ask me, `Should I do this?' And my answer is no. If they're married, they'll lose their family. They will lose their jobs. They will lose everything," Weaver said.

They have been fired or demoted, shunned by colleagues, and denied government support in whistleblower lawsuits filed against contracting firms.

"The only way we can find out what is going on is for someone to come forward and let us know," said Beth Daley of the Project on Government Oversight, an independent, nonprofit group that investigates corruption. "But when they do, the weight of the government comes down on them. The message is, 'Don't blow the whistle or we'll make your life hell.'

"It's heartbreaking," Daley said. "There is an even greater need for whistleblowers now. But they are made into public martyrs. It's a disgrace. Their lives get ruined."

Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse knows this only too well. As the highest-ranking civilian contracting officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, she testified before a congressional committee in 2005 that she found widespread fraud in multibillion-dollar rebuilding contracts awarded to former Halliburton subsidiary KBR.

Soon after, Greenhouse was demoted. She now sits in a tiny cubicle in a different department with very little to do and no decision-making authority, at the end of an otherwise exemplary 20-year career.

People she has known for years no longer speak to her.

"It's just amazing how we say we want to remove fraud from our government, then we gag people who are just trying to stand up and do the right thing," she says.

In her demotion, her supervisors said she was performing poorly. "They just wanted to get rid of me," she says softly. The Army Corps of Engineers denies her claims.

"You just don't have happy endings," said Weaver. "She was a wonderful example of a federal employee. They just completely creamed her. In the end, no one followed up, no one cared."

But Greenhouse regrets nothing. "I have the courage to say what needs to be said. I paid the price," she says.

Then there is Robert Isakson, who filed a whistleblower suit against contractor Custer Battles in 2004, alleging the company - with which he was briefly associated - bilked the U.S. government out of tens of millions of dollars by filing fake invoices and padding other bills for reconstruction work.

He and his co-plaintiff, William Baldwin, a former employee fired by the firm, doggedly pursued the suit for two years, gathering evidence on their own and flying overseas to obtain more information from witnesses. Eventually, a federal jury agreed with them and awarded a $10 million judgment against the now-defunct firm, which had denied all wrongdoing.

It was the first civil verdict for Iraq reconstruction fraud.

But in 2006, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III overturned the jury award. He said Isakson and Baldwin failed to prove that the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-backed occupier of Iraq for 14 months, was part of the U.S. government.

Not a single Iraq whistleblower suit has gone to trial since.

"It's a sad, heartbreaking comment on the system," said Isakson, a former FBI agent who owns an international contracting company based in Alabama. "I tried to help the government, and the government didn't seem to care."

One way to blow the whistle is to file a "qui tam" lawsuit (taken from the Latin phrase "he who sues for the king, as well as for himself") under the federal False Claims Act.

Signed by Abraham Lincoln in response to military contractors selling defective products to the Union Army, the act allows private citizens to sue on the government's behalf.

The government has the option to sign on, with all plaintiffs receiving a percentage of monetary damages, which are tripled in these suits.

It can be a straightforward and effective way to recoup federal funds lost to fraud. In the past, the Justice Department has joined several such cases and won. They included instances of Medicare and Medicaid overbilling, and padded invoices from domestic contractors.

But the government has not joined a single quit tam suit alleging Iraq reconstruction abuse, estimated in the tens of millions. At least a dozen have been filed since 2004.

"It taints these cases," said attorney Alan Grayson, who filed the Custer Battles suit and several others like it. "If the government won't sign on, then it can't be a very good case - that's the effect it has on judges."

The Justice Department declined comment.

Most of the lawsuits are brought by former employees of giant firms. Some plaintiffs have testified before members of Congress, providing examples of fraud they say they witnessed and the retaliation they experienced after speaking up.

Julie McBride testified last year that as a "morale, welfare and recreation coordinator" at Camp Fallujah, she saw KBR exaggerate costs by double- and triple-counting the number of soldiers who used recreational facilities.

She also said the company took supplies destined for a Super Bowl party for U.S. troops and instead used them to stage a celebration for themselves.

"After I voiced my concerns about what I believed to be accounting fraud, Halliburton placed me under guard and kept me in seclusion," she told the committee. "My property was searched, and I was specifically told that I was not allowed to speak to any member of the U.S. military. I remained under guard until I was flown out of the country."

Halliburton and KBR denied her testimony.

She also has filed a whistleblower suit. The Justice Department has said it would not join the action. But last month, a federal judge refused a motion by KBR to dismiss the lawsuit.

Donald Vance, the contractor and Navy veteran detained in Iraq after he blew the whistle on his company's weapons sales, says he has stopped talking to the federal government.

Navy Capt. John Fleming, a spokesman for U.S. detention operations in Iraq, confirmed the detentions but said he could provide no further details because of the lawsuit.

According to their suit, Vance and Ertel gathered photographs and documents, which Vance fed to Chicago FBI agent Travis Carlisle for six months beginning in October 2005. Carlisle, reached by phone at Chicago's FBI field office, declined comment. An agency spokesman also would not comment.

The Iraqi company has since disbanded, according the suit.

Vance said things went terribly wrong in April 2006, when he and Ertel were stripped of their security passes and confined to the company compound.

Panicking, Vance said, he called the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, where hostage experts got on the phone and told him "you're about to be kidnapped. Lock yourself in a room with all the weapons you can get your hands on.'"

The military sent a Special Forces team to rescue them, Vance said, and the two men showed the soldiers where the weapons caches were stored. At the embassy, the men were debriefed and allowed to sleep for a few hours. "I thought I was among friends," Vance said.

The men said they were cuffed and hooded and driven to Camp Cropper, where Vance was held for nearly three months and his colleague for a little more than a month. Eventually, their jailers said they were being held as security internees because their employer was suspected of selling weapons to terrorists and insurgents, the lawsuit said.

The prisoners said they repeatedly told interrogators to contact Carlisle in Chicago. "One set of interrogators told us that Travis Carlisle doesn't exist. Then some others would say, 'He says he doesn't know who you are,'" Vance said.

Released first was Ertel, who has returned to work in Iraq for a different company. Vance said he has never learned why he was held longer. His own interrogations, he said, seemed focused on why he reported his information to someone outside Iraq.

And then one day, without explanation, he was released.

"They drove me to Baghdad International Airport and dumped me," he said.

When he got home, he decided to never call the FBI again. He called a lawyer, instead.

"There's an unspoken rule in Baghdad," he said. "Don't snitch on people and don't burn bridges."

For doing both, Vance said, he paid with 97 days of his life.

White House: No Dissent in the Presence of Bush

2007-08-24T19:00:00.000-04:00

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 22, 2007; A02

Not that they're worried or anything. But the White House evidently leaves little to chance when it comes to protests within eyesight of the president. As in, it doesn't want any.

A White House manual that came to light recently gives presidential advance staffers extensive instructions in the art of "deterring potential protestors" from President Bush's public appearances around the country.

Among other things, any event must be open only to those with tickets tightly controlled by organizers. Those entering must be screened in case they are hiding secret signs. Any anti-Bush demonstrators who manage to get in anyway should be shouted down by "rally squads" stationed in strategic locations. And if that does not work, they should be thrown out.

But that does not mean the White House is against dissent -- just so long as the president does not see it. In fact, the manual outlines a specific system for those who disagree with the president to voice their views. It directs the White House advance staff to ask local police "to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in the view of the event site or motorcade route."

The "Presidential Advance Manual," dated October 2002 with the stamp "Sensitive -- Do Not Copy," was released under subpoena to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a lawsuit filed on behalf of two people arrested for refusing to cover their anti-Bush T-shirts at a Fourth of July speech at the West Virginia State Capitol in 2004. The techniques described have become familiar over the 6 1/2 years of Bush's presidency, but the manual makes it clear how organized the anti-protest policy really is.

The lawsuit was filed by Jeffery and Nicole Rank, who attended the Charleston event wearing shirts with the word "Bush" crossed out on the front; the back of his shirt said "Regime Change Starts at Home," while hers said "Love America, Hate Bush." Members of the White House event staff told them to cover their shirts or leave, according to the lawsuit. They refused and were arrested, handcuffed and briefly jailed before local authorities dropped the charges and apologized. The federal government settled the First Amendment case last week for $80,000, but with no admission of wrongdoing.

The manual demonstrates "that the White House has a policy of excluding and/or attempting to squelch dissenting viewpoints from presidential events," said ACLU lawyer Jonathan Miller. "Individuals should have the right to express their opinion to the president, even if it's not a favorable one."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said that he could not discuss the manual because it is an issue in two other lawsuits.

The manual offers advance staffers and volunteers who help set up presidential events guidelines for assembling crowds. Those invited into a VIP section on or near the stage, for instance, must be " extremely supportive of the Administration," it says. While the Secret Service screens audiences only for possible threats, the manual says, volunteers should examine people before they reach security checkpoints and look out for signs. Make sure to look for "folded cloth signs," it advises.

To counter any demonstrators who do get in, advance teams are told to create "rally squads" of volunteers with large hand-held signs, placards or banners with "favorable messages." Squads should be placed in strategic locations and "at least one squad should be 'roaming' throughout the perimeter of the event to look for potential problems," the manual says.

"These squads should be instructed always to look for demonstrators," it says. "The rally squad's task is to use their signs and banners as shields between the demonstrators and the main press platform. If the demonstrators are yelling, rally squads can begin and lead supportive chants to drown out the protestors (USA!, USA!, USA!). As a last resort, security should remove the demonstrators from the event site."

Advance teams are advised not to worry if protesters are not visible to the president or cameras: "If it is determined that the media will not see or hear them and that they pose no potential disruption to the event, they can be ignored. On the other hand, if the group is carrying signs, trying to shout down the President, or has the potential to cause some greater disruption to the event, action needs to be taken immediately to minimize the demonstrator's effect."

The manual adds in bold type: "Remember -- avoid physical contact with demonstrators! Most often, the demonstrators want a physical confrontation. Do not fall into their trap!" And it suggests that advance staff should "decide if the solution would cause more negative publicity than if the demonstrators were simply left alone."

The staff at the West Virginia event may have missed that line.

Undercover Police Start Riots At "Three Amigos'" Montebello Summit Protests

2007-08-24T17:38:00.000-04:00

Thursday, August 23, 2007
CBC News

Quebec provincial police admitted Thursday that three of their officers disguised themselves as demonstrators during the protest at the North American leaders summit in Montebello, Que.

However, the police force denied allegations its undercover officers were there on Monday to provoke the crowd and instigate violence.

"At no time did the police of the Sûreté du Québec act as instigators or commit criminal acts," the police force said in French in a news release. "It is not in the police force's policies, nor in its strategies, to act in that manner.

"At all times, they responded within their mandate to keep order and security."

Police said the three undercover officers were only at the protest to locate and identify non-peaceful protesters in order to prevent any incidents.

Police came under fire Tuesday, when a video surfaced on YouTube that appeared to show three plainclothes police officers at the protest with bandanas across their faces. One of the men was carrying a rock.

In the video, protest organizers in suits order the men to put the rock down, call them police instigators and try unsuccessfully to unmask them.

Police-issued boots identified fake protesters

Protest organizers on Wednesday played the video for the media at a news conference in Ottawa. One of the organizers, union leader Dave Coles, explained that one reason protesters knew the men's true identities was because they were wearing the same boots as other police officers.

Coles said on Wednesday that the only thing he didn't know was whether the men were Quebec police, RCMP or hired security officers.

"[Our union] believes that the security force at Montebello were ordered to infiltrate our peaceful assembly and provoke incidents," said Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union.

Police said the three were told to monitor protesters who were not peacefully demonstrating to prevent any violent incidents, but they were called out as undercover agents when they refused to throw objects.

Concern Canada losing control of its energy

The protest at Montebello occurred outside the Fairmont Le Château Montebello hotel, near Ottawa, where Prime Minister Stephen Harper was meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderon. The summit about border security, free trade and other issues began Monday and finished Tuesday.

Protesters said they gathered to voice their concern about Canada losing control of its energy and water resources and borders. Others decried what they called a high level of secrecy at the summit.

The Quebec provincial police will not comment any further on the affair, a spokeswoman in Montreal said.

Quebec Justice Minister Jacques Dupuis was made aware of the news, but a spokesman from his office said he will not comment on the matter either.

Police: Two Middle-Eastern Men Found with Bombs; Feds Deny

2007-08-24T16:15:00.001-04:00

Sunday, August 5, 2007
CNN

GOOSE CREEK, South Carolina (CNN) -- Two men faced state explosives charges Sunday after police outside Charleston, South Carolina, found what a law enforcement source said was a bomb and bomb-making material in their car during a weekend traffic stop.

"They're going to be formally charged tomorrow with state charges by the Berkeley County Sheriff's Office, and those charges will involve explosives," Berkeley County Chief Deputy Butch Henerey told CNN.

But federal officials disputed that account, telling CNN that there was no bomb.

And FBI spokesman Richard Kolko told CNN, "We have not found a clear link to terrorism."

The incident began about 5:30 p.m. Saturday, when the men's vehicle was pulled over along U.S. Highway 176 in Goose Creek, about 20 miles north of Charleston, for speeding, police said.

The law enforcement source, who insisted on anonymity, said the materials included at least one bomb and a number of bomb-making elements, including chemicals capable of being used in the production of bombs, fuses and igniters -- small gunpowder charges used to ignite some explosives.

The Charleston County bomb squad responded, and traffic was halted along the road for 10 hours until the materials were detonated, reporter Venton Blandin of CNN affiliate WCIV said. He described the sound of the detonation as "fairly small."

Police identified the men as Yousef Megahed, 21, and Ahmed Mohamed, 24, neither of whom is a U.S. citizen. They were being held at the Berkeley County Detention Center in Moncks Corner, South Carolina.

But federal officials cast doubt on the South Carolina authorities' account Sunday night.

Federal law enforcement sources familiar with the case said no bomb was found -- but the men arrested did not have ready explanations for materials found in the vehicle. That raised questions, which prompted local officials to contact the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force, the sources said.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the FBI, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division and the Berkeley County Sheriff were investigating.

An officer at the detention center said explosives and possible immigration charges will likely be filed Monday. A news conference is scheduled for Monday at 11:30 a.m.

FBI Hunts "Middle-Eastern" Men Seen Casing WA Ferries

2007-08-24T16:07:00.000-04:00

By Scott Gutierrez
P-I Reporter

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

The FBI is asking the public for help in identifying two men who were seen behaving unusually aboard several Washington state ferries.

About four weeks ago, the FBI fielded several reports from passengers and ferry workers about the men, who seemed "overly interested in the workings and layouts of the ferries," Special Agent Robbie Burroughs said Monday.

The FBI also publicized photos of the men, which were taken by a ferry employee, Burroughs said.

The Seattle P-I is not publishing the photos because neither man is considered a suspect nor has either been charged with a crime.

The FBI has no information suggesting that a terrorist attack on the ferry system is imminent, Burroughs said.

For weeks, the FBI has been trying to identify the men through "normal law enforcement channels," she said.

"We get tips periodically, but we don't get photos normally like these," Burroughs said. "We're hoping to use them to resolve this quickly."

Despite the photos, the FBI was unable Monday to provide the men's height, weight or estimated age.

Investigators also did not disclose which ferry runs they were spotted on.

Burroughs acknowledged that the FBI rarely publicizes information from an investigation, unless investigators are seeking a suspect wanted for a crime.

The decision was made "out of an abundance of caution" and "while keeping an open mind and realizing that what some people consider suspicious or unusual behavior actually might turn out to be something completely innocuous," she said.

Anyone with information is asked to call 206-622-0460.

P-I reporter Scott Gutierrez can be reached at 206-903-5396 or scottgutierrez@seattlepi.com.

Austria Practices Thought-Crime Against Holocaust Deniers

2007-08-23T20:21:00.000-04:00

Associated Press

Spanish police on Thursday arrested a right-wing writer and publisher wanted in his home country of Austria for repeatedly denying the existence of the Jewish Holocaust and the use of gas chambers, officials said.

Gerd Honsik was arrested in the southern city of Malaga, a police spokeswoman said. No more details on his arrest were immediately available.

Honsik had fled to Spain after being convicted in 1992 in Austria of neo-Nazi activities and sentenced to one year in prison for writings that defended Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.

Between 1986 and 1989 Honsik published writings in a book disputing among other things that the Nazis systematically killed Jews at Auschwitz and other extermination camps during World War II.

The Austrian judge who convicted him ruled that Honsik's writings were a misleading, propaganda-like presentation of Nazi activities and that they lacked objectivity.

The Vienna public prosecutor's office said Thursday it had issued a European warrant seeking Honsik's arrest, based on suspicions that he had committed other offenses since Austria enacted a landmark 1992 law making it a crime to deny the Holocaust or promote Nazi propaganda.

It was unclear whether or when authorities might lodge a formal request to have Honsik extradited to Austria.

Spain had already twice turned down an Austrian extradition request for Honsik. Spain's high court said that Holocaust denial and neo-Nazi propaganda were not illegal in the country.

But after the European arrest warrant was issued, Honsik could be extradited for racist and xenophobic behaviour, the Austrian ministry said.

Spain has 90 days from the point when the arrest warrant was issued to decide whether to extradite Honsik.

In December, Austria deported British historian David Irving, who was arrested in 2005 and sentenced to three years in prison for denying the Holocaust. But he was granted an appeal to serve the remainder of his sentence on probation.

Denying the Holocaust in Austria, which provided a significant number of top Nazi leaders including Hitler, is a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Israelis Casing SanFran Bay Area for Possible "Incident"

2007-08-23T19:23:00.000-04:00

By Wayne Madsen
Editor, Wayne Madsen Report

Chatter picked up by WMR's sources in the nation's capital and in California point to unusual events that could be a prelude to a 9/11-like false flag "incident" during the Labor Day weekend, possibly one focused on the San Francisco Bay Area.

The FBI in Seattle, as well as the Washington Joint Analytical Center (WJAC), have asked for the public's help in identifying two men spotted aboard Washington state ferries exhibiting unusual behavior. A number of ferry passengers have reported the two men showing strange behavior.

Two photos have been circulated showing two young "Middle East" looking men on board a ferry. The reluctance of the FBI to provide more details is reminiscent of the 2000 and 2001 closely-held government reports that a number of teams of between two and five to six young male and female Israelis, all veteran or reserve Israeli Defense Force members, were spotted casing federal facilities, oil refineries, harbor areas, homes of federal law enforcement officials, office buildings -- including the World Trade Center, bridges, tunnels, and military bases and airfields prior to and subsequent to the 9/11 attacks.

The Israelis were described in a number of federal reports as "Middle East-looking" in appearance. The FBI never sought to prosecute the Israelis, many of whom were using the intelligence covers of office and home furniture movers, vendors of toys at shopping mall kiosks, and art students selling bogus Israeli artwork, and merely turned them over to U.S. immigration authorities for deportation back to Israel. The code phrase "Middle East looking" has since become politically-correct FBI-speak for Israelis. Nationals of Arab countries are described as Arabs in official law enforcement intelligence reports. However, Israeli influence over the Bush administration prevents Israelis in the United States operating illegally or pursuing other dubious activities from being described as Israelis.

As a senior law enforcement official in northern New Jersey told this editor that there should have been some "healthy skepticism" shown by federal, state, and local law enforcement officials about the activities of Israeli nationals in and around New York City prior to 9/11. The official, who was appointed by then-Governor Jim McGreevey, knew that his boss had been compromised in an Israeli intelligence "honey trap" involving Israeli agent Golan Cipel, who McGreevey appointed chief of homeland security for New Jersey after 9/11. Cipel, an Israeli national, had full access to sensitive information about every critical infrastructure facility in the state.

Many of the Israelis picked up prior to 9/11 were turned over to federal and local authorities because they, too, exhibited unusual behavior -- including sketching and photographing the interiors and exteriors of federal buildings, trying to enter various secured offices and other spaces, and splitting up from teams of five and six to teams of two to canvass certain urban areas without drawing too much attention.

The FBI and WJAC have asked anyone with information on the two suspicious ferry passengers in the Seattle area to report it to 206-622-0460.

Yesterday, WMR reported on Israeli press accounts that the Israeli branch chief of Interpol is under investigation for using his contacts within the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem to obtain U.S. visas for criminal Israeli suspects to enter the United States.

Our San Francisco sources also report that, in an unusual move, the Oakland Bay Bridge will be closed by Caltrans in both directions during the entire Labor Day weekend -- from August 31 to September 4. It is the first time the bridge has been closed since the 1989 San Francisco earthquake caused the collapse of the bridge's upper deck. Ostensibly, the bridge is closing to replace a section of the road on Yerba Buena Island but the closure will effectively deter people from traveling to San Francisco from the East Bay, a blow to city businesses that depend on visitors to the city during holiday weekends.

The closure of the bridge will result in expanded service on area ferries, including the Alameda-Oakland, Vallejo Baylink, and Golden Gate ferries, as well as BART train service, including service on the San Francisco-Oakland Trans-Bay Tube, the longest [underwater tunnel for rapid transit] in the world. The security alert issued about suspicious men on Washington state ferries should be viewed as a possible dry run and an "incident" on the expanded service San Francisco ferries cannot be ruled out. The Seattle area, including the Whidbey Island naval installation and Sea-Tac airport, have witnessed past incidents involving suspicious Israeli agents.

With the closure of the Bay Bridge, there will be an increase of traffic on the Golden Gate, Richmond-San Rafael, Dumbarton, and San Mateo-Hayward bridges.

WMR has a number of friends and readers in the San Francisco Bay area and, while not wanting to be alarmist, we urge them and their families and friends to exercise preparedness, alertness, and a high degree of skepticism about any encounters with "Middle East looking" young men and women. The intelligence indications and warnings (I&W) point to a possible maritime incident or incidents involving water-borne craft in San Francisco Bay area waters.

One Tyranny to Another; U.S. Officials Rethink Democracy in Iraq

2007-08-22T22:15:00.000-04:00

Michael Ware and Thomas Evans
CNN

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Nightmarish political realities in Baghdad are prompting American officials to curb their vision for democracy in Iraq. Instead, the officials now say they are willing to settle for a government that functions and can bring security.

A workable democratic and sovereign government in Iraq was one of the Bush administration's stated goals of the war.

But for the first time, exasperated front-line U.S. generals talk openly of non-democratic governmental alternatives, and while the two top U.S. officials in Iraq still talk about preserving the country's nascent democratic institutions, they say their ambitions aren't as "lofty" as they once had been.

"Democratic institutions are not necessarily the way ahead in the long-term future," said Brig. Gen. John "Mick" Bednarek, part of Task Force Lightning in Diyala province, one of the war's major battlegrounds.

The comments reflect a practicality common among Western diplomats and officials trying to win hearts and minds in the Middle East and other non-Western countries where democracy isn't a tradition.

The failure of Iraq to emerge from widespread instability is a bitter pill for the United States, which optimistically toppled the Saddam Hussein regime more than four years ago. Millions of Iraqis went to the polls to cast ballots, something that generated great promise for the establishment of a democratic system.

But Iraqi institutions, from the infrastructure to the national government, are widely regarded as ineffective in the fifth year of the war.

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, declined to be interviewed for this story, but they issued a joint statement to CNN that reiterated that the country's "fundamental democratic framework is in place" and that "the development of democratic institutions is being encouraged."

And, they said, they are helping Iraqi political leaders find ways "to share power and achieve legislative progress." But Crocker and Petraeus conceded they are "now engaged in pursuing less lofty and ambitious goals than was the case at the outset."

Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of Task Force Lightning, also reflected a less lofty American goal for Iraq's future.

"I would describe it as leaving an effective government behind that can provide services to its people, and security. It needs to be an effective and functioning government that is really a partner with the United States and the rest of the world in this fight against the terrorists," said Mixon, who will not be perturbed if such goals are reached without democracy.

"Well, see that all over the Middle East," he said, stating that democracy is merely an option, that Iraqis are free to choose or reject. "But that is the $50,000 question. ... What will this government look like? Will it be a democracy? Will it not?" he asked. Soldiers, he said, are fighting for security, a goal Mixon described as "core to my mission."

But security is far from complete in Iraq, where the government seems dysfunctional and paralyzed.

Seventeen of the 37 Iraqi Cabinet ministers either boycott or don't attend Cabinet meetings. Parliament, now on a much-criticized month-long summer break, has yet to pass key legislation in the areas of energy resource sharing and the future roles of former members of Hussein's Baath Party. U.S. officials, including President Bush, have said there is frustration with efforts by the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to promote political reconciliation.

The government is unable to supply regular electricity and at times running water in the capital. The health care system is run by one Iranian-backed militia and the national police are dominated by another. Death squads terrorize Sunni neighborhoods.

Sectarian cleansing is pushing people into segregated enclaves, protected by Shiite or U.S.-backed Sunni militias, and spurring the flight of thousands to neighboring countries.

Thousands of innocents are dying violently every month in cities and villages across the country.

Iraqi government officials concede things aren't working, but they say that's because the United States doesn't allow Iraq to really control its own destiny.

While the Iraqi government commands its own troops, it cannot send them into battle without U.S. agreement. Iraqi Special Forces answer only to U.S. officers.

"We don't have full sovereignty," said Hadi al-Amri, the chairman of parliament's Defense and Security Committee. "We don't have sovereignty over our troops, we don't have sovereignty over our provinces. We admit it."

And because of the very real prospect of Iranian infiltration, the government doesn't fund or control its own intelligence service. It's paid for and run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Abdul Qarim al-Enzi, director of the parliamentary ethics committee, asks whether it is "reasonable for a country given sovereignty by the international community to have a chief of intelligence appointed by another country."

One senior U.S. official in Baghdad told CNN that "any country with 160,000 foreigners fighting for it sacrifices some sovereignty."

The U.S. government has long cautioned that a fully functioning democracy would be slow to emerge in Iraq. But with key U.S. senators calling for al-Maliki's removal, some senior U.S. military commanders even suggest privately the entire Iraqi government must be removed by "constitutional or non-constitutional" means and replaced with a stable, secure, but not necessarily democratic entity.

Israel Blocks Refugees of Genocide

2007-08-22T02:28:00.000-04:00

By Ellen Knickmeyer

Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 20, 2007; Page A10

CAIRO, Aug. 19 -- Israel closed the door Sunday on a surge of asylum-seekers from Sudan's Darfur region and from other African countries, the largest influx of non-Jewish refugees in the modern history of the Jewish state.

Authorities announced that they had expelled 48 of more than 2,000 African refugees who have entered illegally from Egypt in recent weeks. Officials said they would allow 500 Darfurians among them to remain, but would deport everyone else back to Egypt and accept no more illegal migrants from Darfur or other places.

The announcement, raising new concerns over the refugees' safety, heightened a debate in Israel over what responsibilities a nation created by survivors of genocide in Europe bore toward people fleeing mass killing in Africa.

It was unclear Sunday whether Egypt would in turn deport the refugees to their countries of origin. Israel had received assurances from Egypt that it would not send Sudanese refugees to their troubled home country, an Israeli official said by telephone, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Egyptian police told the Associated Press, however, that Egypt would send the Sudanese back to Sudan. An Egyptian Foreign Ministry official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israel had sought no assurances about the future of the refugees. "Israel just said, 'Please take them,' " the Egyptian official said.

Refugees from Darfur are escaping what President Bush and others have called genocide by government-allied Arab militias against ethnic African villagers. In addition, Sudan and Israel officially are enemies, and Sudan's government has said any refugees sent back from Israel would be considered as having dealt with an enemy state and treated accordingly.

"If deported to Sudan, they will be tried for treason," said Madhal Aguer, a private aid worker in Cairo for refugees from a separate conflict in southern Sudan; a long-running civil war between the north and south killed up to 1 million people before a peace deal in 2005.

Since the 1990s, more than 2 million Sudanese have fled across their country's northern border into Egypt. Although Egypt has generally allowed them to stay, they have faced discrimination and sometimes deadly abuse, and say they find few jobs and little help from refugee agencies.

In 2005, Egyptian police used clubs and water cannons to break up a sit-in by Sudanese refugees near the U.N. refugee agency. At least 20 were trampled to death or otherwise killed in the resulting melee, according to health officials and rights workers.

This spring, thousands of the refugees started moving north to sneak into Israel, in the belief it would allow them safety, freedom and jobs, the refugees said. Israel, which normally gets 700 to 800 asylum-seekers a year, received 2,300 in the first six months of the year, said Anat Ben-Dor, a lawyer at a Tel Aviv University legal clinic who represents some of the African refugees.

Nearly all of the new asylum-seekers are from Africa, including about 1,600 from Sudan, according to Israeli figures. Israel has confined some of the arrivals in prisons or in tent cities and trailer camps in the desert, and others in remote kibbutzim.

The Africans have generally crossed into Israel over Egypt's Sinai border. Most sell all their goods to pay the $300 to $400 fee demanded by local Bedouin guides. The danger is high; since July, Egyptian authorities have fatally shot at least one refugee, a 28-year-old Darfurian woman, at the border, and shot and wounded several others.

U.S. Sent Innocent Canadian Man to be Tortured in Syria

2007-08-21T16:00:00.000-04:00

[Michael Bronner and Wayne Nelson]
Jan. 21, 2004

(CBS) Is it possible the United States sent an innocent man out of the country to be tortured?

That's the disturbing question at the heart of a case that may reveal a secret side of the war on terrorism -- one that the government does not want to talk about.

It involves an accusation that the justice department sent a man from the U.S. to Syria to be interrogated and tortured.

The man making the claim is a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who was taken into custody, under suspicion of being connected with al Qaeda, while changing planes in New York.

Now, Maher Arar tells Correspondent Vicki Mabrey about what became his year in hell, which began when federal agents stopped him for questioning at JFK International Airport.

“I cooperated with them 100 percent. And they always kept telling me, ‘We'll let you go on the next plane,’" says Arar. “They did not.”

It would be more than a year before Arar would see his family again. In September 2002, he’d taken his wife and two children on a beach vacation in Tunisia. But he flew home alone early for his job as a software engineer.

What he didn’t know is that he’d been placed on the U.S. immigration watch list. So when the agents began questioning him, he tells 60 Minutes II that he wasn’t concerned – at least not at first.

“The interrogation lasted about seven or eight hours, and then they came, and shackled me and chained me,” recalls Arar. “I said, ‘What's happening here?’ And they would not tell me. They said, ‘You are gonna know tomorrow.’”

He spent the night in a holding cell. The next day, he was shackled, driven to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn and locked in solitary confinement. Agents told him they had evidence that he’d been seen in the company of terrorist suspects in Canada.

“What they accused me of being is very serious. Being a member of al Qaeda,” says Arar, who denies any involvement with the organization.

Arar wasn’t allowed to make a phone call, so when his wife, Monia, didn’t hear from him, she called the Canadian embassy.

“Nobody knew at that time where he was. He vanished,” says Monia, who didn’t hear from him for six days. Then, American officials acknowledged they were holding Arar in Brooklyn. A Canadian consular official visited and assured Arar he’d be deported home to Canada.

But the justice department had a different plan. After two weeks in U.S.custody, Arar was taken from his cell by federal agents in the middle of the night.

“They read me the document. They say, ‘The INS director decided to deport you to Syria,’” recalls Arar. “And of course, the first thing I did was I started crying, because everyone knows that Syria practices torture.”

Arar says he knows because he was born in Syria. He emigrated to Canada with his parents as a teenager. But, returning to Syria as an accused terrorist, he had good reason to be afraid.

Torture in Syrian prisons is well-documented. The state department’s own report cites an array of gruesome tortures routinely used in Syrian jails. And in a speech last fall, President Bush condemned Syria, alongside Iraq, for what he called the country’s “legacy of torture and oppression.”

Nevertheless, deportation agents flew Arar on a specially chartered jet to Jordan, and the Jordanians drove him to Syria.

“When I arrived there, I saw the photos of the Syrian president, and that’s why I realized I was indeed in Syria,” says Arar. “I wished I had a knife in my hand to kill myself.”

The next morning, Arar says a Syrian intelligence officer arrived carrying a black electrical cable, two inches thick and about two feet long.

“He said, ‘Do you know what this is?’ I said, I was crying, you know, ‘Yes, I know what it is. It's a cable.’ And he said, ‘Open your right hand.’ I opened my right hand … and he beat me very strongly,” says Arar. “He said, ‘Open your left hand.’ And I opened my left hand. And he beat me on my palm, on my left palm. And then he stopped, and he asked me questions. And I said to him, ‘I have nothing to hide.’”

Arar says the physical torture took place during the first two weeks, but he says he also went through psychological and mental torture: “They would take me back to a room, they call it the waiting room. And I hear people screaming. And they, I mean, people, they're being tortured. And I felt my heart was going to go out of my chest.”

But Imad Moustapha, Syria’s highest-ranking diplomat in Washington, says Arar was treated well. He also told Mabrey that Syrian intelligence had never heard of Arar before the U.S. government asked Syria to take him.

Did the U.S. give them any evidence to back up the claim that Arar was a suspected al Qaeda terrorist?

“No. But we did our investigations. We traced links. We traced relations. We tried to find anything. We couldn’t,” says Moustapha, who adds that they shared their reports with the U.S. “We always share information with anybody alleged to be in close contact with al Qaeda with the United States.”

The Syrians allowed Canadian officials six short visits with Arar. But Arar says he was warned not to tell them about the torture or how he was being held – in an underground cell 3 feet wide, 6 feet long and 7 feet high. It was his home for a full 10 months.

“It's a grave. It’s the same size of a grave. It’s a dark place. It’s underground,” says Arar.

He says the Syrians were pressing him to confess he’d been to an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan: “They just wanted to find something that the Americans did not find -- and that’s when they asked me about Afghanistan. They said, ‘You’ve been to Afghanistan,’ so they would hit me three, four times. And, if I hesitate, they would hit me again.”

Arar says he signed a confession because he was “ready to do anything to stop the torture.” But he claims that he had never been to Afghanistan, or trained at a terrorist camp. “Just one hit of this cable, it's like you just forget everything in your life. Everything,” he says.

Back in Canada, Monia was fighting for her husband’s life. She marched in front of parliament, and protested in front of the U.S. embassy.

Eventually, she got the ear of then-Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien. On the floor of parliament, Chretian voiced mounting frustration with the U.S. The job eventually went to Gar Pardy, then one of Canada’s top diplomats, to get answers from the Americans.

“The American authorities acknowledged this was a Canadian citizen that they were dealing with. He was traveling on a Canadian passport. There was no ambiguity about any of these issues,” says Pardy, who believes he should have been sent to Canada, or dealt with under American law in the United States. But not sent to Syria.

But while Canadian diplomats were demanding answers from the U.S., it turns out that it was the Royal Canadian mounted police who had been passing U.S. intelligence the information about Arar’s alleged terrorist associations.

However, U.S. government officials we spoke to say they told Canadian intelligence that they were sending Arar to Syria – and the Canadians signed off on the decision.

Pardy says if that's true, it would have been wrong all around: "I would dispute that the people who were making any statements in this context were speaking for the Canadian government. A policeman talking to a policeman in this context is not necessarily speaking for the Canadian government.

And the Canadian government wanted Arar back. It took a year and a week from the time Arar was detained in New York for Arar to be released. He arrived home in Canada dazed and exhausted.

Why did Syrian officials let him go? “Why shouldn't we leave him to go? We thought that would be a gesture of good will towards Canada, which is a friendly nation. For Syria, second, we could not substantiate any of the allegations against him,” says Moustapha.

He added that the Syrian government now considers Arar completely innocent. But does he feel any remorse about taking a year out of Arar’s life?
“If this was the case, it's not our problem,” says Arar. “We did not create this problem.”

60 Minutes II has learned that the decision to deport Arar was made at the highest levels of the U.S. justice department, with a special removal order signed by John Ashcroft’s former deputy, Larry Thompson.

Ashcroft made his only public statement about the case in November. He said the U.S. deported Arar to protect Americans –- and had every right to do so.

“I consider that really an utter fabrication and a lie,” says Michael Rather, Arar’s attorney and head of the Center For Constitutional Rights. He plans to file a lawsuit against Ashcroft and several other American officials.

“They knew, when they were sending him to Syria, that Syria would use certain kinds of information-gathering techniques, including torture, on him. They knew it,” says Ratner. “That's why he was sent there. That's why he wasn't sent to Canada.”

Before deporting Arar to Syria, American officials involved in the case told 60 Minutes II they had obtained assurances from the Syrian government that Arar would not be tortured –- that he would “be treated humanely”

“The fact that you went looking for assurances, which is reflected here, tells you that even in the minds of people who made this decision,” says Pardy. “I mean, there were some second thoughts.“

No one at the justice department would talk to 60 Minutes II on camera about Arar, but they sent us this statement saying:

“The facts underlying Arar’s case…[are]classified and cannot be released publicly.”

“We have information indicating that Mr. Arar is a member of al Qaeda and, therefore, remains a threat to U.S. national security.”

Despite the American accusations, Arar has never been charged with a crime and, today, he’s free in canada. He’s afraid, though, that he might never be able to clear his name.

Arar’s case is unusual because he was sent directly from U.S. soil to Syria. But intelligence sources tell 60 Minutes II that since 9/11, the U.S. has quietly transported hundreds of terror suspects captured in different parts of the world to Middle Eastern countries for tough interrogations.

Pat Tillman Murdered: Pentagon Cover-up Continues

2007-08-21T15:46:00.000-04:00

July 26, 2007
Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman's forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player's death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

"The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described," a doctor who examined Tillman's body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.

The doctors - whose names were blacked out - said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.

Ultimately, the Pentagon did conduct a criminal investigation, and asked Tillman's comrades whether he was disliked by his men and whether they had any reason to believe he was deliberately killed. The Pentagon eventually ruled that Tillman's death at the hands of his comrades was a friendly-fire accident.

The medical examiners' suspicions were outlined in 2,300 pages of testimony released to the AP this week by the Defense Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Among other information contained in the documents:

-- In his last words moments before he was killed, Tillman snapped at a panicky comrade under fire to shut up and stop "sniveling."

-- Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.

-- The three-star general who kept the truth about Tillman's death from his family and the public told investigators some 70 times that he had a bad memory and couldn't recall details of his actions.

-- No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene - no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.

The Pentagon and the Bush administration have been criticized in recent months for lying about the circumstances of Tillman's death. The military initially told the public and the Tillman family that he had been killed by enemy fire. Only weeks later did the Pentagon acknowledge he was gunned down by fellow Rangers.

With questions lingering about how high in the Bush administration the deception reached, Congress is preparing for yet another hearing next week.

The Pentagon is separately preparing a new round of punishments, including a stinging demotion of retired Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr., 60, according to military officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the punishments under consideration have not been made public.

In more than four hours of questioning by the Pentagon inspector general's office in December 2006, Kensinger repeatedly contradicted other officers' testimony, and sometimes his own. He said on some 70 occasions that he did not recall something.

At one point, he said: "You've got me really scared about my brain right now. I'm really having a problem."

Tillman's mother, Mary Tillman, who has long suggested that her son was deliberately killed by his comrades, said she is still looking for answers and looks forward to the congressional hearings next week.

"Nothing is going to bring Pat back. It's about justice for Pat and justice for other soldiers. The nation has been deceived," she said.

The documents show that a doctor who autopsied Tillman's body was suspicious of the three gunshot wounds to the forehead. The doctor said he took the unusual step of calling the Army's Human Resources Command and was rebuffed. He then asked an official at the Army's Criminal Investigation Division if the CID would consider opening a criminal case.

"He said he talked to his higher headquarters and they had said no," the doctor testified.

Also according to the documents, investigators pressed officers and soldiers on a question Mrs. Tillman has been asking all along.

"Have you, at any time since this incident occurred back on April 22, 2004, have you ever received any information even rumor that Cpl. Tillman was killed by anybody within his own unit intentionally?" an investigator asked then-Capt. Richard Scott.

Scott, and others who were asked, said they were certain the shooting was accidental.

Investigators also asked soldiers and commanders whether Tillman was disliked, whether anyone was jealous of his celebrity, or if he was considered arrogant. They said Tillman was respected, admired and well-liked.

CDC Lies About Harmful Effects of Fluoridated Water

2007-08-20T22:24:00.000-04:00

[Daniel Stockin of The Lillie Center]

August 13, 2007 – A joint meeting of two ethics committees for the Centers for Disease Control has received a detailed formal complaint alleging a series of unethical activities by the CDC Oral Health Division and the CDC Director. The complaint points to a quote by a highly placed CDC official that the public health ethics code CDC espouses is not being internally applied within CDC itself. The complaint specifically questions why CDC’s own data on disproportionate harm from ingested fluoride in minority groups is not being communicated to these communities, and points to new, state of the art National Research Council information showing certain groups to be especially susceptible to harm from fluoride.

The charges were presented to CDC’s joint ethics panel on August 9th by Daniel Stockin, a public health professional of The Lillie Center, Inc., a private sector firm. In a separate development, news surfaced on the same day that 600 doctors, dentists, and other professionals have signed a petition calling for a halt to water fluoridation and for congressional hearings on fluoridation. (See: www.FluorideAction.net .)

According to the complaint, the unethical actions of Oral Health Division manager William Maas and CDC Director Julie Gerberding are “serious and egregious” in not disseminating findings of the National Research Council that kidney patients, diabetics, infants, and seniors are especially susceptible to harm from fluoride. The complaint contains photos of a condition called dental fluorosis, a staining and pitting of teeth indicative of overexposure to fluoride that is disproportionately present in African Americans and perhaps Mexican Americans, compared to Caucasians.

“This is an explosive and deeply disturbing issue,” states Stockin. “We have provided very specific examples of statements and actions by Dr.’s Maas and Gerberding that show blatant disregard for the most fundamental principles of ethics in public health. CDC is striving mightily to defend its policy supporting water fluoridation to prevent cavities, but the facts about harm from fluoride are now coming from highly respected organizations like the National Research Council.”

“People with kidney disease or on dialysis should see this complaint and the report by the National Research Council on fluoride,” Stockin says, “And if you happen to be a member of the population with diabetes or HIV, you will be amazed how the NRC report contains important information you should know about -- but that CDC has elected not to openly share with the public because it runs at odds with putting fluoride in drinking water.”

The ethics complaint and the 600 professionals’ statement are the latest in a string of blows to the conventional wisdom that fluoride and water fluoridation are safe. In 2005, frustrated by EPA administrators’ lack of response to mounting evidence of harm from fluoride, eleven unions within EPA representing 7,000 lab workers, scientists, and others publicly called for the immediate halt to fluoridation based on concerns about fluoride-caused bone cancer. In 2006, the American Dental Association quietly stated on its web site that mothers of newborns might wish to consider using unfluoridated water when mixing powdered infant milk formula. CDC this year similarly changed its policy about use of fluoridated water for mixing formula, but did so only on its web site, not issuing even a press release to alert millions of parents to the news. The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture has recently developed software to begin to assess the quantity of fluoride Americans are ingesting, citing concern that cumulative fluoride intake could lead to a painful bone and joint condition called “skeletal fluorosis.”

The new, detailed list of alleged unethical actions by CDC in protecting its long-held policy is likely to spur groups and legislators across the country to join in the call for an official ethics inquiry into CDC’s actions.

Were CDC officials willing to sacrifice the health of Americans in order to prevent embarrassment to the agency and themselves? Stockin points to supporting materials in the ethics complaint that offer little wiggle room for discomfited CDC officials. “At-risk groups have a moral right to be told the whole story about fluoride,” Stockin says. “Get ready for their lawsuits. The world is not flat, and fluoride is not safe,” he says.

U.S. Using Iraqi Actors to "Portray" Al-Qaeda Leaders

2007-08-20T21:34:00.000-04:00

By Tina Susman, Times Staff Writer
July 19, 2007

BAGHDAD — In March, he was declared captured. In May, he was declared killed, and his purported corpse was displayed on state-run TV. But on Wednesday, Abu Omar Baghdadi, the supposed leader of an Al Qaeda-affiliated group in Iraq, was declared nonexistent by U.S. military officials, who said he was a fictional character created to give an Iraqi face to a foreign-run terrorist organization.

An Iraqi actor has been used to read statements attributed to Baghdadi, who since October has been identified as the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq group, said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner.

Bergner said the new information came from a man captured July 4, described as the highest-ranking Iraqi within the Islamic State of Iraq.

He said the detainee, identified as Khalid Abdul Fatah Daud Mahmoud Mashadani, has served as a propaganda chief in the organization, a Sunni Muslim insurgent group that swears allegiance to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda.

According to Bergner, Mashadani helped create Islamic State of Iraq as a "virtual organization" that exists in cyberspace and is essentially a pseudonym for Al Qaeda in Iraq, another group that claims ties to Bin Laden. The front organization was aimed at making Iraqis believe that Al Qaeda in Iraq is a nationalistic group, even though it is led by an Egyptian and has few Iraqis among its leaders, Bergner said at a news conference.

"The Islamic State of Iraq is the latest effort by Al Qaeda to market itself and its goal of imposing a Taliban-like state on the Iraqi people," Bergner said.

Islamic State of Iraq has been widely described as an umbrella organization of several insurgent groups, including Al Qaeda in Iraq.

There was no way to confirm the military's claim, which comes at a time of heightened pressure on the White House to justify keeping U.S. troops in Iraq. Critics of the Bush administration say the president has been trying to do so by linking Bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network to the conflict in Iraq, even though the organization had no substantial presence here until after the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003.

"The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is the crowd that is now bombing people" in Iraq, Bush said Tuesday.

The U.S. military's announcement Wednesday was the latest bizarre twist surrounding the figure known as Baghdadi. If the Iraqi government's reaction was anything to go by, it won't be the last.

Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed Askari rejected the U.S. assertion, insisting that Baghdadi is real. "Al-Baghdadi is wanted and pursued. We know many things about him, and we even have his picture," Askari said. However, he said he could not release a photograph or additional information because it could jeopardize attempts to capture Baghdadi.

The man known as Baghdadi emerged last year when Islamic State of Iraq was formed after the slaying of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

In March, the Iraqi government announced it had captured him, but then said that it was someone else. In May, confusion reigned when both Iraqi and U.S. officials announced the death of a high-ranking Islamic State of Iraq member. Iraqis identified the man as Baghdadi and showed a body they said was his on television.

The Americans said it was someone else and they had the DNA to prove it. The Iraqis countered by insisting it was the same man, but dropped the matter.

At that time, U.S. officials hinted that they had doubts about Baghdadi's existence.

At Wednesday's news conference, Bergner said Islamic State detainee Mashadani had grown disenchanted with the group's foreign leadership, which has faced opposition from Iraqi Sunni Muslim groups that oppose the U.S. occupation and fear non-Iraqis' attempts to take over the insurgency. One of those groups is Ansar al Sunna, of which Mashadani was a leader, Bergner said, before assuming his latest role 2 1/2 years ago.

Navy Rear Adm. Greg Smith said U.S. officials had long suspected that Islamic State was a facade. "We sort of knew, but now we actually have the individual who was the co-founder," he said.

He described Mashadani, whose photograph showed an unremarkable looking man with a receding hairline, as disenchanted with the foreign influence on the group. He and others "believe the foreigners are ruining and taking down" the organization and that it is becoming "very violent against average Iraqis," Smith said. "He's pretty much a believer in Al Qaeda, but he does not believe the foreign influence is a productive way to conduct business."

Iraqi official Askari said the Americans were being duped by Mashadani and that Baghdadi was the leader of a nationalistic faction of Islamic State of Iraq dominated by former Baathist Party members loyal to Saddam Hussein. It is different from the faction headed by foreigners but just as lethal, Askari said.

"Two factions: the outsiders' Qaeda and the insiders' Qaeda," he said.

Neither Bergner nor Smith offered specifics of what they said was foreign Al Qaeda leaders' involvement in Iraq's violence. But they said Al Qaedaaffiliated groups, not Shiite Muslim militias, were the No. 1 threat to Iraq and hoped to fuel sectarian violence with bombings.

They also had few details about the actor they said portrays Baghdadi in videos, saying only that he is an elderly Iraqi man whose name is Abu Abdullah Naima.

The announcement was the latest in a series of statements from U.S. officials here blaming foreign elements for Iraq's violence. They accuse Iran of providing weapons and training to Shiite militias and Sunni extremists, and say Al Qaeda-linked groups are pouring foreign fighters into the country. Earlier, the U.S. had said Iraq's Shiite militias were the biggest problem facing security forces.

White House to Write General Patraeus' Status Report on Iraq

2007-08-20T21:21:00.000-04:00

By Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
August 15, 2007

WASHINGTON -- --

Intent on demonstrating progress in Iraq, the top U.S. general there is expected by Bush administration officials to recommend removing American troops soon from several areas where commanders believe security has improved, possibly including Al Anbar province.

According to the officials, Gen. David H. Petraeus is expected to propose the partial pullback in his September status report to Congress, when both the war's critics and supporters plan to reassess its course. Administration officials who support the current troop levels hope Petraeus' recommendations will persuade Congress to reject pressure for a major U.S. withdrawal.

The expected recommendation would authorize U.S. commanders to withdraw troops from places that have become less violent and turn over security responsibilities to Iraqi forces.

But it does not necessarily follow that Petraeus would call for reducing the overall number of troops in the country. Instead, he could move them to another hot spot, or use them to create a reserve force to counter any rise in violence.

"That is the form of the recommendation we are anticipating him to come back with," a senior administration official said. But referring to the redeployment options, the official added, "I just don't know which of those categories he is going to be in."

Petraeus has not told the White House where he might recommend reductions. But military commanders have indicated in recent briefings that Nineveh province in northern Iraq and its capital, Mosul, like Al Anbar in the west, could be an area from which it might be suitable for the U.S. to withdraw.

American commanders have found that pulling out too soon and leaving pacified areas to unprepared Iraqi troops can lead to a resurgence of militant activity. In the north, where U.S. officials have reduced the number of combat troops, devastating bomb attacks Tuesday killed at least 175 people.

Tall Afar, a town about 40 miles west of Mosul that had been cited by President Bush as a key U.S. success, has seen a rise in violence since the spring after a period of stability.

Petraeus has been keeping a "close hold" on the recommendations he intends to deliver next month, according to a senior military officer in Baghdad. But the officer said Petraeus wanted to ensure that any moves he made did not cause violence to flare up again.

"He doesn't want to lose the gains we have made," said the military officer who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity because the report is still being developed.

Some officials say they expect Petraeus to push for maintaining the current force level for at least six additional months to build upon security improvements in Baghdad.

U.S. force levels reached nearly 162,000 this month, an increase of about 30,000 from the beginning of the year, when the American military's troop buildup began.

Another Defense official, who has been part of Iraq planning but skeptical of the troop increase, said moving forces out of Al Anbar could make sense to the White House, because doing so would enable the administration to show that improved security translates into a reduction in troops.

Cutting the number of troops in Al Anbar would also eliminate the need to request more forces to secure areas around Baghdad, where the U.S. has been focusing much of its military effort.

"If the Marines are having so much success in Al Anbar, maybe we redeploy them to some other hot spot," said the Defense official. Administration officials have cited improved ties with Sunni Arab leaders in Al Anbar with helping reduce violence and curb the power of the insurgents.

Not all military commanders favor reducing the number of troops in more stable areas. In a news conference last month, Marine Maj. Gen. Walter E. Gaskin, the commander of U.S. forces in Al Anbar, cautioned against cutting back forces there too quickly.

Gaskin argued that the added forces had allowed the Marines to eliminate havens used by the insurgent group that calls itself Al Qaeda in Iraq.

A "persistent presence" of U.S. forces, he said, would help give Iraqi security forces more experience and confidence, and the ability to keep militants out.

"It takes time to gain experience," he said. "I see that experience happening every day, but I don't see it happening overnight. I believe it's another couple of years in order to get them to do that -- and that's not a political answer, that's a military answer."

But division and brigade commanders in other parts of Iraq have said they anticipate recommending further reductions in the months to come. Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. "Randy" Mixon, the American division commander for northern Iraq, said last month that he expected to cut the number of troops in his area, but emphasized that reductions should be made slowly.

The Army 1st Cavalry Division's 4th Brigade has moved soldiers out of combat roles in Mosul and other cities, and into assignments such as full-time advisors with Iraqi units.

Col. Stephen M. Twitty, the brigade commander, said in an interview before the bombings Tuesday that the U.S. combat force in Mosul had been reduced from the size of a division, or nearly 20,000, to that of a battalion, typically about 1,000.

The senior officer in Baghdad said the military was still debating whether Petraeus should make his detailed strategy recommendations to Congress in an open or closed session.

The officer said that though Petraeus would discuss his broad recommendation for adjusting operations, he would avoid detailed public discussion of where he intended to reposition specific brigades.

The officer said Petraeus would not go deeply into detail in an open session.

"The future plan, how he thinks we can move forward, you really do not want to broadcast that to the world," he said.

Administration and military officials acknowledge that the September report will not show any significant progress on the political benchmarks laid out by Congress. How to deal in the report with the lack of national reconciliation between Iraq's warring sects has created some tension within the White House.

Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report's data.

The senior administration official said the process had created "uncomfortable positions" for the White House because of debates over what constitutes "satisfactory progress."

During internal White House discussion of a July interim report, some officials urged the administration to claim progress in policy areas such as legislation to divvy up Iraq's oil revenue, even though no final agreement had been reached. Others argued that such assertions would be disingenuous.

"There were some in the drafting of the report that said, 'Well, we can claim progress,' " the administration official said. "There were others who said: 'Wait a second. Sure we can claim progress, but it's not credible to . . . just neglect the fact that it's had no effect on the ground.' "

The Defense official skeptical of the troop buildup said he expected Petraeus to emphasize military accomplishments, including improving security in Baghdad neighborhoods and a slight reduction in the number of suicide bomb attacks. But the official said he did not believe such security improvements would translate into political progress or improvements in the daily lives of most Iraqis.

"Who cares how many neighborhoods of Baghdad are secured?" the official said. "Let's talk about the rest of the country: How come they have electricity twice a day, how come there is no running water?"

Bush Regime Spent $1.6 Billion Tax Dollars on Domestic Propaganda

2007-08-20T20:34:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, February 14, 2006; Page A13
[Christopher Lee]

How much is good press worth? To the Bush administration, about $1.6 billion.

That's how much seven federal departments spent from 2003 through the second quarter of 2005 on 343 contracts with public relations firms, advertising agencies, media organizations and individuals, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.

The 154-page report provides the most comprehensive look to date at the scope of federal spending in an area that generated substantial controversy last year. Congressional Democrats asked the GAO to look into federal public relations contracts last spring at the height of the furor over government-sponsored prepackaged news and journalism-for-sale.

Armstrong Williams, the conservative commentator, had been unmasked as a paid administration promoter who received $186,000 from the Education Department to speak favorably about President Bush's No Child Left Behind law in broadcast appearances.

Around the same time, a spat erupted between the GAO and the White House over whether the government's practice of feeding TV stations prepackaged, ready-to-air news stories that touted administration policies (but did not disclose the government as the source) amounted to "covert propaganda." The GAO said that it did. The administration disagreed, saying spreading information about federal programs is part of the agencies' mission, and that the burden of disclosure falls on the TV stations.

Congress sided with the GAO. Lawmakers inserted a provision into an annual spending bill requiring federal agencies to include "a clear notification" within the text or audio of a prepackaged news story that it was prepared or paid for by the government.

The new report reveals that federal public relations spending goes far beyond "video news releases." The contracts covered the waterfront, from a $6.3 million agreement to help the Department of Homeland Security educate Americans about how to respond to terrorist attacks; to a $647,350 contract to assist the Transportation Security Administration in producing video news releases and media tours on the subject of airport security procedures; to a $6,600 contract to train managers at the Bureau of Reclamation in dealing with the media.

"Careful oversight of this spending is essential given the track record of the Bush administration, which has used taxpayer dollars to fund covert propaganda within the United States," Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), ranking Democrat of the House Government Reform Committee, said in a statement yesterday.