Bush Administration Credits Diplomacy For Averting Civil War

There is some dispute among various parties about the level of violence in the aftermath of the Samarra mosque bombing and a semantic question of whether a "civil war" is in progress.

Grisly attacks and other sectarian violence unleashed by last week's bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine have killed more than 1,300 Iraqis, making the past few days the deadliest of the war outside of major U.S. offensives, according to Baghdad's main morgue. The toll was more than three times higher than the figure previously reported by the U.S. military and the news media...

The disclosure of the death tolls followed accusations by the U.S. military and later Iraqi officials that the news media had exaggerated the violence between Shiites and Sunnis over the past few days...

After Wednesday's mosque attack in Samarra, (Moqtada al-)Sadr and other Shiite clerics called on their armed followers to deploy to protect shrines across Iraq.

Clutching rocket-propelled grenade launchers and automatic rifles, the militias rolled out of their Baghdad base of Sadr City. Residents of several neighborhoods reported them on patrol or in control of mosques. U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces did not appear to challenge the militias, which are officially outlawed.

Although our allies in the Iraqi security forces may have let down their end of the fight, the U.S. government is crediting our diplomatic officials on the ground with keeping matters from getting even worse.

In the days that followed the bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine, Iraq seemed within a hair's breadth of civil war. But an aggressive U.S. and Kurdish diplomatic campaign appears for now to have coaxed the country back from open conflict between Sunni Arabs and Shiites, according to Iraqi politicians and Western diplomats speaking in interviews on Monday.

"Localized difficulties also persist, but I think, at the strategic level, this crisis -- a mosque attack leading to civil war -- is over," Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, said in a telephone interview. "It was a serious crisis. I believe that Iraq came to the brink and came back."

The diplomats are credited for bringing the Sunnis back to the table in negotiations over a "unity" government.

(The Sunnis) announced that they would boycott meetings on the formation of a new government. They also refused to attend a lunch meeting of Shiite and Kurdish political factions that Talabani had painstakingly organized, instead presenting a list of 10 demands to be met before they would rejoin talks.

"I would not say that it engendered a warm reaction," said a Western diplomat familiar with the negotiations, who provided a background interview on the condition that he not be named.

Among those most upset by the Sunni boycott threat was Talabani, an ethnic Kurd who was able to take a central role in the negotiations because he was perceived as a neutral party.

Ironically, the Kurds stood to gain the most from a civil conflict. They have long wanted an independent state, and revolted against Saddam Hussein in 1991 only to be brutally repressed. But Talabani was deeply troubled by the Samarra crisis, said Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. diplomat who was in contact with Talabani throughout the crisis.

"I've known President Jalal Talabani for over 20 years," Galbraith said. "It is the most pessimistic I've seen him, and that includes being in Iraq the night the uprising collapsed and we were fleeing for our lives. Here, he was profoundly disturbed about the future of Iraq."

Mister Danger and his Secretary of State then got involved:

After discussions at the White House and with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, President Bush called leaders from each faction to give them the final push toward an accommodation, Khalilzad said.

After the call, the Sunni leaders announced their willingness to rejoin the talks, and later that evening they met with various representatives. At the end of that meeting, just before midnight on Saturday, the Iraqi prime minister, flanked by the leaders of the major political parties, solemnly announced at a news conference that the country would not have a civil war -- a moment of "terrific political symbolism," the Western diplomat said...

Saleh al-Mutlak, a Sunni leader who attended the talks Saturday, put it more bluntly: "I think this is a lesson for the Sunnis," he said. "Next time they will try to buy weapons to face these kinds of developments."

Khalilzad agreed that there would likely be a next time, noting that "efforts to provoke a civil war are likely to continue." But he was hopeful that this crisis would be a key moment in the history of Iraq.

The surge in violence has created debate in the Pentagon about whether the troop pullback from Iraq in time to aid Republicans in the fall elections can be workable.

The violence came at a crucial time for the U.S. military: Top generals must decide within weeks whether to carry out a long-anticipated reduction in American troops this summer. Threats of civil war in the country have raised questions about the wisdom of a troop drawdown in the next few months...

For nearly a year, senior commanders have said that political progress in Baghdad and the development of new Iraqi army units could lead to a substantial U.S. troop reduction this year. They have pointed to mid-2006 as a pivotal period, making the decisions on troop levels a telling indicator of progress...

Defense officials said that Army Gens. John P. Abizaid and George W. Casey, the top commanders of U.S. forces in Iraq, soon would travel to Washington to advise President Bush on future troop levels. Because the moves under consideration will be critical to overall U.S. progress in Iraq this year, officials said Abizaid and Casey would brief the president in person.

That would be an interesting meeting to sit in on.

With the Iraq war likely to be one of the key issues in November's midterm elections, lawmakers are increasing pressure on the administration to show progress by cutting the number of U.S. troops stationed in the country. But Bush has long insisted that decisions about troop levels in Iraq will be based solely on the recommendations of his generals, rather than on any political calculations...

Some outside analysts say the discussion in Washington of a troop drawdown has only emboldened insurgents, leading them to declare victory on jihadist websites and step up their attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops.

"The more we talk about withdrawals, the more insurgents assert themselves," said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and U.S. advisor in Iraq, now at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. "Perhaps now is not the time to be bringing troops home."

Words cannot describe the revulsion any thinking person feels at hearing yet another chickenhawk recommend extending the war for even one day.

Goopers Attempt To Seek Cover for President in NSA Scandal

The Republicans--not usually known as soft on crime--are scrambling to pull the administration's fat from the frying pan by trying to retroactively legalize the extra-legal NSA warrantless eavesdropping program.

All the usual suspects make an appearance.

At 5 p.m. today, several Senate Republicans will huddle with Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.) in hopes of loosening one of Congress's toughest knots: how to provide oversight of the Bush administration's domestic surveillance operations without impairing the ability to spy on possible terrorists.

Frist wants to keep his caucus from fracturing over the issue now that Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (Pa.) is proposing a bill that many fellow Republicans oppose. The White House, meanwhile, has signaled that it wants as little congressional meddling as possible.

The Specter bill is a pathetically weak cover-up attempt as it is, and these apologists are trying to make mockery of even that.

Specter is circulating language that would require the FISA judges to rule on the NSA program's constitutionality. Should it pass that test, it would operate under FISA guidelines. Specter's committee will hold a hearing on the program's constitutionality today.

Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) is pushing a rival plan that would keep the NSA program separate from FISA and provide a mechanism for oversight by a bipartisan band of House and Senate members.

"Keep the NSA program separate from FISA?"

The program is only separate from FISA in that the administration says so. A careful reading of law instructs otherwise. DeWine means to legalize what is currently illegal.

Some Republicans consider Specter's plan too restrictive and DeWine's too lenient. Frist's gathering of Republicans from the judiciary and intelligence committees today will seek a possible compromise, several sources said.

One idea, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said yesterday, "would include statutory blessing of the current surveillance program, a limited but meaningful role for the FISA court and a warrant requirement" if there is reason to believe "an American citizen is collaborating with the enemy." The plan, which some call "DeWine plus," would not allow the FISA court to rule the NSA program unconstitutional, said Graham, a Judiciary Committee member.

That is having your cake and eating it too. Graham wishes to retroactively legalize the lawbreaking, and prevent the courts from declaring the program illegal.

Sheesh.

Intelligence committee member Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) hopes "there will be a way that aspects of Senator Specter's and Senator DeWine's legislation can be married," her spokeswoman, Antonia Ferrier, said.

Even if the Senate finds a middle path, it is unclear the House would follow. Intelligence committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) "has been pretty strong that the program does not need to fall under FISA, that the authority lies elsewhere," said his spokesman, Jamal Ware.

The voters in Hoekstra's district need to be "pretty strong" so that the administration's co-conspirator does not win re-election in the fall.

The White House itself is being no slouch in defending itself:

The White House rejected yesterday a call by 18 House Democrats for a special counsel to investigate the Bush administration's warrantless-eavesdropping program.

Scott McClellan, President Bush's spokesman, said those Democrats should instead spend their time investigating the source of the unauthorized disclosure of the classified program, which he said "has given the enemy some of our playbook." He added: "I really don't think there's any basis for a special counsel."...

The lawmakers initially asked the independent watchdogs at the Justice and Defense departments to open inquiries. Both declined.

Taiwan Pushes Independence From China

After a recent thaw in China/Taiwan relations, Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian has decided now is the time to toy with the sensitive issue of pressing for full legal independence from Communist China.

The Reds don't have much of a sense of humor about the Straits issue.

Defying warnings from China and the United States, Taiwan eliminated its National Unification Council on Monday and said that only the Taiwanese people can decide whether they want to rejoin the mainland...

China's government and Communist Party Taiwan affairs offices jointly condemned Chen's move as an incitement to tension. "Chen Shui-bian persists in pushing the radical route of Taiwanese independence and provoking confrontation and conflict within Taiwanese society and across the Taiwan Strait," they said in a statement Tuesday. "This will only bring disaster to Taiwanese society."


Even the Bush administration can see a potential foreign policy crisis here (not of it's own making this time).

The White House 10 days ago dispatched Dennis Wilder, an Asia specialist on the National Security Council staff, and Clifford Hart, who handles Taiwan affairs at the State Department, to Taipei for an unannounced meeting with Chen to press the U.S. case.

Chen rejected the appeals, press reports said. He followed up last week by telling a visiting U.S. congressman, Rob Simmons (R-Conn.), that the council and guidelines were "absurd products of an absurd era."

Bush's family is well-known to be close to, and sensitive to the wishes of, Red China. President Bush's father, the first President Bush, was U.S. ambassador to China in the 1970's.

It should be no time before we hear W extolling the need for the freedom hatin' Taiwanese to get back in the box.

Iran Wants Guarantees of No U.S. Attack

There is news of a possible breakthrough in Iran/Russia talks to jointly develop a peaceful Iranian nuclear program.

There is one big deal-breaker, however.

The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said Sunday that his country had agreed in principle to set up a joint uranium enrichment project with Russia, a potential breakthrough in efforts to prevent an international confrontation over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"Regarding this joint venture, we have reached a basic agreement," said Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the country's nuclear chief, speaking at a news conference with his Russian counterpart in Bushehr, where Russia is helping to build a nuclear power plant. "Talks to complete this package will continue in coming days in Russia."...

Russia's offer to enrich uranium for Iran on Russian territory, a proposal backed by the United States and the European Union, has been the basis of intense but previously fruitless negotiations between Moscow and Tehran. If Iran does agree to shift enrichment to Russia, Iran would cede control of a key element in the nuclear fuel cycle and ease suspicions that it could secretly produce uranium suitable for nuclear weapons...

Aghazadeh made it clear, however, that there was still no formal agreement and that some issues must still be resolved.

"There are different parts that need to be discussed," he said, according to Russian news agencies. "These are not just related to forming a company -- there are other elements. There are political issues, and the proposal should be seen as a package."

He added that Iran had "set a precondition," which he declined to specify.

Russian analysts following the talks said Iran wants security guarantees that it would not be attacked by the United States.

Iran's (Muslim) "street" smarts are on display here.

I wonder if anyone has told them about the new U.S. "signing statement" skullduggery.

Moqtada al-Sadr Not Conciliatory

At least one influential Iraqi figure is doing nothing to calm fears that Iraq will decend further into civil war.

The sectarian crisis further raised the political and military prominence of Moqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric whose black-clad Mahdi Army militiamen rolled out after Wednesday's mosque bombing.

Sadr, who had been abroad meeting with Middle Eastern leaders, returned to Iraq Sunday and called on his followers to keep up the protests.

In stops in three cities, the black-turbaned cleric called for joint Shiite and Sunni demonstrations in Baghdad to demand the withdrawal of U.S. forces and to condemn attacks on mosques and all other "terrorist actions" in Iraq.

"No, no occupation," Sadr chanted before a crowd in Basra.

"You should unite and love each other," he said in remarks directed at Sunnis and Shiites, "so that Iraq will be safe away from the occupation."

In a case of life imitating art, there is the provocative question of whether Moqtada al-Sadr ("Mookie" in the lingo of U.S. ground forces) is "Doing The Right Thing" by inciting the Shiite masses against the occupation.

More Specter Dumbshittery

Sen Arlen "Magic Bullet" Specter has come up with a novel idea: Let's write a law that brings Bush's extra-legal NSA warrantless eavesdropping under the FISA act.

That's kinda like writing legislation to bring exceeding the speed limit on the highways under the traffic laws.

Specter's proposal would bring the four-year-old NSA program under the authority of the court created by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The act created a mechanism for obtaining warrants to wiretap domestic suspects. But President Bush, shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks, authorized the NSA to eavesdrop on communications without such warrants. The program was revealed in news reports two months ago.

I bet he will want to make the provisions retroactive to spare Bush any legal consequences for having evaded FISA for the last few years.

There looks to be a problem or two with Sen. Specter's legislation:

The draft version of Specter's bill, which is circulating in intelligence and legal circles, would require the attorney general to seek the FISA court's approval for each planned NSA intercept under the program...

Specter's bill would require the attorney general to give the secret court "a statement of the facts and circumstances" causing the Justice Department to believe "that at least one of the participants in the communications to be intercepted . . . will be the foreign power or agent of a foreign power specified in [the law], or a person who has had communication with the foreign power or agent." The attorney general would have to provide "a detailed description of the nature of the information sought" and "an estimate of the number of communications to be intercepted . . . during the requested authorization period."

Even published information about the secret program has pointed out that the NSA is casting a hugely wide net. It will be impossible individually to truthfully provide "a statement of the facts and circumstances" for each suspect, not to mention provide a description of the information that they are trying to intercept.

Nobody must have told Specter. He certainly is not among the eight lawmakers who have been briefed on the program.

Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, a civil rights group, said the bill's language is alarmingly broad. "It's not limited to al-Qaeda or even terrorism," she said. Those who communicate with "foreign powers" could include a vast array of innocent people, Martin said.


Specter must think that by eliminating "probable cause" from the requirements of FISA, he is helping to keep the nation safe.

I wonder how he will feel when the administration can't meet even his looser restrictions and continues the program sub rosa.

This Sounds Reassuring

In the most reassuring thing I've heard in awhile, Walter Pincus tells us that the U.S. Intelligence Community has confidence that the Dubai Port deal will not endanger national security.

The Community's BFF Pincus has been told that since the UAE has been so helpful in the "war on terror", that they are now part of the club.

Reviews by U.S. intelligence agencies supported Dubai Ports World's purchase of the British company running terminals at six American seaports, and the assessments were made available to the Treasury Department-run interagency committee that approved the deal, according to senior administration officials.

The intelligence studies were coordinated by the Intelligence Community Acquisition Risk Center, a new organization under the office of the Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte, said one official. The center normally does broad threat analyses of foreign commercial entities that seek to do business with U.S. intelligence agencies.

Pincus is saying that a small office that does cursory checks of IC databases on the backgrounds of foreign companies gives the plan the thumbs up.

While contents of the intelligence assessments remain classified, current and former intelligence officials yesterday spoke highly of the level of counterterrorism cooperation provided after Sept. 11, 2001, by Dubai and several of the other states that make up the United Arab Emirates.

A former senior CIA official recalled that, although money transfers from Dubai were used by the Sept. 11 hijackers, Dubai's security services "were one of the best in the UAE to work with" after the attacks. He said that once the agency moved against Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan and his black-market sales of nuclear technology, "they helped facilitate the CIA's penetration of Khan's network."

What are the odds that the UAE will be glad to see that revelation in a major newspaper, even if untrue? (Which is likely.)

Dubai also assisted in the capture of al-Qaeda terrorists.

Nice one. The proof:

An al-Qaeda statement released in Arabic in spring 2002 refers to UAE officials as wanting to "appease the Americans' wishes" including detaining "a number of Mujahideen," according to captured documents made available last week by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. The al-Qaeda statement threatened the UAE, saying that "you are an easier target than them; your homeland is exposed to us."

Anyone with a passing familiarity with al-Qaeda statements knows that most, if not all, of the Middle-Eastern nations collaborating with the U.S. in the "war on terror" have received the same type of boilerplate threats.

One intelligence official pointed out that when the U.S. Navy no longer made regular use of Yemen after the USS Cole was attacked in 2000, it moved its port calls for supplies and repairs to Dubai.

Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Tuesday praised the "superb" military-to-military relationship with the UAE, saying, "In everything that we have asked and work with them on, they have proven to be very, very solid partners."

This just tells us that if you play ball with the U.S. security regime, you will receive a payoff.

If Hugo Chavez entered the bidding for the British port management company P&O, beating out Dubai to buy the port operations, there is no way that he--with no ties to Muslim terrorists at all--would be the approved buyer.

The real issue anyway is the continued health of the U.S. dollar.

If the Arabs, who hold a huge portion of U.S. debt, get the idea that their dollar holdings don't have the buying power of everybody else's--they will unload their U.S. bonds--spelling doom for the dollar.

Total Information Awareness Lives On

Total Information Awareness, the controversial John Poindexter-led data-mining program, is still in operation under another agency and name, according to a new report in the National Journal.

Research under the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program -- which developed technologies to predict terrorist attacks by mining government databases and the personal records of people in the United States -- was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency to another group, which builds technologies primarily for the National Security Agency, according to documents obtained by National Journal and to intelligence sources familiar with the move. The names of key projects were changed, apparently to conceal their identities, but their funding remained intact, often under the same contracts.

Two of the most important components of the TIA program were moved to the Advanced Research and Development Activity, housed at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., documents and sources confirm. One piece was the Information Awareness Prototype System, the core architecture that tied together numerous information extraction, analysis, and dissemination tools developed under TIA. The prototype system included privacy-protection technologies that may have been discontinued or scaled back following the move to ARDA...

Earlier this month, at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, one of TIA's strongest critics questioned whether intelligence officials knew that some of its programs had been moved to other agencies. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and FBI Director Robert Mueller whether it was "correct that when [TIA] was closed, that several ... projects were moved to various intelligence agencies.... I and others on this panel led the effort to close [TIA]; we want to know if Mr. Poindexter's programs are going on somewhere else."

Negroponte and Mueller said they didn't know. But Negroponte's deputy, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who until recently was director of the NSA, said, "I'd like to answer in closed session." Asked for comment, Wyden's spokeswoman referred to his hearing statements.

The NSA is now at the center of a political firestorm over President Bush's program to eavesdrop on the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States who the agency believes are connected to terrorists abroad. While the documents on the TIA programs don't show that their tools are used in the domestic eavesdropping, and knowledgeable sources wouldn't discuss the matter, the TIA programs were designed specifically to develop the kind of "early-warning system" that the president said the NSA is running.

I recall Rumsfeld, the man who claims never to have lied to the press, saying that TIA had never been implemented.

Most people assumed that it had been moved out of DOD, but was still around is some way, shape, or form.

The fact that it was put into NSA, a DOD agency, doesn't speak well for Mr. Rumsfeld's veracity.

Sunnis Withdraw From Negotiations For New Iraqi Government

In our Iraq crisis watch this morning, the feared upswing of violence following Friday prayers seems not to have materialized.

However, some other bad developments have occurred, including the withdrawal of the Sunni bloc from talks on forming a new "unity" government.

(Yesterday's) surge in violence, sparked by the destruction of Samarra's gold-domed Askariya shrine, comes at a time of political transition and uncertainty, with leaders of Iraq's largest factions mired in negotiations over the composition of the next government. Prospects for a political resolution suffered Thursday when Sunni Arab political leaders abruptly withdrew from talks with Iraq's Shiite ruling parties, blaming the police and army for failing to prevent retaliatory attacks -- and, in some cases, for participating in them.

The possibility of civil war in Iraq continues to be downplayed at the highest levels of the U.S. government:

President Bush yesterday commended Iraqi leaders for urging calm and reaffirmed a U.S. pledge to help rebuild the Askariya shrine in Samarra. "I'm pleased with the voices of reason that have spoken out, and we will continue to work with those voices of reason to enable Iraq to continue on the path of a democracy that unites people and doesn't divide them," Bush told reporters after a Cabinet meeting.

Similarly, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, traveling to Beirut, stressed moves underway to try to bridge sectarian differences and avoid a more serious rupture.

"I don't think we do the Iraqi people any good, or really that we are fair to them, in continually raising the specter that they might fall into civil war," Rice told reporters. She noted that U.S. officials were engaged in "a lot of contact" with Iraqi authorities "about how to deal with the situation."

Some U.S. officials likened the tensions to the spring of 2004, which saw simultaneous Sunni and Shiite uprisings in Iraq. But other officials involved in shaping administration policy on Iraq disputed that, saying the violence has been less extensive and that Iraqi security forces and political institutions are better prepared to restore order.

Wishful thinking meant for domestic U.S. consumption only is coming from the Pentagon:

In the event conditions spiral out of control, U.S. military officers said, forces in Iraq could be quickly enlarged by a U.S. army brigade of about 3,500 troops on standby in Kuwait and by the deployment of other strategic reserve elements from the United States. But the officers said violence in Iraq would have to reach a much higher level to trigger such moves.

Optimism can be useful in "denial and deception" operations, but U.S. military officials are privately much more realistic about the adversity they are facing if Iraq descends further into civil war.

A more reasonable quote is from a member of a well-known Washington security family:

"This isn't a bump in the road, it's a pothole," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a senior policy and planning officer with U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. forces in the region. "And we'll find out if the shock absorbers in the Iraqi society will hold or whether this will crack the frame."

To give our leaders the benefit of the doubt, maybe different officials are interpreting the available evidence differently.

Coincidentally, Kimmitt's brother Robert--a former U.S. Ambassador, now second in command at Treasury--was on the hotseat about the Dubai Port controversy yesterday in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee:

Yesterday, it emerged in the committee hearing that the administration may have skirted the law by not granting a 45-day review of the Dubai ports deal. The law says such a review is mandatory if a sale to a state-owned company "could affect the national security of the United States" -- a standard the administration seemed to acknowledge the deal met because it required special safeguards.

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), who wrote the 1992 law, demanded to know "why that investigation was not carried out."

Warner asked Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt to "clarify."

"Senator," Kimmitt told Byrd, "we have a difference of opinion on the interpretation of your amendment." The administration, he said, views it "as being discretionary."

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), reading the statute to Kimmitt, said the law "requires -- requires -- an investigation."

"We do not see it as mandatory," Kimmitt repeated.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) grew irritated. "If you want the law changed," he told Kimmitt, "come to Congress and change it. But don't ignore it."

"We didn't ignore the law," Kimmitt again maintained. "We might interpret it differently."

The Bush administration has a bad habit of "interpreting" things (such as, inter alia: pre-war Iraq WMD intel, FISA requirements, torture prohibitions) "differently" than a reasonable person would.

DOD Plans To Cut Number of B-52s

In one single line in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, the DOD has disclosed that they are planning to cut the number of B-52 bombers by 40 percent, from 94 to 56.

The decision is not going down well in Congress.

The Air Force wants to pour those savings into upgrading the remaining B-52s, as well as B-1 and B-2 bombers. Much of lawmakers' arguments will center on the fact that B-52s, first fielded in 1955, cost half as much to fly as the B-1.

"Given our huge budget problem, it would make sense to me to keep the most efficient bombers in the fleet," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., a member of the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee who last year helped restore B-52 money in the fiscal 2006 budget.

No secret why Dorgan opposes the DOD plan:

The Louisiana and North Dakota delegations, whose states are home to the entire fleet of B-52s, have successfully thwarted previous efforts to retire portions of the fleet. They are wasting no time gearing up for another battle. Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., discussed the issue Tuesday with leaders at Minot Air Force Base, the North Dakota home to 35 B-52Hs.

It would be unwise "to fly them off to the graveyard when we don't have a replacement and we still face contingencies that could require us to be in action half a world away in Iraq and at the same time be involved in some other distant part of the globe," Conrad told CongressDaily. The upgraded planes are in shape to fly until 2037, he added.

The Defense Department loves to buy new stuff.

In a few years, they will be begging for a bunch of the newer bombers. It will then turn out that we shouldn't have mothballed the BUFs.

Kinda like what happened with the SR-71s.

Sectarian Clashes Increase in Iraq, Egypt, Nigeria

The "clash of civilizations" is moving into high gear today with ominous developments in several important countries.

The situation in Iraq has gone from bad to horrendous in the aftermath of the Shiite mosque bombing in Samarra.

Officials in Baghdad, struggling to restore order, expanded an existing curfew in an effort to get people off the streets after dark and canceled all leaves for Iraqi security forces.

The process of forming a new government also appeared to be in jeopardy, as some Sunni politicians, protesting what they said was a lack of protection for Sunni mosques attacked overnight, said they were pulling out of negotiations with Shiite parties.

There were a great number of disturbances reported across the country Wednesday night and Thursday, too many to accurately track let alone verify.

In Egypt, there are attacks upon Coptic Christians by Muslims:

A mob of Muslim rioters invaded the neighborhood, set fires to palm trees and stables and tried to burn down the building. Only a frantic defense by the Christians and heavy smoke from the flaming trees kept the mob at bay. Police officers who had already surrounded the building stood idly by. One Christian man was killed by a blow to the head with a hoe.

The sectarian battle was one of a series that have recently pitted the minority Coptic Christians, an ancient community in Egypt, against the majority Muslims. Repeated instances of violence have brought to light a persistent paradox of Egyptian life: Although officially a secular state, Egypt is in many ways an Islamic entity in which non-Muslims are accommodated but not exactly on an equal footing. The constitution specifies Islam as Egypt's official religion; Copts make up less than 10 percent of the country's population...

Sabah Shahad, a relative of the slain Christian man, Kamal Shaker Meglaa, said Meglaa was not part of the battle but was simply returning to his house near the church. Shahad said two men attacked Meglaa and hit him repeatedly with a hoe, cracking his skull. They also broke the legs of livestock and set the animals aflame. "They did this because we are Christian," said Shahad, who is a cement porter at a construction site.

I would wager that Allah would frown upon the practice of breaking the legs of livestock and setting the animals aflame. But WTFDIK?

And in a different variation on the events of the day, in Nigeria we are seeing attacks by Christians upon Muslims:

Christian mobs in this southern city attacked Muslim motorists and traders Wednesday, leaving more than 30 people dead, according to witnesses, as religious riots sparked by the publishing of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad continued into a fifth day in Nigeria. Nationwide, the death toll reached at least 80.

Hordes of angry men marauded through Onitsha armed with machetes, guns and boards with nails pounded into their ends, witnesses said. The mobs burned two mosques and looted and destroyed Muslim-owned shops as they sought vengeance for similar attacks against Christians in two predominantly Muslim cities in northern part of the country...

Tony Iweka, 45, a magazine editor, said a man in the mob raised his right hand to display what appeared to be a freshly decapitated head.

Nice.

The recent rioting began when Muslim mobs -- consisting mostly of Hausa men -- destroyed 30 Christian churches and killed 18 people Saturday in the northeastern city of Maiduguri. Those attacks were followed on Monday by rioting in Bauchi, another northern and mostly Muslim city, where 25 died over two days.

The blowback from the Bush administration's malfeasence in going to war in Iraq may be just beginning.

U.S. Wants India's Cooperation, While Offending Indian Scientific Community

In a diplomatic effort, the U.S. is attempting to get India to separate their military and civilian nuclear programs--to reduce the possibility of the diversion of U.S. made technology from energy programs to weapons programs.

Days before he leaves for South Asia, President Bush publicly urged India yesterday to separate its civilian and military nuclear programs to pave the way for a new strategic alliance between Washington and New Delhi.

Bush agreed in July to give India access, for the first time, to civilian nuclear assistance, breaking with decades of U.S. nuclear policies. For the Bush administration, the deal was part of a long-term Asian strategy designed to accelerate India's rise as a global power and as a counterweight to China. The White House had hoped to finalize the accord next week when Bush becomes the first U.S. president to visit India and Pakistan since the two South Asian rivals conducted nuclear tests in 1998...

U.S. law forbids exporting nuclear materials to sites or facilities that are used for bombmaking. For Congress, the military-civilian separation plan is seen as a key indicator of whether New Delhi intends to use the deal to help its weapons production, or its energy sector.

The Indian military is not so keen about the U.S. idea:

In December, Indian negotiators surprised their U.S. colleagues when they proposed keeping a majority of the facilities under military control. In particular, the Indians suggested to senior U.S. officials, including Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns, the chief negotiator, that they wanted military control over fast-breeder reactors, at least until 2010. The reactors are in the experimental phase but will be able to produce enormous quantities of weapons-grade plutonium when fully operational...

At a meeting last week of nuclear weapons experts, David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, suggested that India's plans for the breeder reactor were evidence of "a greedy effort to try to have as much of a plutonium production capability for nuclear weapons as possible."

"India has to choose," Albright said. "Does it want nuclear weapons capabilities, or does it want international cooperation?"

Speaking of international cooperation, the U.S. has infuriated the Indian scientific community by denying one of their top chemists a visa for a routine visit to the United States.

A decision two weeks ago by a U.S. consulate in India to refuse a visa to a prominent Indian scientist has triggered heated protests in that country and set off a major diplomatic flap on the eve of President Bush's first visit to India.

The incident has also caused embarrassment at the highest reaches of the American scientific establishment, which has worked to get the State Department to issue a visa to Goverdhan Mehta, who said the U.S. consulate in the south Indian city of Chennai told him that his expertise in chemistry was deemed a threat...

Mehta's case has especially angered Indians because he was a director of the Indian Institute of Science and is a science adviser to India's prime minister. He has visited the United States "dozens of times," he said, and the University of Florida in Gainesville had invited him to lecture at an international conference.

Are we worried now about Hindu terrorism?

Or does the mere thought of a swarthy man educated in a strategic discipline send shivers up the collective back of the national security state?

Update 2-24: The U.S. Has Approved The Visa For Mehta.

State Department officials said yesterday that the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi has granted a visa to a prominent Indian scientist who said he was accused of deception and potential links to chemical weapons production when he applied to a U.S. consulate.

Goverdhan Mehta said he was told two weeks ago that his visa had been "refused" and that his expertise in chemistry could be a threat to U.S. national security. The case caused a furor in India just days before a visit by President Bush next week that is aimed at building warmer ties between the world's two largest democracies.

Reached at his home, however, Mehta said that he had already canceled his travel plans and declined a visiting professorship at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He said the issuance of a visa will not change his decision.

Rice Facialed By Egyptian

The U.S. diplomatic effort to deny the fruits of democratic victory to Hamas was met yesterday by a public snub from Egypt right to the face of Secretary of State Rice.

Egypt does not provide much aid to the Palestinians but has broad influence in the Arab world on Israeli-Palestinian issues, so the rebuff could hamper Rice's efforts to build a united front against the rise of Hamas. On Wednesday, Rice flies to Saudi Arabia, and she will address officials from Arab countries in the Persian Gulf region on Thursday in the United Arab Emirates.

The lengthy news conference with Aboul Gheit, filled with banter and cross talk by the two diplomats, underscored the daunting and at times contradictory challenge Rice faces as she tries to fashion an international response to Hamas's unexpected victory in Palestinian legislative elections. In effect, she urged pressure on the victor of an election she has hailed as fair and transparent, while seeking the support of an autocratic government that she has demanded must become more free.

That sentence--a beauty--starkly shows the moral relativism that is displayed to the world under the name of U.S. foreign policy.

Rice, who is to meet Mubarak on Wednesday, also met for 45 minutes with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who has wide connections in Hamas and the Palestinian world. She will also meet with Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief and has brought to her meetings the Treasury Department's top official on terrorist financing, Undersecretary Stuart Levey.

At the news conference, Aboul Gheit appeared to draw a distinction between the emerging Hamas-led cabinet and the Palestinian Authority presidency held by Mahmoud Abbas, suggesting that aid could continue indefinitely because Abbas wants to negotiate peace with Israel. "It is called the authority," he said. "And we support the authority," adding that Abbas "is the head of the authority, and his powers are still there."

The Egyptians may have devised a winning formula here. Making such a distinction would allow foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority under the pretext of supporting the presidency, not the Hamas-led cabinet.

The U.S. doubtlessly won't bite on this, but the Europeans might want to give it a try.

Update: The Saudis have joined the anti-Condi chorus:

"We wish not to link the international aid to the Palestinian people to considerations other than their dire humanitarian needs," the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met one-on-one for nearly 2 1/2 hours with King Abdullah.

Saud's statement put the kingdom at odds with the U.S. push to isolate the Palestinians, except for the provision of humanitarian aid. It came one day after Egyptian officials also told Rice that Islamic groups needed to be given time to evolve and accept Israel.

DOD Still "Paying For Play"

Planted "news" about the successful U.S. military campaign is still being provided to newspapers and other media in Iraq. I never expected us to stop the activity, but if you are gonna announce that you have stopped, you might want to actually stop.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that he was mistaken when he stated last week that the U.S. military had stopped paying Iraqi newspapers to publish pro-American articles.

Rumsfeld had said in a television interview Friday that the U.S. military had ceased paying to place positive stories in Iraqi media after criticism in Congress and press. Rumsfeld made similar comments the same day to the Council on Foreign Relations.

"I just misstated the facts," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing yesterday.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said the military command in Iraq was still paying to plant positive stories, even as U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Scott R. Van Buskirk investigates the practice.

On "The Charlie Rose Show," aired by PBS, Rumsfeld said: "The press got it, then the Congress starts calling for hearings and fussing about this and complaining about that, as though it was something terrible that happened.

"It wasn't anything terrible that happened. When we heard about it, we said, 'Gee, that's not what we ought to be doing.' And we told the people down there, and they -- they told the contractor who did it -- it wasn't a military person -- and they stopped doing that," Rumsfeld added in the interview.

Rumsfeld should have simply kept his mouth shut about the program. His logorrhea, awash with quaint-isms, usually charms the press, but he sometimes doesn't know when to quit.

Anti-Iran Propaganda Effort Update

Our daily fix of news on the anti-Iran information operation requires an especially large shovel to cope with today's load.

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq accused Iran on Monday of providing weapons, training and support to Iraqi militia and insurgent groups responsible for the country's continuing violence and instability.

At a news conference, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad criticized what he called Iran's "negative role" in Iraqi affairs, saying the country's diplomatic relationship with its neighbor was tainted by a policy "to work with militias, to work with extremist groups, to provide training and weapons." He added that there was evidence the Iranians provided "indirect help" to Sunni Arab insurgents who attack U.S. and Iraqi government troops.

The Iranian aid was part of a "comprehensive strategy" by a "player seeking regional preeminence," he said.

If that statement isn't the textbook definition of "the pot calling the kettle black" I don't know what is.

Khalilzad's remarks were unusually blunt. "I have said to Iraqis that we do not seek to impose our differences with Iran on them," Khalilzad said. "But we do not want Iranian interference in Iraq."

Does Khalilzad really expect that Iraq's next door neighbor, and fellow Shiites, will not want to have a say in what happens? Especially after fighting the bloody Iran/Iraq war through most of the 1980's?

He is not stupid. He is just "our man in Baghdad."

The info-op continues this morning on the op/ed page of the Washington Post, where an American Euro-weenie calls for Israel to be admitted to NATO to help protect them from the freedom-hatin' Iranians.

But the country most threatened by a future Iranian nuclear capability is, of course, Israel. It would be a mistake to dismiss Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rantings about Israel as mere posturing or a bluff. One lesson from Sept. 11 is that we should not limit our strategic imagination or underestimate our enemies in the Middle East. When someone says he wants to wipe you off the map, he might just might mean it. If, then, the West decides that a military strike to deny Iran the nuclear option is too risky and instead opts for a policy of deterrence and long-term peaceful regime change, it must also take steps to ensure Israel's protection for that interim period.

Blah, blah, blah.

Any time someone brings up Sept. 11, you can basically ignore the rest of the person's argument.

Today's Iran hat trick concludes with a shot from the Boston Globe, quoting various "experts" on the desirability of imposing travel sanctions, and other measures, upon the Iranian leadership.

Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank, said such limited measures are attractive because they could find broad support on the Security Council, where Russia and China -- who have veto powers in the body -- have been reluctant to impose widespread economic embargoes.

''For specific sanctions -- freezing bank accounts of senior leaders, stopping international air carriers from serving Tehran -- I think we can gain consensus," Rubin wrote in an e-mail response to questions from the Globe. ''After all, China doesn't have flights [to Iran], so it's a nonissue for them."...

While countries debate possible sanctions, international pressure has already raised the cost of doing business with Tehran.

Zurich's UBS bank announced in January that it has asked its clients living in Iran to close their accounts because it was becoming too expensive to vouch for the origin of the funds.

Here's a brilliant idea:

If travel and banking sanctions are enacted and fail to change Iran's behavior, (a European diplomat) said, punishment could escalate over time to such tougher actions as a ban on investment in Iran's oil industry or even an oil embargo, which would raise gasoline prices worldwide.

That'll show 'em.

Bush and Cheney's friends in the oil business won't be shedding any tears, though.

Intelligence Agencies Reclassifying Old Papers at National Archives

In what can be described as charitably as possible as trying to put the genie back in the bottle:

(I)ntelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.

The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassified pages began in 1999, when the Central Intelligence Agency and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Bill Clinton. It accelerated after the Bush administration took office and especially after the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to archives records.

Lots of this stuff is ancient:

But because the reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy — governed by a still-classified memorandum that prohibits the National Archives even from saying which agencies are involved — it continued virtually without outside notice until December. That was when an intelligence historian, Matthew M. Aid, noticed that dozens of documents he had copied years ago had been withdrawn from the archives' open shelves.

Mr. Aid was struck by what seemed to him the innocuous contents of the documents — mostly decades-old State Department reports from the Korean War and the early cold war. He found that eight reclassified documents had been previously published in the State Department's history series, "Foreign Relations of the United States."

"The stuff they pulled should never have been removed," he said. "Some of it is mundane, and some of it is outright ridiculous."...

Among the 50 withdrawn documents that Mr. Aid found in his own files is a 1948 memorandum on a C.I.A. scheme to float balloons over countries behind the Iron Curtain and drop propaganda leaflets. It was reclassified in 2001 even though it had been published by the State Department in 1996.

Another historian, William Burr, found a dozen documents he had copied years ago whose reclassification he considers "silly," including a 1962 telegram from George F. Kennan, then ambassador to Yugoslavia, containing an English translation of a Belgrade newspaper article on China's nuclear weapons program.

Under existing guidelines, government documents are supposed to be declassified after 25 years unless there is particular reason to keep them secret. While some of the choices made by the security reviewers at the archives are baffling, others seem guided by an old bureaucratic reflex: to cover up embarrassments, even if they occurred a half-century ago.

One reclassified document in Mr. Aid's files, for instance, gives the C.I.A.'s assessment on Oct. 12, 1950, that Chinese intervention in the Korean War was "not probable in 1950." Just two weeks later, on Oct. 27, some 300,000 Chinese troops crossed into Korea.

I find it impossible to imagine that the CIA's Security Operations Center, the office that investigates security violations, would have had any objection at this late date to having those fossilized documents in the open at the National Archives.

It seems to be more typical of the ridiculous overclassification of documents by the classification officers who clog the U.S. government payroll these days.

Robert Parry On The Failure of the Mainstream Media

Robert Parry has a fine piece up at Consortium News on one of my pet peeves, the obsequious approach taken by the media towards the government, and the Bush administration in particular.

The gravest indictment of the American news media is that George W. Bush has gutted the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Charter – yet this extraordinary story does not lead the nation'’s newspapers and the evening news every day.

Nor does the press corps tie Bush'’s remarkable abrogation of both U.S. and international law together in any coherent way for the American people. At best, disparate elements of Bush'’s authoritarian powers are dealt with individually as if they are not part of some larger, more frightening whole.

What'’s even odder is that the facts of this historic power grab are no longer in serious dispute. The Bush administration virtually spelled out its grandiose vision of Bush'’s powers during the debates over such issues as Jose Padilla's detention, Samuel Alito'’s Supreme Court nomination and the disclosure of warrantless wiretaps.

Parry takes on the usual suspects, including Thomas Friedman, Richard Cohen and David Ignatius for their advocacy editorials.

The pundits also have kept spotting glimmers of hope in the Middle East, even as the U.S. position has grown grimmer and grimmer. A year ago, these commentators were hailing Bush for unleashing the cleansing winds of democracy across the Middle East.

But the pundits missed the fact that many of those regional developments were unrelated to Bush'’s invasion of Iraq. They also didn'’t catch the possibility that elections might not bring the blessings of peace and moderation that Bush promised.

The "tipping point" meme gets critical attention.

After those Iraqi elections and several other regional developments, Friedman was perceiving historical "tipping points" that foreshadowed "incredible," positive changes in the Middle East. [NYT, Feb. 27, 2005]

To Friedman, this expected transformation of the Arab world would also be a personal vindication for his endorsement of the bloody Iraq War, which has now killed nearly 2,300 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis.

Parry wonders why media tools never have to suffer the consequences of their bad calls. Though he has too much class to connect the dots for the reader, I must point out that Robert Parry did have to suffer professionally for his reporting.

Parry grew critical of the national security state years ago, and was jettisoned by the mainstream media.

The Flight 93 Shoot Down

Vice-President Dick Cheney, who admitted having issued a "shoot-down" order for any hijacked planes coming toward the nation's capital on the morning of September 11, 2001, has long claimed that he was merely relaying the express authorization given to him by President Bush.

The new issue of Newsweek, online this morning, has a revealing bit of information buried six pages into a story about Cheney.

We now know why the government concocted the "lets roll" myth of the brave passengers forcing down Flight 93 over Pennsylvania.

People who were with the Vice-President on that morning say that, despite Cheney's testimony to the contrary to the 9-11 commission, he never got the required okay from President Bush to shoot down airliners.

Around 9:35 on the morning of 9/11, Cheney was lifted off his feet by the Secret Service and hustled into the White House bunker. Cheney testified to the 9/11 Commission that he spoke with President Bush before giving an order to shoot down a hijacked civilian airliner that appeared headed toward Washington. (The plane was United Flight 93, which crashed in a Pennsylvania field after a brave revolt by the passengers.)[sic] But a source close to the commission, who declined to be identified revealing sensitive information, says that none of the staffers who worked on this aspect of the investigation believed Cheney's version of events.

A draft of the report conveyed their skepticism. But when top White House officials, including chief of staff Andy Card and the then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, reviewed the draft, they became extremely agitated. After a prolonged battle, the report was toned down. The factual narrative, closely read, offers no evidence that Cheney sought initial authorization from the president. The point is not a small one. Legally, Cheney was required to get permission from his commander in chief, who was traveling (but reachable) at the time. If the public ever found out that Cheney gave the order on his own, it would have strongly fed the view that he was the real power behind the throne.

It was worse than that, Newsweek is covering for the administration's real problem. It was not concern about "the real power behind the throne" that bothered the White House.

The big problem was that an Air National Guard unit shot down Flight 93 without the statutorily required authorization from the President. This is a scandal of monumental proportion.

This helps to explain why Bush and Cheney initially refused to establish a 9-11 commission, and when pressured to do so, why they insisted upon testifying together and without swearing an oath.

It also explains Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's "slip of the tongue" when he referred to "the people who shot down Flight 93 over Pennsylvania."

Rumsfeld Hearts Info-Ops

In "the lady doth protest too much, methinks" department we find Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld whining about mainstream media coverage of defense issues and calling for better DOD information operations.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday called for the military and other government agencies to mount a far more aggressive, swift and nontraditional information campaign to counter the messages of extremist and terrorist groups in the world media.

Rumsfeld criticized the absence of a "strategic communications framework" for fighting terrorism. He also lashed out at the U.S. media, which he blamed for effectively halting recent U.S. military initiatives in the information realm -- such as paying to place articles in Iraqi newspapers -- through an "explosion of critical press stories."

The speech follows a top-level review of Pentagon strategy and resources released earlier this month that concluded: "Victory in the long war ultimately depends on strategic communication." The Quadrennial Defense Review called for closing gaps in U.S. capabilities in what the Pentagon describes as "information operations," an area being reorganized in the Pentagon, according to current and former defense officials...

He also called for creating 24-hour media operations centers and "multifaceted media campaigns" using the Internet, blogs and satellite television that "will result in much less reliance on the traditional print press."

As if the "traditional print press" wasn't already fully compromised by their obsequious attitude towards power. The electronic corporate media is even closer, ask "Bomb" Woodruff.

An info-op that is proceeding exactly as planned, the "cartoon controversy", continues to be a big draw crowd-wise on the Muslim "street."

Protests sparked by newspaper cartoons of the prophet Muhammad continued across (Pakistan) Friday, as a cleric announced a $1 million bounty for the killing of any of the Danish cartoonists responsible for the caricatures and Denmark temporarily closed its embassy.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in the capital, Islamabad, after midday prayers. Rallying at a downtown intersection, some chanted, "Bush is a dog!" and others carried banners reading, "Death sentence for the cartoonists." Police in riot gear watched from the sidelines. Similar demonstrations were reported in other cities across the country...

In the conservative northwestern city of Peshawar, Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi announced after Friday prayers at the historic Mohabat Khan mosque that the mosque and an affiliated religious school would give $25,000 and a car to anyone who killed one of the artists responsible for the cartoons, news agencies reported from the city.

The cleric also said a local jewelers' association had offered a $1 million bounty.

"If the West can place a bounty on Osama bin Laden" and his top deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, "we can also announce a reward for killing the man who has caused this sacrilege of the holy prophet," Qureshi told the Reuters news agency...

Political leaders from moderate as well as hard-line religious parties have vowed to continue the demonstrations, which have expanded beyond the cartoon controversy into a broader attack on Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, and his Western backers, especially the United States.

Religious parties have announced plans for a large rally in the capital on Sunday as part of a series of demonstrations intended to peak when President Bush arrives on a visit in early March.

"They are pursuing a larger agenda against this regime under the cover of the cartoons," said Hasan Rizvi, a political analyst and author. "They want a confrontation now."

They aren't the only ones who "want a confrontation now."

"And finally", as Elizabeth Vargas nightly intones, a related sideshow of the anti-Muslim info-op--the videotaped beatings of the young Iraqi demonstrators by British troops in southern Iraq--is paying it's dividends:

Iran's foreign minister demanded the immediate withdrawal of British forces in Basra, saying that they had destabilized the southern Iraqi city near the Iranian border.

Basra is about 22 miles from a southern Iranian province that witnessed riots and bombings last year allegedly connected to Iran's Arab minority. Iran has blamed British intelligence for some of the bombings, a charge that Britain denies.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran demands an immediate withdrawal of British forces from Basra," Mottaki told reporters after talks with his Lebanese counterpart.

Mottaki's allegations seemed to be spurred by the recent publicity given to a video of what appeared to be British soldiers assaulting Iraqi boys after a street confrontation in January 2004 in the southern Iraqi city of Amarah, about 100 miles north of Basra. The British Army has launched an investigation and arrested two people.

And to think, Rumsfeld would like you to believe that the United States doesn't do information operations well.

Update: Indonesian Muslims are reacting according to plan.

Hundreds of Muslims protesting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad tried to storm the U.S. Embassy on Sunday, smashing the windows of a guard post but failing to push through the gates. Several people were injured.

Roberts Wants To Broaden Leak Law

The odious Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) is thinking about broadening the laws against leaks of classified information to reporters.

The chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said yesterday that he may add language to the fiscal 2007 intelligence authorization bill to criminalize the leaking of a wider range of classified information than is now covered by law. He indicated the new measure would be similar to legislation vetoed by President Bill Clinton more than five years ago.

The leak of the NSA warrantless wiretap program to the New York Times, and the disclosure of the CIA secret prisons in Eastern Europe to the Washington Post, must really exasperate the old Republican codger.

Recalling the legislation Clinton vetoed, Roberts said, "Whether it's a reporter or just any individual or somebody by the water cooler who's upset or somebody who has just a very strong difference of opinion knowingly reveals classified information, that would be a felony."Since the Clinton veto, he added, "I think times have changed, and we may be introducing that in the intelligence authorization bill."...

Clinton vetoed a measure by Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) that would have broadened the law that criminalizes release of "national defense information."

Civil liberties groups and news organizations, which argued that the legislation would chill their ability to get information from officials, lobbied for the veto, which Clinton exercised in 2000.

In 2002, with George W. Bush in the White House, Shelby reintroduced his language, but then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said that "rigorous investigation" and enforcement of existing laws -- not new legislation -- were the best way to fight leaks.

The recent AIPAC case appears to be part of the impetus for the new anti-leak push.

A lawyer familiar with the AIPAC case said administration officials "want this case as a precedent so they can have it in their arsenal" and added: "This as a weapon that can be turned against the media."

The media in this country is already subservient to a very large degree to the whims of the government, despite wing-nut claims to the contrary.

Leaks exposing egregious wrongdoing and blatant illegalities are the only way that the few people who still care about the United States can keep an eye upon the malefactors who have hijacked the nation.

The intentional attempts via legislation to dry up of this trickle of information means that the lawmakers who try to do this are co-conspirators in the crimes of the Bush administration.

Administration Pressure On Senate Succeeds

The attempts by the architects of the extra-legal NSA warrantless eavesdropping program to forestall legal and political liability appears to be working.

The Bush administration helped derail a Senate bid to investigate a warrantless eavesdropping program yesterday after signaling it would reject Congress's request to have former attorney general John D. Ashcroft and other officials testify about the program's legality. The actions underscored a dramatic and possibly permanent drop in momentum for a congressional inquiry, which had seemed likely two months ago...

"It is more than apparent to me that the White House has applied heavy pressure in recent days, in recent weeks, to prevent the committee from doing its job," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the intelligence committee, said after the panel voted along party lines not to consider his motion for an investigation.

There was one setback, however, to the administration's efforts to keep tight wraps on the NSA operation. Yesterday, a federal judge ordered the Justice Department to turn over its internal documents and legal opinions about the program within 20 days -- or explain its reasons for refusing.

The explanation from the administration will doubtlessly be "tough shit."

Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) told reporters: "The administration is now committed to legislation and has agreed to brief more intelligence committee members on the nature of the surveillance program. The details of this agreement will take some time to work out."

Democrats said the administration's overture is so vague that it amounts to nothing, calling it a stalling tactic to give Republican lawmakers political cover for rejecting a full inquiry. "For the past three years, the Senate intelligence committee has avoided carrying out its oversight of our nation's intelligence programs whenever the White House becomes uncomfortable with the questions being asked," Rockefeller told reporters. "The very independence of this committee is called into question."

The House of representatives wants to look like it is exercising its constitutional oversight as well:

In the House, the intelligence committee will ask administration officials to explain the NSA program and its legal justifications in closed hearings over the next few months, said Wilson, one of its subcommittee chairmen.

The committee "has begun a process to thoroughly review this program and the FISA law" through a series of yet-to-be-scheduled briefings and exchanges of letters that will unfold as part of the panel's "regular order," Wilson said in an interview in her office. "This is the way we do oversight," she said, adding that she has discussed the matter with the committee chairman, Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.).

Wilson indicated that the House hearings will not have the sharply investigative tone that Rockefeller sought in his motion, which would have required the administration to detail its reasons and rationale for starting the surveillance program in late 2001.

On another front in the increasingly futile attempt to call the administration to account for the NSA wiretap scheme, perhaps a glimmer of hope:

In a victory for three privacy advocacy groups seeking Justice Department records about the program, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. ruled yesterday that the department cannot decide on its own what documents it will provide, because news reports in December revealing the program's existence have created a substantial public dialogue about presidential powers and individual privacy rights. Kennedy rejected Justice's argument that, because so much of the surveillance program involves classified information, the agency alone can determine when it is feasible to review and possibly release documents...

The American Civil Liberties Union, which had requested the records under the Freedom of Information Act along with the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the National Security Archive Fund, cheered the ruling.

Kennedy agreed with the three groups that the Justice Department's decision to set its own time frame "would give the agency unchecked power to drag its feet and 'pay lip service' " to the law requiring the release of public information.

The Bush administration knows full well that this stalling tactic will dilute the already pathologically short attention span of the American public.

The spying controversy will soon become not such a big deal.

The people will have been lulled back to sleep, and the theft of the nation's riches (both material and other) can continue as per plan.

Justice Dept. Role in NSA Program Investigated

An investigation being portrayed as "routine" is being conducted by the Justice Department into it's own role in the extra-legal NSA warrantless eavesdropping program.

We again venture into the "fox investigating what happened to the chickens in the henhouse" labyrinth with this action.

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility has opened an internal investigation into the department's role in approving the Bush administration's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, officials said yesterday...

In a letter to Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey (D-N.Y.), Office of Professional Responsibility counsel H. Marshall Jarrett said that his office has "initiated an investigation" into the Justice Department's role in the NSA surveillance program. The letter, dated Feb. 2 but not received by Hinchey until yesterday, indicates that the probe will include "whether such activities are permissible under existing law."

But Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said the inquiry will be more limited: "They will not be making a determination on the lawfulness of the NSA program but rather will determine whether the department lawyers complied with their professional obligations in connection with that program."

Scolinos also said that "OPR routinely looks into issues of this kind."

In addition, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales signaled in an interview with The Washington Post yesterday that the administration will sharply limit the testimony of former attorney general John D. Ashcroft and former deputy attorney general James B. Comey, both of whom have been asked to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the program.

"Clearly, there are privilege issues that have to be considered," Gonzales said.

Well, the White House betrayed no concern about "privilege issues" when they sent Gonzales himself to testify last week to the Judiciary Committee.

Maybe they knew that Gonzales would keep to the script.

In response to the comments last night, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said he has asked Gonzales for permission to call Ashcroft and Comey to testify but has not received an answer.

Meanwhile, Gonzales continues to prove why he was such a good choice to be this administration's AG:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales unveiled a series of initiatives yesterday aimed at combating child exploitation, housing discrimination and gang violence, saying that the Justice Department's continued focus on preventing terrorism should not detract from other pressing problems.

He's our man, dealing squarely with all the controversial issues.

"Pressing" too.

Intelligence Committee Investigation Unlikely

The Bush administration may have succeeded in derailing a congressional investigation into the extra-legal NSA warrantless eavesdropping program.

The "let's go to the public and con them about the illegal program" strategy appears to have worked. Several lawmakers have switched their public position on the idea of holding an investigation.

The Senate intelligence committee is scheduled to vote tomorrow on a Democratic-sponsored motion to start an inquiry into the recently revealed program in which the National Security Agency eavesdrops on an undisclosed number of phone calls and e-mails involving U.S. residents without obtaining warrants from a secret court. Two committee Democrats said the panel -- made up of eight Republicans and seven Democrats -- was clearly leaning in favor of the motion last week but now is closely divided and possibly inclined against it.

They attributed the shift to last week's closed briefings given by top administration officials to the full House and Senate intelligence committees, and to private appeals to wavering GOP senators by officials, including Vice President Cheney. "It's been a full-court press," said a top Senate Republican aide who asked to speak only on background -- as did several others for this story -- because of the classified nature of the intelligence committees' work.

The "strength of the information in the briefing changed Senators minds" meme is false, it was the pressure from the fearful public that is working it's magic. That, and the not-too-subtle pressure from the White House upon the lawmakers themselves.

The White House characterized last week's closed-door briefings to the full committees as a significant concession and a sign of the administration's respect for Congress and its oversight responsibilities. Many Democrats dismissed the briefings as virtually useless, but senators said yesterday they appear to have played a big role in slowing momentum for an inquiry.

John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the Senate intelligence committee's vice chairman, has drafted a motion calling for a wide-ranging inquiry into the surveillance program, according to congressional sources who have seen it. Rockefeller declined to be interviewed yesterday.

Sources close to Rockefeller say he is frustrated by what he sees as heavy-handed White House efforts to dissuade Republicans from supporting his measure. They noted that Cheney conducted a Republicans-only meeting on intelligence matters in the Capitol yesterday.

Senate intelligence committee member Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) said in an interview that he supports the NSA program and would oppose a congressional investigation. He said he is drafting legislation that would "specifically authorize this program" by excluding it from the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which established a secret court to consider government requests for wiretap warrants in anti-terrorist investigations.

The high stakes game for the future of the Bush presidency is entering a crucial point. Cheney's fuck-up is not helping things.

All that is needed now is a knowledgeable whistle-blower or two to appear and the whole precarious house of cards could fall down.

Or to put it another way, everything moves faster just before it swirls down the crapper.

NCTC Database Lists 325,000 People

Soon everybody will be on the list.

The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) maintains a central repository of 325,000 names of international terrorism suspects or people who allegedly aid them, a number that has more than quadrupled since the fall of 2003, according to counterterrorism officials...

U.S. citizens make up "only a very, very small fraction" of that number, said an administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of his agency's policies. "The vast majority are non-U.S. persons and do not live in the U.S.," he added. An NCTC official refused to say how many on the list -- put together from reports supplied by the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency (NSA) and other agencies -- are U.S. citizens.

How are we supposed to know "only a very, very small fraction" of that number are Americans? The administration has been deceptive about the measures taken in the "war on terror" before, we have benefit-of-the-doubt issues here.

Names from the NCTC list are provided to the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center (TSC), which in turn provides names for watch lists maintained by the Transportation Security Administration and other agencies.

Civil liberties advocates and privacy experts said they were troubled by the size of the NCTC database, and they said it further heightens their concerns that such government terrorism lists include the names of large numbers of innocent people. Timothy Sparapani, legislative counsel for privacy rights at the American Civil Liberties Union, called the numbers "shocking but, unfortunately, not surprising."...

Sparapani said, "If we have over 300,000 known terrorists who want to do this country harm, we've got a much bigger problem than deciding which names go on which list. But I highly doubt that is the case."

Most national security activities are (believe it or not) at the whim of the offices of legal counsel at each agency. That's why nothing is done without some kind of (occasionally spurious) legal justification, or even better, a Directive.

Terrorism-related names and other data are sent to the NCTC under standards set by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 6, signed by President Bush in September 2003, according to a senior NCTC official. The directive calls upon agencies to supply data only about people who are "known or appropriately suspected to be . . . engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism."...

Analysts at the NCTC review all incoming names and can reject them if they do not have an apparent link to international terrorists, officials said. "That is not common, but it does happen," an NCTC official said.

George Orwell would easily recognize the current operational environment for citizens of the USA:

"If being placed on a list means in practice that you will be denied a visa, barred entry, put on the no-fly list, targeted for pretextual prosecutions, etc., then the sweep of the list and the apparent absence of any way to clear oneself certainly raises problems," said David D. Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who has been sharply critical of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies.

The names will keep piling up because, unless you are a Senator or other powerful person, no security official will be willing to put his or her career on the line to decide that someone who was considered "suspicious" enough to be placed on a "terrorist" list is not actually dangerous.

PATRIOT Act Author Slithers Back Into Public Eye

The author of the USA PATRIOT Act, the odious Viet Dinh, is supporting the defendents in a notorious recent spy case.

The former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy helped write a memorandum of law calling for dismissal of Espionage Act charges against two pro-Israel lobbyists, arguing that, in receiving leaked classified information and relaying it to others, they were doing what reporters, think-tank experts and congressional staffers "do perhaps hundreds of times every day."

Viet D. Dinh, who helped draft the USA Patriot Act after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has joined with lawyers defending Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), who last year became the first non-U.S. government employees to be indicted for allegedly violating provisions of the Espionage Act.

"Never has a lobbyist, reporter, or any other non-government employee been charged . . . for receiving oral information the government alleges to be national defense material as part of that person's normal First Amendment protected activities," the defense memorandum states.

This asshole is really pushing it. The Espionage Act expressly allows for charging someone with disclosure of classified information with or without anything committed to paper.

The defense memorandum was filed under seal in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Jan. 19 and, according to Rosen's attorney, Abbe D. Lowell, was unsealed last Thursday at the request of the defense...

Lowell said that his client and Weissman "have been indicted as felons for doing far less than for what reporters have been awarded Pulitzer Prizes." In the memorandum, reference is made to Washington Post reporter Dana Priest's articles on CIA secret prisons for alleged terrorists, for which a leak investigation is underway. FBI agents are also investigating the leak to the New York Times about the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program.

I don't object to a lawyer (Lowell) doing anything in his power to get his client off, but implicitly comparing the AIPAC case to the Pulitzer-winning Pentagon Papers case or Iran-Contra, is a stretch.

Interesting timing. The AIPAC case allegedly involved information about the capabilities and intentions of Iran.

I bet that the administration wishes it still had such a convenient portal available in the current propaganda effort.

Carlyle Group In The Money Again

The privately held Carlyle Group has an uncanny knack for making good investments.

When British government officials decided to spin off the country's secret Ministry of Defense lab, their aim was to make the resulting company, Qinetiq PLC, into a lean-and-mean player in the commercial technology world.

But that was before District-based investment firm Carlyle Group hitched Qinetiq's wagon to the exploding U.S. defense market two years ago, turning a group of former British civil servants into the latest defense technology darling. Qinetiq went public on Friday in Britain, and the initial results indicate that Carlyle earned more than half a billion dollars from an initial investment of about $73 million, an eightfold return in three years that further cements its reputation as a savvy trader in the defense world...

Carlyle has deep roots in the defense sector, dating to the days when former president George H.W. Bush, former British prime minister John Major and former U.S. defense secretary Frank Carlucci held senior advisory or executive positions. But in recent years, Carlyle has been mostly selling its defense assets and expanding into telecommunications, media, real estate and, with the recent purchase of Dunkin' Donuts Inc., the consumer retail trade...

Until 2001, Qinetiq was part of the Ministry of Defense, in essence the main research laboratory for Britain's defense establishment. The Qs in its name are a cheeky reference to the fictional character who created high-tech and often lethal spy gadgets for James Bond. Agency scientists were behind inventions as varied as the liquid crystal display and the vertical takeoff-and-landing gear on modern jet fighters. One of its chief specialties was radar technology...

More than 40 private equity firms initially bid for a minority stake in Qinetiq in an auction run by the Swiss banking firm UBS AG. Carlyle, according to public securities filings in Britain, made the most attractive financial offer for the smallest share of equity in the company: It paid $73 million for a one-third ownership stake in Qinetiq in January 2003, leaving the rest in the hands of the Ministry of Defense.

But, more significant, Carlyle secured a 51 percent voting interest in the company, giving it control.

What followed was a classic private equity growth story, one that the government contracting industry in Washington knows well.

Carlyle Managing Director Glenn A. Youngkin, who put together the Qinetiq deal and has sat on the company board since 2003, convinced Qinetiq's managers that the real opportunity was not in the private sector, but in the U.S. government market, where federal agencies were spending hundreds of billions on new technologies for homeland defense and high-tech warfare.

So Qinetiq went on a shopping spree, buying four U.S. companies in three years that do business with defense, intelligence and civilian government agencies here...

About $600 million of Qinetiq's $1.5 billion in 2005 revenue came from the U.S. defense market. Carlyle and Qinetiq executives say that the company's U.S. growth, and the growing profitability of its British and European operations, account for what has been a quick and large rise in Qinetiq's value -- from an estimated $870 million when Carlyle acquired its interest three years ago, to around $2.3 billion when shares began trading on Friday.

"The growth story for Qinetiq is a U.S. growth story," Knop said.

Nice.