Inadequate PR Effort Is The Problem, Says Pentagon

The "liberal" media in the U.S. is still not reporting all the good news from Iraq.

That's the way the Pentagon sees things.

The Pentagon is buttressing its public relations staff and starting an operation akin to a political campaign war room amid intensifying criticism over the Iraq war.

The reorganization, spearheaded by Dorrance Smith, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, will help the department "set the record straight" and provide accurate, timely information, Pentagon press secretary Eric Ruff said yesterday.

Smith said in a memo that new teams of people will "develop messages" for the 24-hour news cycle and focus more resources on newer media, such as blogs.

Also included will be new workers to book civilian and military guests on television and radio shows.

Ruff denied that the effort was set up to respond to eroding public support for the war.

The president just announced that we are winning the war, dammit.

The public needs to do their patriotic duty and -- against all evidence -- believe him.

An "October (or November) Surprise" For Moqtada al-Sadr?

Yesterday I dismissed a pre-election "October Surprise" attack by the U.S. upon the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Shortly thereafter, a leading member of my network of national security experts posited a much more likely scenario for the kind of last minute attention-grabbing coup de grâce that might be expected from the Bush administration in the final days before the midterm elections.

It is no secret that the U.S. in conducting security operations in Sadr City -- the infamous Shiite-controlled Baghdad slum.

The television networks and the major print media would make good use of the timely (or untimely, depending on your outlook) killing of one of America's main bogeymen.

Nominated for your consideration: Moqtada al-Sadr.

Since the American people had no problem conflating Saddam Hussein with Osama bin Laden, many people will probably assume that we got the right guy this time.

Heck, they both have beards. Looks like a "slam dunk", PR wise.

Stay tuned.

Russia Strays From The Iran Sanctions Regime (Again)

Russia is angry with the United States for cracking down on two of their companies, and is creating problems with U.S. efforts towards an aggressive sanctions regime against Iran.

With no breakthrough in sight, France, Britain and Germany presented the United States, Russia and China this week with a draft resolution that would ban trade related to Iran's nuclear and ballistic-missile programs but would allow Russia to continue to support the construction of an Iranian nuclear facility at Bushehr.

French President Jacques Chirac told reporters during a visit to the city of Wuhan, China, that "appropriate, adapted, temporary and reversible sanctions will probably have to be found and imposed to show Iran that the whole of the international community does not understand its position," according to Reuters.

The Bush administration declined to endorse the European draft because of concerns that it is too weak to constrain Iran from pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program. But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has suggested that the European draft is too tough and does not conform with the six nations' aim of eliminating "the risks of sensitive technology falling into Iran's hands" while maintaining "vital channels of communication with Iran."

Russia is furious that the United States in July sanctioned two Russian military contractors -- the state arms exporter Rosoboronexport and aircraft manufacturer Sukhoi -- under the 2000 Iran Nonproliferation Act.

Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, has hinted that the U.S. failure to lift those sanctions could complicate the Iran negotiations. "If we work collectively, we need to work collectively," Churkin said recently. "If they want to go it on their own, you know legislating unilateral sanctions, they are welcome to tackle the problem alone."

On a related issue, people are getting jumpy about the timing of two U.S. carrier groups located in the vicinity of Iran. "October Surprise" skullduggery is being rumored.

I have been told that this is routine rotation of naval forces, that carrier groups operate on six month cycles, and that the Enterprise, et al (having been relieved by the Eisenhower), will be heading back to the U.S. for maintenance.

Head In The Clouds

From Al Kamen:

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had a little free time Wednesday for an interview with a Kern News/Talk Radio show.

"Welcome back. My name is Inga," the segment began. "This is 'The Inga Barks Show' broadcasting live from the White House. Thank you, Oreck Clean Homes Center, for sending me here and giving me the opportunity to meet Donald Rumsfeld . . ."

Barks asked Rumsfeld about all the negative press about Iraq.

The media is omnipresent, reporting the violence, he said. "I mean, I fly over Baghdad frequently, and it's where -- within 30 miles of Baghdad is about 90 percent of the violence in the country. And you fly over it and there are people waiting at gas stations, there are people out eating and doing things. The place is not in flames." Granted, "there are a lot of people being killed," he said.

Guess people on the ground simply lack the perspective.

U.S. Is Winning War In Iraq, Bush Declares

What a relief.

I had been under the impression that we are achieving something less than success in our endeavor over in Iraq.

Asked by a reporter whether the United States is winning the war, Bush offered a discussion of the nation's role in the broader struggle against Islamic extremists.

The reporter pressed for a direct answer. "Are we winning?"

"Absolutely, we're winning," Bush said. "Al-Qaeda is on the run. As a matter of fact, the mastermind, or the people who they think is the mastermind of the September the 11th attacks, is in our custody." He then circled back and seemed to make clear that he meant the United States is winning in Iraq specifically. "We're winning, and we will win unless we leave before the job is done. And the crucial battle right now is Iraq."

Asked afterward whether Bush meant that the United States is winning in Iraq specifically or in the fight against terrorism, White House press secretary Tony Snow said: "In Iraq."

Bush repeatedly said this summer that the United States was winning in Iraq. "You're winning this war," he told troops at Fort Bragg, N.C., on July 4. Three days later, at a fundraiser in Chicago, he said: "Americans are wondering whether or not we can win. And to those Americans, I say: Not only can we win, we are winning."

But in nearly four months since then, he has avoided repeating that assertion as violence has escalated to new heights, saying instead that the United States is winning the battle against terrorism or that he is confident that the nation will eventually win in Iraq. Asked at an Oct. 16 briefing whether the United States is winning in Iraq, Snow said: "I don't know. How do you define winning? . . . Let me put it this way: The president's made it obvious we're going to win."

That settles the matter, then.

"Success in Iraq is Possible and Can Be Achieved on a Realistic Timetable"

Khalilzad framed the Iraqi conflict as part of the struggle for security in the Middle East, which he called "the challenge of our age." He sought to rally flagging public support in the United States for the war and answer calls -- led by Democrats -- to set a timeline for American withdrawal.

"The recent sectarian bloodshed in Iraq causes many to question whether the United States and the Iraqis can succeed," Khalilzad said. "My message today is straightforward: Despite the difficult challenges we face, success in Iraq is possible and can be achieved on a realistic timetable."

But events inside and outside the Green Zone on Tuesday highlighted the stubbornness of the basic problems with which U.S. forces have struggled since the 2003 invasion: security and infrastructure. Killings by insurgents in the western province of Anbar helped push up the October death toll among American troops in Iraq by four service members to 91, the U.S. military said Tuesday, the highest monthly total for American forces in the country in 12 months.

And Casey and Khalilzad, the top U.S. military and civilian leaders in Iraq, were left for several minutes to deliver their remarks in darkness illuminated only by the battery-powered lights of TV camera crews. One of Baghdad's frequent power outages cut electricity to the converted parking garage that houses the U.S. military press center, briefly knocking the internationally broadcast conference off the air.

U.S. Slipping in Worldwide Measure of Press Freedom

The obsequious U.S. press didn't take full advantage of their freedom to dig into events when they had the opportunity. They won't even notice the change.

Some poor countries, such as Mauritania and Haiti, improved their record in a global press freedom index this year, while France, the United States and Japan slipped further down the scale of 168 countries rated, the group Reporters Without Borders said yesterday.

The news media advocacy organization said the most repressive countries in terms of journalistic freedom -- such as North Korea, Cuba, Burma and China -- made no advances at all.

The organization's fifth annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index tracks actions against news media through the end of September. The group noted its concern over the declining rankings of some Western democracies as well as the persistence of other countries in imposing harsh punishments on media that criticize political leaders. ...

Iran ranks 162nd, between Saudi Arabia and China. The report said conditions in Russia and Belarus have not improved. It said that Russia continued to steadily dismantle the independent media and that the recent slaying of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya "is a poor omen for the coming year."

Northern European countries top the index, with no reported censorship, threats, intimidation or physical reprisals, either by officials or the public, in Finland, Ireland, Iceland and the Netherlands. All of those countries were ranked in first place.

Serious threats against the artists and publishers of the Muhammad cartoons, which caricatured the prophet of Islam, caused Denmark, which was also in first place last year, to drop to 19th place. ...

Although it ranked 17th on the first list, published in 2002, the United States now stands at 53, having fallen nine places since last year.

"Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of 'national security' to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his 'war on terrorism,' " the group said.

"The zeal of federal courts which, unlike those in 33 U.S. states, refuse to recognize the media's right not to reveal its sources, even threatens journalists whose investigations have no connection at all with terrorism," the group said.

New State Dept. Poll Of Iraqi Opinion

There is a new State Department poll that measures the opinions of young Iraqis about various issues, including a U.S. withdrawal from their beleaguered country.

Majorities of Iraqi youth in Arab regions of the country believe security would improve and violence decrease if the U.S.-led forces left immediately, according to a State Department poll that provides a window into the grim warnings provided to policymakers.

The survey -- unclassified, but marked "For Official U.S. Government Use Only" -- also finds that Iraqi leaders may face particular difficulty recruiting young Sunni Arabs to join the stumbling security forces. Strong majorities of 15- to 29-year-olds in two Arab Sunni areas -- Mosul and Tikrit-Baquba -- would oppose joining the Iraqi army or police. ...

As Iraqi leaders try to diversify the ethnic and religious backgrounds of their security forces, the department's opinion analysis said that Arab Sunnis may be particularly hard to recruit.

In Arab Sunni areas, "confidence in the Iraqi army and police is low, and majorities oppose enlisting in either force," the analysis said. "Even recruitment in Arab Shia areas could present challenges as sizable numbers of local youth express support" for local militias, "thus clouding the issue of loyalty to national forces."

The analysis was headlined "Youth In Iraq's Arab Sunni Regions Not Eager to Enlist in National Army, Police" and highlighted views from those areas.

Yet in its assessment of the broader picture for Iraq, which includes Kurds and Arab Shiites, there were pieces of good news: A majority of young Iraqis would be willing to join the security forces or support a family member who did, the survey found.

On Thursday, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said a two-month old U.S.-Iraqi bid to quell the violence in the Iraqi capital did "not met our overall expectations." Attacks in Baghdad rose by 22 percent in the first three weeks of Ramadan.

"We are working very closely with the government of Iraq to determine how to best to refocus our efforts," he said.

The Bush administration quietly has released findings from previous surveys to highlight increases in political participation or other hopeful signs.

A State Department spokeswoman, Janelle Hironimus, said poll results are not for public release.

"Reliable and accurate assessments of international public opinion at any given point in time are important to the work of our embassies abroad and to policymakers in Washington," she said.

In this poll, nine out of 10 young Iraqi Arabs said they see the U.S. and allied forces in Iraq as an occupying force. The majority of Iraqi youth in Arab regions -- half in Baghdad and Kirkuk -- also believe the security situation and the violence levels would improve if the U.S. and its allies left immediately.

On the contrary, 70 percent of young Iraqi Kurds see the multinational forces as a liberating force.

This survey was circulated among government and congressional officials, part of a stream of near-daily updates from intelligence and defense agencies about the political and security situation in Iraq.

Jane "Battleaxe" Harmon Under Scrutiny

The Mearsheimer/Walt thesis in action:

Did a Democratic member of Congress improperly enlist the support of a major pro-Israel lobbying group to try to win a top committee assignment? That's the question at the heart of an ongoing investigation by the FBI and Justice Department prosecutors, who are examining whether Rep. Jane Harman of California and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) may have violated the law in a scheme to get Harman reappointed as the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, according to knowledgeable sources in and out of the U.S. government.

The sources tell TIME that the investigation by Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has simmered out of sight since about the middle of last year, is examining whether Harman and AIPAC arranged for wealthy supporters to lobby House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on Harman's behalf. Harman said Thursday in a voicemail message that any investigation of -- or allegation of improper conduct by -- her would be "irresponsible, laughable and scurrilous." On Friday, Washington GOP super lawyer Ted Olson left voicemail messages underscoring that Harman has no knowledge of any investigation. "Congresswoman Harman has asked me to follow up on calls you've had," Olson said. "She is not aware of any such investigation, does not believe that it is occurring, and wanted to make sure that you and your editors knew that as far as she knows, that's not true... . No one from the Justice Department has contacted her." It is not, however, a given that Harman would know that she is under investigation. In a follow-up phone call from California, Olson said Harman hired him this morning because she takes seriously the possibility of a media report about an investigation of her, even though she does not believe it herself.

The Silence of the Professionals

Daniel Ellsberg on the silence of intelligence and defense officials in the run-up to possible war with Iran:

Even as they heard the president lead the country to the opposite, false impressions, toward what these officials saw as a disastrous, unjustified war, they felt obliged to keep their silence.

Costly as their silence was to their country and its victims, I feel I know their mind-set. I had long prized my own identity as a keeper of the president's secrets. In 1964 it never even occurred to me to break the many secrecy agreements I had signed, in the Marines, at the Rand Corporation, in the Pentagon. Although I already knew the Vietnam War was a mistake and based on lies, my loyalties then were to the secretary of defense and the president (and to my promises of secrecy, on which my own career as a president's man depended). I'm not proud that it took me years of war to awaken to the higher loyalties owed by every government official to the rule of law, to our soldiers in harm's way, to our fellow citizens, and, explicitly, to the Constitution, which every one of us had sworn an oath "to support and uphold."

It took me that long to recognize that the secrecy agreements we had signed frequently conflicted with our oath to uphold the Constitution. That conflict arose almost daily, unnoticed by me or other officials, whenever we were secretly aware that the president or other executive officers were lying to or misleading Congress. In giving priority, in effect, to my promise of secrecy -- ignoring my constitutional obligation -- I was no worse or better than any of my Vietnam-era colleagues, or those who later saw the Iraq war approaching and failed to warn anyone outside the executive branch. ...

We face today a crisis similar to those of 1964 and 2002, a crisis hidden once again from the public and most of Congress. Articles by Seymour Hersh and others have revealed that, as in both those earlier cases, the president has secretly directed the completion, though not yet execution, of military operational plans -- not merely hypothetical "contingency plans" but constantly updated plans, with movement of forces and high states of readiness, for prompt implementation on command -- for attacking a country that, unless attacked itself, poses no threat to the United States: in this case, Iran.

According to these reports, many high-level officers and government officials are convinced that our president will attempt to bring about regime change in Iran by air attack; that he and his vice president have long been no less committed, secretly, to doing so than they were to attacking Iraq; and that his secretary of defense is as madly optimistic about the prospects for fast, cheap military success there as he was in Iraq.

Even more ominously, Philip Giraldi, a former CIA official, reported in The American Conservative a year ago that Vice President Cheney's office had directed contingency planning for "a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons" and that "several senior Air Force officers" involved in the planning were "appalled at the implications of what they are doing -- that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack -- but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objection." ...

Many of these sources regard the planned massive air attack -- with or without nuclear weapons -- as almost sure to be catastrophic for the Middle East, the position of the United States in the world, our troops in Iraq, the world economy, and U.S. domestic security. Thus they are as deeply concerned about these prospects as many other insiders were in the year before the Iraq invasion. That is why, unlike in the lead-up to Vietnam or Iraq, some insiders are leaking to reporters. But since these disclosures -- so far without documents and without attribution -- have not evidently had enough credibility to raise public alarm, the question is whether such officials have yet reached the limit of their responsibilities to our country.

Assuming Hersh's so-far anonymous sources mean what they say -- that this is, as one puts it, "a juggernaut that has to be stopped" -- I believe it is time for one or more of them to go beyond fragmentary leaks unaccompanied by documents. That means doing what no other active official or consultant has ever done in a timely way: what neither Richard Clarke nor I nor anyone else thought of doing until we were no longer officials, no longer had access to current documents, after bombs had fallen and thousands had died, years into a war. It means going outside executive channels, as officials with contemporary access, to expose the president's lies and oppose his war policy publicly before the war, with unequivocal evidence from inside.

Simply resigning in silence does not meet moral or political responsibilities of officials rightly "appalled" by the thrust of secret policy. I hope that one or more such persons will make the sober decision -- accepting sacrifice of clearance and career, and risk of prison -- to disclose comprehensive files that convey, irrefutably, official, secret estimates of costs and prospects and dangers of the military plans being considered. What needs disclosure is the full internal controversy, the secret critiques as well as the arguments and claims of advocates of war and nuclear "options" -- the Pentagon Papers of the Middle East. But unlike in 1971, the ongoing secret debate should be made available before our war in the region expands to include Iran, before the sixty-one-year moratorium on nuclear war is ended violently, to give our democracy a chance to foreclose either of those catastrophes.

The personal risks of doing this are very great. Yet they are not as great as the risks of bodies and lives we are asking daily of over 130,000 young Americans -- with many yet to join them -- in an unjust war. Our country has urgent need for comparable courage, moral and civil courage, from its public servants. They owe us the truth before the next war begins.

Administration Tells Courts To Get Out Of The Way On Detainee Cases

Gotta strike while the iron is hot:

Moving quickly to implement the bill signed by President Bush this week that authorizes military trials of enemy combatants, the administration has formally notified the U.S. District Court here that it no longer has jurisdiction to consider hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

In a notice dated Wednesday, the Justice Department listed 196 pending habeas cases, some of which cover groups of detainees. The new Military Commissions Act (MCA), it said, provides that "no court, justice, or judge" can consider those petitions or other actions related to treatment or imprisonment filed by anyone designated as an enemy combatant, now or in the future.

Beyond those already imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere, the law applies to all non-U.S. citizens, including permanent U.S. residents. ...

Habeas corpus, a Latin term meaning "you have the body," is one of the oldest principles of English and American law. It requires the government to show a legal basis for holding a prisoner. A series of unresolved federal court cases brought against the administration over the last several years by lawyers representing the detainees had left the question in limbo. ...

Immediately after Bush signed the act into law Tuesday, the Justice Department sent a letter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit asserting the new authorities and informing the court that it no longer had jurisdiction over a combined habeas case that had been under consideration since 2004. The U.S. District Court cases, which had been stayed pending the appeals court decision, were similarly invalid, the administration informed that court on Wednesday.

A number of legal scholars and members of Congress, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), have said that the habeas provision of the new law violates a clause of the Constitution that says the right to challenge detention "shall not be suspended" except in cases of "rebellion or invasion." Historically, the Constitution has been interpreted to apply equally to citizens and noncitizens under U.S. jurisdiction.

The administration's persistence on the issue "demonstrates how difficult it is for the courts to enforce [the clause] in the face of a resolute executive branch that is bound and determined to resist it," said Joseph Margulies, a Northwestern University law professor involved in the detainee cases.

Walcott Takes Down Dinesh D'Souza

From James Wolcott:

(Y)esterday I received the galley of Dinesh D'Souza's new book from Doubleday, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, to be published in January 2007.

It isn't rare that I take instant animus against a book like this. But I don't tend to react right away. The responsible thing for me to do as an occasional book critic is to wait until the official pub date, find a suitable venue for review, and thrash the book based on its merits.

But this is a special book, deserving special mistreatment. With The Enemy at Home, I prefer to do the irresponsible thing and declare war on Dinesh D'Souza and his stinking mackerel of a book starting now. I intend to pound this scurrilous piece of scapegoating at every convenient opportunity. It is long past due that the likes of Ramesh Ponnuru (Death Party A-Go-Go), Jonah Goldberg (Hillary Clinton Was Himmler's Mistress), and now D'Souza be put on notice that they are not going to get away with vilifying liberals, mainstream Democrats, radical thinkers, academics, and entertainers as traitors and terrorist sympathizers. They want to wage culture war? Then, to quote Nabokov, they should brace themselves and prepare for the next crash. They want to practice character assassination? They've picked the wrong time, the wrong adversary.

It's one thing when Michael Savage or Ann Coulter denounce liberals as heathen traitors. One spouts halitosis on the radio, the other is an exhibitionist hag; both cater to their fan base. But D'Souza isn't some low-grade, high-volume performance artist. He's a research scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, which he thanks in the acknowledgments "for providing me with the institutional support to do my work." D'Souza writes, speaks, and thinks like something hatched in a think tank--a careerist toady.

The theme of the book is quite simple, and vile.

"In this book I make a claim that will seem startling at the outset. The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11." ...

He puts Gore Vidal in the Foreign Policy Left. Doesn't Vidal--novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, TV performer--more properly belong in the Cultural Left? And what is Joe Conason, whose work is 99% pure political, doing in the Cultural Left with Eve Ensler and Tony Kushner?

Moreover, how can George Galloway, Robert Fisk, and Arundhati Roy be considered the "enemy at home" when they don't even live in this country? To D'Souza, being dead (Edward Said) or politically defunct (Cynthia McKinney, defeated in her reelection bid, is nonetheless listed in the Congressional Left alongside such Bolsheviks as Ed Markey and Patty Murray)* is no disqualification for treasonhood.

There is no Democrat, living or dead, D'Souza won't stoop to slime. When a Sunni Arab speaker of the Iraqi Assembly says that his dream is to be the Tip O'Neill of Iraq, D'Souza snarks, "Recalling O'Neill's resemblance to our federal government--big, fat, and out of control--I am not ordinarily excited to find a man who wants to emulate Tip O'Neill. But I wish al-Hassani good luck." D'Souza is such a patronizing little shit, such an odious shyster that he disparages John Murtha--whose heartfelt anger and grief over how the mishandled war in Iraq is mauling our military ought to shame D'Souza--as a sockpuppet for Osama bin Laden. "Hey, this man served his country! Don't question his loyalty, even when he makes the same arguments as Noam Chomsky and Osama bin Laden."

U.S. To Seek Hegemony In Space

What do you do next when you have already done an excellent job of screwing up the world?

Hint: It does not involve going to Disney World.

Space, the final frontier:

President Bush has signed a new National Space Policy that rejects future arms-control agreements that might limit U.S. flexibility in space and asserts a right to deny access to space to anyone "hostile to U.S. interests."

The document, the first full revision of overall space policy in 10 years, emphasizes security issues, encourages private enterprise in space, and characterizes the role of U.S. space diplomacy largely in terms of persuading other nations to support U.S. policy. ...

The administration said the policy revisions are not a prelude to introducing weapons systems into Earth orbit. "This policy is not about developing or deploying weapons in space. Period," said a senior administration official who was not authorized to speak on the record.

Nevertheless, Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank that follows the space-weaponry issue, said the policy changes will reinforce international suspicions that the United States may seek to develop, test and deploy space weapons. The concerns are amplified, he said, by the administration's refusal to enter negotiations or even less formal discussions on the subject. ...

In 2004, the Air Force published a Counterspace Operations Doctrine that called for a more active military posture in space and said that protecting U.S. satellites and spacecraft may require "deception, disruption, denial, degradation and destruction." Four years earlier, a congressionally chartered panel led by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld recommended developing space weapons to protect military and civilian satellites. ...

Some sections of the 1996 Clinton policy and the Bush revision are classified. There are many similarities in the unclassified portions, and the NSC and the Defense Department emphasized that continuity. But there is a significant divergence apparent in the first two goals of each document.

Bush's top goals are to "strengthen the nation's space leadership and ensure that space capabilities are available in time to further U.S. national security, homeland security, and foreign policy objectives" and to "enable unhindered U.S. operations in and through space to defend our interests there."

Clinton's top goals were to "enhance knowledge of the Earth, the solar system and the universe through human and robotic exploration" and to "strengthen and maintain the national security of the United States."

The Clinton policy also said that the United States would develop and operate "space control capabilities to ensure freedom of action in space" only when such steps would be "consistent with treaty obligations." The Bush policy accepts current international agreements but states: "The United States will oppose the development of new legal regimes or other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit U.S. access to or use of space."

A number of nations have pushed for talks to ban space weapons, and the United States has long been one of a handful of nations opposed to the idea. Although it had abstained in the past when proposals to ban space weapons came up in the United Nations, last October the United States voted for the first time against a call for negotiations -- the only "no" against 160 "yes" votes.

"Sunni? Shiite? I Thought The Iraqis Were Muslims"

Jeff Stein has an op-ed in today's New York Times in which he discloses that of the many U.S. lawmakers and anti-terror officials he has recently interviewed, few know the difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Or even which countries and non-state actors belong to which branch.

FOR the past several months, I've been wrapping up lengthy interviews with Washington counterterrorism officials with a fundamental question: "Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?"

A "gotcha" question? Perhaps. But if knowing your enemy is the most basic rule of war, I don't think it's out of bounds. And as I quickly explain to my subjects, I'm not looking for theological explanations, just the basics: Who's on what side today, and what does each want? ...

But so far, most American officials I've interviewed don't have a clue. That includes not just intelligence and law enforcement officials, but also members of Congress who have important roles overseeing our spy agencies. How can they do their jobs without knowing the basics?

Stein quotes from some of his interviews with these officials. The results are not reassuring.

It reminds me not only of the incompetence that is endemic in Washington, but also of a story that former Ambassador Peter Galbraith tells about a meeting between President Bush and several Iraqi Americans (one of whom became Iraq's envoy to the United States) about the Iraq War.

When the visitors began discussing Iraq's sectarian differences, President Bush interrupted and said "I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!"

Political Timing For Date Of Saddam Verdict?

The verdict against Saddam Hussein in his first trial will be delivered on November 5.

That's two days before the U.S. midterm elections.

(A) senior court official said a verdict against Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants charged with crimes against humanity in connection with an anti-Shiite crackdown in the 1980s will be announced Nov. 5.

The former Iraqi leader could be hanged if convicted. However, he could appeal the sentence to a higher, nine-judge court. His co-defendants include his former deputy, Taha Yassin Ramadan, and his half brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim.

The trial began a year ago with the eight defendants facing charges arising from the deaths of nearly 150 Shiites from the town of Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam in the town north of Baghdad.

That trial adjourned July 27 to allow its five-judge panel to consider a verdict. The court was to have reconvened Monday to hear a verdict.

"The Dujail trial will resume Nov. 5 when the presiding judge will announce the verdict and the sentencing," Juhi said.

A politically astute observer might think that the Iraq war is a loser of a political issue for the Republicans, and thus, it would not be advantageous to them for this to be brought up on election eve.

The administration and their followers, however, view the overthrow of Saddam to be a "victory" and -- absent a last minute capture of Osama bin Laden -- the sentencing of the former leader of Iraq will have to suffice to remind the electorate of the virtues of their "war president" in a dangerous world.

Or something like that.

NSA Expands Into Colorado

The CATCH ALL program requires lots of storage space for all that mined data. The NSA is expanding while the getting is good.

The next boomtown for spend-happy spies is ... Aurora, Colo.? The growing Denver suburb will play home to a major operations center for the National Security Agency, amid a broader move by the intelligence community to align its operations with the military. ...

The Denver Post first reported NSA's move in January, and the buzz spread that its electronic eavesdroppers were building a new "warning hub" at Buckley Air Force Base. National security historian William M. Arkin has reported that the base is a major downlink for intelligence satellites, including NSA's. Buckley also is home to the 460th Space Wing, which runs the Defense Support Program satellites, the "eyes in the sky" that detect missile launches and warn the military.

Given the Centennial State's pivotal role in national security - U.S. Northern Command is at Peterson Air Force Base near Colorado Springs - it makes sense that NSA and other intelligence agencies would want to centralize operations. (The CIA last year planned to move a division to Denver.) But relocating also is a great deal.

The cost of doing business in Aurora is cheaper than almost any other U.S. city, thanks to its low tax rates for new and existing businesses. That makes the town a big draw - the great skiing nearby doesn't hurt, either.

Some of the biggest names in the intelligence business, including SAIC and Lockheed Martin Corp., have satellite offices nearby. Only Las Vegas and Colorado Springs - go figure - have better tax rates than Aurora, according to The Kiplinger Letter.

As NSA expands operations, it has been running out of office space at its Fort George G. Meade, Md., headquarters, says James Bamford, author of the definitive NSA histories The Puzzle Palace: Inside America's Most Secret Intelligence Organization (Penguin, 1983) and Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (Anchor, 2002). Security concerns also prompted the move, he says. After Sept. 11, agency officials "got very nervous" that "all the facilities [including the counter-terrorism unit] were in one place, in a glass tower, which was one of the highest buildings around," he says. ...

Of course, there's no shortage of government and military employees in the Denver area. Dozens of agencies have offices there, and Buckley Air Force Base alone serves more than 92,500 people. According to Buckley's Web site, the base contributes $1.22 billion annually to the local economy.

NSA's expansion appears to be picking up steam. As Government Executive reported in 2004, "NSA is building a massive data storage facility in Colorado, which will be able to hold the electronic equivalent of the Library of Congress every two days." Harry Gatanas, NSA's senior acquisition executive, said then that the agency needed contractors to assist in knowledge management, high-end computing and analytic tool development. From 2000 to 2004, NSA doubled procurement spending, and Gatanas said it would again by decade's end.

Second Round Of Voting Needed In Ecuador

In a follow up to yesterday's post, Rafael Correa, the leftist candidate in the Ecuadoran presidential election -- who was favored to win -- didn't get enough votes to avoid a runoff, which has been scheduled for Nov. 26.

The runoff will be between Correa and one of Ecuador's richest men, Alvaro Noboa. Noboa has been accused of employing child labor on his banana farms, a charge which he denies. Noboa also has spent $2.5 million on his campaign.

Chavez, Morales May Have Company

Ecuador is going to the polls today and may add a skeptic of U.S. policies to the growing Latin American roster of populist leaders.

In his unlikely race to power, Rafael Correa is as anti-establishment as any politician on a continent where populists have surged by spewing invective against market reforms and the Bush administration. The leftist economist has called President Bush "tremendously dimwitted," threatened to default on Ecuador's foreign debt and promised to tighten ties with President Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan firebrand, an alliance that sends shivers through foreign oil companies here.

But as Ecuadorans prepare for a presidential election on Sunday with ramifications far beyond this tiny country, it remains unclear if Correa, the front-runner among a dozen candidates, would be a strident nationalist in the mold of Chavez or a center-left pragmatist like Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has mixed market orthodoxy with far-reaching social programs.

Trained in Belgium and at the University of Illinois, Correa, 43, is a former finance minister and university professor. His associates and some influential business executives who oppose him say he is a brilliant thinker who, though deeply concerned about the poor, is unlikely to follow the same path as Chavez. Yet, in a deft campaign in which he has hammered the much-reviled political class, Correa has cast himself as such a radical that Wall Street has winced with every point he has risen in the polls. ...

American officials have remained quiet about their preference for a candidate here; anti-American sentiment runs high, and officials have been careful to avoid a backlash. But a win by a leftist with ties to Chavez -- particularly in a country where American oil companies have significant investments -- would be a setback for Washington.

"Hugo Chavez is a friend of mine," Correa told a group of foreign reporters on Thursday.

"We have always said we are part of the trend that is cutting throughout Latin America," he added. "We are looking for a united Latin America that can confront a globalization that is inhumane and cruel."

In the campaign, Correa has lashed out against "corrupt mafias" and those multinational companies he contends have made Ecuador one of Latin America's most poverty-stricken and politically unstable countries. Beating his belt against the roof of a car -- his slogan is " dale correa ," or, roughly translated, "beat with a belt," a wordplay on his last name, which means belt -- he promises to thrash them and the old political guard. Under his government, he says, a constituent assembly would rewrite the constitution, which could dissolve the National Congress. ...

Correa asserts that he wants to have good relations with Washington. But he said his government would not renew a lease, set to expire in 2009, that the United States has to run the Manta military base. He also said that his government would not negotiate a free-trade agreement with the United States, unlike Ecuador's neighbors. He said he would renegotiate existing contracts with foreign oil companies and did not rule out defaulting on Ecuador's $10 billion debt if social needs outweigh the country's servicing obligations. His advisers have warned that a Correa government would be tough on foreign companies and multilateral lenders.

"Here, the rule of law and the constitution are constantly being broken by the mafias and some transnational companies," the candidate said. "The transnationals of the north will have to obey the law."

Correa has 31 percent support, leading his nearest rival, banana tycoon Alvaro Noboa, by 6 points, a Cedatos Gallup poll showed on Saturday. To win in the first round, Correa needs to garner 40 percent of valid votes, which means blank or voided ballots will be excluded, while finishing at least 10 points ahead of the nearest rival. A second round, if needed, would take place Nov. 26.

U.S. Citizen Gets Death Penalty In Iraq

The U.S. is so interested in portraying the Iraqi government as autonomous that it is willing to subject a U.S. citizen (albeit one that is alleged to be a collaborator with insurgents) to the death penalty without what has--until now--passed for justice in the Iraqi system.

A U.S. citizen who allegedly orchestrated the kidnapping of three Romanian journalists near Baghdad last year was sentenced to death in an Iraqi court Thursday, prompting his lawyers to ask a federal judge in Washington to block the U.S. military from transferring him to the Iraqi government.

Mohammad Munaf, 53, has been in U.S. custody since May 23, 2005, when he was arrested during a military raid to rescue the Romanian journalists nearly two months after they were snatched. Authorities have alleged that Munaf -- who had ushered the journalists into Iraq and was acting as their guide and translator -- posed as a kidnap victim but was actually involved in a conspiracy for ransom and led them into a trap. ...

Officials said yesterday that they could not recall another U.S. citizen receiving a death sentence from the Central Criminal Court of Iraq. ...

Lawyers representing Munaf in the United States said that his conviction in the Iraqi court is a farce and that he was not allowed to present evidence or witnesses in his defense. In an emergency motion filed yesterday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Munaf's attorneys asked the U.S. government to intervene and argued that Munaf made incriminating statements only after "threats of violence and sexual assault against him and his family." ...

Munaf's Iraqi attorneys reported that the Central Criminal Court judge was prepared to dismiss the charges at a hearing on Thursday but that two American officials -- including an unnamed general -- stepped into the courtroom and requested a private meeting. The judge returned 15 minutes later and sentenced Munaf and four other defendants to death without hearing additional evidence, according to a sworn statement by Sean Riordan, a legal intern at the Brennan Center who spoke with Munaf's attorney in Baghdad.

"In 36 years practicing law in Iraq, [the lawyer] had never before seen or heard of a death sentence being handed down without deliberation or consideration of the merits," Riordan said in the statement filed in Washington yesterday.

Romanian officials had indicated previously that they did not want to push ahead with charges, according to Munaf's attorneys. They said no Romanian representatives were present at Thursday's hearing.

ACLU Gets Documents on "Talon" Program

Folks who attended last year's "Stop the War Now" rally in Akron, Ohio, had no idea that they were suspected of "potential terrorist activity" simply for congregating in opposition to Bush's lunatic endeavor in that beleaguered country.

The "terror-fighters" know best, though, and the military's "Talon" program that investigates threats to national security thinks that pacifist groups and anti-war organizations are devious covers for violent extremists.

Internal military documents released Thursday provided new details about the Defense Department's collection of information on demonstrations nationwide last year by students, Quakers and others opposed to the Iraq war.

The documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, show, for instance, that military officials labeled as "potential terrorist activity" events like a "Stop the War Now" rally in Akron, Ohio, in March 2005.

The Defense Department acknowledged last year that its analysts had maintained records on war protests in an internal database past the 90 days its guidelines allowed, and even after it was determined there was no threat. ...

Some documents obtained by the A.C.L.U. referred to the potential for disruption to military recruiting and the threat posed to military personnel as a result.

An internal report produced in May 2005, for instance, discussed antiwar protests at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and was issued "to clarify why the Students for Peace and Justice represent a potential threat to D.O.D. personnel."

The memorandum noted that several hundred students had recently protested the presence of military recruiters at a career fair and demanded that they leave.

"The clear purpose of these civil disobedience actions was to disrupt the recruiting mission of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command by blocking the entrance to the recruiting station and causing the stations to shut down early," it said.

But the document also noted that "to date, no reported incidents have occurred at these protests."

The documents indicated that intelligence reports and tips about antiwar protests, including mundane details like the schedule for weekly planning meetings, were widely shared among analysts from the military, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security.

"There is simply no reason why the United States military should be monitoring the peaceful activities of American citizens who oppose U.S. war policies," said Ben Wizner, a lawyer for the A.C.L.U.

Joyce Miller, an official with the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group that learned that information on some of its antiwar protests was in the military database, said she found the operation to be a "chilling" and troubling trend.

NIE Stated That NK Had No Nukes

You heard it here first, folks (see inter alia, Monday's post and a comment to a post from last March).

Some recent secret reports stated that Pyongyang did not have nuclear arms and until recently was bluffing about plans for a test, according to officials who have read the classified assessments.

The analyses in question included a National Intelligence Estimate a consensus report of all U.S. spy agencies produced several months ago and at least two other classified reports on North Korea produced by senior officials within the office of the Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte.

According to officials familiar with the reports, the failures included judgments that cast doubt about whether North Korea's nuclear program posed an immediate threat, whether North Korea could produce a militarily useful nuclear bomb, whether North Korea was capable of conducting an underground nuclear test and whether Pyongyang was bluffing by claiming it could carry one out.

GOP Brings Forward Old Violation By Berger

This is classic. Long after the matter has been adjudicated in federal court, the Republicans have dredged up a several year old security violation by one of Bill Clinton's top advisors to distract the nation from the endemic problems of the GOP.

A group of Republicans in the House of Representatives called Wednesday for a congressional investigation into the improper handling of classified documents by President Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger.

Berger admitted last year that he deliberately took classified documents out of the National Archives in 2003 and destroyed some of them at his office. He pleaded guilty in federal court to one charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material and was fined $50,000.

Ten lawmakers led by House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter and Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner released a letter calling for the House Government Reform Committee to investigate.

They asked the committee to determine whether any documents were missing from Clinton administration terrorism records, to review security measures for classified documents and to seek testimony from Berger.

Hunter's spokesman, Joe Kasper, said the Justice Department had asked Congress to hold off on any oversight until the legal case concluded.

"It's important that the House conduct its own review to ensure there is a clear understanding of the facts, and sensitive and highly classified security information is not potentially compromised in the future," Kasper said.

Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis responded to the letter by sending a request to the inspector general of the National Archives asking for his report on the Berger matter. Committee spokesman Brian McNicoll said it was a preliminary step to help Davis decide whether to pursue a committee investigation.

Berger's lawyer, Lanny Breuer, did not immediately return a call for comment.

At issue is a strange sequence of events in which Berger admitted to sneaking classified documents out of the National Archives in his suit, later destroying some of them and then lying about it. The Bush administration disclosed the investigation in July 2004, just days before the Sept. 11 commission issued its final report.

During Berger's sentencing hearing Breuer characterized Berger as eager to get the facts of the Sept. 11 attacks right when he took the material, which contained information relating to terror threats in the United States during the 2000 millennium celebration.

Democrats had complained about the timing of the original disclosure of the investigation in 2004, claiming the White House was using Berger to deflect attention from the Sept. 11 commission's harsh pre-election findings. Wednesday's events sparked similar charges from Rep. Henry Waxman, top Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee.

In a letter to Davis, Waxman wrote that the Berger incident is not new and already has been reviewed by committee staff. He noted that Berger gave a television interview Tuesday criticizing the Bush administration's policies involving North Korea.

"It would be regrettable if the letter from Republican members that you received today and your own letter to NARA were prompted by Mr. Berger's criticism of the administration," Waxman wrote. "It would be equally regrettable if the sudden calls for an investigation were part of an organized effort to divert attention from the war in Iraq and other pressing national issues."

Berger just finished defending the Clinton administration from scurrilous charges made in ABC's "Path To 9/11" hatchet job, and here comes the pay back.

Huge Civilian Death Toll In Iraq Claimed

Apologists for the war are already disputing these numbers.

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.

It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group. ...

Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country.

The survey was done by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings are being published online today by the British medical journal the Lancet. ...

The great majority of deaths were also substantiated by death certificates.

Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for many years, called the survey method "tried and true," and added that "this is the best estimate of mortality we have."

This viewed was echoed by Sarah Leah Whitson, an official of Human Rights Watch in New York, who said, "We have no reason to question the findings or the accuracy" of the survey. ...

According to the survey results, Iraq's mortality rate in the year before the invasion was 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people; in the post-invasion period it was 13.3 deaths per 1,000 people per year. The difference between these rates was used to calculate "excess deaths." ...

Burnham said that the estimate of Iraq's pre-invasion death rate -- 5.5 deaths per 1,000 people -- found in both of the Hopkins surveys was roughly the same estimate used by the CIA and the U.S. Census Bureau. He said he believes that attests to the accuracy of his team's results.

It is always easy to argue against scientifically-based assertions, lies require almost no research time or effort.

Too Small To Be A Nuke?

There are questions about exactly what the North Koreans detonated, whether nuclear or conventional, miniaturized or dud.

The explosion set off by North Korea yesterday appears to have been extremely small for a nuclear blast, complicating U.S. intelligence efforts to determine whether the country's first such test was successful or signaled that Pyongyang's capabilities are less advanced than expected, several senior U.S. and foreign government officials and analysts said.

A variety of seismic readings around the world yesterday appear to have resulted from no more than a half-kiloton explosion, three officials said -- equivalent to 500 tons of TNT and far smaller than the 21- to 23-kiloton plutonium bomb the U.S. military dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945.

A senior intelligence official called it a "sub-kiloton" explosion detonated inside a horizontal mountain tunnel and said its low yield caught analysts by surprise. "For an initial test, a yield of several kilotons has been historically observed," the official said.

A U.S. government official said the North Koreans, in a call to the Chinese shortly before the test was conducted, said it would be four kilotons. The official said it is possible the explosive yield was as low as 200 tons. France and South Korea both issued sub-kiloton estimates, and officials dismissed as inaccurate an early Russian estimate that the blast resulted from a five-to-15-kiloton explosion. ...

Intelligence and administration officials said yesterday they believed North Korea had managed a nuclear test of some sort, but because of the secrecy of the Pyongyang regime and the lack of scientific data, some observers would not eliminate the possibility that the blast was created by conventional explosives.

The relatively small size of the explosion, along with North Korea's public statement that the test did not produce any radioactive leakage, led some to question how well the test had gone. Small amounts of leakage are normal during nuclear tests, though it can take several days for the ventilation to register. One U.S. official said radiation detectors in the region were being monitored for any signs in the air from the nuclear test.

Will Japan Now Develop The Bomb?

Longtime readers here know that I have been saying that North Korea did not have any nuclear weapons, despite the conventional wisdom that they did.

It looks like my information may have been dated by last night's development.

I will link to the story (when it comes out--and it will) that will assert that the intelligence community had serious doubts that the North had any weapons.

A big question now is whether Japan will take the bait and start building nukes:

The last time North Korea tested a powerful new weapon - in 1998, when it fired a ballistic missile over the largest Japanese island - Japan reacted by beefing up its military and swinging politically to the right.

Now, the North's apparent test of an atomic weapon on Monday could push Japan even further down the same conservative path. Many political analysts say the test, which has yet to be confirmed, could weaken public support for the nation's post-World War II pacifism, and prompt Japan to seek a growing role in regional security.

But could the crisis be big enough to force Japan to break what might be its ultimate postwar taboo - and go nuclear itself?

This is what some in the region have speculated Tokyo would do if the isolated and erratic Communist regime to its north suddenly conducted a test detonation of an atomic bomb. But for now, analysts say, domestic opposition to the idea runs too deep for Japan to change its renunciation of nuclear weapons.

Japan is known to have stockpiles of weapons-grade atomic material, which are used in its civilian nuclear power and research programs, and some studies have said that Tokyo could construct a bomb in a matter of months if it chose. But analysts say that while the North's claimed test was likely to increase calls within Japan to acquire atomic weapons, these proponents will remain limited to the nation's far-right fringe.

The idea of going nuclear, the analysts say, would still face broad and emotional opposition in Japan, which remains the only nation to have suffered atomic attacks, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The prospect of a nuclear Japan might also send shudders through the rest of Asia, where memories are still raw from Japan's wartime aggression.

Instead, the most likely result of Monday's apparent test, say analysts, will be to rally public opinion around Japan's new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and his calls for taking Japan in a more self-assertive and hawkish direction. In particular, a crisis in North Korea would increase Abe's chances of winning support for his goal of revising the country's anti-war Constitution to allow Japan to possess full-fledged armed forces.

"The nuclear test may prove to be an even bigger shock to public opinion" than the missile, said Yasunori Sone, a professor at Keio University in Tokyo. "It won't make Japan build nuclear weapons. But it could turn into a 'wind from the North' that gives Mr. Abe and his policies a big lift."

For the time being, said Sone and other analysts, Abe appears to be trying to take a leading role in responding to the crisis. On Monday, Abe and other Japanese leaders were quick to condemn the claimed test, saying their country was working closely with the United States and Asian neighbors like South Korea and China to find a response.

Ol' "Shoot From The Hip Effy" will add an idea that was presented to me this morning by a Washington troublemaker. This source (who was not the well-connected source of my earlier assertion) posits that the explosion picked up by the sensors was entirely conventional, not nuclear. And that China is saying that it bears the signature of a nuclear bomb in order to help take the heat off of Bush in a period in which all the other political news has been negative to abysmal.

If an immediate nuclear arms race in East Asia does not ensue, I may give more credence to this theory.

An Army Captain On Iraq

From Tom Ricks' Inbox:

The following is the concluding paragraph of a letter sent by an Army captain struggling to make sense of his recently ended tour of duty in Iraq. Like many who have spent time there, he offers a summation of his experiences. But his stands out for its eloquence. This excerpt follows his discussion of how the United States might withdraw from Iraq by supporting a partition of the country.

***********************


. . . So we would leave Iraq, scarred, but hopefully smarter as well. The "long war" is a war of ideas. If Iraq is to teach us anything, it must be that a new idea cannot be beat into a society. I'm a believer in John Stuart Mill's assertion that "All people have the government they deserve," implying that both the choice and its consequences belong to the society as a whole. Rather than putting my faith in the force of arms to transform a society, I put my faith in the force of our ideas. The power of the idea of America had been on the march for half a century -- vanquishing its contrapositive in the form of global communism and gradually changing the face of the world -- until those who didn't really believe it themselves corrupted that idea. "Extraordinary rendition," Guantanamo Bay, and Abu Ghraib have all become shorthand for an America (or an American administration) that lost faith in the power of its own idea. Their hypocrisy seemingly exposed, people who had embraced and were gradually working towards that American idea in the world's most volatile regions were emasculated. These liberals, moderates, progressives and reformers have been overwhelmed by a new generation of extremists determined that an open society in which people were free to express themselves, to make decisions about how to live their own lives, and to have a voice in dictating the laws that would govern them was not a desirable one. What gives me some degree of hope is the ultimate vacuity of this alternative to the American idea. But as long as they can point to the "adoo baeed" -- the external enemy -- to deflect the blame from their own moral and material bankruptcy, they may stay afloat. If we're able to reassert our idea and to hold it up to people as a real choice, I know this current setback can be overcome. No amount of violence inflicted in the name of freedom, however, will be the force to bring it about.

Padilla Lawyers Seek Dismissal Of Terror Case, Cite Mistreatment in Custody

It appears that the mistreatment of foreign prisoners in the "war on terror" extend to the case of the American citizen Jose Padilla.

Criminal charges against accused al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla should be thrown out because of "outrageous government conduct" during his 31/2-year detention in a U.S. Navy brig in South Carolina, Padilla's defense lawyers say. "The government's conduct vis-a-vis Mr. Padilla is a stain on this nation's character, and through its illegal conduct, the government has forfeited its right to prosecute Mr. Padilla," his lawyers said in a legal motion filed this week.

In two additional motions, the lawyers argue the case should be dismissed because the government took too much time between arresting Padilla and charging him.

They contend Padilla's ability to defend himself is compromised as a result of the delay and the mental trauma he suffered.

Defense lawyers claim the government's tactics constitute torture and were "designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and, ultimately, the loss of will to live." ...

According to Padilla's attorneys, the former Broward County resident spent 1,307 days in a 9-by-7-foot cell in an isolated unit of the brig. Sometimes he would be left for hours with his wrists and ankles bound to a chain around his torso, his lawyers state. At night, guards kept him awake with bright lights and loud noises.

During interrogations, Padilla's captors threatened to cut him and pour alcohol on the wounds, to send him to Guantanamo Bay or execute him, according to his attorneys.

They also said his jailers subjected him to noxious fumes and cold temperatures, physically assaulted him and gave him drugs against his will.

Motions to dismiss criminal matters based on government misconduct are granted only in extreme cases. More often, judges exclude evidence derived as a result of the government's illegal conduct. In Padilla's case, Justice Department officials said they will not introduce evidence gathered from his interrogations in military custody. ...

Some of the interrogation tactics described in the defense motions -- including sleep deprivation, stress positions, and exposure to cold -- mirror those approved by the Bush administration for use on terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

Civil rights attorney Joseph Margulies, lead counsel in a case challenging the detentions at Guantanamo Bay, calls such interrogation methods "touchless torture."

"The prisoner is every bit as tormented as if there were brute force," Margulies said.

Sen. Warner Warns About Iraq

The Republican lawmaker who is considered to be the most experienced in dealing with military issues is talking about the war in less optimistic terms than the administration and most of the members of his party.

The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday offered a stark assessment of the situation in Iraq after a trip there this week, saying that parts of the country have taken "steps backwards" and that the United States is at risk of losing the campaign to control an increasingly violent Baghdad.

Sen. John W. Warner (Va.) told reporters on Capitol Hill that the Iraqi government is having trouble making strides and is incapable of providing even basic human necessities to people in certain areas of the country. Though Warner praised U.S. efforts to keep Iraq under control, he was far less optimistic about the situation there than he had been over the past three years.

Echoing the sentiments of several leading Democrats on his committee, Warner said he believes the United States may have to reevaluate its approach in Iraq if the situation does not improve dramatically over the next several months.

"I assure you, in two or three months, if this thing hasn't come to fruition and if this level of violence is not under control and this government able to function, I think it's a responsibility of our government internally to determine: Is there a change of course that we should take?" Warner said. "And I wouldn't take off the table any option at this time."

Warner and other senators traveled to Jordan, Iraq and Israel this week to discuss the security situation and to evaluate the progress of the Iraqi government. He said U.S. military commanders believe there is no way to reduce the number of U.S. troops in the region in the foreseeable future because of a steady increase in the level of violence, and he added that it is important to acknowledge the civil insurrection, sectarian violence, "unacceptable level" of killings and "heavy casualties" among U.S. forces there.

Warner, to his discredit, does repeat the current talking point about who really is to blame for the lack of progress.

Warner blamed the Iraqi leaders for failing to improve conditions. "You do not see them taking the levers of sovereignty and pulling and pushing them and doing what is necessary to bring about a situation in Iraq whereby the people are able to live, have sufficient food and fresh water, and have a sense of confidence in their government that they're going forward," Warner said.

But he said the situation is not beyond repair. "We're not going to give up hope yet. Let's give it more time to work."

Warner acknowledged that, before the invasion of Iraq, there was a lack of understanding among members of Congress about how much it would take to give Iraq full sovereignty. He blamed himself for not aggressively asking such questions before the war.

Make no mistake, Warner is unlikely to recommend that the U.S. pull out of Iraq. He is more likely to push a program that scares up enough taxpayer funding to dramatically expand the military so that we can achieve "success."

U.S. "Stay The Course" Plan Works For Al Qaeda in Iraq

From The Progress Report:

A newly translated letter from al Qaeda’s leadership to its Iraq organization shows the Bush administration’s “stay the course” Iraq strategy is exactly what al Qaeda wants: "The most important thing is that you continue in your jihad in Iraq," the letter's author "Atiyah" writes, "Indeed, prolonging the war is in our interest." The letter was an internal communication, intercepted during the raid which killed Abu Musab Zarqawi. This summer, Bush administration officials repeatedly justified their Iraq policy of "stay the course" by pointing to al Qaeda propaganda. For instance, White House counselor Dan Bartlett said, "It doesn't matter what we say. We should be taking the - the words of the enemy seriously. They think [Iraq is] the fight of the war on terror, so, we might as well." It remains to be seen whether the Bush administration will change its tune now that al Qaeda has endorsed "stay the course."

DHS Data Mining Efforts Under Scrutiny

Two news pieces in one day about the Department of Homeland Security's data mining programs. Where there is smoke, there usually is fire.

From GovExec:

Congressional appropriators have directed the Homeland Security Department's inspector general to investigate one of the department's data-mining projects, saying it appears to lack clear guidelines and oversight.

In the fiscal 2007 Homeland Security spending bill -- expected to be signed by President Bush Wednesday -- lawmakers cite concerns over the department's Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE) program.

"A prototype is currently available to analysts in [the Homeland Security] Intelligence and Analysis [unit] using departmental and other data, including some on U.S. citizens," lawmakers wrote. "The ADVISE program plan, total costs and privacy impacts are unclear and therefore the conferees direct the inspector general to conduct a comprehensive program review and report within nine months of enactment of this act."

The department has spent about $40 million on the project, lawmakers added.

Critics fear that ADVISE might intrude on the privacy rights of U.S. citizens, especially by trolling their e-mails and blogs. House Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis., and Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Martin Olav Sabo, D-Minn., asked the Government Accountability Office earlier this year to investigate the program.

"We've been long concerned about how the department treats Americans' privacy and due process rights," Sabo said during a May markup of the Homeland Security spending bill. "ADVISE appears to be a new variation on the highly controversial Defense Department Total Information Awareness program that was supposed to be terminated in 2003."

A Homeland Security Department spokesman said ADVISE is not yet an active program. When complete, he added, ADVISE will "deliver technology or a set of technologies to provide the capability to connect the dots" of intelligence, a need cited by the 9/11 Commission.

"It extracts important relationships and correlations from a wealth of data and produces actionable intelligence," he said. "What it does perform is data integration at a large scale."

But he would not describe the specific type of data collected through the program.

Today's New York Times addresses another one of the prospective DHS data mining programs:

A consortium of major universities, using Homeland Security Department money, is developing software that would let the government monitor negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas.

Such a "sentiment analysis" is intended to identify potential threats to the nation, security officials said.

Researchers at institutions including Cornell, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Utah intend to test the system on hundreds of articles published in 2001 and 2002 on topics like President Bush's use of the term "axis of evil," the handling of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, the debate over global warming and the coup attempt against President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

A $2.4 million grant will finance the research over three years.

American officials have long relied on newspapers and other news sources to track events and opinions here and abroad, a goal that has included the routine translation of articles from many foreign publications and news services.

The new software would allow much more rapid and comprehensive monitoring of the global news media, as the Homeland Security Department and, perhaps, intelligence agencies look "to identify common patterns from numerous sources of information which might be indicative of potential threats to the nation," a statement by the department said. ...

The researchers, using an grant provided by a research group once affiliated with the Central Intelligence Agency, have complied a database of hundreds of articles that it is being used to train a computer to recognize, rank and interpret statements.

The software would need to be able to distinguish between statements like "this spaghetti is good" and "this spaghetti is not very good -- it's excellent," said Claire T. Cardie, a professor of computer science at Cornell. ...

One article discusses how a rabid fox bit a grazing cow in Romania, hardly a threat to the United States. Another item, an editorial in response to Mr. Bush's use in 2002 of "axis of evil" to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea, said: "the U.S. is the first nation to have developed nuclear weapons. Moreover, the U.S. is the first and only nation ever to deploy such weapons."

The approach, called natural language processing, has been under development for decades. It is widely used to summarize basic facts in a text or to create abridged versions of articles.

But interpreting and rating expressions of opinion, without making too many errors, has been much more challenging, said Professor Cardie and Janyce M. Wiebe, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Pittsburgh. Their system would include a confidence rating for each "opinion" that it evaluates and would allow an official to refer quickly to the actual text that the computer indicates contains an intense anti-American statement.

Ultimately, the government could in a semiautomated way track a statement by specific individuals abroad or track reports by particular foreign news outlets or journalists, rating comments about American policies or officials.

9/11 Panel WAS Told About Tenet/Rice Briefing

An update to yesterday's story.

Members of the commission -- an independent, bipartisan panel created by Congress to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks -- have said for days that they were not told about the July 10 meeting and were angry at being left out. As recently as yesterday afternoon, both commission chairman Thomas H. Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton said they believed the panel had not been told about the July 10 meeting.

But it turns out that the panel was, in fact, told about the meeting, according to the interview transcript and Democratic commission member Richard Ben-Veniste, who sat in on the interview with Tenet. The meeting was not identified by the July 10 date in the commission's best-selling report. ...

Tenet gave testimony about the July 2001 meeting with Rice at his Langley headquarters office on Jan. 28, 2004, occasionally referring to charts and slides. Philip Zelikow, who at the time was the commission's executive director and now works for Rice, was present along with other commission staff members, according to Ben-Veniste and to a portion of the transcript, which was read to The Washington Post by an official with access to it. ...

Ben-Veniste's comments seem to contradict his own remarks over the weekend to the New York Times, in which he said that "the meeting was never mentioned to us." Ben-Veniste said yesterday that there was confusion between two different meetings and that the meeting described by Tenet is different in character from the one portrayed by Woodward.

Zelikow, who now works as one of Rice's closest aides as a State Department counselor, did not respond to a request for comment yesterday. He told the New York Times that none of the commission's witnesses had drawn attention to a July 10 meeting or had outlined the type of confrontation with Rice described by Woodward.

Footnote To The "Negotiated Cover-up" Of 9/11

The "negotiated cover-up" that was the 9/11 Commission missed something:

Members of the Sept. 11 commission said Sunday they were alarmed that they were told nothing about a July 2001 White House meeting at which George J. Tenet, then director of central intelligence, is reported to have warned Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, about an imminent attack by Al Qaeda and failed to persuade her to take action. ...

The final report from the Sept. 11 commission made no mention of the meeting, nor did it suggest that there had been such an encounter between Mr. Tenet and Ms. Rice, now secretary of state. ...

There has also been no comment on the book from J. Cofer Black, who was Mr. Tenet's counterterrorism chief, and who, the (Woodward's) book says, attended the July 10 meeting and left it frustrated by Ms. Rice's "brush-off" of the warnings.

Mr. Black is quoted as saying, "the only thing we didn't do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head." He did not return calls left at Blackwater, the security firm he joined last year. ...

The disclosures took members of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission by surprise last week. Some questioned whether information about the July 10 meeting was intentionally withheld from the panel, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

In interviews Saturday and Sunday, commission members said they were never told about the meeting despite hours of public and private questioning with Ms. Rice, Mr. Tenet and Mr. Black, much of it focused specifically on how the White House dealt with terrorist threats in the summer of 2001.

"None of this was shared with us in hours of private interviews, including interviews under oath, nor do we have any paper on this," said Timothy J. Roemer, a Democratic member of the commission and a former congressman from Indiana. "I'm deeply disturbed by this. I'm furious."

Another Democratic commissioner, the former Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste, said the staff of the Sept. 11 commission was polled in recent days on the disclosures in Mr. Woodward's book and agreed that the meeting "was never mentioned to us."

"This is certainly something we would have wanted to know about," he said, referring to the meeting. "We asked broad questions which should have elicited this information."

He said he had attended the commission's private interviews with both Mr. Tenet and Ms. Rice and had pressed "very hard for them to provide us with everything they had regarding conversations with the executive branch" about terrorist threats before Sept. 11.

The failure of these people to get their stories straight is an interesting footnote to the cover-up of the events of 9/11.

Ms. Rice, who had warned then-San Francisco mayor Willie Brown not to fly on 9/11, has a clear motive to conceal Tenet's warning from the Commissioners. The blame for "ignoring" important warnings is already heavy on her shoulders for her handling of the August PDB that featured the section "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In U.S.".

The fact that neither Tenet or Black mentioned the July 10 meeting -- the details of which reflected well (on its face) upon the CIA men -- is an omission that may be more indicative of a deeper story.