Iranian leader: Israel may be 'uprooted' - Focus on Iran - MSNBC.com

Iranian leader: Israel may be 'uprooted' - Focus on Iran - MSNBC.com

Iranian leader: Israel may be 'uprooted'
Ahmadinejad warns Jewish state against attacking Lebanon this summer
The Associated Press
Updated: 2:11 p.m. ET May 24, 2007

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday warned Israel it would be “uprooted” if the Jewish state made any move against and attacked Lebanon in the coming summer.

Although there has been discussion among Israeli experts about the possibility of another war against the Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerillas, Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz and other officials have denied plans for such a conflict. A war between the two sides last summer ended in a U.N.-brokered cease-fire.

Israeli troops are in the midst of an offensive against the Palestinian Hamas faction in response to rocket attacks on Israeli border towns, arresting more than 30 senior members of Islamic militant group in the West Bank early Thursday.

“If you think that by bombing and assassinating Palestinian leaders you are preparing ground for new attacks on Lebanon in the summer, I am telling you that you are seriously wrong,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a rally in the city of Isfahan.

“If this year you repeat the same mistake of the last year, the ocean of nations of the region will get angry and will cut the root of the Zionist regime from its stem,” added Ahmadinejad, speaking live on state television.

Ahmadinejad warned Israel that “60 years of invasion and assassination is enough. If you do not cease invasion and massacre, soon the hand of power of the nations of the region will rub you criminals with earth.”

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Ahmadinejad’s comments reflected the Iranian leadership’s support for the “most extreme elements in Lebanon and in the Palestinian Authority.”

“Ahmadinejad funds, trains and arms the most extreme anti-peace elements in the region. If there is any real threat to regional security, it comes from an expansionist fundamentalist Iran,” Regev said.

The 34-day Israeli-Hezbollah war started after the pro-Iranian militants captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross border raid in July 2006. The cease-fire called for the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers and Lebanese troops in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel.

After the inconclusive outcome of the war, Israelis are seen as unlikely to start another one unless they felt they could emerge clearly victorious. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert lost most of his public support after Israel failed to achieve its stated goals—freeing the captured soldiers and crushing Hezbollah.

‘Wiped off the map’
Ahmadinejad has a history of verbal attacks on Israel.

In October 2005, he raised outrage in the West when he declared that Israel’s “Zionist regime should be wiped off the map.” His supporters and some independent analysts have since argued Ahmadinejad’s words were mistranslated from Farsi and actually meant “vanish from the pages of time”—implying Israel would disappear on its own rather be destroyed.

Ahmadinejad appears to be stepping up his confrontational tone at a time when Iran faces renewed pressure by the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear program and just days before direct Iran-U.S. talks in Baghdad on Iraq’s security.

The United States, which has long accused Iran of providing sophisticated explosives to militants in Iraq, has also increased its military presence in the Gulf as a show of force.

Ahmadinejad comments Thursday also likely reflect his attempt to cast himself in the role of a champion of the Palestinian cause. Iran support the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups that refuse to recognize Israel.
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11497240/

Use Your Driver's License as a Debit Card

businessweek
A startup promises to save both drivers and gas station owners a bundle at the pump by cutting credit cards out of the payment process

Aurora Bisig is a big believer in retailer discount cards. At her last count, she had a dozen—from Sam's Club (WMT) to nearly every grocery store in Central Texas. So this March, when the Austin (Tex.) insurance agent pulled into a gas station for a fill-up and saw a sign promising an additional 10¢ off per gallon for signing up with a new e-payment program, she was interested.

She was also pleased to learn that the "RollbackPrice" program wouldn't require her to add another piece of plastic to her overstuffed wallet. Instead, after entering her driver's license number and bank account information online with a two-year-old company called National Payment Card (NPC), she'd be able to pay for gas just by swiping her driver's license (linked directly, via the existing magnetic stripe, to her bank account), and entering a personal identification number.

Gas-station owners are pleased with the program too. Because NPC processes the payment as an e-check with the Automated Clearing House (ACH), a network most commonly used for direct deposits, participating retailers bypass credit card companies such as Visa and Mastercard (MA)—and their processing fees (see BusinessWeek.com, 3/13/07, "Steve Case Takes On the Credit Card Giants").
Cutting Down on Interchange Fees

Also known as interchange fees, these charges add up to more than small change for gas station owners now that the average price of gas is over $3 a gallon. In fact, last year, the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) reported that such stores' credit card fees surged 22% to reach $6.6 billion, making it the industry's second-largest expense—and exceeding the industry's overall profits for the first time ever.

NPC started piloting the patent-pending technology at a handful of gas stations in Texas this January. Since then the company has signed contracts to roll out the system to five regional convenience store chains starting in June. Although only 24 states currently issue licenses with magnetic stripes, NPC can also add e-payment functionality to a chain's existing loyalty cards. One of the first contracts NPC signed was with Flash Foods, a convenience-store chain based in Georgia, a state that doesn't have magnetic-stripe licenses. By 2010, NPC Chief Executive Officer Joe Randazza expects the system will be in place at more than 36,000 locations.

While a $36 traditional credit card purchase could cost a gas station around 86 cents (or more, if it's a rewards card), NPC charges a flat 15¢ fee for each transaction it processes. That means that retailers using NPC's system can afford to pass along an instant discount to customers—creating what's in essence a self-funded loyalty program—while still coming out ahead. Randazza estimates his eight-person company, based in Boca Raton, Fla., will be in the black by late 2008 (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/10/07, "The Problem with Loyalty Programs").
Focusing On Gas Stations

Guy Oliver of MTG Management, which manages three of the Texas gas stations where the NPC system is being piloted, says he's pleased to have some control over his spiraling credit card processing costs. "With Visa and Mastercard, there doesn't seem to be any relief in sight," he says. "We pay more in interchange fees than we do for freight to get the gas to the stations."

Randazza says the technology has applications in other industries, but for now the company is focusing on gas stations and convenience stores, where already-slim profit margins have been particularly hard hit by rising credit card interchange fees (see BusinessWeek.com, 11/17/03, "The Virtually Cashless Society," and 5/1/03, "Big Plastic's Costly Losing Hand").

Another reason for the current focus: It's one of the only markets price-sensitive enough that a few pennies off can count as a serious incentive for consumers.

Based on the reactions she's heard from friends and colleagues in Texas, Bisig says it might take some time to convince people that sharing their license number and bank account information with a retailer is safe—especially shoppers who aren't familiar with other e-payment systems like PayPal (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/23/05, "PayPal Spreads Its Wings").
Fear of Fraud a Factor

In Texas, a spokeswoman for the state's Public Safety Dept. issued a statement advising that consumers use caution when providing any retailer with their driver's license number, and emphasized that DPS does not endorse National Payment Card or any other programs that piggyback on state-issued drivers' licenses.

National Payment Card, for its part, says its stringent security measures make the likelihood of fraud or identity theft very low. Customers' financial information is not stored anywhere on the actual license, and withdrawals are not permitted after more than three failed PIN attempts. The system also sets a maximum weekly limit of $300 in withdrawals, though Randazza says in the case of fraud, customers would only be responsible for the first $50 of that.

Bisig, for one, was satisfied with the system's security precautions. Because her license is PIN-protected, she points out, it's even more secure than using a credit card. While some of her friends have worries about giving out too much of their personal information to a retailer, she reasons, "People give out that much information and more whenever they buy something on the Internet."

Bisig says her biggest complaint is that she can't use her license to pay at more retailers and still has to carry individual loyalty cards for each one. "I wish they could all do it," she says. "It would be so much easier."

Ron Paul On The Record

The Texas Congressman's best quotes on martial law, foreign policy, the economy and more
prisonplanet

Over the years we have had the opportunity to interview Ron Paul many times and in light of the recent runaway success and resonance of his presidential campaign, we decided to compile the Texas Congressman's best quotes on subjects ranging from martial law to the plunging dollar to foreign policy.

Compare these home truths to the cacophony of rehearsed establishment pablum spewed forth by Giuliani, McCain, Romney or any other of the shill candidates.

RON PAUL ON THE POLICE STATE & MARTIAL LAW

"If we don't change our ways we will go the way of Rome and I see that as rather sad.....the worst things happen when you get the so-called Republican conservatives in charge from Nixon on down, big government flourishes under Republicans."

"I think they're concerned about the remnant, the remnant of those individuals who don't buy into stuff and think that they should take care of themselves on their own, that they should have their own guns and their own provisions and they don't want to depend on the government at all and I think that is a threat to those who want to hold power. They don't want any resistance to their authoritarian rule."

"They're putting their back up against the wall and saying, if need be we're going to have martial law."

"We've heard all these statements by the President, by the administration, why they need more militarism at the federal government to keep people in check so nobody knows how this will turn out but I do know that the only thing we can do about it is try to alert the American people to what's going on so they can be prepared."

"It's getting close to it, it's called usurpation of power and it's done in many ways with Congress just going along because they're sound asleep and this certainly is an attack on our Constitution and on our freedoms."

"We might have to hope that our Supreme Court helps us out a little. The Court has been better than the executive branch and a heck of a lot better than the Congress, because we've given the President everything he's asked for and the President has been begging for all this authority, so immediately we have to hope that the courts will save us on some of these things. But once again ultimately its only when the people wake up and say they don't like this... sometimes the people wake up to late. Right now we don't have concentration camps, but like you have pointed out, the authority has been given so that concentration camps can come without Habeas Corpus. I have heard the argument that there is nothing else left in the Bill of Rights. If they can lock you up, what good is freedom of speech or what good is a gun? That is now part of the books, part of the law."

"You know there's nothing that guarantees that they will allow you to air your radio show forever. They have already trampled on our rights, they talking about putting people in prison today without Habeas Corpus... If we don't preserve our fundamental freedoms we can't fight back. I'm convinced of one thing, we could all be very very poor tomorrow and have to start from scratch but if we have our freedoms and we have our sound currency and we have the government off our backs, this country would rebound so quickly."

"I think they are always prepared and everyday they have more powers than before because under these emergency powers acts, the President now has more authority than ever. And the contest that is really going on in this Presidential election is are there enough of us that care about our freedoms versus those who are willing to succumb to the temptations of dictatorship. Just think of the attitude, what it was like right after 9/11 when they passed the Patriot Act, I said 'you know it's not even available, you can't even read it and we're getting ready to vote' they said 'it doesn't matter, the people want us to do something, this looks like we're doing something, it sounds good, there's no way I'm even gonna question this', so they voted for it. They got their signals from the people. it is true that there are a lot of people who wanted something done, the big question is are there more of them or more of us?"

"Congress has generously ignored the Constitution while the President flaunts it, the courts have ignored it and they get in the business of legislating so there's no respect for the rule of law."

RON PAUL ON BIRD FLU

"To me it's so strange that the President can make these proposals and it's even plausible. When he talks about martial law dealing with some epidemic that might come later on and having forced quarantines, doing away with Posse Comitatus in order to deal with natural disasters, and hardly anybody says anything. People must be scared to death."


"I believe it is the President hyping this and Rumsfeld, but it has to be in combination with the people being fearful enough that they will accept the man on the white horse. My first reaction going from my political and medical background is that it's way overly hyped and to think that they have gone this far with it, without a single case in the whole country and they're willing to change the law and turn it into a military state? That is unbelievable! They're determined to have martial law."

RON PAUL ON THE NEO-CONS

"I think the arrogance of power that they have where they themselves are like Communists....in the sense that they decide what is right. The Communist Party said that they decided what was right or wrong, it wasn't a higher source."

RON PAUL ON THE UN, GLOBAL GOVERNMENT & THE NORTH AMERICAN UNION

"Who do we have at the UN, Bolton, the arch Neo-Con warmonger and actually what they've done is taken the Neo-Con position on intervening on the internal affairs of other nations and regime change and they've institutionalized that in the United Nations, now the UN is in the business of regime change."

"I think the goal is one world government - we have not only the U.N. - we have the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, then we have all the subsidiaries like NAFTA and hemispheric governments, highways coming in."

"We have behind the scenes a plan for a North American Union, that's the part that the American people are starting to wake up to, although we have a long way to go to wake up Washington. It's amazing to me how many people outside of Washington are very much aware of the plans with this North American Union, at the same time they are in total denial in Washington, except for the few behind the scenes who are laying the plans and providing the finances."

RON PAUL ON THE DEMOCRAT COWARDS

"Not a whole lot will change because the leadership on the Democratic side, even if they had their way, don't have a different foreign policy. They have been supportive of an interventionist foreign policy in the middle east, and they are not about to back away from that... They are willing to criticize the policy but only as a means to get power."

RON PAUL ON THE PLUNGING DOLLAR & THE ECONOMY

"They all believe in the federal reserve, they are not going to get rid of the IRS and the income tax. I think the dollar is going to keep sliding, which means prices are going to rise, when currencies self destruct, the end goes quickly. There are no signs that there is anything being done in Washington to correct the problem. Spending is going to continue and probably going to get worse, the deficits are going to stay high if foreign policy is not going to change."

"That's also part of the foreign policy to be in position to hold onto natural resources, that's one of the major reasons why we're in the middle east, so yes if there is a financial crisis, they're going to have the guns, and they have control of the natural resources... It's not a good scenario, because what usually happens when you wipe out a currency is that you wipe out the middle class, and we already see this happening. The standard of living is going down."

"They get a temporarily good deal but what it does is encourage us not to be productive, it encourages us not to have manufacturing any longer, we can let others do it cheaper, cheap labour, and then we buy it with cheap money. That is going to come to an end. That means later on there are going to be a lot of changes here. Domestically the interest rates are going to rise, the inflation rate, the price of all goods and services, that will rise, and the economy will weaken, so we have some very serious problems ahead."

"Economically the consequences will be that there's going to be a wholesale rejection of the dollar, because the world has trusted the dollar, especially since the breakdown of the Bretton Woods in 1971, when the linkage of the dollar to gold was broken, they still trusted the dollar as if it were gold, and therefore we can print the money and we can spend the money and foreign countries take our money, then loan it back to us, so they're getting a bum rap."

RON PAUL ON FOREIGN POLICY

"As a Commander in chief you could certainly handle the troops around the world. I would start talking to all our allies and tell them what the plans were and start coming home. We are now spending close to a trillion dollars maintaining our foreign policy. It's a lot bigger than most people realize if you add up the Dod, the supplementals, the interest on the money we spend and taking care of our veterans."

"We have turned our own country into isolationists, diplomatically we don't talk to anybody, we have more enemies than we've ever had before and fewer allies, and at the same time our ability to defend this country is being diminished on a daily basis. We worry about borders, all around he world, we worry about borders in Korea, about borders around Iraq, and what do we do with our own borders? Here we don't do anything."

Bush Urges China to Strengthen Currency

sf gate
President Bush on Thursday told a senior Chinese economic minister that the United States is "watching very carefully" whether Beijing will strengthen the value of its currency.

After a meeting with Vice Premier Wu Yi, the leader of the largest high-level Chinese delegation ever to visit the United States, Bush told reporters the U.S. is "making it clear to China that we value our relationship, but the $233 billion trade deficit must be addressed." Strengthening China's currency, he said, is one way to deal with the deficit.

"This is a complex relationship," Bush said. "There's areas where there's friction, and we just got to work through the friction."

A day after high-level economic talks with senior Bush administration officials, Wu planned meetings Thursday with frustrated congressional leaders. Discussions Wednesday failed to reach a breakthrough in the countries' biggest dispute: China's undervalued currency.

Many lawmakers are considering legislation that would punish Beijing for trade practices that they say have driven U.S. trade deficits to record levels and cost thousands of manufacturing jobs.

Bush, in his comments, urged China to open up financial markets to U.S. companies.

"Not only would it be beneficial to the United States, we happen to think it would be beneficial to the Chinese economy for the consumers to have different options when it comes to savings and purchases," Bush said.

He also called on China to open its market to U.S. beef. "They need to be eating U.S. beef. It's good for them. They'll like it," he said.

China has rejected U.S. requests that it accelerate the revaluing of its currency, the yuan, which American manufacturers contend is undervalued by as much as 40 percent. That makes Chinese products cheaper for Americans and U.S. goods more expensive in China.

After meetings Wednesday between lawmakers and Wu, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said the Chinese told lawmakers they needed more time to overhaul their currency system and make other changes.

Rangel, a Democrat, told reporters that his committee planned to move forward with legislation; some of the bills being considered would impose stiff penalties on Chinese imports.

Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, a leading critic of China, described the frustration he said his colleagues felt. "There's never any action," he said in an interview. "I don't think a press release is going to assuage Congress' worries. We need results."

Despite the criticism, both Wu and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, head of the U.S. delegation at the talks, sounded positive about the importance of the new high-level "strategic economic dialogue" between the countries, which occur twice a year.

The delegations agreed to more than double the number of daily passenger flights between the two nations by 2012, going from 10 to 23. Cargo flights also were increased. The gains fell short of the openings the Bush administration had hoped to achieve.

In the area of financial services, China agreed to a slight expansion in business opportunities for U.S. companies but not the lifting of caps on foreign ownership of banks, securities firms and insurance companies that U.S. firms had sought.

For her part, Wu said it was important to continue direct consultations between the two nations rather than resorting to "threat and sanctions."

U.S. business groups had a decidedly more downbeat response.

"It's clear that this dialogue has been nothing but a cynical Bush administration exercise in spin and public relations," said Kevin Kearns, president of the U.S. Business and Industry Council, which represents small and medium-size manufacturing companies. "The failure of the White House's approach is now clear, so the ball is clearly in Congress' court."

New al CIAda Tapes Feature U.S. Capitol Under 'Attack'

abc news

FLASHBACK: U.S. Government Caught Red-Handed Releasing Staged Al-Qaeda Videos

Al Qaeda has a new opening graphic for its propaganda tapes: the U.S. Capitol under "attack."

"The Islamic State of Iraq...March Toward Washington" reads the headline in English superimposed over a digitally created scene of the U.S. Capitol under attack in the introductory sequence of one tape released on the Internet this week.

Another from al Qaeda's "as Sahab" production arm announces "Holocaust of the Americans in the Land of Khorasan" and shows an image of the U.S. Capitol to introduce a short clip of al Qaeda fighters.

"This is a disturbing new trend," says Laura Mansfield, an Arabic expert who monitors jihadi videos on the Internet.

"Recall that in January 2006, Osama Bin Laden said that plans for attacks in the U.S. were in progress," Mansfield told the Blotter on ABCNews.com. "It may be that this new imagery is designed to motivate terrorist activity in the U.S., but it is certainly intended as a recruiting tool and perhaps intended to reassure al Qaeda's jihadi followers they haven't forgotten their goal of an al Qaeda attack on Washington, D.C.," she said.

Bush Re-Authorizes Martial Law Provisions

prisonplanet

President George W. Bush has sparked much alarm by openly declaring himself to be a dictator in the event of a national emergency under new provisions that will effectively nullify the U.S. constitution, but such an infrastructure has been in place for over 70 years and this merely represents a re-authorization of the infrastructure of martial law.

New legislation signed on May 9, 2007, declares that in the event of a "catastrophic event", the President can take total control over the government and the country, bypassing all other levels of government at the state, federal, local, territorial and tribal levels, and thus ensuring total unprecedented dictatorial power.

The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, which also places the Secretary of Homeland Security in charge of domestic "security", was signed earlier this month without the approval or oversight of Congress and seemingly supercedes the National Emergency Act which allows the president to declare a national emergency but also requires that Congress have the authority to "modify, rescind, or render dormant" such emergency authority if it believes the president has acted inappropriately.

Journalist Jerome Corsi, who has studied the directive also states that it makes no reference to Congress and "its language appears to negate any requirement that the president submit to Congress a determination that a national emergency exists."

In other words the new directive excludes Congress altogether from governance in a state of emergency.

While alluding to the "enduring constitutional government", the directive actually ensures the end of constitutional government as each branch, the executive, legislative and judicial, are stripped of equal authority and must answer directly and solely to the President.

The mainstream media has not reported on the directive and the White House has refused to comment.

Earlier this month it was reported that a high-level group of government and military officials has been quietly preparing an emergency survival program named "The Day After," which would effectively end civil liberties and implement a system of martial law in the event of a catastrophic attack on a U.S. city.

Though anathema to any notion of liberty or freedom, this new legislation has not come out of the blue, it is merely an open declaration of the infrastructure of martial law that the federal government has been building since the turn of the last century, which was first publicly codified in the 1933 war powers act under Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Senate Report 93-549, which was presented at the first session of the 93rd Congress, outlines just a handful of the declared national emergencies or martial law declarations that preceded the latest one.

"Since March 9, 1933, the United States has been in a state of declared national emergency. In fact, there are now in effect four presidentially-proclaimed states of national emergency: In addition to the national emergency declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, there are also the national emergency proclaimed by President Harry S. Truman on December 16, 1950, during the Korean conflict, and the states of national emergency declared by President Richard M. Nixon on March 23, 1970, and August 15, 1971."

In alliance with these open declarations of martial law and the 1947 National Security Act, bills such as the Patriot Act, the John Warner Defense Authorization Act and the Military Commissions Act have all put the final jigsaw pieces in place to complete an infrastructure of dictatorship since 9/11.

We're already living under an infrastructure of martial law and have been since 1933, all that remains for it to be fully implemented is a big enough natural disaster, mass terror attack or other catastrophe that will cause the necessary carnage and panic that affords the federal government enough leeway to implement open dictatorship with the least possible resistance.

New revelations that Bush has openly declared himself to be a dictator are both shocking and demand immediate attention, but they only represent a re-authorization of the tyranny that Americans have been living under for at least the past 74 years.

'World heading towards Iran confrontation'

isreal news
IAEA Head Mohamed ElBaradei: Iran is building knowledge, situation is deteriorating. We are unable to inspect Iranian facilities

The international community and Iran are "heading towards confrontation" over Tehran's nuclear program, Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned Thursday morning.

ElBaradei was speaking at a two-day conference in Luxembourg aimed at "preventing nuclear catastrophe," organized by Russian Jewish Congress Chairman Viatcheslav Kantor.

"Its very difficult to say how close a country is to nuclear weapons," ElBaradei said during a press conference. "Iran is expanding its knowledge and capacity. It now has over 1000 centrifuges. I have expressed concern over this because the Agency is unable to conduct a robust and full inspection," he added.

"My current priority is to carry out a comprehensive inspection," ElBaradei said, adding that he estimated Iran was "three to eight years" from being capable of producing nuclear weapons.

The IAEA chief has come under criticism in recent days for suggesting that Iran has made so much progress on its nuclear program that the world should accept as "fact" that Iran will have the independent ability to enrich uranium.

On Wednesday, the IAEA released a report saying Iran was operating 1600 centrifuges independently. US officials have described the report as "alarming," while Iran said the report was "devoid of any new points."

"We could end up with a major confrontation," ElBaradei reiterated. "Iran needs to listen to the international community and suspend enrichment, but the international community also needs to engage Iran. We need a comprehensive settlement," he added, saying, "the status quo is unacceptable."

The IAEA head added that the issue represents "an emerging threat in a region that is in an absolute mess right now."

Nuclear weapons expert Mark Fitzpatrick told Ynetnews that ElBaradei's estimates may be too optimistic. "If everything goes smoothly for Iran, it will be 2 - 3 years away from being able to produce nuclear weapons," he said. "It seems Iran is on track to having 3000 centrifuges by the middle of this summer. It will take them about a year to get a hold of the technical issues and another year to enrich the uranium, hence my estimate of two years," he added.

Fitzpatrick noted that up until 2003, no less than 10 indicators were found to strongly suggest that Iran's nuclear program had a military purpose. "After 2003, all those signs stopped," he said. "Did the Iranians stop? Or is it more secretive? There's no reason to believe they stopped," he added.

'Attack on Iran would be catastrophic'

Meanwhile, speaking to Ynetnews, former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said a military strike on Iran would be a "catastrophic" option.

Blix, who is currently Chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, said previous military operations at nuclear programs, such as Israel's strike on Iraq's Osirak plant in 1982, served to slow the nuclear program, but added that only a "durable occupation or regime change" could ensure that the program is not restarted.

"In all likelihood, an attack on Iran would be catastrophic," Blix said, adding that the strike would rally support for Iranian President Ahmadinejad.

Ex-Gonzales aide says she may have 'crossed the line'

la times + video
Her testimony confirms politics were a factor in Justice Dept. personnel decisions, but the extent remains unclear.

WASHINGTON — After three months of congressional hearings into the firing of U.S. attorneys, one thing became clear Wednesday: Partisan politics did play a role in Justice Department personnel decisions.

But lawmakers, who have heard from an array of young political functionaries to the U.S. attorney general himself, still do not know the extent of it.

The parade of Justice Department officials wrapped up Wednesday with the testimony of Monica M. Goodling, 33, a graduate of an evangelical Christian law school whose meteoric rise to the top of the Bush Justice Department crashed and burned this spring when she resigned and hired a lawyer.

She was senior counsel to Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales and was his liaison to the White House.

After weeks of wrangling about the ground rules for her appearance, Goodling — testifying under a grant of immunity from prosecution — acknowledged that she had taken into account the political leanings of applicants for jobs at the Justice Department, including career prosecutors and immigration judges. That may have violated federal civil service laws, and Goodling conceded she may have "crossed the line."

The admission, before a packed House Judiciary Committee hearing, was the strongest evidence yet of Bush administration wrongdoing turned up by congressional investigators. For Democrats, it confirmed suspicions about the depths of politicization at the Justice Department under Gonzales.

But still fiercely disputed is the core question of whether officials were systematically assessing U.S. attorneys' fidelity to administration political goals and easing out those found wanting, as Democrats and some of the fired attorneys suspect.

The hearings have failed to produce support for Democrats' most provocative theories: that the firings were driven by a desire to find U.S. attorneys who would pursue legal action — in voting fraud or public corruption matters — in ways that would help Republican candidates.

Now, with Goodling and other Justice officials denying they knew of any such motives, Democrats are turning to the White House for answers. That path could be highly problematic.

The administration has declined to provide unfettered access to the likes of political operative Karl Rove and former White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers. Lawmakers are threatening to issue subpoenas for documents and testimony. The matter could be headed for court.

Democrats on Wednesday expressed indignation and frustration at the state of affairs.

"The only way we can get to the full truth is if Mr. Karl Rove is sitting in the very same seat that you're sitting in," Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas) told Goodling. "And he needs to be here. And he needs to be here posthaste."

While portraying herself as a department loyalist who considered her colleagues part of an extended family, Goodling also lobbed new and explosive charges against Gonzales and Paul J. McNulty, the outgoing deputy attorney general.

Goodling recounted one conversation she had with Gonzales during her final days at the department that suggested the attorney general may have attempted to coordinate with her his version of the events leading up to the firing of the eight prosecutors.

Goodling said Gonzales reviewed the story of the firings with her in March at a meeting she requested in his office to discuss her future.

She said she was "paralyzed" and "distraught" by the swirling controversy and asked Gonzales for a transfer. The attorney general said he would consider the request.

"He then proceeded to say, 'Let me tell you what I can remember,' and he laid out for me his general recollection … of some of the process regarding the replacement of the U.S. attorneys," Goodling said. "He laid out a little bit of it, and then he asked me … if I had any reaction to his iteration."

"It made me a little uncomfortable," Goodling continued.

Democrats seized on the exchange, questioning whether Gonzales was attempting to coordinate stories with his former aide and possibly even to obstruct justice.

Gonzales has told lawmakers that he had not discussed the dismissals with others involved at the department for fear that it might compromise the integrity of the investigation.

"Do you think, Ms. Goodling, the attorney general was trying to shape your recollection?" asked Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.).

Goodling said no but that the encounter left her speechless. "I just did not know if it was a conversation that we should be having, and so I just … didn't say anything," she said.

Senate Democrats offered a harsher assessment. "At the very least, the attorney general may have misled the Senate Judiciary Committee," Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a leading Gonzales critic, said in a statement issued after the House hearing. "At worst, he may have tried to influence Ms. Goodling's testimony."

Goodling also alleged that McNulty, who has testified that he was largely in the dark about the events leading up to the firings, was "not fully candid" with lawmakers and gave testimony to Congress that was "incomplete or inaccurate."

McNulty told a Senate panel Feb. 6 that the decision to fire the U.S. attorneys in December was made solely by the Justice Department when, in fact, the White House had also weighed in.

McNulty has said Goodling and other aides failed to sufficiently brief him on the firings in advance of his testimony. Goodling said the allegation was false.

The Justice Department produced quick denials on behalf of Gonzales and McNulty, saying that neither had acted inappropriately.

"The attorney general has never attempted to influence or shape the testimony or public statements of any witness in this matter, including Ms. Goodling," said spokesman Brian Roehrkasse. "The statements made by the attorney general at this meeting were intended only to comfort her in a very difficult period of her life, as Monica described today when she said he was being kind."

McNulty said he testified truthfully "based on what I knew at that time," and that "Ms. Goodling's characterization of my testimony is wrong and not supported by the extensive record of documents and testimony already provided to Congress."

Goodling also acknowledged that the Justice Department last fall interviewed U.S. attorney candidates for Los Angeles who had not yet gone through the state's bipartisan selection process.

Goodling said the department considered a state commission that has screened candidates since 2001 "rather slow" and believed it did not include all candidates that were deserving.

The Times reported Wednesday that the department interviews, in which Goodling participated, were reined in after the head of the state selection commission, Los Angeles investment banker Gerald L. Parsky, protested to the White House.

Concerns were raised that officials were trying to install a politically connected successor to outgoing U.S. Atty. Debra Wong Yang.

Earlier Wednesday, Goodling — who did opposition research for the Republican National Committee before joining the Justice Department — acknowledged that she had gone overboard in considering the political backgrounds of candidates for jobs as career prosecutors. She also said she occasionally scanned Federal Election Commission websites to check out applicants' political contributions.

"You crossed the line on civil service laws, is that right?" asked Rep. Robert C. Scott (D-Va.).

"I believe I crossed the line," Goodling replied. "But I didn't mean to."

She said she could not recall the number of cases in which she allowed politics to affect her judgment.

She downplayed her involvement in the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys, saying that she acted more as a traffic cop, forwarding assessments and other information to higher-ups at the Justice Department and White House.

She offered investigators few leads on connecting the scandal to the White House. She said she never discussed the firings with Rove or Miers, although she acknowledged attending a meeting with Rove after the scandal broke and exchanging e-mail with Miers.

House leaders said the testimony was significant, and they vowed to stay on the trail.

"It's imperative that we begin to obtain more cooperation from the White House," House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) said after the hearing. "We've learned today that trust has been violated, that false statements have been made under oath — not Monica Goodling — and that there was a possible obstruction of justice as well as perjury.

"This is known as the bread crumb theory of investigation," he added. "We keep getting closer and closer to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave."

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rick.schmitt@latimes.com

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(INFOBOX BELOW)

Key players

Paul J. McNulty

Deputy attorney general, No. 2 person at the Justice Department.

• Testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Feb. 6.

• Downplayed his role and that of the White House in the firings. Later, he reportedly told a lawmaker he "had not been entirely candid" in his testimony.

• Announced his resignation May 14.

D. Kyle Sampson

Chief of staff, the attorney general's top aide, who compiled the list of prosecutors to be fired.

• Testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 29.

• Told the panel that despite Gonzales' earlier denials, the attorney general was deeply involved in discussions that led to the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys.

• Resigned March 12.

James B. Comey

Deputy attorney general under former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft.

• Testified twice, before the House and Senate Judiciary committees, May 3 and May 15.

• Said most of the fired U.S. attorneys were among the finest. He recalled that Gonzales, when he was White House counsel in 2004, went to Ashcroft's hospital bedside to get him to sign off on a disputed national security order that Comey had opposed as acting attorney general.

• Left the Justice Department in 2005 after Gonzales was appointed.

Monica M. Goodling

Justice Department's White House liaison, worked with Sampson on personnel matters.

• Testified Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee after receiving immunity from prosecution.

• Acknowledged that she considered political loyalty to the GOP when evaluating Justice Department employees, a possible violation of civil service and other laws.

• Resigned April 6.

Alberto R. Gonzales

U.S. attorney general, the nation's top law enforcement official.

• Testified twice, before the Senate and House Judiciary committees, April 19 and May 10.

• Acknowledged that the firing of eight U.S. attorneys could have been handled better but defended the dismissals as appropriate and based on performance, not politics.

• Despite calls for his resignation from Democrats and even some Republicans, he remains as attorney general and has President Bush's support.