Pace fired to clear way for “national emergency,” Iran nuclear strike?

Paul Craig Roberts
Online Journal
Monday June 18, 2007

“It is the absolute responsibility of everybody in uniform to disobey an order that is either illegal or immoral.” --General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Press Club, February 17, 2006.

“They will be held accountable for the decisions they make. So they should in fact not obey the illegal and immoral orders to use weapons of mass destruction.” --General Peter Pace, CNN With Wolf Blitzer, April 6, 2003

The surprise decision by the Bush regime to replace General Peter Pace as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has been explained as a necessary step to avoid contentious confirmation hearings in the US Senate. Gen. Pace’s reappointment would have to be confirmed, and as the general has served as vice chairman and chairman of the Joint Chiefs for the past six years, the Republicans feared that hearings would give war critics an opportunity to focus, in Defense Secretary Gates words, “on the past, rather than the future.”

This is a plausible explanation. Whether one takes it on face value depends on how much trust one still has in a regime that has consistently lied about everything for six years.

General Pace himself says he was forced out when he refused to “take the issue off the table” by voluntarily retiring. Pace himself was sufficiently disturbed by his removal to strain his relations with the powers that be by not going quietly.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page interpreted Pace’s removal as indication that “the man running the Pentagon is Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan. For that matter, is George W. Bush still President?” [General Retreat, June 11, 2007]

The Wall Street Journal editorial writers’ attempt to portray Pace’s departure as evidence of a weak and appeasing administration does not ring true. An administration that escalates the war in Iraq in the face of public opposition and pushes ahead with its plan to attack Iran is not an appeasing administration. Whether it is the war or Attorney General Gonzales or the immigration bill or anything else, President Bush and his Republican stalwarts have told Congress and the American people that they don’t care what Congress and the public think. Bush’s signing statements make it clear that he doesn’t even care about the laws that Congress writes.

A president audacious enough to continue an unpopular and pointless war in the face of public opinion and a lost election is a president who is not too frightened to reappoint a general. Why does Bush run from General Pace when he fervently supports embattled Attorney General Gonzales? What troops does Bush support? He supports his toadies.

There are, of course, other explanations for General Pace’s departure. The most disturbing of these explanations can be found in General Pace’s two statements at the beginning of this article.

In the first statement General Pace says that every member of the US military has the absolute responsibility to disobey illegal and immoral orders. In the second statement, General Pace says that an order to use weapons of mass destruction is an illegal and immoral order.

The context of General Pace’s second statement above (actually, the first statement in historical time) is his response to Blitzer’s question whether the invading US troops could be attacked with Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But Pace’s answer does not restrict illegal and immoral only to Iraqi use of WMD. It is a general statement. It applies to their use period.

On March 10, 2006, Jorge Hirsch made a case that use of nuclear weapons is both illegal and immoral. [Gen. Pace to Troops: Don't Nuke Iran, Antiwar.com] Despite the illegality and immorality of first-use of nuclear weapons, the Bush Pentagon rewrote US war doctrine to permit their use regardless of their illegality and immorality. For a regime that not only believes that might is right but also that they have the might, law is what the regime says.

The revised war doctrine permits US first strike use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries. We need to ask ourselves why the Bush administration would blacken America’s reputation and rekindle the nuclear arms race unless the administration had plans to apply its new war doctrine.

Senator Joseph Lieberman, a number of neoconservatives, prominent Jewish leaders such as Norman Podhoretz, and members of the Israeli government have called for a US attack on Iran. Most Republican presidential candidates have said that they would not rule out the use of nuclear weapons against Iran.

Allegedly, the US Department of State is pursuing diplomacy with Iran, not war, but Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns gives the lie to that claim. On June 12 Burns claimed that Iran was not only arming insurgents in Iraq but also the Taliban in Afghanistan. Burns’ claims are, to put it mildly, controversial in the US intelligence community, and they are denied not only by Iran but also by our puppet government in Afghanistan. On June 14, Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak told the Associated Press that Burns’ claim has no credibility.

But, of course, none of the administration’s propagandistic claims that set the stage for the invasion of Iraq had any credibility either, and the lack of credibility did not prevent the claims from deceiving the Congress and the American people. As the US media now functions as the administration’s Ministry of Propaganda, the Bush regime believes that it can stampede Americans with lies into another war.

The Bush regime has concluded that a conventional attack on Iran would do no more than stir up a hornet’s nest and release retaliatory actions that the US could not manage. The Bush regime is convinced that only nuclear weapons can bring the mullahs to heel.

The Bush regime’s plan to attack Iran with nuclear weapons puts General Pace’s departure in a different light. How can President Bush succeed with an order to attack with nuclear weapons when America’s highest ranking military officer says that such an order is “illegal and immoral” and that everyone in the military has an “absolute responsibility” to disobey it?

An alternative explanation for Pace’s departure is that Pace had to go so that malleable toadies can be installed in his place.

Pace’s departure removes a known obstacle to a nuclear attack on Iran, thus advancing that possible course of action. A plan to attack Iran with nuclear weapons might also explain the otherwise inexplicable “National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive” (NSPD-51 AND HSPD-20) that Bush issued on May 9. Bush’s directive allows him to declare a “national emergency” on his authority alone without ratification by Congress. Once Bush declares a national emergency, he can take over all functions of government at every level, as well as private organizations and businesses, and remain in total control until he declares the emergency to be over.

Who among us would trust Bush, or any president, with this power?

What is the necessity of such a sweeping directive subject to no check or ratification?

What catastrophic emergency short of a massive attack on the US with nuclear ICBMs can possibly justify such a directive?

There is no obvious answer to the question. The federal government’s inability to respond to Hurricane Katrina is hard evidence that centralizing power in one office is not the way to deal with catastrophes.

A speculative answer is that, with appropriate propaganda, the directive could be triggered by a US nuclear attack on Iran. The use of nuclear weapons arouses the ultimate fear. A US nuclear attack would send Russian and Chinese ICBMs into high alert. False flag operations could be staged in the US. The propagandistic US media would hype such developments to the hilt, portraying danger everywhere. Fear of the regime’s new detention centers would silence most voices of protest as the regime declares its “national emergency.”

This might sound like a far-out fiction novel, but it is a scenario that would explain the Bush regime’s disinterest in the shrinking Republican vote that foretells a massive Republican wipeout in the 2008 election. In a declared national emergency, there would be no election.

As implausible as this might sound to people who trust the government, be aware that despite his rhetoric, Bush has no respect for democracy. His neoconservative advisors have all been taught that it is their duty to circumvent democracy, as democracy does not produce the right decisions. Neoconservatives believe in rule by elites, and they regard themselves as the elite. The Bush regime decided that Americans would not agree to an invasion of Iraq unless they were deceived and tricked into it, and so we were.

Indeed, democracy is out of favor throughout the Western world. In the UK and Europe, peoples are being forced, despite their expressed opposition, into an EU identity that they reject. British PM Tony Blair and his European counterparts have decided on their own that the people do not know best and that the people will be ignored.

As former French PM Valery Giscard d’Estaing told the French newspaper, Le Monde, “Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly.” Giscard d’Estaing is referring to the resurrection of the rejected EU constitution camouflaged as a treaty.

Giscard d’Estaing acknowledges that 450 million Europeans are being hoodwinked. Why should Americans be surprised that they have been and are being hoodwinked?

Americans might have more awareness of their peril if they realized that their leaders no longer believe in democratic outcomes.

Australia, US launch massive war game

AFP
Monday June 18, 2007

Australia and the United States launched a massive war game Monday aimed at honing their ability to act together against threats to Asia-Pacific security, commanders said.

More than 20,000 US troops and 12,000 Australians, backed by a total of 30 ships and 125 aircraft, will be involved in "Operation Talisman Sabre 2007" on the northeast coast until July 2.

Vice Admiral Doug Crowder, commander of the US Navy's 7th Fleet, said uncertainty and unpredictability remained a threat to economic prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region.

"Therefore it is very important that our militaries train together to carry out the types of missions our governments may call upon us to execute to ensure regional security and stability.

"That's exactly what Talisman Sabre 2007 is all about, further developing our ability to operate together as a combined military force," Crowder told reporters aboard the USS Blue Ridge command ship in Sydney.

Australia's Major General Richard Wilson said the operation was the country's largest military training exercise.

"Talisman Sabre is based on a fictional scenario that combines most of the difficult aspects of modern warfare operations," he told reporters.

The war game will involve parachute regiments and amphibious forces paving the way for land-based attacks, along with a series of land, sea and air exercises from bases at Rockhampton and Townsville in Queensland state.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard is a close ally of US President George W. Bush and has contributed troops to US-led operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Opponents of EU treaty accused of being 'terrorists'

Julia Hartley-Brewer
UK Daily Express
Monday June 18, 2007

Eurosceptics have been branded "terrorists" just days before Tony Blair prepares to fly to Brussels to smuggle in the new EU constitution by the back door.

Critics of the EU’s secret plans to bring back the failed European constitution by stealth at this week’s summit were blasted by the Italian President, Giorgio Napolitano.

The Italian head of state told a news conference in Siena last week that "those who are anti EU are terrorists".

And he attacked eurosceptics who warn that the promised new EU treaty will go too far in eroding the powers of member states, saying: "It is psychological terrorism to suggest the spectre of a European superstate."

His comments emerged as EU foreign ministers gather in Luxembourg today to negotiate the new treaty to replace the failed EU constitution, ahead of a summit of EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday.

Ahead of what will be his last major political event before he hands over to Gordon Brown, Mr Blair has been forced to deny widespread claims that he will seek to sign up to a new treaty which will revive the key planks of the constitution, which was doomed after it was rejected by French and Dutch voters in referendums in 2005.

Downing Street issued a list of Britain’s "red line" issues where Mr Blair will refuse to hand over powers to Brussels, such as the veto on criminal justice and labour law and Britain’s seat on the UN security council, but refused to offer British voters a referendum on the treaty.

But critics say Mr Blair is, like most other EU leaders, determined to bring the failed EU constitution in by the back door by simply renaming the document as an "amending treaty" and slimming down its original 500 pages.

Campaigners for national referendums on the proposed treaty were left outraged when President Napolitano spoke out last Monday alongside the German President, Horst Kohler, who nodded in agreement at his comments.

President Kohler also described the tactics of eurosceptics as "populistic, demagogic campaigning".

The words of the two men were seen by many in their home countries as a thinly veiled attempt to link euroscepticism with the demagoguery and populism of the fascist regimes of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

Mr Blair’s claim that the new treaty is not simply a re-hash of the rejected constitution were dismissed by eurosceptic campaigners, who pointed to the statements of other European politicians in recent weeks.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a letter to fellow leaders, revealed last wek that most countries want to keep the "substance" of the constitution.

And former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, a key architect of the EU constitution, said last week: "I am strongly opposed to a mutilated treaty. The European Council must establish a clear road map and a clear mandate to achieve the process for the ratification of the constitutional treaty."

Meanwhile, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier recently said "closed-door negotiations among the 27 EU governments were making progress in deciding on what to do with the constitution", adding: "Everyone wants to push this forward."

UKIP leader, Nigel Farage MEP, said: "This treaty is the constitution by another name. The agenda has always been to sneak it in under another guise. It is a deliberate and deceitful attempt to prevent free and fair referendums not just in Britain but all European countries.

"It will have enormous adverse implications for Britain, yet it is just being bulldozed through. Blair will sign away our future - just days before he leaves No 10 - and his legacy will be a hand grenade with the pin pulled out."

Howard Dean Meets The Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth

9/11 Blogger
Monday June 18, 2007

Mike Jackman, Co-Founder of Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth, questioned Governor Howard Dean about 9/11 at an event in Manchester, New Hampshire.

US tank bombs Iraq Sunni mosque

Press TV
Monday June 18, 2007

Muslim Scholars Association has said in an online statement that US forces bombed a Sunni mosque in Baquba, killing five Iraqis.

The association which is headed by Harith al-Dhari indicated that a US tank destroyed the Abdullah Ibn Mubarak mosque in Baquba, 60 kilometers northeast of Baghdad, on Sunday.

The attack, according to the statement has left five Iraqis dead, DPA reported.

The incident came a day after a suicide bomber blew up a vehicle against the Sunni Al-Anwar mosque in the town of Al-Haswa, 60 kilometers south of Baghdad, killing eight people.

Analysts say the United States is behind such terrorist acts in Iraq and with its prolonged presence in the war-torn country is doing its utmost to pit Sunnis against Shias under the guise of war against terror.

On Sunday informed sources reported that the US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte had planned the attack on the holy Shia shrine in Samarra, a measure to sow discord between Shias and Sunnis as the main Islamic schools of thought.

The blast in Samarra which destroyed the minarets of the sacred shrines of the Shia Imams was performed with the assistance of the former Saddam regime's security agents, the sources added.

Britain feared US would 'nuke' Afghanistan: ex-diplomat

AFP
Monday June 18, 2007

Britain joined the United States' invasion to oust the Taliban in 2001 because it feared America would "nuke the shit" out of Afghanistan, the former British ambassador to Washington reportedly told a television documentary to be screened Saturday.

In comments printed in advance in the Daily Mirror tabloid on Monday, Christopher Meyer said that fear explained why Prime Minister Tony Blair chose to stand with US President George W. Bush in his decision to invade Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks -- to temper his aggressive battle plans.

"Blair's real concern was that there would be quote unquote 'a knee-jerk reaction' by the Americans ... they would go thundering off and nuke the shit out of the place without thinking straight," Meyer reported told the documentary, according to the Mirror.

In other excerpts of the documentary, printed in The Observer newspaper on Sunday, members of Blair's inner circle said the prime minister agreed to commit troops to the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq despite believing that the United States had failed to prepare adequately for post-war reconstruction.

Channel 4 will air the first part of "The Rise and Fall of Tony Blair" on Saturday.

Gordon Brown Future British PM New World Order Speech

youtube

Britains new Prime Minister Gordon Brown's New World Order Speech

The Immigration Debate: Globalists vs. Nationalists

Merrill Cook
The Spectrum
Sunday June 17, 2007

Much of the local reporting regarding the immigration debate has focused on immigration rights groups, like La Raza versus illegal immigration opposition groups, like the Minuteman Project. While this has been a colorful, interesting - and, indeed - important conflict, the more significant battle underlying the immigration debate is between corporate America and America's middle class, or rather, between the globalists and the nationalists.

The current Senate Bush-Kennedy-McCain amnesty bill for 12 to 20 million illegal aliens is little more than an attempt to reward mass criminality. The provision in the bill for enhanced border security is "a spoonful of enforcement to make the amnesty go down." No one is surprised by Sen. Kennedy's commitment to amnesty.

The important question is: Why would the president of the United States and a number of leading Republicans in the Congress be so willing to stomp all over the conservatives and tear the Republican Party apart in their rush to be the architects of this so-called "Grand Immigration Compromise?" The answer lies in the ongoing fight between corporate America and America's middle class workers. This battle can also be characterized as a fight between those whose priority is globalization (the globalists) versus those whose priority is American sovereignty (the nationalists).

The political action committees (PACs) of America's largest companies, especially the multi-nationals, provide the bulk of the money to both political parties and particularly to the campaigns of members of Congress. The No. 1 priority of big business today is to have an endless supply of cheap immigrant labor and to avoid penalties for hiring illegal aliens in violation of current U.S. law.

The next most important (and related) priority of big business is to enable its labor force to move just as freely across national boundaries as trade and capital do. In concert with America's political and economic elite, big business wants a world without borders. Corporate America's fight to legalize America's 12 to 20 million illegal aliens is directly related to its desire to unify Canada, the U.S., and Mexico into a North American Union similar to the European Union. The ultimate goal is global governance and the withering away of national sovereignty. With the vastly lower cost of labor inherent in both of these big business priorities, corporate profits will soar, at least in the short term.

America's workers strongly opposed NAFTA and China's Permanent Most Favored Nation status. Both were promoted by corporate America particularly the multi-nationals. A trade surplus with Mexico at the time NAFTA was enacted has turned into a $1 billion per week trade deficit. The Permanent Most Favored Trade status for China enacted in 2000 has resulted in a $1 billion per day trade deficit! Even the most conservative estimates indicate a loss of at least 6 million American manufacturing jobs from these two pieces of legislation. These corporations in the words of Pat Buchanan, "Want to be rid of their American workers, but keep their American consumers."

America's current political leadership, in crafting the "Immigration Grand Compromise" currently in the Senate in return for campaign contributions from corporate America PAC, has exposed itself as a facilitator in the effort to sell America's middle class down the river. It's up to the people to rise up and stop it.

Negroponte behind Samarra blast

Press TV
Sunday June 17, 2007

The US Deputy Secretary of State reportedly planned the attack on the holy Shia shrines in Samarra to help topple the Iraqi government.

According to an informed source John Negroponte plotted the attack during an unannounced trip to Iraq on June 12 in order to fuel insecurity and sectarian violence in the country.

Negroponte's motive was to overthrow Iraq's legitimate government, the same source added.

Negroponte, who was a staunch supporter of right-wing death squads in Central America during the 1980s, held several informal meetings with Iraqi officials prior to the June 13 terrorist attack on the revered Shia shrines in Samarra, the source said.

During his meetings, Negroponte reportedly strongly cautioned that the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki must change.

Negroponte also asked several Iraqi officials, including Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi, to resign- a move the source said was aimed at paving the way for al-Maliki's government to eventually 'topple'.

The source said Negroponte made “empty promises” to the Iraqi officials, saying they would be appointed to key governmental posts.

But the US still wants to return the Baathists, the loyalists of the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, to power.

The blast in Samarra which destroyed the minarets of the sacred shrines of the Shia Imams was performed with the assistance of the former Saddam regime's security agents, the source added.

As ambassador to Honduras, Negroponte played a key role in US aid to the Contra death squads in Nicaragua and in shoring up the brutal military dictatorship of General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez in Honduras.

During his term as ambassador there, diplomats alleged that the embassy's annual human rights reports made Honduras sound more like 'Norway than Argentina.'

However, according to a four-part series in the Baltimore Sun, in 1982 alone the Honduran press ran 318 stories of murders and kidnappings by the Honduran military.

Israel plans attack on Gaza

Uzi Mahnaimi
London Times
Saturday June 16, 2007

ISRAEL’s new defence minister Ehud Barak is planning an attack on Gaza within weeks to crush the Hamas militants who have seized power there.

According to senior Israeli military sources, the plan calls for 20,000 troops to destroy much of Hamas’s military capability in days.

The raid would be triggered by Hamas rocket attacks against Israel or a resumption of suicide bombings.

Barak, who is expected to become defence minister tomorrow, has already demanded detailed plans to deploy two armoured divisions and an infantry division, accompanied by assault drones and F-16 jets, against Hamas.

The Israeli forces would expect to be confronted by about 12,000 Hamas fighters with arms confiscated from the Fatah faction that they defeated in last week’s three-day civil war in Gaza.

Details of the plan emerged as Fatah forces in the West Bank stormed Hamas-run buildings, including the parliament in Ramallah, where they tried to seize the deputy speaker.

Israeli officials believe their forces would face even tougher resistance in Gaza than they encountered during last summer’s war against Hezbollah in south Lebanon.

A source close to Barak said that Israel could not tolerate an aggressive “Hamastan” on its border and an attack seemed unavoidable.

“The question is not if but how and when,” he said.

Flight 77: The Flight Data Recorder Investigation Files

Google Video
Saturday June 16, 2007

Calum Douglas presents his investigation into the flight data recorder from Flight 77, which was supplied to him under the US Freedom of Information Act, to an audience at the Indian YMCA in Fitzroy Square, London on 8th June 2007.

Fingerprinting and eye scans for children as young as five

Marie Woolf
London Independent
Sunday June 17, 2007

Schools are to get the go-ahead to fingerprint pupils as young as five, in new measures to be approved by the Government.

Ministers will issue guidance telling schools they have the right to collect biometric data and install fingerprint scanners.

But the decision has angered opposition MPs who say collecting fingerprints from children will be a gift to identity thieves.

The guidance will say that personal data, including fingerprints and eyeball scans, can be collected from pupils and used to monitor attendance, so long as schools consult parents first and do not share the data with outside bodies.

Schools will be able to place fingerprint scanners at the entrances to classrooms, the school gates and even in cafeterias.

Fingerprint and eyeball scans would make it easy for schools to track children during the day, and tell if they are playing truant, or even what they have eaten for lunch.

MPs fear that school computers are not secure enough to hold biometric data safely and will be unable to erase the information from systems when students have left school.

Civil liberties campaigners accused the Government of wanting to barcode children and questioned whether the data would be kept from other government agencies and the police.

Nearly 900,000 children aged 10 to 17 have their genetic information stored on the police's national DNA database, along with 108 under the age of 10. The guidance, to be approved by ministers this week, will say that schools can benefit from using biometrics at entry points to schools and classrooms as well as to take out library books.

It will warn schools not to give out the sensitive information, telling them it is governed by the same data-protection laws as children's addresses and birthdays. But it is understood that schools will not have to gain written permission from each parent before their child's fingerprints are taken. The guidance, written by Becta, which advises the Government on the use of technology in education, will go out to schools and further education colleges.

The civil rights group Liberty said: "We have some serious concerns that this biometric data is being collected from children simply for administrative convenience. We want to know what happens to the data after the children leave. The police have the right to get into any database, private or public."

About 200 schools are thought to use fingerprint scans already, but most have been waiting for the Government to give the go-ahead. Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat education spokesman, said she was concerned that hackers could access sensitive data and steal children's identities. She questioned whether schools would be able to erase the data when children left school.

"We wanted a guarantee that nobody can get hold of this information and an absolute guarantee that the data would be destroyed," she said. "The temptation for schools to reveal this sensitive information to the police will be enormous."

Jim Knight, the schools minister, said he wanted "parents to be fully engaged with every aspect of their children's education - this will be at the heart of our guidance.

"I back every headteacher's right to choose technology to improve their day-to-day running - but it's plain common sense for them to talk to parents about this and all other issues relating to their pupils. Schools need to collect pupil personal information... But we are clear that they have to comply with data protection laws. This means that no outside organisation can access any information."

Among Firefighters in New York, Mixed Views on Giuliani

MICHAEL WILSON
NY Times
Sunday June 17, 2007

Their images are permanently etched in photographs after the fall of the World Trade Center towers, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and firefighters cloaked in the same gray dust. For months afterward, they stood together at funerals. Mr. Giuliani, in his eulogy, always asked for a round of applause to celebrate the dead firefighter’s life.

It would be easy to assume, then, that Mr. Giuliani can count on the support of the 11,000 men and women of the New York City Fire Department as he runs for president. But that would not be entirely true.

Interviews with more than 50 firefighters and department officers show a mix of admiration and disdain for the former mayor. Many firefighters praise his years in office, citing his success in reducing crime and his leadership after the terrorist attacks. Others harbor a resentment for what they describe as his poor treatment of the department before and after Sept. 11.

Some still speak bitterly about a contract that left firefighters without a raise for two years. Some also say Mr. Giuliani has exaggerated the role he played after the terrorist attacks, casting himself as a hero for political gain. The harshest sentiments stem from Mr. Giuliani’s decision nearly two months after 9/11 to reduce the number of firefighters who were allowed to search for colleagues in the rubble — a move that he partially reversed but that still infuriates many firefighters.

As his candidacy proceeds, Mr. Giuliani’s work on and after Sept. 11, his greatest strength in the eyes of many voters, will be scrutinized. The firefighters’ interviews indicate that in New York, at least, a critical evaluation has begun.

“I think they assume that we all love him,” said Robert Keys, 48, a battalion chief and 25-year department veteran, referring to people outside New York. “He wound up with this ‘America’s Mayor’ image. Those of us who had to deal with him before and after 9/11 don’t share that same sentiment.”

Daniel McCarthy, a 54-year-old firefighter, said Mr. Giuliani should be judged on more than just his relationship with firefighters. “Maybe he wasn’t great for the Fire Department,” Mr. McCarthy said. “But he was great for the city.”

On the campaign trail, Mr. Giuliani frequently invokes the Sept. 11 heroism of “my firefighters,” as he often calls them, as emblematic of American patriotism and resolve. But some firefighters have begun organizing efforts to dispel the notion that they are in his corner.

The International Association of Fire Fighters, an umbrella union based in Washington, spoke out against Mr. Giuliani in March. The group is also preparing a short DVD outlining its grievances that it plans to send to fire departments across the country. Meanwhile, a small group of Sept. 11 family members and firefighters has been protesting outside many of Mr. Giuliani’s campaign appearances.

One of those protesters, Deputy Chief Jim Riches, who lost his firefighter son that day, said Mr. Giuliani did nothing on Sept. 11 to warrant hero status. “He’s making a million dollars a month with his speeches,” said Chief Riches, 55. “It’s blood money.”

Officials with another union, the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, said they planned to work against Mr. Giuliani’s campaign. “I don’t think the person in Nebraska has any idea yet how we feel,” said John J. McDonnell, a battalion chief and president of the association. “He probably assumes that we think he’s great.”

Historically, the New York City firefighters unions have backed presidential candidates from both parties. The International Association of Fire Fighters and the Uniformed Fire Officers Association have endorsed Democratic candidates for president in recent elections, but the union for rank-and-file firefighters, the Uniformed Firefighters Association, endorsed President Bush in 2004. And both the fire officers and the firefighters unions endorsed Mr. Giuliani for re-election in 1997.

There is one group supporting Mr. Giuliani called Firefighters 4 Rudy. But the retired fire captain and talk-radio host who runs it, Matt Bruce, 59, lives in Florida and worked in Oswego in central New York, not in New York City.

Mr. Giuliani’s supporters credit the former mayor with bringing New York back to something approaching normalcy after the attacks. They also applaud his attendance at the funerals, which continued after his term ended in January 2002.

“Even after he left, he’d go to funerals,” said Chief Michael McGrath, who added that Mr. Giuliani had a right to trumpet his role after the Sept. 11 attacks. “He never ran anything but the city, a city that was attacked,” he said. “What do you think he’s going to talk about?”

Some firefighters said that while they believed that Mr. Giuliani shortchanged the Fire Department in failing to give raises to firefighters in 1995 and ’96, what he did for the city as a whole was more important.

Lt. Thomas Farragher, 52, with Ladder 175 in East New York, said, “There’s more to this country than the Fire Department. I have kids. I’m more worried about that than getting a couple dollars more.”

Other favorable opinions of Mr. Giuliani are based on simple encounters. One firefighter recalled that the former mayor handed him a bottle of water at the scene of a fire. “I’ll never forget that,” he said.

Another firefighter, John Orlando, 36, said he regularly saw Mr. Giuliani at fires. “He was always showing up,” he said. “I turn around, and there’s the mayor.”

Among those firefighters who criticized Mr. Giuliani, almost every one of them said they were still angry about the mayor’s decision several weeks after the attacks to reduce the number of firefighters allowed to search for remains at ground zero, where 343 firefighters died.

Until Mr. Giuliani intervened, the Fire Department was in control of the site, searching first for survivors, then for bodies. Mayor Giuliani, heeding the advice of safety experts, would allow no more than 25 firefighters on the site. That was far fewer than in the weeks immediately following the attacks.

Loose girders and construction equipment that was constantly on the move posed a danger to the firefighters, the Giuliani administration said. And thousands of firefighters who had worked at the site had already been treated for chronic chest pain and coughing.

“All of us standing here have friends that continue to remain there,” Mr. Giuliani said at the time. “And we would love to recover them. But none of us standing here can possibly justify seeing a human being die in this effort if it isn’t handled with great discipline and great responsibility.”

The reduced contingent continued to search for bodies. But firefighters felt, in their words, that he had “shut down the pile.” Emotions simmered, and on Nov. 2, a group of firefighters scuffled with police officers who were blocking access to the site.

After that incident, the policy was relaxed to allow fire company members to escort the remains of their colleagues from ground zero. But the anger lingered.

“I think that was the beginning of a job-wide sense that the guy might not be the greatest guy in the world,” said Lt. Simon Ressner, 47.

“He treated firemen like they were common criminals,” Chief Keys said. “He did not get good advice. There was no one there who would dare tell him no. People forget about the details.”

Chief Riches agreed. “We were finding bodies the week before that,” he said. “The bodies didn’t disintegrate. He just wanted to scoop them up, dump them in a truck and get out of there.”

“Meanwhile,” Chief Riches added, “I’m down there on my hands and knees, looking for my son and other firemen.”

Firefighters who support Mr. Giuliani expressed discomfort discussing ground zero and the interruption in the recovery of bodies. Even though some said they disagreed with their colleagues who found Mr. Giuliani’s actions to be unforgivable, they were hesitant to say so.

“I can’t knock them for that,” said Firefighter McCarthy, who lost several friends. “God, it’s their loved ones under there.”

Another firefighter, Kenneth Haskell, 37, lost two brothers, both fellow firefighters, on Sept. 11, but he supported Mr. Giuliani’s decision to scale back the firefighters’ presence at ground zero.

“The site became a very dangerous area,” Firefighter Haskell said, recalling the day a cable snapped and dropped from a crane. “There was a point where the city needed to move forward.” He also praised the city’s decision to continue paying the salaries of the dead firefighters, at overtime rates, long after Sept. 11.

Beyond ground zero, many firefighters cited lingering frustration over the “double zeros” — the contract in which the first two years, 1995 and 1996, brought no raises.

“If he would have given us a half-percent raise with a retroactive check for $32.75, we would have loved him for it,” said Lt. Thomas McGoff, 54.

Some firefighters said that once their opinions of Mr. Giuliani had soured, they found his frequent appearances at 9/11 funerals hard to take.

John Walsh, 48, a firefighter for 21 years, said he had supported Mr. Giuliani early in his tenure. “He’s been riding our coattails since 9/11 like he did something,” Firefighter Walsh said. “He did nothing. He showed up to funerals. So what? He’s a self-promoter. I told my wife, ‘Anything that ever happens, I don’t want him at my funeral.’ ”

But Lieutenant Farragher said he believed that Mr. Giuliani was being sincere when he appeared at a firefighter’s funeral on his last day in office.

“That just struck me,” he said. “He wasn’t looking for press.”

Bush suffers court setbacks in war on terrorism

James Vicini
Reuters
Sunday June 17, 2007

President George W. Bush's broad assertions of power in his war on terrorism are under assault by U.S. judges who have rejected his indefinite imprisonment of enemy combatants and the domestic spying program.

A pair of recent rulings, one from military judges and the other from a U.S. appeals court, delivered new legal setbacks for Bush's tactics in dealing with terrorism suspects held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or in the United States.

"In case after case, this nation's judicial branch has told the administration that it may not trample on fundamental rights in the name of national security," said Hina Shamsi of the New York-based group Human Rights First.

A federal appeals court panel in Virginia ruled 2-1 on Monday that Bush could not declare civilians in this country to be enemy combatants and have the military hold them indefinitely.

The ruling said Bush overstepped his authority in the case of a Qatari national and suspected al-Qaeda operative, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who has been held in military custody for four years without any charges.

Human rights and civil liberties groups said the decision underscored the importance of judicial review as a check on Bush's executive power.

"Once again, the courts have stepped in to rein in the executive and restore the rule of law," said Jennifer Daskal, U.S. advocacy director of Human Rights Watch.

The ruling came a week after military judges dismissed all charges against the only two Guantanamo prisoners facing trial, saying they had been designated only as "enemy combatants," and not "unlawful enemy combatants" as required by a 2006 law.

The decisions added to a number of earlier rulings that went against the Bush administration over the past three years.

Last August, a federal judge in Detroit ruled that Bush's domestic spying program, adopted after the September 11 attacks, violated free-speech rights, protections against unreasonable searches and the constitutional check on the power of the presidency.

Five months later, the administration abandoned the program and agreed to get court approval for the electronic surveillance. It still has appealed the ruling to a U.S. appeals court, which has yet to decide.

The U.S. Supreme Court in three rulings since 2004 has rejected Bush's position in terrorism cases, including the most recent one a year ago that struck down as illegal his initial system of military trials for Guantanamo prisoners.

Bush administration officials predicted the al-Marri decision would be overturned by the full appeals court, which is controlled by conservative judges and has ruled for the administration in at least two other terrorism cases.

'LAW IS ON OUR SIDE'

"We think the law is on our side in this one," one U.S. official said. The official and others said al-Marri trained at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan during the 1990s and entered the United States just before the September 11 attacks as a "sleeper agent."

The officials also expressed confidence the two Guantanamo trials ultimately would go forward.

The Pentagon has asked the military judges to reconsider their decisions. If the judges refuse, the administration next could appeal to a military court, they said.

The officials point to some significant wins for Bush's terrorism policies.

A U.S. appeals court in February upheld the law that Bush pushed through the then-Republican-led Congress last year that took away the right of the Guantanamo prisoners to challenge their confinement before U.S. federal judges.

That law also created the new system of military trials for Guantanamo prisoners to replace the one struck down by the Supreme Court.

With Democrats now in control of Congress, legislation is moving forward that would restore the rights of the approximately 380 prisoners now at Guantanamo to challenge their imprisonment.

Report Blair Despaired at Iraq Planning

JILL LAWLESS
London Observer
Sunday June 17, 2007

LONDON — Prime Minister Tony Blair committed British troops to Iraq even though he despaired at the failure of the United States to plan adequately for the aftermath of the invasion, a newspaper reported Sunday.

The Observer quoted Jeremy Greenstock, a former British envoy to Baghdad, as saying Blair "was tearing his hair over some of the deficiencies" in planning for the stabilization and reconstruction of the country.

"There were moments of throwing his hands in the air," added Greenstock, who was Britain's representative in Iraq in 2003 and 2004.

The newspaper said the remarks were made in a documentary about Blair's decade in power to be shown next week on Britain's Channel 4 television. The documentary is presented by Andrew Rawnsley, who is also The Observer's chief political correspondent.

The newspaper said David Manning, the current British ambassador in Washington, told the Channel 4 documentary that Blair was "very exercised" about postwar planning as early as March 2002, a year before the invasion.

"All these issues needed to be thrashed out," Manning was quoted as saying. "It wasn't to say that they weren't thinking about them, but I didn't see the evidence at that stage that these things had been thoroughly rehearsed and thoroughly thought through."

Manning visited Washington in March 2002 at Blair's request and on his return sent Blair a memo warning that "there is a real risk that the (Bush) administration underestimates the difficulties" in Iraq.

Blair's office declined to comment on the documentary before it was broadcast.

In planning for the aftermath of the war, "we did all we could and were faced with a challenging situation," a Downing Street spokesman said on condition of anonymity because of government policy.

Blair is due to step down June 27. His decision to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is the dominant, and most divisive, event of his 10 years in office. More than 150 British troops have died in Iraq since the invasion.

U.S.: 60 Pct of Baghdad Not Controlled

KIM GAMEL
AP
Sunday June 17, 2007

Security forces in Baghdad have full control in only 40 percent of the city five months into the pacification campaign, a top American general said Saturday as U.S. troops began an offensive against two al-Qaida strongholds on the capital's southern outskirts.
The military, meanwhile, reported that paratroopers had found the ID cards of two missing U.S. soldiers at an al-Qaida safe house 75 miles north of where they were captured last month, but there was no sign of the men. The house contained computers, video equipment and weapons.

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said American troops launched the offensive in Baghdad's Arab Jabour and Salman Pac neighborhoods Friday night. It was the first time in three years that U.S. soldiers entered those areas, where al-Qaida militants build car bombs and launch Katyusha rockets at American bases and Shiite Muslim neighborhoods.

The overall commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, said during a news conference with visiting Defense Secretary Robert Gates that the operation would put troops into key al-Qaida-held areas surrounding Baghdad.

Odierno said there was a long way to go in retaking the city from Shiite Muslim militias, Sunni Arab insurgents and al-Qaida terrorists. He said only about "40 percent is really very safe on a routine basis"—with about 30 percent lacking control and a further 30 percent suffering "a high level of violence."

The U.S. ground forces commander discussed the new offensive and the security situation in an interview with two reporters as he visited an American outpost near the main market in the capital's southern Dora district, a major Sunni Arab stronghold.

"There's about 30 percent of the city that needs work, like here in Dora and the surrounding areas," Odierno said. "Those are the areas that we consider to be the hot spots, which usually have a Sunni- Shiite fault line, and also areas where al-Qaida has decided to make a stand."

With Baghdad and Basra—the country's second largest city and gateway to the Persian Gulf—under curfew, violent deaths were down dramatically Saturday. Only three people were reported to have been killed or found dead in sectarian violence.

That did not include the discovery of 13 bodies of a tae kwon do team kidnapped last year in western Iraq while driving to a training camp in neighboring Jordan. The bodies were found 65 miles west of Ramadi, police and hospital officials said.

The U.S. military revealed that identification cards belonging to the two missing soldiers were found June 9 near Samarra but said no one was in the safe house. Troops approaching the building came under fire from nearby trees, suffering two wounded before air support intervened, the statement said.

Spc. Alex R. Jimenez and Pvt. Byron Fouty were snatched in a raid on their 10th Mountain Division unit on May 12 near Youssifiyah. The body of a third soldier taken in the raid, Pfc. Joseph Anzack Jr., was found floating in the Euphrates River. Four other U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi translator were killed in the May 12 ambush.

The Islamic State of Iraq, a front group for al-Qaida, claimed in a video posted on the Internet this month that all three missing soldiers were killed and buried. The militants showed images of the military IDs of Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Mass., and Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Mich., but offered no proof they were dead.

Fouty's stepfather found hope in the ID find. "I take it as they keep moving him, and that he's alive," Gordon Dibler Jr. said. "I was happy that they found something tangible. I'm going to keep hoping."

Wendy Luzon, a friend of the Jimenez family, had a similar response. "It's better than not getting any news for weeks," she said. "Getting this news is something good. We keep hoping that he's alive. We have nothing that tells us differently."

The military announced that a U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in southern Baghdad and an Ohio National Guard pilot died when his F-16 fighter crashed shortly after takeoff from Balad Air Base in central Iraq. The two deaths Friday raised to at least 3,522 the number of U.S. personnel who have died since the Iraq war began in March 2003, according to an AP count.

In Baghdad, aides to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told The Associated Press that talks Saturday between the U.S. defense secretary and the Iraqi leader were difficult.

Two top advisers to the prime minister said al-Maliki, a Shiite, objected vigorously to the new U.S. policy of arming and training Sunni militants in the fight against al-Qaida.

A third said Gates told al-Maliki that political and legislative action sought by the U.S., including a new law to share oil revenues among all Iraqis, must be complete by September when the defense secretary has to report to Congress on progress in Iraq.

Gates also met with President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, and expressed concern that the security situation nationwide might be spiraling out of control, a presidential aide said.

All the Iraqi officials agreed to discuss the talks only if not quoted by name because they were not authorized to release details. They said they were briefed on the talks by officials who attended the meetings.

The top U.S. commander in the Middle East, Adm. William Fallon, delivered a similar message to Iraqi leaders on June 10, and John Negroponte, the No. 2 State Department official, reinforced it in a visit at midweek.

Underscoring the challenges, Gates arrived in Baghdad on Friday to find a city all but shut down by a security lockdown imposed after the bombing of an important Shiite shrine north of the city. The explosion at the Askariya shrine in Samarra destroyed the mosque's minarets and prompted at least two retaliatory attacks—both in southern Iraq.

On Saturday, attackers blew up the al-Ashrah al-Mubashra mosque in Basra at dawn, residents in nearby houses said. As they were leaving, the bombers wrote graffiti on the complex's outer wall with the names of revered Shiite saints, witnesses said. No injuries were reported.

US defense chiefs denied knowledge of Abu Ghraib abuse

AFP
Sunday June 17, 2007

A general who investigated US troops sexually humiliating Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison said in a report out Saturday that top Pentagon officials denied knowledge of lurid photographs of the acts.

Army Major General Antonio Taguba said he met with then secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld and other top officials and described to them some of the contents of a report he had prepared on the notorious prison.

But Rumsfeld testified before Congress the following day that he had no idea of the extent of the abuse, Taguba told the New Yorker magazine in an interview.

"He's trying to acquit himself and a lot of people who are lying to protect themselves," the magazine quoted him as saying, referring to Rumsfeld's May 7, 2004 testimony.

The photographs taken by US jailers humiliating prisoners who were naked or hooded, on leashes or piled in a pyramid, rocked the world, becoming one of the few things President George W. Bush has said he regretted about the war.

Taguba said that he described to Rumsfeld what he termed the "torture" of "a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum," the magazine reported.

He said that all high-level officials had avoided scrutiny while the jail keepers were tried in courts-martial.

"From what I knew, troops just don't take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups," Taguba told the New Yorker, adding that his orders were to investigate the military police only and not their superiors.

"These (military police) troops were not that creative," he said. "Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority," he told the magazine.