State Dept. Can’t Account For $1.2B Paid to DynCorp: Audit

ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID ROHDE
The New York Times
October 23, 2007

Question: How much was spent on establishing a prostitution and slave ring in Bosnia?

WASHINGTON — A pair of new reports have delivered sharply critical judgments about the State Department’s performance in overseeing work done by the private companies that the government relies on increasingly in Iraq and Afghanistan to carry out delicate security work and other missions.

A State Department review of its own security practices in Iraq assails the department for poor coordination, communication, oversight and accountability involving armed security companies like Blackwater USA, according to people who have been briefed on the report. In addition to Blackwater, the State Department’s two other security contractors in Iraq are DynCorp International and Triple Canopy.

At the same time, a government audit expected to be released Tuesday says that records documenting the work of DynCorp, the State Department’s largest contractor, are in such disarray that the department cannot say “specifically what it received” for most of the $1.2 billion it has paid the company since 2004 to train the police officers in Iraq.

The review of security practices was ordered last month by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and it did not address the Sept. 16 shooting involving Blackwater guards, which Iraqi investigators said killed 17 Iraqis. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is leading a separate inquiry into that episode.

But in presenting its recommendations to Ms. Rice in a 45-minute briefing on Monday, the four-member panel found serious fault with virtually every aspect of the department’s security practices, especially in and around Baghdad, where Blackwater has responsibility.

The panel’s recommendations include creating a special coordination center to monitor and control the movement of armed convoys through areas under the command of the American military, which has long complained that contractors operate independently in the field.

The report also urged the department to work with the Pentagon to develop a strict set of rules on how to deal with the families of Iraqi civilians who are killed or wounded by armed contractors, and to improve coordination between American contractors and security guards employed by agencies, like various Iraqi ministries.

“They don’t have the right communications, they don’t have the right procedures in place, and you’ve got people operating on their own,” said one official who has been briefed on the report but who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it has not been released yet. “This is not up to the degree it should be.”

Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, said Ms. Rice would closely examine the report’s findings and recommendations and consult with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on what steps to take.

Mr. Gates, who is traveling overseas this week, is pressing for the nearly 10,000 armed security contractors now working for the United States government in Iraq to fall under a single authority, most likely the American military, in an effort to bring the contractors under tighter control.

State Department officials say they have already tightened controls over Blackwater by sending State Department personnel as monitors on Blackwater convoys in and around Baghdad, and by mounting video cameras on Blackwater vehicles.

The panel was led by Patrick F. Kennedy, the State Department’s director of management policy. The other members were Eric J. Boswell, a former diplomat and intelligence office and a former head of the bureau of diplomatic security; J. Stapleton Roy, a former ambassador to China and Indonesia; and George Joulwan, a retired four-star Army general.

While the panel’s review focused on work overseen by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security at the State Department, the second report, focusing on DynCorp, was an audit carried out by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, and it focused on another department office, the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

The audit said that until earlier this year the State Department had only two government employees in Iraq overseeing as many as 700 DynCorp employees. The result was “an environment vulnerable to waste and fraud,” the audit said.

Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the chief of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, said in an interview that while the department had made “significant strides” in scrutinizing payments to DynCorp in the past year, the police training contract “appears to me to be the weakest-staffed, most poorly overseen large-scale program in Iraq.”

He added that “when you put two people on the ground to manage a billion dollars, that’s pretty weak.”

The contract gave DynCorp the job of building police training facilities and deploying hundreds of police trainers to instruct a new Iraqi police force.

Developing a police force was considered central to stabilizing Iraq, but the effort, led first by the State Department and then by the Defense Department, has been criticized by administration opponents as well as by the bipartisan commission on the war led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton.

The State Department said it had improved monitoring of DynCorp, but in a letter to auditors department officials said that it would still take “three to five years” to reconcile fully the payments made to the company during the first two years of the training contract, beginning in February 2004.

As a sign of the confusion, the State Department reported to auditors that as part of its work in Iraq, DynCorp had purchased a $1.8 million X-ray scanner that was never used and spent $387,000 to house company officials in hotels rather than in existing living facilities.

Then, later, the State Department said those costs were actually incurred in Afghanistan, according to the audit. State Department officials say they have always said the spending occurred in Afghanistan.

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut said the special inspector general has shown, once again, “how vulnerable the federal government is to waste when it doesn’t invest up front in proper contract oversight.” He added, “This scenario is far too frequent across the federal government: we spend billions of dollars for goods and services with no oversight plans in place and hope and pray that an audit will identify any mistakes later.”

Thomas A. Schweich, the acting director of the law enforcement bureau, said it had increased staffing in October 2006 and had thoroughly checked all DynCorp invoices since then. He said a detailed review of all DynCorp spending was under way. “We put more people in place,” he said, referring to three additional staff members sent to Iraq to oversee DynCorp. “We have put together a team of 11 people to review historical invoices.”

A review of DynCorp’s spending over the past year identified $29 million in overcharges by DynCorp, including $108,000 in business travel, according to a State Department letter in response to Mr. Bowen’s auditors. A separate review by the Defense Contracting Audit Agency found that DynCorp had billed for $162,869 of labor hours “for which it did not pay its workers.”

Gregory Lagana, a DynCorp spokesman, said the amounts involved were small fractions of the $1.2 billion paid to DynCorp since 2004. He said that if DynCorp filed an erroneous charge the company would reimburse it, adding that DynCorp had already reimbursed the State Department for $72,000.

“There was no intentional misbilling,” Mr. Lagana said. “It could be just a documents problem.” He said that the company initially struggled with some record-keeping, but that it had informed the government whenever it found errors. “We fully acknowledge that we have some problems with invoicing,” he said. “It’s something we’re working really hard to clean up.”

In a letter to Ms. Rice on Monday, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, accused the department of failing to respond to a request the committee made in March for DynCorp-related documents. Mr. Waxman, whose committee is investigating the department’s oversight of both DynCorp and Blackwater, demanded that the department send him the records by Nov. 2.

“The police training program is a critical component of the administration’s efforts to bring stability to Iraq,” Mr. Waxman wrote. “It is a matter of serious concern that this critical initiative appears to have been so poorly managed.”

Officials and auditors said the law enforcement bureau that handled the DynCorp contracts was overwhelmed when large police training programs were begun in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A senior State Department official said the bureau was not equipped to handle such large contracts. “You have a perfect storm of bad events,” said the official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. “You have huge amounts of money passing through an organization that is being retooled as it’s running the race of its life.”

Krauthammer: Bush Will Bomb Iran Before He Leaves Office

News Hounds
October 24, 2007

During Tuesday’s edition of Special Report the All-Star Panel discussion started off with a video clip of Vice President DIck Cheney addressing a weekend meeting at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where he uttered yet another of his dire warnings to Iran. The Washington Institute was founded in 1985 by a former research director of AIPAC and has a long history of advocacy for pro-Israeli positions. Once again, pro-war neocons Fred Barnes and Charles Krauthammer suggested that President Bush will attack Iran before his term ends. His reason? Because he wouldn’t want to leave it for the next President to deal with!! Yeah, and coffee still costs a dime … With video.

It never ceases to amaze me how supposedly rational, educated human beings can sit around and calmly hypothesize about the possible onset of a bloody World War as if they were discussing the latest stock prices over tea and crumpets on a Sunday morning.

This is at least the third time that Special Report has dealt with this issue in the past month. Over and over again, Kristol, Barnes and Krauthammer openly state exactly what the President is going to do and no one seems to take them seriously.

When asked by Brit Hume if the administration might be “saber rattling,” Charles Krauthammer noted that the President feels freer to act now that the situation in Iraq has improved (?!!) so dramatically and Congress has backed off a bit.

“I think there are two clocks working here,” Krauthammer said. “The first is the Iranian one, in which it’s developing a weapon, it has these centrifuges working overtime. But that clock is indeterminate. Nobody is sure when it will happen and you can always argue that we can always wait another six months. The more important clock is the Bush Presidency. It’s running out and we all know exactly how long it has. And the way the President is speaking and Cheney’s speaking, you have the impression that he believes this is a problem he cannot leave to his successor. This looks like a serious threat.”

Krauthammer repeated several times that he believes Bush is set on attacking Iran, possibly playing out some demented end-game scenario, hoping that by appearing to be willing to go the distance in Iran, it will “scare” other nations into putting pressure on Iran to cease their nuclear program. “He’s prepared to attack if nothing happens,” Krauthammer concluded.

Fellow panelists Mara Laisson and Fred Barnes both concurred with Krauthammer’s assessment.

FRED BARNES: “Cheney didn’t say much more than Bush had said. Rudy Giuliani in the debate last night in Orlando talked about this subject, I thought very cogently, that saber rattling can be very,very effective, scaring the Iranians and even scaring our allies into stronger sanctions and the Iranians responding to those sanctions to avoid an attack by the United States. And there are more things they could do. One, leak how we could do this. You know, the White House - the President doesn’t have to come out and say - well. with 200 planes and this many aircraft carriers, I mean, this is viable. We could do it, but …”

BRIT HUME: “There is a military option, in other words.”

BARNES: “Certainly there is and word of that could be leaked. We have one aircraft carrier I think in the Persian Gulf. There could be more sent to the region, things that would really make the Iranians perk up. Right now, it’s clear they’re not paying any attention to the sanctions.”

HUME: “What you’re saying is that the saber is going to be rattling, but they’re not going to be rattling loud enough to suit you, is that ..?

BARNES: “No. It’s not having any effect on the Iranians.”

COMMENT

This was a very, very scary segment. Short. To the point. No frills. Bush and Cheney are playing a game of global thermonuclear chicken.

If what Barnes and Krauthammer said is true, then, in my opinion, the Congress should begin impeachment proceedings immediately on the grounds that the President and Vice-President are totally batty and belong at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, not in the White House.

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Bush offers to bomb Kurds

The Herald Sun
October 24, 2007

THE Bush Administration is considering air strikes, including cruise missiles, against the Kurdish rebel group PKK in northern Iraq.

The move would be an attempt to stave off a Turkish invasion of that country to fight the rebels.

President George Bush spoke with Turkish President Abdullah Gul by phone yesterday in an effort to ease the crisis.

And Prime Minister John Howard says the tensions on the Turkey-Iraq border will not help the west’s battle for democracy in Iraq.

Mr Howard said there was some recent evidence that US forces were making headway in their battle against al-Qaeda in Iraq following the US troop surge.

“There is some evidence in recent weeks that the surge has been more successful than many of its critics wanted it to be or believe it would be,” Mr Howard told an army land warfare conference in Adelaide today.

But he hoped the temperature between Turkey and the Kurds was kept as low as possible.

“It is in a strategic sense a complicating factor at a time when evidence is emerging of slow but nonetheless some progress being made in improving the security position in Iraq,” he said.

“The message I would give to Turkey and Iraq is, like everybody else, just keep it as cool and at a lower temperature as possible,” Mr Howard said.

According to an official familiar with the conversation, Mr Bush assured the Turkish President that the US was seriously looking into options beyond diplomacy to stop the attacks coming from Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.

“It’s not ‘Kumbaya’ time any more - just talking about trilateral talks is not going to be enough,” the official said.

“Something has to be done.”

While the use of US soldiers on the ground to root out the PKK would be the last resort, the US would be willing to launch air strikes on PKK targets, the official said, and has discussed the use of cruise missiles.

But air strikes using manned aircraft may be an easier option because the US controls the air space over Iraq.

Another option would be to persuade the Kurdistan Regional Government, which runs that part of Iraq, to order its Peshmerga forces to form a cordon preventing the movement of the PKK beyond its mountain camps.

“In the past, there has been reluctance to engage in direct US military action against the PKK, either through air strikes or some kind of Special Forces action,” said the official familiar with the Bush-Gul conversation, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“But the red line was always, if the Turks were going to come over the border, it could be so destabilising that it might be less risky for us to do something ourselves.

“Now the Turks are at the end of their rope, and our risk calculus is changing.”

Meanwhile, Iraq said today it would shut down the operations of Kurdish rebels based on its soil, hoping to head off the threatened invasion by Turkish troops massed on the border.

“The PKK is a terrorist organisation and we have taken a decision to shut down their offices and not allow them to operate on Iraqi soil,” Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said.

“We will also work on limiting their terrorist activities which are threatening Iraq and Turkey,” Maliki said after crisis talks in Baghdad with Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan.

He gave no details on how the rebels could be prevented from launching attacks from their remote mountain bases. Analysts say military action would have to involve US forces in Iraq.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara was giving diplomacy a chance, but reminded Iraq that Turkey’s parliament had given the go-ahead for a military incursion at any time.

And the publication of photographs said to show eight Turkish soldiers captured by the rebels increased pressure on Turkey’s government to take swift action.

“Right now we are in a waiting stance but Iraq should know we can use the mandate for a cross-border operation at any time,” Erdogan told a joint news conference in London after talks with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

He later ratcheted up pressure by telling an investors’ conference that Turkey might impose sanctions on exports to Iraq. Turkish exports to Iraq were worth $US2.6 billion ($A2.94 billion) in 2006.

PKK separatists, operating from northern Iraq, killed a dozen Turkish soldiers in weekend fighting.

The PKK said it also captured eight soldiers, and a news agency with close links to the rebels published what it said were photographs of the captives today. Turkey had denied soldiers had been captured but acknowledged eight were missing.

“The pictures show their health condition is pretty good,” said the Firat news agency, which is based in western Europe.

With feelings running high in Turkey, and anti-PKK protests in several towns, the broadcasting watchdog banned news reports on the deaths of the 12 soldiers.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, said PKK attacks on Turkey would not be tolerated.

“We have given the PKK the option to leave or disarm. We care for every drop of Turkish blood like we care for every drop of Iraqi blood,” he said after talks with Babacan.

Washington has so far been reluctant to attack PKK rebels, fearing this could damage ties with Iraqi Kurds and destabilise the Kurdish region, the only area of Iraq to see relative stability and prosperity since Saddam Hussein was toppled.

Turkey estimates 3,000 PKK rebels are based in Iraq. Ankara believes US forces in Iraq have the capability of capturing PKK leaders hiding in the Qandil mountains, shutting down their camps and cutting off supply routes and logistical support.

Turkey’s government says it will use all diplomatic options before launching any strike into northern Iraq against the PKK.

The easing in rhetoric has helped bring global oil prices down from record highs.

Turkey has deployed as many as 100,000 troops, backed by tanks, F-16 fighter jets and helicopter gunships along its border in preparation for a possible attack on rebel bases.

“If expected developments do not take place in the next few days, we will have to take care of our own situation,” Erdogan said in Oxford, England, yesterday.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Britain’s visiting foreign secretary, David Miliband, said they had proposed a meeting in Istanbul next month of officials from the United States, Turkey and Iraq to discuss how to stop PKK attacks.

Iraq’s Talabani said yesterday the PKK would announce a ceasefire. Later the guerrilla group said in a statement it was ready for peace if Ankara stopped its military offensive against Kurdish fighters. It made no mention of a ceasefire.

Babacan said any ceasefire offer would be meaningless as the PKK was a terrorist organisation, not a sovereign army.

An ambush over the weekend by 200 PKK guerrillas left 12 Turkish soldiers dead and eight missing.

The attack’s sophistication and scope surprised not only the Turks but also the US and its Iraqi allies.

The US, with Iraqi help, also could squeeze the flow of supplies and funds for the PKK coming across the border, or through the airport in Irbil, the largest city in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Turkey yesterday said it would exhaust diplomatic channels before launching any military strike into northern Iraq.

Does Senate FISA bill immunize FBI ‘black-bag jobs’?

Declan McCullagh
CNet News
October 22, 2007

A few decades ago, the FBI regularly conducted “black-bag jobs” that involved sneaking into homes, hotel rooms and offices with the cooperation of the building’s owner or even a neighbor with a spare key. Locks were picked otherwise. Because no judge had authorized the FBI’s black-bag job, they were incredibly illegal. In the mid-1970s, the Church Committee famously disclosed the bureau’s clandestine operations.

Now President Bush is backing a bill that seems to encourage the FBI to revert to some of its old habits.

The FISA Amendments Act, approved by a Senate committee last week, seems to immunize people who cooperated with the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency–and other even more shadowy agencies–that conduct black-bag jobs.

Although most of the attention has focused on how the Senate bill might offer telecommunications service providers retroactive immunity (and derail the lawsuits against AT&T), the actual language appears to cover physical intrusions too:

ASSISTANCE–The term ‘assistance’ means the provision of, or the provision of access to, information… facilities, or another form of assistance

PERSON–The term ‘person’ means…a landlord, custodian, or other person who may be authorized and required to furnish assistance…

IN GENERAL–Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no civil action may lie or be maintained in a Federal or State court against any person for providing assistance to an element of the intelligence community, and shall be promptly dismissed, if the Attorney General certifies to the court that…any assistance by that person was provided pursuant to a directive under sections 102(a)(4), 105B(e)…

ELEMENT OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY–The term ‘element of the intelligence community’ means an element of the intelligence community as specified or designated under section 3(4) of the National Security Act… [Ed. Note: That includes the FBI, CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, the Defense Department, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the State Department, the Treasury Department, and any other agency the president chooses.]

Let’s translate that. A hotel manager who lets FBI agents into a guest’s room to copy a laptop’s hard drive in secret would not be liable. An apartment manager who gives Homeland Security the key to a tenant’s unit to place a key logger in a PC would not be liable. A private security firm that divulges a customer’s alarm code would not be liable. A university that agrees to forward a student’s e-mail messages to the Defense Department would not be liable. An antivirus company that helps the NSA implant spyware in an unsuspecting customer’s computer would not be liable.

No court order is required. And if an eventual lawsuit accuses the hotel manager or antivirus firm of unlawful activities, it’ll be thrown out of court as long as the attorney general or the director of national intelligence can provide a “certification.” The “certification” is, of course, secret–all a judge may say publicly is that the rules were followed, and then dismiss the case.

The wording of 105B does seem to narrow this substantially. Enacted in August as part of the Protect Act, 105B says that non-judicial orders by the attorney general or director of national intelligence are limited to “information concerning persons reasonably believed to be outside the United States.”

105B does require “minimization procedures,” which would mean that any key loggers or spyware inserted in a black-bag job would supposedly be programmed to discard information about domestic-to-domestic communications.

Now, perhaps I’ve misread portions of the bill, but the Senate Intelligence Committee wasn’t in the mood to answer questions about it on Monday, so we don’t know its reasoning or explanation. There are other implications that are too far afield to get into now, such as whether FBI contractors breaking into telecommunications or software companies’ offices (or computers) for surveillance-related purposes would be immunized as well.

One thing we do know, given the White House’s flexible definition of “torture” and its legal legerdemain when it comes to NSA surveillance, is that this administration will find creative ways to stretch the law. If politicians are intent on enacting this law, one fix would be to narrow the bill’s immunity to “telecommunications companies offering telephone or Internet service to the public.” If providing legal cover for black-bag jobs isn’t the goal, why not say so explicitly?

Companies push for DHS ID card work

Alice Lipowicz
FCW
October 23, 2007

Executives at identification card companies are intensifying their push for alternative technologies for the Homeland Security Department’s upcoming requirements for border crossing cards and drivers’ licenses.

Representatives of the laser card and smart card industries told lawmakers Oct. 18 that their products offer unique benefits and avoid shortcomings of the formats DHS proposed for the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) Border Crossing Card and the Real ID Act of 2005 driver’s license standard.

For the WHTI Border Crossing Card, also known as the Pass card, DHS officials have said they intend to use long-distance radio frequency identification tags that can be read as far away as 20 feet. A similar RFID tag is to be used in the hybrid WHTI/Real ID Act ID card to be issued in three border states.

But deploying cards with RFID tags will require a huge infrastructure investment in readers to scan the tags. To avoid that expense and inconvenience, Kathryn Alsbrooks, director of federal programs for LaserCard of Mountain View, Calif., said laser cards provide a highly secure card with automatic biometric identification that permits easy visual identification and does not require a reader.

“The implementation of a governmentwide infrastructure to authenticate and read an ID card is an enormous undertaking,” Alsbrooks told the House Government Oversight Committee’s Government Management Subcommittee. “Given that issuance of new ID cards to millions of cardholders will take years, visual inspection will remain with us at least in the interim.”

Furthermore, more than 80 percent of the foreign visitors to U.S. land borders are already carrying a laser card, Alsbrooks said. More than 30 million laser cards have been deployed to date in programs including the U.S. Permanent Resident “Green card” issued by DHS, the “Laser visa” Border Crossing Card issued by the State Department to Mexican citizens and the Canadian Permanent Resident Card issued by Canadian authorities.

Similarly, Neville Pattinson, vice president of Gemalto and a spokesman for the Secure ID Coalition, an industry group representing makers of smart cards and other ID card technologies, urged DHS and Congress to put privacy and data security as the highest priorities in identification programs such as Real ID and the WHTI card.

Smart cards, which use an RFID tag that must be read at close distances of inches, satisfy those requirements because they were designed to allow for encryption and other strong protections of privacy and security, he said.

“Whatever method used in a secure smart ID card the underlying security ensures both electronic document authentication and user authentication before transacting any credential information,” Pattinson said. “No other technology can offer all these features in a cost effective and convenient manner to ensure identity security and authentication.”

Rain of terror in the U.S. air war in Iraq

Chris Floyd
Salon
October 23, 2007

Monday, the Pentagon acknowledged a long-unspoken truth: that the bombardment of civilian neighborhoods in Iraq is an integral part of the vaunted “counterinsurgency” doctrine of Gen. David Petraeus. The number of airstrikes in the conquered land has risen fivefold since George W. Bush escalated the war in January, as USA Today reports:

“Coalition forces launched 1,140 airstrikes in the first nine months of this year compared with 229 in all of last year, according to military statistics … In Iraq, the temporary increase of 30,000 U.S. troops ordered by President Bush in January has led to the increase in bombing missions. The U.S. command has moved forces off large bases and into neighborhoods and has launched several large offensives aimed at al-Qaeda … ‘You end up having that many more opportunities for close air support,’ said Air Force Brig. Gen. Stephen Mueller, director of the Combined Air Operations Center in Doha, Qatar.”

Leaving aside the undigested lump of pure propaganda spewed up by the reporter — “al-Qaeda” has not been the sole or even the main target of the “offensives” launched into civilian areas — the military stats reveal the growing centrality of airstrikes in Iraq. What’s more, these figures do not include attacks by helicopter gunships, whose fearsome destructive power rivals that of any bomb or missile.

The results of this deliberate strategy have been entirely predictable and deeply horrific: Innocent civilians chewed to pieces by blast force and metal. Innocent civilians dispossessed of homes, cars, goods, all means of survival. Innocent civilians turned into bitter enemies of the United States, as they bury their young, their old, their most beloved ones.

Listen to the Iraqis themselves speaking from the ground zero of their reality. From the Washington Post:

“Iraqis voiced outrage Friday over a U.S. military airstrike that killed an estimated 15 civilians — nine children and six women, one of the highest reported civilian death tolls from an American bombing in months. The bombing occurred Thursday evening after U.S. troops raided a suspected leadership meeting of the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq that was taking place south of Lake Tharthar, near the city of Samarra in western Iraq …

“‘This could have been done through the infantry,’ said Ibrahim al-Khamas, a Samarra city council member. ‘But the American Army prefers the easiest solution, which is the air bombardment … This airstrike was excessive, as usual, which led to the fall of civilians. People here are now carrying great hatred against the Americans after the raid. This airstrike turned their Eid to grief’ …

“Mohammed al-Samarrae, 34, said his pregnant cousin was killed in the bombing. He expressed a mix of dismay at her death and the weariness of life after more than four years of war. ‘Where can anybody be safe from Bush’s democracy?’ he asked. ‘Whenever we want to open a new chapter with the Americans, to forget the past and try all over again, they drag us into violence, weapons and fighting again. And to sympathize with al-Qaeda against them. All because of their inconsideration for our blood.’”

(Here’s a report on several more similar incidents earlier this month. And for a richly detailed dissection of the latest airstrike mulching — including how it was thoroughly airbrushed by the headlines in the “homeland” — see this post from Winter Patriot.)

As I’ve noted elsewhere, this rising mound of innocent dead is the inevitable consequence of trying to maintain the occupation and control of another country while minimizing impolitic losses to one’s ground forces. And there would actually be even more of this under the nonwithdrawal “withdrawal” plans of the leading Democrats, all of which call for retaining some sort of “residual” force in Iraq. The only way to protect such a diminished, isolated but still very present and provocative force is through the increased use of airpower. So once again, we see the bipartisan nature of the ongoing war crime in Iraq.

What we are also seeing with this strategy is, to put it plainly, an attempt to terrorize a civilian population into submission. Let’s strip away all the political gamesmanship and partisan point scoring that encrusts the Beltway debate — that hideous masque of red death, where fine-dining blowhards prate and prance to the music of keening mothers and dying soldiers. Let’s break down the on-message jargon and lumps of propaganda into the base elements of truth. For what the air campaign, and the “offensives into neighborhoods,” are really saying is brutally frank:

“We invaded your country under knowingly false pretenses, fixing the intelligence around the policy, because our leaders, who were in possession of vast amounts of intelligence that undermined or refuted their stated casus belli, couldn’t reveal their true, long-held intentions. (’I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,’ Alan Greenspan says.) We destroyed your infrastructure, we destroyed your society, we destroyed your history, we enthroned extremist militias to rule over you, we tortured your sons and fathers in the same hellhole that Saddam used, we killed a million of your people and drove millions more from their homes. And we intend to stay here for as long as we like, in the vast ‘enduring bases’ we are building on your land. Now if you don’t accept this, if you keep shooting at us and trying to make us leave, then we will go on bombing your families in their homes, we will go on killing your women and children, until you stop.”

The military tactic of close air support in a firefight is not the issue here. The issue is why the U.S. military is engaged in this Iraqi urban warfare, with its inevitable killing of civilians, in the first place. And the reason is that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their cohorts have made the deliberate, conscious decision to engage in state terrorism in order to advance foreign policy and energy objectives they held long before 9/11 “changed the world.”

That is the true context, and content, of the war. Anyone who supports its continuation — under any auspices, in any form, for any amount of time longer than it takes to remove all the troops quickly and safely — is advocating the perpetuation of state terror in the name of the American people.

You’d think even a prating blowhard could see the danger of that. But no doubt the masque will go on and on.

CFR’s Plans for Iraq’s Future: Federalism, Separatism, and Partition

Greg Bruno
Council On Foreign Relations
October 22, 2007

Introduction

A non-binding resolution that sailed through the U.S. Senate in September 2007 reignited debate over Iraq’s political future. Introduced by Senators Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-DE) and Sam Brownback, (R-KS), the measure calls for a decentralized Iraqi government “based upon the principles of federalism” and advocates for a relatively weak central government with strong Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish regional administrations. The bill, based on a proposal first introduced by Biden and CFR President Emeritus Leslie H. Gelb, passed the Senate by a 75 to 23 margin. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Chris Dodd (D-CT), rivals in a crowded presidential field that includes Sen. Biden, both supported the amendment. Despite the bipartisan support in Washington, Iraqi politicians in Baghdad reacted furiously. Iraq’s divided central government has condemned the measure, calling it “an incorrect reading” of Iraq’s history. Even the U.S. embassy in Baghdad came out against the federalism measure. Some experts, meanwhile, favor other forms of governmental realignment, including outright “partition” of Iraq into three separate states.

Don’t Call It “Partition”

The Biden-Brownback plan was borne of a broader five-point strategy Biden and Gelb introduced in May 2006. Similar to views expressed (PDF) by the U.S. military, the two argue that ethnic tensions threaten Iraq’s long-term stability and are calling for the establishment of three (or more) semi-autonomous ethnic regions linked by a power-sharing agreement in Baghdad. “The idea is to maintain a unified Iraq by federalizing it and giving Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis control over their daily lives in their own regions,” Biden writes. The central government would maintain control over “truly common interests” such as border defense, foreign policy, and oil production and revenue sharing. Regional governors would then administer their own regional affairs. Biden argues that the plan—similar to the Dayton formula which calmed the Bosnian-Serb-Croat war in 1995—is in accordance with Iraq’s constitution (PDF), which defines the Republic of Iraq as consisting of “a decentralized capital, regions and governorates, and local administrations.”

Specific Concerns

The proposal draws sweeping criticisms. Many Iraqi political parties, including Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s United Iraqi Alliance, denounce the measure as a U.S. attempt to meddle in Iraqi sovereignty. The U.S. government, through its embassy in Baghdad, says the resolution “would produce extraordinary suffering and bloodshed.” Even Iraqi citizens appear unified in their opposition. A September 2007 opinion poll (BBC) found that only 9 percent of more than two thousand respondents favored “a country divided into separate states,” while 62 percent said they favored a central government in Baghdad.

Anthony H. Cordesman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, sees others reasons to question the type of federalism favored by the Biden-Brownback proposal. For one, Cordesman writes in a new report, that it’s unclear how Iraqi security forces would operate under a federal strategy. Creation of separate zones or enclaves could also expose some regions to external threats, including from Iran, and would likely fail to reduce sectarian tensions. Further, Cordesman writes, any “overt action to divide Iraq by the U.S. would almost certainly raise the already high level of Iraqi anger and hostility to the U.S. presence in Iraq.”

Other experts say support for the federal strategy by the Kurds in northern Iraq has escalated tensions between Turkey and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), where fears of Kurdish separatism simmer. Hashim Taie of the Iraqi Accordance Front, the parliament’s principal Sunni bloc, told the Los Angeles Times the proposal amounts to “a dangerous partitioning.” Middle East expert Joost Hiltermann, of the International Crisis Group, says regardless of what the resolution aims to do, “It has been interpreted to say (in the region) that the Senate wants to carve up Iraq (in the worst imperial tradition).” Hiltermann adds that the U.S. should stop pushing top-down governmental restructuring. “They would be enormously difficult in logistical terms, as most people remain intermingled; it would take a major military effort with additional troops; and it would be enormously bloody,” he says.

Faithful to Federalism

Nonetheless, supporters remain committed to the language. Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd and a proponent of federalism, has praised the resolution. Falah Mustafa Bakir, director of the Foreign Relations Department for the KRG, explains the Kurdish position in this interview with CFR.org. Biden and Gelb, too, have stood by their turn of phrase. In an October 2007 Washington Post op-ed, they argued federalism would benefit all Iraqis without partitioning the country. In an interview with CFR’s Bernard Gwertzman,Gelb goes further, suggesting a federal form of government may be the only way to correct the Bush administration’s failed top-down experiment in Iraq. The White House “thought that they could build a strong central government first by elections and then by them putting pressure on the different parties,” Gelb says. “It has not worked for four years and it still doesn’t work.”

Not the Only Option

“Federalism” is receiving the bulk of attention in Washington and Baghdad, but it is by no means the only restructuring buzzword swirling in foreign policy circles. Edward P. Joseph, a visiting scholar at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, write in USA Today that they prefer less subtle terminology: “soft partition.” “Some critics argue that soft partition would make the United States vulnerable to the charge of having deliberately ‘weakened a strong Arab state,’” they write. “They overlook the fact that by toppling Saddam, the United States did weaken a militarily strong Arab state.”

Cordesman, on the other hand, notes that no “partition”—interpreted by many to mean the creation of separate states with complete autonomy—can be termed “soft.” “The term ‘Soft Partitioning’ has also been shown to be a cruel oxymoron,” he writes. “Virtually every aspect of sectarian and ethnic struggle to date has been brutal, and come at a high economic cost to those affected. The reality is that partitioning must be described as ‘hard’ by any practical political, economic, and humanitarian standard.”

Experts see other problems with the partition approach, including questions about where borders might be drawn, how oil revenues would be divided, and who would control the flood of newly created refugees. Reidar Visser, a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and editor of the Iraq website historiae.org, argues that no matter what it’s called—“federalism,” “partition,” or even “separatism”—divisions based on ethnicity are unlikely to gain popular support in Iraq. “Iraqis tend to believe that when federalism is implemented along sectarian lines it will be more divisive than other variants of federalism and will soon lead to partition,” he says. Iraq has never been neatly divided into sectarian units, Visser adds, and to advocate a plan that does so now would be “particularly risky.”

Washington as Global Watchdog

The biggest unanswered question may be one raised in the blogosphere: What makes U.S. lawmakers think they have the answers to Iraqi foreign policy spats? R.J. Eskow, writing at the Huffington Post, accuses Washington of revisionist history. “Is the government listening? The partitioning of nations has been a human tragedy in the past. Best estimates suggest that half a million people died during the partition of India.” Marc Lynch, a professor of political science at George Washington University, writes on his blog that the Biden-Brownback resolution succeeded in infuriating Iraqis while endorsing a plan that “would massively increase suffering” without solving Iraq’s problems. Ilan Goldenberg, executive director of the National Security Network, says the federalist strategy offers some promise but lacks specifics. “Clearly the Iraqis and their Sunni neighbors don’t like the Gelb-Biden plan, but there are many other types of decentralized approaches that might be more acceptable.”

Redstate.com bans new Ron Paul supporters

Ryan Grim
Politico
Wednesday October 24, 2007

The ubiquitous and web-savvy supporters of Ron Paul now have one less forum in which to vent their rage.

The influential conservative blog Redstate.com placed a ban last night on all Paul commentary from readers who are recent arrivals to the blog.

Paul's followers are angry that the Libertarian congressman can’t seem to get traction in national polls as he bids for the Republican presidential nomination.

Paul — a representative from Texas who ran for president in 1988 on the Libertarian Party ticket — remains mired in the low single digits.

The post on Redstate, “Attention, Ron Paul Supporters (Life is *REALLY* Not Fair),” begins, “Effective immediately, new users may *not* shill for Ron Paul in any way shape, form or fashion. Not in comments, not in diaries, nada. If your account is less than 6 months old, you can talk about something else, you can participate in the other threads and be your zany libertarian self all you want, but you cannot pimp Ron Paul. Those with accounts more than six months old may proceed as normal.”

Redstate founder Erick Erickson said he woke up this morning bombed with hundreds of e-mails, “the overwhelming majority very angry.” His own readers, though, loved the ban.

“It is the most recommended user diary in Redstate history,” he said.

Paul's energetic online supporters managed to help him raise more than $5 million in the third quarter of this year, roughly tying Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

They’ve also ticked off an awful lot of people, including, apparently, Leon H. Wolf at Redstate, who calls them “annoying, time-consuming, and bandwidth-wasting.”

Wolf writes he is tired of “responding to the same idiotic arguments from a bunch of liberals pretending to be Republicans.”

Erickson said that he and the regular Redstate readers had just had enough.

“They’re terribly annoying and they don’t add to the debate. If people are adding to the debate we don’t have a problem with them coming here. But they’re just coming to promote Ron Paul. They talk over everyone. They yell at everyone,” he said.

Paul spokesman Jesse Benton said he questioned "the judgment of the decision," but added: "They are a private entity and they are certainly within their rights to do as they see fit.

"I'm sure there are a few Ron Paul supporters who get a little shrill," Benton said . "All we can control is what comes from our campaign."

The ban against Paul-supporting is not categorical, Erickson and Wolf made clear.

“Hey, we’re sure *some* of Ron Paul’s supporters really are Republicans. They can post at any one of a zillion Ron Paul online forums. Those who have *earned* our respect by contributing usefully for a substantial period of time will be listened to with appropriate respect. Those who have not will have to *earn* that respect by contributing usefully in the other threads ... and not mentioning Ron Paul. Given a month of solid contributing, send one of us an email and we’ll consider lifting the restriction on your account,” Wolf writes.

Wolf then shut down the comment thread for the post to avoid the deluge of irritation that was headed his way.

Erickson forwarded to Politico a number of the e-mails as examples of that irritation. “You are banning FREE SPEECH. Perhaps next you can forbid discussion of Democratic candidate names. It is a sad day for America when hypocrites who think they are right try to shovel their propaganda onto the rest of us. What goes around comes around,” wrote one reader with an e-mail exchange at socialheart.com.

Erickson finds this sort of complaint hypocritical itself. “So much for their respect for private property,” he said.

Latest OBL tape: newsroom computer system sound in background?

9/11 blogger
Wednesday October 24, 2007

Thanks to another post at http://www.911blogger.com/node/12132, I downloaded the latest recording of bin Laden from Al Jazeera's web site at the following address:

http://www.aljazeera.net/Channel/KServices/...

It is a 6 minute, 18 second Windows Media File, with no introduction, featuring someone who sounds like they might be (or might have been) Osama, speaking in Arabic, with a clear edit about half way through, with the two segments likely recorded at different times.

Most interesting is this: at 26 seconds into the audio file (presumably recorded on a tiny cassette recorder in some distant hut in the mountains of Pakistan), the distinct sound of two high pitched double pulses can be heard behind bin Laden's voice. I immediately recognized this as the one-second bulletin triggered by the INEWS newsroom software (a program file entitled "bulletin.wav").

INEWS is a pretty comprehensive newsroom management system, marketed to large news outlets (and presumably Al Jazeera) to centralize and automate their operations, and also features access to multiple wire services.

http://www.avid.com/products/inews/

When a message formatted as a bulletin moves on a subscribed wire service, the program can optionally make this particular beep through the computer's speakers, and this sound can sometimes be heard in the background of certain newscasts where the newsroom is the set. There are other sounds the INEWS program can make as well (instant message, incoming mail, flash, etc) but the bulletin sound is unique in its distinctiveness.

I plotted both recordings on a waveform to compare them (see image, attached). There are also two brief Windows XP system sounds in the Osama recording, at 3:50 and 4:00 (XP Exclamation.wav), nothing all that surprising, but the INEWS sound heard at 0:26 is proprietary, created when that program is installed on a computer, and is distinct to that software, as far as I know.

This suggests that whoever is speaking on the tape - be it Osama or whoever else - was recorded in a newsroom of some kind, where such software is used, unless what we are hearing was being recorded off a speaker in a room that also had incoming wire services (i.e. Al Jazeera) - which is also a possibility, I guess, but it does very much sound to me like the speaker is in the same room. It would be interesting to try and find out from Al Jazeera whether this is the original recording, or a re-recording of it off a speaker in their newsroom. If it's a re-recording, why wouldn't they want to offer the original recording up for public scrutiny? If it's the original, I wonder who else AVID (the maker of the INEWS software) sells their software to in the Middle East?

Note: this sound is NOT audible in the English translation provided on video by Al Jazeera, found at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e1a_1193080021 - in comparing these two recordings, the original Arabic is faded under the translator's voice most of the time, and when it is heard again at the 30 second mark in the translation, OBL is already at a later point in the original recording, indicating the portion featuring the beep was either faded or edited out under the translation.

Comments welcome!

3 Minute COINTELPRO Lesson

You Tube
Wednesday October 24, 2007

COINTELPRO for the masses.

Turkey strikes at Kurdish militants in northern Iraq

RIA Novosti
Wednesday October 24, 2007

Units of the Turkish army have crossed the Iraqi border in a special operation against Kurdish militants, local newspapers said Wednesday.

The Yeni Safak newspaper reported that Turkish commandos supported by helicopters were chasing militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and F-16 Falcon fighter-bombers and artillery were delivering pinpoint strikes at militant bases about 50 kilometers (30 miles) deep into the Iraqi territory.

Zaman, Turkey's third largest newspaper, said the Turkish Armed Forces had stepped up their bombardment of the Iraqi border as part of an operation launched in retaliation for Sunday's terrorist attack that killed 12 soldiers and wounded 16 others.

The newspaper cited a government spokesman as saying that the U.S. had been informed about the start of the cross-border operation, although Turkey's military has not confirmed the media reports.

The Turkish parliament sanctioned last week military cross-border operations against the PKK, based in north Iraq, following an earlier government request. The PKK says it is currently holding several Turkish soldiers hostage.

Turkey's military said on Monday that eight military personnel were missing following clashes with Kurdish fighters on the Iraqi border, 34 Kurds and at least 12 Turkish servicemen were killed last Sunday in an ambush by Kurdish militants.

Turkey's National Security Council is meeting Wednesday to discuss further action against the PKK insurgents and the reaction of the U.S. and neighboring countries on the Turkish incursion into northern Iraq.

The PKK, listed by the U.S., NATO and the EU as a terrorist organization, has been fighting for autonomy status in southeast Turkey for nearly 25 years. The conflict has so far claimed about 40,000 lives.

Dem candidate: Warrantless wiretaps a 'victory' for terrorists

Nick Juliano
Raw Story
Wednesday October 24, 2007

Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd, who has taken a hard-line in opposing Bush administration proposals to modify a foreign surveillance law, says the president's willingness to trample Constitutional rights hands terrorists a "victory" beyond what they could achieve through another attack.

"When you give up basic Constitutional rights, you give terrorists a far greater victory in ways," Dodd said during an online video chat.

The Connecticut senator explained his efforts to block a proposed bill that would grant immunity to telecommunications companies that critics say broke the law in allowing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants.

Dodd repeated his promise to filibuster any surveillance law that included immunity for telephone and internet providers, while he acknowledged that sustaining such a blockade would not be easy.

Although he has registered little more than a blip in national opinion polls, Dodd's stand against telecom immunity has dramatically raised his profile among progressive bloggers, and his campaign raised $100,000 in 36 hours when he vowed to put a "hold" on the bill.

In August, Congress rushed to pass a temporary expansion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that was assailed for not providing enough court oversight of surveillance methods authorized by the administration. That measure expires in February, and the House and Senate are considering long-term legislation to modify the act.

Dodd said he was encouraged by indications that the Senate Judiciary Committee would not include telecom immunity in a proposal expected to emerge from the committee in coming weeks. Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted 13-2 in favor of a FISA update that would spare from civil litigation companies that cooperated with the administration.

As Roll Call reports Tuesday, the administration has refused to share internal documents outlining the legal justifications behind the warrantless wiretapping program with the Judiciary Committee. Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and Ranking Member Arlen Specter called those conditions "unacceptable" in a letter to White House counsel Fred Fielding Monday.

The Judiciary Committee may introduce its own FISA-update proposal or refuse to act on the Intelligence Committee's bill, sponsored by Chairman John Rockefeller (D-WV). However, according to Roll Call, if the committee fails to act, the Rockefeller measure could proceed unchanged. Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he will work with Dodd and other critics to correct flaws in the bill and he called on the administration to hand over requested documents, but he has not committed to honoring Dodd's proposed hold.

"The Judiciary Committee has an important role in making sure the final protect is constitutional and legally sound," Reid said from the Senate floor Monday. "Unfortunately, the Administration has chosen again to stonewall Congress in providing all the information and documents needed for Congress to properly consider this legislation."

Dodd said he was hopeful that telecom immunity would be excised from a Senate bill; companion legislation in the House did not contain an immunity provision, but Republicans have succeeded in blocking floor consideration of that measure for now.

AEI’s Muravchik: ‘I Don’t Mind If We Bomb Iran Next Month Or The Month After’

Think Progress
Wednesday October 24, 2007

AEI scholar Joshua Muravchik has consistently pushed for war with Iran. In Nov. 2006, for example, Muravchik wrote an LA Times op-ed called simply, “Bomb Iran.” But as his appearance on MSNBC’s Hardball yesterday demonstrated, Muravchik’s calls for war with Iran aren’t based on any real evidence.

When host Chris Matthews asked how long it will take the Iranians to develop a nuclear weapon “that could be transported by a terrorist group,” Muravchik admitted he didn’t “know how long it will take them.” Muravchik’s comments came on the same day that IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei confirmed that it would take Iran three to eight years to build a nuclear weapon.

Nevertheless, Muravchik added, “I don’t mind if we bomb next month or the month after. I think we have to do it sometime in a short time frame.” Matthews then suggested that the real reason Muravchik is pushing for war so soon is not because of national security imperatives, but because Bush is the most likely president to follow through:

I respect you coming on and you’re a logical thinker. Let’s go to the logic of this. The one reason to bomb them now is you don’t trust the incoming presidency, the next president of the United States to do it. So you say let’s get Bush to do it. He’s the most likely guy to do it.

Watch it:

(Article continues below)

In the past, Muravchick has made clear that he wants war with Iran to happen before the 2008 elections. “Make no mistake, President Bush will need to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving office,” he wrote in late 2006.

Muravchik has pushed for a targeted air strike because it “would not end Iran’s weapons program, but it would certainly delay it.” Yet as a recent study by the British-based Oxford Research Group reports, military strikes on Iran “could accelerate rather than halt Tehran’s production of atomic weapons.”

(HT: Matt Yglesias)

Transcript:

WALSH: Two things on this. One, there’s no country in the history of the world that’s transferred a weapon of mass destruction to a terrorist group, not a nuclear weapon, radiological weapon, biological weapon, chemical weapon.

MATTHEWS: What’s the fence? What stops them?

WALSH: Because they don’t want it coming back and blowing back against them. They can’t trust these crazy guys.

MATTHEWS: Respond, because that’s the one that scares people the most in this country?

MURAVCHIK: Well, the fact that no one has done it yet — we haven’t had this kind of terrorist regime in possession of a nuclear weapon before. It is kind of — to say it hasn’t happened until now doesn’t really tell us anything.

MATTHEWS: Isn’t there a bigger danger than the former Soviet Republics, when there’s an engineer there that’s hard up for cash, hasn’t that always been the biggest fear, that you can go buy a suitcase bomb that’s available?

MURAVCHIK: I don’t think they’re available, but there is a fear.

MATTHEWS: Do you think the Iranians are capable of developing the kind of nuclear weaponry that could be transported by a terrorist group?

MURAVCHIK: I’m sure they are. I don’t know how long it will take them.

MATTHEWS: You say bomb them now though?

MURAVCHIK: Yes, because I don’t know, because it could take them longer. It could take them shorter.

MATTHEWS: Do you know of anyone who believes, in your area of expertise at AEI, who believes that they’re on the verge of getting a weapon that could be transported by a terrorist group? You say bomb now? That’s why I’m asking. There’s a lot of routes down the road we could use, but you say bomb now. Don’t wait for the diplomacy. Don’t wait for sanctions.

MURAVCHIK: No, we’ve waited.

MATTHEWS: You say bomb now. So you have to argue there’s an imminent threat, it seems to me.

MURAVCHIK: I don’t mind if we bomb next month or the month after. I think we have to do it sometime in a short time frame.

MATTHEWS: Why?

MURAVCHIK: Because we don’t know how long. We have consistently –

MATTHEWS: No one believes that you condense the process of developing a nuclear weapon that would be transportable, even delivery by an airplane, in a couple of months? Do you? Do you anybody who believes that?

MURAVCHIK: In a couple of months, no.

MATTHEWS: You said soon, if not now. I’m trying to follow your logic. Why attack now?

MURAVCHIK: Well, Chris, you know, it — as I said, it doesn’t have to be this minute.

MATTHEWS: What about a year from now?

MURAVCHIK: A year from now might be soon enough. The point that I’m trying to make is that there’s no alternative way to stop them. Whether we do it this month or next month –

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you a political question –

(CROSS TALK)

MATTHEWS: I respect you coming on and you’re a logical thinker. Let’s go to the logic of this. The one reason to bomb them now is you don’t trust the incoming presidency, the next president of the United States to do it. So you say let’s get Bush to do it. He`s the most likely guy to do it.

MURAVCHIK: No, Chris, that’s not right. What I’m saying is there’s no alternative way to stop them, that we have tried diplomacy, we have tried sanctions.

MATTHEWS: What about the consequences that Jim laid out?

MURAVCHIK: Hold on. There’s no alternative way to stop them and therefore — and we don’t know exactly how long it`s going to take them to get a nuclear weapon.

MATTHEWS: Nobody says months.

MURAVCHIK: But we — actually in the past, we disastrously underestimated how long it would take the Soviet Union. We underestimated how long it would take China.

MATTHEWS: Can I make a comment? We didn’t know how many east Germans they had. They had a hell of a lot of German scientists helping them back in those days in the late 1940’s. The Russians didn’t develop the nuclear weapon without the Germans.

MURAVCHIK: Iran has a lot of German help, actually.

MATTHEWS: Do they?

MURAVCHIK: A lot of the technology that they have comes from Germany. Yes, it does.

General claims Bush gave 'marching orders' on aggressive interrogation at Guantanamo

Nick Juliano
Raw Story
Tuesday October 23, 2007

New book says US uses 'methods of the most tyrannical regimes'
More than 100,000 pages of newly released government documents demonstrate how US military interrogators "abused, tortured or killed" scores of prisoners rounded up since Sept. 11, 2001, including some who were not even expected of having terrorist ties, according to a just-published book.

In Administration of Torture, two American Civil Liberties Union attorneys detail the findings of a years-long investigation and court battle with the administration that resulted in the release of massive amounts of data on prisoner treatment and the deaths of US-held prisoners.

"[T]he documents show unambiguously that the administration has adopted some of the methods of the most tyrannical regimes," write Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh. "Documents from Guantanamo describe prisoners shackled in excruciating 'stress positions,' held in freezing-cold cells, forcibly stripped, hooded, terrorized with military dogs, and deprived of human contact for months."

Most of the documents on which Administration of Torture is based were obtained as a result of ongoing legal fights over a Freedom of Information Act request filed in October 2003 by the ACLU and other human rights and anti-war groups, the ACLU said in a news release.

The documents show that prisoner abuse like that found at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was hardly the isolated incident that the Bush administration or US military claimed it was. By the time the prisoner abuse story broke in mid-2004 the Army knew of at least 62 other allegations of abuse at different prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, the authors report.

Drawing almost exclusively from the documents, the authors say there is a stark contrast between the public statements of President Bush and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the policies those and others in the administration were advocating behind the scenes.

President Bush gave "marching orders" to Gen. Michael Dunlavey, who asked the Pentagon to approve harsher interrogation methods at Guantanamo, the general claims in documents reported in the book.

The ACLU also found that an Army investigator reported Rumsfeld was "personally involved" in overseeing the interrogation of a Guantanamo prisoner Mohammed al Qahtani. The prisoner was forced to parade naked in front of female interrogators wearing women's underwear on his head and was led around on a leash while being forced to perform dog tricks.

“It is imperative that senior officials who authorized, endorsed, or tolerated the abuse and torture of prisoners be held accountable," Jaffer and Singh write, "not only as a matter of elemental justice, but to ensure that the same crimes are not perpetrated again.”

Critic urges China Communists to abandon dictatorship

Benjamin Kang Lim
Reuters
Wednesday October 24, 2007

The emergence of China's likely next generation of leaders at the Communist Party's just-ended conclave is no cause for celebration yet, the most senior official jailed over the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests said.

Bao Tong, once a top aide to purged Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang and now an outspoken critic of the government, urged the Party to dump its dictatorial ways.

"I think it is not only not frightening for a party to voluntarily abandon dictatorship, but (the move) will also bring the dying (party) back to life and a future without limits," Bao wrote in a commentary circulated on Chinese language Web sites overseas, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.

"What is most important is all citizen have rights to speak freely and walk their own path within a legal framework."

Bao's skeptical reaction to the Congress was a reminder that the Party's new and more youthful elite -- revealed after a five-yearly Congress in past days -- will also face constant pressure from critics over how they handle dissent and the sensitive legacy of 1989.

Zhao was toppled and Bao jailed for seven years for their opposition to sending in troops to crush the pro-democracy protests on June 4, 1989. Zhao died in 2005 after more than 15 years under house arrest. He was replaced by Jiang Zemin, who in turn retired in 2002 to make way for Hu Jintao.

Two next generation leaders -- Shanghai Party boss Xi Jinping and Liaoning provincial Party boss Li Keqiang -- emerged at the 17th Party Congress as possible successors to President Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao when the latter give up their Party and government jobs in 2012 and 2013 respectively.

"Maybe the new people the 17th Congress elected are far from mediocre and can truly achieve feats that will shake heaven and earth ... but now there is no basis to predict and no basis to form a judgment," Bao wrote.

Full article here.