More Russian nuclear fuel delivered to Iran

AFP
Thursday January 24, 2008

Russia delivered a sixth consignment of fuel for Iran's first nuclear power plant in the Gulf port of Bushehr on Thursday which makes it around 80 percent of the consignment, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"The sixth load of nuclear fuel arrived at the Bushehr plant on Thursday morning," said a statement from the Organisation for Production and Development of Nuclear Energy quoted by the news agency.

The delivery brings the nuclear fuel supplied by Russia so far to 66 tonnes or around 80 percent of the total order of 82 tonnes, IRNA said.

Previous deliveries were made on December 17 and 28, and January 18, 20 and 22. Two more consignments are due by February according to a timetable agreed by the two sides.

Late last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the Bushehr reactor would be working at 50 percent capacity by mid-2008.

But the Russian constructors insist the 1,000-megawatt plant will not go on line until the end of the year.

After delivery of the first shipment of fuel, Russia said Iran no longer needed to pursue its own uranium enrichment, a message repeated by US President George W. Bush.

Tehran has so far defied successive UN Security Council ultimatums to suspend enrichment prompting two sets of UN sanctions.

The six major powers, the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- plus Germany drew up a new text on Tuesday to put before the council.

The contents of the text agreed by the foreign ministers of the so called 5+1 were not released.

But a senior US official said the new draft "increases the severity of the sanctions already in place and will also introduce new elements."

Iran on Wednesday described as illegal and ineffective the threat of new UN sanctions and said it would clear up any remaining questions about its nuclear programme in talks with the UN watchdog.

The Western powers fear that Iran's nuclear programme is a cover for a drive to develop a bomb, a charge Tehran strongly denies.

Cheney Wants Surveillance Law Expanded

TOM RAUM
Associated Press
Wednesday, January 23, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Dick Cheney prodded Congress on Wednesday to extend and broaden an expiring surveillance law, saying "fighting the war on terror is a long-term enterprise" that should not come with an expiration date.

"We're reminding Congress that they must act now," Cheney told the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. The law, which authorizes the administration to eavesdrop on e-mails and phone calls to and from suspected terrorists, expires on Feb. 1. Congress is bickering over terms of its extension.

On Tuesday, Senate Republicans blocked an effort by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to extend the stopgap Protect America Act without expanding it, raising stakes for an expected showdown in the Senate later this week on a new version of the law.

"This cause is bigger than the quarrels of party and the agendas of politicians," Cheney said. "And if we in Washington, all of us, can only see our way clear to work together, then the outcome should not be in doubt."

Congress hastily adopted the stopgap act last summer in the face of warnings from the administration about dangerous gaps in the government's ability to gather intelligence in the Internet age.

Administration allies in Congress not only want the expiring law made permanent but amended to give telephone companies and other communications providers immunity from being sued for helping the government eavesdropping and other intelligence-gathering efforts.

Cheney said such providers "face dozens of lawsuits."

"The intelligence community doesn't have the facilities to carry out the kind of international surveillance needed to defend this country since 9-11. In some situations, there is no alternative to seeking assistance from the private sector. This is entirely appropriate," Cheney said.

FULL STORY: CLICK HERE

Ron Paul Comes in Second Again: This Time in Louisiana

Gambling 911
Thursday January 24, 2008

Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul enjoys yet another second place finish in a state caucus. This time it's Louisiana.

The Louisiana contest, however, is not a battleground state in the race for the Republican nomination as candidates have focused on bigger prizes in South Carolina and Florida.

Fred Thompson dropping out of the race helped boost Paul's vote count.

If Thompson had still been in the race, a Louisiana political source explained to NR, his state delegate strength in Louisiana would have been enough to potentially get him all of the state's 47 national delegates. The one big problem, though, is that he dropped out only hours before he finally won something.

John McCain won the state Tuesday.

Louisiana voters have become disenchanted with its state's stance against online gambling. Ron Paul is against Internet gambling prohibition.

Colin Powell Confronted on Depleted Uranium

Jones Report
Wednesday January 23, 2008

Members of WeAreChange Ohio confronted former Secretary of State Colin Powell about the use of depleted uranium in four separate wars-- including Gulf Wars I & II, Kosovo and Bosnia. Powell admitted to its use, but denied its relative harm, repeatedly calling it "useful."

Powell downplays the harmful birth defects those exposed to D.U. have suffered, suggesting that he has been around D.U. himself and suffered no damage.

Audience members also asked the former Secretary of State about falsified intelligence on Iraq, which Powell handily dismissed.

Depleted Uranium has been directed linked with:

Increased rates of immune system disorders and other wide-ranging symptoms, including chronic pain, fatigue and memory loss, have been reported in over one quarter of combat veterans of the 1991 Gulf War. Combustion products from depleted uranium munitions are being considered as one of the potential causes by the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, as DU was used in tank kinetic energy penetrator and machine-gun bullets on a large scale for the first time in the Gulf War. Veterans of the conflicts in the Gulf, Bosnia and Kosovo have been found to have up to 14 times the usual level of chromosome abnormalities in their genes.

Terror law plans to be unveiled

BBC
Thursday January 24, 2008

The government is pressing ahead with plans to allow the police to hold terrorism suspects for up to 42 days before they are charged.

The Counter Terrorism Bill, due to be published later, will propose to extend the limit beyond the current 28 days.

Some senior police officers support the move but it could be beaten by Lib Dem, Tory and rebel Labour MPs.

Attempts to extend the limit to 90 days in 2005 ended in then prime minister Tony Blair's first Commons defeat.

A survey by the Independent newspaper last month suggested 38 Labour MPs were against the 42-day plan, more than the 34 needed to defeat it.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, mindful of a potential rebellion, has been meeting backbenchers to press her case.

'Mass casualties'

She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there was "a consensus that we face a serious threat from terrorism".

Ms Smith added: "It's growing in scale. It's becoming more complicated in nature. People need to intervene earlier because of the way in which it aims to cause mass casualties with no warning."

She also said that "there may come a time in the future where having to release somebody at 28 days in a very complex investigation might mean that you are not able to go forward and charge them and bring them to prosecution".

Asked whether she was proposing legislation to deal with a hypothetical situation, the home secretary replied: "We are putting in a provision for if it becomes unhypothetical."

Perino Dismisses CPI Study: Truth On How We Sold The Iraq War Is Not ‘Worth Spending Time On’

Think Progress
Thursday January 24, 2008

A new study by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism found that the Bush administration issued 935 false statements about the threat from Iraq in the two years following 9/11. President Bush “led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

In today’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino attacked the study. Perino claimed the study “is so flawed” because it “only looked at members of the administration” and not “people around the world”:

I hardly think that the study is worth spending time on. It is so flawed, in terms of taking anything into context or including — they only looked at members of the administration, rather than looking at members of Congress or people around the world.

Because, as you’ll remember, we were part of a broad coalition of countries that deposed the dictator based on a collective understanding of the intelligence.

Watch it:

(Article continues below)

Perino argues that “we thought as a collective body that there” were WMDs. “The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world,” added spokesperson Scott Stanzel.

The entire world community, however, didn’t endorse the Bush administration’s pre-war claims. For example, the IAEA’s Mohamed ElBaradei, Hans Blix, and other U.N. inspectors were all skeptical of Bush’s WMD allegations. Members of Congress who received the administration’s classified intelligence briefings raised similar concerns.

Dan Froomkin reports today that the Senate Intelligence Committee’s long overdue Phase II report on “whether the White House intentionally deceived the public” prior to the war will be out “before the end of spring.”

Transcript:

QUESTION: Any reaction to the study out from the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism, when they did what they called a count of hundreds of false statements made by the president and top administration officials regarding the threat posed by Iraq. And they counted during the two years after 9/11.

PERINO: I hardly think that the study is worth spending time on. It is so flawed, in terms of taking anything into context or including — they only looked at members of the administration, rather than looking at members of Congress or people around the world.

Because, as you’ll remember, we were part of a broad coalition of countries that deposed the dictator based on a collective understanding of the intelligence. And the other thing that that study fails to do is to say that after realizing that there was no WMD, as we thought as a collective body that there was, that this White House, the president set about to make reforms in the intelligence community to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

Government ordered to disclose draft Iraq dossier

Andrew Sparrow
London Guardian
Thursday January 24, 2008

A Whitehall spin doctor may have played a greater role in the drafting of the famous dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction than the government admitted at the time, the Information Tribunal said today.
In a ruling on a freedom of information request relating to what is alleged to be the first draft of the dossier published in 2002, the tribunal said that the public should be allowed to read the document.

The tribunal made its ruling following a three-year campaign by a researcher who believes that the dossier will undermine the government's claims that the document was entirely drawn up by John Scarlett, the then-head of the joint intelligence committee, and not government spin doctors.

The dossier, which claimed Iraq could launch weapons on of mass destruction within 45 minutes, became the subject of huge controversy when the BBC reported that it had been "sexed up" by Downing Street.

Today's decision relates to an early version of the dossier written by John Williams, a former Daily Mirror journalist who at the time was head of press at the Foreign Office. The so-called "Williams draft" was mentioned during the Hutton inquiry but it was never published and at the time the Foreign Office claimed that it had little influence on the version that was eventually published.

The government always claimed that the dossier eventually published in September 2002 was the work of the joint intelligence committee and its chairman, Scarlett.

But Tony Blair was subsequently accused of "sexing up" the dossier to persuade the public to support the war against Iraq and at the time of the Hutton inquiry there was a fierce debate about the extent to which his spin doctors, and principally his press chief, Alastair Campbell, were involved in the wording of the document.

Willliams, who has now retired from the Foreign Office, apparently started writing his version on September 7 2002, four days after Blair had announced that a dossier on Iraq's WMD would be published.

Full article here.

Britain IS heading for a recession, warns billionaire investor George Soros, but Footsie soars in early trade

UK Daily Mail
Thursday January 24, 2008

Britain and America are heading for a recesssion, one of the world's most powerful financiers said yesterday.

The bleak warning from George Soros follows a rollercoaster week on the financial markets demonstrated yesterday by the FTSE 100, which rose on Tuesday, falling again and the plunging Dow Jones rallying to finish up 300 points.

This morning, the FTSE 100 Index's rollercoaster ride took a new turn today as London's leading shares soared higher in early trading. With Asian stock exchanges also registering advances overnight, the Footsie opened more than 2 per cent, or 125.7 points, higher at 5735.

All eyes are now on the Bank of England to see how it will react to Tuesday's 0.75 per cent rate cut in America.

The most common view is that rates will fall next month from 5.5 to 5.25 per cent and 4.75 per cent by the autumn.

Mr Soros, best-known as the man who cashed in on the pound's withdrawal from the European Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday in the 1990s, said a major downturn is on its way.

Asked on Radio 4's Today programme if a recession was looming, he replied: "I think it will be very difficult to avoid it."

Mr Soros, in Davos for the World Economic Forum - a meetingof top political and business leaders - said America's Federal Reserve had no option but to hit the panic button on Tuesday.

If it had not, he said, America could have risked a repeat of the 1930s Depression.

He was backed up by Nouriel Roubini of Roubini Global Economics and Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley.

Full article here.

Study: Bush, aides made 935 false statements in run-up to war

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush and his top aides publicly made 935 false statements about the security risk posed by Iraq in the two years following September 11, 2001, according to a study released Tuesday by two nonprofit journalism groups.

President Bush addresses the nation as the Iraq war begins in March 2003.

"In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003," reads an overview of the examination, conducted by the Center for Public Integrity and its affiliated group, the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

According to the study, Bush and seven top officials -- including Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice -- made 935 false statements about Iraq during those two years.

The study was based on a searchable database compiled of primary sources, such as official government transcripts and speeches, and secondary sources -- mainly quotes from major media organizations.

The study says Bush made 232 false statements about Iraq and former leader Saddam Hussein's possessing weapons of mass destruction, and 28 false statements about Iraq's links to al Qaeda.

Bush has consistently asserted that at the time he and other officials made the statements, the intelligence community of the U.S. and several other nations, including Britain, believed Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

He has repeatedly said that despite the intelligence flaws, removing Hussein from power was the right thing to do.

The study, released Tuesday, says Powell had the second-highest number of false statements, with 244 about weapons and 10 about Iraq and al Qaeda.

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Press Secretary Ari Fleischer each made 109 false statements, it says. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz made 85, Rice made 56, Cheney made 48 and Scott McLellan, also a press secretary, made 14, the study says.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al Qaeda," the report reads, citing multiple government reports, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the 9/11 Commission and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, which reported that Hussein had suspended Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to revive it.

The overview of the study also calls the media to task, saying most media outlets didn't do enough to investigate the claims.

"Some journalists -- indeed, even some entire news organizations -- have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical," the report reads. "These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq."

The quotes in the study include an August 26, 2002, statement by Cheney to the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," Cheney said. "There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."