Under a broad new set of laws criminalizing speech that ridicules the government or its officials, some resurrected verbatim from Saddam Hussein’s penal code, roughly a dozen Iraqi journalists have been charged with offending public officials in the past year.
Currently, three journalists for a small newspaper in southeastern Iraq are being tried here for articles last year that accused a provincial governor, local judges and police officials of corruption.
The journalists are accused of violating Paragraph 226 of the penal code, which makes anyone who “publicly insults” the government or public officials subject to up to seven years in prison.
On Sept. 7, the police sealed the offices of Al Arabiya, a Dubai-based satellite news channel, for what the government said was inflammatory reporting. And the Committee to Protect Journalists says that at least three Iraqi journalists have served time in prison for writing articles deemed criminally offensive.
The White House ignored an urgent warning in September 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to quell the insurgency there, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author. The book describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war.
The warning is described in “State of Denial,” scheduled for publication on Monday by Simon & Schuster. The book says President Bush’s top advisers were often at odds among themselves, and sometimes were barely on speaking terms, but shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from American commanders and others about the situation in Iraq.
As late as November 2003, Mr. Bush is quoted as saying of the situation in Iraq: “I don’t want anyone in the cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don’t think we are there yet.”
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is described as disengaged from the nuts-and-bolts of occupying and reconstructing Iraq — a task that was initially supposed to be under the direction of the Pentagon — and so hostile toward Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, that President Bush had to tell him to return her phone calls.
The American commander for the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, is reported to have told visitors to his headquarters in Qatar in the fall of 2005 that “Rumsfeld doesn’t have any credibility anymore” to make a public case for the American strategy for victory in Iraq.
Three weeks ago, Pakistan signed the terms of the Waziristan Accord .... It was, effectively, the terms of surrender by Pakistan to the Taliban and al Qaeda, which dominate North Waziristan.According to Blankley, intelligence sources assert that the agreement declares that the Pakistani military will "not operate in or monitor actions in the region" and allows Taliban supporters to "set up a Mujahideen council to administer the region ..."
A U.S. military official said [Sept. 27] that American troops on Afghanistan's eastern border have seen a threefold increase in attacks since a recent truce between Pakistani troops and pro-Taliban tribesmen that was supposed to have stopped cross-border raids by the militants.In his column, Blankley notes that the Taliban insurgency could be strengthened because
... according to intelligence sources, Pakistan is negotiating similar terms with agencies in the Khyber, Tank, Dera Ismail Kahn and Bajaur regions of western Pakistan.Not surprisingly, Blankley treats the Bush administration with kid gloves. He writes that "no later than the State of the Union Address, [President Bush] must explain how [the Pakistani truce] changes things and what he is going to do about it."
If those negotiations are realized, the Taliban and al Qaeda will essentially have their own country again. With Waziristan they already have an excellent base of operations against our forces in Afghanistan.
When [President Musharraf] looks me in the eye and says, the tribal deal is intended to reject the Talibanization of the people, and that there won't be a Taliban and won't be al-Qaida, I believe him, you know?If Clinton happened to be president and offered a naive and ridiculous explanation like that, Blankley would have skewered him and called for his impeachment.
Three years after the city banned smoking in restaurants, (New York City) health officials are talking about prohibiting something they say is almost as bad: artificial trans fatty acids.
The city health department unveiled a proposal Tuesday that would bar cooks at any of the city’s 24,600 food service establishments from using ingredients that contain the artery-clogging substance, commonly listed on food labels as partially hydrogenated oil.
Artificial trans fats are found in some shortenings, margarine and frying oils and turn up in foods from pie crusts to french fries to doughnuts.
... Doctors agree that trans fats are unhealthy in nearly any amount, but a spokesman for the restaurant industry said he was stunned the city would seek to ban a legal ingredient found in millions of American kitchens.
SNOW: "... this is why the President says we're safer. Al Qaeda has been significantly degraded. It is one of the key conclusions -- or at least the key judgments; you don't have conclusions in a National Intelligence Estimate -- that, in fact, the operational structure had been weakened ...."
REPORTER: "A couple things. You said, first of all, that al Qaeda has been degraded. Actually, the report said al Qaeda's leadership has been degraded, but that its ranks have increased."
Saudi Arabia is pushing ahead with plans to build a fence to block terrorists from crossing its 560-mile border with Iraq — another sign of growing alarm that Sunni-Shiite strife could spill over and drag Iraq's neighbors into its civil conflict.
The barrier, which hasn't been started, is part of a $12 billion package of measures including electronic sensors, security bases and physical barriers to protect the oil-rich kingdom from external threats, said Nawaf Obaid, head of the Saudi National Security Assessment Project ...
Vice President Dick Cheney defended President Bush's efforts to combat terrorism, including the war in Iraq, and warned during a speech today in Milwaukee against some Democrats' calls for a U.S. troop withdrawal.Is an administration that talks like Dirty Harry ("Bring 'em on!") pursuing a singularly defensive strategy against terrorism?
"We are not going to let down our guard," Cheney told a group of 125 at the Pfister Hotel. "There's still hard work ahead in the war on terror."
.... "Terrorists regard the entire world as a battlefield," he said. "We have to stay on the defensive until the danger is removed."
The United States fell to sixth place in the World Economic Forum's 2006 global competitiveness rankings, ceding the top place to Switzerland .... In a report released Tuesday, the World Economic Forum said Washington's huge defense and homeland security spending commitments, plans to lower taxes further, and long-term potential costs from health care and pensions were creating worrisome fiscal strains.But U.S. consumers don't seem to be glum. In fact, the newest consumer confidence index makes them seem reasonably optimistic:
U.S. consumer confidence rose more sharply than expected in September as energy costs fell and job prospects improved slightly, a survey showed on Tuesday.
The Conference Board ... said its index of consumer sentiment climbed in September to 104.5, up from an upwardly revised 100.2 in August.
Casey Widens Lead in Pa. Senate PollThat's a nice little surge-- it's notable that Santorum can't seem to move above 40%, Casey is over 50% AND only 6% are undecided. It's hardly over but poor little Ricky Santimonious has to be praying extra hard these days.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Democrat Bob Casey appears to have opened a double digit lead over Sen. Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania's Senate race, according to a poll released Tuesday.
Casey had a 14-point lead in the Quinnipiac University Poll, with 54 percent of likely voters saying they planned to vote for him compared to 40 percent for Santorum. One percent said they wouldn't vote and 6 percent said they didn't know.
Lots of chuckles on the Hill and at regulatory agencies over a Sept. 19 letter from Hewlett-Packard Vice President Gary Fazzino to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).
The letter urges Frist to push passage of the Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act of 2006, which is intended to protect the personal information of consumers and employees.
"HP has long been an industry leader on privacy," Fazzino wrote .... Meanwhile, a House committee is investigating HP for authorizing an extensive spying operation on people inside and outside the company, looking for leakers. The company is alleged to have planted false documents, followed its board members and reporters, watched their homes and obtained phone records of directors, reporters and spouses.
Keep that up and it won't be "an industry leader on privacy" much longer.
Sen. George Allen on Monday denounced as "ludicrously false" claims from a former college football teammate that he frequently used a racial slur to refer to black people.
Dr. Ken Shelton, now a radiologist in Hendersonville, N.C., also alleges that Allen, a former University of Virginia quarterback, once stuffed the severed head of a deer into a black household's oversized mail box.
In an Associated Press interview Monday, Allen vehemently denied the allegations Shelton made in an article published Sunday in the online magazine Salon.com and an AP interview Sunday night. His campaign released statements from four other ex-teammates defending Allen and rejecting Shelton's claims.
"The story and his comments and assertions in there are completely false," Allen said during an interview with AP reporters and editors.
... this month, House Republicans caught a glimpse of the calendar, discovered that the November election was around the corner and trembled at the thought that their own conservative voters might not look favorably on the people who represent them offering nothing on a hot issue except hot air.
So they hurriedly cobbled together a slate of 10 enforcement measures .... The first measure that the House approved was 700 miles of border fencing. It was for show. It showed America that folks in Washington don't really understand how the border works.
First, as any border patrol agent will tell you, there's no fence that can keep out someone who is desperate to feed his family and who's willing to go around, go over, or go under.
... The smart thing is to stop the magnet that draws illegal immigrants here: Jobs, jobs, jobs provided by U.S. employers. And yet, nowhere in the GOP's 10-point enforcement plan do you find any mention of employer sanctions.
I don't suppose that has anything to do with the fact that the Republican Party is the party of business, and, more and more in America, businesses depend on illegal immigrant labor.
Weymouth: Reportedly the U.S. government is losing faith in Prime Minister [Nouri al-]Maliki.Either a Post editor did a terrible job of editing the interview for excerpts, or Weymouth isn't familiar with the word "probe."
Talabani: President Bush assured us that he will support the Maliki government. We assured him that all Iraqi political parties support Maliki. He has done many important things for Iraq. He has ordered all of the militias to stop their activities.
Weymouth: But they haven't stopped.
Talabani: They are not operating as before.
Weymouth: When should the U.S. troops leave? ....
Members of the audience took offense and shouted “psycho” and booed as Burns claimed that Democratic Senate candidate Jon Tester has an illegal slush fund, has taken “unreported” trips to Taiwan, and made illegal phone calls to raise campaign funds.I definitely hope Burns loses his re-election bid, but I am appalled at how Democratic partisans behaved during this debate.
The accusations came after Tester accused Burns of no longer representing Montana values.
... The two were in the Bitterroot Valley [Sept. 10] for a 90-minute debate at Hamilton High School, an raucous event punctuated by heckling from a lively overflow audience.
... The crowd, which at times booed and baited Burns, earned a public chastising from one Burns supporter, who voiced her displeasure and asked for the rudeness to end.
... U.S. intelligence agencies and many private security analysts doubt al-Qaida or its elusive leader, Osama bin Laden, still maintain much if any operational control over far-flung terror cells.So what does this mean? In my view, it means two things.
They see no sign of a direct al-Qaida hand in a flurry of recent attacks, such as the assault on the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, Syria, or the fatal shooting of a British tourist in Jordan. The French intelligence report that bin Laden may have died last month of typhoid merely highlights the uncertainty the West now has about any role he plays in the terror network.
All that means those frightening videos may have been just that -- designed to frighten the West and inspire followers -- with little real punch behind them.
Bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, are now ''less like generals and more like talking heads, disseminating their violent ideology via satellite television in hopes of inspiring others to do their bidding,'' said Eben Kaplan of the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in New York.
President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan said yesterday that after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks the United States threatened to bomb his country if it did not cooperate with the American campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan.I'm not sure what I think of this.
General Musharraf, in an interview with “60 Minutes” that will be broadcast Sunday on CBS, said the threat came from Richard L. Armitage, then the deputy secretary of state, and was made to General Musharraf’s intelligence director.
General Musharraf said the intelligence director had told him that Mr. Armitage had said: “ ‘Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age.’ ”
General Musharraf added, “I think it was a very rude remark.”
Mr. Armitage was not immediately available to comment. A Bush administration official said there would be no comment on a “reported conversation between Mr. Armitage and a Pakistani official.”
A court ruled Thursday that an order forcing Tokyo teachers to stand before Japan's flag and sing an anthem to the emperor violated the constitution, a rare victory for the country's waning pacifist movement, plaintiffs' lawyers said.
The decision bolstered opponents of Japan's growing emphasis on patriotism.
The "Hinomaru" flag — a red disc on a white field — and the "Kimigayo" hymn to the emperor were made Japan's official symbols in 1999.
Supporters of the symbols say Japanese children should be taught national pride, but opponents argue the flag and anthem are remnants of Japan's militarist period ...
The 401 plaintiffs sued the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, led by nationalist Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, and the Tokyo education board over a 2003 directive that threatened teachers with punishment for not honoring the anthem and flag.
The American Academy of Family Physicians, which established a political action committee a year ago, also is stepping up its advocacy efforts.Sarasohn must have needed a few lines of text as filler because she felt compelled to end this item with the following quote:
On Wednesday, 2,000 family doctors are expected on the Hill to express their concerns about the uninsured, the need for medical liability legislation and Medicare reimbursements.
"It's time for the country to address the problems of health care," said the academy president, Larry S. Fields , a family doctor from Kentucky.We hear nothing specific on where the group stands on any of the issues they've cited. All we get from Sarasohn is a silly platitude from the group's president.
All told, nine people associated with Abramoff or others linked to recent corruption scandals paid 236 visits to the White House from 2001 to the beginning of 2006, according to the records.In May, the Secret Service released logs showing two visits by Abramoff himself, but the president of the conservative group Judicial Watch (one of 2 groups seeking the logs) said there is "reason to believe there are additional details about Jack Abramoff's visits to the White House that have not been disclosed."
The account of the visits fleshes out well-established connections between figures in the Abramoff scandal and the White House.
... The records show that (Grover) Norquist was cleared for 97 White House visits and (Ralph) Reed 18. A Senate investigation reported in June that Abramoff worked with Norquist and Reed to help fund an Indian tribe's lobbying on gambling issues.
... Among those whose White House visits were made public were Tony Rudy and Neil G. Volz. Rudy, who was an aide to former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), pleaded guilty in federal court here to a charge of conspiracy in connection with the Abramoff scandal. He admitted accepting favors, cash and other gifts while working in DeLay's House leadership office and after leaving to become a lobbyist.
Volz, once a top aide to Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and then an associate of Abramoff, admitted that he took illegal gifts while he was a federal employee ...
... want us to play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules while we are being kicked in the groin and slashed with knives ...Sowell offers this rhetorical response to the argument that our own soldiers could be placed at risk if the U.S. doesn't fully respect the Geneva convention:
Does any sane adult believe that the cutthroats we are dealing with will respect the Geneva convention?That may sound like a good argument. Initially.
Kevin Wiskus, a candidate for Iowa House District 94, has switched his party affiliation from Republican to Independent following what he said was a “shocking and tasteless” mass-mailed brochure attacking his opponent.
The move, he said, was in response to a brochure from the Republican Party of Iowa attacking current state Rep. Kurt Swaim, D-Bloomfield.
... “Though I had no prior knowledge of this vicious attack on you, I ask that you please accept my most sincere and humble apology to you and Julie,” [Wiskus] wrote in an ad to appear in the Centerville Daily Iowegian.
The mailing accuses Swaim of helping child molesters become eligible for early release. It highlights a former case Swaim defended as a public defender.
“He pled guilty and was sentenced to 200 days in jail. He served four. How did he get such a sweet deal? His public defender, Kurt Swaim, was paid $936.30 to get him back on the street,” the brochure states ....
Swaim said Friday, “I accept and appreciate Kevin’s apology and I hope and trust we can move forward for a positive campaign.”
He noted that a public defender has only a few acceptable reasons for not taking a case, and none applied to the one featured in the mailing. As an attorney, Swaim added, it would be unethical not to represent a client as capably as possible.
RUSSERT: Let, let me show you a map of Iraq, and there on the west is Anbar Province. And this is what the Marine Corps has said about Anbar Province. “The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country’s western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there, said several military officers and intelligence officials familiar with its contents.” That’s the military talking. What do we do? ...It's one thing to argue, as Allen does, that we need to keep our troops there and try our best to finish the job. But it's another thing to take that position even as you write off a major province of Iraq and essentially cede that to the insurgents.
ALLEN: Anbar was always difficult to govern. The focus now is on the Baghdad area. When I was over in Iraq back in June, whether they were Kurds, Sunni or Shiites, they were all very grateful to Americans for liberating them from Saddam’s tyrannical regime. They all also recognize that the key for the country is to make sure there is better security in the Baghdad, the central area. The northern part, the Kurdish area, is doing very well. Gosh, they’re even running advertisements for investment in the Kurdish area. They’re building homes, there’s a convention center. And the southern part, the Shiite part, is, is, is fairly stable, too. The key right now, the focus, the adjustments, the adaptations that have been made, is to focus on the Baghdad area.
Two truckers who worked in Iraq told a Senate Democratic policy committee on Monday that their employer, a Halliburton subsidiary, knowingly sent a lightly armed convoy of fuel tankers into a combat zone in April 2004, leading to the deaths of seven truckers and at least two soldiers.
The allegations now form the basis of a lawsuit that families of the dead, along with several truckers wounded in the same incident, have brought against the subsidiary, KBR, formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root.
While an array of lawsuits, criminal investigations and Congressional inquiries have accused KBR and its subcontractors with overcharging and other purely financial offenses, this is the first case to assert that the company put its employees’ lives at risk in the service of profit.
The company denied the accusations and said the United States military, not KBR, was responsible for the security of its convoys.
... The truckers were civilians recruited by KBR to drive in convoys supplying American troops as part of the company’s enormous logistics contract with the Army. Under the contract, the company has been paid more than $15 billion to perform jobs like delivering food and fuel to troops around the world since 2001.
... A lawyer for the truckers, T. Scott Allen, presented documents that he said showed that the company later offered to nominate the truckers for a civilian medal if they signed paperwork releasing KBR from any legal liability.
Imagine if the American people reacted this way every time the Bush administration lied to them. From CNN: Hungary's prime minister has refused to resign after Monday's anti-government riots and vowed to push ahead with tough economic reforms despite admitting in a leaked recording that officials lied about the economy.At least Hungary's prime minister was willing to tell somebody that he lied. That's more than I can say for Dick Cheney.
... The riots, in which 150 people, including 102 police officers, were injured, were "the longest and darkest night" for the country since the end of communism in 1989, the embattled leader said.
... The turmoil exploded Sunday, when state radio aired an audiotape of (Prime Minister Ferenc) Gyurcsany telling members of his ruling Socialist Party that his government had lied about the state of the country's economy throughout its two years in office.
"We lied throughout the past one and a half or two years," he said. "We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening and also at night."
Watching the president on Friday in the Rose Garden as he threatened to quit interrogating terrorists if Congress did not approve his detainee bill, we were struck by how often he acts as though there were not two sides to a debate.
We have lost count of the number of times he has said Americans have to choose between protecting the nation precisely the way he wants, and not protecting it at all.
On Friday, President Bush posed a choice between ignoring the law on wiretaps, and simply not keeping tabs on terrorists. Then he said the United States could rewrite the Geneva Conventions, or just stop questioning terrorists. To some degree, he is following a script for the elections: terrify Americans into voting Republican. But behind that seems to be a deeply seated conviction that under his leadership, America is right and does not need the discipline of rules.
He does not seem to understand that the rules are what makes this nation as good as it can be.
* throw firebombs at five churches in the West Bank and Gaza.
* burn a 170-year-old church in the West Bank town of Tul Karem.
* urge their fellow Muslims to assault or kill Christians (including those who had nothing to do with the pope's statement or the Danish-published cartoon).
Sometimes, I get the impression that my fellow liberals (who, like me, are no fan of the pope) are too inclined to take these violent reactions from the Muslim world in stride.“What happened in Rwanda, it will happen here,” said Sheik Abdullah Muhammad Ali, who fled here from a nearby village seeking the safety that he hoped the presence of about 200 African Union peacekeepers would bring. But the Sudanese government has asked the African Union to quit Darfur rather than hand over its mission to the United Nations. “If these soldiers leave,” Sheik Ali said, “we will all be slaughtered.”"Darfur: Waiting for the slaughter"
Rasha Ibrahim Adam and her children may be about to die - just as she thought they had all escaped to safety."Annan issues stark message to Security Council about impending catastrophe in Darfur"
The 38-year-old mother of four children is one of the latest to flee the bombs from the Sudanese government that have dropped on their homes. Today, she finds herself in one of the dusty, benighted refugee camps that litter the region of Darfur. She sits in her once bright red tob - a wrap-around dress - that has been faded by the sand-laden wind that blows across al-Salaam camp on the edge of the town of el-Fasher.
She was one of the 50,000 people who swelled the scorched camps for the "internally displaced" in the past month - bringing to about 2.5 million the number of children, women and men now homeless in a conflict that has dragged on for three years without an end seemingly in sight. Until now, that is. Because an end is in sight for the Darfur camps - where at least 300,000 black African farmers have been slaughtered by the Khartoum government and its Arab proxies, the Janjaweed militia, whose name means "devils on horseback". One of those who died was Rasha's husband, Adam.
It could be an end so terrifying, it defies the imagination.
Mr. Annan said the UN and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) will have to drastically scale back their humanitarian operations in Darfur unless the security situation improves."Food crisis looms in North Darfur"
“Can we, in conscience, leave the people of Darfur to such a fate? Can the international community, having not done enough for the people of Rwanda in their time of need, just watch as this tragedy deepens?” he asked.
On Wednesday, NRF rebels clashed with government forces south of Tawilla. An Antonov plane and two helicopter gunships reportedly bombed Dobo Al Umda Dobo and Dobo Al Madrasa town and the surrounding villages. The number of casualties is unknown."Rebels Say They May Abandon Darfur Pact"
"If a United Nations force is not deployed soon, something much worse is going to happen here," the SLM/A commander added.
Abdulrahaman Abdallah, a commander of the rebel group's military police, said that without a strong international force here, "the government will go back to its strategy, which is genocide, and inevitably we will go back to the bush."
Senators Defy Bush On Terror MeasureRock on, Senators. Congrats for doing what is right-- FINALLY.
Panel Backs Rival Bill On Interrogations
A Senate committee rebuffed the personal entreaties of President Bush yesterday, rejecting his proposed strategies for interrogating and trying enemy combatants and approving alternative legislation that he has strenuously opposed.
The bipartisan vote sets up a legislative showdown on an issue that GOP strategists had hoped would unite their party and serve as a cudgel against Democrats in the Nov. 7 elections. Instead, Bush and congressional Republican leaders are at loggerheads with a dissident group led by Sen. John McCain (R), who says the president's approach would jeopardize the safety of U.S. troops and intelligence operatives.
Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) is expected to plead guilty in the coming days to charges stemming from his association with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and he will blame a long-standing problem with alcohol for behavior that spiraled down to illegality, sources close to the congressman said last night.Oh, GOP, you shouldn't have!
"... this problem will just get worse, not better. But no one wants to talk about it."At first, I thought this might be a parody. You have to read it to believe it.
There can never be full and absolute security for potential terror targets in the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says.Not only that. If the federal government could ensure "full and absolute security" against terrorist attacks in the U.S., wouldn't that remove the Bush administration's favorite election-season trump card?
Speaking to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Chertoff said there had to be realistic expectations and people had to remember al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden's strategy .... "We have to be realistic about what we expect and what we do. We do have limits and we do have choices to make."
“The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk.”What was most embarrassing for Bush was that this ex-JCS chairman was his previous secretary of state: Colin Powell.
Nine months after Congressional leaders vowed to respond to several bribery scandals with comprehensive reforms, their pledges have come to next to nothing.Why aren't Dem leaders in Congress making a major issue of this?
On Wednesday, leaders of the House prepared to take up a rule requiring individual lawmakers to sign their names to some of the pet projects they tuck into major tax and spending bills. As an internal House rule, the requirement would be in effect only until the end of the session, just a few weeks away.
While reform advocates denounced the proposal as nearly toothless, its bite was still too sharp for many in Congress. By Wednesday night the resolution appeared to be bogged down in a three-way squabble among Republicans, Democrats and the powerful members of the House Appropriations Committee.
“It has been a very pathetic showing,” said Mary Boyle, a spokeswoman for the reform group Common Cause. Even with one congressman in jail, a well-known lobbyist on the way and several other members and staff members still under investigation, she said: “The response to this has been nothing. It has been silence.”
Total number of days that the 2005-6 House of Representatives is scheduled to have met by the end of its term: 241
Last two-year term whose House met for fewer days: 1955-56
Number of days that 1947-8’s famous “Do-Nothing Congress” met: 254
“... certainly the president has made clear that there will be troops (in Iraq) when he leaves office.”I've heard Bush make this statement before, but reading this reference in print suddenly made me realize what a ridiculous statement this is.
"America will stay in the fight. Iraq will be a free nation, and a strong ally in the war on terror. We can be confident that our coalition will succeed ..."But when will the coalition succeed? Apparently not for at least 2 years and 4 months -- because Bush says we'll still need troops over in Iraq when he leaves office.
* In its election issue highlighting primary races in the District of Columbia, the underground weekly City Paper made this endorsement in the Ward 1 race for City Council: "Jim Graham’s challenger, Chad Williams, pleaded guilty to simple assault during the campaign. Let’s just leave it there. Graham has earned another term."
* There are more precincts in the Bronx (945) than there are in the entire state of Rhode Island (577).
* As the president drones on about the "war on terror," let us not forget that many critical local concerns were on Tuesday's ballot. Example: Can a patron at a strip bar get a lap dance? Voters in Scottsdale, Ariz., appear to have struck a powerful blow for sexual filth and degradation -- the lap-dance ban appears to have gone down (pardon the pun) to defeat.
* There were 18 -- count 'em, 18 -- candidates to choose from in the Democratic primary election for the U.S. Senate in Maryland.
* Guillaume de Ramel was not a 16th century French baron. He was one of the two Democratic candidates on the ballot for Rhode Island's secretary of state.
To the Editor:
According to Maureen Dowd, Laura Bush is trying to smarten up her husband by having him read books the rest of us read in high school. Terrific. That pretty much sums up this presidency.
O.K., I'm just bitter because he was partying in Houston while my "invitation" read Haiphong Harbor.
JAMES F. McMANUS III
Phoenix
The African Union force apparently does not even have enough money to pull its troops out, so it might stay anyway and if a deal can be worked out, it might yet form part of a UN force.How poorly funded must the AU be if it can't even cover the cost of getting shut down and thrown out of the country?
“If they don't want to look at the cross then don't come up here.”That's the whole point. Not only is this public land in a technical sense that the government owns it, but it's an important site for the whole community. It is literally the summit of our city, one of the most awe-inspiring points in a city that is blessed with awesome physical beauty. Besides which you can't "not come here" to avoid seeing the cross unless you want to avoid the entire northwestern quadrant of the city: otherwise, you have but to look up, and there it is, sending its message to everyone for miles around.
Uganda's rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) on Tuesday decried a government move to bring mutilated war victims to peace talks in southern Sudan, suggesting it is a propaganda stunt.Ummm ... everyone knows who did this to them.
LRA spokesperson Obonyo Olweny said there is no point in having disfigured people -- some of whom have had their lips, ears and noses cut off, allegedly by the rebels -- at the peace talks in the southern Sudanese capital of Juba.
"We don't understand why they would bring these mutilated people here," he told Agence France-Presse by phone from Juba, where the negotiations are to resume later this week. "For what purpose? Why do they bring such people? Who did this to them? We don't know," Olweny said.
There has been a lot of talk about relying on ancient reconciliation rituals rather than the International Criminal Court to hold Kony and his ilk accountable for their crimes, but mato oput isn't going to solve anything if the LRA refuses to admit its guilt.Two men were tied and forced onto the ground where their heads were joined together. The rebels tried to force me to pick up a log and hit their heads but I refused so one came for me with a knife and cut off my left ear. He accused me of being a government soldier and said that I would be finished off if I failed to smash their heads.
But then, they started smashing the people's heads themselves. I was put in the middle as they smashed the people's heads.
[edit]
They kept on beating us and they denied food or water from us. We complained saying we were hungry and thirsty. They stopped raping the women that were in our group and acted as though they were going to let us eat and drink. The ladies were forced to boil water in a big tin.
Shortly after this they announced that we would eat the government soldier - supposedly, me.
For a long time, the rebels took turns at beating us men with hot metal, and raping the girls.
I was already spiritually dead.
They returned to me at some point and re-tied me before chopping off my lips. They then cut off my right ear and my nose.
Secretary of State Rice compared the Iraq war with the American Civil War, telling a magazine that slavery might have lasted longer in this country if the North had decided to end the fight early.Right, Condi, because this war is *just* like the American Civil War, you know, like back in 1860 when another country invaded the U.S. and arrested our President, thus leaving a power vacuum resulting in various factions of the country fighting one another, not to mention all the outsiders coming in to take advantage of the situation...oh, wait. There is something about that comparison that doesn't hold together.
"I'm sure there are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the Civil War to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold," Rice said in the new issue of Essence magazine.
"I know there were people who said, 'Why don't we get out of this now, take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves?'" Rice said.
Every time Republicans bring up security in a pointed fashion, Democrats commence whining about "politicizing" terror.
Terror, however, is political, just as health care, jobs, and unemployment numbers are. When Democrats appear reluctant to even discuss the issue, voters conclude, rightly, that they either don't know what they think, don't know what they'd do, or are too scared to verbalize their agenda (a dynamic the Republican Party suffers from on domestic policy).
I'm not a consultant and I'm not a foreign policy expert, so I'll leave it to sharper minds to figure out how to speak about this stuff, but it doesn't take a genius to realize that refusing to address it isn't going to cut your opponent's advantage very much.
In any case, Iraq is important. Terror is important. Foreign policy is important. And Democrats want to control the government. Discussing these issues during the election isn't out of bounds; it's a prerequisite.
SANTORUM: "You know, we have a great game plan. We go it just like a football team. You go in there, you do your best, but the enemy has a vote, the enemy can react and change its tactics, and they have, and they’ve been very, very effective."The way he talks, it's almost as if Santorum thinks the enemy is the only side that is capable of changing its tactics. If our tactics aren't succeeding (and I think the vote is unanimous on that), why aren't we changing our tactics?
SANTORUM: "... The real tough question is: how do you win this war? ... And I’ve laid out a very clear vision on that, and my opponent has not."Now we're getting somewhere. So what is Santorum's "very clear vision" for winning the war in Iraq?
SANTORUM: "Look, the plans that my opponent has laid out in some of his speeches and I’ve laid out in mine are basically the same thing the administration is trying to do. You’re trying to get the Iraqis take — to take control of their — of the security situation, which we are trying to do ..."In other words, keep doing more of the same.
It’s a truism that the (U.N.) Security Council can function only insofar as the United States lets it. The adage may soon be applied to China as well.
... Wang Guangya, at 56, is a senior member of a new generation of Chinese diplomats vastly more sophisticated and better educated than the party ideologues of old.
... Wang operates by suggestion, by indirection — often by silence. “They play a very skillful game at the U.N.,” says Vanu Gopala Menon, the Singaporean ambassador. “They make their opinions felt without much talking. They never come in first and make a statement. They always listen first and then make a statement which captures the main thrust of what the developing world wants.”
But the game the Chinese play virtually ensures the U.N.’s regular failure in the face of humanitarian crisis. Indeed, the combination of Wang’s deft diplomacy and China’s willingness to defend nations it does business with from allegations of even the grossest abuse has made a mockery of all the pious exclamations of “never again” that came in the wake of the Security Council’s passive response to Rwanda’s genocide in 1994.
The most notorious example of China’s new activism in this regard is Darfur.While none of the major powers, with the intermittent exception of the United States, have shown any appetite for robust action to protect the people of this Sudanese province from the atrocities visited upon them by the government and its proxy force, known as janjaweed, the Chinese, who buy much of the oil Sudan exports, have appointed themselves Khartoum’s chief protector.
This cruelty and carnage has led some to question whether Iraq has descended into civil war. Our commanders and our diplomats on the ground in Iraq believe that's not the case. They report that only a small number of Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence ...The new report to which Bush referred -- produced by the Pentagon -- is not brimming with optimism. And the report's conclusion about civil war is a bit more complicated than the one-dimensional picture presented by the president.
Increasing violence is affecting "all other measures of stability, reconstruction and transition," according to the (new Pentagon) report, which examined the situation in June, July and August. .... The report said the quarter had seen a 51 percent increase in Iraqi casualties ...In the Washington Post story:
"Sustained ethno-sectarian violence is the greatest threat to security and stability in Iraq," the report said. "Conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq."So there you have it. It's not yet a civil war, but the Pentagon says the "conditions" for civil war are there, and the Pentagon hints of "movement" in that direction.
Afghanistan’s opium harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent from last year, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Saturday in Kabul.
He described the figures as “alarming” and “very bad news” for the Afghan government and international donors who have poured millions of dollars into programs to reduce the poppy crop since 2001.
He said the increase in cultivation was significantly fueled by the resurgence of Taliban rebels in the south, the country’s prime opium growing region. As the insurgents have stepped up attacks, they have also encouraged and profited from the drug trade ....
"A Killing Affair" (1977)It brought back back memories of O.J.'s criminal trial, and his promise to keep searching for Nicole's killer until he finds the person who did it. Hey, O.J., how's that going?
Starring O.J. Simpson and
Elizabeth Montgomery
"I think Secretary Rumsfeld has done a fine job as the defense secretary ..."Never mind the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. Never mind five years of Rummy’s arrogant, cover-his-ass rhetoric: “You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have.” Never mind the fact that the Pentagon repeatedly underestimated the need for more armored Humvees in Iraq.
... should have been relatively straightforward but instead was a mess. Communications were so poor that soldiers had to rely on pay phones. Intelligence was so spotty that troops used tourist maps to find their way around the island. Nineteen service members died in the operation, some needlessly.This was a disturbing revelation — that we had not capitalized on knowledge gleaned on the ground from the first 1-3/4 years of the Iraq war.
In response, the Army opened the Center for Army Lessons Learned — or CALL — at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. CALL was supposed to gather and distribute more efficiently the insights that soldiers glean from battle.
... I asked (CALL's director, Col. Larry) Saul what lessons the Army has learned in Iraq, and he said, “Not much, because lessons learned, in past tense, means you’ve modified behavior. Until you demonstrate changed behavior, you haven’t learned a lesson.”
This is perhaps the weirdest commercial I've covered in this column. It is a freakish mash-up, blending a classically boring car ad with a bizarre stab at social commentary. I can't for the life of me see what Ford hopes to achieve here.I agree. Click here, watch it, and see what you think.
The answers were so good, Republican candidates wanted to use them as their own. The embarrassment was at least seven did.When part of your comment is to reassure the public that your candidate really does have "his own ideas," that kind of says it all.
Republicans in House races copied their party's talking points and included parts of the answers as their own for an AARP survey. The answers related to Medicare, Social Security, insurance plans and retirement.
Candidates in Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, South Carolina and Texas all submitted the sometimes word-for-word responses, which originated with the National Republican Congressional Committee.
... Some of the (congressional) campaigns also said they were happy to use the same talking points.
"Ralph has his own ideas, but we are lucky to have the NRCC's help during this campaign because it's more evidence that Ralph has what it takes to bring change to South Carolina and Washington,"said Rob Godfrey, communications director for Republican Ralph Norman's campaign.
The audience was not entirely supportive. Richard Witbart, a former schoolteacher and local official from Illinois who served in the Navy in World War II, said he believes the troops should be brought home and that the United States should not have invaded Iraq. "It just wasn't the right thing to do," he said. "We were not being attacked by Iraq."I thought this comment by Bush was pretty lame:
[Bush] said that if the country gives up the fight in Baghdad, "we will face the terrorists in the streets of our own cities."This is laughable. Al Qaeda will be marching up Connecticut Avenue in Washington unless we keep our troops in Iraq indefinitely? Such an argument doesn't speak well of the Bush administration's ability to protect America from domestic terrorist attacks.
As a vision of a human loss and despair, The Scream has few equals. But Edvard Munch's iconic painting was the cause of unbridled celebration yesterday, after Norwegian police announced the recovery of the stolen masterpiece.
Some two years after the picture was stolen in an armed raid, along with another priceless Munch work, the paintings were returned largely unscathed and without payment of a reward.
Masked gunmen stole The Scream and the second work, Madonna, in a brazen daylight theft from the Munch Museum in Oslo in August 2004.
