"John Kerry could be our next president, so like everyone else we're eager for clues to what his government would look like. One revealing indication came this week when the Massachusetts Senator floated the names of four possible Defense secretaries: GOP Senators John McCain and John Warner, Democratic Senator Cark Levin, and former Clinton Defense Secretary Bill Perry.

"... what we can't figure out from these four names, however, is the kind of national security policy Mr. Kerry would actually pursue.

"... Mr. Levin has been on the opposite side from Mr. McCain on most major security issues of the past 20 years. Mr. McCain favors missile defense, while Mr. Levin has tried to kill it with underfunding and policy restraints ... Mr. McCain has been one of the leading hawks on North Korea and opposed the 1994 Agreed FRamework that collapsed two years ago. Mr. Levin supported that deal and now wants to negotiate another one, as by the way does Mr. Perry, who was one of the architects of the failed 1994 pact.

"... [Mr. Kerry's] four Pentagon names merely raise more doubts about what he really believes ... The least he could do is give voters a consistent idea of what he'd do differently and better."

"Quite obviously it has been decided, as the Abu Graib story makes plain, that when America stumbles, we are going to have our faces rubbed in it. And rubbed in it and rubbed in it. As far as I can make out, the purpose of this two weeks of media humiliation is that we -- the president, all of us -- are being asked to morally prostrate ourselves before the rest of the world."

For many Democrats, AARP's support for last November's Medicare prescription-drug bill came as a total shock. Not only could the law cause millions of seniors to lose more generous employer and state-coordinated drug benefits while providing only limited help to others ...

Possibly the least surprised man in Washington last fall was Newt Gingrich. The former House speaker, who told a Blue Cross conference in 1995 that Medicare as a "government monopoly plan" was going to "wither on the vine" in favor of a Republican-designed "free-market plan," has spent the last nine years manipulating AARP.

Aided by a coterie of Republican representatives and lobbyists, as well as a headhunter firm whose Washington office is run by a Republican operative, Gingrich helped maneuver AARP from the Democratic to the Republican column. The crucial moment arrived in June 2001, with the ascent to the executive director post of Novelli, who centralized policy making by limiting input from local AARP leaders and who brought with him a team of corporate executives to run the group's federal and state policy -- people much more comfortable with Republicans, open to private plans and market-oriented policies, and more willing to make deals than many of the veteran staff.

Gingrich waxes eloquent about Novelli, who, he told me in a recent interview, "has a long history of supporting individual responsibility in health care and doesn't want seniors dependent on government handouts." Novelli, in turn, felt so comfortable with Gingrich that he invited him to join an advisory panel Novelli had crafted from associates he has met over the years. The panel meetings, which have since concluded, discussed AARP's future strategies, as well as insurance and other products that AARP might offer.

... For Gingrich, the Medicare bill is just the beginning. ...Gingrich asked the AARP chief to write the introduction to his new book about transforming health care, Saving Lives and Saving Money. In it, Gingrich lambastes the current health-insurance system, instead advocating one in which a person has "an economic interest in his or her own health and is the primary guardian of how his or her own money is spent." Novelli does not distance himself from Gingrich's ideas. In his foreword, he writes that "Gingrich's ideas are influencing how we at AARP are thinking about our national role" in the health-care debate.

... (after) Republicans swept Congress in the 1994 elections ... [some GOP leaders] felt that AARP was "the enemy" that had to be replaced by newly created, Republican-controlled senior groups. But Gingrich, from the beginning, believed that AARP could be, as one Republican congressional staffer put it to me, "defanged."

"... [Inhofe] seemed ready to rationalize the abuses. The Abu Ghraib prisoners who were singled out aren't there 'for traffic violations,' he said. 'They're murderers; they're terrorists; they're insurgents.' The Red Cross, however, estimates that as many as 90% of detained Iraqis have been arrested by mistake."

"The current administration has casually sent American armed forces on dozens of missions without clear goals, realizable objectives, favorable rules of engagement, or defined exit strategies. Over the...years, a shrunken American military has been run ragged by a deployment tempo that has eroded its military readiness. Many units have seen their operational requirements increased four-fold, wearing out both people and equipment."

"The rule of law, the very foundation for a free society, has been under assault, not only by criminals from the ground up, but also from the top down. An administration that lives by evasion, coverup, stonewalling, and duplicity has given us a totally discredited Department of Justice."

"Sending our military on vague, aimless, and endless missions rapidly saps morale. Even the highest morale is eventually undermined by back-to-back deployments, poor pay, shortages of spare parts and equipment, inadequate training, and rapidly declining readiness."

"Our goal for NATO is a strong political and security fellowship of independent nations in which consultations are mutually respected and defense burdens mutually shared."

O'BRIEN: Interesting. All right, now one final thought here. You did a very careful translation of your own, of the statement. And in it, you see no reference to al Qaeda. And yet the official U.S. government translation does. Explain how that happened.

NASR: Oh, I find it very interesting, because out of the blue, there is a mention of al Qaeda on the U.S. government translation. It says: "Does al Qaeda need any further excuses?" Any speaker of the Arabic language is going to notice a difference between the word al Qaeda, which means "the base," and al qaed, which means "the one sitting, doing nothing."

My translation says: "Is there any excuse for the one who sits down and does nothing?" Basically they're telling people, you have no excuse for not doing anything, for not acting and defending Islam and so forth. Whereas the U.S. government translation has this factual error, I'm sure it's an honest mistake, but basically it sort of adds al Qaeda to the statement, which is not on the statement.

On March 31, with their eyes on record budget deficits, 11 Republican moderates in the House penned a letter to their leadership, demanding that any congressional budget resolution this year require that future tax cuts be offset by spending reductions or tax hikes.

Yet yesterday, four of the signatories -- Amo Houghton (N.Y.), Mark S. Kirk (Ill.), Thomas E. Petri (Wis.) and Todd R. Platts (Pa.) -- bowed to their leaders' demands and voted against that position. On the 207 to 211 tally, those four votes effectively scuttled the motion.

[I]in which, the network said, two heterosexual men will try to convince various people that they are gay. In the news release, Fox described the notion of a straight man "turning gay overnight" as "a heterosexual male's worst nightmare."

For one week, the two straight guys will "immerse themselves in 'the gay lifestyle,' " the network said.

[edit]

It appears that Fox thinks it means moving into an apartment in West Hollywood with actual gay roommates "to experience what it's like to live life as a gay man."

[edit]

After the two guys are done trying to "pass for gay," they will be put to a "jury of their queers," Fox said. Really, they said that.

The jury, made up of gay men "from all walks of life," will declare which of the two they believe actually is gay.

That lucky guy will win $50,000.

[A]ccording to the Los Angeles Times, which has reported that during a taping last month one of the producers told the audience the contestants were all terminally ill beneficiaries of the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Sudan calm again, UN official finds

A fragile calm has returned to Sudan's western region of Darfur, racked by 15 months of war, but only because "there are no more villages to burn," a United Nations official said yesterday.

"Forced movements of populations have stopped to a certain extent," said UN emergency relief officer Daniel Augstburger, who visited Darfur between April 28 and May 1. But he said that "harassment of civilians" continues, especially in the form of gang rape.

An estimated one million people have been displaced inside the country and a UN report has said the government was deliberately starving some of them. More than 100,000 others have fled across the border into Chad.

[Kofi] Annan then got more specific moving from one to the other of the two terms that those closely following Sudan use when talking of Darfur Province in western Sudan. First, he said that military forces might be needed in Darfur Province to stop "ethnic cleansing." He then explained further: "by action in such situations, I mean a continuum of steps which may include military action." And then he added, "The risk of genocide remains frighteningly real." He cannot, he will not, against all evidence, actually admit genocide is taking place, because even he cannot stand idle in the face of such atrocity. So he contents himself with talking about this frightening reality in the conditional, as if it were merely an idea and not a terrible actuality affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Sudan.

Under his stewardship, the UN can talk of ethnic cleansing - problematic, but not bad enough to demand serious action - or the risk of genocide, even more problematic, but still not bad enough to demand the most serious response. Of course, they can form all sorts of committees, make all sorts of studies, issue all sorts of declarations, but whatever he says, Annan cannot use the term "genocide" in a simple declarative sentence, such as "Genocide is taking place." That simple statement will either force the UN to admit its impotence, or force it to act with military force.

My mental state these past few days:

1. The Abu Ghraib "scandal": Good. Kick one for me. But bad discipline in the military (taking the pictures, I mean). Let's have a couple of courts martial for appearance's sake. Maximum sentence: 30 days CB.

2. The US press blowing up the Abu Ghraib business: Fury at these lefty jounalists doing down America. They just want to re-live the glory days of Vietnam, when they brought down a president they hated. (PS: They hated him because he was an anticommunist, while they themselves tought communism was just fine.)

3. GWB apologizing to some barbarian chieftain for Abu Ghraib: Disgust. Correct approach: "Mind if we film some footage in YOUR jails?"

4. Revelations about sexual hanky panky in US armed forces: Outrage. I want to see someone cashiered -- a general, at least. This is no way for soldiers to behave when on active service. Gross, unpardonable violation of military ethics. Whose damn fool idea was it to mix men and women in the same units?

"There could be a big gorilla sitting on the dining table, and we didn't know about it."

CBS could have produced a story--even a TV story--that didn't display the pictures. If the Pentagon dragged its feet about stopping the abuse and disciplining those responsible, CBS (or whoever had the pictures) could have threatened to publish at least some of the photos as a spur to justice. But if the only alternative were covering it up--then yes, covering up is sometimes the right thing to do.

I used to work in a ship's brig so I know a bit about abusing prisoners....

I have no problem with beating prisoners, per se, regardless of Geneva or anything else. However, killing or maiming people is flat out wrong, and that includes attacks by dogs.

[edit]

[These soldiers] should do SERIOUS brig time. 30 days won't cut it. They are dangerous.

The multibillion-dollar U.S. ballistic missile shield due to start operating by Sept. 30 appears incapable of shooting down any incoming warheads, an independent scientists' group said on Thursday.

A technical analysis found "no basis for believing the system will have any capability to defend against a real attack," the Union of Concerned Scientists said in a 76-page report titled Technical Realities.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said, "It was significantly worse than anything that I had anticipated. Take the worst case and multiply it several times over."

Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., said, "Anything like this is shocking ... but it's generally the same as what's in the public domain -- no huge surprises."

"I saw cruel, sadistic torture," said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., who added that some of the images were of male prisoners masturbating. She said she saw a man hitting himself against a wall as though to knock himself unconscious.

Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said he did not see acts of violence, but what appeared to be "results of acts of violence." He said he saw people in body bags and a person with a face "virtually gone." He saw "people being stitched up above the eyebrow apparently unconscious."

Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., said, "There were people who were forced to have sex with each other."

Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., said, "There were some pictures where it looked like a prisoner was sodomizing himself" with an object. He said blood was visible in the photograph.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said he thought "some people are overreacting," and "The people who are against the war are using this to their political ends," he said.

A team of U.S. diplomats led by Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Charles Snyder is on its way to Kenya to help put the final touches on an agreement to end Sudan's 21-year civil war, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Wednesday.

The number of people in need, 80 per cent of them women and children, has doubled in the past year and the sheer scale of the crisis is stretching the agency’s resources in Uganda to the breaking point. Some $56 million is required before the end of the year. But unless significant donations are received in the coming weeks, stocks of cereals will be exhausted by July. WFP needs $21 million now to continue to supply food until August, when the harvest is due.

Muslim mobs brandishing machetes and clubs attacked Christians in the streets of Kano on Wednesday as security forces struggled to quell a two-day rampage to avenge a massacre of hundreds of Nigerian Muslims.

Police confirmed at least 30 killed in strife engulfing this northern city, where thousands — mostly minority Christians — cowered in army barracks and police stations as mobs attacked victims outside. Witnesses spoke of scores more slaughtered.

[edit]

The rampage exploded Tuesday following a demonstration by thousands of Muslims protesting the slaying of up to 600 Muslims by a predominantly Christian ethnic group last week in the central Nigeria town Yelwa.

Rwandan man wanted on international charges of crimes against humanity stemming from the 1994 Rwanda genocide was arrested on federal visa fraud charges Wednesday after a scuffle with immigration agents at his suburban home.

[A] Clinton-appointed federal judge, U.S. District Court judge Harold Baer, has made a legal finding that Iraq was behind the 9-11 attacks -- a ruling upheld by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals last October.

[The] plaintiffs have shown, albeit barely, "by evidence satisfactory to the
court" that Iraq provided material support to bin Laden and al Qaeda. As noted above, a very substantial portion of plaintiffs evidence is classically hearsay (and often multiple hearsay), and without meeting any exceptions is inadmissible for substantive purposes.

[edit]

My decision reflects no more than that the facts and the available inferences meet the plaintiffs' burden of proof.

Last week, John S. Carroll, editor of the Los Angeles Times, delivered a lecture during "Ethics Week" of the Society of Professional Journalists. The speaker has not yet been announced for "Abstinence Week" of the Society of Professional Whores.

thank heaven for Sen. Carl Levin Â? the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee who allows himself to speak on television, and your videotape machine captures it via the miracle of satellite television. What does this senior American political official confess to? Roll the tape for your young jihadists:

This is not just a few guards in some kind of aberrant conduct. This is a much more systemic problem here. And military intelligence, including I have to believe the CIA have got to be held accountable, right up the chain.

Play it a few more times. In fact, send a copy to the Arab networks in case they missed it, and then distribute it to the imams teaching the young. Play the Levin quote again and again. Assure that would be jihadists around the globe have many chances to hear an admission of guilt for the "systemic" torture and murder of innocent Muslims around the world at the hands of the CIA, for that is what a senior U.S. senator said. We have the proof. The prisoner scandal is not a story of a handful of criminals in uniform, it is the story of the entire American enterprise Â? Sen. Carl Levin said so!

This is just one example of many from the past week, month and indeed year as partisan ambition has poisoned the minds of Democrats in the Senate.

[edit]

The Democratic Party has lost its way, saying the most outrageous things in hopes of scoring points, and doing so in a way that makes the charges ready-made propaganda for our enemies Â? propaganda of the deadliest sort. If they have a shred of decency left, they will stop before they do more harm. Levin and Dayton cannot recall their harmful statements which will shame their careers forever, but at least they can stop adding more tape to the arsenal of poison already in the hands of our terrorist enemies.

The sensational May 2004 edition of Whistleblower magazine, "THE PARTY OF TREASON," rips the veneer of civility and compassion off the Democratic Party and reveals how the party of Truman and Kennedy has been transformed into "the enemy within."

From an insider look at exactly how Democrats have committed fraud in election after election, to current candidates' self-serving and scandalous communications with enemy and terrorist nations, to a stunning expose of how the Democrat Party has progressively embraced corruption in almost every form, the title of the May issue, "THE PARTY OF TREASON," says it all.

As damaging as the pictures of abuse at Abu Ghraib have been to our cause in Iraq, we suspect that the pictures of thugs in Fallujah celebrating their supposed victory over U.S. Marines have done more damage. A cardinal principle of the occupation should be that we mean what we say. We said, in blunt and even swaggering terms, that we would clean out Fallujah. Then we pulled up short, badly undermining our credibility. The Fallujah deal may well encourage other violent factions to ensconce themselves in urban areas and to defy the U.S. If our resolve in Iraq isn't absolutely beyond question, the country's benign forces will avoid extending themselves to help us and will instead keep their heads down, trying to limit their exposure against the day we pull out.

FRC Statement On Iraqi Prisoner Abuse Controversy

WASHINGTON, D.C. - In response to the continuing controversy regarding the photos of Iraqi prisoners, Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins released the following statement:

The latest fallout from the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by members of the U.S. military is not political but rather further acts of terror against innocent Americans. Nick Berg, a 26 year-old contractor from Pennsylvania, was seen being executed on an al Qaeda-linked Web site by five men in jihadist's garb. The Muslim terrorists said the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraid 'is not redeemed except by blood and souls...'

The liberal media continues to seize upon the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and this latest act of terror in an effort to damage the Bush Administration. The photos coming out of Iraq cannot be ignored. But, it is ridiculous to suggest that the Bush Administration or military boot camps are responsible for teaching our young soldiers this behavior. We must be willing to look deeper - we must be willing to look our culture in the mirror and ask some hard questions about what kind of society our children are growing up in.

As a former police officer who spent time working inside the prison system, I am saddened but not surprised at some of the abuse I've seen in these photos. But what is surprising and what should shock our nation's conscience is that these U.S. soldiers took photos and home-made pornography of the abuse as 'trophies' for their actions.

As Chuck Colson pointed out at FRC's inaugural Pastors'Briefing yesterday, when you mix young people who grew up on a steady diet of MTV and pornography with a prison environment, you get the abuse at Abu Ghraid.

America is in a perilous situation. In the eyes of these Muslims we are the enemy because we are Christian, but in many areas of our culture, our conduct as a nation is anything but Christian.

General Who Made Anti-Islam Remark Tied to POW Case

The U.S. Army general under investigation for anti-Islamic remarks has been linked by U.S. officials to the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, which experts warned could touch off new outrage overseas.

A Senate hearing into the abuse of Iraqi prisoners was told on Tuesday that Lt. Gen. William Boykin, an evangelical Christian under review for saying his God was superior to that of the Muslims, briefed a top Pentagon civilian official last summer on recommendations on ways military interrogators could gain more intelligence from Iraqi prisoners.

Critics have suggested those recommendations amounted to a senior-level go-ahead for the sexual and physical abuse of prisoners, possibly to "soften up" detainees before interrogation -- a charge the Pentagon denies.

Large house in one of Columbus's most affluent suburbs, which has nice cars and minivans in nearly every driveway.

His wife is a lawyer, and Lawton, who has a Ph.D in theater, is for the time being a stay-at-home father.

Roger Winter, Assistant Administrator for USAID's Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance, told the committee that in a worst-case scenario, by the end of the year the number of deaths could reach 350,000 through gunfire and disease. "We think more than 100,000 people will die no matter what, at this point," he said.

* A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee;(Raise your hand if you think she consented.)
* Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick;
* Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;
* Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;
* Threatening male detainees with rape;
* Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.
* Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;
* Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;
* Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;
* Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;
* Forcing naked male detainees to wear women's underwear;
* Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;
* Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them.

Why are we shocked by these images from Abu Ghraib, but when the victims are women (or gay men) the images are called pornography or "adult entertainment"? Why can we easily see the violations of human beings in one set of images, but miss it in others? What if the Iraqi men had been forced to smile, could we be convinced that there was a newly formed "publishing and film production" company in Baghdad instead of sexual abuse and humiliation being perpetrated?

Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of Sen. John F. Kerry, said Tuesday that she had income of $5.1 million in 2003, more than 10 times what her husband earned but well below what many outsiders had expected.

Heinz Kerry paid $587,000 in federal income tax, which represents 11.5% of her total income, a rate that is significantly lower than her husband's or President Bush's.

Since much of her income came from dividends, Heinz Kerry benefited from a tax cut on dividends sponsored by Bush.

The Senate by a single vote rejected an election-year effort yesterday to extend federal unemployment benefits.

Democrats tried to attach the measure to a corporate tax bill. On a 59-40 vote in the GOP-controlled Senate, they fell just shy of the 60 votes needed to overcome objections that extending the benefits violated last year's budget agreement.

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was the only senator who missed the vote. Kerry was campaigning in Kentucky.

John Ramsey, the father of slain child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, announced Tuesday that he will run for the Michigan state House, saying his daughter's death has given him "a platform."

State Rep. Ken Bradstreet, is meeting with several conservative Democrats, with an eye toward backing one of them if Ramsey survives the Aug. 3 primary and becomes the nominee.

[edit]

"I'm definitely not happy about him being in the race," said Bradstreet, who has made a study of JonBenet's case. "He's only been a resident of the district for a matter of months."

The Ramseys, in fact, have long owned vacation homes in Charlevoix. By largely spending only the short summer season at this Lake Michigan resort, they fall in the category of what "townies" - the full-time residents - label "fudgies," those who come, buy fudge in the gift shops and leave.

According to polls, President Bush's popularity has been dwindling since the Iraq war heated up again last month, but has it really come to this? A Wisconsin daily newspaper, in a novel twist, has resorted to asking readers to send in pro-Bush letters to the editor to balance out the many critical of the President.

In a notice to its readers, The Post-Crescent of Appleton, Wis. (weekday circulation 54,193), observed that with the presidential race heating up, the editors have found themselves in a "quandary." They feel their Views page takes "the political and social temperature of the Valley." But now the question is: "How can we balance the perspectives and topics of our letters when many of our submissions have been coming only from one side?"

"We've been getting more letters critical of President Bush than those that support him. We're not sure why, nor do we want to guess. But in today's increasingly polarized political environment, we would prefer our offering to put forward a better sense of balance ...

"Since we depend upon you, our readers, to supply our letters, that goal can be difficult. We can't run letters that we don't have.

"If you would like to help us 'balance' things out, send us a letter, make a call or punch out an e-mail ... We'd love to hear from you."

A Sense of Contrition and Humility
Your May 3 editorial "Abuse and Accountability" and Victor Davis Hanson's companion essay left me deeply saddened. Both seemingly express outrage over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers, an incident one writer calls disgusting and the other repugnant. But rather than leave it there and let that ugly episode serve as a powerful lesson, both your editorial and Mr. Hanson try to spin a morality tale out of it -- but not for us who live in the U.S.; for all our enemies and detractors who need to be taught an even greater lesson about how to behave morally and live righteously....Can't we just deal with this "disgusting" and "repugnant" act without so much moralizing about how others outside our jurisdiction and control should behave? If punishments are meted out as swiftly as possible, they will speak for themselves. There's no need to hold us up, in turn, as better than anyone else.

**************************

Your May 7 editorial "Blood in the Water" questions why the reproach of Secretary Rumsfeld's by President Bush over the Iraqi prisoner issue was made public. You seem more concerned about the effects of this crisis on Mr. Bush's re-election campaign.

**************************

America First Mounted the Moral High Horse
Newt Gingrich misses the point in his May 7 editorial-page piece "Double Standards on Abu Ghraib." It is certainly true that Saddam Hussein, Hafez al-Assad, Hamas and many other people and organizations in the Middle East have committed acts of barbarism and inhumanity. It is true that the Arab press, and to a lesser extent the Western press, has failed to condemn these incidents.

So what? I don't believe Hafez al-Assad, Saddam Hussein or their ilk have held themselves out as beacons of hope for the world. I'm certain they did not undertake any moral crusades. However, the United States has held itself out as the light of the world. Mr. Bush contends we are on a moral crusade to bring God-given freedom and democracy to the oppressed Middle East. For that reason, we are held to a higher standard. It is a standard that is self-imposed.

**************************

Abuse, the Army and the Media
Your May 6 editorial "Abuse and the Army" ignored that it was the Red Cross which first complained to U.S. authorities last autumn. The American house-cleaning efforts appear more like a cover-up than anything else. Only the media drew attention to what happened and forced the U.S. government to react....It was obvious from day one that hooding captured prisoners is a coercive technique and what has followed is a logical development of permitting the use of such coercive techniques.

**************************

Donald Rumsfeld set the stage for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by declaring early on that the rules of the Geneva Convention no longer applied to the U.S. and its handling of those it captured....How will the U.S. react if, God forbid, an Iraqi mob gets hold of a female U.S. soldier and parades her naked through the streets? The truth is that this administration can no longer respond with any credibility to any instance of abuse by an enemy against an American soldier. The U.S. is supposed to set the standard for civilized conduct in an uncivilized world. Instead, the Bush administration has lowered it.

"The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated.... Every time we confront Iraqi troops we may win some tactical battles, as we did for 10 years in Vietnam, but we will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost."

Already by 8 April, around 2,000 refugees had gathered for protection. Around 150 were European. Many of the Rwandans were badly wounded by machete cuts. There was hardly any food or water, and the sanitary conditions were appalling. Yet there was no attack on the cantonment, and new refugees were allowed in. ... By 9 April, however, the precariously balanced situation was upset by the order to regroup

Just before midday on 9 April, Col. Dewez tells all KIBAT stations that UNAMIR may be evacuated. "Pack your bags and get ready to evacuate in the early afternoon." Marchal says that the Security Council will decide on the evacuation issue in two hours. Lt. Lemaire asks who will give protection to the Rwandan refugees in his compound when his unit leaves. Nobody answers. The next morning, Lemaire is ordered to provide escort to the airport for the 150 expatriates in the compound, but he objects. Taking out men for escort duty will jeopardize the security of the Rwandans under his protection. "We have 2000 refugees here." A hostile crowd is gathering outside the compound. In the afternoon he contacts the Medicines Sans Frontieres. Can they do anything for the refugees? The answer is negative.

[edit]

The unit at "Beverly Hills" was the last one to be regrouped. Early in the morning on 11 April Col. Dewez told Lemaire to stand by for evacuation to the Meridian hotel. Shortly after noon, Lemaire requested permission to go - there were no expatriates left in the compound, and the southern route used by the French evacuation troops to reach the airport was still open. Dewez asked the Sector Commander: Could Lemaire move out, and - the log pointedly noted - leave 2,000 refugees at "Beverly Hills"? Marchal approved. At 13:45 Lemaire and his men departed, leaving behind them two broken down vehicles and desperate refugees facing a hostile crowd. As the Rwandans left the compound to seek safety elsewhere, most were attacked and killed.

The rise of such schools is drawing new attention in Washington in no small part because hundreds of government employees either attended or are attending them, some at taxpayers' expense, and in many federal agencies, getting a degree means an automatic increase in pay.

... [According to the GAO,] 28 senior-level federal employees have degrees from unaccredited schools, including three Department of Energy managers who have emergency operations responsibilities at the National Nuclear Security Administration and security clearances ...

Committee staffers estimate that the number of such schools has roughly tripled in the past three years to at least 137.

The globally distributed photo of a U.S. servicewoman holding a naked Iraqi prisoner by a leash "is exactly what feminists have dreamed of for years," according to a military expert and frequent critic of attempts to integrate all aspects of the U.S. armed forces.

Elaine Donnelly, president of the [right-wing, anti-feminist] Center for Military Readiness, also believes social-engineering in the military and the degradation of American culture are to blame for the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib facility near Baghdad.

"That demeaning photo of a female soldier with an Iraqi man on a leash - a woman had to have taken that picture," Donnelly said. "And I understand the other woman soldier has admitted that she did."

Donnelly believes the majority of American women reject what she calls the "attitude of hostility," toward men but she warns the feminist message has a powerful influence on young women.

"In this case, these women may not have been aware of it. But if they've been raised in a culture that you have a lack of respect between men and women, it becomes a little bit more understandable even though it's not excusable," Donnelly added.

Although certain feminists would not admit it publicly, "they're probably quite fond" of the photo showing the Iraqi prisoner being held on a leash, said Donnelly. That's "because it is demeaning to a man - any man."

The feminists to whom Donnelly refers are "the ones who like to buy man-hating greeting cards and have this kind of attitude that all men abused all women. It's a subculture of the feminist movement, but the driving force in it in many cases, certainly in academia," she said.

When President George W. Bush was presented in the fall of 2001 with an article on the subject of the Rwanda genocide, he inscribed in firm letters in the memo’s margin: "NOT ON MY WATCH!" President Bush resolutely determined that while he is commander in chief, he plans to do everything he can to ensure that the plague of genocide that afflicted Rwanda and the Balkans in the 1990s will not scourge the earth again.

The government and its Janjaweed allies have killed thousands of Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa—often in cold blood—raped women, and destroyed villages, food stocks and other supplies essential to the civilian population. They have driven more than one million civilians, mostly farmers, into camps and settlements in Darfur where they live on the very edge of survival, hostage to Janjaweed abuses. More than 110,000 others have fled to neighbouring Chad but the vast majority of war victims remain trapped in Darfur.

[edit]

The United States Agency for International Development has warned that unless the Sudanese government breaks with past practice and grants full and immediate humanitarian access, at least 100,000 war-affected civilians could die in Darfur from lack of food and from disease within the next twelve months.

The international community, which so far has been slow to exert all possible pressure on the Sudanese government to reverse the ethnic cleansing and end the associated crimes against humanity it has carried out, must act now. The UN Security Council, in particular, should take urgent measures to ensure the protection of civilians, provide for the unrestricted delivery of humanitarian assistance and reverse ethnic cleansing in Darfur. It will soon be too late.

Norquist... told Stateline.org he expects at least six Republican governors to bolt from the NGA after Idaho Republican Gov. Dirk Kempthorne’s term as NGA chairman ends this summer. NGA rotates its chairmanships between Republicans and Democrats. Kempthorne will turn over the reins to Virginia Gov. Mark Warner (D) at the conclusion of the association’s annual summer meeting, which will take place in Seattle July 17-19.

Robert Behn, a faculty chair at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy’s School of Government, called ATR’s recent letter “a brilliant political ploy” because it gets people talking not only about NGA but also about Norquist’s conservative movement. Even if the campaign results in a “nasty dustup” at the NGA, Behn said NGA -- or an organization like it -- always will exist. “Norquist knows how to play the game,” Behn said.

But even though the United States is not part of the ICC and Iraq is not a member, we might still find our troops wrangled into ICC jurisdiction by a provision that lets non-ICC member states refer cases to it anyway. Once the Iraqi government takes sovereignty on June 30, it might decide to do just that, especially if the Iraqi people demand international justice for the crimes at Abu Ghraib. The United States will surely lobby the future Iraqi government not to refer charges to the ICC. But once we hand the reins of sovereignty to the Iraqi government, this decision will be theirs to make.

So, the United States must now make a difficult choice: It can continue to prosecute a fraction of those involved, with the risk of an ugly ICC prosecution in the future. Or, take a more aggressive stance toward the abuses at Abu Ghraib, in order to preempt ICC jurisdiction.

use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any person described in subsection (b) who is being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.

Musing's First Law of Politics à la G. W. Bush: "If an ulterior motive for a proposed policy exists, that is indisputably the motivation for the policy proposal."

He was not born stupid. He chose stupidity. Bush may look like a well-meaning dolt. On consideration, he's something far more dangerous: a dedicated fool.

I remember calling Sen. Bob Kasten (R-WI) in 1986 to congratulate him on his re-election. He said, "I'm almost sorry I'm coming back. You could not have a worse situation ... Reagan still in office and the Democrats controlling the Senate. Nothing will get accomplished." Kasten was right. Reagan's last two years were spent on the efensive about Iran Contra and various other manufactured scandals. No significant legislation made it through Congress.

Now that Mr. Ignatieff and other conscientious liberals such as Tony Blair have hitched Iraq to the train of humanitarian military action, there is a real risk that the Abu Ghraib derailment will send the whole thing crashing over a cliff, jeopardizing any future benefits from the West.

[edit]

"Supporting the war meant supporting an administration whose motives I did not fully trust for the sake of consequences I believed in," he wrote. "Now I realize that intentions do shape consequences. An administration that cared more genuinely about human rights would have understood that you can't have human rights without order and that you can't have order once victory is won if planning for an invasion is divorced from planning for an occupation."

[edit]

"It's entirely possible that any use of human rights as a justification for military force is tarnished," Mr. Ignatieff says, carefully considering his words. "That is to say, if Iraq fails, it will make the U.S. much more reluctant to engage in this kind of operation in the future, and many in the world will see that as a victory for common sense. Fine. I'd even be prepared to agree.

"But, but -- and this is what has made me furious about this argument all along -- the people who pay the price for failure are the Iraqi people. So in your consideration of how you think the consequence will play out, it's in nobody's interest that 26 million people who've been tortured and abused and gassed and imprisoned for 25 or 30 years now get as their consolation prize a civil war. . . . We should all come away much sadder and wiser."

[edit]

Either this works or it doesn't. Either there is consolidated some form of democracy in Iraq, some form of stability by the end of 2005, the middle of 2006, or I was wrong. You have to take responsibility."

[edit]

"We absolutely are at the tipping point," he says, his voice rising. "You can't do an occupation in the name of human rights and then use it to violate human rights, and hope to conserve any legitimacy.

"I cannot tell you how depressing this is, and how urgent it is for this to be a moment of truth for United States forces. Because it is much worse than just Iraq. It is a global detention problem, and they have messed with it, and they didn't listen to people about Guantanamo Bay, and now they are hung with the consequences of believing they can be judge and jury in their own case. It is a disaster."

White House political strategist Karl Rove, in one of the lengthy interviews with The Times granted by senior administration officials, also detailed how the Bush campaign intends to paint Mr. Kerry as a condescending elitist, who is pro-tax, weak on defense and on the wrong side in the culture wars.

White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. described Mr. Kerry as a John F. Kennedy "wannabe," who lacks the mettle to be president.

[edit]

The strategy to beat Mr. Kerry is relatively straightforward, Mr. Rove said.

"You make it about big issues," he said. "The president is right on the war on terror; Kerry is fundamentally wrong. The president is right on what's necessary to keep the economy gaining strength and creating jobs; Kerry's wrong. The president's right on where the country is with regard to values; Kerry's fundamentally wrong."

Mr. Rove said he expects to portray the candidates as "two men who have a fundamentally different attitude." This entails framing Mr. Bush as a rugged individualist and Mr. Kerry as a condescending elitist.

"One guy who comes from Midland, Texas. You know: 'The sky's the limit. I trust you, not the government. I respect the individual,' "Mr. Rove said. "And another guy who says: 'Hey, I'm better than you. I know better than you. The government knows better than you.' "

"I deserve a second term because, first, I've showed the American people I'm capable of handling tough times," Mr. Bush said. "The thing about the presidency is you never know what's going to be around the corner, and you'd better have a president who is capable of making decisions when times do get tough.

"I'd like to keep expectations low," Mr. Bush said during one of several interviews in the Oval Office. "It's better for people to be surprised rather than disappointed."

[edit]

Mr. Bush's detractors make a costly mistake by dismissing him as a lightweight, Mr. Powell said.

"I'd advise them to get smart," the secretary of state said. "They keep grinding their teeth over his syntax or his not spending enough time on this or that. But he prevails. And they ought to look at his track record, as opposed to these secondary features and characteristics, which don't reflect the man."

The president's penchant for encouraging low expectations "shows how wise he is," Mr. Powell said. "Because if you have something that people consider a weakness, you can use that weakness to your advantage Â? if it isn't really a weakness."

The United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) has launched a comprehensive investigation into reported instances of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of civilians, including minors, by its personnel in Bunia, in the northeastern part of the country.

The Mission is determined to enforce Secretary-General Kofi Annan's policy of zero tolerance of any sexual misconduct, in accordance with his bulletin on special measures for protection from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of last October, a UN spokesman said in New York.

Administration officials spent the weekend reviewing hundreds of photographs collected as part of the investigation of abuse of prisoners in Iraq, some showing new cases of the humiliation of captives and many consisting of heterosexual pornography involving soldiers in uniform. Senior military officials said the images, including digital video files, depict stunning physical abuse of prisoners in Iraq.

"It's not snapshots of people pointing at detainees -- it's live-action abuse," said a Pentagon official who would speak only anonymously because the videos have not been released. "It's horrible."

[edit]

Asked about the unreleased images, Graham said, "The American public needs to understand, we're talking about rape and murder here."

If Bush were of presidential caliber he would have sacked them by now -- and taken full personal responsibility for their incompetence. But wherever the buck stops these days, it surely is not on the president's desk.

Drew McGinnis, a shiny-topped Vietnam veteran, reasons that election-year politics is stoking the controversy. Sitting at the Village barbershop, McGinnis says he was not "bothered one bit" by the prison images and was equally nonplused that the American public did not learn about the abuse until months after the Pentagon received its initial reports.

"I think they know more than we do," he says. "Of course, that's the way it should be."

Reluctantly, even McGinnis and Ricci agree that the soldiers should be punished. But blaming Rumsfeld or Bush would be going to far, Ricci says. "No matter what this president does, you should never, never, never knock your president at a time of war and make your country look foolish," he says.

Vice President Cheney, who was defense secretary under President George H.W. Bush, said through a spokesman that Rumsfeld "is the best secretary of defense the United States has ever had."

"People ought to let him do his job," Cheney said.