Saturday, June 24, 2006

 

Iraqi Government Negotiates With Terrorists; Offers "Cut And Run" Strategy of a TIMETABLE FOR AMERICAN TROOP WITHDRAWAL. Those Damn "Liberal" Iraqi's

Baghdad offers peace deal to Sunni insurgents
By Jack Fairweather in New York
(Filed: 23/06/2006)

The Iraq government is planning to offer an amnesty to Sunni insurgents as part of a comprehensive peace package that authorities hope will ward off civil war.

In a carefully detailed package which could be presented as early as next week, the government will try to tempt insurgent groups to lay down their arms in return for inclusion in the political process and the release of prisoners.

The Government will also offer a timetable for American troop withdrawal, stop US operations targeting insurgents, and clamp down on violations of human rights abuses, according to a 28-page deal reported by the Times.

Such moves are likely to raise serious concerns in Washington, which has so far steadfastly refused to name a date for scaling down its presence in Iraq, and will not want its personnel under Iraqi jurisdiction.

The suggestion of an amnesty for insurgents who have killed American soldiers has already proved deeply unpopular in administration circles in Washington.

When the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, suggested it a week ago it had a distinctly cool reception from the White House.

While public opinion in America has turned against the war, many in Washington will also be unwilling to commit to a fixed timeline for the withdrawal of America's 135,000 troops.

The Bush administration has long resisted such an idea, fearing that it would give an impression of a disorderly withdrawal and also that it would embolden the insurgents.

The plan will also include action against Shia militias and "death squads" attached to the Shia-controlled interior ministry, both of which have provoked widespread fear in the Sunni community.

The "de-Ba'athification" process, another source of anger and resentment among Sunnis, will also be reviewed.

There are financial aid packages as well for victims of terrorist and Coalition attacks, and earlier victims of Saddam's rule.

Friday, June 23, 2006

 

Big Brother is at it Again

Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, June 22 — Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.

The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database.

Viewed by the Bush administration as a vital tool, the program has played a hidden role in domestic and foreign terrorism investigations since 2001 and helped in the capture of the most wanted Qaeda figure in Southeast Asia, the officials said.

The program, run out of the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the Treasury Department, "has provided us with a unique and powerful window into the operations of terrorist networks and is, without doubt, a legal and proper use of our authorities," Stuart Levey, an under secretary at the Treasury Department, said in an interview on Thursday.

The program is grounded in part on the president's emergency economic powers, Mr. Levey said, and multiple safeguards have been imposed to protect against any unwarranted searches of Americans' records.

The program, however, is a significant departure from typical practice in how the government acquires Americans' financial records. Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift.

That access to large amounts of confidential data was highly unusual, several officials said, and stirred concerns inside the administration about legal and privacy issues.

"The capability here is awesome or, depending on where you're sitting, troubling," said one former senior counterterrorism official who considers the program valuable. While tight controls are in place, the official added, "the potential for abuse is enormous."

The program is separate from the National Security Agency's efforts to eavesdrop without warrants and collect domestic phone records, operations that have provoked fierce public debate and spurred lawsuits against the government and telecommunications companies.

But all the programs grew out of the Bush administration's desire to exploit technological tools to prevent another terrorist strike, and all reflect attempts to break down longstanding legal or institutional barriers to the government's access to private information about Americans and others inside the United States.

Officials described the Swift program as the biggest and most far-reaching of several secret efforts to trace terrorist financing. Much more limited agreements with other companies have provided access to A.T.M. transactions, credit card purchases and Western Union wire payments, the officials said.

Nearly 20 current and former government officials and industry executives discussed aspects of the Swift operation with The New York Times on condition of anonymity because the program remains classified. Some of those officials expressed reservations about the program, saying that what they viewed as an urgent, temporary measure had become permanent nearly five years later without specific Congressional approval or formal authorization.

Data from the Brussels-based banking consortium, formally known as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, has allowed officials from the C.I.A., the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies to examine "tens of thousands" of financial transactions, Mr. Levey said.

While many of those transactions have occurred entirely on foreign soil, officials have also been keenly interested in international transfers of money by individuals, businesses, charities and other groups under suspicion inside the United States, officials said. A small fraction of Swift's records involve transactions entirely within this country, but Treasury officials said they were uncertain whether any had been examined.

Swift executives have been uneasy at times about their secret role, the government and industry officials said. By 2003, the executives told American officials they were considering pulling out of the arrangement, which began as an emergency response to the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said. Worried about potential legal liability, the Swift executives agreed to continue providing the data only after top officials, including Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, intervened. At that time, new controls were introduced.

Among the safeguards, government officials said, is an outside auditing firm that verifies that the data searches are based on intelligence leads about suspected terrorists. "We are not on a fishing expedition," Mr. Levey said. "We're not just turning on a vacuum cleaner and sucking in all the information that we can."

Swift and Treasury officials said they were aware of no abuses. But Mr. Levey, the Treasury official, said one person had been removed from the operation for conducting a search considered inappropriate.

Treasury officials said Swift was exempt from American laws restricting government access to private financial records because the cooperative was considered a messaging service, not a bank or financial institution.

But at the outset of the operation, Treasury and Justice Department lawyers debated whether the program had to comply with such laws before concluding that it did not, people with knowledge of the debate said. Several outside banking experts, however, say that financial privacy laws are murky and sometimes contradictory and that the program raises difficult legal and public policy questions.

The Bush administration has made no secret of its campaign to disrupt terrorist financing, and President Bush, Treasury officials and others have spoken publicly about those efforts. Administration officials, however, asked The New York Times not to publish this article, saying that disclosure of the Swift program could jeopardize its effectiveness. They also enlisted several current and former officials, both Democrat and Republican, to vouch for its value.

Bill Keller, the newspaper's executive editor, said: "We have listened closely to the administration's arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration. We remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."

Mr. Levey agreed to discuss the classified operation after the Times editors told him of the newspaper's decision.

On Thursday evening, Dana Perino, deputy White House press secretary, said: "Since immediately following 9/11, the American government has taken every legal measure to prevent another attack on our country. One of the most important tools in the fight against terror is our ability to choke off funds for the terrorists."

She added: "We know the terrorists pay attention to our strategy to fight them, and now have another piece of the puzzle of how we are fighting them. We also know they adapt their methods, which increases the challenge to our intelligence and law enforcement officials."

Referring to the disclosure by The New York Times last December of the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program, she said, "The president is concerned that once again The New York Times has chosen to expose a classified program that is working to protect our citizens."

Swift declined to discuss details of the program but defended its role in written responses to questions. "Swift has fully complied with all applicable laws," the consortium said. The organization said it insisted that the data be used only for terrorism investigations and had narrowed the scope of the information provided to American officials over time.

A Crucial Gatekeeper

Swift's database provides a rich hunting ground for government investigators. Swift is a crucial gatekeeper, providing electronic instructions on how to transfer money among 7,800 financial institutions worldwide. The cooperative is owned by more than 2,200 organizations, and virtually every major commercial bank, as well as brokerage houses, fund managers and stock exchanges, uses its services. Swift routes more than 11 million transactions each day, most of them across borders.

The cooperative's message traffic allows investigators, for example, to track money from the Saudi bank account of a suspected terrorist to a mosque in New York. Starting with tips from intelligence reports about specific targets, agents search the database in what one official described as a "24-7" operation. Customers' names, bank account numbers and other identifying information can be retrieved, the officials said.

The data does not allow the government to track routine financial activity, like A.T.M. withdrawals, confined to this country, or to see bank balances, Treasury officials said. And the information is not provided in real time — Swift generally turns it over several weeks later. Because of privacy concerns and the potential for abuse, the government sought the data only for terrorism investigations and prohibited its use for tax fraud, drug trafficking or other inquiries, the officials said.

The Treasury Department was charged by President Bush, in a September 2001 executive order, with taking the lead role in efforts to disrupt terrorist financing. Mr. Bush has been briefed on the program and Vice President Dick Cheney has attended C.I.A. demonstrations, the officials said. The National Security Agency has provided some technical assistance.

While the banking program is a closely held secret, administration officials have held classified briefings for some members of Congress and the Sept. 11 commission, the officials said. More lawmakers were briefed in recent weeks, after the administration learned The Times was making inquiries for this article.

Swift's 25-member board of directors, made up of representatives from financial institutions around the world, was previously told of the program. The Group of 10's central banks, in major industrialized countries, which oversee Swift, were also informed. It is not clear if other network participants know that American intelligence officials can examine their message traffic.

Because Swift is based overseas and has offices in the United States, it is governed by European and American laws. Several international regulations and policies impose privacy restrictions on companies that are generally regarded as more stringent than those in this country. United States law establishes some protections for the privacy of Americans' financial data, but they are not ironclad. A 1978 measure, the Right to Financial Privacy Act, has a limited scope and a number of exceptions, and its role in national security cases remains largely untested.

Several people familiar with the Swift program said they believed that they were exploiting a "gray area" in the law and that a case could be made for restricting the government's access to the records on Fourth Amendment and statutory grounds. They also worried about the impact on Swift if the program were disclosed.

"There was always concern about this program," a former official said.

One person involved in the Swift program estimated that analysts had reviewed international transfers involving "many thousands" of people or groups in the United States. Two other officials placed the figure in the thousands. Mr. Levey said he could not estimate the number.

The Swift data has provided clues to money trails and ties between possible terrorists and groups financing them, the officials said. In some instances, they said, the program has pointed them to new suspects, while in others it has buttressed cases already under investigation.

Among the successes was the capture of a Qaeda operative, Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, believed to be the mastermind of the 2002 bombing of a Bali resort, several officials said. The Swift data identified a previously unknown figure in Southeast Asia who had financial dealings with a person suspected of being a member of Al Qaeda; that link helped locate Hambali in Thailand in 2003, they said.

In the United States, the program has provided financial data in investigations into possible domestic terrorist cells as well as inquiries of Islamic charities with suspected of having links to extremists, the officials said.

The data also helped identify a Brooklyn man who was convicted on terrorism-related charges last year, the officials said. The man, Uzair Paracha, who worked at a New York import business, aided a Qaeda operative in Pakistan by agreeing to launder $200,000 through a Karachi bank, prosecutors said.

In terrorism prosecutions, intelligence officials have been careful to "sanitize," or hide the origins of evidence collected through the program to keep it secret, officials said.

The Bush administration has pursued steps that may provide some enhanced legal standing for the Swift program. In late 2004, Congress authorized the Treasury Department to develop regulations requiring American banks to turn over records of international wire transfers. Officials say a preliminary version of those rules may be ready soon. One official described the regulations as an attempt to "formalize" access to the kind of information secretly provided by Swift, though other officials said the initiative was unrelated to the program.

The Scramble for New Tools

Like other counterterrorism measures carried out by the Bush administration, the Swift program began in the hectic days after the Sept. 11 attacks, as officials scrambled to identify new tools to head off further strikes.

One priority was to cut off the flow of money to Al Qaeda. The 9/11 hijackers had helped finance their plot by moving money through banks. Nine of the hijackers, for instance, funneled money from Europe and the Middle East to SunTrust bank accounts in Florida. Some of the $130,000 they received was wired by people overseas with known links to Al Qaeda.

Financial company executives, many of whom had lost friends at the World Trade Center, were eager to help federal officials trace terrorist money. "They saw 9/11 not just as an attack on the United States, but on the financial industry as a whole," said one former government official.

Quietly, counterterrorism officials sought to expand the information they were getting from financial institutions. Treasury officials, for instance, spoke with credit card companies about devising an alert if someone tried to buy fertilizer and timing devices that could be used for a bomb, but they were told the idea was not logistically possible, a lawyer in the discussions said.

The F.B.I. began acquiring financial records from Western Union and its parent company, the First Data Corporation. The programs were alluded to in Congressional testimony by the F.B.I. in 2003 and described in more detail in a book released this week, "The One Percent Doctrine," by Ron Suskind. Using what officials described as individual, narrowly framed subpoenas and warrants, the F.B.I. has obtained records from First Data, which processes credit and debit card transactions, to track financial activity and try to locate suspects.

Similar subpoenas for the Western Union data allowed the F.B.I. to trace wire transfers, mainly outside the United States, and to help Israel disrupt about a half-dozen possible terrorist plots there by unraveling the financing, an official said.

The idea for the Swift program, several officials recalled, grew out of a suggestion by a Wall Street executive, who told a senior Bush administration official about Swift's database. Few government officials knew much about the consortium, which is led by a Brooklyn native, Leonard H. Schrank, but they quickly discovered it offered unparalleled access to international transactions. Swift, a former government official said, was "the mother lode, the Rosetta stone" for financial data.

Intelligence officials were so eager to use the Swift data that they discussed having the C.I.A. covertly gain access to the system, several officials involved in the talks said. But Treasury officials resisted, the officials said, and favored going to Swift directly.

At the same time, lawyers in the Treasury Department and the Justice Department were considering possible legal obstacles to the arrangement, the officials said.

In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that Americans had no constitutional right to privacy for their records held by banks or other financial institutions. In response, Congress passed the Right to Financial Privacy Act two years later, restricting government access to Americans' banking records. In considering the Swift program, some government lawyers were particularly concerned about whether the law prohibited officials from gaining access to records without a warrant or subpoena based on some level of suspicion about each target.

For many years, law enforcement officials have relied on grand-jury subpoenas or court-approved warrants for such financial data. Since 9/11, the F.B.I. has turned more frequently to an administrative subpoena, known as a national security letter, to demand such records.

After an initial debate, Treasury Department lawyers, consulting with the Justice Department, concluded that the privacy laws applied to banks, not to a banking cooperative like Swift. They also said the law protected individual customers and small companies, not the major institutions that route money through Swift on behalf of their customers.

Other state, federal and international regulations place different and sometimes conflicting restrictions on the government's access to financial records. Some put greater burdens on the company disclosing the information than on the government officials demanding it.

Among their considerations, American officials saw Swift as a willing partner in the operation. But Swift said its participation was never voluntary. "Swift has made clear that it could provide data only in response to a valid subpoena," according to its written statement.

Indeed, the cooperative's executives voiced early concerns about legal and corporate liability, officials said, and the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control began issuing broad subpoenas for the cooperative's records related to terrorism. One official said the subpoenas were intended to give Swift some legal protection.

Underlying the government's legal analysis was the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which Mr. Bush invoked after the 9/11 attacks. The law gives the president what legal experts say is broad authority to "investigate, regulate or prohibit" foreign transactions in responding to "an unusual and extraordinary threat."

But L. Richard Fischer, a Washington lawyer who wrote a book on banking privacy and is regarded as a leading expert in the field, said he was troubled that the Treasury Department would use broad subpoenas to demand large volumes of financial records for analysis. Such a program, he said, appears to do an end run around bank-privacy laws that generally require the government to show that the records of a particular person or group are relevant to an investigation.

"There has to be some due process," Mr. Fischer said. "At an absolute minimum, it strikes me as inappropriate."

Several former officials said they had lingering concerns about the legal underpinnings of the Swift operation. The program "arguably complies with the letter of the law, if not the spirit," one official said.

Another official said: "This was creative stuff. Nothing was clear cut, because we had never gone after information this way before."

Treasury officials said they considered the government's authority to subpoena the Swift records to be clear. "People do not have a privacy interest in their international wire transactions," Mr. Levey, the Treasury under secretary, said.

Tighter Controls Sought

Within weeks of 9/11, Swift began turning over records that allowed American analysts to look for evidence of terrorist financing. Initially, there appear to have been few formal limits on the searches.

"At first, they got everything — the entire Swift database," one person close to the operation said.

Intelligence officials paid particular attention to transfers to or from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates because most of the 9/11 hijackers were from those countries.

The volume of data, particularly at the outset, was often overwhelming, officials said. "We were turning on every spigot we could find and seeing what water would come out," one former administration official said. "Sometimes there were hits, but a lot of times there weren't."

Officials realized the potential for abuse, and narrowed the program's targets and put in more safeguards. Among them were the auditing firm, an electronic record of every search and a requirement that analysts involved in the operation document the intelligence that justified each data search. Mr. Levey said the program was used only to examine records of individuals or entities, not for broader data searches.

Despite the controls, Swift executives became increasingly worried about their secret involvement with the American government, the officials said. By 2003, the cooperative's officials were discussing pulling out because of their concerns about legal and financial risks if the program were revealed, one government official said.

"How long can this go on?" a Swift executive asked, according to the official.

Even some American officials began to question the open-ended arrangement. "I thought there was a limited shelf life and that this was going to go away," the former senior official said.

In 2003, administration officials asked Swift executives and some board members to come to Washington. They met with Mr. Greenspan, Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, and Treasury officials, among others, in what one official described as "a full-court press." Aides to Mr. Greenspan and Mr. Mueller declined to comment on the meetings.

The executives agreed to continue supplying records after the Americans pledged to impose tighter controls. Swift representatives would be stationed alongside intelligence officials and could block any searches considered inappropriate, several officials said.

The procedural change provoked some opposition at the C.I.A. because "the agency was chomping at the bit to have unfettered access to the information," a senior counterterrorism official said. But the Treasury Department saw it as a necessary compromise, the official said, to "save the program."

Barclay Walsh contributed reporting for this article.


 

Global Warming Skeptics Engage In Denial And Spin Over New Academy Report; Gore Responds

The National Academy of Sciences released an important report yesterday detailing the fact that the Earth’s temperatures in the last few decades have been the warmest in recorded history, raising concern about the impact of global warming. Warming skeptics have responded with their typical denial and spin.

Electricity Daily (sub. req’d), which covers news from the perspective of the electricity industry, reported:

The NAS report casts serious doubts on the conventional scientific wisdom of man-made climate warming, particularly as described by political advocates such as former Vice President Al Gore. … Those who argue that solar activity drives global climate, not CO2, will take heart.

In fact, the report specifically states that “human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming.” Moreover, as ThinkProgress noted, the report factored in the natural variations in temperature — volcanic activity, solar radiation, etc. — and concluded that these can’t explain the warming trend.

Another well-known skeptic, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), zeroed in on a study conducted by climatologist Michael Mann that is reviewed in the NAS report. Through his famous “hockey stick” graph, Mann argued that recent years have been the hottest on record in the last millennium. Inhofe responded:

Today’s NAS report reaffirms what I have been saying all along, that Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ is broken.

In fact, the NAS report “largely vindicates” Mann’s central thesis, stating it is “plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th Century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium.”

As House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) said, “There is nothing in this report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on global climate change…or any doubts about whether any paper on the temperature records was legitimate scientific work.” But science has never stood in the way of global warming skeptics. The NAS report is no exception.

On a conference call that Al Gore held with bloggers this afternoon, I asked him for a response to the claims made by Electricity Daily and Sen. Inhofe. He said that global warming skeptics “will seize on anything to say up is down and black is white.” Gore explained that science, by nature, thrives on uncertainty and tries to eliminate it; politics, on the other hand, is vulnerable to being paralyzed by uncertainty. When science and politics converge, Gore argued, the chance for “cowardice is high.”


 

Last Throes: Insurgents in a "Desperation" Move Set Up Roadblocks In Central Baghdad and Fire On U.S. Troops Just North of the Green Zone.

Iraq declares state of emergency in Baghdad
Security clampdown broadened after gunmen attack U.S.-Iraqi patrol
The Associated Press

Updated: 8:23 a.m. ET June 23, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi government declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew Friday after insurgents set up roadblocks in central Baghdad and opened fire on U.S. and Iraqi troops just north of the heavily fortified Green Zone.

U.S. and Iraqi forces also clashed with insurgents in southern Baghdad.

In other violence, a bomb struck a Sunni mosque in a town northeast of Baghdad, killing 10 worshippers and wounding 15 in the same town where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was slain earlier this month, police said.

The prime minister ordered everyone off the streets of the capital from 2 p.m. Friday until 6 a.m. Saturday. The order came at around noon, when many residents were in prayer, and sent many rushing home to beat the curfew.

Violence persists

The explosion occurred in front of the Grand Hibhib mosque in Diyala province, according to the provincial joint coordination center.

In the southern city of Basra, a car bomb ripped through a market and nearby gas station, killing at least five people and wounding 15, including two policemen police said.

At least 19 other deaths were reported in Baghdad.

Al-Zarqawi, the leader of Iraq’s most feared terror group al-Qaida in Iraq, was killed June 7 in an airstrike in Hibhib, which is near Baqouba, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

Throughout the morning Friday, Iraqi and U.S. military forces clashed with attackers who were armed with rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades and rifles in busy Haifa Street that runs into the Green Zone, site of the U.S. and British embassies and the Iraqi government.

Two Iraqi soldiers and a policeman were wounded in the fighting, said police Lt. Maitham Abdul Razzaq said.

The region was sealed and Iraqi and U.S. forces conducted house-to-house searches.

Gunmen also attacked a group of worshippers marching from Sadr City, the Shiite slum in eastern Baghdad, to the Buratha mosque on the other side of the city to protest a suicide attack a week ago on the revered Shiite shrine. At least one marcher was killed and four were wounded, Lt. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said.

The U.S. military on Friday said a Marine had died in combat and a soldier was killed in an unspecified non-hostile incident three days earlier. Their deaths raise to at least 2,514 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Bid to curb bloodshed

The new security measures came as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sought to rein in unrelenting insurgent and sectarian violence. He launched a massive security operation in Baghdad 10 days ago, deploying tens of thousands of troops who flooded the city, snarling traffic with hundreds of checkpoints.

While violence had diminished somewhat, the outbreak of fighting on Haifa Street and in the Dora neighborhood apparently prompted al-Maliki to declare the state of emergency even as Friday prayer services were in progress, sending many residents scrambling homeward to beat the curfew.

Also Friday, police said they found the bodies of five men who apparently were victims of a mass kidnapping from a factory on Wednesday. The bodies, which showed signs of torture and had their hands and legs bound, were floating in a canal in northern Baghdad, police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said it killed four foreign insurgents in a raid north of Fallujah. Two of the dead men had 15-pound suicide bombs strapped to their bodies. The military said an insurgent thought to be an Iraqi also was killed in the raid, which was launched on information from a suspected arrested in the region in previous days.

Separately, the military said, it detained a senior leader of al-Qaida in Iraq and three other suspected insurgents Monday during raids northeast of Baghdad, near where al-Qaida chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. air raid earlier this month.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

 

Portugal - Avante - Original Article (Portuguese)


 

College Republicans: Proof that Stupid is Contagious.

College Republicans Call for Beach Parties to Mock Global Warming

[The piece below was published this week by syndicated columnist Ed Flattau of Global Horizons]

Whatever happened to the Republican Party of Teddy Roosevelt, a political party distinguished by its forward-looking environmental policy? Today, we have the College Republican National Committee (CRNC) urging its 200,000 student members on 1500 campuses to hold beach parties to mock the threat of global warming. If this is representative of the generation that is going to inherit the earth, the earth is in trouble big-time.

Indeed, deriding climate change is the last thing we need from the age group that could well have the last best chance to atone for the environmental sins of the past.

So the question becomes: is the CRNC’S stance of self-destructive denial a preview of the future identity of the Republican Party? If CRNC’S call to revelry has any traction, you’ve got to wonder what in heaven’s name is being taught in colleges these days regarding science, moral values, and social responsibility. The CRNC derives its dismissive view of global warming from a small clique of increasingly discredited scientists who claim the climate change threat is an exercise in scaremongering. It is a claim that is refuted by the weight of evidence, and subsequently by a consensus of scientists (including leading climatologists) throughout the world.

Global warming may not signal the end of civilization, but nor should it be the target of ridicule. Responsible political leaders cannot afford to sit idly by and wait for proof of a false alarm while the average global temperature is rising with rapidity unprecedented in memory. They don’t have the luxury of wallowing in pedantry at the inconclusiveness of the evidence when ice is melting at a record clip at both poles. They would be derelict to procrastinate because of the complexity of the issue. Uncertainty is no excuse for apathy, and reflection without action is not the answer, when significant impacts from climate change are being abruptly felt by man, beast, and plants in many places around the world.

Facing such a potentially calamitous condition, governments have a moral obligation to implement whatever cost-effective precautionary measures are available. These are measures (e.g. energy conservation, reforestation) that standing alone make sense even if global warming turns out not to be as menacing as originally thought.

As for college age Republicans, if they blindly follow the titular head of their party and thumb their noses at reality, let us pray they don’t end up in political office. On a more contemporary note, should the Republican students choose to frolic on a beach to celebrate rising sea levels and killer heat waves, let’s hope they don’t forget their sunblock.

 

"Scientists" claim earth is warmest it's been in 400 years. I thought this "Myth" had already been discredited by Michael Crichton?

Everybody who is anybody knows that the earth is flat and that our best Science comes from Fiction writers. Oh wait, it's only Republicans who believe that.

________________________________________________________

Earth warmest in at least 400 years, panel finds

National Research Council report focuses on 'hockey stick' data
MSNBC staff and news service reports

Updated: 12:18 a.m. ET June 22, 2006

WASHINGTON - Weighing in on the highest profile debate about global warming, the nation's premier science policy body on Thursday voiced a "high level of confidence" that Earth is the hottest it has been in at least 400 years, possibly even longer.

A panel convened by the National Research Council reached that conclusion in a broad review of scientific studies, reporting that the evidence indicates “recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years.

The panel of top climate scientists told lawmakers that the Earth is running a fever and that “human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming.” Their 155-page report said average global surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rose about 1 degree F during the 20th century.

The report was requested last November by the chairman of the House Science Committee, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., to address naysayers who question whether global warming is a major threat.

Last year, when the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, launched an investigation of three climate scientists, Boehlert said Barton should try to learn from scientists, not intimidate them.

The Bush administration also has maintained that not enough is known about the threat to warrant new emission controls that the White House says would have cost 5 million Americans their jobs.

Boehlert said Thursday the report shows the value of having scientists advise Congress. “There is nothing in this report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on global climate change,” he said.

Many scientists tie warming temperatures to rising emissions of certain gases like carbon dioxide. While essential to survival, carbon dioxide has seen a spike as fossil fuels are burned by cars and factories, leading to concerns that it and other gases are exacerbating the greenhouse effect that keeps Earth inhabitable.

“The numerous indications that recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia, in combination with estimates of external climate forcing variations over the same period, supports the conclusion that human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming,” the panel wrote.

'Hockey stick' debate

The report focused on research data criticized by warming skeptics and which was published in 2001 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that has led international warming research.

Climate scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes had prepared the research, concluding that the Northern Hemisphere was the warmest it has been in 1,000 years. Their research included a graphic dubbed the “hockey stick” because of the way the temperature data looked when presented over time — stability followed by a sharp curve upwards over the last 140 years.

The National Research Council panel concluded that the Mann-Bradley-Hughes research was “likely” to be true, said John Wallace, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Washington and a panel member. The conclusions from the research “are very close to being right” and are supported by even more recent data, Wallace said.

The panel looked at how other scientists reconstructed the Earth’s temperatures going back hundreds of years, before there was data from modern scientific instruments.

For all but the most recent 150 years, the academy scientists relied on “proxy” evidence from tree rings, corals, glaciers and ice cores, cave deposits, ocean and lake sediments, boreholes and other sources. They also examined indirect records such as paintings of glaciers in the Alps.

Combining that information gave the panel “a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries,” the panel said in its report.

'Plausible' scenario past 400 years

“We do roughly agree with the substance of their findings,” panel chairman Gerald North, a geosciences professor at Texas A&M University, said of the "hockey stick" researchers.

Speaking at a news conference Thursday, North did say there was “some disagreement” among panel members on the "hockey stick" data before 1600.

In their report, the panel said it had less confidence in the evidence of temperatures before 1600, but still found it “plausible” that temperatures during the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer “than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium.”

They also considered the data reliable enough to conclude there were sharp spikes in carbon dioxide and methane, the two major greenhouse gases blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere, beginning in the 20th century, after remaining fairly level for 12,000 years.

Between 1 A.D. and 1850, volcanic eruptions and solar fluctuations were the main causes of changes in greenhouse gas levels. But those temperature changes “were much less pronounced than the warming due to greenhouse gas” levels since the mid-19th century, the report said.

The National Research Council is part of the National Academies, a private organization chartered by Congress to advise the government on scientific matters.

MSNBC.com's Miguel Llanos and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

Take the Hitler vs Coulter Quiz: Can You Guess Who Said It?

This really is a classic. Quotes from the brown shirted coulter or the brown shirted hitler? They all sound the same to me.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

 

How to be a Republican Congressman: Give yourself $32,000 pay raises over the last 10 years.

Yep, it's true. 10 years ago the average Congressman made $32,000 dollars a year less than he or she does now. I'm not kidding. Since the Republicans took control of congress they have steadily increased their own pay at a rate that exceeds inflation.

You know how much they have increased the minimum wage over the last 10 years?

Come on! You can guess! These guys are all about FAMILY VALUES right? Who wouldn't take care of hard working families more than a bunch of Jesus lovers right? The meek shall inherit and all that right?

Let's here it for America's working Families! You're paying for those $32,000 dollar pay raises right! So I guess if you scratch Congressional backs, they'll scratch yours right?

So how much has the minimum wage increased during the last 10 years?

Zero. Nada. Zilch. Nothing.

And the Republican leadership just killed another bill that would have raised the minimum wage again. I guess when you're a Republican, the only family you take care of is your own.

$5.15 an hour for 40 hours a week means you take home $206 dollars a week.

If you work that 40 hour job 52 weeks a year you will earn a whopping $10,712 dollars in a year.

In the last 10 years the average minimum wage worker has earned $107,120 dollars total.

The current salary for rank-and-file members of the House and Senate is $165,200 per year.

Just something to think about.

Hugs and kisses,

The Punisher

 

Tony Snow: Time to "Catapult the Propaganda": Delusional Moron Claimed Bush "Never Has" Linked Saddam and 9-11.

On Imus, Snow misleadingly claimed that Bush "never has" linked Saddam, 9-11

Summary: On MSNBC, Don Imus failed to challenge White House press secretary Tony Snow's false claim that President Bush never linked the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the regime of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. In fact, both Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have done so.

On the June 14 edition of MSNBC's Imus in the Morning, host Don Imus failed to challenge White House press secretary Tony Snow's false claim that President Bush has never linked the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the regime of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Snow claimed that Bush told him and NBC's Tim Russert that "there's no demonstrated link between Saddam [Hussein] and 9-11, and we're never going to make that argument." Snow then asserted that Bush "never has" claimed such a link. But both Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have, in fact, explicitly linked Iraq to 9-11.

Bush did so in a March 21, 2003, letter to the speaker of the House of Representatives and president pro tempore of the Senate notifying them of the use of military force in Iraq after the failure of diplomacy, as Media Matters for America has previously noted. In the letter, Bush stated that "the use of armed force against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001."

In addition, Cheney also linked Iraq to 9-11 during two appearances on Russert's NBC program Meet the Press, as Media Matters for America has also noted. On the December 9, 2001, edition of Meet the Press, Russert asked Cheney if he "still believe[s] there is no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11," and the vice president responded falsely that it was "pretty well confirmed" that an Iraqi intelligence officer met with September 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta shortly before the attacks. Then, on the September 14, 2003, edition of the NBC program, Cheney repeated his claim that Iraq and 9-11 are linked, saying: "If we're successful in Iraq ... we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9-11."

Moreover, the 9-11 Commission found that Bush asked his staff to explore possible links between Iraq and 9-11 as early as September 12, 2001. The 9-11 Commission's report noted that, according to former national counterterrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke, Bush asked him on the evening of September 12 to investigate possible Iraqi links to the previous day's attacks:

Clarke has written that on the evening of September 12, President Bush told him and some of his staff to explore possible Iraqi links to 9/11. "See if Sad-dam did this," Clarke recalls the President telling them. "See if he's linked in any way." While he believed the details of Clarke's account to be incorrect, President Bush acknowledged [in an April 29, 2004, interview with the commission] that he might well have spoken to Clarke at some point, asking him about Iraq.

The commission noted that, on September 18, 2001, Clarke's office sent then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice a response memo on the subject. It "found no 'compelling case' that Iraq had either planned or perpetrated the attacks." A March 29, 2004, New York Times article reported that "The White House acknowledged ... that on the day after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush asked his top counterterrorism adviser, Richard A. Clarke, to find out whether Iraq was involved." The Times also noted Clarke's recollection -- disputed by the White House -- of his response to the president:

Mr. Clarke was incredulous, he said in [his] book [Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror (Free Press, March 2004)]. "But, Mr. President, Al Qaeda did this," he said he responded.

Mr. Bush answered: "I know, I know, but ... see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred," according to Mr. Clarke's account.

From the June 14 edition of MSNBC's Imus in the Morning:

IMUS: You mentioned Al Qaeda and 9-11. You guys are not still suggesting there was some link there, are you?

SNOW: Between Al Qaeda and 9-11? The president's never -- of course there's a link between Al Qaeda and 9-11. Osama bin Laden's the head of Al Qaeda.

IMUS: Well, yeah, I understand that, but --

SNOW: You're, you're, you're -- what you're trying to say is Iraq --

IMUS: What I meant is Iraq, yeah.

SNOW: No, Iraq's a front of the war on terror. [Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi clearly was in Iraq when it started. But, I mean, I've been around. And Russert and I were both in a meeting with the president before that first day -- even after September 11. The president back then said there's no demonstrated link between Saddam and 9-11, and we're never going to make that argument, and he never has.

 

Bush Pulls Out Early: Afghanistan still giving birth to Terrorists. Too Bad Afghanistan doesn't have oil; the Bushies may have "Stayed the Course."

Revived Taliban waging 'full-blown insurgency'
Updated 6/20/2006 9:52 AM ET
By Paul Wiseman, USA TODAY

PANJWAI DISTRICT, Afghanistan — In their biggest show of strength in nearly five years, pro-Taliban fighters are terrorizing southern Afghanistan — ambushing military patrols, assassinating opponents and even enforcing the law in remote villages where they operate with near impunity.

"We are faced with a full-blown insurgency," says Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil & Fundamentalism in Central Asia.

Four and a half years after they overthrew the Islamic militia that had controlled much of Afghanistan, U.S.-led forces have been forced to ramp up the battle to stabilize this impoverished, shattered country. More than 10,000 U.S., Canadian, British and Afghan government troops are scouring southern and eastern Afghanistan in a campaign called Operation Mountain Thrust.

Even before fighting heated up this spring, Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, warned Congress that the insurgents "represent a greater threat" to the pro-U.S. government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai "than at any point since late 2001."

More than 500 people — mostly insurgents — have died since mid-May in the fiercest fighting since the fall of the Taliban regime. Since Operation Enduring Freedom began in October 2001, more than 300 U.S. troops have died, 165 of them killed in action. NATO's 36-country International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has lost 60.

Despite the damage they can do, the insurgents do not have enough support to topple Karzai, who was elected two years ago and enjoys international support. "We are not in a situation yet where the Karzai government is threatened," says Joanna Nathan, Afghan analyst for the International Crisis Group, a non-profit research organization. But in places where they are strong, the insurgents have been able to harass government operations and relief efforts — so much so that reconstruction has come to a virtual standstill in the south and east.

"It is hurting us," says Afghan Finance Minister Anwar ul-Haq Ahady. "We build a school, and they come and they burn it. We build a clinic, and they come and burn it. We build a bridge, and they knock it down. Security is the No. 1 issue."

Fears of new 'training camp'

The fear is that an ungovernable Afghanistan will revert to what it was before the overthrow of the Taliban: a failed state that can spread instability across Central Asia and be used as a launchpad for international terrorism. "If the Taliban get their way, Afghanistan will again become a training camp for terrorists," NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told CBC, Canada's public broadcaster, this month.

The influence of the fundamentalist Islamic militia is obvious in Panjwai district, in the heart of Taliban country. Villagers in this dry, dusty plain 15 miles west of Kandahar say they are trapped between the Taliban and the U.S. and Afghan troops hunting them. If they cooperate with the coalition or with the Afghan government, they risk Taliban reprisals.

Just outside Makuan village here, Noor Mohammed, deputized as a security guard at a radio tower, goes to work in plainclothes. "If I wear a uniform, they will kill me," he tells Canadian army Capt. Jonathan Snyder, 24, who is patrolling the area two days after a Canadian convoy was ambushed nearby. Snyder is exasperated: "You shouldn't fear for your life," he tells the frightened man. "They should be fearing for their lives because of you."

The insurgency is a loose alliance of Taliban guerrillas, followers of former prime minister and fundamentalist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, al-Qaeda terrorists recruited from across the Islamic world, opium traffickers and local fighters whose murky motives are rooted in tribal politics.

Taliban commander Mullah Dadallah told al-Jazeera television last month that the insurgents can call on 12,000 fighters. In an interview, Taliban leader Naseeruddin Haqqani says there also are hundreds of suicide bombers. The Taliban's claims probably are exaggerated, Rashid says, but they can draw on hundreds of fighters.

The insurgency began a few months after U.S.-led forces drove the Taliban out of the Afghan capital, Kabul, in November 2001. It became more effective two years ago, when insurgents switched to new tactics, including breaking up into small groups of 10 fighters or less, attacking "soft" civilian targets and limiting head-on confrontations with coalition and Afghan troops.

Like their counterparts in Iraq, the insurgents use the Internet to pick up tips on making roadside bombs, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, has said. They increasingly rely on suicide bombers. Writing in The New York Review of Books this month, Rashid noted 40 suicide attacks in the past nine months vs. five in the previous five years.

Franchising terror

Insurgent leaders — such as Taliban spiritual leader Mullah Mohammed Omar; Jalaluddin Haqqani, father of Naseeruddin Haqqani; and Hekmatyar, who heads the radical Islamic Hizb-i-Islami group — "do not exert power the way a military general does," Seth Jones, an analyst for the California-based think tank RAND Corp., wrote in the spring edition of the journal Survival. Instead, they leave "tactical and operational" control to local cells, "which act as franchises."

Al-Qaeda, which supports the insurgency with training, supplies and occasionally manpower, operates much the same way.

The loose alliance opposed to the Karzai government and the U.S.-led reconstruction of Afghanistan has gained strength because:

•The insurgents have found sanctuary in Pakistan, "fairly brazenly" staying "beyond the reach of Afghan and international security forces," Nathan says. Pakistan's powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), supported the Taliban against rival Afghan factions when the fundamentalist movement formed in the mid-1990s. Pakistan's military regime wants to counter the separatist instincts of Pashtun tribesmen who live in both countries. The government's pro-Taliban policy changed under U.S. pressure after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Rashid says Pakistan has done nothing to eliminate Taliban forces operating openly out of Baluchistan, a Pakistani province opposite southern Afghanistan. The reason, he says, is that the Baluchistan insurgents are "pure Taliban" — remnants of the ISI-supported fundamentalist regime that ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. The insurgents based in Waziristan, by contrast, include many foreign jihadi fighters and members of al-Qaeda — fighters the United States has pressured Pakistan to pursue. "That suited the Pakistanis quite well," Rashid says.

•Ordinary Afghans won't risk their lives to support Karzai's government, which many view as weak and corrupt. Afghanistan's problem is "not necessarily the strong enemy," Eikenberry said in Washington last month. "It's the very weak institutions of the state."

The government also is widely seen as corrupt and dominated by warlords linked to the bloody civil war during the 1990s. "Day by day, corruption, bribery and narcotics go up," says Noor ul-Haq Ulumi, a member of the Afghan parliament from Kandahar. "Weak governors we have every place. They think only about their benefit, not their country's benefit."

•The United States and its allies have scrimped on money and manpower, critics say. Rashid says Iraq has distracted the United States from the difficult tasks of subduing the Taliban and rebuilding Afghanistan. "For Afghanistan, the results have been too few Western troops, too little money and a lack of coherent strategy," Rashid wrote in The New York Review of Books.

According to RAND, international aid to Afghanistan equals $57 per person, compared with $679 in Bosnia and $206 in Iraq. RAND also found that Afghanistan has one soldier for every 1,000 people vs. seven in Iraq, 19 in Bosnia and 20 in Kosovo. RAND's Jones reckons Afghanistan needs 200,000 Afghan and foreign troops and police officers to establish order. The country has about 120,000.

Insurgents test the resolve of NATO forces in the process of taking over combat responsibility from U.S. forces in southern Afghanistan. The incoming NATO commander, British Lt. Gen. David Richards, insists NATO forces "will deal most robustly" with insurgents.

Rashid says the rules of engagement are "incredibly unclear."

"They bifurcate NATO into countries that will fight and countries that won't fight, and that's a dangerous thing," Rashid says.

The insurgents are eager to bloody the NATO newcomers, to find out which ones will fight and to target those that won't. "This is a testing time, a transition time, and is likely to be messy," Nathan says.

Insurgents "are betting that the West doesn't have the political will to remain in Afghanistan for the long run," Jones wrote. "Proving them wrong is the key challenge."

Sending troops to back Karzai's government and keeping them there is "a sacrifice worth making," Nathan says. "Sept. 11 demonstrated what happened last time the international community abandoned Afghanistan."

Contributing: Zafar M. Sheikh in Islamabad, Pakistan; wire reports

 

SENATE DEMOSAURS: This Term Is The Perfect Description for the Joe Lieberman Type Middle of the Road Democrats.

Progressive Daily Beacon Opinion Piece

Carl ''Cro-Magnon'' Levin and Senate Demosaurs Stakeout Their Non-Position on Iraq
A. Alexander, June 20th, 2006

Ah, but those Democrats sure do know how to make a heart go pitter-patter, don't they? The DLC and inside-the-beltway consultant controlled, perpetually losing, and nearly extinct Demosaurs really know how to take every side of every issue, while taking absolutely no stand on any issue. The Senate Democrats' position on Iraq is no different. They've split the difference between Bush's "stay the failed and disastrous course" and the Congressional Republicans "stay Bush's failed and disastrous course" and conjured up their own timid sorta-kinda-maybe "stay the failed and disastrous course" with a little sweetener: they're "urging" Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq by years end. Now, if that isn't a boldly wishy-washy non-position, what is?

The only thing more pathetic was Senator "Insider Trading" Frist's, Rove dictated response: "Let me be clear, retreat is not an option," Frist screeched. For good measure he pitched in the equally thread-worn hyperbole and admonished the Democrats for choosing to "cut and run". These Republican responses, of course, have all been said and done before, as has the entire Iraq scenario -- it was called VIETNAM! Politicians back then also, warned about pulling our troops out of country. Funny that today, we are sucking up to Vietnam as if Bush and Cheney were prepubescent boys with perpetually engorged Johnsons and the Vietnamese government a voluptuous older woman with a reputation for preferring younger, more virile man-boys.

So, the Demosaurs are up to their usual DLC inspired absurdities -- the same DLC inspired asininity that had led the nearly extinct idiots to vote for the Iraq War in the first place: "Must not appear weak on issues of 'national security'", pretending, of course, not to know full well that neither Saddam nor Iraq had anything to do with America's national security. But that is our Demosaurs -- forever running themselves in one directionless circle after another trying to stake a claim to every azimuth on the issue compasses bezel.

Carl "The Cro-Magnon" Levin was the inside-the-beltway and DLC puppet chosen to tell the nation exactly where Senate Demosaurs stood on the quagmire known as Iraq: "Three-and-a-half years into the conflict, we should tell the Iraqis that the American security blanket is not permanent," Cro-Magnon Levin said.

That, sadly, is about good as it gets with the Demosaurs. Truly, should any person care to ponder the arrogance and absurdity of that statement, they are certain to burst out in a belly laugh. Either that, or burst out in tears.

Three-and-a-half years into the conflict Bush created and the insecurity, mayhem, civil-war, ethnic cleansing, death-squads, and total anarchy that followed that idiotic decision to invade a country that posed no threat to America, and Cro-Magnon shouldn't be telling the Iraqi people anything other than: "Sweet Jesus, we beg your forgiveness and really, if you folks ever get this mess straightened out -- we'll be more than willing to pay our share of the reconstruction costs, compensate families for loved ones lost and, too, we'll be making an appearance at the Hague submitting a case for Bush and Cheney to be tried as war criminals. We are so very sorry for the pain and suffering we've caused, but it isn't going to get any better for you long as we remain. We've opened Pandora's Box here and sadly, only you, the Iraqi people, can put it all back together."

Instead, Carl "Cro-Magnon" Levin and the Senate Demosaurs once again, chose their usual approach -- they've taken a stand on every side of the issue, while taking no stand at all. One would think they'd learn by now, but they never will. If they had listened to their base in 2002, they probably would have lost just as many seats or maybe a few less, because the base would have gotten out and voted. True, Kerry would still have lost in 2004 and, too, so would the Congressional Democrats. Following the incredibly inept campaigns waged by the Demosaurs, nothing was going to halt that slaughter. Today, however, and in 2006, had they listened to their base in 2001, 2002 and prior to the war in 2003, the Demosaurs would look like prophetic geniuses and be on their way to, no matter what Karl Rove pulled out of his bag-o-tricks, a true landslide.

All the Demosaurs needed do prior to voting for the resolution authorizing Bush's War, was pay attention to the base. Instead they dialed up and dialed into the DLC and inside-the-beltway forever-loser consultants and they lost everything. And what have the Demosaurs learned? Judging by the Senate Demosaurs recent position on Iraq -- their "urging" position -- they've learned nothing. They are in everyway imaginable as incapable of adapting as the long ago extinct dinosaurs for whom, the Demosaurs are now appropriately named.

Ah, but those Demosaurs sure do know how to make a heart go pitter-patter, don't they?

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

 

American Taliban Still Creepily Wandering The Halls of Congress....

The Da Vinci Senator
By Bob Geiger, AlterNet
Posted on June 19, 2006, Printed on June 20, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/37668/

The United States Senate is often called "the greatest deliberative body in the world," which usually raises the bar on the tenor and intellectual content of speeches given on the floor, if not for the official record.

Not so for Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who took to the Senate floor last week to deliver a strident push for the bigoted "Marriage Protection Amendment." Alongside the typical massive distortions of the issue was an argument that was based almost solely on the opinion of a little-known conservative think tank affiliated with the Roman Catholic organization Opus Dei.

"The problem we have in front of us is the institution of marriage has been weakened, and the effort to redefine it on this vast social experiment that we have going on, redefining marriage differently than it has ever been defined before," the Kansas senator grimly intoned last week. "This effort of this vast social experiment, the early data that we see from other places, harms the institution of the family, the raising of the next generation. And it is harmful to the future of the republic."

Brownback then went on to give figures for how various states have shown their hatred of gay people with their own prohibitions on same-sex marriage and used that as his rationale for a similar amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

But Brownback really hit his stride when he described a paper called "Ten Principles on Marriage and the Public Good," published by a fairly new and extremely conservative group at Princeton University. According to Brownback, the paper is an "important statement of principles from top American scholars [to] be considered carefully by my colleagues." He then added that the sentiments expressed in the nonscientific treatise were so vital to our national dialog that they should "… help guide our debate on this issue."

The paper, sponsored by the Witherspoon Institute at Princeton, makes a case for banning same-sex marriage altogether. What's extraordinary is the idea of a United States senator attempting to sway opinion on an amendment that would have altered our Constitution (had it not been defeated last Wednesday) by using a paper from an organization linked to Opus Dei, a strict religious group that some former members have described as a cult.

Brownback spent a good part of his lengthy Senate speech last week citing the study and attributing it to "this Princeton group of scholars," while never mentioning that all of the findings were based on the ultraconservative Witherspoon Institute bolstered by the involvement -- directly or indirectly -- of a nonprofit, tax-exempt religious organization in Opus Dei.

So what exactly is the Witherspoon Institute, whose paper formed the foundation of Brownback's anti-gay argument?

The institute, which has only been around since 2003, has close ties to Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council, but is also tightly aligned with Opus Dei. Indeed, Luis Tellez, the president of the Witherspoon Institute is also the director and lead cleric of Opus Dei in Princeton.

Since its founding in 1928, Opus Dei has been known for its traditionalist values and right-wing political stances. And critics in academia -- which include former members who sometimes go through "deprogramming" upon exiting Opus Dei -- charge that organizations like the Witherspoon Institute are just veiled attempts by Opus Dei to spread its influence in top-tier academic circles.

So why then, is a U.S. senator offering to Congress "research" linked to Opus Dei on something as vital as amending the Constitution? It turns out that Brownback, who was formerly an evangelical Protestant, converted to Catholicism by way of Opus Dei in 2002 and was sponsored in that conversion by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn., a vocal Opus Dei advocate.

Tellez, the leader of Opus Dei in Princeton, is a "numerary," considered the most conservative of the sect's members -- they are unmarried, celibate, devote every aspect of their lives to their spiritual beliefs and turn over their salaries from secular jobs to Opus Dei.

Again, it bears repeating that Tellez is also the head of the Witherspoon Institute, the group Brownback cited at great length as his primary argument against gay marriage.

And remember, it is Brownback, as an Opus Dei convert, who also leads the charge on Capitol Hill against abortion and stem cell research and who, along with Santorum, is seen by the Religious Right as a point man on "culture war" issues.

The other central figure in the Witherspoon orbit is Dr. Robert George, a Princeton professor and a board member in the institute who, not coincidentally, helped draft the federal gay-marriage ban that was just defeated in the Senate. George chaired a meeting of religious leaders in late 2005 that included Dr. James Dobson and other members of the extreme Religious Right. In fact, in addition to his pivotal role in the Witherspoon Institute, George is also a board member at Perkins' Family Research Council, a group known for its bigoted positions on the gay community.

And, via Brownback, all of this is ultimately finding its way into the halls of Congress.

While it may not be technically illegal for Brownback to be so clearly mixing hard-right religious ideology -- and faux-academic papers promoted by religious organizations like Opus Dei -- with debate on the Senate floor, it should certainly raise some eyebrows. In a country where strict separation of church and state is mandated, it seems Brownback is freely blending the two, attempting to use religious dogma to influence public policy -- all the while not disclosing to his Senate colleagues the background sources of the research he is citing.

But this should not be surprising coming from Brownback.

In a January 2006 Rolling Stone article, "God's Senator," Brownback is described as a religious zealot with a view for America's future that could almost be described as medieval.

"In his dream, America, the one he believes both the Bible and the Constitution promise, the state will simply wither away. In its place will be a country so suffused with God and the free market that the social fabric of the last hundred years -- schools, Social Security, welfare -- will be privatized or simply done away with," reads the article. "There will be no abortions; sex will be confined to heterosexual marriage. Men will lead families, mothers will tend children, and big business and the church will take care of all."

After all, it was Brownback, who came to Congress in 1994 and refused to sign Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" because he felt it wasn't conservative enough. Even then, as a newcomer to the House of Representatives, Brownback believed that the vast majority of what he saw as Big Government should simply be eliminated, including the departments of education, energy and commerce.

And, yes, it was also Brownback who was so outraged at the split-second glimpse of Janet Jackson's nipple during the 2004 Super Bowl, that he introduced the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, which substantially raised fines for such simple on-air displays of nudity.

Finally, in addition to being brought into Catholicism by the likes of Opus Dei and using laundered research by an affiliated group on the Senate floor, Brownback chairs a meeting every Tuesday night with the "Values Action Team," consisting of religious leaders like Dobson who help the senator formulate his thoughts on public policy issues.

According to Time magazine, Opus Dei has assets in the neighborhood of $2.8 billion and, with John McCain unlikely to significantly rouse the Religious Right in 2008, look for Brownback to be the guy that Opus Dei, Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council turn to as their presidential candidate.

And make no mistake about it: Brownback wants to run. So if you think his views for a new America, as viewed from the Senate floor, are scary, think of what he'll be like sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In his mind, it may already be ordained.

 

Revived Taliban waging 'full-blown insurgency'

PANJWAI DISTRICT, Afghanistan — In their biggest show of strength in nearly five years, pro-Taliban fighters are terrorizing southern Afghanistan — ambushing military patrols, assassinating opponents and even enforcing the law in remote villages where they operate with near impunity.

"We are faced with a full-blown insurgency," says Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil & Fundamentalism in Central Asia.

Four and a half years after they overthrew the Islamic militia that had controlled much of Afghanistan, U.S.-led forces have been forced to ramp up the battle to stabilize this impoverished, shattered country. More than 10,000 U.S., Canadian, British and Afghan government troops are scouring southern and eastern Afghanistan in a campaign called Operation Mountain Thrust.

PHOTOS:Fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan

Even before fighting heated up this spring, Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, warned Congress that the insurgents "represent a greater threat" to the pro-U.S. government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai "than at any point since late 2001."

More than 500 people — mostly insurgents — have died since mid-May in the fiercest fighting since the fall of the Taliban regime. Since Operation Enduring Freedom began in October 2001, more than 300 U.S. troops have died, 165 of them killed in action. NATO's 36-country International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has lost 60.

Despite the damage they can do, the insurgents do not have enough support to topple Karzai, who was elected two years ago and enjoys international support. "We are not in a situation yet where the Karzai government is threatened," says Joanna Nathan, Afghan analyst for the International Crisis Group, a non-profit research organization. But in places where they are strong, the insurgents have been able to harass government operations and relief efforts — so much so that reconstruction has come to a virtual standstill in the south and east.

"It is hurting us," says Afghan Finance Minister Anwar ul-Haq Ahady. "We build a school, and they come and they burn it. We build a clinic, and they come and burn it. We build a bridge, and they knock it down. Security is the No. 1 issue."

Fears of new 'training camp'

The fear is that an ungovernable Afghanistan will revert to what it was before the overthrow of the Taliban: a failed state that can spread instability across Central Asia and be used as a launchpad for international terrorism. "If the Taliban get their way, Afghanistan will again become a training camp for terrorists," NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told CBC, Canada's public broadcaster, this month.

The influence of the fundamentalist Islamic militia is obvious in Panjwai district, in the heart of Taliban country. Villagers in this dry, dusty plain 15 miles west of Kandahar say they are trapped between the Taliban and the U.S. and Afghan troops hunting them. If they cooperate with the coalition or with the Afghan government, they risk Taliban reprisals.

Just outside Makuan village here, Noor Mohammed, deputized as a security guard at a radio tower, goes to work in plainclothes. "If I wear a uniform, they will kill me," he tells Canadian army Capt. Jonathan Snyder, 24, who is patrolling the area two days after a Canadian convoy was ambushed nearby. Snyder is exasperated: "You shouldn't fear for your life," he tells the frightened man. "They should be fearing for their lives because of you."

The insurgency is a loose alliance of Taliban guerrillas, followers of former prime minister and fundamentalist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, al-Qaeda terrorists recruited from across the Islamic world, opium traffickers and local fighters whose murky motives are rooted in tribal politics.

Taliban commander Mullah Dadallah told al-Jazeera television last month that the insurgents can call on 12,000 fighters. In an interview, Taliban leader Naseeruddin Haqqani says there also are hundreds of suicide bombers. The Taliban's claims probably are exaggerated, Rashid says, but they can draw on hundreds of fighters.

The insurgency began a few months after U.S.-led forces drove the Taliban out of the Afghan capital, Kabul, in November 2001. It became more effective two years ago, when insurgents switched to new tactics, including breaking up into small groups of 10 fighters or less, attacking "soft" civilian targets and limiting head-on confrontations with coalition and Afghan troops.

Like their counterparts in Iraq, the insurgents use the Internet to pick up tips on making roadside bombs, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, has said. They increasingly rely on suicide bombers. Writing in The New York Review of Books this month, Rashid noted 40 suicide attacks in the past nine months vs. five in the previous five years.

Franchising terror

Insurgent leaders — such as Taliban spiritual leader Mullah Mohammed Omar; Jalaluddin Haqqani, father of Naseeruddin Haqqani; and Hekmatyar, who heads the radical Islamic Hizb-i-Islami group — "do not exert power the way a military general does," Seth Jones, an analyst for the California-based think tank RAND Corp., wrote in the spring edition of the journal Survival. Instead, they leave "tactical and operational" control to local cells, "which act as franchises."

Al-Qaeda, which supports the insurgency with training, supplies and occasionally manpower, operates much the same way.

The loose alliance opposed to the Karzai government and the U.S.-led reconstruction of Afghanistan has gained strength because:

• The insurgents have found sanctuary in Pakistan, "fairly brazenly" staying "beyond the reach of Afghan and international security forces," Nathan says. Pakistan's powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), supported the Taliban against rival Afghan factions when the fundamentalist movement formed in the mid-1990s. Pakistan's military regime wants to counter the separatist instincts of Pashtun tribesmen who live in both countries. The government's pro-Taliban policy changed under U.S. pressure after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Rashid says Pakistan has done nothing to eliminate Taliban forces operating openly out of Baluchistan, a Pakistani province opposite southern Afghanistan. The reason, he says, is that the Baluchistan insurgents are "pure Taliban" — remnants of the ISI-supported fundamentalist regime that ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. The insurgents based in Waziristan, by contrast, include many foreign jihadi fighters and members of al-Qaeda — fighters the United States has pressured Pakistan to pursue. "That suited the Pakistanis quite well," Rashid says.

• Ordinary Afghans won't risk their lives to support Karzai's government, which many view as weak and corrupt. Afghanistan's problem is "not necessarily the strong enemy," Eikenberry said in Washington last month. "It's the very weak institutions of the state."

The government also is widely seen as corrupt and dominated by warlords linked to the bloody civil war during the 1990s. "Day by day, corruption, bribery and narcotics go up," says Noor ul-Haq Ulumi, a member of the Afghan parliament from Kandahar. "Weak governors we have every place. They think only about their benefit, not their country's benefit."

• The United States and its allies have scrimped on money and manpower, critics say. Rashid says Iraq has distracted the United States from the difficult tasks of subduing the Taliban and rebuilding Afghanistan. "For Afghanistan, the results have been too few Western troops, too little money and a lack of coherent strategy," Rashid wrote in The New York Review of Books.

According to RAND, international aid to Afghanistan equals $57 per person, compared with $679 in Bosnia and $206 in Iraq. RAND also found that Afghanistan has one soldier for every 1,000 people vs. seven in Iraq, 19 in Bosnia and 20 in Kosovo. RAND's Jones reckons Afghanistan needs 200,000 Afghan and foreign troops and police officers to establish order. The country has about 120,000.

Insurgents test the resolve of NATO forces in the process of taking over combat responsibility from U.S. forces in southern Afghanistan. The incoming NATO commander, British Lt. Gen. David Richards, insists NATO forces "will deal most robustly" with insurgents.

Rashid says the rules of engagement are "incredibly unclear."

"They bifurcate NATO into countries that will fight and countries that won't fight, and that's a dangerous thing," Rashid says.

The insurgents are eager to bloody the NATO newcomers, to find out which ones will fight and to target those that won't. "This is a testing time, a transition time, and is likely to be messy," Nathan says.

Insurgents "are betting that the West doesn't have the political will to remain in Afghanistan for the long run," Jones wrote. "Proving them wrong is the key challenge."

Sending troops to back Karzai's government and keeping them there is "a sacrifice worth making," Nathan says. "Sept. 11 demonstrated what happened last time the international community abandoned Afghanistan."

Contributing: Zafar M. Sheikh in Islamabad, Pakistan; wire reports


 

AP: Police got phone data from brokers

By TED BRIDIS and JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writers

Numerous federal and local law enforcement agencies have bypassed subpoenas and warrants designed to protect civil liberties and gathered Americans' personal telephone records from private-sector data brokers.

These brokers, many of whom advertise aggressively on the Internet, have gotten into customer accounts online, tricked phone companies into revealing information and even acknowledged that their practices violate laws, according to documents gathered by congressional investigators and provided to The Associated Press.

The law enforcement agencies include offices in the Homeland Security Department and Justice Department — including the FBI and U.S. Marshal's Service — and municipal police departments in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia and Utah. Experts believe hundreds of other departments frequently use such services.

"We are requesting any and all information you have regarding the above cell phone account and the account holder ... including account activity and the account holder's address," Ana Bueno, a police investigator in Redwood City, Calif., wrote in October to PDJ Investigations of Granbury, Texas.

An agent in Denver for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Anna Wells, sent a similar request on March 31 on Homeland Security stationery: "I am looking for all available subscriber information for the following phone number," Wells wrote to a corporate alias used by PDJ.

Congressional investigators estimated the U.S. government spent $30 million last year buying personal data from private brokers. But that number likely understates the breadth of transactions, since brokers said they rarely charge law enforcement agencies any price.

PDJ said it always provided help to police for free. "Agencies from all across the country took advantage of it," said PDJ's lawyer, Larry Slade of Los Angeles.

A lawmaker who has investigated the industry said Monday he was concerned by the practices of data brokers.

"We know law enforcement has used this because it is easily obtained and you can gather a lot of information very quickly," said Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., head of the House Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee. The panel expects to conduct hearings this week.

Whitfield said data companies will relentlessly pursue a target's personal information. "They will impersonate and use everything available that they have to convince the person who has the information to share it with them, and it's shocking how successful they are," Whitfield said. "They can basically obtain any information about anybody on any subject."

The congressman said laws on the subject are vague: "There's a good chance there are some laws being broken, but it's not really clear precisely which laws."

James Bearden, a Texas lawyer who represents four such data brokers, compared the companies' activities to the National Security Agency, which reportedly compiles the phone records of ordinary Americans.

"The government is doing exactly what these people are accused of doing," Bearden said. "These people are being demonized. These are people who are partners with law enforcement on a regular basis."

The police agencies told AP they used the data brokers because it was quicker and easier than subpoenas, and their lawyers believe their actions were lawful. Some agencies, such as Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, instructed agents to stop the practice after congressional inquiries.

The U.S. Marshal's Service told AP it was examining its policies but compared services offered by data brokers to Web sites providing public telephone numbers nationally.

None of the police agencies interviewed by AP said they researched these data brokers to determine how they secretly gather sensitive information like names associated with unlisted numbers, records of phone calls, e-mail aliases — even tracing a person's location using their cellular phone signal.

"If it's on the Internet and it's been commended to us, we wouldn't do a full-scale investigation," Marshal's Service spokesman David Turner said. "We don't knowingly go into any source that would be illegal. We were not aware, I'm fairly certain, what technique was used by these subscriber services."

At Immigration and Customs Enforcement, spokesman Dean Boyd said agents did not pay for phone records and sought approval from U.S. prosecutors before making requests. Their goal was "to more quickly identify and filter out phone numbers that were unrelated to their investigations," Boyd said.

Targets of the police interest include alleged marijuana smugglers, car thieves, armed thugs and others. The data services also are enormously popular among banks and other lenders, private detectives and suspicious spouses. Customers included:

_A U.S. Labor Department employee who used her government e-mail address and phone number to buy two months of personal cellular phone records of a woman in New Jersey.

_A buyer who received credit card information about the father of murder victim Jon Benet Ramsey.

_A buyer who obtained 20 printed pages of phone calls by pro basketball player Damon Jones of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The athlete was "shocked to learn somebody had obtained this information," said Mark Termini, his lawyer and agent in Cleveland. "When a person or agency is able to obtain by fraudulent means a person's personal information, that is something that should be prohibited by law."

PDJ's lawyer said no one at the company violated laws, but he acknowledged, "I'm not sure that every law enforcement agency in the country would agree with that analysis."

Many of the executives summoned to testify before Congress this week were expected to invoke their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and to decline to answer questions.

Slade said no one at PDJ impersonated customers to steal personal information, a practice known within the industry as pretexting.

"This was farmed out to private investigators," Slade said. "They had written agreements with their vendors, making sure the vendors were acquiring the information in legal ways."

Privacy advocates bristled over data brokers gathering records for police without subpoenas.

"This is pernicious, an end run around the Fourth Amendment," said Marc Rotenberg, head of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, a leading privacy group that has sought tougher federal regulation of data brokers. "The government is encouraging unlawful conduct; it's not smart on the law enforcement side to be making use of information obtained improperly."

A federal agent who ordered phone records without subpoenas about a half-dozen times recently said he learned about the service from FBI investigators and was told this was a method to obtain phone subscriber information quicker than with a subpoena.

The agent, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak with reporters, said he and colleagues use data brokers "when he have the need to act fairly quickly" because getting a subpoena can involve lengthy waits.

Waiting for a phone company's response to a subpoena can take several days or up to 45 days, said police supervisor Eric Stasiak of Redwood City, Calif. In some cases, a request to a data broker yields answers in just a few hours, Stasiak said.

Legal experts said law enforcement agencies would be permitted to use illegally obtained information from private parties without violating the Fourth Amendment's protection against unlawful search and seizure, as long as police did not encourage any crimes to be committed.

"If law enforcement is encouraging people in the private sector to commit a crime in getting these records that would be problematic," said Mark Levin, a former top Justice Department official under President Reagan. "If, on the other hand, they are asking data brokers if they have any public information on any given phone numbers that should be fine."

Levin said he nonetheless would have advised federal agents to use the practice only when it was a matter of urgency or national security and otherwise to stick to a legally bulletproof method like subpoenas for everyday cases.

Congress subpoenaed thousands of documents from data brokers describing how they collected telephone records by impersonating customers.

"I was shot down four times," Michele Yontef complained in an e-mail in July 2005 to a colleague. "I keep getting northwestern call center and they just must have had an operator meeting about pretext as every operator is clued in."

Yontef, who relayed another request for phone call records as early as February, was among those ordered to appear at this week's hearing.

Another company years ago even acknowledged breaking the law.

"We must break various rules of law in acquiring all the information we achieve for you," Touch Tone Information Inc. of Denver wrote to a law firm in 1998 that was seeking records of calls made on a calling card.

The FBI's top lawyers told agents as early as 2001 they can gather private information about Americans from data brokers, even information gleaned from mortgage applications and credit reports, which normally would be off-limits to the government under the U.S. Fair Credit Reporting Act.

FBI lawyers rationalized that even though data brokers may have obtained financial information, agents could still use the information because brokers were not acting as a consumer-reporting agency but rather as a data warehouse.

The FBI said it relies only on well-respected data brokers and expects agents to abide by the law. "The FBI can only collect and retain data available from commercial databases in strict compliance with applicable federal law," spokesman Mike Kortan said Monday.


 

Joey Vento and Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum: Stupid Is As Stupid Does. No Geno's Cheesesteaks with Santorum For Me.

In plain English, Rick backs Vento

By CHRISTINE OLLEY
olleyc@phillynews.com 215-854-5184

INJECTING HIMSELF in the middle of a South Philly controversy as burning- hot as a stainless-steel grill, U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (left) made an unscheduled stop at Geno's Steaks last night to wolf down a cheesesteak and stand behind its owner.

He voiced support - albeit in an odd, indirect way - for owner Joe Vento's much debated "Speak English" sign.

"It makes all the sense in the world to have a sign like this," he told a Daily News reporter after the paper was tipped off to his late-night visit. "There's not really an extensive menu here. I mean, come on, it's cheesesteaks, onions, et cetera. It's not that hard."

Santorum took a quick turn flipping shaved beef on Geno's grill and was cheered on by about 20 T-shirt-wearing supporters, mostly 26th Ward Republicans from South Philly, who'd been told the embattled GOP senator was coming.

"We are all out here for Santorum, mostly from the 26th Ward, big supporters of Vento and the First Amendment," said Andrew Dankanich, a GOP committeeman. "He's [Santorum] here because he's an American. America started in South Philly."

The senator's strange move, not formally announced to the media, seemed to signal his determination to continue using the raging immigration controversy as a means to close the gap with his Democratic election rival, state treasurer Bob Casey Jr. Most polls have shown Casey with a double-digit lead over the two-term incumbent.

Santorum recently aired TV ads charging that Casey had "joined with Ted Kennedy and other liberals in supporting a bill that grants amnesty to millions who've entered our country illegally... . That's just not fair." Casey has said the commercial distorts his position.

In the meantime, the owner of Geno's, cheesesteak impresario Joey Vento, has won national attention for his sign that reads: "This is America. When ordering, 'Speak English.' " Talk radio and blogs have been filled with both criticism and defense of the sign, which comes as the Mexican population of South Philadelphia is growing rapidly.

 

Torture of Mentally Ill Prisoner Led Administration To Pursue False Leads

In his new book “The One Percent Doctrine,” Ron Suskind details the story of Abu Zubaydah - a man President Bush once described as “one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States.” Suskind writes that Bush made this claim despite CIA and FBI analysis that showed Zubaydah was “mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be.” (“This guy is insane, [a] certifiable, split personality,” the FBI’s top al-Qaeda analyst said.)

Nevertheless, “under White House and Justice Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for harsh interrogation techniques.” Ultimately, his story became an example of how torture doesn’t work.

From the Washington Post’s review of the book:

Bush “was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,” Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, “Do some of these harsh methods really work?”

Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep.

Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety — against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, “thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each…target.” And so, Suskind writes, “the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.”

The answer to your question, President Bush, is “no.”


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