Free Internet Press Newsletter - Sunday November 5 2006 - (813)

Sunday November 5 2006 edition
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Democrats, On The Offensive, Could Gain Both Houses Of Congress 2006-11-04 23:12:38 Two days before a bitterly fought midterm election, Democrats have moved into position to recapture the House and have laid siege to the Senate, setting the stage for a dramatic recasting of the power structure in Washington, D.C., for President Bush's final two years in office, according to a Washington Post analysis of competitive races across the country. In the battle for the House, Democrats appear almost certain to pick up more than the 15 seats needed to regain the majority. Republicans virtually concede 10 seats, and a split of the 30 tossup races would add an additional 15 to the Democratic column. The Senate poses a tougher challenge for Democrats, who need to gain six seats to take control of that chamber. A three-seat gain is almost assured, but they would have to find the other three seats from four states considered to have tossup races - Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri and Montana. Read The Full Story Bush Says U.S. Should Stay In Iraq For Oil ... Well, NOW He Says That 2006-11-04 23:11:11 During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush and his aides sternly dismissed suggestions that the war was all about oil. "Nonsense," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared. "This is not about that," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. Now, more than 3 1/2 years later, someone else is asserting that the war is about oil - President Bush. As he barnstorms across the country campaigning for Republican candidates in Tuesday's elections, Bush has been citing oil as a reason to stay in Iraq. If the United States pulled its troops out prematurely and surrendered the country to insurgents, he warns audiences, it would effectively hand over Iraq's considerable petroleum reserves to terrorists who would use it as a weapon against other countries. Read The Full Story Army National Guard, Reserves Brace For Accelerated Call-Ups To Iraq 2006-11-04 23:09:05 The Army's National Guard and Reserve are bracing for possible new and accelerated call-ups, spurred by high demand for U.S. troops in Iraq, that leaders caution could undermine the citizen-soldier force as it struggles to rebuild. Two Army National Guard combat brigades with about 7,000 troops have been identified recently in classified rotational plans for possible special deployment to Iraq, according to senior Army and Pentagon officials, who asked that the specific units not be named. One brigade could be diverted to Iraq next year from another assignment, and the other could be sent there in 2008, a year ahead of schedule. Next year, the number of Army Guard soldiers providing security in Iraq will surge to more than 6,000 in about 50 companies, compared with 20 companies two years ago, Guard officials said. "We thought we'd see a downturn in operational tempo, but that hasn't happened," said one official. Read The Full Story Show Us Your Papers: US To Require Permission to LEAVE America 2006-11-04 17:11:22   Beginning on Jan. 14, 2007, everyone will be on the 'no-fly' list for international travel.  The Department of Homeland Security has proposed a new rule requiring airlines, cruise ships, and even fishing boats to have authorization for every passenger to LEAVE or enter the United States.   With the new rules, every American is now a captive of the United States government.  While many will say "That's fine, I love America, I don't want to leave." it severely restricts every American's ability to travel freely, or decide to leave for a country that hasn't turned into an evil dictatorship. Read The Full Story Anger Joins Grief For Family Feeling Misled By Military Over Son's Death 2006-11-04 16:52:50 When Tricia and Gregg White were told by the Marines in 2004 that their son, Lance Cpl. Russell White, had been killed in Afghanistan in a gun-cleaning accident, their hearts went out to the marine who had been holding the gun. Corporal White’s brother Adam memorized a prayer of forgiveness, said the Whites, and headed to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, to visit the marine, Lance Cpl. Federico Pimienta. The Whites had been told he was on a suicide watch. “I immediately put myself in his parents’ position, and I just couldn’t imagine,” said Mrs. White. “We didn’t want two people to die because of what we thought was an unfortunate accident.” But their outpouring of forgiveness came months before they learned that, whatever had happened, their son’s death did not result from a gun-cleaning accident. It was before they learned that Corporal Pimienta had lied to investigators and that he had been repeatedly chastised for mishandling weapons. It was before he failed to appear at his court-martial, having fled to Europe. Read The Full Story Study: U.S. Lags In Health Care 2006-11-04 16:51:19 Americans have a harder time than residents of several other countries getting after-hours appointments with a nurse or primary care physician without going to an emergency room, a study released Thursday found. Forty percent of U.S. primary care doctors said they had arrangements for after-hours care, according to the survey of more than 6,000 physicians in seven countries. That compared with 95 percent in the Netherlands, 90 percent in New Zealand, 87 percent in the United Kingdom, 76 percent in Germany and 47 percent in Canada. The study, published online by the journal Health Affairs, also found that the United States trails other countries in adopting electronic medical records and computerized systems to remind patients about follow-up care, prompt physicians to give patients test results and warn of potentially harmful drug interactions. It found that primary care doctors in America were less likely to have financial incentives to improve the quality of the care they provide. Read The Full Story Neocons Turn On Bush For Incompetence On Iraq War 2006-11-04 00:05:23 Several prominent neoconservatives have turned on George Bush days before critical midterm elections, lambasting his administration for incompetence in the handling of the Iraq war and questioning the wisdom of the 2003 invasion they were instrumental in promoting. Richard Perle and Kenneth Adelman, who were both Pentagon advisers before the war, Michael Rubin, a former senior official in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, and David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, were among the neoconservatives who recanted to Vanity Fair magazine in an article that could influence Tuesday's battle for the control of Congress. The Iraq war has been the dominant issue in the election. "I think the influence will be on morale [among Republicans]," said Steven Clemons, the head of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. "I think they are confusing the right. What this is yielding is ambivalence, and people will stay at home." Perle, a member of the influential Defense Policy Board that advised the defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, in the run-up to the war, is as outspoken in denouncing the conduct of the war as he was once bullish on the invasion. He blamed "dysfunction" in the Bush administration for the present quagmire. Read The Full Story Editorial: Blinding The Taxpayers On Iraq 2006-11-04 00:04:03 Intellpuke: The following editorial, from the November 4, 2006, edition of the New York Times, criticizes the GOP-led Congress for shutting down the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, the "one effective oversight agency that has shown it could produce results". The Times editorial follows: Talk about arbitrary deadlines. Iraq is still an open-ended tragedy, and there is mounting evidence that without vigilant, independent monitoring, reconstruction contracts will waste American tax dollars without delivering the results that Iraqis have been promised. Still, the Republican-controlled Congress has voted to close down, as of next Oct. 1, the one effective oversight agency that has shown it could produce results. The deadline for ending the work of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction was included in the conference report on a huge military authorization bill - inserted at the last minute in the back room by the staff of Duncan Hunter, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. It should be promptly lifted by the new Congress to be elected next week. That ought to be possible even if the Republicans stay in charge, since neither the House nor the Senate included such a deadline in its original legislation. But if the Republicans do lose their House majority, Mr. Hunter will no longer be able carry out such mischief. Read The Full Story Anxious GOP Focuses On Not Losing Senate 2006-11-04 00:02:31 Republicans entered the campaign's final weekend Friday desperately trying to keep control of the Senate, with three or four tossup races likely to determine whether the GOP can cling to power there even as it sees its hold on the House eroding. Strong public opposition to the Iraq war continues to hurt Republicans in many key races, but the Bush administration struck a defiant tone, signaling that the election results will not influence its strategy. Tuesday's balloting might influence Congress, Vice President Cheney said in an interview with ABC News, "but the president's made clear what his objective is. It's victory in Iraq. And it's full speed ahead on that basis. And that's exactly what we're going to do." Cheney was responding in part to sharp criticism launched in a Vanity Fair article by two of the Iraq invasion's strongest advocates: Richard N. Perle of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee and former Pentagon official Kenneth Adelman. Perle said the administration's war policy had become dysfunctional, adding: "You have to hold the president responsible. ... I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty." Read The Full Story	Democrats, On The Offensive, Could Gain Both Houses Of Congress 2006-11-04 23:11:57 Two days before a bitterly fought midterm election, Democrats have moved into position to recapture the House and have laid siege to the Senate, setting the stage for a dramatic recasting of the power structure in Washington, D.C., for President Bush's final two years in office, according to a Washington Post analysis of competitive races across the country. In the battle for the House, Democrats appear almost certain to pick up more than the 15 seats needed to regain the majority. Republicans virtually concede 10 seats, and a split of the 30 tossup races would add an additional 15 to the Democratic column. The Senate poses a tougher challenge for Democrats, who need to gain six seats to take control of that chamber. A three-seat gain is almost assured, but they would have to find the other three seats from four states considered to have tossup races - Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri and Montana. Read The Full Story Secret War Games Showed 400,000 Troops Needed To Invade, Hold Iraq 2006-11-04 23:10:20 A series of secret U.S. war games in 1999 showed that an invasion and post-war administration of Iraq would require 400,000 troops, nearly three times the number there now. And even then, the games showed, the country still had a chance of dissolving into chaos. In the simulation, called Desert Crossing, 70 military, diplomatic and intelligence participants concluded the high troop levels would be needed to keep order, seal borders and take care of other security needs. The documents came to light Saturday through a Freedom of Information Act request by George Washington University's National Security Archive, an independent research institute and library. "The conventional wisdom is the U.S. mistake in Iraq was not enough troops," said Thomas Blanton, the archive's director. "But the Desert Crossing war game in 1999 suggests we would have ended up with a failed state even with 400,000 troops on the ground." Read The Full Story Haggard's Church Dismisses Him For 'Sexually Immoral Conduct' 2006-11-04 23:07:37 In the wake of accusations by a former male escort that the Rev. Ted Haggard had a three-year sexual relationship with him, an independent oversight board at Haggard’s New Life Church found that he had “committed sexually immoral conduct” on Saturday and dismissed him as senior pastor. Over the last few days, Haggard’s career as the founder of the 14,000-member New Life megachurch in Colorado Springs and as leader of the National Association of Evangelicals has crumbled under the weight of the accusations and his explanations. He initially denied knowing the former escort, Michael Jones, 49, of Denver, Colorado. By Friday, Haggard revised his account and said he had gotten a massage from Jones and bought methamphetamine from him. Jones has denied selling drugs. Haggard said he never used the drugs. He has publicly denied any sexual relationship. Nonetheless, he resigned on Thursday as president of the evangelical association and stepped down temporarily as the senior pastor of New Life until its Overseer Board, an independent panel made up of four pastors from other churches, completed an investigation. Read The Full Story GOP Glum As It Struggles To Hold Congress 2006-11-04 16:53:21 The battle for Congress rolled into a climactic final weekend with Republican Party leaders saying the best outcome they could foresee was losing 12 seats in the House, and that they were increasingly steeling themselves for the loss of at least 15 and therefore control of the House for the first time in 12 years. Democrats and Republicans said the battle over the Senate had grown fluid going into the final hours before the elections Tuesday. Democrats said they thought they were almost certain to gain four or five seats and still had a shot at the six they need to take control. Republicans were pouring money into Senate races in Michigan and Maryland this weekend to take advantage of what they described as last-minute opportunities, however slight, in states currently held by Democrats, while a new poll Saturday showed that Senator Conrad Burns, the Montana Republican, was tied with his challenger after a visit there by President Bush. Read The Full Story Ahead Of Saddam Hussein Verdict, Iraq Imposes Tough Curfew 2006-11-04 16:52:14 Iraqi officials on Saturday announced an all-day Sunday curfew in Baghdad and four provinces, fearing that the expected announcement of a verdict in the trial of former leader Saddam Hussein could inflame nationalist and sectarian passions and escalate the daily deluge of violence. "We hope that the verdict will give this man what he deserves for the crimes he committed against the Iraqi people," Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said in remarks carried on state television. Saying a verdict in the 12-month trial would be announced Sunday, Maliki called on people "to remain calm and express their happiness in an appropriate way in this current situation, in a way that does not risk their lives." The declaration of a curfew came as Iraq's Interior Ministry announced the deaths of 53 suspected al-Qaeda in Iraq members in a pitched, four-hour battle with police Saturday afternoon in Tuwaitha, just south of Baghdad. Read The Full Story FDA Halts Anthrax Vaccine Testing On Humans 2006-11-04 16:50:36 Federal drug regulators halted plans by a California biotechnology firm to begin human testing of an anthrax vaccine this month, throwing the fate of the troubled program into doubt. VaxGen Inc. officials said Friday that it was unclear how long it would take to address Food and Drug Administration concerns about the vaccine's reliability. The delay prompted the Department of Health and Human Services to warn the company that it might terminate work potentially worth nearly $1 billion. The news sent The company's stock plummeting 56 percent, or $2.22, Friday to close at $1.77 a share. Read The Full Story U.S. Seeks To Silence Detainees, Claims Interrogation Methods Are National Security 2006-11-04 00:04:44 The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the "alternative interrogation methods" that their captors used to get them to talk. The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and that their release - even to the detainees' own attorneys - "could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage." Terrorists could use the information to train in counter-interrogation techniques and foil government efforts to elicit information about their methods and plots, according to government documents submitted to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton on Oct. 26. The battle over legal rights for terrorism suspects detained for years in CIA prisons centers on Majid Khan, a 26-year-old former Catonsville resident who was one of 14 high-value detainees transferred in September from the "black" sites to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many detainees at Guantanamo, is seeking emergency access to him. Read The Full Story Newspapers For Military Say 'Rumsfeld Must Go' 2006-11-04 00:03:16 Just days after President Bush publicly affirmed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's job security through the end of his term, a family of publications catering to the military will publish an editorial calling for the defense secretary's removal. The editorial, released to NBC News on Friday ahead of its Monday publication date, stated, "It is one thing for the majority of Americans to think Rumsfeld has failed. But when the nation's current military leaders start to break publicly with their defense secretary, then it is clear that he is losing control of the institution he ostensibly leads." The editorial will appear just one day before the midterm election, in which GOP candidates have been losing ground, according to recent polls. "This is not about the midterm elections," continued the editorial, which will appear in the Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times, and Marine Corps Times on Monday. "Regardless of which party wins Nov. 7, the time has come, Mr. President, to face the hard bruising truth: Donald Rumsfeld must go." Read The Full Story North Korea Wants Japan Out Of Nuke Talks 2006-11-04 00:01:45 North Korea lashed out at Japanese officials as "political imbeciles" on Saturday for saying they will not accept the communist nation as a nuclear power, and said Tokyo should not take part in revived talks on the North's atomic program. North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that "there is no need for Japan to participate in (the talks) as a local delegate because it is no more than a state of the U.S. and it is enough for Tokyo just to be informed of the results of the talks by Washington." Japan is a common target for the North Korea's hostile rhetoric, stemming from Tokyo's imperial occupation of the Korean peninsula in the early 20th century. The North has called before for Japan to be excluded from the talks. Read The Full Story
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