Free Internet Press Newsletter - Monday February 12 2007 - (813)

Monday February 12 2007 edition
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U.S. Troops In Iraq Are Short 4,000 Humvee Armor Kits 2007-02-12 03:39:42 The Army is working to fill a shortfall in Iraq of thousands of advanced Humvee armor kits designed to reduce U.S. troop deaths from roadside bombs - including a rising threat from particularly lethal weapons linked to Iran  and known as "explosively formed penetrators" (EFP) - that are now inflicting 70 percent of the American casualties in the country, according to U.S. military and civilian officials. The additional protection is needed for thousands of U.S. reinforcement troops flowing into Baghdad, where these devastating weapons - used primarily by Shiite fighters - are particularly prevalent, said the officials. U.S. Army units in Iraq and Afghanistan lack more than 4,000 of the latest Humvee armor kit, known as FRAG Kit 5, according to U.S. officials. The Army has ramped up production of the armor, giving priority to troops in Baghdad, but the upgrade is not scheduled to be completed until this summer, Army officials said. That is well into the timeline for major operations launched last week to quell violence by Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias, which the U.S. military now views as the top security threat in Iraq. Read The Full Story Republicans Expect Defections As House Debates Iraq War Resolution 2007-02-12 03:39:11 Three days of intense debate over the Iraq war begins in the House Monday, with Democrats planning to propose a narrowly worded rebuke of President Bush's troop buildup and Republicans girding for broad defections on their side. Both parties will jockey for prime time before the C-SPAN cameras, with leaders claiming the best time slots and rank-and-file members trying to make the most of the five minutes each will be allotted. If all 435 House members use their five minutes, debate will last 36 hours. It is likely to begin by late morning and run until midnight tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday. A vote is expected Friday. After watching their counterparts in the Senate stall and sputter last week, unable to agree on ground rules for a debate on Iraq, House leaders are forging ahead, determined to send a statement to the White House to condemn a troop buildup. Read The Full Story Questions Grow About Top CNBC Anchor Maria Bartiromo 2007-02-12 03:38:22 In November 2005, Citigroup gathered top clients at a lush spa resort in Napa Valley for two days of wine tasting and a chance to road test some of the hottest luxury cars on the market. The test drivers included Todd S. Thomson, then the chief executive of Citigroup’s wealth management arm, car collectors, clients of the bank and Maria Bartiromo, the CNBC anchor and celebrity guest. Their charge: To pick the 2006 car of the year for Robb Report, the luxury magazine. Like many of the judges, Bartiromo chose the bright red Ferrari Spider, according to one attendee. So did Thomson, a car enthusiast. “It’s the ultimate package of sex and performance,” he told a reporter for the magazine. Read The Full Story News Media Figures May Be Reluctant Witnesses In Libby Case 2007-02-12 03:37:25 Defense Exhibit 1972, a tape-recorded interview from the "Imus in the Morning" radio show, is another of those revealing moments in the perjury trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. "So ... what happened?" radio host Don Imus asks NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell about her confusing reporting on an undercover CIA officer. "Were you drunk?" "I obviously screwed up," Mitchell responds in the exchange, which Libby's defense hopes to play for the jury in coming days. "I guess I was drunk," she jokes. Just when you thought it was impossible for more harm to come to the national news media's reputation, the defense in the trial of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff is about to present its case. Starting Monday, when Libby's attorneys try to show that he did not intentionally lie about his role in leaking the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, they will rely heavily on a string of journalists as witnesses. In several ways, those witnesses will be asked to raise doubts about the testimony and accuracy of other reporters, and some may end up tarnishing themselves or their sources. Read The Full Story U.S. Fires Artillery Rounds Into Pakistan 2007-02-11 16:20:05 Asserting a right to self-defense, American forces in eastern Afghanistan have launched artillery rounds into Pakistan to strike Taliban fighters who attack remote U.S. outposts, the commander of U.S. forces in the region said Sunday. The skirmishes are politically sensitive because Pakistan's government, regarded by the Bush administration as an important ally against Islamic extremists, has denied that it allows U.S. forces to strike inside its territory. The use of the largely ungoverned Waziristan area of Pakistan as a haven for Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters has become a greater irritant between Washington and Islamabad since Pakistan put in place a peace agreement there in September that was intended to stop cross-border incursions. Read The Full Story U.S. Military Officials Say Iran Sending Explosives Into Iraq 2007-02-11 16:19:37 Iranian security forces, taking orders from the "highest levels" of the Iranian government, are funneling sophisticated explosives to extremist groups in Iraq, and the weapons have grown increasingly deadly for U.S.-led troops over the past two years, senior defense officials said Sunday in Baghdad. Three defense officials from the U.S.-led Multi-National Force in Baghdad, laid out for reporters what they described as a "growing body of evidence" that Iran is manufacturing and exporting into Iraq the armor piercing explosives, known as "explosively formed penetrators," or EFPs, that have killed more than 170 coalition troops, and wounded more than 620 others, in the past two years. "Iran is a significant contributor to attacks on coalition forces," said a senior defense official in Baghdad, who like the two other officials spoke on condition of anonymity. He added that Iran is the only country in the region that produces these weapons. Read The Full Story McCain Taps Cash He Once Sought To Limit 2007-02-11 03:18:56 Just about a year-and-a-half ago, Sen. John McCain went to court to try to curtail the influence of a group to which A. Jerrold Perenchio gave $9 million, saying it was trying to "evade and violate" new campaign laws with voter ads ahead of the midterm elections. As McCain launches his own presidential campaign, however, he is counting on Perenchio, the founder of the Univision Spanish-language media empire, to raise millions of dollars as co-chairman of the Arizona Republican's national finance committee. In his early efforts to secure the support of the Republican establishment he has frequently bucked, McCain has embraced some of the same political-money figures, forces and tactics he pilloried during a 15-year crusade to reduce the influence of big donors, fundraisers and lobbyists in elections. That includes enlisting the support of Washington lobbyists as well as key players in the fundraising machine that helped President Bush defeat McCain in the 2000 Republican primaries. Read The Full Story Commentary: In Iraq, Victory Is Not An Option 2007-02-11 03:15:30 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by William E. Odom and appears in the Washington Post edition for Sunday, February 11, 2007. Odom, a retired Army lieutenant general, was head of Army intelligence and director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan. He served on the National Security Council staff under Jimmy Carter. A West Point graduate with a Ph.D. from Columbia University, Odom teaches at Yale and is a fellow of the Hudson Institute. His commentary follows: The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf that separates President Bush's illusions from the realities of the war. Victory, as the president sees it, requires a stable liberal democracy in Iraq that is pro-American. The NIE describes a war that has no chance of producing that result. In this critical respect, the NIE, the consensus judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, is a declaration of defeat. Its gloomy implications - hedged, as intelligence agencies prefer, in rubbery language that cannot soften its impact  - put the intelligence community and the American public on the same page. The public awakened to the reality of failure in Iraq last year and turned the Republicans out of control of Congress to wake it up. But a majority of its members are still asleep, or only half-awake to their new writ to end the war soon. Perhaps this is not surprising. Americans do not warm to defeat or failure, and our politicians are famously reluctant to admit their own responsibility for anything resembling those un-American outcomes. So they beat around the bush, wringing hands and debating "nonbinding resolutions" that oppose the president's plan to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq. For the moment, the collision of the public's clarity of mind, the president's relentless pursuit of defeat and Congress's anxiety has paralyzed us. We may be doomed to two more years of chasing the mirage of democracy in Iraq and possibly widening the war to Iran. But this is not inevitable. A Congress, or a president, prepared to quit the game of "who gets the blame" could begin to alter American strategy in ways that will vastly improve the prospects of a more stable Middle East. Read The Full Story	Across The Arab World, A Widening Rift 2007-02-12 03:39:28 Egypt is the Arab world's largest Sunni Muslim country, but as a writer once quipped, it has a Shiite heart and a Sunni mind. In its eclectic popular culture, Sunnis enjoy a sweet dish with raisins and nuts to mark Ashura, the most sacred Shiite Muslim holiday. Raucous festivals bring Cairenes into the street to celebrate the birthdays of Shiite saints, a practice disparaged by austere Sunnis. The city's Islamic quarter tangles like a vine around a shrine to Imam Hussein, Shiite Islam's most revered figure. The syncretic blend makes the words of Mahmoud Ahmed, a book vendor sitting on the shrine's marble and granite promenade, even more striking. "The Shiites are rising," he said, arching his eyebrows in an expression suggesting both revelation and fear. The growing Sunni-Shiite divide is roiling an Arab world as unsettled as at any time in a generation. Fought in speeches, newspaper columns, rumors swirling through cafes and the Internet, and occasional bursts of strife, the conflict is predominantly shaped by politics: a disintegrating Iraq, an ascendant Iran, a sense of Arab powerlessness and a persistent suspicion of American intentions. But the division has begun to seep into the region's social fabric, too. The sectarian fault line has long existed and sometimes ruptured, but never, perhaps, has it been revealed in such a stark, disruptive fashion. Read The Full Story Monsanto Dumped Toxic Waste In U.K. 2007-02-12 03:38:48 Evidence has emerged that the Monsanto chemical company paid contractors to dump thousands of tons of highly toxic waste in British landfill sites, knowing that their chemicals were liable to contaminate wildlife and people. Sunday, Britain's Environment Agency said it had launched an inquiry after the chemicals were found to be polluting underground water supplies and the atmosphere 30 years after they were dumped. According to the agency it could cost up to £100 million ($200 million) to clean up a site in south Wales that has been called "one of the most contaminated" in the country. A previously unseen government report read by the Guardian shows that 67 chemicals, including Agent Orange derivatives, dioxins and PCBs which could have been made only by Monsanto, are leaking from one unlined porous quarry that was not authorized to take chemical wastes. The Brofiscin quarry on the edge of the village of Groesfaen, near Cardiff, erupted in 2003, spilling fumes over the surrounding area, but the community has been told little about the real condition of what is in the pit. Sunday the government was criticized for failing to publish information about the scale and exact nature of this contamination. Read The Full Story Noxious Fumes Cause Hundreds To Be Evacuated From Spokane Mall 2007-02-12 03:37:50 Hundreds of people were evacuated from a Spokane, Washington, mall Sunday afternoon after noxious fumes of unknown origin sickened people inside, fire officials said. KREM-TV reported late Sunday night that 37 people had sought treatment at area hospitals. Spokane police called the fumes a "possible chemical irritant," but officials were unsure what the irritant was. Of those seeking treatment, 32 went to Holy Family Hospital and another four went to Sacred Heart Medical Center. Most complaints were about eye, nose and throat irritation. None of the conditions were considered life threatening, Fire Chief Bobby Williams told The Spokesman-Review newspaper. Read The Full Story Princeton ESP Lab To Shut Down After 30 Years 2007-02-12 03:35:42 A laboratory dedicated to extra-sensory perception and telekinesis at the prestigious Princeton University in New Jersey is to close after nearly 30 years of research. The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory was set up in 1979 by Richard Jahn, the university's former dean of applied science and engineering, to investigate whether human consciousness could interfere with sensitive computers and machinery, a possibility described as "functionally devastating" for people in aeroplane cockpits, medical operating rooms and intercontinental ballistic missile silos. The lab, which raised eyebrows among university staff and drew ridicule from Nobel prizewinners, attracted an estimated $10 million (£5 million) from philanthropists and is set to transfer to a nearby non-profit organization called the International Consciousness Research Laboratories. The announcement was posted on the lab's website, for those who had failed to sense that the closure was imminent. Read The Full Story WiFi Turns Internet Into Criminal Haven 2007-02-11 16:19:53 Detectives arrived last summer at a high-rise apartment building in Arlington County, warrant in hand, to nab a suspected pedophile who had traded child pornography online. It was to be a routine, mostly effortless arrest. But when they pounded on the door, detectives found an elderly woman who, they quickly concluded, had nothing to do with the crime. The real problem was her computer's wireless router, a device sending a signal through her 10-story building and allowing savvy neighbors a free path to the Internet from the privacy of their homes. Perhaps one of those neighbors, authorities said, was stealthily uploading photographs of nude children. Doing so essentially rendered him or her untraceable. Read The Full Story Iran Defiant, But Wants Nuclear Talks 2007-02-11 16:19:24 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad struck a defiant yet vague tone on Sunday, telling Iranians during the 28th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution that their country would not give up uranium enrichment but was prepared to negotiate. The hard-line leader's remarks, which came days before a U.N. Security Council deadline demanding Tehran halt enrichment or face further sanctions, fell short of an expected announcement that Iran had started installing 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium at its Natanz plant. "The Iranian nation on Feb. 11, 2007, passed the arduous passes and stabilized its definite (nuclear) right," said Ahmadinejad. He did not elaborate, but his comments indicated that Iran had achieved proficiency in nuclear fuel cycle technology. Ahmadinejad said his country's program would remain within the limits of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that bans production of nuclear weapons. Read The Full Story Threats Sent To Offices Of Financial Companies 2007-02-11 03:15:58 Two pipe bombs delivered late last month to Kansas City addresses appear to be linked to a suspect who has been sending increasingly threatening letters to financial institutions since at least 2005, a corporate counterterrorism expert said Saturday. Officials have suggested in both cases that the devices were not working bombs that could have exploded. Instead, the devices appear to be a sign that the suspect, calling himself "the Bishop," may be closer to sending live bombs, said Fred Burton. FBI spokesman Jeff Lanza said Saturday that the case is being investigated by multiple FBI field offices and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, but he declined to comment on a report Burton issued on the case Wednesday. Burton is vice president of counterterrorism for Stratfor, an Austin-based security and intelligence firm. He writes a weekly terrorism report for clients and said he has many sources within law enforcement. Read The Full Story
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