Free Internet Press Newsletter - Thursday February 22 2007 - (813)

Thursday February 22 2007 edition
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Gunmen, Children, Brutality And Bombs - Iraq's Dirty War 2007-02-22 02:53:00 At first they are ghost figures in the weapons' system monitor, glowing with body warmth and two-dimensional. >From inside the American Bradley fighting vehicle approaching Burhiz, an insurgent neighbourhood of Baquba, you quickly acclimatise to the reality of this representation of human life. Boys on bikes cycle backwards and forwards on a footbridge over a small canal lined with houses and groves of date palms. Women in headscarves look anxiously in groups from windows. Men walk with shopping bags. A gunman, clutching an AK-47, bobs his head around the corner of an alleyway close to a school. Once. Twice. On the third occasion a child, a boy seven or eight years old, is thrust out in front of him. The gunman holds him firmly by the arm and steps out for instant into full view of the Bradley's gunner to get a proper look, then yanks the boy back and disappears. "That is really dirty," says Specialist Chris Jankow, in the back of the Bradley, with a mixture of contempt, anger and frustration. "They know exactly what our rules of engagement are. They know we can't fire back." Read The Full Story National Guard May Be Sent To Iraq Early 2007-02-22 02:52:27 The Pentagon is planning to send more than 14,000 National Guard troops back to Iraq next year, shortening their time between deployments to meet the demands of President Bush’s buildup, Defense Department officials said Wednesday. National Guard officials told state commanders in Arkansas, Indiana, Oklahoma and Ohio last month that while a final decision had not been made, units from their states that had done previous tours in Iraq and Afghanistan could be designated to return to Iraq next year between January and June, the officials said. The unit from Oklahoma, a combat brigade with one battalion currently in Afghanistan, had not been scheduled to go back to Iraq until 2010, and brigades from the other three states not until 2009. Each brigade has about 3,500 soldiers. The accelerated timetable illustrates the cascading effect that the White House plan to increase the number of troops in Iraq by more than 21,000 is putting on the entire Army and in particular on Reserve forces, which officers predicted would face severe challenges in recruiting, training and equipping their forces. Read The Full Story Fatal Outbreak - 684 People Dead - Not A Cholera Epidemic, Insists Ethiopia 2007-02-22 02:51:38 Ethiopia is refusing to declare a suspected outbreak of cholera an epidemic despite the deaths of 684 people and infection of nearly 60,000 others in less than a year. Fearful of affecting revenue from food exports and tourism, the government is insisting that the disease is acute watery diarrhoea - a symptom of cholera - and maintains it is under control. The United Nations and other aid agencies in Addis Ababa say that laboratory tests show that the deaths are due to cholera. They want the government to declare the outbreak an emergency to raise local awareness and improve the international response. Paul Hebert, head of the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Ethiopia, said that while the disease was "not out of control", it was still spreading to new parts of the country and needed to be contained. "If it was called an epidemic by the authorities we could see a much more vigorous response from donors in terms of funding and mobilization," he said. Read The Full Story Insurgents Using Dirty Bombs Against Iraqi Civilians 2007-02-21 13:20:03 For the third time in a month, insurgents deployed a new and deadly tactic against Iraqi civilians Wednesday: A dirty bomb combining explosives with poisonous chlorine gas. A pickup track carrying canisters of the gas, which burns the skin and can be fatal after only a few concentrated breaths, exploded near a diesel-fuel station in southwestern Baghdad, killing at least 5 people and sending another 75 to hospitals, wheezing and coughing, for treatment, Interior Ministry and medical officials said. On Tuesday, a tanker truck filled with chlorine exploded north of Baghdad, killing 9 people and wounding 148, including 42 women and 52 children. At least one other attack with chlorine occurred on Jan. 28 in the Sunni-dominated province of Anbar, according to American military statements. Sixteen people died after a dump truck with explosives and a chlorine tank blew up in Ramadi. Read The Full Story Walter Reed Vows Swift Action 2007-02-21 13:19:26 The White House and congressional leaders called Tuesday for swift investigation and repair of the problems plaguing outpatient care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, as veterans groups and members of Congress in both parties expressed outrage over substandard housing and the slow, dysfunctional bureaucracy there. Top Army officials yesterday visited Building 18, the decrepit former hotel housing more than 80 recovering soldiers, outside the gates of the medical center. Army Secretary Francis Harvey and Vice Chief of Staff Richard Cody toured the building and spoke to soldiers as workers in protective masks stripped mold from the walls and tore up soiled carpets. At the White House, press secretary Tony Snow said that he spoke with President Bush Tuesday about Walter Reed and that the president told him: "Find out what the problem is and fix it." Read The Full Story Iraq: The British Endgame - All Gone By End Of 2008 2007-02-21 02:11:59 All British troops will be pulled out of Iraq by the end of 2008, starting with the withdrawal of 1,000 in the early summer, the Guardian has learned. Tony Blair is to announce the moves - the result of months of intense debate in Whitehall - within 24 hours, possibly later Wednesday, according to officials. The prime minister is expected to say that Britain intends to gradually reduce the number of troops in southern Iraq over the next 22 months as Iraqi forces take on more responsibility for the security of Basra and the surrounding areas. Ministers have taken on board the message coming from military chiefs over many months - namely that the presence of British troops on the streets of Basra is increasingly unnecessary, even provocative. The reduction of just 1,000 by early summer cited by officials Tuesday is significantly less than anticipated in reports that British troops in southern Iraq, presently totalling 7,200, would be cut by half by May. Read The Full Story Commentary: West May Yet Come To Regret Bullying Of Russia 2007-02-21 02:11:28 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Guardian correspondent Simon Jenkins, reporting from Moscow, Russia, and posted on the Guardian Unlimited's website edition for Wednesday, February 21, 2007. Mr. Jenkins writes that Russian President Putin has no interest in a new cold war and is struggling to modernize his economy. Yet he is rebuffed and insulted. Mr. Jenkins' commentary begins here: Countries, too, have feelings. So I am told by a Russian explaining the recent collapse in relations between Vladimir Putin and his one-time western admirers. "We have done well in the past 15 years, yet we get nothing but rebuffs and insults. Russia's rulers have their pride, you know." The truth is that Putin, like George Bush and Tony Blair, has an urgent date with history. He can plead two terms as president in which he has stabilized, if not deepened, Russian democracy, forced the pace of economic modernization, suppressed Chechen separatism and yet been remarkably popular. But leaders who dismiss domestic critics crave international opinion, and are unaccustomed to brickbats. Hence Putin's outburst at the Munich security conference this month, when he announced he would "avoid extra politesse" and speak his mind. Putin's apologists ask that he be viewed as victim of an epic miscalculation by the west. Here is a hard man avidly courted at first by Bush, Blair and other western leaders. After 9/11 he tolerated U.S. intervention along his southern border with bases north of Afghanistan. Yet when he had similar trouble in Chechnya, he was roundly abused. When he induced Milosevic to leave Kosovo (which he and not "the bombing" did), he got no thanks. Read The Full Story	Great Forests Hold Fateful Role In Climate Change 2007-02-22 02:52:46 Here on the edge of the silent and frozen northern tier of the Earth, the fate of the world's climate is buried beneath the snow and locked in the still limbs of aspen trees. Nearly half of the carbon that exists on land is contained in the sweeping boreal forests, which gird the Earth in the northern reaches of Canada, Alaska, Scandinavia and Russia. Scientists now fear that the steady rise in the temperature of the atmosphere and the increasing human activity in those lands are releasing that carbon, a process that could trigger a vicious cycle of even more warming. The prospect of the land itself accelerating climate change staggers scientists, as well as woodsmen such as Bob Austman, who stopped recently in a quiet stand of birch on the edge of the boreal forest to examine a jack rabbit's tracks. "There are big forces out there," he said succinctly. Read The Full Story Analysis: Britain's Move Renews Iraq War Doubts In U.S. 2007-02-22 02:52:07 As the British announced the beginning of their departure from Iraq Wednesday, President Bush's top foreign policy aide proclaimed it "basically a good-news story." Yet for an already besieged White House, the decision was doing a good job masquerading as a bad-news story. What national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley meant was that the British believe they have made enough progress in southern Iraq to turn over more of their sector to Iraqi forces. To many back in Washington, though, what resonated was that Bush's main partner in Iraq is starting to get out just as the president is sending in more U.S. troops. No matter the military merits, the British move, followed by a similar announcement by Denmark, roiled the political debate in Washington at perhaps the worst moment for the White House. Democrats seized on the news as evidence that Bush's international coalition is collapsing and that the United States is increasingly alone in a losing cause. Even some Republicans, and, in private, White House aides, agreed that the announcement sent an ill-timed message to the American public. "What I'm worried about is that the American public will be quite perplexed by the president adding forces while our principal ally is subtracting forces," said Sen. John W. Warner (R-Virginia), a longtime war supporter who opposes Bush's troop increase. "That is the burden we are being left with here." Read The Full Story Prodi Resigns As Italian Prime Minister 2007-02-22 02:51:17 Romano Prodi resigned last night as Italy's prime minister after his government had suffered an unexpected defeat in parliament over its alliance with the United States and its role in NATO. Giorgio Napolitano, who as Italy's president oversees the making and breaking of governments, is to open consultations on the political future Thursday. It was not ruled out that Prodi could be asked to form a new government, and a grouping of core parties in his coalition said last night that they were prepared to back him again. But his spokesman said: "He is ready to carry on as prime minister if, and only if, he is guaranteed the full support of all the parties in his majority from now on." That support was signally lacking in the senate a few hours earlier, when the government sought a vote of approval for its foreign policy. Discontent on the left of his sprawling, nine-party coalition over the extension of an American military base and Italy's open-ended commitment to the NATO-led force in Afghanistan lay behind a two-vote defeat. Since he had not lost a formal confidence vote, Prodi was not obliged to stand down. But, amid raucous scenes, members of the rightwing opposition claimed he had been stripped of his credibility. "There is no majority any more," declared a jubilant Renato Schifani, chief senate whip to Silvio Berlusconi, whom  Prodi defeated in a general election last year. "There is no Prodi government any more." Read The Full Story Iraqi Official Fired After Seeking Rape Investigation 2007-02-21 13:19:51 Political tensions are running high in Iraq Wednesday as Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki ordered the dismissal of a top Sunni official who called for an international investigation into the alleged rape of a Sunni woman by Iraqi security forces. Maliki did not give a reason for his decision to dismiss Sheikh Ahmad Abdul Ghafoor al-Samaraei, the head of the Sunni Endowment, whose organization cares for Sunni mosques and shrines in Iraq. Samaraei, speaking to the Al-Arabiya television network from Amman, Jordan, said that he knew of many cases of rape by Iraqi security forces, but victims were reluctant to come forward because of the stigma attached to the crime. He also said he also knew of cases of rape by Sunni clergy members. Read The Full Story Inflation Slightly Higher Than Expected 2007-02-21 13:18:33 Consumer prices accelerated last month on a wide range of items, from food to health care to hotel rooms, nudging the overall rate of inflation a bit higher than expected. The Labor Department said Wednesday that overall inflation climbed 0.2 percent in January after a rise of 0.4 percent in December. And a less volatile measure of consumer prices that excludes energy and food costs rose 0.3 percent last month after climbing 0.1 percent in December. Investors on Wall Street, who were expecting that inflation would rise at a slower rate, reacted to the new data by pushing stock prices lower. In early trading, the Dow Jones industrial average, the Standard and Poor’s 500-stock index and the Nasdaq composite were all trading off Tuesday’s closing levels. Read The Full Story McCain: Rumsfeld 'One Of Worst Secretarys of Defense In History' 2007-02-21 02:11:44 John McCain, in an effort to reinvent himself as the candidate of the Republican establishment in the 2008 elections, has denounced the former Pentagon chief, Donald Rumsfeld, as one of the worst in history. McCain's comments, made during a campaign swing through South Carolina, were seen today as part of a delicate balancing act for the senator from Arizona, who is trying to shed his image as a maverick and win over conservatives and the religious right. In that vein, McCain has positioned himself as a strong supporter of the war on Iraq - as are the majority of Republican primary voters, but he accused Rumsfeld of compromising that mission by failing to send enough troops for the invasion. "We are paying a very heavy price for the mismanagement - that's the kindest word I can give you - of Donald Rumsfeld, of this war," McCain told a community for retired people near the resort area of Hilton Head. "The price is very, very heavy and I regret it enormously." He added: "I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history." Read The Full Story Guantanamo Detainees Lose Federal Court Appeal 2007-02-21 02:11:06 A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that hundreds of detainees in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, do not have the right to challenge their imprisonment in federal courts, a victory for the Bush administration that could lead to the Supreme Court again addressing the issue. In its 2 to 1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld one of the central components of the Military Commissions Act, the law enacted last year by a then-Republican-controlled Congress that stripped Guantanamo detainees of their right to such habeas corpus petitions. Lawyers have filed the petitions on behalf of virtually all of the nearly 400 detainees still at Guantanamo, challenging President Bush's right to hold them indefinitely without charges. Tuesday's ruling effectively dismisses the cases. Attorneys for the detainees vowed to quickly petition the Supreme Court to hear the case. Read The Full Story
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