Free Internet Press Newsletter - Wednesday February 7 2007 - (813)

Wednesday February 7 2007 edition
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Grand Jury Tapes Bolster Case Against Libby, Describe Cheney As 'Upset' With Wilson 2007-02-07 02:41:30 Vice President Cheney and other senior White House officials regarded a former ambassador's accusations that President Bush misled the nation in going to war in Iraq as an unparalleled political assault and, early in the summer of 2003, held daily discussions about how to debunk them, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told a federal grand jury. In grand jury audiotapes played Tuesday during Libby's perjury trial, the vice president's then-chief of staff said Cheney had been "upset" and "disturbed" by criticisms from former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV that Bush had twisted intelligence to justify the war. And Libby said that Karl Rove had been "animated" by a conversation with Robert D. Novak, in which the conservative columnist told Rove he "had a bad taste in his mouth" about Wilson and was writing a column about him. Libby is charged with lying to the grand jury as it investigated a leak by administration officials of the identity of Wilson's wife, an undercover CIA officer named Valerie Plame. The sound of Libby's clear, measured voice in the tapes - filling a courtroom in U.S. District Court here for six hours over the past two days - buttresses the prosecution's case in two significant ways. Libby's portrayal of the zeal to discredit Wilson's claims, reaching to the White House's highest echelons, reinforces Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's assertion that the criticism of war provoked such a political crisis among Bush's top aides that it is unlikely the defendant simply forgot his role in the leak, as defense attorneys contend. Read The Full Story Military Wants More Civilians To Help In Iraq 2007-02-07 02:40:57 Senior military officers, including members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have told President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that the new Iraq strategy could fail unless more civilian agencies step forward quickly to carry out plans for reconstruction and political development. The complaints reflect fresh tensions between the Pentagon and the State Department over personnel demands that have fallen most heavily on the military. They also draw on a deeper reservoir of concerns among officers who have warned that a military buildup alone cannot solve Iraq’s problems, and who now fear that the military will bear a disproportionate burden if Bush’s strategy falls short. Among particular complaints, the officers cited a request from the office of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice  that military personnel temporarily fill more than one-third of 350 new State Department jobs in Iraq that are to be created under the new strategy. At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Gates made clear that he shared the officers’ concerns, telling senators, “If you were troubled by the memo, that was mild compared to my reaction when I saw it.” Read The Full Story Detained Saudis Described As Democracy Activists 2007-02-07 02:37:58 Saudi police have arrested 10 men and accused them of collecting donations to fund terrorist acts outside the kingdom, said the Interior Ministry, but a lawyer and a prominent dissident said that at least seven of the men are Saudi democracy activists whose arrest was a government attempt to abort their civic rights work. Matrouk al-Faleh, who was jailed in 2004 for calling for more democracy in the kingdom, said the seven men, most of them lawyers and professors, had been waiting for government approval to set up a civic rights group. They also had planned to present authorities this week with a list of more than 40 prisoners without legal representation whom they intended to defend. "The terrorist allegation is a coverup," said Faleh. "It was used against me as well when I was arrested. ... This is an attempt to abort the civic rights work they were planning." Read The Full Story Bush 2008 Budget Doubles Spending To Replace Military Equipment 2007-02-06 15:22:56 More than a quarter of the money the Bush administration is requesting in the 2008 fiscal year for military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere would go toward repairing and replacing military equipment, according to budget figures released Monday by the Pentagon. The scale of the request illustrates the toll that years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan are taking on the military’s vehicles, aircraft, weapons and other equipment; but some budget experts say its size also raises questions about whether the military is using the argument that troops fighting in the field need equipment in top condition to increase purchases of equipment generally. The budget request, if approved by Congress, would allocate $37.6 billion for refurbishment, from a war budget of $141 billion in the fiscal year beginning on Oct. 1. Read The Full Story Justice Department Attorney Defends Firings Of Prosecutors 2007-02-06 15:22:25 The Justice Department removed a prosecutor in Arkansas without cause in order to make room for a former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove aide, a senior Justice official conceded in testimony today. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told senators that the new interim prosecutor in Little Rock, J. Timothy Griffin, has more experience as a prosecutor than the U.S. attorney he replaced. McNulty also defended the recent firings of six other U.S. attorneys in the West and Southwest for unspecified "performance-related" problems, and said the Justice Department would strongly oppose Democratic legislation to limit the attorney general's power to name replacements. Read The Full Story Saudis Work Openly To Counter Iran In Middle East 2007-02-06 03:06:47 With the prospect of three civil wars looming over the Middle East - and Iran poised to gain from them all - Saudi Arabia has abandoned its behind-the-scenes checkbook diplomacy and taken on a central, aggressive role in reshaping the region’s conflicts. On Tuesday, the kingdom is playing host in Mecca to the leaders of Hamas and Fatah, the two feuding Palestinian factions, in what both sides say could lead to a national unity government and reduced bloodshed. Last fall, senior Saudi officials met secretly with Israeli leaders about how to establish a Palestinian state. In recent months, Saudi Arabia has also increased its public involvement in Iraq and its support of the Sunni-led government in Lebanon. The process is shaping up as a counteroffensive to efforts by Iran to establish itself as the regional superpower, according to diplomats, analysts and officials in Saudi Arabia and throughout the region. Some even say that the recent Saudi commitment to temper the price of oil is aimed at undermining Iran’s economy, although officials here deny that. “We realized that we have to wake up,” said a high-ranking Saudi diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. “Someone rang the bell, ‘Be careful, something is moving’.” Read The Full Story Children Of War: The Generation Traumatized By Violence In Iraq 2007-02-06 00:30:24 The car stopped at the makeshift checkpoint that cut across the muddy backstreet in western Baghdad. A sentry appeared. "Are you Sunni or Shia?" he barked, waving his Kalashnikov at the driver. "Are you with Zarqawi or the Mahdi army?" "The Mahdi army," said the driver. "Wrong answer," shouted the sentry, almost gleefully. "Get him!" The high metal gate of a nearby house was flung open and four gun-toting males rushed out. They dragged the driver from his vehicle and held a knife to his neck. Quickly and efficiently, the blade was run from ear to ear. "Now you're dead," said a triumphant voice, and their captive crumpled to the ground. Then a moment of stillness before the sound of a woman's voice. "Come inside boys! Your dinner is ready!" The gunmen groaned; the hapless driver picked himself up and trundled his yellow plastic car into the front yard; the toy guns and knives were tossed by the back door. Their murderous game of make-believe would have to resume in the morning. Abdul-Muhammad and his five younger brothers, aged between six and 12, should have been at school. But their mother, Sayeeda, like thousands of parents in Iraq's perilous capital city, now keeps her boys at home. Three weeks ago, armed men had intercepted their teacher's car at the school gates, then hauled him out and slit his throat. Just like in their game. Read The Full Story Commentary: These 'Moderates' Are In Fact Fanatics, Torturers And Killers 2007-02-06 00:29:48 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Mai Yamani, author of "Cradle of Islam" and "Change Identities: The Challenge of the New Generation in Saudi Arabia". In his column, which appears on the Guardian Unlimited's website edition for Tuesday, February 6, 2007, Yamani writes that the longer the U.S. and Britain back dictatorial regimes in the Middle East the more explosive the region will become. Yamani's column follows: Politicians, especially in times of geopolitical deadlock, adopt a word or a concept to sell to the public. In 1973, at the peak of cold-war tensions, the U.S. secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, coined the term "detente". Such words gain a currency and become useful political tools to escape policy quagmires. As the Middle East lurches from crisis to crisis, Tony Blair, George Bush and Condoleezza Rice compulsively repeat the word "moderates" to describe their allies in the region. But the concept of moderate is merely the latest attempt to market a failed policy, while offering a facile hedge against accusations of Islamophobia and anti-Islamic policies. Western leaders have simply chosen a few Arab rulers they believe are still saleable to western audiences. And, as the word moderate has been repeated by western leaders and echoed in the international media, these rulers have begun to believe their own billing. But who are they, and are they moderate? Their selection has been fluid at the periphery but solid at the core. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt clearly qualify, whereas Syria, an ally during the 1990-91 Gulf war, was once at the periphery but fell out of step with U.S. interests after 9/11. Likewise, after the death of Arafat and the victory of Hamas, Fatah became moderate, while Iran, moderate under the shah, became "radical" after the 1979 Islamic revolution. This minuet of political marketing may play well in the west, but not in the Arab world, where the double standards and manipulation are all too plain to see. The Saudi Wahhabis are, after all, fanatics; Egypt's Hosni Mubarak is intolerant of dissent; and Jordan, the state closest to the western ideal, is a marginal player. These countries' appalling human rights records, lack of transparency and repression rank them among the world's least moderate. Is there such a thing as a "moderate public beheading"? For the U.S. and U.K. governments there clearly is, because all departures from the ideals of liberal democracy and social justice are rooted in "tradition". Hence bribes, beheadings and the oppression of women and minorities are traditional, and because whatever is traditional is not radical, it must be moderate. Read The Full Story U.S. Military: Iraq Lawmaker Is U.S. Embassy Bomber 2007-02-06 00:29:11 A man sentenced to death in Kuwait for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. and French embassies now sits in Iraq's parliament as a member of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's ruling coalition, according to U.S. military intelligence. Jamal Jafaar Mohammed's seat in parliament gives him immunity from prosecution. Washington says he supports Shiite insurgents and acts as an Iranian agent in Iraq. U.S. military intelligence in Iraq has approached al-Maliki's government with the allegations against Jamal Jafaar Mohammed, whom it says assists Iranian special forces in Iraq as "a conduit for weapons and political influence". Repeated efforts by CNN to reach Jamal Jafaar Mohammed for comment through the parliament, through the ruling Shiite Muslim coalition and the Badr Organization - the Iranian-backed paramilitary organization he once led - have been unsuccessful. Read The Full Story 4 Deaths Linked To U.S. Cold Wave 2007-02-06 00:28:35 A bone-chilling cold wave with temperatures as low as 42 below zero shut down schools for thousands of youngsters Monday, sent homeless people into shelters and put car batteries on the disabled list from the northern Plains across the Great Lakes. At least four deaths were linked to the cold weather. The cold was accompanied by snow that was measured in feet in parts of upstate New York. "Anybody in their right mind wouldn't want to be out in weather like this," Lawrence Wiley, 57, said at Cincinnati's  crowded Drop Inn Center homeless shelter, where he has been living. Monday lows were in the single digits. Read The Full Story U.S. Astronaut Arrested On Attempted Kidnapping Charges 2007-02-06 00:27:58 A NASA astronaut was arrested Monday on battery and attempted kidnapping charges after allegedly trying to subdue a romantic rival with pepper spray and abduct her from a parking lot at Orlando International Airport, police said. Navy Capt. Lisa Marie Nowak, who was a mission specialist aboard the space shuttle Discovery in July, and Colleen Shipman were both reported to be "in a relationship" with astronaut Bill Oefelein, a Navy commander, according to a police report of the incident. Nowak, 43, has been charged with battery, attempted kidnapping, attempted burglary to a vehicle and destruction of evidence. Police have recommended Nowak be held without bond. According to the report, she told police that her relationship with Oefelein was "more than a working relationship but less than a romantic relationship." Read The Full Story	Legacy Of Radiation Illness Raises Objections To New Nevada Bomb Test 2007-02-07 02:41:14 When the baby boomers of St. George, Utah, were children, radioactive ash from nuclear test explosions in Nevada regularly drifted toward the red bluffs of their town and fell like snow. They played in it and wrote their names in it on car windows. The federal government reassured the townspeople they were in no danger as it detonated 952 bombs in Nevada over four decades. Yet thousands of people who lived downwind of the test site got radiation-related cancer, and the town of 50,000 has its own cancer-treatment center today. So when word got out recently that the government wants to test a huge conventional bomb in Nevada, sending a mushroom cloud thousands of feet in the air, people in St. George felt an unwelcome blast from the past. At a series of emotional meetings last month in Las Vegas, Nevada, St. George and Salt Lake City, Utah, and the Idaho capital of Boise, people who live downwind of the Nevada Test Site expressed fear that if the government goes ahead with its code-named "Divine Strake" test, radioactive dust from previous tests will blow their way. Read The Full Story U.S. Declines To Join Accord On Secret Detentions, 57 Nations Sign It 2007-02-07 02:39:06 Representatives from 57 countries on Tuesday signed a long-negotiated treaty prohibiting governments from holding people in secret detention. The United States declined to endorse the document, saying its text did not meet U.S. expectations. Louise Arbour, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said the treaty was "a message to all modern-day authorities committed to the fight against terrorism" that some practices are "not acceptable". In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack declined to comment, except to say that the United States helped draft the treaty but that the final wording "did not meet our expectations" Read The Full Story Bremer Spars With Democrats Over Iraq Spending 2007-02-07 02:37:24 House Democrats criticized former Iraq occupation administrator L. Paul Bremer Tuesday for disbursing nearly $9 billion in Iraqi oil revenue without instituting accounting systems to track more carefully how Iraqi officials were using that money. In a five-hour hearing, Democratic members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee probed whether the money, which was provided to Iraqi government agencies to pay salaries and fund other operations in 2003 and 2004, was spent properly. The Democrats cited an audit conducted two years ago by the special inspector general for Iraq's reconstruction that found that Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) engaged in "less than adequate" managerial and financial control of the money. The funds were provided to the Iraqis in cash, often in shrink-wrapped packages of $100 bills. The committee's chairman, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-California), said the U.S. government flew nearly $12 billion in cash into Baghdad on military cargo planes from May 2003 to June 2004. "Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone? But that's exactly what our government did," said Waxman. Because of the way the CPA kept track of the payments, said Waxman, "we have no way of knowing whether the cash shipped into the Green Zone ended up in enemy hands." Read The Full Story Bremer Faces Grilling Before U.S. House Committee 2007-02-06 15:22:42 The last time L. Paul Bremer testified before Congress, he was lauded as an American hero. Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-Florida) congratulated Bremer, who was leading the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq, for a "tremendous success." Sen. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., (D-Delaware) commended his "energy and focus." Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-New Mexico) praised his "brilliant analysis". When Bremer returns to Capitol Hill Tuesday to appear before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, he will receive a far less effusive reception than he did in September 2003. The now-ruling Democrats plan to pounce on him for disbanding Iraq's army, firing many members of the Baath Party, hiring GOP loyalists and not fully accounting for the spending of billions of dollars in Iraqi oil revenue. Fellow Republicans have pointed questions for the first time in public as well. "Had Bremer made better decisions, we would be in a very different place today," said Rep. Christopher Shays (Connecticut). Read The Full Story Earth's Space Junk Reaches 'Critical Density', Threatens Space Exploration 2007-02-06 03:07:04 For decades, space experts have worried that a speeding bit of orbital debris might one day smash a large spacecraft into hundreds of pieces and start a chain reaction, a slow cascade of collisions that would expand for centuries, spreading chaos through the heavens. In the last decade or so, as scientists came to agree that the number of objects in orbit had surpassed a critical mass - or, in their terms, the critical spatial density, the point at which a chain reaction becomes inevitable - they grew more anxious. Early this year, after a half-century of growth, the federal list of detectable objects (four inches wide or larger) reached 10,000, including dead satellites, spent rocket stages, a camera, a hand tool and junkyards of whirling debris left over from chance explosions and destructive tests. Now, experts say, China’s test on Jan. 11 of an antisatellite rocket that shattered an old satellite into hundreds of large fragments means the chain reaction will most likely start sooner. If their predictions are right, the cascade could put billions of dollars’ worth of advanced satellites at risk and eventually threaten to limit humanity’s reach for the stars. Read The Full Story Iranian Diplomat Kidnapped In Baghdad By Iraqis With Official I.D. 2007-02-06 03:06:20 An Iranian diplomat was abducted Sunday evening when his convoy was stopped by men with official Defense Ministry identification in the Karrada neighborhood here, senior Iraqi and American officials said Monday. Iraqi security forces captured several suspects after pursuing their vehicles through the streets of Baghdad, said  two of the Iraqi officials. The vehicle with the diplomat was not caught, though. Read The Full Story Fitzgerald Targets Cheney In Libby Tapes 2007-02-06 00:30:07 Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, in tapes played Monday in the CIA leak trial, pressed Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff on whether Cheney had directed him to leak the identity of a CIA operative to reporters. The audiotapes showed that Fitzgerald, just two months into his leak investigation, was asking pointed questions about the highest levels of government. The first 90 minutes of audiotapes, recorded during the 2003 grand jury testimony of top Cheney aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were played for jurors in Libby's perjury and obstruction trial. More than six hours of additional tapes were to be played Tuesday. Fitzgerald began his questioning by determining what he already knew to be true - that Libby was not the source of syndicated columnist Robert Novak's story revealing that the wife of an outspoken Bush administration critic worked for the CIA. Read The Full Story Female Astronaut Sets Space Walking Record 2007-02-06 00:29:29 U.S. astronaut Sunita Williams has now spent more time in space than any other woman, setting the record on Sunday as she and a crew mate upgraded the international space station's cooling system. Williams broke the previous female spacewalking record of more than 21 hours when she and Michael Lopez-Alegria completed the second of what could be a precedent-setting three spacewalks in nine days. The new record is 22 hours and 27 minutes. Read The Full Story Fears Of New Civil War In Lebanon Increase 2007-02-06 00:28:53 Gun sales in Lebanon have tripled since the current standoff between the government and the Hezbollah-led opposition began, prompting concern that political factions are rearming. The increased presence of gunmen on the streets of the capital, Beirut, and reports of fighters loyal to the Sunni-dominated government being trained overseas has heightened fears of a return to civil war, which ravaged Lebanon from 1975 to 1990. Gunfights last month, some involving the army, left six civilians dead and more than 150 wounded. "There is a reappearance of arms in the hands of almost every political group; we are sitting on a powder keg, tension is increasing every day," said a prominent security analyst. "They don't know what they are doing, they are going to destroy this country." Read The Full Story Temperatures In Beijing Hit 30-Year High 2007-02-06 00:28:12 The weather in China's capital has been unseasonably warm with temperatures hitting a 30-year high, state media said Tuesday amid concern over the country's soaring greenhouse-gas emissions. China, already the world's largest producer and consumer of coal, is expected to surpass the United States as the world's largest greenhouse-gas emitter in the next decade. The China Daily newspaper said Beijing's temperature hit 12.8 degrees Celsius on Saturday - a 30-year high for the date - prompting an early spring, with frozen lakes melting and trees blooming. Read The Full Story
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