Free Internet Press Newsletter - Monday March 26 2007 - (813)

Monday March 26 2007 edition
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Ex-Prosecutor Faced Partisan Questions From White House Officials Before Firing 2007-03-26 01:38:14 One of the eight former U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration said yesterday that White House officials questioned his performance in highly partisan political terms at a meeting in Washington in September, three months before his dismissal. John McKay of Washington state, who had decided two years earlier not to bring voter fraud charges that could have undermined a Democratic victory in a closely fought gubernatorial race, said White House counsel Harriet Miers and her deputy, William Kelley, "asked me why Republicans in the state of Washington would be angry with me." McKay said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the question - which he took as a challenge to his 2004 decision - surprised him because the issue had been carefully reviewed by his office and the decision was supported by the FBI's office in Seattle. "We expected to be supported by people in Washington, D.C., when we make tough decisions like that," said McKay. He added that he took umbrage at the idea that he had other responsibilities beyond focusing "on the evidence and not allow[ing] politics into the work that we do in criminal prosecutions." Those involved in the scandal over the firings who acted unprofessionally "or even illegally" must be held accountable for what they did, he said. Read The Full Story Aged, Frail And Denied Care By Their Insurers 2007-03-26 01:37:30 Mary Rose Derks was a 65-year-old widow in 1990, when she began preparing for the day she could no longer care for herself. Every month, out of her grocery fund, she scrimped together about $100 for an insurance policy that promised to pay eventually for a room in an assisted living home. On a May afternoon in 2002, after bouts of hypertension and diabetes had hospitalized her dozens of times, Mrs. Derks reluctantly agreed that it was time. She shed a few tears, watched her family pack her favorite blankets and rode to Beehive Homes, five blocks from her daughter’s farm equipment dealership. At least, Mrs. Derks said at the time, she would not be a financial burden on her family. But when she filed a claim with her insurer, Conseco, it said she had waited too long. Then it said Beehive Homes was not an approved facility, despite its state license. Eventually, Conseco argued that Mrs. Derks was not sufficiently infirm, despite her early-stage dementia and the 37 pills she takes each day. Read The Full Story GSA Chief Accused Of Playing Politics 2007-03-26 01:36:51 Witnesses have told congressional investigators that the chief of the General Services Administration and a deputy in Karl Rove's political affairs office at the White House joined in a videoconference earlier this year with top GSA political appointees, who discussed ways to help Republican candidates. With GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan and up to 40 regional administrators on hand, J. Scott Jennings, the White House's deputy director of political affairs, gave a PowerPoint presentation on Jan. 26 of polling data about the 2006 elections. When Jennings concluded his presentation to the GSA political appointees, Doan allegedly asked them how they could "help 'our candidates' in the next elections," according to a March 6 letter to Doan from Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-California), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Waxman said in the letter that one method suggested was using "targeted public events, such as the opening of federal facilities around the country." Read The Full Story Vote Overturned By Commissioners. The Voters Were Obviously Confused. 2007-03-25 17:13:22 Residents of Missoula County voted in a referendum intended to advise county law-enforcement types to treat marijuana offenses as low-profile. The referendum would not have changed any laws, but was advisory only. After voters approved it, county commissioners overturned it by a 2-to-1 vote. They were swayed by the argument of the county attorney, who had a "gut feeling" that Missoula's electorate had misinterpreted the ballot language. The move has resulted in a flood of disaffection among voters, especially young voters. "Is there even a point to voting any more if the will of the people can so easily be subverted by two people?" one voter posted on a comment blog. Read The Full Story Coast Guard Purchasing Raises Conflict-Of-Interest Problems 2007-03-25 14:00:04 Four of the seven top U.S. Coast Guard officers who retired since 1998 took positions with private firms involved in the Coast Guard's troubled $24 billion fleet replacement program, an effort that government investigators have criticized for putting contractors' interests ahead of taxpayers'. They weren't the only officials to oversee one of the federal government's most complex experiments at privatization, known as Deepwater, who had past or subsequent business ties to the contract consortium led by industry giants Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. The secretary of transportation, Norman Y. Mineta, whose department included the Coast Guard when the contract was awarded in 2002, was a former Lockheed executive. Two deputy secretaries of the Department of Homeland Security, which the Coast Guard became part of in 2003, were former Lockheed executives, and a third later served on its board. Read The Full Story 7.1 Earthquake Hits Japan, 1 Dead, 110 Injured 2007-03-25 01:33:00 A powerful, deadly earthquake struck Japan early Sunday, killing at least one person and injuring 110 others as it violently shook buildings and triggered a small tsunami that hit the coast, said officials and media reports. The magnitude-7.1 quake struck at 9:42 a.m. local time off the north coast of Ishikawa prefecture (state), Japan's Meteorological Agency said, about 225 miles northwest of Tokyo. The agency issued a tsunami warning urging people near the sea to move to higher land. A small tsunami measuring 6 inches hit shore about 40 minutes after the quake, said the agency. The warning was lifted about an hour later. At least one person was killed and 110 others injured along the country's Sea of Japan coast, media reports said. Read The Full Story Seized British Sailors Face Prosecution After Iran Claims 'Confession' 2007-03-25 01:32:37 Iran defiantly rebuffed international demands Saturday for the release of 15 seized British naval personnel, claiming that the sailors and Royal Marines had confessed to entering its waters in an illegal act of aggression, and were now to be prosecuted in the Iranian capital. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, claimed in a statement that the Britons were engaged "in illegal and suspicious" activities, suggesting that Iran might claim they were spying. Iran, the U.S. and the U.K. have been involved in a tit-for-tat round of accusations. Washington and London accuse Iran of widespread interference in Iraq, including the supply of weapons that have resulted in the deaths of soldiers serving in the multinational forces there. Read The Full Story We Failed, Says Pro-War Iraqi 2007-03-25 01:32:09 Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi exile under Saddam and a key intellectual inspiration for the U.S. policy of "regime change" in Iraq, has admitted he failed to foresee the consequences for his country of the invasion four years ago. In an interview in Saturday's New York Times, Makiya, author of "Republic of Fear", the book that brought the brutality of Saddam Hussein's regime to international attention, concedes he allowed his own "activism" to sway his judgment and launched a scathing denunciation of U.S. policy after the fall of Baghdad, and of Iraq's new leadership. In the week of the invasion's fourth anniversary, the voice that cried loudest for the toppling of Saddam described the day of Saddam's execution "as one of the worst" of his life. "It was a disaster, an unmitigated disaster," said Makiya. "I was just so upset, even on the verge of tears. It was the antithesis of everything I had been working for. Just like everything about the war, it was an opportunity wasted." He catalogued the errors - including his own - that led to the present bloodbath. It is all a remarkable change of tone for the man who was once a friend of Ahmed Chalabi, has been praised in public by Vice President Dick Cheney and is highly regarded by anti-Saddam Iraqi democrats. Read The Full Story U.N. Back Tighter Sanctions On Iran 2007-03-25 01:30:31 The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Saturday to approve a resolution that bans all Iranian arms exports and freezes some of the financial assets of 28 Iranian individuals and entities linked to Iran's military and nuclear agencies. The 15 to 0 vote came one day after President Mahmoud Admadinejad canceled plans to travel to New York to confront the Security Council, leaving his foreign minister to speak in his place. It unfolded as 15 British sailors and marines seized by Iranian naval forces were transferred to Tehran, escalating diplomatic tensions between the two countries. The 15-nation panel imposed the latest sanctions in response to Iran's refusal to abide by repeated U.N. demands to stop its most sensitive nuclear activities, including the enrichment of uranium and the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. The council also threatened to impose new penalties on Tehran after 60 days if it fails to stop its nuclear activities and provide verifiable assurance that it is not secretly pursuing a nuclear weapon. Read The Full Story	Commentary: How A Three-Word Mantra Has Undermined America 2007-03-26 01:37:47 Intellpuke: The following commentary is by Zbigniew Brzezinsky, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, and author most recently of "Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower". In his commentary, Mr. Brzezinski says Americans have allows the "war on terror" to create a culture of fear that  is undermining basic constitutional rights and freedoms in the U.S. His commentary follows: The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration's elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America's psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us. The damage these three words have done - a classic self-inflicted wound - is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves. The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare - political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants. But the little secret here may be that the vagueness of the phrase was deliberately (or instinctively) calculated by its sponsors. Constant reference to a "war on terror" did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue. The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it got without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Support for President Bush in the 2004 elections was also mobilized in part by the notion that "a nation at war" does not change its commander in chief in midstream. The sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger was thus channeled in a politically expedient direction by the mobilizing appeal of being "at war." Read The Full Story Five U.S. Soldiers Killed By Roadside Bombs In Iraq 2007-03-26 01:37:06 Roadside bombs killed five U.S. soldiers in Iraq on Sunday, including four in a single strike in a volatile province northeast of the capital, the military said. In Baghdad, gunmen on rooftops opened fire on Iraqi soldiers, prompting fierce fighting in the narrow streets and alleys of one of the capital's oldest neighborhoods, a Sunni insurgent stronghold and a haven for criminals on the east side of the Tigris River. At least two civilians were killed and four others were wounded in the clashes, police said, as U.S. attack helicopters buzzed overhead. Four U.S. soldiers were killed and two others were wounded, according to a statement, when an explosion struck their patrol in Diyala province, a religiously mixed area that has seen fierce fighting in recent months. A roadside bomb also killed a soldier and wounded two others as they were checking for bombs on a road in northwestern Baghdad, said the military. Read The Full Story Blair Warns Iran On Seizure Of British Sailors, Marines 2007-03-26 01:36:22 Tony Blair Sunday denounced Iran for the "unjustified and wrong" seizure of 15 British sailors and marines, rejecting Tehran's claim they had entered Iranian waters, and warning that the situation had become very serious. "I hope the Iranian government understands how fundamental an issue this is for us," the prime minister said at a European summit in Berlin. "They should not be under any doubt at all about how seriously we regard this act, which was unjustified and wrong." Blair's comments marked a hardening of British tone, after hopes that the capture of the British patrol on Friday would prove to be a misunderstanding had been dashed by statements from Iran over the weekend. Read The Full Story Sen. Hagel: Some See Impeachment As An Option 2007-03-25 14:00:16 With his go-it-alone approach on Iraq, President Bush is flouting Congress and the public, so angering lawmakers that some consider impeachment an option over his war policy, U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel, from Bush's own party,  said Sunday. Meanwhile, the Senate's No. 2 Republican leader harshly criticized House Democrats for setting an ''artificial date'' for withdrawing troops from Iraq and said he believes Republicans have enough votes to prevent passage of a similar bill in the Senate. ''We need to put that kind of decision in the hands of our commanders who are there on the ground with the men and women,'' said Sen. Trent Lott, R-Mississippi. ''For Congress to impose an artificial date of any kind is totally irresponsible.'' Read The Full Story 3 Sunni Mosques Attacked In Iraq, 1 Burned 2007-03-25 13:59:50 Three Sunni mosques in Haswa were attacked Sunday, a day after a suicide bombing of a Shiite shrine in that city. A Sunni mosque was bombed Sunday morning and then burned, according to Capt. Muthana Ahmed, a spokesman for the Babil province police. Two people were injured. Later, said Ahmed, armed men attacked two other Sunni mosques in the area. Clashes broke out between gunmen and Iraqi security forces, who were aided by American soldiers, wire services reported. Police found two roadside bombs near one of those mosques and defused them, said Ahmed. Haswa is a predominantly Shiite city about 30 miles south of Baghdad. Read The Full Story 7.2 and 6.0 Quakes Shake Vanuatu In South Pacific 2007-03-25 01:32:50 Two strong earthquakes struck the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu on Sunday and a tsunami warning was issued for some of its southern islands, said police. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage in the capital, Port Vila. Australia's Emergency Management Office warned the powerful quakes could generate a tsunami, said police spokesman Capt. Arnold Giro. "We are moving (coastal) communities to higher ground" on the southern islands, he said. "We have advised the islands to be alert for a possible tsunami." Read The Full Story More Records And Questions About Gonzales' Role In Prosecutor Firings 2007-03-25 01:32:22 An accumulating body of evidence is at odds with the statements of U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales  that he played little role in the deliberations over the dismissal of eight United States attorneys.  Gonzales has said he did not take part in any discussions of the dismissal effort, and left the planning and execution of the removals up to D. Kyle Sampson, his former chief of staff. But e-mail messages and other documents released by the Justice Department in recent days suggest that  Gonzales was told of the dismissal plan on at least two occasions, in 2005 when the plan was devised and again in late 2006 shortly before the firings were carried out. The conflicts between the documentary record and Gonzales’ version of events have contributed to an erosion of support for him in Congress, where lawmakers from both parties have called for him to step down. They have also fed suspicions by some Democrats that the ousters, from the start, may have been orchestrated by the White House, and most particularly, by Karl Rove, the White House political adviser. Read The Full Story U.S. Database On Terror Evokes Secrecy, Error And Privacy Fears 2007-03-25 01:30:51 Each day, thousands of pieces of intelligence information from around the world - field reports, captured documents, news from foreign allies and sometimes idle gossip - arrive in a computer-filled office in McLean, Virginia, where analysts feed them into the nation's central list of terrorists and terrorism suspects. Called TIDE, for Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, the list is a storehouse for data about individuals that the intelligence community believes might harm the United States. It is the wellspring for watch lists distributed to airlines, law enforcement, border posts and U.S. consulates, created to close one of the key intelligence gaps revealed after Sept. 11, 2001: the failure of federal agencies to share what they knew about al-Qaeda operatives. In addressing one problem, TIDE has spawned others. Ballooning from fewer than 100,000 files in 2003 to about 435,000, the growing database threatens to overwhelm the people who manage it. "The single biggest worry that I have is long-term quality control," said Russ Travers, in charge of TIDE at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean. "Where am I going to be, where is my successor going to be, five years down the road?" Read The Full Story New Mexico Towns Clean Up After 16 Tornadoes 2007-03-25 01:29:58 When she awoke Saturday, Andrea McLaren found that a stretch of the eastern New Mexico city she calls home had been obliterated by a tornado that flattened houses, snapped telephone poles and even heaved a trailer through a bowling alley. The tornado was one of 16 that moved through communities along the New Mexico-Texas border late Friday and early Saturday, leaving two people critically injured. Residents said Saturday that the cleanup effort could take months. "Pretty much everything was pushed together like toy cars," McLaren said by telephone from Clovis, New Mexico.  "We've been picking up debris the whole day. ... Clean up and assess the damage, that's all we can do." The worst damage was reported in Clovis and the village of Logan about 80 miles to the north, said state officials. Read The Full Story
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