Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday April 28 2007 - (813)

Saturday April 28 2007 edition
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U.S. Interior Department Plans To Allow More Offshore Oil, Gas Drilling 2007-04-27 20:52:12 The U.S. Interior Department has put the final touches on a five-year plan to expand oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and offshore from Alaska and Virginia. Interior officials said Friday the plan will include more environmental buffer zones around lease areas and make other minor changes to a previous draft. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is scheduled to announce the "major oil and gas development program" Monday, a department statement says. The new leasing plan "would significantly increase the nation's domestic energy supplies while protecting the coastal and marine environments, and provide a major economic stimulus to the nation and participating coastal states," said the statement. Read The Full Story Commentary: A Failure In Generalship 2007-04-27 20:51:22 Intellpuke: In the following commentary by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, writing in the Armed Forces Journal for Friday, April 27, 2007, Lt. Col. Yingling, according to Washington Post staff writer Thomas E. Ricks, "levels a blistering attack on U.S. generals, saying they have botched the war in Iraq and misled Congress about the situation there". Lt. Col. Yingling's commentary from the Armed Forces Journal follows: "You officers amuse yourselves with God knows what buffooneries and never dream in the least of serious service. This is a source of stupidity which would become most dangerous in case of a serious conflict." - Frederick the Great For the second time in a generation, the United States faces the prospect of defeat at the hands of an insurgency. In April 1975, the U.S. fled the Republic of Vietnam, abandoning our allies to their fate at the hands of North Vietnamese communists. In 2007, Iraq's grave and deteriorating condition offers diminishing hope for an American victory and portends risk of an even wider and more destructive regional war. These debacles are not attributable to individual failures, but rather to a crisis in an entire institution: America's general officer corps. America's generals have failed to prepare our armed forces for war and advise civilian authorities on the application of force to achieve the aims of policy. The argument that follows consists of three elements. First, generals have a responsibility to society to provide policymakers with a correct estimate of strategic probabilities. Second, America's generals in Vietnam and Iraq failed to perform this responsibility. Third, remedying the crisis in American generalship requires the intervention of Congress. The Responsibilities of Generalship Armies do not fight wars; nations fight wars. War is not a military activity conducted by soldiers, but rather a social activity that involves entire nations. Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz noted that passion, probability and policy each play their role in war. Any understanding of war that ignores one of these elements is fundamentally flawed. Read The Full Story Waxman Asks Tenet To Testify On Pre-Iraq War Intelligence 2007-04-27 20:50:23 House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-California) has invited former CIA Director George Tenet to testify before his committee next month about claims that Iraq sought to buy uranium in Africa. Waxman sent a letter to Tenet, in the care of his lawyer, Robert B. Barnett, on Friday asking the former CIA director to appear before his committee to discuss the intelligence data that President Bush cited in his 2003 State of the Union speech to justify the invasion of Iraq. "The purpose of the hearing is to learn your views about one of the claims used to justify the war in Iraq - the assertion that Iraq sought to import uranium from Niger - and related issues," Waxman wrote in the letter. Read The Full Story Britain's High Court Blows Hole In Blair's Anti-Terror Strategy 2007-04-27 20:49:36 Two dangerous Libyan terror suspects are to be freed next Thursday after Britain's High Court judges dealt a new blow to the Blair government's anti-terror strategy by ruling they could not be sent back to Colonel Gadafy's regime because of the risk they would face torture and a show trial. Friday's decision by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) also affects a further eight of the 23 foreign terror suspects who have been detained in Long Lartin maximum security prison for more than 18 months pending their deportation in the wake of the July 2005 London bombings. The ruling by Justice Ouseley and Justice Mitting blows a hole in Tony Blair's strategy of securing memorandums of understanding and "no torture deals" with Middle East and north African regimes to overcome the human rights objections to sending foreign terror suspects back to their homelands. Read The Full Story Reach Of Power Companies' Tentacles Grows 2007-04-27 13:18:40 The federal government said Thursday that it would give power companies special rights to build their lines in the Washington, D.C., region and some other parts of the country, permitting the companies to bypass state authority if necessary in the interest of bolstering the nation's electrical grid. The change could give Dominion Virginia Power greater authority to build a controversial line through Northern Virginia. The company says it has no plans to bypass the state's authority but won't rule it out. During an afternoon briefing, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman announced that the networks of high-voltage power lines in two regions - the Southwest and the mid-Atlantic - are so inadequate that fixing them is a national priority. Read The Full Story Saudis Arrest 172 Militants In Oil Plot 2007-04-27 13:17:45 Police arrested 172 Islamic militants, some of whom had trained abroad as pilots so they could fly aircraft in attacks on Saudi Arabia's oil fields, the Interior Ministry said Friday. A spokesman said all that remained in the plot "was to set the zero hour." The ministry issued a statement saying the detainees were planning to carry out suicide atttacks against "public figures, oil facilities, refineries ... and military zones" - some of which were outside the kingdom "They had reached an advance stage of readiness and what remained only was to set the zero hour for their attacks," Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Mansour al-Turki told the Associated Press in a phone call. "They had the personnel, the money, the arms. Almost all the elements for terror attacks were complete except for setting the zero hour for the attacks." Read The Full Story U.S. House Panel: NASA Chief Improperly Destroyed Tapes Of Meeting 2007-04-27 02:29:56 NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin held an unusual meeting with the staff of the inspector general who oversees his agency and then ordered that video recordings of the meeting be destroyed, the U.S. House Science and Technology subcommittee on investigations and oversight said Thursday. In a letter to Griffin, subcommittee chairman Rep. Brad Miller (D-North Carolina) demanded an explanation from the NASA administrator and accused him of improperly trying to influence the watchdog office's decisions on what it should investigate. In addition, the letter from Rep. Miller said the order to destroy the meeting tapes, which was issued by NASA's chief of staff, "appears on its face to be nothing less than the destruction of evidence." Read The Full Story Ex-CIA Chief Tenet Assails Cheney On Iraq 2007-04-27 02:29:26 George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney  and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a “serious debate” about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States. The 549-page book, “At the Center of the Storm,” is to be published by HarperCollins on Monday. By turns accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical, it is the first detailed account by a member of the president’s inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war. “There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion. Read The Full Story Democratic Candidates United In Criticizing Bush 2007-04-27 02:28:42 Democratic presidential candidates largely set aside their differences at the South Carolina State University campus in Orangeburg Thursday and presented a united front of opposition to President Bush and his Iraq policy, urging the president not to veto newly passed legislation that sets a timetable for beginning the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the conflict. In their first debate of the 2008 campaign, the Democrats showed some disagreement over the issue of cutting off funding for the war and vied with one another to demonstrate their willingness to retaliate swiftly if the United States is attacked by terrorists. They found common ground in accusing Bush of making the country less safe and damaging U.S. relations abroad through foreign policy and argued that the president is ignoring the will of the American people by refusing to shift course dramatically in Iraq. "The American people have spoken," said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (New York). "The Congress has voted, as of today, to end this war. And now we can only hope that the president will listen." Read The Full Story	U.N.: We Have The Money And Knowhow To Stop Global Warming 2007-04-27 20:51:50 Global climate change experts will this week lay out a detailed plan to save the planet from the catastrophic effects of rising temperatures. Climate change could be stopped in its tracks using existing technology, but only if politicians do more to force businesses and individuals to take action. The U.N. study will conclude that mankind has the knowhow to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 26 billion tons by 2030 - more than enough to limit the expected temperature rise across the planet to 2-3 Celsius. Such a move would cost the world economy billions of dollars over the next two decades, but this could be recouped by savings due to the health benefits of lower levels of air pollution. Cheaper solutions could bring down emissions to 1990 levels, but that would still see average temperatures rise by as much as 4 Celsius this century, with devastating consequences for wildlife, agriculture and the availability of water. Read The Full Story Commentary: Bush Blames The Troops 2007-04-27 20:50:49 Intellpuke: In the following commentary, journalist and author Robert Scheer writes that George W. Bush, like failed emperors throughout history, is blaming his own leadership failures on the military while trying to look as though he is supporting the troops. Mr. Scheer's commentary, which was first posted on the truthdig website on Tuesday, April 24, 2007, follows: Blame it on the military but make it look like you’re supporting the troops. That’s been the convenient gambit of failed emperors throughout history as they witnessed their empires decline. Not surprisingly then, it has become the standard rhetorical trick employed by President Bush in shirking responsibility for the Iraq debacle of his making. Ignoring the fact that we have a system of civilian control over the military, which is why he, the elected president, is designated the commander in chief, Bush hides behind the fiction that the officers in the field are calling the shots when in fact he has put them in an unwinnable situation and refuses to even consider a timetable for getting them out. He did it again Monday, responding to the prospect that both houses of Congress seem in agreement on setting guidelines for the “progress” that the president continually proclaims is at hand. “I will strongly reject an artificial timetable [for] withdrawal and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job.” This is disingenuous in the extreme, because Bush is the Washington politician who plotted this unnecessary war from the moment the 9/11 attack provided him with an excuse for regime change in a country that had nothing to do with the terrorist attack. Read The Full Story Mahdi Militia: We Have Special Unit To Target Prince Harry 2007-04-27 20:50:01 Prince Harry will be a prime kidnap target for insurgents in Iraq, a commander in the Mahdi army, the Shia militia loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, told Britain's Guardian newspaper. "One of our aims is to capture Harry, we have people inside the British bases to inform us on when he will arrive," claimed Abu Mujtaba, who commands a unit of around 50 men active in the Mahdi army in Basra. In comments denounced by British defense sources as "blatant propaganda", Abu Mujtaba told the Guardian: "We have a special unit that would work to track him down, with informants inside the bases. "Not only us, the Mahdi army, that will try to capture him, but every person who hates the British and the Americans will try to get him, all the mujahideens in Iraq, the al-Qaeda, the Iranians all will try to get him." Read The Full Story U.S. Economic Growth Slows 2007-04-27 13:19:17 The U.S. economy slowed sharply in the first three months of the year according to preliminary estimates, with declining exports and continuing problems in the housing industry constraining growth to the slowest pace in four years. The new report from the Department of Commerce indicated that gross domestic product (GDP), which measures all goods and services produced in the United States, expanded at an annualized rate of just 1.3 percent from January to March, compared to the 3.4 percent growth recorded for all of 2006. A measure of inflation also accelerated, with prices, excluding volatile food and energy costs, increasing at an annualized rate of 2.8 percent compared to 2.4 percent in the prior three months. Friday's GDP report is preliminary: A similar report on slow growth last year was ultimately revised sharply upward. Read The Full Story Commentary: Bush's Non-Argument 2007-04-27 13:18:04 Intellpuke: In the following commentary, Washington Post op-ed columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr., writes that Bush and Cheney are taking a serious argument over the future of U.S. policy and turning it into a petty partisan squabble. Mr. Dionne's column, which appears in the Washington Post edition for Friday, April 27, 2007, follows: President Bush and Vice President Cheney cannot make the case that their Iraq policies have succeeded, so they are doing one thing they do very well: taking a serious argument over the future of American foreign policy and turning it into a petty partisan squabble. This is not really an argument over the "surge" of troops into Iraq. It is a fight over whether we want to make an open-ended commitment to keeping combat forces in Iraq for many years or whether we anticipate pulling most of them out within a year or two. Even if the surge succeeds in a narrow sense - by reducing the number of Iraqis killed in sectarian violence in Baghdad - there is no guarantee that the overall situation in Iraq will be any better, no guarantee that Iraqi leaders will take the political steps necessary to end the internecine killing and create a stable government, no guarantee that we will make progress against al-Qaeda. Read The Full Story Pentagon: al-Qaeda Operative Captured 2007-04-27 13:17:17 The Pentagon announced Friday the capture of one of al-Qaeda's most senior and most experienced operatives, an Iraqi who was trying to return to his native country when he was captured. Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said the captive is Abdul al-Hadi al-Iraqi. He was transferred to Defense Department custody this week from the CIA, said Whitman, but the spokesman would not say where or when al-Iraqi was captured or by whom. A U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the Iraqi had been captured late last year in an operation that involved many people in more than one country. Read The Full Story FDA Plan Against Tainted Food Imports Allowed To Languish 2007-04-27 02:29:43 After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Food and Drug Administration developed a comprehensive plan to guard the U.S. food supply against tainted imports, which were seen as a serious security threat but, nearly six years later, the plan has languished because of a lack of official will and tight federal budgets, according to former senior officials involved in formulating the strategy. That is a painful realization for lawmakers and others who now are struggling to deal with the discovery of chemicals used to make plastics and to treat swimming pool water in pet food ingredients imported from China. The contamination is believed to have killed or sickened hundreds of animals, forcing the recall of more than 100 brands of pet food. Similar ingredients commonly used in food meant for human consumption are imported with little government supervision. "It was a bitter pill to swallow," said Benjamin L. England, a former FDA regulatory lawyer who worked on the plan for the agency's enforcement branch. "I'm disappointed that they are basically sitting on the solution." Read The Full Story U.S. Officer Accused Of 'Aiding Enemy' In Iraq 2007-04-27 02:29:02 The American military has charged a top commander at its main detention center in Baghdad with nine violations of military law, including “aiding the enemy,” a rare and serious accusation that could carry a death sentence. According to a military statement released Thursday, the officer, Lt. Col. William H. Steele, provided aid to the enemy between Oct. 1, 2005, and Oct. 31, 2006, “by providing an unmonitored cellular phone to detainees” at Camp Cropper, an expansive prison near Baghdad International Airport that held Saddam Hussein before he was hanged. Colonel Steele, who oversaw one of several compounds at Camp Cropper as commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment, was also charged with several counts of illegally storing and marking classified information; failure to obey an order; possession of pornographic videos; dereliction of duty regarding government funds; and conduct unbecoming of an officer - for fraternizing with the daughter of a detainee since 2005, and for maintaining “an inappropriate relationship” with an interpreter in 2005 and 2006. Read The Full Story Scientists Identify 7 New Diabetes Genes 2007-04-27 02:28:15 Researchers said Thursday that they had identified seven new genes connected to the most common form of diabetes - the latest result of an intensifying race between university researchers and private companies to find genes linked to a range of diseases. The findings, presented in three reports by university scientists and one by a private company, offer novel insights into the biology of a disease that affects 170 million people worldwide. The sudden spate of new results mark an acceleration, and perhaps a turning point, in the ability to find disease genes, the long-promised payoff from the human genome project that began in 1989. Thursday’s reports bring the number of well-attested genes involved in adult-onset, or Type 2 diabetes up to 10, from the 3 known previously. The new genes do not immediately suggest any new therapy, but may point to a new biological basis for the disease, from which effective treatments could emerge in time. Read The Full Story
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