Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday June 23 2007 - (813)

Saturday June 23 2007 edition
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U.S. Commander: Top Al-Qaeda Targets Fled Before U.S. Push In Baquba 2007-06-23 01:29:00 The operational commander of troops battling to drive fighters with al-Qaeda from Baquba said Friday that 80 percent of the top al-Qaeda leaders in the city fled before the American-led offensive began earlier this week. He compared their flight with the escape of al-Qaeda leaders from Falluja ahead of an American offensive that recaptured that city in 2004. In an otherwise upbeat assessment, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the second-ranking American commander in Iraq, told reporters that leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq had been alerted to the Baquba offensive by widespread public discussion of the American plan to clear the city before the attack began. He portrayed the al-Qaeda leaders’ escape as cowardice, saying that “when the fight comes, they leave,” abandoning “midlevel” al-Qaeda leaders and fighters to face the might of American troops - just, he said, as they did in Falluja. Some American officers in Baquba have placed blame for the al-Qaeda leaders’ flight on public remarks about the offensive in the days before it began by top American commanders, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, the overall commander in Iraq. General Odierno cast the issue in broader terms, saying al-Qaeda leaders were bound to know an attack was coming in light of President Bush’s decision to pour nearly 30,000 additional troops into the fight in a bid to secure Baghdad and areas around the capital that have been insurgent strongholds. That included Baquba, which lies 40 miles north. Read The Full Story Iraq Push Revives Criticism Of Force Size 2007-06-23 01:28:39 The major U.S. offensive launched last weekend against insurgents in and around Baghdad has significantly expanded the military's battleground in Iraq - "a surge of operations," and no longer just of troops, as the second-ranking U.S. commander there said Friday - but it has renewed concerns about whether even the bigger U.S. troop presence there is large enough. As the U.S. offensive, code-named Phantom Thunder, has been greeted with a week of intensified fighting in areas outside the capital - areas that the U.S. military has largely left untouched for as long as three years - the push raised fears from security experts and officers in the field that the new attacks might simply propel the enemy from one area to another where there are not as many U.S. troops. Since President Bush ordered the troop increase in January, the military had focused on creating a more secure environment in Baghdad. "We are beyond a surge of forces," Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno said Friday in a briefing from his headquarters in the Iraqi capital. He did not directly address the size of the force, saying only that the addition of 30,000 U.S. troops over five months "allows us to operate in areas where we have not been for a long time." Read The Full Story U.N. Report Warns Of Wars Triggered By Climate Change 2007-06-23 01:26:34 The conflict in Darfur has been driven by climate change and environmental degradation, which threaten to trigger a succession of new wars across Africa unless more is done to contain the damage, according to a United Nations  report published Friday. "Darfur ... holds grim lessons for other countries at risk," an 18-month study of Sudan by the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) concludes. With rainfall down by up to 30% over 40 years and the Sahara advancing by well over a mile every year, tensions between farmers and herders over disappearing pasture and evaporating water holes threaten to reignite the half-century war between north and south Sudan, held at bay by a precarious 2005 peace accord. The southern Nuba tribe, for example, have warned they could "restart the war" because Arab nomads - pushed southwards into their territory by drought - are cutting down trees to feed their camels. Read The Full Story Britain's Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, Resigns 2007-06-23 01:25:41 Britain's Attoreny General Lord Goldsmith dramatically announced his resignation as attorney general Friday night, days before he was expected to be ousted when Gordon Brown takes over as prime minister. The departure makes it easier for Brown to look afresh at the role of attorney general, a job which many consider to have inbuilt conflicts of interest. Brown is considering stripping the attorney of his role in superintending prosecutions and making the Crown Prosecution Service independent. Such a change would mean no government minister would play a part in deciding whether to prosecute in the loans-for-honors affair, distancing the new administration from the embarrassing saga. Lord Goldsmith said in a statement that he had been "immensely privileged" to serve but had "wanted for some time to move on". He would not be giving up all links with government, and had "agreed with Mr. Brown to carry out a review of the legal and other aspects of citizenship, further details of which will be announced in due course". His surprise announcement, released just before 9:30 Friday night, ends a six-year career dogged by controversy. Read The Full Story Russia's Gazprom Buys Siberian Gas Field From BP 2007-06-23 01:21:19 The state-controlled energy giant Gazprom on Friday bought a vast natural gas field in Siberia from a unit of British-based petroleum conglomerate BP, continuing the Kremlin'spolicy of shifting control of the country's major energy projects from foreign to state hands. The terms of the multifaceted deal, which also created a new investment alliance between Gazprom and BP, were more favorable to BP than analysts and some company executives had predicted. They had feared that BP could walk away with next to nothing. "It could have been a lot worse for BP," said Jonathan Stern of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. "The last thing BP wanted to do is to either get thrown out of the project or walk out on bad terms. They are still in a great position in Russia." Read The Full Story Controversy Surrounding U.S. Justice Dept. Continues To Grow 2007-06-22 18:08:36 Democratic senators responded caustically Thursday to reports that a former head of the Justice Department's civil rights division pushed aside three minority women on his staff to "make room for some good Americans," as the lawmakers implored his successor to remove all political taint from the agency's work. Wan Kim, the current assistant attorney general for civil rights, distanced himself from the hiring practices and statements in 2005 of his predecessor, Bradley J. Schlozman, and said he first heard of them hours before they were reported in the Washington Post this week. "At a very minimum, those are intemperate, inopportune remarks," said Kim, the division's second-in-command at the time. The consternation over the removal of government civil rights lawyers erupted in the Senate as Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNultydefended himself in the House against allegations he had misled Congress about the firings last year of nine U.S. attorneys. Read The Full Story Interest Rates, Subprime Loans Cause Dow Jones Stocks To Drop Almost 120 Percent 2007-06-22 18:08:05 Stocks on Wall Street fell sharply Friday, extending its losses for the week, amid unease about interest rates and subprime loans. The Dow Jones industrial average fell nearly 120 points. A pullback coming a day after decent gains was characteristic of the somewhat erratic sessions Wall Street has seen in recent weeks as it has dealt with concerns ranging from interest rates to the health of hedge funds to prospects of unfavorable legislation from Washington. Friday's session, unusually devoid of economic or earnings data, began with a focus on the initial public offering of a stake in the management arm of Blackstone Group LP. The most talked-about IPO since Google Inc. went public saw the buyout shop's stock open well above the $31 a share at which it had been priced late Thursday. The stock recently changed hands up $4.70, or 15.2 percent, at $35.70. Enthusiasm over Blackstone wasn't broad enough to prop up the markets. ''Nobody wants to go into the weekend overextended. Once you see start to see momentum push it down it's hard to stay in the way of it,'' said Bill Schultz, chief investment officer at McQueen, Ball & Associates, referring to the stock market. Read The Full Story Indian Reservations To Receive FEMA Trailers 2007-06-22 18:07:30 American Indian tribes throughout the country will receive 2,000 unused trailers that were intended for, but never given to, Hurricane Katrina victims. Thousands of trailers have been idling in Arkansas and Texas, prompting criticism about government waste. They originally were purchased to house people displaced by the hurricane, but FEMA officials said regulations against placing the homes in flood plains prevented their use on the Gulf Coast. Last year, Sen. Tim Johnson, D-South Dakota, urged the agency to donate the trailers to American Indian country, but the agency said federal law dictated the trailers must be used for disaster victims. In September, Johnson pushed through legislation allowing FEMA to sell or donate the trailers. Nine months later, the trailers will finally be distributed, Johnson said in a statement issued by his office Friday. Read The Full Story Replacement Named For Deceased U.S. Senator From Wyoming 2007-06-22 18:04:48 John Barrasso, a Wyoming lawmaker and surgeon, was appointed as a U.S. senator from his state on Friday to replace fellow Republican Craig Thomas, who died on June 4 following a months-long battle with leukemia. Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat, selected Barrasso from among three candidates offered by the state Republican Central Committee. While most states give governors free rein in appointing a successor to a deceased senator, Wyoming requires its governor to select someone from the senator's party. Consequently, there will be no change in the balance of power in the U.S. Senate, now held by Democrats with a marginal 51-49 majority. In announcing his selection, Freudenthal declined to elaborate on the reasons but said, "I will say that I hope I made the right choice." Read The Full Story Cheney Defiant On Classified Material, Ignores 2003 Executive Order 2007-06-22 14:47:42 Vice President Cheney's office has refused to comply with an executive order governing the handling of classified information for the past four years and recently tried to abolish the office that sought to enforce those rules, according to documents released by a congressional committee Thursday. Since 2003, the vice president's staff has not cooperated with an office at the National Archives and Records Administration charged with making sure the executive branch protects classified information. Cheney aides have not filed reports on their possession of classified data and at one point blocked an inspection of their office. After the Archives office pressed the matter, the documents say, Cheney's staff this year proposed eliminating it. The dispute centers on a relatively obscure process but underscores a wider struggle waged in the past 6 1/2 years over Cheney's penchant for secrecy. Since becoming vice president, he has fought attempts to peer into the inner workings of his office, shielding an array of information such as the names of industry executives who advised his energy task force, costs and other details about his travel, and Secret Service logs showing who visits his office or official residence. Read The Full Story Refinery Failures Bump Oil Prices 2007-06-22 14:47:13 In February, fire broke out at a 74-year-old oil refinery in the heart of the Texas Panhandle. At about 2 o'clock on a Friday afternoon, liquid propane escaped from storage tanks, formed a vapor cloud and ignited. Within minutes, buttresses that held pipes 25 to 30 feet above the ground collapsed, spilling more fuel on the fire. Three 1-ton cylinders of toxic chlorine gas were damaged. A dozen people were injured, one critically. The accident also put a dent in the nation's gasoline supplies. It was the fourth fire at a Valero Energy oil refinery this year and one of a dozen to have hit U.S. refineries since Jan. 1. The rash of fires and other breakdowns, known euphemistically in the industry as "unplanned outages," helps explain why motor-fuel prices have soared 36 percent this year. With the U.S. oil refinery industry already stretched thin, breakdowns and maintenance shutdowns have drained gasoline inventories just when the nation's refiners would usually be ramping up for the summer driving season. Read The Full Story	Justice Department's Third-In-Command Resigns 2007-06-23 01:28:49 The Justice Department's third-in-command announced his resignation Friday, becoming the sixth aide to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to leave amid the political uproar over the firings of nine U.S. attorneys last year. William W. Mercer - who had been acting associate attorney general since September - withdrew his nomination for the job just days before he was scheduled to appear at a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing Tuesday. Mercer said he will return to his regular assignment as the U.S. attorney in Montana, writing in a letter to Gonzales that there was "no end in sight" to his nomination because of opposition from Senate Democrats. "After much consideration, I have concluded that it is highly unlikely that both the Judiciary Committee and the Senate will take prompt action on my nomination in the near term, if ever," Mercer wrote. Read The Full Story An Ex-Member Calls Detainee Panels Unfair 2007-06-23 01:28:00 A military officer and former member of a Pentagon unit that decided to indefinitely imprison some detainees from Afghanistan and Iraqhas said in a sworn affidavit that the process of reviewing their cases was "fundamentally flawed" and that the results were influenced by pressure from superiors rather than based on concrete evidence. Stephen Abraham, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve and a lawyer, said the military placed too much weight on unsubstantiated statements by intelligence agencies in deciding that the detainees were enemy combatants, according to his affidavit. That conclusion meant that the detainees could be kept in a prison in Guantanamo as long as the U.S. military wished. Abraham, who helped review government intelligence about detainees in 2004 and 2005 and served on a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, is the first person who played such a role to publicly challenge the fairness of the reviews. He said in an interview Friday that he felt compelled to disclose his misgivings after reading public claims about the fairness of the process made by Rear Adm. James M. McGarrah, who oversaw it. Read The Full Story Go Back And Stand Up To The French, Brown Orders Blair 2007-06-23 01:25:55 Gordon Brown, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer and the man who will succeed Tony Blair as prime minister in a few days, dramatically intervened in a crucial European summit Friday to overrule the prime minister in his last week in office and demand that Britain challenge a French move to dilute Europe's commitment to a free market. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, triggered a row at the Brussels meeting by watering down a pledge to maintain "free and undistorted competition" in the operation of the single European market. Brown, who was not attending the summit, intervened with Tony Blair after the prime minister assented to the French demand. He phoned Blair three times in Brussels as he digested the potential impact of the Sarkozy coup. A chastened prime minister was forced to go back to the negotiating table to demand a new "protocol" to guarantee that the E.U.'s powers to regulate cartels and anti-trust issues were not impaired. Read The Full Story Puzzling Over Putin's Remarks On Succession 2007-06-23 01:21:50 Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to quietly delight in stoking the fevered speculation about who will succeed him when he steps down, as he has promised to do, following presidential elections in March. Now Moscow is suddenly chattering about a new, unnamed prospect - the loyal place-holder. Under that scenario, which Putin recently toyed with publicly, a new leader would keep his seat warm until 2012 - or even sooner, as some have suggested, if Russia's next president were suddenly afflicted with nervous exhaustion or some other condition that forced him - or her - to resign. The Russian constitution only prevents Putin from serving more than two consecutive terms. "Theoretically it's possible," Putin said when asked at the recent Group of Eight summit in Germany if he might run in 2012. "The constitution does not forbid it." Read The Full Story U.S. Prepares For Guantanamo Shut-Down, May Send Some Prisoners To Afghanistan 2007-06-22 18:08:50 The U.S. is helping expand a prison in Afghanistan to take some detainees from Guantanamo Bay, while administration officials argue about whether to bring the most dangerous to the U.S. when the Cuban facility shuts down. President Bush has made closing the prison in Cuba a priority, though the Afghan site is not meant to be a substitute, the White House said Friday. "Everybody is working toward the goal to meet what the president has asked them to do, which is to do it as soon as possible," Deputy press secretary Dana Perino told reporters. She said Bush's top aides are in active discussions about closing Guantanamo. Senior officials, meanwhile, have told The Associated Press a consensus is building on how to do it, including sending some high-value suspects to military facilities in the U.S. where they could be prosecuted. Officials say the administration is split, with Vice President Dick Cheney's office and the Justice Department vehemently opposed to any proposal that would bring detainees to U.S. soil, where they would be afforded more legal rights and might pose a threat. Read The Full Story Commentary: The Bushites Have Outsourced Our Government To Their Pals 2007-06-22 18:08:23 Intellpuke: The following commentary by Jim Hightower was posted on The Hightower Lowdown website on Wednesday, June 20, 2007. "The Hightower Lowdown" is edited by Jim Hightower and Phillip Frazer. Mr. Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, speaker and author of "Thieves In High Places: They've Stolen Our Country And It's Time To Take It Back". I thought the information in Mr. Hightower's commentary merited a broader audience and hope he agrees with this. His commentary follows: The sprawling $43 billion homeland security department (HSD) is known chiefly for being the agency in charge of America's color-coded terrorist-threat alarm system ("Good morning, Americans. Today is Yellow. Be vigilant. Report all suspicious people.") It's boogeyman nonsense, of course, doing absolutely nothing to make our country safe. But such falderal helps those in charge obscure HSD's real mission: to serve as a giant federal cookie jar for corporate America. Go to HSD's website, and you'll find a prominent section called "Open For Business." There, on any given day, corporate shoppers can scroll through the hundreds of contracts and grants available to them. Just dip in and grab some cookies, each one worth from $50,000 to more than $80 million. Like the department's color codes, the vast majority of these projects do nothing to make our country safe. Instead, they are make-work studies, silly technologies, and useless systems that essentially serve as mediums for transferring billions of our tax dollars to a few corporate big shots. Ever helpful to its clients, HSD also maintains a private-sector office, headed by an assistant secretary who is not a security expert but a former banker from JP Morgan Chase. This office provides concierge service for cookie grabbers. For example, it recently held a corporate seminar, entitled "The Business of Homeland Security," offering "tips, hints, and directions" on how to grab the latest contracts and grants. Lest you think that patriotism or even national security might be the motivating force behind these government-industry confabs, a Sikorksy Helicopters executive who attended the session bluntly explained why he was there: "To us contractors, money is always a good thing." Government by Corporation A monumental shift has quietly and quickly been taking place in the way the public's business is done - and We the People have not even been informed about it, much less been asked to discuss and okay it. Corporations are taking over our government. No longer is it just a matter of big business's lobbyists and campaign donations perverting public policy. Now, politically connected corporations are also seizing day-to-day governmental operations for their own profit. Read The Full Story U.S. FDA Issues New Safety Rules For Vitamins 2007-06-22 18:07:42 For the first time, manufacturers of vitamins, herbal pills and other dietary supplements will have to test all of their products' ingredients. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Friday it is phasing in a new rule that is designed to address concerns that existing regulations allowed supplements onto the market that were contaminated or didn't contain ingredients claimed on the label. Last year, the agency found that some supplements contained undeclared active ingredients used in prescription drugs for erectile dysfunction. In the past, regulators found supplements that didn't contain the levels of Vitamin C or Vitamin A that were claimed. If, upon inspection, the FDA finds that supplements do not contain the ingredients they claim, the agency would consider the products adulterated or misbranded. In minor cases, the agency could ask the manufacturer to remove an ingredient or revise its label. In more serious cases, it could seize the product, file a lawsuit or even seek criminal charges. Read The Full Story Welcome Home: Shuttle Atlantis Safely Lands In California 2007-06-22 18:06:58 With the weather in Florida never quite clearing up Friday, NASA flight directors decided to send the space shuttle Atlantis to California to land. Atlantis and its seven astronauts returned to Earth safely Friday, ending a two-week mission to deliver an addition to the international space station and bring home a crew member from the outpost. Atlantis crossed the Pacific and glided to a stop on a runway at Edwards Air Force Base in California. NASA managers had hoped to land the shuttle in Florida, but bad weather forced controllers to abandon that plan. It was NASA's first manned flight of the year. Read The Full Story CIA To Air Decades Of Its Dirty Laundry, Including Assasination Attempts 2007-06-22 14:47:53 The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses - the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said Thursday. The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs. "Most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA's history," Hayden said in a speech to a conference of foreign policy historians. The documents have been sought for decades by historians, journalists and conspiracy theorists and have been the subject of many fruitless Freedom of Information Act requests. Read The Full Story NATO Airstrike Kills Dozens Of Civilians In Afghanistan 2007-06-22 14:47:28 An airstrike by NATO-led forces killed dozens of civilians as well as Taliban militants in southern Afghanistan late Thursday, according to Afghan officials. Taliban fighters had fled to a residential area after attacking NATO troops in the Gereshk district of Helmand province, said Mohammed Anwar Esaqzai, a member of parliament who represents Helmand. NATO responded with an airstrike that killed 36 civilians belonging to three separate families, said Esaqzai. Provincial Police Chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal put the civilian death toll at 25. He said that among the dead were nine women, three babies and a local Muslim cleric. "This is happening a lot," said Esaqzai. "If it continues to happen, it will raise the anger of the people and cause big problems for NATO." Read The Full Story
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