Free Internet Press Newsletter - Sunday June 10 2007 - (813)

Sunday June 10 2007 edition
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U.S. Military Envisions 'Post-Occupation' Force 2007-06-10 00:33:10 U.S. military officials officials here (in Baghdad) are increasingly envisioning a "post-occupation" troop presence in Iraq that neither maintains current levels nor leads to a complete pullout, but aims for a smaller, longer-term force that would remain in the country for years. This goal, drawn from recent interviews with more than 20 U.S. military officers and other officials here, including senior commanders, strategists and analysts, remains in the early planning stages. It is based on officials' assessment that a sharp drawdown of troops is likely to begin by the middle of next year, with roughly two-thirds of the current force of 150,000 moving out by late 2008 or early 2009. The questions officials are grappling with are not whether the U.S. presence will be cut, but how quickly, to what level and to what purpose. One of the guiding principles, according to two officials in Baghdad, is that the United States should leave Iraq more intelligently than it entered. Military officials, many of whom would be interviewed only on the condition of anonymity, say they are now assessing conditions more realistically, rejecting the "steady progress" mantra of their predecessors and recognizing that short-term political reconciliation in Iraq is unlikely. A reduction of troops, some officials argue, would demonstrate to anti-American factions that the occupation will not last forever while reassuring Iraqi allies that the United States does not intend to abandon the country. Read The Full Story Supplier Expands Beef Recall Over E. Coli Concerns 2007-06-10 00:32:33 A meat supplier has expanded a ground beef recall to include about 5.7 million pounds of fresh and frozen meat because they may be contaminated with E. coli. David Goldman, acting administrator of the federal Food Safety and Inspection Service, announced on Saturday that the recall would be expanded to include products with sell-by dates from April 6 to April 20. The beef was distributed by United Food Group LLC, based in California. Goldman said that none of the latest batch of suspect beef was in stores now because the product would be well past its expiration date, but that consumers might still have some of the meat at home. Read The Full Story For U.S. Unit In Baghdad, An Alliance Of Last Resort 2007-06-09 15:04:22 The worst month of Lt. Col. Dale Kuehl's deployment in western Baghdad was finally drawing to a close. The insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq had unleashed bombings that killed 14 of his soldiers in May, a shocking escalation of violence for a battalion that had lost three soldiers in the previous six months while patrolling the Sunni enclave of Amiriyah. On top of that, the 41-year-old battalion commander was doubled up with a stomach flu when, late on May 29, he received a cellphone call that would change everything. "We're going after al-Qaeda," a leading local imam said, recalled Kuehl. "What we want you to do is stay out of the way." "Sheik, I can't do that. I can't just leave Amiriyah and let you go at it." "Well, we're going to go." Read The Full Story Report Gives Details On CIA's Secret Prisons In Europe 2007-06-09 15:03:45 The CIA exploited NATO military agreements to help it run secret prisons in Poland and Romania where alleged terrorists were held in solitary confinement for months, shackled and subjected to other mental and physical torture, according to a European investigative report released here Friday. Some of the Untied States' highest-profile terrorism suspects, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, considered the prime organizer of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, were detained and interrogated at the facility in Poland, according to the 72-page report completed for the Council of Europe, the continent's human rights agency. Dick Marty, a Swiss lawyer hired by the council, said the CIA conducted "clandestine operations under the NATO framework," providing military intelligence agencies in member countries - including Poland and Romania - the cover to assist the agency in disguising the use of secret flights, operations and detention facilities from the days immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks until the fall of last year. Read The Full Story NASA Leader Regrets Global Warming Comments 2007-06-09 14:58:44 NASA administrator Michael D. Griffin said Friday that he regretted having sparked a furor last week when, in an interview with National Public Radio, he said he was not sure climate change“is a problem we must wrestle with.” “To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate,” he said during the NPR interview, stumbling into the rancorous debate over climate change. Among his own troops, James Hansen, who manages NASA’s climate research as the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, and who has said that the Bush administration has told him to soften his comments about warming, said he was shocked by the comments. Read The Full Story Paris In The Slammer When She Fizzles 2007-06-09 14:58:03 She was taken handcuffed and crying from her home. She was escorted into court disheveled, without makeup, hair askew and face red with tears. Crying out for her mother when she was ordered back to jail, Paris Hilton's cool, glamorous image evaporated Friday as she gave the impression of a little girl lost in a merciless legal system. "It's not right!" shouted the weeping Hilton. "Mom!" she called out to Kathy Hilton, who also was in tears. The 26-year-old hotel heiress tried to move toward her parents but was firmly steered away by two sheriff's deputies, who held her by each arm and hustled her from the courtroom. Read The Full Story Indian Reservation Reels In Wake Of Youth Suicides And Attempts 2007-06-09 02:20:37 The two suicides struck the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota like a random virus. No one saw them coming. The young man, 19 years old, played varsity football and basketball at Todd County High School. He was admired across the reservation, in that way small towns follow and celebrate their teenage athletes. The girl, weeks shy of her 14th birthday, made straight A’s at Todd County Middle School, played volleyball and basketball and led a traditional Lakota drum corps. They hanged themselves. This happened at the end of a particularly brutal two-and-a-half months, from Jan. 1 to March 13, when tribal authorities were called to three suicides and scores of attempts. The next day, with the reservation (population 13,000) reeling, tribal officials declared a state of emergency. Read The Full Story Bush Criticized On Immigration Defeat 2007-06-09 02:19:53 President Bush awoke in Germany Friday to find his immigration compromise on life support and facing fresh criticism that he failed to exert the leadership needed to save what is likely to be the last major domestic agenda item of his presidency. Although congressional aides and GOP strategists said it was unfair to blame Bush alone, the collapse of the immigration bill late Thursday was a reflection of the weakened state of his presidency. Those aides said the bill's troubles were exacerbated by Bush's deteriorating relations with congressional Republicans and his inability to combat an unexpectedly fierce attack on the bill by grass-roots conservatives. "This is sort of what his life is going to be like for the rest of his term," said veteran GOP strategist Ed Rollins.  "There are Republicans defecting from him now. He's not going to have any great success on anything that's controversial." Read The Full Story The Bandar Cover-Up, Who Knew What, And When? 2007-06-09 02:18:42 The British government was last night fighting to contain the fallout over £1 billion ($2 billion) in payments to a Saudi prince as the attorney general came under renewed pressure to explain how much he knew about the affair. While in public the government was issuing partial denials about its role in the controversy, in private there were desperate efforts to secure a new BAE £20 billion ($40 billion) arms deal with Saudi Arabia. And any hopes that the furore could be halted were dashed last night when the Guardian learned that the world's anti-corruption organization, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), was poised to resume its own inquiry into why the British government suddenly abandoned its investigations into the £43 billion ($86 billion) al-Yamamah arms deal. The OECD's anti-bribery panel will meet in Paris on June 19 and is expected to discuss the disclosures. When it travels to London, its inspectors are likely to ask ministers for a full explanation of their conduct. Read The Full Story Iran Confirms That California Businessman Is In Tehran Jail 2007-06-09 02:17:40 A semi-official Iranian news agency reported yesterday that California businessman Ali Shakeri is in custody in Tehran and is under investigation for possible national security violations. It is the first confirmation by Iran of his detention after repeated statements from the Tehran regime that it had no information on Shakeri. Shakeri, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen and University of Texas graduate who has lived in the United States since the 1970s, disappeared from Tehran's international airport on May 8 as he was preparing to return to the United States after the death of his mother in Tehran. His wife told the Washington Post that he had called her at least three times from Iran's notorious Evin Prison. The confirmation Friday of his detention came from the ISNA news agency. Read The Full Story	Gap In Atlantis' Thermal Blanket Studied 2007-06-10 00:32:54 With a 4-inch gap in the space shuttle Atlantis' heat-protecting blanket not appearing to be an urgent problem on Saturday, the crew readied themselves for what NASA called a delicate ballet with the international space station. Then the shuttle will enter a weeklong embrace Sunday with the orbital outpost. Atlantis' seven astronauts spent much of Saturday on a mandatory inspection of the shuttle's delicate heat tiles, outer edges and blankets for problems similar to the kind that caused the fatal Columbia accident in 2003. As of Saturday afternoon, no glaring problems were reported. Yet late Friday and early Saturday, the crew spent extra time using a robot arm to look at a gap in a thermal blanket on the left side of the shuttle. The gap, about 4 inches by 6 inches, appears to have been caused by air lifting the corner of the blanket up, John Shannon, chairman of the mission management team, said at a news conference. Read The Full Story 50,000 Years Of Resilience May Not Save Tribe 2007-06-10 00:32:12 One of the last remaining tribes of hunter-gatherers on the planet is on the verge of vanishing into the modern world. The transition has been long underway, but members of the dwindling Hadzabe tribe, who now number fewer than 1,500, say it is being unduly hastened by a United Arab Emirates royal family, which plans to use the tribal hunting land as a personal safari playground. The deal between the Tanzanian government and Tanzania UAE Safaris Ltd. leases nearly 2,500 square miles of this sprawling, yellow-green valley near the storied Serengeti Plain to members of the royal family, who chose it after a helicopter tour. Read The Full Story Is This Food Organic? USDA Considers 38 Ingredients For 'Organic' Labeled Foods 2007-06-09 15:04:06 With the "USDA organic" seal stamped on its label, Anheuser-Busch calls its Wild Hop Lager "the perfect organic experience." "In today's world of artificial flavors, preservatives and factory farming, knowing what goes into what you eat and drink can just about drive you crazy," the Wild Hop website says. "That's why we have decided to go back to basics and do things the way they were meant to be … naturally." But many beer drinkers may not know that Anheuser-Busch has the organic blessing from federal regulators even though Wild Hop Lager uses hops grown with chemical fertilizers and sprayed with pesticides. A deadline of midnight Friday to come up with a new list of nonorganic ingredients allowed in USDA-certified organic products passed without action from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, leaving uncertain whether some foods currently labeled "USDA organic" would continue to be produced. Read The Full Story Private Loans Deepen Student Loan Debt Crisis 2007-06-09 14:59:03 As the first in her immigrant family to attend college, Lucia DiPoi said she had few clues about financing her college education. So when financial aid and low-interest government loans did not stretch far enough, Ms. DiPoi applied for $49,000 in private loans, too. “How bad could it be?” she recalls thinking. When DiPoi graduated from Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, she found out. With interest, her private loans had reached $65,000 and she owed an additional $19,000 in federal loans. Her monthly tab is $900, with interest rates topping 13 percent on the private loans. DiPoi, now 24, quickly gave up her dream to work in an overseas refugee camp. The pay, she said, “would have been enough for me but not for Sallie Mae,” her lender. Read The Full Story Bush Meets With Pope Benedict XVI 2007-06-09 14:58:31 President Bush, deeply unpopular here and met by boisterous protests, sought to impress Pope Benedict XVI and the Italian public Saturday with his humanitarian record and downplayed differences with the Vatican over Iraq. In his meeting with Bush, the Vatican said the pope raised "the worrisome situation in Iraq." "He was concerned that the society that was evolving would not tolerate the Christian religion," Bush explained at a news conference with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi during the president's swing through Europe. "He's worrisome about the Christians inside Iraq being mistreated by the Muslim majority." Bush met with the prime minister several hours after his first sit-down with Benedict. Bush and Benedict appeared intent to look beyond their differences in Iraq. Read The Full Story Cities Take Lead On Environment As Debate Drags At Federal Level 2007-06-09 02:20:56 To the long list of evils being blamed on global warming - hurricanes, heat waves, melting ice caps - tack on the smaller interior of Steve Benesoczky's cab. Inside, his passengers can already feel the squeeze of climate change in their knees. "Of course it's less comfortable. Look, there's less leg room," said Benesoczky, 55, as he pointed to the back of his new taxi - a hybrid Ford Escape. The company Benesoczky works for has started complying with a new directive ordering New York'sentire fleet of 13,000 yellow cabs to go green over the next five years - part of an effort by the nation's largest city to cut its carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030. Most taxis here are now roomy-if-gas-guzzling Ford Crown Victorias, but hundreds of boxy hybrid cabs have already hit the roads, gradually altering the autoscape o Manhattan's glittering byways. Read The Full Story U.S. Supreme Court Ruling Likely to Spur Convictions In Capital Cases - But Will Justice Be Served? 2007-06-09 02:20:11 A decision by the Supreme Court on Monday that made it easier for prosecutors to exclude people who express reservations about the death penalty from capital juries will make the panels whiter and more conviction-prone, experts in law and psychology said this week. The jurors who remain after people with moral objections to imposing the death penalty are weeded out, studies uniformly show, are significantly more likely to vote to find defendants guilty than jurors as a whole. It has long been the law in every state with capital punishment that only people who are prepared to apply the death penalty may serve on capital juries. Monday’s decision, which involved a juror’s equivocation about the death penalty on learning that life without parole was an option, has the potential to make capital juries even less representative. Read The Full Story Chairman Of Joint Chiefs Of Staff On Way Out 2007-06-09 02:19:02 U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced Friday that Marine Gen. Peter Pace will step down as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in September, a move that Gates said will avert the contentious congressional hearings that would be needed to reconfirm the nation's top military officer. Pace will leave after just two years in the post, the shortest stint as chairman in more than four decades. The surprise announcement Friday at the Pentagon amounts to Pace being fired before a customary second two-year term. He has served as the top military adviser to President Bushand the defense secretary since 2005, leading a war effort that has frustrated the American public and appears no closer to a conclusion. Gates said that his decision was rooted in political considerations and that he took guidance from members of Congress who warned that Pace could face a maelstrom on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers would dissect the military's failures in Iraq. Pace has been at the center of war planning and policy since the days immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when he started as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Read The Full Story Israel's Olmert 'In Secret Deal To Return Golan Heights To Syria' 2007-06-09 02:18:01 The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has passed a secret message to Syria offering to return the Golan Heights as part of a broad peace deal, a well-connected Israeli newspaper reported Friday. There was no confirmation of the claim and Syrian diplomats were reported as saying their government had received no such overture. Meir Sheetrit, an Israeli cabinet minister, said that any future agreement with Syria would involve Israel handing over sovereignty of the Golan back to Damascus, but retaining the territory under a lease of at least 25 years. In return, Israel wants Syria to end its support for Iran, Hezbollah and armed Palestinian groups. A number of Palestinian groups have leaders in Damascus, including Khaled Meshal, head of the Hamas political bureau. Read The Full Story
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