Free Internet Press Newsletter - Saturday August 25 2007 - (813)

Saturday August 25 2007 edition
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U.S. General Differ On The Timing Of Troop Cuts In Iraq 2007-08-25 03:13:59 As the Bush administration mulls options for withdrawing forces in Iraq, fault lines are beginning to emerge in a debate between commanders in the field who favor slow reductions and senior generals at the Pentagon who favor cutting the number of combat troops more deeply. Among others, Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., the Army chief of staff, are said to be leaning toward a recommendation that steep reductions by the end of 2008, perhaps to half of the 20 combat brigades now in Iraq, should be the administration’s goal. Such a drawdown would be deeper and faster than Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, is expected to recommend next month, said administration officials. “If you’re out in Baghdad you might have a different priority for where you want the troops,” an administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the White House has not authorized public remarks on the options being considered. Read The Full Story Troops Confront Waste In Iraq Reconstruction 2007-08-25 03:13:26 Inexperience and lack of training hobble oversight, accountability. Maj. Craig Whiteside's anger grew as he walked through the sprawling school where U.S. military commanders had invested money and hope. Portions of the workshop's ceiling were cracked or curved. The cafeteria floor had a gaping hole and concrete chunks. The auditorium was unfinished, with cracked floors and poorly painted walls peppered with holes. Whiteside blamed the school director for not monitoring the renovation. The director retorted that the military should have had better oversight. The contract shows the Iraqi contractor was paid $679,000. The story of the Vo-Tech Iskandariyah Industrial School illustrates the challenges of rebuilding Iraq. It also raises questions about how the military is managing hundreds of millions of dollars to fund such reconstruction, part of the effort to stabilize the country. Read The Full Story U.S. Gen. Pace Likely To Urge Iraq Troop Cut 2007-08-24 21:34:15 The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff is expected to advise President Bush to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq next year by almost half, potentially creating a rift with top White House officials and other military commanders over the course of the war. Administration and military officials say Marine Gen. Peter Pace is likely to convey concerns by the Joint Chiefs that keeping well in excess of 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2008 will severely strain the military. This assessment could collide with one being prepared by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, calling for the U.S. to maintain higher troop levels for 2008 and beyond. Asked about the report that Pace favored the troop cut, White House Deputy Press Secretary Gordon Johndroe said Friday in Crawford, Texas, where Bush is spending several days at his home, that "the president has received no recommendations regarding our future force posture in Iraq." Read The Full Story Editorial: The White House Shell Game 2007-08-24 21:33:32 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Friday, August 24, 2007. The Bush administration’s obsession with secrecy took another absurd turn this week. The administration is claiming that the White House Office of Administration is not covered by the Freedom of Information Act, even though there are some compelling reasons to think it is. Like the fact that the office has its own FOIA officer. And it responded to 65 FOIA requests last year. And the White House’s own Web site, as of yesterday, insisted the office is covered by FOIA. The administration’s logic-free claim about the Office of Administration follows fast on the heels of Vice President Dick Cheney’s laughable claim that he was immune to an open-government law because his office supposedly was not an executive agency. The fight over the Office of Administration’s status is part of a larger battle over access to an estimated five million e-mail messages that have mysteriously disappeared from White House computers. The missing messages are important evidence in the scandal over the firing of nine United States attorneys, apparently because they refused to use their positions to help Republicans win elections. The Office of Administration seems to know a lot about when and how those messages disappeared, but it does not want to tell the public. Read The Full Story Commentary: The Advocates Of Partition In Iraq Only Make Things Worse 2007-08-24 21:32:54 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Guardian columnist Jonathan Steele and appears in that newspaper's edition for Friday, August 24, 2007. Mr. Steele is also a roving correspondent for the Guardian and an author. Since 9/11 he has reported from Afghanistan and Iraq as well as on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. His books deal with international affairs, including books on South Africa, Germany, eastern Europe and Russia. In the following commentary, Mr. Steele writes that however misguided were Bush's remarks this week, at least he didn't further fuel ethnic conflict by calling to split the country. Here is his column: The death toll from last week's staggeringly brutal attacks by suicide bombers on two small-town communities in northern Iraq has crept up above 500, making it by far the worst atrocity since the 2003 invasion. No other mass killing has come within even half that total. Why did four truck bombers make these people their target? The mind struggles for an answer. The Yezidis are one of Iraq's smallest religious minorities, who follow an ancient cult unique to themselves. They wield no political or economic power. They live in an area that is remote from the key cities at the eye of Iraq's recurring hurricanes. Yet there is a potential explanation for their killing, if such things can ever be explained. It carries a lesson for Iraq's future that goes much further than the tragedy of two marginal communities, and by coincidence has echoes in other events that occurred last week - the ceremonies marking 60 years since India's independence. The key word is partition, and the lesson is "Beware partition". Most media coverage of the Yezidi massacre has concentrated on its religious dimension. Reporters pointed to the recent "honor killing" by a stone-throwing Yezidi mob of a young Yezidi girl who married a Muslim and apparently then converted to Islam. The killing was filmed and put on the internet. Sunni Arab extremists linked to al-Qaeda then took their anger out, it seems, against the whole Yezidi community. Read The Full Story Are We Living In A Sims 'Matrix' World? Oxford Professor Says It's Possible 2007-08-24 13:10:30 Intellpuke: The following article was written by Nick Bostrom and appeared in the New York Times edition for Tuesday, August 14, 2007. I found it interesting and a bit thought-provoking, so I didn't want to let it slip through the cracks.  Here's the article: Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims. Now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation. This simulation would be similar to the one in “The Matrix,” in which most humans don’t realize that their lives and their world are just illusions created in their brains while their bodies are suspended in vats of liquid, but in Dr. Bostrom’s notion of reality, you wouldn’t even have a body made of flesh. Your brain would exist only as a network of computer circuits. You couldn’t, as in “The Matrix,” unplug your brain and escape from your vat to see the physical world. You couldn’t see through the illusion except by using the sort of logic employed by Dr. Bostrom, the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford. Read The Full Story More Storms Slam Flooded U.S. Midwest 2007-08-24 12:45:02 Ferocious thunderstorms, heat and humidity added to the Midwest's flooding misery Friday as thousands of people returned to damaged homes, many without electricity to run fans or pumps. A sudden thunderstorm with 70 mph wind slammed into the Chicago area Thursday evening, tearing down huge trees and damaging buildings. In the suburbs, part of an industrial facility's roof collapsed, injuring 40 people, and a tornado was reported as the storm moved into Michigan. "Out of nowhere, the sky just went black," said Kimber Hall, 20, was riding her bike along Lake Michigan when the storm hit. "Sheets of rain. Lightning hit a tree about 25 feet away from me. A branch hit me in the face." Early Friday, another band of thunderstorms was dumping more rain along a line from Missouri and Iowa to Wisconsin. Read The Full Story 3 British Soldiers Killed By U.S. Bomb In Afghanistan 2007-08-24 12:44:14 A bomb apparently dropped by an American fighter jet called in for air support killed three British soldiers in southern Afghanistan, officials said Friday. Two soldiers were seriously wounded. The British unit was on patrol Thursday evening in Helmand province when it came under Taliban attack, said the British Ministry of Defense. "During the intense engagement that ensued, close air support was called in from two U.S. F-15 aircraft to repel the enemy. One bomb was dropped and it is believed the explosion killed the three soldiers." They were the first British soldiers killed in friendly fire in Afghanistan, although joint operations between U.S. and British forces in Iraq have been marred by "friendly fire" deaths caused by the failure of equipment and personnel in correctly identifying allies. Read The Full Story Televangelist's Husband Turns Himself In Following Beating Of Estranged Wife 2007-08-24 12:40:55 The minister husband of evangelist and gospel singer Juanita Bynum turned himself in Friday morning to face charges that he beat her outside a hotel earlier this week. Thomas W. Weeks III, known to his followers as Bishop Weeks, was accompanied by his lawyer when he surrendered at the Fulton County Jail, said Atlanta Police spokesman James Polite. After being photographed and fingerprinted, Weeks was expected to be released on bail, said Polite. The minister faces charges of aggravated assault and terroristic threats following a confrontation in which he left his estranged wife badly bruised, said police. Read The Full Story	U.S. Terror Suspect List Produces Few Arrests 2007-08-25 03:13:44 Raises questions about Americans' privacy. The government's terrorist screening database flagged Americans and foreigners as suspected terrorists almost 20,000 times last year, but only a small fraction of those questioned were arrested or denied entry into the United States, raising concerns among critics about privacy and the list's effectiveness. A range of state, local and federal agencies as well as U.S. embassies overseas rely on the database to pinpoint terrorism suspects, who can be identified at borders or even during routine traffic stops. The database consolidates a dozen government watch lists, as well as a growing amount of information from various sources, including airline passenger data. The government said it was planning to expand the data-sharing to private-sector groups with a "substantial bearing on homeland security," though officials would not be more specific. Few specifics are known about how the system operates, how many people are detained or turned back from borders, or the criteria used to identify suspects. The government will not discuss cases, nor will it confirm whether an individual's name is on its list. Slightly more than half of the 20,000 encounters last year were logged by Customs and Border Protection officers, who turned back or handed over to authorities 550 people, most of them foreigners, said Customs officials. FBI and other officials said that they could not provide data on the number of people arrested or denied entry for the other half of the database hits. FBI officials indicated that the number of arrests was small. Read The Full Story Wife Of Chinese Activist Detained At Beijing Airport 2007-08-25 03:13:03 Authorities forcibly return her to home village. The wife of a blind, imprisoned legal activist was detained at the Beijing airport Friday by authorities, apparently on orders to prevent her from flying to the Philippinesto receive an award on behalf of her husband, whose case has sparked international outrage and condemnation. Yuan Weijing, 30, was forcibly returned to her home village near Linyi city in Shandong province. She had been staying in Beijing since sneaking out from under police surveillance last month to come here and work on the case to free her husband. "I was taken to the basement of the Beijing airport after I was stopped by the airport official at the security check," Yuan said in a telephone interview. "I saw 16 to 17 strong men in the basement, some of whom were from my town. We stayed in the basement for several minutes, and then left for Linyi." Read The Full Story Commentary: Not So Fast, Christian Soldiers 2007-08-24 21:33:48 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Michael L. Weinstein and Reza Aslan and appeared in the Los Angeles Times edition for Wednesday, August 22, 2007. Mr. Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), wrote "With God On Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military". Reza Aslan, author of "No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam", is on the MRFF advisory board. Maybe what the war in Iraq needs is not more troops but more religion. At least that's the message the Department of Defense seems to be sending. Last week, after an investigation spurred by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the Pentagon abruptly announced that it would not be delivering "freedom packages" to our soldiers in Iraq, as it had originally intended. What were the packages to contain? Not body armor or home-baked cookies. Rather, they held Bibles, proselytizing material in English and Arabic and the apocalyptic computer game "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" (derived from the series of post-Rapture novels), in which "soldiers for Christ" hunt down enemies who look suspiciously like U.N. peacekeepers. The packages were put together by a fundamentalist Christian ministry called Operation Straight Up, or OSU. Headed by former kickboxer Jonathan Spinks, OSU is an official member of the Defense Department's "America Supports You" program. The group has staged a number of Christian-themed shows at military bases, featuring athletes, strongmen and actor-turned-evangelist Stephen Baldwin, but, thanks in part to the support of the Pentagon, Operation Straight Up has now begun focusing on Iraq, where, according to its website (on pages taken down last week), it planned an entertainment tour called the "Military Crusade." Read The Full Story Studies Report Inducing Out-Of-Body Experience 2007-08-24 21:33:13 Using virtual-reality goggles, a camera and a stick, scientists have induced out-of-body experiences - the sensation of drifting outside of one’s own body - in ordinary, healthy people, according to studies being published Friday in the journal Science. When people gazed at an illusory image of themselves through the goggles and were prodded in just the right way with the stick, they felt as if they had left their bodies. The research reveals that “the sense of having a body, of being in a bodily self,” is actually constructed from multiple sensory streams, said one expert on body and mind, Dr. Matthew M. Botvinick, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Princeton University. Usually these sensory streams, which include vision, touch, balance and the sense of where one’s body is positioned in space, work together seamlessly, said Dr. Botvinick, but when the information coming from the sensory sources does not match up, the sense of being embodied as a whole comes apart. The brain, which abhors ambiguity, then forces a decision that can, as the new experiments show, involve the sense of being in a different body. Read The Full Story Dissidents Freed As Raul Castro Signals Change Of Tack In Cuba 2007-08-24 21:32:18 Dozens released as talk grows of Fidel's bad health. Overtures to U.S. as small reforms bid to improve life. Raul Castro has started to make cautious changes in Cuba which could signal plans for political and economic reform. Since he took over from his brother Fidel, dozens of dissidents have been released, an olive branch has been extended to Washington and there is talk of easing communist controls on property and agricultural production. Three political prisoners have been freed in the past fortnight, the latest being Armando Betancourt Reina, a journalist jailed for 15 months after reporting on the eviction of a family in Camaguey. Analysts said Raul, 76, who has been acting president since illness forced his brother to step down last year, is experimenting with stealth reforms to improve living conditions and morale without eroding government control. Read The Full Story Telecom Firms Helped With Government's Warrantless Wiretaps Of Americans 2007-08-24 12:45:20 The Bush administration acknowledged for the first time that telecommunications companies assisted the government's warrantless surveillance program and were being sued as a result, an admission some legal experts say could complicate the government's bid to halt numerous lawsuits challenging the program's legality. "[U]nder the president's program, the terrorist surveillance program, the private sector had assisted us," Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said in an interview with the El Paso Times, in Texas, published Wednesday. His statement could help plaintiffs in dozens of lawsuits against the telecom companies, which allege that the companies participated in a wiretapping program that violated Americans' privacy rights, said former Justice Department  officials. Warrantless surveillance began shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and was placed under supervision of a special court in January. Read The Full Story Editorial: The Problem Isn't Mr. Maliki 2007-08-24 12:44:40 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Friday, August 24, 2007. Blaming the prime minister of Iraq, rather than the president of the United States, for the spectacular failure of American policy, is cynical politics, pure and simple. It is neither fair nor helpful in figuring out how to end America’s biggest foreign policy fiasco since Vietnam. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has been catastrophic for Iraq ever since he took over from the equally disastrous Ibrahim al-Jaafari more than a year ago. America helped engineer Mr. Jaafari’s removal, only to get Mr. Maliki. That tells you something important about whether this is more than a matter of personalities. Mr. Jaafari, as it happens, was Iraq’s first democratically chosen leader under the American-sponsored constitution. Continuing in the Jaafari tradition, Mr. Maliki’s government has fashioned Iraqi security forces into an instrument of Shiite domination and revenge, trying to steer American troops away from Shiite militia strongholds and leaving Sunni Arab civilians unprotected from sectarian terrorism. His government’s deep sectarian urges have also been evident in the continuing failure to enact legislation to fairly share oil revenues and the persistence of rules that bar much of the Sunni middle class from professional employment. Read The Full Story Clashes Break Out In The Caucusus 2007-08-24 12:41:18 Two police officers were killed Friday in the Chechen capital of Grozny as they pursued a rebel, who was also killed, said the Chechen Interior Ministry. The authorities identified the rebel as an associate of Doku Umarov, the movement’s president and military leader. The shootout followed an outbreak of violence on Thursday in the mountains of Dagestan, which lies east of Chechnya. Two officers were killed in an ambush, and two other attacks west of Chechnya, in Ingushetia, left a Russian soldier dead. A total of at least 16 police officers and soldiers were wounded, said the authorities. The attacks in Dagestan were the latest in a series this summer in Chechnya and its neighboring republics. They underscored the degree to which the insurgency there, weakened since 2004, has managed to survive and conduct operations against Russia's numerically superior police and military forces. Read The Full Story
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