Free Internet Press Newsletter - Sunday September 9 2007 - (813)

Sunday September 9 2007 edition
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Among Top U.S. Officials, 'Surge' Has Sparked Dissent, Infighting 2007-09-09 03:09:57 For two hours, President Bush listened to contrasting visions of the U.S. future in Iraq. Gen. David H. Petraeus  dominated the conversation by video link from Baghdad, making the case to keep as many troops as long as possible to cement any security progress. Adm. William J. Fallon, his superior, argued instead for accepting more risks in Iraq, officials said, in order to have enough forces available to confront other potential threats in the region. The polite discussion in the White House Situation Room a week ago masked a sharper clash over the U.S. venture in Iraq, one that has been building since Fallon, chief of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees Middle East  operations, sent a rear admiral to Baghdad this summer to gather information. Soon afterward, said officials, Fallon began developing plans to redefine the U.S. mission and radically draw down troops. One of those plans, according to a Centcom officer, involved slashing U.S. combat forces in Iraq by three-quarters by 2010. In an interview, Fallon disputed that description but declined to offer details. Nonetheless, his efforts offended Petraeus' team, which saw them as unwelcome intrusion on their own long-term planning. The profoundly different views of the U.S. role in Iraq only exacerbated the schism between the two men. "Bad relations?" said a senior civilian official with a laugh. "That's the understatement of the century. ... If you think Armageddon was a riot, that's one way of looking at it." Read The Full Story One In Four Mammal Species Threatened With Extinction 2007-09-09 03:09:08 Habitat loss means thousands of endangered species will survive only in zoos, report says. Thousands of species in danger of extinction in the wild may survive only in captivity. The annual "Red List" of extinct and endangered species to be published on Wednesday by the World Conservation Union is expected to show another increase in the numbers under threat of being wiped out by habitat loss, hunting, alien predators and climate change. Last year the union warned that the world faced "the sixth great extinction of life on earth" as mammals, amphibians, birds, insects, fish and plants were being lost at "unprecedented rates". One in four mammals and one in eight bird species have been labelled "threatened". News that the list will show another deterioration will prompt fresh warnings about the danger of ecosystems collapsing, leading to problems with food supply and other "biological services" such as the provision of clean water. Although some species are expected to be put into "safer" categories after successful projects to protect them, more are believed to face a vulnerable future. Read The Full Story Commentary: Time To Take A Stand 2007-09-09 03:08:17 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Paul Krugman, an op-ed colunist for the New York Times. His commentary appeared in that newspaper's edition for Friday, Sept. 7, 2007. Here's what will definitely happen when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress next week: he'll assert that the surge has reduced violence in Iraq - as long as you don't count Sunnis killed by Sunnis, Shiites killed by Shiites, Iraqis killed by car bombs and people shot in the front of the head. Here's what I'm afraid will happen: Democrats will look at Gen. Petraeus's uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe. They won't ask hard questions out of fear that someone might accuse them of attacking the military. After the testimony, they'll desperately try to get Republicans to agree to a resolution that politely asks President Bush to maybe, possibly, withdraw some troops, if he feels like it. There are five things I hope Democrats in Congress will remember. First, no independent assessment has concluded that violence in Iraq is down. On the contrary, estimates based on morgue, hospital and police records suggest that the daily number of civilian deaths is almost twice its average pace from last year. And a recent assessment by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found no decline in the average number of daily attacks. Read The Full Story Warning On 'Mortgage Rescue' Firms 2007-09-09 03:07:21 Debt-ridden homeowners sell to companies and then rent their property back - but they can then face eviction. British homeowners struggling with spiralling mortgage costs have been warned to beware of companies which promise a quick way out of debt but could cost them their houses. A new wave of "mortgage rescue" firms is targeting financially stretched owners, promising to solve their debt problems by buying their homes quickly and free of fees. Although the companies typically pay as little as two-thirds of the property's market value, people are attracted to the deals because they believe they will be able to carry on living in their homes indefinitely. But according to the Citizen's Advice Bureaux and the housing charity Shelter, some homeowners have unknowingly signed up to unprotected, short-term tenancies, leaving them in danger of being made homeless with little notice. The Wolverhampton Citizen's Advice Bureau alone has advised on 17 cases of people losing their homes through such contracts in the last couple of months. The warning comes as increasing numbers of homeowners struggle with their mortgages. The courts have seen a 98 per cent increase in the first quarter of the year of mortgage possession orders compared to the same period in 2004; and last week the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors reported that mortgage payments are swallowing the biggest share of take-home pay for 17 years. Read The Full Story FBI Data Mining U.S. Citizens Went Beyond Targets To Their Contacts 2007-09-08 13:55:44 The F.B.I. cast a much wider net in its terrorism investigations than it has previously acknowledged by relying on telecommunications companies to analyze phone-call and e-mail patterns of the associates of Americans who had come under suspicion, according to newly obtained bureau records. The documents indicate that the F.B.I. used secret demands for records to obtain data not only on the person it was targeting but also details on his or her “community of interest” - the network of people that the target in turn was in contact with. The F.B.I. recently stopped the practice in part because of broader questions raised about its aggressive use of the records demands, which are known as national security letters, officials said Friday after being asked about it. The community of interest data sought by the F.B.I. is central to a data-mining technique intelligence officials call “link analysis.” Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, American counterterrorism officials have turned more frequently to the technique, using communications patterns and other data to identify suspects who may not have any other known links to extremists. Read The Full Story Editorial: Denying Children's Health Care 2007-09-08 13:54:36 Intellpuke: The following editorial appears in the New York Times edition for Saturday, September 8, 2007. The Bush administration reached a deplorable, preordained verdict yesterday when it denied New York State permission to expand a valuable health insurance program to help cover middle-class children. The administration, which makes no effort to disguise its disdain for government insurance programs, imposed new, excessively stringent requirements last month that not only guaranteed New York’s denial but will make it nearly impossible for any state to expand coverage. The denial shows the White House at its most ideological and intransigent. Unfortunately, tens of thousands of children in New York - and many more nationally - will end up paying the price. New York wanted to raise its income threshold for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-chip, from the current $51,000 for a family of four to more than $82,000. There is room to debate whether that level - four times the poverty level - is too high, but the administration is not basing its rejection on those grounds. Federal officials say they have no authority to reject a state’s plan based on income eligibility alone. Read The Full Story U.S. Sen. Hagel, R-Nebraska,Will Not Seek Re-Election In 2008 2007-09-08 13:53:48 U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska Republican and outspoken critic of the Iraq war who had been mulling a run for president, will retire at the end of his term in early 2009 and will not run for the White House, aides said on Saturday. Hagel will make a formal announcement in Omaha on Monday morning, said the aides. In announcing his retirement, Hagel will fulfill a promise he made to voters when he first ran for the Senate in 1996 that he would retire after two terms. His decision is the latest political setback for the Republican Party in its effort to prevent Democrats from extending their majority in Congress next year. Former Senator Bob Kerrey, a Nebraska Democrat, who has been president of The New School University in New York City since leaving office in 2001, has said that he might return to Nebraska to run for office again. Kerrey is also a former governor of Nebraska. Read The Full Story U.S. House Committee Investigates No-Bid Contract At Homeland Security Dept. 2007-09-08 13:52:31 A House oversight committee is investigating a no-bid contract awarded by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement that involves a senior government official and his former colleagues at a private consulting firm. The House Homeland Security Committee probe follows a Washington Post article about the arrangement. Committee officials said they plan to focus on whether the department's ethical guidelines were followed and whether internal policies governing the use of sole-source contracts are rigorous enough. Though the $579,000 contract is small by government standards, committee officials said they believe the way it was awarded, without competition, may represent a broader pattern in the department. "The Bush administration has turned sole-source contracting exceptions on their head - they have made what should be a rare occurrence into a routine practice," said the committee's chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi). "When old-boys-network contractors are telling their buddies in the government how to avoid competition rules and give them contracts, it's the American taxpayers who pay the price." Read The Full Story Former German Chancellor Schroeder Calls U.S. Missile Plan 'Dangerous' 2007-09-08 13:51:33 U.S. plans to site parts of a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic are "politically dangerous," former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said on Saturday. "From my point of view the missile defense system is politically dangerous. It is perceived as an attempt to isolate Russia, which is not in Europe's political interests," said Schroeder, who is a personal friend of President Vladimir Putin. "It is Germany's responsibility ... to persuade the United States to abandon these plans," he said at a round table discussion with political analysts and journalists. Read The Full Story	The New Al-Qaeda Central 2007-09-09 03:09:36 Far from declining, the network has rebuilt, with fresh faces and a vigorous media arm. When Osama bin Laden resurfaced Friday in a 26-minute videotaped speech, his most important message was one left unsaid: We have survived. The last time bin Laden showed his face to the world was three years ago, in October 2004. Since then, al-Qaeda's  core leadership - dubbed al-Qaeda Central by intelligence analysts - has grown stronger, rebuilding the organizational framework that was badly damaged after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, according to counterterrorism officials in Pakistan, the United States and Europe.  It has accomplished this revival, the officials said in interviews, by drawing on lessons learned during 15 years of failed campaigns to destroy it. In that period, bin Laden and his followers have outfoxed powerful enemies from the Soviet army to the Saudi royal family to the CIA. Read The Full Story Commentary: Reporting From Baghdad 2007-09-09 03:08:37 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Scott Ritter and appeared on the Truthdig.com website Thursday, September 6, 2007. Mr. Ritter is a former U.S. Marine and weapons inspector in Iraq. His commentary follows: It should come as no surprise that the Bush administration's newest military-man-of-substance-turned- political lapdog, General Petraeus, maintains that the situation in Iraq is not only salvageable, but actually improving, due to the "surge" of U.S. combat troops into Iraq over the past year. All the president and his collection of G.I. Joe hand-puppets ask for is more time, more money and more troops. There is no reason to believe that the compliant war facilitators who comprise the "anti-war" Democratic majority in Congress will do anything other than give the president what he is asking for. No one seems to want to debate, in any meaningful fashion, what is really going on in Iraq. Why would they? The Democrats, like their Republican counterparts, have invested too much political capital into fictionalizing the problem with slogans like "support the troops," "we're fighting the enemy there so we don't have to fight them here," and my all-time favorite, "leaving Iraq would hand victory to al-Qaeda." There simply is no incentive to put fact on the table and formulate policy that actually seeks a solution to a properly defined problem. Like the Republicans before them, the Democrats today seek not to govern with the best interests of the people in mind, but rather to game the system in order to consolidate political power. Political sloganeering has so trumped reality that any political backlash that is generated from the so-called "Petraeus Report" will be limited to how the Democrats could better sustain a conflict that kills American troops, since no main-stream Democratic leader has expressed a true "get out of Iraq now" policy. Read The Full Story Commentary: CBS Early Show Removes Anti-War Protesters From View In Kansas City 2007-09-09 03:07:49 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Matthew Rothschild and appeared on The Progressive magazine's website on Tuesday, September 4, 2007. Mr. Rothschild is the editor of The Progessive. His commentary follows: On August 10, the CBS Early Show came to Kansas City, Missouri. Using Liberty Memorial Park, the Early Show was featuring the country western band Big & Rich, which is famous for "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)" and for leading audiences in the Pledge of Allegiance. When the local peace community heard that the Early Show was coming to the park, activists hoped to get their message to a national audience. "I received an e-mail about the event and a flier from the Early Show inviting people to attend," says Ira Harritt, Kansas City area program coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). "I rsvp'd, saying some people from the AFSC would be there." Read The Full Story Mrs. Ashcroft And The Hospital 'Tongue' Lashing 2007-09-09 03:07:03 The wife of former Attorney General John Ashcroft stuck her tongue out at two Bush administration officials as they left the hospital room of her seriously ill husband, according to a new account by the man who triggered that now infamous nighttime visit, former Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith. At age 41, the former University of Chicago law professor Goldsmith joined the Justice Department in the fall of 2003 as the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, a little-known but extremely powerful position as the chief adviser to the president and attorney general on the legality of their policies. During his first weeks on the job, Goldsmith says he found the legal basis for the country's most important counterterrorism policies, including those for the CIA's interrogation techniques, to be deeply flawed and sloppily reasoned. Goldsmith says he inherited a legal mess from his predecessor. "My first reaction was I should quit because if I go down this path, it's going to cause enormous disruption to the administration's most important counterterrorism policies," Goldsmith said in an interview with ABC News' Brian Ross. Read The Full Story Melting Ice Cap Triggers Earthquakes 2007-09-08 13:55:08 Estimates of sea-level rise are out of date, say scientists. Religious leaders pray for planet at Greenland glacier. The Greenland ice cap is melting so quickly that it is triggering earthquakes as pieces of ice several cubic kilometers in size break off. Scientists monitoring events this summer say the acceleration could be catastrophic in terms of sea-level rise and make predictions this February by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) far too low. The glacier at Ilulissat, which supposedly spawned the iceberg that sank the Titantic, is now flowing three times faster into the sea than it was 10 years ago. Dr. Robert Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, said in Ilulissat Friday: "We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea. The ice is moving at 2 meters an hour on a front 5 kilometers [3 miles] long and 1,500 meters deep. That means that this one glacier puts enough fresh water into the sea in one year to provide drinking water for a city the size of London for a year." Read The Full Story Commentary: Government Inaction On Climate Is A Grave Dereliction Of Duty 2007-09-08 13:54:14 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Julian Glover and appears in the Guardian edtion for Saturday, September 8, 2007. In his commentary, Mr. Glover writes that government exists to achieve tasks that individuals cannot tackle alone. On the environmental crisis, it has badly failed. Mr. Glover is chief leader writer of Britain's Guardian newspaper since 2006. His commentary follows: Somewhere near Croydon, England, on a rubbish heap carefully assembled for the occasion, a group of people have just done their bit for the environment. An example of the Blue Peter school of greenery - gather up your old jam jar lids and rescue a glacier - the Channel 4 series "Dumped" drove home the message that the planet can be saved if we all just try awfully hard. "Day 19: The group fill their prize of a bio-diesel generator and turn it on. They all cheer!" On eco-planet TV, government does not seem to exist and a collective, coordinated, national response to environmental challenges counts for less than a whole heap of little volunteered savings. Why bother with politics or laws or new taxes when you can assemble a hot tub out of old planks and keep the world alive, all at the same time? Or be forced by Paraliament members to drive and fly less when you can watch "An Inconvenient Truth" on a DVD player thrown out by some thoughtless consumer - entertainment and greater green understanding in one undemanding package? Easy to mock - and perhaps "Dumped" will shock someone into recycling a fridge. But like the BBC's planned Planet Relief day, thrown onto a dump of its own this week, the Channel 4 program suggests an avoidance of political responsibility. It implies that the duty of dealing with climate change lies not with the state but with individuals, who in practice cannot even begin to make up for official failure to do anything serious. It would be no bad thing if the BBC's decision to cancel Planet Relief sent this chirpy spirit of green voluntarism to the scrap heap. Read The Full Story Global Warming: Two-Thirds Of World's Polar Bears Will Disappear By 2050 2007-09-08 13:53:30 Two-thirds of the world’s polar bears will disappear by 2050, even under moderate projections for shrinking summer sea ice caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, government scientists reported on Friday. The finding is part of a yearlong review of the effects of climate and ice changes on polar bears to help determine whether they should be protected under the Endangered Species Act. Scientists estimate the current polar bear population at 22,000. The report, which the United States Geological Survey released here, offers stark prospects for polar bears as the world grows warmer. The scientists concluded that, while the bears were not likely to be driven to extinction, they would be largely relegated to the Arctic archipelago of Canada and spots off the northern Greenland coast, where summer sea ice tends to persist even in warm summers like this one, a shrinking that could be enough to reduce the bear population by two-thirds. Read The Full Story Pacific Nations Set Modest Climate Goals At APEC Summit 2007-09-08 13:52:02 Pacific Rim leaders on Saturday said the world needs to ''slow, stop and then reverse'' greenhouse gas emissions, and adopted modest goals to curb global warming. Thousands of demonstrators rallied to demand stronger action. Some experts and activists dismissed as ineffective the program adopted by the presidents of the United States, China, Russia and leaders of other Asia-Pacific economies at an annual summit - which did not set goals for cutting countries' output of polluting gases. But it sets a precedent because it applies to all of the group's mix of rich and developing members, and could influence upcoming United Nations. negotiations on climate change. ''The world needs to slow, stop and then reverse the growth of global greenhouse gas emissions,'' the 21 leaders said in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum's declaration on climate change. Read The Full Story Japan's Floundering Prime Minister Fights For Floating Gas Station 2007-09-08 13:50:58 For the election-battered, scandal-plagued and competence-challenged government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, it has come down to this: If he cannot keep a floating gas station open in the Indian Ocean, Abe may be  finished as the leader of Japan. The high-seas refueling operation has been Japan's principal contribution to the war in Afghanistan. Over the past six years, Japanese military tanker ships cruising far from home have pumped more than 127 million gallons of fuel, free of charge, much of it into U.S. warships hunting for terrorists and smugglers. Yet in recent weeks the gas station has become a political cudgel. Emboldened by polls showing that about half of the Japanese public wants the fueling operation stopped, a surging opposition party has seized on the issue as a way of felling Abe, who has been in office less than a year. The Democracy Party of Japan clobbered the prime minister's ruling party in a July election and took control of the upper house of the legislature. Forcing Abe to halt fuel deliveries would be a highly visible way for the opposition to demonstrate the prime minister's political infirmity to a public that, according to polls, already doubts his judgment on appointees and his administrative competence. Read The Full Story
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