28 February 2006

Toll in Iraq's Deadly Surge: 1,300
Morgue Count Eclipses Other Tallies Since Shrine Attack
By Ellen Knickmeyer and Bassam Sebti
Washington Post, 28 February 2006
Grisly attacks and other sectarian violence unleashed by last week's bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine have killed more than 1,300 Iraqis, making the past few days the deadliest of the war outside of major U.S. offensives, according to Baghdad's main morgue. The toll was more than three times higher than the figure previously reported by the U.S. military and the news media.

Sunni Mosque Bombed as Iraqi Tanks Deploy in Baghdad
AFP via Yahoo!News, 28 February 2006
Iraqi tanks deployed in Baghdad to pacify the city after an eruption of sectarian violence, but the bombing of a Sunni mosque and a mortar attack shattered the relative calm.
Four people were killed and 15 wounded in the bomb attack outside a Sunni mosque in eastern Baghdad as the faithful were leaving evening prayers, security officials said.
The attack was the latest strike against Iraq's ousted Sunni elite since Shiite mobs unleashed a wave of vengeance against the embittered minority after a revered Shiite shrine was blown up north of Baghdad last Wednesday.
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Baghdad Attacks Kill at Least 36
AP via NYT, 28 February 2006
Four explosions rocked the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 36 people and prompting fears that sectarian violence was continuing following last week's bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine.
In northern Iraq, a blast badly damaged a Sunni mosque where the father of Saddam Hussein is buried. The deposed leader's trial resumed in Baghdad with his defense team ending their month-long boycott of the proceedings.
In the Baghdad violence, a man wearing an explosives belt blew himself up at a gas station in the eastern New Baghdad neighborhood, killing 23 people and injuring 51, said Interior Ministry official Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi.
A car bomb targeting a police patrol in the same neighborhood killed nine people and injured 17 -- all civilians -- said police Lt. Alu Abbas and medic Rahim al-Waedi.
Another car bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in the crowded southeastern Karada neighborhood, killing four people and injuring 16, said al-Mohammedawi.
The fourth blast took place in an open area near the downtown national theater, Mohammedawi said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Sectarian clashes had declined sharply since the bloodletting that followed the destruction of the Shiite shrine in Samarra on Wednesday. Baghdad residents had returned to their jobs after three days of a government-imposed curfew.

Coast Guard Warned of Port Deal Intel Gaps
By LIZ SIDOTI
AP via LA Times, 28 February 2006
Republican congressional leaders had hoped to curtail bipartisan outcries over a United Arab Emirates-based company's pending takeover of some U.S. port operations by brokering an agreement for a new investigation of the deal's potential security risks.
Then came the disclosure that the U.S. Coast Guard had raised concerns weeks ago that, because of U.S. intelligence gaps, it could not determine whether the UAE company, DP World, might support terrorist operations.
Bush administration officials say those concerns were addressed and resolved.
Nevertheless, both Republicans and Democrats seized on the Coast Guard assessment, which was released by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing Monday, to launch a fresh round of criticism just as the furor over the ports deal appeared on the brink of subsiding.
"I am more convinced than ever that the process was truly flawed," said Collins, the Homeland Security Committee's chairwoman. "I can only conclude that there was a rush to judgment, that there wasn't the kind of painstaking, thorough analysis that needed to be done, despite serious questions being raised and despite the involvement of a wide variety of agencies."
"If this isn't a smoking gun," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said, "it shows that there may be one undetected" by the multi-agency panel that approved DP World's proposed purchase of London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. The panel signed off on the deal without doing a 45-day investigation into security implications, which critics say the law requires.
More fuel could be added to the fire Tuesday when the Senate Commerce Committee holds a hearing to review the DP World deal. Edward H. Bilkey, DP World's chief operating officer, was to testify.
In February, the Commerce Committee vetted the appointment of David C. Sanborn of Virginia, a senior DP World executive, to be the new administrator of the Maritime Administration of the Transportation Department.
The White House appointed Sanborn, who worked as DP World's director of operations for Europe and Latin America, to the post Jan. 17, the same day the Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States approved the DP World takeover.
Two Democrats, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Bill Nelson of Florida, have vowed to block Sanborn's nomination unless he testifies again before the Commerce Committee.
The DP World deal has threatened to divide the Republican Party on its signature issues -- national security and fighting terrorism -- during a pivotal election year in which the entire House and a third of the Senate faces re-election.
...Under the agreement congressional GOP leaders negotiated over the weekend, the Bush administration agreed to the company's request for a highly unusual 45-day national security review of its business deal.
Initial reviews from lawmakers were positive. Frist, who had said Feb. 20 that he might introduce a bill to delay the ports transaction if the White House didn't do so, told reporters Monday in Detroit, "I don't think it's necessary to legislate."
But a bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill anyway that would delay the deal and give Congress an opportunity to block the takeover. Separately, Democrats introduced legislation that would prohibit companies owned by foreign governments from controlling operations at U.S. ports.
At a Homeland Security Committee hearing, Collins released an unclassified excerpt of a Coast Guard intelligence assessment done before the government approved the DP World takeover.
"There are many intelligence gaps, concerning the potential for DPW (DP World) or P&O (Peninsular & Oriental) assets to support terrorist operations, that precludes an overall threat assessment" of the potential merger, the half-page excerpt said. "The breadth of the intelligence gaps also infer potential unknown threats against a large number of potential vulnerabilities."
The Coast Guard document raised questions about the security of the companies' operations, the backgrounds of people working for the companies, and whether other foreign countries influenced operations that affect security.

The Conservative goal of constricting federal power in favor of state and local government just happens to fit well with the ability of business interests to dominate smaller government entities. Of course, the 'K Street Project' shows that business interests now work extremely well at the national level, which explains why conservatives are not as interested in making the federal government smaller.
States Offer Grim Look at Curbing Corruption
Many have rules that Congress is considering. But scandals underscore the difficulty of policing ethics, even with independent oversight.
By Mary Curtius
LA Times, 28 February 2006
As lawmakers wrestle this week with overhauling ethics and lobbying guidelines for Congress, they need only to look to the states for sobering examples of how hard it is to curb political malfeasance.
Many states made rule changes years ago that the House and Senate are now contemplating. But even those that imposed the toughest restrictions and oversight continue to grapple with problems of corruption and how to keep it in check.
In about the last year, charges of political wrongdoing have surfaced in nearly a dozen states, including Alaska, Kentucky, New Mexico and Ohio.
The scandals underscore that policing political ethics "is a work in progress, as with any of these efforts to regulate unfortunately what is human nature — exercising power in a way that can be in one's self-interest," said Kathay Feng, executive director of California Common Cause.
Nearly two dozen states, including California, have established some sort of outside oversight of their legislatures. But it is a patchwork quilt of panels with varying degrees of independence, authority and funding — and uneven track records of effectiveness, proponents of changes in congressional ethics rules acknowledge.
Still, several watchdog groups say the time has come for Congress to create an independent commission that would investigate ethics complaints against lawmakers and turn over its findings to House and Senate ethics committees for action. Such a move, good-government groups say, is the only way to overcome the deep reluctance members of Congress have shown in scrutinizing their peers.
The idea is likely to face stiff resistance on Capitol Hill, where many lawmakers already are balking at more modest reform proposals put forward by the Republican leadership.
...For instance, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has backed off a push to permanently ban private groups from financing travel by lawmakers. He intends to propose a temporary moratorium on such travel through the end of the year, giving House members more time to consider the issue.
In the Senate, GOP-backed legislation would crack down on travel and gifts, make it harder for lawmakers to add funding into bills for special projects that benefit their states and require members of Congress to wait two years instead of one before returning to Capitol Hill as lobbyists. Key committees will start grappling with these proposals this week.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has introduced a bill that would create an independent commission modeled on panels in Kentucky, Tennessee and Florida that would investigate ethics charges brought against members of Congress.
The panel, made up of former House and Senate members from both parties, would turn its findings over to the Department of Justice or to each chamber's ethics committee.
"We can pass all the ethics reforms we want … but none of them will make a difference if there isn't a nonpartisan, independent commission that will help us enforce those laws," Obama said when he unveiled the bill last week. "You can't clean up corruption by trusting Congress to police itself."
But in many states where such panels exist, commission officials have found it hard to guard their authority and their budgets from the legislatures they are charged with policing.
"What happens in the states too often is that when the ethics commission oversees the Legislature, and the Legislature gets mad at them, they cut their budget," said Peggy Kerns, director of the Center for Ethics in Government of the National Conference of State Legislatures.
...In California, a budget shortfall forced the Fair Political Practices Commission, created in 1974, to close about 225 cases in 2005 before the investigations were finished.
The commission, considered one of the strongest in the nation, administers and enforces rules on campaign finance and lobbying.
The rules are more stringent than the ones in Congress. For instance, lobbyists in California can spend no more than $10 a month on lawmakers — the so-called hamburger rule. Private groups are severely restricted in the types of travel they can underwrite for lawmakers. California law also requires lawmakers, their staff and lobbyists to take a course on ethics every two years.

Top 1% Receives 30% of the Cut
The Skewed Benefits of the Bush Tax Cuts, 2007-2016
If the Tax Cuts Are Extended, Millionaires Will Receive More than $600 Billion over the Next Decade.
By Aviva Aron-Dine and Joel Friedman
Center On Budget and Policy Priorities, 23 February 2006
Under current law, nearly all of the tax cuts enacted since 2001 are slated to expire by the end of 2010. The President’s budget calls for making most of these tax cuts permanent.
The enacted tax cuts and their extension carry a large cost. This raises the question: how would the large sums involved be distributed among different income groups?
There are no official government estimates on this matter. [1] But the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center has produced estimates of how the benefits of tax cuts enacted since 2001 in the individual income tax, the Alternative Minimum Tax, and the estate tax will be distributed in coming years among households at different income levels. Estimates from the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation indicate that the cost of the tax-cut provisions the Tax Policy Center has analyzed would be $3.2 trillion over the 2007-2016 period if these provisions are extended. Applying the Tax Policy Center estimates of the percentage of the tax cuts that will go to each income group to the CBO/Joint Tax Committee estimates of the tax cuts’ cost yields the following results:
--From 2007 through 2016, households with annual incomes of more than $1 million — a group that comprises the top 0.3 percent of the population — would receive approximately $639 billion in tax cuts. This represents 20 percent of the total tax-cut benefits.

Poll: Bush Ratings At All-Time Low
CBS, 28 February 2006
The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush's approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high.
Americans are also overwhelmingly opposed to the Bush-backed deal giving a Dubai-owned company operational control over six major U.S. ports. Seven in 10 Americans, including 58 percent of Republicans, say they're opposed to the agreement.
CBS News senior White House correspondent Jim Axelrod reports that now it turns out the Coast Guard had concerns about the ports deal, a disclosure that is no doubt troubling to a president who assured Americans there was no security risk from the deal.
The troubling results for the Bush administration come amid reminders about the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina and negative assessments of how the government and the president have handled it for six months.
In a separate poll, two out of three Americans said they do not think President Bush has responded adequately to the needs of Katrina victims. Only 32 percent approve of the way President Bush is responding to those needs, a drop of 12 points from last September’s poll, taken just two weeks after the storm made landfall.
Mr. Bush's overall job rating has fallen to 34 percent, down from 42 percent last month. Fifty-nine percent disapprove of the job the president is doing.
For the first time in this poll, most Americans say the president does not care much about people like themselves. Fifty-one percent now think he doesn't care, compared to 47 percent last fall.
Just 30 percent approve of how Mr. Bush is handling the Iraq war, another all-time low.
By two to one, the poll finds Americans think U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq are going badly – the worst assessment yet of progress in Iraq.
Even on fighting terrorism, which has long been a strong suit for Mr. Bush, his ratings dropped lower than ever. Half of Americans say they disapprove of how he's handling the war on terror, while 43 percent approve.
SEE ALSO:
Democrats now preferred on national security
Just 17% Favor Dubai Ports Deal
Rasmussen Reports, 24 February 2006
Just 17% of Americans believe Dubai Ports World should be allowed to purchase operating rights to several U.S. ports. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that 64% disagree and believe the sale should not be allowed (see crosstabs).
Just 39% of Americans know that the operating rights are currently owned by a foreign firm. Fifteen percent (15%) believe the operating rights are U.S. owned while 46% are not sure.
From a political perspective, President Bush's national security credentials have clearly been tarnished due to the outcry over this issue. For the first time ever, Americans have a slight preference for Democrats in Congress over the President on national security issues. Forty-three percent (43%) say they trust the Democrats more on this issue today while 41% prefer the President.

27 February 2006

Freedom to Be More Equal than Others: Graduates Versus Oligarchs
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 27 February 2006
Ben Bernanke's maiden Congressional testimony as chairman of the Federal Reserve was, everyone agrees, superb. He didn't put a foot wrong on monetary or fiscal policy.
But Mr. Bernanke did stumble at one point. Responding to a question from Representative Barney Frank about income inequality, he declared that "the most important factor" in rising inequality "is the rising skill premium, the increased return to education."
That's a fundamental misreading of what's happening to American society. What we're seeing isn't the rise of a fairly broad class of knowledge workers. Instead, we're seeing the rise of a narrow oligarchy: income and wealth are becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small, privileged elite.
I think of Mr. Bernanke's position, which one hears all the time, as the 80-20 fallacy. It's the notion that the winners in our increasingly unequal society are a fairly large group — that the 20 percent or so of American workers who have the skills to take advantage of new technology and globalization are pulling away from the 80 percent who don't have these skills.
The truth is quite different. Highly educated workers have done better than those with less education, but a college degree has hardly been a ticket to big income gains. The 2006 Economic Report of the President tells us that the real earnings of college graduates actually fell more than 5 percent between 2000 and 2004. Over the longer stretch from 1975 to 2004 the average earnings of college graduates rose, but by less than 1 percent per year.
So who are the winners from rising inequality? It's not the top 20 percent, or even the top 10 percent. The big gains have gone to a much smaller, much richer group than that.
A new research paper by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, "Where Did the Productivity Growth Go?," gives the details. Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10 percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate, wasn't a ticket to big income gains.
But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that's not a misprint.
Just to give you a sense of who we're talking about: the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that this year the 99th percentile will correspond to an income of $402,306, and the 99.9th percentile to an income of $1,672,726. The center doesn't give a number for the 99.99th percentile, but it's probably well over $6 million a year.
Why would someone as smart and well informed as Mr. Bernanke get the nature of growing inequality wrong? Because the fallacy he fell into tends to dominate polite discussion about income trends, not because it's true, but because it's comforting.

Chaos in Iraq Sends Shock Waves Across Middle East and Elevates Iran's Influence
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
NYT, 27 February 2006
Shortly before the American-led invasion of Iraq, Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League, warned that the attack would "open the gates of hell." Now, three years later, there is a sense in the Middle East that what was once viewed as quintessential regional hyperbole may instead have been darkly prescient.
Even before the bombing of one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines in Samarra set off sectarian fighting last Wednesday, the chaos in Iraq helped elevate Iran's regional influence — a great concern to many of the Sunni led governments here — while also giving Al Qaeda sympathizers a new a foothold in the region.
But the bombing, and the prospect of a full-blown civil war driven by sectarian divisions, is even more ominous for the Middle East. Nine Middle Eastern countries have sizable populations of Shiites living side by side with Sunnis, and there is concern in many of them that a split in Iraq could lead to divided allegiances and, perhaps, conflict at home.
"The spillover of this is of concern for everybody in the region," said Ali Shukri, a retired Jordanian general who for 23 years served as an adviser to King Hussein. "When you take western Iraq, Anbar Province borders Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia; the southern part of Iraq borders Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran. If there is a conflict, a surge in violence, it becomes contagious in the region."
The rising tensions in Iraq are also happening at a time when two other powerful dynamics are at work: the rise of Islamic political parties, like Hamas in Gaza and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and the effort of the Iran's leadership to once again try to spread its ideas around the region. How all these forces combine and ultimately influence each other has become a source of deep worry.
In addition, should fighting increase, local leaders are also bracing for a new influx of refugees and damage to the regional economy. Both factors would have serious consequences for Middle Eastern states that have little or no oil and are already suffering from stagnant economies, including Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Yemen.

Younger Clerics Showing Power in Iraq's Unrest
By ROBERT F. WORTH and EDWARD WONG
NYT via Informed Comment, 26 February 2006
American officials have been repeatedly stunned and frequently thwarted in the past three years by the extraordinary power of Muslim clerics over Iraqi society. But in the sectarian violence of the past few days, that power has taken an ominous turn, as rival hard-line Shiite clerical factions have pushed each other toward more militant and anti-American stances, Iraqi and Western officials say.
Even Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the paramount Shiite cleric to whom the Americans have often looked for moderation, appears to have been outflanked by younger and more aggressive figures.
After a bomb exploded in Samarra at one of Iraq's most sacred Shiite shrines on Wednesday, many young Shiites ignored his pleas for calm, instead heeding more extreme calls and attacking Sunni mosques and killing Sunni civilians, even imams, in a crisis that has threatened to provoke open civil war.

Analysts See Lebanon-ization of Iraq in Crystal Ball
By Borzou Daragahi and Megan K. Stack
LA Times, 26 February 2006
Gunmen hold sway over streets lined with concrete bomb-blast barriers and razor wire. Entire neighborhoods are too dangerous for police to enter.
The government, holed up in a fortress behind layers of checkpoints, huddles in emergency meetings and issues proclamations that draw little attention on the streets or in foreign capitals.
And this may be the best that Iraqis and Americans can hope for.
...Like Lebanon, whose sovereignty repeatedly has been encroached by more powerful neighbors, Iraq remains a geopolitical playground for foreign countries.
With a weak central government and a lack of strong national identity, countries in the region support the interests of their sectarian or ethnic kin: Iran backs the Shiites, Turkey backs the Turkmen minority, Jordan and Saudi Arabia back Sunnis.
"It's clear that various states in the region are hedging their bets about what's happening in Iraq," said Sedra, who has studied the Iraq, Afghanistan and Balkan conflicts. "The Iraqi government is trying to assert its own sovereignty, but it has failed."

29 Killed in Iraq; Blasts Rattle Baghdad
By ALEXANDRA ZAVIS
AP via LA Times, 26 February 2006
Violence killed at least 29 people Sunday, including three American soldiers, and mortar fire rumbled through the heart of Baghdad after sundown despite stringent security measures imposed after an explosion of sectarian violence.
A ban on driving in Baghdad and its suburbs helped prevent major attacks during daylight Sunday, but after nightfall explosions thundered through the city as mortar shells slammed into a Shiite quarter in southwestern Baghdad, killing 16 people and wounding 53, police said.

Using Terror to Fight Terror
David Rose
The Observer, 26 February 2006
Two years ago, David Rose was the first journalist to interview the Tipton Three after their release from Guantanamo Bay. Now he applauds Michael Winterbottom's award-winning film of their ordeal - and finds out what has happened to the men since.
Almost two years ago, I sat in a room for most of a day in a house in north London with three men who seemed to have achieved the impossible. Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhel Ahmed, childhood friends from Tipton in the West Midlands, had just rematerialised after more than two years in the legal black hole of Guantanamo Bay, where they had been denied all contact with the world beyond the wire. Having been cleared of any involvement in terrorism by the British and US authorities, they told their story in a five-page interview for this newspaper, exposing both Guantanamo and the process that consigned them there as a horrifying mixture of incompetence and brutality.
Gaunt and hollow-eyed, their faces betrayed the stress of both their 29-month ordeal and their sudden change in circumstances. 'I just can't believe we're sitting here,' Ahmed told me. 'This time last week, we were in the cages at Guantanamo.' They had been given almost no warning they were about to be released, while the long flight home - their first experience of being unchained outside a cell since their capture - had left them jet lagged and disorientated.
Their voices were subdued, but what they said had an almost explosive force. Before their transfer to American custody, they had survived a massacre of prisoners by the Northern Alliance troops of the Afghan warlord General Rashid Dostum, who herded them and hundreds of others into sealed truck containers in which dozens suffocated and were (much later) found by US investigators in a mass grave. The first English-speaking prisoners to be freed from Guantanamo, they told of abusive interrogation sessions, of worthless false 'confessions' and frequent beatings by an 'immediate reaction force' of guards.
In the days after the story's publication, government agencies on both sides of the Atlantic did what they could to neutralise its influence. In the US, Pentagon spokesmen told reporters that the Tipton Three's claims were simply untrue. According to Steve Rodriguez, Guantanamo's chief interrogator, he and his staff had gathered intelligence so valuable that, 'We have been able as a result of information gained here to take operational actions, even military campaigns.' As the New York Times dutifully recorded, he emphatically denied 'the specific allegations of mistreatment made by prisoners recently returned to Britain'. Less than three months later, internal US administration memos confirmed that the treatment described by the three men corresponded exactly to official Pentagon policy.

American Gulag
Torture, force-feeding and darkness at noon -- this is Guantanamo, a lawyer for prisoners says.
By Thomas Wilner, Thomas Wilner is a partner at Shearman & Sterling, which has been representing Kuwaiti prisoners in Guantanamo since early 2002.
LA Times, 26 February 2006
THE AMERICAN PRISON CAMP at Guantanamo Bay is on the southeast corner of Cuba, a sliver of land the United States has occupied since 1903. Long ago, it was irrigated from lakes on the other side of the island, but Cuban President Fidel Castro cut off the water supply years ago. So today, Guantanamo produces its own water from a 30-year-old desalination plant. The water has a distinct yellow tint. All Americans drink bottled water imported by the planeload. Until recently, prisoners drank the yellow water.
The prison overlooks the sea, but the ocean cannot be seen by prisoners. Guard towers and stadium lights loom along the perimeter. On my last visit, we were escorted by young, solemn military guards whose nameplates on their shirts were taped over so that prisoners could not identify them.

"The Bush administration cannot even control the al-Qaeda operatives it has in prison! Much less the many walking around free because Bush wasted our resources on an Iraq War instead of polishing off al-Qaeda." --Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Inmates Revolt at Afghan Prison; Many Hurt
Taliban and Al-Qaeda Members Blamed for Violence Over Rule Requiring Uniforms
Reuters via Washington Post via Informed Comment, 27 February 2006
Taliban and al-Qaeda inmates armed with makeshift weapons took control of parts of Kabul's main jail and at least 30 prisoners were wounded in efforts to quell the riot, officials said Sunday.
Gunfire sounded from the high-security Pul-i-Charkhi prison after hundreds of police officers and troops backed by tanks surrounded the prison on the Afghan capital's eastern outskirts.
A police officer at the scene said seven prisoners were killed, but his account could not be independently confirmed.
The unrest erupted late Saturday and continued through Sunday after prisoners led by Taliban and al-Qaeda militants took two female guards captive in a dispute over a new rule requiring inmates to wear uniforms, government officials said.
"As far as we know, some 1,500 prisoners are involved in this incident," a security official said on condition of anonymity. "It went out of control, and a clash broke out between the prisoners, including many Taliban, and the police, in which 30 people have been wounded."
Deputy Justice Minister Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai said the prison houses more than 2,000 inmates, about 350 of whom are from the Taliban or al-Qaeda.

Port Deal Threatens Bush's Standing in GOP
The contract has drawn sharp criticism from lawmakers who fear the president's move will be a political liability to their reelection bids.
By Janet Hook
LA Times, 26 February 2006
Republicans' raucous rebellion against the White House on a port management deal has proved to be a crucial juncture in George W. Bush's presidency, signaling how dramatically his vise-like grip on the GOP has been loosened in his second term.
It also serves to underscore a fundamental political reality: Most Republicans in Congress are up for reelection in 2006, and Bush is not.

Bush Policies Weakening Guard, Governors Say
By ROBERT PEAR
NYT, 26 February 2006
Governors of both parties said Sunday that Bush administration policies were stripping the National Guard of equipment and personnel needed to respond to hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, forest fires and other emergencies.
Tens of thousands of National Guard members have been sent to Iraq, along with much of the equipment needed to deal with natural disasters and terrorist threats in the United States, the governors said here at the winter meeting of the National Governors Association.

You Can Do Anything with a Bayonet Except Sit on It
A Tomdispatch Interview with Mark Danner, 26 February 2006
...Mark Danner: When you look at the record, the phrase I come back to, not only about interrogation but the many other steps that constitute the Bush state of exception, state of emergency, since 9/11 is "take the gloves off." We hear this again and again. The interesting thing about that phrase is the implication that before we had the gloves on, that the laws and principles that constitute our belief not only in democracy but in human rights left the country vulnerable. The U.S. adherence to the Geneva Convention, the U.S. record of treating prisoners humanely that goes back to George Washington, laws like the FISA law passed to restrict the government's power to surveil its citizens -- all of these constitute the gloves on American power and 9/11 signaled to those in power that the system with "the gloves on" was insufficient to protect Americans. That seems to be their belief.
As you know, very shortly after 9/11, the then-White House counsel [Alberto Gonzales] proposed to President Bush that provisions of the Geneva Conventions had been rendered obsolete, even quaint, by this quote "new paradigm." The Geneva Conventions, the Convention against Torture, and the federal statutes against torture -- these undertakings by the U.S. -- represented restrictions that would unduly hobble the country in fighting the war on terror and, by extension, threaten[ed] the existence of the United States. And I think that's where torture -- "extreme interrogation" is the euphemism -- goes to the heart of the reaction against the way this country has observed human rights in the past, a reaction in a way against law itself. What we have here is a conflict between legality and power.

Cheney's Coup
A 3-year-old executive order that vastly expanded his powers illuminates how the vice president and his minions led us into war.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Salon, 23 February 2006
...On March 25, 2003, President Bush signed Executive Order 13292, a hitherto little known document that grants the greatest expansion of the power of the vice president in American history. The order gives the vice president the same ability to classify intelligence as the president. By controlling classification, the vice president can in effect control intelligence and, through that, foreign policy.
Bush operates on the radical notion of the "unitary executive," that the president has inherent and limitless powers in his role as commander in chief, above the system of checks and balances. By his extraordinary order, he elevated Cheney to his level, an acknowledgment that the vice president was already the de facto executive in national security. Never before has any president diminished and divided his power in this manner. Now the unitary executive inherently includes the unitary vice president.
The unprecedented executive order bears the earmarks of Cheney's former counsel and current chief of staff, David Addington. Addington has been the closest assistant to Cheney through three decades, since Cheney served in the House of Representatives in the 1980s. Inside the executive branch, far and wide, Addington acts as Cheney's vicar, bullying and sarcastic, inspiring fear and obedience. Few documents of concern to the vice president, even executive orders, reach the eyes of the president without passing first through Addington's agile hands.
To advance their scenario for the Iraq war, Cheney & Co. either pressured or dismissed the intelligence community when it presented contrary analysis. Paul Pillar, the former CIA national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, writes in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, "The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made."
On domestic spying conducted without legal approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Addington and his minions isolated and crushed internal dissent from James Comey, then deputy attorney general, and Jack Goldsmith, then head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.
On torture policy, as reported by the New Yorker this week, Alberto Mora, recently retired as general counsel to the U.S. Navy, opposed the Bush administration's abrogation of the Geneva Conventions -- by holding thousands of detainees in secret camps without due process and using abusive interrogation techniques -- based on legal doctrines Mora called "unlawful" and "dangerous." Addington et al. told him the policies were being ended while continuing to pursue them on a separate track. "To preserve flexibility, they were willing to throw away our values," Mora said.

Army to Pay Halliburton Unit Most Costs Disputed by Audit
By JAMES GLANZ
NYT, 27 February 2006
The Army has decided to reimburse a Halliburton subsidiary for nearly all of its disputed costs on a $2.41 billion no-bid contract to deliver fuel and repair oil equipment in Iraq, even though the Pentagon's own auditors had identified more than $250 million in charges as potentially excessive or unjustified.
The Army said in response to questions on Friday that questionable business practices by the subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, had in some cases driven up the company's costs. But in the haste and peril of war, it had largely done as well as could be expected, the Army said, and aside from a few penalties, the government was compelled to reimburse the company for its costs.

Ike Saw It Coming
By BOB HERBERT
NYT, 27 February 2006
Early in the documentary film "Why We Fight," Wilton Sekzer, a retired New York City police officer whose son was killed in the World Trade Center attack, describes his personal feelings in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11.
"Somebody had to pay for this," he says. "Somebody had to pay for 9/11. ... I wanna see their bodies stacked up for what they did. For taking my son."
Lost in the agony of his grief, Mr. Sekzer wanted revenge. He wanted the government to go after the bad guys, and when the government said the bad guys were in Iraq, he didn't argue.
For most of his life Mr. Sekzer was a patriot straight out of central casting. His view was always "If the bugle calls, you go." When he was 21 he was a gunner on a helicopter in Vietnam. He didn't question his country's motives. He was more than willing to place his trust in the leadership of the nation he loved.
"Why We Fight," a thoughtful, first-rate movie directed by Eugene Jarecki, is largely about how misplaced that trust has become. The central figure in the film is not Mr. Jarecki, but Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican president who had been the supreme Allied commander in Europe in World War II, and who famously warned us at the end of his second term about the profound danger inherent in the rise of the military-industrial complex.
Ike warned us, but we didn't listen. That's the theme the movie explores.

25-26 February 2006

UAE Terminal Takeover Extends to 21 Ports
By PAMELA HESS
UPI, 24 February 2006
A United Arab Emirates government-owned company is poised to take over port terminal operations in 21 American ports, far more than the six widely reported.
The Bush administration has approved the takeover of British-owned Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. to DP World, a deal set to go forward March 2 unless Congress intervenes.
P&O is the parent company of P&O Ports North America, which leases terminals for the import and export and loading and unloading and security of cargo in 21 ports, 11 on the East Coast, ranging from Portland, Maine to Miami, Florida, and 10 on the Gulf Coast, from Gulfport, Miss., to Corpus Christi, Texas, according to the company's Web site.
President George W. Bush on Tuesday threatened to veto any legislation designed to stall the handover.
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. said after the briefing she expects swift, bi-partisan approval for a bill to require a national security review before it is allowed to go forward.
At issue is a 1992 amendment to a law that requires a 45-day review if the foreign takeover of a U.S. company "could affect national security." Many members of Congress see that review as mandatory in this case.
But Bush administration officials said Thursday that review is only triggered if a Cabinet official expresses a national security concern during an interagency review of a proposed takeover.
"We have a difference of opinion on the interpretation of your amendment," said Treasury Department Deputy Secretary Robert Kimmitt.

Everything I needed to know, I learned in kindergarten...
Rice Refuses to Meet with Lebanon's Pro-Syrian President
By Warren P. Strobel
Knight Ridder Newspapers, 24 February 2006
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise, lightening-quick trip to Lebanon on Thursday, hoping to further isolate neighboring Syria and shore up Lebanon's fragile sovereignty.
Rice, taking a half-day out from a tour of Egypt and Persian Gulf countries, met under heavy security with pro-Western Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and several other leaders.
She pointedly snubbed President Emile Lahoud, who's close to Syria, which had troops in Lebanon for nearly 30 years until they were pulled out last year under international pressure. A campaign in Parliament is under way to oust Lahoud.

Violence Continues in Iraq Despite Curfew in Central Provinces
By Nancy A. Youssef
Knight Ridder Newspapers, 25 February 2006
Fighting erupted in several western Baghdad neighborhoods Friday evening after the expiration of a curfew that had been imposed throughout central Iraq after widespread religious and ethnic killings the day before.
While U.S. and Iraqi leaders continued to call for calm, there was broad uncertainty about the next steps to prevent Iraq from sliding into civil war.
Hours after Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said in a televised address that the government had secured religious shrines throughout the country, two rockets struck the tomb of Salman Pak, also known as Salman al-Farisi. Salman Pak was a seventh-century companion of the Prophet Muhammad, and Shiite Muslims revere his tomb.
Although the tomb has far less importance than the Samarra shrine that was bombed Wednesday - touching off the latest round of violence - Friday's attack raised fears that Shiites would ignore the orders of their religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to refrain from violence.
The Interior Ministry said it didn't know the extent of the shrine's damage because the neighborhood was too dangerous for forces to enter at night
SEE ALSO:
Religious Strife Shows Strength of Iraq Militias
By EDWARD WONG
and SABRINA TAVERNISE
NYT, 25 February 2006
The sectarian violence that has shaken Iraq this week has demonstrated the power that the many militias here have to draw the country into a full-scale civil war, and how difficult it would be for the state to stop it, Iraqi and American officials say.
The militias pose a double threat to the future of Iraq: they exist both as marauding gangs, as the violence on Wednesday showed, and as sanctioned members of the Iraqi Army and the police.
The insurgent bombing of a major Shiite shrine on Wednesday, followed by the wave of killings of Sunni Arabs, has left political parties on all sides clinging to their private armies harder than ever, complicating American efforts to persuade Iraqis to disband them.
The attacks, mostly by Shiite militiamen, were troubling not only because they resulted in at least 170 deaths across Iraq, but also because they showed how deeply the militias have spread inside government forces. The Iraqi police, commanded by a Shiite political party, stood by as the rampage spread.
Now, after watching helplessly as their mosques and homes burned, many Sunni Arabs say they should have the right to form their own militias.
SEE ALSO:
Outbreak of Violence Seen Posing Stern Test for Iraqi Forces
By Jonathan S. LandayKnight
Ridder Newspapers, 23 February 2006
Sectarian militias replaced Iraqi government forces in some areas hit by violence triggered by Wednesday's bombing of one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines. In other areas, Shiite militiamen or members of Sunni insurgent groups have infiltrated police and military units.
The situation "calls into question a fundamental premise of our strategy in Iraq," said a senior U.S. intelligence official, who, like the senior military official, spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the crisis publicly.
The Bush administration's objective, he noted, "has been to replace militiamen with trained security forces who are loyal to a broad-based central government, not the other way around."
The crisis has been made worse by haggling over how much power Iraq's minority Sunnis, who dominated the country under former dictator Saddam Hussein, should be given in a new central government led by a coalition of Shiite religious parties. The Shiite coalition won the largest share of seats in December parliamentary elections.
Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, a policy institute, compared the situation to the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, when ethnic strife in 1991 led to a breakdown of the army along ethnic lines.
"The only hope here to avoid the fate of former Yugoslavia is for U.S. troops to remain there as the glue around which loyal Iraqi forces can coalesce" and for the central government in Baghdad of Shiite and Sunni Arabs and minority Kurds to unite in a push for sectarian calm, he said.
The U.S. military announced on Thursday that there were 232,000 trained and equipped Iraqi security forces, including 123,000 police officers.
"We are clearly on a ... path to creating this domestic security force that can maintain domestic order and deny Iraq as a safe haven for terrorists," Army Maj. Rick Lynch said in Baghdad.
But the senior military official said: "The key to dealing with the ongoing violence will begin with Iraqi political, ethnic and religious leaders. This is a time when they must rise above sectarian impulses, join hands - as extremely difficult as that will be - and help the Iraqi and (U.S.-led) coalition forces get the situation under control."

Fear of Informants has Stoked Climate of Fear in Baghdad
By Nancy A. Youssef
Knight Ridder Newspapers, 24 February 2006
Fear of informants turning in neighbors to police or militia groups has deeply undermined community trust in many parts of Baghdad.
...A word to the police can result in uniformed security officers or even private soldiers in fake uniforms dragging residents from their homes in the middle of the night - without legitimate cause, the victims complain. Angry and confused, their families suspect that neighborhood informants are feeding lies to the security forces to settle personal scores. The raids also have sown doubts that government security forces can protect the people.
Much of the suspicion is breaking down along ethnic lines, with Sunni and Shiite Muslims blaming each other. The progressive erosion of trust is one reason for the violent response to Wednesday's mosque bombing in Samarra, after which private militias roamed the streets. It underscores the failure so far to build public institutions that earn confidence and that could stand in the way of open civil war.
"The Shiites are afraid of threats and assassinations, while Sunnis are afraid of raids (by uniformed security). The kidnappings or assassinations take place during the daylight hours and the raids happen at night," Ali said. "Dora has become hell for both Shiite and Sunni residents."
Some shop owners say they try not to ask customers questions that they once considered innocuous. Behind closed doors, residents suspect their own relatives of bringing raids to their home.
Working-class neighborhoods that are still ethnically mixed - many others have segregated - are the most vulnerable, said Ihsan Mohammed al Hassan, a sociologist at Baghdad University.
"These people are taken away, and no one knows why," Hassan said. "When other people see that one person's life has been destroyed by a report, the whole community is in fear. They can't trust the police, and they can't trust their neighbor."

Iraq's Insurgents Focus on Creating Civil Strife
By Tom Lasseter
Knight Ridder Newspapers, 24 February 2006
This week's surge in sectarian violence in Iraq - shootings, mosque burnings and mob attacks - is a chilling indicator of how successful the Sunni Muslim insurgency and foreign terrorists have been in fomenting unrest.
While U.S. combat deaths have declined in recent months - from 70 in November to 42 in January and 38 in February as of Friday - insurgents are still staging hundreds of attacks a week. Last week, they struck 555 times, according to American military officials.
The insurgency appears to be adjusting its tactics as confidence grows that U.S. troops will withdraw. Rather than killing American soldiers, the insurgents and foreign terrorists are more focused on creating civil strife that could destabilize Iraq's political process and possibly lead to outright ethnic and religious war.
Unlike past guerrilla movements, Iraq's fighters make few public statements and give fewer interviews. But by all accounts the Sunni fighters are seeking to throw the nation into turmoil, first to hasten the U.S. military's exit and then to counteract the ascent to power of the majority Shiite Muslim population after decades of oppression by Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.

Libby Loses a Round in Court
Ex-Cheney Aide Is Denied in Bid to Learn Leaker's Identity
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post, 25 February 2006
Vice President Cheney's former top aide is not entitled to know the identity of an anonymous administration official who revealed information about CIA operative Valerie Plame to two journalists, a federal judge ruled in a hearing yesterday.
To defend himself against criminal charges, however, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby does have the right to copies of all the classified notes he took as Cheney's chief of staff from spring 2003 to spring 2004, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said. Libby sought the notes to refresh his memory about matters he was handling while discussing Plame with reporters and when questioned by investigators about those conversations.

I.R.S. Finds Sharp Increase in Illegal Political Activity
By STEPHANIE STROM
NYT, 25 February 2006
The I.R.S. said yesterday that it saw a sharp increase in prohibited political activity by charities and churches in the last election cycle, a trend that it aims to reverse as the country heads into the midterm elections.
The tax agency found problems at three-quarters of the 82 organizations it examined after having received complaints about their political activities, according to a report the Internal Revenue Service released. The infractions included distributing materials that encouraged people to vote for particular candidates and giving cash to campaigns.
The agency said it was seeking to revoke the exemptions of three organizations but did not name them, pending an appeals process. Charities are generally prohibited from campaigning for candidates, although they can take stands on issues.
The internal revenue commissioner, Mark W. Everson, devoted much of a speech to a civic group yesterday in Cleveland to the subject.
"We've seen a staggering increase in money flowing into campaigns, and the question is whether all this money is encroaching upon and polluting the charitable sector," Mr. Everson said in a telephone interview before his address. "We saw a disturbing amount of political intervention in charities in the last election cycle."
While pointing out the extent of the problem, the agency published more guidance for nonprofit organizations, including examples of what is permissible and what is not. Mr. Everson warned that the agency would be more aggressive in addressing prohibited political activity as election campaigns moved into full swing.
"You have the ever-increasing influence of money in politics and the fact that charities are subject to much less regulation than campaigns for parties," he said. "Those two things come together to create an opportunity that is at variance with what the statute limiting political activity by charities allows."
Advocates for nonprofit groups praised the report, saying it was unusually clear and

24 February 2006

Bush/Rice Attempts to Prevent Support of Hamas 'Imbecilic'
Rice Draws Attention to Middle East Issue
NPR's Morning Edition, 24 February 2006
Rami Khouri, editor-at-large of the Daily Star in Lebanon, talks with Steve Inskeep about the new Palestinian government, an unexpected visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condolezza Rice to Lebanon and the Dubai Ports controversy.
SEE ALSO:
Washington’s Response to Hamas Carries Enormous Consequences
RamiKhouri.com, 21 February 2006
We are in 1992 once again: Will the victorious Islamist political party Hamas be allowed to govern in Palestine, as the triumphant Islamic Salvation Front was not allowed when it won the Algerian elections in 1992?
The denial of incumbency to the democratically elected Algerian Islamists resulted in a bitter and bloody civil war that costs thousands of lives over a decade. It set back the democratization trend in the Middle East by at least a decade, at a crucial moment after the Cold War when democracy was spreading throughout the world.
Decisions made today may be equally fateful. How the United States, Europe and Israel respond to Hamas’ assuming control of the government in Palestine may well define political trends and militant violence throughout much of the Middle East for years to come. This is because several historical factors have converged to make the success or failure of the Hamas-led Palestinian government a litmus test of broad perceptions and relations between the United States and the Arab world.
At stake here are several major issues:
• The future direction of the democratic wave that is slowly moving throughout the Middle East;
• The fate of America’s credibility with the Arab-Islamic world on promoting freedom and democracy;
• The possibility of achieving a negotiated Arab-Israeli peace in the coming years;
• The balance between, on the one hand, the majority of mainstream political Islamists such as Hamas and the Moslem Brotherhood, and, on the other hand, radical terrorists like Osama bin Laden;
• The legitimacy and staying power of most so-called “moderate” Arab regimes that are close to the United States; and,
• The U.S.’s situation in Iraq and its so-called “global war on terror.”

Clerics Take Lead After Iraq Bombing
By Borzou Daragahi
LA Times, 24 February 2006
Rarely since the U.S.-led invasion have Iraq's politicians appeared so insignificant and its religious leaders loomed so large as in the 48 hours since Wednesday's bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.
Few Iraqis seemed to pay attention to statements by Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari and other political leaders who called for calm. But many winced with trepidation or smiled with satisfaction as hours after the attack, the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the paramount Shiite religious leader here, issued an unusually blunt statement suggesting it was time for "the faithful" to start protecting religious sites — an apparent endorsement of militias.
Others watched to see what Muqtada Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric, would do as he rushed back from Lebanon after the explosion.
Even Sunni political leaders, who Thursday announced they were pulling out of talks to form a new government to protest the government's failure to safeguard their mosques and offices, were outflanked by Sunni clerics.
The Muslim Scholars Assn., an umbrella group for Sunni religious leaders, issued a condemnation Thursday of their Shiite counterparts "for calling for demonstrations knowing that these demonstrations can be infiltrated and they can not control the streets." The statement noted that "the resistance controlled Samarra for two years, and nothing happened to the shrines."
The dominance of clerics from both sects on the political scene marks a dramatic reversal of 85 years of secular rule in Iraq.
SEE ALSO:
Violence Strains U.S. Strategy and Imperils Pullout Plans
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN and ROBERT F. WORTH
NYT, 24 February 2006
The violence in Iraq after the bombing of a Shiite mosque this week has abruptly thrown the Bush administration on the defensive, and there were signs on Thursday that American officials recognized new perils to their plans to withdraw troops this year. The American enterprise in Iraq seemed beleaguered on two fronts, political and military.
Senior administration officials in Washington and Baghdad said the next few days would test American and Iraqi resolve, as the United States military, despite pressure to intervene and angry accusations that it stood by while Iraq erupted in revenge killings, holds back to see if Iraqis can quell violence themselves. An unusual daytime curfew in Baghdad scheduled for Friday Prayer could help, the officials said.
Iraqis and some American officials also said the Bush administration might have to rethink its political strategy in Baghdad.
The American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, has reached out to Sunnis, pushing to include them in the government and pressing Shiite leaders hard to keep politicians with ties to Shiite militias out of sensitive security posts. Sunnis have accused these Shiite leaders of running death squads. But Mr. Khalilzad's stance has infuriated Shiites.
Mr. Khalilzad said Monday that the United States would not "invest the resources of the American people" in Iraqi security forces if they were "run by people who are sectarian." The comment provoked unusually direct criticism from Shiite leaders, some of whom suggested that maligning the Iraqi security leadership led to the attack on the mosque in Samarra on Wednesday.
Because sensitive negotiations are continuing and because officials fear that American comments could further inflame a volatile situation, few officials interviewed here or in Baghdad would be quoted by name.
For the moment, American officials said they doubted that Mr. Khalilzad would change course. They said the Americans were pressing Iraqi leaders not to go forward with political negotiations without Sunni participation.
Since the major Sunni party has suspended its participation in the talks, officials hope waiting a few days may allow tensions to recede.
Iraqi security forces were unable — or, Sunni leaders suggested, unwilling — to quell the violence after the bombing. In many cases, the American military was either not present or not able to stop Shiite mobs exacting revenge killings across Iraq.
SEE ALSO:
Violent Cycle of Revenge Stuns Iraqis
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
NYT, 24 February 2006
After a day of violence so raw and so personal, Iraqis woke on Thursday morning to a tense new world in which, it seemed, anything was possible.
The violence on Wednesday was the closest Iraq had come to civil war, and Iraqis were stunned.

How Costly Is Too Costly?
Finding the tipping point for Vietnam -- and for Iraq
By Mark Engler
TomDispatch.com, 23 February 2006
...The answers provided by past experience are imperfect. The Oxford Companion to American Military History places the direct costs of the Vietnam War at $173 billion (equal to $770 billion in 2003 dollars). Veterans benefits and interest payments add another trillion to Vietnam's costs, calculated in 2003 dollars. Thus, the estimates for the cost of the Iraq war already place the two conflicts at similar levels, although Vietnam expenditures represented a larger percentage of the Gross Domestic Product.
There seems to be no single point at which costs become too great. Different parties reach their moment of decision at different times, independently determining that "victory" is not worth the price being paid. Disaffection builds as financial and human costs rise. And so looking at turning points, in Vietnam or in Iraq, involves twisting the question once again. We must ask not only, "How costly is too costly?" But also, "Too costly for whom?"
For many who opposed the war on moral terms, the conflict was too costly from the start. The lives and money sacrificed since then merely serve as tragic affirmations of a conviction already reached. Others more traditionally supportive of presidential decisions to take the U.S. to war can, however, be swayed by mounting costs, once victory doesn't come.
...The fact of the matter is that the majority of the country has already decided that the war in Iraq has become too costly. Americans have rejected the prospect of funding a massive and prolonged occupation. In that sense, we have already tipped.
Questions about the price of war keep resurfacing not because there's a credible argument for most Americans that the price is reasonable, but because our elected officials thus far have only pushed those costs ever higher. What remains, then, is for the public to hold accountable those who would carry forward the neoconservative crusade -- to make their stance a costly one in public life. What remains is for us bring the political price of war into line with the human and financial costs that we will continue to bear.

Osama, Saddam and the Ports
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 24 February 2006
The storm of protest over the planned takeover of some U.S. port operations by Dubai Ports World doesn't make sense viewed in isolation. The Bush administration clearly made no serious effort to ensure that the deal didn't endanger national security. But that's nothing new — the administration has spent the past four and a half years refusing to do anything serious about protecting the nation's ports.
So why did this latest case of sloppiness and indifference finally catch the public's attention? Because this time the administration has become a victim of its own campaign of fearmongering and insinuation.
...it literally began on Day 1. When terrorists attacked the United States, the Bush administration immediately looked for ways it could exploit the atrocity to pursue unrelated goals — especially, but not exclusively, a war with Iraq.
But to exploit the atrocity, President Bush had to do two things. First, he had to create a climate of fear: Al Qaeda, a real but limited threat, metamorphosed into a vast, imaginary axis of evil threatening America. Second, he had to blur the distinctions between nasty people who actually attacked us and nasty people who didn't.
The administration successfully linked Iraq and 9/11 in public perceptions through a campaign of constant insinuation and occasional outright lies. In the process, it also created a state of mind in which all Arabs were lumped together in the camp of evildoers. Osama, Saddam — what's the difference?

Abusive G.I.'s Not Pursued, Survey Finds
AP via NYT, 23 February 2006
The longest sentence for any member of the American military linked to a torture-related death of a detainee in Iraq or Afghanistan has been five months, a human rights group reported Wednesday.
In only 12 of 34 cases has anyone been punished for the confirmed or suspected killings, said the group, Human Rights First, which is based in New York and Washington.
Beyond those cases, in almost half of 98 known detainee deaths since 2002, the cause was never announced or was reported as undetermined.
"In dozens of cases documented here, grossly inadequate reporting, investigation and follow-through have left no one at all responsible for homicides and other unexplained deaths," it said in the report, based on military court records, news reports and other sources.
The Pentagon says it conscientiously investigates such deaths.
"Some 250 people have been punished in one way or another," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said last month of the abuse cases.
When asked Wednesday for a status report on investigations and prosecutions in individual cases of abuse, the Pentagon said it could not offer a comprehensive compilation because the information was too scattered.
SEE ALSO:
Command's Responsibility: Detainee Deaths in U.S. Custody in Iraq and Afghanistan
Human Rights First's new report provides the first comprehensive accounting of U.S. the government's handling of the nearly 100 cases of detainees who have died in U.S. custody since 2002

Secret Again
The absurd scheme to reclassify documents.
By Fred Kaplan
Slate, 23 February 2006
Those who control the past control the future, Orwell famously wrote in 1984. In the realm of national-security policy, the battle for this control is heating up.
The latest skirmish started last December, when an independent scholar named Matthew Aid went to the National Archives to re-examine some declassified documents that he'd copied several months earlier and learned that they'd been removed from the public shelves and reclassified.
Looking into the matter further, he discovered that, over the last five years, in a program that itself has been a secret, U.S. military and intelligence agencies have reclassified 9,500 documents, constituting more than 55,000 pages, some of them dating back to World War II. And that's just so far. The program under which they've been doing this—which has never been authorized or funded by Congress—is scheduled to continue until at least March 2007.

Medicare Numbers At Odds with Administration Claims
Fewer volunteers for new drug plan
By Jeffrey Krasner
Boston Globe, 23 February 2006
Since December, the US Department of Health and Human Services has repeatedly overstated the number of enrollees in the new Medicare prescription drug plan.
Yesterday, Mike Leavitt, secretary of health and human services, said more than 25 million people were receiving benefits under the program, called Part D, and that millions more are signing up monthly.
But according to Medicare's own figures, the actual number of voluntary enrollees is much smaller, about 5 million. Some of the 20 million other participants cited by Leavitt were automatically enrolled in Part D on Jan. 1. Others are counted as Part D enrollees, even though they receive coverage from former employers, unions, or the government.
Leavitt, through his press office, declined several requests for an interview.
...Critics say the numbers are emblematic of the government's efforts to make a flawed plan look successful.
''For an administration that frequently provides inaccurate information, the use of the 25 million enrollment figure breaks new ground in misleading propaganda," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, an advocacy group that has been critical of the drug program. ''The only real number that is worth focusing on is the approximately 4 million to 5 million who now have prescription drug coverage who did not have it prior to the start of the program. Unfortunately, the administration is trying to mask that failure with an exaggerated number that has nothing to do with new people who gained coverage."
In January 2005, the government estimated 39.1 million people would receive drug coverage this year under Part D. When enrollment started Nov. 15, the projections dropped to 28 to 30 million. The enrollment of about 5 million people who did not have drug coverage previously falls far short of the goal.

U.S. to Pay Big Employers Billions Not to End Their Retiree Health Plans
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
NYT, 24 February 2006
America's largest companies expect the federal government to pay them about $4 billion over the next four years to help keep their retiree health plans alive at a time when such benefits are increasingly on the chopping block, according to a new study by Credit Suisse First Boston.
The money is due to start flowing to employers this month as part of Medicare's new prescription drug benefit. When Congress authorized the Medicare drug benefit, it also agreed to start subsidizing the drug component of employers' retiree health plans, to keep them from shifting their retirees into the government program.
The goal is to save the government money, even after the subsidies, while giving the retirees a better deal than they might get if they were pushed into Medicare.
Among the nation's 500 largest companies, 331 offer retiree health plans.
With the program just starting its first year, it is not yet clear whether the subsidy will achieve its goals. For one thing, there are about 36 million people 65 and older in this country who are eligible for Medicare, but only about 7 million retirees currently covered by employer-sponsored health plans. Still, the Credit Suisse study, published on Wednesday, shows that the subsidy is popular with big employers — even those that do not fit the stereotype of companies in waning industries unable to cope with health care inflation and armies of baby-boomer retirees.
The money, to be sure, will flow to some financially weaker companies staggering under the weight of their health plans, like General Motors, which is expected to receive $1.1 billion over the next four years in drug subsidies for their retired workers.
But there are also thriving businesses like the utility company Exelon, which seem able to afford their plans on their own but will nonetheless receive the federal payouts.

23 February 2006

Blast at Shiite Shrine Sets Off Sectarian Fury in Iraq
By ROBERT F. WORTH
NYT, 23 February 2006
...Iraq's major political and religious leaders issued urgent appeals for restraint, and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari called for a three-day mourning period in a televised address. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most senior Shiite cleric, released an unusually strong statement in which he said, "If the government's security forces cannot provide the necessary protection, the believers will do it."
Most Iraqi leaders attributed the attack to terrorists bent on exploiting sectarian rifts, but some also blamed the United States for failing to prevent it. Even the leader of Iraq's main Shiite political alliance said he thought Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Iraq, bore some responsibility. The Shiite leader, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, said Mr. Khalilzad's veiled threat on Monday to withdraw American support if Iraqis could not form a nonsectarian government helped provoke the bombing. "This declaration gave a green light for these groups to do their operation, so he is responsible for a part of that," Mr. Hakim said at a news conference.
The shrine bombing came as Iraq's political leaders continued to struggle under heavy American pressure to agree on the principles of a new national unity government. As in past moments of political transition here, violence has mounted during the uncertainty, and the attacks, mostly against Shiite civilians, seemed aimed specifically at creating more conflict between Iraq's Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni Arab populations. That effort had at least a momentary success on Wednesday, and the streets of the capital emptied as Iraqis hurried home early, fearing further attacks by Shiite militia members or possible reprisals by Sunni Arabs.
Mr. Khalilzad issued a joint statement with Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, in which he deplored the bombing as a "crime against humanity" and pledged American help in rebuilding the dome. In Washington, President Bush issued a statement extending his sympathy to Iraqis. "The United States condemns this cowardly act in the strongest possible terms," Mr. Bush said. "I ask all Iraqis to exercise restraint in the wake of this tragedy, and to pursue justice in accordance with the laws and Constitution of Iraq."
The Shiite cleric and political leader Moktada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia led many of the violent protests on Wednesday, placed some blame on what he called the "occupation forces" for the bombing but did not give more details. Mr. Sadr told the Arabic satellite network Al Jazeera that he was cutting short his visit in Lebanon because of the bombing.

Big Problem, Dubai Deal or Not
By DAVID E. SANGER
NYT, 23 February 2006
...The administration's core problem at the ports, most experts agree, is how long it has taken for the federal government to set and enforce new security standards — and to provide the technology to look inside millions of containers that flow through them.
Only 4 percent or 5 percent of those containers are inspected. There is virtually no standard for how containers are sealed, or for certifying the identities of thousands of drivers who enter and leave the ports to pick them up. If a nuclear weapon is put inside a container — the real fear here — "it will probably happen when some truck driver is paid off to take a long lunch, before he even gets near a terminal," said Mr. Flynn, the ports security expert.
That is where concerns about Dubai come in. While the company in question has not been a focus of investigations, Dubai has been a way station for contraband, some of it nuclear. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear engineer, made Dubai his transshipment point for the equipment he sent to Libya and Iran because he could operate there without worrying about investigators.
"I'm not worried about who is running the New York port," a senior inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency said, insisting he could not be named because the agency's work is considered confidential. "I'm worried about what arrives at the New York port."
That port, along with the five others Dubai Ports hopes to manage, are the last line of defense to stop a weapon from entering this country. But Mr. Seymour, head of the subsidiary now running the operations, says only one of the six ports whose fate is being debated so fiercely is equipped with a working radiation-detection system that every cargo container must pass through.
Closing that gaping hole is the federal government's responsibility, he noted, and is not affected by whether the United Arab Emirates or anyone else takes over the terminals.
SEE ALSO:
Terrorists Don't Need an Arab Corporate Connection to Waltz Past Leaky Harbor Security
LA Times, 23 February 2006
...Dubai Ports World, like the foreign companies that already run the majority of key U.S. ports — including 80% of the terminals in Los Angeles — does not own the points of entry. It is a contractor that coordinates logistics. And most important, it's not in charge of security. Port operators work with U.S. security officials (port police, the Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security) in charge of preventing terrorism.
This week's hubbub diverts attention from a pressing and genuine debate over what those agencies really need to do to keep our commercial harbors safe. Compared to airport security, port security is woefully underfunded and undeveloped.
A paper written by former Coast Guard Cmdr. Stephen E. Flynn in the current issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review calls the system a "house of cards." Flynn argues that any terrorist worth his salt could simply seek out a well-known "trusted" shipper's containers to stash his deadly contraband. He calls for a slate of inspection-oriented reforms, including the adoption of better screening technologies.
Who owns the companies that operate the ports isn't the point — it's how those companies work together with federal and local authorities to keep ports safe. And the Department of Homeland Security has a long way to go before it figures out how best to get that done.
To be fair, congressional calls for transparency in the bidding process make sense. And any attention paid to port security is better than none at all. But by focusing on the nationality of a respected ports operator, instead of scrutinizing questionable policies or providing tangible suggestions for making the nation safer, members of Congress have once again shown their unerring knack for irrelevance when it comes to matters of homeland security.

Rice, on Tour, Finds Egypt Unreceptive to Hamas Aid Cutoff
By JOEL BRINKLEY
NYT, 23 February 2006
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday began a four-day visit to the Middle East, where she hoped to persuade Arab leaders to cut off financial aid to Hamas. But she ran into trouble on her very first stop.
Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Egypt's foreign minister, told her that Egypt believed funds to the Palestinian government should continue for an indefinite period, to give Hamas "time to develop their own ideas." Egypt gives little if any money to the Palestinians. Still, Washington considers Cairo's view to be influential, one reason Ms. Rice stopped here first.
"The Egyptians," a senior administration official said, "carry significant weight with the Palestinians and are watched by the rest of the Arab world." Administration officials said they had hoped that Egypt would back the American position.
Egypt's refusal to endorse the aid cutoff follows European misgivings and statements of concern late last week about cutting off funds and could significantly complicate Ms. Rice's mission.
Another of Ms. Rice's major goals for this trip — to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — is to lock down commitments from the Arab leaders to stand firm against Iran's nuclear program. But once again, Egypt disappointed her.
Standing next to Ms. Rice at a news conference, Mr. Gheit reiterated a view Egypt offered during talks at the United Nations nuclear agency early this month over reporting Iran to the Security Council. Mr. Gheit said Egypt supported applying the same standard to all Middle East nations, not just Iran. That was a well-understood reference to Israel's secret nuclear weapons program.

The Heart of Compassionate Conservatism
No Justice, No Peace
By BOB HERBERT
NYT, 23 February 2006
If you talk to Maher Arar long enough, even on the telephone, you'll get the disturbing sense that you are speaking with someone whose life has been shattered like a pane of glass.
"Sometimes I have the feeling that I want to go and live on another planet," he told me. "A completely different planet than planet Earth. You know?"
Mr. Arar, thanks to the United States government, went through the almost incomprehensible agony of being tortured. Now he is trying to live with the aftermath of torture, which is its own form of agony.
On Sept. 26, 2002, Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen born in Syria, was taken into custody by American authorities at Kennedy Airport in New York. He was locked in chains and shackles and accused of being "a member of a known terrorist organization."
There was no evidence to support the accusation, and no evidence has ever come to light. Nevertheless, as part of the hideous U.S. policy known as extraordinary rendition, Mr. Arar was shipped off to Syria, where he was kept in an underground rat-infested, grave-like cell, and tortured. (When I visited him in Ottawa last year, he told me how he had screamed and wept and begged both God and his captors for mercy.)
After 10 months, he was released. No charges against him were ever filed.
...The rendition program is one more example of the way the United States, using the threat of terror as an excuse, has locked its ideals away in a drawer somewhere. We don't even give them lip service anymore. A person like Mr. Arar is not seen as having any rights. He's not even seen as human. He was carted away in accordance with official U.S. policy, and treated like an animal.

Sloshed: Journalist Says Secret Service Report Claims Cheney was Drunk
by Dave Lindorff
SF Independent Media Center, 22 February 2006
And anyhow, what kind of a guy would shoot a friend, and then pack him off to the hospital and not go hang around the waiting room to see how he’s doing, instead of going home and having dinner and a drink?
The vice president was tanked when he confused his hunting companion, Texas Republican stalwart Harry Whittington, for a quail, according to Capital Hill Blue reporter and editor Doug Thompson.
In an article in Capital Hill Blue, Thompson, who worked for several key Republican members of Congress before going back into journalism and who appears to have excellent contacts on the Hill and in the White House, says the Secret Service agents who travel with and guard Cheney filed a written report saying the vice president was "clearly inebriated" at the time of the shooting.
The Secret Service report, according to Thompson, who says he spoke with people who've seen it, states that Cheney showed "visible signs" of impairment, such as slurred speech and erratic behavior.
This would put Cheney's inexcusable delay of a day in making the shooting public and also the even more inexcusable effort made by the owners of the ranch and the Cheney entourage to bar local sheriff's deputies from interviewing anyone, including the shooter himself, until the following day, in a different light.
All the nonsense about "needing to know what Whittington's condition was" before going public, or "wanting the ranch owners to be the ones" to tell the story, or about Cheney being too upset to talk about it are just so much bull. This was a case of ducking the law.
Hunting while drunk and shooting someone is a felony in Texas, and the vice president is escaping prosecution because he has the power to hide his crime and his reckless poor judgment.

22 February 2006

Bush Threatens Veto Against Bid To Stop Port Deal
State-Run Arab Firm Poses No Threat, President Says Amid Bipartisan Criticism
By Jim VandeHei and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post, 22 February 2006
President Bush yesterday strongly defended an Arab company's attempt to take over the operation of seaports in Baltimore and five other cities, threatening a veto if Congress tries to kill a deal his administration has blessed.
Facing a sharp bipartisan backlash, Bush took the unusual step of summoning reporters to the front of Air Force One to condemn efforts to block a firm from the United Arab Emirates from purchasing the rights to manage ports that include those in New York and New Orleans.
SEE ALSO:
The President and the Ports
NYT, 22 February 2006
If President Bush follows through on his threat, he'll be making a strange choice for his first veto after more than five years in office.
...Congress is right to resist the ports deal, in which the company, Dubai Ports World, would take over the British company now running these operations. The issue is not, as Mr. Bush is now claiming, a question of bias against a Middle Eastern company. The United Arab Emirates is an ally, but its record in the war on terror is mixed. It is not irrational for the United States to resist putting port operations, perhaps the most vulnerable part of the security infrastructure, under that country's control. And there is nothing in the Homeland Security Department's record to make doubters feel confident in its assurances that all proper precautions will be taken.
The Bush administration has followed a disturbing pattern in its approach to the war on terror. It has been perpetually willing to sacrifice individual rights in favor of security. But it has been loath to do the same thing when it comes to business interests. It has not imposed reasonable safety requirements on chemical plants, one of the nation's greatest points of vulnerability, or on the transport of toxic materials. The ports deal is another decision that has made the corporations involved happy, and has made ordinary Americans worry about whether they are being adequately protected.
It is no secret that this administration has pursued an aggressive antiregulatory agenda, and it has elevated corporate leaders to its highest positions. Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose department convened the panel that approved the ports deal, came to government after serving as the chief executive of the CSX Corporation, which was a major port operator when he worked there. (After he left, CSX sold its port operations to Dubai Ports World.)
The administration's intransigence has inspired a rare show of bipartisanship. The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, and the speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, along with a slew of other Republican members of Congress, have joined leading Democrats in objecting to the move. Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, and Representative Peter King, a New York Republican, are introducing a bill that would put the decision on hold and require closer examination of the proposal. The bill would ultimately give Congress the final say.
SEE ALSO:
G.O.P. to W.: You're Nuts!
By MAUREEN DOWD
NYT, 22 February 2006
...Maybe it's corporate racial profiling, but I don't want foreign companies, particularly ones with links to 9/11, running American ports.
What kind of empire are we if we have to outsource our coastline to a group of sheiks who don't recognize Israel, in a country where money was laundered for the 9/11 attacks? And that let A. Q. Kahn, the Pakistani nuclear scientist, smuggle nuclear components through its port to Libya, North Korea and Iran?
It's mind-boggling that President Bush ever agreed to let an alliance of seven emirs be in charge of six of our ports. Although, as usual, Incurious George didn't even know about it until after the fact. (Neither did Rummy, even though he heads one of the agencies that green-lighted the deal.)
Same old pattern: a stupid and counterproductive national security decision is made in secret, blowing off checks and balances, and the president's out of the loop.

Ohio Men Accused of Plot to Kill Troops in Iraq
Case Appears to Be First Time Suspects in U.S. Have Been Charged With Trying to Aid Insurgency
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post, 22 February 2006
The Justice Department accused three Ohio men yesterday of plotting to kill U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq, allegedly by seeking to set up a Middle Eastern terrorism camp where insurgents would be trained and equipped.
One of the men also was charged with threatening to kill or hurt President Bush. It is not clear, however, how close the trio came to carrying out any of their alleged plans or whether they intended to fight in Iraq themselves.

The Buckshot's Here: A Summary of Unanswered Questions
By Dan Froomkin
Washington Post.com, 21 February 2006
Vice President Cheney's hunting accident lives on this week on newsstands everywhere, with Time and Newsweek cover stories serving up new details about its aftermath as well as a great deal of conjecture about what Cheney's misadventure says about his pysche and his political standing.
Meanwhile, 10 days after the vice president shot a hunting buddy in the face -- and in spite of New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller's insistence that "[t]he Cheney story now seems to have completed its trajectory" -- it's worth noting that the many questions raised in my column all last week remain almost entirely unanswered.
For instance: Was Cheney in any way reckless? What do other witnesses have to say? In short: What exactly happened out there?
What was the real reason Cheney didn't want to make a public announcement right away? And is Cheney answerable to anyone in the White House?...
SEE ALSO:
Cheney's Got a Gun

Bushies at State Punish Career Workers for Being 'Disloyal'
Merger Has Brought Appointees Into Conflict With Longtime Workers, Who Say They Are Sidelined
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post, 21 February 2006
A State Department reorganization of analysts involved in preventing the spread of deadly weapons has spawned internal turmoil, with more than half a dozen career employees alleging in interviews that political appointees sought to punish long-term employees whose views they considered suspect.

Rumsfeld's Incomplete Information War
William M. Arkin
Washington Post.com, 21 February 2006
An unfortunate contradiction about Donald Rumsfeld, and a debilitating handicap for America, is that the Secretary of Defense thinks like a futurist and acts like a Neanderthal.
Rumsfeld, it is said, has fabulous intuition and the ability to clearly see a rapidly changing world. Yet for someone who is also credited with being a peerless bureaucratic warrior, the Secretary of America's most important department also just does not display the ability to implement or carry through on his vision.
...Last Friday, Rumsfeld gave yet another speech telling us that the war on terror is unlike any conflict the United States has ever faced. This time the subject of his attention was the global news environment. 
...To compete in the future, Rumsfeld says, the United States will unleash (how many times have we heard that?) a new communications strategy. 
...The enemy is "able to act quickly with relatively few people, and with modest resources compared to the vast -- and expensive -- bureaucracies of western governments."
Moreover the bad guys, Rumsfeld says, are very skilled at manipulating the media and are not bound by the truth.
Truth, truth, truth. The Secretary chants it to describe American strategy just like the President chants "freedom."
America's new information bomb will be employed and it will be precision information. In the circular mind of Rumsfeld, as long as his information bomb is truthful -- because of course the United States is a truthful dinosaur that just needs to update its style for the new information age and war -- how can anyone accuse the United States of manufacturing the news or propagandizing the world?
But it isn't just the truth that secretive, agile, cunning Rumsfeld is thinking about.
We have to apply the Rumsfeld personality and tactics to understand the unfolding information war plan: Ad hoc and new U.S. military information organizations will not wait to respond, they will not endure a daily information 9/11, they will preempt.

John Junks Talking Points: Muslims' Own Debates Called Key to Future
Negroponte Details Fundamental Struggle
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post, 18 February 2006
Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte said yesterday that the future environment for terrorism worldwide will depend more on the outcome of the debate between Muslim extremists and moderates than on the acts of global jihadists such as Osama bin Laden.
"Entrenched grievances such as corruption and injustice and the slow pace of economic, social and political change in most Muslim-majority nations continue to fuel the global jihadist movement," Negroponte said.
In contrast to comments from other Bush administration officials, Negroponte traced the origins of global jihadism to the Afghan-Soviet conflict, when in the 1980s Muslims from around the world, including bin Laden, were brought in with U.S. support to fight the communist invaders.
The jihadist movement born then, Negroponte said, "is today inspired and led by al Qaeda" and is "the preeminent threat to our citizens, homeland interests and friends."
...In answer to a question, he said that "while there is enmity towards the West in general and towards the United States in particular, a struggle going on within the world of Islam itself may even be the more fundamental struggle that is taking place."
With regard to Iraq, Negroponte said that Sunni-Arab disaffection is likely to continue fueling the insurgency this year while the majority Shiite and Kurdish populations are making political compromise with the Sunnis more difficult by working to protect their separate interests after national elections.

Ex-Malasian Leader Says He Paid Abramoff
AP via San Francisco Chronicle, 20 February 2006
Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said Monday that disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff was paid $1.2 million to organize his 2002 meeting with President Bush, but denied the money came from the Malaysian government.
Mahathir told reporters he was aware a payment was made to Abramoff, but he didn't know who made it. He said he had been persuaded by the U.S. think tank Heritage Foundation to meet with Bush at the time.
"It is true that somebody paid but it was not the (Malaysian) government," Mahathir said. "I understood some people paid a sum of money to lobbyists in America but I do not know who these people were and it was not the Malaysian government."
Mahathir said the Heritage Foundation believed he could help "influence (Bush) in some way regarding U.S. policies."
Mahathir visited the White House at a time when this Southeast Asian country had emerged as a key U.S. ally in the war on terror, following Mahathir's crackdown on suspected Islamic militants although he had been consistently critical of Bush's foreign policies.
Abramoff, once among Washington's top lobbyists, pleaded guilty last month to charges that he and a former partner concocted a fake wire transfer to make it appear they were putting a sizable stake of their own money into a 2000 purchase of casinos.
Abramoff also has pleaded guilty to charges stemming from an investigation into his ties to members of Congress and to the Bush administration.