17 May 2006

As U.S. Image Free-Falls, Spin Wobbles Into Ditch
By ROGER COHEN
International Herald Tribune, 17 May 2006
Karen Hughes talks fast. She talks a lot, zipping from point to point. She's a hybrid, one motor or another always running. She gives the impression of a woman racing against the tide.
The tide in question is anti-Americanism, perhaps the fastest-growing force in the world today. Hughes's job is to stem it, sap it, stop it. That's a big job. In fact, no bigger one exists for the United States.
Hughes, whose official title is under secretary of state for public diplomacy, and whose task Orwell would have characterized as chief propagandist, says she doesn't do spin, only facts.
"Now, of course I try to portray the facts in the best light for our country," she adds, "Because I believe we're a wonderful country and that we are doing good things across the world."
That's called spin. And the world isn't buying it. The image of the United States is in something close to a free fall.
There are lots of reasons, beginning with the fact that any elephant this big bestriding the world's stage is going to irk people, especially when George W. Bush is riding it. But I suspect a basic cause is that in the 65-year period of 1941-2006, the United States has been at war in some form or another for all but 14 years.
There was World War II and then, after a two-year break, the Cold War, which ran until 1989, and then, after an interlude of a dozen years, the war on terror. These were different sorts of wars, of course, and among them were Korea and Vietnam. But somewhere along the way, most acutely in the past few years, people got tired.
They got tired of America's insatiable need for an enemy; suspicious of the talk of freedom and democracy and morality in which every struggle was cast; forgetful of the liberty preserved by such might; alarmed at the American fear that appeared to fire American aggression; and disdainful of the distance between declarations and deeds.
In short they stopped buying the American narrative.

16 May 2006

Bush Aide Defends Acts by N.S.A.
By STEPHEN LABATON
NYT, 15 May 2006
As senior Republican and Democratic lawmakers vowed to strongly question the former head of the National Security Agency this week about its surveillance programs, a top adviser to President Bush said Sunday that the programs were lawful and had not invaded the privacy rights of millions of Americans.
...some lawmakers said Sunday that Congress had been kept in the dark.
"There has been no meaningful Congressional oversight of these programs," said Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mr. Specter has said he will hold hearings soon with representatives from the telephone companies that turned over millions of telephone records to the N.S.A.
He said he wanted to question the phone company executives before the committee because, unlike the Bush administration, "they cannot claim executive privilege" and refuse to answer questions.
Without more details about the program, Mr. Specter said, "we do not know whether it is constitutional or not."
Other lawmakers said that Gen. Michael V. Hayden, whom Mr. Bush has chosen to be the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency, would face strong questions later this week at his confirmation hearings. Lawmakers have said they plan to ask General Hayden about the surveillance programs conducted by the N.S.A. while he led the agency. But none of the Republicans on the Sunday talk shows said they planned to withhold support for his nomination.
"There's no question that his confirmation is going to depend upon the answers he gives regarding activities of N.S.A.," said Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which will hold hearings on Thursday.
Mr. Hagel, who appeared on "This Week" on ABC, has expressed support for the nomination but has raised questions about the surveillance programs.
"One of the questions I want to ask is, Who set the policy?" Mr. Hagel said.
Other lawmakers criticized the program.
"This is the lawless White House, out of control with respect to a program like this," Representative Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on "Face the Nation." She said the program had violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which requires officials to obtain approval from a special court for the records described in the effort.
"I think if we can ever get this case to the Supreme Court, the White House will lose big time," Ms. Harman said.

Rove Said Unfazed by Chance of Charges
By DEB RIECHMANN
AP via YahooNews, 15 May 2006
President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, arrives at the White House every day wearing a jovial smile that masks his boss' political troubles and his own legal woes.
Rove, the man Bush dubbed "the architect" of his re-election, has the arduous task of halting Bush's popularity spiral and keeping Democrats from capturing the House or Senate in November elections — while under the threat of indictment in the CIA leak case.
His friends and colleagues say he's not fazed by his precarious situation.
"Karl's focus is sharper than ever and his spirit is high," said Dan Bartlett, White House counselor, downplaying any claims that Rove is distracted. "He packs more work into one day than most of us get done in a week."
Rove was asked about his legal problems Monday after a speech on the economy at a conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. He ducked. "Nice try," Rove told the questioner.
If the grand jury weren't in the news, it would be hard to tell that Rove, a deputy White House chief of staff, is waiting to find out if he'll be indicted.
Photo after photo of Rove, who is often seen walking behind Bush on the South Lawn or sitting behind him at meetings, depicts the moonfaced adviser wearing the same smile, one that suggests little about what he might be thinking or feeling.
Rove had that expression on April 26 when he arrived at the federal courthouse to testify for the fifth time, and when he made his exit nearly four hours later. Later in the day, Rove was seen kidding around at a trendy Washington restaurant that was hosting a 10th anniversary party for "Fox News Sunday."
Former White House counsel John Dean, who told prosecutors about his own role in Watergate in the 1970s, said Nixon aides who were fighting charges went through great anxiety and spent a lot of time to protect themselves during their final days.
"If Rove is operating as if nothing is going to happen, it is because he has been told nothing is going to happen," Dean said. "Otherwise, he is faking it, and others are protecting him."
Rove's friends say he handles whatever pressure he feels by reminding himself that he can't control the outcome
"He understands that it's not his decision to make," said GOP consultant Ed Gillespie. "He is just one who understands that this is beyond his control — that he's going to get through it and that it's going to come to a resolution soon."
Rove's fate for now is in the hands of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who must decide whether he thinks Rove lied or just forgot to tell a grand jury about a conversation with a reporter.
Rove first told Fitzgerald that he had spoken to conservative columnist Robert Novak in July 2003 before Novak published an article that revealed CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity. Months later, Rove said he had failed to mention that he also had talked to Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper.

Glaciers in Africa Expected to Disappear
AP via MyWayNews, 15 May 2006
Mountain glaciers in equatorial Africa are on their way to disappearing within two decades, a team of British researchers reports.
Located in the Rwenzori Mountains on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the glaciers will be gone within 20 years if current warming continues, the researchers report in this week's online edition of Geophysical Research Letters.
The researchers blamed an increase in air temperatures in recent decades for contributing to the decline of the ice fields.
"Recession of these tropical glaciers sends an unambiguous message of a changing climate in this region of the tropics," said lead researcher Richard Taylor of the University College of London, Department of Geography.
A century ago the Rwenzori glaciers were surveyed at 2.5 square miles. The area covered by glaciers halved between 1987 and 2003 and is now down to about 0.4 square mile, the researchers said.
They said the glaciers are expected to disappear within the next 20 years if present trends continue.
Also known as the Mountains of the Moon, the glaciers on Rwenzori were first reported to Europeans by the ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy, who said the Nile was supplied by snowcapped mountains at the equator in Africa.

D for Debacle
By Paul Krugman
NYT via Truthout, 15 May 2006
...Part D's bad start isn't just another illustration of the administration's trademark incompetence. It's also an object lesson in what happens when the government is run by people who aren't interested in the business of governing.
Before we get there, let's talk for a moment about the problems older Americans have encountered over the past few months.
Even Mr. Bush has acknowledged that signing up for the program is a confusing process. But, he says, "there is plenty of help for you." Yeah, right.
There's a number that people needing help with Part D can call. But when the program first went into effect, there were only 300 customer service representatives standing by. (Remember, there are 43 million Medicare recipients.)
There are now 7,500 representatives, making it easier to reach someone. But should you believe what you're told? Maybe not. A survey by the Government Accountability Office found that when Medicare recipients asked for help in determining which plan would cover their medications at the lowest cost, they were given the right answer only 41 percent of the time.
Clearly, nobody in the Bush administration took responsibility for making Part D's start-up work. But then you can say the same thing about the whole program.
After all, prescription drug coverage didn't have to be bafflingly complex. Drug coverage could simply have been added to traditional Medicare. If the government had done that, everyone currently covered by Medicare would automatically have been enrolled in the drug benefit.
Adding drug coverage as part of ordinary Medicare would also have saved a lot of money, both by eliminating the cost of employing private insurance companies as middlemen and by allowing the government to negotiate lower drug prices. This would have made it possible to offer a better benefit at much less cost to taxpayers.
But while a straightforward addition of drug coverage to Medicare would have been good policy, it would have been bad politics from the point of view of conservatives, who want to privatize traditional social insurance programs, not make them better.
Moreover, administration officials and their allies in Congress had both political and personal incentives not to do anything that might reduce the profits of insurance and drug companies. Both the insurance industry and, especially, the pharmaceutical industry are major campaign contributors. And soon after the drug bill was passed, the congressman and the administration official most responsible for drafting the legislation both left public service to become lobbyists.
So what we got was a drug program set up to serve the administration's friends and its political agenda, not the alleged beneficiaries. Instead of providing drug coverage directly, Part D is a complex system of subsidies to private insurance companies. The administration's insistence on running the program through these companies, which provide little if any additional value beyond what Medicare could easily have provided directly, is what makes the whole thing so complicated. And that complication, combined with an obvious lack of interest in making the system work, is what led to the disastrous start-up.
All of this is, alas, terribly familiar. As John DiIulio, the former head of Mr. Bush's faith-based initiative, told Esquire, "What you've got is everything - and I mean everything - being run by the political arm." Ideology and cronyism take complete precedence over the business of governing.
And that's why when it comes to actual policy as opposed to politics, the Bush administration has turned out to have the reverse Midas touch. Everything it gets its hands on, from the reconstruction of Iraq to the rescue of New Orleans, from the drug benefit to the reform of the C.I.A., turns to crud.

14 May 2006

Not Enough Cheerful Flag Waving: Army Concerned About HBO War Film
By EDWARD WYATT
NYT, 14 May 2006
Senior Army officials have scaled back their planned participation in an advance screening of a documentary about an Army Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad out of concern that its grim medical scenes could demoralize soldiers and their families and negatively affect public opinion about the war, Army officials said Friday.
Two senior Army officers, who were granted anonymity to publicly discuss the private deliberations of Army leaders, said the secretary of the Army, Francis J. Harvey, had declined to attend the screening by HBO, scheduled for Monday night at the National Museum of American History in Washington.
High-ranking military officers, including Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, who is the Army chief of staff, and Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, the surgeon general of the Army, had been expected to attend the screening but now will not, people involved in preparations for the event said.
The documentary, titled "Baghdad ER," chronicles two months at the 86th Combat Support Hospital, where filmmakers were given broad access to follow doctors, nurses, medics and others as they treated soldiers wounded by roadside bombs and in combat. As one nurse, Specialist Saidet Lanier, says in the film: "This is hard-core, raw, uncut trauma. Day after day, every day."
The Army officials said that concerns about the documentary — which includes footage of an amputation and of wounded soldiers undergoing surgery and, in some cases, dying — were also raised by the wives of top Army officers who had seen the film.
"Given the subject matter, it's not something you're going to cheer at the end," said one senior Army official.

Report: Suicidal Troops Sent into Combat
U.S. military violated own rules on mentally ill troops, newspaper finds
AP via Hartford Courant via Antiwar.com, 13 May 2006
U.S. military troops with severe psychological problems have been sent to Iraq or kept in combat, even when superiors have been aware of signs of mental illness, a newspaper reported for Sunday editions.
The Hartford Courant, citing records obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act and more than 100 interviews of families and military personnel, reported numerous cases in which the military failed to follow its own regulations in screening, treating and evacuating mentally unfit troops from Iraq.
In 1997, Congress ordered the military to assess the mental health of all deploying troops. The newspaper, citing Pentagon statistics, said fewer than 1 in 300 service members were referred to a mental health professional before shipping out for Iraq as of October 2005.
Twenty-two U.S. troops committed suicide in Iraq last year, accounting for nearly one in five of all non-combat deaths and was the highest suicide rate since the war started, the newspaper said.
‘Chemically active time bombs’
Some service members who committed suicide in 2004 and 2005 were kept on duty despite clear signs of mental distress, sometimes after being prescribed antidepressants with little or no mental health counseling or monitoring. Those findings conflict with regulations adopted last year by the Army that caution against the use of antidepressants for “extended deployments.”
“I can’t imagine something more irresponsible than putting a soldier suffering from stress on (antidepressants), when you know these drugs can cause people to become suicidal and homicidal,” said Vera Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection. “You’re creating chemically activated time bombs.”

Baghdad Bombings Kill 12 Iraqis, Wound 61
AP via NYT, 14 May 2006
Five roadside bombs and two suicide car blasts killed 12 Iraqis Sunday morning, including a woman and two children on a bus and four people at a vegetable market. At least 61 people were injured.
The two suicide bombs exploded near a U.S. convoy at a checkpoint on Baghdad's airport road, wounding 18 Iraqis, six civilians and 12 security personnel, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein. U.S. forces immediately closed off the area, and no casualties were immediately reported among the Americans.
The first two roadside bomb attacks occurred in separate areas of Palestine Street, a main thoroughfare in eastern Baghdad. The first hit a police patrol at 9 a.m., wounding two policemen and four bystanders, said police Maj. Maher Mohamed. The second missed a police patrol but hit a civilian bus at 9:30 a.m., killing five people, including a woman and two children, and wounding a police officer, said police Lt. Ali Mitaab.
A police patrol hit a roadside bomb in Baghdad's northern district of Azamiyah at 9:30 a.m., killing three policeman and wounding 10 bystanders and three policemen, said police 1st. Lt. Ahmed Mohamed Ali.
About the same time, a roadside bomb missed a police patrol in central Baghdad, but wounded seven civilians, said police 1st Lt. Taheyr Mahmoud.
A roadside bomb exploded in an open market for vegetables and household products in southeastern Baghdad at about 11 a.m., killing four civilians and wounding 16, said police Capt. Ali Mehdi.

They Hate Us, They Really Hate Us
Review by ROBERT WRIGHT
NYT's Magazine, 14 May 2006
FRIENDLY FIRE
Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti-American Century.
By Julia E. Sweig.
251 pp. A Council on Foreign Relations Book/PublicAffairs. $25.
AMERICA AGAINST THE WORLD
How We Are Different and Why We Are Disliked.
By Andrew Kohut and Bruce Stokes.
259 pp. Times Books/Henry Holt & Company. $25.
You wouldn't expect to find good news for President Bush in a book by Andrew Kohut, a pollster and commentator who seems to divide his time between quantifying America's Bush-era plunge in the world's esteem and quantifying Bush's plunge in America's esteem. Then again, you also wouldn't expect to find good news for President Bush in a book by Julia E. Sweig, a liberal senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. But Sweig's "Friendly Fire" joins Kohut's "America Against the World" (written with the columnist Bruce Stokes) in showing that Bush isn't the only one to blame for the world's dim view of the United States. And these days that counts as good news for Bush.
Whether it's good news for the United States is another question. Once you see the deep and diffuse roots of current anti-Americanism, you realize there won't be an easy fix. Still, these two books — especially "Friendly Fire," the more prescriptive of the two — offer insight into how we might avoid what Sweig calls "the Anti-American Century."
The strain of "American exceptionalism" that President Bush has made internationally infamous is hardly new, Sweig notes. A Latin America specialist, she can list a century's worth of examples of the dubious idea that "America could throw its weight around — willy-nilly of international law or the sovereignty of other states — because its goals were noble, its values universal in their appeal."
And she doesn't stop with Latin America. More obviously germane to current headlines than the 1954 coup America sponsored in Guatemala is the one it sponsored in Iran in 1953, ushering in the secular authoritarianism that would in turn usher in the fundamentalist revolution of 1979. This, like so much American support for oppression during the cold war, made less of an impact on Americans than on the oppressed. "The dramas that contained the seeds of today's rebellion played out in obscurity, as yet imperceptible to the naked American eye," Sweig writes in the course of her sweeping and pungent review of abrasive American foreign policies.
Anti-Americanism emanating from globalization also long predates the Bush presidency. As Kohut and Stokes point out in their data-rich book, international resentment of American culture (movies, McDonald's) and business practices (long work hours) was appearing in Gallup polls by the early 1980's.
If America has been alienating people for decades, why has anti-Americanism so rarely gotten the attention it's getting now? For one thing, several forces have converged to create a new truth: national security depends crucially on foreign feelings toward America.
...So history has put America in a position where its national security depends on its further moral growth. This is scary but also kind of inspiring. Maybe the term "American greatness" needn't have the militaristic connotations lately attached to it. Here, perhaps, is an exceptionalism worth aspiring to. But if we succeed, let's try not to brag about it.

Cheney Pushed U.S. to Widen Eavesdropping
By SCOTT SHANE and ERIC LICHTBLAU
NYT, 14 May 2006
In the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney and his top legal adviser argued that the National Security Agency should intercept purely domestic telephone calls and e-mail messages without warrants in the hunt for terrorists, according to two senior intelligence officials.
But N.S.A. lawyers, trained in the agency's strict rules against domestic spying and reluctant to approve any eavesdropping without warrants, insisted that it should be limited to communications into and out of the country, said the officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss the debate inside the Bush administration late in 2001.
The N.S.A.'s position ultimately prevailed. But just how Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the agency at the time, designed the program, persuaded wary N.S.A. officers to accept it and sold the White House on its limits is not yet clear.
As the program's overseer and chief salesman, General Hayden is certain to face questions about his role when he appears at a Senate hearing next week on his nomination as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Criticism of the surveillance program, which some lawmakers say is illegal, flared again this week with the disclosure that the N.S.A. had collected the phone records of millions of Americans in an effort to track terrorism suspects.
By several accounts, including those of the two officials, General Hayden, a 61-year-old Air Force officer who left the agency last year to become principal deputy director of national intelligence, was the man in the middle as President Bush demanded that intelligence agencies act urgently to stop future attacks.
On one side was a strong-willed vice president and his longtime legal adviser, David S. Addington, who believed that the Constitution permitted spy agencies to take sweeping measures to defend the country. Later, Mr. Cheney would personally arrange tightly controlled briefings on the program for select members of Congress.
On the other side were some lawyers and officials at the largest American intelligence agency, which was battered by eavesdropping scandals in the 1970's and has since wielded its powerful technology with extreme care to avoid accusations of spying on Americans.
As in other areas of intelligence collection, including interrogation methods for terrorism suspects, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Addington took an aggressive view of what was permissible under the Constitution, the two intelligence officials said.
SEE ALSO:
NSA has Massive Database of Americans' Phone Calls
By Leslie Cauley
USA TODAY, 11 May 2006
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: The NSA record collection program
"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.
For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.
The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said.
The sources would talk only under a guarantee of anonymity because the NSA program is secret.
Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, nominated Monday by President Bush to become the director of the CIA, headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005. In that post, Hayden would have overseen the agency's domestic call-tracking program. Hayden declined to comment about the program.
The NSA's domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA's efforts to create a national call database.
SEE ALSO:
ANONYMIZED?
Kevin Drum
Washington Monthly, 13 May 2006
Former Bush apparatchik Richard Falkenrath writes in the Washington Post today about the NSA's phone monitoring program:

On Thursday, USA Today reported that three U.S. telecommunications companies have been voluntarily providing the National Security Agency with anonymized domestic telephone records — that is, records stripped of individually identifiable data, such as names and place of residence.

....The large-scale analysis of anonymized data can pinpoint individuals — at home or abroad — who warrant more intrusive investigative or intelligence techniques, subject to all safeguards normally associated with those techniques.

....The Telecommunications Act of 1934, as amended, generally prohibits the release of "individually identifiable customer proprietary network information" except under force of law or with the approval of the customer. But, according to USA Today, the telephone records voluntarily provided to the NSA had been anonymized.

Can we please cut the crap? Even a child knows that phone numbers can be linked to names and addresses using ordinary commercial databases. There is absolutely nothing anonymous about this data, and only a shameless con man would try to convince us otherwise. Why does the Post give space to this obvious agitprop?

A Fresh Focus on Cheney
Hand-written notes by the Vice President surface in the Fitzgerald probe.
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek, 13 May 2006
The role of Vice President Dick Cheney in the criminal case stemming from the outing of White House critic Joseph Wilson's CIA wife is likely to get fresh attention as a result of newly disclosed notes showing that Cheney personally asked whether Wilson had been sent by his wife on a "junket" to Africa.
Cheney's notes, written on the margins of a July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed column by former ambassador Joseph Wilson, were included as part of a filing Friday night by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the perjury and obstruction case against ex-Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
The notes, Fitzgerald said in his filing, show that Cheney and Libby were "acutely focused" on the Wilson column and on rebutting his criticisms of the White House's handling of pre-Iraq war intelligence. In the column, which created a firestorm after its publication, Wilson wrote that he had been dispatched by the CIA without pay to Niger in February, 2002 to investigate an intelligence report that Iraq was seeking uranium from the African country for a nuclear bomb. Wilson said he was told Cheney had asked about the intelligence,but the White House subsequently ignored his findings debunking the Niger claims.
SEE ALSO:
Notes Are Said to Reveal Close Cheney Interest in a Critic of Iraq Policy
By DAVID JOHNSTON
NYT, 14 May 2006
Vice President Dick Cheney made handwritten notations on a July 2003 newspaper column that indicate he was focused on a critic of the administration's Iraq policy, according to a court filing in the C.I.A. leak case.
Mr. Cheney's notes were cited in a prosecution brief in the case against the vice president's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr. The entries were made on a copy of an Op-Ed article by Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador, that was published in The New York Times on July 6, 2003. The leak case involves the disclosure that Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie, was a C.I.A. officer.
"Those annotations support the proposition that publication of the Wilson Op-Ed acutely focused the attention of the vice president and the defendant — his chief of staff — on Mr. Wilson, on the assertions made in his article, and on responding to those assertions," said the legal papers filed Friday by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case.
In neat writing above the text of the column, prosecutors say, Mr. Cheney wrote: "Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an Amb. to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?"
The legal papers do not address how prosecutors know it is Mr. Cheney's handwriting or when the notes were written. A spokesman for the vice president could not be reached for comment Saturday night.
Mr. Fitzgerald wants to use the notations to support the prosecution's contention that Mr. Libby lied to investigators and a grand jury when he testified that he had learned of Ms. Wilson's existence from reporters. Prosecutors have said that Mr. Libby, who has been charged with perjury, learned about Ms. Wilson's role from several people, including Mr. Cheney.

At Falwell's University, McCain Defends Iraq War
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
NYT, 14 May 2006
With the Rev. Jerry Falwell at his side, Senator John McCain offered a spirited defense of the Iraq war on Saturday, telling graduating students at Liberty University that victory there was crucial to world security. But Mr. McCain urged opponents of the war to vigorously "state their opposition" in the interest of critical debate on this increasingly unpopular conflict.
"If an American feels the decision was unwise, then they should state their opposition and argue for another course — it is your right and obligation," Mr. McCain said, adding, "But I ask that you consider the possibility that I, too, am trying to meet my responsibilities, to follow my conscience, to do my duty as best as I can, as God has given me light to see that duty."
Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican and a likely presidential candidate in 2008, made his remarks to 2,500 graduates in a high-profile appearance at the university, which was founded by Mr. Falwell, a conservative religious leader whom he once described as an agent of "intolerance" and a threat to the Republican Party.
The appearance came as Mr. McCain — trying to establish an early dominance in the Republican presidential nomination battle — has sought to ease tensions with Republican conservatives who have long been suspicious of his commitment to conservative ideals, a perception that was stirred by his difficult history with Mr. Falwell.
Though the two men shared a stage here on Saturday, greeting each other warmly and drawing applause from the festive audience, Mr. McCain made only a brief mention of Mr. Falwell in his 28-minute speech. And Mr. McCain, who is normally eager to talk to reporters, left immediately after finishing his speech and before Mr. Falwell offered his greeting to graduates. Mr. McCain's aides said that he had to catch a plane for a speech later Saturday to the Utah Republican Party.

In Kentucky Hills, a Homeland Security Bonanza
By ERIC LIPTON
NYT, 14 May 2006
The Department of Homeland Security has invested tens of millions of dollars and countless hours of labor over the last four years on a seemingly simple task: creating a tamperproof identification card for airport, rail and maritime workers.
Yet nearly two years past a planned deadline, production of the card, known as the Transportation Worker Identification Credential, has yet to begin.
Instead, the road to delivering this critical antiterrorism tool has taken detours to locations, companies and groups often linked to Representative Harold Rogers, a Kentucky Republican who is the powerful chairman of the House subcommittee that controls the Homeland Security budget.
It is a route that has benefited Mr. Rogers, creating jobs in his home district and profits for companies that are donors to his political causes. The congressman has also taken 11 trips — including six to Hawaii — on the tab of an organization that until this week was to profit from a no-bid contract Mr. Rogers helped arrange. Work has even been set aside for a tiny start-up company in Kentucky that employs John Rogers, the congressman's son.
"Something stinks in Corbin," said Jay M. Meier, senior securities analyst at MJSK Equity Research in Minneapolis, which follows the identification card industry, referring to the Kentucky community of 8,000 that has perhaps benefited the most from Mr. Rogers's interventions. "And it is the sickest example of what is wrong with our homeland security agenda that I can find."

11 May 2006

Why the Anger?
William Rivers Pitt
TruthOut, 9 May 2006
...Why the anger? Because that lesson [Viet Nam and Watergate] didn't take, at least with this crowd. Why the anger? Because millions of people are staggered by the idea that, yes Virginia, we have to go through this again. We have to watch soldiers slaughter and be slaughtered for reasons that bear no markings of truth. We have to watch the reputation of this great nation be savaged. We have to watch as our leaders lie to us with their bare faces hanging out.
Why the anger? It can be summed up in one run-on sentence: We have lost two towers in New York, a part of the Pentagon, an important American city called New Orleans, our economic solvency, our global reputation, our moral authority, our children's future, we have lost tens of thousands of American soldiers to death and grievous injury, we must endure the Abramoffs and the Cunninghams and the Libbys and the whores and the bribes and the utter corruption, we must contemplate the staggering depth of the hole we have been hurled down into, and we expect little to no help from the mainstream DC press, whose lazy go-along-to-get-along cocktail-circuit mentality allowed so much of this to happen because they failed comprehensively to do their job.
George W. Bush and his pals used September 11th against the American people, used perhaps the most horrific day in our collective history, deliberately and with intent, to foster a war of choice that has killed untold tens of thousands of human beings and basically bankrupted our country. They lied about the threat posed by Iraq. They destroyed the career of a CIA agent who was tasked to keep an eye on Iran's nuclear ambitions, and did so to exact petty political revenge against a critic. They tortured people, and spied on American civilians.
You cannot fathom anger arising from this?

Saving Iraq: Mission Impossible
Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite hard-liner distrusted by his foes, will almost certainly be unable to stop Iraq's slide to chaos.
By Juan Cole
Salon, 10 may 2006
...Iraq stands on the brink of all-out civil war. Is Prime Minister-designate Nouri al-Maliki the man to forestall it?
Hopes for a breakthrough hinge on the assumption that al-Maliki will be able to act more decisively than his failed predecessor, Ibrahim Jaffari, in crucial areas: putting together a government acceptable to all the parties, restoring a state monopoly on the use of force (i.e., disbanding militias), preventing sectarian killings, restoring basic services, and resolving the explosive question of federalism. Al-Maliki seems more aware than Jaffari of the urgency of these problems. But the painful fact is that they are almost certainly beyond his ability to solve.
Despite the hype that will attend the formation of a new government, whenever it finally comes about, there is little prospect that it will make a decisive difference. Al-Maliki seems doomed to preside over a lot of violence and chaos, and can only hope to make a difference at the margins. And the increasing hostility of the Shiites in the south to the Anglo-American troop presence will put the question of when they are leaving on the new parliament's docket.
In the fractured, mistrustful world of Iraqi politics, it is unclear whether any figure could serve as a uniter. But al-Maliki carries far too much baggage. His years of activism on behalf of a movement for a Shiite, Islamic state -- and his support for policies that explicitly targeted Sunnis -- will leave the secular-leaning Kurds and the fundamentalist Sunni Arabs, who form the other major blocs in parliament, permanently mistrustful of him. Nor does he have the political clout to impose his will. Al-Maliki's United Iraqi Alliance, grouping Shiite religious parties, has only 46 percent of the seats in parliament, and no prospect of gaining a reliable ally on the whole range of issues facing it among other parties. Even if al-Maliki can form a government, it will be weak and vulnerable to a vote of no confidence.
The same schisms and group loyalties that have ripped Iraq apart have plagued the attempt to form a government. Shiite Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi complained on Sunday about the vying for cabinet posts among the largely faith-based or ethnic parties, saying that cabinet posts should "go to upstanding persons of experience and competency." Former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi sounded the same theme, warning of the "danger that some parties and blocs are dealing with the ministry portfolios as though they are spoils."

Casualty Toll Soars in Iraq
THOMAS WAGNER
The Herald (UK), 11 May 2006
Almost 1100 people were killed in Baghdad alone last month, victims of violence that Iraq's president said should serve as a wake-up call for the country's feuding factions to unite against surging crime and terrorism.
Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, said the 1091 people killed in the capital in April were the tip of the iceberg.
"We feel shock, dismay and anger over the daily reports of the discovery of unidentified corpses and those of others killed" around the city, his statement said.
Scores of unidentified bodies turn up in Baghdad on a daily basis, many bound, tortured and shot execution-style in what officials say is a tide of reprisal sectarian killings.
"If we add this to the number of corpses that are not discovered, or to similar crimes in other provinces, then the total number . . . reflects that we are confronting a situation no less dangerous than the results of terrorist acts" such as car bombings and other attacks, said the president.
Sunni Arabs, the minority who were power brokers under Saddam Hussein, say they are being targeted by Shi'ite death squads operating either from within the interior ministry, or with its tacit approval.
Shi'ites say thousands of their community have had to flee their homes to escape threats by Sunni extremists.

Adviser: Iraq ‘Civil War’ Places U.S. in Reactive Role
By Robin Hindery
AP via Air Force Times via Informed Comment, 10 May 2006
 Iraq is embroiled in a “low-level civil war” that is forcing the United States to react to events on the ground rather than shape them, according to a former U.S. military adviser who spent two years there studying the insurgency.
“Once you start reacting to events, you cannot impose a solution,” said Ahmed Hashim, a professor at the Naval War College who worked with U.S. troops in Iraq from November 2003 to September 2005 in an effort to understand the emotions and loyalties driving Iraq’s insurgents. “You go along with the flow.”
Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations on Tuesday, Hashim said the most powerful force behind Iraq’s chaotic downward spiral in recent months is “the identity issue” dividing Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.
“What’s happened over the past several months is that Iraqi communities have created a narrative of one another that is exclusionary,” he said, pointing to the rise of sectarian militias such as the Mahdi Army, the powerful militia loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
When militias take the place of the state in protecting individual communities, he said, ethnic antagonism is the natural byproduct.
Stressing that he was speaking as an individual, not a representative of the U.S. Military, Hashim expressed pessimism over the U.S.’s ability to control the current situation in Iraq.
“We have a civil war right now, a low-level civil war,” he said. “Our understanding of Iraq has advanced at a very glacial pace, and the only policy we really have in our hand right now...is to leave.”
The counterinsurgency strategies the U.S. has been implementing so far may not be effective tools for dealing with a civil war or organized crime, he added.
“To stay in Iraq and to affect the situation in Iraq will require a kind of understanding at a level far deeper than we have,” he said.
Hashim said he was struck by the shift in the attitudes of ordinary Iraqi civilians over the course of his time there. In 2003, most Iraqis he spoke to did not consider civil war a possibility, he said; two years later, all that had changed.
“In 2005 I came back with a fully pessimistic and bleak view of Iraq,” he said, adding that the cycle of sectarian violence seems only to have accelerated since then. “The narratives they’ve created about each other are propelling them.”
Hashim’s statements came on a day when at least 41 people were killed across Iraq, according to an Associated Press tally, including at least 17 in a suicide bombing late Tuesday at a market in Tal Afar.

As Gazans Wait for Aid, Their Situation Is Dire
By STEVEN ERLANGER
NYT, 11 May 2006
GAZA, May 4 — In the gold souk of Kisariya, the oldest part of Gaza City, named after Caesar, the market goes only one way these days. "Everyone is selling — no one is buying," said Rafiq Ayyad, 65, a jeweler and dealer here for 40 years. "I've rarely seen it so bad."
Imad and Sanaa al-Kassar, 23 and 21, were married nine months ago. With Sanaa 6 months pregnant, they came to sell the gold jewelry he gave her for the wedding. "We need the money for the baby," she said. Imad, an employee of the bankrupt and isolated Palestinian Authority, has not been paid in two months.
Zahiya Abu Watfa, 70, was selling an exquisite bracelet of gold coins that she had owned since 1956. She needs the money for food and to help her children.
Jewelry, like land, is a traditional investment here, one of the last possessions to be sold. But conditions are getting dire for many, with 35 percent of the Gaza Strip's 1.4 million people dependent on salaries from the Palestinian Authority. Credit is exhausted and the economy is slowing down.
Tension is palpable between armed groups of supporters of Hamas, which runs the new government, and Fatah, the faction of the longtime leaders, who lost power in elections in January.
Gazans are wary, watchful and increasingly angry at their plight. For now they are angry at the United States for withholding financial support over the Hamas victory. But their anger may also turn against Hamas, whose refusal to recognize Israel has isolated its government, some Fatah leaders warn.

The Republican Agenda for 2006: Tax Cuts for a Favored Few
NYT, 11 May 2006
A puzzling aspect of Congress's latest tax-cut package is why its overwhelmingly Republican supporters believe that its passage will be a big win for them and their party. There's nothing in it for most Americans, and yet all Americans will pay its cost: $69 billion over the near term. That price tag will be reflected in incessant budget deficits, which will further impair the government's ability to meet Americans' needs, and force the government to borrow more, mostly from abroad, to plug the budget gap.
The bill, which was passed yesterday by the House and is expected to clear the Senate as early as today, has two main provisions. The first, and dearest to the hearts of President Bush and his allies in Congress, is an extension of the temporary low tax rates on investment income. The top 10 percent of income earners will get almost all of the benefits, and everyone else will get crumbs.
To justify the giveaway, President Bush and Congressional Republicans insist that tax cuts for investors benefit everyone — and pay for themselves — by stimulating economic growth. That assertion is seriously delusional. Economic theory suggests that a fraction of the tax cuts' cost could, perhaps, be offset by higher growth, all other things being equal. But when a nation must borrow to pay for tax breaks, as is the case in the United States today, any ability of tax cuts for investors to spur growth is severely diminished.
The second major provision will provide temporary relief for taxpayers who have been scorched of late by the alternative minimum tax.
Unlike investors' tax cuts, relief from the alternative tax is needed. But the short-term fix obscures a much bigger problem that is of Congress's own making.
The alternative tax has been unfairly afflicting taxpayers who are nowhere near the multimillionaire level, which it's supposed to target. Why? In part, the problem stems from the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. The tax code is wired to detect when a filer's tax bill is very low relative to income, and to use the alternative tax to raise the tax bill. So the more that tax cuts reduce a filer's liability, the greater the chances that the alternative tax will kick in.
Lawmakers refuse to fix the problem once and for all because as long as the alternative tax lingers on the books, official budget estimates include huge amounts of revenue that it's supposed to raise. Of course, those outsized sums will never actually materialize because Congress keeps passing stopgap relief measures. But the revenue is counted anyway, allowing the administration and Congress to project far smaller budget deficits than will actually be the case.
After five years of duplicitous fiscal policy, Americans are catching on. And Republicans who see tax cuts as an automatic vote-getter may be in for a rude shock. Some two-thirds of Americans now say that the president's priorities, which clearly include ever more tax cuts, do not reflect their own.

Security Issue Kills Domestic Spying Inquiry
MSNBC via AP via Daily Kos, 10 May 2006
NSA won’t grant Justice Department lawyers required security clearance
The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.
The inquiry headed by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers’ role in the program.
“We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program,” OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey. Hinchey’s office shared the letter with The Associated Press.

Amid Strife, Abramoff Had Pal at White House
'Let me know if there is ANYTHING I can do to help,' top budget official David Safavian said in one of their e-mails as the scandal unfolded.
By Peter Wallsten, James Gerstenzang and Tom Hamburger
LA Times, 11 May 2006
Lobbyist Jack Abramoff engaged in regular contact with a high-ranking White House official, asking for favors and pouring out his heart as lawmakers and the media began exposing details of his business dealings, according to copies of e-mails released Wednesday by the White House.
At one point, when news reports began detailing the lobbyist's role in a burgeoning ethics scandal that has threatened to envelop Republican lawmakers, the White House aide offered to assist Abramoff with "damage control."
The e-mails, which include dozens of communications during 2004, reveal a casual, jocular relationship between Abramoff and David H. Safavian, who was chief of federal procurement policy at the White House budget office until he was charged last year with lying in connection with a federal investigation of Abramoff.
Safavian had the power to help Abramoff with some aspects of his lobbying business, and some of the e-mails concern business matters. Most, however, concentrate on friendly banter.
In early October 2004, Safavian asked sympathetically how Abramoff was doing after published reports that he had made disparaging comments about his Indian tribe clients in e-mail messages. "Pretty bummed," Abramoff replied. "They really made me out to be a horrible person. They twisted everything…. The worst was them accusing me of being a racist! I have spilled more blood for tribes than I can possibly recount."

HUD Says Secretary's Political Contracting Tale Untrue
BY STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
Chicago Sun Times via Talking Points Memo, 11 May 2006
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson reportedly told a business group in Dallas that he rejected a government contract with a businessman because the man told him he didn't like President Bush.
A spokeswoman acknowledged that Jackson told the story. But, she said, the story was untrue.
''The secretary's story was anecdotal. He is not part of the contracting process,'' said HUD spokeswoman Dustee Tucker. ''He was trying to explain to this group how politics works in D.C.''
'That's the way I believe'
Jackson, speaking at an April 28 forum sponsored by the Real Estate Executive Council, told about a minority contractor who had finally landed an advertising contract with HUD after trying for 10 years, according to an article in the Dallas Business Journal.
''He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something ... he said, 'I have a problem with your president,''' Jackson told the group, according to the newspaper.
''I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I don't like President Bush.''' Jackson told the group, which promotes business opportunities for minorities in real estate.
''He didn't get the contract,'' Jackson said. ''Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe.''
...Tucker said Jackson does not plan to resign. She acknowledged that he did not tell the audience the story was made up. But, she said, Jackson used the ''hypothetical'' story to describe the ruthless politics of Washington. She said Jackson was trying to convey that Washington is a place where political opponents, rather than stabbing you in the back, ''will stab you in the chest.''

A 3rd President Bush? First 2 All for It
By NEDRA PICKLER
AP via LA Times, 11 May 2006
Could there be a third President Bush? The current chief said Wednesday that younger brother Jeb would make a great one, too, and has asked him about making a run. The first President Bush likes the idea as well.
Jeb Bush, the Republican governor of Florida, has one asset that his presidential brother doesn't right now -- approval from most of his constituents. While George W. Bush's approval ratings are in the low 30s, some 55 percent of Florida voters surveyed last month by Quinnipiac University said Jeb was doing a good job.
The governor has repeatedly said he won't be a candidate for president in 2008, but that doesn't stop his family from encouraging him to go for it some day.
SEE ALSO:
Bush: Jeb Would Be 'Great President'
AP via CBS News, 10 May 2006
 President Bush suggested Wednesday that he'd like to see his family's White House legacy continue, perhaps with his younger brother Jeb as the chief executive.
The president said Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is well-suited for another office and would make "a great president."
"I would like to see Jeb run at some point in time, but I have no idea if that's his intention or not," Mr. Bush said in an interview with Florida reporters, according to an account on the St. Petersburg Times Web site.
The president said he had "pushed him fairly hard about what he intends to do," but Jeb has not said.

10 May 2006

Alarmed by Raids, Neighbors Stand Guard in Iraq
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
NYT, 10 May 2006
...As evidence mounts that Shiite police commandos are carrying out secret killings, Sunni Arab neighborhoods across Baghdad have begun forming citizen groups to keep the paramilitary forces out of their areas entirely. In large swaths of western Baghdad, and in at least six majority Sunni areas in its center, young men take turns standing in streets after the 11 p.m. curfew, to send out signals by flashlights and cellphones if strangers approach.
In some cases, the Sunnis have set up barricades and have taken up arms against Shiite-led commando raids into their neighborhoods. In other cases, residents have tipped off Sunni insurgents. Watch groups have been assembled in other mixed areas, including Baquba to the north and Mahmudiya to the south, residents and officials said.
Three years after the American invasion, the war has settled here, in the quiet of neighborhoods, streets and Iraqis' backyards. Dozens of bodies surface daily. People are taken from their homes and executed. Assassinations are routine. But instead of looking to the government for protection, ordinary Sunni Arabs are taking up arms against it, perhaps the most vivid illustration of the depth of Sunni mistrust of the American backed, Shiite-led security forces. "There is no bridge of confidence between the government and the Iraqi people," said Tarik al-Hashimy, a vice president of Iraq who is a Sunni Arab.

IRAQ: UN Report Cites Vast Under-Nutrition Among Children
IRIN via Informed Comment, 9 May 2006
One in three Iraqi children is malnourished and underweight, according to a report released by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Amman on 2 May.
"Under-nutrition should not be accepted in a country like Iraq, with its wealth of resources," said UNICEF Special Representative for Iraq Roger Wright from the Jordanian capital, Amman. Wright added that ongoing insecurity served to deter parents from visiting health centres for essential services, while many health workers had been kidnapped or killed in different parts of the country.
According to the report, a full 25 percent of Iraqi children between six months and five years old suffer from either acute or chronic malnutrition. A 2004 Living Conditions Survey indicated a decrease in mortality rates among children under five years old since 1999. However, the results of a September 2005 Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis – commissioned by Iraq's Central Organisation for Statistics and Information Technology, the World Food Programme and UNICEF – showed worsening conditions since the April 2003 US-led invasion of the country.
The problem is particularly dire in the south, especially in the provinces of Basra, Diala, Najaf, Qadissiyah, Salahuddin and Wasit, due primarily to a lack of health funding. Health ministry officials acknowledge that the public health situation remains below international standards, but expressed hope that the recently formed government in Baghdad would provide more funding.

Peace Brokers to Set Up Palestinian Aid Conduit
The U.S. agrees to the move under pressure. The goal is to help civilians without supporting the new Hamas-led government.
By Maggie Farley and Ken Ellingwood
LA Times, 10 May 2006
U.S. officials, under heavy pressure from fellow Middle East mediators, agreed Tuesday to the creation of a trial emergency channel for funneling humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, while keeping a funding freeze on the Hamas-led Palestinian government.
The United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations — a group of peace brokers known as the quartet — said the new "international mechanism" was meant to alleviate a shortage of medical supplies and other critical goods without supporting the newly elected government.
The EU will set up the channel, which will be reviewed after three months. Funding will go through institutions such as the World Bank and the U.N.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had urged other nations to maintain a hard line against Hamas, a militant group whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and which the U.S. considers terrorist. But after strong lobbying, she said Washington would support the launch of the aid channel without contributing to it.
"The goal is not to transfer responsibility for meeting the needs of the Palestinian people from the government to the international community," Rice said at a news conference with the other officials after their meetings.
"It is to provide assistance to the Palestinian people so they do not suffer deprivation," she said.
Rice said the U.S. would separately provide $10 million in medical aid through UNICEF and in-kind donations.
In a meeting with quartet officials Tuesday morning, foreign ministers from Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia warned of civil war among Palestinians if the Hamas government collapsed. The World Bank reported Monday that the humanitarian crisis appeared far graver than expected after international aid was frozen in March, and it warned of a breakdown in law and order, health services and education if help didn't arrive.

Portents: The Coming End of the CIA
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, 10 May 2006
Monday's nomination by US President George W Bush of air force General Michael Hayden to take over the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from the hapless Porter Goss has predictably intensified speculation over what is really going on behind the scenes.
Most analysts see the shifts as the latest battle between the director of national intelligence (DNI), John Negroponte, and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld in the war over control of the multiple functions of the United States' sprawling, US$40-billion-a-year intelligence community.
But opinion appears deeply divided over which bureaucratic titan
will emerge as this round's winner, although few doubt that the unceremonious dismissal of a CIA director who served less than 20 months on the job - particularly by a president who has proved dogged in retaining loyal servants despite strong evidence of their incompetence - is filled with portent.
...For John Prados, a prominent author on national-security intelligence, it is far too early to predict the outcome, particularly given the gains and momentum built up by the Pentagon largely at the CIA's expense in budgetary and operational areas during Goss's tenure.
"It's always been Rumsfeld versus Negroponte, and Negroponte has not so far demonstrated much ability to rein in Rumsfeld at all," he said. "This could be a victory for Negroponte in the sense that a new director that can breathe life into a fading CIA would re-create an element of resistance against the Pentagon's aggrandizement. That could improve his situation vis-a-vis Rumsfeld."
At the same time, he said, the latest developments could hasten the CIA's cannibalization by accelerating the migration of its analytical resources to the DNI and its increasingly nominal control over operations to the Pentagon.
"We may be seeing the tipping point toward the end of the CIA and the increased danger of the fragmentation of the American intelligence community," he said.

Poll Gives Bush Worst Marks Yet on Major Issues
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and MEGAN THEE
NYT, 10 May 2006
Americans have a bleaker view of the country's direction than at any time in more than two decades, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Sharp disapproval of President Bush's handling of gasoline prices has combined with intensified unhappiness about Iraq to create a grim political environment for the White House and Congressional Republicans.
Mr. Bush's approval ratings for his management of foreign policy, Iraq and the economy have fallen to the lowest levels of his presidency. He drew poor marks on the issues that have been at the top of the national agenda in recent months, in particular immigration and gasoline prices.
Just 13 percent approved of Mr. Bush's handling of rising gasoline prices. About a quarter said they approved of his handling of immigration, as Congressional Republicans try to come up with a compromise for handling the influx of illegal immigrants into the country.
The poll showed a further decline in support for the Iraq war, the issue that has most eaten into Mr. Bush's public support. The percentage of respondents who said going to war in Iraq was the correct decision slipped to a new low of 39 percent, down from 47 percent in January. Two-thirds said they had little or no confidence that Mr. Bush could successfully end the war.
...Mr. Bush is even losing support from what has been his base: 51 percent of conservatives and 69 percent of Republicans approve of the way Mr. Bush is handling his job. In both cases, those figures are a substantial drop in support from four months ago.
"We should have stayed out of Iraq until we knew more about it," Bernice Davis, a Republican from Lamar, Mo., who said she now disapproved of Mr. Bush's performance, said in a follow-up interview on Tuesday. "The economy is going to pot. Gas prices are escalating. I just voted for Bush because he's a Republican, even though I disapproved of the war. If I could go back, I would not vote for him."

Father and Son Reunion: At 31%
By MAUREEN DOWD
NYT, 10 May 2006
The Bush presidency has devolved into an assertion of empty will.
The White House blew off warnings from Republicans in Congress about appointing Gen. Michael Hayden as C.I.A. chief. You know you're in trouble when conservatives fret that the military is getting too much power.
If W. really cared about getting good intelligence for his war on terror, he would never have appointed Porter Goss. That wasted more than 18 months that could have been used fixing the dysfunctional agency, and drove out some good officials.
Mr. Goss, the Cheney toadie, was appointed because W. and Vice wanted him to do a hostile takeover at Langley to clear out suspected leakers (especially Kerry contributors), malcontents, critics of the war or anyone else who wasn't with the program.
Before the Iraq invasion, it was about fixing the intelligence around the policy. Now it's about appointing yes men and enforcing loyalty. The Bush warriors didn't want good intelligence in the first place because it would have told them they were wrong about Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda and W.M.D. And now they're still more concerned with turf battles than with truth-tellers and finding someone — anyone — who can tell us where Osama is. (Osama who?)
Even Denny Hastert, the Republican speaker, scoffed at the Hayden move as a Negroponte "power grab."
The general is a Cheney pal who stood up for the White House's right to be unconstitutional, going along with the heinous warrantless snooping. That makes him one of the team and ready for a promotion, or a Medal of Freedom. He will no doubt be accommodating when Darth Cheney comes over to Langley to lurk around the analysts and oversee the evidence building a case for sending bombs, rather than diplomats, to Iran.
Now that we're dealing with a crazed Iranian president, dreaming of nukes and writing an 18-page letter that sounds like an Israel-hating Islamic version of the Rapture, wouldn't it be great if our spooks could stop fighting and go spy on somebody?

The GOP's Bankruptcy of Ideas
By Harold Meyerson
Washington Post, 10 May 2006
...The Republicans' problem is not simply their inability to run their government and wage their war of choice, it is also their bankruptcy of ideas. On taxes, the Republican legislative leaders' top priorities are to make permanent the tax cut on investment income and to repeal the estate tax -- economics, as ever, for our wealthiest 1 percent. (This at a time when the entire theory of trickle-down has been negated by the propensity of U.S. corporations to use their shareholders' investments to expand abroad rather than at home.) On energy, the notions of tougher fuel economy standards and mandating a shift to renewable energy sources are so alien to the Republicans' DNA that they come forth with such proposals as Bill Frist's $100 rebate, the most short-lived legislative initiative in recent memory.
There's no concealing the Republican collapse. In a USA Today-Gallup poll released this week, the president's approval rating had deflated to a dismal 31 percent -- and to just 52 percent among conservatives. Other recent polls have shown that the public prefers shifting congressional control to the Democrats by margins as high as 17 percent. Numbers can change, of course, but it's hard to see what the Republicans can do to reverse this tsunami. They can mount an October surprise attack on Iran, but that would require someone making a convincing public case that Iran poses an imminent threat to us and that preemptive war is the only solution. And who, in the wake of the deceptions with which they justified their war in Iraq, has the credibility to do that? Bush? Cheney? Rumsfeld? These guys have turned themselves into Lucy holding the football, while the American people no longer afford them a Charlie Brown benefit of the doubt.

9 May 2006

Bush’s Best Moment in Office? Catching Big Fish
President tells German newspaper landing perch was best, 9/11 the worst
Reuters via MSNBC, 8 May 2006
President Bush told a German newspaper his best moment in more than five years in office was catching a big perch in his own lake.
"You know, I've experienced many great moments, and it's hard to name the best," Bush told weekly Bild am Sonntag when asked about his high point since becoming president in January 2001.
"I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5-pound perch in my lake," he told the newspaper in an interview published Sunday. Bush said the worst moment was Sept. 11, 2001, when hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

Iraq Deployment Delayed as Drawdown Is Studied
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post, 9 May 2006
The Pentagon announced yesterday that it will delay sending a brigade of several thousand U.S. ground troops to Iraq as American commanders weigh the possibility of a further drawdown of U.S. forces there.
The military notified about 3,500 soldiers with the Army's 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, based in Schweinfurt, Germany, that they will not begin deploying in early May as scheduled, and defense officials said they will hold off on shipping the brigade's vehicles and other equipment. The troops were supposed to begin operating in Iraq in late June or early July.
Defense officials stressed that the delay does not signal the start of a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq and will have no immediate impact on U.S. troop strength, which now stands at about 133,000.
"It's a very narrow decision just to hold this unit for now," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, adding that it is likely the brigade will still deploy "somewhere down the road." Whitman said: "It's my understanding that it will deploy at some time. They are trained; they're equipped and ready to go."
Instead, the decision to postpone the deployment was intended to give more time and flexibility to U.S. commanders in Iraq, led by Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., while they and Iraqi leaders assess the insurgency and sectarian violence amid the formation of a new Iraqi government.
"General Casey has not come forward with recommendations for any troop adjustments," said another defense official. "Really, it's a decision to buy him a little more time to make his overall assessment before you are spending money and moving stuff."
SEE ALSO:
Aiming for a More Subtle Fighting Force
General says U.S. troops can counter insurgency best by preserving Iraqis' lives and honor.
By James Rainey
LA Times, 9 May 2006
Some American troops in Iraq have been their "own worst enemy," unintentionally creating new insurgents by treating the Iraqi people in a heavy-handed or insensitive manner, according to the U.S. commander in charge of day-to-day military operations.
Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, in a weekend training session with troops and in an interview afterward, said he found a need to reemphasize to soldiers that they must use reasonable force and treat the Iraqi culture with respect, in part because the insurgency has persisted and grown.

Bush Takes On the Brothels
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NYT, 9 May 2006
I'm guessing that President Bush's foreign policy will stand up about as well to the assessments of future historians as a baby gazelle to a pack of cheetahs.
Yet there is one area where Mr. Bush is making a historic contribution: he is devoting much more money and attention to human trafficking than his predecessors. Just as one of Jimmy Carter's great legacies was putting human rights squarely on the international agenda, Mr. Bush is doing the same for slave labor.
We don't tend to think of trafficking as a top concern, so Mr. Bush hasn't gotten much credit. But it's difficult to think of a human rights issue that could be more important than sex trafficking and the other kinds of neo-slavery that engulf millions of people around the world, leaving many of them dead of AIDS by their early 20's.
...In 2000, Congress passed landmark anti-trafficking legislation, backed by an unlikely coalition of evangelical Republicans and feminist Democrats. Even today, the Congressional leaders against trafficking include a conservative Republican, Senator Sam Brownback, and a liberal Democrat, Representative Carolyn Maloney.
But the heaviest lifting has been done by the State Department's tiny office on trafficking — for my money, one of the most effective units in the U.S. government. The office, led by a former Republican congressman, John Miller, is viewed with suspicion by some career diplomats who fear that simple-minded conservative nuts are mucking up relations with countries over a peripheral issue.
Yet Mr. Miller and his office wield their spotlight shrewdly. With firm backing from the White House (Mr. Bush made Mr. Miller an ambassador partly to help him in his bureaucratic battles), the office puts out an annual report that shames and bullies foreign governments into taking action against forced labor of all kinds.
Under pressure from the report, Cambodia prosecuted some traffickers (albeit while protecting brothels owned by government officials) and largely closed down the Svay Pak red-light district, where 10-year-olds used to be openly sold. Ecuador stepped up arrests of pimps and started a national public awareness campaign. Israel trained police to go after traffickers and worked with victims' home countries, like Belarus and Ukraine. And so on, country by country.
Some liberals object to the administration's requirement that aid groups declare their opposition to prostitution before they can get anti-trafficking funds. But in the past, without that requirement, U.S. funds occasionally went to groups promoting prostitution. And in any case, the requirement doesn't seem to have caused many problems on the ground (partly because aid groups sometimes dissemble to get money). In Zambia, India and Cambodia, I've seen U.S.-financed programs work closely with prostitutes and brothel owners when that is needed to get the job done.
Moreover, Ambassador Miller and his staff aren't squeamish prudes. Mr. Miller is sympathetic to the Swedish model: stop punishing prostitutes, but crack down on pimps and customers. He says that approach seems to have reduced more forced prostitution than just about any other strategy.
The backdrop is a ridiculously divisive debate among anti-trafficking activists about whether prostitution should be legalized. Whatever one thinks of that question, it's peripheral to the central challenge: vast numbers of underage girls are forced into brothels against their will, and many die of AIDS. On that crucial issue, Mr. Bush is leaving a legacy that he and America can be proud of.

The Wrong Spy
LA Times, 9 May 2006
Goss reportedly also resented the notion that the CIA should narrow its focus to espionage and leave the analytical work to others, including Negroponte's office. Presumably Hayden, who has been Negroponte's deputy and once ran the CIA's rival spying agency, will press this narrower focus. This is not necessarily bad in theory. But in practice it may lead to a further politicization of the intelligence community's work.
It's easy to nitpick Hayden's nomination for other reasons. If the agency needs to refocus on human intelligence, wouldn't it make more sense to bring in a director with experience in that area? Hayden comes from the gadget-oriented NSA. And the fact that he is a military man taking over the one formidable nonmilitary intelligence agency at a time when Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's Pentagon is expanding its intelligence capabilities is raising legitimate concerns.
But the most disturbing part of Hayden's resume, and the one that disqualifies him for the job, is his proud parenthood of the NSA's eavesdropping program. Under the program, the agency listens in on conversations between U.S. residents and overseas parties without seeking a warrant from secret courts set up for this purpose.
Hayden has spoken in defense of the program's constitutionality, and the White House thinks it has the upper hand politically on this issue. In the name of fighting terror, most Americans seem willing to allow Bush to chisel away at their privacy and at the Bill of Rights. Senators may find it hard to derail Hayden's nomination. But they should at least use his confirmation hearings to try to ascertain exactly what those NSA eavesdroppers are up to.
SEE ALSO:
Shuffling Spies Around
NYT, 9 May 2006
The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee said on Sunday that Gen. Michael Hayden, President Bush's choice to succeed Porter Goss at the Central Intelligence Agency, is "the wrong person, the wrong place, at the wrong time." While this page hasn't found too much common ground with the Congressional Republican leadership lately, that assessment, by Representative Peter Hoekstra, is a hard one to quibble with.
By almost all accounts, General Hayden, a four-star Air Force general, has an excellent reputation on Capitol Hill. Much has been made of his ability to brief well — that is to say, his ability to explain to lay people in the administration and Congress what American wiretaps and intelligence show about threats around the world. He led the National Security Agency from 1999 until 2005, and he is credited with taking an agency that once concentrated on the cold war and refocusing it on terrorism.
But the next director of the C.I.A. needs to know the business of espionage, and what General Hayden knows is gadgets, not people. The most important thing a director of the C.I.A. must understand is how to use human intelligence. The Bush administration's vision of the agency's future would push that further, and have the agency focus almost entirely on gathering information on the ground while others concentrate on high-tech spying and analyzing data. It's therefore peculiar that the White House immediately reached out to General Hayden, whose background is far from what would seem to be required.
Recruiting spies is different from eavesdropping, the skill that General Hayden honed at the National Security Agency. In fact, he's been spending time lately defending the agency's wiretaps of Americans without warrants.
After The New York Times disclosed last December that the White House was wiretapping without getting warrants, the international calls and e-mail of people in the United States, General Hayden piped up as part of the White House's scripted defense of the program. The nation needs a C.I.A. director who has both a sensitivity to civil liberties issues and a willingness to buck any administration that wants to trample them. The president, clearly, wants exactly the opposite.
It also seems ill advised to put an Air Force general at the helm of the C.I.A., a civilian agency, at a time when it is fending off the Pentagon's efforts to expand its own spying operations. Morale at the C.I.A. is at an all-time low, and the choice of General Hayden sends a politically tone-deaf signal to the men and women in the field who themselves are fending off encroachment from the Pentagon.

Conspiracy Theories: Who's Crazy Now?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 8 May 2006
...the administration officials who told us that Saddam had an active nuclear program and insinuated that he was responsible for 9/11 weren't part of a covert alliance; they all worked for President Bush. The claim that these officials hyped the case for war isn't a conspiracy theory; it's simply an assertion that people in a position of power abused that position. And that assertion only seems wildly implausible if you take it as axiomatic that Mr. Bush and those around him wouldn't do such a thing.
The truth is that many of the people who throw around terms like "loopy conspiracy theories" are lazy bullies who, as Zachary Roth put it on CJR Daily, The Columbia Journalism Review's Web site, want to "confer instant illegitimacy on any argument with which they disagree." Instead of facing up to hard questions, they try to suggest that anyone who asks those questions is crazy.
Indeed, right-wing pundits have consistently questioned the sanity of Bush critics; "It looks as if Al Gore has gone off his lithium again," said Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post columnist, after Mr. Gore gave a perfectly sensible if hard-hitting speech. Even moderates have tended to dismiss the administration's harsh critics as victims of irrational Bush hatred.
But now those harsh critics have been vindicated. And it turns out that many of the administration supporters can't handle the truth. They won't admit that they built a personality cult around a man who has proved almost pathetically unequal to the job. Nor will they admit that opponents of the Iraq war, whom they called traitors for warning that invading Iraq was a mistake, have been proved right. So they have taken refuge in the belief that a vast conspiracy of America-haters in the media is hiding the good news from the public.
Unlike the crazy conspiracy theories of the left — which do exist, but are supported only by a tiny fringe — the crazy conspiracy theories of the right are supported by important people: powerful politicians, television personalities with large audiences. And we can safely predict that these people will never concede that they were wrong. When the Iraq venture comes to a bad end, they won't blame those who led us into the quagmire; they'll claim that it was all the fault of the liberal media, which stabbed our troops in the back.

Bush Approval Rating Hits New Low: 31%
USA Today, 8 May 2006
President Bush's approval rating has slumped to 31% in a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, the lowest of his presidency and a warning sign for Republicans in the November elections.
...Bush's fall is being fueled by erosion among support from conservatives and Republicans. In the poll, 52% of conservatives and 68% of Republicans approved of the job he is doing. Both are record lows among those groups.
Moderates gave him an approval rating of 28%, liberals of 7%.
"You hear people say he has a hard core that will never desert him, and that has been the case for most of the administration," says Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin who studies presidential approval ratings. "But for the last few months, we started to see that hard core seriously erode in support."
Only four presidents have scored lower approval ratings since the Gallup Poll began regularly measuring it in the mid-1940s: Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and the first George Bush. When Nixon, Carter and the elder Bush sank below 35%, they never again registered above 40%.
Truman twice sank into the low 30s and then rose into the 60s, but the third time his rating fell, it stayed below 40% as well.
"Historically it's been pretty devastating to presidents at this level," Franklin says. Even Republican members of Congress are "now so worried about their electoral fortunes in November that he has less leverage with them than he normally would with his own party controlling Congress."

8 May 2006

Conditions in Baghdad Deteriorate: Death Squads Deepen Division
Bombs Sunday killed at least 30; some 45 men were found slain in the capital.
By Dan Murphy
Christian Science Monitor via Informed Comment, 8 May 2006
...Ever since the Feb. 22 bombing of a major Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra touched off dozens of reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques, Iraqis have reported a sharp rise in attacks at the hands of both Shiite and Sunni Arab death squads.
A Baghdad health official says there have been at least 2,500 murders in the capital since the Samarra shrine attack, adding that those numbers don't include the victims of mass-casualty attacks like those Sunday.
Today, Baghdad appears to be more divided and war-torn than at any point since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. Most basic services are at an all-time low (Baghdad is averaging about three hours of power a day) and traditionally mixed Shiite and Sunni Arab neighborhoods continue to feel the impact of the slow seeping away of their diversity as families flee across the city's confessional front lines.
Now, in addition to the four or so well-organized and armed nongovernment militias operating in this diverse city, small armed neighborhood militias are springing up in dozens of neighborhoods.
At around 9 p.m. each night, they roll palm trunks, rusty barrels or other obstacles onto the streets, trusting their protection to no one but themselves, say many residents of Baghdad.
"We've been told over and over that the political process is going to make us safer, but all we see are parties fighting over ministries so they can get jobs and money for themselves,'' says Ahmed, who helped organize a neighborhood militia in Baghdad's Al-Amal district. "If we don't protect ourselves, no one will."
...Despite promises from Iraq's new Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that Iraq's militias would be reined in, groups like the fighters loyal to Mr. Sadr - who helped Mr. Maliki secure his new post - are becoming more assertive.
When a British helicopter was shot down in the largely Shiite southern city of Basra Saturday, killing the five men aboard, about 300 of Sadr's supporters rallied to attack British forces, who were moving to secure the wreckage and search for survivors, with Molotov cocktails and stones, setting four British armored vehicles alight.

Cheney/Bush Sell Short on Human Rights and Democracy for Kazakhstan
By Peter Baker
Washington Post, 6 May 2006
A day after scolding Russia for retreating on democracy, Vice President Cheney flew to oil-rich Kazakhstan yesterday and lavished praise on the autocratic leader of a former Soviet republic where opposition parties have been banned, newspapers shut down and advocacy groups intimidated.
Cheney stood next to Kazakhstan's longtime president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, in a marble hall of the presidential palace in Astana and congratulated him on his country's vibrant economy. His tone was markedly different from the tenor of his remarks about Russia a day earlier during a stop in Lithuania, when he accused Moscow of violating its citizens' rights and using "intimidation or blackmail" against neighbors.
In the course of a 395-word opening statement, according to a White House transcript, Cheney pronounced himself "delighted" to be a guest of Nazarbayev, saying "I consider him my friend" and adding that "the United States is proud to count Kazakhstan as a friend." Cheney professed "great respect" for Nazarbayev and said that "we are proud to be your strategic partner" and look forward "to continued friendship between us."
Asked about Kazakhstan's human rights record, he expressed "admiration for all that's been accomplished here in Kazakhstan" and confidence that it will continue.
Kazakhstan, however, remains a repressive nation, ruled by a former Communist apparatchik who has maintained a tight grip over its 15 million people since Soviet days and parlayed its massive energy reserves into a place on the international stage. Those reserves, human rights advocates say, have earned the country a pass from the Bush administration on human rights.
...Oil has dominated U.S. relations with Kazakhstan for years. With the largest crude oil reserves in the Caspian Sea region, Kazakhstan pumps 1.2 million barrels a day and exports 1 million of that, making it an increasingly important international supplier. With foreign investment flooding into the country, the Kazakh government hopes to boost production to 3.5 million barrels a day by 2015, rivaling Iran.
But human rights groups that hailed Cheney's comments on Russia said Kazakhstan deserved the same. "It is hardly consistent," said Curt Goering, deputy executive director of Amnesty International. "He made some important remarks [on Russia]. He said some of the right things that needed to be said. But he should have said some similar things in Kazakhstan."

A Dept of Defense Take Over of CIA?
Republicans Fault a Top Pick to Lead the C.I.A.
By MARK MAZZETTI and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
NYT, 8 May 2006
Senior Republican lawmakers on Sunday criticized the probable choice of Gen. Michael V. Hayden to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, voicing concerns about his ties to a controversial eavesdropping program and about the wisdom of installing a military officer at the civilian spy agency.
In a possible preview of the difficulties that would await General Hayden on Capitol Hill, several Republicans, including some with close ties to the White House, said President Bush should find someone else to run the embattled agency.
"I do believe he is the wrong person, the wrong place, at the wrong time," Representative Peter Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on "Fox News Sunday."
"We should not have a military person leading a civilian agency at this time," Mr. Hoekstra said.
Several military officers have led the C.I.A., but Mr. Hoekstra said it would be wrong to install one when the agency was fending off efforts by the Pentagon to expand its own spying operations.
Mr. Hoekstra would not directly participate in a debate over General Hayden, because the Senate, not the House, is responsible for confirming the president's nominee.
None of the Republican or Democratic lawmakers who appeared on television on Sunday or who were interviewed separately said directly that they would vote against General Hayden's nomination. He would replace Porter J. Goss, who was forced to resign Friday after repeatedly clashing with John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, over the C.I.A.'s loss of status as the nation's premier spy agency.
But Mr. Hoekstra's remarks, coupled with similar sentiments expressed by leading Senate Republicans, including Pat Roberts, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, suggest that the general might not have an easy ride toward confirmation.
SEE ALSO:
Dodging Perils on Way to Top of Spy Game
By SCOTT SHANE
NYT, 8 May 2006
Since joining the ranks of America's top spies seven years ago, Gen. Michael V. Hayden has weathered intelligence catastrophes and controversies that might easily have ended his career: the Sept. 11 attacks, erroneous reporting on Iraqi weapons and domestic surveillance without warrants — all on his watch at the National Security Agency.
Instead, General Hayden's brainy command of facts and just-folks style of delivering them have made him not just a survivor, but the man the Bush administration turns to for solutions to its most difficult problems at the intelligence agencies.
General Hayden, 61, of the Air Force, whom President Bush is expected to nominate today as the next director of the battered Central Intelligence Agency, has won such trust in part through his mastery of an intimate Washington institution: the intelligence briefing.
As director of the National Security Agency from 1999 to 2005 and top deputy for the past year to John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, General Hayden has again and again been called on to explain to top administration officials and members of Congress just what American wiretaps, spies and satellites show about the threats afoot in the world.
"Here we have a man who everybody says is one of the best briefers that they've ever had on intelligence," Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said yesterday on CNN, "a man who has been described by people on both sides of the aisle as probably knowing more about intelligence than anybody else."

Poker, Hookers and Spooks
By MAUREEN DOWD
NYT, 6 May 2006
...Dusty [Foggo] was handpicked by Porter Goss in late 2004 to be the No. 3 C.I.A. official, astonishing many agency veterans, according to Newsweek.
Dusty turns out to be a friend of a defense contractor implicated in the federal corruption investigation of the imprisoned Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a former G.O.P. congressman. The contractor, Brent Wilkes, is now entangled in allegations of louche and lewd behavior involving limos, hookers, a poker player with a missing digit from the C.I.A. nicknamed "Nine Fingers," and Watergate hospitality suites where more was offered than just Scotch and pretzels.
...Yesterday, Porter Goss lost the job he never should have had in the first place. After John Negroponte gave Mr. Goss the ax, W. went biking in Beltsville, Md.
When spooks get spiked, W. spins the spokes.
The C.I.A. missed 9/11 and W.M.D., so you'd think President Bush would want a superstar in the job. Instead, he put in a Cheney lackey whose first move was to warn agency employees to get in line, that their job was to "support the administration and its policies." Mr. Goss's last move was to fire a top C.I.A. officer, Mary McCarthy, who was accused of, but denied, leaking the secret C.I.A. prisons story.
Mr. Goss got the job even though the 9/11 commissioners had declared that Congressional oversight of intelligence was "dysfunctional" at a time he ran the House intelligence panel.
He got the job even though he tried to help the vice president suffocate the 9/11 commission. At the C.I.A., he relied on so many cronies, he made Brownie look professional.
The benign but still disturbing explanation for his abrupt termination — given all the home videos that Qaeda terrorists are brazenly sending out — is that he and John "10 Fingers" Negroponte were fighting over access to W., like teenage girls over the prom king. (Wasn't Mr. Negroponte's position created to quell turf battles?)
Even conservatives found yesterday's chain of events suspicious. Bill Kristol said on Fox News, "I think there were either serious disputes or some internal problem at the agency or some scandal conceivably involving an associate of Goss's."
The president is supposed to announce Mr. Goss's successor on Monday. It's clear that the White House is again making policy on the fly.
With all these loony threads, conspiracy theorists are having fun weaving dime-novel scenarios.
After all, Ms. McCarthy, the C.I.A. officer ousted by Porter Goss, worked in the agency's inspector general's office. That office — charged with investigating transgressions by C.I.A. employees, like questionable dealings with defense contractors in hotel rooms, with poker and perhaps even pajama games — is now examining Mr. Foggo's dealings with Mr. Wilkes.
Ms. McCarthy was known to be a supporter of John Kerry, not one of the Bush loyalists who could be counted on to see no evil.
She has been labeled a traitor by the right, just as Ray McGovern, a former C.I.A. analyst who challenges Rummy's veracity, is being Swift-boated as a nut case and partisan.
Mr. McGovern and other disgruntled retired spooks say the C.I.A. has been misused, abused and marginalized by the Bush hawks. Rummy even formed his own C.I.A. within the Pentagon to get the prewar intelligence that he and Dick "Trigger Finger" Cheney wanted to hear.
Are disgusted retired C.I.A. analysts colluding with disgusted retired generals to wreak revenge on Rummy, who ran roughshod over them all? Is W.'s dad sending him a message? Mr. McGovern, oddly enough, was a C.I.A. briefer for Poppy. Or are those just wild Potomac conspiracy theories?
...Hard to tell, in the Foggo of war.

Rove's Time in Limbo Near End in CIA Leak Case
By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post, 8 May 2006
Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald is wrapping up his investigation into White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove's role in the CIA leak case by weighing this central question:
Did Rove, who was deeply involved in defending President Bush's use of prewar intelligence about Iraq, lie about a key conversation with a reporter that was aimed at rebutting a tough White House critic?
Fitzgerald, according to sources close to the case, is reviewing testimony from Rove's five appearances before the grand jury. Bush's top political strategist has argued that he never intentionally misled the grand jury about his role in leaking information about undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame to Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper in July 2003. Rove testified that he simply forgot about the conversation when he failed to disclose it to Fitzgerald in his earlier testimony.
Fitzgerald is weighing Rove's foggy-memory defense against evidence he has acquired over nearly 2 1/2 years that shows Rove was very involved in White House efforts to beat back allegations that Bush twisted U.S. intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to sources involved in the case.
That evidence includes details of a one-week period in July 2003 when Rove talked to two reporters about Plame and her CIA role, then reported the conversations back to high-level White House aides, according to sources in the case and information released by Fitzgerald as part of the ongoing leak investigation.
Additionally, one former government official said he testified that Rove talked with White House colleagues about the political importance of defending the prewar intelligence and countering Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. It was Wilson who accused Bush of twisting intelligence about Iraq's efforts to obtain nuclear material from Africa. The official refused to be named out of fear of angering Fitzgerald and the White House.

America's 'Near Poor' Are Increasingly at Economic Risk, Experts Say
By ERIK ECKHOLM
NYT, 8 May 2006
The Abbotts date their tailspin to a collapse in demand for the aviation-related electronic parts that Stephen sold in better times, when he earned about $40,000 a year.
He lost his job in late 2001, unemployment benefits ran out over the next year and he and his wife, Laurie, along with their teenage son, were evicted from their apartment.
They spent a year in a borrowed motor home here in the working-class interior of Orange County, followed by eight months in a motel room with a kitchenette. During that time, Ms. Abbott, a diabetic who is now 51, lost all her teeth and could not afford to replace them.
"Since I didn't have a smile," she recalled, "I couldn't even work at a checkout counter."
Americans on the lower rungs of the economic ladder have always been exposed to sudden ruin. But in recent years, with the soaring costs of housing and medical care and a decline in low-end wages and benefits, tens of millions are living on even shakier ground than before, according to studies of what some scholars call the "near poor."
"There's strong evidence that over the past five years, record numbers of lower-income Americans find themselves in a more precarious economic position than at any time in recent memory," said Mark R. Rank, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of "One Nation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All."
In a rare study of vulnerability to poverty, Mr. Rank and his colleagues found that the risk of a plummet of at least a year below the official poverty line rose sharply in the 1990's, compared with the two previous decades. By all signs, he said, such insecurity has continued to worsen.