MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: September 24, 2006

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September 30, 2006

Woodward, Kissinger, Vietnam--Let's Do The Time Warp Again

Oh well, the folks at the Post must have gotten extra server space for this one, so head on over and check out the Woodward-gets-religion show for yourself. Among the bits we haven't seen in the wall-to-wall coverage of "State of Denial" are some very disturbing ones, to wit:

A powerful, largely invisible influence on Bush's Iraq policy was former secretary of state Kissinger.

"Of the outside people that I talk to in this job," Vice President Cheney told me in the summer of 2005, "I probably talk to Henry Kissinger more than I talk to anybody else. He just comes by and, I guess at least once a month, Scooter [his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby] and I sit down with him."

The president also met privately with Kissinger every couple of months, making him the most regular and frequent outside adviser to Bush on foreign affairs.

Kissinger sensed wobbliness everywhere on Iraq, and he increasingly saw it through the prism of the Vietnam War. For Kissinger, the overriding lesson of Vietnam is to stick it out.

In his writing, speeches and private comments, Kissinger claimed that the United States had essentially won the war in 1972, only to lose it because of the weakened resolve of the public and Congress.

In a column in The Washington Post on Aug. 12, 2005, titled "Lessons for an Exit Strategy," Kissinger wrote, "Victory over the insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy."

He delivered the same message directly to Bush, Cheney and Hadley at the White House.

Victory had to be the goal, he told all. Don't let it happen again. Don't give an inch, or else the media, the Congress and the American culture of avoiding hardship will walk you back.

They've known about Foley for almost a YEAR?

One of the many questions that beg answering in the Foley disaster: How exactly, now that we've all lived through a decade's worth of Catholic priest scandal and outrage over institutional hierarchy whitewashing--how, after all that, do you go from late 2005 to September 2006 convincing yourself that "suspiciously friendly" emails from a powerful man to a teenage boy are not a problem? How, Bishop Hastert?

Now for the cluelessness sweepstakes:

Rich Galen, a Republican political strategist, worried that voters might lump Foley's name with former representatives Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.), all of whom were forced to resign or were indicted amid various scandals this year.

No, Rich. You'd be lucky if people thought this was only as bad as Ney/DeLay/Duke.

September 29, 2006

By the Numbers: Why We Need a Timetable For Leaving Iraq

President George Bush has often stressed that if America wins the hearts and minds of Iraqis, they will stop killing our troops and each other and the country will stabilize. For Bush, that means rooting out Al Qaeda, a strategy that the recently released National Intelligence Estimate dramatically showed isn’t working; the presence of the U.S. in Iraq is recruiting terrorists faster than we can kill them. Perhaps a better way to win over Iraqis would be to (gasp!) listen to what they think we should do and leave. According government and independent polls released this week, more than 70 percent of Iraqis want U.S. troops to quit Iraq within a year, arguing that a pullout would make the country more secure and decrease sectarian violence.

Bush has argued that setting a timetable for withdraw from Iraq would only embolden insurgents. The polls suggest he’s wrong. Iraqi support for attacks on U.S.-led forces has grown over the past year to a majority position—now six in ten. The independent poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes found that Iraqis who support the attacks also believe the U.S. plans to establish permanent military bases in their country. A majority of Iraqis said they’d be less supportive of attacks on U.S. troops, “if the U.S. made a commitment to withdraw from Iraq according to a timetable.”

Our congress is not entirely deaf to Iraqi concerns. A rider in a defense spending bill that passed the House Wednesday would ban construction in Iraq of permanent U.S. bases. But Bush needs to go much further and set a timetable for withdraw. The independent poll found that a whopping 91 percent of Iraqis, including majorities of all ethnic groups, supported a pullout of U.S. troops within two years. Making even that kind of modest commitment would go a long way towards getting Iraqis on our side.

Foley Resigns Over Sexually Explicit Emails (Or, "...sick sick sick sick sick.")

Buh-bye

Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) planned to resign today, hours after ABC questioned him about sexually explicit internet messages with current and former Congressional pages under the age of 18.

Hours earlier, ABC News had read excerpts of instant messages provided by former pages who said the congressman, under the AOL Instant Messenger screen name Maf54, made repeated references to sexual organs and acts.

From yesterday's ABC story:

In the series of e-mails, obtained by ABC News, from Rep. Foley (R-FL) to the former page, Foley asks the young man how old he is, what he wants for his birthday and requests a photo of him.

The concerned young man alerted congressional staffers to the e-mails. In one e-mail, the former page writes to a staffer, "Maybe it is just me being paranoid, but seriously. This freaked me out."

Understandable.

The e-mails were sent from Foley's personal AOL account, and the exchange began within weeks after the page finished his program on Capitol Hill. In one, Foley writes, "did you have fun at your conference…what do you want for your birthday coming up…what stuff do you like to do."

In another Foley writes, "how are you weathering the hurricane…are you safe…send me an email pic of you as well…"

The young man forwarded that e-mail to a congressional staffer saying it was "sick sick sick sick sick."

Training Extremists While They Are Young

It is probably no more than an ironic coincidence that the Kids on Fire camp is in Devil's Lake, North Dakota. Or perhaps not. Kids on Fire is not your mother's summer camp; rather, it is a place where children--some as young as six--receive instruction in glossolalia, go on field trips to political protests, and learn to chant for "righteous judges" for America.

At Kids on Fire, the children pray over a cardboard cutout of George W. Bush, and they wash their hands in bottled water to cleanse themselves of their wicked ways and drive out the devil. Some children are filled with the Holy Spirit and go down in a trance-like state. One little girl is said to have been "pinned to the floor" for over an hour by the Holy Spirit. Children describe seeing "gold dust" on their hands, feeling compelled to dance, and being "slain by the Holy Spirit."

Becky Fischer, leader of Kids of Fire, who wants to "take back America for Christ," says "I want to see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I want to see them radically laying down their lives for the gospel, as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine."

The documentary film, Jesus Camp, made by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, follows three children as they participate in camp activities. Opening today in Los Angeles, the film has already stirred quite a bit of attention. It won in the "scariest movie" category at the Traverse City Film Festival.

One of the children in the documentary, Tory, who is ten years old, says something that is scary enough for me. Tory explains that she prefers "Christian, heavy metal rock and roll" to Britney Spears:

"When I dance, I have to make sure that that's God. People will notice when I'm just dancing for the flesh."

U.N. Security Council to Discuss Human Rights Violations in Burma

Today, for the first time ever, the United Nations Security Council will formally discuss the widespread human rights violations that for decades have been occurring in Burma, or Myanmar, under the rule of a repressive military junta calling itself the State Peace and Development Council.

The Security Council has long failed to address the situation in Burma for fear of drawing China's veto. For the same reason, today's discussion is not expected to bring about any concrete action, but human rights advocates consider it a promising first step. Burmese exiles, however, have doubts about the West's ability to deal with the hardnosed regime, as Burmese historian Thant Myint-U writes in a New York Times op-ed piece today.

Mother Jones recently reported on the build-up to the Security Council's discussion, and on underground resistance in Burma.

Bludgeoning Iraq's "Burgeoning Free Press"

It's a rotten time to be an Iraqi journalist. If being kidnapped and murdered by insurgents or detained indefinitely by the U.S. military aren't bad enough, now the government is cracking down. From today's New York Times:

Under a broad new set of laws criminalizing speech that ridicules the government or its officials, some resurrected verbatim from Saddam Hussein’s penal code, roughly a dozen Iraqi journalists have been charged with offending public officials in the past year.
Currently, three journalists for a small newspaper in southeastern Iraq are being tried here for articles last year that accused a provincial governor, local judges and police officials of corruption. The journalists are accused of violating Paragraph 226 of the penal code, which makes anyone who “publicly insults” the government or public officials subject to up to seven years in prison. [snip]
The office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has lately refused to speak with news organizations that report on sectarian violence in ways that the government considers inflammatory; some outlets have been shut down.

Meanwhile, back inside our own executive media bubble... President Bush, earlier this year: "I like the fact in Iraq that there's a burgeoning free press, there's a lot of press, which is a positive sign. It's a healthy indication."

"Enough with the carrots. It's time for the stick."

Yesterday, as the Senate cleared the controversial detainee bill and the House passed legislation authorizing the president's warrantless wiretapping program (with some restrictions), a little-noticed bill moved the nation a step closer toward a reckoning with Iran. Passed by the House, and now making its way quickly through the Senate, the Iran Freedom and Support Act, which would reauthorize existing sanctions against Iran, stops short of calling for outright regime-change but states that it should be U.S. policy to back “peaceful pro-democracy forces in Iran” and "to support efforts by the people of Iran to exercise self-determination over the form of government of their country."

The New York Sun reports:

The measure specifically does not authorize military action, but in the same way the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 foreshadowed events in the Gulf, the latest bill may come to be seen as an upping of the ante with the Islamic regime — or a step or two short of war.

As Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Florida Republican who sponsored the bill, told the AP, "Enough with the carrots. It's time for the stick."

Free Trade Love

Via PR Watch (whose other current endeavor is "The Best War Ever," a book exposing disinformation and deception around the Iraq War), this lovely bit on Seoul's efforts to promote the Bush administration's latest free-trade idea, a pact with Korea:

The "Korea-U.S. FTA Love Corner" established in the lobby of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in downtown Seoul symbolizes the government's belief that aggressive publicity would result in a successful FTA pact.

Response so far, reports the Korea Herald, has been "lukewarm."

September 28, 2006

Rwanda Abolishes Death Penalty to Get Justice

If there's any nation that should be thirsting for extreme measures against murderers, it's Rwanda, site of a genocidal rampage in 1994 that left nearly one million people dead. But the tiny African country's Justice Minister recently announced that the government plans to scrap capital punishment at the end of this year. It's less a matter of principle than practicality: many Rwandans suspected of involvement in atrocities are currently being held in countries like Belgium and Sweden that refuse to extradite prisoners if they face the death penalty. By abolishing it, Rwanda could gain custody of those prisoners and put them on trial, bringing "closure", as the Justice Minister put it. So far, the only Western country to have extradited suspects to Rwanda is - surprise! - the United States.

Why Did Bush Want the NIE Released When It So Obviously Contradicts His Happy Talk?

This kinda makes you wonder why Bush was so hot to get the full intel report out in the open.

Portions of the report appear to bolster President Bush’s argument that the only way to defeat the terrorists is to keep unrelenting military pressure on them. But nowhere in the assessment is any evidence to support Mr. Bush’s confident-sounding assertion this month in Atlanta that “America is winning the war on terror.’’

While the spread of self-described jihadists is hard to measure, the report says, the terrorists “are increasing in both number and geographic dispersion.”

It says that a continuation of that trend would lead “to increasing attacks worldwide’’ and that “the underlying factors fueling the spread of the movement outweigh its vulnerabilities.’’

Cue lapidary quote from terrorism expert. “I guess the overall conclusion that you get from it is that we don’t have enough bullets given all the enemies we are creating,’’ said Bruce Hoffman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University.

What to make of this? Either Bush truly believes that stuff about how we're an empire now and we make our own reality through action and wishful thinking; or he hadn't read the report, relying on "the filter" of Cheney et al., or he has entered a state of self-protective delusion. Whatever the explanation, the more important point is that the answer to the question Are We Safer? is pretty obviously "NO." So what to do about that?

Going Postal on George Allen

Here's an, um, unique response to the allegation that the young Sen. George Allen stuck a severed deer's head in the mailbox of a black family. "George Allen hates the U.S. Mail," according to Letter Carriers for Truth, which is proposing that the postal service go after Allen for vandalizing federal property, i.e., a mailbox. Or as LCT puts it, "This mailbox belonged to you and me ... the federal taxpayer ... and frankly I don't like it when people go around sticking severed heads in my slot."

Presidential Signing Statements Revisited

There's an interesting new report [PDF] from the Congressional Research Service (leaked to the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News) on presidential signing statements, a practice introduced by James Monroe and now used by George W. Bush to keep his fingers crossed while signing bills into law. CRS confirms the Boston Globe scoop that counted more than 700 examples of presidential pushback on specific legal provisions. But as the CRS points out, Bush's objections seem to be less about constitutional principle than the (questionable) assertion of presidential preeminence:

... the large bulk of the signing statements the Bush II Administration has issued to date do not apply particularized constitutional rationales to specific scenarios, nor do they contain explicit, measurable refusals to enforce a law. Instead, the statements make broad and largely hortatory assertions of executive authority that make it effectively impossible to ascertain what factors, if any, might lead to substantive constitutional or interpretive conflict in the implementation of an act. The often vague nature of these constitutional challenges, coupled with the pervasive manner in which they have been raised in numerous signing statements could thus be interpreted as an attempt by the Administration to systematically object to any perceived congressional encroachment, however slight, with the aim of inuring the other branches of government and the public to the validity of such objections and the attendant conception of presidential authority that will presumably follow from sustained exposure and acquiescence to such claims of power.

Translation: Dubya issues signing statements because he can. It's part of the big ol' executive power play cooked up by Cheney, Addington, Yoo et al. And as today's headlines make clear, in the absence of opposition, the power's there for the taking.

The CRS report also contains a couple of tidbits that hint at how the Supreme Court might line up if this issue winds up there: Back when he worked for Reagan, Samuel Alito argued for signing statements' "rightful place in the interpretation of legislation." And in a 1991 decision, Antonin Scalia heartily affirmed the president's "power to veto encroaching laws ...or even to disregard them when they are unconstitutional."

All of which raises a question that no one has answered to my satisfaction yet: If a president thinks a law is unconstitutional—or wants to puff out his chest at Congress—why not simply veto it? Or has Bush rendered the veto—like other bothersome checks and balances—obsolete?

Al Qaeda in Iraq: Calling all Weapons Experts

AP reports:

In a new audio message Thursday, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq called for explosives experts and nuclear scientists to join his group's holy war against the West. "We are in dire need of you," said the man, who identified himself as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir — also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri — the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.

"The field of jihad (holy war) can satisfy your scientific ambitions, and the large American bases (in Iraq) are good places to test your unconventional weapons, whether biological or dirty, as they call them."

Very much apropos, check out this piece by Kurt Pitzer in Mother Jones about how the U.S. refused to secure Iraq's only real WMDs, its nuclear and bioweapons scientists, with the result that they're now dispersed and more dangerous than ever.

Nobody knows how many Iraqi scientists may have been lured over the borders into Iran, Syria, or beyond. Nobody knows because no one is keeping tabs. But several observers agree that so little attention is being paid to Iraq's scientists, the war may actually have increased the chances of nuclear capabilities proliferating beyond the country's borders. Between its unemployed scientists and the disappearance of large amounts of WMD-related materials from former weapons sites, Iraq now poses a nightmare scenario, according to Ray McGovern, who spent 27 years analyzing intelligence for the CIA and afterward cofounded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. "The danger is much more acute, both from the proliferation side and the terrorism side," McGovern says. "Before we invaded, there was no evidence that Iraq had any plan or incentive to proliferate. They didn't even have a current plan to develop WMDs. They just hadn't been doing it. Now, my God, we have a magnet attracting all manner of foreign jihadists to a place where the WMD expertise is suddenly unprotected. It just boggles the mind."

The Fine Print in the Military Tribunals Bill

The House passed the Bush administration's military tribunals legislation yesterday, which clarifies the rules for how terrorism suspects can be interrogated and tried, and the Senate is expected to vote on the bill today. The bill, which was rushed through Congress as the legislative session comes to a close, includes a host of troubling provisions. Among them, the bill, for the first time, defines the meaning of “illegal enemy combatant” and it does so in a very broad way. As The New York Times notes in an editorial: “...The bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.”

As The Baltimore Sun reports, this under-the-radar provision would also “for the first time legally endorse the fight against terrorism as equivalent to war,” which would “give the fight against terrorism the legal status of an armed conflict.” “Does it allow the president to basically define the war on terrorism as broadly or as narrowly as he wants?” Rep. Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat, told the Sun. “The answer is yes.”

Another provision, dealing with the rights (or, in this case, lack of them) of detainees to challenge their imprisonment in federal court, would effectively “strip green-card holders and other legal residents of the right to challenge their detention in court if they are accused of being 'enemy combatants,’” according to the Boston Globe.

The part of the bill that worries advocates for immigrants most is the one stating that “no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.”...
In the original bill, the section banning "habeas corpus" petitions applied only to detainees being held "outside the United States," referring to the roughly 450 prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. But in recent days, the phrase "outside the United States" was removed.

Yet another provision makes "coerced evidence" admissible in court proceedings "if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant," according to the Times. Further, "coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses."

And that's just for starters.

September 27, 2006

Hurricane W

Climate science censorship, Chapter MMCVIII: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has reviewed the latest hurricane science and, like everyone else in the universe, has concluded that the data suggest that climate change is creating bigger and worse storms. But the White House, reports Nature (via the AP) feels the report is too "technical" and has blocked its release.

Nuff said.

Update: Whistleblower Sisters Sued By Their Company

Kerri Rigsby and Cori Rigsby, the independent insurance adjusters who blew the whistle on State Farm Insurance's allegedly fraudulent practices following Hurricane Katrina, have been sued by a company that contracts with State Farm.

E-A Renfroe and Company, a Birmingham-based adjusting company, alleges that Rigsby and Rigsby broke the law when they turned over State Farm documents to an attorney. The Rigsby sisters also turned these documents over to state and federal authorities.They are now accused of violating the Alabama Trade Secrets Act, as well as breaching confidentiality with the company.

Turn Up the Propaganda, Please

Apparently not satisfied that U.S.-funded broadcast services including Radio Farda and the Voice of America are targeting Iran with a sufficient level of propaganda, a Pentagon report, prepared at the behest of an interagency committee known as the Iran Steering Group, has charged “that U.S. international broadcasts into Iran aren't tough enough on the Islamic regime,” according to McClatchy Newspapers.

The report appears to be a gambit by some officials in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's office and elsewhere to gain sway over television and radio broadcasts into Iran, one of the few direct tools the United States has to reach the Iranian people.

U.S. broadcasting officials, according to McClatchy, view the report as a power play intended to usurp the independence of U.S.-sponsored news outlets. They also say the report is filled with errors. As Kenneth Tomlinson, the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, put it, “The author of this report is as qualified to write a report on programming to Iran as I would be to write a report covering the operations of the 101st Airborne Division.”

That brings us to the author of the report, who sources told McClatchy is a Pentagon official and Iran specialist named Ladan Archin. Back in May Laura Rozen identified Archin as one of three officials who previously worked in the notorious Office of Special Plans, a clearinghouse for manipulated intelligence on Iraq, and are now working in the Pentagon's recently established Iran directorate. (Read Kevin Drum’s take on all of this here.)

In recent months, the U.S. has stepped up so-called democracy promotion campaigns targeting Iran as a means to bolster the opposition and undermine the regime, including an $85 million State Department program to prop up dissident groups and ramp up anti-Iran propaganda efforts. As the U.S. and Iran continue on a collision course, expect the propaganda war to heat up.

September 26, 2006

What Will Karl Rove Do This Time?

Well...

White House and Senate Versions of Detainee Bill Permit Common Types of Rape and Sexual Assault

Rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse are mentioned twice in the bill that George W. Bush is trying to rush through Congress, with loopholes to spare. The bill, which deals with the jailing, interrogation and trying of terror suspects, defines rape as "forced or coerced genital or anal penetration." That's it. As the New York Times points out, sex without consent--the type that prisoners undergo frequently--is not mentioned at all.

Similarly, the bill's definition of sexual abuse is quite narrow, requiring physical contact. That means that prisoners could be ordered to strip and dance, as they were in Rwanda, or strip and wear underwear on their head or get into a body pile, as they were forced to do at Abu Ghraib.

According to Rhonda Copelon, a law professor at CUNY, the bill, in its current forms, would not permit rape to be classified as a form of torture because there must be specific proven intent in an act of "torture," and specific proven intent is very hard to prove in cases of rape.

The fight to protect women under international law has been a long and difficult one. It wasn't until the 1990s that the more "progressive" human rights organizations finally included female genital mutilation as a human rights issue, having preferred to call it a "cultural difference." That the Bush White House would permit the sexual assault of women (and men) is not a surprise. Sadly, it is not a surprise for some of us that our own Senate would do likewise.

Neither Sen. Lindsey Graham nor Sen. John McCain, the bill's authors, responded to questions from the New York Times about these issues.

(Via truthout)

Unexploded Cluster Bombs Left Behind in Lebanon

Israeli troops may be quitting southern Lebanon, but they're leaving behind about a million unexploded cluster bomblets, nearly half the number they fired or dropped during the recent conflict. They're stuck in the ground and scattered "in bushes, trees, hedges and wire fences," representing a serious threat to human life and delaying the return home of about 200,000 people displaced by the war by up to 2 years. The UN last month called Israel's use of the bombs "immoral," though their use is legal under international law.

UN: Gaza Crisis Intolerable

BBC reports:

Standards of human rights in the Palestinian territories have fallen to intolerable new levels, says a UN expert on the Mid-East conflict.

John Dugard said Israel was largely to blame for turning Gaza into "a prison" and "throwing away the key".

But he also criticised the US, Canada and Europe for withdrawing funds to the Palestinian Authority, run by Hamas militants who do not recognise Israel.

Dugard also said, "If ... the international community cannot ... take some action, (it) must not be surprised if the people of the planet disbelieve that they are seriously committed to the promotion of human rights," and that "Gaza is a prison and Israel seems to have thrown away the key."

Remember the Anthrax Investigation?

Remember the anthrax investigation? The probe into the individual (or individuals) responsible for sending a wave of anthrax-laced letters through the mail just days after 9/11? After the initial flurry of media attention died down little was written about the case, but the FBI has quietly continued to investigate the attacks. Now, The Washington Post, among other news outlets, is reporting that there's been a new -- and somewhat discouraging -- development in the case:

Five years after the anthrax attacks that killed five people, the FBI is now convinced that the lethal powder sent to the Senate was far less sophisticated than originally believed, widening the pool of possible suspects in a frustratingly slow investigation.

The finding, which resulted from countless scientific tests at numerous laboratories, appears to undermine the widely held belief that the attack was carried out by a government scientist or someone with access to a U.S. biodefense lab.

It was originally believed that the agent used in the attacks was a rare, weaponized variety of anthrax known as the Ames strain, which could only be found in a handful of labs, among them the U.S. Army's Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) on the Fort Detrick base in Frederick, Maryland. “In my opinion, there are maybe four or five people in the whole country who might be able to make this stuff, and I'm one of them," former U.N. bioweapons inspector Richard O. Spertzel said in 2002. "And even with a good lab and staff to help run it, it might take me a year to come up with a product as good."

The alleged grade of the material and the significant expertise needed to refine it led the FBI to zero in on government biodefense researchers, in particular Steven J. Hatfill, a former researcher at USAMRIID who the Bureau designated a "person of interest" in the case. (Hatfill has sued The New York Times and Vanity Fair for defamation and the Justice Department for violating his constitutional rights in leaking confidential information to the press.)

Now, according to the Post:

The prevailing views about the anthrax powder, meanwhile, have been coalescing among a small group of scientists and FBI officials over several years but rarely have been discussed publicly. In interviews and a recently published scientific article, law enforcement authorities have acknowledged that much of the conventional wisdom about the attacks turned out to be wrong.

Specifically, law enforcement authorities have refuted the widely reported claim that the anthrax spores had been "weaponized" -- specially treated or processed to allow them to disperse more easily. They also have rejected reports that the powder was milled, or ground, to create finer particles that can penetrate deeply into the lungs. Such processing or additives might have suggested that the maker had access to the recipes of biological weapons made by the United States in the 1950s and 1960s.

If this is true, then it complicates the investigation significantly and makes the list of potential suspects much longer. The FBI, for its part, has described its suspect list as "fluid." This development also begs the very important question of how so many experts could have been so wrong for so long.

September 25, 2006

Gordon Brown: Too Different From Blair...and Too Similar

Poor old Gordon Brown. You might expect that the British people would've grown a little wary of "charisma" and "personality" in recent years, and that they'd welcome Brown's overdue ascent, given that he's an eminently qualified politician who lacks only the sheen of his boss/colleague/nemesis, Tony Blair. But no.

The 55-year-old Scot won plaudits from Labour politicians for his speech to the party's annual conference, but may find it hard to attract the middle class, which Blair managed to win over to Labour in 1997 -- the first of his three election victories.

Polls show many voters think David Cameron, youthful leader of the Conservatives, is more likeable and would make a better premier than Brown, who lacks Blair's charisma. ...

Labour's standing has been damaged by feuding this month that forced Blair to say he would quit within a year and sparked fierce attacks on Brown's character. ...

John Curtice, politics professor at Strathclyde University, described Brown's speech as the "most Blairite" speech he had made. He said this may disappoint voters looking for a break with the Blair years.

The speech will not dispel concern about Brown's personality, Curtice told Reuters. "The public are not suddenly going to find Gordon Brown a wonderful, happy, attractive character," he said.

Okay, so voters hold it against Brown that he lacks Blair's flash; and that he's politically "Blairite." Blair is the guy who pretty much single-handedly dragged the country into a war a majority of the British people opposed and there is concern over Brown's character? So this is the famous British irony?

Public Expression of Religion Act Could Become a Reality

Last year, the Public Expression of Religion Act was introduced in Congress. This bill would bar the recovery of attorneys' fees to those who win lawsuits asserting their constitutional and civil rights in cases brought under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. PERA has already been approved by the House Judiciary Committee, and its proponents have established a scare campaign to make Americans think that--without restricting access to attorneys--religious symbols on military gravestones would be removed. Such symbols are, of course, constitutionally protected.

The ACLU's letter to the House of Representatives, urging opposition to PERA, is here.

Posted by Diane E. Dees on 09/25/06 at 12:08 PM | | Comments (0) | E-mail |