THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

One of the most advanced countries in the world did not help to reconstruct Iraq, they didn't even help produce a decent constitution. They did, however, contribute nicely to a kangaroo court and a lynching. A lynching shall go down in history as America's biggest accomplishment in Iraq. So who's next? Who hangs for the hundreds of thousands who've died as a direct result of this war and occupation? Bush? Blair? Maliki? Jaffari? Allawi? Chalabi?

// posted by montag @ 6:13 PM 0 Comments

The death of a Texas soldier, announced Sunday by the Pentagon, raised the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq to at least 3,000, according to an Associated Press count, since the war began in March 2003.

// posted by montag @ 4:56 PM 0 Comments

“We have tried again and again to have a say in the process. But we learned pretty early on that these were kangaroo courts.”

// posted by montag @ 4:51 PM 0 Comments

Across the country Saturday, explosions killed at least 78 people, police said, including 38 who died in a double car bombing in Hurriya, a mainly Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Baghdad.

Sixteen corpses were found in the capital in a 24-hour period ending Saturday. Dumped bodies, often showing signs of torture, have been a signature of Shiite death squads.

// posted by montag @ 1:50 PM 0 Comments

The mass casualty call to action is the most dreaded in combat medicine. For sheer heart-cracking urgency, its only rival is the siren blare that warns of imminent incoming shellfire or rockets. Since arriving in Iraq in early October, the doctors, nurses, medics, and techs of the 399th Combat Support Hospital, a Massachusetts-based Army Reserve unit, have become intimately familiar with both signals.

They've handled scores of hideously wounded casualties so fresh from the battlefield that the stench of explosive still clings to skin and red-hot fragments of shrapnel sizzle and pop in torn flesh. And they've scrambled for cover behind sandbags or into concrete bunkers to the soul-jarring whump of mortar rounds "walking" the compound, and the rip-roar of automatic weapons at the far perimeter wire.

"You listen for sounds like you've never listened in your life," said Captain Kathy Ryland, 42, a trauma nurse from Camas, Wash. "You learn fast to recognize the difference between a shell blast that's too near and one that's too far away to matter. You live by speed because you can die by slow. That's true for saving our patients. That's true for saving ourselves."

They've treated young American soldiers punctured by bullets. They've treated the insurgents who pulled the triggers. They've treated Iraqi police cut down by roadside bombs. They've treated school kids blown up for what's become the cardinal sin in this suffering land -- being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Heard about the glory of war? You're looking at it. This is the ground truth."

// posted by montag @ 12:55 PM 0 Comments

The Justice Department is investigating whether the director of a multibillion-dollar oil-trading program at the Interior Department has been paid as a consultant for oil companies hoping for contracts.

The director of the program and three subordinates, all based in Denver, have been transferred to different jobs and have been ordered to cease all contacts with the oil industry until the investigation is completed some time next spring, according to officials involved.

// posted by montag @ 5:03 PM 0 Comments

"The Americans want him to be hanged respectfully,"

// posted by montag @ 1:42 PM 2 Comments

The U.S. military also announced the deaths of three Marines and three soldiers, making December the year's deadliest month for U.S. troops in Iraq, with 109 service members killed.

The bombing at the fish market in Kufa, a Shiite town about 100 miles south of the Iraqi capital, killed 31 people and wounded 58, said Issa Mohammed, director of the morgue in the neighboring town of Najaf. The man blamed for parking the vehicle was cornered and killed by a mob as he walked away from the explosion, police and witnesses said....

....In northwest Baghdad, two parked cars exploded one after another, killing 37 civilians and wounding 76 in a mixed neighborhood of the Iraqi capital, police said....

....On Friday, a suicide bomber killed at least nine people near a Shiite mosque in Baghdad, and 32 tortured bodies were found across the country.

// posted by montag @ 12:16 PM 0 Comments

The Coast Guard installed long-range surveillance cameras, coastal radar and devices that automatically identify approaching vessels to help search out possible threats.

But the radar, it turns out, confuses waves with boats. The cameras cover just a sliver of the harbor and coasts. And only a small fraction of vessels can be identified automatically.

Officials acknowledge the limited progress that the Department of Homeland Security and the Coast Guard have made toward creating a viable defense here in Miami or at harbors nationwide against a maritime attack, despite the billions of dollars invested since 2001.

// posted by montag @ 11:07 PM 0 Comments

Saddam Hussein, the dictator who led this country through 24 years of brutality, war and bombast before American forces chased him from his capital city and captured him in a filthy pit near his hometown, was hanged just before dawn during the morning call to prayer here on Saturday

// posted by montag @ 10:53 PM 0 Comments

President Bush and first lady Laura Bush were moved to an armored vehicle on their ranch Friday when a tornado warning was issued in central Texas, the White House said.

The vehicle was driven to a tornado shelter on the ranch at 1:30 p.m. CST, and the president, Mrs. Bush and their two Scottish terriers, Barney and Miss Beazley, sat inside until the weather cleared, deputy White House press secretary Scott Stanzel said. They were never moved into the shelter, he said. The shelter is a few hundred yards away from the president's house on the ranch.

// posted by montag @ 6:59 PM 0 Comments

“It’s important for the American people to understand success in Iraq is vital for our own security.”

// posted by montag @ 6:07 PM 0 Comments

Divers call it "the burial ground," an impenetrably dark stretch of the Tigris River, about 20 feet deep, passing through the heart of Baghdad.

Cruising the river on a recent day strapped into life jackets that double as body armor, members of Baghdad's river patrol pointed to bridges near where they swam as children and now recover the city's dead.

"Violence, terror — it is part of what is going on here in Iraq," said a river patrol captain who would not give his name, fearing that insurgents in his neighborhood would discover that he works with the police. He said he gave up swimming in the river years ago and bought a pool.

The patrol's commander, Lt. Col. Alaa Saleh Ibrahim, has learned this much patrolling the stretch of muddy river the last two years: It takes at least 10 days for bodies to surface in winter. Men float faceup, women facedown.

Fishermen find bodies tangled in the 10-foot-tall green reeds that line the sandy banks.

"This month we are relieved," Ibrahim said. "We don't have so many dead bodies."

// posted by montag @ 7:01 AM 0 Comments

“When they are conducting armed aggression against the population, that is where we try and step in and stop it,” he said, adding that when the groups fight one another, “We sit back and watch because that can only benefit us.”

// posted by montag @ 6:25 PM 0 Comments

The car parked outside was almost certainly a tool of the Sunni insurgency. It was pocked with bullet holes and bore fake license plates. The trunk had cases of unused sniper bullets and a notice to a Shiite family telling them to abandon their home.

“Otherwise, your rotten heads will be cut off,” the note read.

The soldiers who came upon the car in a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad were part of a joint American and Iraqi patrol, and the Americans were ready to take action. The Iraqi commander, however, taking orders by cellphone from the office of a top Sunni politician, said to back off: the car’s owner was known and protected at a high level.

For Maj. William Voorhies, the American commander of the military training unit at the scene, the moment encapsulated his increasingly frustrating task — trying to build up Iraqi security forces who themselves are being used as proxies in a spreading sectarian war. This time, it was a Sunni politician — Vice Prime Minister Salam al-Zubaie — but the more powerful Shiites interfered even more often.

“I have come to the conclusion that this is no longer America’s war in Iraq, but the Iraqi civil war where America is fighting,” Major Voorhies said.

// posted by montag @ 6:03 PM 0 Comments

The Department of Homeland Security said yesterday that it is investigating how four handguns recently went missing from its headquarters in Northwest Washington.

// posted by montag @ 6:43 PM 0 Comments

The U.S. command reported three American military deaths Wednesday, bringing the U.S. death toll for December to 93 in one of the bloodiest months for U.S. troops this year. Some 105 soldiers and Marines were killed in October, according to an AP count....

...Two Latvian soldiers were also killed and three were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded under their Humvee, the Latvian Defense Ministry said. It was unclear where the incident took place, but Latvia has about 130 soldiers serving in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad.

A top aide to the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was killed in a raid by U.S. troops Wednesday in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, an Iraqi lawmaker said....

....Violence struck Baghdad again Wednesday, with a car bomb killing eight civilians and wounding 10 near an Iraqi army checkpoint. Four more civilians died in a mortar attack in a Shiite neighborhood, and police found the bodies of 51 apparent victims of sectarian killings.

// posted by montag @ 6:01 PM 0 Comments

“I think he knows it’s bad over there,but I’m not quite sure he fully appreciates the incompetence of what’s gone on.”

// posted by montag @ 1:44 PM 0 Comments

Defense turned to Interior, which manages federal lands and resources, in an effort to speed up its contracting. Interior is one of several government agencies allowed to manage contracts for other agencies in exchange for a fee.

But the arrangement between Interior and Defense "routinely violated rules designed to protect U.S. Government interests," according to draft audit documents obtained by The Washington Post.

More than half of the contracts examined were awarded without competition or without checks to determine that the prices were reasonable, according to the audits by the inspectors general for Defense (DOD) and Interior (DOI). Ninety-two percent of the work reviewed was awarded without verifying that the contractors' cost estimates were accurate; 96 percent was inadequately monitored.

In one instance, Interior officials bought armor to reinforce Army vehicles from a software maker. In another, Interior bought furniture for Defense from a company that apparently had not previously been in the furniture business. One contract worth $100 million, to lease office space for a top-secret intelligence unit in Northern Virginia, was awarded without competition. Defense auditors said that deal cost taxpayers millions more than necessary, and they have referred the matter for possible criminal investigation.

Defense paid Interior management fees of up to 4 percent for everything from pistol holsters to intelligence consultants to office leases. The Defense inspector general said the Pentagon could have saved $22.8 million by using the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA).

The Interior inspector general said Defense "could have used these monies to purchase as many as 50,000 sets of body armor to protect our soldiers."

// posted by montag @ 1:14 PM 0 Comments

No one should be looking for vindication in what is happening in Iraq today. The lesson here is not that some of us were right about Iraq or that some of us were wrong. The lesson is simply that we need to change course rapidly rather than perversely use mistakes already made and lives already given as an excuse to make more mistakes and lose even more lives.

When young Americans are being killed and maimed, when the Middle East is on the brink of three civil wars, even the most vaunted "steadfastness" morphs pretty quickly into stubbornness, and resolve becomes recklessness. Changing tactics in the face of changing conditions on the ground, developing new strategies because the old ones don't work, is a hell of a lot smarter than the insanity of doing the same thing over and over again with the same tragic results.

// posted by montag @ 1:00 PM 0 Comments

"It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven." If that's true - literally true - where do you think the leadership of the Republican Party will be spending eternity?

// posted by montag @ 11:20 PM 0 Comments

Top U.S. military commanders in Iraq have decided to recommend a "surge" of fresh American combat forces, eliminating one of the last remaining hurdles to proposals being considered by President Bush for a troop increase, a defense official familiar with the plan said Friday.

The approval of a troop increase plan by top Iraq commanders, including Gen. George Casey and Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, comes days before Bush is to unveil a new course for the troubled U.S. involvement in Iraq. Bush still must address concerns among some Pentagon officials and overcome opposition from Congress, where many Democrats favor a blue-ribbon commission's recommendation for a gradual withdrawal. But the recommendation by the commanders in Iraq is significant because Bush has placed prime importance on their advice. The U.S. command in Iraq decided to recommend an increase of troops several days ago, prior to meetings in Baghdad this week with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the defense official said.

// posted by montag @ 1:37 PM 1 Comments

President Bush on Saturday told troops who are spending Christmas far from their families that "the coming year will bring change" _ but no reduction in support for their service and sacrifice.

// posted by montag @ 12:50 PM 0 Comments

The smallest form of life known to science just got smaller.

Four million of a newly discovered microbe — assuming the discovery, reported yesterday in the journal Science, is confirmed — could fit into the period at the end of this sentence.

Scientists found the microbes living in a remarkably inhospitable environment, drainage water as caustic as battery acid from a mine in Northern California. The microbes, members of an ancient family of organisms known as archaea, formed a pink scum on green pools of hot mine water laden with toxic metals, including arsenic.

// posted by montag @ 12:32 PM 0 Comments

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
-- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82

// posted by montag @ 7:36 PM 0 Comments

Insurgent attacks killed five more American troops west of the Iraqi capital, the military said Friday, making December the second deadliest month for U.S. servicemen in 2006.

So far this month, 76 American troops have died in Iraq, the same number that were killed in all of April. With nine days remaining in December, the monthly total of U.S. deaths could meet or exceed the death toll of 105 in October.

// posted by montag @ 6:00 PM 0 Comments

"Unfortunately, it is troubling to see that he still does not understand the need for urgent change in Iraq. The president seems lost within his own rhetoric. He is grasping for a victory his current policies have put out of reach and leaving our troops stuck policing a civil war."

// posted by montag @ 6:08 PM 0 Comments

Attacks in Iraq on U.S.-led forces, local security personnel and civilians have surged 22 percent to record levels, the Pentagon said in its latest quarterly report on Iraq published on Monday.

The report also noted a rise in civilian casualties and said this was directly linked to the rise of sectarian death squads, which were helped by elements of Iraqi forces....

....The average number of attacks per week rose to 959 in the three months from August 12 to November 10, from 784 in the previous three months,

// posted by montag @ 5:00 PM 0 Comments

Whose advice does President Bush take most seriously on Iraq?

If the goal is figuring out which way the president is headed, the press corps could do the public a big favor by reporting on who is whispering in his ear.

Most likely, the chief whisperer is Vice President Cheney -- in which case the back-and-forth over whether Bush will change course is sort of pointless. Bush has made some pretty dramatic about-faces in the past. The same cannot be said of the vice president.

// posted by montag @ 1:05 PM 0 Comments

One night in mid-April, the steel door clanked shut on detainee No. 200343 at Camp Cropper, the United States military’s maximum-security detention site in Baghdad.

American guards arrived at the man’s cell periodically over the next several days, shackled his hands and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a padded room for interrogation, the detainee said. After an hour or two, he was returned to his cell, fatigued but unable to sleep.

The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was rousted at random times without explanation and made to stand in his cell. Even lying down, he said, he was kept from covering his face to block out the light, noise and cold. And when he was released after 97 days he was exhausted, depressed and scared.

Detainee 200343 was among thousands of people who have been held and released by the American military in Iraq, and his account of his ordeal has provided one of the few detailed views of the Pentagon’s detention operations since the abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib. Yet in many respects his case is unusual.

The detainee was Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the F.B.I. about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading.

But when American soldiers raided the company at his urging, Mr. Vance and another American who worked there were detained as suspects by the military, which was unaware that Mr. Vance was an informer, according to officials and military documents.

// posted by montag @ 10:46 PM 0 Comments

Iraq after Saddam presented a unique opportunity to steer history on a new course. But instead the Bush administration drove it into a ditch.

// posted by montag @ 7:45 PM 0 Comments

Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain pledged his support for the Iraqi government in a surprise visit here on Sunday. Less than a mile from where he spoke, gunmen in police uniforms seized 25 employees of an Iraqi aid organization.

// posted by montag @ 7:23 PM 0 Comments

Last Monday Bush was, at last, briefed on an actual plan for victory in Iraq, one that is likely to be implemented. Retired General Jack Keane, the former vice chief of staff of the Army, gave him a thumbnail sketch of it during a meeting of five outside experts at the White House.

// posted by montag @ 5:00 PM 0 Comments

We can continue to debate the finer points of the Iraq Study Group recommendations but it will be a purely intellectual exercise until we recognize the albatross in the room.

The president is not only unwilling to seek a negotiated withdrawal, he is incapable of doing so. His credibility in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Iraq has gone beyond absolute zero. He believes he is still in a position to make demands when the very ground upon which he stands is erupting in flames.

// posted by montag @ 1:56 PM 1 Comments

Tom Noe gave about $50,000 to the wife of U.S. Sen. George Voinovich's longtime friend, personal accountant, and campaign treasurer, according to records from his criminal trial.

In 1998, when Mr. Voinovich was governor, Noe received the first $25 million to invest in rare coins from the state. That same year, Laura and Vincent Panichi began donating to Mr. Voinovich's Senate campaign. They gave $12,000 to his campaigns through 2005, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The bureau — under fire for the past 20 months because of corruption in its investment department and accusations of waste in its managed care program — has a disturbing history of secrecy and a failure to police itself, said state Sen. Marc Dann, a Democrat who becomes Ohio’s attorney general next month.

The problems are rooted in the administration of former Republican Gov. George Voinovich — who trashed the bureau in his 1990 gubernatorial campaign as the “silent killer of jobs” and then used it to pump money into the state GOP machine, Mr. Dann said.

// posted by montag @ 1:08 PM 0 Comments

LOOKING OVER the field of potential Republican presidential candidates, one odd thing jumps out at me: Most of them have expressed deep hostility to the religious right's point of view in the past, and several of them are now insisting that they didn't mean a word of it.

One way to look at this is to conclude that they all said or did things they didn't mean, or that they have genuinely come around to the social conservative position. Oddly enough, this is the interpretation many social conservatives seem inclined to accept.

Or there's the other, more logical interpretation: The Republican Party's governing class is deeply hostile to social conservatism, and its leaders manage to fool the base over and over again.

// posted by montag @ 12:37 PM 0 Comments

The US is embroiled in an ill-considered occupation of a distant land; an initial welcome turned to violence amid human rights violations; it will be many years before extrication is possible. Not Iraq today, but the Philippines a century ago, an eerie parallel which might have provided valuable lessons.

// posted by montag @ 12:55 AM 0 Comments

"I just don't believe that this president, with this vice president whispering in his ear every moment, is oriented to change," said retired Col. Larry Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in Bush's first term.

// posted by montag @ 12:19 AM 0 Comments

I propose we unify Iraqis by encouraging them to stop shooting at each other and start shooting at us. Every time they start shooting at each other, we need to step right in the middle, to draw their fire away from each other. If we’re good at this, everyone will be shooting at Americans. That will reduce the number of Iraqis who have a grudge against other Iraqis; the sectarian hatred will lessen.

To succeed at this, we’ll need to arm and train the Iraqi forces, because when they shoot at the Americans, we don’t want untrained Iraqis accidentally killing each other instead. Embedding US advisers in Iraqi's forces will also help, and so will losing billions worth of weapons to the black market, where they can be distributed more efficiently.

We'll need to surge more troops into Baghdad to make sure we can get into the middle of every Iraqi firefight. And we should also expand the Marines and Army and make it easier to send our Reserves and National Guard, in case we have to “double down,” because we don’t want our policy to fail just ‘cause we ran out of troops to be shot at.

// posted by montag @ 4:57 PM 0 Comments

About 40 percent of my unit were stop-lossed. Their first mission was to take down Saddam and his regime, and they seemed to understand that and agree with the mission to take down a ruthless dictator. Now they can't seem to understand why they are there, caught in the cross hairs of a civil war.

// posted by montag @ 1:30 PM 0 Comments

The Justice Department has begun two criminal investigations into the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service, which is already the focus of several inquiries into its collection of royalties for oil and gas produced on federal property....

...The investigations are an unexpected development in what has already become a broad examination of the Interior Department’s oversight of companies that pump more than $60 billion worth of oil and gas each year from publicly owned land and coastal waters.

// posted by montag @ 1:08 PM 0 Comments

The new requirements state that the USGS's communications office must be "alerted about information products containing high-visibility topics or topics of a policy-sensitive nature."

The agency's director, Mark Myers, and its communications office also must be told — prior to any submission for publication — "of findings or data that may be especially newsworthy, have an impact on government policy, or contradict previous public understanding to ensure that proper officials are notified and that communication strategies are developed."

Patrick Leahy, USGS's head of geology and its acting director until September, said Wednesday that the new procedures would improve scientists' accountability and "harmonize" the review process. He said they are intended to maintain scientists' neutrality.

// posted by montag @ 12:49 PM 0 Comments

Spending on Iraq, Afghanistan and the global war on terror would reach a record $170 billion in fiscal 2007 under the latest U.S. Defense Department emergency spending request.

The military's request for $99.7 billion more in funding comes on top of the $70 billion that Congress approved in September and is 45 percent higher than the $117 billion in supplemental funding approved last year.

// posted by montag @ 11:32 PM 0 Comments

Bush hears many opinions and thus believes that "his knowledge is more complete than anyone who is advising him."

// posted by montag @ 11:07 PM 0 Comments

Military planners and White House budget analysts have been asked to provide President Bush with options for increasing American forces in Iraq by 20,000 or more. The request indicates that the option of a major “surge” in troop strength is gaining ground as part of a White House strategy review, senior administration officials said Friday.

Discussion of increasing the number of American troops, at least temporarily, has coursed through Washington for two months, as a possible way to reverse the deteriorating security situation in Baghdad. But the decision to ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff to specify where the additional forces could be found among overstretched Army, Marine and National Guard units, and to seek a cost estimate from the White House Office of Management and Budget, signifies a turn in the debate.

But Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, who is assuming day-to-day command of American troops in Iraq from Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, is said to be sympathetic to the idea.

The surge proposal has also gained greater support among recently retired officers who served in Iraq, particularly if carried out as part of a broader political and economic strategy.

// posted by montag @ 10:43 PM 0 Comments

“Today it should be clear that not only is weakness provocative,” Mr. Rumsfeld said, standing at lectern with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney at his side, “but the perception of weakness on our part can be provocative as well.”

In a clear shot at those considering an American withdrawal from Iraq, Mr. Rumsfeld said, “A conclusion by our enemies that the United States lacks the will or the resolve to carry out missions that demand sacrifice and demand patience is every bit as dangerous as an imbalance of conventional military power.”

Mr. Rumsfeld has overseen the war in Iraq since the American invasion of March 2003. He spoke after receiving full honors on the Pentagon grounds on his last day of work there. The ceremonies began with a 19-gun salute before he walked the grounds to inspect representatives from all of the branches of the military gathered before him in formation in dress uniforms.

// posted by montag @ 6:09 PM 0 Comments

Bush said, "I'm not going to be rushed into making a difficult decision, a necessary decision, to say to our troops, 'We're going to give you the tools necessary to succeed and a strategy to help you succeed.'"

// posted by montag @ 6:13 PM 0 Comments

Nearly eight in 10 Americans support changing the mission of U.S. forces in Iraq from combat to support and training, as proposed by the congressionally chartered Iraq Study Group, and 69 percent agree with its goal of pulling out most combat forces by early 2008. Nearly six in 10 favor direct engagement with Iran and Syria to help resolve the conflict in Iraq, and 74 percent back reducing U.S. military and financial support if the Iraqi government fails to make progress toward national reconciliation and civil order.

Bush has not managed to win back support with his decision to oust Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld the day after the Nov. 7 elections and his promise to develop "a new strategy" in Iraq, the poll found. Bush's approval rating stands at 36 percent, down four points from just before the elections and the second-worst of his presidency. Just 28 percent approve of his handling of Iraq, the lowest since the invasion of March 2003.

// posted by montag @ 6:04 PM 0 Comments

"Jordan: What do you mean by victory? When my mama told me to clean the garage, I cleaned the garage because I knew what she meant. But I don't understand what you mean.

"Bush: You have to speak to the American people with a simple message here. They understand what victory is, and if you come off of it, they'll think you're giving up.

During their entire session, Vice President Dick Cheney--a key architect of the war in Iraq--never said a word. Not one."

// posted by montag @ 4:55 PM 0 Comments

Part of the problem, critics say, is that the F.D.A.’s food safety budget has been repeatedly slashed even as the agency’s responsibilities are multiplying.

Overall, the F.D.A.’s food safety budget has been declining for decades, with money being shifted into the agency’s oversight of drug and medical devices, said William K. Hubbard, a former F.D.A. associate commissioner. He said the portion of the budget devoted to food safety has fallen to about 25 percent from 50 percent in the early 1970s.

Operating funds for the F.D.A.’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, the division at the heart of its food safety operations, have decreased to an estimated $25 million next year from $48 million in 2003, and the number of full-time positions has fallen to 817 from 950, according to F.D.A. records.

Food inspectors are a separate part of the F.D.A. budget that was not immediately available; however, the number of inspectors has declined to 1,962 from about 2,200 in 2003, F.D.A. documents show.

// posted by montag @ 4:17 PM 0 Comments

Most commentators have interpreted the report of the Iraq Study Group as a well-crafted admission of defeat. Predictably, that was exactly how President Bush himself reacted to it. "I … believe we're going to succeed," he told reporters Thursday. "One way to assure failure is just to quit." Addressing one of the report's key recommendations, he bluntly declared that Iran and Syria "shouldn't bother to show up" for negotiations about Iraq if they don't understand their "responsibilities to not fund terrorists" and if the Iranians don't "verifiably suspend their [uranium] enrichment program."

Yet anyone who bothers to read the report carefully — as opposed to skimming the executive summary — can see that it neither proposes "quitting" Iraq nor pins serious hope on Iranian or Syrian assistance. Quite the reverse.

Persuasion in the realm of grand strategy is more a matter of rhetorical art than science. The first essential step is to identify your target audience. Most readers of the report assume that it is directed at Bush. That is wrong. Its principal target audience is Congress, and particularly the new Democratic majorities in both houses. And the aim is not to persuade a stubborn president to admit defeat. Rather, the report's aim is to convince legislators that withdrawal from Iraq — no matter how much their constituents may yearn for it — is not an option. The report's other intended readership is Arab governments throughout the Middle East. The message for them is the same: A U.S. exit from the region is what you most have to fear.

// posted by montag @ 1:35 PM 0 Comments

President Bush on Monday opened three days of intensive consultations on Iraq, saying the United States and countries across the Middle East have a vital stake in helping the fragile government in Baghdad succeed.

Bush went to the State Department to review diplomatic and political options - the latest in a series of consultations that dominate his agenda as he seeks a new course in Iraq.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said Bush hoped to be able to announce his decisions by Christmas but that the timing could slip. "It's something that we would like to see, but I'm not going to promise it," Snow said.

// posted by montag @ 12:49 PM 0 Comments

Thousands of jubilant Chileans streamed into the streets of Santiago after hearing that their former president, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, had died Sunday. Many danced and popped open champagne, while caravans of cars with horns blaring toured the capital for hours.

// posted by montag @ 10:43 PM 0 Comments

He said former colleagues had told him they felt comforted by the recognition that there were no good options, because despite all of the intellect brought to the endeavor, the members of the panel had failed to make the leap from strategy to implementation. “It’s easy to suggest these steps in theory, but we haven’t been able to figure out the how,” Mr. Senor said. “Now, neither have these 10 wise men and woman.”

Mr. Card said, “The president by definition knows more than any of those people who are serving on these panels.”

“The president’s obligations sometimes require him to be very lonely,” he said.

No matter what positions they take today, all Republicans would prefer that the 2008 elections not be fought on the battleground of Iraq, said Douglas Foyle, professor of government at Wesleyan University.

“They don’t want the 2008 presidential and Congressional campaign to be about staying the course,” Professor Foyle said. “That’s where the calculus of Bush and the Republicans diverge very quickly. Everyone is thinking about the next election, and Bush doesn’t have one.”

// posted by montag @ 5:12 PM 0 Comments

“In the south, if the Americans give the Iraqis weapons, the next day you can buy them here, the Iraqi Army, the Iraqi police — they all sell them right away.”

// posted by montag @ 1:35 PM 0 Comments

The outgoing secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, paid a surprise visit to Iraq this weekend and said American troops should stay in the country until the insurgents were defeated.

“We feel great urgency to protect the American people from another 9/11 or a 9/11 times two or three,” Mr. Rumsfeld said on Saturday, in remarks that were posted on the Defense Department’s Web site, in the Anbar province west of Baghdad.

“At the same time, we need to have the patience to see this task through to success,” he said. “The consequences of failure are unacceptable.”

// posted by montag @ 12:51 PM 0 Comments

A top Air Force lawyer who served at the White House and in a senior position in Iraq turns out to have been practicing law for 23 years without a license.

// posted by montag @ 11:03 PM 0 Comments

We were particularly drawn to Recommendations 46, 72 and 78. Under separate headings dealing with the military, the federal budget and the nation’s intelligence agencies, they share one basic idea: Government officials should not lie to the public or each other, especially in matters of war.

One should not need a blue ribbon commission to know that. But the fact that it had to be said, and so often, in the report goes a long way toward explaining how Mr. Bush got the country into the Iraq mess and why it is proving so hard to dig out of it.

It is mind-boggling that this commission felt compelled to deliver Governing 101 lessons to the president of the United States. But that fits with the implicit message of the entire exercise — a rebuke of the ideologically blinkered way Mr. Bush operates. The report shows that there have always been plenty of alternatives to Mr. Bush’s stubborn insistence on staying the course, and that if he were just willing to make an effort, it would be possible to forge a bipartisan consensus on the toughest issues.

It’s tragic that Mr. Bush could not figure that out for himself.

// posted by montag @ 10:39 PM 0 Comments

“The Interior Department has a background of mismanagement, to put it mildly, in the collection of these royalties,” said Representative Nick J. Rahall II of West Virginia, a Democrat who will become chairman of the House Resources Committee next year.

Mr. Rahall said he planned a sweeping investigation of the Interior Department’s enforcement of royalty payments as well as the possible repeal of a 10-year-old law that allows energy companies drilling in deep coastal waters to avoid billions of dollars in payments.

“The oil and gas royalties system has never worked,” asserts a written summary of the committee’s top goals in the new Congress. “Instead it has proven to be a form of corporate welfare that has enabled oil and gas producers to undercut payments due the American people.”

// posted by montag @ 4:39 PM 0 Comments

No one shot on Cheney's quail hunt

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Vice President Dick Cheney went quail hunting last week, and the senator lived to tell the tale.

// posted by montag @ 1:25 PM 0 Comments

That election turned out to be pivotal because it disrupted the plan Papa Bush had for his sons, which may be why he was crying, and why the country cries with him. The family’s grand design had the No. 2 son, Jeb, by far the brighter and more responsible, ascend to the presidency while George, the partying frat-boy type, settled for second best in Texas. The plan went awry when Jeb, contrary to conventional wisdom, lost in Florida, and George unexpectedly defeated Ann Richards in Texas. With the favored heir on the sidelines, the family calculus shifted. They’d go for the presidency with the son that won and not the one they wished had won.

The son who was wrongly launched has made such a mess of things that he has ruined the family franchise. Without getting too Oedipal, it’s fair to say that so many mistakes George W. Bush made are the result of his need to distinguish himself from his father and show that he’s smarter and tougher. His need to outdo his father and at the same time vindicate his father’s failure to get re-elected makes for a complicated stew of emotions. The irony is that the senior Bush, dismissed by Junior’s crowd as a country-club patrician, looks like a giant among presidents compared to his son. Junior told author Bob Woodward, for his book “Plan of Attack,” that he didn’t consult his father in planning the invasion of Iraq but consulted a higher authority, pointing, presumably, to the heavens.

// posted by montag @ 1:08 PM 0 Comments

"We have a classic case of circling the wagons. If President Bush changes his policy in Iraq in a fundamental way, it undermines the whole premise of his presidency. I just don't believe he will ever do that."

// posted by montag @ 12:37 PM 0 Comments

Four years after the Coast Guard began an effort to replace nearly its entire fleet of ships, planes and helicopters, the modernization program heralded as a model of government innovation is foundering.

The initial venture — converting rusting 110-foot patrol boats, the workhorses of the Coast Guard, into more versatile 123-foot cutters — has been canceled after hull cracks and engine failures made the first eight boats unseaworthy.

Plans to build a new class of 147-foot ships with an innovative hull have been halted after the design was found to be flawed.

And the first completed new ship — a $564 million behemoth christened last month — has structural weaknesses that some Coast Guard engineers believe may threaten its safety and limit its life span, unless costly repairs are made.....

....And instead of managing the project itself, the Coast Guard hired Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, two of the nation’s largest military contractors, to plan, supervise and deliver the new vessels and helicopters.

Even some of the smaller Deepwater projects raise questions about management. The radios placed in small, open boats were not waterproof and immediately shorted out, for example. Electronics equipment costing millions of dollars is still being installed in the new cutter, even though it will be ripped out because the Coast Guard does not want it. An order of eight small, inflatable boats cost an extra half-million dollars because the purchase passed through four layers of contractors.

// posted by montag @ 10:38 PM 0 Comments

Private Saudi citizens are giving millions of dollars to Sunni insurgents in Iraq and much of the money is used to buy weapons, including shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles, according to key Iraqi officials and others familiar with the flow of cash.

Saudi government officials deny that any money from their country is being sent to Iraqis fighting the government and the U.S.-led coalition.

But the U.S. Iraq Study Group report said Saudis are a source of funding for Sunni Arab insurgents. Several truck drivers interviewed by The Associated Press described carrying boxes of cash from Saudi Arabia into Iraq, money they said was headed for insurgents....

....Several drivers interviewed by the AP in Middle East capitals said Saudis have been using religious events, like the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and a smaller pilgrimage, as cover for illicit money transfers. Some money, they said, is carried into Iraq on buses with returning pilgrims.

"They sent boxes full of dollars and asked me to deliver them to certain addresses in Iraq," said one driver, who gave his name only as Hussein, out of fear of reprisal. "I know it is being sent to the resistance, and if I don't take it with me, they will kill me."

He was told what was in the boxes, he said, to ensure he hid the money from authorities at the border.

// posted by montag @ 5:59 PM 0 Comments

The Bush administration is considering doing away with health standards that cut lead from gasoline, widely regarded as one of the nation's biggest clean-air accomplishments.

Battery makers, lead smelters, refiners all have lobbied the administration to do away with the Clean Air Act limits.

A preliminary staff review released by the Environmental Protection Agency this week acknowledged the possibility of dropping the health standards for lead air pollution. The agency says revoking those standards might be justified "given the significantly changed circumstances since lead was listed in 1976" as an air pollutant.

The EPA says concentrations of lead in the air have dropped more than 90 percent in the past 2 1/2 decades.

// posted by montag @ 6:09 PM 0 Comments

The Colombia-born wife of a Georgia state senator emerged from hiding and turned herself in Tuesday to face a deportation order, but an immigration judge lifted the order and she was expected to be freed.

Sascha Herrera, 28, who had gone into hiding after the order was issued, arrived at the Martin Luther King Federal Building shortly before 8 a.m. and met with the judge and attorneys for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office.

Government lawyer Terry Bird said the judge lifted the order and agreed to reopen her case. He said she would likely be freed Tuesday pending a hearing on a petition filed by Herrera's husband, state Sen. Curt Thompson, to establish permanent residency for her. The hearing has yet to be scheduled.

// posted by montag @ 7:10 PM 0 Comments

But as the war has continued, Army leaders have recognized that they cannot afford to wait for a drawdown of troops before they begin overhauling equipment -- some of it 20 years old -- that is being used at extraordinary rates. Helicopters are flying two or three times their planned usage rates. Tank crews are driving more than 4,000 miles a year -- five times the normal rate. Truck fleets that convoy supplies down Iraq's bomb-laden roads are running at six times the planned mileage, according to Army data.

Equipment shipped back from Iraq is stacking up at all the Army depots: More than 530 M1 tanks, 220 M88 wreckers and 160 M113 armored personnel carriers are sitting at Anniston. The Red River Army Depot in Texas has 700 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and 450 heavy and medium-weight trucks, while more than 1,000 Humvees are awaiting repair at the Letterkenny Army Depot in Pennsylvania.

Despite the work piling up, the Army's depots have been operating at about half their capacity because of a lack of funding for repairs. In the spring, a funding gap caused Anniston and other depots to lose about a month's worth of work, said Brig. Gen. Robert Radin, deputy chief of staff for operations at the Army Materiel Command at Fort Belvoir.

"Last year we spent as much time trying to find available money as managing our program," he said. "We don't want to go into the next rotation . . . with equipment that's at the far end of its expected life."

// posted by montag @ 6:08 PM 0 Comments

American kids are killing and getting killed solely because the most powerful individual on the planet is too much of a coward to admit error and won't order their withdrawal.

// posted by montag @ 7:35 PM 0 Comments

“Today is May 21,” a naval official declared to a camera videotaping the event. “Right now we’re ready to do a root canal treatment on Jose Padilla, our enemy combatant.”

Several guards in camouflage and riot gear approached cell No. 103. They unlocked a rectangular panel at the bottom of the door and Mr. Padilla’s bare feet slid through, eerily disembodied. As one guard held down a foot with his black boot, the others shackled Mr. Padilla’s legs. Next, his hands emerged through another hole to be manacled.

Wordlessly, the guards, pushing into the cell, chained Mr. Padilla’s cuffed hands to a metal belt. Briefly, his expressionless eyes met the camera before he lowered his head submissively in expectation of what came next: noise-blocking headphones over his ears and blacked-out goggles over his eyes. Then the guards, whose faces were hidden behind plastic visors, marched their masked, clanking prisoner down the hall to his root canal.

Now lawyers for Mr. Padilla, 36, suggest that he is unfit to stand trial. They argue that he has been so damaged by his interrogations and prolonged isolation that he suffers post-traumatic stress disorder and is unable to assist in his own defense. His interrogations, they say, included hooding, stress positions, assaults, threats of imminent execution and the administration of “truth serums.”...

....Mr. Padilla’s lawyers say they have had a difficult time persuading him that they are on his side.

From the time Mr. Padilla was allowed access to counsel, Mr. Patel visited him repeatedly in the brig and in the Miami detention center, and Mr. Padilla has observed Mr. Patel arguing on his behalf in Miami federal court.

But, Mr. Patel said in his affidavit, his client is nonetheless mistrustful. “Mr. Padilla remains unsure if I and the other attorneys working on his case are actually his attorneys or another component of the government’s interrogation scheme,” Mr. Patel said.

Mr. do Campo said that Mr. Padilla was not incommunicative, and that he expressed curiosity about what was going on in the world, liked to talk about sports and demonstrated particularly keen interest in the Chicago Bears.

But the defense lawyers’ questions often echo the questions interrogators have asked Mr. Padilla, and when that happens, he gets jumpy and shuts down, the lawyers said.

Dr. Hegarty said Mr. Padilla refuses to review the video recordings of his interrogations, which have been released to his lawyers but remain classified.

He is especially reluctant to discuss what happened in the brig, fearful that he will be returned there some day, Mr. Patel said in his affidavit.

// posted by montag @ 11:13 PM 0 Comments

Legend has it that King Mithridates, scourge of Roman emperors, concocted a universal antidote to protect himself from poisoners. Less omnipotent leaders have had to be on the lookout for lethal enemies ever since.

A renegade Russian spy died last month in London after ingesting or inhaling a rare radioactive isotope; he claimed before his death that his old comrades had killed him. That raises a question: in a world of invisible threats, how do you protect the leader of the last remaining superpower when he ventures out of the White House?

The Secret Service, charged with protecting presidents since the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley, likes to keep its business secret. But eight years ago, the attorney general and the director of the Secret Service revealed many of the agency’s methods while in court trying to quash subpoenas for President Clinton’s bodyguards. (The issue was an obscure and long-forgotten controversy over sex.)

The goal of the Secret Service is “to provide a complete 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year protective envelope” around the president. (This all-enveloping phenomenon, known as “the bubble,” can ward off reality as well as danger.)

They recognize no zone of presidential privacy: “they accompany him to restrooms and other private places.” In public, they seek to “achieve seamless proximity”: they must stay so close as to be able to place their “hands on the hips of a president to move him in a particular direction.”

Deception and disguise are crucial elements: “Agents have dressed as major league umpires, soldiers, engineers, academics and priests.” In 2000, the Secret Service demanded the deployment of a decoy Air Force One on a trip to Pakistan.

Of course, “Secret Service personnel test the food the president eats.” For the last 43 years, every president who has died has done so peaceably, no small achievement in a dangerous world.

// posted by montag @ 10:39 PM 0 Comments