THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

The Iraqi government on Saturday gave its first official reckoning of the truck bombing Tuesday in the northern city of Tal Afar, putting the death toll at 152 people, a number about double that in early reports.

Sectarian violence continued around Iraq on Saturday, when 27 people were killed in shootings and car bombings and 10 bodies were found in Baghdad, according to the Interior Ministry. In Gabala, near Hilla, Shiite militiamen killed two people at a Sunni mosque and then burned Sunni stores in retaliation for the killing of the brother of a Mahdi Army militia leader. The Iraqi Army intervened to stop the attack on the mosque, said a member of Scorpion Brigade, a commando unit in Babil Province.

The Associated Press count of U.S. military deaths for the month was 81, including a soldier who died from non-combat causes Friday. Figures compiled from officials in the Iraqi ministries of Defense, Health and Interior showed the Iraqi military toll was 44. The Iraqi figures showed that 165 Iraqi police were killed in March. Many of the police serve in paramilitary units....

...At least 83 American forces died in January and 80 in February, according to the AP tabulation.

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

"I like peanuts as much as the next guy, but I believe the security of our troops should come before the security of our peanut crop," Bush said in his weekly radio address, referring to a provision in the war funding legislation that earmarks $74 million for secure peanut storage...

...Bush repeated his promise to veto the bills if the timelines stay in - and if the unrelated earmarks stay in as well - because they "undercut our troops in the field."

"Both houses of Congress have done their jobs and will soon finish a bill that will provide for the troops. When they're done, the only person who could keep funds from reaching troops would be the president...

...If the president vetoes this bill because he doesn't want to formally demonstrate progress in Iraq, never in the history of war would there be a more blatant example of a commander in chief undermining the troops. There is absolutely no excuse for the president to withhold funding for the troops, and if he does exercise a veto, Congress must side with the troops and override it."

// posted by montag @ 4:48 PM 0 Comments

The military is so short of equipment that it will take years after the war in Iraq ends to bring it up to authorized levels, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs told a House subcommittee Thursday.

“It will take end of war plus two years to work off the backlog,” Gen. Peter Pace told the House Appropriations defense subcommittee. “Without being able to give you a definite end of war [date], I can’t tell you exactly how long.”

“The vast majority of our Army units here at home are critically short of equipment and personnel,” Murtha said, adding this was leaving some stateside units “at the lowest readiness level.”

Pace acknowledged that figure and noted that the problem has been years in the making. For instance, the Army, he said, was $56 billion short of being fully equipped back in fiscal 2001, before the war began. “Then, you had four-plus years of war,” Pace said.

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

Part of a generation of young religious conservatives who swept into the federal government after the election of President Bush in 2000, Goodling displayed unblinking devotion to the administration and expected others to do the same. When she started at Justice, "no job was too small for her," and as she moved rapidly up the ranks, none "was too large," Corallo said.

"She was the embodiment of a hardworking young conservative who believed strongly in the president and his mission," said David Ayres, former chief of staff to Bush's first attorney general, John D. Ashcroft....

...To her detractors, Goodling was an enforcer of political loyalty who was not squeamish about firings -- of interns or of senior officials.

"She forced many very talented, career people out of main Justice so she could replace them with junior people that were either loyal to the administration or would score her some points," said a former career Justice official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal.

// posted by montag @ 7:06 AM 0 Comments

Bombers launched two deadly strikes Thursday in crowded Shiite marketplaces in Baghdad and a town north of Iraq's capital, killing 119 people and wounding 171. At least 17 others died in other bombings and gunfire around the country.

The attacks erupted as Iraqi shoppers filled marketplaces Thursday to buy goods at the start of the weekend and the eve of the Muslim holy day of Friday....

...Additionally, Iraqi police found 25 bullet-riddled bodies across the capital.

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

The Department of Veterans Affairs backdated a key document and violated other rules as it pushed through a $100 million computer security contract that resulted in inflated prices and duplicate payments, according to a previously undisclosed report.

In the end, the contract turned into "an open checkbook" for various VA expenses, and the agency today can't detail the whereabouts of some $35 million in equipment purchased under the contract, the report by the VA's inspector general said....

....With a budget of more than $70 billion and more than 235,000 employees, the VA is one of the largest departments in the federal government. But the VA inspector general has repeatedly found that the agency doesn't follow proper contracting procedures, resulting in "significant dollar losses and failed projects," in the words of the most recent report.

// posted by montag @ 7:55 PM 0 Comments

The FBI didn't deliberately break the law by improperly obtaining thousands of Americans' phone, e-mail and financial records, Bureau Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

That was the good news. But then came the bad:

It happened, Mueller said, because of "mistakes, carelessness, confusion, lack of training, lack of guidance and lack of adequate oversight."

Then came this line, which senators didn't find reassuring either:

The FBI's use of inaccurate information to obtain secret search warrants? The problem was "very lengthy documents . . . with thousands of facts."

Mueller didn't mention how the bureau also managed to lose weapons and laptop computers.

// posted by montag @ 7:44 PM 1 Comments

The potential for legal jeopardy for Ms. Goodling from even her most truthful and accurate testimony under these circumstances is very real

// posted by montag @ 6:33 PM 0 Comments

Five weeks after Rep. Bob Inglis broke with his party and his president to vote against the U.S. troop surge in Iraq, the South Carolina Republican is engaged in an all-out effort to save his seat....

... Many of Inglis’ GOP constituents have expressed their displeasure more bluntly.

“Mr. Inglis, I am outraged, embarrassed and ashamed at your vote today,” Mark Sternick, a constituent from Greenville, wrote in comments that Inglis has posted on his Website.

“My son is serving in the Army in Iraq today,” Sternick wrote. “With this vote, you might have just as well just put a bullet in his head and in his heart.”

“Al Qaeda, Hezbollah -- those are our enemies,” he said. “The Democrats are not my enemies. They’re my countrymen.”

// posted by montag @ 7:43 PM 0 Comments

U.S. News and World Report, citing an Army report from Iraq, said American troops working with Iraqi border guards inside the frontier were attacked by a much larger Iranian military unit in September east of the Diyala province town of Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad.

The magazine reported that the Iranians were on the Iraqi side of the border when they fired at the Americans with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms. No Americans were hurt in the incident, but four Iraqi soldiers, an interpreter, and an Iraqi border policeman remain missing.

// posted by montag @ 7:20 PM 0 Comments

Jawad Jasem, 44, was serving a customer at his pushcart outside the courthouse when the bomb exploded. The son of a poor Shia farmer, Jasem had wanted to be an engineer. When he was 18, family friends got him into the Air Force, where he earned good money working on jets—until the Army, desperate for infantrymen in the war with Iran, sent him to the front. He was wounded four times. He was not allowed to return to civilian life after the war, even though he had a wife and five children. "He used to tell everyone that the last day of his military service would be the happiest day of his life," says his younger brother, Kareem, a shopkeeper. "He said he'd celebrate with a great party in which he would make a feast for the entire city."

It didn't turn out that way. His last day of duty was April 8, 2003, when U.S. troops entered Baghdad. Jawad was among thousands of Iraqi soldiers who stripped off their uniforms and fled.

He started over, buying his pushcart and setting up in front of the courthouse. He built a good business. It was a predominantly Shia neighborhood, but the bomber killed members of both sects indiscriminately. "Evil has no eyes," says Kareem Jasem. "Jawad's shop had turned into just a big hole ... and his body was smashed into a wall."...


For Suhad Shakir, 36, her new job was a dream come true. She had always wanted to work with Americans, and she loved helping people. Last September she quit her post as a journalist at state-owned TV and jumped at an opening with the Iraqi Assistance Center, a Coalition-run office in the Green Zone that works with U.S. and Iraqi agencies to provide social services. It seemed safer than reporting, and it paid better.

On Feb. 4 she was on her way to work, waiting in the queue at a checkpoint near an entrance to the Green Zone which is often targeted by suicide bombers. Shakir was in the slow lane, for Iraqi cars that are subject to careful searches. A convoy of armored vehicles came roaring up and got stuck at the checkpoint. One of the bodyguards in the first vehicle threw a bottle of water at the driver in front of Shakir to signal him to move. The driver panicked and backed into Shakir's car. She tried to get out of the way but backed into the car behind her. Someone aboard the fourth vehicle in the convoy, seeing Shakir's sudden move, opened fire, hitting her once. The vehicle slowed and a goateed Westerner in khaki leaned out his window and shot her again in the face at close range. Then the convoy raced off into the Green Zone.

Iraqi cops think Shakir's killer mistook her for a suicide bomber, but they say they're continuing to investigate. "It is very important I know why she is killed and who killed her," said Shakir's mother, Salima Kadhim, dressed in black a month after her daughter's death. Like many Iraqis, she still waits.

// posted by montag @ 1:52 PM 0 Comments

"The Treasury is being looted here. The taxpayer is being fleeced,"

// posted by montag @ 1:10 PM 0 Comments

Called TIDE, for Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, the list is a storehouse for data about individuals that the intelligence community believes might harm the United States. It is the wellspring for watch lists distributed to airlines, law enforcement, border posts and U.S. consulates, created to close one of the key intelligence gaps revealed after Sept. 11, 2001: the failure of federal agencies to share what they knew about al-Qaeda operatives.

But in addressing one problem, TIDE has spawned others. Ballooning from fewer than 100,000 files in 2003 to about 435,000, the growing database threatens to overwhelm the people who manage it. "The single biggest worry that I have is long-term quality control," said Russ Travers, in charge of TIDE at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean.

TIDE is a vacuum cleaner for both proven and unproven information, and its managers disclaim responsibility for how other agencies use the data. "What's the alternative?" Travers said. "I work under the assumption that we're never going to have perfect information -- fingerprints, DNA -- on 6 billion people across the planet. . . . If someone actually has a better idea, I'm all ears."

// posted by montag @ 12:43 PM 0 Comments

Tufan Abdu-Wahab, head of the Baghdad section in the Ministry of Migration and Displaced People, said in an interview that only a handful of Iraqi families had returned, and most of those were Shias returning to Shia districts, rather than to formerly mixed communities. Officials have a pretty good handle on this, he said, because the government is offering a bounty of 250,000 dinars (about $192) to each family that returns to its home, and they also pay a small benefit to families who are displaced, so people both fleeing and returning have a big incentive to register. So as of the end of February, 35,000 families--210,000 people approximately--had registered as displaced, he said. Of those, Abdu-Wahab says that only about 1 percent have come back--which would be 350 families in the first month of the security plan--but many of those have only returned to check on their belongings and leave again. Meanwhile, families continue to flee at the rate of 25 a day, according to the ministry's registration statistics, easily outstripping any returns. "Before it was 350 families a day leaving, so that's a big improvement, but it's still a lot. People still don't feel secure," Abdu-Wahab said.

// posted by montag @ 9:59 PM 0 Comments

You shouldn’t be able to send young people into battle and die unless you’ve had someone die in your arms as a result of an order you’ve given

// posted by montag @ 6:49 PM 0 Comments

Gonzales said last week he was not involved in any discussions about the impending dismissals of federal prosecutors. On Friday night, however, the department disclosed Gonzales' participation in a Nov. 27 meeting where such plans were discussed.

// posted by montag @ 12:54 PM 0 Comments

Millions of Iraqis, spanning the country’s religious and ethnic spectrum, welcomed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But the mostly young men and women who embraced America’s project so enthusiastically that they were prepared to risk their lives for it may constitute Iraq’s smallest minority. I came across them in every city: the young man in Mosul who loved Metallica and signed up to be a translator at a U.S. Army base; the DVD salesman in Najaf whose plans to study medicine were crushed by Baath Party favoritism, and who offered his services to the first American Humvee that entered his city. They had learned English from American movies and music, and from listening secretly to the BBC. Before the war, their only chance at a normal life was to flee the country—a nearly impossible feat. Their future in Saddam’s Iraq was, as the Metallica fan in Mosul put it, “a one-way road leading to nothing.” I thought of them as oddballs, like misunderstood high-school students whose isolation ends when they go off to college. In a similar way, the four years of the war created intense friendships, but they were forged through collective disappointment. The arc from hope to betrayal that traverses the Iraq war is nowhere more vivid than in the lives of these Iraqis. America’s failure to understand, trust, and protect its closest friends in Iraq is a small drama that contains the larger history of defeat.

// posted by montag @ 12:29 PM 0 Comments

J. Steven Griles pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to a felony for making false statements in testimony before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in November 2005 and in an earlier interview with panel investigators. He is the 10th person -- and the second high-level Bush administration official -- to face criminal charges in the continuing Justice Department investigation into Abramoff's lobbying activities.

// posted by montag @ 7:41 PM 0 Comments

Taken together, legal experts and other critics say, the replacement of the U.S. attorneys and the changes in Justice Department voting rights policies suggest that the Bush administration may have been using its law enforcement powers for partisan political purposes.

The department's civil rights division, for example, supported a Georgia voter identification law that a court later said discriminated against poor minority voters. It also declined to oppose an unusual Texas redistricting plan that helped expand the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. That plan was partially reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Frank DiMarino, a former federal prosecutor who served six U.S. attorneys in Florida and Georgia during an 18-year Justice Department career, said that too much emphasis on voter fraud investigations “smacks of trying to use prosecutorial power to investigate and potentially indict political enemies.”

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

He and the other members of the Class of 2007 will be sworn in this year, Lt. Cmdr. Bill Schroeder of the Navy Reserve Intelligence Command in Fort Worth said Wednesday. They will go through a two-week officer indoctrination school, a year of Navy basic intelligence training and be assigned to Navy reserve intelligence units close to their homes....

...The 15 were selected in February by a panel of Navy officers who considered their qualifications, skills and education....Bush, a 30-year-old graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, will get no special treatment, he said.

// posted by montag @ 6:11 PM 0 Comments

In a nation as rich as ours, it should be easy to pay for college. For some reason, we find it easier to pay for wars.

// posted by montag @ 7:08 AM 0 Comments

No doubt the contractors who are bloated like ticks on the billions they've sucked out of the public trough will write the checks to build George W. Bush a really fine presidential library on the campus of Southern Methodist University.

All of it will be a lie, just like the lies his administration told to beat the war drums five years ago.

How will the curators portray the broken military, the broken Constitution, the broken laws, the forever broken troops who came home missing limbs or eyes or pieces of their brains, the broken promises to cherish and care for the families of those who were killed and those very wounded veterans?

How will they portray the corruption, both real and spiritual, that this man and his accomplices have visited upon a nation and a people who once could be proud of their place in this world?

How and why did so many Americans, including so many in Congress and in the media, sit idly by while so much that was precious to us was bent and twisted and broken by men who had the power and the money to do the right things but chose to do the wrong things?

// posted by montag @ 6:57 PM 0 Comments

In Iraq, today is always better that tomorrow.

// posted by montag @ 7:29 AM 0 Comments

Insurgents detonated a bomb in a car with two children in it after using the children as decoys to get through a military checkpoint in Baghdad, an American general said Tuesday.

Speaking at a news briefing at the Pentagon, Maj. Gen. Michael Barbaro, deputy director for regional operations at the Joint Staff, said American soldiers had stopped the car at the checkpoint but had allowed it to pass after seeing the two children in the back seat.

“Children in the back seat lower suspicion,” he said, according to a transcript. “We let it move through. They parked the vehicle. The adults run out and detonate it with the children in back.”

General Barbaro offered no further details.

Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a top American military spokesman in Baghdad, said late Tuesday that his office had no record of the bombing but that it was researching it. “I don’t know what event he’s talking about,” Colonel Garver said.

// posted by montag @ 6:56 AM 1 Comments

This case is ultimately about drugs and other illegal substances

// posted by montag @ 7:03 PM 0 Comments

One prominent Republican, who earlier had predicted that Gonzales would survive the controversy, said he expected both Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty to resign soon. Another well-connected Republican said that White House officials have launched an aggressive search for Gonzales' replacement, though President Bush hadn't decided whether to ask for his resignation.

Support for Gonzales appeared to be collapsing under the weight of questions about his truthfulness and his management ability. White House spokesman Tony Snow offered a tepid defense when asked if Gonzales would stay on the job until the end of Bush's term...

..."The sands have been shifting pretty dramatically," one of the Republicans said.

// posted by montag @ 7:04 AM 0 Comments

I really regret bringing down the statue. The Americans are worse than the dictatorship. Every day is worse than the previous day

// posted by montag @ 7:26 PM 0 Comments

The chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., last week delayed a vote on the subpoenas until Thursday as the president's counsel, Fred Fielding, sought to negotiate terms. But on Sunday, Leahy said he had not met Fielding nor was he particularly open to any compromises, such as a private briefing by the administration officials.

"I want testimony under oath. I am sick and tired of getting half-truths on this," Leahy said. "I do not believe in this, we'll have a private briefing for you where we'll tell you everything, and they don't."

// posted by montag @ 5:04 PM 0 Comments

A U.S. citizen who was caught fleeing the recent fighting in Somalia was questioned about links to al Qaida by the FBI in Kenya, then secretly sent back to the war-ravaged country, where he was turned over to Ethiopian forces.

Amir Mohamed Meshal, 24, is now imprisoned in Ethiopia, where the State Department's 2006 human rights report says "conditions in prisons and pre-trial detention centers remain very poor" and "there were numerous credible reports that security officials often beat or mistreated detainees."

The fact that Meshal has landed in an Ethiopian prison without any semblance of due process raises new questions about what role the rule of law plays in the Bush administration's war on terrorism. Other suspected terrorists or "enemy combatants" have been exposed to extreme interrogation methods, secretly sent to countries that practice torture, held for extended periods without charges or lawyers, or put under surveillance without court warrants.

Meshal's treatment contrasts sharply with that of four British citizens who were caught fleeing the fighting, and of Daniel Joseph Maldonado, another U.S. citizen who fled Somalia and was arrested for entering Kenya illegally.

The four Britons were turned over to British officials, sent home and freed after they were questioned. U.S. authorities obtained custody of Maldonado and his two children from Kenya, flew them back to the United States and charged him in Texas with undergoing military and bomb-making training with al Qaida in Somalia.

The difference, said two other U.S. officials who are familiar with the case but also weren't authorized to discuss it publicly, is that Maldonado quickly confessed to his involvement with al Qaida and Meshal didn't. So while Maldonado could be brought home and imprisoned until his trial, one of the officials said, there wasn't sufficient evidence to charge Meshal and keep him in jail in the United States.

// posted by montag @ 12:21 AM 0 Comments

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said Saturday he favored the extradition to his country of executives of U.S. banana producer Chiquita after the company's admission that it paid Colombian right-wing death squads more than $1.7 million.

"That would be normal. Extradition should be from here to there and from there to here," Uribe said.

// posted by montag @ 10:26 PM 0 Comments

The message connected drug use and religion in a nonsensical phrase that was designed to provoke, and it got Joseph Frederick into a lot of trouble.

After he unfurled his 14-foot "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner on a Juneau, Alaska, street one winter morning in 2002, Frederick got a 10-day school suspension. Five years later, he has a date Monday at the Supreme Court in what is shaping up as an important test of constitutional rights.

Students do not leave their right to free speech at the school door, the high court said in a Vietnam-era case over an anti-war protest by high school students.

But neither can students be disruptive or lewd or interfere with a school's basic educational mission, the court also has said.

[Principal Deborah] Morse saw the banner, confronted Frederick and suspended him. Frederick said she doubled the suspension to 10 days when he quoted Thomas Jefferson on free speech.

// posted by montag @ 7:08 PM 0 Comments

"Regrettably, our effort was blocked by Senate Republicans and a president who stubbornly refused to listen,"

// posted by montag @ 1:36 PM 0 Comments

Occupying the hot seat through these deliberations is the shadowy mercenary company Blackwater USA. Unbeknownst to many Americans and largely off the Congressional radar, Blackwater has secured a position of remarkable power and protection within the US war apparatus. This company's success represents the realization of the life's work of the conservative officials who formed the core of the Bush Administration's war team, for whom radical privatization has long been a cherished ideological mission. Blackwater has repeatedly cited Rumsfeld's statement that contractors are part of the "Total Force" as evidence that it is a legitimate part of the nation's "warfighting capability and capacity." Invoking Rumsfeld's designation, the company has in effect declared its forces above the law--entitled to the immunity from civilian lawsuits enjoyed by the military, but also not bound by the military's court martial system. While the initial inquiries into Blackwater have focused on the complex labyrinth of secretive subcontracts under which it operates in Iraq, a thorough investigation into the company reveals a frightening picture of a politically connected private army that has become the Bush Administration's Praetorian Guard.

// posted by montag @ 12:59 PM 0 Comments

“They don’t know anything about running government. They’re just political hacks. Gonzales is just a political hack.”

// posted by montag @ 12:23 PM 0 Comments

Suspected members of extremist groups have signed up as school bus drivers in the United States, counterterror officials said Friday, in a cautionary bulletin to police.

Asked about the alert notice, the FBI’s Rich Kolko said, “There are no threats, no plots and no history leading us to believe there is any reason for concern,”

// posted by montag @ 12:01 PM 0 Comments

A 10th Mountain Division chaplain was stripped of his rank and sentenced to five months in military prison after pleading guilty to adultery and threatening to kill his mistress when she wanted to end their relationship, Fort Drum officials said Friday.

Capt. John Lau — a Southern Baptist minister described by the mistress as a manipulative sadist — was tried by a military judge who also ordered him dismissed from the Army with all pay and allowances forfeited.

Lau, 50, admitted he threatened to hunt down and kill Amanda Tyler, a 34-year-old British woman he met in 2004 while stationed in England, brought to the U.S. and “married” during a mock ceremony last year at Niagara Falls.

Lau was so cavalier about his extramarital relationship that he routinely brought both women to official Fort Drum functions and introduced Tyler as his “wife’s friend,” he testified during a general court-martial Thursday.

// posted by montag @ 10:35 PM 0 Comments

In the course of the trial of Vice President Cheney's former Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, I was shocked at the evidence that emerged. My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior government officials in both the White House and the State Department. All of them understood that I worked for the CIA, and having signed oaths to protect national security secrets, they should have been diligent in protecting me and every CIA officer. The CIA took great lengths to protect all of its employees, provided at significant taxpayer expense, painstakingly devised creative covers for its most sensitive staffers. The harm that is done when a CIA cover is blown is grave, but I can't provide details beyond that in this public hearing. But the concept is obvious. Not only have breaches of national security endangered CIA officers, it has jeopardized, even destroyed entire networks of foreign agents, who in turn risk their own lives and those of their families to provide the United States with needed intelligence. Lives are literally at stake. Every single one of my former CIA collegues, my fellow covert officers, to analysts to technical operations officers, even the secretaries, understand the vulnerabilities of our officers and recognize that the travesty of what happened to me could happen to them.

// posted by montag @ 6:36 PM 0 Comments

The top US commander in Iraq has requested another Army brigade, on top of five already on the way, as part of the controversial "surge" of American troops designed to clamp down on sectarian violence and insurgent groups, senior Pentagon officials said today.

The appeal -- not yet made public -- by Gen. David Petraeus for a combat aviation unit would involve between 2,500 and 3,000 more soldiers and dozens of transport helicopters and powerful gunships, said the Pentagon sources. That would bring the planned expansion of US forces so far to close to 30,000 troops.

News of the additional deployment comes about a week after President Bush announced that about 4,700 support troops will join the initial 21,500 he ordered in January. They are in addition to the estimated 130,000 troops already in Iraq.

"This is the next shoe to drop," said one senior Pentagon official closely involved in the war planning. "But you cannot put five combat brigades in there and not have more aviation guys, military police, and intelligence units."

// posted by montag @ 6:06 PM 0 Comments

The Bush administration, which six months ago issued a series of political goals for the Iraqi government to meet by this month, is now tacitly acknowledging that the goals will take significantly longer to achieve....

...A “notional political timeline” that the administration provided to Congress in January in an attachment to a letter from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, had called for most of the objectives to be met by this month.

Four of the significant objectives are final approval of an oil law regulating distribution of oil revenues and foreign investment in the oil industry; reversal of the de-Baathification laws that are widely blamed for alienating Sunnis by driving them out of government ministries; the holding of local elections; and reform of Iraq’s Constitution.

A Pentagon assessment of progress in Iraq through the end of last year, submitted to Congress on Wednesday, notes that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki “has promised to reform his government, beginning with his cabinet and the ministries,” but that none of those steps had yet happened. It cited the “passage of a framework” last month for sharing oil revenues among Iraq’s ethnic groups as a modest sign of progress, but notes that the last two months of 2006, before Mr. Bush announced his new strategy, “saw little progress on the reconciliation front.”

Administration officials have never rescinded the “notional timeline,” though the Iraqi government had already missed most of the deadlines by the time Ms. Rice gave it to Congress in January.

// posted by montag @ 7:07 AM 0 Comments

A lesbian couple in Gillette have been told they can't receive communion at the church they've attended since 1998, in part because they publicly opposed a bill that would have barred Wyoming from recognizing gay marriages.

// posted by montag @ 6:25 PM 2 Comments

Acting Army Secretary Pete Geren asked for Kiley's resignation, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates approved the action, a senior Pentagon official said.

In its official announcement, the Army said Kiley had requested retirement.

The 2006 disability retirement numbers released by the Defense Department show trends similar to an analysis of data reported by Military Times this week.

Though 10,460 soldiers went through medical retirement system in 2006, only 412 received lifetime retirement benefits. But in the Air Force, where 6,000 fewer airmen went through the process, 514 people received lifetime medical retirement benefits.

Read the new data analysis for 2005 and 2006 here.

The Navy and Marine Corps combined sent 5,348 people through the process, with 151 receiving permanent medical retirement.

Conversely, the number of injured soldiers given one-time severance pay in 2006 was five times the number of injured airmen. Service members with severance payments do not receive medical benefits for life or the other benefits that come with being a retiree, such as commissary and exchange benefits or continued military health care. This has proven problematic for service members who then go to the Department of Veterans Affairs for medical benefits, because they must first pay back their severance pay before receiving disability payments from the VA.

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

"Filho da puta"

// posted by montag @ 7:38 PM 0 Comments

Now that Halliburton is planning to move its corporate headquarters from Texas to Dubai, do you think this would be a good time to reconsider the wisdom of having a now foreign company providing vital support for our troops. Whether you are talking about rotten food, polluted drinking water, overpriced gasoline or simply overpaid mercenaries, shouldn't these services be provided by a true blue American company?

Given the large personal commitment to the military of so many of your constituents, you have a duty to speak out against selling their support to foreign corporations. If it wasn't good enough for the ports, why should the troops put up with it.

// posted by montag @ 4:25 PM 0 Comments

Presidential advisor Karl Rove and at least one other member of the White House political team were urged by the New Mexico Republican party chairman to fire the state's U.S. attorney because of dissatisfaction in part with his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation in the battleground election state.

In an interview Saturday with McClatchy Newspapers, Allen Weh, the party chairman, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove and asked that he be removed. Weh said he followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.

"Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?" Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event that month.

"He's gone," Rove said, according to Weh.

"I probably said something close to 'Hallelujah,'" said Weh.

// posted by montag @ 1:32 PM 0 Comments

British soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan are receiving "appallingly" poor care in British hospitals, according to families who have made complaints similar to those leveled against the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

"We gloriously see them off to war and then neglect them when they come back," said Phillip Cooper, whose son, Jamie, 18, is an soldier who was severely injured in a mortar attack in Iraq in November. "They lay down their lives for their country, then they get treated appallingly."

Detailing a long list of problems in his son's care during a telephone interview, Cooper said his son's colostomy bag has been allowed to overflow twice, forcing him to lie in his own feces. On one occasion, Cooper said he and his wife changed the bag themselves after nurses on duty at the Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham, Britain's principal medical center tending to wounded soldiers, said they did not know how.

// posted by montag @ 1:06 PM 0 Comments

A new Associated Press-Ipsos poll says 55 percent of those surveyed consider honesty, integrity and other values of character the most important qualities they look for in a presidential candidate.

Among Republican and GOP-leaning voters, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani leads Arizona Sen. John McCain 35 percent to 22 percent. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had 11 percent, followed in the single digits by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas.

// posted by montag @ 12:21 PM 1 Comments

On March 1, a Wall Street analyst at Bear Stearns wrote an upbeat report on a company that specializes in making mortgages to cash-poor homebuyers. The company, New Century Financial, had already disclosed that a growing number of borrowers were defaulting, and its stock, at around $15, had lost half its value in three weeks.

What happened next seems all too familiar to investors who bought technology stocks in 2000 at the breathless urging of Wall Street analysts. Last week, New Century said it would stop making loans and needed emergency financing to survive. The stock collapsed to $3.21.

The analyst’s untimely call, coupled with a failure among other Wall Street institutions to identify problems in the home mortgage market, isn’t the only familiar ring to investors who watched the technology stock bubble burst precisely seven years ago...

...Already, more than two dozen mortgage lenders have failed or closed their doors, and shares of big companies in the mortgage industry have declined significantly. Delinquencies on loans made to less creditworthy borrowers — known as subprime mortgages —recently reached 12.6 percent. Some banks have reported rising problems among borrowers that were deemed more creditworthy as well.

// posted by montag @ 10:35 PM 1 Comments

And, we have to get a message through to every soldier, every family member, every friend of soldiers that the Republican party, the Republican dominated Congress has absolutely been the worst thing that's happened to the United States Army and the United States Marine Corps."

// posted by montag @ 6:23 PM 0 Comments

President Bush said today his administration is working to put a halt to law enforcement abuses of new anti-terrorist intelligence-gathering powers, and he expressed continued confidence in the attorney general and FBI director.

"These problems will be addressed as quickly as possible," Bush said at a news conference in Uruguay, his second stop on a six-day Latin America tour.

// posted by montag @ 5:17 PM 0 Comments

"Scooter Libby, who got indicted, has set up a legal defense fund to help pay his legal bills. It's pretty good, for a $1,000 donation you get a hand-written thank you note and the name of a CIA agent." --Jay Leno

"If convicted Libby could face the following penalties: obstruction of justice: 10 years in prison; making false statements: 5 years; perjury: 4 years; going to jail with the name Scooter: priceless." --Tina Fey

"Scooter Libby was found guilty of perjury, obstruction, and making false statements -- or as the White House calls it, a press conference." --Bill Maher

"I say if Bush doesn't pardon him, at least he should give him a new nickname, because if you have Scooter on the back of your prison jump suit, you are just asking for it." --Bill Maher

// posted by montag @ 5:11 PM 0 Comments

An Internet fund-raising appeal begun last week after the conservative commentator Ann Coulter referred to Mr. Edwards using an antigay slur has already yielded more than $300,000, Mr. Baron said.

// posted by montag @ 4:36 PM 0 Comments

A team of federal investigators spent four days at a hospital here in 2005 to see whether thousands of N.C. veterans were consistently receiving safe and thorough care.

Their conclusion: Not a chance.

In particular, they cited what they called the inadequate care received by two veterans who died at the hospital.

The inspectors determined the Hefner VA Medical Center, one of the fastest-growing VA hospitals in the U.S., was a mess...

...Using the clinically blunt language of the medical bureaucracy, the team describes a facility with poorly trained doctors and nurses who, among other things, cut corners on treatment, manipulated records and didn't talk enough with patients and families.

Though they never made a follow-up trip to Salisbury, federal investigators say they closed the case last year. Donald Moore, director of the hospital at the time of the inspection and now head of a VA facility in Phoenix, could not be reached for comment.

// posted by montag @ 6:11 PM 0 Comments

Veterans face serious inequities in compensation for disabilities depending on where they live and whether they were on active duty or were members of the National Guard or the Reserve, an analysis by The New York Times has found.

Those factors determine whether some soldiers wait nearly twice as long to get benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs as others, and collect less money, according to agency figures.

“The V.A. is supposed to provide uniform and fair treatment to all,” said Steve Robinson, the director of veteran affairs for Veterans for America. “Instead, the places and services giving the most are getting the least.”

// posted by montag @ 7:04 AM 0 Comments

As drove along I was thinking, “Oh, this is unusual; there are no traffic jams, no check stops.. I’m going to reach work very early.” It usually takes two hours to drive less than three miles to work.

Then the shooting began.

From both sides of the highway, I could hear gunfire … coming at me!

Then I realized they were shooting at one another and I was caught in the crossfire.

So that’s why the highway is clear. Furtively looking around,I saw a police patrol under the bridge and a policeman gesturing madly to me to hurry. I sped to the relative safety of the column under the bridge, and stopped, heart pounding. Will I make it safely home to my family today?? Or am I going to be just one more statistic, one more “unidentified body” for my colleagues to include in the roundup of violence for the day, we daren’t carry IDs lest they be used against our families.

// posted by montag @ 6:08 PM 1 Comments

The day-to-day commander of American forces in Iraq has recommended that the heightened American troop levels there be maintained through February 2008, military officials said Wednesday.

The White House has never said exactly how long it intends the troop buildup to last, but military officials say the increased American force level will begin declining in August unless additional units are sent or more units are held over.

// posted by montag @ 9:42 PM 0 Comments

"It is a shame that a man goes to war for his nation, and when he comes home he has to go to war to get his benefits and is treated like a criminal. You know what his crime is: He got wounded fighting for his country."

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

Four years ago, Iraqi poet Abbas Chaychan, a Shiite Muslim who'd been forced into exile during the predominantly Sunni Muslim regime of Saddam Hussein, hailed the American presence here in a poem that praised the top U.S. diplomat in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer.

"We have breakfasts of kabab and qaymar," he wrote, describing the new Iraq with a reference to a rich cream that's considered a sign of wealth. "We put, in your stead, Mr. Bremer / Better than a tyrant of our own flesh and blood, and his torture."

Last January, shortly after Saddam was hanged, Chaychan again put words to paper. But his outlook had changed.

"History is proud to write about him," he said of Saddam. "It wasn't a rope that wrapped around the neck / It was the neck that wrapped around the rope. ...

"From his childhood he was a leader, stubborn and against the occupation."

As the anniversary of the March 20, 2003, U.S.-led invasion of Iraq nears, many Iraqis, like Chaychan, are expressing nostalgia for the time more than 1,000 days ago when Saddam's statue stood proudly in Baghdad's Fardos Square.

// posted by montag @ 7:11 AM 0 Comments

"Yew two guys got almost the same name! Yew must be almost related. Like kissin' cousins or sumptin'. Hee, Hee, Hee"

// posted by montag @ 7:50 PM 0 Comments

Reporters will be barred from hearings that begin Friday in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the 14 terror suspects who were transferred last year from secret CIA prisons, officials said Tuesday....

...In announcing the hearings, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he could not say which of the 14 would go first or how long the process would take.

No word of the hearings will be made public until the government releases a transcript of the proceedings, edited to remove material deemed damaging to national security, he said.

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

McLeod, Duncan and Shannon described a system in which the injured have to justify their wounds in order to earn their disability payments. They said that Army medical personnel can diagnose their conditions, but case managers can question the diagnoses, prolonging their ordeal.

Paperwork gets lost, appointments get postponed and decisions get delayed,

// posted by montag @ 7:51 PM 0 Comments

"Plan B was to make Plan A work."

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

Stacy Beardsley, a soldier's wife released this week from the hospital after a grueling surgery, watched two men in pressed military uniforms walk steadily to her front door.

"Tell me he's just hurt," the Indiana woman told the pair, according to family friend Marilyn Piersdorf.

"Well, they couldn't tell her that," Piersdorf said.

Her husband, Army Sgt. William "B.J." Beardsley, who recently lived in Coon Rapids, died Monday in Diwaniyah, Iraq, 80 miles south of Baghdad, after a roadside bomb went off near his vehicle.

The 25-year-old soldier had re-enlisted, in part, for the health insurance to cover his wife's medical bills.

He died the day she left the hospital.

// posted by montag @ 7:57 PM 0 Comments

More than 1 million rounds of ammunition, a cache of weapons and a tunnel were found at a man's home after an explosive fire that forced a neighborhood evacuation, authorities said Friday...

...After the blaze was extinguished, crews discovered metal and wooden boxes of ammunition for shotguns, small handguns and assault rifles.

Dozens of metal and cardboard boxes filled with ammunition for shotguns, small handguns and assault rifles sat in a driveway. Two of the assault rifles were illegal,

// posted by montag @ 6:11 PM 0 Comments

An Air Force nurse with 32 years in the military, seven in active duty, and nearly two-dozen medals for valor and service, was terminated from her civilian health-care job of 10 years when she was sent to Iraq for four months last year...

...Last November, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management sent its annual report to Congress on veterans and disabled veterans working for the federal government. The press release said, "And by every measure, the Bush Administration is living up to its commitment to make career opportunities available to soldiers, sailors, and airmen." The report said the total number of veterans employed in 2005 out of a federal government work force of 1.8 million was 456,254. But the number of veterans newly hired in 2005 was only 5,000 more than the number hired in 2004.

That was also when 36 members of the Florida National Guard got letters, while serving in combat in Iraq, informing them that their jobs in a federal drug-interdiction program were abolished.

The Denver magazine report told of a 53-year-old Marine, in the service for 29 years, who deployed for nine months in Kuwait and Iraq in 2002 and 2003.

When he got home, he was fired from his $88,000-a-year job in a firm where he'd worked for 19 years. He was allegedly told by the Department of Labor, where his commanding officer referred him, that he didn't have a legal case unless he heard somebody say he was fired because of his military service.

// posted by montag @ 5:16 PM 1 Comments

While he is a Mormon, a religious sect that not so long ago tacitly allowed polygamy, Romney, unlike his Republican challengers - John McCain, Giuliani and Newt Gingrich have all had multiple wives even if not all at once - Romney has opted to settle for one wife.

// posted by montag @ 4:34 PM 0 Comments

[ 2 ]

It's not personal.

The enta who screams "meesta!" every 10 seconds for 48 hours straight isn't doing it to infuriate you, his captor. What it boils down to is that he can't pronounce "mister," and he was carrying that 155-millimeter round in the back of his pickup, and he was going to try to blow you up, and the reason he was picked by the insurgent leaders to haul the shell is that he's soft in the head, which is why he cannot stop screaming "meesta!"

The major who watches NASCAR races on satellite TV in his air-conditioned office at the battalion headquarters while you and your Marines march entas to and from the latrines in 120-degree heat isn't doing it to antagonize you, his subordinate. Frankly, he's just over here for the retirement money, and he didn't want to be in charge of four regional detention facilities in Al Anbar province any more than you wanted to end up as the warden in Fallouja. He wants to keep his head down and forget about the fact that if one, just one, of your Marines snaps and goes Abu Ghraib on a detainee, his pension is out the window.

// posted by montag @ 1:36 PM 0 Comments

After centuries full of vibrant interaction, of marrying, sharing and selling across sects and classes, Baghdad has become a capital of corrosive and violent borderlines. Streets never crossed. Conversations never started. Doors never entered...

...The goal of the new Baghdad security plan is to fix all of this — to fashion a peace that stitches the city’s cleaved neighborhoods back together. After three weeks, there are a few signs of progress. The number of bodies found daily has decreased to 20 or fewer from 35 to 50. In some areas closely patrolled by American troops, a few of the families that fled the violence are said to be returning.

But even in neighborhoods that are improving or are relatively calm, borders loom. Streets once crossed without a thought are now bullet-riddled and abandoned, the front lines of a block-by-block war among Shiite militias, Sunni insurgents, competing criminal gangs and Iraqi and American troops.

Some Americans who have seen both Bosnia and Iraq say Baghdad has come to resemble Sarajevo as it began to unravel in the 1990s, latticed with boundaries that are never openly indicated but are passed on in fearful whispers among neighbors who have suffered horrific losses.

Labels: Bush legacy, failure

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