THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER

Written and Compiled by Black Max

January 2007, Week One

Page Two

 

Bush claims authority to open Americans' mail without warrants

• January 4: Bush asserts his authority to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, an action that contradicts existing law and contradicts the bill he signed.

  Domestic spying

  Bush signed a postal reform bill into law on December 20, but added a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people's mail under emergency conditions. The media just learns of the signing statement today, mostly because Bush signed the bill during the winter Congressional recess. Most Congressional lawmakers were shocked at Bush's blatant assertion of illegal authority. "Despite the President's statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people's mail without a warrant," says Democratic representative Henry Waxman, the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill. Experts say the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail. "The signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming,"Washington. "The danger is they're reading Americans' mail." A career senior US official agrees, saying, "You have to be concerned. It takes Executive Branch authority beyond anything we've ever known."
• Republican senator Susan Collins, another co-sponsor of the bill, has demanded an explanation from Bush about the signing statement, saying, "It is my hope that the administration will clarify its intent with this recent statement." Collins, the former Senate Homeland Security Committee chairwoman, adds that she has long had concerns about Bush's broad use of signing statements that attempt to reinterpret laws passed by Congress. Charles Schumer, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, calls the statement a "last-minute, irregular and unauthorized reinterpretation of a duly passed law." Democratic senator Hillary Clinton says Bush's signing statement shows he's "willing to circumvent those legal protections intended to safeguard both our citizens' privacy and our national security." And New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg says he "would be surprised if the courts sided with the President," even if a warrantless search were done under threat of a terror attack. A top Senate Intelligence Committee aide promises, "It's something we're going to look into."
• And on January 8, Democratic senator Russ Feingold writes in a letter to Bush, the signing statement "raises serious questions about whether the government is reading Americans' first class mail without obtaining a search warrant or other court order as required by statute." Noting that the legislation specifically prohibits the government opening and reading mail without judicial warrants, and noting that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has already lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the NSA's domestic wiretapping program, he writes, "Your December 20, 2006, signing statement now suggests that you believe you have the authority to violate the law with regard to opening regular mail. The American people and Congress are entitled to know whether you have acted on that theory. Please answer the following question: has your administration authorized any government agency to read Americans' first-class mail without obtaining a search warrant, complying with the applicable court order requirements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or satisfying Postal Service regulations?" Based on similar previous requests, it is unlikely that Feingold will receive the courtesy of a reply.
• Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane reform measures. But it also explicitly reinforced protections of first-class mail from searches without a court's approval. Yet in his statement Bush said he will "construe" an exception, "which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection in a manner consistent...with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances." Bush cited as examples the need to "protect human life and safety against hazardous materials and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection." The language of the signing statement essentially gives Bush carte blanche to open and read any mail he deems necessary. Critics point out the administration could quickly get a warrant from a criminal court or a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge to search targeted mail, and the Postal Service could block delivery in the meantime. Martin says that Bush is "using the same legal reasoning to justify warrantless opening of domestic mail" as he did with warrantless eavesdropping. White House press secretary Tony Snow disagrees, saying, "This is not a change in law, this is not new, it is not...a sweeping new power by the president. It is, in fact, merely a statement of present law and present authorities granted to the president of the United States." Martin confirms that the government has long been able to legally open mail believed to contain a bomb or other imminent threat. But authorities are generally required to seek a warrant from a criminal or special intelligence court in other cases, she says. "The administration is playing games about warrants," Martin says. "If they are not claiming new powers, then why did they need to issue a signing statement?"
• Even Gonzales has said that such warrantless mail searches are troublesome. When he was assistant attorney general, Gonzales wrote in a 2005 letter to Republican representative Jeff Flake that warrantless mail searches "would be highly unusual." And, "even then you'd have to go to a judge after the fact and explain what you've done," Gonzales told Flake during an April 2005 House Judiciary Committee hearing.
• Sharp limits have been placed on the government's power to open mail since the 1970s, when a congressional committee investigating abuses found that, for three decades, the CIA and FBI had illegally opened hundreds of thousands of pieces of US mail. Among the targets were "large numbers of American dissidents, including those who challenged the condition of racial minorities and those who opposed the war in Vietnam," according to a report by the Church Committee. Also surveilled was "the mail of Senators, Congressmen, journalists, businessmen, and even a Presidential candidate," according to the report. (New York Daily News, Washington Post, New York Daily News, Raw Story)
• January 4: Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq, is expected to be nominated the next US ambassador to the United Nations as Bush attempts to chart a new course for his Iraq policy.

  Partisan Bush appointees

  Khalilzad, who had also served as ambassador to Afghanistan during Bush's first term, would replace John Bolton, who left the UN post last week. Khalilzad is a former Unocal executive. Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Pakistan, would be nominated to replace Khalilzad in Baghdad. The changes are part of a big realignment of administration personnel as Bush seeks to change his approach to Iraq, where nearly four years of a large US military presence has failed to bring stability and an end to violence. In other changes, Bush will nominate Admiral William Fallon to replace General John Abizaid as the head of US Central Command, which is in charge of US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fallon currently is the top U.S. military commander in the Pacific. The move would place a Navy admiral in control of two land wars. Lieutenant General David Petraeus was expected to become the top ground commander in Iraq, replacing General George Casey. Both Petraeus and Fallon are considered more reliable supporters of Bush's Iraq policies than either Abizaid or Casey. (Reuters/Yahoo! News)
• January 4: John Negroponte, the current Director of National Intelligence, will resign from the post and become the deputy secretary of state under Condoleezza Rice.

  Partisan Bush appointees

  Negroponte will be replaced by retired Vice Admiral Mike McConnell, a 25-year intelligence veteran who directed the NSA from 1992 through 1996. The White House is working to dispel the idea that Negroponte's shift is a demotion; Bush asked Negroponte to take the long-vacant position under Rice, vacant since Robert Zoellick's resignation in July 2006. Congressional Democrats plan on holding hearings to examine the intelligence overhaul that Negroponte helped put into place. Both Negroponte and McConnell must be conformed by the Senate. (AP/Yahoo! News, ABC News)
• January 4: While Republican Vern Buchanan has taken the seat representing Florida's 13th District in the US House, the race is still not over.

  Election fraud

  Democrat Christine Jennings is going through the courts to challenge the veracity of the election results (see related items). Democratic representative Juanita Millender-McDonald, the chair of the House Administration Committee, sends a letter to the Florida appeals court currently hearing the case. The lower courts refused Jennings's request to allow her attorneys and technicians to examine the source code used in the Diebold voting machines that, Jennings alleges, cost her the election. Jennings is appealing the verdict. Millender-McDonald calls the rejection a "matter of concern," and warns that if the Florida courts don't handle the case properly, Congress will intervene. "[R]esolution of these issues may obviate the need for the House to address them," she notes. ()
• January 4: Republican Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, previously a staunch supporter of the war in Iraq, makes an interesting admission to MSNBC's Chris Matthews that the Bush administration selectively "pushed" intelligence to Congress to whip up support for the Iraq invasion.

  Prewar intelligence on Iraq

  Matthews says, "I think [Dick] Cheney had his thumb on the scale, do you agree? That they were pushing this war so hard, they were working to look at any evidence that backed the war and ignore any evidence that didn't back the war." Instead of spinning, backpedaling, or challenging Matthews's patriotism, Lott says, "They were pushing the evidence that justified going to the war. A lot of us, Republicans and Democrats, were concerned about what we were told, and we bought the packet." (MSNBC/TPM Muckraker [link to video])
• January 4: In a diary on the Huffington Post, Democratic representative Jane Harman writes that she and her fellow Democrats will demand that the Iraq war be put "on budget."

  Iraq war and occupation

  Harman writes, "We have already spent at least $400 billion dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But only about 9% of those funds were approved through the normal appropriations process. The rest was passed in 'Emergency Supplemental' appropriation bills not subject to budget caps or the normal congressional oversight process. These supplementals -- because their numbers do not appear on the budgetary bottom line -- allow the White House to pretend it is maintaining a semblance of fiscal discipline. But our deficits are already spiraling out of control and there is no way to bring the budget into balance without taking the staggering war costs into account." Harman calls administration explanations of the necessity for the emergency expenditures "nonsense," and notes that "[b]oth the Korean and Vietnam Wars were almost entirely financed through the regular appropriations process -- not emergency supplementals."
• Harman notes, "The White House will soon ask for over $100 billion in new emergency war spending. Adjusted for inflation, that is more than we spent in 1968, the most expensive year of the war in Vietnam. And the lion's share of that funding was done through the regular process. There must be no more blank checks for this President, and I predict this will be the last 'emergency' supplemental in the new Democrat-controlled Congress." She continues: "One of the things missing thus far from the so-called war on terror is a sense of shared sacrifice among the American people. While hyping the threat of global terrorism, the President has also gone out of his way to encourage Americans to carry on with our normal lives. With honest budgeting practices in place, Americans and elected leaders will finally confront the real trade-offs. Money spent in Iraq can't be spent on healthcare or education -- or homeland security. Bottom line: the Iraq War is even more costly than most Americans realize, and Congress must act." (Huffington Post)
• January 4: Fox News spends much of the day's coverage of the Democratic takeover of Congress in ugly, juvenile belittling of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, attacking her for being female as well as for her politics.

  Conservative smear campaigns

  Fox begins its early-morning coverage, on its morning show "Fox and Friends," by inaccurately portraying Pelosi's decision not to name Democrat Jane Harman as the chair of the House Intelligence Committee as a "catfight." In reality, Pelosi and the Democratic leadership decided not to name Harman to the chairmanship because they felt Harman was too accomodating of the Bush administration and too supportive of the Iraq debacle. The three hosts portray the decision as based on Harman's "willingness to work with Republicans." While the three discuss the story, Fox displays a banner reading "Congress Catfight." Media watchdog site NewsHounds writes, "The term 'catfight' is a belittling term often used to ridicule disagreements among women, casting them as fights among animals (especially an animal that is often seen as fickle and hard to understand like a cat). Saying a disagreement among women is a 'catfight' is akin to saying that the women are less than human and their disagreement is based on something other than rationality, intellect or principle. Men do battle. Women have catfights." Co-host Steve Doocy later mocks Pelosi's ascension to power by playing the song "Pomp and Circumstance" while saying, "All rise, Nancy Pelosi takes control." The musical slap will be repeated again. Instead of celebrating the rise of a woman to such a position of power -- third in line for the presidency behind the president and vice president, with the power to set the agenda for the House -- the co-hosts mock Pelosi for being a woman in such a lofty position. (Co-host Gretchen Carlson does say, "You either like her or you don't, but it is historic in the sense that she is assuming this position, and I think for women in general this shows that any door is open for you, no matter what.." The co-hosts spend the rest of their show rehashing Republican complaints about being shut out of offering amendments for the first 100 hours, while failing to mention how Republicans shut out Democrats for 12 years.
• NewsHounds observes, "Pelosi does not fit the mold of 'fair and balanced' femininity espoused on Fox News: women are either innocent victims, like Natalee Holloway, or they are whores, like the accuser in the Duke lacrosse rape case. Pelosi threatens to upset Fox News' entire world view. And that's worse that repealing Bush's tax cuts."
• On Sean Hannity's talk show on Fox, while Hannity belittles Pelosi and the Democrats for their "100 Hours" agenda, Fox flashes a headline on screen saying "100 Hours To Turn America Into San Francisco." (Fox News/NewsHounds [link to video], Washington Post, Fox News/NewsHounds)

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• January 5: Bush is replacing the two top US generals in charge of operations in the Middle East.

  Iraq war and occupation

  General John Abizaid, the top US commander in the Middle East, and General George Casey, the chief general in Iraq, are on their way out, to be replaced, respectively, by Admiral William Fallon, the top US commander n the Pacific, and Lieutenant General David Petraeus, who headed the effort to train Iraqi security forces. While replacing Abizaid and Casey gives the appearance that Bush is taking steps to shore up the US's failed policies in Iraq, it also gets rid of two top military officials who oppose his "surge" strategy for escalating the US presence in Iraq.
• Other administration shuffles include the likely nomination of Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq and the former Unocal executive, as the US ambassador to the United Nations; Khalilzad will likely be replaced in Iraq by Ryan Crocker, the current US envoy to Pakistan. (AP/Guardian)
• January 5: Faced with the question of dealing with White House visitors' records showing the numerous visits by disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his cronies, Bush decides to do what has worked so well for him in the past -- make them go away.

  Secrecy of Bush administration

  The media just now learns that Bush and the Secret Service quietly made a deal last spring to seal the White House visitors' records from public scrutiny. The justification is that, despite the fact that the Secret Service makes and keeps the visitor records, which are public documents, they're not really Secret Service records even though they'd been treated that way in the past, they're White House records, and thus not subject to FOIA requests. A federal judge has ruled that the White House must produce the logs identifying visitors to the office of Dick Cheney; the government is appealing that decision. And, the Washington Post is suing for access to the logs. The memo, dated May 17, 2006, was issued a day after the watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked a federal judge to impose sanctions on the Secret Service in a dispute over the logs. "It appears the White House is actually manufacturing evidence to further its own agenda," says Anne Weismann, a Justice Department lawyer for 19 years and now chief counsel to CREW.
• Last year in the Abramoff scandal, the Bush administration, in response to three lawsuits, lied about how many visits Abramoff and his lobbying team made to the White House. The task of digging out Abramoff-White House links fell to a House committee that collected the lobbyist's billing records and e-mails. The House report found 485 lobbying contacts with presidential aides over three years, including 10 with top Bush administration aide Karl Rove and scores to Rove's then-aide, Susan Ralston, and similarly large amounts to then-RNC chairman Ken Mehlman and his aides. Eventually, a federal judge will decide the issue. Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, says, "This memo reflects the Bush administration's view of American government, which is that the people's business should be conducted behind closed doors."
• The shoe was on the other foot in the 1990s, when Republicans demanded, and obtained, extensive access to the same logs in their pursuit of Whitewater-based allegations against Bill Clinton, along with evidence of Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, their probe into Clinton's pardon of financier Marc Rich, and in their attempt to find evidence of finance scandal surrounding Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign.
• The government watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sues the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for documents relating to the destruction of Secret Service visitor record logs. NARA has so far rejected a FOIA request by CREW for those documents.
• On January 16, an editorial in the Hartford Courant advises Bush to turn over the logs. It reads, in part, "These logs are public information. By withholding them, the White House isn't doing Americans -- or, ultimately, the presidency -- any favors. It's only fueling speculation that the administration has something to hide. There's an old saying that sunshine (in other words, disclosure) is the best disinfectant. If that's true, then we can only speculate as to why the Bush administration seems to be so fond of germs. Secrecy is too much a part of the administration's culture." (AP/Yahoo! News, AP/TPM Muckraker, Talking Points Memo [copy of memo], CREW, Hartford Courant)
• January 5: The same neoconservatives who dreamed up the original invasion and occupation plans for Iraq (and by extension, the Middle East) are the ones now planning the changes to Bush's Iraq policies, in what political observer Gerald Plessner calls "the dumbest move in a stupidity-plagued presidency."

  Iraq war and occupation

  The group of "informal" policy advisors includes William Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard and former chairman of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the neocon think tank which has for years advocated the military takeover of an entire swath of oil-rich Middle Eastern countries by the United States. Kristol's group also includes Douglas Feith, the hardline ideologue who was once Donald Rumsfeld's chief of policy in the Pentagon, and another PNAC member, who was one of the Bush officials primarily responsible for cherrypicking intelligence in order to build a specious case for invading Iraq. Plessner writes acidly, "The incompetence and arrogance of Rumsfeld and his assistants are the primary causes for the difficulties we now face in Iraq. It is difficult to believe that Feith could contribute anything of value to new war plans." As with the PNAC, the influence of Dick Cheney on the neoconservative advisory group is hard to underestimate. Plessner writes, "The return to influential positions of men whose initial advice was so wrong does not bode well for achieving an end to the war. Because of their presence, we can probably expect more failures costing precious American military and Iraqi civilian lives. ...The American people voted decisively to tell this administration that it should end our involvement in Iraq. If the president and his vice president refuse to honor the expressed will of the American people, then they should resign. Failing that, the Congress should begin to consider impeachment."
• In a related event, the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute holds a presentation on their agenda for Iraq's policies; the presentation revolves around an AEI report on Bush's proposal for a "troop surge." Republican senator John McCain, a strong proponent of the proposed troop escalation, and conservative Democratic senator Joseph Lieberman take part in the presentation. Neocons Frederick Kagan and Jack Keane, the authors of the AEI report, wrote an article last month explaining that "any troop increase must be large and lasting" (a short surge, they wrote, would "play into the enemy's hands" and "virtually ensure defeat"). The Kagan/Keene strategy is, of course, a recommendation for staying in Iraq indefinitely. The report advocates abandoning political development and Iraqi forces training to focus solely on what they call "clear and hold" by American forces of "critical terrain." Only then, they say, can we start thinking about transferring control to Iraqis. Kagan and Keene predict "increasing casualties to levels higher than before the start of security operations," and say that a strong increase in insurgent violence is inevitable. (Gerald Plessner, AEI/Buzzflash)
• January 5: An ABC News poll shows that, if the US senators in 2002 knew then what they know now about the Iraq war, the Senate would not have given its approval to Bush for action against Iraq.

  Iraq war and occupation

  In October 2002, the Senate voted 77-23 to approve Bush's call for military action. Only 43, at most, of the 2002 Senate would now vote for the war, and at least 57 say they would vote against it. "For any Senate vote to switch from 77-23 in favor to essentially 57-43 against is quite remarkable, and far more so for a decision as significant as the one to go to war," writes ABC's Jake Tapper. In December 2006, Republican Gordon Smith galvanized the country when he came out in public, bitter self-recrimination over his vote for the war, saying, "I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that any more." 28 of the 77 senators who voted to authorize the war in Iraq indicate, many for the first time, that they would not vote the same way with the benefit of hindsight. Six others indicate that, in retrospect, the intelligence was so wrong the matter would not have passed the Senate, or would not have even come up for a vote. "This is very significant," says congressional scholar Norman Ornstein of the hardline, neoconservative American Enterprise Institute. "If they were asked that question a year ago, I think the likelihood of getting anywhere close to a majority voting against the war would be impossible. What this tells me is that Gordon Smith's very stunning speech was in some ways the tip of the iceberg."
• The list of those who say they would vote differently is a bipartisan group whose ranks include former and current Republican Senators Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Peter Fitzgerald, Bob Smith, Olympia Snowe, and Kay Bailey Hutchison. An overwhelming number of the Democratic senators who voted to authorize use of force indicated they would vote differently today, including former and current Democratic Senators Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, John Breaux, Jay Rockefeller, and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. Former Republican senator Bob Smith says when asked if he would cast the same vote, "No, I would not. I know now there are no weapons of mass destruction." Smith recalls that at the time, "everyone thought he had weapons of mass destruction. As far as I know -- and I saw a lot of intelligence, what every other US senator saw -- intelligence briefings indicated that Hussein had WMD that he could use perhaps against Israel or neighboring countries." Nighthorse Campbell says, "In retrospect, it was premature. We rushed into there, very frankly, we were kind of pushed in. The problem with being a public official is public opinion jams you around. And public opinion then was we had to do something about all the people being abused and tortured and killed." He adds, "[W]e were leaned on pretty heavily by the administration," which he said told senators "if you didn't support the president you weren't a good soldier.... So we got stampeded into doing something, but unfortunately we didn't have enough international help." Ornstein says, "There is a very large level of disheartenment, dismay and despair in Congress cutting across party lines on a situation where they don't see a way out. ...But if Lyndon Johnson were alive today, he'd tell the president you can't keep prosecuting a war when the public -- and many of your congressional supporters -- abandon you. It makes it much, much harder to sustain it."
• Five current and former senators -- Democrats Harry Reid and Byron Dorgan, and Republicans Charles Grassley, Arlen Specter, Susan Collins, and Mike DeWine -- say that knowing then what we know now, the war resolution never would have even come up for a vote. "The intelligence was obviously wrong," says a Grassley spokeswoman. "If Congress had known the intelligence was wrong, they wouldn't have even been voting." A Dorgan spokesman adds, "The intelligence information the president used to make the request was not accurate. If we knew then it was not accurate, the president wouldn't have been able to make that request." Ornstein is impatient with this explanation, saying, "That's a way of trying to evade the question. People are very reluctant to say, 'Oh, I made a huge mistake,' or 'I would do it differently today.' That's a hard thing for anyone to do, and far more so for a public official." But, Ornstein says, this response is "fundamentally the same thing as saying you regret your vote -- if not even more."
• Some senators, almost all Republicans, say they would stand by their votes for war, though the group includes Democrat Ben Nelson and independent Democrat Joseph Lieberman. The list of Republicans includes John McCain, Dick Lugar, Sam Brownback, Pete Domenici, Orrin Hatch, and George Voinovich, along with former senators Bill Frist, George Allen, Tim Hutchinson, and Pat Roberts. "We were voting on the basis of the intelligence information we had and that's why the vote was so overwhelming," says Hutchinson. "And yes, it was certainly faulty intelligence. But we had to vote on what we knew at the time. I just don't understand the value of what you're doing except to embarrass the Bush administration."
• A number of current and former senators of both parties say, or have already said, they regret their "yes" votes, including the 2004 Democratic presidential ticket, John Kerry and John Edwards. In October 2006, Republican Kay Bailey Hutchinson said, "If I knew then what I had known now on the weapons of mass destruction, which was a key reason I voted the way I did, I would not have voted to go into Iraq." Democrat Hillary Clinton said in December 2006, "[O]bviously, if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn't have been a vote, and I certainly wouldn't have voted that way." Other senators whose offices directly told ABC News they would vote differently include Democrats Biden, Dodd, Rockefeller, Max Baucus, Evan Bayh, Maria Cantwell, Tom Carper, Dianne Feinstein, Herb Kohl, Mary Landrieu, and Bill Nelson, and former senators Breaux, Jean Carnahan, Max Cleland, and Bob Torricelli. On the other side of the aisle, current Republicans Smith of Oregon and Snowe were joined by former senators Nighthorse Campbell, Fitzgerald, and Smith.
• Perhaps the most damning comment comes from former Democratic senator Ernest Hollings, who refused to answer the yes-or-no question directly, but recalls being deeply torn on the issue. He has said in the past that he only voted for the resolution because of something the president said that he now considers a lie. Hollings recalls that he was leaning against voting for the war resolution until Bush said, just days before the vote, that "we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." Hollings says, "When the commander-in-chief said that, I knew he knew something I didn't know." Hollings decided to vote for the war resolution, a vote he now says was a "mistake." "I was lied to and now we all know that we were lied to," Hollings says.
• A few former senators refuse to answer the repeated calls and e-mails on the subject, including Republicans Fred Thompson, Don Nickles, and Phil Gramm, and Democrat Zell Miller; ABC counted them as standing by their votes. Three senators were unable to respond: former Republican Strom Thurmond is dead, and former Republican senator Jesse Helms and current Democratic senator Tim Johnson are medically incapacitated. (ABC News)
• January 5: The Justice Department is attempting to persuade Internet providers to keep track of the Web sites visited by its users, and make those records available to federal investigators.

  Domestic spying

  The excuse is that the federal government wants to make it easier to track down child pornographers. But many believe it is another step towards the Bush administration's desire to engage in total surveillance of citizens, joining warrantless wiretapping, secret scrutiny of library records and unfettered access to e-mail as another power that could be abused. "I don't think it's realistic to think that we would create this enormous honeypot of information and then say to the FBI, 'You can only use it for this narrow purpose,'" says Leslie Harris, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an organization that promotes free speech and privacy in communication. "We have an environment in which we're collecting more and more information on the personal lives of Americans, and our laws are completely inadequate to protect us." The attempt is spearheaded by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. In September testimony before a Senate committee, Gonzales painted a graphic and disturbing picture of child pornography on the Web, which he called an urgent threat to children. The production and consumption of child pornography has exploded as the Internet makes it easier to exchange images, Gonzales said. Federal agents and prosecutors are hampered in their investigations because Internet companies don't routinely keep records of their traffic, he told the committee. In April, Gonzales said in a speech at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, "Privacy rights must always be accommodated and protected as we conduct our investigations. [But] the investigation and prosecution of child predators depends critically on the availability of evidence that is often in the hands of Internet service providers. This evidence will be available for us to use only if the providers retain the records for a reasonable amount of time. Unfortunately, the failure of some Internet service providers to keep records has hampered our ability to conduct investigations in this area."
• At present, Internet service providers keep records of Web traffic only for short periods, usually 30 to 90 days, as a way to trace technical glitches. Many ISPs, along with privacy advocates, say that it's already easy for government agents to get the information they need to investigate crimes. The FBI, without a court order, can send a letter to any Internet provider ordering it to maintain records for an investigation, says Kevin Bankston, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based group that promotes free speech and privacy on the Web. "There's been no showing that mass surveillance of all Internet users, mandated by the government, is necessary for law enforcement," Bankston says. "If this passes, there would be a chilling effect on free speech if everyone knew that everything they did on the Internet could be tracked back to them." The government has offered differing rationales for its data-retention plan, says Harris. "I've been in discussions at the Department of Justice where someone would say, 'We want this for child protection. And someone else would say 'National security,' and someone else would say, 'Computer crimes.' We're operating in the wild, wild West here." (McClatchy/Grand Haven Tribune)
• January 5: Joseph Galloway, a columnist, author, famed war reporter, and Bronze Star winner in Vietnam, calls into serious question Bush's plan for a "surge," or escalation, of US troops in Iraq.

  Iraq war and occupation

  He asks, "Does anyone, including the President, really believe that another 10,000 or even 30,000 soldiers and Marines on top of the 140,000 now in Iraq are somehow going to make Baghdad more secure, or clean up the Sunni insurgents who control much of Anbar province? This isn't a new way forward, nor is it a recipe for the victory that the desperate architect of an unnecessary and costly war seems to believe is waiting out there to rescue his legacy. It's no more than a continuation of George W. Bush's urgent flight from reality." The "surge" proposed by Bush -- 20,000 to 40,000 troops, at last note -- is too small to achieve anything lasting in Baghdad or Anbar. It goes against the advice of the military commanders on the ground, or did, before Bush announced a round of firings and replacements with more like-minded commanders. It flaunts the will of the American people who "no longer have any trust in Bush's conduct of the Iraq war or those like-minded voters who turned Congress over to the Democrats in the November mid-term elections. What on earth is this president thinking?" Galloway continues, "Those who've sacrificed the most -- America's Army and Marine ground forces and their families -- will be asked to continue bearing the burden and paying an even higher price in dead and wounded for a president's ego and intransigence. The very troops who will make up the temporary bump in U.S. forces in Iraq are those who've already paid that price over and over. They'll be found by a sleight-of-hand maneuver: ordering units already tapped to return to Iraq to go there earlier than scheduled. That isn't even robbing Peter to pay Paul. It's robbing Peter to pay Peter. George W. Bush believes that he can buy another couple of years of violent stalemate so he can hand off the disaster to whoever succeeds him in the White House on January 20, 2009. How many more Americans and Iraqis must die to ensure that Bush's parting words as he retreats to Crawford, Texas, will be: I never cut and ran. I stood tall. I kept America safe. The problem with that scenario is that it, like all the others drawn by George Bush and Dick Cheney, is far too rosy. The way forward in Iraq is a spiral toward an even bloodier future, and the real decisions are the Iraqis', not George Bush's. It's too little, too late, Mr. President." (Editor and Publisher)
• January 5: Continuing his penchant for ugly personal attacks, Rush Limbaugh uses Nancy Pelosi's gender as the basis for commenting on her abilities as the new Speaker of the House.

  Conservative smear campaigns

  Responding to a relatively inane comment by Democratic House member Heath Shuler, who said his two-year old daughter "is inspired by Nancy Pelosi's ascension to the speakership," Limbaugh says, "His 2-year-old can't possibly know who Pelosi is other than as a cartoon figure on television. Maybe Pelosi breastfed him, I don't know, when the kid was pregnant. Who knows? She's capable of doing everything else." Limbaugh later adds, "[L]ook at Ms. Pelosi. Why, she can multitask. She can breastfeed, she can clip her toenails, she can direct the House, all while the kids are sitting on her lap at the same time." The day before, Limbaugh denied again that he indulges in personal attacks, saying, "I mean whatever it was that I said in criticism of Democrats, it was not personal, like they have turned it into on the Democrat [sic] side." (MediaMatters)

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• January 6: The Bush administration wants to go forward with the construction of the first US nuclear weapon in two decades, by combining two competing designs from two weapons laboratories in an approach that many experts say is untested and dangerous.

  US nuclear program

  The administration justifies the construction of a new nuclear weapon, intended to replace the existing nuclear arsenal, by saying that the new weapons will be sturdier, more reliable, safer from accidental detonation and more secure from theft by terrorists. The announcement, to be made by the interagency Nuclear Weapons Council, avoids making a choice between the two designs for a new weapon, called the Reliable Replacement Warhead, which at first would be mounted on submarine-launched missiles. The effort, if approved by President Bush and financed by Congress, would require a huge refurbishment of the nation's complex for nuclear design and manufacturing, with the overall bill estimated at more than $100 billion. But the council's decision to seek a hybrid design, combining well-tested elements from an older design with new safety and security elements from a more novel approach, could delay the weapon's production. It also raises the question of whether the US will ultimately be forced to end its moratorium on underground nuclear testing to make sure the new design works. Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration of the Energy Department, says the government would not proceed with the Reliable Replacement Warhead "if it is determined that testing is needed," but other officials in the administration, including Robert Joseph, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, have said that the White House should make no commitment on testing.
• Many Democrats are expected to challenge the need for a huge, lavishly expensive replacement of the US's nuclear arsenal, especially with the US trying to convince the world to put sanctions on North Korea and Iran to halt their nuclear programs. Such a move, say many critics, would be seen as hypocritical. And other countries, particularly China and Russia, would feel freer to conduct their own new nuclear tests.
• The two teams competing to design the weapon, one at Los Alamos in New Mexico, the other at the Livermore National Laboratory in California, approached the problem with very different philosophies, according to several nuclear officials and experts. Livermore drew on a single design that, before the testing moratorium, was detonated in the 1980s under the Nevada desert. The weapon, however, never entered the nation's nuclear stockpile. The Los Alamos team drew on aspects of many weapons from the stockpile and pulled them together in a novel design that has never undergone testing. A winner of the competition was to have been announced in November. But federal officials said they had a hard time choosing between the two designs, calling both excellent. The question now, arms experts say, is whether a mix-and-match approach combining the two will produce a clever hybrid or an unworkable dud. They say the nuclear laboratories, bitter rivals for decades, have never before shared responsibility for designing a weapon. Critics say a main justification for the program vanished in November when a secretive federal panel known as Jason found that the plutonium "pits" at the heart of many nuclear warheads aged far better than expected, with most able to work reliably for a century or more. "This research eliminates a major rationale," says Lisbeth Gronlund, a nuclear arms specialist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. (New York Times)
• January 6: Retired general Wesley Clark calls Bush's upcoming escalation of troops in Iraq "too little, too late," and warns the so-called "surge" may actually worsen the situation.

  Iraq war and occupation

  Clark, who once commanded NATO forces in Kosovo, is a possible candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. Clark says the time for a military solution was past, and a region-wide initiative was needed to try to end the bloody sectarian violence. "We've never had enough troops in Iraq," says Clark. "In Kosovo, we had 40,000 troops for a population of two million. For Iraq, that ratio would call for at least 500,000 troops, so adding 20,000 now is too little, too late. What the surge would do is put more American troops in harm's way, further undercut US forces' morale, and risk further alienation of elements of the Iraqi populace." (AFP/Yahoo! News)

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Israel planning possible nuclear strike against Iran

• January 7: Israel has drawn up secret plans to use tactical nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities, according to several Israeli military sources.

  War with Iran

  Two Israeli Air Force squadrons are training for the mission. Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open "tunnels" into the targets. "Mini-nukes" would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground. "As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished," says one of the sources. Israeli intelligence officials with Mossad believe that Iran is close to producing enough enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons within two years. Israeli military commanders believe conventional strikes may no longer be enough to annihilate increasingly well-defended enrichment facilities. Several have been built beneath at least 70 feet of concrete and rock. The nuclear-tipped bunker-busters would be used only if a conventional attack was ruled out and if the United States declined to intervene.
• Israeli and American officials have met several times to consider military action. Military analysts say the disclosure of the plans could be intended to put pressure on Tehran to halt enrichment, cajole America into action or soften up world opinion in advance of an Israeli attack. Some analysts warn that Iranian retaliation for such a strike could range from disruption of oil supplies to the West to terrorist attacks against Jewish targets around the world.
• Israel has identified three prime targets south of Tehran which are believed to be involved in Iran's nuclear program: Natanz, where thousands of centrifuges are being installed for uranium enrichment; A uranium conversion facility near Isfahan where, according to a statement by an Iranian vice-president last week, 250 tons of gas for the enrichment process have been stored in tunnels; and a heavy water reactor at Arak, which may in future produce enough plutonium for a bomb. Israeli officials believe that destroying all three sites would delay Iran's nuclear program indefinitely. The Israeli government has warned repeatedly that it will never allow nuclear weapons to be made in Iran, whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has declared that "Israel must be wiped off the map."
• Robert Gates, the new US defense secretary, has described military action against Iran as a "last resort," leading Israeli officials to conclude that it will be left to them to strike. Israeli pilots have flown to Gibraltar in recent weeks to train for the 2,000-mile round trip to the Iranian targets. Three possible routes have been mapped out, including one over Turkey. Air force squadrons based at Hatzerim in the Negev desert and Tel Nof, south of Tel Aviv, have trained to use Israel's tactical nuclear weapons on the mission. The preparations have been overseen by Major General Eliezer Shkedi, commander of the Israeli air force. Sources close to the Pentagon said the United States is highly unlikely to give approval for tactical nuclear weapons to be used. One source says Israel would have to seek approval "after the event," as it did when it crippled Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak with airstrikes in 1981. Some sources in Washington say they doubt if Israel will have the nerve to attack Iran. However, Dr. Ephraim Sneh, the deputy Israeli defense minister, said last month: "The time is approaching when Israel and the international community will have to decide whether to take military action against Iran."
• Days before, a senior adviser to Bush warned that Israel, with American and British backing, could launch a war against Iran within two years. CIA specialist on Iran Reuel Marc Gerecht said on CNN that there has been a "tidal shift" of opinion towards military action, especially in Israel. "I think it has now become highly likely the Israelis will launch a strike before the end of George Bush's presidency," Gerecht says. Such an attack risks sparking an eruption of military counterstrikes, terrorist attacks, and backlashes throughout the Middle East.
• Israel denies the reports (in fact, Israel has consistently denied even having any nuclear weapons, though it is widely known that Israel has a considerable stockpile). Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office refused to comment, with spokeswoman Miri Eisin saying only, "We don't respond to publications in the Sunday Times." However, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev denies the report, saying: "if diplomacy succeeds, the problem can be solved peaceably." Defense analyst Reuven Pedatzur, a columnist for the Israeli paper Ha'aretz, says, "I refuse to believe that anyone here would consider using nuclear weapons against Iran. It is possible that this was a leak done on purpose, as deterrence, to say: 'Someone better hold us back, before we do something crazy.'" And former senior intelligence official Ephraim Kam adds, "No reliable source would ever speak about this, certainly not to the Sunday Times." (Sunday Times, CNN/Daily Mirror, AP/Yahoo! News)

Iraq's oil industry set to be privatized; Western oil companies to garner unprecedented wealth

• January 7: Within days, the Iraqi parliament is expected to pass a controversial bill throwing open Iraq's massive oil reserves for near-unrestricted exploitation by Western oil companies like BP, Shell, Chevron, and ExxonMobil, who would be given 30-year contracts.

  Oil profiteering and the "oiligarchy"

  Iraq's oil industry was nationalized in 1972. Many believe that this oil deal may be the actual centerpiece of the entire Iraq agenda, and point to, among other things, the 1999 statement by Dick Cheney, then the CEO of Halliburton, when he said, "The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies." (The editorial staff of the Independent asks, "So was this what the Iraq war was fought for, after all?") The law will allow Western oil companies to pocket up to 75% of the profits genarated, at least in the early years until initial costs are recouped (10% is the global standard), and assume unprecedented control of Iraq's oil industry. Greg Muttitt, a researcher for Platform, a human rights and environmental group which monitors the oil industry, says Iraq will pay an enormous price over the next 30 years for its present instability: "Iraq would end up with the worst possible outcome. ...They would lose out massively, because they don't have the capacity at the moment to strike a good deal." James Paul of the international government watchdog organization Global Policy Forum, says that the Iraqi population would be against such a deal by an overwhelming margin, and "[t]o do it anyway, with minimal discussion within the [Iraqi] parliament is really just pouring more oil on the fire."
• One of the key portions of the new legislation is the use of "production-sharing agreements," or PSAs, that will allow the Western oil companies to profit far more handsomely from the oil than most companies' agreements with Middle Eastern oil producers like Saudi Arabia and Iran, and with other OPEC member nations. The legislation was co-written by lawyers and oil industry representatives from BearingPoint, an American consulting firm hired by the US government. "Three outside groups have had far more opportunity to scrutinize this legislation than most Iraqis," says Muttitt. "The draft went to the US government and major oil companies in July, and to the International Monetary Fund in September. Last month I met a group of 20 Iraqi MPs in Jordan, and I asked them how many had seen the legislation. Only one had." Iraq's sovereign right to manage its own natural resources could also be threatened by the provision in the draft that any disputes with a foreign company must ultimately be settled by international, rather than Iraqi, arbitration. Under the legislation, "Fiscal Regime," the draft spells out that foreign companies have no restrictions on taking their profits out of the country, and are not subject to any tax when doing this. Paul says, "The US and the UK have been pressing hard on this. It's pretty clear that this is one of their main goals in Iraq." The Iraqi authorities are "a government under occupation, and it is highly influenced by that. The US has a lot of leverage...Iraq is in no condition right now to go ahead and do this. ...It is relatively easy to get the oil in Iraq. It is nowhere near as complicated as the North Sea. There are super giant fields that are completely mapped, [and] there is absolutely no exploration cost and no risk. So the argument that these agreements are needed to hedge risk is specious."
• But in the short term, only the small, maverick oil companies are likely to risk opening up production in Iraq. "Production over the next year in Iraq is probably going to fall rather than go up," says Kevin Norrish, an oil analyst from Barclays. "The whole thing is held together by a shoestring; it's desperate." Another oil executive says, "All the majors will be in Iraq, but they won't start work for years. Even Lukoil [of Russia], the Chinese and Total [of France] are not in a rush to endanger themselves. It's now very hard for US and allied companies because of the disastrous war."
• Iraqi trade union leaders says that the legislation will cause an uproar once its terms became known among ordinary Iraqis. "The Iraqi people refuse to allow the future of their oil to be decided behind closed doors," they say in a statement. "The occupier seeks and wishes to secure... energy resources at a time when the Iraqi people are seeking to determine their own future, while still under conditions of occupation." The Independent observes, "The resentment implied in their words is ominous, and not only for oil company executives in London or Houston. The perception that Iraq's wealth is being carved up among foreigners can only add further fuel to the flames of the insurgency, defeating the purpose of sending more American troops to a country already described in a US intelligence report as a cause celebre for terrorism." (Independent, Independent)
• January 7: US attack helicopters strafe suspected al-Qaeda forces in southern Somalia.

  Anti-terrorism and homeland security

  The helicopter attacks follow two days of airstrikes by US forces, the first US offensives in Somalia since 18 American soldiers were killed here in 1993. Although US sources claim that only 5 to 10 people, mostly suspected al-Qaeda fighters, die in the attacks, multiple eyewitnesses and other US officials later confirm that 31 civilians, including a newly married couple and members of the wedding party, are killed in the attacks. The US refuses to confirm the identity of any of the al-Qaeda members killed, or how the US knew they were attacking an al-Qaeda gathering, casting doubt on the accuracy of the US reports. The US is hunting down Islamic extremists in Somalia, according to one Somali defense official. One of the people supposedly caught in the strikes is an al-Qaeda operative who helped carry out the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in East Africa. Since before the UN-sponsored peace mission in 1993 failed, Somalia has been in essential anarchy, with its government unable to do much of anything to prevent the violence and terrorism that embroils the country. However, Somali president Abdullahi Yusuf, head of the UN-backed transitional government, says that the US "has a right to bombard terrorist suspects who attacked its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania." Ethiopian troops are already in Somalia to attempt to counter the violence and chaos throughout the country, but have not had much success defeating the Islamist and anarchist forces in the country; until these attacks, the US has been content to work through the Ethiopians.
• The attacks spark fresh waves of anti-American protests and violence throughout Somalia. "They're just trying to get revenge for what we did to them in 1993," says taxi driver Deeq Salad Mursel, referring to the infamous "Black Hawk Down" episode in which Somali gunmen killed 18 American soldiers and brought down two American helicopters during an intense battle in Mogadishu.
• On January 12, the human rights organization Oxfam confirms that 70 innocent Somalis were killed by the strikes, mostly nomads searching for water sources in the Afmadow district near Kenya. And the US ambassador to Kenya has admitted that the strikes failed to kill any of the three prime targets wanted for their alleged role in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. The wanted men are Fazul Abdullah Moham-med, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Abu Taha al-Sudani, who were all supposedly sheltered by the Union of Islamic Courts during its short reign in Mogadishu. Additionally, the UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, reports that an estimated 100 people were wounded on January 8 when the US conducted air strikes on the small fishing village of Ras Kamboni. The strikes were launched from the US military base in Djibouti after a mobile phone intercept. "Under international law, there is a duty to distinguish between military and civilian targets," says Paul Smith-Lomas, Oxfam's regional director. "We are deeply concerned that this principle is not being adhered to, and that innocent people in Somalia are paying the price."
• Instead of killing the sought-after al-Qaeda figures, the strikes have inflamed passions throughout Somalia and East Africa; since the strikes, the simmering civil war which has embroiled Somalia for years has been rekindled, and violence has broken out throughout the country.
• Salim Lone, the former spokesperson for the UN mission in Iraq and a now a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya, explains the airstrikes: "You know, let me begin by saying that the world has become used to what is called 'targeted assassinations' -- in Gaza by Israel, in Afghanistan by NATO, and in Iraq, as well. But let us be clear that all such attacks are illegal under international law. No one has been identified and tried and sentenced. Invariably, lots of innocent people die in such attacks, sometimes scores, as happened recently in Pakistan. ...[I]n addition, this has escalated this war, begun basically by Ethiopia when they invaded Somalia. And it has opened -- and this is what is so incredulous to me, I find, incredulous that the US has opened another front in the Muslim world. I do not understand what the intention is. The world does want to help the US end terror, but the way the US repeatedly is doing it, from Iraq and Afghanistan to now in Somalia, this will increase the amount of terrorism that exists in the world and certainly in this region. It is a totally brutal attack that has killed many civilians. There was no need to do it this way. There are other ways to fight terror. And in this particular case, the best way to fight terror was to work with the Islamic Courts Union, which had lots of support and controlled virtually all of southern Somalia. We should have engaged -- 'we' meaning the international community, the US -- should have engaged with them to ensure that there was no terror coming out of Somalia. This is completely reckless."
• Lone continues, "But it is also inevitable, because the US, using the issue of terror as the goal to defeat terror, wants to place in Somalia -- and it is succeeding so far -- a client regime, which will go along with what it wishes to do, as happened in Iraq. You know, there's a strategic region, and they want a client regime in there. And the new regime immediately came out in support of the US attacks, even though it acknowledged that lots of people had been killed who are not terrorists." Lone says that regardless of what Somali government officials say, "now Somalia is at war with the United States." Worse, the US actions threaten to destabilize the government of Kenya, which "seems to be supporting the US attack. I think Kenya needs to be very careful. We have millions of Somalis who live in Kenya. Most of them supported the Islamic Courts Union, because the Islamic Courts Union is very popular throughout Somalia. This is destabilizing the region, and it seems that the US ultimately does not care about destabilizing even its allies, as has happened in the Middle East. It is relentless in its drive to obtain hegemony. The world, as I said, would be very happy to help the United States take on terror, but this is the wrong way to go about it." Lone says that the recent visit of General John Abizaid, the commander of US forces in the Middle East, to Ethiopia was a clear signal that US forces would increase hostilities. Lone relates "credible reports of US troops near the Somalia border in Kenya, training in Kenya for these exercises," reports that the US media is ignoring ion their entirety. The US is planning another regional military command for East Africa, to be located in the Horn of Africa, possibly in Ethiopia or Djibouti; it seems plain to Lone that the move against Somalia is the first step in a large-scale attempt for the US to expand its military presence in the region.
• Lone says, "[A]nything that has the word 'Islam' in it is seen to be an enemy. And it is so easy for so many people now, because there are terrorist acts committed by Muslims, many terrorist acts, that that seems to be good enough for them. That seems to be justification enough for them. 'Oh, they're going after the Islamists.' I mean, the reality is that these, what we call Islamists are just Muslims who are pretty traditional. They should be allowed to live as they wish to. I mean, if they want to ban cinemas, that's their right. I don't support it, but I'm not going to start an invasion to say, 'Oh, we don't want such people in power there.' If the Somalis don't want them in power, that is fine. Let the Somalis work it out for them. But this is madness. It is in violation also of explicit UN resolutions that the UN itself supported and passed. For example, the new UN resolution that the UN wanted said no troops from neighboring countries should go into Somalia, in case there is a peacekeeping force from the region. And yet, Ethiopia invaded." (AP/Yahoo! News, New York Times, Independent, Democracy Now)
• January 7: Democratic Congressional leaders vow to use their powers of spending and policy oversight to challenge Bush's expected proposal to escalate the troop numbers in Iraq by as many as 20,000 soldiers.

  Iraq war and occupation

  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls Iraq a nation embroiled in "complete chaos," and, like many of her fellow Democrats, says the Bush escalation of the Iraq war goes against the advice of senior US commanders and the drastic change of course sought by American voters. As a result, Pelosi says, the Democrats will treat the plan, and new funding requests, with strong skepticism. "If the president wants to add to this mission, he's going to have to justify it," Pelosi says on CBS's Face the Nation, and emphasizes that while Congress will not cut off funding for troops now in Iraq, the White House will no longer have a "blank check" for expanding the war effort. Referring to a new $100 billion supplemental spending request, she says, "When the bill comes...it will receive the harshest scrutiny." Since September 11, 2001, more than $500 billion has been spent on the wars and counterterrorism-related expenditures around the world, according to the Congressional Research Service.
• Democratic senator Joseph Biden affirms that Bush has most of the authority to conduct the war as he pleases, calling the idea of a troop idea "a tragic mistake" but acknowledging that "as a practical matter, there is no way to say, 'Mr. President, stop.'" He also says, somewhat contradictorily, that he believes it is unconstitutional for Congress to authorize the war and then try to cap troop levels or restrict funding. Most Republicans on today's morning talk shows generally back Bush's Iraq policies, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell telling a Fox News audience, "At the end of the day...I don't think Congress will cut off money for the troops. Congress is incapable of micromanaging the tactics in the war. And even though this will be a controversial step, I think the president will be able to carry it out, and I hope he'll be successful." Fellow Republican senator Lindsey Graham, a strong supporter of the troop escalation, says the US has never had the troop numbers it needs to succeed in Iraq; he tells his NBC audience, "We cannot let this country go into the abyss" of civil war, which could provoke intervention by Iran and Turkey and decades of regional conflict. But former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, a close colleague of the elder Bush, tells an ABC audience, "Unless there's something we can accomplish that is visible and demonstrable...people will say, well, look, the situation hasn't changed. That demonstrates it's hopeless and the pressure to get out will increase." Perhaps most interestingly, Scowcroft says that it is plainly necessary to use a broader regional approach to stabilize Iraq and refocus more strongly on the Arab-Israeli peace process, and criticizes Bush's vision of bringing peace to the Middle East through democracy as "revolutionary utopianism." (Washington Post)
• January 7: In a story related to the item above, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid joins fellow Congressional Democrats in saying he will explore whatever steps he can take to wind down the war in Iraq, short of cutting funds for troops already deployed.

  Iraq war and occupation

  "I think we've got to tell the president what he's doing as wrong," Reid says. "We've got to start bringing our folks home." Reid and the Congressional Democratic leadership is expected to take what steps it can to block Bush's plan to deploy an additional 20,000 troops in Iraq. Fellow Democratic senator Ted Kennedy says he and his fellows are considering a vote to deny the use of funds for any increase in US deployments. Kennedy is readying legislation that would require Congress to approve the deployment of more troops, and was hoping for a roll call on the topic swiftly, before any increase is implemented. And Reid implies that Congressional Democrats will closely scrutinize, and perhaps block, Bush's expected call for an additional $100 billion for the war. "We have a platform we didn't have before, Leader Pelosi and I, and we're going to...focus attention on this war in many different ways," says Reid. "We ought to insist that the Congress and the Senate take action, so that before we're going to have a surge [of troops], the members of Congress and the members of the Senate will have an opportunity to speak on this issue," says Kennedy. And fellow Democratic senator Dick Durbin adds, "It is time for us to announce we achieved our goals in Iraq and now the American people need to hand this responsibility over to the people of that nation in Iraq."
• White House press secretary Tony Snow says that no matter what funding decisions Congress makes, Bush will go ahead with his troop escalation. "The president has the ability to exercise his own authority if he thinks Congress has voted the wrong way," Snow adds, apparently believing that he works in a monarchy and not a constitutional democracy.
• Air America's Cenk Uyger writes, "I can't imagine any other president saying he has the right to do what he pleases even if Congress makes it illegal. What does 'if he thinks Congress has voted the wrong way' mean? Wrong, according to whom? The fact that it is a law makes it right by definition, by our democracy, by our Constitution. The president can veto laws he thinks Congress voted the wrong way on. But if they override his veto, it is not within his authority to ignore that law. This is so fundamental that it's unbelievable that it has to be spelled out. If you asked whether a president could do this in an eighth grade civics class and anyone answered -- 'Yes, a president can exercise his own authority if he thinks Congress voted the wrong way' -- you would unquestionably fail them. That is not the correct answer. At least not in our system of government. ...This is the stuff constitutional crises are made of. This president has been unabashedly breaking and reinterpreting the law to suit his needs for years now. He does out in the open. He does it with the flimsiest of explanations. And he rubs everyone's face in it. He is in direct violation of FISA.... He now claims the right to violate the new postal reform bill -- right after he signed it into effect. Laws don't apply to him. He has magical executive authority. You know what this kind of 'executive authority' used to be called before? The divine right of kings, dictatorial power, authoritarian rule. ...Imagine if Congress passes a law saying that our troop presence in Iraq is capped at 150,000 troops. Bush vetoes, Congress overrides. Then Bush orders more troops into Iraq, surpassing the legal limit imposed by Congress. What do we do? Does the Supreme Court have to order the generals to not deploy the troops? Do they have to listen? Who does the Pentagon take orders from? If Bush thinks he can ignore Congress, what if he tells the commanders to also ignore the Supreme Court? This is madness. We are supposed to be a country of laws. What do we do when we have a president who expressly tells the country that he is not constrained by the law?" (AP/Yahoo! News, Editor and Publisher, Daily Kos)
• January 7: Along with the US troops to be sent to Iraq as part of Bush's escalation of the war effort, plans are also underway to expand the US civilian presence across Iraq and complete the world's largest embassy in Baghdad.

  Iraq war and occupation

  Construction of what critics call "Fortress Baghdad" has led to arguments inside the State Department amid fears that the overwhelming diplomatic presence will perpetuate a sense of US occupation and become a focus of local anger. US diplomats say that just as the armed forces are being stretched to breaking point, the US foreign service is suffering from low morale and operations in the rest of the world are being damaged by the diversion of resources to Iraq. Officials are also questioning why the Bush administration is sending more civilians into a deteriorating war zone, and the effectiveness of the work they can do.
• The embassy compound being built inside Baghdad's Green Zone covers 104 acres, making it six times larger than the UN compound in New York. A city within a city for more than 1,000 people, it will have its own water, sewers and electricity, six apartment buildings, a Marine barracks, swimming pool, shops and some walls 15 feet thick. The State Department says laconically that the US civilian presence in Iraq has "grown considerably beyond the numbers projected for the new embassy compound," which is scheduled for completion by September 1, 2007 at a cost of $592 million. Recruits are being attracted to one-year posts by a mix of cajoling and inducementsm which include near-doublings of their salaries, promises of four trips outside Iraq during their year, and guarantees of favorable postings afterwards. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other State Department officials have repeatedly sent cables to personnel around the world saying diplomats have a patriotic duty to volunteer for Baghdad and the expanding "provincial reconstruction teams," where diplomats work out of military bases. One diplomat says, "Baghdad dwarfs everything else. It is becoming a monster that has to be fed every year with a new crop of volunteers." So far State has not resorted to compulsory or "directed" assignments, a practice last used during the Vietnam war and recommended by the ISG report. But it has warned it would put assignments elsewhere on hold "if Iraq and Afghanistan and other priority posts are not staffed."
• Steve Kashkett, vice-president of the American Foreign Service Association, writes in the association's journal this month, "It makes no sense for the Iraq report authors simultaneously to propose scaling back the US military presence and beefing up the presence of unarmed US diplomats in a combat zone." And John Brown, who resigned as a US diplomat in protest against the 2003 invasion and now teaches public diplomacy, says the embassy "will be a symbol of the US occupation and the near-total separation of US embassy staff members from the society with which they are supposed to interact. ...Indeed, the planned embassy reminds me of the huge, cavernous buildings that housed Soviet missions in eastern Europe during the cold war. They were hated by the local population for all they stood for: secrecy, arrogance and domination."
• An additional issue is the fact that over 700 of the 1,000 or so US civilians staffing Baghdad are "ad hoc" employees who, the diplomats complain, have been recruited more for their ideological correctness and loyalty to the Republican Party than for any expertise.
• Asked why the US was sending more diplomats into a war zone when such conditions elsewhere in the world would lead to closure or drawdown of embassies, the State Department said such comparisons were "inappropriate," noting the embassy had suffered "minimal casualties." (Financial Times)
• January 7: Britain's treasury chief Gordon Brown, expected to succeed Tony Blair as prime minister by September, says he will pursue an Iraq policy that is more independent of the Bush administration than Blair's.

  Iraq war and occupation

  Brown says that mistakes have been made in the aftermath of the invasion and that he will be "very frank" with Bush on the topic. He says that Britain will scale back its commitment of troops to Iraq over the next few years. "Obviously, people who know me know that I will speak my mind [to Bush," he says. "I will be very frank. The British national interest is what I and my colleagues are about." He adds, "I believe it is true to say that by the end of the year, there may be thousands less in Iraq than there are now." Blair has said he will step down as prime minister and leader of the governing Labour party before September. Brown, who is credited with helping Blair reinvigorate the Labour party, is unlikely to face any credible challenge when the party elects a new leader, who will automatically become Britain's new prime minister. Brown also calls the way Saddam Hussein was executed was "a deplorable set of events." Blair, who first refused to comment on the hanging, now says that the manner of Hussein's execution was "completely wrong." (AP/Yahoo! News)
• January 7: Many US newspapers are now expressing belated regret over their bloodthirsty coverage of the Saddam Hussein execution -- the Philadelphia Daily News celebrated his death with the headline "Yo, Saddam! Say Hi to Hitler," and the New York Post treated its readers to "Saddam: The King of Swing," among others, almost all accompanied by still images of the former dictator with the noose around his neck.

  Conservative media slant

  Many of these same news outlets are now reporting that the execution came across to the world as, in the words of the Guardian, "little more than a US-sponsored lynching in which the central player, Hussein, was the only actor to perform his part with dignity." Yet, the Guardian notes, such belated regrets have done little than to prove the mainstream media has all but lost control of what reaches the public eye. The New York Times observes that the cellphone video of Hussein's execution was, in effect, "a snuff reality show." The Guardian adds, "Stripped of the pretense that the execution was the 'important milestone' on the road to Iraqi democracy that President Bush predicted, the film offered further evidence that America's foreign policy blunders since 2001 are without end." Even conservative Times columnist Thomas Friedman notes "it resembled a tribal revenge ritual rather than the culmination of a constitutional process in which America should be proud to have participated." The Guardian editors observe that the Hussein execution stood in strange, "surreal" contrast to the outpouring of grief and sympathy for the funerals of former president Gerald Ford and R&B singer James Brown, whose funerals spanned the controversial Hussein execution: "American television viewers could be forgiven for confusion over an apparent clash of sentiments about mortality."
• But for the Guardian op-ed writers, the story is as much about the lack of control able to be exercised by the mainstream media as the coverage of the execution. By the time the media showed the sanitized, Iraqi-government approved official edit of the film of Hussein's death, millions of people around the world had already seen the unedited version on the Internet. "This is now a familiar story," the editors write, "from the savage beheadings of American hostages in Iraq to Saddam's hanging, debate over what should and should not be shown has been made all-but irrelevant in the age of mobile phones and YouTube." Art critic Richard Woodward writes in the Wall Street Journal, "The Saddam video proves again that no act is too gruesome or intimate that someone won't try to take a picture of it and share it with the wired world. We better get used to living without visual boundaries -- and with the curiosity and flexible morality of the viewer as the only limit on what we can see -- from now on." The media most likely has no choice but to agree. "Media executives well understand that the audience cannot be denied or they will simply go elsewhere, taking advertisers and revenue with them," the editorial writes. It concludes, "For the media, the pictures of the execution will be filed alongside others that tell the story of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair's Iraq adventure -- Saddam's statue being toppled in 2003, the beheading of Nicolas Berg, Private Lynndie England at Abu Ghraib, the Bush 'Mission Accomplished' picture aboard a US warship. In each case, the effect of the act and the image has taken time to be fully understood." (Guardian)
• January 7: The New York Times writes an angry editorial blasting Bush for flaunting the will of the American people in preparing for a troop escalation in Iraq and for continuing his push towards expanding presidential powers at the expense of civil liberties.

  Iraq war and occupation

  "Observing President Bush in action lately," the Times editorialists write, "we have to wonder if he actually watched the election returns in November, or if he was just rerunning the 2002 vote on his TiVo. That year, the White House used the fear of terrorism to scare American voters into cementing the Republican domination of Congress. Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney then embarked on an expansion of presidential power chilling both in its sweep and in the damage it did to the constitutional system of checks and balances. In 2006, the voters sent Mr. Bush a powerful message that it was time to rein in his imperial ambitions. But we have yet to see any sign that Mr. Bush understands that -- or even realizes that the Democrats are now in control of the Congress. Indeed, he seems to have interpreted his party's drubbing as a mandate to keep pursuing his fantasy of victory in Iraq and to press ahead undaunted with his assault on civil liberties and the judicial system."
• Bush's Justice Department has already announced its intention to keep stonewalling Congressional inquiries into Bush's inhumane and unconstitutional treatment of prisoners taken in anti-terrorist campaigns, and has refused to hand over requested documents. And Bush keeps issuing "signing statements" contradicting the heart of legislation he signs into law -- most recently a Postal Service bill that prohibited the government from reading mail without a warrant, but with a "signing statement" from Bush that asserted the government's right to read any mail its officials choose.
• The Times reminds its readers of "the sorry excuse for a criminal case that the administration whipped up against Jose Padilla, who was once -- but no longer is -- accused of plotting to explode a radioactive 'dirty bomb' in the United States. Padilla was held for two years without charges or access to a lawyer. Then, to avoid having the Supreme Court review Mr. Bush's power grab, the administration dropped those accusations and charged Mr. Padilla in a criminal court on hazy counts of lending financial support to terrorists." And Bush still favors what his officials call "extraordinary renditions," snatching foreign citizens and shipping them to other countries where they can be tortured into confessing or providing information -- information that often turns out to be false.
• The Times writes, "The Democratic majority in Congress has a moral responsibility to address all these issues: fixing the profound flaws in the military tribunals act, restoring the rule of law over Mr. Bush's rogue intelligence operations and restoring the balance of powers between Congress and the executive branch. So far, key Democrats, including Mr. Leahy and Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, chairman of a new subcommittee on human rights, have said these issues are high priorities for them. We would lend such efforts our enthusiastic backing and hope Mr. Leahy, Mr. Durbin and other Democratic leaders are not swayed by the absurd notion circulating in Washington that the Democrats should now 'look ahead' rather than use their new majority to right the dangerous wrongs of the last six years of Mr. Bush's one-party rule. This is a false choice. Dealing with these issues is not about the past. The administration's assault on some of the nation's founding principles continues unabated. If the Democrats were to shirk their responsibility to stop it, that would make them no better than the Republicans who formed and enabled these policies in the first place." (New York Times)

 

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