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2005 Military News History Archive

2005 Military News

20051230

Indonesia - US - Business - Police - "Indonesian military admits being paid by US mining firm." ... "Indonesia's military admitted yesterday that officers received payments from a local subsidiary of the American mining giant Freeport-McMoRan to guard its huge Grasberg copper and gold mine in Papua, the western, Indonesian, half of New Guinea island." ... "The admission comes after a report in the New York Times claimed that Freeport Indonesia paid military and police officers, and several army units £11.7m from 1998 to 2004. Some officers allegedly received tens of thousands of pounds. If they kept any of the money themselves, it would be a criminal offence." -By John Aglionby -Guardian.co.uk
Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - US - Military - Prisons - Food - "Guantanamo Hunger Strike More Than Doubles; 84 Inmates Involved." ... "The number of detainees on a hunger strike at the U.S. naval base at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay has more than doubled in the past week, the U.S. military said." ... "Forty-six detainees joined existing hunger strikers on Dec. 25, to bring the total number of prisoners refusing food to 84, the military said yesterday on the Southern Command's Web site. That's about a sixth of the internment center's inmates." ... "The military said the detainees are trying to put pressure on the U.S. to release them. Detainees' lawyers have said the hunger strikers are protesting their continued detention without trial and conditions at the base." -By Alex Morales -Bloomberg

20051229

Military - Auto - Airplane - "Corps pays $100K for retooled jeep." ... "The Marine Corps is paying $100,000 apiece for a revamped Vietnam-era jeep as part of its program to outfit the hybrid airplane-helicopter V-22 Osprey, Pentagon records show." ... "That's seven times what a deluxe commercial version of the vehicle costs. It's also three times what U.S. Export-Import Bank records show the Dominican Republic paid four years ago for a military version of the vehicle, called the Growler, a recycled version of the M151 jeep." -By Steven Komarow -USATODAY
EU - Global - Russia - US - Military - Politics - "EU sends up 1st of 30 satellites in GPS network." ... "The European Union on Wednesday launched the first satellite in its $4.5 billion Galileo global positioning system, a bid to enhance the world's growing reliance on satellite navigation and to break the U.S. monopoly on networks in space." ... "Many Europeans see political significance in the project too: The world's only civilian-controlled system will give Europe and its partner nations self-sufficiency from the United States, which has warned it could diminish or cut off GPS satellite coverage to countries considered enemies in times of national emergency." ... "The launch comes at a time when Russia is moving forward with a positioning system known as GLONASS. On Sunday it put into orbit three new satellites for the network, which is scheduled to be operational in 2010." -By Molly Moore-WashingtonPost via -ChicagoTribune
EU - Global - Russia - US - Military - Technology - "Sky-High Ambitions: Europe attempts to find its own place in the world of satellite navigation with the launch of GIOVE-A." ... "Europe has moved one giant step closer to operating its own long-awaited global navigation satellite system, Galileo, designed to challenge the domination of the U.S. military's GPS, or Global Positioning System." ... "GIOVE-A (or Galileo In-Orbit Validation Element) will be testing new technologies — including atomic clocks, signal generators and user receivers — for what has been a dream of the European Union since the early 1990s: a wide-ranging navigation system that is faster and more precise than GPS, provides an uninterrupted service under civilian control, and offers a commercial alternative to the U.S. system and its Russian counterpart, GLONASS (Global Navigation Satellite System)." -By Maryann Bird -TIME.com
People - Government - Military - Terrorism - Civil Liberties - Politics - Illinois - Florida - Virginia - "U.S. Defends Conduct in Padilla Case: Supreme Court Asked To Overrule 4th Circuit." ... "A federal appeals court infringed on President Bush's authority to run the war on terror when it refused to let prosecutors take custody of "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla, the Justice Department said yesterday, as it urged the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene." ... "The sharply worded Justice Department filing was the latest salvo in an increasingly contentious battle over Padilla, a U.S. citizen arrested in Chicago [Illinois] in 2002 and initially accused of plotting to detonate a radiological "dirty bomb." Padilla was held for more than three years by the military before he was indicted last month in Miami [Florida] on separate criminal terrorism charges." ... "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit refused last week to allow prosecutors to take custody of Padilla from the military and rebuked the Bush administration for its handling of the high-profile case. The Bush administration took strong issue yesterday with the Richmond-based [Virginia] court's decision and appealed it to the Supreme Court." -By Jerry Markon-WashingtonPost

20051227

Government - Military - Psychology - Health - "A Political Debate On Stress Disorder: As Claims Rise, VA Takes Stock." ... "The spiraling cost of post-traumatic stress disorder among war veterans has triggered a politically charged debate and ignited fears that the government is trying to limit expensive benefits for emotionally scarred troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan." ... "A total of 215,871 veterans received PTSD benefit payments last year at a cost of $4.3 billion, up from $1.7 billion in 1999 -- a jump of more than 150 percent." ... "Experts say the sharp increase does not begin to factor in the potential impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, because the increase is largely the result of Vietnam War vets seeking treatment decades after their combat experiences." (1, 2) -By Shankar Vedantam -WashingtonPost
US - Iraq - Police - "U.S. Seeks To Escape Brutal Cycle In Iraqi City: 3rd Try at Pullout Depends on Police." ... "On one of his last days in Iraq, Sgt. Dale Evans looked out over the turbulent city from a rooftop tower piled high with sandbags, manning a machine gun. Below him, rows of Bradley Fighting Vehicles stood at the ready. Dusty streets were lined with coiled barbed wire and abandoned houses pockmarked from gunfire -- a protective no-man's land around a base that U.S. commanders describe as their "battleship" in downtown Samarra." ... "This month, Evans and his company from the 3rd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment, will leave Patrol Base Uvanni, beginning a third attempt in as many years by U.S. forces to hand this Sunni city over to Iraqi police. It's a major test for the U.S. military in Iraq, and one U.S. commanders here say they can't afford to fail." ... "Since 2003, Samarra has come to symbolize the trials and errors of U.S. strategy in Iraq -- a cycle of military offensives, lulls and new waves of lethal insurgent attacks." (1, 2) -By Ann Scott Tyson -WashingtonPost

20051226

Government - Military - Intelligence - Secret - Prisons - Civil Liberties - Privacy - Law - Media - Politics - "Fear destroys what bin Laden could not." ... "One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn't win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help." ... "If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden's attack our president would admit that he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution -- and then expect the American people to congratulate him for it -- I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled." ... "Had anyone said our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he had known there was no threat -- and expect America to be pleased by this -- I would have thought our nation's sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated." ... "If I had been informed that our nation's leaders would embrace torture as a legitimate tool of warfare, hold prisoners for years without charges and operate secret prisons overseas -- and call such procedures necessary for the nation's security -- I would have laughed at the folly of protecting human rights by destroying them." ... "If someone had predicted the president's staff would out a CIA agent as revenge against a critic, defy a law against domestic propaganda by bankrolling supposedly independent journalists and commentators, and ridicule a 37-year Marie Corps veteran for questioning U.S. military policy -- and that the populace would be more interested in whether Angelina is about to make Brad a daddy -- I would have called the prediction an absurd fantasy." -By Robert Steinback -Miami/Herald
US - Iran - Nuclear- Military - Politics - Bill Frist - "Reining in Iran." ... ""Iran's ruling mullahs have waged a 26-year campaign to suppress dissent, support terror and pursue a nuclear weapons program. In recent weeks, it has become clear that international efforts to stop Iran's atomic program have failed to bear fruit. Unless we act quickly, the United States will have a nuclear crisis on its hands." ... "If we let Tehran develop nuclear weapons covertly while IAEA negotiations slog forward, Iran's theocrats will have little reason to negotiate with anyone. The U.S. needs to act before a regime that has denied the real Holocaust unleashes another. " -By Bill Frist -LAtimes
Iraq - Politics - "Iraq Contingent May Grow if Attacks Persist, Pace Says." ... "Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace said Sunday that the number of U.S. troops in Iraq could increase next year, not decrease, if the insurgency continued." ... "The four-star Marine general said that any decision to withdraw or deploy additional troops in Iraq would depend mostly on whether the insurgency continued to launch deadly attacks against U.S.-led forces and friendly elements of the fledgling Baghdad government." -By Josh Meyer -LAtimes
Iraq - Terrorism- Police - Politics - "Gunmen kill Iraqi forces, bombs shake Baghdad." ... "Guerrillas killed 10 Iraqi policemen and soldiers in attacks north of Baghdad on Monday, while the capital itself was rocked by five major explosions that left at least eight dead." ... "It was one of the bloodiest days in Iraq since the largely peaceful election on December 15, when rival ethnic and sectarian groups took part in a vote for a new parliament. By nightfall, at least 20 were killed and over 40 injured." -By Deepa Babington with contributions by Faris al-Mehdawi in Baquba, Aseel Kami and Gideon Long -Reuters.co.uk

20051225

US - Iraq - "A look at U.S. military deaths in Iraq." ... "As of Sunday, Dec. 25, 2005, at least 2,168 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count." ... "Since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 2,029 U.S. military members have died, according to AP's count." -AP via -SeattlePI.NWsource

20051223

Jerry Lewis - Randy "Duke" Cunningham - Government - Military - Money - Law - Politics - California - "Close ties make Rep. Lewis, lobbyist Lowery a potent pair." ... "From powerful positions on the House Appropriations Committee, California [Republican Representative] Rep. Jerry Lewis has greenlighted hundreds of millions of dollars in federal projects for clients of one of his closest friends, lobbyist and former [Republican Represenatative from California] state Congressman Bill Lowery." ... "Meanwhile, Lowery, the partners at his firm [Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White] and their clients have donated 37 percent of the $1.3 million that Lewis' political action committee received in the past six years." ... "One of the defense companies that received federal contracts with [convicted California Republican Representative Randy "Duke"] Cunningham's support was a Lowery client [Brent Wilkes' ADCS Inc.]. And some of the money was disbursed when Cunningham was a member of the defense appropriations subcommittee and Lewis was the committee chairman." ... "Lowery, his partners and their spouses have contributed $135,000 to Lewis' campaigns and political action committee over the past decade, routinely giving the maximum allowed by law. Lowery also organizes and hosts Lewis fundraisers. And many of Lowery's defense-contractor clients contribute to Lewis as part of their lobbying strategy." ... "Taken together, they have contributed $480,000 to Lewis' political action committee since 2000." ... "Last year Lewis used some of that money to wow the Republican leadership with checks for $650,000 in "excess campaign funds" to help maintain Republican control of the House." ... "In 1999 Lewis became chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee, which oversees more discretionary spending than any other congressional body." ... "Despite that early demonstration of fiscal toughness, earmarks in the defense bills exploded on Lewis' watch." ... "Many of the earmarks went to clients of Lowery's firm, which grew even more prosperous when Lewis' principal defense-earmarks gatekeeper, Letitia White, joined the firm in 2003." -By Jerry Kammer with contributions by Denise Davidson, Erin Hobbs and Peter Uribe -CopleyNews.com via -SignOnSanDiego.com
US - Iraq - "Rumsfeld suggests some U.S. troops will be heading home from Iraq." ... "The reductions would bring U.S. troop levels down from about 158,000 to slightly under 130,000. But Rumsfeld warned that "until it's announced, the government's decision hasn't been announced. Therefore it's not final."" -By Richard Sisk -MercuryNews
Government - Military - Terrorism - Civil Liberties - Politics - Florida - "Terror case challenges White House strategy: An appeals court refused the government's request to have Jose Padilla transferred to Florida for a criminal trial." ... "Suddenly, terror suspect Jose Padilla seems a lot more dangerous to the Bush administration." ... "It has nothing to do with his suspected involvement in Al Qaeda bomb plots, analysts say. Rather, the administration worries that the US Supreme Court might agree to hear Mr. Padilla's case and decide one of the most pressing constitutional issues in the war on terrorism. And by all appearances, government lawyers think they might lose." ... "The issue: Does President Bush have the power as commander in chief to order the open-ended military detention of US citizens that he deems enemy combatants?" -By Warren Richey -CSMonitor

20051222

Government - Law - Military - Terrorism - Alaska - Oil - Environment - Health - Education - Jobs - Money - "Senate Extends Patriot Act, Kills Alaska Drilling (Update1)." ... "The U.S. Senate broke a legislative logjam and cleared the way for its holiday departure last night with a series of short-term compromises that extended the Patriot Act and blocked drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge." ... "Democrats prevailed in getting Senate Republican leaders to abandon the oil-drilling plan, which was attached to the defense budget." ... "[House] Lawmakers passed a $142.5 billion budget for health, education and jobs programs that cuts funding from last year's spending plan, sending the measure to Bush for his signature. The House approved the measure 215-213 on Dec. 14." ... "The health budget reduces funding for the No Child Left Behind education initiative, special education and job training. It freezes funding for the National Institutes of Health and low- income heating assistance." -By Catherine Dodge -Bloomberg
Karl Rove - Dick Cheney - Military - Environmental - Political - Business - "Department's Mission Was Undermined From Start." ... "[Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom] Ridge, who had won a Bronze Star as an infantry staff sergeant in Vietnam, knew he might be stepping into another quagmire at DHS. "Part of him was excited," said then-EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] Administrator Christine Todd Whitman. "Part of him thought it was a no-win situation."" ... "Clearly, he could not count on unlimited financial support. And working in the White House, he was already learning he could not count on absolute political support, either." ... "One stark example was the White House's blockade of a Ridge-supported plan to secure large chemical plants. After Sept. 11, Whitman had worked with Ridge on a modest effort to require high-risk plants --especially the 123 factories where a toxic release could endanger at least 1 million people -- to enhance security. But industry groups warned Bush political adviser Karl Rove that giving new regulatory power to the Environmental Protection Agency would be a disaster." ... ""We have a similar set of concerns," Rove wrote to the president of BP Amoco Chemical Co." ... "In an interagency meeting shortly before DHS's birth, White House budget official Philip J. Perry, who also happens to be Cheney's son-in-law, declared the Ridge-Whitman plan dead." (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) -By Christopher Lee with contributions by Spencer S. Hsu and Julie Tate -WashingtonPost
Government - Military - Terrorism - Civil Liberties - Politics - Florida - "Court Bars Transfer of Padilla To Face New Terrorism Charges." ... "A federal appeals court yesterday refused to authorize the transfer of "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla to face new criminal charges, issuing a strongly worded opinion rebuking the Bush administration and its handling of the high-profile terrorism case." ... "In issuing its denial, the court cited the government's changing rationale for Padilla's detention, questioning why it used one set of arguments before federal judges deciding whether it was legal for the military to hold Padilla and another set before the Miami [Florida] grand jury." ... "In requesting the transfer to Justice Department custody, the government suggested that the 4th Circuit vacate its ruling allowing Padilla to be held as an enemy combatant. But the 4th Circuit yesterday also refused to lift the earlier decision and suggested that the Justice Department request was made to avoid further judicial scrutiny." ... "The judges said prosecutors had left "an appearance that the government may be attempting to avoid consideration of our decision by the Supreme Court." They said they welcomed Supreme Court intervention because of the "enormous implications" of the Padilla case." -By Jerry Markon -WashingtonPost

20051221

Iran - Secret - Nuclear - Military - Politics - EU - US - UN - "The West's patience wears thin with Iran's hard line." ... "When European nations resume talks with Iran in Vienna Wednesday over that country's nuclear ambitions, two dangerous new factors are in play. On the one hand, the patience of the Europeans and the United States with Iran is running thin. On the other hand, Iran's newly elected president has shocked a string of nations with some megalomanic pronouncements that if supported by his people would plunge Iran back into isolation. The stage is not set for compromise and consensus." ... "At issue is whether Iran's suspected pursuit of nuclear technology for military purposes is purely for peaceful purposes, as it claims. The European nations and the US doubt that, pointing to a string of deceptive Iranian actions, including hiding from the International Atomic Energy Agency its secret installations to enrich uranium and produce plutonium." -By John Hughes -CSMonitor

20051220

Government - Military - Intelligence - Total Information Awareness - Secrecy - Consumer - Telecommunications -Databases - Privacy - Law -West-Virginia - Dick Cheney - Terrorism - "Bush, Democrats swap charges over his approval of wiretaps." ... "The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, released a letter he wrote to Vice President Dick Cheney on July 17, 2003, the day he learned of the surveillance in a meeting with Cheney, three other lawmakers and the heads of the CIA and NSA. Rockefeller expressed deep misgivings and said the program reminded him of Total Information Awareness, a controversial Pentagon effort to mine credit-card data, cellphone calls and even bank withdrawals to spot terrorist activity." ... ""These concerns were never addressed, and I was prohibited from sharing my views with my colleagues" by secrecy laws, Rockefeller said Monday. He accused the president and his aides of "repeatedly misrepresenting the facts" in recent days and demanded a "full investigation into the legal and operational aspects of the program" now that the program has come to light." -By Todd J. Gillman -DallasNews.com via -SeattleTimes.NWsource

20051219

Government - Military - Intelligence - Privacy - Law - Politics - "Bush's Snoopgate: The president was so desperate to kill The New York Times' eavesdropping story, he summoned the paper's editor and publisher to the Oval Office. But it wasn't just out of concern about national security." ... "The problem was not that the disclosures would compromise national security, as Bush claimed at his press conference. His comparison to the damaging pre-9/11 revelation of Osama bin Laden's use of a satellite phone, which caused bin Laden to change tactics, is fallacious; any Americans with ties to Muslim extremists-in fact, all American Muslims, period-have long since suspected that the U.S. government might be listening in to their conversations. Bush claimed that "the fact that we are discussing this program is helping the enemy." But there is simply no evidence, or even reasonable presumption, that this is so. And rather than the leaking being a "shameful act," it was the work of a patriot inside the government who was trying to stop a presidential power grab." ... "No, Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story-which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year-because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker." -By Jonathan Alter -MSNBC/Newsweek
Afghanistan - US - Military - "Afghanistan Convenes Newly Elected Parliament." ... "An elected Afghan parliament was sworn in today for the first time in more than 35 years, and will face threats from drug lords, rampant corruption and a surge in suicide bombings." ... "President Hamid Karzai, his voice breaking with emotion, said Afghans had won the world's respect with their difficult struggle to build a democracy, but he cautioned that a lot of hard work still lay ahead." ... "Vice President Dick Cheney, and his wife, Lynne, had front-row seats to the opening of parliament, along with U.S. Ambassador Ronald E. Neumann and Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, who commands about 20,000 U.S. troops here. Many of those soldiers are still battling Taliban and other insurgents four years after a U.S. and Afghan forces toppled the Islamic extremists' regime." -By Paul Watson -LAtimes

20051216

Turkey - Military - Law - Authors - History - Media - TV - Censorship - "'Terrorised' writers lament state's assault on free speech: Trial of Turkey's greatest living author is focusing attention on attempts to control public opinion." ... "Ertugrul Kurkcu has been hauled before the judges for saying the wrong thing so many times that he has almost lost count. "Six or seven trials, always acquitted, but I did get a 10-month jail sentence from a military court for translating a Human Rights Watch report," says the veteran leftwing Turkish dissident." ... "He took one case to the European Court of Human Rights last year. The case was annulled and the Turkish government paid him €5,000 compensation." ... "Mr Kurkcu's problem is that he keeps colliding with the country's notion of "Turkishness", and that spells danger for writers, historians and novelists, who bring the wrath of the establishment down on their heads every time they are deemed to have belittled it." ... "A raft of other regulations make it possible for Turkey to muzzle, fine and pressure the publishing industry, newspapers and television stations for stepping out of line. Censorship flourishes, too, through requirements that manuscripts be submitted to state authorities for approval and special licensing arrangements that oblige the books industry to get official stamps before a book can be published." -By Ian Traynor -Guardian.co.uk
Secret - Government - Military - Terrorism - EMail - Telecommunications - Law- Politics - History - "Bush Authorized Domestic Spying: Post-9/11 Order Bypassed Special Court." ... "President Bush signed a secret order in 2002 authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens and foreign nationals in the United States, despite previous legal prohibitions against such domestic spying, sources with knowledge of the program said last night." ... "For more than four years, the NSA tasked other military intelligence agencies to assist its broad-based surveillance effort directed at people inside the country suspected of having terrorist connections, even before Bush signed the 2002 order that authorized the NSA program, according to an informed U.S. official." ... "The effort, which began within days after the attacks, has consisted partly of monitoring domestic telephone conversations, e-mail and even fax communications of individuals identified by the NSA as having some connection to al Qaeda events or figures, or to potential terrorism-related activities in the United States, the official said." ... "It has also involved teams of Defense Intelligence Agency personnel stationed in major U.S. cities conducting the type of surveillance typically performed by the FBI: monitoring the movements and activities -- through high-tech equipment -- of individuals and vehicles, the official said." -By Dan Eggen with contributions by Dafna Linzer and Peter Baker -WashingtonPost

20051215

Government - Military - Terrorism - Intelligence - Prisons - Law - Arizona - "Bush backs down on proposed torture ban." ... "President Bush on Thursday abandoned his opposition to an anti-torture amendment by Sen. John McCain in the face of overwhelming support for the measure in Congress." ... "Bush backed down from a veto threat after being unable to muster support from one-third of either the House or Senate, even though his own Republican Party controls both chambers. The measure by McCain, R-Ariz., is attached to the annual defense spending bill that funds the war on terrorism." ... "The amendment says no one in U.S. government custody, whether prisoner of war or terrorist," shall be subject to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," regardless of where the prisoner is being held." -By John Diamond with contributions by David Jackson -USATODAY
US - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - "Bush Admits Mistakes but Defends War: He accepts responsibility for acting on flawed intelligence but says the invasion was justified. Aides hope his candor will boost his ratings." ... "President Bush said Wednesday that he accepted responsibility for deciding to wage war in Iraq in part on the basis of faulty intelligence, but that he remained convinced history would conclude he had done the right thing." ... "Speaking hours before Iraqis began arriving at the polls to elect a new government, Bush acknowledged miscalculations and mistakes before and after the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003." ... ""It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong," Bush told a group of political leaders and scholars at the nonpartisan Woodrow Wilson Center. "As president, I'm responsible for the decision to go into Iraq, and I'm also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities."" -By Warren Vieth -LAtimes

20051214

Military - Intelligence - Law - Secrets - Arizona - "New Army Rules May Snarl Talks With McCain on Detainee Issue." ... "The Army has approved a new, classified set of interrogation methods that may complicate negotiations over legislation proposed by [Arizona Republican] Senator John McCain to bar cruel and inhumane treatment of detainees in American custody, military officials said Tuesday." ... "The techniques are included in a 10-page classified addendum to a new Army field manual that was forwarded this week to Stephen A. Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence policy, for final approval, they said." ... "The addendum provides dozens of examples and goes into exacting detail on what procedures may or may not be used, and in what circumstances. Army interrogators have never had a set of such specific guidelines that would help teach them how to walk right up to the line between legal and illegal interrogations." -By Eric Schmitt with contributions by Joel Brinkley -NYTimes

20051213

Hurricane Katrina - Disaster - Government - Politics - "Battle brews over a bigger military role: The Pentagon tilts toward taking more authority in major disasters - worrying governors, lawmakers." ... "The lessons learned from hurricane Katrina appear to be putting the Pentagon on a collision course with governors and lawmakers worried about the expanding role of the military in disaster response." ... "Gaining currency at the highest levels of the Pentagon is the idea that during a catastrophic event - either natural or terrorist - the Department of Defense should replace the Department of Homeland Security as the agency in charge of the federal response." ... "In many ways, the notion is limited, affecting only how the federal government deploys its own resources. Yet in a nation founded on a distrust of military control, any suggestion of giving the armed forces greater authority on American soil faces centuries-old skepticism. Moreover, it comes at a time when governors are already feeling besieged by an administration that, they feel, is too eager to wrest power from them." -By Mark Sappenfield -CSMonitor

20051212

US - Iraq - World - Intelligence - Politics - "Peace-making a core mission in new Pentagon policy." ... "After years of internal debate, the Pentagon has embraced a fundamental change in policy which calls for the U.S. armed forces to be equally adept at waging war and making peace." ... "The new course, announced in a Pentagon directive, follows widespread criticism of the conduct of the war in Iraq, where U.S. forces scored a swift, decisive victory over conventional opponents but found themselves ill-equipped to deal with post-combat chaos and an increasingly effective insurgency." ... "The directive says that establishing order and security, restoring essential services and meeting the humanitarian needs of the population of a vanquished country were a "core U.S. military mission.""" ... "The directive specifies the need for better language skills, more regional expertise, better intelligence and counterintelligence, more emphasis on studying foreign cultures and more coordination with foreign governments, international organizations and nongovernmental organizations." (1, 2) -By Bernd Debusmannn -Reuters

dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/html/300005.htm

Iran - Religious - Nuclear - Military - Terrorism - Politics - "Iran's not-so-secret hatred." ... "Since taking office, Ahmadinejad has pushed Iran further into hatred, intolerance and theocratic tyranny--quite a feat in a repressive country that funds terrorists around the world. He has sacked many of the pragmatists in the government and replaced them with hard-liners. There are signs that even the despotic mullahs who run the country are getting nervous. They reportedly moved recently to strip him of some of his power." ... "If only the threat from Iran were limited to fierce rhetoric." ... "Just a few days ago, Mohamed ElBaradei, the ultra-cautious head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, hinted that Iran could be a lot closer to developing a bomb than was thought previously. He said the international community is "losing patience" with Iran. Robert Joseph, a top State Department official, said Friday that Iran is "very aggressive, very determined to develop nuclear weapons."" -ChicagoTribune
US - Iraq - Military - Politics - "Bush Estimates 30,000 Iraqis Killed in War." ... "In a rare, unscripted moment, President Bush on Monday estimated 30,000 Iraqis have died in the war, the first time he has publicly acknowledged the high price Iraqis have paid in the push for democracy." ... "``I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis,'' Bush said. ``We've lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq.''" ... "The U.S. military does not release its tally of Iraqi dead, but there is some consensus from outside experts that roughly 30,000 is a credible number. White House counselor Dan Bartlett said Bush was not giving an official figure but simply repeating public estimates." -By Nedra Pickler -AP via -Guardian.co.uk
Iraq - Law - US - Military - "Early Voting Begins in Iraq; Nine Killed." ... "Thousands of Iraqi forces will be protecting polling stations, with U.S. and other coalition troops ready to help in case of a major attack." ... "Most attention has focused on Sunni Arabs, who largely boycotted the Jan. 30 election to protest the continued U.S. military presence. That enabled the Shiites and Kurds to dominate parliament, a move that sharpened communal tensions and fueled the Sunni-dominated insurgency." ... "This time, more Sunni Arab candidates are in the race, and changes in the election law to allocate most seats by province instead of based on a party's nationwide total all but guaranteed a sizable Sunni bloc in the next assembly." -By Qassim Abdul-Zahra -AP via -Guardian.co.uk

20051209

Books - US - Iraq - Military - Religion - "Iraq war debate enters new phase." ... "You might not expect a West Point graduate, Vietnam vet and career soldier to come out with a book titled "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Addicted to War." But that's what Andrew Bacevich, who now directs the program in International Relations at Boston University, has done." ... "A self-described conservative, Bacevich argues that Americans have fallen prey to a "military metaphysic." By that he means all international problems are seen as military problems and the likelihood for finding a solution except through military means is discounted. The result is war as a permanent condition with the only acceptable plan for peace a loaded pistol. One has only to consider the relative weight given to the Pentagon and the State Department to get the point." ... "As a pastor what most interested me is Bacevich's careful tracing of the role of leading religious conservatives in promoting a "crusade theory of warfare," to replace the more long-standing and cautious doctrine of just war. A crusade theory of warfare provides the mindset and justification for offensive military action, for so-called preventive wars like the current war in Iraq. The just war ethical tradition mandates the use of force for defensive, not offensive, purposes." -By Anthony B. Robinson -SeattlePI.NWsource

20051208

Iran - Israel - Saudi Arabia - Palestine - Germany - Austria - Military - History - "Update 2: Iranian President: Move Israel to Europe." ... "Iran's hard-liner president, who has called for Israel's destruction, said Thursday that the Jewish state should be moved to Europe if the West wants to make up for the Holocaust." ... "Speaking to reporters at an Islamic summit in the Muslim holy city of Mecca [Saudi Arabia], Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad implied that European countries backed the founding of Israel in the Middle East in 1948 out of guilt over the Holocaust." ... ""Some European countries insist on saying that during World War II, Hitler burned millions of Jews and put them in concentration camps," Ahmadinejad said. "Any historian, commentator or scientist who doubts that is taken to prison or gets condemned."" ... ""Let's give some land to the Zionists in Europe or in Germany or Austria, so they can have their government there," he said. "They faced injustice in Europe, so why do the repercussions fall on the Palestinians? Offer a piece of land from Europe, and we will back this decision and will not attack this government."" -AP via -Forbes

20051207

Japan - Iraq - "Japan extends Iraq troops mission: Japan has extended its military deployment in Iraq for another year." ... "The decision, announced after a meeting of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's cabinet, means the troops can stay until 14 December 2006." ... "Japan has about 500 troops in Samawa in southern Iraq, training Iraqi security forces and helping with reconstruction, but not engaging in combat roles." ... "However, there was media speculation that the troops could be pulled out before their new mandate is fully up." ... "The Japanese troops could be pulled out before the new expiration date if conditions change, either on the ground, or in the make-up of the coalition forces, Kyodo news agency said on Wednesday."-BBC /News
US - Iraq - Military - Terrorism - Intelligence - Opinion - Economy - "Poll: Bush's Ratings Bump Up." ... "The President’s overall approval rating has risen from 35 percent in October to 40 percent now, and his ratings on handling the economy and the war in Iraq have also improved." ... "The Bush Administration continues to face criticism from many Democrats and other war opponents about the way pre-war intelligence was handled, and whether there truly was a compelling connection between Iraq and the terror threat to the United States. Fifty-two percent of Americans think the Bush Administration deliberately misled the public in making the case for war, while 44 percent say it did not." ... "An overwhelming majority of Americans think this Congress should be asking questions about pre-war intelligence. Fifty-six percent call it a very important line of questioning, and another 24 percent call it somewhat important." -CBSNews

20051206

US - Germany - Afghanistan - Secret - Military - Terrorism - Intelligence - Prisons - Law - Politics - VA - "German citizen held in secret prison sues ex-CIA director." ... "A German citizen whom the CIA abducted from Macedonia and held in a secret prison in Afghanistan for five months sued former CIA Director George Tenet on Tuesday, saying he'd been tortured." ... "[Khaled] Al-Masri's lawsuit, filed by ACLU lawyers in Alexandria, Va. [Virginia], sheds light on the CIA's secret practice of "extraordinary renditions," using special teams to capture suspected terrorists and transport them to countries that practice torture or to one of the agency's reported secret prisons in Eastern Europe or Asia." ... "In the four years since the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA has captured about 3,000 people, including some top al-Qaida leaders, according to a Washington Post report. Intelligence committees in Congress have been told that the CIA's inspector general is investigating possible "erroneous renditions."" ... "U.S. officials refuse to confirm or deny the existence of secret prisons." -By Frank Davies and Warren P. Strobel -MercuryNews
US - Iraq - Niger - Lewis Libby - Dick Cheney - Military - Politics - Law - "Plame Is Set to Leave the CIA." ... "[Valerie] Plame, 42, worked undercover for the CIA tracking weapons proliferation but saw her clandestine career imperiled after she was identified as an agency operative in the summer of 2003 in a syndicated column by Robert Novak." ... "Plame is married to Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador, who was sent by the CIA to Africa in February 2002 to evaluate claims that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger. Wilson found the claims unverifiable and publicly criticized the intelligence used by the administration to justify the war against Iraq." ... "Administration officials began a campaign to discredit Wilson and identified Plame in conversations with several journalists, potentially violating a law against unmasking undercover agents. A federal grand jury recently indicted former [Vice President Dick] Cheney aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on charges that he repeatedly lied to investigators." -By Richard B. Schmitt -LAtimes
Japan - Iraq - "Japan Should Keep Troops in Iraq, Al-Jaafari Says (Update1)." ... "Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al- Jaafari said Japan should extend its deployment of troops in his country." ... "Japan has about 600 troops in Samawah helping rebuild hospitals and schools and their term ends on Dec. 14. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi intends to extend the mission for another year, Kyodo News reported today, citing a copy of the government's new deployment plan." -By John Brinsley -Bloomberg
Iran - Military - Disaster - "More than 100 killed in Tehran plane crash." ... "At least 110 are dead after an Iranian military aircraft crashed into a 10-storey building in a densely populated district of Tehran [Iran] on Tuesday." ... "According to reports, the C-130 transport plane crashed into the building while trying to make an emergency landing at Mehrabad international airport and exploded in a ball of fire." -CTV.ca
Iraq - Police - Military - "Baghdad Bombers Kill at Least 27 at Police Academy (Update2)." ... "At least 27 Iraqi police officers and students died and 50 were hurt when two suicide bombers attacked a police academy in eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said." ... "Earlier reports that the bombers were women and walked into a classroom were ``erroneous,'' according to the statement." ... "The attack was the deadliest against Iraqi forces since Feb. 28, when a suicide car bomber struck police and Iraqi National Guard recruits in Hillah, a mostly Shiite Muslim city 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of Baghdad, killing 125." -By Caroline Alexander -Bloomberg
Government - Military -Intelligence - Prisons - Telecommunications - Politics - "Government gets 5 "F's," 12 "D's" in last 9/11 report." ... "The federal government received failing and mediocre grades Monday from the former Sept. 11 commission, whose members said in a final report that the Bush administration and Congress have balked at enacting numerous reforms that could save American lives and prevent another terrorist attack on U.S. soil." ... "The group also said there has been little progress in forcing federal agencies to share intelligence and terrorism information and sharply criticized government efforts to secure weapons of mass destruction or establish clear standards for the proper treatment of U.S. detainees." ... "The panel also sharply criticized Congress for failing to enable first responders to communicate easily by setting aside part of the broadcast spectrum for their use. A pending budget bill would open part of the spectrum for first responders in 2009, but the Sept. 11 panel said that date is "too distant given the urgency of the threat."" -By Dan Eggen-WashingtonPost via -SeattleTimes.NWsource

20051205

US - Pakistan- Egypt - Terrorism - Intelligence - Aircraft - Robots - "Drone said to have killed Al Qaeda's No. 3: If true, Abu Hamza Rabia would be the third to hold the post and be taken out." ... "In the dead of night, the US Predator aircraft swooped in over the [Pakistan] hamlet of Haisori, locking in on an abandoned house five travelers had quietly entered just hours before, according to neighbors. Then, they say, the drone fired on the stone and mud dwelling for about eight minutes, reducing it to rubble." ... "Pakistani officials say the airstrike, which took place last Thursday in tribal region of North Waziristan, killed five people, including Al Qaeda's No. 3 man, Egyptian Abu Hamza Rabia. Conflicting reports cast some uncertainty on Mr. Rabia's death and his exact rank, however." ... "If Islamabad's account holds true it would represent the third Al Qaeda "No. 3" to be killed or captured in as many years. Taking out the terrorist network's operations manager represents an intelligence victory with obvious short-term gains in disrupting terrorist planning, but also points to Al Qaeda's ability to bounce back from these losses in the past, say analysts." -By Gretchen Peters -CSMonitor

20051202

US - Iraq - Politics - "10 Marines killed near Falluja: Marines conducting 'counter-insurgency' operations in Falluja, Ramadi." ... "A roadside bomb Thursday killed 10 Marines while they were on "foot patrol near Falluja," the Marine Corps said Friday." ... "Eleven Marines were also wounded in the incident, and four of them have not yet returned to duty." ... "Marines have been conducting "counterinsurgency operations" in the Falluja and Ramadi areas ahead of the December 15 elections." ... "This brings the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq to 2,123." -Contributed to by Arwa Damon and Mohammed Tawfeeq -CNN

20051130

US - Iraq - Prison - Politics - "General: Americans Must Stop Iraqi Abusers." ... "The nation's top military man, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, said American troops in Iraq have a duty to intercede and stop abuse of prisoners by Iraqi security personnel." ... "When Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld contradicted Pace, the general stood firm." ... "Rumsfeld told the general he believed Pace meant to say the U.S. soldiers had to report the abuse, not stop it." ... "Pace stuck to his original statement." ... ""If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it," Pace told his civilian boss." -By William C. Mann -AP via -WashingtonPost
US - Iraq - Military - GOV- Secrets - "U.S. Military Covertly Pays to Run Stories in Iraqi Press: Troops write articles presented as news reports. Some officers object to the practice." ... "As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq." ... "The articles, written by U.S. military "information operations" troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times." ... "Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country." ... "Though the articles are basically factual, they present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments, officials said." (1, 2, 3) -By Mark Mazzetti and Borzou Daragahi -LAtimes
US- Iraq - Police - Politics - "Bush Offers 'Strategy for Victory' in Iraq: The president again rejects a timetable for troop withdrawal." ... "Moving to deflect criticism of the war in Iraq and lay out new conditions that would allow the departure of U.S. troops, President Bush said today he would settle for "nothing less than complete victory" there, and defined that success as creating an Iraq in which Iraqis could live in peace protected by their own security forces." ... "The president devoted much of the roughly 35-minute speech to presenting a picture of Iraqi police and military units increasingly being able to carry on the campaign against those he called "rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists."" ... "But he did not address three ongoing concerns about the security forces: their de facto division into three segments made up separately of Kurds, Shiites and Sunni; the fact that some Sunnis are accepting the U.S. training and then joining the insurgency; and the infiltration of the Iraqi government's security forces by members of ethnic militia loyal to leaders other than those of the government." -By James Gerstenzang, Tyler Marshall and Mark Mazzetti -LAtimes

20051128

California - Military - Business - Politics - "Bribed congressman resigns, pleads guilty to charges." ... "The co-conspirators are not named in the charging documents. Public records show relationships between [California Republican Randy "Duke"] Cunningham and two contractors whom he helped get Pentagon work: MZM and ADCS. MZM's former president, Mitchell Wade, bought Cunningham's former house, allowing him to buy a more expensive house in Rancho Santa Fe. Brent Wilkes, founder of ADCS, raised $105,250 in personal, company and employee campaign contributions for Cunningham during the past decade. Neither Wade nor Wilkes has been charged with a crime. Their lawyers declined to comment." ... "ADCS landed more than $90 million in government contracts since 1997, when Cunningham helped the company get one of its first Pentagon contracts. Wilkes also provided a corporate jet for Cunningham to use on fundraising trips, campaign-finance records show." -By Jim Drinkard and Matt Kelley -USATODAY
Samuel Alito - New York - Government - Military - Business - Politics - Secrets - "Alito dueled with government ethics chief: As Justice Department lawyer, court nominee fought over disclosure rules." ... "As a Justice Department lawyer, Samuel Alito quarreled with the head of the government ethics office over proposed requirements on personal financial disclosures, according to documents released Monday." ... "Alito's 1987 letter was issued around the time the ethics office said his boss, Attorney General Edwin Meese III, had violated financial disclosure requirements over a $60,000 investment with a businessman who was tied to Wedtech, a Bronx, N.Y. [New York], defense contractor that was caught up in a wide-ranging federal investigation." -AP via -MSNBC
California - Military - Politics - "San Diego-area Rep. Cunningham pleads guilty to bribery, resigns." ... "[California Republican] Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham tearfully resigned Monday after pleading guilty to bribery and admitting he took $2.4 million to steer defense contracts to conspirators using his leadership position on a congressional subcommittee." ... "Authorities said Cunningham secured defense contracts worth tens of millions of dollars for the people who bribed him. The case grew from an investigation into the sale of his home in wealthy Del Mar to a wide-ranging conspiracy involving payments in cash, vacations and antiques from unidentified conspirators." -By Elliot Spagat with contributions by Erica Werner -AP via -MercuryNews
California - Political - Military - Business - "Rep. Randy 'Duke' Cunningham Pleads Guilty, Resigns." ... "[California Republican] Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham resigned his office today after pleading guilty to fraud, conspiracy to commit bribery and tax evasion in a political corruption case." ... "U.S. District Judge Larry Burns accepted the pleas from Cunningham, 63, including the congressman's admission in federal court that he had accepted bribes in exchange for performance of his official duties." ... "According to court papers, Cunningham "demanded and received" a bribe from a defense contractor who paid an inflated price for Cunningham's home in exchange for official favors." -By Tony Perry -LAtimes via -Newsday.com

20051127

Government - Military - Intelligence - Terrorism - Privacy - Law - Civil Liberties - Politics - Oregon - "Pentagon Expanding Its Domestic Surveillance Activity: Fears of Post-9/11 Terrorism Spur Proposals for New Powers." ... "The Pentagon has pushed legislation on Capitol Hill that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information gathered about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies, as long as the data is deemed to be related to foreign intelligence. Backers say the measure is needed to strengthen investigations into terrorism or weapons of mass destruction." ... "The proposals, and other Pentagon steps aimed at improving its ability to analyze counterterrorism intelligence collected inside the United States, have drawn complaints from civil liberties advocates and a few members of Congress, who say the Defense Department's push into domestic collection is proceeding with little scrutiny by the Congress or the public." ... ""We are deputizing the military to spy on law-abiding Americans in America. This is a huge leap without even a [congressional] hearing," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore. [Oregon]), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a recent interview." (1, 2) -By Walter Pincus with contributions by Dan Eggen -WashingtonPost

20051125

Texas - Thanksgiving - US - Iraq - Military - Politics - Cindy Sheehan - "Sheehan Back in Texas for War Protest." ... "The mother of a fallen soldier whose vigil against the war in Iraq outside President Bush's ranch returned to Texas, saying she is "heartbroken" that the troops are not home." ... "[Cindy] Sheehan asked protesters to return to Crawford this week during Bush's family Thanksgiving gathering. She was unknown when she set up camp outside Bush's ranch during his August vacation, but as the vigil drew thousands, she attracted national attention." -AP via -CBSNews

20051123

Military - Terrorism - Prison - Florida - South Carolina - "Longtime US detainee indicted: Charges make no mention of 'dirty bomb' plot." ... "Jose Padilla, the American citizen held in a military prison for more than three years without charges filed against him, has been indicted for allegedly providing support to Al Qaeda and conspiring to attack US civilians overseas, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced yesterday." ... "The indictment of Padilla and four codefendants by a Miami [Florida] grand jury on Nov. 17 made no reference to his alleged involvement in a plot to detonate a radiological device -- a so-called dirty bomb -- in the United States, the government's original rationale for holding Padilla in a brig on a US Navy base in South Carolina." ... "But the indictment, which transfers Padilla from military to federal custody, removes him from judicial limbo, where he has languished since President Bush designated him an ''enemy combatant," stripping him of his right to a trial in a civilian court." -By Bryan Bender -Boston/Globe

20051120

Dick Cheney - GOV - Military - Politics - "Powell aide: Torture 'guidance' from VP: Former staff chief says Cheney's 'flexibility' helped lead to abuse." ... "Retired U.S. Army Col. Larry Wilkerson, who served as former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, told CNN that the practice of torture may be continuing in U.S.-run facilities." ... ""There's no question in my mind that we did. There's no question in my mind that we may be still doing it," Wilkerson said on CNN's "Late Edition."" ... "There's no question in my mind where the philosophical guidance and the flexibility in order to do so originated -- in the vice president of the United States' office," he said. "His implementer in this case was [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld and the Defense Department."" -CNN

20051119

US - Iraq - Religion - Military - "Series of blasts kills nearly 100 in Iraq: Mosques, hotel area targeted." ... "Suicide bombers killed nearly 100 people yesterday in one of the deadliest days of Iraq's insurgency, bringing houses down on sleeping families in Baghdad and blowing up Shi'ite Muslim worshipers in two mosques in the eastern part of the country just as the victims turned their faces up to the preachers to hear their Friday sermons." ... "Nationwide, the attacks were the deadliest since Sept. 14, when at least 14 insurgent bombings in Baghdad killed more than 160 people. Al Qaeda in Iraq was believed to have been involved in at least the Baghdad blasts yesterday. The insurgent group said in a statement that the bombings represented retaliation for a US military offensive still underway in far western Iraq." ... "As in the September attacks, most of the victims yesterday were civilians." ... "" -By Ellen Knickmeyer and Naseer Nouri -WashingtonPost via -BostonGlobe
US - Iraq - Military - "House rejects Iraq pullout." ... "In a maneuver to strike at Iraq war critics, the Republican-led House of Representatives engineered a vote on Friday on a resolution to pull U.S. troops immediately from Iraq, which was defeated nearly unanimously." ... "Democrats denounced it as a political stunt and an attack on Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a leading Democratic military hawk who stunned his colleagues on Thursday by calling for troops to be withdrawn from Iraq as quickly as possible." ... "Unlike Murtha's proposal calling for troops to be withdrawn "as soon as practicable," which he expected would be about six months, the Republican resolution said deployment of the U.S. forces should be "terminated immediately."" -Reuters

20051117

China - Taiwan - Tech - "Chinese build a high-tech army within an army." ... "In a surprisingly short time, China has accomplished two feats. One, it has focused its energy and wealth on creating an army within an army. It has devoted huge amounts of capital to create a small high-tech army within its old 2.2 million-member rifle and shoe-leather force." ... "The specialty of this modern force, about 15 percent of the PLA [People's Liberation Army], is to conduct lightning attacks on smaller foes, using an all-out missile attack designed to paralyze, and a modern sea and air attack coordinated by high-tech communications. In other words, this new modern force is designed to attack Taiwan." ... "Second, China has taken painful but successful steps to create a "defense industrial base," or weapons-building capability. The PLA has improved its factory quality control and its ability to adapt foreign technology. It is bringing an indigenous small-wing F-10 fighter off the production line, and it is moving rapidly toward a "blue water" Navy with ships built in China." -By Robert Marquand -CSMonitor

20051116

US - Iraq - Prisons - Military - "U.S. Troops Discover 173 Abused Detainees In Iraq Basement: Sunni Arab prisoners were allegedly tortured by Iraqi captors." ... "The same day that the [US] Senate passed a resolution barring cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees in the war on terror, the Iraqi government said Tuesday that it has ordered an investigation into the alleged abuse of 173 detainees discovered by American troops over the weekend in the basement of an Interior Ministry building in the Baghdad suburb of Jadriya." ... "For many Iraqis, the revelation of the secret torture center brought back painful memories of the brutality of the Sunni-dominated Saddam Hussein regime, blamed for killing hundreds of thousands of Shiites and Kurds[.]" ... "American officials were quick to condemn the treatment of the prisoners with the American Embassy and U.S. military command calling the situation "totally unacceptable," agreeing with Iraqi officials that "mistreatment of detainees will not be tolerated."" -By Gil Kaufman -MTV.com /News

20051115

GOV - Military - Money - "Senate approves $491 billion defense bill." ... "The Senate unanimously passed legislation on Tuesday authorizing $491.6 billion in defense programs, including policies on treatment of detainees likely to prompt a dispute with the House of Representatives." -Reuters
US - Iraq - Military - Politics - Alaska - "Greenfield: Bush trying to turn the table on Dems: Campaign-style rhetoric comes during eroding support for Iraq war." ... "President Bush has gone on the offensive, stepping up his political rhetoric in the face of the Iraq war's growing unpopularity." ... "In an address Monday at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, President Bush accused war critics of "playing politics with this issue and ... sending mixed signals to our troops and the enemy."" ... "CNN Senior Analyst Jeff Greenfield talked with anchor Wolf Blitzer after the speech, analyzing the Bush administration's fresh strategy to target opponents of his Iraq policies." -CNN
US - Iraq - Military - "Senate Urges Bush to Report Progress on Ending War (Update2)." ... "The Senate today called on President George W. Bush to explain his strategy for ending the war in Iraq and report every three months on progress until all U.S. troops stationed there are redeployed." ... "The measure calls on the administration to make 2006 a year of significant political and military transition in Iraq that will allow a phased reduction of U.S. forces." ... "None of these measures are in the House version of the defense authorization bill, which means they'll be the subject of negotiation when the two chambers hammer out compromise legislation." -By Jeff St.Onge -Bloomberg
US - Iraq- Vietnam - Military - Political - History - "Poll: American attitudes on Iraq similar to Vietnam era." ... "There are enormous differences between the war in Iraq and the one in Vietnam that defined a generation. The current conflict hasn't lasted as long, taken nearly as many American lives or sparked the sort of massive protests that became common in the '60s and '70s." ... "But when it comes to public opinion, Americans' attitudes toward Iraq and the proper course ahead are remarkably similar to public attitudes toward Vietnam in the summer of 1970, a pivotal year in that conflict and a time of enormous domestic unrest." ... "Some political scientists and Vietnam War historians predict the Iraq war, like the one in Southeast Asia a quarter-century ago, will shape American attitudes long after it's over." -By Susan Page with contributions by Andrea Stone -USATODAY

20051113

US - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - Politics - "The Right Way in Iraq." ... "I was wrong." ... "Almost three years ago we went into Iraq to remove what we were told -- and what many of us believed and argued -- was a threat to America. But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when our forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The intelligence was deeply flawed and, in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda." ... "It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake. It has been hard to say these words because those who didn't make a mistake -- the men and women of our armed forces and their families -- have performed heroically and paid a dear price." ... "The world desperately needs moral leadership from America, and the foundation for moral leadership is telling the truth." ... "While we can't change the past, we need to accept responsibility, because a key part of restoring America's moral leadership is acknowledging when we've made mistakes or been proven wrong -- and showing that we have the creativity and guts to make it right." -By John Edwards-WashingtonPost

20051112

US - Iraq - Secret - Military - Terrorism - Politics - Law - "Asterisks Dot White House's Iraq Argument." ... "President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence." ... "But Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions." ... [Furthermore] "... Bush does not share his most sensitive intelligence, such as the President's Daily Brief, with lawmakers. Also, the National Intelligence Estimate summarizing the intelligence community's views about the threat from Iraq was given to Congress just days before the vote to authorize the use of force in that country." ... "In addition, there were doubts within the intelligence community not included in the NIE. And even the doubts expressed in the NIE could not be used publicly by members of Congress because the classified information had not been cleared for release. For example, the NIE view that Hussein would not use weapons of mass destruction against the United States or turn them over to terrorists unless backed into a corner was cleared for public use only a day before the Senate vote." -By Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus-WashingtonPost

20051111

Bill Frist - Secret- Military - Prisons - Law - "Frist concerned more about leaks than secret prisons." ... "Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says he is more concerned about the leak of information regarding secret CIA detention centers than activity in the prisons themselves." ... "Frist told reporters Thursday that while he believed illegal activity should not take place at detention centers, he believes the leak itself poses a greater threat to national security and is "not concerned about what goes on" behind the prison walls." -AP via -CNN
US - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - Religious - Politics - "Poll: Majority questions Bush administration ethics." ... "Most Americans say they aren't impressed by the ethics and honesty of the Bush administration, already under scrutiny for its justifications for an unpopular war in Iraq and its role in the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity." ... "Almost six in 10 — 57 percent — said they do not think the Bush administration has high ethical standards and the same portion says President Bush is not honest, an AP-Ipsos poll found. Just over four in 10 say the administration has high ethical standards and that Bush is honest. Whites, Southerners and evangelicals were most likely to believe Bush is honest." -AP via -HoustonChronicle.com
US - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - Opinion - History - Pennsylvania - "Bush assails Iraq critics as skewing war history." ... "President George W. Bush lashed out at critics of his Iraq policy Friday, accusing them of trying to rewrite history about the decision to go to war and saying their criticism was undercutting U.S. forces in battle." ... ""While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decisions or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began," the president said in a Veterans Day speech in Pennsylvania." ... "Bush delivered his speech as part of an effort to shore up his credibility as he faces growing public skepticism about Iraq and accusations by Democrats and others that he led the nation into war on false pretenses." ... "Those accusations seem to be making a dent in public confidence in him, as public opinion polls show more people questioning the president's honesty about Iraq and about whether American troops should remain in the fight." -By Maria Newman -NYTimes via -IHT.com
US - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - Political - History - Pennsylvania - "Newsview: Bush Returns to Campaign Playbook." ... "President Bush seems to be turning the clock back to Election Day 2004, parrying with ex-rival John Kerry and harshly questioning his critics' commitment to U.S. troops." ... "You can't blame him for being nostalgic for better political times, when most Americans felt he was a strong, honest leader and gave him the benefit of the doubt on Iraq." ... "That's certainly not the sentiment these days. With his approval ratings plunging, even some Republican leaders are showing signs of abandoning Bush's listing ship." ... ""Mistakes were made," Republican Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania said Friday of the war effort." ... "When the president visited Pennsylvania to defend his Iraq policies on Friday, Santorum kept his distance, literally and rhetorically. He was 120 miles away, telling reporters the war in Iraq has been "less than optimal" and that "maybe some blame could be laid" at the White House." -By Ron Fournier -AP via-WashingtonPost
US - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - History - "Bush Fires Back at Critics of Iraq War." ... "Knocked on the defensive over allegations that he launched the Iraq war based on faulty intelligence, President Bush accused his critics today of trying to rewrite the history of how and why the war began." ... ""Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war," he added. "These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs. They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessments of Saddam Hussein."" ... "The bipartisan Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction the panel headed by Judge Laurence H. Silberman and former Sen. Charles S. Robb (D-Va.) that examined the pre-war intelligence reported that U.S. intelligence "was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments" about Iraq's illicit weapons." ... ""This was a major intelligence failure," the panel members wrote." ... "However, it found no evidence that White House officials or other administration figures pressured intelligence analysts to shade or change their reports for political reasons." (1, 2) -By Warren Vieth and James Gerstenzang -LAtimes

20051109

California - Virginia - Political - Business - Law - Privacy - Secret - Intelligence - "Secret military spending gets little oversight." ... "A USA TODAY analysis of MZM-related campaign contributions shows how the company's growth and its political activities became intertwined at key moments. In more than 30 instances, donations from MZM's political action committee or company employees went to two members of the House Appropriations Committee — [California Republican Randy] Cunningham and Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va. [Virginia] — in the days surrounding key votes or contract awards that helped MZM grow." ... "For example, MZM's political action committee gave Cunningham $5,000 in 2003 the day before his appointment to a congressional panel negotiating the final version of the defense budget. Ten days later, the day after the House passed the final Pentagon spending bill, Wade gave Cunningham $2,000." ... "Both lawmakers sit on the subcommittee overseeing the Pentagon's spending and have acknowledged putting language in bills that created or expanded contracts that went to MZM." -By Matt Kelley and Jim Drinkard -USATODAY
Hawaii - Military - Flying - Intelligence - "Stealth engineer facing federal indictment." ... "A federal grand jury in Honolulu has returned a six-count indictment against a B-Two stealth bomber engineer already accused of selling U-S military secrets to foreign countries." -AP via KPUA

20051107

US - Iraq - Syria - "Troops Fend Off Attacks in West: Four U.S. Soliders Die in Suicide Strike South of Baghdad." ... "U.S. and Iraqi troops battled house to house and street to street in the border town of Husaybah on Monday in the third day of a campaign to clear out insurgents and stop the flow of foreign arms and fighters from Syria into Iraq, the U.S. military said." ... "Troops "continue to be attacked by small groups of terrorists," the military said, adding that there had been four incidents of insurgents assaulting U.S. Marines and Iraqi soldiers from inside mosques and one attack from inside a school." -By John Ward Anderson-WashingtonPost
US - Iraq - Dick Cheney - Military - Intelligence - Politics - Listen - "Cheney Positions on Iraq, Detainees Under Scrutiny." ... "Criminal charges against former White House aide I. Lewis Libby have focused new attention on the man he worked for. Vice President Dick Cheney's support for the Iraq war and for exempting detainees in the war on terror from the conventional rules of treatment and interrogation has brought him in conflict with strong forces elsewhere in the government, including Congress." -By Don Gonyea -NPR /News
US - World - Dick Cheney - Military - Intelligence - Politics - Law - Arizona - "Cheney Fights for Detainee Policy: As Pressure Mounts to Limit Handling Of Terror Suspects, He Holds Hard Line." ... "Over the past year, Vice President Cheney has waged an intense and largely unpublicized campaign to stop Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department from imposing more restrictive rules on the handling of terrorist suspects, according to defense, state, intelligence and congressional officials." ... "Just last week, Cheney showed up at a Republican senatorial luncheon to lobby lawmakers for a CIA exemption to an amendment by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz. [Arizona]) that would ban torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners. The exemption would cover the CIA's covert "black sites" in several Eastern European democracies and other countries where key al Qaeda captives are being kept." (1, 2) -By Dana Priest and Robin Wright with contributions by Charles Babington and Josh White-WashingtonPost
US - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Military - Terrorism - "Supreme Court to rule on Guantánamo trials." ... "The US Supreme Court agreed on Monday to rule on whether President George W. Bush has the power to use specially established military commissions to try detainees held in the war on terrorism." ... "The court's decision to hear the case will delay further the Pentagon's efforts to find a legal mechanism for dealing with hundreds of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, some of whom have been held there for nearly four years." -By By Edward Alden -FT.com via -MSNBC

20051104

EU - US - Poland - Romania - Military - Terrorism - Secrets - "EU Accepts Polish, Romanian Denials of Secret Jails (Update1)." ... "The European Union's executive agency said it is satisfied with Poland's and Romania's denials that the U.S. is running secret terrorist jails on their soil, saying there's no proof of human rights violations." ... "The Polish and Romanian governments rebutted reports in the Washington Post and Financial Times, citing U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, that the Central Intelligence Agency has operated covert interrogation centers in those countries." -By John Rega -Bloomberg
US - Iraq - Listen - "Attacks on Road to Baghdad Airport Decrease." ... "Incidents of violence on the road to Baghdad's airport are on the decline. The U.S. Army attributes the downturn in attacks to new, more-comprehensive security operations. Jackie Spinner of The Washington Post tagged along with the unit charged with securing the road." -WashingtonPost-NPR /News
US - Iraq - Military - Politics - Listen - "Former Aide's Criticisms Ignite Iraq War Debate." ... "The former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell has accused the administration of allowing a small group of senior officials to control the pre- Iraq war intelligence and post-war planning." -PBS /NewsHour

20051102

US - Iraq - Military -Secrets - Politics - "Democrats Force Secret Senate Session: Democrats Force Secret Senate Session to Highlight Differences Over How Iraq Intelligence Handled." ... "Unable to win their way with votes, outnumbered Democrats used a rarely invoked Senate rule to force a secret session as a way to dramatize their assertions that the Bush administration misused intelligence in the run-up to war in Iraq." ... "Republicans angrily derided the use of Rule 21 which dates back to 1795 as a political stunt but agreed two hours later to have a bipartisan group check on how the Senate Intelligence Committee is coming along in its investigation of prewar intelligence." ... "The Senate is authorized to have secret sessions by the Constitution." (1, 2) -By Liz Sidoti -AP via -ABCNEWS.com
Dick Cheney - Secret - Military - Terrorism - Intelligence- Prisons - "Bush adviser says policy forbids torture." ... "President Bush's directive banning the torture of terror suspects applies to all prisoners -even if held in a secret prison reportedly set up by the CIA for its most important al-Qaida captives, a senior administration official [National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley] said Wednesday." ... "Led by Vice President Dick Cheney, the Bush administration is floating a proposal that would allow the president to exempt covert agents outside the Defense Department from a Senate-approved ban on torturing detainees in U.S. custody or weakening the prohibition." -AP via -SeattlePI .NWsource
US - Afghanistan - Thailand - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Military - Terrorism - Secret - Prisons - Law - Noteworthy - "CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons: Debate Is Growing Within Agency About Legality and Morality of Overseas System Set Up After 9/11." ... "The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement." ... "The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents." ... "The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions." ... "It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials." (1, 2, 3, 4) -By Dana Priest with contributions by Julie Tate -WashingtonPost
US - Iraq - Military - Politics - Kansas - "White House ducks prewar intel questions." ... "The White House sought to deflect politically charged questions Wednesday about President Bush's use of prewar intelligence in Iraq, saying Democrats, too, had concluded Saddam Hussein was a threat." ... "Democrats sought assurances that Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan. [Kansas], would complete the second phase of an investigation of the administration's prewar intelligence - as he said he was doing anyway." ... "A six-member task force - three members from each party - was appointed to review the Intelligence Committee's work and report to their respective leaders by Nov. 14." -By Liz Sidoti -AP via -SeattlePI .NWsource
US - Iraq - Lewis Libby - Dick Cheney - Military - Intelligence - Nevada - "Secret Senate session keeps up pressure on Bush over Iraq war." ... "Democrats accuse rivals of colluding on WMD reports." ... "In an attempt to keep pressure on the Bush administration that drew a furious reaction from Republicans, the Democratic leader, Harry Reid [Nevada], said the American people and US troops deserved to know the details of how the country became engaged in the war, particularly in light of last week's indictment for perjury of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to the vice-president, Dick Cheney." ... ""They [Republican senators] have repeatedly chosen to protect the Republican administration rather than get to the bottom of what happened and why," Mr Reid said. He accused the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Pat Roberts, of failing to follow through on a promise to conduct a thorough inquiry into prewar intelligence, including how the White House had used or misused it." ... ""The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really all about, how this administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions," Mr Reid said before invoking Senate rules that led to the closed session." -By Jamie Wilson -Guardian.co.uk

20051101

Pakistan - Earthquake- Weather - US - Military - "Worsening weather threatens more misery for Pakistan quake survivors." ... "The U.S. military promised to keep flying helicopter relief missions to help survivors of Pakistan's worst earthquake through the harsh winter, as a bleak weather forecast for Tuesday loomed over hundreds of thousands of people living without shelter." ... "With the brutal Himalayan winter approaching, the relief effort is rushing to deliver tents, food and medicine to victims of the Oct. 8 quake before villages are cut off by snow and helicopter-grounding fog." (1, 2) -By Zarar Khan -AP via -Canada.com
US - Afghanistan - Indonesia - Terrorism - Law - "Pentagon: Top al-Qaida operative escaped." ... "A man once considered a top al-Qaida operative escaped from a U.S.-run detention facility in Afghanistan and cannot testify against the soldier who allegedly mistreated him, a defense lawyer involved in a prison abuse case said Tuesday." ... "Omar al-Farouq was one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants in Southeast Asia until Indonesian authorities captured him in the summer of 2002 and turned him over to the United States." ... "A Pentagon official in Washington confirmed Tuesday evening that al-Farouq escaped from a U.S. detention facility in Bagram, Afghanistan, on July 10." -By Alicia A. Caldwell with contributions by Katherine Shrader and Robert Burns -AP via -SeattlePI.NWsource
US - Iraq - "October ends as 4th deadliest month of the war for U.S. troops." ... "The U.S. military announced the deaths of seven American soldiers and marines near Baghdad on Monday, making bringing the number of Americans killed in October to 92, the highest monthly toll since January, when 106 U.S. troops were killed in violence ahead of national elections." ... "Also on Monday, at least 13 people were killed and 55 wounded when a car packed with explosives detonated near a restaurant in the southern city of Basra, the spokesman for the Basra police department said." -By Sabrina Tavernise with contributions by Qais Mizher and Eric Schmitt -NYTimes via -IHT.com

20051031

US - Afghanistan - "Small US units lure Taliban into losing battles." ... "This has been the most violent year here since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. The US Army is moving in smaller numbers to lure the Taliban out of hiding for fights they cannot win. The result: More than 1,200 enemy deaths this year, including high-level commanders. But it is also a strategy with profound risks, and one that may be difficult to sustain in Zabul Province - a region so unstable that commanders call it the "Fallujah of Afghanistan" - as current troops return home, their replacements as yet undecided." ... "Through interviews with soldiers of Chosen Company, of the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, the Monitor has reconstructed two recent battles that illustrate how this strategy works, and how it may have weakened the Taliban movement's effectiveness as a military force - for now." -By Scott Baldauf -CSMonitor

20051028

US - Iraq - Lewis Libby - Dick Cheney - Military - Intelligence - Politics - "Cheney's top aide indicted in leak case." ... "Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and a key architect of the Iraq war, was indicted Friday on felony charges of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice for allegedly impeding the grand jury investigating the CIA leak case." ... "The five-count indictment alleges that Libby lied to FBI agents who interviewed him on two occasions, perjured himself during two appearances before the grand jury, and obstructed justice when he "knowingly and corruptly endeavored to influence, obstruct and impede" the grand jury's efforts to find out who leaked Valerie Plame's status as a covert agent to reporters during the spring of 2003." ... "Within minutes of the indictment, Libby resigned his post." -By Zachary Coile -SFGate.com

Global - US - Iraq - Lewis Libby - Dick Cheney - Politics - "Libby was a driving force behind Iraq war: Cheney's aide sought to justify pre-emptive strikes to prevent threats." ... "In high-level policy meetings at the White House, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was often in the background, a deputy listening to the views of principals such as his boss, Vice President Dick Cheney." ... "But behind the scenes, those who know Libby say he was a driving force in major decisions --including the invasion of Iraq --and one of the key architects of what has become known as the "Bush doctrine."" ... "He's a foreign policy hawk -- a "neocons' neocon," as Salon magazine called him -- who was a founding member of the Project for the New American Century, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank created in 1997 that supports bigger defense budgets and promotes America's dominant role in global affairs." -By Zachary Coile -SFGate.com
World - Iran - Israel - France - Russia - Palestine - Nuclear - Military - "World Leaders Condemn Iranian's Call to Wipe Israel 'Off the Map'." ... "In a joint statement, the E.U. leaders "condemned in the strongest terms" the Iranian president's call, saying it "will cause concern about Iran's role in the region and its future intentions." President Jacques Chirac of France told reporters that Ahmadinejad risked Iran "being left on the outside of other nations."" ... "Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in Israel, called the Iranian president's statement "unacceptable."" ... "The statement was widely reported in the Arab world; leaders there reacted for the most part with silence. Most Arab countries have no diplomatic relations with Israel. But the Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said, according to the Associated Press: "We have recognized the state of Israel and we are pursuing a peace process with Israel, and . . . we do not accept the statements of the president of Iran. This is unacceptable."" ... "U.S. and European leaders have grown increasingly worried about the bellicose attitude of Iran at a time when it is pursuing a nuclear program that they have said may be intended to produce a nuclear weapon." (1, 2) -By Mary Jordan and Karl Vick with contributions by Scott Wilson and Robin Wright-WashingtonPost

20051027

Military- Terrorism - Television - Media - "Doubt is cast on Pentagon nomination." ... "The senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee has vowed to defeat President George W. Bush's choice as chief Pentagon spokesman, citing an op-ed article the nominee wrote in April accusing American television networks of aiding Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations." ... "The comments Tuesday by the senator, Carl Levin of Michigan, during and after a committee hearing to consider the nomination of J. Dorrance Smith to be assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, cast serious doubt on Smith's chances to win approval by the full Senate." ... "Smith, a former ABC News producer who has worked as an adviser in both Bush administrations, said in an article in The Wall Street Journal on April 25 that the Arab satellite news channel Al Jazeera operated on behalf of terrorists and that American networks aided them by televising Al Jazeera's videotape." -By Eric Schmitt -NYTimes via -IHT.com
Iran - Israel - Religion - Military - "Iran's New President Says Israel 'Must Be Wiped Off the Map'." ... "Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, told a group of students at an anti-Israel event on Wednesday that Israel "must be wiped off the map" and that attacks by Palestinians would destroy it, the ISNA news agency reported." ... "He was speaking to about 4,000 students at a program called "The World Without Zionism," in preparation for an annual anti-Israel demonstration held on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan." ... ""The establishment of a Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world," the news agency reported him as saying. "The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of the war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land."" -By Nazila Fathi with contributions by Greg Myre -NYTimes
Iran - Israel - Nuclear- Military - Terrorism - "Iranian leader sparks alarm by saying Israel 'must be wiped off the map'." ... "Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, Iran's president, yesterday said Israel must be "wiped off the map", in remarks certain to cause alarm in western capitals at a time of rising concern over Tehran's nuclear programme." ... "His comments came as Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian group allied to Iran, killed at least five Israelis with a bombing in the Israeli town of Hedera." ... "The president told an audience of students there was "no doubt the new wave [of attacks] in Palestine will soon wipe off this disgraceful blot from the face of the Islamic world"." -By Gareth Smyth -FT.com

20051026

Iran- Israel - United States - Nuclear - Military - Religion - "Iran leader calls for Israel's destruction." ... "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared Wednesday that Israel is a "disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped off the map" - fiery words that Washington said underscores its concern over Iran's nuclear program." ... ""The United States said Ahmadinejad's remarks show that Washington's fears about Iran's nuclear program are accurate."" ... "Ahmadinejad also condemned Iran's neighbors which seek to break new ground in their relations with Israel. "Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury," state-run television quoted him as saying." -By Ali Akbar Dareini -AP via -SeattlePI.NWsource
Russia - Syria - United States - UN - MIL - Terrorism - "Russia says will defend Syria against UN sanctions." ... "Russia, Syria's close ally since Cold War times, will do all it takes to block any attempt to slap economic sanctions against Damascus, a Foreign Ministry spokesman was quoted as saying on Wednesday." ... "Russia, a veto-wielding permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, angered the United States earlier this year by announcing plans to sell advanced missile systems to Syria, which Washington has accused of having links to terrorism." -Reuters

20051024

Iraq - Journalist - Military - "Three Blasts Shake Hotels Used by Foreigners in Baghdad." ... "Three suicide vehicles, one of which appeared to be a cement mixer packed with explosives, exploded this evening near a government ministry and two prominent hotels popular with foreign journalists and contractors, killing at least six people and wounding scores, the authorities said." ... "According to an Iraqi Army officer, the triple attack began when a suicide car bomb exploded next to an outer security wall surrounding the Palestine Hotel, which sits next to the Sheraton Hotel. Both buildings are prominent features on the east side of the Tigris River and, since the invasion in 2003, have housed many foreign journalists and contractors." -By Kirk Semple -NYTimes
US - Iraq - Niger - Military - People - "Cast of characters grows in CIA leak drama." ... "It began with a clumsy forgery, led the president to backtrack on his own State of the Union address, already has sent one person to jail and has ruined another's career as a covert operative." ... "Up until three years ago, Joe and Valerie Wilson looked like just another upscale couple on the Washington scene, juggling serious jobs while keeping up with 2-year-old twins. He was a former ambassador turned international business consultant. She was an analyst for a Boston-based energy company - a working soccer mom, in the view of one of her neighbors." ... "As it turns out, Valerie really was a clandestine CIA agent and an expert on weapons of mass destruction, exactly the threat that Bush held out as the primary justification for going to war in Iraq. And, as it turns out, Joe's experience as an African envoy also made him a player." ... "In a way, the whole Wilson saga can be traced back to Cheney and Bush. It was Cheney's interest in the alleged Iraq-Niger deal that led the CIA to dispatch Wilson to Africa. And it Bush's use of the debunked claim in his State of the Union address that led Wilson to publish his doubts." -By Nancy Benac -AP via -SeattlePI.NWsource

20051021

US - Iraq - Karl Rove - Government - Law - Media - Military - Politics - Secrets - "CIA Leak Queries Look at Disclosure Of Classified Data." ... "Yesterday, one former administration official said Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff, had discussed former diplomat Joseph Wilson and the role of his wife, Ms. Plame, with White House staffers in 2003. That buttresses the possibility that Mr. Fitzgerald is investigating charges related to leaking classified information." ... "The former official said Mr. Rove had these discussions after Mr. Wilson went public with claims that the Bush administration had twisted intelligence to build support for the Iraq war. Mr. Rove discussed discrediting Mr. Wilson, the former official said, adding that Mr. Rove didn't necessarily name Ms. Plame or make her a key talking point in conversations with other White House officials." ... "The Plame investigation, originally sought by Central Intelligence Agency officials, began in September 2003 after her name appeared in the media in July. Critics, including Mr. Wilson, accused the White House of leaking her identity in an effort to undercut his claim that the administration had manipulated intelligence to support the Iraq war." -By John D. McKinnon, Anne Marie Squeo, and Joe Hagan -WSJ.com
Syria - Lebanon - Political - Military- Terrorism - Intelligence - "Syrian President Assad's Relatives Implicated in Hariri Murder." ... "Seven senior Syrian officials, including President Bashar al-Assad's brother and brother-in-law, are suspects in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, United Nations investigators said in a report likely to increase tensions between the U.S. and Syria." ... "Hariri, a five-time prime minister of Lebanon, was killed by a bomb Feb. 14." ... "``Many leads point directly towards Syrian security officials as being directly involved,'' said the 54-page report prepared by a team led by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis." ... "He said Assad's brother, Maher, and brother-in-law Assef Shawkat plotted the assassination, along with five other Syrian officials named in the report. It doesn't directly implicate Bashar-al-Assad. There was also evidence of Lebanese involvement in the assassination, according to the report." -By Bill Varner -Bloomberg

20051020

US - Afghanistan - Psychological - "Army Investigates Burning Of Taliban Corpses In Afghanistan." ... "The Army has launched a criminal investigation following allegations that U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan burned the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters and used the charred corpses in a propaganda campaign against insurgent forces." ... "According to The New York Times, video shown on the Australian TV show "Dateline" on Wednesday night depicts what is described as an American psychological operations team broadcasting taunts over a loudspeaker in the direction of a village thought to be sheltering Taliban fighters in an attempt to lure the fighters out into the open." -By Gil Kaufman -MTV.com/News

20051019

US - Iraq - Iran - Syria - Politics - "Rice: U.S. May Still Be in Iraq in 10 Years." ... "Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declined on Wednesday to rule out American forces still being needed in Iraq a decade from now. Senators warned that the Bush administration must play it straight with the public or risk losing public support for the war." ... "Pushed by senators from both parties to define the limits of U.S. involvement in Iraq and the Middle East, Rice also declined to rule out the use of military force in Iran or Syria, although she said the administration prefers diplomacy." -By Anne Gearan -AP via -SFGate.com

20051018

US - China - Political - Secrets - "Rumsfeld: China Understating Military: Rumsfeld Accuses China of Understating the Growth of Its Military Budget, Raising Suspicion." ... "China is raising global suspicion about its military intentions by failing to acknowledge the true size of recent increases in its defense spending, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said." ... "In his first scheduled event of the three-day trip a speech at a top Communist Party top training center Rumsfeld lectured China on the lessons of democracy. He urged more political openness and cautioned against the fast pace and secretive nature of China's military expansion." ... "In his remarks at the Central Party School, Rumsfeld advised vigilance against "another Great Wall" a barrier limiting speech, information and choices." (1, 2) -AP via -ABCNEWS.com
US - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - Politics - "Cheney's Office Is A Focus in Leak Case: Sources Cite Role Of Feud With CIA." ... "As the investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's name hurtles to an apparent conclusion, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has zeroed in on the role of Vice President Cheney's office, according to lawyers familiar with the case and government officials. The prosecutor has assembled evidence that suggests Cheney's long-standing tensions with the CIA contributed to the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame." ... "In grand jury sessions, including with New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Fitzgerald has pressed witnesses on what Cheney may have known about the effort to push back against ex-diplomat and Iraq war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV, including the leak of his wife's position at the CIA, Miller and others said. But Fitzgerald has focused more on the role of Cheney's top aides, including Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, lawyers involved in the case said." (1, 2) -By Jim VandeHei and Walter Pincus-WashingtonPost
Sudan - Police - "Chaos Grows in Darfur Conflict as Militias Turn on Government." ... "The outlaws who rode into Geneina [Sudan] on camelback one recent afternoon represent the latest grim chapter in the desert war in western Sudan." ... "Janjaweed militias have focused their wrath on innocent villagers for most of the two and a half years of the conflict in the Darfur region. But on Sept. 18, in a scene that aid workers described as something out of a Hollywood western, the militiamen surrounded the police station along Sudan's border with Chad, roughed up the chief and freed several of their members from jail." ... "The fact that militias trained and armed by the government are now emboldened enough to turn their guns on the government is a sign of trouble. It was government support of the janjaweed at the outset that ignited the fighting in Darfur that killed tens of thousands of people and displaced two million villagers." (1, 2) -By Marc Lacey -NYTimes

20051016

US - Syria - Iran - France - Russia - Britain - Military - Nuclear - "Rice enlists support for Syria, Iran showdowns." ... "U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice mobilized support among major powers for diplomatic showdowns over the next few weeks with Syria and Iran on a trip that ended on Sunday." ... "Over three days, Rice held talks with the leaders of France, Russia and Britain -- all holders of vetoes at the U.N. Security Council - on how to make the two U.S. foes meet U.N. security demands." ... "In a show of diplomacy that reflected the Bush administration's efforts this year to consult partners more, Rice crisscrossed Europe seeking to build a common front against Syria's suspected support for militants in Lebanon and Iran's nuclear ambitions." (1, 2) -Reuters

20051015

US - Iran - UN - MIL - Terrorism - "Iran accused over nuclear plans: The US ambassador to the United Nations has accused Iran of spending 18 years trying to develop nuclear weapons while lying about its intentions." ... "John Bolton told the BBC that Iran wanted nuclear arms to intimidate the rest of the Middle East and possibly supply them to terrorists." ... "He said Iran had violated its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty." ... "Iran has denied US allegations about its nuclear programme." -BBC /News

20051014

Iraq - Political - Terrorism - "Iraq Sunni party attacked after backing constitution." ... "Militants mounted a series of attacks on the offices of one of Iraq's main Sunni Arab political parties after it called on Iraqis to vote "Yes" in Saturday's referendum on a new constitution." ... "Attacks started on Wednesday night when gunmen fired at an empty office of the Iraqi Islamic Party in the western city of Falluja, a hotbed for Sunni insurgents, and left leaflets calling its members "apostates"." ... "On Friday a group of gunmen returned to the office and set it on fire, officials said."-Reuters via -AlertNet.org/Newsdesk
Russia - Terrorism - Police - "Militant Attacks on Russian City Leave 108 Dead." ... "Authorities said today that 108 people have been killed in Russia's North Caucasus region as Islamic militants have staged coordinated attacks on police and government buildings in a new wave of violence spilling over from war-torn Chechnya." ... "At least 24 law enforcers, 12 civilians and 65 guerrillas have died in the two days of fighting in Nalchik, capital of the predominantly Muslim republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, authorities said. Seven more guerrillas were reported killed in an outlying district and 17 were captured." ... "Gunmen who held hostages overnight in a Nalchik police station and in a souvenir shop were killed this morning, and the captives were freed, authorities said." (1, 2) -By David Holley with contributions by Natasha Yefimova and Yakov Ryzhak -LAtimes

20051012

US - Iraq - Military - Terrorism - "Iraq to amend charter before vote, bomber kills 30." ... "Iraq's parliament is to amend a draft constitution on Wednesday in a bid to defuse sectarian feuding just three days before the text is put to a referendum." ... "As ruling Shi'ites and Kurds formally announced concessions that persuaded one prominent Sunni political group to back the text, a suicide bomber detonated among a crowd of Iraqi army recruits in Tal Afar in the north, killing at least 30." ... "It was the second bloody attack in as many days in a town where U.S. and Iraqi forces said they had flushed out insurgents in a major offensive last month. At least 24 died on Tuesday." -By Waleed Ibrahim -Reuters.co.uk
US - Iraq - "Ready? Or Not? U.S. soldiers say their Iraqi counterparts have made huge strides but aren't prepared yet to take control of security and tackle the insurgency." ... "Although the nascent Iraqi army is said to be almost 200,000 strong, Gen. George Casey, commander of U.S. and allied forces in Iraq, recently told Congress that out of 86 Iraqi army battalions, only one is fully ready for combat without the help of U.S. forces. The homegrown units still lack the armored vehicles, weaponry and ability to coordinate quickly that are needed to combat a cunning insurgency that has made the Iraqi security forces one of its primary targets." ... "Because the Iraqi army remains so exposed, U.S. soldiers in this area [near Tikrit, Iraq] take on the more dangerous missions or provide armed support for Iraqis on patrol." -By Anna Badkhen -SFGate.com
US - Iraq - Military - Politics - "CIA review faults prewar plans." ... "A newly released report published by the CIA rebukes the Bush administration for not paying enough attention to prewar intelligence that predicted the factional rivalries now threatening to split Iraq." ... "Policymakers worried more about making the case for the war, particularly the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, than planning for the aftermath, the report says. The report was written by a team of four former CIA analysts led by former deputy CIA director Richard Kerr." ... ""In an ironic twist, the policy community was receptive to technical intelligence (the weapons program), where the analysis was wrong, but apparently paid little attention to intelligence on cultural and political issues (post-Saddam Iraq), where the analysis was right," they write." -By John Diamond -USATODAY

20051011

Kyrgyzstan - US - Afghanistan - Uzbekistan - "Kyrgyzstan says U.S. troops can continue using base." ... "Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice received firm assurances Tuesday that U.S. military forces can use a key logistics base here [in Kyrgyzstan] to support combat operations in Afghanistan and face no near-term deadline to withdraw." ... "The commitment comes 10 weeks after the government of neighboring Uzbekistan served an eviction notice on U.S. troops operating from a larger base there. The move was in retaliation for Washington's criticism of Uzbekistan's bloody crackdown on unarmed protesters." -By Warren P. Strobel -Knight Ridder via -MercuryNews
Nevada - MIL - Autos - Transportation - Robots - "Driverless Volkswagen wins $2 million US in Pentagon's robot race." ... "A driverless Volkswagen won a $2-million race across the rugged Nevada desert Sunday, beating four other robot-guided vehicles that completed a Pentagon-sponsored contest aimed at making warfare safer for humans." ... "The race displayed major technological leaps since last year's inaugural race, when none of the self-driving vehicles crossed the finish line." ... "Stanley the VW Touareg, designed by Stanford University, zipped through the 212-kilometre Mojave Desert course in six hours and 53 minutes Saturday, using only its computer brain and sensors to navigate rough and twisting desert and mountain trails." -AP via -CBC.ca
Pakistan - India - Earthquake - People- Military - "Quake relief fights tough terrain: The Asian temblor is being described as the worst disaster in Pakistan's history." ... "Relief workers and military officials on both sides of the border in the Himalayan region of Kashmir struggled to reach hundreds of villages cut off by the worst earthquake to hit this region in a century. Estimates of the death toll ranged Monday between 20,000 and 30,000. Relief agencies have put out a massive appeal for food, tents, and medicines for an estimated 2.5 million people who are thought to be homeless - a number similar in scope to the Indian Ocean tsunami." ... "Just as Americans voiced anger at the slow response of emergency relief agencies in the wake of hurricane Katrina, many Kashmiris in both the Indian and Pakistani portions of the divided territory decried what they called a slow emergency response." ... "The earthquake of Oct. 8 could be a crucial test of both the military-dominated government of President Pervez Musharraf, as well as renewed peace efforts between India and Pakistan, who both claim the quake-ravaged state of Kashmir." -By Scott Baldauf and Laura Winter with contributions by Anuj Chopra -CSMonitor

20051007

US - Iraq - New York - Transportation - MIL - Police - Intelligence - "New Yorkers Baffled Over Differing Stances on Terrorist Threat." ... "Less than 24 hours after Bloomberg made a dramatic, late afternoon announcement about an "imminent" subway bombing plot, the nation's largest transit system was operating smoothly, New York City officials said. Police, many in riot gear, were deployed in greater numbers than usual at many of the city's 468 stations." ... "One senior federal law enforcement official said the threat reporting was based on "third party information," or conversations among men in Iraq that were overheard by others; this led to men being detained over comments they had allegedly made about traveling to New York to detonate bombs in the subway." ... "The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the information was gleaned from an ongoing military operation in Iraq, passed to the National Counter-terrorism Center at the CIA, and then disseminated to participating law enforcement and intelligence agencies-including Homeland Security." -By Josh Getlin and Josh Meyer -LAtimes

20051006

Secret - US - Philippines - Emergency - Leandro Aragoncillo - Dick Cheney - Government - Military - Intelligence - Police - Politics - New Jersey - Law - "Spy Probe Widens to Years Suspect Was at White House: Ex-Marine Allegedly Sent Files to Philippine Opposition." ... "The Justice Department is investigating whether a naturalized U.S. citizen from the Philippines stole classified documents while he worked in the office of [Republican] Vice President Cheney and provided the information to opposition politicians in Manila [Philippines capital], [Republican] Bush administration officials said yesterday." ... "The possibility that Leandro Aragoncillo was passing the material while stationed as a U.S. Marine security official at the White House marks a dramatic expansion of the case against him and a former Philippine police official, Michael Ray Aquino. Both were arrested and charged in federal court in Newark [New Jersey] last month with sending classified information obtained this year to the Philippines -- more than two years after Aragoncillo left the White House and went to work as an FBI intelligence analyst." ... "Officials from the White House, Justice Department and FBI declined to comment late yesterday, other than to confirm that Aragoncillo first went to work at the White House in 1999, when [Democratic Vice President] Al Gore was vice president. ABC News reported last night that Aragoncillo had admitted taking classified documents while he worked in Cheney's office." ... "Joseph Estrada, the former Philippine president who was forced from office four years ago by mass demonstrations, has acknowledged receiving documents from Aragoncillo while the suspect was still in the Marines." ... "A document from late July reportedly detailed coup discussions at a secret conclave of about two dozen young army and naval officers in Manila. Another account, citing a clandestine source, described Arroyo calling an emergency meeting of her commanding generals to ensure their backing." (1, 2, 3) -By Dan Eggen and Alan Sipress -WashingtonPost
Israel - Palestine - Military - "Israeli court bans human shields." ... "The Israeli Supreme Court on Thursday outlawed the army's use of Palestinian civilians as human shields during round-ups of suspects in the occupied territories, ruling the practice contrary to international law." ... "The judgment by Chief Justice Aharon Barak was a victory for Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups, which produced evidence that the tactic had led to the death or injury of innocent people." -By Harvey Morris -FT.com
US - Afghanistan - Iraq - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Military - Intelligence - "Senate, bucking White House, backs detainee protections." ... "In a sharp rebuke to the White House, the U.S. Senate agreed Wednesday to regulate the detention, interrogation and treatment of prisoners held by the U.S. military." ... "Over two dozen retired senior military officers - including Colin Powell, and John Shalikashvili, two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - endorsed the amendment, which would ban the "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" of anyone in U.S. custody. It would restrict troops to using interrogation techniques outlined in a new U.S. Army field manual but would not cover those used by the CIA." ... "Republicans and Democrats on Wednesday passionately debated the measure, which supporters said would clarify a jumble of conflicting standards and cast a spotlight on the treatment of detainees at U.S. prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba." -By Eric Schmitt with contributions by Carl Hulse -NYTimes via -IHT.com
US - Iraq - Military - Intelligence- Arizona - "Senate sets standards on detainees: Lawmakers defy Bush to overwhelmingly OK McCain bill in response to Abu Ghraib." ... "In a break with the White House, the Republican-controlled Senate overwhelmingly approved a measure Wednesday that would set standards for the military's treatment of detainees, a response to the [Iraq prison] Abu Ghraib scandal and other allegations that U.S. soldiers have abused prisoners." ... "Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. [Arizona], a victim of torture while a prisoner during the Vietnam War, won approval of the measure that would make interrogation techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual the standard for handling detainees in Defense Department custody and prohibit "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of U.S.-held prisoners." -By Richard Simon -LAtimes via -SFGate.com
US - Vietnam - Arizona - South Carolina -Military - Intelligence - "Senate adds ban on torture to bill." ... "The Senate delivered a rebuke to the Bush administration last night, adding language banning U.S. torture of military prisoners to a $440 billion military-spending bill in defiance of a White House threat to veto the whole bill if the anti-torture language were attached." ... "[Arizona Senator John] McCain, who was tortured by his North Vietnamese captors during the Vietnam War, cited a letter written to him recently by Army Capt. Ian Fishback asking Congress to do justice to military personnel." ... ""Give them clear standards of conduct that reflect the ideals they risk their lives for," Fishback wrote the senator." ... "[South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey] Graham, a former judge advocate in the Air National Guard, said: "We take this moral high ground to make sure that if our people fall into enemy hands, we'll have the moral force to say, 'You have got to treat them right.' If you don't practice what you preach, nobody listens."" -By Joseph L. Galloway and James Kuhnhenn -Knight Ridder via -SeattleTimes.NWsource
Military - Terrorism - Intelligence - "Senate Approves Detainee Treatment Rules: Senate Bill Would Impose Restrictions on Treatment of Prisoners." ... "The Senate faces a confrontation with the House over a $440 billion military spending bill that, despite White House opposition, would impose restrictions on the treatment of terrorism suspects." ... "Delivering a rare wartime slap at Pentagon authority and President Bush, the GOP-controlled Senate voted 90-9 on Wednesday to back an amendment that would prohibit the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" against anyone in U.S. government custody, regardless of where they are held." ... "The House-approved version of it does not include the detainee provision. It is unclear how much support the measure has in the GOP-run House." (1, 2) -By Liz Sidoti -AP via -ABCNEWS.com
US - Iraq - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Military - Terrorism - Intelligence - "Senate supports setting interrogation limits: Amendment seeks rules on detainees." ... "The Senate defied the White House yesterday by voting to set new limits on interrogating detainees in Iraq and elsewhere, underscoring Congress's growing concerns about reports of abuse of suspected terrorists and others in military custody." ... "Forty-six Republicans joined 43 Democrats and one Independent in voting to define and limit interrogation techniques that US troops may use against terrorism suspects, the latest sign that alarm over treatment of prisoners in the Middle East and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is widespread in both parties. The White House had fought to prevent the restrictions, with Vice President Dick Cheney visiting key Republicans in July and a spokesman yesterday repeating President Bush's threat to veto the larger bill that the language is now attached to -- a $440 billion military spending measure." -By Charles Babington and Shailagh Murray -WashingtonPost via -Boston/Globe
Iraq - Iran - UK - "Blair Says Bombs Used in Iraq May Be Linked to Iran (Update2)." ... "U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair today said that there is evidence tying Iran to bombings in neighboring Iraq in the first public accusation that the Shiite Muslim country is supporting militants in Iraq." ... "``There have been new explosive devices used against British troops and elsewhere,'' Blair said. ``The particular nature of those devices leads us to either Iranian elements or Hezbollah that is funded and supported by Iran." ... "``We can't be certain of this at this time,'' he told a news conference in London with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, carried live by international broadcasters. ``Obviously, we will continue our investigations'' and ``discussions'' with Iran." -By Caroline Alexander -Bloomberg

20051005

Iraq - US - Military - Religion - "25 Killed In Iraq Mosque Bombing." ... "A bomb exploded at the entrance of a Shiite Muslim mosque south of Baghdad as worshippers gathered for prayers ahead of the breaking of the fast on the first day of Ramadan, killing at least 25 people and wounding 87, police and hospital officials said." ... "Meanwhile, President Bush vowed to prevent insurgents in Iraq from disrupting next week's vote on a new constitution. After a briefing from top U.S. commanders, the president said the goal of terrorists is to "stop the progress of democracy."" ... "The explosion hit the Ibn al-Nama mosque in Hillah, a Shiite town that has been the scene of frequent deadly insurgent attacks." (1, 2) -CBSNews

20051004

Pakistan - Afghanistan - MIL - Terrorism - "Taliban spokesman arrested in Pakistan." ... "The self-proclaimed Taliban spokesman, known for changing his phone number weekly and making wild claims about purported Taliban attacks, has been arrested in Pakistan, officials said." ... "Mullah Hakim Latifi, who has served as a roving one-man Taliban press secretary for almost two years, was captured in Baluchistan province, just over the border from southern Afghanistan, Pakistan government spokesman Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told reporters in Islamabad." -By Kim Barker -ChicagoTribune via -MercuryNews
US - Iraq - "U.S. Military Launches New Offensive in Iraq." ... "U.S. Marines accompanied by more than 1,000 Iraqi troops today began a second major offensive in four days in western Iraq, moving to recapture a cluster of Euphrates River towns at the hub of an insurgent infiltration route from Syria." ... "The U.S. military said five Marines died Monday; four were hit by a roadside bomb outside the town of Haqlaniya on the eve of the latest assault and one was killed on the third day of fighting near the town of Karabla. They were the first American casualties of the two offensives in Al Anbar province, an insurgent staging ground for attacks throughout Iraq." -By Richard Boudreaux -LAtimes

20051003

Government - Military - Police - Disaster - Terrorism - Politics - "GI's as postdisaster police? Think again." ... "The US military has long done more than fight wars. It's built roads, run jobs programs, snagged drug dealers, integrated schools, created the Internet, and provided hurricane relief. Why? It's seen as the government's only lean, mean, can-do machine." ... "Now President Bush asks if the military should also take the lead in domestic disasters, even serving as police - conducting arrests, searches, and seizures of American citizens." ... "But such concerns would not even need to be raised if Mr. Bush and Congress simply challenged an unspoken assumption: that the United States is incapable of having an organization that can act as effectively and efficiently in a time of major crisis as can the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard." ... "With the possibility of more frequent and powerful hurricanes as well as a major terrorist attack on a US city, the country needs a force dedicated specifically to disasters, but it's not the military."-CSMonitor
Pakistan - India - Military - "Pakistan, India sign agreement to give advance notice of missile tests." ... "Pakistan and India signed agreements today for giving advance notice of ballistic missile tests, and on setting up a hotline between their coast guard agencies, officials said." ... "The missile test warning deal was first struck during talks between Indian and Pakistani officials in New Delhi in August but is now being officially brought into force." -AFXNews via -Forbes
Nigeria - United States - Environmental- MIL - "Burdens of oil weigh on Nigerians: Ecological harm, corruption hit hard." ... "Under the vast swamps of Nigeria's coastal delta sit some of the world's most productive oil reserves, a treasure coveted by the energy-hungry United States and other nations." ... "Nigeria produces 10 percent of the oil consumed in the United States, and the Bush administration hopes for a greater bounty soon: US energy officials forecast that oil from Nigeria and the rest of the Gulf of Guinea region will provide one-quarter of America's oil in the next decade, equal to that of the Gulf of Mexico today. Already, 30 percent of the world's newly discovered oil reserves in the past five years have come from this stretch of Africa's west coast." ... "But here in the serpentine creeks and boggy coastal land lie daunting obstacles to those hopes --pirates, corruption, violent youth militias, and environmental catastrophes." -By John Donnelly with contributions by Nicolas V. Gortzounian -Boston/Globe

20051001

US - Iraq - "U.S. Generals Now See Virtues of a Smaller Troop Presence in Iraq." ... "The U.S. generals running the war in Iraq presented a new assessment of the military situation in public comments and sworn testimony this week: The 149,000 U.S. troops currently in Iraq are increasingly part of the problem." ... "During a trip to Washington, the generals said the presence of U.S. forces was fueling the insurgency, fostering an undesirable dependency on American troops among the nascent Iraqi armed forces and energizing terrorists across the Middle East." ... "For all these reasons, they said, a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops was imperative." -By Mark Mazzetti -LAtimes

20050930

Iraq - Military - Politics - "Car bomb attacks kill 99 in Iraq." ... "Three suicide attackers exploded near-simultaneous car bombs in the heart of a bustling, mainly Shiite town [Balad, Iraq] Thursday, killing at least 99 people and wounding 124 amid a new surge of violence before an Oct. 15 referendum on Iraq's constitution." ... "Apparently aimed at killing a large number of Shiite civilians, the string of bombings started just before sunset when the first blast ripped through an open-air market crowded with Iraqis buying vegetables. The next bomb exploded at a bank just yards away, followed by a third on a nearby street of clothing shops." ... "Sunni insurgents have vowed to wreck the referendum, whose passage is crucial to prospects for starting a withdrawal of American troops. Al-Qaida in Iraq has declared ''all-out war'' on the Shiite majority that dominates Iraq's government, and moderate Sunni Arab leaders called on their community to reject the constitution, saying it will fragment Iraq and leave them weak compared to Shiites and Kurds." -AP via -IHT.com

20050929

US - Iraq - Afghanistan- Military - Terrorism - History - "US trying to understand Iraq insurgency -Negroponte." ... "U.S. intelligence is still struggling to understand the nature of Iraq's insurgency more than two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte said on Thursday." ... "The Iraq insurgency, which U.S. forces have yet to stamp out despite repeated attempts, began months after the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003 and spans a disparate collection of groups from Baathists and former regime elements to the Al Qaeda-linked network of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi." ... "The CIA has also warned in a classified report that Iraq was becoming a more effective training ground for foreign terrorists than Afghanistan was during the war against Soviet occupation in the 1980s, which gave rise to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda." -By David Morgan -Reuters via -AlertNet.org/Newsdesk

20050928

US - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - "The 'Second' Man: The slain Abu Azzam may not have been Zarqawi's top deputy after all. Will his death have any effect on the Iraq insurgency?" ... "U.S. intelligence officials and counterterrorism analysts are questioning whether a slain terrorist-described by President Bush today as the "second-most-wanted Al Qaeda leader in Iraq"-was as significant a figure as the Bush administration is claiming." ... "In a brief Rose Garden appearance Wednesday morning, Bush seized on the killing of Abu Azzam by joint U.S-Iraqi forces in a shootout last Sunday as fresh evidence that the United States is turning the tide against the Iraqi insurgency." ... "But veteran counterterrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann said today there are ample reasons to question whether Abu Azzam was really the No. 2 figure in the Iraqi insurgency." ... "Three U.S. counterterrorism officials, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject, also told NEWSWEEK today that U.S. agencies did not really consider Abu Azzam to be Zarqawi's "deputy" even if he did play a relatively high-ranking role in the insurgency." (1, 2) -By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball -MSNBC/Newsweek
Iraq - Police- MIL - Woman - "Woman suicide bomber strikes Iraqi police." ... "A woman suicide bomber blew herself up at an Iraqi police recruitment centre in the former rebel bastion of Tal Afar in one of a string of attacks today, killing five people, police said." ... "Another bomber killed a civilian in an attack on a police checkpoint in the town of Baquba northeast of Baghdad, just a day after a similar attack on a police recruitment centre there killed 10 people." ... " ... "Attacks by female suicide bombers are rare in Iraq but insurgents have repeatedly targeted army and police recruitment centres." -AFXNews via -Forbes

20050927

US - Uzbekistan - "U.S. Forces Leaving Base in Uzbekistan." ... "A senior State Department official said Tuesday the president of Uzbekistan made it clear that American forces must leave their air base in the Central Asian country, and the U.S. intends to do so ``without further discussion.''" ... "The demand came as relations soured following U.S. criticism of Uzbekistan's crackdown on anti-government protesters in May in the eastern city of Andijan." ... "In July, the Uzbek government invoked a provision of the basing agreement with the United States that requires all American forces to leave within six months." -AP via -Guardian.co.uk
Iran - UN - Military - "Iran Threatens to Resume Enrichment." ... "Iran threatened Tuesday to resume uranium enrichment and block U.N. inspections of its nuclear facilities unless the U.N. nuclear agency retracted its moves to refer the country to the Security Council for possible sanctions." ... "Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters Iran was giving a ``serious warning'' to its European negotiating partners and the [IAEA] International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog." -By Ali Akbar Dareini -AP via -Guardian.co.uk

20050926

Florida - Weather - Hurricane Katrina - Hurricane Rita - Medical - Nuclear - MIL - Disaster - "AP: Report Warned of Hurricane Health Woes." ... "Eight months before the devastation of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, an internal Homeland Security Department review warned that the nation was woefully unprepared for a medical disaster and lacked a coherent plan for taking charge of mass casualties." ... "Government medical teams had difficulty coordinating and delivering help during 2004 hurricanes in Florida, said the report obtained by The Associated Press. The report also said there was inadequate planning for dealing with a surge of patients during a disaster like a biological or nuclear attack." ... "It called for creation of a uniformed medical reserve corps, including specialists, fashioned after the National Guard." -By Cheryl Wittenauer -AP via-WashingtonPost
"Medical Readiness Responsibilities and Capabilities: A Strategy for Realigning and Strengthening the Federal Medical Response." -By Jeffrey Lowell, MD -The AP has a [PDF] copy of the January 3, 2005 official report. -AP
US - Iraq - MIL - Politics - Cindy Sheehan - "Sheehan Arrested During Antiwar Protest." ... "Cindy Sheehan, whose protest camp outside President Bush's vacation home in Texas became a focal point of the antiwar movement this summer, was arrested today outside the White House at the head of a civil disobedience campaign intended to dramatize the opposition to the war in Iraq." ... "On the third day of demonstrations that brought tens of thousands of opponents to the war to Washington on Saturday, a much smaller group sat down in front of the executive mansion, after being refused an opportunity to meet with a White House staff member." -By Ryan G. Murphy and Emma Vaughn -LAtimes

20050920

- - - - - - - - "North Korea does quick reversal on nuclear-arms pact." ... "After four rounds of discussions spanning several years, the United States, North and South Korea, Japan, Russia and China said yesterday that they had agreed on a vaguely worded plan under which North Korea promised to dismantle its nuclear weapons in return for energy assistance, eventual U.S. and Japanese diplomatic recognition and a pledge by Washington that it would not attack the country." ... "The agreement also said the United States and other nations would discuss giving North Korea a light-water reactor for generating electricity, though it skirted the question of when." ... "But the North Koreans made it clear today that they are in no mood to defer their reward." ... "In a blunt statement, North Korea's official KCNA news service warned that "the U.S. should not even dream of the issue of [North Korea's] dismantlement of its nuclear deterrent before providing" a light-water reactor, which it called "a physical guarantee for confidence-building."" -By Barbara Demick, Mark Magnier and Sonni Efron with contributions by Alissa J. Rubin and Bruce Wallace -LAtimes with -AP and -SeattleTimes.NWsource
Iran - - - Politics - "Iran warns West over Security Council referral." ... "Iran warned the West on Tuesday it would start uranium enrichment — which can be used to make atomic bombs — and review its membership of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty if sent to the U.N. Security Council." ... "The comments by Tehran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani are likely to heighten tensions at this week's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meeting in Vienna where Iran's nuclear program is being discussed." ... "Tehran argues it has every right to enrich the uranium it mines in its central deserts for use in electricity-generating power stations." -Reuters via -ABCNEWS.com

20050919

- - - - - - "North Korea Pledges to Drop Nuclear Weapons Program." ... "North Korea pledged today to end its nuclear weapons program and rejoin global treaties aimed at stemming the spread of atomic arms in return for energy aid and diplomatic recognition." ... "According to a joint statement by the six nations involved in negotiations for more than two years, Pyongyang "committed to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and to return at an early date to the nonproliferation treaty of nuclear weapons." It also said North Korea would accept International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards." (1, 2) -By Mark Magnier and Barbara Demick with contributions by Yin Lijin -LAtimes
- - - - "U.S. Pleased With Korea Nuclear Agreement." ... "President Bush said Monday that North Korea's pledge to end its nuclear weapons programs is a positive step, but he expressed some skepticism about whether Pyongyang will live up to its promises." ... "``They have said - in principle - that they will abandon their weapons programs,'' Bush said. ``And what we have said is, `Great. That's a wonderful step forward.' But now we've got to verify whether that happens.''" ... "``The question is, over time will all parties adhere to the agreement,'' Bush said." -By Nedra Pickler -AP via -Guardian.co.uk

20050916

Nepal - MIL - Police - - "Torture is systematic in Nepal -- UN rights envoy." ... "Government forces and Maoist rebels routinely torture detainees in Nepal where a raging leftist insurgency has killed thousands of people, a United Nations envoy said on Friday." ... ""Torture and ill-treatment is systematically practised in Nepal by the police ... and the RNA (Royal Nepal Army) in order to extract confessions and to obtain intelligence," Manfred Nowak, U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture, told reporters." ... "He said the agency had received a large number of allegations of torture and ill-treatment committed during the conflict." -Reuters via -AlertNet.org/Newsdesk

20050915

Nepal - - "Nepal's Maoists free 60 soldiers." ... "Sixty Nepalese soldiers are due to be reunited with the army soon after being released by Maoists rebels who had held them prisoner for more than a month." ... "The soldiers were captured following a rebel attack on an army barracks in the west of the country in early August." ... "The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) negotiated the release of the soldiers." ... "Twelve thousand people have been killed since the rebel insurgency began 10 years ago." ... "The rebels say they want an interim government and elections for a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution." ... "This, they say, will clear the way for replacing the monarchy with a people's republic." -By Sushil Sharma-BBC /News
- "Nic Cage Hopes To Push Buttons With Trigger-Pulling 'War': Actor says he wants people to think about who profits from violence." ... "It begins with a startling title sequence: a bullet travels from destination to destination, from box to hand to gun, finally coming to rest within the soft, fleshy forehead of a young boy. After that, "Lord of War" only gets more audacious." ... ""Lord of War" attempts to tell the story behind the newscasts, employing the Oscar winner as Yuri Orlov [Nicolas Cage], a morally ambiguous weapons dealer who not only sells weapons to anyone, but often goes out of his way to supply both sides of a conflict. Critics are already raving over Cage's transformative performance that begins with a young Yuri realizing that people will always need guns and bullets, and concludes several decades later with Cage's character transformed into an unfathomably wealthy, and impossibly lonely, king of his own crime empire." -MTV.com /News
- - - "Aceh rebels begin giving up guns: Separatist rebels in the Indonesian region of Aceh have begun handing over their weapons in a crucial stage of a peace process with the government." ... "The Free Aceh Movement (Gam) fighters are due to give up a quarter of their weaponry at four undisclosed locations across the province this week." ... "In return, Indonesia will withdraw about 6,000 combat troops." ... "Aceh bore the brunt of the Indian Ocean tsunami and the disaster prompted the two sides to return to talks." ... "In the wake of the tsunami, which killed 130,000 people locally, the rebels and the government both made compromises which would have been unthinkable before."-BBC /News

20050914

- - - "Iraq Blasts Kill at Least 160, Wound 570." ... "A spasm of retaliatory violence, claimed by al-Qaida in the name of Sunni insurgents, ripped through Baghdad on Wednesday. At least 160 people were killed and 570 wounded in more than a dozen highly coordinated bombings - the capital's bloodiest day since the end of major combat." ... "The massive bombing campaign terrorized the capital for more than nine hours. The first attack, at 6:30 a.m., was the deadliest: a suicide car bombing which tore through assembled day laborers in the predominantly Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Kazimiyah." ... "In what was believed to be a new tactic, the bomber set off the explosive after calling the laborers to his small van and enticing them with promises of work, a witness said. At least 112 people were killed and more than 200 were wounded, Iraqi Health Ministry officials said." -By Steven R. Hurst -AP via -Guardian.co.uk
- - - "Wave of violence kills at least 97 in Baghdad: Bush meets with Iraqi president." ... "A pair of deadly attacks in Baghdad early Wednesday killed at least 97 people and wounded 162 others, Iraqi police said." ... "A suicide car bomb exploded near a gathering of laborers in Kadhimiya, a Shiite area of north-central Baghdad. Hospital officials told police that at least 75 people were killed and another 162 wounded." ... "A second suicide car bomb detonated near a U.S. Army convoy in eastern Baghdad, wounding a pair of U.S. Soldiers and setting their Humvee on fire, a military spokesman and police said." -Contributed to by Arwa Damon -CNN

20050913

- - - - - "American Envoy Says Syria Assists Training of Terrorists." ... "The United States ambassador to Iraq lashed out at Syria on Monday, saying that its government continued to allow terrorists to operate training camps within Syria that have sent hundreds of insurgents into Iraq." ... "While other administration officials made similar accusations early this year, the focus of American attention to Syria in recent months has been its occupation of Lebanon. Over the summer, Syria said that it had cracked down on insurgents operating within its territory." ... "But Mr. Khalilzad, in remarks to reporters in Washington, made it clear that the United States believed that Syria was providing assistance to insurgents operating in Iraq and that such help might have increased." -By Joel Brinkley -NYTimes
Hurricane Katrina - Disaster - GOV - MIL - Transportation - Politics - Tennessee - "FEMA Convoy Gets Ice to Cities Not in Need." ... "About 200 tractor-trailer trucks with ice and water for victims of Hurricane Katrina took a convoluted, weeklong trip to a storage depot in Memphis [Tennessee], partly because of what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers called ``miscommunication.''" ... "The drivers were sent to cities that didn't end up needing water or ice and were final directed to Memphis, said Corps spokesman Bob Anderson." -By Woody Baird -AP via -Guardian.co.uk

20050912

Louisiana - New Orleans - Hurricane Katrina - "The Category 5 General: There's a Big Job to Be Done in New Orleans. Russel Honore Measures Up." ... "There's the swagger, and that ever-present stogie. There's the height and heft of his physique. And that barking voice with its font of perhaps impolitic obscenities ("That's b.s," he famously asserted on national TV), not to mention his penchant for not suffering fools, as is the prerogative of a three-star general." ... "As leader of the Joint Task Force Katrina, he now commands all active-duty troops from all military branches devoted to the storm recovery operation. As of Saturday, those troops numbered 20,800, and more are coming. (National Guard troops number 50,000, but they are not under Honore's command.)" ... "Among other positions, Honore served as commander of the 2nd Infantry Division in Korea, as vice director for operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and as commander of the Standing Joint Force Headquarters for Homeland Security, part of the U.S. Northern Command. He saw action in Iraq and Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm. He holds a master's degree in human resources management." (1, 2, 3, 4) -By Lynne Duke-WashingtonPost

20050911

- - "Tal Afar 'big warehouse' for arms." ... "Iraq's defense minister has called Tal Afar -- the latest object of a U.S. and Iraqi counter-insurgency offensive -- a "big warehouse for weapons."" ... "Speaking in a press briefing on Sunday, Sadoun al-Dulaimi said several weapons caches and tunnels have been found during the offensive -- part of what the U.S. military calls Operation Restoring Rights." ... ""We discovered a factory to make IEDs (improvised explosive devices)," said al-Dulaimi, who gave an update on the offensive, in its second day." ... ""The technology used in this factory is high-level technology," an indication that foreigners are behind the work of the insurgency." -Contributions by Kevin Flower Enes Dulami, Mike Mount, Kianne Sadeq and Mohammed Tawfeeq -CNN

20050910

Noteworthy - Government - Military - Terrorism - Civil Liberties - Politics - Illinois - "U.S. Can Confine Citizens Without Charges, Court Rules." ... "A federal appeals court yesterday backed the president's power to indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil without any criminal charges, holding that such authority is vital during wartime to protect the nation from terrorist attacks." ... "The ruling, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, came in the case of Jose Padilla, a former gang member and U.S. citizen arrested in Chicago [Illinois] in 2002 and a month later designated an "enemy combatant" by President Bush. The government contends that Padilla trained at al Qaeda camps and was planning to blow up apartment buildings in the United States. Padilla has been held without trial in a U.S. naval brig for more than three years, and his case has ignited a fierce battle over the balance between civil liberties and the government's power to fight terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A host of civil liberties groups and former attorney general Janet Reno weighed in on Padilla's behalf, calling his detention illegal and arguing that the president does not have unchecked power to lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely." ... "The ruling limits the president's power to detain Padilla to the duration of hostilities against al Qaeda, but the Bush administration has said that war could go on indefinitely." -By Jerry Markon-WashingtonPost
- - - Hurricane Katrina - Alabama - Mississippi - Louisiana - "National Guard Stretched Thin." ... "About 41,000 Guard members are scattered across Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, along with 17,000 active-duty troops. About 30,000 Guard members are serving in Iraq, with smaller numbers in Afghanistan, Kosovo and elsewhere overseas." ... "The head of the National Guard Bureau said Friday the assignment of thousands of Guard troops from Mississippi and Louisiana to Iraq delayed those states' initial hurricane response by about a day." ... ""Had that brigade been at home and not in Iraq, their expertise and capabilities could have been brought to bear," said Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, the bureau's chief." ... "The Pentagon has said the response was swift and another 319,000 Army National Guard and Air National Guard personnel are available if needed." -AP via -CBSNews

20050907

- - "A daily look at U.S. deaths in Iraq." ... "As of Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2005, at least 1,893 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count." ... "Since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 1,754 U.S. military members have died, according to AP's count." -AP via -SeattlePI.NWsource
- - Hurricane Katrina - Louisiana - New Orleans - "La. guardsmen returning from Kuwait." ... "Hundreds of soldiers from a [Louisiana] New Orleans National Guard unit begin leaving Thursday to return to the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina. Guard officials said 80 percent lost homes or jobs and some had not heard from relatives since the storm." ... "Over the next two weeks, the 3,700 soldiers of the Louisiana Guard's 256th Brigade Combat Team will be flown to a former military airport in Alexandria, La., and then travel to nearby Fort Polk." -By Jim Krane -AP via -SeattlePI.NWsource

20050905

Hurricane Katrina - Louisiana - Disaster - "Pumps sucking water from flooded city: Deputy chief says New Orleans 'completely destroyed'." ... "Even as the Army Corps of Engineers made progress removing water from New Orleans [Louisiana], the city's deputy police chief urged remaining residents Monday to get out because there was no power, drinkable water or food supply." ... "Many New Orleans streets are still filled with stagnant, fetid waters streaked with iridescent oil and smelling of garbage, human waste and death." ... "The failures of the levee system left about 80 percent of the city flooded with water up to 20 feet deep." ... "The Army Corps of Engineers said Monday that repair crews had patched the ruptured levee along the 17th Street Canal and have begun pumping out water." -CNN

20050902

- - "Terrorist Known Before 9/11, More Say." ... "A Defense Department inquiry has found three more people who recall seeing an intelligence briefing slide that identified the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks a year before the hijackings and terrorist strikes, Pentagon and military officials said Thursday." ... "But the officials said investigators who reviewed thousands of documents and electronic files from a secret counterterrorism planning unit had not found the chart itself, or any evidence the chart ever existed." ... "The officials acknowledged that documents and electronic files created by the unit, known as Able Danger, were destroyed under standing orders that limit the military's use of intelligence gathered about people in the United States." -By Thom Shanker-NYTimes
- - "Inquiry Fails to Find Data on Hijackers: A Pentagon report contradicts statements by members of an intelligence unit that some attackers were known before Sept. 11." ... "An internal Pentagon investigation has found no proof that a classified military intelligence program identified Mohamed Atta or any of the other Sept. 11 hijackers before the attacks or found that they were living in the United States, officials said Thursday." ... "Several senior Pentagon officials said their investigation found five members of the intelligence program codenamed Able Danger who recalled the existence of a large chart of suspected Al Qaeda operatives as far back as 2000 that they said included Atta's name or photograph. But the Pentagon found no evidence that such a chart existed." ... "The findings of the investigation contradict allegations that the military intelligence program may have had information in 2000 that could have led to Atta's arrest and prevented the terrorist attacks." -By Josh Meyer -LAtimes
- - Hurricane Katrina - Louisiana - "Troops Head Home To Another Crisis: State Force to Leave on Schedule, But No Special Transfers Planned." ... "The 3,700 Louisiana National Guard members in Iraq will begin heading home within about a week as part of normal troop rotations, but there are no mass Guard movements back to the United States planned to aid hurricane relief, U.S. military officials in Baghdad said Thursday." ... ""Everyone we have here, and every piece of equipment we have here, is needed here," said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, senior spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq." ... "Exceptions will be made on a case-by-case humanitarian basis to allow Guard members whose families have been hit especially hard by Hurricane Katrina to return, Lynch said." -By Ellen Knickmeyer -WashingtonPost
- - - Hurricane Katrina - Louisiana - - "Katrina poses key test for stretched National Guard: Part-time soldiers - having served in Afghanistan and Iraq - are now called up for duty in Gulf Coast disaster." ... "If the Iraq war showcases how Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has recast the National Guard - turning it from a reserve deployed only in times of crisis to an active, operational force - then the aftermath of hurricane Katrina will go a long way toward determining whether this new mission is spreading America's part-time soldiers too thin, further taxing an already stressed force and endangering the nation." ... "Though Iraq has strained the National Guard, Defense officials have insisted that there are enough soldiers at home to deal with any domestic disaster. Now, with some Guard members comparing New Orleans [Louisiana] to Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein - gripped by chaos and looting - the Pentagon will have to prove its calculations correct." ... "It comes at a time when 138,000 troops - including 80,000 members of the National Guard - are deployed in Iraq." -By Mark Sappenfield -CSMonitor

20050901

- - Hurricane Katrina - Louisiana - Arkansas - - "La. governor warns troops will "shoot and kill"." ... "Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco warned rioters and looters in New Orleans on Thursday that National Guard troops are under her orders to "shoot and kill" to end the rampant violence in the city in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina." ... "Announcing the arrival of 300 Arkansas National Guard troops in New Orleans fresh from service in Iraq, Blanco said, "these troops are battle-tested. They have M-16s and are locked and loaded."" ... ""These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will," she said." -Reuters
- - "Three more assert Pentagon knew of 9/11 ringleader." ... "Three more people associated with a secret U.S. military intelligence team have asserted that the program identified September 11 ringleader Mohammed Atta as an Al Qaeda suspect inside the United States more than a year before the 2001 attacks, the Pentagon said on Thursday." ... "The Pentagon said a three-week review had turned up no documents to back up the assertion, but did not rule out that such documents relating to the classified operation had been destroyed." ... "Pentagon officials declined to identify the three by name, but said they were an analyst with the military's Special Operations Command, an analyst with the Land Information Warfare Assessment Center and a contractor who supported the center." -By Will Dunham -Reuters via -WashingtonPost
Hurricane Katrina - Louisiana - Mississippi - - - "New Orleans Gets More Troops to Stop Katrina Looting (Update2)." ... "An additional 16,000 National Guard members were ordered to Louisiana and Mississippi to combat looting and quell gunfire that disrupted the rescue of survivors of Hurricane Katrina." ... "The troops will be added to 22,000 already deployed in the two states, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said today at a news conference. He said 1,400 will go to New Orleans [Louisiana] daily for the next three days, expanding a force of 3,000 that's trying to maintain order in a city flooded and left without power by the storm three days ago." ... "``Looters are hitting food stores, they're hitting department stores, they're in jewelry stores and gun stores -- they're stealing guns wherever they can,'' Sergeant Frank Coates, a spokesman for the Louisiana Police, said in a telephone interview from Baton Rouge, the Louisiana state capital. ``It's not just to survive, they're taking goods for personal gain.'' -By Heather Burke -Bloomberg

20050831

- - CA - Sacramento - - - - Religion - "Four indicted in alleged terrorist plot against LA-area targets." ... "The head of a militant Islamic prison gang and three others were indicted Wednesday on federal charges of planning terrorist attacks against National Guard facilities, the Israeli Consulate and other Los Angeles-area targets." ... "Prosecutors contend the plot was orchestrated by [Levar Haley] Washington, [Gregory Vernon] Patterson and [Hammad Riaz] Samana at the behest of [Kevin] James, a California State Prison, Sacramento, inmate who founded the radical group Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh, or JIS. Washington converted to Islam while serving three years in the prison for a previous robbery conviction." -By Jeremiah Marquez -AP via -MercuryNews
- - TX - CA - Cindy Sheehan - - "Sheehan, war protesters leave Texas camp." ... "After a 26-day vigil that ignited the anti-war movement, Cindy Sheehan took her protest on the road Wednesday, while a handful of veterans pledged to continue camping off the road leading to President Bush's ranch until the war in Iraq ends." ... "Rather than heading home to California, the mother of a 24-year-old soldier who died in Iraq boarded one of three buses heading out on tour to spread her message." ... "The group plans to stop in 25 states during the next three weeks, then take Sheehan's "Bring Them Home Now Tour" to the nation's capital for a Sept. 24 anti-war march." -By Angela K. Brown -AP via -BostonGlobe

20050830

Colorado

"Air Force issues religious guidelines." ... "Seeking to curb a climate at the U.S. Air Force Academy that several cadets have said is intolerant of non-Christians, the Air Force offered new guidelines Monday that discourage public prayer, disappointing critics who had sought an outright ban." ... "The report on the investigation into religious insensitivity at the academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., noted that in July 2004, an Air Force chaplain had exhorted cadets to ask classmates about their religious backgrounds and to warn non-Christians that they would "burn eternally in hell."" -By John Hendren

-LAtimes via -ChicagoTribune

Religion - - "Air Force Bans Leaders' Promotion of Religion." ... "The Air Force issued new religion guidelines to its commanders yesterday that caution against promoting any particular faith - or even "the idea of religion over nonreligion" - in official communications or functions like meetings, sports events and ceremonies." ... "The guidelines discourage public prayers at official Air Force events or meetings other than worship services, one of the most contentious issues for many commanders. But they allow for "a brief nonsectarian prayer" at special ceremonies like those honoring promotions, or in "extraordinary circumstances" like "mass casualties, preparation for imminent combat and natural disasters."" -By Laurie Goodstein -NYTimes
Colorado - Religion - - "Air Force guidelines discourage public prayer." ... "The Air Force released guidelines for religious tolerance yesterday that discourage public prayer at official functions and urge commanders to be sensitive about personal expressions of religious faith." ... "The guidelines, which apply to the entire Air Force, were created in response to allegations that evangelical Christians wield so much influence at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs [Colorado] that anti-Semitism and other forms of religious harassment became pervasive." -By Robert Weller -AP via -BostonGlobe
Colorado - Religion - - - "Bush nominates new Air Force Academy leader." ... "President Bush on Tuesday nominated Lt. Gen. John Regni to become superintendent of the [Colorado] Air Force Academy, which has been rocked by sexual abuse and religious insensitivity scandals in recent years." ... "If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Regni will replace Lt. Gen. John Rosa, 53, who plans to retire to become president of The Citadel, his alma mater." -By Andrea Shalal-Esa -Reuters
Hurricane Katrina - Louisiana - Mississippi - Alabama - Disaster - - - - "Katrina Death Toll Climbs to 60 People; New Orleans Is Flooded." ... "Hurricane Katrina devastated parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, killing dozens of people, cutting off power to 2 million and leaving most of New Orleans flooded by water as deep as 20 feet. U.S. and state officials say it may be the nation's worst natural disaster." ... "The Federal Emergency Management Agency is moving 23 disaster medical assistance teams into areas hit by Katrina, the Homeland Security Department said in a statement. The agency also has sent urban search and rescue task forces as well as water, ice, generators and other supplies into the Gulf region." ... "The National Guard has mobilized about 7,500, or 42 percent, of 31,500 available personnel to distribute military meals and water, clean up debris and assist law enforcement officials if needed, said spokesman Jack Harrison." ... "More than 40 Coast Guard aircraft with more than 30 boats are conducting search, rescue and humanitarian aid operations, the Homeland Security Department said." -By Heather Burke -Bloomberg
- - - - Religion - - - "Iraq's constitutional trap." ... "At worst, the constitutional mess signals prolongation of the bloody insurgency that prevents the establishment of bearable living conditions in much of Iraq, could lead to civil war and could stall a hoped- for U.S. withdrawal." ... "The draft constitution, though containing guarantees of religious freedom and other individual rights, departs from Western ideas of secular democracy by making Islam the official religion and "a main source of legislation," and giving clergy a role in family matters like marriage, divorce and inheritance. Women under Islamic law would lose rights." -SFGate.com

20050826

Portland - OR - New Jersey - Louisiana - - "BRAC panel votes to keep fighter jets in Portland." ... "A federal commission Friday blocked a Pentagon plan that would have transferred 15 F-15 fighter jets patrolling the Northwest s skies from an Oregon Air National Guard base at Portland International Airport." ... "Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski and the state s congressional delegation welcomed the commission s vote against sending the 142nd Fighter Wing s 15 F-15 jets to Air Force bases in New Jersey and Louisiana." -AP via -King5.com
- - - Cindy Sheehan - "Sheehan planning antiwar bus tour." ... "Cindy Sheehan said yesterday that the antiwar vigil she started nearly three weeks ago near President Bush's ranch won't end when she and other protesters pack up their camp next week." ... "Sheehan, whose son died in the Iraq war, said that the day after she leaves Crawford on Aug. 31, she will embark on a bus tour ending in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 24. Then the group will start a 24-hour vigil there." ... "''I am not alone," she said at a news conference yesterday. ''There's the people standing behind me here, but there's thousands of military families . . . who want the same answers to the same questions."" -By Angela K. Brown -AP via -Boston/Globe

20050825

- - - Cindy Sheehan - "Sheehan resumes protest vigil." ... "A day after she returned to the helm of a protest against President Bush's policy in Iraq, Cindy Sheehan expressed satisfaction Thursday about the peace movement she helped invigorate." ... ""When I left, it thrived, and it grew, and it's because I'm not alone," said the 48-year-old mother of Casey Sheehan, who was killed last year while serving in Iraq. "I'm not the only one who wants answers to these questions."" -CNN
- - - - "'We will stay, we will fight and we will win'." ... "President Bush responded Wednesday to calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq with an emphatic vow to stay there "until the terrorists have nowhere to run."" ... ""So long as I am president, we will stay, we will fight and we will win the war on terrorism," he told a supportive audience of National Guard members and their families in a sports arena in this Boise suburb. Pulling out now, he said, would "embolden the terrorists and create a staging ground to launch more attacks against America."" ... "The speech came in response to intensifying anti-war protests that have put Bush on the defensive lately." -By Richard Benedetto and Judy Keen -USATODAY
- - "Abuse found in military schools." ... "A culture that devalues women in uniform tolerates rape and sexual harassment at the Army and Navy academies, according to a Pentagon task force report released Thursday." ... ""When women are devalued, the likelihood of harassing and even abusive behavior increases," said the panel of military officers and civilian experts. It proposed wide-ranging action, from better admissions screening to revamping antiquated military rape laws." -By Steven Komarow -USATODAY

20050824

PA - IL - Tennessee - - - - "3 states suing Pentagon to stop Air Guard relocations." ... "Pentagon proposals to relocate some Air National Guard aircraft have infuriated governors who say the federal government cannot reassign Guard units without their permission." ... "Among the states that object, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Tennessee have sued in federal court to stop the Pentagon from moving aircraft and personnel to other states. The Base Realignment and Closure Commission has gotten legal opinions, including one from the Justice Department, saying it can take the action, although its own general counsel says it cannot." -By Martha T. Moore -USATODAY
Connecticut - - - "U.S. Panel Rejects Plan to Close Connecticut Sub Base (Update2)." ... "A U.S. commission rejected the Pentagon's recommendation to shut the submarine base in Groton, Connecticut, calling the facility essential for U.S. Navy operations and training." ... "The action by the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission is a victory for Connecticut community leaders and for General Dynamics Corp.'s Electric Boat unit, which builds and repairs the vessels 2 miles from Naval Submarine Base New London. Eighteen submarines whose mission is to defend carrier battle groups and assault land and sea targets are kept at the base, where about 7,800 military personnel are stationed and 2,400 civilians and contractors work." -By Judy Mathewson -Bloomberg
- - - "US general sees significant withdrawal in Iraq." ... "The US is expected to pull significant numbers of troops out of Iraq in the next 12 months in spite of the continuing violence, according to the general responsible for near-term planning in the country." ... "Maj Gen Douglas Lute, director of operations at US Central Command, yesterday said the reductions were part of a push by Gen John Abizaid, commander of all US troops in the region, to put the burden of defending Iraq on Iraqi forces." ... "He denied the withdrawal was motivated by political pressure from Washington." -By Peter Spiegel and Demetri Sevastopulo -FT.com
- Palestine - - "As Israel Leaves Gaza, It Strengthens West Bank Presence." ... "Israeli soldiers worked today to wrap up the military portion of the Gaza Strip withdrawal, and the defense minister said all but a small number of soldiers could be removed from the territory by mid-September." ... "At the same time, Israeli officials confirmed that the government had issued orders to seize West Bank land to build the separation barrier around the largest Jewish settlement, Maale Adumim, and link it up to nearby Jerusalem." ... "Even the United States, Israel's staunchest ally, has raised concerns about constructing the barrier inside the West Bank, and the Bush administration has criticized the Maale Adumim portion of the barrier in particular." -By Greg Myre -NYTimes
- Palestine - - - "Israelis remove final protesters: Withdrawal ends with evacuations in West Bank." ... "The evacuations of Sanur, and another West Bank settlement, Homesh, ended relatively peacefully, despite predictions from Israeli police that militant settlers would mar the disengagement process with violence. Instead, the massive military and police operation demonstrated new will by the Israeli government to confront the settlers and their political backers." ... "More than 50,000 army, border police, and police officers collaborated in the withdrawal as part of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to ''disengage" from the Palestinians, avoiding bloodshed while withdrawing 9,000 settlers and 6,000 of their supporters in less than a week -- an operation that was originally planned to last as long as two months." -By Thanassis Cambanis with contributions by Alon Tuval -Boston/Globe

20050823

- Palestine - - Religion - "Troops remove Jewish extremists in West Bank." ... "Thousands of troops overcame the main bastions of resistance to the evacuation of two settlements Tuesday, clearing out hundreds of extremists who had barricaded themselves inside houses, synagogues and a fortress to protest Israel's first dismantling of West Bank outposts." ... "Security forces had feared the evacuation of Sanur and Homesh would be the most violent phase of the Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip and four northern West Bank settlements, but resistance to the largely unarmed troops was surprisingly mild." ... "The resisters in Sanur and Homesh consider the pullout a dangerous precedent that threatens all Jewish settlement in the West Bank, which the devout see as their God-given right." -AP via -GlobeAndMail
- Palestine - - Religion - "Israeli forces storm two die-hard W.Bank settlements." ... "Israeli forces smashed their way on Tuesday into two West Bank settlements to oust radical Jews who were dug in for a last stand against evacuation after failing to foil a pullout from occupied Gaza." ... "Armored bulldozers burst through makeshift barriers of burning tires and rubbish at the gates to the neighboring settlements of Sanur and Homesh, heralding a showdown with hundreds of young Jewish ultra-rightists inside." ... "Palestinians would like Israel to pull out from all of the West Bank and Gaza but Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has sworn to keep Israel's biggest West Bank settlements. Some 230,000 settlers live in the West Bank among 2.4 million Palestinians." (1, 2) -By Matt Spetalnick and Dan Williams -Reuters

20050822

- - TX - Salt Lake City - Utah - - "Bush Tells Veterans That Iraq Policy Will Make U.S. Safer." ... "President Bush defended his policy in Iraq today, a crucial moment for that emerging country, telling a gathering of veterans in Utah that the struggle to build a new nation amounts to "the first war of the 21st century."" ... "The president left his ranch in Crawford, Tex. [Texas], to fly to Salt Lake City [Utah], where he told an audience from the Veterans of Foreign Wars that the sacrifices of Americans in Iraq would be remembered just as the heroism shown in World War II and Korea was commemorated." ... "Oddly, Mr. Bush faced war protests in Utah, where he took 71 percent of the vote in his 2004 re-election race, making it the reddest of Republican-red states. But Salt Lake's mayor, Ross C. Anderson, a Democrat, organized a protest in a park near the V.F.W. convention, calling on people who oppose Mr. Bush's Iraq and environmental policies to gather around him." -By David Stout -NYTimes
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