Former Interior deputy pleads guilty to obstructing justice in Abramoff probe

March 23, 2007
Former Interior deputy pleads guilty to obstructing justice in Abramoff probe

WASHINGTON - Former Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles pleaded guilty Friday to obstruction of justice in a Senate committee's investigation, becoming the highest-ranking Bush administration official convicted in the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal.

The former No. 2 official in the Interior Department admitted in federal court that he lied to the Senate about his relationship with convicted lobbyist Abramoff, who repeatedly sought Griles' intervention at the agency on behalf of Abramoff's Indian tribal clients.

Griles pleaded guilty to a felony charge for testifying falsely before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee on Nov. 2, 2005, and during an earlier deposition with the panel's investigators on October 20, 2005.

New U.S. attorneys seem to have partisan records

March 23, 2007
New U.S. attorneys seem to have partisan records

WASHINGTON - Under President Bush, the Justice Department has backed laws that narrow minority voting rights and pressed U.S. attorneys to investigate voter fraud - policies that critics say have been intended to suppress Democratic votes.

Since 2005, McClatchy Newspapers has found, Bush has appointed at least three U.S. attorneys who had worked in the Justice Department's civil rights division when it was rolling back longstanding voting-rights policies aimed at protecting predominantly poor, minority voters.

Another newly installed U.S. attorney, Tim Griffin in Little Rock, Ark., was accused of participating in efforts to suppress Democratic votes in Florida during the 2004 presidential election while he was a research director for the Republican National Committee. He's denied any wrongdoing.

Four Generals blamed for Pat Tillman Lies

March 23, 2007
Four Generals blamed for Pat Tillman Lies

WASHINGTON (KCBS) -- CBS News has learned that an investigation by the Pentagon inspector-general into the "friendly fire" death of San Jose's own football-star-turned-soldier, Pat Tillman, will blame nine officers, including four generals, for failing to follow regulations and using poor judgement in a series of missteps that kept the truth of how he died from his family for more than a month.

From her home in San Jose, Tillman's mother, Mary, told KCBS that the Pentagon has not contacted her, and that the investigation's conclusions were "absolute news to me." She declined further comment. Pat Tillman, a San Jose native, graduated from Leland High School.

'Tsunami of foreclosures' seen

March 23, 2007
'Tsunami of foreclosures' seen

WASHINGTON -- Charges of blame were flying Thursday for the meltdown of the high-risk mortgage market as pressure mounted for Congress to do something about rising foreclosures among homeowners unable to meet high payments.

"What we're looking at is a tsunami of foreclosures that is on the horizon," Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., declared at a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee. Most heavily affected, he said, will be black and Hispanic homeowners who were pressured into taking out mortgages at rates they cannot afford.

Under fire from lawmakers, federal regulators said they lacked full authority to prevent the crisis spawned during the soaring housing boom of 2003-2005.

Ohio to Sell Bonds to Avert Home Foreclosures

March 24, 2007
Ohio to Sell Bonds to Avert Home Foreclosures

Ohio, which had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation at the end of last year, plans to issue $100 million in taxable municipal bonds next month to help homeowners refinance mortgages.

Proceeds of the bond issue by the Ohio Housing Finance Agency will finance 1,000 loans with a fixed rate of 6.75 percent, said Robert Connell, director of debt management at the agency.

"We believe that it is incumbent on this agency to do something to assist these folks to enable them to keep their homes," Mr. Connell said. "A $100 million bond from this agency is not going to solve Ohio's foreclosure problem. We hope to at least make a dent."

Foreclosures Force Suburbs to Fight Blight

March 23, 2007
Foreclosures Force Suburbs to Fight Blight

SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio — In a sign of the spreading economic fallout of mortgage foreclosures, several suburbs of Cleveland, one of the nation's hardest-hit cities, are spending millions of dollars to maintain vacant houses as they try to contain blight and real-estate panic.

In suburbs like this one, officials are installing alarms, fixing broken windows and mowing lawns at the vacant houses in hopes of preventing a snowball effect, in which surrounding property values suffer and worried neighbors move away. The officials are also working with financially troubled homeowners to renegotiate debts or, when eviction is unavoidable, to find apartments.

"It's a tragedy and it's just beginning," Mayor Judith H. Rawson of Shaker Heights, a mostly affluent suburb, said of the evictions and vacancies, a problem fueled by a rapid increase in high-interest, subprime loans.

"All those shaky loans are out there, and the foreclosures are coming," Ms. Rawson said. "Managing the damage to our communities will take years."

The situation in Iraq may structurally damage the GOP beyond the '08 vote

March 20, 2007
The situation in Iraq may structurally damage the GOP beyond the '08 vote

The congressional and presidential campaigns will continue to unfold amid the ever-changing economic and political situation.

What we know now is that the situation today in Iraq is, politically speaking, devastating for the Republican Party. It has begun to structurally damage the GOP and that damage might have consequences that go beyond just the 2008 general election.

Just take a look at shifts in party identification numbers over the last three years, as measured by Gallup. People identifying themselves as Democrats have opened up an advantage over those identifying themselves as Republicans. And when independents who lean toward one party or another are mixed in, the lead Democrats have over Republicans grows to its widest margin since Gallup started measuring party identification in 1991.

If things in Iraq remain as they are today, it's hard to see how Republicans can hold the White House, regardless of their nominee for president. Furthermore, it would be a steep uphill battle for Republicans to recapture the congressional majorities they lost in 2006.

The Republican Party is among the war's victims

March 22, 2007
The Republican Party is among the war's victims

For a moment the 2004 election seemed to justify this vision, with an improved Republican performance among blacks, Hispanics and, particularly, women. But by 2007 the Democrats were back in control of both chambers of Congress and itching to retake the White House. Fully 40% of Republicans believe that the Democrats will capture the presidency in 2008, compared with 12% of Democrats who think the Republicans will hang on to it. Ken Mehlman, the party chairman who oversaw the 2004 triumph, is now advising hedge funds on how to deal with a Democratic-leaning world. The Republicans may well be left with nothing except the solid South and a few patches of the Midwest, just as the Democrats were at the end of the 19th century.

Stephen Bainbridge, a conservative academic at the University of California, Los Angeles, has argued that Mr Bush's decision to go to war has "pissed away the conservative moment by pursuing a war of choice via policies that border on the criminally incompetent." William Buckley, the pope of the conservative movement, says that if Mr Bush were the leader of a parliamentary system, "it would be expected that he would retire or resign". Richard Viguerie, another conservative veteran, says that "I've never seen conservatives so downright fed-up as they are today."

The war has eviscerated the administration's reputation for competence—and with it the idea that the Republicans have an inherent advantage as the "Daddy" party. An administration that once boasted about its clutch of CEOs will forever be remembered for phrases such as "slam dunk" (of WMD intelligence) and "Mission Accomplished", or for disasters such as the failure to prepare Walter Reed and other military hospitals to deal with casualties. The same CBS News/New York Times poll found that only 28% of people approved of Mr Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq.

Washington's Covert War inside Iran

March 23, 2007
Washington's Covert War inside Iran

The provision of aid to anti-government forces offers certain advantages to the Bush Administration. No effort needs to be expended in winning support for the policy. Operations can be conducted away from the public eye during a time of growing domestic opposition to the war in Iraq, and international opinion is simply irrelevant where the facts are not well known. In terms of expenditures, covert operations are a cost-effective means for destabilizing a nation, relative to waging war.

According to a former CIA official, funding for armed separatist groups operating in Iran is paid from the CIA's classified budget. The aim, claims Fred Burton, an ex-State Department counter-terrorism agent, is "to supply and train" these groups "to destabilize the Iranian regime." (1)

The largest and most well known of the anti-government organizations is Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), operating out of Iraq. For years MEQ had launched cross-border attacks and terrorist acts against Iran with the support of Saddam Hussein. Officially designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department in 1997, and disarmed of heavy weaponry by the U.S. military six years later, Washington has since come to view MEK in a different light. Three years ago, U.S. intelligence officials suggested looking the other way as the MEK rearmed and to use the organization to destabilize Iran, a recommendation that clearly has been accepted. (2)

US struggles to avert Turkish intervention in northern Iraq

March 22, 2007
US struggles to avert Turkish intervention in northern Iraq

The US is scrambling to head off a "disastrous" Turkish military intervention in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq that threatens to derail the Baghdad security surge and open up a third front in the battle to save Iraq from disintegration.

Senior Bush administration officials have assured Turkey in recent days that US forces will increase efforts to root out Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) guerrillas enjoying safe haven in the Qandil mountains, on the Iraq-Iran-Turkey border.

The firm Turkish belief that the US is playing a double game in northern Iraq. Officials say the CIA is covertly funding and arming the PKK's sister organisation, the Iran-based Kurdistan Free Life party, to destabilise the Iranian government.

March 22, 2007
Episcopals Support Gay Rights

Responding to an ultimatum from the leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion, bishops of the Episcopal Church have rejected a key demand to create a parallel leadership structure to serve the conservative minority of Episcopalians who oppose their church's liberal stand on homosexuality.

"We cannot accept what would be injurious to this church and could well lead to its permanent division," the bishops said in their statement, a set of three resolutions addressed to the church's executive council.

Dems, It's Time To Go Fox Huntin'

March 22, 2007
Dems, It's Time To Go Fox Huntin'

Looking forward, the victory in Nevada sends a powerful message to Fox: You're not going to be able to use Democratic debates to whitewash your right-wing bias the way Exxon green washes its reputation by buying off academics and PR flacks.

For Democrats, it sends an equally powerful message: Fight back; you can win. From its first days on the air, Fox News has smeared Bill and Hillary Clinton. And when President Clinton finally called Fox on it, the effect was electric. Across America, progressives were galvanized into action.

March 20, 2007
Hounding Fox News coverage

As former Fox reporter/anchor Jon Du Pre put it in the documentary "Outfoxed," "We weren't necessarily, as it was told to us, a newsgathering organization so much as we were a proponent of a point of view … we were there to reinforce a constituency."

Conservatives retort that other media project a liberal bias, while Fox presents a needed counterweight. The liberal bias of network news is debatable; that Fox regularly reports false and inaccurate stories designed to drum up support for their candidates and causes is beyond serious dispute.

Can you imagine other networks allowing, let alone encouraging, their anchors to utter statements like "John Kerry has Kim Jong Il on his side ... North Korea loves John Kerry" as part of a newscast?

A study by a University of Maryland center concluded, "Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions" about Iraq. For example, in 2003, 67 percent of those who relied primarily on Fox wrongly believed the U.S. "found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al Qaeda terrorist organization." Only 40 percent of those who relied on print media harbored this illusion, debunked thoroughly by the 9/11 Commission.

Instead of providing "fair and balanced" reporting, Fox has created an audience ignorant of the facts, but fully supportive of management's ideology.

Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007

March 22, 2007
Political Landscape More Favorable To Democrats

Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007

Even more striking than the changes in some core political and social
values is the dramatic shift in party identification that has occurred
during the past five years. In 2002, the country was equally divided
along partisan lines: 43% identified with the Republican Party or
leaned to the GOP, while an identical proportion said they were
Democrats. Today, half of the public (50%) either identifies as a
Democrat or says they lean to the Democratic Party, compared with 35%
who align with the GOP.

Yet the Democrats' growing advantage in party identification is
tempered by the fact that the Democratic Party's overall standing with
the public is no better than it was when President Bush was first
inaugurated in 2001. Instead, it is the Republican Party that has
rapidly lost public support, particularly among political independents.
Faced with an unpopular president who is waging an increasingly
unpopular war, the proportion of Americans who hold a favorable view of
the Republican Party stands at 41%, down 15 points since January 2001.
But during that same period, the proportion expressing a positive view
of Democrats has declined by six points, to 54%.

Poll: Gonzales Approval Rating at 26%

March 14, 2007
Poll: Gonzales Approval Rating at 26%

Public opinion of the Attorney General is declining. The current survey, completed Tuesday night March 20, finds that just 26% have a favorable opinion of Gonzales. That's down six points from a survey conducted five days earlier. At the same time, the number with an unfavorable opinion of Gonzales has climbed to 52%. Last week, 49% had an unfavorable view, a figure that had already jumped up from 41% a month ago.

The number with a Very Unfavorable opinion of Gonzales is up to 28%. That's a 3-point increase over the past week and a ten-point increase over the past month. Just 8% have a Very Favorable opinion, down from 11% last week.

Congress Challenges Network Execs: Bring Balance to Sunday Shows

March 14, 2007
Congress Challenges Network Execs: Bring Balance to Sunday Shows

Washington, DC - Reps. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) have formally asks the executive producers of ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, NBC's Meet the Press, and Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday to end the conservative domination of the Sunday morning talk shows.

Their letter follows a comprehensive study recently released by Media Matters for America, titled "If It's Sunday, it's Still Conservative," which uses empirical data to demonstrate that the networks have largely provided a significant advantage to Republican and conservative voices on their prominent Sunday shows.

Scientist accuses White House of 'Nazi' tactics

March 19, 2007
Scientist accuses White House of 'Nazi' tactics

WASHINGTON -- A government scientist, under sharp questioning by a federal panel for his outspoken views on global warming, stood by his view today that the Bush administration's information policies smacked of Nazi Germany.

James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, took particular issue with the administration's rule that a government information officer listen in on his interviews with reporters and its refusal to allow him to be interviewed by National Public Radio.

"This is the United States," Hansen told the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee. "We do have freedom of speech here."

But Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) said it was reasonable for Hansen's employer to ask him not to state views publicly that contradicted administration policy.

"I am concerned that many scientists are increasingly engaging in political advocacy and that some issues of science have become increasingly partisan as some politicians sense that there is a political gain to be found on issues like stem cells, teaching evolution and climate change," Issa said.

Uk Poll: 60% Say War Was Wrong

March 22, 2007
Uk Poll: 60% Say War Was Wrong

Polling Data

Do you think the United States and Britain were right or wrong to take military action against
Iraq in 2003?

	Mar. 2007	Mar. 2006
Right thing	29%	31%
Wrong thing	60%	60%
Don't know	9%	9%

Do you think the result of the war in Iraq is that Britain is now a safer place, less safe or
is there no real difference one way or the other?

Safer place	3%
No real difference	43%
Less safe	52%
Don't know	2%

Forced resignations and stiff prison sentences intensify the escalating blowback from Ohio’s 2004 stolen election

March 21, 2007
Forced resignations and stiff prison sentences intensify the escalating blowback from Ohio’s 2004 stolen election

In a bold move "to restore trust to elections in Ohio," Ohio's newly-elected Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has requested the resignation of all four members of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. The two Democrats and two Republicans were formally asked to resign by the close of business on March 21. Cuyahoga County includes the heavily Democratic city of Cleveland. Brunner is a Democrat who was elected, last November, to be Ohio's Secretary of State.

Felony convictions have also resulted in 18-month prison sentences for two employees of the Cuyahoga BOE as a result of what the county prosecutor in the case calls the "rigging" of the outcome in the recount following the 2004 presidential election. Further problems surfaced in the conduct of Cuyahoga County's May, 2006 primary, in the wake of which Michel Vu, Executive Director of the county's Board of Elections recently resigned.

Don't Cry for Reagan

March 19, 2007
Don't Cry for Reagan

As the Bush administration sinks deeper into its multiple quagmires, the personality cult the G.O.P. once built around President Bush has given way to nostalgia for the good old days. The current cover of Time magazine shows a weeping Ronald Reagan, and declares that Republicans "need to reclaim the Reagan legacy."

But Republicans shouldn't cry for Ronald Reagan; the truth is, he never left them. There's no need to reclaim the Reagan legacy: Mr. Bush is what Mr. Reagan would have been given the opportunity.

Not mentioned in Mr. Cohn's article, but equally reminiscent of current events, was the state of the Justice Department under Ed Meese, a man who gives Alberto Gonzales and John Mitchell serious competition for the title of worst attorney general ever. The politicization of Justice got so bad that in 1988 six senior officials, all Republicans, including the deputy attorney general and the chief of the criminal division, resigned in protest.

Why is there such a strong family resemblance between the Reagan years and recent events? Mr. Reagan's administration, like Mr. Bush's, was run by movement conservatives - people who built their careers by serving the alliance of wealthy individuals, corporate interests and the religious right that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s. And both cronyism and abuse of power are part of the movement conservative package.

US soldier gets 27 months for Iraq atrocity

March 22, 2007
US soldier gets 27 months for Iraq atrocity

WASHINGTON: A US soldier has been sentenced to 27 months in prison for being an accessory to the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in Iraq and the killing of her family, the US military said.

Private First Class Bryan Howard, 19, was sentenced at Fort Campbell, Kentucky on Wednesday after he pleaded guilty to the accessory charge as well as conspiracy to obstruct justice, the military said in a statement.

Murder and rape charges against Howard were dropped 'based on his limited role in the crimes,' the military said.

The court concluded that Howard had overheard his friends planning the crime and then lied to protect them, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Pre-War Assumptions Led to Flawed Iraq Plan, U.S. Report Says

March 19, 2007
Pre-War Assumptions Led to Flawed Iraq Plan, U.S. Report Says

March 22 (Bloomberg) -- The Bush administration's rosy pre- war assumptions about the speed at which Iraq would stabilize led to poorly coordinated, haphazard planning for post-war reconstruction that's brought waste and inefficiency, according to a new report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq.

Pre-war planning that assumed a small reconstruction effort was so poor that Congress should consider passing legislation similar to a 1986 law that reorganized the military to better perform joint military operations, Inspector General Stuart Bowen said in the report.

"There was an assumption that the Iraqi infrastructure was in reasonably good shape. It wasn't," Bowen said in an interview yesterday. "There was an assumption that the Iraqi government would be able to pick up and sustain itself. That didn't happen. There was an assumption that the Iraqi oil and gas production would provide revenue sufficient to fund recovery. That also did not pan out."

Crisis looms for entire economy

March 20, 2007
Crisis looms for entire economy

If Washington doesn't address the rapidly building multi-trillion-dollar crisis in residential mortgage defaults, its paralysis will help trigger a national economic recession that could touch every homeowner.

The crisis has been building for months - if not years. Experts agree it is a result of banks and other lenders' granting home loans to people who were not truly able to afford the payments. Now, with the national economy in a slide, the number of mortgage defaults is rising at an alarming rate.

Before we engage in the usual finger-pointing over how we got into this mess, let's agree on an aggressive course of action to mitigate it. Our nation must recognize there will be economic pain if the problem goes unaddressed; there will be residential foreclosures and billions of dollars in write-offs as auditors discover that many of these mortgages can never be fully paid down. Many families will find that they may have to consolidate their living space if they hope to hold on to at least one viable residential dwelling.

Veterans boost Democrats' Iraq war exit plan

March 21, 2007
Veterans boost Democrats' Iraq war exit plan

Murphy, a former paratrooper who went to Iraq shortly after the 2003 invasion, is in his third month on Capitol Hill. But as the only Iraq war veteran in Congress, the 33-year-old freshman has become a central player in the most intense lobbying effort since Democrats assumed the majority in January.

As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and her top lieutenants work to rally Democrats behind a bill to force President Bush to begin bringing troops home no later than next March, they are relying on lawmakers like Murphy who have served in the military.

Drug Company Payments Still a Public Secret

March 21, 2007
Drug Company Payments Still a Public Secret

March 21, 2007 — Despite laws created to specifically identify the financial gifts doctors receive from pharmaceutical companies, major obstacles remain in providing that information to the public.

In a first of its kind study from the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers looked at the records from these two states from 2002 to 2004 to examine how their laws have been executed.

Surprisingly, their findings reveal these payments often involve substantial sums, and the details of the transactions remain vague or unavailable.

"What we really found was laws aren't working," says study author Joseph Ross, an instructor in the department of geriatrics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

"We knew there would be substantial sums of money changing hands between doctors and companies," he says. "What was surprising was how poorly information was made available to the public, to researchers, to anyone."

Senate limits Gonzales' hiring authority

March 20, 2007
Senate limits Gonzales' hiring authority

WASHINGTON - The Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to end the Bush administration's ability to unilaterally fill U.S. attorney vacancies as a backlash to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' firing of eight federal prosecutors.

Also, the Senate by a 94-2 vote passed a bill that would cancel the attorney general's power to appoint U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation. Democrats say the Bush administration abused that authority when it fired the eight prosecutors and proposed replacing some with White House loyalists.

Four Years Later: Iraq By the Numbers

March 19, 2007
Four Years Later: Iraq By the Numbers

29,100: Number of additional troops President Bush and his generals have officially requested to send to Iraq as part of an escalation strategy

Up to 50,000: Likely number of additional combat and support troops that will actually have to be deployed for the escalation, according to a Congressional Budget Office report

59: Percentage of Americans who think the Iraq war was a mistake

13: Percentage of Americans who prefer the option of sending more troops to options involving some form of withdrawal

5: Percentage of troops more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder if they serve more than one tour

50,000: Number of troops on whom "stop-loss" has been imposed, meaning they are prevented from leaving the Army when their enlistment end date arrives

Fitzgerald Ranked During Leak Case

March 20, 2007
Fitzgerald Ranked During Leak Case

The ranking placed Fitzgerald below "strong U.S. Attorneys . . . who exhibited loyalty" to the administration but above "weak U.S. Attorneys who . . . chafed against Administration initiatives, etc.," according to Justice documents.

The chart was the first step in an effort to identify U.S. attorneys who should be removed. Two prosecutors who received the same ranking as Fitzgerald were later fired, documents show.

The Bush administration diluted scientific evidence of global warming

March 21, 2007
The Bush administration diluted scientific evidence of global warming

THE Bush administration diluted scientific evidence of global warming, one of its former high-ranking officials has admitted.

Philip Cooney, an oil industry lobbyist now working for Exxon Mobil, conceded during a congressional hearing yesterday that while he was chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality he watered down reports on the adverse effects of man-made emissions on the planet's climate.

"My sole loyalty was to the President and advancing the policies of his administration," Mr Cooney told the house government reform committee. He defended aligning supposedly independent scientific reports with the White House political view on the environment by saying the changes reflected a comprehensive 2001 National Research Council report on the issue.

GOP Memo: "Grovel to senators, be nice to civil servants, and learn how to leak"

March 19, 2007
GOP Memo: "Grovel to senators, be nice to civil servants, and learn how to leak"

A note on "leaking": All administrations hate leaks, which are unauthorized information given to the press. In practice, however, leaks seldom do any real harm. The main objection to them is that higher-ups in the chain of command lose the opportunity to divulge the information themselves to their favored reporters, who often repay such generosity with "puff pieces" in their papers.

Leaks can also be a very powerful way to get an administration's story through a hostile media. Thought of as exclusive news items, leaks can force reporters to run with stories they would never publish if sent out as a press release. Especially if the information comes to them close to a deadline, they have little choice but to run the item with your "spin" on it. They don't have time to check it and cannot afford to risk losing the story to a competitor. During the Reagan years, master leakers like James Baker and David Gergen were notorious for getting good press in liberal papers through the skillful use of this method.

Bush's War Has Put the Army in Grave Danger

March 18, 2007
Bush's War Has Put the Army in Grave Danger

Four years after the invasion of Iraq, the high and growing demand for U.S. troops there and in Afghanistan has left ground forces in the United States short of the training, personnel and equipment that would be vital to fight a major ground conflict elsewhere, senior U.S. military and government officials acknowledge.

More troubling, the officials say, is that it will take years for the Army and Marine Corps to recover from what some officials privately have called a "death spiral," in which the ever more rapid pace of war-zone rotations has consumed 40 percent of their total gear, wearied troops and left no time to train to fight anything other than the insurgencies now at hand.

Poll: 69% of Iraqis Think US Forces Makes the Security Situation Worse

March 20, 2007
Poll: 69% of Iraqis Think US Forces Makes the Security Situation Worse

Fifty-one percent said they thought it was "acceptable" for "other people" to attack coalition forces. In the 2004 survey, 17 percent said such attacks were acceptable.

Despite U.S. efforts to promote the emergence of a free-standing Iraqi government and political system, 59 percent of the Iraqis polled said the U.S. government "controls things in our country," up from 24 percent in 2005. The percentage of those who said that the Iraqi government is in control dropped from 44 percent in 2005 to 34 percent in the current poll.

Food, housing, and healthcare costs rose at a 6 percent yearly rate

March 19, 2007
Inflation is eating US wage gains

Food, housing, and healthcare costs rose at a 6 percent yearly rate in the past three months.

Consumers are being buffeted from several directions. The resurgence of inflation comes even as homeowners face a dip in property values and as the stock market has sagged from a recent peak. All this dragged consumer confidence down a notch in an index released Friday by the University of Michigan.

Release of Guantanamo Prisoners Undermines U.S. Claims of Threat

March 18, 2007
Release of Guantanamo Prisoners Undermines U.S. Claims of Threat

The analysis, based on government case files for Saudi detainees sent home over the past three years, shows inmates being systematically freed from custody within weeks of their return. It also raises questions on how detainees are selected for release: While some of the repatriated Saudis were accused of lesser offenses -- such as working for charitable organizations with alleged ties to al-Qaeda -- others were released in spite of standing accusations that they belonged to al-Qaeda or the Taliban, or even fought against U.S. or coalition forces in Afghanistan, records show.

The case files also offer insight into the nature of U.S. evidence against the detainees. For example, in half the cases studied, the detainees were turned over to U.S. forces by Pakistani police or troops in return for financial rewards. Many others were accused of terrorism connections in part because their Arab nicknames matched those found in a computer database of al-Qaeda members, documents show.

"The credibility of many of these accusations is highly questionable," co-authors Anant Raut and Jill M. Friedman write in "The Saudi Repatriates Report," scheduled for release tomorrow. The report is a statistical analysis of the cases of 24 repatriated Saudis, a group representing nearly half of the 53 Saudi nationals released from Guantanamo Bay as of Feb. 1. The authors are members of the Washington office of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, a law firm that has provided pro-bono representation for five Saudis detained at Guantanamo Bay. The law firm provided copies of the supporting documents to The Washington Post.

Iraqis yearn for the prewar days when Shiites and Sunnis coexisted

March 18, 2007
Iraqis yearn for the prewar days when Shiites and Sunnis coexisted

BAGHDAD, Iraq | Meshajjar Street once was known as the street of trees. The trees are only memories now.

Just like the practice of Sunni and Shiite Muslims mixing and intermarrying. That practice, too, is gone, along with any sense of safety for much of a city that once had nearly 6 million residents.

As the fourth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion arrives Tuesday, once-pleasant neighborhoods like Ghazaliyah have become a civil war's battle-weary front lines. Despite a significant drop in violence since a new Baghdad security plan began Feb. 15, many Iraqis express nostalgia for prewar days — even when Saddam Hussein steered the state.

"Ghazaliyah is now a cemetery," said Adil al-Qaisi, 28. "The streets are empty, and we live in our house like dead people."

Wilson: Leak severely hurt U.S. intelligence

March 17, 2007
Wilson: Leak severely hurt U.S. intelligence

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Valerie Plame Wilson told Congress Friday the leak of her identity as a CIA covert operative "has jeopardized and even destroyed entire networks of foreign agents."

She told a House committee that Bush administration officials had "carelessly and recklessly" released her status as a CIA employee, which was first reported by columnist Robert Novak.

"I felt like I had been hit in the gut," Plame Wilson told the panel.

Major New Problems At Walter Reed

Updated March 19, 2007
Major New Problems At Walter Reed

A worried quality control inspector, Mark Cordell, finally quit last week in frustration, and brought his fears to 9NEWS NOW.

"I won't sit back and watch someone get killed," he says while running through 81 pictures of the problems on a laptop computer.

Cordell points to a picture showing the terrible decay inside the building and says, "The water is actually on the ground floor here. There is water halfway across the ground floor. And there's electricity too. There's high voltage that goes to this building. Two thirteen thousand volt transformers. Through the basement filled with water."

Dems look to expand congressional probe of CIA leak

March 16, 2007
Dems look to expand congressional probe of CIA leak

House Democrats on Friday vowed to expand their investigation into the Valerie Plame leak scandal in order to hold the Bush administration accountable and find out how "future abuses" can be prevented.

"We are going to continue this investigation," said Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) as he called for recess at the end of the former CIA agent's testimony.

"It is not our job to determine criminal culpability. But it is our job to understand what went wrong, to insist on accountability and to make recommendations to prevent future abuses," said Waxman. The lawmaker described the committee's role as "fundamentally different" to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's criminal investigation into the leak.

Media Reviews Plame's Wardrobe -- But Not White House Coverup

March 17, 2007
Media Reviews Plame's Wardrobe -- But Not White House Coverup

In their rush to cover the long-awaited testimony of Valerie Plame, few reporters apparently bothered to stick around the Capitol Hill hearing room yesterday to witness the just as shocking testimony of a much less heralded (and not so attractive) insider named James Knodell.

Knodell, director of the Office of Security at the White House -- whose appearance was opposed by the Bush team until Waxman threatened a subpoena -- revealed that his records showed absolutely no interest or questioning about the leak after the outing occurred in July 2003, and none since (he became chief in August 2004).

Bush's War Has Put the Army in Grave Danger

March 17, 2007
Bush's War Has Put the Army in Grave Danger

You do not have to look very hard these days to see the grave damage the Bush administration's mismanagement of the Iraq conflict has inflicted on the United States Army. Consider the moral waivers for violent offenders, to meet recruitment targets. Or the rapid rotation of exhausted units back to the battlefield. Or the scandalous shortages of protective armor. Or the warnings from generals that there are not enough troops available to sustain increased force levels for more than a few months.

Arctic could have iceless summers by 2100

March 16, 2007
Arctic could have iceless summers by 2100

A review of existing computer climate models suggests that global warming could transform the North Pole into an ice-free expanse of ocean at the end of each summer by 2100, scientists reported today.

The researchers said that out of the 15 models they looked at, about half forecast that the sea-ice cover — a continent-sized expanse that shrinks and grows with the seasons — would seasonally vanish by the turn of the century.

"That may be conservative," said lead author Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.

One model predicted the Arctic would be ice-free each September as early as 2040, according to the article in the journal Science.

KSM "Confessed" To Targeting Bank Founded After His Arrest

March 17, 2007
KSM "Confessed" To Targeting Bank Founded After His Arrest

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's alleged confession testimony has been thoroughly discredited after it emerged that one of the targets he identified, the Plaza Bank, was not founded until 2006, four years after the alleged Al-Qaeda mastermind's arrest.

In his confession, KSM claims, "I was responsible for planning, training, surveying, and financing for the New (or Second) Wave of attacks against the following skyscrapers after 9/11: ...Plaza Bank, Washington state."

KSM was arrested in March 2003. According to the Plaza Bank's website, the organization was founded in early 2006, making it impossible for KSM to have even known of the bank's existence before 2003, never mind plotted against it.

Poll: Most Iraqis live in fear of violence 4 years after invasion

March 18, 2007
Poll: Most Iraqis live in fear of violence 4 years after invasion

Four years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, nearly 9 of 10 Iraqis say they live in fear that the violence ravaging their country will strike themselves and the people with whom they live.

"There is no life at all," Solaf Mohamed Ali, 38, a Shiite woman who works in a bank. USA TODAY interviewed Ali and other Baghdad residents to supplement the poll findings. "We are eating, drinking and sleeping like animals, but animals are lucky because they are not scared all the time like we are. They don't think that they might be killed at any moment, so I think even the animals are much happier than us."

Sergeant convicted of three counts of negligent homicide, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice

March 17, 2007

Sergeant convicted of three counts of negligent homicide, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice

FT. CAMPBELL, KY. — An Army squad leader accused of ordering his soldiers to kill three unarmed Iraqi detainees in May was acquitted Friday of premeditated murder and murder conspiracy. A court-martial panel convicted him of three counts of negligent homicide as well as obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard, 24, had faced a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole if convicted on the murder charges. His attorney said he now faced a maximum of 21 years in prison, with the opportunity to argue for a lower penalty at a sentencing hearing scheduled for Monday.