40 QuickLinks

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Conversations with Machiavelli's ghost: Denials mark neoconservative's account of past and present scandal
(3 comments) Neoconservative Michael Ledeen is no stranger to intrigue.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
HUFFINGTON: How Money Is Clouding the Ports Deal Debate (
(3 comments) Lenin's fabled admonition that capitalists are so eager to make a buck they'll sell you the rope with which to hang them is in need of an update: they'll also lease you the ports through which terrorists can sneak the dirty bomb with which to blow them up. The establishment's full-throated support of the Dubai ports deal is an object lesson in how huge amounts of money can cloud the thinking of people on both sides of the political spectrum.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Where's All the War Dough?
(3 comments) The hefty -- and growing --bill for the war efforts may be getting some new auditors. Over the past three years, Congress has approved $320 billion for military spending over and above the regular Department of Defense budget, which itself has risen about 40% since 2001. But "oversight was lax," contends Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, who sits on the Armed Services Committee. As Pentagon officials head to Capitol Hill next week to start defending this year's $70 billion request for Iraq and Afghanistan, there's new scrutiny of where all the cash is going. IAVA's Follow the Money Project

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Not so fast, General
(3 comments) A bipartisan call by senators to halt the retirement of the major general at the heart of the Abu Ghraib scandal suggests the abuse inquiry finally has a pulse.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Were Sanctions Worth the Price?
(3 comments) As conflict with Iran looms, questions remain about the moral implications of sanctions

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Tom DeLay Faces Primary Test
(3 comments) While DeLay is favored to prevail, it's less certain if he'll reach the 50 percent mark needed to avoid an April 11 runoff. [Guess all Texas politicans are criminals...one crook just as good as another? SAD

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
US Intelligence Chief Negroponte Spends 3 Hrs Daily at Private Club W/ Expensive Security Detail in Tow Say Aides
(3 comments) On many a workday lunchtime, the nominal boss of U.S. intelligence, John D. Negroponte, can be found at a private club in downtown Washington, getting a massage, taking a swim, and having lunch, followed by a good cigar and a perusal of the daily papers in the club’s library. “He spends three hours there [every] Monday through Friday,” gripes a senior counterterrorism official, noting that the former ambassador has a security detail sitting outside all that time in chase cars. Surely Negroponte needs a comfort zone, forced as he is to spends hours in the witness chair in front of congressional committees, fielding hot potatoes on subjects over which he has no control — the NSA’s warrantless surveillance, domestic spying by secret military intelligence units, paying newspapers in Iraq to run pro-U.S. stories. [Good work, if you can get it...]

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
IVINS: The Towering Solons of Abortion
(3 comments) South Dakota is so rarely found on the leading edge of the far out, the wiggy, the California-esque. But it has now staked its claim. First to Outlaw Abortion This Century. The state legislature of South Dakota, in all its wisdom and majesty, a legislature comprised of sons and daughters of the soil from Aberdeen to Zell, have usurped the right of the women of that state to decide whether or not to bear the child of an unwanted pregnancy. They will decide. Women will do what they decide.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Iraqi Government in Turmoil as Violence Persists
(3 comments) American Missing From Tape of Peace Activists Held Hostage

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
How Congress Benefits From Corporate Flights
(3 comments) It was a busy weekend last November for the flight crew of BellSouth's corporate jet. Over three days, they crisscrossed the Southeast, ferrying six U.S. senators, two of their wives, a trio of political consultants and two of the company's Washington lobbyists to Republican and Democratic fundraising events.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Shia bloc seeks time to end impasse
(3 comments) Iraq's Shia Alliance has said it will ask Jalal Talabani, the president, to postpone the opening of parliament for a few days to give them more time to break a deadlock delaying the formation of a new government.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Bush's Last, Best Hope: the Democrats
(3 comments) A Popular Groundswell for Impeachment

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Half a Trillion Dollars - It's an Awful Lot of Money to Makes Us Less Safe and Less Free
(3 comments) Ever since President Eisenhower's farewell address, there have been sporadic warnings about the Military Industrial Complex. Over the last couple of decades, critics like Ernest Fitzgerald and Chuck Spinney have performed a valuable public service by uncovering the Pentagon's lunatic potlatch schemes and dragging them before the bar of public opinion. Lately, organizations such as the Project on Government Oversight, the Center for Defense Information, and the Committee against Government Waste have been in a continuous pother about the riot of pork-barrel spending in the military budget.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
‘I will not seek reelection’
(3 comments) Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), the fiery chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, announced yesterday that he will not seek reelection this year, ending the congressional tenure of one of Capitol Hill’s most polarizing but effective figures. Forced to relinquish the Ways and Means gavel at the end of this Congress because of GOP term limits on the post, Thomas announced the decision from his district office in Bakersfield, Calif., with his wife, Sharon, at his side.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
House GOP to include 527 language in its bill
(3 comments) House Republican leaders have told their Senate counterparts that legislation curtailing the activity of so-called 527 soft-money groups will be included in the House lobbying-reform bill that leaders intend for conference negotiations, according to knowledgeable sources.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Post-9/11 Drive by Republicans To Attract Jewish Voters Stalls
(3 comments) Nearly five years ago, immediately after the Sept.11, 2001, attacks, Republican strategists identified what they hoped would be a powerful new engine of support. "September 12 Republicans" were Jewish Democrats and independents who would switch their allegiance because of their concern over national security and their appreciation of President Bush's stalwart support of Israel.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Fastow Says Skilling Wanted to `Juice' Enron Earnings
(3 comments) Enron Corp.'s former Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow testified today that his boss, Jeffrey Skilling, told him to use off-the-books partnerships to ``give me all the juice you can'' on earnings. Fastow's remarks, in response to prosecutors' questions, were the first attempt to show Skilling, the former chief executive officer, and former Chairman Kenneth Lay, were participants in an accounting fraud that drove Enron into bankruptcy. Fastow, who pleaded guilty to the fraud, said he interpreted Skilling's comment to mean he should ``juice the earnings so we could report the numbers we wanted to report.''

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Democrats Struggle To Seize Opportunity
(3 comments) Amid GOP Troubles, No Unified Message

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
FBI Knew al-Qaeda Pilots Training in U.S.
(3 comments) A top FBI expert on the al-Qaeda terrorist network testified in court today that the agency knew before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the group's leader, Osama bin Laden, had sent followers to an Oklahoma flight school to train as pilots and was interested in hijacking airplanes.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Levee Fixes Falling Short, Experts Warn
(3 comments) The Army Corps of Engineers seems likely to fulfill a promise by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans's toppled flood walls to their original, pre-Katrina height by June 1, but two teams of independent experts monitoring the $1.6 billion reconstruction project say large sections of the rebuilt levee system will be substantially weaker than before the hurricane hit. These experts say the Corps, racing to rebuild 169 miles of levees destroyed or damaged by Katrina, is taking shortcuts to compress what is usually a years-long construction process into a few weeks. They say that weak, substandard materials are being used in some levee walls, citing lab tests as evidence. And they say the Corps is deferring repairs to flood walls that survived Katrina but suffered structural damage that could cause them to topple in a future storm.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
New Model Predicts Severe Solar Activity
(3 comments) Sun-spawned cosmic storms that can play havoc with earthly power grids and orbiting satellites could be 50 percent stronger in the next 11-year solar cycle than in the last one, scientists said yesterday. Using a new model that takes into account the sun's subsurface activity and data about previous solar cycles, astronomers offered a long-range forecast for solar activity that could start as soon as this year or as late as 2008.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Government Smart-Card Project Hits Snags on Fingerprints, Costs
(3 comments) The government's smart-card project appears at risk of falling behind schedule. Federal agencies are supposed to begin issuing government-wide identification cards that can vouch for the identity of federal employees and most contractors in October, but the Government Accountability Office warns that setting up and testing new ID systems may not be completed within deadlines set by the Bush administration.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Envoy to Iraq Sees Threat of Wider War
(3 comments) The top U.S. envoy to Iraq said Monday that the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime had opened a "Pandora's box" of volatile ethnic and sectarian tensions that could engulf the region in all-out war if America pulled out of the country too soon. In remarks that were among the frankest and bleakest public assessments of the Iraq situation by a high-level American official, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the "potential is there" for sectarian violence to become full-blown civil war.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Rumsfeld says potential exists for Iraq civil war
(3 comments) Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday there has always been a risk Iraq could slip into a civil war but he accused the news media of exaggerating the severity of the current situation.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Iraqi President Loses Call for Parliament
(3 comments) Iraq's president failed in a bid Monday to order parliament into session by March 12, further delaying formation of a government and raising questions whether the political process can withstand the unrelenting violence or disintegrate into civil war.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
RAIMONDO: Another War for Israel
(3 comments) The amen corner howls for war with Iran

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
'14,000 detained without trial in Iraq'
(3 comments) US and UK forces in Iraq have detained thousands of people without charge or trial for long periods and there is growing evidence of Iraqi security forces torturing detainees, Amnesty International said today.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Israel 'could target Hamas leaders'
(3 comments) The Israeli defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, warned today that the incoming Palestinian prime minister could be targeted for assassination if Hamas resumed its campaign of violence. Speaking a day after an Israeli air strike killed two Palestinian children, Mr Mofaz said the policy was effective and all Hamas leaders, including the prime minister designate, Ismail Haniyeh, could be targeted.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
CIA Fights Libby's Request for Information
(3 comments) The CIA signaled Tuesday it likely will fight the release of highly classified presidential intelligence briefings that Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide wants to use in his defense against perjury charges.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Two Democrats Vie to Unseat Texas Governor
(3 comments) Two Democrats vying to challenge GOP Gov. Rick Perry were busy with last-minute campaigning Tuesday, while two independents hoped to capitalize on low turnout in Texas' gubernatorial primary election.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Opium Cultivation Rising in Afghanistan
(3 comments) Cultivation of opium poppies has increased in large areas of Afghanistan, raising fears there could be another bumper crop this year, a government and U.N. survey said.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
The Coming Resource Wars
(3 comments) It's official: the era of resource wars is upon us. In a major London address, British Defense Secretary John Reid warned that global climate change and dwindling natural resources are combining to increase the likelihood of violent conflict over land, water and energy. Climate change, he indicated, “will make scarce resources, clean water, viable agricultural land even scarcer”—and this will “make the emergence of violent conflict more rather than less likely.” Although not unprecedented, Reid’s prediction of an upsurge in resource conflict is significant both because of his senior rank and the vehemence of his remarks. “The blunt truth is that the lack of water and agricultural land is a significant contributory factor to the tragic conflict we see unfolding in Darfur,” he declared. “We should see this as a warning sign.”

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Rumsfeld pushes Gingrich Long War strategy
(3 comments) U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is circulating a strategy paper by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, asking top deputies to take another look at the QDR with it in mind. Former House Speaker Gingrich wrote the paper, "Essential Strategic Changes in National Security 2005-2007," in October. Responses to Rumsfeld's questions were due back last week.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Unrest grows in rural China over land grabs
(3 comments) Her sorrow is in contrast to the jubilation in the village in April last year, when 30,000 farmers stopped 1,500 police from entering Huaxi and the farmers won the battle. Huaxi became famous among activists in China, one of the first of many disturbances as rampant industrialisation led to clashes between the authorities and those left behind by development - the farmers and migrant workers who make up two-thirds of China's 1.3 billion people.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
UK: Plan for new nuclear programme approaches meltdown after report
(3 comments) Despite the Prime Minister's well-known support for the nuclear industry, the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) concluded that a new nuclear programme was not the answer to the twin challenges of climate change and security of supply. In a hard-hitting report, the 15-strong Commission identified five "major disadvantages" to nuclear power:

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Palestinians to Get $42 Mln World Bank Grant to Ease `Crisis'
(3 comments) The World Bank approved a $42 million grant to help ease the ``severe fiscal crisis'' in the Palestinian Authority as the Islamic militant group Hamas prepares to take over the government.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Cheney Says U.S. Won't Let Iran Get Nukes
(3 comments) Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday that Iran will not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon and warned "the United States is keeping all options on the table in addressing the irresponsible conduct of the regime."

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Iraqi Leader Won't Abandon Election Bid
(3 comments) Iraq's Shiite prime minister declared Tuesday he won't be blackmailed into abandoning his bid for a second term, and the Kurdish president bowed to Shiite pressure to delay calling parliament into session until a deadlock is resolved over who should lead a unity government.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Ex-Enron CFO Says He Helped Hide Losses
(3 comments) Former Enron Corp. Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow testified Tuesday he ran partnerships designed to help the company mask as much as hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

Tuesday, March 7, 2006
U.S. Firm Against Iran Nuclear Enrichment
(3 comments) The Bush administration told Iran on Tuesday that any enrichment of nuclear fuel on Iranian territory was unacceptable, as Russia appeared to close ranks with the United States over Tehran's nuclear program.