IHT : Taliban kill Korean hostage as demands go unmet

Taliban kill Korean hostage as demands go unmet

By Carlotta Gall | July 25, 2007

KABUL, Afghanistan: The Taliban shot dead one of their 23 South Korean hostages on Wednesday after complaining that the government had not responded positively to their demands. The victim's body was brought to a United States military base in Ghazni Province, said an Afghan official negotiating with the Taliban captors for the hostages' release.

The official, Waheedullah Mujadeddi, said he was expecting eight hostages to be released Wednesday evening, but by late evening it was not clear if a transfer had occurred. He confirmed the death of a male hostage.

"I can confirm one of the hostages was very sick and there was no doctor or medicine, and the Taliban shot him," Mujadeddi said. He said he had learned the news directly from the group holding the hostages.

The South Koreans are members of a Protestant church group who were on a 10-day relief mission; most are women in their 20s and 30s, and some are nurses and teachers. They were abducted last Thursday while traveling on a public bus on the main highway from the capital, Kabul, to the southern city of Kandahar.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the kidnappers, said that a hostage was killed because the government had not agreed to an initial release of eight Taliban prisoners in exchange for eight Koreans.

"They do not pay attention and did not give a positive response," Ahmadi said, "so that's why we killed one Korean hostage." He gave the man's name and said he was killed in midafternoon in a desert area in the district of Qarabagh near the main highway.

The Associated Press, citing KBS, the South Korean public broadcasting network, reported from Kabul that the slain hostage was a 42-year-old pastor, Bae Hyung-kyu.

Ahmadi said more hostages would be killed in 10 hours if the government was not more cooperative.

In the morning, Ahmadi contacted journalists and said that the Taliban was running out of patience and would start to kill hostages if the government did not meet demands for 23 Taliban prisoners to be released and South Korean troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan.

The killing of the South Korean follows the death of a German engineer at the hands of kidnappers in the province of Wardak, near Kabul. Another German and four Afghans are still being held by those kidnappers.

The Taliban and other insurgents have often sought to abduct or kill foreign civilians to deter reconstruction and aid projects in Afghanistan and undermine the government. As a result, few foreigners travel on the highway from Kabul to Kandahar.

IHT : As U.S. rebuilds, Iraqi minister won't take over finished work

As U.S. rebuilds, Iraqi minister won't take over finished work

By James Glanz | July 27, 2007

Iraq's national government is refusing to take possession of thousands of American-financed reconstruction projects, forcing the United States either to hand them over to local Iraqis, who often lack the proper training and resources to keep the projects running, or commit new money to an effort that has already consumed billions of taxpayer dollars.

The conclusions, detailed in a report released Friday by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, a federal oversight agency, include the finding that of 2,797 completed projects costing $5.8 billion, Iraq's national government had, by the spring of this year, accepted only 435 projects valued at $501 million. Few transfers to Iraqi national government control have taken place since the current Iraqi government, which is frequently criticized for inaction on matters relating to the American intervention, took office in 2006.

The United States often promotes the number of rebuilding projects, such as power plants and hospitals, that have been completed in Iraq, citing them as signs of progress in a nation otherwise fraught with violence and political stalemate. But closer examination by the inspector general's office, headed by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., has found that a number of individual projects are crumbling, abandoned or otherwise inoperative only months after the United States declares that they have been successfully completed. The United States always intended to hand over projects to the Iraqi government when they were completed.

Although Bowen's latest report is primarily a financial overview, he said in an interview that it raised serious questions on whether the problems his inspectors had found were much more widespread in the reconstruction program.

The process of transferring projects to Iraq "worked for a while," Bowen said. But then the new government took over and installed its finance minister, Bayan Jabr, who has been a continuing center of controversy in his various government posts and is formally in charge of the transfers. "After Jabr took over, that process ceased to function," Bowen said.

In fact, in the first two quarters of 2007, Bowen said, his inspectors found significant problems in all but two of the 12 projects they examined after the United States declared those projects completed.

In one of the most recent cases, a $90 million project to overhaul two giant turbines at the Dora power plant in Baghdad failed after completion because employees at the plant did not know how to operate the turbines properly and the wrong fuel was used. The additional power is critically needed in Baghdad, where residents often have only a few hours of electricity a day.

Because the Iraqi government will not formally accept projects like the refurbished turbines, the United States is "finding someone at the local level to handle the project, handing them the keys and saying, 'Operate and maintain it,' " another official in the inspector general's office said.

If the pace of the American rebuilding program is a guide, those problems could quickly accelerate: So far, the United States has declared that $5.8 billion in American taxpayer-financed projects have been completed, but most of the rest of the projects within a $21 billion rebuilding program that Bowen examined in the report are expected to be finished by the end of this year. Some of that money is also being used to train and equip Iraqi security forces rather than finance construction projects.

The report was released too late in the day to contact Jabr, who is part of a Shiite alliance in charge of the government. In his previous position as interior minister, he was accused of running Shiite death squads out of the ministry. In his current position he has developed a reputation as being slow to release budget money to Iraqi government entities, which would have to run the new projects at substantial expense.

He is sometimes suspected of seeking to use his position to undermine the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who is also a Shiite but answers to a different faction within the alliance. In interviews, Jabr has rejected those accusations and says he strongly supports the government.

American researchers who have followed the reconstruction said Bowen's report raised serious new doubts about the program. Rick Barton, co-director of the postconflict reconstruction project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research institute in Washington, said the lack of interest on the part of the Iraqis was the latest demonstration that they were not involved enough in its planning stages. "It sort of confirms that you really need pre-agreement on the projects you are attempting," Barton said, "or you end up with these kinds of projects at the tail end, where people don't know much about the program and they haven't bought into it."

Barton said that the episode was probably inevitable given that the elected Iraqi government operated mainly within the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad and had little capability of managing thousands of new projects around the country. He said that this was the most likely explanation — rather than any ill will on Jabr's part. But Barton said the findings indicated that the United States should put some of the remaining money in the program into "sustainment," the term for running the projects, rather than continuing to build when there might be no one to run the projects.

"To build something and not have these issues resolved from top to bottom is unfathomable," said William Nash, a retired general who is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on Middle East reconstruction. "The management of the reconstruction program for Iraq has been a near-total disaster from the beginning."

The report says that of the 2,797 projects declared completed, besides the 435 projects formally accepted by Iraq's central government, 1,141 have been transferred to local Iraqi authorities. American government entities in charge of those projects include the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the American-led multinational forces in Iraq, the United States Embassy and the United States Agency for International Development. In letters attached to Bowen's report, several of those entities largely concurred with many of Bowen's findings and said that new agreements were being hammered out with the Iraqi government to smooth the transfers.

A spokesman for the development agency, David Snider, said in a statement that work now being undertaken by the agency "helps address the concerns" raised in the report. Snider said that the agency was seeking to formalize an agreement with the Iraqi government that would protect the American investment there.

The agency "usually secures these commitments from recipient governments before the initiation of a project," Snider said. But in the case of Iraq, he said, the American rebuilding effort "began before the current Iraqi government was established."

IHT : U.S. set to offer huge arms deal to Saudi Arabia

U.S. set to offer huge arms deal to Saudi Arabia

By David S. Cloud | July 27, 2007

WASHINGTON: The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to total $20 billion over the next decade at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq.

The proposed package of advanced weaponry for Saudi Arabia, which includes advanced satellite-guided bombs, upgrades to its fighters and new naval vessels, has made Israel and some of its supporters in Congress nervous. Senior officials who described the package on Friday said they believed that the administration had resolved those concerns, in part by promising Israel $30.4 billion in military aid over the next decade, a significant increase over what Israel has received in the past 10 years.

But administration officials remained concerned that the size of the package and the advanced weaponry it contains, as well as broader concerns about Saudi Arabia's role in Iraq, could prompt Saudi critics in Congress to oppose the package when Congress is formally notified about the deal this fall. In talks about the package, the administration has not sought specific assurances from Saudi Arabia that it would be more supportive of the American effort in Iraq as a condition of receiving the arms package, the officials said.

The officials said the plan to bolster the militaries of Gulf countries is part of an American strategy to contain the growing power of Iran in the region and to demonstrate that, no matter what happens in Iraq, Washington remains committed to its longtime Arab allies in the region. Officials from the State Department and the Pentagon agreed to outline the terms of the deal after some details emerged from closed briefings this week on Capitol Hill.

The officials said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who are to make a joint visit to Saudi Arabia next week, still intended to use the trip to press the Saudis to do more to help Iraq's Shiite-dominated government, officials said.

"The role of the Sunni Arab neighbors is to send a positive, affirmative message to moderates in Iraq in government that the neighbors are with you," a senior State Department official told reporters in a conference call on Friday. More specifically, the official said, the United States wants the Gulf states to make clear to Sunnis engaged in violence in Iraq that such actions are "killing your future."

In addition to promising an increase in American military aid to Israel, the Pentagon is seeking to ease Israel's concerns over the proposed weapons sales to Saudi Arabia by asking the Saudis to accept restrictions on the range, size and location of the satellite-guided bombs, including a commitment not to store the weapons at air bases close to Israeli territory, the officials said.

The package and the possible steps to allay Israel's concerns were described to Congress this week, in an effort by the administration to test the reaction on Capitol Hill before entering into final negotiations on the package with Saudi officials. The Saudis had requested that Congress be told about the planned sale, the officials said, in an effort to avoid the kind of bruising fight on Capitol Hill that occurred in the 1980s over proposed arms sales to the kingdom.

In his visit with King Abdullah and other Saudi officials next week, Gates plans to describe "what the administration is willing to go forward with" in the arms package and "what we would recommend to the Hill and others," according to a senior Pentagon official, who conducted a background briefing on the upcoming trip with reporters on Friday.

The official added that Gates would also reassure the Saudis that "regardless of what happens in the near term in Iraq that our commitment in the region remains firm, remains steadfast and that, in fact, we are looking to enhance and develop it."

The $20 billion price tag on the package is more than double what officials originally estimated when details became public this spring. Even the higher figure is a rough estimate that could fluctuate depending on the final package, officials said.

Worried about the impression that the United States was starting an arms race in the region, State and Defense Department officials stressed that the arms deal was being proposed largely in response to improvements in Iran's military capabilities and to counter the threat posed by its nuclear program, which the Bush administration contends is aimed at building nuclear weapons.

Along with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are likely to receive equipment and weaponry from the arms sales under consideration, officials said. In general, the United States is interested in upgrading the countries' air and missile defense systems, improving their navies and making modest improvements in their air forces, administration officials said, though not all the packages would be the same.

Rice is expected to announce Monday that the administration will open formal discussions with each country about the proposed packages, in hopes of reaching agreements by the fall. Along with the announcement of formal talks with Gulf allies on the arms package, Rice is planning to outline the new 10-year agreement to provide military aid to Israel, as well as a similar accord with Egypt. The $30.4 billion being promised to Israel is $9.1 billion more than Israel has received over the past decade, an increase of nearly 43 percent.

A senior administration official said the sizable increase was the result of Israel's need to replace equipment expended in its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon last summer, as well as to maintain its advantage in advanced weaponry as other countries in the region modernize their forces.

In defending the proposed sale to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, the officials noted that the Saudis and several of the other countries are in talks with suppliers other than the United States. If the packages offered to them by the United States are blocked or come with too many conditions, the officials said, the Gulf countries could turn elsewhere for similar equipment, reducing American influence in the region.

The United States has made few, if any, sales of satellite-guided munitions to Arab countries in the past, though Israel has received them since the mid-1990s as part of a United States policy of ensuring that Israel has a military edge over its regional rivals.

Israeli officials have made specific requests aimed at eliminating concerns that satellite-guided bombs sold to the Saudis could be used against its territory, administration officials said.

Their major concern is not a full-scale Saudi attack, but the possibility that a rogue pilot armed with one of the bombs could attack on his own or that the Saudi government could one day be overthrown and the weapons could fall into the hands of a more radical regime, officials said.

IHT : In Baghdad, the search for ice becomes a deadly struggle

In Baghdad, the search for ice becomes a deadly struggle

By Stephen Farrell | July 27, 2007

BAGHDAD: Each day before the midsummer sun rises high enough to bake blood on concrete, Baghdad's underclass lines up outside Dickensian ice factories.

With electricity reaching most homes for just a couple of hours each day, the poor hand over soiled brown dinars for what has become a symbol of Iraq's steady descent into a more primitive era and its broken covenant with leaders, domestic and foreign. In a capital that was once the seat of the Islamic Caliphate and a center of Arab worldliness, ice is now a currency of last resort for the poor, subject to sectarian horrors and gangland rules.

In Shiite-majority Topci, icemakers say that Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi army militia issued a diktat on the first day of summer ordering vendors to set a price ceiling of 4,000 dinars, or $3, per 25-kilogram, or 55-pound, block of ice - 30 percent less than they charge in areas outside Mahdi army control.

Everyone complied, delivering an instant subsidy to the veiled women and poor laborers who are the radical Shiite cleric's natural constituency. The same price is enforced in his other power bases, like Sadr City.

"They are trying to improve their image, and gain favor," grumbled one merchant, as a sickle-wielding colleague chopped the hollow crystalline blocks in half for black-robed women to cram into shopping bags. "But it won't do much good. We all know what the Mahdi army are."

Wearied by four years of chaos, others support the move to reimpose order, any order.

"There is nothing better than law and order," said Omar Suleiman, another factory manager. "In the days of Saddam Hussein, the government used to control the price of ice. Now there is no control, except where the militias are doing it."

Shiites are not alone in manipulating supply to suit their own agendas.

At one plant, all four delivery drivers quit last year after warnings that sectarian gangs would kill them if they continued to drive across the invisible but all-too-real lines dividing Baghdad's Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods.

Customers in one suburb cautioned them that takfiris - fanatical Sunni extremists - had decreed their frozen product un-Islamic.

"In Ghazaliya it is forbidden to sell ice because the takfiris said the Prophet Muhammad had no ice in his time," said Khatan Kareem, an ice factory manager, shaking his head at the absurdity.

Many of Baghdad's ice plants are museum pieces. In one, the industrial compressor was manufactured in India in 1960. Another's was built by L. Sterne and Co. in Glasgow more than half a century ago.

As he scuttles from fan belt to ice-blistered piping, trying to keep his plant limping along, Hussam Mohammed says he never imagined his dilapidated factory, built in 1952 when Iraq was still a monarchy, would survive into the post-Saddam era.

"In 2003 I thought the ice business would be finished because everyone would have electricity and refrigerators once the Americans arrived," said the veteran ice-maker.

"The fish sellers and meat stores who used to buy from us are gone, closed because of the security situation. Now it is the poor people who come because they don't have money to pay for generators to keep their food and drinks cold."

Baghdad's sectarian compartmentalization of ice is as rigid for customers as for deliverymen.

Such is the universal fear of the gunmen that only this factory's immediate neighbors can safely reach its doors.

"People used to come here from Sunni areas - Taji, Amiriya and Jamia - to buy ice because they had no ice factories in their areas," Kareem said. "But the Sunnis cannot reach this area now, and I am the same. I am Shia and I cannot go to Yarmuk."

Yarmuk rankles Kareem because until three months ago he lived in the Sunni neighborhood and enjoyed a secure government job, until an Iraqi Army raid uncovered a Shiite icon on his wall.

"They beat me up, burnt my house and forced me out of the area," he said, squatting amid the nauseating smell of ammonium that permeates all ice factories. "I now live in my relatives' kitchen. And I work here."

His depression reflects the frustration of an Iraqi middle class that prides itself on being one of the most educated in the Arab world, but sees itself falling farther behind its regional rivals and back to the technology of its grandfathers.

In wealthier districts consumer goods are stacked high on shelves, for the "haves" who can afford to buy black-market electricity from private owners of generators.

But millions of "have-nots" cannot afford this luxury, and many of those generator owners have now been killed or driven away by militias intent on securing their lucrative assets.

Ice, ostensibly the least political of commodities, requires only water, electricity and a few chemicals.

But in Baghdad's current state of polarized violence, no individual business has the luxury of existing as an island. Raw materials must pass the checkpoints and gunmen, with their arbitrary rules and instant punishments, as must customers, suppliers, staff and the finished product.

The ice factories - cash cows in the peak summer season - have not escaped the gunmen's notice.

In the Sunni enclave of Adhamiya, newly walled off from its Shiite neighbors to halt cross-community slaughter, Taha Khaleel complains that his drivers and mechanics are at the mercy of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi Army checkpoint that controls the gate.

"It depends on their mood," he said. "This causes problems for us in the continuity of fuel supplies. The drivers are more reluctant to come to us now because of that, and because of the insults they face."

One kidnapped factory owner in Taji was released only after he surrendered his car. At Baghdad's Qutub Ice Factory the owner has already fled Iraq after receiving a death threat, and employees say most of its middle-class customers have also gone.

Not so fortunate are the poor buyers in Hay al-Salaam's street market, where wooden ice shacks have sprung up in recent months, despite the adjacent sewage and piles of rotting garbage.

Alarmed by tales of disease, many buyers now drop sterilization pills into the frozen blocks. If they are lucky, the stores will have ice from Kurdish Sulaimaniya or Erbil, made from clean mountain water. If they are unlucky, their only option is the impure Baghdad product, with its distinctive yellow sheen.

"I never used to buy ice in Saddam's regime because I could use my refrigerator. But nowadays I have to because there is no electricity and we need cold water," said Mohammed Abbadi, a 52-year-old fashion store owner.

"Ice is the only source, even if it is dirty. Both my girls fell sick with typhoid two weeks ago, he said."

Reuters : Recurring suicide bomb nightmare haunts Pakistan

Recurring suicide bomb nightmare haunts Pakistan

By Simon Cameron-Moore | July 28, 2007

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani authorities warned more suicide bombers were stalking Islamabad, a day after 14 people were killed in a blast near a mosque regarded as a symbol of Islamist resistance to U.S. ally President Pervez Musharraf.

"I feel very insecure for myself, for my children and for my city. I never thought my city would be like this," Fareha Ansar, a former high school principal, said on Saturday, after the second suicide attack in the capital this month.

A wave of suicide attacks, roadside bombs and shootings have killed more than 180 people, in a militant campaign triggered by the storming of the Red Mosque in Islamabad earlier this month to crush a Taliban-style movement.

The government reopened the mosque this week, but trouble broke out on Friday as hundreds of followers of radical clerics briefly seized the mosque before being dispersed by police.

A suicide bomber, described as a bearded man in his 20s, struck at a nearby restaurant shortly afterwards.

The only extra police evident on Saturday were stationed around the now "indefinitely closed" Red Mosque, or Lal Masjid.

Part of the problem for security forces is that they are the main target for attacks. Eight of Friday's victims were police.

Police foiled a car bomb plot on Friday in Bannu, a city at the gateway to North Waziristan, a tribal region regarded as a hotbed of support for the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Musharraf has to contend with more challenges than just the militant threat in Pakistani cities, and pressure from the United States to act against al Qaeda nests in North Waziristan, as he struggles to hold on to power.

SECRET RENDEZVOUS WITH BHUTTO?

A Supreme Court ruling last week to reinstate a chief justice who Musharraf had spent four months trying to oust augured ill for his plan to get re-elected by the sitting assemblies before their dissolution in November without running into serious constitutional challenges.

Having become increasingly isolated politically over the past few months, and virtually silent since the court decision went against him last week, Musharraf was in Abu Dhabi on Friday, reportedly for secret talks with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto about a deal to secure him a second term.

Officials denied the television reports on Friday, but newspapers on Saturday said the two held their first face-to-face talks since Musharraf came to power in a coup eight years ago, though his emissaries have been speaking to Bhutto for months.

Musharraf was in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, and expected back in Pakistan on Sunday.

Mutual distrust has surrounded contacts with Bhutto, and a deal remains fraught with problems, though both share a vision of turning Pakistan into a moderate, progressive nation.

Living in self-exile, Bhutto has seen her bargaining position strengthen as Musharraf's grip on power weakens.

General Musharraf wants to be re-elected by the sitting assemblies while still army chief. Bhutto says he should get re-elected after parliamentary elections due around the end of the year, and that he should stand as a civilian.

While Musharraf would be ready to give her Pakistan People's Party (PPP) a share of power, he would prefer the strong-willed Bhutto to stay on the sidelines, according to government sources.

U.S. and British officials have spoken of hope that political moderates can come together at the centre of Pakistan's fractured politics to form a bulwark against a rising Islamist tide.

(With additional reporting by Kamran Haider)

WaPo : Dozens of Afghan civilians die in air raids: residents

Dozens of Afghan civilians die in air raids: residents

Reuters | July 27, 2007

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Dozens of civilians, including women and children, have been killed in two foreign air strikes in southern Afghanistan, residents and a local member of parliament said on Friday.

One of the raids by NATO hit houses in the Girishk district of Helmand province on Thursday evening, killing up to 50 civilians, a group of some 20 residents reported to journalists in Kandahar, the main city in the south.

Wali Jan Sabri, a parliamentarian from Helmand, said he had credible information that between 50 to 60 civilians had been killed in a battle between the Taliban and NATO forces in Girishk.

He said most of the victims were killed in air strikes.

"Yes, there was a battle ... and most of those killed were from NATO bombardment," he told Reuters.

The district chief of Girishk, Manaf Khan, said more than 20 civilians were killed in NATO bombing when they were trying to flee the battle.

"The fighting was fierce between Taliban and NATO," he told Reuters. "Civilians began to flee and 27 or 28 of them were killed while fleeing NATO bombing. I do not have information about the wounded," he said.

He later phoned Reuters to say said that 50 Taliban were also killed in the bombing and battle. The Taliban could not be reached for comment.

A spokesman for British forces in Helmand said there was an ongoing operation in the province, but denied there had been any civilian casualties around Girishk.

"We have no reports of any such incidents in Girishk yesterday at all. There have been no people taken to the hospital ... in relation to anything around Girishk," said Lieutenant-Colonel Charlie Mayo.

"Because the Taliban don't wear uniforms like us, as soon as they are killed, they are called civilians, the key is are they male or female and if they are male, what age are they?"

Due to the remoteness of the region it was not immediately possible to verify the information.

Some 2,000 British and Afghan army forces have been conducting an operation in the Upper Girishk valley this week to clear Taliban insurgents from the area.

The second attack hit two houses in the Char Cheno district of neighboring Uruzgan late on Thursday afternoon and killed 15 civilians there, several villagers from the area told reporters by telephone.

Dominion Post (NZ) : Dozens of Afghan civillians die in air raids

Dozens of Afghan civillians die in air raids

Reuters | July 28, 2007

Dozens of civilians, including women and children, have been killed in two foreign air strikes in southern Afghanistan, residents and a local member of parliament said on Friday.

One of the raids by NATO hit houses in the Girishk district of Helmand province killing up to 50 civilians, a group of some 20 residents reported to journalists in Kandahar, the main city in the south.

Wali Jan Sabri, a parliamentarian from Helmand, said he had credible information that between 50 to 60 civilians had been killed in a battle between the Taliban and NATO forces in Girishk.

He said most of the victims were killed in air strikes.

"Yes, there was a battle ... and most of those killed were from NATO bombardment," he told Reuters.

The district chief of Girishk, Manaf Khan, said more than 20 civilians were killed in NATO bombing when they were trying to flee the battle.

"The fighting was fierce between Taliban and NATO," he told Reuters. "Civilians began to flee and 27 or 28 of them were killed while fleeing NATO bombing. I do not have information about the wounded," he said.

He later phoned Reuters to say said that 50 Taliban were also killed in the bombing and battle. The Taliban could not be reached for comment.

A spokesman for British forces in Helmand said there was an ongoing operation in the province, but denied there had been any civilian casualties around Girishk.

"We have no reports of any such incidents in Girishk yesterday at all. There have been no people taken to the hospital ... in relation to anything around Girishk," said Lieutenant-Colonel Charlie Mayo.

"Because the Taliban don't wear uniforms like us, as soon as they are killed, they are called civilians, the key is are they male or female and if they are male, what age are they?"

Due to the remoteness of the region it was not immediately possible to verify the information.

Some 2,000 British and Afghan army forces have been conducting an operation in the Upper Girishk valley this week to clear Taliban insurgents from the area.

The second attack hit two houses in the Char Cheno district of neighboring Uruzgan late on Thursday afternoon and killed 15 civilians there, several villagers from the area told reporters by telephone.

FOX News : At least 50 Taliban Militants Killed in Airstrikes in Afghanistan

At least 50 Taliban Militants Killed in Airstrikes in Afghanistan

AP | Friday, July 27, 2007

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — NATO and Afghan troops clashed with Taliban insurgents and called in airstrikes, killing at least 50 suspected militants and dozens of civilians, local officials and villagers said Friday.

The fighting started Thursday night in the village of Kumbarak in Helmand province, and NATO forces told residents to evacuate their homes because of the clashes, said Gereshk district chief Abdul Manaf Khan.

The airstrikes killed 50 Taliban and 28 civilians, Khan said, citing villagers' reports. He said the bodies have already been buried, and the fighting continued Friday.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force said it did not have any information about the incident and was looking into it.

The report could not be immediately verified due to the area's remoteness and instability, although a local lawmaker and a resident also said there were civilians among the dead.

Malim Mirwali, a member of Parliament for Gereshk, said that more than 40 civilians were killed in the airstrikes — a figure that one local resident also cited.

"The war planes came and bombed these villagers — more than 40 civilians killed, including women and children," said villager Nimatullah Khan.

"The villagers' bodies were buried this morning because the weather was hot. Right now, the people are scared, and the operation is ongoing between these forces and the Taliban," he said.

The latest violence comes a day after reports of U.S.-led coalition and Afghan troops battling with militants in the south, leaving more than 60 suspected Taliban dead. A NATO soldier was killed in another incident.

Violence has risen sharply in Afghanistan in the last two months. More than 3,500 people, mostly militants, have been killed in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press tally of casualty figures provided by Western and Afghan officials.

Civilian deaths are a recurring problem that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly deplored, demanding foreign forces take greater care to avoid such incidents.

The Guardian : 28 Afghans Killed in South

28 Afghans Killed in South

The Guardian | July 27, 2007

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) - NATO and Afghan troops clashed with Taliban insurgents and called in airstrikes, killing at least 50 suspected militants and dozens of civilians, local officials and villagers said Friday.

The fighting started Thursday night in the village of Kumbarak in Helmand province, and NATO forces told residents to evacuate their homes because of the clashes, said Gereshk district chief Abdul Manaf Khan.

The airstrikes killed 50 Taliban and 28 civilians, including women and children, Khan said, citing villagers' reports. He said the bodies have already been buried, and the fighting continued Friday.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force said it did not have any information about the incident and was looking into it.

LAT : NATO soldier, 60 Taliban killed in battles in southern Afghanistan

NATO soldier, 60 Taliban killed in battles in southern Afghanistan

From the Associated Press | July 26, 2007

KABUL, Afghanistan -- U.S.-led coalition forces and Afghan troops clashed with militants in two separate battles in southern Afghanistan, leaving more than 60 suspected Taliban dead, while a NATO soldier was killed in another incident, officials said today.

Coalition forces and Afghan troops late Wednesday attacked on a cluster of buildings in Helmand province that militants have been using to launch attacks, triggering a 12-hour gunbattle.

"Coalition air support dropped two bombs on the compounds with the greatest concentration of insurgents," a coalition statement said. "Both compounds produced significant secondary explosions immediately suggesting a large quantity of explosive material was present in each."

More than 50 Taliban were killed in the clash and a number of others were wounded, the coalition said.

The clash happened near the village of Musa Qala, where a peace deal struck last year with local elders effectively ceded control of the area to Taliban fighters. Militants use the village and surrounding areas as a staging ground for raids against Afghan and foreign troops.

The most recent attack, using heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers on a coalition patrol, triggered the assault on the militant compound. A coalition soldier broke his hand during the engagement, it said.

"They are using Musa Qala as a base of support and it is believed that they will stay and defend the area rather than use their normal hit-and-run tactics," the coalition said.

In neighboring Kandahar province's Maruf district, Afghan troops clashed with Taliban for three hours on Wednesday, leaving 10 suspected militants and one policemen dead, said Sayed Afghan Saqib, Kandahar provincial police chief.

A NATO soldier was also killed today following a clash with militants in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said in a statement. The soldier's nationality and the exact location of the clash were not revealed.

Violence has risen sharply in Afghanistan in the last two months. More than 3,500 people, mostly militants, have been killed in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press tally of casualty figures provided by Western and Afghan officials.

WaPo : 60 Taliban Killed in Afghan Battles

60 Taliban Killed in Afghan Battles

By FISNIK ABRASHI | The Associated Press | July 26, 2007

KABUL, Afghanistan -- U.S.-led coalition forces and Afghan troops fought two separate battles with militants in southern Afghanistan, killing more than 60 suspected Taliban insurgents, officials said Thursday.

Coalition forces and Afghan troops attacked a cluster of buildings in Helmand province that militants have been using to launch attacks. More than 50 Taliban were killed and several others were wounded in the 12-hour gunbattle that ended early Thursday.

"Coalition air support dropped two bombs on the compounds with the greatest concentration of insurgents," a coalition statement said. "Both compounds produced significant secondary explosions immediately suggesting a large quantity of explosive material was present in each."

The clash happened near the village of Musa Qala, where a peace deal struck last year with local elders effectively ceded control of the area to Taliban fighters. The agreement between the elders and the Helmand government prevents NATO and Taliban forces from entering the town, but militants still use the area as a staging ground for raids against Afghan and foreign troops.

Militants recently attacked a coalition patrol with heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, prompting the assault on the compound. A coalition soldier broke his hand during the fight, the coalition said.

"They are using Musa Qala as a base of support and it is believed that they will stay and defend the area rather than use their normal hit-and-run tactics," the coalition said.

In neighboring Kandahar province, Afghan troops clashed with the Taliban for three hours leaving 10 suspected militants and one policemen dead, said Sayed Afghan Saqib, Kandahar provincial police chief.

Violence has risen sharply in Afghanistan in the last two months. More than 3,500 people, mostly militants, have been killed in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press tally of casualty figures provided by Western and Afghan officials.

Associated Press writer Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.

Eurasia Net : NATO Air Strikes Kill Scores In Afghanistan's South

NATO AIR STRIKES KILL SCORES IN AFGHANISTAN’S SOUTH

July 27, 2007

NATO and Afghan troops clashed with Taliban militants in Helmand Province overnight, with NATO air strikes killing scores of people.

There are conflicting claims about the number of Taliban and civilians killed.

Wali Jan Sabri, a lawmaker from Helmand, said he has credible information that up to 60 civilians were killed by air strikes during the battle in the Gereshk district.

Gereshk district chief Abdul Manaf Khan said 50 suspected Taliban fighters were killed, along with up to 28 civilians.

A spokesman for British forces, Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Mayo, denied that any civilians were killed.

Reuters : Dozens of Afghan civilians die in air raids: residents

Dozens of Afghan civilians die in air raids: residents

Reuters | July 27, 2007

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Dozens of civilians, including women and children, have been killed in two foreign air strikes in southern Afghanistan, residents and a local member of parliament said on Friday.

One of the raids by NATO hit houses in the Girishk district of Helmand province on Thursday evening, killing up to 50 civilians, a group of some 20 residents reported to journalists in Kandahar, the main city in the south.

Wali Jan Sabri, a parliamentarian from Helmand, said he had credible information that between 50 to 60 civilians had been killed in a battle between the Taliban and NATO forces in Girishk.

He said most of the victims were killed in air strikes.

"Yes, there was a battle ... and most of those killed were from NATO bombardment," he told Reuters.

The district chief of Girishk, Manaf Khan, said more than 20 civilians were killed in NATO bombing when they were trying to flee the battle.

"The fighting was fierce between Taliban and NATO," he told Reuters. "Civilians began to flee and 27 or 28 of them were killed while fleeing NATO bombing. I do not have information about the wounded," he said.

He later phoned Reuters to say said that 50 Taliban were also killed in the bombing and battle. The Taliban could not be reached for comment.

A spokesman for British forces in Helmand said there was an ongoing operation in the province, but denied there had been any civilian casualties around Girishk.

"We have no reports of any such incidents in Girishk yesterday at all. There have been no people taken to the hospital ... in relation to anything around Girishk," said Lieutenant-Colonel Charlie Mayo.

"Because the Taliban don't wear uniforms like us, as soon as they are killed, they are called civilians, the key is are they male or female and if they are male, what age are they?"

Due to the remoteness of the region it was not immediately possible to verify the information.

Some 2,000 British and Afghan army forces have been conducting an operation in the Upper Girishk valley this week to clear Taliban insurgents from the area.

The second attack hit two houses in the Char Cheno district of neighboring Uruzgan late on Thursday afternoon and killed 15 civilians there, several villagers from the area told reporters by telephone.

© Reuters 2007

Guardian : Violent clashes as Red Mosque reopens

Violent clashes as Red Mosque reopens

Associated Press | Guardian Unlimited | July 27, 2007

Police fired teargas at hundreds of religious students who occupied Islamabad's Red Mosque today, two weeks after an army siege that left more than 100 dead.

Protesters demanding the return of a pro-Taliban cleric threw stones at an armoured personnel carrier and at dozens of police in riot gear on a road outside the mosque.

Police used teargas to scatter the crowd after protesters ignored their appeals. They fled back inside the mosque compound. A voice on the mosque loudspeaker, of which a small group of religious students appeared to be in control, urged the protesters not to attack the security forces, but the situation remained tense.

The clashes spoiled a government attempt to reopen the mosque, which was stormed by the army on July 10 after its pro-Taliban clerics had launched an anti-vice campaign. The government had turned a blind eye until militants seized seven Chinese nationals, precipitating a bloody raid on the mosque.

Earlier, security forces stood by as protesters clambered on to the mosque's roof and daubed red paint on the walls after forcing the retreat of a government-appointed cleric who was assigned to lead Friday prayers.

The protesters demanded the return of the mosque's former chief cleric, Abdul Aziz, who was in government detention, and shouted slogans against the president, General Pervez Musharraf.

"Musharraf is a dog! He is worse than a dog! He should resign!" students shouted.

In an act of defiance against the authorities repainting the mosque this week in pale yellow, protesters wrote "Lal Masjid" (Red Mosque) in large Urdu script on the mosque's dome.

They also raised a black flag with two crossed swords, meant to symbolise jihad, or holy war.

The crowd also shouted support for the mosque's former deputy cleric, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who led the siege until he was shot dead by security forces after refusing to surrender.

Pakistan's Geo television showed scenes of pandemonium inside the mosque, with dozens of young men in traditional Islamic clothing and prayer caps shouting angrily and punching the air with their hands.

Officials were pushed and shoved by men in the crowd.

Maulana Ashfaq Ahmed, a senior cleric from another mosque in the city who was assigned by the government to lead Friday's prayers, was quickly escorted from the mosque as protesters gestured angrily at him.

Today's attempted reopening of the mosque was meant to help cool anger over the siege, which triggered a flare-up in militant attacks on security forces across Pakistan.

However, there was still public scepticism over the government's accounting of how many people died in the siege, with many still claiming that a large number of children and religious students were among the dead.

At least 102 people were killed in the violence. Attacks by militants in north-western Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan have surged since the siege, killing about 200 others in suicide bombings and clashes, many of them security forces.

Albany Times-Union : Explosion heard near Pakistan mosque

Explosion heard near Pakistan mosque

By SADAQAT JAN, Associated Press | July 27, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A large explosion went off near Islamabad's Red Mosque on Friday, officials said. Local media reported several people died.

The explosion happened at a market area about a quarter mile from the mosque, where religious students clashed earlier in the day with security forces.

Ambulances were rushing to the scene of the explosion. Police said they were investigating. Dawn reported that seven people had died.

Hundreds of religious students occupied Islamabad's Red Mosque on Friday and clashed with security forces, demanding the return of a pro-Taliban cleric two weeks after a bloody army siege left more than 100 people dead.

Hundreds of protesters threw stones at an armored personnel carrier and dozens of police in riot gear on a road outside the mosque. After protesters disregarded police calls to disperse peacefully, police fired tear gas, scattering the crowd on the road.

Earlier, security forces stood by as protesters clambered onto the roof of the mosque and daubed red paint on the walls after forcing a government-appointed cleric assigned to lead Friday prayers to retreat.

The protesters demanded the return of the mosque's pro-Taliban former chief cleric, Abdul Aziz -- who is in government detention -- and shouted slogans against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Later a cleric from a seminary associated with the mosque led the prayers.

"Musharraf is a dog! He is worse than a dog! He should resign!" students shouted. Some lingered over the ruins of a neighboring girls' seminary that was demolished by authorities this week. Militants had used the seminary to resist government forces involved in the siege.

The mosque's clerics had used the mosque's thousands of students in an aggressive campaign to impose Taliban-style Islamic law in the capital. The campaign, which included kidnapping alleged Chinese prostitutes and threatening suicide attacks to defend the fortified mosque, raised concern about the spread of Islamic extremism in Pakistan.

Militants holed up in the mosque compound for a week before government troops launched their assault on July 10, leaving it pocked with bullet holes and damaged by explosions. At least 102 people were killed in the violence.

In an act of defiance to authorities' repainting of the mosque this week in pale yellow, protesters wrote "Lal Masjid" or "Red Mosque" in large Urdu script on the dome of the mosque. They also rose a black flag with two crossed swords -- meant to symbolize jihad, or holy war.

The crowd also shouted support for the mosque's former deputy cleric, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who led the siege until he was shot dead by security forces after refusing to surrender. Before that, Ghazi was the public face of a vigilante, Islamic anti-vice campaign that had challenged the government's writ in the Pakistani capital.

"Ghazi your blood will lead to a revolution," the protesters chanted.

Armed police stood by on the street outside the mosque, but did not enter the courtyard where the demonstration was taking place.

Islamabad commissioner Khalid Pervez said police forces did not want to go inside the mosque in case it led to a clash with protesters, but maintained the situation was under control. He said the reaction of Aziz's supporters was understandable and predicted things would calm down.

Over mosque loudspeakers, protesters vowed to "take revenge for the blood of martyrs."

In a speech at the mosque's main entrance, Liaqat Baloch, deputy leader of a coalition of hard-line religious parties, the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, condemned Musharraf as a "killer" and declared there would be an Islamic revolution in Pakistan.

"Maulana Abdul Aziz is still the prayer leader of the mosque. The blood of martyrs will bear fruit. This struggle will reach its destination of an Islamic revolution. Musharraf is a killer of the constitution. He's a killer of male and female students. The entire world will see him hang," Baloch said.

Pakistan's Geo television showed scenes of pandemonium inside the mosque, with dozens of young men in traditional Islamic clothing and prayers caps shouting angrily and punching the air with their hands.

Officials were pushed and shoved by men in the crowd. One man picked up shoes left outside the mosque door and hurled them at news crews recording the scene.

Maulana Ashfaq Ahmed, a senior cleric from another mosque in the city who was assigned by the government to lead the prayers, was quickly escorted from the complex, as protesters waved angry gestures at him.

Wahajat Aziz, a government worker who was among the protesters, said officials were too hasty in reopening the mosque.

"They brought an imam that people had opposed in the past," he said. "This created tension in the environment. People's emotions have not cooled down yet."

Security was tightened in Islamabad ahead of the mosque's reopening, with extra police taking up posts around the city and airport-style metal detectors put in place at the mosque entrance used to screen worshippers for weapons.

In the southwestern city of Quetta, meanwhile, gunmen opened fire on the vehicle of the official spokesman for a provincial government in Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan, killing him, police said.

Raziq Bugti, spokesman and special adviser to the chief minister of Baluchistan province, died at the scene after unknown assailants fired a barrage of shots as he drove past a school in Quetta, said Javid Ahmed, a local police officer.

The attackers fled, Ahmed said.

Baluchistan has experienced scores of attacks on military and government targets, most blamed on ethnic Baluch tribesmen and nationalist groups who are demanding the central government grant more royalties and control over resources, such as natural gas, extracted from the province.

The region has also been used by Taliban militants to launch attacks across the border on Afghan and foreign troops. Local officials have denied that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and Taliban chief Mullah Omar are hiding in Baluchistan.

Musharraf has angrily rejected claims by Afghan President Hamid Karzai that Omar was living in Quetta, insisting that the Taliban leader was in Afghanistan's neighboring Kandahar province.

Economic Times (India) : US again warns of strike against Al Qaeda

US again warns of strike against Al Qaeda

July 27, 2007

WASHINGTON: The US has asked Pakistan to do more to defeat terrorist forces on its soil, repeating its warning that Washington may launch a military strike against Al Qaeda “safe haven” in its tribal region.

The warning came from US defence and intelligence officials at a House panel hearing on Wednesday when pressed on what could be done to eliminate what they conceded was a safe haven for the terrorist organisation in North Waziristan of Pakistan.

James R Clapper Jr, undersecretary of defence for intelligence, told a joint hearing of the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees that more involvement of Pakistani troops would help, as would “more freedom of action on our part to engage in Pakistan”.

Asked by representative Robert E Andrews whether the US would be willing to intercede with Pakistan’s special forces against Al Qaeda if it received actionable intelligence, Clapper said, “Well, yes sir, we would be.” “The American people, both Republicans and Democrats, want this job done by the United States,” Andrews said. “We do not want to farm this one out.”

Pete Verga, acting assistant secretary of defence for homeland, interjected: “I would not want the American people to get the impression that if there were information and opportunity to strike a blow to Al Qaeda in (the tribal area) that we would not take immediate advantage of that opportunity.”

Meanwhile, under secretary of state for political affairs, R Nicholas Burns, told the Senate Foreign Relations committee that Pakistan still needs to do more to defeat terrorist forces. on its soil.

Pakistan’s future is key to stability in South Asia, Burns said describing it as a region of “singular importance” to US foreign policy since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on America. Its success in fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban is indispensable to the global effort to defeat radical Islamic terrorist groups in South Asia and worldwide, he said.

Pakistan’s tribal regions of north and south Waziristan have become “safe havens for violent extremist and terrorist activity”. Burns said not enough was being done to bring to justice top Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in the tribal regions.

“Long-term denial of these areas to terrorists will require local cooperation, and Pakistan will have to find a more effective and successful way to do so,” he said. Recent reports of Al Qaeda activity in those regions, said Burns, underscored the need for Pakistan to “elevate its efforts to fight this enemy”.

The United States, he said, remained engaged with Pakistan on a full range of non-proliferation and counter-proliferation issues because “they remain vital to the US and global interests” and key to preventing the emergence of a “shadow proliferation network”.

Referring to a network led by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the former head of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme - who sold nuclear technology and know-how to rogue regimes around the world - Burns said: “Khan did enormous damage to international efforts to restrain the spread of nuclear technology.” The Pakistani government has “direct responsibility to help us undo that damage and ensure it does not happen again”.

Back at the House panel hearing, Democratic members complained that the National Intelligence Estimate released last week portrayed a resurgent Al Qaeda after the US has spent billions of dollars on the war on terrorism and lost more than 3,000 troops fighting in Iraq.

Democrats said the intelligence report contradicted President Bush’s earlier repeated assertions that Al Qaeda was “on the run” and had been decimated since the organisation was driven from Afghanistan by US-backed forces in late 2001.

The defence and intelligence officials testified that Al Qaeda attempted to reconstitute itself in Pakistani urban areas, only to be pushed out by Pakistani forces in early 2004. Al Qaeda then “relocated” to north Waziristan, where it was far more difficult for Pakistani forces to find its members.

“We saw indications that the top leadership was able to exploit that comfort zone” and exert more influence over Al Qaeda affiliates elsewhere, Edward Gistaro, the CIA’s national intelligence officer for transnational threats, told the hearing.

Reuters : U.S. Congress ties Pakistan aid to terrorism progress

U.S. Congress ties Pakistan aid to terrorism progress

By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent | July 27, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional negotiators have agreed on legislation that would tie U.S. aid to Pakistan to significant progress by Islamabad in cracking down on al Qaeda, the Taliban and other militants, congressional sources said on Thursday.

The agreement, which must still be approved by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, reflects growing concern in Washington that al Qaeda has become entrenched in a safe haven in Pakistan's tribal region near Afghanistan.

A new National Intelligence Estimate found a "persistent and evolving" threat to the United States from Islamic militant groups, especially Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

The government of President Pervez Musharraf has been an important ally in the U.S. war on terrorism declared after the September 11 attacks, but administration officials and lawmakers say it could do more.

The Pakistan aid provision is part of a massive bill implementing recommendations of the September 11 commission that was the result of compromise by House and Senate negotiators.

It bars assistance in the fiscal year beginning Oct 1 until President George W. Bush finds Pakistan is "making demonstrated, significant and sustained progress toward eliminating support or safe haven for terrorists," according to a draft made available to Reuters.

Islamabad must show a commitment to eliminate from its territory "any organization such as Taliban, al Qaeda or any successor, engaged in military, insurgent or terrorist activities in Afghanistan," the bill said.

And it must undertake a "comprehensive military, legal, economic and political campaign" to achieve that goal.

Pakistan this year is receiving about $700 million (343 million pounds) in U.S. economic and military assistance and in 2008 is expected to receive more than $800 million, which could be affected by the bill. It also receives billions of dollars in counter-terrorism assistance, which could also be targeted in a separate defence spending bill.

In future years, economic and military aid to Pakistan will be determined by the extent to which Islamabad cracks down on al Qaeda and the Taliban, including eliminating training camps, arresting organization leaders and halting cross border attacks, the bill said.

Other criteria demand the implementation of democratic reforms, including "free, fair and inclusive elections at all levels of government in accordance with internationally-recognized democratic norms."

Depending on Pakistan's progress toward these targets, aid could be cut or increased, one congressional source said.

The compromise provision tones down some of the tough rhetoric toward Pakistan in the House version of the bill and sets goals that drafters felt Bush could more realistically certify and Pakistan could more realistically achieve.

But it also would put Congress on record as calling for Pakistan to do some specific things, including take stronger action against al Qaeda affiliate groups Lashkar-e Taiba and Jaish-e Muhammad.

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

LAT : The torture mystery

The torture mystery

Troubling questions remain about how far the CIA can go with its 'enhanced' interrogation methods.

July 26, 2007

"We do not torture," President Bush says. Yet that oft-repeated assurance has been followed by an unspoken "but" in reference to interrogation of suspected terrorists by the CIA. Last week, that troubling "but" was translated into an executive order that, while forswearing torture, allows the intelligence agency to use "enhanced" interrogation methods off-limits to the U.S. military.

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden says that under the new order, "our mission and authorities are clearly defined." But not to the public, which is left to puzzle over how an "enhanced" technique can be so vital as to justify a departure from standards imposed on military interrogators and yet not so aggressive as to raise concerns about torture. It's not surprising that both critics and supporters of the order seem to assume that the CIA will be skirting the ban on torture.

David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor, points to the qualifiers and ambiguities in the order's prohibition on "willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliation or degrading the individuals in a manner so serious that any reasonable person, considering the circumstances, would deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency." Cole correctly concludes: "Whatever else one might say, these are hardly 'clear rules.' "

They're clear enough for Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who said in Iowa that, while he was against torture, "I support tough interrogation techniques, enhanced interrogation techniques, in circumstances where there is a ticking time bomb." But Romney must know that the "ticking time bomb" is the scenario of choice for those who argue that in some circumstances torture might be permissible to serve the greater good.

The Senate Intelligence Committee in a recent report raised questions about whether special interrogation rules for the CIA were "necessary, lawful and in the best interests of the United States." If Bush's executive order doesn't calm those doubts, Congress should say so -- and insist on a single standard for interrogation that will remove the "but" from "we do not torture."

LAT : Dark powers, the sequel

Dark powers, the sequel

The president's recent executive order allows the CIA to detain anyone the agency thinks is a terrorist -- or a terrorist's kid.

By Rosa Brooks | July 27, 2007

'We ... have to work the dark side, if you will," Vice President Dick Cheney told NBC's Tim Russert, five days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. "We've got to spend time in the shadows using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies. That's the world [terrorists] operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal"

It was an odd thing to say. Throughout our history -- from John Winthrop's 1630 "City Upon a Hill" sermon to President Clinton's foreign policy speeches -- our leaders have been quick to assure us of the opposite premise: We will prevail against our enemies because (and only if) we're on the side of light, rather than the side of darkness. We will prevail not through spending "time in the shadows" but through our commitment to freedom, democracy, justice and the rule of law.

Granted, previous rhetorical commitments to the side of light were at times accompanied by some pretty dark episodes. But if we didn't always manage to live up to the values we publicly embraced, our public commitments at least gave us a yardstick for measuring ourselves -- and declared to the world our willingness to be held to account when we fell short.

But in keeping with Cheney's admonition to "work the dark side," this administration has openly embraced tactics that no previous administration would have formally condoned. In prior wars, for instance, we granted the protections of the Geneva Convention to our enemies as a matter of policy, even when those enemies -- like the Viet Cong -- lacked any legal claim to the convention's protections. Yes, some U.S. soldiers abused Viet Cong prisoners anyway -- but when they did so, they violated the clear written laws and policies of the United States.

Contrast that with the Bush administration, which refused to recognize any Geneva Convention rights for the "unlawful enemy combatants" captured in the war on terror until finally ordered to do so by the Supreme Court.

Within months of Cheney's "dark side" comments, Guantanamo filled up with hooded, shackled prisoners kept in open-air cages. The Justice Department developed legal defenses of torture, we opened secret prisons in former Soviet bloc countries and the president authorized secret "enhanced" interrogation methods for "high-value" detainees.

And despite the best efforts of human rights groups, the courts and a growing number of congressional critics from both parties, Cheney's still getting his way. On July 20, President Bush issued an executive order "interpreting" Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, as applied to secret CIA detention facilities. On its face, the order bans torture -- but as an editorial in this paper noted Thursday, it does so using language so vague it appears designed to create loopholes for the CIA.

Just as bad, though barely noted by the media, last week's executive order breaks new ground by outlining the category of people who can be detained secretly and indefinitely by the CIA -- in a way that's broad enough to include a hefty chunk of the global population. Under its terms, a non-U.S. citizen may be secretly detained and interrogated by the CIA -- with no access to counsel and no independent monitoring -- as long as the CIA director believes the person "to be a member or part of or supporting Al Qaeda, the Taliban or associated organizations; and likely to be in possession of information that could assist in detecting, mitigating or preventing terrorist attacks [or] in locating the senior leadership of Al Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces."

Got that? The president of the United States just issued a public pronouncement declaring, as a matter of U.S. policy, that a single man has the authority to detain any person anyplace in the world and subject him or her to secret interrogation techniques that aren't torture but that nonetheless can't be revealed, as long as that person is thought to be a "supporter" of an organization "associated" in some unspecified way with the Taliban or Al Qaeda, and as long he thinks that person might know something that could "assist" us.

But "supporter" isn't defined, nor is "associated organization." That leaves the definition broad enough to permit the secret detention of, say, a man who sympathizes ideologically with the Taliban and might have overheard something useful in a neighborhood cafe, or of a 10-year-old girl whose older brother once trained with Al Qaeda.

This isn't just hypothetical. The U.S. has already detained people based on little more. According to media reports, the CIA has even held children, including the 7- and 9-year-old sons of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In 2006, Mohammed was transferred from a secret CIA facility to Guantanamo, but the whereabouts of his children are unknown.

It's dark out there, all right.

rbrooks@latimescolumnists.com

NYT : Stacking the Court

Stacking the Court

By JEAN EDWARD SMITH | July 26, 2007

WHEN a majority of Supreme Court justices adopt a manifestly ideological agenda, it plunges the court into the vortex of American politics. If the Roberts court has entered voluntarily what Justice Felix Frankfurter once called the “political thicket,” it may require a political solution to set it straight.

The framers of the Constitution did not envisage the Supreme Court as arbiter of all national issues. As Chief Justice John Marshall made clear in Marbury v. Madison, the court’s authority extends only to legal issues.

When the court overreaches, the Constitution provides checks and balances. In 1805, after persistent political activity by Justice Samuel Chase, Congress responded with its power of impeachment. Chase was acquitted, but never again did he step across the line to mingle law and politics. After the Civil War, when a Republican Congress feared the court might tamper with Reconstruction in the South, it removed those questions from the court’s appellate jurisdiction.

But the method most frequently employed to bring the court to heel has been increasing or decreasing its membership. The size of the Supreme Court is not fixed by the Constitution. It is determined by Congress.

The original Judiciary Act of 1789 set the number of justices at six. When the Federalists were defeated in 1800, the lame-duck Congress reduced the size of the court to five — hoping to deprive President Jefferson of an appointment. The incoming Democratic Congress repealed the Federalist measure (leaving the number at six), and then in 1807 increased the size of the court to seven, giving Jefferson an additional appointment.

In 1837, the number was increased to nine, affording the Democrat Andrew Jackson two additional appointments. During the Civil War, to insure an anti-slavery, pro-Union majority on the bench, the court was increased to 10. When a Democrat, Andrew Johnson, became president upon Lincoln’s death, a Republican Congress voted to reduce the size to seven (achieved by attrition) to guarantee Johnson would have no appointments.

After Ulysses S. Grant was elected in 1868, Congress restored the court to nine. That gave Grant two new appointments. The court had just declared unconstitutional the government’s authority to issue paper currency (greenbacks). Grant took the opportunity to appoint two justices sympathetic to the administration. When the reconstituted court convened, it reheard the legal tender cases and reversed its decision (5-4).

The most recent attempt to alter the size of the court was by Franklin Roosevelt in 1937. But instead of simply requesting that Congress add an additional justice or two, Roosevelt’s convoluted scheme fooled no one and ultimately sank under its own weight.

Roosevelt claimed the justices were too old to keep up with the workload, and urged that for every justice who reached the age of 70 and did not retire within six months, the president should be able to appoint a younger justice to help out. Six of the Supreme Court justices in 1937 were older than 70. But the court was not behind in its docket, and Roosevelt’s subterfuge was exposed. In the Senate, the president could muster only 20 supporters.

Still, there is nothing sacrosanct about having nine justices on the Supreme Court. Roosevelt’s 1937 chicanery has given court-packing a bad name, but it is a hallowed American political tradition participated in by Republicans and Democrats alike.

If the current five-man majority persists in thumbing its nose at popular values, the election of a Democratic president and Congress could provide a corrective. It requires only a majority vote in both houses to add a justice or two. Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative colleagues might do well to bear in mind that the roll call of presidents who have used this option includes not just Roosevelt but also Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln and Grant.

Jean Edward Smith is the author, most recently, of “F.D.R.”

NYT : F.B.I. Chief Challenges Gonzales’s Testimony

F.B.I. Chief Challenges Gonzales’s Testimony

By DAVID STOUT | Published: July 26, 2007

WASHINGTON, July 26 — The dispute over the truthfulness of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales reached a new intensity today as the F.B.I. Director, Robert S. Mueller 3rd, contradicted Mr. Gonzales’s sworn testimony before a Senate committee.

Mr. Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee that the Bush administration’s secret eavesdropping program was the main topic at an encounter in the hospital room of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on March 10, 2004, contrary to what Mr. Gonzales told a Senate panel on Tuesday.

At the time, Mr. Gonzales was the White House counsel, and Mr. Ashcroft was recovering from gall bladder surgery. That March night, Mr. Gonzales went to the hospital room with Andrew H. Card Jr., then White House chief of staff.

In his testimony before the Senate panel on Tuesday, Mr. Gonzales said the subject in the hospital room was “intelligence activities” under debate in the administration, but not the secret eavesdropping program.

But Mr. Mueller contradicted that version of events today, several hours after four Senate Democrats called for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate whether Mr. Gonzales perjured himself before Congress.

Mr. Mueller was testifying at an F.B.I. oversight hearing when he was questioned by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas.

“Did you have an understanding that the conversation was on T.S.P.?” the Congresswoman asked, using the shorthand for terrorist surveillance program.

“I had an understanding the discussion was on an N.S.A. program, yes,” Mr. Mueller replied, using the abbreviation for the National Security Agency. A moment later, he added that the discussion was on the warrantless eavesdropping program “that has been much discussed, yes.”

The conflict in accounts could be significant, because Mr. Gonzales’s critics have accused him of trying to convey the false impression that the N.S.A. program had spawned no serious dissension within the Bush administration.

But former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey has testified that Justice Department lawyers were balking at recertifying the program early in 2004 and that he thought Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card rushed to the hospital to persuade Mr. Ashcroft, who was not at full capacity, to overlook his own objections to the program.

Mr. Mueller said that after receiving a call from Mr. Comey he went to the hospital, arriving shortly after Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card left, and that after he spoke with Mr. Ashcroft he understood that the N.S.A. program was indeed the focus of the dramatic bedside encounter.

There have been repeated instances in which lawmakers have questioned Mr. Gonzales’s competence and his recollection of events. But today’s developments seemed to mark a shift toward suggestions that he actually committed crimes in testifying before Congress.

The four senators who sought a special counsel are all members of the Judiciary Committee. They urged Solicitor General Paul D. Clement in a letter to name an independent counsel from outside the Justice Department. “It has become apparent that the attorney general has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements,” the senators wrote.

While the four were asking for a special counsel, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, announced that a subpoena was being issued to Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political adviser, to provide information on the firings last year of nine federal prosecutors. The White House has asserted executive privilege in resisting Congressional demands for testimony by present and former presidential aides.

The request that the solicitor general name a special counsel to investigate Mr. Gonzales marked a new stage in the long-running controversy over his stewardship of the Justice Department. Mr. Gonzales’s most outspoken critics suggested today that the attorney general might have committed crimes, including perjury and obstruction of justice, when he testified about President Bush’s domestic-surveillance program and the dismissal of the nine United States attorneys.

The four senators — Charles E. Schumer of New York, Dianne Feinstein of California, Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island — zeroed in today on Mr. Gonzales’s testimony that there had been no internal dissent over the president’s warrantless eavesdropping program and that an emergency meeting at the White House in March 2004 concerned subjects other than the secret eavesdropping operation.

“Both of those statements appear to be false,” Mr. Schumer said today. “We know from senators who were there, and we know from a letter from John Negroponte,” he went on, referring to the former director of national intelligence. “It’s in black and white.”

The letter from the four senators was addressed to the solicitor general because Mr. Gonzales has recused himself, as has the outgoing deputy attorney general, Paul J. McNulty.

A Justice Department spokesman, Brian Roehrkasse, said on Wednesday that Mr. Gonzales stood by his testimony. And the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said today that Mr. Bush still stood by Mr. Gonzales.

After Mr. Gonzales’s most recent testimony on Tuesday, Justice Department aides acknowledged in a background briefing for reporters that the attorney general had caused confusion by his “linguistic parsing.” A special counsel, if one is named, would presumably try to determine if any of Mr. Gonzales’s ambiguous statements were outright lies.

Senator Feinstein said today that Mr. Gonzales has often given “misleading and often untrue statements to Congress,” and that she had never seen “an attorney general so contemptuous of Congress and his role as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States.”

A spokesman for the Democratic majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, told The Associated Press that Mr. Reid supported the request for a special counsel.

Senator Leahy said he was subpoenaing Mr. Rove because “the accumulated evidence shows that political considerations factored into the unprecedented firing” of the federal prosecutors last year. A subpoena is also being issued for J. Scott Jennings, a White House political aide, Mr. Leahy said.

United States attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, and the people in those posts typically change when administrations change. But once installed, United States attorneys have traditionally been free of explicit political interference. Democrats have asserted that the nine who were let go last year may have been victims of cynical political calculations.

Mr. Leahy has said explicitly that he simply does not trust Mr. Gonzales. Today, Mr. Leahy sent a letter to Mr. Gonzales inviting him to change his testimony to cleanse himself of any possible perjury charges, and to do so by the end of next week.

Aboard Air Force One on the way to Philadelphia today, the White House spokesman, Mr. Snow, said that, contrary to the Democrats’ assertions, Mr. Gonzales has been consistent and that “the president supports him.” Mr. Snow suggested that what some see as deliberate inconsistencies in Mr. Gonzales’s accounts may be a reflection of the complexity of the issues being discussed.

President Bush was accompanied on his visit to Philadelphia by Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Specter has been as critical of Mr. Gonzales as have the Democrats, and he told reporters that he might talk to the president today about his concerns, The Associated Press reported.

Later, after returning to Washington, Mr. Specter declined to discuss what he and the president had talked about. Asked whether he supported the call for a special counsel, which was led by Senator Schumer, Mr. Specter said he did not.

Regarding Mr. Gonzales’s testimony, Mr. Specter said: “There are very complex questions that have to be answered on looking at the record. But Senator Schumer’s not interested in looking at the record. He’s interested in throwing down the gauntlet and making a story in tomorrow’s newspapers.”

Mr. Specter pointed out that Senator Leahy had not signed the letter to the solicitor general.

WaPo : AP: New Details on Tillman's Death

AP: New Details on Tillman's Death

By MARTHA MENDOZA | The Associated Press | July 26, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO -- Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman's forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player's death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

"The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described," a doctor who examined Tillman's body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.

The doctors -- whose names were blacked out -- said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.

Ultimately, the Pentagon did conduct a criminal investigation, and asked Tillman's comrades whether he was disliked by his men and whether they had any reason to believe he was deliberately killed. The Pentagon eventually ruled that Tillman's death at the hands of his comrades was a friendly-fire accident.

The medical examiners' suspicions were outlined in 2,300 pages of testimony released to the AP this week by the Defense Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Among other information contained in the documents:

* In his last words moments before he was killed, Tillman snapped at a panicky comrade under fire to shut up and stop "sniveling."

* Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.

* The three-star general who kept the truth about Tillman's death from his family and the public told investigators some 70 times that he had a bad memory and couldn't recall details of his actions.

* No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene -- no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.

The Pentagon and the Bush administration have been criticized in recent months for lying about the circumstances of Tillman's death. The military initially told the public and the Tillman family that he had been killed by enemy fire. Only weeks later did the Pentagon acknowledge he was gunned down by fellow Rangers.

With questions lingering about how high in the Bush administration the deception reached, Congress is preparing for yet another hearing next week.

The Pentagon is separately preparing a new round of punishments, including a stinging demotion of retired Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr., 60, according to military officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the punishments under consideration have not been made public.

In more than four hours of questioning by the Pentagon inspector general's office in December 2006, Kensinger repeatedly contradicted other officers' testimony, and sometimes his own. He said on some 70 occasions that he did not recall something.

At one point, he said: "You've got me really scared about my brain right now. I'm really having a problem."

Tillman's mother, Mary Tillman, who has long suggested that her son was deliberately killed by his comrades, said she is still looking for answers and looks forward to the congressional hearings next week.

"Nothing is going to bring Pat back. It's about justice for Pat and justice for other soldiers. The nation has been deceived," she said.

The documents show that a doctor who autopsied Tillman's body was suspicious of the three gunshot wounds to the forehead. The doctor said he took the unusual step of calling the Army's Human Resources Command and was rebuffed. He then asked an official at the Army's Criminal Investigation Division if the CID would consider opening a criminal case.

"He said he talked to his higher headquarters and they had said no," the doctor testified.

Also according to the documents, investigators pressed officers and soldiers on a question Mrs. Tillman has been asking all along.

"Have you, at any time since this incident occurred back on April 22, 2004, have you ever received any information even rumor that Cpl. Tillman was killed by anybody within his own unit intentionally?" an investigator asked then-Capt. Richard Scott.

Scott, and others who were asked, said they were certain the shooting was accidental.

Investigators also asked soldiers and commanders whether Tillman was disliked, whether anyone was jealous of his celebrity, or if he was considered arrogant. They said Tillman was respected, admired and well-liked.

The documents also shed new light on Tillman's last moments.

It has been widely reported by the AP and others that Spc. Bryan O'Neal, who was at Tillman's side as he was killed, told investigators that Tillman was waving his arms shouting "Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat (expletive) Tillman, damn it!" again and again.

But the latest documents give a different account from a chaplain who debriefed the entire unit days after Tillman was killed.

The chaplain said that O'Neal told him he was hugging the ground at Tillman's side, "crying out to God, help us. And Tillman says to him, `Would you shut your (expletive) mouth? God's not going to help you; you need to do something for yourself, you sniveling ..."

Associated Press reporters Scott Lindlaw in Las Vegas and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this story.

Forbes : AP: New Details on Tillman's Death

AP: New Details on Tillman's Death

By MARTHA MENDOZA | July 26, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO - Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman's forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player's death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

"The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described," a doctor who examined Tillman's body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.

The doctors - whose names were blacked out - said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.

Ultimately, the Pentagon did conduct a criminal investigation, and asked Tillman's comrades whether he was disliked by his men and whether they had any reason to believe he was deliberately killed. The Pentagon eventually ruled that Tillman's death at the hands of his comrades was a friendly-fire accident.

The medical examiners' suspicions were outlined in 2,300 pages of testimony released to the AP this week by the Defense Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Among other information contained in the documents:

_ In his last words moments before he was killed, Tillman snapped at a panicky comrade under fire to shut up and stop "sniveling."

_ Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.

_ The three-star general who kept the truth about Tillman's death from his family and the public told investigators some 70 times that he had a bad memory and couldn't recall details of his actions.

_ No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene - no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.

The Pentagon and the Bush administration have been criticized in recent months for lying about the circumstances of Tillman's death. The military initially told the public and the Tillman family that he had been killed by enemy fire. Only weeks later did the Pentagon acknowledge he was gunned down by fellow Rangers.

With questions lingering about how high in the Bush administration the deception reached, Congress is preparing for yet another hearing next week.

The Pentagon is separately preparing a new round of punishments, including a stinging demotion of retired Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr., 60, according to military officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the punishments under consideration have not been made public.

In more than four hours of questioning by the Pentagon inspector general's office in December 2006, Kensinger repeatedly contradicted other officers' testimony, and sometimes his own. He said on some 70 occasions that he did not recall something.

At one point, he said: "You've got me really scared about my brain right now. I'm really having a problem."

Tillman's mother, Mary Tillman, who has long suggested that her son was deliberately killed by his comrades, said she is still looking for answers and looks forward to the congressional hearings next week.

"Nothing is going to bring Pat back. It's about justice for Pat and justice for other soldiers. The nation has been deceived," she said.

The documents show that a doctor who autopsied Tillman's body was suspicious of the three gunshot wounds to the forehead. The doctor said he took the unusual step of calling the Army's Human Resources Command and was rebuffed. He then asked an official at the Army's Criminal Investigation Division if the CID would consider opening a criminal case.

"He said he talked to his higher headquarters and they had said no," the doctor testified.

Also according to the documents, investigators pressed officers and soldiers on a question Mrs. Tillman has been asking all along.

"Have you, at any time since this incident occurred back on April 22, 2004, have you ever received any information even rumor that Cpl. Tillman was killed by anybody within his own unit intentionally?" an investigator asked then-Capt. Richard Scott.

Scott, and others who were asked, said they were certain the shooting was accidental.

Investigators also asked soldiers and commanders whether Tillman was disliked, whether anyone was jealous of his celebrity, or if he was considered arrogant. They said Tillman was respected, admired and well-liked.

The documents also shed new light on Tillman's last moments.

It has been widely reported by the AP and others that Spc. Bryan O'Neal, who was at Tillman's side as he was killed, told investigators that Tillman was waving his arms shouting "Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat (expletive) Tillman, damn it!" again and again.

But the latest documents give a different account from a chaplain who debriefed the entire unit days after Tillman was killed.

The chaplain said that O'Neal told him he was hugging the ground at Tillman's side, "crying out to God, help us. And Tillman says to him, `Would you shut your (expletive) mouth? God's not going to help you; you need to do something for yourself, you sniveling ..."

Associated Press reporters Scott Lindlaw in Las Vegas and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this story.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

NYT : F.B.I. Chief Gives Account at Odds With Gonzales’s

F.B.I. Chief Gives Account at Odds With Gonzales’s

By DAVID JOHNSTON and SCOTT SHANE | July 27, 2007

WASHINGTON, July 26 — The director of the F.B.I. offered testimony Thursday that sharply conflicted with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales’s sworn statements about a 2004 confrontation in which top Justice Department officials threatened to resign over a secret intelligence operation.

The director, Robert S. Mueller III, told the House Judiciary Committee that the confrontation was about the National Security Agency’s counterterrorist eavesdropping program, describing it as “an N.S.A. program that has been much discussed.” His testimony was a serious blow to Mr. Gonzales, who insisted at a Senate hearing on Tuesday that there were no disagreements inside the Bush administration about the program at the time of those discussions or at any other time.

The director’s remarks were especially significant because Mr. Mueller is the Justice Department’s chief law enforcement official. He also played a crucial role in the 2004 dispute over the program, intervening with President Bush to help deal with the threat of mass resignations that grew out of a day of emergency meetings at the White House and at the hospital bedside of John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general.

In a separate development, Senate Democrats, who were unaware of Mr. Mueller’s comments, demanded the appointment of a special counsel to investigate whether Mr. Gonzales committed perjury in his testimony on Tuesday about the intelligence dispute. The Senate Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, issued a subpoena to Karl Rove, the White House senior political adviser, and another presidential aide, J. Scott Jennings, for testimony about the dismissal of federal prosecutors, another issue that has dogged Mr. Gonzales.

White House officials said the Democrats had engaged in political gamesmanship.

“What we are witnessing is an out-of-control Congress which spends time calling for special prosecutors, starting investigations, issuing subpoenas and generally just trying to settle scores,” said Scott M. Stanzel, a White House spokesman. “All the while they fail to pass appropriations bills and important issues like immigration reform, energy and other problems go unanswered.”

The conflict underscored how Mr. Gonzales’s troubles have expanded beyond accusations of improper political influence in the dismissal of United States attorneys to the handling of the eavesdropping program, in which Mr. Gonzales was significantly involved in his previous post as White House counsel.

“I had an understanding that the discussion was on a N.S.A. program,” Mr. Mueller said in answer to a question from Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas, in a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.

Asked whether he was referring to the Terrorist Surveillance Program, or T.S.P., he replied, “The discussion was on a national N.S.A. program that has been much discussed, yes.”

Mr. Mueller said he had taken notes of some of his conversations about the issue, and after the hearing the committee asked him to produce them.

An F.B.I. spokesman declined Thursday night to elaborate on Mr. Mueller’s testimony.

In a four-hour appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Mr. Gonzales denied that the dispute arose over the Terrorist Surveillance Program, whose existence was confirmed by President Bush in December 2005 after it had been disclosed by The New York Times. Mr. Gonzales said it centered on “other intelligence activities.”

Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said Thursday night that Mr. Gonzales had testified truthfully, saying “confusion is inevitable when complicated classified activities are discussed in a public forum where the greatest care must be used not to compromise sensitive intelligence operations.”

The spokesman said that when Mr. Gonzales had said there had been no controversy about the eavesdropping operation, he was referring only to the program to intercept international communications that Mr. Bush publicly confirmed.

“The disagreement that occurred in March 2004 concerned the legal basis for intelligence activities that have not been publicly disclosed and that remain highly classified,” Mr. Roehrkasse said.

The four senators seeking an inquiry into Mr. Gonzales’s testimony sent a letter to the Justice Department saying “it is apparent that the attorney general has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements.”

The senators asked for the appointment of a special counsel. While the Justice Department is not obliged to act on their request, the letter reflected the chasm of distrust that has opened between lawmakers on the Judiciary Committee and Mr. Gonzales.

The senators who signed the letter were Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, Dianne Feinstein of California, Charles E. Schumer of New York and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. Ms. Feinstein, Mr. Feingold and Mr. Whitehouse are members of the Intelligence Committee and have been briefed on the intelligence programs at issue.

The senators’ letter was sent to Paul D. Clement, the solicitor general, because Mr. Gonzales is recused from investigations of his own conduct. In addition to his statements to Congress about the intelligence controversy, the letter raised the possibility that Mr. Gonzales had lied about the prosecutor firings.

In what amounted to a warning to the attorney general, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, sent Mr. Gonzales the transcript of Tuesday’s hearing, asking him to “mark any changes you wish to make to correct, clarify or supplement your answers so that, consistent with your oath, they are the whole truth.”

Similar requests are routinely sent to witnesses after hearings, but Mr. Leahy’s pointed language underscored his view of the seriousness of the dispute over Mr. Gonzales’s veracity.

Still, neither Mr. Leahy nor Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the committee’s top Republican and a tough critic of Mr. Gonzales, joined in the call for a perjury investigation.

“I don’t think you rush off precipitously and ask for appointment of special counsel to run that kind of an investigation,” Mr. Specter said.

Doubts about Mr. Gonzales’s version of events in March 2004 grew after James B. Comey, the former deputy attorney general, testified in May that he and other Justice Department officials were prepared to resign over legal objections to an intelligence program that appeared to be the N.S.A. program.

Mr. Gonzales’s testimony Tuesday was his first since Mr. Comey’s account drew national attention. He stuck to his account, repeatedly saying that the dispute involved a different intelligence activity.

Mr. Gonzales described an emergency meeting with Congressional leaders at the White House on March 10, 2004, to discuss the dispute. That evening, he and the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., went to the hospital bedside of Mr. Ashcroft in an unsuccessful effort to get his reauthorization for the secret program.

Lawmakers present at the afternoon meeting have given various accounts, but several have said that only one program, the Terrorist Surveillance Program, was discussed.

In addition, in testimony last year, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who was the N.S.A. director when the program started and now heads the Central Intelligence Agency, said the March 2004 meeting involved the Terrorist Surveillance Program.