Reuters : Congress set for fiery post-election session

Congress set for fiery post-election session

By Thomas Ferraro | November 15, 2008

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Expect plenty of fireworks when the U.S. Congress meets next week for a post-election session focused largely on the ailing U.S. economy.

With Barack Obama preparing to become the 44th U.S. president on January 20, lawmakers will take another crack at providing fiscal relief to Americans and the U.S. auto industry, and elect leaders for the new Congress set to convene on January 6 with Obama's Democrats in stronger control.

Lawmakers also will move to expel Republican Ted Stevens from the Senate if a protracted ballot count shows that Alaska voters returned the 84-year-old senator to Washington after his conviction for corruption last month.

In addition, Democrats also will decide what, if any, punishment to impose on Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Democrat turned independent, for actively campaigning for Republican John McCain for president ahead of the November 4 election.

Obama has privately opposed ousting Lieberman from the Senate Democratic conference, saying that would break Obama's vow to set aside partisanship, a party source said.

It is unclear what Lieberman would do if stripped of a committee chairmanship, as threatened. But as one Democratic Party aide put it, "He's keeping all his options open," including, apparently, bolting to the Republican Party.

CARMAKERS ON THE LINE

On the economic front, Democrats are working to direct $25 billion in loans to Detroit automakers, who say the action is needed to survive their worst-ever fiscal downturn.

Support, however, is uncertain, especially from Senate Republicans reluctant to legislate yet more money for business rescues. They also are not convinced General Motors Corp, Chrysler LLC and Ford Motor Co are viable with overall industry sales plunging and consumers moving away from American-made gas guzzlers.

Bailout foes suggest Congress amend a separate $25 billion loan program approved in September for automakers to retool factories necessary to produce electric cars and other more fuel-efficient products.

At the same time, Democrats are clamoring to inject at least tens of billions of dollars into the economy to help ease the worst fiscal crisis since The Great Depression.

But with outgoing President George W. Bush and fellow Republicans wanting to give a new $700 billion rescue package for the financial industry more time to kick in, Obama may have to wait until he takes office to sign any additional economic stimulus into law.

Senate leaders swapped open letters on Friday in advance of next week's showdown.

"The adoption of a robust recovery package should be the top priority," wrote Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, urging Republicans to reconsider apparent plans to block such a measure.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky fired back by complaining that Reid had yet to provide details. "Taxpayers deserve to know if this bailout would increase the national debt and raise their taxes," McConnell wrote.

The Senate is to reconvene on Monday, likely for about a week. House Democrats say they will move quickly to give final approval to any relief measures that win Senate passage.

PARTY LEADERS

Lawmakers will elect party leaders for the new Senate and House of Representatives that will convene in January with their biggest Democratic majorities in years. Democrats will also pick committee chairs.

In the November 4 election, Democrats picked up 22 seats in the 435-member House to raise their majority to 257 with a few races yet to be decided. Democrats gained six Senate seats, increasing their majority in the 100-member chamber to 57.

Three razor-close Senate races have not yet been decided. All involve seats now held by Republicans -- Stevens in Alaska, Norm Coleman in Minnesota and Saxby Chambliss in Georgia.

A final vote count in the Stevens race may come next week. Minnesota and Georgia are headed for a recount and runoff, respectively, next month.

If Democrats capture all three, they would have a majority big enough, 60, to pass legislation over Republican procedural hurdles. "Possible but unlikely," said Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, head of the Senate Democratic campaign committee.

If Stevens wins, senators promise to move to expel him for his conviction last month of lying on Senate disclosure forms by failing to report more than $250,000 in home improvements and other gifts from an oil executive.

Democrats want to move quickly but Republicans may try to wait until after a Stevens appeal. That could take months.

But South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint wants to act now. He is pushing for a vote to strip Stevens of committee assignments and oust him from the Senate Republican conference.

"We should clean our own house," a DeMint aide said.

(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan, Donna Smith and John Crawley, editing by Vicki Allen)

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

WaPo : Spending Bill Suggests Long Stay in Afghanistan

Spending Bill Suggests Long Stay in Afghanistan

By Walter Pincus | July 14, 2008

Congress has quietly used fiscal 2008 legislation on military construction to signal that it plans on a long-term military presence in Afghanistan.

In the recently approved supplemental funding bill for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, legislators approved construction of a $62 million ammunition storage facility at Afghanistan's Bagram Air Base, where 12 planned "igloos" will support Army and Air Force needs.

"As a forward operating site, Bagram must be able to provide for a long term, steady state presence which is able to surge to meet theater contingency requirements," the Army said in requesting the money.

When he initially sought the funds last year, Adm. William J. Fallon, then commander of U.S. Central Command, described Bagram as "the centerpiece for the CENTCOM Master Plan for future access to and operations in Central Asia."

In another sign that U.S. troops will be there a long time, the Army requested, and Congress provided, $41 million for a 30-megawatt power plant at Bagram. It is capable of generating enough electricity for a town of more than 20,000 homes.

On the other hand, Congress eliminated the Army's request for $184 million to build power plants at five bases in Iraq. Those are to be among the final bases and support locations where troops, aircraft and equipment will be consolidated as the U.S. military presence is reduced.

In his testimony last year, Fallon said: "As smaller contingency operating sites are closed and forces are consolidated on contingency operations bases, the latter will need significantly more electricity." At present, the military uses diesel generators to power the bases.

But Congress "did not want to do anything in Iraq that seemed long-term, and the power plants would have taken up to two years to complete," said one Senate staff member familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak for lawmakers.

The funding plan also shows preparations to shut down Iraqi military facilities. Money was approved to build landfills, at $880,000 apiece, at five forward operating bases scheduled to be closed, including ones at Fallujah and Ramadi.

"These landfills are required to ensure we meet environmental, base camp closure, and property disposal procedures," the Army said in asking for the money.

Congress did approve $11.7 million to build a facility for juveniles held by the United States at an Iraqi army base on the outskirts of Baghdad, called Camp Constitution. A former U.S. forward operating base, it has been turned over to the Iraqi Army, which uses it as an adult detention center. Within it, however, the United States will run what it calls a Theater Internment Facility Reintegration Center for the juveniles.

Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, who until recently ran the U.S. detention program in Iraq, told reporters last June 9 that he separated the younger detainees at Camp Cropper each day and bused them to Camp Constitution, where they were provided schooling and athletic opportunities. That took them away, for a time, from the hardened fighters who had recruited them.

National security and intelligence reporter Walter Pincus pores over the speeches, reports, transcripts and other documents that flood Washington and every week uncovers the fine print that rarely makes headlines -- but should. If you have any items that fit the bill, please send them to fineprint@washpost.com.

WaPo : Senate Passes Broad War Funding Measure

Senate Passes Broad War Funding Measure

Democrats' Domestic Spending Intact

By Paul Kane | Washington Post Staff Writer | June 27, 2008

In a 92 to 6 vote, the Senate yesterday approved unrestricted funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that allows continuation of the current military course of action through the end of President Bush's term and beyond.

In exchange for that unencumbered freedom to operate in Iraq, Bush agreed to demands by congressional Democrats to create a new higher-education benefit for veterans and their families, and to extend unemployment benefits.

"There are going to be a lot of veterans in the United States who are going to be happy with the United States Senate," said Sen. James Webb (D-Va.), who crafted the legislation granting the new education benefit.

In the end, the $257.5 billion emergency spending bill, which had been the subject of two months of intense debate and negotiation, won overwhelming support in the Senate and the House, where it was approved last Friday by 416 to 12.

Bush is expected to sign the bill next week.

Since House passage last week, the outcome of Bush's last war funding fight with the Democratic-controlled Congress had been a foregone conclusion. But the bill became entangled in unrelated disputes that created a logjam in the Senate, as conservatives opposed a housing bill and liberal Democrats opposed a rewriting of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
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Unable to overcome parliamentary hurdles, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) postponed consideration of both until Congress returns from its week-long Fourth of July recess. In addition, the Senate failed to clear a 60-vote threshold on a bill to postpone a 10.6 percent fee cut for doctors who treat Medicare patients. That reduction will take effect next week.

By setting aside those issues, the Senate cleared a path for the war funding measure, which ended up with enough legislative morsels to please just about every philosophical corner of Congress.

Bush began the fight in early May by demanding a "clean" war funding bill that would provide the $108 billion he needed for Iraq and Afghanistan with no restrictions on how he could conduct the war and with no additional domestic spending favored by Democrats.

Having lost every attempt in the previous year to limit Bush's hand in Iraq, Democrats quickly gave up their effort to force a timeline for troop withdrawals and focused their efforts on a domestic agenda.

That included the education benefit, which gives veterans who have served since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks the ability to pay tuition at even the most expensive state universities. Democrats also included the unemployment extension for jobless workers who already have used their 26 weeks of insurance. It will cost taxpayers more than $8 billion.

Democrats inflated the war funds to about $162 billion. The additional money will keep military operations going well into 2009.

After initially fighting the education and unemployment provisions, Bush capitulated and demanded that the education benefit be transferable to spouses and children of veterans. That pushed the cost of the Webb bill to $62.8 billion over 11 years.

The legislation also contains a $24 billion grab bag of other items, including $5.8 billion to strengthen levees in Louisiana and $4.6 billion to rebuild veterans hospitals.

The additions brought the total cost of the bill to almost $150 billion more than Bush's original request.

NYT : Senate Passes $696 Billion Defense Policy Bill

Senate Passes $696 Billion Defense Policy Bill

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | December 14, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate on Friday passed a defense policy bill that would offer more help to troops returning from combat and set conditions on contractors and pricey weapons programs.

The measure reflects the best Democrats could do this year on their national security agenda while holding such a slim majority. Powerless to overcome GOP objections in the Senate, the bill does not order troops home from Iraq, as Democrats would have liked.

The 90-3 vote follows House approval earlier this week and sends the measure to President Bush to sign, which he is expected to do.

''Caring for our troops and their families must always be our top priority,'' said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, which helped write the bill.

The bill, which covers the 2008 budget year, authorizes $696 billion in military spending, including $189 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While it does not send money to the Pentagon, it is considered a crucial policy measure because it guides companion spending legislation and dictates the acquisition and management of weapons programs.

The bill would authorize a 3.5 percent pay raise for service members. It also would guarantee that combat veterans receive mental health evaluations within 30 days of their request and prohibit fee increases to the military's health care system.

In one provision that is likely to be particularly costly, troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are guaranteed three more years of Veterans Affairs health care after being discharged. Current law gives troops two years to file claims.

Advocates say the extra time is needed because conditions can worsen over time or take more time to become obvious, particularly in cases of brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

At the same, Democrats sought to put controls on the Pentagon's hefty weapons and technology budget, including missile defense.

The bill would authorize Bush to spend $10 billion for ballistic missile defense, about $331 million less than requested. The bill would restrict the money from being used to deploy missile defense radars in Poland and the Czech Republic until those governments approved the deal and Congress received an independent assessment of the program.

The bill also includes several provisions intended to increase the oversight of contractors and the rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan. More specifically, it would require that private security contractors working in a war zone comply with military regulations and orders issued by commanders.

It would establish an auditing system to oversee reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan that would be modeled after the special watchdog for Iraq reconstruction.

Final action on the bill comes as Democrats struggle for a way to pay for combat operations overseas without appearing to support Bush's policies in Iraq.

Some $70 billion in war spending is expected to be attached next week to a separate government-wide spending bill. While Democrats want to tie the money to troop withdrawals, Senate Republicans are insisting the money be provided without strings attached.

Holding a narrow majority and unable to muster the 60 votes needed to overcome procedural hurdles, Democrats are expected to back down and provide the money.

AP : Democrats Consider More Money for War

Democrats Consider More Money for War

<By ANNE FLAHERTY | October 30, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats are debating whether to approve $50 billion to $70 billion more for Iraq and Afghanistan, less than half of President Bush's $196 billion request but enough to keep the wars afloat for a few more months.

Such a move would satisfy party members who want to spare the Pentagon from a painful budget dance and show support for the troops as Congress considers its next major step on Iraq.

But it also would irritate scores of other Democrats, who want to pay only to bring troops home and who say their leadership is not doing enough to end the war.

"I cannot vote for another dollar that will be used to continue the president's occupation of Iraq," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.

Democratic leaders caution that no decisions have been made, including whether to approve any money for the wars at all. Also uncertain is which spending bill might contain the war money.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday he didn't think Congress should approve the money and won't deal with it immediately. Delaying the money signals to voters that "the president does not have a blank check," he told reporters.

Consideration of the war money comes as Democrats are locked in a dispute with Bush on domestic spending. None of the dozen annual spending bills, including the Pentagon's annual $460 billion budget, has been approved.

Democrats say one possibility is sending Bush a bill that would bundle together the defense and veterans spending he wants with extra money for education that he doesn't. The bill would not likely include war funding, officials said.

On Tuesday, Bush said he would veto such a measure, calling it a "three-bill pileup."

On the table for war spending are estimates of $40 billion to $70 billion — with $50 billion considered the most likely scenario. The final amount would depend on how many months of combat Democrats would want to support, and how much money they think the Pentagon needs to buy new bomb-resistant vehicles that protect troops from roadside blasts.

Many Democrats say the money is necessary if Congress passes an annual defense spending bill without any war funding. If left without a "bridge fund" to fill the gap until Congress takes up the full $196 billion request, the Pentagon would have to divert money from less urgent accounts to pay for immediate war requirements — an approach military officials warn is disruptive and inefficient.

These Democrats also say they want to avoid giving the public perception that the party is turning its back on the troops.

Earlier this fall, Democrats decided to delay until next year action on Bush's war spending request. Unable to pass veto-proof legislation ordering troops home, they also are divided on whether to continue paying for the unpopular war.

Party officials say they hope that by next year, as election season approaches, more Republicans might be willing to support anti-war legislation.

House and Senate appropriators hope to complete an agreement on the 2008 defense appropriations bill on Thursday. Neither the House nor the Senate version of the bill includes war spending.

Meeting privately on Tuesday to discuss the bill were Reps. John Murtha and C.W. Bill Young and Sens. Daniel Inouye and Ted Stevens. Murtha, D-Pa., and Inouye, D-Hawaii, chair the House and Senate panels that oversee military spending; Young, R-Fla., and Stevens, R-Alaska, are the top Republicans on those subcommittees.

Murtha said he supports adding the war spending to the Pentagon's core budget, but the leadership opposes it.

"You're going to have a bridge fund at some point," he told reporters. "I just don't know if it'll be on this bill."

WaPo : Bush Requests $46B to Fund Wars

Bush Requests $46B to Fund Wars

By Peter Baker | Washington Post Staff Writer | October 22, 2007

President Bush requested $46 billion more today to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and other security priorities, bringing the total request pending before Congress to $196.4 billion and setting the stage for another politically charged battle over the course of the war.

The funding request would pay for day-to-day costs of the wars, including everything from bullets to body armor, as well as for training of Iraqi troops, embassy programs and intelligence operations. It also would pay for treatment of injured soldiers, equipment repairs, relief for Iraqi refugees, U.N. peacekeeping in the Darfur region of Sudan and counter-narcotics aid to Mexico.

The president's war funding plan appears certain to revive the debate over Iraq that has grown somewhat dormant in Washington over the past month. Bush demanded that Congress approve his spending request by the end of the year and cast it as a test of whether lawmakers support U.S. troops, rather than his policy.

Democratic leaders in Congress have said they do not plan to act on Bush's request until next year as they seek a new strategy to counter the president's war leadership.

"I know some in Congress are against the war and are seeking to demonstrate that opposition," Bush said in a midday announcement from the White House. "I recognize their position, and they should make their views heard. But they ought to make sure our troops have what it takes to succeed. Our men and women on the front lines should not be caught in the middle of partisan disagreements in Washington, D.C."

The president appeared in the Roosevelt Room, surrounded by leaders of veterans and military support organizations and a few family members. He made clear that he will argue, as he did last spring, that the issue is about them -- not about his decisions or policies.

"I often hear that war critics oppose my decisions but still support the troops," he said. "Well, I'll take them at their word -- and this is the chance to show it."

Democratic leaders and other antiwar activists reject that logic, saying Congress's power of the purse is the best means for lawmakers to influence war policy. So far, though, Democrats have been unwilling to refuse the president his requested war funding. When Democrats tried to attach a U.S. troop withdrawal timetable to the last war funding bill in the spring, Bush vetoed it and Congress ended up approving the money without major conditions.

Since that strategy failed, some antiwar lawmakers are urging Democratic leaders to refuse to give Bush the money he needs to wage war, or at least cut it.

"President Bush should not expect the Congress to rubber-stamp this latest supplemental request," said Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). "In the coming weeks, we will hold it up to the light of day and fight for the change in strategy and redeployment of troops that is long overdue."

Most Americans oppose funding Bush's full war request, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll last month. Just a quarter of those surveyed supported the president's full spending plan, as it was then projected, and seven in 10 wanted it reduced. About 46 percent wanted it cut sharply or altogether.

The $45.9 billion Bush asked for today comes on top of $150.5 billion already requested for the 2008 fiscal year that started Oct. 1. Altogether, that would make this year by far the most expensive since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and would bring the overall cost of Iraq, Afghanistan and counterterrorism operations to more than $800 billion. Even adjusted for inflation, that would exceed the cost of the Vietnam War.

A Congressional Research Service report in July estimated that the total additional cost for the next 10 years could reach $1.45 trillion by 2017, even assuming the number of U.S. troops in Iraq is cut in half within five years.

Today's spending plan includes $42.3 billion more for the Defense Department and $3.6 billion more for the State Department. One of the biggest expenditures is $14.1 billion for mine-resistant vehicles and other efforts to counter snipers and improvised explosive devices. Another big-ticket item is $8.8 billion to refurbish or replace worn-out or damaged equipment.

Smaller spending items include $1.76 billion to better support families of service members affected by long, repeat deployments and to improve health care and rehabilitation for returning injured soldiers. That includes money to accelerate the transition from Walter Reed Army Medical Center to military hospitals in Bethesda and Fort Belvoir.

The administration also tucked in money for several foreign policy initiatives not directly related to Iraq or Afghanistan, such as funds for the Palestinian Authority, United Nations peacekeeping in Darfur, emergency food aid for Africa and heavy fuel oil for North Korea that is part of the deal under which Pyongyang would dismantle its nuclear programs.

The plan also would direct $550 million to Mexico and Central American countries to help their efforts against the drug trade and human trafficking.

NYT : Bush Requests $46 Billion for Wars

Bush Requests $46 Billion for Wars

By DAVID STOUT | October 22, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 — President Bush asked Congress today for an additional $46 billion to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to finance other national security expenses, setting off new verbal skirmishing with Congressional Democrats.

“The majority of the supplemental funding is for day-to-day military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq,” the president told reporters at the White House today. “The bill provides for basic needs like bullets and body armor, protection against I.E.D.’s, and mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles,” he said, using shorthand for improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs.

“These are urgent military necessities,” Mr. Bush said, declaring that the supplemental budget request “was prepared in close consultation with our commanders on the ground,” including the top American commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus.

“This funding is what General Petraeus and other military leaders say we need, and Congress ought to give it to them,” Mr. Bush said.

The numbers Mr. Bush mentioned were not a surprise, since Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said several weeks ago on Capitol Hill that the administration wanted about $42 billion more for war-related expenses. Another several billion dollars would go toward additional State Department security-related spending.

In February, the administration asked for $141.7 billion for the wars, warning at the time that the amount could increase later. Assuming today’s request is approved by Congress, the wars are now expected to cost taxpayers more than $190 billion for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1.

“President Bush should not expect us to rubber-stamp his latest supplemental request,” Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratc majority leader, said in a statement. But the Democrats have so far been unable to translate their election victory last year into the power to change the president’s war policies.

Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, alluded to Mr. Bush’s veto of a children’s health insurance program as he criticized the president. “President Bush has made his priorities clear: health care for children is too expensive, but more of the same in Iraq is worth billions in debt,” Mr. Emanuel said.

By coincidence, Mr. Bush made his supplemental-budget request the same day a new audio recording, apparently of Osama bin Laden, was broadcast on Al-Jazeera. The voice on the recording urged Iraqi insurgents to unite. It was not immediately known whether the recording was authentic.

The Senate Democrats’ communications center, noting that the United States intelligence community has called Mr. bin Laden’s network the main terrorist threat to the United States, said today in a statement: “Instead of focusing on Bin Laden, the President is focused on policing an Iraqi civil war. Six years after 9/11, it’s time for us to put our eye back on the ball.”

Reuters : Lawmakers seek to make contractors accountable

Lawmakers seek to make contractors accountable

By Sue Pleming | October 4, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Jolted by a shooting incident involving security firm Blackwater that killed 11 Iraqis, U.S. lawmakers passed a bill on Thursday to make all government contractors accountable under U.S. law for their actions.

But the bill, voted 389-30 in the House of Representatives, faces opposition from the Republican White House and a similar version still must make its way through the Senate before becoming law.

Lawmakers hope to clear up confusion and close loopholes over which laws apply if the more than 160,000 U.S. contractors working in Iraq are accused of committing crimes.

The bill expands the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA), which covers defense department contractors, to all civilians working for the U.S. government abroad. Blackwater, which has about 1,000 staff in Iraq, has a State Department contract to protect its diplomats there.

"It will give our country the ability to hold contractors accountable, which will enhance our national security and the safety of our troops," said the bill's author, Democratic Rep. David Price of North Carolina, Blackwater's home state.

In addition, the bill would expand the MEJA so the Department of Justice, through the FBI, must enforce it by investigating and prosecuting offenses by contractors. The proposal would establish FBI units, where the incidents took place, to investigate every incident for which there is reasonable suspicion of criminal felony misconduct.

Democratic leaders in the Senate have indicated they are eager to move forward with similar legislation. Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said this week he believed the law should be changed to close a loophole that apparently leaves some U.S. contractors immune from prosecution.

But it was unclear whether the Senate would work on a version authored by Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, or simply take up the House bill and pass it, Senate aides said.

WHITE HOUSE CONCERNS

The White House said it supported greater accountability for contractors abroad, but had "grave concerns."

"The bill would have unintended and intolerable consequences for crucial and necessary national security activities and operations," the White House in a formal assessment of the bill released on Wednesday.

The measure would put "unwarranted burdens" on the defense department and obligate it to support criminal investigations by the FBI in the middle of a war, it added.

Price said the White House objections should "infuriate anyone who believes in the rule of law."

The September 16 Blackwater shooting incident in Baghdad has exposed the challenge of holding accountable contractors in Iraq, who perform a broad variety of tasks from laundry and cooking for troops to protecting diplomats.

If something goes awry -- from a domestic dispute to a shooting involving Iraqi civilians -- the legal repercussions are largely untested, say experts.

Further complicating the issue is the fact that under an agreement with the former occupying U.S. authority, Iraqi courts do not have the jurisdiction to prosecute contractors without U.S. government permission.

Peter Singer, an expert from the Brookings Institution who has done extensive research on the activities of contractors in Iraq, said more challenging than any legal question was whether there was a will to act against contractors anyway.

"You can have wonderful laws but they become irrelevant if no one executes them," said Singer.

(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell)

© Reuters 2007 All rights reserved

NYT : House’s Iraq Bill Applies U.S. Laws to Contractors

House’s Iraq Bill Applies U.S. Laws to Contractors

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN | October 5, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 — With the armed security force Blackwater USA and other private contractors in Iraq facing tighter scrutiny, the House of Representatives on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a bill that would bring all United States government contractors in the Iraq war zone under the jurisdiction of American criminal law. The measure would require the F.B.I. to investigate any allegations of wrongdoing.

The bill was approved 389 to 30, despite strong opposition from the White House. It came as lawmakers and human rights groups are using a Sept. 16 shooting by Blackwater personnel in Baghdad to highlight the many contractors operating in Iraq who have apparently been unaccountable to American military or civilian laws and outside the reach of the Iraqi judicial system.

The State Department, which had been leading the investigation into the shooting, said Thursday that a team of F.B.I. agents sent to Baghdad in recent days had taken over the inquiry. No charges have been filed in the case, and Justice Department officials have said it is unclear whether American law applies.

Even if enacted, the House bill would have no retroactive authority over past conduct by Blackwater or other contractors.

Federal law enforcement officials said the team of about 10 F.B.I. special agents had been sent to Baghdad at the request of the State Department to oversee the Blackwater investigation. One official, who like others who discussed the investigation spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about it publicly, described their assignment as a fact-finding mission to determine whether any of the Blackwater employees had engaged in activity in violation of American laws.

Iraqi officials have said they would like to prosecute the Blackwater case, but it is extremely unlikely that American authorities would allow them to assert jurisdiction.

Shortly after the occupation of Iraq in 2003, the American administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, issued a decree granting immunity to American military and civilian personnel from criminal prosecution in Iraqi courts.

The House bill, sponsored by Representative David E. Price, Democrat of North Carolina, would expand a law that in 2000 brought defense contractors working with American troops overseas under the jurisdiction of United States criminal law. The 2000 law has rarely been used and might not apply to firms like Blackwater, which was hired to guard diplomats and could argue that its work is not tied directly to war operations.

But Republican critics, who said they supported the overall goal of increasing accountability for contractors, said there were weaknesses in the legislation, including imprecise descriptions about the locations where the law would apply. They also said that the F.B.I. was not equipped to conduct numerous investigations overseas and that the effort would prove costly.

Mr. Price has been working on the contractor issue for about three years and first introduced his bill in January. A similar measure was submitted in the Senate by Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois. Mr. Obama, a candidate for his party’s nomination for president, introduced an updated version on Thursday.

The F.B.I. maintains a sizable office in Iraq. But law enforcement officials said the Blackwater inquiry would be left to the visiting agents.

The officials said the F.B.I. had received no specific accusations of criminality from the State Department in opening the investigation, which is expected to focus on Blackwater operatives who are accused of involvement in the deaths of Iraqi civilians or other violent acts. But it could prove extremely difficult to prosecute under American civilian or military laws.

The White House said it was willing to work with Congress to achieve greater accountability for contractors but it had “grave concerns” about the new House bill, which it said would overburden the F.B.I. and the Defense Department and interfere with crucial “national security activities and operations.”

Before the bill was passed, Democrats agreed to add language specifying that it was not intended to hamper intelligence efforts.

Because the Justice Department had prosecuted few crimes under the 2000 law, Congress last year approved a measure that brought Defense Department contractors in the war zone under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, potentially subjecting them to court-martial. But no prosecutions have been brought under that provision, watchdog groups said.

Mr. Obama’s measure, like the one approved by the House, would require the F.B.I. to establish “theater investigative units” — field offices in the war zone — to investigate criminal accusations against any of the roughly 180,000 contractor personnel working in Iraq. And it would require the Justice Department to report to Congress on the number of complaints, investigations and criminal cases brought against contractors.

But analysts said that even if the legislation was adopted it could prove extremely difficult to prosecute cases. Under the law adopted in 2000, only two criminal cases have originated in Iraq, the analysts said, one involving a contractor accused of possessing child pornography and another accused of attempted rape.

Under the law, responsibility for the cases falls to prosecutors in the defendant’s home jurisdiction, meaning that law enforcement officials must conduct expensive investigations overseas under dangerous conditions, then bring evidence and witnesses back to the United States.

“At the end of the day, the execution of this depends not on Congress but the executive branch,” said Peter W. Singer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has followed the contractor issue closely.

He said that by some accounts, as many as 20 potential criminal cases involving contractors had been referred to the Justice Department, but none were pursued. “They have disappeared into a black hole,” he said.

But Mr. Singer said prosecutors in American criminal courts would face enormous obstacles in any case where the activity described as a crime under civilian laws might be viewed by a jury as justifiable in a war.

Scott Horton, a human rights lawyer who has been heavily involved in efforts to develop legislation that would hold contractors accountable, said in an interview that the House bill would close a loophole that might allow Blackwater employees to argue that their work was unrelated to the war effort because the company had a contract to protect State Department diplomats around the world.

But he expressed frustration that officials had not been more active in prosecuting crimes in Iraq and that the legal situation remained gray.

“When we have got a contractor city, say, of 180,000 people, and there hasn’t been a completed prosecution of anybody coming out of Iraq, not one,” he said, “what sort of city in America would be like that, where no one is prosecuted for anything for three years? It’s unthinkable.”

WaPo : House Acts in Wake of Blackwater Incident

House Acts in Wake of Blackwater Incident

Measure Is Passed to Place Wartime Contractors Under U.S. Courts' Jurisdiction

By Jonathan Weisman | Washington Post Staff Writer | October 5, 2007

Prompted by last month's deadly shootings in Baghdad by armed guards working for Blackwater USA, the House voted overwhelmingly yesterday to place all private contractors working in Iraq and other combat zones under the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.

The 389 to 30 vote expanding the scope of the existing Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act came over the strong opposition of the Bush administration, which objected to its broad application to a wide range of contractors working for U.S. agencies overseas.

The bill requires that contractor offenses that would be punishable by at least a one-year prison sentence if perpetrated in the United States be pursued under U.S. law. The Justice Department's inspector general would have to report to Congress on the status of Justice Department investigations of alleged contactor abuses. And the FBI would have to establish investigative units for each U.S. war zone where contractors are operating.

Defense Department contractors already fall under U.S. and military law, but contractors working for other agencies often do not. Blackwater and two other private firms provide protective services to U.S. diplomats and other civilian officials in Iraq under a State Department contract.

"This bill will improve the law, and it will improve enforcement," said Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.), the legislation's author. "It will give our country the ability to hold contractors accountable, which will enhance our national security and the safety of our troops. And it will ensure that our country remains a model of law and integrity to the rest of the world."

But the White House complained that the bill's scope of U.S. jurisdiction depended on "vague notions of 'proximity' " to conflict that could complicate prosecutions. The Office of Management and Budget said it could have unspecified but "intolerable consequences for crucial and necessary national security activities" and would pose an undue burden on the military.

While the administration stopped short of a veto threat, the White House claimed the bill could spawn a rash of litigation, extend federal court jurisdiction overseas far too broadly and burden both the military and the FBI with mandatory overseas activities.

Such arguments held little sway after last month's Blackwater incident, which left at least 11 Iraqi civilians dead. Indeed, the administration is looking increasingly alone on the issue. Hearings this week by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee highlighted additional Blackwater incidents, such as a drunk Blackwater employee's fatal shooting of a security guard of one of Iraq's vice presidents.

During those hearings, Blackwater founder Erik Prince suggested he supports a clarification of existing laws governing the behavior of contractors overseas. Of the intoxicated Blackwater shooter, Prince said: "Beyond firing him for breaking the rules, withholding any funds we can, we can't flog him. We can't incarcerate him. We can't do anything beyond that."

The bill was endorsed by the International Peace Operations Association -- a trade group for security contractors, including Blackwater -- which said after its passage that "effective legal structures are necessary to ensure ethical operations in the field."

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), said the Senate is likely to take up the measure after next week's Columbus Day recess.

Some Republicans complained that Democrats were ramming through the bill without proper vetting, simply for maximum political effect. But only 30 Republicans voted against it.

Sen. Sam Brownback (Kan.), a conservative Republican running for his party's White House nomination, wrote a letter yesterday to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, asking for a broad investigation of the impact of contractor behavior on U.S. diplomatic efforts.

"The respect for and promotion of human rights are central to U.S. diplomacy in all parts of the world. The negative effects of a Blackwater security guard using excessive force are not limited to the victims of a particular incident. Such violence undermines the efforts of our diplomats to affirm the importance of human rights and advance our national interests," Brownback wrote.

Staff writer Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.

NYT : Department of Brazen Bureaucracy

Department of Brazen Bureaucracy

September 13, 2007

The Bush administration seems intent on flouting Congress’s mandate to restore the primacy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in dealing with disasters. At the core of the government’s dreadful performance when Katrina crushed New Orleans two years ago was the confusion of responsibility in which the new and untested Department of Homeland Security superseded FEMA as the manager of disaster response.

To repair this glaring problem, Congress passed a bipartisan reform act last year firmly specifying FEMA as the main coordinator for national emergencies. Nevertheless, homeland security has just issued its own sweeping disaster policy statement claiming the coordinator’s role for its own department secretary.

Congress is properly furious. The administration’s latest exercise of in-your-face contumely would confirm the superagency, which includes FEMA in its organization chart, as a millstone rather than a bulwark in future disasters. The reform act sought to repair the lines of authority, bolster FEMA and prevent its slide toward a patronage-heavy underling agency.

The new homeland security policy — the already overdue “national response framework” — amounts to fresh disaster on paper. It not only ignores Congress’s vital mandate, but it breezes past a range of valuable proposals from state and local disaster managers and first responders. It threatens to compound bureaucratic inertia by creating 15 regional disaster areas with separate operational and strategic plans.

Homeland Security Department officials defend their plan as merely a draft open to hearings and change. But they’re throwing down the gauntlet before Congress. Some angry members are threatening to strip FEMA entirely from under the homeland umbrella. Far better that Congress defend its own primacy by establishing this finally is a nation of law, not runaway executives.

Dallas News : Bush: Congress must stay put until surveillance bill approved

Bush: Congress must stay put until surveillance bill approved

Associated Press | August 3, 2007

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Friday that Congress must stay in session until it approves legislation modernizing a U.S. law governing eavesdropping on foreigners.

"So far the Democrats in Congress have not drafted a bill I can sign," Bush said at FBI headquarters, where he was meeting with counterterror and homeland security officials. "We've worked hard and in good faith with the Democrats to find a solution, but we are not going to put our national security at risk. Time is short."

The president said lawmakers cannot leave for their August recess this weekend as planned unless they "pass a bill that will give our intelligence community the tools they need to protect the United States."

Bush has the authority under the Constitution to call Congress back into session once it has recessed or adjourned, but White House spokeswoman Dana Perrino said talk of him doing that is premature.

"We cannot imagine that Congress would leave without fixing the problem," she said.

As of early afternoon, however, it was clear that no deal was imminent.

"It's up in the air; I think we're going to be here for awhile," Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said upon emerging from a closed-door meeting of Senate Democrats on the issue.

Sen. Kit Bond, top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, said the White House's offer included several concessions; among them to let the plan expire in six months, giving lawmakers time to work out a more comprehensive law.

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell "has put on the table this last best offer," Bond said.

Earlier Friday, the White House offered an eleventh-hour accord to Democrats in the negotiations over the matter, saying it would agree to a court review of its foreign intelligence activities instead of leaving certification up to the attorney general and director of national intelligence.

But it attached several conditions that could be unacceptable to Democrats: that the review would only be after-the-fact and would only involve the administration's general process of collecting the intelligence, not individual cases, said a senior administration official speaking on condition of anonymity to more freely discuss internal deliberations.

Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said other issues in the dispute include whether the new eavesdropping powers Bush wants be made permanent -- or temporary -- and whether this new authority could be used against intelligence targets other than al-Qaida terrorists, such as Iran or Syria.

Bush said the administration offer is a "a narrow and targeted piece of legislation that will close the gaps in intelligence."

"This is what we need to do our job to protect the American people," the president said. "It's the bare minimum."

The two sides, however, still are far from striking a deal on what all agree needs to happen, and soon: an update of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

At issue is how the government would spy on foreign terror suspects overseas without invading Americans' privacy rights. Democrats want the special FISA Court to review the eavesdropping process to make sure the surveillance does not focus on communications that might be sent to and from Americans.

The law now generally requires court review of government surveillance of suspected terrorists in the United States. It does not specifically address the government's ability to intercept messages believed to come from suspects who are overseas, opening what the White House considers a significant gap in protecting against attacks by foreigners targeting the U.S.

Negotiations broke off shortly before midnight Thursday and resumed Friday morning.

In a statement late Thursday, McConnell said he would agree to a review by the FISA court, but only after the surveillance had begun, not before as some Democrats are demanding.

"To acknowledge the interests of all, I could agree to a procedure that provides for court review -- after needed collection has begun -- of our procedures for gathering foreign intelligence through classified methods directed at foreigners located overseas," McConnell wrote.

"While I would strongly prefer not to engage in such a process, I am prepared to take these additional steps to keep the confidence of members of Congress and the American people that our processes have been subject to court review and approval," he wrote.

The FISA court review would happen 120 days after the surveillance began, another senior administration official said Friday. Until then, McConnell and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would oversee and approve the process of targeting foreign terrorists, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing negotiations.

The administration is demanding that this apply to monitoring of all foreign targets, no matter whether they end up communicating with another foreigner or someone in the U.S, and no matter whether they are a suspected terrorist or a target for some other reason, said the first official.

Democrats leery of Gonzales' involvement said that seemed far too long a period of time before the FISA court could step in.

Bush said that he would judge any bill sent to him by one measure alone: McConnell's judgment as to whether it provides "what you need to prevent an attack on the country."

"If the answer's `no,' I'm going to veto the bill," he said.

The urgent push to update FISA may stem from a recent ruling by the court that oversees it, according to remarks earlier this week by House Republican Leader John Boehner during an interview with Fox News.

"There's been a ruling, over the last four or five months, that prohibits the ability of our intelligence services and our counterintelligence people from listening in to two terrorists in other parts of the world where the communication could come through the United States," said Boehner, going further that most officials have in explaining the pressing need for change.

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.

NYT : House Resolution Rejects Permanent Bases in Iraq

House Resolution Rejects Permanent Bases in Iraq

By CARL HULSE | July 26, 2007

WASHINGTON, July 25 — The House voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to bar permanent United States military installations in Iraq as lawmakers readied for yet another clash over a Democratic demand to withdraw combat troops from the conflict.

By a vote of 399 to 24, the House adopted a resolution that would limit federal spending intended “to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq or to exercise United States economic control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

Democrats said the measure, the latest in a series of politically tinged war votes, was needed to make it clear that America had no plan for a permanent military presence in Iraq — a fear they said was fueling some attacks on American troops and building the insurgent resistance.

“We must soundly reject the vision of an open-ended occupation as bad policy that undermines the safety of our troops and recognize it for what it is: another recruiting poster for terrorists,” said Representative Barbara Lee, Democrat of California and an author of the proposal.

House Republicans offered little resistance, saying the plan essentially reflected current law and Bush administration policy. But they criticized Democrats for what they said was meaningless legislation since the administration had not called for permanent bases.

“The bill brought to the floor by the majority today represents yet another political stunt, and an intellectually dishonest one at that, because the United States has never proposed establishing a permanent base in Iraq or anywhere else,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader. All of the plan’s opponents were Republicans.

The vote came as Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, chairman of the subcommittee that sets Pentagon spending and a leading Democratic critic of the war, indicated he would try, as early as next week, to add a new withdrawal plan to the annual military spending bill.

Under Mr. Murtha’s draft proposal, President Bush would be required to present Congress with a classified plan for bringing regional stability in the Middle East and within 60 days begin “an immediate and orderly redeployment of U.S. armed forces from Iraq.”

The withdrawal would begin with troops that have been there longer than a year. The proposal, which also calls for an estimate of the American presence in the region for the next five years, does not set a deadline for removing the troops, though Mr. Murtha estimated it would take more than a year.

Mr. Murtha predicted that the central showdown over the withdrawal plan would come in September, after the Congressional recess. He said he had indications that more Republicans and some in the military might be ready at that time to rally behind his latest proposal.

“When you get to September, this is history, this is when we are going to have a real confrontation with the president,” Mr. Murtha told reporters. “I see signals that things are going to get worked out.”

But House Republicans were likely for now to oppose Mr. Murtha’s plan as a misguided Congressional infringement on the president’s powers as commander in chief. And many Democrats prefer an end-date for the withdrawal.

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House speaker, said lawmakers should expect repeated votes on Iraq policy, and she criticized Mr. Bush for citing, in a speech on Tuesday, Al Qaeda as the chief reason for keeping troops there.

“Just when you think you have seen it all, just when you think you have heard it all, the president mentioned Al Qaeda nearly 100 times to justify his course of action in Iraq,” said Ms. Pelosi, who said Democrats were prepared to vote every day on Iraq policy if necessary.

In the Senate, where lawmakers have put off their dispute over Iraq for now, senior members resurrected popular parts of a Pentagon policy measure that stalled last week in the stalemate over the Democratic push for a withdrawal timetable.

In a bipartisan decision, the Senate approved provisions intended to bring improvements in active-duty and veterans health care and provide a 3.5 percent military pay raise as of Oct. 1. The remaining elements are not expected to resurface in the Senate until September.

NYT : Panel Holds Two Bush Aides in Contempt

Panel Holds Two Bush Aides in Contempt

By DAVID STOUT | July 25, 2007

WASHINGTON, July 25 — The House Judiciary Committee voted today to seek contempt of Congress citations against a top aide to President Bush and a former presidential aide over their refusal to cooperate in an inquiry about the firing of federal prosecutors.

The 22-to-17 vote along party lines escalates the battle between the administration and Congressional Democrats over the dismissals of nine United States attorneys last year, an episode that Democrats say needs airing but that many Republicans say is much ado about nothing.

“It’s not a step that, as chairman, I take easily or lightly,” the head of the panel, Representative John D. Conyers, Democrat of Michigan, said before the committee voted to cite Joshua B. Bolten, the president’s chief of staff, and Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel.

To take effect, the Judiciary Committee’s recommendation must be voted upon by the full House, where Democrats have a 231-to-201 edge, with 3 vacancies. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not said whether she would seek House action before the lawmakers recess in early August, or allow the issue to simmer until the House reconvenes after Labor Day.

Or a compromise could be worked out between the White House and the legislators, despite the hard-edged words on both sides in the months since the controversy over the firings erupted. Recent history offers several examples of disputes between the executive and legislative branches being settled.

The White House has refused, on the grounds of executive privilege, to make Mr. Bolten and Ms. Miers available for sworn testimony before Congress. To do so, the White House argues, could stifle frank, confidential advice to the president, and future presidents, by their closest advisers.

Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the judiciary panel, argued that the White House had already offered to provide all the information the committee needs, by making presidential aides available for semi-formal, private interviews in which the aides would not be under oath.

“The majority knows that the president’s assertions of executive privilege go back to George Washington and rest on long-standing and well-reasoned court rulings and bipartisan executive practices,” Mr. Smith said today.

But Democrats have scoffed at what several of them have termed the administration’s arrogant, “take it or leave it” offer. Mr. Conyers said before today’s vote that members of Congress could not tolerate a situation in which “our subpoenas can be readily ignored, where a witness under a duly authorized subpoena doesn’t even have to bother to show up.” Mr. Bolten and Ms. Miers refused to even appear before the committee.

In the event that the full House voted contempt citations against Mr. Bolten and Ms. Miers, the next legal step would be a referral to the United States attorney for the District of Columbia (a Bush appointee) for prosecution.

But there is a further complication: the White House asserted last week that the law does not permit Congress to require a United States attorney to convene a grand jury or otherwise pursue a prosecution when someone refuses on the basis of executive privilege to testify or turn over documents. That stance was repeated in a Justice Department letter to the Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

Contempt of Congress is punishable by up to a year in prison and a fine of $100,000, increased from the long-standing $1,000 in 1984, the judiciary panel’s press office said today. But it was by no means clear today that the cases of Mr. Bolten and Ms. Miers would ever reach that point.

In 1998, a House investigating committee voted along party lines to charge Attorney General Janet Reno with contempt of Congress in a dispute over whether an independent counsel should be appointed to prosecute campaign finance abuses. The issue never got to the full House. The last time a full chamber of Congress voted on a contempt citation was May 18, 1983. By 413 to 0, the House cited Rita M. Lavelle, a former official of the Environmental Protection Agency, for refusing to appear before a committee investigating hazardous-waste programs. She was acquitted in court of the contempt charge but convicted of perjury in another trial and served several months in prison.

In late 1982, the House voted, 259 to 105, to charge Anne Gorsuch Burford, administrator of the E.P.A. , with contempt, but the case was dropped after lawmakers were given access to the documents they wanted, and the United States attorney for the District of Columbia refused to prosecute in any event.

Earlier in 1982, a House committee voted to cite Interior Secretary James G. Watt for refusing to turn over documents related to energy-related policies. But President Ronald Reagan then gave the committee enough access to the papers to satisfy them.

In 1975, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger was cited by a House committee. That issue was also settled by compromise.

NYT : Just What the Founders Feared: An Imperial President Goes to War

Just What the Founders Feared: An Imperial President Goes to War

By ADAM COHEN | July 23, 2007

The nation is heading toward a constitutional showdown over the Iraq war. Congress is moving closer to passing a bill to limit or end the war, but President Bush insists Congress doesn’t have the power to do it. “I don’t think Congress ought to be running the war,” he said at a recent press conference. “I think they ought to be funding the troops.” He added magnanimously: “I’m certainly interested in their opinion.”

The war is hardly the only area where the Bush administration is trying to expand its powers beyond all legal justification. But the danger of an imperial presidency is particularly great when a president takes the nation to war, something the founders understood well. In the looming showdown, the founders and the Constitution are firmly on Congress’s side.

Given how intent the president is on expanding his authority, it is startling to recall how the Constitution’s framers viewed presidential power. They were revolutionaries who detested kings, and their great concern when they established the United States was that they not accidentally create a kingdom. To guard against it, they sharply limited presidential authority, which Edmund Randolph, a Constitutional Convention delegate and the first attorney general, called “the foetus of monarchy.”

The founders were particularly wary of giving the president power over war. They were haunted by Europe’s history of conflicts started by self-aggrandizing kings. John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States, noted in Federalist No. 4 that “absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal.”

Many critics of the Iraq war are reluctant to suggest that President Bush went into it in anything but good faith. But James Madison, widely known as the father of the Constitution, might have been more skeptical. “In war, the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed,” he warned. “It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle.”

When they drafted the Constitution, Madison and his colleagues wrote their skepticism into the text. In Britain, the king had the authority to declare war, and raise and support armies, among other war powers. The framers expressly rejected this model and gave these powers not to the president, but to Congress.

The Constitution does make the president “commander in chief,” a title President Bush often invokes. But it does not have the sweeping meaning he suggests. The framers took it from the British military, which used it to denote the highest-ranking official in a theater of battle. Alexander Hamilton emphasized in Federalist No. 69 that the president would be “nothing more” than “first general and admiral,” responsible for “command and direction” of military forces.

The founders would have been astonished by President Bush’s assertion that Congress should simply write him blank checks for war. They gave Congress the power of the purse so it would have leverage to force the president to execute their laws properly. Madison described Congress’s control over spending as “the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”

The framers expected Congress to keep the president on an especially short leash on military matters. The Constitution authorizes Congress to appropriate money for an army, but prohibits appropriations for longer than two years. Hamilton explained that the limitation prevented Congress from vesting “in the executive department permanent funds for the support of an army, if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence.”

As opinion turns more decisively against the war, the administration is becoming ever more dismissive of Congress’s role. Last week, Under Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman brusquely turned away Senator Hillary Clinton’s questions about how the Pentagon intended to plan for withdrawal from Iraq. "Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq,” he wrote. Mr. Edelman’s response showed contempt not merely for Congress, but for the system of government the founders carefully created.

The Constitution cannot enforce itself. It is, as the constitutional scholar Edwin Corwin famously observed, an “invitation to struggle” among the branches, but the founders wisely bequeathed to Congress some powerful tools for engaging in the struggle. It is no surprise that the current debate over a deeply unpopular war is arising in the context of a Congressional spending bill. That is precisely what the founders intended.

Members of Congress should not be intimidated into thinking that they are overstepping their constitutional bounds. If the founders were looking on now, it is not Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who would strike them as out of line, but George W. Bush, who would seem less like a president than a king.

WaPo : Suicide Bombing Kills 24 Pakistani Soldiers

Suicide Bombing Kills 24 Pakistani Soldiers

By Griff Witte and Imtiaz Ali | Washington Post Foreign Service | July 15, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 14 -- A suicide blast killed 24 Pakistani troops in North Waziristan on Saturday, dealing a potentially critical blow to a controversial peace deal between the government and tribal elders in a region where al-Qaeda has been rapidly reorganizing.

The attack, in which an explosives-laden car rammed into a military convoy, injured an additional 29 troops, was considered one of the most devastating strikes against the Pakistani military in recent years.

The violence came amid heightened tension in northwestern Pakistan after the government raided the besieged Red Mosque in Islamabad last week and killed at least 75 militants. Since then, radical clerics have called for revenge. At least 53 people have died in a spate of attacks over the past two weeks, with Pakistani security forces taking heavy losses.

Saturday's attack occurred in an area where security forces and pro-Taliban fighters have technically agreed to a cease-fire. But the viability of that agreement was in question Saturday, and there were indications that both sides were girding for more violence. Thousands of troops rumbled into the border region, though the military said it had no specific plans to attack.

A purported spokesman for the Taliban in Pakistan said in an interview that the government should prepare to fight a full-scale guerrilla war unless it immediately withdraws troops from North Waziristan. The government had recently set up checkpoints in the area, which the Taliban considers a violation of the peace deal.

"We give the government a deadline till [Sunday] for closing all checkpoints and withdrawing its forces," Abdullah Farhad, the purported spokesman, said in a telephone interview. "Otherwise, the peace agreement will collapse and we will start our war against the government troops."

The government said that the checkpoints were necessary because the other side was not abiding by the terms of the agreement but that overall the deal remained operative.

"The deal is very much in place and will stay in place," said Tariq Azim Khan, the state minister for information. "These threats are only made to destabilize the area. The vast majority of people there are still supporting the peace deal."

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president who is considered a crucial U.S. counterterrorism ally, has consistently defended the agreement. His government has boasted that local tribesmen were aggressive this spring in ousting foreign fighters.

Khan said on Saturday that the North Waziristan deal should be a model for dealing with militancy in other parts of Pakistan. "There should be more deals like this," he said.

But as Khan spoke, the military appeared to be preparing for battle. Over the past several days, the army has been moving troops, vehicles and supplies into areas near Waziristan as part of a campaign Musharraf announced late last week to stamp out extremism. More than 20,000 soldiers have been brought into various trouble spots.

Musharraf is under intense U.S. pressure to do more to oust militants; he also faces stiff domestic challenges, both from hard-line religious leaders who consider him a pawn of Washington and from moderate forces that want a return to democratic, civilian rule in Pakistan.

The remote, semiautonomous tribal areas that line Pakistan's western border have been hotbeds of radicalism in recent years and major command centers for cross-border attacks on U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.

Waziristan in particular has become the suspected base for al-Qaeda operations in the region. Just last week, a senior U.S. intelligence official warned Congress that al-Qaeda appears "to be fairly well settled into the safe haven in the ungoverned spaces of Pakistan." Recently, senior U.S. officials have also said they believe the North Waziristan deal is not working.

The deal signed in September between the Pakistani government and North Waziristan's tribal leaders -- a group that included some Taliban fighters -- was intended to compel local tribal forces to police the area and expel foreign fighters on their own. In exchange, the Pakistani military agreed to return to its bases after five years of unrest in the region that claimed the lives of hundreds of soldiers.

But the deal has come under widespread scrutiny, with security analysts arguing it amounted to a capitulation to extremists. Since it was signed, violence has surged in Afghanistan, and the Taliban has instituted a severe version of Islamic law in many areas on the Pakistani side of the border.

"Today, the result is very much clear. The Taliban have established their own state," said Latif Afridi, a tribal elder and former legislator from the western city of Peshawar. "The east of Afghanistan has become a problem for the United States and NATO forces, and the west of Pakistan has become a problem for the Pakistani forces. Both have emerged as big quagmires."

The violence Saturday came as Qazi Hussain Ahmad, leader of a coalition of hard-line religious parties, announced he would resign from Parliament in protest over the Red Mosque raid. Ahmad has alleged that casualties in the mosque were much higher than the government has admitted.

Ali reported from Peshawar, Pakistan.

The Independent : Ship of fools: Johann Hari sets sail with America's swashbuckling neocons

Ship of fools: Johann Hari sets sail with America's swashbuckling neocons

The Iraq war has been an amazing success, global warming is just a myth – and as for Guantanamo Bay, it's practically a holiday camp... The annual cruise organised by the 'National Review', mouthpiece of right-wing America, is a parallel universe populated by straight-talking, gun-toting, God-fearing Republicans.

By Johann Hari | 13 July 2007

I am standing waist-deep in the Pacific Ocean, both chilling and burning, indulging in the polite chit-chat beloved by vacationing Americans. A sweet elderly lady from Los Angeles is sitting on the rocks nearby, telling me dreamily about her son. "Is he your only child?" I ask. "Yes," she says. "Do you have a child back in England?" she asks. No, I say. Her face darkens. "You'd better start," she says. "The Muslims are breeding. Soon, they'll have the whole of Europe."

I am getting used to these moments -– when gentle holiday geniality bleeds into... what? I lie on the beach with Hillary-Ann, a chatty, scatty 35-year-old Californian designer. As she explains the perils of Republican dating, my mind drifts, watching the gentle tide. When I hear her say, "Of course, we need to execute some of these people," I wake up. Who do we need to execute? She runs her fingers through the sand lazily. "A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise the country," she says. "Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that's what you'll get." She squints at the sun and smiles. " Then things'll change."

I am travelling on a bright white cruise ship with two restaurants, five bars, a casino – and 500 readers of the National Review. Here, the Iraq war has been "an amazing success". Global warming is not happening. The solitary black person claims, "If the Ku Klux Klan supports equal rights, then God bless them." And I have nowhere to run.

From time to time, National Review – the bible of American conservatism – organises a cruise for its readers. I paid $1,200 to join them. The rules I imposed on myself were simple: If any of the conservative cruisers asked who I was, I answered honestly, telling them I was a journalist. Mostly, I just tried to blend in – and find out what American conservatives say when they think the rest of us aren't listening.

I. From sweet to suicide bomber

I arrive at the dockside in San Diego on Saturday afternoon and stare up at the Oosterdam, our home for the next seven days. Filipino boat hands are loading trunks into the hull and wealthy white folk are gliding onto its polished boards with pale sun parasols dangling off their arms.

The Reviewers have been told to gather for a cocktail reception on the Lido, near the very top of the ship. I arrive to find a tableau from Gone With the Wind, washed in a thousand shades of grey. Southern belles -- aged and pinched -- are flirting with old conservative warriors. The etiquette here is different from anything I have ever seen. It takes me 15 minutes to realise what is wrong with this scene. There are no big hugs, no warm kisses. This is a place of starchy handshakes. Men approach each other with stiffened spines, puffed-out chests and crunching handshakes. Women are greeted with a single kiss on the cheek. Anything more would be French.

I adjust and stiffly greet the first man I see. He is a judge, with the craggy self-important charm that slowly consumes any judge. He is from Canada, he declares (a little more apologetically), and is the founding president of "Canadians Against Suicide Bombing". Would there be many members of "Canadians for Suicide Bombing?" I ask. Dismayed, he suggests that yes, there would.

A bell rings somewhere, and we are all beckoned to dinner. We have been assigned random seats, which will change each night. We will, the publicity pack promises, each dine with at least one National Review speaker during our trip.

To my left, I find a middle-aged Floridian with a neat beard. To my right are two elderly New Yorkers who look and sound like late-era Dorothy Parkers, minus the alcohol poisoning. They live on Park Avenue, they explain in precise Northern tones. "You must live near the UN building," the Floridian says to one of the New York ladies after the entree is served. Yes, she responds, shaking her head wearily. "They should suicide-bomb that place," he says. They all chuckle gently. How did that happen? How do you go from sweet to suicide-bomb in six seconds?

The conversation ebbs back to friendly chit-chat. So, you're a European, one of the Park Avenue ladies says, before offering witty commentaries on the cities she's visited. Her companion adds, "I went to Paris, and it was so lovely." Her face darkens: "But then you think – it's surrounded by Muslims." The first lady nods: "They're out there, and they're coming." Emboldened, the bearded Floridian wags a finger and says, "Down the line, we're not going to bail out the French again." He mimes picking up a phone and shouts into it, "I can't hear you, Jacques! What's that? The Muslims are doing what to you? I can't hear you!"

Now that this barrier has been broken – everyone agrees the Muslims are devouring the French, and everyone agrees it's funny – the usual suspects are quickly rounded up. Jimmy Carter is "almost a traitor". John McCain is "crazy" because of "all that torture". One of the Park Avenue ladies declares that she gets on her knees every day to "thank God for Fox News". As the wine reaches the Floridian, he announces, "This cruise is the best money I ever spent."

They rush through the Rush-list of liberals who hate America, who want her to fail, and I ask them – why are liberals like this? What's their motivation? They stutter to a halt and there is a long, puzzled silence. "It's a good question," one of them, Martha, says finally. I have asked them to peer into the minds of cartoons and they are suddenly, reluctantly confronted with the hollowness of their creation. "There have always been intellectuals who want to tell people how to live," Martha adds, to an almost visible sense of relief. That's it -- the intellectuals! They are not like us. Dave changes the subject, to wash away this moment of cognitive dissonance. "The liberals don't believe in the constitution. They don't believe in what the founders wanted -- a strong executive," he announces, to nods. A Filipino waiter offers him a top-up of his wine, and he mock-whispers to me, "They all look the same! Can you tell them apart?" I stare out to sea. How long would it take me to drown?

II. "We're doing an excellent job killing them."

The Vista Lounge is a Vegas-style showroom, with glistening gold edges and the desperate optimism of an ageing Cha-Cha girl. Today, the scenery has been cleared away -- "I always sit at the front in these shows to see if the girls are really pretty and on this ship they are ug-lee," I hear a Reviewer mutter -- and our performers are the assorted purveyors of conservative show tunes, from Podhoretz to Steyn. The first of the trip's seminars is a discussion intended to exhume the conservative corpse and discover its cause of death on the black, black night of 7 November, 2006, when the treacherous Democrats took control of the US Congress.

There is something strange about this discussion, and it takes me a few moments to realise exactly what it is. All the tropes that conservatives usually deny in public -- that Iraq is another Vietnam, that Bush is fighting a class war on behalf of the rich -- are embraced on this shining ship in the middle of the ocean. Yes, they concede, we are fighting another Vietnam; and this time we won't let the weak-kneed liberals lose it. "It's customary to say we lost the Vietnam war, but who's 'we'?" the writer Dinesh D'Souza asks angrily. "The left won by demanding America's humiliation." On this ship, there are no Viet Cong, no three million dead. There is only liberal treachery. Yes, D'Souza says, in a swift shift to domestic politics, "of course" Republican politics is "about class. Republicans are the party of winners, Democrats are the party of losers."

The panel nods, but it doesn't want to stray from Iraq. Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan's one-time nominee to the Supreme Court, mumbles from beneath low-hanging jowls: "The coverage of this war is unbelievable. Even Fox News is unbelievable. You'd think we're the only ones dying. Enemy casualties aren't covered. We're doing an excellent job killing them."

Then, with a judder, the panel runs momentarily aground. Rich Lowry, the preppy, handsome 38-year-old editor of National Review, says, "The American public isn't concluding we're losing in Iraq for any irrational reason. They're looking at the cold, hard facts." The Vista Lounge is, as one, perplexed. Lowry continues, "I wish it was true that, because we're a superpower, we can't lose. But it's not."

No one argues with him. They just look away, in the same manner that people avoid glancing at a crazy person yelling at a bus stop. Then they return to hyperbole and accusations of treachery against people like their editor. The ageing historian Bernard Lewis -- who was deputed to stiffen Dick Cheney's spine in the run-up to the war -- declares, "The election in the US is being seen by [the bin Ladenists] as a victory on a par with the collapse of the Soviet Union. We should be prepared for whatever comes next." This is why the guests paid up to $6,000. This is what they came for. They give him a wheezing, stooping ovation and break for coffee.

A fracture-line in the lumbering certainty of American conservatism is opening right before my eyes. Following the break, Norman Podhoretz and William Buckley -- two of the grand old men of the Grand Old Party -- begin to feud. Podhoretz will not stop speaking -- "I have lots of ex-friends on the left; it looks like I'm going to have some ex-friends on the right, too," he rants -- and Buckley says to the chair, "Just take the mike, there's no other way." He says it with a smile, but with heavy eyes.

Podhoretz and Buckley now inhabit opposite poles of post-September 11 American conservatism, and they stare at wholly different Iraqs. Podhoretz is the Brooklyn-born, street-fighting kid who travelled through a long phase of left-liberalism to a pugilistic belief in America's power to redeem the world, one bomb at a time. Today, he is a bristling grey ball of aggression, here to declare that the Iraq war has been "an amazing success." He waves his fist and declaims: "There were WMD, and they were shipped to Syria ... This picture of a country in total chaos with no security is false. It has been a triumph. It couldn't have gone better." He wants more wars, and fast. He is "certain" Bush will bomb Iran, and "thank God" for that.

Buckley is an urbane old reactionary, drunk on doubts. He founded the National Review in 1955 -- when conservatism was viewed in polite society as a mental affliction -- and he has always been sceptical of appeals to "the people," preferring the eternal top-down certainties of Catholicism. He united with Podhoretz in mutual hatred of Godless Communism, but, slouching into his eighties, he possesses a world view that is ill-suited for the fight to bring democracy to the Muslim world. He was a ghostly presence on the cruise at first, appearing only briefly to shake a few hands. But now he has emerged, and he is fighting.

"Aren't you embarrassed by the absence of these weapons?" Buckley snaps at Podhoretz. He has just explained that he supported the war reluctantly, because Dick Cheney convinced him Saddam Hussein had WMD primed to be fired. "No," Podhoretz replies. "As I say, they were shipped to Syria. During Gulf War I, the entire Iraqi air force was hidden in the deserts in Iran." He says he is "heartbroken" by this "rise of defeatism on the right." He adds, apropos of nothing, "There was nobody better than Don Rumsfeld. This defeatist talk only contributes to the impression we are losing, when I think we're winning." The audience cheers Podhoretz. The nuanced doubts of Bill Buckley leave them confused. Doesn't he sound like the liberal media? Later, over dinner, a tablemate from Denver calls Buckley "a coward". His wife nods and says, "Buckley's an old man," tapping her head with her finger to suggest dementia.

I decide to track down Buckley and Podhoretz separately and ask them for interviews. Buckley is sitting forlornly in his cabin, scribbling in a notebook. In 2005, at an event celebrating National Review's 50th birthday, President Bush described today's American conservatives as "Bill's children". I ask him if he feels like a parent whose kids grew up to be serial killers. He smiles slightly, and his blue eyes appear to twinkle. Then he sighs, "The answer is no. Because what animated the conservative core for 40 years was the Soviet menace, plus the rise of dogmatic socialism. That's pretty well gone."

This does not feel like an optimistic defence of his brood, but it's a theme he returns to repeatedly: the great battles of his life are already won. Still, he ruminates over what his old friend Ronald Reagan would have made of Iraq. "I think the prudent Reagan would have figured here, and the prudent Reagan would have shunned a commitment of the kind that we are now engaged in... I think he would have attempted to find some sort of assurance that any exposure by the United States would be exposure to a challenge the dimensions of which we could predict." Lest liberals be too eager to adopt the Gipper as one of their own, Buckley agrees approvingly that Reagan's approach would have been to "find a local strongman" to rule Iraq.

A few floors away, Podhoretz tells me he is losing his voice, "which will make some people very happy". Then he croaks out the standard-issue Wolfowitz line about how, after September 11, the United States had to introduce democracy to the Middle East in order to change the political culture that produced the mass murderers. For somebody who declares democracy to be his goal, he is remarkably blasé about the fact that 80 per cent of Iraqis want US troops to leave their country, according to the latest polls. "I don't much care," he says, batting the question away. He goes on to insist that "nobody was tortured in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo" and that Bush is "a hero". He is, like most people on this cruise, certain the administration will attack Iran.

Podhoretz excitedly talks himself into a beautiful web of words, vindicating his every position. He fumes at Buckley, George Will and the other apostate conservatives who refuse to see sense. He announces victory. And for a moment, here in the Mexican breeze, it is as though a thousand miles away Baghdad is not bleeding. He starts hacking and coughing painfully. I offer to go to the ship infirmary and get him some throat sweets, and -- locked in eternal fighter-mode -- he looks thrown, as though this is an especially cunning punch. Is this random act of kindness designed to imbalance him? "I'm fine," he says, glancing contemptuously at the Bill Buckley book I am carrying. "I'll keep on shouting through the soreness."

III. The Ghosts of Conservatism Past

The ghosts of Conservatism past are wandering this ship. From the pool, I see John O'Sullivan, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher. And one morning on the deck I discover Kenneth Starr, looking like he has stepped out of a long-forgotten 1990s news bulletin waving Monica's stained blue dress. His face is round and unlined, like an immense, contented baby. As I stare at him, all my repressed bewilderment rises, and I ask -- Mr Starr, do you feel ashamed that, as Osama bin Laden plotted to murder American citizens, you brought the American government to a stand-still over a few consensual blow jobs? Do you ever lie awake at night wondering if a few more memos on national security would have reached the President's desk if he wasn't spending half his time dealing with your sexual McCarthyism?

He smiles through his teeth and -- in his soft somnambulant voice -- says in perfect legalese, "I am entirely at rest with the process. The House of Representatives worked its will, the Senate worked its will, the Chief Justice of the United States presided. The constitutional process worked admirably."

It's an oddly meek defence, and the more I challenge him, the more legalistic he becomes. Every answer is a variant on "it's not my fault". First, he says Clinton should have settled early on in Jones vs Clinton. Then he blames Jimmy Carter. "This critique really should be addressed to the now-departed, moribund independent counsel provisions. The Ethics and Government [provisions] ushered in during President Carter's administration has an extraordinarily low threshold for launching a special prosecutor..."

Enough -- I see another, more intriguing ghost. Ward Connerly is the only black person in the National Review posse, a 67-year-old Louisiana-born businessman, best known for leading conservative campaigns against affirmative action for black people. Earlier, I heard him saying the Republican Party has been "too preoccupied with... not ticking off the blacks", and a cooing white couple wandered away smiling, "If he can say it, we can say it." What must it be like to be a black man shilling for a magazine that declared at the height of the civil rights movement that black people "tend to revert to savagery", and should be given the vote only "when they stop eating each other"?

I drag him into the bar, where he declines alcohol. He tells me plainly about his childhood -- his mother died when he was four, and he was raised by his grandparents -- but he never really becomes animated until I ask him if it is true he once said, "If the KKK supports equal rights, then God bless them." He leans forward, his palms open. There are, he says, "those who condemn the Klan based on their past without seeing the human side of it, because they don't want to be in the wrong, politically correct camp, you know... Members of the Ku Klux Klan are human beings, American citizens – they go to a place to eat, nobody asks them 'Are you a Klansmember?', before we serve you here. They go to buy groceries, nobody asks, 'Are you a Klansmember?' They go to vote for Governor, nobody asks 'Do you know that that person is a Klansmember?' Only in the context of race do they ask that. And I'm supposed to instantly say, 'Oh my God, they are Klansmen? Geez, I don't want their support.'"

This empathy for Klansmen first bubbled into the public domain this year when Connerly was leading an anti-affirmative action campaign in Michigan. The KKK came out in support of him -- and he didn't decline it. I ask if he really thinks it is possible the KKK made this move because they have become converted to the cause of racial equality. "I think that the reasoning that a Klan member goes through is -- blacks are getting benefits that I'm not getting. It's reverse discrimination. To me it's all discrimination. But the Klansmen is going through the reasoning that this is benefiting blacks, they are getting things that I don't get... A white man doesn't have a chance in this country."

He becomes incredibly impassioned imagining how they feel, ventriloquising them with a shaking fist -- "The Mexicans are getting these benefits, the coloureds or niggers, whatever they are saying, are getting these benefits, and I as a white man am losing my country."

But when I ask him to empathise with the black victims of Hurricane Katrina, he offers none of this vim. No, all Katrina showed was "the dysfunctionality that is evident in many black neighbourhoods," he says flatly, and that has to be "tackled by black people, not the government." Ward, do you ever worry you are siding with people who would have denied you a vote -- or would hang you by a rope from a tree?

"I don't gather strength from what others think – no at all," he says. "Whether they are in favour or opposed. I can walk down these halls and, say, a hundred people say, 'Oh we just adore you', and I'll be polite and I'll say 'thank you', but it doesn't register or have any effect on me." There is a gaggle of Reviewers waiting to tell him how refreshing it is to "finally" hear a black person "speaking like this". I leave him to their white, white garlands.

IV. "You're going to get fascists rising up, aren't you? Why hasn't that happened already?"

The nautical counter-revolution has docked in the perfectly-yellow sands of Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, and the Reviewers are clambering overboard into the Latino world they want to wall off behind a thousand-mile fence. They carry notebooks from the scribblings they made during the seminar teaching them "How To Shop in Mexico". Over breakfast, I forgot myself and said I was considering setting out to find a local street kid who would show me round the barrios – the real Mexico. They gaped. "Do you want to die?" one asked.

The Reviewers confine their Mexican jaunt to covered markets and walled-off private fortresses like the private Nikki Beach. Here, as ever, they want Mexico to be a dispenser of cheap consumer goods and lush sands – not a place populated by (uck) Mexicans. Dinesh D'Souza announced as we entered Mexican seas what he calls "D'Souza's law of immigration": "The quality of an immigrant is inversely proportional to the distance travelled to get to the United States."

In other words: Latinos suck.

I return for dinner with my special National Review guest: Kate O'Beirne. She's an impossibly tall blonde with the voice of a 1930s screwball star and the arguments of a 1890s Victorian patriarch. She inveighs against feminism and "women who make the world worse" in quick quips.

As I enter the onboard restaurant she is sitting among adoring Reviewers with her husband Jim, who announces that he is Donald Rumsfeld's personnel director. "People keep asking what I'm doing here, with him being fired and all," he says. "But the cruise has been arranged for a long time."

The familiar routine of the dinners -- first the getting-to-know-you chit-chat, then some light conversational fascism -- is accelerating. Tonight there is explicit praise for a fascist dictator before the entree has arrived. I drop into the conversation the news that there are moves in Germany to have Donald Rumsfeld extradited to face torture charges.

A red-faced man who looks like an egg with a moustache glued on grumbles, "If the Germans think they can take responsibility for the world, I don't care about German courts. Bomb them." I begin to witter on about the Pinochet precedent, and Kate snaps, "Treating Don Rumsfeld like Pinochet is disgusting." Egg Man pounds his fist on the table: "Treating Pinochet like that is disgusting. Pinochet is a hero. He saved Chile."

"Exactly," adds Jim. "And he privatised social security."

The table nods solemnly and then they march into the conversation -- the billion-strong swarm of swarthy Muslims who are poised to take over the world. Jim leans forward and says, "When I see these football supporters from England, I think -- these guys aren't going to be told by PC elites to be nice to Muslims. You're going to get fascists rising up, aren't you? Why isn't that happening already?" Before I can answer, he is conquering the Middle East from his table, from behind a crème brûlée.

"The civilised countries should invade all the oil-owning places in the Middle East and run them properly. We won't take the money ourselves, but we'll manage it so the money isn't going to terrorists."

The idea that Europe is being "taken over" by Muslims is the unifying theme of this cruise. Some people go on singles cruises. Some go on ballroom dancing cruises. This is the "The Muslims Are Coming" cruise -- drinks included. Because everyone thinks it. Everyone knows it. Everyone dreams it. And the man responsible is sitting only a few tables down: Mark Steyn.

He is wearing sunglasses on top of his head and a bright, bright shirt that fits the image of the disk jockey he once was. Sitting in this sea of grey, it has an odd effect -- he looks like a pimp inexplicably hanging out with the apostles of colostomy conservatism.

Steyn's thesis in his new book, America Alone, is simple: The "European races" i.e., white people -- "are too self-absorbed to breed," but the Muslims are multiplying quickly. The inevitable result will be "large-scale evacuation operations circa 2015" as Europe is ceded to al Qaeda and "Greater France remorselessly evolve[s] into Greater Bosnia."

He offers a light smearing of dubious demographic figures – he needs to turn 20 million European Muslims into more than 150 million in nine years, which is a lot of humping.

But facts, figures, and doubt are not on the itinerary of this cruise. With one or two exceptions, the passengers discuss "the Muslims" as a homogenous, sharia-seeking block -- already with near-total control of Europe. Over the week, I am asked nine times -- I counted -- when I am fleeing Europe's encroaching Muslim population for the safety of the United States of America.

At one of the seminars, a panelist says anti-Americanism comes from both directions in a grasping pincer movement -- "The Muslims condemn us for being decadent; the Europeans condemn us for not being decadent enough." Midge Decter, Norman Podhoretz's wife, yells, "The Muslims are right, the Europeans are wrong!" And, instantly, Jay Nordlinger, National Review's managing editor and the panel's chair, says, "I'm afraid a lot of the Europeans are Muslim, Midge."

The audience cheers. Somebody shouts, "You tell 'em, Jay!" He tells 'em. Decter tells 'em. Steyn tells 'em.

On this cruise, everyone tells 'em -- and, thanks to my European passport, tells me.

V. From cruise to cruise missiles?

I am back in the docks of San Diego watching these tireless champions of the overdog filter past and say their starchy, formal goodbyes. As Bernard Lewis disappears onto the horizon, I wonder about the connections between this cruise and the cruise missiles fired half a world away.

I spot the old lady from the sea looking for her suitcase, and stop to tell her I may have found a solution to her political worries about both Muslims and stem-cells.

"Couldn't they just do experiments on Muslim stem-cells?" I ask. " Hey -- that's a great idea!" she laughs, and vanishes. Hillary-Ann stops to say she is definitely going on the next National Review cruise, to Alaska. "Perfect!" I yell, finally losing my mind.

"You can drill it as you go!" She puts her arms around me and says very sweetly, "We need you on every cruise."

As I turn my back on the ship for the last time, the Judge I met on my first night places his arm affectionately on my shoulder. "We have written off Britain to the Muslims," he says. "Come to America."

A version of this article has appeared in 'The New Republic' (www.tnr.org)