SMH : Bush is lying to you about Iraq, Americans told

Bush is lying to you about Iraq, Americans told

Michael Gawenda | Herald Correspondent in Washington | September 30, 2006

THE Bush Administration has lied about the level of violence in Iraq, especially against American troops, according to the investigative reporter Bob Woodward, who has spent the past two years researching and writing his new book State of Denial.

Woodward says that not only has the Administration lied about the level of violence, but it has buried intelligence reports that warn of the insurgency in Iraq getting worse in 2007.

The book, a detailed account of the war in Iraq, will hit the book stores in the next few weeks, and observers say it will not please the US President, George Bush - who agreed to be interviewed by Woodward - or his senior officials.

Woodward will be interviewed on the American program 60 Minutes tomorrow and The Washington Post will publish excerpts of the book at the weekend.

According to Woodward, there is an insurgent attack on coalition forces in Iraq every 15 minutes, which means close to 100 attacks a day. The Pentagon last month reported 800 attacks a month in Iraq, including attacks on Iraqi forces and Iraqi civilians - far below Woodward's figures.

On a clip for 60 Minutes, Woodward says both the White House and the Pentagon are not telling Americans the truth.

"The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the President and you have the Pentagon saying, 'Oh no, things are getting better"', he said.

"Now there's public and then there's private. But what did they do with the private? They stamp it 'secret'. No one is supposed to know. The insurgents know what they are doing. They know the level of violence and how effective they are. Who doesn't know? The American public."

The Woodward claim came just two days after a US intelligence report, parts of which were declassified by Mr Bush after leaks of key findings to the media, said that the war in Iraq had became a "cause celebre" for jihadists around the world.

White House and Pentagon officials denied Americans were being lied to about the level of violence in Iraq.

Woodward also claims Mr Bush and the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, often meet with a former secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, who has become an informal White House adviser.

"Now what's Kissinger's advice?" Woodward said. "On Iraq, he declared very simply, 'Victory is the only meaningful exit strategy.' This is so fascinating. Kissinger's fighting the Vietnam War again because, in his view, the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will."

Meanwhile, on a mid-term election campaign swing through Alabama, Mr Bush significantly increased his rhetoric, accusing Democrats of "lacking the stomach" to combat terrorism.

"Five years after 9/11, the worst attack on the American homeland in our history, Democrats offer nothing but criticism and obstruction and endless second-guessing," he said.

"The party of FDR and the party of Harry Truman has become the party of cut and run."

This was the first time Mr Bush has used the words "cut and run", though it has been used regularly by Mr Cheney and by senior congressional Republicans.

ABC [Australia] : White House denies understating Iraq violence

White House denies understating Iraq violence

September 30, 2006

The White House has denied wilfully understating violence in Iraq, one of a barrage of charges stemming from a new book that reportedly paints top US officials in disarray over the war.

At issue is State of Denial, the new tome by veteran journalist Bob Woodward, whose reporting on the Watergate scandal three decades ago helped force then-president Richard Nixon to resign.

According to the Washington Post, where Woodward is an assistant managing editor, the writer found that the Pentagon in May predicted in a secret intelligence estimate that violence in Iraq would increase through 2007.

And in a recent interview with CBS television, Woodward also said that US President George W Bush's administration was keeping secret that the frequency of attacks on US troops in Iraq has sharply increased.

"Nobody's tried to mislead anyone about it," countered Mr Bush's spokesman Tony Snow, who declined to spell out whether US forces are facing more or fewer attacks because "classified briefings remain classified".

"I can neither confirm nor deny" that US troops are attacked every 15 minutes, said the spokesman.

"Sometimes the attacks go up and sometimes they've gone down."

Mr Snow confirmed Woodward's claim that Mr Bush has been taking advice on the strategy for Iraq from Henry Kissinger, the controversial Vietnam war-era national security adviser turned secretary of state.

"The role is not an extraordinary one," the spokesman said after speaking to Dr Kissinger.

"The President has a lot of people in, and he listens to them, and Dr Kissinger was one of them."

"Dr Kissinger says he agrees with the overall thrust of American policy. He thinks we're doing the right things. He said he also may have times when he disagrees on details," Mr Snow said.
Internal feuding

On another front, Mr Snow denied that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld feuded to the point that he would not return her telephone calls.

"I talked with secretary Rice today and her quote was, 'This is ridiculous, and I told that to Woodward'," said Mr Snow, who added that Dr Rice and Mr Rumsfeld take part in a daily telephone call with the national security adviser.

He stopped well short of denying another bombshell reportedly in Woodward's book: that former White House chief of staff Andrew Card had twice pushed Mr Bush to fire Mr Rumsfeld.

Mr Snow said he had not yet spoken to Mr Card about the claim, but stressed: "It's typical, as a matter of fact, quite often in administrations at this point people are asked to submit their resignations".

"People serve at the pleasure of the President. If tomorrow the President decided that he didn't want Don Rumsfeld to serve as secretary of defence, Don Rumsfeld would no longer serve as secretary of defence," he said.
Rebuttal

Mr Bush on Friday accused critics who say the Iraq war has fuelled terrorist recruitment of buying into "the enemy's propaganda".

Democrats have seized on a US Government report that the conflict fuels global terrorist recruitment to contradict Mr Bush's longstanding claim that the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq has made the world safer.

"This argument buys into the enemy's propaganda that the terrorists attack us because we're provoking them," Mr Bush said.

"Iraq is not the reason the terrorists are at war against us.

"If that ever becomes the mind set of the policymakers in Washington, it means we'll go back to the old days of waiting to be attacked and then respond."

- AFP/Reuters

The News : Pakistan, India swap anti-terror information

Pakistan, India swap anti-terror information

September 30, 2006 (??)

ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Sherpao has said Pakistan and India are global partners in eliminating terrorism as information is exchanged between both the countries frequently.

In an interview with a private television channel, the minister said India has not given any positive response regarding handing over of 58 wanted persons to Pakistan. He said Pakistan has handed over a list of wanted persons to India and similarly India has given a list of its wanted persons.

Pakistan and India are both the members of Interpol, he said, adding “In this background we will help India under the charter of Interpol.” Responding to a question, Sherpao said Rashid Rauf is a British national and a case has been registered against him in Pakistan. “We will extradite him to Britain after adopting a specific procedure,” he added.

This Is London : Muslim teacher in carol concert tirade is made Ofsted inspector

Muslim teacher in carol concert tirade is made Ofsted inspector

September 30, 2006

A hardline Muslim teacher who caused a furore by denouncing pupils for celebrating Christmas has been made a Government schools inspector.

Israr Khan's Ofsted appointment was described by a former colleague as 'absolutely astonishing'.

Mr Khan, now headmaster of an Islamic school, launched into his tirade during a concert rehearsal at Washwood Heath Secondary School in Birmingham in 1996 after the choir including around 40 Muslim youngsters, had sung a number of popular Christmas songs, including carols.

He leapt from his seat, yelling: "Who is your God? Why are you saying Jesus and Jesus Christ? God is not your God - it is Allah."

As children in the audience began booing and clapping, a number of choir members - both white and Asian - walked out, some in tears.

Mr Khan, a maths teacher, was asked to work from home pending an investigation but there was no disciplinary action.

It has been claimed that Washwood Heath school was then a 'hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism'. Rashid Rauf - the airline terror bomb suspect whose extradition is currently being sought from Pakistan - was a pupil there at that time.

Mr Khan left Washwood Heath a year later to found the independent Islamic Hamd House Preparatory School in Small Heath, Birmingham, where he is headmaster.

Earlier this year, he was appointed as a governor of Anderton Park Primary School, in Sparkbrook, Birmingham.

A former Washwood Heath colleague laughed openly when told of Mr Khan's role as an Ofsted inspector where he has the responsibility for passing or failing schools.

He said: "Given the man's history, it's absolutely astonishing. It's just the cheek of the man that he's been able to reach that position. He always was an extremely clever man.

"He gave me many insights into the Islamic cause and their hatred of the US and the Western World. He had a big support base among some of the Muslim parents.

"But there were some very influential, radical elements at Washwood Heath at that time and Israr Khan was very close to all that."

Earlier this year, Anderton Park, where 99.5 per cent of the pupils are Asian, received a dismal Ofsted report which branded its teaching and its achievements as inadequate.

One Muslim father, who asked to be known only as Mohammed, said: "As a governor, Mr Khan will be able to exert a great deal of influence over the school and its policies.

"By his previous actions, he seems to represent what I would call a hardcore attitude to Islam."

Mr Khan declined to comment about his appointment, waving questions away at his large home in Moseley, Birmingham.

An Ofsted spokesman said: "Israr Khan was appointed as an additional inspector via a highly competitive recruitment and selection process. He has undergone all the relevant security checks."

Think Progress : Bush Officials May Have Covered Up Rice-Tenet Meeting From 9/11 Commission

Bush Officials May Have Covered Up Rice-Tenet Meeting From 9/11 Commission

Peter Rundlet was a Counsel to the 9/11 Commission.

by Peter Rundlet | September 30, 2006

Most of the world has now seen the infamous picture of President Bush tending to his ranch on August 6, 2001, the day he received the ultra-classified Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) that included a report entitled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US.” And most Americans have also heard of the so-called “Phoenix Memo” that an FBI agent in Phoenix sent to FBI headquarters on July 10, 2001, which advised of the “possibility of a coordinated effort” by bin Laden to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation schools.

As a Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, I became very familiar with both the PDB and the Phoenix Memo, as well as the tragic consequences of the failure to detect and stop the plot. A mixture of shock, anger, and sadness overcame me when I read about revelations in Bob Woodward’s new book about a special surprise visit that George Tenet and his counterterrorism chief Cofer Black made to Condi Rice, also on July 10, 2001:

They went over top-secret intelligence pointing to an impending attack and “sounded the loudest warning” to the White House of a likely attack on the U.S. by Bin Laden.

Woodward writes that Rice was polite, but, “They felt the brushoff.”

If true, it is shocking that the administration failed to heed such an overwhelming alert from the two officials in the best position to know. Many, many questions need to be asked and answered about this revelation — questions that the 9/11 Commission would have asked, had the Commission been told about this significant meeting. Suspiciously, the Commissioners and the staff investigating the administration’s actions prior to 9/11 were never informed of the meeting. As Commissioner Jamie Gorelick pointed out, “We didn’t know about the meeting itself. I can assure you it would have been in our report if we had known to ask about it.”

The Commission interviewed Condoleezza Rice privately and during public testimony; it interviewed George Tenet three times privately and during public testimony; and Cofer Black was also interviewed privately and publicly. All of them were obligated to tell the truth. Apparently, none of them described this meeting, the purpose of which clearly was central to the Commission’s investigation. Moreover, document requests to both the White House and to the CIA should have revealed the fact that this meeting took place. Now, more than two years after the release of the Commission’s report, we learn of this meeting from Bob Woodward.

Was it covered up? It is hard to come to a different conclusion. If one could suspend disbelief to accept that all three officials forgot about the meeting when they were interviewed, then one possibility is that the memory of one of them was later jogged by notes or documents that describe the meeting. If such documents exist, the 9/11 Commission should have seen them. According to Woodward’s book, Cofer Black exonerates them all this way: “Though the investigators had access to all the paperwork about the meeting, Black felt there were things the commissions wanted to know about and things they didn’t want to know about.” The notion that both the 9/11 Commission and the Congressional Joint Inquiry that investigated the intelligence prior to 9/11 did not want to know about such essential information is simply absurd. At a minimum, the withholding of information about this meeting is an outrage. Very possibly, someone committed a crime. And worst of all, they failed to stop the plot.

NYT : Growing Unarmed Battalion in Qaeda Army Is Using Internet to Get the Message Out

Growing Unarmed Battalion in Qaeda Army Is Using Internet to Get the Message Out

By HASSAN M. FATTAH | September 30, 2006

AMMAN, Jordan — On the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Abu Omar received the call to jihad. Literally.

“There’s a present for you,” a voice on the other end of the phone said that morning, he recalled. It was a common code whenever his friends and colleagues wanted to share a new broadcast or communiqué from Al Qaeda over the Internet, he said.

Abu Omar, speaking on the condition that only his nickname be used, said he soon went to one of the Internet cafes he frequents in Amman and began distributing the latest video by Al Qaeda, alerting friends and occasionally adding commentary.

“We are the energy behind the path to jihad,” Abu Omar said proudly. “Just like the jihadis reached their target on Sept. 11, we will reach ours through the Internet.”

Abu Omar, 28, is part of an increasingly sophisticated network of contributors and discussion leaders helping to wage Al Qaeda’s battle for Muslim hearts and minds. A self-described Qaeda sympathizer who defends the Sept. 11 attacks and continues to find inspiration in Osama bin Laden’s call for jihad, Abu Omar is part of a growing army of young men who may not seek to take violent action, but who help spread jihadist philosophy, shape its message and hope to inspire others to their cause.

Though he does not appear to be directly connected to Al Qaeda, Abu Omar does seem to be on a direct e-mail list for groups sympathetic to Al Qaeda, making him a link in a chain that spreads the organization’s propaganda using code and special software to circumvent official scrutiny of their Internet activity.

As Al Qaeda gradually transforms itself from a terrorist organization carrying out its own attacks into an ideological umbrella that encourages local movements to take action, its increased reliance on various forms of media have made Web-savvy sympathizers like Abu Omar ever more important.

For example, this past Sept. 11, Abu Omar said, a link sent to a jihadist e-mail list took him to a general interest Islamic Web site, which led him to a password-protected Web site, then onto yet another site containing the latest release from Al Qaeda: a lecture by its No. 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahri, threatening attacks on Israel and the Persian Gulf. Abu Omar said he then passed the video to friends and confidants, acting as a local distributor to other sympathizers.

In recent years, Al Qaeda has formed a special media production division called Al Sahab to produce videos about leaders like Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri, terrorism experts say. The group largely once relied on Arab television channels like Al Jazeera to broadcast its videos and taped messages.

Al Sahab, whose name means the cloud, has continued to draw on a video library featuring everything from taped suicide messages by the Sept. 11 hijackers to images of gun battles and bombings spearheaded by Al Qaeda and others, said Marwan Shehadeh, an expert on Islamist movements with the Vision Research Institute in Amman who has close ties to jihadists in Jordan and Syria.

But this year Al Sahab has released many more recordings than in previous years, said Chris Heffelfinger, a specialist in jihadi ideology at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, in what many analysts see as a new offensive focusing on the Muslim mainstream. Jihadi Web sites, meanwhile, have continued sprouting on the Internet, serving as a conduit for Al Qaeda’s propaganda.

Mr. Shehadeh describes Al Sahab as an informal group with video camcorders and laptops. Some news reports have described it as an organization with a mobile production unit that navigates the Pakistani provinces. “The jihadis have successfully used American technology to show the U.S. as a loser,” Mr. Shehadeh said. “This is an open-ended war, and they use media as part of their jihad against Western and Arab regimes.”

Just days before the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Al Sahab released a barrage of videos, including images of Mr. bin Laden seated with some of the Sept. 11 suicide bombers; a documentary that some have described as a “making of Sept. 11” feature, with testaments by two of the bombers; and the lecture by Mr. Zawahri that Abu Omar said he received that morning.

What is most striking about the messages is their tone, terrorism analysts say. In the past, the group’s leaders were generally depicted as soldiers in battle, often filmed outdoors with weapons in the background. But the more recent communiqués show Al Qaeda’s leaders in the comfort of a living room or office, set against bookshelves with religious texts. The group has also taken to quoting Western authors and famous speeches, in what seems to be an effort to reach those with Western sensibilities.

“It’s a clear message: when there’s a gun in the background, they’re saying, ‘I’m a fighter like you’; when there are books in the background, it means, ‘I am a scholar and deserve authority,’ ” said Fares bin Hizam, a journalist who reports on militant groups for the Arab satellite news channel Al Arabiya. “It is a message that resonates well with an impressionable young man who is 17 or 18.”

One result, terrorism analysts say, is a militant group in transition, seeking to push ideology over direct action, franchising its name and principles to smaller groups acting more independently.

BBC : Pakistan 'the West's main ally'

Pakistan 'the West's main ally'

BBC News | September 30, 2006

The president of Pakistan has warned the West would be "brought to its knees" without his country's co-operation in the war against terror.

President Pervez Musharraf said in a BBC Radio 4 interview that Pakistan was the West's "main ally".

"If we were not with you, you won't manage anything," he said.

Earlier this week Tony Blair assured Mr Musharraf a leaked paper condemning Pakistan's intelligence service did not reflect his government's view.

In the leaked report, an officer at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) claimed Pakistan's intelligence service, ISI, had indirectly helped the Taleban and al-Qaeda.

In the BBC interview Mr Musharraf rejected these claims and said ISI's support was vital.

"You'll be brought down to your knees if Pakistan doesn't co-operate with you. That is all that I would like to say. Pakistan is the main ally. If we were not with you, you won't manage anything," he said.

"Let that be clear. And if ISI is not with you, you will fail."

'Historic debt'

He also claims the US and Britain had a historic debt to pay as Pakistan had helped "win the Cold War" for the West.

He also argued the West's strategy in Afghanistan towards the end of the Cold War helped to create the conditions which led to al-Qaeda's rise.

President Musharraf said mujahideen fighters went into the area from all over the world and the West armed and trained the Taleban. He said Pakistan was then left "high and dry".

His comments develop arguments he has made over the past few days at meetings with US President George W Bush and Tony Blair and a speech given in Oxford.

Of the leaked MoD paper, British defence officials said it was written by a junior official, was unfinished and had not been seen by anyone who actually makes government policy.

After two hours of talks on Thursday Downing Street said Mr Musharraf had accepted Mr Blair's reassurances.

Aldergrove Star : Afghanistan: A Modest Proposal

Afghanistan: A Modest Proposal

By GWYNNE DYER | September 29, 2006

Most people in Afghanistan are farmers. If Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government in Kabul is to survive, it must have their support. So not destroying their main cash crop should be an obvious priority for Karzai's foreign supporters. But what the hell, let's go burn some poppies.

"We need to realize that we could actually fail here," said Lieutenant General David Richards, British commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, recently. In south-western Afghanistan, where 7,000 British, Canadian and Dutch troops were committed during the summer to contain a resurgent Taliban, the guerillas now actually stand and fight, even against NATO's overwhelming firepower and air power, and everything that moves on the roads gets ambushed.

The combat in Afghanistan is more severe and sustained than anything seen in Iraq, for the Taliban fight in organized units with good light infantry weapons. In the past month, Britain and Canada have lost about half as many soldiers killed in Afghanistan as the US lost in Iraq in the same time, out of a combat force perhaps one-tenth as big.

Concern in Europe about Western casualties in Afghanistan is already so great that none of the Nato countries was willing to commit more troops to the fighting when their defence chiefs met in Belgium on September 13, despite an urgent appeal from General Richards for 2,500 more combat troops. Most of them just don't believe that a few thousand more troops will save the situation in Afghanistan.

To limit their casualties, the British have already abandoned their original "section-house" strategy of spreading troops through the villages of the south-west in small groups that would provide security and help with reconstruction. They were just too vulnerable, so they have been pulled back to bigger base camps and replaced by Afghan police (who will make deals with the local Taliban forces to save their lives.)

The rapid collapse of the Taliban government in the face of America's air power and its locally purchased allies in late 2001 created a wholly misleading impression that the question of who controls the country had been settled. Afghanistan has always been an easy country to invade but a hard country to occupy. Resistance to foreign intervention takes time to build up, but the Afghans defeated British occupations (twice) and a Soviet occupation when those empires were at the height of their power, and they are well on the way to doing it again.

Perhaps if the US and its allies had smothered the country in troops and drowned it in aid at the outset, the rapid increase in security and prosperity would have created a solid base of support for the government they installed under President Karzai. But most of the available troops were sent off to invade Iraq instead, and most of the money went to American contractors in Iraq, not American contractors in Afghanistan (though little of it reached the local people in either case).

The various warlords who allied themselves with the United States are the real power in most of Afghanistan, and in the traditional opium-producing areas in the south they have encouraged a return to poppy-farming (which had been almost eradicated under the Taliban) in order to get some cash flow. Poor farmers struggling under staggering loads of debt were happy to cooperate, and by now Afghanistan is producing about 90 percent of the world's opium, the raw material for heroin.

That's the price you pay for disrupting the established order, and the US should just have paid it. There's no real point in destroying poppies in Afghanistan, because they'll just get planted elsewhere: so long as heroin is illegal, the price will be high enough that people somewhere will grow it. Even if it is ideologically impossible for the United States to end its foolish, unwinnable "war on drugs," it should have turned a blind eye in Afghanistan.

But it didn't. For the past five years a shadowy outfit called DynCorps has been destroying the poppy-fields of southern Afghanistan's poorest farmers with US and British military support. This was an opportunity the Taliban could not resist, and the alliance between Taliban fighters and poppy-farmers (now often the same people) is at the root of the resurgent guerilla war in the south.

It begins to smell like the last year or two in a classic anti-colonial war, when the guerillas start winning and local players begin to hedge their bets. After taking heavy casualties, Pakistan has agreed with the tribes of Waziristan to withdraw its troops from the lawless province, giving the Taliban a secure base on Afghanistan's border. Karzai, seeking allies who will help him survive the eventual pull-out of Western troops, is appointing gangsters and drug-runners as local police chiefs and commanders. The end-game has started, and the foreigners seem bound to lose.

Only one chance remains for them. The futile "war on drugs" will drag on endlessly elsewhere, but if they legalized the cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan -- and bought up the entire crop at premium prices -- they might just break the link between the Taliban and the farmers.

Store it, burn it, whatever, but stop destroying the farmers' livelihoods and put a few billion dollars directly into their pockets. Otherwise, the first Afghan cities will probably start to fall into Taliban hands within the next year to 18 months.

BBC : Bush 'concealing Iraq violence'

Bush 'concealing Iraq violence'

By Justin Webb | BBC News, Washington | September 29, 2006

Veteran US journalist Bob Woodward has claimed that the true extent of insurgent attacks in Iraq has been hidden by the administration.

He makes the claim in a book, State of Denial, due to be released on Monday.

Mr Woodward has had better access to policymakers in the Bush White House than any other writer.

In a preview interview he also revealed that former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has become a frequent adviser to President Bush.

State of Denial is a follow up to earlier volumes on the Bush White House which have contained a vivid detail of who said what to whom but have been largely uncritical of the President.

Indeed, they have been recommended as essential reading by Bush supporters.

This book appears to be much more challenging, with Bob Woodward making at least one eye-catching and politically damaging claim that the true extent of the violence in Iraq is being hidden.

"Now, there's public and then there's private, but what do they do with the private - they stamp it secret. No-one's supposed to know," Mr Woodward said.

He added that the insurgents knew how effective they were - but the US public did not.

Old hand

In response the White House compared the book to candyfloss that looks substantial but melts on contact.

The White House spokesman pointed out that Iraq casualty reports are public knowledge.

Still, the book is likely to sell well and certainly has a wealth of detailed information which the White House is not entirely denying.

Mr Woodward says he was stunned to be told by the Vice-President Dick Cheney that the veteran former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, -who served Presidents Nixon and Ford during the Vietnam war - was also serving President Bush.

"He's back. In fact Henry Kissinger is almost like a member of the family. If he is in town he can call up and if the President's free he will see him," Mr Woodward said.

He added that Mr Kissinger's message was that victory was the only meaningful exit strategy.

"So fascinating. Kissinger's fighting the Vietnam war again," Mr Woodward added.

The book which goes on sale here on Monday, is expected to be a bestseller.

S.F. Gate : Senate Approves $70B for War Spending

Senate Approves $70B for War Spending

By ANDREW TAYLOR | Associated Press Writer | September 29, 2006

The Senate unanimously approved $70 billion more for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan Friday as part of a record Pentagon budget.

The bill, now on its way to the White House for President Bush's signature, totals $448 billion. It was passed by a 100-0 vote after minimal debate.

Approval by a comfortable margin came despite intense partisan divisions over the course of the Iraq war, which is costing about $8 billion a month. Another infusion of money will be needed next spring.

At the White House, President Bush said he would sign the bill and thanked Congress "for passing legislation that will provide our men and women in uniform with the necessary resources to protect our country and win the war on terror."

"As our troops risk their lives to fight terrorism," he said, "this bill will ensure they are prepared to defeat today's enemies and address tomorrows threats. I look forward to signing this bill into law."

The House-Senate compromise bill provides $378 billion for core Pentagon programs, about a 5 percent increase, though slightly less than President Bush asked for. The $70 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan is a down payment on war costs the White House has estimated will hit $110 billion for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.

Congress has now approved $507 billion for Iraq, Afghanistan and heightened security at overseas military bases since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to the Congressional Research Service. The war in Iraq has cost $379 billion and the conflict in Afghanistan now totals $97 billion.

The Iraq war continues to be unpopular with voters, according to opinion polls, but even Democratic opponents of the war voted for the Pentagon measure, which provides funding for body armor and other support for U.S. troops overseas.

"America is in deep trouble in Iraq," said Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. "The continuing violence and death is ominous.... Militias are growing in strength and continue to operate outside the law. Death squads are rampant."

The growing price tag of the Iraq conflict is partly driven by the need to repair and replace military equipment worn out in harsh, dusty conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan or destroyed in battle. Almost $23 billion was approved for Army, Marine Corps and National Guard equipment such as helicopters, armored Humvees, Bradley armored fighting vehicles, radios and night-vision equipment.

Lawmakers allotted $1.9 billion for new jammers to counter improvised explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan and $1 billion is provided for body armor and other personal protective gear.

There is also a stack of pet projects for lawmakers' homes states and districts, including $372 million obtained for Hawaii, home of Daniel Inouye, top Democrat on the defense appropriations panel.

"There are 2,000 earmarks in the bill directed by Members of Congress — somewhere around $8 billion — and a large portion of those don't have anything to do with the mission of the Defense Department," said Tom Coburn, R-Okla.

The legislation would be the first of 11 spending bills to clear Congress for the new budget year. The homeland security bill is the only other ready to pass before Congress leaves Washington this weekend. Nine bills funding domestic programs and foreign aid will wait until a lame duck session. That means delays in funding increases for veterans health care.

So little progress has been made on other bills that the Pentagon measure also carries a stopgap funding bill to keep open through Nov. 17 agencies whose funding bills won't have passed. Only the homeland security measure is expected to also pass before Congress leaves Washington to campaign.

The core bill contains $86 billion for personnel costs, enough to support 482,000 Army soldiers and 175,000 Marines. That would provide for a 2.2 percent pay increase for the military, as Bush requested in his February budget.

The bill provides $120 billion for operations and maintenance costs, just less than the Pentagon request. And $81 billion goes for procurement of new weapons, with $76 billion dedicated to research and development costs.

That's still not enough for the White House, which requested $4 billion more. But House appropriators diverted that money to ease cuts in domestic programs. Earlier this year, the Senate passed a version shifting $9 billion to domestic programs but backed off in the face of a White House veto threat.

Investor's Business Daily : Cooling Down The Climate Scare

Cooling Down The Climate Scare

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | September 29, 2006

Environment: The country is drowning in wild alarums warning of impending doom due to global warming. Yet there has risen — from the U.S. Senate, of all places — a lone voice of rational dissent.

While Al Gore drifts into deeper darkness on the other side of the moon, propelled by such revelations as cigarette smoking is a "significant contributor to global warming," Sen. James Inhofe is becoming a one-man myth-wrecking crew.

Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, took to the Senate floor two days last week to expose the media's role in the global warming hype. This is a man who more than three years ago called the global warming scare "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" and has made a habit of tweaking the left-leaning environmental lobby.

One member of the media, Miles O'Brien of CNN, responded last week to Inhofe's criticism of the media with a piece criticizing Inhofe and challenging his arguments. If anything, it seems that O'Brien's reply simply motivated Inhofe to continue his effort to undress the media's complicity and bring light to the issue.

We hope so. The "science" on global warming and the media's propaganda campaign need to be picked apart.

The assumptions made by gloomy theorists should be revealed for what they are: mere conjecture.

The lies and carefully crafted implications, many of them discharged like toxic pollutants by a former vice president, deserve a thorough and lasting deconstruction.

What the public needs — and deserves — is a credible voice to counter the sermons from Gore, on whose behalf cigarettes were distributed in 2000 to Milwaukee homeless people who were recruited by campaign volunteers to cast absentee ballots. Inhofe could be that voice.

He's no John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness. What he is, in fact, is a thrice-elected senator, a former member of the House and, before that, a state senator and representative.

For those not impressed by a political background — after all, Gore, far out of proportion to his qualifications, rose to the second most powerful position on Earth — consider that Inhofe is an Army veteran and longtime pilot, and has actually worked in the private sector.

Unlike most in the Senate, Inhofe is willing to stand on a soapbox and expose his head to his opponents' rhetorical stones. Name another in that august body who would dare label as a hoax the premise that undergirds the day's most trendy pop cult. Is there anyone there who would want to try to stand up to the likes of O'Brien?

O'Brien's biased report is not exactly the type of exposure global warming skeptics hope for, though. The goal, say the skeptics, should be to teach and inform, to provide an alternative to the flood of hyperbole and intentionally misleading thunder that's passed off as settled science.

There are enough scientists to fill a fleet of Humvees who can express scepticism over global warming, despite Gore's claims that the matter has been resolved in favor of his conclusions. But none has the forum a U.S. senator can command. With rare exceptions, scientists can marshal media attention on the climate change issue only by spouting the party line that man-made emissions are causing Earth to warm. That's the sort of stuff the press laps up like a starving dog.

Without the wind of a compliant media at his back, Inhofe nevertheless got his message out to America, primarily through C-Span and the Drudge Report, which linked to his speeches at the Web site of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Among those responding to Inhofe's first speech included a scientist and a meteorologist. Both hold views on global warming that are in line with the senator's — which puts them at odds with the environmental lobby's assertions of "consensus" that have been relentlessly beaten into the masses for more than a decade.

The most important audience, though, is among the Americans who have no links to science. They're the ones who have a lot to learn and will benefit the most from someone who has mass access to the public and is willing to challenge the widely — and often uncritically — accepted claims about climate change.

Mercury News : Bush hails liberation of Afghanistan as a `great achievement'

Bush hails liberation of Afghanistan as a `great achievement'

By William Douglas and Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers | September 29, 2006

WASHINGTON - Amid signs that the Taliban insurgency is regaining strength, President Bush on Friday defended his efforts to stabilize war-savaged Afghanistan and blasted critics who charge that his policies there are failing.

Afghanistan is reeling from its worst bloodshed since the 2001 U.S.-led intervention as the Taliban and allied warlords tie down 42,000 American and NATO-led troops and President Hamid Karzai struggles with colossal corruption, record opium production and nose-diving popularity.

In his most extensive remarks on Afghanistan recently, Bush sought to accentuate the positive, praising Karzai's democratic government, hailing the training of the Afghan National Army and noting the multinational contributions to the anti-Taliban fight.

"The liberation of Afghanistan was a great achievement," Bush told the Reserve Officers Association, which represents the interests of military reservists in Washington.

The president acknowledged setbacks, such as faltering police reform.

But he made no mention of the key reasons for the Taliban's resurgence: the diversion of U.S. troops to Iraq; America's failure to make good on a promise of a reconstruction program akin to the rebuilding of post-World War II Europe; endemic corruption; and the support the Taliban receive from Pakistan. Bush instead praised Pakistan as a strong ally in fighting terrorism.

Several of the president's statements about Afghanistan's judicial and legal reforms were misleading:

_He praised Karzai for naming new Supreme Court judges. But he failed to mention that the Afghan parliament rejected Karzai's nominee for chief justice, a conservative cleric blamed for stalling reform, who favored Islamic laws mandating that adulterers be stoned to death and thieves have their hands amputated.

_He praised Italy for helping to train Afghan judges and prosecutors. Many Western officials and experts say the effort is seriously flawed and that Afghanistan's legal system is in a state of collapse.

_He said the Afghan National Police "have faced problems with corruption and substandard leadership." He contended that Karzai's government began tackling the problem after appointing a new leadership team this summer. But he didn't mention that Karzai named to his team 14 senior police generals whom U.S., European and U.N. officials opposed because of their alleged involvement in human-rights abuses and corruption.

Bush's comments were the latest in a series of talks that he's been making to counter Democratic charges that his policies in Iraq and Afghanistan have fanned violent Islamic extremism.

He praised the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force for beating back a major Taliban offensive earlier this month near Afghanistan's southern city of Kandahar and said multinational reconstruction teams were helping to restore electricity, build roads and improve water, irrigation and sanitation.

He noted that the United States has approved more than $4.5 billion in reconstruction money.

"The critics warned that we were heading towards a `quagmire,' " the president said. "And then the Taliban fell, and operations began in Iraq, the critics held up the multinational coalition in Afghanistan as a model and said it showed that everything in Iraq was wrong. And now some of the critics who praised the multinational coalition we built in Afghanistan claim that the country is in danger of failing because we don't have enough American troops there."

More than a dozen current and former U.S., European and Afghan officials and commanders agreed in recent interviews that there aren't enough foreign forces to provide the security required to rebuild one of the most devastated nations on Earth.

There are 5,000 American combat troops for the 27,000 square miles of eastern Afghanistan and only 8,000 NATO soldiers in the Taliban's vast southern heartland.

More foreign and Afghan soldiers and civilians have died this year than in any year since 2001, and suicide bombings have risen from two in 2002 to about one every five days. Karzai has called for a change in U.S. tactics because of the rising civilian casualties, a major factor behind the plunge in his popularity.

The problems with the American-led police reform program, a key part of Bush's exit strategy, go beyond those that the president outlined.

For instance, he put the size of the force at 45,000 officers.

But police Gen. Gullam Jan, who's in charge of police recruiting, and three U.S. officials involved in the program told McClatchy Newspapers earlier this month that no one knows how many officers are on the force.

Jan and the American officials, who requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly, described the reform effort as paralyzed by immense corruption, nepotism, desertions, low pay, incompetence, massive pilfering of equipment and Taliban infiltration.

Bush praised Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for making a "courageous choice" to end his country's support for the Taliban after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and to back the war on terrorism.

Bush noted that despite attempts on the Pakistani president's life, Musharraf has helped capture senior al-Qaida operatives whose information foiled terrorist plots and "saved American lives."

But Musharraf hasn't ordered the arrests of any of the Taliban leaders who fled to Pakistan in 2001 and who senior Afghan, U.S. and NATO officials say are directing the insurgency in Afghanistan from the Pakistani city of Quetta.

The United States has strong evidence that Pakistani intelligence officers are providing arms, training, money and protection to the Taliban as part of a long-held goal of installing a pro-Pakistan regime in Afghanistan's capital, according to U.S. officials and experts.

The insurgency will continue as long as the Taliban are given refuge in Pakistan, they warn.

Bush hosted Karzai and Musharraf at a White House dinner Wednesday in an effort to persuade them to put aside their differences and cooperate more closely.

In his speech Friday, Bush noted that Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 military coup, plans to hold presidential elections next year.

Musharraf is expected to run, but he's refused say whether he'll relinquish the post of army chief of staff beforehand.

For an on-scene McClatchy report on conditions in Afghanistan, go to www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/world/12426823.htm

Zee News : Pak Generals, Bhutto slam Musharraf for revealing secrets

Pak Generals, Bhutto slam Musharraf for revealing secrets

September 29, 2006

Islamabad, Sept 29: Retired Pakistani Generals and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto have slammed president pervez musharraf for endangering national security interests through his memoirs with a former army officer wanting him to be "interrogated" by a national commission.

"He (Musharraf) has provided ample legal and moral evidence against himself. A National Commission should be formed to interrogate him," said former ISI Chief Lt Gen (retd) Hameed Gul, who turned a strong critic of Musharraf ever since he withdrew support to Taliban government in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

Another retired ISI chief Asad Durrani said the book "in the line of fire" had revealed that Pakistan's decision to support the US-led war on the Taliban was taken under threat and pressure from Washington.

Observing that Musharraf has made a "cheap attempt to gain popularity at the behest of endangering Pakistan's vital interests," Bhutto said "by violating the official secrets act, Gen. Musharraf is jeopardising Pakistan's national security".

In a statement, Bhutto, who is abroad in self-exile, regretted that Musharraf was "abusing" his official position to boost his personal image.

The daily times quoted Durrani to say "a large segment of society thought that Pakistan had taken side with the us after 9/11, but Gen Musharraf's revelation has been a big disappointment to them".

Retired General Kamal Matinuddin was of the opinion that Musharraf should not have disclosed sensitive details about disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist A Q Khan, the Afghanistan policy and the Kargil conflict and that too in a controversial manner.

"I would not have written these facts if I was writing a book. There are many things which one knows but they are not supposed to be disclosed," he said.

Former Generals Aslam Beg and K M Arif said they were not in a position to comment on the book because they had not read it.

Reports said Musharraf's book was selling fast in Quetta, the capital of southwest Balochistan province, which was up in arms ever since the killing of Baloch Nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Bugti on Aug 26 in a military encounter.

Bureau Report

UPI : Analysis: Karzai over optimistic

Analysis: Karzai over optimistic

By JACOB RUSSELL | UPI Correspondent | September 29, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 (UPI) -- Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, handpicked by Bush in December 2001, painted an optimistic picture of Afghanistan in five years in a speech at a Washington think tank, raising the eyebrows of several critics.

Karzai, speaking at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said the way forward is to remove the need for groups, organizations, and all state entities relying on religious radicalism as instruments of policy.

"He was even induced to give Bush political support on Iraq," said Marvin Weinbaum, a scholar-in-residence at the Middle East Institute who was just in Pakistan earlier in the week.

"Has the exercise of the use of radicalism as instruments of policy ended by intervention in Afghanistan? Or is that exercise still continuing? I would tell you it is still continuing," he said.

Karzai urged a more effective fight against terrorism.

"We as societies and those who act on our behalf -- the governments -- must make sure that no entity in that part of the world relies on radicalism as an instrument of policy," he said. "In order for us to be safe, we must bring ourselves to an end of this reign and if we do not, we will continue to suffer."

When questioned about the dominating presence of warlords and Taliban groups in Afghanistan, Karzai said that there were no warlords in control of any town, and that that was the case four years ago.

According to Karzai, Afghanistan has now established governors and district chiefs appointed by his signature in those places. He admitted that some of those district chiefs were bad, but he assured the committee that he can remove them and replace them at any time.

The truth, according to Weinbaum, is that the warlord problem is still very much alive. President Karzai has had to make appointments of local authority figures who are, in Weinbaum's words, "basically warlords," because the central government doesn't have the strength to exert its authority. Some of these "warlords" aren't bad, Weinbaum said.

"Marvin's right," Dr. Larry P. Goodson, professor of Middle East Studies and the General Dwight D. Eisenhower Chair of National Security, said. "Ethnic Afghans might say, 'Why do you always call them warlords? They're ethnic community leaders.' Yeah, you could call them that, but they are also warlords. They get their power from having control over armed men."

He added, "Karzai is not entirely incorrect." What Karzai can do, he explained, and what he has been successful doing, is to move warlords around to disconnect them from their sources of income.

"Karzai has tried to push a technocratic cabinet to put highly qualified people in places while keeping the warlords on the sideline," Goodson said. "The warlords, however, have a lot of local support, so there's a tension between Karzai with a Westernized background returning to Afghanistan and the warlords who have blood on their hands but can legitimately say they've been there all along."

Karzai wants to replace the warlords with highly educated and skilled politicians who have made their place in the United States, Goodson said. The locals perceive these officials as carpetbaggers. "That's a very loaded term," he added, "but I am using it purposely."

Presently, the central government is turning to the local militia to work as a police force in order to arrest the momentum that Taliban has had, Weinbaum said. This further displays Afghan dependence on a militia that they claim is authorized and not under control.

President Karzai made the situation in Afghanistan sound optimistic. According to him, the real problem was four years ago with warlords, but it is now under control. "We've disarmed thousands of people," he said.

"He's putting the best face on it," Goodson said.

The disarming of thousands, according to Weinbaum, mostly took place in the north -- outside of the areas that were most contentious. All of the big warlords were disarmed, he said, but not the tens of thousands of militia "sub-commanders" who have the greatest influence over these towns.

Instead, they are rearming these militias they were once so anxious to get rid of.

"It's a problem," Goodson said. "It's sort of a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situation. If you don't turn to warlords, then you don't have the ground strength to push back the Taliban, but if you do, then you undermine the whole success of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration."

The problem is very serious and unfortunate. The continuation of trouble in Afghanistan will increase Afghan taxes, the cross-war activities, the loss of foot-war soldiers, the loss of women and children, the burning of schools and the burning of mosques, according to President Karzai.

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Forbes : Bush Strikes Back at Dems on Security

Bush Strikes Back at Dems on Security

by NEDRA PICKLER | September 29, 2006

Maneuvering for election-year advantage, President Bush is striking back at Democrats who have trumpeted government findings that the Iraq war has helped recruit more terrorists, saying the opposition party is one of "obstruction and endless second-guessing."

With less than six weeks until Election Day, Bush and Democrats grabbed onto recently declassified intelligence findings to step up their criticisms of one another on the pivotal issue of national security. Bush called Democrats obstructionists who will run from the fight in Iraq, while the top Democrat in the Senate said Bush's failed strategy shows he has no credibility on national security.

Bush's pointed reproach of the Democrats came Thursday before more than 2,000 Republicans at a Birmingham, Ala., fundraiser for Gov. Bob Riley and the state GOP. He planned to continue touting his war leadership Friday, albeit in a less partisan speech before the Reserve Officers Association in Washington than he gave in Alabama.

In that address, Bush said Democrats are using a National Intelligence Estimate that was leaked to the media last weekend to "mislead the American people and justify their policy of withdrawal from Iraq." The document, an analysis of terror trends put together by the nation's top intelligence analysts across 16 spy agencies, concluded that Iraq is contributing to a growth in the jihadist movement around the world.

"The greatest danger is not that America's presence in the war in Iraq is drawing new recruits to the terrorist cause," Bush said. "The greatest danger is that an American withdrawal from Iraq would embolden the terrorists and help them find new recruits to carry out even more destructive attacks."

"Five years after 9/11, the worst attack on the American homeland in our history, Democrats offer nothing but criticism and obstruction and endless second-guessing," the president said.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., responded by calling on Bush to release the entire National Intelligence Estimate - not just the key judgments - so Americans can determine for themselves whether his policies are working. "The fact that he won't speaks volumes about how the failure of his policies has made the American people less safe," Reid said in a written statement.

White House officials said that on Friday, Bush would highlight his diplomatic work this week by describing his two-and-a-half-hour dinner Wednesday night with Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Bush considers the neighboring leaders to be key allies against Islamic extremism in the region, but they have been sparring over efforts to fight terrorists along their long mountainous border.

White House officials said Bush planned to describe the two leaders' role in the struggle between moderation and extremism that is unfolding across the broader Middle East. He was to talk about how they personally understand the stakes because of the extremists who are trying to spread violence in their countries, including with attempted assassination attacks on both their lives.

He also planned to tout progress in Afghanistan, such as the more than 30,000 military forces and 46,000 police who have been trained and equipped. He was to laud NATO's role in securing the country, even as Afghanistan suffers its worst violence since the U.S.-led ouster of the extremist Taliban regime nearly five years ago.

More specifically on Pakistan, Bush planned to applaud Musharraf's role in fighting terrorism and talk about how the U.S. is helping establish stronger control over the border region where terrorists are able to hide.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

IHT : Republican congressman resigns amid questions about e-mails to teenager

Republican congressman resigns amid questions about e-mails to teenager

The Associated Press | September 29, 2006

WASHINGTON A prominent House Republican has resigned after the revelation that he exchanged raunchy electronic messages with a teenage boy, a former congressional page.

Rep. Mark Foley of Florida, who is single, apologized Friday for letting down his family and constituents. Pages are high school students who attend classes under congressional supervision and work as messengers.

Once his resignation letter was read to the House late Friday afternoon, Republicans spent the night trying to explain — six weeks before congressional elections — how this could have happened on their watch.

Near midnight, they engineered a vote to let the House ethics committee decide whether an investigation is needed.

Among the Republican explanations during the night, the congressional sponsor of the page, Rep. Rodney Alexander, said he was asked by the youth's parents not to pursue the matter, so he dropped it.

Alexander said that before deciding to end his involvement, he passed on what he knew to the chairman of the House Republican campaign organization, Rep. Thomas Reynolds. Reynolds' spokesman, Carl Forti, said the campaign chairman also took no action in deference to the parents' wishes.

Rep. John Shimkus, chairman of the Page Board that oversees the congressional work-study program for high schoolers, said he did investigate but Foley falsely assured him he was only mentoring the boy.

The spokesman for Speaker Dennis Hastert, Ron Bonjean, said the top House Republican had not known about the allegations. Shimkus said he learned about them in late 2005.

Just as Shimkus' explanation was released, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi proposed to the House that its ethics committee investigate and make a preliminary report in 10 days. She demanded to know who knew of the messages, whether Foley had other contacts with pages and when the Republican leadership was notified of Foley's conduct.

Instead, majority Republicans engineered a vote to allow the ethics panel to decide whether there should even be an investigation.

Foley's departure sent Republicans scrambling for a replacement candidate.

Foley, 52, had been almost certain to gain a new term until the e-mail correspondence surfaced in recent days. The page was 16 at the time of the correspondence.

Foley's resignation further complicates the political landscape for Republicans, who are fighting to retain control of Congress. Democrats need to win a net of 15 Republican seats to regain the power they lost in 1994.

Florida Republicans planned to meet as soon as Monday to name a replacement in Foley's district, which President George W. Bush won with 55 percent in 2004 and is now in play for November. Though Florida ballots have already been printed with Foley's name and cannot be changed, any votes for Foley will count toward the party's choice.

Hastert said Friday he had asked Shimkus to investigate the page system. "We want to make sure that all our pages are safe and the page system is safe," Hastert said.

ABC News reported Friday that Foley also engaged in a series of sexually explicit instant messages with current and former pages, all male. In one message, ABC said, Foley wrote to one page, "Do I make you a little horny?"

In another message, Foley wrote, "You in your boxers, too? ... Well, strip down and get relaxed."

Foley, as chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, had introduced legislation in July to protect children from exploitation by adults over the Internet. He also sponsored other legislation designed to protect minors from abuse and neglect.

"We track library books better than we do sexual predators," Foley has said.

Foley e-mailed the page in August 2005. Foley asked the youth how he was doing after Hurricane Katrina and what he wanted for his birthday. The congressman also asked the boy to send a photo of himself, according to excerpts of the e-mails that were originally released by ABC News.

The e-mails were posted Friday on the Web site of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington after ABC News reported their existence.

Naomi Seligman, a spokeswoman for CREW, said the group also sent a letter to the FBI after it received the e-mails. CREW did not post their copies of the e-mail until ABC News reported them, instead waiting for the investigation.

"The House of Representatives has an obligation to protect the teenagers who come to Congress to learn about the legislative process," the group wrote.

According to the CREW posting, the boy e-mailed a colleague in Alexander's office about Foley's e-mails, saying, "This freaked me out." On the request for a photo, the boy repeated the word "sick" 13 times.

He said Foley asked for his e-mail when the boy gave him a thank-you card. The boy also said Foley wrote that he had e-mailed another page.


WASHINGTON A prominent House Republican has resigned after the revelation that he exchanged raunchy electronic messages with a teenage boy, a former congressional page.

Rep. Mark Foley of Florida, who is single, apologized Friday for letting down his family and constituents. Pages are high school students who attend classes under congressional supervision and work as messengers.

Once his resignation letter was read to the House late Friday afternoon, Republicans spent the night trying to explain — six weeks before congressional elections — how this could have happened on their watch.

Near midnight, they engineered a vote to let the House ethics committee decide whether an investigation is needed.

Among the Republican explanations during the night, the congressional sponsor of the page, Rep. Rodney Alexander, said he was asked by the youth's parents not to pursue the matter, so he dropped it.

Alexander said that before deciding to end his involvement, he passed on what he knew to the chairman of the House Republican campaign organization, Rep. Thomas Reynolds. Reynolds' spokesman, Carl Forti, said the campaign chairman also took no action in deference to the parents' wishes.

Rep. John Shimkus, chairman of the Page Board that oversees the congressional work-study program for high schoolers, said he did investigate but Foley falsely assured him he was only mentoring the boy.

The spokesman for Speaker Dennis Hastert, Ron Bonjean, said the top House Republican had not known about the allegations. Shimkus said he learned about them in late 2005.

Just as Shimkus' explanation was released, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi proposed to the House that its ethics committee investigate and make a preliminary report in 10 days. She demanded to know who knew of the messages, whether Foley had other contacts with pages and when the Republican leadership was notified of Foley's conduct.

Instead, majority Republicans engineered a vote to allow the ethics panel to decide whether there should even be an investigation.

Foley's departure sent Republicans scrambling for a replacement candidate.

Foley, 52, had been almost certain to gain a new term until the e-mail correspondence surfaced in recent days. The page was 16 at the time of the correspondence.

Foley's resignation further complicates the political landscape for Republicans, who are fighting to retain control of Congress. Democrats need to win a net of 15 Republican seats to regain the power they lost in 1994.

Florida Republicans planned to meet as soon as Monday to name a replacement in Foley's district, which President George W. Bush won with 55 percent in 2004 and is now in play for November. Though Florida ballots have already been printed with Foley's name and cannot be changed, any votes for Foley will count toward the party's choice.

Hastert said Friday he had asked Shimkus to investigate the page system. "We want to make sure that all our pages are safe and the page system is safe," Hastert said.

ABC News reported Friday that Foley also engaged in a series of sexually explicit instant messages with current and former pages, all male. In one message, ABC said, Foley wrote to one page, "Do I make you a little horny?"

In another message, Foley wrote, "You in your boxers, too? ... Well, strip down and get relaxed."

Foley, as chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, had introduced legislation in July to protect children from exploitation by adults over the Internet. He also sponsored other legislation designed to protect minors from abuse and neglect.

"We track library books better than we do sexual predators," Foley has said.

Foley e-mailed the page in August 2005. Foley asked the youth how he was doing after Hurricane Katrina and what he wanted for his birthday. The congressman also asked the boy to send a photo of himself, according to excerpts of the e-mails that were originally released by ABC News.

The e-mails were posted Friday on the Web site of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington after ABC News reported their existence.

Naomi Seligman, a spokeswoman for CREW, said the group also sent a letter to the FBI after it received the e-mails. CREW did not post their copies of the e-mail until ABC News reported them, instead waiting for the investigation.

"The House of Representatives has an obligation to protect the teenagers who come to Congress to learn about the legislative process," the group wrote.

According to the CREW posting, the boy e-mailed a colleague in Alexander's office about Foley's e-mails, saying, "This freaked me out." On the request for a photo, the boy repeated the word "sick" 13 times.

He said Foley asked for his e-mail when the boy gave him a thank-you card. The boy also said Foley wrote that he had e-mailed another page.

NYT : Book Says Bush Ignored Urgent Warning on Iraq

Book Says Bush Ignored Urgent Warning on Iraq

By DAVID E. SANGER | September 29, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 — The White House ignored an urgent warning in September 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to quell the insurgency there, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author. The book describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war.

The warning is described in “State of Denial,” scheduled for publication on Monday by Simon & Schuster. The book says President Bush’s top advisers were often at odds among themselves, and sometimes were barely on speaking terms, but shared a tendency to dismiss as too pessimistic assessments from American commanders and others about the situation in Iraq.

As late as November 2003, Mr. Bush is quoted as saying of the situation in Iraq: “I don’t want anyone in the cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don’t think we are there yet.”

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is described as disengaged from the nuts-and-bolts of occupying and reconstructing Iraq — a task that was initially supposed to be under the direction of the Pentagon — and so hostile toward Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, that President Bush had to tell him to return her phone calls. The American commander for the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, is reported to have told visitors to his headquarters in Qatar in the fall of 2005 that “Rumsfeld doesn’t have any credibility anymore” to make a public case for the American strategy for victory in Iraq.

The book, bought by a reporter for The New York Times at retail price in advance of its official release, is the third that Mr. Woodward has written chronicling the inner debates in the White House after the Sept. 11 attacks, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the subsequent decision to invade Iraq. Like Mr. Woodward’s previous works, the book includes lengthy verbatim quotations from conversations and describes what senior officials are thinking at various times, without identifying the sources for the information.

Mr. Woodward writes that his book is based on “interviews with President Bush’s national security team, their deputies, and other senior and key players in the administration responsible for the military, the diplomacy, and the intelligence on Iraq.” Some of those interviewed, including Mr. Rumsfeld, are identified by name, but neither Mr. Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney agreed to be interviewed, the book says.

Robert D. Blackwill, then the top Iraq adviser on the National Security Council, is said to have issued his warning about the need for more troops in a lengthy memorandum sent to Ms. Rice. The book says Mr. Blackwill’s memorandum concluded that more ground troops, perhaps as many as 40,000, were desperately needed.

It says that Mr. Blackwill and L. Paul Bremer III, then the top American official in Iraq, later briefed Ms. Rice and Stephen J. Hadley, her deputy, about the pressing need for more troops during a secure teleconference from Iraq. It says the White House did nothing in response.

The book describes a deep fissure between Colin L. Powell, Mr. Bush’s first secretary of state, and Mr. Rumsfeld: When Mr. Powell was eased out after the 2004 elections, he told Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, that “if I go, Don should go,” referring to Mr. Rumsfeld.

Mr. Card then made a concerted effort to oust Mr. Rumsfeld at the end of 2005, according to the book, but was overruled by President Bush, who feared that it would disrupt the coming Iraqi elections and operations at the Pentagon.

Vice President Cheney is described as a man so determined to find proof that his claim about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was accurate that, in the summer of 2003, his aides were calling the chief weapons inspector, David Kay, with specific satellite coordinates as the sites of possible caches. None resulted in any finds.

Two members of Mr. Bush’s inner circle, Mr. Powell and the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, are described as ambivalent about the decision to invade Iraq. When Mr. Powell assented, reluctantly, in January 2003, Mr. Bush told him in an Oval Office meeting that it was “time to put your war uniform on,” a reference to his many years in the Army.

Mr. Tenet, the man who once told Mr. Bush that it was a “slam-dunk” that weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq, apparently did not share his qualms about invading Iraq directly with Mr. Bush, according to Mr. Woodward’s account.

Mr. Woodward’s first two books about the Bush administration, “Bush at War” and “Plan of Attack,” portrayed a president firmly in command and a loyal, well-run team responding to a surprise attack and the retaliation that followed. As its title indicates, “State of Denial” follows a very different storyline, of an administration that seemed to have only a foggy notion that early military success in Iraq had given way to resentment of the occupiers.

The 537-page book describes tensions among senior officials from the very beginning of the administration. Mr. Woodward writes that in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Tenet believed that Mr. Rumsfeld was impeding the effort to develop a coherent strategy to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. Mr. Rumsfeld questioned the electronic signals from terrorism suspects that the National Security Agency had been intercepting, wondering whether they might be part of an elaborate deception plan by Al Qaeda.

On July 10, 2001, the book says, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, met with Ms. Rice at the White House to impress upon her the seriousness of the intelligence the agency was collecting about an impending attack. But both men came away from the meeting feeling that Ms. Rice had not taken the warnings seriously.

In the weeks before the Iraq war began, President Bush’s parents did not share his confidence that the invasion of Iraq was the right step, the book recounts. Mr. Woodward writes about a private exchange in January 2003 between Mr. Bush’s mother, Barbara Bush, the former first lady, and David L. Boren, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a Bush family friend.

The book says Mrs. Bush asked Mr. Boren whether it was right to be worried about a possible invasion of Iraq, and then to have confided that the president’s father, former President George H. W. Bush, “is certainly worried and is losing sleep over it; he’s up at night worried.”

The book describes an exchange in early 2003 between Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, the retired officer Mr. Bush appointed to administer postwar Iraq, and President Bush and others in the White House situation room. It describes senior war planners as having been thoroughly uninterested in the details of the postwar mission.

After General Garner finished his PowerPoint presentation — which included his plan to use up to 300,000 troops of the Iraqi Army to help secure postwar Iraq, the book says — there were no questions from anyone in the situation room, and the president gave him a rousing sendoff.

But it was General Garner who was soon removed, in favor of Mr. Bremer, whose actions in dismantling the Iraqi army and removing Baathists from office were eventually disparaged within the government.

The book suggests that senior intelligence officials were caught off guard in the opening days of the war when Iraqi civilian fighters engaged in suicide attacks against armored American forces, the first hint of the deadly insurgent attacks to come.

In a meeting with Mr. Tenet of the Central Intelligence Agency, several Pentagon officials talked about the attacks, the book says. It says that Mr. Tenet acknowledged that he did not know what to make of them.

Mr. Rumsfeld reached into political matters at the periphery of his responsibilities, according to the book. At one point, Mr. Bush traveled to Ohio, where the Abrams battle tank was manufactured. Mr. Rumsfeld phoned Mr. Card to complain that Mr. Bush should not have made the visit because Mr. Rumsfeld thought the heavy tank was incompatible with his vision of a light and fast military of the future. Mr. Woodward wrote that Mr. Card believed that Mr. Rumsfeld was “out of control.”

The fruitless search for unconventional weapons caused tension between Vice President Cheney’s office, the C.I.A. and officials in Iraq. Mr. Woodward wrote that Mr. Kay, the chief weapons inspector in Iraq, e-mailed top C.I.A. officials directly in the summer of 2003 with his most important early findings.

At one point, when Mr. Kay warned that it was possible the Iraqis might have had the capability to make such weapons but did not actually produce them, waiting instead until they were needed, the book says he was told by John McLaughlin, the C.I.A.’s deputy director: “Don’t tell anyone this. This could be upsetting. Be very careful. We can’t let this out until we’re sure.”

Mr. Cheney was involved in the details of the hunt for illicit weapons, the book says. One night, Mr. Woodward wrote, Mr. Kay was awakened at 3 a.m. by an aide who told him Mr. Cheney’s office was on the phone. It says Mr. Kay was told that Mr. Cheney wanted to make sure he had read a highly classified communications intercept picked up from Syria indicating a possible location for chemical weapons.

Mr. Woodward and a colleague, Carl Bernstein, led The Post’s reporting during Watergate, and Mr. Woodward has since written a string of best sellers about Washington. More recently, the identity of Mr. Woodward’s Watergate source known as Deep Throat was disclosed as having been W. Mark Felt, a senior F.B.I. official.

In late 2005, Mr. Woodward was subpoenaed by the special prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case. He also apologized to The Post’s executive editor for concealing for more than two years that he had been drawn into the scandal.

Mark Mazzetti and David Johnston contributed reporting from Washington, and Julie Bosman from New York.

NYT : House Approves Power for Warrantless Wiretaps

House Approves Power for Warrantless Wiretaps

By ERIC LICHTBLAU | September 29, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 — The House voted on Thursday to give the president the formal power to order wiretaps on Americans without a court order for 90 days, even as a federal judge in Detroit once again declared the administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants to be illegal.

The House approved the surveillance measure, 232 to 191, after rejecting efforts by Democrats and some Republicans to impose greater restrictions on the wiretapping authority.

It appears all but certain that Congress will not reach an agreement on a final surveillance bill before its pre-election recess this week.

Senate Republicans held out hope that they would vote on Friday or Saturday on a bill of theirs that takes a different approach to regulating wiretapping and has the backing of the White House.

Even if the Senate acts this week, lawmakers agreed, there would not be time before the recess for House-Senate negotiators to reach an accord on a final plan, depriving the White House of the chance to sign a bill into law before Election Day.

The legislation took on greater urgency on Thursday after the court ruling in Detroit, as Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of Federal District Court gave the government a week to appeal her decision of Aug. 17 on the wiretapping program or shut it down.

In her earlier ruling, Judge Taylor had found that the surveillance program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was illegal and unconstitutional, violating First and Fourth Amendment protections by allowing wiretaps on Americans’ international communications without a court-ordered warrant.

Judge Taylor reaffirmed that finding after a hearing on Thursday, when she said that she thought it was unlikely that the United States Court of Appeals for Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, would overrule her. Her decision, she said, was based on “settled law.”

The Justice Department immediately filed an emergency motion with the appeals court, asking it to suspend Judge Taylor’s ruling while it considers “the important legal issues” raised by the case, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. Stopping the program while the appeals court considers it would pose “a drastic risk of harm to the nation,” the department said in its filing.

Representative Peter Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican who leads the House Intelligence Committee, said the Detroit ruling “underscores the importance of Congressional approval of legislation to modernize” federal surveillance laws in the fight against terrorism.

The bill that the House passed on Thursday with Mr. Hoekstra’s backing formalized the president’s authority to act outside the confines of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Congress passed that act in 1978 in response to domestic spying on political figures and antiwar protesters.

The bill gives the president the authority to order wiretaps for up to 90 days without a court order on Americans suspected of having ties to terrorists if the president determines there is an “imminent threat” to the United States.

Representative Heather A. Wilson, the New Mexico Republican who wrote the measure, said it would also impose additional Congressional oversight after what she called the administration’s “inappropriate” failure to brief the full Intelligence Committees on the surveillance program.

Ms. Wilson said she believed that the bill struck the right balance between giving the government the tools it needed to fight terrorism and protecting the privacy and civil liberties of Americans.

“This is not some drift net,” she said.

A bipartisan amendment offered by Representatives Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, and Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, sought to limit wiretaps without warrants to a maximum of 7 days rather than 90. The amendment would affirm the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as the “exclusive” means of conducting intelligence surveillance.

Mr. Schiff said in an interview that Ms. Wilson’s bill would effectively gut the current intelligence law and give the president broad and sweeping authority at the expense of the courts. His effort failed, 221 to 202. Ms. Wilson’s measure also faced behind-the-scenes resistance from the Bush administration, which had pressed her to bring the bill more in line with the Senate version to speed a final bill, Senate officials said.

The Senate bill would offer a differing and somewhat broader approach to resolving the issue by submitting the entire surveillance program to the foreign intelligence court for a one-time review of its constitutionality.

Critics of the approach said it would give the president virtually unchecked authority if the program were to be declared legal.

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who worked out the compromise with the White House, said he saw it as the only viable way to ensure some measure of judicial review over the program.

John Carpenter contributed reporting from Detroit.

IHT : Rumsfeld raps interpretations of intelligence assessment on terrorism

Rumsfeld raps interpretations of intelligence assessment on terrorism

The Associated Press | September 29, 2006

PORTOROZ, Slovenia U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld steered clear of any judgment on a classified document that concludes the terrorist threat to the U.S. has increased, saying efforts to judge whether the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have fueled terrorism would be futile.

In his first extensive remarks about the U.S. intelligence report, Rumsfeld said it is impossible to know with any precision whether the wars have created more terrorists than they've killed. But, he added, "the implication that if you stop killing or capturing people who are trying to kill you, then therefore the world would be a better place, is obviously nonsensical."

Speaking to reporters at a NATO defense ministers conference Thursday, Rumsfeld tread carefully on what has been a politically explosive issue in recent days, and he would comment only broadly on the terrorist question.

In the much-discussed National Intelligence Estimate, the government's top analysts concluded that Iraq has become a "cause celebre" for jihadists, who are growing in number and geographic reach. If the trend continues, the analysts said, the risks to the U.S. interests at home and abroad surely will grow.

"Are more terrorists being created in the world? We don't know," said Rumsfeld, adding that there aren't good ways to measure how many terrorists are being trained at camps around the world.

Disclosure of the classified report, and U.S. President George W. Bush's subsequent move to make portions of it public, has had broad political ramifications.

For Republicans, the report provides more evidence that Iraq is central to the war on terrorism and can't be abandoned without giving jihadists a crucial victory. And for Democrats, it furthers their argument that the 2003 Iraq invasion has inflamed anti-U.S. sentiments in the Muslim world and left the U.S. less safe.

Rumsfeld said that while it's hard to know how many terrorist are being created, officials have a better idea how many have been killed or captured.

On Thursday the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq purportedly said in an audio message posted online that more than 4,000 foreign militants have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the first apparent acknowledgment from the insurgents about their losses.

"Anyone who thinks there is a single answer or a single reason, or a silver bullet that's going to solve the problem, can't be right. It's too complex," Rumsfeld said.

Yale Daily News : Report resuscitated contentious debate

Report resuscitated contentious debate

by Dan Bleiberg | September 29, 2006

President George W. Bush '68 shouldn't have been surprised this past Tuesday when he sparked an international maelstrom of discussion and speculation­ upon declassifying a document from the National Intelligence Estimate. Because the document addresses the effects of the Iraq War on the growth of terrorism in the Middle East, it should also have come as no surprise to him that the conclusions of this debate were less than favorable for his administration. Despite his best efforts to highlight the salutary effects of the Iraq venture, critics relentlessly accuse him of having buttressed Islamic extremism, disseminating it further throughout a region he had hoped to stabilize.

These criticisms are common, so much so that to even question them is to associate oneself with President Bush's seemingly empty and one-sided propaganda. But the claims of the NIE report are worth a second look. As easy as it is to blame the Iraq War for stirring up fundamentalist Islamic terrorism, one has to ask precisely why this is a relevant point to highlight.

The unspoken implications of critics' arguments suggest that a reason the war should have been avoided in the first place has been confirmed. It is true that the U.S. invasion and occupation of a majority Muslim country were destined to foster a violent opposition. But this criticism, by itself, is not a reason to regret the decision to invade. That would be tantamount to saying that one should not attack one's enemies for fear of galvanizing them.

In reality, criticizing the war in light of the NIE document only sounds satisfactory because the war turned out to be poorly justified. But what if, say, stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq? Every other facet of the war and occupation could still have been mishandled in exactly the same way, but few would doubt that the war had been justified.

Some may argue that President Bush's failed justification of the war was in itself what steeled the tenacity of terrorist organizations. Perhaps some in the Middle East saw the president's manipulation of intelligence and determined that injustice was afoot. But this argument is, of course, specious. It is outlandish to suggest that terror would have spread any less rapidly if the war had been deemed necessary (after the fact) for the preservation of American national security. It is further unlikely that suicide bombers were born out of the controversy over just how grave a threat Saddam Hussein posed to the United States.

The Bush administration's failure to stabilize Iraq should be noted and criticized accordingly. It is fair to say that the Bush administration failed to foresee and plan for a substantial terrorist insurgency. But had this form of terrorism been foreseen, it would have only been treated as a necessary hurdle in a larger struggle against jihadism. Clairvoyance in this regard would have led to planning, not redirection. Thus a predictable increase in the fervor of jihadist terror should not be used as a reason to retroactively protest the war. Though the NIE report states that the Iraq War has become a "cause celebre" for terrorists, the same might be said of the broader War on Terror, which few would argue was poorly justified.

There is little validity to the allegation that the Iraq War was a mistake because it fostered the growth of terrorism. The conditions that have allowed terrorism to spread were entrenched, and it has been America's goal to root them out from the start. Furthermore, much of the supposed spread of terrorism was actually just a manifestation of a pre-existing phenomenon. The invasion of Iraq brought terrorism to the fore by putting 150,000 American citizens in the world's epicenter of terrorism. It is misleading, however, to assume that the underlying causes of the ensuing attacks were necessarily created or strengthened by the invasion. To the contrary, jihadism was a presence that required reckoning long before America invaded Iraq.

Regardless of whether the invasion of Iraq was pragmatic or justified, it was meant to combat an extant foe. Given such a foe, would anyone really advise against a fight simply because the fight might revitalize that foe's resolve? Justified for other reasons or not, this war should not be opposed on the grounds that it has fueled the enemies it was meant to combat. Though we tend to discount it because Bush says it so often, this is an important struggle. As terrorism and anti-Americanism grow in ways that frighten us, we should remember that.

Dan Bleiberg is a sophomore in Trumbull College.