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Iran talks: Strong rhetoric, low expectations

admin — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 05:34:18 +0000

GENEVA -Iran and six world powers are heading into negotiations about the country's nuclear program Monday with low expectations, at odds on what to talk about and with tensions high over the assassination of one of Tehran's most prominent scientists.

The talks in Geneva — the first in over a year — are meant to ease concerns over Iran's nuclear agenda. Tehran says it does not want atomic arms, but as it builds on its capacity to make such weapons, neither Israel nor the U.S. have ruled out military action if Tehran fails to heed U.N. Security Council demands to freeze key nuclear programs.

Iran's bold stance was highlighted Sunday, when it announced it had delivered its first domestically mined raw uranium to a processing facility, claiming it is now self-sufficient over the entire nuclear fuel cycle.

A senior diplomat in Vienna who is familiar with the issue said the move was expected and mainly symbolic. Still, the timing of the announcement was significant in signaling just a day ahead of the Geneva talks that Tehran was unlikely to meet international demands that it curb its nuclear activities.

Over two planned days, Saeed Jalili, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, will meet with EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, with Ashton's office saying she will act "on behalf" of the U.S., China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany. In fact, senior officials for those six powers will attend and do much of the talking with Tehran.

Chances of meaningful progress were low even before the assassination late last month of a prominent nuclear scientist and the wounding of another further clouded hopes of success at the talks.

Jalili called the killing a "disgrace" for the Security Council on Saturday, claiming the attacks were linked to efforts to implement international sanctions. He did not elaborate.

Still, the expected presence of Ali Bagheri reflects the importance Iran attaches to the meeting. Officials familiar with the composition of the Iranian delegation say Bagheri has a direct line to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Western officials urged Tehran to meet international concerns about its nuclear activities.

Invoking possible military confrontation over Iran's nuclear defiance, British Defense Secretary Liam Fox said Saturday that the Geneva talks need to make a serious start toward resolving the issue.

"We want a negotiated solution, not a military one — but Iran needs to work with us to achieve that outcome," he said. "We will not look away or back down."

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it was up to Iran to restore trust about its nuclear intentions, urging it to come to Geneva prepared to "firmly, conclusively reject the pursuit of nuclear weapons."

But for Iran the main issues are peace, prosperity — and nuclear topics only in the context of global disarmament.

"Iran has not and will not allow anybody in the talks to withdraw one iota of the rights of the Iranian nation," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said before the scheduled talks, warning the other nations at the table to "put aside the devil's temper" and negotiate in good faith.

Expectations are suitably low, even allowing for the fact that both sides are likely talking tough going into the talks with the purpose of maximizing their starting negotiating positions.

Glyn Davies, the chief U.S. delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the talks were meant to shape conditions for "a new start," even while insisting that Iran's nuclear program "has to be first and foremost on the agenda."

Other officials from the four Western nations coming to the table acknowledge that the six powers are coming without a firm agenda. One of them used freestyle wrestling as an analogy of what to expect.

"Think of this as a sort of catch-as-catch can," said the official, a senior diplomat who asked for anonymity because he was briefing The Associated Press on privileged information. "I don't think we are going to get into any kind of substantive discussions — the best we can hope for is a second round of meetings."

Such caution is understandable.

The last Geneva meeting of the seven nations in October 2009 appeared to put Iran nuclear talks back on track after a four-year hiatus, but Tehran and the six powers began to quibble about what was agreed on only days after they ended.

Iran initially seemed to accept a plan to export 75 percent of its low-enriched uranium to be made into special fuel for a Tehran reactor making medical materials — a move that would have stripped it of much of the material it then had stockpiled that could have been turned into a bomb.

But it then started putting conditions on the deal, which unraveled, deepening mistrust between the two sides.

A fourth set of U.N. Security Council sanctions because of Tehran's continued expansion of uranium enrichment has further burdened relations.

Nations have a right to enrich domestically and Iran insists it is doing so only to make fuel for an envisaged network of reactors and not to make fissile warhead material. But international concerns are strong because Tehran developed its enrichment program clandestinely and because it refuses to cooperate with an IAEA probe meant to follow up on suspicions that it experimented with components of a nuclear weapons program — something Iran denies.

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House censures veteran Rep. Rangel for misconduct

admin — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 01:10:10 +0000

WASHINGTON -Veteran Rep. Charles Rangel, the raspy-voiced, backslapping former chairman of one of Congress' most powerful committees, was censured by his House colleagues for financial misconduct Thursday in a solemn moment of humiliation in the sunset of his career.

"I brought it onto myself," Rangel told the House. But he also said politics was at work.

After the 333-79 vote, the 80-year-old Democrat from New York's Harlem stood silently at the front of the House and faced Speaker Nancy Pelosi as she read him the formal resolution of censure.

Then, in response, he admitted he had made mistakes, including his failure to pay all his taxes, filing misleading financial statements and improperly seeking money from corporate interests for a college center bearing his name.

But he also declared, "In my heart I truly feel good." He said, "A lot of it has to do with the fact that I know in my heart that I am not going to be judged by this Congress, but I am going to be judged by my life."

It was only the 23rd time in the nation's history that a House member received the most severe punishment short of expulsion. Aside from the embarrassment, censure carries no practical effect and ends the more than two-year ordeal for the congressman who was re-elected to a 21st term last month with more than 80 percent of the vote.

Relief and defiance took over the moment Rangel finished speaking. Somber, Pelosi quietly slipped out of the chamber, but some Democrats gave him a standing ovation. Rangel made it only a third of the way up the aisle when a phalanx of well-wishers stopped and hugged him; he responded by saying something that made them laugh. He was smiling for the rest of the 10 minutes or so that it took to get through his colleagues to exit the chamber, his humiliation past.

Despite the censure, he contended in his response on the House floor that it had been proven that "at no time has it ever entered my mind to enrich myself or to do violence to the honesty that's expected of all of us in this House."

"I am fully aware that this vote reflects perhaps the thinking not just of the members but the political side and the constituency of this body," he told his colleagues. Outside, he told reporters the censure vote was "very, very, very political."

Still, the matter is likely to stain Rangel's half-century in public service. The House ethics committee last month found him guilty of 11 of 13 charges of financial misdeeds, including submitting misleading financial statements and failing to pay all his taxes.

The chairman of the ethics committee, Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, said the censure her committee recommended was consistent with a Democratic pledge to run "the most honest, most open, most ethical Congress in history."

She said Rangel "violated the public trust" while serving in influential positions including chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

Rangel's predicament pained his many friends in the House. His staunchest allies — members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the New York delegation — tried to reduce the punishment to a simple reprimand Thursday, but that effort failed by a vote of 267-146.

Before the final vote, the dapper congressman, wearing a blue suit and blue tie with a blue handkerchief, was humble before his colleagues.

"I have made serious mistakes," he said, apologizing for the "awkward" position his troubles had placed them in. He was at times contrite, saying that members of Congress "have a higher responsibility than most people" for ethical conduct and that senior lawmakers like himself "should act as a model" for newer lawmakers.

A half-dozen members spoke in his defense, arguing a reprimand was appropriate and that censure had been used for members found guilty of sexual misconduct. Lofgren, though, suggested that today, expulsion would be appropriate for those types of misdeeds.

It's a difficult sunset for Rangel's long career. A jovial politician with a distinctive voice, Rangel was re-elected in November with more than 80 percent of the vote despite being under an ethics cloud for more than two years. He has argued that censure is reserved for corrupt politicians — and he's not one of them.

He also has been making a more personal plea, asking colleagues to remember that he won a Purple Heart after he was wounded in combat in Korea, to focus on his efforts for the underprivileged and to understand that he has great respect for the institution he has served for so long. He's tied for fourth in House seniority.

The House ethics committee painted Rangel as a congressman who ignored rules of conduct and became a tax scofflaw despite his knowledge of tax law from his long service on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

Rangel chaired that panel until last March, when he stepped down after the committee — in a separate case — found that he improperly allowed corporations to finance two trips to Caribbean conferences.

Rangel shortchanged the IRS for 17 years by failing to pay taxes on income from his rental unit in a Dominican Republic resort. He filed misleading financial disclosure reports for a decade, leaving out hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets he owned.

He used congressional letterheads and staff to solicit donations for a monument to himself: a center named after him at City College of New York. The donors included businesses and their charitable foundations that had issues before Congress and, specifically, before the Ways and Means Committee.

Rangel also set up a campaign office in the Harlem building where he lives, despite a lease specifying the unit was for residential use only.

He has paid the Treasury $10,422 and New York state $4,501 to fulfill an ethics committee recommendation. The amounts were to cover taxes he would have owed on his villa income had the statute of limitations not run out on his tax bills.

The last previous House censure was in 1983, when two members, Reps. Gerry E. Studds, D-Mass., and Daniel Crane, R-Ill., were disciplined for having sex with teenage pages. Nine House members have been reprimanded, the latest last year when Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C. was punished for yelling "You lie" at President Barack Obama.

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US-Russian ‘reset’ in trouble as nuke pact stalls

admin — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 08:46:09 +0000

MOSCOW -Is the reset on the rocks?

Rumblings in Washington by the resurgent Republican Party against Senate ratification of the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty raise doubts about a fragile U.S.-Russian rapprochement — the "reset" that has been a centerpiece of President Obama's diplomacy.

An unraveling of ties, which hit post-Cold War lows during the administration of George W. Bush, would erode global stability at a time of burgeoning security threats and harm international efforts to stem the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

New START bolstered mutual trust, helping Washington win crucial Kremlin backing for a new set of sanctions against Iran and stronger support for the war in Afghanistan.

"The failure to ratify the treaty will deal a very painful blow to Obama's administration and the policy of `reset,'" said Sergei Rogov, head of the Moscow-based U.S.A. and Canada Institute, a top think-tank advising the government on foreign policy.

If "the administration can't deliver what it promised, it would seriously undermine Obama's position in the international arena."

The Russian Foreign Ministry sought to play down a statement from Sen. Jon Kyl, a leading Republican, who spoke against holding a ratification vote this year. But it warned that the process should go forward in both countries at the same time.

Obama on Thursday urged the Senate to ratify the treaty, appearing at the White House with former secretaries of state and defense of both parties who all support it.

"This is not about politics," he said. "It's about national security."

Some Kremlin-connected legislators and political pundits said Senate failure to ratify the agreement would likely push Moscow to rethink its relationship with the United States.

Mikhail Margelov, head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of parliament, said Moscow may reconsider its stance on Iran and Afghanistan if the treaty fails.

"We should agree with Vice President Joe Biden who fears that due to procrastinations with the ratification, the United States may lose Moscow's vital support in tackling the problem of Iran and in the war in Afghanistan," Margelov was quoted in Russian news reports as saying. "The continuation of `reset' that envisages the development of partnership on security issues hinges on the treaty's ratification."

Moscow backed the latest set of U.N. sanctions against Iran in June and later shelved a 2007 contract to supply Iran with sophisticated S-300 air defense missile systems that drew strong U.S. and Israeli concerns. The moves angered Tehran, which accused Moscow of kowtowing to the West.

The Kremlin also has offered stronger support for NATO operations in Afghanistan, allowing the alliance to carry supplies across the Russian territory. A Russia-NATO summit in Lisbon this weekend is expected to see the signing of a new deal on the so-called "reverse" transit that would allow NATO to ship cargo back from Afghanistan.

Rogov said Russia would be unlikely to backtrack on its moves regarding Iran and Afghanistan, even if the Senate fails to seal the arms deal, but that it would close the door to any further friendly action.

"It's not that we will turn back, but any further moves toward cooperation will be unlikely," he told The Associated Press.

Dmitry Trenin, head of the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow office, said Russia will continue to cooperate with Obama, but show more caution. "The relations will be stable and businesslike, but limited in depth and scope," he said.

The nuclear arms deal signed in April by Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev would reduce strategic warheads to 1,550 for each country from the current ceiling of 2,200 and restore onsite inspections and other verification measures that ceased when the previous START treaty expired nearly a year ago.

Trenin said that the unraveling of arms control would erode stability.

"It's always dangerous to have nuclear arsenals of two major powers develop without proper information exchange," he said. "That would reduce the level of predictability."

Rogov warned that the termination of inspections would prompt each country to overestimate the other's potential, as happened during the Cold War. "If on-the-ground inspections aren't restored, both the U.S. and Russia will have to proceed from the worst-case scenario as they did before the first arms control agreements were reached in the early 1970s," he said.

Rogov and other observers also warned that failure to put New START into force would ruin hopes for global nuclear disarmament and encourage the spread of atomic weapons.

"The world is no longer bipolar, and the collapse of the U.S.-Russian arms control mechanism will turn the multipolar world into multipolar chaos, as no one else would be able to persuade other nuclear powers to accept at least some rules of the game," Rogov said. "The consequences of the New START collapse could be extremely grave."

Sergei Karaganov, chairman of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policies that includes some of Russia's top political and military analysts, said that if the treaty fails in the Senate, Obama and Medvedev might agree to implement its provisions by executive orders. He added, however, that many in Russian officialdom would likely oppose that, arguing it would make no sense to fulfill the deal at a time when the U.S. policy may change soon.

Some said the arms treaty's collapse would play into the hands of hawks in the Russian government and weaken Medvedev, who has pushed for better ties with the U.S.

"It will raise doubts about the `reset' and undermine positions of Medvedev who placed his bets on that," said Sergei Markov, a leading lawmaker with the ruling United Russia party led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

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Rangel guilty: House ethics panel rules misconduct

admin — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 02:21:06 +0000

WASHINGTON -New York Rep. Charles Rangel, a longtime power in the U.S. House, violated its rules with financial misconduct, brought it discredit and will be punished, fellow lawmakers sitting as jurors ruled on Tuesday.

Protesting the enduring stain on his four-decade congressional career, the 80-year-old Democrat said he was treated unfairly for "good faith mistakes." His statement reflected the bitterness of an eight-month career slide, starting with an unrelated ethics ruling that forced him from his coveted chairmanship of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

The conduct often cited by critics was his failure to report income to the IRS from a unit he owned in a Dominican Republic resort — showing the chairman in charge of tax legislation shortchanged the IRS.

Rangel, a founder of the Congressional Black Caucus, remains a political kingpin in New York's famed Harlem neighborhood and is unlikely to resign. He won re-election earlier this month.

Convicted on 11 of 13 charges of rules violations, his ordeal isn't finished.

The eight-member ethics panel that convicted him — four Democrats and four Republicans — now will write what is likely to be a stinging report to amplify its findings. Then, the full House ethics committee will conduct a hearing Thursday on the appropriate punishment for Rangel, the silver-haired, gravelly voiced and sartorially flashy veteran of 20 terms in Congress.

Rangel can waive his right to the hearing and ask the committee to go straight to deliberations on possible sanctions.

Possible sanctions include a House vote deploring his conduct, a fine and denial of certain privileges.

Rangel's downfall, in part, came in the way he solicited money for a New York college center designed as a monument to himself. There also was his decade of misleading annual disclosures of his income and assets and his use of a subsidized New York apartment — designated for residential use — as a campaign office.

The panel deliberated over two days before its chairman, Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren, made a bare-bones statement announcing the findings — leaving a full explanation for the upcoming written report.

The conviction was a fresh setback for Democrats who lost control of the House to the GOP in the midterm elections, support for Republican candidates' assertions of bad conduct.

At his one-day trial on Monday, Rangel was reduced to pleading for a postponement — arguing that his lawyers abandoned him after he paid them some $2 million but could afford no more. The panel rejected his request, and Rangel walked out of the proceeding.

"How can anyone have confidence in the decision of the ethics subcommittee when I was deprived of due process rights, right to counsel and was not even in the room?" Rangel complained on Tuesday. "I can only hope that the full committee will treat me more fairly and take into account my entire 40 years of service to the Congress before making any decisions on sanctions."

He called the panel's findings "unprecedented" because there was no rebuttal evidence. He complained that the rejection of his appeal for more time violated "the basic constitutional right to counsel."

Rangel, echoing a statement he made in August in a speech to the House, added, "Any failings in my conduct were the result of good faith mistakes." He said they were caused by "sloppy and careless record keeping but were not criminal or corrupt."

New York Gov.-elect Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who attended Rangel's fundraiser in August while campaigning to clean up New York politics, said, "It's obviously a sad situation to experience."

"It's important that people have full faith in the integrity in public service, so it's painful to watch," Cuomo said Tuesday at a press event near Rochester. "But we'll see what happens at the end of the process."

The eight-member jury panel was unanimous on most charges against Rangel. Members split 4-4 on a charge that he violated a ban on gifts because he was to have an office — and storage of his papers — at the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York.

Two counts charging him with misuse of Congress' free mail privilege were merged into one. And the panel voted 7-1 on a final charge that he had brought discredit on the House. No breakdown was given on who voted no.

The charges said the solicitation for the Rangel Center targeted foundations and businesses that were seeking official action from the House or had interests that might be substantially affected by Rangel's congressional conduct.

However, Rangel was not accused of using his influence to pass or defeat legislation.

During Monday's trial proceeding, the chief counsel for the House ethics committee, Blake Chisam, told the jury that Rangel could have received permission to solicit nonprofit foundations. However, he could not have used congressional stationery and staff as he was found to have done.

Rangel had previously acknowledged some of the charges, including submission of 10 years' worth of incomplete and inaccurate annual statements disclosing his assets and income.

He also admitted he initially did not report his rental income from a unit he owned at the Punta Cana resort in the Dominican Republic.

An apartment in Harlem's Lennox Terrace complex housed the Rangel for Congress and National Leadership PAC political committees, although the lease terms said the unit was for living purposes only.

Chisam had told the jury that other tenants were evicted at an increasing rate for violating the same lease terms.

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Ethics panel begins deliberations in Rangel case

admin — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 20:30:55 +0000

WASHINGTON -Shortly after veteran Rep. Charles Rangel of New York walked out of his ethics trial in protest, a House panel began closed-door deliberations Monday on 13 counts of alleged financial and fundraising misconduct that could bring formal condemnation.

Only recently one of the most powerful members of Congress, Rangel was reduced to pleading in vain for colleagues to give him time to raise money for a lawyer before taking up the charges. The 80-year-old congressman left when they said no, and the rare proceeding — only the second for this type of hearing in two decades — went on without him.

An ethics committee panel of four Democrats and four Republicans was sitting as a jury in the case late Monday. The official acting as prosecutor said the facts were so clear there was no need to call witnesses, and panel members apparently agreed.

If the panel members decide Rangel violated any House rules, the full committee will hold a hearing on how he should be punished. The most likely sanction would be a House vote deploring his conduct.

Rangel, a 20-term congressman representing New York's famed Harlem neighborhood, implored the ethics panel for further delay, saying that "50 years of public service is on the line." But the panel basically decided that the 2 1/2-year-old case had gone on long enough — and Congress had little time left to deal with it in the lame duck session that commenced Monday.

Rangel said he had run out of money after paying his previous attorneys some $2 million and needed time to set up a legal defense fund to raise an additional $1 million.

Until last spring, Rangel had wielded great influence as chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, a gravelly voiced, outgoing figure who raised millions for fellow lawmakers' campaigns. He relinquished that chairmanship in March after being admonished by an ethics panel for taking corporate trips to the Caribbean in violation of House rules. There was no further punishment for that, but the current charges are another matter.

After Rangel left Monday's hearing, House ethics committee chief counsel Blake Chisam pushed for a decision on the 13 counts of fundraising and financial conduct that allegedly violated House rules. Chisam, assuming the role of prosecutor, played a video of Rangel's speech on the House floor in August in which the congressman acknowledged that he'd used House stationery to raise money for a college center named after him, and that he'd been tardy in filing taxes and financial disclosure statements.

He said then that he never intended to break any rules.

Chisam told the panel of four Republicans and four Democrats that there were no questions "as to any material facts in this case. As a result the case is ripe for a decision."

Chisam also said, "I see no evidence of corruption" by Rangel. Rather, he suggested, the congressman was "overzealous" and "sloppy in his personal finances."

Chisam said Rangel could have legally raised money for the Charles B. Rangel Center at City College of New York by asking the ethics committee for permission to solicit nonprofit organizations. However, he would not have been able to use congressional letterheads or employees in the fundraising, as he is charged with doing.

The counsel also said Rangel used a subsidized apartment in New York City as a campaign office when the lease required that it be for residential use only.

"At the same time, the landlord was evicting other tenants at an increased rate" for failing to follow the same lease terms, Chisam said.

Several members of the panel criticized Rangel's lawyers for leaving the case just weeks before the hearing.

Vermont Democratic Rep. Peter Welch said that no law firm should be "taking the money ... and kicking their client by the side of the road."

Rangel's former lawyer, Leslie Berger Kiernan, did not immediately respond.

If the ethic panel finds that Rangel broke the rules, the House ethics committee could recommend that the full House vote to condemn his conduct.

"My family has caught hell" in the investigation, Rangel said in asking for more time. Earlier this fall, he had pleaded for a quick decision before the November elections. He won re-election.

The ethics committee chairman, Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., told Rangel that time was an issue since this Congress will soon adjourn. He responded that his fate should not depend on the congressional calendar.

"I truly believe I am not being treated fairly," Rangel said.

The ethics investigation goes back to at least July 2008. Only former Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio, who was expelled from the House after a criminal conviction, has faced a similar trial since current House ethics procedures were adopted two decades ago.

Key charges portray Rangel as a veteran congressman who thought he could ignore rules on disclosing his assets, and improperly used official resources to raise money for a college center that was a monument to his career.

Another allegation that caught the public's eye was his failure to declare rental income to the IRS from a resort unit he owned in the Dominican Republic.

The charges allege violations of:

_A House gift ban and restrictions on solicitations. Rangel is accused of using congressional staff, letterhead and workspace to seek donations for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York. The requests usually went to charitable arms of businesses with issues before Congress, including Rangel's Ways and Means Committee.

_A U.S. government code of ethics. Several allegations fall under this code, among them: accepting favors (the Rangel Center donations) that could be construed as influencing Rangel's congressional duties; acceptance of a rent-subsidized New York apartment used as a campaign office, when the lease said it was for residential use only, and failure to report taxable income.

_The Ethics in Government Act and a companion House rule requiring "full and complete" public reports of a congressman's income, assets and liabilities each year. Rangel is charged with a pattern of submitting incomplete and inaccurate disclosure statements. He filed amended reports covering 1998 to 2007 only after the investigative ethics panel began looking into his disclosures. He belatedly reported at least $600,000 in assets.

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High court allows gay military ban for now

admin — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 23:08:34 +0000

WASHINGTON -The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Pentagon to continue preventing openly gay people from serving in the military while a federal appeals court reviews the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

The court did not comment in denying a request from the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay rights group, to step into the ongoing federal court review of "don't ask, don't tell." The Obama administration urged the high court not to get involved at this point.

Last month, a federal judge ruled that the policy violates the civil rights of gay Americans and she issued an injunction barring the Pentagon from applying it. But the San Francisco-based appeals court said the policy could remain in effect while it considers the administration's appeal.

"Log Cabin Republicans are disappointed that the Supreme Court decided to maintain the status quo with regards to 'don't ask, don't tell,' but we are not surprised," said R. Clarke Cooper, the group's executive director. "We are committed to pursuing every avenue in the fight against this failed and unconstitutional policy."

President Barack Obama has pledged to push lawmakers to repeal the law in the lame-duck session before a new Congress is sworn in. But administration lawyers have in the meantime defended "don't ask, don't tell" in court.

The policy, which prohibits gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military, was lifted for eight days in October after U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips ruled that it is unconstitutional. The Obama administration asked the appeals court to reinstate the ban until it could hear arguments on the broader constitutional issues next year.

Justice Elena Kagan did not take part in the court's consideration of the issue. Kagan served as the administration's chief Supreme Court lawyer before she became a justice in August.

—

Associated Press writer Julie Watson in San Diego contributed to this report.

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Officials: Saudis warned 3 weeks before attack

admin — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 04:24:34 +0000

WASHINGTON -A Saudi tip about a possible al-Qaida effort to bring down airplanes was relayed to U.S. authorities in early October, nearly three weeks before the group's Yemen affiliate tried to ship mail bombs to the U.S. in cargo planes, U.S. intelligence officials said Friday.

The Saudi intelligence tip helped to head off what could have been a devastating series of plane explosions. Western officials credit the Saudis with playing a crucial role in finding two mail bombs recovered last week in Dubai and Britain before they reached the U.S.

On Friday, the Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for sending the two bombs and threatened more attacks on civilian and cargo planes. The group also said it had a role in the crash of a UPS cargo plane in Dubai in September, but investigators so far have insisted an accident was at fault.

The Saudi tip in October contained no mention of cargo planes, or any details of the plot carried out last week, said U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss classified matters. But they said it gave the U.S. and other Western officials enough of a warning to know what to look for when another Saudi tip arrived last week.

A CIA spokesman Friday night cited several allies that have provided key intelligence about terrorist activities.

"Over the past several months, we received intelligence — which was shared across our government — from our foreign partners about threats from AQAP and other terrorist groups," said CIA spokesman George Little. "The United States receives this kind of information from other governments on a regular basis, as you would expect. Last week, we received specific intelligence that allowed the United States and our allies to disrupt the cargo plot. Our actions were swift and aggressive."

Another U.S. official said the Yemeni terror group's interest in plane attacks has been apparent since its failed Christmas Day attempt last year to bring down a Detroit-bound plane with explosives hidden in the underwear of a suicide bomber. Both the Christmas Day attack and the mail bombs sent last week used a powerful industrial explosive PETN, and the AQAP's top bomb maker is considered a top suspect in both attempts.

But although the tip relayed in October did raise alarms about a plane attack, it did not mention cargo planes or where the plot might originate or even who the attackers might be, the official said.

U.S. intelligence had been monitoring steady intelligence on a possible attack such as this since early September, one U.S. official has said. And in late September, authorities also intercepted a group of packages shipped to Chicago which in retrospect is now seen as a likely test run by the terror group to gauge the logistics of shipping bombs by air to the U.S.

The report on the Saudi tip in October was first reported Friday by The New York Times and the German news magazine Der Spiegel.

On Friday, AQAP said it would continue to strike American and Western interests and specifically said it would target civilian and cargo aircraft.

"We have struck three blows at your airplanes in a single year," the group said in a message posted on a militant website. "And God willing, we will continue to strike our blows against American interests and the interests of America's allies."

The authenticity of Friday's claim could not be immediately verified. A U.S. intelligence official said authorities are not surprised to see this claim now.

Authorities in the U.S. and the UAE have said the Sept. 3 crash of the UPS plane in Dubai shortly after takeoff was caused by an onboard fire, but investigators are taking another look at the incident following the parcel bomb plot.

A security official in the UAE familiar with the investigations into the UPS cargo plane crash in Dubai and the mail bombs plot told The Associated Press on Friday that there is no change in earlier findings and that the UPS crash in September was likely caused by an onboard fire and not by an explosive device.

"There was no explosion," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under standing UAE rules on disclosing security-related information.

A UPS spokesman, Norman Black, said his company had "no independent knowledge of this claim by al-Qaida," and noted that both UAE officials and U.S. National Transportation Safety Board officials have so far ruled out the possibility of a bomb as cause in the crash.

In its statement, al-Qaida's Yemeni offshoot said that it "downed the UPS airplane but because the enemy's media did not attribute the act to us, we kept silent about the operation until we could return the ball once more.

"We have done that, this time with two explosives, one of them sent via UPS, the other via FedEx."

It said that its "advanced explosives" give it "the opportunity to detonate (planes) in the air or after they have reached their final target, and they are designed to bypass all detection devices."

Both mail bombs were hidden inside computer printers and wired to detonators that used cell-phone technology and packed powdered PETN, a potent industrial explosive.

The message also directed a warning to Saudi Arabia, warning: "God's curse on the oppressors."

—

Murphy reported from Dubai. Associated Press writers Samantha Bomkamp in New York City and Eileen Sullivan, Adam Goldman and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.

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Files: Iraqi deaths higher than US count

admin — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 07:57:08 +0000

WASHINGTON -Military documents laid bare in the biggest leak of secret information in U.S. history suggest that far more Iraqis died than previously acknowledged during the years of sectarian bloodletting and criminal violence unleashed by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

The accounts of civilian deaths among nearly 400,000 purported Iraq war logs released Friday by the WikiLeaks website include deaths unknown or unreported before now — as many as 15,000 by the count of one independent research group.

The field reports from U.S. forces and intelligence officers also indicate U.S. forces often failed to follow up on credible evidence that Iraqi forces mistreated, tortured and killed their captives as they battled a violent insurgency.

The war logs were made public in defiance of Pentagon insistence that the action puts the lives of U.S. troops and their military partners at risk.

Although the documents appear to be authentic, their origin could not be independently confirmed, and WikiLeaks declined to offer any details about them.

The 391,831 documents date from the start of 2004 to Jan. 1, 2010, providing a ground-level view of the war written mostly by low-ranking officers in the field. The dry reports, full of military jargon and acronyms, were meant to catalog "significant actions" over six years of heavy U.S. and allied military presence in Iraq.

The Pentagon has previously declined to confirm the authenticity of WikiLeaks-released records, but it has employed more than 100 U.S. analysts to review what was previously released and has never indicated that any past WikiLeaks releases were inaccurate.

Casualty figures in the U.S.-led war in Iraq have been hotly disputed because of the high political stakes in a conflict opposed by many countries and a large portion of the American public. Critics on each side of the divide accuse the other of manipulating the death toll to sway opinion.

Iraq Body Count, a private British-based group that has tracked the number of Iraqi civilians killed since the war began, said it had analyzed the information and found 15,000 previously unreported deaths, which would raise its total from as many as 107,369 civilians to more than 122,000 civilians.

It said most of the newly disclosed deaths included targeted assassinations, drive-by shootings, torture, executions and checkpoint killings.

Al-Jazeera, one of several news organizations provided advance access to the WikiLeaks trove, reported the documents show 285,000 recorded casualties, including at least 109,000 deaths. Of those who died 66,000, nearly two-thirds of the total, were civilians.

The Iraqi government has issued a tally claiming at least 85,694 deaths of civilians and security officials were killed between January 2004 and Oct. 31, 2008.

In July of this year, the U.S. military quietly released its most detailed tally to date of the deaths of Iraqi civilians and security forces in the bloodiest years of the war.

That U.S. body count, reported by The Associated Press this month, tallied deaths of almost 77,000 Iraqis between January 2004 and August 2008 — the darkest chapter of Iraq's sectarian warfare and the U.S. troop surge to quell it. The new data was posted on the U.S. Central Command website without explanation.

In August 2008, the Congressional Research Service said the U.S. military was withholding statistics on Iraqi civilian deaths. The Pentagon did publish in June 2008 a chart on civilian death trends by month that showed it peaking at between 3,500 and 4,000 in December 2006. But it did not release the data used to create the chart.

In 2006 and 2007, the Bush administration and military commanders often played down the extent of civilian killings from revenge killings, blood feuds and mob-style violence in Iraq, much of which had no direct effect on U.S. forces.

Administration figures repeatedly denied Iraq was sliding into civil war. The war did not begin to turn around in a lasting way until the 2007 "surge" of U.S. troops and the decision of key Sunni leaders to cut ties with the foreign-led al-Qaida terror group.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell called the release of the Iraq war material by WikiLeaks "shameful" and said it "could potentially undermine our nation's security."

"The biggest potential damage here, we think, could be to our forces," he said, "because there are now potentially 400,000 documents in the public domain for our enemies to mine, look for vulnerabilities, patterns of behavior, things they could exploit to wage attacks against us in the future."

He said that about 300 Iraqis mentioned in the documents are "particularly vulnerable to reprisal attacks" because of the documents' release and that U.S. forces in Iraq are trying to protect them.

The deputy minister for the Iraqi justice ministry, Busho Ibrahim, said he hadn't read the WikiLeaks documents but denied any abuse had taken place in Iraqi-run prisons.

WikiLeaks gave the AP a censored version of the files, with some names of people, countries and groups redacted. Fuller versions were offered to other news outlets ahead of time, according to a WikiLeaks member at London's Frontline Club, where a handful of journalists was given last-minute access before the war logs were released more widely.

WikiLeaks declined to make the less-redacted files available to the AP, saying journalists wanting such a copy would have to lodge a request with the organization, which would respond within a "couple of days." Asked why, a spokesman for the group who identified himself only as "Joseph" hung up the phone. Asked again when he appeared at the Frontline Club, he said: "I just can't answer any more questions."

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange did not return an e-mail seeking comment.

It was not immediately clear whether WikiLeaks released all the military records in its possession. In some cases, names and other pieces of identifying information appeared to have been redacted but it was unclear to what extent WikiLeaks withheld names in response to Pentagon concerns that people could become targets of retribution.

Allegations of torture and brutality by Shiite-dominated security forces — mostly against Sunni prisoners — were widely reported during the most violent years of the war, when the rival Islamic sects turned on one another in Baghdad and other cities. The leaked documents provide a ground's-eye view of abuses as reported by U.S. military personnel to their superiors and appear to corroborate much of the past reporting on such incidents.

—

Associated Press writers Raphael G. Satter and Michael Weissenstein in London, Kim Gamel in Cairo, Lynn Dombek in New York and Bushra Juhi in Baghdad contributed to this report.

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As Democrats’ message lags, GOP awaits huge wins

admin — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 02:34:21 +0000

WASHINGTON -Two weeks before Election Day, Democrats fear their grip on the House may be gone, and Republicans are poised to celebrate big gains in the Senate and governors' mansions as well.

Analysts in both parties say all major indicators tilt toward the Republicans. President Barack Obama's policies are widely unpopular. Congress, run by the Democrats, rates even lower. Fear and anger over unemployment and deep deficits are energizing conservative voters; liberals are demoralized.

Private groups are pouring huge sums of money into GOP campaigns. An almost dizzying series of Democratic messages has failed to gain traction, forcing Obama to zigzag in search of a winning formula.

At a Democratic rally in Boston on Saturday, Obama acknowledged that the enthusiasm of his presidential run two years ago may have faded in the face the country's economic problems. And he said Republicans believe they can "ride people's anger and frustration all the way to the ballot box."

"There is no doubt that this is a difficult election, Obama told the crowd of 10,000. "That's because we've been through an incredibly difficult time as a nation."

With early voting under way in many states, Democrats are trying to minimize the damage by concentrating their resources on a dwindling number of races.

"The poll numbers and the enthusiasm on the right versus the lack of the enthusiasm on the left suggest a pretty big Republican night," said former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, who once headed the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

With Democrats in power while the unemployment rate stands at 9.6 percent, "it's difficult to say, 'Well it could have been worse,'" Kerrey said.

Polls, campaign finance reports and advisers in both parties indicate that Republicans are in line to seize on a level of voter discontent that rivals 1994, when the GOP gained the House majority for the first time in 40 years. Democrats are embattled at every level.

HOUSE:

Republicans need to win 40 seats to regain the House majority they lost four years ago. Even some Democratic officials acknowledge that their losses could well exceed that.

A GOP takeover would depose Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as the first female House speaker and force Obama to negotiate with Republicans on every significant legislative issue.

Every day brings fresh evidence of Democratic officials virtually abandoning House members whose re-election bids seem hopeless. Republicans are expanding the field to pursue races that once appeared unattainable. In the coming week, Republicans or GOP-leaning outside groups plan to spend money in a 82 House races that they see as competitive or within reach of a last-minute upset.

Democrats, desperate to hold their losses to three dozen seats, plan to run TV ads in 59 races in the remaining days. But their chief House campaign committee has recently canceled millions of dollars worth of advertising for struggling Reps. Steve Driehaus and Mary Jo Kilroy of Ohio, Suzanne Kosmas of Florida, Betsy Markey of Colorado and Steve Kagen of Wisconsin.

They are shifting some of that money to incumbents once considered safe, such as Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva. But in a sign of the election's volatility, they also are helping viable incumbents they had expected to be trailing significantly — South Dakota Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, for example.

The Democrats' House campaign committee raised almost $16 million in September and has $41.6 million in the bank.

That's a big fundraising advantage over the GOP's House campaign committee. But the figures are misleading because heavy spending by outside groups, which often hide their donors' identities, clearly favors Republican candidates.

—

SENATE:

To gain the Senate majority, Republicans must hold all 18 of their seats on this year's ballots while picking up 10 of the 19 Democratic seats. It's a tough task, but not inconceivable.

Democrats trail badly in states where they once held some hope of supplanting Republicans: Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio and Florida. Kentucky is the only one that's still close. But Democrats have reduced their spending there, a sign that Republican and tea party favorite Rand Paul is clearly ahead.

Among seats now held by Democrats, Republicans are favored to win open races in North Dakota and Indiana, and to oust Sen. Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas.

In Pennsylvania, where Republican Pat Toomey had comfortably led Democrat Joe Sestak in polls, the race has tightened in recent weeks, forcing the GOP to spend more than it had planned. The Republican Party also is pouring am additional $2 million into Illinois, where Republican Mark Kirk has slipped somewhat in polls in his race against Democrat Alexi Giannoulias for Obama's old seat.

That said, Democrats say Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold is struggling mightily, and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet is in a tough fight.

Races are extremely close in West Virginia and Nevada, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is battling tea party-backed Republican Sharron Angle in a bitter and costly campaign.

Democrats are anxiously watching Sens. Barbara Boxer in California and Patty Murray in Washington. Private polls show Republicans pulling closer but still trailing.

Should Republicans win all the close races and knock off either Boxer or Murray, they may rue the nomination of tea partier Christine O'Donnell, who badly trails Chris Coons in Delaware. That once-promising state could have provided the 10th GOP win needed to take the Senate majority.

—

GOVERNORS:

Democrats risk losing a dozen governors' chairs they now hold, including those in pivotal presidential states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, Maine and New Mexico. Also possibly falling into GOP hands are Oklahoma, Kansas, Wyoming, Tennessee, Illinois and perhaps Oregon.

Democrats have good chances to pick up GOP-held governorships in four or five states, including California and possibly Florida.

The Republican Governors Association's $31 million haul over the past three months enables the GOP to jump into more races. The Democratic Governors Association raised $10 million in that period.

—

MESSAGING:

Perhaps nothing has frustrated Democrats more than their yearlong failure to find a message that could puncture the anger of millions of voters who seem bent on punishing the party in power. It wasn't for a lack of trying.

Obama may have charmed stadiums full of voters in 2008, but he and congressional Democrats never recovered from barrages of criticism in 2009 about unemployment, bank bailouts and strong-arm legislative tactics used on issues such as health care.

Eight months ago, Democrats boldly predicted that voters would embrace the new health care law once portions took effect, such as the right to keep children on their parents' insurance plans until age 26. Obama practically dared GOP lawmakers to urge the law's repeal.

"Go for it," he said in Iowa in March. "If these congressmen in Washington want to come here in Iowa and tell small-business owners that they plan to take away their tax credits and essentially raise their taxes, be my guest."

It didn't work out that way. By the time the health bill's first elements became law on Sept. 23, most Democratic candidates were ducking it, and many had to defend their votes amid harsh attacks from Republican opponents.

Democrats turned their energies to framing the election as a series of one-on-one contests about local issues, while Republicans kept portraying it as a national referendum on Obama and the economy.

The national theme persisted, so Democrats tried to turn it to their advantage. Obama repeatedly reminded voters that former President George W. Bush had left him with a major recession, failing banks and a rapidly growing deficit. Don't give the car keys back to those who drove the economy into the ditch, Obama would say dozens of times.

In the early autumn, the president and his allies tried another tack: portraying House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, as the well-tanned face of a party that would let Wall Street run amok while the richest Americans kept enjoying deep tax cuts. In an Ohio speech, Obama cited Boehner's name eight times.

Voters seemed to shrug. Obama and his top aides then tried a new approach: accusing Republican supporters, particularly the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, of funding campaigns with millions of undisclosed dollars, some of them possibly from foreign sources.

The group and others angrily denied the allegations, and Democratic strategists said they saw little evidence that the debate was moving voters.

As Election Day draws nearer, top Democrats seem almost desperate and hyperbolic. The chairman of the Democratic Party, Tim Kaine, compared conservative groups' campaign spending with the Watergate scandal, even though no one has provided evidence of wrongdoing, let alone criminality.

Kerrey, the Nebraska Democrat, said the White House has careened from message to message all year without finding an economic pitch to reassure Americans deeply worried about finding or holding jobs.

"They said, 'It could have been worse, we did pass health care reform, we did pass financial services industry reform,'" Kerrey said. "Those arguments don't do much to much to confront what is a building momentum in the opposite direction."

Many Republicans say there's almost nothing that Obama and other Democrats can do at this stage.

"It's as if the concrete has already been poured around the Democrats' feet," said GOP consultant Kevin Madden.

—

Associated Press writers Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Jim Kuhnhenn and Julie Pace contributed to this report.

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Emotions Run High As Officer Involved Car Wrecks Spike

admin — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 22:59:00 +0000

Huntsville, AL - Over the past few weeks, we've seen several wrecks involving Huntsville Police Officers. Three of them have been serious, and the most recent killed a mother of three, who was expecting her fourth child.

While no one questions that police officers risk their lives to keep us safe, many in the community are now wondering why they are involved in so many auto accidents.

"(In) the last two months, we've had 25 accidents" admits Huntsville Police spokesman Harry Hobbs. "But 14 of those accidents were just little fender benders, and out of those 25 only 11 were at fault to the police officer that maybe could have been avoided."

For many people, those 11 where and officer was at fault is 11 too many. But Hobbs insists when you factor in the fact that many patrol officers are in their cars for hours at a time without a wreck, the numbers aren't as bad as they seem.

Unfortunately, accidents do happen. One such accident that happened Friday night proved deadly.

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