The Best Revenge

Artichokes

"Are you going to eat that?"

I grew up eating artichokes, and when friends came to dinner, I’d invariably be asked that question. Artichokes, strange looking green things, are an extremely tasty, though perhaps unusual, vegetable. Their armor-like appearance or their prickly-tipped leaves may be intimidating, but they are easy to prepare and fun to eat.

When you eat an artichoke you are actually eating the bud of a warmth-loving, three-to-five-foot-tall thistle plant. The artichoke has the distinction of being the only flower that is actually cultivated to be eaten. We eat the base, or heart, which is an outgrowth of the stem, and the surrounding protective outer leaves. The part we call the choke is actually a mass of undeveloped, immature flowerets, which, if allowed to develop, would turn a beautiful violet-blue.

The most commonly grown artichoke is the globe variety, but there are others. In French Provence, smaller, purplish, spindle-shaped artichokes are delicate enough to be eaten raw. Italy offers numerous varieties, including extremely small ones that are preserved in oil. The Italians and French, by the way, eat many more artichokes per person than we do here.

Forget the Wine
Artichokes contain a chemical called cynarin, which in many people affects the taste buds by enhancing sweet flavors. It will spoil the taste of wine but curiously, makes plain water seem deliciously sweet. Dave Bridges, the Co-op resident wine expert, had this to say about the pairing of wine and artichokes.

"Artichokes... the troubled vegetable with few friends in the wine world. While we adhere to the adage that there are no rules when it comes to Food and Wine matching, artichokes are one vegetable group that does deserve a bad rap in the culinary realm. By virtue of some funky, very individualistic flavors, characteristics, and chemistry, the spectrum of agreeable or complimentary wines are slim. We've found that, in a pinch, some California Sauvignon Blancs work in addition to some of New Zealand’s finer Sauvignon Blanc.

The real ace in the hole is to be found in the Loire Valley of France. Sancerre, that wonderful Sauvignon Blanc-based wine of this region, can hold up to the astringent greeny flavors of the artichoke. Indeed, a good Pouilly Fume, Sancerre, or other Loire Sauvignon Blanc embodies many of these same flavors!

So, if in need, look to the Loire for that match to the artichoke!"

History
Native to the Mediterranean region, the artichoke is a descendant of the cardoon, the uncultivated form. Artichokes probably were first popular in Italy, although not with everyone. Goethe remarked scornfully in his book Travels Through Italy that in that country "peasants eat thistles." Pliny the Elder claimed that artichokes were "the most monstrous production of the earth; even animals avoid them."

Yet, once you get the hang of trimming and cooking them, eating artichokes may become a habit, as it did for Catherine de’ Medici, wife of Henry II. She is credited with bringing the artichoke to France from her native Tuscany.

Unfortunately for her, during the Renaissance it was considered the height of impropriety for a young woman to eat a vegetable claimed to be an aphrodisiac. She gained notoriety due to her scandalous fondness for them.

In the New World, early plantings were made by French settlers in Louisiana and by the Spaniards on the coast of California. Virtually all artichokes grown in the US today come from a California town south of San Francisco called Castorville, the self-proclaimed "Artichoke Center of the World."

Choosing
"In Italy, where the artichoke is known as carciofo, old women at the market stalls usually rub two together before they make their selection for their shopping bags. If the artichokes make a proper little squeak on contact, they are deemed fresh. If they are muto (silent), the ladies simply pass them by." —Bert Greene (Greene on Greens)

Take a tip from the little old Italian ladies, and choose artichokes which feel full, compact, and heavy for their size, with an even green color. Avoid those that are shriveled or have a loose leaf formation. Sometimes fall-and winter-grown artichokes will have a slight mottling on the leaves where they have been nipped by cooler temperatures, but this will not affect the quality. Store unwashed artichokes in a plastic bag in the refrigerator if you must; they are best if used soon after purchase.

Preparing
To prepare whole artichokes for poaching, pull off the lower, outer petals. Trim the stem to form a flat base so that the artichokes will stand upright. Cut off one-fourth to one-third of the artichoke leaves straight across the top. Rub the cut surfaces right away with lemon juice to prevent browning. Stand the artichokes on their flat bases in a non-aluminum pot with about 2 inches of water. If desired, you can flavor the water with lemon juice and seasonings. Cover, and gently simmer the artichokes for 20 to 30 minutes. Drain.

Eating
The traditional way to eat a whole artichoke is with your hands. Remove the outer leaves one at a time, dip them into a sauce or flavored butter, and draw the wider portion of the leaf through the teeth to scrape the fleshy part into your mouth. Discard the leaves onto a spare plate. (You’ll be amazed at how quickly the "discard pile" grows.) Once all the leaves have been eaten, you’ll come to the lighter colored, pinkish cone of inner leaves, which hides the fuzzy choke. Gently twist the cone of leaves to remove it. With the tip of a teaspoon, scrape off the fuzzy part to reveal the heart. If you look closely at the hollowed, firm surface you’ll see the pebbly pattern left behind marking where each individual flower petal was anchored. Now you’ve reached the prize — the rich, succulent, artichoke heart, or flower base. It is the sweetest part of the artichoke plant, and is entirely edible. Cut it into bite-size pieces and enjoy the wonderful flavor. I'll give you some artichoke hearts and spinach dip recipes next, but if you aren't savoring artichokes and hollandaise, you are missing the main menu. Steam them for ten minutes and serve the leaves with a decent hollandaise. If you can't make a decent meal out of oysters on the half shell (6 for me, a couple dozen for you larger folk) and an artichoke, by God, you have not been paying attention. Life is for the living and if you aren't eating the good stuff, why on earth are you alive?

Life is too short to eat bad food or drink bad wine. The best of both are easily at hand. Drink deep and scarf up those oysters

Cooking Skills

The Ultimate Sour Cream Chocolate Cake

CAKE:

2 c. flour
2 c. sugar
1 c. water
3/4 c. sour cream
1/4 c. shortening
1 1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 eggs
4 oz. unsweetened chocolate, melted

FROSTING:

1/3 c. butter
3 oz. unsweetened chocolate, melted
3 c. confectioners sugar
1/2 c. sour cream
2 tsp. vanilla

CAKE: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 13 x 9 inch oblong pan. Measure all cake ingredients into large mixing bowl. Mix 1/2 minute on low speed, scraping bowl constantly. Beat 3 minutes at high speed, scraping bowl occasionally. Pour into pan and bake 40 to 45 minutes.

FROSTING: Mix butter and chocolate thoroughly. Blend in sugar. Stir in sour cream and vanilla. Beat until smooth.

Notes from the cook: don't overbeat the cake batter, you'll get tunnels instead of a fine crumb. Quit stirring as soon as the dry ingredients are combined. It's fine if the batter is a little lumpy.

Got a birthday in your future or a fourth of July party? This one is a winner. The frosting is to die for (unless you are one of those Ben and Jerry's cookie dough batter people. That cake will never get baked.) This is chocolate intensity. It is so good that it ought to be illegal.

No EEG

Bush's Passive Appeasement
By Steve Andreasen, Steve Andreasen was director for defense policy and arms control on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.

No one can accuse the Bush administration of making an active effort to appease North Korea or Iran. In fact, the administration has gone to great lengths to avoid even the appearance of "giving in" to Pyongyang or Tehran, refusing to engage in direct negotiations regarding their nuclear programs. Without negotiations, the reasoning appears to be, there can be no concessions, no agreement and no appeasement.

Or can there be? The administration seems to have forgotten the part about meeting the aggressor head-on. Indeed, the administration's approach might be called passive appeasement — and the absence of energetic diplomacy or credible military threat may be just as injurious to U.S. interests as an active agreement recognizing renegade nations as nuclear powers.

Take North Korea. In 1994, the Clinton administration made it clear that Pyongyang would not be allowed to reprocess fuel rods from its nuclear reactor to produce plutonium for weapons. A "red line" was drawn, not to be crossed, on pain of military force. That catalyzed the 1994 Agreed Framework, which froze North Korea's reactor, fuel rods and reprocessing capabilities in place.

During the latter half of the 1990s, it turns out, Pyongyang violated the accord and began a secret program to produce enriched uranium for nuclear arms — a clear violation of the framework, which was crafted to ensure a nuclear-free Korean peninsula. When the U.S. got wind of it and confronted North Korea in October 2002, North Korea kicked out international inspectors and went back to producing plutonium for arms. The Bush administration's response to this provocation? On the military side, North Korea shrewdly timed its actions to coincide with the administration's decision to put Iraq on the front burner. With the U.S. deploying roughly 300,000 troops, six carrier battle groups and 15 air wings to deal with Iraq, the administration has had few sabers available to rattle in Asia.

As for the U.S. diplomatic response, it might best be described as asleep at the wheel. The Bush administration rejected North Korea's demand for bilateral negotiations, agreeing only to six-party talks (Russia, China, Japan and South Korea in addition to the U.S. and North Korea). In the absence of meaningful U.S. incentives, it's an approach that has gotten nowhere.

I'd go further and call Bush's "foreign policy" brain-dead. In fact, besides invading Iraq, his foreign policy isn't detectable. His failure to engage China on monetary policy is costing us big-time in trade deficits. The man is clueless and has only yes-men around him in his second term cabinet.

Forbidding the Conversation

No Room For Dissent?

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, May 31, 2005; Page A17

Not long after, word came that the Rev. Tom Reese had been forced to resign as the editor of America magazine, the Jesuit weekly, at the end of a process begun under then-Cardinal Ratzinger. It seems that Reese was too willing to invite Catholics to his pages who did not agree with the totality of the Vatican's views. Not, mind you, that he didn't give top billing to the official view. Cardinal Ratzinger himself once wrote for Reese's magazine. But Father Tom, a moderate by temperament, was a bit too willing to broaden the community of discourse.

Liberal Catholics -- and many moderates, too -- were aghast. "For those who had hoped that the pastoral challenges of his new office might broaden Benedict's sympathies, this is a time of indignation, disappointment and increased apprehension," the editors of Commonweal, a lay Catholic magazine (with which I've had a long association), wrote. "If the moderate views expressed in America, views widely shared by the vast majority of lay Catholics, are judged suspect by the [Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith], how is the average Catholic to assess his or her own relationship to the church?"

Fay Vincent, the former baseball commissioner, made his own assessment. A couple of weeks ago he resigned from the board of trustees at the Jesuit-run Fairfield University and refused to accept an honorary degree from Sacred Heart University to protest what happened to Reese. "I'm really worried that some Catholic organizations, especially universities, are at some risk," Vincent told a local newspaper, according to the Associated Press. "How can you call yourself a university without free debate?"

Now there's a case to be made that those who don't like what's happening always have the option of, well, crossing the street to another church, or another magazine. The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, once a liberal Lutheran pastor and now a conservative Catholic priest, makes a forceful case for clear boundaries. Writing in the Boston Globe, Neuhaus argued that because America is "a Catholic magazine in the service of the church and its mission," it has a special obligation to uphold orthodoxy as defined by the pope. That's especially true, he said, on "publicly controversial questions such as the moral understanding of homosexuality, same-sex marriage and the exploitation of embryonic stem cells."

"On such questions, the church has clearly defined positions," Neuhaus wrote. "The practice of America suggested to some the magazine's neutrality or hostility to the church's teaching. Not surprisingly, they asked of the magazine, 'Whose side are you on?' " That last question is a good one, relevant to all traditions and not just to Catholics. I answer it differently from Neuhaus not only because I failed to see hostility toward the church in Reese's magazine, but also because I think we see tradition differently.

The Catholics Reese's magazine spoke to, and often for, are loyal to their tradition but also understand, as the philosopher Michael Walzer has put it, that "traditions are sites for arguments." Traditions stay alive by nurturing a spirit that is at once loving and critical. If every question is kept open, there are no answers. But if too many questions are closed, the answers the tradition offers become steadily less compelling, less fresh and less persuasive.

"Tradition is the living faith of the dead," wrote the great religious historian Jaroslav Pelikan. "Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." Father Reese stands for a living faith serene enough to argue with itself. I worry that's why he was asked to leave his post.

Exactly, E.J. And that is the reason I decided to "cross the street."

Human Sale

AP: Gitmo Detainees Say They Were Sold

By MICHELLE FAUL
Associated Press Writer

The U.S. Rewards for Justice program pays only for information that leads to the capture of suspected terrorists identified by name, said Steve Pike, a State Department spokesman. Some $57 million has been paid under the program, according to its Web site. It offers rewards up to $25 million for information leading to the capture of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

But a wide variety of detainees at the U.S. lockup at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, alleged they were sold into capture. Their names and other identifying information were blacked out in the transcripts from the tribunals, which were held to determine whether prisoners were correctly classified as enemy combatants.

One detainee who said he was an Afghan refugee in Pakistan accused the country's intelligence service of trumping up evidence against him to get bounty money from the U.S.

"When I was in jail, they said I needed to pay them money and if I didn't pay them, they'd make up wrong accusations about me and sell me to the Americans and I'd definitely go to Cuba," he told the tribunal. "After that I was held for two months and 20 days in their detention, so they could make wrong accusations about me and my (censored), so they could sell us to you."

Another prisoner said he was on his way to Germany in 2001 when he was captured and sold for "a briefcase full of money" then flown to Afghanistan before being sent to Guantanamo.

"It's obvious. They knew Americans were looking for Arabs, so they captured Arabs and sold them - just like someone catches a fish and sells it," he said. The detainee said he was seized by "mafia" operatives somewhere in Europe and sold to Americans because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time - an Arab in a foreign country.

A detainee who said he was a Saudi businessman claimed, "The Pakistani police sold me for money to the Americans."

"This was part of a roundup of all foreigners and Arabs in that area," of Pakistan near the Afghan border, he said, telling the tribunal he went to Pakistan in November 2001 to help Afghan refugees.

The military-appointed representative for one detainee - who said he was a Taliban fighter - said the prisoner told him he and his fellow fighters "were tricked into surrendering to Rashid Dostum's forces. Their agreement was that they would give up their arms and return home. But Dostum's forces sold them for money to the U.S."

Several detainees who appeared to be ethnic Chinese Muslims - known as Uighurs - described being betrayed by Pakistani tribesmen along with about 100 Arabs.

I don't know what the Geneva Conventions have to say about this, but it is a policy ripe for abuse. Old hatreds and rivalries and ethnic strife are going to have people standing in line to get paid to turn in old enemies. This is stupid and unproductive, and says a great deal about how truly clueless Bushco is about prosecuting the so-called Global War on Terror.

Flatline

Working people, watch your wallets

May 29, 2005

BY WILLIAM O'ROURKE

The public is catching on to the deal being doled out to workers generally. It isn't management but the workers at United who end up paying for all the tumult in the airline industry. It's not their fault that United overexpanded during the 1990s stock market bubble; not their fault that low-cost, bottom-feeder airlines can use the physical infrastructure created by the legacy airlines and pay none of the costs, but reap the benefits. It's not their fault that United didn't make a good bet on the oil futures market, like Southwest Airlines did. And United's workers weren't responsible for 9/11 and its effects on air travel.

Progressive economists have offered a number of solutions for the plight of legacy airlines like United. There could be a $1 or $2 surcharge on airline tickets to restore the underfunded pension plans. A tax solution, generated from the Abandoned Mine Land Fund, was reluctantly brokered in 1992 by Elizabeth Dole, when she was the first President Bush's secretary of labor, to help fund a mine workers retirees' health plan.

In 1919, legacy railroads created the industrywide Railroad Retirement plan. Similarly, it is foolish to see United as a single company in trouble. Its troubles come from industrywide practices, and the solution is industry wide, too: All airline workers could be put into an airline retirement fund similar to the railroad fund.

Of course, all such solutions are anathema to the current Bush administration. It's another case where the son differs from the father. It's sink or swim out there -- for workers, but not for bosses. The buck -- or lack of bucks -- is passed down to employees. They shoulder most of the burden.

Recent reports make that clear. In April, the Wall Street Journal pointed out that ''The U.S. Labor Department says that hourly wages for private-sector workers who aren't bosses rose 2.6 percent to nearly $16 an hour between March 2004 and March 2005, which is short of the 3.1 percent increase in consumer prices over that period." In other words, wages aren't even keeping up with inflation.

Regardless, workers still are blamed. In Chicago, there are the perennial complaints about the wages paid to union workers at McCormick Place and continuing dire predictions of what those costs will do to convention business. What goes unsaid by those complaining -- but not undone by businesses everywhere -- is that other people would work for lower pay -- and undocumented workers would work for even less, practically for free. It's the same kind of worldwide economic policy the president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, espouses: the preeminence of cheap labor above all.

But, as the Wall Street Journal noted, ''Not everyone's wages are sinking.'' For United workers, the sinking will go on after they retire, given the caps on payments the PBGC will make to pensioners if it takes over United's plan. The Bush administration is all for caps -- when they limit what is paid out, not when they are raised to take in more revenue, as in the case of the easiest possible Social Security fix. Indeed, one reason for the 75-year shortfall forecast for Social Security is that wages for most people haven't gone up at the rate Social Security actuaries had predicted. What goes around, comes around.

How are you doing? I haven't had a raise in ten years.

Believing Badly

via teacherken, who always reads the BoGlo, even when I forget to:

America's mess, not Bush's

By James Carroll | May 31, 2005

MUCH AS Democrats and liberals hate to admit it, the Bush disaster did not begin with him. That he swatted aside the structures of international law as a mode of responding to Osama bin Laden was prepared for by Washington's habit, begun in the Reagan years, of dismissing international courts, ignoring treaties, and refusing to meet obligations to the United Nations and other transnational bodies.

The International Criminal Court, just coming into existence as America's war on terrorism was mobilized, fulfilled the impulse to replace revenge with adjudication. Completing the Nuremberg legacy, this new court would have been the perfect arena in which to make world historic cases against Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein, but George W. Bush, in one of his first acts as president, had ''unsigned" the ICC treaty.

This momentous act of political destruction had been prepared for, though, by Bill Clinton, who, despite signing the treaty, had never argued for it. Both presidents were protective of the US military because the Pentagon regarded itself as a ready target of ICC prosecution, a fear that seemed paranoid until revelations both that American soldiers routinely abused prisoners in Iraq and high Pentagon officials unilaterally rejected norms set by the Geneva Convention. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo were epiphanies of a new Pentagon lawlessness, but it was rooted in several decades' worth of dismissal of international law.

Ironically, US military initiatives, including the invasion of Iraq, were justified with the language of human rights, as if the promotion of elections and the liberation of females defined the heart of Washington's agenda. This fulfilled a trend that began when liberals and neo-conservatives found common ground in the Clinton-era ideal of ''humanitarian intervention," as if every war in history hadn't been justified by its perpetrator as humanitarian.

The measure of the humanitarian character of interventions, of course, is taken by what happens on the ground in the countries at issue. In Afghanistan and Iraq, new levels of sectarianism, ethnic conflict, warlordism, drug trafficking, and radical Islamism are all evident in the broader context of destroyed infrastructure, widespread malnourishment, obliterated civil society.

Bush administration officials crow that girls in Afghanistan and Iraq can at last attend schools as equals, without acknowledging that, with rare exceptions in heavily protected enclaves in both countries, there are no schools for anyone to attend. The two countries had been human rights nightmares before Bush's wars, but the wars themselves -- destroying cities and villages to save them -- hardly represent improvements in the lives of ordinary people. Even under the best of outcomes -- if, say, civil war can be avoided -- Afghanistan and Iraq will be decades in recovering from America's self-proclaimed good intentions.

Carroll is being very narrow in his vision. American militarism and colonialism have a much longer history, he seems to have forgotten the Phillippines and the War of 1812, begun when we invaded what is now the Canadian province of Ontario.

Where Carroll is correct: Americans have always had expansionist dreams, usually crafted in the language of American goodness and exceptionalism. That's the bullshit language that Bushco is using to excuse the rape (literal and figurative) of Iraq, and Americans may not buy it in the Gallup polls, but are doing little about it as a practical matter.

Fleeing

Bush's Political Capital Spent, Voices in Both Parties Suggest
Poll Numbers Sag as Setbacks Mount at Home and Abroad

By Peter Baker and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 31, 2005; Page A02

Two days after winning reelection last fall, President Bush declared that he had earned plenty of "political capital, and now I intend to spend it." Six months later, according to Republicans and Democrats alike, his bank account has been significantly drained.

In the past week alone, the Republican-led House defied his veto threat and passed legislation promoting stem cell research; Senate Democrats blocked confirmation, at least temporarily, of his choice for U.N. ambassador; and a rump group of GOP senators abandoned the president in his battle to win floor votes for all of his judicial nominees.

With his approval ratings in public opinion polls at the lowest level of his presidency, Bush has been stymied so far in his campaign to restructure Social Security. On the international front, violence has surged again in Iraq in recent weeks, dispelling much of the optimism generated by the purple-stained-finger elections back in January, while allies such as Egypt and Uzbekistan have complicated his campaign to spread democracy.

The series of setbacks on the domestic front could signal that the president has weakened leverage over his party, a situation that could embolden the opposition, according to analysts and politicians from both sides. Bush faces the potential of a summer of discontent when his capacity to muscle political Washington into following his lead seems to have diminished and few easy victories appear on the horizon.

"He has really burned up whatever mandate he had from that last election," said Leon E. Panetta, who served as White House chief of staff during President Bill Clinton's second term. "You can't slam-dunk issues in Washington. You can't just say, 'This is what I want done' and by mandate get it done. It's a lesson everybody has to learn, and sometimes you learn it the hard way."

Through more than four years in the White House, the signature of Bush's leadership has been that he does not panic in the face of bad poll numbers. Yet many Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the lobbyist corridor of K Street worry about a season of drift and complain that the White House has not listened to their concerns. In recent meetings, House Republicans have discussed putting more pressure on the White House to move beyond Social Security and talk up different issues, such as health care and tax reform, according to Republican officials who asked not to be named to avoid angering Bush's team.

"There is a growing sense of frustration with the president and the White House, quite frankly," said an influential Republican member of Congress. "The term I hear most often is 'tin ear,' " especially when it comes to pushing Social Security so aggressively at a time when the public is worried more about jobs and gasoline prices. "We could not have a worse message at a worse time."

No, Karl Rove is not the current incarnation of Niccolo Machiavelli, he's a marginal figure who may understand Texas, but not the broader American scene. Bush is in trouble and he's taking the GOP with him. Coming into the midterm elections, watch the congressional repubs cut their ties. "RINO" is going to be a real theme in the coming year.

Get Out of Jail Free Card

Robert Scheer:
A Cover-Up as Shameful as Tillman's Death
Once again it has taken grieving relatives to point out that the Bush administration will exploit even a heroic death for its own partisan purposes.

As with the widows of Sept. 11 who demanded that our obfuscating leaders investigate what went wrong on that terrible day, or the wounded Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who resisted efforts to make her into some kind of Rambo figure, so relatives of late NFL star Pat Tillman are demanding to know why their celebrated war hero son's death in 2004 was exploited for public relations purposes by the U.S. military and the administration.

"They blew up their poster boy," Tillman's father, Patrick, a San Jose lawyer, told the Washington Post last week. He joined his former wife to demand accountability for the latest military cover-up to happen on Commander in Chief Bush's watch. High-ranking Army officials, he said, told "outright lies."

"After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this," Tillman said. "They purposely interfered with the investigation …. I think they thought they could control it, and they realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a handbasket if the truth about his death got out."

A devastating series of investigations and Post stories has shown that the Army's command structure was eager to cover up the embarrassing truth: that Pat Tillman, who turned down a $3.6-million contract with the Arizona Cardinals to join the Army Rangers after 9/11, was accidentally killed by his fellow Rangers while on patrol in Afghanistan a year ago.

Last spring, after months of increasingly damaging reports exposing the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and cover-up, the administration found some public relations relief in the sad, patriotic tale of a man who spurned fame and fortune to make "the ultimate sacrifice in the war on terror," in the words of a White House spokesman at the time. A nationally televised memorial service and a Silver Star commendation cemented Tillman's place as the nation's first war hero since the story of Lynch's capture and phony details of her rescue were foisted on the public in 2003.

Now, thanks to the reporting of the Post and the fury of Tillman's parents, we know that the military's top commanders were covering up the truth to protect their image, and that of the Bush administration's costly and deadly "nation-building" exercises in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Although "soldiers on the scene said they were immediately sure Tillman was killed by a barrage of American bullets," according to the Post, and "a new Army report on the death shows that top Army officials, including the theater commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, were told that Tillman's death was fratricide days before the service," Army officials decided not to inform Tillman's family or the public until weeks after the memorial. And even then, they provided no details and answered no questions, saying only that friendly fire "probably" killed Tillman.

"The fact that he was the ultimate team player and he watched his own men kill him is absolutely heartbreaking and tragic," Tillman's mother, Mary, told the Post. "The fact that they lied about it afterward is disgusting."

The soldiers on the ground said they burned Tillman's bullet-riddled uniform and body armor, the Post reported, because they considered them a biohazard, and because, as one said, "we knew at the time, based on taking the pictures and walking around it, it was a fratricide…. so we weren't thinking about proof or anything."

So, given all this, why has nobody high in the Army chain of command, such as Abizaid, been held accountable for this cover-up?

Did President Bush know about it? If not, why not? After all, this was the most prominent soldier to die since Bush took office four years earlier, a prize recruit for his controversial spate of foreign invasions.

In any case, the White House has refrained from making any public apologies for the cover-up. Indeed, Mary Tillman said she was particularly offended that even after the facts were known, Bush exploited her son's death with a message played before an Arizona Cardinal game last fall before the election.

"Maybe lying's not a big deal anymore," Patrick Tillman said. "Pat's dead, and this isn't going to bring him back. But these guys should have been held up to scrutiny, right up the chain of command, and no one has."

Accountability is an idea which seems to have gone out of favor, unless it applies to thee and me. Or Bill Clinton's blow jobs. Perpetrators of war crimes, like W and Rumsfeld get off scott free.

Payback is Hell

Unceremonious end to Army career
Outspoken general fights demotion

May 29, 2005
By Tom Bowman

WASHINGTON - John Riggs spent 39 years in the Army, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery during the Vietnam War and working his way up to become a three-star general entrusted with creating a high-tech Army for the 21st century.

But on a spring day last year, Riggs was told by senior Army officials that he would be retired at a reduced rank, losing one of his stars because of infractions considered so minor that they were not placed in his official record.

He was given 24 hours to leave the Army. He had no parade in review, no rousing martial music, no speeches or official proclamations praising his decades in uniform, the trappings that normally herald a high-level military retirement.

Instead, Riggs went to a basement room at Fort Myer, Va., and signed some mandatory forms. Then a young sergeant mechanically presented him with a flag and a form letter of thanks from President Bush.

"That's the coldest way in the world to leave," Riggs, 58, said in a drawl that betrays his rural roots in southeast Missouri. "It's like being buried and no one attends your funeral."

So what cost Riggs his star?

His Pentagon superiors said he allowed outside contractors to perform work they were not supposed to do, creating "an adverse command climate."

But some of the general's supporters believe the motivation behind his demotion was politics. Riggs was blunt and outspoken on a number of issues and publicly contradicted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld by arguing that the Army was overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan and needed more troops.

"They all went bat s- - when that happened," recalled retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, a one-time Pentagon adviser who ran reconstruction efforts in Iraq in the spring of 2003. "The military part of [the defense secretary's office] has been politicized. If [officers] disagree, they are ostracized and their reputations are ruined."

Little-used punishment

A senior officer's loss of a star is a punishment seldom used, and then usually for the most serious offenses, such as dereliction of duty or command failures, adultery or misuse of government funds or equipment.

Over the past several decades, generals and admirals faced with far more serious official findings - scandals at the Navy's Tailhook Convention, the Air Force Academy and Abu Ghraib prison, for example - have continued in their careers or retired with no loss of rank.

Les Brownlee, who was then acting Army secretary and who ordered that Riggs be reduced in rank, said he stands by the demotion. "I read the [Army inspector general's] report and made that judgment. I happen to think it was that serious. Maybe I have a higher standard for these things," Brownlee said in an interview. "I still believe it was the right decision."

Rumsfeld's office had no comment for this story, referring all questions to the Army, which issued a statement.

The two contracting infractions "reflected negatively on Lt. Gen. Riggs's overall leadership and revealed an adverse command climate," the Army statement said. "Based on the review of the investigation and Lt. Gen. Riggs's comments, the Acting Secretary of the Army [Brownlee] concluded that Lt. Gen. Riggs did not serve satisfactorily in the grade of lieutentant general."

Garner and 40 other Riggs supporters - including an unusually candid group of retired generals - are trying to help restore his rank.

But even his most ardent supporters concede that his appeal has little chance of succeeding and that an act of Congress might be required.

See Wayne's post below. Vindictiveness is hardly good policy.

The Usual Suspects

U.S. military mistakenly detains Sunni official

By Nancy A. Youssef and Yasser Salihee
Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military said Monday that it mistakenly detained a top Sunni political leader, drawing complaints from Iraqi authorities who say such mistakes are undermining efforts to include Sunnis in the nation's political process.

Mohsen Abdel Hamid, the secretary-general of the Iraqi Islamic Party, said a group of American soldiers came into his home around 4 a.m., ransacked it and detained him and his eight bodyguards.

Hamid, who leads the largest Sunni political party, said he was interrogated all day before he was released at the U.S. Embassy about 12 hours later. He said he learned that his three sons also had been detained. They also were released.

Iraqi officials have said the new government will not survive - and the insurgency will not be thwarted - unless Sunnis, the nation's largest minority, are included in the political process. Members of the Shiite-dominated National Assembly have reached out to Sunni leaders such as Hamid, who had agreed to participate.

Laith Kubba, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim al Jaafari, said it was the second time in a week that a Sunni leader has been the target of a raid shortly after engaging in the political process, although he did not elaborate. He said the troops often do not know they are detaining Sunni leaders who are part of the new government.

"This is undermining the political process, and what the government is trying to do in including the Sunnis," Kubba said.

Hamid declined to give details about his interrogation. "I was blindfolded by the American soldiers who interrogated me for all the day long about different things that I can't mention," he said.

The U.S. military said in a statement that after it apprehended and interviewed Hamid, "it was determined that he was detained by mistake and should be released," adding "coalition forces regret any inconvenience and acknowledge Mr. Hamid's cooperation in resolving this matter."

Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman, said he did not know how the mistake happened or what kind of investigation the soldiers were conducting.

Hamid's arrest fueled public perception that coalition and Iraqi forces do not know how to fight the insurgency. Residents said they round up any Sunnis and call them potential insurgents.

The insurgency is largely Sunni, according to U.S. and Iraqi security officials.

Sunni leaders held a press conference and said they did not understand why such raids were occurring, particularly when Sunnis are embracing the political process and encouraging people to join the Iraqi army and police forces.

"We're surprised by these raids. They seem designed to obstruct all channels for the Sunnis to join the democratic process in Iraq," said Adnan al Dulaimy, a leader of Sunni Endowments, a group that manages mosques.

Hamid opened his home to reporters after his release. A Knight Ridder reporter who went inside saw that every room and even the refrigerator had been ransacked.

Oh great. We're arresting the good guys.

Growing Stories

You've moved me to tears this weekend with your stories, told privately for the most part. I hope that you will learn that narrative is what makes an animal human and that your story needs to be told. Narrative is a public art, rather like being human and going to the grocery store. It needs to be shared in order to grow, and that is what a story needs to do. They have a personal root, but that isn't where the branches are.

Come and leaf out.

The Coming Plague

Kossak G2geek writes this (much on my mind this evening) about the coming possible avian influenza epidemic:

Ideally you want to self-quarantine yourself & family/housemates for the first month following detection of the first case in your area.

See also Scientific American (March 2005 issue) about this: the best way to stop a pandemic in its tracks is for everyone to stay home (self-quarantine) for the first couple of weeks it's in their area.

What you need to do to prepare isn't much different than what's needed for your local natural disasters (storms, floods, earthquakes, etc.).

Consider also the possibilty that routine breakdowns in utilities and services could take longer than usual to fix, in the event the power company, water/sewer department, and private contractors (plumbers etc.) are short-staffed during the crisis.

For example an otherwise "normal" localized power outage that would ordinarily be fixed same or next day, might take a few days to fix, during which time food stored in your fridge might go bad.

Have two weeks' to a month's worth of food on hand. Include foods that don't need refrigeration and can be cooked under emergency conditions such as over an outdoor bonfire.

Have two weeks' to a month's worth of clean water on hand (same reason: in case there's a plumbing or public water supply problem that can't be fixed in the normal amount of time). You can store water in half-gallon or 2-liter juice or soda bottles that have been washed and rinsed thoroughly. Add a couple of drops of plain chlorine bleach (not scented bleach or bleach/detergent blends) to each container to keep the water sanitary.

Have some cash on hand to meet emergency expenses for two weeks to a month. Get the cash before there is any sign of a flu crisis. If you don't particularly like or trust your bank, move your accounts to a local credit union, preferably one that's small enough that they know their customers by name: do this now, well ahead of the crisis. If you're in tight economic conditions, put aside a little cash every week, whatever you can spare.

Keep your gas tank full. You're going to buy the gas anyway, you may as well get in the habit of filling up when you're at 1/2 or 3/4 of a tank, rather than waiting until you're at 1/4 or less.

Public transit is a potential hazard, if you're riding during peak hours under crowded conditions. See about changing your work hours so you start and leave earlier or later than normal to avoid crowds. Otherwise you might have to consider going to work earlier and coming home later, even if it means wasting time at both ends.

Plan to do re-supply shopping during either the early morning or late night hours when the stores are least crowded. Do a couple of test runs now so you know the hours of your local grocery stores etc. Consider the possibility that some or most stores may reduce their hours if they are short-staffed.

Buy appropriate facemasks now. Assume one mask per day in normal usage, or as per the instructions on the package. What you want are masks that are rated to stop the transmission of germs. You might also want to buy a box of disposable surgical gloves, to wear when in public places.

Germs hang out on surfaces, and H5N1 is known to be highly persistent. The most notorious surfaces for germs are doorknobs, telephone receivers (especially payphones), countertops, desktops, and light switches. Also be concerned with public drinking fountains, vending machines, public bathrooms, anything that the general public handles. Don't get paranoid, just be aware and prudent.

Improve your hand-washing habits starting now. Wash your hands before you go to the toilet as well as after (before, because you don't want germs from your hands getting on/in sensitive areas of your body that aren't exposed to sunlight). Wash your hands before handling food or eating. Wash your hands before touching your face or blowing your nose. Wash your hands after blowing your nose (to prevent spreading germs to others). Wash your hands when you get home from work each day.

Accordingly, buy more soap than normal, keep track of how much you use, and plan to have a month's worth at home.

Also buy a couple of bottles of "Purell" or similar alcohol-based hand sanitizing lotion. Keep a small bottle with you when you're out of the house in case you need to wash your hands but can't otherwise (i.e. public bathroom out of soap).

Also more detergent and bleach than normal. Under some conditions it might be prudent to change from "work clothes" to "at-home clothes" at the end of each day, and have a good scrub or even a shower before putting your "at-home clothes" on.

If you use public laundromats or communal washing machines, consider they may be a risk factor (warm, humid air; other users' infected clothing; etc.). If you can't afford to buy a standard size washing machine, consider a "compact washer," decent ones cost about $250. and can be ordered online. Otherwise, practice at washing your clothes by hand in the sink or tub, and drying them on an outdoor or indoor clothes line, or drying rack (about $25). Note, never hang clothes near a heater: major fire hazard. A small fan can provide enough air circulation to dry clothes overnight indoors.

Depending on your job, look into the option of telecommuting (working from home), and start taking steps to make that happen (e.g. start with one day a week, increase to two, talk to your supervisor about going to full telecommute mode when the flu hits your area.

If you work in retail or otherwise have to deal with the public, insist on your right to wear facemask and surgical gloves. If your workplace is unionized, talk to your union representaties about this issue now, and give them the facts they will need to make the case.

Consider buying one or two courses of Tamiflu for each member of your household. If you plan to do this, do it now, because during a crisis it may not be possible. Get a prescription and buy it from a reputable local pharmacy; do not order via online pharmacies as there are plenty of fake / counterfeit pills going around.

Talk to your friends and family about forming a mutual financial support network in the event that one or more of you has to leave a job for flu safety reasons. Organize this in advance, including the rules that govern how much money each person should keep on hand to contribute if it becomes necessary, what conditions justify someone quitting a job to stay safe, how you'll decide to allocate resources, and so on. Have those discussions well ahead of a crisis, and write down your agreements and have everyone sign the document.

Talk to your city government about its preparedness plans. Talk to your city council member, your local director of public health, and/or other officials as needed. Write to your local officials. Keep a moderate tone when you write.

If you travel by air during the holidays, consider alternatives, and make those plans now. The most prudent thing to do is to hold family gatherings at times other than the usual calendar holidays. Travel during off-peak seasons when planes are not crowded; tickets are also cheaper during those times.

If you have to fly on a crowded plane, wear an appropriate face mask and surgical gloves. When someone coughs or sneezes, germs can travel up to seven rows ahead of them. When you book your tickets, tell the booking agent you're planning to wear a mask, and ask if there are any security issues (i.e. people in face masks in airports). Bring a couple of extra sets of masks and gloves with you in your carry-ons when you fly. When you board the aircraft, politely ask the flight attendant to make a safety announcement to ask people to cover their mouths with a tissue if they have to cough or sneeze. If you're seated next to someone who appears to be ill, ask to be moved further back in the airplane.

That was supposed to be a short list. Hmm. Most of this stuff is basically minor inconvenience, and it could save your life. Just take reasonable steps, and put up with the inconveniences. The risks of wasted time and money in the event this turns out to be a false alarm, are a heck of a lot less than the risk to your life if this is anywhere near as serious as it appears.

This is very, very good advice.

I'm putting together a new wiki with Revere and DemFromCT on Avian Influenza. When docs and epidemiologists start taking this seriously, you might want to, too. We'll be live before the end of the week. Tell your friends and relations, this is material they need to know. Check in often, there will be new news as often as it happens. It is time to start paying attention and your political bent no longer matters. Flu doesn't care who it infects.

Friends, docs and epidemiologists are worrying about this. If you aren't, you are condemning yourself and your loved ones to needless suffering. If you and your family don't remember the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918-19, I suggest you check in here. This is serious, the time to prepare is now.

Taking a chance is taking a chance. I'm not a gambler.

Never-Never Land

America, a Symbol of . . .

By BOB HERBERT
Published: May 30, 2005

Amnesty International noted last week in its annual report on human rights around the world that more than 500 detainees continue to be held "without charge or trial" at Guantánamo. Locking people up without explaining why, and without giving them a chance to prove their innocence, seems a peculiar way to advance the cause of freedom in the world.

It's now known that many of the individuals swept up and confined at Guantánamo and elsewhere were innocent. The administration says it has evidence it could use to prove the guilt of detainees currently at Guantánamo, but much of the evidence is secret and therefore cannot be revealed.

This is where the war on terror meets Never-Never Land.

President Bush's close confidante, Karen Hughes, has been chosen to lead a high-profile State Department effort to repair America's image. The Bush crowd apparently thinks this is a perception problem, as opposed to a potentially catastrophic crisis that will not be eased without substantive policy changes.

This is much more than an image problem. The very idea of what it means to be American is at stake. The United States is a country that as a matter of policy (and in the name of freedom) "renders" people to regimes that specialize in the art of torture.

"How," asked Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, "can our State Department denounce countries for engaging in torture while the C.I.A. secretly transfers detainees to the very same countries for interrogation?"

Ms. Hughes said in March that she would do her best "to stand for what President Bush called the nonnegotiable demands of human dignity." Someone should tell her that there's not a lot of human dignity in the venues where torture is inflicted.

The U.S. would regain some of its own lost dignity if a truly independent commission were established to thoroughly investigate the interrogation and detention operations associated with the war on terror and the war in Iraq. A real investigation would be traumatic because it would expose behavior most Americans would never want associated with their country. But in the long run it would be extremely beneficial.

William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in an interview last week that it's important to keep in mind how policies formulated at the highest levels of government led inexorably to the abusive treatment of prisoners.

"The critical point is the deliberateness of this policy," he said. "The president gave the green light. The secretary of defense issued the rules. The Justice Department provided the rationale. And the C.I.A. tried to cover it up."

When is this going to break out? We've got the smoking gun.

In Body and Soul

Remember the Wounded
We should recognize and honor all sacrifices for America.

By John Wheeler

Monday, May 30, 2005; Page A21

Thanks to forward surgical teams, in mini-hospitals close to battle, the ratio of wounded to killed is 8 to 1 in Iraq, up from 5 to 1 in Vietnam. Surgeon Atul Gawande wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine about one Iraq case, "Injuries like his were unsurvivable in previous wars. The cost, however, can be high. The airman lost one leg above the knee, the other in a hip disarticulation, his right hand, and part of his face. How he and others like him will be able to live and function remains an open question."

Lew's [Puller's] case shows the need for recognition, support and encouragement for these wounded, especially to avert depression, isolation and suicide. Like Lew, many wounded veterans can continue to be very productive, but they can at the same time be afflicted by potentially fatal aftereffects.

Unfortunately, no Memorial Day ceremony or war memorial that I have seen has explicitly honored the wounded. In fact, under House Concurrent Resolution 587 of Feb. 10, 1966, Memorial Day is simply for paying "tribute to those who gave their lives."

This oversight needs correction. We need to honor the wounded as well as those who died. Their numbers are growing, and society needs to both acknowledge their sacrifice and understand their situation. And it needs, through this tribute, to give support and encouragement to the families of the wounded -- families that bear great anguish, time devoted to care and economic loss.

Some wounds are not as visible as others. The Purple Heart excludes post-traumatic stress disorder as well as infections and disease that often become evident after a veteran has left the war zone. The Department of Veterans Affairs has reported, concerning Afghanistan and Iraq, that these new wars "will produce a new generation of veterans at risk for the chronic mental health problems that result, in part, from exposure to the stress, adversity, and trauma of war-zone experiences. . . . [I]t is important to . . . raise the awareness of civilians back home, to prepare loved ones for soldiers' return."

The nation and its government need to give some thought to ways to honor the wounded and to recognize the full range of impairments suffered by those who have served and sacrificed for their country. Topics for discussion could include officially expanding the purpose of Memorial Day, establishing medals for cases excluded from the Purple Heart (severe illness in the war zone or later, and death in battlefield accidents), and mentioning the wounded, veterans who suffer illnesses and their families in war memorials. This is a good day to start.

Because it is home to both Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Bethesda Naval Medical Hospital, we in my area are probably more aware of the wounded than is the rest of the country. But Wheeler, is correct, official recognition should be extended to the soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors who have been wounded, whether their wounds are visible or not. We see the invisible wounds in the faces of the homeless in the metro area, who are disproportionately veterans.

Memorial Day 2005

Church Going

by Philip Larkin

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
"Here endeth" much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognizable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation -- marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these -- for whom was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

The Disownership Society, Again

A Bane Amid The Housing Boom: Rising Foreclosures

By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 30, 2005; Page A01

PHILADELPHIA -- To walk Thayer Street in northeast Philadelphia is to count, door by door, the economic devastation afflicting a working-class neighborhood. On a single block, 18 of the 42 brick rowhouses have gone into foreclosure in the past three years.

There's Marciela Perez, who fell ill with cancer, lacked health insurance and stopped making mortgage payments. Barrel-chested Richard Hidalgo, who got divorced and could no longer make his monthly nut. And Mike O'Mara, a rawboned and crew-cut truck driver who took on too much debt, lost his job and fell behind on his mortgage.

"Mortgage companies convinced us to refinance, and each time our bill went up," O'Mara said as he surveyed his narrow street from his shaded front porch. "You fall behind and they swoop down on you."

Philadelphia, its suburbs and indeed much of Pennsylvania have experienced a foreclosure epidemic as low-income homeowners take on mortgage debt they cannot afford. In 2000, the Philadelphia sheriff auctioned 300 to 400 foreclosed properties a month; now he handles more than 1,000 a month. Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, had record auctions of foreclosed homes, and officials speak of a "Depression-era" problem. The foreclosures fall particularly hard on black and Latino families.

For some American homeowners, the greatest housing boom in U.S. history has delivered riches. They repeatedly tap their homes for equity and use the cash to purchase granite countertops, a BMW, even a trip to the Super Bowl. But there's a dark side -- a sharp rise in foreclosures that is destroying the single greatest generator of personal wealth for most Americans.

Foreclosure rates rose in 47 states in March, according to Foreclosure.com, an online foreclosure listing service. The rates in Florida, Texas and Colorado are more than twice the national average. Even in New York City and Boston, where real estate markets are white-hot, foreclosures are rising in working-class neighborhoods.

It's the same old brew: increased income instability, no safety net to guard against catastrophic medical expenses, little if any regulation of predatory lenders, and of course a new bankruptcy law to tilt the table even further against ordinary Americans.

The President says he wants to help average Americans build wealth. That's baloney, of course: he simply wants to end Social Security, and private accounts are his excuse. If he really wanted to do that, he'd help protect Americans from losing everything they've got - and then give them a better hand when it comes to sharing in this country's prosperity. The way into the ownership society is by earning enough money so you can own something.

More of the WaPo story behind the cut.

Virginia, Maryland and the District have relatively low foreclosure rates -- analysts say troubled owners in those booming markets can still sell their homes before facing foreclosure.

Should the nation's housing bubbles deflate, as many economists and federal officials expect, the foreclosures could prefigure a national crisis. Americans now shoulder record levels of housing debt -- more than 8 percent of homeowners spend at least half their income on their mortgage.

"We are clearly seeing a spike in foreclosures in a number of our major urban areas," said Julie L. Williams, acting U.S. comptroller of the currency, whose agency regulates the nation's banks. "It can lead to a downward spiral for neighborhoods. If we are not careful, the American dream can quickly turn into the American nightmare."

A recent study in Chicago found that rising foreclosures, and attendant social dislocation, fuel increases in crime rates.

State and federal regulators place much of the blame for the foreclosure problem at the feet of mortgage brokers and bankers, who have crafted ever-riskier ways for Americans with poor credit to buy homes. Interest-only and adjustable-rate mortgages account for 63 percent of new mortgages.

But many policymakers say the rise in foreclosures leads to a larger question: Is the push to boost homeownership -- successive presidential administrations have strongly promoted it -- backfiring? As home prices and personal debt rise to record levels, they note, homeownership has become an albatross for millions of Americans, destroying rather than creating wealth.

Officials at Fannie Mae, the federally chartered mortgage giant designed to expand homeownership, suggest that the solution lies with more counseling and fine-tuning of mortgages for lower-income families. But the Pennsylvania Banking Department is skeptical. It commissioned a study of 14 counties -- urban, suburban and rural -- and found that foreclosures had spiked in each county in the past four years.

"We've had a national agenda that's putting people into homeownership who are not ready for it," said A. William Schenck III, Pennsylvania's secretary of banking and a former bank president. "This is a fact that the nation must deal with unless we want to wreck the credit of a lot of middle-class Americans."

A Rude Awakening

Six years ago, Cynthia Boyd, 42, signed mortgage documents and lived a dream. The food aide at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children had taken ownership of a three-bedroom rowhouse in the Olney neighborhood of Philadelphia.

"This was the first house I'd ever owned," she said. "I didn't think it'd ever happen."

Then Boyd got sick and had family problems. She fell down a mortgage hole. She asked the original mortgage company to cut her a break, but it had already sold her mortgage to another lender. She tried -- unsuccessfully -- to file for bankruptcy in hopes of forestalling foreclosure. Soon her monthly payment doubled because she faced penalties for falling behind. She also owed $10,000 in back payments and attorney fees. Then the sheriff's office added a charge for processing the foreclosure: $4,000.

Boyd felt like curling into a fetal position. "I was fighting so hard to save my house," she said. "I just kept thinking to myself: You're going to lose your house." For now, she is holding on to the house, but just barely.

Stories like this are heard again and again in Philadelphia. "When a lot of homeowners get into trouble, it doesn't take long to turn into big trouble," said John Dodds, director of the Philadelphia Unemployment Project.

At first glance, the high foreclosure rates in Pennsylvania seem paradoxical. The average Pennsylvania homeowner has one of the highest credit scores in the nation, saves more than the average American, and is less likely to be unemployed or divorced.

But the Reinvestment Fund, a Philadelphia-based think tank, analyzed 22,979 foreclosures for the state Banking Department and found a more problematic profile. Those homeowners, most of whom are blacks, Latinos or working-class whites, live close to the economic margin.

They have low incomes and little or no health insurance -- 40 percent of those who sought emergency foreclosure help cited medical costs as the cause of their distress.

"For lots of these folks, homeownership is a dangerous, precarious existence," said Ira Goldstein, policy director for the fund. "Foreclosures can become like a contagion in these neighborhoods."

Few of these homeowners were tutored in home buying, and 70 percent relied on "subprime" mortgage brokers, which specialize in buyers with bad credit and charge interest rates between 8 and 12 percent, far above market interest rates of 6 percent or less.

Said Williams, the acting comptroller of the currency: "We've produced a new class of lenders willing to take on riskier and riskier borrowers at a very high price. Many of the products are nothing more than time bombs."

On average, at-risk Philadelphia homeowners purchased their homes in the mid- to late 1990s and faced a foreclosure filing four years later. Benigno Diaz, 55, was one of them. He cleans floors at the Philadelphia airport every night. A few years ago, he hurt his knee and went on disability -- which paid 60 percent of his annual $28,000 salary. He fell behind on his home loan.

His mortgage company demanded that he make double payments to catch up. He couldn't manage that. Then he found his house was on a foreclosure list. "I'm like, wow, are you kidding me, man?" Diaz said. He never bounced a check, he said -- "I'm just two months behind." He is hanging on for now.

Irv Ackelsburg, a lawyer with Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, sees people like Diaz every week. They come in with folders stuffed with papers and panicked expressions.

"You see these people come in with huge costs and health problems and it breaks your heart," he said. "A lot of time you have to tell them, 'You're going to lose your home.' "

Frozen Out

Class and the American Dream

Published: May 30, 2005

What fools many Americans is the sight of high achievers vaulting from poor or obscure backgrounds to positions of power and wealth. Witness Bill Clinton, who rose from a humble background to the presidency, or Bill Gates, who rose from the upper middle class to become the world's richest person. Witness all the self-made billionaires and corporate titans. But beneath this veneer of super-achievers, recent scholarship shows, many Americans find themselves mired in the same place as their parents, with profound implications for their health and education, as well as other aspects of their lives. Those in the upper middle classes enjoy better health and live longer than those in the middle classes, who live longer and better than those at the bottom. That's partly because money, good jobs and connections help the better-off get the best medical care. Education, supposedly the key to advancement in a meritocratic society, is also heavily dependent on wealth and class. It is thus extremely disheartening to learn that at 250 of the most selective colleges, the proportion of students from upper-income families has actually grown over the past two decades, despite financial aid programs.

There is no sure-fire way to mitigate the deep-seated, multifaceted impact of class. Stronger affirmative-action programs to bring low-income students into colleges would surely help. So, too, would stronger anti-poverty and early-education programs. Tax cuts would be better targeted at the middle class and below, not at the wealthy who already have more than enough advantages. The goal should be a truly merit-based society where class finally fades from importance.

Actually, class immobility is much worse than the Times paints it. Despite multiple graduate degrees, I don't live any where near as well as my (undegreed) parents did. Employment is much less certain, pensions are shakier and health insurance is hard to find. Absent winning the lottery, I'll never be able to afford a single family home.

Too Late

Too Few, Yet Too Many

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: May 30, 2005

Back in September 2003 a report by the Congressional Budget Office concluded that the size of the U.S. force in Iraq would have to start shrinking rapidly in the spring of 2004 if the Army wanted to "maintain training and readiness levels, limit family separation and involuntary mobilization, and retain high-quality personnel."

Let me put that in plainer English: our all-volunteer military is based on an implicit promise that those who serve their country in times of danger will also be able to get on with their lives. Full-time soldiers expect to spend enough time at home base to keep their marriages alive and see their children growing up. Reservists expect to be called up infrequently enough, and for short enough tours of duty, that they can hold on to their civilian jobs.

To keep that promise, the Army has learned that it needs to follow certain rules, such as not deploying more than a third of the full-time forces overseas except during emergencies. The budget office analysis was based on those rules.

But the Bush administration, which was ready neither to look for a way out of Iraq nor to admit that staying there would require a much bigger army, simply threw out the rulebook. Regular soldiers are spending a lot more than a third of their time overseas, and many reservists are finding their civilian lives destroyed by repeated, long-term call-ups.

Two things make the burden of repeated deployments even harder to bear. One is the intensity of the conflict. In Slate, Phillip Carter and Owen West, who adjusted casualty figures to take account of force size and improvements in battlefield medicine (which allow more of the severely wounded to survive), concluded that "infantry duty in Iraq circa 2004 comes out just as intense as infantry duty in Vietnam circa 1966."

The other is the way in which the administration cuts corners when it comes to supporting the troops. From their foot-dragging on armoring Humvees to their apparent policy of denying long-term disability payments to as many of the wounded as possible, officials seem almost pathologically determined to nickel-and-dime those who put their lives on the line for their country.

Now, predictably, the supply of volunteers is drying up.

Most reporting has focused on the problems of recruiting, which has fallen far short of goals over the past few months. Serious as it is, however, the recruiting shortfall could be only a temporary problem. If and when we get out of Iraq - I know, a big if and a big when - it shouldn't be too hard to find enough volunteers to maintain the Army's manpower.

Much more serious, because it would be irreversible, would be a mass exodus of mid-career military professionals. "That's essentially how we broke the professional Army we took into Vietnam," one officer told the National Journal. "At some point, people decided they could no longer weather the back-to-back deployments."

And we're already seeing stories about how young officers, facing the prospect of repeated harrowing tours of duty in a war whose end is hard to imagine, are reconsidering whether they really want to stay in the military.

For a generation Americans have depended on a superb volunteer Army to keep us safe - both from our enemies, and from the prospect of a draft. What will we do once that Army is broken?

Paul, the correct question would be: What do we do now that our army is broken?

Resolution

It took a bit of running around, but data cables have been moved around, the bios has been renewed, various drives tested and so forth and I'm up and running again. It really helps if the keyboard is plugged in....

Due to technical difficulties...

Good morning. Pogge here.

The poltergeist who lives in Melanie's computer has resurfaced. Posting will be light until he can be persuaded to go back into retirement.

I guess you can treat this as an open thread. And if you know any spells to ward off mischief in electronic devices, this would be a good time to share.

What Would Iran Do Without Us?

Gulf actions of U.S. prove boon to Iran

With its Iraqi and Afghan enemies gone, the nation is in a position to become the area's major power

By Michael Hill
Baltimore Sun Staff
Originally published May 29, 2005

And the winner is - drum roll, please - Iran!

That's at least one surprising answer to the question of who is coming
out on top in the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Everything has gone very well for the Iranians," says Juan Cole, a
professor specializing in Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the
University of Michigan, a view echoed by many others who study the
region.

"They had two major geopolitical enemies on the
region. One was the Taliban and the other was Saddam Hussein," Cole
says. "So from their point of view, the United States has very
helpfully removed their major problems.

"And not only has it removed those major problems, it has installed regimes that have strong
traditional alliances with the Iranians," he says.

It can certainly be assumed that it was not the intention of the Bush
administration when it embarked on these military adventures to aid a
member of the so-called "axis of evil." Bush put Iran on that axis,
along with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and North Korea.

But that's the way it has worked out.

"It's a very odd outcome," says Shibley Telhami, professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, College Park. "I don't think the administration ever thought we would be where we are today."

Where we are is not only were Iran's enemies vanquished by the U.S.-led
forces, but the government now in power in Baghdad has longstanding
ties to Iran, turning those former enemies into potentially strong
allies.

"Iraq was the major competitor with Iran in the
Persian Gulf," Telhami says. "The intentional strategy of the United
States for decades was to maintain that balance of power, not to allow
one of them to dominate, to use one against the other.

"What you have now is Iraq really disappearing as a strategic player in the
gulf for the foreseeable future," he says. "It will not be able to
threaten anyone militarily. And that leaves Iran as the sole power in
the gulf, except for the American military presence."

Iran certainly does not dismiss that, especially with Washington's
threatening denunciations of Iran's nuclear program. But for now, U.S.
forces are tied down by the insurgency in Iraq and probably not able to
take on any more military adventures.

In retrospect, this is painfully obvious, even to a mathematician like me. I bet plenty of people whose occupational specialty involves understanding Near Eastern affairs found this obvious beforehand, and could have told the Bushies what to expect, if they'd had any interest in listening, which they didn't.

Liberal Courts, My ***!

Injudiciously divided

The fight over judicial nominees spotlights
the importance of the Circuit Courts of Appeals, which much more often
than not have the final say in high-profile cases.

By Gail Gibson
Baltimore Sun National Staff
Originally published May 29, 2005

Even as partisan warfare over the federal judiciary heated up in the
1990s - a prelude of sorts to the brink-of-disaster rhetoric
surrounding last week's Senate deal over a handful of nominees to U.S.
appeals courts - one of the central players, then-Sen. Jesse Helms,
acknowledged the relative obscurity of the fight.

"You go out on the street in Raleigh, North Carolina, and ask 100
people, 'Do you give a damn who is on the 4th Circuit Court of
Appeals?' They'll say, 'What's that?'" Helms, a Republican, told one of
his home state newspapers in 1999.

Their low profile, however, has not kept the nation's 13 federal
appeals courts from landing at the center of the most heated and public
debate in Washington so far this year. And despite the deal on nominees
brokered by Senate moderates to avert a procedural showdown over
filibusters, no one expects the issue to die.

One factor is the looming possibility of a Supreme Court vacancy.
But a mix of statistics and politics also have pushed the U.S. Circuit
Courts of Appeals into a greater position of decision-making
prominence, say activists across the spectrum and legal scholars who
closely follow appellate issues.

One step below the Supreme Court, they hear appeals on issues from
abortion to gay marriage, property rights and environmental repairs.
And as the nation's highest court has reduced its workload - from
deciding about 130 cases each term two decades ago to fewer than 80
cases now - the Circuit Courts of Appeals, which decide roughly 27,000
cases each year, increasingly have the last word.

"The Supreme Court is still the ultimate prize," said Elliot M.
Mincberg, legal director and vice president of the People for the
American Way, an advocacy group that has opposed many of President
Bush's judicial picks. "But, given the 80 cases vs. 30,000 cases, the
amount of influence that the appeals courts can have is significant."

They also have drawn the spotlight in a number of high-profile
cases, and people have taken notice, said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel
for the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative advocacy
group that has supported the president's judicial nominees.

"Every major social issue is being decided now in the courts, not in the legislatures," Sekulow said.

The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was
criticized earlier this spring when it decided not to intervene in the
case of Terri Schiavo, the severely brain damaged Florida woman. The
San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court prompted a national uproar with
its 2002 ruling that the words "under God" turned the time-honored
Pledge of Allegiance into a "profession of religious belief."

The Supreme Court weighed in on both cases - siding with the 11th
Circuit; overturning the 9th Circuit - but the initial impression
proved lasting.

"Most folks may not know the difference between a federal court
and a tennis court, but they do know that their child cannot say the
Pledge of Allegiance in their classroom, and that upsets them," Wendy
E. Long, general counsel for the Judicial Confirmation Network, a
conservative group that has worked to support Bush's nominees, told
reporters as the Senate fight escalated.

"The inside-the-Beltway language that is typically used when it
comes to judicial nominations is not necessarily as relevant," Long
said. "But when you're looking at a case, like Terri Schiavo or the
Pledge of Allegiance or Ten Commandants - or even property rights cases
or any of these other cases, the terrorist cases that have come up -
that makes it relevant and very real to the average person out there."

While conservative activists complain about liberal "activist"
judges, a headcount of the federal judiciary shows that the majority of
current appeals court judges were appointed by Republican presidents.

As of last week, 94 of the 162 active judges on the federal
appeals courts - or 58 percent - were appointed by Republican
presidents. That number bumped up by one Wednesday, with the Senate's
confirmation of Texas judge Priscilla Owen to the New Orleans-based 5th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

When Bush took office, there was a Republican-appointed majority
on eight of the 13 federal appeals courts. At the end of his first
term, there was a GOP-appointed majority on 10 of them.

Last week's Senate deal also means the only evenly divided
appellate court, the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit Court of Appeals -
which has six Democratic and Republican appointees each - is likely to
tip to a Republican-appointed majority, with two nominees for that
court cleared Thursday by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

There's a lot more to the article, so click the link and read the whole thing if you're interested.

According to a graphic in the print version of the article, only 62 federal Appeals Court judges are Democrats, so there are half again as many Republicans as Democrats on the Courts of Appeals. And in a matter of weeks, eleven of the thirteen appeals courts will have GOP majorities. Feel free to mention these facts when someone talks about activist liberal judges.

No matter how much an advantage the wingnuts get, they'll just keep wanting more.

Mole Holes

First Day of Iraqi Push Against Insurgents Leaves 27 Dead

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 29, 2005

Filed at 1:45 p.m. ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraqi forces swept through Baghdad on Sunday, erecting checkpoints and searching vehicles as they launched the largest offensive of its kind since Saddam Hussein's ouster, but insurgents hit back with suicide bombings and ambushes that killed at least 27 people, including a British soldier. Skip to next paragraph The Reach of War Go to Complete Coverage

The first of more than 40,000 soldiers and police, supported by U.S. forces, searched hundreds of vehicles and raided several houses, described as ''terrorist dens'' in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood, arresting several suspects, army Capt. Ihssan Abdel-Hamza said.

Operation Lightning was launched as a direct challenge to the bloody wave of militant attacks that have killed more than 720 people since the April 28 announcement of Iraq's new Shiite-led government, according to an Associated Press count. At least seven militants died in suicide bombings or gunbattles Sunday.

''We set up these checkpoints in order to arrest all those insurgents trying to destroy this country and we will hit them with an iron fist,'' said Iraqi army Sgt. Ali al-Khazali while manning a highway checkpoint in Dora.

But insurgents defied the offensive, launching a series of coordinated attacks in western Baghdad as well as the southern and northern outskirts of the capital.U.S. jet fighters and attack helicopters flew overhead during the clashes.

Look at the underlined sentence above. Know what that means? It means we have no operational security and that the "insurgents" have excellent intel on the joint force. Things continue to roll downhill.

Violence

Disrespecting Women Soldiers

Published: May 29, 2005

On Tuesday, Republican leaders had the Rules Committee block the House from voting on two modest amendments to the military authorization bill that were intended to remove ideological barriers to providing decent care to military women who are victims of sexual assault. One amendment, offered by Representative Michael Michaud, a Maine Democrat, would have ensured that so-called morning-after emergency contraception, which can prevent pregnancy if taken within 120 hours of unprotected sex, was made available to sexual assault victims at military bases. The other, sponsored by Representatives Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut, and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Democrat of Florida, would have carved out a narrow exception to the ban on federal financing of abortions, for military women who have suffered rape or incest.

We understand why G.O.P. leaders wanted to prevent the House from voting on these measures: that would have required Republicans to go on record in favor of ill-treating female service members to placate their influential extreme-right wing.

On Wednesday, House members did vote on a perennial proposal, offered this time by three California Democrats, Representatives Susan Davis, Jane Harman and Loretta Sanchez, to permit American troops overseas and their relatives to obtain abortions at military hospitals and clinics if they pay the bills. Military doctors currently may perform abortions only in cases of rape, incest or when the mother's life is endangered. Even in cases of rape and incest, the women must pay. While women stationed in the United States who seek an abortion can at least go to public or private hospitals or clinics off the grounds of military bases, those options may not be available to many of the more than 100,000 American women living on overseas bases, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We ask women to put their lives at risk for our freedom, so why is it we do not support them when they require safe and legal medical services?" asked Representative Davis. That is the right question. Troubling figures released this month by the Pentagon show that the number of reported cases of sexual assault among service members continues to climb. Regrettably, this did not deter the House from defeating the amendment, 233 to 194.

Beyond doing the right thing for troops healthcare, hey, Congress, how about an investigation of those "climbing rates" of sexual assualts? Since part of what the military does is turn men into brutes, they are going to act like brutes, and we need to protect our female soldiers from them.

Investing Green

Some pension funds to put $1 billion into companies that fight pollution

Bill Varner
Bloomberg News
May. 29, 2005 12:00 AM

NEW YORK - Labor and government pension fund managers overseeing $3 trillion in assets said they will invest $1 billion in companies that are reducing greenhouse gas emissions and will publicly rate the pollution-fighting efforts of the 100 largest oil, electricity, mining and auto companies.

The 26 institutional investors announced the plans during a recent United Nations conference that asked Wall Street and the Securities and Exchange Commission to assess and publish risks related to global climate change. They met with about 75 other investors and officials such as former Vice President Al Gore and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.

"How can we excuse ourselves on the grounds that we are in business to make money if we damage our own families?" O'Neill said in a speech to the daylong conference. "So we shouldn't be producing greenhouse gases. We are so far away from getting more value out of the energy we consume that there is a huge opportunity."

The fund managers who pledged the $1 billion investment in clean-technology companies include state treasurers from California, Connecticut, Maryland and New York, New York City's comptroller and heads of labor pension funds for the International Association of Machinists and International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

Fund managers and event sponsors declined to identify the pollution-fighting companies considered suitable for investment.

Event sponsors, including the Investor Network on Climate Risk, a group of 43 institutional investors formed since the first U.N conference on climate change in November 2003, said substantial progress has been made since then.

This is progressivism in action for social change. Click on the link to explore their website.

House Cleaning

This NYTimes opinion piece by Edward Ayers is well worth a read. He makes the connection between Iraq and the Reconstruction of the American South following the Civil War in 1867. The comparison is eerie.

The First Occupation
By EDWARD L. AYERS

For more than a hundred years now the United States has been one of the great agents of social transformation in the world. From the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century to Iraq at the beginning of the 21st, this country has sought to remake other nations. The reconstructions of Japan and Germany after World War II stand as the great successes, mixed among other interventions in the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

As Americans try to understand our role in the world, we seldom turn for instruction to our own history of Reconstruction of the South in the 1860's and 1870's. That is partly because the South is hardly a foreign country and partly because ''Gone With the Wind'' and other popular stories have told us that Reconstruction was a horrible mistake, a misguided, hypocritical and deluded effort by zealots to force an unnatural order on a helpless South. Modern historians have exploded that story but agree that Reconstruction failed to deliver on its promises, abandoning African-Americans to poverty, lynching and segregation.

Despite its limitations and failures, however, Reconstruction is worth our attention -- not least because it represented America's first attempt to transform a defeated society through a sustained military occupation. As such, it would foreshadow significant parts of American foreign policy over the next century and a half.
....
Combining every dream of social reconstitution -- prosperity, justice and equality -- was dangerous enough by itself. But Republicans ignored the segregation and disfranchisement of African-Americans that marred their own Northern states, demanding a standard for the South they refused to apply to themselves. White Southerners hammered away relentlessly on this inconsistency of their would-be reconstructors, claiming that it nullified the moral standing of the white North. They held up every isolated instance of Republican bribery or malfeasance as an example of the moral bankruptcy of all Republicans everywhere.

Republicans portrayed themselves not only as agents of democracy but also as agents of economic transformation. They would remake the South along Northern lines, with shrewd and farsighted investments in railroads, levees and roads. They bragged that their Yankee business acumen would make the South prosper in a way it had never prospered under the leadership of the lazy and incompetent slaveholder regime. When railroad financing collapsed in the Panic of 1873 and states defaulted on their payments, the Republicans suddenly appeared as bumbling and corrupt incompetents rather than as astute modernizers. By speaking of social progress as the seamless installation of democracy, capitalism and disinterested virtue, the Republicans put every part of their agenda at risk and would pay the price. After the disputed election of 1876, and the back-room deals that followed, the nation settled on an exit strategy.

A hard paradox lies at the heart of all reconstructions: the reconstructor must transform a society in its own image without appearing selfish or self-righteous. An effort at reconstruction, our nation's history shows us, must be implemented not only with determination and might, but also with humility and self-knowledge -- and with an understanding of the experience of defeat that attention to Southern history can give us. Otherwise, America risks appearing as the thing it least wants to be, a carpetbagger nation.

Ayers is implicitly addressing the moral dimension of reconstruction and the fact that we've got plenty of logs in our own eyes that ought to be removed before we try to transform other societies.

Calling a Spade a Spade

Indian call staff quit over abuse on the line
Firms provide counselling to help staff insulted by British customers

Amelia Gentleman, New Delhi
Sunday May 29, 2005
The Observer

Abuse from British and American customers is driving increasing numbers of Indian call centre workers from their jobs, defeated by the strain of handling persistent rudeness.

Irate customers was cited as one of the main industry stress factors in a recent survey of call centre staff and some organisations have begun employing psychiatrists and counsellors to help employees to cope.

'I've had people tell me, "Back off, Paki, and don't call me again", said Eugene, 27, whose former employer, Spectrumind, provided an accounts services for BT. 'There was a lot of racist abuse once people detected from our accents that we weren't English. I saw girls reduced to tears by it.'

Pooja Chopra, 29, from Delhi, who spent two years fielding calls for BT Cellnet and America Online, faced similar abuse. 'People would say, "You're a Paki, I don't want to talk to you, pass me to someone who can speak my language".

Workers face a spectrum of rudeness - from sexual harassment to fury at unsolicited sales calls, to open racism. Industry analysts have seen the phenomenon of racist clients grow in recent years, as customers in the UK and the US become increasingly sensitive to the political issue of jobs outsourced to India.

Shyamanuja Das, editor of Global Outsourcing magazine, which published a study on the stress factors triggering call centre resignations, said that hostility from clients was one of the factors which caused workers to quit - 25 per cent of those questioned said client vitriol was a major cause of stress.

'The anger in the West over job losses and fear about offshoring has made this a growing problem. Some people call up with deliberately difficult questions. Most just say things like: "You're from India. You don't know anything. I don't want to speak to you", he said.

Vijay Mukhi, a call centre analyst, said websites have sprung up in the US giving phone numbers of companies which use call centres in India, and listing Hindi swear words to be used to abuse staff. 'When you move jobs away from a country, there's going to be a lot of pent-up frustration which gets let out on Indian workers,' he said.

As staff turnover is a major problem, with some companies battling an annual departure rate of 60-70 per cent, organisations are taking radical steps to help staff to deal with abuse. In recent months some firms have decided to provide psychological support to their workers. Sanjay Salooja's Delhi-based firm, Empower, has 20 trained counsellors who tour the city's largest call centres, providing support to harassed employees.

The Observer is far too polite. This is racism, pure and simple.

Learning Curve

Review May Shift Terror Policies
U.S. Is Expected to Look Beyond Al Qaeda

By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 29, 2005; Page A01

The Bush administration has launched a high-level internal review of its efforts to battle international terrorism, aimed at moving away from a policy that has stressed efforts to capture and kill al Qaeda leaders since Sept. 11, 2001, and toward what a senior official called a broader "strategy against violent extremism."

The shift is meant to recognize the transformation of al Qaeda over the past three years into a far more amorphous, diffuse and difficult-to-target organization than the group that struck the United States in 2001. But critics say the policy review comes only after months of delay and lost opportunities while the administration left key counterterrorism jobs unfilled and argued internally over how best to confront the rapid spread of the pro-al Qaeda global Islamic jihad.

President Bush's top adviser on terrorism, Frances Fragos Townsend, said in an interview that the review is needed to take into account the "ripple effect" from years of operations targeting al Qaeda leaders such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed, arrested for planning the Sept. 11 attacks, and his recently detained deputy. "Naturally, the enemy has adapted," she said. "As you capture a Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an Abu Faraj al-Libbi raises up. Nature abhors a vacuum."

The review marks the first ambitious effort since the immediate aftermath of the 2001 attacks to take stock of what the administration has called the "global war on terrorism" -- or GWOT -- but is now considering changing to recognize the evolution of its fight. "What we really want now is a strategic approach to defeat violent extremism," said a senior administration official who described the review on the condition of anonymity because it is not finished. "GWOT is catchy, but there may be a better way to describe it, and those are things that ought to be incumbent on us to look at."

In many ways, this is the culmination of a heated debate that has been taking place inside and outside the government about how to target not only the remnants of al Qaeda but also broader support in the Muslim world for radical Islam. Administration officials refused to describe in detail what new policies are under consideration, and several sources familiar with the discussions said some issues remain sticking points, such as how central the ongoing war in Iraq is to the anti-terrorist effort, and how to accommodate State Department desires to normalize a foreign policy that has stressed terrorism to the exclusion of other priorities in recent years.

"There's been a perception, a sense of drift in overall terrorism policy. People have not figured out what we do next, so we just continue to pick 'em off one at a time," said Roger W. Cressey, who served as a counterterrorism official at the National Security Council under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. "We haven't gone to a new level to figure out how things have changed since 9/11."

"No question this is the next stage, the phase two," another senior counterterrorism official said. "We are coming to the point of decisions."

Much of the discussion has focused on how to deal with the rise of a new generation of terrorists, Top government officials are increasingly turning their attention to anticipate what one called "the bleed out" of hundreds or thousands of Iraq-trained jihadists back to their home countries throughout the Middle East and Western Europe. "It's a new piece of a new equation," a former senior Bush administration official said. "If you don't know who they are in Iraq, how are you going to locate them in Istanbul or London?"

Glasser can't say it in a P.1 Post article, but the subtext here is that these people are clueless and have been clueless since assuming office. The Iraq war creates terrorists and never had anything to do with the "global war on terror." Being widely hated in the Muslim world isn't doing a damn thing to reduce terrorism.

Look at that last question. We are well and truly screwed. If someone could point out to me anywhere in which Bushco is actually competent (other than fscking the middle class taxpayer) that would be a service.

Peering into the Mind of the Times

The Death Spiral of the Volunteer Army

Published: May 29, 2005

Army recruitment is now regularly falling short of the necessary targets. Recruiters are having even more trouble persuading people to sign up for Army National Guard and Reserve units. The Marine Corps has been missing its much smaller monthly quotas as well. Unless there is a sharp change later this year, both forces will soon start feeling the pinch as too few trainees are processed to meet both forces' operational needs.

Why this is happening is no mystery. Two years of hearing about too few troops on the ground, inadequate armor, extended tours of duty and accelerated rotations back into combat have taken their toll, discouraging potential enlistees and their parents. The citizen-soldiers of the Guard and Reserves have suddenly become full-time warriors. Nor has it helped that when abuse scandals have erupted, the Pentagon has seemed quicker to punish lower-ranking soldiers than top commanders and policy makers. This negative cycle now threatens to feed on itself. Fewer recruits will mean more stress on those now in uniform and more grim reports reaching hometowns across America.

The results can now be seen at every Army and Marine recruiting office. (The Air Force and Navy, which have not been subjected to the same stresses and dangers as the ground forces, are meeting their recruiting quotas.) Missed quotas have translated into intense pressure to lower standards and recruit people who should not be in uniform. Earlier this month the Army required all of its recruiters to go through a one-day review of basic recruiting ethics.

Things might have been different if Mr. Rumsfeld had heeded the judgment of Gen. Eric Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, in the months before the United States invaded Iraq and planned for a substantially larger occupation force. A larger force might have kept the insurgency smaller and more manageable. It would have been better able to defend itself without resorting to the kind of indiscriminate firepower that kills civilians, destroys homes and inflames Iraqi opinion. Individual combat brigades would not have been under such constant operational stress. But Mr. Rumsfeld rejected General Shinseki's sound advice. The Pentagon now says it gives field commanders as many troops as they ask for. But those commanders are aware of Mr. Rumsfeld's doctrinaire commitment to holding down troop numbers and of the diminished career prospects that could result from challenging him.

The Pentagon now hopes that next month's high school graduations will help it catch up to its recruiting goals. Besides crossing its fingers, the military should open more combat roles to women, end its senseless discrimination against gays and reach out to immigrants with promises of citizenship after completion of service. There should be no thought of reinstating the draft, which would be militarily foolish and politically explosive. But expanding the potential recruiting pool can be only a partial answer. Young people and their parents are reacting rationally to a regrettable and unnecessary transformation in how the United States government treats its ground troops. That is what needs to be changed.

This editorial tells more about how disconnected the NYT is from the lives of ordinary Americans than what's wrong with recruiting. Note to the Times: people aren't signing up for the Army because they don't want to get killed, it is as simple as that.

More Frat Prank News from Iraq

Navy SEAL Acquitted of Abusing Iraqi

Saturday May 28, 2005 2:01 AM
By SETH HETTENA
Associated Press Writer

SAN DIEGO (AP) - A military jury acquitted a Navy SEAL lieutenant Friday of beating an Iraqi prisoner who later died. Jurors deliberated about three hours before finding Lt. Andrew K. Ledford not guilty of all charges.

The 32-year-old SEAL had faced up to 11 years in military prison if he had been convicted of assault, dereliction of duty, conduct unbecoming an officer and making false statements.

Ledford, who had stood at attention for the verdict's reading, burst into a huge smile and embraced his attorney upon hearing he was acquitted.

"I think that's what makes this country great is that there is a system in place and it works," he said outside court.

Ledford's family, including his pregnant wife, wiped away tears as several SEALs who had served with him in Iraq applauded.

Navy prosecutors left the courtroom without commenting.

"I hope that someone receives a message from this outcome," Ledford's civilian attorney, Frank Spinner, told reporters. "That we have valiant warriors, brave SEALs, who put their lives on the line and they're human."

Prosecutors said that Ledford failed as a leader on a November 2003 mission after he and his men captured Manadel al-Jamadi, a suspect in the bombing of Red Cross offices in Baghdad that killed 12.

During a brief stop at an Army base, members of Ledford's SEAL platoon testified that they punched, kicked and struck al-Jamadi with muzzles of their rifles. Instead of ordering his men to halt the beating, Ledford accepted a subordinate's offer to "give this turd a knock" and punched the bound prisoner in the arm, Navy prosecutor Lt. Chad Olcott said.

No witness who appeared during the four-day court martial testified that they saw Ledford strike al-Jamadi. The only evidence of the punch came in Ledford's own sworn statement last year to Navy criminal investigators. On the witness stand Thursday, Ledford denied punching the detainee.

Eight SEALs and one sailor who served under Ledford have received administrative punishments for abusing al-Jamadi and other detainees.

Al-Jamadi died shortly after the SEALs turned him over to the CIA while he was being interrogated in Abu Ghraib prison. Spinner said the CIA should fully disclose its role in the case.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press show al-Jamadi died while suspended by his wrists, which were handcuffed behind his back.

The CIA has forwarded its investigation to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. No charges have been filed against anyone at the CIA.

Ledford also had posed for a picture hoisting a can of Red Bull energy drink as he and his men gathered around al-Jamadi in the back of a Humvee, and he testified that he regretted having done so.

"This case represents nothing more than prosecutorial excess as a result of the pictures and abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib,'" Spinner told the jury during his closing argument.

Through his attorney, Ledford said he plans to continue serving as a SEAL. He has been selected for the rank of lieutenant commander, a promotion that was placed on hold pending the trial's outcome.

I guess the story of this guy being tortured to death must've been in the news already, but I missed the particulars.

Several things occur to me. First is that that was a very painful way to die. The arms aren't meant to turn that way in the shoulder sockets, even without the weight of one's body pulling everything the wrong way.

Second is, I'm wondering if anyone in the CIA, which had custody of al-Jamadi when he was tortured to death, is getting prosecuted for this.

Third is, even if we assume Lt. Ledford didn't actually punch al-Jamadi himself, it sounds like he was right there when the members of his platoon were beating him up, and did nothing to stop it. And he's going to be promoted now?! That's insane.

I used to think the military was an honorable profession. It used to be one, I think. It's come undone.

Lightening the Mood

I found this over at big brass blog:

It seems that an economist was walking along an Arabian beach when he stumbled upon an ancient lamp. He kicked it a little, then he picked it up. First looking around to make sure no one would see him doing something totally stupid, he rubbed the lamp vigorously. Much to his shock, a billowing cloud issued forth from the lamp, and out came a giant genie.

"Sahib!" bellowed the enormous being of legend and lore. "You have freed me from my prison, so I shall grant you one wish!"

The economist looked a little perturbed and mumbled, "Whatever happened to the traditional three wishes?"

The genie replied, "The central genie wishing bank recently restricted the supply of wishes because of wish inflation, so be happy with the one you're getting; and make it now, before I get upset."

The economist thought for just a brief moment, and then he said, "I wish for an end to all scarcity: an end to scarcity of food and water, an end to scarcity of adequate medical treatment, an end to scarcity of jobs, an end to scarcity of factors of production... an end to all scarcity."

The genie roared, "Are you NUTS?! You're an economist! You should know that scarcity is the entire point of economic reality. It is scarcity that creates prices, and the prices then allocate the goods and services to their most efficient end uses. Scarcity is what causes creatures and societies to try different ways of organizing themselves in their efforts to deal with the relative scarcities of material and emotional wants and needs. Without scarcity, the entire biology of life would be fundamentally altered, perhaps even catastrophically!" The genie folded his arms defiantly and concluded, "No. No, no, no. I have the right to deny the first proposed wish of any master; and since I am duty bound to deny any such wish that would so fundamentally change the order of the universe, I hereby refuse you."

The economist looked a little taken aback at the adamance of his wish granter. He said, "I am truly sorry. I think I understand now that wishes should be for small and personal matters that don't disrupt the wider cosmos." So he thought for another moment, then he said, "I know what I want. Since I'm an economist, I want to make an economic forecast just once in my life that turns out to be exactly right. Yes! That's what I want."

The genie didn't say a word; he merely turned away from his master and walked down to the edge of the beach and stared out at the sun that was setting over the ocean. There in silence he stood for what seemed like an eternity before he let out an almost mournful sigh, turned to the economist, and said, "Okay. End all scarcity it is, then."

Inoculation Against Militararism

Learning to Say No to the Military
By Andrew Tonkovich

My wife and I will teach our son to recognize the military scam, to challenge the pitch, to be skeptical about flag waving, uniforms and ridiculous promises. He'll need to be armed against the recruiters, prepared to exercise intellectual selfdefense. It is a lot to ask of a child, but it may save his life, and the lives of others.

I see him in a crowded school auditorium, flags and bunting all around. Then I see my kid raising his hand to challenge the uniformed man on stage who is promising kids glory, college education and popularity, but never mentioning killing and dying.

It's impossible to inoculate a child completely from the horrors of militarism and its misguided ideals of service, its putative duty to kill others and to be killed in the name of national chauvinism, nostalgia or corporate hegemony.

So we will help him. Along with his other life documents and files — vaccination records, the Social Security card issued at his birth, his first "ouchie" notification from preschool, passport, report cards, awards — he'll have a conscientious objector file. Contents so far include photographs of him in his stroller at antiwar marches, standing in solidarity with striking supermarket workers, wearing his peace sign T-shirt, napping in his mother's arms at candlelight vigils, attending teach-ins and rallies, and standing in line with Dad at the Red Cross bloodmobile.

We'll document his participation in peaceful, alternative service to humanity: canned food and clothing drives for our local Catholic Worker, building trails for the Sierra Club, beach cleanups, voter registration. He'll learn to answer the bullies and sadists who have somehow coerced, shamed, flattered and lied our nation into believing patriotic service means murder on behalf of state power. Speaking truth to power, the Quakers call it.

My son may eventually choose otherwise when it comes to military service, but he will know that resistance is an option, and that thinking about one's allegiances is a requirement of citizenship.

Military service is without honor when militarism is being used to conquer and occupy nations which have never threatened us. I do NOT support the troops, they shouldn't be stationed in bases all over the world and shouldn't be fighting in Iraq.

Making a Joke of Human Rights

Amnesty International Report 2005

Hundreds of detainees continued to be held without charge or trial at the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Thousands of people were detained during US military and security operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and routinely denied access to their families and lawyers.

Military investigations were initiated or conducted into allegations of torture and ill-treatment of detainees by US personnel in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and into reports of deaths in custody and ill-treatment by US forces elsewhere in Iraq, and in Afghanistan and Guantánamo. Evidence came to light that the US administration had sanctioned interrogation techniques that violated the UN Convention against Torture. Pre-trial military commission hearings opened in Guantánamo but were suspended pending a US court ruling.

In the USA, more than 40 people died after being struck by police tasers, raising concern about the safety of such weapons. The death penalty continued to be imposed and carried out.

International Criminal Court

The US government intensified its efforts to curtail the power of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In December, Congress approved a provision in a government spending bill mandating the withholding of certain economic assistance to governments that refuse to grant immunity for US nationals before the ICC.

Guantánamo Bay

By the end of the year, more than 500 detainees of around 35 nationalities continued to be held without charge or trial at the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay on grounds of possible links to al-Qa’ida or the former Taleban government of Afghanistan. While at least 10 more detainees were transferred to the base from Afghanistan during the year, more than 100 others were transferred to their home countries for continued detention or release. At least three child detainees were among those released, but at least two other people who were under 18 at the time of their detention were believed to remain in Guantánamo by the end of the year. Neither the identities nor the precise numbers of detainees held in Guantánamo were provided by the Department of Defense, fuelling concern that individual detainees could be transferred to and from the base without appearing in official statistics.

In a landmark decision, the US Supreme Court ruled in June that the US federal courts had jurisdiction over the Guantánamo detainees. However, the administration tried to keep any review of the detainees’ cases as far from a judicial process as possible. The Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT), an administrative review body consisting of panels of three military officers, was established to determine whether the detainees were “enemy combatants”. The detainees were not provided with lawyers to assist them in this process and secret evidence could be used against them. Many detainees boycotted the process, which by the end of the year had determined that more than 200 detainees were “enemy combatants” and two were not and could be released. The authorities also announced that all detainees confirmed as “enemy combatants” would have a yearly review of their cases before an Administrative Review Board (ARB) to determine if they should still be held. Again, detainees would not have access to legal counsel or to secret evidence. Both the CSRT and the ARB could draw on evidence extracted under torture or other coercion. In December, the Pentagon announced that it had conducted its first ARB.

The government informed the detainees that they could file habeas corpus petitions in federal court, giving them the address of the District Court in Washington DC. However, it also argued in the same court that the detainees had no basis under constitutional or international law to challenge the lawfulness of their detention. By the end of the year, six months after the Supreme Court ruling, no detainee had had the lawfulness of his detention judicially reviewed.

This is George Bush's idea of freedom and democracy. This infuriates me, and what infuriates me more is that the American public doesn't give a good Goddam about it.

Only an Apple

Honor Thy Teacher

By MATT MILLER
Published: May 28, 2005

Researchers agree that one of the best things government can do to help poor children is raise teacher quality. Yet poor schools today attract the bottom third of the college class. Why? Compare a typical urban district with its affluent suburbs nearby. When the suburbs (1) pay more, (2) have better working conditions and (3) serve easier-to-teach kids who bring fewer problems to school, it's no surprise that the best teachers gravitate to the best suburban schools.

This isn't to diminish the many great teachers who work their hearts out for poor kids in trying conditions. But it's these teachers who've told me with passion how mediocre many of their colleagues are. We're essentially relying on missionaries to staff schools in poor neighborhoods. How many more years have to pass before we admit that the missionary "plan" isn't working?

Yet the problem with most pay reforms (like Arnold's) is that they're all stick and no carrot. Or they offer such small bonuses (say, $2,000) that teachers have no reason to rethink their aversion to pay differentials based on anything but seniority.

The answer is to think bigger. Consider this "grand bargain." We'd raise salaries for teachers in poor schools by 50 percent. But this offer would be conditioned on two major reforms. First, the unions would have to abandon their lock-step pay scale so that we could raise the top half of performers (and those in shortage fields like math and science) another 50 percent. Second, the unions would have to make it much easier to fire the worst teachers, who are blighting the lives of countless kids.

In many big districts, salaries start around $40,000 and top out, after 25 years, around $75,000. Under this plan, starting teachers would earn $60,000. The top performing half of teachers (and the shortage specialties) would average $90,000. The best teachers would earn up to $150,000. With the amount they could save, the best teachers of poor children could retire with $1 million in the bank.

A move on this scale would change how teaching is viewed by college students who are deciding how to spend their lives. We'd finally be acknowledging the massive "subsidy" schools lost once women were free to enter other professions after the 1970's. And there are environmental benefits, too; if a young couple thinks they could jointly earn $250,000 as teachers, we may well end up with two fewer lawyers!

This plan to make teaching poor children the most exciting career in America would cost roughly $30 billion a year. It's a 7 percent increase in the nation's K-12 spending, which would buy a 1,000 percent revolution in how teaching is viewed. Union leaders, superintendents and teachers have told me that while there are details to sort out, something like this could work. It could transform the teacher corps and its professional culture over the next decade.

If we declared both teachers and nurses critical for "homeland security" (which they are) and compensated them like we meant it, shortages in both fields would be over in a heartbeat. The reality is that neither children nor the sick matter at all in our culture. Healthcare and excellent educations are only for the wealthy.

A Little Gardening Music

The herbs are in and I still have room for another pass, maybe some of those "grape tomatoes." Any suggestions? The herb bed gets about a half day of full sun. I've got mint, basil, rosemary, dill, chives, the usual suspects.

What are you growing this year?

The Sorry Truth

Read the whole thing:

What Went Wrong

The so-called “controversializing” of troublesome mainstream journalists was aided and abetted by the fact that many senior news executives and publishers were either openly or quietly sympathetic to the neocons’ hard-line foreign policy agenda. That was even the case in news companies regarded as “liberal” – such as the New York Times, where executive editor Abe Rosenthal shared many neocon positions, or at Newsweek, where top editor Maynard Parker also aligned himself with the neocons.

In the 1980s, reporters who dug up hard stories that challenged the Reagan administration’s messaging found themselves under intense pressure, both externally from well-funded conservative attack groups and behind their backs from senior editors. Any false step – if it offended the Reagan-Bush White House – could prove fatal for a career.

The New York Times’ Central America correspondent Raymond Bonner was perhaps the highest profile journalist pushed out of a job because his reporting angered the neoconservatives, but he was far from alone. The Reagan administration even organized special “public diplomacy” teams to lobby bureau chiefs about ousting reporters who were deemed insufficiently supportive of government policies.

The Bushies actually get reporters fired for telling the truth, and they aren't smart enough to have figured this out on their own, they learned it from the Reaganistas. If you think you are still living in a democracy, you haven't been paying attention.

Trouble in River City

Many Buyers Opt for Risky Mortgages
High Rate of Interest-Only Loans a Concern in Virginia

By Kirstin Downey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 28, 2005; Page A01

More than a third of the mortgages written in the Washington area this year are a risky new kind of loan that lets borrowers pay back only the interest, delaying for years repayment of any loan principal. Economists warn that the new loans are essentially a gamble that home prices will continue to rise at a brisk pace, allowing the borrower to either sell the home at a profit or refinance before the principal payments come due.

The loans are attractive because their initial monthly payments are tantalizingly low -- about $1,367 a month for a $320,000 mortgage, compared with about $1,842 a month for a traditional 30-year, fixed-rate loan. If home prices fall, though, borrowers could lose big.

"It's a game of musical chairs," said Allen J. Fishbein, director of housing and credit policy at the Consumer Federation of America. "Somebody is going to have the chair pulled out from under them when they find prices have leveled out and they try to sell, only to find they can't sell for what they paid for it."

About 54 percent of home buyers in the District purchased their homes using interest-only loans so far this year, according to LoanPerformance, a San Francisco-based company that tracks loan originations nationwide. About one-third of buyers in Maryland and Virginia are buying with interest-only loans.

Just five years ago, only about 2 percent of home-purchase loans in the Washington area involved interest-only terms.

So, which gets us first, the collapse of the housing bubble or bird flu? This is not an academic question.

Karl Rove Stumbles

Editorial:
The Senate in Blinders

Published: May 28, 2005

John Bolton's nomination to be United States ambassador to the United Nations was put on hold Thursday when Senate Republicans failed to force a vote over Democratic objections. The delay is not exactly a classic filibuster, but a protest against the Bush administration's failure to turn over documents that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asked for as part of its review of the nomination.

Mr. Bolton was an awful choice for the job before the Senate went away for vacation. He will be an awful choice when the Senate returns. It's unfortunate that this incorrigibly secretive White House is once again stonewalling legitimate requests for documents. But the senators are not exactly working with a shortage of information. They can listen to recordings in which Mr. Bolton expresses contempt for the U. N. They have heard former associates deplore his inability to work well with others, and paint a portrait, as Senator George Voinovich has said, of a "poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be." The chief of staff for former Secretary of State Colin Powell testified that Mr. Bolton was regarded as so unreliable he was forbidden to make speeches unless they were personally approved by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

The senators have also heard compelling reports about Mr. Bolton's habit of pressuring intelligence officers to make their reports fit his own preconceptions about global reality. That includes testimony by former deputy C.I.A. director John McLaughlin that Mr. Bolton had tried to get a top C.I.A. analyst who disagreed with him transferred. It was, Mr. McLaughlin said, the only time in his 32 years in the C.I.A. that he had seen such strong-arming by a policy maker.

Lawmakers who have managed to take in all that information and still believe that Mr. Bolton deserves to represent the country at the U. N. have simply decided to close their eyes and press the lever. Additional evidence of his unsuitability probably isn't going to help.

It is depressing to see how many normally independent Republicans have already put on the blinders. Senator Voinovich, an Ohio Republican, has been waging a gallant and lonely battle to convince other members of his party that they are not obliged to support a desperately unsuitable candidate just because President Bush wants him.

No matter how many times I read the Constitution, I cannot find anywhere a clause which says that the Senate has to ratify every stupid choice the Executive makes.

Methinks that the "separation of powers" offers the choice for one branch to over-ride the idiocy of another. And that would be a good thing.

Everybody within ten miles of 23rd and C street knows that John Bolton is a monstrously inept choice for the UN and that his nomination is a sort of "back of the hand" swipe at everyone from Colin Powell to the State Department career folk. This is a huge "fuck you" to all the people who served in the first Bush administration, and a way of saying "I never needed any of you." The smug frat boy is just begging for retaliation. Thumbing your nose at the State Department is rarely wise.

Bad News From China

Just how bad this news may be is still not clear. But there is just no way that it's other than bad.

The news report of its genesis seems to have surfaced at the CIDRAP website on Wednesday.

Emphasis mine.

Some 519 birds of at least five migratory species have died in the H5N1 avian influenza outbreak in China's Qinghai province, according to data the Chinese government provided the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).

The May 21 report, available on the OIE Web site, indicates a broader outbreak than has been described in media reports, which have attributed only the deaths of 178 bar-headed geese to H5N1. Other affected bird species are the great black-headed gull, the brown-headed gull, the ruddy shelduck, and the great cormorant.

Note that these were migratory birds, not barnyard fowl. That means that their flyways are also at risk.

The geographic location and extent of Qinghai Province? The People's Daily is good enough to inform us. But Holy Saint Peter! That's a loooong way from Indochina.

Here is a copy of the OIE announcement.

Emphasis mine.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza in the People's Republic of China
virus type H5N1 in wild birds

(Date of previous outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza in the People's Republic of China reported to the OIE: June 2004 [in poultry]).

Information received on 21 May 2005 from Mr Jia Youling, Director General, Veterinary Bureau, Ministry of Agriculture, Beijing:

Report date: 21 May 2005.

Nature of diagnosis: clinical and laboratory.

Date of initial detection of animal health incident: 4 May 2005.

Estimated date of primary infection: 15 April 2005.

Date of laboratory tests: 18 May 2005.

Location of the outbreak: Niannaisuoma village, Quanji town, Gangcha county, Qinqhai province (in the central part of the country). The place is an important rendezvous of migratory birds on one of their Asia-Europe routes.

Description of affected population: migratory birds found dead, including bar-headed goose (Anser indicus), great black-headed gull (Larus ichthyaetus), brown-headed gull (Larus brunnicephalus), ruddy shelduck (Tadorna ferruginea) and great cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo).

Total number of birds found dead: 519.

Laboratory where diagnosis was made: National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory (Harbin Veterinary Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricutural Sciences).

Oh, joy. Great joy and gladness.

Furthermore, the incident is a month and a half old, and laboratory tests constitute the evidentiary data. So we cannot hope that this is merely a rumor. This is clinically verified fact.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the government of the PRC was insisting that this so far seems to be an isolated case.

"We have surveyed more than 2 million fowls in the whole province, and didn't detect any contagion (of the deadly H5N1 avian influenza virus) among them," Dang Chenyan, director of the Qinghai provincial animal epidemic prevention headquarters, said yesterday.

Nor has the disease spread to humans, he said.

Riiiight. These are migratory birds. So how on earth can the PRC know whether this is isolated or not? The flyways involved extend way past its borders. On both ends. How big are these flyways? Have a look. Sweet. This involves India and Russia, at a minimum.

It gets better.

The province is well on its way to finishing the vaccination of its domestic poultry flock after the ministry confirmed last Saturday that the deaths of migratory birds in Gangcha County on May 4 were caused by bird flu, Dang said.

I'll let Revere, at Effect Measure, comment on the vaccination technique used over there.

We note that China also practices vaccination, which allows birds to be infected but not sicken. Vaccinated birds shed significantly less virus but may still be infectious. So the notion that the problem was isolated and is over with is not very credible. I'm trying to say it nicely.

It gets even better. Henry Niman cites a Chinese language news source, brought to this English language forum through the magic of babelfish.

On May 25, 2005 the Xining news, after before this reported the Qinghai birds and beasts flu causes 121 person of deaths tragedies, China official has strictly blocked the news, but partially died the family member or to obtain the related internal news.

As a result of the epidemic disease area news blockade, caused many to have relative's recently one after another to arrive Xining in the epidemic disease area work family member, and to dead possible place centralism. Because official unblocking, before this once unified places, after but the death news rapid proliferation, the family members are monitored the housing, the foreign relation received the strict limit, to May 25, related with the family member completely severs.

Comforting news. 121 dead people. What did they die of? And if it was disease, then how did they contract it?

Emphasis mine.

According to the insider stated that, at present may understand is this birds and beasts flu certainly is not pure H5N1, but is H5N1 ties the synthesis with other infectious virus the new infection virus, but in the symptom only has the small difference with H5N1, has the ambush in particular under the high temperature, manifests suddenly the time to be quicker, but has the infection.

Oh. My. God.

And today, Reuters informs us that the migratory bird kill is twice what was previously reported.

BEIJING (Reuters) - A strain of bird flu deadly to humans has killed more than 1,000 migratory birds in northwest China, an agriculture ministry official said on Friday, more than five times the number of birds initially reported dead.

Earlier this week, China sealed off nature reserves and rushed more than 3 million doses of bird flu vaccine to far-flung Qinghai province after migratory birds were found dead from the H5N1 strain.

The reference to "news blackouts" may, however, have a halfway reasonable explanation. But only halfway.

The Chinese government has taken measures to prevent domestic birds and human beings from being infected by avian flu virus carried by wild birds, China's national chief veterinary officer said Friday.

At a press conference of the Information Office of the State Council, Jia Youling, director general of the Veterinary Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture, said that the affected Niannaisuma Village of Quanji Township of Gangca County, Qinghai Province, has been sealed off right after death of some migratory birds was found. He said there had been no precedent in the world to prevent and control avian influenza among migratory birds, and China's measures are all aimed at preventing the virus from spreading to domestic animals and human beings.

Up to May 26, more than 1,000 migratory birds including bar-headed geese and great black-headed gulls were killed by bird flu virus in northwest China's Qinghai Province. No tourists and irrelevant persons had been allowed to get into the habitats of migratory birds and the infected areas since the outbreak, he said.

Revere said it. This incident is not a purely Chinese problem. Because if this really is an airborne strain, and it infects some poor devil who hops aboard an international jetliner, it will be all over the world within a very short time. My brass is on a month, two months tops.

I know perfectly well that China and its people and its sovereignty have been grotesquely abused in decades and centuries past. But the government of the PRC is going to have to get over it. Fast. Because when you're dealing with something which looks perfectly capable of stacking up hundreds of millions, if not billions, of corpses, and can girdle the world in mere months, THERE IS NO ROOM FOR ANYONE TO BE PRICKLY ABOUT SOVEREIGNTY.

Hear that, Mr. "Go it alone" President?

Holiday Open Thread

You might have noticed that there is no federal holiday in April, which made it a very long month. I'm going to be here for the long weekend, and welcoming Charles Roten back to guest posting. I'm planning to stroll the Farmer's Market tomorrow morning, pick up some artisanal bread, fresh butter, cut flowers and herb plants for the herb garden, which still isn't in yet (compulsive blogging has really cut into my gardening time.) The fresh pasta makers will be there as well, so I'll get some fresh fettucine for a dish of alfredo tomorrow night. Here is how to make it something less than a heart attack on a plate:

For 2

10 oz fresh pasta, 8 oz dried
Boiling Salted Water

While the water is heating, combine in a food processor

1/2 cup cottage cheese
6 oz wedge of Parmaggiano-Reggiano cheese cut in small pieces
3 tablespoons evaporated skim milk
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
(optional but fun: a couple of cloves of peeled garlic; a handful of cleaned and dried italian flatleaf parsley; baby spinach leaves; a couple of teaspoons of pesto)

Process until the butter is combined, the sauce will be lumpy. Don't use lowfat cottage cheese, it doesn't emulsify properly and you will get stringy protein.

Pour the sauce into your serving dish and place in a very slow oven, 180 degrees, you want to heat the sauce, not cook it.

When the pasta is al dente, drain it carefully but don't rinse. Shake off as much of the water as you can without cooling the pasta any more than you have to. Immediately place the pasta on the sauce and toss. The heat of the pasta will finish the sauce. Yes, this is the way they make it at Alfredo's in Rome.

Top with good button mushrooms, halved, and sauteed lightly in olive oil, drained on paper towels and dressed with a spritz of lemon juice, and chopped flatleaf italian parsley.

To serve as a main course, precede with a good minestrone soup. As a first course, fettucine alfredo is natural pairing with veal or any game dish. For dessert, offer ripe d'anjou pears with coins of bel paese cheese.

Pair with a Pinot Grigio and plenty of mineral water.

If you were a guest at my table tonight this is what I'd feed you, so go make it for your family.

Calling it What it Is

A confrontration ends, but will issue remain?

Palm Beach Post Editorial

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

There would have been no looming confrontation in the Senate if President Bush had chosen better nominees for federal appeals court vacancies. There should be no illusion that, despite Monday night's truce, the confrontation is over.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., the newly minted demagogue on this issue, clearly isn't agreeing that the so-called "nuclear option" — ending judicial filibusters — won't remain an option. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., clearly isn't agreeing that his party won't filibuster a nominee, though the compromise agreement allows filibusters only in "extraordinary" circumstances. And President Bush shows no sign of acknowledging that some of his nominees aren't worth risking all-out conflict in the Senate.

Unfortunately, the deal ends filibusters on two of the worst nominees among the seven in question. Janice Rogers Brown, a justice on the California Supreme Court, has dismissed age discrimination and otherwise indicated in her writings that the country would function best with a regulatory climate similar to 1937 — when there was almost no government check on business. She probably will be confirmed for a seat on the appeals court for the District of Columbia that handles major challenges to federal laws. Priscilla Owen, a justice on the Texas Supreme Court, once drew a rebuke for judicial activism — something the president claims to dislike — from a colleague named Alberto Gonzales, who is Mr. Bush's attorney general. In that case, though, it was anti-abortion judicial activism, for which the president will make an exception. Justice Owen soon will be confirmed for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

At last, a paper calls it like it is: Bush should nominate better people. That's the real problem behind this conflict.

The Coming Pandemic

A new flu scare

The world has been swept by devastating flu pandemics in the past, including the Hong Kong flu, which killed a million people in 1968. When health authorities engage in doomsday talk, the public wants specific information as to what to do, and it wants it immediately.

However, WHO officials have a problem. If they act too soon, it could provoke panic and needlessly damage various economies. If they don't move fast enough and the virus begins to spread from one person to another, then whatever researchers do may be too little, too late.

This strain of avian influenza has been blamed for more than 50 deaths in Southeast Asia, most in Vietnam. Although it first struck people handling poultry, changes and mutations in the virus have put researchers on guard.

The ultimate nightmare would be a pandemic on the scale of the Spanish flu virus, which killed 50 million people at the end of World War I, including 500,000 in America.

At least WHO is warning the international community. In this country, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health are reviewing the issue and hopefully are making plans for every possibility.

Meanwhile, the rest of us need to hope that scientists come up with better information to protect the public, and that if an outbreak occurs, it will be contained.

The Toledo Blade has a reputation for award-winning reporting, but this editorial is just plain silly. Had they bothered to actually read this week's issue of Nature they would realize that we are completely defenseless, for all intents and purposes. We know that from the spread of SARS two years ago. Avian flu is asymptomatic for the first 24 hours after infection and there is no way to keep it off of airplanes. This is a silly ed which demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of communicable diseases.

We are looking at mass death on a scale not seen since 1918 (or worse), economic and civic unrest, and the Blade thinks all we need is more information?

The Last Man to Die for a Mistake

LOCAL COMMENT: Bush owes explanation on Iraq war

May 27, 2005

BY SUSAN WRIGHT

Bush claimed in March 2002 that Hussein "is a dangerous man who possesses the world's most dangerous weapons." Vice President Dick Cheney stated on Aug. 26, 2002: "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. ... There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." And the president declared shortly before Congress voted on the war resolution in October 2002, "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

But when the Defense Department's billion-dollar investigation scoured Iraq for weapons of mass destruction for 15 months and came up empty-handed last October, the president and his men switched the reason for the war from Iraq's WMDs as imminent threat to the importance of removing Hussein. Bush then claimed that U.S. and allied intelligence on Iraq's weapons was wrong. But he insisted that going to war was the right course anyway -- that "the world is better off" without Hussein. It was a suspiciously abrupt turn in rationale.

What did the president and his men really know about Iraq's lack of WMDs? The memo, published May 1 in the Sunday Times of London, represents unusually hard evidence: It is a British government record, marked "Secret and strictly personal -- UK eyes only. ... No further copies should be made," of a meeting of Blair with his senior ministers and advisers to discuss the president's desire "to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by a conjunction of terrorism and WMD."

"Secret -- UK eyes only" means circulation was strictly limited to the prime minister and his highest confidantes. It's worth paying full attention to what such people say when think they are sharing secrets.

Crucial information in this meeting came from the report of the head of British intelligence, Sir Richard Dearlove, on talks with former CIA director, George Tenet, in Washington on July 22, 2002. Dearlove describes a decision already taken by the Bush administration to find a way to justify a war: "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam."

There was just one problem, of which this group of high-level British politicians and civil servants was clearly aware. Foreign Minister Jack Straw said of the push for military action: "The case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

Evidently Tenet had said nothing to persuade Dearlove or Straw that Saddam presented a major threat. Dearlove observed: "The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

It was just a month after the meeting between the top British and American spies that Cheney claimed Hussein was "amassing weapons of mass destruction." And that was just the beginning. Congress and the American people were systematically deceived. The only way to persuade the American people to go to war, and to let their sons and daughters undergo the full onslaught of war, was to conjure up an imminent threat. And this is what they produced, mushroom clouds, lethal chemicals, anthrax and all.

So far, the president's aides have made sure that none of the war protestors' claims would stick to their man. But as the toll of death and injury continues to mount in Iraq, this new evidence that the "case was thin" for war may prove more difficult to evade.

U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and 88 House Democrats have written to the president requesting an explanation. They should have the full support of all Americans. We need to know exactly why this president led the nation into this tragic and disastrous war.

And where were you, Freep, on the run up to the war? Hmm? Beating the drum like CNN?

Missing the Point, V.5.0

Assault On the Media

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Friday, May 27, 2005; Page A27

Let's be clear: Newsweek originally reported that an internal military investigation had "confirmed" infractions alleged in "internal FBI e-mails." The documents made public Wednesday include only an allegation from a prisoner about the flushing of the Koran, and the Pentagon insisted that the same prisoner, reinterviewed on May 14, couldn't corroborate his earlier claim.

But it's also clear, to be charitable, that not all was well in Guantanamo. That's why the administration and its apologists -- more about that word in a moment -- went bonkers over the Newsweek story.

The war on Newsweek shifted attention away from how the Guantanamo prisoners have been treated, how that treatment has affected the battle against terrorism and what American policies should be. Newsweek-bashing also furthered a long-term and so far successful campaign by the administration and the conservative movement to dismiss all negative reports about their side as the product of some entity they call "the liberal media."

At this point, it is customary to offer a disclaimer to the effect that my column runs in The Post, is syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group and that The Washington Post Co. owns Newsweek. I resisted writing about this subject precisely because I do not want anyone to confuse my own views with Newsweek's or The Post's.

I write about it now because of the new reports and because I fear that too many people in traditional journalism are becoming dangerously defensive in the face of a brilliantly conceived conservative attack on the independent media.

Conservative academics have long attacked "postmodernist" philosophies for questioning whether "truth" exists at all and claiming that what we take as "truths" are merely "narratives" woven around some ideological predisposition. Today's conservative activists have become the new postmodernists. They shift attention away from the truth or falsity of specific facts and allegations -- and move the discussion to the motives of the journalists and media organizations putting them forward. Just a modest number of failures can be used to discredit an entire enterprise.

Of course journalists make mistakes, sometimes stupid ones. Dan Rather should not have used those wacky documents in reporting on President Bush's Air National Guard service. Newsweek has been admirably self-critical about what it sees as its own mistakes on the Guantanamo story. Anonymous sources are overused. Why quote a nameless conservative saying a particular columnist is "an idiot liberal" when many loyal right-wingers could be found to say the same thing even more colorfully on the record? If the current controversies lead to better journalism, three cheers.

But this particular anti-press campaign is not about Journalism 101. It is about Power 101. It is a sophisticated effort to demolish the idea of a press independent of political parties by way of discouraging scrutiny of conservative politicians in power. By using bad documents, Dan Rather helped Bush, not John Kerry, because Rather gave Bush's skilled lieutenants the chance to use the CBS mistake to close off an entire line of inquiry about the president. In the case of Guantanamo, the administration, for a while, cast its actions as less important than Newsweek's.

Back when the press was investigating Bill Clinton, conservatives were eager to believe every negative report about the incumbent. Some even pushed totally false claims, including the loony allegation that Clinton aide Vince Foster was somehow murdered by Clinton's apparatchiks when, in fact, Foster committed suicide. Every journalist who went after Clinton was "courageous." Anyone who opposed his impeachment or questioned even false allegations was "an apologist."

We now know that the conservatives' admiration for a crusading and investigative press carried an expiration date of Jan. 20, 2001.

When the press fails, it should be called on the carpet. But when the press confronts a politically motivated campaign of intimidation, its obligation is to resist -- and to keep reporting.

Um, E.J., you might want to mention that the ICRC reported the Koran infractions a year ago. But that would mean doing real reporting. Or just reading the "A" section of your own damn paper.

Balance of Power, People's Edition

The people, we great unwashed, are paying attention and have a thing or two to say. This is in today's Letters to the Editor in the Miami Herald:

PERSPECTIVES ON FILIBUSTER COMPROMISE

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist lost a lot in the decision on Senate voting practices. He has been cited as saying that he will still bring up the ''nuclear option'' and move to close debate whenever he sees fit, appealing to overrule the procedure to admit a potential filibuster.

But he won't get the votes for that if the ''fearless 14'' senators decide that a particular debate is an ''exceptional circumstance.'' With any luck, they will stay together and keep future Supreme Court nominees from avoiding the threat of filibuster completely. The country needs that safeguard against one-party rule.

I object strongly to the opposition saying that ''people of faith'' are all on their side. What do they think the rest of us are? People of no faith? That's a heresy against the religion of a great many devout people.

DOROTHY L. SEROTTA, Miami Beach

Indeed. Those of us on the religious left are just as religious as the lunatic fringe, we just don't seek to force it on everybody else.

Bringing Down the Hammer

Treasurer of DeLay Group Broke Texas Election Law

By Sylvia Moreno and R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, May 27, 2005; Page A01

AUSTIN, May 26 -- A state judge ruled Thursday that the treasurer of a political fundraising committee organized by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) violated the state's election law by failing to report $684,507 in contributions from corporations and other donors in 2002.

The civil court decision is the first to uphold a complaint by Democrats about the way DeLay and his advisers financed a 2002 political victory in Texas, which ultimately helped cement Republican control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The fundraising committee, Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC), following a plan devised by the DeLay camp, helped elect the first Republican majority in the Texas House in 130 years. That allowed DeLay's allies here in the state legislature to redraw congressional districts and elect four additional Republicans to the U.S. House in 2004.

The decision by state District Judge Joseph H. Hart focused on the liability of the committee's treasurer and did not mention DeLay, who has denied involvement in any improprieties. The judge did not rule explicitly on the wider issue of whether the contributions themselves -- as opposed to the failure to report them -- were illegal.

Separate criminal charges related to that issue, including indictments of three political associates of DeLay and four of the corporations that provided contributions, are pending in another Texas court.

The prosecutor is closing in on the Bugman. It's only a matter of time.

Where are Woodward and Bernstein When You Need Them?

Assault On the Media

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Friday, May 27, 2005; Page A27

Let's be clear: Newsweek originally reported that an internal military investigation had "confirmed" infractions alleged in "internal FBI e-mails." The documents made public Wednesday include only an allegation from a prisoner about the flushing of the Koran, and the Pentagon insisted that the same prisoner, reinterviewed on May 14, couldn't corroborate his earlier claim.

But it's also clear, to be charitable, that not all was well in Guantanamo. That's why the administration and its apologists -- more about that word in a moment -- went bonkers over the Newsweek story.

The war on Newsweek shifted attention away from how the Guantanamo prisoners have been treated, how that treatment has affected the battle against terrorism and what American policies should be. Newsweek-bashing also furthered a long-term and so far successful campaign by the administration and the conservative movement to dismiss all negative reports about their side as the product of some entity they call "the liberal media."

At this point, it is customary to offer a disclaimer to the effect that my column runs in The Post, is syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group and that The Washington Post Co. owns Newsweek. I resisted writing about this subject precisely because I do not want anyone to confuse my own views with Newsweek's or The Post's.

I write about it now because of the new reports and because I fear that too many people in traditional journalism are becoming dangerously defensive in the face of a brilliantly conceived conservative attack on the independent media.

Conservative academics have long attacked "postmodernist" philosophies for questioning whether "truth" exists at all and claiming that what we take as "truths" are merely "narratives" woven around some ideological predisposition. Today's conservative activists have become the new postmodernists. They shift attention away from the truth or falsity of specific facts and allegations -- and move the discussion to the motives of the journalists and media organizations putting them forward. Just a modest number of failures can be used to discredit an entire enterprise.

Of course journalists make mistakes, sometimes stupid ones. Dan Rather should not have used those wacky documents in reporting on President Bush's Air National Guard service. Newsweek has been admirably self-critical about what it sees as its own mistakes on the Guantanamo story. Anonymous sources are overused. Why quote a nameless conservative saying a particular columnist is "an idiot liberal" when many loyal right-wingers could be found to say the same thing even more colorfully on the record? If the current controversies lead to better journalism, three cheers.

But this particular anti-press campaign is not about Journalism 101. It is about Power 101. It is a sophisticated effort to demolish the idea of a press independent of political parties by way of discouraging scrutiny of conservative politicians in power. By using bad documents, Dan Rather helped Bush, not John Kerry, because Rather gave Bush's skilled lieutenants the chance to use the CBS mistake to close off an entire line of inquiry about the president. In the case of Guantanamo, the administration, for a while, cast its actions as less important than Newsweek's.

Back when the press was investigating Bill Clinton, conservatives were eager to believe every negative report about the incumbent. Some even pushed totally false claims, including the loony allegation that Clinton aide Vince Foster was somehow murdered by Clinton's apparatchiks when, in fact, Foster committed suicide. Every journalist who went after Clinton was "courageous." Anyone who opposed his impeachment or questioned even false allegations was "an apologist."

We now know that the conservatives' admiration for a crusading and investigative press carried an expiration date of Jan. 20, 2001.

When the press fails, it should be called on the carpet. But when the press confronts a politically motivated campaign of intimidation, its obligation is to resist -- and to keep reporting.

Um, E. J.? Not to put too fine a point on it, but can we say Scotty McLelland lied? That Bushco continues to lie? Can we say that? If we can't say that, why not?

You local press corps are so timid, when the facts are so obvious.

Vacationing in the Nation's Capital?

Smithsonian Inundated With Leaks, GAO Reports

By Don Oldenburg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 27, 2005; Page C01

"Leak" in Washington usually has one meaning -- the one that raises official ire, triggers internal investigations and sends unnamed sources scampering like roaches when the lights go on.

But when Government Accountability Office analysts reported leaks and other upkeep issues in its infrastructure study of the Smithsonian Institution on Wednesday, they meant it the old-fashioned way -- drip by drip, countered with buckets, towels and mops.

To wit, or wet: A leak at the National Air and Space Museum caused rust on the wing of the first plane to hit Mach 2. Plaster walls are weeping in the Renwick Gallery. Some buildings and exhibits on the Mall and at the National Zoo have closed because of disrepair, and more leaks threaten the Smithsonian's historic collections and irreplaceable objects, the report says.

Cost to fix and maintain the deteriorating facilities over the next nine years? At least $2.3 billion, the Smithsonian estimates -- almost 13 times its current facilities budget.

"The problems are relatively serious given the kinds of repair backlogs the Smithsonian has," says Mark Goldstein, the GAO's director of physical infrastructure issues, who oversaw the study. "They are taking pretty strong steps to deal with the major problems within the confines of their budget. But they can't do as much as they'd like to do."

The Smithsonian's repairs-and-maintenance budget for fiscal year 2004 is $184.4 million of its $904 million operating budget for 18 public museums and galleries, 10 science centers, the zoo and other facilities. There are 660 buildings altogether that display, study and safeguard 143.7 million precious objects and specimens and 166.3 million archived documents and photographs.

"There are not adequate resources to address a fairly profound shortfall in terms of an aging physical plant," says Sheila Burke, the Smithsonian's deputy secretary and chief operating officer, calling the GAO report "quite accurate" and "a fair analysis."

So far, "structural deterioration" and "chronic leaks" have closed some buildings, restricted access to others and damaged some collections, the report says.

Among the casualties are the landmark 1881 Arts and Industries Building on the Mall and the zoo's sloth bear building and birds-of-prey flight cage, which have been shut down pending repairs. The Old Patent Office Building at Seventh and F streets NW, home to the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum, has been closed since 2000 for revitalization for reroofing, but is scheduled to reopen in July 2006.

Some precious objects have also been damaged. At Air and Space, the pioneering Lilienthal Hang Glider that influenced the Wright Brothers' flight designs has been blemished by a leak, and the Douglas Skyrocket D558, the first airplane to break Mach 2, has some visible rust. As stopgaps, Smithsonian conservators have had to drape plastic sheeting over valuable artifacts.

Welcome to Bush Budget 2. I'm pretty sure he isn't even aware of the Smithsonian.

I Hate Flying

Crowds, Security May Cause Air Travel Woes

WASHINGTON, May 26, 2005

(AP) Fliers beware: This summer vacation season could rival 2000, the worst ever for flight delays, cancellations and cranky travelers crammed into airport terminals.

Takeoffs are now returning to pre-Sept. 11, 2001, levels, and millions of tickets have already been sold. Security-related delays are a concern, and so is one thing that no one controls: Mother Nature.

"In bad weather, that's when it shuts down," said Jack Evans, spokesman for the Air Transport Association, the industry group for major airlines.

Hot, humid air produces summer thunderstorms, typically in a zone that stretches from Texas to Michigan. They're too high to fly over, too dangerous to fly through and often too wide to fly around.

At hub airports _ especially Chicago's O'Hare International _ bad weather can combine with huge numbers of passengers to cause delays that cascade through the entire system. That's what happened in 2000, forcing thousands of passengers to sleep on terminal floors or sit fuming while their planes lingered on runways for hours.

Much has been done to improve things since then. Airports have added runways and terminals and improved efficiency, and the Federal Aviation Administration has adopted new strategies.

But the system has yet to be tested during a bad thunderstorm season, and the signs so far aren't encouraging.

The Memorial Day rush at Washington Dulles International Airport began early Thursday afternoon as security lines suddenly ballooned to thousands of travelers.

Many were taking advantage of cheap ticket prices. The average airfare for a 1,000-mile flight is now $118, 20 percent lower than it was in 2000, according to Transportation Department Inspector General Kenneth Mead.

Bargain airfares allowed Nancy Cross, a physician's assistant from Ashburn, Va., to take her husband and two stepdaughters with her to Orlando, Fla., where she was attending a medical conference.

Cross couldn't believe the security line. "I can't even see where it begins," she said, standing on tiptoes.

The weather service is already warning on a busier than normal thunderstorm season.

I came home Monday through a connecting flight at Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport. That's a mistake I'll never make again. The lines for security were unbelievable. And this was before Memorial Day.

I'm planning to drive to Toronto this summer.

Irony

Bush the despot
The Senate's compromise on the filibuster won't stop the president's quest for absolute power.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Sidney Blumenthal

May 26, 2005 | President Bush's drive for absolute power has momentarily stalled. In a single coup, he planned to take over all the institutions of government. By crushing the traditions of the Senate he would pack the courts, especially the Supreme Court, with lock-step ideologues. Sheer force would prevail. But just as his blitzkrieg reached the outskirts of his objective he was struck by a mutiny. Within a span of 24 hours he lost control not only of the Senate but, temporarily, of the House of Representatives, which was supposed to be regimented by unquestioned loyalty. Now he prepares to launch a counterattack -- against the dissident elements of his own party.

Bush's wonder weapon for total victory was a device called the "nuclear option." Once triggered, it would obliterate a 200-year-old tradition of the Senate. The threat of a Democratic filibuster in the Senate of Bush's appointments to the federal bench would set the doomsday sequence in motion. The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, would call for a change in the rule, and a simple majority would vote to abolish the filibuster. Bush's nominees would then sail through.

Unlike the House, the Senate was constructed by the constitutional framers as an unrepresentative body, with each state, regardless of population, allotted two senators. (Currently, Republicans have 55 senators who represent only 45 percent of the country.) The Senate creates its own rules, and the filibuster can be stopped only by a super-majority of 60 votes. Historically, it was used by Southern senators to block civil rights legislation. In the first two years of the Clinton presidency, Republicans deployed 48 filibusters, more than in the entire previous history of the Senate, to make the new Democratic chief executive appear feckless. The strategy was instrumental in the Republican capture of Congress in 1994. By depriving Democrats of the filibuster, Bush intended to transform the Senate into his rubber stamp.

For many senators the fate of the filibuster was only superficially about an arcane rule change. And shameless hypocrisy was the least of the problem. (Frist, like most Republicans in favor of the nuclear option, had enthusiastically filibustered against Clinton's court nominees, 65 of which were blocked from 1995 to 2000.) If Bush had succeeded he would have effectively removed the Senate's "advice and consent" on executive appointments, drastically reducing its power.

Over the weekend, two elders, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and Sen. John Warner, R-Va., together privately pored over the Federalist Papers, written by the constitutional framers, to refresh their thinking about the inviolability of the Senate. On Monday, seven Republicans and seven Democrats signed a pact that preserved the filibuster under "extraordinary" circumstances and allowed several of Bush's appointments to be voted on.

The mutiny is broader than is apparent. More than the seven Republican signatories supported the accord, but they let the others take a public stance without revealing themselves. Bush's radicalism offended their conservatism. Dwight Eisenhower (or even Bush I), not Bush, is their preferred model for a Republican president. These Republican senators are the equivalent of the Republicans on the Supreme Court -- Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy -- who are conservative but operate without ideology, and hold the balance against the aggressive right-wing justices.

The day after Bush was frustrated by Republicans in the Senate, 50 Republicans in the House deserted him on the issue of stem cell research. His policy limiting scientific work that might cure many diseases is a sop to the religious right, which views the stem cell question as an extension of abortion. (Historians will discover that in early August 2001 Bush was immersed in delivering a nationally televised speech on stem cells while ignoring the CIA memo titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.") Debate in the House was marshaled by Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who argued that Bush's policy must be supported because "we were all at one time embryos ourselves. So was Abraham. So was Muhammad. So was Jesus of Nazareth." (DeLay was apparently ignorant of the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, which makes it unlikely that Jesus was an embryo.) Bush promised to veto the stem cell bill passed with massive Republican defections, the irony of his opposition to the filibuster going unmentioned.

Advice from the North

Blaming the victim for Qur'an desecrations

HAROON SIDDIQUI

It is hard to believe but there are commentators who are berating those who protested the desecration of the Qur'an, not those who did the desecrating. This attitude of blaming the victims fits the tenor of the times. The colonial British and the French were also adept at holding the Indians and Algerians responsible for their own plight.

The pundits are being even more bizarre than the Bush administration, which skewered Newsweek for reporting the sacrilege, not those who committed it.

Even as the Bush administration continues its cover-up for presiding over one of the most shameful chapters in prisoner abuse, here is New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, reprinted in the Toronto Star no less, hectoring the Afghans and others for being stupid enough to take to the streets in dismay.

He is not alone, and he and the other new Orientalists are entitled to their views, as also their logical contortions to continue rationalizing the war on Iraq. But their myopia does cause concern.

Here are their arguments, with one person's response:Political opportunists in Pakistan and elsewhere hijacked the Qur'an incidents to whip up public fury.

Don't our politicians exploit every chance to advance their agenda and themselves, often at the expense of the common good? Aren't George W. Bush and other Republicans particularly adept at using religious and moral wedge issues?

Muslims should be up in arms about the killing of 17 fellow Muslims in the Qur'an protests.

Unlike the impression left of crowds lynching one another, most of those who died were killed in police shootings ordered by the pro-American governments of Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Hamid Karzai.

There has been plenty of criticism of that, which is not what Messrs. Friedman and others, shedding crocodile tears, are looking for. What they want is for Muslims to berate Muslims for being Muslim in a way not acceptable to America. Muslims must condemn "their culture of death," as demonstrated in the Qur'an protests and in suicide bombings, lately in Iraq.

Sure. But as a recent study by Robert Pape, professor at the University of Chicago, has shown, suicide bombings are not the exclusive preserve of Muslims. The Tamil Tigers, who happen to be Hindu, have been the leading user of that dastardly weapon.

More importantly, the Arab and Muslim world has had much to say, and with good reason, about America's "culture of death," as seen in the killing of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis in the last three years, and in the earlier deaths of an estimated 500,000 children in the American-led economic sanctions, and in American complicity by silence in Russia's butchering of more than 100,000 Chechens.

Why the soft-pedalling of such mass deaths but the frothy denunciations of the Muslim mayhem, which is minuscule by comparison?

All killings must be condemned. But honesty demands context and perspective.

Because, Harroun, the Yanks aren't paying attention to what is being committed in our name and basically don't care.

The Book on the Bushes

I didn't catch this last fall when the book came out, but The Toronto Star's Azerbic blog (blogspace for their terrific columnist, Antonia Zerbisias, Canada's answer to Molly Ivins) tells us that the paperback edition of Kitty Kelley's take down of the Bush dynasty, The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty has just been released. It took a little clicking around, but I found my way to Slate's "review" from last September. You are going to love that link. A sample:

Page 261-68: George W. at Yale. A witness remembers a "roaring drunk" Bush doing the Alligator at a fraternity kegger. A frat brother says Bush "wasn't an ass man." Another friend concurs: "Poor Georgie. He couldn't even relate to women unless he was loaded. … There were just too many stories of him turning up dead drunk on dates." W. lovingly tends to his frat brothers but derides other Yalies as "liberal pussies."

Page 271: Joke excised from Bush's 2001 Yale commencement speech: "It's great to return to New Haven. My car was followed all the way from the airport by a long line of police cars with slowly rotating lights. It was just like being an undergraduate again."

Page 309: At Harvard Business School, which W. attends from 1973 to 1975, a professor screens The Grapes of Wrath. Bush asks him, "Why are you going to show us that Commie movie?" W.'s take on the film: "Look. People are poor because they are lazy."

Sex and Drugs

Page 49: Prescott Bush frequently shows up drunk at the lavish Hartford Club and never tips the bellboys. "Finally we figured out how to exact revenge," says one bellboy. "Whenever he came in drunk and wanted to go upstairs, we'd take him in the elevator and stop about three inches from his floor. He'd step out and fall flat on his face."

Page 79: In a letter to his mother during World War II, H.W. fulminates against the casual sex he sees at a Naval Air Station: "These girls are not prostitutes, but just girls without any morals at all."

Page 209: In the early 1960s, H.W. has an affair with an Italian woman named Rosemarie and "promise[s] to get a divorce and marry her." Bush ends the affair in 1964; the woman asks the attorney if she can sue Bush for breaking their engagement.

Page 327-30; 341-42; 353: Now ambassador to China, H.W. has a relationship with his aide Jennifer Fitzgerald. Around the same time, Barbara disappears from Peking for three months. "Everyone knew that [Fitzgerald] was George's mistress," says a source.

Page 375-76: James Baker refuses to run Bush's 1980 presidential campaign if Fitzgerald is around; Bush concedes but pays her a salary. After becoming vice president, Bush gets into a traffic accident while riding with his "girlfriend"; he calls Secretary of State Alexander Haig to help him shoo away the Washington, D.C., police. Fitzgerald isn't Bush's only dalliance: A divorcee from North Dakota moves to Washington to be with the veep. Kelley says Nancy Reagan, who reviles the Bushes, delights in the gossip.

Page 266: George W. and cocaine. One anonymous Yalie claims he sold coke to Bush; another classmate says he and Bush snorted the drug together. Sharon Bush, W.'s ex-sister-in-law, tells Kelley that Bush has used cocaine at Camp David "not once, but many times." (Sharon has since denied telling Kelley this.)

Page 304: While working on a 1972 Alabama Senate campaign, Bush, witnesses say, "liked to sneak out back for a joint of marijuana or into the bathroom for a line of cocaine."

Page 575: A friend says Laura Bush was the "go-to girl for dime bags" at Southern Methodist University.

The media, of course, utterly ignored the book and Kelley got only stinted attention when it was published. Mark Crispin Miller has some further thoughts on the subject. Amazing that you've got to read a Canadian blog to find out about this.

Fantasyland

Iraqi Leaders Announce Major Effort to Curb Insurgents

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: May 26, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 26 - The new Iraqi government announced sweeping measures today to clamp down on insurgents in Baghdad and the rest of the country, saying it would deploy 40,000 Iraqi troops in the capital over the next week.

The Iraqi government released this image of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi on March 7. Iraqi ministers today backed reports that he had been injured, but offered no other details.

In the operation, soldiers and security forces will set up 600 checkpoints around Baghdad, some of them mobile, and will check the identification of Iraqis in neighborhoods and hotels.

The announcement came on a day that saw at least 10 more people killed in a suicide bombing and shootings in the capital. In addition, four people, a child and three policemen, were killed in gunfights in the northern city of Mosul. The operation, which will divide Baghdad into seven areas, will also include raids on suspected insurgent hideouts.

"There is no timeline - the timeline is to defeat terrorists," Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi said at a news conference with the interior minister, Bayan Jabor.

"There is no place for terrorists in this country," Mr. Dulaimi said.

In a brief reference to the most wanted militant in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the ministers said they had information that he had been injured, but offered no other details. Their comment followed similar information posted on an Islamic Web site on Wednesday.

Mr. Dulaimi said that a blockade will be imposed around the capital, "like a bracelet around an arm, God willing," adding, "No one will be able to penetrate this blockade."

The operation will continue in the rest of the country for several weeks, the ministers said.

The ministers also cautioned that any arrests would be well-planned and not reckless.

Iraq will not "achieve security at the expense of human dignity," Mr. Dulaimi said, adding that the government wished "to build good relations with people."

Yesterday we learned that it will be 5-10 years before the Iraqi forces will be effective, and today they want us to buy this? This is PR, nothing more.

Tipping Point

GOP Tilting Balance Of Power to the Right

By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 26, 2005; Page A01

The campaign to prevent the Senate filibuster of the president's judicial nominations was simply the latest and most public example of similar transformations in Congress and the executive branch stretching back a decade. The common theme is to consolidate influence in a small circle of Republicans and to marginalize dissenting voices that would try to impede a conservative agenda.

House Republicans, for instance, discarded the seniority system and limited the independence and prerogatives of committee chairmen. The result is a chamber effectively run by a handful of GOP leaders. At the White House, Bush has tightened the reins on Cabinet members, centralizing the most important decisions among a tight group of West Wing loyalists. With the strong encouragement of Vice President Cheney, he has also moved to expand the amount of executive branch information that can be legally shielded from Congress, the courts and the public.

Now, the White House and Congress are setting their sights on how to make the judiciary more deferential to the conservative cause -- as illustrated by the filibuster debate and recent threats by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and others to more vigorously oversee the courts.

"I think we have used the legislative and executive branch as well as anybody to achieve our policy aims," said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.). "It is a remarkable governing instrument."

The transformation started in the House in the 1990s and intensified with Bush's 2000 election. The result has been a stronger president working with a compliant and streamlined Congress to push the country, and the courts, in a more conservative direction, according to historians, government scholars, and current and former federal officials.

Some of the changes, such as a more powerful executive branch, less powerful rank-and-file members of Congress and more pro-Republican courts, are likely to outlast the current president and GOP majority, they say. The Republican bid to ban the filibustering of judges made it easier for Bush to appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court and holds open the threat of future attempts to erode the most powerful tool available to the minority party in Congress.

"Every president grabs for more power. What's different it seems to me is the acquiescence of Congress," said former representative Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.), a government scholar at the Aspen Institute.

When Republicans won control of the House in 1994, conservatives turned an institution run by Democrats and veteran chairmen into a top-down organization that looked in some ways like the flow chart of a Fortune 500 business. The idea was to put power in the hands of a few leaders and place conservative loyalists in the most important lower-level jobs to move legislation as quickly as possible through Congress, according to current and former lawmakers.

Those who cross party leaders often pay a price, usually by losing positions of influence. Most recently, Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) lost the chairmanship of the Veterans Affairs Committee after clashing with party leaders over spending and other issues. At the same time, loyalists are rewarded. The result, writes American University's James A. Thurber in a forthcoming book on Congress and the presidency, is less powerful representatives facing increased pressure to carry out their leadership's wishes.

This is precisely the reason why I opposed the Nelson/McCain compromise earlier this week: it amounts to little more than yet another capitulation to Republican attempts to further weaken Constitutional balance of power. If the Founders could look at the republic today, they would be horrified.

Bush Hypocrisy

Stem Cell Hypocrisy ...

This leads to two conclusions. First, Bush's policy is illogical; he not only tolerates in vitro fertilization — the president celebrates it (correctly) as bringing happiness to many. It is a "pro-family" policy that unavoidably involves creating and destroying embryos.

Second, encouraging the donation of frozen embryos to prospective parents, even under the most optimistic scenario, would put only a small dent in the supply. According to a 2003 study, there are almost half a million frozen human embryos in storage in the United States. The vast majority of them — 87% — were frozen in case the parents might need them, but the vast majority of that vast majority will never be needed or used. An embryo-adoption drive wouldn't save the embryos that die in other stages of the process. And ironically, the recipients of donated fertilized eggs also generally have several implanted in the hope that one will survive. In effect, donation results in the deaths of embryos that would otherwise stay frozen.

A bill approved by a wide (but not veto-proof) margin in the House on Tuesday would loosen restrictions on federal funding for stem cell research. The president is threatening to veto this bill. If he does, these embryos will either be destroyed or frozen forever. They will not develop into cuddly babies. Therefore a veto wouldn't actually save a single embryo. His threat is purely symbolic.

If you really believe that embryos are full human beings, this doesn't matter. But if you think the issue is uncertain or ambiguous at all, it's a powerful argument to say: It's not a choice between a human life and an embryo's life. It's a choice between real human lives and a symbolic statement about the value of an embryo. And it's a statement belied by the reality of in vitro fertilization and how it works.

Until it is implanted in a uterus, a blastocyst is not a potential human, period. I think about the amount of actual human suffering that could be addressed with stem cell research and I wonder how anyone could get exercised about stem cells.

Bells and Alarms

Hat-tip to Revere at Effect Measure:

The US's premiere scientific journal, Nature, is devoting its entire current issue to avian influenza and makes its content available free on the website. This is unprecedented and a sign of how seriously scientists are taking this this threat. An excerpt:

Trouble is brewing in the East. A highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza is endemic in southeast Asia. Many millions of chickens have been culled, but there is a persistent reservoir in domesticated ducks and wild birds. The H5N1 virus isn't going to go away. And each time it emerges, people can be infected.

H5N1 first reared its head in Hong Kong and southern China in 1997, killing six. Since late 2003, it has led to the deaths of more than 50 people in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia.

The stage is set for the emergence of a fresh human influenza pandemic. These occur when a virus to which most people have no immunity, usually an avian strain, acquires the ability to transmit readily from person to person. H5N1 hasn't yet gained that ability — and hopefully, it will not.

But if it does, the virus could spread across the globe within months. The consequences are difficult to predict. We're unlikely to be as lucky as in 1968, when the relatively mild H3N2 virus killed some 750,000 people worldwide. But the real nightmare scenario is a re-run of the H1N1 flu pandemic of 1918, which left as many as 40 million dead. Standards of health care have improved a lot since then, which will help. But if a pandemic strain were to retain H5N1's current extreme pathogenicity, a similar toll can't be ruled out.

This week, Nature devotes its News Feature and Commentary pages to a detailed consideration of the risks posed by avian flu, and how well we are prepared to deal with it. In the pages that follow, our reporters examine nations' capacity to produce a vaccine against a pandemic strain, and the adequacy of global stockpiles of antiviral drugs. They do not paint an encouraging picture.

Repeated warnings about the international community's failure to respond to the pandemic threat have fallen on deaf ears. So in our opening News Feature, we use the benefit of fictional hindsight to throw the issues into starker relief, describing a future pandemic through the weblog of a journalist in the thick of things. This is fiction, but not fantasy — the storyline was drawn up in consultation with those who could soon be dealing with the situation for real.

Read the fictional weblog on the link above. This is a scenario I've been telling you about for the last six months or so. Be prepared rather than sorry.

UPDATE: USAToday and The Scotsman have more on the possible economic effects of a lethal pandemic:

Flu pandemic warnings escalate
By Anita Manning, USA TODAY

There is still uncertainty about when a pandemic might emerge, says Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. But "the accumulation of evidence is very disturbing." In his Nature article, Osterholm calls WHO's pandemic plan "non-specific" and says it "falls far short of what is needed" for local or long-term planning.

Development of a vaccine should be a top priority, he says, along with availability of antivirals and protective masks.

The danger goes beyond public health, he warns.

"Even if a country had access to a protective pandemic vaccine ... its economy is going to crash," he says. International trade will halt as countries close their borders. "We will see major shortages in products that mean life and death," such as food and drugs, he says, and when the pandemic is over, the question will be how to get the world's economy going again.

"How do you prime a pump when you have no electricity?" he asks. "Nobody has ever seen the global economy go down."

If that doesn't get your attention, I don't know what will.

Salon weighs in as well, and even CNN has a snippet today. The report in Nature has shaken this story loose.

That Cessna Incident

Of Cabbages and Kings
by William S. Lind

I suspect that more than a few of our soldiers and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan, enjoying as they do a daily diet of IEDs, ambushes and mortarings, were less than amused at watching Washington flee from a flea. More importantly, what message does such easy panic send to the rest of the world? Osama bin Laden has whole armies trying to kill him, but as best I know he has shown no signs of fear. Here again we see the power of the moral level of war. In cultures less decadent than our own, few men are likely to identify with leaders who fill their pants at one tiny blip on a radar screen.

The episode also reveals what has become one of the main characteristics of America's "homeland defense:" a total inability to use common sense. We have already seen that in our airport security procedures, our de facto open borders immigration policy, and the idiotic "PATRIOT Act." Here, it seems that no one was willing to act on the obvious, namely that if a small plane is approaching Washington, it is probably because the pilot got lost (which pilots do frequently). Why? Because to bureaucracies what is important is not external reality but covering your own backside politically. Putting on shows serves that purpose well, even if the shows make us look like both fools and cowards.

There was also a message to the American people in the Cessna affair, and from a Fourth Generation perspective it was not a helpful one. The message was that the safety of the New Class in Washington is far more important than the safety of other Americans. As the first really serious terrorist incident is likely to show, America remains ill-prepared either to prevent or to deal with the consequences of a suitcase nuke or an induced plague. Not only will ordinary people die in large numbers, but it will be realized in retrospect that many of the deaths could have been avoided had the New Class cared about anyone other than itself. But, of course, it doesn't.

As I have said many times before, what lies at the heart of Fourth Generation war is a crisis of legitimacy of the state. In America, that crisis can only be intensified by any instance where the Washington elite draws a distinction between itself and the rest of the country. When the same people who have sent our kids to die in Iraq and left our borders wide open run in panic because of a Cessna, the American people get the message: Washington is "them," not "us." At some point, that gap may grow wide enough to swallow the state itself. Kings who become cabbages, like Darius, end up history's losers.

Bill Lind and I may not agree on much of anything politically, but he is the only commentator on the right I've found who understands that war, particularly the Iraq war, has a moral dimension, and that morality is one of the most important determiners of the outcome. He is correct to point out that the gap between the governed and the governing has now become almost unbridgable, and that the republic is at risk because of it. This man is a patriot.

Women's Work

Bid to Limit Women In Combat Withdrawn

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 26, 2005; Page A01

House Republicans retreated yesterday from a measure that would have restricted women's roles in the military in an effort to keep them out of combat.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Army leaders and lawmakers from both parties opposed the change, which would have frozen the jobs that women are allowed to fill related to military ground operations and would have required congressional approval for any change.

Yesterday's reversal capped two weeks of intense debate over women in combat that highlighted a gap between committee-room interpretations of a decade-old policy and the daily reality of road bombs and rockets that thousands of female soldiers face today in Iraq.

"In the history of this country there has never been a law limiting the assignment of women in the Army, and we will not do so now," Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-N.M.), the only female military veteran in Congress, said on the House floor. She added in an interview: "We have men and women 6,000 miles from home doing a very dangerous job, and we should not do anything to indicate we do not appreciate their service."

At issue was a 1994 Pentagon policy that bars women from serving in direct ground combat units below the brigade level. Over the years, the Army has expanded the range of positions women are allowed to fill, placing them closer and closer to units whose central mission is combat. Some House Republicans have come to believe that the military is straying from its own stated policy and sought to rein it in by rolling back the places where women can serve.

But their efforts fizzled after top Army generals and other critics said the change would send the wrong message to women serving under fire in Iraq. Yesterday, as the House prepared to pass the annual defense authorization bill, lawmakers on both sides of the issue reached agreement on language essentially maintaining the status quo. The bill was approved 390 to 39.

The chief advocate of restricting women's roles, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), scaled back his own plan so that it simply would extend the time required for the Pentagon to notify Congress -- from 30 days to 60 days in session -- before it opened or closed positions to women.

In a statement, Hunter said the new language preserves his aim "to inject Congress into any policy changes" the Pentagon may propose on assigning women to "units such as infantry, armor and artillery."

"The women-in-the-military issue is past," said Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, who also fought the proposal.

Opposition from Pentagon and Army leaders was intense. Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey said last week that it was "unnecessary" and could cause "confusion on the part of commanders and soldiers."

Rumsfeld made his disagreement clear in a Capitol Hill luncheon with Republicans from the House Rules Committee on Tuesday, lawmakers said. "He said he loves Duncan Hunter but on this one he was wrong and it should be taken out of the bill," Wilson said. Later Tuesday, Rumsfeld met with Hunter and they discussed "some language they could both agree to," said Hunter spokesman Joshua Holly.

It's too late, this bird has already flown. Two of the three national dailies are leading with this story, but the public has moved on.

Retch

The Daily Load

This is utter horse shit. General and civil/charter aviation was never a threat. Those deadly Cessna 152s.

Tsk. When is Congress going to protect the harbors and the bridges on the I95 and I5 corridors? Hmm?

The Evening News

Um, people? The Zarqawi story is purest bullshit and Bushco propaganda. If you aren't reading Juan Cole you aren't really paying attention.

Dr. Cole says:

If Zarqawi did die, what difference would it make? He is responsible for only a fraction of the violence in Iraq, and has lots of jihadi lieutenants who would gladly take his place.

So, we cannot know if it is true. If it is true it is old news. And it wouldn't matter much to the situation in Iraq. I'd file that under "not a story."

The few reporters left in Iraq are confined to the Green Zone hotels, and so they are manufacturing news to justify being there.

There was a time when being a war correspondent could make a career. Now, they are just making shft up.

Kiss Up, Kick Down

I'm listening to the Bolton debate in the Senate on C-Span. I have to admit, the guy must have an ego so big that it is disqualifying for a diplo job: anybody who can stand having their temperament, not just their record, hauled over the coals like this (probably rightfully so, but still...) has to be some kind of lunatic. I sure as hell wouldn't want to go through this for ANY job, I don't care how important.

In my life, I've met maybe one person who could stand this, and he was a classic case of narcissistic personality disorder. A normal person would have asked that the nomination be withdrawn.

Defining Dumbness Down

Wilbanks Indicted on False Crime Charge

By DANIEL YEE
The Associated Press
Wednesday, May 25, 2005; 1:42 PM

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. -- Runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks was indicted Wednesday on two charges of lying to police about being kidnapped _ counts that could mean up to six years in prison.

The 32-year-old woman faces one felony count making of false statement and one misdemeanor count of making a false police report.

The felony charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, and the misdemeanor up to a year in jail if she is convicted. She could also face up to $11,000 in fines and be ordered to reimburse authorities for the cost of the search.

"We believe this is a reasonable next step in the case. We believe the grand jury made the right decision," said Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter.

"At some point you just can't lie to the police," he said.

A bench warrant will be issued for Wilbanks' arrest within the next few days, he added. He said he was confident arrangements could be made for Wilbanks to turn herself in. No court date has been set.

The indictment does not rule out a plea agreement to lesser charges, Porter said. Authorities had said they were talking to the Wilbanks family about a possible deal.

What I want to know is who is going to fine CNN/MSNBC/Fox for going wall to wall on this non-story for days?

Fait Accompli

In the updated NYTimes:

Many Republicans Are Already Eager to Challenge Agreement on Filibusters

By CARL HULSE
Published: May 25, 2005

WASHINGTON, May 24 - Angered by a bipartisan deal on judicial nominees, many Senate Republicans warned on Tuesday that they were already eager to challenge the agreement by pushing forward contested candidates, as the Senate cleared the way for the confirmation of the first Bush choice to benefit from the deal.

"This deal is really no deal until it plays out at length," said Senator Larry E. Craig, Republican of Idaho, who said he wanted a vote soon after Memorial Day on the nomination of William G. Myers III, a candidate whose fate was left uncertain in the deal.

Just a day after the agreement broke an impasse that had vexed the Senate and the Bush administration for years, senators on both sides of the aisle portrayed the new framework as fragile. Republicans in particular said the bipartisan deal, brokered by seven Democrats and seven Republicans on the eve of a showdown that could have crippled the Senate, would survive only if Democrats refrained from filibustering other emerging nominees, including some who were not guaranteed a vote in the last-minute agreement.

Other Republicans threatened to immediately invoke what some have called the nuclear option - doing away with the filibuster against judicial candidates - if Democrats tried to block any nominee except in the most extreme cases.

"This is merely a truce; it's not a treaty yet," said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah and a senior member of the Judiciary Committee.

And first out of the gate:

After 4 Years, Senate Votes to Confirm Owen for Federal Bench

By DAVID STOUT
Published: May 25, 2005

WASHINGTON, May 25 - Justice Priscilla R. Owen of the Texas Supreme Court was confirmed by the Senate today for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit after four years of frustration.

The vote, 56 to 43, was mostly along party lines. It came a day after the Senate voted overwhelmingly to cut off debate on the nomination and give her the yes-or-no decision that her Republican backers had long sought.

Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican majority leader, said just before today's roll call that Justice Owen had shown patience and courage while waiting "longer than anyone - anyone" should have had to wait.

In four years of off-and-on debates, Justice Owen was described by her supporters as a jurist of wide-ranging intellect and impeccable integrity whose rise from a hardscrabble childhood to the top of her class at Baylor University and on to the Texas high court was the American dream come to life.

But Justice Owen's detractors, mostly Democrats, argued that she was too far right ideologically, as shown by decisions that favored big business over consumers, for example.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic minority leader, said on Tuesday that Justice Owen's record on the Texas court revealed "an extreme ideological approach to the law."

"Objections to Priscilla Owen, nominee for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, are easy to understand: Owen's 1994 campaign to win a seat on the Texas Supreme Court was engineered by Karl Rove, President Bush's envoy to the radical right. Even her court colleagues have commented on her habit of twisting law to fit her hyperconservative political views, and of expressing open disdain for the high court's abortion rulings. What's more, Owen's ethical compass is apparently broken: She's accepted campaign cash from companies and law firms -- and then declined to recuse herself when those donors have appeared before her."

--Strib editorial, November 13, 2003

He Needs to Get Out More

The Senate's Real Leader

By David S. Broder

Wednesday, May 25, 2005; Page A27

The Monday night agreement to avert a showdown vote over judicial filibusters not only spared the Senate from a potentially ruinous clash, but also certified John McCain as the real leader of that body.

In contrast to Majority Leader Bill Frist, who was unable to negotiate a compromise with Minority Leader Harry Reid or hold his Republicans in line to clear the way for all of President Bush's nominees to be confirmed, McCain looks like the man who achieved his objectives.

U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) talks with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., May 24, 2005. Fourteen U.S. Senate moderates struck a deal on Monday to avert a historic showdown vote over U.S. President George W. Bush's stalled judicial nominees, crafting a bipartisan compromise that includes a commitment to clear the way for confirmation votes on three of five disputed nominees. The agreement was reached less than 24 hours before the Republican-led Senate was to decide whether to strip Democrats of their power to block Bush's candidates for federal courts. REUTERS/Mannie Garcia
U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) talks with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., May 24, 2005. Fourteen U.S. Senate moderates struck a deal on Monday to avert a historic showdown vote over U.S. President George W. Bush's stalled judicial nominees, crafting a bipartisan compromise that includes a commitment to clear the way for confirmation votes on three of five disputed nominees. The agreement was reached less than 24 hours before the Republican-led Senate was to decide whether to strip Democrats of their power to block Bush's candidates for federal courts.

If -- as many expect -- McCain and Frist find themselves rivals for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, the gap in their performance will be remembered.

David, David, you've been inside the beltway far too long. In ten days time, the 35% of the public which is even aware of this flap will have forgotten all about it. 2008 is a lifetime away. And you forget that Frist is playing to the evangelical Christian right, and his go for it all approach plays well with them.

Smilin'

For GOP, Deeper Fissures and a Looming Power Struggle

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 25, 2005; Page A11

Monday's surprise deal left two of the party's most prominent potential 2008 candidates, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.) and Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), on opposite sides of an ideological and strategic divide that is likely to widen as the party begins in earnest to hunt for a successor to Bush. Perhaps mindful of the power of social and religious conservatives, other GOP senators with presidential aspirations, including George Allen (Va.) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.), condemned the deal.

The compromise forged by 14 Democratic and Republican senators represented a rare, if temporary, rebuff to religious and social conservatives. Their condemnations, whether from James Dobson's Focus on the Family, radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh or conservative bloggers, were quick and strong. Dobson labeled it a "complete bailout and betrayal," and Jan LaRue, chief counsel of Concerned Women for America, branded the GOP negotiators "seven dwarves" who had given Democrats the right to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee.

Outside analysts took a more measured view of the terms of the agreement that blocked for now the use of the "nuclear option" to bar judicial filibusters; they contended that social and religious conservatives may have done better than they are willing to acknowledge, including the likely approval of three of Bush's most controversial appellate court nominees. The agreement, they said, may look much better to the right in a month or two.

"If they think more incrementally and realistically about what can be achieved, they managed to get a lot of the people [judicial nominees] they wanted without blowing up the United States Senate and without slowing down other elements of the president's agenda," said James L. Guth, a professor of political science at Furman University.

But leading voices among social conservatives sharply disagreed. "It's a rebuff of both the president, Senator Frist and the socially conservative base of the party by a handful of senators," said Gary L. Bauer, a former presidential candidate and president of American Values. "The heart of the Republican Party is as unhappy as I can recall."

That unhappiness stems in part from the huge investment that conservative groups put into the fight to kill the use of the filibuster in judicial nominations. Much of the energy came from religious conservatives, and Frist even appeared in a telecast last month sponsored such groups that was designed to drum up support for up-or-down votes for all judicial nominees.

But Frist's inability or unwillingness to strike a deal with Harry M. Reid (Nev.), the Senate Democratic leader, empowered McCain and his allies to seize control of the debate. The body language of the two GOP senators -- McCain ebullient in announcing the deal, and Frist taut and drawn in interpreting it moments later on the Senate floor -- spoke volumes about the immediate reading of who won and who lost.
....
As Republicans squabbled loudly, Democrats, led by Reid, tried to put up a united front in support of the agreement. But with three of Bush's long-delayed nominees ticketed for approval under the compromise, cracks began to show within the Democratic ranks as well.

The Congressional Black Caucus blasted the agreement as "more of a capitulation than a compromise" for allowing those votes. Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) said it would encourage the White House "to send more nominees who lack the judicial temperament or record to serve in these lifetime positions."

Some Democrats privately fretted that others in their party had been too quick to claim victory, and even the party chairman, Howard Dean, questioned whether the compromise is good for Democrats. "We don't know if this is a victory in the long run or not," he said on CNN's "Inside Politics."

That could leave Democrats in a different posture a few months from now, depending on what happens when Bush is presented with a Supreme Court vacancy. But for now, the compromise struck on Monday night has done more to highlight the coming power struggle within the Republican Party.

The quibbles inside the Dems are nothing new, but the splits in the Repubs getting press attention is definitely new. Having the majority isn't always a good thing for the party in power.

It is time to get the popcorn ready.

History

Peace in Iraq 'will take at least five years to impose'

Richard Norton-Taylor and Michael Howard in Iraq
Wednesday May 25, 2005
The Guardian

It could take at least five years before Iraqi forces are strong enough to impose law and order on the country, the International Institute of Strategic Studies warned yesterday.

The thinktank's report said that Iraq had become a valuable recruiting ground for al-Qaida, and Iraqi forces were nowhere near close to matching the insurgency.

John Chipman, IISS director, said the Iraqi security forces faced a "huge task" and the continuing ability of the insurgents to inflict mass casualties "must cast doubt on US plans to redeploy American troops and eventually reduce their numbers".

Insurgents have killed 600 Iraqis since the new government was formed. The IISS report said: "Best estimates suggest that it will take up to five years to create anything close to an effective indigenous force able to impose and guarantee order across the country."

The report said that, on bal ance, US policy over the past year had been effective in emboldening regional players in the Middle East and the Gulf to rally against rogue states.

But it warned that the inspirational effect of the intervention in Iraq on Islamist terrorism was "the proverbial elephant in the living room. From al-Qaida's point of view, [President] Bush's Iraq policies have arguably produced a confluence of propitious circumstances: a strategically bogged down America, hated by much of the Islamic world, and regarded warily even by its allies".

Iraq "could serve as a valuable proving ground for 'blooding' foreign jihadists, and could conceivably form the basis of a second generation of capable al-Qaida leaders ... and middle-management players", the report said.

(cough, cough)Viet Nam, anyone?

Governing

Senate Truce Faces Test of Bush's Next Nominations
# A polarizing choice, especially for Supreme Court, could unravel the deal, both sides say.

By Ronald Brownstein and Janet Hook, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — The fate of Monday's agreement defusing the Capitol Hill confrontation over judicial nominations may now rest as much in the hands of President Bush as in those of the senators who crafted it.

The dramatic deal by a bipartisan group of 14 senators produced immediate results Tuesday: The chamber voted to end a Democratic filibuster of Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla R. Owen. Her long-stalled nomination to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to be confirmed today.

Some who forged the deal expressed hope that the agreement would create momentum for compromise on other knotty issues, such as Social Security and immigration.

"Watch this group when it comes to major problems that the nation faces, like Social Security," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said. "I think we have created momentum for the idea that if you constructively engage each other, the political reward is high."

The group brokered a compromise in which seven Republicans agreed to oppose a Senate rule change to end the judicial filibuster and seven Democrats agreed to use the tactic against future nominees only in "extraordinary circumstances." But the agreement could prove short-lived if future judicial appointments provoke partisan conflicts similar to those that erupted over the current nominees.

The deal, both sides say, will face its greatest strain should a vacancy open on the Supreme Court. That could happen as soon as this summer, when many expect ailing Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist to retire.

"The Supreme Court is probably where this comes to a head," said Gary Marx, executive director of the Judicial Confirmation Network, a conservative group supporting Bush's nominees.

If the president chooses a polarizing figure for the high court, the seven Democrats would face enormous pressure to support a filibuster — and that would pressure the seven Republicans to reverse direction and back the filibuster ban.

Graham and Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), another negotiator of the agreement, indicated in interviews Tuesday that they would support banning the judicial filibuster if they believed that Democratic use of the stalling tactic did not meet the "extraordinary circumstances" standard.

With the arrangement in such a precarious balance, the crucial factor governing its survival may be Bush's reaction to the group's request that he consult more closely with senators of both parties on his judicial nominations, particularly one for the Supreme Court.

"It totally depends on Bush," said Ron Klain, who as deputy White House counsel and Justice Department chief of staff helped guide two Supreme Court nominations for President Clinton. "If Bush picks someone for the Supreme Court who is middle-of-the-road … that person is going to get confirmed easily, and then this agreement will hold. If Bush chooses a different course and picks someone of an ideological stripe like these more controversial appellate court nominees, this agreement … will unravel very shortly after that."

Supporters and critics of the deal were united Tuesday on one point: Its effect will be determined by how it affects future nomination fights.

The deal establishes conditions for handling only five appellate court nominations. It guarantees up-or-down votes for Owen, California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown and former Alabama Atty. Gen. William H. Pryor Jr. — all of whom now are virtually certain to be confirmed. And it explicitly notes that participants have not agreed to oppose a filibuster on two others: Henry W. Saad, a judge on the Michigan state appeals court, and William G. Myers III, an Idaho lawyer and former U.S. Interior Department solicitor. Both are expected to be defeated.

The compromise does not directly deal with seven other appellate court nominations Bush sent to the Senate in February. Sources on both sides said they expected four to win confirmation: U.S. District Judge David W. McKeague and Michigan state court Judges Richard A. Griffin and Susan B. Neilson, all nominated to the U.S. 6th Circuit, and Utah lawyer Thomas B. Griffith, chosen for the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Brett M. Kavanaugh and William J. Haynes II, nominated for the D.C. and 4th circuits, respectively, face longer odds.

On Tuesday, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, named the nominees he expected to be approved; he pointedly omitted Kavanaugh and Haynes.

It's only one battle in a war. Having Bush in the White House is like having Gingrich in the Congress, it isn't about governing, it is about winning. The Senate Repubs are starting to chafe about it, as they should.

Market Timing

Steep Rise in Prices for Homes Adds to Worry About a Bubble

By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: May 25, 2005

Home prices rose more quickly over the last year than at any point since 1980, a national group of Realtors reported yesterday, raising new questions about whether some local housing markets may be turning into bubbles destined to burst.

With mortgage rates still low and job growth accelerating, the real estate market is defying yet another round of predictions that it was on the verge of cooling. The number of homes sold also jumped in April, after having been flat for almost a year.

Nationwide, the median price for sales of existing homes, which does not factor in newly built ones, rose to $206,000 last month, up 15.1 percent over the last year and breaking the $200,000 level for the first time, the National Association of Realtors said. Adjusted for inflation, the median price - the point at which half cost more and half cost less - has increased more than a third since 2000.

"We've had robust markets before," said Maurice J. Veissi, the president of a real estate agency in Miami, who has been a broker for 30 years. "But this one is so much broader and deeper."

Even before this surge, housing prices had risen more steeply over the last 10 years than during any such period since World War II. A growing number of economists worry that real estate is to this decade what technology stocks were to the 1990's, with many people assuming that home values will rise forever.

Over all, home prices have never fallen by a significant amount, and Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said on Friday that a national drop in price remained unlikely. But they have sometimes fallen sharply in certain locations, including New York and Los Angeles, and Mr. Greenspan, in his strongest warning to date, stated that some metropolitan areas were clearly showing signs of "froth."

Having been sanguine about real estate in recent years, Mr. Greenspan began to change his tone in March, when he cited some analysts' concern that the housing market might "implode."

Prices continue to rise most rapidly in the places where they are already highest, including Florida, the Boston-Washington corridor and along the West Coast. In the late 1980's, a typical house in San Diego cost about as much as two typical houses in Syracuse, according to the Realtors' association; today, someone could buy six Syracuse houses for the price of one in San Diego.

Prices have jumped most sharply over the last year in the West - up 21 percent in April from a year earlier, compared with an increase of 14 percent in the calendar year 2004. Price increases also accelerated in the Midwest, to almost 13 percent, while they remained roughly similar in the Northeast at 16 percent, and the South, where they are up about 8 percent compared with a year earlier.

In a separate report, the Census Bureau said Tuesday that the percentage of homes worth at least a million dollars had almost doubled from 2000 to 2003. California had the highest share of million-dollar homes in 2003, with more than 4 percent valued above that amount. It was followed by Connecticut; Washington, D.C.; Massachusetts; and New York, where an estimated 2.1 percent of the homes were valued at more than $1 million. Nationally, 1 percent are worth more than that.

"There's clearly speculative excess going on," said Joshua Shapiro, the chief United States economist at MFR Inc., an economic research group in New York. "A lot of people view real estate as a can't lose."

Until the April surge, the overall housing market had seemed to have reached a plateau. Economists, even some working for real estate lobbying groups, predicted that sales would decline a little in 2005 and prices would rise more modestly.

But even as the Fed has steadily lifted its benchmark short-term interest rate, mortgage rates have remained low. The average interest rate for a 30-year fixed loan is now 5.71 percent, down from 6.30 percent a year ago, according to Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage buyer.

Mortgage rates are closely tied to the market for long-term government bonds, which are benefiting from purchases by foreign governments, particularly in Asia, that continue to buy Treasury bonds, as well as from investors looking for a haven from risky corporate securities.

Bubbles, in themselves, aren't all that important. But when economies and markets begin to organize themselves around bubbles, then we have a problem, and that is what is going on right now. Consumer liquidity is the only thing fueling the economy at the moment and it is based on the re-fi craze. When that runs out, as it will in a couple of months, markets will plunge.

I'd be out of equities right now. Brad deLong's mentor, Dean Baker, has even sold his house and is renting to get out of the housing bubble. I won't go that far, but I'd certainly be in all cash right now if I were an investor. If it is good enough for Warren Buffet, it is good enough for me.

Return of the Medieval Church

Robert Scheer:
A Hypocritical Church's Sex Lessons
# The pope has minimized priests' crimes while wagging a finger at gays.

When it comes to matters of poverty, immigration and peace, the Catholic Church is a major source of enlightenment. It is a serious loss to have the church's work in those areas undermined by its Dark Ages attitude on sex. And, as is so often the case with the most severely judgmental and repressed, this stance is rife with moral hypocrisy.

How else to explain an institution that refuses to accept responsibility for the lives it has violated through sexual abuse, even as it incessantly condemns same-sex couples for wanting to form stable families? If you are gay and want to get married you are "deviant and a threat to society," according to the Vatican, and if you adopt a child — the irony is dark here — it is tantamount to abuse.

Pope Benedict himself exemplifies this contradiction. The same man who doesn't get the scale of the molestation cover-ups has written some of the Vatican's most anti-gay rhetoric, including a 1986 letter to bishops calling homosexuality "an intrinsic moral evil," as well as a 2003 battle plan telling Catholic politicians they have a "moral duty" to oppose gay marriage and adoptions.

"Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behavior … but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity," stated the church's "Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons."

"Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development."

Tell that to the many happy children of loving and nurturing parents who happen to be gay. Such a common-sense solution to the tragedy of unwanted children is what the pope abhors as part of a "dictatorship of relativism," to quote from his pre-anointment speech April 18.

This is all especially outrageous considering that the openly gay community has offered a model of honest and socially accountable behavior, while the Catholic Church — secretive and unaccountable — has provided exactly the opposite. In fact, the church's history of sexual abuse by "celibate" priests and nuns makes the case that the repression of natural impulses leads to, rather than discourages, sexual abuse. Is it too much to ask that a religious institution sporting such an abysmal record in dealing with these matters stop dictating the bedroom behavior of its millions of followers?

Sadly, it probably is. The church will continue to face eruptions of sexual scandal because of its renewed insistence on a sanctimonious medieval morality ignoring the main lesson of this sorry affair: Sex is natural, becoming ugly and exploitive only when denied healthy outlets.

For our civil society, the message is even more compelling: Yes to the life decisions of responsible adults, gay or heterosexual; no to the sexual dictates of a church that cannot be trusted to monitor its own behavior.

For these sins, among others, I have decided that I had to leave. This might not make a lot of sense to you, but former Cardinal Ratzinger's move to oust Tom Reese from the editorship of the Jesuit weekly America was the final straw for me. John Paul II considerably curtailed the intellectual life of the Church, and Benedict XVI signals that he plans to clamp down even further. I love the Church and the people in it, it is the people who are the church and have been since the Early Church. Benedict seems to think that the Church is the Rules, rather than the life of the Spirit breathed into the people. While he's sitting on the Throne of Peter, it won't be a place for me.

Hello, Canterbury.

The Undiplomat

G.O.P. Senator Sends Letter to Colleagues Opposing Bolton

By DOUGLAS JEHL

In the letter, Mr. Voinovich said that while he had been "hesitant to push my views on my colleagues" during his years in the Senate, he felt "compelled to share my deep concerns" about Mr. Bolton's nomination.

"In these dangerous times, we cannot afford to put at risk our nation's ability to successfully wage and win the war on terror with a controversial and ineffective ambassador to the United Nations," Mr. Voinovich wrote. He urged colleagues to "put aside our partisan agenda and let our consciences and our shared commitment to our nation's best interests guide us."

The White House remains strongly in favor of Mr. Bolton's nomination, and it is unusual for a Republican to break ranks so publicly by circulating a letter opposed to a Republican president's agenda. A copy of Mr. Voinovich's letter, dated May 23 but not circulated until Tuesday, was provided by a Senate Democratic aide opposed to Mr. Bolton.

The Senate's Republican leaders signaled today that they would try to push for a vote on Mr. Bolton by the end of the week. Senate Democrats have strongly opposed the nomination, and at a lunchtime meeting today, Democratic leaders were weighing possible moves to defeat the nomination, or to use procedural moves to delay or prevent a Senate vote.

It is not clear whether any Republicans might join Mr. Voinovich in breaking ranks with the White House, which has strongly supported Mr. Bolton's nomination despite strong opposition from many critics, including senior officials who worked with Mr. Bolton at the State Department during President Bush's first term.

Among the 10 Republicans on the Senate committee, 3 joined Mr. Voinovich in expressing reservations about Mr. Bolton's nomination. In the face of strong Democratic opposition, the Republicans on the panel agreed only to send the nomination to the full Senate without an endorsement, an unusual move.

Today, however, spokesmen for two of those Republicans, Senators Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, said their bosses expected to vote in favor of Mr. Bolton when his name came before the full Senate. A spokeswoman for the third, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the senator had told reporters from her home state that she was "likely to support Bolton's nomination on the floor."

A spokesman for another Republican, John Thune of South Dakota, said this afternoon that Mr. Thune "hasn't made any decisions" about Mr. Bolton's nomination.

One Democrat, Senator Barbara Boxer of California, has sought to block a Senate vote on Mr. Bolton, saying that she would oppose any vote until the State Department provided documents related to the nomination that the department had so far refused to hand over. This afternoon, however, a spokeswoman for Ms. Boxer said that she had decided to lift a hold on Mr. Bolton's nomination. Ms. Boxer's spokeswoman said she would join with Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware in agreeing to a Republican plan to move toward a vote on Mr. Bolton after allowing up to 40 hours of debate.

Congressional Republicans are looking to 2006 and Bush's second term agenda ain't popular with the public. They can read the polls, too. The Senate has another 20 hours of debate pending on the filibuster, so they aren't going to get to Bolton this week if the Dems press for all 40 hours. This gives even more time for the Senators to get cold feet. If this nomination flies, it will be a squeaker.

That the Repubs have broken with the White House tells you that Bush has pushed loyalty over competence too far with his Republican Senate.

Drawing Your Own Conclusions

WashPo's Dan Froomkin connects the dots:

Bush's approval rating has dropped 4 points in three weeks, to 46 percent according to the latest Gallup poll.

Susan Page writes in USA Today: "President Bush's approval ratings for handling the economy, Iraq and Social Security have fallen to the lowest levels of his White House tenure, according to a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday."

On CNN's Inside Politics show, William Schneider played the poll results against videotape of Bush statements:

"SCHNEIDER: President Bush's numbers continue to drop. The president's current job approval rating, 46 percent. Half the public disapproves of the way President Bush is handling his job. That's the president's worst rating in over a year. What's the problem?

"BUSH: We're going to permanently solve the Social Security issue so you can grow up with peace of mind.

"SCHNEIDER: Not working. Fifty-nine percent now disapprove of the president's handling of Social Security. Eleven points higher than in early February, when the President started his Social Security campaign.

"And on the economy?

"BUSH: The economy is getting better. Today we got some good news. We added 262,000 new jobs last month.

"SCHNEIDER: Not much celebration. Fifty-eight percent disapprove of the way the President is handling the economy, the worst all year.

"How about Iraq?

"BUSH: And I'm confident we're making great progress in Iraq.

"SCHNEIDER: The public is not. Fifty-six percent disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq.

"Does President Bush get a positive rating on anything?

"BUSH: America is answering new dangers with firm resolve.

"SCHNEIDER: Yes. The President continues to get high marks for his handling of terrorism. But terrorism may have faded in importance.

"A whopping 57 percent of Americans say they disagree with George W. Bush on the issues that matter most to them. That number has never been higher than 51 percent."

Dan, you might want to tell your readers what it IS that Bush is doing to "handle" terrorism, other than bogging us down in Afghanistan and Iraq. The ports, chemical plants and nuclear facilities remain unguarded. The de facto firefighters for forest fires and city policers following hurricanes are in the sands of Mesopotamia as we face a busier than normal hurricane season and a drought in the west. Isn't that a charming little scenario?

Lazy Media

This is an extraordinarily poor article. Graphs and graphs on the utterly meaningless hunt for Zarqawi, while you have to hunt into the bottom graphs to discover that the death rate for American troops has lept up again. This is really shameful writing and editing.

Web Report: Zarqawi Wounded
Seven U.S. Soldiers Killed in Separate Attacks

By Ellen Knickmeyer and Saad Sarhan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 24, 2005; 1:45 PM

The Baghdad car bombing and the attacks on U.S. troops Tuesday came after a series of bombings Monday left more than 50 people dead across Iraq amid heightening sectarian tensions. The death toll stands at more than 600 people killed since the new Iraqi government was installed less than a month ago.

The seven U.S. casualties included three Americans who were killed by a bomb-rigged car that struck their convoy in central Baghdad about 1:30 p.m., local time, said Sgt. David Abrams, a U.S. military spokesman.

The other four were killed Monday after they were attacked in Haswa, 30 miles south of Baghdad, the Associated Press said, quoting a military spokesman. The soldiers were assigned to the 155th Brigade Combat Team, II Marine Expeditionary Force.

The new deaths brought to 11 the number of American troops killed in action since Sunday. Four died Sunday in Mosul and Tikrit, the military said.

A fifth American died in a vehicle accident near Kirkuk Sunday, according to the military officials.

Payback is Hell

Dobson Blasts Filibuster 'Betrayal'

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., May 23 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Focus on the Family Action Chairman Dr. James C. Dobson today issued the following statement, upon the announcement by members of the U.S. Senate that a "compromise" had been reached on the filibuster issue:

"This Senate agreement represents a complete bailout and betrayal by a cabal of Republicans and a great victory for united Democrats. Only three of President Bush’s nominees will be given the courtesy of an up-or-down vote, and it's business as usual for all the rest. The rules that blocked conservative nominees remain in effect, and nothing of significance has changed. Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Antonin Scalia, and Chief Justice William Rehnquist would never have served on the U. S. Supreme Court if this agreement had been in place during their confirmations. The unconstitutional filibuster survives in the arsenal of Senate liberals.

"We are grateful to Majority Leader Frist for courageously fighting to defend the vital principle of basic fairness. That principle has now gone down to defeat. We share the disappointment, outrage and sense of abandonment felt by millions of conservative Americans who helped put Republicans in power last November. I am certain that these voters will remember both Democrats and Republicans who betrayed their trust."

Told ya this was going to happen. The social conservatives just turned their backs on the Goldwater conservatives. Hubris always brings nemesis. The Repubs will fail from their own over-reach.

The 7 P's*

Afghans left out of their own rebuilding
President Karzai discussed reconstruction during his White House visit Monday.
By Ben Arnoldy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

SAROWBI, AFGHANISTAN – Along a construction detour for the new highway between Kabul and Jalalabad, four unemployed Afghans stare out as trucks struggle up a dusty hill. The men are angry that the two Chinese firms in charge of the paving project haven't employed them or many of their compatriots.

After years of depending on the international community for help, Afghans are frustrated that they are not more involved in the rebuilding of their own country.

Yet road projects like this one underline a critical dilemma: Most Afghans still lack the skills needed to take over this work, even as the government begins modest efforts to try to train engineers. The short-term need to provide tangible improvements like a newly paved road often trumps the long-term work of training workers within Afghan ministries and the private sector.

"Do you do something very quickly in the absence of capacity so that you get some demonstrable results, or do you take the slow road and face a real danger of a reversion to conflict?" asks Ameerah Haq with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, arguing that development work cannot be kept on hold for training. "People in rural areas will say, 'My life is no better. Nothing has happened for me.' "

Y'know, it doesn't take a Mensa-level IQ to figure out that a little planning in consultation with the NGOs we expected to pick up the slack might have been in order before we tried to take on Afghanistan. The Russians could have told us that.

(*proper prior planning prevents piss-poor performance)

Sorrows of Empire

US to consolidate forces into four huge bases in Iraq
US military also wants bases in Romania, Azerbaijan, and Bulgaria.
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

Top US military officials in Iraq confirmed Monday that they are planning to consolidate the more than 100 bases where US personnel are now stationed in Iraq into four huge, more permanent bases.

The Washington Post reported Sunday, however, that these military officials say that, despite the appearance to the contrary, these moves do not signal a "permanent US presence in Iraq."

Horseshit.

The US military commanders say that building these new bases, which would be located in the north, south, west and center of Iraq, are "part of a withdrawal expected to occur in phases, with Iraqi forces gradually taking over many of the bases inhabited by US and other foreign troops."

The Guardian reports that some Iraqi politicians opposed to a "long-term US presence in Iraq questioned the move."

"They appear to settling in a for the long run, and that will only give fuel for the terrorists," said a spokesman for the mainstream Sunni Iraqi Islamic party.

Yup.

The Guardian also reports that a US spokesman says there is no "hard and fast deadline" to build the new bases, and will depend to a large degree on the strength of the insurgency "and the progress of Iraq's fledgling security structures."

Last week, however, US military commanders in briefings in Washington and Baghdad, and in media interviews, said that growth of the insurgency has convinced them that the US will be in Iraq for "many more years to come," and that the pace at which Iraqi police, in particular, are being prepared to take over their own country's defense is not going anywhere near as fast as the US would like.

Feel a draft yet?

What Is It Good For?

Juan Cole calls these the "days of rage" in Iraq. I cannot argue.

Car Bombs Kill Nine in Baghdad

By OMAR SINAN, Associated Press Writer 5 minutes ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Car bombs exploded Tuesday near a U.S. convoy patrolling in Baghdad and near a junior high school for girls, killing nine people, including three American soldiers, a day after 49 Iraqis died in a string of insurgent attacks.

The Americans were killed by a bomb-rigged car that struck a convoy about 1:30 p.m., said Sgt. David Abrams, a U.S. military spokesman.

At least 1,637 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the
Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Separately, a homemade bomb destroyed a Bradley fighting vehicle late Monday in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, wounding three U.S. soldiers. Two of them returned to duty while the third remained in a military clinic, said Sgt. Jeffrey Pool. None of the soldiers was seriously hurt.

Militants also gunned down two people and seized control of Tal Afar, a town 50 miles west of the northern city of Mosul, police said Tuesday, hours after two car bombs killed at least 20 people there late Monday.

Separately, gunmen opened fire on a four-car convoy carrying conservative Shiite legislator Salamah al-Khafaji, one of the most prominent women in Iraq's new parliament. The lawmaker escaped unharmed, but four of her bodyguards were critically injured.

The U.S. military announced that a two-day operation involving more than 2,000 Iraqi soldiers and police — the largest-ever joint campaign in the Baghdad area — had rounded up 428 suspected insurgents.

But insurgents continued to wreak havoc in the capital despite the ongoing crackdown in the Abu Ghraib area, which targets militants believed responsible for multiple attacks on the U.S.-detention facility there and the road linking downtown to the international airport.

Residents called police about a suspicious-looking car parked opposite the Dijlah Junior High School for Girls in Alwiyah, near eastern Baghdad's well-known Withaq Square, a Christian neighborhood. As bomb disposal experts approached the vehicle, it exploded and killed six bystanders, said police Capt. Husham Ismael.

Three civilians and one policeman also were injured; none of the school's students were believed to be among the casualties.

"May God seek revenge for those who were killed or injured!" an elderly woman screamed outside a hospital where casualties were brought. "We hope that such killers be killed or perished as they kill our youth. Those killers are against homeland, against Islam."

At least 620 people, including 52 U.S. troops, have been killed since April 28, when Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his new Shiite-dominated government. Washington hopes his government will eventually train police and an army capable of securing Iraq, allowing the withdrawal of coalition troops.

We have no intelligence, we have inadequate forces and they hate us. So much for democracy, whiskey, sexy.

I opposed this unneccessary war three years ago, and I wonder how on earth anyone can support it now.

Survivor

What Women Want

By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: May 24, 2005

Suppose you could eliminate the factors often blamed for the shortage of women in high-paying jobs. Suppose that promotions and raises did not depend on pleasing sexist male bosses or putting in long nights and weekends away from home. Would women make as much as men?

Economists recently tried to find out in an experiment in Pittsburgh by paying men and women to add up five numbers in their heads. At first they worked individually, doing as many sums as they could in five minutes and receiving 50 cents for each correct answer. Then they competed in four-person tournaments, with the winner getting $2 per correct answer and the losers getting nothing.

On average, the women made as much as the men under either system. But when they were offered a choice for the next round - take the piece rate or compete in a tournament - most women declined to compete, even the ones who had done the best in the earlier rounds. Most men chose the tournament, even the ones who had done the worst.

The men's eagerness partly stemmed from overconfidence, because on average men rated their ability more highly than the women rated theirs. But interviews and further experiments convinced the researchers, Muriel Niederle of Stanford and Lise Vesterlund of the University of Pittsburgh, that the gender gap wasn't due mainly to women's insecurities about their abilities. It was due to different appetites for competition.

"Even in tasks where they do well, women seem to shy away from competition, whereas men seem to enjoy it too much," Professor Niederle said. "The men who weren't good at this task lost a little money by choosing to compete, and the really good women passed up a lot of money by not entering tournaments they would have won."

You can argue that this difference is due to social influences, although I suspect it's largely innate, a byproduct of evolution and testosterone. Whatever the cause, it helps explain why men set up the traditional corporate ladder as one continual winner-take-all competition - and why that structure no longer makes sense.

Now that so many employees (and more than half of young college graduates) are women, running a business like a tournament alienates some of the most talented workers and potential executives. It also induces competition in situations where cooperation makes more sense.

The result is not good for the bottom line, as demonstrated by a study from the Catalyst research organization showing that large companies yield better returns to stockholders if they have more women in senior management. A friend of mine, a businessman who buys companies, told me one of the first things he looks at is the gender of the boss.

"The companies run by women are much more likely to survive," he said. "The typical guy who starts a company is a competitive, charismatic leader - he's always the firm's top salesman - but if he leaves he takes his loyal followers with him and the company goes downhill. Women C.E.O.'s know how to hire good salespeople and create a healthy culture within the company. Plus they don't spend 20 percent of their time in strip clubs."

Still, for all the executive talents that women have, for all the changes that are happening in the corporate world, there will always be some jobs that women, on average, will not want as badly as men do. Some of the best-paying jobs require crazed competition and the willingness to risk big losses - going broke, never seeing your family and friends, dying young.

Um, John? There are a small number of men willing to take on jobs like that, which are basically a lottery, and an even smaller number of women. Why do we think that anyone should want to work that way? Get rich or die isn't a particularly Christian way to make your way in the world.

Sorry. There are some mornings when he is just too easy a target.

How Sick Do We Have To Get?

U.S. must take avian influenza seriously

Preventing the fire is much easier than putting out a raging inferno Like an inferno that jumps indiscriminately between adjoining wooden buildings, contagious diseases know no national boundaries. This trait should make international cooperation in fighting the H5N1 avian influenza virus a top priority for our own and every other government.

Just as preventing fires is easier than putting them out, there are concrete steps that should be taken now to delay, contain and mitigate a flu outbreak in Southeast Asia that the World Health Organization (WHO) increasingly fears has the potential to kill millions worldwide.

The bird flu, as the H5N1 virus is commonly known, appears to be adapting and evolving this spring in northern Vietnam. The virus is showing signs of becoming able to spread directly from person to person. Until this spring, virtually all who died caught the virus from infected chickens and ducks. Of 97 known cases, there have been 53 fatalities.

As the virus mutates, it is infecting a wider age range of people, but is killing fewer of those who catch it. Unfortunately, a declining rate of mortality isn’t a particularly good sign, since even a virus that kills one victim out 100 might cost tens of millions of lives around the planet. Killing fewer of those it infects also makes it easier for a virus to spread.

Prompt treatment with new anti-viral drugs has been effective in saving lives. This expensive medicine should be stockpiled and rapidly provided wherever needed in order to surround an outbreak area with a zone of people who have been treated and thus protected — a sort of firebreak.

Similarly, cooperation between technical experts, countries, manufacturers and financial donors is urgently needed to develop, produce and distribute supplies of H5N1 vaccine in currently infected nations. Not only would this save lives in Asia, it would limit the ability of the virus to spread outside that region.

One of the most important steps that can be taken is to vaccinate poultry in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia and other affected nations. WHO observes that where the infection in poultry has been controlled or eliminated, human cases no longer occur.

Among other recommendations, WHO also urges steps to increase the sharing of information on suspected outbreaks, as well as technical matters such as adapting the vaccine to counter future mutations of the virus.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control is playing a valuable role in investigating the H5N1 virus and preparing to combat it. But it is debatable whether American attention and spending is on par with the danger represented by this incipient flu pandemic. We ought to be stamping out the sparks of this disease with all our might, before these sparks turn to flames that spread around the globe.

The provincial papers are starting to take this seriously. I wonder when the national papers will start to notice.

This is the most serious strain of pandemic flu we've seen in a hundred years and we are napping. With HIV/AIDS, we've already shown that we are willing to let the dead stack up like cord wood. I wonder how we'll feel about that when the dead aren't gay men but our relatives, neighbors and children, whose "risky behavior" was to go to work or school. We'll probably be too sick to do much about it.

Why We Fight

Supreme Court to Tackle Abortion Again After 5 Years

By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: May 24, 2005

WASHINGTON, May 23 - The Supreme Court accepted its first abortion case in five years on Monday, an unexpected development that despite the rather technical questions that the case presents is likely to add even more heat to the already superheated atmosphere surrounding the court and its immediate future.

The new case is an appeal by the State of New Hampshire of a federal appeals court ruling that struck down a parental-notification requirement for minors seeking abortions.

The Supreme Court has dealt with parental-notice statutes for many years and has upheld those that contain safeguards for minors, including the option of bypassing the notice requirement by going before a judge. This case does not require the court to revisit those precedents.

Rather, it presents two questions that the court has not previously addressed in the context of parental-notice laws: provisions for health concerns and what kind of challenges should be allowed to abortion laws that have not yet taken effect.

The court's answers could be important for its consideration of future abortion cases, including ones challenging the recent federal law that prohibits the procedure that abortion opponents call partial-birth abortion. That law has been declared unconstitutional in federal district courts around the country, and appeals by the Bush administration are now pending in three federal appeals courts.

Those cases are likely to reach the Supreme Court in its next term, increasing the visibility and volatility of the abortion issue in what may be a transitional time for the court in view of the likely retirement of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. He has, however, been a consistent dissenter from the court's decisions upholding the right to abortion, so his replacement would not be likely to shift the balance on the court.

One question facing the court in the current case is whether parental-notice laws, or by extension, any abortion regulations, must explicitly provide exceptions for those women whose continued pregnancy is a threat to their health. Beginning with Roe v. Wade in 1973, and including the court's most recent decision, which invalidated Nebraska's partial-birth abortion law in 2000, the court has held that the government may not constitutionally ban an abortion necessary to preserve a pregnant woman's health.

The New Hampshire parental-notice law, enacted in 2003, provides an exception for minors whose pregnancy threatens their life, but does not include a more general health exception. It was in part on this basis that the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which sits in Boston, declared the law unconstitutional last November.

The other question in the case is what standard courts should use in evaluating a judicial challenge to abortion laws that like the New Hampshire law have not yet taken effect. Typically, as in this case, abortion rights advocates challenge restrictions by seeking injunctions as soon as a new law is enacted.

In striking down the New Hampshire law, the federal appeals court applied a standard derived from the Supreme Court's 1992 decision that reaffirmed the right to abortion.

That decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, struck down a Pennsylvania requirement that married women notify their husbands before obtaining an abortion. The majority found that while many married women do consult with their husbands, and therefore would not be affected by the requirement, the law did place an "undue burden" on the category of married women who were in abusive relationships or who could not notify their husbands without adverse consequences.

Even if that category represented only 1 percent of all women seeking abortions, the majority concluded, it still created a substantial obstacle for a "large fraction" of those women for whom the regulation was directly relevant, and was therefore unconstitutional.

In order to keep this post from getting long in the tooth I'll stop here, but go back and read the Linda Greenhouse story for a brief history of Casey to Roe to Lochner. Married women are now, of course, a minority of the women who seek to end their pregnancies.

This is about judicial activism from the right, and the curtailing of civil liberties. That is the reason we fight on, in a climate where the question of civil liberties is looked upon with suspicion in too many quarters on the religious and political right.

When I flew back to DC yesterday, I got hauled out of the line for a pat down search at every check point. I have reason to believe I'm watch-listed because of this blog, it has been the same every time I've flown in the last two years. Yes, reproductive rights are under assault, but so is free speech.

I am scared for my country.

The Class Gap

Before the New York Times permanently marginalizes itself by taking some of its content behind the paid subscription wall in September, read the start of this series on class and education.

For decades, we've been told that higher education is the elevator between economic classes in this country. That is less and less the case: a college education no longer is a guarantee to a better economic life. The class into which you are born is more of a determinant.

My generation has more education than our parents but are falling behind economically. My parents lived better, on less education, than I do. The class gap is widening. My parents could afford a single family home on one income. With multiple degrees, I cannot.

Meanwhile, back in the non-nuclear war...

Attacks hit vital security in Iraq

By Sharon Behn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
May 23, 2005

Iraq's insurgents are conducting increasingly sophisticated and lethal attacks on the private security companies that are crucial to the nation's reconstruction and the eventual departure of U.S. troops, contractors and U.S. officials say.

These contractors and officials point to the surprising level of planning and brutality involved in a May 8 attack on the British security company Hart Security Ltd., which provides protection to convoys, homes and individuals in Iraq.

Twelve out of 18 Iraqi and international guards were killed in the attack, in which insurgents ambushed a convoy escorting cargo for the U.S. forces from Baghdad to a base in al-Asat, about 90 miles west of the city.

Once resistance from the security team ended, the attackers moved in to finish off the wounded, then piled several of the bodies on top of a bomb so they could not be removed without setting off an explosion, sources said.

The terrorists taped the event, presumably to develop a training and recruiting tool and to study to refine their techniques. The six-minute video is available on the Internet with a claim of responsibility from the terrorist group Ansar al-Sunnah Army.

Security specialists said the terrorists appeared to have calibrated mortars in advance of the attack, permitting direct hits on the five-vehicle convoy just as it hit a series of hidden bombs laid out in a "daisy chain" along the road.

The militants then managed to split up the convoy and systematically wipe out members of each smaller component.

Such attacks "have become much more organized and much more complex," said one retired special-operations officer working as a security manager for a firm operating in Iraq.

"In 2003, they were random small-arms fire. Then they escalated to roadside bombs — sometimes command-detonated or with tripwires. Then they escalated to car bombs that would run a ramp and pull into a convoy or traffic circle.

"And now they are very well organized, rehearsed, orchestrated, using a combination of rocket-propelled grenades, [roadside bombs] set in a daisy chain to get the wounded as they exit the vehicles, heavy machine guns, small arms and hand-thrown grenades," he said.

At least 93 security operators have been killed in Iraq since April 2003, icasualties.org reported. The Web site showed the number of contractor deaths spiking in April with 20 killed, the most since 31 contractors died in August 2004. So far, seven have been killed this month.

Security operators think the numbers are higher. About 130 private security companies, each with hundreds of operators working in Iraq, are hired to defend personnel, facilities and convoys.

Most are highly skilled and ex-military professionals who have been in the protection business "longer than the average soldier in Iraq has been alive" said one U.S. official in Baghdad.
As in any industry, the sector also has its share of inexperienced wannabes, as they are described derisively by some of the operators in Baghdad.

Some guards also say recruiters have hit the bottom of the professional barrel and are hiring anyone who knows how to handle a gun.

Security companies are making huge profits providing clients with a line of armored cars, low-visibility cars, armed guards known as "shooters," and drivers.

With the intensity and sophistication of terrorist attacks increasing, and with the constant fear of kidnapping, the cost of security has mushroomed to account for 16 percent of the total reconstruction budget.

But the bottom line is that without private security companies, "reconstruction would not be done" in Iraq, said Lawrence Peter, director of a group representing private security companies in Iraq.

"Private security companies are responsible for the security of the entire reconstruction effort," Mr. Peter said. "If we didn't have them here, we would need another division of troops.

"These men who have died, they served with distinction," he said.

Just to reiterate the obvious:
1) Reconstruction isn't getting done anyway.
2) If it weren't for the security companies and their $1000/day checks that Uncle Sam is ultimately picking up, we'd have another division of troops.
3) It wouldn't matter. These guys have the home-field advantage, they know what they're doing, and despite our best efforts, they're far better at being vicious killers than we are. They're getting better at what they're doing, and it's just a matter of time before we pull back to bases outside of the cities and become bystanders in the upcoming civil war.

Now What?

Senators Reach Deal to Avert a Showdown on Judicial Nominees

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 23, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Averting a showdown, centrists from both parties reached agreement Monday night on a compromise that clears the way for confirmation votes on many of President Bush's stalled judicial nominees, leaves others in limbo and preserves venerable Senate filibuster rules.

"In a Senate that is increasingly polarized, the bipartisan center held," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.

"The Senate is back in business," echoed Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of 14 senators who signed the two-page memorandum of agreement, which cited "mutual trust and confidence."

Under the terms, Democrats would agree to oppose any attempt to filibuster -- and thus block final votes -- on the confirmation of Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown and William Pryor. There is "no commitment to vote for or against" the filibuster against two other conservative nominees, Henry Saad and William Myers.

As for future nominees, the agreement said they should "only be filibustered under extraordinary circumstances," with each Democrat senator holding the discretion to decide when those conditions had been met.

Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada welcomed the agreement -- although he hastened to say he remains opposed to some of the nominees who will now likely take seats on the appeals court.

"We have sent President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the radical right of the Republican party an undeniable message....the abuse of power will not be tolerated."

As my students would say, B**LS***T Senator Reid. Here is the message you sent to Bush and his cronies --

We won't push for the blocking of justices that are so far out of bounds that even most unbiased observers think they should not be appointed. Some of these judges were people who have already been submitted and failed to get through the Senate, thus failing to receive the consent of the Senate Thus, we are setting the precident that unless you nominate someone MORE extreme than

Also, simply the threat of this "nuclear option" should be enough to set a precident that we should allow ANY Bush nominee an up or down vote for ANYTHING even if they are completely unqualified and oppose the institute they are going to work with (see John Bolton)

THAT'S THE MESSAGE YOU SENT!

Now, maybe some of this legendary Senate bi-partisanship will rub off and some of the extremists judges will be opposed by these "moderate" Republicans, but if I'm left depending on Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to save the Union and many of the liberties that my family holds dear... then maybe I better check out the housing prices in Edinburgh.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggetty Jig

Thanks to the guest posters for taking such able care of the blog while I got away to do some preaching, teaching and superb hang-out time in the Florida sun. This blogger is one of those glow-in-the-dark, fair scandhoovians, so the sunblock was industrial grade, but I did freckle a little.

Thanks, RT, Mike, Wayne and Chuck for your excellent efforts. It is always good to know that I can leave the blog in such good hands. It's good to be home, even if it is 60 degrees of cold drizzle. Sigh.

This week is going to be big on the "nuclear option," and I imagine I'll be doing some cross posting between here and Judging the Future during the week. It is going to be a very, very busy week.

I was treated mighty fine by the UUs of Ft. Myers, FL, the workshop and the sermon went pretty well by my lights, and I think I learned as much from them as anything I could have brought them. I have the kind of tired that comes from good, hard work, and not just too much adrenalin in the system. I got good visits with old friends, the best kind.

I got to spend a lot of time reflecting on things like faith, love, justice and politics with some of the activists who are leading the religious left and I found hope in their spirit. We ain't done yet.

Why Judges Matter

Abortion Parental-Notification Law Gets U.S. High Court Review

by Laurie Asseo

May 23 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether states that require parental notification before a minor can get an abortion must make an exception when the procedure is needed to protect the girl's health.

The justices said they will consider reinstating a New Hampshire law struck down by a lower court in 2003 on grounds it lacked such a health exception. The lower court also said a provision allowing an abortion without parental notice to save a patient's life was too narrow.

Opponents who challenged the law said no federal appeals court has upheld a parental-notice or parental-consent law that lacked an exception to protect the minor's health since the Supreme Court in 1992 reaffirmed the constitutional right to abortion. That ruling said laws creating an ``undue burden'' on the right to abortion are unconstitutional.

``The New Hampshire act does not preclude a woman from receiving a medically necessary abortion,'' the state's lawyers said in court papers filed in Washington. ``While the act itself does not contain an explicit health exception, other provisions of New Hampshire law provide a functional equivalent.''

The law, which has never taken effect, would require girls under age 18 who seek an abortion to notify a parent 48 hours in advance unless a judge ruled the minor was mature enough to give informed consent herself. An exception would allow an abortion without such notice if needed to prevent the minor's death, though there was no exception to protect her health.

So while Laura is over playing nice and talking the talking about women's rights and protection, her husband's fans are doing everything they can to reduce the number of rights that women have here.

Apparently this culture of life doesn't include the mother. I wonder who they think will take care of the kid after they arrive... or do they care? Again, this is why the fight over judges is so important. It's why these compromises that allow the radical judges to get on the bench are simply unacceptable and toxic to any sort of deal.

The War Against Wal-Mart

Putting on the Brakes
Local Grocery Workers Union Leads the Fight to Block Wal-Mart's Efforts to Infiltrate Inner Suburbs, District

By Michael Barbaro
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 23, 2005; Page E01

At first glance, the numbers seem arbitrary.

Legislation before the D.C. Council would ban new stores with more than 80,000 square feet that devote 15 percent of their space to food and other nontaxable merchandise.

A bill passed by the Maryland General Assembly would require companies with more than 10,000 employees to spend 8 percent of payroll on health care.

A zoning rule approved in Montgomery County restricts the location of outlets larger than 120,000 square feet with a full-service grocery and pharmacy.

But behind the hodgepodge of figures is a very specific goal: Keeping out Wal-Mart Stores Inc. As the discount giant shifts its focus from the Washington region's fast-growing fringes to its dense urban center, it has become locked in a bitter behind-the-scenes struggle with the local unionized grocery industry, which is scrambling to erect legislative barriers to the chain's growth.

The fight is taking on national significance. Wal-Mart, which has conquered rural America with more than 3,000 stores, desperately needs to break into the urban market to maintain its phenomenal growth. So far, it has been rebuffed in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, and the retailer views Washington as an important frontier for expansion.

The Bentonville, Ark., company has already made strong inroads here. Since its arrival in the region 13 years ago, Wal-Mart has quietly planted 147 stores in Maryland and Virginia, including 32 in the greater Washington area. It is now the No. 1 private employer in Virginia and one of the top 10 in Maryland, with 52,000 workers in both states.

But the company has succeeded in such places as Prince Frederick and La Plata in Maryland, and Warrenton and Burke in Virginia, far from the region's center.

Across the area, big-box stores are facing growing resistance from communities worried about increased traffic and environmental impact. But Wal-Mart's inability to open a store in the inner suburbs is unique. Both Home Depot and Best Buy have stores inside the Beltway and the District. And Target, Wal-Mart's closest competitor, has seven stores inside the Capital Beltway. Its first location in the District is scheduled to open in 2007. "We'd like to be a part of that success," said Mia Masten, Wal-Mart's head of corporate affairs for the East Coast.

Although Target, Home Depot and Best Buy have no union, and Target is moving into the grocery business, local unions are giving those chains a pass to focus their energies, and cash, on a single foe.

"Wal-Mart is the biggest threat to our members' way of life," said C. James Lowthers, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400, which represents local grocery workers at Giant, Safeway and Shoppers Food Warehouse.

Local unionized grocery chains, which dominate the area's closer-in suburbs, fear they cannot compete with Wal-Mart's rock-bottom prices, technology-driven efficiencies and cheaper, non-union labor force. Wal-Mart is now the nation's largest food seller, and although it operates few of its full supermarket formats in the Washington area, the chain says it wants to build the more profitable stores wherever possible.

Giant Foo[d], Safeway and Shoppers Food control 55 percent of the local grocery market, and their union is relying on its strong political ties and sympathetic shoppers to stop Wal-Mart's expansion. At stake, the union says, is the future of more than 20,000 supermarket jobs that offer a middle-class lifestyle to the region's unskilled workers.

Wal-Mart's opponents, led by Local 400 and Giant Food, have already won several high-profile victories. Six jurisdictions, including Prince William, Calvert and Montgomery counties, have passed zoning rules that make it harder, if not impossible, for the chain to open a supercenter, its most profitable format. Several more jurisdictions, including the District, are considering such rules. And in April, the Maryland General Assembly passed a bill backed by Giant and Local 400 requiring Wal-Mart to spend more on employee health benefits. The governor vetoed the bill, but some legislators have vowed to override it.

(More at the link.)

Wal-Mart can end all this in a heartbeat by playing fair with its employees' attempts to unionize. But as long as the nation's largest retailer is willing to shut down entire stores rather than negotiate with an employees' union, they will rightly be regarded as a bad corporate citizen, and the efforts to block its expansion into the cities and inner suburbs will continue.

Brainwashing our kids gets its own theme park

At Play in a Grown-Up World
Theme Park and Its Corporate Sponsors Introduce Children to Life on the Job

By Caroline E. Mayer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 23, 2005; Page A01

SUNRISE, Fla. -- It was a busy day for 8-year-old Jordan Mike. The third-grader piloted a Spirit Airlines jet, worked as a cashier at a Publix grocery story, helped repair a broken arm as an emergency room doctor at Plantation General Hospital and wrote an article as a Miami Herald reporter. Jordan was also a firefighter and police officer; he didn't have time to bottle drinks at the local Coca-Cola plant or help produce a show on Cartoon Network or CNN.

For all these jobs, Jordan earned 310 Wongas, which he deposited in his State Farm Bank account. It came with a gold plastic bank card, complete with a personal identification number, so Jordan could withdraw cash any time he needed it.

All in all, it was a typical day for Jordan and the hundreds of other "kidizens" who visit Wannado City, the latest innovation in both amusement parks and corporate marketing to children, each day.

The size of 2 1/2 football fields, this $40 million indoor theme park near Fort Lauderdale provides 3- to 13-year-olds with what its developers say is a taste of the grown-up world. They get to "play" at more than 100 professions, from attorney to paleontologist, dentist to pizza maker, hairdresser to detective. For their hard work, they earn Wongas, which can be spent on cookies, rock climbing or carnival rides purchased from park employees, or manicures and hair styling done by other role-playing youngsters.

But what's real life without brand names or corporate marketing? As Wannado's chief creative officer, Luis Javier Laresgoiti, says, a city without corporate names "doesn't look like a real city."

So it's no surprise that the theme park aggressively courts brand-name firms as sponsors to give companies an opportunity to reach out to children and their parents in hopes of turning their Wannado enthusiasm into can-do spending.

That's certainly the goal of State Farm Bank, an early sponsor at the park that opened in August in the Sawgrass Mills shopping mall, a popular Florida tourist destination. The bank, a subsidiary of State Farm Insurance Cos., the nation's largest auto and home insurer, has no branches; customers gain access to it through State Farm agents, a telephone or the Internet. "A lot of people don't know about our bank," said Bobby Wilkinson, State Farm's manager of sponsorships. That's what made Wannado a great marketing opportunity, he said.

Wannado officials said they approached State Farm to sponsor other activities, including the fire department, but when the firm learned that the bank needed a sponsor, it snapped up that option.

"How awesome to have a 3- or 4-year-old with their first bank account and debit card from State Farm," Wilkinson said. "We can introduce that brand early to kids and bring some awareness to parents that we have a State Farm Bank. And if we can introduce this brand early to these kids, then the potential that these could be lifelong customers just increases."

(More at the link.)

I'm getting to be a radical about this: I'm against the exploitation of kids by adults, no matter what the form, be it for sex, child labor, commercialism or what. Kids are there to be raised, not used. And this is using them.

Tied up without wires

Kind of sad that it has gotten to the point where not carrying a cell phone is newsworthy.

The guy in the article isn't somebody with a critical 24-7 life-or-death skill, he owns some restaurants. A fine and noble calling, if you ask me, but the consequences of his being out of touch when he's not at work are not likely to be extreme.

My wife owns a costume shop. She often carries a cell phone, but I think it is, in the long run, a detriment to the business. When she is out and has the phone, people minding the store (sometimes employees, more often family members) call her for every little thing, down to price checks. When she's out of touch, people minding the store have to make decisions themselves. The customer is served faster and usually better, and the person minding the store learns.

There was an ad a few years back that asked whether you had sent a fax from the beach, and then proclaimed "You Will!". So help me God, that will never happen. When I am at the beach, I am at the beach.

I've been thinking lately about what a real culture of life would look like. I don't think the expectation or glorification of 24/7 dedication to business is part of it. I don't think BushCo would like it much.

Hanging up the cell phone

Fun and Games in Iraq

300 suspected insurgents detained in Iraq

Monday, May 23, 2005
Updated at 6:45 AM EDT
Associated Press

Baghdad — Iraqi security forces backed by U.S. troops detained almost 300 suspected insurgents overnight in the largest joint U.S.-Iraqi military offensive to date, the military said Monday.

The Baghdad offensive, dubbed Operation Squeeze Play, came as the American military announced that five U.S. soldiers were killed in northern Iraq on Sunday — four in separate roadside bomb attacks and one in a vehicle accident.

Two carloads of gunmen killed Major General Wael al-Rubaei, a top national security official, and his driver in Baghdad's latest drive-by shooting. The killing came a day after another senior government official, Trade Ministry auditing office chief Ali Moussa, was shot dead — part of an ongoing terror campaign that has killed more than 550 people in less than one month.

In other violence, a suicide bomber killed five people and injured 13 when he drove an explosives-packed pickup truck into a crowd of people outside a municipal council office in Tuz Khormato, 80 kilometres south of the northern city of Kirkuk, said police commander Lieutenant General Sarhat Qader.

Operation Squeeze Play, which began Sunday and was apparently winding down on Monday, was centred on western Baghdad's Abu Ghraib district and targeted militants suspected of attacking the U.S. detention facility there and the road linking downtown to the international airport, the military said in a statement.

“This is the largest combined operation with Iraqi security forces to date,” said U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Clifford Kent. “The Iraqi Security Forces have the lead in this operation while we perform shaping and supporting roles.”

Seven Iraqi battalions backed by U.S. forces launched an offensive in the capital in an effort to stanch the violence that has killed more than 550 people in less than a month, targeting insurgents who have attacked the dangerous road to Baghdad's airport and Abu Ghraib prison.

“Iraqi army and ministry of interior forces worked very well together and demonstrated good, solid fundamental skills today,” said Colonel Mark Milley, commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division.

Captain Renault: Major Strasser has been shot. Round up the usual suspects.

Casablanca 1942

Dean -1 Delay - 0

DeLay 'may end up in jail,' Dean predicts

Monday, May 23, 2005

By Alan C. Miller, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON -- Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said yesterday that "there's a reasonable chance" embattled House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, "may end up in jail."

Dean, who came under fire as a Democratic presidential candidate last year because he insisted that Osama bin Laden should not be prejudged, said DeLay had already been admonished three times by the House ethics committee for his political tactics and faces a new inquiry to determine whether he broke House rules by taking overseas trips financed by lobbyists. He has not been charged with any crime.

"I don't think I'm prejudging him," Dean said during an hourlong interview on NBC's "Meet the Press." Referring to actions for which DeLay is under investigation, he said, "I think there's a reasonable chance that this may end up in jail. And I don't think people ought to do these kinds of things in public service."

This was not the first time that Dean had made such statements. The onetime Vermont governor, who was elected party chairman in February, told the Massachusetts state Democratic convention two weeks ago that DeLay "ought to go back to Houston, where he can serve his jail sentence down there courtesy of the Texas taxpayers."

DeLay, who has said he is looking forward to proving his innocence, has asserted that the Democrats and the media have targeted him in an effort to undermine the conservative agenda.

This is why the Far Right is so terrified of Dean, he calls them like he sees them and doesn't pull any punches. In other words, he fights back in a way that everyone can understand. Sure Delay will wrap himself up as a victim, that's what bullies do when you strike back at them. They go running to their mommies whining about those "mean, evil people who hit them" (parents who refuse to allow their kids to make mistakes do the same thing to teachers).

There is no need for us to call our opponents Nazis or insult their religious beliefs or imply they lack religious beliefs as the Far Right does. We simply need point out to the public that if they walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and visits Donald and Scrouge at family reuinons then they are ducks.

So if you act like a crook, and talk like a crook, and cover things up like a crook, then....

Coalition

Senate moderates forming power center

Deal on nominees could spur change

By Rick Klein, Globe Staff | May 23, 2005

WASHINGTON -- With Democratic and Republican leaders locked in a fierce battle over judges, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers has begun to form a new power center in the Senate, with implications that could extend far beyond the current debate.

The group of about 15 senators has been quietly forging a compromise even as their more partisan colleagues bludgeon each other daily on the Senate floor. They comprise at least six members of each party, the current margin of power in the Senate, and thus could decide any vote that falls along party lines.

Close Senate observers say the coalition's work could shift power from the majority and minority leaders and revitalize the political middle, with moderates who have found themselves out of the mainstream of their own parties enjoying heightened influence on major legislation.

If they are able to work productively together on other issues, their influence could expand, with the docket including such contentious issues as Social Security, stem cell research, reauthorization of the Patriot Act, and John Bolton's nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations.

''Any time you have a middle that is willing to vote with either side -- that will look at cross pressures as well as partisan pressures -- you have power there," said Mark Hurwitz, a political science professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo. ''It says a lot about what the Senate is going through, with its increased polarization, that this group has formed."

The group that is searching for a compromise -- some of them stayed in touch by telephone over the weekend and the whole group is scheduled to meet face-to-face again tonight -- represents a diverse collection of lawmakers.

The Democrats include the longest-serving senator, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, and one of the newest, freshman Ken Salazar of Colorado. They are joined by Democratic centrists, such as Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, and Mark Pryor of Arkansas.

Those on the Republican side include such moderates as Lincoln D. Chafee of Rhode Island and Susan M. Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, as well as independent-minded conservatives, such as John W. Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona, and Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina.

While the diversity of political viewpoints represents a source of the group's strength, it could also limit its impact on future issues. The so-called centrists have jumped at the opportunity to negotiate a compromise to the filibuster issue, but it is not yet clear whether the same group could work cooperatively on a future issue, said Darrell West, a political science professor at Brown University. Continued...

If they can remain united, they would be a powerful force," West said. ''But the problem is, there's almost as much division within that group as outside that group. And the bigger they get, the more divided they get."

Still, the negotiations could have quick impact on the way that Bush and future presidents choose judges to nominate. A provision was added to the agreement late last week calling for the Senate Judiciary Committee to set up a new process in which judges, lawyers, and academics would put together a pool of potential candidates for the president to consider for judgeships.

The president would not be bound to choose a nominee from that pool. But his choices would be less likely to arouse other controversy, because politicians were not involved in clearing them, Byrd said.

''Get it out of the hands of the politicians; that's what I'm seeking," Byrd said.

Unlike in the House, where the majority can move bills through at a fast clip, the Senate is designed as a more deliberative body that gives more power to individual members and determined blocs who are in the minority. In that environment, moderates in each party have always been important, and they enjoyed influence early in Bush's first term, when the Senate was divided 50-50.

But Republicans now control 55 Senate seats, and as Bush's agenda has rolled through, there have been few opportunities for moderate Democrats and Republicans to work together. That has begun to change with the historic confrontation over judges, and moderates will have more opportunities to work together on such issues as Bolton's nomination and Social Security, said Alan Wolfe, a political science professor at Boston College.

''If this works -- and I'm not sure it will -- it will embolden people to find a new way of doing business," Wolfe said..

Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel

Most Iran Reform Candidates Disqualified

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press Writer
Sunday May 22, 2005

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's hard-line constitutional watchdog has rejected all reformists who registered to run in next month's presidential elections, approving only six out of the 1,010 hopefuls, state-run television reported Sunday.

The announcement prompted a crisis meeting by reformers, who immediately threatened to boycott the election.

``We are warning the Guardian Council that we will not participate in the election if it doesn't reverse its decision,'' Rajabali Mazrouei, a top member of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front, told The Associated Press.

``Barring reform candidates means there will be no free or fair election,'' he said.

There was similar outrage last year when the Council - which supervises the elections - disqualified more than 2,000 reformists from legislative elections, leading to a low turnout. Reformists denounced that vote as a ``historical fiasco.''

The council's announcement, however, appeared to be the final decision and effectively leaves reformers seeking democratic changes within the ruling Islamic establishment without a candidate.

Ruling clerics are seeking to consolidate their power following the departure of President Mohammad Khatami, a reformist who is barred from seeking another term. Khatami came to power in a popular landslide in 1997, but hard-line clerics led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have succeeded in stifling his program for political and social reform.

The approved candidates for the June 17 presidential race included the powerful former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who moves frequently between the hard-line and more moderate camps and was seen as a front-runner.

*sigh* And here I was, thinking that since the President told us that with elections in Iraq that it was only a matter of time that democracy would spread through out the Middle East and our troops would finally receive that welcoming with roses that Rummy promised them.

Instead we have an improving, but unstable Lebanon (like that's anything new, at least the unstable part), Syria, Israel (a democracy that acts more and more undemocratic every day), the Saudis (nuff said), and Iran rigging their elections again.

Where else would you find a group of religious fanatics that intentionally manipulate the election process to make sure that anyone with a shred of sense can win? Oh yeah... then maybe it was truely

More Avian Flu

As it's been noted in the past here, as the Avian Flu sitution gets more and more dire, the mainstream media simply can't continue to stick their head in the sand and ignore it. Earlier this week, the Boston Globe ran some stuff on it. Now it's the Washington Post

On Front Lines Of Asian Battle Against Bird Flu

By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 22, 2005; Page A01

HANOI -- Behind high gray double doors, Professor Nguyen Thu Van, a simply dressed woman with black hair held back by a barrette, has been laboring tirelessly with her team of researchers in a race to avert a pandemic.

Her white-coated co-workers scurried about one recent day in their small, second-floor laboratory in an elegant French colonial building in the Vietnamese capital. Engaged in a drive to perfect a human vaccine against avian influenza, Van, 50, has produced an experimental version and conducted successful tests on monkeys. She and her researchers have volunteered to be the first subjects in human trials, which she hopes will begin this summer despite warnings from the World Health Organization.

Van is at the forefront of a campaign in Southeast Asia to halt the progress of bird flu. International health specialists say they fear the virus could undergo genetic changes suddenly and become the most deadly disease to strike humanity in modern times. Almost 200 million chickens, ducks and other birds throughout Southeast Asia have died from the virus or been slaughtered to contain it in the last two years.

So far, bird flu has killed 53 people, mostly as a result of close contact with infected poultry. But international health experts say they suspect the virus has also begun to spread among humans.

With bird flu endemic among birds in the Asian countryside, the disease could pose a threat to humans for years. And in an age of global travel, health experts predict that an easily transmitted human strain could move beyond Asia in a matter of weeks and infect tens of millions of people worldwide.

What struck me was both the title and were this article is located... it's A01! the tone here is very serious through out the article, which is quite long. There are also some interesting bits about how some researchers are trying to make a vaccine and the author makes a point to throw in some jabs against laws and international health guidelines so the focus of the article can come across as more heroic, just like in the movies.

The article is well worth reading and supports a lot of the stuff that Melanie has warned us about for months and months. Oh, and another reason the Post probably put this on the front page is because of the following announcement:

China in national bird flu alert

China has ordered nationwide emergency measures to try to stop the spread of bird flu after discovering that wild geese had been killed by the virus.

Agriculture officials say the migratory birds may have brought a more virulent flu strain into China from South East Asia, Xinhua official news agency said.

Tests confirmed that the geese found dead in Qinghai province had been infected with the H5N1 virus.

The virus has killed at least 53 people in South East Asia since late 2003.

China has had confirmed outbreaks of H5N1 in birds before, but no-one has yet died from avian flu on the mainland.

In Hong Kong, six people died after being infected when the strain spread from wildfowl to chickens to humans in 1997.

An expert from the national bird flu reference laboratory, Cui Shangjin, told Xinhua that "people need not be too worried" as the controls introduced should be effective.

The measures include:

* Banning people from habitats of migratory birds

* Immunising poultry raised near habitats and routes of migratory birds

* Asking public to stop contact with poultry

* Introducing quarantine measures in Qinghai

Now manybe the Chinese will have some more success in limiting the spread of the flu, but you know it's serious when the news agency there comes out and says there is a problem, no matter how they try and downplay it. This really has me worried because I remember what their initial responce was to SARS just a few years ago.

Workers Giving Up Vacations

At the Breaking Point, Passing Up Vacation
Workers Give Back 421 Million Days in 2005

By Amy Joyce
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 22, 2005; Page F06

Are you vacation-deprived?

According to a new study from Expedia.com (okay, I understand it behooves a company that sells travel arrangements to say this): You probably are.

Americans are likely to give back more than 421 million vacation days in 2005, according to the survey of more than 2,000 people conducted by Harris Interactive and released this week. That means each employed U.S. adult will leave an average of three vacation days unused this year. Nearly one third (31 percent) of Americans say they do not use all their vacation days, even though many of them say they feel rejuvenated when they return to work after a vacation.

We all talk about vacations and vacation time. It's important enough that it makes its way onto the small talk list at cocktail parties (how's work, can you believe this weather, are you going away anytime soon?). But according to this study, and in talking to hard workers out there, vacation is not always important enough to force us to take as much as we're offered.

The average length of vacation time spent away from home was four days in 2003, compared with 5.4 nights in 1985 and more than a week 25 years ago, according to the Travel Industry Association.

With the economy sending us all on a roller coaster ride (long weekend to an amusement park, anyone?), workers around the nation have been a little stingier with their paid days off. It's important for employees to work hard, look like they are working hard, and be at the ready when the boss is looking for someone to take on another project.

Just one more indication of the extent to which employers have the upper hand in America: many workers don't feel they're able to take the vacation they're theoretically entitled to.

The rest of the article's behind the cut.

This week's study found that of the 31 percent of U.S. adults who said they don't always take all their vacation days, 13 percent said that is because they get money back for unused days, 12 percent said it was because they need to schedule a vacation in advance (so get with the program, folks), and 10 percent said they were simply too busy at work to get away.

For Thomas Kim, it's a combination of all those factors that has left him vacationless for longer than he can remember. Kim runs a Web and software development firm in Washington that recently merged with a lobbying organization. Between that and a 1-year-old, Kim and his wife, a lawyer, haven't had a vacation "in a couple of years."

Other than a long weekend to Chicago for a recent wedding, they have mostly been tied to their work. Kim said that although owning his own business may make it hard to get away, it also offers a more flexible environment, so he can take longer lunches or stay home if his son is sick.

But still, he said, that's no vacation. "It would be wonderful to just kind of get away and unplug for a week and recoup, reenergize myself. But I don't really feel like it's an absolute necessity right now," he said. "And if I were to go away, I'm sure I'd still check e-mail or bring my BlackBerry."

Kim's not alone in that no-vacation vacation so many people take. According to the survey, 16 percent of respondents checked work e-mail or voice mail while vacationing. ( Just 16 percent?)

That's why Nancy Palazza, president of Alternative Employment Specialists in Herndon, likes to take vacations abroad: Her cell phone doesn't work there. "That's the only time I really feel like I'm on vacation. Other times, I'm always connected," she said. Palazza likes to plan a vacation as soon as she gets home from one so she has something to look forward to. Because her husband is a high school teacher, she takes breaks when his schedule allows. Her next vacation? France in July.

"I encourage my staff to do the same thing," she said. "Because I think if you don't take the time to go and do it, you feel like you're working forever, and you need down time."

However, Palazza refuses to take a vacation of more than 10 days because "that's the limit where I feel comfortable," she said.

That mind-set is very American, according to the survey.

Thirty-eight percent of employees who have vacation time in 2005 say they will take one full week of vacation and use the rest of the time here and there. (Expedia calls it a "power week.")

France, the land of vacation time, provides its workers with an average of 39 days a year, while nearly half of its workers take one three- to four-week vacation each year.

Employed Canadian adults receive an average of 20 days of vacation, but its workers are tied with Americans in giving back the most vacation days per person: three days on average.

"I always take all of it and, in fact, wish I had more," said Kari Swartz, Expedia's product manager for leisure travel, who gets three weeks a year. So what does the state of the survey make her think? "It's sad."

Why sad? Because we need to take vacations. Sure, the e-mails pile up, and all the problems that weren't taken care of while we were away await us. But as 48 percent of the more than 2,000 respondents said, they feel rested and more productive when they get back from taking a vacation.

"I envy the folks that do," Kim said.

horrible

In U.S. Report, Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates' Deaths
By TIM GOLDEN
New York Times
May 20, 2005

Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him.

The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.

Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face.

"Come on, drink!" the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. "Drink!"

At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.

Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

The story of Mr. Dilawar's brutal death at the Bagram Collection Point - and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died there six days earlier in December 2002 - emerge from a nearly 2,000-page confidential file of the Army's criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.

Like a narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib, the Bagram file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse. The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths.

In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both.

Beneath the cut, the details get even more graphic. Even after everything I'd already learned since the Abu Ghraib story broke last year, it stuns me that such brutality was committed in the name of America. Basically, they beat and hanged this guy to death over the course of several days, just because. He was just some poor schlub in the wrong place at the wrong time, and we put him in a hell on earth. Most of the time this torture was going on, they weren't even interrogating him.

Horrible. Just horrible.

Who knows how many of the 108 persons known to have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan spent the last hours and days of their lives in a similar hell.

In sworn statements to Army investigators, soldiers describe one female interrogator with a taste for humiliation stepping on the neck of one prostrate detainee and kicking another in the genitals. They tell of a shackled prisoner being forced to roll back and forth on the floor of a cell, kissing the boots of his two interrogators as he went. Yet another prisoner is made to pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum mixed with excrement and water as part of a strategy to soften him up for questioning.

The Times obtained a copy of the file from a person involved in the investigation who was critical of the methods used at Bagram and the military's response to the deaths.

Although incidents of prisoner abuse at Bagram in 2002, including some details of the two men's deaths, have been previously reported, American officials have characterized them as isolated problems that were thoroughly investigated. And many of the officers and soldiers interviewed in the Dilawar investigation said the large majority of detainees at Bagram were compliant and reasonably well treated.

"What we have learned through the course of all these investigations is that there were people who clearly violated anyone's standard for humane treatment," said the Pentagon's chief spokesman, Larry Di Rita. "We're finding some cases that were not close calls."

Yet the Bagram file includes ample testimony that harsh treatment by some interrogators was routine and that guards could strike shackled detainees with virtual impunity. Prisoners considered important or troublesome were also handcuffed and chained to the ceilings and doors of their cells, sometimes for long periods, an action Army prosecutors recently classified as criminal assault.

Some of the mistreatment was quite obvious, the file suggests. Senior officers frequently toured the detention center, and several of them acknowledged seeing prisoners chained up for punishment or to deprive them of sleep. Shortly before the two deaths, observers from the International Committee of the Red Cross specifically complained to the military authorities at Bagram about the shackling of prisoners in "fixed positions," documents show.

Even though military investigators learned soon after Mr. Dilawar's death that he had been abused by at least two interrogators, the Army's criminal inquiry moved slowly. Meanwhile, many of the Bagram interrogators, led by the same operations officer, Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, were redeployed to Iraq and in July 2003 took charge of interrogations at the Abu Ghraib prison. According to a high-level Army inquiry last year, Captain Wood applied techniques there that were "remarkably similar" to those used at Bagram.

Last October, the Army's Criminal Investigation Command concluded that there was probable cause to charge 27 officers and enlisted personnel with criminal offenses in the Dilawar case ranging from dereliction of duty to maiming and involuntary manslaughter. Fifteen of the same soldiers were also cited for probable criminal responsibility in the Habibullah case.

So far, only the seven soldiers have been charged, including four last week. No one has been convicted in either death. Two Army interrogators were also reprimanded, a military spokesman said. Most of those who could still face legal action have denied wrongdoing, either in statements to investigators or in comments to a reporter.

"The whole situation is unfair," Sgt. Selena M. Salcedo, a former Bagram interrogator who was charged with assaulting Mr. Dilawar, dereliction of duty and lying to investigators, said in a telephone interview. "It's all going to come out when everything is said and done."

With most of the legal action pending, the story of abuses at Bagram remains incomplete. But documents and interviews reveal a striking disparity between the findings of Army investigators and what military officials said in the aftermath of the deaths.

Military spokesmen maintained that both men had died of natural causes, even after military coroners had ruled the deaths homicides. Two months after those autopsies, the American commander in Afghanistan, then-Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, said he had no indication that abuse by soldiers had contributed to the two deaths. The methods used at Bagram, he said, were "in accordance with what is generally accepted as interrogation techniques."

The Interrogators

In the summer of 2002, the military detention center at Bagram, about 40 miles north of Kabul, stood as a hulking reminder of the Americans' improvised hold over Afghanistan.

Built by the Soviets as an aircraft machine shop for the operations base they established after their intervention in the country in 1979, the building had survived the ensuing wars as a battered relic - a long, squat, concrete block with rusted metal sheets where the windows had once been.

Retrofitted with five large wire pens and a half dozen plywood isolation cells, the building became the Bagram Collection Point, a clearinghouse for prisoners captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The B.C.P., as soldiers called it, typically held between 40 and 80 detainees while they were interrogated and screened for possible shipment to the Pentagon's longer-term detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The new interrogation unit that arrived in July 2002 had been improvised as well. Captain Wood, then a 32-year-old lieutenant, came with 13 soldiers from the 525th Military Intelligence Brigade at Fort Bragg, N.C.; six Arabic-speaking reservists were added from the Utah National Guard.

Part of the new group, which was consolidated under Company A of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, was made up of counterintelligence specialists with no background in interrogation. Only two of the soldiers had ever questioned actual prisoners.

What specialized training the unit received came on the job, in sessions with two interrogators who had worked in the prison for a few months. "There was nothing that prepared us for running an interrogation operation" like the one at Bagram, the noncommissioned officer in charge of the interrogators, Staff Sgt. Steven W. Loring, later told investigators.

Nor were the rules of engagement very clear. The platoon had the standard interrogations guide, Army Field Manual 34-52, and an order from the secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, to treat prisoners "humanely," and when possible, in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. But with President Bush's final determination in February 2002 that the Conventions did not apply to the conflict with Al Qaeda and that Taliban fighters would not be accorded the rights of prisoners of war, the interrogators believed they "could deviate slightly from the rules," said one of the Utah reservists, Sgt. James A. Leahy.

"There was the Geneva Conventions for enemy prisoners of war, but nothing for terrorists," Sergeant Leahy told Army investigators. And the detainees, senior intelligence officers said, were to be considered terrorists until proved otherwise.

The deviations included the use of "safety positions" or "stress positions" that would make the detainees uncomfortable but not necessarily hurt them - kneeling on the ground, for instance, or sitting in a "chair" position against the wall. The new platoon was also trained in sleep deprivation, which the previous unit had generally limited to 24 hours or less, insisting that the interrogator remain awake with the prisoner to avoid pushing the limits of humane treatment.

But as the 519th interrogators settled into their jobs, they set their own procedures for sleep deprivation. They decided on 32 to 36 hours as the optimal time to keep prisoners awake and eliminated the practice of staying up themselves, one former interrogator, Eric LaHammer, said in an interview.

The interrogators worked from a menu of basic tactics to gain a prisoner's cooperation, from the "friendly" approach, to good cop-bad cop routines, to the threat of long-term imprisonment. But some less-experienced interrogators came to rely on the method known in the military as "Fear Up Harsh," or what one soldier referred to as "the screaming technique."

Sergeant Loring, then 27, tried with limited success to wean those interrogators off that approach, which typically involved yelling and throwing chairs. Mr. Leahy said the sergeant "put the brakes on when certain approaches got out of hand." But he could also be dismissive of tactics he considered too soft, several soldiers told investigators, and gave some of the most aggressive interrogators wide latitude. (Efforts to locate Mr. Loring, who has left the military, were unsuccessful.)

"We sometimes developed a rapport with detainees, and Sergeant Loring would sit us down and remind us that these were evil people and talk about 9/11 and they weren't our friends and could not be trusted," Mr. Leahy said.

Specialist Damien M. Corsetti, a tall, bearded interrogator sometimes called "Monster" -he had the nickname tattooed in Italian across his stomach, other soldiers said - was often chosen to intimidate new detainees. Specialist Corsetti, they said, would glower and yell at the arrivals as they stood chained to an overhead pole or lay face down on the floor of a holding room. (A military police K-9 unit often brought growling dogs to walk among the new prisoners for similar effect, documents show.)

"The other interrogators would use his reputation," said one interrogator, Specialist Eric H. Barclais. "They would tell the detainee, 'If you don't cooperate, we'll have to get Monster, and he won't be as nice.' " Another soldier told investigators that Sergeant Loring lightheartedly referred to Specialist Corsetti, then 23, as "the King of Torture."

A Saudi detainee who was interviewed by Army investigators last June at Guantánamo said Specialist Corsetti had pulled out his penis during an interrogation at Bagram, held it against the prisoner's face and threatened to rape him, excerpts from the man's statement show.

Last fall, the investigators cited probable cause to charge Specialist Corsetti with assault, maltreatment of a prisoner and indecent acts in the incident; he has not been charged. At Abu Ghraib, he was also one of three members of the 519th who were fined and demoted for forcing an Iraqi woman to strip during questioning, another interrogator said. A spokesman at Fort Bragg said Specialist Corsetti would not comment.

In late August of 2002, the Bagram interrogators were joined by a new military police unit that was assigned to guard the detainees. The soldiers, mostly reservists from the 377th Military Police Company based in Cincinnati and Bloomington, Ind., were similarly unprepared for their mission, members of the unit said.

The company received basic lessons in handling prisoners at Fort Dix, N.J., and some police and corrections officers in its ranks provided further training. That instruction included an overview of "pressure-point control tactics" and notably the "common peroneal strike" - a potentially disabling blow to the side of the leg, just above the knee.

The M.P.'s said they were never told that peroneal strikes were not part of Army doctrine. Nor did most of them hear one of the former police officers tell a fellow soldier during the training that he would never use such strikes because they would "tear up" a prisoner's legs.

But once in Afghanistan, members of the 377th found that the usual rules did not seem to apply. The peroneal strike quickly became a basic weapon of the M.P. arsenal. "That was kind of like an accepted thing; you could knee somebody in the leg," former Sgt. Thomas V. Curtis told the investigators.

A few weeks into the company's tour, Specialist Jeremy M. Callaway overheard another guard boasting about having beaten a detainee who had spit on him. Specialist Callaway also told investigators that other soldiers had congratulated the guard "for not taking any" from a detainee.

One captain nicknamed members of the Third Platoon "the Testosterone Gang." Several were devout bodybuilders. Upon arriving in Afghanistan, a group of the soldiers decorated their tent with a Confederate flag, one soldier said.

Some of the same M.P.'s took a particular interest in an emotionally disturbed Afghan detainee who was known to eat his feces and mutilate himself with concertina wire. The soldiers kneed the man repeatedly in the legs and, at one point, chained him with his arms straight up in the air, Specialist Callaway told investigators. They also nicknamed him "Timmy," after a disabled child in the animated television series "South Park." One of the guards who beat the prisoner also taught him to screech like the cartoon character, Specialist Callaway said.

Eventually, the man was sent home.

The Defiant Detainee

The detainee known as Person Under Control No. 412 was a portly, well-groomed Afghan named Habibullah. Some American officials identified him as "Mullah" Habibullah, a brother of a former Taliban commander from the southern Afghan province of Oruzgan.

He stood out from the scraggly guerrillas and villagers whom the Bagram interrogators typically saw. "He had a piercing gaze and was very confident," the provost marshal in charge of the M.P.'s, Maj. Bobby R. Atwell, recalled.

Documents from the investigation suggest that Mr. Habibullah was captured by an Afghan warlord on Nov. 28, 2002, and delivered to Bagram by C.I.A. operatives two days later. His well-being at that point is a matter of dispute. The doctor who examined him on arrival at Bagram reported him in good health. But the intelligence operations chief, Lt. Col. John W. Loffert Jr., later told Army investigators, "He was already in bad condition when he arrived."

What is clear is that Mr. Habibullah was identified at Bagram as an important prisoner and an unusually sharp-tongued and insubordinate one.

One of the 377th's Third Platoon sergeants, Alan J. Driver Jr., told investigators that Mr. Habibullah rose up after a rectal examination and kneed him in the groin. The guard said he grabbed the prisoner by the head and yelled in his face. Mr. Habibullah then "became combative," Sergeant Driver said, and had to be subdued by three guards and led away in an armlock.

He was then confined in one of the 9-foot by 7-foot isolation cells, which the M.P. commander, Capt. Christopher M. Beiring, later described as a standard procedure. "There was a policy that detainees were hooded, shackled and isolated for at least the first 24 hours, sometimes 72 hours of captivity," he told investigators.

While the guards kept some prisoners awake by yelling or poking at them or banging on their cell doors, Mr. Habibullah was shackled by the wrists to the wire ceiling over his cell, soldiers said.

On his second day, Dec. 1, the prisoner was "uncooperative" again, this time with Specialist Willie V. Brand. The guard, who has since been charged with assault and other crimes, told investigators he had delivered three peroneal strikes in response. The next day, Specialist Brand said, he had to knee the prisoner again. Other blows followed.

A lawyer for Specialist Brand, John P. Galligan, said there was no criminal intent by his client to hurt any detainee. "At the time, my client was acting consistently with the standard operating procedure that was in place at the Bagram facility."

The communication between Mr. Habibullah and his jailers appears to have been almost exclusively physical. Despite repeated requests, the M.P.'s were assigned no interpreters of their own. Instead, they borrowed from the interrogators when they could and relied on prisoners who spoke even a little English to translate for them.

When the detainees were beaten or kicked for "noncompliance," one of the interpreters, Ali M. Baryalai said, it was often "because they have no idea what the M.P. is saying."

By the morning of Dec. 2, witnesses told the investigators, Mr. Habibullah was coughing and complaining of chest pains. He limped into the interrogation room in shackles, his right leg stiff and his right foot swollen. The lead interrogator, Sergeant Leahy, let him sit on the floor because he could not bend his knees and sit in a chair.

The interpreter who was on hand, Ebrahim Baerde, said the interrogators had kept their distance that day "because he was spitting up a lot of phlegm."

"They were laughing and making fun of him, saying it was 'gross' or 'nasty,' " Mr. Baerde said.

Though battered, Mr. Habibullah was unbowed.

"Once they asked him if he wanted to spend the rest of his life in handcuffs," Mr. Baerde said. "His response was, 'Yes, don't they look good on me?' "

By Dec. 3, Mr. Habibullah's reputation for defiance seemed to make him an open target. One M.P. said he had given him five peroneal strikes for being "noncompliant and combative." Another gave him three or four more for being "combative and noncompliant." Some guards later asserted that he had been hurt trying to escape.

When Sgt. James P. Boland saw Mr. Habibullah on Dec. 3, he was in one of the isolation cells, tethered to the ceiling by two sets of handcuffs and a chain around his waist. His body was slumped forward, held up by the chains.

Sergeant Boland told the investigators he had entered the cell with two other guards, Specialists Anthony M. Morden and Brian E. Cammack. (All three have been charged with assault and other crimes.) One of them pulled off the prisoner's black hood. His head was slumped to one side, his tongue sticking out. Specialist Cammack said he had put some bread on Mr. Habibullah's tongue. Another soldier put an apple in the prisoner's hand; it fell to the floor.

When Specialist Cammack turned back toward the prisoner, he said in one statement, Mr. Habibullah's spit hit his chest. Later, Specialist Cammack acknowledged, "I'm not sure if he spit at me." But at the time, he exploded, yelling, "Don't ever spit on me again!" and kneeing the prisoner sharply in the thigh, "maybe a couple" of times. Mr. Habibullah's limp body swayed back and forth in the chains.

When Sergeant Boland returned to the cell some 20 minutes later, he said, Mr. Habibullah was not moving and had no pulse. Finally, the prisoner was unchained and laid out on the floor of his cell.

The guard who Specialist Cammack said had counseled him back in New Jersey about the dangers of peroneal strikes found him in the room where Mr. Habibullah lay, his body already cold.

"Specialist Cammack appeared very distraught," Specialist William Bohl told an investigator. The soldier "was running about the room hysterically."

An M.P. was sent to wake one of the medics.

"What are you getting me for?" the medic, Specialist Robert S. Melone, responded, telling him to call an ambulance instead.

When another medic finally arrived, he found Mr. Habibullah on the floor, his arms outstretched, his eyes and mouth open.

"It looked like he had been dead for a while, and it looked like nobody cared," the medic, Staff Sgt. Rodney D. Glass, recalled.

Not all of the guards were indifferent, their statements show. But if Mr. Habibullah's death shocked some of them, it did not lead to major changes in the detention center's operation.

Military police guards were assigned to be present during interrogations to help prevent mistreatment. The provost marshal, Major Atwell, told investigators he had already instructed the commander of the M.P. company, Captain Beiring, to stop chaining prisoners to the ceiling. Others said they never received such an order.

Senior officers later told investigators that they had been unaware of any serious abuses at the B.C.P. But the first sergeant of the 377th, Betty J. Jones, told investigators that the use of standing restraints, sleep deprivation and peroneal strikes was readily apparent.

"Everyone that is anyone went through the facility at one time or another," she said.

Major Atwell said the death "did not cause an enormous amount of concern 'cause it appeared natural."

In fact, Mr. Habibullah's autopsy, completed on Dec. 8, showed bruises or abrasions on his chest, arms and head. There were deep contusions on his calves, knees and thighs. His left calf was marked by what appeared to have been the sole of a boot.

His death was attributed to a blood clot, probably caused by the severe injuries to his legs, which traveled to his heart and blocked the blood flow to his lungs.

The Shy Detainee

On Dec. 5, one day after Mr. Habibullah died, Mr. Dilawar arrived at Bagram.

Four days before, on the eve of the Muslim holiday of Id al-Fitr, Mr. Dilawar set out from his tiny village of Yakubi in a prized new possession, a used Toyota sedan that his family bought for him a few weeks earlier to drive as a taxi.

Mr. Dilawar was not an adventurous man. He rarely went far from the stone farmhouse he shared with his wife, young daughter and extended family. He never attended school, relatives said, and had only one friend, Bacha Khel, with whom he would sit in the wheat fields surrounding the village and talk.

"He was a shy man, a very simple man," his eldest brother, Shahpoor, said in an interview.

On the day he disappeared, Mr. Dilawar's mother had asked him to gather his three sisters from their nearby villages and bring them home for the holiday. But he needed gas money and decided instead to drive to the provincial capital, Khost, about 45 minutes away, to look for fares.

At a taxi stand there, he found three men headed back toward Yakubi. On the way, they passed a base used by American troops, Camp Salerno, which had been the target of a rocket attack that morning.

Militiamen loyal to the guerrilla commander guarding the base, Jan Baz Khan, stopped the Toyota at a checkpoint. They confiscated a broken walkie-talkie from one of Mr. Dilawar's passengers. In the trunk, they found an electric stabilizer used to regulate current from a generator. (Mr. Dilawar's family said the stabilizer was not theirs; at the time, they said, they had no electricity at all.)

The four men were detained and turned over to American soldiers at the base as suspects in the attack. Mr. Dilawar and his passengers spent their first night there handcuffed to a fence, so they would be unable to sleep. When a doctor examined them the next morning, he said later, he found Mr. Dilawar tired and suffering from headaches but otherwise fine.

Mr. Dilawar's three passengers were eventually flown to Guantánamo and held for more than a year before being sent home without charge. In interviews after their release, the men described their treatment at Bagram as far worse than at Guantánamo. While all of them said they had been beaten, they complained most bitterly of being stripped naked in front of female soldiers for showers and medical examinations, which they said included the first of several painful and humiliating rectal exams.

"They did lots and lots of bad things to me," said Abdur Rahim, a 26-year-old baker from Khost. "I was shouting and crying, and no one was listening. When I was shouting, the soldiers were slamming my head against the desk."

For Mr. Dilawar, his fellow prisoners said, the most difficult thing seemed to be the black cloth hood that was pulled over his head. "He could not breathe," said a man called Parkhudin, who had been one of Mr. Dilawar's passengers.

Mr. Dilawar was a frail man, standing only 5 feet 9 inches and weighing 122 pounds. But at Bagram, he was quickly labeled one of the "noncompliant" ones.

When one of the First Platoon M.P.'s, Specialist Corey E. Jones, was sent to Mr. Dilawar's cell to give him some water, he said the prisoner spit in his face and started kicking him. Specialist Jones responded, he said, with a couple of knee strikes to the leg of the shackled man.

"He screamed out, 'Allah! Allah! Allah!' and my first reaction was that he was crying out to his god," Specialist Jones said to investigators. "Everybody heard him cry out and thought it was funny."

Other Third Platoon M.P.'s later came by the detention center and stopped at the isolation cells to see for themselves, Specialist Jones said.

It became a kind of running joke, and people kept showing up to give this detainee a common peroneal strike just to hear him scream out 'Allah,' " he said. "It went on over a 24-hour period, and I would think that it was over 100 strikes."

In a subsequent statement, Specialist Jones was vague about which M.P.'s had delivered the blows. His estimate was never confirmed, but other guards eventually admitted striking Mr. Dilawar repeatedly.

Many M.P.'s would eventually deny that they had any idea of Mr. Dilawar's injuries, explaining that they never saw his legs beneath his jumpsuit. But Specialist Jones recalled that the drawstring pants of Mr. Dilawar's orange prison suit fell down again and again while he was shackled.

"I saw the bruise because his pants kept falling down while he was in standing restraints," the soldier told investigators. "Over a certain time period, I noticed it was the size of a fist."

As Mr. Dilawar grew desperate, he began crying out more loudly to be released. But even the interpreters had trouble understanding his Pashto dialect; the annoyed guards heard only noise.

"He had constantly been screaming, 'Release me; I don't want to be here,' and things like that," said the one linguist who could decipher his distress, Abdul Ahad Wardak.

The Interrogation

On Dec. 8, Mr. Dilawar was taken for his fourth interrogation. It quickly turned hostile.

The 21-year-old lead interrogator, Specialist Glendale C. Walls II, later contended that Mr. Dilawar was evasive. "Some holes came up, and we wanted him to answer us truthfully," he said. The other interrogator, Sergeant Salcedo, complained that the prisoner was smiling, not answering questions, and refusing to stay kneeling on the ground or sitting against the wall.

The interpreter who was present, Ahmad Ahmadzai, recalled the encounter differently to investigators.

The interrogators, Mr. Ahmadzai said, accused Mr. Dilawar of launching the rockets that had hit the American base. He denied that. While kneeling on the ground, he was unable to hold his cuffed hands above his head as instructed, prompting Sergeant Salcedo to slap them back u