:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 3.29.2007 ::

:: RE Iraq ::

Senate Passes War-Spending Bill With Iraq Deadline
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and CARL HULSE
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, March 29 — The Senate narrowly approved a war-spending bill today that calls for most American combat troops to be out of Iraq by March 31, 2008, and in so doing defied a veto threat by President Bush.

A L S O
Message to the Man in the Bunker
from The Nation

William Greider writes that by voting to set a deadline for exiting Iraq, the House and Senate have heeded the American people's call to end the war. But will the man in the White House bunker get the message?

posted by me

:: 11:29:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Bush vents fury at Congress demand for troop withdrawal" ::

Rupert Cornwell
The Independent UK

Besieged as never before during his six years in the White House, George Bush lashed out yesterday at his Democratic foes in Congress, accusing them of making reckless "political statements" by insisting a deadline for a US force withdrawal is a condition of any further funding for the war in Iraq.

The President's tirade - delivered in the somewhat incongruous setting of an address to the National Cattlemen's Beef Association - came the day after the Senate, hitherto a usually reliable bulwark in his defence, had followed the House of Representatives in setting a mid-2008 date for the departure of the bulk of US combat troops from Iraq.

Once again, Mr Bush repeated his threat to veto any bill that linked a deadline to the $122bn of new funding he has requested for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan - even though without it, the White House maintains, money for the two wars will run out next month.

posted by me

:: 10:50:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Congress passes war funding bill with controversial timetable" ::

wacotrib.com
By David Doerr

The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly approved a spending bill Friday that would set a timetable to begin pulling troops out of Iraq and to redirect the primary mission of American forces’ fight against terrorism in the Middle East.

Ignoring a veto threat from President Bush, lawmakers voted 218-212, mostly along party lines, for a $124 billion war spending bill that requires combat operations to cease before September 2008, or earlier if the Iraqi government doesn’t meet certain requirements.

The vote marks the first time Congress has used its budget power to try redirecting the course of the war, now entering its fifth year.

“What we’re trying to do in this legislation is force the Iraqis to fight their own war,” said Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who helped write the bill.

Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, voted to support the resolution, saying it was the first step in pressuring Iraqi political leaders to take responsibility of their nation’s future.

“I believe that in a war that has now lasted longer than America’s involvement in World War II, it is time to send a clear message to Iraqi politicians that they must take more responsibility to protect their nation from what is increasingly becoming a religious civil war,” he said in a statement.

“Now the future of Iraq depends on Iraqi political leaders’ willingness to end their corruption, to stop religious infighting and to start using their vast oil wealth to improve their economy.”

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:32:00 AM [+] ::
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:: RE Iraq ::

Bush and Congress at odds over Iraq war
By JENNIFER LOVEN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Iraq war lumbered into its fifth year Monday with President Bush pleading for patience to let his revised battle plan work and Congress' new Democratic leaders retorting that no patience remains.

"The new strategy will need more time to take effect," Bush said in remarks televised from the White House to mark the four years since he ordered the invasion. He challenged Congress to send him a war funding bill "without strings and without delay."

He got a swift response from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"The American people have lost confidence in President Bush's plan for a war without end in Iraq," said Pelosi, D-Calif. "That failed approach has been rejected by the voters in our nation and it will be rejected by the Congress."

Four years in, the war has claimed the lives of more than 3,200 members of the U.S. military. Predictions about the cost and length of the war have been far surpassed. The public overwhelmingly opposes the war, and Bush's approval rating stands near his all-time low. Trying to halt spiraling sectarian bloodshed, Bush has ordered nearly 30,000 more combat and support troops to Iraq, mostly to stabilize Baghdad.

Read more here.

A L S O
Reports from The Nation


Conscience and the War
Stephen F. Cohen

The Non-withdrawal Withdrawal Proposal
Tom Engelhard

Congress, End the War
The Editors

posted by me

:: 3:27:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Iraq war's anniversary sparks protests" ::

AARON CLARK
Associated Press Writer
The Houston Chronicle

PORTLAND, Ore. — The fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq brought thousands of anti-war marchers into the streets for largely peaceful protests over the weekend, though a large rally in Portland ended in with scuffles and police using pepper spray.

"This is a war to establish U.S. hegemony," said Susan Hay, a high school teacher, who marched Sunday in Portland with her two children and husband. "This is a war to be able to consume everyone else's resources."

The clashes with police started after the march, when a small group broke off in scuffles and a standoff that lasted into the evening. At least half a dozen protesters were detained and police used pepper spray at one point.

Some said the police overreacted. "They showed a huge amount of force," said Jake Fagan, 21, who said he had lost two friends in Iraq. "But we are just trying to march."

Organizers said there might have been as many as 15,000 people at the staging point for the march. Police did not give a crowd estimate.

In San Francisco, about 3,000 people closed Market Street, a major downtown thoroughfare in an anti-war demonstration Sunday. In New York, more than 1,000 protesters converged in a park near the United Nations headquarters. Protesters also gathered during the weekend in Washington, Los Angeles, San Diego and Hartford, Conn.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:50:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Cheney on Trial" ::

The Nation
By David Corn

It was fall 2003. The news had broken that the Justice Department, at the request of the CIA, was investigating the leak that outed Valerie Wilson as an undercover intelligence officer, and FBI investigators were targeting White House officials. With a firestorm under way, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, went to see his boss. Libby hadn't passed any information about Valerie Wilson to right-wing columnist Robert Novak, who first published the leak in a July 14, 2003, column. But he had talked to other reporters about Valerie Wilson and her CIA connection before the leak occurred. And he also knew that Karl Rove, White House über-strategist, had spoken to Novak about her days before the leak column. That is, Libby knew a fair bit about the episode.

Libby told Cheney he had not been one of Novak's two Administration sources for the leak, and he offered to disclose to the Vice President everything he knew. But Cheney did not want to hear it; Libby said no more.

Shortly after that, Libby, responding to a request from investigators, came across a note in his files indicating that in early June 2003--weeks before the Wilson affair began--Cheney had told him that the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson worked at the CIA's Counterproliferation Division, a unit of the agency's clandestine operations directorate. (At that point, the former envoy had spoken only privately to two reporters about his CIA-sponsored trip to Niger, during which he had concluded there was not much to the intelligence report that Iraq had been uranium-shopping there.) The note was a significant discovery. A key issue in the investigation was who in the Bush Administration had spread information about Wilson's wife to undermine Wilson's charge that the White House had twisted the prewar intelligence (a criticism Wilson made public in a July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed). And Libby had uncovered evidence showing that Cheney had conducted his own research on Joseph Wilson early on, learned about Valerie Wilson's CIA job and shared the information with Libby. Cheney apparently was the first White House official to discuss Valerie Wilson's specific place of work.

With a criminal investigation in full force, Libby told Cheney, I first heard about Valerie Wilson from you. From me? Cheney replied. The Vice President then tilted his head and, as Libby later said, "that was that." The two discussed it no further.

These vignettes of how Cheney does business--in a mob-boss sort of way--emerged from the recently completed obstruction of justice trial of Scooter Libby.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 11:58:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Bush: FBI Addresses Patriot Act Problems" ::

By DEB RIECHMANN
Associated Press

President Bush said the FBI has addressed the problems that led to illegal prying into personal information on people in the U.S., but "there's more work to be done."

Bush, at a news conference after meeting with Uruguay's president, said he was briefed last week on the report from the Justice Department's internal watchdog that disclosed the FBI's transgressions involving a subpoena known as national security letters.

"My question is, `What are you going to do solve the problem and how fast can you get it solved?'" the president said.

A L S O
Audit Finds FBI Abused Patriot Act
Slashdot

happyslayer writes to mention that according to Yahoo! News a recent audit shows that the FBI has improperly and in some cases illegally utilized the Patriot Act to obtain information. "The audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine found that FBI agents sometimes demanded personal data on individuals without proper authorization. The 126-page audit also found the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances. The audit blames agent error and shoddy record-keeping for the bulk of the problems and did not find any indication of criminal misconduct. Still, 'we believe the improper or illegal uses we found involve serious misuses of national security letter authorities,' the audit concludes."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:18:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "World riveted to full lunar eclipse" ::

Moon bathed in reddish light
The Boston Globe

LONDON -- A dark red shadow crept across the moon yesterday during the first total lunar eclipse in nearly three years, thrilling stargazers and astronomers around the world.

Partly visible on every continent, residents of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East had the best view of the phenomenon, weather permitting.

About a dozen people gathered at the Croydon Observatory in southeast London to watch the start of the eclipse.

"It's starting to go!" said Alex Gikas, 8, a Cub Scout who was studying for his astronomy badge. "I've never seen anything like it before. I'm really excited."

The eclipse was clearly visible, thanks to clear, crisp weather in southern England. Overcast skies prevented an ideal view of the eclipse in the Boston area.

Lunar eclipses occur when Earth passes between the sun and the moon, an uncommon event because the moon spends most of its time either above or below the plane of Earth's orbit.

Sunlight still reaches the moon during total eclipses, but it is refracted through Earth's atmosphere, bathing the moon in an eerie reddish light.

Read more here.

A L S O

"Stargazers aglow over stunning eclipse"
Scotsman.com

Key quote: "Saturday's eclipse was probably the best I've ever seen. The Moon was spectacularly red, and the shadow of the Earth cast on its surface was extremely sharp" - Douglas Cooper, secretary of the Scottish Astronomer's Group

IT WAS, experts agreed, the most spectacular lunar eclipse they had ever seen. As the skies across most of Scotland cleared, the surface of the full Moon first darkened before turning a brilliant coppery-red as the Earth's shadow was cast across its surface.

Slowly the shadow passed across the face of the Moon, before a brilliant white crescent appeared at its edge as the eclipse passed.

posted by me

:: 9:28:00 PM [+] ::
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:: 'Zodiac' ::

A frightening, engrossing account of the hunt for a notorious Bay Area killer
Seattle P-I

As a rule, movies about real-life, unsolved murders tend to be -- by their unresolved nature -- not very satisfying, which is probably why none of the dozens of films based on the Jack the Ripper story over the years have been particularly memorable.

We had a perfect example of this last fall with "The Black Dahlia," Brian De Palma's historically reckless and disastrously over-the-top film-noir fabrication based on Los Angeles' most celebrated unsolved murder of the '40s.

But "Zodiac," David Fincher's scrupulously factual drama about the determined serial killer who eluded Northern California police for more than two decades, manages to be an absorbing and fulfilling experience -- even though it ends with a question mark.

Its story begins July 4, 1969, with a terrifying scene right out of "Bonnie and Clyde," as a young couple parked in a lonely spot near the town of Vallejo is attacked by a gunman who unleashes a hail of bullets, killing the girl and wounding the boy.

The next day, letters arrive at the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers from a man claiming responsibility and calling himself "Zodiac." He includes a coded message and instructions that the letter be printed on the front page, or more murders will follow.

Thus begins a saga that will cover decades and include 20 more letters taunting the police (and threatening mass murder of children), 47 possible victims (no one knows for sure how many) and enough clues and suspects to fill a 10-hour miniseries.

The film's first half, which dramatizes Zodiac's more famous killings, his cat-and-mouse interplay with Chronicle reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) and the crisis his crimes create in the Chronicle board room, makes for the best newspaper movie since "All the President's Men."

The second half takes place in later years, as Zodiac becomes inactive, the police lose interest and the case becomes the personal obsession of two men: S.F. cop Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and Chronicle political cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal).

Graysmith, who spent 30 years researching the case and wrote two books about it that were the basis of the script, gradually puts all the information of the competing Bay Area police departments together, finds clues of his own and makes a convincing case for Zodiac's identity.

... overall, it works. Fincher has crafted a true-crime epic: a sprawling, ambitious, no-nonsense drama that rejects most of the cliches of the serial-killer formula and comes together as a mystery, an ensemble character study and a "Da Vinci Code"-like puzzle movie.

posted by me

:: 1:58:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "McCain Says U.S. Lives 'Wasted' in Iraq" ::

Associated Press
By LIZ SIDOTI

Republican presidential contender John McCain, a staunch backer of the Iraq war but critic of how President Bush has waged it, said U.S. lives had been "wasted" in the four-year-old conflict. Democrats demand the Arizona senator apologize for the comment as Sen. Barack Obama did when the Democratic White House hopeful recently made the same observation.

"Americans are very frustrated, and they have every right to be," McCain said Wednesday on CBS'"Late Show With David Letterman.""We've wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives."

McCain, who repeated his assertion that U.S. troops must remain in Iraq rather than withdrawing early, made the "wasted" remark after confirming to Letterman what has been clear for at least a year or more — that he's in the running for the 2008 Republican nomination.

"I am announcing that I will be a candidate for president of the United States," he said — and added that he would officially enter the race by giving a formal announcement speech to that effect in April after a visit to Iraq.

Hours after the taped appearance aired, the Democratic National Committee called on McCain to take back the "wasted" lives remark.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 11:43:00 AM [+] ::
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