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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/10/ap/politics/printableD8K1RJ200.shtml
Bill Would Ease CIA Interrogation Limits
WASHINGTON, Sep. 10, 2006
(AP) To many of President Bush's allies, it is time to free intelligence officials from "legislative purgatory" and get the CIA back in the business of effective interrogations of suspected terrorists.
That chance could come this week if the Senate takes up a White House proposal limiting the punishable offenses that CIA interrogators may face when questioning "high-value" terrorist suspects. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., is expected to begin debate on the bill as early as Tuesday.
Through omissions and legal definitions, the proposal could authorize harsh techniques that critics contend potentially violate the Geneva Conventions, which govern the treatment of war prisoners. These methods include hypothermia, stress positions and "waterboarding," a practice of simulated drowning.
The bill would keep in law prohibitions on war crimes such as rape and torture that are widely accepted as illegal.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/09/AR2006090900911_pf.html
Bush's Approval Ratings Slumping Further in Europe
By Chris Cillizza and Zachary A. Goldfarb
Sunday, September 10, 2006; A05
President Bush's approval ratings in the United States are nothing to cheer about, but he can count himself lucky that the midterm elections will not be held in Europe. A comprehensive survey of public opinion in a dozen European nations and the United States found that things have gone from bad to worse when it comes to disdain for the administration and its national security policies.
The annual survey, taken by the highly regarded German Marshall Fund of the United States, shows that 77 percent of Europeans disapprove of the way Bush has handled international affairs, as compared with 56 percent who felt that way in GMF's "Transatlantic Trends" survey in 2002.
Asked how desirable it was for the United States to exert strong leadership on the world stage, 37 percent of Europeans said that should be a goal -- down from 64 percent five years ago. In this country, 82 percent of Americans think it is very desirable or somewhat desirable for the United States to exert leadership.
Anyone who has seen the large antiwar rallies in Europe on television
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/08/AR2006090801664.html
Rescue Darfur Now
By John McCain and Bob Dole
Sunday, September 10, 2006; B07
In 1995, the writing was on the wall. The conflict in Bosnia was escalating. Tens of thousands of civilians had been driven from their homes and were trapped in places the United Nations had designated as "safe areas," including Srebrenica. Only a few hundred poorly equipped U.N. peacekeepers stood between those civilians and Bosnian Serb forces. The Serbs had signaled their defiance of the United Nations, their disdain for diplomatic overtures and their determination to advance on the safe areas and finish the job of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. All the makings of a massacre were present, and, before the eyes of the world, that is what unfolded. Eight thousand Bosnian Muslims were systematically killed at Srebrenica, and history has judged severely those policymakers who failed to heed the warning signs of mass murder.
As advocates of military action in Bosnia, we will never forget those terrible days. We remember that when the United States and its allies did finally act, military intervention saved countless lives. And all of us pledged anew that, should such a situation again unfold, we would do things very differently.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/08/AR2006090801614.html
The Taliban, Regrouped And Rearmed
By Peter Bergen
Sunday, September 10, 2006; B01
KABUL, Afghanistan
The interpreter's hand-held radio crackled with the sound of intercepted Taliban transmissions, and he signaled the infantry patrol to wait while he translated. At 7 a.m. one morning late in the summer, peasants were already out scything wheat, with their children tending fields of pink and white poppies that would soon add to Afghanistan's record-setting opium and heroin supplies. We were 9,000 feet up, in the hamlet of Larzab, in a remote part of Zabul province -- the heart of Talibanland.
Our interpreter, Mohammed, estimated that the Taliban fighters were less than half a mile away. We walked through the fields for 20 more minutes before stopping next to a small hill. The chatter revealed that the Taliban were "watching us and waiting for us to get closer," Maj. Ralph Paredes the hidden fighters. Soldiers back at the base -- a mud-walled compound without electricity or water -- fired mortar rounds over our heads to a hill several hundred meters from our position, where the Taliban might be hiding. We never learned whether they found their target.
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The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/09/AR2006090901079_pf.html
In a Pivotal Year, GOP Plans to Get Personal
Millions to Go to Digging Up Dirt on Democrats
By Jim VandeHei and Chris Cillizza
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 10, 2006; A01
Republicans are planning to spend the vast majority of their sizable financial war chest over the final 60 days of the campaign attacking Democratic House and Senate candidates over personal issues and local controversies, GOP officials said.
The National Republican Congressional Committee, which this year dispatched a half-dozen operatives to comb through tax, court and other records looking for damaging information on Democratic candidates, plans to spend more than 90 percent of its $50 million-plus advertising budget on what officials described as negative ads.
The hope is that a vigorous effort to "define" opponents, in the parlance of GOP operatives, can help Republicans shift the midterm debate away from Iraq and limit losses this fall. The first round of attacks includes an ad that labeled a Democratic candidate in Wisconsin "Dr. Millionaire" and noted that he has sued 80 patients.
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The New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/opinion/10kristof.html?pagewanted=print
September 10, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Why Genocide Matters
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
When I spoke at Cornell University recently, a woman asked why I always harp on Darfur.
It's a fair question. The number of people killed in Darfur so far is modest in global terms: estimates range from 200,000 to more than 500,000.
In contrast, four million people have died since 1998 as a result of the fighting in Congo, the most lethal conflict since World War II. And malaria annually kills one million to three million people - meaning that three years' deaths in Darfur are within the margin of error of the annual global toll from malaria.
So, yes, you can make an argument that Darfur is simply one of many tragedies and that it would be more cost-effective to save lives by tackling diarrhea, measles and malaria.
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The New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/opinion/10brooks.html?pagewanted=print
September 10, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Investing in Human Futures
By DAVID BROOKS
Imagine a classroom of first graders. Now imagine we could get every kid in that classroom to graduate from college, and that we could get every kid in every classroom to graduate from college. Don't you think that's the most important thing we could do to make America a richer and fairer place?
Some people, actually, don't think that. Some people don't think wage stagnation is mainly about education and skills. They think the economy is so broken, the Republican Party so malevolent and all-controlling, that almost all the gains would go to the top 5 percent or 1 percent anyway.I may be a sucker, but I think they're wrong.
I may be a sucker, but I doubt we can achieve broad-based social mobility unless workers possess the skills that a global economy now rewards. I may be a sucker, but I suspect the most important thing we can do to increase social mobility is to come up with second-generation human capital policies.
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The New York Times
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/opinion/10rich.html?pagewanted=print
September 10, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Whatever Happened to the America of 9/12?
By FRANK RICH
"THE most famous picture nobody's ever seen" is how the Associated Press photographer Richard Drew has referred to his photo of an unidentified World Trade Center victim hurtling to his death on 9/11. It appeared in some newspapers, including this one, on 9/12 but was soon shelved. "In the most photographed and videotaped day in the history of the world," Tom Junod later wrote in Esquire, "the images of people jumping were the only images that became, by consensus, taboo."
Five years later, Mr. Drew's "falling man" remains a horrific artifact of the day that was supposed to change everything and did not. But there's another taboo 9/11 photo, about life rather than death, that is equally shocking in its way, so much so that Thomas Hoepker of Magnum Photos kept it under wraps for four years. Mr. Hoepker's picture can now be found in David Friend's compelling new 9/11 book, "Watching the World Change," or on the book's Web site, watchingtheworldchange.com. It shows five young friends on the waterfront in Brooklyn, taking what seems to be a lunch or bike-riding break, enjoying the radiant late-summer sun and chatting away as cascades of smoke engulf Lower Manhattan in the background.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/opinion/10sun2.html?pagewanted=print
September 10, 2006
Editorial
Turkey at the Tipping Point
After a Kurdish group claimed responsibility for a series of recent bombings in Turkey that killed three civilians and injured many others, the United States appointed a retired Air Force general and former NATO commander, Joseph Ralston, to work with Turkish authorities. General Ralston will be responsible for coordinating American antiterrorist efforts with Iraq and Turkey, both of which have sizable Kurdish minorities - and minorities within those minorities who have resorted to terror.
The Turkish foreign ministry hailed the appointment as a "new opportunity" for cooperation between the United States and Turkey.The United States would be wise to create many more and varied opportunities to engage with Turkey, a longtime ally, and a uniquely important one. Turkey is apredominantly Muslim, secular democracy, situated between Europe and the Middle East.
After years of trying to make amends for having suppressed its Kurdish population, often brutally, Turkey has seen violence resume of late. The United States needs to frankly acknowledge that instability in Iraq, on Turkey's southeast border, has fomented instability in Turkey. That morally obligates the United States to help with corrective action.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/opinion/10sun1.html?pagewanted=print
September 10, 2006
Editorial
A Ban on Carry-On Luggage
In a directive whose logic is not always apparent, the Transportation Security Administration has spelled out what airline passengers can carry on board with them, what must be placed in checked luggage, and what can't go on the plane at all. Knives must be checked but knitting needles and corkscrews are allowed in the cabin. Up to four ounces of eye drops can be carried aboard, with fingers crossed that multiple terrorists won't combine their allotments to exceed the limit. Laptops, digital cameras, mobile phones and other electronic devices are permitted, so never mind any warnings you've heard that they could be used to trigger a bomb.
The ban on liquids surely makes sense given the lack of a reliable, efficient way to detect liquid explosives on the passenger screening line. But the other fine distinctions in this directive make us think the best approach would be a ban on virtually all carry-on items, or at least a limit of one small personal bag per passenger to tote travel documents, keys, vital medications, reading materials and any other minimal items that are allowed.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Palestinians-Abbas.html?ei=5094&en=56283bd31afb4b65&hp=&ex=1157947200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
September 10, 2006
Abbas Says He's Ready to Meet Olmert
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:13 a.m. ET
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday that he was ready to meet unconditionally with the Israeli leader, possibly paving the way for a resumption of long-stalled peace talks.
Olmert called twice last week for a meeting with Abbas. This was Abbas' first public statement of his willingness to meet without conditions with the Israeli leader.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/washington/10cheney.html?ei=5094&en=dd2796fe2fa400dd&hp=&ex=1157947200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
September 10, 2006
Cheney's Power No Longer Goes Unquestioned
By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 - From those first moments five years ago when Secret Service agents burst into Vice President Dick Cheney's office on Sept. 11, lifted him off his feet and propelled him to the underground Presidential Emergency Operations Center, the man who had returned to Washington that year to remake the powers of the presidency seemed unstoppable.
Within minutes, Mr. Cheney was directing the government's response to an attack that was still under way. Within weeks, he was overseeing the surveillance program that tracked suspected terrorist communications into and out of the United States without warrants. Within months, he and his staff, guided by a loyal aide, David S. Addington, were championing the reinterpretation of the rules of war so that they could detain "enemy combatants" and interrogate them at secret detention facilities run by the C.I.A. around the world.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/nyregion/10muslims.html?ei=5094&en=ab8aedc990642d4f&hp=&ex=1157947200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
September 10, 2006
More Muslims Arrive in U.S., After 9/11 Dip
By ANDREA ELLIOTT
America's newest Muslims arrive in the afternoon crunch at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Their planes land from Dubai, Casablanca and Karachi. They stand in line, clasping documents. They emerge, sometimes hours later, steering their carts toward a flock of relatives, a stream of cabs, a new life.
This was the path for Nur Fatima, a Pakistani woman who moved to Brooklyn six months ago and promptly shed her hijab. Through the same doors walked Nora Elhainy, a Moroccan who sells electronics in Queens, and Ahmed Youssef, an Egyptian who settled in Jersey City, where he gives the call to prayer at a palatial mosque.
"I got freedom in this country," said Ms. Fatima, 25. "Freedom of everything. Freedom of thought."
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/world/africa/10darfur.html?hp&ex=1157947200&en=a0d2379e512af55a&ei=5094&partner=homepage
September 10, 2006
Darfur Trembles as Peacekeepers' Exit Looms
By LYDIA POLGREEN
TAWILA, Sudan, Sept. 8 - They call this place Rwanda.
A year ago it was a collection of straw huts, hastily thrown together in the aftermath of battle, hard by the razor-wire edge of a small African Union peacekeeper base.
Today it is a tangle of sewage-choked lanes snaking among thousands of squalid shacks, an endless sprawl that dwarfs the base at its heart. Pounding rainstorms gather fetid pools that swarm with mosquitoes and flies spreading death in their filthy wake. All but one of the aid groups working here have pulled out.
Many who live here say the camp is named for the Rwandan soldiers based here as monitors of a tattered cease-fire. But the camp's sheiks say the name has a darker meaning, one that reveals their deepest fears.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/washington/10senate.html?ei=5094&en=550e137bcbd48987&hp=&ex=1157947200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
September 10, 2006
To Hold Senate, G.O.P. Bolsters Its Most Liberal
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
WARWICK, R.I., Sept. 9 - With a barrage of television advertisements and the mobilization of its get-out-the-vote machine, the national Republican Party has lined up in Rhode Island to beat back a conservative primary challenge to the most liberal Republican in the Senate, Lincoln Chafee. The outcome on Tuesday could help determine whether Democrats have a shot at taking back the Senate.
In an extraordinary pre-emptive announcement, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has said it will concede Rhode Island to the Democrats should Stephen Laffey, the mayor of Cranston, defeat Mr. Chafee in the primary. Citing poll data, Republican leaders said they saw no way someone as conservative as Mr. Laffey could win in a state as Democratic as this; as it is, they are increasingly worried about Mr. Chafee's hopes in a general election.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/washington/10detain.html?ei=5094&en=7cd606c9fd4d23f9&hp=&ex=1157947200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
September 10, 2006
At a Secret Interrogation, Dispute Flared Over Tactics
By DAVID JOHNSTON
WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 - Abu Zubaydah, the first Osama bin Laden henchman captured by the United States after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was bloodied and feverish when a C.I.A. security team delivered him to a secret safe house in Thailand for interrogation in the early spring of 2002. Bullet fragments had ripped through his abdomen and groin during a firefight in Pakistan several days earlier when he had been captured.
The events that unfolded at the safe house over the next few weeks proved to be fateful for the Bush administration. Within days, Mr. Zubaydah was being subjected to coercive interrogation techniques - he was stripped, held in an icy room and jarred by earsplittingly loud music - the genesis of practices later adopted by some within the military, and widely used by the Central Intelligence Agency in handling prominent terrorism suspects at secret overseas prisons.
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The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/books/review/Wolfe.html?pagewanted=print
September 10, 2006
Defending the Ph.D.'s
By ALAN WOLFE
David Horowitz, once a Marxist theoretician and Black Panther enthusiast, is now a right-wing political activist whose main target is academia. Leftists dominate American university faculties, Horowitz believes, and they use tenure and control over the classroom to propagate anti- American extremism. His "Academic Bill of Rights," which states that students should be graded and professors hired without reference to their political or religious beliefs, has inspired legislation in 18 states.
Since right-wing critics like Horowitz focus so much on left-wing English departments, it is appropriate that Michael Bérubé, who teaches literature at Penn State, has become Horowitz's most engaged critic. In "What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts?" Bérubé comes off as spunky, likable and anything but a left-wing extremist - you won't find him defending the truth-telling courage of Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor who referred to 9/11 victims as "little Eichmanns" - and he convinces me that Horowitz is as unpleasant as he is ungracious. But he does not persuade me that Horowitz is wrong. I've taught in at least two universities known for their leftism, and I know full well that those who teach at them strenuously opppose hiring conservatives and treat students who venerate the military, for example, as misguided. Were Horowitz not in fact intent on replacing left-wing thought police with their right-wing equivalent, I would applaud his efforts.
Left-wing domination of academia is so obvious a fact that Bérubé never
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Forwarded from Ron Mills
http://www.RonMills.us
Discover the Secret Right-Wing Network Behind ABC's 9/11 Deception
Less than 72 hours before ABC's "The Path to 9/11" is scheduled to air, the "The Path to 9/11" is "a dramatization, not a documentary." The filmdeceptively invents scenes to depict former President Bill Clinton'shandling of the Al Qaeda threat.
Now, ABC claims to be is editing those false sequences to satisfy critics sothe show can go on -- even if it still remains a gross distortion ofhistory. And as it does so, ABC advances the illusion that the deceptivenature of "The Path to 9/11" is an honest mistake committed by a hardworking but admittedly fumbling team of well-intentioned Hollywood professionals who wanted nothing less than to entertain America. But this is another Big Lie.
In fact, "The Path to 9/11" is produced and promoted by a well-honedpropaganda operation consisting of a network of little-known right-wingersworking from within Hollywood to counter its supposedly liberal bias. Thisis the network within the ABC network.
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