News for March 6, 2006

Some Highlights:
Iraq Weapons come from Iran
Did Billy register as "Agent of a Foreign Principal."
Leaking Sources, Reporters Could Be Prosecuted
How liberal are Dem candidates-to-be?
Rumsfeld Pays Surprise Visit as Wounded Troops Hit the Slopes
“Top” movies not in mainstream
Iraq's Anbar province shows signs of calm
Transcripts show media bias
Harvard Students Rip Down Controversial Pro-life Posters
Clinton gave Chinese Long Beach Port Deal
Popular Mechanics!! Kills media myths on Katrina

Intel Wars: Will Senators Have to Take Polygraph Tests?
By Jim Kouri
The United States government and its intelligence community are adopting a series of initiatives to discourage government employees from leaking classified information to journalists, The Washington Post reported in its Sunday edition.
The efforts include several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws, the Post said.
During the Bush Administration, a nexus of politicians, government workers and members of the news media have worked overtime in leaking classified information. From the secret terrorist prisons to the National Security Agency's super-secret surveillance program, intelligence officials and the Bush Administration have had to watch their counterterrorism efforts neutralized for political reasons.
Special agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation recently interviewed dozens of employees at the CIA, the NSA and other intelligence agencies as part of an intense and wide-reaching investigation. Many employees who possess security clearances at the CIA, FBI, the Justice Department and other agencies received letters from the Justice Department forbidding them from discussing even unclassified intelligence programs.
But people such as former deputy-undersecretary of Defense Jed Babbin don't think the Justice Department investigators and prosecutors have the guts to indict a U.S. senator. Babbin said it would cause a battle royal on the Hill, if not a constitutional crisis.
He did say however, that any senator or congressional staffer that holds a security clearance can be asked at any time to take a polygraph. The individual can of course refuse to take the test, but failure to do so is reason to remove that person's security clearance. Babbin further said that Senators Rockefeller, Durbin, and Wyden, and some on their staffs will soon be requested to take polygraphs.
But it's not only the Bush Administration that is frustrated with all the leaks and news stories. Recently Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-CA) said straight out that the New York Times, which ran a front page story on the top secret NSA spy program, should be prosecuted for their actions.
Some news stories have pointed fingers at Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), co-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, as a possible leaker. Others cited sources that pointed to senate staffers. Still others believe that liberal politicians in both parties are secretly leaking information to the news media for political reasons.
The debate over how much classified information the White House should share with lawmakers flared up when Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) defended himself against charges he leaked sensitive information.
Durbin actually took to the Senate floor to deny accusations that he disclosed classified information on Iraq after CIA Director George Tenet briefed the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2003, which led many observers to say, "He doth protest too much."

EXCLUSIVE: Iraq Weapons -- Made in Iran?
By BRIAN ROSS, RICHARD ESPOSITO and JILL RACKMILL
March 6, 2006 — - U.S. military and intelligence officials tell ABC News that they have caught shipments of deadly new bombs at the Iran-Iraq border.
They are a very nasty piece of business, capable of penetrating U.S. troops' strongest armor.
What the United States says links them to Iran are tell-tale manufacturing signatures -- certain types of machine-shop welds and material indicating they are built by the same bomb factory.
"The signature is the same because they are exactly the same in production," says explosives expert Kevin Barry. "So it's the same make and model."
"I think the evidence is strong that the Iranian government is making these IEDs, and the Iranian government is sending them across the border and they are killing U.S. troops once they get there," says Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief and an ABC News consultant. "I think it's very hard to escape the conclusion that, in all probability, the Iranian government is knowingly killing U.S. troops."
U.S. intelligence officials say Iran is using the bombs as a way to drive up U.S. casualties in Iraq but without provoking a direct confrontation.
John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Februrary 2, saying, "Tehran's intention to inflict pain on the United States and Iraq has been constrained by its caution to avoid giving Washington an excuse to attack it."

Oscar Party Gift Bags Include Kid's Book Satirizing Hollywood (The Joke's on Streisand!)
PR Web, via Yahoo ^ 3/6/06
Many of Hollywood's brightest stars received an unexpected surprise in their Oscar party gift bags last night -- an advance copy of a children’s book that parodies celebrity activists.
Bestselling author Katharine DeBrecht's new book “Help! Mom! Hollywood's in My Hamper” (Kids Ahead; hardcover; ISBN 0976726912) hits stores nationwide on Tuesday, but scores of Academy Award honorees past and present were given a sneak peek at the sure-to-be-controversial book on Sunday.
The illustrated book features satirical look-a-likes resembling outspoken celebrities including Barbra Streisand, Sean Penn, Madonna, Britney Spears, Ben Affleck, and Tom Cruise. It tells the story of Janie and Sam, two girls who were happy just being kids until Hollywood stars pop out of their hamper to tell them how to behave and to sell them expensive trinkets.

DUBAI DUETS
The American Spectator ^ 3/6/06 Washington Prowler
Late Friday, Department of Justice lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel were attempting to determine if former President Bill Clinton had registered as an "Agent of a Foreign Principal."
Federal statute requires that anyone -- even a former President -- doing political or public affairs work on behalf of a foreign country, agency or official must register with the Department, and essentially update his status every six months. It was not clear the Clinton had done so.
If his status is less clear, here is what we do know: If Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton did not know about her husband's standing with the United Arab Emirates and with Dubai World Ports, members of her Senate staff most assuredly did.
"There were enough people in the Clintons' orbit who were potentially going to be part of the deal," says an employee of a firm that does work for both Clintons. "We were pursuing work on the ports deal, and we cleared our participation with Clinton's office. We didn't want there to be a conflict."
In fact, at least two senior outside advisers to Senator Clinton were attempting to get business out of the Port Deal, and President Clinton was the go-between. Associates with the Glover Park Group, which houses just about the entire shadow staff for Hillary's run-up to a Democratic presidential bid, were attempting to get a slice of the DPW deal before the deal was made public about three weeks ago. According to current and former President Clinton staff, Hillary Clinton's Senate office was aware that Glover Park was in the running to do work on the DPW deal.
"She was also very much aware of President Clinton's financial arrangements with the UAE," says a former Bill Clinton staffer. "We're talking about more than a million dollars, some of paid out soon out after they left the White House. That income helped the Clintons buy the properties that allow them to live both in New York and Washington, D.C.. This was not an insignificant financial arrangement."
What is not clear is whether or not the junior Senator from New York was aware that Clinton was acting as an agent of a foreign principal, which Clinton clearly was. According to sources with knowledge of the deal, President Clinton was advising members of the DPW buyout team in the UAE, London and Washington before the deal hit the headlines. He encouraged them to hire a number of people working in consulting firms based in Washington with whom he had both personal and financial ties: The Cohen Group, the Albright Group, and the Glover Park Group. Other sources claim that longtime Clinton confidante and golf partner Vernon Jordan's name was also suggested as potential helpful fixer in the capital.

White House Trains Efforts on Media Leaks
Sources, Reporters Could Be Prosecuted
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
` The Bush administration, seeking to limit leaks of classified information, has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government sources. The efforts include several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws.
In recent weeks, dozens of employees at the CIA, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies have been interviewed by agents from the FBI's Washington field office, who are investigating possible leaks that led to reports about secret CIA prisons and the NSA's warrantless domestic surveillance program, according to law enforcement and intelligence officials familiar with the two cases.
Numerous employees at the CIA, FBI, Justice Department and other agencies also have received letters from Justice prohibiting them from discussing even unclassified issues related to the NSA program, according to sources familiar with the notices. Some GOP lawmakers are also considering whether to approve tougher penalties for leaking.
In a little-noticed case in California, FBI agents from Los Angeles have already contacted reporters at the Sacramento Bee about stories published in July that were based on sealed court documents related to a terrorism case in Lodi, according to the newspaper.
Some media watchers, lawyers and editors say that, taken together, the incidents represent perhaps the most extensive and overt campaign against leaks in a generation, and that they have worsened the already-tense relationship between mainstream news organizations and the White House.
"There's a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding information, and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public's business risk being branded traitors," said New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, in a statement responding to questions from The Washington Post. "I don't know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it sounds like the administration is declaring war at home on the values it professes to be promoting abroad."
President Bush has called the NSA leak "a shameful act" that was "helping the enemy," and said in December that he was hopeful the Justice Department would conduct a full investigation into the disclosure.
"We need to protect the right to free speech and the First Amendment, and the president is doing that," said White House spokesman Trent Duffy. "But, at the same time, we do need to protect classified information which helps fight the war on terror."
Disclosing classified information without authorization has long been against the law, yet such leaks are one of the realities of life in Washington -- accounting for much of the back-channel conversation that goes on daily among journalists, policy intellectuals, and current and former government officials.
Presidents have also long complained about leaks: Richard Nixon's infamous "plumbers" were originally set up to plug them, and he tried, but failed, to prevent publication of a classified history of the Vietnam War called the Pentagon Papers. Ronald Reagan exclaimed at one point that he was "up to my keister" in leaks.
Bush administration officials -- who complain that reports about detainee abuse, clandestine surveillance and other topics have endangered the nation during a time of war -- have arguably taken a more aggressive approach than other recent administrations, including a clear willingness to take on journalists more directly if necessary.
"Almost every administration has kind of come in saying they want an open administration, and then getting bad press and fuming about leaks," said David Greenberg, a Rutgers University journalism professor and author of "Nixon's Shadow." "But it's a pretty fair statement to say you haven't seen this kind of crackdown on leaks since the Nixon administration."
But David B. Rivkin Jr., a partner at Baker & Hostetler in Washington and a senior lawyer in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, said the leaking is "out of control," especially given the unique threat posed by terrorist groups.
"We're at the end of this paradigm where we had this sort of gentlemen's agreement where you had leaks and journalists were allowed to protect the leakers," Rivkin said. "Everyone is playing Russian roulette now."
At Langley, the CIA's security office has been conducting numerous interviews and polygraph examinations of employees in an effort to discover whether any of them have had unauthorized contact with journalists. CIA Director Porter J. Goss has spoken about the issue at an "all hands" meeting of employees, and sent a recent cable to the field aimed at discouraging media contacts and reminding employees of the penalties for disclosing classified information, according to intelligence sources and people in touch with agency officials.
"It is my aim, and it is my hope, that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information," Goss told a Senate committee.
The Justice Department also argued in a court filing last month that reporters can be prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act for receiving and publishing classified information. The brief was filed in support of a case against two pro-Israeli lobbyists, who are the first nongovernment officials to be prosecuted for receiving and distributing classified information.
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said last month that he is considering legislation that would criminalize the leaking of a wider range of classified information than what is now covered by law. The measure would be similar to earlier legislation that was vetoed by President Bill Clinton in 2000 and opposed by then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft in 2002.
But the vice chairman of the same committee, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), complained in a letter to the national intelligence director last month that "damaging revelations of intelligence sources and methods are generated primarily by Executive Branch officials pushing a particular policy, and not by the rank-and-file employees of the intelligence agencies."
As evidence, Rockefeller points to the case of Valerie Plame, a CIA officer whose identity was leaked to the media. A grand jury investigation by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald resulted last year in the jailing of Judith Miller, then a reporter at the New York Times, for refusing to testify, and in criminal charges against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who resigned as Vice President Cheney's chief of staff. In court papers, Libby has said that his "superiors" authorized him to disclose a classified government report.
The New York Times, which first disclosed the NSA program in December, and The Post, which reported on secret CIA prisons in November, said investigators have not contacted reporters or editors about those articles.
Leonard Downie Jr., executive editor of The Post, said there has long been a "natural and healthy tension between government and the media" on national security issues, but that he is "concerned" about comments by Goss and others that appear to reflect a more aggressive stance by the government. Downie noted that The Post had at times honored government requests not to report particularly sensitive information, such as the location of CIA prisons in Eastern Europe.
"We do not want to inadvertently threaten human life or legitimately harm national security in our reporting," he said. "But it's important . . . in our constitutional system that these final decisions be made by newspaper editors and not the government."
In Sacramento, the Bee newspaper reported last month that FBI agents had contacted two of its reporters and, along with a federal prosecutor, had "questioned" a third reporter about articles last July detailing the contents of sealed court documents about five terrorism suspects. A Bee article on the contacts did not address whether the reporters supplied the agents with any information or whether they were subject to subpoenas.
Executive Editor Rick Rodriguez said last week he could not comment based on the advice of newspaper attorneys. Representatives of the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, which is conducting the inquiry, also declined to comment.
CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise Dyck declined to discuss details of the leak investigations there but said they were being conducted independently of the White House and were not aimed at pressuring journalists.

“In the United States there is no phenomenon more threatening to popular government than the unwillingness of newspapers to give the facts to their readers.” —Nelson Antrim Crawford

AP usage of 'breach' was wrong
Arizona Star
Tucson, Arizona Published: 03.04.2006
WASHINGTON — An Associated Press story Thursday on this page incorrectly reported that federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees in New Orleans, citing confidential video footage of an Aug. 28 briefing among U.S. officials.
The story should have made clear that Bush was warned about floodwaters overrunning the levees, rather than the levees breaching.
The Army Corps of Engineers considers a breach a hole developing in a levee rather than an overrun.
The day before the storm hit, Bush was told there were grave concerns that the levees could be overrun. It wasn't until the next morning, as the storm was hitting, that Michael Brown, then head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Bush had inquired about reports of breaches.

Wash times
'Heroes' of Senate liberalism
TODAY'S EDITORIAL
With a dozen or so U.S. senators giving serious consideration to running for their party's 2008 presidential nomination, voters will want to know how the political ideologies of these potential candidates rank among their colleagues. Arguably, voters can best discern the relative ideologies by comparing the votes they cast on identical issues.
Both the nonpartisan National Journal and the liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) have recently released their 2005 voting guides, ranking the ideological purity of members of Congress. Herewith is a review of those rankings among the five Democratic senators -- Evan Bayh of Indiana, Joe Biden of Delaware, Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Russell Feingold of Wisconsin and John Kerry of Massachusetts -- who are likely to seek the Democratic presidential nomination.
ADA followed its customary practice of selecting what it considers to be the 20 most important votes of the year and awarding a senator five points for each vote in support of ADA's position. Senators voting ADA's way all the time receive a "liberal quotient" of 100 percent and are officially designated a "Hero."
After registering four consecutive scores of 95 percent (2001-04), Mrs. Clinton finally achieved the status of ADA "Hero" last year. Other "Heroes" included Messrs. Biden, Kerry and Feingold. Mr. Bayh, who scored 95 percent, was one of three Democrats to join a virtually unanimous Republican front to defeat an amendment that would have prohibited the funding of the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, or "bunker buster" weapon.
The National Journal's rating system is more complex. It ranks the 100 senators on liberal and conservative continuums. In addition to providing sub-rankings according to senators' positions on economic issues (41 votes in 2005), social concerns (16 votes) and foreign-policy matters (13 votes), the National Journal provides composite liberal and conservative scores. In early 2004, it may be recalled, the National Journal's rating system identified Mr. Kerry as the most liberal senator in 2003, a distinction that the Bush White House emphasized throughout the campaign.
Although Mr. Kerry remains the only senator to be identified as the Senate's most liberal member in four different years since National Journal initiated its rating system 25 years ago, Sen. Ted Kennedy captured that position in 2005. Still, Mr. Kerry was ranked the most liberal senator among the five likely to seek the Democratic nomination in 2008. On a continuum from 0 to 100, Mr. Kerry received a composite liberal score of 86.7 in 2005, making him the eighth most liberal senator last year. Trailing him in 2005 were Mr. Feingold (85.2, 14th); Mr. Biden (80.2, 19th); Mrs. Clinton (79.8, 20th); and Mr. Bayh (70.7, 34th).
The National Journal also helpfully supplied lifetime average composite liberal scores. Among the five likely presidential candidates in 2008, Mr. Kerry's was the highest: 85.7 since 1985. The others' average lifetime liberal composite scores are: Mr. Feingold (80.6 since 1993); Mrs. Clinton (80.5 since 2001); Mr. Biden (76.8 since 1981, although he was first elected in 1972); and Mr. Bayh (63.2 since 1999).
Recall that these "composite" figures represent an aggregate liberal score based upon 70 roll-call votes classified as either economic, social or foreign-policy issues. For each of the three categories, the National Journal's system enables it to declare that a member is more liberal than a specific percent of the Senate. For example, Mr. Kerry's 86.7 liberal composite score in 2005 results from his voting record being more liberal than 91 percent of the Senate on economic issues, more liberal than 90 percent of the Senate on social issues and more liberal than 72 percent of the Senate on foreign-policy issues. Similar conclusions were drawn for the others.
Last year, Mrs. Clinton was determined to be more liberal than 84 percent of the Senate (economic issues); 83 percent (social); and 66 percent (foreign policy). The percentages for the others are: Mr. Biden (73, 83, 76); Mr. Feingold (76, 83, 90); and Mr. Bayh (66, 83, 58).

Rumsfeld Pays Surprise Visit as Wounded Troops Hit the Slopes
By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, March 5, 2006 – Wounded troops participating in the third annual Vail Veterans Program here got a surprise visit on the ski slopes today when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld arrived to cheer them on and congratulate them for their accomplishments.
Rumsfeld and his wife Joyce appeared unannounced last night, joining 24 servicemembers who lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan at the top of Vail Mountain for dinner at the Eagle's Nest Restaurant.
The secretary spent the evening circulating among the program participants, all patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and their spouses and guests. He also attended a dinner hosted by the Vail Fire Department for the program participants.
He chatted one-on-one with the troops, posed for photos around the room and offered up encouragement and thanks to all, including the Vail Veterans Program organizers and volunteers.
Today, Rumsfeld took to the ski slopes to see firsthand how the veterans were applying the skills they are learning this week.
The program, hosted by Vail Mountain and the Vail community, gives wounded war veterans an all-expenses-paid opportunity to learn how to ski and snowboard. It kicked off March 1 and wraps up tomorrow.
Rumsfeld said he was delighted to see the veterans' progress. "Being outside in fresh air and having a chance to physically do something like this, I think it gives them a sense of freedom they wouldn't otherwise get," he said.

Katie Couric Miffed Over Traditional Values Town
NewsMax ^ 3/5/06 NewsMax
NBC "Today Show" hostess Katie Couric didn't sound too pleased Friday morning with plans to develop a community that openly espouses traditional values, let alone the fact that it will have a Catholic University at its center.
Plans for Ave Maria, Florida have already drawn praise from Gov. Jeb Bush, who told NBC: "I think it'll be a model for sustainable living not just for Florida, but for the country."
But plaudits from the Florida Republican, who NBC pointedly reminded, is Catholic himself, didn't impress the folks at "Today."
Introducing the segment, reporter Michelle Kosinski lamented that Ave Maria would be a town "without condoms or birth control pills, no porn shops or strip joints, or premarital sex."
But it was Couric herself who seemed most offended, chastising her guests, Domino's Pizza mogul Thomas Monaghan and developer Paul Marinelli, for building a community that "people will see . . . as eschewing diversity and promoting intolerance."
"Does [Ave Maria] follow the tenets pretty much, Mr. Marinelli, of the Catholic church?" Couric worried. "In other words, pharmacies in this community can't sell contraception, correct?"
Not true, the developer responded - explaining that the sale contraceptive materials will be discouraged but not banned.
"You would welcome Jewish residents?" Couric queried, sounding like she expected to get a no for an answer.
"Definitely," Marinelli explained. "We anticipate that there would be synagogues as well as [a] Baptist church."
"What about gay couples?" Couric pressed, appearing confident she'd finally ferreted out the bigoted streak in the traditional values town.
Foiled again.
"We will not discriminate against anyone," Marinelli explained. "You know, we respect the Constitution, we're not going to violate the US Constitution or the Florida Constitution."

Breakouts - Which Movies Are Really in the Mainstream?
Breakpoint.org ^ March 3, 2006 Chuck Colson
If all goes as expected at this Sunday’s Academy Awards, Brokeback Mountain will win in the “Best Picture,” “Best Director,” and perhaps even “Best Actor” categories. Even if it doesn’t do as well as expected, the film is already being hailed as a “breakout” event, a kind of cultural watershed of sorts—which it almost certainly is not.
By “breakout,” I mean the idea, most famously advanced by New York Times columnist Frank Rich, that the movie would do well in the “heartland,” and that this, in turn, would signal an increased acceptance of same-sex relationships.
As USA Today summarized it, the film would change “how Hollywood portrays gay characters [and] also how gay men and lesbians are accepted by mainstream America.”
Well, it turns out that the reports of a breakout were greatly exaggerated. While admittedly, Brokeback did well at the box office, its audience was exactly whom you would have predicted all along: people in the Northeast and on the West Coast. The film made far more money in Canada than in the Great Plains or the Rocky Mountain states.
There’s nothing new in this pattern. As Mickey Kaus of Slate pointed out, it’s the same pattern we saw with Fahrenheit 9/11, the anti-Bush documentary. Then, as now, reports about the film’s alleged popularity in middle-America were treated as harbingers of a cultural shift. Then, as now, these reports were shown to be equal parts wishful thinking, spin, and propaganda.
But even if we concede that Brokeback’s $70 million-plus at the box office “is a sign of American mainstream status,” we are still left with another question. “What is $288 million or even . . . $370 million” a sign of?
This question was posed by columnist Terry Mattingly. The numbers he’s citing are the comparable box-office takes for The Chronicles of Narnia and The Passion of the Christ, respectively. These films not only made many times what Brokeback did, they did well in every part of the country. By Rich and company’s logic, this would place them and their Christian messages squarely in the “mainstream.” But don’t hold your breath waiting for such an acknowledgment.
The truth is that, as Mattingly writes, “Brokeback Mountain is a solid, artistic niche movie for the hard left in American life.” This group is “dominated by Oscar voters and Hollywood’s most loyal supporters in blue zip codes.”
The insular worldview of this group is why the “Best Picture” nominees are, as the Los Angeles Times put it, “five movies most people haven’t seen.” This year’s Oscars are a celebration of one particular group’s ideals and tell us little about what constitutes mainstream American attitudes.

Iraq's Anbar province shows signs of calm
AP ^ March 5 2006 JIM KRANE
Iraq's western Anbar province, the crucible of the Sunni Muslim insurgency since shortly after the U.S.-led invasion nearly three years ago, is showing signs of calm in recent weeks, and U.S. leaders say cooperation is emerging among once bitter enemies.
Insurgent attacks last week in the province dropped by more than a quarter, U.S. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said in a briefing here this week. At the same time, U.S. military and civilian leaders have softened their rhetoric against the largely Sunni insurgents. Rebels once denigrated as "Baathist thugs and killers" are now often described as nationalists.
U.S. Central Command chief Gen. John Abizaid said last week's bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine - and the reprisal attacks on Sunni Arabs - created a stronger impetus for Sunni-American cooperation.
"There is an improvement in Anbar," Abizaid told The Associated Press on Saturday. "A lot of people in the Sunni community are talking to us, lessening the cycle of violence. Many Sunni leaders are moving forward to take part in the political process."
U.S. military leaders have attributed improving relations in the province to several factors, including a confluence of interests. Americans frequently say Sunni participation in government is key to preventing an Iraqi civil war and the country's breakup. And Sunnis have leaned on Americans to gain leverage in Iraq's feuding political system and protection from Shiite militias.
The conservative province was one of Saddam Hussein's strongholds that violently turned on American troops after what many considered a pivotal event: Soldiers in the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne fired on demonstrators in Fallujah in April 2003, killing 16 and wounding 65.

Moussaoui fights for his life
By Stewart Powell
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE , ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
The sentencing trial that opens tomorrow for confessed Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui is expected to spotlight federal authorities' missed opportunities to disrupt the unfolding plot during the 26 days between the student pilot's arrest and the devastating attacks.
Prosecutors seeking the death penalty are preparing to tell the sentencing jury that Moussaoui bears direct responsibility for the attacks and deserves execution because he "lied to federal agents to allow his al-Qaeda `brothers' to go forward with the operation" after his arrest on Aug. 16, 2001.
But Moussaoui's court-appointed defense team is ready to urge the jury that the 37-year-old Moroccan-born French citizen should be spared execution because he knew far less about the plot than top officials in the Bush administration, including then-CIA Director George Tenet.
More than 80 prospective jurors are scheduled to report to US District Court here in suburban Washington, DC, tomorrow morning for the final phase of jury selection. The pool of candidates will be whittled down to 18 jurors and alternates, who will decide whether Moussaoui faces execution or life imprisonment without release.
Lawyers' opening arguments begin tomorrow afternoon in proceedings that stem from Moussaoui's surprise guilty plea last April 22 to six charges arising from the Sept. 11 plot, including three carrying the death penalty.
Moussaoui, the only person to face criminal charges in US courts in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, claims he had nothing to do with the plot and was sent to the US for a second-wave of suicide attacks that never occurred.
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said defense lawyers will try to shift jurors' attention away from Moussaoui "and onto government officials' failure to stop the attacks" in hopes of staving off the death penalty.
"By the time jurors face a decision on punish-ment, the government may look a lot less competent about what it did to stop the attacks," Tobias said.
Moussaoui's defense team underscored its plans to focus attention on the federal government's pre-attack actions by subpoenaing testimony from US Representative Curt Weldon (Republican, Pennsylvania). The 10-term lawmaker investigated a super-secret Pentagon intelligence operation known as "Able Danger" that raised the possibility that US officials knew about the Sept. 11 plot before it was carried out.
US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema last Thursday rejected defense lawyers' subpoena for Weldon, but granted defense lawyers' request for testimony by three specialists involved with the "Able Danger" program.
"What knowledge the government possessed before Sept. 11 regarding members of al-Qaeda, and specifically links between al-Qaeda and the eventual hijackers, is a key issue in dispute in this death penalty trial," Brinkema said in her written order.
It is unknown if Moussaoui's lawyers also subpoenaed high-ranking officials, such as Tenet or US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, because the court has sealed the list of witnesses.
But Moussaoui's defense lawyers can draw upon evidence of government missteps from the exhaustive findings of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the US.

Court Upholds Campus Military Recruiting
By GINA HOLLAND
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that colleges that accept federal money must allow military recruiters on campus, despite university objections to the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays.
Justices rejected a free-speech challenge from law schools and their professors who claimed they should not be forced to associate with military recruiters or promote their campus appearances.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, said that the campus visits are an effective military recruiting tool.
"A military recruiter's mere presence on campus does not violate a law school's right to associate, regardless of how repugnant the law school considers the recruiter's message," he wrote.
The ruling upheld a law that requires colleges that take federal money to accommodate recruiters. In addition, justices said that Congress could directly demand military access on campus, even without the threat of losing federal money.
College leaders have said they could not afford to lose federal help, some $35 billion a year.
Roberts filed the only opinion, which was joined by every justice but Samuel Alito. Alito did not participate because he was not on the bench when the case was argued.

Oscar ratings down according to early figures
Mon Mar 6, 2006pm ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Oscar organizers' fears of weak television ratings for an Academy Awards lacking in star power and box-office hits may about to be confirmed.
Preliminary figures released by Nielsen Media Research on Monday for ABC's 3 1/2-hour Oscar telecast capped by the surprise Oscar triumph of racial drama "Crash" indicate a ratings drop of about 10 percent from last year's ceremony.
Sunday night's broadcast, hosted for the first time by comedian Jon Stewart, drew an average household rating of 27.1 percent, which would be the lowest percentage of homes that has tuned into the Academy Awards since 2003, according to data Nielsen collected in the 55 largest U.S. TV markets.
By comparison, last year's Oscars ceremony, which crowned boxing film "Million Dollar Baby" as 2004's best picture, garnered an average household rating of 30.1.


“Congress is hardly a weak institution. It is composed of the only legitimate federal lawmakers in our system of government, 535 accomplished men and women who also happen to be the most skilled camera-hogging gasbags this side of professional wrestling.” —Mac Johnson

You Don't Say?
Greyhawk
In a recent press briefing General George Casey (the commander of Multinational Forces in Iraq) countered virtually every inflated claim made by the media regarding Iraq's recent "civil war" in the wake of the Shrine bombing in Samarra. But there are significant disconnects between what Gen Casey said and how his words are reported.

From the transcript:
Q General Casey, David Cloud with the New York Times. You mentioned, I think, a few minutes ago that there were reports of ISF assisting the militias. Can you expand on that a little bit, and how widespread was it? I think you mentioned east Baghdad . Can you just give us a sense of how widespread the problem of sectarian violence within the ISF has been over the last few days?
GEN. CASEY: The reports that we have is that they were allowing the Mahdi militia to pass through their checkpoints. And, obviously, this is not something that we are going to condone, nor will the Iraqi security force leadership condone.
But as I said, this is different than August '04 and April '04. The militias didn't take over anything, or if they did, it was quite fleeting. And when the Iraqi security forces showed up, they, by and large, yielded control.
We have a story of a Mahdi militia that went into a Sunni mosque in Baghdad and intended to remain there overnight. And a brigadier general from -- a brigade commander from the Iraqi army went in and talked them out and let them go on their way. Now, that's an Iraqi solution to an Iraqi problem, but it's Iraqi security forces dealing with the challenges that they're faced with.

The report on those comments that appeared in the New York Times:
Casey said that in some instances, the mostly Shiite security forces gave armed Shiites free rein in Baghdad and Basra, where reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques and clerics took days to contain.
And the Washington Post
Moreover, in Baghdad, Iraqi security forces in several instances aided the militias' movements, allowing them to pass unhindered through checkpoints, according to military reports cited by Casey. He said the militias were primarily responsible for attacks on mosques in Baghdad, where militias in neighborhoods such as the predominantly Shiite Sadr City had taken to the streets immediately after the Samarra bombing.

Immediately following the attack on the Shrine, the Washington Post reported that 120 Sunni mosques had been attacked in retaliation, other media reports claimed as many as 184. In his press conference, General Casey explained that "it took us a few days to sort our way through what we considered in a lot of cases to be exaggerated reports" and provided updated totals:
We can confirm about 30 attacks on mosques around the country, with less than 10 of those mosques moderately damaged and only two or three of those mosques severely damaged.
There are other reports -- we have sent forces out to check them -- in one instance in Baghdad , we checked eight reports -- visited eight mosques that were reportedly damaged. We found one broken window in those eight mosques.

Here's how the Washington Post reported those comments:
He said 350 Iraqi civilians had died in a surge of sectarian killings, militia violence and revenge attacks on about 30 mosques around the country after the bombing. "This, obviously, is unacceptable," he said.

The media is free to dispute the General's claims - that's expected of them. But in this case they aren't, they are simply using his words selectively in a manner that supports their own previously published fictions. There's no law that says U.S. media outlets are required to report accurately or completely on comments made by military or government officials.
Likewise there are no requirements for media outlets to acknowledge that they are printing unverified claims made by "other parties" in the war as confirmed "news" - as was the case in the aftermath of the Shrine bombing (See here and here).
But consumers of those reports should be aware of their flaws. Citing sources or linking to full texts are not difficult tasks, and certainly serve to keep people well informed. After all, a well-informed public is the motivation for all good journalism, right?

Top Democrats Question Dean's DNC Spending
NewsMax
Democratic congressional leaders reportedly gave an earful to Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean in a private meeting last month. Their problem: Dean’s free-spending ways.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., complained to the 2004 presidential candidate that his spending priorities at the DNC were misplaced.
Dean has been spending large amounts on organizing state parties in strong Republican states like Mississippi rather than targeting states with close congressional races in the mid-term elections.
Several anonymous sources told the Washington Post that neither side gave in. Dean claimed his strategy was necessary for the long-term health of the party. It is the same argument he made when running for the DNC chairmanship.

Sunnis Now Want U.S. Troops to Remain in Iraq
The Seattle Times
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Two years ago, Riyadh al Adhadh cursed the U.S. soldiers who had overrun his homeland, toppled his Sunni sect from power and tormented prisoners at Abu Ghraib. A member of the City Council, he loudly demanded an American withdrawal.
Last week, his neighborhood under attack by Shiite militiamen, Adhadh found himself huddled over the telephone in panic, begging the U.S. embassy to send American soldiers.
The moment of bitter irony for the father of six captured a sharp shift in Iraqi opinion. Three years after the March 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, as the threat of civil war looms, leaders of a nervous Sunni minority have started to drop demands for an immediate U.S. withdrawal.
"We've changed our ideas," said Adhadh, 52.

Angry with union fees, state workers ponder suit
Puget Sound Business Journal ^
State employees unhappy with a requirement to pay union fees are rebelling in different ways, with some planning to file a class-action lawsuit.
Other employees who object to the mandate have different plans. About a half-dozen have been fired for refusing to pay fees in lieu of union dues. Other workers have paid and kept their jobs, but joined a nonprofit called Free Conscience that wants to end the fee through litigation or lobbying. Others who object to the mandate are working on a petition-on-wheels, a car signed by angry employees who gather in the parking lot to vent their frustration.
The mandate stems from a 2002 law that allowed the first collective bargaining for wages and benefits. An agreement between the state and the Washington Federation of State Employees, which represents about 38,000 workers, contained a union security clause requiring employees to either join the union and pay dues or pay the union a fee for its bargaining services.

Pro-Life Posters Spark Debate: Students Rip Down Controversial Pro-life Posters (Harvard)
Harvard Crimson ^ 3/6/2006 Joyce Y. Zhang
Posters depicting in utero fetuses raised eyebrows and a small uproar last week. One of the posters, the second in a series created by Harvard Right to Life (HRL), featured the picture of a fetus named Elena with the words, “I’m 25 days old...and my heart already BEATS!!”
“The posters from this semester are getting torn down left and right,” said HRL President Meghan E. Grizzle ’07. “Apparently people find the picture of a fetus gruesome and I don’t understand why, because we’re not showing pictures of an aborted fetus or a dead baby,” Grizzle said. She added that HRL had to constantly replace the posters that were removed from displays across campus.
A debate concerning the abortion posters raged over the Cabot-open e-mail list after Ndidi N. Menkiti ’06 requested in an e-mail that people stop defacing the posters.
“I had seen some posters ripped up and thrown on the ground on the first floor of Cabot,” said Menkiti. “I felt it was an immature way to react when you disagree with someone.”

Iraq's New Parliament to Convene Sunday
AP via Yahoo! ^
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's president said Monday he would convene the new parliament for the first time on March 12, beginning a 60-day countdown during which lawmakers must elect a new head of state and sign off on a prime minister and Cabinet.
The constitution requires parliament to meet no later than four weeks after the vote was certified, which occurred Feb. 12, nearly two months after the election.
"We will call today for holding the meeting on the 12th of this month because it is the last day that the constitution allows us to hold the meeting of the new parliament," President Jalal Talabani told reporters.

"The Ballad of the Green Berets"-Mumber One 40 Years Ago This Month
"Fighting soldiers from the sky...Fearless men who jump and die...Men who mean just what they say...The brave men of the Green Berets..."
The first verse of the most popular song in America during March 1966. "The Ballad of the Green Berets" was number one on the Billboard charts for three weeks and the Cashbox chart for four weeks. "Ballad of the Green Berets" tied for number one song of 1966 with "Monday,Monday" by The Mamas and Papas on the Cashbox chart.
Something good to remember here in March 2006, 40 years later.

Chinese Got Long Beach Deal (1997 - Clinton Deal)
The Daily Republican ^ March 7, 1997 Staff Investigative Journalists
LONG BEACH DESK - The Long Beach Naval Station was tentatively placed on the Military Base Closure-List by president George Bush in 1991. President Bill Clinton, closed the naval base last in 1993. That resulted in the loss to Long Beach, California of 17,500 military and civilian jobs. The economic impact of the of loss was $52.5 million and drove the California economy into the tank. It has never recovered.
Between 1995-1996, during the heat of the Clinton-Gore Campaign fund raising activity, the Clinton administration actively intervened to make sure a Communist Chinese cargo container shipping interest got a too-good deal on a Long Beach, California, shipping terminal.
The Secretary of the Navy has formally turned the base over to the City of Long Beach. But, the Port of Long Beach has signed a letter of intent to lease the property to the China Ocean Shipping Co., a steamship line run by the Communist Chinese government.
The Navy base property is about to be leased to a Communist China-owned shipping company under an agreement that was only made possible by the intervention of the White House.
After a hearing before the court, a judge ruled last week that the deal had been rushed and proper procedures had not been in place.
Clinton was so eager to push the deal through that he met twice with Long Beach officials and once at a White House meeting in 1995 that included his then-chief of staff and the Pentagon's No. 2 official and others.
The deal finally approved by the Secretary of the Navy turns over control of the Long Beach Naval Station, with a value of at least $65 million, free of charge to the City of Long Beach. The city has agreed to lease it to the China Ocean Shipping Co. of the People's Republic of China.
The Chinese deal apparently went forward without a national security review by either the CIA or National Security Council. The White House apparently avoided normal and routine government channels in pushing the deal through in 1995. '... there seemed to be no reason to check with the National Security Council on the decision ...' White House spokesman Lanny Davis said.

Popular Mechanics Takes on Katrina Myths (good read!)
The American Thinker ^ 3/6/2006 Noel Sheppard
In its March issue, Popular Mechanics took on virtually all of the media myths and misnomers that were so drilled into the citizenry by press representatives that many have become part of the public psyche. Thankfully, its authors made it clear right in the first paragraph that they planned on pulling no punches:
“In the months since the storm, many of the first impressions conveyed by the media have turned out to be mistaken.”
Myth #1: “’The aftermath of Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history.’—Aaron Broussard, president, Jefferson Parish, La., Meet the Press, NBC, Sept. 4, 2005”
“Bumbling by top disaster-management officials fueled a perception of general inaction, one that was compounded by impassioned news anchors. In fact, the response to Hurricane Katrina was by far the largest—and fastest-rescue effort in U.S. history, with nearly 100,000 emergency personnel arriving on the scene within three days of the storm’s landfall.”
Certainly, it seems hard to categorize 100,000 workers as an abandonment. Unlike many in the media that make such bold statements without verification, PM backed up its position with actual facts
Myth #2: “’This is a once-in-a-lifetime event.’—New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, press conference, Aug. 28, 2005”
“Though many accounts portray Katrina as a storm of unprecedented magnitude, it was in fact a large, but otherwise typical, hurricane. On the 1-to-5 Saffir-Simpson scale, Katrina was a midlevel Category 3 hurricane at landfall. Its barometric pressure was 902 millibars (mb), the sixth lowest ever recorded, but higher than Wilma (882mb) and Rita (897mb), the storms that followed it. Katrina’s peak sustained wind speed at landfall 55 miles south of New Orleans was 125 mph; winds in the city barely reached hurricane strength.
“By contrast, when Hurricane Andrew struck the Florida coast in 1992, its sustained winds were measured at 142 mph. And meteorologists estimate that 1969’s Category 5 Hurricane Camille, which followed a path close to Katrina’s, packed winds as high as 200 mph.”
Myth #3: “’Perhaps not just human error was involved [in floodwall failures]. There may have been some malfeasance.’—Raymond Seed, civil engineering professor, UC, Berkeley, testifying before a Senate committee, Nov. 2, 2005”
There’s been a lot of second-guessing and finger pointing concerning the levee design, and who was responsible for their failure. According to PM, these were all built according to specifications:
“Most of the New Orleans floodwall failures occurred when water up to 25 ft. high overtopped the barriers, washing out their foundations. But three breached floodwalls-one in the 17th Street Canal and two in the London Avenue Canal showed no signs of overtopping. Accusations of malfeasance were born after the Army Corps of Engineers released seismic data suggesting that the sheet-pile foundations supporting those floodwalls were 7 ft. shorter than called for in the design a possible cause for collapse. In December 2005, PM watched Corps engineers pull four key sections of the 17th Street Canal foundation out of the New Orleans mud. The sections were more than 23 ft. long-as per design specifications
Myth #4: “’They have people … been in that frickin’ Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people.’—New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Sept. 6, 2005”
Both public officials and the press passed along lurid tales of post-Katrina mayhem: shootouts in the Superdome, bodies stacked in a convention center freezer, snipers firing on rescue helicopters. And those accounts appear to have affected rescue efforts as first responders shifted resources from saving lives to protecting rescuers.
“The only confirmed account of a weapon discharge occurred when Louisiana Guardsman Chris Watt was jumped by an assailant and, during the chaotic arrest, accidently shot himself in the leg with his own M-16.
“When the Superdome was finally cleared, six bodies were found—not the 200 speculated. Four people had died of natural causes; one was ruled a suicide, and another a drug overdose. Of the four bodies recovered at the convention center, three had died of natural causes; the fourth had sustained stab wounds.”
Myth #5: “‘The failure to evacuate was the tipping point for all the other things that … went wrong.’—Michael Brown, former FEMA director, Sept. 27, 2005”
Regardless, when you look at the arithmetic and the facts, this really was a very successful evacuation. PM agreed:
“When Nagin issued his voluntary evacuation order, a contraflow plan that turned inbound interstate lanes into outbound lanes enabled 1.2 million people to leave New Orleans out of a metro population of 1.5 million. ‘The Corps estimated we would need 72 hours [to evacuate that many people],’ says Brian Wolshon, an LSU civil engineer. ‘Instead, it took 38 hours.’”
Another myth in this regard was that the only people that didn’t evacuate were those that couldn’t. Not so according to PM:
“Later investigations indicated that many who stayed did so by choice. ‘Most people had transportation,’ says Col. Joe Spraggins, director of emergency management in Harrison County, Ala. ‘Many didn’t want to leave.’ Tragic exceptions: hospital patients and nursing home residents.”
Myth #6: “‘We will rebuild [the Gulf Coast] bigger and better than ever.’—Haley Barbour, Miss. Gov., The Associated press, Sept. 3, 2005”
There’s been much discussion in the media concerning what should be done with New Orleans after its destruction. PM offered a bold view in this regard. Its premise was that the current National Flood Insurance Program rewards people who live in coastal areas subject to floods, with some making multiple claims for very large sums of money:
“Just 1 to 2 percent of claims were from ‘repetitive-loss properties’-those suffering damage at least twice in a 10-year period. Yet, those 112,000 properties generated a remarkable 40 percent of the losses-$5.6 billion. One homeowner in Houston filed 16 claims in 18 years, receiving payments totaling $806,000 for a building valued at $114,000.
Myth #7: “‘You have a major energy network that is down … We could run out of gasoline or diesel or jet fuel in the next two weeks here.’—Roger Diwan, managing director, Oil Markets Group, PFC Energy, Business Week, Sept. 1, 2005”
Probably not unintentionally, PM saved the best myth for last. Some of the worst media reporting surrounding this hurricane was directly related to energy prices. In fact, we quickly heard how this was going to cause massive job cuts around the country, lead to a recession, send gasoline to $5 per gallon, and kill the Christmas shopping season.
Much like most economic predictions from the media, none of these prognostications materialized. And, according to PM, the media were all wet regarding how much damage was done to the nation’s energy complex:
“Initially, the pictures from the gulf looked bleak: oil rigs washed up along the coast, production platforms wrecked. In truth, Katrina inflicted minimal damage to the offshore energy infrastructure. Only 86 of the gulf’s 4000 drilling rigs and platforms were damaged or destroyed, and most of those were older, fixed platforms atop unproductive wells.”
Beyond this, the subsequent storms of Rita and Wilma had a larger impact on our energy complex than Katrina, though neither garnered the same media attention. However, even with all this damage, things were repaired much quicker than expected – especially by the media that never see any good in anything:
“But recovery came more quickly than many experts predicted. By the end of the year, overall production was down just 8 percent, and only three refineries were still off line.