It’s hard to say which is worse news for Republicans: that George W. Bush now has the worst approval rating of an American president in a generation, or that he seems to be dragging every ’08 Republican presidential candidate down with him. But According to the new NEWSWEEK Poll, the public’s approval of Bush has sunk to 28 percent, an all-time low for this president in our poll, and a point lower than Gallup recorded for his father at Bush Sr.’s nadir. The last president to be this unpopular was Jimmy Carter who also scored a 28 percent approval in 1979.

When the NEWSWEEK Poll asked more than 1,000 adults on Wednesday and Thursday night (before and during the GOP debate) which president showed the greatest political courage—meaning being brave enough to make the right decisions for the country, even if it jeopardized his popularity —more respondents volunteered Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton (18 percent each) than any other president. Fourteen percent of adults named John F. Kennedy and 10 percent said Abraham Lincoln. Only four percent mentioned George W. Bush. (Then again, only five percent volunteered Franklin Roosevelt and only three percent said George Washington.)

A majority of Americans believe Bush is not politically courageous: 55 percent vs. 40 percent. And nearly two out of three Americans (62 percent) believe his recent actions in Iraq show he is “stubborn and unwilling to admit his mistakes,” compared to 30 percent who say Bush’s actions demonstrate that he is “willing to take political risks to do what’s right.”

Clinton receives the highest marks for showing political courage in the current campaign, though, with 34 percent of voters saying she has, followed by 33 percent for Obama, 30 percent for Edwards, 28 for McCain, 25 for Giuliani and 11 for Romney.

Obama is seen as the most optimistic candidate (a consistent measure of electability) in either party: 51 percent of registered voters say the Illinois senator is optimistic, compared to 47 percent who say Edwards is, 46 percent for Clinton, 45 percent for Giuliani, 40 percent for McCain, and 27 for Romney.

While the poll has some high marks for Clinton, it’s not all good news. Though the New York senator and former first lady aims to project an aura of inevitability that she will win the Democratic nomination, Obama beats the leading Republicans by larger margins than any other Democrat: besting Giuliani 50 to 43 percent, among registered voters; beating McCain 52 to 39 percent, and defeating Romney 58 percent to 29 percent.

Labels: 2008 election, George W. Bush

Ten Republican men gathered on a stage Thursday night to pound their chests. Each of them looked tough. Each talked tough. Each tried to be the alpha dog, the real-deal decider, the next Ronald Reagan.

"Ronald Reagan was a president of strength," said former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, looking tall, tan and strong. "His philosophy was a philosophy of strength: a strong military, a strong economy and strong families."

"We should never retreat in the face of terrorism," said former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, with a prosecutor's voice and a gleaming forehead.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, the current front-runner, came out like a chained dog, pointing at the camera to punctuate his points. "We will do whatever is necessary," he said of terrorist-at-large Osama bin Laden. "We will bring him to justice, and I will follow him to the gates of hell."

It was hard to miss the point. Republicans have a different code than Democrats. Liberals elect leaders with finesse and style, men or women who can inspire, who can seek out the truth and lead the nation there. When the Democratic presidential candidates debated last week, the front-runners were modest and reasonable and calm. Republicans, on the other hand, elect father figures, men who will never flinch and will always lay down the law. The candidates came out swinging.

Eight years ago, President George W. Bush looked as though he would pass this test. But he turned out to be a ninny. He led the conservative movement into a period of decadence and decline. He revealed the limits of American power by sending the nation into a losing foreign war. So the Grand Old Party has reached back to the past, to Ronald Reagan, the great California cowboy who never sweated the details. The Republican primary has become, in many ways, a fatherhood audition. Only a man's man will save us.

Find someone as macho as Reagan, Giuliani suggested, and America's enemies will fold in fear. "He has to look at an American president and he has to see Ronald Reagan," Giuliani said of the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "Remember, they looked in Ronald Reagan's eyes, and in two minutes, they released the hostages." Of course, that is not what happened in Iran in 1981. But it doesn't matter. Republicans believe in their guts that Reagan's swagger released the hostages, grew the economy, and won the Cold War.

Labels: Republic Party, Ronald Reagan

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed Thursday that Congress repeal the authority it gave President Bush in 2002 to invade Iraq, injecting presidential politics into the Congressional debate over financing the war.

Mrs. Clinton’s proposal brings her full circle on Iraq — she supported the war measure five years ago — and it sharpens her own political positioning at a time when Democrats are vying to confront the White House.

“It is time to reverse the failed policies of President Bush and to end this war as soon as possible,” Mrs. Clinton said as she joined Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, in calling for a vote to end the authority as of Oct. 11, the fifth anniversary of the original vote.

Her stance emerged just as Congressional leaders and the White House opened delicate negotiations over a new war-financing measure to replace the one that Mr. Bush vetoed Tuesday.

Even if Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Byrd succeed in their effort, it is not clear whether President Bush would have to withdraw troops, or if he could resist by claiming that Congress cannot withdraw its earlier authorization but instead has to deny money for the war to achieve that result.

The question could prompt a constitutional debate over war powers that only the federal courts could resolve.

Mostly, Mrs. Clinton appeared to be trying to claim a new leadership position among the Democratic presidential candidates against the war in Iraq.

She supported the war early on, but she has turned into a staunch critic of the administration’s performance on Iraq. She has been saying that she granted Mr. Bush the authority to go to war based on intelligence reports at the time, but that the reports have since proved wrong.

Now, her advisers say, a vote to withdraw authorization would make plain to antiwar and liberal Democrats that she was repudiating her 2002 vote. The hope among her aides was that demands by antiwar voters for her to apologize for her vote would be rendered moot.

Labels: Hillary Clinton, Iraq

Wie Meiren was a standard-issue gulaosi, the kind you can find in every Chinese town. She was a 32-year-old woman with three kids who left her hungry village and travelled to Dongkeng, where she got a job assembling the toy cars for the British kids’ market.

There, she was expected to work 360 days a year, from 7.30am to as late as 9.30pm, with only a half-hour break for lunch and fines for taking too long on the toilet. As in many Chinese factories, military drills were often yelled: “Long live the company!” If anybody argued back to the managers, they could be punched in the face.

One day, Meiren had a family crisis at home. She was forbidden by her bosses from going to take care of it - so she became angry and fainted. She forced herself to keep going to work for the next fortnight, but eventually she became so exhausted she collapsed - and died before she reached the hospital. The autopsy indicated gulaosi - heart and organ failure caused by extreme exhaustion.

Some 50,000 fingers are sliced off in China’s factories every month. Tao Chun Lan was a 20-year-old woman from Sichuan province at the heart of China who moved to Shenzhen and got a job working in a handicrafts factory. One night, she discovered the factory was filling with smoke - and the workers were locked inside. Some 84 workers were burned or trampled to death. Lan jumped out of a window, irreparably damaging her legs. She has received no compensation. “They don’t care if I am crippled for life,” she says.

Last year, the Chinese dictatorship announced a new draft of labour laws designed finally to allow Chinese workers like her - too late - some basic rights.

The new law would permit people like Lan and Meiren to join trade unions. It would give them the right to a written contract. It would give them the right to a severance payment. It would give them the right to change jobs freely. Where previously China’s labour rules were diffuse, dispersed and barely enforced, now they would be drawn together and backed with big fines.

The dissident-killing Chinese Communist Party didn’t propose this change out of a sudden flush of benevolence. They did it because the Chinese people have in increasing numbers been refusing to be tethered serfs for the benefit of Western corporations. Last year, there were 300,000 illegal industrial actions in China, a huge spate of “factory kidnappings” of managers, and more than 85,000 protests.

The Chinese people were showing they did not want to leap from a Maoist gulag to a market-fundamentalists’ sweatshop. They demanded a sensible compromise: strong trade and markets to generate wealth, matched by strong trade unions to stop markets devouring them. They want an end to grinding poverty, but one that doesn’t kill them as they get there.

But they bumped into a huge obstacle. Groups representing Western corporations with factories in China sent armies of lobbyists to Beijing to cajole and threaten the dictatorship into abandoning these new workers’ protections.

The American Chamber of Commerce - representing Microsoft, Nike, Ford, Dell and others - listed 42 pages of objections. The laws were “unaffordable” and “dangerous”, they declared. The European Chamber of Commerce backed them up.

This is not the first time big business has militated to prevent basic freedoms from being extended to China. Bill Clinton came to office promising “an America that will not coddle dictators, from Beijing to Baghdad”, and at first, he acted on this rhetoric, issuing an executive order that decreed trade with China could only grow if China in tandem increased its respect for human rights. Enraged American business executives subjected him to nuclear-strength lobbying - so Clinton ditched his executive order after a year.

Ever since, Western governments have been justifying business with the Chinese dictatorship by saying our corporations and trade would inevitably and inexorably bring greater freedom to China.

But now the corporations that they claimed would bring freedom and democracy are in fact lobbying to crush freedom and opposing the plain democratic will of the Chinese people. As James Mann, the former Los Angeles Times bureau chief in Beijing, puts it after years of observing the behaviour of big business in China: “The business communities of China and the United States [and, he might have added, Europe] do not harbour dreams of democracy. Both profit from a Chinese system that permits no political opposition, and both are content with it.”

Their lobbying seems to have paid off. The (unelected) Chinese National People’s Congress is due to vote on the new labour laws in the next month or so, but the proposals have already been massively watered down.

Scott Slipy, the director of human resources for Microsoft in China, bragged to BusinessWeek, “We have enough investment at stake that we can usually get someone to listen to us if we are passionate about an issue.”

It seems that Maoism is fine so long as its dictatorial urges are put to the service of Bill Gates and other billionaires, rather than one psychotic dictator.

These Western corporations are explicitly seeking a China where a tiny number of extremely rich people are free to organise, but the vast majority of poor people are physically prevented from doing so by the state.

At the same time, however, the company has initiatives underway to keep employees on the sales floor, Cimino said. For one, employees who are often torn between helping customers and other store duties such as stocking shelves will be directed to confine their attention to customers when stores are open. The other duties are to be performed after or before store hours, he said. The practice is being piloted in several stores and will be expanded during the next few months.

Job reduction announcements by major U.S. corporations soared by 44% to 70,672 in April after falling to an eight-month low in March, according to a monthly report released Wednesday by outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas.
Layoff plans were up 18% compared with April 2006. It's the first time since September that layoffs rose on a year-over-year comparison.

The job cuts in April were led by Citigroup, which announced plans to eliminate 17,000 positions. See archived story. With 33,789 reductions in April, the financial sector has now announced plans to cut 50,221 jobs so far this year, overtaking the auto industry as the top job reducer.

The declining housing market led to 6,000 lost jobs in the financial sector in April, the firm said.

"Coming on the heels of a lower-than-expected [gross domestic product] reading in the first quarter, the April job-cut surge is likely to further increase concerns about the strength of the economy and the job market," said John Challenger, CEO of the outplacement firm, in a statement.

In April, the top industries for job reductions were financial with 33,789, government with 5,643, autos with 4,089, industrial goods with 3,968 and consumer products with 3,391.

Labels: corporatism, greed

Mr. Rieckhoff is an imposing six-foot-two-inch, 245-pound former infantry officer who joined the military after graduating from Amherst College. When he came home from a harrowing tour in Iraq in 2004, he vowed to do what he could to serve the interests of the men and women who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan but have never fully gotten the support they deserve from the government or the public at large.

He wrote a book, “Chasing Ghosts,” which is now out in paperback, and he formed a powerful veterans’ advocacy organization called Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Mr. Rieckhoff is not bitter. He’s actually funny and quite engaging (and a good writer). But he has very little tolerance for the negligence and incompetence the government has shown in equipping the troops and fighting the war in Iraq, and he is frustrated by the short shrift that he feels the troops get from the media and the vast majority of Americans.

There’s a gigantic and extremely disturbing disconnect, he says, between the experiences of the men and women in uniform and the perspective of people here at home. “We have a very diverse membership in I.A.V.A.,” he said. “We’ve got Republicans and Democrats and everything in between. But one of the key things we all have in common is this frustration with the detachment that we see all around us, this idea that we’re at war and everybody else is watching ‘American Idol.’

“I think that’s one of the main reasons why so many guys want to go back to Iraq. They come home and feel like: ‘Man, I don’t fit in here. You know, I’m out of place.’ ” Even though there’s never been a clear statement of the military’s mission in Iraq, and the goals have shifted from month to month and year to year, the soldiers and marines who have been sent there have felt that they were carrying out an important task on behalf of the nation.

“It’s tough to have such a serious sense of commitment,” Mr. Rieckhoff said, “and then come home and see so many people focused on such frivolous things. So I think that frustration is serious and growing. And I’ll tell you the truth: I blame the president for that. One of the biggest criticisms of the president, and I hear this across the board, is that he hasn’t asked the American people to do anything.”

Mr. Rieckhoff is convinced that if the public heard more from the soldiers and marines who have actually experienced combat, including those who have been wounded and suffered emotional trauma, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be viewed more seriously. Part of the problem, he said, is that too many civilians have little or no understanding of what war is really like, and of the toll it takes beyond the obvious toll of the dead and wounded.

Among other things, there are family problems, drug and alcohol abuse, untreated post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and suicide — all directly attributable to service in a war zone. “Incredibly,” he writes in his book, “no government agency keeps track of the number of veterans who kill themselves after their service has ended — another sign of how little value is placed on veterans’ long-term well-being.”

I mentioned a young soldier I had interviewed in 2005 who worried that because he had killed three insurgents during a battle in Iraq he might not be “allowed into heaven.” The soldier wondered whether he had “done the right thing.”

Mr. Rieckhoff nodded. “Asking somebody to die for their country might not be the biggest thing you can ask,” he said. “Asking my guys to kill, on my orders — as an officer, that’s difficult. I’m telling that kid to squeeze that round off and take a man’s life. And then he’s got that baggage for the rest of his life. That’s what you have to live with.”

I signaled for the check and we left the restaurant. It was a beautiful, sunlit afternoon. New Yorkers were smiling and enjoying the spring weather. There was no sign of a war anywhere.

Let's just add the charge to everybody's taxes next year, a nice little line-item. Total costs of the war in Iraq will soon be $500 billion, to date, and with 100 million Americans filing tax returns each year (the actual number is somewhat higher, but for the life of me I can't find it), that comes to about $5000 a taxpayer. (And I'm just talking about the actual up front defense costs - the real cost of the war is estimated at $2 trillion dollars, that's four times what we're paying for the defense side of it, so that makes the real cost to taxpayers around $20,000.)

We're paying for it anyway, why not put it in our tax returns so that we're forced to see exactly how much the Republicans' little patriotic venture in Iraq is costing every American taxpayer. Most Americans have no idea what the costs of this war are, in lives, in money, in national prestige. But the one thing we can show, quite personally, is the cost in dollars.

The Iraq war is the biggest tax increase in American history. I'd love to see someone amend the tax code and require a line-item on all of tax forms adding $5,000. Then see how long the war goes on for.

Labels: IAVA, Iraq

Today, in your veto message regarding the bipartisan legislation just passed on Operation Iraqi Freedom, you asserted that you so decided because you listen to your commanders on the ground.

Respectfully, as your former commander on the ground, your administration did not listen to our best advice. In fact, a number of my fellow Generals were forced out of their jobs, because they did not tell you what you wanted to hear -- most notably General Eric Shinseki, whose foresight regarding troop levels was advice you rejected, at our troops' peril.

The legislation you vetoed today represented a course of action that is long overdue. This war can no longer be won by the military alone. We must bring to bear the entire array of national power - military, diplomatic and economic. The situation demands a surge in diplomacy, and pressure on the Iraqi government to fix its internal affairs. Further, the Army and Marine Corps are on the verge of breaking - or have been broken already - by the length and intensity of this war. This tempo is not sustainable - and you have failed to grow the ground forces to meet national security needs. We must begin the process of bringing troops home, and repairing and growing our military, if we are ever to have a combat-ready force for the long war on terror ahead of us.

The bill you rejected today sets benchmarks for success that the Iraqis would have to meet, and puts us on a course to redeploy our troops. It stresses the need for sending troops into battle only when they are rested, trained and equipped. In my view, and in the view of many others in the military that I know, that is the best course of action for our security.

As someone who served this nation for decades, I have the utmost respect for the office you hold. However, as a man of conscience, I could not sit idly by as you told the American people today that your veto was based on the recommendations of military men. Your administration ignored the advice of our military's finest minds before, and I see no evidence that you are listening to them now.

I urge you to reconsider your position, and work with Congress to pass a bill that achieves the goals laid out above.

Respectfully,

Major General Paul D. Eaton, USA, Retired

In principle, I do not favor Congressional involvement in the execution of U.S. foreign and military policy. I have seen its perverse effects in many cases. The conflict in Iraq is different. Over the past couple of years, the President has let it proceed on automatic pilot, making no corrections in the face of accumulating evidence that his strategy is failing and cannot be rescued.

Thus, he lets the United States fly further and further into trouble, squandering its influence, money, and blood, facilitating the gains of our enemies. The Congress is the only mechanism we have to fill this vacuum in command judgment.

To put this in a simple army metaphor, the Commander-in-Chief seems to have gone AWOL, that is ‘absent without leave.’ He neither acts nor talks as though he is in charge. Rather, he engages in tit-for-tat games.

Some in Congress on both sides of the aisle have responded with their own tits-for-tats. These kinds of games, however, are no longer helpful, much less amusing. They merely reflect the absence of effective leadership in a crisis. And we are in a crisis.

Most Americans suspect that something is fundamentally wrong with the President’s management of the conflict in Iraq. And they are right.

The challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is how to recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the first place. The war could never have served American interests.

But it has served Iran’s interest by revenging Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in the 1980s and enhancing Iran’s influence within Iraq. It has also served al Qaeda’s interests, providing a much better training ground than did Afghanistan, allowing it to build its ranks far above the levels and competence that otherwise would have been possible.

We cannot ‘win’ a war that serves our enemies interests and not our own. Thus continuing to pursue the illusion of victory in Iraq makes no sense. We can now see that it never did.

A wise commander in this situation normally revises his objectives and changes his strategy, not just marginally, but radically. Nothing less today will limit the death and destruction that the invasion of Iraq has unleashed.

No effective new strategy can be devised for the United States until it begins withdrawing its forces from Iraq. Only that step will break the paralysis that now confronts us. Withdrawal is the pre-condition for winning support from countries in Europe that have stood aside and other major powers including India, China, Japan, Russia.

It will also shock and change attitudes in Iran, Syria, and other countries on Iraq’s borders, making them far more likely to take seriously new U.S. approaches, not just to Iraq, but to restoring regional stability and heading off the spreading chaos that our war has caused.

The bill that Congress approved this week, with bipartisan support, setting schedules for withdrawal, provides the President an opportunity to begin this kind of strategic shift, one that defines regional stability as the measure of victory, not some impossible outcome.

I hope the President seizes this moment for a basic change in course and signs the bill the Congress has sent him. I will respect him greatly for such a rare act of courage, and so too, I suspect, will most Americans.

There is no real game plan in-place...just a 'GO OUT THERE AND GET THE BAD GUYS,' and little else. The present battle plan does not play directly and effectively in helping the Iraqi military and police take over the country, and the speed of their readiness is influenced greatly by the Iraqi culture, which dictates, a 'hand out for a hand up'...how much more can you give us and when?"

We must take a hard look at what is in our best interests, and the Iraqi people must start to stand up for their own freedoms. The Iraqi government must take a more active role in getting their own resources up to speed in the development of their economy. America has been more than generous with economic aid. These people must now stand on their own two feet

Labels: George W. Bush, Iraq

Just when the press had pretty much exhausted every joking play on President Bush's self-proclaimed nickname "The Decider" he handed them another on a platter today: "The Commander Guy."

In a speech to the Associated General Contractors of America, a construction industry trade group, today in Washington, he discussed his current tussle with Congress over troop levels and funding for Iraq.
“The question is, ‘Who ought to make that decision, the Congress or the commanders?,’’ Bush said. “As you know, my position is clear – I’m the commander guy.” So he vetoed the congressional initiative in this area.

This led Sheryl Gay Stolberg on The New York Times' blog, The Caucus, to wonder if this suggested a possible new new nickname: "Veto Man."

Labels: George W. Bush, idiocy

Circuit City's Job Cuts Backfiring, Analysts Say

By Amy Joyce
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 2, 2007; Page D01

Circuit City fired 3,400 of its highest-paid store employees in March, saying it needed to hire cheaper workers to shore up its bottom line. Now, the Richmond electronics retailer says it expects to post a first-quarter loss next month, and analysts are blaming the job cuts.

The company, which on Monday also revised its outlook for the first half of its fiscal year ending Feb. 29, 2008, cited poor sales of large flat-panel and projection televisions. Analysts said Circuit City had cast off some of its most experienced and successful people and was losing business to competitors who have better-trained employees.

"I think even though sales were soft in March, this is clearly why April sales were worse. They were replaced with less knowledgeable associates," said Tim Allen, an analyst with Jefferies & Co.

In particular, the televisions showing disappointing results are "intensive sales" requiring more informed employees, Allen said. "It's a big-ticket purchase for somebody. And if they feel like they're not getting the right advice or are being misled by someone who doesn't know, it would be definitely frustrating. They will take their business elsewhere."

Circuit City said in March that sales would be volatile for the next several months as the company adjusts to the changes. But yesterday the company said it was too early to tell whether the dismissals had caused any of the falloff in April sales.

"We will continue to monitor that," said Bill Cimino, a company spokesman. "Only two or three salespersons per store were impacted on average. Others were customer service representatives or warehouse employees," which would point to other factors for the drop in sales, he said.

About 60 percent of the people let go held in-store sales positions. Each of the company's almost 650 U.S. stores has about 50 salespeople per store, he said.

Cimino said Circuit City attributes the sales picture to a combination of economics and the company's poor forecasting and planning. "That's what we're working on right now," he said.

At the same time, however, the company has initiatives underway to keep employees on the sales floor, Cimino said. For one, employees who are often torn between helping customers and other store duties such as stocking shelves will be directed to confine their attention to customers when stores are open. The other duties are to be performed after or before store hours, he said. The practice is being piloted in several stores and will be expanded during the next few months.

Although the impact on Circuit City was "sudden and severe," there could be other reasons for slower television sales, including a "softening of consumer spending," Mike Baker, a research analyst with Deutsche Bank wrote in a report released yesterday. Best Buy is also "likely not immune," he wrote.

However, Baker also said Circuit City's situation is mostly a result of its loss of informed workers. Best Buy "will fare better because of market share gains driven by weakening customer service at Circuit City," he wrote. "We believe that Circuit City's store labor change . . . likely has had a worse than expected impact on Circuit City's service levels and has enabled [Best Buy] to take share."

Labels: corporatism, greed

At least 2.5 million broiler chickens from an Indiana producer were fed pet food scraps contaminated with the chemical melamine and subsequently sold for human consumption, federal health officials reported yesterday.

Hundreds of other producers may have similarly sold an unknown amount of contaminated poultry in recent months, they added, painting a picture of much broader consumption of contaminated feed and food than had previously been acknowledged in the widening pet food scandal.

Officials emphasized that they do not believe the tainted chickens -- or the smaller number of contaminated pigs that were reported to have entered the human food supply -- pose risks to people who ate them.

"We do not believe there is any significant threat of human illness from this," said David Acheson, the Food and Drug Administration's chief medical officer. FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach named Acheson yesterday the agency's new "food czar" -- officially, assistant commissioner for food protection.

None of the farm animals is known to have become sick from the food, and very little of the contaminant is suspected of having accumulated in their tissue. Thus, no recall of any products that may still be on store shelves or in people's freezers is planned, officials said.

Nonetheless, 100,000 Indiana chickens that ate the melamine-laced food and are still alive have been quarantined and will be destroyed as a precautionary measure -- as will any other animals that turn up as the investigation continues to expand.

Labels: food industry, melamine, tainted pet food scandal

For more than five years, President Bush authorized government spying on phone calls and e-mail to and from the United States without warrants. He rejected offers from Congress to update the electronic eavesdropping law, and stonewalled every attempt to investigate his spying program.

Suddenly, Mr. Bush is in a hurry. He has submitted a bill that would enact enormous, and enormously dangerous, changes to the 1978 law on eavesdropping. It would undermine the fundamental constitutional principle — over which there can be no negotiation or compromise — that the government must seek an individual warrant before spying on an American or someone living here legally.

To heighten the false urgency, the Bush administration will present this issue, as it has before, as a choice between catching terrorists before they act or blinding the intelligence agencies. But the administration has never offered evidence that the 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, hampered intelligence gathering after the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Bush simply said the law did not apply to him.

The director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, said yesterday that the evidence of what is wrong with FISA was too secret to share with all Americans. That’s an all-too-familiar dodge. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who is familiar with the president’s spying program, has said that it could have been conducted legally. She even offered some sensible changes for FISA, but the administration and the Republican majority in the last Congress buried her bill.

Mr. Bush’s motivations for submitting this bill now seem obvious. The courts have rejected his claim that 9/11 gave him virtually unchecked powers, and he faces a Democratic majority in Congress that is willing to exercise its oversight responsibilities. That, presumably, is why his bill grants immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated in five years of illegal eavesdropping. It also strips the power to hear claims against the spying program from all courts except the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which meets in secret.

According to the administration, the bill contains “long overdue” FISA modifications to account for changes in technology. The only example it offered was that an e-mail sent from one foreign country to another that happened to go through a computer in the United States might otherwise be missed. But Senator Feinstein had already included this fix in the bill Mr. Bush rejected.

Moreover, FISA has been updated dozens of times in the last 29 years. In 2000, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, who ran the National Security Agency then, said it “does not require amendment to accommodate new communications technologies.” And since 9/11, FISA has had six major amendments.

The measure would not update FISA; it would gut it. It would allow the government to collect vast amounts of data at will from American citizens’ e-mail and phone calls. The Center for National Security Studies said it might even be read to permit video surveillance without a warrant.

Labels: George W. Bush, privacy

Labels: 2008 election, Republic Party

Contamination of Chinese Wheat Gluten Widespread

Dingell, Stupak Dispatch Investigators to West Coast Ports

Reps. John D. Dingell, the Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Bart Stupak, Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee today dispatched Committee investigators to the west coast to pursue reports of extensive melamine contamination of wheat gluten, rice protein, and other vegetable protein.

The Committee’s investigation of contaminated pet food and the discovery of melamine contamination of wheat gluten imported from China were examined in a hearing on food safety held by the committee last week. The hearing brought to light serious shortcomings in the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) inspection and regulation of food imported from China.

Last week’s hearing brought immediate action from the FDA:

• On April 25th, the FDA determined that Chinese wheat gluten had been contaminated with cyanuric acid, in addition to melamine.

• On April 26th, the FDA opened a criminal investigation focusing on the contaminated Chinese wheat gluten and rice protein, and searched importers’ offices and warehouses.

• On April 27th, the FDA issued an import alert (IA #99-29) ordering the immediate embargo of all vegetable protein from China, whether intended for human or animal food.

“The FDA’s embargo of Chinese vegetable protein is a good first step toward forcing proper control of these food products at their source,” said Dingell. “We are dispatching investigators to the west coast immediately to examine the extent and depth of the FDA’s commitment to inspection of these products from China.”

Stupak emphasized that this is just the beginning of the Committee’s investigation. “The FDA should have taken this action weeks ago. Our Committee will continue to monitor this situation and will continue to pressure the FDA to properly address the food safety problems that have plagued our country in recent months.”

The Committee is holding a second hearing on food safety on May 17th, at which the FDA’s food safety activities will be examined.

Labels: corporatism, deregulation, food industry, greed, tainted pet food scandal

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraq's prime minister has created an entity within his government that U.S. and Iraqi military officials say is being used as a smokescreen to hide an extreme Shiite agenda that is worsening the country's sectarian divide.

The "Office of the Commander in Chief" has the power to overrule other government ministries, according to U.S. military and intelligence sources.

Those sources say the 24-member office is abusing its power, increasingly overriding decisions made by the Iraqi Ministries of Defense and Interior and potentially undermining the entire U.S. effort in Iraq.

The Office, as it is known in Baghdad, was set up about four months ago with the knowledge of American forces in Iraq. Its goal is ostensibly to advise Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki -- the nation's new commander in chief -- on military matters.

According to a U.S. intelligence source, the Office is "ensuring the emplacement of commanders it favors and can control, regardless of what the ministries want."

Ali Dabbagh, spokesman for the Iraqi government, would not respond directly to questions about what authority the Office exercises within the Iraqi government. He denied allegations that the prime minister's advisers were trying to push a Shiite agenda.

However, a senior Iraqi army officer disagreed. The officer, who is seeking help from the senior U.S. command, said: "The Office is not supposed to be taking charge like this. It's overstepping its role as an advisory office. It's not a healthy thing to have. It's people with no power who want to have power."

Labels: Iraq

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed a highly confidential order in March 2006 delegating to two of his top aides -- who have since resigned because of their central roles in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys -- extraordinary authority over the hiring and firing of most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department. A copy of the order and other Justice Department records related to the conception and implementation of the order were provided to National Journal.

In the order, Gonzales delegated to his then-chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, and his White House liaison "the authority, with the approval of the Attorney General, to take final action in matters pertaining to the appointment, employment, pay, separation, and general administration" of virtually all non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department, including all of the department's political appointees who do not require Senate confirmation. Monica Goodling became White House liaison in April 2006, the month after Gonzales signed the order.

The existence of the order suggests that a broad effort was under way by the White House to place politically and ideologically loyal appointees throughout the Justice Department, not just at the U.S.-attorney level. Department records show that the personnel authority was delegated to the two aides at about the same time they were working with the White House in planning the firings of a dozen U.S. attorneys, eight of whom were, in fact, later dismissed.

A senior executive branch official familiar with the delegation of authority said in an interview that -- as was the case with the firings of the U.S. attorneys and the selection of their replacements -- the two aides intended to work closely with White House political aides and the White House counsel's office in deciding which senior Justice Department officials to dismiss and whom to appoint to their posts. "It was an attempt to make the department more responsive to the political side of the White House and to do it in such a way that people would not know it was going on," the official said.

Labels: Administration B.S., Alberto Gonzales

The U.S. government said on Monday 38 poultry farms in Indiana were given contaminated feed containing melamine in early February, with some of the animals likely to have entered the food supply.

The Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration said in a joint statement that officials learned of the link between the chicken feed and tainted pet food as part of the investigation into imported rice protein concentrate and wheat gluten that have been found to contain the industrial chemical melamine and related compounds.

The affected poultry farms and breeder poultry farms fed the contaminated feed to poultry within days of receiving it, the agencies said. Other farms will probably be identified as having received tainted feed, they added.

All the broilers believed to have been fed contaminated products have been processed, while the breeders are under voluntary hold by flock owners, the agencies said.

Birds that were given the contaminated feed will not be allowed to enter the U.S. food supply. Farmers will be compensated if they destroy the birds that consume the feed.

The agencies also said there was a “low-risk” to humans and no food recalls were expected at this time. They are uncertain how many chickens were involved, how many entered the food supply or where they went.

At this time, we have no evidence of harm to humans associated with the processed pork product, and therefore no recall of meat products processed from these animals is being issued. Testing and the joint investigation continue. If any evidence surfaces to indicate there is harm to humans, the appropriate action will be taken.

“The public thinks the food supply is much more protected than it is,” said William Hubbard, a former associate commissioner who left in 2005 after 27 years at the agency. “If people really knew how weak the F.D.A. program is, they would be shocked.”

Globalization and new manufacturing capabilities have changed the makeup of the food that Americans put on their table. Food processors in the United States are buying a greater number of ingredients from other countries, becoming more of an assembler in the nation’s food supply chain.

“With globalization, American food processors are turning to less-developed countries to get food ingredients because they can get them so much more cheaply,” Mr. Hubbard said.

Labels: corporatism, greed, lies, tainted pet food scandal

When the Army Corps of Engineers solicited bids for drainage pumps for New Orleans, it copied the specifications — typos and all — from the catalog of the manufacturer that ultimately won the $32 million contract, a review of documents by The Associated Press found.

The pumps, supplied by Moving Water Industries Corp. of Deerfield Beach, Fla., and installed at canals before the start of the 2006 hurricane season, proved to be defective, as the AP reported in March. The matter is under investigation by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

In a letter dated April 13, Sen. David Vitter (news, bio, voting record), R-La., called on the Corps to look into how the politically connected company got the post-Hurricane Katrina contract. MWI employed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, President Bush's brother, to market its pumps during the 1980s, and top MWI officials have been major contributors to the Republican Party.

While it may not be a violation of federal regulations to adopt a company's technical specifications, it is frowned on, especially for large jobs like the MWI contract, because it could give the impression the job was rigged for the benefit of a certain company, contractors familiar with Corps practices say.

The Corps' January 2006 call for bids for 34 pumps used the wording on how the pumps should be built and tested, with minor changes, found in MWI catalogs.

The specifications were so similar that an erroneous phrase in MWI catalogs — "the discharge tube and head assembly shall be abrasive resistance steel" — also appears in the Corps specifications. The phrase should say "abrasion resistant steel." An incorrect reference to the type of steel that would be required apparently was also lifted.

Eugene Pawlik, a Corps spokesman in Washington, said the agency is working on a response to Vitter's letter.

MWI declined to discuss how it won the contract. GAO would not talk about its probe.

Richard White, a federal contracting expert, said it is "not unheard of for a spec to be copied, in particular in cases of emergency purchases."

"It's not a good practice, but it's not anything egregious, especially if the Corps allowed other companies to negotiate to change it," White said.

After Katrina swamped about 80 percent of the city, Congress appropriated $5.7 billion to rebuild New Orleans' flood protection systems. Vitter and Sen. Mary Landrieu (news, bio, voting record), D-La., have excoriated the Corps over its workmanship since Katrina.

In his letter to the commander of the Corps, Vitter said the bid solicitation for the pumps "includes specifications identical to those written and marketed by Moving Water Industries." In addition, "the testing specifications are also identical to the testing specifications developed and authored by MWI."

A May 2006 memo by a Corps inspector working on the project, provided to the AP earlier this year, warned that the pumps were faulty and would not work if needed to remove water during a hurricane. GAO opened its investigation after the memo surfaced.

The Corps and MWI insist the pumps would have worked, but last year's mild hurricane season never put them to the test. The pumps have been overhauled and are being reinstalled.

The Corps withheld about 20 percent of MWI's contract price — including an incentive of about $5 million to deliver them by June 1, 2006 — until the flaws have been resolved. But the Corps also spent $4.5 million for six additional MWI pumps for use in troubleshooting the defective ones.

The Corps contract officer overseeing the January 2006 bid, Cindy Nicholas, was told about the copied specifications during a conference call with FPI Inc., a Florida company that also bid on the project, shortly after MWI was awarded the contract. A recording of the briefing was provided to the AP by FPI.

"Are you folks aware that the specifications that you folks put out was a copy of the specifications in the MWI catalog?" asked Bob Purcell, who was an FPI salesman at the time the bids were taken.

"No, I'm not aware of that," Nicholas replied.

Corps official Dan Bradley said during the briefing that consulting engineers had a hand in drawing up the specifications.

Purcell then complained: "We were forced to meet someone else's specifications in entirety." He said the consultants did not cooperate with FPI, and he charged that MWI was given "a head's up" about the job. That, he said, was evident by MWI's order for pump engines before the contract was even put out to bid.

Labels: Bush family, corruption, greed

This distresses me quite a bit. You know how I adore Prez Dubya so. Yes, you do—as I’ve utterly applauded his actions in Iraq for eons. Just love how he’s got us over there killing people (them and us), occupying a country we have no biz being in. But, alas, this is a goss column, people want to laugh and point fingers, I keep forgetting.
So, let’s aim a few digits at ol’ Georgey-Porgey himself! This too-fun-fer e-words begins with the following quote:

“She's staying at the Hay-Adams. I don't know how many people know...but it's probably not many.”

That’s my Desk DeeCee, hard at busybody work, informing me further of what this column has more than hinted at before: that the U.S. Chief of Grief, George W. Bush, has a wife (by the name of Laura, ‘course) who’s so damn put out by the teetotaling Texan’s return to drinking that she had to get outta the White House. Woo-hoo! That be first-class First Lady dish there, my darlin’ goss lovers!

“She just couldn’t take it anymore,” whispered a former White House staffer who remains superclose to Miz Bush. “She’s had it.”
Like most of the rest of Bush’s constituents haven’t?

Kinda weird, though, as Laura-doll reportedly used to smoke fags, ya know. But whatev, guess she got squeaky clean and expects her hub-unit to do likewise (would it mean he’d get us the hell outta Iraq, already?). You go, barely elected girlfriend!

Oh, for the official record, neither the president’s press office nor the president’s wife’s press office would comment. Which I find damn insulting, as I help pay those persnickety peep’s salaries!

Paparazzi P.S.: Hate to blow Laura’s cover ‘n’ all, but look, you stalkers of all things Hollywood—if you want an exclusive snap of L.B., she’s not exactly using the posh inn's front door, ka-peesh?

But if the man who has the authority to launch nuclear weapons all on his say-so is an alcoholic who has gone back on the sauce because of the pressure of his job, that seems to me to be fucking news! The public has the right to know that. And from what I can tell this seems to be the open secret among journalists that some people claimed Valerie Plame’s real job was, something “everybody knows” but nobody is saying. A president who has claimed absolute power based on a couple of stray clauses in the Constitution and a couple of dodgy recent laws is an addict who has fallen back into his habit.

That seems important.

Labels: George W. Bush, tabloid journalism

A female freelance writer who blogged about the pornography industry was threatened with rape. A single mother who blogged about "the daily ins and outs of being a mom" was threatened by a cyber-stalker who claimed that she beat her son and that he had her under surveillance. Kathy Sierra, who won a large following by blogging about designing software that makes people happy, became a target of anonymous online attacks that included photos of her with a noose around her neck and a muzzle over her mouth.

As women gain visibility in the blogosphere, they are targets of sexual harassment and threats. Men are harassed too, and lack of civility is an abiding problem on the Web. But women, who make up about half the online community, are singled out in more starkly sexually threatening terms -- a trend that was first evident in chat rooms in the early 1990s and is now moving to the blogosphere, experts and bloggers said.

A 2006 University of Maryland study on chat rooms found that female participants received 25 times as many sexually explicit and malicious messages as males. A 2005 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that the proportion of Internet users who took part in chats and discussion groups plunged from 28 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2005, entirely because of the exodus of women. The study attributed the trend to "sensitivity to worrisome behavior in chat rooms."

Joan Walsh, editor in chief of the online magazine Salon, said that since the letters section of her site was automated a year and a half ago, "it's been hard to ignore that the criticisms of women writers are much more brutal and vicious than those about men."

Arianna Huffington, whose Huffington Post site is among the most prominent of blogs founded by women, said anonymity online has allowed "a lot of those dark prejudices towards women to surface." Her site takes a "zero tolerance" policy toward abusive and excessively foul language, and employs moderators "24/7" to filter the comments, she said.

Sierra, whose recent case has attracted international attention, has suspended blogging. Other women have censored themselves, turned to private forums or closed comments on blogs. Many use gender-neutral pseudonyms. Some just gut it out. But the effect of repeated harassment, bloggers and experts interviewed said, is to make women reluctant to participate online -- undercutting the promise of the Internet as an egalitarian forum.

Robert Scoble, a technology blogger who took a week off in solidarity with Sierra, said women have told him that harassment is a "disincentive" to participate online. That, he said, will affect their job prospects in the male-dominated tech industry. "If women aren't willing to show up for networking events, either offline or online, then they're never going to be included in the industry," he said.

[snip]

Two factors can contribute to the vitriol, experts said: blogging in a male-dominated field, such as technology, and achieving a degree of prominence.

Susan Herring, a professor of information science at Indiana University, said each new online venue has been greeted with optimism because the early adopters tend to be educated, socially conscious people who think the form engenders community. Even as recently as 2003, she said, it was relatively rare to find negativity on blogs.

Now, she said, blogs risk becoming "nastified," at least in the comment zones.

Kathleen Cooper, the single mother, said she began to experience harassment about five years ago after she posted a retort on a friend's blog to a random blogger's threat against a friend. The harasser began posting defamatory accusations on Cooper's site, on his blog and then on a site that purports to track "bad businesses." He said that he could not be responsible for what "his minions" might do to her, she said.

Cooper, 37, who lives in Sarasota, Fla., has tried password-protecting her site. She and five other women have asked the man's Web site server to shut him down, but he revives his site with another server. Law enforcement officials laugh it off, she said, "like 'Oh, it's not a big deal. It's just online talk. Nobody's going to come get you.' "

Labels: misogyny

Last fall Edward Lazear, the Bush administration’s top economist, explained that what’s good for corporations is good for America. “Profits,” he declared, “provide the incentive for physical capital investment, and physical capital growth contributes to productivity growth. Thus profits are important not only for investors but also for the workers who benefit from the growth in productivity.”

[snip]

Unfortunately, these days none of what Mr. Lazear said seems to be true. In the Bush years high profits haven’t led to high investment, and rising productivity hasn’t led to rising wages.

The second of those two disconnects has gotten a lot of attention because of its political consequences. The administration and its allies whine that they aren’t getting credit for a great economy, but because wages have been stagnant — the median worker’s earnings, adjusted for inflation, haven’t gone up at all since the current economic expansion began in 2001 — the economy feels anything but great to most Americans.

Less attention, however, has been given to the first disconnect: the failure of high profits to produce an investment boom.

Since President Bush took office, the combination of rising productivity and stagnant wages — workers are producing more, but they aren’t getting paid more — has led to a veritable profit gusher, with corporate profits more than doubling since 2000. Last year, profits as a share of national income were at the highest level ever recorded.

You might have expected this gusher of profits, which surely owes something to the Bush administration’s pro-corporate, anti-labor tilt, to produce a corresponding gusher of business investment. But the reality has been more of a trickle. Nonresidential investment — that is, investment other than housing construction — has grown very slowly by historical standards. As a share of G.D.P., nonresidential investment remains far below its levels of the late 1990s, and it has been declining for the last two quarters.

Why aren’t corporations investing, and what does the lack of business investment mean for the economy?

It’s possible that sluggish business investment reflects lack of confidence in the economic outlook — a lack of confidence that’s understandable given the bursting of the housing bubble, which has already caused G.D.P. growth to slow to a crawl.

But as Floyd Norris recently reported in The Times, there is a more disturbing possibility. Instead of investing in physical capital, many companies are using profits to buy back their own stock. And cynics suggest that the purpose of these buybacks is to produce a temporary rise in stock prices that increases the value of executives’ stock options, even if it’s against the long-term interests of investors.

It’s not a far-fetched idea. Researchers at the Federal Reserve have found evidence that company decisions about stock buybacks are strongly influenced by “agency conflicts,” a genteel term for self-dealing by corporate insiders. In the 1990s that kind of self-dealing often led to excessive investment, which at least left a tangible legacy behind. But today the self-interest of management may be standing in the way of productive investment.

Whatever the reasons, we now have an economy with incredibly high profits and surprisingly low investment. This raises some immediate, short-run concerns: with housing still in free fall and consumers ever more stretched, optimistic projections for the economy depend on vigorous growth in business investment. And that doesn’t seem to be happening.

[snip]

In any case, next time someone tells you that any action that might reduce corporate profits a bit — like actually enforcing health and safety regulations or making it easier for workers to organize — will reduce business investment, bear in mind that today’s record profits aren’t being invested. Instead, they’re being used to enrich executives and a few lucky stock owners.

Labels: corporatism, greed

Here at the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group factory, huge boiler vats are turning coal into melamine, which is used to create plastics and fertilizer.

But the leftover melamine scrap, small acorn-sized chunks of white rock, is then being sold to local entrepreneurs, who say they secretly mix a powdered form of the scrap into animal feed to artificially enhance the protein level.

The melamine powder has been dubbed "fake protein" and is used to deceive those who raise animals into thinking they are buying feed that provides higher nutrition value.

"It just saves money," says a manager at an animal feed factory here. "Melamine scrap is added to animal feed to boost the protein level."

The practice is widespread in China. For years animal feed sellers have been able to cheat buyers by blending the powder into feed with little regulatory supervision, according to interviews with melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.

But now, melamine is at the center of a massive, multinational pet food recall after it was linked earlier this month to the deaths and injuries of thousands of cats and dogs in the United States and South Africa.

No one knows exactly how melamine - which had not been believed to be particularly toxic - became so fatal in pet food, but its presence in any form of American food is illegal.

U.S. regulators are now headed to China to figure out why pet food ingredients imported from here, including wheat gluten, were contaminated with high levels of the chemical.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has banned imports of wheat gluten from China and ordered the recall of over 60 million packages of pet food. And last week, the agency opened a criminal investigation in the case and searched the offices of at least one pet food supplier.

[snip]

The huge pet food recall is raising questions in the United States about regulatory controls at a time when food supplies are increasingly being sourced globally. Some experts complain that the FDA is understaffed and underfunded, making it incapable of safeguarding America's food supply.

"They have fewer people inspecting product at the ports than ever before," says Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington. "Until China gets programs in place to verify the safety of their products, they need to be inspected by U.S. inspectors. This open-door policy on food ingredients is an open invitation for an attack on the food supply, either intentional or unintentional."

The pet food case is also putting China's agricultural exports under greater scrutiny because the country's dubious food safety record and history of excessive antibiotic and pesticide use.

In recent years, for instance, China's food safety scandals have involved everything from fake baby milk formulas and soy sauce made from human hair, to instances where cuttlefish were soaked in calligraphy ink to improve their color and eels were fed contraceptive pills to make them grow long and slim.

China's government disputes any suggestion that melamine from the country could have killed pets. But Friday, regulators here banned the use of melamine in vegetable proteins made for export or for use in domestic food supplies.

Yet it is clear from visiting this region of northern China is that for years melamine has been quietly mixed into Chinese animal feed and then sold to unsuspecting farmers as protein-rich pig, poultry and fish feed.

Many animal feed operators advertise on the Internet seeking to purchase melamine scrap. And melamine scrap producers and traders said in recent interviews that they often sell to animal feed makers.

"Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed," says Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company. "I don't know if there's a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says 'don't do it,' so everyone's doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren't they? If there's no accident, there won't be any regulation."

[snip]

Most local feed companies do not admit that they use melamine. But last Friday here in Zhangqiu, a fast-growing industrial city southeast of Beijing, a pair of animal feed producers explained in great detail how they purchase low-grade wheat, corn, soybean or other proteins and then mix in small portions of nitrogen-rich melamine, whose chemical properties give a bag of animal feed an inflated protein level under standard tests.

Melamine is the new scam of choice, they say, because urea - another nitrogen-rich chemical that works similarly - is illegal for use in pig and poultry feed and can be easily tested for in China as well as the United States.

"If you add it in small quantities, it won't hurt the animals," said one animal feed entrepreneur whose name is being withheld to protect him from prosecution.

The man - who works in a small animal feed operation that consists of a handful of storage and mixing areas - said he has mixed melamine into animal feed for years.

He said he was not currently using melamine, which is actually made from urea. But he then pulled out a plastic bag containing what he said was melamine powder and said he could dye it any color.

Asked whether he could create an animal feed and melamine brew, he said yes, he has access to huge supplies of melamine. Using melamine-spiked pet food ingredient was not a problem, he said, even thought the product would be weak in protein.

"Pets are not like pigs or chickens," he said casually, explaining that cheating them on protein won't matter. "They don't need to grow fast."

The feed seller makes a heftier profit because the substitute melamine scrap is much cheaper than purchasing soy, wheat or corn protein.

Labels: corporatism, greed, tainted pet food scandal

The first date was when the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century issued its final report warning, as did its previous reports, of the danger of terrorist attacks on America. The George W. Bush administration did nothing about these warnings and we lost 3,000 American lives. What did you do during those critical eight months? Where were you? Were you on the defensive, or were you even paying attention?

Before you qualify to criticize Democrats, Mr. Giuliani, you must account for your preparation of your city for these clearly predicted attacks. Tell us, please, what steps you took to make your city safer.

Until you do, then I strongly suggest you should keep your mouth shut about Democrats and terrorism.

Labels: Rudy Giuliani

Labels: hypocrisy

Labels: music

In a troubling sign for the American-financed rebuilding program in Iraq, inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that in a sampling of eight projects that the United States had declared successes, seven were no longer operating as designed because of plumbing and electrical failures, lack of proper maintenance, apparent looting and expensive equipment that lay idle.

The United States has previously admitted, sometimes under pressure from federal inspectors, that some of its reconstruction projects have been abandoned, delayed or poorly constructed. But this is the first time inspectors have found that projects officially declared a success — in some cases, as little as six months before the latest inspections — were no longer working properly.

The inspections ranged geographically from northern to southern Iraq and covered projects as varied as a maternity hospital, barracks for an Iraqi special forces unit and a power station for Baghdad International Airport.

At the airport, crucially important for the functioning of the country, inspectors found that while $11.8 million had been spent on new electrical generators, $8.6 million worth were no longer functioning.

At the maternity hospital, a rehabilitation project in the northern city of Erbil, an expensive incinerator for medical waste was padlocked — Iraqis at the hospital could not find the key when inspectors asked to see the equipment — and partly as a result, medical waste including syringes, used bandages and empty drug vials were clogging the sewage system and probably contaminating the water system.

The newly built water purification system was not functioning either.

Curiously, most of the problems seemed unrelated to sabotage stemming from Iraq’s parlous security situation, but instead were the product of poor initial construction, petty looting, a lack of any maintenance and simple neglect.

A case in point was the $5.2 million project undertaken by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to build the special forces barracks in Baghdad. The project was completed in September 2005, but by the time inspectors visited last month, there were numerous problems caused by faulty plumbing throughout the buildings, and four large electrical generators, each costing $50,000, were no longer operating.

The problems with the generators were seemingly minor: missing batteries, a failure to maintain adequate oil levels in the engines, fuel lines that had been pilfered or broken. That kind of neglect is typical of rebuilding programs in developing countries when local nationals are not closely involved in planning efforts, said Rick Barton, co-director of the postconflict reconstruction project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research organization in Washington.

Labels: corruption, Iraq