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US has spent over $600 billion on wars since 9/11

Tuesday, July 10th, 2007

The US has spent $610 billion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and on protecting its bases worldwide since the Sep 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, a report released by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) said.

The Bush administration spends on an average $12 billion a month on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the report by the CRS, an independent research agency that provides research and analysis to lawmakers.

Ten of the 12 billion dollars was spent for Iraq and nearly two billion for Afghanistan, plus other minor costs. So far Iraq has accounted for $450 billion, and in fiscal year 2007 alone, about $165.8 billion have been spent on Iraq, a rise of 40 percent from last year.

If the administration’s war funding requests for fiscal 2008 were granted in full, the total war spending would rise to $758 billion, with $567 billion spent on Iraq, according to the report.

The report forecast a total spending of $1.4 trillion on the war on terrorism by 2017.

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Real 9/11 Heroes Speak Out Against Rudy

Tuesday, July 10th, 2007

New York City firefighters are out to set the record straight on Rudy Giuliani’s 9/11 legacy.

By Ari Paul

It’s been nearly six years since the 9/11 attacks and six months since former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has decided to grace the race for the Republican presidential nomination with his presence. Now unions representing New York’s Bravest are popping a tough question.

What on Earth did this man do on 9/11 and in its aftermath that was so breathtakingly heroic?

More accurately, they are campaigning to expose how Giuliani short-changed and endangered the city’s 11,000 firefighters over the course of two terms, and then went on to exploit their heroism during and after the 9/11 attacks for his own political advantage.

Martin Steadman, a spokesperson for New York’s Uniformed Fire Officers Association (UFOA), explains that the New York City Fire Department issued a report on communication devices after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing showed that the department’s hand-held radio devices were wholly inadequate.

The report, which landed on Mayor Giuliani’s desk his first day in office, explained that department radios didn’t work between floors in high-rises or in deep subway tunnels.

The city eventually bought several thousand new Motorolas in 1999, according to the New York Times. Chaos soon ensued, says Steadman, after firefighters complained that there were strong echoes and voice delays on the new radios. But as the 9/11 Commission report shows, when the FDNY responded to the 9/11 attacks, it was using the analog radios that “performed poorly” during the 1993 bombings.

As a result, more than 200 firefighters in the north tower did not receive an evacuation call on their radios.

“We’re saying he had eight years to solve that problem,” says Steadman.

The International Association of Firefighters, with which the UFOA is affiliated, is in the process of producing a video outlining its critique of Giuliani, hoping to inform the nation’s firefighters of Giuliani’s record when he steps up his presidential campaigning.

Steve Cassidy, the president of the city’s Uniformed Firefighters Association (UFA), which represents firefighters below the rank of lieutenant, also vowed to the New York Post that his union would wage a vigorous counter-campaign against Giuliani in the ‘08 election.

Cassidy’s problem revolves around the fact that firefighters working at the World Trade Center did not receive respirators as they should have according to state labor law, leaving them exposed to serious and sometimes fatal pathogens. In late June, Cassidy called on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties to question Giuliani on the issue.

Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman testified before the subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), June 25. Worker’s rights advocates had demanded she be held accountable for responders, like firefighters, who are suffering from illness and injuries as a result of their worker. Rep. Nadler has so far made no plans to ask Giuliani to testify.

“The 9/11 Commission gave Rudy Giuliani a pass, not asking him tough questions about what he knew, when he knew it or why he failed to provide respirators to firefighters and other first responders,” reads Cassidy’s public statement.

So far Giuliani appears publicly unfazed by the firefighters’ charges. Steve Malanga, a senior scholar at the right-wing Manhattan Institute and a critic of public sector unions, scoffs at the firefighters’ political agenda.

“It’s ludicrous for them to believe that a disagreement over a technical issue like respirators is going make an impact on Giuliani’s presidential run,” Malanga says. “Voters just don’t focus on those types of micro issues. It’s not going to make any political difference for Giuliani.”

But the firefighters believe they have real political muscle to flex, and their crusade to counteract Giuliani’s heroic image stems from genuine grievances about his eight years of governance. There’s a good chance the public will pay attention. For many Americans, 9/11 proved that firefighters and other emergency responders risk their lives every day on the job and as result sympathize with their losses. After the attacks, political cartoonist Mike Luckovich published a cartoon depicting firefighters and police officers radioing to their officers that they had “reached the top,” as they approached the gates of Heaven.

In addition, New York firefighters are anything but leftists looking to pick an ideological fight. The UFA endorsed George W. Bush in the last election. There is a strong military tradition within the department, and within the unions as well. At this year’s department medal ceremony at City Hall, when one winner’s family received his award because he was serving in Iraq with the Marines, the thousands of firefighters and their families rose to applaud.

Vocal opposition from the true heroes of 9/11 would be a politically heavy blow to a candidate who hopes to use his 9/11 legacy to win over voters of all partisan stripes.

Of course, there are firefighters who feel Giuliani did all he could to serve the department, that no one is perfect, and that no grudges should be held. But John Finucane, the founder of Advocates for a 9/11 Fallen Heroes Memorial and a retired fire lieutenant, said many firefighters hold a particular grudge against Giuliani for speeding up the cleaning process at Ground Zero in such a way that was disrespectful to the bodies of the dead responders. It is a debatable point, but Giuliani’s action nonetheless left a bad taste in firefighters’ mouths.

Moreover, Finucane claims that firefighters are aware that although Giuliani often publicly said he appreciated their work and stood by their fellow department members on the rubble that once made up the twin towers, he had also denied firefighters raises they thought they were entitled to and was excessively thrifty when making resources available for the department.

“Words are very easy to say, but it’s the tangible things that count,” Finucane says. “What has he done for the firemen? He’s no friend of the firemen.”

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Britain not sharing info from terror probe: Interpol chief

Tuesday, July 10th, 2007

The head of Interpol today said that Britain’s anti-terrorist efforts are “in the wrong century,” pointing out that authorities in London had not shared any information from the investigation of three failed car bomb attacks and had not made good use of a passport database.

“We have received not one name, not one fingerprint, not one telephone number, not one address, nothing, from the UK, about the recent thwarted terrorist attacks,” Ronald Noble, Interpol’s secretary general, said in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp television.

“My view is that the UK’s anti-terrorist effort is in the wrong century,” Noble said.

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200707091816.htm

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Four guilty of plotting July 21 suicide attacks on London transport system

Tuesday, July 10th, 2007

By Cahal Milmo and Kim Sengupta

Four members of an Islamist terrorist cell have been found guilty of plotting the 21 July suicide bombings of London’s transport system using devices made from hair bleach and Chapatti flour.

The attempt, two weeks after the devastating 7 July attacks that killed 52 people in 2005, failed due to a mixture of technical faults and what was described as “sheer good luck”.

Yesterday’s verdict, which came just over a week after the bomb attempts in London and Glasgow, once again brought into focus the threat faced from the radicalised and alienated members of the country’s Muslim community.

Muktar Said Ibrahim , 29, Yassin Omar, 26, Ramzi Mohammed, 25, and Hussein Osman, 28, were found guilty of conspiracy to murder at London’s Woolwich Crown Court after a trial lasting almost six months. The four men all came to Britain from war-torn countries in the Horn of Africa, leading lives on the margins of British society.

Questions were immediately raised over whether the plot could have been averted and what possible links the 21/7 group had with the 7/7 bombers.

The Independent understands that Ibrahim, the self-proclaimed “emir” of the group, visited the same terrorist training camp in Pakistan as Shehzad Tanweer, one of the 7/7 suicide bombers. They are said to have been present at the camp in Manserah, near the Kashmir border, in December and January 2005.

Both the 21/7 and 7/7 attacks were carried out using bombs made from hydrogen peroxide, used in hair bleach, and a detonator using a highly unstable explosive known as Mother of Satan. It was the first time that hydrogen peroxide bombs had been used in Britain.

It emerged that the 21/7 cell had also been secretly photographed by the police and MI5 when they attended a training camp in the Lake District along with other suspected Muslim extremists. Ibrahim had also been arrested and charged under the Public Order Act with threatening behaviour while distributing Islamist material in Oxford Street, London, in October 2004.

But while on bail he was stopped at Heathrow Airport, along with three companions, attempting to board a flight to Pakistan in December 2005. Security officials recognised Ibrahim and discovered that the three men were carrying $2,000 in cash, combat-style clothing, and a medical manual with the treatment of bullet wounds underlined. But Ibrahim was allowed to continue with his journey.

Last night, the shadow Home Secretary, David Davies, said: “This trial has revealed that the ringleader of the 21/7 plot was allowed to leave the country to train at a camp in Pakistan and return to plan and attempt the attack on 21/7. This was despite the fact that he was facing criminal charges for extremism.”

Scotland Yard said Ibrahim was not a “wanted” person because he was already on bail.

Ibrahim, as well as visiting Pakistan at the same time as Tanweer and Mohammed Sidique Khan, had been to Sudan, which has a strongly Muslim government and had once hosted Osama Bin Laden. At the same time, he and at least two other cell members - Yassin Omar and Ramzi Mohammed - became regular attendants at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London, where the radical cleric Abu Hamza was a preacher.

Although seen as a “copycat” version of the 7/7 attacks, the planning for 21/7 had, in fact, begun a year previously.

Home Office sources insisted last night that the four men, who entered Britain in the early 1990s as refugees from the Horn of Africa and who were fast-tracked for leave to remain in the UK, would now no longer be granted to leave to stay in the country. Ibrahim, who was convicted of two robbery offences and jailed for five years in 1995, would have been deported out of Britain once his sentence had been served.

Omar’s flat, 58 Curtis House, became the factory used by Ibrahim to mix his deadly explosives. Hundreds of empty bottles of liquid hydrogen peroxide were found. But it is believed Ibrahim made a crucial error in his calculations over the proportions of the chemicals to be used in the devices.

The jury will continue their deliberations today over charges against two more defendants, Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, the alleged “fifth bomber” who abandoned his device, and Adel Yaha, an alleged co-conspirator who left the UK a month before the attacks.

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Bush Denies Congress Access to Aides

Tuesday, July 10th, 2007

By LAURIE KELLMAN

President Bush directed former aides to defy congressional subpoenas on Monday, claiming executive privilege and prodding lawmakers closer to their first contempt citations against administration officials since Ronald Reagan was president.

It was the second time in as many weeks that Bush had cited executive privilege in resisting Congress’ investigation into the firings of U.S. attorneys.

White House Counsel Fred Fielding insisted that Bush was acting in good faith in withholding documents and directing the two aides - Fielding’s predecessor, Harriet Miers, and Bush’s former political director, Sara Taylor - to defy subpoenas ordering them to explain their roles in the firings over the winter.

In the standoff between branches of government, Fielding renewed the White House offer to let Miers, Taylor and other administration officials meet with congressional investigators off the record and with no transcript. He declined to explain anew the legal underpinnings of the privilege claim as the chairmen of the House and Senate judiciary committees had directed.

“You may be assured that the president’s assertion here comports with prior practices in similar contexts, and that it has been appropriately documented,” Fielding wrote.

Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House panel, left little doubt where the showdown was headed.

“Contrary to what the White House may believe, it is the Congress and the courts that will decide whether an invocation of executive privilege is valid, not the White House unilaterally,” the Michigan Democrat said.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said the posturing was a waste of time and money and a distraction from the questions at hand: Who ordered the firings, why, and whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should continue to serve or be fired.

Specter, a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the Democrats’ threat of taking the standoff to court on a contempt citation was spurious because the prosecutor who would consider it is a Bush appointee.

“On a case like this, does anyone believe the U.S. attorney is going to bring a criminal contempt citation against anyone?” Specter said in a telephone interview. “The U.S. attorney works for the president and it’s a discretionary matter what the U.S. attorney does.”

Historically, such standoffs over executive privilege are resolved before the full House or Senate votes on referring a congressional contempt citation to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. But rather than cooling off over the July 4th holiday, Bush and Democrats returned from the weeklong break closer to a legal confrontation.

The last contempt finding Congress sought to prosecute was against former Environmental Protection Agency official Rita Lavelle in 1983. The Democratic-led House voted 413-0 to cite her for contempt for refusing to appear before a House committee. She was later acquitted in court of the contempt charge but was convicted of perjury in a separate trial.

Just before Congress left town, Bush invoked executive privilege on subpoenas lawmakers filed for any documents Taylor and Miers received or generated about the firings. On Monday, Bush again invoked privilege on the women’s scheduled testimony for this week. Through their attorneys, Bush instructed the pair not to testify on the firings.

Lawmakers said they had plenty of questions to ask the women outside the privilege claim.

Both officials were included on e-mails about the firings released earlier this year by the Justice Department, and Miers at one point suggested the firings of all 93 federal prosecutors. Taylor also could have sent e-mails on a Republican National Committee account outside the White House, according to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, who insisted those communications were not covered by executive privilege.

The dispute squeezes Miers and Taylor between the president’s instructions and the possibility of being held in contempt of Congress. Their lawyers did not respond to requests for comment, but Leahy said he expects Taylor to appear before his panel Wednesday, as scheduled. It was unclear if Miers would appear before Conyers’ committee the next day.

Fielding invoked executive privilege in dismissing a Monday morning deadline set by Conyers and Leahy for the White House to explain and list which documents it was withholding from their committees.

“We are aware of no authority by which a congressional committee may `direct’ the executive to undertake the task of creating and providing an extensive description of every document covered by an assertion of executive privilege,” he wrote.

Bush’s counsel, a veteran of executive privilege disputes, cloaked his tough rejoinder to the Democratic committee chairmen in gentlemanly language. But his message was unequivocal: The White House won’t back down.

He argued that the committees’ “open-ended” investigation into the firings had no constitutional basis, in large part because the president has the right to hire and fire his own political appointees.

Fielding cast the impasse as a natural constitutional tension between branches of government and complained that Leahy, D-Vt., and Conyers had accused the White House of acting in something other than good faith. He called for “a presumption of goodwill on all sides.”

Democrats didn’t bite.

“The president seems to think that executive privilege is a magic mantra that can hide anything, including wrongdoing,” said New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, chairman of the Senate Democrats’ 2008 election campaign operation.

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White House ‘debating Iraq pullout’

Tuesday, July 10th, 2007

Much depends on what stand John McCain would

Senior US officials have begun debating whether George Bush, the US president, should announce his intention to withdraw US troops from Iraq.The New York Times reported that Bush had originally been mulling over a September 15 deadline to announce a pullout, when a progress report on Iraq is due to be released.

But the US president’s aides have advised him that he may need to make an announcement sooner ahead of a senate debate on the defence authorisation bill, the report said.

Many Republican senators have recently announced they can no longer support Bush’s Iraq strategy and have demanded change.

As a result, the paper reported some aides are now telling Bush that if he wants to forestall more defections, it would be wiser to announce plans for a far more narrowly defined mission for US troops that would allow for a staged pullback.

The president had originally rejected this strategy in December when it was proposed by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

“When you count up the votes that we’ve lost and the votes we’re likely to lose over the next few weeks, it looks pretty grim,” the New York Times quotes one senior official as saying.

In a sign of growing concern in the administration, Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, cancelled his Latin American tour on Sunday to attend meetings on Iraq.

Last week, Stephen Hadley, US national security advisor, was called in from a brief holiday to join discussions on Iraq, which included Karl Rove, a US political strategist and Joshua Bolten, the White House chief of staff, according to the report.

Deep concern

Officials describe Hadley as deeply concerned that the loss of Republicans could accelerate this week, a fear shared by Rove, the report said.

But they also said that Rove had warned that if Bush went too far in announcing a redeployment, the result could include a further cascade of defections - and the passage of legislation that would force a withdrawal by a specific date, the paper said.

“Everyone’s particularly worried about what happens when McCain [John, a Republican senator] gets back from Iraq,” one official is quoted as saying.

McCain has been a strong supporter of the “surge” strategy, but is facing political troubles in the race for the Republican nomination for president.

McCain’s poor performance in presidential nomination polls, attributed to his position on Iraq, has fuelled speculation that he may declare that the Iraqi government is incapable of reaching the kind of political accommodations that Washington considers necessary for overall success, the New York Times said.

Agencies

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9/11 Truth Activists Strike Motorway Lorry

Tuesday, July 10th, 2007

By Mick Meaney
RINF Alternative News

On the northbound M6 motorway, between Preston and Lancaster, 9/11 truth activists engaged in some hardcore guerilla activism by ‘branding’ a motorway advert lorry with a 9/11 truth web site.

WWW.AE911TRUTH.ORG can clearly be read from the motorway and it is expected to be seen by at least 302,400 people a week, that’s 43,200 people a day minimum.

In an anonymous message to RINF, one of the activists stated: “We hope this will inspire other groups around the country to take similar action because a short and to the point website URL can be hugely effective on motorways as it will be seen by hundreds of thousands of people every week.

“It’s very easy to do and doesn’t take much time. The benefits are enormous and since similar action was taken in September last year, we’ve noticed awareness of 9/11 truth in the area has increased dramatically,” he said.

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Presidential Pardon for Libby Rejected in U.S.

Tuesday, July 10th, 2007

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Liberties lost

Tuesday, July 10th, 2007

Baltimore Sun

Besides all his other gifts, Thomas Jefferson appears to have been prophetic. -In his first presidential inaugural address in 1801, he ticked off a long list of essential principles of government, featuring highlights of the Bill of Rights, and called preservation of the government “in its whole constitutional vigor” the “anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad.” These principles “should be the creed of our political faith,” he said. “Should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty and safety.”

Such moments of error or alarm have sent the government off on dangerous tangents from time to time over the years - but rarely with more wide-ranging consequences than the course embarked upon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. On this 231st anniversary of Jefferson’s eloquent Declaration of Independence from British rule, the United States is desperately in need of restoring the rights and freedoms surrendered in a false bid for security that has perversely put the nation at greater risk.

Consider what has been lost.

Sweeping federal measures, most of them heavily cloaked in secrecy, have robbed Americans of privacy, due process of law, even freedom of movement. Warrantless wiretaps, e-mail surveillance, national security letters secretly demanding information on thousands of citizens and, soon to come, the equivalent of national ID cards - all would be abominations to Jefferson.

America’s suspected enemies have fared worse. They have been tortured, held indefinitely without charge and spirited away to secret prisons abroad so no one knows who they are or what has happened to them.

The United States has been fortunate to have suffered no terrorist attacks since 9/11, but there’s little evidence that any of these extraordinary measures have had anything to do with that. What they have done is to further isolate the United States at a time when the war in Iraq has left America with no global good will to spare. And Iraq has now become a proving ground for development of terrorist weaponry, such as the roadside bomb, and tactics.

In the weeks and months after 9/11, when the Bush administration was paring back civil liberties through the cynically named Patriot Act and travelers were coping with what would become increasingly burdensome restrictions, fearful Americans were persuaded to accept the sacrifice in return for a greater measure of safety.

But Jefferson would argue that was a false choice. Liberty is the source of security. An open, accountable government is the best protection against tyranny and incompetence. Travel restrictions in the form of identity papers - aimed not at terrorists but at illegal immigrants - represent the cost of unchecked power on the quality of American life.

The portrait now emerging of Vice President Dick Cheney as the unseen hand behind many of the more outrageous violations of civil liberties, aided in part by Alberto R. Gonzales, the lapdog of an attorney general, powerfully underscores Jefferson’s point that the time has come to retrace these missteps and get back on the road to peace, liberty and safety.

Congress, now in Democratic hands partly because of a backlash at these heavy-handed tactics, should begin the process by getting out all the facts. Americans have a right - and a responsibility - to know what’s being done in their name and what effect it’s having.

Some might argue that such a public review would allow America’s enemies to learn its secrets. Experience suggests, though, that secrecy often shields abuse and simple bungling. For example, Justice Department auditors reported in March that the FBI had misused, sometimes illegally, the national security letters through which it demands, with no prior court approval and no notice to the individual involved, personal information about Americans. The FBI acknowledges perhaps 1,000 such instances.

America’s history of violating constitutional restraints in times of perceived peril is a long one. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus protections against unlawful detention during the Civil War. Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered Japanese-Americans confined to camps during World War II. The FBI’s history of misdeeds has roots that predate its creation, when J. Edgar Hoover, who would later become the bureau’s first director, used a Justice Department perch to send federal agents on a brutal crackdown of more than 10,000 suspected communists in 1919.

During the Cold War and turmoil of the Vietnam War era, Mr. Hoover’s FBI would direct its anti-subversive energies at alleged spies, war protesters and civil rights activists as well as suspected communists.

Records released last week detail a similarly sordid history of the CIA’s stepping over constitutional hurdles to plot the assassination of foreign leaders, spy on American journalists and political dissidents, and confine a Soviet defector for three years before he was released without charges.

Public outrage at the discovery of such clandestine abuses has typically resulted in the sort of corrective action Jefferson recommended. Such a process may be under way soon again as Congress and the courts begin to apply some restraints on an administration that as much as or more than any other has considered itself above the law. There’s little time to waste before Americans become so accustomed to their lost liberty that the loss becomes acceptable.

A government that spies upon its citizens, evades the courts and feels no compulsion to explain itself beyond vague warnings of security threats must be brought into check. The damage caused by terrorists on 9/11 begins to pale against the havoc wreaked upon America by America itself.

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‘Use children as medicine guinea pigs’

Tuesday, July 10th, 2007

Children should be used as guinea pigs in clinical research to speed up medical breakthroughs and improve treatment for them, a leading expert says.

About 40 per cent of medicines prescribed to children have never been tested on them. For newborn babies, the figure rises to 90 per cent.

But scientists will only make real breakthroughs in children’s medicine if they include children in research programmes as well as adults, Prof John Warner, a consultant paediatrician, says today at the opening of the Paediatric Research Unit in central London, Britain’s first unit solely devoted to paediatric clinical research.

Most drug research is carried out on adults because it is ethically simpler to obtain consent from them. Critics complain that children are not merely small adults and that therapeutic and side effects can vary widely with age.

There is also a problem with dosing. Doctors are often forced to guess at what the child dose will be.

Source

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