BREAKING: Discover How A Slacker Makes $100,000 A Year!

WEBMASTERS! Get Your Website To The Top Of Google

House Democrats Pull War Funding From Budget Offer

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

The GOP is negotiating in bad faith, Obey says.

A Democratic deal to give President Bush some war funding in exchange for additional domestic spending appeared to collapse last night after House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.) accused Republicans of bargaining in bad faith.

Instead, Obey said he will push a huge spending bill that would hew to the president’s spending limit by stripping it of all lawmakers’ pet projects, as well as most of the Bush administration’s top priorities. It would also contain no money for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

”Absent a Republican willingness to sit down and work out a reasonable compromise, I think we ought to end the game and go to the president’s numbers,” Obey said. “I was willing to listen to the argument that we ought to at least add more for Afghanistan, but when the White House refuses to compromise, when the White House continues to stick it in our eye, I say to hell with it.”

House Democratic leaders were scheduled to complete work last night on a $520 billion spending bill that included $11 billion in funding for domestic programs above the president’s request, half of what Democrats had initially approved. The bill would have also contained $30 billion for the war in Afghanistan, upon which the Senate would have added billions more for Iraq before final congressional approval.

But a stern veto threat this weekend from White House budget director Jim Nussle put the deal in jeopardy, and Obey said he is prepared for a long standoff with the White House.

”If anybody thinks we can get out of here this week, they’re smoking something illegal,” he said.

Obey’s proposal would ax about 9,500 home-district and home-state projects worth a total of $9.5 billion, according to Keith Ashdown, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group. Republicans inserted about 40 percent of those projects. Not all of that money could be eliminated, however. The budget of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is parceled out as home-district projects, and Congress has no intention of eliminating the Army Corps.

Obey would not specify where the remaining billions would come from to reach Bush’s bottom line, beyond saying the money would be shaved from the president’s priorities. One possibility would be funding for abstinence education. Other targets could be nuclear weapons research and development in the Energy Department, NASA programs and high-technology border security efforts that have come under criticism for being wasteful and ineffective, said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense.
ad_icon

Obey’s proposal did not move the White House to negotiate, spokesman Tony Fratto said. “Different day, different Democrat, different direction. Our position hasn’t changed,” Fratto said.

House Republican leaders would be happy to take Obey’s offer on spending, GOP aides said yesterday. But rank-and-file lawmakers from both parties could revolt. Home-district projects - known as earmarks - were stripped from the fiscal 2007 spending bills early this year, after Democrats took control of Congress and hastily disposed of budget bills their Republican predecessors had not passed. Earmarks were also eliminated from the 2006 appropriations bill that funded labor, health and education programs, the biggest domestic spending bill of the year.

”There are a lot of people who were very disappointed last year when nobody got any earmarks. If they do it again for the second year in a row, it will be a very bitter pill to swallow,” said Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), an appropriator who complained that he could lose $400,000 he needs for the Abraham Lincoln bicentennial celebration, slated to begin Feb. 12.

LaHood is not the only Republican appropriator who is angry at the White House and at GOP leaders who have refused to negotiate with Democrats on domestic spending levels. In recent days, Rep. David L. Hobson (Ohio), ranking Republican on the Appropriations subcommittee in charge of energy and water projects, had a heated discussion with House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), arguing that Boehner should come off his hard line.

Rep. James T. Walsh (N.Y.), another senior Republican appropriator, took to the House floor to argue: “If the proposal is to split the difference, to reduce the amount of spending above the president’s request by $11 billion, I would advise the president to take yes for an answer.”

But most Republicans are expected to fall in line, as the GOP leadership pushes to regain the mantle of small-government conservatism. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), another member of the Appropriations Committee, said Republican lawmakers will face no political jeopardy for not bringing money home for their districts, because they can simply blame Democrats.

”The smartest thing for [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi to do is to realize the White House always wins these spending contests,” he said, advising her to “cut your losses, get out of town and say Bush is still relevant” to the legislative process.

That still leaves the war-funding issue unresolved. Democratic leadership aides on Capitol Hill concede that at some point, Republicans can add some money for Iraq as a stripped-down spending bill winds through Congress. But plans for a quick end to the showdown appear to be fading.

”It is extraordinary that the president would request an 11 percent increase for the Department of Defense, a 12 percent increase for foreign aid, and $195 billion of emergency funding for the war while asserting that a 4.7 percent increase for domestic programs is fiscally irresponsible,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) said.

Have Your Say: House Democrats Pull War Funding From Budget Offer
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Iraqi Policewomen Told To Surrender Their Weapons

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

Los Angeles Times

The Iraqi government has ordered all policewomen to hand in their guns for redistribution to men or face having their pay withheld, thwarting a U.S. initiative to bring women into the nation’s police force.

The Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, issued the order late last month, according to ministry documents, U.S. officials and several of the women. It affects all officers who have earned the title “policewoman” by graduating from the police academy. It does not apply to men in the same type of jobs.

Critics say the move is the latest sign of the religious and cultural conservatism that has taken hold in Iraq since Saddam Hussein’s ouster ushered in a government dominated by Shiite Muslims. Now, that tendency is hampering efforts to bring stability to Iraq by driving women from the force, said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. David Phillips, who has led the effort to recruit female officers.

Have Your Say: Iraqi Policewomen Told To Surrender Their Weapons
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Lawyer: CIA may have more interrogation tapes

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

White House tacitly approved destruction of CIA waterboarding tapes, former official says

John Byrne

Contrary to the official CIA line, the lawyer for a captured prisoner revealed that her client reported seeing videocameras in interrogation rooms and on the wall of the prison in 2003 — a year after the CIA said interrogations had stopped, suggesting there may be yet more tapes.

“The former prisoner who reported seeing cameras, Muhammad Bashmilah of Yemen, was seized by Jordanian intelligence agents in 2003 and turned over to the C.I.A., according to an investigation by Amnesty International, the human rights advocacy organization,” the New York Times reported Tuesday. “He was flown from Jordan to Afghanistan in October 2003 and held there until April 2004, when he was flown by plane and helicopter to a C.I.A. jail in an unidentified country, Amnesty found. Mr. Bashmilah and two other Yemeni men held with him were flown to Yemen in May 2005 and later released.”

“Meg Satterthwaite, a director of the International Human Rights Clinic at New York University who is representing Mr. Bashmilah in a lawsuit, said Mr. Bashmilah described cameras both in his cells and in interrogation rooms, some on tripods and some on the wall,” the paper added. She said his descriptions of his imprisonment, in hours of conversation in Yemen and by phone this year, were lucid and detailed.

This comes in contrast to a statement from CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden, who told agency employees in a message Tuesday that “videotaping stopped in 2002,” after officials “determined that its documentary reporting was full and exacting, removing any need for tapes.”

What’s more, the White House was pressed by the agency on numerous occasions as to whether the existing tapes — showing waterboarding of detainees — should be kept.

Even after two years of debate among government agencies, the White House declined to order the CIA to retain videotapes showing hundreds of hours of interrogations of two terror suspects, according to officials who spoke under condition of anonymity in Tuesday’s New York Times.

“They never told us, ‘Hell, no,’” the source, described as a former senior intelligence official, said. “If somebody had said, ‘You cannot destroy them,’ we would not have destroyed them.”

The White House and the Justice Department advised against destroying the tapes in 2003. But after two years of inter-agency deliberation and CIA pressure on the White House to deliver a clear answer, the tapes were destroyed after clearance from lawyers from the CIA’s clandestine service.

Jose Rodriguez, the former chief of the then-Directorate of Operations, authorized the tapes destruction.

The official quoted said Rodriguez destroyed the tapes because he was concerned for the safety of the CIA agents shown on the recordings.

Read the full Times article here.

Have Your Say: Lawyer: CIA may have more interrogation tapes
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

CIA chief to appear before Congress

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

General Michael Hayden, head of the CIA, is to appear before the US congress to explain why his agency destroyed video footage of interrogations.

Hayden was going before a closed session of the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday.

He will appear before the House of Representatives’ intelligence committee on Wednesday, also in secret.

The CIA chief told employees last week that the agency had taped the interrogations of two alleged terrorists in 2002.

He said congress was notified in 2003 both of the tapes’ existence and the intent to destroy them.

The CIA destroyed the tapes in November of 2005. When congress was notified and in what detail remains unclear.Multiple investigations have begun into who approved the decision to destroy the tapes and why.

One of the recorded interrogations was the “waterboarding”, or simulated drowning, of Abu Zubaydah, suspected to be a senior member of al-Qaeda

Justification

The leader of the CIA team interrogating him said it was necessary to use the technique to extract information from suspects in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001.

John Kiriakou, now retired, told ABC News he had no knowledge that the session was being recorded or that the tapes were subsequently destroyed.

Kiriakou said: “He was able to withstand the waterboarding for quite some time - about 30-35 seconds.”

“[A] short time afterwards, in [the] next day or so, he told his interrogators that Allah had visited him in his cell at night and told him to co-operate because his co-operation would make it easier on the other brothers who’d been captured.”

When asked if the waterboarding broke Abu Zubaydah, Kiriakou said: “I think it did, yes.”

He said the use of the technique, which critics have cited as evidence of US torture, provided information to disrupt up to a dozen attacks.

“We are Americans and we’re better than this and we shouldn’t be doing this kind of thing.

“But at the same time, what happens if we don’t waterboard a person and we don’t get that nugget of information? I would have trouble forgiving myself.”

Torture?

Meanwhile, the CIA has said it no longer uses waterboarding and the Bush administration has repeatedly denied authorising torture.

George Bush, the US president, said CIA procedures were safe, lawful and necessary.

Human-rights groups say, quite to the contary, that it is clearly torture.

International law defines torture as “an act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him … information or a confession.”

But when asked about the use of waterboarding, Dick Cheney, said: “Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives? Well, it’s a no-brainer for me, but for a while there I was criticised as being the vice president for torture.

“We don’t torture. That’s not what we’re involved in.”

Al Jazeera and agencies

Have Your Say: CIA chief to appear before Congress
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

US soldier charged with murder heads to court

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

US soldier charged with murdering Iraqi civilians heads to court

The Associated Press

A U.S. soldier accused of murdering and assaulting Iraqi civilians was scheduled to appear in military court Tuesday in a hearing aimed at determining whether he should face a court martial.

Sgt. Leonardo Trevino, 30, is charged with premeditated murder, attempted murder, assault and obstruction of justice for in connection with the incidents in the volatile Iraqi city of Muddadiyah in June 24. Authorities maintain Trevino shot two detained civilians — killing one, and allegedly assaulted another civilian who was lying on the floor.

The incidents were detailed in an Army document obtained by the San Antonio Express-News through the Freedom of Information Act.

Army officials have not commented on the case. But family members and Trevino’s attorney said the sniper with the Fort Hood-based1st Cavalry Division has been falsely accused.

The Article 32 hearing Tuesday is similar to a civilian grand jury hearing and aims at determining whether sufficient evidence exists to move the case forward.

His is the latest of several cases in which U.S. troops have been accused of assaulting or killing Iraqi civilians. Among the most high profile cases were the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha by a Marine squad and the rape-slaying of an Iraqi girl and the murder of her family in Hamandia, also allegedly by Marines.

The charge sheet also alleges that Trevino tried to force a soldier to murder a detainee and told a soldier to “drop a pistol” near a detainee who had been shot. The Army accuses Trevino tried to hamper the investigation into the incident.

Trevino’s attorney told the newspaper for its Tuesday edition that the allegations are connected to an incident in a house in a “hostile neighborhood.”

Relatives said Trevino was on his second tour of duty in Iraq this summer and had lost a close comrade in a roadside bomb explosion less than one month before the alleged crime.

Have Your Say: US soldier charged with murder heads to court
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

The return of the ID card debate

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

The UK Government’s embarrassing loss of 25 million citizens’ personal details has reignited the ID card debate

By Pete Swabey

ID cards data protection

It was the most highly publicised data breach of all time. And when details of the loss by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) of 25 million UK citizens’ personal data emerged in November 2007, it was not long before the nation’s attention turned to the Government’s controversial proposals for a national identity card.

Up to 25 million Britons now face worries that their bank details could fall into criminal hands, after two HMRC disks containing their details were lost in the post. So does data loss on that scale demonstrate that the state should not attempt to store large volumes of personal data? Or does it actually demonstrate that citizens need the security that a biometric ID card would bring?

Under the current ID card proposals, the UK Government would store an unprecedented volume of sensitive personal information – and given its reputation on protecting data, those plans need rethinking, insists George Osborne, the shadow Chancellor. The child benefit scandal should be the “final blow” for the national ID card scheme, he says: “They simply cannot be trusted with people’s personal details.”

Conversely, Government officials believe that the mistakes that led to the HMRC’s data breach underscore the need for a national ID system. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith argues that the identity system will make ID fraud harder by enforcing dual authentication of biographic details – similar to those lost by HMRC – with biometric data. The biographic and biometric data will be stored in separate databases. “It is an increased protection even against times when people’s biographic details are actually stolen or lost,” argues Smith.

Many business leaders will recognise the ‘chicken and egg’ dilemma facing the Government. It insists the ID card is central to plans for offering better public services, yet there may be reluctance to hand over additional information when its track record on data protection is seemingly so lamentable.

Have Your Say: The return of the ID card debate
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report in our forum .

Related News

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Political News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Translate: