RK Articles Only

Twice The Shame, McCain's Clear Cowardice

2008-08-22T17:39:00.003-06:00

That McCain was more shaken up by the South Carolina voters in the 2000 GOP primary being upset with his ad tying Bush Jr to Clinton, instead of the "anonymous" attacks on his own adopted daughter Bridget, and then made peace with those same scumbags who slimed her, all for political gain, shows McCain does not have the character, integrity or honor to be President. The full picture comes from two articles, one about the attacks on his daughter, the other about losing the 2000 SC Republican primary.

The anatomy of a smear campaign

By Richard H. Davis | March 21, 2004

Every presidential campaign has its share of hard-ball political tactics, but nothing is more discomforting than a smear campaign. The deeply personal, usually anonymous allegations that make up a smear campaign are aimed at a candidate's most precious asset: his reputation. The reason this blackest of the dark arts is likely to continue is simple: It often works.

The premise of any smear campaign rests on a central truth of politics: Most of us will vote for a candidate we like and respect, even if we don't agree with him on every issue. But if you can cripple a voter's basic trust in a candidate, you can probably turn his vote. The idea is to find some piece of personal information that is tawdry enough to raise doubts, repelling a candidate's natural supporters.

All campaigns do extensive research into their opponent's voting record and personal life. This so-called "oppo research" involves searching databases, combing through press clips, and asking questions of people who know (and preferably dislike) your opponent. It's not hard to turn up something a candidate would rather not see on the front page of The Boston Globe.

It's not necessary, however, for a smear to be true to be effective. The most effective smears are based on a kernel of truth and applied in a way that exploits a candidate's political weakness.

Having run Senator John McCain's campaign for president, I can recount a textbook example of a smear made against McCain in South Carolina during the 2000 presidential primary. We had just swept into the state from New Hampshire, where we had racked up a shocking, 19-point win over the heavily favored George W. Bush. What followed was a primary campaign that would make history for its negativity.

In South Carolina, Bush Republicans were facing an opponent who was popular for his straight talk and Vietnam war record. They knew that if McCain won in South Carolina, he would likely win the nomination. With few substantive differences between Bush and McCain, the campaign was bound to turn personal. The situation was ripe for a smear.

It didn't take much research to turn up a seemingly innocuous fact about the McCains: John and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter named Bridget. Cindy found Bridget at Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh, brought her to the United States for medical treatment, and the family ultimately adopted her. Bridget has dark skin.

Anonymous opponents used "push polling" to suggest that McCain's Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. In push polling, a voter gets a call, ostensibly from a polling company, asking which candidate the voter supports. In this case, if the "pollster" determined that the person was a McCain supporter, he made statements designed to create doubt about the senator.

Thus, the "pollsters" asked McCain supporters if they would be more or less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious South, that's not a minor charge. We had no idea who made the phone calls, who paid for them, or how many calls were made. Effective and anonymous: the perfect smear campaign.

Some aspects of this smear were hardly so subtle. Bob Jones University professor Richard Hand sent an e-mail to "fellow South Carolinians" stating that McCain had "chosen to sire children without marriage." It didn't take long for mainstream media to carry the charge. CNN interviewed Hand and put him on the spot: "Professor, you say that this man had children out of wedlock. He did not have children out of wedlock." Hand replied, "Wait a minute, that's a universal negative. Can you prove that there aren't any?"

Campaigns have various ways of dealing with smears. They can refute the lies, or they can ignore them and run the risk of the smear spreading. But "if you're responding, you're losing." Rebutting tawdry attacks focuses public attention on them, and prevents the campaign from talking issues.

We chose to address the attacks by trying to get the media to focus on the dishonesty of the allegations and to find out who was making them. We also pledged to raise the level of debate by refusing to run any further negative ads -- a promise we kept, though it probably cost us the race. We never did find out who perpetrated these smears, but they worked: We lost South Carolina by a wide margin.

The only way to stop the expected mud-slinging in 2004 is for both President Bush and Senator Kerry to publicly order their supporters not to go there. But if they do, their behavior would be the exception, not the rule.

Richard H. Davis is president of the Reform Institute and a partner in Davis Manafort, a political consulting firm. He was a fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics in 2002. He was campaign manager for John McCain in 2000 and has worked in every presidential campaign since 1980.

© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.

October 19, 2007

The Long Run

Confronting Ghosts of 2000 in South Carolina

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

CHARLESTON, S.C. — When Senator John McCain and his wife campaign in South Carolina these days, people pull them aside to apologize for what happened during the presidential primary here in 2000.

With its early date, Southern location and reputation for road testing conservative credentials, the South Carolina primary is a proving ground for any Republican who longs to be president.

But as Mr. McCain seeks the Republican nomination again, the state is also a painful symbol of the brutality of American politics, the place that derailed his 2000 bid and, ultimately, helped reshape him into the candidate he is today.

“He would tell you he’s the same guy and they’re over it and I think on many levels they are,” said John Weaver, Mr. McCain’s former chief political strategist. “But it changes you.”

A smear campaign during the primary in February 2000 here had many in South Carolina falsely believing that Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, was a drug addict and that the couple’s adopted daughter, Bridget, was the product of an illicit union. Mr. McCain’s patriotism, mental well-being and sexuality were also viciously called into question.

In the years that followed, many around Mr. McCain said, the South Carolina ghosts were not easily exorcised for Mr. McCain or the people close to him. Just a few months ago, at the onset of this campaign, Bridget, now 16, summoned Mr. McCain’s aides and asked them to explain in detail what had happened in South Carolina and to give assurances that it would not happen again.

Mrs. McCain was also unsure about another run. The ultimate decision was in her hands, she said, and she was deeply influenced by the feelings of Bridget, who only learned about the events of 2000 when she Googled herself last year.

“She was a very important part of the process in deciding if we were going to run,” Mrs. McCain said. “She wanted to know the whole history of it.”

On the campaign bus, Mrs. McCain spoke recently of the people from across South Carolina who had made a point of apologizing to her about the pain her family endured in 2000.

As the McCains traveled throughout the state that year, they began to feel, aides said, as if they were being pelted by hail from an underground whispering campaign of unknown origin — a telephone call from a push pollster here, a nasty anonymous flier there — that they could barely keep pace with each attack.

“But we’re past that,” Mrs. McCain said, catching her husband’s eye. “We’ve moved on.”

Mr. McCain, in a recent interview, said that after losing the South Carolina primary he felt sorry for himself and was angry.

“You know, How could this happen? Woe is me!” Mr. McCain said. “Then, after a couple of days, I thought, Look, I’m the senator from Arizona; the people of Arizona expect me to represent them in the Senate, not feel sorry for myself because of something that happened in a political campaign.”

In his efforts both to fight back here in 2000 and to reconcile his loss to George W. Bush, Mr. McCain saw his reputation as a reformer and an outsider — one he had solidified in his stunning victory in the New Hampshire primary just weeks before — lacerated.

The bruising episode left him rancorous toward Mr. Bush, yet schooled in what it takes to win. Mr. McCain fell into a “very dark place,” in the words of one acquaintance, re-emerging as a more pragmatic, traditional Republican who now regularly reaches out to many of Mr. Bush’s allies, speaks comfortably to religious conservatives and has all but abandoned the maverick story line of 2000.

“He regrouped, and he dug real deep to figure out how to make the best of that situation,” said the acquaintance, Ed McMullen, who heads a South Carolina public policy group.

Several top campaign aides cited a single moment that marked a turning point in the South Carolina campaign, and in Mr. McCain himself. In an effort to fight back, the McCain campaign had gone negative, broadcasting a television advertisement that accused Mr. Bush of twisting the truth “like Clinton,” a reference to President Bill Clinton.

At a town-hall-style meeting in Spartanburg after the advertisement ran, a woman stood up, her voice shaking. She recalled how her 13-year-old son had received a phone call from a push pollster calling Mr. McCain a liar and a cheat.

“‘A man got on the phone and talked about how dishonest you were,’" Mr. Weaver recalled her saying. “‘My son had admired you, and now he doesn’t know what to believe.’”

Afterward, on the bus, Mr. McCain, who was shaken by how negative a turn the primary had taken, instructed his staff to pull the negative advertisements and “stop trying to defend ourselves,” Mr. Weaver said.

“We tried to talk him out of this,” Mr. Weaver said. “But John was so impacted by that woman’s comments, we just did it.”

Nancy Snow, a volunteer on the McCain campaign, was at that meeting, too, and remembered seeing the life drain from Mr. McCain’s face.

Ms. Snow said of Mr. McCain’s expression: “He looked like he felt terrible, and terrible for that boy, because he knew he had so many young people supporting him before that. It was kind of like the air had gone out of the room.”

In the process, Mr. McCain changed from an underdog Republican seemingly determined to remake his party in his own image — one that would be divorced from religiousness and without dogmatic socially conservative notions — to a candidate who now claims that he prefers a Christian in the White House.

Right after his bitter loss in 2000, Mr. McCain stood before an audience in Virginia and said defiantly: “We are the party of Ronald Reagan, not Pat Robertson. We are the party of Theodore Roosevelt, not the party of special interests. We are the party of Abraham Lincoln, not Bob Jones.”

The latter was a reference to Bob Jones University, where Mr. Bush had kicked off his South Carolina campaign and which, at the time, did not permit interracial dating on its campus.

Last year, by contrast, Mr. McCain said he would consider speaking at Bob Jones University. Further, while Mr. McCain denounced Jerry Falwell in 2000 as one of the United States’ “agents of intolerance,” he eagerly accepted Mr. Falwell’s invitation last year to be the graduation speaker at Liberty University, which Mr. Falwell founded.

And Mr. McCain, who always seemed uncomfortable in 2000 making statements about his own religious beliefs, recently told a reporter he would prefer a Christian as president of the United States over someone of a different faith, saying the affiliation would be “an important part of our qualifications to lead.”

As the South Carolina primary loomed in February 2000, aides to both Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush were regrouping from the outcome of the contest on Feb. 1 in New Hampshire. Mr. McCain won by an astonishing 18 points.

The Bush team, stung by the New Hampshire blowout, knew that South Carolina could not be lost, and while the McCain campaign was celebrating, the Bush team was shifting into high gear.

Even as Mr. McCain’s plane was aloft over the state from New Hampshire, Bush supporters had taken to the airwaves, accusing Mr. McCain of having accomplished little as a senator and suggesting he was out of step with conservative South Carolina.

“I remember thinking,” said Roy Fletcher, who was Mr. McCain’s deputy campaign manager, “these people knew they were going to get their butts pounded and they already had this attack planned.”

Evidently unnerved, the McCain campaign stumbled. Addressing the issue of the use of the Confederate battle flag — a subject of passionate debate in South Carolina — Mr. McCain vacillated. He called the flag “offensive” and a “symbol of racism and slavery,” but later backed off those remarks, referring to it as “a symbol of heritage,” the same language flag supporters used in explaining why it flew over the statehouse.

“I feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win the South Carolina primary,” Mr. McCain later conceded. “So I chose to compromise my principles.”

Perhaps most significantly, though, an underground campaign was bubbling all around.

People in some areas of South Carolina began to receive phone calls in which self-described pollsters would ask, “Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?”

It was a reference to Bridget, who was adopted as a baby from an orphanage in Bangladesh and is darker skinned than the rest of the McCain family. Richard Hand, a professor at Bob Jones University, sent an e-mail message to “fellow South Carolinians” telling recipients that Mr. McCain had “chosen to sire children without marriage.”

Literature began to pepper the windshields of cars at political events suggesting that Mr. McCain had committed treason while a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, that he was mentally unstable after years in a P.O.W. camp, that he was the homosexual candidate and that Mrs. McCain, who had admitted to abusing prescription drugs years earlier, was an addict.

“You had a sense of besiegement daily,” said Mark Salter, a longtime aide to Mr. McCain.

The McCain team had trouble nailing down the origin of the dirt.

“One time in Hilton Head, we chased these punks down the block who were handing them out,” said State Representative James H. Merrill, the Republican state majority leader, “and when we got to them and asked them where they got them, they said some guy in a red pickup truck said, ‘Hey do you wanna make $100?’”

Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s political adviser, and the entire Bush team strongly denied involvement, though it was clear Mr. Bush was the beneficiary of the campaign. When the McCain camp did fight back, it chose Mr. Bush as the target — and a method that backfired.

After promising a positive campaign, Mr. McCain’s campaign put together two negative advertisements, including the one accusing Mr. Bush of twisting the truth “like Clinton.” The advertisement offended many Republicans in the state, who considered a comparison to Mr. Clinton, then president and unpopular among Republicans here, beyond the pale.

“We pulled the pedestal right from under him,” recalled Dan Schnur, a spokesman for the campaign in 2000. “That negative ad turned him into just another career politician. Once we took that halo off of him, there was no way to get it back.”

Charlie Condon, a former South Carolina attorney general who supported Mr. Bush in 2000 and is now co-chairman of Mr. McCain’s South Carolina committee, said the downward spiral the contest took was not surprising.

“Our primaries have a way of doing that,” Mr. Condon said. “There is a tradition of it, it is accepted behavior, and frankly it works.”

He added, “There are no regrets about 2000. To this day I don’t have one. If someone did those things, shame on them. But I did see that there was a need for bringing up issues.”

Michael Cooper contributed reporting.

Double The Stupidity, Double The Fun

2008-07-31T21:40:00.006-06:00

Apparently, Al-Jazeera has a new racket, planning to kidnap politicians.

Ex-G.I. candidate finds election battle all too real

Updated Monday, July 28th 2008, 2:44 PM

Retired Army Lt. Col. Allen West thought he'd left behind the specters of Iraq when he decided to run for Congress in Florida. But a recent interview request lead him to suspect he was a target for kidnapping.

West's combat instincts flared a few days ago when his campaign office got a call from a young woman who identified herself as a booker for the Al Jazeera network's English-language channel.

"She told my staff that she wanted to talk about the perceived uptick in violence in Afghanistan," West tells us. "I found that strange, since I haven't been in Afghanistan in eight months. There are a lot of other people better qualified to speak to that subject.

"But my b.s. flag really went up when they said they wanted my address, to pick me up at night. They said they would send a car but wouldn't tell me where it was going.

"I don't know if it was a kidnapping attempt," says West, who is challenging first-term Democratic Rep. Ron Klein in the Sunshine State. "But I am not going to entrust Al Jazeera with my life. I said, ‘Cancel the interview!'"

West believes he has every reason to be wary. In 2003, while he was serving in the Sunni Triangle, his unit was targeted for an ambush. West's controversial questioning of a suspect (he fired his pistol next to the suspect's head) helped foil the assassination plot. After facing a possible court-martial for the mock execution, West was allowed to retire with a full pension.

"We were concerned about a link to the Iraq incident," says West's press secretary, Donna Brosemer. "I spoke with the FBI, and they said we were right to have alerted them."

Molly Conroy, a spokeswoman for Al Jazeera English, called the kidnapping scenario "outlandish" and said the call was legit, though she says the network never ordered a car.

West is happy he bailed. "I was not about to be a puppet for Al Jazeera," says the candidate, whose district includes fellow conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge and Ann Coulter. "You know they are going to pull some tricks. I will not validate their network, which has helped torment our men and women in uniform."

"AJE makes every effort to report all sides of the story," contends Conroy, noting that past guests have included Republicans John McCain, Karen Hughes and Michael Chertoff. "It is unfortunate that the individuals making allegations against the channel have clearly never taken the opportunity to watch it."

Mayor Langford refuses to do interview with Al-Jazeera reporters

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

JOSEPH D. BRYANT
News staff writer

Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford Tuesday refused to be interviewed by reporters from Middle Eastern news network Al-Jazeera English because he opposes the group's coverage of terrorist activities and its graphic display of hostages.

Reporters were in town to do a story about Langford's plan for a four-day work week for city employees. The new schedule, set to begin next week, involves most of the city's 4,000 employees. That plan already received national and international attention soon after it was announced last month.

Al-Jazeera English is the 24-hour English-language news channel, headquartered in Doha, Qatar. Al-Jazeera has been criticized for its news programming including coverage of American military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan and its broadcasting of taped messages from terrorist leaders including Osama bin Laden.

"I refuse to give an interview because I don't know how that interview will be interpreted 10,000 miles away," Langford said. "This country comes before personal ego. This is bigger than all that. We have enough people damaging America without me joining them."

Langford, who served five years in the Air Force, said he could not participate in an organization that showed little regard for American lives in its coverage.

Langford's staff said the network contacted City Hall Monday telling them of plans to attend today's council meeting.

"They were told in advance that the mayor would not do an interview, and they came anyway, which they have the right to do," said Deborah Vance, Langford's chief of staff. "The Council Chamber is a public chamber."

The mayor today did interviews with reporters from CNN and ABC News for stories on how the nation is handling $4-a-gallon gas prices. Langford had already been featured on the Fox News cable channel and "ABC World News Tonight" after announcing the new work schedule.

While Langford did not talk to Al-Jazeera, Councilman William Bell did. Bell said he was asked by Council President Carole Smitherman to talk to the crew. The interview lasted a few minutes and included basic questions about energy conservation and what people are doing to save on rising fuel costs.

"I didn't detect any hidden political agenda," Bell said. "I just answered the questions that were given. It is what it is. We are going to a four-day work week, and the reason we did that was the cost of transportation."

While the mayor disagrees with the organization's ethics, he has a responsibility to represent the city and his policy by talking to them, said George Daniels, assistant professor of journalism at the University of Alabama.

In addition, Daniels said, if the mayor is serious about landing the Olympics for 2020, then he must be open to the international press.

"If you're talking about making the city an international city, a city that's going to attract the attention of the world, it would seem to me that you would be willing to talk to the media from around the world," he said.

E-mail: jbryant@bhamnews.com

GOP Youth Having A Tough Time, Pity Party Ensues

2008-07-22T08:57:00.002-06:00

Well Boo-Fucking-Hoo, cry me a fucking river.

Young Republicans, Blue About the Prospects Ahead

Gen-Nexters Are Feeling Left Out of the Party

By Krissah Williams Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 22, 2008; C01

David All glanced around Top of the Hill bar and saw the future of the Republican Party. It looked dim. A who's who of young conservatives had gathered, but they were few, and they were frustrated.

Here were the executive director of the Young Republicans, and the 20-something who helped steer Fred Thompson's Internet operation, and the young woman who put Mitt Romney's Web site on the map, and the 24-year-old staffer for Newt Gingrich's American Solutions for Winning the Future, who had brought them all together to cry in their free Blue Moon beer. The crowd was mostly white and mostly male, dressed in slacks and starched shirts. For most of them, Ronald Reagan and the good times he personified for conservatives were not even vague memories.

"When Reagan was president, I was 9 years old, doing cannonballs and watching 'Rambo,' " says All, 29, who prominently displays the requisite grip-and-grin photos of himself with President Bush in the office of his own L Street consulting firm. He recalled that first Republican presidential debate of the 2008 campaign, held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California; it was a veritable Reagan love-fest, with each contender claiming to be more like the conservative icon than his opponents. They sounded like old fogies and intoned the icon's name at least a dozen times.

"For me, I don't even know what that means," All says. "The Republicans are sort of talking down to Gen-Nexters, not bringing them in."

"You don't hear Barack Obama going around saying, 'I'm John F. Kennedy.' He's saying, 'I'm Barack Obama,' " All says. "There's a reason for that. He's inspiring an entire generation, and it's a generation that's trying to change the world in 160 characters or less through text messages."

And John McCain? His campaign has never sent All a text message, he complains. It's the little things like that, along with poor communication on the big issues such as Iraq and the economy, that have caused the GOP brand to slip with younger Americans, even as they have grown more political.

Voters under 30 are more than twice as likely to identify themselves as Democrats, according to the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll.

All and his friends bravely offer bromides to fight off despair:

"I think the Republican Party is staring down a very long, dark, quiet night," All says.

"It's always darkest before the dawn," says Mindy Finn, 27, who ran Romney's site.

"It's a challenging time right now, and I think there's a lot of people searching for a new identity, new leaders," says Robert Bluey, 28, a blogger who is editor in chief of the Heritage Foundation's Web site and director of its Center for Media and Public Policy. "Sometimes it will take some cleansing before it gets better."

Republicans haven't always been so disconnected. A quarter-century ago, Reagan charmed young voters and won 59 percent of their vote in 1984. In 1992, on the heels of the Reagan Revolution, voters under 30 split their allegiance about evenly between the two major parties. But every presidential cycle since then, Democrats have gained ground. This year, according to the Post-ABC poll, 44 percent of those under 30 call themselves Democrats, and only 18 percent identify as Republicans.

Both parties had a tendency to shrug off the youth and young adult vote, because as a group they have been the least reliable to turn out on Election Day. But this year, record numbers have registered to vote and shown up at the polls. In the swing state of Virginia alone, 90,000 people under age 34 recently joined the voter rolls.

"Conservatives haven't been in the right place to get the message to young voters," Austin Walne, 22, says, sipping his beer. "Young people who just got into the workforce don't care about the tax rate, but they have to fill up their gas tank and turn on the AC in their studio apartment. Energy is a big winner for us if we can communicate it well."

Walne, just one year out of the University of Tennessee, helped staff former Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson's Web site and now works for a small PR firm in town. He has taken some teasing from Democratic friends, who predict this year will see a tidal wave for their party. He nudges back at them. "Congress's approval rates are [approaching] 19 percent, so nobody's thrilled," he says. "People that didn't grow up under Jimmy Carter don't remember the stagflation of the '70s or the Iran standoff. Our job is to educate them on the failed policies of the past."

Like their elders, the young Republicans have mixed feelings about their party's presidential candidate. Some worry that McCain is not conservative enough on core issues such as immigration reform and lowering taxes, on which he has departed from the party line. Others admire his lifelong service to the country and heroism while imprisoned during the Vietnam War. If McCain can convey his straight-shooting independence and show his authentic sense of humor through compelling YouTube videos and smart interaction via the blogosphere, he can pull in Gen-Next and millennial voters, says All.

The campaign intends to do just that, stepping up its presence on Facebook and MySpace and other social networking sites. McCain will continue to make the rounds of shows like "Saturday Night Live" and Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart."

"Over the next couple of months, you will see John McCain talking to young voters across this country about the major issues confronting our country. We view the youth vote as very competitive, and we will campaign aggressively," says McCain spokesman Joe Pounder. "The vision [McCain] has outlined for this country addresses such challenges as global warming, energy independence and ensuring peace for future generations. Those issues appeal to young people."

Still, many of the party's newbies are preparing for the worst. Matt Lewis, 33, is hoping a trouncing in November will force the old guard aside and give his generation a shot. He was one of the committed young conservatives who came to Washington during the Bush administration, eager to push the politics of limited government and compassionate conservatism. He worked for the Leadership Institute, which teaches youngsters about the principles of classic conservatives such as Edmund Burke and Frederic Bastiat, as well as William F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater. He now blogs full time at the conservative Web site Townhall.com.

He's happy with Bush's Supreme Court picks but disappointed by the administration's failure to curb the ballooning deficit and bloated government.

"When everything is working well there is no hunger for new ideas," Lewis says. "Maybe there is room for some new up-and-coming thinkers to get a shot now. There is a bright side to seeing the Republican Party go through travail."

And there is a depressing side, too. Tim Cameron, 24, the Gingrich staffer who sent out the mass e-mail bringing everyone to the bar to mingle, is now saying, "We don't care what the electoral map looks like." He cut his teeth on local races in South Carolina and worked on online strategy for conservative Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), but being out of power forces a different tactic.

"I'm focused more on solutions than partisanship," Cameron says. He began working for Gingrich's nonpartisan group last month, pushing the former House leader's "Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less" campaign to advocate for drilling off the coast of Florida and in other domestic oil fields. Cameron sent out a ton of e-mail promoting a "Drill Now" online petition and promoted a YouTube video of Gingrich discussing his plan. The petition now has more than 43,000 signatures. That got a few nods of approval at the Top of the Hill bar.

David All points to a page on McCain's Web site as more old-fogy branding: The candidate is extolling his regulatory policies as friendly to small business, and the accompanying photo shows an old-time Main Street barbershop in the background. The young Republican techie, who raises money online for McCain, would have used the image of a young high-tech entrepreneur instead, someone to whom teenagers could relate. Seventy percent of high school students say they want to be entrepreneurs, according to a recent Gallup poll.

"But," says All, "they're not talking about opening a barbershop."

Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.

Of Course More Guns=Less Violence

2008-06-11T16:05:00.003-06:00

These gun nuts think they'd be like Dirty Harry in a sudden eruption of gunfire, while it's much more likely they'd be more like Barney Fife, fumbling about with his one bullet. It's also likely that even more innocent victims would be killed by their supposed "protectors".

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-opencarry7-2008jun07,0,849912.story
From the Los Angeles Times
COLUMN ONE

Packing in public: Gun owners tired of hiding their weapons embrace 'open carry'

Those who wear their guns in full sight are part of a fledgling movement to make a firearm a common accessory.

By Nicholas Riccardi
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

June 7, 2008

PROVO, UTAH — For years, Kevin Jensen carried a pistol everywhere he went, tucked in a shoulder holster beneath his clothes.

In hot weather the holster was almost unbearable. Pressed against Jensen's skin, the firearm was heavy and uncomfortable. Hiding the weapon made him feel like a criminal.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR THE RECORD:
Gun laws: An article in Saturday's Section A about people who openly carry handguns said the practice was permissible in California only if the firearm was not loaded. In cities within the state, publicly displayed guns must not be loaded. In unincorporated areas, loaded guns can be carried openly unless a local ordinance prohibits it.
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Then one evening he stumbled across a site that urged gun owners to do something revolutionary: Carry your gun openly for the world to see as you go about your business.

In most states there's no law against that.

Jensen thought about it and decided to give it a try. A couple of days later, his gun was visible, hanging from a black holster strapped around his hip as he walked into a Costco. His heart raced as he ordered a Polish dog at the counter. No one called the police. No one stopped him.

Now Jensen carries his Glock 23 openly into his bank, restaurants and shopping centers. He wore the gun to a Ron Paul rally. He and his wife, Clachelle, drop off their 5-year-old daughter at elementary school with pistols hanging from their hip holsters, and have never received a complaint or a wary look.

Jensen said he tries not to flaunt his gun. "We don't want to show up and say, 'Hey, we're here, we're armed, get used to it,' " he said.

But he and others who publicly display their guns have a common purpose.

The Jensens are part of a fledgling movement to make a firearm as common an accessory as an iPod. Called "open carry" by its supporters, the movement has attracted grandparents, graduate students and lifelong gun enthusiasts like the Jensens.

"What we're trying to say is, 'Hey, we're normal people who carry guns,' " said Travis Deveraux, 36, of West Valley, a Salt Lake City suburb. Deveraux works for a credit card company and sometimes walks around town wearing a cowboy hat and packing a pistol in plain sight. "We want the public to understand it's not just cops who can carry guns."

Police acknowledge the practice is legal, but some say it makes their lives tougher.

Police Chief John Greiner recalled that last year in Ogden, Utah, a man was openly carrying a shotgun on the street. When officers pulled up to ask him about the gun, he started firing. Police killed the man.

Greiner tells the story as a lesson for gun owners. "We've changed over the last 200 years from the days of the wild, wild West," Greiner said. "Most people don't openly carry. . . . If [people] truly want to open carry, they ought to expect they'll be challenged more until people become comfortable with it."

Jensen and others argue that police shouldn't judge the gun, but rather the actions of the person carrying it. Jensen, 28, isn't opposed to attention, however. It's part of the reason he brought his gun out in the open.

"At first, [open carry] was a little novelty," he said. "Then I realized the chances of me educating someone are bigger than ever using it [the gun] in self-defense. If it's in my pants or under my shirt I'm probably not going to do anything with it."

As Clachelle pushed the shopping cart holding their two young children during a recent trip to Costco, her husband admired the new holster wrapped around her waist. "I like the look of that low-rise gun belt," he said.

The Jensens' pistols were snapped into holsters attached to black belts that hug their waists. Guns are a fact of life in their household. Their 5-year-old daughter, Sierra, has a child-sized .22 rifle she handles only in her parents' presence.

Clachelle is the daughter of a Central California police chief and began shooting when she was about Sierra's age. She would take her parents' gun when she went out and hide it in her purse because the firearm made her feel safer.

"I love 'em," Clachelle said. "I wouldn't ever be without them."

Kevin Jensen's first encounter with guns came when he was 11: His grandfather died and left him a 16-gauge shotgun. The gun stayed locked away but fascinated Jensen through his teen years. He convinced his older brother to take him shooting in the countryside near their home in a small town south of Salt Lake City.

"I immediately fell in love with it," said Jensen, a lean man with close-cropped hair and a precise gait that is a reminder of his five years in the Army Reserve. "I like things that go boom."

Jensen kept as many as 10 guns in the couple's 1930s-style bungalow in Santaquin, 21 miles southwest of Provo. In January 2005, he decided to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon, mainly for self-defense.

"I'm not going to hide in the corner of a school and mall and wait for the shooting to stop," he said.

When Jensen bought a Glock and the dealer threw in an external hip holster, he began researching the idea of carrying the gun in public and came upon OpenCarry.org.

Its website, run by two Virginia gun enthusiasts, claims 4,000 members nationwide. It summarizes the varying laws in each state that permit or forbid the practice. People everywhere have the right to prohibit weapons from their property, and firearms are often banned in government buildings such as courthouses.

According to an analysis by Legal Community Against Violence, a gun control group in San Francisco that tracks gun laws, at least eight states largely ban the practice, including Iowa and New Jersey. Those that allow it have different restrictions: In California, people can openly carry only unloaded guns.

Utah has no law prohibiting anyone from carrying a gun in public, as long as it is two steps from firing -- for example, the weapon may have a loaded clip but must be uncocked, with no bullets in the chamber. Those who obtain a concealed-weapons permit in Utah don't have that restriction. Also, youths under 18 can carry a gun openly with parental approval and a supervising adult in close proximity.

Most of the time people don't notice Jensen's gun. That's not uncommon, said John Pierce, a law student and computer consultant in Virginia who is a co-founder of OpenCarry.org.

"People are carrying pagers, BlackBerrys, cellphones," Pierce said. "They see a black lump on your belt and their eyes slide off."

Sometimes the reactions are comical. Bill White, a 24-year-old graduate student in ancient languages at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wears his Colt pistol out in the open when he goes to his local Starbucks. Earlier this month a tourist from California spotted him and snapped a photo on his cellphone.

"He said it would prove he was in the Wild West," White recalled.

But there are times when the response is more severe. Deveraux has been stopped several times by police, most memorably in December when he was walking around his neighborhood.

An officer pulled up and pointed his gun at Deveraux, warning he would shoot to kill. In the end, eight officers arrived, cuffed Deveraux and took his gun before Deveraux convinced them they had no legal reason to detain him.

Deveraux saw the incident as not giving ground on his rights. "I'm proud that happened," he said.

Cases like this are talked about during regular gatherings of those who favor open carry. At a Sweet Tomatoes restaurant in the Salt Lake City suburb of Sandy, more than 40 civilians with guns strapped to their hips took over a corner of the restaurant, eating pasta and boisterously sharing stories.

Hassles with law enforcement were a badge of honor for some.

Travis White, 19, who has ear and chin piercings, congratulated Brandon Trask, 21, on carrying openly for the first time that night. "Just wait until you get confronted by a cop," White said. "It'll make you feel brave."

Having pistols strapped around their waists made Shel Anderson, 67, and his wife, Kaye, 63, feel more secure. Longtime recreational shooters, they began to carry their pistols openly after a spate of home-invasion robberies in their neighborhood. The firearms can serve as a warning to predators, they said.

"I decided I want to have as much of an advantage as I can have in this day and age," said Kaye Anderson, a retired schoolteacher.

Nearby, Scott Thompson picked over the remains of a salad, his Springfield Armory XD-35 sitting snugly in his hip holster.

The gangly graphics designer grew up in a home without guns and didn't think of owning one until he started dating a woman -- now his wife -- who lived in a rough neighborhood. One night last year, a youth had his head beaten in with a pipe outside her bedroom window. The next day, Thompson got a concealed-weapons permit.

Thompson found out about open carry last month while reading gun sites. He's become a convert. He likes the statement it makes.

Glancing around the restaurant, as armed families like the Jensens dined with men in cowboy hats and professionals like himself, Thompson smiled.

"I love this," he said. "I want people to be aware that crazy people are not the only ones with guns. Normal people carry them."

The Jensens' daughter, Sierra, and newborn son, Tyler, began to get restless, so the couple bundled up the children and pulled the manager of the restaurant aside to thank her for hosting them.

A patron appeared at Jensen's side and began to berate him. "What you guys are doing here is completely unacceptable," he said. "There are children here."

Jensen said that everyone in the restaurant had a legal right to carry. The man didn't back down and the Jensens left.

Days later, Jensen was still thinking about the reaction and the man's belief that guns are unsafe.

"People can feel that way and it doesn't bother me," he said. "If they have irrational fears, that's fine."

nicholas.riccardi@latimes.com

Really, Voters Want MORE Republican Policies

2008-05-19T23:54:00.000-06:00

The GOP's Socially Conservative wing refuses to acknowledge just how unpopular their policies and ideas are for the majority of voters, which will make their upcoming political woes even more devastating.

Now is NOT the time to be running as the reddest of Republicans.

bypass registration with this Bug Me Not link

May 20, 2008

House Conservatives to Offer Ideas for G.O.P. Message

By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON — Conservative Republicans in the House plan to urge their colleagues to rally behind a new manifesto that mixes antispending initiatives and tighter restrictions on government benefits as the party seeks a fresh message after a string of election defeats.

Leaders of the Republican Study Committee intend to use a closed-door party meeting on Tuesday to present a seven-point proposal calling for a constitutional limit on federal spending, a new simplified income tax alternative and a proposal to require recipients of food stamps or housing aid to meet work requirements.

“Clearly, we have been sobered by three special election losses in a row,” said Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas, chairman of the group of more than 100 Republican lawmakers. “We are sobered by the massive cash advantage that Democrats have to get their message out.”

Mr. Hensarling said that getting off the political defensive would “take unity, and it is going to take unity behind a handful of messages.”

The proposal from the group of conservatives is likely to be just one of the ideas circulated at the session as Republicans look for ways to right themselves heading into what is promising to be a difficult election year.

The party leadership in the House has already begun to roll out its own agenda under the rubric “The Change You Deserve,” but some lawmakers have said the party needs to be more aggressive. Others are skeptical about overreacting to the elections or embracing too strong a conservative theme.

A spokeswoman for Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No. 2 Republican in the House, said the leadership was open to constructive suggestions from lawmakers.

“It’s healthy and good for our members to weigh in and put forward ideas,” said the spokeswoman, Antonia Ferrier. “That’s how we get the energy leading into November.”

Several Republicans have said it is not their goal to force changes in the House leadership team. Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, said Sunday that he intended to remain in his position.

Some of the ideas from the conservatives have been circulating for months, including an immediate moratorium on seeking money for the pet home-state projects known as earmarks. But other Republicans have rejected that idea, arguing it is a chief responsibility of representatives to win federal aid for local initiatives.

A draft of the conservative agenda calls for the endorsement of a constitutional amendment to prohibit federal spending from growing faster than the economy except in times of war or national emergency. The plan seeks support for an income tax overhaul that would provide a simplified flat tax and allow people to choose between it and the current system.

The conservative proposal seeks tax credits for buying health insurance, more domestic energy production and a streamlined terrorist surveillance program. The draft also said that House Republicans should extend existing welfare work requirements to food stamps and housing assistance “so that those who are not old, young or disabled are either working in the private sector or serving in their community.”

Mr. Hensarling said his group was emphasizing fiscal policy because polls and recent electoral experience showed that voters viewed Republicans as having strayed too far from the party’s tradition on spending restraint. That approach could also mesh with the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the party’s presumed nominee, who has made his opposition to excessive federal spending a central theme.

“We have to get back to our core identity,” Mr. Hensarling said, adding that “there is work to be done.”

Refusing To State The Obvious

2008-05-19T13:45:00.002-06:00

This PNAC letter doesn't use the obvious word "draft" in its text.

Letter to Congress on Increasing U.S. Ground Forces
January 28, 2005

Dear Senator Frist, Senator Reid, Speaker Hastert, and Representative Pelosi:

The United States military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume. Those responsibilities are real and important. They are not going away. The United States will not and should not become less engaged in the world in the years to come. But our national security, global peace and stability, and the defense and promotion of freedom in the post-9/11 world require a larger military force than we have today. The administration has unfortunately resisted increasing our ground forces to the size needed to meet today's (and tomorrow's) missions and challenges.

So we write to ask you and your colleagues in the legislative branch to take the steps necessary to increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps. While estimates vary about just how large an increase is required, and Congress will make its own determination as to size and structure, it is our judgment that we should aim for an increase in the active duty Army and Marine Corps, together, of at least 25,000 troops each year over the next several years.

There is abundant evidence that the demands of the ongoing missions in the greater Middle East, along with our continuing defense and alliance commitments elsewhere in the world, are close to exhausting current U.S. ground forces. For example, just late last month, Lieutenant General James Helmly, chief of the Army Reserve, reported that "overuse" in Iraq and Afghanistan could be leading to a "broken force." Yet after almost two years in Iraq and almost three years in Afghanistan, it should be evident that our engagement in the greater Middle East is truly, in Condoleezza Rice's term, a "generational commitment." The only way to fulfill the military aspect of this commitment is by increasing the size of the force available to our civilian leadership.

The administration has been reluctant to adapt to this new reality. We understand the dangers of continued federal deficits, and the fiscal difficulty of increasing the number of troops. But the defense of the United States is the first priority of the government. This nation can afford a robust defense posture along with a strong fiscal posture. And we can afford both the necessary number of ground troops and what is needed for transformation of the military.

In sum: We can afford the military we need. As a nation, we are spending a smaller percentage of our GDP on the military than at any time during the Cold War. We do not propose returning to a Cold War-size or shape force structure. We do insist that we act responsibly to create the military we need to fight the war on terror and fulfill our other responsibilities around the world.

The men and women of our military have performed magnificently over the last few years. We are more proud of them than we can say. But many of them would be the first to say that the armed forces are too small. And we would say that surely we should be doing more to honor the contract between America and those who serve her in war. Reserves were meant to be reserves, not regulars. Our regulars and reserves are not only proving themselves as warriors, but as humanitarians and builders of emerging democracies. Our armed forces, active and reserve, are once again proving their value to the nation. We can honor their sacrifices by giving them the manpower and the materiel they need.

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution places the power and the duty to raise and support the military forces of the United States in the hands of the Congress. That is why we, the undersigned, a bipartisan group with diverse policy views, have come together to call upon you to act. You will be serving your country well if you insist on providing the military manpower we need to meet America's obligations, and to help ensure success in carrying out our foreign policy objectives in a dangerous, but also hopeful, world.

Respectfully,

Peter Beinart Jeffrey Bergner Daniel Blumenthal

Max Boot Eliot Cohen Ivo H. Daalder

Thomas Donnelly Michele Flournoy Frank F. Gaffney, Jr.

Reuel Marc Gerecht Lt. Gen. Buster C. Glosson (USAF, retired)

Bruce P. Jackson Frederick Kagan Robert Kagan

Craig Kennedy Paul Kennedy Col. Robert Killebrew (USA, retired)

William Kristol Will Marshall Clifford May

Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey (USA, retired) Daniel McKivergan

Joshua Muravchik Steven J. Nider Michael O'Hanlon

Mackubin Thomas Owens Ralph Peters Danielle Pletka

Stephen P. Rosen Major Gen. Robert H. Scales (USA, retired)

Randy Scheunemann Gary Schmitt

Walter Slocombe James B. Steinberg R. James Woolsey

People This Stupid Should Be Heeded Just WHY Again?

2008-02-11T17:49:00.000-07:00

Some articles are too important to not showcase every word of, in this case, the pure willful ignorance/unbelievable paternalism shown by O'Hanlon & Taspinar needs to be harshly mocked and shredded by as many of the public as possible, like the "bad taste in the mouth" that people show when the name Joe McCarthy is brought up

Time for Kurdish Realism

By Michael O'Hanlon and Omer Taspinar
Saturday, February 9, 2008; A15

Increasingly, Iraq's Kurds appear to be interfering with efforts to foster political accommodation among their country's major sectarian groups. Since Iraq's future hinges on establishing such a spirit of compromise, this trend has potentially grave implications for Iraq, its neighbors and the United States.

Two key issues stand out. First, Kurds are beginning to develop oil fields on their territory with foreign investors but with no role for Baghdad, claiming cover under Iraq's 2005 constitution. But the relevant sections of the Iraqi constitution (articles 109 through 112, among others) state that future oil wells will be developed by Iraq's provinces and regions in conjunction with the central government.

Second, Kurds want to reclaim the city of Kirkuk and its surrounding oil fields, which may hold about 15 percent of Iraq's total reserves. Kurds claim, with considerable justification, that many properties in the city were taken from them under Saddam Hussein's "Arabization" programs. Kurds want the homes back. More broadly, they want to control the politics of Kirkuk and environs, up to and including the possibility of Kirkuk and its oil joining the region of Iraqi Kurdistan (which many Kurds hope will ultimately become independent). Because of these ambitions, it has been difficult to hold a referendum on Kirkuk's future; a referendum was supposed to have taken place by the end of 2007.

The Kurds are making a major mistake. They should rethink their approach both out of fairness to the United States, which has given them a chance to help build a post-Hussein Iraq, and in the interests of the Kurds and their neighbors. Baghdad needs a role in developing future oil fields and sharing revenue; Kirkuk needs to remain where it is in Iraq's political system, or perhaps attain a special status. It should not be muscled away into Kurdistan.

It is hard to be sure, but the Kurds seem to believe that if Iraq fails, they will be okay. Under this theory, even if the country splits apart, the United States will stand by its Kurdish friends, establish military bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, and ultimately ease the way toward its independence. Several prominent Americans give occasional endorsement to this dream, further convincing Kurds that it could become reality.

We strongly doubt it. Kurdistan is an inland, mountainous region within the broader Middle East. Its neighbors are Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Two of the four are nemeses of the United States; all have their issues with Iraq's Kurds; none will be eager to tolerate the kind of American military overflights that would be needed to sustain bases in Kurdistan if Iraq was breaking apart. Nor would they necessarily let Iraq's Kurds export oil through their territories and ports.

Why would the United States even want bases in Kurdistan? If it ever goes to war against Iran, numerous other countries are better positioned, being adjacent to international waterways and airspace. Those countries may not all be as pro-American as Iraq's Kurds, but if the threat posed by Iran grows, some will probably make common cause with the United States.

To be sure, many Americans admire the democratic, prosperous, resilient Kurds. Americans also feel a moral debt after allowing Hussein to oppress the Kurds so many times in the past. But after protecting the Kurds since 1991 and spending hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives in Iraq over the past five years, that moral debt has been partially repaid. If the Kurds will not now help the United States in stabilizing Iraq, is there really a sense of common purpose, and a set of shared interests, between the two peoples?

Instead of pursuing a maximalist agenda in Kirkuk and a dream of independence, the Kurds should opt for realism. This means recognizing that if Iraq falls apart, they will be on their own. It also means recognizing that Turkey, with its 15 million Kurds, is very nervous about Kurdish independence. Yet the Kurds of Iraq should also know that a Turkish-Kurdish war is not destiny. In fact, with visionary leadership in Ankara and Irbil, Turkish-Kurdish economic, political and military cooperation -- starting with joint operations against the terrorist Kurdish group, the PKK -- could lead to genuine friendship. After all, Turkey is the most democratic, secular and pro-Western of Iraq's neighbors, attributes that Iraqi Kurdistan shares.

Iraq's Kurds have a remarkable future almost within their grasp. But they face a crucial choice: They can attain that future by compromising with their fellow Iraqis, forming a partnership with Turkey and strengthening their bond with the United States. Or they can continue to pursue their own agenda in a way that ultimately shatters their country and destabilizes the broader region.

Michael O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Omer Taspinar is a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings and a professor at the National War College. The views expressed here are their own.

Forget "What If?", The John Podhoretz Wish List

2007-10-01T17:06:00.000-06:00

TOO NICE TO WIN? ISRAEL'S DILEMMA

07.25.2006 | New York Post
JOHN PODHORETZ

July 25, 2006 -- WHAT if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests?

What if the universalist idea of liberal democracy - the idea that all people are created equal - has sunk in so deeply that we no longer assign special value to the lives and interests of our own people as opposed to those in other countries?

What if this triumph of universalism is demonstrated by the Left's insistence that American and Israeli military actions marked by an extraordinary concern for preventing civilian casualties are in fact unacceptably brutal? And is also apparent in the Right's claim that a war against a country has nothing to do with the people but only with that country's leaders?

Can any war be won when this is the nature of the discussion in the countries fighting the war? Can any war be won when one of the combatants voluntarily limits itself in this manner?

Could World War II have been won by Britain and the United States if the two countries did not have it in them to firebomb Dresden and nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Didn't the willingness of their leaders to inflict mass casualties on civilians indicate a cold-eyed singleness of purpose that helped break the will and the back of their enemies? Didn't that singleness of purpose extend down to the populations in those countries in those days, who would have and did support almost any action at any time that would lead to the deaths of Germans and Japanese?

What if the tactical mistake we made in Iraq was that we didn't kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything? Wasn't the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?

If you can't imagine George W. Bush issuing such an order, is there any American leader you could imagine doing so?

And if America can't do it, can Israel? Could Israel - even hardy, strong, universally conscripted Israel - possibly stomach the bloodshed that would accompany the total destruction of Hezbollah?

If Lebanon's 300-plus civilian casualties are already rocking the world, what if it would take 10,000 civilian casualties to finish off Hezbollah? Could Israel inflict that kind of damage on Lebanon - not because of world opinion, but because of its own modern sensibilities and its understanding of the value of every human life?

Where do these questions lead us?

What if Israel's caution about casualties among its own soldiers and Lebanese civilians has demonstrated to Hezbollah and Hamas that as long as they can duck and cover when the missiles fly and the bombs fall, they can survive and possibly even thrive?

What if Israel has every capability of achieving its aim, but cannot unleash itself against a foe more dangerous, more unscrupulous, more unprincipled and more barbaric than even the monstrous leaders of the Intifada it managed to quell after years of suicide attacks?

And as for the United States, what if we have every tool at our disposal to win a war - every weapons system we could want manned by the most superbly trained military in history - except the ability to match or exceed our antagonists in ruthlessness?

Is this the horrifying paradox of 21st century warfare? If Israel and the United States cannot be defeated militarily in any conventional sense, have our foes discovered a new way to win? Are they seeking victory through demoralization alone - by daring us to match them in barbarity and knowing we will fail?

Are we becoming unwitting participants in their victory and our defeat? Can it be that the moral greatness of our civilization - its astonishing focus on the value of the individual above all - is endangering the future of our civilization as well?

jpodhoretz [at] gmail.com

Atkinson's Sick Take On "A Declining Society", Pt III

2007-10-01T00:44:00.000-06:00

Pt 1 is HERE, Part II is HERE-the same link works for Atkinson's name. Definitely hit the link for this Atkinson effort showcased here, at this time, it takes the reader to more of Atkinson's pearls of wisdom

How Can A Declining Civilization Be Saved?
by Philip Atkinson

Mental Decay Has Already Occurred

If you were to observe your aging mother attempt to boil water by placing an electric kettle on a gas cooker, you would immediately know that she was losing her mind. And that it would be futile to try and remedy her mistake by instruction or demonstration. The act would be unmistakable evidence of mental decay for which there is no possible treatment (the loss of memory means loss of brain tissue), and her condition would only get worse. And what is true for the individual is also true for the community. The behaviour that reveals social decline is undeniable evidence that the communal mind has already decayed.

Decline Is Communal Senility

Social decline is the impact of a growing deterioration in the understanding of the community; the community is losing its mind along with its strength and becoming senile:

1. Growing Communal Dementia is because of increasing public confusion as a result of the widespread abandonment of the community's founding morality along with its associated beliefs, which are the wisdom of society.

2. Faltering Communal Strength is a direct result of the growth of selfishness among its citizens, for a community's strength is built upon its members' willingness to make private sacrifice for the common good.

Impossibility of repair

A senile community is like a senile person, though the mind is rotten the body may appear intact, still have strength and vitality, and so lend itself to the notion of being able to be cured. But the simple truth is the understanding that occupied the body is now dead. Nothing can bring it back. It is possible in theory for a diseased brain to be repaired by replacement of some or all of that organ, but this would not return the lost memory or lost personality and would create a new understanding; a treatment that could only be done by another intact understanding. Though such an option may be open to a senile person among friends and relatives, it is unavailable to a senile community.

Wisdom and strength permanently lost

The impact of senility, increasing mental confusion and decreasing strength, which must become fatal to the community, are impossible to repair:

1. Wisdom cannot be restored because it has to be founded upon a morality, which no longer exists. And inspiring a people with a morality can only be the accidental work of events because it must precede understanding. This means that just as a man cannot choose his morality nor can a community, so once lost a morality can never be regained.

2. Strength cannot be restored because it needs a pool of unselfish citizens who no longer exist, and it is impossible to change the existing selfish into unselfish people.

Nothing Left To Save

When the symptoms of social decline appear the people who gave the civilization energy, intelligence and made it an asset to humanity, no longer exist in any numbers. Their place has been taken by a race of foolish cowards, who can only dissipate the accumulated wealth and wisdom they have inherited. Though the true character of these new citizens will initially be disguised by the restraints imposed by their inheritance of customs, manners and beliefs, these will be rapidly discarded by the impatience of subsequent generations.

Can Only Promote Lies And Injustice

To attempt to assist such a community is to aid and abet people who hate truth and justice. Those citizens, who feel their duty impels them to try, are taking grave risks for no purpose. Their individual efforts cannot make up for the shortcomings of their society, but they will be punished for their attempts, and this is demonstrated in no uncertain manner by contemporary and historical examples.

By 2000 Most Citizens Of Western Civilization Are Fools

Our civilization has been declining since the late Eighteenth century (see "A Study Of History" by Professor Arnold Toynbee), which means that since then the majority of citizens of western civilization have been selfish — for selfishness is the influence that rejects moral restraint, along with its associated beliefs. In place of the guide of tradition the selfish rely upon feelings to recognise right from wrong and fact from fancy. Now, after more than two centuries of discarding and reversing traditions, most citizens are fools who can neither tell right from wrong nor fact from fancy.

Only Changes For the Worse Accepted

Naturally it is possible to persuade contemporary citizens to accept change, but all such change must appeal to an understanding guided by feelings not reason. So regardless of any claim the public may make to the contrary, they will be unable to resist the compulsions of their instincts; the terrors of the fearful are beyond appeals to reason, which is why the threat of Global Warming is so popular and withstands all attempts at debunking. Any citizen who persists in denying that Global Warming is a real threat is either ignored or persecuted. So any attempt to curtail the unnecessary costs and limitations imposed in the name of Global Warming will be resisted, whereas further increases to such costs, or extension of restrictions, will be accepted as a required imposition to save the world.

In the same way, those parents who indulge their offspring, and so create odious citizens, are also impossible to change, except for the worse. Anyone who dares point out to a modern guardian the inadequacies of their child raising technique, or that their progeny are spoilt brats, risks unpleasant repercussions for no good reason. The proud parent will remain an adoring parent regardless of any argument advanced to the contrary. Modern parents will reject any imposition of discipline upon their favourites that could improve their child's character, but will accept any and every move that panders to their charges, even though it further weakens their offspring's character.

Nowhere is the urge to self-destruction more obvious than in the way the general public respond to unemployment. Despite the fact that our community is being slowly impoverished by unemployment enforced by an irresistible tide of automation, the public resist any attempt to alleviate the problem. Politicians still find it increases their popularity by increasing the restrictions on paying the dole, even though this must make everything worse for everybody. Whereas the notion of paying the dole to every citizen without a wage is treated as an anathema, despite the fact that this could only benefit everyone. The unemployed do not eat money but hand it on to others by spending it. An act that is repeated throughout the community so supplying extra money to everyone. This simple effect is ignored because of the feelings of the community towards the unemployed. Regardless of the truth, the community will only accept changes that punish the unemployed even though this makes everybody poorer and further accelerates the plunge into communal poverty.

This means that the decaying understanding that is impoverishing and deluding our community is beyond the ability of its citizens to repair, for they will insist upon making things worse.

Gushing W -Lackey Supreme Philip Atkinson In His Own Words Part II

2007-10-01T00:33:00.000-06:00

Pt 1 Of Atkinson's repellent mindset is HERE, this is much more entertaining as a result of Atkinson's complete clueless, self-defeating nature, posting it here in case he decides to yank this autobiographical profile

Philip Atkinson
Author of A Study Of Our Decline
Send a comment or E-mail rpa@ourcivilisation.com

Philip Atkinson was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, on the 7th June 1947, the result of a wartime marriage between a state registered nurse and a Captain in the Royal Army Ordinance Corps. His father had been educated at Cambridge University before working for some years for the foreign office in Africa; he was an ardent supporter of George Orwell and a socialist, so after being demobbed and winning the position as lecturer in History at Kings College, Newcastle, he decided to plant his family among the proletariat, the heroes of Nineteen Eighty-Four. This meant his middle-class wife and three children lived for the next fourteen years on a new council estate in the company of resettled slum dwellers. And this action, inspired by inverted snobbery, had a lasting impact upon his spouse and offspring, especially his middle-child.

Like all children I wanted to be accepted by my peers and be part of the gang of small boys who lived in the street. They were my heroes, I hung on every word they said, and I did everything I could to win their approval. Their contemptuous treatment of me I accepted as only natural because I was the youngest and weakest. They were tough and clever while I was puny and inexperienced. But one day this all changed. To my delight, a boy who was smaller and younger than me, moved into the street, and I knew that it would only be a matter of time before I could demonstrate my superiority to the newcomer. And when the gang resolved to have a boxing competition, I felt that this was my chance. Previously I would have been omitted from such a competition as being too weak to match in a fight, but now there was a possible partner, and as the gang split up into matched pairs I was pitted against the new boy. And when it was our turn to box, I gently, but firmly, displayed my clear superiority. Alas, when the judges, the oldest boys, declared the result, it was not me, but the new boy, who was deemed the winner. I was stunned.

For some time afterwards I struggled to understand this decision. I knew that I had won the fight, but this was not enough; it was not my stature nor strength but some innate personal quality that condemned me. It was clear that regardless of what I did, I would never win the respect of my peers, so I stopped trying. But I also knew the judges had lied, so to understand their motive I started to look closely at my erstwhile heroes and began to see their undeniable flaws. They were not rational; they had rejected me out of prejudice. While they were all larger than me, I found they only presented a threat as a group. Alone, they not only left me in peace, but seemed a little nervous at my presence. And in games that required strategy, I found it was easy to best them. My esteem for my peers became replaced by contempt, and planted the seed of suspicion in my mind that my whole community was of the same calibre —foolish cowards. A notion that experience rarely confounded but often confirmed, so insensibly I became a social exile.

This was just as well, for in a declining community any citizen who retains respect for the truth must become alienated from the majority of his fellow citizens because they hate the truth. Inevitably I could only ever be a social outcast, but being freed from the need to win social approval also meant being freed from social prejudices, and being able to see my community more clearly; a detachment that is essential for any student of society.

As an adult it is easy to understand why the other boys in the street hated me, I was from a different class. My father was an honest, educated man, who didn't smoke or drink, and would never dream of striking his wife, but he was surrounded by drunks, thieves and wife-beaters. Our family enjoyed money, comfort and stability, unlike many of those around us. Not only were we the only family in the street to have a car, but also we were the only family in the whole suburb to have tea on the lawn. Everything about us was different, and we were naturally resented. While the neighbouring adults never confronted my father, their children were delighted to bully his children. My siblings and myself became social half-castes, accepted by no class and despised by all. The result in my case was an initial bitter resentment of my community, along with the traditional notions that I should pursue a university education then a career; so I dropped out of school to take a job as a bus conductor. And to escape this dead-end job, I emigrated, arriving in Australia in 1969, aged 22, with a pregnant wife, two small children, 30 pounds sterling, no job and no qualifications other than an incomplete public school education.

With determination, skill and a little luck I forged a career in computers before being forced into retirement in 1991; a fate that brought as much relief as anxiety. No more salary, little chance of ever getting a job, but no longer having to pretend that the community and its administration were sane. And I was fortunate that my second wife, an Australian by birth, was happy to work so her husband did not, and for the first time in my life I was blessed with leisure. Not only did I not have to toil, but also I did not have to worry about paying the bills, which is another essential qualification for any student of the community.

Of course I could have restarted the education that I abandoned in my teens, but by then the true nature of universities had become obvious; they were no longer centres of learning pursuing truth but centres of profit pursuing customers. Inevitably striving for popularity with youth has made universities bastions of Political Correctness, and full of the kind of people who wanted to burn Galileo for daring to question that the sun circled the earth. So I spent my enforced idleness applying the skills acquired as a system's analyst to discover why my society is disintegrating into delusion and impotence. An effort resulting in a simple theory which outlines the process of communal rise then decline, an explanation that seems to have eluded mankind despite the regular and inevitable cycle that has always been present.

In January 2000 I became an Internet publisher, placing a variety of books 'online' at my own expense, in an attempt to preserve some of the vanishing wisdom of humanity.

Early in 2004 I realized that not only did my theory clarify the subject of civilization, but it also clarified that of Philosophy, so ever since then I have considered myself a philosopher.

The Unintentional Wit And "Wisdom" Of Philip Atkinson, Pt 1

2007-09-30T23:44:00.000-06:00

Atkinson is deluded beyond belief, and, tellingly, some of the FSM links no longer work, or go to a scrubbed page, so the following quoted post comes from a different site altogether

Think Tank Suggests Bush should be President For Life

Exclusive: Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy
Philip Atkinson

Author: Philip Atkinson
Source: The Family Security Foundation, Inc.
Date: August 3, 2007

While democratic government is better than dictatorships and theocracies, it has its pitfalls. FSM Contributing Editor Philip Atkinson describes some of the difficulties facing President Bush today.

Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy

By Philip Atkinson

President George W. Bush is the 43rd President of the United States. He was sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2005 after being chosen by the majority of citizens in America to be president.

Yet in 2007 he is generally despised, with many citizens of Western civilization expressing contempt for his person and his policies, sentiments which now abound on the Internet. This rage at President Bush is an inevitable result of the system of government demanded by the people, which is Democracy.

The inadequacy of Democracy, rule by the majority, is undeniable – for it demands adopting ideas because they are popular, rather than because they are wise. This means that any man chosen to act as an agent of the people is placed in an invidious position: if he commits folly because it is popular, then he will be held responsible for the inevitable result. If he refuses to commit folly, then he will be detested by most citizens because he is frustrating their demands.

When faced with the possible threat that the Iraqis might be amassing terrible weapons that could be used to slay millions of citizens of Western Civilization, President Bush took the only action prudence demanded and the electorate allowed: he conquered Iraq with an army.

This dangerous and expensive act did destroy the Iraqi regime, but left an American army without any clear purpose in a hostile country and subject to attack. If the Army merely returns to its home, then the threat it ended would simply return.

The wisest course would have been for President Bush to use his nuclear weapons to slaughter Iraqis until they complied with his demands, or until they were all dead. Then there would be little risk or expense and no American army would be left exposed. But if he did this, his cowardly electorate would have instantly ended his term of office, if not his freedom or his life.

The simple truth that modern weapons now mean a nation must practice genocide or commit suicide. Israel provides the perfect example. If the Israelis do not raze Iran, the Iranians will fulfill their boast and wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Yet Israel is not popular, and so is denied permission to defend itself. In the same vein, President Bush cannot do what is necessary for the survival of Americans. He cannot use the nation’s powerful weapons. All he can do is try and discover a result that will be popular with Americans.

As there appears to be no sensible result of the invasion of Iraq that will be popular with his countrymen other than retreat, President Bush is reviled; he has become another victim of Democracy.

By elevating popular fancy over truth, Democracy is clearly an enemy of not just truth, but duty and justice, which makes it the worst form of government. President Bush must overcome not just the situation in Iraq, but democratic government.

However, President Bush has a valuable historical example that he could choose to follow.

When the ancient Roman general Julius Caesar was struggling to conquer ancient Gaul, he not only had to defeat the Gauls, but he also had to defeat his political enemies in Rome who would destroy him the moment his tenure as consul (president) ended.

Caesar pacified Gaul by mass slaughter; he then used his successful army to crush all political opposition at home and establish himself as permanent ruler of ancient Rome. This brilliant action not only ended the personal threat to Caesar, but ended the civil chaos that was threatening anarchy in ancient Rome – thus marking the start of the ancient Roman Empire that gave peace and prosperity to the known world.

If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege while terrifying American enemies.

He could then follow Caesar’s example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court.

President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Philip Atkinson is the British born founder of ourcivilisation.com and author of A Study of Our Decline. He is a philosopher specializing in issues concerning the preservation of Western civilization. Mr. Atkinson receives mail at rpa@ourcivilisation.com.

read full author bio here

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If you are a reporter or producer who is interested in receiving more information about this writer or this article, please email your request to pr@familysecuritymatters.org.

Note — The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of The Family Security Foundation, Inc.

W Kisses The Ring Of, And Up To, Muqtada al-Sadr

2007-09-12T11:01:00.000-06:00

U.S. seeks pact with Shiite militia

The military is in talks with elements of cleric Sadr's powerful group, which is accused of attacks against soldiers but which holds sway in much of Baghdad and parts of Iraq.

By Ned Parker
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 12, 2007

BAGHDAD — -- U.S. diplomats and military officers have been in talks with members of the armed movement loyal to Muqtada Sadr, a sharp reversal of policy and a grudging recognition that the radical Shiite cleric holds a dominant position in much of Baghdad and other parts of Iraq.

The secret dialogue has been going on since at least early 2006, but appeared to yield a tangible result only in the last week -- with relative calm in an area of west Baghdad that has been among the capital's most dangerous sections.

The discussions have been complicated by divisions within Sadr's movement as well as the cleric's public vow never to meet with Iraq's occupiers. Underlying the issue's sensitivity, Sadrists publicly deny any contact with the Americans or British -- fully aware the price of acknowledging such meetings would be banishment from the movement or worse.

The dialogue represents a drastic turnaround in the U.S. approach to Sadr and his militia, the Mahdi Army. The military hopes to negotiate the same kind of marriage of convenience it has reached in other parts of Iraq with former insurgent groups, many Saddam Hussein loyalists, and the Sunni tribes that supported them. Both efforts are examples of how U.S. officials have sought to end violence by cooperating with groups they once considered intractable enemies.

In 2004, U.S. officials branded Sadr an outlaw and demanded his arrest, sparking two major Shiite revolts in Baghdad and in the southern shrine city of Najaf that left more than a thousand dead. Last year, as the Bush administration developed its "surge" strategy, military planners said the campaign would also target Shiite militias involved in sectarian killings. U.S. commanders later accused Iranian-backed elements of the Mahdi Army of carrying out deadly bomb attacks against U.S. forces and spearheading sectarian violence.

U.S. officials now feel they have no choice but to talk to the militia. Despite its internal rifts, the Sadr movement is widely seen as the most powerful force in Baghdad. The Mahdi Army's grip is absolute on most of the capital's Shiite neighborhoods, where it sells fuel and electricity and rents houses, and it has reached deep inside the army and police. U.S. soldiers have marveled at the movement's ability to generate new leaders to replace almost every fighter they lock up.

U.S. officials fear that failure to reach a political compromise with the Sadrists could have severe consequences once U.S. forces begin to pull back from their current high levels.

"If there are no American troops and there is no American deal, the Mahdi Army seizes control of Baghdad. That's the vision. It's not a pleasant vision. It's a really bad vision. In situations like this, the most extreme elements tend to predominate," said a U.S. diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In his testimony to Congress on Monday, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, underscored the importance of reaching out to the Mahdi Army, deflecting a suggestion that the U.S. declare the movement a terrorist group.

"You're not going to kill or capture all of the Sadr militia anymore than we are going to kill or capture all the insurgents in Iraq," Petraeus said. "Some of this is a little bit distasteful. It's not easy sitting across the table, let's say, or drinking tea with someone whose tribal members may have shot at our forces or in fact drawn the blood -- killed our forces."

The White House is keen for a breakthrough. "There's a part of the Sadrist camp that is extremist and dedicated to killing us, and we need to kill them instead. But there are others who we think we might be able to work with," said an administration official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

Officials point to their negotiations with Sunni insurgents as a model. The Sunnis, however, cooperated in large part because they had split with Al Qaeda in Iraq militants and needed U.S. help to battle them. By contrast, the Sadrists have yet to decide that they want a clear break from their more radical and lawless elements.

Contacts with Sadr's followers have included clandestine meetings with U.S. Embassy officials in the fortified Green Zone and encounters on the street between low-level militia commanders and U.S. captains.

This month's breakthrough came when Lt. Col. Patrick Frank, responsible for west Baghdad's dangerous Bayaa, Jihad and Amal neighborhoods, met Sept. 3 with tribal leaders belonging to the Mahdi Army at Camp Falcon, a sprawling U.S. base.

To preserve the movement's posture of not negotiating with Americans, the tribal leaders did not discuss their affiliation, but their identity was well known. "The organization we are extending our hand to is the Jaish al Mahdi," Frank said, using the group's Arabic name. A Sadr follower in west Baghdad confirmed that Shiite and Sunni tribal leaders were in negotiations with the Americans for a truce in the area.

The session, which brought together commanders, community officials and mostly Shiite leaders, was the fruit of talks initiated by the Sadrists in late July, Frank said in an interview.

Moderate Sadrists involved in the Mahdi Army's social service network contacted U.S. forces through intermediaries, Frank said. The region was largely Sunni until the Mahdi Army began driving out residents and replacing them with Shiites last year.

Since then, residents had grown unhappy that their neighborhood was the stage for shootouts and bombings. Some Sadr loyalists started passing tips to the Americans on militants.

An opening for wider talks came with Sadr's announcement nearly two weeks ago that his militia would halt operations for six months to give it time to weed out alleged rogue elements. That call was in response to fighting between Sadr's followers and another Shiite militia in the holy city of Karbala that left 52 dead.

"Once Muqtada Sadr issued his call for six months of nonviolence, we thought that went hand in hand with the initiative we were attempting to start," Frank said. "It did give us an opportunity that was very helpful to the discussion effort."

When they met, Frank proposed the Sadrists stop attacks for two weeks. In exchange, he said the Americans would consider reducing their raids in the district. The Sadr representatives relayed the plan back to Mahdi Army brigade and company commanders and violence dropped last week, the commander said.

Frank has no illusions that peace is suddenly at hand. "We understand that it may be cyclical. Reconciliation efforts may occur many times. We may see a spike in contact between militant Jaish al Mahdi, Iraqi security forces and the coalition forces and then move back into a reconciliation process.

"We have to craft a way ahead. We have to find a workable solution with the community leaders, the religious leaders and essentially the local political leaders within Jaish al Mahdi," he added.

As in the talks with Sunni sheiks and armed groups in Anbar province, in western Iraq, U.S. officials who have met with Sadrists and their intermediaries have sought to convince them that the United States has no interest in occupying Iraq and that cooperating with the military will expedite its departure.

"The idea was clearly, 'Your violence is increasing the time we will be here . . . if you want to stop this, lets talk,' " a second U.S. diplomat said. "With the Sunnis, it took over a year and a half for it to generate the kind of momentum it has."

How far the contacts with the Sadrists can go may depend on a debate that militia members say is raging within their movement. Lawmaker and Sadr loyalist Qusay Abdul Wahab said the truce aimed to make a clear distinction between the Mahdi Army and fighters who had used the group as a cover for killings and other crimes.

"Those who do not obey the Sadr office will surface. The Iraqi security forces will go after them," he said, adding it was acceptable for U.S. forces to do the same.

A street commander in Sadr City put the policy this way: "Anyone who fights the Americans now is not from the Mahdi Army. Muqtada Sadr sent this order to freeze the Mahdi Army for just one reason: to distinguish between good and bad Mahdi Army members."

The fighter vowed that the militia would punish anyone who took advantage of the militia's name. "If we catch any of them, they will be tried, interrogated and they will be punished and treated as bandits," he said, adding that the militia recently captured 10 Iranians with Al Qaeda operatives in eastern Diyala province and punished them. "We dealt with them," he said, smiling and refusing to say what they had done.

The fighter's next remarks, however, were a quick reminder of the long road the Americans have to travel before they enjoy a partnership with Sadr's movement.

"Anyone who collaborates with the Americans will be considered a traitor," the fighter warned.

ned.parker@latimes.com

Times staff writers Doyle McManus and Julian E. Barnes in Washington and special correspondents in Baghdad contributed to this report.

W Sticks It To Katrina Victims Yet Again

2007-09-11T00:44:00.001-06:00

July 25, 2007

Agency Erred in Canceling Loans to 8,000 Along Gulf, Audit Finds

By RON NIXON

WASHINGTON, July 24 — The Small Business Administration, which runs the federal government’s largest program to help disaster victims rebuild their houses, improperly canceled thousands of loans it had promised homeowners along the Gulf Coast after the 2005 hurricanes, a government audit has found.

The agency canceled nearly 8,000 loans without calling the borrowers or mailing them a notice, according to the audit by the agency’s inspector general. The homeowners did eventually receive a letter contending that they had voluntarily given up their loans, the report says, even though many told auditors that they actually needed the money.

The loans were canceled last year, after the agency had come under fire for being slow to give out rebuilding money, according to the audit. Former agency employees have complained that they were pressured to withdraw the loans to cut the number of applicants whose loans had been approved but not paid out.

A spokeswoman for the agency declined to comment on the report.

The Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, which is examining problems with the agency’s disaster loan program, is planning a hearing on the audit on Wednesday.

“We all wanted to see the loans processed and disbursed more quickly and the red tape removed,” said Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the committee. “Unfortunately, even with good intentions, some disaster victims are still being left behind, and that’s not acceptable.”

The audit is the latest in a series of problems for the troubled agency, which was widely criticized for its slow response to Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. Earlier audits found that poor planning, low levels of staffing and problems with a new computer system had led to a backlog of hundreds of thousands of loan applications.

Steven C. Preston, the agency’s administrator, made fixing the disaster loans program his top priority when he took office last July.

But the audit found that agency employees might have cut corners to reduce the backlog. In many cases employees made only one call and sent no letters, according to the report. Because of problems with the agency’s computer system, its records indicated that these borrowers had requested that their loans be canceled.

Bones Of Subprime Loan Sharks Victims Legally Picked Clean A Second Time

2007-09-11T00:38:00.000-06:00

August 20, 2007

After Foreclosure, a Big Tax Bill From the I.R.S.

By GERALDINE FABRIKANT

Two years ago, William Stout lost his home in Allentown, Pa., to foreclosure when he could no longer make the payments on his $106,000 mortgage. Wells Fargo offered the two-bedroom house for sale on the courthouse steps. No bidders came forward. So Wells Fargo bought it for $1, county records show.

Despite the setback, Mr. Stout was relieved that his debt was wiped clean and he could make a new start. He married and moved in with his wife, Denise.

But on July 9, they received a bill from the Internal Revenue Service for $34,603 in back taxes. The letter explained that the debt canceled by Wells Fargo upon foreclosure was subject to income taxes, as well as penalties and late fees. The couple had a month to challenge the charges.

For those who struggle to pay their bills, who watch their housing payments rise out of reach with their adjustable-rate mortgages, who lose a job or who fall victim to illness, losing one’s home can feel like hitting bottom. But one more financial indignity may await as the fallout from the great housing boom ripples across the United States.

“Getting that tax bill,” Mrs. Stout recalled, “my first thought was that I needed to see my family doctor to help me with my stress, because we had a big mortgage and other debt and then here came the I.R.S. saying we owe this.”

Notices of unpaid taxes, unanticipated and little understood, will probably multiply as more people fall behind on their mortgages, said Ellen Harnick, senior policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonpartisan research and policy center in Durham, N.C.

Foreclosure is one way that beleaguered homeowners can fall into this tax trap. The other is when homeowners are forced to sell their homes for less than the value of the mortgage. If the lender forgives that difference, they are liable for income taxes on that amount.

The 1099 shortfall, as it is called, stems from an Internal Revenue Service policy that treats forgiven debt of all types as income even if the taxpayer has nothing tangible to show for it, unless the debt is canceled through bankruptcy.

The Center for Responsible Lending expects that 20 percent of the home loans made in 2005 and 2006 to people with weak credit, commonly called subprime loans, will end in foreclosure. Because so little money was required as a down payment during the boom, the value of many of these houses may be less than what is owed.

Some people in this predicament are fighting the I.R.S. and winning. Sometimes, lower payments can be negotiated with the I.R.S., tax experts say.

In other cases, bankruptcy or a claim of insolvency can eliminate the tax burden. Sometimes, the bills are sent out erroneously, as banks fail to keep track of home values and what price the properties ultimately sell for.

“The tax laws are far too complex for borrowers to understand,” said Kurt Eggert, a professor at Chapman University School of Law, noting that there are distinctions between selling a house for less than the loan amount and losing one in foreclosure. He says it is crucial to get expert tax advice to sort through the bewildering complications.

The whole concept can be counterintuitive. “Your home has declined in value and you lose it,” Mr. Eggert said. “Then the I.R.S. says you owe tens of thousands in taxes because you got a windfall when the debt was forgiven.”

Mr. Stout has suffered doubly from the downturn in the housing market. He earned $65,000 last year as a salesman for a roofing company. But last winter, his job was cut from a salaried position to an hourly one. Then his hours were reduced, as construction demand eased. Through July he had earned only $25,000, said his lawyer, Stephen G. Doherty, of Bennett & Doherty in Doylestown, Pa., putting him on pace for a pay cut over all this year.

Mr. Doherty set out to appeal the Stouts’ tax bill by arguing that Wells Fargo got the home as collateral so the family did not reap a benefit. The Stouts and their lawyer also hoped to show that Wells Fargo was able to sell the house for far more than $1. Finally, they contended that penalties were inappropriate because they did not receive a tax notice in 2005 or 2006.

After a reporter inquired about the Stout matter, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage said last week that it had reviewed the Stouts’ tax documents and was filing a corrected 1099 tax form to show that no debt had been canceled, because the fair market value of the home was actually more than Mr. Stout had owed.

Mr. Doherty, the Stouts’ lawyer, pointed out that the acquiring lender, in this case Wells Fargo, has some leeway in valuing a house. The fair market value can be the high bid at a sheriff’s sale, or an alternative valuation.

In this case, Wells Fargo’s about-face was tied to an appraisal that Mr. Doherty says he believes was completed before the sale. It set the value of the house at $132,844, eliminating the Stouts’ liability. (Lenders do periodic appraisals once a property is in default, Mr. Doherty said.)

The Stouts found in county records that Wells Fargo had sold the house to U.S. Bank for $106,000 — the same amount Mr. Stout had owed — in March 2006. The house was resold that month for $140,000.

An I.R.S. spokesman would not comment on the Stout matter or how the agency applies the tax rules on forgiven debt, but referred to a document on the I.R.S.’s policies.

Diane Thompson, a lawyer in Godfrey, Ill., for the National Consumer Law Center, says the tax can be a real hardship for some people.

She recalled a client who owed $39,000 to her lender and got a tax bill after her house was sold in foreclosure for $10,000. Ms. Thompson appealed to tax authorities, contending that her client, a part-time waitress, was broke because her debts were greater than her assets.

“If you can prove you are insolvent, the I.R.S. does not treat the forgiveness of debt as income,” Ms. Thompson said. Her client did not have to pay.

Lawyers may also be able to show that the original loan process was so flawed that the borrower is not liable for taxes. Indeed, during the real estate bubble, lenders and mortgage brokers sometimes encouraged homeowners to borrow more based on inflated home values.

Such was the case with Agnes Mouser, a 65-year-old widow who works in the records department in a Houston prison. In 2000, she sought to pay off her credit-card debt with a loan from Beneficial Finance, which sent an appraiser to assess the value of her home.

“A real nice young man came out to see me,” Mrs. Mouser recalled. “He could have been my grandson.”

That appraiser compared her 1977 mobile home with two new standard homes with two-car garages. Using those homes as benchmarks, Beneficial agreed to lend $34,730 on her home, valued at $43,500, in 2000. Mrs. Mouser’s loan carried an interest rate of 14.88 percent, and she paid 7 points, or $2,431, at closing to get that rate, along with $270 to Beneficial for the appraisal.

A spokeswoman for HSBC, the parent company of Beneficial, said it did not comment on matters involving specific customers.

In 2003, when Mrs. Mouser could not meet the payments, she contacted Ira D. Joffe, a lawyer in Houston. He found that her property was valued by the county at $19,970, less than half of what Beneficial had estimated.

“I promised to depose the appraiser’s Seeing Eye dog if there was a lawsuit,” Mr. Joffe recalled telling Beneficial.

Beneficial released the lien. But then Mrs. Mouser got a tax bill for $10,000, or the amount owed on the $29,566 that Beneficial had treated as a canceled loan.

“The tax bill scared her to death,” Mr. Joffe recalled. “It took a letter from an accountant and two letters from me to get the I.R.S. to go away.”

W Fights Terrorists "Over There": Over Here, Nuclear Security Rather Lacking

2007-09-11T00:27:00.000-06:00

July 12, 2007

A Nuclear Ruse Uncovers Holes in U.S. Security

By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, July 11 — Undercover Congressional investigators set up a bogus company and obtained a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March that would have allowed them to buy the radioactive materials needed for a so-called dirty bomb.

The investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, demonstrated once again that the security measures put in place since the 2001 terrorist attacks to prevent radioactive materials from getting into the wrong hands are insufficient, according to a G.A.O. report, which is scheduled to be released at a Senate hearing Thursday.

“Given that terrorists have expressed an interest in obtaining nuclear material, the Congress and the American people expect licensing programs for these materials to be secure,” said Gregory D. Kutz, an investigator at the accountability office, in testimony prepared for the hearing.

The bomb the investigators could have built would not have caused widespread damage or even high- level contamination. But it still could have had serious consequences, particularly economic ones, in any city where it was set off.

The undercover operation involved an application from a fake construction company, supposedly based in West Virginia, that the investigators had incorporated even though it had no offices, Internet site or employees. Its only asset was a postal box.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials did not visit the company or try to interview its executives in person. Instead, within 28 days, they mailed the license to the West Virginia postal box, the report says.

That license, on a standard-size piece of paper, also had so few security measures incorporated into it that the investigators, using commercially available equipment, were able to modify it easily, removing a limit on the amount of radioactive material they could buy, the report says.

With that forged document, the auditors approached two industrial equipment companies to arrange to buy dozens of portable moisture density gauges, which cost about $5,000 each and are used to read the density of soil and pavement when building highways. The machines include americium-241 and cesium-137, radioactive substances commonly used in industrial equipment. Auditors, convinced they had enough evidence to prove their point, called off the ruse before the devices were delivered.

But if they had gone ahead with the plot — which would have required extracting the radioactive materials from the machines and combining them, a job that could harm anyone in close contact — they could have built a bomb that would have contaminated an area about the length of a city block, according to the regulatory commission.

As with any dirty bomb, the resulting low-level contamination would not have presented an immediate health hazard. Still, the area would have to have been evacuated and decontaminated.

Edward McGaffigan Jr., a member of the regulatory commission’s governing board, said the agency had taken steps to improve safeguards immediately after learning about the security lapses from auditors. The commission now requires members of its staff to visit any company it is not familiar with before approving a license application. It is also looking for ways to change the license to make it harder to modify or counterfeit, Mr. McGaffigan said.

But he said the danger associated with the amount of radioactive material the auditors were trying to buy should not be overstated. And the operation would have been much more expensive and complicated than pulling off a more conventional attack involving a truck bomb or a chemical tanker truck.

“Why would I not blow up a chemical tanker on a train with chlorine in it or other toxic materials, at a tiny fraction of the cost before doing this very elaborate exercise?” Mr. McGaffigan said.

A nuclear commission spokesman, David McIntyre, said the agency had not inspected the offices of the bogus company before issuing a license because the portable devices the Congressional auditors were trying to buy are considered a lower-level threat than that posed by more dangerous radioactive materials, which it regulates more strictly.

But Senator Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota, who has pushed Congressional auditors to investigate nuclear threats since 2003, said the commission was guilty of playing down the threat.

“The economic and psychological effects of a dirty bomb detonating on American soil would be devastating,” Mr. Coleman said in a statement Wednesday. “The N.R.C. has a pre 9-11 mindset in a post 9-11 world focusing just on preventing another Chernobyl.”

The findings by the Congressional auditors are the latest in a series of reports about management and procedural weaknesses at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that investigators have argued make the nation more vulnerable to a dirty bomb attack. In 2003, auditors first recommended that licenses for radioactive materials not be granted without inspections or other means of verifying that the applicant was legitimate.

In 2006, it recommended that the agency take steps to make sure its documents cannot be forged.

The use of undercover tactics is not a new one for the auditors. They used a similar approach last year when trying to smuggle radioactive materials across the border and investigating how effective the government’s protections were against fraudulent efforts to get cash assistance after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The most recent investigation did turn up some reassuring news: a second ploy by the auditors to acquire radioactive material was thwarted.

In 34 states, local regulatory authorities handle license applications. In Maryland, the Congressional investigators sent a similar application for a license to buy construction equipment that relied on a radioactive source. But Maryland officials said they wanted to inspect the bogus company’s offices and storage yard, so the auditors withdrew their application.

Hey Look, A Petraeus "Surge" That Worked-Just Not For The US Troops

2007-09-10T23:49:00.001-06:00

August 28, 2007

Iraq Weapons Are a Focus of Criminal Investigations

By JAMES GLANZ and ERIC SCHMITT

BAGHDAD, Aug. 27 — Several federal agencies are investigating a widening network of criminal cases involving the purchase and delivery of billions of dollars of weapons, supplies and other matériel to Iraqi and American forces, according to American officials. The officials said it amounted to the largest ring of fraud and kickbacks uncovered in the conflict here.

The inquiry has already led to several indictments of Americans, with more expected, the officials said. One of the investigations involves a senior American officer who worked closely with Gen. David H. Petraeus in setting up the logistics operation to supply the Iraqi forces when General Petraeus was in charge of training and equipping those forces in 2004 and 2005, American officials said Monday.

There is no indication that investigators have uncovered any wrongdoing by General Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, who through a spokesman declined comment on any legal proceedings.

This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen federal investigators, Congressional, law enforcement and military officials, and specialists in contracting and logistics, in Iraq and Washington, who have direct knowledge of the inquiries. Many spoke on condition of anonymity because there are continuing criminal investigations.

The inquiries are being pursued by the Army Criminal Investigation Command, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, among other agencies.

Over the past year, inquiries by federal oversight agencies have found serious discrepancies in military records of where thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces actually ended up. None of those agencies concluded that weapons found their way to insurgents or militias.

In their public reports, those agencies did not raise the possibility of criminal wrongdoing, and General Petraeus has said that the imperative to provide weapons to Iraqi security forces was more important than maintaining impeccable records.

In an interview on Aug. 18, General Petraeus said that with ill-equipped Iraqi security forces confronting soaring violence across the country in 2004 and 2005, he made a decision not to wait for formal tracking systems to be put in place before distributing the weapons.

“We made a decision to arm guys who wanted to fight for their country,” General Petraeus said.

But now, American officials said, part of the criminal investigation is focused on Lt. Col. Levonda Joey Selph, who reported directly to General Petraeus and worked closely with him in setting up the logistics operation for what were then the fledgling Iraqi security forces.

That operation moved everything from AK-47s, armored vehicles and plastic explosives to boots and Army uniforms, according to officials who were involved in it. Her former colleagues recall Colonel Selph as a courageous officer who was willing to take substantial personal risks to carry out her mission and was unfailingly loyal to General Petraeus and his directives to move quickly in setting up the logistics operation.

“She was kind of like the Pony Express of the Iraqi security forces,” said Victoria Wayne, who was then deputy director of logistics for the overall Iraqi reconstruction program.

Still, Colonel Selph also ran into serious problems with a company she oversaw that failed to live up to a contract it had signed to carry out part of that logistics mission.

It is not clear exactly what Colonel Selph is being investigated for. Colonel Selph, reached by telephone twice on Monday, said she would speak to reporters later but did not answer further messages left for her.

The enormous expenditures of American and Iraqi money on the Iraq reconstruction program, at least $40 billion over all, have been criticized for reasons that go well beyond the corruption cases that have been uncovered so far. Weak oversight, poor planning and seemingly endless security problems have contributed to many of the program’s failures.

The investigation into contracts for matériel to Iraqi soldiers and police officers is part of an even larger series of criminal cases. As of Aug. 23, there were a total of 73 criminal investigations related to contract fraud in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan, Col. Dan Baggio, an Army spokesman said Monday. Twenty civilians and military personnel have been charged in federal court as a result of the inquiries, he said. The inquiries involve contracts valued at more than $5 billion, and Colonel Baggio said the charges so far involve more than $15 million in bribes.

Just last week, an Army major, his wife and his sister were indicted on charges that they accepted up to $9.6 million in bribes for Defense Department contracts in Iraq and Kuwait.

Investigations span the gamut from low-level officials submitting false claims for amounts less than $2,500 to more serious cases involving, conspiracy, bribery, product substitution and bid-rigging or double-billing involving large dollar amounts or more senior contracting officials, Army criminal investigators said. The investigations involve contractors, government employees, local nationals and American military personnel.

Questions about whether the American military could account for the weaponry and other equipment purchased to outfit the Iraqi security forces were raised as early as May of last year, when Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia and then the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a request to an independent federal oversight agency to investigate the matter.

But federal officials say the inquiry has moved far beyond the initial investigation of hundreds of thousands of improperly tracked assault rifles and semiautomatic pistols that grew out of Senator Warner’s query. In fact, Senator Warner said in a statement to The New York Times that he was outraged when he was briefed recently on the initial findings of the investigations.

“When I was briefed on the recent developments, I felt so strongly that I asked the Secretary of the Army to brief the Armed Services Committee right away, which he did in early August,” Senator Warner said in a statement.

An Army spokesman declined to comment on the briefing by the secretary of the Army, Pete Geren. In a sign of the seriousness of the scandal, the Defense Department Inspector General, Claude M. Kicklighter, will lead an 18-person team to Iraq early next month to investigate contracting practices, said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary.

Mr. Morrell said Mr. Kicklighter, a retired three-star Army general, would stay in Iraq indefinitely to investigate contracting abuses, and was empowered to fix problems on the spot or take action if his team identified potential criminal activity.

Congressional officials who have been briefed on the Defense Department inspector general’s inquiry said Monday that one focus would be on weapons, munitions and explosives. In addition, Mr. Geren, the Army secretary, is expected to announce later this week the creation of a panel of senior contracting and logistics specialists to address any systemic problems they identify.

Senator Warner’s request last May for an independent federal oversight agency to investigate the accountability of weapons and equipment given to Iraqi security forces underscored concern about the issue.

That federal agency, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, responded with a report in October 2006 that found serious discrepancies in American military records of where thousands of the weapons actually ended up. The military did not take the routine step of recording serial numbers for the weapons, the inspector general found, making it difficult to determine whether any of the weapons had ended up in the wrong hands.

In July 2007, the Government Accountability Office found even larger discrepancies, reporting that the American military “cannot fully account for about 110,000 AK-47 rifles, 90,000 pistols, 80 items of body armor, and 115,000 helmets reported as issued to Iraqi security forces as of Sept. 22, 2005.”

James Glanz reported from Baghdad, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

Katrina: One Reporter's Blur Of Contrasts

2007-09-01T10:15:00.000-06:00

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It was America, unhinged

The veteran reporter had seen a lot, but nothing could prepare her for New Orleans after Katrina. Emotions could be overwhelming.

By Ann Simmons
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 1, 2007

NEW ORLEANS — Shortly after arriving in New Orleans in March 2006, I took a wrong turn and headed over a bridge into the city's Lower 9th Ward, which was still largely deserted after being devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

A knot tightened in my stomach. I had unintentionally broken my self-imposed rule of not traveling into an unfamiliar area late at night.

Suddenly, something darted in front of my car. A small dog, I thought. It turned out to be a rat. Another one followed shortly afterward.

Then I saw him -- someone standing on the sidewalk ahead of me.

My fingers tightened around the steering wheel. Trapped on one side by a levee wall, there was nowhere to go but forward.

I couldn't drive fast for fear of puncturing a tire. What remained of the buckled road was littered with nail-studded wood, glass shards and spikes from the ruins of destroyed homes.

The figure didn't move. Could he be armed?

As I approached, I saw that my potential assailant was some kind of post or stump.

Why was I so nervous?

I stand over 6 feet tall, a strong black woman from London who is not easily intimidated. My career as a journalist had put me on the front line of conflicts in Eritrea and Liberia. I had been roughed up at a rally in the Democratic Republic of Congo for supposedly resembling a Banyamulenge, a member of an ethnic group then embroiled in Congo's civil conflict. I had walked side by side with gun-toting militia members in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, and I survived a suicide bomb attack in Baghdad.

I hadn't imagined phantoms there. I knew of the risks and had expected danger.

But this was America, and as a Briton by birth, I had a somewhat idealistic view of America the Great. By now, six months after Katrina, there should have been lights in windows, people strolling the sidewalks, the murmur of voices, music wafting from front porches.

Instead, there was the kind of ominous silence that envelops a city under siege until the crackle of gunfire punctures the peace.

The unnatural silence, the nothingness, scared me.

Over my 14 months covering the rebuilding of New Orleans, the city repeatedly brought to mind images and people I had seen in more desperate parts of the developing world.

It was not unusual for the lights to go out, streets to flood, and water pressure in New Orleans neighborhoods to drop to a trickle when it rained. The problem was prevalent at the so-called luxury apartment where I lived, which also served as the Los Angeles Times bureau in the Mid-City area.

Against the background of the enormous physical destruction, such inconveniences should have seemed minor.

But the repeated small indignities mounted and pushed New Orleanians to the edge. Before the storm, everyone took for granted a consistent supply of electricity and potable water, regular mail service, a local supermarket, a bank, a church, a nearby school, and at least one local restaurant, even if it was a fast-food joint.

For long months after Katrina, most neighborhoods had none of these. Some still don't.

It took several months to find a dry cleaner, so I only wore clothes that could be washed in a machine, or by hand. The nearest Rite Aid pharmacy operated out of a trailer until October 2006.

Only five doctors remained of the 120 estimated to have been in practice in the neighborhood before August 2005. I typically let my illnesses run their course rather than face the hassle of trying to find a doctor, or I sought medical attention on trips back to L.A.

Most New Orleans residents could not do that. They had to, and still have to, make do with subpar healthcare. Before Katrina, there were 11 area hospitals offering emergency services. Today, there are fewer than half that.

The storm also destroyed or financially hurt more than 80% of Orleans Parish's small businesses, among them many black hair salons. Managing the short style that I had before moving to New Orleans was a challenge.

One day, I cornered a policewoman shopping at Wal-Mart who was wearing the same style. She gave me her hairdresser's name, but added that her salon was the only one in the Bywater neighborhood that had reopened, and that it was constantly jammed. Newcomers would probably have to book at least a month in advance, or sit and wait all day. This hardly seemed practical.

I started wearing my hair in extension braids. Andrea Shaw, a colleague and friend from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, referred me to Sarone SunRaa, a veteran of black hair care. She plied her trade from a clean and comfortable room in her home.

This seemingly mundane and vanity-driven experience illustrated what many African Americans meant when they said New Orleans was no longer truly "a black city." It wasn't only the physical presence of African Americans that counted, but the many longtime black community institutions, such as barbershops, black-owned corner stores, and traditional Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs -- benevolent societies that are famous for their parasol-twirling, brass-band "second line" jazz parades.

Here we were in supposedly the world's most powerful industrialized nation, yet getting New Orleans back on its feet was so slow. Federal, state and city officials continue to blame each other for the lethargic progress.

My perception of the United States as a democracy that takes care of its own was shattered.

This wasn't Somalia of the 1990s, where the absence of a central government guaranteed a dearth of public services and shoddy infrastructure; or postwar Angola, where broken bridges, land mines and derelict roads and airstrips could be blamed for hampering the transport of supplies or assistance to a populace in need. It wasn't southern Sudan, where aid groups often had to suspend relief efforts because of security concerns.

This was America.

The lack of faith in the government, common among people in the developing world, gradually began to show itself among New Orleanians as they waited in vain for an outpouring of help from authorities.

"It's like no one cares; like we've been forgotten," Marie Benoit, a schoolteacher pre-Katrina, said one day on the way to her home in a park of 500 campers on the campus of Southern University at New Orleans.

It was a sentiment that echoed continually -- feelings of rejection, that New Orleans was not part of the United States, that maybe those internally displaced or living in exile were indeed "refugees." (New Orleanians despise that term.)

Expectation gave way to resignation -- a gradual unconscious acceptance that New Orleanians were essentially on their own. A greater community spirit emerged from that realization. Neighborhood associations were founded, or came back to life. They brought neighbors together, sometimes for the first time, and encouraged people to get involved in the city's future.

"It's going to take everyone who's still left living here to get involved," said homemaker Becky Zaheri as she explained her motivation for launching Katrina Krewe, a volunteer community cleanup group of students, homemakers, retirees, teachers and other professionals. "We need all the citizens to take pride in our city, to take ownership of our city."

Not a day went by during my stay without a mention of the "K" word. No matter the topic, all conversation led back to Katrina: how someone had fared; what they managed to salvage; where they were living; their struggles to rebuild. Many interviews became impromptu therapy sessions.

I always scheduled more time than was necessary just to leave room for the inevitable Katrina tales. Some people had to "talk it out" whenever they got the opportunity.

But being bombarded with raw feelings -- anger and anxiety, denial and defiance, sadness and hope -- was draining. Every day it hit home that Katrina had touched the life of every person in this city, no matter their social or economic standing.

Gordon Natal, a professor of nursing at Loyola University, lived in the city's upscale Lakewood South suburb, which had literally become a lake in the days after the hurricane.

His 3,000-square-foot house had been flooded almost to its eaves. He was trying to renovate the house while fixing up his backyard pool house so his homeless parents could live there temporarily.

Natal spoke with confidence as he expressed his determination to return home. But as he finished talking, his poise gave way to tears.

It was the fifth time that week that someone had broken down and wept during an interview. Three were grown men. I would press a shoulder comfortingly, mutter words of consolation, or sit in uncomfortable silence allowing the person to grieve.

What do you say to someone who has lost everything they ever owned? That you understood how it felt, when you did not? Saying "I'm sorry" just seemed so lame.

Feelings of inadequacy -- my inability to help people -- overwhelmed me. Relief came through the seven-mile run and gym workout each morning -- and often another session each evening.

By the second anniversary of Katrina, Natal had been back in his house for almost a year. His parents had made his pool house their permanent home.

But life was still a struggle: heavy debt from home repairs, higher property taxes, and utility bills that had doubled. The father of three has been forced to take a second job as an emergency room nurse on weekends. "I would not encourage anybody to return here," said Natal. "It's not worth it."

Throughout my months in New Orleans, my accent elicited curiosity, admiration, amusement and sometimes a measure of disbelief. I often had to explain "what I was": "No, I'm not South African"; "Yes, there are lots of black people in England."

Generally, people's interest helped to break the ice.

"Our people be everywhere," Dwayne Holmes, a heavyset African American 16-year-old, said with a grin one day as he and his pals sat on a stoop on a street in crime-plagued Central City.

Holmes wanted to know whether black youth in England also called each other "dog" as a term of endearment.

For the most part, we have our own lingo, I told him.

"They treat black people bad there too?" he continued.

This provided an entree to the subject that had brought me to Central City: that African American youth, like Holmes and his mates, were being blamed for a growing wave of violence.

In the summer of 2006, Louisiana's Democratic Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco dispatched a contingent of National Guard and state troopers after the gunning-down of six people -- five of them teenagers -- over one weekend.

New Orleans has long had a crime problem. Katrina did not create this. But many residents openly acknowledged that they had hoped the storm had swept out the criminals, for good.

The city haltingly crept toward recovery at the outset of 2007, 16 months after Katrina. Annual events like Mardi Gras and the Jazz & Heritage Festival were huge successes.

When the New Orleans Saints qualified for the National Football Conference championship in January, residents were united in their euphoria. Hurt and anxiety over the rebuilding struggle were momentarily swept aside.

The Saints were the first team in the history of the NFL to reach a conference championship after losing 13 or more games the previous season. Their success became a beacon of hope for the city's recovery.

I don't understand the rules of American football, but I watched the game with friends at the Dry Dock Cafe at historic Algiers Point.

Black and whites sat festively side by side. The only colors that mattered here were the Saints' black and gold.

"Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints? Who dat? Who dat?" I yelled out the Saints battle cry as running back Reggie Bush scored a touchdown. My accent elicited a ripple of laughter.

A month after the game, D. Majeeda Snead, a clinical professor and criminologist at Loyola, and a justice system source-turned-friend, extended an invitation to the Zulu Ball, a premier event of carnival season.

The annual dance is organized by the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club Inc., New Orleans' largest, predominantly African American carnival organization. A colleague described the event as "a formal picnic," because guests typically bring their own food and drink.

That frigid February evening, ladies dressed in ball gowns toted foil trays with fried chicken, sandwiches and hors d'oeuvres. Tuxedo-clad men hauled crates and coolers and bags with bottles of wine and champagne.

It took almost two hours to get through the crush of cars and floats to the convention center, where an estimated 15,000 had gathered. Screams of excitement rang out as people who had not seen each other since Katrina embraced and kissed.

Many people were still living outside the city, but had returned specifically for the ball. Revelers shouted "Where you at?" -- a common New Orleans greeting for "How ya doing?" There was a feeling of homecoming as tears blended with laughter.

Throughout the first half of this year, signs of normalcy increased. Many storm-ravaged neighborhoods began to spring back to life: The first new home in the Lower 9th Ward was dedicated in February, though it stood against a backdrop of destruction. By May, more than two dozen businesses had returned to the main commercial strip in the Lakeview area. I left New Orleans the day before the June 1 start of the hurricane season, the second one since Katrina.

The day before, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin gave his first State of the City address since Katrina. He berated federal and state leaders for breaking promises to provide adequate financial assistance to New Orleans "and people who need it the most." He insisted the city was on the mend.

"New Orleans is coming back, whether you like it or not," Nagin said, "and you might as well deal with it."

I regretted leaving this dynamic and offbeat city, its compelling story and its resilient people.

Their heartbreak and struggles were a reminder to never take for granted the basics of everyday existence.

But overall, there was a measure of hope now. No matter how long it took, New Orleans would come back.

I remembered the mood during the Saints' campaign for the Super Bowl. Although the team lost, the city won. It got a second wind. It simply refused to be beaten.

This was the America I knew.

ann.simmons@latimes.com

Dems Get Ready To Give W Another Blank Check

2007-08-30T21:23:00.000-06:00

Unless there are clear timetables, then this is nothing but another shameful cave-in to a massively despised and politically isolated President

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Reid Opens Door to Pact With Antiwar Republicans

By Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 31, 2007; A01

LAS VEGAS -- Saying the coming weeks will be "one of the last opportunities" to alter the course of the war, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said he is now willing to compromise with Republicans to find ways to limit troop deployments in Iraq.

Reid acknowledged that his previous firm demand for a spring withdrawal deadline had become an obstacle for a small but growing number of Republicans who have said they want to end the war but have been unwilling to set a timeline.

"I don't think we have to think that our way is the only way," Reid said of specific dates during an interview in his office here. "I'm not saying, 'Republicans, do what we want to do.' Just give me something that you think you would like to do, that accomplishes some or all of what I want to do."

Reid's unwavering stance this summer earned him critics who said he was playing politics by refusing to bargain with antiwar Republicans. In the interview, he said that his goal remains an immediate return of U.S. troops but that now is the time to work with the GOP. He cited bringing up legislation after Labor Day that would require troops to have more home leave, forcing military leaders to reduce troop levels, a measure that has drawn some Republican support.

During the week of Sept. 10, Congress will hear a progress report on the war from the U.S. commander in Baghdad, Gen. David H. Petraeus, and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker. After those hearings and a formal report from President Bush, lawmakers will renew their debate on the war.

That debate screeched to a halt in late July after the most poisonous confrontation since Democrats took control of Congress eight months ago. Reid convened an all-night session that infuriated Republicans, who blocked a Democratic withdrawal measure. Despite antiwar stirrings within the GOP, just four Republican senators broke ranks on the vote, and several chastised Reid, saying he wasted the Senate's time on a publicity stunt.

Reid then dropped the war debate, hoping to highlight Republican obstructionism. But the delay has provided the administration with breathing room to build its case that Bush's strategy is working. Petraeus is expected to report to Congress next month that there are some signs of progress in Iraq and that a precipitous U.S. withdrawal could be disastrous.

"I don't think we had any choice," Reid said, shrugging off past skirmishes. "I have no regrets about the way that I have tried to marshal the troops. It's been hard to keep all the Democrats together, but we've done that."

But looking forward, Reid said he will encourage new coalitions to develop, with a more bipartisan hue. "There is no reason that this be Democrat versus Republican," he said. But his GOP colleagues, he added, must be willing to stand up to Bush, as few have so far. "All these people saying September is here, September is the time -- they're going to have belly up to the bar and decide how to vote," Reid said.

One measure Reid said he will seek to resurrect would tighten rules on the use of troops by requiring soldiers' leave times to be at least as long as their most recent deployment. The proposal, offered by Sen. James Webb (D-Va.), would not set withdrawal terms, but it could effectively limit U.S. force levels. A vote of 56 to 41 in favor of the measure on July 11 fell four votes short of the 60 needed to overcome a GOP filibuster, but it had seven Republican supporters.

Another approach, left hanging when Reid terminated the July debate, was a proposal from Sens. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) to turn the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group into official U.S. policy. The study group's proposals, offered in December and mostly ignored by the White House, include setting the stage for a new regional diplomatic initiative and transitioning U.S. combat forces to more specific roles, including training and counterterrorism. If progress isn't made, troops would begin withdrawing early next year.

The Salazar-Alexander bill has attracted 12 additional co-sponsors, half of them Republicans. Reid said he is willing to listen to their pitch, but he remains concerned that the language is too cautious and may now be outdated.

Alexander said he and Salazar are discussing tweaks to reflect changing circumstances. But he believes that the study group report contains "the seeds for consensus," and he said of his proposal, "It's not withdrawal with a deadline, but it's finishing the job."

"I respect that some Democrats want us out tomorrow, and some Republicans want a victory like Germany and Japan, but that's not going to happen," Alexander said. But he warned that, given the onset of the 2008 presidential campaign season, "September may be our last best chance" to force a legislative solution.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), who works closely with Reid on Iraq policy, noted that with each new phase of the Iraq debate, "we've picked up more votes." But to meet the Democrats' ultimate goal of ending the war, he added, "There's only so many things you can do."

The antiwar community also is warily eyeing the clock, frustrated that Bush remains firmly in control of Iraq policy. Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org Political Action, called the all-night session in July "a good step in the right direction" but said of Reid's efforts to force Republicans to concede, "We'd like to see it go further."

The Senate has proved to be punishing terrain. Although Democrats technically control the chamber 51 to 49, Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) has been absent all year for health reasons, and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), an independent who is a member of the Democratic caucus, votes with Bush on Iraq. Given that controversial Senate bills require 60 votes to pass, Reid starts out 11 votes short.

Reid's friends see the wear on him. "I think he has agonized over this," said Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.), who has known Reid since she was a teenager. "I can see it. It weighs on his shoulders. But he's approaching this for all the right reasons, and I admire him for that."

Few Democrats have come as full circle on the war as Reid himself. On Oct. 10, 2002, as Senate majority whip, Reid became the most senior Democrat to endorse the war resolution. "They gave us the information, and I accepted what they told us," he explains.

It took a while to let go. "I did not wake up some morning and say, 'I oppose the war.' It built very slowly," Reid said.

One glimmer came when Frederick E. Pokorney Jr., a 31-year-old Marine from Tonopah, died on March 23, 2003; he was the first Nevada resident to be killed in Iraq. Reid called Wade Lieseke, the man Pokorney considered his father, to offer condolences. When Lieseke told him, "This war is worthless," he was taken aback. "I'm not sure that's right," he thought to himself. But with every new call, Reid later said, "I reflected back on that."

Reid also recalled his first visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. "I say to this young man -- he's missing part of one leg and the other one's up in a sling, and I try to be nice -- 'I know we need to go get you more armor.' " The young man responded: "We don't need more armor. We need to get out of there." That comment lingered too.

This March, the senator returned to Walter Reed, where he met a young Ohio man recovering from a bomb attack that had "vaporized" his friend. A 22-year Army veteran told Reid she had lost her memory because she'd been knocked unconscious so many times. Reid left the hospital and headed to the Senate floor, where he delivered a passionate speech in favor of Webb's bid for troop-deployment limits.

"That did it for me," Reid said of the Walter Reed visit. "I never looked back. I'm not really proud of the fact that it's taken me so long to realize how bad it's been, but I'm there."

Bush Jr's "Escalation", Ever-Changing Mission, Crushing US Troops Morale

2007-08-25T10:00:00.001-06:00

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GIs' morale dips as Iraq war drags on

With tours extended, multiple deployments and new tactics that put them in bare posts in greater danger, they feel leaders are out of touch with reality.

By Tina Susman
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

August 25, 2007

YOUSIFIYA, IRAQ — In the dining hall of a U.S. Army post south of Baghdad, President Bush was on the wide-screen TV, giving a speech about the war in Iraq. The soldiers didn't look up from their chicken and mashed potatoes.

As military and political leaders prepare to deliver a progress report on the conflict to Congress next month, many soldiers are increasingly disdainful of the happy talk that they say commanders on the ground and White House officials are using in their discussions about the war.

And they're becoming vocal about their frustration over longer deployments and a taxing mission that keeps many living in dangerous and uncomfortably austere conditions. Some say two wars are being fought here: the one the enlisted men see, and the one that senior officers and politicians want the world to see.

"I don't see any progress. Just us getting killed," said Spc. Yvenson Tertulien, one of those in the dining hall in Yousifiya, 10 miles south of Baghdad, as Bush's speech aired last month. "I don't want to be here anymore."

Morale problems come as the Bush administration faces increasing pressure to begin a drawdown of troops.

The Times reported Friday that Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was expected to advise Bush to reduce U.S. force levels next year by almost half because of the strain on the military.

But Pace on Friday said, "The story is wrong, it is speculative. I have not made or decided on any recommendations yet."

Plenty of troops remain upbeat about their mission in Iraq. At Patrol Base Shanghai, flanking the town of Rushdi Mullah south of Baghdad, Army Capt. Matt Dawson said residents used to shoot at troops but now visit them and offer ideas on improving security.

"For the 20-year-old kids here who have been shot at for 10 months in a row, the change is a tremendous feeling," Dawson said last week.

The Army cites reenlistment numbers as proof that morale remains high and says it expects to reach its retention goal of 62,200 for the fiscal year.

"On the 4th of July, we reenlisted 588 service members . . . in Baghdad. That has to be an indicator," said Sgt. Maj. Marvin Hill, who visits bases to gauge morale on behalf of Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Based on his encounters, Hill said, he would rank morale at 8 on a scale of 1 to 10.

"Units that are having real success are units where troop morale is extremely high," Hill said. "Units that are sustaining losses, whether it be personnel losses, injuries or casualties -- those are organizations where morale might dip a bit."

The signs of frustration and of flagging morale are unmistakable, including blunt comments, online rants and the findings of surveys on military morale and suicides.

Sometimes the signs are to be found even in latrines. In the stalls at Baghdad's Camp Liberty, someone had posted Army help cards listing "nine signs of suicide." On one card, seven of the boxes had been checked.

"This occupation, this money pit, this smorgasbord of superfluous aggression is getting more hopeless and dismal by the second," a soldier in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, wrote in an Aug. 7 post on his blog, www.armyofdude.blogspot.com.

"The only person I know who believed Iraq was improving was killed by a sniper in May," the blogger, identified only as Alex from Frisco, Texas, said in a separate e-mail.

The Army's suicide rate is at its highest in 23 years: 17.3 per 100,000 troops, compared with 12.4 per 100,000 in 2003, the first year of the war. Of the 99 suicides last year, 27 occurred in Iraq.

The latest in a series of mental health surveys of troops in Iraq, released in May, says 45% of the 1,320 soldiers interviewed ranked morale in their unit as low or very low. Seven percent ranked it high or very high.

Mental health trends have worsened in the last two years, said Cindy Williams, an expert in military personnel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "These long and repeated deployments are causing acute mental stress," she said.

Most troops in Iraq expected 12-month deployments. Those were extended in May by three months for the troop buildup. Thousands already were on their second or third deployments.

The result is a fighting force that includes many soldiers who are worn down, just as Petraeus, who took command of the war six months ago, is asking them to adopt intense counterinsurgency tactics. Those strategies emphasize living "outside the wire," in military-speak, in outposts that put troops close to Iraqis. The theory is that people will come to trust the soldiers and share information needed to quell the violence.

But these posts often lack basic amenities such as running water, flush toilets, telephones and Internet access, which troops at the forward operating bases enjoy, along with food courts and athletic facilities. Being on the front lines, troops in outposts also face greater danger than those at bases.

Since the war began, there have been eight months in which U.S. troop deaths topped 100, including three months since the buildup began in February.

In Yousifiya, troops occupy the sun-scorched grounds of a former potato-processing plant. They use pit latrines and get showers only when there is enough water. They jog around a shade-less concrete lot that serves as a helipad and mortar-launching site. Other troops in this area have far less comfortable surroundings.

Army Maj. Rob Griggs believes rough conditions are good for the mission. Without comforting distractions, troops are more driven to complete their jobs, said Griggs, who is on his fifth deployment, including two in Iraq, since enlisting 17 years ago.

"It allows them to focus on why they are here," said Griggs, who sleeps and lives in half of a 20-foot metal shipping container on the Yousifiya base. Having troops live in the same spare conditions as many Iraqis do also helps convince people that the Americans are genuine about wanting to make things better, he said.

But the disparities in living and working conditions among soldiers heighten resentments, chipping away at morale. So does the feeling that the mission is futile, a belief fueled by the Iraqi political stalemate and the unreliability of Iraqi forces.

"There are two different wars," said Staff Sgt. Donald Richard Harris, comparing his soldiers' views with those of commanders in distant bases. "It's a dead-end process, it seems like."

Asked to rank morale in his unit, Harris gave it a 4 on a 10-point scale. "Look at these guys. This is their downtime," he said, as young soldiers around him silently cleaned dust from their rifles at a battle position south of the capital. A fiery wind blasted through the small base, an abandoned home surrounded by sandbags and razor wire.

"It sounds selfish, but if we just had phones and Internet service," said Staff Sgt. Clark Merlin, his voice trailing off.

Their unit was supposed to go home this month but its tour was extended until November. That means three more months of using plastic sacks for toilets, burning their waste and hoping for packages from home.

"I think the extension has been 99% of the reason morale is low," said Merlin, rating it 4 or 5.

Counterinsurgency expert Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations said the "two wars" issue is common in conflict zones as front-line soldiers grow to resent troops at the bases and come to believe their commanders are out of touch with the realities in the field.

"But this kind of war really highlights it," Biddle, who has advised Petraeus, said of Iraq. Soldiers' discomfort is compounded by the task of forging relations with people whom few trust, and who often make clear their dislike of the U.S. presence.

"All war is political, but usually privates and specialists don't have to think much about that part of it. In this conflict they do, to a much greater degree," Biddle said, referring to the community activities that troops have been drawn into. These include negotiating with tribal leaders who once harbored insurgents, striking deals with former insurgents to bring them into the Iraqi security forces, and listening to residents' complaints about lack of services.

"You have to help people despite the strong suspicion that lots of them mean you ill," Biddle said. "We're asking an awful lot of very, very young people."

It is especially difficult for soldiers trained to fight a uniformed enemy but in Iraq face an array of unconventional forces. Most thought their job was finished after Saddam Hussein was ousted. Instead, they found themselves directing traffic in Baghdad's chaotic streets. Four years later, they still are policing and doing community work they did not anticipate.

"You couple that with getting blown up and shot at, and it definitely makes it harder to deliver service with a smile," said Staff Sgt. Kevin Littrell, whose plan to leave the Army in May was thwarted when his unit's tour was extended.

At another patrol base, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of U.S. forces in southern Iraq, was introduced to 1st Lt. Jeff Bess. The young man had just arrived for his first assignment. Asked how he liked the Army so far, Bess made an attempt to be polite. "It's a learning experience, sir," he replied.

Lynch told him: "You're making history here while those back home are watching it on TV."

tina.susman@latimes.com

Times staff writers Julian E. Barnes in Washington and Garrett Therolf, Carol J. Williams and Alexandra Zavis in Iraq contributed to this report.

L.A.U.S.D. Personnel Get The "Support The Troops" Treatment

2007-08-25T09:36:00.000-06:00

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L.A. Unified payroll a lesson in agony

Frustrated teachers, aides take out loans as district's troubled $95-million system refuses to pay them.

By Joel Rubin
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

August 25, 2007

Since launching a $95-million computer system six months ago, the Los Angeles Unified School District has been beset by programming glitches, hardware crashes and mistakes by hurriedly trained clerical staff. The result: tens of thousands of teachers, cafeteria workers, classroom aides and others have been underpaid, overpaid or not paid at all.

The hardest hit have been the roughly 48,000 certificated employees -- teachers and others who require a credential to perform their jobs. Their complicated, varied job assignments and pay scales have perplexed computer programmers and, this month, an additional 3,900 people received incorrect paychecks.

That total would have been higher had the district not caught "a number of. . . system defects" and "administrative errors," before paychecks were written, acknowledged David Holmquist, the district's director of risk management and insurance.

Anedra Harper knew she would never get rich working as a teacher in Los Angeles' public schools. The trade-off, the 32-year-old figured, was the satisfaction of doing a job that mattered.

But for three months this summer, Harper, who makes about $40,000 teaching learning and emotionally disabled students at a city high school, was not paid. With mortgage payments, bills and grocery receipts piling up, she eventually took out $15,000 in loans to stay afloat.

"I absolutely love teaching and working with kids," she said, "but this has been a nightmare."

The continued payroll problems have become a serious stumbling block for Supt. David L. Brewer, who inherited the Business Tools for Schools technology project when he was hired in November. His early, emphatic promises to fix the mess only exacerbated the situation as district hotlines and an emergency office set up in L.A. Unified's downtown headquarters were immediately overwhelmed.

Union leaders have pounced on the issue, lambasting the district for not doing more. United Teachers Los Angeles took the district to court, unsuccessfully seeking a ruling to force a remedy. No quick fix appears possible: District officials say that several more months are needed and have already set aside an additional $37 million to pay for the repairs.

That does not bode well for employees. With only one payday each month -- as is the case for most district staff -- when something goes awry, carefully laid plans to pay bills and budget for such basics as groceries and gas quickly become complicated.

"All I want to know is whether I am getting a paycheck or not," a calm but weary Rosanna White, an English teacher, told a frazzled payroll staffer who was trying to help determine why she had received a check for less than half of what she was owed for July. White was into her fourth hour of what would turn out to be a seven-hour wild goose chase.

"Do you even see my [teaching] assignment in the computer?" she asked the man, the third person to whom she had repeated her story so far that day.

"No," he said, helplessly.

White, 30, who earns about $43,000 a year as a full-time teacher at Manual Arts High School, said she was first beset by payroll problems in February, when she was working every day as a substitute at the school.

That month, she received no paycheck. With little savings in the bank, White saw her finances spiral out of control. She accepted an emergency advance from the district that estimated her net pay, but did not account for taxes, union fees or other deductions. As the district's system automatically recouped the advance in subsequent checks, White said, she was left scrambling anew and was forced to take more emergency advances. The cycle lasted for months. White said she has taken her credit cards to the limit and gotten about $14,000 in loans to keep afloat.

Her story is a common one. Months of oscillating between underpayments and overpayments, and trying to decipher the system's pay stubs has led to widespread confusion and frustration. White and Harper, the special education teacher, eventually received paychecks for July, but both say they are uncertain whether the amounts are accurate.

"I don't even know what my base pay is anymore!" an exasperated Beverly Ann Ball said recently to a group of teachers who nodded in agreement as they waited for help at the district office. Over the last four months, Ball's paychecks have varied dramatically, fluctuating from $1,033 to $3,269.

Teachers continue to take the brunt of the abuse because they work 10 months out of the year, but are scheduled to be paid 12 times.

The payroll system's software was not designed to correctly spread out, or annualize, the salaries, Holmquist said. Programmers have begun the two- to three-month process of rewriting the software from scratch using more complex programs while district officials consider scrapping the 12-month pay calendar, Holmquist said.

Meanwhile, the district is in talks with Deloitte Consulting, the firm hired to plan and implement the three-phase technology project that began in 2005. District officials are negotiating a possible repayment of some of the more than $55 million the firm has received, or an increase in the resources and staffing it provides to the district. If talks fail, district officials said, a lawsuit is possible.

"All of the potential remedies are on the table," said Holmquist, who oversees the district's efforts to fix the payroll problems. Holmquist took control after the district's chief financial officer, Charles Burbridge, left his post this summer amid increasing dissatisfaction with his performance.

A spokeswoman for Deloitte declined to respond to questions regarding the company's alleged role, saying in an e-mail: "We empathize with those district employees who have been affected by the transition to a new payroll system."

Los Angeles Unified is not alone in its troubles. The Los Angeles Community College District experienced similar problems, albeit on a smaller scale, after implementing the same system in 2005. The state government, meanwhile, has decided to phase in a similar project next year.

The confusion at L.A. Unified seems certain to continue. Next month, the district plans to begin the process of recouping nearly $45 million it has overpaid to more than 28,700 employees -- most of it on the June 5 payday that district officials refer to as "black Tuesday."

Not accounting for new problems that arose from the last payday, Holmquist said, the district had repaid all of the employees who had been underpaid by "any material amount."

Small underpayments, he said, will be corrected in coming months.

In an effort to minimize the inevitable confusion, district and union officials have mailed payroll histories to each affected employee in an attempt to reconcile and explain each person's situation.

Such efforts may help, but they are unlikely to erase employees' built-up aggravation. Several said their experiences in bouncing between school clerks and overwhelmed staff downtown in search of help has been a harsh reminder of the impersonal reality of working in a school district with 90,000 employees.

"It makes you feel like a small person, very insignificant," White said. "This hasn't soured me on teaching. I want to teach, but I don't have to teach at this school district."

joel.rubin@latimes.com

DNI Michael "OMG!!! We're All Gonna Die!!!" McConnell: Telecoms Must Have Legal Immunity To Warrantlessly Spy On Customers

2007-08-23T21:22:00.000-06:00

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August 24, 2007

Role of Telecom Firms in Wiretaps Is Confirmed

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 — The Bush administration has confirmed for the first time that American telecommunications companies played a crucial role in the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program after asserting for more than a year that any role played by them was a “state secret.”

The acknowledgment was in an unusual interview that Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, gave last week to

The El Paso Times in which he disclosed details on classified intelligence issues that the administration has long insisted would harm national security if discussed publicly.

Mr. McConnell made the remarks apparently in an effort to bolster support for the broadened wiretapping authority that Congress approved this month, even as Democrats are threatening to rework the legislation because they say it gives the executive branch too much power. It is vital, he said, for Congress to give retroactive legal immunity to the companies that assisted in the program to help prevent them from facing bankruptcy because of lawsuits over it.

“Under the president’s program, the terrorist surveillance program, the private sector had assisted us, because if you’re going to get access, you’ve got to have a partner,” Mr. McConnell said in the interview, a transcript of which was posted by The El Paso Times on Wednesday.

AT&T and several other major carriers are being sued over their reported role in the program, which permitted eavesdropping without warrants on the international communications of Americans suspected of terrorism ties. The administration has sought to shut down the lawsuits by invoking the state-secrets privilege, refusing even to confirm whether the companies helped conduct the wiretaps.

Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is heading up the lawsuit against AT&T, said her group might ask the appeals court to consider Mr. McConnell’s comments in deciding whether the state-secrets argument should be thrown out.

“They’ve really undermined their own case,” Ms. Cohn said.

Mr. McConnell said those suits were a driving force in the administration’s efforts to include in this month’s wiretapping legislation immunity for telecommunications partners. “If you play out the suits at the value they’re claimed,” he said, “it would bankrupt these companies.”

Congress agreed to give immunity to telecommunications partners in the measure , but refused to make it retroactive.

Mr. McConnell, who took over as the country’s top intelligence official in February, warned that the public discussion generated by the Congressional debate over the wiretapping bill threatened national security because it would alert terrorists to American surveillance methods.

“Now part of this is a classified world,” he said in the interview. “The fact we’re doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die.”.

Asked whether he was saying the news media coverage and the public debate in Congress meant that “some Americans are going to die,” he replied: “That’s what I mean. Because we have made it so public.”

Mr. McConnell, though, put new information on the public record in the interview, on Aug. 14 while in Texas for a border conference.

Mr. McConnell said, for instance, that the number of people inside the United States who were wiretapped through court-approved warrants totaled “100 or less” but on the “foreign side, it’s in the thousands.” The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves national security wiretaps, told Congress it approved 2,181 eavesdropping warrants last year. The court and the administration have not been willing to break out how many Americans were in those orders.

Mr. McConnell did not make clear the time frame for his estimate, nor was it clear whether he was referring to the security agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, which was brought under the oversight of the intelligence court in January. Officials in his office refused to clarify what he meant.

Mr. McConnell also offered the administration’s first public discussion about a classified series of rulings by the intelligence court that he said had restricted the agency’s ability to collect foreign intelligence.

He said one judge this year gave broad approval for the agency’s eavesdropping program. But another judge, he said, ruled in the spring that the administration would have to obtain a warrant for any “foreign to foreign” communications that passed through an American telecommunications center.

The administration obtained a stay of that ruling until May 31, he disclosed, but after that date he intelligence officials had “significantly less capability” to track foreign communications. The ruling sent the administration “in the wrong direction,” he added.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has petitioned the intelligence court to make public its secret wiretapping rulings, expressed frustration on Thursday with the timing of Mr. McConnell’s comments.

“If this ostensibly sensitive information can be released now, why could it not be released two months ago, when the public and Congress desperately needed it?” asked Jameel Jaffer, director of the group’s national security project.

Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, said the interview “was quite striking because he was disclosing more detail than has appeared anywhere in the public domain.”

“If we’re to believe that Americans will die from discussing these things,” Mr. Aftergood said, “then he is complicit in that. It’s an unseemly argument. He’s basically saying that democracy is going to kill Americans.”

McConnell's Absurd FISA Spin

2007-08-23T21:11:00.000-06:00

This is the El Paso Times interview that's getting so much play nationally, with Director Of Intelligence Michael McConnell

Transcript: Debate on the foreign intelligence surveillance act

By Chris Roberts / ©El Paso Times
El Paso Times
Article Launched: 08/22/2007 01:05:57 AM MDT
The following is the transcript of a question and answer session with National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell.

Question: How much has President Bush or members of his administration formed your response to the FISA debate?

Answer: Not at all. When I came back in, remember my previous assignment was director of the NSA, so this was an area I have known a little bit about. So I came back in. I was nominated the first week of January. The administration had made a decision to put the terrorist surveillance program into the FISA court. I think that happened the 7th of Jan. So as I come in the door and I'm prepping for the hearings, this sort of all happened. So the first thing I want to know is what's this program and what's the background and I was pretty surprised at what I learned. First off, the issue was the technology had changed and we had worked ourselves into a position that we were focusing on foreign terrorist communications, and this was a terrorist foreigner in a foreign country. The issue was international communications are on a wire so all of a sudden we were in a position because of the wording in the law that we had to have a warrant to do that. So the most important thing to capture is that it's a foreigner in a foreign country, required to get a warrant. Now if it were wireless, we would not be required to get a warrant. Plus we were limited in what we were doing to terrorism only and the last time I checked we had a mission called foreign intelligence, which should be construed to mean anything of a foreign intelligence interest, North Korea, China, Russia, Syria, weapons of mass destruction proliferation, military development and it goes on and on and on. So when I engaged with the administration, I said we've gotten ourselves into a position here where we need to clarify, so the FISA issue had been debated and legislation had been passed in the house in 2006, did not pass the Senate. Two bills were introduced in the Senate, I don't know if it was co-sponsorship or two different bills, but Sen. (Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.) had a bill and Sen. Specter had a bill and it may have been the same bill, I don't know, but the point is a lot of debate, a lot of dialogue. So, it was submitted to the FISA court and the first ruling in the FISA court was what we needed to do we could do with an approval process that was at a summary level and that was OK, we stayed in business and we're doing our mission. Well in the FISA process, you may or may not be aware ...

Q: When you say summary level, do you mean the FISA court?

A: The FISA court. The FISA court ruled presented the program to them and they said the program is what you say it is and it's appropriate and it's legitimate, it's not an issue and was had approval. But the FISA process has a renewal. It comes up every so many days and there are 11 FISA judges. So the second judge looked at the same data and said well wait a minute I interpret the law, which is the FISA law, differently. And it came down to, if it's on a wire and it's foreign in a foreign country, you have to have a warrant and so we found ourselves in a position of actually losing ground because it was the first review was less capability, we got a stay and that took us to the 31st of May. After the 31st of May we were in extremis because now we have significantly less capability. And meantime, the community, before I came back, had been working on a National Intelligence Estimate on terrorist threat to the homeland. And the key elements of the terrorist threat to the homeland, there were four key elements, a resilient determined adversary with senior leadership willing to die for the cause, requiring a place to train and develop, think of it as safe haven, they had discovered that in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Now the Pakistani government is pushing and pressing and attempting to do something about it, but by and large they have areas of safe haven. So leadership that can adapt, safe haven, intermediate leadership, these are think of them as trainers, facilitators, operational control guys. And the fourth part is recruits. They have them, they've taken them. This area is referred to as the FATA, federally administered tribal areas, they have the recruits and now the objective is to get them into the United States for mass casualties to conduct terrorist operations to achieve mass casualties. All of those four parts have been carried out except the fourth. They have em, but they haven't been successful. One of the major tools for us to keep them out is the FISA program, a significant tool and we're going the wrong direction. So, for me it was extremis to start talking not only to the administration, but to members of the hill. So from June until the bill was passed, I think I talked to probably 260 members, senators and congressmen. We submitted the bill in April, had an open hearing 1 May, we had a closed hearing in May, I don't remember the exact date. Chairman (U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas) had two hearings and I had a chance to brief the judiciary committee in the house, the intelligence committee in the house and I just mentioned the Senate, did not brief the full judiciary committee in the Senate, but I did meet with Sen. (Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.) and Sen. (Arlen Specter, R-Pa.), and I did have an opportunity on the Senate side, they have a tradition there of every quarter they invite the director of national intelligence in to talk to them update them on topics of interest. And that happened in (June 27). Well what they wanted to hear about was Iraq and Afghanistan and for whatever reason, I'm giving them my review and they ask questions in the order in which they arrive in the room. The second question was on FISA, so it gave me an opportunity to, here I am worrying about this problem and I have 41 senators and I said several things. The current threat is increasing, I'm worried about it. Our capability is decreasing and let me explain the problem.

Q: Can't you get the warrant after the fact?

A: The issue is volume and time. Think about foreign intelligence. What it presented me with an opportunity is to make the case for something current, but what I was really also trying to put a strong emphasis on is the need to do foreign intelligence in any context. My argument was that the intelligence community should not be restricted when we are conducting foreign surveillance against a foreigner in a foreign country, just by dint of the fact that it happened to touch a wire. We haven't done that in wireless for years.

Q: So you end up with people tied up doing paperwork?

A: It takes about 200 man hours to do one telephone number. Think about it from the judges standpoint. Well, is this foreign intelligence? Well how do you know it's foreign intelligence? Well what does Abdul calling Mohammed mean, and how do I interpret that? So, it's a very complex process, so now, I've got people speaking Urdu and Farsi and, you know, whatever, Arabic, pull them off the line have them go through this process to justify what it is they know and why and so on. And now you've got to write it all up and it goes through the signature process, take it through (the Justice Department), and take it down to the FISA court. So all that process is about 200 man hours for one number. We're going backwards, we couldn't keep up. So the issue was ...

Q: How many calls? Thousands?

A: Don't want to go there. Just think, lots. Too many. Now the second part of the issue was under the president's program, the terrorist surveillance program, the private sector had assisted us. Because if you're going to get access you've got to have a partner and they were being sued. Now if you play out the suits at the value they're claimed, it would bankrupt these companies. So my position was we have to provide liability protection to these private sector entities. So that was part of the request. So we went through that and we argued it. Some wanted to limit us to terrorism. My argument was, wait a minute, why would I want to limit it to terrorism. It may be that terrorists are achieving weapons of mass destruction, the only way I would know that is if I'm doing foreign intelligence by who might be providing a weapon of mass destruction.

Q: And this is still all foreign to foreign communication?

A: All foreign to foreign. So, in the final analysis, I was after three points, no warrant for a foreigner overseas, a foreign intelligence target located overseas, liability protection for the private sector and the third point was we must be required to have a warrant for surveillance against a U.S. person. And when I say U.S. person I want to make sure you capture what that means. That does not mean citizen. That means a foreigner, who is here, we still have to have a warrant because he's here. My view is that that's the right check and balances and it's the right protection for the country and lets us still do our mission for protection of the country. And we're trying to fend off foreign threats.

Q: So are you satisfied with it the way it is now?

A: I am. The issue that we did not address, which has to be addressed is the liability protection for the private sector now is proscriptive, meaning going forward. We've got a retroactive problem. When I went through and briefed the various senators and congressmen, the issue was alright, look, we don't want to work that right now, it's too hard because we want to find out about some issues of the past. So what I recommended to the administration is, 'Let's take that off the table for now and take it up when Congress reconvenes in September.'

Q: With an eye toward the six-month review?

A: No, the retroactive liability protection has got to be addressed.

Q: And that's not in the current law?

A: It is not. Now people have said that I negotiated in bad faith, or I did not keep my word or whatever...

Q: That you had an agenda that you weren't honest about.

A: I'll give you the facts from my point of view. When I checked on board I had my discussion with the president. I'm an apolitical figure. I'm not a Republican, I'm not a Democrat. I have voted for both. My job is as a professional to try to do this job the best way I can in terms of, from the intelligence community, protect the nation. So I made my argument that we should have the ability to do surveillance the same way we've done it for the past 50 years and not be inhibited when it's a foreigner in a foreign country. The president's guidance to me early in the process, was, 'You've got the experience. I trust your judgement. You make the right call. There's no pressure from anybody here to tell you how to do it. He did that early. He revisited with me in June. He did it again in July and he said it publicly on Friday before the bill was passed. We were at the FBI, it's an annual thing, we go to the FBI and do a homeland security kind of update. So he came out at noon and said, 'I'm requesting that Congress pass this bill. It's essential. Do it before you go on recess. I'm depending on Mike McConnell's recommendations. And that was the total sum and substance of the guidance and the involvement from the White House with regard to how I should make the call. Now, as we negotiated, we started with 66 pages, were trying to get everything cleaned up at once. When I reduced it to my three points, we went from 66 pages to 11. Now, this is a very, very complex bill. I had a team of 20 lawyers working. You can change a word in a paragraph and end up with some major catastrophe down in paragraph 27, subsection 2c, to shut yourself down, you'll be out of business. So when we send up our 11 pages, we had a lot of help in making sure we got it just right so it would come back and we'd say wait a minute we can't live with this or one of the lawyers would say, 'Wait we tried that, it won't work, here's the problem.' So we kept going back and forth, so we sent up a version like Monday, we sent up a version on Wednesday, we sent up a version on Thursday. The House leadership, or the Democratic leadership on Thursday took that bill and we talked about it. And my response was there are some things I can't live with in this bill and they said alright we're going to fix them. Now, here's the issue. I never then had a chance to read it for the fix because, again, it's so complex, if you change a word or phrase, or even a paragraph reference, you can cause unintended ...

Q: You have to make sure it's all consistent?

A: Right. So I can't agree to it until it's in writing and my 20 lawyers, who have been doing this for two years, can work through it. So in the final analysis, I was put in the position of making a call on something I hadn't read. So when it came down to crunch time, we got a copy and it had some of the offending language back in it. So I said, 'I can't support it.' And it played out in the House the way it played out in the House. Meantime on the Senate side, there were two versions being looked at. The Wednesday version and the Thursday version. And one side took one version and the other side took the other version. The Thursday version, we had some help, and I didn't get a chance to review it. So now, it's Friday night, the Senate's voting. They were having their debate and I still had not had a chance to review it. So, I walked over, I was up visiting some senators trying to explain some of the background. So I walked over to the chamber and as I walked into the office just off the chamber, it's the vice president's office, somebody gave me a copy. So I looked at the version and said, 'Can't do it. The same language was back in there.'

Q: What was it?

A: Just let me leave it, not too much detail, there were things with regard to our authorities some language around minimization. So it put us in an untenable position. So then I had another version to take a look at, which was our Wednesday version, which basically was unchanged. So I said, well certainly, I'm going to support that Wednesday version. So that's what I said and the vote happened in the Senate and that was on Friday. So now it rolled to the House on Saturday. They took up the bill, they had a spirited debate, my name was invoked several times, not in a favorable light in some cases. (laughs) And they took a vote and it passed 226 to 182, I think. So it's law. The president signed it on Sunday and here we are.

Q: That's far from unanimous. There's obviously going to be more debate on this.

A: There are a couple of issues to just be sensitive to. There's a claim of reverse targeting. Now what that means is we would target somebody in a foreign country who is calling into the United States and our intent is to not go after the bad guy, but to listen to somebody in the United States. That's not legal, it's, it would be a breach of the Fourth Amendment. You can go to jail for that sort of thing. And If a foreign bad guy is calling into the United States, if there's a need to have a warrant, for the person in the United States, you just get a warrant. And so if a terrorist calls in and it's another terrorist, I think the American public would want us to do surveillance of that U.S. person in this case. So we would just get a warrant and do that. It's a manageable thing. On the U.S. persons side it's 100 or less. And then the foreign side, it's in the thousands. Now there's a sense that we're doing massive data mining. In fact, what we're doing is surgical. A telephone number is surgical. So, if you know what number, you can select it out. So that's, we've got a lot of territory to make up with people believing that we're doing things we're not doing.

Q: Even if it's perception, how do you deal with that? You have to do public relations, I assume.

A: Well, one of the things you do is you talk to reporters. And you give them the facts the best you can. Now part of this is a classified world. The fact we're doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die, because we do this mission unknown to the bad guys because they're using a process that we can exploit and the more we talk about it, the more they will go with an alternative means and when they go to an alternative means, remember what I said, a significant portion of what we do, this is not just threats against the United States, this is war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Q. So you're saying that the reporting and the debate in Congress means that some Americans are going to die?

A. That's what I mean. Because we have made it so public. We used to do these things very differently, but for whatever reason, you know, it's a democratic process and sunshine's a good thing. We need to have the debate. The reason that the FISA law was passed in 1978 was an arrangement was worked out between the Congress and the administration, we did not want to allow this community to conduct surveillance, electronic surveillance, of Americans for foreign intelligence unless you had a warrant, so that was required. So there was no warrant required for a foreign target in a foreign land. And so we are trying to get back to what was the intention of '78. Now because of the claim, counterclaim, mistrust, suspicion, the only way you could make any progress was to have this debate in an open way.

Q. So you don't think there was an alternative way to do this?

A. There may have been an alternative way, but we are where are ...

Q. A better way, I should say.

A. All of my briefs initially were very classified. But it became apparent that we were not going to be able to carry the day if we don't talk to more people.

Q. Some might say that's the price you pay for living in a free society. Do you think that this is necessary that these Americans die?

A. We could have gotten there a different way. We conducted intelligence since World War II and we've maintained a sensitivity as far as sources and methods. It's basically a sources and methods argument. If you don't protect sources and methods then those you target will choose alternative means, different paths. As it is today al-Qaida in Iraq is targeting Americans, specifically the coalition. There are activities supported by other nations to import electronic, or explosively formed projectiles, to do these roadside attacks and what we know about that is often out of very sensitive sources and methods. So the more public it is, then they take it away from us. So that's the tradeoff.

DIVERSITY IN THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

Q: I wanted to ask you about the diversity question. This has major ramifications here, we have this center of excellence program that's recruiting high school kids, many of whom wouldn't qualify if first generation American citizens weren't allowed.

A: So you agree with me?

Q: It does sound like something that would benefit this area that would also allow you to get people from here who are bicultural and have an openness to seeing things ...

A: You're talking about Hispanics?

Q: Yes.

A: Hispanics are probably the most under-represented group if you think of America, what the ethic makeup of America, Hispanics are the most under-represented group in my community. Now, that said, and should increase that Hispanic population and programs like this will do that. That's why the outreach. But also we need, particularly with the current problem of terrorism, we need to have speakers of Urdu and Farsi and Arabic and people from those cultures that understand the issues of tribes and clans and all the things that go with understanding that part of the world. Varying religions and so on. Because it is, it's almost impossible, I've had the chance to live in the Middle East for years, I've studied it for years, it's impossible to understand it without having some feel for the culture and so on. So while I'm all for increasing the diversity along the lines we talked about, I'm also very much in favor of first generation Americans from the countries that are causing issues and problems.

Q: What is the status of that program.

A: It is not in statue. It is not in policy. It has been habit. So we've stated, as a matter of policy, that we're not going to abide by those habits.

Q: And that's already the case?

A: Yes, and are we making progress? Not fast enough, but we will make progress over time.

Q: How do you measure that?

A: Very simple, you get to measure what are you and where are you trying go and are you making progress. I wrestled with this years ago when I was NSA ....

Q: You don't want quotas, though?

A: Quotas are forbidden so we set goals. My way of thinking about it is what is your end state? Now some would say that federal governments should look like America, whatever that is. OK, that sounded like a reasonable metric, so I said, 'Alright, what does America look like?' So I got a bunch of numbers. I said, 'Alright, what do we look like?' and it didn't match, and as I just told you, the one place where there's the greatest mismatch is Hispanic. It's much closer, as matter of fact, people would be surprised how close it is across, at least my community among the other minorities. Now, that said, numbers don't necessarily equal positioning in the organization. So that's another feature we have to work on, is placement of women and minorities in leadership positions.

Q: So, you're quantifying that as well?

A: Yes.

TERRORIST ACTIVITY ON THE NATION'S SOUTHWEST BORDER

Q: There seems to be very little terrorist-related activity on the Southwest border, which is watched very closely because of the illegal immigration issue. Can you talk about why it's important to be alert here?

A: Let me go back to my NIE, those are unclassified key judgements, pull them down and look at them. You've got committed leadership. You've got a place to train. They've got trainers and they've got recruits. The key now is getting recruits in. So if the key is getting recruits in. So, if you're key is getting recruits in, how would you do that? And so, how would you do that?

Q: I'd go to the northern border where there's nobody watching.

A: And that's a path. Flying in is a path. Taking a ship in is a path. Coming up through the Mexican border is a path. Now are they doing it in great numbers, no. Because we're finding them and we're identifying them and we've got watch lists and we're keeping them at bay. There are numerous situations where people are alive today because we caught them (terrorists). And my point earlier, we catch them or we prevent them because we've got the sources and methods that lets us identify them and do something about it. And you know the more sources and methods are compromised, we have that problem.

Q: And in many cases we don't hear about them?

A: The vast majority you don't hear about. Remember, let me give you a way to think about this. If you've got an issue, you have three potential outcomes, only three. A diplomatic success, an operational success or an intelligence failure. Because all those diplomatic successes and operations successes where there's intelligence contribution, it's not an intelligence success. It's just part of the process. But if there's an intelligence failure ...

Q: Then you hear about it.

A: So, are terrorists coming across the Southwest border? Not in great numbers.

Q: There are some cases?

A: There are some. And would they use it as a path, given it was available to them? In time they will.

Q: If they're successful at it, then they'll probably repeat it.

A: Sure. There were a significant number of Iraqis who came across last year. Smuggled across illegally.

Q: Where was that?

A: Across the Southwest border.

Q: Can you give me anymore detail?

A: I probably could if I had my notebook. It's significant numbers. I'll have somebody get it for you. I don't remember what it is.

Q: The point is it went from a number to (triple) in a single year, because they figured it out. Now some we caught, some we didn't. The ones that get in, what are they going to do? They're going to write home. So, it's not rocket science, word will move around. There's a program now in South America, where you can, once you're in South American countries, you can move around in South America and Central America without a visa. So you get a forged passport in Lebanon or where ever that gets you to South America. Now, no visa, you can move around, and with you're forged passport, as a citizen of whatever, you could come across that border. So, what I'm highlighting is that something ...

Q: Is this how it happened, the cases you're talking about?

A: Yes.

No-Bid Outsource Contract Winners Help Outsource Government No-Bid Contracts

2007-08-23T16:53:00.000-06:00

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Federal No-Bid Contracts On Rise
Use of Favored Firms A Common Shortcut

Wednesday, August 22, 2007; A01

Under pressure from the White House and Congress to deliver a long-delayed plan last year, officials at the Department of Homeland Security's counter-narcotics office took a shortcut that has become common at federal agencies: They hired help through a no-bid contract.

And the firm they hired showed them how to do it.

Scott Chronister, a senior official in the Office of Counternarcotics Enforcement, reached out to a former colleague at a private consulting firm for advice. The consultant suggested that Chronister's office could avoid competition and get the work done quickly under an arrangement in which the firm "approached the government with a 'unique and innovative concept,' " documents and interviews show.

A contract worth up to $579,000 was awarded to the consultant's firm in September.

Though small by government standards, the counter-narcotics contract illustrates the government's steady move away from relying on competition to secure the best deals for products and services.

A recent congressional report estimated that federal spending on contracts awarded without "full and open" competition has tripled, to $207 billion, since 2000, with a $60 billion increase last year alone. The category includes deals in which officials take advantage of provisions allowing them to sidestep competition for speed and convenience and cases in which the government sharply limits the number of bidders or expands work under open-ended contracts.

Government auditors say the result is often higher prices for taxpayers and an undue reliance on a limited number of contractors.

"The rapid growth in no-bid and limited-competition contracts has made full and open competition the exception, not the rule," according to the report, by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Keith Ashdown, chief investigator at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said that in many cases, officials are simply choosing favored contractors as part of a "club mentality."

"Contracting officials are throwing out decades of work to develop fair and sensible rules to promote competition," Ashdown said. "Government officials are skirting the rules in favor of expediency or their favored contractors."

In the case of the counter-narcotics office, a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department said it was not unusual for a contractor to tell agency officials how to arrange no-bid contracts because contractors sometimes know federal procurement regulations better than federal program managers.

Chronister and the former colleague, consultant Ron Simeone, declined to be interviewed for this article. The director of the counter-narcotics office, Uttam Dhillon, defended his office's decision to use the consultants, saying ethics officials at the Department of Homeland Security had been informed of the arrangements and approved them, as long as Chronister did not supervise his former colleagues.

Contracting officials at the department also determined that the no-bid arrangement was okay because Simeone and his subcontractor were uniquely qualified to do the work, in part because they intended to replicate some work they had done for the White House drug office, he said.

"Every step of the way, we followed the advice and guidance of our ethics officer," Dhillon said. "We did everything we're required to do by law and then some."

Dhillon said he was comfortable hiring Simeone after Chronister and another office official described the consultant as a counter-narcotics expert. He said the firm performed well.

"My goal was to get this done as quickly and efficiently as possible," he said. "He obviously had experience with this and was knowledgeable about this."

Homeland Security's counter-narcotics office was formed in 2004 to develop policies that unify various drug-enforcement programs. With fewer than a dozen employees, the office has struggled with deadlines for its budget, annual reports and the development of a system for measuring the effectiveness of drug-control efforts, Dhillon said.

After Dhillon was confirmed as the office's director in May 2006, he made the development of the measure system "one of my highest priorities," he said. He said Congress and the White House had made multiple requests for information that the office could not provide.

A senior manager at the counter-narcotics office had been assigned to the task. But Dhillon said he "came to the conclusion the office was not really in a position" to finish the work.

In July, Chronister asked Simeone for help in developing a system to measure the impact of government interdiction efforts. Simeone in turn decided to hire another consultant, John Carnevale, for help.

Chronister, Simeone and Carnevale had worked together over the years, including at the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Chronister later worked as a senior policy analyst at Carnevale Associates, a policy consulting firm owned by Carnevale, before joining the counter-narcotics office.

Simeone, too, worked at Carnevale Associates. He is listed as chief scientist, on the firm's Web site. At the same time, Simeone ran his own company, Simeone Associates. Carnevale is listed on that company's Web site as a senior associate.

Carnevale said Chronister sought the meeting with Simeone last July "to explain the problems they were having related to pulling together a performance-measurement system and asked him for advice."

"Simeone suggested an approach, which he turned into a sole-source proposal," Carnevale said in an e-mail.

On Sept. 20, about a week before the contract was awarded, Chronister was given responsibility for overseeing the work, according to an e-mail obtained by The Washington Post.

That changed five days later, when Chronister first told Dhillon about his ties to the consultants, Dhillon said in an interview. On advice from ethics officials at the department, Dhillon told Chronister not to work with Carnevale.

"Chronister was walled off from dealing with the contractor and subcontractor before the contract was signed," Dhillon said. "We made the decision with an abundance of caution."

But contact didn't cease between Chronister and the contractors.

Dhillon eased the prohibition on Chronister's contact with Simeone when the office expanded the demands of the contract, and Dhillon asked the contractor to also help prepare the office's annual report to Congress, which was months overdue. He said an ethics official approved the arrangement.

An Oct. 18 e-mail shows that Chronister was also included in communication involving the original project and a planned conference that included Simeone and Carnevale.

In November, the office organized a meeting with other drug enforcement agencies to present an outline of its plan, called "Performance Measures for United States Counternarcotics Enforcement Efforts." Both Simeone Associates and Carnevale Associates are listed on the documents.

Carnevale said he did not answer to Chronister for his work, which focused on budget matters. "Technically and legally speaking, Simeone was my supervisor," Carnevale said.

Chronister and Carnevale also maintained a close professional tie outside the office: They are listed as the authors of a March 2007 paper, "An Assessment of the U.S. Drug Control Budget." Chronister is listed on the paper as working at Carnevale Associates, and it includes an e-mail address for him at the firm.

Carnevale said the paper was actually written in 2004. He said Chronister was listed as a Carnevale employee because that was his job at the time. Carnevale said Chronister is no longer a paid employee.

Guess What's Not Surging In Baghdad? The Electricity

2007-08-23T16:49:00.000-06:00

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Militias Seizing Control of Iraqi Electricity Grid

BAGHDAD, Aug. 22 — Armed groups increasingly control the antiquated switching stations that channel electricity around Iraq, the electricity minister said Wednesday.

That is dividing the national grid into fiefs that, he said, often refuse to share electricity generated locally with Baghdad and other power-starved areas in the center of Iraq.

The development adds to existing electricity problems in Baghdad, which has been struggling to provide power for more than a few hours a day because insurgents regularly blow up the towers that carry power lines into the city.

The government lost the ability to control the grid centrally after the American-led invasion in 2003, when looters destroyed electrical dispatch centers, the minister, Karim Wahid, said in a news briefing attended also by United States military officials.

The briefing had been intended, in part, to highlight successes in the American-financed reconstruction program here.

But it took an unexpected turn when Mr. Wahid, a highly respected technocrat and longtime ministry official, began taking questions from Arab and Western journalists.

Because of the lack of functioning dispatch centers, Mr. Wahid said, ministry officials have been trying to control the flow of electricity from huge power plants in the south, north and west by calling local officials there and ordering them to physically flip switches.

But the officials refuse to follow those orders when the armed groups threaten their lives, he said, and the often isolated stations are abandoned at night and easily manipulated by whatever group controls the area.

This kind of manipulation can cause the entire system to collapse and bring nationwide blackouts, sometimes seriously damaging the generating plants that the United States has paid millions of dollars to repair.

Such a collapse took place just last week, the State Department reported in a recent assessment, which said the provinces’ failure to share electricity resulted in a “massive loss of power” on Aug. 14 at 5 p.m.

It added that “all Baghdad generation and 60 percent of national generation was temporarily lost.” By midnight, half the lost power had been restored, the report said.

With summer temperatures routinely exceeding 110 degrees, and demand soaring for air-conditioners and refrigerators, those blackouts deeply undermine an Iraqi government whose popular support is already weak.

In some cases, Mr. Wahid and other Iraqi officials say, insurgents cut power to the capital as part of their effort to topple the government.

But the officials said it was clear that in other cases, local militias, gangs and even some provincial military and civilian officials held on to the power simply to help their own areas.

With the manual switching system in place, there is little that the central government can do about it, Mr. Wahid said.

“We are working in this primitive way for controlling and distributing electricity,” he said.

Mr. Wahid said the country’s power plants were not designed to supply electricity to specific cities or provinces. “We have a national grid,” he said.

He cited Mosul and Baquba, in the north, and Basra, in the south, as being among the cities refusing to route electricity elsewhere. “This greatly influenced the distribution of power throughout Iraq,” Mr. Wahid complained.

At times the hoarding of power provides cities around power plants with 24 hours of uninterrupted electricity, a luxury that is unheard of in Baghdad, where residents say they generally get two to six hours of power a day.

Mr. Wahid said Baghdad was suffering mainly because the provinces were holding onto the electricity, but he said shortages of fuel and insurgents’ strikes on gas and oil pipelines also contributed to the anemic output in the capital.

Although a refusal by provincial governments to provide their full quotas to Baghdad could easily be seen as greedy when electricity is in such short supply, many citizens near the power plants regard the new reality as only fair; under Saddam Hussein, the capital enjoyed nearly 24 hours a day of power at the expense of the provinces that are now flush with electricity.

Keeping electricity for the provinces, said Mohammed al-Abbasi, a journalist in Hilla, in the south, “is a reaction against the capital, Baghdad, as power was provided to it without any cuts during the dictator’s reign.”

Other Iraqis are just grateful for anything that brings more comfort to their families and neighborhoods.

“We support any step that provides us with power,” said Ahmed Abdul Hussein, an ironsmith in Najaf, in the south.

The precision with which militias control electricity in the provinces became apparent in Basra on May 25 when Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army carried out a sustained attack against a small British-Iraqi base in the city center, and turned that control to tactical military advantage.

“The lights in the city were going on and off all over,” said Cpl. Daniel Jennings, 26, one of the British defenders who fought off the attack.

“They were really controlling the whole area, turning the lights on and off at will. They would shut down one area of the city, turn it dark, attack us from there, and then switch off another one and come at us from that direction.

“What they did was very well planned.”

The electricity briefing began with Brig. Gen. Michael J. Walsh, commanding general of the Gulf Region Division of the Army Corps of Engineers, saying the United States had finished more than 80 percent of the projects it planned for rehabilitating the Iraqi grid.

He said that even though Baghdad now got no power from either the south or north, about a third of its electricity was still supplied by the national grid.

But General Walsh said he knew people in Baghdad were far from satisfied.

“I understand people’s impatience,” he said. “Certainly when you flip the light switch and nothing happens, you can get angry.”

Of Course We're Not Being Spied On, Of Course The 4th Amendment's Not Gutted

2007-08-23T12:47:00.000-06:00

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Concerns Raised on Wider Spying Under New Law

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 — Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include — without court approval — certain types of physical searches on American soil and the collection of Americans’ business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said.

Administration officials acknowledged that they had heard such concerns from Democrats in Congress recently, and that there was a continuing debate over the meaning of the legislative language. But they said the Democrats were simply raising theoretical questions based on a harsh interpretation of the legislation.

They also emphasized that there would be strict rules in place to minimize the extent to which Americans would be caught up in the surveillance.

The dispute illustrates how lawmakers, in a frenetic, end-of-session scramble, passed legislation they may not have fully understood and may have given the administration more surveillance powers than it sought.

It also offers a case study in how changing a few words in a complex piece of legislation has the potential to fundamentally alter the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a landmark national security law. The new legislation is set to expire in less than six months; two weeks after it was signed into law, there is still heated debate over how much power Congress gave to the president.

“This may give the administration even more authority than people thought,” said David Kris, a former senior Justice Department lawyer in the Bush and Clinton administrations and a co-author of “National Security Investigation and Prosecutions,” a new book on surveillance law.

Several legal experts said that by redefining the meaning of “electronic surveillance,” the new law narrows the types of communications covered in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, by indirectly giving the government the power to use intelligence collection methods far beyond wiretapping that previously required court approval if conducted inside the United States.

These new powers include the collection of business records, physical searches and so-called “trap and trace” operations, analyzing specific calling patterns.

For instance, the legislation would allow the government, under certain circumstances, to demand the business records of an American in Chicago without a warrant if it asserts that the search concerns its surveillance of a person who is in Paris, experts said.

It is possible that some of the changes were the unintended consequences of the rushed legislative process just before this month’s Congressional recess, rather than a purposeful effort by the administration to enhance its ability to spy on Americans.

“We did not cover ourselves in glory,” said one Democratic aide, referring to how the bill was compiled.

But a senior intelligence official who has been involved in the discussions on behalf of the administration said that the legislation was seen solely as a way to speed access to the communications of foreign targets, not to sweep up the communications of Americans by claiming to focus on foreigners.

“I don’t think it’s a fair reading,” the official said. “The intent here was pure: if you’re targeting someone outside the country, the fact that you’re doing the collection inside the country, that shouldn’t matter.” Democratic leaders have said they plan to push for a revision of the legislation as soon as September. “It was a legislative over-reach, limited in time,” said one Congressional Democratic aide. “But Democrats feel like they can regroup.”

Some civil rights advocates said they suspected that the administration made the language of the bill intentionally vague to allow it even broader discretion over wiretapping decisions. Whether intentional or not, the end result — according to top Democratic aides and other experts on national security law — is that the legislation may grant the government the right to collect a range of information on American citizens inside the United States without warrants, as long as the administration asserts that the spying concerns the monitoring of a person believed to be overseas.

In effect, they say, the legislation significantly relaxes the restrictions on how the government can conduct spying operations aimed at foreigners at the same time that it allows authorities to sweep up information about Americans.

These new powers are considered overly broad and troubling by some Congressional Democrats who raised their concerns with administration officials in private meetings this week.

“This shows why it is so risky to change the law by changing the definition” of something as basic as the meaning of electronic surveillance, said Suzanne Spaulding, a former Congressional staff member who is now a national security legal expert. “You end up with a broad range of consequences that you might not realize.”

The senior intelligence official acknowledged that Congressional staff members had raised concerns about the law in the meetings this week, and that ambiguities in the bill’s wording may have led to some confusion. “I’m sure there will be discussions about how and whether it should be fixed,” the official said.

Vanee Vines, a spokeswoman for the office of the director of national intelligence, said the concerns raised by Congressional officials about the wide scope of the new legislation were “speculative.” But she declined to discuss specific aspects of how the legislation would be enacted. The legislation gives the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales broad discretion in enacting the new procedures and approving the way surveillance is conducted.

Bush administration officials said the new legislation, which amends FISA, was critical to fill an “intelligence gap” that had left the United States vulnerable to attack.

The legislation “restores FISA to its original and appropriate focus — protecting the privacy of Americans,” said Brian Roehrkasse, Justice Department spokesman. “The act makes clear that we do not need a court order to target for foreign intelligence collection persons located outside the United States, but it also retains FISA’s fundamental requirement of court orders when the target is in the United States.”

The measure, which President Bush signed into law on Aug. 5, was written and pushed through both the House and Senate so quickly that few in Congress had time to absorb its full impact, some Congressional aides say.

Though many Democratic leaders opposed the final version of the legislation, they did not work forcefully to block its passage, largely out of fear that they would be criticized by President Bush and Republican leaders during the August recess as being soft on terrorism.

Yet Bush administration officials have already signaled that, in their view, the president retains his constitutional authority to do whatever it takes to protect the country, regardless of any action Congress takes. At a tense meeting last week with lawyers from a range of private groups active in the wiretapping issue, senior Justice Department officials refused to commit the administration to adhering to the limits laid out in the new legislation and left open the possibility that the president could once again use what they have said in other instances is his constitutional authority to act outside the regulations set by Congress.

At the meeting, Bruce Fein, a Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration, along with other critics of the legislation, pressed Justice Department officials repeatedly for an assurance that the administration considered itself bound by the restrictions imposed by Congress. The Justice Department, led by Ken Wainstein, the assistant attorney general for national security, refused to do so, according to three participants in the meeting. That stance angered Mr. Fein and others. It sent the message, Mr. Fein said in an interview, that the new legislation, though it is already broadly worded, “is just advisory. The president can still do whatever he wants to do. They have not changed their position that the president’s Article II powers trump any ability by Congress to regulate the collection of foreign intelligence.”

Brian Walsh, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation who attended the same private meeting with Justice Department officials, acknowledged that the meeting — intended by the administration to solicit recommendations on the wiretapping legislation — became quite heated at times. But he said he thought the administration’s stance on the president’s commander-in-chief powers was “a wise course.”

“They were careful not to concede any authority that they believe they have under Article II,” Mr. Walsh said. “If they think they have the constitutional authority, it wouldn’t make sense to commit to not using it.”

Asked whether the administration considered the new legislation legally binding, Ms. Vines, the national intelligence office spokeswoman, said: “We’re going to follow the law and carry it out as it’s been passed.”

Mr. Bush issued a so-called signing statement about the legislation when he signed it into law, but the statement did not assert his presidential authority to override the legislative limits.

At the Justice Department session, critics of the legislation also complained to administration officials about the diminished role of the FISA court, which is limited to determining whether the procedures set up by the executive administration for intercepting foreign intelligence are “clearly erroneous” or not.

That limitation sets a high bar to set off any court intervention, argued Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, who also attended the Justice Department meeting.

“You’ve turned the court into a spectator,” Mr. Rotenberg said.

An Adjunct Site

2007-08-23T12:26:00.000-06:00

Aside from this initial post, there will be no other commenting on the stories posted here, other than the Post Titles, although if, say a YouTube video makes perfect commentary, it may get posted as well

This site is to merely showcase the actual articles, in their entirety, that I comment on at the Royally Kranked blog

And while an article may be posted here, it may not be commented on at all, this is only a way to archive articles-linked to their published site-that will otherwise disappear behind pay-for-access firewalls after a certain amount of time

One helpful hint when that happens, take the article's title and do a search on it after the article's behind that firewall

And yes, the RK site has been finding lots to roar, whine, blather, bleat, gripe, rage, opine and laugh about