Wednesday, July 20, 2005

YWA Catching up:

Eleven former intelligence officers say the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity may have damaged national security and the government's ability to gather intelligence.

The former officers made their views known in a three-page statement to congressional leaders.

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Thousands of Pakistani tribesmen shouted anti-U.S. slogans on Saturday as they buried three of 24 suspected Islamist militants killed inside Pakistan by U.S. forces operating out of Afghanistan.

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Pakistani officials said they were checking whether any territorial violation was committed by the U.S. forces while hitting the suspected militants.

Despite its status as a key U.S. ally, Pakistan has bridled in the past at U.S. sorties across the border.

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An Army general who has been criticized for his role in the treatment of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has contradicted his sworn congressional testimony about contacts with senior Pentagon officials.

Gen. Geoffrey Miller told the Senate Armed Services Committee in May 2004 that he had only filed a report on a recent visit to Abu Ghraib, and did not talk to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or his top aides about the fact-finding trip.

But in a recorded statement to attorneys three months later, Miller said he gave two of Rumsfeld's most senior aides - then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary for Intelligence Steve Cambone - a briefing on his visit and his subsequent recommendations.

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Miller's statement about the meeting, if true, suggests that officials at the very top of the Pentagon may have been more involved in monitoring activities at the prison than previously disclosed.

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Miller, Cambone and Wolfowitz, who is now acting director of the World Bank, each declined to respond to written questions about Miller's contradictory statements. Rumsfeld, Cambone, Wolfowitz and Miller have denied knowledge of prisoner abuse.

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The federal government's chief investigator yesterday blasted the Pentagon for its ''atrocious financial management," saying the Defense Department was not able to give federal oversight officials a full accounting of the $1 billion being spent each week on the war in Iraq.

''If the Department of Defense were a business, they'd be out of business," David Walker, comptroller general of the Government Accountability Office, said at a breakfast with reporters yesterday. ''They have absolutely atrocious financial management."

The GAO has been examining the Pentagon's Iraq expenses, and ''we're having extreme difficulty in getting the Department of Defense to provide a full accounting of what they're spending" there, Walker said. ''I can't understand how we're spending $1 billion a week."

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The U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, warned Wednesday that more terrorist attacks could be in the works in the kingdom.

The embassy issued a warden's message, or advisory, to the American community in Saudi Arabia saying that it "has received indications of operational planning for a terrorist attack or attacks in the kingdom."

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In a ruling seen as a sharp blow to coordinated counterterrorism efforts in Europe, Germany's highest court refused Monday to turn over an Al Qaeda suspect to Spain, arguing that a recent Europe-wide agreement to streamline extradition procedures across Europe violated the rights of German citizens.

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Egypt's newspapers on Saturday convey widespread shock at the arrest in Cairo of an Egyptian biochemist, Magdi Mahmoud al-Nashar, for questioning over the London bombings.

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Interior Minister Habib al-Adli has said that 33-year old Egyptian Chemist Dr Magdi al-Nashar who has been arrested recently by the security forces has no connection with the terrorist al-Qaeda organisation.

In an exclusive statement to Al-Jumhuriyah, he said that what has been reported by US and British TV channels and published in Arab and western press on his connection with al-Qaeda organisation was groundless, and was based on hasty conclusion.

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A federal appeals court has said Osama bin Laden's driver can face a war crimes tribunal at Guantánamo after all, reversing a lower court ruling and setting the stage for a Supreme Court challenge.

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A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously upheld President Bush's war powers to create a military commission to try Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 35, of Yemen.

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Forty-four government scientists have violated ethics rules on collaborating with pharmaceutical companies, a preliminary review by the National Institutes of Health shows.

Nine of the scientists may have violated criminal laws, the report said.

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It's a war that soldiers in Iraq weren't trained for: a long-distance fight to keep marriages and finances intact [...]

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After surviving the chaos of Iraq, thousands of soldiers have become casualties of a fight they were poorly trained for: keeping control of their family lives during the separation of war. Men and women who feel lucky their units suffered few fatalities say they can name dozens who returned to empty houses, squandered bank accounts, divorce papers and restraining orders.

The Army divorce rate has jumped more than 80% since the fighting began overseas in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The courts around Ft. Hood, the Army's largest post, may have to add another judge to handle the caseload.

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President Bush said Monday that he will fire anyone in the administration found to have committed a crime in the leaking of a CIA operative's name, creating a higher threshold than he did one year ago for holding aides accountable in the unmasking of Valerie Plame.

After originally saying anyone involved in leaking the name of covert CIA operative would be fired, Bush said: "If somebody committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration."

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And if that were actually what would happen, there'd be a very empty White House indeed.
Inside the Beltway, where everyone spends far too much time sniffing each other's fumes, speculative frenzy has the Rove crisis reaching a point where the president has no choice but to separate himself from Rove. Nonsense. In Texas, we dance with the ones that brung us.

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People who think the president might cast his deputy chief of staff to the wolves need to get another fantasy. Short of a Nixonian resignation by George W. Bush, or an indictment and conviction, the Architect, Bush's Brain, Turd Blossom, or by whatever name he is called, Karl Rove is on for the long ride. There would be no Bush presidency without Rove.

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Touché.

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