DFA Anne Arundel: 2007-06-03

The Real Cost of Offshoring

U.S. data show that moving jobs overseas hasn't hurt the economy. Here's why those stats are wrong

Whenever critics of globalization complain about the loss of American jobs to low-cost countries such as China and India, supporters point to the powerful performance of the U.S. economy. And with good reason. Despite the latest slow quarter, official statistics show that America's economic output has grown at a solid 3.3% annual rate since 2003, a period when imports from low-cost countries have soared. Similarly, domestic manufacturing output has expanded at a decent pace. On the face of it, offshoring doesn't seem to be having much of an effect at all.

Who needs environmental monitoring?

We monitor the stock market, the weather, our blood pressure. Yet environmental monitoring is often criticized as being unscientific, expensive, and wasteful. Scientists argue that environmental monitoring is a crucial part of science in the review, "Who needs environmental monitoring?" Gary Lovett, Institute of Ecosystem Studies, and colleagues from several universities and US government offices contributed to the review.

Dobson's dilemma

Will dismissing GOP frontrunners Giuliani and McCain as unacceptable presidential candidates and getting involved in a series of squabbles with fellow conservative evangelicals, diminish the power of Focus on the Family founder?

With the Rev. Jerry Falwell gone; Coral Ridge Ministries' D. James Kennedy seriously ill, the Rev. Pat Robertson in a perpetual state of hoof-and-mouth disease -- although still raking in handsome amounts of dough -- Ralph Reed tainted by the Abramoff Scandal, and Pastor Ted Haggard just plain tainted, it appears that the time is ripe for Focus on the Family founder and Christian radio psychologist Dr. James Dobson, to crank up what blogger Richard Rothstein has termed his "vast bigotry-based political machine" and seize the religious right's center stage. Or has Dobson, who has gotten himself embroiled in a series of conflicts with fellow evangelicals, missed his moment?

Taming Corporations Gone Wild

Ralph Nader

June 08, 2007

Ralph Nader is a consumer and political activist. He is the organizer of a conference, “Taming the Giant Corporation: A National Conference on Corporate Accountability,” that convenes today through Sunday in Washington "to address how to subordinate raw corporate power to the will of the people." Nader will speak at the closing session Sunday.

Back in the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt went on national radio and declared what the basic necessities were for the American people—a wage that can support a family, decent housing, the right to health care, a good education and future economic security.

Sound familiar today? It certainly would sound familiar to a majority of the American people. The struggle for livelihood, the struggles to escape poverty, calamitous health care bills, mounting debt, gouging rents and failing, crumbling schools continues year after year.

What’s that French saying? “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”

Back To The Future?

Religious Right Activists At ‘Assembly 2007’ Seek To Roll Back Church-State Relations 400 Years And Make America A Christian Nation

by Jeremy Leaming

In late April of 1607, three ships of English adventurers landed at Cape Henry in what is now Virginia in search of fame and fortune. Although their primary motivation was gold, not God, they erected a wooden cross, and Anglican priest Robert Hunt led a prayer service.

Four hundred years later, the Rev. John Gimenez stepped onto the sand at nearby Virginia Beach to reenact that historic event. This time, Gimenez, TV preacher Pat Robertson and a host of their Religious Right allies erected an array of small plastic crosses and claimed America for their version of Christianity.

Tort reformer Robert Bork sues Yale Club.

Claiming the Yale Club of New York City “wantonly, willfully, and recklessly” failed to provide easy to climb staging, conservative uber-activist Judge Robert Bork is suing the club for $1,000,000 in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages...

Gitmo and the Bogus 'Enemy Combatants' Trials Should Be Ceased Immediately

By Marjorie Cohn, AlterNet. Posted June 8, 2007.

The Military Commissions Act, which denies basic due process protections, including the right to habeas corpus, is a disgrace. But an even bigger disgrace is the concentration camp the United States maintains at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

In 2002, Donald Rumsfeld famously called the detainees at Guantánamo "the worst of the worst." General Richard B. Myers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned they were "very dangerous people who would gnaw hydraulic lines in the back of a C-17 to bring it down." These claims were designed to justify locking up hundreds of men and boys for years in small cages like animals.

George W. Bush lost no time establishing military commissions to try the very "worst of the worst" for war crimes. But four and a half years later, the Supreme Court decided in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that those commissions violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions. So Bush dusted them off, made a few changes, and rammed his new improved military commissions through the Republican Congress last fall.

Blackwater Heavies Sue Families of Slain Employees for $10 Million in Brutal Attempt to Suppress Their Story

By Daniel J. Callahan and Marc P. Miles, AlterNet. Posted June 8, 2007.

The lawyers representing the families of four American Blackwater contractors killed in Fallujah make the case that the company's executives are suing the families to keep them quiet and to avoid any accountability.

The following article is by the lawyers representing the families of four American contractors who worked for Blackwater and were killed in Fallujah. After Blackwater refused to share information about why they were killed, the families were told they would have to sue Blackwater to find out. Now Blackwater is trying to sue them for $10 million to keep them quiet.

Raleigh, NC -- The families of four American security contractors who were burned, beaten, dragged through the streets of Fallujah and their decapitated bodies hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River on March 31, 2004, are reaching out to the American public to help protect themselves against the very company their loved ones were serving when killed, Blackwater Security Consulting. After Blackwater lost a series of appeals all the away to the U.S. Supreme Court, Blackwater has now changed its tactics and is suing the dead men's estates for $10 million to silence the families and keep them out of court.

Mommies Opting Out of Work: A Myth That Won't Die

By Heather Boushey, AlterNet. Posted June 9, 2007.

Last year it was the "opt-out" myth, and this year the story is about opting back in. Both tales defy the hard evidence.

In recent years the media has obsessed over a storyline about highly educated mothers "opting out" of employment. These stories are not only wrong -- the reality is that there is no increase in recent years in women, even women with advanced degrees, choosing to be stay-at-home mothers over working mothers -- they also imply that most mothers have a choice to work or not. This couldn't be further from the truth. Wives typically bring home a third of their family's income and single mothers often have no option but to work. While the choices of professional upper-class women might be interesting to read about, they certainly are not representative of the economic reality facing the majority of families.

Bush mantra: Be afraid, be very afraid

By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY

McClatchy Newspapers

The Democrats in Congress wring their hands, gnash their teeth and wail that there was nothing they could do but cave in and vote to continue funding the war in Iraq. After all, that crafty George W. Bush had maneuvered them into a corner and they didn't have the votes to override his veto.

Horse manure.

All they had to do was keep passing a war funding bill with a hard-and-fast timetable for beginning - and ending - the complete withdrawal of the more than 150,000 American troops fighting in that far-away place. Over and over and over, throwing it back into the face of a president who mistakes stubborn and hardheaded for principled resolve.

Fred Thompson's Christian Nationalist Pander

By Frederick Clarkson
Tue Jun 05, 2007 at 10:16:14 PM EST

When prospective GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson auditioned at a recent meeting of the secretive, far right Council for National Policy, he probably did not have to wonder which buttons to push. The CNP has, since 1981, been a key conservative movement leadership network, dominated by the religious right. As a man who entered electoral politics as moderate, has been at some pains to establish his conservatie bona fides. And these days if you want to show the religious right that you are one of them, one of the things you do is to let them know you share their Christian nationalism. Thompson, whose unofficial campaign is on a fast track, was quick to make a transcript of his remarks available to The National Review Online.

Our founders established an independent federal judiciary to decide cases, not social policy. Yet more and more that is exactly what it is doing. Roe v. Wade is a classic example. And nowhere is it more apparent than with regard to the issue of church and state.
Many federal judges seem intent on eliminating God from the public schools and the public square in ways that would astound our founding fathers. We never know when a five to four Supreme Court decision will uphold them. They ignore the fact that the founders were protecting the church from the state and not the other way around.

We can see lots of red flags fluttering in the breezes of former Senator Thompson's rhetoric. But I want to focus on just two.

Ted Rall: Left Turn: The Political Pendulum Swings Back

America’s experiment with neofascism is coming to an end. He came to office in a coup d’état and consolidated power after 9/11. George W. Bush may be our worst president in history–certainly in recent times–but he is also one of the most important. Imposing his sweeping vision on everything from the tax system to why we wage war to eliminating your right to an attorney, his legislative and stylistic legacy will long outlive his administration.

He has been wildly successful at getting what he wanted. The irony is, his radical achievements have set the stage for a dramatic political shift to the left.

Prison for Libby in Leak Case

MATT APUZZO | June 5, 2007 12:20 PM EST |

WASHINGTON — Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison Tuesday for lying and obstructing the CIA leak investigation.

Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, stood calmly before a packed courtroom as a federal judge said the evidence overwhelmingly proved his guilt.

Sediment dredging has fallen short of achieving cleanup goals at many contaminated sites

At many projects to dredge contaminated sediments from US rivers and other bodies of water, it has not been demonstrated that dredging has reduced the long-term risks the sediments pose to people and wildlife, says a new report from the National Research Council.

Paul Krugman: Obama in Second Place

One of the lessons journalists should have learned from the 2000 election campaign is that what a candidate says about policy isn’t just a guide to his or her thinking about a specific issue — it’s the best way to get a true sense of the candidate’s character.

Do you remember all the up-close-and-personals about George W. Bush, and what a likeable guy he was? Well, reporters would have had a much better fix on who he was and how he would govern if they had ignored all that, and focused on the raw dishonesty and irresponsibility of his policy proposals.

Is Martial Law Coming?

May 29, 2007 By Matthew Rothschild

A note of caution since I wrote about Bush’s plans to anoint himself the insurer of constitutional government in the event of emergency.

I decided to see what the American Civil Liberties Union thought of the May 9 release of the National Security Presidential Directive, and to my surprise, the ACLU did not seem that concerned about it.

“These presidential directives on the continuity of government have existed for a long time,” says Mike German, ACLU policy counsel. “All it does is establish that they should have a policy and coordinate that policy with legislative and judiciary. It doesn’t change the order of succession, or anything like that.”

Plus, he praised the Bush Administration for making the document public, since previous ones have remained classified.

Murray Waas: The Ninth Man Out: A Fired U.S. Attorney Tells His Story

The first sign that crimes may have been committed was when the victims no longer felt nauseous and their hair stopped falling out. Also, it wasn't cold going deep into the vein the way it was before. They needed that hurt. And when it was too long in coming, they grew anxious. Their discomfort after all was their comfort. That was the only way that they knew that the chemotherapy was working.

Obamacare: Clearing Away The Fog

Jacob S. Hacker

June 04, 2007

Jacob S. Hacker is a Yale University political science professor and a fellow at the New America Foundation . He is the author of The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care, and Retirement —And How You Can Fight Back , as well as the “Health Care for America” proposal recently released as part of the Economic Policy Institute’s Agenda for Shared Prosperity.

If Iraq had the starring role in Sunday night’s Democratic debate, health care was the key supporting actor. Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama, former Sen. John Edwards, Gov. Bill Richardson, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich all spoke with passion about the need to reform a health insurance framework that, in Edwards’s well-chosen words, “is completely dysfunctional.”

Unfortunately, while we have growing clarity of purpose in Democratic discussions, we have not always had clarity of vision. Few candidates have specified how they would achieve affordable quality health care for all. (Sen. Clinton is among those whose health plan remains TBA.) And last week, when Obama released his long-awaited health plan, most of the health care commentariat appeared not relieved, but completely flummoxed about what he was up to.

Daily Kos: Evidence Mounts in DoJ Tampering w/ Voter Rolls

by MLDB

Mon Jun 04, 2007 at 07:20:13 PM PDT

As many of you know, Bradley Schlozman is set to testify tomorrow on Capitol Hill. [FYI...liveblogging tomorrow for 2:30 EDT testimony...volunteer here] He is a prime player in the DoJ's gutting of the Civil Rights Division. (You can read about some of his escapades here, here, and here.) At the core of his efforts (and those putting people like him in place) is the disenfranchisement of people of color through the purging of voter roles.

Tribunals are dealt another legal setback

Dismissal rulings in two Guantanamo cases raise questions about the military's jurisdiction over detainees.

By Carol J. Williams and Julian E. Barnes, Times Staff Writers
June 5, 2007

GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA — Military judges threw out war-crimes cases Monday against the only detainees here who have been indicted, in rulings that suggest the hastily reassembled military tribunals have no jurisdiction over any of Guantanamo's 380 prisoners.

In separate hearings, an Army colonel and a Navy captain granted motions to dismiss the cases because the 2006 Military Commissions Act that Congress passed last year gave the tribunals jurisdiction only over "unlawful alien enemy combatants."

Frank Rich: Failed Presidents Ain’t What They Used to Be

A few weeks ago I did something I never expected to do in my life. I shed a tear for Richard Milhous Nixon.

That’s in no small measure a tribute to Frank Langella, who should win a Tony Award for his star Broadway turn in “Frost/Nixon” next Sunday while everyone else is paying final respects to Tony Soprano. “Frost/Nixon,” a fictionalized treatment of the disgraced former president’s 1977 television interviews with David Frost, does not whitewash Nixon’s record. But Mr. Langella unearths humanity and pathos in the old scoundrel eking out his exile in San Clemente. For anyone who ever hated Nixon, this achievement is so shocking that it’s hard to resist a thought experiment the moment you’ve left the theater: will it someday be possible to feel a pang of sympathy for George W. Bush?

The New Assault on Al Gore

By Robert Parry
June 5, 2007

An irony about Al Gore’s new book, The Assault on Reason, is that the former Vice President blames TV much more than the print media for America’s drift into the world of the irrational.

Yet, while author Gore has encountered mostly respectful interviews on TV, his book has been savaged by major newspapers and print reviewers, often distorting the contents and resurrecting one of the favorite press themes of Campaign 2000, that Gore is an obnoxious pedant.

Starting the ball rolling was a dismissively brief two-column review in the Washington Post’s Book World on May 27, largely ignoring what the book said while making clear that the Inside-the-Beltway hostility toward Gore endures.

“Al Gore possesses a skill that no other American politician can match – or would want to,” wrote Washington Post reviewer Alan Ehrenhalt. “He has a consistent ability to express fundamentally reasonable sentiments – often important ones – in ways that annoy the maximum possible number of people.”

New Study Debunks The Great Education Myth

By David Sirota
Posted on June 5, 2007, Printed on June 5, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/sirota/53171/

If you've read my writing, you probably know of my dislike for The Great Education Myth - the myth forwarded by politicians and power-worshiping pundits like Tom Friedman that says all America has to do is better its education system in order to solve our economic problems. If people just got more college degrees, the myth goes, somehow that will raise wages and improve health care benefits in the face of a trade policy that encourages companies to troll the world for slave labor. Along with a few other progressive economists and reporters, I've written a lot of posts and newspaper articles showing what a bunch of crap this myth really is - and now today, the Financial Times reports on a study that reinforces what we've been writing.

Here's the key excerpt:

"Earnings of the average U.S. worker with an undergraduate degree have not kept up with gains in productivity in recent decades, according to research by academics at MIT that challenges traditional explanations of why income inequality is rising...The average graduate failed to keep up with gains in economy-wide productivity, once those productivity gains are adjusted for the composition of the workforce...This casts doubt on the conventional argument that the solution to rising in-equality is to improve the standard of education across the workforce as a whole...The failure of workers even with undergraduate degrees to keep up with productivity is due to a change in labor market institutions and norms that reduced the bargaining power of most U.S. workers." (emphasis added)

Is Big Business Buying Out the Environmental Movement?

By Phil Mattera, Corporate Research Project
Posted on June 5, 2007, Printed on June 5, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/53113/

In the business world these days, it appears that just about everything is for sale. Multi-billion-dollar deals are commonplace, and even venerable institutions such as the Wall Street Journal find themselves put into play. Yet companies are not the only things being acquired. This may turn out to be the year that big business bought a substantial part of the environmental movement.

That's one way of interpreting the remarkable level of cooperation that is emerging between some prominent environmental groups and some of the world's largest corporations. What was once an arena of fierce antagonism has become a veritable love fest as companies profess to be going green and get lavishly honored for doing so. Earlier this year, for instance, the World Resources Institute gave one of its "Courage to Lead" awards to the chief executive of General Electric.

Matt Taibbi: Giuliani: Worse Than Bush

RollingStone

Thursday 31 May 2007

He's cashing in on 9/11, working with Karl Rove's henchmen and in cahoots with a Swift Boat-style attack on Hillary. Will Rudy Giuliani be Bush III?

Early Wednesday, May 16th, Charleston, South Carolina. The scene is a town-hall meeting staged by GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, only a day after he wowed a patriotic Republican crowd at a nationally televised debate with a righteous ass-kicking of the party's latest Hanoi Jane, terrorist sympathizer Ron Paul. A bump in the polls later, "America's Mayor" is back on the campaign trail - in a room packed with standard-issue Adorable Schoolchildren, in this case beatific black kids in elementary school uniforms with wide eyes and big RUDY stickers pinned to their oblivious breasts.

Giuliani has good stage presence, but his physical appearance is problematic - virtually neckless, all shoulders and forehead and overbite, with a hunched-over, Draculoid posture that recalls, oddly enough, George W. Bush, the vestigial stoop of a once-chubby kid who grew up hiding tittie pictures from nuns. Not handsome, not cuddly, if he wins this thing it's going to be by projecting toughness and man-aura. But all presidential candidates have to play the baby-kissing game, and here is an early chance for Rudy to show his softer side.

What If Our Mercenaries Turn on Us?

By Chris Hedges
The Philadelphia Inquirer

Sunday 03 June 2007

Armed units from the private security firm Blackwater USA opened fire in Baghdad streets twice in two days last week. It triggered a standoff between the security contractors and Iraqi forces, a reminder that the war in Iraq may be remembered mostly in our history books for empowering and building America's first modern mercenary army.

There are an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 armed security contractors working in Iraq, although there are no official figures and some estimates run much higher. Security contractors are not counted as part of the coalition forces. When the number of private mercenary fighters is added to other civilian military "contractors" who carry out logistical support activities such as food preparation, the number rises to about 126,000.

Bush's "Magic" Economic Formula: The Rich get Richer; Regular People Lose Ground

By Larry Beinhart, AlterNet. Posted June 4, 2007.

The economy keeps growing, as does the enormous largesse of the wealthy, while the average person makes less than they did when Bush took Office. This is Bush's magic economic formula.

Supposedly we are in a sustained economic recovery and have been since 2002.

Part of this is Bush hot air and the Republican Noise Machine, which the media quotes verbatim.

By a certain measure, however, it's real.

The economy has grown. Corporate profits are at an all-time high. Average income is up. There's lots of money around.

Consumers feel the heat from rising food prices

Ethanol-driven demand for corn is just one of the causes.

By Kara McGuire, Star Tribune

Last update: June 02, 2007 – 2:26 PM

Rising gasoline prices have been getting all the attention, but the cost of another, more-important staple is actually rising even more: food.

In the past year, food prices have increased 3.7 percent and are on track to jump by as much as 7 percent by year's end. The current increase is more than double the 1.8 percent jump seen the year before, according to the consumer price index.

If You Ever Wonder Whether We Really Need Public Financing of Elections in this Country

As a candidate for the U.S. Senate here in Minnesota, I've become painfully aware of the role money plays in politics.

For instance, according to my staff, I'm not supposed to write anything without mentioning that our grassroots campaign needs the support of great progressives like YOU and asking you to click here and chip in a few bucks so I can take on the Republican attack machine.

See? That kind of thing totally distracts the reader from my point, which is this: If you ever wonder whether we really need public financing of elections in this country, try running for office. You might think I spend most of my time kissing babies or shaking hands or having serious policy debates in which my sparkling wit and superior knowledge of the issues combine to sweep audiences off their feet.

But no. I spend most of my time doing this.

Southern Halliburton University

Moving the Bush Bubble to the Big D

Dr. Benjamin Johnson, a history professor at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, where President Bush is proposing to build his $500 million library and neoconservative institute, recently attended the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians. Several colleagues there reported that Karl Rove, Bush's chief political strategist, has been traveling around the country examining research facilities, discussing how to select Bush Institute fellows, and meeting with library directors.

According to Dr. Johnson, one well-respected colleague said, "Rove seems to know exactly what the square footage is of the building that will be at SMU and where it will be located on campus." Rove also expressed displeasure that some SMU faculty and United Methodist bishops were protesting the proposed partisan institute over which Bush and company will have total control. This hands-on involvement of a top-level White House operative like Rove demonstrates the importance of the proposed library and think tank at SMU to Bush insiders.

Former White House Communications Deputy Tim Griffin Resigns after Evidence Ties Him to Alleged Voter Suppression

Posted by Jon Ponder | Jun. 3, 2007, 8:44 am

Big media is ignoring the story that former White House Deputy Communications Director — and former RNC Research Director — Tim Griffin resigned as the U.S. Attorney in Arkansas last week after evidence revealed he was directly involved in alleged voter suppression in the 2004 elections.

This may be the first time you’ve heard of the illegal tactic of “caging” voters, but if BBC investigator Greg Palast is correct, it will not be the last.

NYT Editorial: Dick Cheney Rules

Published: June 3, 2007

Americans are accustomed to Vice President Dick Cheney’s waiting out a terrorist threat in a “secure undisclosed location.” Now it seems that Mr. Cheney wears the cloak of invisibility in secure disclosed locations.

The Associated Press reported that Mr. Cheney’s office ordered the Secret Service last September to destroy all records of visitors to the official vice presidential mansion — right after The Washington Post sued for access to the logs. That move was made in secret, naturally. It came out only because of another lawsuit, filed by a private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, seeking the names of conservative religious figures who visited the vice president’s residence.

Dem Debate: Edwards, Hillary and Obama Slug It Out on Iraq

By David Corn, TheNation.com. Posted June 4, 2007.

Edwards slams Clinton and Obama on the war. But Hillary holds her own, while Obama coasts.

There are no major differences among us regarding the Iraq war.

So said Senator Hillary Clinton at Sunday night's Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire.

There are profound differences among us regarding the Iraq war.

So said former Senator John Edwards at the same debate.

Daily Kos: "To be a Democrat in this modern age"

by MissLaura
Sun Jun 03, 2007 at 09:31:06 AM PDT

At yesterday's New Hampshire Democratic Party state convention, presidential candidates Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, and Bill Richardson spoke. Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley spoke for Hillary Clinton, former Congressman David Bonior spoke (through a bullhorn, to protest a non-union sound company) for John Edwards, and Michelle Obama spoke for Barack Obama. New Hampshire Governor John Lynch spoke, Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter spoke. Senate candidates Jay Buckey, Steve Marchand, and Katrina Swett spoke. It was a jam-packed day.

But Paul Hodes gave us something special. While I'm predisposed to like what Hodes has to say, I've also heard him speak many times and the ending of this one stood out, in the day and in his record.

To be a Democrat in this modern age means to inherit a fearful nation and give it new confidence and new strength. It means creating policies that transform our nation into something stronger and more compassionate than it was before. Our great opportunity is to build on the legacy of the Democratic Party, adapt it to modern times and lead with strength and clarity. To paraphrase John Fitzgerald Kennedy, we look forward and not behind. We welcome new ideas without rigid reaction. We care about people, their health, their housing, their jobs, their schools, their civil rights, and their civil liberties. And we believe that we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad.

Abuse and incompetence in fight against global warming

Up to 20% of carbon savings in doubt as monitoring firms criticised by UN body

Nick Davies
Saturday June 2, 2007
The Guardian

A Guardian investigation has found evidence of serious irregularities at the heart of the process the world is relying on to control global warming.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which is supposed to offset greenhouse gases emitted in the developed world by selling carbon credits from elsewhere, has been contaminated by gross incompetence, rule-breaking and possible fraud by companies in the developing world, according to UN paperwork, an unpublished expert report and alarming feedback from projects on the ground.

Cheney And Iran

Remember that report from Steve Clemons last week about how Dick Cheney is hoping to get Israel to attack Iran in order to provoke a shooting war that will suck in the United States? Today in the New York Times, Helene Cooper confirms it:

In interviews, people who have spoken with Mr. Cheney's staff have confirmed the broad outlines of the report, and said that some of the hawkish statements to outsiders were made by David Wurmser, a former Pentagon official who is now the principal deputy assistant to Mr. Cheney for national security affairs.

Good 'ol David Wurmser. A neocon's neocon.

Defense Officials Tried to Reverse China Policy, Says Powell Aide

By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor

The same top Bush administration neoconservatives who leap-frogged Washington’s foreign policy establishment to topple Saddam Hussein nearly pulled off a similar coup in U.S.-China relations—creating the potential of a nuclear war over Taiwan, a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell says.

Lawrence B. Wilkerson, the U.S. Army colonel who was Powell’s chief of staff through two administrations, said in little-noted remarks early last month that “neocons” in the top rungs of the administration quietly encouraged Taiwanese politicians to move toward a declaration of independence from mainland China — an act that the communist regime has repeatedly warned would provoke a military strike.

Judge Halts Award Of Iraq Contract

By Alec Klein and Steve Fainaru

Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, June 2, 2007; Page D01

A federal judge yesterday ordered the military to temporarily refrain from awarding the largest security contract in Iraq. The order followed an unusual series of events set off when a U.S. Army veteran filed a protest against the government practice of hiring what he calls mercenaries, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The contract, worth about $475 million, calls for a private company to provide intelligence services to the U.S. Army and security for the Army Corps of Engineers on reconstruction work in Iraq. The case, which is being heard by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, puts on trial one of the most controversial and least understood aspects of the Iraq war: the outsourcing of military security to an estimated 20,000 armed contractors who operate with little oversight.

DFA Anne Arundel

09 June 2007