Envoy to U.N. Recounts Threats of Retaliation by U.S. in Run-Up to Invasion

In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.

The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting "bitterness" and "deep mistrust" in Washington's relations with allies in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, Heraldo Mu¿oz, Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, writes in his book "A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons," set for publication next month.

"In the aftermath of the invasion, allies loyal to the United States were rejected, mocked and even punished" for their refusal to back a U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein's government, Mu¿oz writes.

But the tough talk dissipated as the war situation worsened, and President Bush came to reach out to many of the same allies that he had spurned. Mu¿oz's account suggests that the U.S. strategy backfired in Latin America, damaging the administration's standing in a region that has long been dubious of U.S. military intervention.

Mu¿oz details key roles by Chile and Mexico, the Security Council's two Latin members at the time, in the run-up to the war: Then-U.N. Ambassadors Juan Gabriel Vald¿s of Chile and Adolfo Aguilar Zinser of Mexico helped thwart U.S. and British efforts to rally support among the council's six undecided members for a resolution authorizing the U.S.-led invasion.

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Jailed American Citizens Say They Have Right to Access U.S. Legal System

In a jail guarded by U.S. military police on the outskirts of Baghdad, at a base where U.S. interrogators do the questioning, Iraqi American Mohammad Munaf and Jordanian American Shawqi Ahmad Omar are stuck in a peculiar legal limbo.

Munaf and Omar say their jailers at Camp Cropper are under U.S. Army command, and therefore they are entitled to challenge their detention under U.S. law. But the Bush administration has argued in court that the prison belongs to the international military coalition called Multi-National Force-Iraq and that Munaf and Omar are, therefore, beyond the reach of U.S. courts.

The dispute is scheduled to be taken up by the Supreme Court on Tuesday, and the outcome could have broad implications for the rights of U.S. citizens held on international battlefields. Until the court rules, the extent of U.S. constitutional protections overseas remains unclear.

"Habeas corpus, the power of the courts to review detention by the executive, has existed in some form for over seven hundred years," American Bar Association President William H. Neukom told the court in a brief. "It remains, in the context of military detentions of this country's citizens, a vital protection of the rule of law."

The largely parallel legal claims of the two men are complicated by their controversial personal sagas. Munaf was jailed in Camp Cropper as the result of a strange kidnapping incident involving three Romanian journalists he was escorting through Baghdad.

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Terminal 5 Chaos Threat Over Fingerprint Plan in UK

The opening of Heathrow's new Terminal 5 was under threat last night after its management was warned that a plan to fingerprint passengers may be illegal.

The £4.3billion terminal is due to open on Thursday.

But the Information Commissioner has told Spanish-owned airport operator BAA that its plan to fingerprint all passengers may breach the Data Protection Act.

The Commissioner's office says passengers ordered to give their prints should do so "under protest" and that such a scheme would normally be considered "intrusive".

It has launched an investigation into whether BAA "took account of the data protection implications of its proposal".

Unless Heathrow provides evidence that the move is necessary, the Commissioner has the power to order it to stop fingerprinting passengers or face legal action.

Last night there were fears that Terminal 5's opening could be delayed, potentially causing flight chaos at Heathrow.

David Smith, the Deputy Information Commissioner, said: "We want to know why Heathrow needs to fingerprint passengers at all.

"Taking photographs is less intrusive. So far we have not heard BAA's case for requesting fingerprints.

"If we find there is a breach of data protection legislation, we would hope to persuade them to put things right.

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Amended DNA Bill in Maryland Tentatively Approved

Legislation to significantly expand Maryland's DNA database to include samples collected from people charged with violent crimes and burglary advanced in the General Assembly yesterday, but only after lawmakers adopted amendments reflecting a compromise between Gov. Martin O'Malley and the Legislative Black Caucus.

After debate, the House of Delegates gave preliminary approval to the amended legislation, paving the way for the bill's passage as soon as today. If passed, the bill would move to the Senate, where legislative leaders are preparing to adopt the amended language agreed on in the House.

One amendment to O'Malley's proposal would require that DNA samples of suspects who are arrested but exonerated be automatically destroyed. Under the initial proposal, such samples would have remained in the state's database.

Another amendment would mandate stricter regulations on how DNA samples are collected at crime scenes. The bill covers such violent crimes as abduction, kidnapping, manslaughter, murder, rape, carjacking and assault.

The legislation is a top priority for O'Malley (D), who has said that using technology to collect more "modern-day fingerprints" could help solve more cold cases and exonerate people wrongfully accused of crimes. Currently, only convicted felons are required to submit a sample for the state's DNA database.

The bill has been backed by the state's top prosecutors, including Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler (D), who strolled through the House talking with delegates shortly before the floor debate.

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Montana Governor: DHS 'Blinks' on Real ID

Montana governor Brian Schweitzer declared victory Friday after the Department of Homeland Security sent his state an extension to the Real ID act, despite his insistence Montana will never comply with a mandate he describes as a "boondoggle."

If I were writing the headline, it would be 'DHS Blinks," Schweitzer, a Democrat, told THREAT LEVEL by phone late Friday.

Montana's attorney general sent DHS chief Michael Chertoff a letter (.pdf) Friday outlining the security features in Montana's current driver's licenses, which DHS threatened to reject as valid I.D. for boarding airplanes or entering federal buildings come May 11 unless the state promised to comply with Real ID.

DHS responded by interpreting that letter as a request for an extension  (.pdf) of the Real ID deadlines until 2010, reversing its previous position that Montana ID cards would be rejected by federal agents.

"I sent them a horse and if they want to call it a zebra, that's up to them," Schweitzer said. "They can call it whatever they want, and it wasn't a love letter."

Schweitzer emphasized that his state's licenses already contain holograms, secure digital photographs and a magnetic stripe on the back. But says he has no intention of sharing his state's residents' data with the federal government, as required by Real ID.

The information the government wants the states to keep and share in Real ID is ripe for abuse, despite the government's privacy and security promises, he said.

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Pentagon Urges Delay in U.S. Troop Reductions in Iraq

Senior military commanders have presented the Bush administration with proposals to put off any plans for further reductions of troops in Iraq at least until the end of summer. At the same time, the proposals would limit new deployments to 12 months, instead of 15 months now, military and administration officials said Friday.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates met for a second day in closed sessions with the Pentagon’s top officers to outline recommendations to be presented to President Bush on Wednesday.

Mr. Bush is to discuss the proposals with the senior commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, in a videoconference on Monday and is expected to make a decision about any additional withdrawals before he leaves on April 1 for a five-day trip to Ukraine, Romania and Croatia, the officials said.

Last September, facing intense pressure from Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress, Mr. Bush announced that he would withdraw five combat brigades and two Marine battalions by July. Those reductions, not yet complete, would effectively return the number of troops in Iraq to roughly 140,000, a level slightly higher than before Mr. Bush ordered the buildup that became known as the “surge.”

Mr. Gates’s spokesman, Geoff Morrell, said four more departing brigades, each with more than 3,000 troops, had yet to leave Iraq, making it difficult to assess the effect on security in Iraq of the reduction of troops ordered last fall. There are now 155,000 American troops in Iraq, down from a peak of 170,000 last fall.

“A pause of some duration is worthwhile to figure out the impact of the rapid withdrawal of the last four surge brigades,” Mr. Morrell said. “So losing those four brigades over the course of four months is going to require some assessment of the impact that has.” He declined to discuss in detail the proposals that Mr. Gates heard in the meetings in recent days.

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U.S. deaths in Iraq approach 4,000

A roadside bomb killed three American soldiers north of Baghdad on Saturday, pushing the U.S. death toll in the five-year conflict to nearly 4,000.

Also Saturday, Iraqi authorities reported that a U.S. airstrike north of the capital killed six members of a U.S.-backed Sunni group — straining relations with America's new allies in the fight against al-Qaida.

Two Iraqi civilians also died in the roadside bombing, which occurred as the Americans were patrolling an area northwest of the capital, the U.S. military said in a statement.

Two of the soldiers were killed in the blast and the third died of wounds, the statement said. The soldiers were assigned to Multinational Division-Baghdad, the statement said, but gave no further details.

The latest deaths brought to 3,996 the number of U.S. service members and Pentagon civilians who have died since the war began on March 20, 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

With the war entering its sixth year, President Bush paid tribute Saturday to America's fallen service members, saying in his weekly radio address that they will "live on in the memory of the nation they helped defend."

Speaking for the Democrats, however, Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey called on Bush to "face the reality" in Iraq and "tell us the truth" about the cost of the conflict as America is struggling with a faltering economy and mounting casualty tolls.

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Dick Cheney's Error -- It's Government By the People

By Mickey Edwards / Washington Post

For at least six years, as I've become increasingly frustrated by the Bush administration's repeated betrayal of constitutional -- and conservative -- principles, I have defended Vice President Cheney, a man I've known for decades and with whom I served and made common cause in Congress. No longer.

I do not blame Dick Cheney for George W. Bush's transgressions; the president needs no prompting to wrap himself in the cloak of a modern-day king. Nor do I believe that the vice president so enthusiastically supports the Iraq war out of a loyalty to the oil industry that his former employer serves. By all accounts, Cheney's belief in "the military option" and the principle of president-as-decider predates his affiliation with Halliburton.

What, then, is the straw that causes me to finally consign a man I served with in the House Republican leadership to the category of "those about whom we should be greatly concerned"?

It is Cheney's all-too-revealing conversation this week with ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz. On Wednesday, reminded of the public's disapproval of the war in Iraq, now five years old, the vice president shrugged off that fact (and thus, the people themselves) with a one-word answer: "So?"

"So," Mr. Vice President?

Policy, Cheney went on to say, should not be tailored to fit fluctuations in the public attitudes. If there is one thing public attitudes have not been doing, however, it is fluctuating:

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White House: Computer Hard Drives Destroyed

Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005.

The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed.

"When workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired ... the hard drives are generally sent offsite to another government entity for physical destruction," the White House said in a sworn declaration filed with U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola.

It has been the goal of a White House Office of Administration "refresh program" to replace one-third of its workstations every year in the Executive Office of the President, according to the declaration.

Some, but not necessarily all, of the data on old hard drives is moved to new computer hard drives, the declaration added.

In proposing an e-mail recovery plan Tuesday, Facciola expressed concern that a large volume of electronic messages may be missing from White House computer servers, as two private groups that are suing the White House allege.

Facciola proposed the drastic approach of going to individual workstations of White House computer users after the White House disclosed in January that it recycled its computer backup tapes before October 2003.

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Peter Dale Scott Interview Posted on Electronic Politics

On this week's episode of his excellent weekly podcast from Washington, "Electric Politics," George Kenney interviews Peter Dale Scott. This is Kenney's third show on 9/11.

If you haven't already listened to his fantastic interview with Paul Craig Roberts, I encourage you to download it from the archives -- it's one of the best PCR interviews I've heard yet. And show him some love in the comments section afterward!

"Of all the books on 9/11 Peter Dale Scott's learned The Road To 9/11(University of California Press, 2007) deserves special recognition for situating the events of 9/11 in an intelligible, albeit complicated, context. Unlike other leftist social critics who see a simple narrative in government actions, Peter sees rich textures in what he calls 'the deep state.'

An agnostic about what actually happened on 9/11 Peter nevertheless convincingly and powerfully argues that everything is not as it seems.

Here, we take up 9/11 as well as larger philosophical themes. Total runtime an hour and sixteen minutes. Enjoy!"

http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2008/03/skimbleshanks.html

The Change Congress Project

A prominent Stanford law professor on Thursday launched an ambitious project (change-congress.org) that aims to use collaborative software to harness the extraordinary levels of pent-up political energy and dissatisfaction that voters have shown over the past two years with their members of congress.

The Change Congress project's first mission is to diminish the influence of money in the legislative body by influencing the outcome of the 2008 election campaigns of 67 members of congress which are up for grabs. As the Change Congress project founder Larry Lessig noted in the project's launch Thursday afternoon, there haven't been so many seats open up for challenge in more than a decade.

Lessig, known for his decade-long role in trying to loosen the entertainment industry's vice-like grip on popular culture by shaping copyright law, is betting that the energy and dissatisfaction exhibited by voters against the status-quo in Washington DC, and the emergence of collaborative software that enables vast numbers of geographically-dispersed citizens to become politically active on their own schedule, will enable a new kind of transparency and accountability in political campaigns.

"The problem we face is ... the problem of crony capitalism using money to capture government," he said on Monday during the launch of his project in Washington, DC. "The challenge is whether in fact we can change this. The political experts tell you that it can't be done, that process always win over substance."

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FBI Sets Up Fake Child Porn Links!!!

A new technique to catch people looking for child pornography online has been approved by the courts and has already been used in three states. It involves posting bogus links to illegal videos that automatically triggers an armed raid on the user.

Doctoral student Roderick Vosburgh was caught this way last year. Agents got him to come outside after asking him about his car. He faces 10 years behind bars, a lifetime ban on being a college instructor, and 15 years as a registered sex offender.

Vosburgh's lawyer said, "I thought it was scary that they could do this. This whole idea that the FBI can put a honeypot out there to attract people is kind of sad. It seems to me that they've brought a lot of cases without having to stoop to this."

With the logs revealing those allegedly incriminating IP addresses in hand, the FBI sent administrative subpoenas to the relevant Internet service provider to learn the identity of the person whose name was on the account--and then obtained search warrants for dawn raids. The search warrants authorized FBI agents to seize and remove any "computer-related" equipment, utility bills, telephone bills, any "addressed correspondence" sent through the U.S. mail, video gear, camera equipment, checkbooks, bank statements, and credit card statements.

While it might seem that merely clicking on a link wouldn't be enough to justify a search warrant, courts have ruled otherwise.

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Experts Say President Is Wrong on Iran

President Bush said Thursday that Iran has declared that it wants to be a nuclear power with a weapon to "destroy people," including others in the Middle East, contradicting the judgments of a recent U.S. intelligence estimate.

The president spoke in an interview intended to reach out to the Iranian public on the Persian new year and to express "moral support" for struggling freedom movements, particularly among youth and women. It was designed to stress U.S. support for Iran's quest for nuclear energy and the prospects that Washington and Tehran can "reconcile their differences" if Iran cooperates with the international community to ensure that the effort is not converted into a weapons program.

But most striking was Bush's accusation that Iran has openly declared its nuclear weapons intentions, even though a National Intelligence Estimate concluded in December that Iran had stopped its weapons program in 2003, a major reversal in the long-standing U.S. assessment.

"They've declared they want to have a nuclear weapon to destroy people -- some in the Middle East. And that's unacceptable to the United States, and it's unacceptable to the world," Bush told U.S.-funded Radio Farda, which broadcasts into Iran in Farsi.

Experts on Iran and nuclear proliferation said the president's statement was wrong. "

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Antiwar Protesters Can Rally at 2009 Inaugural

A federal District court yesterday ruled that antiwar protesters can rally along Pennsylvania Avenue during the inauguration parade in January.

Members of the ANSWER Coalition won the judgement by saying the National Park Service violated their First Amendment rights by excluding them and other visitors from a major section of the route during President Bush's 2005 inaugural parade. The sections were reserved for guests who received tickets from the Presidential Inaugural Committee.

"It means thousands and thousands of people who want the war in Iraq to come to an end can line the parade route and let their views be known," said Brian Becker, the coalition's national coordinator. "Whoever is the next president will hear from people that they want the war in Iraq ended and there will be signs and banners saying that along the parade route."

U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman said in his ruling the inauguration "is not a private event."

"Protesters are entitled to engage in political speech in a public forum during the inaugural parade," he said. "As the Supreme Court has observed, the government may not grant the use of a forum to people whose views it finds acceptable, but deny use to those wishing to express less favored or more controversial views."

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Sexual Blackmail at U.S. Immigration Services!

No problems so far, the immigration agent told the American citizen and his 22-year-old Colombian wife at her green card interview in December. After he stapled one of their wedding photos to her application for legal permanent residency, he had just one more question: What was her cellphone number?

The calls from the agent started three days later. He hinted, she said, at his power to derail her life and deport her relatives, alluding to a brush she had with the law before her marriage. He summoned her to a private meeting. And at noon on Dec. 21, in a parked car on Queens Boulevard, he named his price — not realizing that she was recording everything on the cellphone in her purse.

“I want sex,” he said on the recording. “One or two times. That’s all. You get your green card. You won’t have to see me anymore.”

She reluctantly agreed to a future meeting. But when she tried to leave his car, he demanded oral sex “now,” to “know that you’re serious.” And despite her protests, she said, he got his way.

The 16-minute recording, which the woman first took to The New York Times and then to the Queens district attorney, suggests the vast power of low-level immigration law enforcers, and a growing desperation on the part of immigrants seeking legal status. The aftermath, which included the arrest of an immigration agent last week, underscores the difficulty and danger of making a complaint, even in the rare case when abuse of power may have been caught on tape.

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Investment Firms Tap Fed for Billions

Big Wall Street investment companies are taking advantage of the Federal Reserve's unprecedented offer to secure emergency loans, the central bank reported Thursday.

The lending is part of a major effort by the Fed to help a financial system in danger of freezing.

Those large firms averaged $13.4 billion in daily borrowing over the past week from the new lending facility. The report does not identify the borrowers.

The Fed, in a bold move Sunday, agreed for the first time to let big investment houses get emergency loans directly from the central bank. This mechanism, similar to one available for commercial banks for years, got under way Monday and will continue for at least six months. It was the broadest use of the Fed's lending authority since the 1930s.

Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley said Wednesday they had begun to test the new lending mechanism.

On Wednesday alone, lending reached $28.8 billion, according to the Fed report.

The Fed created a way for investment firms to have regular access to a source of short-term cash.

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Wider U.S. Financial Bailout Could Fuel Inflation

If the U.S. government bails out the financial system by buying mortgage debt directly, the price might be surging inflation and a dollar crisis.

Calls are increasing for the federal government, either directly or through the Federal Reserve, to cut the knot of the credit crisis at a stroke by buying up mortgages that banks and investment banks are finding difficult to finance.

If the government bought mortgage debt at or near 100 cents on the dollar, even though much of it is trading well below that amount, it would allow banks to pay back loans used to finance these holdings.

If done in sufficient size, say $800 billion or $1 trillion, it would relieve the terrible pressure on bank balance sheets and allow other credit markets, like those for corporate loans, to return to something approaching equilibrium.

That, in turn, would make Fed monetary policy more effective in the sense that banks would be able to increase lending and pass on interest rate reductions.

Of course this would be a radical step, and way beyond the Fed's already extraordinary policy of swapping mortgages held by banks and some investment banks for easy-to-finance Treasuries.

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U.S. Slowdown Could Have Been Avoided Says Expert

 Congress and the Federal Reserve missed their chance to keep the country from falling into recession by acting too slowly, according to a well-respected economist.

Lakshman Achuthan, the managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, said the economy has now fallen into what he calls "a recession of choice."

He argues that the economic stimulus package passed by Congress this year is too late to help many consumers and businesses and that the Federal Reserve was too timid when it started trimming interest rates last fall.

Since then the Fed has aggressively cut rates, most recently lowering them by three-quarters of a percentage point at its meeting Tuesday.

"If they had done all this in the fourth quarter, I think we'd be having a different discussion," he said. "We might not have had Bear," he added, referring to the fire sale purchase of brokerage firm Bear Stearns (BSC, Fortune 500) by JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) that the Fed helped arrange over the weekend to avoid a collapse of Bear Stearns.

The ECRI, which forecasts a number of key economic readings such as employment, inflation and production from various business sectors, had been reluctant to join the rising tide of economists arguing that the economy has fallen into a recession. But it changed its call Thursday.

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Hagel Slams Bush War 'Arrogance'

U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel writes in a new book that the United States needs independent leadership and possibly another political party, while suggesting the Iraq war might be remembered as one of the five biggest blunders in history.

"In the current impasse, an independent candidate for the presidency, or a bipartisan unity ticket ... could be appealing to Americans," Hagel writes in "America: Our Next Chapter," due in stores Tuesday. The Associated Press obtained an advance copy.

The Nebraska Republican, who announced last year he wouldn't seek a third term or the GOP presidential nomination, had been widely mentioned as a running mate on an independent ticket with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg said last month he wouldn't run.

Hagel said that despite holding one of the Senate's strongest records of support for President Bush, his standing as a Republican has been called into question because of his opposition to what he deems "a reckless foreign policy ... that is divorced from a strategic context."

Hagel, who's been a harsh critic of the war since 2003, writes that the invasion of Iraq was "the triumph of the so-called neoconservative ideology, as well as Bush administration arrogance and incompetence."

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Ex-chief Weapons Inspector Slams Iraq War as 'Tragedy'

Hans Blix, the former chief UN weapons inspector, slammed the Iraq war as a "tragedy" and blamed it on leaders ignoring the facts, in a comment piece published Thursday.

Writing in The Guardian on the five-year anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, Blix, who clashed with Washington in the run-up to the Iraq war, described the war as "a tragedy -- for Iraq, for the US, for the UN, for truth and human dignity."

In the sub-headline to the comment piece, Blix, who headed the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, wrote that responsibility for the war "must lie with those who ignored the facts five years ago".

At the time of the Iraq war, Blix accused the US and Britain of exaggerating the threat from Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's alleged "weapons of mass destruction" -- traces of which have never been found.

In his comment piece, he said the war was a "setback in the world's efforts to develop legal restraints on the use of armed force between states" and added that in 2003, "Iraq was not a real or imminent threat to anybody."

Blix wrote that had coalition troops not deposed Saddam, "he would, in all likelihood, have become another Kadhafi or Castro; an oppressor of his own people but no longer a threat to the world."

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