Designtrash

The over reaching capacity of the human race : an open letter to an American Conservative.

2007-07-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

“You probably have already seen this... I know the situation that we are in... I have a sense of what is happening to our ecology...there are far fewer birds than when I was a child...It can be as simple as that... We are individuals and we can only do what each of us is equipped as individuals can do....I get hurt when I sense you being bitter and angry and I feel you are wasting energy being that way. You have a wonderful creative mind...that can be freed to other purposes when it’s not bogged down in bitterness and anger towards those we cannot control. We cannot control others...we can only control ourselves. You have talents... Share them...use them to make some difference...some small difference there in Oregon...a small difference that can grow... who knows where it will lead...”
- an American Conservative

Part One - The DNA Frontier
In the basement of Mac Hall at OHSU I came across a massing of corporate and institutional communications–flyers, brochures, folders, postcards, catalogs. Two examples caught my eye. The first was an 8 1/2” x 11” trifold, printed on an 80 pound cover stock that allowed it to stand rigidly, the contemporary 4 color process created a seamless blue gradient to make the message read airy and coolly, and the typography unflinchingly stated “Get the Gene You Want”. The inside spread housed a handsome chart that described the production flow of managing gene sequences.

Next to the trifold was a 30 page catalog. There you could shop for then purchase the laboratory supplies, instruments, and machines that allowed any human being with proper knowledge to engineer genes.

“Our large, collaborative faculty apply
experimental approaches that include
molecular biology, genetics, biochemistry,
and microscopy. Using these tools, we pursue
an understanding of the regulatory
mechanisms that underlie the behavior of
cells, tissues, and organisms.”
- http://www.ohsu.edu/cellbio/

“The function of the nucleus is to maintain the integrity of genes and to control the activities of the cell by regulating gene expression.”
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_nucleus

“Gene expression, or simply expression, is the process by which the inheritable information which comprises a gene, such as the DNA sequence, is made manifest as a physical and biologically functional gene product, such as protein or RNA.

Several steps in the gene expression process may be modulated, including the transcription step and the post-translational modification of a protein. Gene regulation gives the cell control over structure and function, and is the basis for cellular differentiation, morphogenesis and the versatility and adaptability of any organism. Gene regulation may also serve as a substrate for evolutionary change, since control of the timing, location, and amount of gene expression can have a profound effect on the functions (actions) the gene in the organism.”
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_expression

Next to the pile of communications in the basement of Mac Hall, there was a vending machine. The kind of vending machine you can find across this country which normally serve up candy bars and snack chips. Yet, the object of this vending machines purpose was to dispense concentrated samples of enzymes.

Taken together, a dedicated student can learn management strategies to manipulate the structural quality of a cell, the internal functioning of a cell, and the resources within the environment which a cell lives. This body of knowledge is growing. Human beings now regularly intervene upon the lives of cell communities (tissue). Of course there is the desire to better manage the much more complicated task, the task that cells themselves have already achieved, the management of complex tissue structures (organisms).

“Genetics is the science of heredity and Genetic variation in living organisms. Knowledge that desired characteristics were inherited has been implicitly used since prehistoric times for improving crop plants and animals through selective breeding. The science comes from human experience to improve crop and animals through the use of method such as domestication. However, the modern science of genetics, which seeks to understand the mechanisms of inheritance, only began with the work of Gregor Mendel in the mid-1800s.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetics

Part Two - Cataloging a Conversation on Politics and History

Last night we took two sides on an issue. I was against human beings existence as it now stands due to the brilliant yet clumsy implementation of its corpus of knowledge and the integrity of the organizations that manage the implementation of that knowledge. Too much power has been accumulated and this species is not responsible enough to wield its power. I continued by doubting that we would ever be so organized. We are adept at observing and engineering though we lack the faculty to manage a reasonable balance after we have intervened. A reasonable balance would mean less luxury for human beings for the sake of luxury, less death to other life forms as an expense of that luxury and to cease the activities which destroy ecosystems that spawn life.

You defended human beings as they are now, and you defended America in particular. Your arguments are used by conservatives in general and those who are against the ideas of a liberal society. For the American Right I sense that they believe that strength, particularly spiritual, economic and military strength, is the virtue that will allow them to prevail-which in the end is quite clannish and tribal. One of the favorite slogans for the American Right while sabre rattling in 2001-2002 was, “You are either with us or against us”. Blind faith in free markets is a core belief of the American Right, too. Advocating capitalistic consumption simply because they find their good fortune boosted by that kind of organization is not a justification for how that organization affects all other life forms and impacts the ecosystems that we share.

In our conversation, your first defense was that human beings did not need to be brilliant in its use of the knowledge they have accumulated. Human beings need not be burdened with accountability and do not have responsibility towards the environmental situation they have created. It is out of the individuals control thus it should be put out of the individuals mind. Human beings need only to survive and human beings need only pursue and experience joy. Human beings should succumb to the idea that they have no control and that human beings simply need ‘to be’. This is quite enough for you I imagine due to your faith in the lovely qualities of the human soul. This perspective might help an individual sort through their identity, an aid for contemporary personal reflections on the self. Though this conversation is not about the individual human being.

Your defense for human beings then focused on an abstraction–the experience of joy itself. Your sense of ‘joy’ was based on something deeply private and quite ethereal. In context of the conversation, you insist that the human ability to experience private joy some how justifies any social, environmental or ecological cost. You did not want to speak of the daily atrocities that modern human society inflicts upon the world. Private joy is all that needs to be considered.

At its root, your defense was tiredly Western. To be Western, one discusses the world with human experience considered supreme. The entrenched power of the Christian church, along with its brother the Humanities, do nothing but perpetuate this view point unquestioned.

In the end your last counter point was simple and Bushian. America is not evil compared to other evil civilizations, therefore it was good. This is empty rhetoric and text book egocentrism.

To counter this perspective, I viewed human beings as a social group and spoke about its accumulated history. This tactic must give an ironic nod to the Humanities itself, particularly the French Structuralists, Post-Structuralists and ultimately Foucault. In our conversation I looked back on the grisly history of modern culture. I began the time line with American Civil War atrocities, footnoted a contemporary war in China that saw 20 million perish in over a decades time, and then, like a good high school debate from the 1980’s, emphasized the impact of the nuclear bomb. I quickly advanced a time line of American war, industrialization, and technical dominance by human beings upon the massive variety of life forms that inhabit this planet.

We have created an existence overwhelmed by industrialized process. We nurse life to maturity in order to slaughter it for food. We mine resources, manufacture to our delight, then create nasty sinks where we dump our waste. This unchecked activity destroys numerous habitats and ecosystems. The ecological footprint in order to maintain this kind of civilization we so enjoy is stressing fresh water supplies, radically altering the climate and the quality of the air, land and ocean.

The examination of our material world shows how human beings, particularly over the past 150 years, have not shown a collective maturity to handle the knowledge that they are creating. We use it predominantly in this society for wealth creation–a collective activity which does not redeem our existence.

America: Climate Change Debate Hinges On Economics

2007-07-15T11:08:00.000-07:00

Climate Change Debate Hinges On Economics
Lawmakers Doubt Voters Would Fund Big Carbon Cuts
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 15, 2007; Page A01

Here's the good news about climate change: Energy and climate experts say the world already possesses the technological know-how for trimming greenhouse gas emissions enough to slow the perilous rise in the Earth's temperatures.

Here's the bad news: Because of the enormous cost of addressing global warming, the energy legislation considered by Congress so far will make barely a dent in the problem, while farther-reaching climate proposals stand a remote chance of passage.

Despite growing public concern over global warming, the House has failed to agree on new standards for automobile fuel efficiency, and the Senate has done little to boost the efficiency of commercial office buildings and appliances. In September, Congress is expected to start wrestling with more ambitious legislation aimed at slowing climate change; but because of the complexity of the likely proposals, few expect any bill to become law. Even if passed by Congress and signed by President Bush, the final measure may not be tough enough to slow global warming.

"I don't think there's any question that what is being talked about now would, over the long term, be insufficient," said Philip Sharp, president of the think tank Resources for the Future and a former House member. "The issue is: Will Congress get in place a larger architecture that sends a signal to the economy that accelerates change?"

The potential economic impact of meaningful climate legislation -- enough to reduce U.S. emissions by at least 60 percent -- is vast. Automobiles would have to get double their current miles to the gallon. Building codes would have to be tougher, requiring use of more energy-efficient materials. To stimulate and pay for new technologies, U.S. electricity bills could rise by 25 to 33 percent, some experts estimate; others say the increase could be greater.

Most of the technologies that could reduce greenhouse gases are not only expensive but would need to be embraced on a global scale, scientists say. Many projections for 2030 include as many as 1 million wind turbines worldwide; enough solar panels to cover half of New Jersey, massive reforestation; a major retooling of the global auto industry; as many as 400 power plants fitted with pricey equipment to capture carbon dioxide and store it underground; and, most controversial, perhaps 350 new nuclear plants around the world.

"The scope of the problem is really enormous," said Prasad Kasibhatla, associate professor of environmental chemistry at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. Not only must Congress and the White House reach agreement on emissions limits, developing nations must also act to achieve temperature goals. "If the climate change bills go through Congress and could somehow be coupled to a multinational agreement, then things could really start to change," Kasibhatla said. "But I'd like to start seeing real agreements between countries before I call myself an optimist."

Measures taken by the world's governments to reduce greenhouse gases could cost 1 percent of world economic output, according to a report commissioned by the British government and written last year by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern. But Stern said the cost of not taking those steps would be at least five times as much, hitting the developing world hardest.

The shape of U.S. legislation targeted exclusively at climate change remains a matter of debate.

"I sincerely doubt that the American people are willing to pay what this is really going to cost them," John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a recent C-SPAN interview, adding that he intended to introduce legislation that would impose a carbon tax "just to sort of see how people really feel about this." He said his proposal would boost the gasoline tax by 50 cents a gallon and establish a "double-digit" tax on each ton of all carbon-dioxide emissions.

In the Senate, five climate change bills have been introduced recently -- with sponsors from both parties. They do not tax carbon but use variations on Europe's cap-and-trade system. Europe modeled its system on the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which the Senate rejected and President Bush later dismissed, saying it would cause the U.S. economy "serious harm."

A cap-and-trade system creates a new market where a limited, decreasing number of permits for emitting greenhouse gases, measured in metric tons of carbon dioxide, are traded. One hedge fund manager compared the importance of such a move to the creation of paper money. If implemented in the United States, it would alter the calculations of almost every business; hundreds of billions of dollars of energy investments would be redirected.

It's impossible to pinpoint the price a ton of carbon dioxide in the United States, because a cap-and-trade system would leave the price to the market. In Europe, however, the price for a permit to emit a ton of carbon dioxide in December 2008 is $29.

John M. Deutch, former CIA director and now a physical chemistry professor at MIT, thinks that price is about right. He has been pressing policymakers to speed development of technology that would capture carbon dioxide gases released by power plants and store them underground for centuries. This so-called carbon capture technology, currently applied in a handful of pilot projects, costs at least $200 million to $300 million per plant and hasn't been demonstrated on a commercial scale.

Deutch says that the technology, seen as a vital part of almost any strategy to slow global warming, won't be commercially viable until carbon dioxide reaches $30 a ton. That would translate into a 25 percent average increase in electric bills nationwide, Deutch said.

"It's certainly affordable for our economy and our society," Deutch said.

But the price might be too high for members of Congress and voters. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is the lead sponsor of one of the cap-and-trade bills. Like Europe's system, it would establish a ceiling for emissions and let companies buy or sell extra allocations, or credits. But unlike Europe's plan, Bingaman's would create a "safety valve" so that the price of a ton of carbon dioxide would not surpass $12 in 2012. When the price hit that level, the government would sell permits until the price goes down. The ceiling level would rise 5 percent a year above the inflation rate.

In response to critics, Bingaman would also give a certain number of extra credits to carbon capture and storage projects.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), who chairs the subcommittee that will draft a law, opposes a safety valve, and he is planning another proposal with Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), but they haven't worked out details. In 2003, Lieberman worked with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on an earlier cap-and-trade bill, which garnered support from 43 senators. With today's greater sense of urgency about climate change, there may be more support for a cap-and-trade bill now.

But countless technical details each worth billions of dollars to regions and companies remain a matter of debate. Utilities like PNM Resources based in New Mexico, which burns coal for 64 percent of its power, want more allowances for current emitters like itself; environmentalists call these companies "pollution squatters" seeking rewards for bad past behavior. By contrast, California-based Sempra Energy, which has efficient natural gas plants that emit relatively few greenhouse gases, fears it will be penalized for its good behavior. Sempra president Neal Schmale says California, which has high electricity rates, shouldn't subsidize the rest of the country.

"The thing I'm struck by is the magnitude of the challenge," said James Rogers, chief executive of Duke Energy, after listening to a talk on carbon capture and storage. Rogers said that he feared that the United States is far -- "we're not even three Zip codes away" -- from a price that would make that technology economically viable.

In Europe, there is a much greater sense of urgency about combating climate change, as Bush discovered at last month's meeting of the Group of Eight major industrial nations. German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. Merkel is expected to push for big increases in power plant productivity and more renewable energy, although Germany is already the leading country in Europe for wind and solar power. Spain and Italy are offering incentives of about 40 cents a kilowatt hour for solar-power installations.

While some energy-intensive industries complain that the European cap-and-trade program is driving manufacturers to developing countries where greenhouse gases aren't regulated, German government officials say that the campaign to reduce emissions will foster new technologies and jobs, helping the German economy.

Neither Congress nor the Bush administration is considering figures anywhere near the cuts Merkel supports. Bingaman's bill would take effect in 2012 and bring emissions back to 2006 levels by 2020. The Bush administration has talked about lowering carbon intensity, meaning the amount of gases emitted for every unit of economic output. But in a growing economy, it could still mean additional emissions overall.

The deepest proposed U.S. cuts are in the bill introduced by Sens. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). Falling in between are proposals by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.), John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), McCain and Lieberman. The bills also differ over whether to cover all industries or just utilities; on whether to distribute allocations or auction them; and how much to allow offsetting credits for projects, such as reforestation, that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

One issue for U.S. lawmakers is that the impact of greenhouse gas restrictions would vary by region and lifestyle. Some utilities rely more heavily than others on coal, which faces a big challenge if progress isn't made on carbon capture and storage. Other utilities are poised to take advantage of new regulations. Areas where wind can power huge turbines might benefit. Wealthier Americans might be better able than poor Americans to afford new equipment -- more efficient air conditioners, better insulated windows, solar panels -- to cut energy costs. In recent lobbying, utilities from Southern states, who said they would be disadvantaged, successfully dissuaded the Senate from adopting renewable-energy standards that would have applied evenly across the country.

In 2009, one of the first issues to confront the new U.S. president is likely to be climate change legislation. In addition to domestic pressures, the European Union will want a deal including the United States because the Kyoto framework it is using expires in 2012, and it takes time for all the member countries to ratify a new plan.

"Doing something about global warming requires an intelligent use of lead time," said David Hawkins, director of the climate change section of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Changing the way our economy functions so that it isn't polluting is like turning a supertanker. You can't wait until you're on the reef before deciding how to steer the ship."

Iraq: Operation Last Chance

2007-07-15T10:29:00.001-07:00

When President George W Bush announced a “surge” of American troops in Iraq, Nick Smarro, 26, an army transport driver, was one of the first to be sent to the front line. He has already survived one roadside bomb, which was buried under a heap of rubbish. It burst the tyres and shattered the windows of his vehicle but left him with only minor injuries. Two days later he was back on patrol.

“He is scared to death,” says Tina Smarro, his mother. “He tells me he will never get out of his vehicle unless he absolutely has to.”

Nick is stationed just outside Baghdad, where US soldiers are taking the fight to Sunni insurgents and Al-Qaeda. Every day he runs a gauntlet of small arms fire and rocks thrown by hostile Iraqis. He feels like a duck in a shooting gallery, never knowing when his luck will run out.

“He doesn’t trust the Iraqi police,” his mother says. “When you don’t see them around, you know something is about to happen. They melt away.”

Smarro held a huge “welcome home” party for her son on his return to America a
fortnight ago, but his ordeal is not over. In two days’ time he is heading
back to the Sunni triangle for another year of duty. He doesn’t complain
much to strangers. When asked what life is like out there, he says: “You
don’t want to know.”

His mother feels most Americans have preferred not to know, until now. There
has been no “shared sacrifice” with military families, she says. But as the
death toll of soldiers has risen to more than 3,600, more and more Americans
are decrying the lack of progress after so much blood has been spilt.

In theory the surge is a carefully laid plan to bring security to Baghdad and
buy time for the Iraqi government to reach out to opponents. In practice, as
one defence official out it: “The troops are paying with their lives for
clearing streets in crummy neighbourhoods without any strategic context.”

In the past five months an extra 30,000 troops have arrived in Iraq, boosting
total US forces to 160,000. Operation Phantom Thunder, launched in June, is
rolling through the Baghdad “belts” in the hope of denying insurgents havens
from where they can launch attacks and car bombings. “We couldn’t call it
what it is – Operation Last Chance,” one senior military official admitted.

US soldiers are living in Baghdad hot spots in joint security stations
alongside Iraqi forces, yet the number of unidentified bodies in the capital
was 40% higher in June than at the start of the surge. A suicide bomb in a
market near Kirkuk killed more than 100 people last week.

In Anbar province there have been some notable successes, with US forces
teaming up with formerly hostile Sunni tribes-man to take on Al-Qaeda in
search-and-destroy missions. Yet there has been little progress towards
political reconciliation by the Shi’ite-domi-nated government.

Ryan Crocker, the American ambassador in Iraq, says: “There are no
consequences for them when they screw up. Whatever is wrong we take care of
it.”

Even if the war is still winnable in Iraq, it is now being lost at home.
Roughly half of Republican senators whisper privately that they have given
up on Iraq, while a growing number are in open revolt. Bush’s own officials
are expressing doubts about sustaining a war that will cost $135 billion
this year. A record 71% of Americans want most troops out of Iraq by the
spring. Bush’s approval rating has plunged below 30%.

Britain, America’s staunchest ally, is inching away from the president under
the new semi-detached leadership of Gordon Brown. In an interview yesterday,
Lord Malloch-Brown, a minister at the Foreign Office, said that the British
prime minister and US president would “no longer be joined at the hip”.

Last week Bush remained defiant. “The real debate over Iraq is between those
who think the fight is lost or not worth the cost or those who think the
fight can be won,” he said. Increasingly, it is an argument between the
president and everybody else.

Bush says he is waiting for the verdict of history, but historians might
conclude that this was the week Americans lost the will to win.

Bush’s hopes of salvaging his tattered legacy now rest with “King David”, as
General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, is known. “I’m going to
wait for David . . . to come back and give us the report on what he sees,”
the president said last week. But will the general deliver the answers Bush
wants?

“Petraeus is an ambitious person,” said a senior defence source. “He might
move into politics one day so he’s looking for bipartisan support. He is a
very pragmatic guy.”

Petraeus believes it takes 10 years for a counterinsurgency war to succeed,
yet he has just two more months to turn the course of the war around before
he presents his progress report to Congress in September.

He knows America’s overstretched army cannot continue at its current troop
levels beyond the spring.

The American commander’s prediction of a disparity between “two clocks” – one
ticking in Baghdad, the other in Washington – is already being borne out by
events. In advance of his report he is bracing for Sunni insurgents to mount
a “mini-Tet”, a reference to the 1968 offensive against the Americans in
Vietnam that undermined public support for that war.

The signs are that Robert Gates, the defence secretary, will begin withdrawing
troops in Iraq this autumn to presurge levels. With luck, Petraeus will be
able to supply a few rosy scenarios to justify such a move. If not, the
pull-out is likely to start anyway to forestall a mutiny by Republican
politicians. The hope is to reduce troops to 60,000 or 70,000 by the end of
2008 and take the sting out of the war as an election issue.

Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate leader, provoked accusations of treason when
he said only a few months ago that Bush knew the war was “lost”. Now the
president himself is raising the spectre of defeat and the dire consequences
of “surrendering to Al-Qaeda” as a last-ditch means of rallying support for
his policy.

Bush looked defensive and peevish when he delivered his interim report on the
troop build-up at a televised press conference on Thursday. He admitted that
progress in an “ugly war” had been unsatisfactory. “Sometimes the decisions
you make and the consequences don’t enable you to be loved,” he said.

Peggy Noonan, President Reagan’s speech-writer, was appalled by his vanity.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, she noted that Bush liked to present
himself as an idealist, who made decisions “on principle”, unlike his
critics, who were selfish, isolationist and “ever watchful of the polls”.

It is “ungracious”, Noonan pointed out. “Part of the story of his presidency
is he gets to be romantic about history and the American people get to be
the realists . . . This is extremely irritating.” She concluded, “Americans
can’t fire their president right now, so they are waiting it out.”

THEY have, as Bush admitted, “tired of the war”, as its terrible toll hits
home. Many veterans feel brutalised by their experiences. Michael Harmon,
24, an army medic, said he turned against the invasion after a two-year-old
girl was shot. “An IED went off, the gun-happy soldiers just started
shooting anywhere and the baby got hit,” he recalled. “And this baby looked
at me, wasn’t crying, wasn’t anything . . . I know she couldn’t speak. It
might sound crazy but she was like asking me why. You know, ‘Why do I have a
bullet in my leg?’ I was like, this is it. This is ridiculous.”

The few remaining optimists on Iraq are becoming marginalised figures – none
more so than John McCain, the former frontrunner for the Republican
nomination, who might be forced by lack of campaign funds and declining
support to pull out of the 2008 presidential race, as The Sunday Times
revealed last month.

In the Senate last Tuesday, the Arizona senator urged his colleagues to stand
fast. “The terrorists are in this war to win it. Are we?” he asked. McCain
had just returned from Baghdad and, “from what I heard and saw while there,
I believe that our military, in cooperation with the security forces, is
making progress”, he told the fainthearted.

But that day McCain was in desperate straits. Two aides revealed they had
resigned from his presidential campaign after it had blown $22m and was
beset by internal feuding. The Vietnam war hero had to slink away to the
Senate cloakroom in the midst of the Iraq war debate to make a call on his
mobile phone urging fund-raisers not to desert him. His presidential
ambitions are so shattered that he is referred to as Dead Man Walking.

Antiwar critics used to be said to suffer from Bush derangement syndrome. Now
those who back Bush are the ones who appear out of touch with reality. The
rot set in for McCain last April when he was ridiculed for declaring the
surge a success after strolling around a Baghdad market under heavy armed
guard.

As soon as he lost the support of independent voters, Republicans who had
never cared for him but regarded him as a winner began baling out of his
campaign. The McCain implosion was a stark lesson for other politicians,
particularly those facing elections: back Bush at your peril.

In Congress last week, Republicans put Bush on notice that their support for
the war was running out. “Wimps!” scoffed John Boehner, the house Republican
leader. For some perhaps, it was a question of political survival – one war
critic learnt recently that he would face a well-funded antiwar challenge
for his Senate seat.

John Warner, 80, the former chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who is
expected to retire at the next election, said he was still haunted by the
memory of Vietnam. “The army generals would come in [and say], ‘Just send in
another five or 10 thousand [troops]’,” he recalled. “You know, month after
month. Another 10 or 15 thousand. They thought they could win it. We kept
surging in those years. It didn’t work . . . You don’t forget something like
that.”

The polling company Gallup has tested the opinion of American voters on
various conflicts, asking whether it was mistake to send troops. The company
reported this month that “the only war that compares to the current conflict
in terms of public opposition is the Vietnam war”. WHILE the White House was
dealing with its own row over Iraq, the first “wobble” of the new regime in
Downing Street broke out. Douglas Alexander, the secretary of state for
international development, a close ally of the prime minister, delivered a
speech in Washington which was said to “reorder” Britain’s relationship with
America.

Alexander’s call for a “multilateralist, not unilateralist” foreign policy was
cast as a dig at Blair’s unquestioning support for Bush. “In the 20th
century a country’s might was too often measured by what they could
destroy,” he said. “In the 21st century strength should be measured by what
we can build together.”

Had Brown sided with the waverers to win votes back home? The headlines on
Friday morning sparked a flurry of panic at No 10. Brown called a meeting
with his advisers shortly after lunch, where there was talk of sacking one
of Alexander’s aides for spinning the speech – a sin in the supposedly new
spin-free zone in Downing Street.

At the White House and State Department, senior officials went ballistic and
demanded explanations from their British counterparts. “It has severely
irritated the administration,” said a senior British source. “Douglas
Alexander and his team caused a lot more problems for the prime minister
than they knew.”

No 10 tried to play down suggestions of Britain taking a more independent
line. Blaming spin, however, is too easy an explanation for the
miscom-munication. Sources acknowledge that Alexander intended to deliver a
“subtle” message in Washington for British consumption – just not with the
megaphone that the White House heard loud and clear.

Besides, 24 hours later, another of Brown’s new ministers stoked the
suspicions. Mal-loch-Brown, former deputy secretary-general of the United
Nations, said: “What I really hate is the effort to paint me as
antiAmerican, but I am happy to be described as antineocon. If they see me
as a villain, I will wear that as a badge of honour.”

He went on to say that he hoped British foreign policy under Brown would
become “much more impartial”.

Brown is now preparing to fly to Washington in the next couple of weeks to
reassure Bush about the strength of the alliance. “He may need to come out
quicker than he intended,” a British official said. “He will have to undo
some of the damage.”

David Miliband, the foreign secretary, is also said to be furious and might
arrive in Washington before Brown. Simon MacDonald, No 10’s foreign policy
adviser, will fly out this week to meet Stephen Hadley, the US national
security adviser.

A senior government source insisted Britain’s policy on Iraq remained the
same. “We are not drawing up some political timetable for withdrawal. That
would be nonsensical. Not only that, but how would you explain it to our
troops?

“If we said we were going to withdraw by the end of the year based on some
political calculation, then our military leaders would quite rightly say,
‘Well, why don’t we just pull out now?’ ” Thomas Friedman, the New York
Times commentator, noted last week that the British were already quietly
pulling out of southern Iraq, with important consequences for America.

“Look at the British in Basra,” he wrote. “The British forces there have
slowly receded into a single base at Basra airport. And what has happened?
The void has been filled by a vicious contest for power among Shi’ite
warlords, gangs and clans, and British troops are still being killed
whenever they venture out.

“We should not kid ourselves,” he concluded. “Our real choices in Iraq are
either all in or all out.”

Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, warned last week that an American
withdrawal could provoke a blood-bath. “The dangers could be a civil war,
dividing the country, regional wars and the collapse of the state,” he said.

The problem is that staying and propping up the Iraqi government is doing
nothing to stop the present violence. Political divisions among Iraq’s
various factions remain as entrenched as ever. Last week Taha al-Luhaibi, an
MP from the National Accord Front, told The Sunday Times: “The government is
a sectarian government which is not based on the constitution and did not
respect its agreements with the other political blocs. This government is
part of the problem and not part of the solution.”

Saleh al-Mutlek, leader of the National Dialogue party, accused the government
of working in the interests of “external forces”, not Iraqis. America, he
said, had brought “nothing to Iraq except destruction and lack of security”.

On Friday the Republican revolt against Bush’s strategy gathered pace. Warner
and Richard Lugar, another Republican senator, proposed legislation that
envisaged a withdrawal of troops beginning as early as January 1.

WHATEVER the manner and timetable of troop reductions in Iraq, and the
consequences for civilians there, another factor plays on the American mood.
At the American Enterprise Institute, the neoconservative think tank where
so many hopeful plans for the war were hatched, a recent meeting discussed
the dangers of abandoning the “surge” prematurely.

But as the meeting drew to a close, Danielle Pletka, a leading hawk, glumly
noted that the panel and audience had spent two hours discussing the war
with barely a mention of Al-Qaeda or the threat of terrorism. The focus was
almost entirely on America’s diminishing will to win.

Days later the contents of a new US intelligence report were leaked to the
Associated Press. Al-Qaeda, an official revealed, was “considerably
operationally stronger than a year ago” and has “regrouped to an extent not
seen before 2001”. Michael Chertoff, the homeland security chief, said he
had a “gut feeling” that terrorists were planning to attack the United
States this summer.

After billions of dollars and thousands of lives expended, America, it seems,
is back where it started on the eve of September 11, 2001.

Additional reporting: Ali Rifat, Jordan

2003

March 20 Invasion starts

May 1 George W Bush makes ‘mission accomplished’ speech on USS Abraham
Lincoln

May 11 Paul Bremer becomes head of the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Disbands Iraqi army

September 25 UN orders almost total withdrawal of its staff from Iraq

December 13 Saddam Hussein captured by US troops near Tikrit

2004

Janaury 23 David Kay, head of Iraq Study Group, says Iraq had no WMD

April 29 Pictures of Iraqi prisoners being humiliated by US
troops shown on American television

June 17 Independent US commission reports that there was no link
between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 attacks

June 28 Bremer stands down. Interim Iraqi government sworn in

July 9 US Senate committee says US and its allies went to war on
‘flawed’ information

November 7 Battle to drive insurgents from stronghold of Fallujah
begins

2005

January 30 8m Iraqis vote in elections

March 16 Iraq's new parliament opens

August 3-4 21 marines killed near Haditha

August 31 Up to 1,000 people killed in stampede of Shi’ite
pilgrims in Baghdad after bomb rumours

October 25 2,000th US soldier killed

November 19 Reports suggest 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including women
and children, killed by US marines in Haditha

2006

January 31 100th British soldier killed

February 22 Bomb destroys Al-Askari mosque in Samarra, one of the
holiest sites in Shi’ite Islam, deepening sectarian strife

June7 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, killed

June29 British and Iraqi ministers announce plan to transfer security
to Iraqi troops by the end of the year

November 7 Democrats win control of Congress

November 8 Donald Rumsfeld, a key architect of the war, resigns

December 6 US Iraq Study Group recommends Bush abandon his policy or be
‘doomed to failure’

December 30 Saddam Hussein hanged

2007

February 1 Surge of additional 30,000 troops begins

February 18 News reports reveal scandal of wounded US soldiers being
poorly treated at Walter Reed army medical centre

April 12 Suicide bomber gets inside Iraqi parliament, killing three MPs
and injuring five others

July 12 Bush says some military progress being made, but admits no
political solution in sight. US House of Representatives votes to withdraw
most troops by April 2008

• US dead 3,612

• UK dead 159

• Estimates of Iraqis killed by the war range from 73,000 to more than 600,000

What now for Iraq?

Wishful thinking

The Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki moves towards political reconciliation
between Shi’ite, Sunni and Kurd factions. A deal is agreed on oil revenues.
Iraqi forces successfully take over internal security. US troop numbers
fall, leaving 50,000 to fight Al-Qaeda and protect the border. Phased
withdrawals continue under the new president, whether Republican or
Democrat.

Hopeful pragmatism

US forces withdraw in stages, but Iraqi forces melt away as sectarian militias
run out of control. The government falls and civil war worsens between Sunni
and Shi’ite areas. The worst of the carnage is soon over and factions agree
spheres of influence. Iraq is effectively divided into three – autonomous
Kurds in the north, a Sunni central area and a Shi’ite south. Baghdad
remains the thorniest problem.

The fear

Coalition troops withdraw and civil war rages, spilling over into neighbouring
countries. Iran aids the Shi’ites, while Saudi Arabia defends its Sunni
brethren. As the fighting continues it fans further violence throughout the
region, particularly in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. Al-Qaeda
establishes new havens to plot terror attacks on the West.

For Deborah Haynes's blog from Iraq, go to www.timesonline.co.uk/insideiraq

Race for PM in England to Lean Left

2007-05-14T11:53:00.000-07:00

Mr Meacher said he would support Mr McDonnell at hustings around the country, and said their "united left platform" would focus on tackling wealth inequality, boosting house-building, reducing poverty in old age, a foreign policy that was not "subservient to America", reversing privatisation of public services, reviving democratic accountability and dealing with climate change.

Brown set to face challenge as Meacher withdraws
Matthew Tempest, David Hencke, Hélène Mulholland and Deborah Summers
Monday May 14, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Gordon Brown is set to face a contest for the leadership after Michael Meacher tonight stood aside to give John McDonnell a clear shot at the leftwing vote.
Mr McDonnell urged Labour MPs to back his campaign, insisting it was an "issue of democracy".

"What we are doing today is launching an appeal to Labour MPs to nominate the only candidate that there is to ensure that there is an election for the leader of the Labour party," he said.

"We are doing that not just because we want them to support our political platform, but also because, if they don't nominate, hundreds of thousands of party members and trade unionists will be denied the opportunity to vote for the leader of this party.

"This is an issue of democracy."

Mr Meacher confirmed that he had agreed to step aside after receiving fewer pledges of support from other MPs than Mr McDonnell, but neither would say how many each of them had got.

They confirmed that some names had had to be "eradicated" from their lists after it turned out they had offered their support to both men.

Mr McDonnell said: "The pledges of support we have got should ensure I will be on the ballot paper, but there are many MPs out there who haven't made their minds up. We have got pledges, but we need to convert those pledges into nominations."

He called on Mr Brown to ensure that there was a "climate of opinion" where Labour MPs felt able to nominate an opponent to challenge him for the leadership.

And he insisted that he expected to win significant support if a contest took place: "If we get on the ballot paper, you will be shocked at the depth of support among rank-and-file members and trade unions.

"There is a demand for change and I think that demand for change will translate into votes."

Asked if he would offer Mr Brown a job if he won the election, Mr McDonnell joked: "I would certainly give him a job, but not necessarily in this country."

Mr Meacher said he would support Mr McDonnell at hustings around the country, and said their "united left platform" would focus on tackling wealth inequality, boosting house-building, reducing poverty in old age, a foreign policy that was not "subservient to America", reversing privatisation of public services, reviving democratic accountability and dealing with climate change.

The two challengers made a pact two weeks ago whereby the one with the least support would step aside to avoid splitting the leftwing vote.

If Mr McDonnell gets enough backers, he and Mr Brown will face a six-week hustings campaign selling themselves, in effect, to party members.

Nominations for both the leadership and deputy leadership opened today, and close on Thursday.

Any challenger for either post needs 45 backers including him or herself.

There will be 11 hustings events before the results of the contest or election are announced at a special one-day leadership conference in Manchester on Sunday 24 June - three days before Tony Blair will formally step down as prime minister.

Deputy leadership hopefuls Harriet Harman, Peter Hain and Hazel Blears have published lists of at least 45 backers. Alan Johnson is thought to have more than the required backers.

Jon Cruddas and Hilary Benn say they are "confident" of getting to 45.

Quiet Bush Aide Seeks Iraq Czar, Creating a Stir

2007-04-29T21:59:00.000-07:00

New York Times
April 30, 2007
Quiet Bush Aide Seeks Iraq Czar, Creating a Stir

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, April 29 — Stephen J. Hadley would be the first to tell you he does not have star power. But Mr. Hadley, the bespectacled, gray-haired, exceedingly precise Washington lawyer who is President Bush’s national security adviser, is in the market for someone who does — with the hope of saving Iraq.

Mr. Hadley is interviewing candidates, including military generals, for a new high-profile job that people in Washington are calling the war czar. The official (Mr. Hadley, ever cautious, prefers “implementation and execution manager”) would brief Mr. Bush every morning on Iraq and Afghanistan, then prod cabinet secretaries into carrying out White House orders.

It is the kind of task — a little bit of internal diplomacy and a lot of head-knocking, fortified by direct access to the president — that would ordinarily fall to Mr. Hadley himself. After all, he oversaw the review that produced Mr. Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq. But his responsibilities encompass issues around the globe, and he has concluded that he needs someone “up close to the president” to work “full time, 24/7” to put the policy into effect. He hopes to fill the job soon.

“What we need,” he said in a recent interview, “is someone with a lot of stature within the government who can make things happen.”

Even so, the idea that the national security adviser is subcontracting responsibility for the nation’s most pressing foreign policy crisis — and must recruit someone of stature to get the attention of the cabinet — is provoking criticism of Mr. Hadley himself, and how he has navigated the delicate internal politics of a White House famous for its feuding.

“Steve Hadley is an intelligent, capable guy, but I don’t think this reflects very well on him,” said David J. Rothkopf, author of “Running the World,” a book about the National Security Council. “I wouldn’t even call it a Hail Mary pass. It’s kind of a desperation move.”

Mr. Rothkopf sees the new position as “a tactic to separate the national security adviser from Iraq” — a way to save Mr. Hadley’s reputation. Ivo Daalder, a former Clinton administration official who is co-writing a book on national security advisers, said the proposal “raises profound questions” about Mr. Hadley’s “ability to put heads together and make sure that the president’s wishes are in fact his commands.”

At 60, Mr. Hadley has been around Washington long enough to know pretty much everyone in town. He arrived in 1972 to work at the Pentagon (after attending law school at Yale with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York) and has served Republicans since Richard Nixon. His relationships with Vice President Dick Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former secretary of defense, date from the Ford administration.

He is regarded as a sharp negotiator, more of a pragmatic conservative than a neoconservative. Despite his mild-mannered appearance, he has shown flashes of toughness on those rare occasions when the White House curtain is pulled back. By one account, which he does not deny, Mr. Hadley pressed for the ouster of Mr. Rumsfeld early in Mr. Bush’s second term. He delivered a stinging assessment of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki in a confidential memo to the president last year.

Today, after serving as deputy to Condoleezza Rice when she was national security adviser, and then replacing her when she became secretary of state, Mr. Hadley is one of Mr. Bush’s closest advisers. He is the first person the president sees in the Oval Office each morning and a constant, sober presence on international trips. Yet he is so relentlessly low-profile that it is difficult to get a fix on his views. Even his admirers have a hard time assessing his performance.

“I’m a big fan of Steve Hadley,” said Kurt Campbell, founder of the Center for New American Security, an independent research organization in Washington. “Whether he’s in the right job, and whether it’s too difficult, I’m not really sure.”

In a city filled with people who crave the spotlight, Mr. Hadley is an aberration. Every once in a while, Dan Bartlett, the chief White House communications strategist, prods him into appearing on a Sunday morning news program, if only, Mr. Bartlett says, because he comes across as so “even-handed and credible.” Friends lament that no one sees the warm, witty Mr. Hadley that they know.

“He seems like a functionary when I watch him on television — he’s very controlled,” said Amy Dickinson, author of the syndicated Ask Amy advice column, who knows Mr. Hadley from church. “But he’s somebody who I think of in other contexts as being very warm, very funny.”

And strait-laced. One story around the White House — Mr. Hadley calls it “one of the great urban myths” — is that he wore penny loafers to cut brush with the president on his Texas ranch. Last year, during Mr. Bush’s surprise trip to Baghdad, Mr. Hadley’s concession to comfort on the overnight flight was to change out of his business suit into gray flannel pants.

“We got him to at least take his jacket off,” Mr. Bartlett said.

On Capitol Hill, Mr. Hadley has become sort of a fix-it man for the Bush White House. When Republicans like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina revolted over the legislation creating military commissions to try terrorism suspects, Mr. Hadley was sent to Capitol Hill to straighten out the mess.

“He is a cross between a law school professor, an accountant and — ” Mr. Graham said, pausing for a few seconds before adding, “Jon Stewart.” Mr. Hadley, upon hearing this, did not bat an eye at being compared to the host of the Comedy Central news show but complained about the accountant reference. “An accountant?” he asked. “I’m not that great with numbers.”

But to the public, Mr. Hadley is nearly invisible. He has transformed a position once inhabited by some of the most vivid personalities in foreign affairs — among them Henry A. Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Ms. Rice — into one that many Americans do not know exists.

“No one is ever going to talk about the Hadley era in U.S. national security,” Mr. Rothkopf said. “He is definitely this administration’s man in the gray flannel suit.”

Mr. Brzezinski said: “He’s straightforward, nice, to the point. But there’s a kind of bureaucratic regularity to him.”

That is precisely the way Mr. Hadley wants it. Some, like Mr. Kissinger and Mr. Brzezinski, have taken an expansive approach to the job, using it as a platform to advance their own ideas. Mr. Hadley, like Ms. Rice before him, sees himself as “an honest broker,” he said, “somebody who is not pushing a particular policy view.” When the big egos of the White House — the vice president, secretary of state or defense chief — disagree, he says, he presents opposing views, and Mr. Bush decides.

The White House was rife with such disputes when Mr. Hadley took his job at the beginning of the second term, and former colleagues say he quickly set about bridging the gaps — and pushing himself into the background.

“He made a very deliberate decision to let Rice be the face of foreign policy,” said Michael Green, a former top Asia specialist at the National Security Council. He also tried to smooth relations with Mr. Rumsfeld by bringing Pentagon officials onto the security council staff. But when the defense secretary fired off lengthy memos, dubbed snowflakes, to the council, Mr. Hadley firmly fired snowflakes back.

Still, questions about whether he had the backbone for the job persisted.

“A lot of people wonder, how will Hadley stand up to Cheney or Rumsfeld or Rice,” Mr. Hadley said last year, in a rare interview in which he talked about himself. “The answer is: you don’t have to. They are 600-pound gorillas, but I work for the 1,500-pound gorilla.”

That was before the 1,500 pound gorilla — Mr. Bush — fired Mr. Rumsfeld after the November midterm elections. In his book “State of Denial,” the journalist Bob Woodward writes that Mr. Hadley argued for Mr. Rumsfeld’s ouster much earlier. Mr. Hadley showed a rare flash of anger when asked about it. But, asked if it was true, he did not deny it.

“One of the things I try not to do,” he said stiffly, “is talk publicly about my advice to the president.”

With Mr. Rumsfeld gone and Mr. Bush taking a more assertive role in managing the war, people inside and outside the White House say the balance of power has shifted, and Mr. Hadley has emerged as more of a force. As Fred Kagan, a military historian who is considered the co-author of the troop buildup strategy, said, “I get the sense of a guy who is trying to do his job at a very difficult time and is actually being allowed to do it for the first time.”

That is one reason the war czar proposal has left some in Washington scratching their heads. At a recent press conference, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates described it this way: “This is what Steve Hadley would do if Steve Hadley had the time.”

But Mr. Daalder, who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, was mystified. “If Hadley doesn’t have time for this,” he asked, “what does he have time for? Our policy toward Nicaragua?”

David E. Sanger contributed reporting.

Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China

2007-04-29T21:29:00.000-07:00

April 30, 2007

By DAVID BARBOZA and ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
ZHANGQIU, China, April 28 — As American food safety regulators head to China to investigate how a chemical made from coal found its way into pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States, workers in this heavily polluted northern city openly admit that the substance is routinely added to animal feed as a fake protein.

For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.

“Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed,” said Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company, which sells melamine. “I don’t know if there’s a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says ‘don’t do it,’ so everyone’s doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren’t they? If there’s no accident, there won’t be any regulation.”

Melamine is at the center of a recall of 60 million packages of pet food, after the chemical was found in wheat gluten linked this month to the deaths of at least 16 pets and the illness of possibly thousands of pets in the United States.

No one knows exactly how melamine (which is not believed to be particularly toxic) became so fatal in pet food, but its presence in any form of American food is illegal.

The link to China has set off concerns among critics of the Food and Drug Administration that ingredients in pet food as well as human food, which are increasingly coming from abroad, are not being adequately screened.

“They have fewer people inspecting product at the ports than ever before,” says Caroline Smith DeWaal, the director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington. “Until China gets programs in place to verify the safety of their products, they need to be inspected by U.S. inspectors. This open-door policy on food ingredients is an open invitation for an attack on the food supply, either intentional or unintentional.”

Now, with evidence mounting that the tainted wheat gluten came from China, American regulators have been granted permission to visit the region to conduct inspections of food treatment facilities.

The Food and Drug Administration has already banned imports of wheat gluten from China after it received more than 14,000 reports of pets believed to have been sickened by packaged food. And last week, the agency opened a criminal investigation in the case and searched the offices of at least one pet food supplier.

The Department of Agriculture has also stepped in. On Thursday, the agency ordered more than 6,000 hogs to be quarantined or slaughtered after some of the pet food ingredients laced with melamine were accidentally sent to hog farms in eight states, including California.

The pet food case is also putting China’s agricultural exports under greater scrutiny because the country has had a terrible food safety record.

In recent years, for instance, China’s food safety scandals have involved everything from fake baby milk formulas and soy sauce made from human hair to instances where cuttlefish were soaked in calligraphy ink to improve their color and eels were fed contraceptive pills to make them grow long and slim.

For their part, Chinese officials dispute any suggestion that melamine from the country could have killed pets. But regulators here on Friday banned the use of melamine in vegetable proteins made for export or for use in domestic food supplies.

Yet what is clear from visiting this region of northeast China is that for years melamine has been quietly mixed into Chinese animal feed and then sold to unsuspecting farmers as protein-rich pig, poultry and fish feed.

Many animal feed operators here advertise on the Internet, seeking to purchase melamine scrap. The Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Company, one of the companies that American regulators named as having shipped melamine-tainted wheat gluten to the United States, had posted such a notice on the Internet last March.

Here at the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group factory, huge boiler vats are turning coal into melamine, which is then used to create plastics and fertilizer.

But the leftover melamine scrap, golf ball-size chunks of white rock, is sometimes being sold to local agricultural entrepreneurs, who say they mix a powdered form of the scrap into animal feed to deceive those who raise animals into thinking they are buying feed that is high in protein.

“It just saves money if you add melamine scrap,” said the manager of an animal feed factory here.

Last Friday here in Zhangqiu, a fast-growing industrial city southeast of Beijing, two animal feed producers explained in great detail how they purchase low-grade wheat, corn, soybean or other proteins and then mix in small portions of nitrogen-rich melamine scrap, whose chemical properties help the feed register an inflated protein level.

Melamine is the new scam of choice, they say, because urea — another nitrogen-rich chemical — is illegal for use in pig and poultry feed and can be easily detected in China as well as in the United States.

“People use melamine scrap to boost nitrogen levels for the tests,” said the manager of the animal feed factory. “If you add it in small quantities, it won’t hurt the animals.”

The manager, who works at a small animal feed operation here that consists of a handful of storage and mixing areas, said he has mixed melamine scrap into animal feed for years.

He said he was not currently using melamine. But he then pulled out a plastic bag containing what he said was melamine powder and said he could dye it any color to match the right feed stock.

He said that melamine used in pet food would probably not be harmful. “Pets are not like pigs or chickens,” he said casually, explaining that they can afford to eat less protein. “They don’t need to grow fast.”

The resulting melamine-tainted feed would be weak in protein, he acknowledged, which means the feed is less nutritious.

But, by using the melamine additive, the feed seller makes a heftier profit because melamine scrap is much cheaper than soy, wheat or corn protein.

“It’s true you can make a lot more profit by putting melamine in,” said another animal feed seller here in Zhangqiu. “Melamine will cost you about $1.20 for each protein count per ton whereas real protein costs you about $6, so you can see the difference.”

Feed producers who use melamine here say the tainted feed is often shipped to feed mills in the Yangtze River Delta, near Shanghai, or down to Guangdong Province, near Hong Kong. They also said they knew that some melamine-laced feed had been exported to other parts of Asia, including South Korea, North Korea, Indonesia and Thailand.

Evidence is mounting that Chinese protein exports have been tainted with melamine and that its use in agricultural regions like this one is widespread. But the government has issued no recall of any food or feed product here in China.

Indeed, few people outside the agriculture business know about the use of melamine scrap. The Chinese news media — which is strictly censored — has not reported much about the country’s ties to the pet food recall in the United States. And few in agriculture here do not see any harm in using melamine in small doses; they simply see it as cheating a little on protein, not harming animals or pets.

As for the sale of melamine scrap, it is increasingly popular as a fake ingredient in feed, traders and workers here say.

At the Hebei Haixing Insect Net Factory in nearby Hebei Province, which makes animal feed, a manager named Guo Qingyin said: “In the past melamine scrap was free, but the price has been going up in the past few years. Consumption of melamine scrap is probably bigger than that of urea in the animal feed industry now.”

And so melamine producers like the ones here in Zhangqiu are busy.

A man named Jing, who works in the sales department at the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group factory here, said on Friday that prices have been rising, but he said that he had no idea how the company’s melamine scrap is used.

“We have an auction for melamine scrap every three months,” he said. “I haven’t heard of it being added to animal feed. It’s not for animal feed.”

David Barboza reported from Zhangqiu and Alexei Barrionuevo reported from Chicago. Rujun Shen also contributed reporting from Zhangqiu.

Another NY Times Hillary Expose

2007-04-13T23:04:00.000-07:00

April 14, 2007
Wellesley Class Sees ‘One of Us’ Bearing Standard

By TAMAR LEWIN
For her Wellesley classmates, Hillary Clinton’s quest to become the first female president is a generational mirror. Some like what they see; others are less certain.

They were there for her fiery commencement speech, delivered at the height of the Vietnam War, when she described her class’s search for a “more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating mode of living” and said that every protest was “unabashedly an attempt to forge an identity in this particular age.” The speech landed Hillary Rodham in the spotlight as a celebrated archetype of a new generation of women.

“We were very proud of her: she was a feminist; she was outspoken,” said Jane Moss, a classmate who now teaches French at Colby College. “Hillary was speaking for all of us, for a generation that felt we weren’t being heard.”

From their days at Wellesley, where they attended Wednesday teas and fought to end parietal hours and curfews, to their pioneering careers in law, academia and science, the 400 members of that Class of 1969 have been marked by the profound shift in women’s roles that accompanied their coming of age.

Throughout their journey, Hillary Rodham Clinton has been both a standard-bearer and a touchstone to measure themselves against.

They have winced at her struggles over how to be a modern first lady and her marital humiliations, rejoiced with her election to the Senate, puzzled over how her guarded and cool political persona is so different from the warm, funny and outspoken woman they know.They still see her as the thoughtful friend who called every week after a husband died, or wrote a charming note about the birth of a grandson.

And some are raising money or volunteering in Mrs. Clinton’s effort to become the first woman elected to the White House.

“Just knowing that one of us is trying to be the first woman president is a kick in the butt,” said Jayne Abrams, executive director of a Pennsylvania nonprofit group, “enough to keep you going at an age when some of us might be thinking of slowing down.”

Mrs. Clinton’s struggles as the first woman in her Arkansas law firm, and then first lady of Arkansas resonate with her classmates, too, in their own battles as “first woman” in workplaces dominated by men, trying to navigate what now seem like quaint battles over whether a woman can take a business trip with a man, or whether a pregnant professor should get tenure.

“When Hillary had the class reunion at the White House, there were 325 of us there,” said Catherine S. Gidlow, a lawyer in St. Louis. “I turned to someone and said, ‘I think there are 324 of us here who feel like failures,’ and she said, ‘No, I think there are 325 of us who feel like failures.’ ”

But if Mrs. Clinton is elected the first female president, it will represent an enormous success, the payoff for decades of campaigning, compromising and personal challenges.

“When she came to Maine campaigning for Bill the first time, she was very stylish, very blond, very thin,” said Nancy Wanderer, director of the legal research and writing center at the University of Maine law school. “It was like she was in a Halloween costume and I thought, ‘Who is that?’ She looks more natural now. I think she’s had to tamp herself down a lot, but now that Bill’s out of the White House, it’s her chance, and I think she’s just warming up.”

The ’60s still loom large in American politics, providing the underlying text, for example, in the last presidential campaign’s debate over President Bush and Senator John Kerry’s different records in the Vietnam War. Mrs. Clinton’s Wellesley senior thesis on Saul Alinsky, the radical Chicago community organizer, kept under wraps during the Clinton presidency, has been an endless source of fascination to her conservative critics.

On the cusp of seismic social change, and because of Mrs. Clinton, the class of 1969 has been much scrutinized. A book on the class, “Rebels in White Gloves: Coming of Age With Hillary’s Class — Wellesley ’69” (Times Books, 1999), found that most came from Republican families, with homemaker mothers, but that most had at some point outearned their husbands — all like Mrs. Clinton.

“We always felt a little special, because we were the ones who were there when all the rules changed,” said Susan Doull, who has lived in Europe for the last 20 years, running hotels. “We were the last class before Wellesley was diluted by men’s colleges like Yale going coed, and Wellesley was where we began to focus on the idea that we would have careers.”

It has not been easy to mesh the sense of unlimited possibility they got at Wellesley with the practical realities of being the first generation of professional women to enter the workplace en masse.

“I went to work for Citibank for two years after college,” Ms. Doull said, “and I was supposed to take a business trip with the officer I reported to, but his wife wouldn’t let him go with me, or he was afraid to tell her. I don’t think our daughters really grasp how different things were.”

Many of the women in the class have similar stories. Lawyers tell of using the back door or the freight elevator to attend meetings at men-only clubs. Academics described difficult fights for tenure.

“The French department had never had a woman in a tenure-track position when I got to Colby,” Professor Moss said, “and when I got pregnant before tenure, they literally didn’t know what to do. When I came up for tenure, my male colleagues voted against me and I got tenure, but you can imagine my feelings at department meetings for the next few years.”

Some of Mrs. Clinton’s classmates say they take personally criticism that she is “shrill” or “strident.”

“I hear these anti-Hillary attacks by men, especially right-wing men, and I feel like it’s just as much an attack on me,” said Cheryl Lynn Brierton, an in-house lawyer for the California courts. “It’s an effect of intelligence that you come across as intense, that you have strong views. I’ve always felt that the way she is singled out and attacked is very indicative of how society reacts to smart women.”

When she herself started working, Ms. Brierton said, she had to tone herself down and find a voice that would not be off-putting. So when she hears criticism of Mrs. Clinton, she said, “I’m constantly thinking, There but for the grace of God go I.”

Ms. Abrams, executive director of ParentWorks, a nonprofit parent-education and child-abuse prevention group based in Harrisburg, Pa., also identifies with Mrs. Clinton. “In my community, I think I’m perceived as Hillary-esque,” she said. “I talk too much, I advocate and my husband says he can’t take me anywhere because I’m always trying to raise money.”

Although she is a Republican, Ms. Abrams said she might well vote for Mrs. Clinton.

“She’s a brilliant charismatic woman,” Ms. Abrams said. “When we were in college, arguing about Vietnam, she knew what she was talking about, unlike the rest of us. She’s still brilliant, she’s still charismatic, but she’s also polarizing.”

Many of the Wellesley women have watched with sadness as the Hillary they knew changed from a passionate and outspoken figure to a more guarded and careful one as she put her husband’s political career first, campaigning at his side and then finding herself in uncharted territory as a new kind of first lady.

“What was striking even at Wellesley was Hillary’s boldness, her boundarylessness; she was way off the charts in being engaged in her community and in the world, taking personally what was happening and wanting to do something about it,” said Jan Piercy, a friend of Mrs. Clinton who was appointed United States executive director at the World Bank by President Clinton.

But, Ms. Piercy said, the boldness has been tempered. “If you spend all your adult life in the public eye,” she said, “you necessarily have to create a kind of protection, a caution, that will lead to the perception that you’re joyless or calculating or not spontaneous or Machiavellian.”

Eleanor Dean Acheson, the general counsel who was in the Clinton administration’s Justice Department, said Mrs. Clinton was only now emerging from her husband’s shadow.

“What people now perceive as Hillary’s distance, the criticism that she’s cold and calculating, and does nothing without a focus group, finds its root in that she has had to be, for 25 years, in the spotlight, and in the shadow of Bill,” Ms. Acheson said. “I think she’s going to get more relaxed as this campaign goes, and show more of the personal qualities her friends have always seen.”

Some of the classmates believe Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign seared his wife, especially the attacks on her statements about not being “some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette” or not having “stayed home and baked cookies.”

“When she saw that something as seemingly innocuous as that cookie statement set off such a firestorm, it took me by surprise and it must have taken her by surprise, too,” said Cheryl L. Walker, a literature professor at Scripps College. “I think her strong commitments are the same, but she is definitely savvier, more cautious, and probably more cynical, than she was then. And actually, when she published her recipe, I made it, and it became the standard in my house, the ones my children liked best.”

Catherine Neal Parke, an English professor at the University of Missouri, said she saw her classmate’s life as a political and domestic allegory.

“She goes to a women’s college, gives that gangbuster graduation speech, then goes to Arkansas, continues her career in the stellar way, makes more money than her husband, has only one child,” Ms. Parke said. “Then she becomes the first lady, makes the cookies remark, tries health-care reform, but when it doesn’t work, she has to become the housewife of the White House, because that’s the required persona. Now that her husband’s out, though, she can go back to pursuing her own career.”

Of the marriage, Mr. Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky and his impeachment, many classmates are reluctant to offer judgments. “I feel no need to draw any kind of conclusion,” Ms. Gidlow said. “It must have taken great perseverance to go on.”

Pamela C. Colony, a scientist who teaches at SUNY Cobleskill in upstate New York, said: “My husband thinks staying with Bill was a big mistake, but I have kind of mixed feelings. Part of me respects her for sticking with him, and part of me wonders why did she stick with him, was it for love-based reasons or political ones?”

Professor Colony and others sound rueful, too, about what they see as Mrs. Clinton’s political compromises. “She reaffirms for me the fact that as soon as you get into politics you have to compromise on your goals, if not your ideals,” the professor said. “It’s incredibly upsetting, but I think it’s a fact of life.”

High Stakes: Chávez Plays the Oil Card

2007-04-09T20:29:00.000-07:00

April 10, 2007
new york times

By SIMON ROMERO and CLIFFORD KRAUSS
CARACAS, Venezuela, April 9 — With President Hugo Chávez setting a May 1 deadline for an ambitious plan to wrest control of several major oil projects from American and European companies, a showdown is looming here over access to some of the most coveted energy resources outside the Middle East.

Moving beyond empty threats to cut off all oil exports to the United States, officials have recently stepped up the pressure on the oil companies operating here, warning that they might sell American refineries meant to process Venezuelan crude oil even as they seek new outlets in China and elsewhere around the world.

“Chávez is playing a game of chicken with the largest oil companies in the world,” said Pietro Pitts, an oil analyst who publishes LatinPetroleum, an industry magazine based here. “And for the moment he is winning.”

But this confrontation could easily end up with everyone losing.

The biggest energy companies could be squeezed out of the most promising oil patch in the Western Hemisphere. But Venezuela risks undermining the engine behind Mr. Chávez’s socialist-inspired revolution by hampering its ability to transform the nation’s newly valuable heavy oil into riches for years to come.

As Mr. Chávez asserts much greater control over Venezuela’s oil industry, his national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, is already showing signs of stress. Management has become increasingly politicized, and money for maintenance and development is being diverted to pay for a surge in public spending.

During the last several decades, control of global oil reserves has steadily passed from private companies to national oil companies like Petróleos de Venezuela. According to a new Rice University study, 77 percent of the world’s 1.148 trillion barrels of proven reserves is in the hands of the national companies; 14 of the top 20 oil-producing companies are state-controlled.

The implications are potentially stark for the United States, which imports 60 percent of its oil. State companies tend to be far less efficient and innovative, and far more politicized. No place captures the shift in power to nationalist governments like Venezuela.

“We are on a collision course with Chávez over oil,” said Michael J. Economides, an oil consultant in Houston who wrote an influential essay comparing Mr. Chávez’s populist appeal in Latin America with the pan-Arabism of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya two decades ago. “Chávez poses a much bigger threat to America’s energy security than Saddam Hussein ever did.”

Consider the quandary facing Exxon Mobil after its chairman, Rex W. Tillerson, recently suggested that Exxon might be forced to abandon a major Venezuelan oil project because of its growing troubles with Mr. Chávez.

The energy world took notice. So did Mr. Chávez’s government.

Only a day later, Venezuelan agents raided Exxon’s offices here in the San Ignacio towers, a bastion for this country’s business elite. The government said that the raid was part of a tax investigation, but energy analysts said the exchange of threat and counterthreat was all too clear.

Politics and ideology are driving the confrontation here as Mr. Chávez seeks to limit American influence around the world, starting in Venezuela’s oil fields. Mr. Chávez views the Bush administration as a threat, in part because it indirectly supported a coup that briefly removed him from power five years ago. Yet the United States remains Venezuela’s largest customer.

Mr. Chávez recently decreed that Venezuela would take control of heavy oil fields in the Orinoco Belt, a region southeast of Caracas of so much potential that some experts say it could give the country more reserves than Saudi Arabia. The United States Geological Survey describes the area as the “largest single hydrocarbon accumulation in the world,” making it highly coveted despite Mr. Chávez’s erratic policies.

By setting a May 1 deadline for what some foreign oil executives consider an expropriation, the Venezuelan leader risks losing Exxon, ConocoPhillips and other companies, which are loath to put their employees and billions of dollars in assets under Venezuelan management.

A departure of expertise and investment could weaken an oil industry already unsettled by being transformed into Mr. Chávez’s most crucial tool for carrying out his reconfiguration of Venezuelan society.

Mr. Chávez has raised taxes on foreign oil companies and forced other oil ventures to come under his government’s control. And he has purged more than 17,000 employees from Petróleos de Venezuela after a debilitating strike about four years ago.

The talks have bogged down over how much the oil companies’ stakes in four big Orinoco projects are worth, whether Venezuela’s cash-short oil company would pay for the assets in oil instead of cash and, most important, who would manage the reduced operations of the foreign oil companies.

Still prevented from producing oil in places like Saudi Arabia and Mexico, the companies desperately want to hold on to their Venezuelan reserves. Companies like Exxon, whose Venezuelan assets were nationalized in the 1970s and returned to it in the 1990s, know the pitfalls of operating here and figure that Mr. Chávez will not be around forever.

With oil prices at high levels, oil-rich countries as varied as Angola, Norway and Russia are also waiting to see how the talks unfold. Governments in Kazakhstan and Nigeria are trying to negotiate better terms with foreign oil companies as well. But none are doing so with Mr. Chávez’s revolutionary flourish.

“It is a defining moment,” said Christopher Ruppel, a geopolitical risk analyst at John S. Herold Inc., the energy consulting firm.

Last week, Rafael Ramírez, Venezuela’s energy minister, sent a chilling signal to the oil companies, saying Venezuela might sell refineries in Texas and Louisiana that process crude from Exxon’s Venezuelan oil fields. Analysts say Venezuela could be setting the stage to produce much less oil in ventures with American oil companies for export to the United States.

The oil companies decline to talk publicly about the negotiations, but people in the industry say Exxon and ConocoPhillips, two of the largest American companies in Venezuela, are digging in their heels. The companies, however, lack a united front: Chevron is expected to accept Mr. Chávez’s terms, since it is also negotiating access to a large natural gas project in Venezuela.

“If the majors want to negotiate a settlement, they have to be able to let Chávez save face and look like he has won this with his people,” said Michael S. Goldberg, head of the international dispute resolution group at Baker Botts, a law firm in Houston that represents many of the major oil companies around the world.

For decades, Venezuela has been a leading supplier of oil to American refineries, a resilient economic relationship that remains intact despite deteriorating political ties. Venezuela is the fourth-largest supplier of oil to the United States, accounting for more than 10 percent of American oil imports.

Once Venezuela’s heavy oil is counted, its reserves may surpass those of Saudi Arabia or Canada, though the oil will be worthless without ventures to extract it. American oil producers are drawn here by Venezuela’s 80 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, among the largest outside the Middle East.

But Mr. Chávez is chipping away at those ties by forming ventures with state oil companies from China, Iran, India and Brazil. Venezuelan exports of oil and refined products to the United States fell 8.2 percent to a 12-year low in 2006 of about 1.3 million barrels a day, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Meanwhile, Mr. Chávez has accepted higher shipping costs to reach China, expanding exports tenfold to about 160,000 barrels a day since 2004.

“If the United States wants to diversify its oil supplies for reasons of national security, then Venezuela should be allowed to diversify its customer base for the same reason,” said Mazhar al-Shereidah, an Iraqi-born petroleum economist who is one of Venezuela’s leading energy experts.

But even under the best of circumstances, China’s retooling of its refineries to handle Venezuela’s sour, or high-sulfur, crude oil could take five to seven years. And it is not clear whether Mr. Chávez’s new foreign energy partners are prepared to invest heavily until they are confident they can trust him.

In a country where many facets of life are politicized, output levels are no exception. Venezuela says it produces 3.3 million barrels a day, but OPEC officials say production is closer to 2.5 million, 1 million barrels less than in 1999 when Mr. Chávez’s presidency began.

No one sees an immediate crisis at Petróleos de Venezuela. But its windfall from high oil prices masks the devilish complexity and rising costs of producing heavy oil.

Meanwhile, the company acknowledged last month that spending on “social development” almost doubled in 2006, to $13.3 billion, while its spending on exploration badly trailed its global peers. And Petróleos de Venezuela’s work force has ballooned to 89,450, up 29 percent since 2001 even as production declined.

Independent analysts are alarmed by a troubling increase in explosions and refining accidents during the last two years, which authorities brush off as sabotage. Mr. Ramírez, the energy minister, declined repeated requests for an interview.

With heavily subsidized domestic oil consumption surging, the government spends an estimated $9 billion to keep gasoline prices under 20 cents a gallon. Moreover, Mr. Chávez uses Petróleos de Venezuela to finance other nationalizations, like its $739 million purchase of an electric utility in Caracas from the AES Corporation.

Petróleos de Venezuela’s cash is said to be running short as Mr. Chávez uses its revenue to cement political alliances with Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua. The company has borrowed more than $11 billion since the start of the year, a rapid debt buildup that reflects a wager by Mr. Chávez that oil prices will remain high indefinitely.

Simon Romero reported from Caracas, Clifford Krauss from Houston.

Lavish Paydays and Info Graphics

2007-04-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

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Counselor To Gonzales Announces Resignation

2007-04-07T12:34:00.000-07:00

Goodling Had Refused to Testify on Prosecutor Firings
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 7, 2007; A01

The senior counselor to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales submitted her resignation yesterday, becoming the third high-ranking Justice Department aide to quit in the aftermath of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys.

The departure of Monica M. Goodling, 33, comes two weeks after she first refused to answer questions from Congress about the firings, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Goodling's resignation also comes amid signs of sinking morale in some U.S. attorney's offices. In Minneapolis, three top managers staged a revolt Thursday, choosing to demote themselves rather than work for the newly confirmed U.S. attorney there, who is a former Gonzales aide, officials said. The department was so alarmed that it sent a Washington-based Justice official to Minneapolis this week to try to talk the three out of their plans, officials said.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee also stepped up their demands yesterday for hundreds of pages of unreleased records related to the firings that the Justice Department has deemed too sensitive for release to Congress.

Gonzales, meanwhile, has largely disappeared from public view as he prepares for a crucial April 17 appearance before the committee to explain his role in the firings.

Seven prosecutors were dismissed in December and another was removed earlier as part of a plan set in motion by the White House to replace U.S. attorneys viewed as insufficiently loyal to President Bush or his policies. Gonzales has sought to minimize his role in the firings, but recently released documents and testimony show he was regularly briefed on the effort.

Goodling's departure follows the resignation last month of D. Kyle Sampson as Gonzales's chief of staff. Sampson went on to testify before the Judiciary Committee that Gonzales was more directly involved in the firings than he had acknowledged, and that the attorney general was aware of proposals to circumvent the Senate confirmation process for some U.S. attorneys.

The Justice official who carried out the firings, Michael A. Battle, also left the department last month. Battle and other department officials have said his departure was not connected to the dismissals.

"Attorney General Gonzales's hold on the department gets more tenuous each day," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), who has been among the most vocal Capitol Hill Democrats calling for Gonzales's resignation.

Sampson and Goodling worked closely together on the firings, particularly in the case of an Arkansas prosecutor removed to make way for a former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove. Both participated in briefings for Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty and others prior to testimony before Congress that has since been shown to be inaccurate.

Goodling and her attorneys have cited McNulty's complaints about her role in those briefings as a key reason for her refusal to testify.

In a letter late yesterday to Sens. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the Justice Department said Goodling's departure renders moot any concerns about conflicts between her and others who remain employed at Justice.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard A. Hertling also wrote that Gonzales and McNulty have "taken steps to ensure that no actual or apparent conflict of interest would arise" in connection with the prosecutor firings.

Another conflict erupted this week between Justice and Democrats over other records connected to the firings that have not been released to Congress. The committee is set to approve subpoenas Thursday demanding the release of those records, along with uncensored versions of previously released documents.

"We are trying to get to the truth," Leahy, Schumer and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) wrote in a letter to Gonzales yesterday. "Documents should be provided without restrictions on disclosure so that they may be used to question witnesses -- including yourself -- on any issue that is an important part of our inquiry."

Throughout the week, Gonzales has been reaching out to lawmakers, predominantly House Republicans. Aides on Capitol Hill confirmed that the attorney general spoke with Rep. Chris Cannon (Utah), the top Republican on a Judiciary subcommittee, and to Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the minority whip and a close ally of Christian conservatives, who in the past have not been outspoken in support of Gonzales.

The discontent in Minnesota centers on U.S. Attorney Rachel K. Paulose, 34, who previously worked for Gonzales and his deputy, McNulty. She is part of a wave of more than a dozen Bush administration insiders appointed as federal prosecutors over the past two years, according to government records.

Paulose said in a statement that "the management team supports the decision of the three to step down" and that "the community will benefit from their focus on prosecuting high-profile, sophisticated cases in the years to come."

"We have work to do," Paulose said. "The office remains focused on our law enforcement priorities and service to this community."

David Schultz, a law professor at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn., said the Minneapolis U.S. attorney's office had been relatively free of discontent in recent administrations.

"You never really hear political rumblings out of that office, so it comes as some surprise to see three people step down like this all at once," Schultz said. "It raises the question of whether attorneys are starting to become uncomfortable about the politicization that seems to be going on at Justice."

Paulose replaced veteran prosecutor Thomas B. Heffelfinger, who served as U.S. attorney under both President Bush and President George H.W. Bush. Heffelfinger abruptly resigned early last year to enter private practice.

Heffelfinger has said that he does not know whether he was slated for removal. E-mails from Sampson indicate that two U.S. attorneys targeted for dismissal resigned in early 2006; Heffelfinger is one of two who quit during that time to enter private practice. Heffelfinger declined to comment yesterday.

Paulose has drawn complaints from taxpayer advocates for an allegedly lavish "investiture" ceremony held last month to commemorate her confirmation as U.S. attorney, although Justice officials say the cost to the department was only $225. Paulose has also gained attention for her aggressive efforts to obtain "righteous sentences" in child pornography cases.

Washingtonpost.com staff writer Paul Kane and Washington Post staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

I'm taking bets now on the Democratic ticket

2007-02-12T21:55:00.004-08:00

I'll pick "Hillary in 2008" for the Democratic nomination. Just to warm things up, I'll bet somebody a whole dollar that Clinton rolls.

10 to 1 : I get the Clinton/Obama ticket to win it all and you get the field. I'll put down ten and you put down a hundred. Anyone want to take my ten bucks?

Who do I want to win? Al Gore. I don't think he's going to run. I hope he grabs an Oscar though.

Clinton Reminds New Hampshire, I’m With Bill

2007-02-12T21:47:00.004-08:00

New York Times
February 13, 2007
Political Memo

By PATRICK HEALY
As she made her first outing to New Hampshire as a presidential candidate last weekend, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton left her husband at home, yet she tried to tap his old political magic at nearly every turn.

Mrs. Clinton, Democrat of New York, mentioned Mr. Clinton at least eight times on Saturday — at one point talking about “Bill’s heart surgery” to illuminate her own travails with health care bureaucracy — and a few times on Sunday, most memorably when she said of Republicans, “Bill and I have beaten them before, and we will again.”

For the first time in her bid for the White House, Mrs. Clinton directly laid claim to the legacy and popularity of former President Bill Clinton — and did so in a crucial primary state where her husband showed his resiliency in 1992, when he finished second despite weeks of troubles.

“It helps her because we know Bill Clinton and we love Bill Clinton. We know him and his foibles. We know he loves his Dunkin’ Donuts; we know his love for burgers,” said State Representative Patricia M. McMahon, a longtime ally of both Clintons. “It shows that she’s human, too, and appreciates her husband and likes him as much as we do.”

This latest chapter in the Clinton political relationship is still a work in progress. Twice as a candidate for the Senate, and during her six-year term, Mrs. Clinton has kept a measure of professional distance from her husband, partly to keep the spotlight on “the politician in the family,” as he has called her. Where the two have appeared together — for example, at the funeral of Coretta Scott King last year — his skills as a speaker have overshadowed hers.

Now that Mrs. Clinton is a presidential candidate, however, her advisers say it would be folly to minimize Mr. Clinton’s role in her life: as a potential first gentleman, as her “full-time political counselor” (as she called him on Saturday) and as a source of emotional support.

Mr. Clinton is an asset in particular with his fan base, which was obvious as Mrs. Clinton drew smiles and laughter by recalling their White House days, “what Bill did” with the government in the 1990s (which she said she would try to replicate) and his famous tardiness, which, she noted with humor, she has endured with everyone else.

“The way she talked about him gave me a better feeling for her warmth,” said Karen Ryan of Concord, who attended a question-and-answer forum with the senator there on Saturday. “And the Clinton administration is a much better memory than the one we have now.”

Yet Mr. Clinton is also a potential liability because of the questions he provokes, as both a polarizing former president who could return to the White House and as a husband whose behavior in the Monica Lewinsky affair lingers in the some minds.

“It’s nice that she stayed with him, but as strong as she is, I think she should’ve dumped him after Monica,” said Karla Frasse, a dental assistant in Concord. “I want to see her in her own right and not really be reminded of the two of them together.”

Mr. Clinton stepped in for Mrs. Clinton on Sunday for the first time since she announced her candidacy, speaking at a breakfast of Westchester County Democrats in New York. It was not an official campaign event, though he did say that her huge re-election victory in November helped catapult her to New Hampshire. It was a reminder that Mr. Clinton will be a chief surrogate at fund-raisers and political events through November 2008, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said.

There are no plans for Mr. Clinton to campaign on his own or to appear with his wife at events right now, though they will eventually campaign together, said Howard Wolfson, a senior campaign adviser.

Mr. Wolfson said that Mrs. Clinton’s references to her husband were not scripted, and that he did not know whether the couple had cooked up a Dunkin’ Donuts joke — in which she said, a few times, that Mr. Clinton had gained 20 pounds from his pit stops there, and that she would need voters’ help to keep off the pounds.

“I think it’s hard for her to think about New Hampshire without thinking about him,” Mr. Wolfson said.

Mr. Clinton finished second in the New Hampshire primary in February 1992 despite a winter of controversy over his draft record and other problems, and he declared himself “the comeback kid.”

Today he is exceptionally popular among Democrats in the state; in interviews this past weekend, several New Hampshire Democrats recalled their first conversations with him in 1992 as if they had just happened.

Mrs. Clinton’s informal references to “Bill” turned off a few Democrats, who said they found it distracting or informal. Yet political analysts said her casual references showed a certain assuredness, since many politicians, particularly women, are careful about saying or doing anything to suggest they are under the sway of their spouses.

“I think the way she was teasing about him, and not shying away from their years together, projected a nice confidence,” said Dante Scala, an associate professor of politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. “It helps engender early good will that can help build a candidacy.”

War supporters disdain a withdrawal, but what about winning?

2007-02-11T20:27:00.000-08:00

At this point, it's kamikaze strategy in Iraq
Jonathan Chait
L A Times

February 11, 2007

THERE IS something genuinely bizarre about those remaining supporters of President Bush's strategy in Iraq. It is not just that they are wrong — being wrong happens to all of us from time to time. It's that they are completely detached from reality.

Their arguments have nothing to do with what is actually happening in Iraq. They aren't claiming that Bush's critics have a wrong impression of what's happening in Iraq. They just seem to have no interest in the subject themselves. Their arguments take place almost entirely at the level of abstraction.

If you follow the news in Iraq, the story has become depressingly familiar. Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is a creature of hard-line Shiite sectarians, and his government has been deeply infiltrated by Shiite militias. Everything he has done in his job has been toward the end of giving the Shiites an upper hand over the Sunnis.

Shiite militias have infiltrated the Iraqi army. We're equipping and training the bad guys. The Shiite militia members who haven't joined the army lay low when our troops patrol Baghdad, so that we fight the Sunnis and leave them standing. As Tom Lasseter of McClatchy Newspapers reported a week and a half ago, "The U.S. military drive to train and equip Iraq's security forces has unwittingly strengthened anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army militia."

That's why Maliki supports the surge. To the extent it succeeds, the surge will do a faster and better job of driving Sunnis out of Baghdad. But why should we want to help him do that?

The critiques of Bush's strategy all flow from this interpretation of events. The administration's critics say that our current role has the unintended but unavoidable effect of furthering sectarian warfare. If we stop cooperating with one party to a civil war, we can't make things much worse. We might possibly make them better: If we're no longer doing the Shiites' fighting for them, perhaps they'll have to bargain with the Sunnis.

What do the administration's supporters say to this? Let's look at a brief survey. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), one of the most vocal supporters of Bush's strategy, has made two major statements on the war in 2007. In the first, a letter in January, he wrote that "withdrawing from the fight is not a sound, long-term policy for the national security of the United States. Withdrawing from the fight is a recipe for defeat." How did Lieberman envision us winning? What about the reports that our actions are simply fueling the civil war? His letter had nothing to say.

Since then, Lieberman delivered a speech on the war, and that was even worse. The entire point of it was that a Senate vote of no confidence in Bush would demoralize our allies and embolden the enemy. Nothing at all about how the Bush strategy could work.

OK, you say, so maybe Lieberman has nothing of substance. But he's a politician, and they craft their words for sound bites. So surely the intellectuals who support Bush must have something deeper, right?

Sadly, no. The Weekly Standard — Bush's strongest bastion of remaining support — has editorialized about the war for three consecutive issues. The first editorial asserted that "abandoning American efforts to control the violence in Iraq would lead to an increase in violence" but offered no evidence to support this claim. It did not mention Maliki's clear lack of interest in making peace with the Sunnis nor the infiltration of the Iraqi armed forces.

The next editorial, by Executive Editor Fred Barnes, consisted of an extended analogy to Vietnam. The closest Barnes came to a substantive point was pointing out that war opponents had denigrated the Vietnamese government too. Did this mean we're wrong to denigrate the Iraqi government today? Barnes did not say.

And the next editorial consisted entirely of attacking proponents of the anti-surge resolution as cowards. It didn't even bother to make a claim that we're winning, or we could still win, or withdrawing would make things worse.

So, there you have it, the case for supporting Bush: Trust the commander in chief, don't undermine the troops, withdrawal equals defeat. These aren't arguments to support Bush's strategy, they're generic pro-war arguments. Change a few details and these lines could support Napoleon's invasion of Russia or the Crusader occupation of Jerusalem or almost any war. Generic pro-war arguments may be trite, but that's what you turn to when you've given up on reality.

Putin Says U.S. Is Undermining Global Stability

2007-02-10T13:03:00.000-08:00

February 11, 2007
New York Times

By THOM SHANKER and MARK LANDLER
MUNICH, Feb. 10 — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia accused the United States on Saturday of provoking a new nuclear arms race by developing ballistic missile defenses, undermining international institutions and making the Middle East more unstable through its clumsy handling of the Iraq war.

In an address to an international security conference, Mr. Putin dropped all diplomatic gloss to recite a long list of complaints about American domination of global affairs, including many of the themes that have strained relations between the Kremlin and the United States during his seven-year administration. Among them were the expansion of NATO into the Baltics and the perception in Russia that the West has supported groups that have toppled other governments in Moscow’s former sphere of influence.

“The process of NATO expansion has nothing to do with modernization of the alliance,” Mr. Putin said. “We have the right to ask, against whom is this expansion directed.”

He said that the United States had turned the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which sends international monitors to elections in the former Soviet sphere, “into a vulgar instrument of insuring the foreign policy interests of one country.”

The comments were the sternest yet from Mr. Putin, who has long bristled over criticism from the United States and its European allies as he and his cadre of former Soviet intelligence officials have consolidated their hold on Russia’s government, energy reserves and arms-manufacturing and trading complexes.

Rubble from the Berlin Wall was “hauled away as souvenirs” to countries that praise openness and personal freedom, he said, but “now there are attempts to impose new dividing lines and rules, maybe virtual, but still dividing our mutual continent.”

The world, Mr. Putin said, is now unipolar: “One single center of power. One single center of force. One single center of decision making. This is the world of one master, one sovereign.”

With the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the American defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, and a Congressional delegation sitting stone-faced, Mr. Putin warned that the power amassed by any nation that assumes this ultimate global role “destroys it from within. It has nothing in common with democracy, of course.”

“Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations — military force,” he said.

“Primarily the United States has overstepped its national borders, and in every area,” said Mr. Putin, who increasingly has tried to re-establish Russia’s once broad Soviet-era influence, using Russia’s natural resources as leverage and defending nations at odds with the United States, including Iran.

American military actions, which he termed “unilateral” and “illegitimate,” also “have not been able to resolve any matters at all,” and have created only more instability and danger. “They bring us to the abyss of one conflict after another,” he said. “Political solutions are becoming impossible.”

The comments irritated some European leaders and prompted sharp criticism from the Americans in attendance. Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican widely expected to make a bid for the White House, made a rebuttal that began, “In today’s multipolar world, there is no place for needless confrontation.” He said that the United States won the cold war in partnership with powerful nations of Western Europe, and that “there are power centers on every continent today.”

Mr. McCain then hit back at Mr. Putin more directly. “Will Russia’s autocratic turn become more pronounced, its foreign policy more opposed to the principles of the Western democracies and its energy policy used as a tool of intimidation?” he asked. “Moscow must understand that it cannot enjoy a genuine partnership with the West so long as its actions, at home and abroad, conflict fundamentally with the core values of the Euro-Atlantic democracies.”

Russia has also faced criticism from the United States and other Western countries that believe it has used energy reserves and transport pipelines to reward friendly countries and to punish those seeking to distance themselves from Kremlin control. Some analysts saw the tone of the speech as evidence of how much oil and mineral revenues have strengthened Mr. Putin.

The occasion of the speech was the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy — an event begun deep in the cold war, when Germany was divided and hundreds of thousands of American troops were stationed in Western Europe as a bulwark against Communist Warsaw Pact forces.

Mr. Putin began with an apology for the tough talk to come. But during a lively question and answer period full of challenges and rebukes, the Russian president indicated that he relished provoking the international audience of legislators, government leaders, political analysts and human rights advocates.

“I love it,” Mr. Putin said as he reviewed a long list of questions. He has long enjoyed high and durable public approval ratings at home, in part for standing up to the West and for pursuing an assertive foreign policy with former Soviet states.

He did offer at least two significant and conciliatory statements to the United States.

President Bush “is a decent man, and one can do business with him,” he said. From their meetings and discussions, Mr. Putin said, he has heard the American president say, “I assume Russia and the United States will never be enemies, and I agree.”

And while Mr. Putin denied that Russia had assisted the Iranian military with significant arms transfers, he also criticized the government in Tehran for not cooperating more with the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency or responding to questions about its nuclear program.

Other American lawmakers offered measured criticism after the speech. “He’s done more to bring Europe and the U.S. together than any single event in the last several years,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “It was seen as unnecessary bravado.”

Senator Joseph Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, described the speech as “confrontational,” saying, “some of the rhetoric takes us back to the cold war.”

Iran’s top nuclear official, Ali Larijani, listened impassively from the back of the room. Mr. Larijani’s attendance at the conference had become a sideshow in itself. After accepting an invitation to speak on Sunday, he canceled, citing health reasons, after a tense meeting with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna that concluded with a decision to freeze technical cooperation projects.

Mr. Putin joked that he worried the United States was “hiding extra warheads under the pillow” despite its treaties with Moscow to reduce strategic nuclear stockpiles. And he indicated obliquely that the new Russian ballistic missile, known as the Topol-M, was being developed at least in part in response to American efforts to field missile defenses.

He expressed alarm that an effective antimissile shield over the United States would upset a system of mutual fear that kept the nuclear peace throughout the cold war. “That means the balance will be upset, completely upset,” he said.

Addressing tensions between Europe and Russia over energy exports, Mr. Putin noted that 26 percent of Russian oil was extracted by foreign companies. While Russia is open to outside investment, he said, it has found its businessmen blocked from deals abroad.

The Kremlin has been criticized for attempting to impose registration and taxation laws that could restrict the work of foreign nongovernmental organizations with offices in Russia to aid democratization.

But Mr. Putin said his concerns about the work grew from the fact that they “are used as channels for funding, and those funds are provided by governments of other countries.” This flow of foreign money to assist opposition Russian political organizations, he said, is “hidden from our society. What is democratic about this? This is not about democracy. This is about one country influencing another.”

Mrs. Merkel, in her opening speech, struck a far more diplomatic tone than Mr. Putin, though she alluded to the tensions between Europe and Russia over energy shipments and the independence of Kosovo.

Addressing herself to Mr. Putin, who was sitting in the front row, Mrs. Merkel said, “In my talks with you, I have sensed that Russia is going to be a reliable and predictable partner.” But she added, “We need to speak frankly with each other. There’s no point in sweeping things under the carpet.”

Mrs. Merkel sharply criticized Russia’s recent shutdown of oil shipments to Belarus, which followed a dispute over the price of natural gas deliveries. She is pressing Russia to sign a charter with the European Union that governs energy, which Moscow has so far resisted.

Mrs. Merkel also alluded to another potential confrontation between Europe and Russia. The United Nations is weighing a proposal that would put Kosovo on the path to independence from Serbia, which Russia opposes because it fears that such a move could upset its own turbulent relations with ethnic groups in the Caucasus. Russia has crushed one separatist-minded people within its own borders, in Chechnya, but supports breakaway regions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both in Georgia.

“We’re going to come to the stage where we have to decide: does Serbia, does Kosovo want to move in the European direction?” Mrs. Merkel asked. “If that’s the route they choose, both will have to make compromises.”

C. J. Chivers contributed reporting from Moscow.

Rebuke in Iran to Its President on Nuclear Role

2007-01-18T21:04:00.000-08:00

New York Times
January 19, 2007

By NAZILA FATHI and MICHAEL SLACKMAN
TEHRAN, Jan. 18 — Iran’s outspoken president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, appears to be under pressure from the highest authorities in Iran to end his involvement in its nuclear program, a sign that his political capital is declining as his country comes under increasing international pressure.

Just one month after the United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions on Iran to curb its nuclear program, two hard-line newspapers, including one owned by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called on the president to stay out of all matters nuclear.

In the hazy world of Iranian politics, such a public rebuke was seen as a sign that the supreme leader — who has final say on all matters of state — might no longer support the president as the public face of defiance to the West.

It is the first sign that Mr. Ahmadinejad has lost any degree of Ayatollah Khamenei’s confidence, a potentially damaging development for a president who has rallied his nation and defined his administration by declaring nuclear power Iran’s “inalienable right.”

It was unclear, however, whether this was merely an effort to improve Iran’s public image by lowering Mr. Ahmadinejad’s profile or was signaling a change in policy.

The presidency is a relatively weak position with no official authority over foreign policy, the domain of the supreme leader. But Mr. Ahmadinejad has used his post as a bully pulpit to insert himself into the nuclear debate, and as long as he appeared to enjoy Ayatollah Khamenei’s support, he could continue.

While Iran remains publicly defiant, insisting that it will move ahead with its nuclear ambitions, it is under increasing strain as political and economic pressures grow. And the message that Iran’s most senior officials seem to be sending is that Mr. Ahmadinejad, with his harsh approach and caustic comments, is undermining Iran’s cause and its standing.

The Security Council passed a resolution on Dec. 23 with sanctions intended to curb Iran’s uranium enrichment program, which Iran says is for peaceful purposes but the United States and some European nations contend is for the purpose of creating nuclear weapons. The measure bars the trade of goods or technology related to Iran’s nuclear program. Enriched uranium can be used for making nuclear fuel but also for making nuclear weapons.

The president dismissed the Security Council resolution as “a piece of torn paper.”

But the daily Jomhouri-Eslami, which reflects the views of Ayatollah Khamenei, said, “The resolution is certainly harmful for the country,” adding that it was “too much to call it ‘a piece of torn paper.’ ”

The newspaper added that the nuclear program required its own diplomacy, “sometimes toughness and sometimes flexibility.”

In another sign of pressure on the president to distance himself from the nuclear issue, a second newspaper, run by an aide to the country’s chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, also pressed Mr. Ahmadinejad to end his involvement in the nuclear program. Mr. Larijani also ran for president and was selected for his post by the supreme leader.

“They want to minimize the consequences of sanctions now that they have been imposed,” said Mohammad Atrianfar, an executive at the daily Shargh, which was closed last fall, and a reformist politician. “But they don’t have clear strategy, and they are taking one step at a time.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad took office more than a year ago as an outsider, the mayor of Tehran who promised to challenge the status quo, to equally distribute Iran’s oil wealth and to restore what he saw as the lost values of the Islamic revolution. His was a populist message, centered on a socialist economic model and Islamic values. He found opposition from the right and the left, in Parliament and among so-called pragmatists.

That pressure has continued, and the criticism now seems to have gained more credibility in the face of the sanctions and Iran’s troubled economic standing. The United States increased pressure on Iran over its role in Iraq has also raised concerns in Tehran and may be behind efforts to restrain the president, political analysts in Tehran said.

“The resolution has decreased Iran’s political credibility in the international community, and so other countries cannot defend Iran,” said Ahmad Shirzad, a reformist politician and a former legislator.

Although the Security Council sanctions were limited to Iran’s nuclear program, they have started to cause economic disruptions.

About 50 legislators signed a letter this week calling on the president to appear before Parliament to answer questions about the nuclear program. They need at least 22 more signatures.

In another letter, 150 lawmakers criticized the president for his economic policies, which have led to a surge in inflation, and for his failure to submit his annual budget on time.

The Iranian stock market, which was already in a slump, continued to decline — falling more rapidly in the past month — as buyers stayed away from the market. The daily Kargozaran reported last week that the number of traders had decreased by 46 percent since the Security Council resolution was passed.

“The resolution has had a psychological effect on people,” said Ali Hagh, an economist in Tehran. “It does not make sense for investors not to consider political events when they want to invest their money.”

Kargozaran reported that a group of powerful businessmen, the Islamic Coalition Party, met with Mohammad Nahavandian, a senior official at the Supreme National Security Council, and called for moderation in the country’s nuclear policies to prevent further damage to the economy.

In the past year, several major European banks have severed their business ties with Iran. Economists say the banks’ actions will also lead to an increase in inflation because importers must turn to complicated ways to finance purchases.

“The nuclear issue has paved the way for other forms of pressures on Iran,” Mr. Shirzad said.

Despite Mr. Ahmadinejad’s harsh language since the resolution was passed, Ayatollah Khamenei has not referred to it directly and only once said that Iran would not give up its right to pursue its nuclear program.

Mr. Larijani has said that Iran will not quit the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty or bar international inspectors despite earlier threats to do so.

Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran, and Michael Slackman from Cairo.

Article: Plugging Into the Sun

2007-01-04T16:25:00.000-08:00

POWER HOUSE At Robert Felton’s mansion in the Oakland hills, a photovoltaic system allows him to save $2,500 a month.

New York Times
January 4, 2007

By GREGORY DICUM
WILLIAM LEININGER is not your typical environmental zealot. A Navy commander who works as a doctor at the Naval Medical Center San Diego, he is a Republican and lives in one of California’s most conservative counties, in a development of neat lawns and Spanish-style houses. His 2,400-square-foot, single-level house — “the usual Southern California design,” he said recently — is barely distinguishable from its neighbors, apart from one detail: the red-tile roof is crammed with solar panels.

Dr. Leininger, 42, is one of thousands of Californians, many of them unlikely converts to the cause of alternative energy, who have installed solar power systems in their homes in just the last year.
EMPOWERED Robert Felton in front of the expanse of solar panels he installed near his large house.
Spurred by recent legislation that provides financial incentives — and by rising energy costs and, perhaps, by a lingering distrust of power companies in the aftermath of the California electricity crisis at the start of the decade — homeowners across the state have come to see solar power as a way to conserve money as well as natural resources. Architects in California are routinely designing solar systems into custom homes, and developers are offering solar systems and solar-ready wiring in new spec houses and subdivisions.

Solar power is also emerging as a kind of status symbol, a glamorous mark of personal responsibility. Celebrities, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Alicia Silverstone, Carlos Santana and Tom Seaver, have installed solar systems. (Edward Norton runs a campaign in Los Angeles, encouraging his fellow celebrities to install solar panels on their homes and to make donations for systems in low-income housing.)

The vogue began in earnest a year ago, when the state legislature approved the California Solar Initiative, one of the most ambitious solar programs in the world. The legislation took effect at the start of this month but was preceded by a stopgap measure with similar terms that ran throughout 2006, offering homeowners a rebate on top of the federal tax credit of up to $2,000 that has been available nationwide since 2006.

The theory was that supplanting the year-to-year incentive programs in place since 1998 with the long-term certainty offered by the initiative’s 10-year, $3.2 billion program of rebates (one-third of which would likely go to homeowners) would stimulate the development of a robust solar sector — which could then be weaned from subsidies as its growing scale brought down prices.

If it works as planned, said J. P. Ross, the policy director for Vote Solar, an organization that advocates for large state-level solar projects, the initiative will stimulate the installation of 3,000 megawatts of solar electrical generating capacity in the state over the next decade. That would be an increase by a factor of more than 20, Mr. Ross said, equivalent to 30 small natural-gas-fired power plants.

Given the enthusiasm homeowners have shown for the initiative, filing nearly twice as many plans for solar systems with the California State Energy Commission in 2006 than in previous years, this goal may not be far-fetched.

Other states are considering the future of their solar programs (several states in the Northeast and the Southwest have less ambitious ones in place, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut), and they are closely watching California’s.

As the rebate program has made it less expensive to install a home solar system — and as banks, which consider a solar system to be an improvement that increases a house’s value, have made financing readily available — the solar industry has grown. There are now 434 companies registered to install solar systems by the state energy commission, which together installed just under 50 megawatts of solar electric generating capacity in 2006, the most in a single year. (California’s total capacity by October was 180 megawatts, enough energy to power about 135,000 homes. At the end of 2005 the nationwide solar photovoltaic capacity was 425 megawatts.)

While much of the total came from industrial and utility installations, more than 7,000 homeowners filed plans with the state energy commission in 2006, up from about 4,000 in each of the previous two years.

The companies are responding not only to an increase in demand, but also to a change in the type of consumers interested in going solar. Unlike the do-it-yourself tinkerers who once made up much of the home photovoltaic market, the people fueling the current growth spurt are interested in hands-off user friendliness.

“I more or less set it up and then I forgot about it,” said Nicky González Yuen, an instructor in political science at De Anza College in Cupertino, who hired a company called NextEnergy to install the modest three-kilowatt system in his 100-year-old Berkeley duplex. “I’m a really busy person, and I didn’t need to know that level of information.”

Companies like NextEnergy provide homeowners with a complete package that includes system design, permit applications, rebate processing, installation, maintenance and warranty. “It was a seamless, painless process,” said Mr. Yuen, whose system cost $16,000 after the California rebate and the federal tax credit, which together saved him $10,000. It was “comparable to having a sprinkler system put in,” he said.

Mr. Yuen, 47, was the first on his block to install a solar system: “In my circle I’m the eco-nut,” he said. But, he said, less than a year later they are quite common in his neighborhood. “A lot of people are really paying attention and beginning to think about the whole environmental cycle,” he added.

But even as these solar adopters re-evaluate their relationship to the power grid, virtually all of them remain connected to it, which is contrary to the go-it-alone image of the early solar pioneers. Though the connection means a house will lose power in a blackout, most home users find the ease of operation makes up for the loss of independence.

“All I see is an e-mail from the system once a month,” said Robert Felton, chief executive of TenFold, a software company, of the report of how much power his mansion in the Oakland hills is using and producing.

As recently as 10 years ago it was unheard of and, in fact, illegal for solar-powered houses in California to connect to the grid; now power companies are legally required to credit their customers for the excess power they produce.

The grid, in effect, serves to store power, replacing the bank of batteries that is a component of off-grid systems. At the end of the year, credits for solar power added to the grid are applied against charges for power taken from it, helping homeowners “zero out” their electricity bills. According to Borrego Solar Systems, the company that installed the long rows of solar panels on a hill next to Mr. Felton’s house, two-thirds of its customers manage to do so.

Excess credits are lost at the end of the year, so homeowners, at least for now, cannot make a profit from their solar systems. Even so, the savings can be substantial: in 2005 Mr. Felton paid Pacific Gas and Electric about $2,500 a month for electricity. (“I have a whole bunch of fountains and water features and stuff like that,” he said.) In California residential electricity rates are tiered, and large users like Mr. Felton pay rates about three times higher than more modest consumers, making solar power even more attractive.

While the average home solar system is about five kilowatts, Mr. Felton’s is 45 kilowatts, and he seldom sees an electric bill. Borrego Solar estimated the system could save Mr. Felton almost $2 million over 30 years — far more than the $255,000 the system cost him after a $134,000 rebate.

Mr. Felton, 67, said that a solar system did not make sense when he built his house in 2000, but that the rebate, as well as rising electricity prices, persuaded him to install the system last year. His pragmatic concerns were also informed by broader issues. “I’m not a hippie greenie,” he said, pointing out that with a background in nuclear engineering, he strongly supports nuclear power. “But solar is certainly a way to get off foreign oil.”

As a member of the military who has been deployed to the Persian Gulf three times, Dr. Leininger has been affected by the nation’s foreign oil habits more than most. “The need for stable oil supplies is the big reason that we spend so much time in the Persian Gulf,” he said. “Decreasing our national energy consumption is in my self-interest.”

His neighbors in the San Diego suburb of Escondido, most of them politically conservative, have responded well to the solar panels of the eight-kilowatt system that he and his wife, Suzann, a cartographer, installed last year on their roof. The neighborhood association, which was required to approve the plan by California law, did so happily, he said. Lately, the Leiningers have noticed at least one other photovoltaic system in the immediate area and a number of solar heating systems for swimming pools. (Meanwhile, in Orange County, which is known for its political conservatism, about 250 solar installations were approved from January to November last year, more than twice the 2005 figure.)

The Leiningers, who paid Borrego Solar $39,000 for their system after a $24,000 rebate, figure their system will pay for itself in a dozen years — assuming residential electricity rates do not increase, as they have by 37 percent since 1998. Dr. Leininger estimated that his system had reduced his household carbon emissions by nearly 30 tons since it was installed in June, and that it was well on its way to zeroing out.

“It comes down to personal responsibility,” he said. “If I can go electricity-neutral on my house, that’s that much less coal we have to burn.”

And much less money. “One of the most gratifying things is on a sunny day when the meter is spinning backward,” Dr. Leininger said. “We have a guaranteed return on the system because we know we’re not going to have an electric bill from now on.”

2005 Peak Oil Report Concerning 2007

2007-01-04T13:21:00.000-08:00

Follow Peak Oil Here here. Plus I'm putting up a blog post that I found online from "Jonathan":

Posted by Jonathan at January 28, 2005 10:20 AM
You can read more from Jonathan's blog here: post.

In a recent post, I noted that oil companies' actions (not their words) show that they realize oil exploration is no longer a profitable exercise. Nearly all the world's oil has already been discovered; all that's left to discover are the scraps, and oil companies know it.

In fact, the situation is so critical that "the net present value of all discoveries for the 5 oil majors during 2001/2/3 was less than their exploration costs." (Energy Pulse, November 17, 2004, via FTW) Let that sink in. It now costs more to find new oil than the oil is worth.

Here's more evidence that the oil companies know the oil endgame is beginning. Dow Jones Newswire, January 17, via FTW:

Major oil companies are replacing dwindling reserves by acquiring other oil companies instead of exploring for new fields, a strategic shift with implications for global oil supplies, investment bank Credit Suisse First Boston said in a report Monday.
Integrated oil companies are spending only 12% of their total capital expenditures on finding new oil fields, down from nearly a third in 1990, the report said. [...]

In addition, with the world's biggest oil companies convinced exploration is too costly and risky, the steady growth of the world's total oil reserves has fallen sharply, the bank said. Global oil reserves are being replaced at a rate of 1.2% a year in the last three years, compared to 2.3% over the last 20 years, even as oil demand growth is hitting new records with China and India becoming industrial powers, the bank said. [My emphasis]

With record and ever-growing demand, you'd think that oil companies would be scrambling to find new oil fields. Their reluctance to invest in exploration speaks volumes. It should, in fact, be setting off alarm bells all over the world, but the human capacity for denial is boundless.

It takes on average six years to bring new oil fields online, so one can look ahead by analyzing the totality of planned projects. Such a review of planned projects was recently published by the journal Petroleum Review. It shows that 2007 could be the year that the world really discovers it's running out of oil. EMS:

Global oil supplies could start to have difficulty meeting growing demand after 2007, according to a recent analysis (PDF) of existing and planned major oil-recovery projects published this month in Petroleum Review.
While a flood of new production is set to hit the market over the next three years, the volumes expected from anticipated new projects thereafter are likely to fall well below requirements, the report says.

"There are not enough large-scale projects in the development pipeline right now to offset declining production in mature areas and meet global demand growth beyond 2007," said Chris Skrebowski, author of the report, editor of Petroleum Review and a recently appointed Board member of the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre (ODAC) in London.

"Since it takes, on average, six years from first discovery for a mega project to start producing oil, any new project approved today would be unlikely to come on stream until the end of the decade," Mr Skrebowski noted.

The report, 'Oil field mega projects 2004', analysed all known projects with estimated reserves of over 500 million barrels and the claimed potential to produce over 100,000 barrels of oil a day. Projects on that scale account for about 80 percent of the world's oil supplies.

The report found that just three such projects are expected to come on stream in 2007 and three more in 2008. No new projects could be identified for start-up in subsequent years.

"Ever-growing demand for oil means there is a ready market for additional supplies so substantial new discoveries tend to go into development in a very limited time," Mr Skrebowski noted. "But between a quarter and a third of the world's oil production is already in decline and it appears that giant new discoveries to replace lost capacity are becoming very scarce."

The rate of major new oil field discoveries has fallen dramatically in recent years. There were 13 discoveries of over 500 million barrels in 2000, six in 2001 and just two in 2002, according to the industry analysts IHS Energy. For 2003, not a single new discovery over 500 million barrels has so far been reported. [The falling discovery trend is confirmed by another recent report by energy consultant Wood Mackenzie, according to a January 23, 2004 article in The Wall Street Journal.]

The report says 18 large projects are scheduled to come online in 2005, 11 in 2006, only 3 in 2007, 3 in 2008, and after that: zero.

The bottom line:

From 2007, the volumes of new production will likely fall short of the combined need to replace lost capacity from depleting older fields and satisfy continued growth in world demand. [My emphasis]

In other words, barring a miracle, 2007 is the year world oil production peaks. After that, it's all downhill.

No one in our political leadership says a word about any of this. They rush us to war to grab control of the world's oil regions, but never tell us why. That's not how a democracy is supposed to work.

Somalia: Ethiopians occupy Mogadishu

2006-12-29T18:54:00.000-08:00

Somalia: Warlord back to his base in Mogadishu
SomaliNet
Mohamed Qanyare Afrah, a member of parliament and among former warlords, who returned to Mogadishu capital on Friday under the protection of Ethiopian forces, said he was very happy about the new change in Somalia and he is welcoming the ousting of Islamic Courts Union from the capital.

Mr. Qanyare, who returned to his residence in Mogadishu, told the local media that he is against the plan in which the government wants to disarm the militias without giving their rights. “The militias should see the government as their own,” he said.

“In my point of view, I do reject to say to the militia put down the weapons and leave for good, because if the militias who have nowhere to go are ordered to do that, they would damage the security. I would suggest the transitional federal government to consider that and make the militias themselves as government soldiers,” said Qanyare. “The government should place the militia instead of discharging them,”

Mr. Qanyare, once one of powerful warlords in Somalia, also welcomed the Ethiopian forces' entry into the capital without clashes.

“Ethiopian forces should be thanked for their military operation against the so-called Islamic Courts which made the country base for terrorists,” said Qanyare. “The rule of Al-Qaeda members in Somalia has ended in failure and Somalis got their freedom back,”

He confirmed that he is fully working with the government for restoring the law and order in the capital.

Mohamed Qanyare, an MP, said in a happy mood he had changed his position of being a warlord and is now ready to participate in reconstruction of Somalia.

He said since the warlords were defeated in Somalia, they put out where the terrorists are hiding in the country. “The fighting we had with the courts was successful because we showed the world the cave of extremists in horn of Africa,”

In Mogadishu, people feel that warlords are returning to their former positions with acts of retaliations against the remnant of Islamic members in the capital. Some see the returning of the warlords as negative to the peace and security in Somalia.

Somalis Split as Fighting Halts and Hint of Insurgency Looms
New York Times
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: December 30, 2006
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Dec. 29 — Anti-Ethiopia riots erupted in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, on Friday, while masked gunmen emerged for the first time on the streets, a day after Ethiopian-backed troops captured the city from Islamist forces.

Hundreds of Somalis flooded into bullet-pocked boulevards to hurl rocks at the Ethiopian soldiers, set tires on fire and shout anti-Ethiopian slogans.

“Get out of our country!” they yelled. “We hate you, Ethiopians!”

In northern Mogadishu, residents said men with scarves over their faces and assault rifles in their hands lurked on the street corners. Mogadishu has plenty of gunmen, of every age and every clan, but gunmen hiding their identity is something new and may be a sign of a developing insurgency.

“We’re going to turn this place into another Iraq,” said Abdullahi Hashi, a construction worker who said he was part of a new underground movement to fight the Ethiopians.

Many analysts have said that if the Ethiopian troops protecting the internationally recognized transitional government of Somalia linger in the country too long and their intervention turns into a full-scale occupation, it will uncork a long and nasty guerilla war.

At the same time, it seems that many Somalis appreciate the presence of the Ethiopians for helping to bring some stability. Just a few hours after the protests, thousands of residents came out to warmly greet Ali Mohammed Gedi, the prime minister of the transitional government and one of the leaders who called in the Ethiopian muscle.

It is unclear what is going to happen in Mogadishu. Many people are still absorbing the dramatic power shift that occurred this week, when the Islamists who once ruled much of the country quickly collapsed under Ethiopia’s overwhelming force, enabling the transitional government, which had been roundly dismissed as weak, to suddenly take control.

Islamist leaders said Friday that they were not simply giving up. While most of their troops have abandoned the cause — shedding their uniforms and shaving their beards — the Islamist leadership said it was regrouping in Kismayo, a city along Somalia’s southern coast. Not far from Kismayo is a lightly populated, heavily forested area that Western intelligence officers said has served as a terrorist hide-out for many years.

“We will not leave Somalia,” Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, a top Islamist leader, told The Associated Press on Friday. “We will not run away from our enemies. We will never depart from Somalia. We will stay in our homeland.”

The Islamists uttered similar vows to fight to the death for Mogadishu, their former stronghold. But when thousands of Ethiopian fighters and troops from the transitional government reached the city’s outskirts on Wednesday, the Islamists fled and the city fell the next morning without a shot.

Ethiopian officials have justified the intervention in Somalia by saying that the Islamists were extremists who had their eyes on part of Ethiopia, and said their troops would remain on Somali soil until that threat is wiped out. The Ethiopian and transitional government troops seem to be focused on Mogadishu, but many Somalis suspect that once that city is stabilized, the bulk of the Ethiopian forces will shift to Kismayo. On Friday, Kismayo residents said Ethiopian fighter jets were circling the skies above town.

Mr. Gedi, meanwhile, is wasting little time getting to work. He announced Friday that the transitional government, one of the most promising efforts at a central government since 1991, when Somalia descended into anarchy, was imposing martial law for the next three months. He asked Mogadishu’s various clan militias to turn in their weapons or face the consequences.

“This country has been through a lot of anarchy,” Mr. Gedi said, “so to re-establish order we will have to have an iron hand.”

Last year, when Mr. Gedi set foot in the capital, he was nearly assassinated. On Friday, he was surrounded by armored trucks and Ethiopian infantrymen. Though officials in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, have said their troops should not enter downtown Mogadishu, many are camped in the former American Embassy, a decrepit building that was closed more than 15 years ago after American soldiers suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of warlords.

Mohammed Ibrahim and Yuusuf Maxamuud contributed reporting from Mogadishu, Somalia.

President Ford Disagreed With Bush About Invading Iraq

2006-12-28T13:40:00.000-08:00

President Gerald R. Ford, center, with Chief of Staff Donald H. Rumsfeld, left, and Rumsfeld’s assistant, Dick Cheney, on April 28, 1975.

FORD Quote 1: Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people. Whether you can detach that from the obligation number one, of what’s in our national interests, there comes a point where they conflict. And I just don’t think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security.

FORD Quote 2 : I don’t think if I had been president, on the basis of the facts as I saw them publicly, I don’t think I would have ordered the Iraqi war. I would have maximized our effort through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer.

FORD Quote 3 : I think Rumsfeld, Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction.

FORD Quote 4 : And now, I’ve never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do.

Ford Disagreed With Bush About Invading Iraq
By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 28, 2006; A01

Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. “I don’t think I would have gone to war,” he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford’s own administration.

In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford “very strongly” disagreed with the current president’s justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney -- Ford’s White House chief of staff -- and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford’s chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.

“Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction,” Ford said. “And now, I’ve never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do.”

In a conversation that veered between the current realities of a war in the Middle East and the old complexities of the war in Vietnam whose bitter end he presided over as president, Ford took issue with the notion of the United States entering a conflict in service of the idea of spreading democracy.

“Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people,” Ford said, referring to Bush’s assertion that the United States has a “duty to free people.” But the former president said he was skeptical “whether you can detach that from the obligation number one, of what’s in our national interest.” He added: “And I just don’t think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security.”

The Ford interview -- and a subsequent lengthy conversation in 2005 -- took place for a future book project, though he said his comments could be published at any time after his death. In the sessions, Ford fondly recalled his close working relationship with key Bush advisers Cheney and Rumsfeld while expressing concern about the policies they pursued in more recent years.

“He was an excellent chief of staff. First class,” Ford said. “But I think Cheney has become much more pugnacious” as vice president. He said he agreed with former secretary of state Colin L. Powell’s assertion that Cheney developed a “fever” about the threat of terrorism and Iraq. “I think that’s probably true.”

Describing his own preferred policy toward Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Ford said he would not have gone to war, based on the publicly available information at the time, and would have worked harder to find an alternative. “I don’t think, if I had been president, on the basis of the facts as I saw them publicly,” he said, “I don’t think I would have ordered the Iraq war. I would have maximized our effort through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer.”

Ford had faced his own military crisis -- not a war he started like Bush, but one he had to figure out how to end. In many ways those decisions framed his short presidency -- in the difficult calculations about how to pull out of Vietnam and the challenging players who shaped policy on the war. Most challenging of all, as Ford recalled, was Henry A. Kissinger, who was both secretary of state and national security adviser and had what Ford said was “the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew.”

“I think he was a super secretary of state,” Ford said, “but Henry in his mind never made a mistake, so whatever policies there were that he implemented, in retrospect he would defend.”

In 1975, Ford decided to relieve Kissinger of his national security title. “Why Nixon gave Henry both secretary of state and head of the NSC, I never understood,” Ford said. “Except he was a great supporter of Kissinger. Period.” But Ford viewed Kissinger’s dual roles as a conflict of interest that weakened the administration’s ability to fully air policy debates. “They were supposed to check on one another.”

That same year, Ford also decided to fire Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger and replace him with Rumsfeld, who was then Ford’s White House chief of staff. Ford recalled that he then used that decision to go to Kissinger and say, “I’m making a change at the secretary of defense, and I expect you to be a team player and work with me on this” by giving up the post of security adviser.

Kissinger was not happy. “Mr. President, the press will misunderstand this,” Ford recalled Kissinger telling him. “They’ll write that I’m being demoted by taking away half of my job.” But Ford made the changes, elevating the deputy national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, to take Kissinger’s White House post.

Throughout this maneuvering, Ford said, he kept his White House chief of staff in the dark. “I didn’t consult with Rumsfeld. And knowing Don, he probably resented the fact that I didn’t get his advice, which I didn’t,” Ford said. “I made the decision on my own.”

Kissinger remained a challenge for Ford. He regularly threatened to resign, the former president recalled. “Over the weekend, any one of 50 weekends, the press would be all over him, giving him unshirted hell. Monday morning he would come in and say, ‘I’m offering my resignation.’ Just between Henry and me. And I would literally hold his hand. ‘Now, Henry, you’ve got the nation’s future in your hands and you can’t leave us now.’ Henry publicly was a gruff, hard-nosed, German-born diplomat, but he had the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew.”

Ford added, “Any criticism in the press drove him crazy.” Kissinger would come in and say: “I’ve got to resign. I can’t stand this kind of unfair criticism.” Such threats were routine, Ford said. “I often thought, maybe I should say: ‘Okay, Henry. Goodbye,’ “ Ford said, laughing. “But I never got around to that.”

At one point, Ford recalled Kissinger, his chief Vietnam policymaker, as “coy.” Then he added, Kissinger is a “wonderful person. Dear friend. First-class secretary of state. But Henry always protected his own flanks.”

Ford was also critical of his own actions during the interviews. He recalled, for example, his unsuccessful 1976 campaign to remain in office, when he was under enormous pressure to dump Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller from the Republican ticket. Some polls at the time showed that up to 25 percent of Republicans, especially those from the South, would not vote for Ford if Rockefeller, a New Yorker from the liberal wing of the Republican Party, was on the ticket.

When Rockefeller offered to be dropped from the ticket, Ford took him up on it. But he later regretted it. The decision to dump the loyal Rockefeller, he said, was “an act of cowardice on my part.”

In the end, though, it was Vietnam and the legacy of the retreat he presided over that troubled Ford. After Saigon fell in 1975 and the United States evacuated from Vietnam, Ford was often labeled the only American president to lose a war. The label always rankled.

“Well,” he said, “I was mad as hell, to be honest with you, but I never publicly admitted it.”

Christine Parthemore contributed to this report.

Protest against World War III

2006-12-20T13:16:00.000-08:00

Long, Ideological War Ahead

2006-12-19T16:19:00.000-08:00

I listened to the tape of this interview and he punched this line hard twice: " this ideological war we're in is going to last for a while".

Transcript Excerpt: The Post's Interview With President Bush
The Washington Post
Tuesday, December 19, 2006; 4:20 PM

Washington Post reporters Peter Baker, Michael Fletcher and Michael Abramowitz interviewed President Bush at the White House earlier today. Below is a transcript excerpt from their conversation.

President Bush: Listen, a couple of things before we get going. Obviously, I've been thinking about -- and talking to a lot of people about the way forward in Iraq and the way forward in this ideological struggle. I want to share one thought I had with you, and I'm inclined to believe that we do need to increase our troops, the army, the Marines. And I talked about this to [Defense] Secretary [Robert M.] Gates and he is going to spend some time talking to the folks in the building, come back with a recommendation to me about how to proceed forward on this idea. I want to give him a little time to get his feet on the ground. And so I'll be addressing this after consultations with him. I just want to share that with you before we get going.

Q. You're talking about troops in Iraq, not --

No, I'm talking about overall size.-

- overall size of the army. Do you have a rough idea how much --

I'm going to wait for Secretary Gates. As I say, I'm inclined to believe it's important and necessary to do so. The reason why is, it is a accurate reflection that this ideological war we're in is going to last for a while, and that we're going to need a military that's capable of being able to sustain our efforts and to help us achieve peace.

So you've not made a decision about Iraq, per se, about what to do --

I have not, Mike, I have not. And we'll spend some more time -- Secretary Gates, as he indicated, is going to head to the region at some point in time. I need to talk to him when he gets back. I've got more consultations to do with the national security team, which will be consulting with other folks. And I'm going to take my time to make sure that the policy, when it comes out, the American people will see that we are -- have got a new way forward to achieve an important objective, which is a country that can govern, sustain and defend itself.

And one thing that will be clear is that I want the American people to know that -- and the Iraqi people to know -- that we expect the Iraqi people to continue making hard choices and doing hard work necessary to succeed, and our job is to help them do so.

I'd like to come back to your first statement, because I'd like to expand a little bit. You talked about the size of the military. Colin Powell said on a Sunday show that the Army was nearly broken. Do you believe that's true? And, if so, do you feel responsible for that? Do you --

I heard -- we have been transforming our Army to make it lighter, more lethal and easier to move, and that transformation has been very important. Secondly, we have been changing our force posture around the world to reflect the threats of the 21st century, and that has been a very important reform.

I also believe that the suggestions I've heard from outside our government, plus people inside the government -- particularly, the Pentagon -- that we need to think about increasing our force structure makes sense, and I will work with Secretary Gates to do so. He's going to come back and report --

So is our army nearly broken, or not?

The people that would know best are those in the Pentagon. I haven't heard the word "broken," but I've heard the word "stressed." I know that we need to -- and my budgetary requests will reflect what a lot of people in Congress have been saying and in the Pentagon, and that is we need to reset our military. There's no question the military has been used a lot. And the fundamental question is, will Republicans and Democrats be able to work with the administration to assure our military and the American people that we will position our military so that it is ready and able to stay engaged in a long war, and this ideological struggle?

Article: Nothing New Here—And That's the Point

2006-12-18T08:59:00.000-08:00

In California, 10 Friends Eschew Consumer Culture to Live Secondhand
By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 18, 2006; A01

SAN FRANCISCO -- In the living room, the group gathers to share inspirational stories about the joy of finding just the right previously owned shower curtain. To the uninitiated, these people appear almost normal, at least in a San Francisco kind of way. But upon closer inspection, you see it: Nothing in this house, nothing on their bodies, none of their products -- nothing is new. Everything is used.

For these people, recycling wasn't enough. Composting wasn't a challenge anymore. No, they wanted much more of much less.

Attention holiday shoppers! These people haven't bought anything new in 352 days -- and counting. These 10 friends vowed last year not to purchase a single new thing in 2006 -- except food, the bare necessities for health and safety (toilet paper, brake fluid) and, thankfully, underwear, and maybe socks (they're still debating whether new socks are okay).

Everything else they bought secondhand. They bartered or borrowed. Recycled. Re-gifted. Reused. Where? Thrift stores and swap meets, friends and Dumpsters, and the Internet, from Craigslist to the Freecycle Network, which includes 3,843 communities and 2.8 million members giving away stuff to one another.

These people purchased old sheets this year. Tonight's vegetarian feast was cooked in a hand-me-down Crock-Pot. Christmas presents? They're making them, or -- shudders -- they don't give them.

They call their little initiative "the Compact," which they say has something to do with the Mayflower and the Pilgrim pledge to live for the greater good, save the planet, renew their souls, etc. And although these modern "Compactors" say they never intended to spark a mini-movement or appear on the "Today" show, that is exactly what has happened.

Since the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article about them in February, their story of not buying has appeared on media outlets around the world -- everything from Yoga Journal to Martha Stewart's Body + Soul to the London Times. Even Oprah's producers called.

It appears they've pinched a nerve. Perhaps, the Compactors suggest, many people have the same feeling that the mall just isn't working for them anymore.

"We're just rarefied middle-class San Francisco greenies having a conversation about consumption and sustainability," says John Perry, a marketing executive with a high-tech firm, and one of the founding Compactors. "But suddenly, we decide we're not going to buy a bunch of new stuff for a year? And that's international news? Doesn't that say something?"

Their user group on Yahoo has grown to 1,800 registered members, representing SubCompact cells operating across the country (including Washington), and around the planet. So they apparently live among us, biding their time, quietly not buying, like some kind of Fifth Column of . . . Shakers.

The online Compact community ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thecompact) spends enormous amounts of typing-time discussing things most Americans probably do not. Such as how to make soap. Or whether a mousetrap counts as a safety necessity. Or how to explain to your children that Santa Claus traffics in used toys.

"And people hate us for it? Like it drives them nuts?" This is Shawn Rosenmoss, an environmental engineer in the original San Francisco group. Some have called the Compactors un-American, anti-capitalist, eco-freak poseurs whose defiant act of not-consuming, if it caught on, would destroy the economy and our way of life.

Kalle Lasn, editor of Adbusters magazine, who advocates taking a 24-hour timeout of the consumer merry-go-round, has promoted Buy Nothing Day since 1992, urging citizens to resist the urge to splurge on the day after Thanksgiving, the kickoff to the holiday shopping spree.

Lasn claims that millions of people have stopped shopping on Buy Nothing Day, although he admits there is no way to know for sure. But Lasn does know that Internet discussion about the movement has grown, and so, too, the backlash -- against the backlash.

"I go on talk radio shows, and I'm amazed by the anger of some people, the Chamber of Commerce president who calls up and says, 'You're trying to ruin the economy,' " Lasn says. "I sympathize. I know you have to pay your rent, but try to take the larger view. We consume three times more than we did right after World War II. These things are connected."

"I think it upsets people because it seems like we're making a value judgment about them," says Rosenmoss, who has two children. "When we're simply trying to bring less . . . into our house."

What are the rules to this particular game? "People are really into the rules," Perry says, "as if it were a game, which it kind of is. I like that part of it. Figuring out how to do what I need to do without running out and buying something."

The rules are simple -- and flexible. The original Compactors decided they would get to vote on anything in the gray areas.

One member recalls asking permission to purchase a new toilet brush, contending that it was a health issue. Overruled. How about a new house key? Allowed. New tubes of shampoo, toothpaste, sunscreen are okay, but skin bronzer would be frowned upon.

At the potluck supper, the family dog is playing with a toy, which looks like a ball of yarn. Technically, it is new, and thus a Compact breaker. "But if she eats it," points out Rachel Kesel, a professional dog walker, "then it's food."

"We all have our little weaknesses," says Kate Boyd, a schoolteacher and set designer. Her challenge was getting used bicycle shoes, plus a used helmet and pump. Three buys through Craigslist through three sellers. "It was more of a hassle than going to the bike store," she says, but more interesting, too. "You get to meet new people."

The greatest challenge of the Compact? "The strangest things," Perry explains. For example, he cannot find used shoe polish.

Then there are modern dilemmas. Is it better to buy a battery (allowed, if recycled and rechargeable) for a cellular phone for $70 or just have the company give you a new free phone if you switch providers?

Clothes? Easy, they say. Vintage stores. Consignment shops. Or more down-market, your Goodwill, your Salvation Army. Or your own closet, likely filled with outfits.

Toys? The easiest. Perry and his partner, Rob Picciotto, a high school language teacher, have two adopted children. "I take Ben to Target sometimes and we'll play with the toys and then leave," Picciotto says. The kid seems happy.

"I broke down and bought a drill bit," Rosenmoss says. The Compactors nod their heads. "I just wanted it and I needed and I did it." The group members understand. They've had their drill-bit moments.

But not a lot of them. Asked what they bought that broke the Compact, the list was not long: some sneakers, the drill bit, a map, and for Sarah Pelmas and her newlywed husband, Matt Eddy (fellow Compactors), some energy-efficient windows for the house renovation. The 1920s house, they remind us, was purchased used. Indeed, they painted it with recycled paint.

"By being so strict with yourself, you learn to take a deep breath," Kesel says.

"You learn to do away with the impatience." Boyd says, "You see that the craving will pass."

One Compactor points out that the group's members are not really denying themselves much. Boyd says that, for example, by buying less new, "I drink way better wine now." Also allowed: services. So they could buy a massage if they wanted to. They can go to movies, theater, concerts, museums, bars, music clubs and restaurants. They can fly, drive (and buy gas), stay in hotels.

Judith Levine, author of "Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping," went really cold turkey in 2004 with her husband. The couple split their time between Brooklyn and Vermont. She applauds the Compactors, but says that not buying stuff for a year is only taking it halfway. Not going to the movies and restaurants for a year -- now that's cutting back.

Amazingly, the Compactors have all decided to renew their pledge for another year. There are, naturally, things they miss, and so they've decided to give themselves one day next month when they can buy a few things they really need new.

Like? "I need a drain snake," Perry says. Is that not pitiful?

Pelmas is dying for new pillowcases. Used pillowcases, even this group agrees, are rather disgusting.

Lessons learned?

"We didn't do this to save the world. We did this to improve the quality of our own lives," Perry says. "And what we learned is that we all have a lot of more stuff than you think, and that you can get along on a lot less stuff than you can imagine."

Article: Opec to cut output in February, "…increasing spare capacity"

2006-12-15T10:56:00.000-08:00

Opec to cut output in February
By Ed Crooks and Dino Mahtani in Abuja and Carola Hoyos in London
Published: December 14 2006 14:31 | Last updated: December 14 2006 19:59
Financial Times

The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries on Thursday moved to reassert its power over oil prices by agreeing to cut production early next year in spite of rising concerns over tightening world crude markets.

Opec ministers meeting in Abuja agreed to cut output by 500,000 barrels a day from February 1. The move followed a 1.2m b/d cut announced in October, and sent prices higher.

Crude prices rose, with January West Texas Intermediary crude rising $1.14 to $62.53 in lunchtime New York trading. The WTI benchmark price has now risen 10 per cent in the last month.

Opec also broadened its reach by adding Angola as a member – boosting its share of world production from 40 to 43 per cent – while also calling a rare heads of state summit next year in Riyadh.

The last time Opec met in Saudi Arabia was in 1980. In its 46-year history, Opec has held only two summits of heads of state, with the most recent one in 2000 in Caracas.

Analysts saw the move as highlighting Saudi Arabia’s increasing assertiveness within the cartel, which comes as Riyadh is also stepping up its political activity in the Middle East, even at the risk of angering the US, its major western ally.

Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank, said: “In addition to flexing its muscle externally, Saudi Arabia, with the heads of state meeting, wants to make sure that the group keeps working together for the long term.”

Saudi Arabia has played a pivotal role in Opec, in which it is the biggest producer. But, in the past, the kingdom has sought to keep a low profile within the cartel to avoid straining its relationship with the US and Europe.

In a statement, Opec said the cut was justified on the basis that there was “more than ample crude supply, high stocks levels and increasing spare capacity” in the market.

The cartel estimates that non-Opec oil production will rise by 1.8m b/d next year, its fastest rate since 1984, and that global economic growth will slow.

However, the cut was criticised by the International Energy Agency, the industrialised countries’ energy watchdog, which had warned on the eve of Thursday’s meeting that world oil markets were tightening.

Lawrence Eagles, of the IEA said: “The announcement of further cuts is unwelcome, particularly in the light of existing high prices, elevated supply risks and the onset of the peak winter heating season.”

Opec member countries had been split coming into the Abuja meeting, with some, such as Iran calling for a cut in output, and others, such as Kuwait, suggesting one was not needed.

There was also pressure on the members to deliver the 1.2m barrel a day cut in production to 26.3m barrels a day that they agreed at the previous Opec meeting in Doha in October

The ten member countries bound by quota restrictions – Iraq is exempt – have been suspected of failing to adhere to their commitments to cut output.

The IEA estimated that Opec production actually fell by only half the 1.2m b/d target last month. Opec itself believes compliance has been better, although still short of the target.

Arriving at the meeting on Wednesday Ali Naimi, the petroleum minister of Saudi Arabia, which is Opec’s biggest and most influential member, had suggested that “a bit more work” was needed, and that view appears to have been reflected in the decision. The next ministerial meeting will not be held until the middle of March next year.

Article: General Says Army Will Need To Grow

2006-12-14T21:57:00.000-08:00

General Says Army Will Need To Grow
Iraq and Afghanistan Are Straining the Force, Chief of Staff Warns
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 15, 2006; A01

Warning that the active-duty Army “will break” under the strain of today’s war-zone rotations, the nation’s top Army general yesterday called for expanding the force by 7,000 or more soldiers a year and lifting Pentagon restrictions on involuntary call-ups of Army National Guard and Army Reserve troops.

Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army’s chief of staff, issued his most dire assessment yet of the toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the nation’s main ground force. At one point, he banged his hand on a House committee-room table, saying the continuation of today’s Pentagon policies is “not right.”

In particularly blunt testimony, Schoomaker said the Army began the Iraq war “flat-footed” with a $56 billion equipment shortage and 500,000 fewer soldiers than during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Echoing the warnings from the post-Vietnam War era, when Gen. Edward C. Meyer, then the Army chief of staff, decried the “hollow Army,” Schoomaker said it is critical to make changes now to shore up the force for what he called a long and dangerous war.

“The Army is incapable of generating and sustaining the required forces to wage the global war on terror . . . without its components -- active, Guard and reserve -- surging together,” Schoomaker said in testimony before the congressionally created Commission on the National Guard and Reserves.

The burden on the Army’s 507,000 active-duty soldiers -- who now spend more time at war than at home -- is simply too great, he said. “At this pace, without recurrent access to the reserve components, through remobilization, we will break the active component,” he said, drawing murmurs around the hearing room.

The Army, which had 482,000 soldiers in 2001, plans to grow temporarily to 512,000. But the Army now seeks to make that increase permanent and to continue increasing its ranks by 7,000 or more a year, Schoomaker said. He said the total increase is under discussion.

“I recommend we continue to grow the Army so that we have choices,” Schoomaker said, cautioning that it is ill advised to assume demand for American troops overseas will decrease. “Our history is replete with examples where we have guessed wrong: 1941, 1950, 2001, to name a few,” he said. “We don’t know what’s ahead.”

In light of such a sober assessment, Schoomaker voiced skepticism about the idea of an infusion of U.S. ground troops into Iraq, a message sources said he and the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff delivered to President Bush at the Pentagon on Wednesday.

“We should not surge without a purpose, and that purpose should be measurable and get us something,” he told reporters after the hearing.

Schoomaker’s highly public appeal for more troops and reserve call-ups appeared to be part of an Army campaign to lobby incoming Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who is to be sworn in Monday, to approve the desired policy changes as well as a significant increase in the Army budget.

The Army estimates that every 10,000 additional soldiers will cost about $1.2 billion a year, up from $700 million in 2001 in part because of increased enlistment bonuses and other incentives. The Army will have to “gain additional resources to support that strategy,” Schoomaker acknowledged.

Democrats, who will take charge of Congress next month, said yesterday that they plan to hold hearings on the “urgent” and “critical” readiness problems of the Army and Marine Corps. “Readiness levels for every unit must be raised and maintained at the highest possible level,” Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz (D-Tex.), incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s readiness panel, and Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) said in an opinion article released yesterday. Two-thirds of Army units in the United States are now considered not ready to deploy.

The Army’s manpower dilemma stems from current Pentagon policies: Although 55 percent of soldiers belong to the National Guard or the reserve, the Defense Department dictates that reservists can be mobilized involuntarily only once, and for no more than 24 months.

As a result, out of the total of 522,000 Army National Guard and reserve members, only about 90,000 are still available to be mobilized, according to Army data. “We’re out of Schlitz,” declared an Army chart depicting the shortage as a depleted barrel, saying this leaves “future missions in jeopardy.”

Compounding the problem, the Pentagon has restricted repeated involuntary call-ups, leading to deeper and deeper holes in Army Guard and reserve units. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, hundreds of thousands of reserve soldiers have been mobilized for Iraq and Afghanistan. So when a unit is called to deploy, the only soldiers who can go are volunteers and new soldiers. The remainder are often drawn from dozens of units across the United States.

The result is systematically “broken” and “non-cohesive” units, said another Army chart titled “OSD-mandated Volunteer Policy Stresses the Force,” referring to the office of the secretary of defense.

For example, Army Reserve units now must take an average of 62 percent of their soldiers for deployments from other units, compared with 6 percent in 2002 and 39 percent in 2003, according to the Army data. In one transportation company, only seven of 170 soldiers were eligible to deploy. The other 163 came from 65 other units in 49 locations, said the commission chairman, retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Arnold L. Punaro, who quoted a Marine Reserve officer as calling the policy “evil.”

“Military necessity dictates that we deploy organized, trained, equipped cohesive units -- and you don’t do that by pick-up teams,” said Schoomaker, a decorated veteran of the Army’s Delta Force who served in the ill-fated Desert One rescue mission in Iran in 1980.

“We must start this clock again . . . and field fully ready units. . . . We must change this policy,” he said, banging his hand on the table for emphasis. He said later that he had detected “some movement” by Pentagon policymakers who have so far rejected a change on the politically sensitive issue.

In an interview yesterday on C-SPAN, Thomas F. Hall, assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs, said that under the current authority Bush can mobilize up to 1 million reservists for no more than two “continuous” years, but the Pentagon policy under Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has been more restrictive, limiting the time to two “cumulative” years. “The law does say ‘continuous,’ so you could have a break and recall them,” Hall said.

Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn, chief of the 346,000-strong Army National Guard, said yesterday that his force is “poised for remobilization.”

Vaughn said he thinks state Guard leaders will accept fresh call-ups sooner than planned as long as the deployments are limited to 12 months and draw on units that have been home the longest. He said the Guard could tolerate having units deploy for one year out of every five, instead of out of every six.

“One year is absolutely critical,” he said, explaining that the 18 months it currently takes for a Guard unit to mobilize, train and deploy means too much time away from jobs and families. Schoomaker indicated that the Army is working on reducing the duration of Guard and reserve deployments to one year.

Since 2001, the Army Guard has deployed 186,000 soldiers and the Army Reserve 164,000 soldiers for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and in homeland-defense missions.

This year will be Britain’s warmest since records began in 1659

2006-12-13T16:06:00.000-08:00

This year will be Britain’s warmest since records began, say scientists
· Surge in temperature astounds weather experts
· Man - not nature - is to blame, researchers say

Ian Sample, science correspondent
Thursday December 14, 2006
Guardian

Britain is on course for the warmest year since records began, according to figures from the Met Office and the University of East Anglia yesterday. Temperatures logged by weather stations across England reveal 2006 to have been unusually mild, with a mean temperature of 10.84C. The record beats the previous two joint hottest years of 1999 and 1990 by 0.21C.
Temperatures in central England have been recorded since 1659, the world’s longest climate record, and they indicate the trend towards warming weather across Britain as a whole.

Experts are convinced that the warming can only be explained by rising greenhouse gases from human activity and rule out the impact of natural variations, such as the sun’s intensity. “Our climate models show we should be getting warmer and drier weather in the summer, and warmer and wetter in the winter, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing,” said Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia. “I cannot see how else this can be explained.”

Soaring summer temperatures and an exceptionally warm autumn were the main forces driving annual temperatures to record levels, with July being the warmest month ever recorded at 19.7C and September an exceptional 16.8C. The summer heatwave was caused by a high pressure weather system loitering over the Alps from July to August. Highs are associated with air currents that spin clockwise, so on the western side Britain was warmed by air sucked up from north Africa. The high brought chilly northerlies down to east European countries.

In July, temperatures reached 33C (91F) across an area of central and southern England from Hereford to Bedfordshire, with 29.5C recorded at Prestwick, near Glasgow, and 30C in Castlederg, Northern Ireland. The heatwave put the Department of Health on level three alert - one away from emergency levels - and elderly and vulnerable people were advised to drink lots, stay out of the sun in the afternoon and wear loose clothing.

In the autumn, predominantly south-westerly air currents brought warm air to southern Britain from Spain and Portugal.

The record year has astounded scientists. “What’s phenomenal about this year is that some of these months have broken records by incredible amounts. This year it was 0.8C warmer in autumn and 0.5C warmer between April and October than the previous warmest years. Normally these records are broken by around one tenth of a degree or so,” said Prof Jones.

A study this year by Peter Stott at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Change found that warming over the past 50 years could only be explained by climbing emissions of greenhouse gases. A 1C rise in the past five decades was only reproduced by climate models when human-induced greenhouse gas emissions were included.

In 2004 Dr Stott and scientists at Oxford University showed that human emissions of greenhouse gases had more than doubled the risk of record-breaking heatwaves such as the one reckoned to have killed 27,000 people across Europe in 2003. The Met Office figures show that 2006 is set to be 1.37C warmer than the mean temperature logged over the four decades from 1961. The previous two hottest years, 1990 and 1999, both recorded mean temperatures of 10.63C.

All of the 10 warmest years in Britain have occurred in the past 18 years, except the fourth hottest, when in 1949 the year’s mean temperature reached 10.62C.

Other figures released by the Met Office yesterday reveal that global temperatures have risen too, with 2006 on track to become the sixth warmest year since records began in 1850. The latest figures mean that the 10 warmest years ever have all occurred in the past 12 years. Some scientists already predict a warmer year in 2007, in large part because of a natural phenomenon called El Niño in the eastern Pacific, which is expected to have a profound effect on climate.

Mild warming is not expected to be overly problematic for the UK, but the trend towards drier summers has already seen a two-year drought devastate groundwater supplies in southern England, while sudden downpours have triggered flash flooding. Though scientists are not able to pin a single year’s record temperatures on global warming, the long-term trend towards a warming climate is now irrefutable, they claim, and should be taken seriously by policy makers.

“The government is making many of the right noises, but we really should be doing more,” said Prof Jones. “We were the first country to industrialise, why can’t we become the first to really reduce our emissions? I despair when I hear the government talking about extensions to airports, when air travel is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gases. It’s as if there’s a belief in government that this will sort itself out.”

Article: “An oil supply interruption cannot be reasonably dismissed as improbable.”

2006-12-13T15:58:00.000-08:00

Bush urged to break US oil dependence
By Carola Hoyos in London, Edward Luce in Washington and Krishna Guha in Beijing
Published: December 13 2006 22:07
Financial Times

The Bush administration should act decisively to break America’s dependence on oil, said a group of leading US business executives and senior military officers in a report presented on Wednesday to the White House and Congress.

The bipartisan group, which includes the chief executives of Fedex, UPS, Dow Chemicals and some of America’s best known retired generals, urged Washington to recognise that “pure market economics will never solve the problem” of US oil dependency.

The report poured cold water on the Bush administration’s goal of reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil, rather than on oil in general. It urged Mr Bush and the new Democrat-controlled Congress to set up a plan to halve the American economy’s oil-intensity by 2030.

George W. Bush has repeatedly identified “energy independence” and immigration reform as two of the issues most likely to attract bipartisan support following the Republican loss of control of Capitol Hill in mid-term elections last month.

“Events affecting supply or demand anywhere will affect consumers everywhere,” said the report, brought out by the Energy Security Leadership Council, a think tank. “Exposure to price shocks is a function of how much oil a nation consumes and is not significantly affected by the ratio of “domestic oil” to so-called “foreign oil”.

The report also warned Mr Bush, who is expected to announce new energy independence measures in his annual State of the Union address to Congress next month, that America’s oil dependence makes it acutely vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

America’s transport system is 97 per cent dependent on oil. More than 90 per cent of world oil supply is controlled by foreign governments. “America must address this critical weakness.” Said P.X. Kelley, a retired Marine Corps general. “An oil supply interruption cannot be reasonably dismissed as improbable.”

However, there is deep-seated scepticism about the willingness of the Bush administration, which has yet to endorse the theory of global warming, to take the tough steps most energy experts say are necessary to reduce America’s dependence on oil.

Last January Mr Bush declared that America was “addicted to oil”. But Mr Bush’s announcement was not followed by any significant change in energy strategy. “There is very little reason to believe that the White House will take the tough measures necessary to make this happen,” said a Washington-based energy lobbyist. “There is no appetite, say, to impose a carbon tax or for putting a floor under the price of oil that would incentivise investors to put their money into alternative energy.”

However, the US administration wants to step up co-operation with China on energy efficiency and the use of alternative fuels. Energy and the environment will be among the topics addressed in Friday’s final session of the US-China strategic economic dialogue involving top officials meeting in Beijing.

The dialogue is the brainchild of Hank Paulson, US Treasury Secretary, who has a strong track record as an environmentalist and is treated with suspicion by some US conservatives as a result. Lack of binding targets for China and other big emerging market countries such as India to limit their greenhouse gas emissions was one of America’s principal reasons for refusing to ratify the Kyoto accord.

The Goldman Sachs Group earned $9.34 billion this year; $16.5 billion was set aside for salaries

2006-12-12T20:38:00.000-08:00

Goldman Reports Record Earnings for 2006

$16.5 billion was set aside for salaries, bonuses and benefits, or an average of $622,000 for each employee.

Goldman Reports Record Earnings for 2006
December 12, 2006
New York Times

By JOHN HOLUSHA
The Goldman Sachs Group, the investment banking company that is the leading advisor in corporate mergers and acquisitions, reported today that it earned $9.34 billion this year, the most in Wall Street history.

The company said it was setting aside $16.5 billion for salaries, bonuses and benefits, or an average of $622,000 for each employee, although much larger payouts usually go to the bankers who arrange business deals or sell corporate stock to investors than to other kinds of employees.

In the company’s fourth fiscal quarter, which ended Nov. 24, profits increased 93 percent over the year before, to $3.16 billion, or $6.59 a share, exceeding the forecasts of most analysts.

The bonuses at Goldman and those expected at other Wall Street companies are expected to boost the New Y0rk area’s economy, particularly in sales of high-end residential real estate, luxury cars and other pricey goods.

“When these guys learn what their bonuses are, we are among the first people they call,” said Pamela Liebman, the chief executive of the Corcoran Group, a residential brokerage. “They call their mothers, and then their real estate brokers.”

Ms. Liebman said that investment bankers “work hard and want to live well,” and that they are usually interested in buying a luxury apartment in Manhattan or a second or third residence elsewhere.

She said her agency is already getting calls in advance of the bonus announcements this year, and that the interest is not limited to the top executives of Wall Street firms. “Even the junior guys want to spend their bonuses on residential real estate.”

Two years ago, BMW of Manhattan opened a showroom at 57 Wall Street, so that investment bankers would not have to take the time to travel uptown to its main sales and service operation at 57th Street and 11th Avenue.

At the time, Jeffrey A. Falk, the president of the dealership, said the intention was to get physically closer to potential customers.

“This is part of a strategy we have been developing over the past two years to make it more convenient for our demographic.”

Speaking today, he said there has been an increased level of what he called “pre-shopping” at the Wall Street showroom, based on anticipated bonuses.

“They are shopping now, and talking to salesmen based on what they think their bonus will be,” Mr. Falk said. “Then in January and February, we’ll get the orders.”

Spouses and the high-end retailers that cater to them feel the effect of the bonus payment, said Faith H. Consolo, vice chair of Prudential Douglas Elliman, a commercial brokerage.

“The luxury market is very dramatically affected by bonuses,” Ms. Consolo said. “We are talking furs, jewelry, apparel and beauty items like $250 jars of face cream. Anything that makes them look good or feel good.”

Luxury spas are likely to see an influx of business as well, she side, as executives use part of their bonuses to send their spouses on spa vacations.

2006 is the third consecutive year of record-breaking earnings for Goldman, which is the world’s largest securities company as measured by the total market value of its stock. And the company appears positioned to continue growing in its crucial investment banking business.

The company said its backlog of merger and underwriting deals was larger at the end of November than it was at the end of August.

Rising stock prices generally, an active market in fee-generating business deals and gains on investments, many of them in Asia, are expected to make this year exceptionally profitable for many other Wall Street companies as well.

Carbon Neutral: Travel Section

2006-12-12T20:31:00.000-08:00

New York Times
December 10, 2006
Buzzword of the Year
Carbon Neutral: Raising the Ante on Eco-Tourism

By MICHELLE HIGGINS
SUDDENLY it’s not enough to be green. Now truly eco-conscious travelers are also carbon neutral.

The term, which will be added to the New Oxford American Dictionary in 2007, describes a balance between polluting and enhancing the environment, especially in terms of harmful greenhouse gases. Its use is perhaps nowhere more prevalent than in the travel industry, where eco-tourism has been steadily gaining momentum over the years, and travelers — who are already booking eco-friendly lodging, renting hybrid cars and reusing the towels in their hotel rooms — are looking for ways to further reduce their impact on the environment.

For travelers, becoming carbon neutral involves calculating their “carbon footprint,” the approximate amount of carbon dioxide produced on flights, road trips or when they otherwise burn fossil fuels, and then buying “offsets” — donating money for projects that promise to produce energy without burning fossil fuels or otherwise reduce the production of greenhouse gases.

The reduction purchased is supposed to equal the amount of carbon dioxide the trip created, per passenger. The ultimate goal: a carbon neutral trip.

Increasingly, tour operators are buying carbon offsets to compensate for the amount of carbon dioxide produced on trips. REI Adventures announced a Carbon-Neutral Travel program in October. Beginning next year, the company will buy renewable energy credits from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation to offset the carbon dioxide produced by each traveler’s flight and ground transportation. The credits, called Green Tags, will support solar, wind and other renewable energy projects.

Ecoventura, an adventure company in the Galápagos Islands, says it has “achieved CarbonNeutral status” on its Web site, www.ecoventura.com. Working with the CarbonNeutral Company, Ecoventura is trying to balance the CO2 created through its trips by donating to a portfolio of projects, including sustainable energy projects in Sri Lanka and India, and methane recovery in the United States, which captures leaking methane at a Pennsylvania coal mine.

Ski resorts from Vail, Colo., to Stratton, Vt., are getting into the act by buying renewable energy credits to offset their electricity consumption. The credits purchased by the ski resorts support the production of clean electricity generated by wind farms or other sustainable sources rather than fossil fuels like coal and gas.

It’s a way for eco-friendly travel companies to practice what they preach. Carbon offsets “address the inherent dilemma of our programs being all about sustainability, but also having students fly around the world,” said Daniel Greenberg, executive director of Living Routes, a study-abroad company that runs sustainability education programs in eco-villages around the world and started its own carbon offset program last year.

Individual travelers can get into the mix by going to one of several carbon-offset Web sites, like www.carbonoffsets.org or www.terrapass.com, and using an online “carbon calculator” to determine the approximate amount of carbon dioxide produced when they travel. Carbon offsets, usually anywhere from $5 to $30, depending on the length of the trip and the form of transportation, can be purchased through a growing number of travel companies.

Expedia and Travelocity both rolled out new programs this year that let travelers buy carbon offsets. Travelers who buy offsets through Expedia and its partner TerraPass, a Web-based for-profit company in Menlo Park, Calif., for a medium or long-haul flight get a “Carbon Balanced Flyer” luggage tag. The charge is $5.99 to offset about 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide — the amount emitted, per passenger, on a round-trip flight of up to 2,200 miles; $16.99 for a cross-country flight of up to 6,500 miles; and $29.99 for an international flight of up to 13,000 miles.

It is unclear how much impact these programs actually have on climate change — or whether they function mostly as a way for travelers to justify the amount of pollution they generate on trips. Still, many travelers see carbon offsetting as a way to help tackle global warming without having to give up that trip to the Bahamas.

Bush Begins Round of Talks on Iraq

2006-12-11T14:56:00.000-08:00

New York Times
December 11, 2006

By BRIAN KNOWLTON
WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 — President Bush traveled to the State Department today as part of a round of consultations over how to reshape Iraq policy, saying that it was important that “when I do speak to the American people, they will know that I have listened to all aspects of government.”

He was scheduled to meet this afternoon with five experts in military and foreign affairs, four of whom have expressed deep skepticism about the recommendations issued last week by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. On Tuesday, he will consult by video link with commanders in Iraq and the U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.

The president will then travel to the Pentagon on Wednesday for talks with top officials there.

Under intense pressure to change course, following his party’s losses in the Nov. 7 election and the assessment by the study group that the situation in Iraq is “grave and deteriorating,” President Bush hopes to deliver a major speech on Iraq before Christmas, according to the White House.

In brief remarks today at the State Department, as he stood flanked by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney, the president gave little clue to his thinking but again underscored a long-term U.S. commitment to a successful outcome in Iraq.

Success there, he said, “is a country that governs, defends itself, that is a free society, that serves as an ally in this war on terror,” Mr. Bush said, adding that, “Iraq is a central component of defeating the extremists who want to establish safe haven in the Middle East.”

Stopping those who, he said, seek to aggressively spread a totalitarian ideology “is really the calling of our time.”

Mr. Bush has distanced himself from two key recommendations by the study group, the withdrawal from Iraq of most combat units by early 2008, and a new diplomatic effort to engage Iraq’s neighbors, including holding talks with Iran and Syria.

The president did not mention either of those issues today, though he did speak of the “responsibilities” that Iraq’s neighbors have “to help this young Iraqi democracy survive.”

And in an apparent reference to recent diplomatic initiatives by Baghdad toward the governments in Damascus and Tehran, Mr. Bush said, “I appreciate so very much the Iraqi leadership taking the lead in its neighborhood.”

The president took no questions.

Later today, Mr. Bush is scheduled to meet with Jack Keane, who was acting chief of staff for the Army and served on the study group’s panel of military advisers; Stephen Biddle, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former professor at the U.S. Army War College; Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star general; Eliot Cohen, a military historian with Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Strategic and Advanced International Studies; and Wayne Downing Jr., the retired former commander of the Special Operations Command and a White House counterterrorism adviser during Mr. Bush’s first term.

All but Mr. Downing are on record as having criticized parts of the study group’s report, some in particularly sharp terms.

Mr. Keane, for example, said that the goal set out by the Iraq Study Group of withdrawing most combat forces from Iraq by the first quarter of 2008 was impractical.

”Based on where we are now, we can’t get there,” Keane said in an interview last week with The New York Times. The report’s conclusions, he said, say more about ”the absence of political will in Washington than the harsh realities in Iraq.”

General McCaffrey told The Times that while he agreed with the overall concept of withdrawing U.S. forces as the Iraqi military capability improved, the withdrawal of U.S. combat brigades could leave thousands of American advisers dangerously exposed. ”This is a recipe for national humiliation,” he said.

Mr. Biddle offered a similar assessment. He told The Los Angeles Times that the panel’s recommendation of embedding more U.S. troops with Iraqi units could be particularly dangerous without the backing of American combat brigades nearby.

“The U.S. combat brigades are currently keeping a lid on the violence in the country,” Mr. Biddle said. Without the combat units, he predicted, the use of roadside bombs by insurgents “will skyrocket, the civilian death rate will increase.”

For his part, Mr. Cohen was dismissive of both the study group’s process and its results.

“There is something of a farce in all this, an invocation of wisdom from a cohesive Washington elite that does not exist,” he wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal.

On Sunday, he told an NBC interviewer, “You had a bunch of very senior, eminent people all very worthy, who spent a grand total of four days in Iraq. Only one of them left the Green Zone.”

Of the report itself, he said: “Some parts of this verge on fantasy. You know, you’re going to get the Syrians to turn themselves in over the Hariri assassination; you’ll get them to persuade Hamas to recognize Israel.”

He referred to the assassination in February 2005 in Lebanon of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri. United Nations investigations have implicated Syrian officials in the killing.

“The idea that you’re going to have a different course of action” in Iraq, Mr. Cohen said, “I don’t really buy, at the end of the day.”

The White House has said that the study group report will be only “one input” in the administration’s broad reconsideration of Iraq policy. In addition to separate State Department and Defense Department reviews, the National Security Council has also been examining policy options.

Report on Iraq Exposes Divide Within G.O.P.

2006-12-11T14:54:00.000-08:00

New York Times
December 10, 2006

By JOHN M. BRODER and ROBIN TONER
WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 — The release of the report by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group this week exposed deep fissures among Republicans over how to manage a war that many fear will haunt their party — and the nation — for years to come.

A document that many in Washington had hoped would pave the way for a bipartisan compromise on Iraq instead drew sharp condemnation from the right, with hawks saying it was a wasted effort that advocated a shameful American retreat.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page described the report as a “strategic muddle,” Richard Perle called it “absurd,” Rush Limbaugh labeled it “stupid,” and The New York Post portrayed the leaders of the group, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic member of Congress, as “surrender monkeys.”

Republican moderates clung to the report, mindful of the drubbing the party received in last month’s midterm elections largely because of Iraq. They said they hoped President Bush would adopt the group’s principal recommendations and begin the process of disengagement from the long and costly war. But White House officials who conducted a preliminary review of the report said they had concluded that many of the proposals were impractical or unrealistic. [Page 18.]

The divisions could make it more difficult for Republicans to coalesce on national security policy and avoid a bitter intraparty fight going into the 2008 campaign.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, rejected the major recommendations of the group because they did not present a formula for victory. Mr. McCain, hoping to claim the Republican mantle on national security issues, has staked out a muscular position on Iraq, calling for an immediate increase in American forces to try to bring order to Baghdad and crush the insurgency.

It is too early to say how the war will figure in Republican primary battles, as other potential candidates are still developing their positions and conditions on the ground in Iraq may change. Mr. McCain’s chief early rival, Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, has been in Asia all week and has not yet read the report, an aide said.

But the debate will go to the heart of the party’s identity — and its image as the party of strength on national security — after Mr. Bush’s aggressive post-Sept. 11 foreign policy brought electoral successes in 2002 and 2004 but was profoundly challenged by voters this year.

Mr. Bush has not yet tipped his hand on what course he intends to pursue, saying he will await parallel reviews of Iraq policy from the National Security Council, the State Department and the Pentagon before deciding on any major changes. But he has already signaled that he intends to make some adjustments, most notably by dismissing Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld immediately after the midterm elections.

Mr. Bush’s choices will not only have profound effects on the conduct of the war, but will also resonate within his party and give shape to the foreign policy debate of the 2008 elections. Republicans are already engaged in soul-searching over the results of the recent election, trying to figure out how the party can regain the faith of the American people on questions of war and peace.

The ambivalence and introspection were summed up by Senator Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, who spoke at length in the Senate this week about the dangers of withdrawing from Iraq but said he could no longer support the status quo.

“I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day,” Mr. Smith said. “That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that anymore. I believe we need to figure out how to fight the war on terror and to do it right. So either we clear and hold and build, or let’s go home.”

The frustration was widespread among Congressional Republicans, some of whom were serving their final days in office this week after an election largely influenced by the public’s unhappiness with the war.

“So what do we have?” asked Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, who supported the war, defended it throughout his re-election campaign and was defeated last month. “We have the Baker-Hamilton report, which is a prescription for surrender. It is just a matter of time.”

But Mr. Bush is also facing a rising chorus of demands from moderates in his party, as well as from Democrats, for a plan to begin a withdrawal from Iraq. They see in the report a politically palatable way to achieve disengagement from Iraq and an end to the partisan warfare in Washington.

“To ignore the message sent in the last election is to do so at our political peril, because the message was a resounding repudiation of the status quo with respect to Iraq,” said Senator Olympia J. Snowe, the moderate Republican from Maine. “The American people are essentially unified in their intense dissatisfaction with the way things have progressed in Iraq.”

Bill Kristol, the neoconservative editor of The Weekly Standard and a leading advocate of the decision to invade Iraq, said: “In the real world, the Baker report is now the vehicle for those Republicans who want to extricate themselves from Iraq, while McCain is articulating the strategy for victory in Iraq. Bush will have to choose, and the Republican Party will have to choose, in the very near future between Baker and McCain.”

The choice Mr. Kristol is describing reflects a longstanding Republican schism over policy and culture between ideological neoconservatives and so-called realists. Through most of the Bush administration, the neoconservatives’ idea of using American military power to advance democracy around the world prevailed, pushed along by Vice President Dick Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld.

But as the Iraq war spiraled downward, the realists began to speak out more forcefully. They were also heavily represented on the Iraq Study Group, including Mr. Baker, former Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger and Robert M. Gates, who stepped down from the panel last month when Mr. Bush named him to succeed Mr. Rumsfeld. All three served in the administration of Mr. Bush’s father.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, one barometer of conservative thought, called the study group’s report “a bipartisan strategic muddle ginned up for domestic political purposes.” It welcomed the panel’s plan to increase the number of American trainers embedded with Iraqi military units, but it scoffed at the group’s recommendation of involving Jordan and Syria in talks to address problems in Iraq.

Mr. Perle, a prominent neoconservative and early advocate of invading Iraq, dismissed the panel as a “misadventure” that should be ignored.

“You don’t outsource the responsibilities of the commander in chief,” Mr. Perle said. “The whole thing is absurd.”

Mr. Limbaugh, who commands a large conservative audience on talk radio, said the commission was peopled with out-of-touch weaklings who placed a higher value on bipartisan comity than on winning the war.

“You know, bipartisanship simply means Republicans cave on their core principles and agree with Democrats,” Mr. Limbaugh said on his program this week. “That’s why everybody is praising the stupid report. Because there’s nothing in this about winning, there’s nothing in this about victory. There isn’t anything in this about moving forward in a positive way. This is cut and run, surrender without the words.”

Representative Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who is the departing chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a 2008 presidential hopeful, said, “The policy-making decisions about Iraq should not be considered to be devolving to a nonelected group put together essentially for the purpose of advising the president.”

Democrats, meanwhile, face divisions of their own, aware that they face high expectations from voters after running campaigns that promised change in Iraq.

Many leaders in the party indicated this week that they felt vindicated by the study group’s findings, and they vowed to push ahead with their promise of aggressive oversight hearings on the management of the war when they take control of Congress in January.

But the party’s liberal base is hungry for more forceful action, including voting against additional financing for the war. “It’s difficult to talk about ending the war without showing you’re willing to end the money,” said Representative Maxine Waters, a California Democrat and leader of the antiwar caucus in the House.

Democratic leaders have opposed cutting off the money, although Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi said this week that Democrats would impose new standards and conditions in Iraq spending bills.

Representative Christopher Shays, the Connecticut Republican who survived a Democratic electoral sweep across New England last month, said, “I don’t think there’s a real consensus in Congress in general” on Iraq. But he added, “Having been to Iraq 15 times, staying the course would just be foolish.”

No matter what positions they take today, all Republicans would prefer that the 2008 elections not be fought on the battleground of Iraq, said Douglas Foyle, professor of government at Wesleyan University.

“They don’t want the 2008 presidential and Congressional campaign to be about staying the course,” Professor Foyle said. “That’s where the calculus of Bush and the Republicans diverge very quickly. Everyone is thinking about the next election, and Bush doesn’t have one.”

The Realists’ Repudiation Of Policies for a War, Region

2006-12-11T14:50:00.000-08:00

The Realists’ Repudiation Of Policies for a War, Region
Washington Post
Thursday, December 7, 2006

The Iraq Study Group report released yesterday might well be titled “The Realist Manifesto.”

From the very first page, in which co-chairmen James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton scold that “our leaders must be candid and forthright with the American people,” the bipartisan report is nothing less than a repudiation of the Bush administration’s diplomatic and military approach to Iraq and to the whole region.

Throughout its pages, the report reflects the foreign policy establishment’s disdain for the “neoconservative” policies long espoused by President Bush and his aides. But while many of its recommendations stem from the “realist” school of foreign policy, it is unclear at this point whether a radically different approach would make much difference nearly four years after the invasion of Iraq.

The administration’s effort to spread democracy to Arab lands is not mentioned in the report, except to note briefly that most countries in the region are wary of it. The report urges direct talks with Iran and Syria, both of which the administration has largely shunned. It also calls for placing new emphasis on resolving the Israel-Arab conflict, including pressing Israel to reach a peace deal with Syria, on the grounds that the issue shapes regional attitudes about U.S. involvement in Iraq. Overall, it strongly suggests that Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have bungled diplomacy in the region with unrealistic objectives and narrow strategies.

“ We took a very pragmatic approach because all of these people up here are pragmatic public officials, ” Hamilton told reporters, referring to the five Democrats and five Republicans who unanimously endorsed the report’s conclusions and recommendations. The bipartisan nature of the report -- and the fact that Baker was secretary of state for Bush’s father -- will make it difficult for the White House to ignore. By endorsing the critics’ view of the war, the report will also help incoming Democratic congressional leaders frame the debate over Iraq as a disaster largely of the administration’s making.

In a lengthy preamble to the recommendations titled “Assessment,” the report gives a dispassionate account of the “grave and deteriorating” situation in Iraq, echoing books and news reports that the administration had previously criticized as one-sided or overly negative. The report’s description of the violence in Iraq, which amounts to an attack on the administration’s understanding of the facts on the ground, will likely set the new baseline for how the Iraq conflict is portrayed.

“The ability of the United States to influence events within Iraq is diminishing,” the report warns.

The report is replete with damning details about the administration’s inept handling of Iraq. It notes, for instance, that only six people in the 1,000-person embassy in Baghdad can speak Arabic fluently. It recounts how the military counted 93 acts of violence in one day in July, when the group’s own reexamination of the data found 1,100 acts of violence. “Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes discrepancy with policy goals,” the report says.

The report calls for seeing Iraq differently, for scaling back the administration’s goals and for ending the president’s open-ended commitments to the war-torn country. It also argues that the administration should support a “far-reaching” amnesty of insurgent fighters, pointedly warning that neither the executive nor legislative branches should try to undermine an amnesty program.

Administration officials yesterday gamely insisted that the report is not a criticism of the administration’s approach. White House spokesman Tony Snow said many issues raised in the report are being discussed and addressed by the administration. “You’re asking if that is a repudiation of policy,” he told reporters. “No, it’s an acknowledgment of reality .”

On both the diplomatic and military fronts, the report differs sharply from the administration’s current approach. Perhaps befitting a panel with two former secretaries of state -- Lawrence S. Eagleburger is also a member -- a large section of the report outlines what it labels “the New Diplomatic Offensive.”

The section appears to be an implicit rebuke of the policies pursued by Rice, arguing that her current efforts to build a regional “compact for Iraq” are too narrow, that her efforts to engage moderate Arab states lack ambition, and that her pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace needs to be reinvigorated. Bush has shunned a hands-on role in the issue, but the report says that “the United States does its ally Israel no favors in avoiding direct involvement to solve the Arab-Israel conflict.”

“Everybody said that if you’re going to settle Iraq, it is important that you do what you can to settle Israel-Palestine,” Eagleburger said, asserting a linkage that until now the administration had rejected. The report makes no mention of the moribund U.S.-backed peace plan known as the road map.

The report also urges high-level talks with Iran and Syria without preconditions, although it sets goals for those talks that struck some analysts as unrealistic. Iran and Syria might have been more amenable to serious negotiations several years ago -- the panel noted, for instance, that Iran was helpful in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban -- but that moment has probably passed, now that Iran and Syria believe the United States is on the ropes. Baker, who said “you talk to your enemies, not just your friends,” suggested that one goal of such talks would be to demonstrate to others in the region that Iran and Syria want Iraq to fail.

Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld also comes in for some pointed commentary, with the group’s 46th recommendation being that his successor repair relations with the top military brass.

The report’s core military recommendation -- that almost all U.S. combat troops be withdrawn by the beginning of 2008, but that a large force be left to train and advise Iraqi forces -- struck some military experts as appropriate, but others called it overly ambitious.

Anthony H. Cordesman, a defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, criticized the recommendation to quadruple the current number of U.S. advisers and trainers to about 20,000 soldiers, saying: “The U.S. is to rush in more qualified trainer and embeds that it doesn’t have and assign more existing combat forces unqualified for the mission.” Indeed, among the lessons brought home by U.S. trainers over the past three years are that many were unprepared for the task and that the mission is extremely difficult. It requires knowledge not only of U.S. combat operations but also of foreign weaponry and, most of all, of Iraqi culture.

Quang X. Pham, author of a memoir about his service in the U.S. Marine Corps and his father’s time as a pilot for the South Vietnamese military, said he considers the troop plan a thinly disguised form of quitting. “In one year, during the 2008 election year, the United States will abandon and betray Iraq as it did South Vietnam,” predicted Pham, who was a pilot during the Persian Gulf War.

Meanwhile, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), head of the “Out of Iraq” congressional caucus, said it appears to her that the group is calling only for improvements to the Bush administration’s plan to stand down U.S. forces as Iraqi forces stand up.

Iraq Study Group Press Conference

2006-12-11T14:49:00.000-08:00

December 6, 2006
Transcript
The Iraq Study Group News Conference

Following are remarks by the Iraq Study Group in presenting its report on U.S. involvement in Iraq, as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions, LLC.

Speakers: James Baker, Chairman; Lee H. Hamilton, Co-Chairman; William Perry, Member; Sandra Day O’Conner, Member; Ed Meese, Member; Leon Panetta, Member; Charles S. Robb, Member.

HAMILTON: Good morning. Earlier today, we presented the report of the Iraq Study Group to President Bush and to members of the United States Congress.

We are pleased to present our report now to the American people. It represents the unanimous views of our 10 members.

On behalf of the Iraq Study Group, Jim Baker and I thank Congressman Frank Wolf who took the initiative to create the study group; Senators John Warner and Joe Biden, Congressman Chris Shays and others for supporting our efforts. And, of course, we thank all of the members of the Congress on both sides of Capitol Hill, on both sides of the aisle.

I want to say a word of appreciation to Jim Baker for his extraordinary leadership. It has been a high personal privilege for me to work with him.

And, of course, I extend my thanks to all members of the Iraq Study Group, who have worked very hard and have come together to support this report.

The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating. Violence is increasing in scope and lethality. Attacks on U.S. forces and U.S. casualties continue at an alarming rate. The Iraqi people are suffering great hardship.

The democratically elected government that replaced Saddam Hussein is not adequately advancing the key issues of national reconciliation, providing basic security, or delivering essential services.

Economic development is hampered.

The current approach is not working. And the ability of the United States to influence events is diminishing.

The United States has committed staggering resources. Our country has lost almost 2,900 Americans; 21,000 more have been wounded. The United States has spent an estimated $400 billion in Iraq, and costs could rise well over $1 trillion.

Many Americans are understandably dissatisfied.

Our ship of state has hit rough waters. It must now chart a new way forward.

No course of action in Iraq is guaranteed to stop a slide toward chaos. Yet, in our view, not all options have been exhausted.

We agree with the goal of U.S. policy in Iraq as set forth by President Bush: an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself.

We recommend a new approach to pursue that goal. We recommend a responsible transition.
Our three most important recommendations are equally important and reinforce one another.

First, a change in the primary mission of U.S. forces in Iraq that will enable the United States to begin to move its combat forces out of Iraq responsibly.

Two, prompt action by the Iraqi government to achieve milestones, particularly on national reconciliation.

And, three, a new and enhanced diplomatic and political efforts in Iraq and in the region.
United States must encourage Iraqis to take responsibility for their own destiny. This responsible transition can allow for a reduction in the U.S. presence in Iraq over time.

The primary mission of U.S. forces in Iraq should evolve to one of supporting the Iraqi army, which would take over primary responsibility for combat operations.

As this transition proceeds, the United States should increase the number of troops embedded in and supporting the Iraqi army. And U.S. combat forces could begin to move out of Iraq.

By the first quarter of 2008, subject, of course, to unexpected developments on the ground, all U.S. combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq. U.S. combat forces in Iraq could be deployed only in units embedded with Iraqi forces, in rapid reaction and special operation teams, and in training, equipping, advising and force protection.

A key mission for those rapid reaction and special forces would be targeting Al Qaida in Iraq.
It is clear that the Iraqi government will need assistance from the United States for some time to come. Yet the United States must make it clear to the Iraqi government that we could carry out our plans, including planned redeployments, even if the Iraqi government did not implement their planned changes.

The United States must not make an open-ended commitment to keep large numbers of troops deployed in Iraq.

We also make several recommendations to reset the U.S. military, as these redeployments go forward.

A military solution alone will not end the violence in Iraq. We must help the Iraqis help themselves.

President Bush and his national security team should convey a clear message to Iraqi leaders: The United States will support them if they take prompt action to make substantial progress toward the achievement of milestones on national reconciliation, security and improving the daily lives of Iraqis.

If the Iraqi government does not make substantial progress toward the achievement of milestones, the United States then should reduce its political, military or economic support to the Iraqi government.
Let me now turn over the floor to Secretary Baker.

BAKER: Thank you very much, Lee.

Ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you, Lee Hamilton, for your hard work, and I might add, your distinguished service to our nation in the past.

And thanks, as well, to all of our colleagues on the Iraqi Study Group who’ve worked on this difficult issue and they worked on it in a bipartisan spirit and in a very collaborative way.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is no magic formula that will solve the problems of Iraq.

But to give the Iraqi government a chance to succeed, United States policy must be focused more broadly than on military strategy alone or on Iraq alone. It must seek the active and constructive engagement of all governments that have an interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq, including all of Iran’s neighbors -- Iraq’s neighbors.

To gain this constructive engagement, the United States should promptly initiate a new diplomatic offensive, and working with the government of Iraq should create an international Iraq support group to address comprehensively the political, economic and military matters necessary to provide stability in Iraq.

That support group should include Iraq, of course, but also all of Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Syria, the key regional states, including Egypt and the Gulf states, the United Nations Security Council Perm 5 member countries, a representative of the United Nations secretary general, and the European Union.

Given the central importance of the Arab-Israeli conflict to many countries both in and out of the region, the United States must again initiate active negotiations to achieve a stable Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts and in the manner that we outline specifically in the report.

Ladies and gentlemen, altogether in this report we make 79 recommendations. In addition to military, political and diplomatic recommendations, which, as Lee has said, are equally important and reinforce each other, these recommendations cover a range of other areas: criminal justice, oil, reconstruction, the United States budget process, the training of U.S. government personnel, and United States intelligence.

These recommendations are important and they will greatly increase our ability to achieve a responsible transition in Iraq.

We agreed upon our recommendations after considering a full range of other approaches. I suppose some of you will have questions about some of those other approaches, so let me say a word or two about them.

We do not recommend a stay-the-course solution. In our opinion, that approach is no longer viable.

While we do recommend a five-fold increase in U.S. forces training Iraqi troops, from let’s say from a high of 4,000 to a high of 20,000, we do not recommend increasing U.S. forces by in excess of 100,000 troops, as some have suggested.

Additional fully combat-ready United States forces of that magnitude are simply not available.
We have not recommended a division of Iraq into three autonomous regions based on ethnic or sectarian identities but with a weak central government.

As a practical matter, such a devolution, in our view, could not be managed on an orderly basis. And because Iraq’s major cities are peopled by a mixture of warring groups, a disorderly devolution would likely result in a humanitarian disaster or a broad-based civil war.
We also did not recommend a precipitous withdrawal of troops because that might not only cause a blood bath, it would also invite a wider regional war.

The approach we do recommend as its own shortcomings. We recognize that implementing it will require a tremendous amount of political will and will require a unity of effort by government agencies.

Most of all, it will require cooperation by the executive and the legislative branches of our government.

Events in Iraq could overtake what we recommend. And for that reason, we believe that decisions should be made by our national leaders with some urgency.

As it is now, people are being killed day after day: Iraqis and the brave American troops who are trying to help them.

Struggling in a world of fear, the Iraqis themselves dare not dream. They have been liberated from the nightmare of a tyrannical order only to face the nightmare of brutal violence.
As a matter of humanitarian concern, as a matter of national interest and as a matter of practical necessity, it is time to find a new way forward, a new approach.

We believe that a constructive solution requires that a new political consensus be built, a new consensus here at home and a new consensus abroad And it is in that spirit that we have approached our study group’s task on a bipartisan basis.

So I’m especially pleased to note for you that our group offers and supports each and every one of our recommendations unanimously. We, of course, recognize that some people will differ with some of these recommendations.

We nevertheless hope very much that in moving forward others will wish to continue to broaden and deepen the bipartisan spirit that has helped us come together.

We’d be delighted to respond to your questions.

QUESTION: You talked about no course of action guaranteeing to stop the slide. But what do you think the odds are, if every single one of your recommendations is implemented, that this situation in Iraq can be turned around?

And secondly, you talked about urgency. Your process took nine months. Was there ever any concern that, with the situation sliding so rapidly, that your own report might be too late?

BAKER: Well, I’ll take the last part of that, and then maybe we’ll both answer the first part.
There was never any concern on the part of our group. We felt it was extraordinarily important to try and keep this process out of politics if we could. And therefore we did not want to bring it out during the political season, during the midterm election.

So we decided right off the bat that we wanted to wait until after the election. We did so. We only took one month to get the report out after the election was concluded.

With respect to the chances for success, I don’t know whether anybody has a crystal ball that could put a percentage on there for you. I’ll tell you this, and we say this in our report: If we do what we recommend in this report, it will certainly improve our chances for success.

HAMILTON: We cannot, of course, predict the future.

We believe that the situation in Iraq today is very, very serious. We do not know if it can be turned around. But we think we have an obligation to try. And if the recommendations that we have made are effectively implemented, there is at least a chance that you can see established a stable government in Iraq and stability in the region.

The task ahead of us is daunting -- very, very difficult. And we recognize that. But it is not by any means lost.

QUESTION: Just to follow up on that, can the president pick and choose what recommendations he decides to implement, or is this approach, as far as you’re concerned, an all-or-nothing approach if it is intended to work?

BAKER: Well, this is not legislation, and it’s not an executive order. And it doesn’t bind anyone: doesn’t bind the leadership on the Hill, and it doesn’t bind the president.

But it is the only recommended approach that will enjoy, in our opinion, complete bipartisan support, at least from the 10 people that you see up here.

HAMILTON: I think it’s very important to emphasize, as your question suggests, that in order to solve the difficulties in Iraq you do have to have a comprehensive approach. And we tried to put together a comprehensive approach with these 79 recommendations.

Now, we’re not the only group in town making recommendations here.

But you cannot solve this problem by dealing with the military problem or by dealing with the economic reconstruction problem or by dealing with the political problems in Iraq. It’s too far along the way for that.

So a comprehensive approach has to be taken.

We were immensely pleased today when President Bush indicated to us that this report presents to the American people a common opportunity to deal with the problems in Iraq. And if that kind of attitude prevails, then you will see a bipartisan solution that we put together in the country.

And I think it’s a matter of faith for all of us up here that American foreign policy is going to be much stronger if we’re united -- executive and legislative but, also, the American people are supporting the foreign policy.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, Congressman Hamilton, commissioners, gentlemen, Madam Supreme Court Justice, I’ve only had a chance to briefly read this, but I searched in vain for a phrase or a word the president uses routinely: victory.

And I’m wondering if it is fair to say that the conclusion of the Iraq Study Group is that victory is so difficult to define right now, the more important and more immediate policy objective of the United States government and the Iraqi government is to avoid catastrophe in Iraq.

And if that is, in fact, what the Iraq Study Group is saying, isn’t that going to be part of an elaborate communication process with the American people to rally around avoiding catastrophe, as opposed to rallying around definable victory?

BAKER: We stayed away from a lot of terms that have been bandied about during the campaign season and the political debate. You probably won’t find civil war in here either. You won’t find victory. But you will find success.

And so I think what our report says on balance, if you read it, is that if you implement the recommendations we make, the chances for success in Iraq will be improved.

QUESTION: You’re certainly a group of distinguished elder statesmen, but tell me, why should the president give more weight to what you all have said, given that -- as I understand, you went to Iraq once, with the exception of Senator Robb; none of you made it out of the Green Zone -- why should he give your recommendations any more weight than what he’s hearing from his commanders on the ground in Iraq?

HAMILTON: The members of the Iraq Study Group are, I think, public servants of a distinguished record. We don’t pretend now, we did not pretend at the start, to have expertise. We’ve put in a very intensive period of time. We have some judgments about the way this country works and the way our government works, and some considerable experience within our group on the Middle East.

We recognize that our report is only one, and there will be many recommendations. But the report will stand on its own and be accepted or rejected on its own.

We tried to set forth here achievable goals. It’s a very easy thing to look at Iraq and sit down and set out a number of goals that really have no chance of all of being implemented. We took a very pragmatic approach because all of these people up here are pragmatic public officials.

We also hope that our report will help bridge the divide in this country on the Iraq war and will at least be a beginning of a consensus here. Because without that consensus in the country, we do not think ultimately you can succeed in Iraq.

BAKER: Let me add to that that this report by this bunch of has- beens up here is the only bipartisan report that’s out there.

QUESTION: One of the aspects of your report is outreach to Iran and Syria. What indications do you have from the discussions that you had in preparing the report that these two countries are prepared to be at all helpful?

And I notice that you’ve taken the nuclear issue out of the equation. You say that should not be discussed in connection with Iraq. Why would the Iranians agree to come to a table and talk about Iraq unless the nuclear question and other questions were addressed?

BAKER: Why did they agree to come to the table and talk about Afghanistan without talking about the nuclear issue? They did, and they helped us, and it was important.

In our discussions with them -- and the report points this out -- we didn’t get the feeling that Iran is champing at the bit to come to the table with us to talk about Iraq. And in fact, we say we think they very well might not.

But we also say we ought to put it to them, though, so that the world will see the rejectionist attitude that they are projecting by that action.

With respect to Syria, there’s some strong indications that they would be in a position, if we were able to enter into a constructive dialogue with them, that they would be in a position to help us and might want to help us.

But we’re specific in the report, there must be 10 or 11 or 12 things we say there that we will be asking of Syria. The suggestion that somehow we’re going to sacrifice the investigations of Pierre Gemayel and the assassinations of Gemayel and Hariri or others is just ridiculous.
So we’re talking not about talking to be talking. We’re talking about tough diplomacy.

HAMILTON: May I simply add to that that I think all of us feel here that both Iran and Syria have a lot of influence in the region and have a lot of impact on Iraq?

Iran probably today is the national power that has the single greatest influence inside Iraq today.

We will be criticized, I’m sure, for talking with our adversaries. But I do not see how you solve these problems without talking to them.

We have no exaggerated expectations of what can happen. We recognize that it’s not likely to happen quickly.

On the other hand, if you don’t talk to them, we don’t see much likelihood of progress being made.

You cannot look at this area of the world and pick and choose among the countries that you’re going to deal with. Everything in the Middle East is connected to everything else. And this diplomatic initiative that we have put forward recognizes that.

BAKER: And let me just add to that, if I might, that for 40 years, we talked to the Soviet Union, during a time when they were committed to wiping us off the face of the Earth.

So you talk to your enemies, not just your friends.

QUESTION: As clearly as you can, can you talk about this notion of significantly increasing the number of U.S. troops embedded with Iraqis? Does that imply a top line increase to the 139,000 troops in Iraq right now or simply shifting a greater proportion of those in Iraq to embedded units?

BAKER: Secretary Perry will answer that.

PERRY: We’re talking about an increase from about 3,000 or 4,000 we now have to maybe 15,000 to 20,000. So there’s about an extra 10,000 troops we’re talking about. Those can come out of the combat brigades that we now have there if the commanders in place determine that’s the best way to do it.

There is the training time involved, so there’ll be some lag time. But it can be done, I believe, with the existing combat brigade troops.

Part of this plan involves pulling the combat brigade -- redeploying the combat brigade to the United States. As they redeploy, some of the troops can be held back for doing this mission.

QUESTION: You write that by the first quarter of 2008, subject to unexpected developments, all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq. What does that mean for who’s left in Iraq -- what residual force there will be for the training mission? And to the degree foreseeable, how long do you anticipate that training mission lasting?

MEESE: It would indicate that there would be a considerable force there, which would include logistical support, it would include, obviously, the trainers themselves, force protection. We don’t say in terms of numbers specifically, but it would be adequate to take care of those responsibilities.

It will take longer for the Iraqi army to develop its own logistical and support capabilities in addition to intelligence, communications, transport, things such as that.

So it means that, over a sustained period of time, we will be backing up those trainers, particularly with ready response forces and special forces; the latter being also devoted to dealing with Al Qaida in Iraq and other terrorist groups.

QUESTION: You said, Urgent action is needed because events could overtake what we recommend. Could you be more specific about what those events are, and might they make your report ultimately moot?

HAMILTON: Well, from the very beginning we recognized that events could overtake our work, could overtake policy -- American policy in the region. And that may still be the case: We could look at your reports tomorrow and find out that it has happened.

I think the recommendations that we make here would apply to any government of Iraq, not just the one in power today.

But what are the events? Well, the events are just anarchy, total chaos, the collapse of the government without a new government taking its place, and rampant violence throughout the country.

We do not underestimate the difficulties of the problems in Iraq, and we do not underestimate the possibilities that could happen.

We’ve got a specific situation in front of us now. We have to try to deal with it the best we can. And that’s what our report is aimed for.

QUESTION: You say in the executive summary that you recommend the renewed diplomatic effort, and you talk about incentives and disincentives to Iran and Syria, and especially on the Arab-Israeli front.

Yet the Bush administration has said that it’s offered Syria and Iran in different contexts incentives and disincentives. And it also says that it is actively engaged on the Palestinian-Israeli front.
What particularly are you recommending?

BAKER: Well, it’s pretty specific. If you go to the report itself and read beyond the executive summary, we’re quite specific in what we recommend vis-a-vis the Syria-Lebanon track. We’re also specific about what we recommend on the Israel-Palestinian track.

So I refer you to the report. I could answer it, but I think we’d be wasting the time of others. You can read it in the report.

QUESTION: All of you have considerable experience at helping presidents change course when they find themselves in a blind alley. What do you intend to do from now on to help President Bush embrace the wisdom of all of your recommendations?

He’s already expressed some discomfort with several of them, including engaging Syria and Iran, and including giving the Iraqi government what might look like ultimata for changing its performance with the negative outcome of a troop disengagement if they don’t comply.

How will you act from now on to get him closer to where you are?

BAKER: I think it would be appropriate for President Clinton’s former chief of staff to answer that question.

(LAUGHTER)

PANETTA: As I told the president this morning, this war has badly divided this country.
It’s divided Republicans from Democrats, and to some extent, the president from the people. And policy sometimes, with those divisions, has been reduced to a 30-second sound bite that runs the gamut from victory or stay the course to cut and run.

And what this group tried to do, five Democrats and five Republicans, is try to set aside those code words and those divisions and try to look at the realities that are there.

And I would suggest to the president and to the American people that, if you look at the realities of what’s taking place there, the fact that violence is out of control, the fact that Iraqis ultimately have to control their future; they have to take care of security; they’ve got to deal with the region in that area, that ultimately, you can find consensus here.

This country cannot be at war and be as divided as we are today. You’ve got to unify this country.

And I’d suggest to the president that what we did in this group can perhaps serve as an example to try to pull together the leadership of the Congress and try to focus on the recommendations that we’ve made.

We have made a terrible commitment in Iraq in terms of our blood and our treasure. And I think we owe it to them to try to take one last chance at making Iraq work, and more importantly, to take one last chance at unifying this country on this war.

I think the president understands that he simply is not going to be able to proceed with whatever policy changes he wants to implement if we’re divided. That is the principal goal, in my mind, that he has to accomplish.

BAKER: Justice O’Connor?

O’CONNOR: I would be willing to add a comment about what Leon Panetta has just expressed so well.

We’ve said in the report that we agree with the goal of U.S. policy in Iraq, as stated by the president: an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself.

And to do that, we’ve made these various recommendations on a consensus basis.

It’s my belief that if a large segment of our country gets behind that on a consensus basis that it’s very likely we can move forward and make some progress toward that statement of goals.
And this is not an ongoing commission. It really is out of our hands, having done what we did. It’s up to you, frankly. You are the people who speak to the American people. You’re there interpreting this and talking to America. And I hope that the American people will feel that if they are behind something in broad terms that we’ll be better off.

I think we will, and I hope in general others think so, too.

BAKER: Senator Simpson?

SIMPSON: Well, you better listen to the associate justice there, because when I was working on this, word for word, she said I was using split infinitives.
(LAUGHTER)
And I told her I didn’t even know what they were; I had trouble with adverbs and things like that.

But I can tell you this: Since leaving public life and this chamber, where I was the toast of the town one day and toast the next, it’s a strange place.
(LAUGHTER)
But I see the American people -- and the sadness to me is the American people see the Congress and the administration as dysfunctional, which is very sad for someone who loves the institution.

This group -- and you heard Leon speak -- it’s so clear. Leon and I used to work together. He was at the White House. I was chair; I was assistant leader. We’d meet together, have lunch, say, I’ve got a bill here. What are you going to do with it when it gets there?

Said, Well, we’re not going to keep this piece in there. That’s history. We’ll take that, we’ll take that, then we’ll approve it. We work that way.

And the sad part to me is that you see people in this who are 100-percenters in America. A 100-percenter is a person you don’t want to be around. They have gas, ulcers, heartburn and B.O.
(LAUGHTER)
And they seethe. They’re not seekers...
(LAUGHTER)
... they’re not seekers; they’re seethers. There are a lot of them out there. And we’re going to get it from the right, far right; we’re going to get it from the far left. We’re going to get bombs away and everybody’ll say it can’t work.

Well, we’re just sincere enough to believe that it will and that all people would with a D behind their name did not become a guard at Lenin’s tomb and all the people with an R behind their name did not crawl out of a cave in the mountains, and that maybe we can do something.

And that’s what we’re here for -- people of goodwill, in good faith -- maybe it’s corny, maybe it won’t work, but it sure as hell better than sitting there where we are right now.

HAMILTON: General Meese?

MEESE: One of the toughest parts of this, of course, is the governance and reconciliation parts of this on the part of the government of Iraq. And I think one of the things is the commitments they’ve already made to a series of milestones, which are incorporated in our report, to deal with some of the governance and reconciliation issues. And so that there is some commitment already on their part to resolving some of these difficult issues.

HAMILTON: The question was what we will be doing. We are not a statutorily based commission. We will go out of existence. Specifically what we do -- I think some of us, at least, will be testifying. I think we have 15 or 20 invitations to testify in both this Congress and the one in January.

So we will be interested -- in our recommendations -- we will do what we can to put them forward. But, obviously, the policymakers have to take over from this point.

QUESTION: You picked very carefully the goals of the presidents that you choose to embrace. It’s actually one of his later iterations of this, an Iraq that can defend itself, sustain itself, and govern itself.

There’s no place I saw in the executive summary where you refer to his older goals, which was a democratic Iraq or an Iraq that could spread democracy throughout the region.

Are you essentially telling the president, in this case, that he should abandon that as an either medium-term or long-range goal?

HAMILTON: We want to stay current.
(LAUGHTER)
BAKER: This was the latest of elaboration of the goal, and that’s the one we’re working with.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Of all the distinguished men and women in front of us today, you have the closest relationship with the Bush family.

When you recommend something like engaging Iran, which the president has been a very clear will only happen after they verifiably suspend, it seems to set up the need for the president to pull a 180.

Does he have the capacity to do that, in your opinion, sir?

QUESTION: You know, I’ve worked for four presidents and I used to get questions all the time: tell me about this president versus that president or the other president. And I never put presidents I worked for on the couch.

So I’m not going to answer that, because that would mean I’d have to psychologically analyze the inner workings of his mind. And I don’t do that.

QUESTION: Time and again, as we sit in rooms like this, and as early as yesterday we’ve heard members ask, various members of the administration and in the military, ask them, it’s been going four years now, and training’s been going on for four years, and something is not working.

I wonder if you could answer that question why to now training does not seem to be working with Iraq forces. And what’s the expectation that it will somehow improve? Is that just by increasing the numbers of troops embedded with Iraqi forces?

BAKER: Well, Secretary Perry can talk to you about why the training mission has not worked as well as had been hoped in the past, and then maybe General Meese would have something to say.

And we’ll take one more question after this.

PERRY: First of all, the training was slow to get started. It’s been going on I think very effectively in the last year or so. But the training is a basic training, and as the Iraqi soldiers go into their units, they don’t have any combat skill, they don’t have leadership.

So we believe that the best -- the thing that they needed at this stage to be able to come up to the task they have is effectively on- the-job training. And that on-the-job training can be best done when they have role models of American teams in front of them.

So the key to doing what this, we thought, was to substantially increase the number of American military teams embedded in Iraqi units, right down to the company level. This, I think, can make a big difference in effectiveness.

BAKER: Which is something that hasn’t been tried before, down to the company level.
General Meese?

MEESE: We have talked also in the report about increasing the amount of training that the trainers themselves receive and special selection of trainers from units both overseas and in the United States, so that we get career-enhancing assignments for military trainers to be in these particular positions.

BAKER: Senator Robb?

ROBB: Let me just say that this represents a dramatic change in the way we have been doing business. It is one that the senior military leadership of this country are supportive of, believe can be very helpful. But it represents a clear break from the past tradition of being the principal combat unit to a role of combat support.

But by embedding our forces at greater levels in the Iraqi military, we will have more capacity, more trust, more capability in the Iraqi forces.

But it will have the U.S. technical skills, all of the other support missions as well as the outside support. And it will provide a more robust capability with an Iraqi face on it.

This will diminish the American face that’s currently so much associated with our presence, give it an Iraqi face, but give them the capability on which they still depend on the United States of America to fulfill our missions.

BAKER: One final question.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) one last chance to make this work. We’ve been told over and over again that the war in Iraq is critical to our national security (OFF-MIKE). We’re also told that much of it is out of our hands, including the Iraqi government.

What if it doesn’t work? What then? Is this a war that we can afford to lose?

HAMILTON: Well, we understand the possibilities that things fall apart. That’s not where we are now.

And we have addressed our recommendations to where we are and with recommendations we hope are achievable in the context of the political environment, both in this country and in Iraq as well.

Now, if those circumstances change radically, if things fall apart, whatever that may mean, then we’ll simply have to make adjustments to it. But we are not there yet.

BAKER: Also, I might point out that in the report, we call for -- we note the fact that there will be, for quite some time, a robust American force presence, both in Iraq and in the region, because of our interest in preventing just such a result and also because of our national security interests in the region.

Thank you all very, very much.

Overview of Iraq Study Group Recomendations

2006-12-11T14:47:00.000-08:00

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The Iraq Study Group

2006-12-11T14:45:00.001-08:00

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Article: Democrats Plan Oil Royalties Inquiry

2006-12-09T15:44:00.000-08:00

December 9, 2006
Democrats Plan Oil Royalties Inquiry
New York Times

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 — House Democratic leaders vowed Friday to pursue a broad overhaul of tax breaks and other subsidies to oil companies in January, saying that their first target would be an investigation of how the government collects billions of dollars in royalties on oil and gas produced on federal property.

“The Interior Department has a background of mismanagement, to put it mildly, in the collection of these royalties,” said Representative Nick J. Rahall II of West Virginia, a Democrat who will become chairman of the House Resources Committee next year.

Mr. Rahall said he planned a sweeping investigation of the Interior Department’s enforcement of royalty payments as well as the possible repeal of a 10-year-old law that allows energy companies drilling in deep coastal waters to avoid billions of dollars in payments.

“The oil and gas royalties system has never worked,” asserts a written summary of the committee’s top goals in the new Congress. “Instead it has proven to be a form of corporate welfare that has enabled oil and gas producers to undercut payments due the American people.”

In an opening slap at the industry, House Democrats tried, but narrowly failed, to pass a measure on Friday that would have pressured oil companies to give up a legal loophole that is expected to allow them to avoid as much as $10 billion in royalties over the next five years.

Though the measure was defeated, 205 to 207, Democratic leaders said they would resurrect it when they took control in January. Many Republicans conceded that the bill would almost certainly pass. But Democrats said they did not intend to stop there. Party leaders hope to repeal several billion dollars in tax breaks to oil companies, including a special deduction for “manufacturing” that was extended to drilling companies two years ago.

They also plan to investigate the Interior Department’s entire program of enforcing royalty payments, which has come under harsh criticism from lawmakers in both parties as well as from the department’s own inspector general.

“This is a warning to oil and gas companies,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois and chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “When you get a Democratic Congress, you are going to get a cop on the beat.”

The dwindling political influence of the oil industry was apparent on Friday, even as House Republicans handed it a modest victory by passing a bill opening up new areas in the Gulf of Mexico for drilling.

The measure, contained in a catch-all bill that extends several dozen expiring tax breaks, would open up an additional 8.3 million acres on the outer continental shelf in the Gulf of Mexico.

Though energy companies had desperately wanted the oil drilling bill to pass, it was far less ambitious than either the industry or House Republicans had originally sought. The original House bill would have eventually opened up much bigger areas along the Atlantic and Pacific Seaboards and it would have given a big share of royalties to coastal states near the drilling.

But Senate Republicans had warned that they could not pass anything more ambitious than a limited expansion in the Gulf of Mexico. Indeed, in deference to Florida Republicans who feared that oil spills would jeopardize the state’s tourism industry, the bill would continue to prohibit drilling closer than 125 miles from the Florida coast.

But Democratic lawmakers have focused most of their ire on what they have called “royalty giveaways” to oil and gas companies.

To that end, their most immediate goal will probably be a bill aimed at renegotiating about 1,000 offshore drilling leases that the government admits are flawed. The leases, signed during the Clinton administration, could allow energy companies to escape as much as $10 billion in payments to the federal government over the next five years.

The leases offered “royalty relief” as an incentive to companies drilling in deep water. But in a mistake that Interior officials essentially ignored until this February, the leases omitted a standard escape clause that forced companies to pay the full royalties if oil prices climbed above $34 a barrel.

Because oil and gas prices have soared in the last several years, Interior officials now estimate that oil companies have already escaped about $1.3 billion in payments and could avoid several times that much in the next five years.

More than 50 companies, including Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell and BP, hold the flawed leases. Chevron, which recently discovered a huge new oil field that extends over two of the leases, could potentially escape more than $1 billion in royalties on about 170 million barrels of oil.

House Democrats tried on Friday to pass a bill that would pressure companies to renegotiate the bungled leases by prohibiting them from acquiring any additional leases in the new areas that are about to be opened up for drilling. For the last six months, the Interior Department has tried without success to persuade companies to renegotiate their deals voluntarily.

“Time has run out,” said Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, who sponsored the Democratic bill with Representative Maurice D. Hinchey of New York. “They haven’t concluded any agreements; they don’t have any deals. Quite honestly, I don’t think they really want to cut any deals.”

Republican opponents did not argue about the merits of Mr. Markey’s bill, but insisted that attaching it to the broader measure would jeopardize its prospects in the Senate and should be postponed until the Democrats take control.

“This is 10 years overdue,” demanded Representative Bill Thomas, a Republican who is the departing chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

“Can’t we make this 10 years and 20 days overdue?”

Panel: Middle East

2006-12-09T15:25:00.000-08:00

If the American era in the Middle East is ending, as argued by some analysts, what is likely to replace it? Chaos? Self-determination? Iranian hegemony? A new caliphate?
- David Ignatius & Fareed Zakaria

The Apocalyptic Whistle
Bashir Goth
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES/SOMALIA

Goth is a veteran journalist, freelance writer, the first Somali blogger and editor of a leading news website . He is also a regular contributor to major Middle Eastern and African newspapers and online journals.

Somalia/UAE - Ruth Shanor, an octogenarian American friend of mine who observes the world from her little home in Cowpens, South Carolina, and reads my Postglobal pieces, wrote to me after learning about the release of the Baker-Hamilton report on Iraq:

Dear Bashir, I have a whistling tea kettle. When I want a cup of tea I put the kettle on the back burner of the stove. I continue with other chores in the kitchen. Usually I completely forget that the temperature is rising in the tea kettle and the water is on the verge of breaking into a full boil. When the silence is finally blasted by an ear-splitting, shrill whistle, it scares me to death. There is no way to ignore the alarm. A call to action! Looks like wiser heads in America are finally screaming that the kettle is about to explode. Your part of the world keeps throwing sticks on the fire also, doesn’t it? When will we have that cup of tea?
An apt analysis indeed. But instead of giving us the recipe for preparing the tea, the Baker-Hamilton report advises the Bush Administration to flee the explosion. The recommendation of engaging Iran and Syria to help solve the Iraqi debacle seems a pragmatic, long-overdue measure. However, looking at the overall defeatist tone of the report, one may conclude that America now turns to Iran and Syria to serve as a lifeboat for the Bush administration. It will then pass along the ticking bomb to Iran and Syria, who it now accuses of fueling the fire. It is their turn to burn.

The Report describes the Iraqi situation as daunting, points out that Bush’s stay-the-course policy was not working, calls for a pull out of American combat troops by early 2008, demands Iran and Iraq be involved in finding a solution, and links the age-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the deteriorating situation of Iraq. This clearly spells out defeat for the Bush administration and a resounding victory for Al Qaeda and the other extremists in the region. One thing the report didn’t mention, however, is that the decision to launch the war on Iraq was the wrong one. But that would have been tantamount to putting Bush in the dock, calling for his impeachment.

If America flees the battlefield, Al Qaeda will be gloating on their favorite TV channel Al Jazeera.

Calling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the core issue of the Middle East problem and linking it to the pacification of the situation in Iraq is a deft way of shifting the focus from the failure in Iraq and winning back the trust of the American-allied Sunni countries which have been alarmed by the growing influence of the Iranian-backed Shiite groups in the region.

I am sure that many people in the region will agree that the stay-the-course policy of the Bush administration was suicidal and the Report was right to advise a change of policy, but running away from the exploding kettle will not only engulf the whole region in unprecedented sectarian wars and chaos but will also signal an end to any future American influence in the region. The Islamic extremists and Al Qaeda sympathizers will emerge as the winners, thus bringing their dream of an Islamic caliphates closer to reality. Emboldened by the American defeat in Iraq, they will flock to other places like Somalia where the Islamists there are raising the mantra of Jihad against the deployment of UN-backed African peace keeping forces. The only consolation for America will be that the emerging Islamic caliphates will not be homogeneous both in ideology and objectives and they will be annihilating themselves on sectarian basis, thus shifting the extremists war away from American and Western soil to a Muslim-Muslim fratricide fought in Arab streets like what we see in Iraq today.

Therefore, I add a few recommendations that may make the Baker-Hamilton Report more appealing to the disgruntled Iraqi Sunni, so that it is veiwed no longer as simply an exit strategy for the Bush administration. The Report is a bitter pill to swallow for the Bush administration to swallow. A few more pills won’t do any harm. Bush should press the Iraqi government to call the old Iraqi army back to service and to open a serious dialogue with the leadership of the disgraced Baathist party. A release of Saddam Hussein, giving him an exile in Venezuala, Cuba, Zimbabwe, or North Korea may also help to calm down the Iraqi Sunnis who feel humiliated every day by the way their former leader is being treated. It will also show Bush’s atonement for waging a domestically unpopular and internationally unjust war on the basis of liesand deceit.

The Bush Administration should also call a tribal conference in Iraq, similar to the Jirga of Afghanistan. In it, tribal leaders and militia commanders represent every tribe and ethnic group in the country and talk to each other. As America’s democracy has only brought a vengeful majority to power in Iraq, resorting to the traditional Arab way of resolving problems and sharing power may reassure the Iraqi people that their fate is in their hands. This, in the end, might expedite the exit of the beleaguered Bush administration.

America Loses, China Rises
Lamis Andoni
QATAR

Lamis Andoni is an English and Middle East consultant for Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based news station. She has been covering the Middle East for 20 years. She has reported for the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times and the main newspapers in Jordan. She was a professor at the Graduate School in UC Berkeley.

Jerusalem, Israel - The defeat of the U.S. in Iraq signals the beginning of the end of America’s unilateral political hegemony in the region. It does not, however, end America’s influence. The U.S. will remain dominant while other regional and international powers consolidate their influence to initially counter a weakened American power. That will take time.

China is the most likely candidate to sweep into the region, using its economic power. China’s embassies are already filled with Arab-speaking experts. The country is making slow but sure inroads across the region.

The French, Spanish, and Italian-backed initiatives to hold a peace conference on the Arab-Israeli conflict has been the boldest European move in the region for a while. They are capitalizing on America’s setback, but it remains to be seen if Europe, or some of its countries, will take full advantage of America’s quagmire in Iraq.

Seen in this context, the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations reflect a U.S. realization that they should recapture the moribund “peace process” to minimize its losses.

Meanwhile, the Islamic project -- in its different shades and forms -- has risen in response to America’s blunders and the Israeli occupation. Despite of its diversity -- and serious internal contradictions -- the political Islamic movement has gained unprecedented legitimacy and power. This is partly due to the Islamic nature of the forces leading the resistance in Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon.

Secular forces cannot support Israel and American hegemony; they also cannot accept the ideological premises of the Islamic movements; and so are caught in the middle.

China’s Middle East Conundrum
Huang Hung
CHINA

Huang runs CIMG, a media company in China. She is the publisher of Time Out in China and iLook, a Chinese luxury lifestyle magazine. In addition, she has wrote a best seller book titled “My abnormal Life” and her own blog is one of the most popular in china.

Beijing, China - Funny you should ask. Only yesterday, over a cup of coffee, a seasoned editor and I came to the conclusion that expressing opinions on the Middle East must be a pain in the you-know-what for the Chinese government.

On the one hand, they want to show solidarity with the West on issues such as terrorism; on the other hand they are completely tongue-tied because they have a huge domestic Muslim population.

China is being pushed to assume a world superpower role. But our policy research institutes aren’t ready to provide adequate information and recommendations to the Chinese leadership. If the top leaders want a Baker-Hamilton report, they wouldn’t know whom to call. For too long, Chinese academics and policy analysts have spent their time trying to figure out what the leadership wants to hear, not what they should hear.

As a result, Chinese statements often seem empty. If indeed the American era in the Middle East is over, then there is much scrambling to do on the Chinese side to come up with a coherent Middle East policy. Until then, please don’t ask.

Iran Cannot Dominate
Yossi Melman
ISRAEL

Yossi Melman is a senior commentator for the Israeli daily Haaretz. He specializes in intelligence, security, terrorism and strategic issues. An author of seven books on these topics he is now writing (with Meir Javedanfar) a book on Iran’s President and his desire for nuclear weapons to be published next spring in the U.S.A.

Tel Aviv, Israel - The end of the American presence in the Middle East is not yet near. U.S. policy in the region is indeed licking its wounds. Iraq was a major blow. But America’s involvement is far from over.

The U.S. still needs Middle East oil. America must remain involved in the region for this reason. And there are other reasons too. Pro-western states that favor the status quo, like Israel and the Sunni world of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates, all need America’s security umbrella. These states fear the growing expansion of Iran’s Shiism. They struggle at home to maintain stability and repel forces of radicalism and Islamism. They feel threatened by Iran’s belligerency.

Iran is heading toward -- and it seems unstoppable -- acquiring nuclear weapons. Talk in the Middle East is about the “Shiite Crescent” (some refer to it as the “Shiite Banana”). Iran is trying to to create a geographically connected zone extending from Iran to its Shiite allies in Iraq -- and via the pro-Iranian regime in Syria, controlled by the Alwaites (which is a minority and ruling Asad family is part of it) - all the way to Lebanon.

Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah are both threats to the existence of Israel, but above all they are perceived as threats to Arab Sunnites. No wonder Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan wanted Israel to prevail against Hezbollah. Tensions will likely only increase between the Shiites led by Iran and by the Sunnites led by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

A new alliance to stop Iranian hegemony is already in the making. In individual countries, violent struggles for power could or already have emerged in Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon and of course Iraq. America will withdraw from Iraq sooner or later and when it does, Iraq will most probably be divided into three mini-states -- Shiite, Sunnite and a Kurdish. The U.S., along with Europe and Russia will be there to exercise their influence.

The Middle East is facing harsh times. But it is too large and too ethnically and religiously diversified to allow one local force, Iran, to dominate.

New Superpower Pair: U.S. & EU
Miklos Vamos
HUNGARY

Miklós Vámos is a Hungarian novelist, screenwriter and talk show host.

Budapest, Hungary - The American era is slowly ending, and not just in the Middle East. The question is: What kind of an era will replace it.

The U.S. seems to have been better at solving problems in dangerous places and keeping peace around the globe than another super power, the late Soviet Union, was at it. Ever since the USA became the sole superpower, it has been acting like a man or woman who, after a long marriage, is suddenly left alone in the house and acts senselessly; he or she starts doing things too many things at the time, and is never sure what to do.

This is exactly how the aggressive steps of the United States of America seem to me. I understand that it is hard to be the only superpower -- the only living creature in the old house. What should America do? Let’s stick to our example and see. When you loose your life companion, go and befriend others more than ever. Work more than ever. In the end, try to find another partner.

The U.S. has no big choice. Either it accepts that the new “superpower” is the dispersed group of terrorist around the world -- and that mustn’t be accepted -- or he turns to the European Union. Great Britain is just nostalgia for superpower days of yore, and is important just as one member of the European community, with or without Tony Blair.

Let’s not try to figure out the future of Iraq. Let’s leave that problem to the people of Iraq. They will find their own way, and the road won’t be much bloodier without the Americans. The only difference is that there won’t be American blood on that road. That difference, unfortunately, is not too important from the point of view of the future of that region. This all means that now is the right time for U.S. troops to go home without feeling guilty.

Israel is a Liability for U.S.
Daoud Kuttab
PALESTINE/JORDAN

Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist. He was born in Jerusalem in 1955. He is the director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University in Ramallah, and he is the founder and general director of AmmanNet, the Arab world’s first internet radio station.

Ramallah, Palestine - The departure of Rumsfield and Bolton from the political scene, the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton report, and the frank talk of Jimmy Carter are all signs that Americans are finally beginning to realize that Israel is a liability and not an asset to their global interests. However, there is still a long way to go before the end of U.S. hegemony in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israel, unfortunately, is still a domestic issue for the United States and the strength of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee hasn’t weakened despite attempts by U.S. academics to expose them.

Hopefully, as the roots of America’s blind support for Israel are exposed, a more sane U.S. foreign policy in the region might emerge -- a policy that takes into account what the rest of the world thinks. So far, a great deal is needed to end the misery caused by the unjust, nearly 40-year-old occupation of Palestine. The U.S. must act proactively, doing what Bush senior and James Baker III tried to do with the Shamir government on the eve of the 10 billion loan guarantees and the Madrid Peace process.

The next year or so might provide a small window of opportunity if a Palestinian national unity government is formed, the moderate Arab countries get serious, and Britain along with its European partners makes a real push for Olmert to answer for his country’s illegal occupation and for the obstruction of genuine negotiations.

Article: Richest 2% hold half the world’s assets

2006-12-05T23:46:00.000-08:00

Richest 2% hold half the world’s assets
Financial Times
By Chris Giles, Economics Editor in London
Published: December 5 2006 13:13

Personal wealth is distributed so unevenly across the world that the richest two per cent of adults own more than 50 per cent of the world’s assets while the poorest half hold only 1 per cent of wealth.

A survey released on Tuesday shows that middle-income countries with high growth rates still have a long way to go before they have a hope of catching up with the levels of prosperity of the richest.

Adults with more than $2,200 of assets were in the top half of the global wealth league table, while those with more than $61,000 were in the top 10 per cent, according to the data from the World Institute fpr Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-Wider).

To belong to the top 1 per cent of the world’s wealthiest adults you would need more than $500,000, something that 37m adults have achieved.

So much of the world’s wealth is concentrated in few hands that if all the world’s wealth was distributed evenly, each person would have $20,500 of assets to use.

Almost 90 per cent of the world’s wealth is held in North America, Europe and high-income Asian and Pacific countries, such as Japan and Australia.

While North America has 6 per cent of the world’s adult population, it accounts for 34 per cent of household wealth.

The concentration of wealth in different countries varies considerably, with the top 10 per cent in the US holding 70 per cent of the country’s wealth, compared with 61 per cent in France, 56 per cent in the UK, 44 per cent in Germany and 39 per cent in Japan.

According to Anthony Shorrocks, the director of UNU-Wider, the number of wealthy individuals in a country depends on the size of the population, the average wealth and its inequality.

“China fails to feature strongly among the super-rich because average wealth is modest and wealth is evenly spread by international standards”, he said.

As countries grow richer, their population changes how it holds wealth, according to the report.

In developing countries, property, particularly land and farm assets are important, while cash savings tend to dominate in middle-income counties.

Only in certain advanced countries such as the US and the UK with developed financial sectors is there a strong appetite for holding equities and other more sophisticated financial assets.

Debt is also low in poor countries because financial institutions do not exist to allow people to borrow.

In contrast, the authors say “many people in high-income countries have negative net worth and, somewhat paradoxically, are among the poorest people in the world in terms of household wealth.”

Wealth is difficult to measure even in the most advanced countries, so the research was based on painstaking compilation of aggregate and survey data for the 38 countries of the world where it exists and statistical models for the rest of the world.

Comment: Russia Tests the Limits of Realism

2006-12-05T15:25:00.000-08:00

Russia Tests the Limits of Realism
Financial Times
By Gideon Rachman
Published: December 4 2006 19:23

In the US, outstanding investigative journalists win Pulitzer prizes. In Russia, they get shot. Browsing through the shelves of recent books on modern Russia it is chilling to realise that the authors of two of the most interesting volumes – Anna Politkovskaya and Paul Klebnikov – were subsequently murdered.

It is another killing – the poisoning in London of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian agent – which is today’s cause célèbre. Yegor Gaidar, a former prime minister, is also in hospital – perhaps another victim of a poisoning.

British policemen are heading to Moscow to try to get to the bottom of the Litvinenko case. But one cannot be entirely optimistic about their chances. The unsolved poisoning is an old Russian tradition. Historians are still arguing about the role of poison in the death of Ivan the Terrible in 1584 – as well as in those of Rasputin in 1916 and Maxim Gorky in 1936.

Prolonged exposure to Russian conspiracy theories can be damaging to mental health. But, whoever is behind the recent spate of killings, Vladimir Putin’s Russia looks like an increasingly sinister place. As José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, put it recently: “We have a problem with Russia. In fact, we have several problems. Too many people have been killed and we don’t know who killed them.”

Some western commentators are using much less diplomatic language. Recent opinion pieces in the Wall Street Journal and the Times (of London) have claimed respectively that Russia is “the enemy” and that a “new cold war” is under way.

But there is little appetite in official circles in the west for renewed confrontation with Russia. Germany and France have made it clear long ago that they want to pal up with Mr Putin. Jacques Chirac, French president, recently invited Mr Putin to his birthday party. (He was unable to make it.) Gerhard Schröder, the former German chancellor, has happily taken a position on the board of a subsidiary of Gazprom, the Russian energy giant which is closely associated with the Kremlin.

As for Washington and London, the problems of the Middle East are daunting enough already without seeking a new clash with Russia. It is not just that the war in Iraq sucks up time and resources. Iraq has also damped American and British zeal for promoting democracy and human rights. Foreign policy “realism” is coming back into fashion.

A realist approach to Russia starts by emphasising all the areas in which Europeans and Americans need Russian co-operation – the supply of energy, the control of nuclear proliferation, the war on terror and the containment of Iran – to name a few. A classical realist would recommend conceding the Russians their own “sphere of influence”, in return for co-operation on areas of mutual importance. Realists would not exactly condone murder within Russian borders – and they might sigh at restrictions on the media and non-governmental organisations. But they would insist that arguments over the future of Georgia or Russian NGOs should not be allowed to poison a vital working relationship.

The Iraqi debacle has also fostered an appropriate humility about the ability of western nations to export democracy. The new orthodoxy is that change must come, above all, from within a society and that democracy needs to be grounded in civil institutions and supported by an independent middle-class.

Looked at from this perspective, the picture of Putin’s Russia is not all bad. It is discouraging that the independence of the media and of big business has been steadily eroded in favour of a re-assertion of state power. But there is also real evidence of the emergence of a new middle-class. Driven by high commodity prices, the Russian economy has been growing at nearly 7 per cent a year. This wealth has not simply led to a proliferation of Ferraris and casinos in the centre of Moscow. Ikea, that symbol of middle-class retailing and self-improvement, is becoming a striking presence on the outskirts of Russia’s biggest cities. Russian package tourists are visible from Egypt to Cyprus to the Costa del Sol.

The growth of a Russian middle class may or may not follow the models of political scientists and lead to pressure for political liberalisation. But, after the collapse in Russian living standards in the 1990s, rising affluence is good news in itself – and goes a long way to accounting for the evident popularity of President Putin.

These “realist” points about Russia are important and valid. But the realist perspective also has its limitations. In a globalised world, the idea that the problems of Russia can be safely walled off behind its borders and a notional “sphere of influence” is too sanguine. If Russia continues to try to strangle Georgian independence, that tells us something about the kind of country that we are dealing with on all the other issues. And Litvinenko was, after all, a British citizen assassinated in London.

The billions generated by the commodity boom also means that Russian money, linked to the Russian state, is an increasingly powerful and potentially corrupting force in western Europe. Britain, France and Germany all have ruling political parties that are chronically short of funds and that have proved susceptible in the past to murky financing deals. The sight of Chancellor Schröder signing a deal to build a controversial gas pipeline from Russia to Germany – and then weeks later leaving office to take a job on the pipeline’s supervisory board – is not a pretty one. Who knows what job offers may come Mr Chirac’s way when he steps down next year?

Given Gazprom’s relationship with the Kremlin—and obvious questions about the political direction of Russia—it would be prudent for Europeans to qualify the traditional liberal position that foreign investment is welcome from whatever quarter, provided it is properly regulated. But an expanding presence of Gazprom in western Europe has a political aspect that cannot be ignored.

Mr Putin has exercised a strange fascination over his western colleagues. George W. Bush famously suggested that he had glanced into his Russian counterpart’s soul and liked what he had seen. Others to fall for the charming Russian president have been Messrs Chirac, Schröder and Silvio Berlusconi of Italy.

There are no longer any excuses for infatuation with Mr Putin. But it is usually unwise to swing straight from adoration to loathing. Mr Putin may not be a soulmate. But he is not an enemy of the west either.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

Article: Gates "US not winning in Iraq"

2006-12-05T15:07:00.000-08:00

Gates Says U.S. Not Winning War in Iraq
Nominee Pledges Consultation With Congress, Military Leaders
By William Branigin and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 5, 2006; 3:14 PM

Robert M. Gates, President Bush’s nominee to be the next secretary of defense, told a Senate confirmation hearing today that “all options are on the table” in dealing with the situation in Iraq, and he said he does not believe that U.S. forces currently are winning the war there.

Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gates said in his opening remarks that he is “open to a wide range of ideas and proposals” in Iraq, and he pledged to consult urgently with military leaders, combatant commanders in the field and members of Congress, among others, if confirmed.

He warned that the war in Iraq risks provoking a “regional conflagration” unless a new strategy can arrest the nation’s slide toward chaos. He called the status quo there unacceptable and said Iraq would be his “highest priority.”

Asked by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, whether “you believe we’re currently winning in Iraq,” Gates answered, “No, sir.” He repeated the assessment when asked the same question by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

In response to a later question from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Gates said he came to that conclusion during his service with the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. Until his nomination to lead the Pentagon, Gates was a member of the group, which is scheduled to formally release its long-anticipated recommendations on Iraq tomorrow.

Gates’s view contradicted the appraisal publicly stated by Bush in an Oct. 25 news conference, when he said in response to a question, “Absolutely, we’re winning” in Iraq. Bush added then, “As a matter of fact, my view is the only way we lose in Iraq is if we leave before the job is done.”

Gates, 63, a former CIA director and national security adviser who spent 26 years in the intelligence community, was nominated by Bush to replace Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld a day after the Nov. 7 midterm elections, which handed control of the House and Senate to the Democrats.

“What we are now doing is not satisfactory,” Gates told the outgoing committee chairman, Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.).

Noting that Bush wants someone with “fresh eyes” to assess the situation in Iraq, the nominee said, “In my view, all options are on the table, in terms of how we address this problem in Iraq, in terms of how we can be more successful and how we can, at some point, begin to draw down our forces.”

He later said the options he regards as on the table include one recently listed in a memo by Rumsfeld: beginning modest U.S. withdrawals so that Iraqi leaders know they have to “pull up their socks” and take more responsibility for their country.

Gates also said his open-minded approach extends to the prospect that the United States might need to hold direct bilateral talks with Iran and Syria, a step that Bush so far has refused to consider. Iran, which is led by a Shiite Muslim theocracy, has been accused of meddling in neighboring Iraq by supplying and training Shiite militias. The Bush administration has charged that Syria has allowed radical Islamic foreign fighters to use its territory to infiltrate into Iraq and wage war against the Iraqi government and U.S. forces.

Answering a question from Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) on whether Iraq is “the central battlefront in the war on terror,” as Bush has repeatedly asserted, Gates voiced a more nuanced view.

“I think that it is one of the central fronts in the war on terror,” he said. He cited “a metastasized terror threat” from radical Muslim “jihadists,” or holy warriors, since the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, saying that “indigenous radicals” in countries such as Britain, Spain and the United States “are in fact planning terrorist operations and activities.”

While Iraq “certainly is an important front in the war on terror,” Gates said, “I think we face a more dispersed threat that’s really a very amorphous kind of second front.”

Gates said historians would decide whether the U.S. invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do, although he acknowledged he supported the war when it was launched in March 2003.

“Was the decision to go in right? I think it’s too soon to tell,” Gates told the committee. His comment stood in sharp contrast to Bush’s unwavering public certitude that he made the correct choice in ordering U.S. forces into Iraq to depose the regime of Saddam Hussein.

While he is open to new ideas, Gates said in his opening statement, he feels strongly that developments in Iraq will shape the future of the entire Middle East, possibly with dire consequences.

“Our course over the next year or two will determine whether the American and Iraqi people and the next president of the United States will face a slowly and steadily improving situation in Iraq and in the region or will face the very real risk of a regional conflagration,” he said.

Gates said his “greatest worry” about Iraq is that if U.S. forces leave the country “in chaos,” a variety of regional powers will become involved, “and we will have a regional conflict on our hands.”

More broadly, Gates said, when it comes to waging the war on terrorism, the United States must achieve the same kind of bipartisan agreement that prevailed over the generations during the Cold War. He said such consistency is “imperative” to carry on “this long war” in a way that America’s enemies “don’t think we’re going to cut and run.” He pledged to work with members of Congress from both parties “to see if we can forge that kind of bipartisan approach going forward” so that those who want to harm the United States “know we’re in it for the long haul.”

In Iraq, Gates said, the U.S. military presence is likely to continue for “a long time,” although it could be “dramatically smaller” than the current level of 140,000 troops.

In examining the options in Iraq, Gates said he would “give most serious consideration to the opinions” of U.S. military commanders—consideration that some of those commanders have privately complained Rumsfeld did not give them.

The nominee acknowledged that, in retrospect, the United States should have sent more forces into Iraq to control the country after the 2003 invasion. But he told a skeptical McCain that U.S. commanders in Iraq did not indicate they needed more troops during his consultations with them in Baghdad as a member of the Iraq Study Group.

Gates also said the U.S. “de-Baathification” policy after the invasion was a mistake and that members of Hussein’s ruling Baath Party should have been offered a role in the new Iraq.

Warner opened the hearing by telling Gates, “You simply have to be fearless—I repeat, fearless”—in advising the president on Iraq and other critical defense matters. Gates responded later by saying that, especially because his decisions would have life or death consequences for U.S. troops, he had no intention of being “a bump on a log” and would express his views candidly.

Gates, who is president of Texas A&M University, said he has known some of the 12 university students who have been killed in Iraq. “This all comes down to being very personal for all of us,” he said, noting specifically that 2,889 troops have died in Iraq as of yesterday.

Recently, he said, a woman approached him who has two sons serving in Iraq and pleaded with him, “For God’s sake, bring them home safe.”

“Now, that’s real pressure,” Gates told the committee.

After the morning session, Levin told reporters that he and his fellow Democrats thought Gates delivered “a very positive presentation” that “bodes well for a speedy confirmation” and for a “change in direction” in Iraq.

Today’s hearing offered a glimpse into how aggressive Democratic lawmakers—many of whom are seeking a phased pullout of troops from Iraq—may be once they assume the Senate and House majorities in January.

If confirmed, Gates would take the helm at a time when the United States is pressing the fledgling Iraqi government and nascent military to crack down on Shiite Muslim militias and Sunni Muslim insurgents. The Bush administration also is planning to shift troops from elsewhere in Iraq into Baghdad in an effort to clamp down on violence; and, more broadly, is considering new options and strategies in Iraq in search of a way to resolve the entrenched, 3 1/2 -year-old military conflict.

In his opening remarks, Levin, who will assume the chairmanship of the committee in January, listed a string of what he called U.S. failures in Iraq. The administration failed to send in sufficient forces at the start, then “thoughtlessly disbanded the Iraqi army” and banned low-level Baathists from employment, Levin said. In the more than three years since, the United States has failed to secure Iraq, defeat the insurgency, disarm militias, create a viable police force, rebuild the economy or provide employment, he said.

“The next secretary of defense will have to deal with the consequences of those failures,” Levin said.

Warner praised Gates’s “long and distinguished record of service to the nation” and hailed the nomination of a new defense secretary at a time when, Warner said, change in Iraq policy is sorely needed. He urged Bush to review the Iraq Study Group’s report and other policy recommendations, and then seek bipartisan consensus before formulating new Iraq strategies.

“To me, this fulfills a moral obligation that our government, executive and legislative, has to the brave men and women of the armed forces of the United States and their families, who have sacrificed very, very heavily,” Warner said.

Gates is widely expected to be confirmed as defense secretary by the full Senate, likely before the end of the week, when Congress may adjourn for the year. But some Democrats indicated before today’s hearing that they wanted to revisit old questions Gates faced in 1991, during a bruising battle to become director of the Central Intelligence Agency during the presidential term of Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush.

Levin opposed Gates’s confirmation 15 years ago, in part because Gates had been accused of skewing intelligence reports while at the CIA. The senator has said he wants assurances that Gates will be more independent-minded in his new job.

Referring to Iraq, Levin told reporters before the hearing, “We’ve had enough [of] manipulating intelligence . . . in order to give the policymakers what they wanted to hear.”

Early this morning, Bush and Gates ate breakfast together at the White House, then appeared briefly before reporters so the president could endorse his nominee. “Bob Gates will be a fine secretary of defense,” Bush said. “I hope for speedy confirmation so he can get sworn in and get to work.

“Those who wear the uniform know they’ll have a friend in Bob Gates.”

Staff writer Debbi Wilgoren contributed to this report.

Gates says ‘US not winning in Iraq’
Financial Times
By Demetri Sevastopulo and Guy Dinmore in Washington
Published: December 5 2006 16:22

Robert Gates, chosen by President George W. Bush to replace Donald Rumsfeld as defence secretary, on Tuesday acknowledged the US was not winning the war in Iraq.

Asked at his nomination hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee whether the US was winning in Iraq, Mr Gates responded: “No Sir.”

His blunt reply, exceeding previous comments from Bush administration officials, came the day before the Iraq Study Group, the bi-partisan commission mandated by Congress to examine US policy on Iraq, is expected to release its recommendations.

His response drew praise from Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who will chair the Armed Services Committee from January. “Your acknowledgement that we’re not winning in Iraq, frankly, is a necessary, refreshing breath of reality that is so needed if we’re going to look at ways of changing course in Iraq to maximise the chances of success,” said Mr Levin.

Mr Gates’s remarks went further than those of Mr Bush, who has said only that things are not going well in Iraq.

But later in his testimony, the nominee said he agreed with a statement by General Peter Pace, the chairman of the joint chiefs, that the US was neither winning nor losing.

Mr Gates said he was open to a “wide range” of ideas for US policy on Iraq. But the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency – who himself was an ISG member until being nominated to replace the controversial Mr Rumsfeld – said he did not believe the group’s recommendations would be the “last word”.

“It’s my impression that … there are no new ideas on Iraq,” said Mr Gates. “The list of tactics, the list of strategies, the list of approaches, is pretty much out there. And the question is: is there a way to put pieces of those different proposals together in a way that provides a path forward?”

Mr Gates said the next two years in Iraq would be crucial in determining whether the US could help the country stabilise itself.

“Our course over the next year or two will determine whether American and Iraqi people and the next president of the US will face a slowly but steadily improving situation in Iraq and in the region, or will face the very real risk and possible reality of a regional conflagration.” Mr Gates was also outspoken on Iran saying he would only advise an attack on the country as an “absolute last resort”.

“We have seen in Iraq that once war is unleashed, it becomes unpredictable. And I think that the consequences of a military conflict with Iran could be quite dramatic.”

Mr Gates added he did not support an attack on Syria, which, along with Iran, the US has accused of meddling in Iraq. His reservations on military action against Iran were a shot across the bows of weakened but still influential neo-conservatives in Washington who have called for strikes against the Islamic republic’s nuclear facilities.

Glen Howard, president of the Jamestown Foundation, a security think-tank, said: “The neo-cons are regrouping around the Iran threat.”

Analysts said Mr Gates was believed to have supported the expected ISG recommendation for the US to engage with Iran and Syria to try to help end the Iraq war.

Editorial: Global Warming Goes to Court

2006-12-04T22:58:00.000-08:00

New York Times
Published: November 28, 2006

The Bush administration has been on a six-year campaign to expand its powers, often beyond what the Constitution allows. So it is odd to hear it claim that it lacks the power to slow global warming by limiting the emission of harmful gases. But that is just what it will argue to the Supreme Court tomorrow, in what may be the most important environmental case in many years.

A group of 12 states, including New York and Massachusetts, is suing the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to properly do its job. These states, backed by environmental groups and scientists, say that the Clean Air Act requires the E.P.A. to impose limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted by new cars. These gases are a major contributor to the “greenhouse effect” that is dangerously heating up the planet.

The Bush administration insists that the E.P.A. does not have the power to limit these gases. It argues that they are not “air pollutants” under the Clean Air Act. Alternatively, it contends that the court should dismiss the case because the states do not have “standing,” since they cannot show that they will be specifically harmed by the agency’s failure to regulate greenhouse gases.

A plain reading of the Clean Air Act shows that the states are right. The act says that the E.P.A. “shall” set standards for “any air pollutant” that in its judgment causes or contributes to air pollution that “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” The word “welfare,” the law says, includes “climate” and “weather.” The E.P.A. makes an array of specious arguments about why the act does not mean what it expressly says. But it has no right to refuse to do what Congress said it “shall” do.

Beneath the statutory and standing questions, this is a case about how seriously the government takes global warming. The E.P.A.’s decision was based in part on its poorly reasoned conclusion that there was too much “scientific uncertainty” about global warming to worry about it. The government’s claim that the states lack standing also scoffs at global warming, by failing to acknowledge that the states have a strong interest in protecting their land and citizens against coastal flooding and the other kinds of damage that are being projected.

In a friend-of-the-court brief, climate scientists from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Stanford University and other respected institutions warn that “the scientific evidence of the risks, long time lags and irreversibility of climate change argue persuasively for prompt regulatory action.” The Supreme Court can strike an important blow in defense of the planet simply by ruling that the E.P.A. must start following the law.

Article: Bristol Bay

2006-12-04T16:41:00.000-08:00

Bush Mulls Resumed Energy Drilling Off Alaska
New York Times
December 4, 2006

By FELICITY BARRINGER
WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 — President Bush is considering whether to lift the 17-year-old moratorium on energy drilling in the waters off southwestern Alaska, a White House spokeswoman said Sunday, which would allow oil and gas companies to try to tap into more than five trillion cubic feet of natural gas that lies beneath rich fishing grounds.

The push to market oil and gas leases in these waters, which oil and gas companies favor, is part of a larger national effort to expand domestic supplies of fossil fuel by opening up areas of the outer continental shelf, long off-limits to energy development.

Last summer the Interior Department recommended reopening several areas of the outer continental shelf, including the southern part of Bristol Bay, which lies just north of where the Aleutian Islands meet the Alaskan mainland, to energy exploration. The report said that 14 oil and gas companies had supported the idea. The department has estimated that such a move could create up to 11,500 jobs, part of what it describes as “net benefits” of $7.7 billion.

In a letter to President Bush on Friday, a coalition of environmental groups, including the Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Counsel, citing the impact of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, called the bay “an economically critical salmon fishery,” adding that “it provides essential habitat for the endangered northern right whale.”

The executive director of Greenpeace, John Passacantando, said Sunday that the Bering Sea was “the most intact marine ecosystem in United States waters” and that Bristol Bay was “among the most important parts of the Bering Sea.”

Asked about the potential impact of an outer continental shelf leasing program confined to the southern waters of the bay, Mr. Passacantando said: “The energy industry ultimately gives you things that look like the Exxon Valdez. It was because of the threat of this kind of spill that that leases were initially rescinded.”

He was referring to a handful of oil leases that were granted in the southern part of Bristol Bay in 1988, then bought back by the federal government after the Exxon Valdez supertanker, with a captain who had been drinking, ran aground on Bligh Reef in March 1989. The tanker ruptured and spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into the sound.

The Alaska Economic Development Commission has supported opening the area to expand economic diversification, and has concluded that the impact on marine life can be “fully mitigated,” the Interior Department reported.

When Congress, acting at the urging of Alaska’s senior senator, Ted Stevens, a Republican, rescinded its protections for Bristol Bay in 2003, the area remained protected by earlier presidential decisions, first by President George Bush in 1991 and then, in 1998, by President Bill Clinton, who put the area off-limits to energy leasing until 2012.

There has been widespread speculation among environmental groups and fishing industry representatives that President Bush would end the moratorium during the lame-duck session of Congress, allowing the Interior Department to proceed with its plans to market oil and gas leases in the southern section of the bay, along the north coast of the Aleutian Islands.

The Associated Press reported over the weekend that the administration was considering ending the moratorium, a report that was confirmed by a White House spokeswoman, Emily Lawrimore. She would not comment on the merits of the debate but said the president was considering whether to end the leasing moratorium.

Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a statement Sunday that “executive withdrawal on oil and gas leasing in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, one of our nation’s most sensitive fisheries, combined with House Republicans scheduling a vote next week to expand offshore drilling off Florida’s coast, only underscores that G.O.P. stands for Gas and Oil Party.”

Mr. Markey added, “The administration should be leading efforts to increase fuel economy standards, which would dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”

Comment: There is much more at stake for America than Iraq

2006-12-04T16:36:00.000-08:00

There is much more at stake for America than Iraq
Financial Times
By Zbigniew Brzezinski
Published: December 4 2006 19:17

This is the week in which a painful truth finally came calling on power in the Oval Office of the White House. The president, though still mouthing his self-reassuring slogans to the public, has on his desk two documents, each telling him in effect that “mission accomplished” has turned into mission bust.

Superficially, the two documents could not be more different. Donald Rumsfeld’s memo on the conduct of the military operations in Iraq, submitted just prior to his sudden dismissal, is a very brief and highly personal summary of the various tactical adjustments that might be considered in the light of the setbacks in fighting the Iraqi insurgency. It conveys anxiety but offers no strategic alternative.

The long-awaited Baker-Hamilton Study Group report assessing broader US policy options in Iraq is a lengthy compromise statement reflecting a typical, middle-of-the-road consensus among an elite Washington “focus group”, composed of esteemed individuals not handicapped by much historical or geopolitical familiarity with the region’s problems.

Arguing for conditional military redeployment from Iraq, it offers sound advice on the desirability of wider diplomatic initiatives to engage Iraq’s neighbours in a collective search for regional stability, including the belated need to tackle seriously the lingering Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The real importance of both documents is in what they do not say explicitly but implicitly convey: that the war has been a disaster; that the US must find a way to disengage by handing over the mess it created to the Iraqi leaders that the US itself had elevated to power; and that eventually the US may have to leave while blaming those same leaders for the US failure to cope. That notion is implicit even in some of Mr Rumsfeld’s options and it is inherent in the 16-months deadline set by the Baker-Hamilton group for eventual US military disengagement.

Neither document faces squarely two basic and troubling realities: that since in Iraq (except for Kurdistan) real power is not in the hands of the Iraqi politicians resident in the US-protected Green Zone in Baghdad, any political solution must engage the Shia theocracy, with its militias; and that the longer the American occupation continues, the already declining US influence in the Middle East will give way to regional extremism and instability, especially if continuing indecision over the basic strategic choices in Iraq continue to be matched by US unwillingness to address the negative regional consequences of Israel’s prolonged and increasingly repressive occupation of the Palestinians.

The combination of the two has already elevated Iran’s geopolitical power in the region. Hence the need of the moment is not for tactical tinkering or long consensus reports. Can one imagine Charles de Gaulle in the late 1950s waiting weeks for a long study by French public figures on how to end the Algerian war that was damaging France’s national unity and international reputation? Leadership derived from a sense of history requires sometimes the cutting of Gordian knots, not tying oneself up in knots.

The president, and America’s political leadership, must recognise that the US role in the world is being gravely undermined by the policies launched more than three years ago. The destructive war in Iraq, the hypocritical indifference to the human dimensions of the stalemate in Israeli- Palestinian relations, the lack of diplomatic initiative in dealing with Iran and the frequent use of Islamophobic rhetoric are setting in motion forces that threaten to push America out of the Middle East, with dire consequences for itself and its friends in Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

America needs a strategic change of course, and it has to be undertaken on a broad front. It must accept the fact that real leadership in Iraq should be based on a coalition of the Shia clergy commanding the loyalty of Shia militias and of the autonomous Kurds and that the sooner a date is set for US departure, the sooner the authentic Iraqi leaders will be able to enlist Iraq’s neighbours in a wider regional effort to promote a more stable Iraq. It must also engage its allies in a joint definition of the basic parameters of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, for the two parties to the conflict will never do so on their own. Last but not least, the US must be ready to pursue multilateral and bilateral talks with Iran, including regional security issues.

In brief, the immediate dilemma is Iraq but the larger stake is the future of the Middle East.

The writer, former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, is author of “The Choice” (Basic Books)

Article: Hardline, Uncompromising Conservative Bites Dust

2006-12-04T16:33:00.000-08:00

Bolton resigns as US ambassador to UN
By Caroline Daniel in Washington and Mark Turner in New York
Published: December 4 2006 14:35
Financial Times

The White House on Monday bowed to the political realities imposed by the new Democratic Congress when it accepted John Bolton’s resignation as Ambassador to the United Nations, ending his combative, controversial tenure.

His departure marks the second high profile resignation of Mr Bush’s long serving foreign policy team after the November mid-term elections. Tony Snow, White House spokesman, admitted defeat saying, it was “pretty obvious” he wasn’t going to get the votes from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Mr Bolton had become to his critics an unpopular symbol of an aggressive, unilateralist style of US foreign policy. President George W. Bush on Monday hailed his record and his “extraordinary dedication and skill, assembling coalitions that addressed some of the most consequential issues facing the international community,” such as the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea.

The White House decision last month to re-nominate Mr Bolton – who had needed to be imposed in a recess appointment – was seen by some political analysts as a strategic mistake, undermining Mr Bush’s immediate rhetoric of bi-partisanship and was always doomed to fail. Joe Biden, the incoming Democrat chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, warned he saw no point in reconsidering it.

“The administration made a minor mistake over John Bolton,” said Vin Weber, a Republican strategist. “His resignation is a recognition of the fact the administration is in the process of sorting out what its new relationship with Capital Hill looks like.”

However, Norm Ornstein, resident scholar fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said it had made sense to pursue it, even if failure was inevitable. “It was a balancing act with his conservative base, and an effort to show some loyalty.”

The White House was reluctant to present it as a conciliatory move for Democrats. Mr Bush blamed “stubborn obstructionism,” while Mr Snow said the “appointments process is broken,” and charged that “for reasons of partisanship a handful of senators prevented him remaining UN ambassador.”

Opposition to Mr Bolton was not just confined to Democrats. Lincoln Chafee, a Republican moderate who lost his Senate seat, also blocked Mr Bolton’s nomination. Democrats, such as Senator John Kerry, were quick to claim a scalp. “Like Secretary Rumsfeld’s departure, Ambassador Bolton’s resignation offers a chance to turn the page at a critical period.” He called for a new ambassador “who has the full support of Congress,” and “who can put results ahead of ideology.”

Mr Bolton will leave at the end of lame duck congressional session. The announcement comes at a difficult time for the UN. While Mr Bolton saw through several important UN resolutions on Lebanon, Iran and other trouble spots over recent months, the permanent five are once more struggling to make policy on the fast-evolving situation around the Middle East.

Talks on Iran are currently being held by political directors, not ambassadors, but the dossier is expected to return to the UN before Christmas. Serious challenges remain in Darfur, Somalia and Lebanon; and the UN is still struggling to find a way through on internal reforms.

Opinion Blog
UK Times

John Bolton has resigned as US Ambassador to the UN. The Economist argued that his main success has been to unite the southern hemisphere against the rich north. Newt Gingrich in this National Review article from last year defended Bolton from the accusation that he is too tough, rough and uncompromising. From the Left, the stalkerish website Bolton Watch has been keeping tabs on him. And here you can read The Nation’s take on Bolton’s original appointment:

Perhaps the real damage is the signal Bush has sent to the other members of the UN: that the United States is not really serious about the organization it helped to found. Almost as worrying is the implicit message of encouragement to the know-nothings on the extreme right of the Republican Party, who get their news and geography from Rush Limbaugh and Fox, and see the UN as a cabal of gun-reforming, gay-liberating, abortion-peddling, US Constitution-undermining foreigners.

But does the UN deserve to be treated seriously? If you read Rosemary Righter’s splendid (but long) piece in The Times Literary Supplement, the answer will have to be “no”. The UN is looking rather beside the point.

The UN no longer exists, as it did in 1945, in lonely eminence. It must compete for influence in a world of instant communications and multiple voices, and of networks inside and outside government that operate across frontiers with unprecedented ease. Globalization is transforming not only the world economy, but also the relations between governments and their increasingly mobile, disconcertingly better-informed citizens. The inter-state threats which the UN’s security machinery was designed to address have been largely displaced by the problems of collapsing, dysfunctional states and the globalization of organized crime and terrorist networks.

Bolton quits as UN envoy for Bush Administration
Tim Reid, Washington
Comment Central: Was he what the UN deserves?

John Bolton, the controversial ambassador to the United Nations, resigned today after it became clear that President Bush was unable to muster support for his reappointment.

Mr Bush, who received Mr Bolton’s resignation letter on Friday, said he was “deeply disappointed” that a “handful” of senators had blocked the appointment. But the resignation reflected the new reality in Washington of a greatly weakened president who, with Democrats now controlling the House and Senate, can no longer count on getting what he wants.

He is the second high-profile casualty of that change in the balance of power in last month’s mid-term elections following Mr Bush’s removal of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defence. Confirmation hearings for his successor Robert Gates begin tomorrow.

Mr Bolton, a blunt, irascible hawk who earlier in his career expressed contempt for the UN, was unable to get Senate confirmation last year and was installed to the post by Mr Bush in August 2005 by means of a recess appointment, when Congress was not in session. Recess appointments are temporary, and without formal confirmation this month Mr Bolton’s tenure at the UN will expire when the current session of Congress adjourns on January 3.

As recently as last week Mr Bush was adamant that Mr Bolton should remain at the UN despite the fact that he lacked the votes on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to move the nomination to a full floor vote.

The White House had been looking for yet another way around the impasse, one option being to appoint him as an “acting” ambassador for another few months. But Mr Bolton’s fate was effectively sealed with the Democrats’ takeover of the Senate after last month’s mid-term elections. Joe Biden, the incoming chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he saw “no point in considering Mr Bolton’s nomination again.

The final blow came after Lincoln Chaffee, a moderate Republican on the committee who lost his Rhode Island seat on November 7, said he would not vote for Mr Bolton if the nomination was considered in the final weeks of this congressional session.

John Kerry, Mr Bush’s 2004 Democratic challenger, said Mr Bolton’s departure could be a turning point for the Administration.

“With the Middle East on the verge of chaos and the nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea increasing, we need a United Nations ambassador who has the full support of Congress and can help rally the international community to tackle the serious threats we face,” Mr Kerry said.

There was no word from the White House on who will be nominated to replace Mr Bolton, but the choice will say much about the tenor of Mr Bush’s diplomatic intentions during his last two years in office.

One possible contender is the Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, Mr Bush’s current ambassador to Iraq. One of the Administration’s most skilled diplomats, there has been a growing expectation that after nearly 18 months in Baghdad Mr Khalilzad’s time in Iraq is coming to a close, particularly as his relentless efforts to co-opt Iraq’s Sunni minority into the political process has had little success.

Mr Bolton’s hardline, uncompromising conservatism meant he was deemed totally unsuitable for the job by Democrats and some moderate Republicans, particularly with his 1994 comment that if the UN building in New York lost ten storeys “it wouldn’t make a bit of difference”. But Mr Bush believed he was the perfect choice to force reform at the UN.

Since he took up the post, Mr Bolton has won over many former critics in the UN and has achieved some notable successes on the Security Council. He pushed through a strong sanctions resolution against North Korea within days of Pyongyang’s October 9 nuclear test, and worked successfully with France to broker and oversee the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon

December 4, 2006
At U.N., Mixed Views of Bolton’s Tenure

By WARREN HOGE
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 4 — The announcement today of John R. Bolton’s imminent departure was greeted by United Nations officials with relief and by diplomats with mixed assessments of his effectiveness during his 17 months as the United States ambassador.

“No comment, he said with a smile,” Mark Malloch Brown, the deputy secretary general, said over his shoulder to reporters who pursued him as he hustled through the corridors of U.N. headquarters on his way to a meeting.

Mr. Malloch Brown angered Mr. Bolton this summer by accusing the United States of “stealth diplomacy” — turning to the United Nations when Washington needed it, while continuing to publicly disdain the institution’s value and to encourage its harshest detractors.

At the time, Mr. Bolton demanded a personal apology from Secretary General Kofi Annan, but did not get it.

Mr. Bolton’s relationship with Mr. Annan was also marked by testiness. He repeatedly ducked opportunities offered by reporters to praise or commend Mr. Annan, usually by changing the subject or by saying, as he did on one such occasion last month, “I’ll pass.”

A year ago, Mr. Annan startled Security Council ambassadors at one of their monthly luncheons by chastising Mr. Bolton for trying to “intimidate” him.

Mr. Annan told reporters today: “It is difficult to blame one individual ambassador for difficulties on some of these issues, whether it is reform or some other issues. But I think what I have always maintained is that it is important that the ambassadors work together, that the ambassadors understand that to get concessions, they have to make concessions, and they need to work with each other for the organization to move ahead.”

Security Council ambassadors said they respected Mr. Bolton personally and that they thought he represented the United States well, but they said his manner — often described as abrupt and confrontational — alienated traditional American allies and undercut American influence.

They said that in areas where he was clearly taking his instructions from Washington, he performed well. But when it came to the objective that he described as the United States’s priority and on which he planted his personal stamp — overhauling the management of the U.N. — he was unsuccessful.

Of course, even Mr. Bolton’s success in championing the Bush administration represented a problem for him at the world organization, where that policy is perceived as disdainful of diplomacy itself, heedless in its effects on others and single-minded in its assertion of American interests.

“I think he was serious about the American objective here of reforming the United Nations, and he pushed hard,” said Wang Guangya, the Chinese ambassador. “But of course, sometimes in order to achieve the objective, you have to work together with others.”

Adamantios Vassilakis, the Greek ambassador, said: “I had a good personal relationship with him. Sometimes it was not easy, but we managed to find a solution whenever I dealt with him.”

A third ambassador from a Security Council member state, asking to speak anonymously when commenting on a fellow envoy, said, “People here are not against the United States, but I think the United States lost a lot of things because of Bolton’s tactics.”

In Moscow, the Novosti news agency quoted a Russian foreign ministry spokesman saying that Mr. Bolton had been “a very strong professional, although on a series of issues, including problems of U.N. reform, he supported extremely severe views.”

The spokesman added that he hoped President Bush would nominate a successor without “excessive severity in his approach.”

Mr. Vassilakis said he thought Mr. Bolton had been particularly effective in obtaining Security Council backing for resolutions condemning North Korea’s nuclear program, but less so in gaining support for joint action against Iran’s nuclear program. “But then, Iran is more complicated,” he said.

On Mr. Bolton’s campaign to bring about change in United Nations practices, he said, “I might say I would personally push for the same thing with different tactics, but that’s a different story.”

Asked about achievements of Mr. Bolton, both Mr. Wang and Mr. Vassilakis noted approvingly a simple but dramatic step Mr. Bolton took a year ago, when the United States held the rotating presidency of the Security Council. Mr. Bolton insisted that Council meetings begin on time, and to illustrate the point, he gaveled the first meeting of his tenure to order at the appointed hour even though he was the only ambassador in the chamber at the time.

“I think, generally speaking, he wanted the council to work more effectively and he wanted to change the working habits here so we started punctually,” he said.

Mr. Vassilakis said, “Starting on time is an important thing, because the interpreters are paid, and if we say we are going to start at 10 and we start at 10:30, they cash their salary early.”

Mr. Bolton is leaving his post just weeks before Mr. Annan, who completes his second five-year term in office on Dec. 31, leaves his. “Yes,” Mr. Annan said today, “we are both graduating together.”

Comment: What use the UN?

2006-12-04T16:32:00.000-08:00

Times Online
What use the UN?
Rosemary Righter
July 19, 2006

Paul Kennedy
THE PARLIAMENT OF MAN

Thirty years ago in Rome, a French minister started his speech to the general assembly of the Food and Agriculture Organization, a UN body so scandal-ridden that it was even then a joke, by pronouncing, very slowly, the words: “A . . . quoi . . . bon, le FAO?”. In the 1970s, that was shocking stuff; but it is, or ought to be, the starting point for any study of the UN.

Paul Kennedy’s answer to that “what use” question is unequivocally positive. The argument of his latest book, The Parliament of Man, “rests on the reasonable assumption that whether we approve of the organisation’s past record or not, the changes taking place in world society will make us turn to it again and again”. How reasonable is that assumption? Could the opposite be equally true?

Oscar Wilde once observed that a map of the world that did not contain Utopia was not worth looking at. No matter that he would not have cared to live there, or that the delusions of the twentieth century were to give politicians terrible cause to write “here be dragons” on those parts of the globe where the engineers of utopian ideologies were at work. The allure of a world made fresh and new lurks deep within us, if only as a compensating myth to shore against disorderly realities.
It is impossible to read the preamble to the Charter of the United Nations without being moved by its affirmation of the triumph of hope over searing experience. “We the peoples . . . determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind . . . reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person.”

These are words written in the hot ashes of the Second World War, words about justice, respect for the rule of law and “social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom”. It is hard to muster the same emotions about the United Nations itself, whose creation was announced by that same Charter. “The peoples” fade out with the preamble; they do not figure in the rest of the text, or for that matter in most UN business ever since. With the single exception of such corporatist oddities as the International Labour Organization, a leftover from the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, the United Nations was, and is, exclusively the realm of governments. At various times people become aware how many governments violate the Charter’s principles, without forfeiting their good standing at the UN. But most people have not the faintest idea what goes on there; and, beyond vaguely supposing that the UN must be a good thing, depressingly few people care to find out.

“The scourge of war” is with us, as it was always going to be. But in any of the great questions of war and peace, the United Nations has seldom been more than a bit player. In an early instance of its enduring penchant for optimistic fictions, the UN’s own information department described the Security Council as “a supreme war-making organization”.

It was never anything of the kind. Even if the Cold War had not swiftly put paid to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wartime vision of “four policemen” (the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and, implausibly, Nationalist China) collectively presiding over international security, the UN was essentially a containment mechanism, not a machine for “making war on war”. Over six decades, the Korean War of 1950–53 remains the only war to have been fought under the UN flag, and even then the commanding general was American, and the orders came from Washington and not New York. The Cold War blunted the UN even as a containment device; over the next four decades, 22 million people died in 150 separate conflicts, more than 125 of those conflicts in the developing world. The invention in 1956 of blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers to monitor agreed ceasefires was a brilliant but limited improvisation.

Politically, the UN exerted no influence on the great transformations of the late twentieth century, the collapse of European Communism and the end of the Cold War. That, too, was hardly surprising. More surprising was its stumbling thereafter. In the turbulent decade-and-a-half since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the whole notion of collective security has been tested almost to the point of destruction. The UN’s authority as the source of international legitimacy has been thrown further into question, first in Kosovo, where NATO decided not to seek Security Council authorization which it knew would not be forthcoming, and then, dramatically, in 2003 over Iraq.

As to the Charter’s vision of social progress, the transformation of the world economy since 1945 has indeed brought “better standards of life” within the reach of billions. Not only, however, has the UN’s contribution to development been marginal, but the development tail has come to wag the UN dog. The UN’s specialized agencies were designed as places for experts to exchange ideas, not as the bureaucratic dispensers of a multilateral Maundy money. The doctrinaire tiers-mondisme that came to dominate UN forums in the 1970s held back progress, by over-promoting the role of the State and by encouraging incompetent and corrupt governments to see development aid as a perk to which they were automatically entitled and could use, or more commonly abuse, as they pleased.

Only in the realm of human rights can the UN claim to have made a distinctive and indispensable contribution. Moral touchstones do matter. The high purposes proclaimed at San Francisco in 1945 and in the ambitious Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948 have retained their resonance, encouraging a change in thinking about the duties that states owe to their citizens and about the pressures that may legitimately be brought to bear against gross violations of human rights, even where these do not directly threaten international peace and security. Along with the provision of humanitarian assistance, it is in this area that the UN today – despite the lamentable recent failure to make a clean break with the hideous politicization of the UN’s human rights machinery – comes closest to connecting with “the peoples” it was created to serve. There are now dozens of highly effective human rights organizations outside the UN, but all of them benefit from the traction exerted on governments by UN conventions.

The modesty of the UN’s place in world affairs has not prevented the global bureaucracy from expanding massively since 1945 – expanding, as distinct from adapting. Successive efforts at UN reform – and there have been dozens, dating as far back as 1949 – have left the beach more cluttered with debris than before. The consequence of all this “institution-building”, to use a hallowed UN phrase, is complexity and loss of focus. Even the supposedly “political” UN in New York is choked, intellectually as well as physically, by no fewer than a hundred programmes and units, with often overlapping remits, ranging from statistics to family planning, child welfare and gender equality, the urban habitat and even a committee on geographical names.

The “functional” UN, a polycentric cluster of autonomous agencies with their own governing bodies, has proliferated likewise; there are now more than twenty bodies with some kind of agricultural remit, four drugs agencies at the last count, and literally dozens of emergency relief units fighting each other for funds.
The question that thus poses itself is this: in a world that the UN’s founders would have trouble recognizing, what is the comparative advantage of global organizations? Even if we accept multilateral cooperation as a fact of life, do we need all the global machinery that has accumulated over the decades, in a process that more nearly resembles a galactic accident than organic growth led by demand?

Before and especially since 9/11, the effort to reshape our thinking about what constitutes security in a globalized world has exposed severe doctrinal, political, structural and procedural weaknesses in the frameworks devised in and after 1945. The mismatch between supply and demand has become an embarrassment to the UN’s supporters, and an irritant to those politicians still prepared to take it seriously as a vehicle for international cooperation.

How relevant, then, are these bodies to the decisions politicians must take, or to people’s lives? Can the touted advantages of universal membership be mobilized for the common good? Or is there, finally, something inherently anachronistic about purely governmental clubs, populated for the most part by backbiting diplomatic generalists, wrapped in a bureaucratic cocoon where nationality, length of service and political connections outweigh dedication and competence?

The UN no longer exists, as it did in 1945, in lonely eminence. It must compete for influence in a world of instant communications and multiple voices, and of networks inside and outside government that operate across frontiers with unprecedented ease. Globalization is transforming not only the world economy, but also the relations between governments and their increasingly mobile, disconcertingly better-informed citizens. The inter-state threats which the UN’s security machinery was designed to address have been largely displaced by the problems of collapsing, dysfunctional states and the globalization of organized crime and terrorist networks.

In times of rapid change, flexibility is all-important – and flexibility is not a word readily associated with the UN. Institutions are made for man, not the other way round. Institutional inflation, hardened political and bureaucratic arteries, and confidence-sapping internal scandals make the UN a difficult place to get things done. Where alternative channels exist, they are therefore likely to be used.

Professor Kennedy’s American publishers have chosen to market his book as “the first definitive history of the United Nations”; his English publishers as “the first full analysis”. As a bibliography, had one been included, would presumably have made clear, neither claim is accurate. The first attempt to get to grips with the great organizational sprawl clustered under the UN umbrella was Inis Claude’s still impressive Swords into Ploughshares, published four decades ago; students of international affairs have been falling asleep for years over Evan Luard’s worthily compendious volumes; there have been countless collections of academic essays examining the UN from multiple angles and – declaring an interest here – my own less reverent anatomy of the beast appeared eleven years ago.

The untutored enthusiasms of publishers’ blurb writers can be an acute embarrassment to authors and an irritation to readers who have purchased a book under a false prospectus; but in this case, the American subtitle’s grand claim to illuminate “the past, present and future of the United Nations”, implies a certain complicity. (The difference in the subtitles of these two editions is significant. In the US, to have presented this as the story of “the quest for world government” would have fanned the wilder conspiracy theories of the American Right; in Europe, the reaction is more likely to be an approving nod from the bien pensant and mild weariness elsewhere at the reappearance of a well-worn and misleading cliché.)

Kennedy’s project, whose genesis lies in his co-chairmanship a decade ago of one of the innumerable reform panels of the great and the good, offers neither a definitive, nor a particularly up-to-date, account of the UN. As he comes close to conceding, this winsome essay is not really a history at all, but an engagingly written panegyric for the idea of “global governance”.

The UN that interests Kennedy is “a story of human beings groping towards a common end, a future of mutual dignity, prosperity and tolerance through shared control of international instruments”. The trouble with this heart-warming pastoral is that it is hard to square with what actually goes on in the UN’s many mansions.

Take, for a start, the UN General Assembly, his “Parliament of Man”. (The book’s title, taken from Tennyson’s youthful poem “Locksley Hall”, places Kennedy firmly in the camp of nostalgic internationalists.) Far from being an arena where, as he approvingly quotes Tennyson, “the common sense of most . . . hold a fretful realm in awe”, the UN General Assembly is a place where common sense is checked, like a dangerous weapon, at the door.

To sit in on the General Assembly is to be numbed by the vacuity of the set speeches and the absurdity of its bloc politics. What passes for debate there is a mind-numbing, patience-sapping, game of “let’s pretend”. Let’s pretend that all 191 nations are equal not just in law but in weight. Let’s pretend that voting blocs dating back to the heyday of North–South confrontation and the ideological confrontations of the Cold War reflect contemporary political realities. The so-called G-77 of “developing” nations now includes 132 states plus, for opportunistic reasons, China. It bunches the world’s least developed together with wealthy cosmopolitan states that, outside the UN, are significant players, the worst-ruled with the best. Elsewhere they go their own ways. Yet at the UN, the G-77 debates and votes as one, perpetuating an artificial North–South cleavage which poisons the UN’s internal politics and renders reform all but impossible. Kennedy’s “shared control of international instruments” is an unedifying farce.

The General Assembly’s obsession with process, rather than results, is reflected in the inconsequentiality of most of its decisions. UN files are filled with mould-pocked resolutions which never stood a chance of being implemented, reports and requests for further reports. Few of these documents are read by delegates, let alone by their governments. In New York alone, a recent inventory – the first attempted since 1956 – identified no fewer than 9,000 “active mandates” which the secretariat is supposed to be implementing. A body that cannot even organize its own agenda is unlikely to contribute to the better ordering of the world. There and elsewhere in the UN, the grinding of the mill has come to matter more than the quality of the flour produced.

Kennedy concedes that people neither know nor care what the General Assembly gets up to. He raises a gentle eyebrow at such pointless make-work as the solemn designation of 2008 as the Year of the Potato and the “extremely silly” – was it really no worse than that? – “Zionism equals racism” resolution of 1975. Yet he would like the General Assembly to have more power: power over the policies of the thankfully independent Bretton Woods institutions, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund; and, approvingly quoting the Brazilian President Lula da Silva, power over “responsibilities for maintaining international peace and security”. Why? Because it is “a barometer of world opinion . . . the global equivalent of a town hall meeting . . . the only sounding board at governmental level for what much of the world thinks and feels”.

This makes a nice change from the temptation, notably among Europeans, to treat the General Assembly as a Third World playpen – a temptation to which the playpen politics of the G-77 has mightily contributed. Yet it leaves this reviewer wondering just how much time Kennedy has put in at General Assembly sessions, let alone at the Economic and Social Committee with its 80,000-page agendas, or at the biennial assemblies of the UN’s nineteen major specialized agencies, long weeks passed haggling over the small print of biennial programmes the size of two fat telephone books. On what close observation of the notoriously ineffective FAO does he base the assertion that it is as important as the World Health Organization? Distance lends perspective, perhaps.

Kennedy’s essay is much too high-minded to make space for the old joke that the UN is “a place where nations which are unable to act individually get together to decide that they are unable to act collectively”. But his reluctance to come down harder on defects that are glaringly apparent makes the book’s general tone of relentless optimism less persuasive. He might have done better to concede that the needle in the General Assembly “barometer” jammed more than three decades ago. A body stuck in an ideological time warp cannot be a reliable sounding board for world opinion. Even the media do a better job.

Where Kennedy scores is with his “new readers start here” approach. This is “UN lite”, a cheerful guided tour with lots of brightly lit signposts. He opens with a lucid summary of the League of Nations experiment and the wartime thinking that went into the United Nations.
Then, with attractive even if somewhat deceptive simplicity, he divides the main body of the essay into six broad themes: the Security Council; peacekeeping and security; economic development; the UN’s “truly revolutionary” social programmes; human rights; and a bromide-laden meditation on civil society, the NGO universe and “how to establish higher forms of global governance”. He ends with safely conventional thoughts on the future of the UN.

Some valid points are made along the way. There is a good crisp run through the League years, where he sensibly builds on Inis Claude’s insight that the Great Powers of 1919 were concerned merely to make the world more accident-proof, and that the League should thus be seen as an outgrowth of the nineteenth-century Concert of Europe, not an attempt to replace it. It is startling to discover that a historian of Kennedy’s high reputation should believe that in 1939, Eire was part of the British Empire, and that he talks of “both” Axis powers, apparently forgetting Italy. On wartime planning for the United Nations, it is unfair to suggest that Churchill gave it scant attention until 1943. In the lengthy correspondence between Churchill and Roosevelt that preceded the Atlantic Charter of 1941, it was Roosevelt who insisted that Churchill delete from the draft a reference to “effective international organisation”. Churchill managed to get in a phrase envisaging “a wider and permanent system of general security” only on the understanding that this must wait until the Allies had first disarmed the Axis powers and set up their own global policing system.

More broadly, had he paid closer attention to the British side of planning for the United Nations, notably the influence of David Mitrany’s arguments for keeping areas of “practical” cooperation well apart from the UN’s political functions, he might have been less inclined to treat the UN’s polycentric character as a design fault. It was entirely deliberate. The UN was never intended to be a centralized “system”, a hub-and-spokes structure in which all roads led outward from New York. The UN’s specialized agencies are entirely autonomous bodies, each with specific remits, a separate budget, and its own assembly and governing board. The Charter invites them to enter into “relationship” with the General Assembly, but rather as sovereign states might consent to join a confederation.

Kennedy says this “didn’t make sense”. His useful summary of the Charter’s main provisions, which unsurprisingly concentrates largely on the Security Council and the chapters dealing with international peace and security, observes that the General Assembly was given an expansive remit to “promote” (not, as he writes, to supervise) cooperation “in the economic, social, cultural, educational and health fields”. From this he concludes that it is “not unreasonable” to conclude that the founders intended the Assembly’s Economic and Social Council to coordinate the work of the UN’s specialized agencies. But that is not what the Charter says.

The whole point was to let the specialized agencies get on with their work unencumbered by gesture politics. It didn’t work out that way; by the 1970s, the “UN disease” had infected most, though not all, of these bodies. But the outbreaks could at least be separately tackled. Most decisively set apart were the Bretton Woods institutions, the IMF and the World Bank – the two that, not coincidentally, have made the best fist of reinventing themselves down the years in response to changing circumstances and are doing so today. The UN in New York cannot even claim the powers of a holding company – no bad thing, given its inability to keep its own house in order. Even to describe the UN Secretary-General as primus inter pares grossly overstates his influence.

This may seem a narrowly institutional and arcane point. But it is important. The habit of treating the UN as the “system” it is not has mightily distorted past efforts at reform and is still doing so today. Not only is it hopeless to expect the UN to function as a coordinated whole – the only result of such efforts has been the proliferation of committees – but the obsession with “coordination” distracts attention from the great merit of polycentrism, which is that it should be possible to fix the plumbing in those parts of the machine that still matter and downgrade funding and support for those, such as the Industrial Development Organization, that belong in the category of “better dead”.

The chapters that summarize the chequered histories of the Security Council and of UN peacekeeping and enforcement trot along happily enough, and are at their best when dealing with the 1990s. There are curious errors. Professor Kennedy is generous in his acknowledgement of the enviable amount of research assistance made available to him, but the book occasionally betrays the presence of too many hands.
Thus, on page 77 he writes, correctly, that “the UN Charter contains absolutely no mention of the word peacekeeping and offers no guidelines as to the form of this collective action”; yet on page 99, writing of the blurring in the Somalia operation of peacekeeping and peace enforcement, he comments that the borderline between the two is a thin one and that “both options are, after all, offered in Chapter VII of the Charter”. Of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, he blandly writes that “Britain and France went along with an aroused United States”. Here again his researchers failed him: in the hours after the invasion, President Bush Sr was able to produce nothing more coherent than “we are ruling nothing in, and nothing out”. It was Margaret Thatcher who, arriving in the States later that day, proposed taking action under Chapter VII, the enforcement provision which had never in the UN’s history been invoked. It was she who announced the decision, at a press conference where a haggard Mr Bush insisted that she take the microphone first.

Most importantly, as a guide to the UN’s likely future, these chapters are gravely weakened by the inexplicably cursory treatment of the rift over what action to take on Iraq that, thirteen years later, split the UN Security Council open. This was as near to its “Abyssinia moment” as the UN has come, the moment when the Security Council marched its men to the top of the hill and then backed off. The Iraq crisis of 2003 brought to a head issues of absolutely primary importance about when intervention is permissible, about the legitimacy of pre-emptive military action and, as Kofi Annan put it, “the adequacy and effectiveness” of rules set in 1945 to deal with terrorism and asymmetric warfare.

When the Security Council cannot agree, and action is urgent, can it ever be the right answer that nothing can therefore be done? What if respect for Security Council decisions, or indecisions, results in the weakening of respect for international law? Questions such as these defeated the League of Nations. Kennedy suggests that the Iraq crisis should perhaps be seen as an example of the UN working much as the founders intended – necessarily at the margin in any conflict where the interests of the Great Powers are directly engaged. This is altogether too calm a conclusion: the UN’s authority rests to a considerable degree on what Hobbes called “the common power to keep men in awe”, and that power has indisputably been weakened.

Well over half of The Parliament of Man is taken up with a glowingly sympathetic treatment of the UN’s other dimensions. Kennedy overestimates the importance of UN development aid, most of which comes in the form of well-paid international consultants, executing thousands of small-budget projects of questionable impact. Despite the tendency of global conferences to set evidently unrealistic targets (who now remembers the WHO’s “Health for All by the Year 2000”?), he is right to point to the importance of the UN’s consciousness-raising functions. Yet there are some major errors of commission and omission.

It is breathtaking to find a Western liberal accepting that “the health and fairness of the world’s press” was “technically within the remit” of UNESCO. That agency’s effort in the 1970s and 1980s to impose a “new world information order” was not just “clumsy and impractical”; it was an attempt to legitimize censorship, in direct violation of UNESCO’s constituted duty to uphold the free flow of words and ideas.

He is brusquely dismissive of the “negative” roles of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and its successor the World Trade Organization – neither of them part of the UN, incidentally – two bodies that have arguably done more, by bringing down protectionist barriers, to bring prosperity within the reach of millions than all the UN’s development programmes put together. Yet he waxes eloquently and at length on the transforming influence of the UN’s “revolutionary” promotion of such “soft agendas” as gender awareness and environmental degradation.

The anti-globalization brigade will find much to approve in Kennedy’s conventionally liberal treatment of North–South confrontation, his bias towards the view that open markets “inherently favour the powerful over the weak”, and his consequent distaste for the World Bank and IMF. But you would have to belong to the lunatic fringe of that movement to accept without question his sweeping assertion that “‘collapsed states’ in many parts of Africa are the ultimate expression of our failure to render help in time”.

This is patronizing nonsense. The reasons why states “fail”, collapsing into anarchy or civil war, are the very reasons that make them difficult to rescue from looming catastrophe. Lousy regimes are hard to help. Once a trend towards violent disorder sets in, savings, investment and growth fall away, people look to their immediate survival, politicians grab the spoils while they still can, and there is a rake’s progress to hell.
This book may make readers feel better about the UN, and that is plainly the intention. But it does not have much new to say about how to get a better product – or, ultimately, about what makes the UN as indispensable as Kennedy would have us believe. His final chapter, on the future, makes a number of pertinent points, most notably on improvements that could be made to the functioning of the Security Council without more fruitless discussions about enlarging its membership. In a deliberately broad essay, it may make sense to all but ignore the latest push to trim the UN agenda and overhaul its management structures – an effort that the G-77, to the detriment of the UN’s poorer members, seems determined to block. But one might have expected insights more profound than a repetition of the sad old saw that the UN is no more than the number of its member states or that “we will witness failures and disappointments in the years to come”.

The UN bulks large for people in Kennedy’s age group, but younger generations will increasingly reject the tired and inaccurate defence that the UN is “the mirror of mankind”. A richer multilateral world is in the making; and the more people become accustomed to thinking globally, the more impatient they will be of closed-circuit governmental bodies. The trouble with books that start from the premiss that the UN is unquestionably a force for the good is that they tend to wrap their theme in a bubble of conventional cant. Paul Kennedy makes many shrewd observations in The Parliament of Man, but the bubble remains, as he intends, intact.

Article: Videotape Offers a Window Into a Terror Suspect’s Isolation

2006-12-03T20:37:00.000-08:00

December 4, 2006
Videotape Offers a Window Into a Terror Suspect’s Isolation
New York Times

By DEBORAH SONTAG
One spring day during his three and a half years as an enemy combatant, Jose Padilla experienced a break from the monotony of his solitary confinement in a bare cell in the brig at the Naval Weapons Station in Charleston, S.C.

That day, Mr. Padilla, a Brooklyn-born Muslim convert whom the Bush administration had accused of plotting a dirty bomb attack and had detained without charges, got to go to the dentist.

“Today is May 21,” a naval official declared to a camera videotaping the event. “Right now we’re ready to do a root canal treatment on Jose Padilla, our enemy combatant.”

Several guards in camouflage and riot gear approached cell No. 103. They unlocked a rectangular panel at the bottom of the door and Mr. Padilla’s bare feet slid through, eerily disembodied. As one guard held down a foot with his black boot, the others shackled Mr. Padilla’s legs. Next, his hands emerged through another hole to be manacled.

Wordlessly, the guards, pushing into the cell, chained Mr. Padilla’s cuffed hands to a metal belt. Briefly, his expressionless eyes met the camera before he lowered his head submissively in expectation of what came next: noise-blocking headphones over his ears and blacked-out goggles over his eyes. Then the guards, whose faces were hidden behind plastic visors, marched their masked, clanking prisoner down the hall to his root canal.

The videotape of that trip to the dentist, which was recently released to Mr. Padilla’s lawyers and viewed by The New York Times, offers the first concrete glimpse inside the secretive military incarceration of an American citizen whose detention without charges became a test case of President Bush’s powers in the fight against terror. Still frames from the videotape were posted in Mr. Padilla’s electronic court file late Friday.

To Mr. Padilla’s lawyers, the pictures capture the dehumanization of their client during his military detention from mid-2002 until earlier this year, when the government changed his status from enemy combatant to criminal defendant and transferred him to the federal detention center in Miami. He now awaits trial scheduled for late January.

Together with other documents filed late Friday, the images represent the latest and most aggressive sally by defense lawyers who declared this fall that charges against Mr. Padilla should be dismissed for “outrageous government conduct,” saying that he was mistreated and tortured during his years as an enemy combatant.

Now lawyers for Mr. Padilla, 36, suggest that he is unfit to stand trial. They argue that he has been so damaged by his interrogations and prolonged isolation that he suffers post-traumatic stress disorder and is unable to assist in his own defense. His interrogations, they say, included hooding, stress positions, assaults, threats of imminent execution and the administration of “truth serums.”

A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Todd Vician, said Sunday that the military disputes Mr. Padilla’s accusations of mistreatment. And, in court papers, prosecutors deny “in the strongest terms” the accusations of torture and say that “Padilla’s conditions of confinement were humane and designed to ensure his safety and security.”

“His basic needs were met in a conscientious manner, including Halal (Muslim acceptable) food, clothing, sleep and daily medical assessment and treatment when necessary,” the government stated. “While in the brig, Padilla never reported any abusive treatment to the staff or medical personnel.”

In the brig, Mr. Padilla was denied access to counsel for 21 months. Andrew Patel, one of his lawyers, said his isolation was not only severe but compounded by material and sensory deprivations. In an affidavit filed Friday, he alleged that Mr. Padilla was held alone in a 10-cell wing of the brig; that he had little human contact other than with his interrogators; that his cell was electronically monitored and his meals were passed to him through a slot in the door; that windows were blackened, and there was no clock or calendar; and that he slept on a steel platform after a foam mattress was taken from him, along with his copy of the Koran, “as part of an interrogation plan.”

Mr. Padilla’s situation, as an American declared an enemy combatant and held without charges by his own government, was extraordinary and the conditions of his detention appear to have been unprecedented in the military justice system.

Philip D. Cave, a former judge advocate general for the Navy and now a lawyer specializing in military law, said, “There’s nothing comparable in terms of severity of confinement, in terms of how Padilla was held, especially considering that this was pretrial confinement.”

Ali al-Marri, a Qatari and Saudi dual citizen and the only enemy combatant currently detained in the United States, has made similar claims of isolation and deprivation at the brig in South Carolina. The Pentagon spokesman, Lieutenant Vician, said Sunday that he could not comment on the methods used to escort Mr. Padilla to the dentist. Blackened goggles and earphones are rarely employed in internal prison transports in the United States, but riot gear is sometimes used for violent prisoners.

One of Mr. Padilla’s lawyers, Orlando do Campo, said, however, that Mr. Padilla was a “completely docile” prisoner. “There was not one disciplinary problem with Jose ever, not one citation, not one act of disobedience,” said Mr. do Campo, who is a lawyer at the Miami federal public defender’s office.

In his affidavit, Mr. Patel said, “I was told by members of the brig staff that Mr. Padilla’s temperament was so docile and inactive that his behavior was like that of ‘a piece of furniture.’ ”

Federal prosecutors and defense lawyers are locked in a tug of war over the relevancy of Mr. Padilla’s military detention to the present criminal case. Federal prosecutors have asked the judge to forbid Mr. Padilla’s lawyers from mentioning the circumstances of his military detention during the trial, maintaining that their accusations could “distract and inflame the jury.”

But defense lawyers say it is unconscionable to ignore Mr. Padilla’s military detention because, among other reasons, it altered him in a way that will impinge on his trial.

Dr. Angela Hegarty, director of forensic psychiatry at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, N.Y., who examined Mr. Padilla for a total of 22 hours in June and September, said in an affidavit filed Friday that he “lacks the capacity to assist in his own defense.”

“It is my opinion that as the result of his experiences during his detention and interrogation, Mr. Padilla does not appreciate the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, is unable to render assistance to counsel, and has impairments in reasoning as the result of a mental illness, i.e., post-traumatic stress disorder, complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation,” Dr. Hegarty said in an affidavit for the defense.

Mr. Padilla’s status was abruptly changed to criminal defendant from enemy combatant last fall. At the time, the Supreme Court was weighing whether to take up the legality of his military detention — and thus the issue of the president’s authority to seize an American citizen on American soil and hold him indefinitely without charges — when the Bush administration pre-empted its decision by filing criminal charges against Mr. Padilla.

Mr. Padilla was added as a defendant in a terrorism conspiracy case already under way in Miami. The strong public accusations made during his military detention — about the dirty bomb, Al Qaeda connections and supposed plans to set off natural gas explosions in apartment buildings — appear nowhere in the indictment against him. The indictment does not allege any specific violent plot against America.

Mr. Padilla is portrayed in the indictment as the recruit of a “North American terror support cell” that sent money, goods and recruits abroad to assist “global jihad” in general, with a special interest in Bosnia and Chechnya. Mr. Padilla, the indictment asserts, traveled overseas “to participate in violent jihad” and filled out an application for a mujahedin training camp in Afghanistan.

Michael Caruso, a public defender for Mr. Padilla, pleaded “absolutely not guilty” for him to charges of conspiracy and of providing material support to terrorists. Mr. Padilla faces two charges that each carry a maximum penalty of 15 years. Over the summer, Judge Marcia G. Cooke of United States District Court in Miami threw out the most serious charge, of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim persons in a foreign country, saying that it replicated accusations in the other counts and could lead to multiple punishments for a single crime. This was a setback for the government, which has appealed the dismissal.

Mr. Padilla’s lawyers say they have had a difficult time persuading him that they are on his side.

From the time Mr. Padilla was allowed access to counsel, Mr. Patel visited him repeatedly in the brig and in the Miami detention center, and Mr. Padilla has observed Mr. Patel arguing on his behalf in Miami federal court.

But, Mr. Patel said in his affidavit, his client is nonetheless mistrustful. “Mr. Padilla remains unsure if I and the other attorneys working on his case are actually his attorneys or another component of the government’s interrogation scheme,” Mr. Patel said.

Mr. do Campo said that Mr. Padilla was not incommunicative, and that he expressed curiosity about what was going on in the world, liked to talk about sports and demonstrated particularly keen interest in the Chicago Bears.

But the defense lawyers’ questions often echo the questions interrogators have asked Mr. Padilla, and when that happens, he gets jumpy and shuts down, the lawyers said.

Dr. Hegarty said Mr. Padilla refuses to review the video recordings of his interrogations, which have been released to his lawyers but remain classified.

He is especially reluctant to discuss what happened in the brig, fearful that he will be returned there some day, Mr. Patel said in his affidavit.

“During questioning, he often exhibits facial tics, unusual eye movements and contortions of his body,” Mr. Patel said. “The contortions are particularly poignant since he is usually manacled and bound by a belly chain when he has meetings with counsel.”

Article: Lebanon for Hezbollah

2006-12-03T16:12:00.000-08:00

800,000 on streets in revolution to put Lebanon in hands of Hezbollah
Nicholas Blanford, Beirut
Pro-Syria crowd packs city centre
Protesters vow to change government
UK Times

It was last year’s “Cedar revolution” in reverse. Hundreds of thousands of pro-Syrian protesters waving Lebanese flags rallied yesterday in central Beirut, vowing to remain in the streets until the Western-backed Government was overthrown.

Fouad Siniora, the Prime Minister, says that the Government is determined to remain in power, accusing the Hezbollah-led opposition of attempting to mount a coup and acting on the orders of Syria and Iran.

With neither side willing to give way, many Lebanese fear that the political deadlock will be broken only by violence.

The huge crowd, numbering perhaps 800,000 or almost a quarter of the population, packed two squares in the city centre. They had travelled from all over Lebanon.

“Siniora out, Siniora out,” chanted groups of young supporters of General Michel Aoun, the former Lebanese army commander who is an opposition ally of Hezbollah.

General Aoun is also a Christian leader, emphasising that opposition to the Sunni-led Government goes wider than Shia Hezbollah.

Highlighting the sectarian divisions in Lebanon’s power struggle, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, a predominantly Sunni country, telephoned Mr Siniora and every member of his Cabinet to offer his personal support.

Mr Siniora and his ministers sat out the rally in the heavily protected Grand Serail, his offices overlooking the city centre. Troops had slung rows of razor wire across the approach roads, increasing the impression of a government under siege.

Mr Siniora has increased hugely the numbers of security personnel around him amid assassination fears. Last month Pierre Gemayel, the Industry Minister, died in a hail of bullets aimed at his car.

“I call on the Prime Minister and his ministers to quit,” General Aoun said, to the cheers of protesters. “I wish that the Prime Minister and his ministers were among us today, not hiding behind barbed wire and army armoured carriers. He who has his people behind him does not need barbed wire.”

About 20,000 troops were deployed on the streets to forestall any outbreak of trouble. Armoured personnel carriers equipped with heavy machineguns were parked at road junctions. About 15,000 Hezbollah marshals channelled Shia Muslim protesters along the main roads from the southern suburbs of Beirut to the city centre, ensuring that none strayed into Christian neighbourhoods.

“We want to topple the American government in Beirut,” said Iman Shehadi, wearing a full-length black chador, who had travelled from Bint Jbeil in south Lebanon. “We want a government of people willing to sacrifice themselves for Lebanon,” she added.

The turmoil has been festering since the end of the war between Hezbollah and Israel four months ago. The catalyst was the imminent formation of a tribunal under UN auspices to try those accused of murdering Rafik Hariri, a former Lebanese prime minister who died in a truck bomb explosion in February last year.

A UN commission has suggested that Syria was responsible and the anti-Syrian Lebanese Government believes that Damascus has instructed its allies in Lebanon to create a political crisis to forestall the establishment of the tribunal.

But bigger issues are at stake. Lebanon has become an arena for a struggle for control of the Middle East, pitting the West and its Arab allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, against an anti-Western alliance grouping Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.

The US views the Lebanese Government as a useful tool to maintain pressure on neighbouring Syria and to block Iran’s ambitions to influence directly the Arab-Israeli conflict through Hezbollah, its ally.

But the anti-Western axis is seeking to weaken US influence in Lebanon by replacing Mr Siniora’s Government with one more sympathetic to Damascus and Tehran. Inevitably, the political struggle in Lebanon takes on a sectarian edge, with the Government supported by most Christians and the Sunni and Druze communities against an opposition overwhelmingly composed of Shia Muslims. Walid Jumblatt, the leader of the Lebanese Druze and a harsh critic of Syria, said that the rally was an “attempted coup, but we will remain strong”.

Hezbollah says that it will increase its actions if the Government refuses to yield to the opposition’s demands, raising fears of a prolonged crisis.

“It will take some weeks,” said Michel Samaha, a former Lebanese minister and Syrian ally who attended the rally.

“I hope that change comes about through compromise, if not we are going to have real problems.”

What’s next for Lebanon?

If the opposition triumphs

The Siniora Government falls because of street action by the Hezbollah-led opposition
Pro-Syrian Lebanese form the next government and delay formal approval of the Hariri international tribunal
Washington’s influence declines, Syria’s increases and a Paris-hosted international aid conference scheduled for the new year to fund Lebanon’s postwar recovery is postponed

If the Government survives
Bombings and murders continue, as the UN investigation into Hariri’s murder draws to a conclusion
Hezbollah and its allies escalate their opposition to the Government with continued strikes and sit-ins, further crippling an already ailing economy
Washington may begin to lose interest in Lebanon as it is urged to arrange deals with Syria and Iran over Iraq

Hezbollah Protests Continue to Fill Streets of Beirut
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post
Saturday, December 2, 2006; 11:36 AM

BEIRUT, Dec. 2 -- Hezbollah and its allies escalated Lebanon’s month-long political crisis into a popular confrontation Friday and Saturday, sending hundreds of thousands of supporters into the streets, parking lots and sidewalks of downtown Beirut, vowing to topple the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and reorient the country.

The city’s stylish downtown, to some a symbol of recovery from the 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, was awash in red-white-and-green Lebanese flags, interspersed with banners in the colors of various sectarian and political leaders. The winter sun glinted off coils of wire and barricades encircling the colonnaded government headquarters nearby, where Siniora and other ministers have taken up residence. But the crowd was more festive than angry, more celebratory than militant, as the theater of the moment intersected, perhaps a little dissonantly, with the drama of a struggle as decisive as any in Lebanon’s history.

“I wish that our prime minister and his ministers were here among us today, rather than hiding behind army tanks and barbed wire,” Michel Aoun, an influential Christian leader allied with Hezbollah, told the crowd. “The one who has support of his people does not need barbed wire.” Moments later, he added, “I call on the prime minister and his ministers to resign.”

In symbolism, numbers and aims, the protest marked a collision between two countries that have coexisted uneasily inside Lebanon following the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri in February 2005, when dueling protests convened in downtown Beirut over Syria’s 29-year military presence here. They share almost no common ground: the culture of resistance to Israel celebrated by Hezbollah or the accommodation promoted by Siniora’s government; the influence of Hezbollah’s patrons in Iran and Syria or that of the government’s French and American allies; a divided social perspective, one more religiously traditional, one more liberal. Also at issue is the extent of power due the long-disenfranchised Shiite Muslim community, the country’s single largest, that Hezbollah and its militia largely represent.

Thousands of Hezbollah supporters camped out in tents in the center of the city on Saturday, keeping up the pressure on the Siniora government to resign, the Associated Press reported from Beirut.

Following Friday’s demonstration, participants set up hundreds of white tents across downtown, just yards from Siniora’s offices, the AP reported. They kept up their noisy, carnival-like protests for a second day in a row with occasional chants of “Siniora out!,” the news agency reported.

“One Lebanon, one voice!” people shouted Friday. But the question playing out across downtown Beirut, under the statue of one of Lebanon’s founders, Riyad es-Solh, was the same question asked at Lebanon’s independence in 1943 and so often since: What kind of Lebanon?

What is happening is more than just a political struggle unleashed by Hezbollah’s demand in October for a share of the cabinet that would give it an effective veto over government decisions. Competing narratives of the country’s past and future are on display.

Both sides utter the same words -- independence, sovereignty, national unity -- yet they hold two visions of what those words represent. In broadcasts, both Hezbollah’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah, and Siniora urged their supporters to fly the Lebanese flag, either at the protest or, for the prime minister’s supporters, from their homes. Each man speaks with sincerity underlined by the desperate conviction that the other side poses an existential threat. Both claim legitimacy from a long list of martyrs, whether Hezbollah’s dead in this summer’s war with Israel or Hariri and other anti-Syrian figures assassinated in Beirut since his death.

And both speak with certainty of a majority they claim to represent in Lebanon.

“Us,” sign after sign read Friday. In Arabic, the consonants used can also mean, “We want a clean government.”

“The government ruling us right now is dictatorial. It’s a minority claiming to be a majority,” said Boudy Mbarak, 24, a Christian supporter of Aoun from the village of Balouneh. “And I think we’re showing today who’s the majority.”

Behind him, chants cascaded across the crowd: “Siniora out! We want a free government!” Drums added a cadence to the slogans thundering from banks of speakers. Youths danced in circles: “Hey, hey, you government of thieves!”

With Friday’s protest, the crisis now gains momentum. Hezbollah has said the demonstrations will be open-ended. Long after nightfall, white tents went up in the downtown area, where thousands of people were expected to stay indefinitely, and speakers blared Hezbollah anthems. Groups lit fires with placards, one reading, “All of us for the nation.” Others played cards or smoked water pipes in a carnival-like atmosphere.

“I’m staying until the year 2100 or until Sayyid Hasan speaks again,” vowed Hassan Karnib, a 20-year-old protester, using an honorific for the Hezbollah leader.

If the protests fail to force the government’s resignation, flatly ruled out by Siniora in a speech Thursday, Hezbollah’s supporters have talked about resignations from parliament, work stoppages or civil disobedience to shut down ministries.

The group’s opponents, sensing that Friday’s mass demonstration was the biggest card it had to play, promised to wait.

“They decided to go to the streets. Let them do that, and let them stay there as long as they want,” said Walid Jumblatt, the leader of the Druze community, who has shifted alliances since the civil war and is now one of Hezbollah’s most outspoken opponents. “We will stay in our homes, raise our flags and wait one month, two months, as long as they want.”

Hezbollah announced the protest Thursday, and by early morning the movement, among the best-organized in the Middle East, was in full swing. The southern suburbs, devastated by Israeli bombing this summer, were almost frenetic, with buses plying roads and flags of Hezbollah and Lebanon flying from windows. Mopeds sped through streets plastered with portraits of Nasrallah, who has inspired a cult of personality among his followers and others in the Arab world. “I promise you victory always,” read one of his posters near a warren of shops along a street snarled with traffic.

Protesters ventured downtown along streets adorned with the iconography of Hezbollah’s opponents. One sign read in French, “I love life.” Another, written in red, said in Arabic, “We want to live.” Both were critiques of Hezbollah’s celebration of martyrdom.

“They don’t love life; they love the throne,” quipped Maha Kanj, 16.

A Hezbollah placard read: “Because we love life.”

Each side boasted of the numbers, or lack thereof, at the protest. Hezbollah’s television station, al-Manar, put the figure at 1.5 million. Future Television, loyal to Hariri’s son, Saad, who has inherited leadership of the Sunni community, estimated tens of thousands. Although it was larger than last week’s funeral for assassinated cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel, it appeared smaller, according to anecdotal impressions, than the March 14 protest that climaxed last year’s demonstrations.

While al-Manar provided minute-by-minute coverage of the protest’s early hours, Future broadcast a cooking show. During the protest’s peak, Future broadcast a split screen. On one side were images of an empty Martyrs’ Square, with troops, armored personnel carriers and firetrucks barring demonstrators from entering. On the other were images of protests the night before in support of the prime minister. On al-Manar, the numbers themselves were the message: “This is probably the view Siniora had of the demonstrations,” the announcer said as footage rolled. “We wonder whether he heard and saw.”

Hezbollah went to lengths to portray the demonstration as less its own and more an expression of what it calls the national opposition. No Hezbollah speakers appeared; Aoun, a Christian, gave the main address, although the number of his supporters paled in comparison to Hezbollah’s. The demonstrators themselves were eclectic, from sober-looking clerics in traditional robes to supporters of Aoun who had dyed their hair his group’s trademark orange. Others had donned orange wigs and cowboy hats. Some of the slogans were sectarian: “God, Nasrallah and all the southern suburbs.” At times, though, the crowd aimed for chants with broader appeal: “Green, yellow, orange,” the colors of Hezbollah, an allied movement and Aoun, “we want to topple the government.”

The slogans played on themes that Hezbollah and its allies have pushed relentlessly since the crisis began. Corruption was a key complaint. Many chants were directed at Siniora, some ridiculing him for crying in public during the war. “We’ve had enough lies and tears,” one went.

Often the language was directed against the United States’ sway in Lebanon. Nasrallah has called the government more loyal to U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey D. Feltman than Siniora himself, and in conversation after conversation, protesters, occasionally even Aoun’s supporters, cast the protest as a way to deflect U.S. influence, usually ignoring the roles played by Iran and neighboring Syria as Hezbollah’s allies.

“This is the government of Feltman!” shouted Zein Sleiman, 16.

“Siniora is an Israeli,” added his friend Samer Salim.

“No, he’s an American,” Sleiman answered. He paused. “There’s no difference!”

In some ways, the most poignant theme was the legacy of this summer’s war: Hezbollah’s opponents blame it for starting the conflict; Hezbollah celebrates it as a victory, with anger at what it sees as the government’s lack of support as it fought. The war’s imagery suffused the conversations and message of the protest. In Lebanese politics, the conflict left Hezbollah emboldened, and the sequence of events has proved an unbroken chain, with Hezbollah now pressing for unprecedented power.

As Ali Younis sat with his three sons, he used the words heard so often among Hezbollah’s supporters in southern Lebanon during the war: pride and empowerment.

Behind them a banner played on a slogan from the conflict: “As with victory, change is coming, coming, coming.” Younis spoke with the fervor of a man who wants to be listened to.

“I’m staying until the government falls,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “Dignity is more important than anything else.”

Special correspondent Lynn Maalouf contributed to this report.

Article: President’s Isolation

2006-12-03T15:57:00.000-08:00

Leaked Memo Highlights President’s Isolation
Financial Times
By Edward Luce in Washington
Published: December 3 2006 23:30

Few people in Washington see the leaking of Donald Rumsfeld’s Iraq memo as anything more than a belated and probably forlorn attempt to retrieve the outgoing defence secretary’s tattered reputation.

Yet Mr Rumsfeld’s blunt rejection of continuing “on the current path” in Iraq also reinforced the sense that George W. Bush’s presidency was now more lonely than it has ever been.

Last week, Mr Bush took every opportunity to restate that his administration was not prepared to qualify its goal of achieving success and “completing the mission” in Iraq.

This week, Mr Bush’s alleged “stubbornness” – a description put forward on Sunday by Carl Levin, the incoming Democratic chairman of the Senate armed services committee – will be given its severest test yet.

On Wednesday, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, led by James Baker, former secretary of state, and Lee Hamilton, former Democratic lawmaker, is set to publish its recommendations, which are likely to include options that directly undercut much of what Mr Bush has held dear since he ordered the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

These would include holding direct talks with Iran and Syria, the two most recalcitrant regional powers in the eyes of the White House, which has consistently seen direct dialogue with Tehran and Damas cus as “rewarding bad behaviour”.

According to leaks, the ISG report would also include at least an implicit paring down of Mr Bush’s goal of bequeathing a democratic and stable Iraq if and when US forces start leaving the country.

Many fear the ISG report comes too late to put out the spreading fires in Iraq.

But it at least has the potential of uniting Democrats with Republicans behind a plan that Mr Bush has said he will study seriously.

“Jim Baker will basically give Mr Bush an option of making a graceful exit from Iraq over the next 12 to 18 months,” said one former administration official. “Unfortunately Mr Bush continues to reject this realistic approach.”

Mr Bush’s isolation was reinforced last week when Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, cancelled a meeting in Amman at the last minute following the leaking of a memo written by Stephen Hadley, the US national security adviser, that painted Mr Maliki in an unflattering light.

The two leaders met the following morning. But the Iraqi prime minister signalled a clear and growing distance from the US president, which in turn has strengthened speculation about how long Mr Maliki’s government can survive.

On Monday, Mr Bush will meet Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the pro-Iran and Shia Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Mr Hakim is the bitterest rival of Moqtada al-Sadr, another Shia leader, whose political group props up Mr Maliki’s weak premiership.

Critics of Mr Bush are urging the US president to reduce his ambitions in Iraq by focusing on creating a stable government there.