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A roundup re: the Libby verdict

Report on Bush’s trip to Latin America and Jack Cafferty emails regarding a Plan B for Iraq.

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay –President Bush asked Congress on Saturday for $3.2 billion to pay for at least 4,000 extra combat support troops and military police forces that commanders told the president they need in Iraq.

The extra troops are in addition to the 21,500-troop buildup Bush announced in January. The budget revisions come as many lawmakers opposed to the buildup are debating funding for the war.

Bush is proposing to cancel $3.2 billion in low-priority defense items within his fiscal 2007 supplemental budget request to offset the need for these extra forces.

Cutting the programs, he said, would not require increasing the overall $93.4 billion in additional defense money he’s already requested to finance this year’s war operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“This revised request would better align resources based on the assessment of military commanders to achieve the goal of establishing Iraq and Afghanistan as democratic and secure nations that are free of terrorism,” Bush wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

More at Boston.com

Corporate America

Washington - Brad Delp, the lead singer of the 1970s and ’80s rock band Boston was found dead at his home in southern New Hampshire on Friday, local police said.

The band’s popularity peaked in the late 1970s, but it remained active off and on, producing its last album Corporate America in 2002.

RIP

Over a three-year period ending in 2005, the FBI collected intimate information about the lives of a population roughly the size of Bethesda’s — 52,000 — and stored it in an intelligence database accessible to about 12,000 federal, state and local law enforcement authorities and to certain foreign governments.

The FBI did so without systematically retaining evidence that its data collection was legal, without ensuring that all the data it obtained matched its needs or requests, without correctly tallying and reporting its efforts to Congress, and without ferreting out all of its abuses and reporting them to an intelligence oversight board.

These are the conclusions of the Justice Department’s uncontested examination of one of the most sensitive and widely used intelligence-gathering tools of the post-Sept. 11 era — the
(NSL). A report released yesterday by the department’s Office of the Inspector General offers the first official glimpse into the use of that impressive tool, and the results, according to the report, are not pretty.

“We believe,” the inspector general’s office said in a summary of whether and how often the tool might have jeopardized the privacy of U.S. residents, “that a significant number of NSL-related violations are not being identified or reported by the FBI.”

The 199-page report, which Congress ordered the inspector general’s office to produce over the Justice Department’s objections, does not accuse the FBI of deliberate lawbreaking. But it depicts the bureau’s 56 field offices and headquarters as paying little heed to the rules, and misunderstanding them, as they used the USA Patriot Act and three other laws to request the telephone records, e-mail addresses, and employment and credit histories of people deemed relevant to terrorism or espionage investigations.

Continue reading at the Washington Post

This is so appalling to me. I can’t believe the world is letting Bush get away with this. Why even bother with a hearing at all?

US military hearings on the “enemy combatant” status of 14 top terror suspects began Friday at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba out of sight of the media and defense lawyers.

“We started our first hearing, and the purpose is to determine whether the detainee fits the criteria for designation as an enemy combatant,” said Commander Chito Peppler, a Pentagon spokesman.

Conducted by a panel of three military officers, the proceedings are the first of their kind for a group that includes Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

But the Pentagon closed the hearings to media coverage, citing fears that classified information might leak.

The move had the effect of keeping out of sight some of the most notorious Al Qaeda suspects, who have been kept under tight wraps at Guantanamo since their arrival on September 5 from secret CIA detention facilities overseas.

Peppler would not say which detainee was the first to have his case reviewed by the tribunal, or whether he was present at the proceeding.

“There are a number who want to be present and there are a number that have said they don’t want to be present for their CSRTS,” said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. “It’s a mix, It’s a healthy mix on both sides.”

Source

And the military industrial complex marches on……

NAIROBI, Kenya - The State Department has hired a major military contractor to help equip and provide logistical support to international peacekeepers in Somalia, giving the United States a significant role in the critical mission without assigning combat forces.

DynCorp International, which also has U.S. contracts in Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, will be paid $10 million to help the first peacekeeping mission in Somalia in more than 10 years.

It’s a potentially dangerous assignment. When the first 1,500 Ugandans peacekeepers arrived in Somalia’s capital Tuesday, they were greeted with a mortar attack and a major firefight. And on Wednesday, attackers ambushed the peacekeepers in Mogadishu, setting off another gunfight.

The support for the Ugandans is part of a larger goal to improve African forces across the continent and promote peace and stability in a region that’s often lawless and a haven for terrorists, including some tied to al-Qaida. The U.S. has also begun to depend more on African nations for oil and minerals, and wants to expand its influence.

Read more at YahooNews

Where’s Condi?

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraq has urged envoys from 16 regional and world powers — including the United States and its arch foe Iran and Syria — to forge a common front against international terrorism.

As mortar blasts and sporadic gunfire echoed around Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-MalikiMaliki welcomed delegates from neighbouring countries and from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to a conference on Saturday.

The talks at the Iraqi foreign ministry were designed to persuade the Middle East’s main players to cut off support from the illegal factions in Iraq’s civil war and launch a regional consensus on security cooperation.

“We wish to have our neighbours’ support for confronting terrorism,” said Maliki in his opening address to the assembled diplomats, warning that the violence gripping Iraq could spread throughout the region.

Terrorism “is an international epidemic, the price of which is being paid by the people of Iraq, and our country is on the frontline of confrontation.

“It needs to be met by an international stand and more importantly, a stand by which our brethren and neighbours support Iraq in this battle, which involves all states of the region,” he added.

Following the opening address, envoys repaired for closed-door talks.

US commanders accuse Iranian agents of smuggling weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq, including components for lethal roadside bombs that have been blamed for the deaths of at least 170 US soldiers since May 2004.

They also accuse Syria of allowing Sunni Arab extremists to cross its borders to join Al-Qaeda-linked groups fighting in Iraq.

Officials of Iraq’s Shiite-led government in turn accuse figures from the Sunni kingdom of Saudi Arabia of funding Sunni insurgent groups.

All five veto-wielding permanent members of the UN Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — were taking part, along with the Arab League and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.

Most were represented simply by their ambassadors in Iraq, but the United States also sent David Satterfield, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s top adviser on Iraq.

From the region Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey sent representatives.

Continue reading at YahooNews