Tony Snow Steps Down

Friday, August 31, 2007 

Reuters 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, who has been battling cancer, plans to step down on September 14 and he will be replaced by his deputy, Dana Perino, a U.S. official said.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto confirmed that Snow would be departing and said President George W. Bush would announce the news on Friday at 1245 EDT.

Snow, a former Fox News commentator who was hired by the Bush administration last year, announced in March that he had suffered a recurrence of colon cancer.

While undergoing chemotherapy to treat his cancer, Snow had continued in his job. But a few weeks ago he indicated that he would be stepping down for financial reasons sometime before Bush leaves office. He noted that he had taken a pay cut from his private-sector job to work in the White House.

Snow is the latest in a latest in a string of high-level White House officials to depart.

Friday was the last day at work for senior White House adviser Karl Rove, who previously announced his intention to resign. White House counselor Dan Bartlett, who like Rove is a longtime Bush adviser from Texas, left earlier this year.

Homeland Security Developing Game

Friday, August 31, 2007

Game Spot

For years, the government has used game technology for military purposes. America’s Army was created as a recruiting tool, Full Spectrum Warrior was developed to help train soldiers in close-quarters combat tactics, and a modified version of the life sim There was being developed to create facsimiles of Iraqi villages.

Now, the Department of Homeland Security is using game technology to help shore up defenses at home. ABC News is reporting that for the past year, the government agency has spent $600,000 funding Ground Truth, a game that would cast players as first responders to a terrorist attack or natural disaster. Success in the game would be dependent not only on the rapidity of the response, but a player’s tack. Poor choices would equal larger casualties and a lower score.

Computer scientist Donna Djordjevich told ABC that she is designing the game to be on par with anything on a next-generation console. “I think it’s very important to at least get to a certain level of production-quality or private industry-quality graphics, so that way people don’t just turn away from it immediately and just dismiss it as old technology, old software. You have to stay relevant,” she said. The game is being developed at Sandia National Labs, with grad students from the University of Southern California doing graphics work.

Marines Ordered To Execute Women/Children

Friday, August 31, 2007

Raw Story

A US Marine was ordered to execute a room full of Iraqi women and children during an alleged massacre in Haditha that left 24 people dead, a military court heard Thursday.

The testimony came in the opening of a preliminary hearing for Marine Sergeant Frank Wuterich, who faces 17 counts of murder over the Haditha killings, the most serious war crimes allegations faced by US troops in Iraq.

Wuterich, dressed in desert khakis, spoke confidently to confirm his name as the hearing to decide if he faces a court martial began at the Marines’ Camp Pendleton base in southern California.

The 27-year-old listened intently as Lance Corporal Humberto Mendoza recounted how Marines had responded after a roadside bomb attack on their convoy in Haditha on November 19, 2005 left one comrade dead.

Mendoza said Marines under Wuterich’s command began clearing nearby houses suspected of containing insurgents responsible for the bombing.

At one house Wuterich gave an order to shoot on sight as Marines waited for a response after knocking on the door, said Mendoza.

“He said ‘Just wait till they open the door, then shoot,’” Mendoza said. Read more

Immigration Could Add 100M By 2060

Friday, August 31, 2007 

AP

Melissa Eddy 

If both legal and illegal immigration continues at its current pace, the U.S. population will grow by 1.25 million per year and reach a net total of 468 million by 2060, according to a report issued Thursday by a Washington think tank.

That increase of 167 million people over the next 53 years “is equal to the combined populations of Great Britain, France and Spain,” said Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), during a news conference at the National Press Club.

Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Camarota wrote in his report, “100 Million More: Projecting the Impact of Immigration on the U.S. Population, 2007 to 2060,” that “about 1.6 million new legal and illegal immigrants settle in the country each year. About 350,000 immigrants go home, so net immigration is about 1.25 million.”

Immigrants who will arrive in the future and their descendants “will account for 105 million, or 63 percent of the increase,” a total that by itself “is equal to 13 New York Cities,” he said. Read more

Credit Crisis Compared To 1930

Friday, August 31, 2007 

Guardian 

The US financial industry displayed fresh signs of distress from the credit crunch afflicting global money markets yesterday, with one mortgage provider describing lending conditions as the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Leading accountancy firm H&R Block revealed huge losses at its up-for-sale mortgage arm, Option One, and said it was considering a halt on new loans. Reporting a quarterly loss of $302m (£150m), Mark Ernst, chief executive, said: “The loan originations market is in the midst of the most severe dislocation it has seen in years, maybe the most severe since the 1930s.”

During early trading, the Dow Jones industrial average slipped by 104 points, taking it 750 below its record high set in mid-July. The Federal Reserve injected $10bn of liquidity into the banking system and by lunchtime in New York the blue-chip index had pared back its losses and was down only 16 at 13,272.

Freddie Mac, the US government-sponsored mortgage aggregator that buys loans and repackages them as securities to keep costs down for low-income households, revealed that it had taken a $320m hit on credit losses in the three months to June. Read more

The Rip-off in Iraq: You Will Not Believe How Low the War Profiteers Have Gone

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Alternet 

Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com

How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins — he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq.

You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion. You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill to testify before Congress — until one day in the summer of 2003, when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private construction company looking to do work in Iraq.

Now you can finally move out of your dull government housing on Bolling Air Force Base and get your wife that dream home you’ve been promising her all these years. The place on Park Street in Dunn Loring, Virginia, looks pretty good — four bedrooms, fireplace, garage, 2,900 square feet, a nice starter home in a high-end neighborhood full of spooks, think-tankers and ex-apparatchiks moved on to the nest-egg phase of their faceless careers. On October 20th, 2003, you close the deal for $775,000 and start living that private-sector good life.

A few months later, in March 2004, your company magically wins a contract from the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to design and build the Baghdad Police College, a facility that’s supposed to house and train at least 4,000 police recruits. But two years and $72 million later, you deliver not a functioning police academy but one of the great engineering clusterfucks of all time, a practically useless pile of rubble so badly constructed that its walls and ceilings are literally caked in shit and piss, a result of subpar plumbing in the upper floors.

You’ve done such a terrible job, in fact, that when auditors from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction visit the college in the summer of 2006, their report sounds like something out of one of the Saw movies: “We witnessed a light fixture so full of diluted urine and feces that it would not operate,” they write, adding that “the urine was so pervasive that it had permanently stained the ceiling tiles” and that “during our visit, a substance dripped from the ceiling onto an assessment team member’s shirt.” The final report helpfully includes a photo of a sloppy brown splotch on the outstretched arm of the unlucky auditor. Read more

Iran Scoffs At U.S. Warning Over Iraq

Thursday, August 30, 2007

AFP

Iran on Thursday dismissed US President George W. Bush’s allegations of its interference in Iraq as “undocumented” and a sign of “political despair,” local news agencies reported.

“Bush’s statements lack any new and documented points and are a sign of indecision, lack of wisdom and political despair,” Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said, quoted by the semi-official Mehr news agency.

Bush demanded on Tuesday that Iran end support for extremists in Iraq and said he had ordered military chiefs in Iraq to confront Iran’s “murderous activities.”

“The US president faces serious problem in creating propaganda for the next election and thinks he can find a way out these problems by unfounded words,” Mottaki said.

The foreign minister called on the United States to “end its security approach and pure militarism, respect people’s votes and leave the region to its main owners in order to get out of a succession of mistakes.”

Bush branded the Islamic republic “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” and accused it of backing Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Shiite fighters killing US troops in Iraq.

Iran blames the US-led occupation for the deadly conflict in its western neighbour and calls for a pullout.

Iran supports the Shiite-led government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is criticized for his inability to reunite his war-torn country.

IAEA confirms the “peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear activities”

Full text of Iran-IAEA Modalities of Resolution of Outstanding Issues

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Global Research

International Atomic Energy Agency - 2007-08-21

Global Research Editorial Note

The mainstream media has failed to report the agreement reached between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Iranian government in regards to the Iranian nuclear energy program. An understanding has been reached between the two. The IAEA has given Iran’s nuclear program a clean bill of health.

Why is the U.S. media not reporting on this matter? Why do the U.S. and its Western allies continue to threaten Iran with punitive bombings for its alleged non-compliance, when everything indicates that Iran has a bona fide nuclear energy program and does not have the capabilities of developing nuclear weapons?

The following are highlights from the document:

Article IV (1): These modalities cover all remaining issues and the Agency [meaning IAEA] confirmed that there are no other remaining issues and ambiguities regarding Iran’s past nuclear program and activities.

Article IV (3): The Agency’s delegation is of the view that the agreement on the above issues shall further promote the efficiency of the implementation of safeguards in Iran and its ability to conclude the exclusive peaceful nature of the Iran’s nuclear activities.

Article IV (4): The Agency has been able to verify the non-diversion of the declared nuclear materials at the enrichment facilities in Iran and has therefore concluded that it remains in peaceful use.

Emphasis added

The Director-General of the IAEA has also confirmed in an interview published by Profil, an Austrian magazine that it is highly unlikely that Iran would pursue the development of a nuclear weapons program.

The document is a slap in the face for the Bush Administration. In light of these developments, it is no surprise that the Washington is now seeking to justify military action on the grounds that Iran is allegedly behind the killings of American troops in Iraq.

The fact of the matter is that the U.S. and its Coaltion partners, as confirmed by several reports, are in an “advanced state of readiness” to wage a military operation directed against Iran. What they now require is a new fabricated pretext which portrays Iran, in the eyes of public opinion, as a threat to world peace.

The Western media bears a heavy burden of responsibility in the current wave of disinformation regarding Iran.

Global Research, 30 August 2007 Read more

Little Progress Seen On Iraq Goals

Thursday, August 30, 2007 

Guardian 

WASHINGTON (AP) - Congressional auditors have determined that the Iraqi government has failed to meet the vast majority of political and military goals laid out by lawmakers to assess President Bush’s Iraq war strategy, The Associated Press has learned.

The Government Accountability Office, or GAO, will report that at least 13 of the 18 benchmarks to measure the surge of U.S. troops to Iraq are unfulfilled ahead of a Sept. 15 deadline for Bush to give a detailed accounting of the situation eight months after he announced the policy, according to three officials familiar with the matter.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the report has not been made public, also said the administration is preparing a case to play down its findings, arguing that Congress ordered the GAO to use unfair, “all or nothing” standards when compiling the document.

The GAO is to give a classified briefing about its findings to lawmakers on Thursday. It is not yet clear when its unclassified report will be released but it is due Sept. 1 amid a series of assessments called for in January legislation that authorized Bush’s plan to send 30,000 more troops to Iraq, where there is now a total of more than 160,000 troops. Read more

Petraeus says Iraq “surge” working: paper

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Reuters 

The U.S. troop surge in Iraq has thrown al Qaeda off balance and led to a reduction in sectarian violence and bombings, the U.S. commander in Iraq was quoted on Friday by an Australian newspaper as saying.

“We say we have achieved progress, and we are obviously going to do everything we can to build on that progress and we believe al Qaeda is off balance at the very least,” General David Petraeus told the Australian in an interview after briefing Australia’s defense minister, Brendan Nelson, in Baghdad.

Petraeus and U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker will testify before the U.S. Congress on either September 11 or 12.

Their reports on Iraq’s security and political situation could prompt a shift in U.S. President George W. Bush’s Iraq policy amid calls from opposition Democrats and some senior Republicans for U.S. troops to start leaving Iraq.

Bush urged coalition allies to make pullout decisions based on security conditions on the ground. Read more

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