Early Bird summary
Tuesday’s Early Bird leads with a report from the New York Times reporting that President Obama sent a secret letter to Russia’s president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons, American officials said Monday.The letter to President Dmitri A. Medvedev was hand-delivered in Moscow by top administration officials three weeks ago. It said the United States would not need to proceed with the interceptor system, which has been vehemently opposed by Russia since it was proposed by the Bush administration, if Iran halted any efforts to build nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.
The Boston Globe reports that former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani promised yesterday to assist in Iraq's reconstruction after nearly six years of war that has involved Shi'ite militias with suspected links to Tehran."We hope the era of conflict and hardships for Iraq is coming to an end," Rafsanjani told reporters in his first visit to Iraq since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The Los Angeles Times reports that civilians will bear the brunt of an escalation in the Afghan war this year as thousands more U.S. troops deploy unless more is done by NATO forces and Taliban militants to protect them, a top Red Cross official said.Civilian casualties in Afghanistan are "significantly higher" today than a year ago, and an intensification of the conflict this year could mean that consequences for many more Afghans will be "dire in the extreme," said Pierre Krahenbuhl, the director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross.The United Nations last month said 2,118 civilians died in the Afghan conflict in 2008, a 40% increase from the 2007 toll.
McClatchy Newspapers reports that a new alliance of Pakistani extremist groups — united after rival warlords vowed to renew the fight against international troops — threatens to escalate the insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan just as thousands more U.S. soldiers are to be deployed to the region.NATO nations, which lead the international coalition in Afghanistan, are concerned that the new militant partnership in Pakistan's Waziristan region, which lies on the Afghan border, will significantly increase cross-border influx of fighters and suicide bombers. The move could preempt President Barack Obama's new Afghanistan strategy, even before it's launched.The Islamic militants' sudden unity appears aimed against the upcoming "surge" of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and the fast-approaching spring season for resumption of hostilities, Western and Pakistani officials believe. It comes after a call by Mullah Omar, the one-eyed cleric who leads the Afghan Taliban insurgents, to Pakistani militants to stop fighting at home in order to join the battle to "liberate Afghanistan from the occupation forces."
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Walnut Creek Rep. Ellen Tauscher opened a carefully planned assault on the ban on gays and lesbians in the military Monday, describing significant opposition in Congress to lifting the 15-year-old "don't ask, don't tell" policy.President Obama's campaign promise to end the ban lifts the threat of a presidential veto for the first time in eight years. Now the problem is Congress, where repeal would require 218 votes in the House and 60 in the Senate that have yet to materialize. Opposition is especially intense on the armed services committees, including from former Republican presidential nominee John McCain, R-Ariz.
The CIA got rid of 92 videotapes depicting the harsh interrogations and confinement of "high value" al-Qaeda suspects, government lawyers disclosed yesterday, as a long-running criminal probe of the tapes' destruction inched toward a conclusion that is not expected to result in charges against CIA operations employees, three sources said, according to the Washington Post.Then-directorate of operations chief Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. gave an order to destroy the recordings in November 2005, as scrutiny of the CIA and its treatment of terrorism suspects intensified. The agency's then-Director Michael V. Hayden argued that the tapes posed "a serious security risk" because they contained the identities of CIA participants in al-Qaeda interrogations. Until yesterday, the exact number of destroyed tapes was not known. Agency officials have said they stopped taping detainees six years ago.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday expressed doubts in a private meeting with an Arab counterpart that the Obama administration's outreach to Iran would be successful, according to the Washington Post.Clinton "said she is doubtful that Iran will respond to any kind of engagement and opening the hand out and reaching out to them," said a senior State Department official, who requested anonymity because he was describing a closed-door conversation.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that girls in Pakistan's Swat Valley can attend school but must wear veils that cover their heads and faces, a top official said yesterday after the government pledged to impose Islamic law in the area, as demanded by Taliban extremists, in return for a truce.Provincial chief minister Amir Haider Khan Hoti also said the government would do its best to install religious judges by a mid-March deadline demanded by a hard-line cleric mediating peace talks.Taliban fighters in Swat have destroyed scores of girls' schools going back more than a year, and at one point declared a ban on female education in the onetime tourist haven.
In the new electronic information world, your cellphone or BlackBerry can be tagged, tracked, monitored and exploited by a foreign intelligence service between the time you disembark from a plane in that country's capital and the time you reach the airport taxi stand, according to the Washington Post.That is according to Joel F. Brenner, national counterintelligence executive and mission manager for counterintelligence for the director of national intelligence.In a talk on information-sharing last Wednesday at a conference sponsored by the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Brenner described his job by invoking the image of a hole materializing in a security fence. "Our job in part," he said, "is to figure out how it got there, who's been coming through it, and what they took when they left." In addition, he said, his group tries to figure out "how to return the favor," meaning how to break into the adversary's networks.The thrust of his presentation was to alert the audience and the public to the vulnerability of new electronic communications devices and the growth in the number and types of groups exploiting them.
Media summary
1. Leading newspaper headlines: The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post lead with, and the Wall Street Journal banners, yet another horrible Monday for stock markets around the world. (Slate Magazine)
2. Letter to Editor: Beware of false choices (by LtCol Robert Bracknell, MARFORCOM Deputy SJA) (Washington Times)
3. Missiles ‘kill seven’ in Pakistan: Missiles said to have been fired by US unmanned aircraft have killed seven people close to Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, Pakistani sources say. (BBC)
4. Iraqis detain al-Qaeda ‘minister’: Iraqi security forces say they have captured 11 members of the country's al-Qaeda network, including the group's self-styled "oil minister". (BBC)
Leading newspaper headlines
The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post lead with, and the Wall Street Journal banners, yet another horrible Monday for stock markets around the world. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 4.2 percent to 6,763, marking the first time the index closed below 7,000 since April 1997. The Dow has now fallen almost 20 percent in January and February, "the worst first two months of the year in its 113-year history," points out the LAT. The worldwide sell-off began in Asia and hit Europe particularly hard. Britain's main stock index lost more than 5 percent and Italy's plunged 6 percent. The dollar continued to rise, "as investors concluded that, for all the problems in the U.S. economy, it looks better than the rest of the world," notes the Post.
USA Today gives big front-page play to the stock markets but devotes its lead spot to increasing evidence that flu viruses are growing more resistant to the drug Tamiflu. In an analysis of Tamiflu resistance, researchers found that about 12 percent of the people infected with one of the three most common flu strains had caught a resistant virus. This year, Tamiflu resistance in that strain has reached almost 100 percent.
There wasn't one single reason for the worldwide decline in the markets. Sure, there may have been a spate of fresh bad economic news, but analysts said the sell-off had more to do with a "deepening, sense of gloom among investors," as the WSJ puts it. No one expects the pain to be over any time soon, and investors are just throwing up their hands and getting out of the stock market. For now, at least, it seems no one is betting on a market bottom just yet. "Stocks are in free fall. Investors are in panic mode," USAT succinctly summarizes. "It's a bloodbath, pure and simple," one expert said.
Coming on the same day as American International Group reported a $61.7 billion quarterly loss, and the government announced yet another plan to bail out the insurance giant, there is growing skepticism about whether the Obama administration's numerous attempts to save the economy through bailouts and stimulus would have any effect. "We've reached the point of disgust with Washington," an equity strategist tells the LAT. "Every day there's a new plan, and every day there's a new bailout. I think bailout fatigue is gripping the market."
A lack of confidence in government action is hardly limited to the United States. There was once hope that governments around the world would come up with a unified strategy to deal with the global recession, but "the European Union summit this weekend provided an indication that few countries were willing to risk their own taxpayers' money to help others," notes the NYT. Everyone speculates that yesterday's declines may have been partly triggered by famed investor Warren Buffett, who said last weekend that "the economy will be in shambles, throughout 2009, and, for that matter, probably well beyond."
The NYT off-leads word that Russian President Dmitri Medvedev isn't a very good pen pal. President Obama sent him a secret letter three weeks ago that suggested the United States would be willing to drop its plans to set up the missile defense system in Eastern Europe if the Russian government helps efforts to stop Iran from developing long-range weapons. "It's almost saying to them, put up or shut up," said a senior administration official. "It's not that the Russians get to say, 'We'll try and therefore you have to suspend.' It says the threat has to go away." Medvedev has not responded, but apparently Russia's foreign minister will bring up the issue with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when they meet Friday.
The WSJ and WP front, while everyone else covers, news that the CIA destroyed 92 videotapes depicting the harsh interrogation techniques that were used on two al-Qaida suspects. Although we already knew that videotapes had been destroyed, it was the first time that the number of tapes was revealed. The WP hears word that the ongoing investigation into why the tapes were destroyed is unlikely to result in any charges against CIA employees. The Senate intelligence committee is getting ready to broaden the investigation into the videotapes to take a look at the entire CIA interrogation program.
News of the videotapes wasn't the only dirty laundry from the Bush years that the Obama administration made public yesterday. The LAT and NYT front the Justice Department posting newly declassified legal opinions and memos that were issued after the Sept. 11 attacks and formed the basis for the Bush administration's claims of broad presidential powers. The WP points out that the number of "major legal errors" made by the Bush administration's lawyers "was far greater than previously known." In one memo that everyone highlights, administration lawyers said the president could order the military to deploy domestically and arrest terrorism suspects. The memo also claimed that the military could ignore free-speech protections. Unsurprisingly, many of the opinions were written by John Yoo, the former Justice official who is most famous for writing another memo that many have interpreted as an authorization to torture. Many of the memos had already been repudiated by the Justice Department but officials said it was important to release them for the sake of transparency.
The WP off-leads a look at how the Obama administration will have to hire tens of thousands of new federal employees if it hopes to fulfill the goals that were outlined in its budget last week, particularly considering that the president has vowed to cut back on private contractors. Exactly how many workers will have to be added to the federal payroll is still unknown and will likely remain that way until the full budget is released in April, but estimates range from 100,000 to 250,000. That would reverse a long-standing trend that had every president since Ronald Reagan limiting the size of the federal workforce. "If the outside estimates are realized, Obama could spur a government hiring spree on a scale unseen since President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society agenda in the 1960s," notes the Post.
The NYT points out that lawmakers and executives are beginning to "quietly acknowledge" that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are unlikely to return to private investors. Now that there's lots of talk about possibly nationalizing some large banks, there are fears that the experience with the mortgage giants demonstrates "that a takeover so hobbles a company's finances and decision making that independence may be nearly impossible," notes the paper. Part of the reason why the companies are unlikely to return to independence is that it could take them 100 years, if not longer, to pay back the government. Republicans also say that Democratic lawmakers will want to hold on to the ability to directly affect the housing market and the economy at large. "Once government gets a new tool, it's virtually impossible to take it away," Republican Rep. Scott Garrett said.
The WSJ hears word that the Obama administration is considering setting up several investment funds to purchase the toxic assets that are currently clogging banks' balance sheets. The White House had already announced it plans to spend somewhere between $500 billion and $1 trillion to buy these assets with what it called private-public partnerships but gave few details. Now it seems the administration is considering establishing these funds that would be run by private investment managers with a combination of private and public capital. The private investment managers would make all the decisions on what to buy and how much to pay, which would help the government avoid having to make these politically sensitive determinations. A key question has always been how to price assets for which there is no market, but some officials believe that setting up multiple funds might go a long way toward solving that problem.
Return to top of document
LETTER TO EDITOR: Beware of false choices
Friday, February 27, 2009
"Interrogating Army 'justice' " is wrong in its premises and conclusions. Counterinsurgency is different. The population is the center of gravity. U.S. forces, fairly or not, are held to a higher standard in their conduct than other forces, particularly insurgents and terrorists.
Abuse of detainees undermines the legitimacy of coalition counterinsurgency operations in the minds of the target population. Read the U.S. Army FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency, and the counterinsurgency writings of David Kilcullen, John Nagl and David Galula, among others.
Second, Capt. Roger Hill's interrogation actions are inconsistent with 99 percent of other combat leaders who manage to command their units and protect their troops without resorting to unlawful and immoral methods.
Capt. Hill simply abandoned his responsibility as an officer to maintain the moral high ground. Expectation of reciprocity by the enemy, concededly not forthcoming from radical terrorists, is but one of several factors counseling compliance with U.S. law and policy and the law of armed conflict.
Finally, the authors' blaming the "military's own lawyers" is disingenuous, at best. As former commanders, they each know that all decisions in the military justice system are made by commanders, not attorneys. Prosecutorial discretion is practically nonexistent in the U.S. military justice system. Responsibility for decisions in disciplinary outcomes lies where it should: with responsible, accountable commanders.
The authors' misrepresentations and apparent embrace of the ham-fisted tactics of a rogue officer are disappointing, particularly given their vast experience and positions of influence. In my experience, their position represents the minority stance among commanders, officers and troops and decidedly is at odds with established Department of Defense policy and U.S. law.
LT. COL. ROBERT GRAY BRACKNELL
Lt. Col. Bracknell, a former combat arms officer, is a Marine lawyer on active duty with two combat tours in Iraq.
Virginia Beach Return to top of document
Missiles 'kill seven' in Pakistan
US missile strikes have been criticised by Pakistan's political parties
Missiles said to have been fired by US unmanned aircraft have killed seven people close to Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, Pakistani sources say.
Two missiles reportedly struck a house in Sararogha, in South Waziristan, and the dead are believed to include suspected militants.
The region is a stronghold of Pakistani Taleban leader Baitullah Mehsud.
US drones have targeted the area with missiles before, in attacks criticised by Pakistani politicians.
Local people said Taleban militants had been operating from the house which was attacked.
When asked about the attack, Adm Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he would not talk about the specifics of US operations.
But, speaking to Fox News, he added that the military overall was "carrying out guidance from [US] President [Barack] Obama" in the region.
'Taleban sanctuary'
A villager, named by Reuters news agency as Hakeemullah, said that people were searching the rubble for more casualties.
"It was a Taleban sanctuary, which was destroyed in the attack," an unnamed Pakistani security official told AFP news agency.
"Some foreigners were possibly among those killed."
At least four of the dead are believed to have been foreign militants, unnamed Pakistani officials told the Associated Press.
They added that drones were seen in the air ahead of the strike and Taleban fighters afterwards surrounded the damaged house which was allegedly a militant training facility.
Previous US missile attacks have been aimed at militant groups such as al-Qaeda, which have used the region as a base for attacks inside Afghanistan.
More than 20 such attacks have been carried out on targets in north-western Pakistan in recent months.
The US and Pakistan have had serious disagreements over the Afghan border zone, with Washington unhappy at Pakistani efforts to tackle militants and Islamabad condemning the US drone attacks.
Pakistani leaders had expressed hope that the new US administration would halt the controversial air strikes, saying they fuelled public anger and complicated Pakistan's own counter-insurgency efforts.
But the drone attacks have continued since Mr Obama was inaugurated as US president in January.
Return to top of document
Iraqis detain al-Qaeda 'minister'
Iraqi security forces say they have captured 11 members of the country's al-Qaeda network, including the group's self-styled "oil minister".
Ali Mahmoud Mohammed and 10 other suspected insurgents were detained on Saturday in a village in Iraq's volatile Diyala province, reports say.
He is suspected of planning attacks on oil tanker trucks.
The US says al-Qaeda has been pushed out of much of Iraq, but is still capable of large-scale attacks.
Reports say al-Qaeda in Iraq used the self-proclaimed ministerial titles to refer to key members of their organisation.
Iraq's interior ministry described Ali Mahmoud Mohammed as the organisation's "oil minister".
Threat diminished
The latest raids come just a week after al-Qaeda in Iraq's self-styled "irrigation minister" and "finance minister" were arrested in another operation on 21 February.
The head of al-Qaeda in Iraq is said to be known as the group's "war minister".
Much of al-Qaeda's support comes from the area around Diyala and in the province of Nineveh.
Although its capacity for staging attacks has been reduced, it is still viewed as a major threat in Diyala and around the northern city of Mosul.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq was responsible for a violent insurgent campaign in the years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, but its influence has lessened because of the success of a US campaign to isolate it from Iraq's tribal leaders and Sunni Muslim communities.
The US military succeeded in winning Sunnis over by striking deals and bringing thousands of potential insurgents onto the US payroll, arming and training them.
Return to top of document
Tuesday’s Early Bird leads with a report from the New York Times reporting that President Obama sent a secret letter to Russia’s president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons, American officials said Monday.The letter to President Dmitri A. Medvedev was hand-delivered in Moscow by top administration officials three weeks ago. It said the United States would not need to proceed with the interceptor system, which has been vehemently opposed by Russia since it was proposed by the Bush administration, if Iran halted any efforts to build nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.
The Boston Globe reports that former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani promised yesterday to assist in Iraq's reconstruction after nearly six years of war that has involved Shi'ite militias with suspected links to Tehran."We hope the era of conflict and hardships for Iraq is coming to an end," Rafsanjani told reporters in his first visit to Iraq since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The Los Angeles Times reports that civilians will bear the brunt of an escalation in the Afghan war this year as thousands more U.S. troops deploy unless more is done by NATO forces and Taliban militants to protect them, a top Red Cross official said.Civilian casualties in Afghanistan are "significantly higher" today than a year ago, and an intensification of the conflict this year could mean that consequences for many more Afghans will be "dire in the extreme," said Pierre Krahenbuhl, the director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross.The United Nations last month said 2,118 civilians died in the Afghan conflict in 2008, a 40% increase from the 2007 toll.
McClatchy Newspapers reports that a new alliance of Pakistani extremist groups — united after rival warlords vowed to renew the fight against international troops — threatens to escalate the insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan just as thousands more U.S. soldiers are to be deployed to the region.NATO nations, which lead the international coalition in Afghanistan, are concerned that the new militant partnership in Pakistan's Waziristan region, which lies on the Afghan border, will significantly increase cross-border influx of fighters and suicide bombers. The move could preempt President Barack Obama's new Afghanistan strategy, even before it's launched.The Islamic militants' sudden unity appears aimed against the upcoming "surge" of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and the fast-approaching spring season for resumption of hostilities, Western and Pakistani officials believe. It comes after a call by Mullah Omar, the one-eyed cleric who leads the Afghan Taliban insurgents, to Pakistani militants to stop fighting at home in order to join the battle to "liberate Afghanistan from the occupation forces."
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Walnut Creek Rep. Ellen Tauscher opened a carefully planned assault on the ban on gays and lesbians in the military Monday, describing significant opposition in Congress to lifting the 15-year-old "don't ask, don't tell" policy.President Obama's campaign promise to end the ban lifts the threat of a presidential veto for the first time in eight years. Now the problem is Congress, where repeal would require 218 votes in the House and 60 in the Senate that have yet to materialize. Opposition is especially intense on the armed services committees, including from former Republican presidential nominee John McCain, R-Ariz.
The CIA got rid of 92 videotapes depicting the harsh interrogations and confinement of "high value" al-Qaeda suspects, government lawyers disclosed yesterday, as a long-running criminal probe of the tapes' destruction inched toward a conclusion that is not expected to result in charges against CIA operations employees, three sources said, according to the Washington Post.Then-directorate of operations chief Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. gave an order to destroy the recordings in November 2005, as scrutiny of the CIA and its treatment of terrorism suspects intensified. The agency's then-Director Michael V. Hayden argued that the tapes posed "a serious security risk" because they contained the identities of CIA participants in al-Qaeda interrogations. Until yesterday, the exact number of destroyed tapes was not known. Agency officials have said they stopped taping detainees six years ago.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday expressed doubts in a private meeting with an Arab counterpart that the Obama administration's outreach to Iran would be successful, according to the Washington Post.Clinton "said she is doubtful that Iran will respond to any kind of engagement and opening the hand out and reaching out to them," said a senior State Department official, who requested anonymity because he was describing a closed-door conversation.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that girls in Pakistan's Swat Valley can attend school but must wear veils that cover their heads and faces, a top official said yesterday after the government pledged to impose Islamic law in the area, as demanded by Taliban extremists, in return for a truce.Provincial chief minister Amir Haider Khan Hoti also said the government would do its best to install religious judges by a mid-March deadline demanded by a hard-line cleric mediating peace talks.Taliban fighters in Swat have destroyed scores of girls' schools going back more than a year, and at one point declared a ban on female education in the onetime tourist haven.
In the new electronic information world, your cellphone or BlackBerry can be tagged, tracked, monitored and exploited by a foreign intelligence service between the time you disembark from a plane in that country's capital and the time you reach the airport taxi stand, according to the Washington Post.That is according to Joel F. Brenner, national counterintelligence executive and mission manager for counterintelligence for the director of national intelligence.In a talk on information-sharing last Wednesday at a conference sponsored by the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Brenner described his job by invoking the image of a hole materializing in a security fence. "Our job in part," he said, "is to figure out how it got there, who's been coming through it, and what they took when they left." In addition, he said, his group tries to figure out "how to return the favor," meaning how to break into the adversary's networks.The thrust of his presentation was to alert the audience and the public to the vulnerability of new electronic communications devices and the growth in the number and types of groups exploiting them.
Media summary
1. Leading newspaper headlines: The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post lead with, and the Wall Street Journal banners, yet another horrible Monday for stock markets around the world. (Slate Magazine)
2. Letter to Editor: Beware of false choices (by LtCol Robert Bracknell, MARFORCOM Deputy SJA) (Washington Times)
3. Missiles ‘kill seven’ in Pakistan: Missiles said to have been fired by US unmanned aircraft have killed seven people close to Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, Pakistani sources say. (BBC)
4. Iraqis detain al-Qaeda ‘minister’: Iraqi security forces say they have captured 11 members of the country's al-Qaeda network, including the group's self-styled "oil minister". (BBC)
Leading newspaper headlines
The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post lead with, and the Wall Street Journal banners, yet another horrible Monday for stock markets around the world. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 4.2 percent to 6,763, marking the first time the index closed below 7,000 since April 1997. The Dow has now fallen almost 20 percent in January and February, "the worst first two months of the year in its 113-year history," points out the LAT. The worldwide sell-off began in Asia and hit Europe particularly hard. Britain's main stock index lost more than 5 percent and Italy's plunged 6 percent. The dollar continued to rise, "as investors concluded that, for all the problems in the U.S. economy, it looks better than the rest of the world," notes the Post.
USA Today gives big front-page play to the stock markets but devotes its lead spot to increasing evidence that flu viruses are growing more resistant to the drug Tamiflu. In an analysis of Tamiflu resistance, researchers found that about 12 percent of the people infected with one of the three most common flu strains had caught a resistant virus. This year, Tamiflu resistance in that strain has reached almost 100 percent.
There wasn't one single reason for the worldwide decline in the markets. Sure, there may have been a spate of fresh bad economic news, but analysts said the sell-off had more to do with a "deepening, sense of gloom among investors," as the WSJ puts it. No one expects the pain to be over any time soon, and investors are just throwing up their hands and getting out of the stock market. For now, at least, it seems no one is betting on a market bottom just yet. "Stocks are in free fall. Investors are in panic mode," USAT succinctly summarizes. "It's a bloodbath, pure and simple," one expert said.
Coming on the same day as American International Group reported a $61.7 billion quarterly loss, and the government announced yet another plan to bail out the insurance giant, there is growing skepticism about whether the Obama administration's numerous attempts to save the economy through bailouts and stimulus would have any effect. "We've reached the point of disgust with Washington," an equity strategist tells the LAT. "Every day there's a new plan, and every day there's a new bailout. I think bailout fatigue is gripping the market."
A lack of confidence in government action is hardly limited to the United States. There was once hope that governments around the world would come up with a unified strategy to deal with the global recession, but "the European Union summit this weekend provided an indication that few countries were willing to risk their own taxpayers' money to help others," notes the NYT. Everyone speculates that yesterday's declines may have been partly triggered by famed investor Warren Buffett, who said last weekend that "the economy will be in shambles, throughout 2009, and, for that matter, probably well beyond."
The NYT off-leads word that Russian President Dmitri Medvedev isn't a very good pen pal. President Obama sent him a secret letter three weeks ago that suggested the United States would be willing to drop its plans to set up the missile defense system in Eastern Europe if the Russian government helps efforts to stop Iran from developing long-range weapons. "It's almost saying to them, put up or shut up," said a senior administration official. "It's not that the Russians get to say, 'We'll try and therefore you have to suspend.' It says the threat has to go away." Medvedev has not responded, but apparently Russia's foreign minister will bring up the issue with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when they meet Friday.
The WSJ and WP front, while everyone else covers, news that the CIA destroyed 92 videotapes depicting the harsh interrogation techniques that were used on two al-Qaida suspects. Although we already knew that videotapes had been destroyed, it was the first time that the number of tapes was revealed. The WP hears word that the ongoing investigation into why the tapes were destroyed is unlikely to result in any charges against CIA employees. The Senate intelligence committee is getting ready to broaden the investigation into the videotapes to take a look at the entire CIA interrogation program.
News of the videotapes wasn't the only dirty laundry from the Bush years that the Obama administration made public yesterday. The LAT and NYT front the Justice Department posting newly declassified legal opinions and memos that were issued after the Sept. 11 attacks and formed the basis for the Bush administration's claims of broad presidential powers. The WP points out that the number of "major legal errors" made by the Bush administration's lawyers "was far greater than previously known." In one memo that everyone highlights, administration lawyers said the president could order the military to deploy domestically and arrest terrorism suspects. The memo also claimed that the military could ignore free-speech protections. Unsurprisingly, many of the opinions were written by John Yoo, the former Justice official who is most famous for writing another memo that many have interpreted as an authorization to torture. Many of the memos had already been repudiated by the Justice Department but officials said it was important to release them for the sake of transparency.
The WP off-leads a look at how the Obama administration will have to hire tens of thousands of new federal employees if it hopes to fulfill the goals that were outlined in its budget last week, particularly considering that the president has vowed to cut back on private contractors. Exactly how many workers will have to be added to the federal payroll is still unknown and will likely remain that way until the full budget is released in April, but estimates range from 100,000 to 250,000. That would reverse a long-standing trend that had every president since Ronald Reagan limiting the size of the federal workforce. "If the outside estimates are realized, Obama could spur a government hiring spree on a scale unseen since President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society agenda in the 1960s," notes the Post.
The NYT points out that lawmakers and executives are beginning to "quietly acknowledge" that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are unlikely to return to private investors. Now that there's lots of talk about possibly nationalizing some large banks, there are fears that the experience with the mortgage giants demonstrates "that a takeover so hobbles a company's finances and decision making that independence may be nearly impossible," notes the paper. Part of the reason why the companies are unlikely to return to independence is that it could take them 100 years, if not longer, to pay back the government. Republicans also say that Democratic lawmakers will want to hold on to the ability to directly affect the housing market and the economy at large. "Once government gets a new tool, it's virtually impossible to take it away," Republican Rep. Scott Garrett said.
The WSJ hears word that the Obama administration is considering setting up several investment funds to purchase the toxic assets that are currently clogging banks' balance sheets. The White House had already announced it plans to spend somewhere between $500 billion and $1 trillion to buy these assets with what it called private-public partnerships but gave few details. Now it seems the administration is considering establishing these funds that would be run by private investment managers with a combination of private and public capital. The private investment managers would make all the decisions on what to buy and how much to pay, which would help the government avoid having to make these politically sensitive determinations. A key question has always been how to price assets for which there is no market, but some officials believe that setting up multiple funds might go a long way toward solving that problem.
Return to top of document
LETTER TO EDITOR: Beware of false choices
Friday, February 27, 2009
"Interrogating Army 'justice' " is wrong in its premises and conclusions. Counterinsurgency is different. The population is the center of gravity. U.S. forces, fairly or not, are held to a higher standard in their conduct than other forces, particularly insurgents and terrorists.
Abuse of detainees undermines the legitimacy of coalition counterinsurgency operations in the minds of the target population. Read the U.S. Army FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency, and the counterinsurgency writings of David Kilcullen, John Nagl and David Galula, among others.
Second, Capt. Roger Hill's interrogation actions are inconsistent with 99 percent of other combat leaders who manage to command their units and protect their troops without resorting to unlawful and immoral methods.
Capt. Hill simply abandoned his responsibility as an officer to maintain the moral high ground. Expectation of reciprocity by the enemy, concededly not forthcoming from radical terrorists, is but one of several factors counseling compliance with U.S. law and policy and the law of armed conflict.
Finally, the authors' blaming the "military's own lawyers" is disingenuous, at best. As former commanders, they each know that all decisions in the military justice system are made by commanders, not attorneys. Prosecutorial discretion is practically nonexistent in the U.S. military justice system. Responsibility for decisions in disciplinary outcomes lies where it should: with responsible, accountable commanders.
The authors' misrepresentations and apparent embrace of the ham-fisted tactics of a rogue officer are disappointing, particularly given their vast experience and positions of influence. In my experience, their position represents the minority stance among commanders, officers and troops and decidedly is at odds with established Department of Defense policy and U.S. law.
LT. COL. ROBERT GRAY BRACKNELL
Lt. Col. Bracknell, a former combat arms officer, is a Marine lawyer on active duty with two combat tours in Iraq.
Virginia Beach Return to top of document
Missiles 'kill seven' in Pakistan
US missile strikes have been criticised by Pakistan's political parties
Missiles said to have been fired by US unmanned aircraft have killed seven people close to Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, Pakistani sources say.
Two missiles reportedly struck a house in Sararogha, in South Waziristan, and the dead are believed to include suspected militants.
The region is a stronghold of Pakistani Taleban leader Baitullah Mehsud.
US drones have targeted the area with missiles before, in attacks criticised by Pakistani politicians.
Local people said Taleban militants had been operating from the house which was attacked.
When asked about the attack, Adm Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he would not talk about the specifics of US operations.
But, speaking to Fox News, he added that the military overall was "carrying out guidance from [US] President [Barack] Obama" in the region.
'Taleban sanctuary'
A villager, named by Reuters news agency as Hakeemullah, said that people were searching the rubble for more casualties.
"It was a Taleban sanctuary, which was destroyed in the attack," an unnamed Pakistani security official told AFP news agency.
"Some foreigners were possibly among those killed."
At least four of the dead are believed to have been foreign militants, unnamed Pakistani officials told the Associated Press.
They added that drones were seen in the air ahead of the strike and Taleban fighters afterwards surrounded the damaged house which was allegedly a militant training facility.
Previous US missile attacks have been aimed at militant groups such as al-Qaeda, which have used the region as a base for attacks inside Afghanistan.
More than 20 such attacks have been carried out on targets in north-western Pakistan in recent months.
The US and Pakistan have had serious disagreements over the Afghan border zone, with Washington unhappy at Pakistani efforts to tackle militants and Islamabad condemning the US drone attacks.
Pakistani leaders had expressed hope that the new US administration would halt the controversial air strikes, saying they fuelled public anger and complicated Pakistan's own counter-insurgency efforts.
But the drone attacks have continued since Mr Obama was inaugurated as US president in January.
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Iraqis detain al-Qaeda 'minister'
Iraqi security forces say they have captured 11 members of the country's al-Qaeda network, including the group's self-styled "oil minister".
Ali Mahmoud Mohammed and 10 other suspected insurgents were detained on Saturday in a village in Iraq's volatile Diyala province, reports say.
He is suspected of planning attacks on oil tanker trucks.
The US says al-Qaeda has been pushed out of much of Iraq, but is still capable of large-scale attacks.
Reports say al-Qaeda in Iraq used the self-proclaimed ministerial titles to refer to key members of their organisation.
Iraq's interior ministry described Ali Mahmoud Mohammed as the organisation's "oil minister".
Threat diminished
The latest raids come just a week after al-Qaeda in Iraq's self-styled "irrigation minister" and "finance minister" were arrested in another operation on 21 February.
The head of al-Qaeda in Iraq is said to be known as the group's "war minister".
Much of al-Qaeda's support comes from the area around Diyala and in the province of Nineveh.
Although its capacity for staging attacks has been reduced, it is still viewed as a major threat in Diyala and around the northern city of Mosul.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq was responsible for a violent insurgent campaign in the years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, but its influence has lessened because of the success of a US campaign to isolate it from Iraq's tribal leaders and Sunni Muslim communities.
The US military succeeded in winning Sunnis over by striking deals and bringing thousands of potential insurgents onto the US payroll, arming and training them.
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