United States News Digest
G.W. Bush Interviewed in Plame Probe
President George W. Bush was interviewed by U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald for 70 minutes on June 24, in conjunction with the probe of the leaking of the identity of an undercover CIA operative, Valerie Plame, wife of former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who had been involved in investigating allegations that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium ore from the African country of Niger in 2002.
Revealing a CIA agent's identity is a crime, and White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, about the latest questioning of Bush, "No one wants to get to the bottom of this matter more than the President...."
Investigators have also interviewed Vice President Dick Cheney and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales.
Cheney Loses It on Senate Floor
In an act of rage which should be the last straw, Vice President Dick Cheney told Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Maine) to "f- off," or "go f- yourself," after a heated exchange on the floor of the U.S. Senate June 24. The report on Cheney's meltdown was the lead item on all broadcast news programs. The Reuters version said that the Senate was gathered for a photograph, when Leahy, the ranking member of the Judiciary committee, greeted the Vice President. Cheney lit into him over Leahy's criticism of Halliburton's war profiteering, and the Senator's call for hearings on Cheney's role. Leahy shot back Republicans have accused Democrats of being anti-Catholic (Leahy is a Catholic), on the absurd grounds that they have opposed anti-abortion judges. At this point, according to "aides," Cheney unloaded with the "f-bomb."
Leahy confirmed the Veep's profanity: "I think he was just having a bad day, and I was kind of shocked to hear that kind of language in the floor," he said.
Kevin Kellems, Cheney's spokesman, told the press, "That doesn't sound like the kind of language that the Vice President would use, but I can confirm that there was a frank exchange of views."
State Department Forced To Revise Terror Report
When the State Dept. released its annual report entitled "Patterns of Global Terrorism" in April, showing a decrease in terrorism, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Cal.) sent a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell wanting to know if the figures in the report were fudged for political reasons. Powell had to admit that the report had some misleading numbers on attacks and people wounded, but blamed the errors on a new data collection system.
On June 22, the State Dept. released a vastly different, corrected version, in which the number of terror attacks are 208, and not 190 as reported earlier. It shows that a total of 625 people died in 2003, more than double the 307 cited in the earlier version. The biggest year-to-year increase was in the number of people wounded. The number of wounded for 2003 was 3,646; for the previous year, 2,013.
U.S. Drops Effort for Immunity for U.S. Troops
The U.S. received approval from the United Nations for exemption from the International Criminal Court in 2002, and a renewal in 2003, but the Abu Ghraib revelations have changed the geometry. It was clear that the U.S. could not gain the needed nine affirmative votes in the 15-member UN Security Council for passage, so U.S. Deputy Ambassador James Cunningham announced, on June 23, that "The U.S. has decided not to proceed further with consideration and action on the draft at this time, in order to avoid a prolonged and divisive debate."
The open resistance within the Security Council over the war crimes issue indicates the level of outrage at the Abu Ghraib revelations. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan also strongly opposed the exemption.
Bremer To Extend Immunity Order
American pro-consul in Iraq, Amb. Paul Bremer, will declare an extension of "Order No. 17," granting immunity to U.S. soldiers and civilian contractors in Iraq from any prosecution by Iraqis, as one of his last acts before June 30, according to the Washington Post June 24. Although this will clearly look bad to the incoming "sovereign" government, it would have been worse (U.S. officials said) if that supposedly sovereign government had to grant immunity to the U.S. as one of its first acts in power! The immunity is intended to last until the elections.
Health Insurance Premiums Rising Faster Than Costs
A June 21 Wall Street Journal article charted the rising profits of health insurers in 2003, a year in which the insurers premiums rose by 10-16% across the board; profits of for-profit health insurers, like Aetna and UnitedHealth Group, Inc., grew by 30%; and profits of the so-called "not-for-profit" Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance plans rose by 115%!
"2003 was a banner year for the nation's health insurers, in which profits soared as the escalating price of premiums far outpaced more slowly growing medical costs," the Journal concluded. The article describes a state-by-state backlash by legislatures and regulators, particularly of the Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans, which it said had "moderated rate increases so far during 2004"; but the premiums are still rising at "several times the rate of inflation."
Much of the increased profit has been put into insurers' reserve funds, which grew by about 33% in 2003, or into "investments"; to the point where state legislatures in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Rhode Island have passed resolutions demanding that reserves be reduced in order to give premium rate-increase relief. Insurance firms generally have been rebuilding reserve funds since the 9/ll damages and wars, as well as making up for low bond interest rates, by increasing premiums.
Democrats Blast Wolfowitz on Iraq War
House Armed Services Committee chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif), as has become the pattern in recent months, spared no effort in defending the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, during a hearing of his committee on June 22, but his efforts failed to protect Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz from those Democrats who would not accept his testimony at face value. Ranking Democrat Ike Skelton (Mo) expressed skepticism that the Administration had a specific plan for the future in Iraq.
After extensive testimony from Wolfowitz on the June 30 handover to an Iraqi government, Skelton told him, "I see two Iraqs. One is the optimistic Iraq that you describe.... And the other Iraq is the one that I see every morning, with the violence, the deaths of soldiers and Marines." When Skelton asked Wolfowitz what lessons the administration had learned over the last 15 months, he launched into a diatribe against the Congress for not providing the funding flexibility needed for fielding Iraqi security forces faster than has been the case.
Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hi) posed even more pointed questions, demanding to know from Wolfowitz what exactly the relationship between U.S. forces in Iraq and the Iraqi government will be after June 30, and what will be the conditions for withdrawal of U.S. forces. On the one hand, Wolfowitz said, mechanisms were being put in place by which the two sides will consult with each other on conducting either joint or separate military operations. On the other hand, he said, "we're fighting a very determined enemy" and an elected government in Iraq will face defeat without the U.S. presence. Abercrombie responded that he thought that what Wolfowitz was proposing "is virtually schizophrenic. On the one hand, you're saying that everything is working according to the plans that we have ... and yet, when it comes to the United States being able to extract itself in an honorable fashion ... it suddenly disappears."
Rep. Baron Hill (D-Ind) subjected Wolfowitz to further grilling about his own record calling for war on Iraq since the early 1990s and his relationship with Ahmed Chalabi. Wolfowitz first claimed that what he advocated in the 1990s was more help for the Iraqi opposition, but "For me, everything changed after Sept. 11." The "mere fact of contact" between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, he added, "is disturbing" and apparently enough justification for invasion.
But when Wolfowitz claimed that Chalabi was not "an important part of our intelligence." Hill blasted him, saying, "I think the evidence is overwhelming that you and Mr. [Richard] Perle and others decided a long time ago that Saddam Hussein had to be removed prior to Sept. 11," and that Wolfowitz was trying to make connections between Iraq and 9/11 that do not exist. Hill noted that he had voted for the Iraq war resolution on the basis of an intelligence briefing that Iraq had drones that could threaten the U.S., which proved to be a fabricated story.
Senators Demand Iraq Receive 'Capacity To Govern'
Returning June 22 from a two-day trip to Iraq, Jordan, and Kuwait, Sens. Tom Daschle (D-SD), Joe Biden (D-Del), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) urged that the Bush Administration and the "international community" provide Iraq with what it requires to achieve sovereignty and "the capacity to govern."
The Senators were most impressed by the fact that Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the "hard, tough, no-nonsense" commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, based in Baghdad, didn't speak to them about killing, but gave them a slideshow on the sewage in Sadr City. "What I need in my sector in Sadr City," Chiarelli told them, "is, I need to cut off the recruiting device that the al-Qaeda and the terrorists and all the other insurgency groups have. And the way for me to do that is not to shoot these kids, it's to clean up the sewage, it's to actually clean the place up." He put up a chart of insurgent attacks in Sadr City, which showed that "when there was full power, drinkable water, and the sewage problem was taken care of, attacks went down by 90%. Where those problems were unsolved, it's a hotbed of terrorism," Sen. Graham reported. Chiarelli had sent some of his senior leadership to attend a municipal conference in Texas, to learn how to build infrastructure for cities.
Both Graham and Biden warned that, as Jordan's King Abdullah stressed to them, failure in Iraq would "be a death sentence on all moderate forces in the Mideast." There is still time to save the situation, but, Sen. Graham noted, comparing what he saw on this trip to his last visit in August, U.S. soldiers are under "unbelievable stress ... and it's beginning to show." Law and order is critical, Biden stressed, citing a June 22 Washington Post article, that over 100 leaders from the new Iraqi governments (municipal, national, etc.) have been assassinated since the process began.
While the Senators underestimate Iraqi capabilities, and were petulant that other countries weren't doing enough to pull the U.S. out of its mess, they had one main message: "The way you win the hearts and minds is, you change the circumstance on the ground. You allow for the possibility that you can send your daughter from your house a block away to the corner store to pick up the poultry for the dinner for tonight and not worry she's going to be raped, abducted or a drive-by casualty.... You take the dung that's piled up in certain parts of the city, in Sadr City. You take the open raw sewage that people are bathing in and walking through, and you clean it up," as Biden put it.
"People don't like us there, but they'll tolerate us there as long as they see progress," Biden stressed.
Two Charged in Death of Iraqi Officer
The U.S. Army has announced plans to file charges against two military intelligence officers in the suffocation death of an Iraqi Maj. Gen., Abed Hamed Mowhoush, who was the commander of Saddam Hussein's air forces.
Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer, based at Fort Carson, Colo., and a member of the 66th Military Intelligence Group, is accused of suffocating the general in a sleeping bag, while sitting on his chest and covering his mouth, according to Pentagon documents obtained by the Denver Post. This death is among 30 prisoner deaths in May in Iraq and Afghanistan that the Pentagon said it is investigating.
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