News and Current Events

Fourteen US soldiers killed in three days of fighting

AFP, Thursday June 21, 2007

Fourteen US soldiers have been killed in three days of fighting, the military announced on Thursday, as US-led troops continued to press simultaneous offensives in and around Baghdad.

The news came hours after a suicide bomber exploded an oil tanker south of Iraq’s oil-rich city of Kirkuk, killing 15 people and wounding 66, including policemen and local politicians.

The bomber blew up the tanker outside police headquarters and a cluster of government buildings in Suleiman Beg, about 90 kilometres (55 miles) from the northern city of Kirkuk, police and hospital officials said.

“Several of the wounded are city council members and police officers, including the chief of police in Suleiman Beg, Hassan Ali Al-Bayati,” a local hospital official said.

The latest attack—two days after a Baghdad bomb killed 87 people—was carried out as the US military pressed an air and ground assault on suspected Al-Qaeda strongholds north of Baghdad.

The military said by Thursday it had killed 41 people it described as insurgents and had destroyed some of their hideouts in the restive Diyala province, long considered one of the deadliest areas in Iraq.

But as US troops have channeled a recently completed troop “surge” into a belt of insurgent strongholds around the capital they have met stiff resistance and suffered increasing casualties.

On Thursday five US soldiers, an Iraqi interpreter, and three Iraqi civilians were killed when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle in northeastern Baghdad, the military said in a statement.

A sixth soldier and two Iraqi civilians were wounded in the attack.

Another soldier was killed and three others wounded in Baghdad on Thursday when their vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

On Wednesday four soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack in Baghdad, and two marines were killed in combat operations in the western Anbar province.

Another two soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on Tuesday, the US military said on Thursday, correcting a previous report.

The latest deaths bring total US casualties for this month alone to 59, with at least 3,536 since the March 2003 invasion, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.

Around 10,000 US and Iraqi troops backed by attack helicopters and armoured vehicles continued to battle alleged Al-Qaeda militants in Diyala.

Operation Arrowhead Ripper is viewed as the biggest full-fledged assault on insurgents since the November 2004 operation against the former rebel town of Fallujah and is aimed at destroying the group’s strongholds in the province.

“Our combined forces have begun destroying Al-Qaeda operatives and their resources in and around Diyala province,” US commander Brigadier General Mick Bednarek said in a statement released overnight.

The forces destroyed three “enemy safe houses” and a number of roadside bombs, it said, adding ground forces also found a house booby-trapped with homemade explosives in the Khatoon neighbourhood near Baquba.

The military said air support was called in to destroy the house but a bomb missed its target and struck another nearby structure wounding 11 civilians.

The original target was later destroyed with missiles which produced a “large secondary explosion confirming the house as containing a large amount of explosives”, it said.

Ethnically mixed Diyala and its capital of Baquba have emerged as hotbeds of Al-Qaeda since Iraq’s sectarian conflict broke out in earnest in February 2006.

In a separate operation southeast of Baghdad the military captured more than 60 suspected insurgents and destroyed 17 boats allegedly being used to transport fighters and weapons.

The US military says it expects the present offensives to trigger a counter-attack from Al-Qaeda.

Speaking to The Times of London from Baghdad, General David Petraeus, the chief of US forces in Iraq, said on Wednesday that the network was “obviously going to have a surge of their own.

“You saw an example of this yesterday (Tuesday),” he said, referring to the massive truck bomb in Baghdad.

Insurgents fired about three mortar rounds on Thursday onto Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, the seat of the Iraqi parliament and site of the US and British embassies. No casualties were reported.

South of Baghdad, a suicide car bomb ploughed into a police base, killing two policemen and wounding at least 10 other people, including civilians, security officials said.

And in the town of Iskandiriyah, south of Baghdad, a local representative of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his bodyguard were shot dead on their way to work, a police official said

GOP Congressman Introduces Legislation To Restrict Pelosi Trips To Enemy Countries

TPMCafe.com, 06.21.07
By Greg Sargent | bio

Oh, this is a good one. GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa apparently wasn’t satisfied with the attention he got for proposing the use of an electrified fence—the kind used on livestock—for our southern border. He must’ve wanted some more.

So he hit on a nifty solution: Dust off the old Pelosi-to-Syria controversy!

Just in from The Hill: House Republican wants to restrict Pelosi’s travel

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will not be permitted to use State Department funds to travel to nations that are known to have sponsored terrorism if a Republican amendment to appropriations legislation passes the House on Thursday.

The amendment to the $34 billion State and Foreign Operations bill, offered by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), prohibits funds to be used to travel to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan or Syria.

The idea did get attention—it was the lead on Drudge for some time.

So we thought it would be fun to check in with a spokesman for King and ask if the amendment would also apply to any of the Republican members of Congress who went to Syria recently. As you may recall, they included GOP Reps. Eric Cantor, David Hobson, Darryl Issa, Frank Wolf, and several others.

We reached a King spokesman and posed the question. The answer: “The measure only applies to one position—the Speaker of the House.”

When we asked why the measure wouldn’t also apply to Republicans who might want to go to Syria, King’s spokesman replied: “The Speaker of the House is the third in line, and Nancy Pelosi has made it very clear that she wants” to interfere in the crafting of foreign policy.

We then inquired why the measure didn’t also apply to members of Congress, since journeying to “enemy” countries is presumably a bad thing even when done by lowly Congressmen. The spokesman’s answer: He wasn’t sure whether that had been considered, or why it might not have been.

Oh, well. One can try.

REPORT: The Right Wing Domination Of Talk Radio And How To End It

ThinkProgress.org
June 20, 2007

The Center for American Progress and Free Press today released the first-of-its-kind statistical analysis of the political make-up of talk radio in the United States. It confirms that talk radio, one of the most widely used media formats in America, is dominated almost exclusively by conservatives.

The new report — entitled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio� — raises serious questions about whether the companies licensed to broadcast over the public radio airwaves are serving the listening needs of all Americans.

While progressive talk is making inroads on commercial stations, right-wing talk reigns supreme on America’s airwaves. Some key findings:

– In the spring of 2007, of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners, 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming was conservative, and only 9 percent was progressive.

– Each weekday, 2,570 hours and 15 minutes of conservative talk are broadcast on these stations compared to 254 hours of progressive talk — 10 times as much conservative talk as progressive talk.

– 76 percent of the news/talk programming in the top 10 radio markets is conservative, while 24 percent is progressive.

Two common myths are frequently offered to explain the imbalance of talk radio: 1) the 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine (which required broadcasters to devote airtime to contrasting views), and 2) simple consumer demand. Each of these fails to adequately explain the root cause of the problem. The report explains:

Our conclusion is that the gap between conservative and progressive talk radio is the result of multiple structural problems in the U.S. regulatory system, particularly the complete breakdown of the public trustee concept of broadcast, the elimination of clear public interest requirements for broadcasting, and the relaxation of ownership rules including the requirement of local participation in management. […]

Ultimately, these results suggest that increasing ownership diversity, both in terms of the race/ethnicity and gender of owners, as well as the number of independent local owners, will lead to more diverse programming, more choices for listeners, and more owners who are responsive to their local communities and serve the public interest.

Along with other ideas, the report recommends that national radio ownership not be allowed to exceed 5 percent of the total number of AM and FM broadcast stations, and local ownership should not exceed more than 10 percent of the total commercial radio stations in a given market.

Snow Responds To Potentially Illegal Use Of RNC Accounts: Clinton Did It Too

ThinkProgress.org
06.19.07

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee yesterday released a report documenting how White House officials have regularly used RNC and Bush-Cheney ‘04 e-mail accounts for official government business, in apparent violation of the Hatch Act. The report also found that the RNC has overseen “extensive destruction� of these e-mails, which would likely violate the Presidential Records Act.

During yesterday’s press briefing, White House spokesman Tony Snow brushed aside this direct evidence of potential illegality. His response: Clinton did it too. “Those email accounts were set up on a model based on the prior administration, which had done it the same way, in order to try to avoid Hatch Act violations.�

Snow’s statement is false. In 1993, President Clinton’s then-Assistant to the President John Podesta issued a staff memo clearly stating that all administration e-mails dealing with official business had to be “incorporated into an official recordkeeping system,� stressing that no “e-mail document that is a Presidential record should be deleted.�

The Clinton administration’s policy also made clear that personal and political e-mail accounts — which are generally exempt from the Presidential Records Act — could not be used for official business. Indeed, the Bush administration has seemingly implemented a policy opposite of the Clinton administration’s.

Read the full memo: http://websrvr80il.audiovideoweb.com/il80web20037/ThinkProgress/2007/1863_001.pdf

9/11 widows demand release of CIA’s Inspector General report

06/18/2007 @ 3:23 pm
Filed by RAW STORY
http://rawstory.com/printstory.php?story=6518

A group composed of widows of 9/11 victims are demanding the release of a key CIA report.

“The report, prepared by the CIA’s inspector general, is the only major 9/11 government review that has still not been made publicly available,” Michael Isikoff reported in January. “When it was completed in August 2005, Newsweek and other publications reported that it contained sharp criticisms of former CIA director George Tenet and other top agency officials for failing to address the threat posed by Al Qaeda, as well as other mistakes that might have prevented the attacks.”

In a statement obtained by RAW STORY, September 11th Advocates Patty Casazza, Monica Gabrielle, Mindy Kleinberg, and Lorie Van Auken write, “Almost six years have passed since the attacks of September 11, 2001, yet critical information continues to be withheld from the American public regarding the attacks.

“In 2002, after reviewing the evidence produced by the Joint Inquiry of Congress into the 9/11 Attacks, both Republican and Democratic Congressmen agreed that a CIA Inspector General review into individual responsibility was necessary,” the statement continues. “Faced with the facts, these Congressmen understood that accountability in the Intelligence Community was crucial.”

The 9/11 widows add, “Their intent was that a final declassified CIA/IG report be released to the public and where deemed appropriate by the report, for personnel at all levels to be held accountable for any omission, commission, or failure to meet professional standards in regard to the events of September 11, 2001. To date, despite enormous efforts from the Senate Intelligence Committee, nothing has happened.”

According to 9/11Truth.org, a petition entitled “The Public’s Right to Know - Declassification and Release of Documents” (link) garnered over 15,000 signatures and was “hand delivered...to lawmakers in Washington, DC.”

Further excerpts from September 11th Advocates’ statement:

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Michael Isikoff wrote in his January 2007 Newsweek article that, “When it [the CIA/IG report] was completed in August 2005, NEWSWEEK and other publications reported that it contained sharp criticisms of former CIA director George Tenet and other top agency officials for failing to address the threat posed by Al Qaeda, as well as other mistakes that might have prevented the attacks.”

Isikoff goes on to say, “What’s really behind the intelligence community’s refusal to release the report, the senators suspect, is a desire to protect the reputations of some of the main figures.”

Since sources and methods are not revealed in a declassified report, national security is protected and thus not an excuse for withholding this document. Since when does embarrassment meet any standard for keeping a government report secret? Isn’t it time for our elected and appointed officials to do the job that they were sent to our Nation’s Capitol for: to protect the public and not reputations?

Americans have the right to know that the problems identified in this report have been addressed and corrected. We have the right to know that competent people are serving us in strategic positions – our safety and security depends on it. Incompetence costs lives.

Legislation, co-sponsored by Senators Ron Wyden D-OR and Kit Bond R-MO, calling for the release of the 9/11 CIA/IG report, already exists, has passed the Senate and has strong bipartisan support. Yet, the White House and the CIA continue to refuse to release the already declassified version of the report.

It is sadly and abundantly clear that, once again, only heightened public pressure on the Administration and the CIA will force accountability. We call on the public and the press to demand the release of the declassified version of the 9/11 CIA’s Inspector General report.

Patty Casazza
Monica Gabrielle
Mindy Kleinberg
Lorie Van Auken