Joseph Galloway, 67, is an award-winning journalist and former military affairs correspondent for Knight Ridder, and an award for distinguished journalism is given each year that bears his name.  --  He is also the the only civilian to be awarded the Bronze Star by the U.S. Army during the Vietnam war, for rescuing wounded American soldiers under heavy enemy fire during a battle in the Ia Drang Valley.  --  On Jun. 20 he wrote a column praising the courage of Maj. Gen. Anthony Taguba, the author of an investigative report into Abu Ghraib who recently denounced the Bush administration, saying:  "The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture."[1]  --  Galloway emphasized the part that Taguba's Filipino roots played in maintaining his integrity, but did not note that the use of torture against Filipinos in the Philippine War (1899-1902) may also be a factor.  --  "During the 1899-1902 Philipppine War," according James Grant Crawford, "some American commanders allegedly condoned atrocities, including denying quarter, indiscriminate burnings, and torture of prisoners and civilians. Reacting to the 1901 Balangiga massacre, in which Filipino guerrillas hacked to death thirty-nine U.S. soldiers, Gen. Jacob Smith told officers to make the island of Samar a 'howling wilderness' and kill any makes over the age of ten. Though not implemented as policy, his directive exonerated one subordinate who illegally executed civilians" (The Oxford Companion to American Military History [Oxford UP, 1999], p. 66).  --  Galloway concluded his column:  "I know.  I know.  A snowball has a better chance in Hell than we do at ever seeing the President and his cronies actually brought to justice for their high crimes and misdemeanors.  We are going to see these walking examples of the lowest common denominator become the happy recipients of a blizzard of presidential pardons on Jan. 19, 2009, before the few who haven't already fled slip out of town ahead of the subpoenas.  --  My thoughts keep returning to a little speech Gen. Taguba made to his team of investigators as they first began their work in 2004:  'Bottom line:  We will follow our conscience and do what is morally right.'  --  Would that our President and his unindicted co-conspirators had done the same."  --  The McClatchy-owned Tacoma News Tribune failed to print Galloway's column.  --  On Sunday, the paper published an editorial that stopped short, but only barely, of making the same claim.[2] ...

You can sign a petition to the Senate Democratic Steering Committee for the removal of Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) from the chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee at the link below; it's accompanied by a new Robert Greenwald short entitled "Lieberman Must GO."[1]  --  Greenwald noted in a recent message that Lieberman "has endorsed and stumped for McCain, wants to be the star of the Republican National Convention, and has even served on a 527 group that smeared Barack Obama with a nasty attack ad."[2] ...

"Four U.S. soldiers were killed in roadside bombings Tuesday and Wednesday, the U.S. military said, bringing to 10 the number of Americans killed in Iraq since Monday," the Washington Post reported Thursday.[1]  --  In a separate incident, Iraqi officials said four members of a family, including two small children, were killed when a U.S. military patrol called in an airstrike on a farmhouse in response to gunfire that was, it turned out, warning shots from a farmer who thought he was responding to thieves.  --  The Los Angeles Times gave additional details on another incident mentioned in the Post report in which civilians died, identifying as "a manager and two female employees from a bank at the airport" three civilians killed when U.S. soldiers who were part of "a convoy stopped near the Baghdad international airport to recover a stalled vehicle" shot and caused "a fiery crash."[2]  --  The two incidents are examples of how U.S. rules of engagement are prioritizing force protection.  --  This problem, which alienates the very groups the military is supposedly present to protect, has for years plagued U.S. forces, both military and mercenary, in Afghanistan and Iraq.  --  It was the subject of an article a year ago published by IRIN (Integrated Regional Information Networks, associated with the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs [OCHA]) reporting on a statement from an NGO umbrella group that said:  "We strongly condemn the operations and force protection measures carried out by international military forces in which disproportionate or indiscriminate use of force has resulted in civilian casualties" and described how "civilians have been killed for simply driving or walking too close to international military personnel or vehicles."[3]  --  COMMENT:  Philip Bobbitt, who believes that what we are in the midst of an historic transition from the nation-state to what he calls "the market state," argues that a shift in emphasis to force protection is one of many changes in warfare that are part of that transition:  "Third, the shift to a market state has largely replaced conscription with an all-volunteer, which is to say market-based, force.  Traditional tasks like peeling potatoes are outsourced to McDonald's because it is cheaper to do so.  Conscription, 'the human production line' as [Rupert] Smith terms it [in The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London, Allen Lane, 2005)] — in another industrial, nation state metaphor — is being phased out in many countries, and there is no longer a seemingly infinite number of persons whose cost to the State is confined to their maintenance.  This has led to much greater professionalization of the force, but also to greater emphasis on force protection.  'We fight,' Smith writes, 'so as not to lose the force, rather than fighting by using the force at any cost to achieve the aim.'  For many reasons, the citizens of a market state are more sensitive to the value of individual life and less tolerant of sacrifice.  Accordingly, there is 'a greater emphasis on force protection including body armor, heavily armored vehicles, and well protected bases.'  The implications of this change for the Wars of Terror are considerable if not widely appreciated, for these measures 'distance the force from the people amongst whom they operate and who may conceal the adversary, who are the primary audience and the source of information . . . [Indeed] most armed forces deploy with very large administrative structures designed for wars of maneuvering large mass.  They require guarding and fortifying [but in a war against terror the] more they are secured, the more isolated and the more of a target they become" (Philip Bobbitt, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008], pp. 149-50).  --  NOTE:  UFPPC's Monday evening book discussion group, Digging Deeper, will begin a two-week examination of Bobbitt's Terror and Consent at 7:00 p.m. on Mon. Jun. 30, at Tacoma's Mandolin Cafe....

This spring four analysts of the American political scene gathered to look critically at the American two-party system and contemplate the conditions under which the Republican Party might the suffer the demise it so richly deserves.  --  They were unable to imagine any.  --  The United States in the first decade of the 21st century, they agreed, has grown so decadent and so corrupt that political regeneration appears to be all but impossible.  --  An edited, 4,800-word version of their conversation appeared in the July 2008 issue of Harper's Magazine.[1]  --  A few moments in their colloquy stand out.  --  (1) Novelist and historian Kevin Baker pointed out that the dysfunctionality observed in the United States is part of a larger phenomenon, "a strange global capital consensus whereby the élites of all the controlling parties have accepted what they feel are the limits of globalization, which will inevitably drive down wages and realign all kinds of economic forces.  This consensus creates a huge disassociation between what is being promised and what is being delivered."  --  (2) Thomas Schaller, a political scientist, noted that "Obama talks about building a governing majority, and Hillary Clinton talks about how you need a knife fighter — somebody who knows how things work, who can win bureaucratic politics.  She starts from the premise that we are stuck forever in this kind of 49-49 America.  He starts from the premise that Democrats can get to 54 percent or 55 percent, in which case they don't need to be knife fighters."  --  (3) Political analyst Kevin Phillips observed:  "A major Republican weakness that doesn't get noticed is their inability, despite all their macho muscle-flexing, to bring foreign wars to a successful finish.  Our whole involvement in the Middle East, from the 1970s through the 2020s or however long it goes on, is going to do for the United States what two world wars did for Britain.  It is a disaster.  But it never gets examined in this way."  --  (4) Schaller again:  "There is an increasing desire for America to remove itself somewhat from this global war.  Obama can't really address that desire outright — directly addressing the isolationist tendency among some voters would be a bridge too far for the national press."  --  (5) On the Iraq war:  "PHILLIPS:  The Democrats could easily get trapped in Iraq, the way the Republicans under Nixon were trapped in Southeast Asia.  Back then, the Democrats were capable of shifting shamelessly on the Vietnam issue, and Nixon was stupid enough to give them a chance to do it.  He should have just pointed out that the Democrats were the party that built up the war and also bungled it.  If the Democrats keep the current war going, the Republicans could try to reinvent themselves on Iraq, and in so doing lock the Democrats into a 2009-2012 version of Nixonizing the war.  --  BAKER:  It seems almost inevitable that this is going to happen, doesn't it?  --  PHILLIPS:  It shouldn't be, because we are hearing a far less equivocal call for getting out of Iraq from the Democrats than we ever heard from Nixon.  Not that I believe them."  --  (6) On the morass inside the Beltway:  "PHILLIPS:  Well, when I was a kid, I collected postage stamps, including the old presidential series — the old Jefferson purple three, the Madison magenta four, and so forth.  I took it awfully seriously.  I collected returnable bottles in order to buy the stamps, but my grandfather bought me the otherwise unaffordable $2 and $5 stamps, which pictured Harding and Coolidge.  That was already depressing, because once you got up to the 1920s, you were starting to look at third-rate presidents you knew more about.  And it's been discouraging for the past fifty years, too.  As you go down the line, you really feel a deep sense that this is a waste of time.  --  MITCHELL:  Democracy?  --  PHILLIPS:  No, no!  The American political system in Washington."  --  (7) Despite the subtitle of the forum, "Why the G.O.P. Must Die," the interlocutors turn away from the prospect of the G.O.P.'s demise toward the end of their exchange:  "The cliché about this contest is that it is the 'change election,' but it seems that most of us at this table think no real change is in the offing," Harper's editor Luke Mitchell noted, morosely.  --  COMMENT:  There are a number of things missing from this discussion.  Among them:  --  (a) The culture of militarism (though Scott McConnell, the editor of the American Conservative, did speak longingly on the last page of a military revolt, "our version of a Gaullist coup").  --  (b) The influence of the Israel Lobby (apparently unmentionable; in fact, Israel was not mentioned once in this long exchange, though the possibility of an attack on Iran was).  --  (c) The stranglehold of corporations on American political institutions (though Phillips did stress the importance of "the business and financial interests pumping money into the Democratic Party" and added:  "Some people in Congress get tired after three terms and go home.  They just don't want to bother with it.   But most understand that it is the ticket to making real money.  You can hang around Washington and be a lobbyist.  Even if you're a jerk, you'll still make $300,000 a year, which is twice what a congressman makes.  None of this is likely to change, at least not based on anything that is in motion now").  --  (d) The related problem of the role of corporate-owned media in the American political system....

The U.S. mainstream press often transmits the allegation that Syria embarked on a nuclear program with the help of North Korea, and suggests that Israel's mysterious attack on Syria on Sept. 6, 2007, was justified by this fact.  --  Thus on Jun. 20, the New York Times noted in passing that "In September, Israeli aircraft bombed a structure in Syria that American officials said housed a nuclear reactor built with the aid of North Korea."  --  Seymour Hersh, however, writing in the New Yorker in February 2008, all but ruled out the possibility that the target of "Operation Orchard" was a nuclear site.  --  On Monday, the Financial Times of London reported that the president of Syria has promised the International Atomic Energy Association its "full cooperation" and that "Syria has signalled that it is confident of the outcome of a probe into an alleged nuclear installation."[1]  --  "Mr. Assad has been invited to attend a summit in France in July, which many Syrians consider ends attempts to isolate Syria," Ferry Biedermann noted, along with other diplomatic developments lessening tensions with Damascus....

Because its "decision to pump more oil than it has in nearly 30 years risks being completely negated by the sharp drop in output caused by attacks on production facilities in Nigeria," Saudi Arabia's confirmation that it would pump 9.7m barrels a day next month, an increase from 9.5m barrels a day, "is likely to be seen as a disappointment," the Financial Times of London reported Sunday.[1]  --  In a separate piece, the London daily said that avoiding blame was a principal motive:  "The Saudis are concerned by their image in the U.S. and do not want oil to become an election issue that draws unwanted attention to them," reported Andrew England.[2]  --  Corroborating this analysis, AFP reported that "Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah condemned oil 'speculators' on Sunday . . . The monarch, who said Saudi Arabia would give 1.5 billion dollars to efforts to ease energy shortages in poor nations, told the 36-nation summit his country was 'very concerned' about consumers worldwide.  --  He blamed increased oil consumption and taxes on fuel, but added: 'Among other factors behind this unjust increase in oil prices is the abhorrent act of speculators acting for their own selfish interests.'"[3]  --  OPEC's president, Algeria's Oil Minister Chakib Khelil, also blamed speculators:  "We believe that the market is in equilibrium," he said. "The price is disconnected from fundamentals.  It is not a problem of supply."  --  But U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman claimed that "there is no evidence that we can find that speculators are driving futures prices."  --  The economics editor of the center-right Australian (Sydney, Australia) argued in an analysis on Monday that more important than the speculator, "the age-old scapegoat in economic uncertainty," is the role of central banks, particularly the Fed, "in running loose monetary policy over the past decade.  The slashing of U.S. rates over the past six months in response to recession fears raises the prospect of one last inflationary wave of excess liquidity washing into world markets."[4]  --  "Some of the best oil industry market analysis comes out of Rice University in Texas," wrote David Uren.  "A recent paper by Amy Myers Jaffe and Mahmoud Amin El-Gamal from Rice traces the cycles of boom and bust in the oil market back to the dawn of the oil age in the middle of the nineteenth century.  --  Periods of increased trade and globalization increase demand for energy and, since supply cannot respond quickly enough, bring higher prices in their train.  Higher energy prices become caught in the momentum of inflation, which becomes self-perpetuating as negative real interest rates develop.  Inflationary cycles have typically ended with recessions following currency and banking crises." ...

There is a Catch-22 in John McCain's policy on Iraq, Frank Rich wrote in Sunday's New York Times:  "If violence continues to subside in Iraq — if, as Mr. McCain has it, we keep 'winning' — it will only call more attention to the internal contradictions of a policy that says success in Iraq should be punished by forcing American troops to stay there indefinitely.  And if Iraq reignites, well, so much for 'winning.'”[1]  --  And "who’s paying attention to any of this Iraq stuff anyway?" Rich asked.  --  According to him, "[v]irtually no one."  --  "This isn’t the press’s fault, and it isn’t the public’s fault.  It’s merely the way things are."  --  "Perhaps if Americans had been asked for shared sacrifice at the war’s inception, including a draft, they would be in 1968-ish turmoil now.  But they weren’t, and they aren’t.  In 2008, the Vietnam analogy doesn’t hold.  The center does."  --  Rich makes some good points, but on public indifference to Iraq, he exaggerates.  --  On Thursday, Bill Quigley wrote:  "There have been over 15,000 arrests for resistance to war since 2002.  There were large numbers right after the runup to and invasion of Iraq.  Recently, arrests have begun climbing again.  Though arrests are a small part of antiwar organizing, their rise is an indicator of increasing resistance."[2] ...

WSWS said Saturday that "The various services held this week in honor of Tim Russert, longtime moderator of NBC’s 'Meet the Press,' underscore the extraordinary degree to which the American media has been integrated into the state apparatus."[1]  --  Alex Lantier and David Walsh explained that evidence that emerged in the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby demonstrated conclusively the degree to which under Tim Russert's leadership "Meet the Press" became part of "the corporate-owned press [that] in the U.S. functions as a disciplined, highly-controlled agency ‘explaining’ the latest twists of state policy to the population, and lulling it to sleep." ...

According to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, "[t]he latest Pentagon budget request contains a near record high level of money for classified, or 'black' programs," Wired reported Friday.[1]  --  Specific funding programs is unknown, but Sharon Weinberger said that "classified space programs," include "a classified bombing prototype" are believed to account for much of it....

The news that Israel carried out in early June a massive military exercise over the eastern Mediterranean that seemed to rehearse the logistics for a strike on Iran's nuclear program has elicited commentary around the world.  --  Reuters reported Friday that the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency who won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, Mohamad ElBaradei, said he would resign in the event of an attack on Iran.[1]  --  "A military strike, in my opinion, would be worse than anything possible. It would turn the region into a fireball," he said.  --  The speaker of the Majlis, Iran's parliament, Ali Larijani, who was for a long period Iran's nuclear negotiator with the West, said:  "If they make such a grave mistake, they will pay a high price for it," the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.[2]  --  Iran's Press TV reported that a senior commander in the Revolutionary Guards who had just "oversee[n] a military exercise aimed at detecting and destroying mock targets in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz" said Iran was "prepared to detect and repel any potential attack against the country’s nuclear facilities."[3]  --  Barack Obama said Israel was "always justified in making decisions that will provide for its security" but that "[w]ithout access to the actual detailed intelligence, I want to be careful about characterizing what was done and whether it was appropriate or not," Reuters reported, adding that Israel's ambassador to the U.S. told CBS News:  "[A]s our prime minister recently said Israel will not tolerate a nuclear Iran. . . . [time i]s running out."[4] ...

In another derogation of its constitutional responsibilities, on Friday the U.S. House of Representatives voted 293-129 to confer retrospective immunity on telecommunications companies that broke the law by participating in post-9/11 warrantless wiretapping.  --  The New York Times reported that "the Senate . . . is expected to pass [the bill] next week by a wide margin."[1]  --  The vote in the House was "a major victory for the White House after months of dispute," Eric Lichtblau and David Stout said.  --  Under the new bill, the government is "no longer requir[ed to seek] individual warrants for wiretapping purely foreign communications, like phone calls and e-mail messages that pass through American telecommunications switches.  The government would now be allowed to use broad warrants to eavesdrop on large groups of foreign targets at once.  --  In targeting and wiretapping Americans, the administration would have to get individual court orders from the intelligence court, but in 'exigent' or emergency circumstances it would be able to go ahead for at least seven days without a court order if it asserted that 'intelligence important to the national security of the United States may be lost.'” ...

"[I]ncreasingly military analysts are warning of severe consequences if the U.S. begins a shooting war with Iran," the Christian Science Monitor said Friday in an analysis of how Iran would probably respond to an attack.[1]  --  Magnus Ranstorp of the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defense College in Stockholm told reporter Scott Peterson:  "I doubt very much our ability to manage some of the consequences. . . . If you attack Iran you are unleashing a firestorm of reaction internally that will only strengthen revolutionary forces, and externally in the region.  It's a nightmare scenario for any contingency planner, and I think you really enter the twilight zone if you strike Iran." ...

A "major military exercise" involving "[m]ore than 100 Israeli F-16 and F15 fighters" ended on Jun. 5 "over the eastern Mediterranean and over Greece," the New York Times reported Friday.[1]  --  U.S. officials said the exercise "appeared to be an effort to develop the [Israeli] military’s capacity to carry out long-range strikes and to demonstrate the seriousness with which Israel views Iran’s nuclear program," Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt said.[1]  --  It was "a clear message to the United States and other countries that Israel was prepared to act militarily if diplomatic efforts to stop Iran from producing bomb-grade uranium continued to falter," Gordon and Schmitt said.  --  "The exercise also included Israeli helicopters that could be used to rescue downed pilots.  The helicopters and refueling tankers flew more than 900 miles, which is about the same distance between Israel and Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, American officials said."  --  A remark by an Israeli deputy prime minister that an Israeli attack on Iran was "inevitable" was made, it turns out, "the day after the unpublicized exercise ended."  --  Israel, the White House, and the U.S. National Security Council refused to comment on the report, but a senior cleric in Iran said that "Israelis and their U.S. supporters" would be dealt "a heavy blow" if such an attack were carried out, Bloomberg News reported.[2]  --  The Wall Street Journal attributed a $4 rise in the price of a barrel of oil to the New York Times report.[3] ...

ABC News reported Thursday — in a blog — that U.S. Army Maj. Gen. (ret.) Antonio Taguba says in a foreword that "there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes.  The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."[1]  --  "[T]he Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture," Gen. Taguba says.  --  "This story is not only written in words:  It is scrawled for the rest of these individuals’ lives on their bodies and minds.  Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors."  --  In other words, "we are led by war criminals," as the title of a piece by Jay Bookman put it on the web site if the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.[2]  --  The Washington Post reported the news, but suppressed the accusation of war crimes, effectively censoring Gen. Taguba's important charge by reporting only that "In a statement accompanying the report, retired Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who led the Army's first official investigation on Abu Ghraib, said the new evidence suggested a 'systematic regime of torture' inside U.S.-run detention camps."[3]  --  (Dan Froomkin of the Post was more forthright on a blog entry on the paper's web site.)  --  AP reported in some detail on the report's findings and provided a link to the report.[4]  --  The New York Times ignored both the report and Gen. Taguba's assertions.  --  Kudos, however, to Pierce County's own News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) for putting Warren Strobel's McClatchy article on Taguba's text on its front page.  --  COMMENT:  That impeachment remains "off the table" for congressional leaders, that the drive to impeach is ignored by U.S. mainstream media in these circumstances, and that the American public tolerates this situation are striking facts that still await an adequate explanation....

The U.S. military is attributing responsibility for a bombing in Baghdad to a Shiite radical who has broken away from Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and who has enriched himself by seizing homes in Baghdad's Hurriya neighborhood that belonged to displaced Sunnis and renting them to Shiite families, the Los Angeles Times reported.[1]  --  The death toll from the truck bombing on Tuesday has risen to 63, Ned Parker and Usama Redha said.  --  "U.S. and Iraqi forces have chased [Haydar Mehdi Khadum] Fawadi for months and are offering a $50,000 reward for help in his capture," according to Parker and Redha.  --  "Mahdi Army members, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Fawadi had been expelled from their militia about two years ago and had a reputation as a criminal."  --  Many Iraqis are "convinced the Americans had carried out the bombing," the Los Angeles Times said.  --  A. U.S. spokesperson denominated Fawadi "an all-around bad guy," but a local resident scoffed:  "Nobody will believe them.  They are the occupiers.  It is propaganda,” the New York Times said.[2]  --  "A spokesman for the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr rejected the American version as 'completely away from reality,'” Andrew Kramer reported.  --  "Jabir Habeeb Jabir, a mainstream Shiite lawmaker, also questioned the assertion that a Shiite had killed Shiites to provoke revenge killings against Sunnis.  'We never heard of such actions,' he said."  --  The Los Angeles Times noted that "The Americans accuse Iran of funding, supplying, and training the 'special groups,' which Tehran denies," and the New York Times said that the U.S. had "identified [Fawadi] as a leader of the Iranian-linked Shiite fighters known as special groups."  --  This sort of remark led Iran to protest on Thursday that "The U.S. has given refuge to terrorist Mujahideen Khalq Organization (MKO) on one hand and its media are misleading the public opinion by linking Iran to the terrorist bombings in Iraq on the other hand," the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.[3] ...

The New York Times reported Thursday that "Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, and BP   the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company   along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat."[1]  --  Andrew Kramer reported the talks with the supermajors are "in the final stages of negotiations" and that an announcement was expected on Jun. 30.  --  "While small, the deals hold great promise for the companies," Kramer said.  --  "'The bigger prize everybody is waiting for is development of the giant new fields,' Leila Benali, an authority on Middle East oil at Cambridge Energy Research Associates [Daniel Yergin's firm], said in a telephone interview from the firm’s Paris office.  The current contracts, she said, are a 'foothold' in Iraq for companies striving for these longer-term deals."  --  Because "[t]he no-bid deals are structured as service contracts," the agreements "do not require the passage of an oil law setting out terms for competitive bidding," but they are highly unusual in that "payment [is] in oil rather than cash.  'These are not actually service contracts,' Ms. Benali said.  'They were designed to circumvent the legislative stalemate' and bring Western companies with experience managing large projects into Iraq before the passage of the oil law."  --  "A clause in the draft contracts would allow the companies to match bids from competing companies to retain the work once it is opened to bidding, according to the Iraq country manager for a major oil company who did not consent to be cited publicly discussing the terms."  --  "Assem Jihad, the Oil Ministry spokesman, said the ministry chose companies it was comfortable working with."  --  "It is not clear what role the United States played in awarding the contracts; there are still American advisers to Iraq’s Oil Ministry," Kramer noted laconically....

Democratic leaders in Congress have agreed to a war-funding bill that "drops restrictions on Bush's ability to conduct the war and gives him almost all of the funding he sought well over a year ago for Iraq and Afghanistan," the Associated Press reported Wednesday.[1]  --  House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, "would not immediately release details, saying the verbal agreement had yet to be written in congressional legalese."  --  The natural disaster in the Midwest facilitated the unholy alliance by "pav[ing] the way for a quick infusion of emergency flood relief for the Midwest," Andrew Taylor reported; the agreement also encompasses "an extension of unemployment payments for the jobless, and a big boost in GI Bill college for veterans."  --  Bloomberg News noted that the spending bill would "fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan until President George W. Bush's successor is in office" — until mid-2009.[2]  --  White House Budget Director Jim Nussle touted the agreement as "a major victory" and said the bill would "meet the president's priorities" and "live within" his funding request.  --  The agreement finalizes the Democratic Party's complete sell-out on Iraq war funding, despite antiwar November 2006 elections that put Democrats in control of both houses of Congress with a mandate to bring the war in Iraq to an end — a situation that UFPPC has characterized as a "crisis of the Republic." ...

On Wednesday morning, Parti Socialiste First Secretary François Hollande, 53, appeared on France 2's morning interview program "Les Quatre Vérités" to comment on recent events; his remarks are translated below.[1]  --  (Hollande is the father of the four children of another famous French Socialist, Ségolène Royal, but their personal relationship came to end during the 2007 presidential campaign, in which she was defeated by Nicolas Sarkozy; she has since made clear her availability for Hollande's post as party first secretary, a competition that has much occupied French political discussion during the past year.)  --  Speaking to journalist Françoise Laborde, Hollande criticized the plan for the reorganization of the French military that President Nicolas Sarkozy had announced the day before, saying it lacked "strategic vision" and criticizing the decision to reintegrate France fully into NATO.  --  Hollande went on to criticize the increasingly unpopular Sarkozy presidency as "the miniaturized presidency," since it is cutting state activity in many areas, and "the gift presidency," since it has been characterized by fiscal advantages to the wealthiest sectors of French society.  --  He concluded:  " I think there's a sort of anger now that is individual, it's because people can't take it anymore — the price of gas, calling into question of the work week, they want to put retirements on the table — for a lot of our fellow citizens, we've had enough!" ...

In the aftermath of the Jun. 10 drone attack that killed 11 Pakistani soldiers in Pakistan's autonomous tribal region, the Pakistani military "is threatening to postpone or cancel an American program to train a paramilitary force in counterinsurgency for combating Islamist militants," the New York Times reported Wednesday.[1]  --  "The recriminations have exposed the underlying mistrust in the alliance, which has been held together in large part by the personal relationship between President Pervez Musharraf and President Bush," Jane Perlez reported.  --  "As the two men fade from power, the alliance is finding it difficult to quell the threat to the United States, Afghanistan, and Pakistan from a growing array of Taliban and Qaeda cells that are dug into Pakistan’s tribal areas."  --  Another indication of the state of U.S.-Pakistan relations:  "After the New York Times sought an interview with Anne W. Patterson, the American ambassador in Islamabad, an embassy spokeswoman asked that it first get permission from the State Department.  Sean McCormack, the department spokesman, gave the go-ahead, but Ms. Patterson declined."  --  Jane Perlez concluded her article by recalling that "One of the senior Pakistani government officials said the alliance forged between Washington and Islamabad immediately after 9/11 had been imbued with mutual suspicion 'since Day 1.'  --  A major reason for the distrust of the Americans among the Pakistani military came from the belief that Pakistan was unfairly blamed by Washington for the American and NATO difficulties in the war in Afghanistan.  --  The struggle against the Taliban in Afghanistan was faltering not only because Taliban forces from Pakistan were crossing the border into Afghanistan, the Pakistani government official said.  'Pakistan thinks you have screwed up in Afghanistan and made Pakistan the fall guy,' the official said." ...