Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 394

By Lisa Girion and Jordan Rau
Facing a torrent of criticism Tuesday, Blue Cross of California abruptly halted its practice of asking physicians in a letter to look for medical conditions that could be used to cancel patients' insurance coverage.

In a statement issued about 6 p.m., the state's largest for-profit insurer said, "Today we reached out to our provider partners and California regulators and determined this letter is no longer necessary and, in fact, was creating a misimpression and causing some members and providers undue concern.

"As a result, we are discontinuing the dissemination of this letter going forward."

The announcement came after blistering rebukes Tuesday by physicians, patients, privacy experts and officials including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) after The Times disclosed the practice.

The letter had been sharply criticized Monday by the California Medical Assn., and Tuesday night its president, Richard Frankenstein, said: "This letter was part of Blue Cross' pattern of unfairly canceling policies when people need coverage most. We're relieved that Blue Cross is ending this particular tactic but continue to have serious concerns about this company's practices looking forward."

Earlier in the day, Shannon Troughton, a spokeswoman for Blue Cross parent WellPoint Inc., said the company had been sending as many as 1,000 letters a month for years and had received no complaints.

Blue Cross sent physicians copies of insurance applications filled out by new patients, along with the letter advising them the company had a right to drop members who failed to disclose "material medical history." That could include "preexisting pregnancies."

The letter asked physicians to "immediately" report any discrepancies between their patients' medical condition and the information in the applications.
















AP)
The West's great reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, could run dry by 2021 without a drastic change in water consumption, according to an analysis released Tuesday.

The two reservoirs, which now contain 25 million acre-feet of water, are losing about 1 million acre-feet a year as a result of rising demand and persistent drought.

The study, to be published in the journal Water Resources Research, analyzed how global warming is likely to increase the strain on the Colorado River. Climate models predict that precipitation will decline and evaporation will increase across much of the western United States.

The reservoirs serve as protection against drought for the 27 million people who rely on water from the Colorado.

"The only option is to not take as much water out," said Tim Barnett, a marine geophysicist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla and lead author of the study.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the Colorado River, has a plan to reduce allocations if the reservoirs drop below certain levels.

By Pamela Hess

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Afghan government under President Hamid Karzai controls just 30 percent of the country, the top U.S. intelligence official said Wednesday.

Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the resurgent Taliban controls 10 percent to 11 percent of the country and Karzai's government controls 30 percent to 31 percent. But more than six years after the U.S. invasion to oust the Taliban and establish a stable central government, the majority of Afghanistan's population remains under local tribal control, he said.

Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, the Defense Intelligence Agency director, told the committee at the same hearing that the Pakistan government is trying to crack down on the lawless tribal area along the Afghan border area where Taliban and al-Qaida are believed to be training, and from which they launch attacks in Afghanistan. But neither the Pakistani military nor the tribal Frontier Corps is trained or equipped to fight, he said.

Maples said it would take three to five years to address those deficiencies and see a difference in their ability to fight effectively in the tribal areas.

"Pakistani military operations in the (region) have not fundamentally damaged al-Qaida's position in the region. The tribal areas remain largely ungovernable and, as such, they will continue to provide vital sanctuary to al-Qaida, the Taliban and regional extremism more broadly," Maples said.

Under questioning from Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., Maples also said he considers the harsh interrogation technique known as waterboarding to be inhumane. That would put it outside the bounds of U.S. law, which since late 2005 has prohibited cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees.

The Bush administration has refused to rule on whether waterboarding is torture. Waterboarding involves strapping a person down and pouring water over his or her cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning. It has been traced back hundreds of years, to the Spanish Inquisition, and is condemned by nations around the world.

According to CIA Director Michael Hayden, waterboarding remains among the interrogation methods available to the CIA but must be approved on a case-by-case basis by the attorney general and the president.

The U.S. military specifically prohibited waterboarding in 2006. Maples said the 19 other interrogation techniques allowed under military rules are effective.

"We have recently confirmed that with those who are using those tools on operations," Maples said.

Earlier this month Congress approved a bill that would limit the CIA to the military's interrogation techniques. The White House has threatened to veto it.

---

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 393

By Christian E. Weller

Economic weaknesses are becoming increasingly apparent heading into 2008. The crisis in the housing and mortgage markets has spilled over into other sectors and is causing much slower economic growth and a weaker labor market. And these problems are increasingly overshadowed by continuously large budget and trade deficits. The United States needs an economic recovery package to counter broad-based economic weaknesses. The economic stimulus passed last week is a good start, but it should be followed by a large-scale reform of U.S. economic policy.

1. Wage growth is low. Factoring in inflation, hourly wages were 2.5% higher and weekly wages were 1.6% higher in December 2007 than in March 2001. Over the past 12 months, real hourly earnings have fallen by 0.7% and weekly wages by 0.9%.

2. Job growth weakens substantially. Monthly job growth since March 2001 has averaged an annualized 0.6%. Over the past 12 months, the average monthly job growth was 82,800 jobs, compared to 166,100 in the previous 12 months, and 219,900 in the 12 months before that.

3. Benefits are disappearing. The share of private sector workers with a pension dropped from 50.3% in 2000 to 43.2% in 2006, the last year for which data are available, and the share of people with employer-provided health insurance dropped from 64.2% to 59.7%.

4. Family debt is on the rise. In the third quarter of 2007, household debt averaged a record 133.0% of disposable income. In the second quarter of 2007, families spent 14.3% of their disposable income to service their debt, up from 13.0% in the first quarter of 2001.

5. Families feel the pressure. The share of mortgages entering foreclosure was 0.8% in the third quarter of 2007, reflecting the sixth increase in a row to the highest level on record since 1979. The share of all mortgages in foreclosure also reached a record with 1.7%.

6. Housing market slows. New home sales in December 2007 were 40.7% lower than a year earlier and existing home sales were 22.0% lower. The median sales price of existing homes was 6.0% lower in December 2007 than a year earlier and the median sales price of new homes had dropped 10.4%. The average monthly supply of homes for the six months ending in October was 9.1 months, the highest since February 1982.

7. Home equity declines. Home equity dropped by 2.5 percentage points relative to disposable income in the third quarter of 2007, the seventh decline in a row, ending also the largest year-over-year drop since June 1992.

8. Poverty stays high. The poverty rate fell slightly to 12.3% in 2006, down from 12.6% in 2005, but still substantially higher than the last low point in 2000, when it was 11.3%.

9. Business investment is low and productivity growth slows. Business investment averaged 10.4% of GDP between March 2001 and December 2007, the lowest share since the 1960s. Net investment, after accounting for depreciation of capital goods, averaged 1.9% of GDP at the same time, the lowest share of any business cycle. And labor productivity growth fell below 2% in 2005, 2006, and 2007 for the first time since 1997.

10. The deficit increases again. In January 2008, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the deficit for 2008 will amount to $219 billion, $56 billion more than in 2007, not including the cost of an economic stimulus or additional appropriations for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

11. Deficit financing provided by foreigners. Foreign investors bought 77.2% of new Treasury debt and the share of U.S. foreign-held debt grew to 46% in September 2007 from 31% in March 2001. Interest payments from the federal government to foreigners rose to $39 billion in the second quarter 2007 from $21 billion in the first quarter of 2001.

12. Trade deficit remains high despite strong export growth. In the fourth quarter of 2007, the trade deficit grew again slightly to 5.2% of GDP from 5.0% in the third quarter of 2007.














By Pamela Hess

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate voted Tuesday to shield from lawsuits telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on their customers without court permission after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

After nearly two months of stops and starts, the Senate rejected by a vote of 31 to 67 a move to strip away a grant of retroactive legal immunity for the companies.

President Bush has promised to veto any new surveillance bill that does not protect the companies that helped the government in its warrantless wiretapping program, arguing that it is essential if the private sector is to give the government the help it needs.

About 40 lawsuits have been filed against telecom companies by people alleging violations of wiretapping and privacy laws.

The Senate also rejected two amendments that sought to water down the immunity provision.

One, co-sponsored by Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, would have substituted the government for the telecoms in lawsuits, allowing the court cases to go forward but shifting the cost and burden of defending the program.

The other, pushed by California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, would have given a secret court that oversees government surveillance inside the United States the power to dismiss lawsuits if it found that the companies acted in good faith and on the request of the president or attorney general.

Full telecom immunity must still be approved by the House; its version of the surveillance bill does not provide immunity.

At issue is the government's post-9/11 Terrorist Surveillance Program, which circumvented a secret court created 30 years ago to oversee such activities. The court was part of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a law written in response to government abuse of its surveillance authority against Americans.

The surveillance law has been updated repeatedly since then, most recently last summer. Congress hastily adopted a FISA modification in August in the face of dire warnings from the White House that changes in telecommunications technology and FISA court rulings were dangerously constraining the government's ability to intercept terrorist communications.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A resurgent Taliban is back in charge over parts of Afghanistan, the nation's chief intelligence official said Wednesday in an assessment that differed from the one made last month by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

More than six years after the United States invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban has regained control of about 10 percent of the country, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Just a few weeks ago, Gates touted NATO military success in Afghanistan in 2007 and said the Taliban controlled no land.

"The Taliban occupy no territory in Afghanistan on a continuing basis," Gates said during a Pentagon briefing in January.

Despite his less-optimistic assessment on that score, McConnell said the Taliban has suffered "significant degradation" in its leadership and is unable to successfully face off against U.S. and NATO forces.

He attributed an uptick in violence to the Taliban resorting to the terrorist tactics used by al Qaeda in Iraq -- suicide attacks and roadside bombings.

McConnell also said the Taliban chooses other means to engage.

"They'll fill in an area when we withdraw, or they will influence a village or region if our presence is not there," he said.

He stressed the need not only for improved security, but also for better governance, noting the federal government controls only about 30 percent of Afghanistan, leaving the majority of the country under the influence of local tribes.

At the Senate threat assessment hearing, McConnell said the same safe haven in Pakistan that has enabled al Qaeda to regain strength has allowed the Taliban to "train, recruit, rest and recuperate and then come back into Afghanistan to engage."

But he praised Pakistani authorities for helping the United States "more than any other nation in counterterrorism operations."

However, Gen. Michael Maples, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the senators Pakistani efforts to confront al Qaeda and the Taliban in the ungoverned regions of the country have had little impact.

"Pakistani military operations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas have had limited effect on al Qaeda," Maples said.

Both Maples and McConnell expressed concern about al Qaeda's continued effort to recruit and train operatives for terrorist operations against the United States and its allies and its stated desire to obtain weapons of mass destruction.

McConnell and Maples spoke on the eve of a Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing to discuss Pakistan with Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, the second most senior official at the State Department.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 392

(AP)

JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. — A former Marine and Clark County resident who was wounded in Iraq has been missing for nearly a week in Florida.

Eric Hall, 24, left the Deep Creek, Fla., home of a relative he was staying with on Sunday, according to the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office. He rode away on a motorcycle that was later found on a roadside, still running.

Hall had been hallucinating and having flashbacks, the sheriff's office states. Officials said Friday they were still searching.

Hall was injured in June 2005 when a bomb exploded while he was on patrol. He was treated for damage to his right arm, left leg and hip and the left side of his abdomen. He spent 13 weeks in the hospital and was then granted medical retirement by the Marines.

Hall's father, Kevin, said his son had been struggling with the stress and his injuries since he returned home. He said the 2002 Jeffersonville High School graduate had moved to Florida to "get things together."

By Michael Holden and Andrew Gray

A suicide car bomb killed 33 people in Iraq on Sunday, a security official said, hours before U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Baghdad to assess recent security gains and discuss troop levels.

The bomber struck a checkpoint outside a crowded market near the town of Balad in the country's north, said Colonel Hamadi Atshan, a spokesman for Iraqi security forces in the area.

The checkpoint was run by Sunni Arab volunteers who have joined U.S. forces to fight al Qaeda, Atshan said, adding women and children were among those killed in one of the worst attacks in Iraq this year. The U.S. military put the death toll at 23.

"There was a big explosion near the checkpoint. I saw blood, clothes, children's shoes and other personal things strewn on the ground," said Mustafa Kamal, a member of the volunteer security force and who was wounded in the attack.

Gates told reporters he would discuss troop levels with the U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus.

Petraeus is expected to testify to the U.S. Congress in April about possible further cuts in American forces in Iraq should recent drops in violence be sustained.

"I will obviously be interested in hearing from General Petraeus about his evaluation -- where he stands and what more work he feels he needs to do before he's ready to come back with his recommendations," Gates said.

Gates is visiting Baghdad a year after a U.S.-Iraqi security offensive was launched with the aid of an extra 30,000 U.S. troops to halt the country's slide into all-out sectarian war.

Security has improved since the additional forces were fully deployed in June, allowing the U.S. military to start withdrawing some troops.

By Maddy Sauer

A Houston, Texas woman, who says she was gang-raped by her co-workers at a Halliburton/KBR camp in Baghdad, says 38 women have come forward through her foundation to report their own tragic stories to her, but that many cannot speak publicly due to arbitration agreements in their employment contracts.

Jamie Leigh Jones is testifying on Capitol Hill this afternoon. She says she and other women are being forced to argue their cases of sexual harassment, assault and rape before secretive arbitration panels rather than in open court before a judge and jury.

Jones returned from Iraq following her rape in 2005. She was the subject of an exclusive ABC News report in December which led to congressional hearings.

After months of waiting for criminal charges to be filed, Jones decided to file suit against Halliburton and KBR.

KBR has moved for Jones' claim to be heard in private arbitration, instead of a public courtroom, as provided under the terms of her original employment contract.

Halliburton, which has since divested itself of KBR, says it is improperly named in the suit and referred calls to KBR.

In arbitration, there is no public record or transcript of the proceedings, meaning that Jones' claims would not be heard before a judge and jury. Rather, a private arbitrator hired by the corporation would decide Jones' case.

In fact, Tracy Barker, who says she was sexually harassed and sexually assaulted while working for Halliburton/KBR in Iraq, also recently tried to file suit against the companies. She was forced into arbitration last month.

Jones will tell Congress today that she was not aware that when she signed her employment contract, she was effectively signing away her right to bring a lawsuit.

"When I decided to pursue a civil suit, I was informed that within my 13-page employment contract that had an additional five pages attached, [there was] included an arbitration clause," Jones says in her prepared statement to the committee.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 391

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A couple and their son were killed and four other people were injured Tuesday during a U.S. military raid in northern Iraq, police said.

The incident marks the second time in four days that a U.S.-led coalition operation was blamed for killing Iraqi civilians.

A father, mother and son were killed in a raid on their home in Adwar, a village just south of Tikrit, police in Tikrit said.

The U.S. military confirmed the deaths, saying that "two men and a woman were killed during an intelligence-driven raid on a terrorist cell."

Though police said the victims were civilians, the U.S. military said troops entered a building after an "unknown enemy" fired upon them. Troops fired on the enemy once inside the building, the military said.

Troops later found the three dead and a child who had "leg injuries," according to the military.

On Saturday, nine Iraqi civilians were killed and three others wounded during a coalition operation in Tal al-Samar, near Iskandariya, south of Baghdad. A child and two women were among the dead, said police in Babil.

Police said the casualties resulted from a U.S. airstrike.

News of Tuesday's incident came as officials raised a new flag over Baghdad for the first time.

As a band played the Iraqi national anthem, officials lowered the old flag and hoisted a temporary one at a ceremony at Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's office in Baghdad's Green Zone.

Associated Press

NEW YORK — The U.S. military said five soldiers were killed Friday in two separate incidents in Iraq.

Four soldiers died when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device while the troops were on a combat patrol northwest of Baghdad, the military said.

In violence near Tikrit, another soldier and killed and three others wounded in an explosion near their vehicle as they carried out operations in Tamim province, the military said in a statement.

The wounded soldiers were transported to a coalition medical facility for treatment.

No other information on the attacks was immediately released, and names of the casualties were being withheld pending family notification.















By Jo Mannies
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft on Saturday defended President George W. Bush's electronic surveillance program, saying it was far less intrusive than similar surveillance in World Wars I and II.

Bush has been using security measures to protect freedoms, not to curb freedom, Ashcroft said in a speech to hundreds of Missouri Republicans attending the party's statewide Lincoln Days festivities this weekend.

"The president of the United States has been among the most respectful of all leaders ever engaged in the responsibility of fighting for freedom,'' Ashcroft said, and has been "most respectful in terms of respecting the civil liberties and rights of individuals while engaged in the important task of fighting for freedom."

Ashcroft said Woodrow Wilson monitored "all calls into and outside the United States'' in World War I, while Franklin Delano Roosevelt had "all traffic coming into and going out of the United States'' monitored in World War II.

Ashcroft said, "It is stunning to me that when the president of the United States, George W. Bush, simply says that we need to be able to monitor calls being made to terrorist territories, known geographies that are the source of terrorist activities, or known terrorists who are making calls into the United States … that some people see it as an infringement somehow."

Bush "respects liberty so profoundly that he has protected it and has safeguarded civil liberties more than any other president in wartime that I know of,'' Ashcroft said.

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NEW YORK - February 15 - The National Lawyers Guild calls on Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to recuse himself from any case coming before the Supreme Court involving the constitutionality of torture as an interrogation technique. In a BBC interview that aired on Tuesday, Scalia defended the use of torture to extract information from persons in custody by law enforcement officials in some cases. Although no case involving the use of torture is currently before the Court, recent events suggest that such a case may be forthcoming.

Guild President Marjorie Cohn said: “The Guild is appalled that a sitting Justice of the United States Supreme Court has ventured in a public forum his belief that it is justifiable to attempt to extract information from persons in custody by the use of torture. A justice of the highest court in the land, sworn to uphold the Constitution, whose views so undermine the fundamental right of security of the person guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, is unfit to sit on that Court.” The thrust of Scalia’s recent remarks is that he does not believe it is clear that the government is precluded from using coercive interrogation to prevent an imminent terrorist attack. He says that the Constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishment, but if torture is not meant as punishment, it may not be unconstitutional. Surely Justice Scalia knows that torture is unlawful under the U.S. Torture Statute (18 USC 2340) and the U.S. War Crimes Act (18 USC 2441). Two years ago, five retired U.S. military officers who had entered a case before the Supreme Court for Salim Ahmed Hamdan sought Scalia’s recusal after he publicly voiced skepticism abut the rights of Guantanamo detainees. Scalia declined to recuse himself. Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director of the Guild said: “Justice Scalia’s remarks inevitably pre-judge the issues in every case in which the Constitution might dictate suppression of evidence because of illegal police interrogation techniques, or the right to compensation of a person subjected to a violation of civil rights.

We therefore call upon Justice Scalia to recuse himself from any case which comes before the Court in which such issues are at stake.”

Founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association, which did not admit people of color, the National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York and it has chapters in every state.




















By Richard Lardner

Hundreds of U.S. Marines have been killed or injured by roadside bombs in Iraq because Marine Corps bureaucrats refused an urgent request in 2005 from battlefield commanders for blast-resistant vehicles, an internal military study concludes.

The study, written by a civilian Marine Corps official and obtained by The Associated Press, accuses the service of "gross mismanagement" that delayed deliveries of the mine-resistant, ambush-protected trucks for more than two years.

Cost was a driving factor in the decision to turn down the request for the so-called MRAPs, according to the study. Stateside authorities saw the hulking vehicles, which can cost as much as a $1 million each, as a financial threat to programs aimed at developing lighter vehicles that were years from being fielded.

After Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared the MRAP (pronounced M-rap) the Pentagon's No. 1 acquisition priority in May 2007, the trucks began to be shipped to Iraq in large quantities.

The vehicles weigh as much as 40 tons and have been effective at protecting American forces from improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the weapon of choice for Iraqi insurgents. Only four U.S. troops have been killed by such bombs while riding in MRAPs; three of those deaths occurred in older versions of the vehicles.

The study's author, Franz J. Gayl, catalogs what he says were flawed decisions and missteps by midlevel managers in Marine Corps offices that occurred well before Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld in December 2006.

Among the findings in the Jan. 22 study:

• Budget and procurement managers failed to recognize the damage being done by IEDs in late 2004 and early 2005 and were convinced the best solution was adding more armor to the less-sturdy Humvees the Marines were using. Humvees, even those with extra layers of steel, proved incapable of blunting the increasingly powerful explosives planted by insurgents.

• An urgent February 2005 request for MRAPs got lost in bureaucracy. It was signed by then-Brig. Gen. Dennis Hejlik, who asked for 1,169 of the vehicles. The Marines could not continue to take "serious and grave casualties" caused by IEDs when a solution was commercially available, wrote Hejlik, who was a commander in western Iraq from June 2004 to February 2005.

Gayl cites documents showing Hejlik's request was shuttled to a civilian logistics official at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in suburban Washington who had little experience with military vehicles. As a result, there was more concern over how the MRAP would upset the Marine Corps' supply and maintenance chains than there was in getting the troops a truck that would keep them alive, the study contends.

• The Marine Corps' acquisition staff didn't give top leaders correct information. Gen. James Conway, the Marine Corps commandant, was not told of the gravity of Hejlik's MRAP request and the real reasons it was shelved, Gayl writes. That resulted in Conway giving "inaccurate and incomplete" information to Congress about why buying MRAPs was not hotly pursued.

• The Combat Development Command, which decides what gear to buy, treated the MRAP as an expensive obstacle to long-range plans for equipment that was more mobile and fit into the Marines Corps' vision as a rapid reaction force. Those projects included a Humvee replacement called the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle and a new vehicle for reconnaissance and surveillance missions.

The MRAPs didn't meet this fast-moving standard and so the Combat Development Command didn't want to buy them, according to Gayl. The study calls this approach a "Cold War orientation" that suffocates the ability to react to emergency situations.

• The Combat Development Command has managers — some of whom are retired Marines — who lack adequate technical credentials. They have outdated views of what works on the battlefield and how the defense industry operates, Gayl says. Yet they are in position to ignore or overrule calls from deployed commanders.

An inquiry should be conducted by the Marine Corps inspector general to determine if any military or government employees are culpable for failing to rush critical gear to the troops, recommends Gayl, who prepared the study for the Marine Corps' plans, policies and operations department.

By Greg Miller
WASHINGTON -- The White House said Wednesday that the widely condemned interrogation technique known as waterboarding is legal and that President Bush could authorize the CIA to resume using the simulated-drowning method under extraordinary circumstances.

The surprise assertion from the Bush administration reopened a debate that many in Washington had considered closed. Two laws passed by Congress in recent years -- as well as a Supreme Court ruling on the treatment of detainees -- were widely interpreted to have banned the CIA's use of the extreme interrogation method.

But in remarks that were greeted with disbelief by some members of Congress and human rights groups, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said that waterboarding was a legal technique that could be employed again "under certain circumstances."

Fratto said the nation's top intelligence officials "didn't rule anything out" during congressional testimony Tuesday on CIA interrogation methods, and he indicated that Bush might consider reauthorizing waterboarding or other harsh techniques in extreme cases, such as when there is "belief that an attack might be imminent."

For years, White House officials denied that the U.S. had engaged in torture but always stopped short of confirming whether waterboarding had been used. The administration's latest stance -- described by Fratto during the daily White House briefing -- was denounced Wednesday by key lawmakers. "This is a black mark on the United States," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "The White House is trying to give themselves as much of an open field here as possible. It says to others that we are prepared to use the same kinds of tactics used by the most repressive regimes and the most heinous regimes."

The White House comments came one day after CIA Director Michael V. Hayden testified publicly for the first time that the agency had used waterboarding on Al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003. He also identified three prisoners, including self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who he said were the only detainees subjected to the method.

Waterboarding refers to a practice that involves strapping down a prisoner, placing a cloth over his face and dousing him with water to simulate the sensation of drowning. The technique has been traced to the Spanish Inquisition and has been the subject of war-crimes trials dating back a century.

The White House position on the issue is in some ways consistent with its long-standing efforts to expand executive power and resist attempts by Congress to rein in the president's authority.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 389

By Garrett Therolf and Saif Hameed
BAGHDAD -- Nine people were killed and four were injured in an errant U.S. airstrike southeast of Baghdad, the military said Sunday.

One child was among the dead, and two children were among the injured, said U.S. Army Maj. Brad Leighton.

"We offer our condolences to the families of those who were killed in this incident," Leighton said. "We mourn the loss of innocent life."

The news came the same day the military announced that a U.S. soldier was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade Thursday in eastern Baghdad. The identity of the soldier was not released pending notification of next of kin. At least 3,945 American troops have been killed in Iraq since the conflict began in March 2003, according to the independent website icasualties.org.

At least three members of a so-called concerned local citizens group were among the dead in the mistaken airstrike, according to a U.S. military source. The citizens groups are mostly Sunni Arab security forces organized and paid by the U.S. military in hopes that many will eventually be integrated into the Shiite-dominated Iraqi security forces.

The airstrike comes at a time when members of the groups, typically paid $10 a day, are coming under deadly attacks by Al Qaeda in Iraq and other militants because of their affiliation with the U.S. The volunteers have received significant praise for their role in the improved security in many areas of the country.

The airstrike occurred late Saturday when the military spotted what it believed to be a team of insurgents readying a roadside bomb in a rural area 25 miles southeast of Baghdad, the military source said.

A U.S. aircraft bombed a house that the suspected Al Qaeda in Iraq insurgents were believed to have entered. A search later revealed that the bomb site was actually a concerned local citizens checkpoint, the military source said.

Mohammed Ghrairi, the local citizens commander in the area, said a U.S. military colonel immediately visited him to issue an apology. News of the incident was not released to the media, however, until the military was contacted by The Times.

By Bruce Fein

Jan. 28, 2008, is a date that will live in congressional infamy. Congress surrendered the power of the purse over national security affairs to the White House.

President Bush appended a signing statement to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2008 denying the power of Congress to withhold funds for establishing permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq, or to control its oil resources. The statement tacitly averred that Congress was required to appropriate money to support every presidential national security gambit, for example, launching pre-emptive wars anywhere on the planet or breaking and entering homes to gather foreign intelligence.

A few members of Congress growled, but quickly moved on with their more docile colleagues to preserve earmarks. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, regularly sermonizes that the Constitution is subservient to advancing the Democratic Party. The Republican leadership vocally defends the power of the purse for earmarks, but not for any matter of national security consequence.

Congress has taken the Constitution backward more than three centuries to the Stuart monarchs. King Charles I then levied a ship tax on maritime areas in times of war to build naval vessels. The tax provoked popular protest when the king expanded its reach nationwide and during peacetime. He prevailed in the British courts, but a post-Restoration successor, King James II, was overthrown for asserting an executive power to tax without the consent of Parliament. The English Bill of Rights of 1688 assailed the last of the Stuart monarchs for subverting the liberties of the Kingdom, "By levying money for and to the use of the Crown by pretense of prerogative for other time and in other manner than the same were granted by Parliament." Accordingly, the Bill of Rights declared executive taxation or spending unauthorized by Parliament "illegal."

Like the British, the Founding Fathers understood that the power of the purse in Congress was indispensable to checking the president's temptation to concoct excuses for war to aggrandize executive power and to achieve popular unity. Article I, section 9 of the Constitution declares, "No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law." James Madison, father of the Constitution, acclaimed the power of the purse as an invincible congressional weapon for redressing grievances against the executive.

The president cannot veto congressional inaction in refusing to appropriate funds; and, he cannot spend a dime on the military or otherwise unless Congress affirmatively passes an appropriations bill.

The National Defense Authorization Act's restrictions on President Bush in Iraq were no novelty. Congress has repeatedly legislated to constrain the president's projection of the military abroad or has otherwise overridden his national security policies.

Richard Nixon was blocked from expanding the Vietnam War into Laos, Thailand or Cambodia. Ronald Reagan was prevented by the Boland amendments from employing the Defense Department, the CIA or other intelligence agencies to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Franklin Roosevelt was forbidden from deploying draftees outside the Western Hemisphere. William McKinley was prohibited from annexing Cuba. In Little v. Barreme (1804), the Supreme Court sustained Congress' power to deny John Adams authority to seize ships sailing from France during a semi-war.

And Mr. Bush has bowed to congressional limits on military personnel in Colombia. So his signing statement was preposterous in claiming that the Act unconstitutionally handcuffed his ability to protect the national security by ruling out permanent military bases in Iraq or control of its oil fields.

Yet Congress acquiesced. It did not pass a resolution disputing Mr. Bush. It did not threaten impeachment. It meekly surrendered its national security relevance. Under the precedent it left undisturbed, the president could flout congressional prohibitions on spending funds to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, to invade North Korea, to conduct military offensives in Iraq, to install an anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic, or to assist Taiwan against a Chinese attack.

A combination of congressional inertness and imbecility has crippled the power of the purse to check executive abuses and craving for perpetual war. Mr. Bush is now crowned with more power than the Stuart kings.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 388

By Erica Werner

Human activity such as driving and powering air conditioners is responsible for up to 60 percent of changes contributing to dwindling water supplies in the arid and growing West, a new study finds.

Those changes are likely to accelerate, says the study published Thursday in Science magazine, portending "a coming crisis in water supply for the western United States."

The study is likely to add to urgent calls for action already coming from Western states competing for the precious resource to irrigate farms and quench the thirst of growing populations. Devastating wildfires, avalanches and drought have also underscored the need.

Researchers led by climate expert Tim P. Barnett at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, studied climate changes in the West between 1950-1999. They noted that winter precipitation falls increasingly as rain rather than snow, snow melts faster, river flows decrease in summer months, and overall warming is exacerbating dry summer conditions.

The researchers used statistical modeling to compare climate changes that would have happened with natural fluctuations over time, to climate changes with the addition of human-caused greenhouse gases and other emissions from vehicles, power plants and other sources.

They found that most changes in river flow, temperature and snow pack between 1950 and 1999 can be attributed to human activities, such as driving, that release emissions including carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The changes they observed differed significantly from trends that could be attributed to natural fluctuations between wet and dry periods over time, they said.

"The climate's changing in the West. We've known that. The question is why, and no one's really addressed that," Barnett said in an interview. According to his study, "The answer is it is us."

"The picture painted is quite grim so it's time to collectively sit down and get our act together," Barnett added, suggesting the need for conservation, more water storage, and a slowdown on development in the desert Southwest.

By Lolita C. Baldor

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military isn't ready for a catastrophic attack on the country, and National Guard forces don't have the equipment or training they need for the job, according to a report.

Even fewer Army National Guard units are combat-ready today than were nearly a year ago when the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves determined that 88 percent of the units were not prepared for the fight, the panel says in a new report released Thursday.

The independent commission is charged by Congress to recommend changes in law and policy concerning the Guard and Reserves.

The commission's 400-page report concludes that the nation "does not have sufficient trained, ready forces available" to respond to a chemical, biological or nuclear weapons incident, "an appalling gap that places the nation and its citizens at greater risk."

"Right now we don't have the forces we need, we don't have them trained, we don't have the equipment," commission Chairman Arnold Punaro said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Even though there is a lot going on in this area, we need to do a lot more. ... There's a lot of things in the pipeline, but in the world we live in — you're either ready or you're not."

In response, Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, chief of U.S. Northern command, said the Pentagon is putting together a specialized military team that would be designed to respond to such catastrophic events.

"The capability for the Defense Department to respond to a chemical, biological event exists now," Renuart told the AP. "It, today, is not as robust as we would like because of the demand on the forces that we've placed across the country. ... I can do it today. It would be harder on the (military) services, but I could respond."

Over the next year, Renuart said, specific active duty, Guard and Reserve units will be trained, equipped and assigned to a three-tiered response force totaling about 4,000 troops. There would be a few hundred first responders, who would be followed by a second wave of about 1,200 troops that would include medical and logistics forces.














By Jad Mouawad
By any measure, Exxon Mobil's performance last year was a blowout.

Thanks to surging oil prices, the company beat its own record for the highest profit ever recorded by a U.S. company, with net income rising 3 percent to $40.6 billion last year. The company's sales - over $404 billion - exceeded the gross domestic product of all but the 24 richest countries in the world.

Exxon also had its most profitable quarter ever. It said Friday that net income rose 14 percent to $11.7 billion, or $2.13 a share, in the fourth quarter. In addition, the company managed to beat analysts' expectations of $1.95 a share, after missing targets in the past two quarters.

Like most oil companies, Exxon has benefited from a near-doubling of oil prices, from a low of around $50 a barrel in early 2007 to almost $100 by the end of the year - the single biggest jump in oil prices in any one year.

With growth at all of its units, from oil production to its refining and chemicals business, Exxon squeezed the most out of these gains.

"Exxon sets the gold standard for the industry," said Fadel Gheit, a longtime oil analyst at Oppenheimer in New York.

Oil companies have all been reporting record profits in recent days. Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company, said Friday that its profit rose 9 percent to $18.7 billion last year.

But the higher profits in the industry mask a more contrasted reality.

Faced with the resurging power of national oil companies, like PetroChina, Petróleo Brasileiro of Brazil, or Gazprom of Russia - Western majors are having a hard time increasing their production and renewing reserves.

As oil prices increase, countries like Russia and Venezuela have tightened the screws on foreign investors, limiting access to energy resources or demanding a bigger share of the revenue. At the same time, many of the traditional production regions, like the North Sea or Alaska, are slowly drying up. The industry is also being pressured by rising costs and shortages of workers, rigs and engineering capacity.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXIV No. 387

By Marian Burros
Recent laboratory tests performed for The New York Times found so much mercury in tuna sushi that a regular diet of even two or three pieces a week at some restaurants could be a health hazard for the average adult, based on guidelines set out by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Eight of the 44 pieces of sushi The Times purchased from local restaurants and stores in October had mercury levels so high that the Food and Drug Administration could take legal action to remove the fish from the market.

Although all the samples were gathered in New York City, experts believe similar results would be observed elsewhere. "Mercury levels in bluefin are likely to be very high, regardless of location," said Tim Fitzgerald, a marine scientist for Environmental Defense, an advocacy group that works to protect the environment and improve human health. Most of the stores and restaurants in the survey said the tuna The Times had sampled was bluefin.

In 2004, the Food and Drug Administration joined with the Environmental Protection Agency to warn children and women who may become pregnant to limit their consumption of certain varieties of canned tuna because the mercury it contained might damage the developing nervous system. Fresh tuna was not included in the advisory. The tuna sushi in The Times sample contained far more mercury than is typically found in canned tuna.

Over the past several years, studies have suggested that mercury may also cause health problems for adults, including an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and neurological symptoms.











By Douglass K. Daniel

WASHINGTON - A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel did not comment on the merits of the study Tuesday night but reiterated the administration's position that the world community viewed Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein as a threat.

"The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world," Stanzel said.

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had WMD's or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

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(AP)
FORT CARSON A Fort Carson soldier who says he was in treatment at Cedar Springs Hospital for bipolar disorder and alcohol abuse was released early and ordered to deploy to the Middle East with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team.

The 28-year-old specialist spent 31 days in Kuwait and was returned to Fort Carson on Dec. 31 after health care professionals in Kuwait concurred that his symptoms met criteria for bipolar disorder and “some paranoia and possible homicidal tendencies,” according to e-mails obtained by a Denver newspaper.

The soldier, who asked not to be identified because of the stigma surrounding mental illness and because he will seek employment when he leaves the Army, said he checked himself into Cedar Springs on Nov. 9 or Nov. 10 after he attempted suicide while under the influence of alcohol. He said his treatment was supposed to end Dec. 10, but his commanding officers showed up at the hospital Nov. 29 and ordered him to leave.

“I was pulled out to deploy,” said the soldier, who has three years in the Army and has served a tour in Iraq.

Soldiers from Fort Carson and across the country have complained they were sent to combat zones despite medical conditions that should have prevented their deployment.

Late last year, Fort Carson said it sent 79 soldiers who were considered medical “no-gos” overseas. Officials said the soldiers were placed in light-duty jobs and are receiving treatment there. So far, at least six soldiers have been returned.

An e-mail sent Jan. 3 by Capt. Scot Tebo, the brigade surgeon, says the 3rd Brigade Combat Team had “been having issues reaching deployable strength” and that some “borderline” soldiers were sent overseas.













By Patrick J. McDonnell
LIMA, PERU -- Sometimes he wakes up with a shudder, thinking he needs to take cover, fast. At other moments he dreams he's running and the mortar shell strikes again, fiery shards of metal ripping through his flesh.

"I take pills to help me sleep," Gregorio Calixto says, proffering a box of cheap over-the-counter medication, the only kind he can afford.

In the United States, Calixto might be under treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder from his time in Iraq, receiving daily physical therapy and counseling. Here he's an unemployed street vendor, renting a spartan room and struggling to recover physically and emotionally from severe shrapnel wounds.

He is one of several thousand Latin Americans who have taken jobs with U.S. contractors as security guards in Iraq and Afghanistan. About 1,200 Peruvians are in Iraq, mostly guarding sites in Baghdad's Green Zone. Chileans, Colombians, Salvadorans and Hondurans have also served as part of the polyglot assemblage providing "conflict labor" in U.S. war zones.

Although most appear to have returned to Latin America safely and with enough cash to buy houses, taxis and businesses, others, such as Calixto, have been unlucky: seriously injured in Iraq and left to negotiate a labyrinthine and what he terms inadequate U.S. insurance system.

The primary recruiter here, Triple Canopy, a Virginia-based firm founded by U.S. Special Forces and Delta Force veterans, defends its practices. Peruvians are treated no differently from U.S. employees, the company says, and 85% sign up for extensions.

Calixto says he has no complaints about his treatment in Iraq. The problem, he says, has been getting help since his return to Peru. The U.S. Defense Base Act requires that contractors such as Triple Canopy provide coverage, including disability, for work-related injuries. Claims, however, are reviewed by the U.S. Labor Department and are administered by a U.S. insurance company.

Calixto describes a frustrating process of telephoning representatives in the United States and finding no one who speaks Spanish; of frequent trips to downtown Lima, the capital, to speak with representatives of Triple Canopy; pleading for reimbursement for clinic bills, medicine, taxis, international phone calls and other expenses. He only irregularly attends physical therapy sessions, he says, because of delays in getting reimbursed.

He lives on $492 in monthly disability checks provided through the Triple Canopy insurance. But he says he doesn't know how long that's going to last. Nor does he consider it sufficient: The injury has severely limited his prospects in a country where the maimed can often be found begging in the streets. He also says he is owed two months' back pay.

Triple Canopy declined to comment on individual cases but acknowledged "past delays" in its insurance plan. The company says it is working to smooth out the system. Last year, Triple Canopy switched from a subcontractor to a wholly owned subsidiary here, it says, "to improve service for our Peruvian personnel."

Still, Calixto says he has no regrets about going to Iraq. During his time away, he saved $12,000, enough to buy a ramshackle adobe home a few blocks from the stifling room he still rents for $40 a month.

"I need to fix it up, but it's a start," says a limping Calixto.

He bids goodbye, sitting alone on a dusty cot in his roofless dream house, remembering a distant war no one here much thinks about.


Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, was outraged.

“If he’s an inpatient in a hospital, they should have never taken him out. The chain of command needs to be held accountable for this. Washington needs to get involved at the Pentagon to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

By Terence Chea

The number of chinook salmon returning to California's Central Valley has reached a near-record low, pointing to an "unprecedented collapse" that could lead to severe restrictions on West Coast salmon fishing this year, according to federal fishery regulators.

The sharp drop in chinook, or "king," salmon returning from the Pacific Ocean to spawn in the Sacramento River and its tributaries last fall is part of broader decline in wild salmon runs in rivers across the West.

The population dropped more than 88 percent from its all-time high five years ago, according to an internal memo sent to members of the Pacific Fishery Management Council and obtained by The Associated Press.

Regulators are still trying to understand the reasons for the shrinking number of spawners; some scientists believe it could be related to changes in the ocean linked to global warming.

Some fishermen and environmentalists believe the sharp decline is related to increased water exports from the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta, which supplies drinking water to millions of people in dry Southern California, as well as irrigation for America's most fertile farming region.

"It's time to reduce pumping of delta waters before we destroy the fish and wildlife species we appreciate so much in California," said Mike Sherwood, an attorney for Earthjustice.

Only about 90,000 returning adult salmon were counted in the Central Valley in 2007, the second lowest number on record, the memo said. The population was at 277,000 in 2006 and 804,000 five years ago.

In an e-mail to council members, Donald McIsaac, the agency's executive director, said he wanted to give them "an early alert to what at this point appears to be an unprecedented collapse in the abundance of adult California Central Valley ... fall Chinook salmon stocks."

"The magnitude of the low abundance ... is such that the opening of all marine and freshwater fisheries impacting this important salmon stock will be questioned," he said.

It's only the second time in 35 years that the Central Valley has not met the agency's conservation goal of 122,000 to 180,000 returning fish, according to the council, which regulates Pacific Coast fisheries.

More worrisome is that only about 2,000 2-year-old juvenile chinooks — used to predict returns of adult spawners in the coming season — returned to the Central Valley last year, by far the lowest number ever counted. On average, about 40,000 juveniles, or "jacks," return each year.

Salmon that spawn in Central Valley rivers form the backbone of the West Coast's commercial and recreational salmon fishery and are caught by fishermen from Southern California to British Columbia.

"Sacramento fish are really what the fishery depends on," said Chuck Tracy, the council's salmon management officer.

Not long ago, salmon restoration efforts in the Sacramento watershed were being touted as a wildlife management success story. But recent years have seen populations dwindle in many Western rivers, and scientists are trying to understand why.

The council plans to meet in Sacramento in March to discuss possible restrictions, including a complete closure of the salmon season that begins in May. Final decisions will be made in April.

Duncan MacLean, a Half Moon Bay fisherman who is on a team that advises the fishery council, said he's bracing for hard times.

"It's probably going to be worse than anything we've experienced before," said MacLean, 58, who relies on salmon fishing for as much as 70 percent of his income. "It's going to put a lot of us out or business."

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 385

By Peter Spiegel
WASHINGTON -- The international effort to stabilize Afghanistan is faltering and urgently needs thousands of additional U.S. and coalition troops, an influential group of American diplomatic and military experts concluded in a report issued Wednesday.

The independent study finds that the Taliban, which two years ago was largely viewed as a defeated movement, has been able to infiltrate and control sizable parts of southern and southeastern Afghanistan, leading to widespread disillusionment among Afghans with the mission.

"The prospect of again losing significant parts of Afghanistan to the forces of Islamic extremists has moved from the improbable to the possible," the study says, warning that Afghanistan could revert to a "failed state."

The report is critical of nearly every governmental and international organization involved in Afghanistan, including the Bush administration, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, calling their efforts inadequate, poorly coordinated and occasionally self-defeating.

Although many of the criticisms have been made before, the new study is spearheaded by some of the same experts and organizations involved in the Iraq Study Group, the influential panel whose report a year ago put intense pressure on the Bush administration to change course in Iraq.

The co-chairmen of the group are former NATO commander and retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, and Thomas R. Pickering, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. The two men have significant bipartisan standing in U.S. foreign policy circles, which could give the study a wider and more authoritative reach than other assessments.

Jones and Pickering are scheduled to testify on Afghanistan before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today.

The Afghanistan Study Group's criticisms of the Bush administration focus on the military mission. It welcomes the Pentagon's recent decision to send an additional 3,200 Marines, increasing the U.S. presence to about 28,000 troops. But it says the Pentagon should send additional troops as soon as they are freed from duty in Iraq.

"Afghanistan is larger in size and population than Iraq but has far fewer national and foreign troops," the report says.

The study calls for a change in the way the U.S. funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since the start of the Iraq war, the two conflicts have been linked in funding considerations. The study group says they should be "decoupled" so that Afghanistan is not overshadowed by Iraq.

"While the fates of the two countries are connected -- and a failure in Iraq would influence Afghanistan and vice versa -- tying together Afghanistan and Iraq also creates the false impression that they consist of the same mission, while in reality the challenges in these countries differ significantly," the report says.

The panel also calls on the White House to appoint a special envoy to Afghanistan to coordinate various efforts.

Although the Bush administration did not directly challenge the report's findings Wednesday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack insisted that Afghanistan remains much better off today than before the Taliban was ousted six years ago.

The White House told Democratic congressional leaders Saturday that President Bush opposes a 30-day extension of an expiring eavesdropping law and instead wants an expanded version to be passed by Friday.

“The president would veto a 30-day extension,” a senior administration official said. “They’re just kicking the can down the road. They need the heat of the current law lapsing to get this done.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called the veto threat "shamefully irresponsible" and "simply posturing in advance of Monday’s State of the Union address."

"There will be no terrorism intelligence collection gap," Reid said. "But if there is any problem, the blame will clearly and unequivocally fall where it belongs: on President Bush and his allies in Congress."

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) said in a statement Friday that the White House had only given his committee access to necessary documents on Thursday – eight months after they were requested. And he called the access “limited.”

“Thousands of pages of material were provided," Reyes said, "and it will take some time to carefully review."

By Hope Yen

WASHINGTON (AP) - Strained by war, recently discharged veterans are having a harder time finding civilian jobs and are more likely to earn lower wages for years due partly to employer concerns about their mental health and overall skills, a government study says.

The Veterans Affairs Department report, obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, points to continuing problems with the Bush administration's efforts to help 4.4 million troops who have been discharged from active duty since 1990.

The 2007 study by the consulting firm Abt Associates Inc. found that 18 percent of the veterans were unemployed within one to three years of discharge, while one out of four who did find jobs earned less than $21,840 a year. Many had taken advantage of government programs such as the GI Bill to boost job prospects, but there was little evidence that education benefits yielded higher pay or better advancement.

The report blamed the poor prospects partly on inadequate job networks and lack of mentors after extended periods in war. The study said employers often had misplaced stereotypes about veterans' fitness for employment, such as concerns they did not have adequate technological skills, or were too rigid, lacked education or were at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder.

It urged the federal government to consider working with a private-sector marketing firm to help promote and brand war veterans as capable employees, as well as re-examine education and training such as the GI Bill.

"The issue of mental health has turned into a double-edged sword for returning veterans. More publicity has generated more public awareness and federal funding for those who return home different from when they left. However, more publicity _ especially stories that perpetuate the 'Wacko Vet' myth _ has also made some employers more cautious to hire a veteran," said Joe Davis, spokesman for Veterans of Foreign Wars.

"The federal government needs to accelerate its hiring and training of these young veterans to fill the ranks of the retiring Boomer generation," he said.

A VA spokesman declined to comment, saying the report spoke for itself. Last November, the VA announced the initial hiring of 10 full-time staff as part of an effort to help veterans find jobs at the department.

---

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LONDON (AP) -- Stocks fell sharply worldwide Monday following declines on Wall Street last week amid investor pessimism over the U.S. government's stimulus plan to prevent a recession.

U.S. markets were closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but the downbeat mood from last week's market declines there circled through Europe, Asia and the Americas. Britain's benchmark FTSE-100 slumped 5.5 percent to 5,578.20, France's CAC-40 Index tumbled 6.8 percent to 4,744.15, and Germany's blue-chip DAX 30 plunged 7.2 percent to 6,790.19.

In Asia, India's benchmark stock index tumbled 7.4 percent, while Hong Kong's blue-chip Hang Seng index plummeted 5.5 percent to 23,818.86, its biggest percentage drop since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Canadian stocks fell as well, with the S&P/TSX composite index on the Toronto Stock Exchange down 4 percent in early afternoon trading. In Brazil, stocks plunged 6.9 percent on the main index of Sao Paulo's Bovespa exchange.

By John Heilpran

NEW YORK — Iran is stronger today because of the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Friday.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq removed a key rival of Shiite Iran with the ouster of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated government. Iran is friendly with the Iraqi Shiites now in power.

"It's helped Iran's relative position in the region, because Iraq was a rival of Iran ... and the balance there has disintegrated or weakened," Zalmay Khalilzad said while answering questions from students at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. "And so one of the objectives of Iran, in my view, is to discourage a re-emergence of Iraq as a balancer. And Afghanistan, too, the change was helpful to Iran."

President Bush has called Iran a major sponsor of terrorism, and the U.S. is leading the push for more U.N. sanctions because of its nuclear program.

Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan, argued that an unintended consequence of U.S. decisions in Afghanistan and Iraq has been to strengthen Iran's position in the Mideast.

Iran almost went to war with the Taliban in the late 1990s, because of its extremist theology and its killing of Afghan Shiite Muslims. With the U.S.-led coalition's overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, Iran's relations and trade with Afghanistan improved and Iran helped build roads and power lines in Afghanistan. But the Bush administration says Iran is now arming the Taliban to make life difficult for the U.S.

"I used to tease the [Iranian] ambassador that we have done so much for you in Iraq and Afghanistan, the least you can do is to be helpful to this effort. Otherwise, one day you will get a big bill," he told the students.

He and the crowd laughed.

Iran has been supplying Iraqis with electricity, household goods and food. Iraqi leaders from the Shiite bloc now in power have said their ties with Iran will grow.














WATERTOWN, NY - "I was messed up in the head. It was okay for me. I laughed afterwards. We all did. It's just the way things go."

Iraq war veteran Jon Turner said it was almost expected of him to pull the trigger on people who didn't need to die. So he did.

"It was my decision," Turner said. "I made it. Now I have to live with the fact I see someone's eyes screaming at me after I shot them."

But Turner says it wasn't his choice to be encouraged to do it from higher ranking officers. He and three other veterans speaking out Saturday at the Different Drummer Cafe in Watertown said committing war crimes is not only the way things go, but it's unofficial policy.

"The killing of innocent civilians is policy," veteran Mike Blake said. "It's unit policy and it's Army policy. It's not official policy, but it's what's happens on the ground everyday. It's what unit commanders individually encourage."

The group, part of the national organization called Iraq Veterans Against War are planning an event to be held in Washington, D.C. this coming March called "Winter Soldier" that will have veterans all speaking about war crimes they committed or witnessed during their tours of duty.

"These decisions are coming from the top down," veteran Matt Howard said. "The tactics that we use. The policies that the military engages will create situations, create dynamics, create, ultimately, atrocity."

IVAW hopes to have 100 veterans speak at the event. Once it ends, they'll document the testimony and package it for Congress.

IVAW says it expects a number of veterans from Fort Drum to be at the event and it is hoping to get more veterans to attend and speak at the event and will help pay for any active duty soldier who wants to go and listen.

Hey, here's a few stories Bill O'Reilly didn't report on today. Vol. CXXXVI No. 383

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A bomb planted on a car carrying an Interior Ministry official exploded Sunday, killing the official and wounding two police officers who were accompanying him, a ministry official said.

Two men mourn over the body of their relative, one of four men found dead in Baquba on Sunday.

Lt. Col. Mohammed Ibrahim worked in National Police Affairs, the official said.

The Associated Press said that Ibrahim was director of Iraq's police commandos, an elite special forces unit. The men accompanying Ibrahim were serving as his bodyguard and driver, the news agency reported.

Ibrahim was en route to work when the bomb detonated in the capital's Mansour neighborhood, according to AP.

Also Sunday, the U.S. military confirmed that two teenagers and two young men had been killed after their bodies were discovered in a house in Baquba.

All four were members of Concerned Local Citizens, a network of neighborhood watch groups that patrol residential communities and report suspicious activities to Iraqi and coalition forces. They were 17, 18, 20 and 21 years old, Staff Sgt. Sam Smith said.

No other group is has taken responsibility for thet deaths.

In other violence:

• A U.S. soldier died in northern Iraq's Ninewa province Saturday, the U.S. military said. The military said only that the soldier did not die in combat. No other details were released. The death, the first reported this month, brings the death toll for U.S. soldiers in Iraq to 3,937. Seven civilian contractors also have been killed.

By Robert Greenstein, James R. Homey and Richard Kogan

The President’s budget would provide more tax cuts heavily skewed to the most well-off while cutting vital services for low- and moderate-income Americans, generating large deficits, and increasing the strain on states already confronting budget problems as a result of the economic downturn. The budget reflects misguided priorities that would leave the American people more vulnerable in a number of ways.

Budget Lacks Fiscal Discipline Because of Costly Tax Cuts

Despite substantial cuts in areas ranging from health care, disease control, and environmental protection to emergency responders, low-income heating assistance, and other important domestic needs, the budget would enlarge deficits by a total of $547 billion in fiscal years 2008-2013, or $397 billion not counting the economic stimulus package. This is because the budget proposes extending virtually all of the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 and adding other tax cuts on top.

• The cuts in domestic programs would reduce expenditures for domestic appropriations and entitlements by $23 billion in 2009 and $474 billion over five years.

• The tax cuts, however, would cost more than $900 billion over five years — and an additional $1.5 trillion in the five years after that, for a total cost of $2.4 trillion over the next decade.
• The Administration claims its plan would balance the budget in 2012 and 2013, but no sensible analyst takes that claim seriously, as it relies on the omission of large costs. For example, the budget numbers for 2012 assume that relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax will be allowed to expire. If that were to happen, the AMT would explode in size, hitting 38 million households that year (compared to about 4 million households today). Similarly, the budget numbers for 2012 and 2013 assume no cost whatsoever for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and other overseas activities related to the global war on terror.
• Moreover, the Administration’s own budget numbers show that its proposals (other than the economic stimulus package) would enlarge budget deficits by $397 billion over 2008 and the ensuing five years — even without counting the costs of continued operations in Iraq or continuation of AMT relief.
• If AMT relief is continued and costs for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in coming years follow CBO’s most optimistic (and least costly) scenario for a phase-down of those costs, deficits under the Administration’s budget plan would equal $118 billion in 2012 and $153 billion in 2013. For the 2008-2013 period, deficits would total $1.5 trillion under this more realistic set of assumptions. (These figures exclude the cost of the stimulus package.)

Program Cuts Would Affect Millions of Ordinary Families

For 2009, the Administration’s budget would cut funding for domestic discretionary programs outside of homeland security — the part of the budget that funds everything from education to environmental protection to veterans’ health care and Head Start — by $2.4 billion in nominal terms (i.e., before adjusting for inflation) — and by about $15 billion or 4 percent after adjusting for inflation. These cuts would hit nearly every area of the domestic budget.

The Administration claims that its funding for these programs is up by 0.3 percent for 2009 in nominal terms. But this claim is misleading, as it is based on a 2008 funding level that omits $3.7 billion provided for veterans’ medical care this year. (The $3.7 billion was designated as emergency funding but was provided to meet ongoing needs in veterans’ health care; these needs will not somehow vanish in 2009 and succeeding years.) When that $3.7 billion is included in the 2008 base, the amount proposed by the President for domestic discretionary programs for 2009 is $2.4 below the amount enacted in 2008, in nominal terms, and even further below when inflation is accounted for.

• In the poverty area, funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) would be cut $570 million or 22 percent, even before adjusting for changes in energy prices. This would require cutting more than 1 million low-income families and elderly people off the program entirely, shrinking the average amount of assistance provided to poor families by 22 percent, or some combination of the two. The funding level the President proposes for LIHEAP in 2009 — $2.0 billion — is identical to the program’s funding level in 2001, even though home energy prices are now 65 percent higher than in 2001.

• The budget would freeze funding for child care assistance for low-income families for the seventh consecutive year. After adjusting for inflation, child care funding has already fallen by almost 17 percent since 2002. (Between 2002 and 2006, the last year for which data are available, the number of low-income children grew by more than 8 percent.) According to the Administration’s own data, 200,000 fewer children in low-income families would receive federal child care assistance in 2009 than in 2007, under the President’s budget.
• The budget reduces or freezes funding for a number of other low-income assistance programs, as well. For example, because of cuts in the Section 8 housing voucher program, the nation’s largest low-income rental assistance program, at least 100,000 fewer low-income households would receive voucher assistance.
• The budget would cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by $433 million, even before adjusting for inflation. These reductions include sharp cuts in funding for detection and control of infectious diseases and preventive health services.
• The budget would reduce funding for the Environmental Protection Agency by $330 million, before adjusting for inflation. EPA funding in 2009 would fall more than $1 billion below the 2004 level (and $700 million below the 2001 level) before any adjustment for inflation.
• While the budget would expand some education programs, it would cut others, and its total funding for K-12 education is less than is needed simply to keep pace with inflation.

Pushing States Deeper Into Fiscal Crisis

The budget is replete with cuts aimed at state and local governments.

• It would cut discretionary grants to states and local governments in 2009 by $15.1 billion, or 9 percent, even before adjusting for inflation. These cuts total $19.1 billion, or 11 percent, once inflation is taken into account. For example, grants to states and cities for homeland security, law enforcement, and firefighters and other first responders would be cut by $1.5 billion, or 45 percent, even before adjusting for inflation.

• In addition, the budget would cut federal Medicaid expenditures by $18.2 billion over five years (with $17.4 billion in reductions from legislative changes and another $800 million from regulatory changes). These “savings” would primarily be achieved not by lowering health care costs, but rather by shifting costs to the states.

Cuts such as these would force states to institute even bigger program cuts or tax increases than will otherwise be needed to close the budget gaps now emerging across the country as a result of weakening revenues. Unlike the federal government, states must balance their budgets, even during economic downturns.

Large Medicare Reductions

In addition to the Medicaid cuts, the budget includes $556 billion in Medicare reductions over ten years. Many of the proposed cuts go well beyond the reductions that MedPAC, Congress’ expert advisory commission on Medicare payments, recommended and considers safe. These reductions could drive some health care providers to limit the number of Medicare patients they see or drop out of the program entirely. That, in turn, would jeopardize health care for significant numbers of people who are elderly or have serious disabilities.

At the same time, the Administration rejected MedPAC’s call to curb the tens of billions of dollars of overpayments being made to private insurance companies that serve some Medicare beneficiaries through the Medicare Advantage program. MedPAC has recently reported that the private insurers are being paid 13 percent more, on average, than it would cost to treat the same beneficiaries under traditional Medicare, and has called for the elimination of these overpayments in order to “level the playing field.” The overpayments will cost taxpayers about $150 billion over ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The President’s budget, however, leaves these overpayments untouched. The Administration’s refusal even to modestly scale back the overpayments led it to propose deeper cuts in other parts of Medicare in order to secure the overall level of Medicare savings that its budget contains. (See the appendix for further discussion of the Medicare proposals.)

Children’s Health Funding Inadequate to Maintain Current SCHIP Programs

The budget includes what it describes as a $19.7 billion increase in funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). This would not, however, allow states to cover more uninsured children, millions of whom are eligible for SCHIP and Medicaid but unenrolled.

States need an increase of approximately $21.5 billion over the next five years simply to maintain their current programs. This is because the budget “baseline” for SCHIP includes no adjustment for health care inflation in coming years; the baseline actually assumes a reduction in SCHIP funding for 2009. Under the Administration’s funding level, therefore, states would be required to scale back their SCHIP programs modestly unless they were able to increase their own funding.

Most Well-Off Americans Would Receive Large Tax Windfalls

Alongside its sizeable, widespread reductions in most parts of the domestic budget, the Administration proposes $2.4 trillion in tax cuts over the next ten years, including the extension of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. This figure, moreover, excludes the cost of AMT relief. Continuing AMT relief would reduce revenues by an additional $1.3 trillion over the next decade, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates.

The tax cuts would provide windfalls for the most affluent Americans, even as many vulnerable Americans living on modest budgets would face the loss of needed benefits and services.

• The top 1 percent of households — those with incomes exceeding $450,000 a year — would receive more than $1 trillion in tax cuts over the next ten years. (This figure assumes the extension of AMT relief.) Each year these households would receive more than $60,000 apiece in tax cuts, on average.
• Households with annual incomes over $1 million would get an even larger tax cut: more than $150,000 a year, on average. This group makes up just 0.3 percent (three one-thousandths) of the nation’s households, yet its combined tax cuts would exceed the entire amount that the federal government spends on elementary and secondary education, as well as the entire amount that it devotes to medical care for the nation’s veterans.

Repealing Estate Tax Would Use Up Budget Savings From Medicare Cuts

As noted, the budget’s Medicare proposals would cut projected Medicare expenditures by $556 billion over ten years. Its proposal to make estate-tax repeal permanent would cost $522 billion, or almost as much.

The Medicare cuts would adversely affect tens of millions of Americans who are elderly or have serious disabilities. Repealing the estate tax, in contrast, would benefit only the wealthiest 1 to 2 percent of Americans — and would be worth the most by far to fabulously wealthy individuals, whose estates would receive up to tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars apiece in tax cuts.