Free to Choose by Robert B. Reich
The union card-check bill is up for a vote today in the House. Employer groups' objections to it don't pass the laugh test.
Cheney Follies by Matthew Yglesias
Our vice president is both a national joke and a national nightmare.
Friday, March 02, 2007
THE PEOPLE V. RICHARD CHENEY (MARCH 2007)Resolved, that Richard B. Cheney, vice president of the United States, should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors and that these articles of impeachment be submitted to the American people.
By Wil S. Hylton
The Real Choice on Iraq
by Ned Lamont
Dear Senator Lieberman,
Fifteen months ago, in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal praising the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, you asked the rhetorical question, "does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq?"
"Yes," we did, you answered.
Since the day you wrote those words, over 1,000 more American troops have lost their lives in Iraq and that country is more dangerous than ever.
Senator, you had it exactly wrong then, and this week, in another Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled "The Choice on Iraq," you have managed to get it exactly wrong yet again.
"As the battle for Baghdad just gets underway," you write in this week's piece, congressional opponents of the escalation "have already made up their minds about America's cause in Iraq."
On the contrary, Senator, it was you and President Bush who had already made up your minds before the war started, using cherry-picked intelligence to sell the war to the American people. And if the battle for Baghdad is "just getting underway," how do we explain the escalating violence over the last four years?
You claim that "a precipitous pullout would leave a gaping security vacuum in its wake."
Actually, Senator, it was the precipitous invasion that you supported, along with its disastrous aftermath, which left the security vacuum that exists today - a vacuum which the terrorists, insurgents, and militias have all rushed to fill.
You plead for elected officials to "come together around a constructive legislative agenda for our security."
Senator, we have already done this. The result was the bipartisan (remember that word?) Baker-Hamilton report which called for a redeployment of our troops over twelve months, plus aggressive diplomacy, as our best hope to bring stability to the region. The report's conclusions were widely accepted by a strong majority of Democrats and Republicans, and then promptly disregarded by you, the President, and all those who had "already made up their minds," the facts be damned.
You worry that Washington is removed "from what is actually happening in Iraq."
Senator, Generals Abizaid and Casey were on the ground in Iraq and opposed the escalation. They recommended a phased redeployment of our combat troops. But rather than listen to them and redeploy the troops, President Bush redeployed his generals, and escalated the war.
On November 8th of last year, while voters across the country were giving Democrats a mandate to change course on Iraq, you were able to muddy the real "Choice on Iraq" for the voters of Connecticut. They thought they were choosing between two candidates who anticipated "significant" troop reductions by the end of the year, who both wanted "to bring our troops home."
Senator, one of us still believes in those words we spoke during the campaign.
The American people and our military experts have already made their "Choice on Iraq" quite clear. It is now up to all of our elected representatives to follow their lead.
Sincerely,
Ned Lamont
by Ned Lamont
Dear Senator Lieberman,
Fifteen months ago, in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal praising the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, you asked the rhetorical question, "does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq?"
"Yes," we did, you answered.
Since the day you wrote those words, over 1,000 more American troops have lost their lives in Iraq and that country is more dangerous than ever.
Senator, you had it exactly wrong then, and this week, in another Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled "The Choice on Iraq," you have managed to get it exactly wrong yet again.
"As the battle for Baghdad just gets underway," you write in this week's piece, congressional opponents of the escalation "have already made up their minds about America's cause in Iraq."
On the contrary, Senator, it was you and President Bush who had already made up your minds before the war started, using cherry-picked intelligence to sell the war to the American people. And if the battle for Baghdad is "just getting underway," how do we explain the escalating violence over the last four years?
You claim that "a precipitous pullout would leave a gaping security vacuum in its wake."
Actually, Senator, it was the precipitous invasion that you supported, along with its disastrous aftermath, which left the security vacuum that exists today - a vacuum which the terrorists, insurgents, and militias have all rushed to fill.
You plead for elected officials to "come together around a constructive legislative agenda for our security."
Senator, we have already done this. The result was the bipartisan (remember that word?) Baker-Hamilton report which called for a redeployment of our troops over twelve months, plus aggressive diplomacy, as our best hope to bring stability to the region. The report's conclusions were widely accepted by a strong majority of Democrats and Republicans, and then promptly disregarded by you, the President, and all those who had "already made up their minds," the facts be damned.
You worry that Washington is removed "from what is actually happening in Iraq."
Senator, Generals Abizaid and Casey were on the ground in Iraq and opposed the escalation. They recommended a phased redeployment of our combat troops. But rather than listen to them and redeploy the troops, President Bush redeployed his generals, and escalated the war.
On November 8th of last year, while voters across the country were giving Democrats a mandate to change course on Iraq, you were able to muddy the real "Choice on Iraq" for the voters of Connecticut. They thought they were choosing between two candidates who anticipated "significant" troop reductions by the end of the year, who both wanted "to bring our troops home."
Senator, one of us still believes in those words we spoke during the campaign.
The American people and our military experts have already made their "Choice on Iraq" quite clear. It is now up to all of our elected representatives to follow their lead.
Sincerely,
Ned Lamont
Thursday, March 01, 2007
ARTHUR SCHLESINGER JR.: 1917-2007 Historian who advised Kennedy
San Francisco Chronicle:Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the historian whose more than 20 books shaped discussions for two generations about America's past, ...
Let's see how Rush and Sean and Bill"O spin this one
New Doubts On Nuclear Efforts by North Korea
U.S. Less Certain of Uranium Program
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 1, 2007; A01
The Bush administration is backing away from its long-held assertions that North Korea has an active clandestine program to enrich uranium, leading some experts to believe that the original U.S. intelligence that started the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions may have been flawed.
The chief intelligence officer for North Korea, Joseph R. DeTrani, told Congress on Tuesday that while there is "high confidence" North Korea acquired materials that could be used in a "production-scale" uranium program, there is only "mid-confidence" such a program exists. Meanwhile, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, the chief negotiator for disarmament talks, told a conference last week in Washington that it is unclear whether North Korea ever mastered the production techniques necessary for such a program.
If the materials North Korea bought "did not go into a highly enriched uranium program, maybe they went somewhere else," Hill said. "Fine. We can have a discussion about where they are and where they've gone."
The administration's stance today stands in sharp contrast to the certainty expressed by top officials in 2002, when the administration accused Pyongyang of running a secret uranium program -- and demanded it be dismantled at once. President Bush told a news conference that November: "We discovered that, contrary to an agreement they had with the United States, they're enriching uranium, with a desire of developing a weapon."
The accusation about the alleged uranium program backfired, sparking a series of events that ultimately led to North Korea's first nuclear test -- using another material, plutonium -- nearly five months ago.
In 2002, the United States led a drive to suspend shipments of fuel oil promised to Pyongyang under a 1994 accord that froze a North Korean plutonium facility. The collapse of the 1994 agreement freed North Korea to build up a stockpile of plutonium for as many as a dozen nuclear weapons. Pyongyang conducted its test with some of that plutonium -- while the alleged uranium facility faded in importance.
Plutonium and highly enriched uranium provide different routes to building nuclear weapons. The North Koreans were able to reprocess spent fuel rods -- which had been monitored by U.N. inspectors under the 1994 agreement -- to obtain the weapons-grade plutonium for a nuclear test last year. A uranium-enrichment program would have required Pyongyang to build a facility with thousands of uranium-spinning centrifuges to obtain the highly enriched uranium needed for a weapon. Iran's nuclear program, which the United States alleges is intended for weapons, involves enriched uranium.
When Bush took office in 2001, a number of top administration officials openly expressed grave doubts about the 1994 accord, which was negotiated by the Clinton administration, and they seized on the intelligence about the uranium facility to terminate the agreement. The CIA provided an unclassified estimate to Congress in November 2002 that North Korea had begun constructing a plant that would produce enough "weapons-grade uranium for two or more nuclear weapons per year . . . as soon as mid-decade."
David Albright, a respected former U.N. inspector and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, issued a report last week in which he likened the intelligence on North Korea's uranium facility to the discredited intelligence before the invasion of Iraq that Baghdad was building a nuclear program. "The analysis about North Korea's program also appears to be flawed," he wrote.
In the upcoming issue of the Washington Quarterly, Joel S. Wit, a former State Department official who, with Albright, recently met with North Korean officials in Pyongyang, also raises questions about the intelligence estimate.
Administration officials insist they had valid suspicions at the time about North Korean purchases -- including 150 tons of aluminum tubes from Russia in June 2002 -- to halt any possible cooperative talks with Pyongyang. Officials also say that a senior North Korean official admitted to the program in October 2002, when Hill's predecessor, James Kelly, confronted North Korean officials over the U.S. intelligence findings at a meeting in Pyongyang. North Korea subsequently denied that any such admission took place.
Kelly told reporters at the time he had informed the North Koreans that "this was a big problem and that they needed to dismantle it right away, before we could fully engage in a whole range of things that might well be mutually beneficial."
U.S. participants at the meeting said in interviews there was little dispute at the time North Korea appeared to be admitting the program, though one said the admission was more "tonal" -- such as the North Korean official's belligerent attitude -- than would appear in the transcript of the discussion.
During the early years of the crisis, the United States took a firm stand that North Korea must first admit to the uranium facility, rejecting proposals from other nations that it was more important to freeze the plutonium facility in order to halt North Korea's production. In May 2004, DeTrani -- then with the State Department -- was dispatched to give the North Koreans a detailed, 90-minute presentation of all the materials that Pyongyang had procured overseas, including aluminum tubes, chemicals and even a centrifuge kit from a Pakistani nuclear smuggling network, a U.S. official said.
The North Koreans have consistently denied having a uranium-enrichment program, and U.S. officials say suspected procurement activities have largely ceased in the past two years for unknown reasons. Some speculate that Pyongyang found a uranium program too difficult, especially since the plutonium facility was active. Others say DeTrani's presentation spooked them and they either ended the purchases or became more discreet.
Hill has said he has raised the uranium program at every meeting with the North Koreans, but the recent deal struck with Pyongyang focuses on the plutonium program. Under the agreement, North Korea will close and "seal" its plutonium nuclear reactor at Yongbyon within 60 days in return for 50,000 tons of fuel oil.
Pyongyang must eventually disclose and dismantle its programs in order to receive significant aid and other benefits, including normalizing relations with the United States.
U.S. Less Certain of Uranium Program
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 1, 2007; A01
The Bush administration is backing away from its long-held assertions that North Korea has an active clandestine program to enrich uranium, leading some experts to believe that the original U.S. intelligence that started the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions may have been flawed.
The chief intelligence officer for North Korea, Joseph R. DeTrani, told Congress on Tuesday that while there is "high confidence" North Korea acquired materials that could be used in a "production-scale" uranium program, there is only "mid-confidence" such a program exists. Meanwhile, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, the chief negotiator for disarmament talks, told a conference last week in Washington that it is unclear whether North Korea ever mastered the production techniques necessary for such a program.
If the materials North Korea bought "did not go into a highly enriched uranium program, maybe they went somewhere else," Hill said. "Fine. We can have a discussion about where they are and where they've gone."
The administration's stance today stands in sharp contrast to the certainty expressed by top officials in 2002, when the administration accused Pyongyang of running a secret uranium program -- and demanded it be dismantled at once. President Bush told a news conference that November: "We discovered that, contrary to an agreement they had with the United States, they're enriching uranium, with a desire of developing a weapon."
The accusation about the alleged uranium program backfired, sparking a series of events that ultimately led to North Korea's first nuclear test -- using another material, plutonium -- nearly five months ago.
In 2002, the United States led a drive to suspend shipments of fuel oil promised to Pyongyang under a 1994 accord that froze a North Korean plutonium facility. The collapse of the 1994 agreement freed North Korea to build up a stockpile of plutonium for as many as a dozen nuclear weapons. Pyongyang conducted its test with some of that plutonium -- while the alleged uranium facility faded in importance.
Plutonium and highly enriched uranium provide different routes to building nuclear weapons. The North Koreans were able to reprocess spent fuel rods -- which had been monitored by U.N. inspectors under the 1994 agreement -- to obtain the weapons-grade plutonium for a nuclear test last year. A uranium-enrichment program would have required Pyongyang to build a facility with thousands of uranium-spinning centrifuges to obtain the highly enriched uranium needed for a weapon. Iran's nuclear program, which the United States alleges is intended for weapons, involves enriched uranium.
When Bush took office in 2001, a number of top administration officials openly expressed grave doubts about the 1994 accord, which was negotiated by the Clinton administration, and they seized on the intelligence about the uranium facility to terminate the agreement. The CIA provided an unclassified estimate to Congress in November 2002 that North Korea had begun constructing a plant that would produce enough "weapons-grade uranium for two or more nuclear weapons per year . . . as soon as mid-decade."
David Albright, a respected former U.N. inspector and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, issued a report last week in which he likened the intelligence on North Korea's uranium facility to the discredited intelligence before the invasion of Iraq that Baghdad was building a nuclear program. "The analysis about North Korea's program also appears to be flawed," he wrote.
In the upcoming issue of the Washington Quarterly, Joel S. Wit, a former State Department official who, with Albright, recently met with North Korean officials in Pyongyang, also raises questions about the intelligence estimate.
Administration officials insist they had valid suspicions at the time about North Korean purchases -- including 150 tons of aluminum tubes from Russia in June 2002 -- to halt any possible cooperative talks with Pyongyang. Officials also say that a senior North Korean official admitted to the program in October 2002, when Hill's predecessor, James Kelly, confronted North Korean officials over the U.S. intelligence findings at a meeting in Pyongyang. North Korea subsequently denied that any such admission took place.
Kelly told reporters at the time he had informed the North Koreans that "this was a big problem and that they needed to dismantle it right away, before we could fully engage in a whole range of things that might well be mutually beneficial."
U.S. participants at the meeting said in interviews there was little dispute at the time North Korea appeared to be admitting the program, though one said the admission was more "tonal" -- such as the North Korean official's belligerent attitude -- than would appear in the transcript of the discussion.
During the early years of the crisis, the United States took a firm stand that North Korea must first admit to the uranium facility, rejecting proposals from other nations that it was more important to freeze the plutonium facility in order to halt North Korea's production. In May 2004, DeTrani -- then with the State Department -- was dispatched to give the North Koreans a detailed, 90-minute presentation of all the materials that Pyongyang had procured overseas, including aluminum tubes, chemicals and even a centrifuge kit from a Pakistani nuclear smuggling network, a U.S. official said.
The North Koreans have consistently denied having a uranium-enrichment program, and U.S. officials say suspected procurement activities have largely ceased in the past two years for unknown reasons. Some speculate that Pyongyang found a uranium program too difficult, especially since the plutonium facility was active. Others say DeTrani's presentation spooked them and they either ended the purchases or became more discreet.
Hill has said he has raised the uranium program at every meeting with the North Koreans, but the recent deal struck with Pyongyang focuses on the plutonium program. Under the agreement, North Korea will close and "seal" its plutonium nuclear reactor at Yongbyon within 60 days in return for 50,000 tons of fuel oil.
Pyongyang must eventually disclose and dismantle its programs in order to receive significant aid and other benefits, including normalizing relations with the United States.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
US: Secret CIA Prisoners Still Missing
Washington Should Reveal Fate of People "Disappeared" by US
Human Rights Watch, February 27, 2007
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/02/26/usint15408_txt.htm
(New York, February 27, 2007) - The US government should account for all the
missing detainees once held by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Human
Rights Watch said in a report released today.
The 50-page report, "Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention,"
contains a detailed description of a secret CIA prison from a Palestinian
former detainee who was released from custody last year. Find report at
http://hrw.org/reports/2007/us0207/
Human Rights Watch has also sent a public letter to US President George W.
Bush requesting information about the fate and whereabouts of the missing
detainees.
"President Bush told us that the last 14 CIA prisoners were sent to
Guantanamo, but there are many other prisoners 'disappeared' by the CIA
whose fate is still unknown," said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and
counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch. "The question is: what
happened to these people and where are they now?"
In early September, 14 detainees were transferred from secret CIA prisons to
military custody at Guantanamo Bay. In a televised speech on September 6,
President Bush announced that with those 14 transfers, no prisoners were
left in CIA custody.
The former CIA detainee, Marwan Jabour, told Human Rights Watch about a
number of other people who were in CIA detention but whose present
whereabouts are unknown. Jabour saw one of these men, Algerian terrorism
suspect Yassir al-Jazeeri, as recently as July 2006 in CIA custody.
"The Bush administration needs to provide a full accounting of everyone who
was 'disappeared' into CIA prisons, including their names, locations, and
when they left US custody," Mariner said.
Human Rights Watch's letter to Bush contained two lists of missing
detainees.
http://hrw.org/reports/2007/us0207/bushletter.pdf
The first list names 16 people whom Human Rights Watch believes were held in
CIA prisons and whose current whereabouts are unknown. The second list names
22 people who may have been held in CIA prisons and whose current
whereabouts are unknown.
Human Rights Watch expressed concern about what may have happened to the
missing prisoners. One possibility is that the US may have transferred some
of them to foreign prisons where they remain under the CIA's effective
control.
Another worrying possibility is that prisoners were transferred from CIA
custody to places where they may face torture. A serious concern is that
some of the missing prisoners might have been returned to their countries of
origin, which include Algeria, Egypt, Libya and Syria, where the torture of
terrorism suspects is common.
The new report provides the most comprehensive account to date of life in a
secret CIA prison, as well as new information regarding 38 possible
detainees. The report explains that these prisoners' treatment by the CIA
constitutes enforced disappearance, a practice that is absolutely prohibited
under international law.
Marwan Jabour was arrested by Pakistani authorities in May 2004 in Pakistan
and held for more than a month at a secret facility in Islamabad operated by
both US and Pakistani personnel, during which time he was badly abused. In
June, he was flown to another secret prison, which he believes was in
Afghanistan, where all or nearly all of the personnel were American.
His clothes were taken from him when he arrived, and he was left completely
naked for a month and a half, including during questioning by women
interrogators and filming. He was chained tightly to the wall of his small
cell so that he could not stand up, placed in painful stress positions so
that he had difficulty breathing, and told that if he did not cooperate he
would be put in a suffocating "dog box."
During the more than two years that he was held in this secret prison,
Jabour spent nearly all of his time alone in a windowless cell, with little
human contact besides his captors. Although he worried incessantly about his
wife and three young daughters, he was not allowed even to send them a
letter to reassure them that he was alive.
"It was a grave," Jabour later told Human Rights Watch. "I felt like my life
was over."
The wife of another former CIA detainee whose whereabouts remain unknown
told Human Rights Watch that she has had to lie to her four children about
her husband's "disappearance." She explained that she could not bear telling
them that she did not know where he was.
"What I'm hoping," she said, "is if they find out their father has been
detained, that I'll at least be able to tell them what country he's being
held in, and in what conditions."
Enforced disappearance involves arbitrary, secret and incommunicado
detention, and poses a serious risk to the right to life and to protection
from torture and other mistreatment. As these cases make clear, enforced
disappearance also inflicts severe mental pain and suffering on the
"disappeared" person's family.
Human Rights Watch expressed grave concern about President Bush's stated
view that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 permits the government to
restart the CIA's secret prison program. Human Rights Watch called upon the
Bush administration to reject the use of secret detention and coercive
interrogation as tactics in fighting terrorism, and announce that the CIA's
detention and interrogation program has been permanently discontinued.
"The CIA program - and the civilian leaders who created it - have inflicted
tremendous harm on the reputation, moral standing, and integrity of the
United States," Mariner said. "It's time for President Bush to repudiate
this program, and to take steps to repair the damage it has done."
Related Material
Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention
Report, February 27, 2007
http://hrw.org/reports/2007/us0207/
Letter from Human Rights Watch to President Bush
Letter, February 27, 2007
http://hrw.org/reports/2007/us0207/bushletter.pdf
Audio commentary by Joanne Mariner, director of the Terrorism and
Counterterrorism Program at Human Rights Watch
Audio Clip, February 27, 2007
http://www.hrw.org/audio/2007/english/us02/usint15408.htm
Accessed from:
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/02/26/usint15408.htm
Human Rights Watch, February 27, 2007
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/02/26/usint15408_txt.htm
(New York, February 27, 2007) - The US government should account for all the
missing detainees once held by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Human
Rights Watch said in a report released today.
The 50-page report, "Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention,"
contains a detailed description of a secret CIA prison from a Palestinian
former detainee who was released from custody last year. Find report at
http://hrw.org/reports/2007/us0207/
Human Rights Watch has also sent a public letter to US President George W.
Bush requesting information about the fate and whereabouts of the missing
detainees.
"President Bush told us that the last 14 CIA prisoners were sent to
Guantanamo, but there are many other prisoners 'disappeared' by the CIA
whose fate is still unknown," said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and
counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch. "The question is: what
happened to these people and where are they now?"
In early September, 14 detainees were transferred from secret CIA prisons to
military custody at Guantanamo Bay. In a televised speech on September 6,
President Bush announced that with those 14 transfers, no prisoners were
left in CIA custody.
The former CIA detainee, Marwan Jabour, told Human Rights Watch about a
number of other people who were in CIA detention but whose present
whereabouts are unknown. Jabour saw one of these men, Algerian terrorism
suspect Yassir al-Jazeeri, as recently as July 2006 in CIA custody.
"The Bush administration needs to provide a full accounting of everyone who
was 'disappeared' into CIA prisons, including their names, locations, and
when they left US custody," Mariner said.
Human Rights Watch's letter to Bush contained two lists of missing
detainees.
http://hrw.org/reports/2007/us0207/bushletter.pdf
The first list names 16 people whom Human Rights Watch believes were held in
CIA prisons and whose current whereabouts are unknown. The second list names
22 people who may have been held in CIA prisons and whose current
whereabouts are unknown.
Human Rights Watch expressed concern about what may have happened to the
missing prisoners. One possibility is that the US may have transferred some
of them to foreign prisons where they remain under the CIA's effective
control.
Another worrying possibility is that prisoners were transferred from CIA
custody to places where they may face torture. A serious concern is that
some of the missing prisoners might have been returned to their countries of
origin, which include Algeria, Egypt, Libya and Syria, where the torture of
terrorism suspects is common.
The new report provides the most comprehensive account to date of life in a
secret CIA prison, as well as new information regarding 38 possible
detainees. The report explains that these prisoners' treatment by the CIA
constitutes enforced disappearance, a practice that is absolutely prohibited
under international law.
Marwan Jabour was arrested by Pakistani authorities in May 2004 in Pakistan
and held for more than a month at a secret facility in Islamabad operated by
both US and Pakistani personnel, during which time he was badly abused. In
June, he was flown to another secret prison, which he believes was in
Afghanistan, where all or nearly all of the personnel were American.
His clothes were taken from him when he arrived, and he was left completely
naked for a month and a half, including during questioning by women
interrogators and filming. He was chained tightly to the wall of his small
cell so that he could not stand up, placed in painful stress positions so
that he had difficulty breathing, and told that if he did not cooperate he
would be put in a suffocating "dog box."
During the more than two years that he was held in this secret prison,
Jabour spent nearly all of his time alone in a windowless cell, with little
human contact besides his captors. Although he worried incessantly about his
wife and three young daughters, he was not allowed even to send them a
letter to reassure them that he was alive.
"It was a grave," Jabour later told Human Rights Watch. "I felt like my life
was over."
The wife of another former CIA detainee whose whereabouts remain unknown
told Human Rights Watch that she has had to lie to her four children about
her husband's "disappearance." She explained that she could not bear telling
them that she did not know where he was.
"What I'm hoping," she said, "is if they find out their father has been
detained, that I'll at least be able to tell them what country he's being
held in, and in what conditions."
Enforced disappearance involves arbitrary, secret and incommunicado
detention, and poses a serious risk to the right to life and to protection
from torture and other mistreatment. As these cases make clear, enforced
disappearance also inflicts severe mental pain and suffering on the
"disappeared" person's family.
Human Rights Watch expressed grave concern about President Bush's stated
view that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 permits the government to
restart the CIA's secret prison program. Human Rights Watch called upon the
Bush administration to reject the use of secret detention and coercive
interrogation as tactics in fighting terrorism, and announce that the CIA's
detention and interrogation program has been permanently discontinued.
"The CIA program - and the civilian leaders who created it - have inflicted
tremendous harm on the reputation, moral standing, and integrity of the
United States," Mariner said. "It's time for President Bush to repudiate
this program, and to take steps to repair the damage it has done."
Related Material
Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention
Report, February 27, 2007
http://hrw.org/reports/2007/us0207/
Letter from Human Rights Watch to President Bush
Letter, February 27, 2007
http://hrw.org/reports/2007/us0207/bushletter.pdf
Audio commentary by Joanne Mariner, director of the Terrorism and
Counterterrorism Program at Human Rights Watch
Audio Clip, February 27, 2007
http://www.hrw.org/audio/2007/english/us02/usint15408.htm
Accessed from:
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/02/26/usint15408.htm
For Want of a Dentist
washingtonpost.com
Pr. George's Boy Dies After Bacteria From Tooth Spread to Brain
By Mary Otto
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 28, 2007; B01
Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday.
A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.
If his mother had been insured.
If his family had not lost its Medicaid.
If Medicaid dentists weren't so hard to find.
If his mother hadn't been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth.
By the time Deamonte's own aching tooth got any attention, the bacteria from the abscess had spread to his brain, doctors said. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care, the Prince George's County boy died.
Deamonte's death and the ultimate cost of his care, which could total more than $250,000, underscore an often-overlooked concern in the debate over universal health coverage: dental care.
Some poor children have no dental coverage at all. Others travel three hours to find a dentist willing to take Medicaid patients and accept the incumbent paperwork. And some, including Deamonte's brother, get in for a tooth cleaning but have trouble securing an oral surgeon to fix deeper problems.
In spite of efforts to change the system, fewer than one in three children in Maryland's Medicaid program received any dental service at all in 2005, the latest year for which figures are available from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The figures were worse elsewhere in the region. In the District, 29.3 percent got treatment, and in Virginia, 24.3 percent were treated, although all three jurisdictions say they have done a better job reaching children in recent years.
"I certainly hope the state agencies responsible for making sure these children have dental care take note so that Deamonte didn't die in vain," said Laurie Norris, a lawyer for the Baltimore-based Public Justice Center who tried to help the Driver family. "They know there is a problem, and they have not devoted adequate resources to solving it."
Maryland officials emphasize that the delivery of basic care has improved greatly since 1997, when the state instituted a managed care program, and 1998, when legislation that provided more money and set standards for access to dental care for poor children was enacted.
About 900 of the state's 5,500 dentists accept Medicaid patients, said Arthur Fridley, last year's president of the Maryland State Dental Association. Referring patients to specialists can be particularly difficult.
Fewer than 16 percent of Maryland's Medicaid children received restorative services -- such as filling cavities -- in 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available.
For families such as the Drivers, the systemic problems are often compounded by personal obstacles: lack of transportation, bouts of homelessness and erratic telephone and mail service.
The Driver children have never received routine dental attention, said their mother, Alyce Driver. The bakery, construction and home health-care jobs she has held have not provided insurance. The children's Medicaid coverage had temporarily lapsed at the time Deamonte was hospitalized. And even with Medicaid's promise of dental care, the problem, she said, was finding it.
When Deamonte got sick, his mother had not realized that his tooth had been bothering him. Instead, she was focusing on his younger brother, 10-year-old DaShawn, who "complains about his teeth all the time," she said.
DaShawn saw a dentist a couple of years ago, but the dentist discontinued the treatments, she said, after the boy squirmed too much in the chair. Then the family went through a crisis and spent some time in an Adelphi homeless shelter. From there, three of Driver's sons went to stay with their grandparents in a two-bedroom mobile home in Clinton.
By September, several of DaShawn's teeth had become abscessed. Driver began making calls about the boy's coverage but grew frustrated. She turned to Norris, who was working with homeless families in Prince George's.
Norris and her staff also ran into barriers: They said they made more than two dozen calls before reaching an official at the Driver family's Medicaid provider and a state supervising nurse who helped them find a dentist.
On Oct. 5, DaShawn saw Arthur Fridley, who cleaned the boy's teeth, took an X-ray and referred him to an oral surgeon. But the surgeon could not see him until Nov. 21, and that would be only for a consultation. Driver said she learned that DaShawn would need six teeth extracted and made an appointment for the earliest date available: Jan. 16.
But she had to cancel after learning Jan. 8 that the children had lost their Medicaid coverage a month earlier. She suspects that the paperwork to confirm their eligibility was mailed to the shelter in Adelphi, where they no longer live.
It was on Jan. 11 that Deamonte came home from school complaining of a headache. At Southern Maryland Hospital Center, his mother said, he got medicine for a headache, sinusitis and a dental abscess. But the next day, he was much sicker.
Eventually, he was rushed to Children's Hospital, where he underwent emergency brain surgery. He began to have seizures and had a second operation. The problem tooth was extracted.
After more than two weeks of care at Children's Hospital, the Clinton seventh-grader began undergoing six weeks of additional medical treatment as well as physical and occupational therapy at another hospital. He seemed to be mending slowly, doing math problems and enjoying visits with his brothers and teachers from his school, the Foundation School in Largo.
On Saturday, their last day together, Deamonte refused to eat but otherwise appeared happy, his mother said. They played cards and watched a show on television, lying together in his hospital bed. But after she left him that evening, he called her.
"Make sure you pray before you go to sleep," he told her.
The next morning at about 6, she got another call, this time from the boy's grandmother. Deamonte was unresponsive. She rushed back to the hospital.
"When I got there, my baby was gone," recounted his mother.
She said doctors are still not sure what happened to her son. His death certificate listed two conditions associated with brain infections: "meningoencephalitis" and "subdural empyema."
In spite of such modern innovations as the fluoridation of drinking water, tooth decay is still the single most common childhood disease nationwide, five times as common as asthma, experts say. Poor children are more than twice as likely to have cavities as their more affluent peers, research shows, but far less likely to get treatment.
Serious and costly medical consequences are "not uncommon," said Norman Tinanoff, chief of pediatric dentistry at the University of Maryland Dental School in Baltimore. For instance, Deamonte's bill for two weeks at Children's alone was expected to be between $200,000 and $250,000.
The federal government requires states to provide oral health services to children through Medicaid programs, but the shortage of dentists who will treat indigent patients remains a major barrier to care, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Access is worst in rural areas, where some families travel hours for dental care, Tinanoff said. In the Maryland General Assembly this year, lawmakers are considering a bill that would set aside $2 million a year for the next three years to expand public clinics where dental care remains a rarity for the poor.
Providing such access, Tinanoff and others said, eventually pays for itself, sparing children the pain and expense of a medical crisis.
Reimbursement rates for dentists remain low nationally, although Maryland, Virginia and the District have increased their rates in recent years.
Dentists also cite administrative frustrations dealing with the Medicaid bureaucracy and the difficulties of serving poor, often transient patients, a study by the state legislatures conference found.
"Whatever we've got is broke," Fridley said. "It has nothing to do with access to care for these children."
Pr. George's Boy Dies After Bacteria From Tooth Spread to Brain
By Mary Otto
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 28, 2007; B01
Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday.
A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.
If his mother had been insured.
If his family had not lost its Medicaid.
If Medicaid dentists weren't so hard to find.
If his mother hadn't been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth.
By the time Deamonte's own aching tooth got any attention, the bacteria from the abscess had spread to his brain, doctors said. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care, the Prince George's County boy died.
Deamonte's death and the ultimate cost of his care, which could total more than $250,000, underscore an often-overlooked concern in the debate over universal health coverage: dental care.
Some poor children have no dental coverage at all. Others travel three hours to find a dentist willing to take Medicaid patients and accept the incumbent paperwork. And some, including Deamonte's brother, get in for a tooth cleaning but have trouble securing an oral surgeon to fix deeper problems.
In spite of efforts to change the system, fewer than one in three children in Maryland's Medicaid program received any dental service at all in 2005, the latest year for which figures are available from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The figures were worse elsewhere in the region. In the District, 29.3 percent got treatment, and in Virginia, 24.3 percent were treated, although all three jurisdictions say they have done a better job reaching children in recent years.
"I certainly hope the state agencies responsible for making sure these children have dental care take note so that Deamonte didn't die in vain," said Laurie Norris, a lawyer for the Baltimore-based Public Justice Center who tried to help the Driver family. "They know there is a problem, and they have not devoted adequate resources to solving it."
Maryland officials emphasize that the delivery of basic care has improved greatly since 1997, when the state instituted a managed care program, and 1998, when legislation that provided more money and set standards for access to dental care for poor children was enacted.
About 900 of the state's 5,500 dentists accept Medicaid patients, said Arthur Fridley, last year's president of the Maryland State Dental Association. Referring patients to specialists can be particularly difficult.
Fewer than 16 percent of Maryland's Medicaid children received restorative services -- such as filling cavities -- in 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available.
For families such as the Drivers, the systemic problems are often compounded by personal obstacles: lack of transportation, bouts of homelessness and erratic telephone and mail service.
The Driver children have never received routine dental attention, said their mother, Alyce Driver. The bakery, construction and home health-care jobs she has held have not provided insurance. The children's Medicaid coverage had temporarily lapsed at the time Deamonte was hospitalized. And even with Medicaid's promise of dental care, the problem, she said, was finding it.
When Deamonte got sick, his mother had not realized that his tooth had been bothering him. Instead, she was focusing on his younger brother, 10-year-old DaShawn, who "complains about his teeth all the time," she said.
DaShawn saw a dentist a couple of years ago, but the dentist discontinued the treatments, she said, after the boy squirmed too much in the chair. Then the family went through a crisis and spent some time in an Adelphi homeless shelter. From there, three of Driver's sons went to stay with their grandparents in a two-bedroom mobile home in Clinton.
By September, several of DaShawn's teeth had become abscessed. Driver began making calls about the boy's coverage but grew frustrated. She turned to Norris, who was working with homeless families in Prince George's.
Norris and her staff also ran into barriers: They said they made more than two dozen calls before reaching an official at the Driver family's Medicaid provider and a state supervising nurse who helped them find a dentist.
On Oct. 5, DaShawn saw Arthur Fridley, who cleaned the boy's teeth, took an X-ray and referred him to an oral surgeon. But the surgeon could not see him until Nov. 21, and that would be only for a consultation. Driver said she learned that DaShawn would need six teeth extracted and made an appointment for the earliest date available: Jan. 16.
But she had to cancel after learning Jan. 8 that the children had lost their Medicaid coverage a month earlier. She suspects that the paperwork to confirm their eligibility was mailed to the shelter in Adelphi, where they no longer live.
It was on Jan. 11 that Deamonte came home from school complaining of a headache. At Southern Maryland Hospital Center, his mother said, he got medicine for a headache, sinusitis and a dental abscess. But the next day, he was much sicker.
Eventually, he was rushed to Children's Hospital, where he underwent emergency brain surgery. He began to have seizures and had a second operation. The problem tooth was extracted.
After more than two weeks of care at Children's Hospital, the Clinton seventh-grader began undergoing six weeks of additional medical treatment as well as physical and occupational therapy at another hospital. He seemed to be mending slowly, doing math problems and enjoying visits with his brothers and teachers from his school, the Foundation School in Largo.
On Saturday, their last day together, Deamonte refused to eat but otherwise appeared happy, his mother said. They played cards and watched a show on television, lying together in his hospital bed. But after she left him that evening, he called her.
"Make sure you pray before you go to sleep," he told her.
The next morning at about 6, she got another call, this time from the boy's grandmother. Deamonte was unresponsive. She rushed back to the hospital.
"When I got there, my baby was gone," recounted his mother.
She said doctors are still not sure what happened to her son. His death certificate listed two conditions associated with brain infections: "meningoencephalitis" and "subdural empyema."
In spite of such modern innovations as the fluoridation of drinking water, tooth decay is still the single most common childhood disease nationwide, five times as common as asthma, experts say. Poor children are more than twice as likely to have cavities as their more affluent peers, research shows, but far less likely to get treatment.
Serious and costly medical consequences are "not uncommon," said Norman Tinanoff, chief of pediatric dentistry at the University of Maryland Dental School in Baltimore. For instance, Deamonte's bill for two weeks at Children's alone was expected to be between $200,000 and $250,000.
The federal government requires states to provide oral health services to children through Medicaid programs, but the shortage of dentists who will treat indigent patients remains a major barrier to care, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Access is worst in rural areas, where some families travel hours for dental care, Tinanoff said. In the Maryland General Assembly this year, lawmakers are considering a bill that would set aside $2 million a year for the next three years to expand public clinics where dental care remains a rarity for the poor.
Providing such access, Tinanoff and others said, eventually pays for itself, sparing children the pain and expense of a medical crisis.
Reimbursement rates for dentists remain low nationally, although Maryland, Virginia and the District have increased their rates in recent years.
Dentists also cite administrative frustrations dealing with the Medicaid bureaucracy and the difficulties of serving poor, often transient patients, a study by the state legislatures conference found.
"Whatever we've got is broke," Fridley said. "It has nothing to do with access to care for these children."
The Ghost of Giuliani’s Political Pastby Theodore Hamm
Rudy Giuliani is often presented as a political moderate whose thriving presidential campaign need only negotiate the hurdle of a conservative primary, but his pre-9/11 record as New York’s mayor—particularly his policies toward working-class and minority residents—should greatly alarm progressives.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Cheney Feels Impact of Failure of War on Terror
By Matthew Rothschild
Just how seriously Bush has bungled his war on terror became painfully clear this week. On Tuesday a Taliban suicide bomber attacked Bagram Air Force Base in an apparent assassination attempt on Dick Cheney, who was visiting there.
When the Vice President of the United States is unable to visit purported allies in the so-called war on terror without risking his life, how can Bush and Cheney say we’re winning?Cheney was unhurt, but the blast killed “up to 23 people and wounding 20 more,” CNN reported.
Bagram is one of the most heavily defended sites in all of Afghanistan. If the Vice President is not safe there, no one is safe in the entire country.
It’s a country Bush and Cheney have neglected and mismanaged. After knocking off the Taliban, they failed to vanquish bin Laden in the caves of Tora Bora. They failed to get Mullah Omar. And they lowballed the number of troops needed to control the place.
As a result, the Taliban have reemerged, bolder than ever, as Cheney himself got to learn, up close and personal.
Next door, in Pakistan, things aren’t any better.
Cheney visited there a day before Bagram, and the mission was top secret. American reporters couldn’t even mention that Cheney was going to Pakistan until he’d left the country.
The reason: Because Musharraf can’t control the people in his own intelligence agency, the ISI, who were seen as a threat to Cheney’s life. Elements of the ISI have also been aiding the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.
When the Vice President of the United States is unable to visit purported allies in the so-called war on terror without risking his life, how can Bush and Cheney say we’re winning?
I pity the Secret Service.
China Disputes Cheney on Military Plans
Washington Post, DC - 12 hours agoBEIJING -- China rejected criticism by Vice President Dick Cheney about its military ambitions, saying Tuesday that it is a force for stability in the world ...
By Matthew Rothschild
Just how seriously Bush has bungled his war on terror became painfully clear this week. On Tuesday a Taliban suicide bomber attacked Bagram Air Force Base in an apparent assassination attempt on Dick Cheney, who was visiting there.
When the Vice President of the United States is unable to visit purported allies in the so-called war on terror without risking his life, how can Bush and Cheney say we’re winning?Cheney was unhurt, but the blast killed “up to 23 people and wounding 20 more,” CNN reported.
Bagram is one of the most heavily defended sites in all of Afghanistan. If the Vice President is not safe there, no one is safe in the entire country.
It’s a country Bush and Cheney have neglected and mismanaged. After knocking off the Taliban, they failed to vanquish bin Laden in the caves of Tora Bora. They failed to get Mullah Omar. And they lowballed the number of troops needed to control the place.
As a result, the Taliban have reemerged, bolder than ever, as Cheney himself got to learn, up close and personal.
Next door, in Pakistan, things aren’t any better.
Cheney visited there a day before Bagram, and the mission was top secret. American reporters couldn’t even mention that Cheney was going to Pakistan until he’d left the country.
The reason: Because Musharraf can’t control the people in his own intelligence agency, the ISI, who were seen as a threat to Cheney’s life. Elements of the ISI have also been aiding the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan.
When the Vice President of the United States is unable to visit purported allies in the so-called war on terror without risking his life, how can Bush and Cheney say we’re winning?
I pity the Secret Service.
China Disputes Cheney on Military Plans
Washington Post, DC - 12 hours agoBEIJING -- China rejected criticism by Vice President Dick Cheney about its military ambitions, saying Tuesday that it is a force for stability in the world ...
Monday, February 26, 2007
Libby Juror Dismissed Over Media ExposureBy NEIL A. LEWIS and DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 — A juror in the perjury trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, was dismissed from the panel today after acknowledging that she had had outside contact with information related to the case.
Federal Judge Reggie B. Walton said the jury’s deliberations, which began at mid-day Wednesday, could go on with 11 members on the panel. “I don’t think it would be appropriate to throw away those two and a half days,” he said, alluding to the work that jurors had done up to this morning.
The judge’s decision came over the objection of the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who wanted one of two remaining alternates to be seated, bringing the jury panel back to 12. But that would have required the newly constituted jury to begin deliberations all over again, a development that the chief defense lawyer, Theodore V. Wells Jr., said would be prejudicial to his client.
Judge Walton said the problem juror’s exposure to outside information was the result of a misunderstanding rather than intentional on her part. But he said he had no choice but to dismiss her. The woman, who now lives in Washington, was a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for decades.
Mr. Libby is charged with obstruction of justice, lying to federal agents and perjuring himself before a grand jury amid an investigation over who made public the name of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson, whose husband, the former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, was highly critical of the Bush administration’s rationale for going to war in Iraq.
Before dismissing the juror, and ruling that the 11 remaining on the panel could continue to deliberate, Judge Walton questioned them individually. He then cautioned the jurors, as he has daily over the four-week trial, to avoid contact with any case-related information from outside the courtroom.
When the trial began, there were 16 jurors — counting four alternates — but two were let go before today for reasons not having to do with the case.
Libby: No Mistrial, Yet
by John Nichols Judge questions jurors about exposure to news of the high-stakes trial of Dick Cheney's top aide.
Al Gore wins Oscar and lots of laughsLOS ANGELES — The documentary that turned former U.S. vice-president Al Gore's power-point presentation on global warming into an engaging and entertaining film won the Oscar on Sunday night.
The best-documentary win was a triumph for Gore, who has kept a sense of humour about his loss in the 2000 election that was decided in George W. Bush's favour by a U.S. Supreme Court decision.
"I am Al Gore. I used to be the next president of the United States of America,'' Gore says in the film, repeating a line he has used often.
Sunday, Gore used the Oscar win not to further his political career but to boost his campaign to find solutions for global warming and other environmental problems.
"My fellow Americans,'' Gore said to laughter from the crowd. "People all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis. It's not a political issue, it's a moral issue. We have everything we need to get started with the possible will to act. That's a renewable resource. Let's renew it.''
Earlier in the evening, Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio took the stage to unveil a series of efforts the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences took to make this year's awards more environmentally friendly.
Pressed by DiCaprio about any other major announcement he might like to make, the former vice president pulled out a statement.
"My fellow Americans, I'm going to take this opportunity right here and now, to formally announce my intentions to ...'' Gore said before the orchestra broke in and he walked off, arm-in-arm and laughing, with DiCaprio.
Backstage, Gore put speculation to rest, saying "I do not have plans to become a candidate for office again.''
Instead, Gore said he was dedicating all his efforts to pressuring governments to act on climate-crisis issues.
"It is the overriding world challenge of our time,'' Gore said. "I really hope the decision by the academy to honour the work by director Davis Guggenheim and these producers will convince people who did not go see it before to see the movie and learn about the climate crisis and become a part of the solution.''
Editorial Observer: Why Have So Many U.S. Attorneys Been Fired? It Looks a Lot Like Politics
By ADAM COHEN
Three theories are emerging for why these well-qualified U.S. attorneys were fired — all political, and all disturbing.
By ADAM COHEN
Three theories are emerging for why these well-qualified U.S. attorneys were fired — all political, and all disturbing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)