Democrats are immoral cowards for trying to pass the 9/11 health and compensation act as a bill that requires a two-thirds vote and doesn’t allow the GOP a chance to alter it, Rep. Pete King charged today.
King, a Long Island Republican, is furious because he believes the measure would pass easily as a regular bill needing a simple majority — but Democrats fear the GOP might attach toxic provisions if they get the chance.
“The Democrats are guilty of moral cowardice and a failure of leadership,” King told the Daily News this morning.
“They put this up on the suspension calendar knowing it’s not going to get a two-thirds vote,” he fumed. “It’s really morally disgraceful… They are letting cops and firefighters die because their members don’t have the guts to take a vote.”
King acknowledged that the GOP — like the Democrats when they were in the minority — regularly tries to influence legislation and even kill it when they get the chance, as they are allowed under the regular legislative rules in the House.
The out-of-power party does that by offering a “motion to recommit” on the House floor which can send a bill back to the drawing board, often with instructions on how it should be redone. Lately, the GOP as attached language on abortion, immigration and other hot-button issues that divide the Democratic Party.
The 9/11 bill, with its emphasis on health, potentially could offer a vehicle to attack the recent health care reform law, though no one has said publicly that Republicans would attempt such a ploy. Republicans already tried to attach immigration and abortion restrictions to the bill when it was being written, and could again.
But King argues Democrats have had the votes to pass whatever they think is important — such as health care and the stimuls bill — and the 9/11 bill would attract at least some GOP support. Many in the party oppose it because of the $10.5 billion cost, and the plan to pay for it by closing tax loopholes of foreign companies.
He blames the House leaders, but also his New York colleagues for going along.
“Too many members in the New York delegation are covering up for them,” King charged. “This is the ultimate in moral cowardice. It’s morally indefensible.
“There are motions to recommit on every bill,” he added. “Why are they applying this standard to this one bill?”
King said he was especially disappointed in his Democratic partners because they had made the bill a top priority four years ago when Republicans lost their grip on power, and he said he doesn’t understand why they’ve failed to deliver.
“It’s poor leadership, it’s morally deficient leadership, and it’s just the ultimate in cowardice,” he said.
The measure was supposed to have come up this afternoon, but late last night was delayed until Thursday.
Delegation Democrats know the suspension bill route is tougher, but insist it still has a chance to pass. And they argue that if it doesn’t, at least the vote will show the bill has majority support, and it will build momentum to pass it the normal way in September.
The Obama administration has been reluctant to back the measure because it mandates the spending, rather than leaving it up to the annual appropriations process. And while the White House has doubled spending for ailing 9/11 responders to $150 million, the bill would more than double that, and make it very difficult to cut.
Update: City Hall reporter Kate Lucadamo finds they are not pleased, either.
Fearing the suspension bill is doomed to fail, Mayor Bloomberg’s top political advisers including Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson, have been furiously calling the New York delegation over the last 24 hours for help.
“Our position is simple. We want to put a bill on the floor that is going to pass,” said a City Hall official.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Monday it was launching a manhunt to find whoever leaked tens of thousands of classified documents on the war in Afghanistan, one of the largest security breaches in U.S. military history.
U.S. defense officials said the person behind the release of some 91,000 classified documents appeared to have "secret" clearance and access to sensitive documents on the Afghan war.
More leaks were possible, officials acknowledged.
"We will do what is necessary to try to determine who is responsible for the leaking of this information," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said.
"Until we know who's responsible, you have to hold out the possibility that there could be more information that has yet to be disclosed. And that's obviously a concern."
The Pentagon said its review of the documents being made public by the organization WikiLeaks would take "days if not weeks" and that it was too soon to assess any damage to national security.
Still, U.S. military officials played down any revelations within the documents revealed so far, saying they appeared to be low-level assessments that largely confirm the military's publicly stated concerns about the Afghan war.
The military's warnings of potential mission failure last year helped lead to President Barack Obama's decision in December to deploy 30,000 more troops.
"The scale of (the leak), the scope of it, is clearly alarming. I don't think the content of it is very illuminating," Morrell said.
Among the documents were reports that U.S. officials in Afghanistan strongly suspected Pakistan was secretly supporting Taliban insurgents while taking massive amounts of American aid. The documents could fuel growing doubts in Congress about Obama's war strategy as the U.S. death toll rises.
The Pentagon has declined to name any suspects over the leak but also has refused to rule out potential involvement of an Army specialist already awaiting trial on charges of leaking information related to the Iraq war to WikiLeaks.
Army Specialist Bradley Manning was charged earlier this month in connection with the leak of a classified video showing a 2007 helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in Iraq, including two Reuters journalists. He is also accused of downloading State Department cables to his personal computer.
Asked whether WikiLeaks also might come under scrutiny, Pentagon officials have said that historically the leakers have been the ones targeted for criminal prosecution -- not those who merely publish the information.
"I don't know what's going to happen here. This is a whole new world that we are entering into where an organization without any editorial judgment, beholden to nobody, is soliciting classified information from people all over the world and then publishing it," Morrell said.
"I don't know. I'm not a lawyer but people are going to have to make judgments about whether there are legal ramifications for soliciting a criminal act."
The shocking rates of infant mortality and cancer in Iraqi city raise new questions about battle
By Patrick Cockburn
Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.
Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.
Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.
Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. He added that "to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened".
US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.
In the assault US commanders largely treated Fallujah as a free-fire zone to try to reduce casualties among their own troops. British officers were appalled by the lack of concern for civilian casualties. "During preparatory operations in the November 2004 Fallujah clearance operation, on one night over 40 155mm artillery rounds were fired into a small sector of the city," recalled Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, a British commander serving with the American forces in Baghdad.
He added that the US commander who ordered this devastating use of firepower did not consider it significant enough to mention it in his daily report to the US general in command. Dr Busby says that while he cannot identify the type of armaments used by the Marines, the extent of genetic damage suffered by inhabitants suggests the use of uranium in some form. He said: "My guess is that they used a new weapon against buildings to break through walls and kill those inside."
The survey was carried out by a team of 11 researchers in January and February this year who visited 711 houses in Fallujah. A questionnaire was filled in by householders giving details of cancers, birth outcomes and infant mortality. Hitherto the Iraqi government has been loath to respond to complaints from civilians about damage to their health during military operations.
Researchers were initially regarded with some suspicion by locals, particularly after a Baghdad television station broadcast a report saying a survey was being carried out by terrorists and anybody conducting it or answering questions would be arrested. Those organising the survey subsequently arranged to be accompanied by a person of standing in the community to allay suspicions.
The study, entitled "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009", is by Dr Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi, and concludes that anecdotal evidence of a sharp rise in cancer and congenital birth defects is correct. Infant mortality was found to be 80 per 1,000 births compared to 19 in Egypt, 17 in Jordan and 9.7 in Kuwait. The report says that the types of cancer are "similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to ionising radiation from the bomb and uranium in the fallout".
Researchers found a 38-fold increase in leukaemia, a ten-fold increase in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults. At Hiroshima survivors showed a 17-fold increase in leukaemia, but in Fallujah Dr Busby says what is striking is not only the greater prevalence of cancer but the speed with which it was affecting people.
Of particular significance was the finding that the sex ratio between newborn boys and girls had changed. In a normal population this is 1,050 boys born to 1,000 girls, but for those born from 2005 there was an 18 per cent drop in male births, so the ratio was 850 males to 1,000 females. The sex-ratio is an indicator of genetic damage that affects boys more than girls. A similar change in the sex-ratio was discovered after Hiroshima.
The US cut back on its use of firepower in Iraq from 2007 because of the anger it provoked among civilians. But at the same time there has been a decline in healthcare and sanitary conditions in Iraq since 2003. The impact of war on civilians was more severe in Fallujah than anywhere else in Iraq because the city continued to be blockaded and cut off from the rest of the country long after 2004. War damage was only slowly repaired and people from the city were frightened to go to hospitals in Baghdad because of military checkpoints on the road into the capital.
The Salt Lake Community College in Sandy, Utah, will play host to a historic line up of speakers this July 30th – August 1st. The “Axiom 2010: The Truth Tellers Conference” is allotting an unheard of two hours for each speaker, ensuring total immersion, comprehension and time for questions and answers. The conference will also feature film screenings and live music.
When Bruno Bruhwiler from We Are Change Los Angeles saw the speakers list he stated, “This has got to be the most amazing truth lineup I’ve seen to date to date… a powerhouse conference”.
“I’m proud to announce that our diverse line-up of confirmed speakers include: Luke Rudkowski, Walter Burien, Alan Watt (via satellite), Gary Franchi (with Camp FEMA movie screening), Sheriff Richard Mack, Dr. A. True Ott, Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Marc Stevens, Dr. Ann Blake Tracy, Dr. Tim O’shea, Scott Stevens, Byron Dale, and Jake Shannon, with more tentatively confirmed,” stated organizer Clint Richardson, of We Are Change Utah, when asked about the lineup.
There will be a full vendor exhibition hall offering booth space at no cost to vendors in exchange for sponsorship of the conference for a limited time. The Exhibition hall will also be promoted to the public a separate public marketplace.
More information, videos and tickets can be found at: http://axiomconference.com/
We hope to see you there on July 30 – August 1. Tickets are just $70. And seating is limited to 300.
A federal judge has ordered the release of another Yemeni captive at Guantanamo, the 37th time a war on terror captive in southeast Cuba has won his unlawful detention suit against the U.S. government.
Judge Paul Friedman's order in the case of Hussein Almerfedi at the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., instructs the Obama administration to "take all necessary and appropriate steps to facilitate the release of petitioner forthwith.''
His reasoning on why the U.S. had unlawfully detained Almerfedi, 33, held at Guantanamo since May 2003, was still under seal.
But as far back as 2005, Almerfedi had argued before a military panel at the Navy base in southeast Cuba that he fled his native Aden, Yemen, with plans to settle in Europe, not to join a jihad. Instead, he said, his journey took him to Pakistan and then Tehran where Iranian forces turned him over to Afghan forces, who in turn handed over to the United States.
Justice Department attorneys argued that Almerfedi was a former Aden-based salesman of the narcotics plant called qat who came to support al Qaeda "and is thus an enemy of the United States.''
A chunk of the case file is censored in federal court but government lawyers also argued that, while in Afghanistan, he stayed at al Qaeda safehouses.
The U.S. also said that Almerfedi was subjected to a lie detector test and was found to be deceptive. Almerfedi told a military panel at Guantanamo in 2005 that he was polygraphed in Bagram, Afghanistan, on the eve of his transfer to Cuba.
The U.S. government has won just 14 of the 51 decided cases filed by prisoners at Guantanamo, although an appeals court has found a flaw in one of the 14 rulings and ordered a new review in the case of Algerian captive Belkacem Bensayah.
In contrast, civilian judges have so far ruled for the release of 37 so-called "enemy combatants'' -- ordering them repatriated or resettled safely elsewhere if the stigma of Guantánamo detention would endanger them in their homelands.
About half of the 181 detainees at Guantanamo today are citizens of Yemen, Osama bin Laden's ancestral homeland. A total of 15 Yemenis so far have had their habeas corpus petitions heard. Eight detentions have been upheld and seven have been ruled unlawful.
Attorneys at the firm that handled Almerfedi's case, Covington and Burling in Washington D.C., declined comment on Thursday. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said attorneys would review the decision to decide whether to appeal.
Thursday's ruling was the first by Friedman in a courthouse where more than 100 Guantánamo habeas corpus petitions have been divided up among the judges.
The Gulf area may have to live with oil long after the beaches have been cleaned. Some residents are outraged that BP has been dumping oily waste in landfills in their areas.
After BP crews scoop up the oil off Gulf beaches, the waste is transported to Mississippi's Pecan Grove landfill. Even workers' protective suits, gloves, shovels, rakes and anything else that touches oil is buried there.
The Board of Supervisors in Harrison, Mississippi passed a resolution saying they don't want any BP waste in their community but there is little they can do. BP has cut deals with Waste Management, the owners of the landfill. They answer to the state instead of local county government.
"We don't want it," President of the Board of Supervisors Connie Rocko told CNN's Randi Kaye. "It is valuable landfill space and hazardous to our citizens. Take your waste somewhere else or please find an alternative."
Rocko is concerned that oil could find its way into the water table and be harmful to the residents.
But Waste Management's Ken Haldin says there's nothing to be worried about. "It is an understandable concern because there is a lack of awareness," he told CNN.
Haldin explained that Pecan Grove landfill is designated a nonhazardous site which means no liquid waste can be dumped there. There is a liner underneath the landfill that is designed to prevent waste from seeping into the water table.
In the past 24 hours alone, 150 tons of BP waste has been dumped there, said Haldin.
The EPA has ordered that BP waste disposal efforts must be transparent. The company must post details of all collected waste at their website.
But considering accusations that BP and the Coast Guard have tried to prevent reporters from covering the cleanup efforts, some may have grounds to question that transparency.
This video is from CNN.com, broadcast July 8, 2010.
New York (CNN) -- The dollar is an unreliable international currency and should be replaced by a more stable system, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs said in a report released Tuesday.
The use of the dollar for international trade came under increasing scrutiny when the U.S. economy fell into recession. "The dollar has proved not to be a stable store of value, which is a requisite for a stable reserve currency," the report said.
Many countries, in Asia in particular, have been building up massive dollar reserves. As a result, those countries' currencies have become undervalued, decreasing their ability to import goods from abroad.
The World Economic and Social Survey 2010 is supporting a proposal long advocated by the International Monetary Fund to create a standardized international system for liquidity transfer.
Under this proposed system, countries would no longer have to buy up foreign currencies, as China has long done with the U.S. dollar. Rather, they would accumulate the right to claim foreign currencies, or special drawing rights, or SDRs, rather than the currencies themselves.
The special drawing rights would be backed by a basket of currencies, which would make them less susceptible to volatility in any one currency. And because the value of a special drawing right is defined by the IMF, changes in the value of any one currency could be adjusted for.
These initiatives, supported by U.N. Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, are meant to help sustain the international trade and financial systems that will allow less-developed countries to participate and integrate into the global economy.
In addition to the proposed reforms regarding international currency, the survey also offered guidance on increasing social well-being.
The survey said that "the number of the poor in the world living on less than $1.25 a day decreased from 1.8 billion in 1990 to 1.4 billion in 2005, but nearly all of this reduction was concentrated in China."
The number of poor increased in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia over the same period. Income inequalities within countries have increased since the early 1980s with few exceptions, the report said.
"There's too little aid being provided, it's too fragmented, and it's too volatile in terms of the resources that are flowing to countries," said Rob Vos, director of the development policy and analysis division of the U.N.
The survey projects that by 2050 the population will be at 9 billion, with 85 percent living in developing countries, and the global economy will have to sustain a system that will allow for "decent living."
By 2050, one of every four people living in a developed country and one in every seven in countries now being developed will be over age 65. The fast ageing of the population will call for proper pension and health care systems that are sustainable.
China has the power to shut down its Internet, so why can't we?
That's one of the arguments Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is making about the bill he's co-authored that would give the president the power to disable parts of the Internet as he deems necessary.
"Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too," Lieberman told CNN's Candy Crowley on State of the Union Sunday.
"There's a lot of people out there who think that what you are granting the president is absolute power to shut down freedom of speech, that this is just over the top," Crowley said.
"No way and total misinformation," Lieberman replied. "We need this capacity in a time of war. We need the capacity for the president to say, 'Internet service provider, we've got to disconnect the American Internet from all traffic coming in from another foreign country, or we have to put a patch on this part of it'."
Lieberman continued: "So I say to my friends on the Internet, relax. Take a look at the bill. And this is something that we need to protect our country."
Lieberman, along with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), introduced the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act two weeks ago. The bill would allow the President to disconnect Internet networks and force private websites to comply with broad cybersecurity measures. The president's power to shut down parts of the Web would be renewed indefinitely under the bill.
Website that exposed video says Washington Post withheld video of attack for over a year and didn't release to public
Federal officials have arrested a 22-year-old intelligence analyst whom they accuse of leaking classified materials to the web site Wikileaks.org, which released video showing the US military killing innocent civilians in Iraq.
In the wake of the arrest, Wikileaks issued a statement alleging that the Washington Post had a copy of the video showing the attack but didn't release it for over a year. A statement on the group's Twitter feed said, "Statement: Washington Post had Collateral murder video for over a year but DID NOT RELEASE IT [sic] it to the public."
"Collateral murder" is the title the group gave to a video they released at the National Press Club in April, which shows a US military missile strike on a van in Baghdad that killed a Reuters photographer and his driver, as well as several unarmed civilians.
The Post described the video as "long sought" when it was released earlier this year. But one of its reporters wrote a book that documented the attack, and acknowledged at the time that he had seen a copy of the secret video, and offered a frame-by-frame account.
Wikileaks' assertion would seek to place the Post in the company of prominent media organizations like The New York Times, which held off publishing a story about the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program for a year at the behest of the Bush Administration.
But their claim presupposes the fact that the Post actually had a copy of the video, rather than simply a reporter who reviewed it. Wikileaks has offered no additional details. It also seems to discount the fact that the Post offered a frame-by-frame account of the attack both in their newspaper and in a book by one of their staff members.
The Post has withheld information on national security grounds before; notably, it declined to name the Eastern European countries where the US had secret CIA prisons.
According to Wired.com, the Feds recently arrested an analyst they believe involved with leaking information surrounding the attack:
SPC Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, where he was arrested nearly two weeks ago by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. A family member says he’s being held in custody in Kuwait, and has not been formally charged.
Manning was turned in late last month by a former computer hacker with whom he spoke online. In the course of their chats, Manning took credit for leaking a headline-making video of a helicopter attack that Wikileaks posted online in April. The video showed a deadly 2007 U.S. helicopter air strike in Baghdad that claimed the lives of several innocent civilians.
He said he also leaked three other items to Wikileaks: a separate video showing the notorious 2009 Garani air strike in Afghanistan that Wikileaks has previously acknowledged is in its possession; a classified Army document evaluating Wikileaks as a security threat, which the site posted in March; and a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables that Manning described as exposing “almost criminal political back dealings.”
“Hillary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public,” Manning wrote.
In response, Wikileaks issued several statements from its Twitter account.
"We never collect personal information on our sources, so we are are unable as yet to confirm the Manning story," one read.
"Allegations in Wired that we have been sent 260,000 classified US embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect," said another.
A Post reporter suggested in a profile piece just last month a possible reason an organization might withhold the video: fear of being labeled anti-American.
"Edited and unedited versions of the video have been viewed nearly 8 million times, provoking shock but also condemnation," the reporter wrote.
Some critics blasted WikiLeaks as an incarnation of "Baghdad Bob," the nickname of the former Iraqi information minister under Saddam Hussein.
Since the video was released, Assange and other WikiLeaks officials have defended their airing of the its disturbing images as an important counterbalance to those served up by television and Hollywood.
"We're being desensitized by watching fake violence, but we're not seeing the real stuff, the real pain and real cruelty," Schmitt said. "How can you have an opinion about this war if you don't know what it looks like?"
