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U.S. Raids Baghdad Slum
American soldiers rolled into Baghdad’s Shiite Sadr City slum on Saturday in search of Iranian-linked militants and as many as 26 Iraqis were killed in what a U.S. officer described as “an intense firefight.”
But residents, police and hospital officials said eight civilians were killed in their homes and angrily accused U.S. forces of firing blindly on the innocent. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned the raids and demanded an explanation for the assault into a district where he has barred U.S. operations in the past.
Separately, two American solders were charged with the premeditated murder of three Iraqis, the U.S. military said Saturday. And in Muqdadiyah, 60 miles north of the capital, police said a suicide bomber blew himself up near a crowd of police recruits, killing at least 23 people and wounding 17.
A U.S. soldier was killed Friday and three wounded when a sophisticated, armor-piercing bomb hit their combat patrol in southern Baghdad, the military announced a day later.
The U.S. military said it conducted two pre-dawn raids in Sadr City, killing 26 “terrorists” who attacked U.S. troops with small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs. But Iraqi officials said all the dead were civilians.
An American military spokesman insisted all of those killed were combatants. “Everyone who got shot was shooting at U.S. troops at the time,” said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver. “It was an intense firefight.”
U.S. troops detained 17 men suspected of helping Iranian terror networks fund operations in Iraq, a military statement said. There were no U.S. casualties.
Witnesses said U.S. forces rolled into their neighborhood before dawn and opened fire without warning.
“At about 4 a.m., a big American convoy with tanks came and began to open fire on houses – bombing them,” said Basheer Ahmed, who lives in Sadr City’s Habibiya district. “What did we do? We didn’t even retaliate – there was no resistance.”
According to Iraqi officials, the dead included three members of one family – a father, mother and son. Several women and children, along with two policemen, were among the wounded, they said.
The assault brought quick criticism from al-Maliki. “The Iraqi government totally rejects U.S. military operations … conducted without a pre-approval from the Iraqi military command,” al-Maliki said in a statement released by his office. “Anyone who breaches the military command orders will face investigation.”
Sadr City is the Iraqi capital’s largest Shiite neighborhood – home to some 2.5 million people. It is also the base of operations for the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The fighters are blamed for much of the sectarian killing in Baghdad.
Last year, al-Maliki banned military operations in Sadr City without his approval after complaints from his Shiite political allies. But he later agreed that no area of the capital was off-limits, after President Bush ordered reinforcements to Iraq as part of the Baghdad security operation.
Houses, a bakery and some other shops were damaged by U.S. tank fire during the assault, Iraqi officials said. In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, Sheik Salah al-Obaidi, a spokesman for al-Sadr condemned Saturday’s raids: “The bombing hurt only innocent civilians.”
A policeman wounded in the raid, Montadhar Kareem, said he was on night duty when U.S. troops moved in and “began bombing houses in the area.”
“The bombing became more intense, and I was injured by shrapnel in both my legs and in my left shoulder,” Kareem said from a gurney at Al Sadr General Hospital.
Hours afterward, a funeral procession snaked through Sadr City. Three coffins were hoisted atop cars.
One resident who goes by the nickname of Um Ahmed, or “mother of Ahmed,” stood outside her home as mourners passed by.
“We are being hit while we are peacefully sleeping in our houses. Is that fair?” she cried. The woman gave only her nickname, fearing reprisal.
The U.S. military statement said American troops opened fire on four civilian cars during the assault – one that failed to stop at a checkpoint, and three that insurgents were using for cover as they shot at U.S. soldiers.
“Every structure and vehicle that the troops on the ground engaged were being used for hostile intent,” Garver said. Some of the 26 dead were in civilian cars, some had been hiding behind cars and others had fired on U.S. troops from nearby buildings, he said.
In the murder case, the two American soldiers are accused of killing three Iraqis in separate incidents, then planting weapons on the victims’ remains, the military said in a statement. Fellow soldiers reported the alleged crimes, which took place between April and this month near Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad, it said.
The U.S. military on Saturday identified the soldiers as Staff Sgt. Michael A. Hensley from Candler, N.C., and Spc. Jorge G. Sandoval from Laredo, Texas.
Hensley is charged with three counts each of premeditated murder, obstructing justice and “wrongfully placing weapons with the remains of deceased Iraqis,” the military said. He was placed in military confinement in Kuwait on Thursday.
Sandoval faces one count each of premeditated murder and placing a weapon with the remains of a dead Iraqi, a statement said. He was taken into custody Tuesday while at home in Texas, and was transferred to military confinement in Kuwait three days later, it said.
Saturday’s blast in Muqdadiyah ripped through a crowded market area where Iraqi police recruits were having coffee, police said.
One witness, 30-year-old Abu Omar, said he rushed to the area where his brother has a shop, and saw police loading mutilated bodies into the back of a pickup truck. Fire engines sprayed water onto burning storefronts, and ambulances evacuated the wounded, he said.
At least seven shops were destroyed by the explosion, and the market street soaked with blood, Omar said.
[Forbes]
Israeli aircraft strike Gaza for third time Saturday
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip: Israeli aircraft fired missiles on central Gaza late Saturday, injuring four people, Palestinian officials said.
Witnesses said the explosion took place at a weapons factory targeted earlier in the day by Israel.
It was the third airstrike of the day, following two earlier attacks that killed three militants each.
The army had no immediate comment. Palestinian medical officials said four people were injured in the attack. Their identities were not immediately known.
[International Herald Tribune]
Britain on Edge After Car Slams Into Airport
LONDON, June 30 — One day after the British police discovered what they called a double car-bombing plot in London, two men slammed a Jeep S.U.V. that caught fire into the departure doors at Glasgow Airport as thousands of people awaited flights on the first day of school summer vacations.
The episodes in London and Scotland deepened foreboding among security experts that Britain was confronting a new threat: the use of relatively unsophisticated, homemade explosive devices to claim lives and spread mayhem.
Britain raised its assessment of the threat from terrorism to “critical,” the highest level, meaning that an attack is imminent, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said. It had been at “severe” since a major alert over an alleged conspiracy last August to bomb transatlantic airliners using liquid explosives.
A British security official, speaking in return for customary anonymity, said the heightened level reflected an assessment that the London and Glasgow attacks were “linked in some ways and, therefore, there are clearly individuals who have the capability and intent to carry out further attacks.”
The episode in Scotland produced dramatic images, shown on television from shaky video shot on passengers’ cellphones, of an orange fireball at the airport entrance doors.
Accounts by eyewitnesses were confused, but some spoke of the two occupants of the car — both described by witnesses as men of South Asian descent — smashing bottles of gasoline and struggling with police and others who tried to restrain them.
One of the men in the car was said to have been ablaze, possibly after setting himself on fire. The police said two men were arrested.
The events at Glasgow Airport came as London braced for a weekend of high-profile public events including a concert to honor the memory of Diana, Princess of Wales, a Gay Pride March and the Wimbledon tennis tournament.
The police in the capital stepped up foot patrols as counterterrorism officers hunted suspects linked to the rigged cars found in London.
But the episode in Scotland seemed to have taken the authorities by surprise. Gordon Brown, the newly installed prime minister who is himself a Scot, summoned an emergency meeting of the high-level security committee called Cobra to try to come to grips with the newest attack.
American officials stepped up surveillance at airports in the United States but did not raise the overall threat level, which remained at yellow, or “elevated,” for the country and orange, or “high,” for domestic and international flights.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security said Saturday that they were monitoring events in the United Kingdom but had “no intelligence that there is a credible threat in the U.S. based on these events.”
In London, counterterrorism experts suggested that the bombers who abandoned the two explosives-laden Mercedes sedans in central London may have been what a senior Western official called “less directed from Al Qaeda and more a matter of a homegrown group,” although the attack seemed to be modeled on terrorist attacks in Iraq.
Several experts and officials said the technology behind the foiled bombings seemed to be amateurish. While the attackers apparently tried to detonate the bombs using cellphones, “they didn’t go off because there were not top-grade people putting them together,” the Western official said, speaking in return for anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters.
If the plot turns out to be the work of a small, hitherto undetected cell, that could raise alarms that Britain’s terrorism threat is broader than the 2,000 suspected radicals known to the authorities, according to British and Western officials. “If we had never heard of them before, it means the problem is even bigger,” a British official said, speaking according to the same ground rules. The Western official said British investigators were pursuing several “good leads.”
The events in Scotland seemed marked by the same sense of an improvised attack.
BAA, the company operating the airport, said a vehicle “drove into a front door at the check in area” and “caught fire on impact.”
One witness, Scott Leeson, said the Jeep sped up to the building at around 30 miles per hour in an area where people usually drive much more slowly.
“Then the driver swerved the car around so he could ram straight into the door,” the Press Association news agency quoted Mr. Leeson as saying. “He must have been trying to smash straight through. Luckily he did not get the car too far in. He just managed to get the nose of the Jeep inside,” he said.
Another witness, Lynsey McBean, 26, said, “We saw a green Cherokee drive straight into the front door of the airport but it got jammed. They were obviously trying to get it further inside the airport as the wheels were spinning and smoke was coming from them. One of the men, I think it was the driver, brought out a plastic petrol canister and poured it under the car. He then set light to it,” she said, according to the Press Association.
“At that point a policeman came over, the passenger got out of the car and punched him. At that point I began to run away. But when I looked back several people had run over to try and stop the men, who were Asian. I could see that one of the men was on fire,” she said.
In London, no one took responsibility publicly for the foiled attack on Friday, which was thwarted almost by accident when an ambulance crew and traffic wardens on Friday separately discovered the sedans packed with gasoline, gas canisters and nails.
But an online forum monitored by the SITE Institute, which tracks jihadist Web sites, asked whether London had been “craving explosions from Al Qaeda” after authorities in June bestowed a knighthood on the author Salman Rushdie, reviled by some radical Muslims for his book “The Satanic Verses.”
No “established link” exists between the knighthood and the foiled bombings, a British security official said, speaking in return for anonymity, but the posting on the jihadist site was likely to be closely scrutinized by investigators.
The British news media have asserted that if the bombs had gone off they would likely have caused havoc and huge loss of life, but some experts have questioned the level of sophistication involved in the devices, which officials call vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices.
The Times of London reported Saturday that the police had warned nightclub operators a few days ago of the threat of such attacks.
The two cars were parked around a corner from each other. The first to be discovered and disarmed was found outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub on the Haymarket near Piccadilly Circus. The second was towed away for a parking infraction about 90 minutes later from nearby Cockspur Street leading to Trafalgar Square, the police said.
In the United States, Strategic Forecasting, a private research group, said the “amateur construction” of the explosive device “and the way it was placed suggest the plotter or plotters have no connection to a major militant organization.”
Sajjan M. Gohel, a security expert, said the police were pursuing a theory that the two bombs had been designed to explode one after the other — the first to bring people into the street and the second to cause great loss of life. The fact that Thursday night at Tiger Tiger was ladies’ night, he said, recalled a conspiracy in 2004 in which British-born bombers said they wanted to attack women at a nightclub, whom they viewed as promiscuous, in conversations monitored by British intelligence.
In their hunt for the would-be bombers, the British police say they are poring over thousands of images from the closed-circuit television cameras that film the streets of central London.
[NY Times]
Death Squads Reportedly Targeting Iraqi Adult Web Surfers
BAGHDAD — Dozens of Iraqi citizens have been murdered after using the Internet to access adult websites, according to Middle Eastern media reports.
“We have received information from many sources that militants are operating spies inside Internet cafes just to find out who is browsing sites they have deemed offensive to Islam,” Iraqi Aid Association spokesperson Fatah Ahmed said. The IAA is a Baghdad-based nongovernmental aid agency.
According to Ahmed, most of the killings and abductions have happened directly after the victim leaves an Internet café.
“It is very serious because in an Islamic country in which violence is spreading on a daily basis, people search for some entertainment and it is found today only on the internet,” Ahmed said. “There are no places to go, so young people are making friends via chatrooms, which are now also being condemned by Islamic extremists.”
One victim of kidnapping and assault, university student Ibraheem Abdel-Qahar, told Al-Jazeera that he was kidnapped after leaving a café, then blindfolded, transported to what he believes was a house on the outskirts of Baghdad, and then beaten and tortured.
“They told me to take off all my clothes and handcuffed me. They started to beat me and use cigarettes to burn my legs,” Abdel-Qahar said, adding that he was beaten with an iron bar, and forced to drink chicken blood and his own urine.
Abdel-Qahar said that he was desperate, shouting questions at his abusers as to why they were assaulting him.
“After three hours of continuous torture they told me that it was because I was watching non-Muslim sites on the internet,” Abdel-Qahar said.
Following six days of torture, Abdel-Qahar said he was dropped off near his home and told that if he was found surfing adult sites again he would be killed. The perpetrators also advised him to seek salvation in the local mosque.
Armed marauders have not spared the proprietors who operate Internet cafés, either; in February, Internet café owners Fadhel Ibraheem and Youssef Ala’a were tortured and beheaded, reportedly for allowing access to adult sites in their café.
“It wasn’t my brother’s fault,” said Yehia Ala’a, the brother of Youssef. “He was just offering the computers and Internet access for people to use. The people who search for the Internet entertainment just want to have some distraction in the middle of this hell and hypocritical society.”
The violence toward Internet café patrons and proprietors has not gone unnoticed in other segments of Iraqi society. Baghdad University Professor Hussam Abdallah said that the University offers access to the Internet, but does so “on the condition that the browsing is controlled, and pornographic sites are blocked.”
“We have also prohibited online chatting,” Abdallah said. “We do not want to give extremists an excuse to attack us.”
[XBIZ]
Car Crashes into Glascow Airport, Explodes
LONDON, June 30 (AP) – (Kyodo)— A car on fire was driven at the main terminal building at Glasgow airport and exploded Saturday, BBC reported, quoting police. The report said the airport was evacuated and all flights suspended.
DEVELOPING…
[AP]
U.S. Border Fence Protrudes Into Mexico
COLUMBUS, N.M. (AP) – The 1.5-mile barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border was designed to keep cars from illegally crossing into the United States. There’s just one problem: It was accidentally built on Mexican soil. Now embarrassed border officials say the mistake could cost the federal government more than $3 million to fix.
The barrier was part of more than 15 miles of border fence built in 2000, stretching from the town of Columbus to an onion farm and cattle ranch.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman said the vertical metal tubes were sunk into the ground and filled with cement along what officials firmly believed was the border. But a routine aerial survey in March revealed that the barrier protrudes into Mexico by 1 to 6 feet.
James Johnson, whose onion farm is in the disputed area, said he thinks his forefathers may have started the confusion in the 19th century by placing a barbed-wire fence south of the border. No one discovered their error, and crews erecting the barrier may have used that fence as a guideline.
“It was a mistake made in the 1800s,” Johnson said. “It is very difficult to make a straight line between two points in rugged and mountainous areas that are about two miles apart.”
The Mexican government was notified and did what any landowner would do: They sent a note politely insisting that Mexico get its land back.
“Our country will continue insisting for the removal (of the fence) to be done as quickly as possible,” the Foreign Relations Department said in a diplomatic missive to Washington.
When the barrier was built in 2000, the project was believed to cost about $500,000 a mile. Estimates to uproot and replace it range from $2.5 million to $3.5 million.
Michael Friel, the spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, said the barrier was “built on what was known to be the international boundary at the time.” He acknowledged the method used was “less precise than it is today.”
The International Boundary and Water Commission, a joint Mexican-American group that administers the 2,000-mile border, said the border has never changed and is marked every few miles by tall concrete or metal markers.
Sally Spener, a commission spokeswoman in El Paso, said the agency is generally consulted for construction projects to ensure that treaties are followed. The commission is working with the Department of Homeland Security “to develop a standardized protocol” for building fences and barriers.
“We just want to make sure those things are clear now,” Spener said.
New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman asked Customs and Border Protection officials to build a new fence on U.S. soil before the old one is torn down.
Bingaman said he was concerned about security issues in Las Chepas, the small Mexican village where most area residents live. New Mexico once sought permission to raze the community because it was known as a popular staging area for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers.
Back at his farm, Johnson said he doesn’t understand why the placement of the barriers has become an issue now since his family’s fence went unquestioned for more than a century.
“The markers are in the right place, and the fence is crooked,” Johnson said. “But for 120-plus years it was agreed upon that that fence was the border.”
[AP]
Jenna Bush Steals Show on Africa Trip
MAPUTO, Mozambique (June 29) — Jenna Bush is stepping out. We didn’t even know she was coming.
I first saw her at our stop at the Fann Hospital for HIV/AIDS patients in Dakar, Senegal. She was with her mother, the first lady, getting a tour of the garden that provides the hospital’s patients with vegetables.
I had never really seen her close up. The only time I saw her in public was leaving the White House to board Marine One with her parents.
I had heard the party-girl reports, and saw the infamous picture of her playfully sticking her tongue out at the White House press corps from inside the limo, but I, like most of the press corps, stayed clear of her, as her parents had requested.
Now Jenna has grabbed the international spotlight accompanying her mother on their second trip to Africa. In the fall, Jenna will launch a book tour to promote “Ana’s Story: A Journey of Hope,” about a 17-year-old Panamanian girl living with HIV-AIDS. Jenna met her while working for UNICEF in Latin America.
In the hospital garden, Jenna first appeared shy. I strained to hear her, and realized I had never heard her speak. Her voice was low and quiet.
Watching her, I tried to see the president in her. She and her mother nodded in agreement, often in unison, as various volunteers pointed out different vegetables and demonstrations. She listened intently to those who addressed her and turned her back to the cameras.
But when Jenna was with children she completely lit up. It happened in Maputo, Mozambique, at our visit to a pediatric day hospital for children with HIV/AIDS.
A small group of children sat around a table waiting for the first lady and Jenna to join them. When Jenna entered, she asked “Habla Español?” to the boy beside her. “Portuguese? My name is Jenna.” She then did a three-part handshake with him, reminiscent of what I learned as a child growing up in African-American culture. I am told it was an African greeting. She immediately made a friend.
Jenna’s Spanish and the boy’s Portuguese were good enough for them to understand each other. But that happened without them speaking at all.
They held hands for a long time. All eyes were on them.”That’s my little girl, Jenna,” Bush told the children. Jenna is a teacher in Washington for third and fourth grades.
“What grade are you in?” Jenna asked. The two seemed to be lost in one another as they did another African handshake, leaned into each other and smiled.
The boy stood up and started talking in Portuguese about why he liked the hospital. The room fell silent. When he finished, Jenna rewarded his bravery with a warm pat on the back.
He was the first of many children who Jenna befriended in her new role as public ambassador, a role she seemed to fit into with ease and sincerity.
[AOL News]
Was London Bomb Plot Heralded On Web?
Hours before London explosives technicians dismantled a large car bomb in the heart of the British capital’s tourist-rich theater district, a message appeared on one of the most widely used jihadist Internet forums, saying: “Today I say: Rejoice, by Allah, London shall be bombed.”
CBS News found the posting, which went on for nearly 300 words, on the “al Hesbah” chat room. It was left by a person who goes by the name abu Osama al-Hazeen, who appears regularly on the forum. The comment was posted on the forum, according to time stamp, at 08:09 a.m. British time on June 28 — about 17 hours before the bomb was found early on June 29.
Al Hesbah is frequently used by international Sunni militant groups, including al Qaeda and the Taliban, to post propaganda videos and messages in their fight against the West.
There was no way for CBS News to independently confirm any connection between the posting made Thursday night and the car bomb found Friday.
Al-Hazeen’s message begins: “In the name of God, the most compassionate, the most merciful. Is Britain Longing for al Qaeda’s bombings?”
Al-Hazeen decries the recent knighthood of controversial author Salman Rushdie as a blow felt by all British Muslims. “This ‘honoring’ came at a crucial time, a time when the whole nation is reeling from the crusaders attacks on all Muslim lands,” he said, in an apparent reference to the British role in Iraq.
“We say to Britain: The Emir of al Qaeda, Sheikh Osama, has once threatened you, and he carried out his threats. Today I say: Rejoice, by Allah, London shall be bombed,” the message reads.
Speaking at a news conference Friday after the bomb scare in central London, the Metropolitan Police force’s Counter-Terrorism Commander Peter Clarke said that officials had “no indication that we were going to be attacked this way”.
Prior to the Thursday night posting by al-Hazeen, there had been no specific allusions to threats against London or Britain seen on al Hesbah, or any other major jihadist forums in recent weeks.
Several responses to the posting by other forum members expressed hope that an attack against London would be realized in the near future.
In response, al-Hazeen urges patience, saying, “Victory is very close, but you are just rushing it.”
Reached by CBSNews.com Friday, the Metropolitan Police’s media office could not confirm whether investigators were aware of the Internet posting on al Hesbah.
Intelligence sources who spoke to CBS News Friday morning seemed to express surprise at the discovery of the device, suggesting there had been “no warning, no intel, no smell” as a prelude to the plot — a vacuum of information which reportedly had Britain’s domestic intelligence agency “very, very worried”.
The attempted bombing in London’s Haymarket area came one week before the second anniversary of the July 7 bombings that killed 52 people on London’s transportation network.
Also Friday, a London jury was expected to hand down a verdict in the case against five young men who were charged with trying to blow up city buses and trains in 2005.
The men, all from London, were arrested after police found homemade devices on trains and buses that had failed to detonate properly — sending puffs of smoke from backpacks that frightened commuters, but injured no one.
Early reports from law enforcement officials indicate that the car bomb found Friday morning may also have failed to detonate properly — causing smoke to appear in the passenger area. It was the smoke that prompted people to call explosives officers to the scene.
One explosives expert told the British Broadcasting Corporation that the device — comprised of gas canisters and nails — appeared to be a fairly crude construction, and not the work of anyone with an extensive knowledge of weaponry.
Britain has wrestled since the July 7, 2005, over how to deal with the threat of “homegrown” terrorism. Young men from the country’s large Muslim population are easy prey for radical clerics and propaganda campaigns propagated on Internet forums such as al Hesbah.
In addition to messages calling for jihad in Britain, detailed video demonstrations of how to construct bombs using gas canisters are readily available on the forums.
[CBS]
Pelosi, Reid to announce new push to end Iraq war
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) are expected tomorrow to announce a new coordinated effort to force votes in July to end the Iraq war, according to Democratic insiders.
Reid has already publicly declared that Senate Democrats will offer four Iraq-related amendments to the upcoming 2008 Defense authorization bill, including a proposal by Reid and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) to set a firm timetable to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by next spring.
Pelosi is planning to announce that the House will also vote on a bill setting a new withdrawal timetable of April 1, 2008, although the details of the proposal were still up in the air at press time, according to Democratic sources. The House will consider this proposal as a freestanding bill, said the sources.
Pelosi is also planning to force a vote on a proposal by Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, to repeal the 2002 use-of-force resolution for Iraq. This “deauthorization” proposal may be offered as an amendment to the 2008 Defense spending bill, which the House is scheduled to take up following the week-long July 4th recess.
In addition, House Democrats will push proposals to prohibit the creation of permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq, as well as a “readiness” initiative similar to that authored by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.). The Webb proposal would limit deployments of U.S. soldiers and marines in Iraq by requiring the Pentagon to keep military units from being sent back to Iraq until they have been stateside as long as they were in the combat zone.
Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the powerful Defense subcommittee on the House Appropriations Committee and a leader of the anti-war movement, is planning to offer his own new measures as part of the Defense spending bill.
Pelosi has been quietly meeting with various factions within the Democratic Caucus this week on the Iraq initiative, including Blue Dog conservatives skittish about being seen as anti-military, and the Out of Iraq Caucus, whose members have pushed hard for an end to the U.S. military involvement in Iraq.
Both Pelosi and Reid have come to the conclusion that President Bush’s plan for a “surge” in the number of U.S. troops inside Iraq, has failed and that Democrats, despite losing their showdown with Bush and the Republicans over the recent Iraq supplemental funding bill, must continue to force votes to end the war. Gen. David Petraeus is supposed to report back to Congress in September on the state of the “surge,” but Democrats have decided not to wait for his report.
“The surge is a failure, it isn’t working,” said a Democratic aide familiar with the new initiative. “We just can’t leave American soldiers out there dying and not do anything.”
Reps. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the leaders of the Out of Iraq Caucus attended a meeting with Pelosi, other Democratic leaders and the Blue Dog lawmakers today.
After the meeting, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Democratic leaders “are working to build a consensus” within the Caucus on the Iraq proposals, but promised votes all next month on the issue. Hoyer said no date had been scheduled at this time for any of these votes, although the Defense spending bill is set to reach the House floor in mid-July.
Bush Seeks Revived Friendship With Putin
MOSCOW (AP) – After the Sept. 11 attacks, Vladimir Putin and George Bush ushered in a short-lived era of cooperation between Russia and the United States, which had been firm adversaries for most of the 20th century.
At their weekend summit in Maine, the two presidents will try to salvage some of that spirit after years of growing animosity and what one analyst has called the “Cold Spring” of 2007.
Washington today is disappointed by Russia’s increasingly confrontational tone and steady retreat from political pluralism. The Kremlin contends the U.S. seeks to weaken Russia and it is demanding a larger role in global affairs.
The Putin-Bush meeting on Sunday and Monday “represents the last real opportunity for the two presidents to try to reverse this downward slide that has characterized U.S.-Russia relations for the past several years,” Steven Pifer, a deputy assistant secretary of state during Bush’s first term, told reporters in Washington on Wednesday.
Sarah Mendelson, a scholar with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the venue—the summer home in Kennebunkport of Bush’s parents—suggests Bush’s chief aim will be to renew the friendship he and Putin forged six years ago.
After Bush met Putin for the first time at their 2001 summit in Slovenia, which came three months before the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush declared: “I was able to get a sense of his soul.”
Mendelson told The Associated Press that Bush once again hopes “to make this personal, to try to have this set in the context of his family. In some ways this feels like a last ditch try to reboot this relationship.”
For Putin, the meeting is another chance to demonstrate Russia’s revived influence following his nation’s political and economic implosion in the 1990s. “This is showing that Russia’s back on top, Russia is back in the game, nothing can be decided without Russia being at the table,” Mendelson said.
There are still important areas of cooperation between the two nations, especially in efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in North Korea and Iran. Washington and Moscow also recently extended a joint program to boost security at nuclear facilities.
But the Kremlin has threatened to target its missiles at sites in eastern Europe if the U.S. builds an anti-missile system there. It tolerated a sometimes violent siege of Estonia’s embassy in Moscow by protesters after the Baltic nation moved a Red Army monument from the center of its capital. And Russia has hinted it would veto independence for Kosovo, which the U.S. favors.
Putin has also sharply criticized the United States, denouncing what he called Washington’s “hyper use of force” during a speech in February. In May, he seemed to compare the United States to Nazi Germany and this month said U.S. conduct during the Vietnam War was worse than the state-sponsored terror of Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
“Putin’s comments are adding a lot of anxiety and anger in the relationship,” Mendelson said.
In part, the Kremlin’s criticism of the U.S. appears intended for internal consumption, analysts say, appealing to growing nationalist sentiments as the country prepares for parliamentary elections in December and a presidential vote in March.
Russia’s resurgent economy also seems to have reawakened the Kremlin’s geopolitical ambitions after more than a decade of feeling powerless to influence international affairs.
The United States, meanwhile, is concerned about the Kremlin’s consolidation of power under Putin.
Unlike in the Soviet era, political dissidents aren’t routinely jailed and there is no formal censorship in Russia. But most opposition protests have been disrupted by mass detentions and police violence, dissenting voices are rarely heard in the major media and occasionally critics of the Kremlin—like Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB officer poisoned in London—die mysteriously.
Lilia Shevtsova, an analyst at the Moscow Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in a Hudson Institute report released Tuesday that Russia “falls into the political gray zone between democracy and dictatorship.”
She said the Kremlin uses a “Potemkin village style imitation of democratic and liberal institutions” to cloak its quasi-autocratic rule. The “Cold Spring” of 2007, she added, resulted from its efforts to perpetuate that rule.
Some U.S. critics of Putin, including Harvard historian Richard Pipes, have urged the White House to more bluntly challenge Russia’s rejection of the Western liberal democratic model.
These critics have called on Washington to renounce any implicit deals granting Russia the right to intervene in the affairs of former Soviet states and to consider kicking Russia out of the NATO-Russia Council and the Group of Eight.
Bush has resisted, perhaps because the United States has little to gain and much to lose by a dramatic rupture with Russia.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was dismissed by some as “Upper Volta with nukes”—a reference to the African country that is now Burkina Faso—because of its poverty. Today Russia has a trillion- dollar economy and the world’s largest oil and gas industry.
Moreover, Russia remains a regional power with significant influence over neighboring former Soviet states. It is a major producer of advanced military technology and still has a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons.
“Russia is one of the most important bilateral relationships that the United States has in the world,” Andrew Kuchins of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said Wednesday.
[AP]
Barbra Streisand honoured in France
Barbra Streisand performed her first concert in France this week and was rewarded with a medal of the Legion of Honour.
President Nicolas Sarkozy awarded the singer at a ceremony in Paris, the first time the new President had bestowed the honour on anyone since he took over last month from Jacques Chirac.
“You are the America that we love,” said Mr Sarkozy, seen as more US-friendly than his predecessor. “Women like you … do a lot to bring our two peoples together.”
“My kids told me, ‘Now you’re really President’,” when they heard Streisand was going to the presidential palace, Mr Sarkozy said.
Onlookers included French crooner Charles Aznavour and actor Alain Delon.
Mr Sarkozy’s wife, Cecilia, went to Streisand’s sole concert in France, at Paris’ Bercy stadium on Tuesday.
Ms Streisand told conservative Sarkozy he reminded her of former US presidents John F Kennedy and Bill Clinton, “who appreciated art, and recognised the importance of the arts in the world”.
Created by Napoleon Bonaparte in the early 19th century, the Legion of Honour is France’s elite national merit society.
Although foreigners cannot be officially inducted into the Legion, they are routinely made honorary recipients of the medal.
Recent inclusions were US comedian Jerry Lewis, Italian fashion designer Valentino and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist Norman Mailer.
Hamas TV Kills Off Mickey Mouse Double
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) – A Mickey Mouse lookalike who preached Islamic domination on a Hamas- affiliated children’s television program was beaten to death in the show’s final episode Friday. In the final skit, “Farfour” was killed by an actor posing as an Israeli official trying to buy Farfour’s land. At one point, the mouse called the Israeli a “terrorist.”
“Farfour was martyred while defending his land,” said Sara, the teen presenter. He was killed “by the killers of children,” she added.
The weekly show, featuring a giant black-and-white rodent with a high- pitched voice, had attracted worldwide attention because the character urged Palestinian children to fight Israel. It was broadcast on Hamas- affiliated Al Aqsa TV.
Station officials said Friday that Farfour was taken off the air to make room for new programs. Station manager Mohammed Bilal said he did not know what would be shown instead.
Israeli officials have denounced the program, “Tomorrow’s Pioneers,” as incendiary and outrageous. The program was also opposed by the state-run Palestinian Broadcasting Corp., which is controlled by Fatah, Hamas’ rival.
[AP]
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