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Cops Find 9 Adopted Kids Handcuffed, Starved
Nine adults and teenagers were held captive, abused and starved by their adoptive Florida mother for as long as 15 years, authorities tell ABC News.
Judith Leekin, 62, allegedly duped four different New York City adoption agencies into allowing her to adopt 11 children, all of whom authorities believe she later abused. Leekin is also thought to have kept all of the state-issued funds intended for the children, spending it on her own personal expenses.
While 10 of the 11 adopted Leekin children have been found, one still remains unaccounted for. The 10th child, who was not found in the home at the time of the police investigation, is a 19-year-old male who authorities tell ABC News was found within the last day in the state of Florida.
The Port St. Lucie Police Department was led to Leekin’s home after locating an abandoned 18-year-old woman who told officers that her mother, now known to be Leekin, kept all of her children tied up in various parts of her Florida home.
Upon arriving at the home for initial investigations, authorities told ABC News that they found it hard to believe the young woman’s story.
“The home was a beautiful, well-maintained home in a very nice neighborhood,” said Robert Vega, a spokesman for the Port St. Lucie Police Department. “The landscaping is probably the nicest in the entire neighborhood.”
After further investigation and being granted entrance by Leekin, however, authorities were shocked to find eight people being held hostage in one of the home’s bedrooms.
“[The victims] initially denied being handcuffed. They seemed brainwashed or in fear of their lives,” said Vega. “These people have lived there for some time and we think they all came at different times, between 10 and 15 years ago. None of them appeared to have an education past the fourth-grade level.”
The people, who range in age from 15 to 27, told authorities they were kept handcuffed to one another, forced to sleep on tile floors on only a single bed sheet and were prohibited from going to the bathroom. As a result, they were forced to soil themselves.
When asked why Leekin had voluntarily allowed officers to search her home when she knew what they would find, Vega said, “I have no idea.”
The New York City Administration for Children’s Services is calling the alleged adoption scam “extraordinary.”
Potential adoptive parents must meet strict requirements in order to adopt a child and Leekin would have needed as many as three witnesses per adoption to testify to adoption agencies about her character and parenting abilities.
An ACS spokesperson told ABC News that these witnesses are being probed by authorities.
“It’s abhorrent to everyone at Children’s Services and the larger child welfare community who work so hard to identify strong, loving adoptive families to think that someone would adopt children and then mistreat them,” said ACS Commissioner John B. Mattingly in a written statement.
Authorities say that so far Leekin has received somewhere between $1.5 million and $2 million in state-issued funds. They told ABC News that this number is likely to grow, as all the paperwork has yet to be reviewed.
Leekin is being held on $4.5 million bail at the Port St. Lucie County jail. She also faces several counts of child abuse including four counts of abuse of an elderly or disabled person because because five of the nine found were handicapped in addition to charges of false identification and witness tampering.
One of Leekin’s neighbors said that up until a few weeks ago, he would see the children playing outside. One boy, who the neighhor suspects may be autistic, would spend the day picking weeds on the front lawn.
“It’s a very quiet neighborhood and all the children would wave nicely and get out of the way of the cars,” said Gary Howard, one of Leekin’s neighbors. “They were good children.”
All of the adoptees found by police in the home are currently under the care of the Department of Children and Families in Florida.
“At this point in time, the department is conducting assessments to make sure [the victims] are being taken are of and we are taking every measure to make sure they are healthy mentally and physically and are on their way to full recovery,” said Erin Geraghty, spokesperson for the DCF. “This is a tragic situation and we’re doing all we can so that the children and adults are happy and healthy and know they’re taken care of.”
[ABC]
Cheney admits was wrong about “last throes” in Iraq
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney acknowledged on Tuesday he was wrong in 2005 when he insisted the insurgency in Iraq was in its “last throes.”
It was Cheney’s most direct public admission of how badly the administration had underestimated the strength of America’s enemies in the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq.
But Cheney, an architect of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, otherwise gave no ground in an interview on CNN’s “Larry King Live” as he defended President George W. Bush’s Iraq policy.
He said the Bush administration would still send troops into Iraq if it could do it all over again, even knowing what it knows now, including that more than 3,000 U.S. military personnel would be killed.
“I firmly believe,” Cheney said, “that the decisions we’ve made with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan have been absolutely the sound ones in terms of the overall strategy.”
But Cheney made clear he no longer held to a May 2005 assessment, widely mocked by political satirists and Democratic politicians, in which he said, “I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.”
Since then, unrelenting attacks have brought Iraq to the brink of civil war.
Cheney’s words were among many oft-cited quotes marking the U.S. pursuit of the war, which has damaged U.S. credibility around the world. They include Bush’s taunting insurgents after the invasion by declaring “Bring ‘em on!” and the banner stating “Mission Accomplished” behind Bush as he spoke aboard an aircraft carrier on May 1, 2003.
CHENEY SAYS HE WAS WRONG
Cheney, known for his secretive ways and rarely one to admit mistakes publicly, said:
“My estimate at the time — and it was wrong, it turned out to be incorrect — was the fact that we were in the midst of holding three elections in Iraq, elected an interim government, then ratifying a constitution, then electing a permanent government, that they had had significant success, we’d rounded up Saddam Hussein.
“I thought there were a series of these milestones that would in fact undermine the insurgency and make it less than it was at that point. That clearly didn’t happen. I think the insurgency turned out to be more robust.”
Cheney said it had also been made before al Qaeda in Iraq had stepped up attacks, including the 2006 bombing of a Shi’ite mosque that sparked a wave of sectarian killings.
The Bush administration is facing growing pressure from a Democratic-led Congress and a war-weary American public for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal, something Bush firmly rejects.
In a further blow to Bush’s strategy, Iraq’s parliament went into summer recess for a month on Monday after political leaders failed to agree on a series of laws that Washington sees as crucial to stabilizing the country.
“It’s better than taking two months off, which was their original plan,” Cheney said. “I made it clear, for example, when I was there in May that we didn’t appreciate the notion that they were going to take a big part of the summer off and they did cut that in half.”
He insisted that since the U.S. Congress takes the month of August off, “I don’t think we can say that they (Iraqi lawmakers) shouldn’t go home at all.”
[Reuters]
Oil Settles Above $78, Setting Record
NEW YORK (AP) — Oil futures settled at a record high above $78 Tuesday on expectations that crude inventories fell last week and reports of new violence in Nigeria, a large oil producer and key supplier to the U.S.Investors believe Wednesday’s inventory report by the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration will show that refiners drew down oil inventories as they continued to increase gasoline production last week, analysts said.
News that a Nigerian construction worker was kidnapped Tuesday added to the bullish tone of a market that seemed determined to test last year’s record highs, analysts said.
“They want to get back to $78.40,” the intraday price record set July 14, 2006, said Jack Hunter, an energy trader at FC Stone Group in Kansas City.
Light, sweet crude for September delivery gained $1.38 to settle at $78.21 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That puts futures within striking distance of the intraday record, and beat the settlement price record of $77.03 set the same day.
Oil’s advance helped pull other energy futures higher. But news that Total PetroChemicals USA Inc. is reducing output at a Texas refinery to perform maintenance gave investors a rare additional reason to buy gasoline futures.
The August gasoline contract, which expired after the close of trading, rose 5.52 cents to settle at $2.1408 on the Nymex. Expiring futures contracts are often subject to volatile swings as investors square positions. The September contract, which now assumes front-month status, rose 4.67 cents to settle at $2.1059 a gallon.
At the pump, meanwhile, the average national price of a gallon of gas fell 1.4 cents overnight to $2.876, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Retail prices, which typically lag the futures market, peaked at $3.227 a gallon in late May. Futures at that point were rallying on concerns that refiners were not making enough gas to meet summer driving demand.
“The gasoline market now appears amply supplied with the end of the heavy driving season only about a month away,” wrote Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch & Associates in Galena, Ill., in a research note.
That’s part of the reason gasoline futures have fallen nearly 29 cents over the last two weeks.
In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures rose 3.49 cents to settle at $2.10 a gallon and natural gas futures fell 30.8 cents to settle at $6.191 per 1,000 cubic feet.
September Brent crude gained $1.31 to settle at $77.05 a barrel on the ICE futures exchange in London.
Analysts surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires, on average, expect Wednesday’s inventory report to show crude oil inventories fell by 690,000 barrels in the week ended July 27 as refinery utilization rates rose by 0.7 percentage points to 92.4 percent of operating capacity.
Gasoline stocks are expected to have increased by 1.1 million barrels, and distillate stocks, which include heating oil and diesel fuel, to have risen 1.4 million barrels.
Declines in crude inventories have driven oil prices higher in recent weeks, much to analysts’ chagrin.
Vienna’s PVM Oil Associates noted that “even with such a decline, U.S. crude stocks would remain some 43 million barrels above the five-year average and around 17 million barrels higher than seen in the same week last year.”
Those fundamentals don’t seem to matter to many speculators. Analysts say large investment funds — many of which trade on technical factors — have pulled money out of gasoline futures and plowed it into oil futures in recent weeks, another factor driving high oil prices and undermining gasoline futures.
Investors are also closely watching OPEC, whose officials have been giving mixed signals about whether the cartel will decide during a September meeting to boost production.
“There is no official price band, but I think I can safely say we would not feel comfortable if the oil price sank to $50 a barrel,” said Abdalla Salem el-Badri, secretary general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, in an interview with Austrian financial daily Wirtschaftsblatt published Monday. “A price above $80 also wouldn’t make us particularly pleased.”
[AP]
Centrist Democrats take on left over Iraq
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — At a moment when many Democratic activists are urging their leaders to be bolder and more confrontational with Republicans, the party’s most influential centrists met Monday to call for more pragmatism and bridge-building.
Presidential candidates were nowhere to be seen at the annual gathering of the Democratic Leadership Council, a moderate group that was closely linked to Bill Clinton but has long been viewed suspiciously by liberal activists.
The DLC’s popularity among many Democrats — especially the Netroots — has plunged in recent years in large measure because most of the group’s leaders backed President Bush on the Iraq war in 2002 and 2003 and continue to warn about a too-rapid withdrawal.
Yet even as the DLC is radioactive in presidential politics, the Nashville conclave highlighted how many of the party’s most impressive gains in recent elections — including winning numerous governorships in states that typically vote Republican in presidential contests — have come from politicians in the classic DLC mold. They played down partisanship, played up traditional values and offered agendas that emphasized problem-solving over ideology.
Many of these politicians warned Monday that Democrats risk blowing their chance to regain the presidency in 2008, and failing to win a long-term majority, if they present a face to the public that is too angry in tone. They also warned that, despite the broad unpopularity of the Iraq war, there is a risk that candidates will position the party as insufficiently committed to protecting national security if they push for too precipitous an end to the war.
“We have an abundance of talent [among Democratic candidates],” said Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer. “Issue by issue, we are in step with the American people. But never underestimate our ability to screw it up.”
Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, in a keynote speech, invoked the metaphor of rural “barn-raisings” — in which neighbors join together to build a barn — to describe his brand of bipartisan pragmatism.
He said that has allowed him to be successful as a Democrat in a state that Republicans have won in the past two presidential elections, as well as to make progress on progressive-minded health care and education reforms.
“Americans have always loved contact sports, and elections are certainly that,” Bredesen said, adding that voters “also expect us to tone that down when elections are over, get together and build some barns.”
He said he knows some Democrats believe that is “naive” and that they “have to crush the enemy.” But he argued that the problem with some combat-minded partisans is that “if your only tool is a hammer, you see every problem as a nail.”
The rhetoric at the conference — even as the DLC’s leaders responded defensively to the absence of presidential candidates — highlights a broader dilemma the party will have to navigate in 2008. Believing that too much accommodation by Democrats is responsible for the Iraq war and other Bush policies, activists and many candidates are in the mood to draw sharp lines.
At the same time, many candidates — including Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama — have also argued that one way to end the Bush era is by turning away from the highly partisan, highly confrontational politics that they believe are Bush’s signature.
Many other elected officials joined Schweitzer and Bredesen in urging pragmatism over ideological conflict, including Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.
Some politicians were blunt in acknowledging that they do not fully trust their own party’s political instincts — particularly when it comes to national security.
“Democrats are capable of grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory. We’ve done that a few times,” said Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn.).
“If we become the anti-war party, that’s not beneficial to Democrats in 2008,” Davis said. “Bill Clinton ordered our troops and worked with NATO in Bosnia,” he continued. “That’s the kind of pro-war Democrat that we ought to be: the war that we fight wisely, the ones that we engage in wisely.”
In interviews, Davis and Schweitzer conveyed a mutual belief that some congressional Democrats’ push for an absolute and immediate pullout of troops in Iraq is neither practical nor prudent.
Moderates argued that Democrats should unite to draw down troops, rather than offer what they saw as empty pledges to implement a full pullout.
“Understand: We are not leaving Iraq,” Schweitzer said, adding that there will be a need for tens of thousands of troops in Iraq to ensure stability for some years. “We’re not leaving as long as we are dependent on that oil,” he repeated.
In a panel discussion, Maryland’s O’Malley said that “the biggest strategic mistake we made four years ago was downplaying global security, domestic security.”
“I think our party has been running away from security and national security for a couple of decades,” O’Malley added. “We need to become again the party of security.”
But he also said U.S. troops have achieved what has been reasonably asked of them — including ousting Saddam Hussein — and that it was time for them to come home.
Bredesen warned that Democrats will regain the security mantle only if they are practical about their policy in ending the war in Iraq.
“After Vietnam, we were not seen as the muscular party,” Bredesen said.
The four headlining governors said that some Washington Democrats do not reflect a pragmatism that they view as imperative to winning and holding so-called “red states.”
“Good governance means you have to make some tough decisions,” Schweitzer said.
Schweitzer, Bredesen, O’Malley and Sebelius all had Republican predecessors. Each called for Washington Democrats to make “tough decisions,” while advocating that sustaining a national majority may depend on putting practical policies before partisan ideals.
Bredesen said he could define Republicans in fewer than 25 words: a traditional view of the family, the centrality of faith, low taxes and an assertive and combative view of American interests. But, he followed, “I challenge you to describe what the Democratic Party stands for in 25 words. You can’t do it.”
As Democrats campaigned in the key primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire, those attending the DLC conference argued that the presidential candidates’ viability depends on winning in states like Tennessee. Beneath the rhetoric was the noticeable absence of the Democratic field.
“George Bush is handing us our Hoover moment, but we’ll only build a lasting majority if we put in place and carry out an agenda that works,” DLC President Bruce Reed said last week and emphasized throughout the conference.
President Herbert Hoover was unable to stop the tumbling economy during the Great Depression, paving the way for the last continuous Democratic majority under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
DLC Founder Al From seconded Reed, arguing that a “sustainable progressive centrist majority” depends on Democratic presidential candidates returning to the political middle ground.
“We had a similar opportunity in 1974, when we won big. We backed into the majority in 1976,” From said. “But we didn’t have a plan to govern. And we paid a big price.”
Lieberman Enjoys Freedom as Independent
Ever since Connecticut Democrats refused to back him for a fourth term in Congress, Joe Lieberman has been burnishing his independent credentials in the narrowly divided Senate while becoming increasingly critical of the Democratic Party on the war in Iraq.
Lieberman, the Democrats’ 2000 vice presidential nominee, insists he is not actively considering joining the Republican Party. But he is keeping that possibility wide open as his disenchantment grows with Democratic leaders. The main sticking points are their attempts to end the war in Iraq and their hesitation to take a harder line against Iran.
“I think either [Democrats] are, in my opinion, respectfully, naïve in thinking we can somehow defeat this enemy with talk, or they’re simply hesitant to use American power, including military power,” Lieberman said in a wide-ranging interview with The Hill.
“There is a very strong group within the party that I think doesn’t take the threat of Islamist terrorism seriously enough.”
Lieberman says he is annoyed by the mudslinging on Capitol Hill and Democrats’ unwillingness to work with President Bush. But his critics say he has contributed to that polarization by his rhetoric and refusal to compel Bush to find a new way forward in Iraq.
As Lieberman sees it, however, the Democratic Party has slipped away from its “most important and successful times” of the middle of last century, where it was tough on Communism and progressive on domestic policy.
“I fear that some people take this position also because anything President Bush is for, they’ll be against, and that’s wrong,” said Lieberman, a staunch advocate of the war. “There’s a great tradition in our history of partisanship generally receding when it comes to foreign policy. But for the moment we’ve lost that.”
Even though he did not reclaim his Senate seat as a Democrat, Lieberman has been instrumental in two bills this Congress central to the 2006 Democratic campaign platform: an ethics and lobbying overhaul bill and a measure to implement recommendations of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission. The 9/11 bill cleared Congress last week, and the ethics bill could win final approval this week before lawmakers adjourn for August recess.
But if Lieberman seems blunt about the direction of the Democratic Party, it may stem from his loss last August in the primaries to businessman Ned Lamont, who wooed Democratic voters with his anti-war platform. Lieberman calls his ensuing victory in the general election as an independent “inspiring.” And remaining an independent has freed him to repeatedly buck the Democratic leadership on foreign policy and other legislative issues.
“Now that he knows he can win as an independent, he doesn’t need the Democrats at all,” said Kenneth Dautrich, a professor of public policy at the University of Connecticut. “I think it’s absolutely emboldened him.”
Lieberman was the only non-Republican in June to vote against Democratic efforts to pass a resolution expressing no confidence on embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. He has no plans to endorse a Democrat for president, including the senior senator from his home state, Christopher Dodd, and is open to backing a Republican candidate for president. Lieberman also startled Democrats when he lent his support to the re-election bid of Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a top target of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
During this month’s Iraq debate, Lieberman was working behind the scenes strategizing with Republicans and was front-and-center in several GOP press conferences denouncing Democratic tactics to push for an end to the war.
Lieberman was the lone non-Republican to vote against Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) efforts to shut down debate on an amendment to bring troops home by next April. (Reid voted against the cloture motion to file a similar motion at a later time.) Lieberman was also alone when he joined 40 Republicans in voting to kill an amendment by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) to extend the time between troop deployments in Iraq.
“I’m disappointed that I am in so small a minority among Senate Democrats in taking the position that I have,” Lieberman said.
But even as he has played a key role on some of their top domestic initiatives, Democrats have at times kept their distance from Lieberman. Last week, for instance, Reid held a press conference with several Democrats to tout their efforts to pass the 9/11 Commission bill and a homeland-security spending plan. Lieberman, the lead Senate negotiator on the measure and chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, was conspicuously absent.
Reid said it was not intentional to leave Lieberman out of the press conference, but Lieberman said not being invited was “surprising.”
The distance that Democratic leaders appear to be keeping from Lieberman could result from the animosity that the Democrats’ anti-war base has directed toward him. That criticism intensified even more last month, when he suggested military intervention against the Iranian government.
“He used to have a heart and soul, and he used to care about people,” said Leslie Angeline, an activist with the anti-war group Code Pink, who held a 24-day hunger strike until she could meet with Lieberman about his position on Iran.
Angeline is facing an unlawful entry charge after she refused to leave Lieberman’s office during her strike.
Even though Lieberman has become a lightning rod on the left, his prominent chairmanship and influence within the Democratic caucus is safe, for now, given the Democrats’ razor-thin majority. Analysts say if Democrats increase their Senate majority from the 2008 elections, Lieberman’s influence and role could be marginalized within the caucus.
Still, Lieberman is unfazed and says he has no intention of formally rejoining the Democratic Party.
“For now, I find being an independent more fun,” Lieberman said. “The partisanship in this place is out of control. As an independent I’ve got the opportunity to speak out against that.”
[The Hill]
Pentagon Announces Iraq Troop Rotations
WASHINGTON (AP) – Nearly 20,000 U.S. troops based in the United States will begin departing for Iraq in December as part of the regular rotation of combat forces there, the Defense Department announced Tuesday. These Army and Marine Corps units are not related to the buildup of American troops announced by President Bush in January, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.
Scheduled to deploy later this year and early in 2008 are the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force headquarters, Camp Pendleton, Calif.; Marine Regimental Combat Teams One and Five, also out of Camp Pendleton; and the 3rd Brigade of the Army’s 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
“These forces are replacement forces for the level of effort of 15 combat brigades, which was the standing level of effort prior to the surge,” Whitman said. “They are not forces identified to replace surge forces.”
The surge brought the number of combat brigades in Iraq to 20. Each combat brigade has roughly 3,500 troops.
Whitman would not say what units would be replaced.
There are 159,000 U.S. forces in Iraq. Those levels could vary between now and December depending on ongoing reviews by Army Gen. David Petraeus and other top commanders in Iraq.
Petraeus is scheduled to deliver a report to Congress in September on the impact the surge has had.
Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, the Bush administration’s nominee to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has told the Senate Armed Services Committee that if confirmed he will immediately “go to the theater in order to more clearly understand conditions on the ground.”
The Army troops will deploy for 15 months. The Marine combat teams typically spend seven months overseas and the headquarters unit will be deployed for a year.
[AP]
U.S. Death Toll in Iraq Lowest in 8 Months
BAGHDAD (AP) – The U.S. military said Tuesday that a Marine was killed in fighting west of the capital, pushing the American death toll for July to at least 75, the lowest in eight months.
An Apache helicopter also went down Tuesday after coming under fire in a predominantly Shiite area in eastern Baghdad, but both crew members were safely evacuated, the military said.
President Bush’s nominee to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff, meanwhile, acknowledged that slow progress in Iraq is hurting America’s credibility and emboldening Iran’s regional ambitions.
While steady progress has been made on the military front, Iraq’s political factions have made only limited headway in achieving reconciliation, said Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, who has been nominated to replace U.S. Gen. Peter Pace as the nation’s top military officer.
Iraq’s parliament shrugged off U.S. criticism and adjourned for a month, as key lawmakers declared there was no point waiting any longer for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to deliver Washington-demanded benchmark legislation for their vote.
Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani closed the final three-hour session Monday without a quorum present and declared lawmakers would not reconvene until Sept. 4. That date is just 11 days before the top two U.S. officials in Iraq—Ambassador Ryan Crocker and military commander Gen. David Petraeus—must report to Congress on American progress in taming violence and organizing conditions for sectarian reconciliation.
The recess, coupled with al-Maliki’s failure to get the key draft laws before legislators, may nourish growing opposition to the war among U.S. lawmakers, who could refuse to fund it.
Critics have questioned how Iraqi legislators could take a summer break while U.S. forces are fighting and dying to create conditions under which important laws could be passed in the service of ending sectarian political divisions and bloodshed. But in leaving parliament, many lawmakers blamed al-Maliki, saying he had failed to send them any legislation to consider.
“Even if we sit next month, there’s no guarantee that important business will be done,” said Mahmoud Othman, a prominent Kurdish legislator. The parliament already had extended its session by a month, having initially planned a recess for July and August.
Also Monday, a U.S. Marine was killed while conducting combat operations in the vast Anbar province west of Baghdad, the military said.
The attack raised to at least 75 the number of U.S. service members who have died in Iraq in July, the lowest number since November 2006, when at least 70 U.S. deaths were reported. The monthly toll topped 100 in April, May and June.
In all, at least 3,652 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians.
The No. 2 commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, expressed cautious optimism about the downturn last week. He said casualties had increased as U.S. forces expanded operations into militant strongholds as part of a five-month-old security crackdown aimed at clamping off violence in Baghdad, but were going down as Americans gained control of the areas.
“It’s an initial positive sign, but I would argue we need a bit more time to make an assessment whether it’s a true trend,” he said.
In scattered violence reported by police Tuesday, at least 11 people were killed or found dead nationwide, including three Iraqi police in a drive-by shooting and one soldier in a roadside bombing. A teacher also was shot to death while driving to work in a mainly Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad.
Meanwhile, al-Maliki’s government faced a threat by the main Sunni bloc in parliament to withdraw its Cabinet members if he doesn’t meet a series of demands by Wednesday.
The Iraq Accordance Front, which has six Cabinet members and 44 of parliament’s 275 seats, called for a pardon for security detainees not charged with specific crimes and the disbanding of militias, among other demands. But the government said the move amounted to blackmail and said the Sunni bloc had contributed in creating some of the very policies it now criticized.
A Sunni insurgent group jumped into the debate with an Internet statement posted Tuesday.
“We repeat our call to the Accordance Front to withdraw from the government and from the political process that gave those who elected it more killing, displacement and misery,” the Islamic Army in Iraq said.
An unmanned U.S. drone also crashed late Monday while landing at an air base north of Baghdad, but it did not appear to be from hostile activity, the military said separately.
The U.S. has an estimated two dozen or more unmanned MQ-1 Predators doing surveillance over Iraq. They have become mainstays of the U.S. war effort, offering round-the-clock airborne “eyes” watching over road convoys, tracking nighttime insurgent movements via infrared sensors, and occasionally unleashing one of their two Hellfire missiles on a target.
[AP]
Consumer Confidence Hits 6-Year High
NEW YORK (AP) — American consumers — shrugging off a struggling housing market as jobs remained plentiful — became more confident in July and sent a gauge of sentiment to a six-year-high, a private research group said Tuesday.The New York-based Conference Board said that its Consumer Confidence Index, rebounded to 112.6, its highest level since August 2001 when it recorded a 114.0 reading. That compared to a revised 105.3 in June. The July 24 cutoff for the preliminary survey of 5,000 U.S. households was before last week’s stock market tumble, however.
“An improvement in business conditions and the job market has lifted consumers’ spirits in July,” said Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center. “Looking ahead, consumers are more upbeat about short-term economic prospects, mainly the result of a decline in the number of pessimists, not an increase in the number of optimists. This rebound in confidence suggests economic activity may gather a little momentum in the coming months.”
[AP]
Pentagon Plans to forestall Turkey From Invading Iraq
The morass in Iraq and deepening difficulties in Afghanistan have not deterred the Bush administration from taking on a dangerous and questionable new secret operation. At a high level, U.S. officials are working with their Turkish counterparts on a joint military operation to suppress Kurdish guerrillas and capture their leaders. Through covert activity, their goal is to forestall Turkey from invading Iraq.
While detailed operational plans are necessarily concealed, the broad outlines have been presented to selected members of Congress as required by law. U.S. Special Forces are to work with the Turkish Army to suppress the Kurds’ guerrilla campaign. The Bush administration is trying to prevent opening another war front in Iraq that would have disastrous consequences. But this gamble risks major exposure and failure.
The Turkish initiative reflects the temperament and personality of George W. Bush. Even faithful congressional supporters of his Iraq policy have been stunned by the president’s upbeat mood, oblivious to the loss of his political base. Despite the failing effort to impose a military solution in Iraq, he is willing to try imposing arms — though clandestinely — on Turkey’s ancient problems with its Kurdish minority, comprising one-fifth of the country’s population.
The development of an autonomous Kurdish entity inside Iraq, resulting from the decline and fall of Saddam Hussein, has alarmed the Turkish government. That led to Ankara’s refusal to permit entry of U.S. combat troops through Turkey into Iraq, an eleventh hour complication for the 2003 invasion. As political power grew for the Kurds inside Iraq, the Turkish government became steadily more uneasy about the centuries-old project of a Kurdistan spreading across international boundaries — and chewing up big pieces of Turkey.
The dormant PKK {Kurdistan Workers Party) Turkish Kurd guerrilla fighters came to life. By June, the Turkish government was demonstrating its concern by lobbing artillery shells across the border. Ankara began protesting, to both Washington and Baghdad, that PKK was using northern Iraq as a base for guerrilla operations. On July 11 in Washington, Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy became the first Turkish official to claim publicly that the Iraqi Kurds have claims on Turkish territory. On July 20 (two days before his successful re-election), Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened a trans-border military incursion into Iraq against the Kurds.
On July 25, Murat Karayilan, head of the PKK Political Council, predicted “the Turkish Army will attack southern Kurdistan.” Turkey has a well-trained, well-equipped army of 250,000 near the border, facing some 4,000 PKK fighters hiding in the mountains of northern Iraq. But significant cross-border operations surely would bring to the PKK’s side the military forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government, the best U.S. ally in Iraq.
What is Washington to do in the dilemma of two friends battling each other on an unwanted new front in Iraq? The surprising answer was given in secret briefings on Capitol Hill last week by Eric S. Edelman, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and now under secretary of defense for policy. A Foreign Service officer who once was U.S. ambassador to Turkey, he revealed to lawmakers plans for a covert operation of U.S. Special Forces helping the Turks neutralize the PKK. They would behead the guerrilla organization by helping Turkey get rid of PKK leaders that they have targeted for years.
Edelman’s listeners were stunned. Wasn’t this risky? He responded he was sure of success, adding that the U.S. role could be concealed and always would be denied. Even if all this is true, some of the briefed lawmakers left wondering whether this was a wise policy for handling the beleaguered Kurds who had been betrayed so often by U.S. governments in years past.
The plan shows that hard experience has not dissuaded President Bush from attempting difficult ventures employing the use of force. On the contrary, two of the most intrepid supporters of the Iraq intervention — John McCain and Lindsey Graham — were surprised by Bush during a recent meeting with him. When they shared their impressions with colleagues, they commented on how unconcerned the president seemed. That may explain his willingness to embark on a questionable venture against the Kurds.
Chief Justice John Roberts Suffers Seizure
WASHINGTON (AP) – Chief Justice John Roberts suffered a seizure at his summer home in Maine on Monday, causing a fall that resulted in minor scrapes, Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said. He will remain in a hospital in Maine overnight.
Roberts, 52, was taken by ambulance to the Penobscot Bay Medical Center, where he underwent a “thorough neurological evaluation, which revealed no cause for concern,” Arberg said in a statement.
Roberts had a similar episode in 1993, she said.
The incident occurred around 2 p.m. EDT on a dock near the home in Port Clyde on Maine’s Hupper Island. Port Clyde, which is part of the town of St. George, is about 90 miles by car northeast of Portland, midway up the coast of Maine.
Roberts was taken by private boat to the mainland and then transferred to an ambulance, St. George Fire Chief Tim Polky said.
“He was conscious and alert when they put him in the rescue (vehicle),” Polky said. The hospital, in Rockport, did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press.
Named to the court by President Bush in 2005, Roberts is the youngest justice on a court in which the senior member, John Paul Stevens, is 87. Bush was informed of the hospitalization by his chief of staff, Josh Bolten, the White House said.
Roberts is the father of two young children.
Doctors called Monday’s incident “a benign idiopathic seizure,” Arberg said. The White House described the January 1993 episode as an “isolated, idiosyncratic seizure.”
Larry Robbins, a Washington attorney who worked with Roberts at the Justice Department in 1993, said he drove Roberts to work for several months after the incident. Robbins said Roberts never mentioned what the problem was and he never heard of it happening again.
In 2001, Roberts described his health as “excellent,” according to Senate Judiciary Committee records.
Roberts became chief justice after the death of William Rehnquist in September 2005, although Bush had first chosen him to take Sandra Day O’Connor’s seat when she announced her retirement earlier that year.
He had served as an appellate judge in Washington and spent more than a decade before that as a lawyer at the Hogan and Hartson law firm, where he specialized in arguing cases before the Supreme Court.
Roberts also served in the Reagan and Bush administrations in the and ’90s. He was a clerk for Rehnquist after graduating from Harvard Law School.
Roberts spent a couple of weeks in Europe in July, teaching a course in Vienna and attending a conference in Paris. He was at the court in Washington late last week.
[AP]
FBI, IRS Search Home of Sen. Ted Stevens
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – Agents from the FBI and Internal Revenue Service on Monday searched the home of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, an official said.
Investigators arrived at the Republican senator’s home in Girdwood shortly before 2:30 p.m. Alaska time, said Dave Heller, FBI assistant special agent.
Heller said he could not comment on the nature of the investigation.
The Justice Department has been looking into the seven-term senator’s relationship with a wealthy contractor as part of a public corruption investigation.
[AP]
Picture Posted on Daily Kos Creates Controversy
The Internet is buzzing about what is being billed as the final “death blow” to ultra left-wing blog Daily Kos. This according to Bill O’Reilly who will run the story tonight on The O’Reilly Factor. O’Reilly has done a number of stories about the left wing blog which he has compared to a KKK website.
The Daily Kos is one of the most trafficked sites on the Internet and has received sporadic media attention over the years for its over the top personal attacks on the Bush Administration and Republicans in general.
Fueling the current controversy involving The Daily Kos is a picture that a user posted which was obviously edited to give the appearance of Senator Joe Lieberman preparing to perform oral sex on President Bush. In response, the Daily Kos removed the picture and says it can’t be held responsible for everything people post.
The Democrats running for President are set to speak at the yearly convention organized by the Daily Kos called YearlyKOS, which is a gathering of the most liberal organizations in America.
-Chris Jones
Editor-In-Chief
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