Don't expect a joyride from Scooter, Dems

http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn30.html

Don't expect a joyride from Scooter, Dems

October 30, 2005

BY MARK STEYN
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

The "Ding Dong, the Bush Is Dead" fever rages on, disappointments notwithstanding. Hurricane Katrina was, politically, a wash. And say what you like about Harriet Miers, but at least the disaffected right wrapped the whole thing up in a month. Meanwhile, the left's still panting orgasmically about Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into what Scooter Libby said to Judith Miller about what Valerie Plame knew about what Joseph C. Wilson IV said . . . zzzz . . . fingers growing heavy . . . losing the will to type . . .

Most Americans have never heard of any of these people. What's that? You've heard of Scooter? No, you're mistaken, you're thinking of Skeeter -- Skeeter Davis, the late country-and-western singer who had a Top Three hit in 1963 with "Don't They Know It's The End of The World/It Ended When You Said Goodbye," which is apparently what George W. Bush will be singing as Karl Rove's led out of the Oval Office in handcuffs.

Just for the record, Scooter Libby is the highest-ranking Scooter in the Bush administration, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. All last week, lefty gloaters were eagerly anticipating "Fitzmas," their designation for that happy day when federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald hands down indictments against Libby, and Rove, and maybe Cheney, and -- boy oh boy, who knows? -- maybe Chimpy Bushitlerburton himself. Pat Fitzgerald has been making his list, checking it twice, found out who's naughty or nice, and he's ready to go on a Slay Ride leaving Bush the Little Drummed-Out Boy and the Dems having a blue blue blue blue blue-state Christmas in November 2006, if not before.

Well, I enjoy the politics of personal destruction as much as the next chap, and one appreciates that it's been a long time since the heady days when Dems managed to collect the scalps of both Newt Gingrich and his short-lived successor within a few short weeks. But, as I've said before, one reason the Democratic Party is such a bunch of losers is because they're all tactics and no strategy. Suppose they succeed in destroying Libby and a bunch of other non-household names. Then what? Several analysts are suggesting that the 2006 elections are shaping up like 1994, when Newt's revolution swept the Democratic old guard from power.

It's a bit early for my reckless election predictions, but I'd bet on the Republicans holding both the House and Senate. Though the electorate was disgusted by the sheer arrogance of Democrat corruption, 1994 wasn't just a throw-the-bums-out spasm -- despite Peter Jennings sniffing that "the voters had a temper tantrum." Au contraire, it was also a throw-the-bums-in election. Voters liked the alternative: a coherent conservative agenda. It's quite possible that the electorate will have a throw-the-bums-out attitude to the Republicans in 12 months' time, but I'd say it's almost completely unfeasible that they'll be in a mood to throw the Dems in. There are not a lot of competitive congressional districts, and those that are are mostly in Democrat blue states that, if not yet red, are turning distinctly purple. The Dems' big immoveable obstacle remains their inability to articulate a set of ideas that connects with the electorate. James Carville and Stanley Greenberg are said to be working on a Democrat version of Newt's Contract with America, but Greenberg's a pollster and Carville's an attack dog. Whatever their charms, these aren't the ideas guys.

The difficulty for the left is that if the problem is Iraq, Katrina or pretty much anything else, the solution is not obviously the Democratic Party. The future of Iraq is mostly a matter for Iraqis now, and it's not going badly, as you can sort of tell if you decode the headlines -- "Bitterly Divided Iraqis Take Time Out From Trembling On Brink Of Civil War To Overwhelmingly Ratify New Constitution," "Three Sunnis And Their Pet Camel Boycott Poll In Sign Iraq May Be Becoming Ungovernable," etc. In fact, it's Syria that's bitterly divided and becoming ungovernable, and Baby Assad's fall will not be long now.

Nonetheless, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, is full of gloom. As the Financial Times reported, "Vice President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the U.S. weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday."

What does he mean by "hijacked"? Is Wilkerson saying that Cheney and Rumsfeld have imposed their foreign policy on the United States against the wishes of the president? I think not. If you read any Bush speech or talk to him for five minutes, it's clear that he's no supporter of the disastrously complacent State Department realpolitik herd mentality reflected by Wilkerson. Every word he utters on the subject suggests he inclines to the Cheney-Rumsfeld view of the world -- or, rather, that they incline to his. The president sets foreign policy. He's the pilot; he can't "hijack" his own plane. Wilkerson is a whiny stewardess in a snit because she doesn't want to learn a new spiel. "Do you want the chicken or the beef?" She's been serving up State Department chicken in Cairo and Amman and Damascus for decades, and she's not comfortable with the new Texas beef. But the only hijack that's going on is the State Department's bland assumption that it has the right to block the president's foreign policy.

The Bush caricature -- the idiot sock-puppet manipulated by Cheney and Rove to do their bidding -- is exactly backward. The president is his own man -- to such a degree that he seems not to notice that very few others are and, when he does, his response is to hunker down among a tight circle of loyalists. So, while he has a certain amount of stellar talent around him, most of his administration is either in the hands of opponents like Wilkerson or trusted non-entities like Harriet Miers.

In that sense, the Miers implosion and the Valerie Plame quagmire are an instructive contrast. The Democrats see the world in purely political terms. They have an increasingly tenuous grasp of the profound social, cultural and national security issues that transcend the politics and the passing figures associated with them. And, if their object in the Fitzgerald investigation was somehow to get the administration's Iraq policy criminalized, they failed utterly. Look at it this way: If "Iraq" is the James Bond movies, Scooter Libby is the gal who played Moneypenny in ''The Living Daylights.'' Happy Fitzmas.

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Plame's Input Is Cited on WILSON'S Niger Mission

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html?referrer=emailarticle

washingtonpost.com

Correction to This Article
In some editions of the Post, a July 10 story on a new Senate report on intelligence failures said that former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV told his contacts at the CIA that Iraq had tried to buy 400 tons of uranium from the African nation of Niger in 1998. In fact, it was Iran that was interested in making that purchase, but no contract was signed, according to the report.


Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission
Report Disputes Wilson's Claims on Trip, Wife's Role

By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A09


Joseph C. Wilson IV has denied his wife's input.

Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.

Wilson last year launched a public firestorm with his accusations that the administration had manipulated intelligence to build a case for war. He has said that his trip to Niger should have laid to rest any notion that Iraq sought uranium there and has said his findings were ignored by the White House.

Wilson's assertions -- both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.

The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.

Yesterday's report said that whether Iraq sought to buy lightly enriched "yellowcake" uranium from Niger is one of the few bits of prewar intelligence that remains an open question. Much of the rest of the intelligence suggesting a buildup of weapons of mass destruction was unfounded, the report said.

The report turns a harsh spotlight on what Wilson has said about his role in gathering prewar intelligence, most pointedly by asserting that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, recommended him.

Plame's role could be significant in an ongoing investigation into whether a crime was committed when her name and employment were disclosed to reporters last summer.

Administration officials told columnist Robert D. Novak then that Wilson, a partisan critic of Bush's foreign policy, was sent to Niger at the suggestion of Plame, who worked in the nonproliferation unit at CIA. The disclosure of Plame's identity, which was classified, led to an investigation into who leaked her name.

The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional.

The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame "offered up" Wilson's name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." The next day, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson, the report said.

Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger.

"Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."

Wilson stood by his assertion in an interview yesterday, saying Plame was not the person who made the decision to send him. Of her memo, he said: "I don't see it as a recommendation to send me."

The report said Plame told committee staffers that she relayed the CIA's request to her husband, saying, "there's this crazy report" about a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq. The committee found Wilson had made an earlier trip to Niger in 1999 for the CIA, also at his wife's suggestion.

The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."

"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents -- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq -- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.

Wilson's reports to the CIA added to the evidence that Iraq may have tried to buy uranium in Niger, although officials at the State Department remained highly skeptical, the report said.

Wilson said that a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, was unaware of any sales contract with Iraq, but said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq -- which Mayaki interpreted to mean they wanted to discuss yellowcake sales. A report CIA officials drafted after debriefing Wilson said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to UN sanctions on Iraq."

According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.

Still, it was the CIA that bore the brunt of the criticism of the Niger intelligence. The panel found that the CIA has not fully investigated possible efforts by Iraq to buy uranium in Niger to this day, citing reports from a foreign service and the U.S. Navy about uranium from Niger destined for Iraq and stored in a warehouse in Benin.

The agency did not examine forged documents that have been widely cited as a reason to dismiss the purported effort by Iraq until months after it obtained them. The panel said it still has "not published an assessment to clarify or correct its position on whether or not Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa."

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

Iran to mark U.S. embassy seizure anniversary with parades

http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4215

Iran to mark U.S. embassy seizure anniversary with parades Sun. 30 Oct 2005



Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Oct. 30 – Iran’s Ministry of Education announced on Sunday that 20 million students in primary and secondary schools across the country will chant “Death to America” on Wednesday to mark the anniversary of the seizure of the United States embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979.

“Students across the country will be ringing school bells with chants of Death to America on Wednesday, November 2, and special programs will be held in schools”, said a statement by the public relations department of the Ministry of Education, carried by the Persian-language website Aftab, which belongs to the State Expediency Council. The anniversary ceremonies are being held two days earlier this year, as November 4 falls on Friday, the Muslim Sabbath.

“There will be a statement on the November 4 anniversary condemning the warmongering policies of the U.S. and the Zionist regime”, the Education Ministry statement said.

On November 4, 1979, Iranian “students” led by a close confidante of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran and took approximately seventy Americans captive. The incident triggered the most profound crisis of the Carter presidency and lasted 444 days. Many of the hostage-takers went on to become major political figures in Iran in subsequent years.

“A series of activities are planned to mark the occasion, which will include parades, cultural and arts contests, essay-writing competition and newspaper production by students, and all will be centred on the themes, ‘Why Death to America and Zionists?’, ‘Hating the Great Satan America’, ‘The Role of Students in the Scientific Development of the Country’ and ‘Quest for Justice at the Heart of Domestic and International Issues’.”

From FactCheck.org

http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html


Bush's "16 Words" on Iraq & Uranium: He May Have Been Wrong But He Wasn't Lying

Two intelligence investigations show Bush had plenty of reason to believe what he said in his 2003 State of the Union Address.

July 26, 2004

Modified:August 23, 2004
Summary



The famous “16 words” in President Bush’s Jan. 28, 2003 State of the Union address turn out to have a basis in fact after all, according to two recently released investigations in the US and Britain.

Bush said then, “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .” Some of his critics called that a lie, but the new evidence shows Bush had reason to say what he did.

* A British intelligence review released July 14 calls Bush’s 16 words “well founded.”
* A separate report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee said July 7 that the US also had similar information from “a number of intelligence reports,” a fact that was classified at the time Bush spoke.
* Ironically, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who later called Bush’s 16 words a “lie”, supplied information that the Central Intelligence Agency took as confirmation that Iraq may indeed have been seeking uranium from Niger .
* Both the US and British investigations make clear that some forged Italian documents, exposed as fakes soon after Bush spoke, were not the basis for the British intelligence Bush cited, or the CIA's conclusion that Iraq was trying to get uranium.

None of the new information suggests Iraq ever nailed down a deal to buy uranium, and the Senate report makes clear that US intelligence analysts have come to doubt whether Iraq was even trying to buy the stuff. In fact, both the White House and the CIA long ago conceded that the 16 words shouldn’t have been part of Bush’s speech.

But what he said – that Iraq sought uranium – is just what both British and US intelligence were telling him at the time. So Bush may indeed have been misinformed, but that's not the same as lying.
Analysis



The "16 words" in Bush's State of the Union Address on Jan. 28, 2003 have been offered as evidence that the President led the US into war using false information intentionally. The new reports show Bush accurately stated what British intelligence was saying, and that CIA analysts believed the same thing.

The "16 Words"

During the State the Union Address on January 28, 2003, President Bush said:

Bush: The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.



The Butler Report

After nearly a six-month investigation, a special panel reported to the British Parliament July 14 that British intelligence had indeed concluded back in 2002 that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy uranium. The review panel was headed by Lord Butler of Brockwell, who had been a cabinet secretary under five different Prime Ministers and who is currently master of University College, Oxford.

The Butler report said British intelligence had "credible" information -- from several sources -- that a 1999 visit by Iraqi officials to Niger was for the purpose of buying uranium:

Butler Report: It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999. The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger’s exports, the intelligence was credible.

The Butler Report affirmed what the British government had said about the Niger uranium story back in 2003, and specifically endorsed what Bush said as well.

Butler Report: By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa” was well-founded.

The Senate Intelligence Committee Report

The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reported July 7, 2004 that the CIA had received reports from a foreign government (not named, but probably Britain) that Iraq had actually concluded a deal with Niger to supply 500 tons a year of partially processed uranium ore, or "yellowcake." That is potentially enough to produce 50 nuclear warheads.

Wilson: Bush's Words "The Lie"

(From a web chat sponsored by Kerry for President Oct. 29, 2003)

*** Joe Wilson (Oct 29, 2003 11:24:53 AM)
I would remind you that had Mr.. Cheney taken into consideration my report as well as 2 others submitted on this subject, rather than the forgeries

*** Joe Wilson (Oct 29, 2003 11:25:06 AM)
the lie would never have been in President Bush's State of the Union address

*** Joe Wilson (Oct 29, 2003 11:25:14 AM)
so when they ask, "Who betrayed the President?"

*** Joe Wilson (Oct 29, 2003 11:25:30 AM)
They need to point the finger at the person who inserted the 16 words, not at the person who found the truth of the matter
The Senate report said the CIA then asked a "former ambassador" to go to Niger and report. That is a reference to Joseph Wilson -- who later became a vocal critic of the President's 16 words. The Senate report said Wilson brought back denials of any Niger-Iraq uranium sale, and argued that such a sale wasn't likely to happen. But the Intelligence Committee report also reveals that Wilson brought back something else as well -- evidence that Iraq may well have wanted to buy uranium.

Wilson reported that he had met with Niger's former Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki, who said that in June 1999 he was asked to meet with a delegation from Iraq to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between the two countries.
Based on what Wilson told them, CIA analysts wrote an intelligence report saying former Prime Minister Mayki "interpreted 'expanding commercial relations' to mean that the (Iraqi) delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales." In fact, the Intelligence Committee report said that "for most analysts" Wilson's trip to Niger "lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal."

The subject of uranium sales never actually came up in the meeting, according to what Wilson later told the Senate Intelligence Committee staff. He quoted Mayaki as saying that when he met with the Iraqis he was wary of discussing any trade issues at all because Iraq remained under United Nations sanctions. According to Wilson, Mayaki steered the conversation away from any discussion of trade.

For that reason, Wilson himself has publicly dismissed the significance of the 1999 meeting. He said on NBC’s Meet the Press May 2, 2004:

Wilson: …At that meeting, uranium was not discussed. It would be a tragedy to think that we went to war over a conversation in which uranium was not discussed because the Niger official was sufficiently sophisticated to think that perhaps he might have wanted to discuss uranium at some later date.

But that's not the way the CIA saw it at the time. In the CIA's view, Wilson's report bolstered suspicions that Iraq was indeed seeking uranium in Africa. The Senate report cited an intelligence officer who reviewed Wilson’s report upon his return from Niger:

Committee Report: He (the intelligence officer) said he judged that the most important fact in the report was that the Nigerian officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999, and that the Nigerian Prime Minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium, because this provided some confirmation of foreign government service reporting.

"Reasonable to Assess"

At this point the CIA also had received "several intelligence reports" alleging that Iraq wanted to buy uranium from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and from Somalia, as well as from Niger. The Intelligence Committee concluded that "it was reasonable for analysts to assess that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa based on Central Intelligence Agency reporting and other available intelligence."

Reasonable, that is, until documents from an Italian magazine journalist showed up that seemed to prove an Iraq-Niger deal had actually been signed. The Intelligence Committee said the CIA should have been quicker to investigate the authenticity of those documents, which had "obvious problems" and were soon exposed as fakes by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

"We No Longer Believe"

Both the Butler report and the Senate Intelligence Committee report make clear that Bush's 16 words weren't based on the fake documents. The British didn't even see them until after issuing the reports -- based on other sources -- that Bush quoted in his 16 words. But discovery of the Italian fraud did trigger a belated reassessment of the Iraq/Niger story by the CIA.

Once the CIA was certain that the Italian documents were forgeries, it said in an internal memorandum that "we no longer believe that there is sufficient other reporting to conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad." But that wasn't until June 17, 2003 -- nearly five months after Bush's 16 words.

Soon after, on July 6, 2003, former ambassador Wilson went public in a New York Times opinion piece with his rebuttal of Bush's 16 words, saying that if the President was referring to Niger "his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them," and that "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Wilson has since used much stronger language, calling Bush's 16 words a "lie" in an Internet chat sponsored by the Kerry campaign.

On July 7, the day after Wilson's original Times article, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer took back the 16 words, calling them "incorrect:"

Fleischer: Now, we've long acknowledged -- and this is old news, we've said this repeatedly -- that the information on yellow cake did, indeed, turn out to be incorrect.

And soon after, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that the 16 words were, in retrospect, a mistake. She said during a July 11, 2003 White House press briefing :

Rice: What we've said subsequently is, knowing what we now know, that some of the Niger documents were apparently forged, we wouldn't have put this in the President's speech -- but that's knowing what we know now.

That same day, CIA Director George Tenet took personal responsibility for the appearance of the 16 words in Bush's speech:

Tenet: These 16 words should never have been included in the text written
for the President.

Tenet said the CIA had viewed the original British intelligence reports as "inconclusive," and had "expressed reservations" to the British.

The Senate report doesn't make clear why discovery of the forged documents changed the CIA's thinking. Logically, that discovery should have made little difference since the documents weren't the basis for the CIA's original belief that Saddam was seeking uranium. However, the Senate report did note that even within the CIA the comments and assessments were "inconsistent and at times contradictory" on the Niger story.

Even after Tenet tried to take the blame, Bush's critics persisted in saying he lied with his 16 words -- for example, in an opinion column July 16, 2003 by Michael Kinsley in the Washington Post :

Kinsley: Who was the arch-fiend who told a lie in President Bush's State of the Union speech? . . .Linguists note that the question "Who lied in George Bush's State of the Union speech" bears a certain resemblance to the famous conundrum "Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?"

However, the Senate report confirmed that the CIA had reviewed Bush's State of the Union address, and -- whatever doubts it may have harbored -- cleared it for him.

Senate Report: When coordinating the State of the Union, no Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts or officials told the National Security Council (NSC) to remove the "16 words" or that there were concerns about the credibility of the Iraq-Niger uranium reporting.

The final word on the 16 words may have to await history's judgment. The Butler report's conclusion that British intelligence was "credible" clearly doesn't square with what US intelligence now believes. But these new reports show Bush had plenty of reason to believe what he said, even if British intelligence is eventually shown to be mistaken.
Sources



President George W. Bush, “ State of the Union ,” 28 January 2003.

Chairman Lord Butler of Brockwell, “Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction,” 14 July 2004.

“Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq,” Select Committee on Intelligence United States Senate, 7 July 2004.

Walter Pincus, “ CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data; Bush Used Report Of Uranium Bid ,” Washington Post, 12 June 2003.

Mohamed ElBaradei, “ The Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq: An Update ,” Statement to the United Nations Security Council by International Atomic Energy Agency Director General, 7 March 2003.

Joseph Wilson, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” New York Times, 6 July 2003.

Joseph Wilson,The Official Kerry-Edwards BLOG: "Transcript of Chat with Ambassador Joe Wilson," 29 Oct 2003.

Michael Kinsley, "...Or More Lies From The Usual Suspects?," Washington Post, 16 July 2003: A23.

Ari Fleischer, “ Press Gaggle ,” 7 July 2003.

Ari Fleischer and Dr. Condoleeza Rice, “ Press Gaggle ,” 11 July 2003.

George Tenet, "Statement by George J. Tenet Director of Central Intelligence," Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 11 July 2003.

Ten very surprising things about Iran

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article323336.ece

Real Life: Ten very surprising things about Iran
By Angus McDowall
Published: 30 October 2005

Most TV news reports about Iran depict religious revolutionaries who promote militancy abroad and suppress human rights at home. But this is only part of the story:

1 Art-house Iranian films by such directors as Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf wow foreign audiences. But the domestic film industry also churns out hundreds of more popular pictures. Last year's big hit The Lizard, drew the clerics' wrath for depicting a convict escaping prison disguised as a mullah. This year's hit was Girls' Dormitory, about a psychotic killer terrorising students.

2 In the form of Shia Islam practised in Iran, Muslims are allowed to enter into temporary marriages with each other, sometimes lasting only a few hours. Critics say this in effect legalises prostitution, and women who enter into these sigheh contracts are often ostracised. But the practice is defended as a legal loophole to provide inheritance rights for children who would otherwise be born out of wedlock. Sigheh websites have been set up to offer advice to prospective brides and grooms.

3 More than 3,600 Iranians have been killed in the past 25 years fighting heroin smugglers, whose main trade route to the West passes through the Islamic republic. Iran itself has a major drug problem, with more than two million addicts. The government has permitted radical measures to tackle the problem, including methadone programmes and syringe hand-outs to prevent the spread of disease.

4 Transsexuals are permitted to have sex-change operations in Iran by the decree of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini himself. The founder of the Islamic republic passed a fatwa allowing one transsexual woman to have the operation because sexual ambiguity made it impossible for her to carry out her religious duties properly. Iran now has dozens of people who have had a sex change.

5 According to the UNHCR, Iran hosts more than one million foreign refugees - more than any other country on earth. Most of these are Afghans and Iraqi Kurds, who fled their countries during the 1980s and '90s. Iran has in the past spent millions providing them with social security but in return it has acquired a huge workforce prepared to do manual labour for rock-bottom wages.

6 While official dress codes are very strict, many young Iranians delight in pushing back the boundaries of what is acceptable. Teenage girls in Tehran wear the most vestigial of see-through headscarves and tight overcoats that barely cover the bottom. This season gypsy-style scarves are in, featuring traditional Turkmen floral designs. Cosmetic surgery is all the rage, with girls proudly displaying a plaster to show their nose has recently been "fixed".

7 Skiing is a major pastime in mountainous parts of Iran, with pistes that rival those in Alpine resorts. Every winter young Iranians flock to the main slopes near Tehran, where social mores are less tightly enforced. Iran also has cricket, baseball and women's rugby teams, but football remains the most popular sport.

8 Iran has one of the only condom factories in the Middle East, and actively encourages contraception as a means of family planning. Sex education for married couples and major advertising campaigns helped Iran to slow its booming population growth.

9 Satellite television is banned in Iran, but receiver dishes sit in plain view on top of many houses. The most popular channels are run by Iranians based in Los Angeles, who broadcast Iranian pop music and a steady stream of anti-regime propaganda - though many Iranians also scoff at the radical tone taken by the stations.

10 Iran is one of the world's biggest producers of luxury foods. The country has rights to fish more sturgeon - the source of caviar - than any other Caspian Sea nation because of its extensive restocking programmes. It is also the world's biggest producer of pistachios, as well as saffron.

Most TV news reports about Iran depict religious revolutionaries who promote militancy abroad and suppress human rights at home. But this is only part of the story:

1 Art-house Iranian films by such directors as Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf wow foreign audiences. But the domestic film industry also churns out hundreds of more popular pictures. Last year's big hit The Lizard, drew the clerics' wrath for depicting a convict escaping prison disguised as a mullah. This year's hit was Girls' Dormitory, about a psychotic killer terrorising students.

2 In the form of Shia Islam practised in Iran, Muslims are allowed to enter into temporary marriages with each other, sometimes lasting only a few hours. Critics say this in effect legalises prostitution, and women who enter into these sigheh contracts are often ostracised. But the practice is defended as a legal loophole to provide inheritance rights for children who would otherwise be born out of wedlock. Sigheh websites have been set up to offer advice to prospective brides and grooms.

3 More than 3,600 Iranians have been killed in the past 25 years fighting heroin smugglers, whose main trade route to the West passes through the Islamic republic. Iran itself has a major drug problem, with more than two million addicts. The government has permitted radical measures to tackle the problem, including methadone programmes and syringe hand-outs to prevent the spread of disease.

4 Transsexuals are permitted to have sex-change operations in Iran by the decree of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini himself. The founder of the Islamic republic passed a fatwa allowing one transsexual woman to have the operation because sexual ambiguity made it impossible for her to carry out her religious duties properly. Iran now has dozens of people who have had a sex change.

5 According to the UNHCR, Iran hosts more than one million foreign refugees - more than any other country on earth. Most of these are Afghans and Iraqi Kurds, who fled their countries during the 1980s and '90s. Iran has in the past spent millions providing them with social security but in return it has acquired a huge workforce prepared to do manual labour for rock-bottom wages.

6 While official dress codes are very strict, many young Iranians delight in pushing back the boundaries of what is acceptable. Teenage girls in Tehran wear the most vestigial of see-through headscarves and tight overcoats that barely cover the bottom. This season gypsy-style scarves are in, featuring traditional Turkmen floral designs. Cosmetic surgery is all the rage, with girls proudly displaying a plaster to show their nose has recently been "fixed".

7 Skiing is a major pastime in mountainous parts of Iran, with pistes that rival those in Alpine resorts. Every winter young Iranians flock to the main slopes near Tehran, where social mores are less tightly enforced. Iran also has cricket, baseball and women's rugby teams, but football remains the most popular sport.

8 Iran has one of the only condom factories in the Middle East, and actively encourages contraception as a means of family planning. Sex education for married couples and major advertising campaigns helped Iran to slow its booming population growth.

9 Satellite television is banned in Iran, but receiver dishes sit in plain view on top of many houses. The most popular channels are run by Iranians based in Los Angeles, who broadcast Iranian pop music and a steady stream of anti-regime propaganda - though many Iranians also scoff at the radical tone taken by the stations.

10 Iran is one of the world's biggest producers of luxury foods. The country has rights to fish more sturgeon - the source of caviar - than any other Caspian Sea nation because of its extensive restocking programmes. It is also the world's biggest producer of pistachios, as well as saffron.
Also in this section

Honda motorcycles to sport airbags

Honda motorcycles to sport airbags
Company debuts the world's first airbag on a motorcycle

September 13, 2005; Posted: 11:23 a.m. EDT (1523 GMT)

TOKYO (Reuters) - Honda Motor Co. on Thursday unveiled the world's first airbag system to be mounted on a production model motorcycle, with plans to offer it on the new Gold Wing touring bike to hit U.S. showrooms next spring.

The airbag module is built in between the bike's handles and activates when four crash sensors detect a severe frontal collision, creating a buffer as the rider is flung forward on impact.

Honda (Research), Japan's third-biggest car manufacturer and the world's top motorcycle maker, said the airbag would significantly reduce fatalities and serious injuries, citing data which shows most harm occurs during frontal collisions.

Honda will eventually offer the airbag option in Europe and Japan, Operating Officer Suguru Kanazawa told a news conference. The company declined to say how much the add-on would cost.

The 1800cc Gold Wing is Honda's biggest motorcycle and starts at $18,600 in the United States. It sold 12,000 units in North America last year, 1,600 in Europe and 270 in Japan.

Officials said Honda aimed to offer the airbag on more motorcycles in future, but acknowledged a number of hurdles.

Because the airbag works by absorbing kinetic energy from the forward-flying rider, the motorcycle itself needs to be heavy enough not to tip over, otherwise the driver would be thrown over the deployed airbag.

The airbag also needs enough space to blow up safely in front of the rider, meaning the system can't be mounted on a sporty bike where the driver leans forward into the handle.

Still, Chief Engineer Satoshi Iijima said having the airbag could mean the difference between life and death. While the system works best in a straight-angle frontal collision at up to 50 km (31 miles) an hour, the airbag can slow down the rider being thrown off at twice the speed, causing only a minor injury in an accident that would otherwise result in death.

Honda is at the forefront of vehicle safety technology, offering Japan's first airbag in 1987 on the Legend high-end sedan. It began research and development on motorcycle airbags in 1990.

As part of its safety drive, Honda has also developed technology to warn motorcyclists of oncoming cars that are hidden from the rider's view, and headlight designs that help others on the road better gauge the distance from the motorcycle.

Those technologies are not yet available on production models.


Copyright 2005 Reuters All rights reserved.

How Dubya lost his swagger

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/360664p-307263c.html

How Dubya lost his swagger

BY THOMAS M. DEFRANK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF

President Bush
WASHINGTON - Before President Bush was reelected last November, a historical analysis commissioned by senior aide Karl Rove found a common thread among troubled second terms: scandal.

"That's one thing that will never happen to us," a top White House aide chirped at the time, confident in the Bush family's reputation for high ethical standards.

Now, what the President's father might call the "ugly S-word" has descended on his son's administration - further damaging a presidency that was already crippled and on the verge of unraveling.

"We used to have a problem with hubris," one senior Bush adviser said glumly. "Well, there ain't much swagger right now."

A career federal prosecutor with a reputation for nonpartisanship has embarrassed the White House, left Bush's indispensable chief lieutenant under a cloud, tainted Vice President Cheney and lengthened the litany of woes Bush's damage-control team must now confront.

Patrick Fitzgerald's indictments are especially jarring because they also raise the dangerous specter of political hypocrisy: In the 2000 campaign, Bush ended every stump speech by placing his hand on an imaginary Bible and swearing to restore the honor and dignity of the Oval Office, "so help me God."

"There is still time to recover, but we are in a terrible mess," a senior GOP strategist closely allied with the White House admitted.

The damage to Bush could have been far worse, however, and he and his aides breathed massive sighs of relief when Fitzgerald did not announce an indictment against Karl Rove.

The effect of the loss of Rove to the weakened President could not be overstated. The 54-year-old strategist is the central nervous system of the Bush White House, as well as the driving force of the national Republican movement.

It's no coincidence that such political fiascoes as the sluggish federal response to Hurricane Katrina and the bungled Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers occurred while Rove was distracted by his own legal difficulties.

"The truth is, Karl is irreplaceable," a senior Bush adviser said. "We have seen what this administration looks like absent Karl these last weeks. The rest of the group is simply not up to the task."

Now Rove will lead a battered White House's attempt to rebuild from the carnage, but that's a daunting mission.

Only nine months into a second term, Bush's presidency stands at its lowest point. His reputation as a take-charge, in-charge leader was breached by Katrina, his moral authority punctured by Fitzgerald's findings.

Bush has told aides better days lie ahead and exhorted them to "get back on offense," in the words of a top adviser.

For a President who reads the Bible regularly, however, the Book of Job would seem a particularly appropriate text in these trying days.

Originally published on October 30, 2005

The Mystery of Hurricane Wilma's eye

The mystery of the eye
NBC2 News
Last updated on: 10/27/2005 10:24:25 AM


LEE COUNTY— While watching NBC2 coverage of Hurricane Wilma about two dozen residents called the station reporting an unusual sighting. While watching a Doppler loop of Hurricane Wilma coming ashore, a number two appeared in the eye of the storm.

In going back through the recorded Doppler loop, we found exactly what viewers were talking about.

The image below was not altered in any way - it's a screen capture from the Doppler system. You can click 'play' above to watch the actual Doppler loop.


© 2005 by NBC2 NEWS. All rights reserved.
*
http://www.nbc-2.com/articles/readarticle.asp?articleid=4715&z=3&p=

Mystery of Hurricane Wilma's eye

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A Focus on Cheney's Powerful Role

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/politics/30cheney.html?pagewanted=print

The New York Times
October 30, 2005
The Vice President
In Indictment's Wake, a Focus on Cheney's Powerful Role
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 - Vice President Dick Cheney makes only three brief appearances in the 22-page federal indictment that charges his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., with lying to investigators and misleading a grand jury in the C.I.A. leak case. But in its clear, cold language, it lifts a veil on how aggressively Mr. Cheney's office drove the rationale against Saddam Hussein and then fought to discredit the Iraq war's critics.

The document now raises a central question: how much collateral damage has Mr. Cheney sustained?

Many Republicans say that Mr. Cheney, already politically weakened because of his role in preparing the case for war, could be further damaged if he is forced to testify about the infighting over intelligence that turned out to be false. At the least, they say, his office will be temporarily off balance with the resignation of Mr. Libby, who controlled both foreign and domestic affairs in a vice presidential office that has served as a major policy arm for the West Wing.

"Cheney has had a tight, effective team, and they have been an incredible support system for the presidency," said Rich Bond, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. "To the degree that that support system is weakened, it's a bad day at the office. But no person is indispensable." For now, David Addington, the vice president's counsel, is the leading candidate to replace Mr. Libby.

Mr. Cheney's allies noted that there was no suggestion in the indictment that the most powerful vice president in American history, with enormous influence in all important corners of administration policy, had done anything wrong. They also said that Mr. Libby, whose role had been diminished in the past year as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice became more powerful and the leak investigation took its toll, could be quickly replaced from the vice president's large Rolodex of support.

"His reach within both the party mechanism and the policy structures of the government is so deep that I believe that it is possible to find somebody who would provide the technical and intellectual support that Libby did, even if he doesn't have the same personal relationship that he had with Libby," said Tom Rath, a New Hampshire Republican with White House ties. "That's very hard to duplicate."

The indictment against Mr. Libby, known as Scooter, alleges that the vice president's office was the hub of a concerted effort to gather information about key critics of the Bush Iraq policy. [Page 28.]

The larger question, Republicans said, was Mr. Cheney's standing with the public - and what his staff has often called the vice president's constituency of one, Mr. Bush.

Christie Whitman, the president's former E.P.A. administrator and a longtime Bush family friend who was critical of the White House and the Republican right wing in a recent book, said that she did not expect the president's personal relationship with Mr. Cheney to change. Nonetheless, Ms. Whitman said she believed that if more information about Mr. Cheney's involvement in the leak case became public, "and if it keeps hanging around and getting close to the vice president, he might step aside - but that's an extreme case."

For now, she said, "Scooter has fallen on his sword, and the focus is on him."

Paul Light, a vice presidential scholar at New York University's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, agreed that Mr. Cheney's relationship with Mr. Bush would probably remain solid, but the taint of the scandal could hurt the vice president outside the White House.

"Cheney becomes a bit of an albatross except with the base, where he's a real rock star," Mr. Light said. "It'll be less possible for him to make campaign trips because this issue will dog him."

A number of influential Republicans agreed, although they did not want to speak for attribution for fear of harming their relationships with Mr. Cheney.

"Cheney doesn't have a legal problem, but he has a political problem," said one Republican close to the White House who did not want to be named to avoid public quarrels with the White House. "As the driving force on foreign policy and the Iraq war, his leadership is now nowhere near as credible. Bush has got to approach the stuff coming from the vice president's office with raised eyebrows."

Others said that Mr. Cheney was far too central at the White House to be diminished by the scandal. "He's a survivor of all time," said Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming and a longtime friend of the vice president. "I never saw him bow his head or go into a cocoon or suck his thumb or anything like that. He's an unflappable man."

Warren B. Rudman, a former Republican senator from New Hampshire, agreed with that assessment. "Look, Dick Cheney is not running for anything, he's obviously an incredibly important person in the administration, and I don't think that will change inside the White House," Mr. Rudman said. "If he were a normal vice president looking to run in '08, then it would be a totally different situation."

Most Republicans said that they had not taken seriously recent talk, advanced by conservatives, that Mr. Cheney should be the next Republican presidential candidate. In any case, they said, his history of heart problems, the faulty prewar intelligence and now Mr. Libby's indictment effectively ruled out a political future beyond Mr. Bush's second term. "He's too controversial," Ms. Whitman said.

Although Mr. Cheney makes only three appearances in the indictment, the episodes tell a story of a vice president directly involved in an effort to learn about Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat who emerged in 2003 as a critic of the way the administration used prewar intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. The episodes do not shed light on the action that set off the special prosecutor nearly two years ago: who first leaked the name of Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson, an undercover officer at the C.I.A., as an attempt to denigrate Mr. Wilson's trip as a nepotistic junket arranged by his spouse.

Mr. Cheney's most interesting appearance in the indictment is on Page 5, where he is described as telling Mr. Libby, on June 12, 2003, that Mr. Wilson's wife worked at the C.I.A. in the counterproliferation division. "Libby understood that the vice president had learned this information from the C.I.A.," the indictment states.

Mr. Cheney also appears on Page 8, when he flew with Mr. Libby and others on Air Force Two on July 12, 2003, to Norfolk, Va. On the return trip, the indictment states, Mr. Libby "discussed with other officials aboard the plane" what he should say to reporters in response to "certain pending media inquiries," including questions from Matthew Cooper of Time magazine.

The indictment does not say who the "other officials" are or the nature of the media inquiries, but it does say that on that same day Mr. Libby spoke to Mr. Cooper, and that he confirmed that he had heard that Mr. Wilson's wife was involved in sending him on the trip.

The indictment comes as other parts of the wall that was built around Mr. Cheney's defense of the war have come tumbling down. Earlier this month, Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Colin L. Powell while he was secretary of state, complained in a speech of a "cabal" between Mr. Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld when it came to Iraq and of a "real dysfunctionality" in the administration's foreign policy team.

The indictment also serves as fresh evidence to those Republicans who have known Mr. Cheney for decades and say he has changed, and that he reacted to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, by becoming consumed with threats against the nation and his longtime desire to rid Iraq of Mr. Hussein. Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to the first President Bush, said as much in The New Yorker's current issue.

"I consider Cheney a good friend - I've known him for 30 years," Mr. Scowcroft told Jeffrey Goldberg. "But Dick Cheney I don't know anymore."

Some Republicans say that Mr. Cheney's relationship with Mr. Bush has already changed, and that he has become less of a mentor to the president after Mr. Bush's nearly five years in office. Still, Mr. Cheney's allies insist that, with or without Mr. Libby, Mr. Cheney will be at the president's side.

"I don't think it's ever been about Cheney's staff," said Victoria Clarke, a former Pentagon spokeswoman and aide to the first President Bush. "It's about him. Cheney's influence has always been his own."

* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Plame - Apparent CIA front Co. didn't offer much cover

http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2003/10/10/apparent_cia_front_didnt_offer_much_cover/

The Boston Globe
Apparent CIA front didn't offer much cover

By Ross Kerber and Bryan Bender, Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent, 10/10/2003

At first glance, 101 Arch St. seems like the perfect setting for a spy story: an elegant office building downtown with an upscale restaurant, lots of foot traffic, and a subway entrance to stage a getaway.

"It's a great place to blend in," said Rob Griffin, regional president of Cushman & Wakefield Inc., the real estate firm.

The CIA may have thought so too. Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative once listed as her employer Brewster Jennings & Associates. A company by that name has a listed address but no visible presence at the 21-story office tower.

Plame's exposure as an intelligence operative has become a major controversy in Washington. Former intelligence officials confirmed Plame's cover was an invention and that she used other false identities and affiliations when working overseas. "All it was was a telephone and a post office box," said one former intelligence official who asked not to be identified. "When she was abroad she had a more viable cover."

That's a good thing, considering how little work seems to have gone in to establishing the company's presence in Boston, intelligence observers said. While the renovated building houses legal and investment firms, current and former building managers said they've never heard of Brewster Jennings. Nor did the firm file the state and local records expected of most businesses.

Both factors would have aroused the suspicions of anyone who tried to check up on Brewster Jennings, said David Armstrong, an Andover researcher for the Public Education Center, a liberal Washington think tank.

At the least, a dummy company ought to create the appearance of activity, with an office and a valid mailing address, he said. "A cover that falls apart on first inspection isn't very good. What you want is a cover that actually holds up . . . and this one certainly doesn't."

Some in the real estate industry believe something was amiss, if not illegal. "It's almost like out of a spy novel -- the tenant that wasn't there," said Griffin, who once oversaw management of the tower. "And they picked a nice address."

The collapse of Plame's cover could compromise any other operatives who claimed to work for Brewster Jennings. Although former officials wouldn't confirm that Plame's cover company used the Arch Street address, they offered no other explanation of the phantom tenant.

Plame's identity as a CIA operative was disclosed July 14 by the conservative newspaper columnist Robert Novak, who implied that the information came from "two senior administration officials." Just eight days before, her husband, Joseph C. Wilson, a former US ambassador, had written in The New York Times that the Bush administration relied on discredited intelligence in alleging sales of uranium from Niger to Iraq.

Yesterday, Plame didn't return a message left with Wilson requesting an interview, but she had listed her employer as "Brewster-Jennings & Associates" in a filing when she donated $1,000 to Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign. She listed her occupation as "analyst."

A spokeswoman for Dun & Bradstreet Inc., a New Jersey operator of commercial databases, said Brewster Jennings was first entered into its records on May 22, 1994, but wouldn't discuss the source of the filing. Its records list the company at 101 Arch St. as a "legal services office," which could mean a law firm, with annual sales of $60,000, one employee, and a chief executive identified as "Victor Brewster, Partner."

That person isn't listed elsewhere. But the address is certainly known, a tower finished in 1988 at the corner of Summer and Arch streets with 405,511 square feet of office space, then housing the upscale Dakota's restaurant, since succeeded by Vinalia. Many commuters pass through the building as they exit the Downtown Crossing subway station. 101 Arch was sold last year to CB Richard Ellis Investors of Los Angeles for an estimated $90 million.

Dun & Bradstreet records on Brewster Jennings show that on June 1, 2000, "sources contacted verified information" the day before, but a D&B spokeswoman wouldn't discuss what that means.

The D&B records give a phone number for the company, but it wasn't in service yesterday. Verizon wouldn't comment. A spokesman for the US Postal Service wouldn't say whether a post office box was associated with the company.

Vince Cannistraro, the CIA's former counterterrorism chief, said that when operating undercover outside the United States, Plame would have had a real job with a more legitimate company. The Boston company "is not an indicator of what she did overseas," he said.

Brewster Jennings was the name of the president of the former Socony-Vacuum oil company, a predecessor of Exxon Mobil Corp. But the Jennings family denies any connection, said a grandson, Brewster Jennings, a real estate investor in Durango, Colo. He said that since the firm was named as a CIA front he's heard from many friends and family members who "find tremendous humor in all this."

Ross Kerber can be reached at kerber@globe.com.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
© Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Wilson-Plame "scandal" was political pulp fiction

The Yellowcake Con
The Wilson-Plame "scandal" was political pulp fiction.

Thursday, July 15, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

So now the British government has published its own inquiry into the intelligence behind the invasion of Iraq, with equally devastating implications for the credibility of the Bush-Blair "lied" crowd. Like last week's 511-page document from the Senate Intelligence Committee, the exhaustive British study found some flawed intelligence but no evidence of "deliberate distortion." Inquiry leader Lord Butler told reporters that Prime Minister Tony Blair had "acted in good faith."

What's more, Lord Butler was not ready to dismiss Saddam Hussein as a threat merely because no large "stockpiles" of weapons of mass destruction have been found. The report concludes that Saddam probably intended to pursue his banned programs, including the nuclear one, if and when U.N. sanctions were lifted; that research, development and procurement continued so WMD capabilities could be sustained; and that he was pursuing the development of WMD delivery systems--missiles--of longer range than the U.N. permitted.

But the part that may prove most salient in the U.S. is that, like the Senate Intelligence findings, the Butler report vindicates President Bush on the allegedly misleading "16 words" regarding uranium from Africa: "We conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that 'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-founded." (Click here for more excerpts.)

We're awaiting apologies from former Ambassador Joe Wilson, and all those who championed him, after his July 2003 New York Times op-ed alleging that Mr. Bush had "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." The news is also relevant to the question of whether any crime was committed when a still unknown Administration official told columnist Robert Novak that Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA employee and that's why he had been recommended for a sensitive mission to Niger. A Justice Department special prosecutor is investigating the case, with especially paralyzing effect on the office of the Vice President.

In that New York Times piece, readers will recall, Mr. Wilson outed himself as the person who had been sent to Niger by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq might have been seeking yellowcake ore for its weapons program. Vice President Dick Cheney had asked for the CIA's opinion on the issue after reading a Defense intelligence report.

Mr. Wilson wrote that "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." He claimed he informed the CIA of his findings upon his return, was certain reports of his debrief had circulated through appropriate channels, and that the Administration had chosen to ignore his debunking of the story.

After the Novak column appeared, Mr. Wilson charged that his wife was outed solely as punishment for his daring dissent from White House policy. To that end, he has repeatedly denied that his wife played a role in his selection for the mission. "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," he wrote in his book "The Politics of Truth." "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip." A huge political uproar ensued.

But very little of what Mr. Wilson has said has turned out to be true. For starters, his wife did recommend him for that trip. The Senate report quotes from a February 12, 2002, memo from Ms. Plame: "my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity."

This matters a lot. There's a big difference both legally and ethically between revealing an agent's identity for the revenge purpose of ruining her career, and citing nepotism (truthfully!) to explain to a puzzled reporter why an undistinguished and obviously partisan former ambassador had been sent to investigate this "crazy report" (his wife's words to the Senate). We'd argue that once her husband broke his own cover to become a partisan actor, Ms. Plame's own motives in recommending her husband deserved to become part of the public debate. She had herself become political.

Mr. Wilson also seems to have dissembled about how he concluded that there was nothing to the Iraq-Niger uranium story, serving for example as the anonymous source for a June 12, 2003, Washington Post story saying "among the Envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because 'the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.' " There were some forged documents related to an Iraq-Niger uranium deal. Trouble was, such documents had not even come to the intelligence community (never mind to Mr. Wilson's attention) by the time of his trip, and obviously hadn't been the basis of the report he'd been sent to investigate. He told the Senate he may have "mispoken"--at some length we guess--on this issue.

The Senate Intelligence Committee found, finally, that far from debunking the Iraq-Niger story, Mr. Wilson's debrief was interpreted as providing "some confirmation of foreign government service reporting" that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger. Why? Because he'd reported that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki had told him of a 1999 visit by the Iraqis to discuss "commercial relations," which the leader of the one-industry country logically interpreted as interest in uranium.

Remember that Messrs. Bush and Blair only said that Iraq had "sought" or was "trying to buy" uranium, not that it had succeeded. It now appears that both leaders have been far more scrupulous in discussing this and related issues than much of the media in either of their countries, which would embarrass the journalistic profession, if that were possible.

All of this matters because Mr. Wilson's disinformation became the vanguard of a year-long assault on Mr. Bush's credibility. The political goal was to portray the President as a "liar," regardless of the facts. Now that we know those facts, Americans can decide who the real liars are.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005354

Oil-for-Food Program - $1.8 Billion in Illegal Payments

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/27/AR2005102700954.html?nav=rss_print/asection


U.N. Panel Says 2,400 Firms Paid Bribes to Iraq
Oil-for-Food Program Report Alleges $1.8 Billion in Illegal Payments

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 28, 2005; A16

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 27 -- More than 2,400 businesses, including scores of international shell companies and major blue-chip European firms such as Siemens and DaimlerChrysler, paid nearly $1.8 billion in illegal kickbacks to the former Iraqi government through the U.N. oil-for-food program, according to a report by a U.N. committee investigating misconduct.

The 623-page report, which was presented Thursday by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, the head of the Independent Inquiry Committee, is the most detailed account of how Iraq persuaded almost half of its 4,500 trading partners in more than 60 countries to circumvent U.N. sanctions by secretly channeling kickbacks into Baghdad-controlled Jordanian banks.

The report also shows how French and Russian diplomats, business executives, U.N. officials and anti-sanctions advocates, including a former Vatican official, either solicited oil trade from Iraqi officials on behalf of companies or benefited financially from the program.

After the report was released, Volcker and his top advisers pleaded with the 191-member U.N. General Assembly to change U.N. business practices to prevent future abuses. But he received a chilly response from Costa Rican and Mexican officials, who complained about not being formally given copies of the report. They also questioned why Volcker was raising the matter with the assembly when the Security Council bears primary responsibility for mismanaging the program.

Volcker said design and management failures that permitted the abuses in the oil-for-food program permeate the United Nations. He noted that the failure to institute administrative changes to confront the flaws will lead the world body to repeat its mistakes, further undermining its credibility.

The release of Volcker's fifth and final report marked the end of a $35 million, 18-month investigation into abuses in the United Nations's largest humanitarian program. U.N. investigators expect criminal prosecutors in the United States and other countries to follow up on the report's findings and investigate the firms and individuals named in the report.

Federal and state prosecutors in New York have already charged more than a dozen companies and executives with paying bribes to the former Iraqi government. The Securities and Exchange Commission is conducting its own inquiry into Iraqi businesses.

Texas oil tycoon Oscar S. Wyatt Jr., the former chairman of Coastal Corp., pleaded not guilty Thursday in New York to charges that he paid bribes. The report says Wyatt-controlled firms paid more than $7 million in illegal surcharges. Wyatt has denied wrongdoing through his attorney.

Iraq used its oil wealth to influence some countries' policies at the United Nations, rewarding Russia $19 billion in oil contracts and France $4.4 billion in deals, according to the report. The report notes that numerous U.S. companies, prevented from directly entering the trade, established subsidiaries in France to do business in Iraq.

The report provides additional evidence in support of allegations that two former top French diplomats, a former senior Kremlin official and British parliamentarian George Galloway profited from the program. It cites a payment to a bank account controlled by Galloway's wife. Galloway has denied wrongdoing.

The report challenges assumptions that most of the kickbacks involved illegal oil surcharges. It asserts that the vast majority of kickbacks were obtained through the sale of food, medicine and other humanitarian goods to Iraq. To illustrate the scheme, the report cites case studies showing how Iraq disguised its kickbacks through inflated "transportation fees" and "after sales services charges."

Three subsidiaries of Siemens AG -- in France, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates -- paid more than $1.6 million in such fees on the sale of street lights, transformers, circuit breakers and other equipment, the report shows. Siemens of Germany -- one of the world's largest electronics and electrical engineering companies -- said in a letter to Volcker's committee that its findings are "premature [and] unjustified."

The report also cites evidence that a representative of Germany's DaimlerChrysler signed a secret agreement to pay Iraq $7,000 for an armored Mercedes van valued at about $70,000. The price paid into a U.N.-controlled bank account was inflated to cover the cost of the kickback, the report says.

The company told the Volcker committee that its representative could not remember signing the agreement and was confused about the U.N. rules banning such fees. DaimlerChrysler told the Associated Press it could not comment because of investigations by the SEC and the Justice Department.

The report also sharply criticizes BNP-Paribas, a Paris-based bank that managed billions of dollars in funds for the U.N. program, saying it had divided its "loyalties" by representing many of Iraq's major traders. The bank often disguised the role of its clients, including Marc Rich & Co. Investment AG, by using shell companies to trade with Iraq, according to the report. The company, which was founded by Marc Rich, the billionaire oil trader who was pardoned by President Bill Clinton in 2000, allegedly paid kickbacks. The company has denied paying such bribes.

Several customers, including an Italian executive the firm knew was a money laundering suspect, channeled more than $10 million in illegal surcharges through the bank, the report alleges. "Although there is no evidence that BNP knew or approved of the use of its own facilities to pay illegal surcharges, BNP was uniquely positioned to probe such payments -- and failed to do so," the report says.

The Volcker report also says that anti-sanctions activists and U.N. bureaucrats, including the organization's former humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, Hans Von Sponeck, made money from the program. Von Sponeck, who resigned from his post to protest the sanctions policy, solicited financial contributions for his anti-sanctions activities from companies seeking business deals with Iraq, the report says. He was also paid for introducing German business executives to Iraqi officials, the report adds.

The Rev. Jean-Marie Benjamin, a Roman Catholic priest who served as an assistant in the early 1990s to the Vatican's secretary of state, received a $140,000 donation for his charity from a Swiss businessman, the report says. The businessman received rights to buy more than 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil after Benjamin, an outspoken critic of U.N. sanctions with ties to Iraq's leaders, assured Iraq's then-Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz that he was a "good man," according to the report.

The Volcker report clears former U.N. secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali, whose relatives allegedly engaged in illicit oil trade, of allegations of wrongdoing. It says a review of Boutros-Ghali's and his wife's bank accounts provided no evidence that he received bribes.


© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Black Unemployment Drops Under Bush

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=9942

Black Unemployment Drops Under Bush

by Jerry Bowyer
Posted Oct 28, 2005

On the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March this month, Louis Farrakhan led what he called the “Millions More Movement,” which, ironically, appeared to have hundreds of thousands fewer attendees.

Here’s a possible explanation: A lot of people had to work that day. After all, anybody keeping up with the African-American unemployment rate would know that it is at one of its lowest levels ever.

George W. Bush is laying a claim to be the President who did the best job creating jobs for blacks. Currently, black unemployment is 9.4%, which is significantly lower than the 10% it averaged in the Clinton years. The current rate is also much lower than the average black unemployment rate over the past 30 years, which is 12.4%.

Some on the left have complained that even if the black unemployment rate is dropping, there is still too great a gap between the unemployment rate for blacks and for whites.

If this complaint were sincere, those who made it should be pleased to learn the gap between black and white unemployment, which stands today at 4.9 points, is smaller than the 5.5-point average gap of the Clinton years and the 6.9-point average gap of the past 30 years.



Copyright © 2004 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.

Oil-for-Food Panel Rebukes Annan, Cites Corruption

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090701646.html


Oil-for-Food Panel Rebukes Annan, Cites Corruption
Secretary General Faulted For Management of Program

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 8, 2005; A01

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 7 -- A U.N.-appointed panel investigating corruption in prewar Iraq's oil-for-food program delivered a scathing rebuke of Secretary General Kofi Annan's management of the largest U.N. humanitarian aid operation and concluded that Kojo Annan took advantage of his father's position to profit from the system.

Former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, the head of the Independent Inquiry Committee, said blame for the program's failure was shared by the Security Council, other members of the United Nations and Annan's senior advisers. In a dramatic appearance before the Security Council, Volcker warned Annan and the 15-nation council to change the way they do business or face a worldwide loss of public support.

"Our assignment has been to look for mis- or mal-administration in the oil-for-food program, and for evidence of corruption within the U.N. organization and by contractors. Unhappily, we found both," Volcker told the council.

Senior U.N. officials said they hope that Volcker's fourth and most complete report will bring an end to a painful 18-month probe of the $64 billion program, which investigators concluded was so poorly managed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein raked in $1.7 billion in kickbacks from participating companies and $11 billion in oil-smuggling profits. Among the most volatile allegations probed by Volcker were suspicions that Kofi Annan had steered lucrative Iraqi oil contracts to a Swiss company, Cotecna, that had put his son on its payroll.

Wednesday's report said the panel found no evidence that Kofi Annan had interceded on behalf of Cotecna and no conclusive proof that he knew of his son's activities. But it provided fresh details suggesting that Kojo Annan, 31, may have obtained privileged information about U.N. business deals from his father's personal assistant and from contacts in the U.N. procurement office. It also asserted that Kojo Annan abused his father's diplomatic status to secure more than $20,000 in breaks on taxes and customs fees for a Mercedes-Benz he bought in Geneva in 1998.

"We have found no corruption by the secretary general," said Volcker, but "his behavior has not been exonerated by any stretch of the imagination."

Annan told reporters after the report's release that he accepted its "criticism," but he dismissed calls for his resignation by U.N. critics, saying: "I don't anticipate anyone to resign. We are carrying on with our work."

He also underscored Volcker's conclusion that blame should be shared by the broader U.N. membership. In a statement released by his lawyer, Kojo Annan denied that he played any role in promoting Cotecna's case for oil-for-food business and said he had never discussed the company's plans with his contacts in the U.N. procurement office. "As to using my father's name to get a discount on a car, I was young and I just didn't think it through," he said.

U.S. Ambassador John R. Bolton seized on the report's findings to advance his case for greater independent oversight of U.N. spending, citing the need "to reform the U.N. in a manner that will prevent another oil-for-food scandal. The credibility of the U.N. depends on it."

Bolton accused dozens of developing countries "who are in a state of denial" of resisting attempts to agree on such changes before world leaders arrive in New York next week for a summit on poverty and U.N. reform.

Congressional leaders said the report raises questions about Annan's capacity to lead the organization.

"The flagship of international diplomacy ran aground while Kofi Annan was at the helm," said Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), who is heading an investigation into U.N. corruption. "The critical question now is whether the secretary general can provide the management direction needed to restore U.N. credibility and effectiveness."

The oil-for-food program was established in December 1996, to provide relief to Iraqis enduring hardship from a U.N. trade embargo that was imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The program allowed Iraq to sell oil under U.N. auspices and to use the proceeds to buy food and medicine and also pay billions of dollars in war reparations.

Annan appointed Volcker in April 2004 to investigate reports of abuses by U.N. officials and by foreign businessmen and officials. Several congressional committees have also conducted investigations.

The probes have led Volcker to accuse the former head of the U.N. program, Benon V. Sevan, of receiving about $150,000 in bribes from an Egyptian businessman who bought millions of barrels of Iraqi oil. Volcker alleged that the former Iraqi government provided Sevan with the rights to buy discounted Iraqi crude in the hope he would back its efforts to obtain relief from U.N. sanctions. Sevan then passed on those purchase rights to his Egyptian associate, according to Volcker's panel. Sevan, who is now in his home country of Cyprus, has denied receiving any payments.

The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York is conducting his own criminal probe of the U.N. program. One former U.N. procurement officer, Alexander Yakovlev, a Russian national, pleaded guilty last month to money laundering and wire fraud. Volcker had accused him of soliciting a bribe from a Swiss company trying to do business with the United Nations in Iraq and of receiving nearly $1 million in bribes from contractors in other U.N. programs.

Volcker's report, which runs more than 840 pages, concludes that the oil program "undoubtedly" saved lives but says Hussein's regime "found ways and means of turning it to his own advantage, primarily through demands for surcharges and kickbacks from companies doing business with the program." He said that Iraq earned $1.8 billion in illicit proceeds from corruption in the U.N. program and nearly $11 billion from smuggling profits outside the program.

Volcker sharply criticized Annan and his top advisers, principally Deputy U.N. Secretary General Louise Frechette. He said they did not exercise adequate oversight over Sevan, and made "minimal efforts" to address sanctions violations with Iraqi officials or to ensure that "critical evidence" of wrongdoing was brought to the Security Council's attention.

It also charged that the former Iraq regime tried to bribe former U.N. secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali. The report states that Baghdad sought to channel the money through Iraqi American businessman Samir Vincent, who recently pleaded guilty to federal charges of acting as an unregistered agent of Iraq, and a Korean lobbyist, Tongsun Park, who faces similar charges.

The Iraqi leadership hoped the money would make Boutros-Ghali "more flexible," setting favorable terms for Iraq in the establishment of the oil-for-food program, the report said. The panel found no evidence that Boutros-Ghali knew about such plans or received any such payments. Boutros-Ghali, who is in Cairo, declined an interview request Wednesday.

The report also criticized Russia and China for refusing to turn over documents to U.N. investigators or to require officials or businessmen to be interviewed.

It also accused U.S. officials of approving "the single largest episode of oil smuggling" out of Iraq, by Jordan, in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The United States and Jordan declined Volcker's requests for interviews and documents, the report said, saying his panel had no authority to investigate oil smuggling outside the oil-for-food program.


© 2005 The Washington Post Company

After Boom, Golf Isn't Out of Woods

After Boom, Golf Isn't Out of Woods

By Greg Johnson
Times Staff Writer
Sat Oct 29, 7:55 AM ET

When Palm Desert Country Club opened in the early 1960s, it promised carefree living along verdant fairways.

Today, the clubhouse is in disrepair, the grass is brown, and the course — one of 120 in the golf-loving Coachella Valley — is dismissed even by some who live along its fairways as a "dog track" and a "cow pasture."

The current owner hopes to revive the club by spending $25 million to renovate the clubhouse, fashion new sand traps, lakes and a waterfall and squeeze in dozens of additional homes alongside its 27 fairways.

If the remodeling succeeds, Palm Desert Country Club could avoid the fate awaiting other troubled courses in an industry roiled by soaring real estate prices, lean corporate entertainment budgets and the sport's failure to attract and retain participants.

Operators are dangling discounts and promotions in front of customers — and courting a new generation of duffers who prefer T-shirts to polos and wouldn't think of playing without their iPods and Bluetooth-enabled cellphones. To survive, some courses are taking Palm Desert's approach: plowing under acreage to build homes that will finance improvements.

This isn't the scenario that golf's gurus envisioned in the 1990s, when the "Tiger effect" — a surge in interest in the sport inspired by the arrival of Tiger Woods on the pro tour — and dot-com stock options fueled the belief that a course a day could be built for the foreseeable future.

That euphoria extended into 2000, when 400 courses opened nationwide. This year, about 150 will open, still far exceeding the 50 or so that will shut down.

The build-it-and-they-will-come mentality has been fueled by demand for high-end communities anchored by alluring courses. It comes after a heady half-century of growth; only 3.5 million Americans played golf in 1950, compared with 27.3 million in 2004.

But the number of rounds played increased by just 0.7% in 2004 after three years of decline. The ranks of serious golfers — the roughly half of all players who account for the vast majority of rounds — fell by nearly 5% last year.

"We've gotten to the point where we could probably stand to close a course a day for the next 10 years," said Walt Lankow, the owner of a family-run golf business outside Boston.

Woods has lured newcomers, including many minorities, to the game. Latinos, Asians and African Americans now account for one-fifth of all players, according to a 2003 National Golf Foundation survey.

But many new golfers quickly retire their clubs because of the game's high costs, its inherent difficulty and the time it takes to play 18 holes — or because they come to agree with Mark Twain's observation that golf is a good walk spoiled.

That leaves golf's near-term success in the grip of baby boomers, those now in their 40s and 50s with time and money to play, their fascination with the game ingrained after watching Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer turn it into a television staple.

"We see 15 to 20 years of terrific business ahead for our company," said Henry Dozier, vice president of golf for Pulte Homes, which owns the Del Webb retirement communities. "If you were born in 1964, that makes you 41 right now, and you'll be hitting the Del Webb sweet spot in 10 years and be in it for another 10 years."

What's uncertain, said Steve Mona, chief executive of the Golf Course Superintendents Assn. of America, is whether boomers with a wealth of leisure activities to choose from will hold onto their clubs or trade them for running shoes, bicycles and kayaks.

Golf also must hone its marketing game for younger consumers "who've had computer screens in front of them since grade school," said Dana Garmany, chairman of Troon Golf, a Scottsdale, Ariz., company that owns and operates courses. "If golf doesn't understand how to evolve, it's going to end up being like polo."

Golf's problems are evident in corporate entertainment spending, which was slashed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"Instead of going to Scottsdale or Palm Beach in January, many companies are going to Atlanta, holding the meeting at the airport Marriott and dispensing with the golf altogether," Mona said.

Most new courses in the last decade have been high-end, daily-fee clubs that are open to the public. But the intense competition for golfers willing to spend $100 and more for a round has pushed the pendulum back in the other direction, a return to private courses for members only.

In most cases, the developer builds the course and surrounding homes and eventually sells out to the homeowners or an operating company. The math can work, if the owners are willing to pay for upgrades over the years, and the course generates enough cash to remain healthy.

But Garmany said the course-building binge has hurt "middle-market" clubs with initial memberships costing $5,000 to $15,000, which haven't been able to boost daily playing rates for six years because of the wealth of options for players. The Palm Desert Country Club has been stuck at about $50 a weekday round for years, though green fees will increase to about $75 when it reopens next year, in line with comparable nearby courses.

The industry is responding with its first unified effort to recruit and retain players, seeking to add 1 million a year through 2020, and push the number of rounds played to 1 billion a year. Results have been mixed.

As golf struggles to keep its ranks filled, it also is wrestling with a booming real estate market that is tempting some course owners to sell to developers, even as it drives the market for new, generally upscale facilities in such golf-centric regions as the Coachella Valley.

It's what happens after the courses open that worries existing clubs.

"Developers have a tried-and-true formula in which golf courses enhance the value of their real estate," Garmany said. "But we calculate that only 20% of what's being built pencils out."

Developers suggest that Garmany sharpen his pencil.

Most faltering courses were built five or 10 years ago with no economic support beyond their original capital investment and cash flow from operations, Pulte Homes executive Dozier said.

"Some people have the impression that developers build regardless of whether there is a market for more courses, but that couldn't be further from being accurate," he said. "We spend a lot of time on each market before making a decision."

Golf's new economics have ended the days when club pros could build a career on a solid swing and a winning smile. The emphasis is on luring customers and getting them to play often.

Courses are rolling out frequent-golfer cards, wine tastings and barbecues. Some offer day care for toddlers and free rounds to children playing with parents. Others offer deep discounts on second rounds.

Operators also are recognizing that golf traditions are not sacrosanct.

"These kids are going to be bringing their laptop, their cellphone and BlackBerry, and they're going to be wearing their favorite cool shirt," said Tim Hurja, a PGA pro whose company books golfers onto Palm Springs-area courses. "What's golf going to do? Say, 'No, no, no, you can't have a cellphone, you've got to wear this shirt, and you can't have a mulligan?' "

For Palm Desert Country Club, privately owned but open to the public, salvation might lie along its fairways. The owner, Dahoon Investments Inc., has joined with Kosmont Cos. to fund the project, which includes a cost-saving watering system.

Palm Desert's reshaped greens, new bunkers and lakes are being financed with profits from the construction of 41 course-side homes. The browned-out driving range will give way to 54 more homes.

Mom-and-pop operators used to make a go of it on the strength of cart rentals, green fees and whatever revenue the clubhouse and pro shop could generate.

"But the reality is that you need to have the revenue from something other than operating income to make capital improvements," said Larry Kosmont, president of Kosmont Cos., an Encino-based real estate consulting firm.

In Palm Desert's case, that meant building additional homes, but the plan had to pass muster with the city of Palm Desert and the subdivision's homeowners, some of whom remain skeptical because of previous development plans that faltered.

Fort Worth-based D.R. Horton Inc. didn't fare as well when it wanted to build homes on half of the Hidden Valley Golf Course in Norco. The plan was shelved this spring after angry residents, fearing traffic and lost views, threatened to recall City Council members who sided with the builder.

The power of the real estate market is being felt at courses across the country. Half a dozen courses in Myrtle Beach, S.C., could close during the next few years to make room for housing. Development is also supplanting courses near Grand Rapids, Mich., and Raleigh, N.C.

Even financially healthy courses are wringing additional revenue from their land. The Pete Dye Challenge Course in Rancho Mirage replaced some of its bunkers with lakes. Though water can encourage speedier play than sand — golfers often need several swings to escape bunkers and then must spend time with a rake in hand — economics was the driving force.

In Palm Desert, real estate agents say existing homes will rise in value when the 43-year-old country club returns to play early next year.

Scott Johnson, the course's general manager, drummed up support for the project by telling residents to consider the alternative: a course that would continue its downward spiral.

"If we didn't get this project approved and completed," he said, "we wouldn't have much of a golf course left."

Copyright © 2005 Los Angeles Times

Sleepwalking Through Today's Earth Crisis

I am sorry not to have a link to this article. Normally, I wouldn't post it, but I feel it makes some valid points...

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APOCALYPSE NOW: How Mankind is Sleepwalking Through Today's Earth Crisis

Floods, storms and droughts. Melting Arctic ice, shrinking glaciers, oceans
turning to acid. The world's top scientists warned last week that dangerous
climate change is taking place today, not the day after tomorrow. You don't
believe it?

Future historians, looking back from a much hotter and less hospitable
world, are likely to play special attention to the first few weeks of 2005. As they
puzzle over how a whole generation could have sleepwalked into disaster -
destroying the climate that has allowed human civilization to flourish over
the past 11,000 years - they may well identify the past weeks as the time when
the last alarms sounded.

Last week, 200 of the world's leading climate scientists - meeting at Tony
Blair's request at the Met Office's new headquarters at Exeter - issued the
most urgent warning to date that dangerous climate change is taking place,
and that time is running out.

Next week the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty that tries to control
global warming, comes into force after a seven-year delay. But it is clear
that the protocol does not go nearly far enough.

The alarms have been going off since the beginning of one of the warmest
Januaries on record. First, Dr Rajendra Pachauri - chairman of the official
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - told a UN conference in
Mauritius that the pollution which causes global warming has reached
"dangerous" levels.

Then the biggest-ever study of climate change, based at Oxford University,
reported that it could prove to be twice as catastrophic as the IPCC's worst
predictions. And an international task force - also reporting to Tony Blair,
and co-chaired by his close ally, Stephen Byers - concluded that we could
reach "the point of no return" in a decade.

Finally, the UK head of Shell, Lord Oxburgh, took time out - just before his
company reported record profits mainly achieved by selling oil, one of the
main causes of the problem - to warn that unless governments take urgent action
there "will be a disaster".

But it was last week at the Met Office's futuristic glass headquarters,
incongruously set in a dreary industrial estate on the outskirts of Exeter,
that it all came together. The conference had been called by the Prime
Minister to advise him on how to "avoid dangerous climate change". He needed help in persuading the world to prioritize the issue this year during Britain's
presidencies of the EU and the G8 group of economic powers.

The conference opened with the Secretary of State for the Environment,
Margaret Beckett, warning that "a significant impact" from global warming "is already inevitable". It continued with presentations from top scientists and
economists from every continent. These showed that some dangerous climate change was already taking place and that catastrophic events once thought highly
improbable were now seen as likely (see panel). Avoiding the worst was
technically simple and economically cheap, they said, provided that
governments could be persuaded to take immediate action.

About halfway through I realized that I had been here before. In the summer
of 1986 the world's leading nuclear experts gathered in Vienna for an inquest
into the accident at Chernobyl. The head of the Russian delegation showed a film
shot from a helicopter, and we suddenly found ourselves gazing down on the
red-hot exposed reactor core.

It was all, of course, much less dramatic at Exeter. But as paper followed
learned paper, once again a group of world authorities were staring at a
crisis they had devoted their lives to trying to avoid.

I am willing to bet there were few in the room who did not sense their
children or grandchildren standing invisibly at their shoulders. The conference
formally concluded that climate change was "already occurring" and that "in many
cases the risks are more serious than previously thought". But the cautious
scientific language scarcely does justice to the sense of the meeting.

We learned that glaciers are shrinking around the world. Arctic sea ice has
lost almost half its thickness in recent decades. Natural disasters are
increasing rapidly around the world. Those caused by the weather - such as droughts, storms, and floods - are rising three times faster than those - such as
earthquakes - that are not.

We learned that bird populations in the North Sea collapsed last year, after
the sand eels on which they feed left its warmer waters - and how the number of
scientific papers recording changes in ecosystems due to global warming has
escalated from 14 to more than a thousand in five years.

Worse, leading scientists warned of catastrophic changes that once they had
dismissed as "improbable". The meeting was particularly alarmed by powerful
evidence, first reported in The Independent on Sunday last July, that the
oceans are slowly turning acid, threatening all marine life.

Professor Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, presented
new evidence that the West Antarctic ice sheet is beginning to melt, threatening
eventually to raise sea levels by 15ft: 90 per cent of the world's people
live near current sea levels. Recalling that the IPCC's last report had called
Antarctica "a slumbering giant", he said: "I would say that this is now an
awakened giant."

Professor Mike Schlesinger, of the University of Illinois, reported that the
shutdown of the Gulf Stream, once seen as a "low probability event", was now
45 per cent likely this century, and 70 per cent probable by 2200. If it comes
sooner rather than later it will be catastrophic for Britain and northern
Europe, giving us a climate like Labrador (which shares our latitude) even
as the rest of the world heats up: if it comes later it could be beneficial,
moderating the worst of the warming.

The experts at Exeter were virtually unanimous about the danger, mirroring
the attitude of the climate science community as a whole: humanity is to blame.
There were a few skeptics at Exeter, including Andrei Illarionov, an adviser
to Russia's President Putin, who last year called the Kyoto Protocol "an
interstate Auschwitz". But in truth it is much easier to find skeptics among media
pundits in London or neo-cons in Washington than among climate scientists. Even the few contrarian climatalogists publish little research to support their views,
concentrating on questioning the work of others.

Now a new scientific consensus is emerging - that the warming must be kept
below an average increase of two degrees centigrade if catastrophe is to be
avoided. This almost certainly involves keeping concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main cause of climate change, below 400 parts per million.

Unfortunately we are almost there, with concentrations exceeding 370ppm and
rising, but experts at the conference concluded that we could go briefly
above the danger level so long as we brought it down rapidly afterwards. They
added that this would involve the world reducing emissions by 50 per cent by
2050 - and rich countries cutting theirs by 30 per cent by 2020.

Economists stressed there is little time for delay. If action is put off for
a decade, it will need to be twice as radical; if it has to wait 20 years, it
will cost between three and seven times as much.

The good news is that it can be done with existing technology, by cutting
energy waste, expanding the use of renewable sources, growing trees and crops
(which remove carbon dioxide from the air) to turn into fuel, capturing the gas
before it is released from power stations, and - maybe - using more nuclear energy.

The better news is that it would not cost much: one estimate suggested the
cost would be about 1 per cent of Europe's GNP spread over 20 years; another
suggested it meant postponing an expected fivefold increase in world wealth
by just two years. Many experts believe combating global warming would increase
prosperity, by bringing in new technologies.

The big question is whether governments will act. President Bush's
opposition to international action remains the greatest obstacle. Tony Blair, by almost universal agreement, remains the leader with the best chance of persuading him to change his mind.

But so far the Prime Minister has been more influenced by the President than
the other way round. He appears to be moving away from fighting for the
pollution reductions needed in favor of agreeing on a vague pledge to bring in new
technologies sometime in the future.

By then it will be too late. And our children and grandchildren will
wonder - as we do in surveying, for example, the drift into the First World War - "how on earth could they be so blind?"

WATER WARS

What could happen? Wars break out over diminishing water resources as
populations grow and rains fail.

How would this come about? Over 25 per cent more people than at present are
expected to live in countries where water is scarce in the future, and
global warming will make it worse.

How likely is it? Former UN chief Boutros Boutros-Ghali has long said that
the next Middle East war will be fought for water, not oil.

DISAPPEARING NATIONS

What could happen? Low-lying island such as the Maldives and Tuvalu - with
highest points only a few feet above sea-level - will disappear off the face
of the Earth.

How would this come about? As the world heats up, sea levels are rising,
partly because glaciers are melting, and partly because the water in the oceans
expands as it gets warmer.

How likely is it? Inevitable. Even if global warming stopped today, the seas
would continue to rise for centuries. Some small islands have already sunk
for ever. A year ago, Tuvalu was briefly submerged.

FLOODING

What could happen? London, New York, Tokyo, Bombay, many other cities and
vast areas of countries from Britain to Bangladesh disappear under tens of feet
of water, as the seas rise dramatically.

How would this come about? Ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica melt. The
Greenland ice sheet would raise sea levels by more than 20ft, the West
Antarctic ice sheet by another 15ft.

How likely is it? Scientists used to think it unlikely, but this year
reported that the melting of both ice caps had begun. It will take hundreds of years,
however, for the seas to rise that much.

UNINHABITABLE EARTH

What could happen? Global warming escalates to the point where the world's
whole climate abruptly switches, turning it permanently into a much hotter and
less hospitable planet.

How would this come about? A process involving "positive feedback" causes
the warming to fuel itself, until it reaches a point that finally tips the
climate pattern over.

How likely is it? Abrupt flips have happened in the prehistoric past.
Scientists believe this is unlikely, at least in the foreseeable future, but
increasingly they are refusing to rule it out.

RAINFOREST FIRES

What could happen? Famously wet tropical forests, such as those in the
Amazon, go up in flames, destroying the world's richest wildlife habitats and
releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide to speed global warming.

How would this come about? Britain's Met Office predicted in 1999 that much
of the Amazon will dry out and die within 50 years, making it ready for
sparks - from humans or lightning - to set it ablaze.

How likely is it? Very, if the predictions turn out to be right. Already
there have been massive forest fires in Borneo and Amazonia, casting palls of
highly polluting smoke over vast areas.

THE BIG FREEZE

What could happen? Britain and northern Europe get much colder because the
Gulf Stream, which provides as much heat as the sun in winter, fails.

How would this come about? Melting polar ice sends fresh water into the
North Atlantic. The less salty water fails to generate the underwater current
which the Gulf Stream needs.

How likely is it? About evens for a Gulf Steam failure this century, said
scientists last week.

STARVATION

What could happen? Food production collapses in Africa, for example, as
rainfall dries up and droughts increase. As farmland turns to desert, people flee in
their millions in search of food.

How would this come about? Rainfall is expected to decrease by up to 60 per
cent in winter and 30 per cent in summer in southern Africa this century. By some
estimates, Zambia could lose almost all its farms.

How likely is it? Pretty likely unless the world tackles both global warming
and Africa's decline. Scientists agree that droughts will increase in a warmer
world.

ACID OCEANS

What could happen? The seas will gradually turn more and more acid. Coral
reefs, shellfish and plankton, on which all life depends, will die off. Much of the
life of the oceans will become extinct.

How would this come about? The oceans have absorbed half the carbon dioxide,
the main cause of global warming, so far emitted by humanity. This forms dilute
carbonic acid, which attacks corals and shells.

How likely is it? It is already starting. Scientists warn that the chemistry
of the oceans is changing in ways unprecedented for 20 million years. Some
predict that the world's coral reefs will die within 35 years.

DISEASE

What could happen? Malaria - which kills two million people worldwide every
year - reaches Britain with foreign travelers, gets picked up by British
mosquitos and becomes endemic in the warmer climate.

How would this come about? Four of our 40 mosquito species can carry the
disease, and hundreds of travelers return with it annually. The insects
breed faster, and feed more, in warmer temperatures.

How likely is it? A Department of Health study has suggested it may happen
by 2050: the Environment Agency has mentioned 2020. Some experts say it is
miraculous that it has not happened already.

HURRICANES

What could happen? Hurricanes, typhoons and violent storms proliferate, grow
even fiercer, and hit new areas. Last September's repeated battering of
Florida and the Caribbean may be just a foretaste of what is to come, say
scientists.

How would this come about? The storms gather their energy from warm seas,
and so, as oceans heat up, fiercer ones occur and threaten areas where at
present the seas are too cool for such weather.

How likely is it? Scientists are divided over whether storms will get more
frequent and whether the process has already begun.