The Talk Show American

THE TALK SHOW AMERICAN: 12/25/2005 - 01/01/2006

Friday, December 30, 2005

Justice Dept. to Probe Leak of NSA Spying Program

The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the leak of classified information about President Bush's secret domestic spying program, Justice officials said Friday.

The officials, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, said the inquiry will focus on disclosures to The New York Times about warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The Justice Department's investigation was being initiated after the agency received a request for the probe from the NSA.

Ex-CIA Big: Bill Clinton Authorized Extralegal Interrogations

The man who ran the Central Intelligence Agency's Bin Laden desk during the 1990s is accusing President Clinton of giving the CIA carte blanche to circumvent U.S. law and interrogate terrorist suspects in any way the agency saw fit - a directive that led to the establishment of secret CIA prisons on foreign soil.

"We asked the president what we should do with the people we capture," recalled Michael Scheuer, who headed up the agency's Bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999, in an interview Wednesday with the German newsmagazine Die Zeit.

Scheuer said Clinton replied: "That's up to you."

According to an Agence France Press summary of the Die Zeit interview, Scheuer explained that the Clinton administration "had been looking in the mid-1990s for a way to combat the terrorist threat and circumvent the cumbersome US legal system."

The top Bin Laden hunter recalled that the extralegal directive came after "President Clinton, his national security advisor Sandy Berger and his terrorism advisor Richard Clark ordered the CIA in the autumn of 1995 to destroy Al-Qaeda."

The secret CIA interrogation process became known as "renditioning," Scheuer said, explaining that it included moving prisoners without due legal process to countries without strict human rights protections.
"In Cairo, people are not treated like they are in Milwaukee," he told Die Zeit. "The Clinton administration asked us if we believed that the prisoners were being treated in accordance with local law. And we answered, yes, we're fairly sure."

Scheuer's revelations contradict a much ballyhooed Nov. 2, 2005 report in the Washington Post, which insisted that "the secret detention system was conceived in the chaotic and anxious first months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks."

After mistakenly claiming that renditioning began under President Bush, the Post noted that "considerable concern lingers [within the CIA] about the legality, morality and practicality" of the program.

Thursday, December 29, 2005

Bush Most Admired Again

President George W. Bush is the clear choice as the most admired man in Gallup's annual poll on this topic. This marks the fifth straight year that Bush has been most admired man.

Gallup's Dec. 19-22 poll asked Americans to name, without prompting, the man and woman, living anywhere in the world, whom they admire most. Nineteen percent of Americans named Bush as the most admired man.


Gallup's Dec. 19-22 poll asked Americans to name, without prompting, the man and woman, living anywhere in the world, whom they admire most. Nineteen percent of Americans named Bush as the most admired man. Former president Bill Clinton, with 5%, and former president Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI, and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates (each of whom garners 3%) round out the top five. The remainder of the top 10 includes the Rev. Billy Graham, former South African President Nelson Mandela, former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, the Dalai Lama, Arizona Sen. John McCain, and rock singer Bono. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Mormon Church President Gordon B. Hinckley, and former president George H.W. Bush also received mention from at least 1% of Americans.

Bush Was Right to Reject Kyoto 'Fiasco'

George Bush suffered heavy international criticism for rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, but it now appears he was exactly right: The treaty is a "fiasco,� Forbes magazine declares.

The treaty was negotiated in 1997 as a way to slow global warming, and formally took effect in February, without U.S. participation.

The Clinton administration agreed to the protocol, but the Senate refused to ratify it, in part because developing countries that were major polluters and trade competitors, particularly China and India, refused to participate in the Kyoto accord.

So right now "Kyoto is essentially a western European proposition,� Forbes reports.

But "China and India together send more tons of carbon into the atmosphere than all of western Europe combined, and the U.S. accounts for more than China and India together.�
Therefore it has become "painfully obvious that the treaty was a fiasco,� Dan Seligman writes in Forbes.

Even Britain�s Tony Blair, a supporter of the protocol, seemed to admit defeat for the treaty when in a recent speech at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, he conceded: "No country is going to cut growth� � which is the only known way to cut emissions, according to Forbes.

Ironically, even western Europe is not reducing emissions. According to the protocol, western European nations must reduce their emissions to levels 8 percent lower than those of 1990. But in the years since the treaty was negotiated, carbon dioxide levels increased by 7 percent in France, 11 percent in Italy and 29 percent in Spain. Overall, the increase for western Europe was 5.4 percent.

"After many years of European chatter about the monstrous evil perpetrated by George W. Bush in rejecting Kyoto,� Forbes concludes, "it is of possible interest that the increase in carbon emissions in the U.S. during those years was slightly lower (4.7 percent).�

Environmental 'Political Machines' Getting EPA Grants

The same environmental groups that lobby and sue the government over protecting air, water and human health also are collecting federal grant money for research and technical work, documents show.

More than 2,200 nonprofit groups have received grants from the Environmental Protection Agency over the past decade, including some of the Bush administration's toughest critics on environmental policy.

"It may be confusing to the public that with the right hand we're accepting government money and with the left hand sometimes we're beating up the government," said Charles Miller, communications director for Environmental Defense. The group has received more than $1.8 million from the EPA since 1995.

"But the government is a complicated beast. Some of the things they're doing we think are wrong. A lot of the things they're doing we think are right. We're using the grant money to further the environmental cause," Miller said.

One recipient, the Natural Resources Defense Council, recently was cited by auditors for failing to properly document more than one-third of the $3.3 million it received in three EPA grants.

The group used the money to conduct research and education on storm water pollution, and to develop and encourage energy-efficient technology, according to the EPA's inspector general, the agency's internal watchdog.

The council acknowledges record-keeping errors dealing with benefits, timesheets and indirect costs. It cited in part erroneous direction from the EPA about what was required.

"We're not running away from that and that's why we've offered to pay back the money," amounting to some $75,000, once the documentation was corrected, said the council's lawyer, Mitch Bernard. He noted there was no criticism of NRDC's research. The case is not finalized.

Asked about potential conflicts between their watchdog role and their financial connections to EPA, the groups say grants for specific technical, research and education projects do not interfere with their advocacy, which they conduct with separate funds.
Others see such grants posing at least an appearance problem.

"It raises the specter of a conflict of interest. It's an ethical question," said Roberta Baskin, executive director for the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity, an investigative organization that accepts no government, union or corporate money.

"They're supposed to be watchdogs. Does it make you a lap dog if they're funding you? Is your loyalty to - the environment - or is it to the bottom line?" Baskin said.

The grants have drawn fire in recent years from conservatives, including Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Last year, he said environmental groups were "simply Democrat political machines."

The EPA does not turn away grantees because of their criticism or lawsuits, spokesman Bob Zachariasiewicz said. A new policy requires competitive bidding for any grant over $15,000 and the money cannot be spent on lobbying, political or litigation work.

Evidence indicates 'torture' worked

Moral and legal aspects aside, conventional wisdom is that torture simply isn't practical: that someone who is being tortured will say anything to make the torture stop, and that information gleaned through torture is therefore not reliable.
Some former military and intelligence officers say, however, that physically aggressive interrogation techniques that some human rights groups consider torture can be effective in the short term. When asked for specifics, the technique they cite is "waterboarding," in which water is poured over a subject's face to create the sensation of drowning.
Consider Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the 39-year-old former al-Qaida operative who was the Sept. 11 mastermind and bearer of many al-Qaida secrets.
If anyone had a motive for remaining silent it was the man known to terrorism investigators as "KSM." But not long after his capture in Pakistan, in March 2003, KSM began to talk.
He ultimately had so much to say that more than 100 footnoted references to the CIA's interrogations of KSM are contained in the final report of the commission that investigated Sept. 11.
Not that everything KSM said was believable. But much of his information checked out in separate questioning of other captures al-Qaida figures.
What made KSM decide to talk? The answer may be waterboarding, to which KSM was subjected on at least one occasion, according to various accounts.
Intelligence operatives point out that while waterboarding can break through a suspect's initial resistance, it isn't effective for long-term interrogation.
Once a suspect begins to communicate, however, an interrogation specialist can put into action a wide range of far more subtle techniques, which include playing to a subject's ego or pretending to be his friend.
It could not be learned exactly when KSM was "waterboarded," or whether the technique was used more than once. But only 12 days after being captured in Pakistan, on March 1, 2003, KSM made his first reported major revelation.
As part of his initial proposal for the attack on America, he had "considered targeting a nuclear power plant," KSM said. But al-Qaida chieftain Osama bin Laden "decided to drop that idea," evidently concerned about a Chernobyl-type fallout that might threaten countries adjacent to the United States.
There are no footnotes keyed to the next 12 days. But on March 24 KSM began talking again, this time about assistance provided by al-Qaida to Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested in Minnesota three weeks before Sept. 11 and later pleaded guilty to planning to fly a hijacked airplane into the White House as part of a separate plot.
On April 17, KSM spoke about the abortive 1995 plot in which several U.S. airliners were to have been brought down simultaneously over the Pacific by bombs smuggled onboard.
On May 15, KSM began divulging something of the inner workings of al-Qaida. From that point onward, according to the commission's footnotes, KSM became a veritable fountain of information.
It was Osama bin Laden, he said, who had argued for increasing the number of Sept. 11 targets and planes beyond the four ultimately selected.
The 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa had cost less than $10,000, KSM continued, adding that after the success of those attacks al-Qaida had decided to focus on "soft targets" in the West like oil refineries, embassies and airliners.
The Sept. 11 report reflects five productive interrogation sessions during the last two weeks in May 2003, four in June, eight in July, four in August, three in September, three in October and four in November.
The interrogations continued through the winter and early spring of 2004, producing increasingly detailed information about al-Qaida.
KSM said bin Laden's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, opposed the Sept. 11 attacks, disagreeing with bin Laden over whether to honor the request of Afghanistan's Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, not to attack the United States.
In early April 2004, KSM revealed that the 15 young men who joined the hijacking plot for the express purpose of subduing the airplanes' passengers and disabling their crews hadn't known they were to become part of a suicide mission until a month before Sept. 11.
The last footnote, dated June 15, 2004, reflected KSM's annoyance with hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar, who left the United States without al-Qaida's permission in the summer of 2000 to visit his family in Saudi Arabia.
The commission's report was published in July 2004. But for all the world knows, KSM may be talking still.

Clinton Started CIA Rendition Program: Ex-agent

Former US President Bill Clinton was the first to use the CIA's rendition program to capture, transfer and question terror suspects on foreign soil, a former US counterterrorism agent has revealed.

"President Clinton, his national security advisor Sandy Berger and his terrorism advisor Richard Clark ordered the CIA in the autumn of 1995 to destroy Al-Qaeda," Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA who resigned from the agency in 2004, told Thursday's issue of the German newsweekly Die Zeit, reported Agence France Presse (AFP) Wednesday, December 28.

"We asked the president what we should do with the people we capture. Clinton said 'That's up to you'."

The rendition program was first authorized by President Ronald Reagan in 1986.

Scheuer, who headed the CIA unit that tracked Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, said that he developed and led the "rendition" program.

The program development, he added, included moving prisoners without due legal process to countries without strict human rights protections.

"In Cairo, people are not treated like they are in Milwaukee. The Clinton administration asked us if we believed that the prisoners were being treated in accordance with local law. And we answered, yes, we're fairly sure."

Scheuer bashed European countries for what he said hypocrisy in criticizing the Bush administration for its anti-terror tactics while benefiting from them.

"All the information we received from interrogations and documents, everything that had to do with Spain, Italy, Germany, France, England was passed on," he said.

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Most Americans back Bush-ordered wiretaps

Believe NSA should eavesdrop on suspects' calls without warrants

A new survey found nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the National Security Agency should monitor communications between terrorist suspects overseas and contacts inside the U.S.

According to Scott Rasmussen of Rasmussen Reports, 64 percent of respondents said the super-secret NSA should be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States. Just 23 percent disagreed, the survey found.

Meanwhile, 68 percent of those surveyed said they are following news reports about the NSA somewhat or very closely.

Barely one-quarter of those surveyed by Rasmussen, 26 percent, said they believe Bush is the first president to order warrantless eavesdropping. Forty-eight percent said he is not while 26 percent said they weren't sure.

Politically, 81 percent of Republicans said they believe the NSA should be authorized to listen in on conversations between suspected terrorists and people living in the U.S. That view is also supported by 51 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of respondents who said they were not affiliated with either major political party.

U.N. official: Iraqi elections credible

A United Nations official said Wednesday that Iraq's recent parliamentary elections, which have given a strong lead to the Shiite religious bloc dominating the current government, were credible and that there was there was no justification in calls for a rerun.

In violence Wednesday, an inmate in a Baghdad prison grabbed an assault rifle from a guard and opened fire, killing eight people, police said. One American soldier was injured in the attempted prison break, the U.S. military said.

The Shiite bloc held talks with Kurdish leaders about who should get the top 12 government jobs, as thousands of Sunni Arabs and secular Shiites protested what they say was a tainted vote. Two Sunni Arab groups and former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's Iraqi National List have threatened a wave of protests and civil disobedience if fraud charges are not properly investigated.

In another of continuing political demonstrations across the country, more than 4,000 people rallied Wednesday in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, in favor of the major Sunni Arab party, the Iraqi Accordance Front. Demonstrators carried banners say "We refuse the election forgery."

The United Nations official, Craig Jenness, said at a news conference organized by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq that the U.N.-led international election assistance team found the elections to be credible and transparent. "Turnout was high and the day was largely peaceful, all communities participated."

Iraqi officials said they had found some instances of fraud that were enough to cancel the results in that place, but not to hold a rerun. There were more than 1,500 complaints made about the elections, with about 50 of them considered serious enough to possibly result in the cancellation of results in some places.

"After studying all the complaints, and after the manual and electronic audit of samples of ballot boxes in the provinces, the electoral commission will announce within the next few days some decisions about canceling the results in stations where fraud was found," said Abdul Hussein Hendawi, an elections official.

He said fraud had been discovered in the provinces of Baghdad, Irbil, Ninevah, Kirkuk, Anbar and Diyala.

Jenness said the number of complaints was less than one in every 7,000 voters. About 70 percent of Iraq's 15 million voters took part in the elections. He added that the U.N. saw no reason to hold a new ballot.

"Complaints must be adjudicated fairly, but we in the United Nations see no justification in calls for a rerun of any election," he said.

Civil-rights attorney: ACLU 'terrorizing' U.S.

Activist praises bill that would keep taxpayer funds from organization

An attorney who once worked for the American Civil Liberties Union has slammed the organization for "perverting" federal law by successfully threatening government officials into getting rid of public expressions of religion.

Rees Lloyd made the comments in an online podcast hosted by Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., in which the two discuss the congressman's legislation, the Public Expression of Religion Act, or PERA (H.R.2679). The bill would prohibit judges in civil suits involving the First Amendment's Establishment Clause from awarding attorney's fees to those offended by religious symbols or actions in the public square � such as a Ten Commandments display in a courthouse or a cross on a county seal.

Lloyd, a California civil-rights attorney, is an officer with the American Legion who wrote a resolution passed by the national organization supporting Hostettler's bill.

As WorldNetDaily reported, Hostettler's proposal would amend the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Act of 1976, 42 U.S.C. Section 1988, to prohibit prevailing parties from being awarded attorney's fee in religious establishment cases, but not in other civil rights filings. This would prevent local governments from having to use taxpayer funds to pay the ACLU or similar organization when a case is lost, and also would protect elected officials from having to pay fees from their own pockets.

In the podcast, Hostettler explains that the 1976 statute was meant to help "the little guy" who is going up against a governmental entity so he won't be impoverished when working to guarantee the liberty to express or practice his faith. But, says the lawmaker, the ACLU has used the law to enrich itself at the expense of taxpayers and as a means to silence public officials who don't want to be sued personally.

Hostettler says some organizations have created a new civil liberty � a right to be protected "from religion, which is found nowhere in the Constitution, nowhere in the Bill of Rights." The Indiana congressman blames "a very select group" for "perverting" the original statute, including the ACLU, People for the American Way and Americans United for the Separate of Church and State.

Consumer Confidence Surges Again

Consumer confidence surged in December as declining gasoline prices and improving job opportunities buoyed spirits, boding well for spending in the new year.

The Conference Board said Wednesday that its Consumer Confidence Index advanced to 103.6 this month, after recovering to 98.3 in November. Analysts had expected a reading of 103.0 for December.

December's rise put the index at its highest level since Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29, devastating Gulf Coast states and disrupting fuel and trade for much of the nation. Last August, before the storm, the index registered 105.5.

Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board's Consumer Research Center, said in a statement accompanying the report that "consumer confidence continues to bounce back" from the beating it took after the hurricane.

"The resiliency of the economy, recent declines in prices at the pump, and job growth have consumers feeling more confident at year-end than they felt at the start of 2005," Franco said. "Consumers are confident that the economy will continue to expand in 2006."

The consumer confidence index stood at 102.7 in December 2004.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

EU states that berated Bush on Kyoto fail to hit emissions targets

MANY of the European nations responsible for coercing the United States to remain committed to combating climate change are named and shamed today as major polluters of the environment.

A remarkable report has discovered Britain stands almost alone among 15 EU nations in making strides towards honouring Kyoto commitments to cut greenhouse gases.

The London-based think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), has found that ten of the 15 European Union signatories to the Kyoto Protocol will miss their targets by 2010 without urgent action.

The worst offenders are Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy, each up to 20 per cent off target. Only Britain, Sweden and France are remotely on target.

The poorly performing nations are among the many who have criticised the US and President George Bush - who early in his presidency declared Kyoto "dead" - for refusing to sign up to the agreement because of fears it would limit economic growth.

However, earlier this month - after fierce negotiations at a United Nations conference in Montreal, Canada - the US did agree to a "non-binding dialogue to respond to climate change", aimed at setting new mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions after 2012, when the existing pact known as the Kyoto Protocol expires.

The research carried out by the IPPR, the Left-leaning think-tank, finds that Britain has the best record on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It projects that by 2010, with green policies still to be introduced, the UK will have reduced emissions by 20 per cent of the level recorded in 1990. Sweden will be just 1 per cent away from achieving its target of an increase on 1990 levels of just 4 per cent.

However, Spain will miss - by 13 per cent - its target of limiting emission levels to 15 per cent more than were recorded in 1990. Ireland will fail to hit its target of emission levels running at a rate of 13 per cent higher than the 1990 level by 20.4 per cent.

Duncan McLaren, the chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said last night he was surprised the IPPR had found the UK's projected performance would be so good, and he questioned its methodology.

However, he added: "We are not surprised to see the EU falling behind its Kyoto targets, and this is because nations are increasing the pursuit of economic growth rather than sustainable development."

L.A. Times admits false claim about Falwell

A column by a rabbi published in the Los Angeles Times falsely asserted Rev. Jerry Falwell claimed lesbian actress Ellen DeGeneres played a role in the 9-11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina because she was the host of the Emmy Awards before both events.

The Times ran a correction explaining the Baptist minister "made no such claim."

In the Dec. 18 column, Rabbi Stephen Julius Stein wrote:


We've all heard about the rise of the evangelical movement and about some of the excesses of its leaders. For instance, the Rev. Jerry Falwell claimed that Ellen DeGeneres played a role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina because she was the host of the Emmy Awards ceremony preceding both events. I only wish the situation was just comical. But when we realize how this movement has saturated the fabric of American culture, we cannot � we must not � remain indifferent to its effect on us, to our neighbors of other faiths and to the essence of what still makes this country a beacon of democracy to the world.
Stein is a rabbi at Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles and vice president of the Wilshire Center Interfaith Council.

The Times' correction Sunday said the column was "defending the separation of church and state."

Mass Grave Uncovered in Karbala, Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Municipal workers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala found remains believed to be from a massgrave dating to 1991, when Saddam Hussein's regime put down a Shiite uprising in the south.

The remains were discovered Monday and were sent for testing Tuesday in an effort to identify the bodies, said Rahman Mashawy, a Karbala police spokesman. He did not say how many bodies were found, and the police claim could not be independently verified.

Human rights organizations estimate that more than 300,000 people, mainly Kurds and Shiite Muslims, were killed and buried in massgraves during Saddam's 23-year rule, which ended when U.S.-led forces toppled his regime in 2003. Saddam and seven co-defendants are now on trial for the deaths of more than 140 Shiites after a 1982 attempt on Saddam's life in the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad.