Friday Panda Cub Blogging. I don't have any digital photos of my cat handy. So, here's my new neighbor. Pretty cute, huh? But check out those claws.

Miller's comments to reporters after testifying, from E&P;. And from Dan Froomkin:

Reporter/blogger Murray Waas writes: "Miller's testimony is central to whether special [counsel] Fitzgerald brings criminal charges against I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. Libby was unwavering in telling prosecutors and the FBI that he knew nothing of Plame's covert work for the CIA, even though he spoke to Miller about at length about her and her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Whether that account is truthful is something only both Miller and Libby know. Miller's testimony on that issue will be central to any final disposition of the criminal probe, sources close to the investigation have told me for some time now."

Here's the link to Murray's latest.

More on the Franklin/AIPAC case from Eli Lake.

Back in August, investigative journalist Murray Waas reported on prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's great interest in a July 8 2003 meeting between Judy Miller and Scooter Libby. The piece holds up very well.

“The invasion of Iraq I believe will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history,” said [Retired Army Lt. Gen. William] Odom, [former NSA director] now a scholar with the Hudson Institute.

Greg Djerejian commends Judge Hellerstein for his decision yesterday in favor of release of Abu Ghraib photos the Pentagon has asked to remain secret. And the decision is worth commending:

Suppression of information is the surest way to cause its significance to grow and persist. Clarity and openness are the best antidotes, either to dispel criticism if not merited or, if merited, to correct such errors as may be found. The fight to extend freedom has never been easy, and we are once again challenged, in Iraq and Afghanistan, by terrorists who engage in violence to intimidate our will and to force us to retreat. Our struggle to prevail must be without sacrificing the transparency and accountability of government and military officials. These are the values FOIA was intended to advance, and they are at the very heart of the values for which we fight in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Shorter Hellerstein: Sunlight is the best disinfectant. And strong societies let the sun shine in," Greg writes. Amen. More on this via Greg from Knight-Ridder's venerable Joe Galloway, "Responsibility Runs Up."

Libby assumed Miller was protecting other sources, reports the WSJ:

Mr. Libby also expressed surprise that Ms. Miller had been holding out for his sake. Mr. Libby and his lawyer had assumed that Ms. Miller had been protecting other sources. Mr. Tate, in a brief telephone interview last night, added that Mr. Libby has testified already to the grand jury about his conversation with Ms. Miller. He declined to discuss specifics, but noted that his side hasn't heard from prosecutors in more than a year. Mr. Tate previously has said that Mr. Libby has not been told that he's a target of the investigation.

Good LAT piece on Miller's decision to seek a new waiver from Libby.

A bunch of readers have sent reports that Judith Miller has been released from jail. From the Philadelphia Inquirer via Raw Story:

...She was released after she had a telephone conversation with the Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, sources said. In that conversation, Libby reaffirmed that he had released Miller from a promise of confidentiality more than a year ago, sources said.

Update: The New York Times reports that she's been released and will testify tomorrow:

The agreement that led to Ms. Miller's release followed intense negotiations between Ms. Miller; her lawyer, Robert Bennett; Mr. Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate; and Mr. Fitzgerald. The talks began with a telephone call from Mr. Bennett to Mr. Tate in late August. Ms. Miller spoke with Mr. Libby by telephone earlier this month as their lawyers listened, according to people briefed on the matter. It was then that Mr. Libby told Ms. Miller that she had his personal and voluntary waiver.

But the discussions were at times strained, with Mr. Libby and Mr. Tate asserting that they communicated their voluntary waiver to Ms. Miller's lawyers more than year ago, according to those briefed on the case. Mr. Libby wrote to Ms. Miller in mid-September, saying that he believed her lawyers understood that his waiver was voluntary.

Others involved in the case have said that Ms. Miller did not understand that the waiver had been freely given and did not accept it until she had heard from him directly.

Late Update: Yet more on the negotiations this past month in this updated NYT story:

...On Sept. 16, Mr. Tate [Libby's lawyer] wrote to Mr. Fitzgerald saying his conversations with Mr. Abrams last year were meant to assure Ms. Miller that a broad waiver that Mr. Libby signed in late 2003 was not coerced and applied specifically to Ms. Miller.

On Thursday, Mr. Abrams wrote to Mr. Tate disputing parts of Mr. Tate's account. His letter said although Mr. Tate had said the waiver was voluntary, Mr. Tate had also said any waiver sought as a condition of employment was inherently coercive.

Mr. Abrams would not discuss the question in a brief telephone conversation on Thursday.

As part of the agreement, Mr. Bennett gave Mr. Fitzgerald edited versions of notes taken by Ms. Miller about her conversations with Mr. Libby.

Later Update: The Washington Post has more:

...According to a source familiar with Libby's account of his conversations with Miller in July 2003, the subject of Wilson's wife came up on two occasions. In the first, on July 8, Miller met with Libby to interview him about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the source said.

At that time, she asked him why Wilson had been chosen to investigate questions Cheney had posed about whether Iraq attempted to buy uranium in the African nation of Niger. Libby, the source familiar with his account said, told her that the White House was working with the CIA to find out more about Wilson's trip and how he came to be selected.

Libby told Miller he heard that Wilson's wife had something to do with sending him but he did not know who she was or where she worked, the source said.

Libby had a second conversation with Miller on July 12 or July 13, the source said, in which he told her that he had learned that Wilson's wife had a role in sending him on the trip and that she worked for the CIA. Libby never knew Plame's name or that she was a covert operative, the source said.

One lawyer involved in the case said Miller's attorneys reached an agreement with Fitzgerald that may confine prosecutors' questions solely to Miller's conversations with Libby. Bennett, reached last night, said he could not discuss the terms of the agreement for Miller's testimony. Abrams did not return a call seeking comment.

One lawyer said it could become clear as early as next week whether Fitzgerald plans to indict anyone or has negotiated a plea bargain.

An more of an explanation about why this agreement came about only now:

...Fitzgerald has made it clear for more than a year that Miller was the main obstacle to completing the case, and that he was prepared to exert pressure on her to testify. People involved in the case said they began to hear earlier this week that Miller was looking for a way out of jail.

In recent weeks, people close to Miller said her attorneys grew anxious that Fitzgerald would extend her time behind bars. Fitzgerald has the authority to extend the grand jury investigating possible leaks for another 18 months, and he could ask the judge to hold Miller in jail for another six months, lawyers familiar with the case said...

Via Kevin Drum, this profile of the new head of Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee is very funny. Some lively quotes.

The investigation into the murder of Gus Boulis, estranged former business partner of top GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, is being aided by one of the three suspects arrested earlier this week, the Sun Sentinal reports. "Anthony 'Big Tony' Moscatiello, 67, has provided several details about the plot and pointed a finger at co-defendants and others he said were responsible, the sources said." The hitman another suspect, "Little Tony" Ferrari initially tried to hire has apparently disappeared, the piece goes on to note.

"DeLay indictment may be overshadowed by looming Abramoff probe," Bloomberg reports:

...The larger legal challenge for DeLay may center on a task force led by the U.S. Justice Department that's investigating Jack Abramoff, the indicted lobbyist who boasted of his relationship with DeLay.

Even as DeLay faces the charge in Texas state court in connection with corporate donations that allegedly were used to help fund the Republican takeover of the state legislature in 2002, ``he is inevitably also going to be under investigation by federal prosecutors'' in the Abramoff matter, said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a Washington watchdog group that has criticized DeLay...

Abramoff was indicted in August by a federal grand jury in Florida in connection with the purchase of a casino cruise line, SunCruz Casino Ltd., in 2000. Separately, the Senate Indian Affairs Committee has started an investigation of him and partner Michael Scanlon -- a former DeLay aide -- for their lobbying activities on behalf of casino-operating Indian tribes. The two men took in $66 million in fees from the tribes they represented, according to the Senate panel, which is planning a fourth public hearing on the issue later this year.

Two former DeLay aides, Tony Rudy and William Jarrell, have also gone on to work for Abramoff at his lobbying firms...

Jim Hoagland sure doesn't seem to think much of Bush's advisors:

...Bush's floundering since he was caught off base and off guard by Hurricane Katrina strips the veil from a broad pattern of recurrent inattention to the duties of governance, of misplaced loyalty to incompetent subordinates, and a crippling refusal to look back at and learn from mistakes...

As it has on Iraq, the Bush team has adopted a "look forward, not back" strategy of communication, relying on vague generalities about the future to smother the past and current setbacks. They try to mobilize the short national attention span as an ally in the era of the 24-7 news cycle.

But that shortsighted approach can only erode confidence and support for the long-haul endeavors of reconstructing America's Gulf Coast and providing stability in the Middle East's Persian Gulf region. Reports of yet another "new" military approach in Iraq can only inspire shudders of concern or disbelief at this point. Saying that rebuilding New Orleans is "going to cost whatever it's going to cost" is an arrogant dismissal of serious concerns about huge budget deficits and about the wisdom of defying Mother Nature once again...

David Ignatius:

ISKANDARIYAH, Iraq -- If Iraq slips toward civil war, this town along the Sunni-Shiite fault line will be one of the flash points. Talking to U.S. troops at a base near here, you come away with a idea of what the war looks like out in the killing zone -- and how hard it is to mesh U.S. strategy with the nightmarish reality of the Iraqi insurgency.

This war is in many ways a series of disconnects, and you sense them during a visit to Forward Operating Base Kalsu, as the Army calls its garrison here. It's a war in which U.S. troops remain upbeat, even as support deteriorates back home; in which the appearance of stability in much of Iraq is shattered by spasms of hideous violence; in which U.S. military strategy is confounded by Iraq's political disarray. [...]

The soldiers at Kalsu Base are buying time. As long as they guard the fault line, a full-scale civil war is unlikely in this region, says Lt. Jennifer Bowen, the deputy intelligence chief. But if they leave, a sectarian conflict is likely. Before the Mississippi Rifles go back home at year-end, the Iraqis will hold another election. If the new government doesn't reflect a Sunni-Shiite alliance that can begin to restore order, sending a new team of Americans to Kalsu Base won't make much sense.

Gen. George Casey testifies today that "the number of Iraqi battalions capable of fighting without American support has dropped from three to one." Even reading this, I don't understand how it's going backwards. Here's more on the testimony today of Rumsfeld, Casey, Abizaid, and Myers.

Franklin plea deal.

Go read Mark Schmitt.

Via Atrios, judge orders release of more Abu Ghraib photos.

Stephen Grey in Basra:

...Faisal was able to track Muhammed's movements as far as the headquarters of what the Iraqi police were then calling their intelligence department, though their British "mentors" referred to it more discreetly as the Special Operations Department...

When I visited the intelligence department at Jamiat Police Station, I found prisoners stiff with fear, bound and gagged, their heads resting on a concrete wall. On that wall was a poster of the former Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini.

More than 18 months after that visit, that same police station was in the news worldwide, for it was there that two SAS soldiers were bound and gagged, and British armoured vehicles broke down a wall during a rescue operation. According to some reports, the SAS men were engaged in an undercover operation to track Iranian agents operating in the city, and after their capture they were handed by Iraqi police directly into the hands of extremist militias.

This NYT Robin Toner analysis of the GOP's troubles brings out something I've been running up against recently. The lack of oversight provided by the Republican-led Congress to protect their party allies in the White House, the Pentagon, etc. is the worst enemy of not only the country's national interests, but of their party. It allows the sheer excessiveness of the excesses, the corruption, the improper, the incompetence, the cronyism, the abuse, to go unchecked until it blows up into full-scale catastrophe. All Katrinas and Abu Ghraibs. As Rutgers political science professor Ross Baker tells Toner, "What you're stuck with is oversight as a product of scandal, a product of catastrophe...It requires a blunder of major proportions, a calamity that is poorly addressed, before you get oversight." As in the case of DeLay and quite possibly Frist and certainly Abramoff and possibly Rove, these are cases that are headed to the courts, with juries of ordinary citizens, who are much less likely to be swayed by Karl Rovean Swift Boat Vet type tactics. The dereliction of duty of this Congress, the lack of effective oversight provided by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence committees, the Senate Armed Services committee, obviously the House Ethics committee, the Homeland Security committee, etc. will come to be a strategic mistake for the GOP. They tried to protect their own, and they ended up letting disaster after disaster blow up in spectacular pyrotechnics that exposed the underlying corrosion, debasement and corruption of the conservative movement and the GOP, described so well by Andrew Ferguson in the Weekly Standard.

Basically, it's become evident that we can't believe a word coming out of the Pentagon's mouth...

Anyhow, Rumsfeld is finally testifying today.

Update: Matt Yglesias suggests another disturbing possibility. The Pentagon doesn't really know who Zarqawi's number two guy is, which is why we regularly hear from them that they have captured or killed Zarqawi's #2 right arm, top lieutenant, etc. I was basing my blanket statement on the dishonesty of the Pentagon under Rumsfeld on a series of recent reports -- the Pentagon's initial cover up of the circumstances under which Pat Tillman was killed (long enough for the media to portray him as a great football hero who had been killed by the enemy) even though the fact that he was killed by friendly fire was known immediately, the funny business emerging now about the cover up of the investigation of his death, the way it has tried to ignore Ian Fishback's allegations of detainee abuse at Camp Mercury for months until Fishback was forced to go to the Senate Armed Services committee and Human Rights Watch, the fact that it sat on the Abu Ghraib revelations similarly for months until Seymour Hersh and 60 Minutes aired them, as part of a body of only the most recent evidence that Rumsfeld and his spokesmen have a propensity for dishonesty, cover up, etc.

Bill Arkin on Able Danger, Part III.

Steve Clemons is right. Nancy Pelosi is wrong to try to replace Jane Harman as ranking Democrat on the House intel committee.

Pentagon intelligence activities not being reported to the Congressional Intelligence committees, in violation of the National Security Act.

If I'm reading this right, buried deep in this Post piece, DeLay knew he was likely going to be indicted for weeks:

...DeLay waived a requirement that the indictment be presented within three years of "the commission of the offense," the document states; [DeLay's attorney, Dick] DeGuerin said DeLay did this under duress so that he could put off an indictment weeks ago and keep trying to persuade Earle not to bring one.

This piece on the end of the DeLay era is worth reading too. Including this elegy from Norquist in the conclusion:

Publicly, Republicans stood by their embattled colleague Wednesday. Privately, some began to talk of a post-DeLay era. Either way, they were hopeful that, whatever happened with the legal troubles, DeLay had institutionalized his fundraising and vote-whipping prowess so much that it would outlive him. "He is a conviction politician like Ronald Reagan; he's also been a party builder," said Grover Norquist, an anti-tax activist and DeLay ally. "DeLay always kept his eye on building party and the movement, and that's rare."

David Brooks sounds more than happy to see DeLay go down.

Karen Hughes gets an earful from Turkish human rights activists:

..."This war is really, really bringing your positive efforts to the level of zero," said Hidayet Sefkatli Tuksal, an activist with the Capital City Women's Forum. She said it was difficult to talk about cooperation between women in the United States and Turkey as long as Iraq was under occupation...

Hughes, who became increasingly subdued during the session, defended the decision to invade Iraq as a difficult and wrenching moment for Bush...

"War is not necessary for peace," shot back Feray Salman, a human rights defender. She said countries should not try to impose democracy through war, adding that "we can never, ever export democracy and freedom from one country to another."

Update: Juliette Kayyem is appropriately brutal here. "...In any event, the idea that the democracy 'flourishing' in the Middle East (?!?!?!) is what this audience cares about (Turkey borders Iraq, afterall), is simply silly. Hughes remarks also suggests that public diplomacy is tea party dialogue for the girls..."

From the WSJ:

The Securities and Exchange Commission upgraded its probe of stock sales made by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to a formal investigation, giving the agency subpoena power and the ability to review phone records and other documents, according to people familiar with the matter.

Just out.

The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes is worried about the Republicans in 2008. His two top picks, Cheney and Jeb Bush, are terrifying.

Here's the DeLay indictment (.pdf linked). Charge is criminal conspiracy. "As the 2002 elections approached, DeLay and his colleagues formulated a strategy about how to do something in Texas that would benefit him in Washington," the WaPo's Jeff Smith is explaining on NPR's Talk of the Nation now. Texans for a Republican majority raised corporate money that was only allowed to be used for administrative expenses. To get around that, they send this corporate money to Washington, to an arm of the RNC. The RNC in turn sent the money back to candidates in Texas. Two of the fundraisers in Texas have already been accused of moneylaundering, of essentially evading Texas law..."There is no dispute that the money was collected in Texas, sent to Washington, and returned to Texas. There is no question about that. They have good evidence on that. The question is, who knew?"

The Austin American-Statesman reports that the DeLay indictment focuses on one transaction in particular:

...In recent days, the broad-based investigation has focused on one particular transaction during the 2002 campaign.

In late September 2002, Colyandro, the executive director of Texans for a Republican Majority, sent a blank check to Ellis, who is DeLay's primary fundraiser in Washington.

According to the money-laundering indictment returned against those two last year, Ellis was accused of having the Republican National Committee launder $190,000 of corporate donations into noncorporate money that was sent to to seven Texas House candidates, including Austinites Jack Stick and Todd Baxter.

Update: And this from the LA Times, about the potential implications of the DeLay indictment for the White House:

...Although the White House of fellow Texas Republican George Bush has publicly kept its distance from DeLay for some time, he is closely tied to many of the same conservative constituents — focused on both economic, cultural, and national security issues — that form the foundation of Bush's dwindling support.

Thus, even as Bush tries to recover from the political setbacks of the struggle in Iraq and the criticism of his administration's initial response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, he is facing a third political storm front. It challenges the ethics of his political foundation just as investigators have focused on a top Republican lobbyist in Washington in a separate case...

DELAY INDICTED:

September 28, 2005

DeLay Indicted in Texas Campaign Finance Probe

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 12:36 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Texas grand jury on Wednesday charged Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, an indictment that could force him to step down as House majority leader.

More from MSNBC:

A Texas grand jury on Wednesday charged Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, an indictment that could force him to step down as House majority leader.

DeLay attorney Steve Brittain said DeLay was accused of a criminal conspiracy along with two associates, John Colyandro, former executive director of a Texas political action committee formed by DeLay, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay's national political committee.

The indictment against the second-ranking, and most assertive Republican leader came on the final day of the grand jury's term. It followed earlier indictments of a state political action committee founded by DeLay and three of his political associates...

The grand jury action is expected to have immediate consequences in the House, where DeLay is largely responsible for winning passage of the Republican legislative program. House Republican Party rules require leaders who are indicted to temporarily step aside from their leadership posts.

“It’s a skunky indictment if they have one,” DeLay attorney Bill White told reporters before the indictment was handed down. “Like a dead skunk in the middle of the road. It stinks to high heaven.”

House GOP rules require any member of the elected leadership to step down temporarily if indicted, and it would be up to the rank and file to select an interim replacement.

According to the Associated Press, Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.,will recommend that Congressman David Dreier, R-Calif., will take over DeLay's duties...

And this from the AP:

The charge carries a potential two-year sentence, which forces DeLay to step down under House Republican rules.

Who's Who among the Gus Boulis murder suspects, from the Sun-Sentinal:

...Born in New York, [Anthony Ferrari] has spent considerable time in New Jersey and Miami, developing a reputation as a tough man with a short temper.

In 1999, Tampa Bay-area attorney Edward C. Vining accused Ferrari of assaulting and threatening to kill him after Vining filed a lawsuit against Ferrari associates, according to Miami-Dade court records. A Miami-Dade County judge banned Ferrari from even attending depositions and eventually ordered Ferrari and his partners to pay $20,000 in damages.

In depositions for that case, Ferrari said he had been arrested several times for things "in connection with a checkbook." He said he "pleaded [guilty] to save a friend of mine" and was put on probation in New Jersey. He was arrested at least three other times over the next three years on similar charges.

Ferrari and his company, Moon Over Miami, collected at least $95,000 from Kidan for SunCruz security. Ferrari does not have a license in Florida to operate a security firm.

According to Tuesday's indictment, [Anthony] Ferrari... solicited another man, Dwayne Nicholson, to kill Boulis about four months before the murder...

Local Channel 10 has an old story about Ferrari and his business partners.

Austin American-Statesman:

U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's leadership post is on the line today as a Travis County grand jury is expected to consider indicting DeLay on conspiracy charges, several lawyers familiar with the investigation said.

The charges would stem from DeLay's role in using corporate money in the 2002 elections. State law generally bans corporate money from campaign activities...

Today's secret vote by the grand jury could mark the end of a three-year investigation into whether DeLay and his Republican and business allies illegally spent corporate money to help elect a Republican majority to the Legislature in 2002. In turn, state lawmakers drew congressional districts urged by DeLay that gave Texas Republicans more clout in Washington. The lawmakers also elected Craddick, a Republican from Midland and a DeLay ally, as their speaker...

But a conspiracy charge would fall under the criminal code, not the election statute that bans corporate money from being spent on a campaign.

That tactic is what defense lawyers fear -- and would give Travis County prosecutors jurisdiction over DeLay.

A conspiracy charge would likely allege that DeLay worked with others to circumvent state law...

As late as Tuesday, Travis County prosecutors were interviewing Republican National Committee staffers about their roles in the transaction...

Bill Arkin on why Able Danger was shut down:

In April 2000, Able Danger, only months old, was abruptly shut down. Caught violating Reagan administration Executive Orders and Defense Department and Army regulations restricting intelligence agencies from collecting information on United States "persons," the highly compartmented cell within the Army's Land Information Warfare Activity (LIWA) was halted in its effort to use data mining and link analysis to characterize the worldwide nature of the al Qaeda terrorist network...

But in 2000, the problem was also a pretty simple one: An off-the-books intelligence effort once again abused the "force protection" justification to collect information on Americans. Military commanders, mindful of the law and regulations, shut down the operation...

LIWA's al Qaeda project collected 2.5 terabytes of "open source" information, Shaffer says, a ridiculously immense amount of data equivalent to 500 million pages of text or a pile of paper 30,000 miles high if it were all printed out -- court records, news databases, credit card and telephone records. "Anything we could get our hands on," says Shaffer...

However, the open source label tends to hide the real problem the Able Danger sponsored effort ran into.

According to military sources familiar with the Able Danger legal side, the effort stepped over the line when LIWA contractors purchased photographic collections of people entering and exiting mosques in the United States and overseas. One source says that LIWA contractors dealt with a questionable source of photographs in California, either a white supremacy group or some other anti-Islamic organization...

Thus there was a "commingling of U.S. person data" with other data. The contractors and software specialists did not take precautions to tag data from different sources or to segregate information about wholly innocent Americans of Islamic faith from others who were not US persons...

So just months after LIWA began its seat-of-the-pants effort, it was directed to destroy its 2.5 terabytes...

One can see why the Pentagon is very anxious for this not to all come out. Is it posible that the military truly bought photos of Americans going into religious institutions from some white supremacy group? Out of control.

More from the Miami Herald about the three arrests yesterday in the Gus Boulis murder. Arrested were two people who had received several hundred thousand dollar payments from Abramoff business partner and former College Republican Adam Kidan -- Anthony "Big Tony" Moscatiello and Anthony ''Little Tony" Ferrari, as well as James ''Pudgy" Fiorillo, the owner of a black Mustang similar to the one that pulled up besides Boulis' car and filled him with bullets in February 2001. "The car disappeared shortly after Boulis' death," police told the Miami Herald.

And "Little Tony" Ferrari wasn't your average rent-a-thug. According to the Washington Post, Ferrari checked into Washington's tony Madison Hotel for Reagan's funeral last year, along with his family and a "five-car entourage of aides." He told the Post he even met Reagan once:

Miami Beach business consultant Anthony Ferrari, his wife, Jessie, their young daughter and a five-car entourage of aides already were encamped at the Madison Hotel yesterday. Ferrari hoped to see the horse-drawn procession to the Capitol tonight and perhaps see Reagan's coffin in the Capitol Rotunda tomorrow.

"I'm a big fan of President Reagan," he said. "I met him once. . . . The man had a big impact on America. He really loved this country and it showed."

Wonder under what circumstances Ferrari, who claims to be related to "Uncle John" Gotti, met with Reagan?

Disturbing story about the Pentagon being more interested in targeting the whistleblowers than investigating detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan:

An Army captain who reported new allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq said Tuesday that Army investigators seemed more concerned about tracking down young soldiers who reported misconduct than in following up the accusations and investigating whether higher-ranking officers knew of the abuses.

The officer, Capt. Ian Fishback, said investigators from the Criminal Investigation Command and the 18th Airborne Corps inspector general had pressed him to divulge the names of two sergeants from his former battalion who also gave accounts of abuse, which were made public in a report last Friday by the group Human Rights Watch.

Captain Fishback said the investigators who have questioned him in the past 10 days seemed to be less interested in individuals he identified in his chain of command who allegedly committed the abuses...

"I'm convinced this is going in a direction that's not consistent with why we came forward," Captain Fishback said in a telephone interview from Fort Bragg, N.C., where he is going through Army Special Forces training. "We came forward because of the larger issue that prisoner abuse is systemic in the Army. I'm concerned this will take a new twist, and they'll try to scapegoat some of the younger soldiers. This is a leadership problem." ...

After fruitlessly trying for 17 months to get his superiors to take action on his complaints, Captain Fishback said, he finally took his concerns this month to aides to two senior Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, John W. Warner of Virginia, the committee chairman, and John McCain of Arizona. When the Army learned he was talking to Senate aides, Captain Fishback said that Army investigators suddenly intensified their interest in his complaints.

In Putin's Russia - this would be the MO expected. But this is not how a government agency is supposed to behave in a democracy. When is Congress holding hearings again on the detainee abuse issue? When is Rumsfeld going to appear?

Update: More about the Pentagon's treatment of Fishback, via Kevin Drum. And another disturbing story about allegations of US troops posting photos of killed and dismembered Iraqis on a website. I wouldn't be the first person to note that the Army seems to investigate these allegations with far more alacrity when photos are involved.

Gus Boulis murder suspect Anthony Ferrari, arrested today, apparently calls John Gotti "Uncle John."

Bill Arkin has some useful insights into what Able Danger was -- and was not:

As a representative of U.S. Special Operations Command said at a special Pentagon briefing arranged on September 1, Able Danger "was merely the name attributed to a 15-month planning effort" to begin building a war on terrorism. This is the real story...

For Able Danger sleuths, Arkin's explanation is likely as close as we are going to get to the holy grail. Tomorrow's installment also promises to be interesting: "Overreach and how the data-mining project goes awry." I think this is where Condi Rice and China may come in.

Derek Chollet on the Iraq endgame:

...I know what some will argue: how can we believe that we are getting out when Bush is clearly saying that we are not, as he did last week after a Pentagon briefing? In many ways, that’s the point. Bush is not going to give the anti-war movement a victory by standing up and saying: I’m wrong, I’m sorry, we’re failing, and now we are going to come home with our tails between our legs. And I don’t think this is only because of his arrogance: President’s rarely do that (the last I can think of is Ronald Reagan’s pullout of Lebanon after the Marine barracks bombing).

What Bush will do is continue what he has been doing: push the imperfect political process along (in the face of criticism from think tankers and experts), slowly begin withdrawing, and talk up the glass-half-full argument. He can do this because he knows that even as things tailspin downward in Iraq, as long as our troops are leaving his political opposition won’t have the clout or support to offer the alternative -- to keep our troops there.

So mobbed up, it's not even funny. Is this what the conservative movement has come to? Get this on the two mobsters arrested today in the gangland-style killing of Abramoff-Kidan business partner Gus Boulis. From the Miami Herald back in August:

Both men [Abramoff and Kidan], according to court records, siphoned off some of SunCruz's income to collect $500,000 salaries and pay for private boxes at FedEx Field, MCI Center and Orioles Park at Camden Yards to entertain Republican donors and politicians.

Kidan diverted $250,000 in SunCruz money to a reputed organized crime associate of imprisoned Gambino Family boss John Gotti and to a Miami Beach man described by police as a ''wannabe'' mobster, according to records.

Kidan, in an earlier interview with The Herald, defended the payments to reputed Gotti associate Anthony Moscatiello of Queens, N.Y., and Anthony Ferrari of Miami Beach, saying one provided catering and the other security for SunCruz's 11 gambling vessels...

Those associations -- coupled with the SunCruz fraud indictment -- have stirred up questions anew about whether Kidan knows anything about the mob execution-style murder of Boulis. It was no secret that after the September 2000 SunCruz sale soured, Kidan and Boulis threatened each other...

Fueling speculation about some connection between the fraud prosecution and murder probe is that Paul Schwartz and Lawrence LaVecchio, the two prosecutors involved in the SunCruz case, are better known for organized-crime investigations.

The Washington Post noted last year that one Anthony Ferrari, "a Miami Beach business consultant," came to Reagan's funeral with his family and "a five-car entourage of aides." Same Anthony Ferrari?

WaPo:

...Car bombings and other insurgent attacks, as unknown in Baghdad before the invasion as suicide subway bombings were in London until this summer, have killed more than 3,000 people in the capital since late spring...

3,000 killed just in Baghdad in what, five months?

And maybe this bit of wisdom isn't in the Army's counterinsurgency manuals, but this doesn't seem like the way you go about keeping people from hating your guts:

....In Karrada this summer, Mohammed and the neighborhood watched as American soldiers on patrol grew irritated at an Iraqi who had left his car in the street to run inside a store on an errand, blocking their armored convoy.

The Americans took one of the empty plastic water bottles they use to relieve themselves when on patrol, Mohammed said. When the Iraqi driver ran out to move his car, an annoyed American plunked him with the newly filled bottle and rolled on, Mohammed said.

"He started crying," Mohammed said of the Iraqi driver, humiliated in front of the neighborhood.

Obstruction of Justice (with a capital "J"). From the NYT:

The Justice Department's inspector general and the F.B.I. are looking into the demotion of a veteran federal prosecutor whose reassignment nearly three years ago shut down a criminal investigation of the Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, current and former department officials report.

They said investigators had questioned whether the demotion of the prosecutor, Frederick A. Black, in November 2002 was related to his alert to Justice Department officials days earlier that he was investigating Mr. Abramoff. The lobbyist is a major Republican party fund-raiser and a close friend of several Congressional leaders.

Colleagues said the demotion of Mr. Black, the acting United States attorney in Guam, and a subsequent order barring him from pursuing public corruption cases brought an end to his inquiry into Mr. Abramoff's lobbying work for some Guam judges.

Colleagues of Mr. Black, who had run the federal prosecutor's office in Guam for 12 years, spoke on condition of anonymity because of Justice Department rules that bar employees from talking to reporters. They said F.B.I. agents questioned several people in Guam and Washington this summer about whether Mr. Abramoff or his friends in the Bush administration had pushed for Mr. Black's removal. Mr. Abramoff's internal e-mail messages show that he boasted to clients about what he described as his close ties to John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, and others at the department.

Mr. Black's colleagues said that similar questions had been raised by investigators for the Justice Department's inspector general's office, which serves as the department's internal watchdog...

Colleagues said they recalled that Mr. Black was distressed when he was notified by the department in November 2002 that he was being replaced.

The announcement came only days after Mr. Black had notified the department's public integrity division in Washington, by telephone and e-mail communication, that he had opened a criminal investigation into Mr. Abramoff's lobbying activities for the Guam judges, the colleague said. The judges had sought Mr. Abramoff's help in blocking a bill in Congress to restructure the island's courts.

The colleagues said that Mr. Black was also surprised when his newly arrived bosses in Guam blocked him from involvement in public corruption cases in 2003. Justice Department officials said Mr. Black was asked instead to focus on terrorism investigations, which had taken on new emphasis after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The San Francisco Chronicle's Robert Collier has a must-read report on the Pentagon's troubled investigation of the death of Pat Tillman.

Smaller US Iraq Footprint Next Year?

After observing US military commanders from Iraq huddle in Doha this past week, WaPo columnist David Ignatius reports that the commanders are planning to reduce the US troop presence in Iraq next year:

I had a rare opportunity to hear a detailed explanation of U.S. military strategy this weekend when the Centcom chief, Gen. John Abizaid, gathered his top generals here for what he called a "commanders' huddle." They described a military approach that's different, at least in tone, from what the public perceives. For the commanders, Iraq isn't an endless tunnel. They are planning to reduce U.S. troop levels over the next year to a force that will focus on training and advising the Iraqi military. They don't want permanent U.S. bases in Iraq. Indeed, they believe such a high-visibility American presence will only make it harder to stabilize the country.

The commanders' thinking is conveyed by a set of "Principles for a Long War" for combating the main enemy, al Qaeda and affiliated movements. Among the precepts they discussed here: "use the indirect approach" by working with Iraqi and other partner forces; "avoid the dependency syndrome" by making the Iraqis take responsibility for their own security and governance; and "remove the perception of occupation" by reducing the size and visibility of American forces. The goal over the next decade is a smaller, leaner, more flexible U.S. force in the Middle East -- one that can help regional allies rather than trying to fight an open-ended American war that would be a recruiting banner for al Qaeda...

President Bush and other administration officials continue to speak about Iraqi democracy in glowing terms, but you don't hear similar language from the military. After watching Iraqi political infighting for more than two years, they're more cautious. "I think we'd be foolish to try to build this into an American democracy," says one general. "It's going to take a very different form and character." The military commanders have concluded that because Iraqis have such strong cultural antibodies to the American presence, the World War II model of occupation isn't relevant. They've sharply lowered expectations for what America can accomplish.

What Abizaid and his commanders seem to fear most is that eroding political support for the war in the United States will undermine their strategy for a gradual transition to Iraqi control. They think that strategy is beginning to pay off, but it will require several more years of hard work to stabilize the country. The generals devoutly want the American people to stay the course -- but the course they describe is more limited, and more realistic, than recent political debate might suggest.

This column was much discussed by foreign policy experts at a big Iraq CFR discussion today featuring Leslie Gelb. For his part, Gelb is proposing something similar, what he calls "flexible withdrawl" from Iraq.

Arming Iraq's Defense Ministry. Last week, in the wake of the violence between British troops and Shiite-militant-infiltrated Iraqi police forces in Basra, the British papers reported on the case of one to two billion dollars in US taxpayer reconstruction money reportedly embezzled from Iraq's defense ministry in shady arms procurement deals. First uncovered by Knight Ridder's Hannah Allam last month, the Independent's Patrick Cockburn reported last week:

...Most of the money was supposedly spent buying arms from Poland and Pakistan. The contracts were peculiar in four ways. According to Mr Allawi, they were awarded without bidding, and were signed with a Baghdad-based company, and not directly with the foreign supplier. The money was paid up front, and, surprisingly for Iraq, it was paid at great speed out of the ministry's account with the Central Bank. Military equipment purchased in Poland included 28-year-old Soviet-made helicopters....

Among those whom the US promoted was a man who was previously a small businessman in London before the war, called Hazem Shaalan, who became Defence Minister.

Mr Shalaan says that Paul Bremer, then US viceroy in Iraq, signed off the appointment of Ziyad Cattan as the defence ministry's procurement chief. Mr Cattan, of joint Polish-Iraqi nationality, spent 27 years in Europe, returning to Iraq two days before the war in 2003. He was hired by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority and became a district councillor before moving to the defence ministry.

For eight months the ministry spent money without restraint. Contracts worth more than $5m should have been reviewed by a cabinet committee, but Mr Shalaan asked for and received from the cabinet an exemption for the defence ministry...

Authorities in Baghdad have issued an arrest warrant for Mr Cattan. Neither he nor Mr Shalaan, both believed to be in Jordan, could be reached for further comment...

Now the Sunday Times of London has advanced the story, interviewing the mysterious former Iraqi 'defense minister' Hazem Shaalan (spelled "Hazim al-Shalan" here), who is back in London, where he resided for twenty years before the war and helped British and American intelligence. Al-Shalan (a Shi'ite rival of Ahmad Chalabi who threatened to have Chalabi arrested for accusing him of corruption) tells the Sunday Times that Iran is taking over Iraq:

...Shalan — the exiled leader of a Shi’ite tribe with 1m members worldwide and 250,000 in southern Iraq — had already been helping British and American intelligence for several months. Now his task was to organise support among the Shi’ite population for the imminent invasion.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein he rose from resistance organiser to provincial governor and defence minister. Now, however, he is back in London saying that he is wholly disillusioned.

Lucky to be alive after 15 attempts on his life and accused of fraud by his former colleagues, Shalan warned last week that the country is gradually being taken over by Iran with devastating potential consequences.

Talking exclusively to The Sunday Times, he said that the Iranians influence the Iraqi police and army and even the interim government.

More than 460 Iranian intelligence agents have been captured in the country, but many thousands more are openly operating, he said.

According to Shalan, the Iranian intelligence service began infiltrating Iraq two months before the allied invasion.

When Saddam began withdrawing troops from outlying regions to protect Baghdad, Iranian intelligence officers “entered through the desert, between 200 and 250 of them carrying just Kalashnikovs and light communication equipment”.

After the invasion, the infiltrators reported back to Tehran that American troops were busy providing critical services such as water, food and medical assistance to Iraqis.

“The Iranians decided there was an opportunity to send large numbers of people very quickly into Iraq. Thousands of Iranians and Iraqi exiles who had joined the militia in Iran began arriving with money to buy houses,” said Shalan.

They sought positions of influence on the new councils and other bodies being formed...

In an accompanying piece, the Sunday Times reports that the real mission of the two British SAS soldiers detained by Basra police last week after shooting their way through a checkpoint had been to shut down a channel bringing weapons from Iran into Iraq:

TWO SAS soldiers rescued last week after being arrested by Iraqi police and handed over to a militia were engaged in a “secret war” against insurgents bringing sophisticated bombs into the country from Iran.

The men had left their base near the southern Iraqi city of Basra to carry out reconnaissance and supply a second patrol with “more tools and fire power”, said a source with knowledge of their activities.

They had been in Basra for seven weeks on an operation prompted by intelligence that a new type of roadside bomb which has been used against British troops was among weapons being smuggled over the Iranian border...

Whether the weapons reportedly being funnelled from Iran into Iraq are the work of private arms dealers or public officials is hard to determine. Juan Cole has some thoughts about who are the arms dealers capatilizing on the situation. (Ghorbanifar was in Iraq as recently as January, according to associates of his I interviewed in France at the time, but I don't know what exactly he was doing there). Meantime, the Washington Post reports today that the Pentagon is going to take over from the State Department in "aiding" Iraq's defense and interior ministries:

...The U.S. military plans to take over responsibility from the State Department for providing assistance to Iraq's Defense and Interior ministries, following a determination that greater resources and technical expertise are needed.

Getting the ministries to exercise effective control over Iraq's fledgling security forces remains key to enabling those forces to operate on their own and allow the withdrawal of U.S. troops. But while the number of Iraqi forces has grown steadily to more than 192,000, the ministries have yet to put in place many of the budgeting, contracting, personnel management and other systems necessary to administer the country's military and police units, U.S. military officers and diplomats said...

It's an almost ridiculous understatement to note just what a dangerous situation this is, with an extraordinary amount of arms moving into a literally explosive situation by people with various agendas. There's the corruption factor, the sheer untrustworthiness of the characters involved -- the unvetted Iraqi security forces totally infiltrated by militants from various militas -- and their hidden allegiances with foreign backers with competing agendas. But there's also just the pouring in of extraordinary firepower and potential for escalating bloodletting on an unimaginable scale. A few months back the NYT's John Burns asked US military commanders if there was a concern that the US military was helping in effect arm the future combatants in a full fledged Iraqi civil war. The answer was yes. The US is pouring literally billions of dollars into Iraq to arm Iraqi security forces that we know to be so heavily infiltrated by militant loyalists that those in police vehicles have recently assassinated journalists investigating those stories, billions have gone missing, the State Department has handed off overseeing the contracting to the Pentagon which can't even oversee its own internal investigations....and Congress can't even hold a simple hearing where Rumsfeld will deign to answer what his strategy is, the detainee abuse issue remains untouched, the Pentagon's own inspector general has been forced out of the job for leaking investigations of his superiors. Anyone feel hopeless here?

"How many more Mike Browns are out there?" asks Time. Meet the FDA's pharmacy-tied Scott Gottlieb, 33, for one:

...What [Gottlieb's] bio omits is that his most recent job was as editor of a popular Wall Street newsletter, the Forbes/Gottlieb Medical Technology Investor, in which he offered such tips as "Three Biotech Stocks to Buy Now." In declaring Gottlieb a "noted authority" who had written more than 300 policy and medical articles, the biography neglects the fact that many of those articles criticized the FDA for being too slow to approve new drugs and too quick to issue warning letters when it suspects ones already on the market might be unsafe. FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford, who resigned suddenly and without explanation last Friday, wrote in response to ?e-mailed questions that Gottlieb is "talented and smart, and I am delighted to have been able to recruit him back to the agency to help me fulfill our public-health goals." But others, including Jimmy Carter-era FDA Commissioner Donald Kennedy, a former Stanford University president and now executive editor-in-chief of the journal Science, say Gottlieb breaks the mold of appointees at that level who are generally career FDA scientists or experts well known in their field. "The appointment comes out of nowhere. I've never seen anything like that," says Kennedy.

Gottlieb's financial ties to the drug industry were at one time quite extensive. Upon taking his new job, he recused himself for up to a year from any deliberations involving nine companies that are regulated by the FDA and "where a reasonable person would question my impartiality in the matter." Among them are Eli Lilly, Roche and Proctor & Gamble, according to his Aug. 5 "Disqualification Statement Regarding Former Clients," a copy of which was obtained by Time. Gottlieb, though, insists that his role at the agency is limited to shaping broad policies, such as improving communication between the FDA, doctors and patients, and developing a strategy for dealing with pandemics of such diseases as flu, West Nile virus and sars. Would he ever be involved in determining whether an individual drug should be on the market? "Of course not," Gottlieb told Time. "Not only wouldn't I be involved in that ... But I would not be in a situation where I would be adjudicating the scientific or medical expertise of the (FDA) on a review matter. That's not my role. It's not my expertise. We defer to the career staff to make scientific and medical decisions."

Behind the scenes, however, Gottlieb has shown an interest in precisely those kinds of deliberations. One instance took place on Sept. 15, when the FDA decided to stop the trial of a drug for multiple sclerosis during which three people had developed an unusual disorder in which their bodies eliminated their blood platelets and one died of intracerebral bleeding as a result. In an e-mail obtained by Time, Gottlieb speculated that the complication might have been the result of the disease and not the drug. "Just seems like an overreaction to place a clinical hold" on the trial, he wrote. An FDA scientist rejected his analysis and replied that the complication "seems very clearly a drug-related event." Two days prior, when word broke that the FDA had sent a "non-approvable" letter to Pfizer Inc., formally rejecting its Oporia drug for osteoporosis, senior officials at the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research received copies of an e-mail from Gottlieb expressing his surprise that what he thought would be a routine approval had been turned down. Gottlieb asked for an explanation.

Gottlieb defends his e-mails, which were circulated widely at the FDA...

A big hint as to why Lester Crawford was forced to resign, perhaps. And more on how Safavian got the GSA job in the first place, as well as on the anonymous tip to the feds about the Safavian-Abramoff business deals that Safavian withheld from investigators. "In 2002, Abramoff invited Safavian on a weeklong golf outing to Scotland's famed St. Andrews course (as Abramoff had done with DeLay in 2000). Seven months after the trip, an anonymous call to a government hotline said lobbyists had picked up the tab for the jaunt. That wasn't true; Safavian paid $3,100 for the trip. But the government alleges that he lied when he repeatedly told investigators that Abramoff had no business dealings with the General Services Administration, where Safavian worked at the time." Something's rotten in Denmark, indeed.

Posted by Laura at 01:39 PM

FOIA'd documents obtained by the AP reveal the role of the secretive Navy Office of Special Projects in hiring a fleet of 33 aircraft used to render US-snatched terror suspects from Europe to Egypt for torture. Again, where is the Congressional oversight? Warner? Roberts? Rockefeller? McCain?

Don't miss Christopher Caldwell's incredible dispatch on Turkey turning inside out in the NYT magazine.

Newsweek on the Safavian-Abramoff backstory:

David Safavian wasn't expecting visitors. A relatively senior White House official—he oversaw federal contracts for the Office of Management and Budget—the 38-year-old Safavian had been working around the clock on Katrina relief. But at 7:30 a.m. on Sept. 19, a team of FBI agents showed up at his house and arrested him. The Feds wanted to know if Safavian would be willing to cooperate in an ongoing corruption probe surrounding his friend, lobbyist Jack Abramoff. According to Safavian's lawyer, no deal was struck. Safavian was then charged with lying to the FBI and obstructing an investigation...

Cool and cocky, Safavian had been one of Abramoff's lobbying partners. He joined the Bush administration in 2002, as chief of staff of the General Services Administration. According to the Feds' complaint, Abramoff invited Safavian to participate in a trip to Scotland that summer to play golf at the world-famous St. Andrews course. Total tab: $100,000. Safavian received prior approval from his agency's ethics officer. But the Feds say he had neglected to mention that Abramoff at the time was seeking to lease property from the GSA and had sought Safavian's help. When a whistle-blower's complaint led to an inquiry, Safavian falsely told the GSA inspector general, and later the FBI, that Abramoff had "no business" before the agency, the Feds charge.

Wonder who the whistleblower on Safavian was. Read on. Ney is as crooked as they come.

National Disgrace

US Army abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan is systematic, says West Point grad Army Captain Ian Fishback, the man behind the latest Human Rights Watch revelations, who is profiled today by the Los Angeles Times:

...This summer, after weighing the possible effects on his career, he stepped outside the Army's chain of command and telephoned the Human Rights Watch advocacy group. He later met with aides on the Senate Armed Services Committee. On Friday, he authorized them to make public his allegations, along with those of two sergeants, of widespread prisoner abuse they had witnessed when they served in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 as members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division.

Within hours, the Army announced it had opened a criminal investigation.

The review is the first major investigation by the military of widespread prisoner abuse outside the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and the first time such a review has targeted soldiers in the regular Army rather than the National Guardsmen and reservists in the Abu Ghraib case.

But for Fishback, whom friends describe as a deeply religious Christian and patriot who prays before each meal and can quote from the Constitution, the ordeal may be just beginning.

Army officials have temporarily furloughed him from Special Operations training school at Ft. Bragg, N.C., to make him available to the Criminal Investigation Command as it sorts through his allegations.

And sources close to the case said investigators are pressing him to identify the two sergeants who have backed up his accusations — something he does not want to do for the sake of all their careers.

"He's a very decent, fine young man," said Col. Dan Zupan, who teaches the rules of war at West Point and was one of Fishback's mentors. "He doesn't have an ax to grind. He's just in search of the truth."

At Human Rights Watch, Tom Malinowski, the group's Washington director, recalled escorting Fishback, his uniform adorned with two bronze stars, to meet with staff aides on the Senate Armed Services Committee two weeks ago.

For an hour they chatted behind closed doors in the committee's hearing room in the Russell building. Malinowski said Fishback answered all their questions unflinchingly.

"He answered them just as you would imagine an officer would — very factual, very unemotional," Malinowski said.

A former soldier close to Fishback, who asked not to be identified out of respect for Fishback's own decision not to talk to the media, said Fishback "really doesn't care what happens to him."

"He wants to stay in the Army. But he also says, 'This is bigger than me. I've got to do the right thing here.' "

Fishback maintains that he witnessed detainees being stripped, deprived of sleep and exposed to the elements at the behest of Army intelligence officers, who wanted the prisoners softened up for interrogation.

To back up his claims, two as-yet-unnamed sergeants came forward, telling Human Rights Watch they saw soldiers break a prisoner's leg, kick and punch others and force others to hold large water jugs for long periods of time or stack themselves into human pyramids.

Will our lame Congress continue to let the White House suppress a proper, timely investigation of this? The White House led by Cheney specifically ordered killed an amendment in a defense authorization bill draft in August that would have called for an independent commission to look into detainee treatment issues. Warner has to step up to the plate and defy those in his party who are going along with this disgrace. Here's the Human Rights Watch report based on testimony of three members of the 82nd Airborne. Here are excerpts from the lead 82nd Airborne witness's account:

...We got to the camp in August [2003] and set up...Shit started to go bad right away. On my very first guard shift for my first interrogation that I observed was the first time I saw a PUC pushed to the brink of a stroke or heart attack. At first I was surprised, like, this is what we are allowed to do? This is what we are allowed to get away with? I think the officers knew about it but didn’t want to hear about it. They didn’t want to know it even existed. But they had to.

On a normal day I was on shift in a PUC tent. When we got these guys we had them sandbagged and zip tied, meaning we had a sandbag on their heads and zip ties [plastic cuffs] on their hands... If I was told they were there sitting on IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices, homemade bombs] we would fuck them up, put them in stress positions or put them in a tent and withhold water.

The “Murderous Maniacs” was what they called us at our camp because they knew if they got caught by us and got detained by us before they went to Abu Ghraib then it would be hell to pay. They would be just, you know, you couldn’t even imagine. It was sort of like I told you when they came in it was like a game. You know, how far could you make this guy goes before he passes out or just collapses on you. From stress positions to keeping them up fucking two days straight, whatever. Deprive them of food water, whatever.

To “Fuck a PUC” means to beat him up. We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs, and stomach, pull them down, kick dirt on them. This happened every day.

To “smoke” someone is to put them in stress positions until they get muscle fatigue and pass out. That happened every day. Some days we would just get bored so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid. This was before Abu Ghraib but just like it. We did that for amusement.

Guard shifts were four hours. We would stress them at least in excess of twelve hours...We would withhold water for whole guard shifts. And the next guy would too....And we withheld food, giving them the bare minimum like crackers from MREs [Meals Ready to Eat, the military’s prepackaged food]. And sleep deprivation was a really big thing. Someone from [Military Intelligence] told us these guys don’t get no sleep. They were directed to get intel [intelligence] from them so we had to set the conditions by banging on their cages, crashing them into the cages, kicking them, kicking dirt, yelling. All that shit...

On their day off people would show up all the time. Everyone in camp knew if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC tent. In a way it was sport. The cooks were all US soldiers. One day a sergeant shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him to bend over and broke the guy’s leg with a mini Louisville Slugger that was a metal bat. He was the fucking cook. He shouldn’t be in with no PUCs. The PA came and said to keep him off the leg. Three days later they transported the PUC to Abu Ghraib. The Louisville Slugger [incident] happened around November 2003, certainly before Christmas.

People would just volunteer just to get their frustrations out. We had guys from all over the base just come to guard PUCs so they could fuck them up. Broken bones didn’t happen too often, maybe every other week. The PA would overlook it. I am sure they knew.

All three witnesses testify that it was their understanding that the US military was not following the Geneva Conventions, and this guided the abuse occurring by their units. HRW's conclusion:

...The abuses alleged in this report can be traced to the Bush administration’s decision to disregard the Geneva Conventions in the armed conflict in Afghanistan.

On February 7, 2002, President George W. Bush announced that the Geneva Conventions concerning the treatment of prisoners did not apply at all to al-Qaeda members or to Taliban soldiers because they did not qualify as members of the armed forces. He insisted that detainees would nonetheless be treated “humanely.” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told journalists that day: “The reality is the set of facts that exist today with the al-Qaeda and the Taliban were not necessarily the set of facts that were considered when the Geneva Conventions was fashioned.”

The accounts presented in this report are further evidence that this decision by the Bush administration was to have a profound influence on the treatment of detained persons in military operations in Iraq as well as in the “global war on terror.” In short, the refusal to apply the Geneva Conventions to Guantánamo Bay and Afghanistan was to undermine long-standing adherence by the U.S. armed forces to federal law and the laws of armed conflict concerning the proper treatment of prisoners....

Warner needs to get Rumsfeld in a stress position before the frigging Armed Services committee for several days to explain this stuff in live televised hearings. What in the world is he waiting for? Don't even Republicans in Congress feel some responsibility to exercise real oversight of the executive branch, or is their sole purpose to go along with and cover up for this behavior?

Update: More from Greg Djerejian.

National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley denies that Weldon gave him any Able Danger chart. Says he recalls being shown a counterterrorism link analysis chart by Weldon, but says Mohamed Atta was not on it:

National security adviser Stephen J. Hadley yesterday denied receiving a Defense Department chart that allegedly identified lead terrorist Mohamed Atta before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, dealing a blow to claims by a Republican congressman that have caused a political uproar in recent weeks.

Rep. Curt Weldon (Pa.) wrote in his book, "Countdown to Terror," earlier this year that he provided a chart to Hadley produced in 1999 by the Pentagon's "Able Danger" program, a secret effort to identify terrorists using publicly available data. Weldon said the chart identified Atta in connection with a Brooklyn, N.Y., terrorist cell.

That claim was the start of an expanding list of allegations related to Able Danger, that culminated Wednesday with a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee where angry lawmakers accused the Pentagon of a coverup for refusing to allow some witnesses to testify.

But a spokesman for Hadley, who has previously declined to comment on Weldon's claims, said yesterday that a search of National Security Council files produced no such documents identifying Atta and that Hadley was not given such a chart by Weldon.

"Mr. Hadley does not recall any chart bearing the name or photo of Mohamed Atta," said the spokesman, Frederick L. Jones II. "NSC staff reviewed the files of Mr. Hadley as well as of all NSC personnel" who might have received such a chart.

"That search has turned up no chart," he said.

Hadley does recall seeing a chart used as an example of "link analysis" -- the technique used by the Able Danger program -- as a counterterrorism tool, but is not sure whether it happened during a Sept. 25, 2001, meeting with Weldon or at another session, Jones said.

Weldon's chief of staff, Russ Caso, said that "the congressman sticks by his account" of the meeting, adding that it was understandable Hadley may have forgotten or misplaced the chart, given the demands of his job.

Link. And the chief Able Danger witness, LTC Anthony Shaffer, apparently had a pretty limited exposure to the project:

...Shaffer has conceded that he based his recollection on the memories of others, and the Pentagon says he had contact with the now defunct 18-month project for a total of 27 days. Shaffer's security clearance was formally revoked on Monday for a series of unrelated violations, including allegations that he exaggerated his past actions to obtain a service medal, according to his attorney, Mark S. Zaid.

And a hint that could account for the discrepancies in memories over whether Atta was indeed identified in any Able Danger products:

While Pentagon investigators never found such a chart, they did uncover two other interesting diagrams: One from 1999 included the name and photograph of Mohammed Atef -- not Atta -- a well-known al Qaeda lieutenant. Another included the photo of a convicted terrorist named Eyad Ismoil, an Egyptian who bears a resemblance to Atta -- and who, unlike Atta, was part of the Brooklyn cell tied to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford resigns, reader JR writes that CNBC is reporting. Still looking for something on the wires... Update: Here's MSNBC.

Stephen Vincent was just "appalled at how poorly the United States was fulfilling...its obligations" to Iraq:

...[His widow, Lisa Ramaci] is no peacenik, she said. And don't expect her to follow the Cindy Sheehan path, using a loved one's death in Iraq as a political banner. "Steven's odyssey was an extremely personal one," she said. "I would not want to capitalize on it."

BUT none of that alters for her - any more than it did for Mr. Vincent - a conviction that the war has been botched. For her husband, Ms. Ramaci said, "it was all about democracy, it was about women's rights, it was about freedom." What he found instead was that too many Iraqis lived in fear and in physical hardship.

"He was just appalled," she said, "at how poorly the United States was fulfilling what he saw as its obligations to the people of the country that it had liberated, which is what his terminology was."

Able Danger Hearings, Round 2! Senate Judiciary Committee, October 5th, 930am, Dirksen 226. The Pentagon changes its mind! Its employees can testify after all. From Arlen Specter's press staff:

In the initial hearing held on September 21, 2005, the Department of Defense refused to produce five key witnesses relating to the identification of 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta. The Department of Defense has now changed their position and will make the witnesses available in a public hearing. The Committee will focus on obtaining corroborating evidence as to what occurred with the pre-9/11 charts and information which were allegedly destroyed by order of DoD personnel.

Better late than never, right?

Abramoff promised to lobby Rove on behalf of off-shore tax shelter for Tyco, the WaPo reports:

Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff bragged two years ago that he was in contact with White House political aide Karl Rove on behalf of a large, Bermuda-based corporation that wanted to avoid incurring some taxes and continue receiving federal contracts, according to a written statement by President Bush's nominee to be deputy attorney general.

Timothy E. Flanigan, general counsel for conglomerate Tyco International Ltd., said in a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that Abramoff's lobbying firm initially boasted that Abramoff could help Tyco fend off a special liability tax because he "had good relationships with members of Congress," including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).

Abramoff later said "he had contact with Mr. Karl Rove" about the issue, according to the statement by Flanigan, who oversaw Tyco's dealings with Abramoff and his firm and received reports from Abramoff about progress in the lobbying campaign. Flanigan's statement is the latest indication that Abramoff promoted himself as having ready access to senior officials in the Bush administration.

A White House spokeswoman, Erin Healy, said Rove "has no recollection" of being contacted by Abramoff about Tyco's concerns.

What a tangled web! We already knew that Rove's personal assistant at the time, Susan Ralston, was formerly Abramoff's secretary. But this piece highlights a new absurdity: Tyco's general counsel, Timothy Flanigan, "who oversaw Tyco's dealings with Abramoff and his firm," is currently awaiting confirmation to be US deputy attorney general! Reports the Post:

...Flanigan, who is still at Tyco while awaiting a committee vote on his nomination [to be deputy attorney general], said in his Sept. 15 written statement that he would "consult with DOJ ethics officials . . . and apply normal recusal standards" about the Justice Department's investigation of Abramoff. Flanigan said he would recuse himself from any Abramoff investigation involving Tyco.

Is this an accident that the Bush administration picks nominees who are so intertwined with those being investigated? Or is Flanigan a whistleblower on Abramoff's corruption? The LA Times reported earlier this week:

...The nominee (Flanigan)...wrote that Tyco discovered after an internal investigation that payments it made to a consulting firm recommended by Abramoff, GrassRoots Interactive, had been diverted to "entities controlled by Mr. Abramoff and were not used in furtherance of lobbying efforts on behalf of Tyco."

He said Tyco had concluded that the diversion was "in violation of Mr. Abramoff's ethical, fiduciary and contractual obligations to Tyco." The payments totaled $1.5 million.

Saudi foreign minister warns, Iraq is falling apart.

Talk about pork. Saxby Chambliss is a disgrace:

A Bush administration proposal that sought to get food to starving people more rapidly and efficiently was rejected by Senate leaders yesterday, but the Canadian government announced that it was increasing the use of the same technique...

In contrast, under the food aid program run by the United States Agency for International Development, with a budget of more than $1 billion, all food must be bought in United States markets and most must be shipped on United States-flagged vessels. Shipping costs consume 40 percent to 50 percent of the food aid budget, and delivering the food typically takes four months.

The Bush administration asked that the aid agency be allowed to spend up to a quarter of its food aid budget in or near the poor countries afflicted by hunger crises. The Senate leadership declined to include such a provision in the agricultural appropriations bill passed yesterday. The House did the same in June.

Keith Williams, a spokesman for Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia and chairman of the Agriculture Committee, said yesterday that there were concerns that food aid bought abroad might not be delivered as reliably as aid bought in the United States, and that such purchases might drive up food prices and worsen scarcity in drought-stricken areas...

Bono answers some pretty interesting reader questions about ending poverty and fighting AIDS. Hey, the Wash Post has Holbrooke, maybe the NYT should offer Bono a monthly column or blog on these issues?

Rita weakens to a category 4 hurricane, as total gridlock makes for fourteen hour delays getting out of Houston. Will Bunch writes that Rita threatens to be Katrina Redux in Houston, with too few buses for the poor in the most flood prone sections of Houston. Colleagues in Houston of my better half write, there's no gas to be found:

Total gridlock is preventing us from leaving even if we wanted to. All gas stations in the area are dry. For now, we are preparing to ride out the storm here. If the roads begin to move tonight or early am, we may try and go. I just scored a generator from one of my neighbors who has a dual fuel tank truck (full) and can make it to New Mexico if he wants to.

Bloomberg on the widening Abramoff probe...

Last graph is also interesting. "Safavian was one of three former Abramoff associates who joined the Bush administration. Another was Patrick Pizzella, assistant secretary of labor for administration and management. The third was Susan Ralston, special assistant to White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove." We know about Ralston, we know about Safavian, what is Patrick Pizzella up to?

Left vs. Left. Democracy Arsenal's Lorelei Kelly has an as-usual very smart essay on the Saturday march, etc.

Evacuating Houston:

Conservative dismay and frustration at the failed Bush presidency: Andrew Sullivan, Dan Drezner, Robert Novak, Robert George...

"Iran makes North Korea look easy," the LA Times cites western negotiators:

...In Vienna, Iranian and Western diplomats shuttled from room to room, making their case to members of the IAEA board who were still uncommitted.

The European Union, backed by the United States, has circulated a five-page resolution that would send Iran's case to the Security Council because of its past failure to disclose its nuclear program, and its refusal to answer key questions from the nuclear agency...

Amid the diplomatic jostling, there was a sense that events were moving toward a decisive moment when the U.S. and its allies would succeed in reining in Iran's nuclear ambitions or Iran would declare that it was refusing to cooperate any further with the atomic agency...

For U.S. officials and their allies, Iran's oil, the lure of its hard currency to pay for development projects and Tehran's diplomatic skills make the nation a far more formidable diplomatic adversary than North Korea.

Commercial considerations are believed to have played some role in positions taken by Russia and China on Iran. Both countries worked closely with the United States on this week's agreement with North Korea, but by late Wednesday remained opposed to U.S. efforts on Iran...

The AP reports that the EU delays referring Iran to the Security Council:

Iran gained a reprieve in the standoff over its nuclear program Wednesday, with diplomats saying the European Union had decided to postpone its push to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council.

The decision to delay a vote until a later board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency instead of demanding one this week appeared driven by concerns about strong opposition. More than a dozen of the 35 IAEA board member nations meeting in Vienna -- including Security Council members Russia and China -- are against the idea.

Although a new EU draft motion doesn't mention Security Council sanctions, it still calls for reporting Iran to the council if it continues defying board demands, which include freezing activities related to uranium enrichment, said senior diplomats accredited to the IAEA.

The text is expected to be introduced at this week's IAEA meeting, but any vote on referral would come only at a future session -- at the earliest when the board meets again in November, said the diplomats, who demanded anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss EU strategy at the meeting...

Departing CIA #2 operations chief gives Porter Goss a big thumbs down, the WaPo reports:

...According to sources close to both men, Richer was blunt in his assessment of Goss's tenure and urged Goss, a Republican former congressman from Florida who once chaired the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, to communicate a vision for the agency and demonstrate leadership that senior career officials could rally behind.

"Rob laid at his doorstep, in a collegial way, that Goss is out of touch," said one officer whose identity is protected by law. "It fell on deaf ears," the officer said. Richer left the meeting angry and walked out of the Langley headquarters for perhaps the last time, several officers said...

(Thx to Eric Umansky for the heads up.)

Via Atrios, the tinfoil-ready Trifecta. One does wonder, reading all these news reports over the past few months, what in the hell kind of operation Abramoff was really running. Greed, sure, extreme greed, sure sure sure, but the kind of enormous infiltration/influence-racket operation he was running -- was it about more than the intersection of greed and the far-right conservative agenda? More than money and power? Or is that it? Abramoff's past ties to apartheid-era South African intelligence, Grover Norquists' own adventures in Africa, the ties to terrorist suspects, one wonders just what this whole operation was really about (beyond drowning government in a bathtub).

Hurricane Rita strengthens to Category 5, destination: Texas. Rita may be the exception that proves the rule that lightning doesn't strike the same place twice. Incredible.

Arianna Huffington's sources:

...So could Ambassador Bolton actually be a target of Pat Fitzgerald's investigation? When considering this question, it's important to keep in mind that he's never been subpoenaed or questioned by the Plamegate grand jury -- and, as a lawyer who does work for the New York Times put it: "The target of a grand jury investigation would not ordinarily be subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury."

Not being questioned or not being subpoenaed could also be a sign of something else, right? Granted, the temptation to use neoconservative standards of evidence to make a case against the neoconservatives is tempting, but doesn't that defy the liberal argument against the whole Iraq-did-9/11, Niger docs, Atta-in-Prague paradigm in the first place? Anyhow, does Bolton have, uh, diplomatic immunity?

Able Danger hearings are on C-Span 3. Ret. Major Erik Kleinsmith, now with Lockheed Martin, has just testifed that he personally does not remember seeing Mohamed Atta's name or photo on any Able Danger chart or document, but believes the five people "implicitly" who have testified that they saw his name (Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, Orion contractor JD Smith, Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott, Westphal, etc). He says he made the decision to delete the documents, based on his understanding of Army Regulations, and that he did so in May/June 2000.

Update: What am I missing? Mohamad Atta was not a "US Person" back in May 2000, was he? (9/11 commission report says he entered the US on June 3, 2000). Condoleezza Rice, however, was, and me thinks that had more to do with the closing of Able Danger, deletion of the documents, etc. Shaffer attorney Mark Zaid mentioned in his testimony today armed federal agents coming to Able Danger contractor's JD Smith's Orion Scientific office in May, June 2000 timeframe to seize their data. But his chart (unclassified) was in the trunk of his car. Too bad he threw it out, according to Zaid, in 2004.

What's with Specter's obsession with Posse Comitatus? That's not the act or law that guides the US military's decision to destroy US person information after 90 days!

Bill Arkin on Granite Shadow. His new Washington Post blog, Early Warning, is riveting.

Seymour Hersh speaking now at the new Steve Clemons' security conference, on webcast.

The WaPo reports on David Safavian's reluctance to disclose his lobbying clients before the Senate panel that confirmed him in 2004:

David H. Safavian, the Bush administration official arrested Monday, initially failed to disclose lobbying work he had done for several controversial foreign clients when he went before a Senate panel last year to be confirmed as chief of the White House's federal procurement office.

The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee held up Safavian's nomination for more than a year, in part because of lawmakers' concerns about lobbying work for two men later accused of links to suspected terrorist organizations, according to committee documents. Safavian did not disclose his firm's representation of the men until questioned in writing by the committee's staff, and initially failed to tell the panel he had registered as a foreign agent for two controversial African regimes...

Lobby disclosure forms originally filed by Safavian's firm, Janus-Merritt Strategies, show that it represented Alamoudi, a prominent Muslim activist, until 2001. Alamoudi has since been convicted and imprisoned for accepting money from the Libyan government as part of an alleged plot to assassinate the crown prince of Saudi Arabia...

Safavian told the committee in an April 16, 2004, letter that he and his firm never did any work for Alamoudi. He said the firm lobbied at Barzinji's request to gain U.S. support to free the former deputy prime minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, who was imprisoned for six years.

Safavian also told the committee that he had "overlooked" two other clients while preparing his initial submissions for the OMB position. He did not initially mention work as a registered foreign agent for Gabon, a country persistently rated by the United States as having a "poor" human rights record, or his work as a registered foreign agent for Pascal Lissouba, the former president of the Republic of Congo who has been tried in absentia for treason and embezzlement...

Basra police militants should be vetted out, the head of multi-national forces in Basra tells the BBC. All the British papers' top story is discussing options for the way forward.

So, did the Pentagon learn its public relations skills in Moscow? Back in the 70s? The DoD has indeed banned - in writing - its employees from testifying at the Senate Judiciary committee hearings today on Able Danger.

Hooman Majd on the Iranian delegation to NY's speech for "Iranian ears only":

...It occurred to me that Dr. Larijani knew that whatever he was saying this evening would land, translated by the C.I.A., on the desk of Condoleezza Rice the next morning, courtesy of a spy or two in the audience or a listening device in the room. The message was in crystal-clear Farsi: Iran was moving ahead with its nuclear plans, like it or not, go tell your masters.

At the end of his speech, his eyes scanned the room (was he looking for the spy?) before he made two direct references to the U.S.: first, that America would not and could not act militarily against Iran, as it is too busy with the messy “soup” it’s created in Iraq; and second, that the U.S. should know that the reason the Shiites of Iraq are tolerating, if not cooperating, with the occupiers is “because of Iran”—and only because of Iran. That was as close to “Bring it on” as it gets, and Dr. Larijani’s Cheshire-cat grin while basking in the applause was a telling sign of the confidence the Iranians felt at the end of their New York stay...

Further Times Select misery. OK, four phone calls later, I'm now an account-registered member of Times Select, but now when I click on a Times Select article, it says, you need to sign up to Times Select to read this! It doesn't register that I am already registered and logged in as a Times Select member.

Reader M has a similar problem:

Tuesday afternoon: I am still locked out of protected content and tried to email customer service about it, only to get repeated "server errors" from their system. Did you ever get in?

I hastily answered yes before finding that indeed, like M. I am locked out.

Update II: A reader solved my problem. Logout, log back in with your email address and password, ta da. I am comforted to know that Paul Krugman writes to say he had the same problem.

Update III: Ok, enough Times Select bashing (for today anyhow). The company needs the money. I actually don't resent the charging for content. (We were already paying for it). I resented that the roll-out was so full of bugs and difficult to use. Another victim.

FDA briefly appoints a veterinarian to heads its women's health initiative, then denies it.

The FEC sues Club for Growth, demanding it register as a PAC.

"No freedom without justice." RIP, Simon Wiesenthal.

The Vatican is shielding an indicted Croatian war criminal, Ante Gotovina in a Franciscan monastery, the BBC and Daily Telegraph report.

More on the Abramoff-Safavian case from the Washington Post. Reading this, it seems Safavian was effectively an Abramoff operative working as the top federal procurement officer in the Bush administration:

...On July 22, 2002, Abramoff sent Safavian an e-mail with a proposed draft letter that "at least two members of Congress" could send to GSA supporting the lease, according to the affidavit. "Does this work, or do you want it to be longer?" Abramoff asked.

Three days later, Safavian forwarded Abramoff an e-mail describing how an employee at OMB was resisting Abramoff's plan to lease space at the post office. "I suspect we'll end up having to bring some Hill pressure to bear on OMB," Safavian messaged Abramoff.

On the same day Safavian discussed the golf trip with the ethics office, he sent an e-mail to Abramoff from his home computer, advising him how to "lay out a case for this lease." Abramoff subsequently wrote in an e-mail to his wife and two officials of the school that Safavian had shown him a map of the property at his GSA office but had cautioned that Abramoff should not visit again "given my high profile politically."

Safavian nonetheless arranged a meeting for Abramoff's wife and business partner with officials at GSA on the day before he departed for Scotland aboard Abramoff's chartered jet. The trip cost more than $120,000 and was paid for mostly by a charity founded and run by Abramoff, the Capital Athletic Foundation.

When Safavian was questioned by The Washington Post about the trip last year, he said he paid his share of the expenses and took unpaid leave. "The trip was exclusively personal; I did no business there. . . . Jack is an old friend of mine," Safavian said.

But the complaint alleges that Safavian lied about his contacts with Abramoff on three occasions after his initial false pledge to the GSA ethics officer. The first was during a 2003 investigation by GSA's inspector general, who was responding to an anonymous tipster's hotline complaint; the second was in a March 17, 2005, letter to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs; and the third was during an FBI interview on May 26, 2005.

That's quite a negotiation.

The NYT on the Safavian arrest:

...Mr. Safavian had recently been working on developing contracting policies for the multibillion-dollar relief effort after Hurricane Katrina. The Justice Department did not reveal details of Mr. Safavian's arrest, including where it occurred. The department also did not say why the criminal charges were brought directly by prosecutors, rather than by the Washington grand jury investigating Mr. Abramoff. The Justice Department often bypasses a grand jury when a criminal case is brought together hurriedly or when there is fear that a defendant may try to flee.

The F.B.I. affidavit, which was dated Friday and made public on Monday, said that Mr. Safavian had provided extensive, secret assistance to Mr. Abramoff in 2002, when the lobbyist wanted help on behalf of a client to arrange a lease on favorable terms for the Old Post Office Building, which was controlled by the General Services Administration. The affidavit said the client was one of several Indian tribes that Mr. Abramoff has represented...

Let's just hope the nuclear arsenals aren't as easy to hack. (Thx to reader LL).

White House OMB official David Safavian arrested, for allegedly obstructing a GSA investigation and making false statements concerning his ties to Jack Abramoff:

...The affidavit filed in support of the criminal complaint alleges that from May 16, 2002 until January 10, 2004, Safavian served as Chief of Staff at the GSA. During that time he allegedly aided a Washington D.C. lobbyist in the lobbyist's attempts to acquire GSA-controlled property in and around Washington, D.C. In August 2002, this lobbyist allegedly took Safavian and others on a golf trip to Scotland.

The false statement and obstruction of the investigation charges relate to Safavian's statements to a GSA ethics officer and the GSA-OIG that the lobbyist had no business with GSA prior to the August 2002 golf trip. According to the affidavit, Safavian concealed the fact that the lobbyist had business before GSA prior to the August 2002 golf trip, and that Safavian was aiding the lobbyist in his attempts to do business with GSA

Since Nov. 29, 2004, Safavian has served as the administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy at the Office of Management and Budget...

(Thx to POGO for the heads up).

Update: Reader MP writes, "Just in case you've missed these items in your web searching on David Safavian":

...Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, plans to look at reorganization of the GSA and whether parts of the federal acquisition system needs modification. Safavian's wife, Jennifer Safavian, is chief counsel for oversight and investigations on the committee, and she has signed a recusal agreement that will keep her from looking into OMB and procurement matters.

You couldn't make this stuff up... More from the AP:

...David Safavian, then-chief of staff of the General Services Administration and a former Abramoff lobbying associate, concealed from federal investigators that Abramoff was seeking to do business with GSA when Safavian joined him on a golf trip to Scotland in 2002, according to an FBI affidavit and the officials.

At the time, FBI agent Jeffrey A. Reising said in the affidavit, a lobbyist _ identified separately as Abramoff _ had enlisted Safavian's help in trying to gain control of 40 acres of land at the Federal Research Center at White Oak in Silver Spring, Md., for a private high school that Abramoff helped establish and supported.

For his part, Safavian edited a letter the lobbyist was preparing to send to GSA, and arranged and attended a meeting involving a GSA official, the lobbyist's wife and others to discuss leasing the property, the affidavit said.

Abramoff told his wife to use her maiden name at the meeting because Safavian sought to play down Abramoff's involvement, the affidavit said, citing an e-mail from Abramoff.

Safavian was given clearance to go on the August 2002 golf trip after telling GSA's ethics officer that the lobbyist "has no business before GSA," the affidavit said.

Nine people, including Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, made the trip and played golf on the fabled Old Course at St. Andrews. Safavian paid $3,100 for the travel, "in the exercise of discretion," he said, as quoted in the affidavit. The total cost was more than $100,000, the affidavit said.

Safavian moved to the Office of Management and Budget last year, becoming the administration's top procurement official. He resigned that post, effective Friday, OMB spokesman Alex Conant said....

More from Knight-Ridder, which reports that it was Safavian, not Abramoff, who suggested that Abramoff's wife use her maiden name in her meeting with the GSA officials:

In a June 15, 2002, e-mail to a colleague, according to the affidavit, the lobbyist explained why he'd invited Safavian on the golfing trip: "Total business angle. He is new (chief of staff) of GSA."

From May 2002, when Safavian was the GSA's chief of staff, through the August golf trip, the affidavit says the lobbyist sought to acquire as a site for his high school some 40 acres at the Naval Surface Warfare Center-White Oak, which was controlled by GSA. The FBI affidavit also says the lobbyist also sought changes in regulations for another GSA-controlled building in Washington, the Old Post Office, in ways that could have benefited his Indian tribal clients seeking to lease and develop the building.

E-mail excerpts quoted in the affidavit suggest Safavian offered advice to the lobbyist on how to approach the GSA and lobby Congress to secure the land. He forwarded internal communications to the lobbyist, the affidavit says. And Safavian counseled the lobbyist's wife not to use her marital name during a meeting with GSA officials to discuss providing land for the school.

In a July 21, 2002, e-mail to a colleague, the lobbyist wrote that Safavian was "totally supportive" of the efforts to acquire the White Oak land for his school, the affidavit said.

At the White House budget office, spokesman Alex Conant said that Safavian had resigned Friday and the office was cooperating in the investigation...

Safavian, who once was an Abramoff colleague at a Washington law firm, was tapped by President Bush for the White House budget post in November 2003, and was confirmed by the Senate nearly a year later.

Wonder who recommended Safavian to the White House for the job in the first place? Abramoff recommend it to Rove? Norquist?

Horrible news. An Iraqi NYT stringer has been killed in Basra, the Times reports:

An Iraqi journalist and photographer working for The New York Times in Basra was found dead early this morning in Basra after being abducted from his home by a group of armed men wearing masks and claiming to be police officers, relatives said.

The journalist, Fakher Haider, 38, was found with his hands bound and a bag over his head in a deserted area on the outskirts of Basra, hours after being taken from his house. A relative who viewed his body in the city morgue said he had at least one bullet hole in his head and bruises on his back as if he had been beaten.

Mr. Haider had worked for The Times since April 2003 and had recently reported on the growing friction and violence among Basra's rival Shiite militias, which are widely believed to have infiltrated the police...

Update: Increasing trouble in Basra, the BBC reports.

Sharon Weinberger on Psy Ops, Inc. I think some of those prohibitions have been thrown to the wind at the Pentagon at least as they concerned an OSD contract that stretched for months beyond the Congressionally ordered death of the office of strategic influence.

The NYT Select thing is a total catastrophe. We have been subscribers to the print edition of the NYT for a hundred years. But that paper subscription has no correlation to a login and password that you could use to login to Times Select. (Anyone else have the problem of a couple household with about 12 email addresses between you over the years? Who knows what one we subscribed with. Besides, we subscribed over the phone, or however it was done back in the early 90s. This must be the case for a healthy percent of Times' subscribers!) Have been on the phone with the NYT for 20 minutes who are overloaded with calls of people similarly frustrated. All I can say is, for this amount of frustration, it is tempting to cancel one's subscription to the NYT altogether. Update: And after 25 minutes on hold, the line went dead. Do I have to call back to cancel the subscription or can I do it online? Update II: I have an idea for the Times. How 'bout making the print-subscriber login for Times Select based on your subscription phone number? Since that is how you notify them about an undelivered paper, etc.?

Update III: Readers write in with their complaints:

...OK- UNCLE! It acknowledges that I'm a Times Select member when I try to sign in, but when I try to actually read protected content it doesn't recognize that I already have the service and offers no option other than signing up for the service and no way back to the content. Today seems to be all about signing up, but not actually using?

And

I'm having the same problem. The account is not accepting the fact that I am a home delivery subscriber -- it doesn't recognize the credit card number I am providing.

Apart from the initial logistics, this is a dumb move by the NY Times. Readership and corresponding influence of columns by Paul Krugman, David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, and others are going to plummet. How are blogs like yours going to be able to link to these articles? Even though the Wall Street Journal is an excellent newspaper, its articles are not so much in the daily "buzz" because you need to pay to read them.

Once again, the NY Times demonstrates how it just doesn't get it.

And

Short perspective on Times Select. I got the blandishment and spent about a half hour screwing around with the website before I gave up to battle another day. I didn't call, thank God or else I would have apparently had my brain eaten by these folks.

And Soccer Dad writes with a scheme for getting around it altogether.

Iraq body counts:

...After generally rejecting body counts as standards of success in the Iraq war, the U.S. military last week embraced them -- just as it did during the Vietnam War. As the carnage grew in Baghdad, U.S. officials produced charts showing the number of suspects killed or detained in offensives in the west...

On Iran, it seems the real story is, the fact that the EU-3 has so come 'round to the US position. Writes a well informed reader who worked these issues on the Hill:

On Iran, the EU-3 are as fed up with Tehran's antics as the U.S. This is not a unilateral Washington push to refer Iran to the UNSC -- London and Paris are definitely on board, with Berlin as a weaker supporter. A powerful op-ed in last week's NY Times by Pierre Goldschmidt, the retired IAEA official in charge of the Iran account for the past three years, arguing that enough is enough and it is time to refer Iran to the UNSC.

We'll see what happens this week. With enough pressure, India will likely accede to a referral request, so the ball is in the court of China and Russia. The question still remains -- if you get to the UNSC, then what? But Tehran is not exactly giving the international community much flexibility here.

One billion dollars (plus) in US-taxpayer funded money reportedly stolen from the Iraqi defense ministry. And another $500,000 to $600,000 in loose change stolen from the transport, electricity, and other ministries:

...Most of the money was supposedly spent buying arms from Poland and Pakistan. The contracts were peculiar in four ways. According to Mr Allawi, they were awarded without bidding, and were signed with a Baghdad-based company, and not directly with the foreign supplier. The money was paid up front, and, surprisingly for Iraq, it was paid at great speed out of the ministry's account with the Central Bank. Military equipment purchased in Poland included 28-year-old Soviet-made helicopters....

Among those whom the US promoted was a man who was previously a small businessman in London before the war, called Hazem Shaalan, who became Defence Minister.

Mr Shalaan says that Paul Bremer, then US viceroy in Iraq, signed off the appointment of Ziyad Cattan as the defence ministry's procurement chief. Mr Cattan, of joint Polish-Iraqi nationality, spent 27 years in Europe, returning to Iraq two days before the war in 2003. He was hired by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority and became a district councillor before moving to the defence ministry.

For eight months the ministry spent money without restraint. Contracts worth more than $5m should have been reviewed by a cabinet committee, but Mr Shalaan asked for and received from the cabinet an exemption for the defence ministry. Missions abroad to acquire arms were generally led by Mr Cattan. Contracts for large sums were short scribbles on a single piece of paper. Auditors have had difficulty working out with whom Iraq has a contract in Pakistan.

Authorities in Baghdad have issued an arrest warrant for Mr Cattan. Neither he nor Mr Shalaan, both believed to be in Jordan, could be reached for further comment.

More on Cattan here from this brief from the Polish embassy:

Iraq interested in Polish help in tank modernisation. Warsaw, Oct. 29: Cooperation between Poland and Iraq envisages the modernisation of T-55 and T-72 tanks and this will be one of the most important contracts. In two weeks a Polish delegation will go to Iraq to examine the tanks. The value of the contract is still being negotiated, according to representatives of the Iraqi defence ministry. During a visit to Poland the Iraqi delegation said that modernisation would probably cover 200 tanks and that the country still considers a possible involvement of Ukraine in the task. Ziyad Cattan from the Iraqi delegation has said that the value of contracts reached with Poland up till now exceeds 50 million USD and that three other contracts worth 20 million USD are being drafted. The signed contracts cover deliveries of ammunition and optical equipment. Iraq has considered the purchase from Poland of choppers for the transport of troops and VIPs as well as for medical evacuation. A group of Iraqi experts will come to Poland at the beginning of November. The biggest partner of the Iraqi defence ministry is Bumar group that has signed some arms contracts and plans to open an Ursus tractor factory in the more peaceful, northern part of Iraq.

And under the spelling Ziad Kattan, several more entries. Cattan/Kattan and the Defense Ministry rip-off recall the the cast of characters suspected in the killing of US defense contractor Dale Stoffel.

Via Atrios.

Update: More from Juan Cole and Nadezhda.

Update II: As Juan and others note, Knight Ridder's Hannah Allam has already written the ground-breaking piece on Iraqi Defense Ministry swindling and the strange case of Ziad Cattan:

Former Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan has told U.S. and Iraqi officials that Bremer personally requested that Ziad Cattan - the alleged ringleader of the corruption and the ministry's former procurement chief - stay in his job after sovereignty was transferred last summer.

Bremer said this week, through his former CPA spokesman Dan Senor, that he didn't know Cattan. "At least to his knowledge, he'd never met him," Senor said.

Cattan, a dual Polish-Iraqi national, was fired in May and a warrant was issued for his arrest in connection with "the abuse of an employer's funds." He fled Baghdad and hasn't returned to answer the charges...

Even as hints of a corruption scandal emerged last spring, Cattan told others in the ministry that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld personally had assured his job and no Iraqi had the power to remove him, al Dulaimi said. Instead of fleeing the investigation closing in on him, Cattan lobbied for even more authority. He wanted to become defense minister, a seat reserved for a Sunni Arab by al Jaafari's Shiite-dominated government, which was elected last January.

Cattan, a Sunni, contacted the Iraqi National Dialogue Committee, the main Sunni faction negotiating with al-Jaafari on Cabinet appointments, and offered members $10 million cash to nominate him as their candidate for the post, said Mohammed al-Daini and two other committee members who heard Cattan's proposal. The group refused, and al-Jaafari handed the post to al-Dulaimi, a British-educated sociologist who isn't implicated in the scandal.

In several e-mail messages last month, Cattan gave Knight Ridder photos and documents purporting to show his close working relationship with U.S. officials and his repeated requests for their help in streamlining the contracting process. He denied wrongdoing, but acknowledged that some Western officials who are accustomed to peacetime standards might take exception to the aggressive weapons procurement he conducted to quickly arm an Iraqi force against the insurgency.

Shouldn't there be Senate and House armed services committee hearings that require Bremer, Cattan and others to testify about the missing one to two billion dollars? And what motivated Cattan's appointment?

Update III: Reading a bunch of reports on Cattan from Nexis, it seems one purpose he served was to essentially bribe Poland into keeping troops in Iraq by furnishing Polish arms manufacturers with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts from the Iraqi MoD. This from the AP January 21 2005:

Iraqi Deputy Defense Minister Ziad Cattan appealed to Poland on Friday to keep troops in Iraq for as long as possible.

Poland contributed combat troops to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and currently has 2,400 troops serving in the international security force it leads, but plans on reducing the number to 1,700 after Iraqi elections at the end of the month.

"We ask you that your troops stay in our country for as long as possible and that you do not reduce your contingent," Cattan said at a news conference after signing a US$20 million (US$15.43 million) weapons contract with state-owned arms company Bumar PHZ. "Your men are highly honored in our country, they understand our customs and our needs - we need them there."

He dismissed charges in a recent British Museum report that said Polish and U.S. troops using the area around the ancient city of Babylon had damaged archaeological sites.

"The Polish and the American troops actually helped us in preserving those precious art pieces," he said.

Bumar has many contracts with the Iraqi army, which total some US$320 million (US$247 million).

Why do none of these stories mention he has dual Polish-Iraqi citizenship?

A reader J writes, "Iran is also going to explode in the news, with this week's IAEA BOG meeting and the lack of any conciliatory proposals in the Iranian President's speech yesterday." And the WaPo's Dafna Linzer reports tonight that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's conspiracy-laden speech at the UN did what US diplomacy could not: convince other countries Iran may intend to build atomic weapons.

Schroeder out?

Fareed Zakaria:

...Bush will go down in history as the most fiscally irresponsible chief executive in American history. Since 2001, government spending has gone up from $1.86 trillion to $2.48 trillion, a 33 percent rise in four years! Defense and Homeland Security are not the only culprits. Domestic spending is actually up 36 percent in the same period. These figures come from the libertarian Cato Institute's excellent report "The Grand Old Spending Party," which explains that "throughout the past 40 years, most presidents have cut or restrained lower-priority spending to make room for higher-priority spending. What is driving George W. Bush's budget bloat is a reversal of that trend." To govern is to choose. And Bush has decided not to choose. He wants guns and butter and tax cuts.

People wonder whether we can afford Iraq and Katrina. The answer is, easily. What we can't afford simultaneously is $1.4 trillion in tax cuts and more than $1 trillion in new entitlement spending over the next 10 years...

Today's Republicans believe in pork, but they don't believe in government. So we have the largest government in history but one that is weak and dysfunctional. Public spending is a cynical game of buying votes or campaign contributions, an utterly corrupt process run by lobbyists and special interests with no concern for the national interest...

Hurricane Katrina is a wake-up call. It is time to get serious. We need to secure the homeland, fight terrorism and have an effective foreign policy to advance our interests and our ideals. We also need a world-class education system, a great infrastructure and advancement in science and technology.

For all its virtues, the private sector cannot accomplish all this. Wal-Mart and Federal Express cannot devise a national energy policy for the United States. For that and for much else, we need government. We already pay for it. Can somebody help us get our money's worth?

Amen.

Newsweek on Haley Barbour's "master class in milking the federal bureaucracy."

Frank Rich:

...The worst storm in our history proved perfect for exposing this president because in one big blast it illuminated all his failings: the rampant cronyism, the empty sloganeering of "compassionate conservatism," the lack of concern for the "underprivileged" his mother condescended to at the Astrodome, the reckless lack of planning for all government operations except tax cuts, the use of spin and photo-ops to camouflage failure and to substitute for action...

Link.

Via Praktike, the NYT on US troubles in persuading other countries to get on board with sanctioning Iran:

...The Iranian situation has been at an impasse for weeks, as the United States and its European partners have sent envoys to countries around the world to rally support for a vote at the International Atomic Energy Agency's board meeting next week to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council for possible condemnation or sanctions.

But India and Russia have balked, despite personal appeals by President Bush. At the White House on Friday, President Vladimir V. Putin again expressed misgivings about rushing things with Iran...

In light of these and other rebuffs, European and American diplomats said Friday that they thought they had about 20 votes out of 35 on the nuclear agency's board to refer Iran to the Security Council. While that would be enough to accomplish the goal, they were not sure whether to proceed with such a slim majority. "At this point our options are still open," the senior State Department official said. Echoing European officials, he said that a final decision would be made after a speech on Saturday by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran at the United Nations, where he is expected to offer his own proposals for breaking the impasse with the West.

The tactical concern among Americans and Europeans is that, in the absence of a broad consensus, a vote sending Iran to the Security Council could embarrass the West, guarantee that the Council would not act quickly and possibly embolden the Iranians themselves.

The Huffington Post's spies in Aspen submit Rove off the record. Meantime, more interetsing, they caught the US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad predicting the US would enter Syria to "combat insurgents there."

Here's Reuters on a new CSIS/Anthony Cordesman study on the demographics of Iraq's insurgents:

Hundreds of Saudi fighters who joined the insurgency in Iraq showed few signs of militancy before the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein, according to a detailed study based on Saudi intelligence reports.

The study by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), obtained by Reuters on Sunday, also said Saudis made up just 350 of the 3,000-strong foreign insurgents in Iraq -- fewer than many officials have assumed.

"Analysts and government officials in the U.S. and Iraq have overstated the size of the foreign element in the Iraqi insurgency, especially that of the Saudi contingent," it said.

Non-Iraqi militants made up less than 10 percent of the insurgents' ranks -- perhaps even half that -- the study said...

The study estimated the largest foreign contingent was made up of 600 Algerian fighters. It said about 550 Syrians, 500 Yemenis, 450 Sudanese, 400 Egyptians, 350 Saudis, and 150 fighters from other countries had crossed into Iraq to fight.

The take-away: 90% of Iraq's insurgents are Iraqi, which differs significantly from what I was told by a senior Republican Hill staffer the other day, that the insurgents are mostly foreign fighters.

Writing in the Boston Globe "Ideas" section, Geoffrey Wheatcroft remembers when Israel was the darling of the European left, France gave Israel nuclear technology, and US-Israeli relations were chillier:

...But the problems that Israelis now fight over date less from the kingdom of David, or from the scissions of the 1920s, than from the Six Days' War of 1967. And the truly remarkable turnabout in regard to Israel by both America and Europe can also be dated to the 1960s.

What critics of Israel still don't recognize is that she was not fighting a deliberate war of territorial conquest. To the contrary, we now know that Moshe Dayan, the military hero of the war, recalled to the colors by popular acclaim, warned against the danger of going into Gaza, with its teeming Palestinian population. And Levi Eshkol, the prime minister and political hero, told his cabinet colleagues while the fighting raged, ''Even if we take the West Bank and the Old City, we will eventually be forced to leave them."

Having won them, Israel has found it very hard to leave them, and has certainly not been ''forced to," least of all by Washington. And here is the strangest change of all, in the respective attitudes to Israel of America and Europe. Rather like the Hollywood producer who said he was so old he could remember Doris Day before she was a virgin, some of us are old enough to remember the days when Israel was not only politically close to Europe but revered there, especially on the liberal left. For nearly 20 years after the creation of Israel in 1948, one of her closest allies was France, the first country to furnish her with nuclear technology as well as jet fighters.

In the 1956 Suez adventure, Israel conspired with the British and French governments against Colonel Nasser of Egypt. Their caper miscarried in any case, but the conspirators had quite reckoned without Washington, which pulled the rug from under them. The Eisenhower administration was engaged in an all-consuming Cold War with Russia, and saw the Middle East as a tiresome distraction from that greater conflict.

What seems more extraordinary today is that the White House then was not so much neutral as thoroughly cold toward Israel. President Dwight Eisenhower told the State Department to let the Israelis know that he would conduct his policy as if there were no Jewish voters in America, and John Foster Dulles, his Secretary of State, told Senator William Knowland that he was going to try to have ''a policy not approved by the Jews," however hard that was.

Of course Israel was entitled to pursue her own interests, said Dulles, but those were not necessarily America's, and ''We cannot have our policies made in Jerusalem." If that had been said publicly at the time it would have been adduced-maybe it still will be-to prove their anti-Semitism, although there is no evidence to suggest that Ike or Dulles harbored such prejudice. (Harry Truman, who recognized Israel against the wishes of the State Department, and Richard Nixon, who gave Israel unconditional support, really were anti-Semitic in private.)

Quite apart from the Suez conspiracy that bound Israel with London and Paris, there has been a dramatic turnaround in public opinion. Fifty years ago Israel was revered by the European left as a model social democracy, and was indeed the most statist political economy outside the eastern bloc. In those days, David Ben-Gurion could be profiled in a leftist British magazine like the New Statesman in well-nigh hero-worshipping tones, with nothing said about the Palestinians.

The ''diplomatic revolution," or change of partners, began in 1961 with the inauguration of John Kennedy, who believed that he owed his election to Jewish voters, and asked Ben-Gurion-to the latter's irritation-what he could do for the Jews in return. And yet even as Washington drew closer to Israel, the politics were startlingly different from today.

Last year, as part of the elaborate maneuvers that made Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza possible, the Republican administration of President Bush gave Sharon a letter of approval. In effect it conceded-against previous American policy-that in any final settlement there would be no going back to the pre-1967 borders, which would, by implication, be heavily revised in Israel's favor to incorporate many of the West Bank settlements; and that the Palestinians could forget about any ''right of return" for those expelled in 1948 or their descendants.

And yet in the 1950s-one writes this almost with disbelief-the Republican administration of President Eisenhower regularly rebuked Israel for reprisal raids (sometimes led by the young Arik Sharon), demanded border concessions-at Israel's expense, that is, from the pre-1967 frontier-and took very seriously the rights of those 1948 refugees.

Even under Kennedy, when the United States had turned towards Israel and supplied her with Hawk missiles, Washington still kept up pressure on the question of refugees...

Update: And The Forward reports that the Bush administration is working to bolster Sharon against Netanyahu.

Iraq's spy problems, from the LAT's Borzou Daragahi:

...That's what made Muslah such a valuable intelligence asset. He was quite a catch: a respected member of the Dulaimi tribe, which is thought to be spearheading the insurgency, as well as a man with ties to a shadowy insurgent group called Asadullah, or the Lions of God.

Another source had said he was an open-minded young man who might be willing to betray his clan and the insurgents for the new Iraq. Through intermediaries, Kamal invited Muslah to his offices.

Muslah was broad-shouldered and tall, a tough guy in his late 20s who already had two wives. Kamal appealed to his manhood.

"Look at Saddam," Kamal said with contempt. "Saddam was a coward. Even his sons were more honorable than him. At least they fought and died."

Kamal's aims were obvious; Muslah's were murkier. Perhaps he wanted to believe there was a place for him in the new Iraq.

"When we are stable and able to build our security forces, you'll have a role in fighting real terrorists," Kamal told him. "One day Americans will leave and we will have a country to run."

Muslah began to give in. He started coming through with small tips, on little notes signed with his code name.

But days after the beheading of an American contractor, Muslah came up with a big one — the names and locations of the members of the insurgent cell responsible. What's more, he told Kamal when to grab them all at once.

The operation was doomed almost from the start. Iraqi forces weren't up to the task, and had to call U.S. troops for help. The Americans moved in too quickly.

"We studied this information very well," Kamal recalled. "I told them to attack the place at a specific time because at the time all the terrorist cells would be there. They went and they didn't find the whole group."

Those who escaped suspected an informant in their midst. Days later, they caught up with Muslah on the road to Taji, north of Baghdad, and beheaded him.

"We consider Muslah a martyr," Kamal said in an interview on the seventh floor of the Interior Ministry's mammoth headquarters.

"Though he was a Baathist, he was loyal to us," he said wistfully. "May God have mercy on him. He understood."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Americans also have struggled to solve Iraq's intelligence puzzle. The U.S. military's efforts, however, have been anything but clandestine.

Near Baqubah recently, a battalion attached to the 42nd Infantry Division rumbled into a rural village in armored Humvees to check on reports that three vans had dropped off insurgents there a few days earlier.

The soldiers set up a cordon around the town square in As Sadah and began handing out candy to children, as intelligence officers quizzed shopkeepers about the insurgents.

"There is no insurgency," 30-year-old Ali Iskander told one soldier outside a hut that passes as the hardware store.

"Well, tell us if you see anything," the unit's frustrated intelligence officer said to Iskander and villagers who had gathered.

After less than 20 minutes, the Americans rolled out.

"No one is going to rat out their neighbor in front of the whole village," said the intelligence officer, who asked that his name not be published because of the sensitive nature of his work.

The U.S. military has proved adept, however, at the technology of intelligence. Using computer overlays and databases, for example, the military figured out the patterns insurgents were using for conducting car bombing operations. Locations of known insurgent cells — where their members lived and where they worked — were overlaid on maps showing car bombs and reports of suspicious activity.

They discovered that car bombs afflicting Baghdad were likely being assembled within six miles of where they were being detonated. They came up with 12 hot spots, which they flooded with Iraqi and U.S. soldiers. As a result, U.S. military officials say, the number of car bombings in the capital dropped by half from May to June.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have also accused Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and especially Iran of sending a flood of intelligence assets into Iraq, and of launching clandestine offensives. Iraqis say they're too overwhelmed fighting the insurgency to fend off those efforts...

Iraq Reconstruction Fiasco

Compliments of the Bush administration:

The United States has poured more than $200 million into reconstruction projects in this city, part of the $10 billion it has spent to rebuild Iraq. Najaf is widely cited by the military as one of the success stories in that effort, but American officers involved in the rebuilding say that reconstruction projects here, as elsewhere in the country, are hobbled by poor planning, corrupt contractors and a lack of continuity among the rotating coalition officers charged with overseeing the spending...

But in a series of interviews, American military officers and Iraqi officials involved in the reconstruction described a pattern of failures and frustrations that Army officers who have worked in other parts of Iraq say are routine. Residents complain that the many of the city's critical needs remain unfulfilled and the Army concedes that many projects it has financed are far behind schedule. Officers with the American military say that corruption and poor oversight are largely to blame...

But American officers say there is almost no oversight after a contractor is given the job. The Army pays small Iraqi contractors in installments - 10 percent at the outset, 40 percent when the work is half done, 40 percent on completion and the final 10 percent after fixing problems identified in a final inspection. On larger projects, contractors are paid by the month, regardless of how much work is actually done.

Penalty clauses for missing deadlines are rare, and some contractors drag out their projects for months, officers say, then demand more money and threaten to walk away if it is not forthcoming...

Part of the problem is that much of the money is spent before any work is done. The International Monetary Fund reported recently that a third to half of the money paid to foreign contractors is spent on security and insurance. Importing equipment also eats up cash. Major Smith said the hospital's new boiler, for example, was being shipped from the United States.

At the maternity hospital across town, Dr. Yassin could hardly disguise her mounting frustration. She said the contractor, the Parsons Corporation, had repaired the hospital's reverse osmosis water purification equipment, but that little else had been accomplished in the five months since the renovation began.

Only one of the hospital's four elevators is working, and that is the one Parsons left in operation while the others were supposedly being repaired, she said, adding that no one is working on the elevators now. Major Smith said Parsons had completed the work but that it was so shoddy the Army would not certify the elevators for use. He said the company had since agreed to bring in elevator specialists to redo the job.

Parsons was also supposed to fix the hospital's incinerators, but it completed the work without hooking up gas lines to fuel them, Dr. Yassin said.

A Parsons spokesman in California said that all work on the hospital would be completed in November and blamed insurgent activity in the area for the delays. The hospital director, though, said that there had never been any fighting around the site, and that Najaf had been free of major violence for more than a year.

Cavalry Was Ready, Waiting....and Waiting for Bush's Orders

Knight-Ridder:

Two days after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, President Bush went on national television to announce a massive federal rescue and relief effort.

But orders to move didn't reach key active military units for another three days.

Once they received them, it took just eight hours for 3,600 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C., to be on the ground in Louisiana and Mississippi with vital search-and-rescue helicopters...

You don't need martial law when you have a commander in chief who's doing his job. (Via Kevin Drum).

The latest on Able Danger, from Fox News. "Sources: Pentagon Wants 'Able Danger' Hearings Closed." Frankly, I think the Pentagon is making a PR mistake here, giving the appearance that it has something to hide, when there's very little about the Able Danger controversy at this point that wouldn't be smoothed out if they just released what they know and be done with it.

More Bush speech reaction from Dan Froomkin.

Katrina Contracts Oversight

The Project on Government Oversight is on it. POGO's rep writes, "Wanted to let you know we've launched several pages to help reporters and the public track Katrina spending, links are below. Next week we will be uploading more, keep an eye on our site at http://www.pogo.org...:"

LIVE KATRINA INFO CENTER LINKS

Katrina Contracts Awarded:
http://pogo.org/p/contracts/katrina/katrinacontracts.html

Government Purchase Card Spending:
http://pogo.org/p/contracts/katrina/katrinaPurchaseCards.html

Check out the site here.

I hear Rep. Peter King (R-NY) has been selected as the new chair of the House Homeland Security committee. Here's the GCN article on King's selection.

Huffington Post's Hooman Majd on breakfast with Ahmadinejad. More on the US sharing Iran intelligence to try to persuade Russia, China and India to get on board with referring Iran in noncompliance with the NPT to the UN. (Thx to DW and LZ).

More on Ahmadinejad's controversial appearance in NY from Mark Goldberg.

Martial Law for Dummies

Military analyst Bill Arkin warns that Bush's call last night that "...a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces -- the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice" is dangerous:

...The President’s plan is both wrong-headed and dangerous.

I for one don't want to live in a society where "a moment’s notice" justifies military action that either preempts or usurps civil authority.

What is more, nothing about what happened in New Orleans justifies such a radical move to give the military what bureaucrats call "a lead role" in responding to emergencies.

In the wake of Katrina, the military was standing by awaiting orders, as it should be. The White House and the federal government were for their part either on vacation or out to lunch. The problem wasn’t the lack of resources available. It was leadership, decisiveness, foresight. The problem was commanding and mobilizing the resources, civil and military.

The President's plan is also wrong-headed in that it lets the Department of Homeland Security off the hook. If such a department hadn't been set up after 9/11, I might reluctantly conclude that the military is the only institution that could do the job in such a large scale catastrophe.

But it does exist, and it needs to be held accountable and redirected to safeguard the American people and respond to emergencies. A well run FEMA with the right marching orders (people first, fabulous weapons of mass destruction Hollywood scenarios as time permits) can quickly call upon military resources, as it could have in Katrina....

Who calls for earlier resort to martial law as a policy just because he and his aides couldn't get their derrieres back to Washington from month long vacations? He can't be bothered to govern, he can't hire professional staff for his agencies, and now he wants to resort to martial law at the first sign of crisis? That's a very dangerous way to compensate for lack of competence, lack of discipline, lack of leadership. Go read.

Update: Democracy Arsenal's Heather Hurlburt reminds us of that old saying, "When you've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

Bush speech:

I propose the creation of a Gulf opportunity zone. Within this zone we should provide immediate incentives for investment, tax relief for small businesses, and loan guarantees for businesses, including minority owned businesses.

I propose the creation of worker recovery accounts. Under this plan the federal government would provide accounts of up to $5,000 which these evacuees could draw upon while looking for a job, and for childcare.

I propose an Urban homesteading act, which would identify property owned by the federal govenrment, and provide housing free of charge determined by a lottery.

It is the armies of compassion that give our reconstruction effort its humanity...

(Gave the FEMA telephone number on the airwaves.)

Wants to know all the facts about government response to Hurricane Katrina....

Yet the system was not well coordinated and was overwhelmed in the first few days. It is now clear that a challenge of this level requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces... Four years after September 11th, Americans have every right to expect a more effective response. I as president am responsible for the problem and the solution. So I have ordered every cabinet secretary to engage in a comprehensive review of the Katrina response. Congress has an important oversight role....

Tim Russert reaction - The president demonstrated he understands the magnitude of this crisis. But we are three weeks into this. One speech alone will not solve his political problems. Three out of four Americans do not believe their government is prepared to protect them in a time of crisis. This is not a quick fix...

David Gregory - We are just not used to this president admitting mistakes...

Update: Here's the transcript.

Update II: More speech reaction here.

OK, after listening to this NPR story tonight, I'm now convinced that the legendary Rev. Eugene Rivers is the source of the "Rwanda" and the "grab some black people who look like they might be preachers" anonymous quotes. But it's just a guess.

Reader 'Rorschach' writes, "I have volunteered down at Austin's convention center, where some thousands of evacuees have been living, but my wife has done more due to work schedules. Her account of what it's like is a must-read, in my humble opinion."

I love Meghan O'Rourke's account of reading Faulkner with the Oprah book club:

...What I liked best was that people were busy addressing something no one talks about much these days: the actual experience of reading, the nuts and bolts of it. A typical posting, under the heading "That's Faulkner For Ya," offered encouragement to a struggling fellow member:

I think Benjy's chapter [the first] is the hardest to read through since his is not only subjective but his thought processes are REALLY random. Once you get past this and Quentin's, it shouldn't be that hard. Hang in there, it's a true masterpiece! Oh, and try reading the first 2 chapters again after you've read it through.

To which another reader responded:

Actually, Benjy's jumps aren't random. There is usually a trigger, and looking for the trigger can help you make sense of it. For example, the first transition is triggered by Luster noting Benjy is always "snagging on that nail." This triggers a memory of when Caddy "uncaught" Benjy when he was little.

This was helpful. I was hooked. From then on, whenever I got disgruntled and confused, I'd scan the message boards quickly and find a wise soul. [...]

And Faulkner's ideology is as sui generis as his methodology, which makes Oprah's decision to read him at once bold and old-fashioned. During his lifetime, he advocated greater freedom for blacks, a position that put him at odds with his fellow white Southerners. (They labeled him a Communist sympathizer.) Yet his later positions were far too moderate for liberals and northerners who advocated desegregation, and he has come in for censure from Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, and others, because he cautioned civil rights activists to "go slow" lest they unbalance an "emotional people" (i.e., white Southerners). Unfazed, Oprah was plainly drawn by currents in Faulkner that transcend race—his portraits of Southern family psychodrama, the rebellious, pre-verbal sexuality of his women, the hothouse tragedy of it all. These are matters that on some level aren't too far from those that preoccupy Oprah and her devotees...

In writing about the South he knew, he was trying to articulate a story of doomed consciousness, of pain, of being hyper-cognizant of the demise of not only family but of an entire culture established in bad moral faith...

The US military is jailing Iraqi journalists, many of them working for American media:

...On Wednesday, Iraq's justice minister, Abdul Hussein Shandal, criticized the detentions of Iraqi journalists in an interview with Reuters, saying he wanted to change a United Nations resolution that gives American troops immunity from Iraqi law. He said journalists were not free to report on all sides of the conflict.

He also dismissed American claims that his ministry had an equal say in detentions, suggesting that the American military controlled the Combined Review and Release Board.

[US] Military officials in Iraq contend that some Iraqi cameramen and photographers show up at attacks so promptly that they must have had advance notice. Colonel Boylan said he knew of two Iraqi journalists in detention whose film footage indicated that they had filmed several attacks on one day, from the start.

Mr. Macdonald and other Western bureau chiefs say they have seen no evidence of such cases. They also say the frequent repetition of that accusation is irresponsible because it makes soldiers more likely to be aggressive with Iraqi journalists at attack scenes.

It's alarming, but we have all just become numb to the daily horrors coming out of Iraq. The US has deposed Hussein and left an explosive, unjust, miserable hell. Check out Raed and Riverbend:

...For the 3,000 victims in America [on September 11th], more than 100,000 have died in Iraq. Tens of thousands of others are being detained for interrogation and torture. Our homes have been raided, our cities are constantly being bombed and Iraq has fallen back decades, and for several years to come we will suffer under the influence of the extremism we didn't know prior to the war.

As I write this, Tel Afar, a small place north of Mosul, is being bombed. Dozens of people are going to be buried under their homes in the dead of the night. Their water and electricity have been cut off for days. It doesn’t seem to matter much though because they don’t live in a wonderful skyscraper in a glamorous city. They are, quite simply, farmers and herders not worth a second thought.

Four years later and the War on Terror (or is it the War of Terror?) has been won:

Score:
Al-Qaeda – 3,000
America – 100,000+

Congratulations.

And Raed:

...Most of the one thousand Iraqis who died yesterday came from As-Sadr city in Baghdad. They had different murderers in the same day: seven of them were killed by a mortar attack on Al-Kathum area, and more than 965 died because of Al-A'emmah bridge disaster two hours after the mortar attack.

No one can tell who’s responsible for the mortar attack. Even the Zarqawi group, being the most extremist and Takfiri group, never announced their responsibility for any of the coward attacks against mosques and pilgrims. Who’s responsible for the mortar attack is a big mystery...

On the other hand, everyone can tell who’s responsible of Al-A'emmah bridge disaster.

When the occupation forces, working side by side with the Iraqi governmental troops and paramilitary fighters, close all the bridges that lead to Al-Kathum Shrine in a day that everyone is expecting millions of pilgrims to come, everyone will tell you who’s responsible for the mass murder. When the A'emmah Bridge, which has been closed for the last 9 months by the occupation force, still has two feet-high concrete barriers placed in the way of pilgrims, everyone will tell you who’s responsible for the fall and death of the one thousand Iraqis. When hundreds of pilgrims fall in the river and die drowning because of the lack of emergency staff or river police boats, all of us should know who to blame.

No, not Canada.

Blame the US-led occupation for killing more Iraqis.

It doesn't seem like the hearts and minds thing is working.

Update: Go read Anthony Loyd's latest piece, "Terrorists unite to plot Iraqi civil war":

...According to US military intelligence sources, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi...now commands thousands of fighters from various rival groups and is set to order further waves of bombings...

(Emphasis added). Why did the Bush administration and Rumsfeld allow Iraq to be turned into the world's greatest terrorist paradise?

Update II: Greg Djerejian has the outlines of a plan for salvaging something from catastrophe, urging again the firing of Rumsfeld.

Unless it is a closely held state secret, the previews of Bush's speech tonight on Katrina reconstruction indicate that Bush does not plan to announce a high profile reconstruction czar to oversee the reported $200 billion effort:

Mr. McClellan indicated that Mr. Bush would not use the speech to name a "reconstruction czar" to oversee the effort. A number of White House officials have advised the president to name such a czar, with Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of forces in the 2001 war in Afghanistan, being a favorite of Republicans who are pushing the idea.

Rudy Guiliani has also been mentioned as a logical person to appoint. But the White House's reluctance to do so is revealing. It has already been reported somewhere a few days back that they don't want to appoint someone perceived as so competent that it shows up their own incompetence. But it's hard not to believe that a Rudy Guiliani given such a position would be in a remarkable position to run for president in 2008 and be a very powerful candidate. The Bush White House doesn't seem anxious for that to happen. Which is interesting. So they will just throw all of this money at the Gulf - an extraordinary amount of money - much of it funnelled through a FEMA that has already been revealed as truly hopelessly incompetent and misled. A domestic version of the Iraq reconstruction fiasco.

With a reported 30 million Italian citizens tapped over the years, who has time to listen to it all?

Ex FEMA chief Brown interview with the NYT:

Mr. Brown, then director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said he told the officials in Washington that the Louisiana governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, and her staff were proving incapable of organizing a coherent state effort and that his field officers in the city were reporting an "out of control" situation.

"I am having a horrible time," Mr. Brown said he told Mr. Chertoff and a White House official - either Mr. Card or his deputy, Joe Hagin - in a status report that evening. "I can't get a unified command established."

By the time of that call, he added, "I was beginning to realize things were going to hell in a handbasket" in Louisiana. A day later, Mr. Brown said, he asked the White House to take over the response effort...

But Mr. Brown's account, in which he described making "a blur of calls" all week to Mr. Chertoff, Mr. Card and Mr. Hagin, suggested that Mr. Bush, or at least his top aides, were informed early and repeatedly by the top federal official at the scene that state and local authorities were overwhelmed and that the overall response was going badly...

Mr. Brown's version of events raises questions about whether the White House and Mr. Chertoff acted aggressively enough in ratcheting up the response...

On Monday night [the day the hurricane struck], Mr. Brown said, he reported his growing worries to Mr. Chertoff and the White House. He said he did not ask for federal active-duty troops to be deployed because he assumed his superiors in Washington were doing all they could. Instead, he said, he repeated a dozen times, "I cannot get a unified command established."...

William Arkin on failure of imagination, part XVI.

Will Bunch on a screwed up FEMA policy that would have left people for dead if the California National Guard didn't break it.

Iran Slideshow

Dafna Linzer:

With an hour-long slide show that blends satellite imagery with disquieting assumptions about Iran's nuclear energy program, Bush administration officials have been trying to convince allies that Tehran is on a fast track toward nuclear weapons.

The PowerPoint briefing, titled "A History of Concealment and Deception," has been presented to diplomats from more than a dozen countries. Several diplomats said the presentation, intended to win allies for increasing pressure on the Iranian government, dismisses ambiguities in the evidence about Iran's intentions and omits alternative explanations under debate among intelligence analysts.

The presentation has not been vetted through standard U.S. intelligence channels because it does not include secret material. One U.S. official involved in the briefing said the intelligence community had nothing to do with the presentation and "probably would have disavowed some of it because it draws conclusions that aren't strictly supported by the facts."

That is extraordinary. The intelligence community is confined to make judgments about only that which is secret? Is that what the Bush administration sees at its only value? Bypassing the intelligence community's judgment on Iran's nukes altogether if it doesn't support the preferred conclusions is a logical extension of the cherrypicking we saw with Iraq. But where is this stuff coming from? And who in the Bush administration really put it together?

Update: Here's the slideshow. [.pdf linked]
[Thx to DP and RZ].

Louisiana Officials Praised After Company Quits FEMA Contract

Doesn't this say a lot:

Kenyon [Worldwide Disaster Management spokesman Bill] Berry said he did not consider it appropriate to discuss why the company did not want to continue working under FEMA. But he had high praise for the state, which reached out to Kenyon after the company notified FEMA on Sunday that it would not accept a contract.

"I can't say enough about the Louisiana state people," Mr. Berry said. "They heard our problems, and they simply fixed them. It's beautiful to see a general sitting there from the National Guard saying, 'I can do that,' and it's done."

Fred Jones, correcting the (presidential) record!

Bush similarly said he would bring up Iran with Hu and Putin in hopes of forging a consensus approach to blocking any nuclear weapons development by the theocratic state. Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who will be in New York for his first U.S. visit since winning election, has insisted that his country wants to develop only civilian nuclear power.

"Some of us are wondering why they need civilian nuclear power, anyway," Bush said. "They're awash with hydrocarbons. Nevertheless, it's a right of a government to want to have a civilian nuclear program."

That comment caused a stir because the U.S. government has adamantly rejected North Korea's aspirations for civilian nuclear power. Aides later insisted Bush was not trying to signal a policy change toward Pyongyang. "I can guarantee you that's not what he intended to indicate," said National Security Council spokesman Frederick L. Jones II.

How long will this DHS Inspector General last?

The inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday that his office had received accusations of fraud and waste in the multibillion-dollar relief programs linked to Hurricane Katrina and would investigate how no-bid contracts were awarded to several large, politically well-connected companies.

The inspector general, Richard L. Skinner, who serves as the department's internal watchdog, said in an interview that he intended to be "extremely aggressive" in monitoring the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which will receive most of the $62 billion in disaster-response financing approved by Congress last week...

Mr. Skinner's remarks came as the secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff; Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales; and Republican Congressional leaders said Tuesday that they also were concerned about the potential for abuse, given the amount of federal money and private charity committed to the hurricane-relief effort.

Their comments appeared to be a response, in part, to charges from Democratic lawmakers that such a large, hurriedly organized federal relief program could produce the sort of contract abuses, cronyism and waste that numerous investigations have identified in the Bush administration's reconstruction programs in postwar Iraq...

Spokesmen at FEMA have been unwilling to provide details of the decision-making process that is being used to award contracts for the hurricane-relief program, nor have they identified the agency officials who are making the procurement decisions....

He said that his investigators would focus on several no-bid contracts awarded over the last two weeks to large, politically influential companies, including the Fluor Corporation of California, a major donor to the Republican Party, and the Shaw Group of Baton Rouge, La. Shaw is a client of Joe M. Allbaugh, a consultant who is the former head of FEMA and was President Bush's campaign manager in 2000.

Another of Mr. Allbaugh's clients - Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, the giant defense contractor once led by Vice President Dick Cheney - is doing major repairs at Navy facilities along the Gulf Coast that were damaged by the hurricane. That work is being done under a $500 million contract with the Defense Department...

So how does the no-bid contracting really work? Does Cheney make the calls? More from Joe Conason.

More Baghdad Horror

A suicide car bomb kills 114 people, Shiite day laborers looking for work.

An Iraqi man mourning after a suicide car bomber struck as day laborers gathered to find work in a Shiite neighborhood in north Baghdad. (Credits: Ali Al-Saadi/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images).

Update:"A dozen explosions ripped through the Iraqi capital Wednesday, killing at least 152 people and wounding 542 in a series of attacks that began with a suicide car bombing that targeted laborers assembled to find work for the day. Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility." Horrible, terrible.

Knight Ridder reports that it was actually Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff who had the lead designated role in mobilizing a federal response to Katrina, and that his hesitation cost lives. More from Steve Soto.

Via Raw Story, the WSJ on the government documents showing the federal government's bungled response to Katrina:

As the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency stepped down yesterday, government documents surfaced showing that vital resources, such as buses and environmental health specialists, weren't deployed to the Gulf region for several days, even after federal officials seized control of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, the (paid-restricted) WALL STREET JOURNAL reports Tuesday. Excerpts follow. [...]

FEMA's official requests, known as tasking assignments and used by the agency to demand help from other government agencies, show that it first asked the Department of Transportation to look for buses to help evacuate the more than 20,000 people who had taken refuge at the Superdome in New Orleans at 1:45 a.m. on Aug. 31. At the time, it only asked for 455 buses and 300 ambulances for the enormous task. Almost 18 hours later, it canceled the request for the ambulances because it turned out, as one FEMA employee put it, "the DOT doesn't do ambulances."

FEMA ended up modifying the number of buses it thought it needed to get the job done, until it settled on a final request of 1,355 buses at 8:05 p.m. on Sept. 3. The buses, though, trickled into New Orleans, with only a dozen or so arriving on the first day.

The part of the plan that authorizes OSHA's role as coordinator and allows it to mobilize experts from other agencies such as NIH wasn't activated by FEMA until shortly before 5 p.m. Sunday [September 11th]. The delay came despite repeated efforts by the agencies to mobilize...

Hitchens on Darkness at Noon.

Army policy?

Outside one house on Kentucky Street, a member of the Army 82nd Airborne Division summoned a reporter and photographer standing nearby and told them that if they took pictures or wrote a story about the body recovery process, he would take away their press credentials and kick them out of the state.

"No photos. No stories," said the man, wearing camouflage fatigues and a red beret.

On Saturday, after being challenged in court by CNN, the Bush administration agreed not to prevent the news media from following the effort to recover the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.

But on Monday, in the Bywater district, that assurance wasn't being followed. The 82nd Airborne soldier told reporters the Army had a policy that requires media to be 300 meters -- more than three football fields in length -- away from the scene of body recoveries in New Orleans. If reporters wrote stories or took pictures of body recoveries, they would be reported and face consequences, he said, including a loss of access for up-close coverage of certain military operations.

Via Romenesko.

Federal City.

Monitoring Katrina contracts an after-thought, the Post reports. "...The agency has already begun awarding hundreds of millions of dollars in no-bid Katrina contracts under loosened government rules designed to get relief and rebuilding efforts underway quickly..."

As many readers have alerted me, FEMA's Brown steps down. Update: Brown's replacement, R. David Paulison, "...who has 30 years of fire rescue services experience..."

Unreliable Source

The Washington Post addresses the recent episode of the paper's publishing an anonymous White House quote last Sunday that falsely blamed Katrina response delays on Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco having not declared a state of emergency. Within hours, as you might remember, the Post had published an above-the-story correction, saying in fact Blanco had issued a state of emergency on August 26th. So why was the Post continuing to protect the White House source who misled them?

Here's Howie Kurtz (second item):

The Washington Post, like many news organizations, says it is trying to crack down on the use of anonymous sources. But the paper allowed a "senior administration official" to spin the story of the slow response to Katrina -- with a claim that turned out to be false.

On Sept. 4, the paper cited the "senior Bush official" as saying that as of the day before, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco "still had not declared a state of emergency." As The Post noted in a correction, Blanco, a Democrat, had declared a state of emergency on Aug. 26.

Liberal bloggers have unloaded on The Post. Wrote Arianna Huffington: "Why were the Post reporters so willing to blindly accept the words of an administration official who obviously had a partisan agenda -- and to grant the official anonymity?"

Post National Editor Michael Abramowitz calls the incident "a bad mistake" that happened right on deadline. "We all feel bad about that," he says. "We should not have printed the information as background information, and it should have been checked. We fell down on the desk."

Spencer Hsu, the article's co-author, says he "tried to make clear that the source came from the administration, and that he was blaming the locals, which I believe our story made clear and broke ground in explaining by uncovering the National Guard dispute."

Should the paper identify the source who provided bad information? "We don't blow sources, period, especially if we don't have reason to believe the source in this case actually lied deliberately," Hsu says.

Can we at least hope for more detailed corrections? More information to understand the context in which the White House official spoke and got it 100% wrong? And why the reporters are convinced the source was not deliberately lying?

Late Update: More from Post ombudsman Michael Getler.

Just Out: Unwagging the dog.

Via Kevin Drum, Newsweek's Evan Thomas on Bush's bubble:

...The reality, say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night. Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One.

How this could be—how the president of the United States could have even less "situational awareness," as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century—is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace.

President George W. Bush has always trusted his gut. He prides himself in ignoring the distracting chatter, the caterwauling of the media elites, the Washington political buzz machine. He has boasted that he doesn't read the papers. His doggedness is often admirable. It is easy for presidents to overreact to the noise around them.

But it is not clear what President Bush does read or watch, aside from the occasional biography and an hour or two of ESPN here and there. Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him. Bush can ask tough questions, but it's mostly a one-way street. Most presidents keep a devil's advocate around. Lyndon Johnson had George Ball on Vietnam; President Ronald Reagan and Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, grudgingly listened to the arguments of Budget Director Richard Darman, who told them what they didn't wish to hear: that they would have to raise taxes. When Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth: that the state and local governments had been overwhelmed, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not up to the job and that the military, the only institution with the resources to cope, couldn't act without a declaration from the president overriding all other authority...

A NEWSWEEK reconstruction of the government's response to the storm shows how Bush's leadership style and the bureaucratic culture combined to produce a disaster within a disaster...

And a strikingly similar account from Time's Mike Allen:

...From tarmac to Cabinet room, the President's performance was uneven at the very least, and associates say that can be explained by several factors. Some are specific to his CEO style, others endemic to second terms, but all of them came together in early September much like Katrina itself. The first was his elongated summer vacation: Bush upped to nearly five weeks his traditional month of working vacation at the Crawford ranch, a vacuum that always alarmed his aides because it gave others an opening for capturing the news agenda. While the staff agonized about whether he should try to head off mounting criticism of the Iraq war by meeting a second time with Cindy Sheehan to discuss the death of her soldier son, Bush rejected the idea, saying part of the job is to expect protesters wherever he goes and he needs to "go on with my life, to keep a balanced life."

In addition, former aides say there has always been enormous pressure on White House officials to take only the most vital decisions to Bush and let the bureaucracy deal with everything else. Bush does not appear to tap sources deep inside his government for information, the way his father or Bill Clinton did, preferring to get reports through channels. A highly screened information chain is fine when everything is going well, but in a crisis it can hinder. Louisiana officials say it took hours for Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco to reach Bush (although when she did, he talked to her soothingly, according to White House officials). "His inner circle takes pride in being able to tell him 'everything is under control,' when in this case it was not," said a former aide. "The whole idea that you have to only burden him with things 'that rise to his level' bit them this time."

A related factor, aides and outside allies concede, is what many of them see as the President's increasing isolation. Bush's bubble has grown more hermetic in the second term, they say, with fewer people willing or able to bring him bad news—or tell him when he's wrong...

Mark Danner:

...Four years after we watched the towers fall, Americans have not succeeded in "ridding the world of evil." We have managed to show ourselves, our friends and most of all our enemies the limits of American power. Instead of fighting the real war that was thrust upon us on that incomprehensible morning four years ago, we stubbornly insisted on fighting a war of the imagination, an ideological struggle that we defined not by frankly appraising the real enemy before us but by focusing on the mirror of our own obsessions. And we have finished - as the escalating numbers of terrorist attacks, the grinding Iraq insurgency, the overstretched American military and the increasing political dissatisfaction at home show - by fighting precisely the kind of war they wanted us to fight...

In Iraq, the insurgents have presided over a catastrophic collapse in confidence in the Americans and a concomitant fall in their power. It is difficult to think of a place in which terror has been deployed on such a scale: there have been suicide truck bombs, suicide tanker bombs, suicide police cars, suicide bombers on foot, suicide bombers posing as police officers, suicide bombers posing as soldiers, even suicide bombers on bicycles. While the American death toll climbs steadily toward 2,000, the number of Iraqi dead probably stands at 10 times that and perhaps many more; no one knows. Conservative unofficial counts put the number of Iraqi dead in the war at somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000, in a country a tenth the size of the United States.

Civil wars, of course, are especially bloody, and a civil war is now being fought in Iraq. The country is slowly splitting apart along the lines where French and British negotiators stitched it together early in the last century out of three Ottoman provinces - Mosul, Baghdad and Basra - and it is doing so with the enthusiastic help of the Islamists, who are doing all they can to provoke a Shia-Sunni regionwide war...

In the midst of it all, increasingly irrelevant, are the Americans, who have the fanciest weapons but have never had sufficient troops, or political will, to assert effective control over the country. If political authority comes from achieving a monopoly on legitimate violence, then the Americans, from those early days when they sat in their tanks and watched over the wholesale looting of public institutions, never did achieve political authority in Iraq. They fussed over liberalizing the economy and writing constitutions and achieving democracy in the Middle East when in fact there was really only one question in Iraq, emerging again and again in each successive political struggle, most recently in the disastrously managed writing of the constitution: how to shape a new political dispensation in which the age-old majority Shia can take control from the minority Sunni and do it in a way that minimized violence and insecurity - do it in a way, that is, that the Sunnis would be willing to accept, however reluctantly, without resorting to armed resistance. This might have been accomplished with hundreds of thousands of troops, iron control and a clear sense of purpose. The Americans had none of these. Instead they relied first on a policy of faith and then on one of improvisation, driven in part by the advice of Iraqi exile "friends" who used the Americans for their own purposes. Some of the most strikingly ideological decisions, like abruptly firing and humiliating the entire Iraqi Army and purging from their jobs many hundreds of thousands of Baath Party members, seemed designed to alienate and antagonize a Sunni population already terrified of its security in the new Iraq. "You Americans," one Sunni businessman said to me in Baghdad last February, shaking his head in wonder, "you have created your own enemies here."

The United States never used what authority it had to do more than pretend to control the gathering chaos, never managed to look clearly at the country and confront Iraq's underlying political dysfunction, of which the tyranny of Saddam Hussein was the product, not the cause. "The illusionists," Ambassador John Negroponte's people called their predecessors, the officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority under L. Paul Bremer III. Now, day by day, the illusion is slipping away, and with it what authority the Americans had in Iraq. What is coming to take its place looks increasingly like a failed state...

American power, however, is not limitless. Armies can destroy and occupy, but it takes much more to build a lasting order, especially on the shifting sands of a violent political struggle: another Vietnam echo. Learning the lesson this time around may prove more costly, for dominoes can fall both ways. "Political engineering on this scale could easily go awry," Stephen D. Biddle, a U.S. Army War College analyst, wrote this past April in a shrewd analysis. "If a democratic Iraq can catalyze reform elsewhere, so a failed Iraq could presumably export chaos to its neighbors. A regionwide Lebanon might well prove beyond our capacity to police, regardless of effort expended. And if so, then we will have replaced a region of police states with a region of warlords and chronic instability. This could easily prove to be an easier operating environment for terrorism than the police states it replaces."

The sun is setting on American dreams in Iraq; what remains now to be worked out are the modalities of withdrawal, which depend on the powers of forbearance in the American body politic. But the dynamic has already been set in place. The United States is running out of troops. By the spring of 2006, nearly every active-duty combat unit is likely to have been deployed twice. The National Guard and Reserves, meanwhile, make up an unprecedented 40 percent of the force, and the Guard is in the "stage of meltdown," as Gen. Barry McCaffrey, retired, recently told Congress. Within 24 months, "the wheels are coming off." For all the apocalyptic importance President Bush and his administration ascribed to the Iraq war, they made virtually no move to expand the military, no decision to restore the draft. In the end, the president judged his tax cuts more important than his vision of a "democratic Middle East." The administration's relentless political style, integral to both its strength and its weakness, left it wholly unable to change course and to add more troops when they might have made a difference. That moment is long past; the widespread unpopularity of the occupation in Iraq and in the Islamic world is now critical to insurgent recruitment and makes it possible for a growing insurgent force numbering in the tens of thousands to conceal itself within the broader population...

This Washington Post big picture chronology of government preparation and response to Katrina and its aftermath documents how at every turn, FEMA and DHS were unaware of the mangitude of what was happening, literally days behind -- it took them five days after the Hurricane struck to begin delivery of what they had promised local and state officials (buses, MREs, water, ice), lacked sense of urgency, failed to get information from the field and get it to those above, failed to act as a coordinator between federal state and local officials, lacked competent delivery, lacked a brain. The federal government seemed to not be hearing the multiple requests and signed declarations from state officials begging for everything they've got:

Around midnight, at the last of the day's many conference calls, local officials ticked off their final requests for FEMA and the state. Maestri specifically asked for medical units, mortuary units, ice, water, power and National Guard troops.

"We laid it all out," he recalled. "And then we sat here for five days waiting. Nothing!"

Monday, Aug. 29

'We need everything you've got.'

Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana around 6 a.m. Central time, and within an hour, New Orleans Mayor Nagin was hearing reports of water breaking through his city's levees. At 8:14 a.m., the National Weather Service reported a levee breach along the Industrial Canal, and warned that the Ninth Ward was likely to experience extremely severe flooding. A protective floodwall along Lake Pontchartrain had given way as well, which meant that billions of gallons of water were draining into the city.

This was the worst of the worst-case scenarios. New Orleans is a soup bowl of a city, most of it well below sea level; everyone knew a serious crevasse could fill it with 20 feet of water. Even the gloomy Hurricane Pam drill had optimistically assumed the levees would hold, but they were designed to withstand only a Category 3 storm, and Katrina created at least five breaches at three locations. Now the waters were rising.

And nobody in charge seemed to know it.

On Saturday, according to Army Corps homeland security chief Ed Hecker, the corps had warned FEMA that Katrina would probably send water over the levees, and quite possibly breach them. On Sunday, the Army Corps's Riley had told the FEMA videoconference that a plan was in place to repair levee damage once the storm passed.

But now the power was out, roads were unnavigable, and communication was practically nonexistent; even Nagin's aides had to "loot" an Office Depot for equipment to install Internet phone service...

The federal disaster response plan hinges on transportation and communication, but National Guard officials in Louisiana and Mississippi had no contingency plan if they were disrupted; they had only one satellite phone for the entire Mississippi coast, because the others were in Iraq. The New Orleans police managed to notify the corps that the 17th Street floodwall near Lake Pontchartrain had busted, and Col. Richard Wagenaar, the top corps official in New Orleans, tried to drive to the site to check it out. But he couldn't get through because of high water, trees and other obstacles on the road...

At 11 a.m., ABC News reported that some New Orleans levees had been breached, and a few other outlets broadcast similarly sketchy reports that day...

At the White House, one official recalled, "there was a general sigh of relief." On a trip to Arizona, the president shared a birthday cake with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who was turning 69. During a speech about the Medicare drug plan, Bush noted that he had just spoken to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff -- about immigration.

The federal interagency team seemed to recognize the urgency of the crisis at a meeting that morning, discussing the potential for six months of flooding in New Orlean... But before noon, FEMA's Brown sent a remarkably mild memo to Chertoff, politely requesting 1,000 employees to be ready to head south "within 48 hours." Brown's memo suggested that recruits bring mosquito repellent, sunscreen and cash, because "ATMs may not be working."

"Thank you for your consideration in helping us meet our responsibilities in this near catastrophic event," Brown concluded...

As water poured into the city, as many as 20,000 more residents poured into the Superdome. "People started coming out of the woodwork," Ebbert said. The stadium was hot and fetid, and tempers were flaring. Ebbert said he told FEMA that night that the city would need buses to evacuate 30,000 people. "It just took a long time," he said...

Around 6 p.m., as Governor Blanco was about to hold a news conference in Baton Rouge to discuss the damage, Blanco's communications director whispered that the president was on the line. The governor returned to a windowless office in her situation room and pleaded with the president for assistance.

"We need your help," she said. "We need everything you've got." ...

FEMA managed to deliver 65,000 meals to the Superdome, but by the end of the day, water was rising so fast that the agency was unable to unload five more truckloads of food and water. That evening, in a belated bow to televised reality, Chertoff declared the unfolding disaster an "incident of national significance," triggering the government's highest level of response for the first time since the new post-9/11 system had been designed. He did not publicly announce the move until the next day.

Wednesday, Aug. 31

...Dawn found a handful of buses outside the Superdome, and an estimated 23,000 people clamoring for a ride. FEMA had promised hundreds of buses, but they were arriving, Louisiana's Smith recalled, "in a trickle." And unbeknownst to FEMA, a new circle of hell was opening downtown, as the New Orleans convention center filled with an estimated 25,000 evacuees, many of them unable to get to the flooded area around the Superdome. There was no food, no water and no feds. A spree of robbery, looting and gunfire erupted inside as police dispatched to the center stayed almost exclusively on the perimeter, according to police and witnesses, outnumbered and unable to quell the mayhem.

New Orleans as a city had all but ceased to exist. Nagin spoke of "thousands" dead. Blanco publicly pleaded for 40,000 National Guard troops. In a conference call with Guard officials in the region, Blum asked if they had what they needed. They said no.

"They said that this is bigger than anything we've ever seen or imagined," Blum recalled. "This had touched them personally. Even at that time they didn't have a full sense of what they were dealing with." Blum immediately arranged a videoconference with every adjutant general around the country, and 3,000 Guard troops streamed into New Orleans over the next 24 hours, enough to replace the entire city police force. By Saturday, the Guard would have 30,000 troops in the region.

Bush, winging his way back from vacation, paused to swoop low over the prostrate city on Air Force One. Back in Washington, he convened a stunned Cabinet.

That was on WEDNESDAY -- two days after the hurricane had struck, that business really seemed to start in Washington, signalled from the very top by a president who was on vacation. The only agency that comes off remotely well is the National Guard which it is clear from this piece was hampered by significant resource-loss to Iraq (only one satellite phone for the Guard available in Alabama - the rest were in Iraq). which at least sent in Guard without an order from above. The president cannot run the government from his five week vacation in Texas after all. The government cannot be run by Bush-Cheney campaign hacks. Hundreds of lives were lost because of the way the Bush administration neglected its solemn responsibilities, to protect American lives.

A certain amount of improvisation and ingenuity is always needed in crises, but some basic crisis management contingencies are utterly predictable and were predicted. How four years after 9/11 some basic lessons had not been identified and worked out is staggering:

1) a clear plan for coordination between federal, state, and local authorities has to be worked out ahead of time (this does not mean days of philosophical discussions between the White House and Department of Justice and the Pentagon about only offering federal troops to aid in a humanitarian mission by wresting control from state officials, but coordination, who does what...)

2) plan that communications systems will fail and set up reliable alternatives. Those comms should be interoperable. The Guard's comms didn't work, the mayor's telephone lines went out, FEMA did not know what was going on on the ground, even what was on TV, etc.

3) plan to maintain order and prevent breakdown of law and order (this does not mean letting police block people from evacuating the flooded city to wealthier neighborhoods -- those Gretna police should be prosecuted). As in Baghdad, a little control at the beginning sets a signal that prevents a total breakdown, something the Bush administration has failed to learn apparently in Iraq, but Gen. Bill Nash knew from the first steps NATO took into Bosnia in '95.

And a lesson unique to natural disaster with advance warning unlike a terrorist attack:

4) prepare for getting people out who can't or don't know to leave on their own. It was always anticipated that about 20% of New Orleans wouldn't or couldn't evacuate, which sounds about right for most any city, given human nature, means, etc. And people being people, plan to sustain the people left behind, who will be there in almost every case. There is never going to be a total evacuation. In the case of a crisis with no advance warning, you are going to have to deal with doing all of this with the whole population in place. So New Orleans was in some ways an easier situation, given that an estimated 80% of the population had already evacuated by the time the hurricane hit. It's terrifying when you realize how utterly unprepared the government is for dealing with a catastrophic attack in a US city.

You can't do this without professionals. You can't do this with your top guys on vacation, or with their boss on vacation, in a passive, back burner way. You can't do this in a politicized way. All factors which epitomize how the Bush administration does business.

Will Americans' loss of confidence in the Bush administration sink GOP prospects in 2006? Here's Newsweek on their new poll numbers:

Reflecting the tarnished view of the administration, only 38 percent of registered voters say they would vote for a Republican for Congress if the Congressional elections were held today, while 50 say they would vote for a Democrat.

And this:

For the first time in the four years since 9/11, more Americans disapprove of Bush’s handling of terrorism and homeland security than approve of it...

Only 38 percent of Americans approve of the way Bush is doing his job overall, a record-low for this president in the NEWSWEEK poll. (Fifty-five percent of Americans disapprove of his overall job performance.) And only 28 percent of Americans say they are “satisfied with the way things are going” in the country, down from 36 percent in August and 46 percent in December, after the president’s re-election.

Why Bush didn't go past the airport in New Orleans:

One prominent African-American supporter of Mr. Bush who is close to Karl Rove, the White House political chief, said the president did not go into the heart of New Orleans and meet with black victims on his first trip there, last Friday, because he knew that White House officials were "scared to death" of the reaction.

"If I'm Karl, do I want the visual of black people hollering at the president as if we're living in Rwanda?" said the supporter, who spoke only anonymously because he did not want to antagonize Mr. Rove.

Everybody knows this, but that is still quite a staggering quote from a Rove insider, if you think about it. So as we all know, instead of risking the visuals of a genuine response to Bush's visit to New Orleans, the White House arranged for FEMA to fly 50 firefighters from Atlanta to stand by the president's side for an utterly artificial, stage managed photo opportunity.

CNN wins for now:

At the request of CNN, a federal judge in Texas Friday night blocked emergency officials in New Orleans from preventing the media from covering the recovery of bodies from Hurricane Katrina.

Attorneys for the network argued that the ban was an unconstitutional prior restraint on news gathering.

U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison issued a temporary restraining order against a "zero access" policy announced earlier Friday by Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who is overseeing the federal relief effort in the city, and Terry Ebbert, the city's homeland security director.

A hearing was scheduled for Saturday morning to determine if the order should be made permanent....

Why hasn't there been more media coverage than the handful of reports we've seen about federal efforts to obstruct coverage of the recovery in the first place? "Zero access" policy?

Late Update: Government folds.

"You're Surely Kidding?"

Reader AR writes, "There's an excellent article by Anita Kumar just posted at the St. Pete Times website with new background info on Brownie, including quotes from a former boss who was interviewed by the FBI during the FEMA background check:

Brown was pleasant enough, if a bit opportunistic, Jones said, but he did not put enough time and energy into his job. "He would have been better suited to be a small city or county lawyer," he said. Jones was surprised Brown was being considered for job at FEMA but figured it wasn't impossible he could have risen high enough in local and state government to be considered for a job directing FEMA operations in Oklahoma.

The agents quickly corrected him. This was a national post in Washington, deputy director of FEMA, the arm of the federal government that prepares for and responds to disasters around the United States.

Jones looked at the agents, "You're surely kidding?"

Via Kevin Drum, this Knight-Ridder report on how far FEMA has sunk under Bush:

...In 2000, 40 percent of the top FEMA jobs were held by career workers who rose through the ranks of the agency, including chief of staff. By 2004, that figure was down to less than 19 percent, and the deputy director/chief of staff job is held by a former TV anchor turned political operative.

Former Reagan administration FEMA Director Gen. Julius Becton Jr. said the agency has become too political and should be run by a nonpolitical appointee.

Of the top 15 FEMA spots in Washington, the only people who had experience or have a single permanent job - some employees of FEMA are holding down two positions - are the agency's top lawyer, its equal rights director, its technology chief and its inner-agency planning chief. None of them is responsible for disaster response or preparations.

Some people have in recent days suggested pulling FEMA out of the Department of Homeland Security as a possible solution to correcting its ineptness. But the only real solution as you can see from such reports above is pulling FEMA out of the Bush administration. FEMA's disrepair and staffing by political rent-a-hacks is not only a symptom of its chief Brown of the padded resume; FEMA epitomizes how the Bush administration has done business since it came to town. PR over substance, loyalty over competence, ideology over effectiveness, at every turn. Will they continue to get away with it? And if so, at what further cost?

Right on. More here, and some background.

The no accountability White House. Today's press conference with McClellan.

NRO's Rod Dreher on "The Cost of Cronyism":

It would be very wrong, I believe, to let the ignominious Michael Brown be the scapegoat for FEMA's sins. Check out this front-pager from the WaPo. Turns out that a raft of FEMA's top leaders have little or no emergency management experience, but are instead politically well connected to the GOP and the White House. This is a scandal, a real scandal. How is it possible that four years after 9/11, the president treats a federal agency vital to homeland security as a patronage prize? The main reason I've been a Bush supporter all along is I trusted him (note past tense) on national security -- which, in the age of mass terrorism, means homeland security too. Call me naive, but it's a real blow to learn that political hacks have been running FEMA, of all agencies of the federal government! What if al-Qaeda had blown the New Orleans levees? How much worse would the crony-led FEMA's response have been? Would conservatives stand for any of this for one second if a Democrat were president? If this is what Republican government means, God help the poor GOP Congressmen up for re-election in 2006.

Richard Haass:

...Hurricane Katrina has delivered a painful but important warning. In ways similar to the 9/11 attacks four years ago, it demonstrates that U.S. power, however great, is not to be confused with invulnerability. In addition, U.S. power, however great, is still limited. And U.S. power, however great, cannot be taken for granted. In the end, American power is a reflection of the strength of the American economy and the cohesion of American society. Any country must balance what it allocates for guns and what for butter; the United States is no exception. Although we are wealthy enough to fund both, we are not wealthy enough to fund both to the extent we are now doing and to keep taxes as low as they are. Something will have to give.

Brown relieved of his Katrina duties. From the AP:

Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown is being removed from his role managing Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, The Associated Press has learned.

Brown is being sent back to Washington from Baton Rouge, where he was the primary official overseeing the federal government's response to the disaster, according to two federal officials who declined to be identified before the announcement.

Advance men in charge of FEMA.

The holdouts. It's hard not to admire these people, as crazy as they are. And maybe the need to evacuate at this point is overblown? After all, they're telling people they would need food and water supplies to last three weeks, there are a 90,000 troops in the Gulf, and the contractors can't be far behind. "Like other people, Mr. Dobbs said, he believed that the city had exaggerated the health risks of staying, as a scare tactic. The city simply wants to force people out so that its reconstruction will go more smoothly, he said." And Ms. Harris (photo below) doesn't want to leave either. "I haven't even run out of weed yet," she told the Times.

"Emily Harris, on Desire Street, has food and water for a year, gasoline, a canoe and a dog for protection." (Credits, Chang Lee, NYT).

More from NOLA:

In many ways, Thursday seemed to be a day of small victories: Water continued to drain away. Some downtown hotels struggled toward life. A weak but discernible commercial pulse began to beat in the city’s suburbs...

Water levels continued to recede throughout the metropolitan area. Some drained through gaps deliberately punched in levees, sluicing back into surrounding waterways that have fallen back to pre-storm levels. In addition, the region’s pumping system -- still a feeble remnant of its original power -- continued to suck at stagnant standing water.

From Romenesko:

Newsman has tense confrontation with New Orleans police
San Francisco Chronicle
Peter Fimrite figures there were at least five automatic weapons pointed at him on a dark New Orleans street. He writes:

"I'm a journalist working for The San Francisco Chronicle," I said quickly, trying to remain calm. "I'm out here because the signal ...."
"Step out here!" he interrupted, and his tone suggested that the consequences for not stepping out into the street would be dire. I stepped out.
The encounter was a sobering look into the post-hurricane reality of New Orleans.

Are tens of thousands of heavily armed troops and police in a now mostly deserted city really necessary at this point?

Here's Fimirte's whole very sobering account.

Incredible WSJ story that Eric brought to my attention, about how New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin and his staff were only able to communicate with the outside world for days last week thanks to the Internet phone service account of one of his aides:

For days after Hurricane Katrina's devastating rampage through this city, a small corps of city leaders holed up at the Hyatt Hotel. They had virtually no way to communicate with the outside world.

A command center set up before the storm stopped working when the backup generator ran out of diesel fuel. Cellphone towers had been knocked out by high winds. Many land lines in the area were unusable.

When emergency power finally returned to the Hyatt, Scott Domke, a member of the city's technology team, remembered that he had recently set up an Internet phone account with Vonage Holdings Corp. He was able to find a working socket in a conference room and linked his laptop to an Internet connection.

At 12:27 a.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 31, the mayor's inner circle made its first outside call in two days....

For the next five days, virtually all communications out of New Orleans by the city's top officials depended on Mr. Domke's laptop and this single Internet phone account.

Mr. Meffert, a software entrepreneur before he joined the mayor's office in 2002, realized he needed more lines and more phones to cope with a rapidly deteriorating situation. Before dawn on Wednesday, Messrs. Meffert and Domke and some other aides drove a military Humvee into the darkness and devastation. They were accompanied by the chief of police, Eddie Compass.

Their destination was Office Depot, where they loaded up on phones, routers, printers and fax machines -- anything that was needed to support a government under siege by weather and crime. The store had already been looted of some supplies. While Mr. Meffert was looking for printer cartridges, several looters returned. Mr. Compass, the police chief, roared at the looters and chased them off, says Mr. Meffert.

Mr. Meffert told the chief he needed a large computer server for email. They found the one used by Office Depot in its backroom.

"Do you really need this?" Mr. Meffert says the police chief asked him.

"Yes, we do," Mr. Meffert says he replied.

The server was screwed into an equipment rack in the backroom. Without the use of tools, the chief bent parts of the metal rack and ripped the server out of its housing with his hands, Mr. Meffert says, adding: "I have never seen that before."

The team was sleeping and working out of a single conference room, called Burgundy D. There were enough cots for five people. Another half-dozen slept on the floor. In one corner, phones, routers, cables and other gear lay in a pile. Dirty blankets and clothes were scattered about.

On Wednesday evening, when Mr. Meffert was manning the phones, one rang. On the other end was President Bush in Air Force One. Mr. Meffert, now wearing the hat of secretary, scribbled down the number and sent someone to find Mayor Ray Nagin.

The mayor later recounted his conversation with the president in an interview with WWL-AM on Thursday. "I told him we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice," the mayor said.

Later in the interview, conducted over the single Hyatt link, the mayor blasted the response to date. "I need reinforcements, I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man," he said.

How the feds couldn't get in there to get the mayor some logistical help so he could have better communications with state and federal officials is beyond me. Surely there is no law against providing such emergency help.

FEMA's Brown seems very likely to be out by Friday night cocktail hour.

Howard Kurtz on journalist run ins with officials trying to restrict access.

Changing the playbook?

Eric Umansky has the story on FEMA chief Mike Brown's padded resume. More on Bush administration allocating many top jobs at FEMA to those with little emergency management experience from the Washington Post.

Novak calls for heads to roll.

Do-it-yourself emergency management.

NBC's Brian Williams offers a new dispatch clarifying a bit his observations from yesterday:

...Yesterday's post continues to draw attention, links and comment. I just spoke with Howie Kurtz of the Washington Post who is apparently writing on same for tomorrow. What I said to him and what I will repeat today is this: it can be said absent slant, ideology or opinion that the security presence in much of central New Orleans is in response to lawlessness that no longer exists. I can tell you that last Wednesday evening on Canal Street in New Orleans, we asked members of the Federal Protective Service to "cover" our location... as we found ourselves necessarily bathed in television lights (the only light for blocks in that part of the city) for a live, hour-long "Dateline" broadcast. I can tell you that on that very same day, the situation in the French Quarter was so dire (and fears of smash-and-grab carjackers so prevalent) that troopers with the Louisiana State Police offered to "cover" us, with muzzles pointed at people standing in waist-deep water in the street, as we pulled out of a hotel in a rental SUV with three passengers... and flood water coming up and over the hood [...]

Yesterday afternoon, I watched a column of troopers from the 82nd Airborne march down Bourbon Street, which was empty... save for the occasional hotel worker hosing down the sidewalk. We saw a total of three pedestrians in the Quarter, and interviewed two of them....

What he's saying very carefully is that the current armed security presence in an almost deserted New Orleans is ridiculous overkill -- too much, too late. (And the Pentagon told me tonight another 30,000 troops are headed into the Gulf coast over the next 24-48 hours, to join the "65,410" active duty and National Guard troops already there.) Sounds like somebody got the message.

Friday Update: CNN SUES. Good. Other companies should be joining the suit.

No More "Blame Game"?

I do believe Scott McClellan spoke without a hint of irony for a moment today when he asserted:

MR. McCLELLAN: The President hasn't outlined the investigation that he's talked about making sure that we lead, so we'll be talking about that as we move forward.

Here's the rest of the transcript. As Jim Romenesko points out, "McClellan doesn't use 'blame game' today," which is indeed notable since he used it about 700 times the past two days. Maybe Operation Suppress Truth and Accountability is being revamped?

Made some calls. The AP New York photo editor who oversees some 6 photographers in New Orleans and 4 in Mississippi, says that there was an incident yesterday in which some of their crew were blocked by a Nat'l Guard unit from entering New Orleans from Jefferson Parish. But they "went through higher channels" and got it resolved. He had not heard of more problems today.

Now Comes the Test

Nikki Finke:

...No one could have anticipated that, suddenly, TV’s two prettiest-boy anchors would be boldly and tearfully (CNN’s Anderson Cooper and FNN’s Shep Smith, to their immense credit) relating horror whenever and wherever they found it, no matter if the fault lay with Mother Nature or President Dubya. The impact was felt immediately. The depth of their reporting, along with that of other TV newscasters who were similarly unashamed to show their outrage, bested almost anything written by the most talented and experienced newspaper reporters. And the rawness of that televised despair spurred a still-new generation of Internet blogs and Web magazines to abandon their potty-mouthed snarking for long enough to start snarling at the proliferation of government lies and lying liars who tell them...

Contrary to the scripture so often quoted in these areas of Louisiana and Mississippi, the TV newscasters knew the truth, but the truth did not set them free. And the truth telling soon turned to backslapping. Lost amid all the self-congratulation by broadcasters once the crisis point had been passed was the fact that TV journalists went back to business-as-usual by the weekend. Their choke chains had been yanked by no-longer-inattentive parent-company bosses who, fearful of any FCC regulatory fallout from fingering Dubya for the FEMA fuckups, decided yet again to sacrifice community need for corporate greed.

Now comes the real test of pathos vs. profit: whether the TV newscasters will spend the fresh reservoir of truth and trust earned with the public to challenge FEMA’s attempt to perpetrate a campaign of mass deception. That’s the only way to describe what Reuters says is the agency’s attempt to block the news media from photographing the dead — maybe 10,000 corpses — as they are recovered from flooded New Orleans. Yet again, as it did with the coffins coming home from the Iraqi War and its violent aftermath, the Bush administration wants to hide from the public the lethal consequences of its flawed programs and policies....

Yahoo collaborated with Chinese jailing of journalist:

Yahoo, the Internet search company, provided information last year that helped authorities in China convict a Chinese journalist for leaking state secrets to a foreign Web site, court documents show.

The journalist, Shi Tao, was sentenced to 10 years in prison this June for sending to a Chinese-language Web site based in New York an anonymous posting that authorities said contained state secrets. His posting summarized a communication from Communist Party authorities to media outlets around the country.

Mr. Shi's case has become a prominent symbol of the recent tightening of media controls in the one-party state, where authorities often punish outspoken journalists for releasing information deemed secret.

According to the court documents, Yahoo provided records that showed that Mr. Shi used a computer at his workplace, Contemporary Business News in Changsha, late in the evening of April 20, 2004, to gain access to his Yahoo e-mail account. Authorities say the offending e-mail message was sent to the New York Web site from that e-mail account around that time, according to people involved in Mr. Shi's defense.

Yahoo's role in the prosecution of Mr. Shi was first reported in July by Boxun, a Web site run by overseas Chinese, and was repeated Tuesday by Reporters Without Borders, a media watchdog group. Yahoo declined to comment on the matter on Wednesday, though it did issue a statement noting, "Just like any other global company, Yahoo must ensure that its local country sites must operate within the laws, regulations and customs of the country in which they are based."

It's pretty horrifying, when the Internet profiteers work in effect to further repression.

If you see more credible reports like this, please let me know.

Campaign Vets for FEMA Damage Control

The guy who callled me back yesterday who was supposedly a spokesman for FEMA? It turns out the WaPo reported as recently as March 2005 that he had been hired as one of three staffers to run a Bush administration Social Security "war room", modeled on the "Coalition Information Centers that promoted the administration message around the world during the war in Afghanistan":

The Treasury Department yesterday announced the formation of a Social Security "war room" and the hiring of three full-time employees to help coordinate and refine the administration's message on the issue. The war room, which the administration is calling the Social Security Information Center, will track lawmakers' remarks to their local news outlets, to help the White House detect signs of Republican concern or Democratic compromise.

The office, modeled after the Coalition Information Centers that promoted the administration message around the world during the war in Afghanistan, will also help target speaking trips by top administration officials...

The center is to be headed by Mark Pfeifle, an administration veteran who has been a spokesman for the Interior Department and last summer's Republican National Convention. Working with him will be Shannon Burkhart and Jill Willis, both of whom worked on the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign. The three were hired about two weeks ago.

What's he doing at FEMA now? Is FEMA's only purpose under the Bush administration to do damage control and photo opportunities for the Bush administration? What was it doing 10 days ago? Where were all these folks who should have been applying their skills doing emergency management? When did their contracts start? Were they hired on the plane back from the Devenish-Wallace wedding party?

FEMA's former IG Clark Kent Ervin weighs in, writing in the NY Times that the problem is not rearranging deck chairs inside DHS, but the incompetent leaders the Bush administration has appointed. "...So let's not move boxes around on the organization chart (again). Instead, let's appoint competent and experienced leaders and provide vigorous independent oversight to make sure they're doing what they're supposed to do...." Is it possible when the person they ultimately report to has many of the same flaws as the people who have failed him at the head of FEMA currently? That good ole' boy benign negligence and incompetence bred of knowing someone will usually appear after the mess one's made to mop it up? Talk about the Big Easy. There's an unbearable lightness of being quality to these characters.

Update: Interesting that the White House ordered Ervin fired in 2003 after he authored two IG reports critical of the Department of Homeland Security:

The White House has decided not to reappoint Clark Kent Ervin as inspector general for the Homeland Security Department.

In nearly two years on the job, Ervin earned a reputation as a blunt critic of DHS...“They’re just not keeping him. They feel he has not been a friend of the department,” the official said. As a recess appointment, Ervin’s term will end when this session of Congress adjourns.

Ervin’s office has issued highly critical reports on several programs at DHS. In October, for instance, one criticized the department for failing to take charge of the effort to combine the federal government’s numerous terrorist watch lists...

In what might have been Ervin's last official act, the Office of Inspector General released two reports Dec. 8, excerpted from the DHS Performance and Accountability Report for fiscal 2004: "Independent Auditors' Report of DHS' FY 2004 Financial Statements" and "Major Management Challenges Facing the Department of Homeland Security".

What's the Bush administration's strategy for dealing with constructive critics? Fire 'em. Treat it as PR problem. What's the standard being enforced? Yes men. Tell the boss what he wants to hear. Cover for him. Lie. What's the result for this country? Catastrophe.

Yesterday people were writing about Bush as a failed CEO. It's clear that Bush's biggest leadership failure has always been prizing loyalty and yes men over those who tell him the truth.

No words for this surreal experience described here. Who were the good guys? the hostiles? Beats me. It's clear from many of these reports that it was the media that often proved the difference between life and mortal obscurity in the chaos.

After the apocalypse. This rises above the usual dispatch.

USA Today on the evisceration of competent professionals from FEMA by the Bush administration in favor of political hacks:

...But a deeper review of the agency's history, the records of its top managers and internal memoranda reveal far deeper problems than a momentary burst of poor decisions. Over the past four years, the Bush administration has replaced competent leaders with people long on political connections but short on disaster management expertise. At the same time, the war on terrorism has drained the agency's resources and reduced its effectiveness...

Since Katrina, blame for FEMA's blundering has zeroed in on the agency's director, Michael Brown. His failure should not have been a surprise. He had almost no experience in disaster work before he was appointed in 2003 by President Bush, and confirmed by the Senate, to lead the agency. Before joining FEMA as its counsel in 2001, Brown, a friend of the FEMA director who hired him, worked for nine years as a commissioner at an Arabian horse association.

But that's only the tip of FEMA's management problems. Brown's top deputy, Patrick Rhode, is equally inexperienced, according to his résumé. Rhode worked for Bush's 2000 campaign and for the White House doing advance operations. Another senior FEMA manager, Daniel Craig, had been a lobbyist for electric cooperatives.

In addition, FEMA has seen an exodus of experienced officials over the past four years. By the time Katrina struck, three senior positions were either vacant or filled on an "acting" basis, including the director running Katrina-ravaged Mississippi and Alabama...

What has FEMA been doing with its budget, if not gauging how many people it would need to react quickly to a huge disaster, identifying their skills and training them to be ready? ...

Government by hacks -- you'll get the same results we've seen in Iraq.

Operation Resist Censorship

This sort of blatant censorship cannot be tolerated in America. I think this writer to Americablog has the right idea:

Hey there John,

First, thanks for being the voice of conscience through all of this horror we are experiencing here in the south.

I was concerned when I read your comments that the press was being moved out of New Orleans, so I called the White House to voice my concern. I was told by the WH operator that the reason was out of respect for the dead. I told her that I thought it was a bad idea to not chronicle this issue so that we could learn from it, correct what went wrong and make sure there is accountability.

Well the minute the operator heard the buzzword "accountability" she got very testy and insisted that it was not appropriate to show the dead. I told here we saw dead bodies everyday on the news from Iraq and she went a little nuts and said I was "being insensitive." I've got friends I can't find in New orleans and I'm being insensitive? These people need to get real and hear from more Americans.

Please tell people to call 202-456-1414, 202-456-1111 and tell the WH operators that the press need to stay.

Thanks
C...
Atlanta

Call the White House and your Senators and Congressmen, and demand that the administration stop trying to suppress reporting on the recovery operation in New Orleans, and demand that there be an independent investigation of the government's failures in its Katrina response, its FEMA and DHS hiring and staffing and operations. And a whole lot of civil disobedience and law suits from the media against the government are in order, starting with suing FEMA for trying to ban media access to recovery of the dead in New Orleans. The Bush administration made this country look like the Third World last week -- let's not let it continue on this path in the aftermath.

More.

Friday Update: CNN SUES:

In response to official statements earlier today that news media would be excluded from covering the victim recovery process in New Orleans and surrounding areas on the suggestion that what is reported may offend viewers' or victims' sensibilities, CNN has filed a lawsuit in federal court to prohibit any agency from restricting its ability to fully and fairly cover this story...Government officials cannot be allowed to hinder the free flow of information to the public, and CNN will not let such a decision stand without challenge.

This is the noble thing to do. Other media companies should join the suit.

Operation Suppress Truth and Accountability.

I put in a call to FEMA this morning to get more information on the disturbing much-noted report in the Salt Lake Tribune yesterday about the 50 firefighters being directed by FEMA to be used as props in a Bush photo opportunity in Louisiana earlier this week. I got a call back tonight, from a FEMA spokesman, who claimed not to know anything about the report, but who took the time to let me phrase my question every which way before redirecting me to the lines you can imagine ("...everything is coming together.....as effectively as possible...."). (And in all honesty, one appreciates that he even bothered to call back.) Of course, I googled this person as soon as I hung up. On a hunch, I first tried the search terms, "[First Name Last Name]" and "Bush-Cheney". And this is what I got, "[So and so], a Bush-Cheney campaign spokesman..."

It's uncanny. FEMA is wholly owned, operated, and run as an extension of the Bush-Cheney campaign. From top to bottom.

Media banned from New Orleans? Bob Brigham, via Atrios:

We are in Jefferson Parish, just outside of New Orleans. At the National Guard checkpoint, they are under orders to turn away all media. All of the reporters are turning they’re TV trucks around.

Anyone who didn't see the possibility of this coming hasn't been paying attention to sickening recent developments, in which FEMA's core mission has been fused seamlessly into Rove's PR/campaign operation.

Late Update: Atrios adds "...by email Bob says the organization is crappy so they managed to get in."

My friend David Glenn has published an amazing profile of the New Yorker writer George Packer, author of the forthcoming Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq.

More on FEMA, Pat Robertson, and some African war criminals from the NY Daily News.

Katrina's biggest windbag. Why does an otherwise excellent paper waste space on this predictable RNC-emailed shillery?

Update: Far more worthwhile: here's David Ignatius today:

The most pointed criticism of Bush's management I've read over the past week comes from the conservative columnist William Kristol. "Almost every Republican I have spoken with is disappointed" by the administration's response to Katrina, Kristol told The Post's Jim VandeHei. "He is a strong president . . . but he has never really focused on the importance of good execution. I think that is true in many parts of his presidency."

Operation What Are We Doing Here

Someone please ask Bush to explain this photo opportunity at his next press conference. And Scotty today. And Chertoff. And Mike Arabian Horse Flunkee Brown.

And is the media suing FEMA for banning journalists from covering the recovery of the dead from New Orleans? It is obvious that this is to prevent the public from seeing the impact of the failures of the administration signalled from the top by Mr. Five Week Vacation while Thousands Die (Twice). It is to serve FEMA's new self-declared role to make the administration look good:

(...Brown's memo told employees that among their duties, they would be expected to "convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations and the general public.")

Please ask your congressmen and Senators to hold hearings into why FEMA failed to act to save thousands of people who perished in New Orleans but found itself capable of moving firemen to Bush's side for his photo opportunity, and then banned reporters from taking photos of the dead.

Salt Lake Tribune:

Frustrated: Fire crews to hand out fliers for FEMA

By Lisa Rosetta
The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake Tribune

"Firefighters endure a day of FEMA training, which included a course on sexual harassment. Some firefighters say their skills are being wasted." (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune)

ATLANTA - Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing here?"

As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.

Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.

Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.

On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency.

Federal officials are unapologetic.

"I would go back and ask the firefighter to revisit his commitment to FEMA, to firefighting and to the citizens of this country," said FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak.

The firefighters - or at least the fire chiefs who assigned them to come to Atlanta - knew what the assignment would be, Hudak said.

"The initial call to action very specifically says we're looking for two-person fire teams to do community relations," she said. "So if there is a breakdown [in communication], it was likely in their own departments."

One fire chief from Texas agreed that the call was clear to work as community-relations officers. But he wonders why the 1,400 firefighters FEMA attracted to Atlanta aren't being put to better use. He also questioned why the U.S. Department of Homeland Security - of which FEMA is a part - has not responded better to the disaster.

The firefighters, several of whom are from Utah, were told to bring backpacks, sleeping bags, first-aid kits and Meals Ready to Eat. They were told to prepare for "austere conditions." Many of them came with awkward fire gear and expected to wade in floodwaters, sift through rubble and save lives.

"They've got people here who are search-and-rescue certified, paramedics, haz-mat certified," said a Texas firefighter. "We're sitting in here having a sexual-harassment class while there are still [victims] in Louisiana who haven't been contacted yet."

The firefighter, who has encouraged his superiors back home not to send any more volunteers for now, declined to give his name because FEMA has warned them not to talk to reporters.

On Monday, two firefighters from South Jordan and two from Layton headed for San Antonio to help hurricane evacuees there. Four firefighters from Roy awaited their marching orders, crossing their fingers that they would get to do rescue and recovery work, rather than paperwork.

"A lot of people are bickering because there are rumors they'll just be handing out fliers," said Roy firefighter Logan Layne, adding that his squad hopes to be in the thick of the action. "But we'll do anything. We'll do whatever they need us to do."

While FEMA's community-relations job may be an important one - displaced hurricane victims need basic services and a variety of resources - it may be a job best suited for someone else, say firefighters assembled at the Sheraton.

"It's a misallocation of resources. Completely," said the Texas firefighter.

"It's just an under-utilization of very talented people," said South Salt Lake Fire Chief Steve Foote, who sent a team of firefighters to Atlanta. "I was hoping once they saw the level of people . . . they would shift gears a little bit."

Foote said his crews would be better used doing the jobs they are trained to do.

But Louis H. Botta, a coordinating officer for FEMA, said sending out firefighters on community relations makes sense. They already have had background checks and meet the qualifications to be sworn as a federal employee. They have medical training that will prove invaluable as they come across hurricane victims in the field.

A firefighter from California said he feels ill prepared to even carry out the job FEMA has assigned him. In the field, Hurricane Katrina victims will approach him with questions about everything from insurance claims to financial assistance.

"My only answer to them is, '1-800-621-FEMA,' " he said. "I'm not used to not being in the know."

Roy Fire Chief Jon Ritchie said his crews would be a "little frustrated" if they were assigned to hand out phone numbers at an evacuee center in Texas rather than find and treat victims of the disaster.

Also of concern to some of the firefighters is the cost borne by their municipalities in the wake of their absence. Cities are picking up the tab to fill the firefighters' vacancies while they work 30 days for the federal government.

"There are all of these guys with all of this training and we're sending them out to hand out a phone number," an Oregon firefighter said. "They [the hurricane victims] are screaming for help and this day [of FEMA training] was a waste."

Firefighters say they want to brave the heat, the debris-littered roads, the poisonous cottonmouth snakes and fire ants and travel into pockets of Louisiana where many people have yet to receive emergency aid.

But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

"Firefighters line up Monday in Atlanta to give their names to FEMA personnel drawing up deployment lists. Many will be assigned to hand out fliers."

**

There should be Congressional hearings now on this and every top official in FEMA should be subpoenaed to testify under oath. If FEMA was used for Bush's photo opportunity, all those campaign hacks, who couldn't be bothered to do their jobs of saving American lives but could find it in their core mission to work on Bush's photo opportunities, should go to jail.

A must-read LA Times report about the secret relationship between the Bush administration and Libya's Moammar Kadafi and intelligence chief, Musa Kusa, who is banned from entering the US because of his suspected involvement in terrorism, including the Lockerbie bombing and a plot to kill Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah:

...As it struggles to combat Islamic terrorist networks, the Bush administration has quietly built an intelligence alliance with Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, a onetime bitter enemy the U.S. had tried for years to isolate, topple or kill.

Kadafi has helped the U.S. pursue Al Qaeda's network in North Africa by turning radicals over to neighboring pro-Western governments. He also has provided information to the CIA on Libyan nationals with alleged ties to international terrorists.

In turn, the U.S. has handed over to Tripoli some anti-Kadafi Libyans captured in its campaign against terrorism. And Kadafi's agents have been allowed into the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba to interrogate Libyans being held there [...]

Kusa, Libya's primary negotiator with the Bush administration on counter-terrorism and other major issues, has been barred from entering the U.S. because of his suspected involvement in the Lockerbie bombing. Last year, he was named in U.S. court records as a key planner of an alleged plot to kill Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah, who became king last month after the death of King Fahd.

According to a State Department report this year, Kusa's agency was part of an "extensive security apparatus" overseeing a "pervasive surveillance system." Security forces have held numerous detainees for years without charge or trial, and torture was routinely used on political foes, the report says. Methods allegedly included beatings, electric shock, pouring lemon juice on open wounds, breaking fingers "and allowing the joints to heal without medical care," suffocation with plastic bags and hanging by the wrists...

The CIA has also allowed Kadafi's intelligence officers to interrogate Libyan prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, according to Clive Stafford Smith, an attorney who represents 38 detainees there. Among his clients is Omar Deghayes, whose family fled to Britain from Libya in 1986, six years after Deghayes' father, a lawyer and dissident, was arrested and executed by Kadafi's regime....

Deghayes told Stafford Smith that four Libyan intelligence officers had interrogated him and other Libyans in September 2004. He said he was fully shackled when the Libyans questioned him Sept. 9 about alleged anti-Kadafi activities, in the presence of three Americans in civilian clothes. Two days later, the Libyans questioned him again, this time about anti-Kadafi exiles based in Britain.

According to Deghayes, Kadafi's agents showed him pictures of badly beaten Libyan detainees, and one of the agents told him: "You will be brought to judgment in Libya, and when we bring you to Libya, I will personally teach you the meaning of this. In here I cannot do anything, but if I meet you [later], I will kill you." ...

Bush is the Worst US President Since Carter. I don't remember such a time of national crisis and malaise, of a country going in the wrong direction, of incapable leadership and a bankrupt executive...As a nation, we look weak in front of the world, and internally, we are grossly misled, divided and hopeless, from Iraq to the Gulf Coast. All those armchair-warrior shills who have long tried to cover for an administration whose leadership is entirely hollow, entirely bankrupt...even they know it.

(Editors Note: I wrote this overnight and then hesitated to post it, but it is amazing that so many people were -- coming to think the same thing at the same time. So much for originality.)

Romenesko:

WH to press: The time for bickering, blame-gaming is later
WhiteHouse.gov
From today's White House press briefing:
SCOTT McCLELLAN: You know, David, there are some that are interested in playing the blame game. The President is interested in solving problems and getting help to the people who need it. There will be a time --

Q: Wait a minute. Is it a blame game when the President, himself, says that we remain at risk for either another catastrophe of this dimension, that's not manmade, or a terrorist attack? Isn't it incumbent upon this administration to immediately have accountability to find out what went wrong, when at any time this could happen again? ...

McCLELLAN: We can engage in this blame-gaming going on and I think that's what you're getting --

Q: No, no. That's a talking point, Scott, and I think most people who are watching this --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, that's a fact. I mean, some are wanting to engage in that, and we're going to remain focused ...The time for bickering and blame-gaming is later.

Belgravia Dispatch's Greg Djerejian has, like David Brooks and many of the rest of us mere mortals, reached his bursting point with this administration and its endless excuses, sliming and buck-passing:

...Well, it's not unbelievable, sadly. It has become standard operating procedure with this Administration. Colossal missteps are made (no serious attention paid to what might happen if the levees were breached, no thought of moving to expeditiously evacuate the Superdome, no apprecation that basic law and order might be grossly imperiled if the city became submerged in floodwaters, no contingency planning for an insurgency in Iraq, no appreciation of the full ramifications of tossing aside the Geneva Conventions) and time and again there is a staggering lack of accountability. Well, here at B.D. we're sick of the empty bear hugs and cutesy nicknames, the circle the wagons damage control mentality, cheap ass-covering and rampant buck-passing, the guitar-strumming and talk of Trent Lott's porch looking all antebellum swell post reconstruction and Kennebunkport 'let them move to Texas' insouciance. Above all else, B.D is sick of the sheer spectacle of grim incompetence that humiliated this nation as New Orleans descended into mayhem reminiscent of wartime Haiti or Liberia--with hundreds if not thousands perhaps needlessly dying because of government ineptitude (though the human toll would be immense even if the planning and governmental reaction had been far superior). There was massive culpability, to be sure, at the local and state level as well. But, make no mistake, the federal response during the first week was grotesquely amateur. Particularly with FEMA, of course, but also at the now so risibly named Department of Homeland Security. The government failed in its most fundamental duty--ensuring the basic physical safety of its citizens. And it failed miserably. Does anyone have confidence that, tomorrow say, if Tulsa or Peoria or Dallas or Chicago where attacked by a chemical or biological weapon--that our government would be able to mount an effective response? I certainly don't. After all, the government knew a Category 4 or 5 was about to slam into New Orleans. There won't be any such warning issued by al-Qaeda, of course. I'd like a tri-state national emergency area declared, as Newt Gingrich has suggested, with Rudy Giuliani in charge of mounting a massively ambitious reconstruction project through the Gulf Coast. I want to see adults at the helm, I want to see competence, I want to see seriousness of resolve and purpose, rather than clueless figures like Mike Brown being told they are doing a "heck of a job." ...Suffice it to say for now that, like David Brooks, B.D. has reached his "bursting point."

What qualifications were required for top slots in the Bush administration's FEMA? You guessed it. Working on Bush-Cheney's campaign. As you will remember, this was largely how the American contingent of the Iraq CPA leadership was drafted as well. It's terrible that many hundreds of lives may have been lost because the administration did not take this department seriously enough to encourage the hiring of those with real emergency management experience. (Via Political Animal)

Ma'ariv is reporting that Iran has permitted an Israeli TV reporter to report from inside Iran:

Ma'ariv posted a report to its website on September 1 that said: "[Israeli] TV Channel 2 reporter Gidon Kutz has been permitted to enter Iran to report from the land of the ayatollahs. Kutz's report will be broadcast on this evening's [September 1] main Channel 2 newscast and will be rerun on Friday's [September 2] Studio program. As part of his assignment, Kutz met members of the Jewish community in Tehran and talked to government officials.

"In an interview with Kutz, the former Iranian foreign minister referred to the evacuation of the settlements in the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria, proclaiming that his country was pleased with the implementation of the disengagement plan. Another government representative said that Iran was not ruling out the possibility of implementing a policy aimed at reining in the terrorist organizations.

"Iranian government officials told Kutz that Tehran was trying to resolve the international crisis over its nuclear reactor and that work on its nuclear program was continuing. They explained that Iran has every right to have nuclear arms and that it would defend itself if attacked by the United States or Israel.

"Kutz recorded the life of the Jewish community in Tehran through conversations that were held by and large in Hebrew. The local Jews told him that the administration was permitting them to lead full Jewish lives while demonstrating tolerance, but that like the rest of the population of Iran, they were suffering from the country's serious economic situation." - Ma'ariv, Israel

Dan Froomkin on classic Rovean tactics on display in the White House PR operation at work since Friday:

...Like previous Rove operations, it calls for multiple appearances by the president in controlled environments in which he can appear leader-like. It calls for extensive use of Air Force One and a massive deployment of spinners.

It doesn't necessarily include any change in policy. It certainly doesn't include any admission of error.

It utilizes the classic Rovian tactic of attacking critics rather than defending against their criticism -- and of throwing up chaff to muddle the issue and throw the press off the scent.

It calls for public expressions of outrage over the politicization of the issue and of those who would play the "blame game." While at the same time, it is utterly political in nature and heavily reliant on shifting the blame elsewhere.

But in some ways, this post-Katrina campaign poses Bush's aides with unprecedented challenges...

More from Amy Sulivan and Kevin Drum on the alternative story lines being floated to counter what much of the country witnessed with their own eyes on live TV last week (even on Fox!). As the saying goes, who you gonna believe, me or your lyin' eyes?

If you are in need of a break from Katrina, you could do worse than reading Jennifer Senior's masterful profile of Clinton.

USNorthcom spokesman Ltc. Commander Sean Kelly emails Kevin Drum an important addendum to the post on Katrina and Northcom, which I noted here. Upshot, they were authorized to act, but the storm itself impeded a more robust response. But I'm confused about his earlier comments to the BBC. Why did Kelly made such a point of emphasizing the need to wait for authorization from the president?

Is Bush promising to oversee an investigation into what went wrong with Katrina response sort of like his vow to fire whoever in his administration leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame's name?

Update: Look at the bright side. He could have appointed Cheney to be in charge of the investigation.

Live Now: Check out the live webcast of the two-day security conference organized by Steve Clemons.

Worth reading: Newsweek's Jonathan Alter on saving New Orleans, and what determines whether cities survive or fall after such catastrophes.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco's Aug. 28th emergency expedited help request to the president (.pdf linked).

This is incredible. The Bush administration and FEMA have been encouraging Katrina donations to a supposed charity called "Operation Blessing," headed by Rev. Pat Robertson. Many people pointed this out, in recent days. But what's truly shocking is that it has been well documented that Robertson's Operation Blessing diverted charity funds during the Rwandan genocide to bring in diamond mining equipment for a Robertson-headed mining corporation to Zaire. The NY Daily News reports:

Back in 1994, during the infamous Rwandan genocide, Robertson used his 700 Club's daily cable operation to appeal to the American public for donations to fly humanitarian supplies into Zaire to save the Rwandan refugees.

The planes purchased by Operation Blessing did a lot more than ferry relief supplies.

An investigation conducted by the Virginia attorney general's office concluded in 1999 that the planes were mostly used to transport mining equipment for a diamond operation run by a for-profit company called African Development Corp.

And who do you think was the principal executive and sole shareholder of the mining company?

You guessed it, Pat Robertson himself.

Robertson had landed the mining concession from his longtime friend Mobutu Sese Seko, then the dictator of Zaire.

Nauseating. Is Robertson basically a glorified arms dealer? More on the diversion by the pilots used in the bait-n-switch.

Can we get a bipartisan commission appointed to oversee Katrina reconstruction, to prevent the worst sort of corruption, abuses, and fraud we saw in Iraq? The kind that seem to grow like barnacles off the current administration? Democracy Arsenal's Suzanne Nossel calls for "Fairness in Contracting Post-Katrina."

Update: Hmm. That's very interesting. Operation Blessing seems to have been removed in the past two days from FEMA's website. Anyone save the earlier webpage? Update II: Here's what the FEMA page looked like before changes were made September 4th (via Americablog).

Here's what it looks like now.

Update III: I suppose this total revision of recent history is, under the circumstances, progress!

"It's Your Failure Too, Mr. President"

The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson:

...a few days in and around this ground zero have convinced me that there are two things the federal government failed to do, and that for these failures there's ultimately no one to blame but the president.

First, an administration that since Sept. 11, 2001, has told us a major terrorist strike is inevitable should have had in place a well-elaborated plan for evacuating a major American city. Even if there wasn't a specific plan for New Orleans -- although it was clear that a breach of the city's levees was one of the likeliest natural catastrophes -- there should have been a generic plan. George W. Bush told us time and again that our cities were threatened. Shouldn't he have ordered up a plan to get people out?

Second, someone should have thought about what to do with hundreds of thousands of evacuees, both in the days after a disaster and in the long term. As people flooded out of New Orleans, it was officials at the state and local level who rose to the challenge, making it up as they went along. Bring a bunch of people to the Astrodome. We have a vacant hotel that we can use. Send a hundred or so down to our church and we'll do the best we can.

Tent cities aren't a happy option, but neither is haphazard improvisation. Is the problem the Bush administration's ideological fervor for small government? Does the White House really believe that primary responsibility should fall on volunteers, church groups and individuals? Or is it just stunning incompetence and lack of foresight?

Communications systems failed. The WSJ's post-mortem of what went wrong in the flooding aftermath of Katrina's landfall in New Orleans documents the disturbing failure of emergency communication systems:

...Communications systems also broke down, as they did at the World Trade Center in 2001, preventing emergency officials from communicating with each other and the military. That led to the odd juxtaposition of top federal officials praising the rescue effort and denying problems at New Orleans' overcrowded convention center while TV cameras showed people there crying for help.

Flooding and power shortages appear to be behind most of the serious communications problems, but incompatible radio systems didn't help.

Emergency responders in New Orleans and three nearby parishes all use different radio systems. New Orleans and nearby Jefferson Parish both use radios that operate on the 800 Mhz band, according to a Louisiana State Police interoperability report, but they were manufactured by different vendors. That means officials there had up to five channels on which to talk to one another.

"Communication is always difficult in emergency situations because of increased traffic," says William Vincent of the Lafayette Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, about 135 miles from New Orleans. Emergency 911 dispatchers in Lafayette fielded calls from New Orleans residents who still had working cellphones but couldn't reach local police.

New Orleans officials had equipment at the fire department's communication center that could link otherwise incompatible local and federal systems. It was reportedly knocked out by flooding.

Another problem: Even after 9/11, local officials and federal emergency responders don't typically use the same radio frequencies, which can make communication difficult until agreements are reached on sharing channels.

As handheld radios began losing power in New Orleans, police officers and other emergency responders had no way of recharging them. Unlike radios used by firefighters combating wild fires, which can be powered by disposable batteries found in any grocery store, a typical handheld police emergency radio uses rechargeable batteries similar to those powering cell phones...

How in the world four years after 9/11 has this not be fixed? What did people really need last Monday and Tuesday? Information. That was what was so utterly third world seeming about the chaotic aftermath, the fact that DHS officials in Washington somehow had no idea what all of us were seeing at the Convention Center, as if it was happening in Sudan. It's genuinely startling to realize how bad things are four years after 9/11. What in the world has the Bush administration been doing for four years? Truly, what? Imagine after a terrorist attack -- when no one would have been evacuated -- how unprepared the government would be to respond. It's third world standards. What have they been spending all the money on? Who's supposed to be accountable if not the directors of FEMA and DHS?

In an administration in which PR is policy, it sounds like Fema chief Mike D. Brown has already effectively been demoted, according to this Post article:

...In his last extended TV interview on CNN, Brown admitted Thursday that the federal government did not know that thousands of survivors without food or water had taken shelter at the city's convention center, despite a day of news reports.

Since then, Brown has been eclipsed by his boss, Chertoff -- who flew overnight Sunday to take charge of integrating military with civilian efforts -- and by a new deputy, U.S. Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad Allen, whom Chertoff named yesterday to take charge of federal recovery efforts in New Orleans.

His last effective long TV interview was Thursday - a half life in this storm aftermath, and he was notably invisible on the administration's PR push on the Sunday talk shows. The Post also notes that his old college pal, GOP lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, who hired Brown as general counsel of FEMA from the beleaguered International Arabian Horse Association, is now only offering a "qualified" defense of Brown. It all reminds one of how Jay Garner suddenly just disappeared from Iraq.

Why FEMA was MIA.

"In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of refugees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader":

They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2 years old, and one was wearing only diapers. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love.

Thousands of human stories have flown past relief workers in the last week, but few have touched them as much as the seven children who were found wandering together Thursday at an evacuation point in downtown New Orleans. In the Baton Rouge headquarters of the rescue operation, paramedics tried to coax their names out of them; nurses who examined them stayed up that night, brooding.

Transporting the children alone was "the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, knowing that their parents are either dead" or that they had been abandoned, said Pat Coveney, a Houston emergency medical technician who put them into the back of his ambulance and drove them out of New Orleans.

"It goes back to the same thing," he said. "How did a 6-year-old end up being in charge of six babies?"

Link.

Bush-Blanco tensions on display during Bush's visit to the Gulf today, the AP reports:

...Blanco was not told when Bush would visit the state, nor was she immediately invited to meet him or travel with him. Blanco’s office didn’t know Bush was coming until told by reporters. Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said the White House reached out to Blanco’s office on Sunday, but didn’t hear back. White House staff in Louisiana spoke with Blanco early today, he said.

Making his third visit to the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged states, Bush stopped first at the Bethany World Prayer Center, a huge hall half covered with pallets and half filled with dining tables. Blanco visited at the same time, but she and Bush kept apart as they walked around talking to people.

During his stop at Bethany, several people ran up to meet Bush and get autographs as he and first lady Laura Bush wandered around the room. But just as many hung back and looked on.

“I need answers,” said Mildred Brown, who has been there since Tuesday with her husband, mother-in-law and cousin. “I’m not interested in handshaking. I’m not interested in photo ops. This is going to take a lot of money.” ...

Seems to reflect the level of emergency communications established by FEMA in Louisiana during the aftermath of the hurricane, where Chertoff and Brown were somehow unaware of what everyone in America and the world with access to CNN, Fox, NPR, etc. was last Thursday: that more than 2,000 evacuees were stranded at the New Orleans convention center with no food, water, or security.

More from Knight-Ridder about the stage management of Bush's trip today:

...Bush and his wife, Laura, visited Louisiana and Mississippi three days after his first up-close look at the stricken region. The hastily arranged return trip came amid mounting criticism of the president's leadership in the aftermath of the natural disaster.

"We're angry, Mr. President, and we'll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry," the New Orleans Times-Picayune said in an open letter to Bush in Sunday's edition. "Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That's to the government's shame."

Bush didn't directly address complaints about the government's response during his stops in Baton Rouge and Poplarville, Miss. Instead, he praised the work of private volunteers, reassured evacuees that they wouldn't be abandoned, and expressed confidence in the region's ability to rebound.

Bush didn't venture into New Orleans, which he also skipped on his first visit. But after days of televised suffering by African Americans in the city, White House officials ensured that the television pictures of Bush's trip would include shots of the president with African-American survivors.

Joining Praktike, a new blog from Cairo by a western journalist.

Posted by Laura at 10:06 PM

Why did the Bush administration take days to approve other states' offers of National Guard troops?

Several states ready and willing to send National Guard troops to the rescue in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans didn't get the go-ahead until days after the storm struck — a delay nearly certain to be investigated by Congress.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state's National Guard on Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn't come from Washington until late Thursday.

California troops just began arriving in Louisiana on Friday, three days after flood waters devastated New Orleans and chaos broke out...

Maj. Gen. Thomas Cutler, who leads the Michigan National Guard, said he anticipated a call for police units and started preparing them, but couldn't go until states in the hurricane zone asked them to come.

"We could have had people on the road Tuesday," Cutler said. "We have to wait and respond to their need."

It is beyond baffling. American leaders "shocked" as feds reject other offers of aid. You know, like search and rescue specialists. What in the world happened? Was everyone on vacation? Is that what happens when the boss goes away for five weeks?

When the most critical period is over, it seems obvious that Fema chief Brown and DHS Secretary Chertoff should offer their resignations.

Red Cross Banned From New Orleans

Red Cross press release: State Homeland Security Department and National Guard preventing Red Cross from entering New Orleans, afraid it will discourage people from evacuating. Whatever their logic, leaving those waiting for days to get evacuated to survive with nothing was a decision that will have led to many deaths.

Update: And not just the Red Cross is banned. From Knight-Ridder:

...As federal officials tried to get some control over the deteriorating situation in New Orleans, chaos was being replaced with bureaucratic rules that inhibited private relief organizations' efforts.

"We've tried desperately to rescue 250 people trapped in a Salvation Army facility. They've been trapped in there since the flood came in. Many are on dialysis machines," said Maj. George Hood, national communications secretary for the relief organization.

"Yesterday we rented big fan boats to pull them out and the National Guard would not let us enter the city," he said. The reason: a new plan to evacuate the embattled city grid by grid - and the Salvation Army's facility didn't fall in the right grid that day, Hood said in a telephone interview from Jackson, Miss.

"No, it doesn't make sense," he said.

Titanic. (via Atrios):

At one point Friday, the evacuation was interrupted briefly when school buses pulled up so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line — much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the Superdome since last Sunday.

"How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?" exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage.

The 700 had been trapped in the hotel, near the Superdome, but conditions were considerably cleaner, even without running water, than the unsanitary crush inside the dome. The Hyatt was severely damaged by the storm. Every pane of glass on the riverside wall was blown out.

Five thousand people still stranded in the Superdome, waiting for buses.

FEMA Head FIRED From Horse Association in 2001

As several readers have alerted me, not only was FEMA chief Michael D. Brown a former attorney for the Lyons, Colorado based International Arabian Horse Association, but he was actually *fired from* the International Arabian Horse Association. A Kos poster writes that his colleagues say he was fired for being an "unmitigated, total...disaster". The NYT profiles him here. Even I am staggered -- Brown was the lawyer for the horse association not back in the 1980s or 1990s, but until 2001 when he was brought into FEMA as deputy director by Joe Allbaugh. Incredible. One would think Bush administration party patronage positions would be confined to - you know, cushy ambassadorships and Iraq CPA positions, not doled out as heads of agencies that should be led by even semi-competent technocrats and professionals. Bring in the cavalry, indeed.

If he could go to Baghdad, why didn't Bush go to the New Orleans Superdome or the Convention Center? It was bizarre for all of the country and much of the world to be watching those scenes for days on our TVs and news reports, and for Bush's photo ops to be in areas that were far less critical. I know there are security considerations but his visit seemed extraordinarily hollow even by this administration's standard of ultra-stage managed events.

Dutch viewer Frank Tiggelaar writes:

There was a striking dicrepancy between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV.

ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time.

The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF.

Tuesday Update: Rivka has an accounting of the differences between what my correspondent Frank Tiggelaar thought he heard on the German TV reports and what appeared to actually air.

FEMA head Michael Brown insists this is the best the US can do:

Fema head Michael D Brown has defended the federal response, saying that his agency had prepared for the storm, but that the widespread flooding had hampered the operation.

He said personnel, equipment, supplies, trucks and search-and-rescue teams were positioned in the region ahead of the hurricane, the Washington Post quoted him as saying.

"What the American people need to understand is that the full force of the federal government is bringing all of those supplies in, in an unprecedented effort that has not been seen even in the tsunami region," he said.

If Brown is right, that this is the best the Bush administration can do, they should appoint someone who can do better.

Update: Jefferson Parish official to FEMA: "Where are they?"

Just got back in and got a call that Fox is reporting that there are still 30,000 people stranded at the New Orleans Convention Center. There are no buses. What in heaven's name is going on? These reports are just insane.

Secondly, why on earth are they repeatedly putting several thousand people in large stadiums? This report makes clear it is a recipee for a security nightmare, crime, violence, health problems...Why not disperse them by settling them at motels or camps etc. after they get registered by the Red Cross and given the basics? More on this from Harvard's Jennifer Leaning:

..."I fear the worst is yet to come," said Jennifer Leaning, a Harvard University public health professor who is helping with the Red Cross relief coordination. "No refugee population in the world lives like this. There is a vast need for at least a little personal privacy. The sanitation problems, disease, and civil unrest will grow. To think that we can house people in the open in these vast shelters like the Superdome and the Astrodome for more than a couple weeks is delusional."

(Thx to SS).

An acquaintance in Baton Rouge writes:

Thanks so much for thinking of us. Our power has just come back on today (Friday) and we are catching up. It can not be described in written word what this horrible horrible storm has done. Thousands of our citizens are floating dead in the streets of New Orleans. Doctors, Nurses and patients are dying stuck in hospitals that have water filling up the first floor. Criminals are all over the city hampering rescue efforts. Here it is 5 days later and there are still possibly 40,000 people stuck in NO. The condtions there are terrible - no food, water, electricity (it is in the 90's here), medical care. These unbearable condtions are causing even good people to do desperate things.
We are so fortunate that we were barely touched at the time of the hurricane. But now with all the refugees Baton Rouge has doubled in size. The results of that are extremely stretched hospitals and schools and public sources. I have returned to work as a nurse at our hospital to help out and the stories from the refugees is very heartbreaking. Many don't know where their children, spouses, parents are. To see the faces of these people is hard. I always would wonder what life in 3rd world countries is like and now I have some idea. Fortunately our is temporary. We now have 300,000 people in our city that do not have jobs. We fear this will create crime like we have never seen. Some people have been car jacked and held up in the wal-mart parking lots. All our churches and schools are housing refugees. I don't know how this will work on Tuesday when the children return to school but it just seems like a scary situation. This will likely go on for months.
We fear that so many are dead in apartments and houses and in the streets of New Orleans. Our death toll will probably excede that of 911.
But, there is so much good going on as well. Many people are housing strangers and our cities are providing for the needs of all these people. Right now our focus is on the safety and rescue of many people and we have not been able to consider the lose of our New Orleans that was so deeply rich in history and culture...
Please keep our state and especially Baton Rouge (the new New Orleans) in your prayers. Our leaders need prayers to face this unsurmountable task. They are all exhausted and doing the best they can.
Thanks for thinking of us...we are doing fine...

Running video and reports from a guy who runs a Live Journal ISP on a New Orleans rooftop, and a rescue plea from LSU hospital from several hours ago.

CNN:

"New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who slammed the federal response, speaks to the president."

And I believe this Lt. Gen. Russel Honore was credited by Nagin in this interview as the most competent, take-charge official he'd seen:

...Lt. Gen. Russel Honore was directing the deployment of National Guard troops -- expected to number 1,000 -- from a New Orleans street corner.

Honore said getting food and water to the people at the convention center was a difficult process. "If you ever have 20,000 people come to supper, you know what I'm talking about," the general said. "If it was easy, it would have been done already."

CNN's Barbara Starr, who is traveling with the three-star general, said Honore is "very determined to keep this looking like a humanitarian relief operation."

"A few moments ago, he stopped a truck full of National Guard troops ... and said, 'Point your weapons down, this is not Iraq,'" Starr reported.

Authorities were working to evacuate the Ernest Morial Convention Center, trying to help the weakest people first.

Evacuees in and around the crowded building described harrowing conditions...

"Mayor Nagin doing an outstanding job...Federal support failed to show"

Go read this letter to NRO from a New Orleans native now in DC:

It has been hard for me to read The Corner the past few days. I am concentrating on news from New Orleans local media, since I feel the national media (with the exception of Fox) has sensationalized things, if that can be possible. But as a New Orleans native, now living in the Washington DC area, with family in New Orleans (all safely evacuated) I am having a hard time keeping emotion out of ongoing discussions. I would like to offer you both a few quick viewpoints:

First, Mayor Nagin has been doing an outstanding job. A true reform Mayor, he came into office two years ago after literally decades of City hall corruption of all types. He immediately moved to clean up and "fix" City Hall, including inviting the FBI and Justice Department in to rid the city of police corruption. I think highly of him and it is unfair to expect him to complete three decades of preparation in the past two years, especially since hurricane response is one of the many competing priorities he faced. Yes, things went wrong but, believe it or not, many more things went right.

Second, Louisiana's Democratic Governor has been a miserable failure where it matters most - rallying the citizens. As my brother put it, "I have a mother. I need a Governor." What that means about Americans' view of women in top leadership positions now I dont know, but if I were Hillary, I would go to New Orleans and shoot some looters on national television.

Third, having attended a conference in New Orleans on Homeland Security just last year, I can say with some certainty that the city and state have been working for the past five years closely with FEMA and the Offices of Emergency Preparedness of the adjoining states. There are mutually-supportive plans in place and they were wrung out as well as could have been done in advance. The FEMA regional director was highly regarded and I think was doing well. Having said that, however,

Fourth, I think there has been a failure at the Federal level. The First Responders moved in and did their job. The second wave (prepositioned FEMA response units and neighboring states' assets) moved in and did their job. The third wave (distant Federal support) failed to show. I cannot see how this could happen. The airfield at the Joint Reserve Base at Belle Chasse (across the river) has been conducting flight operations for three days - how could it be that no C-130 loads of bottled water arrived? That some of this water was not airlifted by helicopter to people stranded for four days on bridge overpasses? We got Navy ships from Hawaii to Thailand faster than from Norfolk to Louisiana. I am a retired Navy Commander and I know what I am talking about - this is simply unsat. The President bears ultimate responsibility for that.

Fifth, much has been made of the behavior of some New Orleans policemen. Some have been filmed apparently looting and some have turned in their badges and walked away from the job. I think the bad rep these guys are getting is unfair. There are hundreds who risked their lives to stay on the job during and immediately after the hurricane - there are not many average Americans who would have done that. Some of these guys lost their own homes and families - after this number of days I think it is understandable that some have reached their limit, feel that they have done their duty and quit. Finally, every city has corrupt police officers and the very few who did loot (if in fact they did) are not unique to New Orleans. I love the New Orleans cops.

Sixth, it occurs to me that the apparent slowness of the current military response, compared with that of other recent humanitarian crises around the globe, may in part relate to who is in charge. During past emergencies, the responsible Unified Commander (top dog) has been a commander (and his staff) who have been used to running emergencies: USJFCOM (formerly USLANTCOM; Navy/Marine command traditionally) ran Hurricane Andrew and Haiti just fine; USPACOM (Navy command traditionally) ran part of Tsunami relief fine and other WESTPAC contingencies; USSOUTHCOM (Army command traditionally) has run relief operations in central and South America; and USCENTCOM (Army/Marine command) ran the other part of Tsunami relief fine. Katrina is being run by NORTHCOM (Northern Command, an Air Force command) and this is the first humanitarian emergency ever run by them. I think they are simply not up to it. This may be a matter for subsequent, sober analysis.

Seventh, Speaker Hastert's remarks about Federal aid for rebuilding New Orleans just delivered Louisiana to the Democrats for the foreseeable future. This is unfortunate and yet another example of the national Republican leadership being off message. Louisiana went for GW, voting Republican for the first time since Reconstruction. There are currently slews of Republican Representatives and one Senator. A non-white, immigrant Republican almost won the last Governor's race and until Speaker Haster opened his mouth the consensus of opinion was that the results of that election were unfortunate and would probably be reversed. Haster single-handedly changed all that.

Eight and finally, I think that Katrina is going to make a lot of fence-sitters on gun control hop down. The ardent anti-gun folks will never agree that private ownership is ever a good thing, but a lot of people (such as in our DC area) are going to note that, sometimes, you are on your own.

You'll absolutely want to listen to this interview with New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin. (Link to mp3). It is very compelling, it explains a lot about how it's been to try to manage this crisis from on the scene with a governor, president and federal bureaucracy painfully unresponsive and out of touch, always promising help will eventually get there, and ends with both the mayor and the WWL-AM radio host in tears.

Question: Why are there only 2,000 National Guard in New Orleans? CNN reports that another 2,600 are on the way. But even 4,600 is not very many, given the catastrophic conditions, esp. four days after the hurricane hit. What happened?

Convoy of Aid Trucks Arriving at the Convention Center:

...Mayor Ray Nagin said in a statement that more than 10,000 people were evacuated from the city Thursday but that more than 50,000 survivors were still on rooftops and in shelters, in urgent need of help...

Earlier, Nagin lashed out at state and federal authorities saying they were "thinking small" in the face of the massive crisis...

Thousands of people have been stranded at the Ernest Morial Convention Center with little help and surrounded by corpses, trash and human waste.

"We got here, there's no food. There's no water. There's shooting. They're killing people," evacuee Tishia Walters told CNN from inside the center. "They're robbing men in the restrooms, they're raping women trying to go to the rest room. So people have resorted to defecating on the floors. You can't walk. There's babies without Pampers, mammas without milk. It's chaos total chaos."

CNN's Chris Lawrence, who was driving out of New Orleans around 11:30 a.m. (12:30 p.m. ET), said he saw huge flatbed trucks stacked with water bottles and boxes of food heading into the city.

He also saw about 25 tour buses and as many as 12 school buses in a line heading into the city...

Overnight, police snipers were stationed on the roof of their precinct, trying to protect it from gunmen roaming through the city, CNN's Chris Lawrence reported.

One New Orleans police sergeant compared the situation to Somalia and said officers were outnumbered and outgunned by gangs in trucks.

"It's a war zone, and they're not treating it like one," he said, referring to the federal government.

The officer hitched a ride to Baton Rouge Friday morning, after working 60 hours straight in the flooded city. He has not decided whether he will return.

He broke down in tears when he described the deaths of his fellow officers, saying many had drowned doing their jobs. Other officers have turned in their badges as the situation continues to deteriorate...

"Buses and trucks carrying supplies drive to the convention center."

Disconnect

Arabian Horse Association Attorney-Turned-FEMA Chief: "Victims Bear Some Responsibility." This guy is going to be - uh - unpopular if he can ever find his way to New Orleans.

DHS Secretary Chertoff: FEMA doing a "magnificent job."

CNN:

...But there was perhaps no clearer illustration of the disconnect between how emergency officials view the situation at a distance, and how it is viewed by those actually living it on the ground, than Brown's comments to CNN's Wolf Blitzer Thursday evening about the evacuation of hospitals in the city.

"I've just learned today that we ... are in the process of completing the evacuations of the hospitals, that those are going very well," he said.

Shortly after he made those comments, Dr. Michael Bellew, a resident at Charity Hospital, where more than 200 patients were still waiting to be evacuated, described desperate conditions. The hospital had no power, no water, food was running out and nurses were bagging patients by hand because ventilators didn't work.

Earlier in the day, the evacuation from Charity had to be suspended for a time after a sniper opened fire on rescuers...

"Homeland Security Flunks Its First Test"

Tim Naftali in Slate:

...What has DHS been doing if not readying itself and its subcomponents for a likely disaster? The collapse of a New Orleans levee has long led a list of worst-case urban crisis scenarios. The dots had already been connected...

The response to Katrina thus far indicates two flaws in the Bush administration's thinking about homeland security. The federal government hasn't learned how to plan for a tragedy that demands putting a city on sustained life-support, as opposed to a one-moment-in-time attack that requires recovering the dead and injured from debris and then quickly rebuilding. And DHS appears unwilling to plan for the early use of the U.S. military to cope with a civilian tragedy....

Flunked and failed the people of the Gulf Coast and particularly New Orleans to a staggering degree. What has the Bush administration been doing for four years? Why are they sleepwalking?

More from a letter to NRO:

...I think...that you might be underestimating the outrage some are feeling right now at the government's pathetic response. I am a post-9/11 conservative...At this point, I have zero faith in the Republican Party at the federal level to accomplish anything to make our cities safe. It appears that there has been pretty much nothing done in the way of planning for emergencies since 9/11. Think about these few things..."

Posted by Laura at 10:42 AM

Significant Able Danger Update. The Pentagon says it has interviewed five "credible" former Able Danger associated individuals who remember that the project had identified 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta. It has not found a chart or any documentation that proves that, and doesn't rule out that such documentation was destroyed. UPI's Shaun Waterman has the details.

Update: The LA Times has the opposite take-away from yesterday's Pentagon press briefing: "Inquiry Fails to Find Data on Hijackers: A Pentagon report contradicts statements by members of an intelligence unit that some attackers were known before Sept. 11."

"What I'm seeing on TV now is a third-world country with a government unwilling or incompetent to fulfill its tasks."

Flood Relief: How it should be done. Dutch broadcaster and human rights activist Frank Tiggelaar writes:

Dear Andras, Laura,

Watching events unfold in the New Orleans area I had flashbacks of the 1995 river Rhine and Meuse floods in Holland. Then, in just under two days aurthorities staged a forced evacuation of almost half a million people (total Dutch pop. is 16 million) and 2 million heads of cattle, pigs etc. It was the most orderly mass-operation I have ever seen.

I live near Holland's main disaster hospital AMC, which can effectively triple its capacity from 1,200 to 4,000 patients in 3 hours by opening up its six-story undergound disaster unit, and witnessed how hundreds of ambulances, army trucks and dozens of medicopters (including German and Belgian air-borne operating theatres) brought in hospital patients, people from care homes and the disabled from the disaster areas. Roads were closed to all other traffic, in hospitals across the country an overwhelming - and fortunatly unnecessary - number of staff and volunteers were on stand-by.

The material damage was incredible, but there were no casualties, there were three meals every day for every temporarily displaced man, woman and child, all cows were fed and milked, there was no looting. National public TV within days set up a disaster charity show which raised over 60M guilders (EUR 30M) to pay for damages not covered by insurance.

What I'm seeing on TV now is a third-world country with a government unwilling or incompetent to fulfill its tasks. I feel very, very sorry for the residents of the area.

Frank

What did it take? A plan and political will, both shockingly absent in this administration.

More from the NOLA Weblog.

"It's Like FEMA Had Never Been to a Hurricane"

Col. Terry Ebbert, director of homeland security for New Orleans, concurred, and he was particularly pungent in his criticism. Asserting that the whole recovery operation had been "carried on the backs of the little guys for four goddamn days," he said that "the rest of the goddamn nation can't get us any resources for security."

"We are like little birds with our mouths open, and you don't have to be very smart to know where to drop the worm," Colonel Ebbert said. "It's criminal within the confines of the United States that within one hour of the hurricane they weren't force-feeding us. It's like FEMA has never been to a hurricane."

"No command and control":

“This is a national disgrace,” said Terry Ebbert, head of New Orleans’ emergency operations. “FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control,” Ebbert said. “We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims but we can’t bail out the city of New Orleans."

If you were the President, wouldn't you consider sending one of your cabinet officials to be on the scene non stop as a sign of the administration's interest in what's going on? Wouldn't you want that person reporting to your White House war room round the clock about what's happening? Who's representing the White House in New Orleans? Who has been since Sunday?

"Ex-Army Corps officials say budget cuts imperiled flood mitigation efforts."

No one in charge. DHS Secretary Chertoff is making a whole bunch of excuses for the most staggering federal failure I have ever heard of. Here's Chertoff's interview with NPR's Robert Siegel (here's a link to the link). The unflappable NPR Texas correspondent John Burnett now on the scene in New Orleans is almost shouting at the conditions at the NO convention center. The fact that no one is on top of this is very upsetting. Why isn't Chertoff in New Orleans? Or at least Baton Rouge?

Here's my rough transcript of Burnett's interview with the NPR host Robert Siegel on All Things Considered tonight. It followed Chertoff's chilling interview with Siegel.

John Burnett: There are 2,000 people living outside the convention center. There is no food. There is absolutely no water. There is no medical treatment. There are no police. There are two dead bodies on the ground and in a wheel chair around the convention center, both elderly people. We understand two more died earlier.

We understand that a 10 year old girl was raped in the convention center in the last two nights. Pople are absolutely desperate there.

I have never seen anything like this.

They have seen buses go past, they have seen police go past, but no one has brought them food. They are living like animals.

Now the Superdome is being evacuated, and that's a very good thing. I think these people want to know when on earth are you going to look after us?
they feel abandoned...

A lot of the looters distributed the food and water they got to the rest of the group

Host: The secretary (Chertoff) spoke of distribution points. Is there any place nearby where authorities say they should be going to get supplies?

John Burnett: No. In fact authorities have been telling people to go to the convention center for three days and they will be bused away out of the area...

The superdome is getting all the attention and the people we interviewed were very upset that no one seems to know they exist there living in this squalor.

Host: Is there someone in charge?

John Burnett: No. There is no one. There is no one in charge of this effort. They seem to be throwing it back between the national guard, city police and state police. The plan seems to be changing by the hour. These people were told to go to the superdome, then to the convention center, then they were told buses would pick them up, and so they are just livid that they keep being told things but nothing is happening...

Update: Buses evacuating people from the Superdome are required to have an armed escort.

People are dying in the New Orleans hospitals.

"Cries for help spread across New Orleans: Local Officials blame FEMA for 'nationl disgrace,' mayor issues 'SOS'.

Oh No. The evacuation of New Orleans' Charity Hospital, long awaited by its desperate staff and patients, has been halted because of sniper fire. New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin has issued a desperate SOS for help for the more than 10,000 people stranded in the New Orleans' superdome. Can someone please explain to me why it's so difficult to evacuate these people and bus them out of there? What is the hold up? Is it lack of organization? Where are the feds???? A Dutch reporter at the scene just interviewed by the BBC's The World expressed outright shock at the fact that there is no one federal in sight to help these people. He said exhausted volunteers and police have no food, no help, no water, and they are not getting any assistance. No one could explain to him why there was no one there to help the people. He said Dutch viewers, who remember a flood jumping the levees in southern Netherlands in 1950, can't understand why such a powerful country has been so ineffective at rescuing a city that he described as being at war.

"A man covers the body of a man who died Thursday outside the convention center in New Orleans." (Credits, CNN)

NOLA Weblog.

Able Danger News (for the six people still interested). The DoD will hold a background briefing on AD today at 2pm. Will post the transcript when it's available. I don't expect they'll say anything approximating "We found the chart. It turns out, we ID'd Atta a year before 9/11 after all. What do you know! Sorry for the confusion. Next?" (Thx to SA).

Check out this timeline of key decisions that led to horrific lack of preparedness for Katrina. Read it and weep.

Dear lord. Why bring people to fester at the Superdome for days and hours with no information? From the AP:

Fights and trash fires broke out at the hot and stinking Superdome and anger and unrest mounted across New Orleans on Thursday, as National Guardsmen in armored vehicles poured in to help restore order across the increasingly lawless and desperate city.

``We are out here like pure animals. We don't have help,'' the Rev. Issac Clark, 68, said outside the New Orleans Convention Center, where corpses lay in the open and evacuees complained that they were dropped off and given nothing...

At least seven bodies were scattered outside, and hungry, desperate people who were tired of waiting broke through the steel doors to a food service entrance and began pushing out pallets of water and juice and whatever else they could find.

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

``I don't treat my dog like that,'' 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. ``I buried my dog.'' He added: ``You can do everything for other countries but you can't do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can't get them down here.''

Just above the convention center on Interstate 10, commercial buses were lined up, going nowhere. The street outside the center, above the floodwaters, smelled of urine and feces, and was choked with dirty diapers, old bottles and garbage.

``They've been teasing us with buses for four days,'' Edwards said.

People chanted, ``Help, help!'' as reporters and photographers walked through. The crowd got angry when journalists tried to photograph one of the bodies, and covered it over with a blanket. A woman, screaming, went on the front steps of the convention center and led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm.

Why not have buses taking people immediately to motels outside of the affected areas? Shouldn't a contingent of FEMA people be standing outside the Superdome putting people on buses non stop until the city is empty? Why shouldn't all the hotels and the motels be given guarantees from FEMA that they're picking up the tab and letting people be dispersed and not centralized in an area with no facilities to care for them to understandably become restive and turn into a situation that needs to be controlled by the National Guard? Who is running this? For how many days have they known they were going to have to move people out?

FEMA's advice to those afflicated just plain sucks. It was last updated in October 2004.

Wes Clark is right. Where is the leadership?

My lord, the guy heading FEMA has no qualifications. What was he doing before getting pulled into FEMA by the Bush administration in 2003? He was an estate planning lawyer in Colorado and of counsel for the International Arabian Horse Association Legal Department. And yes, it is the same Michael D. Brown.

Blogger Chris Bowers of MyDD is organizing an aid effort for victims of Katrina. Details here.

Bush and Katrina. Go read Democracy Arsenal's Lorelei Kelly:

...Water destroying New Orleans has always been a matter of national defense. Despite this, and aided and abetted by conservatives, President Bush has gutted the Federal Emergency and Management Agency (FEMA) exiled the National Guard to purgatory in Iraq, and stripped flood control and mitigation programs --just to mention three relevant items. Though these actions did not cause the hurricane, they left New Orleans vulnerable and now bereft. Conservative politics and the safety of American citizens have come full circle on the Gulf Coast and collided in spectacular horror with the citizens taking the hit. Natural disasters are in the hands of God. Incompetence and ideology are ours to claim, however, and today they reign supreme.

A broken levee wall is what caused the city to drown. For years the walls have been sinking. Starting in the 1960's, the federal government began working with regional state and local officials on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA in 1995. Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle...The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remained about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River. In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain.

FEMA enfeebled: FEMA's Project Impact, a model mitigation program created by the Clinton administration, was canceled outright under Bush and conservative congressional leadership. Federal funding of post-disaster mitigation efforts designed to protect people and property from the next disaster was cut in half.. In Louisiana, requests for flood mitigation funds were rejected by FEMA this summer.

The tradeoffs are appalling. In Fiscal Year 2006, Louisianan's will spend 78.4 million dollars on Cold War boondoggle missile defense. They will spend 1.7 billion for the war in Iraq. Mississippi will spend 42.9 million on missile defense and 918.7 for the war in Iraq. This would have paid for the levee repair with change.

Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of Americans would have translated into 930 million dollars for Louisiana and 707.1 million for Mississippi. Louisiana spent 1.6 million dollars on abstinence only education programs last year...

I don't think it takes too many cartwheels of reason to say flat out that these terrible tradeoffs are what happens when your political leadership relies on an extreme ideological base --many of whom attack reasoned debate as treasonous and any questioning of our national priorities as communism redux. Maybe it will now be obvious. Our leadership is a bunch of towel-snapping fraternity boys who are not interested in government....

More from Nadezhda.

"Waiting for a Leader": the NYT editorial speaks for many here:

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.

We will, of course, endure, and the city of New Orleans must come back. But looking at the pictures on television yesterday of a place abandoned to the forces of flood, fire and looting, it was hard not to wonder exactly how that is going to come to pass. Right now, hundreds of thousands of American refugees need our national concern and care. Thousands of people still need to be rescued from imminent peril. Public health threats must be controlled in New Orleans and throughout southern Mississippi. Drivers must be given confidence that gasoline will be available, and profiteering must be brought under control at a moment when television has been showing long lines at some pumps and spot prices approaching $4 a gallon have been reported...

While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?

It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.

As reader J noted in an email this morning, the Bush administration has taken a laissez-faire Rumsfeldian/Baghdad approach to the disaster in New Orleans. And it shows an ideology that has failed and endangered human life, peace and security on a massive scale in both Iraq and here. J writes, "On the way to work this morning, the following occured to me: What if Don Rumsfeld was heading up the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina, and in particular, the rampant looting and general breakdown in law-and-order that appears to be mestasizing in New Orleans? Is all of this simply the price of freedom?... 'Free markets rule and the role of government is to be minimized in all spheres.' In the Rummy world, the job of the U.S. military was only to oust Saddam's regime; the people of Iraq were on their own for nation-building. In domestic politics, a large federal role in disaster preparation is not appropriate -- that is best left to state/local governments and 'civil society.'" Whatever the ideological philosophy that underpins the BUsh administration's sleepwalking in times of crisis, it has once and for all been proven bankrupt.

Long night falls on New Orleans. From the AP's Adam Nossiter:

NEW ORLEANS - With thousands feared drowned in what could be America's deadliest natural disaster in a century, New Orleans' leaders all but surrendered the streets to floodwaters Wednesday and began turning out the lights on the ruined city — perhaps for months.

Looting spiraled so out of control that Mayor Ray Nagin ordered virtually the entire police force to abandon search-and-rescue efforts and focus on the brazen packs of thieves who have turned increasingly hostile.

Nagin also called for an all-out evacuation of the city's remaining residents. Asked how many people died, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands." [...]

An exodus from the Superdome began Wednesday as the first of nearly 25,000 refugees left the miserable surroundings of the football stadium to be transported in a caravan of buses to the Astrodome in Houston, 350 miles away. The conditions in the Superdome had become horrendous: There was no air conditioning, the toilets were backed up, and the stench was so bad that medical workers wore masks as they walked around.

In Mississippi, bodies are starting to pile up at the morgue in hard-hit Harrison County. Forty corpses have brought to the morgue already, and officials expect the death toll in the county to climb well above 100.

Tempers were beginning to flare. Police said a man fatally shot his sister in the head over a bag of ice in Hattiesburg, Miss...

The federal government dispatched helicopters, warships and elite SEAL water-rescue teams in one of the biggest relief operations in U.S. history, aimed at plucking residents from rooftops in the last of the "golden 72 hours" rescuers say is crucial to saving lives.

As fires burned from broken natural-gas mains, the skies above the city buzzed with National Guard and Coast Guard helicopters frantically dropping baskets to roofs where victims had been stranded since the storm roared in with a 145-mph fury Monday. Atop one apartment building, two children held up a giant sign scrawled with the words: "Help us!"

Looters used garbage cans and inflatable mattresses to float away with food, blue jeans, tennis shoes, TV sets — even guns. Outside one pharmacy, thieves commandeered a forklift and used it to push up the storm shutters and break through the glass. The driver of a nursing-home bus surrendered the vehicle to thugs after being threatened.

Police said their first priority remained saving lives, and mostly just stood by and watched the looting. But Nagin later said the looting had gotten so bad that stopping the thieves became the top priority for the police department...

From Knight Ridder's team:

A major American city all but disintegrated Wednesday, and the expected death toll from Hurricane Katrina mushroomed into the thousands.

Bodies floated down streets. Defeated survivors waded waist-deep and ghost-like through floods. Packs of looters rampaged through the ruins and armed themselves with stolen weapons, and gunfire echoed through the city...

And the mayor confirmed what many knew in their hearts, but could not bring themselves to say: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands," Mayor Ray Nagin said when asked had many perished -- just in New Orleans -- in this week's natural assault on what had been one of the nation's largest, most popular, most carefree of cities....

"The city will not be functional for two or three months."

"Some people made their way out of the New Orleans area on railroad tracks Wednesday as officials began evacuations." (Credits, Vince Laforet, NYT).