Necessary News

All you need to know to sound brilliant

“War On Terror” Is A War In Error

• Whoops. A small intelligence company says their cover was blown by Bush administration officials who leaked an Osama bin Laden tape to the media. And that’s not the only thing going wrong with the War on Terror. [Washington Post]
• On September 7th, the SITE intelligence group gave two senior Bush administration officials access to an unreleased Osama bin Laden video. They stipulated that the video should not be made public until bin Laden had released the tape himself. But it got out.
• By the afternoon of the same day, the tape and transcript were on cable television news worldwide, a leak that SITE founder Rita Katz says “tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group’s communications network.”
• The unfortunate leak comes as the White House warns that al Qaeda has “regenerated a safe haven” in Pakistan and is “likely to intensify efforts to place operatives inside” the United States. [NY Times]
• Blowing secret agent’s covers isn’t the only thing the White House is bungling. A new report from the Oxford Research Group finds that, between the Iraq War, bellicose rhetoric, and a disdain for diplomacy, the U.S. “War on Terror...is failing and instead fueling an increase in support for extremist Islamist movements.” [Reuters]
• Read the full report here: [Oxford Research Group]
• Also, let’s stop calling it that. As former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in March, “the Bush administration’s elevation of these three words ["War On Terror"] into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America’s psyche and on U.S. standing in the world.” [Washington Post]

Feeling safer?

Find Out Which President Would Attack Without Congressional Approval

The Story:

• In case you missed it, CNBC yesterday held a debate titled “The Republicans, The Economy And You” (not to be confused with the classic “Johnny Dangerously” clip, “Your Testicles And You,” of course.) [CNBC] [Johnny Dangerously]
• The economic questions were interesting, but the exchange which really caught us was about presidential power.
• The Question: Does the President of the United States need to go to Congress before attacking Iran? The Answers: Be afraid. Be very afraid.
• Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution: “Congress shall have power… to declare War,”
• The Law: The War Powers Act of 1973 requires the President of the United States to go to Congress both before and during any hostilities.

The Audio:

THE QUESTION: CHRIS MATTHEWS:

• Do you believe Congress has to authorize a strategic attack, not an attack in hot pursuit, but a strategic attack on weaponry in Iran? Do you need Congressional approval as Commander-In-Chief?
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Mitt Romney: Consult with the lawyers, not Congress

• Romney: You sit down with your attorneys, who’ll tell you what you have to do, but obviously, the president of the United States has to do what’s in the best interests of the United States protect us against a potential threat. The president did that as he was planning on going into Iraq and received the authorization of Congress…
• Matthews: Did he need it?
• Romney: You know, we’re going to let the lawyers sort out what he needed to do and what he didn’t need to do.”
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Duncan Hunter: If he has time, sure, but he doesn’t need to.

• “Answer, Chris, it depends on one thing, first I think the president does not need that if the target is fleeting. We live in this age of terrorists with high technology and if you have a very narrow window to hit a target, the president is going to have to take that on his shoulders. He’s gonna have to do it. He ahs the right to do that under the Constitution, as Commander in Chief of the Military forces. If he has time, then certainly he’ll want to go to congress as we did in Iraq and get the approval of Congress.”
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Ron Paul: Read the Constitution!

• “Absolutely! This idea of going and talking to attorneys wholly baffles me! Why don’t we just open up the Constitution and read it? You’re not allowed to go to war without a declaration of war!”
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• “The thought that the Iranians could pose an imminent attack on the United States is preposterous! There’s no way! This is just war propaganda, continued war propaganda preparing this nation to go to war and spread this war not only in Iraq but into Iran!”

John McCain: Oh, yeah, we’re going to attack Iran.

• I would at minimum consult with the leaders of Congress because there may be a time when you need the approval of Congress and I believe that this is a possibility that is maybe closer to reality than we are discussing tonight.
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Rudy Giuliani: When In Doubt, bring up 9/11

• It’s desirable, it’s safer, to go to Congress and get approval from Congress. If you’re really dealing with exigent circumstance, then the President has to act in the best interests of the country. And the point that Congressman Paul made before that we’ve never had an imminent attack, I don’t know where he was on 9/11.
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• (Paul: Now as far as fleeting enemies go, yes, if there’s an emminent attack on us, but we’ve never had that happen in 220 years.)
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Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

SCOTUS And The Case Of The Guy Accidentally Tortured By The CIA

The Story

• The Supreme Court yesterday sided with the Bush administration and refused to hear the case of a man who says he was wrongly abducted and tortured by the CIA. [LA Times]
• Khaled Masri: A German car salesman. Khalid Masri: A wanted terrorist. Two different guys.
• In January 2004, Masri-the-car-salesman charges he was kidnapped by the CIA in a horrific case of mistaken identity. He was then shipped to a U.S.-run prison in Afghanistan and tortured for five months until agents realized their mistake. They dropped him off on a random hillside in Albania; he eventually found his way home to Germany.
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel has even said that in a meeting with Secretary of State Condi Rice, U.S. officials admittted, whoops, they’d made a mistake and confused him with someone else. (U.S. officials have not publicly admitted responsibility.)
• Masri-the-car-salesman was understandably upset. Two years ago, he sued the CIA.
• The White House doesn’t want any part of the suit. They’ve pushed the courts to deny his suit, saying it could expose “state secrets.” (About, for example, kidnapping people and sending them to be tortured in U.S.-run prisons in Afghanistan.)
• Yesterday, the Supreme Court announced they would not hear Masri vs. the United States. They gave no explanation.
• A 1953 Supreme Court case allows the government to withhold information if “there is a reasonable danger” disclosure would threaten our national security. There is enormous controversy over what that in fact covers; hearing this case would have pushed the Supreme Court to clarify this.
• The Constitution Project: “The government’s treatment of Mr. El-Masri has been appalling, and the executive branch should not be permitted to hide its mistakes behind the so-called state secrets privilege…Now that the court has declined to consider this issue, Congress should immediately take up legislation to reform the state secrets privilege and clarify that it does not authorize unchecked power to disregard individual rights.” [NY Times]
• Rep. Ed Markey agrees: “The Bush administration reflexively responds with the ‘state secrets’ defense whenever it is caught bending or simply ignoring the law.” [NY Times]

By The Numbers

• 6: The number of times between the war years of 1953 and 1976 a U.S. president invoked the “state secrets” privilege.
• 39: The number of times George Bush has invoked the “state secrets” privilege since 2001. [USA Today]

Color us not surprised: The U.S. also refuses to talk about Maher Arar, the Canadian also mistakenly abducted by the CIA and sent to Syria where he was tortured.

The British Are Leaving, The British Are Leaving

The Story

• Monday, in a break from his predecessor Tony Blair, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced plans to reduce British forces in Iraq by half by next spring. They’re outta there. [NY Times]
• Currently, the British have about 5,000 troops in Iraq. By spring of ‘08, that number will drop to 2,500. Many predict that Britain will complete a full withdrawal by the end of that year.
• Since 1,000 British troops pulled out of Basra City in southern Iraq, Brown says the security situation there has “been calmer.”
• Indeed, last week Reuters reported that the city had become “much quieter since British troops withdrew from the grand Saddam Hussein-era Basra Palace.” [Reuters]
• Meanwhile, in Baghdad, Iraqi lawmakers seem to have abandoned the U.S.-imposed of political reconciliation (what the surge was supposed to be for).
• The Washington Post reports that lawmakers claim that “sectarian animosity is entrenched in the structure of their government” and leaders, with their loyalty to sect trumping all, feeling “hamstrung by the very government structure they are operating within.” [Washington Post]

The Audio

• British Brigadier Graham Binns explains that, “what will be left in spring of next year will be a militarily coherent force, which is capable of conducting all the tasks required of us by a US core commander.”
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Time to hang up your saddle, Paul Revere.

You Pollute, You Pay

• The earth has scored another victory in the on-going legal battle against global warming. The Associated Press reports that “Settling an eight-year legal battle, a major power generator has agreed to spend $4.6 billion to reduce chemical emissions blamed for spreading acid rain across the Northeast.” [AP]
• But that’s not all. The polluter — American Electric Power Co. — “will be required to reduce the emissions by at least 69 percent over the next 10 years and pay an additional $15 million in civil penalties and $60 million in cleanup and mitigation costs to help heal polluted parkland and waterways.”
• If $4.6 billion seems like a lot of money, that’s because it is. In fact, it’s the most money a company has ever been fined by the government in an environmental case. To put things in perspective: Exxon Mobil Corp. estimates it has paid $3.5 billion in cleanup costs, government settlements, fines and compensation for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.
• Here’s the background: The EPA, a dozen environmental groups and eight states Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont brought the lawsuit against AEP in 1999 during the Clinton administration. The group said that the company had re-built factories without installing proper pollution controls that were required under the Clean Air Act.
• And believe us, acid rain is as bad as it sounds. The poisonous drops — which are linked to sulfates and nitrates that are products of coal-fired plants — have caused severe damage from everything ranging from the Statue of Liberty, to the Adirondacks mountain range in upstate New York.
• Finally, this isn’t the first time courts in the U.S. have gone green. In September, a federal judge in Vermont backed a California measure that intends “to reduce greenhouse gases emitted by automobiles and light trucks.” 13 other states are expected to follow suit. [New York Times]
• That legal victory comes on the heels of April’s Supreme Court decision that the EPA has the authority to regulate nasty greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

That’s quite an expensive slap on the wrist.

Good News, Bad News

A car-jacker’s job is about to get a whole lot harder. Starting with about of its 20 models for 2009, GM’s On Star service will be able to slowly halt a car that is reported stolen, and the radio may even speak up and tell the thief to pull over because police are watching. OnStar already finds 700 to 800 cars per month using the global positioning system. With the new technology, which OnStar President Chet Huber said GM will apply to the rest of its lineup in future years, OnStar would call police and tell them a stolen car’s whereabouts. Let’s check out the pros and cons. [CBS]

GOOD NEWS

Nothing deters a car thief more than an automated voice telling him to pull over.

BAD NEWS

Future developments: weight scales on seats; Dom DeLuise telling you to slow down.

Quote Of The Day

“I see shorter skirts on the women of Fox News than I do on the prostitutes being arrested on cop shows.”

—Mark Dice, leader of Christian media watchdog group, “The Resistance.” Fox’s response: “We’re always flattered to have everyone talking about us in one form or another.” [NY Post]

Speed Round

AUDIO: BUSH ON NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

President Bush called on Congress to reauthorize his controversial education policy. Hear what he had to say.

AUDIO: RUSH LIMBAUGH

The pill popper bashes a 12-year old recipient of SCHIP, saying his head is “filled with lies.” All this to distract from his statement that troops who oppose the war in Iraq are “phony soldiers.”

[Think Progress]

TERROR

Remember “we have to fight the terrorists in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them here” line? Yeah, the White House wants us to officially forget it, issuing a new report saying we face home-grown terrorists and IED roadside bombs right here in the U.S. of A. [Washington Post]

BOOMSDAY

It’s starting: The first wave of Baby Boomers are cashing in on social security. [USA Today]

AND THE WINNER IS...

Thank these two guys: Nobel Prizes were awarded to a German and a Frenchman whose discoveries and inventions have led to devices such as the iPod store reams of data on ever-shrinking hard disks. [AP]

BABY, IT’S COLD OUTSIDE

Heat your house with oil? Get ready to pay an average of $319 *more* this winter, 22% more than you did last winter. [AP]

RUN, MADRAZO, RUN!

Mexico’s Roberto Madrazo, member of the nation’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (a party frequently accused of election fraud) won the Berlin Marathon on September 30. Problem: According to his race-tracking chip, he was running 9 miles in 21 minutes, faster than a human being can run. That’s right…he cheated. [Sports Illustrated]

TERROR

Terrorism experts support Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s plan to give drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants, saying they “regard it as a way of bringing a hidden population into the open and ultimately making the system more secure.” [NY Times]

OOPS

Secret Service takes shot at Ahmadinejad. [RAW]

1.4 MILLION

The number of searches conducted on Google every minute around the world. [AP]

D’OH-A

Developing countries say they won’t reduce tariffs. [FINANCIAL TIMES]

IRAQ

Two Iraqi women are killed in a shooting by a security convoy. The kicker? A private security contractor, Unity Resources Group, has confirmed that it was involved in the shooting. [NY Times]

ANOTHER WAR

Fighting intensifies in Pakistan. Thank the Taliban. [NY Times]

“THREE OR FOUR YEARS AND SUBSTANTIAL RESOURCES”

What the Army needs to recover from the Iraq war, according to General Casey. [Think Progress]

SIGNED, FABULOUS

“Dear Abby” supports gay marriage. [WTOP]