Growing opposition to Bush re-election

For the first time, more Americans say they would oppose President George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004 than support a second term, according to a poll published yesterday that showed mounting pessimism over the US military presence in Iraq.

A Newsweek poll found that the human and economic costs of occupation were eroding the president’s support at an accelerating rate.

Sixty-nine percent of those asked were concerned that the US would be bogged down for many years in Iraq with little to show for it in improved security for Americans; 49 percent said they were very concerned.

At the same time Bush’s approval rating dropped to 53 percent, down 18 percent since April, and his lowest rating since before the September 11 attacks turned him from the victor of a disputed election presiding over a worsening economy into a wartime leader.

But the most jarring statistic for the White House looked forward to the 2004 election. Some 49 percent of Americans questioned in yesterday’s poll said they did not want him re-elected, against only 44 percent prepared to give him a second term. The corresponding figures in April were 52 percent backing re-election with 38 percent opposed. (The Guardian (UK))

Protesters near Bush ranch demand withdrawal of troops from Iraq

The ongoing, emotional debate over Iraq came to President Bush’s doorstep on Saturday, Aug. 23.

While protesters near the presidential ranch in Crawford urged that American troops be brought home from Iraq, Bush called their effort there a major offensive in the war on terrorism.

Among those gathering at the local football stadium to denounce both Bush and the war, four days after a terrorist bombing at the UN headquarters in Baghdad, were relatives of troops.

Some protested the extended tours of duty in Iraq and cuts in veterans’ benefits.

Others cited continuing guerilla attacks on American soldiers and the failure to date to find weapons of mass destruction, calling the entire rationale for the war into question.

The Bush critics who journeyed to Crawford had various opinions about the president and what course he should take in Iraq.

Some accused him of lying to justify the war, while others said he was only mistaken. Some called for immediate American withdrawal from Iraq, while others urged the administration to seek help from the United Nations in stabilizing Iraq.

But all said they want loved ones back as soon as possible. (Dallas Morning News)

Prosecutors urged to press Congress

The Justice Department has urged US attorneys to contact congressional representatives who voted against a key anti-terrorism provision of the USA Patriot Act, part of a broad-based publicity campaign on behalf of the law, according to internal department documents.

An Aug. 14 memorandum from Guy A. Lewis, director of the executive office for United States Attorneys, encourages federal prosecutors “to call personally or meet with . . . congressional representatives” to discuss “the potentially deleterious effects” of an amendment approved in the House last month that would cut off funding for “sneak and peek” warrants in terrorism cases.

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-MI), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to Attorney General John D. Ashcroft yesterday questioning whether a current speaking tour by Ashcroft and contacts between US attorneys and members of Congress amount to a violation of the law.

Justice spokeswoman Barbara Comstock said the campaign was fully vetted by government attorneys, and the memo warns that only US attorneys themselves, who are political appointees, can initiate and attend the congressional meetings. “Congress has been saying they want to know how the Patriot Act is being used. The 93 US attorneys are people who can... help tell members of Congress how the Patriot Act is working and how important it is,” she said.

In addition to meeting with local House members, the memo instructs the 93 chief federal prosecutors to hold community meetings to press the virtues of the Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism legislation that passed overwhelmingly weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and gave the government significant new powers to conduct searches and surveillance in terrorism investigations. (Washington Post)

Record spy class heads into field

The CIA, looking to double its ranks of clandestine operatives, recently graduated the largest class of new officers in the agency’s history, officials said.

They are members of the first class enrolled after the Sept. 11 attacks. These men and women have completed background checks and training at the “farm,” the officially unacknowledged site outside Williamsburg, VA, where recruits are taught the craft of intelligence work.

They graduated in June; many are assuming fake identities and heading overseas. Their job will be to steal secrets.

The CIA this year began ad campaigns aimed at recruiting Chinese-Americans and Arab-Americans.

About 3,000 people claiming the ability to speak Chinese have applied this year, Bob Rebelo, the CIA’s chief of human resources said, and one-third say they are native speakers. Many are still being tested to verify this. An additional 2,400 people said they spoke Arabic, including 900 native speakers.

Interest in working for the CIA rose after the Sept. 11 attacks. Between October 2001 and October 2002, the agency received 170,000 resumes, Rebelo said. An additional 100,000 have arrived since.

Criticism has increased as well. Rebelo recalled some pointed questions from the audience at a recent career fair he attended.

“The first question I got: “9/11 happened. You can’t find the weapons of mass destruction. You can’t find Osama bin Laden. You’re a secretive organization. You can’t tell us sources and methods. You can’t talk about much. ... How should I, as an American, feel about investing in such an organization?”

Rebelo said he answered: “What you don’t know, and what we can’t talk about for obvious reasons, is everything that’s gone right.” (Associated Press)

Ex-prisoners allege rights abuses by US military

Prisoners released from the military camps at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Bagram air base in Afghanistan have said in a series of interviews with Amnesty International that they were subjected to human rights abuses.

The accounts, which provide some of the most detailed information so far on alleged violations, include claims that people were forcibly injected, denied sleep and forced to stand or kneel for hours in painful positions. These charges are included in a new report from the human rights organization, which is reviewing 23 months of US actions in the war on terror.

About 700 prisoners have been kept at Guantanamo Bay, most captured in Afghanistan after the war in 2001. About 60 men have since been released. The United States has designated the prisoners “enemy combatants” and has refused them access to lawyers or relatives.

The report concludes that conditions at the bases may be coercive in the context of repeated interrogations and calls for the Bush administration to treat detainees humanely, provide legal counsel and charge them promptly with recognizable criminal offenses — or release them.

Alexandra Arriaga, director of government relations for Amnesty International USA, said it was impossible to independently judge conditions at the camps, as the organization had been denied entry.

Concern for detainees mounted earlier this year when pathologists at Bagram called the deaths of two Afghan prisoners after interrogation homicides and blamed blunt-force injuries in addition to other causes. The US military is still investigating the deaths. (Washington Post)

Closing V.A. hospitals has Congress squirming

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ new proposal to close seven hospitals and change the services available at dozens of others landed with a thud on Capitol Hill this month, even though the plan called for spending billions of dollars to build new centers and open scores of outpatient clinics in areas where veterans have migrated.

Senators and representatives fired off angry letters, vowing to fight any closings. Emergency community meetings were convened. Advocacy groups were mobilized.

Given the hopeful acronym of CARES (Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services), the plan is the department’s most ambitious effort to date in its struggle to put its services where the veterans are and catch up to the shift of medicine to outpatient care. It is also an effort to get a grip on what has been an embarrassing problem — vacant and underutilized veterans centers built in the Northeast and Midwest decades ago when veterans were clustered there before they retired to the Sunbelt. The object of the plan is to save $45 million a year over the next 20 years by reducing the department’s vacant and little used space by more than 40 percent — to 4.9 million by 2022 from 8.5 million square feet in 2001.

Many lawmakers would acknowledge that some veterans’ facilities should have been mothballed long ago or transformed into something other than 1950’s-style hospitals. But they also know their communities expect them to put up a fight. More is at stake than providing care. In some towns, the veterans’ center is the major employer. (New York Times)

Microsoft switches site to Linux during security crisis

According to a post on the Netcraft web site, Microsoft changed its settings on Friday so that requests for www.microsoft.com no longer resolve to machines on Microsoft’s own network, but instead are handled by the Akamai caching system, which runs Linux.

Akamai runs a service to help boost web site performance by caching copies of web sites on many servers in many locations. Akamai can help defend against denial-of-service attacks by spreading the attack among many servers. Just as a distributed denial-of-service attack enlists large numbers of systems to attack a single server, Akamai presents a distributed defense against denial-of-service attacks.

Microsoft using a Linux service is ironic, given that Microsoft has identified Linux as its biggest competitor. In a conference call with analysts last month, company CFO John Connors ranked Linux as the #2 risk faced by the company. The #1 risk was the general economic environment, Connors said. Nearly one in five small and mid-sized businesses is using Linux on the desktop. (Internet Week)

US wastes health-care funds

Thirty-one cents of every dollar spent on health care in the United States goes to pay administrative costs — nearly double the rate in Canada, according to a new comparison that sees colossal bureaucratic waste in the American system.

Americans spend $752 more per person per year than Canadians on medical administrative costs alone, according to the study by investigators from Harvard University and the Canadian Institute for Health Information, which was published in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers who prepared the comparison said on Aug. 21 that the United States wastes more money on health bureaucracy than it would cost to provide health care to the tens of millions of uninsured Americans.

The team, led by Steffie Woolhandler of Harvard, said a large sum of money might be saved in the United States if administrative costs could be trimmed by implementing a Canadian-style, single-payer health care system. (Toronto Star)