#5
Gitmo can't be all that bad if Carlos wants to go there.
He should alert Amnesia International that his human rights are being violated by all of this, and demand that they work to send him to Gitmo tout suite!
Yesterday on The Situation Room, NYT editor Bill Keller told CNN's Wolf Blitzer (video):
KELLER: To the best of my knowledge, three people outside of the administration were asked by the administration to call us. I spoke to one of them. One of them spoke to our Washington bureau chief. One of them spoke to Jill Abramson, our managing editor. All of them spoke, they thought, in confidence, and I don't think I will breach the confidence of what they said, although I will say that not all of them urged us not to publish.
BLITZER: Because in the letter from the treasury secretary, he specifically refers to former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton, who, together with the chairman of the 9/11 Commission, Governor Tom Kean of New Jersey, appealed to you not to print this information. I assume you can confirm Lee Hamilton, since the treasury secretary has disclosed his name.
KELLER: I am happy to tell you who we spoke to. I think I'll leave it to them to tell you what they actually said, but I will say that...
BLITZER: Who were the three people outside of the administration that asked you not to report this information?
KELLER: Tom Kean, Lee Hamilton and Congressman Jack Murtha.
This exchanged raised several questions. First, did the administration ask Murtha to speak to the New York Times about this program? I can't imagine that they would. I mean, there's bipartisanship and all, and sometimes practicality forces you to work with people you don't like, but . . . Murtha?
Second, Keller said of the three outside officials, "not all of them urged us not to publish." We know Hamilton and Kean urged the NYT not to publish. Did Murtha not urge the NYT not to publish details of a classified program? I'd be pleasantly surprised if Murtha did the right thing and urged them not to publish.
The phrasing of Blitzer's question makes it difficult to guess. He asked, who were the three people "that asked you not to report this information." Keller told him it was Kean, Hamilton and Murtha.
I called Murtha's office today and got this response from his communications director: "It's a classified program and he's not going to talk about it." She refused to comment beyond that.
My suspicion is that Murtha, if he had anything to do with this at all, would have supported the NYT in publishing. Hell, I wouldn't put it past him to have been one of the leakers.
Did Murtha speak to an NYT editor about the program and fail to urge the paper to refrain from publishing the details of a sensitive intelligence-gathering operation? Keller's not talking. Murtha's not talking. How will we ever find out?
We probably never will. As Andy McCarthy wrote yesterday, the press reserves a secrecy for itself that it finds unacceptable in our efforts to kill and capture terrorists.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/28/2006 09:22 ||
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That rat Murtha has something to do with this? You can bet any reasons he has for talking to them are nefarious and self-serving.
#2
Logically, Murtha should be against the NYT action.
This is because Murtha is against military action against terrorists and if military action is verboten then all you have left is the intel, financial agreements and legal actions.
Of course, Murtha is not required to recognize this or any other logical arguement.
#4
Logically (in his reality) Murtha should be for the NYT action.
All his actions are directed toward his personal ambition to be House Majority Leader. He thinks humbling the trunks will bring about a donk victory in November.
Not saying it's true or logical to the rational and reality based, just the Kool-Aid he drinks.
Carnegie Endowment Report, June 2006 The following is a summary by Ashley J. Tellis. Click on the icon above for the full text of the report.
Among the most serious criticisms leveled at the U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation initiative agreed to by President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is that it would enable India to rapidly expand its nuclear arsenal. This criticism rests upon two crucial assumptions: that New Delhi in fact seeks the largest nuclear weapons inventory its capacity and resources permit; and, the Indian desire for a larger nuclear arsenal has been stymied thus far by a shortage of natural uranium.
Atoms for War? U.S.-Indian Civilian Nuclear Cooperation and Indias Nuclear Arsenal by Ashley J. Tellis, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, suggests that both these assumptions are deeply flawed. To begin with, the study concludes that India is currently separating about 24-40 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium annually, far less than it has the capability to produce. This evidence, which suggests that the Government of India is in no hurry to build the biggest nuclear stockpile it could construct based on material factors alone, undermines the assumption that India wishes to build the biggest nuclear arsenal it possibly can.
Further, Indias capacity to produce a huge nuclear arsenal is not affected by prospective U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear cooperation. A few facts underscore this conclusion clearly. India is widely acknowledged to possess reserves of 78,000 metric tons of uranium (MTU). The forthcoming Carnegie study concludes that the total inventory of natural uranium required to sustain all the reactors associated with the current power program (both those operational and those under construction) and the weapons program over the entire notional lifetime of these plants runs into some 14,640-14,790 MTUor, in other words, requirements that are well within even the most conservative valuations of Indias reasonably assured uranium reserves. If the eight reactors that India has retained outside of safeguards were to allocate 1/4 of their cores for the production of weapons-grade materialsthe most realistic possibility for the technical reasons discussed at length in the forthcoming reportthe total amount of natural uranium required to run these facilities for the remaining duration of their notional lives would be somewhere between 19,965-29,124 MTU. If this total is added to the entire natural uranium fuel load required to run Indias two research reactors dedicated to the production of weapons-grade plutonium over their entire life cyclesome 938-1088 MTUthe total amount of natural uranium required by Indias dedicated weapons reactors and all its unsafeguarded PHWRs does not exceed 20,903-30,212 MTU over the remaining lifetime of these facilities. Operating Indias eight unsafeguarded PHWRs in this way would bequeath New Delhi with some 12,135-13,370 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium, which is sufficient to produce between 2,023-2,228 nuclear weapons over and above those already existing in the Indian arsenal.
The research in this report concludes that the total amount of natural uranium required to fuel all Indian reactors, on the assumption that eight of them would be used for producing weapons-grade materials in 1/4 of their cores, would be crudely speaking somewhere between 26,381 and 35,690 MTU over the remaining lives of all these facilitiesa requirement that lies well within Indias assured uranium reserves howsoever these are disaggregated. In sum, India has the indigenous reserves of natural uranium necessary to undergird the largest possible nuclear arsenal it may desire and, consequently, the U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear cooperation initiative will not materially contribute towards New Delhis strategic capacities in any consequential way either directly or by freeing up its internal resources.
This conclusion notwithstanding, India does face a current shortage of natural uranium caused by constrictions in its mining and milling capacity. This deficit, however, represents a transient problem that is in the process of being redressed. It should be borne in mind that the U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation agreement proposed by President Bush does not in any way affect the Government of Indias ability to upgrade its uranium mines and milling facilitiesas it is currently doing. All this implies that the shortages of uranium fuel experienced by India presently are a near-term aberration, and not an enduring limitation resulting from the dearth of physical resources. As such, they do not offer a viable basis either for Congress to extort any concessions from India in regards to its weapons program or for supporting the petty canard that imported natural uranium will lead to a substantial increase in the size of Indias nuclear weapons program.
Ashley J. Tellis is a senior associate specializing in international security, defense, and Asian strategic issues at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is co-author of Strategic Asia 2005-06: Military Modernization in an Era of Uncertainty.
Posted by: john ||
06/28/2006 06:38 ||
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however, represents a transient problem that is in the process of being redressed. It should be borne in mind that the U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation agreement proposed by President Bush does not in any way affect the Government of Indias ability to upgrade its uranium mines and milling facilities
On March 2, while the President Bush was visiting New Delhi, he and Prime Minister Singh signed an agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation. The agreement requires congressional action to implement, however, and little has been done to move this process forward. Later today, the House International Relations Committee is scheduled to mark up H.R. 4974, a bill to authorize the president to waive the application of certain requirements of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 with respect to India, but floor action in the House and favorable actions of any kind in the Senate are a question mark.
On June 22, Vice President Dick Cheney tried to get the ball rolling with a speech to the U.S.-India Business Council in which he called the agreement one of the most important strategic foreign-policy initiatives of our government. He stressed that Today there is a new strategic partnership between our countries a partnership based on democratic values, common interests, strong commercial ties and a climate of trust and good faith between our governments.
Yet, in an interview with the London Financial Times earlier in the week, Sen. John McCain said that Congress would probably not act on the measure this year because of the need to scrutinize the deal rigorously. Critics fear that lifting restrictions on nuclear cooperation with India, a country that has developed nuclear weapons without signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, would set a bad precedent at a time when the United States is trying to rally international opinion against the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea.
Posted by: john ||
06/28/2006 06:37 ||
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Excellent article. It boils down who can you trust more to abide by agreements and act responsibly, clearly the answer is India (rather than China).
#2
Yeah, big difference between India and Iran.
So that argument doesn't hold water. India doesn't go around threatening to annihilate other countries and use terror to bend its neighbors to their will.
by Jim Geraghty, New York Sun It's a teaser link, but the good part is in the first two paragraphs
Odd as it may seem, the annual release of the survey results of the Pew Global Attitudes Project has evolved into the American equivalent of the bloody Shia ritual of Ashura. During Ashura, devout Shiites commemorate the suffering and martyrdom of the grandson of Mohammed, Husayn, by flagellating themselves bloody with bladed chains.
For several consecutive years, the Pew study has disclosed that large majorities of foreign populations despise Americans, spurring international pundits to call for Americans to embrace a vigorous round of metaphorical self-flagellation, and for the Bush administration to seek penance by changing its policies.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/28/2006 07:08 ||
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Some of us out here love America and respect what President Bush is doing. Just keep doing it, with more please.
And if you decide isolation is the solution, then I understand.
#3
Many years ago I was introduced to such people, for whom self-hatred has evolved into hatred of everyone who would treat them justly.
Of a radical leftist professor who was just a continual pest at a local university, it was even said in the student newspaper that "All he wants is once a year to be paraded around the campus while being scourged. Is that too much to ask?"
I took it as a joke until a year or so later, when the professor ceased being such a nuisance. It seems that he and his wife had joined a sado-masochistic master-slave club, and he had become one of their top "flogees".
And now, having an outlet, he no longer agitated for leftists causes around campus. It struck everyone that he looked a lot happier now.
A lot of words have been used to describe media behavior in revealing government secrets in the war on terror. "Irresponsible," "reprehensible" and "disgraceful" are just a few. How about "criminal"?
Listening to the top editors of America's leading newspapers justify acts of perfidy in recent days has been instructive. Much has been said in defense of the indefensible. But we were aghast at the rationale offered by New York Times Editor Bill Keller: It was, he said, in the "public interest." We rather doubt that. Fact is, the Times has now published three stories in the last year and a half that revealed details of secret programs in the war on terror. In so doing, it has put terrorists on notice they're being watched, thereby giving them an incentive to alter their behavior and become tougher to catch. How's that in the "public interest"?
We'll at least credit Doyle McManus, Washington bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times, for his honesty. Appearing on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, he admitted the program to track terrorist bank dealings through SWIFT, a global financial clearing network, was probably legal and effective. He also admitted "it is conceivable" that printing the stories would help terrorists elude capture. So, again, is that in the "public interest?"
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
06/28/2006 00:00 ||
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Can you hear it, George? How 'bout you, Karl?
People are coming out into the open and telling you they have had their fill of the NYT and the rest.
#2
Its NOT "WAR" when Radical Islamists/Muslims andor Commies wage it - there will be no war once the entire world is fully Islamist andor Communist. YOU HOO - WORLD-CONQUERING ISLAMIST, MEET WORLD-CONQUERING COMMUNIST; GOD-BASED SOCIALIST, MEET SECULAR ATHEIST SOCIALIST. BUGS BUNNY > of course you just know there will peace and harmony between these two GLOBALISTS-TOTALITARIANS-CENTRALISTS, once America and the West is successfully gone.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
