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South Korea has canceled plans to send troops to Iraq, because theyre only interested in peaceful reconstruction and thats not what we wantSouth Korea has canceled plans to send troops to the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, citing U.S. pressure to participate in "offensive operations" that are contrary to Seoul's mission of peaceful reconstruction, the Defense Ministry said Friday.
The ministry said that it was looking for a new location to send the 3,600 troops it has promised to dispatch to Iraq to aid in rebuilding the country.
"South Korea and the United States share the understanding that it was inevitable to change the location of our troop dispatch because the security in Kirkuk, our original candidate area, has worsened," the ministry said in a statement.
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Well, I'm sure everyone out there will be astonished to hear that a year after we went in to get al Qaeda, US commanders say that al Qaeda have gone from nonplayers to the biggest single threat to american troops in Iraq. Smooth move, ExLax.U.S. military commanders across Iraq say that a combination of foreign and indigenous Islamic extremists have eclipsed loyalists of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party as the dominant organizers and financiers of attacks on American and Iraqi security forces and civilians.
The Islamic radicals have been deemed by the commanders to be largely responsible for not just a series of high-profile suicide car bombings that have killed more than 1,000 people, but also a spate of recent attacks on U.S. troops, foreign civilians and Iraqis working with American forces. In many cases, the commanders said, religious extremists have begun to exercise leadership over cells of low-level Baathist fighters whose superiors have been captured or killed, by offering money and weapons to conduct mortar strikes, drive-by shootings and assassinations.
On the eve of the Iraq invasion's first anniversary, Islamic extremists have emerged as "the principal threat" to security in Baghdad, said Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division, which controls the capital. Officers based in restive areas outside Baghdad, including the commander of an Army battalion in Fallujah and the commander of a brigade in Baqubah, said the same trend has emerged in their areas.
In the intelligence operations room at the 1st Armored Division's headquarters, wall-mounted charts identifying and linking insurgents depict the changing battlefield. Last fall, the organizational chart of Baathist fighters and leaders stretched for 10 feet, while charts listing known Islamic radicals took up a few pieces of paper. Now, the chart of Iraqi religious extremists dominates the room, while the poster depicting Baathist activity has shrunk to half of its previous size. Smaller diagrams identify what is known about foreign Islamic extremists who have set up operations in the capital.
Military officials said evidence and intelligence from informers and interrogations suggests that foreign fighters still constitute a relatively small component of the insurgency. Dempsey said he estimated there were only about 100 "foreign terrorists" in Baghdad, organized into about six cells. In Anbar province, which stretches across western Iraq and includes the strife-torn cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr. of the 82nd Airborne Division said he believed there were a total of 50 to 80 foreign fighters in eight to 10 cells.
Military officials said they suspected that the foreign fighters were making up for what they lacked in numbers by plugging into networks of Iraqi Sunni Muslim extremists who adhere to the same radical Wahhabi brand of Islam as Osama bin Laden. The officials believe the foreigners are bringing money, technical expertise and encouragement to get hundreds of Iraqis to plant roadside bombs, assassinate people collaborating with occupation forces and detonate explosive-packed vehicles.
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Pakistan refuses to let us talk to the scientist who they say unilaterally supplied all of the Axis of Evil (except for Iraq) with nuclear capacity, although Powell says they're lying about thatU.S. officials have been unable to directly question a Pakistani scientist who sold nuclear technology to rogue states, leaving doubt that the United States has a full picture of who was involved in the operation, what nuclear devices were sold and to whom.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking to reporters Thursday on his plane en route from Pakistan to Kuwait, said Pakistan was sharing information with the United States from the interrogation of the scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan.
"We're getting a 'fill' at the moment," Powell said. "I don't think there's been any direct access. But we're getting information."
Powell, who met Thursday with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf over lunch, sidestepped questions about whether current or former Pakistani government officials were involved in the sale of nuclear know-how to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
Khan, considered the father of Pakistan's bomb, admitted running the network but claimed he acted on his own. Musharraf subsequently pardoned him.
"Obviously, A.Q. Khan was acting with other agencies of the government to produce a bomb in the first place," Powell told reporters. He said Musharraf "gave me a summary of the relationship A.Q. Khan had with those in authority over that period of time." Powell refused to give details.
Nuclear experts say it is almost inconceivable that Khan peddled nuclear technology without government involvement. Pakistani military planes were photographed two years ago by U.S. satellites unloading North Korean missiles that North Korea is believed to have traded for uranium-enrichment technology.
A high-level State Department official directly involved in the U.S. anti-proliferation effort says Pakistan delivered to North Korea centrifuges, uranium fuel and designs for a uranium-based bomb Ñ the same package the Khan network sold to Libya. Since selling nuclear capacity to our enemies is not an imminent threat like wanting some is, we're rewarding Pakistan by selling them depleted uranium ammunition and lending them money to buy weaponsThe United States soon will name Pakistan a major non-NATO ally, making it easier for the country to acquire U.S. arms in recognition of the Pakistani government's crucial support in the war on terrorism, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday.
Hours later, Pakistani officials said their troops had surrounded al Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, in an operation near the Afghan border, after waging their second assault this week on Islamic militants in isolated tribal areas near the Afghan border.
"We'll designate Pakistan as a major non-NATO ally for purposes of our future military-to-military relations," the secretary said at a press conference with Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri during a visit to Islamabad.
The designation, of which Congress will be formally notified in the coming days, allows a foreign country to use U.S. funding to lease certain defense items and makes it eligible for loans of military supplies for research and development projects.
It also enables that country to buy depleted uranium ammunition, to have U.S.-owned military stockpiles on its territory outside U.S. bases and to receive U.S. military training on easier financial terms. Anybody wonder what exactly the US government is buying with all that support of outsourcing to India? Well, we don't hear a whole lot from India about our leaping into bed with the rogue government of Pakistan lately, do we.
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...knock on any door and say, "If you let me in, I'll live the way you want me to live, and I'll think the way you want me to think," and all the blinds'll go up and all the windows will open, and you'll never be lonely, ever again. - Inherit the WindThe county that was the site of the Scopes "Monkey Trial" over the teaching of evolution Thursday reversed its call to ban homosexuals.
Rhea County commissioners took about three minutes to retreat from a request to amend state law so the county can charge homosexuals with crimes against nature. The Tuesday measure passed 8-0.
County attorney Gary Fritts said the initial vote triggered a "wildfire" of reaction. "I've never seen nothing like this," he said Thursday.
But Fritts said it was all a misunderstanding.
"They wanted to send a message to our (state) representative and senator that Rhea County supports the ban on same-sex marriage," he said. "Same-sex marriage is what it was all about. It was to stop people from coming here and getting married and living in Rhea County."
Not that the issue of banning homosexuals didn't arise.
"I'm not saying it wasn't discussed," Fritts said. "Sometimes you had five or six people talking."
Fritts said he advised the commissioners they cannot ban homosexuals or make them subject to criminal charges. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 struck down Texas' sodomy laws as a violation of adults' privacy.
Fritts said he doesn't believe the issue will come up again.
"I think they got all the publicity they need about it," he said.
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I have in the past had my differences with Eric Alterman, but this segment of the Dennis Miller show was a smackdown. Miller appeared to be under the influence of something, and he lost track of the conversation when Alterman declined to give him an opening to use his Howard Dean material (yeah, timely stuff, that). Very sad. A long time ago, Miller was funny, or maybe it just seems that way in the rosy glow of memory when you figure he was working with, say, David Spade. Does anyone else find it a little scary that performers who oppose Our Fearless Leader are supposed to shut up, because, well, they perform, and the right are promoting the support of policy wonks like Bo Derek, Jessica Simpson and Dennis Miller?  via SK Bubba (who whupped me in the Koufax Awards) and skippy
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John McCain says that Kerry would not endanger national security as Commander in Chief. Keyboard warriors, start your engines. Senator John McCain added a rare bit of restraint to the escalating tone of the presidential campaign today, rejecting assertions by other Republicans that his colleague, Senator John Kerry, would endanger national security if elected.
``I don't think that,'' Mr. McCain said on CBS this morning. ``I think that John Kerry is a good and decent man. I think he has served his country. I think he has different points of view on different issues and he will have to explain his voting record. But this kind of rhetoric, I think, is not helpful in educating and helping the American people make a choice.'' Advertisement
Mr. McCain also defended Mr. Kerry in an appearance on NBC's "Today," saying in response to a question that he did not believe Mr. Kerry was "weak on defense."
But Mr. McCain made it clear he supported the president and said he had no intention of joining his fellow Vietnam veteran on the ticket after he recently left the door slightly open to that possibility, much to the distress of the White House.
``I don't want to be vice president of the United States,'' Mr. McCain said on CBS, adding that he enjoyed his work in the Senate. ``I do not want to leave the Republican Party. I would not be vice president of the United States on either ticket.''
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from a Washington Post article about international reaction to the spanish election, from the Philipine Daily Inquirer "The Spaniards are not appeasers. They are a people who understand, and expect, that democratic rule is derived from a legitimate mandate to govern. A mandate that cannot be maintained by lies, managing information, and most of all, using a national tragedy for political ends." Gosh, it's just like they knew us. Guess the filipinos havent been dealing with muslim terrorism for way longer than we have (because it wouldn't make sense that way). Other nice quotes from around the world: from what the Post is careful to refer to as the leftist Guardian in England "Let no one forget that 36 hours before the election, about 11 million Spaniards took to the streets to swear their revulsion at terrorism. It takes some cheek to accuse a nation like that of weakness and appeasement."
The Spanish voters did not cave in to the terrorists, he says.
"On the contrary, many of those who opposed the war in Iraq did so precisely because they feared it would distract from the more urgent war against Islamist fanaticism. (Witness the US military resources pulled off the hunt for Bin Laden in Afghanistan and diverted to Baghdad.) Nor was it appeasement to suggest that the US-led invasion of an oil-rich, Muslim country would make al-Qaeda's recruitment mission that much easier." from the Daily Star in Beirut, where muslim terrorism is pretty much unknown "The appeasement accusation will grow stronger and get uglier in the weeks and months ahead. It deserves a full and fair hearing, and nobody should shy away from it or be intellectually terrorized by the charge."
Khoury acknowledged the danger that al Qaeda will again use terror attacks to influence Western elections. On the other hand, he said Spanish voters "took to the streets in their millions to say that they are against terror and will fight it vigorously. They also said that the policy chosen for this end by their former government is a failed policy. Most of the world, in fact, takes this view." from Le Monde Spanish voters ousted Jose Maria Aznar's Popular Party "not out of fear, but anger," according to the French daily. "They did not support a government and a president, that deceived them and sought to manipulate their votes by putting all the responsibility for the attacks on the ETA [the Basque separatist group] while already possessing clues to Islamist involvement. The handling of the information, backed by pressure on the big media, revived the memory of other deceptions, such as the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which Mr. Aznar refused to explain." I'll give the final quote to the Beirut paper In Khoury's view, the challenge facing the world remains urgent: "to defeat terrorism by devising a mix of political, economic, social and military policies that are based on accurate analysis and diagnosis, effective actions and a realistic prognosis."
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DeLay declines to support party line that Congress knew about the higher estimate, Medicare Administrator Scully "felt" that it would be inconvenient to allow actuary the political independence guaranteed by Clinton-era Republican legislationThe administration says Democrats, whose Medicare proposals would have cost nearly $1 trillion, are exploiting the controversy for political gain at the expense of the elderly. But some Republicans are openly questioning the White House, and the Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, said he saw a "growing scandal over the Medicare drug bill."
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat and a leading critic of the Medicare bill, put the issue in stark, Watergate-era terms, saying, "What did the president know; when did he know it?"
Those questions have not been answered. But interviews with federal officials, including Mr. Foster and Mr. Scully, make clear that the actuary's numbers were circulating within the administration, and possibly on Capitol Hill, throughout the second half of last year, as Congress voted on the prescription drug bill, first in June and again in November.
But the figures were either discounted or ignored, as lawmakers and the White House grappled with the political imperative to pass the legislation.
At a hearing on Feb. 10, Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, told lawmakers that "we knew all along" that the administration's cost estimates would be higher, but said he did not have a final figure, of $534 billion, until Dec. 24, after the bill was signed into law. Nonetheless, Mr. Thompson said he and Mr. Scully had shared their estimates with House and Senate negotiators and with the White House throughout the legislative process.
"There were individuals in the White House who knew that our preliminary estimates were higher," Mr. Thompson testified.
Yet as late as November, Mr. Scully continued to cite the $400 billion figure, which came from the Congressional Budget Office. In a letter to The New York Times published on Nov. 20, Mr. Scully wrote, "We are spending $400 billion."
One House negotiator, Representative Nancy L. Johnson, Republican of Connecticut, said she knew of the higher estimates last year, but discounted them because she thought Mr. Foster's assumptions were flawed. "Absolutely, we knew about these numbers," she said.
But Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, who was also a negotiator, said on Wednesday that he did not learn of the higher estimates until January, when he attended a Republican leaders' retreat. An aide to Mr. DeLay said Joshua B. Bolten, President Bush's budget director, presented the $534 billion final figure at that meeting.
"The leaders about took his head off," said the aide, Stuart Roy, adding, "It was very clear that none of the leaders in that room had ever heard those numbers before."
Mr. DeLay told reporters on Wednesday that the actuary's numbers are "irrelevant to the policy that we passed." In any event, he said, Congress is required to use the estimates of the Congressional Budget Office.
But Mr. Foster's figures do have significance. The Medicare bill was President Bush's highest legislative priority going into the election year, and Congressional forecasts about its cost were highly uncertain. At the same time, conservative lawmakers were up in arms over the expense, and were threatening to vote against the measure.
Ultimately, the legislation squeaked through the House by a final vote of 220 to 215, but only after Republican leaders kept the roll call open for nearly three hours while they twisted the arms of recalcitrant party members. Had the cost estimates been higher than the Congressional Budget Office figures, lawmakers of both parties say, it is possible the Republican-backed bill would have been doomed, or at least significantly altered.
Democrats, sensing a political opportunity in an election year, are now calling for hearings. On Wednesday, Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, threatened to sue Mr. Thompson to get access to Mr. Foster's estimates. Some Republicans are also demanding answers.
"If anyone was truly pressured by a superior to withhold information from Congress, that is profoundly unethical and inappropriate," said Representative Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican who voted reluctantly for the bill.
Seeking to quell the furor, Mr. Thompson announced Tuesday that he had ordered an independent inquiry by the office of the inspector general in his department.
"We have nothing to hide," the secretary said.
This is not the first time Medicare's chief actuary has been caught in a political tempest. In 1997, Republicans, frustrated in their efforts to get information from the actuary under the Clinton administration, wrote into law provisions protecting his independence and stating that he "may be removed only for cause."
Ms. Bjorklund said Democrats routinely made direct requests of Mr. Foster, who has held the actuary's job since 1995. But in an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Scully said that from the time he took office in 2001, he disagreed with Mr. Foster over how much independence the actuary should have.
"Rick felt he was an independent operator," said Mr. Scully, who resigned in December to join a law firm. "My view was that the actuary is part of the executive branch. We had to have some ability to know what he was doing."
Mr. Foster said that he was told in June 2003 that he should not respond directly to certain Congressional requests, and that `the consequences of insubordination would be very severe." Moreover, he said, "there was a pattern of withholding information for what I perceived to be political purposes."
The tensions peaked that month, when, Ms. Bjorklund said, she learned Republicans were drafting a provision that would set up competition between private health plans and the traditional government-run Medicare program. On June 17, she sent Mr. Foster an e-mail message asking him to estimate the proposal's cost. On June 24, still lacking the information, she telephoned him.
"He said, `I cannot give it to you. I'm afraid I could be fired,' " Ms. Bjorklund said. After reminding him that he could be fired only for cause, she said, she called Mr. Scully, who, she said, declared that he could fire Mr. Foster for "insubordination -- directly defying my orders."
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As Case A for the stupidity of trying to figure out what psychotics are thinking (although perhaps some of our dexter sibren are better qualified at that than I by propinquity) and apply it to electoral strategy, I give you this: An unrelated videotape of a man describing himself as al Qaeda's European military spokesman also claimed responsibility for the Madrid bombing, saying it was in retaliation for outgoing Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's domestically-unpopular support for the U.S.-led Iraq war.
In a shock election result three days after the Madrid bombs, Spain voted in the Socialist party, which has since said it will probably withdraw its troops from Iraq.
"The Spanish people... chose peace by choosing the party that was against the alliance with America," the statement said.
The statement said it supported President Bush (news - web sites) in his reelection campaign, and would prefer him to win in November rather than the Democratic candidate John Kerry (news - web sites), as it was not possible to find a leader "more foolish than you (Bush), who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom."
In comments addressed to Bush, the group said:
"Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilization."
"Because of this we desire you (Bush) to be elected." They agree with you about Spain, so the other part must be reliable, right? Idiots. You should at least make your opponents come to the board before you let them play you.
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The Pentagon is sending 18 year olds to die without proper equipment for $500/month in a pointless war, I can support that. But now theyre paying for foreign research on embryonic stem cells, which have a Right to Life. Boy, am I tornThe Pentagon has granted $240,000 to a Swedish team for embryonic stem-cell research linked to Parkinson's disease, the researchers said on Wednesday, despite U.S. government limits on stem-cell research.
In a statement, Lund University in southern Sweden said the U.S. Department of Defense was supporting the Swedish Parkinson's study because the findings could be used to treat similar neurological illnesses caused by battlefield toxins.
The Swedish research, using human embryonic stem cells, will focus on ways to prompt the cells to develop into the type of nerve cells deficient in the brains of patients with Parkinson's. The disease causes tremors, muscle rigidity and slow movement in its sufferers and is currently incurable.
"The goal is to develop a line of human embryonic stem cells which can be transplanted to test animals with a disease resembling Parkinson's," said Patrik Brundin, the research team leader.
Stem cells are a type of master cell. Embryonic stem cells, or blastocysts, can be directed to develop into any type of cell or tissue when grown correctly.
President Bush has forbidden the use of federal funds to manipulate or create human embryos for research and limited scientific research to a few existing batches of cells taken from fertility clinic leftovers.
Opponents, including Bush, say any use of a human embryo amounts to murder and is unethical.
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