Author: lapin

The Bush administration altered critical portions of a scientific analysis of the environmental impact of cattle grazing on public lands before announcing relaxed grazing limits on those lands, according to scientists involved in the study.

A government biologist and a hydrologist, who both retired this year from the Bureau of Land Management, said their conclusions that the proposed rules might adversely affect water quality and wildlife, including endangered species, were excised and replaced with language justifying less-stringent regulations favored by cattle ranchers.

Grazing regulations, which affect 160 million acres of public land in 11 Western states, set the conditions under which ranchers may use that land, and guide government managers in determining how many cattle may graze, where, and for how long without harming resources.

The original draft of the environmental analysis warned that the new rules would have a “significant adverse impact” on wildlife, but that phrase was removed. The BLM now concludes that the grazing regulations are “beneficial to animals.”

Eliminated from the final draft was another conclusion that read: “The Proposed Action will have a slow, long-term adverse impact on wildlife and biological diversity in general.”

Also removed was language saying how the rules changes could affect endangered species adversely.

“This is a whitewash; they took all of our science and reversed it 180 degrees,” said Erick Campbell, a former BLM state biologist in Nevada and a 30-year BLM employee who retired this year. Campbell wrote sections of the report pertaining to impacts on wildlife and threatened and endangered species. “They rewrote everything. It’s a crime,” he said.

Former BLM hydrologist Bill Brookes, who assessed the rules’ impact on water resources, said in the original draft that the proposed rule change is “an abrogation of (BLM’s) responsibility under the Clean Water Act.”

“Everything I wrote was totally rewritten and watered down,” Brookes said Thursday. “Everything in the report that was purported to be negative was watered down. Instead of saying, in the long term, this will create problems, it now says, in the long term, grazing is the best thing since sliced bread.”

Campbell and Brookes were among more than a dozen BLM specialists who contributed to the environmental-impact statement (EIS). The others could not be reached or did not return calls seeking comment.

Ranchers hailed the rules.

Democratic Party Chairman     Howard Dean on Wednesday defended his recent harsh criticism of Republicans, including his observation that they are “pretty much a white, Christian party.”

Dean noted that he, too, is a white Christian. But he said the GOP is too narrow in its scope and the Democratic Party is far more diverse.

While even prominent Democrats in recent days have distanced themselves from some of his comments, the outspoken Dean, appearing on NBC”s “Today” show, said criticism of him is meant by Republicans to divert attention from the country’s problems and make him the issue instead.

Dean told a forum of journalists and minority leaders Monday that Republicans are “not very friendly to different kinds of people, they are a pretty monolithic party … it’s pretty much a white, Christian party.”

Challenged on that during the NBC interview, Dean said “unfortunately, by and large it is. And they have the agenda of the conservative Christians.”

“This is a diversion from the issues that really matter: Social Security, and adequate job opportunity, strong public schools, a strong defense,” Dean said.

Biden, asked about Dean Wednesday during an interview on the Don Imus radio show, also said the chairman is doing a good job.

“A lot of things he does say, I agree with,” Biden said. But he also said that Dean “has views that are slightly different than mine .. .But look, he’s a lightning rod. … It’s probably good that there’s a guy out there that’s a lightning rod … .”

Biden, however, added that he thinks “the rhetoric is counterproductive.”

“I think this country has a purple heart, not a red heart or a blue heart,” Biden said. “If we can’t bring this (country) together, man, boy, we’re really in deep trouble.”

The Senate yesterday defeated a proposal by Sen. Maria Cantwell to put the nation on the path toward reducing its dependence on foreign oil supplies by 40 percent over the next 20 years.

The measure, which Cantwell wanted to attach to the energy bill, was defeated 53-47 on a mostly party-line vote.

Cantwell, D-Wash., expressed disappointment with the outcome, noting that Democrats, Republicans and President Bush have all agreed that the nation should move to lessen its dependence on foreign supplies. The United States currently imports 58 percent of the 21 million barrels of oil it consumes every day.

“Unfortunately, the concern we’ve been hearing from the president and Republican leaders about America’s dependence on foreign oil is just empty rhetoric,” Cantwell said. “They had a chance to throw a strike for the economic and national security of our nation, and they balked.”

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Cantwell attracted three Republican votes — Sens. Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania — while one Democrat, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, voted against the amendment.

Key members of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency reappointed Mohammed ElBaradei for a third term as head of the organization Monday after the Bush administration last week publicly dropped its opposition to him.

Washington had accused ElBaradei of being too mild on Iran and of trying to obstruct the invasion of Iraq by questioning U.S intelligence that asserted Saddam Hussein had a nuclear arms program.

Mr. President, my report to the council today is an update on the status of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s nuclear verification activities in Iraq pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1441 and other relevant resolutions.

When I reported last to the council on February 14, I explained that the agency’s inspection activities has moved well beyond the reconnaissance phase — that is, re-establishing our knowledge base regarding Iraq nuclear capabilities — into the investigative phase, which focuses on the central question before the IAEA relevant to disarmament — whether Iraq has revived or attempted to revive its defunct nuclear weapons program over the last four years.

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Mr. President, in the last few weeks, Iraq has provided a considerable volume of documentation relevant to the issues I reported earlier as being of particular concern, including Iraq’s efforts to procure aluminum tubes, its attempted procurement of magnets and magnets-production capabilities and its reported attempt to import uranium.

I will touch briefly on the progress made on each of these issues.

Since my last update to the council, the primary technical focus of IAEA field activities in Iraq has been on resolving several outstanding issues related to the possible resumption of efforts by Iraq to enrich uranium through the use of centrifuge. For that purpose, the IAEA assembled a specially qualified team of international centrifuge manufacturing experts.

With regard to the aluminum tubes, the IAEA has conducted a thorough investigation of Iraq’s attempt to purchase large quantities of high-strength aluminum tubes. As previously reported, Iraq has maintained that these aluminum tubes were sold for rocket production.

Extensive field investigation and document analysis have failed to uncover any evidence that Iraq intended to use these 81-millimeter tubes for any project other than the reverse engineering of rockets.

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With respect to reports about Iraq efforts to import high-strength permanent magnets or to achieve the capability for producing such magnets for use in a centrifuge enrichment program, I should note that since 1998 Iraq has purchased high-strength magnets for various uses.

Iraq has declared inventories of magnets of 12 different designs. The IAEA has verified that previously acquired magnets have been used for missile guidance systems, industrial machinery, electricity meters and field telephones.

Through visits to research and production sites, review of engineering drawings and analysis of sample magnets, the IAEA experts familiar with the use of such magnets in centrifuge enrichment have verified that none of the magnets that Iraq has declared could be used directly for centrifuge magnetic bearings.

In June 2001, Iraq signed a contract for a new magnet production line for delivery and installation in 2003. The delivery has not yet occurred, and Iraqi documentations and interviews of Iraqi personnel indicate that this contract will not be executed.

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With regard to uranium acquisition, the IAEA has made progress in its investigation into reports that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger in recent years. The investigation was centered on documents provided by a number of states that pointed to an agreement between Niger and Iraq for the sale of uranium between 1999 and 2001.

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Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded with the concurrence of outside experts that these documents which formed the basis for the report of recent uranium transaction between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded. However, we will continue to follow up any additional evidence if it emerges relevant to efforts by Iraq to illicitly import nuclear materials.

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At this stage, the following can be stated:

One, there is no indication of resumed nuclear activities in those buildings that were identified through the use of satellite imagery as being reconstructed or newly erected since 1998, nor any indication of nuclear-related prohibited activities at any inspected sites.

Second, there is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import uranium since 1990.

Three, there is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminum tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment. Moreover, even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuge out of the aluminum tubes in question.

Fourth, although we are still reviewing issues related to magnets and magnet-production, there is no indication to date that Iraq imported magnets for use in centrifuge enrichment program.

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After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapon program in Iraq.

After the call reaches a person they are prompted to press “1” if they oppose gay marriage. A holding message says “Please do not hang up … This information will describe how the ACLU and gays are getting gay marriage in every state.” The operator then enters the conversation:

Operator: Did you press 1 to oppose same sex marriages?

Mr. Mirman: Oh, I pressed it, yes.

Operator: Okay, that’s great to hear. And are you against same sex marriages?

Mr. Mirman: Well, I want to destroy it, yes.

Operator: Okay. That’s great to hear… –

Mr. Mirman: Like the fist of God we will smash them!

Operator: Exactly.

Mr. Mirman coaxes out the absurdity of the script, but he’s no left-wing activist with an axe to grind. Born in Russia, he explains, “My problem isn’t with people of faith having certain convictions and wanting their money to support those convictions; it’s with a phone company surreptitiously exploiting people’s beliefs and fears for revenue. To have a nonprofit call people on your behalf and imply that MCI makes money from the rape of children and that God hates your competitors, I think, is inappropriate.”

That’s certainly one word for it. A call to United American Technologies shed further light on the fund-raising scheme. I spoke to Carl Thomspon, a senior consultant whose son-in-law Tom Anderson is CEO of the year-old company. He told me that 2,000 people a month were switching as a result of the calls and was forthright in admitting that “our main thing is calling against the gay and lesbian lifestyle.” “We’re not concerned about offending people who don’t agree with us on these issues,” he said.

More complicated was the arrangement he described with the “Faith Family and Freedom” 527 organization that had been placing the calls. The fund was created and maintained by the 33-year-old Republican floor leader of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, Lance Cargill. The funding arrangement, as both men described it, was that a percentage of the profits from each caller who switched would be directed back into the 527’s coffers to pay for conservative political campaigns. This is a hate-speech-fueled food chain between a company professing faith and a political action fund.

Mr. Thompson said that both parties agreed to the script, a charge that Mr. Cargill denies. Mr. Cargill stated that the calls had been recently stopped because of complaints from folks who “didn’t appreciate the phone calls,” but other organizations continue to place calls on United American Technologies’ behalf. This is a rare glimpse into the divide-to-conquer world of grassroots political activists in an age of poisonous partisanship.

The militant Islamic Jihad on Wednesday presented pictures of torn copies of the Islamic holy book, the Quran, claimed they were taken inside an Israeli prison and said soldiers were responsible for the desecration. Israel denied the charge and said the pictures were a fabrication.

The Marines said the 16 Americans and three Iraqis, employed by Zapata Engineering of Charlotte, N.C., sprayed small-arms fire at Iraqi civilians and U.S. forces from their cars in Fallujah on May 28. No one was hurt.

Marine Lt. Col. Dave Lapan said Marines reported seeing gunmen in several late-model trucks fire ”near civilian cars” and on military positions.

”Three hours later, another Marine observation post was fired on by gunmen from vehicles matching the description of those involved in the earlier attack,” the spokesman said.

U.S. forces said they detained the contractors without incident and held them for three days, but no charges were filed.

A group of American security guards in Iraq have alleged they were beaten, stripped and threatened with a snarling dog by US marines when they were detained after an alleged shooting incident outside Falluja last month.
“I never in my career have treated anybody so inhumane,” one of the contractors, Rick Blanchard, a former Florida state trooper, wrote in an email quoted in the Los Angeles Times. “They treated us like insurgents, roughed us up, took photos, hazed [bullied] us, called us names.”

A Marine Corps spokesman denied that abuse had taken place and said an investigation was continuing. According to the marines, 19 employees of Zapata Engineering, including 16 Americans, were detained after a marine patrol in Falluja reportedbeing fired on by a convoy of trucks and sports utility vehicles. The marines also claim to have seen gunmen in the convoy fire at civilians.

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Mark Schopper, a lawyer for two of the contractors, told the newspaper that his clients, both former marines, were subjected to “physical and psychological abuse”. He said they had told him that marines had “slammed around” several con tractors, stripped them to their underwear and placed a loaded weapon near their heads.

“How does it feel to be a big, rich contractor now?” one of the marines is alleged to have shouted at the men, in an apparent reference to the large sums of money private contractors can make in Iraq.

Mark Schopper, a lawyer for two of the contractors, said that his clients, both former Marines, were subjected to “physical and psychological abuse.”

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He also said that during their detention, the workers’ relatives in the United States received phone calls from people with American accents threatening to kill their loved ones if they talked about the incident.

Mark Schopper, an attorney who said he represents two of the workers who were detained, told The Charlotte Observer they were stripped to their underwear, blindfolded and handled roughly by Marines.

”Marines put their knees on the backs of their necks and ripped off religious medallions,” Schopper said. ”They asked for attorneys, they asked for Amnesty International, they asked for the American Red Cross. All three requests were denied.”

A Marine Corps spokesman denied that any abuse had taken place and said an investigation was continuing. No Iraqis or Americans were injured in the incident that prompted the arrests.
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On May 18, he said, a Marine patrol in Fallouja reported receiving fire from a convoy of late-model trucks and sport utility vehicles. The Marines also saw gunmen in the convoy fire at civilians in the streets of Fallouja, where reconstruction was taking place.

Three hours later, a second set of Marines at an observation post reported receiving fire from vehicles matching the description of the convoy involved in the earlier incident, Lapan said.

The Marines stopped the convoy using spiked strips in the road and took 16 Americans and three Iraqi translators into custody. Of the Americans, 14 were armed security personnel, according to the Corps of Engineers.

“The Americans were segregated from the rest of the detainee population and, like all security detainees, were treated humanely and respectfully,” Lt. Col. David Lapan said Tuesday in an e-mail confirming the incident.

WALLACE: Mr. Schulz, the Soviet gulag was a system of slave labor camps that went on for more than 30 years. More than 1.6 million deaths were documented. Whatever has happened at Guantanamo, do you stand by the comparison to the Soviet gulag?

SCHULZ: Well, Chris, clearly this is not an exact or a literal analogy. And the secretary general has acknowledged that.

There’s no question. But what in size and in duration, there are not similarities between U.S. detention facilities and the gulag. People are not being starved in those facilities. They’re not being subjected to forced labor.

But there are some similarities. The United States is maintaining an archipelago of prisons around the world, many of them secret prisons into which people are being literally disappeared — held in indefinite incommunicado detention without access to lawyers or a judicial system or to their families. And in some cases, at least, we know that they are being mistreated, abused, tortured and even killed.

And those are similar at least in character if not in size to what happened in the gulag and in many other prison systems in world history.

WALLACE: You know, you talked about torture in your first answer. In your presentation of the report, you listed what you called high-level torture architects, including Defense Secretary Rumsfeld (search) and Attorney General Gonzales (search). Then you went on to say, and let’s put it up: “The apparent high-level architects of torture should, therefore, think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera, because they may well find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet, famously did in London in 1998.”

Now, Pinochet was a Chilean dictator who presided over the death or disappearance of 3,000 of his own people. Do you stand by the comparison of Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales to a brutal dictator?

SCHULZ: No, that wasn’t the comparison. My point was very simple…

WALLACE: You’re the one who brought them up in the same sentence, sir.

SCHULZ: Any nation that is party to the Geneva Conventions or the Convention Against Torture is obligated under international law to investigate those who are alleged to be involved with the formulation of a policy of torture or with its carrying out. That is simply international law and that is well more than 125 countries.

All we are saying is that the United States should be the one that should investigate those who are alleged at least to be architects of torture, not just the foot soldiers who may have inflicted the torture directly, but those who authorized it or or encouraged it or provided rationales for it or in the case of Rumsfeld, provided the exact rules, 27 of them in fact, for interrogations, some of which do constitute torture or cruel, inhumane treatment.

WALLACE: Mr. Schulz, let’s get if we can…

SCHULZ: What we’re saying is that the United States…

WALLACE: Let’s get if we can, sir, to the question about exactly what Rumsfeld did or didn’t do. Let’s listen first of all to how one of your so-called architects of torture, Secretary Rumsfeld, responded to your remarks this week. Let’s listen.

WALLACE: Mr. Schulz, if I ask you, when you accuse the Bush administration of, in using your words, “atrocious human rights violations,” where do you fit into that equation the liberation of 50 million people from oppressive regimes?

SCHULZ: These are two entirely different questions. You know, someone can do a good thing one day and a bad thing the other and it doesn’t vitiate the bad thing that they have done good things as well. That is not the point.

Amnesty tries to hold one plumb-line universal standard to every government: to Chile, to Cuba, to North Korea, to China — every government.

And the United States applauds Amnesty when we criticize Cuba and North Korea and China. Indeed, that’s Secretary Rumsfeld, who just called us reprehensible. That is the same person who quoted Amnesty regularly in the run-up to the Iraq war when we reported for 20 years on Saddam Hussein’s violations — years during which Rumsfeld himself was courting Hussein for the U.S. government.

WALLACE: Mr. Schulz, if I can get a couple of final questions in. Last year, didn’t you contribute $2,000, the maximum, to John Kerry’s presidential campaign?

SCHULZ: I did indeed, yes.

WALLACE: Isn’t it a fact that you have already contributed $1,000 to Ted Kennedy’s next campaign?

SCHULZ: I have contributed, yes. And my personal political views have nothing to do with Amnesty’s position. And I’ll tell you why, Chris. Because Amnesty’s research and policies are not set by those of us here in the United States.

They are set by our researchers in London at our international office. The vast majority of those are not Americans. They can’t contribute to American political campaigns. They have nothing to do with American politics, with John Kerry, Ted Kennedy or any one else.

My job in the United States is solely to implement Amnesty’s policy that is set at the international level by global Amnesty researchers. And that’s why I pointed out that the comment about the gulag came out of Amnesty in London. And whether the Americans like it or not, it does reflect how the more than 2 million Amnesty members in a hundred countries around the world and indeed the vast majority of those countries feel about the United States detention policy.

WALLACE: But Mr. Schulz, and we do have to wrap this up. I mean, you’re hardly just a bystander here. You’re the one, who in your presentations, specifically called Rumsfeld and Attorney General Gonzales high-level torture architects.

And I’d like to finish, if I might, by quoting The Washington Post, which has hardly been a supporter of President Bush’s and the Bush administration’s treatment of prisoners. This is what they had to say in a recent editorial. And let’s put it up on the screen, if we may. “Turning a report on prisoner detention into another excuse for Bush-bashing or America-bashing undermines Amnesty’s legitimate criticisms of U.S. policies.”

Is it possible, sir, that by excessive rhetoric or by your political links, that you have hurt, not helped, your cause?

SCHULZ: Chris, I don’t think I’d be on this station, on this program today with you if Amnesty hadn’t said what it said and President Bush and his colleagues haven’t responded as they did. If I had come to you two weeks ago and said, “Chris, I’d like to go on Fox with you just to talk about U.S. detention policies at Guantanamo and elsewhere,” I suspect you wouldn’t have given me an invitation.

WALLACE: So you’re saying if you make irresponsible charges, that’s good for the cause?

SCHULZ: I don’t believe that they’re irresponsible. I’ve told you the ways in which I think that there are analogies between the Soviet prison system and the United States.

But the important point is — the important point is — and I should say first that we said alleged architects of torture. That’s very important.

The important point is that Amnesty is not American bashing any more than we’re China bashing or Cuba bashing or any other country bashing when we try hold one universal standard up for countries to be judged on.

That’s all we’re interested in and I don’t do it. It is Amnesty’s researchers who come from all over the world who do it. It has nothing to do with John Kerry.

An Iraqi Air Force aircraft crashed northeast of Baghdad close to the Iranian border on Monday with four U.S. military personnel and an Iraqi on board, the U.S. military said in a statement.