Wednesday, March 1, 2006

More than a third of U.S. soldiers and Marines are reportedly seeking mental help after serving in Iraq, as John Zogby paraphrases 'A Letter From The Troops.' [Cursor.org] 12:44:07 PM    comment []

The Post is alone in citing a source in the Interior Ministry's statistics department, whose estimated toll is three times that coming from the prime minister and cabinet, as it's reported that the only new rebuilding money in the State Department's latest budget request for Iraq is $100 million for prisons. [Cursor.org] 12:41:56 PM    comment []

After citing officials at Baghdad's main morgue as saying that more than 1,300 bodies had been brought in, the Washington Post reports that morgue officials "have come under pressure not to investigate the soaring number of apparent cases of execution and torture," according to John Pace, the former U.N. human rights chief for Iraq. [Cursor.org] 12:41:01 PM    comment []

Carl Pope: The Perils of a 'Forward Strategy' for Homeland Security. The more we learn about the Bush administration's approach to port security in the wake of the Dubai debacle, the more inadequate it seems. The difficulty of securing a huge external perimeter (in this case, the whole world) against an enemy is why preparedness and security usually focus on a country's own infrastructure. But, for peculiar ideological reasons, the Bush administration seems to loathe and disparage preparedness or home-based security. Only "forward" strategies focused on finding or attacking terrorists overseas, seem to get their blood racing. For example, last August the Administration proudly trumpeted a new program that would inspect "80 percent" of the containers coming to the U.S. -- in their port of embarkation. This sounded impressive -- until you looked at the list of ports that were initially signed up for the program: Currently, 26 major ports in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America are participating in the CSI program -- Algeciris, Spain; Antwerp, Belgium; Hamburg and Bremerhaven, Germany; Busan, Korea; Halifax, Montreal, and Vancouver, Canada; Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Le Havre, France; Pireaus, Greece; Hong Kong; Singapore; Durban, South Africa; Laem Chabang, Thailand; Yokohama, Kobe, and Tokyo, Japan; Felixstowe, the UK; Genoa and La Spezia, Italy; and Goteborg, Sweden. Notably absent was Dubai -- or indeed any port in the Muslim world. Now presumably as the Administration works toward its 80 percent goal, Dubai and other major ports in the Muslim world are intended to be included. But as long as there are some ports without inspection and as long as terrorists can figure out which ones, not only is 80 percent not good enough -- it's totally useless. After all, containers loaded in Yemen or Syria can still make their way to New York by being transshipped at other destinations. On the other hand, proper security precautions at all U.S. ports would be highly effective and, even if we were only moving toward that goal, it still would make it harder for terrorists to know which ports were not yet truly secure. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 10:19:42 AM    comment []

Climate Change: No Doubt It's Us. The Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change is set to announce that greenhouse emissions are to blame. Period. [TomPaine.com] 10:17:59 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2006 Patricia Thurston.