U.S., Russia snub cluster bomb ban. The United States and Russia were absent Wednesday as representatives from countries from around the world gathered to sign a treaty banning the use of cluster bombs. [CNN.com]
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The private security firm Blackwater is planning to offer a new service to make money: protection from the pirate-infested waters off the coast of East Africa. [base ']ÄúBlackwater’s push to land its first antipiracy contract is part of a strategy to build its business outside its State Department security work in Iraq, which brings in between $300 million and $400 million a year.[base ']Äù The security company may be looking for new lucrative opportunities partly because the Iraqi government has now ratified a law stripping Blackwater contractors of immunity. Indeed, Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell noted the legal benefits of operating in the open sea: “We would be allowed to fire if fired upon; the right of self-defense is one that exists in international waters.”
It looks like a treaty to ban current cluster bomb designs will take another step forward, as over one hundred countries are slated to sign the treaty in the next couple days. This is the next stage in a process, begun in Dublin in May of 2008, to reduce the use of cluster bombs in warfare. Though the continued absence of the U.S., Russia, and China—the largest cluster bomb manufacturers—from the treaty remains significant.
The BBC:
The first of more than 100 countries have begun signing a treaty to ban current designs of cluster bombs, at a conference in Oslo, Norway.
Campaigners are hailing the treaty as a major breakthrough.
But some of the biggest stockpilers, including the US, Russia and China, are not among the signatories.
First developed during World War II, cluster bombs contain a number of smaller bomblets designed to cover a large area and deter an advancing army.
The UN built camps in Kosovo for homeless Roma gypsies on top of the
biggest lead mine in Europe. Every child conceived in these camps will be born
with irreversible brain damage. (Photo: Nigel Dickinson)
Baghdad - About 1,000 Asian men who were hired by a Kuwaiti subcontractor to
the U.S. military have been confined for as long as three months in windowless
warehouses near the Baghdad airport without money or a place to work.
Najlaa International Catering Services, a subcontractor to KBR, an engineering,
construction and services company, hired the men, who're from India, Nepal,
Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. On Tuesday, they staged a march outside their compound
to protest their living conditions.
On Monday, ThinkProgress caught Bill O’Reilly claiming that there is “no proof” that detainees were ever abused at Guantanamo Bay, despite the fact that both the FBI and the Red Cross have documented abuse at the prison. On MSNBC’s Countdown last night, Keith Olbermann pointed out that O’Reilly is also contradicting himself when he says that there is no proof of abuse at Gitmo:
OLBERMANN: That kind of contradicts this is quote from somebody who visited Gitmo in June of 2005.
“There have been abuses by U.S. interrogators there, but not many and now we have some stats to back that up.”
It also contradicts what the same visitor said after a second trip to Gitmo in June, 2006.
“Muhammad al Gitani, thought to be directly involved with the 9/11 attack, was treated harshly and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld ordered that Gitani could be subjected to coerced interrogation.”
Who is it that disagrees with Bill O’Reilly’s contention that there is no proof of mistreatment at Gitmo? Bill O’Reilly. He was the visitor who had confirmed the abuses.
It took six press conferences since Election Day, but Fox News has finally been called on.
Veteran White House correspondent Wendell Goler asked the third (and final) question during Obama's press conference to nominate Bill Richardson for Commerce Secretary, the fifth presser in the past nine days.
"We're deeply disappointed with the loss of the beard," Obama said.
He was responding to a question from FOX News' Wendell Goler for Mr. Obama's nominee for Secretary of Commerce, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Goler had asked Richardson "what happened to the beard, sir?"
The president-elect said he would answer for Richardson, saying that he was sad about the loss of the beard, which had given the Governor, in Mr. Obam's view, a "Western, rugged look."
For some reason, though, Richardson got rid of it.
"Maybe it was scratchy when he kissed his wife," Mr. Obama said.
Former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) told Politico, “I am considering” a run for Senate, after Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) announced yesterday he would retire in 2010. [base ']ÄúA lot of people are calling him and contacting him and encouraging him to look seriously at this,” a source close to Bush said. In an e-mail to ABC’s The Note, Bush wrote, [base ']ÄúI am going to think about it for the next month or so.[base ']Äù
CNN reports that President-elect Barack Obama has a [base ']Äúhearty appetite for intelligence.[base ']Äù Obama is receiving intelligence briefings on all seven days of the week, [base ']Äúexceeding the six days given to President Bush.[base ']Äù Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell jokingly wondered aloud whether “there’s a little bit of competition” between the men.
Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson “was awarded a $4 million bonus in 2008” and was granted 225,000 shares of restricted stock. He will also receive a 10 percent increase in his annual salary in 2009, raising his base salary to $2.06 million.
Yesterday, federal prosecutors expanded the corruption indictment against former NYC police commissioner Bernie Kerik. [base ']ÄúThe main charges [base ']Äî that Kerik accepted free apartment renovations from a would-be city contractor, lied to the White House and filed false income tax returns [base ']Äî remain,[base ']Äù but the indictment adds new details regarding Kerik[base ']Äôs lies about his finances.
Yesterday, the White House approved “one of the most contentious” regulations officials are trying to push through in Bush’s final weeks in office, making it “easier for coal companies to dump rock and dirt from mountaintop mining operations into nearby streams and valleys.” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson argued that the new rule would “protect fish, wildlife and streams.” More »
Last night in New York, ABC News correspondent John Donovan moderated a debate between the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, former Bush aide Karl Rove, Slate editor Jacob Weisberg and Guardian columnist Sir Simon Jenkins. The most contentious part of the debate came during discussion over the invasion of Iraq, in which Kristol proclaimed outright that the United States has won:
But [Kristol] and Mr. Rove both maintained that while the initial occupation was mismanaged, the surge of troops begun in 2007 has placed the U.S. on the cusp of victory in Iraq.
“We’ve won the war,” Mr. Kristol said.
Kristol did not say if this meant that all U.S. troops could now come home.
Addressing speculation that he “is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies,” President-elect Barack Obama pledged last month to end torture as part of “an effort to regain America[base ']Äôs moral stature in the world.” Today, a dozen retired generals and admirals will meet with Obama’s transition team “to plead for a clean, unequivocal break with the Bush administration’s interrogation, detention and rendition policies.” The officers also want Guantanamo Bay closed, an effort that would force Obama “to decide what to do with inmates who can[base ']Äôt be tried for war crimes yet are deemed too dangerous to be released.”
During a recent interview with the National Ledger, conservative columnist Robert Novak was asked if he would reveal Valerie Plame Wilson’s secret CIA identity if he could go back and do it all over again. Novak noted that he has previously said he “should have ignored” what he had been told about Plame, but he now claims he is “much less ambivalent“:
NOVAK: I’d go full speed ahead because of the hateful and beastly way in which my left-wing critics in the press and Congress tried to make a political affair out of it and tried to ruin me. My response now is this: The hell with you. They didn’t ruin me. I have my faith, my family, and a good life. A lot of people love me — or like me. So they failed. I would do the same thing over again because I don’t think I hurt Valerie Plame whatsoever.
But of course, Plame was “hurt” because of Novak’s column — she no longer has a career as a covert CIA agent. Moreover, Plame has said that she feared for her and her family’s lives after Novak revealed her identity.
But Novak ignores the point that Plame’s outing had broader national security implications. In fact, Plame’s CIA job was to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and as one former senior intelligence officer put it, the leak made “it harder for other CIA officers to recruit sources.”
Novak also claimed “it was an important story because it explained why the CIA would send Joe Wilson [Plame’s husband] — a former Clinton White House aide with no track record in intelligence and no experience in Niger — on a fact-finding mission to Africa.” Except, Wilson did have experience in Niger, not only as a foreign service officer but as the NSC’s Senior Director of African Affairs during the Clinton administration as he explained to TPM:
WILSON: Why me? Because I knew a lot about the [uranium] business […] I knew all of the personalities who would have been involved in this sort of interaction, because I had been at the White House during the time when the transaction purportedly took place.
Earlier in the interview with the National Ledger, Novak said that Vice President Dick Cheney is “the most forceful, effective vice president in history.” Given the dark “cloud” that hangs over the vice president’s involvement in the whole Plame saga, it is perhaps easy to understand Novak’s lack of remorse.
Obama Team Restates Strong Support For Union Bill An aide to Barack Obama reaffirmed the President-elect's support for the labor movement's chief legislative priority in a one-word statement issued to the Huffington Post on late Tuesday.
Asked if Obama's support for the Employee Free Choice Act remained as strong as his public proclamations suggested on the campaign trail, transition spokesman Dan Pfeiffer responded, succinctly, "Yes."
The reaffirmation may not seem like a political breakthrough on its surface. But in the current political climate, in which the Obama team has steadfastly refused to comment on various legislative priorities, it does signal that the President-elect is not shying away from progressive pledges made during his campaign.
Moreover, it clears the air of some confusion that was prompted by a statement from Rahm Emanuel in late November. Appearing at a Wall Street Journal CEO Council conference, the incoming White House chief of staff spoke opaquely about the so-called "card check" bill, leaving the impression to some that it would not be a priority.
Some were concerned by Emanuel's remarks, taking them as a signal that Obama would push back aspects of the pro-labor agenda in order to tackle other pressing economic matters. <a href="http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/nov/30/tone-card-check-support-shifts/ ">Press reports enforced the theory that Emanuel had "declined to say whether the White House would support the legislation."
In private, however, Obama allies insisted that the Emanuel's statement was not a dodge but rather a joke, meant to lighten the mood and change the subject in front of an audience of business leaders hostile to the legislation. Pfeiffer's remark -- even in its brevity -- should go a bit further in assuaging concerns over Obama's pro-labor commitments.
Last night in New York, ABC News correspondent John Donovan 
During a recent 