THE FULCRUM

Researchers have estimated that as many as 100,000 more Iraqis - many of them women and children - died since the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq than would have been expected otherwise, based on the death rate before the war.

Writing in the British-based medical journal The Lancet, the American and Iraqi researchers concluded that violence accounted for most of the extra deaths and that airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition were a major factor.

He [a bomb expert under contract to the Pentagon] added, however, that what was looted from al-Qaqaa is just a small portion of the dangerous munitions in the country at the war's end. Prewar Iraq was studded with similar weapons depots and many of them were left unguarded and subsequently looted. "There are hundreds and hundreds of tons of munitions kicking around Iraq," he said.

Four British former inmates of the U.S. detention centre at Guantanamo Bay sued Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others yesterday, saying they were tortured in violation of U.S. and international law.

The four former detainees are seeking $10-million (U.S.) in damages...

[they]want Mr. Rumsfeld and other defendants to be held accountable for their actions...

Last year, after a pitched political battle, Texans voted to amend their state constitution to allow caps on awards for noneconomic damages, such as pain and suffering, in medical-malpractice cases. In most cases, that cap is $250,000.

In a filing with the Texas Department of Insurance seeking a rate increase, Medical Protective Co., an arm of General Electric Co., said the caps would lower payouts by just 1%.

noun: the condition of temperature and pressure under which the gaseous, liquid, and solid phases of a substance can exist in equilibrium.

It is possible that some of the prisoners transferred out of Iraq may have been handed over to friendly governments, like those of Egypt or Saudi Arabia, in a procedure known as rendition. Another possibility is that they were transferred to the secret American-run sites around the world that have been used since the Sept. 11 terror attacks to house the highest ranking Qaeda detainees, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of being the mastermind of the attacks.

Such transfers have been used by American officials in the past three years in part to subject suspected members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban to interrogation practices harsher than those permitted under the Geneva Conventions or under American law. American officials have defended such practices, including a technique in which a prisoner is made to believe that he will drown, as essential to extract information that may be useful in preventing terrorist attacks.

Government officials say they have no specific intelligence to suggest an imminent attack; and many states, exercising caution, are putting various safety and emergency measures in place around polling time. Still, that hasn't stopped some people from wondering: In the event of a major attack around Nov. 2, could the election be canceled or postponed? And who has the power to decide?

The simple answer, like in Missouri, is nobody. But there are enough shades of gray to suggest all sorts of caveats and complexities. The bottom line: If an election-time catastrophe were to arise, the government's reaction would likely depend on the particulars of what happened when and where -- not to mention inevitable legal wranglings.

The Congressional Research Service, part of the Library of Congress, addressed the question in July and found that Congress does in fact has the power to postpone presidential elections in the event of a national emergency. Moreover, the CRS's sweeping review of American case law and statutes found that the executive branch also has the ability to make it "difficult or impractical" for an election to take place. A memorandum drawn up for lawmakers said that the administration could limit the movement of citizens under emergency powers although an "exercise of such power would not appear to have the legal effect of delaying an election." In such an event, it concluded, legal resolution would ultimately fall to the courts.

Several hundred tons of conventional explosives are missing from a former Iraqi military facility that once played a key role in Saddam Hussein's efforts to build a nuclear bomb, the U.N. nuclear agency confirmed Monday.

[snip]

Nearly 380 tons [note the discrepancy between the numbers - 30 tons is a lot of explosive power - ed.] of powerful explosives that could be used to build large conventional bombs are missing from the former Al Qaqaa military installation, the New York Times reported Monday. The explosives included HMX and RDX, which can be used to demolish buildings but also produce warheads for missiles and detonate nuclear weaponry, the newspaper said. It said they disappeared after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last year.

Al Qaqaa, a sprawling former military installation about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of Baghdad, was placed under U.S. military control but repeatedly has been looted, raising troubling questions about whether the missing explosives have fallen into the hands of insurgents battling coalition forces.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office has prepared a directive instructing the military's four-star regional commanders to "develop and maintain" new war plans designed to lessen the chance of postwar instability like the situation in Iraq.

The directive, still in draft form, amounts to a concession that prewar planning for Iraq fell short. [snip]

The Pentagon's four-star regional combatant commanders, who each oversee U.S. military operations in wide swaths of the world, would have to devote more resources and attention to posthostility planning in their war plans. In Iraq, plans for the war and postwar periods were largely developed separately. Inherent in the new directive is the idea that a commander might plan the high-intensity part of the war differently if the commander is also thinking about how to stabilize the country after the major fight is over.

[snip]

In contrast to planning for the Iraq war, in which the Defense Department kept civilian agencies largely out of the process, the directive calls for the Pentagon to support the State Department's newly created Office of Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations. State Department officials are working separately to develop reconstruction teams that would work with the military.

1. Vote. I'm sure my regular readers are all registered, have found out where their polling places are and have set aside some time from their busy schedules on Tuesday. But have YOU? It's too late to register, of course, but if you were wondering whether it was worth your effort, stop wondering. Please, get out on Tuesday, do whatever you have to do to get to the polls. Call a friend, call a cab - hell, call me. But vote.

2. Get Someone else to Vote. If you're going to the polls, you might as well take someone with you. It doesn't really matter what party they are registered with - although I'd love for you to take along someone voting for Kerry/Edwards - just get someone else to vote who might not otherwise have done so. With all the polls pointing to one of the closest elections ever, both in the popular vote and in the Electoral College, every vote will be important.

Jihadist terrorism has always posed what strategists call an "asymmetric threat," capable of inflicting catastrophic harm against a much stronger foe. But the way it operates, they said, is changing. Students of al Qaeda used to speak of it as a network with "key nodes" that could be attacked. More recently they have described the growth of "franchises." Gordon and Falkenrath pioneered an analogy, before leaving government, with an even less encouraging prognosis.

Jihadists "metastasized into a lot of little cancers in a lot of different countries," Gordon said recently. They formed "groups, operating under the terms of a movement, who don't have to rely on al Qaeda itself for funding, for training or for authority. [They operate] at a level that doesn't require as many people, doesn't require them to be as well-trained, and it's going to be damned hard to get in front of that."

Most officials interviewed said Bush has not devised an answer to a problem then-CIA Director George J. Tenet identified publicly on Feb. 11, 2003 -- "the numbers of societies and peoples excluded from the benefits of an expanding global economy, where the daily lot is hunger, disease, and displacement -- and that produce large populations of disaffected youth who are prime recruits for our extremist foes."

The president and his most influential advisers, many officials said, do not see those factors -- or U.S. policy overseas -- as primary contributors to the terrorism threat. Bush's explanation, in private and public, is that terrorists hate America for its freedom.

But at least a dozen current and former officials who have held key positions in conducting the war now say they see diminishing returns in Bush's decapitation strategy. Current and former leaders of that effort, three of whom departed in frustration from the top White House terrorism post, said the manhunt is important but cannot defeat the threat of jihadist terrorism. Classified government tallies, moreover, suggest that Bush and Vice President Cheney have inflated the manhunt's success in their reelection bid.

So in a "new bargain with our allies" America "re-engages" in the "peace process" in return for troops and money in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The company commander of a U.S. Army Reserve unit whose soldiers refused to deliver fuel along a dangerous route in Iraq has been relieved of her duties, the U.S. military said Thursday.

The decision to relieve the commander of the 343rd Quartermaster Company came at her request and is effective immediately, according to a statement from the 13th Corps Support Command. It was authorized by Brig. Gen. James E. Chambers.

“The outgoing commander is not suspected of misconduct and this move has nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of anyone involved,” the statement said.

Let's get a few facts straight. Sinclair is a big company. It gives lots of money to politicians, almost exclusively Republicans. It ordered its stations not to run the "Nightline" program that listed the names of the dead American soldiers in Iraq. One of its top executives also doubles as a conservative commentator. It has a sad record of using its public broadcasting license -- yes, Americans, not conglomerates, still own the airwaves -- to regularly promote Republican causes.

Iran said it test fired on Wednesday a more accurate version of its Shahab-3 missile, already believed capable of hitting Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf.

Iran has previously announced that it has increased the missile's range to 1,250 miles, an upgrade from a range pencilled in at 800 miles by military experts.

Former President Clinton will campaign for Sen. John Kerry early next week in Philadelphia, a senior Democratic official who is familiar with the former president's plans said Tuesday.

For the second straight year, U.S. Army recruiters fell short of their goal for signing up enlistees in the first month of a new recruiting cycle.

For the first 30-day period in its new recruiting year, the Army was 30% shy of its goal of signing up 7,274 recruits. The Army had a particularly hard time recruiting for the Army Reserve, on which the Pentagon has relied heavily in Iraq and Afghanistan. Enlistments for the reserves were 45% below the target.

In the same period last year, the Army came up 25% short in its goal in the first month for enlisting 6,220 regular recruits and 40% short of its reserve enlistment goal.

A Pentagon survey shows substantial doubts among many Army Reservists about their units' preparedness for wartime missions, amid intense debate in the presidential campaign about whether U.S. troops are spread too thin.

In the survey conducted in the spring, almost half of the Army Reserve soldiers who responded said their units weren't "well prepared" for their wartime missions. Army Reservists who had served in Iraq graded their units' readiness for war even lower; only 45% of those veterans said their unit was "well prepared for its wartime mission," compared with 54% of Army Reserve members overall, the survey found.

The Army Reserve soldiers who refused orders last week to drive a dangerous supply route through Iraq's Sunni triangle were members of the 343rd Quartermaster Company, one of the few units in Iraq whose trucks lack protective armor, the unit's commanding general said at a news conference over the weekend.

Brig. James E. Chambers, the commander of the 13th Corps Support Command, said concerns about the lack of armor along with vehicle maintenance led the soldiers to balk at the mission. "Not all of their trucks are completely armored. In their case, they haven't had the chance to get armored," Gen. Chambers said of the unit.

The stuff he's saying now on TV, he didn't have the guts to say to Senator Kerry's face during the debates. Now, with his cozy little ass kissing audience, he's tough and as usual, nasty. I find it so very strange that he smiles when he speaks of the most dastardly events. I also find it very strange that so damned many people actually believe the bullshit that he's saying.

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Abortion might be a crime in most states. Gay people could be thrown in prison for having sex in their homes. States might be free to become mini-theocracies, endorsing Christianity and using tax money to help spread the gospel. The Constitution might no longer protect inmates from being brutalized by prison guards. Family and medical leave and environmental protections could disappear.

The flu is the leading cause of Americans calling in sick to work, with 5% to 20% of U.S. residents contracting the flu on average each year. According to one survey, Americans miss on average 1.2 to 1.4 days of work each year as a result of the flu.

A recent study by ComPsych Corp., Chicago, found that 40% of people who don't get flu shots miss some time at work because of the flu, compared with less than 20% of people who receive flu shots.

"If we have a normal flu season and there are no shots available we're going to have a significant number of people miss work," says Richard A. Chaifetz, chairman and chief executive of ComPsych. He suggests that any labor-dependent industries that rely heavily on performance during the peak flu season in the U.S. from December through March, could be affected significantly. "In an economy that is forcing people to do more with less, this could be a tough season."

Seventeen months into a shadowy terror campaign that has killed more than 100 people, numerous Saudis express less anger at the insurgents than at the United States for its invasion of Iraq, the signal event that they say touched off the attacks inside the kingdom.

In interviews over the last week, the Saudis condemned the terror attacks, aimed primarily at foreigners, but called them a small inconvenience that has not forced them to make significant changes in their daily lives. By contrast, they expressed unremitting disdain for the United States.

In a brazen attack that punctured any illusions of a safe haven in the capital, five people, including three American civilians, were killed today when two separate explosions were set off inside the heavily controlled Green Zone in central Baghdad.

Florida's attorney general, responding to complaints that some suppliers of flu vaccine are raising prices amid the severe shortage of shots, filed a lawsuit alleging that a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., drug distributor attempted to sell the vaccine for as much as 10 times its normal price.

The lawsuit comes amid a scramble across the country to find suddenly scarce flu shots before they run out.

[snip]

In a survey by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, more than half of 677 hospital pharmacists said they had been contacted during the past week by distributors offering flu vaccine at four to 10 times the regular price, the trade group said. Some pharmacists reported that distributors were charging at least $800 for a 10-dose vial of flu vaccine [normal price is $63 to $85 a vial - ed.]. More than 80% of the pharmacists in the survey said they wouldn't buy the vaccine at inflated prices, even though three-fourths said they don't have as many doses as they need.

The biggest health insurer in the U.S. today said its net income climbed to $698 million, or $1.04 a share, compared with $476 million, or 77 cents a share, in the year-earlier period. The latest results reflect a tax benefit of one cent a share.

[snip]

Revenue rose 36% to $9.86 billion from $7.24 billion, led by growth in revenue generated from premiums, which increased to $8.92 billion from $6.4 billion.

Tax Windfall May Not Boost
Hiring Despite Claims

Big companies long lobbied for a tax cut on their overseas profit as a way to spur U.S. job growth. But now that it has been granted, much of the windfall won't go toward hiring but for such uses as strengthening balance sheets, buying back shares and making acquisitions.

The one-year break, included in a sweeping tax bill that cleared the Senate and went to the president this week, will allow hundreds of billions of dollars in overseas profit to be brought home by dozens of U.S. companies at a steeply reduced tax rate. By some estimates, U.S. companies have parked as much as $500 billion in profit abroad to avoid taxes back home.

Companies say the repatriated money, which would be taxed at a 5.25% rate instead of 35%, will provide stimulus and better position them for hiring in the long run. Software company Oracle Corp., for instance, likely will use some of the billions it will bring home to help finance its aggressive acquisition strategy. Computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co. says it may devote a substantial portion of the several billion dollars it plans to bring back to paying down debt from its purchase of Compaq Computer Corp. -- a transaction that led to layoffs.

[snip]

Last week, Treasury Secretary John Snow wrote that an analysis by the Council of Economic Advisers "indicates that the repatriation provision would not produce any substantial economic benefits." Allen Sinai, the Wall Street economist who was one of the bill's biggest backers, says he thinks the bill might create only 50,000 jobs annually for the next few years, far lower than the 500,000 figure that some politicians have invoked while citing his work.

AT&T Corp., the nation's largest long-distance carrier, announced moves to cut about 7,000 more jobs as it retreats from the consumer market and to write off $11.4 billion in assets that have lost much of their earning power.

[snip]

The cuts come as AT&T, based in Bedminster, N.J., struggles with plunging revenue and earnings. AT&T, which had forecast cutting about 5,000 positions earlier in the year, said it will eliminate a total of about 12,000 jobs this year, resulting in a 20% reduction from the 61,600 employees it had at the end of 2003.

For the second time in a week, the House ethics committee Wednesday night admonished House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, this time for engaging in fund-raising activities that created the appearance of impropriety, and for using his position to exert undue influence over a federal agency.

[snip]

Already, at least one good-government group is calling for DeLay to step down. On Wednesday, before the committee released its report, Judicial Watch - - a conservative public interest group -- called on DeLay to resign his position as majority leader, citing last week's rebuke in the case involving Rep. Nick Smith, R-Mich.

[not] trying to lure Western tourists to Iraq. He's trying to keep them away.

"I understand all about wanting to have an adventure, but Iraq could be a one-way trip," he says, shaking his head. "This is just not a place for tourists."

With the country beset by a bloody guerrilla war and a wave of kidnappings and killings, Mr. Jobori's point might seem obvious. But despite the violence, a small number of determined adventure-seekers are planning to visit Iraq in coming months.

Phil Lalani, a hotel owner from Blackpool, England, hopes to be one of the pioneers. He and his girlfriend, Katrina Copsey, are among the 10 tourists who have paid to reserve space in a tour of the country later this month with Don Lucey, a former British special-forces officer who worked in Iraq last year doing support work for a British company providing telecommunications services to the British army. Cost of the eight-day trip: $2,200 per person, with mandatory insurance adding another $1,000.

[snip]

For security reasons, Mr. Lucey refuses to tell the tourists their exact itinerary until they arrive in Iraq. Then, he'll parcel it out to them a day at a time.

Mr. Lucey, 52, also says the group will wear non-Western clothing, travel discreetly in inconspicuous vehicles and be protected at all times by armed guards.

"People think we'll be walking around with cameras around our necks snapping pictures, but this will be a covert operation," Mr. Lucey says. "You can't get away from the fact that Iraq is a very dangerous place, but I'm determined to begin bringing tourists here."

Mr. Jobori had hoped to travel north and mark its completion with a gala grand-opening party. But with the highways connecting the cities largely controlled by militants and Mosul convulsed by violence, Mr. Jobori opted to remain in Baghdad instead. He didn't even announce the completion publicly for fear of sparking an insurgent attack on the hotel.

The end of campaigning was marked by violence today when Karzai's first vice-presidential running mate, Ahmad Zia Mas'ud, escaped injury when an explosion hit his convoy in northeastern Afghanistan.

One person was killed and two injured in the blast, for which the Taliban has reportedly claimed responsibility.

Thirty states are poised to make abortion illegal within a year if the Supreme Court reversed its 1973 ruling establishing a woman's legal right to an abortion, an advocacy group said Tuesday.

[snip]

"The building blocks are already in place to recriminalize abortion," said Nancy Northup, the center's president.

Currently, it is believed that five of the nine justices support abortion rights, but that balance could be tipped if President Bush, in a second term, nominates a new justice who reflects his anti-abortion views. Democratic contender John Kerry is a strong supporter of abortion rights.

• G.W. Bush: 23%


• J.F. Kerry: 70%


• Tie: 7%

17096 votes

Bush, allegedly, is tough. Instead of being tough, he looked weak and small compared to the Presidential-looking Kerry. And that isn't just spin, Kerry seemed to gain in stature as Bush lost his. If the situations were reversed, and Bush was the challenger, his campaign would be all over but the voting.