From: www.thelastinspector.com
I Haven’t Rode on the Train in a Long, Long Time.

Monday, March 24, 2008, 06:50 AM
I haven’t traveled by railroad since so long ago I don’t know when it was, but last week I rode uninterrupted all week long on a train in which I was the sole occupant with a destination as predetermined as any scheduled Amtrak service—with this unstoppable train’s destination in effect set to the edge of a cliff of a deep, deep chasm by Boeing, the King County Prosecutor Boeing largely financed last November’s election of, and a compliant (thufar) King County Superior Court system.

Railroaded. There is no other way to describe last week’s sequence of events in pre-trial hearings before the trial this week with its all but certain similarly predetermined ending to please corrupt Boeing management and attorneys who really should be on this train, albeit I would at least grant them a fair trial despite the vastly greater crimes they committed than I am being railroaded for supposedly committing---as opposed to the unfair trial they are ensuring for me with money funneled to the King County Prosecutor’s successful (because of it) campaign, executives conferring strategy against me in closed door meetings at Boeing’s headquarters, taking precious time away from their own continuing and complex fraudulent activities, and communication via Blackberry device from and to the courtroom to ensure the train they put me on isn’t detoured in any way.

This railroading started in earnest Monday at a hearing before Superior Court Judge Carey where my attorney tried to stop the railroading before it began by asking for just a week’s continuance until we could finally get the information requested from my seized computer that was needed for my defense that we were promised by the prosecutor the previous Friday, so at least we had the weekend to review it and incorporate it in my defense before trial. The prosecution and Seattle Police Department failed to produce the information required for my defense despite almost the full week’s time to do so under the guise that the terms we wanted to search my computer for were crashing the police database of what was on my computer. They tried to search for all of the 56 search terms we requested at the same time, which “crashed” their database, they said. Both my attorney and I, not as computer savvy as them by far, wondered why they couldn’t search for each term separately, and maybe get us at least some of the requested information. The answer seemed clear—it was just an excuse to withhold the information needed for my defense from us.

The prosecution’s case is based on information they supposedly found on my computer that supposedly relates to information found in articles in the Seattle Times. While they are using such information they supposedly gleaned from my computer to prosecute me, they are not willing to let me access my own files on my computer in order to prepare a defense to those charges, yet another reason I have been in effect placed on a train with sabotaged brakes by the “working together” team of the King County Prosecutor and Boeing with the destination of my doom in order to “kill the messenger” of Boeing’s vastly greater and numerous crimes against myriad innocent commercial airplane travelers and against our nation’s security itself.

The prosecutor argued to judge Carey that, even if there was proof on my computer that Boeing was violating laws and regulations by intentionally placing airline passengers at greater risk of death for more bottom line dollars by not doing required inspections, then that would not prevent him from convicting me on the (relatively very petty) charges against me. The judge seemed to agree, and abetted the prosecutor’s “don’t give a damn” attitude about airline passenger safety and Boeing’s breaking of laws and regulations that placed them at much greater risk, and kept the train I was on running on its predetermined destination despite withholding of essential information and the time to review it in order to present our defense to the retaliatory charges making the term “malicious prosecution” inadequate to describe the situation. The judge denied our motion for continuance for a week and placed the case on the trial schedule as a priority for the next judge available for a trial to take.

I then left, as my attorney said it would likely be the next day at the earliest when a judge could be found for such a long case. However, just a few hours later my attorney called me an told me to be back at the courthouse ASAP, as a judge had already been assigned to the case! By the time I got there, the pre-trial motion part of my persecution had already begun.

The judge assigned to the case was Monica J. Benton, who I just this weekend learned was appointed by Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire, which was a shocking revelation after watching her rule against the well reasoned motions backed by numerous case law pecedents all week.

My attorney would present detailed and very relevant case law and arguments to justify our motions, then the prosecutor would give some inane interpretation of cases almost totally unrelated to the issue at hand and then present his obviously highly biased personal opinion (not reasoned legal argument based on the facts) of that case and how it should negate our motion, then the judge would rule against us (and the law) and for his personally and intentionally twisted opinions of vaguely related cases, everytime.

It was disillusioning, to say the least. First you see wholesale corruption placing lives at risk at Boeing, then you find out the enabling corruption in FAA management that intentionally rollerstamps its oversight role of Boeing as “it’s all good” without any real oversight of Boeing at all. Then you find out the enabling DOT OIG that will not act against Boeing or FAA management itself, no matter the merits of the case. Then you find out that your own county justice system is highly biased, and next to impossible to get a fair trial in.

My attorney told me, after I indicated to her my dismay at her (what I saw to be “slam dunk” legal argument based) motions all getting ruled against by the judge, that people new to the justice system there are shocked, like I was, when they find out how biased the whole court system is against the defendant. I couldn’t have agreed more with her on that point.

One of the days the prosecutor even had the gall to ask the judge to admonish (or a similar term) my attorney for stating to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that, “Boeing is a very big presence here in this part of the country. I think that the prosecutor is under a lot of pressure from Boeing," to which any reasoned person would say “duh” to, however the prosecutor feigned outrage at such a suggestion that he was somehow under pressure from Boeing despite having practically been living with two or three Boeing Legal attorneys and one attorney hired by Boeing from an outside law firm for the past nearly two years, and especially the past few weeks. At least the judge didn’t bite on that one. My attorney and the Deputy Prosecutor had seemed to be getting along well with each other during various hearings, probably due to my attorney’s belief that being adversarial when not before a judge is not in the client’s best interest, however this undeserved jab by him in an effort to prejudice the judge may change things.

But the most damaging thing that occurred last week in the many rulings against us by a biased court system was the motion the judge granted taking away our right to argue a necessity defense for my actions. Of course, the only reason I ever contacted the press was to go public with my story after all other avenues had failed. I knew many lives would be placed at greater and greater risk as time went on if Boeing’s fraud in quality assurance management was permitted to continue unabated. However that sole reason for my actions will not be allowed to be presented in my defense due to the judge’s ruling.

Interestingly, this again hinged on what was obviously a bogus and biased argument by the Deputy Prosecutor. He cited a case about an elk that had charged a person who shot it outside of hunting season. The court found that he acted on necessity even though he broke the law, and could not be charged. The Deputy Prosecutor then (intentionally?) misquoted the case and stated the case made it clear that a necessity defense could only be presented if I was being compelled to commit a crime “by a force of nature” such as the charging elk. He again reiterated that even if my allegations of rollerstamping at Boeing are true, then that doesn’t deter him in any way from charging me with crimes they chose to charge me with. My attorney correctly quoted the case law and stated that in addition to “force of nature,” “the pressure of circumstance,” as was the case in my situation, was also permitted as a necessity defense.

The judge then said case law did support a “pressure of circumstance” necessity defense, but then she ruled against us because I wasn’t “personally endangered”! Quite unbelievable, isn’t it? I could only defend myself with the necessity defense if I was defending myself from danger. I couldn’t to so to protect the millions of lives Boeing had intentionally placed in danger in order to reap greater profit margins while Death also reaped greater returns. That’s justice for you. Or, more aptly, injustice, perhaps.

So, I guess the moral is that you had better not intervene and try to save anyone from harm by another person, lest you hurt the perpetrator while saving someone’s life and end up doing time for that, while the attacker walks free to hurt, maim, and kill again. Doesn’t sound logical to me, but that appears to be the law of this State, anyway. It’s a big disincentive for people to do the right thing, which is no doubt what Boeing and the Deputy Prosecutor are trying to ensure by my trial. Do gooders beware, as unethical companies and prosecutors have free reign, at least in King County.

Due to the current King County Prosecutor impersonating a just deceased and respected Republican King County Prosecutor, as well as donations and the running of his campaign by Boeing’s chief outside law firm, the current Republican King County Prosecutor was elected last November, a mistake by an electorate that obviously didn’t know the man at all, and who could blame them as he was doing his best to impersonate his dead boss to gain his job, running on his bosses’ accomplishments and not his own. The deceased former King County Prosecutor, Norm Maleng, was perhaps the only Republican in King County government (which are few) that was well respected. Indeed, Mr. Maleng’s death hurt the prosecutor’s office immensely, allowing the current King County Prosecutor to gain office by what was so blatant an impersonation of Mr. Maleng it could be charged, I believe, as a case of identity theft. What has resulted is a fascist prosecutors office that ignores purposely and openly crimes by corporations and white collar criminals, while holding those “little guys” not well connected to it to the law. It is no accident, perhaps, that the current King County Prosecutor touted as an accomplishment his running a organization of young Republican boys/men, the nearest thing I’ve heard to similar groups Adolph Hitler founded. Not to say that the group has the beliefs of the Nazis outside the general Republican belief that fascism is good (government controlled by and ran for corporations rather than the people) and socialism like social security is bad. So the King County Prosecutor’s office being run out of “Boeing’s pants” is no great surprise. If my predetermined conviction does any good, it will be in exposing these “working together” crooks for what they really are, and for what a justice system they promise to put in place in the future if left in power, ala George Orwell’s “1984” justice system.

We lost all the battles last week, despite having the law behind us. The prosecutor won his arguments solely by saying, “I believe,” then stating how the case law really meant the opposite of what it actually meant. Too bad the judge for the most part bought it.

We did win a few small points. While we sought substantive relief before trial in reducing the number of charges due to overlap and other legal precedents, the judge allowed us to argue that point to a jury only following my predetermined conviction. Never mind that the jury would be prejudiced by the number of charges against me during the trial itself, making a conviction more likely, as that is the destination already chosen for this “railroad” I am on.

Another interesting fact is that the prosecutor sought to further suck up to Boeing by protecting Boeing from another one of their crimes—Sarbanes Oxley violations. The prosecutor presented a motion to exclude any testimony about violations of the SOX laws by Boeing by Boeing not protecting their financial data from access and manipulation as required. My attorney is working on our response to that motion.

And yet another interesting fact is that the “star” Boeing witness against me, Mike Bair, failed former head of the 787 program and still on Boeing’s payroll for reasons unknown, stated in his interview with my attorney that the leak to the Seattle Times of Boeing Commercial Airplane’s CEO’s recommendation to Boeing’s Board of Directors of Everett as winner of the site selection contest for final assembly site of the 787 had pressured the board to go with that selection, although he also said it could have made them go the other way, I guess for spite purposes. He called the leak “a brush with death.” What isn’t known is why he testified about that leak as I am not charged with that leak to the press. Perhaps it is just because he, just as Boeing’s Corporate Security Manager said to me during my interview the day after I was released from jail after my arrest, believes I was the source of that leak, and forced Boeing’s Board to select Everett with all of its “union problems” over the Board’s preferred site for final assembly of South Carolina. I detail Boeing’s belief I forced them to site the 787 in Washington State on my website. Bair’s interview only confirms their belief that is the case, which is not the true reason they are retaliating against me via these unfounded charges.

Gerry

The Last Inspector

Last updated March 24, 2008 8:41 p.m. PT
Boeing backers may target tanker pact
Lawmakers look to reverse decision
By ERIC ROSENBERG
P-I WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., said Monday that Boeing Co. supporters in Congress are exploring legislative options to freeze the award of a $35 billion Air Force tanker contract to the EADS-Northrop Grumman Corp. team.
Chicago-based Boeing is appealing the Air Force decision to the Government Accountability Office, which is scheduled to render a verdict by mid-June.
If Boeing's appeal fails, "you are going to see a vigorous effort in Congress through the appropriations process or some other mechanism to revisit this whole contract," Inslee said in an interview. "There are six to a dozen strategies we are now looking at to see the best way to do that."
George Behan, a spokesman for Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., said lawmakers were mulling "several options" -- including canceling funds for the tanker program. Dicks believes that "Congress reserves the right to take actions it deems warranted, including those which could reverse the contract award."
The Air Force on Feb. 29 rejected Boeing's bid to build a new fleet of aerial tanker planes based on the company's 767 passenger jet. The service instead selected a tanker modeled on the Airbus 330, a much larger airplane.
According to Inslee, the legislative options under discussion include:
· Prohibiting the award of a U.S. government contract to any company found by the U.S. government to be receiving illegal subsidies.
The U.S. Trade Representative has alleged in a complaint with the World Trade Organization that EADS, the parent of plane maker Airbus, receives illegal subsidies from European governments, the effect of which has been to undercut Boeing's prices on commercial aircraft and gain worldwide market share.
· Directing the Air Force to reconsider the competing tanker proposals and "factor in the subsidies," Inslee said in a telephone interview from India, where he and other lawmakers are traveling.
· Directing the Air Force to reopen the bidding and allow Boeing to propose building a tanker based on a larger airplane.
· Canceling the EADS-Northrop contract outright, the "ultimate last-case scenario" Inslee said.
Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of a key House panel that oversees military spending, warned earlier this month that his panel might propose freezing tanker funds.
"All this committee has to do is stop the money (and) this program is not going forward," Murtha said.
But other lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee are likely to resist efforts that would cut tanker funds and reopen the competition.
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., a senior Republican on the panel, has warned "that Congress should not get in the business of trying to rewrite a contract, particularly one of this magnitude and complexity."
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., whose constituents would make up some of the work force assembling the Airbus tanker, suggested that Boeing's supporters on Capitol Hill should get over their disappointment and focus on the main goal: "producing the best aircraft" possible.
"We need to get on with it," Wicker said.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., whose state would gain thousands of new jobs from the contract, said it should stand.
"The complaints have come now from some who didn't win, and I think that's a bit late," Sessions said, adding, "It's not acceptable to change the rules in the middle of the game, and it's certainly not acceptable to change the rules after the game is over."
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Iran a Nuclear Threat, Bush Insists
By Robin Wright
The Washington Post
Friday 21 March 2008

Experts say president is wrong and is escalating tensions.
President Bush said Thursday that Iran has declared that it wants to be a nuclear power with a weapon to "destroy people," including others in the Middle East, contradicting the judgments of a recent U.S. intelligence estimate.
The president spoke in an interview intended to reach out to the Iranian public on the Persian new year and to express "moral support" for struggling freedom movements, particularly among youth and women. It was designed to stress U.S. support for Iran's quest for nuclear energy and the prospects that Washington and Tehran can "reconcile their differences" if Iran cooperates with the international community to ensure that the effort is not converted into a weapons program.
But most striking was Bush's accusation that Iran has openly declared its nuclear weapons intentions, even though a National Intelligence Estimate concluded in December that Iran had stopped its weapons program in 2003, a major reversal in the long-standing U.S. assessment.
"They've declared they want to have a nuclear weapon to destroy people - some in the Middle East. And that's unacceptable to the United States, and it's unacceptable to the world," Bush told U.S.-funded Radio Farda, which broadcasts into Iran in Farsi.
Experts on Iran and nuclear proliferation said the president's statement was wrong. "That's as uninformed as [Sen. John] McCain's statement that Iran is training al-Qaeda. Iran has never said it wanted a nuclear weapon for any reason. It's just not true. It's a little troubling that the president and the leading Republican candidate are both so wrong about Iran," said Joseph Cirincione, president of Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation.
Others said it is unclear whether the president believes what he said or was deliberately distorting Iran's position.
"The Iranian government is on the record across the board as saying it does not want a nuclear weapon. There's plenty of room for skepticism about these assertions. But it's troubling for the administration to indicate that Iran is explicitly embracing the program as a means of destroying another country," said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran specialist at the State Department until last year and now at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center.
National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Bush was referring to previous Iranian statements about wiping Israel off the map. "The president shorthanded his answer with regard to Iran's previously secret nuclear weapons program and their current enrichment and ballistic missile testing," Johndroe said.
In two interviews beamed into Iran, Bush expressed deep respect for Iranian history and culture. In a second interview with the Voice of America's Persian News Network, Bush said: "Please don't be discouraged by the slogans that say America doesn't like you, because we do, and we respect you."
But analysts warned that Bush's statement on Iran's nuclear intentions could escalate tensions when U.S. strategy for the first time in three decades is to persuade Iran to join international talks in exchange for suspending its uranium enrichment, a process used for peaceful nuclear energy that can be converted for use in a weapons program. "The bellicose rhetoric from one side only produces the same from the other," Maloney said.
Signaling further pressure on Tehran, the administration also issued a warning on Thursday to U.S. financial institutions about the dangers of doing business with Iranian banks because of inadequate checks on money laundering and the growing risks to the international financial system posed by Iran's financial sector. "The government of Iran disguises its involvement in proliferation and terrorism activities through an array of deceptive practices," the Treasury Department said.
The advisory lists 59 major banks or their branches in cities such as Athens, Hong Kong, London and Moscow. It includes Iran's Central Bank and covers many banks not facing sanctions from the United Nations or the United States.
The Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said that Iran's Central Bank and commercial banks started asking that their names be removed from global transactions to make it more difficult for intermediary financial institutions to determine their true identity or origin.
The United States recently imposed new restrictions on dealings with Bahrain-based Future Bank, which is controlled by Iran's Bank Melli.
"Over the past eight days, the U.S. government has undertaken a number of steps to put Tehran on notice that the international community will not allow the Iranian government to misuse the international financial system or global transportation network to further its aspirations to obtain nuclear weapons capability, improve its missile systems, or support international terrorism," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement.
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Staff writers Michael Abramowitz and William Branigin contributed to this report.


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Bush Erroneously Says Iran Announced Desire for Nuclear Weapons
By Jonathan S. Landay
McClatchy Newspapers
Thursday 20 March 2008

Washington - President Bush contended that Iran has "declared they want a nuclear weapon to destroy people" and that the Islamic Republic could be hiding a secret program.
Iran, however, has never publicly proclaimed a desire for nuclear weapons and has repeatedly insisted that the uranium enrichment program it's operating in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions is for civilian power plants, not warheads.
Bush made his assertion Wednesday in an interview marking the Iranian New Year with Radio Farda, a U.S. government-run radio service that broadcasts into Iran in the Farsi language. The White House released the transcript on Thursday.
The president reiterated his view that Iran has a right to civilian nuclear power. But, he said, the low-enriched uranium fuel for its reactors should be supplied by Russia, a proposal that Tehran has repeatedly rejected.
"The problem is the (Iranian) government cannot be trusted to enrich uranium because one, they've hidden programs in the past and they may be hiding one now. Who knows?" said Bush.
"Secondly, they've declared they want to have a nuclear weapon to destroy people, some in the Middle East. And that is unacceptable to the United States and it's unacceptable to the world."
Iran has repeatedly denied seeking nuclear warheads, and its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a religious edict in 2005 forbidding the production, stockpiling and use of such weapons.
Asked about the president's comment, Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman, said Bush had "shorthanded" Iran's desire "to wipe Israel off the map," its refusal to heed U.N. Security Council demands to suspend its enrichment work and Iran's continued development of ballistic missiles.
Asked if Iran could exploit Bush's inaccurate comment for political purposes, Johndroe replied: "I'm not concerned about that. If they want to spin it a certain way, they can do it any way they want. They have still called for Israel to be wiped off the map and are in violation of three U.N. Security Council resolutions."
Speaking in October 2005 at a "World Without Zionism" conference, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted by state-run Iranian media as saying that "Israel must be wiped off the map."
Some experts, however, disputed the translation, saying that Ahmadinejad's comment couldn't be interpreted as a threat to use force against Israel.
Meanwhile, the State Department announced targeted new restrictions on a bank in Bahrain, which is controlled by the Iran-based Bank Melli, and additional scrutiny of any vessel calling at a U.S. port that has recently visited Iran. It said Iran hadn't maintained "effective anti-terrorism measures" at its ports.
"The international community will not allow the Iranian government to misuse the international financial system or global transportation network to further its aspirations to obtain nuclear weapons capability, improve its missile systems or support international terrorism," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
The Treasury Department also warned U.S. banks that Iran is using "an array of deceptive practices" to circumvent international financial sanctions.
The department said that it is "particularly concerned that the central bank of Iran may be facilitating transactions for sanctioned Iranian banks."
In the Radio Farda interview, Bush said, "There's a chance that the U.S. and Iran could reconcile their differences," but only if Iran verifiably suspends its uranium enrichment program.
"The Iranian people have got to understand that the United States is going to be firm in our desire to prevent the nation from developing a nuclear weapon, but reasonable in our desire to see to it that you have a civilian nuclear program . . . without enabling the government to enrich."
Enrichment produces both low-enriched uranium, which is used to fuel nuclear power plants, and highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, depending on the duration of the process.
Iran kept its program hidden for 18 years until its disclosure by an Iranian opposition group in 2002.
A December 2007 U.S. intelligence report said Iran halted work on nuclear weapons four years earlier, but could restart it.
Tehran has refused to comply with three U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that it suspend the program while the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency completes an investigation and institutes strict safeguards to ensure the project isn't being used for weapons.
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Annan Warns Against Conflict With Iran
The Associated Press
Thursday 20 March 2008

New York - Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned Thursday that military action against Iran would be "a real disaster" and said the Middle East could explode if the international community doesn't handle the many conflicts in the region very carefully.
He also said there was "quite a bit of hypocrisy on all sides" in trying to resolve the five-year conflict in Sudan's Darfur region - especially in encouraging the African Union to take on peacekeeping when it didn't have the resources.
At a wide-ranging round-table with journalists, Annan said he didn't have enough information to comment on the justification for the U.N. Security Council's demand that Iran suspend uranium enrichment until it allays suspicions its nuclear program is trying to produce weapons. Tehran insists the program is peaceful, aimed only at using nuclear power to generate electricity.
Annan said he had told Iranian leaders that "if indeed you have nothing to hide and you are not making a bomb and your intentions are pacific, open your doors, let the inspectors come, let them go anywhere - find a way of reassuring the world, not just the U.S."
Asked how the international community should deal with Iran, he said dialogue was the only way.
"We cannot, I'm sure, take on another military action in Iran, and I hope no one is contemplating it. It would be a real disaster," he said.
Calling the broader Middle East "a very dangerous region," Annan said that "many conflicts have converged and are feeding off each other, and the international community has to handle that situation very carefully because any miscalculation can lead to very serious explosions."
He said Lebanon's political crisis and inability to elect a president was "very worrying," adding that it was a bit like the infighting among the Palestinians, which pits the Fatah movement of President Mahmoud Abbas against the Islamic militants of Hamas.
Annan also cited the dangers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Sunni-Shiite divide in Iraq and other Mideast countries, and unrest in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
On Darfur, he criticized wealthy nations with well-equipped militaries for refusing to provide essential helicopters for the joint U.N.-African Union force that took over peacekeeping there early this year.
He urged U.N. member states to heed the warning of peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guehenno that the world body's peacekeeping operations are overstretched with more than 100,000 troops in the field.
"I don't think the U.N. is in a position today to go and take over in Afghanistan," he said. "I don't think the U.N. will get the resources to go and play a major and active role in Somalia. We are already struggling to get the resources for Darfur, where some have declared it a genocide."
Annan was in New York to receive the first MacArthur Award for International Justice from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. As U.N. secretary-general, he promoted the concept of an international "responsibility to protect" that was adopted by world leaders at a 2005 summit.
He said his recent successful mediation after Kenya's post-election violence "was a hopeful example" of putting this responsibility into practice.


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Annan Says UN Is "Overstretched" by Global Conflicts
By Warren Hoge
The New York Times
Friday 21 March 2008
United Nations - Kofi Annan, the former secretary general, said Thursday that the United Nations was "overstretched" in conflict areas and should resist taking on new responsibilities as long as major powers proved unwilling to supply needed support.
"I don't think the U.N. is in a position today to go in and take over in Afghanistan; I don't think the U.N. will get the resources to play a major and active role in Somalia," he said. "We are already struggling to get the resources in Darfur, where some have declared it a genocide."
The United Nations, he said, must make clear what it can and cannot do. "To create the impression of action when nothing is happening is, I think, more damaging," he said, in a conversation with journalists who cover the United Nations.
On the issue of Iran's nuclear program, he said he backed Security Council resolutions putting pressure on its government to stop enrichment of uranium, but he warned that taking military steps to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons would be "a real disaster." He said, "We cannot, I am sure, take another military action, in Iran, and I hope no one is contemplating it."
It was Mr. Annan's first conversation with United Nations journalists since completing his second five-year term in office on Dec. 31, 2006. He divides his time between Geneva and his native Ghana and was in New York to receive an international justice award from the MacArthur Foundation at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel on Thursday evening.
He said the United Nations' current difficulties in trying to get 26,000 peacekeeping troops into Darfur, the troubled Sudan region, to replace an underequipped 7,000-member African Union force illustrated the quandary that the organization faced. "We have these conflicts where no one really wants to get involved, powerful countries with means will not touch it with a barge pole, they will support weak, ineffectual initiatives by others, sometimes by a subregional or regional organization, to create the impression of action," he said.
"I can understand why some countries will not put troops on the ground in Darfur for reasons I think we can accept," he said. "But I cannot understand why they cannot spare a couple of helicopters." The United Nations says the force needs 24 helicopters to patrol the vast Darfur area, but thus far no country has responded to repeated requests for them from the current secretary general, Ban Ki-moon.
Mr. Annan was asked about Mr. Ban's preference for one-on-one negotiations with foreign leaders in private and free of public comment in contrast to his own practice of making broad statements on international responsibilities. "I did it my way, and I think he should do it his way," Mr. Annan said. "But I believe there is a bully pulpit that a secretary general should use."
He was also asked about the perception of some member states that Mr. Ban was overly influenced by the United States. Mr. Annan came to office a favorite of Washington but fell out of favor with the Bush administration after the Security Council refused in 2003 to endorse the invasion of Iraq. He later said the war violated international law.
"Almost every secretary general at one point or the other is perceived as close to the Americans and at another point fighting the Americans with their daggers drawn," Mr. Annan said. "It comes with the territory."
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Democrats Want Contract Fraud Documents
By Lara Jakes Jordan
The Associated Press
Thursday 20 March 2008

Washington - House Democrats demanded documents Thursday about a multibillion-dollar overseas contracting loophole to track down how - and why - the Bush administration slipped it into plans to protect taxpayer money.
Leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee gave the administration until April 4 to turn over the documents or, aides have said, face a possible subpoena.
The controversial loophole has irked Democrats and Republicans alike. But it has the support of a trade association that lobbies on behalf of giant global government contractors, including Blackwater USA, KBR Inc., Boeing Co., CACI International Inc. and Lockheed Martin.
The United States has spent more than $102 billion over the last five years to help rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. In that time, the Justice Department has uncovered at least $14 million in contract bribes in those two nations alone.
"Preventing fraud by contractors overseas should be a high priority," Democrats wrote in letters sent to the White House Office of Management and Budget and four other executive agencies. "Instead, the exemption for contracts to be performed overseas appears to have been inserted in the rule late in the process and against the wishes of the Department of Justice, which raises serious questions as to why and how such a policy was developed."
The letters were signed by House Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman of California and committee members Reps. Edolphus Towns of New York and Peter Welch of Vermont. Welch, who first called for the investigation, vowed "to get to the bottom of this."
"Who snuck this in at the eleventh hour and why?" Welch said in a statement. "No contractor should be given a free ride to defraud taxpayers, at home or abroad."
OMB spokeswoman Jane Lee said Waxman's request was being reviewed and that the rule in total would help curb fraud, but she declined to discuss the loophole.
Letters also were sent to the Justice and Defense departments, NASA and the General Services Administration.
Thursday's demand marked the first step in a congressional inquiry of the loophole that was quietly slipped into plans otherwise aiming to crack down on waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars spent on government contracts. The loophole was first reported last month by The Associated Press.
The government spends an estimated $350 billion a year on contracts.
Last May, facing growing cases of fraud and increasing spending overseas, the Justice Department introduced plans to force companies to notify the government about evidence of contract abuse worth $5 million or more. Currently, contractors report evidence of abuse on a voluntary basis, and the number of company-reported fraud cases has declined steadily over the past 15 years.
By November, after it left the Justice Department and was published in the Federal Register, the proposed rule specifically exempted "contracts to be performed outside the United States."
The Justice Department and the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction have asked the exemption be eliminated before the rule becomes law. Additionally, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has threatened to block the loophole in the federal budget if the administration does not do away with it.
OMB's Office of Federal Procurement Policy has repeatedly declined to comment on the loophole or how it was added to the overall fraud crackdown.
The House inquiry is looking at whether the exemption was added at the request of private firms, or their lobbyists, to escape having to report abuse in U.S. contracts performed abroad.
Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president of the Professional Services Council, says the loophole merely follows long-standing Defense Department policy that only covers domestic contracts. Without the exemption, Chvotkin said, U.S. firms that subcontract out work to foreign businesses could be unfairly held liable for abuse that they have little or no way of preventing.
The Arlington, Va.-based Professional Services Council represents more than 300 government contractors and other businesses. Chvotkin said the lobbying firm did not ask for the loophole but agrees with it. The Professional Services Council is among firms and other business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, that oppose the overall rule.
"We're not trying to exempt companies or suggest that fraudulent behavior in overseas contracts should go unpunished," Chvotkin said in an interview this week. "If somebody's guilty, hold them accountable. We've just stopped short of mandatory disclosure as part of a government-wide rule that goes everywhere for everything."
The rule - with or without the loophole - could become law at any time.
"It's hard to imagine that the Justice Department won't fight to eliminate this exception before the rule becomes final," said former prosecutor David Laufman, now a defense attorney in Washington.
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Why?
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Wednesday 19 March 2008
Politics is the art of controlling your environment.
- Hunter S. Thompson


Five years in Iraq.
That's 1,825 days since "Shock and Awe" lit up the skies above Baghdad, all of which was captured live and in living color by unblinking CNN cameras with unobstructed views of the carnage.
3,991 United States soldiers have died in Iraq since then. That's a little more than two United States soldiers killed per day. Every day. For five years.
More than 40,000 United States soldiers have been wounded in Iraq since then. That's more than twenty-one United States soldiers wounded per day. Every day. For five years.
The last Congressional Budget Office report on the monetary cost for Iraq dates back to October of last year, and tabulates that cost at $421 billion. The CBO cannot be censured should that number prove lower than what has actually been spent, as it is understood that all the other millions pilfered by profiteers and passed on in bribes were not duly recorded in the books, and thus cannot be accounted for.
The CBO's number must be considered inaccurately low on spec, thanks in part to a nifty little cash-and-carry hootenanny from three years ago in July of 2005. A report from the UK Guardian tells the tale: "The auditors have so far referred more than a hundred contracts, involving billions of dollars paid to American personnel and corporations, for investigation and possible criminal prosecution. They have also discovered that $8.8 billion that passed through the new Iraqi government ministries in Baghdad while Bremer was in charge is unaccounted for, with little prospect of finding out where it has gone. A further $3.4 billion appropriated by Congress for Iraqi development has since been siphoned off to finance 'security'."
But wait, there's more: "Pilfering was rife," continues the Guardian report. "Millions of dollars in cash went missing from the Iraqi Central Bank. Between $11 million and $26 million worth of Iraqi property sequestered by the Coalition Provisional Authority was unaccounted for. The payroll was padded with hundreds of ghost employees. Millions of dollars were paid to contractors for phantom work. Some $3,379,505 was billed, for example, for 'personnel not in the field performing work' and 'other improper charges' on just one oil pipeline repair contract."
This one example, just one among the multitudes, makes the existence of significant gaps in the accuracy of the information supporting the CBO's conclusions a safe assumption. As for the money not present on the official balance sheets, well ... to paraphrase John Kenneth Galbraith, that cash went to the same place your lap goes when you stand up. Even the guys who stole it probably don't know what happened to it all, not completely, not for certain. If the Federal Reserve had stuffed those bills into the belly of a ballistic missile and launched the thing into deep space, they'd know exactly as much about where it is as they now know about what happened to the cash literally dumped into Iraq. It's somewhere, and nowhere, and all the way gone.
$421 billion spent over 1,825 days in Iraq comes to $230,684,931 plus change per day. Every day. For five years.
And that number is low.
Fast-forward the tape ten years to 2017, via the calculations recently published in a new book by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University professor Linda Bilmes, and the cost of attacking Iraq will be somewhere in the vicinity of $3 trillion. This is based on the assumption that United States soldiers will still be dying in Iraq ten years hence. Six to four and pick 'em on that one. Sucker bet.
George W. Bush's banner-bolstered "Mission Accomplished" photo-op happened four years and ten months ago. This event is noteworthy for myriad reasons, Bush's gruesome and unspeakably inaccurate grandstanding being foremost among them. Also, as an aside, Bush's use of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln as a backdrop for his 1,825-days-wrong-and-counting festival of balderdash set a new world record for Largest Prop Ever Used For Political Gain, by any world leader, ever.
That event was followed the very next day by a comment from General Tommy Franks, leader of the US attack and invasion of Iraq. A reporter apparently had the unrivaled gall to query Franks on the matter of Iraqi civilian casualties. "We," replied Franks, "don't do body counts."
The man was not lying; in the five years since the United States invaded Iraq, not one attempt has been made by any United States government agency or office to accurately count the civilian dead and wounded. A number of non-official efforts have been made to find some kind of answer for that cheeky reporter's question. In October of 2004, a team of experts sponsored by Human Rights Watch put forth their best attempt to provide a number.
"One of the first attempts to independently estimate the loss of civilian life from the Iraq war has concluded that at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians may have died because of the US invasion," reported The Washington Post. "The analysis, an extrapolation based on a relatively small number of documented deaths, indicated that many of the excess deaths have occurred due to aerial attacks by coalition forces, with women and children being frequent victims."
That was four years ago, and might not be accurate. Two years later, the British medical journal the Lancet put the number of Iraqi civilian deaths at 655,000. A hue and cry was raised about the methodology of that study, so we really don't know how many have died. Is it a million dead Iraqi civilians, is it two million, or only a half-million? Two hundred thousand, or one hundred thousand? Fifty thousand, or ten thousand? Nobody knows, because we don't do body counts.
One thing is sure. Iraqi civilians have been dying. Every day. For five years.
Why?
Mainly, because the motivations behind the invasion and occupation of Iraq came down to power, payback and greed, which makes this entire calamity just another ghastly page within the oldest book in humanity's bloody history.
Vice President Dick Cheney is, by far and away, the most powerful man in the present administration. He is still bitter from watching the slow annihilation of Richard Nixon, his first boss in Washington, at the hands of a Democrat-dominated US Congress fueled by broad and vocal support from an outraged public. Nixon was Cheney's archetype, the Unitary Executive version 1.0, who tried to raze the separation of powers doctrine to the ground by brazenly declaring the Presidency to be beyond any legal limitations, beyond any meddling intruders sniffing for secrets in the name of oversight, and thus vested with the same absolute authority once claimed by the Stuart kings of old.
Yet that Nixonian leviathan collapsed and came to grief before the Legislature, the Judiciary, and the rule of constitutional law. Cheney was a man thwarted, and so he would brood on that defeat for many long years, and would bide his time. Few people, not even his closest Republican colleagues, were aware of the stone-fisted authoritarian lurking behind that bland conservative facade.
One passage from a Washington Post analysis of Cheney's long career in government and business stands out: "Cheney's muscular views on presidential power, then and now, offer one answer to the question raised often by former colleagues in recent years: What happened to the careful, mainstream conservative they once thought they understood?"
What happened? Opportunity happened, at long last, George W. Bush and 9/11 and a manufactured state of permanent war happened. Over these last five years, virtually every invocation of the ever-expanding powers laid claim by Executive privilege, every ignored Congressional subpoena, every assertion of confidentiality or national security to block even meager attempts to scrutinize White House activities, every summary termination of a US attorney who refused administration orders to cripple offending Democrats with baseless abuses of prosecutorial discretion, every refusal to obey black-letter laws requiring the release of administration documents even to the harmless librarians at the National Archives, every signing statement that eviscerates another duly-passed bill from Congress, every attempt to stack the Justice Department and the federal court system with devoted yes-men whose only qualification is their total loyalty to and complete Judicial protection of the administration, with neither heed nor concern paid to whatever laws or freedoms or principles are rubbished by the process, every one of these lethal attacks upon America's constitutional infrastructure have been committed under the ill-defined and therefore limitless legal prerogatives afforded to American presidents "during a time of war."
Why?
Because war in Iraq presented Dick Cheney with the means to fulfill his decades-old ambition: to invest the Executive branch with unprecedented and unlimited power, to settle a few festering scores with that nettlesome Legislature, and to cash in on the spoils of supremacy by rerouting every available dollar out of the Treasury and into tax-sheltered coffers of like-minded comrades in the oil and warfare industries, comrades who eagerly joined in the plunder and have happily fattened their fortunes with money that now might as well be in the same place as your lap once you stand up. Somewhere, nowhere, and all the way gone.
Author and former presidential adviser Sidney Blumenthal, writing in November of 2005, noted where Dick Cheney's plans had led him, and the nation, to that point. "The making of the Iraq war, torture policy and an industry-friendly energy plan," he observed, "has required secrecy, deception and subordination of government as it previously existed. But these, too, are means to an end. Even projecting a 'war on terror' as total war, trying to envelop the whole American society within its fog, is a device to invest absolute power in the executive. Dick Cheney sees in George W. Bush his last chance. Nixon self-destructed, Ford was fatally compromised by his moderation, Reagan was not what was hoped for, the elder Bush ended up a disappointment. In every case, the Republican presidents had been checked or gone soft. Finally, President Bush provided the instrument, September 11 the opportunity. This time the failures of the past provided the guideposts for getting it right. The administration's heedlessness was simply the wisdom of Cheney's experience."
It is certainly possible that those Bush administration officials who advocated legalizing the torture of prisoners, and who celebrated Bush's recent veto of legislation to prohibit same, are simply a bunch of clandestine bondage freaks with a taste for the whip and the waterboard. It doesn't matter. The one and only reason this White House chose to legitimize the infliction of ruthless agony with the stamp of presidential approval is because somebody somewhere forbade them from doing it.
They may all genuinely despise the very idea of torture, but not as much as they despise being told "No" under any circumstances. "No" is the red flag to Cheney's bull. "No" is unacceptable to the Unitary Executive. "No" will not stand, period, and whatever the matter at hand may be is almost completely irrelevant to the argument as they see it. Forcing "No" into becoming "Yes," or forcing the defeated retreat of whatever adversary dared to defy them with a "No," is the complete sum and substance of Bush administration ideology.
Why?
Outrageous as it may seem, that is the answer.
This is a wretched anniversary. Let us not do it again next year.