NBC reporter to testify at CIA leak case

WASHINGTON - NBC News reporter Tim Russert should find the format familiar: An interviewer, a television screen and a gauntlet of pointed questions.

Unlike his seat as host of "Meet the Press," however, Russert won't be asking the questions. He'll be in the witness box, fielding questions from prosecutors about his conversation with former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and from defense attorneys who want to undercut his credibility.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald says he expects Russert to be his final witness Wednesday in Libby's perjury and obstruction trial. Libby is accused of lying to authorities investigating the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

Russert and Libby tell two very different stories about a phone conversation they had in July 2003.

Both agree Libby called to complain about one of Russert's colleagues. Russert says the call ended there. Libby says Russert brought up the subject of an outspoken war critic, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador who accused the Bush administration of doctoring prewar intelligence on Iraq.

"Did you know that Ambassador Wilson's wife worked at the CIA?" Libby said Russert asked.

"No, I don't know that," Libby said he replied.

"Yes, all the reporters know it," Russert responded, according to Libby's grand jury testimony.

Russert is expected to testify that exchange never happened. Fitzgerald believes Libby learned about Plame's identity from government officials, passed it on to reporters, then concocted the Russert conversation to cover it up.

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Rep. grills ex-US leader in Iraq: Where did 363 tons of cash go?

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), leading a Congressional review of possible U.S. waste and fraud in Iraq, sought answers from former Iraq Provisional Authority leader L. Paul Bremer today.

"House Democrats, taking charge of investigations now that they control Congress, grilled the former U.S. occupation chief in Iraq on Tuesday about the way he doled out billions of Iraqi dollars without accounting for the money," the Associated Press reports.

Over $4 billion in cash, which came from Iraqi oil exports and other sources, was sent by the Federal Reserve to Baghdad on pallets aboard U.S. military planes just before government control was given back to the Iraqis, Reuters says. The bills reportedly weighed hundreds of tons.

"Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone? But that's exactly what our government did," Waxman said, according to Reuters.

The AP says Bremer countered, "I arrived in Baghdad at a time when much of the city was burning. Looting was still widespread. My responsibilities were to kickstart the economy.

"Millions of Iraqi families depended on civil service salaries and pensions," Bremer continued, according to the AP. "It was clear we had to get this Iraqi money in the hands of people immediately."

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US should weigh war on terrorism tax - Lieberman

WASHINGTON, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Sen. Joseph Lieberman said on Tuesday that Congress should consider a tax to fund the U.S.-declared war on terrorism and reduce the need to cut domestic programs to pay for security spending.

A former Democrat who supports the Iraq war and backs President George W. Bush's plan to send 21,500 additional troops to Iraq, Lieberman said the proposed increase in the Pentagon's budget for next fiscal year will squeeze funding for critical domestic programs.

"I think we have to start thinking about a war on terrorism tax," the independent Connecticut lawmaker said. "I mean people keep saying we're not asking a sacrifice of anybody but our military in this war and some civilians who are working on it."

"When you put together the (Pentagon) budget and the Homeland Security budgets, we need to ask people to help us in a way that they know when they pay more it will go for their security," he said during a Senate panel hearing on the defense budget request.

Bush on Monday asked Congress to approve $700 billion in new military spending and to curb many domestic programs. The request includes $245 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars between now and late 2008.

If Congress approves the war funding, the United States will have spent $661.9 billion on combat in Iraq, Afghanistan and related activities.

Increased defense spending since 2001 has come amid tax cuts that the Bush administration says were critical to keeping the U.S. economy strong after the Sept. 11 attacks.

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Lawyers May Keep Libby Off Witness Stand

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 — The jurors deciding the perjury case against I. Lewis Libby Jr. listened to his voice on audiotape for hours today as his lawyers quietly explored a surprise strategy — keeping him off the witness stand — that would insure the jurors would never hear his voice in person.

The audio tapes played in the courtroom were of Mr. Libby’s two grand jury appearances in March 2004 in which he repeatedly testified under oath that he had no recollection of several conversations he held about Valerie Wilson, a Central Intelligence Agency operative. His denials were in sharp contrast to the testimony over the last two weeks of reporters and government officials who were colleagues of Mr. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

But out of the jury’s presence and beyond the four walls of the courtroom, Mr. Libby’s lawyers appeared to be engaging in some gamesmanship over the possibility of not having Mr. Libby testify in his own defense as his lawyers had frequently suggested.

Theodore V. Wells Jr., Mr. Libby’s chief defense lawyer, filed a motion with the court on Monday evening asking about the consequences of keeping his client off the stand. Mr. Wells argued that even if his client decided not to testify, he should be able to argue that any misstatements Mr. Libby made to the grand jury and investigators about Ms. Wilson were caused by confusion because of Mr. Libby’s pressing schedule of important issues.

Judge Reggie B. Walton had asserted earlier in the trial that Mr. Libby’s “faulty memory” defense would require that he take the stand to testify about his distractions.

While testifying could be perilous for Mr. Libby, a decision not to testify is almost by definition a risky strategy for any defendant in a white-collar criminal case. Lawyers assume the jury, especially in a perjury case, wants to hear a personal and plausible explanation directly from the defendant about the statements that prosecutors have charged are false.

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'Startling moment' at Libby trial as President Bush is referenced

Last night on MSNBC's Countdown, correspondent David Shuster provided a breakdown of Monday's events at the trial of former White House aide I. Lewis Libby.

One "very startling moment" occurred when a tape of Libby's grand jury testimony included references to President George Bush.

"There was one other very startling moment, referring to President Bush, in Scooter Libby‘s Grand Jury testimony on audiotape. Libby noted on a piece of paper a notation, and prosecutors asked whether the notation shows that President Bush was interested in the Kristof article on the State of the Union," Shuster said. "It was a Kristof article in May of 2003 which first got the White House thinking about Ambassador Wilson, because it talked about an ambassador‘s trip, which essentially undercut the State of the Union speech."

Shuster continued, "Libby was asked about the president‘s interest and he said, yes, that‘s what my notes signals, but Libby then went on to testify he never discussed the president‘s interest with the vice president, nor did Libby speak about it with President Bush. He went on to testify that he only heard about the president‘s interest from a senior staff meeting. Of course, we don‘t know if Libby was telling the truth, but it was certainly a tantalizing bit of testimony."

Liveblogging the trial at firedoglake, Swopa notes that Bush's name came up again today during playback of Libby's grand jury testimony.

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald asked Libby in March of 2004, referring to a note from a conversation about a statement on Ambassador Joe Wilson made by former CIA Director George Tenet, "Does this say, 'The president is comfortable?'"

"Yes," Libby replied, according to Swopa's unofficial transcript.

"And the next line," Fitzgerald continued.

Libby replied that it was Stephen Hadley, Deputy National Security Advisor at the time, saying that the NIE, a report on Iraq's purported WMD program, should be "leaked."

"Did anyone say it was OK to leak the NIE that week?" Fitzgerald asked.

"I had already talked to Judith Miller, with the President's approval," Libby responded, referring to the former New York Times reporter who spent close to three months in jail for refusing to name the former White House aide as a source.

Video clip from MSNBC broadcast

U.S. Attorney Firings Set Stage for Congressional Battle

H.E. "Bud" Cummins III had served for five years as the U.S. attorney in Little Rock -- a job he obtained in large part because of his credentials as a longtime GOP lawyer and avid supporter of President Bush.

So Cummins, 47, was more than a little surprised when he got a call from the Justice Department last year asking him to resign. He was told there was nothing wrong with his performance, but that officials in Washington wanted to give the job to another GOP loyalist.

"I don't think many of us were aware that the administration might want to ask someone to step aside just to give someone else an opportunity," said Cummins, who left office in December and was replaced by J. Timothy Griffin, a former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove. "The precedent was that once you were appointed, assuming you were successful in office, you were there until there was a change in the White House."

Cummins was the first in a wave of seven U.S. attorneys to be fired by the Justice Department, a move that has prompted sharp criticism from Democrats in Congress and has set the stage for a legislative battle over the attorney general's power to appoint federal prosecutors.

Six of the prosecutors received calls notifying them of their firings on a single day shortly before Christmas, officials said, including the U.S. attorney who oversaw a prominent public corruption probe in San Diego and a prosecutor in New Mexico whose life as a military lawyer was portrayed by Tom Cruise in the movie "A Few Good Men." Most have told colleagues that they have no idea why they were shoved out, according to aides.

A little-noticed provision passed last year allows Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to appoint interim U.S. attorneys indefinitely without seeking approval from the Senate. Fearing an attempted end run around congressional prerogatives, both House and Senate Democrats have introduced legislation to repeal the provision. The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the issue Tuesday.

"The U.S. attorneys' job is too important for there to be unnecessary disruptions, or worse, any appearance of undue influence," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in a floor speech last month.

Gonzales and his aides say that they intend to seek Senate approval for every new U.S. attorney and that the old system, which allowed federal judges to appoint replacements, has both practical and constitutional problems. Justice Department officials also defend Gonzales's right to fire U.S. attorneys at will and have suggested that each of the recently dismissed prosecutors had performance problems.

"Every U.S. attorney, like the attorney general of the United States, serves at the pleasure of the president," Gonzales said in a recent interview with The Washington Post. "We can be asked to leave at any time; we can be asked to leave for any reason."

He added later: "From time, to time we make an evaluation as to whether we believe we can put in people who can produce better results, who can do a better job."

But there is also evidence that broader political forces are at work. One administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in discussing personnel issues, said the spate of firings was the result of "pressure from people who make personnel decisions outside of Justice who wanted to make some things happen in these places."

Several of those fired have already left, and the rest will be gone by the end of the month.

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Iraq is main issue for Iowa, N.H. voters

CONCORD, N.H. - When it comes to the Iraq war, apparently there is more than one right answer.

Among rank-and-file Democrats in early voting states like New Hampshire and Iowa, anti-war passion is so strong that it's difficult for their party's presidential candidates to oppose the war too forcefully. On the other hand, candidates don't want to go too far and risk losing swing voters critical to winning the general election.

At the same time, Republican hopefuls campaigning in these same states must tread delicately if they are to distance themselves from President Bush's prosecution of an increasingly unpopular war without offending core GOP voters, many of whom continue to support Bush and the conflict.

As a result, candidates in both parties are spinning and pivoting as they search for the right impression to convey on the issue that for many voters eclipses all others.

"Iraq is still the No. 1 issue. It will be the No. 1 issue through the presidential primary," said Marine Lt. Col. Joseph Kenney, a Republican state senator from Wakefield, N.H., who spent six months in Iraq last year. "We cannot fail in Iraq."

That's not how fellow state Sen. Jacalyn Cilley, a Democrat, sees it. She says she has just one question for any presidential candidate seeking her support: "If this Congress and this Senate do not get us out of Iraq by the time you take office, will this be your first act?"

"It's THE issue for me," said Cilley, of Barrington, N.H.

Ditto for Democrats and Republicans in Iowa, where party caucuses will kick off the presidential nominating season on Jan. 14, 2008.

"If the situation remains the same, you better not be against the war, you better be really against it," said former Iowa Democratic Chairman Dave Nagle.

But Michael Mahaffey, a former Iowa GOP chairman, said, "Most Republicans want the president to succeed, they want this surge (Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq) to succeed."

Polls conducted by Research 2000 in late December found Democrats in both states strongly against the war, but the Republican picture was more complicated.

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Court Hears Tapes of Libby’s Grand Jury Testimony

WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 — Prosecutors in the perjury trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr. played audio tapes today in which Mr. Libby was heard testifying under oath before a grand jury that he had not discussed the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency operative with fellow administration officials in the summer of 2003.

The sound of Mr. Libby’s disembodied voice in the courtroom vividly underlined the contrast between his sworn account and the testimony of the parade of prosecution witnesses presented to the jury over the last two weeks.

Mr. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, is charged with lying to that grand jury and to F.B.I. agents who were investigating the leak to reporters of the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson.

The jury today listened to 90 minutes of Mr. Libby’s grand jury testimony from March 5, 2004, in which he was questioned in a straightforward, almost friendly manner by the chief prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald. Mr. Libby was heard responding in unstuffy and earnest tones, as if he were sometimes straining to remember correctly.

On the tape, Mr. Libby was heard saying repeatedly that he could not recall any conversation he ever had with Marc Grossman, a senior state department official, about Ms. Wilson.

Mr. Grossman, who was then the undersecretary of state, has already testified about two such conversations. Mr. Grossman told the jury that Mr. Libby anxiously asked him that summer about reports that a former ambassador had traveled to Africa to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium there for his nuclear weapons program.

Mr. Grossman recounted in detail his conversations with Mr. Libby, even noting that one occurred just outside the White House situation room following a meeting of senior officials.

Mr. Grossman told the jury that he had reported back to Mr. Libby at their second meeting that the former ambassador was Joseph C. Wilson IV, and that he had been sent to Africa by the Central Intelligence Agency. He also told Mr. Libby that Mr. Wilson’s wife worked at the C.I.A. and appeared to have had a major role in choosing him for the assignment.

The audio tapes, which were played with a synchronized running transcript on television screens in the courtroom, seemed to hold the attention of the jurors, who also followed the dialogue printed in loose-leaf binders.

Tapes played today were only the first part of what is to be a total of eight hours that the jury will hear.

Judge Reggie B. Walton, concerned that the evidence could put jurors to sleep, warned the jurors to ask for a break if anyone’s attention is flagging.

As the tapes were played, Mr. Libby himself sat mostly motionless and expressionless.

Judge Walton denied a defense motion arguing that the tapes should not be given to the news media to play to the public. The entire eight hours will be released after the jury has heard all the tapes.

The remaining grand jury testimony, which will include Mr. Libby’s second appearance on March 24, 2004, is certain to include denials from Mr. Libby about conversations with other officials who have already testified that they spoke with him about Ms. Wilson. Before recessing for the day, the jury heard some of a recording in which Mr. Libby told the grand jury that he had not talked to one of those officials, Robert Grenier of the C.I.A. about Ms. Wilson.

Mr. Grenier has already testified in detail about his conversation with Mr. Libby about Ms. Wilson.

Ms. Wilson’s name was first disclosed in a July 14, 2003, column by Robert Novak, only days after The New York Times published an op-ed article written by Mr. Wilson asserting that the Bush administration had willfully distorted intelligence about Iraq’s efforts to obtain uranium in the African nation of Niger.

To demonstrate that Mr. Libby lied to the F.B.I. as well, which is charged in the indictment, prosecutors put Deborah S. Bond, an agent, on the stand. Ms. Bond, who was present at the two interviews of Mr. Libby in his Old Executive Office Building office in October and November of 2003 completed her testimony today but acknowledged she may have testified incorrectly last Thursday.

Theodore V. Wells Jr., Mr. Libby’s chief defense lawyer, was magnanimous with a purpose, when he pointed out her error over a conversation between Mr. Libby and Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff.

“I can’t believe I said it,” Ms. Bond said when shown last week’s testimony. Mr. Wells then prodded her to say that she must have answered in good faith but simply forgot, a proposition to which she readily agreed.

It was a reminder to the jury that one of the pillars of Mr. Libby’s defense is that if he spoke inaccurately to the grand jury and investigators, it was only a case of faulty memory.

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Cheney's own investment manager sends assault on U.S. energy policy to clients

Vice President Cheney's own investment manager, Jeremy Grantham, has emailed his clients -- including the Vice President -- a scatching attack on US energy policy, TheStreet.com reports Monday.

"While America Slept, 1982-2006: A Rant on Oil Dependency, Global Warming, and a Love of Feel-Good Data," Grantham's jeremiad is reportedly a mordant critique of US energy policy over the past two decades -- a period in which Cheney steered one of the largest energy concerns in the world: Halliburton, and set secretive energy policy with industry executives in the White House. Excerpts of TheStreet.com article follow:

"Successive U.S. administrations have taken little interest in either oil substitution or climate change," he writes, "and the current one has even seemed to have a vested interest in the idea that the science of climate change is uncertain."

Yet "there is now nearly universal scientific agreement that fossil fuel use is causing a rise in global temperatures," he writes. "The U.S. is the only country in which environmental data is steadily attacked in a well-funded campaign of disinformation (funded mainly by one large oil company)."

As for Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen, who appears everywhere to question global warming, Grantham mocks him as "the solitary plausible academic [the skeptics] can dig up, out of hundreds working in the field."

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War in Iraq Propelling A Massive Migration

Wave Creates Tension Across the Middle East

AMMAN, Jordan -- Inside his cold, crumbling apartment, Saad Ali teeters on the fringes of life. Once a popular singer in his native Baghdad, he is now unemployed. To pay his $45 monthly rent, he borrows from friends. To bathe, he boils water on a tiny heater. He sleeps on a frayed mattress, under a tattered blanket.

Outside, Ali, 35, avoids police officers and disguises his Arabic with a Jordanian dialect. He returns home before 10 p.m. to stay clear of government checkpoints. Like hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees here, he fears being deported. Six months ago, near his home in Baghdad, two men threatened to kill him. Singing romantic songs, they said, was un-Islamic.

So when his pride hits a new low, he remembers that day.

"Despite all the hardships I face here, it is better than going back to Baghdad," said Ali, long-faced with a sharp chin, who wore a thick red sweat shirt and rubbed his hands to keep warm. "They will behead me. What else can I do? I have no choice."

As the fourth year of war nears its end, the Middle East's largest refugee crisis since the Palestinian exodus from Israel in 1948 is unfolding in a climate of fear, persecution and tragedy.

Nearly 2 million Iraqis -- about 8 percent of the prewar population -- have embarked on a desperate migration, mostly to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The refugees include large numbers of doctors, academics and other professionals vital for Iraq's recovery. Another 1.7 million have been forced to move to safer towns and villages inside Iraq, and as many as 50,000 Iraqis a month flee their homes, the U.N. agency said in January.

The rich began trickling out of Iraq as conditions deteriorated under U.N. sanctions in the 1990s, their flight growing in the aftermath of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Now, as the violence worsens, increasing numbers of poor Iraqis are on the move, aid officials say. To flee, Iraqis sell their possessions, raid their savings and borrow money from relatives. They ride buses or walk across terrain riddled with criminals and Sunni insurgents, preferring to risk death over remaining in Iraq.

The United Nations is struggling to find funding to assist Iraqi refugees. Fewer than 500 have been resettled in the United States since the invasion. Aid officials and human rights activists say the United States and other Western nations are focused on reconstructing Iraq while ignoring the war's human fallout.

"It's probably political," said Janvier de Riedmatten, U.N. refugee agency representative for Iraq, referring to the reason why the world hasn't helped Iraq's refugees.

"The Iraq story has to be a success story," he said.

For decades, Jordan welcomed refugees. Roughly a third of its 5.9 million residents are Palestinian refugees. According to the United Nations, 500,000 to 700,000 Iraqi refugees live in Jordan, but aid officials say the actual number is nearer to 1 million because many Iraqis live under the radar. Jordan's tolerance has waned, however, since a group of Iraqis bombed three hotels in November 2005, killing 60 people, according to Iraqis, aid officials and human rights groups. The government fears that Iraq's mostly Sunni Arab refugees could remain in the country permanently or become recruits for Iraq's insurgency.

Now, the exodus is generating friction and anger across the region, while straining basic services in already poor countries. Iraqis are blamed for driving up prices and taking away scarce jobs. Iraq's neighbors worry the new refugees will carry in Iraq's sectarian strife.

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After Deadly Blast in Iraq, Shiites Assail U.S. Policy

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 4 — Naeem Al-Kaabi, Baghdad’s deputy mayor, nodded toward the gunfire outside his seventh floor office, a few hundred yards from the market where a one-ton truck bomb killed at least 130 people on Saturday and wounded hundreds more. The shots, he said, signaled another body — another son, another daughter — being carried from the rubble.

“The terrorists chose this spot three months ago and again yesterday so they could kill as many people as possible,” said Mr. Kaabi, a Shiite from Sadr City. “Trucks are not even allowed in the small alleys of the market. I wonder how the truck made it in.”

It was a question that traveled through much of Baghdad today, in the wake of the deadliest single bomb blast since the American invasion in 2003. Shiites in particular came prepared with an answer. They said the looming American-Iraqi security plan for Baghdad had weakened the Mahdi army, the Shiite militia loyal to the militant cleric Moktada Al-Sadr, emasculating the Shiites’ only reliable source of security.

Instead of making the city safer, they said, recent American efforts have opened Shiite areas to bombs that have left more than 450 dead since Jan. 16.

“A long time has passed since the plan was announced,” Basim Shareef, a Shiite member of Parliament, said today. “But so far there security has only deteriorated.”

An American military official, responding to the Shiite accusations, said that American checkpoints around eastern and central Baghdad last October seemed to reduce the number of car bombs until the checkpoints were removed because of objections from Sadr officials and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal Al-Maliki. Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the American military spokesman in Iraq, called for patience as the new security plan rolls out.

“Give the government and coalition forces a chance to fully implement it,” he told news agencies.

His comments, however, came as more than a dozen mortar shells crashed on Adhamiya, a Sunni Arab area of eastern Baghdad, in what appeared to be an act of retaliation from Shiites. At least seven people were killed and more than 35 were wounded.

And in the streets of Sadriya, the poor, mostly Shiite area of central Baghdad where the deadly bomb exploded Saturday, residents and merchants struggled to control their anger and grief.

“I saw with my own eyes young children flying from the windows of the apartments on top of the shops when the explosion arrived,” said Haydar Abdul Jabbar, 28, a car mechanic who was standing near a barber shop when the bomb exploded, sending up a plume of smoke several stories high. “One woman threw herself out of the window when the fire came close to her.”

Mr. Abdul Jabbar said he rushed to collapsed buildings, trying to help the wounded, but found mainly hands, skulls and other body parts. At one point, he discovered the remains of his close friend, who was engaged to be married.

“How would you feel if you were in this position,” he said today. “The government is supposed to protect us, but they are not doing their job. I watch the TV and see the announcements on the imminent implementation of the security plan. Where is it for God’s sake?”

“I wish they would attack us with a nuclear bomb and kill us all,” he added, “so we will rest and anybody who wants the oil — which is the core of the problem — can come and get it. We can not live this way anymore; we are dying slowly every day.”

The truck exploded around dusk on Saturday at a market flush with crowded food stands. Today, the crater from the blast looked large enough to hold a sedan, and the truck’s gnarled engine block sat more than 100 yards away, tossed like a pebble despite its weight.

The rescue effort continued today with workers and relatives tugging concrete in a mad search for victims amidst the piles of collapsed apartments and office buildings. Processions heavy with death moved through the area: Men lashed simple wood coffins to the top of mini-buses for the long journey to cemeteries, while families in the back of trucks wailed after collecting the bodies of relatives at a city morgue.

While the American military put out a statement saying an Iraqi Army unit helped secure the bomb site, the area closest to the bomb crater was controlled by the Mahdi Army. About 8 to 15 men dressed in black, carrying AK-47s, waved reporters away this morning and again in the afternoon.

When two American Humvees and an Iraqi patrol passed just after 1 p.m. local time, one of the Iraqi men in black called the soldiers “apes and cowards.”

“They’re the ones who brought us the catastrophe,” one of the Iraqis said. “If they were not here, such a thing wouldn’t happen to us.”

Mr. Abdul Jabbar, the car mechanic, was one of many Iraqis today who said that the American military would have been better off leaving the Mahdi Army in charge of Shiite neighborhoods.

Uday Ahmed, 31, a Sunni whose three restaurants at the market were obliterated by the blast, along with 20 of his workers, said that until a few weeks ago, Mahdi militiamen were more visible on the streets, checking vehicles, watching, offering to arbitrate disputes. After American and Iraqi officials arrested several top Mahdi commanders last month, he said, many of the Mahdi officers drifted into the shadows or fled.

He said he believed the increased violence in Shiite neighborhoods was connected to their departure.

“The Jaish al-Mehdi are like protectors, but with the announcement of the start of the security plan the Americans really chased them, so they withdrew from these places and now we don’t see them,” he said. “They don’t want to confront the Americans.”

He acknowledged that nothing may have stopped the truck bomb from killing dozens. Huge blasts have killed scores in Baghdad long before the American security plan was announced.

Yet some Shiites in the area said the truck could have been stopped at a checkpoint, decreasing damage from its payload. Hussein Ali, 57, said that Shiite militiamen were neighborhood volunteers who let drivers pass only if they recognized them.

“They don’t have any system or apparatus to check the cars,” he said. “But they know from looking at the faces who is supposed to come to Sadriya to bring vegetables or fruits. They have a relationship with the merchants.”

Mr. Kaabi , the deputy mayor and a senior Sadr official, said the American military, with the approval of the Iraqi government, has made an enemy of a group that could have been a partner. Nearly three years after bloody battles against Americans in the southern city of Najaf, the Mahdi Army no longer wanted to fight, he said. They simply wanted to defend and control their own sect’s areas.

“If the Mahdi were given the freedom to move, they could have coordinated with the Iraqi Army and the police,” Mr. Kaabi said. “They could have made it safe.”

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Truck bombing slaughters 121, wounds 215 in Baghdad market

A suicide bomber has blown up his truck near a central Baghdad market, killing at least 121 people as shoppers were buying household items ahead of the night-time curfew.

Another 215 people were wounded in the gruesome attack in Baghdad's Al-Sadriya district, security and medical sources said Saturday.

The bombing was the worst attack this year and the second biggest after the Sadr City car bombings last November which killed more than 200 people.

"A suicide truck bomb exploded near the Sadriya market, in central Baghdad on the east bank of the Tigris River. At least 102 people were killed and 215 wounded," a security source told AFP.

The blast sent a long plume of thick grey smoke into the overcast sky just before dusk, when markets are usually crowded with shoppers out for food ahead of the night-time curfew between 9:00 pm (1800 GMT) and 6:00 am (0300 GMT).

A twin car bomb attack on January 22 near the capital's Haraj market killed 88 people, and on Thursday, 73 people were killed in a twin suicide bombing in the mainly Shiite town of Hilla, south of Baghdad.

The campaign of massive bombings in recent weeks is posing a major challenge to Iraqi and US authorities as they fine-tune a make-or-break security plan to stabilize the violent capital.

The Sadriya bomb came just hours after insurgents unleashed a series of other car bombs and shootings across the strife-torn country.

The northern oil hub of Kirkuk bore the brunt of those attacks, with seven car bombs rocking the ethnically mixed city that is claimed by both Kurds and Arabs.

In one Kirkuk attack, a suicide bomber exploded a car outside the office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party led by powerful Kurdish leader Massud Barzani, killing two people.

The attack wounded another 17 people, mainly women and children, and many more were reported wounded in the other six car bombings.

Two of the seven car bombs exploded near two schools in the city but did not cause serious casualties because it was the weekend.

After the attacks police imposed a curfew on Kirkuk from 4:00 pm (1300 GMT) on Saturday to 6:00 am (0300 GMT) on Sunday.

Authorities also had to slap a curfew on two other Iraqi cities, Mosul and Samarra, following outbreaks of violence there as well, police said.

In Samarra, gunmen attacked a police checkpoint just north of the city killing six commandos and wounding six more, local police told AFP.

After the attack, police using loudhailers announced an indefinite curfew on Samarra, an AFP correspondent reported.

The predominantly Sunni town, 125 kilometres (80 miles) north of Baghdad, was the site of a February 22 2006 attack on a revered Shiite shrine.

The attack on the Al-Askari shrine triggered sectarian bloodshed nationwide in which tens of thousands of people have been killed, mainly in Baghdad.

In Mosul, 370 kilometres (230 miles) north of Baghdad, clashes between insurgents and security forces were reported from various districts on Saturday.

Although no casualties were reported immediately, Iraq's third largest city after Baghdad and Basra in the south was also put under curfew, police Colonel Mohammed Jassim said.

Elsewhere three more people were killed in other attacks.

The US military announced the deaths of two more soldiers in different incidents, taking its losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 3,091, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.

Four more members of a Shiite messianic cult which fought a fierce battle with security forces earlier this week were arrested in the central Iraqi shrine city of Karbala, police said.

Karbala police chief Major General Mohammed Abu al-Walid said 25 militants were arrested across the city in a series of raids. Four of those detained were from the "Soldiers of Heaven" group, the militant Shiite cult.

At least 263 of the cult's fighters and their leader were killed and 502 arrested during fierce clashes with Iraqi forces near Najaf on Sunday.

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Bush At Dem Retreat For First Time In 6 Years

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the question-and-answer portion of Bush's appearance was closed to the press to be consistent with his appearances at gatherings of congressional Republicans. At those events, Bush spoke in public but the questioning was closed "to provide frank and open discussion," Stanzel said.

He said Bush last attended a House Democrat retreat in early 2001, right after he took office.

Read the entire article here.

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Libby: Don't Release Grand Jury Tapes

WASHINGTON -- Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is fighting to keep his grand jury testimony about the leak of a CIA operative's name from being released and broadcast in the media.

Libby's grand jury testimony _ the sworn statements he gave to investigators about his conversations with Vice President Dick Cheney and journalists _ is at the heart of his perjury trial. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald plans to play hours of recordings of that testimony in court next week to bolster his case that Libby lied and obstructed the investigation.

Trial evidence is normally public and all exhibits in Libby's case have been made public so far. Even though Fitzgerald successfully fought to get Libby's full grand jury testimony admitted into evidence, Libby's attorneys say the audiotapes should not be released outside the courtroom.

Libby defense attorney William Jeffress, who successfully argued a Supreme Court case that kept the Watergate tapes from being released, said in court Thursday that grand jury tapes are never meant to be made public.
He said he knew of no case when such recordings have been released.

In the tapes, Libby discusses conversations he had regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame, the wife of a prominent Iraq war critic. Plame's identity was leaked to reporters in 2003.

Nobody was charged with the leak. Fitzgerald said Libby learned Plame's identity from Cheney and discussed it with journalists. Libby says he forgot about his conversation with Cheney and, when he heard about Plame from a reporter weeks later, it struck him as new information.

Fitzgerald says Libby concocted that story to protect himself from prosecution because repeating rumors from reporters is less serious than repeating sensitive information from Cheney.

If the tapes are released, they could be broadcast on television news programs, radio stations and the Internet. U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said he worried that would sensationalize an already public trial.

Attorneys for The Associated Press and a dozen other news organizations said they would challenge any effort to seal the tapes. Court papers were to be filed Friday afternoon. Walton said he would consider the matter over the weekend.

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Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.

The UN report was written by international experts and is widely regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science. It will underpin international negotiations on new emissions targets to succeed the Kyoto agreement, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft last year and invited to comment.

The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees.

The letters, sent to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere, attack the UN's panel as "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work" and ask for essays that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs".

Climate scientists described the move yesterday as an attempt to cast doubt over the "overwhelming scientific evidence" on global warming. "It's a desperate attempt by an organisation who wants to distort science for their own political aims," said David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

"The IPCC process is probably the most thorough and open review undertaken in any discipline. This undermines the confidence of the public in the scientific community and the ability of governments to take on sound scientific advice," he said.

The letters were sent by Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar at AEI, who confirmed that the organisation had approached scientists, economists and policy analysts to write articles for an independent review that would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC report.

"Right now, the whole debate is polarised," he said. "One group says that anyone with any doubts whatsoever are deniers and the other group is saying that anyone who wants to take action is alarmist. We don't think that approach has a lot of utility for intelligent policy."

One American scientist turned down the offer, citing fears that the report could easily be misused for political gain. "You wouldn't know if some of the other authors might say nothing's going to happen, that we should ignore it, or that it's not our fault," said Steve Schroeder, a professor at Texas A&M university.

The contents of the IPCC report have been an open secret since the Bush administration posted its draft copy on the internet in April. It says there is a 90% chance that human activity is warming the planet, and that global average temperatures will rise by another 1.5 to 5.8C this century, depending on emissions.

Lord Rees of Ludlow, the president of the Royal Society, Britain's most prestigious scientific institute, said: "The IPCC is the world's leading authority on climate change and its latest report will provide a comprehensive picture of the latest scientific understanding on the issue. It is expected to stress, more convincingly than ever before, that our planet is already warming due to human actions, and that 'business as usual' would lead to unacceptable risks, underscoring the urgent need for concerted international action to reduce the worst impacts of climate change. However, yet again, there will be a vocal minority with their own agendas who will try to suggest otherwise."

Ben Stewart of Greenpeace said: "The AEI is more than just a thinktank, it functions as the Bush administration's intellectual Cosa Nostra. They are White House surrogates in the last throes of their campaign of climate change denial. They lost on the science; they lost on the moral case for action. All they've got left is a suitcase full of cash."

On Monday, another Exxon-funded organisation based in Canada will launch a review in London which casts doubt on the IPCC report. Among its authors are Tad Murty, a former scientist who believes human activity makes no contribution to global warming. Confirmed VIPs attending include Nigel Lawson and David Bellamy, who believes there is no link between burning fossil fuels and global warming.

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FBI Agent Testifies Libby First Heard About Plame from Cheney

WASHINGTON The "CIA leak" trial resumed today, after two critical days of testimony from reporters Judith Miller and Matt Cooper. As in past days, E&P will provide running updates here.

After a long day or legal wrangling and no witnesses, an FBI agent took the stand shortly before 3 p.m. She is Deborah Bond, a 19-year veteran, called into the probe of who may have leaked name of classified agent.

She described the bureau's interview with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on Oct. 14, 2003. Asked where he first learned of Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, he had told the FBI then -- from the vice president, on or about June 12 that year, in a telephone conversation.

Vice President Cheney had also said that she worked in "CP" or counter-proliferation at the agency. How did Cheney know this? From someone at the CIA -- possibly director George Tenet, but Libby wasn't sure.

How to explain Libby originally claiming he had first heard about Wilson's wife from NBC's Tim Russert in July? He had simply forgotten he had actually heard it from the vice president a month or more earlier. But Libby's notes, produced by prosecutors during this testimony, did show notations from June 12 regarding Wilson's wife. And Libby later confirmed this in a second FBI interview.

But he said it seemed like news to him -- he'd forgotten all about it -- when Russert asked him if he knew that Ambassador Wilson's wife worked at the agency and, allegedly, other reporters knew this. Then Libby told other reporters who might not know about it, including Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post and NBC's Andrea Mitchell.

Libby in that 2003 FBI interview also said he had not mentioned Plame in his July 8 meeting with Judith Miller -- or the lunch with Ari Fleischer that Fleischer testified about earlier. This contradicts their testimony.

And he claimed that in his chat with Time's Matt Cooper he had closed by warning Cooper that what other reporters were saying about Plame working at the CIA might not be true.

He also described other conversations relating to all this with Cheney.

Cross-examination then began, with defense suggesting that Libby, in that first 2003 interview, had not been given fair chance to refresh his memory via notes etc. When he did have that chance, he changed his story, and then stuck to it: He simply forgot about the June 12 chat with Cheney.

The trial broke off before 5. It does not convene again until Monday. The FBI agent will return. Eight hours of Libby's grand jury testimony will be played for the jury. Then Tim Russert will testify, with the prosecution likely to rest around Wednesday.

As always, we will base our updates here mainly on nearly minute-by-minute blogging from the courthouse by the women at FireDogLake.com, which has proven extremely accurate so far, along with other bloggers and wire service reports as they come in.

EARLIER TODAY

The trial had re-convened this morning about 10:30 a.m. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald appeared at first to be losing his fight to get the judge to allow him to enter tapes of White House spokesman Scott McClellan saying in 2003 that Karl Rove was not involved in the Plame leak but not making the same claim about top Cheney aide, "Scooter" Libby.

In the course of discussing this (with jury out), Libby attorney Ted Wells appears to say that if Vice President Cheney testifies he will confirm defense claim that Libby was concerned about being "scapegoated" in this matter -- not that he lied to save his job.

Still at issue: Will Fitzgerald be allowed to play for the jurors Libby's several hours of testimony before the grand jury -- during which he allegedly lied about his role in the leaking.

The wrangling between lawyers last all morning, ending with a debate over whether it can be introduced that Libby had signed a "non-disclosure" agreement meaning he could not release any classified info (such as that involving a covert CIA agent) -- and that he was concerned about this after the Plame outing.

Then they broke for lunch.

Legal wrangling continued afterward. Finally the ury came in after 2 p.m. Fitzgerald was allowed to show parts of transcripts concerning McClellan/Rove/Libby. He'd barely begun when another break for discussion arrived.

Finally, the FBI agent took the stand.

The current AP backgrounder follows.*

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald appears to be saving NBC newsman Tim Russert as his last witness in the perjury trial of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Fitzgerald has said he plans to play excerpts from Libby‘s grand jury testimony at trial, and the government‘s next witness, FBI agent Deborah Bond, appears to be Fitzgerald‘s opportunity. That would give jurors the chance to hear for themselves the testimony that Fitzgerald says is a lie and that Libby says is a product of faulty memory.

The perjury and obstruction trial hinges on whether Libby lied about his conversations with reporters regarding outed CIA operative Valerie Plame .

Fitzgerald spent the first week of the trial presenting witnesses who said they talked to Libby about Plame, the wife of prominent Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson. Some witnesses, such as officials from the CIA and State Department, said they told Libby about Plame.

Others, such as former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and journalists Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper, said Libby talked about Plame to them.

Fitzgerald contends Libby concocted that story to avoid embarrassment, prosecution and possibly losing his job.

Libby, ex-chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney , is on trial on charges he lied to the FBI and a grand jury about his conversations with reporters about Plame and obstructed the investigation into how her identity leaked to the public in 2003. No one has been charged with the actual leak.

Fitzgerald says he expects to call Russert to testify on Monday or Tuesday, a plan that would make the well-known journalist the last witness jurors hear before the government rests its case. Russert says he did not discuss Plame with Libby, a recollection that is directly at odds with the former aide‘s testimony.

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Judiciary Chairman Conyers to probe signing statements

"Asserting that President Bush’s frequent use of 'signing statements' to interpret federal laws have allowed the executive branch to effectively thwart Congressional intent, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) said Wednesday that his panel will launch a formal investigation into the practice," the paid-restricted Roll Call reports Wednesday.

Excerpts:

The Michigan lawmaker said the investigation would include both Democratic and Republican staff and will focus on the approximately 150 signing statements issued by Bush, which the American Bar Association estimates have affected more than 1,100 provisions of federal law.

House Democrats have criticized the use of such statements, arguing that they not only undermine the separation of powers of the legislative and executive branches but also threaten legislative authority.

“All too often, the administration has engaged in these practices under a veil of secrecy. This is a constitutional issue that no self-respecting federal legislature should tolerate,” Conyers said.

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Judge mulls 'how far' Miller must go in testifying on sources

Below is a rough transcript from MSNBC's David Shuster on the Libby trial, followed by excerpts from liveblogging. Subjects being discussed during the course of today's trial include what Miller heard at various times from various parties about the identity of Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson, and the circumstances under which Miller went to jail to protect her journalistic sources.

In later testimony, Matt Cooper, a former Time reporter who made the decision to disclose his sources rather than go to prison, told the court that Karl Rove had told him that Joseph Wilson's wife worked on weapons of mass destruction issues at the CIA, according to blogger "emptywheel," or Marcy Wheeler.

Host: Is the defense team expected to go after Judith Miller's memory, once again, today?

Shuster: The key issue is that Judy Miller testified for the prosecution about those conversation that happened before Scooter Libby said that he even learned about Valerie Wilson and Judy Miller in her testimony said she heard Scooter Libby talking about Valerie Wilson and the fact that Wilson was working at the CIA and before Scooter Libby had the conversation where he told investigators that he first learned about Valerie Wilson. So, her testimony is damaging to the defense in several ways.

And what the defense is now trying to do on the cross examination is point out that after Judy Miller got out of jail for refusing to testify about her source Scooter Libby, she immediately went to the grand jury and during that first grand jury session she remembered one conversation with Scooter Libby and another conversation over the phone but she did not remember her June 23, 2003 conversation. The prosecutors, after that grand jury session, asked her to try to go back and find her notebooks and look at her notes. She went back to her desk in New York, found in a big bag, a series of notebooks. In going through the notebooks, then remember that she actually did have this June conversation with Scooter Libby. And that she had actually written down Valerie Wilson's name in her notebook. What the defense is trying to do is suggest that if you couldn't remember on your own this June conversation with Libby, why should the jury trust her ability now?

So, they've been hammering at her memory. The other thing that they are trying to do, is that while Judy Miller has testified about her source scooter libby related to the Wilson's issue, late yesterday, the defense was asking her if she had any other source that she could remember sort of related to the larger issue about pre-war intelligence and issues related to the Wilson's. And she said she couldn't remember. That sparked a huge court fight because, again, Judy Miller didn't want to have to testify about sources other than scooter libby. Her own lawyer got up and started explain to the court that it's not something she wanted to do and then the prosecution and the defense got into this huge argument about how far should the reporter, Judy Miller, have to go talking about sources. And, again, that was the whole issue that prompted Judy Miller to decide that she wanted to go to jail for 85 days. The judge is expected to resolved that issue overnight and make a ruling this morning about how far Judy Miller has to go testifying about sources other than Scooter Libby and then her cross examination will continue again with the defense trying to show that Judy Miller is not credible.

Host: And, David, looking a little further, who do you expect on the stand next in this trial?

Shuster: There will be another journalist, Matt Cooper, who was the recipient of information from Scooter Libby about Valerie Wilson according to Matt Cooper. He'll be on the witness stand next for the prosecution. And, again, this is part of the prosecution effort to show that Scooter Libby actually had the information about Valerie Wilson before he testified that he had it and that he was disseminating this information. All at a period, before Valerie Wilson was outed as a CIA operative.

Emptywheel, live-blogging the trial at firedoglake, has a rough transcript of Judge Walton's decision this morning.

Walton: We left with whether the question was appropriate. My conclusion, it seems to me that scope of evidence that's relevant is constrained by what the issues are, in particular as it relates to the witness. When any witness takes the stand, their general credibility comes into issue. If there is evidence that definitively goes to her general credibility, obviously even though that challenge may be beyond that issue, if she had provided a false statement under oath, it would be appropriate to query her in reference to that false info, if she lied under oath before, then the jury might conclude she would lie under oath again. If, in fact, there were other people she had spoken to on this issue, if there were in fact sources she had talked regarding that issue, because conceivably, it could be argued that she confused who she got the information from.

The op-ed says nothing about 'his wife.' It's all about this trip, about his conclusions about the reasons we went to war, I'd assume in context of that broad scope, in reference to the fifth paragraph of the affadavit, specifically says she had never written an article about Wilson or Plame, she contemplated writing an article about the op-ed, that op-ed says nothing about Plame. To ask a question about her sources this far afield would require her to reveal her sources, I don't think it's in any way relevant to this litigation. We need to make a record, in the event there's a conviction, in the event of an appeal. I assume as an officer of the court that she has sources that would provide info that is relevant to the broad scope of the topic of Wilson's op-ed.

After the Firedoglake blog suffered a service breakdown, EmptyWheel (aka Marcy Wheeler) continued at Daily Kos, with more updates from Miller's testimony in response to juror questions.

Miller claimed that she wasn't being a "martyr" by going to jail, and denied that there had been any "quid pro quo" between her and Libby.

EmptyWheel's rough transcript:

Walton: Why didn't you or your attorney contact Libby earlier?

Miller: Because I was afraid of a fishing expedition. It was only after I had both things.

Walton: If you had had his personal waiver immediately, would you have testified?

Miller: I still needed agreement that it would be this one source on this subject. As soon as I got both, I went to testify.

Walton: Why did you make decision to go to jail?

Miller: Because all of my reporting depended on my ability to protect sources. Until I had something written from Libby, not something his boss asked him to sign, I felt that as a professional matter, it was all I could do. I wasn't trying to be a martyr. You can't operate that way in DC, it was too important in national security reporting.

Walton: Have you ever had memory losses like the memory loss you said you had with Libby?

Miller: When I was preparing my last book, there was an incident. I went back and found out the story was very different. I'd actually misremembered it. From that time, I've been careful about notes, trying to be careful.

Walton: Did you make agreement with Libby regarding sharing of info that might be a quid pro quo?

Miller: No, only the way in which he was to be identified. There was no quid pro quo.

Walton: The notes that you found after you were asked to look for notes. Where did you locate those?

Miller: Right under my desk at NYT in shopping bag.

Walton: Is that where you kept your notes?

Miller: That's where I kept notes for a relevant period of time before I went to jail.

Walton: Is that your standard method of archiving?

Miller: I meant to archive them. I assumed I'd have time to take the notebooks home for safekeeping. That's why they were there. But the marshalls took me away right away.

Walton: How many other notebooks?

Miller: About 15 or 20.

Emptywheel at DailyKos liveblogging on Karl Rove, with partial corrections by RAW STORY staff.

Matt Cooper: Friday July 11, I spoke with Karl Rove, a member of WH staff. I put in a call to Rove's office, I was routed to his office, at first, he wasn't there, he was busy, but then they put me through, and we talked. I said "Ah sure, we're interested in Wilson story." And he immediately said, "Don't get too far out, don't lionize or idolize him." He said a number of things would be coming out. He said the DCI (Director of Central Intelligence) had not sent him. He said the VP had not been involved. Then he said, it would come out who was involved in sending him. He said his wife. I until that point didn't know Wilson had a wife. I said "the wife?" He said she worked in WMD at the Agency, I took the CIA, not the EPA. We talked a bit more, at the end he said, I've already said too much.

Developing...

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Senate foes of troop buildup join forces

WASHINGTON - Two senators — a Republican and a Democrat — leading separate efforts to put Congress on record against President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq joined forces Wednesday, agreeing on a nonbinding resolution that would oppose the plan and potentially embarrass the White House.

Sens. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., and Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich., had been sponsoring competing measures opposing Bush's strategy of sending 21,500 more U.S. troops to the war zone, with Warner's less harshly worded version attracting more Republican interest. The new resolution would vow to protect funding for troops while keeping Warner's original language expressing the Senate's opposition to the buildup.

Levin replaced Warner as chairman of the Armed Services Committee when the Democrats took control of the Senate in January. Their resolution could well gain more support from members of both parties than their separate versions had been attracting. It lacks Levin's language saying the troop increase is against the national interest, and it drops an earlier provision by Warner suggesting Senate support for some additional troops.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record) said he wants to begin debate Monday on the new measure, bypassing committee review. Levin's original resolution would no longer be considered unless offered as an amendment.

"I believe we have a better chance now" of passing a resolution against the president's plan, said Sen. Richard Durbin (news, bio, voting record), D-Ill.

The resolution is likely to pose a threat to the White House because of its potential appeal to Republicans who have grown tired of the nearly four-year war and want a chance to express their concerns. The White House has been hoping to avoid an overwhelming congressional vote criticizing Bush's handling of the war.

"It's been a hard work in progress," Warner said of his resolution, which has been struggling to win support of 60 senators so as to prevent a filibuster.

The agreement comes as several leading Republicans who support the troop buildup said they will give the administration and the Iraqis about six months to show significant improvement. Many other Republicans say they are deeply skeptical additional troops in Iraq, rather than a political settlement, would help calm the sectarian violence.

The widely unpopular war has led to the deaths of more than 3,000 U.S. troops and is blamed for GOP losses in the Nov. 7 elections that handed control of Congress to the Democrats.

The House had planned on waiting for the Senate to vote as a way of testing the waters for Republican support of such a resolution. But according to a Democratic aide, the House may begin the process next week with a committee review. That would set the stage for a House floor debate the week of Feb. 12.

Warner had attracted at least seven other Republicans who were inclined to vote for his resolution. Scrambling to find additional support, Warner added language proposed by Sen. Judd Gregg (news, bio, voting record), R-N.H., that would protect funding for troops.

As of late Wednesday, Gregg had not said whether he would support the revised resolution.

"Colleagues have come up to me and said, 'Can you assure me that this doesn't provide a cutoff of funds?'" Warner said.

Warner's resolution will now rival a proposal by Sens. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham (news, bio, voting record), R-S.C., that would identify benchmarks for the Iraqi government. McCain's measure is intended to give Republicans an outlet for expressing that the U.S. commitment in Iraq must not be open-ended, without openly criticizing the president.

McCain's measure also picked up steam Wednesday, with Sens. Pat Roberts (news, bio, voting record), R-Kan., Lisa Murkowski (news, bio, voting record), R-Alaska, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (news, bio, voting record), R-Ga., and GOP leaders saying they might support it.

"I don't think this war can be sustained for more than six months if in fact we don't see some progress," said Roberts. His comments came two days after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (news, bio, voting record), R-Ky., said the new U.S. military push was the Iraqis' "last chance."

Bush on Wednesday objected to Iraq proposals from Republicans and Democrats alike and acknowledged that "there's a lot of pessimism" in Congress about his troop buildup.

In an interview with Fox News, Bush took issue with McConnell's statement that his plan needs to be successful over the next six to nine months.

"I think it's a mistake to put timetables on difficult missions because an enemy can adjust," Bush said. "On the other hand, I certainly understand the urgency in Mitch's voice. I also understand the skepticism on Capitol Hill. I mean, no doubt, there's a lot of pessimism there today."

In a statement after the president's interview, McConnell avoided mention of a specific time frame, but he stressed that the U.S. commitment in Iraq "is not open-ended."

"We will know in a relatively short period of time whether or not the Iraqis are committed, and initial results are positive," McConnell said. "Of course we would need to reconsider our strategy if this effort fails."

Bush also criticized a proposal by Sen. Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record), a Democratic presidential candidate from Illinois, to have all U.S. combat forces out of Iraq by spring 2008. "I say that it's important to succeed and that failure in Iraq will cause chaos," Bush said. "My admonition to those who are speaking out is let us back the troops and let us hope for the success" of their mission.

Although deserted by some key Republicans, Bush said: "I don't feel abandoned. ... When times are good, there's millions of authors of the plan. When times are bad, there's one author, and that would be me."

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Obama Says “Withdraw the Troops By March ‘08″

Barack Obama has introduced a bill that requires the withdrawal of troops in the near future, with complete withdrawal by March of 2008.

The timetable may be too slow for some, and too fast for others.

Sen. Clinton has said she would consider it "irresponsible" for Bush not to have withdrawn all troops by the end of his term in January 2009.

Obama is now recommending making it a matter of law that troops be out ten months earlier than that.

The debate among Democrats is clearly shifting more toward winding down the war. (Note that I didn't say it's "shifting to the left."

Opposition to this war can no longer be described as a left/right issue.)

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Matthew Cooper Testifies Rove Told Him About Plame

Jan. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Former Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper testified today that top presidential aide Karl Rove was the first person to tell him that an Iraq war critic's wife was a CIA official.

Cooper, testifying in Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby's perjury trial, also contradicted Libby's account of a conversation the two had the following day, on July 12, 2003, about war critic Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame.

Libby, 56, Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide, is accused of lying to investigators probing whether U.S. officials deliberately leaked Plame's identity to retaliate against Wilson for attacking the administration's Iraq war claims. Prosecutors say Libby falsely told a grand jury that, when Cooper asked about Plame, he said he heard about her from other reporters and didn't know if the information was true.

``I asked what he heard about Wilson's wife'' sending him to Niger to find out if Iraq sought to buy uranium there, Cooper said. ``Mr. Libby said words to the effect of `yeah, I heard that too.'''

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald asked whether Libby said where he had learned about Plame.

``Not in any way,'' said Cooper, now Washington editor of a new magazine, Conde Nast Portfolio. Asked whether Libby said he heard about her from other reporters, Cooper replied in the negative.

Wilson wrote a column in the New York Times on July 6, 2003, saying he found no evidence that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Niger and accusing the Bush administration of ``twisting'' intelligence to justify invading Iraq.

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Roundup: 'Stressed' Miller takes stand in CIA leak trial

Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller is "stressed out" and on the stand live undergoing questions in the CIA leak trial, and has just contradicted statements by Vice President Cheney's former Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby, who said he believed he first learned of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity from another reporter.

AP: "Miller testified Tuesday that Libby discussed the CIA officer on June 3, 2003. He said Wilson’s wife worked for the “bureau,” Miller recalled. She was confused about that at first, she said. “Through the context of the discussion, I quickly determined it to be the CIA,” she testified.

Firedoglake, which has been covering the CIA leak trial closely, is in the courtroom now. "This is not the picture of someone who is relaxed," blogger EmptyWheel notes.

It "looks like she's doing breathing exercises, pouring herself water. Got out of chair and is now back," adds EmptyWheel. "Gets more water... Looking around cautiously. Closes eyes. Breathes. Breathes out. Looking straight forward. Head darts nervously. Staring forward. Shifts in chair. Looks toward Libby's team? Looks toward lawyers. Adjusts blouse. Looks at lawyers again. Looks down, folds arms. Looks down. Looks toward Libby's team. Folds arms, leans back, turning in swivel chair. Takes glasses off. Looks for tissue to wipe her hands."

MORE FROM AP HERE

MORE FROM FIREDOGLAKE HERE

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NY Times: Bush signs landmark executive order increasing power over federal agencies

President George W. Bush has given his administration a boost in how the government regulates key issues such as civil rights and the environment, The New York Times will report on its Tuesday front page.

The President "signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules that the federal government develops to regulate public health, safety," privacy and other issues, writes Robert Pear for the Times.

Pear reports that "in an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Bush said that each federal agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee" who will monitor the creation of process and procedures and the associated documentation.

"The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency," Pear writes, "to analyze the costs and benefits of new rules and to make sure they carry out the president's priorities."

Excerpts from the Times article follow...

This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts. It suggests that the administration still has ways to exert its power after the takeover of Congress by the Democrats.

The White House said the executive order was not meant to rein in any one agency. But business executives and consumer advocates said the administration was particularly concerned about rules and guidance issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Business groups welcomed the executive order, saying it had the potential to reduce what they saw as the burden of federal regulations. This burden is of great concern to many groups, including small businesses, that have given strong political and financial backing to Bush.

Consumer, labor and environmental groups denounced the executive order, saying it gave too much control to the White House and would hinder agencies' efforts to protect the public.

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Jan. 27: This Marine's death came after he served in Iraq

When Jonathan Schulze came home from Iraq, he tried to live a normal life. But the war kept that from happening.

At first, Jonathan Schulze tried to live with the nightmares and the grief he brought home from Iraq. He was a tough kid from central Minnesota, and more than that, a U.S. Marine to the core.

Yet his moods when he returned home told another story. He sobbed on his parents' couch as he told them how fellow Marines had died, and how he, a machine gunner, had killed the enemy. In his sleep, he screamed the names of dead comrades. He had visited a psychiatrist at the VA hospital in Minneapolis.

Two weeks ago, Schulze went to the VA hospital in St. Cloud. He told a staff member he was thinking of killing himself, and asked to be admitted to the mental health unit, said his father and stepmother, who accompanied him. They said he was told he couldn't be admitted that day. The next day, as he spoke to a counselor in St. Cloud by phone, he was told he was No. 26 on the waiting list, his parents said.

Four days later, Schulze, 25, committed suicide in his New Prague home.

Citing privacy laws, Veterans Affairs officials wouldn't comment specifically on the case, nor would they confirm or deny the Schulze family's account. However, Dr. Sherrie Herendeen, line director for mental health services at the St. Cloud hospital, said Thursday that under VA policy, a veteran talking about suicide would immediately be escorted into the hospital's locked mental health unit for treatment.

She also said that after hearing of Schulze's death, the hospital is doing an internal review of its procedures.

Schulze's father and stepmother, Jim and Marianne Schulze of rural Stewart, Minn., say their son would be alive today if the VA had acted on his pleas for admittance. They say they heard him tell VA staff in St. Cloud that he felt suicidal -- in person on Jan. 11 at the hospital, and over the phone on Jan. 12.

On the evening of Jan. 16, Schulze called family and friends to tell them that he was preparing to kill himself. They called New Prague police, who smashed in the door and found him hanging from an electrical cord. Police attempted to resuscitate him, but it was too late.

Schulze's family doctor in Stewart, a farming crossroads in McLeod County, said he was convinced that Schulze suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, a disabling mental condition that can result from military combat.

"Jonathan was a classic," said Dr. William Phillips, who said he first examined Schulze in October 2004 when Schulze was home on leave from Marine duty.

Phillips said Schulze was reliving combat in his sleep, had flashbacks when he was awake, couldn't eat, felt paranoid, struggled with relationships and admitted to drinking alcohol excessively. Phillips prescribed medication to calm his nerves and help him sleep.

The doctor also asked Schulze to seek counseling at Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps base in California where he was assigned. Phillips said he was unable to learn whether Schulze had done so.

"We don't have a system for this," Phillips said this week. "The VA is overwhelmed, and we're rural doctors out here trying to deal with this.
Unfortunately, we're going to see a lot of Jonathans."

Seeking help

Maj. Cynthia Rasmussen, the combat stress officer for the 88th Regional Readiness Command at Fort Snelling, said veterans returning to Minnesota who have problems often don't seek help until their civilian lives begin to fall apart. "Soldiers think if they go to get help that they're going to be seen as weak, but they also think their command won't have faith in them," she said.

Rasmussen said reasons for mental illness among returning veterans are many and complex, but often relate to personality changes that service members must make while in uniform -- and especially in combat zones -- and then try to readjust to civilian life.

After Schulze left the Marines in late 2005, he continued to have aching memories of combat.

"When he got back from Iraq he was mentally scattered," said his older brother Travis, who also served there with the Marines.

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Fleischer Tells Jury That Libby Told Him About Plame

Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told a jury today that Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff disclosed to him the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame a week before her name surfaced publicly in the press.

Taking the stand as the most critical witness so far in the perjury trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fleischer said that in an unusual lunch in the White House mess, Libby told him that the wife of prominent war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV worked in the CIA's counterproliferation division.

Fleischer, who was called by the prosecution, said Libby told him at the July 7 lunch that former ambassador Wilson was sent to Niger to investigate reports Iraq had tried to buy nuclear material there by Wilson's wife, not by the vice president, as some news accounts were saying.

Wilson later accused the administration of twisting information he gathered, in order to justify the invasion of Iraq. Some have charged that Plame's name was leaked to columnist Robert D. Novak, who published it in a July 14 column, to discredit Wilson.

Fleischer said he believed that Libby told him Plame's name, but could not be sure.

"He added that this was something hush-hush or on the QT, that not many people knew this information," Fleisher said. "My impression was Mr. Libby was telling me this was kind of newsy."

Added Fleischer: "My thought was that what I was hearing was about nepotism."

Libby is charged with lying to FBI agents and a grand jury and obstructing justice in the investigation of who leaked Plame's name to Novak. He told investigators that he learned about Plame's identity from NBC reporter Tim Russert in a July 10 telephone call. He has pleaded not guilty, contending that when he testified, he did not remember some conversations he had with reporters about Plame. He is not charged with the leak itself.

Fleischer said he never viewed the information he received about Plame as classified or secret, because the protocol in the White House was that press aides would be warned explicitly when information was classified and could not be used in discussions with reporters.

Fleischer also made clear how uncomfortable he was when questioned earlier that day at a press briefing about Wilson's claims that the administration was twisting intelligence. Earlier in the spring, he had insisted that President Bush stood behind 16 words in his 2003 State of the Union address about Iraq's efforts to buy uranium in Niger.

But higher level officials he didn't name began suggesting it might be a problem to defend that statement.

"I had been told to be careful not to stand by the 16 words, that the ground might be shifting on that," Fleischer said. "You can't say yes. You can't say no. At that briefing, I basically punted. I said yes and no."

During afternoon testimony, Fleischer told jurors that, a few days after his lunch with Libby, Fleischer had relayed the fact that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA to two reporters while they were covering a trip Bush made to Africa.

According to Fleischer, he passed on the information to the reporters, NBC's David Gregory and Time magazine's John Dickerson, as they were walking alongside a road in Uganda.

The former press secretary said that, in addition to learning about Plame from Libby, he also had just heard another White House aide, then-communications director Dan Bartlett, "vent" about news accounts that Cheney had asked for Wilson's trip. Fleischer said he was in the senior staff cabin of Air Force 1 during the Africa trip when he overheard Bartlett say out loud that Wilson's wife had sent him on the mission to Niger.

He testified that neither Libby nor Bartlett gave him any reason to believe that Plame's employment was classified.

"I never in my wildest dreams thought this information would be classified," he said.

Fleischer, who left the White House in mid-July 2003, said that in September, about 2 1/2 months after his conversation with the reporters, he saw a news account that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to investigate a possibly illegal leak of a covert CIA officer's identity.

"I was absolutely horrified to know I had played a role," Fleischer said. "I thought, 'Oh my God. Did I play a role in somehow outing a CIA officer. . . . Did I just do something that I could be in big trouble for.' "

He said that he hired lawyers and ultimately agreed to be interviewed by investigators after receiving immunity from prosecution.

Defense attorneys told U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton this morning they want to try to cast Fleischer as a man who had a motive to help prosecutors and lie about Libby -- to save himself from possible prosecution for leaking information to reporters in mid-July 2003. Plame's name and secret CIA role first appeared in a syndicated column by Robert Novak on July 14, 2003 -- eight days after her husband publicly accused the administration of using bad intelligence to justify the war with Iraq earlier that year.

But at the same time, defense lawyers warned Walton that they are worried about the government providing too much information or suggesting too much about Fleischer seeking the immunity deal --- because of what it might imply about their own client.

"The government seeks to use this testimony that if Mr. Fleisher thought he had a criminal problem, Mr. Libby must have thought he had a criminal problem," said defense attorney William H. Jeffress Jr.

Defense attorneys are suspicious of the immunity deal and why Fitzgerald made it without any apparent reluctance. Libby's defense lawyers suggested last week in court that Fitzgerald got a secret summary of Fleischer's testimony -- a deal they want to discuss with jurors when Fleischer takes the stand today.

Walton said this morning he had read in his chambers an affidavit the government provided from Fleischer about his immunity deal and was "satisfied" there was nothing to suggest Fleischer promised Fitzgerald any specific testimony. Fitzgerald had said last week no such promises were made.

"We got no specifics," Fitzgerald said then.

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Ex-aide's immunity deal won't be detailed

WASHINGTON - Attorneys for former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby won't know the specifics of former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer's unusual immunity-from-prosecution deal when Fleischer testifies against their client Monday.

A federal judge ruled that Fleischer's agreement with prosecutors is not relevant to Libby's perjury and obstruction defense. Libby's attorneys believed Fleischer promised specific testimony against Libby in exchange for immunity — a deal they wanted to use to question Fleischer's credibility.

Prosecutors normally require an informal account of what a witness will say before agreeing to grant immunity. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said that he reluctantly gave Fleischer immunity without knowing specifics and believing only that the former top White House spokesman could help the investigation into who leaked a CIA's operative's name.

Fitzgerald gave U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton a summary of his conversations with Fleischer's attorneys and Walton agreed that it didn't need to be disclosed to Libby's attorneys.

Fleischer was to begin his testimony later Monday after Vice President Dick Cheney's former spokeswoman, Cathie Martin, leaves the stand.

Fleischer, who was the chief White House spokesman for the first 2 1/2 years of
President Bush's first term, will be a key witness against Libby. Libby is accused of lying to investigators about his conversations with reporters regarding outed CIA operative Valerie Plame, the wife of a prominent Bush administration critic.

Libby says he was surprised to learn from NBC News reporter Tim Russert that Plame worked at the CIA. Anything he later told reporters about Plame was simply a repetition of what he learned from Russert, Libby said.

Fitzgerald's first witnesses were government employees who testified that they told Libby about Plame days before the Russert conversation. Fleischer is expected to testify that Libby then relayed that information to him, also before Libby and Russert spoke.

As Fitzgerald said in his opening statement: "You can't learn something on Thursday that you're giving out on Monday."

Fleischer acknowledged being one of the sources for the leaks Fitzgerald was investigating and defense attorneys want to cast him as an opportunist who cannot be trusted.

Prosecutors will counter that Fleischer sought immunity because he feared he did something wrong by talking to reporters about Plame. If they can hint that Libby felt the same way, it would suggest a possible motive for him to lie to investigators.

Nobody was ever charged with leaking Plame's identity. Libby is the only person charged in the case.

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White House defies Congress, public to push Iraq surge

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The White House has stood by President George W. Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq, despite growing public opposition and a chorus of criticism from lawmakers in Congress.

Vice President Dick Cheney said the United States needed to remain steadfast in the face of escalating violence in Iraq, defending the administration's plan to deploy an additional 21,500 troops.

"People are trying to make a judgment on whether or not this plan is going to work I think far too early," he said in an interview with Newsweek. "And I think in fairness to the Iraqis, they need to be given an opportunity to follow through on their commitments."

He cautioned against the phased withdrawal backed by Democrats, saying Iraq would collapse into chaos and the United States would lose stature in the world.

"All of a sudden, the United States, which is the bulwark of security in that part of world, would I think no longer -- could no longer be counted on by our friends and allies that have put so much into this struggle," he said.

Congress is due to vote in early February on a non-binding motion criticizing the surge in troops, with Democrats and Republicans moving to prepare other draft resolutions even as the violence in Iraq claimed more lives with at least 61 killed across the country on Sunday.

Democratic Senator Charles Schumer (news, bio, voting record) predicted a large number of lawmakers in Bush's Republican Party -- possibly "even a majority" -- would support the resolution condemning the proposed deployment.

"And that will send shockwaves through the White House and through the country," Schumer told NBC.

Congress also appeared headed for a possible confrontation with Bush over requests for additional funds for the war, with Schumer and other lawmakers vowing to pile pressure on the president.

Bush has urged a skeptical US public to give his new strategy a chance and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (news, bio, voting record) told CBS that Senate Republicans were "not going to talk about failure" in Iraq.

"We're going to talk about success," he said. "But we don't want to allow these places, to become once again where these elements like Al-Qaeda can operate with impunity and then be prepared to launch attacks on us again here in America."

But the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, presidential hopeful Joe Biden, challenged the administration's doomsday predictions.

"It's not the American people or the United States Congress who are emboldening the enemy," he told Fox News.

"It's the failed policy of this president, going to war without a strategy, going to war prematurely, going to war without enough troops, going to war without enough equipment and lastly, now sending 17,500 people in the middle of a city of 6.5 million people with bullseyes on their back with no plan," he added.

Biden vowed a "full-throated debate" on the plan in the Senate despite administration promises to move ahead in face of the opposition.

The president faces an uphill battle to gain support for his plan, with even loyal Republicans like Senator David Vitter (news, bio, voting record) of Louisiana calling it "clearly the final shot."

"I think we should be stronger and clearer about benchmarks," the senator said on NBC, adding his support for a regional conference that includes Iran and Syria.

"We need to go over and over and over the issue of, is this new troop level enough to make a difference. Because I think, clearly, we have been wrong in the past about the adequacy of troop levels," he said.

Democrat-leaning independent Senator Joe Lieberman said Sunday he was working with Republican Senator John McCain (news, bio, voting record) on a text to try to bridge the divisions.

On Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters -- including Vietnam War opponent US actress Jane Fonda -- took to the streets of Washington to denounce the president's plan and demand an end to the war.

In Iraq Sunday, US and Iraqi forces killed more than 250 gunmen in a raging battle north of Najaf in which two US soldiers also died when their helicopter crashed.

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Politics TV: The DC Rally

C-Span has been doing coverage of the DC anti-war rally all day.

PoliticsTV got video up on YouTube for those of us unable to attend.

It's nice to see some Congresspeople at the rally, but the absence of every senator does not go unnoticed either.

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