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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (15764)	11/10/2003 4:57:24 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793677

Here is an overall review of the Intel issue. _____________________________ Strategy memo 'poisons' panel By Audrey Hudson Washington Times The chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence yesterday said his nonpartisan panel will continue operating, but in a weakened capacity because of a Democratic memo that surfaced last week outlining plans for a partisan attack against the White House. "What this memo has done is really poison the well," said Sen. Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who heads the panel, which has operated in a nonpartisan fashion for 30 years, handling sensitive and classified information. "I was stunned by this memo, shocked by this memo," Mr. Roberts told "Fox News Sunday." The memo, which outlined a Democratic strategy of using the investigation of prewar intelligence on Iraq against the Bush administration, surfaced last week as the work of a staffer working for Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, West Virginia Democrat and a leading critic of the war. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican, said Friday the committee has become so politicized "as to render it incapable of meeting its responsibilities to the United States Senate and to the American people." Mr. Roberts said all committee activity will not be shut down, but "it's going to be very difficult to put the committee back together again without somebody saying, 'We're not going to launch this attack plan.' " "It really prejudges the whole inquiry. It says that we're guilty until proven innocent, in regards to the use of the memo. We are about 90 percent done. Now, we have this very partisan attack memo laying out there, with some members of the Senate actually embracing it, reveling in it. They are destroying the nonpartisan history of this committee," Mr. Roberts said. Mr. Frist said the committee might be forced to wrap up its inquiry into pre-Iraq war intelligence quickly. According to Mr. Roberts, finishing the inquiry will be "primary duty right now" of the committee and sensitive briefings will continue. However, he questioned how functional the committee will be in the future. In a floor speech, Mr. Frist demanded that Democrats "disavow this partisan attack in its entirety" and said he will not let the committee be "misused for blatant partisan gain." Senators are discussing sanctions against the committee, including restructuring the rules that make the panel unique in Congress. REST AT washtimes.com

To: KLP who wrote (15764)	11/10/2003 11:34:48 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793677

They took the case! I thought they might pass. I think they will uphold the Gov. ____________________________ Supreme Court Takes First Case on Guantánamo Detainees By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court will hear its first case arising from the government's anti-terrorism campaign following the Sept. 11 attacks, agreeing Monday to consider whether foreigners held at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba should have access to American courts. The appeals came from British, Australian and Kuwaiti citizens held with more than 600 others suspected of being Taliban or al-Qaida foot soldiers. Most were picked up in U.S. anti-terrorism sweeps in Afghanistan following the attacks of two years ago. The court combined the men's appeals and will hear the consolidated case sometime next year. Lower courts had found that the American civilian court system did not have authority to hear the men's complaints about their treatment. "The United States has created a prison on Guantanamo Bay that operates entirely outside the law," lawyers for British and Australian detainees argued in asking the high court to take the case. REST AT nytimes.com

To: KLP who wrote (15764)	11/10/2003 12:25:47 PM
From: Neeka	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 793677

Lindy........who is Robert Fisk? M Robert Fisk: Frightening winds swirl around the House of Saud 11.11.2003 - COMMENT Osama bin Laden has an awful lot of friends in Saudi Arabia. In the mosque, among the disenchanted youth, among the security forces, even - and this is what the West declines to discuss - within the royal family. Saudi ambassadors routinely dismiss these facts as "unfounded", but Sunday's attack in the capital, Riyadh, is part of a growing insurrection against Bin Laden's enemies in the House of Saud. Whether or not the bombers were Saudi security force members - they were certainly wearing Saudi military uniforms - the Riyadh Government's own "war on terror" is now provoking bombings, gun battles and killings almost every day in the kingdom. The enemies of the House of Saud want to make the kingdom ungovernable - just as America's enemies in Iraq want to make its occupation ineffective. Iraqis are still the principal victims of the bombings in Baghdad, just as Saudis were the principal victims on Sunday. Clearly, after years of procrastination, the Saudi authorities are passing on some of their own intelligence to the US. For once, the latest warning from Washington - that al Qaeda's next attack was moving from the "theoretical" to the "operational" stage was spot on the mark. But the Saudi royal family - that part still desperate for US assistance - provided plenty of reasons during the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq for their Arab enemies to attack them. For although they publicly said the US would not use Saudi military facilities during the war, they allowed the Americans to direct 2700 air sorties a day from the Prince Sultan Air Base - far more damagingly, they gave secret permission for 200 US aircraft at the base to fly 700 combat missions over Iraq daily. The Jordanians suspect the bombing of their embassy in Baghdad was retaliation for a secret military operation in which 26 US F/A-18 fighter bombers flew missions from a Jordanian air base to bomb Iraqi air force facilities possibly able to fire missiles at Israel. So, Crown Prince Abdullah, the effective ruler of Saudi Arabia, must be feeling some frightening winds blowing across the Saudi desert. For Bin Laden's aim to destroy the royal family is shared by the American right wing. When Laurent Murawiec, friend of the then US defence policy board chairman Richard Perle, gave his odd but damning assessment of Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the US and the "Kernel of Evil", he might have been Bin Laden spokesman. Murawiec, who works with the Rand corporation and has been an executive editor of Executive Intelligence Revue presented a slide show to the Pentagon last year with titles that included "taking 'Saudi' out of Arabia". He claimed that since 1745, 58 per cent of all Saudi rulers had met a violent demise, that other Arabs consider Saudis "lazy, overbearing, dishonest, corrupt" and that they are "active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheer leader." A suspicion persists in Washington that the Saudi royal family is still trying to compromise with the country's religious hierarchy and its al Qaeda enemies. And Bin Laden's messages are still laced with venom for the House of Saud. Indeed, his original aim is to do what Murawiec demanded: to take the "Saudi" out of Arabia. Could the Americans sit back and watch al Qaeda take over the nation's oil wells? There are those in the House of Saud who fear that now the US is in Iraq, it can - in the event of a revolution - just seize the oil fields in northern Saudi Arabia, leaving Riyadh and other cities to whichever Arabian ruler takes control. nzherald.co.nz