To Everything Spin Spin Spin

Instead of working the problem, Louisiana Governor Blanco had her top aides work furiously to spin the desperate situation following Katrina's landfall so as to divert blame from her own incompetence onto the federal government.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco and the Bush administration were locked in a pitched political battle to shape public opinion about the response to Hurricane Katrina at the same time they were trying to manage the rescue operation, documents released late Friday by the governor's office show.

E-mails turned over by the state to the congressional committees investigating the hurricane response show that the governor's senior staff was deeply involved in trying to preserve the governor's political standing and make sure that the White House was blamed for the slow pace of the initial response.

In other words, it confirms what many bloggers were saying from the outset - that the state and local response was seriously flawed, and that the state and local officials sought to spin their way out of the mess by blaming the federal government.

While many in the big national media outlets quickly focused on the national response, it is only more recently that serious inquiries into the disaster response have shown the full measure of incompetence and failures at the local level. Gov. Blanco continues to defend her actions, but that's a futile effort as more of her correspondence sees the light of day.

Meanwhile, the largest CYA operation in human history begins its slow march as the company that drove the sheet piles for the levees that failed claimed that it tried to warn the Army Corps of Engineers about the inadequate depth of the pilings but were rebuffed by the Corps.

Modjeski and Masters was the lead design firm for the project. In an e-mail written in response to a Times-Picayune article Wednesday that quoted members of a Louisiana State University engineering team investigating the failure as saying a basic engineering mistake led to the disaster, Conway said the shorter sheet piles were not recommended by his company.

". . . we point out that the existence of a humus layer at the 17th Street Canal was known to us and the Corps of Engineers," Conway said in his e-mail. "It was reflected in the initial -35 sheet pile tip elevation for the east floodwall.

"The final sheet pile tip elevations shown on the contract plans were mandated by the Corps," he wrote. "Further, Modjeski and Masters was not employed for the field monitoring of the construction project in which the sheet piling was apparently not redriven, as required, to a final -17.05 tip elevation." Tip elevation is a measurement of how far the bottom of the pilings are below sea level. Conway produced no documents to support his contentions, and did not respond to requests for interviews.

Go figure. No documents to support the contentions, and no corroborating evidence. I guess we'll have to sort this whole sordid mess out in the discovery phase of cases to be brought. Solomon's House has provided a new update on the levee investigation.

And with all this going on, the Louisiana politicians who helped shape this mess want to delay elections. How unDemocratic. They want to delay the elections until they know that they can muster the votes to be reelected, even though there's little to support the reelection of anyone involved in the colossal failures by the state and local government in Louisiana and New Orleans in particular.

This posting is cross posted at the following: Wizbang, Sweetness and Light notes that a Sheehanacolyte may be running for NOLA mayor (just what they need), LA Political News Service, Perilocity

UPDATE:
Also blogging the levee situation, the corruption of Louisiana politicians, and rebuilding along the Gulf Coast this weekend: Mostly Cajun, All American and Opinionated, Sarcastipundit, the Violence Worker, The Pagan Temple offers their own rebuilding plan, Les Jones notes that the levees were leaking even before Katrina hit, Crabapple Lane, Jacob McKee, Vatul wonders whether she could ever go home to NOLA and is counting the days since she evacuated (now 95).

Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; katrina aid; hurricane rita; slidell; biloxi; gulfport; pascagoula; nagin; blanco; barbour; hurricane rita; hurricane wilma.

Ramsey Clark Doesn't Read Tom Clancy

Ramsey Clark must not have read Tom Clancy. Not the newest Tom Clancy tomes mind you, but the middle books in the Jack Ryan series - Debt of Honor and Executive Orders. At the end of Debt of Honor, Congress is vaporized, along with the President of the US and most high ranking officials when a Japanese pilot crashes his 747 into a joint session of Congress. Jack Ryan was being presented as the next Vice President of the US at the time, after the former VP [Kealty] was forced to step down due to a scandal.

In Executive Orders, Kealty believed that he should be the President of the US since it was unclear whether he was properly sworn in. When a new national crisis arises forcing a quarantine to be imposed because of a nasty virus spread by a terrorist outfit, Kealty, a former attorney, acts. He brings a lawsuit claiming that the acts are unconstitutional and that the orders should be lifted. It's a move that he hopes would install him as President instead of Ryan.

Problem for Kealty is that he drafted the papers for the lawsuit naming Jack Ryan as the President of the United States of America.

The court has settled another important constitutional issue here. In referring to President Ryan by both his name and the title of his office, the court has settled the succession question raised by former Vice President Kealty. Further, the court said that that order was vacated. Had Mr. Ryan not been the President, the order would have been invalid and never legally binding, and the court could have stated that as well. Instead, the Court acted improperly on point, I believe, but properly in a procedural sense. Thank you. [page 743 - Executive Orders]

It's bad form to try and get what you want when you admit the obvious.

Ramsey Clark has all but admitted for the world to see that Saddam Hussein was guilty as charged in the 1982 murders of 148 Shi'ite men and boys in the town of Dujail. As Hitchens puts it:

Ramsey Clark believes that A) the massacre and torture did occur and B) that it was ordered by his client and C) that he was justified in ordering it and carrying it out. That is quite sufficiently breathtaking. It is no less breathtaking when one recalls why Saddam "had this huge war going on." He had, after all, ordered a full-scale invasion of the oil-bearing Iranian region of Khuzestan and attempted to redraw the frontiers in Iraq's favor. Most experts accept a figure of about a million and a half as the number of young Iranians and Iraqis who lost their lives in consequence of this aggression (which incidentally enjoyed the approval of that Nobel Peace laureate Jimmy Carter). And Ramsey Clark says that the aggression is an additional reason to justify the massacre at Dujail.

Not only does this mean that Saddam's defense counsel has been undermined by Clark's statements, but that Clark is monumentally inept in trying to defend his 'client.'

Bad Guys Go Boom

First, there's this report from the Counterterrorism blog:

According to various reports from credible mujahideen sources, Abu Omar Mohammed bin Abdullah al-Saif (a.k.a. Mohammed bin Abdullah bin Saif al-Jaber)--a top tier Saudi Arabian Al-Qaida commander in Chechnya and personal military advisor to Shamil Basayev--has been killed during a Russian counterterrorism operation in neighboring Dagestan. Unable to escape after Russian soldiers backed by helicopters surrounded his temporary hideout, Abu Omar allegedly detonated an explosive device he was carrying and collapsed the building on top of himself.

Score one for the good guys. Chechnya has been a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists for quite some time, and Basayev was responsible for the slaughter in Beslan School #1, which killed more than 330 people, mostly women and children who were attending the first day of school. Good riddance, and this should help the Russians in their efforts against Islamic terrorists along their Southern frontier.

Then, there's the report from Pakistan that a US Predator launched a missile into a house where five al Qaeda terrorists were operating, including Hamza Rabia.

The operational commander of al-Qaida and possibly the No. 3 official in the terrorist organization, Hamza Rabia, was killed early Thursday morning by a CIA missile attack on a safehouse in Pakistan, officials told NBC News.

Pakistan's president later confirmed the militant leader's death.

Again, this is great news. While Pakistan hasn't exactly been thrilled to let people know that the US has been operating CIA ops within their borders, eliminating al Qaeda strongholds in Pakistan will improve the security in Afghanistan and South Asia. Pakistan has a bunch on its plate, mostly in the form of coming to grips with the humanitarian emergency that resulted from the earthquake earlier this year that devastated the region between India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. While the Pakistani attention was focused on the humanitarian efforts, terrorists have attempted to seize the opportunity to expand their bases of operations, and that's why continuing operations in this region must continue.

And this leads me back to a story that ran in the Times yesterday. It claims that terrorist groups are growing in number. That's only part of the story. To put things in context, you need to dig deeper. What is the key factor, the number of names of groups that are running around, or the number of terrorists themselves? I'd posit that it's simply the number of terrorists. Each cell within al Qaeda could simply call itself something new, and it would be claimed that there are more 'terrorists' floating about, even though the actual number of terrorists hasn't changed.

Then, there's the fact that if we know of additional terrorist groups operating, it is because we now have better intel on these groups and can do a better job of tracking, interdicting, and eliminating the threats.

To buttress this point, just look at how Rabia became the number three terrorist in al Qaeda. All the guys above him were killed or captured. We keep taking out the terrorists all over the place, and the terrorists respond by trying to loosen the operational ties between individual cells - masking their identities under new affiliations. Lower ranked guys become higher ranked guys, but they're not nearly as capable as the guys they're replacing. This doesn't mean that the number of terror groups has increased, only that they're masking their identities and the shrinking ranks of terrorists. After all, a lone terrorist could start attacks and call himself his own terror group.

And, it doesn't mean that the threat has been eliminated. It just means we have to continue pushing even harder to eliminate these terror groups.

Also noting the current culling of terror masters: Winds of Change, alphabet city, California Yankee, Don Singleton, and Security Watchtower

UPDATE 12/4/2005:
Further sites noting the recent US coalition's culling of terror masters: Confederate Yankee, Protein Wisdom

UPDATE: 12/4/2005:
The US national Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley made the rounds today on the morning talk shows, and said that the US couldn't confirm the death of Rabia, though Pakistani President Musharraf said he was killed.

No Surprise at All

The UN finds that China's government tortures its people on a daily and regular basis? Say it isn't so.

Manfred Nowak, UN special rapporteur on torture, said police often resorted to torture in the early stages of detaining subjects as they came “under heavy pressure to produce confessions”. Techniques such as beatings and sleep deprivation by police and other security authorities focused on “breaking the will” of individuals, thus creating a “general culture of fear”, he said.

China needed to overhaul its legal system to ensure fair trials and see that detainees were not held under vaguely worded security laws, Mr Nowak said. He also accused the government of obstructing his investigations.

Mr Nowak’s findings, after an unprecedented two-week mission to China, also show poor legal protections for detainees, who often include ethnic minorities, political dissidents, religious activists and Falun Gong believers.

Mr Nowak said that while China’s government had shown its commitment to reducing instances of torture, it must make structural changes to its detention and legal system. He said Beijing had to “bring criminal law and criminal procedures in line with international standards”.

And yet, the UN wanted to give countries like China control over the Internet. That was such a good idea. Put the most repressive countries in charge of the thing they fear the most - the free flow of information that would undermine their authoritarian and totalitarian governments.

Victory for Commuters

Commuters 1 - NYCLU 0

A federal judge ruled on Friday it was constitutional for police to randomly search riders' bags on the New York City subway to deter a terrorist attack.

U.S. District Judge Richard Berman ruled the searches were an effective and appropriate means to fight terrorism.

"The need for implementing counter-terrorism measures is indisputable, pressing, on-going and evolving," Berman wrote.

In a statement, Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised the ruling, calling bag searches a "reasonable precaution" that police would continue to take.

Random bag searches began on July 22 after a second set of bomb attacks on London's transit system.

The New York Civil Liberties Union sued the city and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly shortly afterward, calling the policy of searching thousands of riders a day without any suspicion of wrongdoing unconstitutional.

The NYCLU never had a chance of winning this suit because random bag searches were always a reasonable precaution for interdicting a potential terror plot against the subway system.

UPDATE: 12/3/2005:
Others blogging the NYCLU defeat and their call for an immediate appeal of the decision: Stop the ACLU, Sister Toldjah, Is It Just Me?, The Political Pit Bull, The Jawa Report, and Common Sense Runs Wild

Rebuilding Gulf Coast Means Settling Debts

With thousands of flooded-out Louisiana homeowners in a similar bind, a buzz of interest is growing around legislation to bail them out. A bill by Rep. Richard Baker, R-Baton Rouge, would create the Louisiana Recovery Corp., which would use proceeds from the sale of federal government bonds over 10 years to buy up storm-damaged property and pay off the mortgages.

Under Baker's plan, no one would make a profit or receive the pre-Katrina value of their homes. But they could at least avoid the poorhouse.

The corporation would make offers to homeowners based on how much they have paid toward the mortgage and possibly include what they have spent on home improvements. If the homeowner had insurance, it would go toward settling the mortgage.

Baker is reluctant to say how much people could get. The extent of storm damage is still unknown and he said he prefers to leave it up to the LRC board to develop a formula. But he said payments could range from 60 percent to 80 percent of what homeowners have paid in.


Everyone gets something

Most important to homeowners like Perrot, the LRC would also negotiate with lenders to settle up, taking less than the full value of the mortgage from the LRC and releasing the homeowner from the debt.

"I can say this much: Individuals will fare much better than the banks will," Baker said, since he envisions that banks will get at least 40 percent of the unpaid mortgage value.

Nonetheless, the mortgage and banking industries have reacted favorably to the legislation. They have few other choices. Baker's bill is the only one moving through Congress that would bail them out of a financial crisis that could ripple through the national economy if large numbers of an estimated 350,000 borrowers along the Gulf Coast default and banks foreclose.

For banks after Katrina, to foreclose means to own property with value that doesn't come close to covering what is owed on it.

"Banks want to rebuild these communities. They don't want to be in the real estate business," said David Boneno, general counsel to the Louisiana Bankers Association.

From the sound of this capsule summary, it appears to be a good idea. The devil is in the details.

And speaking of devils and details, elections scheduled for February may not come to pass. It all depends on whether the Governor thinks that the elections can be held.

New Orleans' mayoral and city council elections should be postponed for up to eight months because of Hurricane Katrina, the state's top election official recommended Friday.

Gov. Kathleen Blanco has the final say on whether the elections will go forward as scheduled Feb. 4. She was not immediately available for comment but has said she will follow Secretary of State Al Ater's advice.

In his recommendation, Ater said the election should be held by Sept. 30.

The highest profile race set for Feb. 4 is for mayor. Incumbent Ray Nagin, who has gotten both criticism and compliments for his handling of the Katrina disaster, has not formally announced whether he will seek re-election. A Nagin spokeswoman said the mayor had no immediate comment but would likely release a statement on the postponement later Friday.

Races for city council and sheriff are also on the ballot.

In other words, the group of politicians that failed the people of the state of Louisiana are getting to decide whether they can stay in office that much longer because they don't think that they can hold elections in February as originally scheduled. Considering their track record of misjudgment, I think they better make damned sure the elections go off as originally scheduled. Louisiana deserves better.

Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; katrina aid; hurricane rita; slidell; biloxi; gulfport; pascagoula; nagin; blanco; barbour; hurricane rita; hurricane wilma.

Government Oversight Is Lacking

Who is to blame for the lack of government oversight? In New Orleans, it is becoming crystal clear that the Army Corps of Engineers and the local levee boards failed to design, construct, and maintain the levee system over the past 20 years (and could quite possibly stretch back even longer than that). Congress has the final say on the appropriations for the federal funding that goes towards the levees. Local elected officials are responsible for the local funding portion appropriated for the levee system.

At the same time, questions over whether the military is operating hand to mouth suggests that the military isn't necessarily getting the kind of support that it should. That support includes the proper appropriations towards the equipment and material needed to run during a war and during peacetime, and at all points in between. Congress is responsible for that as well.

So, is it the fault of Congress that they are failing on overseeing such a wide range of critical issues? After all, the levee failures may cost taxpayers, insurers, and property owners more than $300 billion. The costs of failing to properly supply the US military are astronomical.

The answer is yes and no. Congress is responsible - and individual members of Congress who are on the various committees responsible for oversight are responsible. However, the voters who permit members of Congress to shirk their duties are also responsible. We may like a particular member of Congress (usually their own) because they bring home the bacon, but their responsibility extends so much beyond that. They have to make sure that they uphold the Constitution of the United States - to protect and Defend, to make sure that the military is properly supplied, and that critical infrastructure is properly designed, constructed, and maintained.

So, if a particular member of Congress reads reports that state that the military is ill-prepared and is not getting the kind of equipment replacements the military officials deem necessary, then they should be doing their utmost to make sure that the equipment gets to where it is needed. Instead, we're seeing the same member of Congress who is 'whistle blowing' the inadequacies of the military, say that the only way to fix the problem is to bring the boys (and girls) home now. That's not a strategy for success, or for even making sure that the military is prepared to fight and win a war. It's a recipe for disaster.

Also commenting on the political dimensions of accountability for military readiness and the battle of words over Iraq: Wrechard at Belmont Club, Blackfive says we're in a battle to shape the history. I wonder whether they're going to have to rewrite the axiom that winners write the history. After all, the current revisionism over Iraq seems to be rewriting the history in favor of the losers - not the winning US, coalition partners, and the Iraqi people themselves.

You've Been Warned

I had been telling you this for some time now. Maybe you'll listen to John 'Road Warrior' Cichowski instead.

But in this case, the joke is more costly than it is funny. If you listen carefully, you'll hear ticking at the transfer station. The sound isn't highway traffic or diesel locomotives.

It's a financial time bomb.

Under an (ahem) unusual deal with NJ Transit and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, the retail developer is only required to kick in its $140 million share of building the transfer station and exit ramp if the Allied Junction project can get off the ground by 2011.

The environmentalists are furious.

"Giant boondoggle sprawl machine" is the way Jeff Tittel of the Sierra Club puts it. Since the offices and shops won't be built anytime soon, the environmental crowd thinks the exit ramp will simply bring more suburban development and traffic jams.

"I think the place might be cursed," said Patrick Andriani of Roxbury.

Andriani should know. His grandfather was buried in a plot there. You see, 15X used to be a potters field graveyard, so lots of grandmas and grandpas had to be dug up two years ago before the ramp to nowhere was built. More than 4,000 bodies were moved in what became the biggest disinterment in American history.

How big?

More than $6 million, courtesy, again, of the New Jersey Turnpike and its tollpayers.

You can't make this stuff up. It's Jersey, where the stumbling and the bumbling and the laughing show no sign of letup, especially along the turnpike.

And how are we going to be paying for all this with a Transportation Trust Fund that doesn't have any money, debt servicing on the bloated project takes a larger share than it should have had the costs been controlled from the outset, and riders will feel the pain for years to come. But Cichowski thinks that this may all work out in the end:

But here's the biggest joke of all: All these haphazard fits and starts might actually work.

"It sure is a testament to the disjointed planning in New Jersey that leads to perceptions that we don't know what we're doing," said transportation planner Martin Robins of Rutgers University. "But in the long run, this is a very valuable project."

Yes, despite all the foul-ups and all the jokes, is there any genuine doubt that the onetime site of a 19th century graveyard won't soon blossom exponentially?

That's what can happen when a combination highway-and-rail hub is completed just west of Manhattan. It's a no-brainer.

Parking? It's barely an issue anymore. For starters, Edison Park Fast wants to build a 1,700-car lot near the transit station. Two years from now, it'll probably be filled with off-peak parkers.

Why? Unlike the 1990s, when NJ Transit feared competition from cars, rail ridership to and from the city is building, partly because midtown Manhattan is enjoying a growth spurt.

"Maybe it's no longer such a bad idea to allow some people to drive to Secaucus from, say, Teaneck, to catch a train to Long Branch or points south, instead of requiring them to drive to an out-of-the-way rail stop," said Robins.

In the end, 15X might be more of a sea change than a Jersey joke. Thursday night might be remembered as the hour when the car teamed up with the train, and the toll collectors got busy after all.

The problem is that the local community doesn't want the parking lots. They don't want the urban sprawl, and the builders aren't kicking in the money they were supposed to when this project was first proposed.

The hurdle of dealing with a community that doesn't want the commuter parking lots in the first place has to be overcome.

Consider the alternatives that the $1.1 billion could have gone towards:
~ a far smaller and less elegant transfer station that would be functional and not a crushing burden on taxpayers and a brand new Hudson River tunnel that would alleviate traffic into Midtown and increase the number of trains that could get in and out of the city during peak times;
~ upgrading all the NJ Transit stations so that they're ADA compliant (high level platforms;
~ purchasing new rail cars and locomotives;
~ upgrading and maintaining existing infrastructure;
~ building a second track for the Pascack Valley line to permit two-way traffic at all times of the day;
~ building new park and rides/parking lots at or near transit hubs desperately in need of parking spaces - Edison, New Jersey for example. People don't ride the train if they can't park at the stations.

Those are just a few of the things that the $1.1 billion spent on the Secaucus project could have gone for. But didn't.

The expectations for the site seem overly optimistic considering that even the Turnpike Authority didn't want the interchange, and NJ Transit acknowledges that ridership using the Transfer itself is less than expected - so to justify the project, they need to build the parking garage to encourage people to use it.

Go figure.

Object Lesson

This is what fixing elections looks like. You want to fix an election, the Palestinians have it down pat. From intimidating people into not showing up to torching the ballot boxes themselves, the Palestinians have perfected the routine.

Voting in a primary election for the ruling Fatah faction was halted in a Palestinian town near the West Bank city of Nablus on Friday after ballot boxes were set on fire, election officials said.

Voting was called off in the town of Salfit "because of problems and divisions", said Ahmed al-Deek, a senior Fatah official. Election officials said some ballot boxes had been torched but there was no immediate word on who was behind it.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas suspended voting in the Gaza Strip and at several West Bank voting stations earlier in the week due to widespread fraud and violence.

In an attempt to salvage the primary vote which has highlighted widening internal rifts in Fatah, Abbas set up a review board to finalize a list of the party's candidates for a January 25 parliamentary election.

Elections in the Palestinian controlled areas has always been a joke since the PA has always controlled things tightly - to the benefit of the PA (which is really Fatah and the PLO). Hamas doesn't like this monopoly on the ballot boxes, so they have tried to outdo the Fatah/PLO terrorists at their own game.

Did Raspberry Coulis Cause Levee Failures?

Situation normal: all f'd up. That's the best way to describe what engineers and scientists have discovered about the 17th Avenue levee failure.

Baumy said the Corps cannot explain the disparity between what its 1993 design documents show was supposed to be there and what they've found.

The documents indicated that the steel reinforcements in the levee, known as sheet piling, went to a depth of 17.5 feet below sea level. Sonar tests indicated the pilings went only to 10 feet below sea level, meaning the flood wall would have been much weaker than intended.

The LSU team is working on a report for the state that will say there were serious, fundamental design and construction flaws at both the 17th Street and London Avenue canals. Both broke during Hurricane Katrina, flooding much of the city.

The team's leader, Ivor van Heerden, said Wednesday that the levee design ensured failure under the type of water pressure exerted by Katrina's storm surge.

The pilings needed to be driven to a minimum depth of 50 feet below sea level to have the kind of protection needed during a Katrina sized storm.

Who was in charge of the pile driving and did they take short cuts? If they did, they may be held liable for the damage caused by the levee failures.

This was not some natural disaster, but the colossal failure of an engineering system that competent oversight should have caught before it was too late. Did anyone not bother to check to make sure that the piles were properly driven to the correct depth? You mean to tell all the displaced residents of New Orleans 9th Ward who are streaming home for the first time since the end of August that they were flooded out because someone didn't do their job right 10-15 years ago when the plans for the levees were approved and built?

And as if to butress the argument that there was precisely no oversight at the local level, NOLA reports that the levee boards spent more time planning the luncheon buffets than the walkthroughs for the levee system.

When engineers and Orleans Levee Board officials gather twice a year to tour the city's floodwalls, records show that the inspection requires less planning than the day's final event: lunch.

Participants acknowledge that the five-hour survey of the 125-mile levee system amounts to little more than a drive-by. Not so for the post-inspection lunches of crab cake with champagne dill sauce topped off by a dessert of white chocolate mousse with a raspberry coulis.

Nice to know that someone enjoyed their raspberry coulis. We wouldn't want to disrupt their luncheon with the real task of making sure that the levee system was properly built, functioning, and maintained.

In defending the annual inspections last week, Spencer said there are other informal checks of the levee system that take place throughout the year.

"On a daily basis, our people are out in the field cutting the grass, doing work on floodgates, greasing them, that sort of thing," Spencer said. "Most of their supervisors have been here 25 or 30 years, so they know what a good levee looks like and what one with problems looks like. If there's a problem, it's looked into further."

It's become quite apparent that those in charge of the levee system didn't know what problems looked like and that they didn't take the job as seriously as they should. How many lives were lost as a result? Far too many.

And if they know what a good levee looks like, how did any of them not catch the problems with the 17th Street levee? Were they even looking? Or did they figure that since it was built more recently it would be okay for now and someone else would have to deal with the problems if they failed?

In the alternative, if someone at the levee boards did find problems, did they get addressed in a timely and efficient manner. Did someone discover the problems and try to get them fixed? Will the inevitable discovery process (from lawsuits and investigative reporting) determine that the levee boards knew about the problems and did nothing? Or worse - that they buried the evidence of the problems?

All the rebuilding in New Orleans depends on the protection of the levee belt surrounding the city - and if there are deficiencies in the system, it could have catastrophic results. We must hold those responsible for the oversight and management of the levees accountable. And we cannot let the same mistakes be made.

Meanwhile the Lousiana bill to consolidate some of the levee boards saw some shennanigans.

A bill to consolidate several New Orleans area levee boards was shot down, 51-38, in a controversial procedural vote in the state House of Representatives two nights before the recent special legislative session ended. But the official record now shows the final vote as 47-45, as three previously absent members voted to support the measure and four who originally said no changed their votes to yes.

Consolidation is needed to clear the graft and improve the coordination and efficiencies of the levee boards. However, residency limitations preclude anyone with experience being brought in to actually run the levee system. It amounts to little more than adjusting the current patronage.

UPDATE:
Cross listed to the following blogs: Don Surber, The Thief, Brainster, Write Like She Talks, ...how'd i get here, YatPundit (who writes about the merging of the levee boards and about NOLA politics in general), and Michael Williams.

UPDATE:
Added Ace to the list - he thinks the finger points at the ACoE. It's pretty compelling stuff.

Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; katrina aid; hurricane rita; slidell; biloxi; gulfport; pascagoula; nagin; blanco; barbour; hurricane rita; hurricane wilma.

Watch Your Back Darth Vader

Now that's some funny stuff.

UPDATE:
Posted to Don Surber

This IS Propaganda

The French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, stated that the riots in France that went on for more than three weeks weren't really riots. They were social unrest.

Social unrest, you have to understand also, there were no guns in the streets. No adults; mostly young people between 12 and 20 ... so it is very special movement.

It's a special movement when a large and growing percentage of your population decides to torch every car in sight for three weeks straight. That's quite the population you've got there.

Perhaps Villepin isn't familiar with the definition of riot. Here's the definition:

1. A wild or turbulent disturbance created by a large number of people.
2. Law A violent disturbance of the public peace by three or more persons assembled for a common purpose.
3. An unrestrained outbreak, as of laughter or passions.
4. A profusion: The garden was a riot of colors in August.
5.
a. Unrestrained merrymaking; revelry.
b. Debauchery.
6. Slang An irresistibly funny person or thing: Isn't she a riot?
v. ri·ot·ed, ri·ot·ing, ri·ots
v.intr.
1. To take part in a riot.
2. To live wildly or engage in uncontrolled revelry.
v.tr.
To waste (money or time) in wild or wanton living: "rioted his life out, and made an end" Tennyson.

If it walks like a riot, talks like a riot, it is a riot. Sorry, but Villepin just wants to brush this little problem under the table.

UPDATE:
Others noticing the propaganda spin of Villepin: Flopping Aces, who notes that there were, in fact, people who were murdered in the course of the riots; Atlas Shrugged; Sister Toldjah, and Inside Larry's Head.

Meanwhile, Is It Just Me notices the media bias in the coverage of the war on terror and the war in Iraq. It's two sides of the same coin. The outrage over the US trying to get its message out via various means is a phony outrage since the media outlets spew tons of propaganda themselves - it's just the kind that helps the enemies of the US and most every reader of the media outlets themselves.

Cross linked to TMH Bacon Bits

Rep. Murtha's Back in the News

Most U.S. troops will leave Iraq within a year because the Army is "broken, worn out" and "living hand to mouth," Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record) told a civic group.

Just how exactly is the Army broken or worn out? Murtha doesn't quite say but the AP article has the following information:

Lt. Col. Chris Cleaver, spokesman for the Pennsylvania National Guard at Fort Indiantown Gap, said "there are some deployment concerns."

Cleaver said some guard units had to leave equipment in Iraq when they returned to the United States, which could cause training problems here.

But Cleaver also said most of the 2,100 Guard troops now deployed with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team can't be sent back to Iraq for a second tour of duty anyway, because of regulations that limit redeployment.

So that doesn't exactly suggest that the Army is broken or living hand to mouth. It suggests that the military is efficiently using its limited resources.

And speaking of Living hand to mouth? Again, Rep. Murtha doesn't quite say how this is the case. It's simply his opinion, however informed or uninformed it may be.

And unless the Constitution of the US has been changed lately (and it hasn't), it's Congress' job to make sure that the Army is properly funded to provide for the common Defense (Article I, Sec. 8, Clause 1 and Clause 12). So, if there is a problem, it's up to Murtha and his colleagues in Congress to make sure that the military is properly funded so that it has the proper levels of equipment and supplies. As we've seen in the past, Congress hasn't exactly been on top of making sure that appropriations for military equipment get done or making sure that the Pentagon is doing their job. That's called a failure of oversight.

And for all their talk, none of the Democrats have actually come up with a plan for Iraq, unless you consider cutting and running a policy (and even some Democrats shy away from that).

There are folks who think that Murtha's right, including Pam Spaulding, but can anyone on the Left actually point to a single fact that supports Murtha's claim? I have a few facts that undermine Murtha's claims, including the high reelistment rate among all the service branches. Obviously the folks that are doing the fighting think that things are going far better than Murtha does. And they've got the first-hand information to back up their assertion. So does Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) who disagrees with Murtha and his supporters. Is Lieberman drinking the Bush kool-aid? I don't think so.

Wuzzadem sums up the media's positon, and that of the Left in general.

In a related note, Ace wonders how the heck a terrorist tried to smuggle 20 tons of what are apparently VX chemical munitions into Jordan from Syria, especially considering that Syria never produced VX. Good question. Maybe we should be looking at Iraq and the actions of those involved in the time between 9/11/2001 and the recommencement of full military action against Iraq in 2003.

UPDATE:
Multilinked to [and updated often]: Don Surber, bRight and Early, Newsbusters (who notes all the media attention on Murtha but the paucity on Lieberman's speech), Basil's Blog

UPDATE:
Jeff Goldstein offers his take, and it isn't pretty for the Democratic party leadership.

UPDATE 12/3/2005:
Cross posted to Wizbang

Syria Disputes Harari Assassination Findings Again

Syria's U.N. Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad made the demand on Wednesday after Husam Taher Husam, a Syrian barber and self-proclaimed intelligence operative, came forward with claims that he had been offered money by the family of slain former prime minister Rafik Hariri and by Lebanese officials to frame Syria.

Husam's accusations, made on Sunday, were immediately rejected by the Lebanese government and Hariri's family. And the head of the U.N. commission into the killing, Detlev Mehlis, said in remarks published Thursday that Syria was trying to obstruct the U.N. investigation.

A Fair Fight?

Alan Derschowitz vs. Noam Chomsky.

A highly regarded lawyer and law professor vs. a linguist who frequently opines about subjects outside his area of expertise.

The subject? Arab Israeli relations.

Two noted academics offered vastly different views on the history and path forward in the Arab-Israeli conflict recently as Alan Dershowitz and Noam Chomsky debated each other at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Whereas Chomsky claimed "Israeli rejectionism" was the source of Arab-Israeli tensions, Dershowitz derided the Palestinian rejection of the peace offer made to Yasser Arafat by Ehud Barak at Camp David.

Dershowitz also called on academics to stop demonizing Israel. "At the moment, I am sad to report that many academics around the world are contributing to an atmosphere that makes peace more difficult to achieve," Dershowitz said. "Thank G-d Israel has to make peace with the Palestinians, and not with the professors!" Dershowitz went on to say that peace "will require that both sides give up rights."

No Surprise

Hamas has stated that it would not disarm. Like this is a surprise to anyone?

The political leader of the Palestinian terror group Hamas on Wednesday said it would not renew a truce with Israel when it expires at the end of the year and accused the Jewish state of violating the agreement that reduced violence.

"All circumstances on the ground, the regional political atmosphere and the Palestinian situation are not encouraging to renew the truce," Khaled Mashaal told The Associated Press in a telephone interview in Damascus. "Hamas is not going to renew the truce because Israel did not abide by the conditions of the truce."

What did Israel do that it didn't abide by the conditions of the truce as understood by Hamas? Simple. Israel didn't cease to exist. It didn't roll over and die. It didn't give up its right to exist and no longer exercise dominion over Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and all points in between. Oh, and Israel continued to go after terrorists who planned attacks against Israel and conducted reprisals after Hamas terrorists successfully managed to attack Israel.

Hamas has too much at stake being the guys with the itchy trigger fingers. Their legitimacy before the eyes of their fellow Palestinians comes from their attacks against Israel and attempting to provide some kind of services for the Palestinians that the Palestinian Authority (PLO) can't.

They can't give up the guns for butter because then they would be virtually indistinguisable from the PLO. I say virtually because Hamas is far more religiously oriented than the PLO, which is a nationalist movement. Hamas has jihad as its goal, and its first step is eliminating Israel.

I Have a Bad Feeling About This

Airline passengers will be allowed to carry small scissors and tools onto planes, reversing a rule that led to confiscation of many thousands of sharp objects at airports since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, a Homeland Security Department official said Wednesday.

Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley on Friday will announce changes to the list of items prohibited in carry-on luggage and to the airport screening process, according to the official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because the plan has yet to be formally announced.

With federal air marshals on planes, bulletproof cockpit doors, armed pilots and 100 percent screening of checked baggage, the threat of a terrorist taking over an airplane has lessened since the 2001 attacks, the official said. The biggest concern now is explosives.

The number of air marshals is a closely guarded secret, but the number would have been higher during periods of heightened security if a program to train air marshals wasn't canned.

What Really Happened to the Levees?

Paul at Wizbang really wonders what is going on with the big media outlets. The local paper, the Times Picayunne does groundbreaking work on why the levees failed, and comes to the conclusion that it was due to negligence on the part of the Army Corps of Engineers to properly construct the 17th Street Levee in the first place.

Yet no one seems to have picked up on this story in the mass media? Why?

There is a reason for me harping on this-- Other than the obvious that it was an appalling failure by the Corps...

This makes the case against the Corps (ie the Federal Government) seem to be a slam dunk. Contrary to what the arm-chair lawyers will tell you, the government can be sued for negligence. I've been saying it since days after the storm, we are going to see a lawsuit against the feds the likes of which we've never seen before. (Can you cay 300 billion?)

It simply amazes me the MSM is missing this story. 60 Minutes runs some whackjob who claims New Orleans is sinking but they ignore who flooded New Orleans?!?! I can't help but wonder who is making those calls.

If there was an engineering failure on a aircraft that made 3 of the same model aircraft crash and it killed 1000 people, the media would be in full circus mode.

In a not so hypothetical situation- A single teenaged girl disappears in Aruba and that gets front page coverage for months. The Federal Government floods a city of a million people and the media ignores it. What am I missing here?

Paul isn't alone in wondering about the levee failures. Solomon's House has been delving into the engineering mess that was the levee system. I've been looking at the political ramifications and rebuilding of the Gulf Coast on a regular basis. But the national media has been strangely silent.

This is something that the big media outlets should be salivating over. Perfidy and corruption at the highest levels of government in an ongoing problem for decades. A high death toll and widespread property damage that may have been the result of a failure to properly design, engineer, and manage the levee system. Yet, they're silent.

Before any reconstruction can go forward, it looks like the Corps will need to see a house cleaning to get to the bottom of this disaster, which may put the federal government on the hook for damages that may exceed $300 billion.

While we're at it, one has to wonder whether anyone at the local levee boards noticed a problem and spoke up? Or were they in on the mess as well? Expect culpability to extend out from the Corps to anyone associated with the design, construction, and maintenance of the levees. Oh, and the largest CYA job ever imagined.

UPDATE 12/1/2005:
Today's edition of the New York Times has a summary of the findings in the T-P/nola.com story about the levee failures. It appears buried in the middle of Section A. About page A20. You would think that a story that has ramificiation the reverberate throughout the halls of Congress, the Army Corps of Engineers (ACoE), and throughout the state and local government of Louisiana that someone at the Times might have pushed the story to the front page. Of course, it would look bad for the 'paper of record' to push a story that it didn't bother examining on its own and instead relies upon the work of a local paper with no national prominence.

Whatever the reason, the Times better get up to speed quick. There's plenty of room for investigating this mess. The Times can start with the DC angle. Finding out what Congress knew and when they knew it might be interesting. So would the oversight procedures in place at the ACoE.

The Chinese Wish Life Were But a Dream

Instead, they're living with the nightmare of the Songhua River chemical spill making its way downstream. Another city had to shut its water supply off to prevent contamination:

Another town on a poisoned Chinese river shut down its water system Wednesday as a toxic slick caused by a chemical plant explosion arrived, and the country's health minister warned that the spill was still a major problem.

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Running water to about 26,000 people in Dalianhe, on the Songhua River in China's northeast, was cut off at 6 p.m., said an employee of the government office of Yilan County, where Dalianhe is located.

"It will last three days," said the employee, who would give only his surname, Gu.

The slick arrived a day after Harbin, a major city upstream, declared its tap water safe to drink again. Its 3.8 million people had endured five days without running water as the slick of benzene and other toxic chemicals passed.

Schools in Harbin reopened Wednesday and businesses that closed due to lack of water, such as bathhouses, reported a surge in customers.

But Health Minister Gao Qiang warned against complacency, saying the spill was still a "major problem."

The major problem is that the benzene and other contaminants are still present in the water, and especially in the ice. It may take until the spring until the water is flushed of all the contaminants. And the chemical spill is going to make it to the Russian border in the next few days:

The 50-mile-long slick is expected to reach the major Russian city of Khabarovsk within two weeks. The Songhua flows into the Heilong River, which becomes the Amur in Russia.

Oleg Mitvol, deputy chief of Russia's Federal Natural Resources Service, said Wednesday in Moscow that the slick could reach Khabarovsk, a city of 600,000, in as soon as four days.

Residents of Khabarovsk have bought up bottled water in stores, leaving many shops with only carbonated water. They also are stocking up on water at home, filling bathtubs and any container they can find.

Meanwhile, the death toll from the latest coal mine explosion reached 161. More than 6,000 Chinese die every year in mining accidents.

What Does Harry Reid Know And How Does He Know It?

Was Osama bin Laden killed in last month's earthquake in Pakistan? So said Senate minority leader Harry Reid to a Nevada TV station (video here). More than the news itself that the No. 1 Most Wanted could be dead -it's not the first time the speculation arises, and at least until now it has been never confirmed-, it's the possibility that Reid might have disclosed classified information what is has some angry, though others say that there's not much there there since Reid was only speculating

How did Reid come across this information? Was it classified? Did he break the law by leaking classified information?

Considering that this isn't the first time that Reid has leaked classified information to the general public, anything is possible.

Also noted by: Michelle Malkin, Betsy Newmark, Say Anything, Gateway Pundit, Iowa Voice (who wonders if there was a real good reason this information was being kept quiet).

And, if bin Laden is well and truly dead, does this mean that the Democrats will be calling for the troops to come home from Afghanistan next? After all, the mission there is 'done.' The head of the terrorist organization that committed mass murder against the US is now dead. That's the Democratic Party MO lately.

It should be noted that there were numerous stories after the earthquake hit that terrorist camps in Kashmir, Pakistan and Afghanistan were badly affected and that many terrorists may have perished as a result of the quakes, the resulting mud and rock slides, and the loss of roads and communications between groups. In fact, some theorize that bin Laden may have been hiding out near the epicenter of the quake, which hit October 8th.

Instapundit Has His Toys. I Have Mine

His wish list includes a potato gun.

Mine has a phaser on it. It's not quite ready for commercial purchase, but it sounds like a winning stocking stuffer in a few years.

My wife, Mrs. Lawhawk, on the other hand, would prefer this kind of gun. Mmmmmm... Cookies.

Of course, nothing quite beats what Stephen Green got for Christmas last year: a Star Destroyer. Oh, and he photoblogged its construction too! Darth Vader would be proud.

Iraq to Ramsey Clark: Go Home

Iraqis know what Saddam Hussein did to their country. The hundreds of thousands killed, tortured, raped, and mutilated during Saddam's rule. The landscape that was permanently scarred by the environmental 'policies' that went hand-in-hand with the genocide of the Marsh Arabs. The draining of the swamps and marshlands to flush out the Marsh Arabs and Shi'a who took refuge there.

And yet there appears to be no stronger defender of Saddam Hussein than Ramsey Clark, who now runs ANSWER (the far left anti-American organization), and who seeks to find fault with every bit of American foreign policy that doesn't adhere to his extremely limited and deranged worldview.

Ramzi Clark and the so called (Al-Niami) from Qatar with their support for Saddam are the enemy of the Iraqi people especially the victims of tyrant. Both of them are undesirable and not welcomed to be in Iraq.

The Judge should have prevented RC and Naimi from attending the trial for many reasons. One of the important reasons is that both of them are not registered as solicitors with the Solicitors Union of Iraq and RC may not even in his own country. The other good reason to prevent these enemies of the Iraqi people from attending the trial is that the trial is a national Iraqi one and not Qatari or American trial. The trial is a national one so as in the Iraqi language which is Arabic and no need at all to translate for RC. On the other hand RC used this to show a political position against his own government however money is still paid by Saddam's daughters.

Noted by Mudville Gazette Greyhawk also provides a brief (well, compared to War and Peace perhaps) history of the long war with Iraq, that goes back to the 1990 Gulf War buildup.

Omar at Iraq the Model thinks that Ramsey's worth a good laugh - for his sartorial choices. Agreed. Sharon Hughes wonders what the heck Clark is doing there in the first place. Right Thinking From the Left Coast thinks that the only folks who doubt whether Saddam did these crimes is the far Left wingnuts who would let Saddam slide because he once shook hands with Rumsfeld.

Letters from a Bostonian exile makes an interesting observation, based on an earlier posting by Eric at Classical Values: If the war was illegal, what legitimacy does the court have to try Saddam in the first place. After all, the anti-war folks should be decrying the legitimacy of the court and this is the logical conclusion. The silence from these folks is deafening.

Also blogging Ramsey's appearance: smokerblog, The Houston Conservative (who finds that the French have more common sense than Clark, even if it's a little too late), and Marc Cooper who points out that Ramsey's presence is only for political purposes, not to provide any real legal assistance as Saddam and his cohorts already have hundreds of attorneys working for them.

UPDATE 12/1/2005:
Newsbusters also notes the Ramsey Clark adoration club in the media.

The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 74

Goldman Sachs broke ground yesterday on the $2.4 billion headquarters that will be build adjacent to the WTC complex. Some say that this will jumpstart the Lower Manhattan market. I'm not so sure. Building at Ground Zero, coupled with demolishing Fiterman Hall and the Deutsche Bank building, will jumpstart the market.

Meanwhile, a panel of reviewers of the 9/11 museum materials are concerned over just how explicit the displays should be.

A panel of citizens who volunteered to review proposals for a 9/11 memorial museum was split over how explicit exhibits of the attack should be, a report yesterday showed.
Some agreed that the events of the day should not be "sanitized" or "sugar-coated," while others felt that immersing visitors in the attack "would only elicit anger."

Museum planners proposed an alternate route through the museum that would bypass the most graphic displays.

Some relatives of those who died in the attack want the events of 9/11 shown without any punches being pulled.

The museum would include significant mangled pieces of the Twin Towers, rescue vehicles and other artifacts.

Are you kidding me? The whole point of the museum should elicit anger. Anger at those who committed such heinous acts - the Islamic terrorists who hijacked four planes and crashed two of them into the World Trade Center, destroying it and nearly 3,000 people in the process. If you aren't angered by the violence done to our fellow citizens on 9/11, something is wrong. If the museum pulls its punches on this point, something is wrong.

Do you honestly think that if someone designed a Holocaust museum, but left out all the important but gory details, like that the Nazis systematically sought to eliminate all the Jews from their dominion, created huge death camps specifically for that purpose, kept detailed records of their actions, and obtained huge stockpiles of clothes, possessions, gold pulled from the teeth of the dead, hair from the dead, and huge piles of shoes that would be acceptable?

If going to a Holocaust Museum, whether it is Yad Vashem in Israel or the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, and you weren't angered by what the Nazis did, the museum curators did something wrong. Sure, the exhibits will make you sad, cry, and feel the pain of those who died, but the exhibits should make you angry that more wasn't done to stop the genocide sooner. It should anger you at the inhumanity of man.

It should make you angry at the Nazis who committed such acts, and those that obediently followed such inhumane decisions.

A museum recounting the 9/11 terrorist attacks must focus on the inhumanity of those who committed the attacks. The purposeful attack on a civilian population that was designed to kill 10 times as many people as it did. And that this attack was part of a larger worldwide campaign against the US and Western values.

Elsewhere, Sen. Clinton branded a plan to test for pollutants released by the collapse of the towers as inadequate.

The feds yesterday unveiled a new plan to test buildings near Ground Zero for dangerous dust from the Twin Towers collapse — but Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton branded it inadequate.

It calls for testing the area south of Canal Street and west of Pike and Allen streets for asbestos, lead and other contaminants — and to clean up areas where too much dust is found.

But Clinton said the Environmental Protection Agency plan fails to deal with "major problems" because it doesn't include testing for possible contamination in homes and workplaces north of Canal Street or in Brooklyn.

Clinton also protested the EPA's plan to disband an expert panel on Dec. 13, before it has a chance to identify "unmet public health needs and recommend any steps to further minimize the risks associated" with 9/11's aftermath.

One problem is trying to determine what contamination was caused by the collapse of the towers, and what was already preexisting. The testing was to rely on one kind of chemical marker, but there is a dispute over whether that is sufficient, or even accurate.

UPDATE:
In a related development to the ongoing issues at Ground Zero, the 9/11 Memorial in Shanksville, PA has been redesigned:

The new design for the memorial, to be built on the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, crash near Shanksville, features most of the details of the original, which was unveiled in September after a worldwide design competition.

But a round, bowl-shaped area would replace a ''Crescent of Embrace,'' a crescent-shaped cluster of maple trees.

In September, Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., criticized the design in a letter to the National Park Service Director, saying many questioned the shape ''because of the crescent's prominent use as a symbol in Islam -- and the fact that the hijackers were radical Islamists.''

Paul Murdoch, president of Paul Murdoch Architects, which designed the memorial, had called the criticism of the crescent an ''unfortunate diversion,'' but said they were sensitive to the concerns.

In both old and new versions of the design, a tower with 40 wind chimes welcomes visitors to the site, where they can then walk to a large circular field ringed by 40 groves of red and sugar maple trees, symbolizing the 40 passengers and crew who died. There will also be pedestrian trails, a plaza from which to view the crash site, and a white marble wall with the victims' names inscribed.

UPDATE:
A link to the updated design can be found here.

UPDATE:
Also noticing the changes to the Flight 93 9/11 memorial: Michelle Malkin, LGF, Flopping Aces.

A couple folks complain that the whole crescent kerfuffle was much ado over nothing. They include Froth Slosh B'Gosh and A Stitch in Haste. While a crescent is a perfectly valid architectural form, the particular shape used in the previous version was a near perfect match for the Islamic crescent. It's orientation on the site also appeared to link back to the city of Mecca.

UPDATE:
Back at Ground Zero, Mayor Bloomberg seems determined on trying to undermine any progress made thus far on the master plan and rebuilding.

It's not that there's anything wrong with building new housing downtown or, for that matter, with the construction of new market-rate housing anywhere else in the city. But as the tragedy of Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn shows, once the "affordable housing" pressure groups and their allies in the Bloomberg administration get done chewing up and spitting out a proposed residential development in this city, the result is that private developers are forced to create new subsidized units. These create all the same problems that the state has been trying, however slowly, to phase out in rent-regulation in New York, such as empty-nesters holding on to absurdly under-priced three-bedroom apartments, landlords with little incentive to improve their properties, tenants with little incentive to move into the free market for housing, even if they can afford it.

No wonder that Mr. Silverstein is so far sticking to office space.

UPDATE 12/1/2005:
Error Theory suggests that the Islamic theme from the earlier design hasn't gone away, and that the memorial honors the memories of the hijackers as well as the victims:

There are still 44 translucent blocks on the flight path to the crash site, matching the total number of dead, instead of just the forty translucent blocks that are dedicated to the forty murdered Americans. Lastly, the Tower of Voices part of the memorial is still an Islamic prayer-time sundial.

There were four hijackers on board Flight 93. They murdered those 40 passengers and crew and should not be honored in any way, shape, or form. The only mention of their existence should come as a result of detailing their actions to murder those on board, and the plan to murder those on the ground at their intended target.

Technorati: World Trade Center, WTC, Pataki, LMDC, urban policy, Freedom Tower, IFC, International Freedom Center.

New Developments in Chinese Espianoge Case

According to court papers, Chi Mak, an electrical engineer who worked on more than 200 Navy contracts, told investigators two days after his Oct. 30 arrest that he had been sending sensitive but unclassified documents on weapons research to China since 1983.
According to the papers, Chi Mak admitted passing to China information on:
• Direct current-to-direct current (DDC) converters for submarines.
• A 5,000-amp direct current hybrid circuit breaker for submarines.
• Electro-Magnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), a new system to launch aircraft from carriers using magnets instead of steam.
• The power distribution system for the Aegis weapons system and its Spy-1 radar, used on the Navy's most advanced guided missile destroyers and cruisers.
• A study that reveals the methods used by U.S. warship personnel to continue operating after being attacked. Officials said the paper is a blueprint for attacking and disabling warships.
• Modifications and Additions to Reactor Facility (MARF), a nuclear reactor located at the Navy's Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory that's used for testing prototype nuclear reactors. Investigators found a detailed, hand-drawn map of that facility in Chi Mak's house.

I feel much safer now, knowing what was delivered to the Chinese. Don't you?

Hinrichs Case Moves Sideways

Michelle has done yeoman's work trying to pore through all the records that were unsealed in a November 18 order by U.S. Magistrate Judge Valerie K. Couch, who determined there was no longer any reason for the records to remain sealed. She's done the great service of scanning those documents for review. Where was the rest of the media outlets to do this?

In any event, we're no closer to figuring out what motivated Joel Hinrichs to blow himself up than before the records were unsealed. And, we haven't learned anything new since I wrote about the records being unsealed earlier this month. We know conclusively that he used TATP in his bomb, which is the explosive of choice for Islamic suicide bombers. However, the papers do not prove or disprove whether he blew himself up due to depression, angst, religious, or some other reason.

The local CBS affiliate, News 9, continues to stand by its story that Hinrichs visited the Islamic mosque near his apartment.

Meantime, the medical examiner's office released its report stating the obvious. The FBI/Joint Terrorism Task Force have yet to complete their investigation, though an FBI spokesman told me it's nearing an end. The OU Daily reports that the FBI says it "may never know if Hinrichs tried try to enter the stadium or purchase a ticket for the game, even though surveillance tape was taken from the stadium." Local TV reports of Hinrichs' attempt to buy ammonium nitrate fertilizer before the bombing incident still stand, and News 9 stands by its reporting on Hinrichs' alleged visits to a nearby mosque.

Generation Why? wonders whether any remaining questions, and there are a bunch, will ever be adequately answered. I think the answer will be an unsatisfying no.

Michelle also wonders why Vaughn Ververs of the CBS blog was asking whether other bloggers to correct the record after the records became unsealed. I have to wonder whether Vaughn ever bothered to check my own blog, which
not only noted the unsealing of the records, but that the evidence remains inconclusive, unless Ververs himself has access to information that isn't already in the public domain.

Also blogging the document drop: Stuck on Stupid, Dustbury.com, and Kuru Lounge.

Saddam's In Extremely Good Spirits

Unfortunately for his victims, that is. The hundreds of thousands of his victims are in slightly less than good spirits this holiday season.

The Lingering Threat

The chemical spill into the Songhua River will linger for years, according to experts. The situation will not improve until the spring, when ice melt and spring rains will help flush the Songhua River of benzene and other contaminants. Meanwhile, the Russians are preparing for the spill entering their country in about two weeks.

Zhang Qingxiang, professor of environmental studies at Shanghai's East China University of Science and Technology, also warned that the Songhua's spring thaw could bring another wave of benzene contamination.

Authorities ``should pay much attention next spring when the ice is going to melt,'' Zhang said.

Even more serious were pollutants absorbed into the riverbed, including by aquatic plants and micro-organisms, Zhang said. Declining water quality could take 10 years or more to recover, he said, time enough for fish to introduce benzene into the food chain.

``This is going to break the ecological balance,'' Zhang said.

Although Chinese media has reported little about the possible long-term effects, fish and other aquatic products from the Songhua were being kept off the market.

The Chinese are limiting the amount of information? Say it isn't so. The Chinese Communists wouldn't do that to their comrades?

Would they?

Of course they would. The less information the public knows about the dangers, the less likely they are to get uppity with the local government, and the national government.

French Consider Tightening Immigration After Riots

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin announced plans on Tuesday to tighten immigration controls in response to France's worst urban rioting in almost 40 years.

He proposed a longer wait for citizenship for foreigners who marry French people, a tougher selection process for students visiting France and close checks on immigration by families joining a foreign worker already living in the country.

"The government will act firmly and with a sense of responsibility," Villepin told reporters after a ministerial meeting on immigration control.

He also called for tight policing of polygamy, which is illegal in France but some center-right politicians say was one of the causes of the unrest because children from large polygamous families have problems integrating into society.

I'd say that folks who have problems integrating into society may not want to integrate into the society or that the society doesn't want them there in the first place. In Frace, you get both ends of the deal. Recent immigrants are not welcomed as citizens and many of the recent immigrants want to maintain their separate national/religious identities. No amount of legalisms will change that.

How does a longer wait to immigrate to France change the existing dynamic? Fewer people coming into France will solve matters? I don't think so. Such simplistic thinking would result in castigation by the media elites had it been suggested by some US politicians, but it gets a pass since it's the French proposing these measures.

Under Villepin's plans, a foreigner who marries a French person will obtain French nationality after 4 years if the couple lives in France -- 2 more than now. The wait will increase from 3 to 5 years for couples living abroad.

Foreign students wishing to follow courses in France will be subject to a tougher selection process.

Because the 35,000 people who are affected by the proposed marriage requirements are really going to stop the problems with the French society in general.

What the French don't quite understand is that people want a stake in society. If they're not stakeholders, they're not going to care about what happens to their country, their villages, or their communities. Making these people go through even more hoops may only result in further alienation among those who choose to come to France legally.

No Pasaran notes that the French briefly considered using the Lebanese model for social reform:

France now finds itself toying with similar things, and at a similar level to a nation that had to reconstruct itself after it went through a 16 year long civil war.

France 2 reports that the Prime Minister rejected the notion of introducing a kind of compulsory civilian service similar to a military draft, but had at least weasely, guarded proponency to at least removing another barrier, albeit lat[e] in the game: the photo required with a CV.

Not Playing the Party Line

Let's hear it for JoeMentum. Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-CT, has this to say about the situation in Iraq:

I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood--unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.

Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.

There are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones in Iraqi hands than before. All of that says the Iraqi economy is growing. And Sunni candidates are actively campaigning for seats in the National Assembly. People are working their way toward a functioning society and economy in the midst of a very brutal, inhumane, sustained terrorist war against the civilian population and the Iraqi and American military there to protect it.

How have Congressional Democrats not found a way to muzzle the last remaining sane voice in the Democratic caucus? He, alone among Senior Democrats, gets it. And he even notices the media bias:

Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.

The leaders of America's military and diplomatic forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey and Ambassador Zal Khalilzad, have a clear and compelling vision of our mission there. It is to create the environment in which Iraqi democracy, security and prosperity can take hold and the Iraqis themselves can defend their political progress against those 10,000 terrorists who would take it from them.

Even the criticism he offers is the constructive kind. He, along with Sen. Warner, wants President Bush to outline more of the accomplishments made, so that people realize what we have actually accomplished in Iraq, both in terms of nation building and the global war on terror.

And the New York Times? It has the AP story online, but doesn't prominently display Joe's comments on the front page, or even the national page. Curious. Why would the Times limit the coverage of Joe's statements? After all, Connecticut is part of the NY Metro region and the local coverage for the paper. Connecticut is quite liberal, and Joe's comments would seemingly be out of step with what those folks believe. Curious.

UPDATE:
Others blogging Lieberman's comments [and updated regularly]: titusonenine, AI, AJ Strata (who also notes Daschle's rationale for voting for the war - it was about the votes), WMET1160 Talk Back Blog, Mark Kilmer, GOP Bloggers, D.F. Moore, and Overtaken by Events (who wonders when the maverick label will begin appearing next to Lieberman's name). Also blogging: Decision '08 and Unconsidered Trifles. Captain Ed has an extensive posting, and also notes that the WaPo and NYT both consider Lieberman's comments lacking in significance to provide anything other than an AP report.

The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 73

Seven WTC is preparing to open for business. The asking price is $50 per square foot and that's got real estate watchers warily watching:

Possibly no new office tower has ever caused so much excitement and anxiety as 7 WTC, which is seen as a bellwether for Lower Manhattan.

Silverstein is putting the finishing touches on the 52-story tower to replace the bulkier original that fell on 9/11. David Childs designed a sleek parallelogram sheathed in translucent curtain-wall glass that looks blue in sunlight, thanks to hidden spandrels that reflect light onto floor-to-ceiling windows.

Inside, it's crammed with security features, state-of-the-art systems and a slick lobby where an installation by artist Jenny Holzer will convey I Love New York-type messages on electronic zippers.

Although it's always stood to reason that 7 WTC might take time to lease up in a slow market, the 1.6 million square feet it added to the downtown inventory has given market-watchers conniptions.

So has Silverstein's $50 "ask," compared with rents between $25 and $40 downtown.

But the newest other buildings nearby, such as the World Financial Center towers, are at least 20 years old. Only a tenant can determine whether 7 WTC's spanking newness justifies the price difference.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs will be breaking ground on their new headquarters building diagonally across from West Street and Ground Zero. People may wonder why the rents are so high at the new 7 WTC, but there's good reason to believe that the true costs to tenants will be much lower. Given local, state, and federal incentives, the price will probably be 30% less than the asking price. And the new building will have many amenities that make it preferable to buildings uptown or even across the street at the WFC.

Technorati: World Trade Center, WTC, Pataki, LMDC, urban policy, Freedom Tower, IFC, International Freedom Center.

The High Costs of Rebuilding

The NY Times posits that it will cost billions and take decades to implement a levee system capable of protecting New Orleans from a Category 5 storm.

Building Category 5 protection, however, is proving to be an astronomically expensive and technically complex proposition. It would involve far more than just higher levees: there would have to be extensive changes to the city's system of drainage canals and pumps, environmental restoration on a vast scale to replenish buffering wetlands and barrier islands, and even sea gates far out of town near the Gulf of Mexico.

The cost estimates are still fuzzy, but the work would easily cost more than $32 billion, state officials say, and could take decades to complete.

No word on whether changes to the state and local governments will improve matters. Considering the amount of graft and corruption at the state and local level, cleaning out the statehouse and the New Orleans local government of the corrupt officials and extra layers of bureaucracy could go a long way to speeding up the construction of improved levees in the Mississippi Delta area.

Whiplash Nagin is at it again. After vowing to completely rebuild, he's backing away from that vow as urban planners are considering to not rebuild in some vulnerable locations:

Elected officials and residents from New Orleans' hardest-hit areas on Monday responded with skepticism and, at times, outright hostility to a controversial proposal to eliminate their neighborhoods from post-Katrina rebuilding efforts.

Even Mayor Ray Nagin, whose own commission asked the Urban Land Institute to devise the restoration plan, said he is reserving judgment on the most radical aspect: to abandon, at least for the near term, some of the city's lowest-lying ground.

Nagin's doing what anyone in his position has to do, keep options open for himself politically, but he should never have put himself in this position in the first place by vowing to completely rebuild in the areas most prone to flooding. That made no sense.

One aspect of flood control that will definitely change will be the MR-GO (Mississippi River Gulf Outlet). It appears that the channel acted as a funnel and exascerbated the flooding in New Orleans. It also contributed to the loss of wetlands that act as a buffer during storms.

Critics of MR-GO had long warned of such a disaster in urging that it be closed, but they were ignored. That was a tragic mistake, and the many voices that are calling for the waterway to be closed must be heeded now. Keeping MR-GO open after its danger has been so graphically demonstrated would be unforgivable.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has suspended the dredging of the channel for the next year, and rightly so. It makes no sense to continue spending $16 million a year to clear a channel that has such a murky future.

As the debate over MR-GO begins in earnest, the focus must be protecting people and property, not protecting the economic interests of the handful of businesses that use the channel, although some compensation might be due to businesses that will have to move.

St. Bernard Parish officials say an average of 16 to 18 ships go through the MR-GO in a month. That's not much traffic, but the Port of New Orleans still wants to keep the waterway open, albeit at a shallower depth.

Hydrology experts should determine the best course of action here considering that the economic impact of the closure of the channel appears limited.

Meanwhile, folks are building back in Biloxi and neighboring areas.

With a lot of help from faith-based groups and FEMA assistance, people living on the street are bouncing back.

"Everyone I know in the Cleveland Avenue area is building back," said Thomas Gates, who has lived there for 40 years. "I was here for Camille and other storms but nothing came close to Katrina."

Four feet of water swept through homes, but that area didn't experience the devastating surge and wind that hit closer to the beach.

"We're waiting on Sheetrock," said Gates, 68, a retired construction worker. "We'll get back but it'll probably take a year."

He and his wife are out front in "a fine FEMA trailer" like most families in that area. "We'll be visiting grandchildren this Christmas," Gates said.

What will slow the pace of rebuilding? The lack of skilled construction workers. While the cleanup doesn't require a lot of skilled construction workers, building new homes and buildings does:

Hurricane Katrina has changed the Coast's economy from a tourism to construction, but the real rebuilding hasn't even begun. Executives with three of the Coast's biggest contractors say we're only in the first phase of structural recovery: repairs and remediation.

"A lot of people are dealing with insurance companies for this quarter," said Roy Anderson III, president of Roy Anderson Corp. "If I can guess, it will be the first quarter of 2006 to mid-2006 before people start finalizing their negotiations and hopefully have a good settlement with their insurance. Right now, it's a lot of remediation, protection and preservation of assets."

Going forward, the demand for highly skilled construction workers will increase, but there's not a lot of homegrown talent available.

"We were able to use a lot of nonconstruction-skilled people do to cleanup," said Charles Collins, vice president of JO Collins Contractor Inc. "The construction is going to start real soon when it's time to start rebuilding. There was already a tremendous shortage of skilled workers on the Coast. It's certainly not improved because of this. I'm talking carpenters, painters, concrete finishers, just the whole gamut of skilled construction workers."

And one shouldn't forget the need for plumbers and electricians, both of whom are in high demand; particuarly electricians who have to make sure that structures that survived flood damage have sound electrical systems.

UPDATE:
Mayor Nagin is proposing building a free wi-fi network for New Orleans to lure business back to the city. I think your resignation, along with that of everyone else who was responsible for levee construction, maintenance, and oversight, would do more to lure business back than building a wi-fi network.

In an attempt to boost its stalled economy, the hurricane-ravaged city of New Orleans is starting the nation's first free wireless Internet network owned and run by a major city.

Mayor Ray Nagin made the announcement at a late morning news conference.

Similar projects elsewhere have been stalled by stiff opposition from telephone and cable television companies aimed at discouraging competition from public agencies.

One has to wonder how long this proposal will remain intact given that businesses that make money on wi-fi will oppose the plan, not to mention the fact that the government service will be limited in bandwith as soon as the emergency passes. Again, we're seeing priorities run amok. Going for the sexy stuff instead of the nuts and bolts of fixing the levee system.

UPDATE:
Scott Delea has been photoblogging the rebuilding and widespread damage in New Orleans. (HT: Mister Snitch)

Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; katrina aid; slidell; biloxi; gulfport; pascagoula; nagin; blanco; barbour.