Obama backs Bush: No rights for Bagram prisoners

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama’s Justice Department sided with the former Bush administration on Friday, saying detainees in Afghanistan have no constitutional rights.

In a two-sentence court filing, department lawyers said the Obama administration agreed that detainees at Bagram Air Base could not use U.S. courts to challenge their detention. The filing shocked human rights attorneys.

“The hope we all had in President Obama to lead us on a different path has not turned out as we’d hoped,” said Tina Monshipour Foster, a human rights attorney representing a detainee at the Bagram Air Base. “We all expected better.”

In midyear last year, the Supreme Court gave al-Qaida and Taliban suspects held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the right to challenge their detention. With about 600 detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and thousands more held in Iraq courts are grappling with whether they, too, can sue to be released. Three months after the Supreme Court’s ruling on Guantanamo Bay, four Afghan citizens being detained at Bagram tried to challenge their detentions in U.S. District Court in Washington.

After Obama took office, a federal judge in Washington gave the new administration a month to decide whether it wanted to stand by Bush’s legal argument. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd says the filing speaks for itself. “They’ve now embraced the Bush policy that you can create prisons outside the law,” said Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who has represented several detainees. The Justice Department argues that Bagram is different from Guantanamo Bay because it is in an overseas war zone and the prisoners there are being held as part of a continuing military action. The government argues that releasing enemy combatants into the Afghan war zone, or even diverting U.S. personnel there to consider their legal cases, could threaten security.

source : jang.com.pk

U.S. to ink nuclear cooperation deal with UAE

WASHINGTON: In one of her final diplomatic acts, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is set to sign a nuclear cooperation deal with the United Arab Emirates, a U.S. ally who some in Congress say has done too little to help stem the illicit flow of nuclear supplies to its Gulf neighbour, Iran.

The first such deal with a West Asian nation, it lays the legal groundwork for U.S. commercial nuclear trade with the UAE, which has foresworn nuclear arms as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

The Bush administration, backed by a leading nuclear-control advocacy group, calls the deal an important expression of U.S. interest in cooperating with countries that want to develop nuclear power for peaceful uses.

source : jang.com.pk

Rice shame-faced by Bush over UN Gaza vote: Olmert

JERUSALEM: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was left shame-faced after President George W. Bush ordered her to abstain in a key UN vote on the Gaza war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday.

“She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour,” Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashkelon.

The UN Security Council passed a resolution last Thursday calling for an immediate ceasefire in the three-week-old conflict in the Gaza Strip and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza where hundreds have been killed.

Fourteen of the council’s 15 members voted in favour of the resolution, which was later rejected by both Israel and Hamas. The United States, Israel’s main ally, had initially been expected to voted in line with the other 14 but Rice later became the sole abstention.

“In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour,” Olmert said

“I said ‘get me President Bush on the phone’. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care. ‘I need to talk to him now’. He got off the podium and spoke to me.

“I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour.”

Bush has consistently placed the blame for the conflict on Hamas, telling reporters on Monday that while he wanted to see a “sustainable ceasefire” in Gaza, it was up to Hamas to choose to end its rocket fire on Israel.

source : jang.com.pk

Bush defends legacy in final news conference

WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush mounted a defiant and emotional defense of his “good, strong record” on Monday, rejecting criticism of his “war on terror” tactics and policy in Iraq and on the economy.

In his last formal news conference before ceding power to Barack Obama on January 20, Bush highlighted the “troop surge” in Iraq and his efforts to rescue the US economy as it slumped into the worst recession since the 1930s. He warned that Iran and North Korea, which he famously included in an “axis of evil”, were still dangerous and said Obama still faced the grave threat of an attack on the US homeland.

“There are plenty of critics in this business,” Bush said at a valedictory encounter with reporters in the White House briefing room at the end of a turbulent two-term presidency saying he had a “good, strong record.”

Bush, who presided over two wars which tested US ties with close allies, said he had never spent much time worrying about the “loud voices” of critics, adding that president-elect Obama would also face “harsh” criticism.

“He is going to have to do what he thinks is right, if you don’t I don’t see how you can live with yourself.” He did not dwell on the decision to invade Iraq, but said the surge was an example of how he had responded to events while in office.

“When the history of Iraq is written, historians will analyse the decision on the surge,” he said remembering the rising tide of violence at the time in Iraq.

“I decided to do something about it, and to send 30,000 troops in as opposed to withdrawing. The part of history is certain in the situation did change.”

Bush used the news conference to warn Hamas that it must halt rocket fire on Israel if there is to be a durable ceasefire in Gaza.

“I am for a sustainable ceasefire. And a definition of a sustainable cease-fire is that Hamas stops firing rockets into Israel,” the US leader told.

“I happen to believe the choice is Hamas’s to make.”

He also warned that Obama would have to face up to the fact that America’s terrorist foes would like to attack again, more than seven years after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

“The most urgent threat he will have to deal with, and other presidents after him have got to deal with, is an attack on our homeland,” Bush told.

“I wish I could report that is not the case, but there’s still an enemy out there that would like to inflict damage on Americans. That will be the major threat.”

Bush also noted that historians would examine the fact that the US economy slumped into recession as he leaves office to head back home to Texas. He said he would be willing to ask Congress for a second 350 billion dollar tranche of a financial institutions bailout package if Obama asked for it.

“I told him that if he felt he needed the 350 billion, I would be willing to ask for it. If he feels like it needed to happen on my watch,” Bush said.

Bush dismissed the notion that his presidency had damaged America’s standing in the world.

“I strongly disagree with the assessment of our moral standing has been damaged. People still understand America stands for freedom.” And he said personally, keeping Americans safe had been more important to him that personal popularity.

source : jang.com.pk

Advisers say Obama preparing to close Gitmo

WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama is preparing to issue an executive order his first week in office — and perhaps his first day — to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, according to two presidential transition team advisers.

It’s unlikely the detention facility at the Navy base in Cuba will be closed anytime soon. In an interview last weekend, Obama said it would be “a challenge” to close it even within the first 100 days of his administration.

But the order, which one adviser said could be issued as early as Jan. 20, would start the process of deciding what to do with the estimated 250 al-Qaida and Taliban suspects and potential witnesses who are being held there. Most have not been charged with a crime.

The Guantanamo directive would be one of a series of executive orders Obama is planning to issue shortly after he takes office next Tuesday, according to the two advisers. Also expected is an executive order about certain interrogation methods, but details were not immediately available Monday.

The advisers spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the orders that have not yet been finalized.

Obama transition team spokeswoman Brooke Anderson declined comment Monday.

The two advisers said the executive order will direct the new administration to look at each of the cases of the Guantanamo detainees to see whether they can be released or if they should still be held — and if so, where.

Many of the Guantanamo detainees are cleared for release, and others could be sent back to their native countries and held there. But many nations have resisted Bush administration efforts to repatriate the prisoners back home. Both Obama advisers said it’s hoped that nations that had initially resisted taking detainees will be more willing to do so after dealing with the new administration.

What remains the thorniest issue for Obama, the advisers said, is what to do with the rest of the prisoners — including at least 15 so-called “high value detainees” considered among the most dangerous there.

Detainees held on U.S. soil would have certain legal rights that they were not entitled to while imprisoned in Cuba. It’s also not clear if they would face trial through the current military tribunal system, or in federal civilian courts, or though a to-be-developed legal system that would mark a hybrid of the two.

Where to imprison the detainees also is a problem.

Obama promised during the presidential campaign to shut Guantanamo, endearing him to constitutional law experts, civil libertarians and other critics who called the Bush administration detentions a violation of international law.

But he acknowledged in an interview Sunday that the process of closing the prison would be harder and longer than initially thought.

“That’s a challenge,” Obama said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I think it’s going to take some time and our legal teams are working in consultation with our national security apparatus as we speak to help design exactly what we need to do.

“But I don’t want to be ambiguous about this,” he said. “We are going to close Guantanamo and we are going to make sure that the procedures we set up are ones that abide by our constitution.”

President George W. Bush established military tribunals to prosecute detainees at Guantanamo. He also supports closing the prison, but strongly opposes bringing prisoners to the United States.

Lawmakers have moved to block transfer of the detainees to at least two potential and frequently discussed military facilities: an Army prison at Fr. Leavenworth, Kan., and a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. A Marine Corps prison at Camp Pendleton in Southern California also is under consideration, a Pentagon official said.

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., said Monday that “it’s hard to show why terror suspects should be housed in Kansas.”

“If the holding facility at Guantanamo Bay is closed, a new facility should be built, designed specifically to handle detainees,” Brownback said in a statement.

A Pentagon team also has been looking at how to shut Guantanamo and move its detainees but spokesman Bryan Whitman did not immediately know Monday whether it was completed.

The executive order marks only a first step at what is likely to be a long legal process. Still, American Civil Liberties Union legislative director Caroline Fredrickson called “extremely meaningful” even if the Guantanamo prison can’t be closed immediately.

“It’s clear that there is a process of time that will be necessary to close it properly, to make sure that human rights and respected and security is protected,” Fredrickson said. “But the fact that it’s set in motion is extremely good news.”

source : news.yahoo.com

Bush, Obama to tag-team lawmakers for bailout cash

WASHINGTON – A request for the remaining $350 billion in financial industry bailout funds could come as early as Monday as the Bush administration and President-elect Barack Obama tag-team uneasy lawmakers for the money.

A vote in Congress is likely soon, possibly this week, several senators predicted after a briefing from Obama economic adviser Larry Summers on the Wall Street bailout, as well as on Obama’s separate plan for roughly $800 billion in spending and tax breaks to spur the economy.

President George W. Bush would request the additional money for the Troubled Asset Relief Program but the incoming administration would sell the plan by laying out a series of changes in how the program is run. More of the money would go directly to relieve homeowners threatened with foreclosure, said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. A fuller accounting of the money already spent is needed as well, Dodd said.

“Larry Summers made a very strong argument for why it’s important and critical for the overall recovery,” said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. “And I think that’s an argument that most senators understand.”

Summers sought to win over Senate Democrats even as the GOP leader of the House, John Boehner of Ohio, warned that any effort to release the additional money would be a tough sell.

A request would force a vote within days on whether to block the funding, but the deck is stacked in favor of Bush and Obama winning release of the remaining $350 billion. Congress can pass a resolution disapproving the request, but the White House could veto the resolution; then, just one-third of either chamber would be needed to uphold the veto and win release of the money. Senate leaders would prefer to win a majority vote, Dodd said.

The idea is to make the money available to the new administration shortly after Obama takes office Jan. 20. The unpopular bailout has featured unconditional infusions of money into financial institutions that have done little to account for it.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson originally promised the money would be used to buy up toxic mortgage-related securities whose falling values have clogged credit markets and brought many financial institutions to the brink of failure.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that Bush and Obama officials were near agreement on submitting notice to Congress about using the remaining $350 billion.

“We’re waiting to hear from President Bush and-or President-elect Obama as to what, if anything, they’re going to do,” said Reid, D-Nev., “and that’s occurring as we speak.”

But to prevail, Obama and his team must soothe senators who feel burned by the way the Bush administration has used the TARP.

“The (incoming) administration … is going to fundamentally alter how this is being managed,” Dodd said. “The concept is still very sound and solid and it is needed. But it’s not going to pass around here unless there’s a strong commitment to foreclosure mitigation.”

Work continued through the weekend on Obama’s economic recovery plan, which features aid to cash-strapped state governments, $500 to $1,000 tax cuts for most workers and working couples, a huge spending package blending old-fashioned public works projects with aid to the poor and unemployed, and a variety of other initiatives.

Advocates for using tax cuts to promote alternative energy won concessions and the Obama team promised to make a $3,000 job creation tax credit — which has attracted considerable criticism — more workable.

Meanwhile, transition officials were resisting efforts to use the economic recovery bill to address the alternative minimum tax, which has affected more and more middle-income families.

source : news.yahoo.com

Obama to discuss trade, drug war with Calderon

WASHINGTON: U.S. President-elect Barack Obama will discuss the drug war and trade issues with Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Monday, in Obama’s first meeting with a foreign leader since his November election.

Obama has promised to nurture close ties with Mexico and with Latin American countries that complained of neglect by the United States after President George W. Bush’s foreign policy focused heavily on Iraq and the war on terror. With Mexico’s drug violence exploding and amid fears that Obama might seek changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement, Calderon is eager for a meeting with the incoming U.S. president.

Calderon plans to meet Bush on Tuesday. Beyond following tradition, a senior Obama adviser also said Obama “feels very strongly about the U.S.-Mexico relationship. This is obviously a priority.” Obama, who takes over from Bush on Jan. 20, in a speech last May accused the Bush administration of being “negligent” toward its friends in the Americas and pledged to renew ties with neighbors like Mexico.

source : jang.com.pk

Bush defends interrogation record

President Bush on Sunday defended controversial interrogation measures established by his administration, arguing that techniques like water-boarding helped save American lives.

“The techniques…were necessary and are necessary to be used on a rare occasion to get information to protect the American people,” Bush said during an expansive exit interview that aired on Fox Sunday.

Citing an interrogation with Al Qaeda strategist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, which included simulated drowning, otherwise known as “waterboarding,” the outgoing president said, “We believe the information we gained helped save lives on American soil.”

The Bush administration has been criticized by civil liberties advocates and others for the use of, and legal justifications underpinning, these harsh interrogation methods. President-elect Barack Obama has already promised to review these policies when he takes the oath of office later this month.

In the interview with Fox News Sunday, Bush joked that his administration has been “slightly criticized” for its policy to push the legal limits of the rights, the treatment and the interrogation of suspected terrorists detained by U.S. military and intelligence officials, or cooperative governments.”

The president defended those measures repeatedly on Sunday, saying, “I firmly reject the word ‘torture.’ Everything this administration does had a legal basis to it; otherwise, we would not have done it.”

In a separate interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Obama said, “From my view, waterboarding is torture.”

Whatever Bush administration policies he overturns, the president-elect wants to protect intelligence officials at the Central Intelligence Agency in order to do their jobs.

“At the CIA, you’ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working hard to keep Americans safe,” Obama said on ABC. “I don’t want them to suddenly feel like they’ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders.”

The outgoing president is “confident” that his successor “understands the nature of the world and understands the need to protect America.” But Bush hopes Obama and his intelligence team “take a hard look at the realities of the world and the tools now in place to protect the United States from further attack.”

In the exit interview, Bush specifically mentioned Mohammed, whose interrogation became a flashpoint in the broader legal debate about the rights of suspected terrorists detained abroad.

Mohammed, a top Al Qaeda strategist, was arrested in Pakistan and eventually flown to a secret detention site in Poland, where he reportedly endured a series of harsh interrogation methods, most notably waterboarding. But Bush administration officials have repeatedly argued that that session with Mohammed gave them leads to prevent other attacks.

“Look, I understand why people can get carried away on this issue, but generally they don’t know the facts,” Bush said of his critics on Sunday.

“But I am concerned that America, at some point in time, lets down her guard,” the president said. “If we do that, the country becomes highly vulnerable.”

source : news.yahoo.com

Bush hopes Obama to continue counter-terror policies

WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush said he hopes his successor Barack Obama will carefully weigh keeping his controversial interrogation tactics and other policies that his administration put in place to fight the “war on terror.”

“I would hope that the team that has the honor of serving the country will take a hard look at the realities of the world and the tools now in place to protect the United States from further attack,” Bush said on Fox News Sunday, referring to the next administration.

“I would hope they would take a sober assessment, and I believe they will.” Bush strongly defended his use of presidential authority, rejecting criticism from lawmakers and rights groups that he overstepped the country’s Constitution and permitted the torture of terror suspects after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

“My presidency was defined by the attack on the country and, therefore, I used the powers inherent in the Constitution to defend this country.”

source : jang.com.pk

Obama advisers say plan would create 3.5m new jobs

WASHINGTON – Facing growing criticism of his economic recovery plan, President-elect Barack Obama made public Saturday a detailed analysis by his economic advisers that estimates the $775 billion plan of tax cuts and new spending would create 3.5 million jobs over the next two years.

With an eye on Obama having immediate access to bailout money already approved by Congress when he becomes president, his economic team and the Bush administration have discussed having Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson ask lawmakers for access to the $350 billion remaining in the fund.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the administration hasn’t decided whether to make such a request, which would be made within the next week. Under the terms of the legislation creating the fund, Congress would have 15 days to reject the request.

The Obama transition team also has asked Neel Kashkari, the head of the rescue program at the Treasury Department, to remain in that position for a short time after the inauguration to help assure a smooth transition, according to an Obama official.

The 14-page analysis of Obama’s $775 billion plan, which was posted on the Internet, concedes that the estimates are “subject to significant margins of error,” both because of the assumptions that went into their economic models and because no one knows the final outlines of the package that will emerge from Congress.

“These numbers are a stark reminder that we simply cannot continue on our current path,” Obama said in his weekly radio and YouTube broadcast address.

“If nothing is done, economists from across the spectrum tell us that this recession could linger for years and the unemployment rate could reach double digits — and they warn that our nation could lose the competitive edge that has served as a foundation for our strength and standing in the world,” he said.

Obama, who previously has provided few details of the massive spending and tax cut plan, released the report one day after the unemployment rate jumped to 7.2 percent, the highest in 16 years. The nation lost 524,000 jobs in December, bringing the total job loss for last year to 2.6 million, the largest since World War II.

If Congress fails to enact a big economic stimulus plan, Obama’s advisers estimated that another 3 million to 4 million jobs will disappear before the recession ends.

As lawmaker criticisms of parts of his plan grew during the week, Obama agreed Friday to modest changes in his proposed tax cuts. Democratic congressional officials said his aides came under pressure in closed-door talks to jettison or significantly alter a proposed tax credit for creating jobs, and to include relief for upper middle-class families hit by the alternative minimum tax.

The new report is likely to intensify debate over the economic recovery plan even more, as economists outside the Obama team begin delving into the analysis. The report, for example, estimates that the unemployment rate at the end of 2010 would be 1.8 percentage points lower if the plan is enacted.

Top Democrats on Capitol Hill say there is far more agreement than disagreement on the major parts of the recovery plan: aid to cash-strapped state governments, $500-$1,000 tax cuts for most workers and working couples, and a huge spending package blending old fashioned public works projects with aid to the poor and unemployed and a variety of other initiatives.

The new report provides detailed breakdowns of how many jobs each part of the plan would create, even going so far as to provide estimates that more than 40 percent of the new jobs would go to women and that 90 percent of them would be created in the private sector. It also provides estimates of how many new jobs would be created in each different sector of the economy.

“It’s not too late to change course — but only if we take immediate and dramatic action,” Obama said. “Our first job is to put people back to work and get our economy working again.”

source : news.yahoo.com

Ferrell says his Bush on Broadway will surprise

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. – Will Ferrell says audiences should expect the unexpected from his upcoming one-man Broadway show and HBO special about President George W. Bush.

Ferrell, known for his Bush impersonation on “Saturday Night Live,” said Friday there’s nothing derivative about the production. He says it will surprise people with its twists and turns and what it has to say about Bush.

Executive producer Adam McKay says the show aims to be funny but also hold the Bush administration’s feet to the fire.

McKay and Ferrell spoke to the Television Critics meeting in the Los Angeles area by satellite from New York.

“Will Ferrell: You’re Welcome America. A Final Night with George W. Bush” is set to begin previews Jan. 20 and open Feb. 5. It will air live on HBO March 14.

source : news.yahoo.com

Dems signal CIA interrogators not held responsible

WASHINGTON – As President-elect Barack Obama assures intelligence officials that his complaints are with the Bush administration, not them, there are growing hints from Democratic Senate allies that spy agency veterans will not be prosecuted for past harsh interrogation and detainee policies.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein told The Associated Press in an interview this week that there is a clear distinction between those who made the policies and those who carried them out.

“They (the CIA) carry out orders and the orders come from the (National Security Council) and the White House, so there’s not a lot of policy debate that goes on there,” she said. “We’re going to continue our looking into the situation and I think that is up to the administration and the director.”

Feinstein declined to comment on whether her committee would take specific action to offer legal cover to those involved in harsh interrogations that some critics say amount to torture.

Obama has not indicated his stance on what information should be declassified and released or whether he thinks those who conducted harsh interrogations should be protected from lawsuits. But when he introduced his intelligence advisers at a news conference Friday, he expressed gratitude for the work and professionalism of intelligence agency employees and promised them pragmatic leadership.

“The men and women of the intelligence community have been on the front lines in this world of new and evolving dangers,” he said. “They have served in the shadows, saved American lives, advanced our interests, and earned the respect of a grateful nation.”

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he is interested in revealing the origins and sweep of the Bush administration’s controversial interrogation program and is willing to sponsor legislation if necessary to release many of the documents about the program.

Scores of secret documents have been assembled for the Senate Intelligence Committee’s bipartisan investigation into the CIA’s destruction of videotapes that showed U.S. interrogators conducting waterboarding of two terrorism suspects.

Wyden, a Senate confidant of Obama’s, wants to declassify many top-secret documents that would reveal how the program came to be, whether severe methods have been effective in yielding useful intelligence, and what the legal arguments were for allowing them.

“I think the U.S. has got to come clean on this,” he said. “It’s about a program that goes right to the heart of what’s needed to keep America safe and keep our moral authority in the world.”

Vice President Dick Cheney told the AP that waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning since banned at the CIA, produced valuable intelligence.

“It’s been used with great discrimination by people who know what they’re doing,” he said.

Current and former intelligence officials have expressed concern that a release of the classified documents — which civil liberties and human rights groups as well as some in Congress have been clamoring for — could be used to mount lawsuits against agency employees. Some have advocated a process like the 9/11 Commission to investigate what was authorized, what was done and by whom, which could also form the basis for civil rights lawsuits.

Last year, the CIA announced it would pay the full cost of legal liability insurance for agency employees and expanded the pool of those eligible to about two-thirds of the work force.

Wyden said those fears of a surge in lawsuits are unfounded. With Republican Sen. Kit Bond, Wyden got legislation passed last year requiring the CIA to release an internal investigation into the agency’s activities in the months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. One of the reasons three CIA chiefs resisted doing it voluntarily was the prospect of prosecutions, Wyden said.

“You know how at Langley they are saying, ‘people are going be prosecuted with all this,’” he said in an interview. “Think about what happened. … I didn’t push anyone to be prosecuted after the CIA’s report was released on 9/11.”

“No one’s talking about some witch hunt,” Wyden insisted.

He added there is little appetite in Congress to prosecute government employees who engaged in “enhanced” interrogations authorized by the White House. The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which prohibited cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners, also called for the protection of those employees from civil lawsuits or criminal prosecutions if they believed in good faith they were acting on lawfully. The bill passed with an overwhelming majority.

Obama pledged Friday that Leon Panetta, his nominee to head the CIA, would be a strong advocate for the agency’s interest inside the White House, and his selection for national intelligence director, retired Adm. Dennis Blair, would continue “the good work that is being done.”

And he signaled his clear intention to abandon the Bush administration’s more controversial practices.

“I was clear throughout this campaign and was clear throughout this transition that under my administration the United States does not torture. We will abide by the Geneva Conventions. We will uphold our highest ideals,” he said. “We must adhere to our values as diligently as we protect our safety with no exceptions.”

___

Associated Press writer Erica Werner contributed to this report.

source : news.yahoo.com

Bush, Obama to lunch with former US presidents

WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush will talk briefly in private with his successor Barack Obama Wednesday before they share a rare lunch with all living former US presidents at the White House.

The meeting of past and present US leaders is the first such event since 1981 and marks a “historic moment,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said, amid one of the most delicate transitions in recent memory.

Those around the table will include Democrat Jimmy Carter (1977-1981), Bush’s father Republican George H.W. Bush (1989-1993) and Democrat Bill Clinton (1993-2001).

Prior to the lunch, the 43rd and 44th presidents will have about a half-hour to meet one-on-one in the Oval Office, with 13 days remaining before Obama is inaugurated to the presidency.

Obama, who will be sworn in as the nation’s first African-American president on January 20, inherits two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a grave economic crisis, and a surge in Middle East violence.

“Tomorrow I’m sure they’ll talk a little bit about issues,” Perino said, without elaborating.

It was not immediately clear if the former presidents would discuss escalation in the Mideast conflict, with which all have considerable personal experience.

Democrat Carter’s administration in 1978 helped bring off the Camp David peace accords. His Atlanta-based Carter Center has said in a statement that: “The government of Israel must cease actions that endanger the civilian population of densely-populated Gaza, and the de facto authorities of Gaza must halt rocket attacks.”

Obama has declined to comment on Israel’s military assault on Gaza until he takes office, other than expressing concern, but all the presidents who will be around the table are aware of the gravity of the situation as a top US ally in the Middle East battles Hamas militants while civilians are caught in the crossfire.

“After January 20 I am going to have plenty to say about the issue,” Obama told reporters Tuesday, fending off criticism that he has failed to forcefully address the Israeli military onslaught on the Gaza Strip.

Obama said he was sticking by his campaign pledge that “at the beginning of our administration, we are going to engage effectively and consistently in trying to resolve the conflict that existed in the Middle East.

So far, Bush and Obama have spoken regularly, Perino said.

“The president and the president-elect shared a phone call on New Year’s Day. They have had periodic calls,” she said.

“So they’ve had a chance to talk about issues. Those are private conversations.”

“All of us would love to be flies on the wall and listening to that conversation. But these are leaders who only understand what it’s like to be in each other’s shoes. And none of us can put ourselves in their shoes,” Perino said.

Obama receives the same briefings as Bush each morning, and Bush’s aides have said they shared emergency contingency plans with Obama’s team ahead of the handover.

Now, with the Obama family installed at the Hay-Adams hotel within view of the White House in downtown Washington, Perino said she expected some of the conversation would involve family life.

“I’m sure they’ll talk a little bit about raising children in the White House, raising children when you’re a public figure, and how to protect them.”

Since winning the election on November 4, Obama has been to the White House once before, on November 10, when he went there for talks with Bush.

The outgoing administration said the pair discussed international and domestic issues, and Bush reportedly showed Obama the rooms where his daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, would stay.

Meanwhile Bush and his wife have already started packing ahead of their departure, Perino said.

“The president’s style is always to be one that’s a little bit prepared early, and he and Mrs. Bush have been working to box things up,” she said.

“They didn’t come with a lot of things; they didn’t bring a lot of furniture here. So mostly what they have are books, obviously their clothes, and then some of the things that they’ve picked up along the way on their travels.”

source : jang.com.pk

Bush adviser: Iran, Pakistan key Obama challenges

WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush’s national security adviser said Tuesday that Iran is the biggest challenge President-elect Barack Obama will face in the Middle East and that more sanctions will be needed to force Tehran to forgo its nuclear ambitions and support for extremists.

Outside the Mideast, the next administration’s top priority should be stabilizing an increasingly volatile Pakistan, Stephen Hadley said.

In a nearly hour-long interview with media, Hadley said the Bush White House has been trying to “shore up and store up leverage” on Iran to bequeath to the Obama administration. Obama’s challenge, he said, will be to use those sanctions to force Iran to change its behavior.

Saying that European officials have pointed to Tehran’s dependence on gasoline imports and its need for additional refining equipment, Hadley added that “one of the questions is whether these kinds of vulnerabilities provide a potential source of leverage, and this is the kind of dialogue that we will continue to have with the Europeans.”

While the Middle East presents challenges, he said Obama might also find his biggest foreign policy opportunity there, in the form of a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians. That’s a lofty goal considering the recent escalation of violence between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip.

Last month, Obama suggested a combination of economic incentives and tighter sanctions might persuade the Iranian government to change its behavior and alter its nuclear program. The U.S. and its allies believe that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons capabilities and has demanded it suspend its enrichment program, but Tehran insists it is interested only in nuclear power generation.

Iran, however, has rejected the carrot-and-stick approach as unacceptable and insists it has the right to continue.

Hadley would not offer advice on whether the incoming administration should increase dialogue with Iran. But, he said, the U.S. “would be foolish to talk without leverage, because talking and negotiating without leverage won’t get you a deal that will advance your interests. If you want to change the behavior of a country like Iran, you have to have leverage.”

And right now, he said, the U.S. is still short of the leverage needed to force that change.

source : jang.com.pk

Bush to establish 3 marine monuments in Pacific

WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush plans to designate three remote Pacific island chains as national monuments in what will be one of the largest marine conservation efforts in U.S. history.

The three areas are expected to include the Mariana Trench along the Northern Mariana Islands, Rose Atoll in American Samoa and seven islands in the central Pacific Ocean.

The White House confirmed plans for an announcement by the president on Tuesday but declined to provide other details.

Two years ago, the president made a huge swath of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands a national monument, barring fishing, oil and gas extraction and tourism from its waters and coral reefs.

source : jang.com.pk

Obama to detail economic vision

Barack Obama will lay out his vision for a massive economic stimulus plan in meetings with congressional leaders Monday. Perhaps more important, he’ll be taking a major step toward rebuilding the broken relationship between the executive branch and the legislative branch.

Doing so will be critical to the success of his agenda.

If Obama seems unwilling to take lawmakers’ ideas into account, he could risk whatever goodwill he’s getting from the GOP and irk Democrats expecting to play a big role in a new Washington. But if Obama bends to the demands of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, the public could perceive him as a weak president even before he takes the oath of office.

McConnell, the Senate minority leader, said on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday that Republicans just want to be “a part of the process.” Obama has signaled that he wants them to be a part of the process, too. While Democrats often complained that President Bush left them in the cold – lining up just enough votes to pass whatever he wanted – Obama’s strategists have indicated that he wants not 51 or 60 but at least 80 Senate votes for his stimulus plan.

To get there, the president-elect’s stimulus plan will put nearly as much emphasis on tax cuts as on new spending. As Politico reported Sunday night, 40 percent of the plan’s price tag will come from tax breaks that could help woo GOP support. Obama and his vice-president-elect, Joseph Biden, have said that they’ll keep earmarks out of the package – another bone for Republicans – and Hill Democrats say they may slow consideration of the package to assuage Republicans who have been complaining in advance about heavy-handed tactics.

“Whatever we do must be done on a bipartisan basis,” Reid, the Senate majority leader, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

Obama takes office at a critical moment in the country’s economic history but also at a critical juncture in the relationship between Congress and the White House. Bush and his predecessor, Bill Clinton, were both former governors accustomed to exerting their wills over state legislatures, and that translated into frosty relationships with Congress.

A standoff between Clinton and House Republicans led to a government shut-down in 1995, and the House voted to impeach Clinton in 1998. Bush and the Democrats in Congress were often at war over the Iraq war and other issues. And over the last few months, even Republicans have abandoned the president on economic issues, resisting his administration’s pleas for a $700 billion financial-markets bailout and rejecting his plan for a $14-billion bailout of the auto industry.

Since Election Day, Obama and his senior aides have tried to heal the wounds. The president-elect has placed dozens of phone calls to key Republicans and Democrats, insisting that his administration will want Hill input as it crafts its agenda. A former senator himself, Obama picked another senator as a running mate, a third senator as his secretary of state, a fourth as his interior secretary and Rahm Emanuel – a fast-rising member of the Democratic House leadership – as his White House chief of staff.

Now, a day after arriving in Washington, he plans to make the trip to Capitol Hill himself.

Linda Fowler, professor of government at Dartmouth College, said Obama’s trek to the Hill is “unusual and potentially quite important” since it is more than just a courtesy call.

“I think it sends an important symbolic message in the sense that it is a very definite break with the Bush-style of policy-making,” Fowler said.

Eight years ago, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott got a pre-inauguration meeting with Bush – but to get it, they had to fly to Texas, where the not-quite-yet president-elect received them at his ranch in Crawford.

Obama’s early moves suggest that he will do things differently. At 11 a.m. Monday, the president-elect will meet with Pelosi, followed by a 2:30 p.m. meeting with Reid on the Senate side. At 3:15 p.m., he’ll meet for 45 minutes with the House and Senate leaders and whips from both parties in an ornate room off the Senate floor – a room named after Lyndon B. Johnson.

Front and center at the meetings will be the stimulus package, which could cost $775 billion or more over two years and will include a huge investment to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, provide jobless benefits, pump money into ailing state budgets, invest in energy projects and cut taxes for workers and businesses.

In details provided to Politico Sunday evening, Obama’s plan will include a $500 tax credit for individuals and $1,000 for families to offset payroll taxes — ideas designed to encourage Americans to spend extra cash. In addition, Obama’s team is considering a massive tax credit for employers making new hires or averting layoffs and a rewrite of rules to allow for broader tax deductions for businesses.

Those points may help Obama sell the plan to Republican leaders. But the president-elect will have to determine how much further he’s willing to go to win over Republicans – especially when doing so risks angering Democrats.

One issue that may hang in the balance: A proposal to allow bankruptcy courts to renegotiate mortgage rates of distressed homeowners. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has sought the measure as a way to help stabilize the mortgage crisis, but some in the GOP call it a deal breaker because of its potential for passing on costs to other borrowers.

Another negotiating point: McConnell is suggesting that money in the stimulus package for state governments come in the form of loans rather than grants. But it’s not clear whether Democratic lawmakers – many of whom represent states with huge budget problems – would be open to the idea.

Outside the stimulus, Obama could curry favor with congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle by offering to move quickly on the unfinished spending bills from last year. Bush and the GOP rarely sparred over spending, but the president began vetoing appropriations bills that exceeded his proposed limit after Democrats took control of Congress in 2006. Members of Congress said Bush was stubbornly refusing to negotiate. The White House accused Congress of being reckless in its spending. In the stalemate, most of last year’s bills went nowhere.

McConnell said Sunday that the bills – wrapped up in a single omnibus package expected to cost $410 billion – have been vetted by both parties and can pass Congress quickly with Obama’s support.

Although some Democrats may be looking for payback, Reid – who could face a tough re-election fight back home in 2010 – suggested Sunday that it’s time to move ahead.

“Whatever program we have, let’s not talk about the last eight years,” Reid said. “Let’s talk about the next eight years.”

source : news.yahoo.com

Bush says he wants lasting Mideast cease-fire

WASHINGTON – President George W. Bush says any cease-fire in the Mideast must be fully respected, Hamas rocket attacks on Israel stopped and the flow of smuggled weapons into Gaza cut off.

Bush called the Hamas attacks an “act of terror” and said no peace deal would be acceptable unless the flow of smuggled weapons to terrorist groups is monitored and stopped. He made the comments in his weekly radio address taped for broadcast Saturday but released a day early.

It was the first time Bush has spoken about one of the bloodiest Mideast clashes in decades, though a White House spokesman has offered extensive comments in recent days.

The conflict began a week ago. Israeli warplanes have rained bombs on Gaza, targeting the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which has traumatized southern Israel with intensifying rocket attacks.

“The United States is leading diplomatic efforts to achieve a meaningful cease-fire that is fully respected,” Bush said. “Another one-way cease-fire that leads to rocket attacks on Israel is not acceptable. And promises from Hamas will not suffice — there must be monitoring mechanisms in place to help ensure that smuggling of weapons to terrorist groups in Gaza comes to an end.”

With time running out on the Bush presidency, the crisis in Gaza is likely to carry over to President-elect Barack Obama. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice briefed Bush on developments in Gaza, and she continued telephone diplomacy to arrange a truce. Yet, she said she had no plans to make an emergency visit to the region.

More than 400 Palestinians and at least four Israelis have been killed in the latest offensive. The U.N. estimated Friday that a quarter of the Palestinians killed were civilians. In their waning days in power, Bush and Rice have been working the phones with world allies.

Bush offered no criticism of Israel, depicting the country’s air assaults as a response to the attacks on its people. The White House will not comment on whether it views the Israeli response as proportionate to the scope of rockets attacks on Israel.

“This recent outburst of violence was instigated by Hamas — a Palestinian terrorist group supported by Iran and Syria that calls for Israel’s destruction,” Bush said.

The president said Hamas ultimately ended the latest cease-fire on Dec. 19 and “soon unleashed a barrage of rockets and mortars that deliberately targeted innocent Israelis — an act of terror that is opposed by the legitimate leader of the Palestinian people, President (Mahmoud) Abbas.”

Hamas-run Gaza has been largely isolated from the rest of the world since the Islamic militants won parliamentary elections in 2006. Then Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, expelling forces loyal to the moderate Abbas.

Bush expressed deep concern about the humanitarian suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza. U.N. officials say Gaza’s 1.5 million residents face an alarming situation under constant Israeli bombardment, with hospitals overcrowded and both fuel and food supplies growing scarce.

“By spending its resources on rocket launchers instead of roads and schools, Hamas has demonstrated that it has no intention of serving the Palestinian people,” Bush said. “America has helped by providing tens of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid, and this week we contributed an additional $85 million through the United Nations. We have consistently called on all in the region to ensure that assistance reaches those in need.”

The White House has cautioned Israel to be aware of the toll its military strikes will have on civilians. Bush blamed Hamas for hiding within the civilian population. “Regrettably, Palestinian civilians have been killed in recent days,” he said.

International calls for a cease-fire have been growing. Bush promised to stay engaged with U.S. partners in the Middle East and Europe and keep Obama updated. Obama is receiving the same intelligence reports on Gaza that Bush is.

Rice has spoken to both Obama and his choice for secretary of state, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, about the situation at least once in the last week. Obama and Clinton have remained mum out of deference to Bush, who will be in office until Obama’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

___

Associated Press writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

source : news.yahoo.com

Ford sees sharp drop in U.S. sales

DEARBORN, Mich (Reuters) – Ford Motor Co expects industry-wide December U.S. auto sales to drop by some 35 percent from a year earlier with no sign of a turnaround in the first quarter of this year.

Ford, the No. 2 U.S. automaker, expects that full-year sales of light vehicles in the world’s largest market will drop to near 13.2 million for 2008, down from near 16.2 million in 2007, Ford’s chief sales analyst George Pipas said on Friday.

The only other time the U.S. auto industry has seen a similar 3-million unit plunge in sales over the course of a single year was during 1974 in the wake of the first oil shock, Pipas told reporters.

Major automakers are set to release December and full-year 2008 sales data on Monday. Analysts have said they see December light-vehicle sales slipping below the 10.2 million unit sales rate recorded a month earlier.

Annualized auto sales rates have declined on a quarter-to-quarter basis throughout 2008. The sales rate fell from 15.6 million vehicles in the first quarter to an estimated 10.6 million in the fourth quarter. Those figures include medium and heavy-duty truck sales of about 300,000 units on an annual basis.

“The sales rates have declined like a lead balloon, really,” Pipas said. “I think when December comes in every segment will be down. Not one segment will be up versus a year ago.”

“We’re not looking for the first quarter to be much different from what we saw in the fourth quarter,” Pipas said.

The sharpest sales declines in 2008 came in full-size SUVs, a gas-guzzling category that U.S. consumers abandoned during the spring and summer spike in oil prices.

On a full-year basis, Pipas said, 2008 is on track to become the first year since 2000 that passenger cars have outsold light trucks in the United States. The light trucks category includes: pickups, SUVs and minivans.

Manufacturers have responded to the slump in truck sales with aggressive discounts in recent months, including cash rebates and low-rate financing.

Pipas said data tracked by Ford showed the average incentive on a full-size pickup truck was between $7,000 and $8,000 in December and near $7,000 for a full-size SUV.

By contrast, the average discount on a compact car was just $1,300 and near $2,000 for a mid-size car, he said.

With manufacturers scrambling to clear year-end inventory, average sales incentives across all vehicle segments were up about $900 in December from a year earlier, Pipas said.

Pipas said Ford expects that its own 2008 market share will end up just over 14 percent, down by about half a percentage point from a 14.6 percent share a year earlier.

In order to regain market share, Ford recognizes that it needs to have a more competitive line-up of small vehicles on the market reflecting the increasing importance of that segment, Pipas said.

Unlike its Detroit-based rivals General Motors Corp and Chrysler LLC, Ford has not sought an emergency loan from the U.S. government.

The No. 2 U.S. automaker, which borrowed more than $23 billion in 2006, has attempted to use its better financial position and recent quality gains to distinguish itself from its battered competitors in the eyes of car shoppers.

GM and Chrysler were given a $17.4 billion bailout from the Bush administration. Ford has sought a $9 billion credit line from the government if the ongoing recession runs deeper and longer than it expects.

But Pipas said Ford’s sales planners expected to see industry-wide U.S. auto sales declines of between 20 percent and 30 percent in monthly sales reports in the first quarter.

Second-quarter sales results are also expected to show double-digit percentage declines, he said.

Ford does not expect U.S. auto sales to begin to stabilize until the second half of 2009 based on the view that the U.S. economy will begin to improve late this year, Pipas said.

(Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)

source : news.yahoo.com

Ex-aides say Bush never recovered from Katrina

WASHINGTON – Hurricane Katrina not only pulverized the Gulf Coast in 2005, it knocked the bully pulpit out from under President George W. Bush, according to two former advisers who spoke candidly about the political impact of the government’s poor handling of the natural disaster.

“Katrina to me was the tipping point,” said Matthew Dowd, Bush’s pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign. “The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn’t matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn’t matter. P.R.? It didn’t matter. Travel? It didn’t matter.”

Dan Bartlett, former White House communications director and later counselor to the president, said: “Politically, it was the final nail in the coffin.”

Their comments are a part of an oral history of the Bush White House that Vanity Fair magazine compiled for its February issue, which hits newsstands in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday, and nationally on Jan. 6. Vanity Fair published comments by current and former government officials, foreign ministers, campaign strategists and numerous others on topics that included Iraq, the anthrax attacks, the economy and immigration.

Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, said that as a new president, Bush was like Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee whom critics said lacked knowledge about foreign affairs. When Bush first came into office, he was surrounded by experienced advisers like Vice President Dick Cheney and Powell, who Wilkerson said ended up playing damage control for the president.

“It allowed everybody to believe that this Sarah Palin-like president — because, let’s face it, that’s what he was — was going to be protected by this national-security elite, tested in the cauldrons of fire,” Wilkerson said, adding that he considered Cheney probably the “most astute, bureaucratic entrepreneur” he’d ever met.

“He became vice president well before George Bush picked him,” Wilkerson said of Cheney. “And he began to manipulate things from that point on, knowing that he was going to be able to convince this guy to pick him, knowing that he was then going to be able to wade into the vacuums that existed around George Bush — personality vacuum, character vacuum, details vacuum, experience vacuum.”

On other topics, David Kuo, who served as deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, disputed the idea that the Bush White House was dominated by religious conservatives and catered to the needs of a religious right voting bloc.

“The reality in the White House is — if you look at the most senior staff — you’re seeing people who aren’t personally religious and have no particular affection for people who are religious-right leaders,” Kuo said.

“In the political affairs shop in particular, you saw a lot of people who just rolled their eyes at … basically every religious-right leader that was out there, because they just found them annoying and insufferable. These guys were pains in the butt who had to be accommodated.”

source : news.yahoo.com

Politicians much more comfortable on late-night TV

NEW YORK – It proved to be more than a joke when David Letterman said in late September that “the road to the White House runs through me.”

Presidential candidates found late-night comedy shows a particularly valuable asset during the 2008 campaign, making more than four times the number of on-set appearances with Letterman, Jay Leno, Jon Stewart and the crowd than the 2004 contenders did, some new research has found.

“Candidates have figured out that you can reach voters through entertainment venues even better than news,” said Robert Lichter, a George Mason University professor and head of the Center for Media and Public Affairs.

Candidates made 110 appearances on the late-night shows, up from 25 in 2004, the center said. Fifty this time came before a primary vote was even cast, as a full complement of candidates in both parties looked for ways to get their faces in front of cameras — something President Bush didn’t have to worry about four years ago.

There’s a rich history of candidates using entertainment venues to show voters they can laugh at themselves: Richard Nixon went on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-in” in 1968, and Bill Clinton played the sax on “The Arsenio Hall Show” in 1992. Yet it wasn’t until 2008 that the appearances began to seem routine.

Republican John McCain made 17 such guest shots on venues that relentlessly made him the butt of jokes, although one appearance he canceled — with Letterman — may be remembered longer than any of them. President-elect Barack Obama had 15 appearances, third behind Republican Mike Huckabee, who now has a talk show of his own on Fox News Channel.

For the shows, it was a way to tap into a campaign that was a television hit from start to finish. Leno had 22 candidate appearances, while Stewart had 21, Letterman had 19 and Stephen Colbert had 15.

Not only does a candidate have the chance to display a sense of humor to the late-night crowd, a good exchange could be magnified with endless repeats on YouTube or cable news networks the next day.

The shows also give the candidates a venue to talk directly to voters than they might otherwise get. In 2000, candidate George Bush had more time to talk in one appearance with Letterman than he had during a full month on the “CBS Evening News,” Lichter said.

And who wants to deal with pesky journalists, who always want to knock you off message?

“It’s a lot more risky, as Sarah Palin will attest, to do an interview with Katie Couric than it is with Jay Leno,” said Howard Wolfson, a veteran campaign strategist and former Hillary Clinton adviser.

They aren’t always puffball appearances, though. Letterman, in particular, has become a particularly sharp interviewer. When McCain backed off an appearance citing the economic crisis — then did an interview with Couric later that day — Letterman wouldn’t let him forget it until McCain came back and pleaded for forgiveness. At a crucial time, Letterman was repeatedly reminding viewers of McCain’s brief campaign suspension, a period the candidate would rather voters have forgotten, Lichter said.

His running mate stayed away from the talk shows but made one memorable appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” getting in on some jokes about her.

source : news.yahoo.com

Mrs. Bush, Rice: Bush presidency not a failure

WASHINGTON – The two most influential women in President George W. Bush’s White House — first lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — are strongly defending the president’s legacy against critics who are calling his administration one of the worst in history.

“I know it’s not, and so I don’t really feel like I need to respond to people that view it that way,” Mrs. Bush said in an interview that aired Sunday. “I think history will judge and we’ll see later.”

Rice took a similar view in a separate interview, saying that claims that the Bush administration has been one of the worst ever are “ridiculous.”

“I think generations pretty soon are going to start to thank this president for what he’s done. This generation will,” Rice said.

“Because I think the fact that we have really made foreign assistance not just an issue of giving humanitarian aid or giving money to poor people, but really insisting on good governance and fighting corruption,” she said. “I think the fact that this president has laid the groundwork for a Palestinian state, being the first president, as a matter of policy, to say that there should be one, and now, I think, laying the foundation that’s going to lead to that Palestinian state — I can go on and on.”

In her interview, Mrs. Bush called the shoe-throwing incident in Baghdad an “assault.” She rebuffed Bush administration critics who contend the U.S. turned its military might and resources to the war in Iraq before finishing the job in Afghanistan.

Mrs. Bush noted that under her husband’s watch, the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein and liberated millions of people in Afghanistan and Iraq from oppressive governments. She also highlighted the president’s work to provide treatment for disease like AIDS and malaria to millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa. She said her husband responded to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in a way that has kept the nation safe.

“I think that’s very, very important,” she said.

Mrs. Bush said that while the president laughed it off when an Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at him during a news conference earlier this month in Iraq, she was not amused. The president deftly dodged the shoes and wasn’t hit. He continued the news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki after security officials dragged the journalist from the room.

“The president laughed it off,” she said. “He wasn’t hurt. He’s very quick. As you know, he’s a natural athlete and ducked it. But on the other hand, it is an assault. And I think it should be treated that way. And I think people should think of it that way.”

On the other hand, she said the incident reflects change in Iraq.

“As bad as the incident is, in my view, it is a sign that Iraqis feel a lot freer to express themselves,” she said.

Mrs. Bush challenged critics who contend that Iraq was a distraction the U.S. mission in Afghanistan where heightened violence is causing renewed instability.

“Well, I don’t know that I would agree with that at all,” Mrs. Bush said. “I don’t think that’s true at all. We’ve stayed very, very invested in Afghanistan. Not as invested militarily, maybe, and maybe that’s what the critics say, that it should have been more military. But I think we stayed very invested.”

Rice said it won’t be long before Bush’s contributions to the world will be acknowledged.

“When you look at what this president took on in terms of AIDS relief and foreign assistance to the world, when you look at the number of countries … and the number of people that this president has actually liberated — you know, I really am someone who believes that you don’t want to pay too much attention to today’s headlines,” she said.

But recognition of big achievements sometimes take a long time, Rice said.

Rice noted that while Germany was reunified in 1990, the work that made it possible was done in the 1940s, “when things didn’t look quite so rosy.” So historians who are now making judgments about the Bush administration and its Middle East policies aren’t very good historians, Rice said.

“One cannot yet judge the effects of decisions that this president has taken on what the Middle East will become,” Rice said. “I mean, for goodness’ sakes, good historians are still writing books about George Washington.”

Mrs. Bush spoke on “Fox News Sunday,” while Rice was on CBS “Sunday Morning.”

source : news.yahoo.com

Bush calls servicemen and women to thank them

President Bush Wednesday continued the holiday tradition of calling U. S. members of the armed forces and thanking them for “their continued sacrifices that they are making in serving our country overseas, and away from family.”

source : news.yahoo.com

Enchiladas and turkey and family: A Bush Christmas

President Bush is spending Christmas at Camp David with his family–the 12th time he and Mrs. Bush have been there for Christmas. They have spent the past eight years there as president and First Lady, and from 1989 to 1992, joined President George W. Bush. Their Christmas Eve menu this time consisted of enchiladas and tamales, rice and pinto beans and guacamole. Here’s Thursday’s lunch lineup:

Roast Turkey and Cornbread Dressing

Green Beans

Sweet Potatoes

Mashed Potatoes

Spinach Salad

Giblet Gravy

Cranberry Sauce

Rolls

Pumpkin Pie

Pecan Pie

source : news.yahoo.com

Coal for Christmas: Brooklyn man’s pardon revoked

WASHINGTON – The pardons President George W. Bush granted this week couldn’t have been better Christmas gifts if Santa himself had delivered them.

But a Brooklyn, N.Y., man, Isaac Robert Toussie, received the legal equivalent of a lump of coal.

Toussie, convicted of making false statements to the Housing and Urban Development Department and of mail fraud, was among 19 people pardoned Tuesday.

But after learning in news reports that Toussie’s father had donated tens of thousands of dollars to the Republican Party a few months ago, as well as other information, the White House issued an extraordinary statement Wednesday saying the president was reversing his decision on Toussie’s case.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said the decision to revoke the pardon — a step unheard of in recent memory — was “based on information that has subsequently come to light,” including the extent and nature of Toussie’s prior criminal offenses. She also said neither the White House counsel’s office nor the president had been aware of a political contribution by Toussie’s father that “might create an appearance of impropriety.”

“Given that, this was the prudent thing to do,” she said.

The new information came to the White House’s attention from news reports, Perino said.

A story in the New York Daily News said Toussie’s father, Robert, donated $28,500 to the national Republican Party in April — just months before Toussie’s pardon petition.

The counsel’s office generally doesn’t include vetting of political contributions in its reviews on such matters, as that would be “highly inappropriate on many levels,” she said. The White House decision on Toussie had come without a recommendation from the pardon attorney, Ronald L. Rodgers, as Toussie’s request for a pardon came less than five years after completion of his sentence, so that eliminated another step in the review process.

The Daily News story on Wednesday, and others in Newsday and on blogs, shed light on Toussie’s record. He pleaded guilty for lying to HUD and mail fraud, admitting that he falsified finances of prospective homebuyers seeking HUD mortgages. He was sentenced to five months in prison and five months’ house arrest, a $10,000 fine and no restitution, the Daily News reported.

In another case, Toussie pleaded guilty to having a friend send his local county a letter that falsely inflated property values.

The Daily News located a lawyer representing hundreds of ex-customers who have sued Toussie in federal court, accusing him of luring poor, minority homebuyers into buying overpriced homes with mortgages that had hidden costs.

The attorney, Peter E. Seidman, said Wednesday that news of the pardon was “gut-wrenching for his clients” and left him “baffled.”

“I am glad somebody at the White House woke up,” he said in an interview.

Maxine D. Wilson, 42, bought one of Toussie’s homes on Long Island in 1996. She later sued Toussie, claiming the house started to fall apart after she moved in in 1997. She said she was shocked when she learned Bush was going to pardon Toussie.

“I was angry at how money, power and influence seemed to trump justice,” she said. But on Wednesday, she said she felt “somebody paid attention. Somebody stepped back and made us feel equal.”

The Justice Department advises the president on who qualifies for pardons. Only people who have waited five years after their conviction or release from prison can apply for a pardon under the department’s guidelines. Criminals are required to begin serving time, or otherwise exhaust any appeals, before they can be considered for sentence commutation.

But the president can forgive people outside that process if he chooses. Under the Constitution, the president’s power to issue pardons is absolute and cannot be overruled — meaning he can forgive anyone he wants, at any time.

Perino said she did not know of another instance of a pardon reversal in “recent memory,” but that the White House couldn’t say for sure it never had happened before.

“The counsel to the president reviewed the application and believed, based on the information known to him at the time, that it was a meritorious application,” she said. Bush now believes the case should rest with the pardon attorney.

Bradford Berenson, an associate White House counsel during Bush’s first term and Isaac Toussie’s lawyer, said in a statement that his client remained confident the pardon attorney would grant his request.

“Isaac Toussie is deeply grateful that both the counsel to the president and the president himself found Mr. Toussie’s pardon application to have sufficient merit to be granted,” Berenson said. “Mr. Toussie looks forward to the pardon attorney’s expeditious review of the application.”

Berenson declined to elaborate further on the case and its developments.

Federal Election Commission records show a number of donations to Republicans this year by Robert Toussie and by a Laura Toussie who lists the same address. Between them, they gave $4,600 to Minnesota GOP Sen. Norm Coleman and another $4,600 to Oregon Republican Sen. Gordon Smith, all on Oct. 15. Coleman is locked in a still-undecided race against Democrat Al Franken, and Smith lost in November to Democrat Jeff Merkley.

On Oct. 30, Robert Toussie also gave $2,300 to GOP Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia.

His contribution to the Republican National Committee came as part of a fundraiser in March for GOP presidential candidate John McCain. Out of a total donation of $30,800 by Toussie, $2,300 went to McCain’s campaign and $28,500 went to the RNC.

Doug Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University and a close follower of presidential clemency decisions, said the White House decision strikes him as unprecedented, but he said it’s not inconceivable that it had happened in the past.

“It’s, at best, embarrassing. At worst, it’s an extraordinary example of this White House’s ability to bollix up one bit of presidential authority that he clearly has,” Berman said.

With the Toussie reversal, Bush has granted a total of 189 pardons and nine commutations. That’s fewer than half as many as Presidents Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan issued during their two-term tenures.

___

Associated Press writer Deb Riechmann in Washington and Adam Goldman in New York contributed to this story.

source : news.yahoo.com

Obama is most admired American: poll

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President-elect Barack Obama has replaced US President George W. Bush as the most admired man in America, according to a poll published Friday in the USA Today newspaper.

One-third of the 1,008 respondents surveyed named Obama as their first or second choice, with Bush falling to a distant second after seven years as the country’s most-admired man.

Thirty-two percent of respondents chose Obama against five percent for Bush. It was the first time a president-elect topped the poll since Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.

The poll was conducted over telephone between December 12 and 14.

The newspaper reported that the only higher support in the history of the survey was Bush’s 39 percent rating in 2001, just a few months after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Among men, John McCain — Obama’s defeated Republican rival for the presidency — ranked third and three others tied for fourth place: Pope Benedict XVI, the Reverend Billy Graham and former president Bill Clinton.

Hillary Clinton led the list of most-admired woman at 20 percent — a spot she’s held for 13 of the past 16 years.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who catapulted into the limelight after McCain named her Republican vice-presidential candidate, was a distant second at 11 percent.

Among women, the president-elect’s wife, Michelle Obama came in fifth place, following talk-show host Oprah Winfrey in third and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in fourth.

The Gallup polling organization has been conducting the phone survey, which has sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points, since 1948.

source : news.yahoo.com

Bush withdraws 1 of 19 pardons he issued Tuesday

WASHINGTON – President George W. Bush on Wednesday revoked a pardon he had granted only a day before — a step unheard of in recent memory — after learning in news reports of political contributions to Republicans by the man’s father and other information.

Bush pardoned 19 people on Tuesday, including Isaac Robert Toussie of Brooklyn, N.Y., who had been convicted of making false statements to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and of mail fraud. On Wednesday, the White House issued an extraordinary statement saying the president was reversing his decision in Toussie’s case.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said the new decision was “based on information that has subsequently come to light,” including on the extent and nature of Toussie’s prior criminal offenses. She also said that neither the White House counsel’s office nor the president had been aware of a political contribution by Toussie’s father that “might create an appearance of impropriety.”

“Given that, this was the prudent thing to do,” she said.

The new information came to the White House’s attention from news reports, Perino said.

A story in the New York Daily News said Toussie’s father, Robert, donated $28,500 to the national Republican Party in April. It came just months before Toussie’s pardon petition, the newspaper said.

The counsel’s office generally doesn’t include vetting of political contributions in its reviews on such matters, as that would be “highly inappropriate on many levels,” she said. The White House decision on Toussie had come without a recommendation from the pardon attorney, Ronald L. Rodgers, as Toussie’s request for a pardon came less than five years after completion of his sentence, so that eliminated another step in the review process.

The Justice Department advises the president on who qualifies for pardons. Only people who have waited five years after their conviction or release from prison can apply for a pardon under the department’s guidelines. Criminals are required to begin serving time, or otherwise exhaust any appeals, before they can be considered for sentence commutation.

But the president can forgive people outside that process if he chooses. Under the Constitution, the president’s power to issue pardons is absolute and cannot be overruled — meaning he can forgive anyone he wants, at any time.

Perino said she did not know of another instance of a pardon reversal in “recent memory,” but that the White House couldn’t say for sure it never had happened before.

“The counsel to the president reviewed the application and believed, based on the information known to him at the time, that it was a meritorious application,” she said. Bush now believes the case should rest with the pardon attorney.

The Daily News story on Wednesday, and another in Newsday and on blogs, shed light on Toussie’s record. He pleaded guilty for lying to HUD and mail fraud, admitting that he falsified finances of prospective homebuyers seeking HUD mortgages. He was sentenced to five months in prison and five months’ house arrest, a $10,000 fine and no restitution, the Daily News reported.

In another case, Toussie pleaded guilty to having a friend send his local county a letter that falsely inflated property values.

The Daily News also located a lawyer representing hundreds of ex-customers who have sued Toussie in federal court, accusing him of luring poor, minority homebuyers into buying overpriced homes with mortgages that had hidden costs.

The attorney, Peter E. Seidman, said Wednesday that news of the pardon was “gut wrenching for his clients” and left him “baffled.”

“I am glad somebody at the White House woke up,” he said in an interview.

Maxine D. Wilson, 42, bought one of Toussie’s homes on Long Island in 1996. She later sued Toussie, claiming the house started to fall apart after she moved in in 1997. She said she was shocked when she learned Bush was going to pardon Toussie.

“I was angry at how money, power and influence seemed to trump justice,” she said. But on Wednesday, she said, “I feel today that somebody paid attention. Somebody stepped back and made us feel equal.”

Federal Election Commission records show a number of donations to Republicans this year by Robert Toussie and by a Laura Toussie who lists the same address. Between them, they gave $4,600 to Minnesota GOP Sen. Norm Coleman and another $4,600 to Oregon Republican Sen. Gordon Smith, all on Oct. 15. Coleman is locked in a still-undecided race against Democrat Al Franken, and Smith lost in November to Democrat Jeff Merkley.

On Oct. 30, Robert Toussie also gave $2,300 to GOP Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia.

His contribution to the Republican National Committee came as part of a fundraiser in March for GOP presidential candidate John McCain. Out of a total donation of $30,800 by Toussie, $2,300 went to McCain’s campaign and $28,500 went to the RNC.

Doug Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University and a close follower of presidential clemency decisions, said the White House decision strikes him as unprecedented, but he said it’s not inconceivable that it had happened in the past.

“It’s, at best, embarrassing. At worst, it’s an extraordinary example of this White House’s ability to bollox up one bit of presidential authority that he clearly has,” Berman said.

Bradford Berenson, an associate White House counsel during Bush’s first term and Isaac Toussie’s lawyer, said in a statement that his client remained confident the pardon attorney would grant his request.

“Isaac Toussie is deeply grateful that both the counsel to the president and the president himself found Mr. Toussie’s pardon application to have sufficient merit to be granted,” Berenson said. “Mr. Toussie looks forward to the pardon attorney’s expeditious review of the application.”

Berenson declined to elaborate further on the case and its developments.

With the Toussie reversal, Bush has granted a total of 189 pardons and nine commutations. That’s fewer than half as many as Presidents Clinton or Reagan issued during their two-term tenures.

___

Associated Press writer Deb Riechmann in Washington and Adam Goldman in New York contributed to this story.

source : news.yahoo.com

Bush pardons 19, commutes 1 prison term

WASHINGTON – Before leaving for the holidays, President Bush on Tuesday commuted the prison sentence of a drug offender and granted 19 pardons, including one to a man who helped the Jewish resistance in the 1940s.

With this latest batch, which includes forgiveness for convictions ranging from gun and drug violations to bank and mail fraud, Bush has granted a total of 191 pardons and nine commutations. That’s fewer than half as many as Presidents Clinton or Reagan issued during their two terms.

Included in the latest list is Charles Winters, who is considered a hero in Israel.

Winters, who died in the 1980s in Florida, was in the airplane business after World War II. He bought up former military cargo planes and used them to transport fruit and other products. He later started helping his Jewish friends who were shipping arms to Jews trying to found their own state in the Middle East.

Winters, a Protestant from Boston, could fly his planes in and out of the region without interference from authorities. In 1948, three of his planes left Miami, picked up weapons in Azores and Czechoslovakia and then left the planes and arms in Palestine.

Winters was convicted of violating the Neutrality Act, fined $5,000 and sentenced to serve 18 months in prison. The act is designed to ensure that financial assistance and arms are not provided to parties in foreign conflicts where the U.S. has not taken sides.

Two others, Herman Greenspun and Al Schwimmer, also were convicted of violating the act, but they did not serve time. President Kennedy pardoned Greenspun in 1961. President Clinton pardoned Schwimmer in 2000.

Reginald Brown, an attorney who worked on the Winters pardon, said Bush’s pardon “rights a historical wrong and honors Charlie’s belief that the creation of the Jewish state was a moral imperative of his time. … Charlie Winters helped shape human history for the better.”

Film director Steven Spielberg wrote a letter to Bush appealing for a pardon for Winters.

“There are probably many unsung heroes of America and of Israel, but Charlie Winters is surely one of them,” wrote the director of “Schindler’s List” and other Oscar-winning movies. “While a pardon cannot make Charlie Winters whole, and regrettably he did not live to see it, it would be a fitting tribute to his memory and a great blessing to his family if this pardon is granted.”

The only other pardon granted posthumously in recent years was given to Henry O. Flipper, the first black graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Flipper was drummed out of the Army after white officers accused him of embezzling about $3,800 from commissary funds. Flipper initially discovered the funds missing from his custody and concealed their disappearance from superiors, hoping the money would return.

He was court-martialed, acquitted of embezzlement but convicted of conduct unbecoming an officer, and dishonorably discharged. Flipper went on to a successful civilian career as an engineer and expert in Spanish and Mexican land law. He wrote several books and worked as a special assistant to the U.S. interior secretary. In 1976, an Army board commuted Flipper’s dismissal to a good conduct discharge, concluding that his conviction and punishment were “unduly harsh and unjust.” In 1999, Clinton granted him a full pardon.

In addition to Winters, others granted pardons were:

_William Alvis III, of Flushing, Ohio. Possession of an unregistered firearm and cocaine distribution.

_John Allen Aregood of Riviera, Texas. Conspiracy to harbor and transport illegal aliens.

_Eric Charles Blanke of Parker, Colo. Counterfeiting.

_Steve Doyle Cavender of The Villages, Fla. Conspiring to import, possess, distribute and dispense marijuana.

_Marie Elena Eppens of Lynden, Wash. Conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute marijuana.

_Lydia Lee Ferguson of Sun City, Ariz. Conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute marijuana.

_Eduviges Duvi Gonzalez-Matsumura of Clovis, Calif. Aiding and abetting embezzlement of bank funds.

_George Clarence Greene Jr. of Gray, Ga. Mail fraud.

_James Won Hee Kang of South Barrington, Ill. Trafficking in counterfeit goods.

_Alan Stephen Maiss of Reno, Nev.

_Richard Harold Miller of Tallahassee, Fla. Conspiracy to defraud the United States.

_Delano Abraham Nixon of Neosho Rapids, Kan. Forging the endorsement on a U.S. Treasury check.

_John H. Overholt of Black Hawk, S.D. Concealment of information affecting Social Security benefits.

_Morris Keith Parker of Georgetown, S.C.

_Robert Truman Reece of Redondo Beach, Calif.

_Donald Edward Roessler of Harrison, Ohio. Embezzlement of mail matter.

_Issac Robert Toussie of Brooklyn, N.Y. False statements to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and mail fraud.

_David Lane Woolsey of St. George, Utah. Aiding and abetting violation of the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.

Bush also commuted the prison sentence of Reed Raymond Prior of Des Moines, Iowa.

Prior was convicted of possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute. He was sentenced in 1996 in the Southern District of Iowa to life in prison with 10 years of supervised release. His prison sentence is now set to expire on Feb. 23, 2009, but the terms of the commutation leave intact and in effect the 10 years of supervised release with all its conditions.

source : news.yahoo.com

‘Bush Shoe’ gives a Turk firm footing in the market

ISTANBUL: When a pair of black leather oxfords hurled at President Bush in Baghdad produced a gasp heard around the world, a Turkish cobbler had a different reaction: They were his shoes.

“We have been producing that specific style, which I personally designed, for 10 years, so I couldn’t have missed it, no way,” said Ramazan Baydan, a shoemaker in Istanbul. “As a shoemaker, you understand.”

Although his assertion has been impossible to verify — cobblers from Lebanon, China and Iraq have also staked claims to what is quickly becoming some of the most famous footwear in the world — orders for Baydan’s shoes, formerly known as Ducati Model 271 and since renamed “The Bush Shoe,” have poured in from around the world.

A new run of 15,000 pairs, destined for Iraq, went into production on Thursday, he said. A British distributor has asked to become the Baydan Shoe Company’s European sales representative, with a first order of 95,000 pairs, and an American company has placed an order for 18,000 pairs. Four distributors are competing to represent the company in Iraq, where Baydan sold 19,000 pairs of this model for about $40 each last year.

Five thousand posters advertising the shoes, on their way to the Middle East and Turkey, proclaim “Goodbye Bush, Welcome Democracy” in Turkish, English and Arabic.

source : jang.com.pk

No hard feelings” over shoe incident, White House

WASHINGTON: The White House declared there were ‘no hard feelings’ over the shoe assault on President George W Bush during a weekend trip to Baghdad, and said it was up to the Iraqi government to determine if the assailant should be punished.

‘The president harbours no hard feelings about the incident,’ White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

‘Obviously, he was very angry,’ Perino said of Montasser al- Zaidi, the reporter who is due to appear in court for the incident on Wednesday.

‘The president believes that Iraq is a sovereign country, a democratic country, and they will have a process that they follow on this,’ Perino said.

source : jang.com.pk

Iraqi who threw shoes at George Bush hailed as hero

The Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at President Bush during his farewell visit to Baghdad was hailed a hero in the Arab world today as thousands marched to demand his release.

Muntazer al-Zaidi tore off his shoes and flung them at Mr Bush as he stood beside Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, during a press conference in Baghdad’s Green Zone yesterday.

“This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq,” he shouted before being overpowered by security guards and bundled out of the room.

Mr Bush tried to laugh off the row – he told reporters aboard Air Force One last night that he had seen his assailant’s “sole” and was collecting other shoe jokes. But al-Zaidi’s friends and employers expressed concern for his fate given the embarrassment his action had caused the Government.

Al-Zaidi worked for the independent Iraqi television station al-Baghdadia, which is based in Cairo. Colleagues said that he “detested America” and had been planning such an attack for months.

The Iraqi government however branded al-Zaidi’s actions as “shameful” and demanded an apology from his Cairo-based employer, which in turn called for his immediate release from custody.

“Al-Baghdadia television demands that the Iraqi authorities immediately release their stringer Muntazer al-Zaidi, in line with the democracy and freedom of expression that the American authorities promised the Iraqi people,” it said in a statement. “Any measures against Muntazer will be considered the acts of a dictatorial regime.”

The journalist’s exact whereabouts were unclear, although one Iraqi official said that he was being held for questioning at Mr al-Maliki’s residence, his shoes having been kept as evidence.

Throwing shoes is particularly insulting in the Middle East, as was shown when crowds of Iraqis used their shoes to whack a toppled statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad after the 2003 invasion.

Al-Zaidi is a Shia Muslim in his late 20s who was kidnapped by an unknown insurgent group in November 2007 and held for more than two days. He said at the time that the kidnappers had beaten him until he lost consciousness, and used his necktie to blindfold him and his shoelaces to tie his hands together.

Among those leaping up to support al-Zaidi today was Khalil al-Dulaimi, Saddam’s former lawyer, who said he was forming a team to defend the journalist and that around 200 lawyers, including Americans, had offered their services for free. “It was the least thing for an Iraqi to do to Bush, the tyrant criminal who has killed two million people in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.

There were demonstrations in support of al-Zaidi in Sadr City, the bastion of the radical anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, where protesters threw shoes at passing US military vehicles. The footwear was also flying In the holy Shia city of Najaf, where crowds chanted “Down with America”.

“All US soldiers who have used their shoes to humiliate Iraqis should be brought to justice, along with their US superiors, including Bush,” said Ali Qeisi, head of a Jordan-based Iraqi rights group.

“The flying shoe speaks more for Arab public opinion than all the despots/puppets that Bush meets with during his travels in the Middle East,” said Asad Abu Khalil, a popular Lebanese-American blogger and professor at Stanislaus University in California on his website at angryarab.blogspot.com.

An Iraqi lawyer said that al-Zaidi risked a miminum of two years in prison if he is prosecuted for insulting a visiting head of state, but could face a 15-year term if he is charged with attempted murder.

In Cairo, Muzhir al-Khafaji, programming director for the television channel, described Zaidi as a“proud Arab and an open-minded man,” saying he had worked at Al-Baghdadia for three years. “We fear for his safety,” he said.

Bush: Retreat in Iraq would have meant failure

BAGHDAD – On an Iraq trip shrouded in secrecy and marred by dissent, President George W. Bush on Sunday hailed progress in the war that defines his presidency and got a size-10 reminder of his unpopularity when a man hurled two shoes at him during a news conference.

“This is the end!” shouted the protester, later identified as Muntadar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, an Iraqi-owned station based in Cairo, Egypt.

Bush ducked both shoes as they whizzed past his head and landed with a thud against the wall behind him.

“All I can report,” Bush joked later, “is a size 10.”

The U.S. president visited the Iraqi capital just 37 days before he hands the war off to President-elect Barack Obama, who has pledged to end it. The president wanted to highlight a drop in violence in a nation still riven by ethnic strife and to celebrate a recent U.S.-Iraq security agreement, which calls for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011.

In many ways, the unannounced trip was a victory lap without a clear victory. Nearly 150,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq fighting a war that is intensely disliked across the globe. More than 4,209 members of the U.S. military have died in the conflict, which has cost U.S. taxpayers $576 billion since it began five years and nine months ago.

Polls show most Americans believe the U.S. erred in invading Iraq in 2003. Bush ordered the nation into war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq while citing intelligence claiming the Mideast nation harbored weapons of mass destruction. The weapons were never found, the intelligence was discredited, Bush’s credibility with U.S. voters plummeted and Saddam was captured and executed.

“There is still more work to be done,” Bush said after his meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, adding that the security pact puts Iraq on solid footing.

“The war is not over,” Bush said, adding that “it is decisively on it’s way to being won.”

It was at that point the journalist stood up and threw a shoe. Bush ducked, and it narrowly missed his head. The second shoe came quickly, and Bush ducked again while several Iraqis grabbed the man and dragged him to the floor.

In Iraqi culture, throwing shoes at someone is a sign of contempt. Iraqis whacked a statue of Saddam Hussein with their shoes after U.S. marines toppled it to the ground after the 2003 invasion.

Bush brushed off the incident, comparing it political protests at home.

“So what if I guy threw his shoe at me?” he said.

For Bush, the war is the issue around which both he and the country defined his two terms in office. He saw the invasion and continuing fight as a necessary action to protect Americans and fight terrorism. Though his decision won support at first, the public now has largely decided that the U.S. needs to get out of Iraq.

In the news conference with al-Maliki, the U.S. president applauded security gains in Iraq and said that just two years ago “such an agreement seemed impossible.”

“There is hope in the eyes of Iraq’s young,” Bush said. “This is the future of what we’ve been fighting for.”

Said al-Maliki: “Today, Iraq is moving forward in every field.”

Air Force One, the president’s distinctive powder blue-and-white jetliner, landed at Baghdad International Airport in the afternoon local time after a secretive Saturday night departure from Washington. In a sign of security gains in this war zone, Bush received a formal arrival ceremony — a flourish absent in his three earlier trips.

Bush soon began a rapid-fire series of meetings with top Iraqi leaders.

He met first with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and the country’s two vice presidents, Tariq al-Hashemi and Adel Abdul-Mahdi, at the ornate, marble-floored Salam Palace along the shores of the Tigris River. Defending the war, Bush said, “The work hasn’t been easy, but it has been necessary for American security, Iraqi hope and world peace.”

Later, Bush’s motorcade pulled out the heavily fortified Green Zone and crossed over the Tigris so he could meet al-Maliki at the prime minister’s palace. A huge orange moon hung low over the horizon as Bush’s was ferried quickly through the city.

The two leaders sat down together for probably the last time in person in these roles. They signed ceremonial copy of the security agreement. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said the trip proved that the U.S.-Iraq relationship was changing “with Iraqis rightfully exercising greater sovereignty” and the U.S. “in an increasingly subordinate role.”

The Bush administration and even White House critics credit last year’s military buildup with the security gains in Iraq. Last month, attacks fell to the lowest monthly level since the war began in 2003. Still, it’s unclear what will happen when the U.S. troops leave. While violence has slowed in Iraq, attacks continue, especially in the north. At least 55 people were killed Thursday in a suicide bombing in a restaurant near Kirkuk.

It was Bush’s last trip to the war zone before Obama takes office Jan. 20. Obama won an election largely viewed as a referendum on Bush, who has endured low approval ratings because of the war and more recently, the U.S. recession.

Obama, a Democrat, has promised he will bring all U.S. combat troops back home from Iraq a little over a year into his term, as long as commanders agree a withdrawal would not endanger American personnel or Iraq’s security. Obama has said that on his first day as president, he will summon the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the White House and give them a new mission: responsibly ending the war.

Obama has said the drawdown in Iraq would allow him to shift troops and bolster the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. Commanders there want at least 20,000 more forces, but cannot get them unless some leave Iraq.

The trip was conducted under heavy security and a strict cloak of secrecy. People who made the 10 1/2-hour trip with the president agreed to tell almost no one about the plans, and the White House released false schedules detailing activities planned for Bush in Washington on Sunday.

The new U.S.-Iraqi security pact, which goes into effect next month, replaces a U.N. mandate that gives the U.S.-led coalition broad powers to conduct military operations and detain people without charge if they were believed to pose a security threat. The bilateral agreement changes some of those terms and calls for all American troops to be withdrawn by the end of 2011, in two stages.

The first stage begins next year, when U.S. troops pull back from Baghdad and other Iraqi cities by the end of June.

Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Saturday that even after that summer deadline, some U.S. troops will remain in Iraqi cities.

Bush, Maliki sign security deal

BAGHDAD: US President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Sunday signed a security accord which calls for American troops to pull out of Iraq by the end of 2011.

The two leaders, in a symbolic ceremony, added their names to the accord which was officially signed on November 17 by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and US ambassador Ryan Crocker.

The signing was held at Maliki’s private office in the highly-fortified Green Zone of central Baghdad that houses the Iraqi government and US and British embassies.

Bush arrives in Iraq on farewell visit

WASHINGTON: US President George W. Bush began a farewell to Iraq Sunday, the country he ordered invaded in 2003, according to the White House.

The White House said Bush had come to meet Iraqi leaders, thank the troops and celebrate a new security agreement.

This is Bush’s fourth visit to Iraq since US-led troops toppled the regime of president Saddam Hussein in April 2003.

The visit comes after Iraq approved a status of forces agreement with the United States, which calls for the withdrawal of all US troops by the end of 2011.

Bush greets Pakistan nation on Eid-ul-Azha

WASHINGTON: US President George W. Bush has greeted the entire Pakistan nation on the eve of Eid-ul-Azha.

In a message sent to prime minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, the US president has expressed kind sentiments on behalf of the American nation.

The US president in his message to Gilani said that we under the spirit of Eid-ul-Azha can work together for peace and freedom in the whole world.

President Bush in his message prayed for a better future for the Pakistan people.