Election Sweep Boosts Mubarak

But questionable win by the ruling party could lead to more instability in Egypt.

by Sarah A. Topol
Newsweek
December 01, 2010

Senior officials of Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party at a press conference in Cairo on Wednesday.

With the results of Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Egypt, the regime of President Hosni Mubarak sent a powerful message that it will brook no dissent as the country moves toward a potential presidential transition as early as next year. By sweeping almost all the seats, Mubarak’s National Democratic Party paved the way for the octogenarian to secure yet another term as head of state—or perhaps install his son, Gamal, as president.

But while the results may strengthen America’s strongest ally in the region in the short term, the regime’s ongoing heavy-handed tactics and supine parliament could eventually undermine its grip on power. The government’s purported embrace of democracy—even as it continues to shore up its own power—is likely to be further exposed as a ruse, with returns giving the NDP 209 of 221 seats and the country’s two main opposition groups, citing widespread fraud, pulling out of the next round.

“The opposition withdrawal will deprive these elections of whatever shred of legitimacy they had,” Michele Dunne, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told NEWSWEEK. “This election will feed the growing tendency of the opposition to refuse to participate in a political game they see as unfair and will feed tendencies to call for wholesale changes in the system.”

According to Egypt’s High Election Commission, the country’s largest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, won no seats in the first round of voting, not exactly a surprise to the group. The Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that’s officially banned, holds 20 percent of seats in the current People’s Assembly, the lower house of Parliament. International and domestic rights groups slammed the elections for mass rigging, procedural violations, voter intimidation, and scattered violence, and said they were far worse than the last vote in 2005. Amnesty International reported at least eight people were killed.

The regime, however, congratulated itself on a job well done. “The elections as a whole were conducted properly and the results announced earlier reflected the will of the Egyptian electorate,” commission spokesman Sameh al-Kashef said in a statement.

But the Brotherhood, whose slate runs as independents, has announced that its remaining 26 candidates will not stand in a Dec. 5 run-off, required for districts where no candidate received an absolute majority. Egypt’s second-largest party, the secular Wafd, stated that it also is withdrawing. Wafd won two seats outright in the first round, according to the Associated Press—the commission has yet to announce official tallies—and holds a handful of seats in the current Assembly.

Even without the near landslide, Mubarak has had a compliant legislature, currently dominated by the NDP, that should position him well in the run-up to presidential elections scheduled for September 2011. “It sets the stage for a façade presidential election between whoever the NDP candidate might be—the father or the son—and a few candidates who are supposedly opposition,” says Samer Shehata, assistant professor of Arab politics at Georgetown University.

Mubarak, 82, has ruled Egypt with an iron fist—under a state of emergency decreed after the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981—for almost three decades. He has not yet confirmed that he will run for a sixth term. The ailing leader is rumored to be setting the stage for his son, who also is unpopular, to succeed him.

Over the years, the country has become ever more disillusioned with politics. “Egyptians, if anything, are further convinced of the fact that elections are neither free nor fair and the regime doesn’t give a damn about voting or about any of these things that are supposedly important to democracy,” says Shehata, who was in the northern port city of Alexandria on Election Day. The government has relied on coercion to keep power and maintain stability, but analysts say that is not sustainable. “That works, but will it work forever?” asks Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who sees repression as a “feedback loop” for citizen fury. “The regime takes ever-stronger measures against potential sources of instability, which only increases the possibilities of instability.”

And Egypt does not lack for potential flash points: simmering sectarian tensions, rising food prices, growing economic disparity, a media crackdown, and a citizenry increasingly fed up with police brutality. “Those are the kinds of issues that have the potential to mobilize dissent on a much larger scale. And then if you have a political leadership in place in the presidency and in the Parliament that’s not considered to really enjoy legal and constitutional legitimacy, I think that’s just another risk factor in the situation,” says Dunne.

The official turnout for Sunday’s election was purported to be 35 percent, 10 percent higher than in 2005. But around Cairo, voting booths were nearly empty, and local groups estimated the turnout at about 10 percent. “They [Egyptians] are sure that nothing will change, so why would they even spend five minutes voting?” said Bahey el Din Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies. “It has become very risky to participate in public elections.” Indeed, Egyptian elections have become notorious for the presence of gangs of beefy young men who intimidate voters at polling stations. “I never vote because of the thugs; they scare me. You have to hire your own thugs if you want to vote,” said Mohamed Metwalli, a poet and journalist.

The U.S. State Department issued a statement Monday voicing “dismay” and “disappointment” about the elections. But the comments rang hollow in light of the latest WikiLeaks revelations, which show the degree to which Washington does business with, and even props up, undemocratic Middle East regimes, including Mubarak’s. The published cables highlight America’s reliance on Egypt as a sounding board and partner on regional issues, from Iraq to Israel. That relationship suggests the U.S. is not necessarily prepared to ramp up pressure on Mubarak to increase democracy.

For now, the regime’s tactics are unlikely to bring many people into the streets—although small riots around the country did break out Monday. “With each unhappy encounter with the state, people who would be willing to work within the established rules of the game decide they have no option,” says Cook. He noted that in the 1990s Islamic insurgency groups capitalized on anger against the government to stage terrorist attacks. “You can beat the Muslim Brotherhood up and they’ll continue to stand, [but] you’ll have offshoots of the Brotherhood potentially who’ll want to shoot back.”

The biggest fear now is a deepening of disaffection in a country that has already seen protest over wages, food prices, and police brutality. In a volatile region where conflict is always latent, anything can happen. “Egyptians’ expectations are rising, and they’re less willing to accept what they accepted in the past,” says Dunne. “I’m just not sure it’s going to work on a long-term basis for the Egyptian regime to continue to play by the old rules of vote rigging and exclusion of the opposition.”

Why is the U.S. afraid of Egypt?

Editorial
The Washington Post
Saturday, December 4, 2010; 6:21 PM

EGYPTIAN AND international observers were expecting last weekend's parliamentary elections to be afflicted with fraud and government-sponsored violence. As it turned out, they were mildly surprised - by just how blatant and pervasive the rigging was. The regime's thugs refused to let some voters enter the polls; the government drove away even those observers and candidate representatives who held official accreditation. It stuffed ballot boxes so universally that not a single candidate of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood won in the first round. By way of contrast, candidates of the Muslim Brotherhood won about 20 percent of the seats in the 2005 parliamentary vote, even though it, too, was marked by fraud and violence.

The verdict on the election by Egyptian and international groups was unanimous: It was a clear step away from democracy or even limited political reform, and an invitation to radicalization by the growing opposition. By retrenching in autocracy, 82-year-old President Hosni Mubarak is endangering the stability of Egypt - even as his poor health casts doubt on how long he can remain in office.

Given those facts, Egyptians and concerned Americans eagerly waited on Monday to learn the reaction of the Obama administration to the electoral travesty. And waited. The State Department failed to produce a statement until 7:20 p.m.; the White House was silent until Tuesday. What finally emerged were two timid and painstakingly balanced comments, attributed not to President Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, or even to their principal spokesmen, but to the spokesman of the National Security Council and "the office of the spokesman" at State.

Egypt's elections, they said, are "worrying"; they "give cause for concern." Officials were "dismayed" by "reports of election day interference and intimidation by security forces." But "the United States has a long-standing partnership" with the government of Egypt. When State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley was asked on Tuesday what would be the administration's "next step," he said only that "we will continue to raise our concerns where appropriate." Cairo's response was far more direct: it bluntly dismissed "unacceptable meddling in Egyptian internal affairs."

Other countries watching this exchange will marvel at Washington's weakness. A nominal U.S. ally that receives $1.5 billion in annual aid makes a mockery of democratic rights -- and is answered with mild and low-level expressions of regret and promises to do nothing other than "raise concerns where appropriate." The Obama administration appears to be thoroughly intimidated by Hosni Mubarak - when what it ought to be worried about is who or what will succeed him.

Sarah Palin is wrong about John F. Kennedy, religion and politics

By Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
Friday, December 3, 2010; 6:00 PM

Sarah Palin has found a new opponent to debate: John F. Kennedy.

In her new book, "America by Heart," Palin objects to my uncle's famous 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, in which he challenged the ministers - and the country - to judge him, a Catholic presidential candidate, by his views rather than his faith. "Contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president," Kennedy said. "I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic."

Palin writes that when she was growing up, she was taught that Kennedy's speech had "succeeded in the best possible way: It reconciled public service and religion without compromising either." Now, however, she says she has revisited the speech and changed her mind. She finds it "defensive . . . in tone and content" and is upset that Kennedy, rather than presenting a reconciliation of his private faith and his public role, had instead offered an "unequivocal divorce of the two."

Palin's argument seems to challenge a great American tradition, enshrined in the Constitution, stipulating that there be no religious test for public office. A careful reading of her book leads me to conclude that Palin wishes for precisely such a test. And she seems to think that she, and those who think like her, are qualified to judge who would pass and who would not.

If there is no religious test, then there is no need for a candidate's religious affiliation to be "reconciled." My uncle urged that religion be private, removed from politics, because he feared that making faith an arena for public contention would lead American politics into ill-disguised religious warfare, with candidates tempted to use faith to manipulate voters and demean their opponents.

Kennedy cited Thomas Jefferson to argue that, as part of the American tradition, it was essential to keep any semblance of a religious test out of the political realm. Best to judge candidates on their public records, their positions on war and peace, jobs, poverty, and health care. No one, Kennedy pointed out, asked those who died at the Alamo which church they belonged to.

But Palin insists on evaluating and acting as an authority on candidates' faith. She faults Kennedy for not "telling the country how his faith had enriched him." With that line, she proceeds down a path fraught with danger - precisely the path my uncle warned against when he said that a president's religious views should be "neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office."

After all, a candidate's faith will matter most to those who believe that they have the right to serve as arbiters of that faith. Is it worthy? Is it deep? Is it reflected in a certain ideology?

Palin further criticizes Kennedy because, "rather than spelling out how faith groups had provided life-changing services and education to millions of Americans, he repeatedly objected to any government assistance to religious schools." She does not seem to appreciate that Kennedy was courageous in arguing that government funds should not be used in parochial schools, despite the temptation to please his constituents. Many Catholics would have liked the money. But he wisely thought that the use of public dollars in places where nuns explicitly proselytized would be unconstitutional. Tax money should not be used to persuade someone to join a religion.

As a contrast to Kennedy's speech, Palin cites former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's remarks during the 2008 Republican primary campaign, in which he spoke publicly of "how my own faith would inform my presidency, if I were elected." After paying lip service to the separation of church and state, Romney condemned unnamed enemies "intent on establishing a new religion in America - the religion of secularism."

"There is one fundamental question about which I am often asked," Romney said. "What do I believe about Jesus Christ?" Romney, of course, is a Mormon. He answered the question, proclaiming that "Jesus Christ is the son of God."

Palin praises Romney for delivering a "thoughtful speech that eloquently and correctly described the role of faith in American public life." But if there should be no religious test in politics, then why should a candidate feel compelled to respond to misplaced questions about his belief in Jesus?

When George Romney, Mitt Romney's father, was a presidential candidate in 1968, he felt no such compulsion. Respect for the Constitution and the founders' belief in the separation of church and state suggests that those kinds of questions should not play a role in political campaigns.

Palin contends that Kennedy sought to "run away from religion." The truth is that my uncle knew quite well that what made America so special was its revolutionary assertion of freedom of religion. No nation on Earth had ever framed in law that faith should be of no interest to government officials. For centuries, European authorities had murdered and tortured those whose religious beliefs differed from their own.

To demand that citizens display their religious beliefs attacks the very foundation of our nation and undermines the precise reason that America is exceptional.

Palin's book makes clear just how dangerous her proposed path can be. Not only does she want people to reveal their beliefs, but she wants to sit in judgment of them if their views don't match her own. For instance, she criticizes Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), a Democrat and a faithful Catholic, for "talking the (God) talk but not walking the walk."

Who is Palin to say what God's "walk" is? Who anointed her our grand inquisitor?

This is a woman who also praises Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural, even though Lincoln explicitly declared, "But let us judge not that we not be judged." The problem for those setting up a free-floating tribunal to evaluate faith is that, contrary to Lincoln, they are installing themselves as judges who can look into others' souls and assess their worthiness.

Kennedy did not and would not do that, but not because he was indifferent to faith. In fact, unlike Romney or Palin, in fealty to both his faith and the Constitution, he promised on that day in Houston that he would resign if his religion ever interfered with his duty as president.

My uncle was a man who had his faith tested. His brother and brother-in-law were killed in World War II, and his sister died in a plane crash soon after the war. He suffered from painful injuries inflicted during his Navy service when his PT boat was cut in two by a Japanese destroyer. His God did not make life easy but did require a commitment to justice.

America's first and only Catholic president referred to God three times in his inaugural address and invoked the Bible's command to care for poor and the sick. Later in his presidency, he said, unequivocally, about civil rights: "We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution."

Faith runs as a deep current through my family. Faith inspired my uncles' and my father's dedication to justice. My father, Robert F. Kennedy, on returning from apartheid-era South Africa in 1966, wrote a magazine article titled "Suppose God Is Black." And my uncle Teddy fought for health care for all Americans, even if in her book Palin presumes to judge that he took positions "directly at odds with his Catholic faith."

Teddy Kennedy believed that his stands were at one with his faith. He did disagree with the Roman Catholic hierarchy at times. But as we have seen, the hierarchy's positions can change, and in our church, we have an obligation to help bring about those changes. That may not be Palin's theology, but the glory of America is its support for those who would disagree - even on the most difficult and personal matters, such as religion.

John F. Kennedy knew that tearing down the wall separating church and state would tempt us toward self-righteousness and contempt for others. That is one reason he delivered his Houston speech.

Palin, for her part, argues that "morality itself cannot be sustained without the support of religious beliefs." That statement amounts to a wholesale attack on countless Americans, and no study or reasonable argument I have seen or heard would support such a blanket condemnation. For a person who claims to admire Lincoln, Palin curiously ignores his injunction that Americans, even those engaged in a Civil War, show "malice toward none, with charity for all."

Palin fails to understand the genius of our nation. The United States is one of the most vibrant religious countries on Earth precisely because of its religious freedom. When power and faith are entwined, faith loses. Power tends to obfuscate, corrupt and focus on temporal rather than eternal purposes.

Somehow Palin misses this. Perhaps she didn't read the full Houston speech; she certainly doesn't know it by heart. Or she may be appealing to a religious right that really seeks secular power. I don't know.

I am certain, however, that no American political leader should cavalierly - or out of political calculation - dismiss the hard-won ideal of religious freedom that is among our country's greatest gifts to the world. As John F. Kennedy said in Houston, that is the "kind of America I believe in."

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is a former lieutenant governor of Maryland and the author of "Failing America's Faithful: How Today's Churches Are Mixing God With Politics and Losing Their Way."

A resurgent Syria alarms U.S., Israel

By Janine Zacharia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 3, 2010; 10:19 PM

IN BEIRUT Syria's fresh interference in Lebanon and its increasingly sophisticated weapons shipments to Hezbollah have alarmed American officials and prompted Israel's military to consider a strike against a Syrian weapons depot that supplies the Lebanese militia group, U.S. and Israeli officials say.

The evidence of a resurgence by Syria and its deepening influence across the region has frustrated U.S. officials who sought to change Syrian behavior. But the Obama administration has so far failed through its policy of engagement to persuade the country to abandon its support for Hezbollah and sever its alliance with Iran.

"Syria's behavior has not met our hopes and expectations over the past 20 months and Syria's actions have not met its international obligations," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the Lebanese daily an-Nahar on Nov. 10. "Syria can still choose another path and we hope that it does."

Israel has complained to the United Nations about long-range missiles and shorter-range rockets that are flowing freely from camps inside Syria to a transit site along the Syrian border with Lebanon and on to Hezbollah. But Israel has so far hesitated to take military action out of concern that such a strike could touch off a conflict even bloodier than the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, said an Israeli military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

In the past, U.S. interest in Syria was mostly limited to coaxing it to make peace with Israel and to end its rule in Lebanon. But now it is increasingly clear that Syria - with its pivotal alliance with Iran and its strategic borders with Israel, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq - has the ability to shape regional developments on a broader scale.
Unsuccessful U.S. efforts

The Obama administration's efforts at dialogue with Syria have done little to stop the flow of weapons, end Syria's practice of sheltering Palestinian leaders of militant groups, or counter Syria's interference in Lebanon, which has undermined the U.S. effort to promote Lebanese independence from external actors.

Although President Obama has named a new ambassador to Syria, his appointment is being held up on Capitol Hill by senators who say they do not want to send a new envoy to Damascus until the United States better articulates how having an ambassador there would help achieve its goals.

Without a permanent top diplomat in the Syrian capital, U.S. envoys - including Middle East peace mediator George J. Mitchell, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, Jeffrey D. Feltman, and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) - have flown to Damascus to try to persuade Syrian leaders to take steps to improve relations with the United States, which hit a low point in 2005.

That year, President George W. Bush, in the wake of Saddam Hussein's ouster in Iraq, warned Syria to stop the flow of foreign fighters across its border into Iraq, prompting fears in Damascus of a U.S. effort to topple Syria's leadership. Massive anti-Syrian demonstrations in Beirut forced Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon. Syria's relations with regional allies soured.

Today, there are clear signs that the country has emerged stronger than before.

While the United States maintains sanctions against Syria, American allies such as India and Turkey have inked trade deals with Damascus in recent months that undercut the American effort.

Syria plays a role in Iraq. In September, a parade of Iraqi politicians flocked to Damascus seeking advice on forming a government.

And Syria's alliance with Iran remains strong, to the dismay of U.S. officials who, as the WikiLeaks cables show, had hoped to drive a wedge between Syria and Iran, in part to stop the flow of weapons to Hezbollah. But Syria's support of Hezbollah remains robust.
Flow of weapons

Israeli surveillance tracks the nighttime missile shipments as Syrian personnel escort them from clandestine bases in Syria to the Lebanese border. At the swap area, the weapons are transferred to Lebanese trucks and driven into southern Lebanon and to Beirut, the Israeli military official said.

Asked about the likelihood of Israel striking at the border transfer area or one of the camps inside Syria, the military official said, "This is definitely one of the options Israel has. Of course any attack like this could lead to an escalation."

Persuading Syria to break its alliance with Hezbollah's chief patron, Iran, would be a key step toward ending the shipments.

But it is in Lebanon that Syria's regional resurgence has been felt most profoundly.

Hadi Mahfouz, a Lebanese government official and writer, says Syria is more effectively managing Lebanese affairs from afar than when it had 15,000 troops inside the country.

Wiam Wahab, a pro-Syrian Druze politician and former Lebanese cabinet minister, says Washington must resolve its differences with Syria if the United States wants to stymie Iran's influence.

Many Lebanese, especially those in the Christian and Sunni communities, still oppose any Syrian role in Lebanese affairs.

Lebanon's top security positions - the head of military intelligence and director of general security - are controlled by Syrian-approved appointees. The government can't make many major decisions without first consulting with Damascus. Lebanon's top leaders, including Prime Minister Saad Hariri, toe a pro-Syrian line.
Syria's supporters

But the clearest example of Syria's restored influence may be Walid Jumblatt. Five years ago, Jumblatt, a well-known Druze politician whose party holds swing votes in Lebanon's coalition government, marched with the pro-democracy March 14 movement against Syria's occupation. He now describes that period as a momentary lapse of sanity.

"I feel much more comfortable now. I'm back to my roots," Jumblatt said last month.

Jumblatt credits Syria with reestablishing order after the Lebanese civil war and suggests that Syria's military may need to take over again if Hezbollah is indicted by an international tribunal investigating the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri and sectarian strife arises.

"It seems that, well, we cannot govern ourselves by ourselves," Jumblatt said. "Lebanon is not a nation. It's a bunch of tribes."

Lebanon defence minister denies WikiLeaks cable

(AFP) – 12/3/2010

BEIRUT — Lebanese Defence Minister Elias Murr denied on Friday allegations in a diplomatic cable revealed by the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks that he gave advice to Israel in 2008 on how to get rid of Hezbollah, an aide said.

"The information posted by WikiLeaks is not complete and is not accurate," said Murr aide George Soulage. "The aim behind this is to sow discord in Lebanon."

Soulage said that while the minister did meet with Michele Sison, who was the US ambassador in 2008, a cable published in Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar on Thursday did not accurately reflect the tenor of their talks.

"The cable does not reflect the truth about what happened during the meeting and it has no value," he told AFP.

According to the cable, Murr expressed concern during his March 10, 2008 meeting with Sison that another war between Hezbollah and Israel was imminent.

Israel attacked Lebanon in the summer of 2006 after guerrillas from the Shiite militant party captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid. The war killed 1,200 Lebanese, mainly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

"Making clear that he was not responsible for passing messages to Israel, Murr told us that Israel would do well to avoid two things when it comes for Hezbollah," the cable read.

"One, it must not touch the Blue Line or the UNSCR 1701 areas as this will keep Hezbollah out of these areas," said the memo, referring to the border region in southern Lebanon patrolled by UN peacekeepers.

"Two, Israel cannot bomb bridges and infrastructure in the Christian areas," Murr is cited as saying.

The cable adds that, according to Murr, in the case of any new conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, "this war is not with Lebanon, it is with Hezbollah".

It said Murr had given "guidance to (army chief Michel) Sleiman that the Lebanese Armed Forces should not get involved 'when Israel comes'."

Sleiman was elected president in May 2008, ending a protracted crisis between the Western-backed government and a Hezbollah-led alliance.

Another cable published on the Al-Akhbar website quoted Christian leader Samir Geagea, a key member of Prime Minister Saad Hariri's "March 14" coalition, as telling US embassy officials in 2008 that the premier opposed boosting an independent Shiite leader to counter Hezbollah.

"Proposing that March 14 enlarge its reach, Geagea said he wanted to join forces with non-Hezbollah Shiites, and in particular, Ahmad Assaad, leader of Lebanon Intimaa ("Belonging"), an anti-Hezbollah 'third way Shiite' political movement," read the cable.

Geagea "cautioned that Saad is opposed to Assaad, in part because the Saudis (Saad's allies) do not want to be at loggerheads with Hezbollah."

Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah featured in several cables ranging from arms smuggling to who was behind the 2008 assassination of top commander Imad Mughnieh in Damascus.

One cable said "most observers" in a Hezbollah-led alliance accused Israel in the bombing that killed Mughnieh, but mid-level police officers told US embassy officials they thought it likely Syrian President Bashar al-Assad might be responsible for the assassination.

"Another theory in the Beirut rumor mill has it that the Saudis and the Hariri family collaborated with Syrian Sunni jihadis to deal a blow to the (Hezbollah-led) opposition and their allies Syria and Iran," read the cable.

Another leaked cable, originating in Dubai, quoted an Iranian source as saying the Iranian Red Crescent was used as a cover to smuggle arms as well as members of the elite Revolutionary Guard into Lebanon during the 2006 war.

WikiLeaks has also published cables revealing a US-British clash over the use of a Cyprus air base for US spying missions to track militants in Lebanon.

Government reports violations of limits on spying aimed at U.S. citizens

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 3, 2010; 12:41 AM

The federal government has repeatedly violated legal limits governing the surveillance of U.S. citizens, according to previously secret internal documents obtained through a court battle by the American Civil Liberties Union.

In releasing 900 pages of documents, U.S. government agencies refused to say how many Americans' telephone, e-mail or other communications have been intercepted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - or FISA - Amendments Act of 2008, or to discuss any specific abuses, the ACLU said. Most of the documents were heavily redacted.

However, semiannual internal oversight reports by the offices of the attorney general and director of national intelligence identify ongoing breaches of legal requirements that limit when Americans are targeted and minimize the amount of data collected.

The documents note that although oversight teams did not find evidence of "intentional or willful attempts to violate or circumvent the law . . . certain types of compliance incidents continue to occur," as a March 2009 report stated.

The unredacted portions of the reports refer only elliptically to what those actions were, but the March 2009 report stated that "information collected as a result of these incidents has been or is being purged from data repositories."

All three reports released so far note that the number of violations "remains small, particularly when compared with the total amount of activity." However, as some variously put it, "each [incident] - individually or collectively - may be indicative of patterns, trends, or underlying causes, that might have broader implications." and underscore "the need for continued focus on measures to address underlying causes." The most recent report was issued in May.

In a statement Thursday, the ACLU said that violations of the FISA Amendments Act's "targeting and minimization procedures . . . likely means that citizens and residents' communications were either being improperly collected or 'targeted' or improperly retained and disseminated." The ACLU has posted the documents on its Web site.

A spokesmen for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper did not immediately comment on the ACLU statement.

In an e-mailed statement late Thursday, a spokesman for Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., Dean Boyd, said the new law "put in place unprecedented oversight measures, reporting requirements and safeguards to protect privacy and civil liberties," and that the reports cited by the ACLU were the product of "rigorous oversight" by the Justice Department and intelligence community. "In short, foreign intelligence surveillance is today carefully regulated by a combination of legislative, judicial, and executive-branch checks and balances designed to ensure strong and scrupulous protection of both national security and civil liberties," Boyd's e-mail said.

Melissa Goodman, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, said, "It is imperative that there be more public disclosure about the FAA [FISA Amendments Act] violations described in these documents . . . as Congress begins to debate whether the FAA should expire or be amended in advance of its 2012 sunset."

Congress passed FISA in 1978 to prevent Americans' communications from being tapped without a warrant. Lawmakers amended the law in 2008 to broaden and clarify legal authorities after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and advances in Internet communications prompted fresh concerns over expanded surveillance powers.

The ACLU, human rights activists and other parties sued, charging that the new law violates the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches. A U.S. district judge tossed out the case, which remains on appeal, and the ACLU has pursued a related Freedom of Information Act request.

Background - Danziger Bridge

ProPublica
http://www.propublica.org/nola/case/topic/case-six

New Orleans police officers responded to an emergency call near Danziger Bridge on Sept. 4, 2005. They opened fire on a group of civilians, injuring four and killing two.

The autopsy reports show that Ronald Madison, 40, was shot once in the shoulder and five times in the back, while 17-year-old James Brissette was killed by seven gunshots.

The survivors were seriously injured: Susan Bartholomew lost her right arm as a result of the gunfire; Lesha Bartholomew suffered four gunshot wounds; Leonard Bartholomew was shot three times; and Jose Holmes Jr. had to have a colostomy after he was shot in the stomach.

No police officers were injured.

The Police Account

At approximately 9 a.m., police responded to a report that two officers had been shot in the area of Chef Menteur Highway and Downman Road, near Danziger Bridge, according to the NOPD’s report of the incident. Once they arrived, the officers say, they came under fire and began shooting back.

They initially charged Ronald Madison’s brother, Lance Madison, with eight counts of attempted murder, but a grand jury declined to indict him.

The Civilians’ Account

All of the surviving civilians agree on one thing: They didn’t shoot at the police. They’ve filed a string of lawsuits against the police claiming their rights were violated; those suits remain on hold as federal authorities investigate.

According to a suit filed by Holmes, the officers didn’t issue any orders or warnings before firing their weapons, and their vehicle did not have any markings on it to identify them as law enforcement officers. Holmes says he was shot twice in his abdomen by an officer standing over him.

The Aftermath

Investigators assigned to the Danziger Bridge shooting relied heavily on their colleagues’ statements for their 54-page report. Reporters at the New Orleans Times-Picayune haven’t been able to locate two civilian witnesses who were interviewed for the report, or uncover any evidence that these witnesses actually exist. And another key witness, David Ryder, was a fraud. He told police he was a St. Landry Parish sheriff’s deputy, but, in fact, Ryder was a convicted criminal who’d never worked for the St. Landry sheriff.

Eddie Jordan, then the New Orleans district attorney, got an indictment of seven officers on murder and attempted murder charges in December 2006. Citing prosecutorial missteps, a state court judge dismissed the case in 2008.

FBI agents are now investigating the Danziger Bridge shooting. In September, the agents shut down the bridge, trying to recreate the scene and collect any remaining evidence. Dozens of officers and department leaders -– including the current chief and his predecessor—have been called to testify before a grand jury.

NYT Coverage - Louisiana: Maximum Sentence in Katrina Shooting

December 1, 2010
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

A former New Orleans police officer has been sentenced to eight years in federal prison for helping to cover up the deadly shootings of two unarmed civilians on the Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina. The sentence imposed Wednesday by a federal district judge, Sarah Vance, against the former officer, Michael Hunter, was the maximum allowed plus nine months above the maximum recommended guideline. Mr. Hunter is one of five former officers who have pleaded guilty in the shootings that happened a week after Katrina hit.

Ex-cop gets 8 years for role in post-Katrina shootings

December 01, 2010
By the CNN Wire Staff

The Danziger Bridge shootings in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina left two dead and four seriously wounded.

A former New Orleans, Louisiana, police officer who pleaded guilty to covering up police shootings of civilians on a Louisiana bridge in the days following Hurricane Katrina was sentenced Wednesday to eight years in prison, authorities said.

Former officer Michael Hunter pleaded guilty April 7 in federal court in New Orleans to conspiracy to obstruct justice and for misprision of a felony (for concealing a known crime), in the Danziger Bridge shootings in New Orleans that left two dead and four seriously wounded, the Department of Justice said in a statement Wednesday.
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Hunter also was ordered to pay a $2,500 fine and serve three years' supervised release. His sentence will begin in March 2011.

Judge Sarah Vance said that the kind of behavior displayed by multiple New Orleans officers on Danziger Bridge less than a week after Hurricane Katrina was "poisonous."

"It breeds mistrust, cynicism ... and the antidote is punishment that will deter others," Vance said, according to CNN New Orleans affiliate WWL.

In the first September 4, 2005, shooting, on the east side of the bridge, one person, James Brissette, 19, was killed and four people were wounded, prosecutors said.

In another shooting on the bridge's west side, Ronald Madison, 40, a severely disabled man, was killed. Madison's brother, Lance, was arrested but later released without being charged, authorities said.

Inside the courtroom, Hunter looked at the Madison family and apologized, saying, "Nothing I can say or do can take your pain away," according to WWL.

Four other former officers have also pleaded guilty in the case and six other former or current officers are set to go on trial in June. Hunter, who has said he doesn't believe his shots hit anyone, is expected to be one of the government's star witnesses in that trial, WWL reported.

A CNN special, "Shoot to Kill," examined the shootings at Danziger Bridge and other police actions in the days after Katrina.

It was a week of dire flooding, rampant looting and death by drowning. Police were strained, beset by suicides and desertion. Four people were killed in confrontations with police that weekend alone.

Lance Madison told CNN about how he and his brother left their flooded home and were crossing the bridge to find shelter. They were unwittingly headed to an area where armed looters were marauding.

According to court documents, Hunter drove to Danziger Bridge in a rental truck carrying officers in response to a radio call about gunshots and reports that officers on the nearby Interstate 10 bridge had come under fire. At the time, New Orleans police said they got into a running gun battle with several people.

That's when officers encountered the Madisons.

Lance Madison told CNN that police officers were the only ones shooting, as he and his brother ran for safety from the area. A witness told CNN in 2006 that police shot Ronald Jackson in the back as he ran toward a motel at the bottom of the bridge.
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"Hunter ... admitted that he was present on the west side of the Danziger Bridge when an officer, identified as Officer A, shot and killed Ronald Madison, a civilian who was running away from officers with his hands in view, and did not have a weapon or pose a threat," the Justice Department statement said.

Hunter admitted that officers on the east side of the Danziger Bridge fired at civilians, even though the civilians did not appear to have any weapons, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

"Hunter also has admitted that he fired his weapon repeatedly at civilians who were running away over the bridge," according to the statement. "In addition, Hunter has acknowledged that he did not see any weapons on these civilians, and that the civilians did not appear to pose a threat to officers as they ran up the bridge."

The former officer said that he was present on the west side of the Danziger Bridge when an officer killed Madison, the Justice Department said.

Hunter participated in a conspiracy to cover up the truth about what happened on the bridge," the department said.

"Specifically, he admitted, among other things, that he and other officers provided false statements about what happened on the Danziger Bridge; that before giving formal statements on tape, he and other officers met in a gutted-out police station and discussed their false stories; and that he lied to a state grand jury about what happened on the Danziger Bridge."

Prosecutors can ask Vance to reduce Hunter's sentence once he finishes cooperating with the investigation, WWL said.

US deploys 'game-changer' weapon to Afghanistan

by Michael Mathes
Wed Dec 1, 2010

WASHINGTON (AFP) – It looks and acts like something best left in the hands of Sylvester Stallone's "Rambo," but this latest dream weapon is real -- and the US Army sees it becoming the Taliban's worst nightmare.

The Pentagon has rolled out prototypes of its first-ever programmable "smart" grenade launcher, a shoulder-fired weapon that uses microchipped ammunition to target and kill the enemy, even when the enemy is hidden behind walls or other cover.

Click image to see photos of the XM25 weapon system



AFP/Army Handout
After years of development, the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System, about the size of a regular rifle, has now been deployed to US units on the battlefields of Afghanistan, where the Army expects it to be a "game-changer" in its counterinsurgency operations.

"For well over a week, it's been actively on patrols, and in various combat outposts in areas that are hot," said Lieutenant Colonel Chris Lehner, program manager for the XM25.

The gun's stats are formidable: it fires 25mm air-bursting shells up to 2,300 feet (700 meters), well past the range of most rifles used by today's soldiers, and programs them to explode at a precise distance, allowing troops to neutralize insurgents hiding behind walls, rocks or trenches or inside buildings.

[With Afghan control by 2014, Obama sees combat end]

"This is the first time we're putting smart technology into the hands of the individual soldier," Lehner told AFP in a telephone interview.

"It's giving them the edge," he said, in the harsh Afghan landscape where Islamist extremists have vexed US troops using centuries-old techniques of popping up from behind cover to engage.

"You get behind something when someone is shooting at you, and that sort of cover has protected people for thousands of years," Lehner said.

"Now we're taking that away from the enemy forever."

PEO Soldier says studies show the XM25 is 300 percent more effective than current weapons at the squad level.

The revolutionary advance involves an array of sights, sensors and lasers that reads the distance to the target, assesses elements such as air pressure, temperature, and ballistics and then sends that data to the microchip embedded in the XM25 shell before it is launched.

Previous grenade launchers needed to arc their shells over cover and land near the target to be effective.

[U.S.: Special forces operations down by half in Iraq]

"It takes out a lot of the variables that soldiers have to contemplate and even guess at," Lehner said.

If, for example, an enemy combatant pops up from behind a wall to fire at US troops and then ducks behind it, an XM25 gunner can aim the laser range finder at the top of the wall, then program the shell to detonate one meter beyond it, showering lethal fragmentation where the insurgent is seeking cover.

Use of the XM25 can slash civilian deaths and damage, the Army argues, because its pinpointed firepower offers far less risk than larger mortars or air strikes.

The result, the Army says, is "very limited collateral damage."

The Pentagon plans to purchase at least 12,500 of the guns -- at a price tag of 25,000 to 30,000 dollars each -- beginning next year, enough for one in each Infantry squad and Special Forces team.

Lehner said the XM25 was special in that it requires comparatively little training, because the high-powered technology does so much of the work.

"This system is turning soldiers with average shooting skills into those with phenomenal shooting skills," he said.

Bolton: Military strike only way to stop Iran nukes

By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER
The Jerusalem Post
30/11/2010

Former US ambassador to UN during Bush administration tells 'Post' he is mulling GOP presidential run to reassert strong US foreign policy.

WASHINGTON – John Bolton is mulling a run for president because he believes the US needs to recover its international standing and be more assertive, including being willing to bomb Iran and scrap the two-state solution.

“Both our friends and our adversaries alike have assessed this as a very weak administration, uncomfortable with asserting American interests or defending them, particularly through the use of force internationally,” Bolton told The Jerusalem Post in an interview Tuesday.

“To raise national security back into the center of the debate – which is where I think it belongs – it could well take a presidential candidacy, because that is what helps focus people’s attention on these issues and that’s why I’m thinking of doing it.”

The former under secretary of state for arms control and US ambassador to the UN during the George W. Bush administration, Bolton identified proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism as the top challenges facing America, along with the threat of nuclear Iran.

Bolton, who would seek the Republican nomination should he run, rejected the idea that sanctions could eventually affect Iran’s nuclear ambitions as some in the US and even Israel have suggested.

“The most likely outcome with respect to Iran is that it gets nuclear weapons and very, very soon,” he said. “Given that diplomacy has failed, given that sanctions have failed, the only alternative to an Iran with nuclear weapons is a limited military strike against the nuclear weapons program.”

Though he said he doesn’t prefer such action, he believes it’s better than the alternatives. And he dismissed the argument that a focused strike would cause regional instability, pointing to Wikileaks’ dissemination of diplomatic cables this week showing Arab support for an attack.

“A preemptive military strike against Iran’s nuclear program would not cause chaos in the Middle East because the Arab states don’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons any more than Israel does,” he said.

Bolton noted, however, that taking coordinated action could be harder because of the leaks and the concerns allies abroad will now have about working with America. But he assessed it would be a temporary rather than long-term setback.

Bolton does not believe two-state solution is working

He also said the revealed Arab support also punctures the Obama administration’s contention that progress on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process was needed to help rally the Arab world’s help on Iran.

When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Bolton doesn’t think the current effort to forge a two-state solution is working.

“I think the entire model of the two-state solution has failed,” he declared. “There’s nobody on the Palestinian side that you can trust who will make the hard commitments necessary to achieve peace or who will be able to carry them out into the future.”

Instead, he proposed a “three-state solution” which would include the admittedly unpopular moves of returning Gaza to Egypt and the Palestinian areas of the West Bank back to Jordan.

According to Bolton, the current US-Israel negotiations to extend the settlement freeze in return for 20 F-35 fighter planes also makes for unwise conditioning.

“That’s a destructive kind of relationship for both countries,” he warned.

Still, he said it wouldn’t be difficult to reset relations with Israel under a new White House.

“I don’t think that would be hard,” he estimated. “Frankly, I’m not aware of any potential Republican candidate for president who couldn’t do a better job on this issue than Obama.”

Whether he could be a successful Republican candidate, however, is another question.

Bolton acknowledges that he’s never run for elected office let alone the presidency and would need to consult with his family and give serious thought to the obstacles before making a decision.

Political expert Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, however, gave Bolton no chance of being successful in getting the nomination.

“He has little visibility and no support except among a very small group of neoconservative interventionists,” he said. “Moreover, he has no experience in elective politics and has an abrasive personality not well-suited to retail politicking.”

Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, called Bolton “the longest of long shots” for the Republican nomination, adding that he’s “enough of a realist to know that.”

Instead of running to win office, Sabato saw Bolton as launching a campaign in order to raise the profile of certain issues.

“If you want to get some of the issues that you believe need to be discussed on the table, you run for president,” he explained.

“This could be a campaign that is dominated overwhelmingly by economic and other domestic issues,” Sabato continued, noting Bolton’s interest in ensuring that foreign affairs are also addressed.

Bolton himself admitted his interest in highlighting international and security priorities, saying, “I’ve been concerned for the past two years that there has not been adequate attention to foreign policy and national security issues.”

But he emphasized that if he enters the race it will be a sincere bid.

“If I get in this, I get in it to win,” he said.

Attorney General launches criminal investigation into WikiLeaks dossier as Clinton brands it 'an attack on America'

By James Chapman, Gerri Peev and Ian Drury
Daily Mail
30th November 2010

The Obama administration launched a full-bloodied assault on Wikileaks today just hours after the whistle-blowing website plunged the U.S. into an unprecedented diplomatic crisis.

As the White House began a frantic damage limitation exercise, Hillary Clinton said the government was taking 'aggressive steps to hold responsible those who stole this information.'

In a defiant press conference in Washington, the Secretary of State said: 'This disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests.

'It is an attack on the international community: the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity.'

Despite the damage to international relations, Mrs Clinton said she was 'confident' that U.S. partnerships would withstand the diplomatic crisis.

And she joked that one senior U.S. diplomat told her: 'Don't worry, you should see what we say about you.'

Mrs Clinton will be the first American politician to gauge the international reaction to the furore for herself as she is setting off today on a potentially embarrassing tour of central Asia.

She will be at a summit which will also be attended by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and German chancellor Angela Merkel.

And she will end the four-nation tour in Bahrain by delivering a speech to Middle East leaders from many of the countries whose confidences were compromised by the leaks.

Mr Medvedev was portrayed as being the Robin to Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin’s Batman in the Kremlin and his country was described in the leaked cables as being a ‘virtual mafia state.’

Mrs Merkel was portrayed as an unimaginative leader who ‘avoids risk and is rarely creative.’

According to one diplomatic cable, Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifah told U.S. general David Petraeus that America must take whatever action was necessary to stop Iran’s nuclear programme.

Mrs Clinton has already apologised to Russia and Germany for the leaks, but aides fear it could still be ‘uncomfortable’ for her during the trip.

She said that she and Barack Obama were confident that the diplomatic partnerships they had built around the world would survive the embarrassing disclosures contained in the cables.

Mrs Clinton will be at a summit which will also be attended by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and German chancellor Angela Merkel.

In what appeared to be co-ordinated retaliation by the Obama administration, the Attorney General today launched a criminal investigation into the WikiLeaks dossier - the biggest intelligence leak in history.

Eric Holder pledged to prosecute those behind the publication of the confidential documents.

He said: 'To the extent that we can find anybody who was involved in the breaking of American law, they will be held responsible.'

On Capitol Hill, the reaction was less guarded.

Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate homeland security committee, said those responsible for the 'outrageous, reckless and despicable' leaks are going to have blood on their hands'.

He urged the US to do everything it could to shut down the whistle-blowing website.

According to Peter Hoekstra, the senior Republican on the House intelligence committee, the documents contained a “whole number of time bombs” and he described the likely breakdown in trust between the US and other countries as a “catastrophic issue”.

Earlier a senior Republican today had urged the Attorney General to designate WikiLeaks a 'foreign terrorist organisation'.

Pete King said the website 'posed a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.'

The WikiLeaks dossier revealed U.S. embassy cables exposing everything from secret discussions on bombing Iran to 'inappropriate behaviour' by a member of the British Royal Family.

The release of the dossier prompted President Obama to order U.S. agencies this morning to urgently review their safeguards on classified information.

But it is likely to be Mrs Clinton who will be forced to bear the brunt of the international backlash.

The Secretary of State leaves Washington today on a four-nation tour of Central Asia and the Middle East - regions that figure prominently in the leaked documents.

Among the most damaging revelations is the file that showed the U.S. had ordered a spying operation on diplomats at the United Nations, in apparent breach of international law.

U.S. staff in embassies around the world were ordered by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to obtain frequent flyer numbers, credit card details and even iris scans, fingerprints and DNA of foreign officials.

WikiLeaks ignored a last-minute warning from the Obama administration that going ahead with publication of the first tranche of 250,000 classified documents would put 'many lives at risk'.

Yesterday the WikiLeaks website crashed.

In a Twitter statement the organisation said it had suffered a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack - ie an effort to make the site unavailable to users, usually by flooding it with requests for data.

But the damaging disclosures were already being published by international media.

Experts warned the revelation of repeated private calls from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia for the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear programme and 'cut off the head of the snake' risked destablising the Middle East.

President Barack Obama is revealed in one damaging cable as having 'no feelings for Europe' and preferring to 'look East rather than West'.

Others reveal withering assessments of the U.S. of a long list of world leaders.

The U.S. branded France's President Nicola Sarkozy an 'emperor with no clothes' with a 'thin-skinned and authoritarian personal style', Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as an 'alpha dog' and Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as 'Hitler'.
Damage control: L-R David Cameron, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama at the Nato summit in Lisbon on November 19. The new WikiLeaks release is set to put strain on the 'special' relationship

Silvio Berlusconi of Italy's 'wild parties' were described by U.S. diplomats, who called him 'feckless, vain, and ineffective as a modern European leader'.

Another dispatch from Rome recorded the view that he was a 'physically and politically weak' leader whose 'frequent late nights and penchant for partying hard mean he does not get sufficient rest'.

Detailed in another document was Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi's fondness for a 'voluptuous' Ukranian blonde he apparently employs as a 'nursing sister' and who accompanies him everywhere.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is damned as 'risk aversive and rarely creative', while Dmitry Medvedev of Russia is a 'pale, hesitant' figure who 'plays Robin to Putin's Batman'.

WHAT AMERICA THINKS OF LEADERS AROUND THE WORLD

French President Nicolas Sarkozy: ‘has a thin-skinned and authoritarian personal style’ and is an ‘emperor with no clothes’

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi: ‘feckless, vain and ineffective as a modern European leader’. He is a ‘physically and politically weak’ leader whose ‘frequent late nights and penchant for partying hard mean he does not get sufficient rest’

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev: ‘plays Robin to Putin’s Batman’ and is ‘pale and hesitant’

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin: an ‘alpha dog’

Chancellor Angela Merkel: ‘avoids risks and is rarely creative’

Iranian President Mahmoud Amhadinejad: like ‘Hitler’

Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi: is ‘strange’ and ‘accompanied by voluptuous blonde Ukranian “nurse”’

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan: governs with ‘a cabal of incompetent advisors’

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il: ‘flabby old chap’ who suffers from ‘physical and psychological trauma’

Afghan president, Hamid Karzai: ‘driven by paranoia’ and ‘an extremely weak man who did not listen to facts but was instead easily swayed by anyone who came to report even the most bizarre stories or plots against him’

Zimbabwean tyrant, Robert Mugabe: ‘the crazy old man’

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is said to 'float along on paranoia' and is dismissed as 'an extremely weak man who did not listen to facts but was instead easily swayed by anyone who came to report even the most bizarre stories or plots against him'.

Kim Jong-il, the ailing dictator of North Korea is described as a 'flabby old chap' who had suffered 'physical and psychological trauma'.

The White House has slammed the decision to publish the information.

Spokesman Robert Gibbs said President Obama supports open and accountable government, but the WikiLeaks was being 'reckless and dangerous'.

'By releasing stolen and classified documents, WikiLeaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and work of these individuals,' Gibbs said. 'We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information.'

Today desperate efforts were being made on both sides of the Atlantic to shore up the special relationship in the wake of the revelations about the U.S. assessment of Britain.

There were no further details of the claims concerning the member of the British royal family or of the requests for intelligence about MPs, expected to emerge in the days ahead.

Criticism of British operations in Afghanistan were however said to be 'devastating', putting the U.S.-UK alliance under strain.

Remarks concerning Mr Cameron, who was said to have been deemed a 'lightweight' by U.S. President Barack Obama when the two first met, were described as 'serious political criticisms'.

The Obama administration told whistleblower WikiLeaks that its release of classified State Department cables will put 'countless' lives at risk, threaten global counterterrorism operations and jeopardise U.S. relations with its allies.

The State Department released a letter from Harold Koh, its top lawyer, to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his attorney telling them that publication of the documents would be illegal and demanding that they stop it

He said the move would 'place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals', 'place at risk on-going military operations,'and 'place at risk on-going cooperation between countries.'

'They were provided in violation of U.S. law and without regard for the grave consequences of this action,' he said.

The White House said that the disclosure of confidential diplomatic communications would 'deeply impact' U.S. foreign interests.

In London, the Foreign Office also condemned the leaks and was forced to insist they would not undermine the special relationship between the U.S. and UK.

'We condemn any unauthorised release of this classified information, just as we condemn leaks of classified material in the UK,' a spokesman said.

'They can damage national security, are not in the national interest and, as the U.S. have said, may put lives at risk. We have a very strong relationship with the U.S. Government. That will continue.'

Italy's foreign minister Franco Frattini said the files would 'blow up the relationship of trust between states', adding: 'It will be the September 11th of world diplomacy.'

The U.S. says it has known for some time that WikiLeaks held the diplomatic cables. No one has been charged with passing them to the website, but suspicion focuses on Welsh-born U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, an intelligence analyst arrested in Iraq in June and charged over an earlier leak.

He told a fellow hacker he would come into work with a CD labelled 'Lady Gaga' and downloaded intelligence in 'possibly the largest data spillage in American history'.

Manning is said to have told a fellow hacker: 'Information should be free. It belongs in the public domain.'

Intended to be read by officials in Washington up to the level of the Secretary of State, the cables are generally drafted by the ambassador or subordinates.

They are marked 'Sipidis' - secret internet protocol distribution - and are classified at various levels. The most sensitive are marked 'SECRET NOFORN' [no foreigners].

Wikileaks claimed last night it had come under attack from a computer-hacking operation ahead of the release of secret U.S. documents.

'We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack,' it said on its Twitter feed.

Hillary Clinton's orders to U.S. diplomats to spy on UN

Hillary Clinton ordered American officials to spy on high ranking UN diplomats, including British representatives.

Top secret cables revealed that Mrs Clinton, the Secretary of State, even ordered diplomats to obtain DNA data – including iris scans and fingerprints - as well as credit card and frequent flier numbers.

All permanent members of the security council – including Russia, China, France and the UK – were targeted by the secret spying mission, as well as the Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon.

Work schedules, email addresses, fax numbers, website identifiers and mobile numbers were also demanded by Washington.

The US also wanted ‘biographic and biometric information on UN Security Council permanent representatives’.

The request could break international law and threatens to derail any trust between the US and other powerful nations.

Requests for IT related information – such as details of passwords, personal encryption keys and network upgrades - could also raise suspicions that the US was preparing to mount a hacking operation.

It is set to lead to international calls for Mrs Clinton to resign.
MIDDLE EAST TENSIONS: ARAB CALLS FOR U.S. TO ATTACK IRAN

Arab leaders urged the U.S. to attack Iran and end its nuclear weapons programme.

Saudi Arabia 'frequently exhorted' Washington to launch an air strike against the regime in Tehran, according to leaked documents.

In a report of a 2008 meeting with U.S. General David Petraeus, the Saudi ambassador to Washington said King Abdullah wanted the White House 'to cut the head off the snake' before Iran developed nuclear weapons and threatened its neighbours in the Middle East.

The secret document revealed that the Saudis demanded 'severe U.S. and international sanctions on Iran, including a travel ban and further restrictions on bank lending'.

It added that 'the use of military pressure against Iran should not be ruled out'.

King Abdullah was backed by the King of Bahrain who warned in a cable: 'The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it.'

And the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed, told the U.S. that he believed that Iran's tyrannical President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was 'going to take us to war'.

The revelations will reverberate around the world and are likely to ratchet up tension in the Middle East.

The statements will bolster the case of Israeli and U.S. hawks who believe an attack against Iran will be necessary during the near future.

But they will also provoke President Ahmadinejad - referred to in one missive as 'Hitler' - to press on with his nuclear programme.

The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed earlier this year that Iran had produced its first small batch of higher-grade enriched uranium - stoking fears it was secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons capacity.

The cables also included a U.S. assessment that Iran was attempting to adapt rockets from North Korea for use as long-range ballistic missiles that could strike capitals in Western European.


The fishing expedition was ordered by Mrs Clinton in July 2009, but followed similar demands made by her predecessor, Condoleeza Rice.

Mrs Clinton called for biometric details ‘on key UN officials, to include undersecretaries, heads of specialised agencies and their chief advisers, top SYG [secretary general] aides, heads of peace operations and political field missions, including force commanders’.

She also wanted intelligence on Ban Ki-Moon’s ‘management and decision-making style and his influence on the secretariat’.

Cables were sent to US embassies in the UN, Middle East, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

America has always handed over information about top foreign officials to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

But the request by Mrs Clinton paves the way for officials to be more closely spied upon, with even their travel plans tracked by US diplomats.

In what could discredit the US’s role in the Middle East peace process, missions in Israel, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt were asked to gather biometric information ‘on key Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaders and representatives, to include the young guard inside Gaza, the West Bank’.

Details of the US spying mission were sent to the CIA, the US Secret Service and the FBI under the heading ‘collection requirements and tasking’.

International treaties ban spying at the UN.

The 1946 UN convention on privileges and immunities states: ‘The premises of the United Nations shall be inviolable. The property and assets of the United Nations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation and any other form of interference, whether by executive, administrative, judicial or legislative action.’

The American ambassador to Britain, Louis Susman said he ‘condemned’ the disclosures and that the US government was ‘taking steps to prevent future security breaches’.

He also claimed the disclosures had 'the very real potential to harm innocent people" but insisted the cables ‘should not be seen as representing US policy on their own’.

He said the leaks were ‘harmful to the US and our interests’ adding, ‘However, I am confident that our uniquely productive relationship with the UK will remain close and strong, focused on promoting our shared objectives and values.

US State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said Mrs Clinton had warned leaders in Britain, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan and China about the cables, revealed by investigators at the Wikileaks website.

Canada, Denmark, Norway and Poland had also been warned.

THE 'HOT-HEADED LONER': BRADLEY MANNING

The prime suspect for the latest leaks is U.S. Army soldier Bradley Manning, a 'hot-headed loner' who grew up in Britain.

The 23-year-old military intelligence officer was arrested in Iraq in June and charged over an earlier disclosure to WikiLeaks.

American prosecutors have accused Private First Class Manning of leaking a copy of a classified video showing a U.S. helicopter gunship attack in Baghdad in July 2007 which killed two journalists and a civilian.

The video - dubbed 'Collateral Murder' - was the first big scoop for the whistleblowers' website. It was among 200,000 secret cables leaked.

Pfc Manning, who was assigned to a support battalion with the U.S. 10th Mountain Division in Iraq, has been charged with 'transferring classified data onto his personal computer and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system' and 'communicating, transmitting and delivering national defence information to an unauthorized source'.

Held at Quantico Marine Barracks in Virginia, he faces a maximum 52 years in jail.

U.S. believe Pfc Manning was behind the leaks of war logs from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the top secret State Department missives.

It is a far cry from the 'quiet nerd' who went to school in Haverfordwest, in Pembrokeshire, Wales, where his seriously-ill mother Susan still lives.

Mrs Manning had moved to the U.S in 1979 after marrying Bradley's father Brian Manning, a former serviceman who was based at Cawdor Barracks, near the Welsh town.

Her son was born in Oklahoma but after the couple divorced acrimoniously in 2001 she moved back to Wales with him. He sat GCSEs at the Tasker Milward secondary school in Haverfordwest.

Former classmates described him as 'hot-headed' and a computer nerd'.

One, Jenna Morris, a 23-year-old sales manager, said: 'He was a quiet lad and he'd had a tough upbringing.

'He had a tough time when he came back here with his mum because moving to another country after a break-up was hard. He was quite a loner and he didn’t really have a lot of friends. He had quite a bit of trouble at school and was picked on.'

He returned to America after dropping out of school, moving in with his father and getting a job as a £4.14-an-hour greeter at an Incredible Pizza restaurant. He later joined the U.S. Army.

Deployed to Iraq, he posted a series of downbeat musings on the Facebook website.

On January 12, he wrote: 'Bradley Manning didn't want this fight. Too much to lose, too fast.'

In an apparent swipe at the U.S. Army, he also wrote: 'Bradley Manning is not a piece of equipment.'

He was arrested in June after American journalist Adrian Lamo told the authorities that Pfc Manning, with whom he had been talking, was the source of the leaks. Lamo said he had come forward as an act of conscience.

THE 'INFORMATION ACTIVIST': JULIAN ASSANGE

He describes himself as an ‘information activist’ who performs a vital public duty by placing powerful organisations, including governments, defence departments and big businesses, under the cold stare of scrutiny.

But the elusive Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks whistle-blowing website, has met a storm of protest this year over his controversial decision to disclose countless secret U.S. documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr Assange, 39, himself admits his uncompromising stance means WikiLeaks may end up with ‘blood on our hands’. But this concern has not stopped him.

He was born in Townsville, Queensland, northern Australia, in 1971, to two peace activists who met at a demonstration against the Vietnam War.

He had an unstable childhood, attending 37 different schools as a child, moving often because his mother ran a touring theatre and puppet company.

By the time he was 16, he had developed an obsession with computers and had joined a group of hackers who called themselves the International Subversives, who broke into the Nasa and U.S. Department of Defence’s databases.

He first ran into trouble with the authorities for his online activities in 1995 when he pleaded guilty to hacking activities in Australia, receiving a small fine.

Eleven years later Mr Assange, who studied pure maths and physics at the University of Melbourne, began WikiLeaks with a group of like-minded people.

Possessing no offices nor paid employees, it was a web-based ‘dead-letterbox’ for would-be leakers. Key members - except the increasingly high-profile Mr Assange - are known by code letters.

Information sent to its website is directed to a computer in Sweden, then bounced to another internet server in Belgium, before being downloaded at other locations. It is designed to make the origin of the leaks untraceable.

It claims to be funded by ‘human rights campaigners, investigative journalists, technologists and the general public’.

Recognisable by his shock of white hair, Assnage is convinced he is under surveillance by the U.S. authorities and refuses to travel to America for fear of arrest.

Despite his recent public appearances, he is rarely seen in public. Something of a nomad, he has no home address and prefers lodging with fellow activists. He carries a blue rucksack containing mobile phones, computer equipment and clothes.

He is believed to live in Britain but has popped up in Iceland and Sweden, where internet anonymity is enshrined in law. But a visit to Sweden in August led to unsavoury allegations he had raped and sexually assaulted two women.

Last week a court in Stockholm rejected his appeal against a detention order in the cases.

Mr Assange insists the claims are part if a smear campaign. London lawyer Mark Stephens has said the claims are ‘false and without basis’.

Does cable confirm U.S. bombing of civilians in Yemen?

Envoy's report released by WikiLeaks indicates Yemeni leaders 'lied' about air strikes to cover up U.S. involvement

By Michael Isikoff National investigative correspondent
NBC News NBC News
updated 11/29/2010

The U.S. media paid scant attention in June when Amnesty International released a report charging that U.S. cruise missiles carrying cluster bombs had struck the village of al Majalah in southern Yemen on Dec. 17, 2009, killing 41 civilians, including 14 women and 21 children.

Pentagon officials declined to discuss the matter at the time. But accusations of direct U.S. participation in that bombing and others in Yemen that reportedly caused civilian casualties quickly became a principal theme of al-Qaida propaganda.

That theme is now likely to get even more traction as a result of the disclosure by WikiLeaks of an unusually revealing State Department cable in which Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his top ministers appear to agree to cover up the extent of the U.S. military role in disputed air strikes in Yemen.

“President Saleh's comments will be translated and used over and over again by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) as a recruiting and propaganda tool,” Gregory Johnsen, a leading U.S. expert on the terror organization’s Yemeni affiliate, told NBC on Monday. “His statements and those of his top ministers of deceiving and lying to the Yemeni public and parliament … fit seamlessly into a narrative that AQAP has been peddling in Yemen for years. This is something AQAP will take immediate and lasting advantage of.”

As Johnsen’s comments suggest, the Jan. 4, 2010, cable recounting a meeting between U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, then commander of U.S. Central Command, and Saleh and his top ministers may well be among the most significant of the scores of documents that have been made public by WikiLeaks so far.

Not only are the full contents of the cable likely to weaken Saleh politically, the document seems to confirm what the U.S. government has never officially acknowledged: that it is deeply involved in prosecuting a military campaign against al-Qaida in a region thousands of miles away from the battlefields in Afghanistan.

In the cable, Saleh told Petraeus that “mistakes were made” during the Dec. 17 strike and another one on Dec. 24 (which was initially, and wrongly, reported to have killed radical U.S.-born imam Anwar Al-Awlaki), specifically referring to the “killing of civilians” in Yemen’s southern Abyan province. He also complained later in the meeting that U.S. cruise missiles are “not very accurate.”

While Petraeus dismissed the notion that innocents were killed (he insisted the only civilians killed were “the wife and two children” of an al-Qaida operative), he later proposed “to move away from the use of cruise missiles and instead have U.S. fixed wing bombers circle outside Yemeni territory, ‘out of sight,’ and engage AQAP targets when actionable intelligence became available.”

“We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours,” Saleh said, according to the cable. This prompted Deputy Prime Minister Rashad al–Alimi “to joke that he had just ‘lied’ by telling parliament that the bombs in Ahrab, Abyan and Shebwa (provinces) were American-made but deployed by the ROYG (Republic of Yemen Government.)”

The casual disclosure that the Yemenis had “lied” about the U.S. role in the air strikes might be dismissed as typical of the kind of diplomatic deceptions that are necessary in an especially volatile portion of the Mideast.

But there is more to the back story of the Dec. 17 strike. It provoked a domestic uproar inside Yemen, spurred a parliamentary inquiry and prompted Amnesty International to send its own team to investigate on the ground. The group’s investigators concluded that the air strike, while killing 14 suspected militants, had largely killed women and children; the Amnesty team also came back with photographs that it said showed the wreckage of a U.S. made Tomahawk cruise missile and portions of unexposed cluster bombs — munitions that have sparked international attempts to ban their use because of their indiscriminate impact. Amnesty also noted in its report that when Yemeni parliamentary investigators arrived in the village of al-Majalah, they “found that all the homes and their contents were burnt and all that was left were traces of furniture.”

“The fact that so many of the victims were actually women and children indicates that the attack was in fact grossly irresponsible, particularly given the likely use of cluster munitions,” said Philip Luther, deputy director of Amnesty’s International Middle East and North Africa Program.

Just as unnoticed in the U.S. media was the degree to which images from the Dec. 17 strike in al-Majalah and the account of civilian casualties were used by al-Qaida. An al-Qaida video from last spring flashed images of civilians burned and mutilated in the attack and talked about how a U.S. cruise missile “poured its lava over al-Majalah Village” and scorched the bodies of women who were "baking bread for breakfast" in their homes.

On Monday, in the wake of the WikiLeaks disclosure, an Amnesty International spokeswoman said the organization plans to renew its call for a U.S. investigation of the Dec. 17 air strike — a request that went unanswered when it released its report in June.

“It’s fair to say that this leak kind of confirms what we were saying in our report,” said Sharon Singh, adding that both the Yemeni and the American public deserve to know the full truth about the air strike.

But so far, at least, the Pentagon isn’t talking. Asked whether U.S. cruise missiles are being used in air strikes in Yemen, Pentagon spokesman David Lapan said: "We work with the government of Yemen as well as others in the region to counter the threat of terrorism in the region." But, he added, "we don't discuss the nature of our operations."

WikiLeaks provides the truth Bush obscured

By Richard Cohen
The Washington Post
Tuesday, November 30, 2010;

Say what you want about WikiLeaks - and I don't much like what it has done - it nevertheless would be useful for its founder, Julian Assange, to follow George W. Bush as he lopes around the country, promoting his new book, "Decision Points." When, for instance, Bush attempts to justify the Iraq war by saying the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein, Assange could reach into his bag of leaked U.S. government cables and cite Saudi King Abdullah's private observation that the war had given Iraq to Iran as a "gift on a golden platter."

Iraq now has a Shiite-dominated government and many senior officials who are ominously friendly with Iran. It was always American policy to use Saddam's Iraq to counterbalance Iran since it was really Iran that posed a danger to the region. That danger is now amply documented in the new WikiLeaks documents - including the revelation that North Korea has sold Iran missiles capable of reaching, say, Tel Aviv or, a minute or so later, Cairo.

To a certain extent, the leaked documents contain the rawest form of gossip. It is amusing to learn that Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafiâ?? is psychologically gridlocked with all sorts of neurotic tics ticks and will not travel without his Ukrainian nurse, described as a "voluptuous blonde." It is good to see that parody of a blowhard, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, characterized as being in the pocket of Russia's Vladimir Putin and fun to wonder, in a Scrooge McDuck moment, how Afghanistan's vice president was able to take $52 million in cash out of the country and get it through customs in the United Arab Emirates last year when you and I get stopped for having a small bottle of shampoo. Something's wrong here, I suspect.

The Arab world's alarm at the imminence of an Iranian bomb is on full display in the leaked documents - as is the Obama administration's methodical and effective attempts to isolate Tehran. Saudi Arabia's Abdullah implored Washington to "cut off the head of the snake" while there was still time, and the United Arab Emirates "agreed with [U.S. Gen. John P.] Abizaid that Iran's new President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad seemed unbalanced, crazy even."â?? Some months later the Emirates' defense chief, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi, told Abizaid that the United States needed to take action against Iran "this year or next." If cables from Jordan and Egypt could be read, they would be no different. The (Sunni) Arab world loathes and fears Iran on sectarian grounds and also because it espouses a revolutionary doctrine of the sort that kings and dictators find disquieting.

This is the world George Bush left us. It exists everywhere but in his book, where facts are either omitted or rearranged so that the war in Iraq seems the product of pure reason. As my colleague, the indefatigably indefatigable Walter Pincus, has pointed out, Bush manages to bollix up both the chronology and the importance of the various inspections of Iraq's weapons systems so as to suggest that any other president given the same set of facts would have gone to war. "I had tried to address the threat from Saddam Hussein without war," he writes. On that score, he is simply not credible.

The accumulating evidence at the time showed that Iraq lacked a nuclear weapons program and did not have biological weapons either. As for its chemical weapons program, while harder to ferret out, it not only no longer existed, but even if it had, it was insufficient reason to go to war. Poison gas has been around since the Second Battle of Ypres. That was 1915. "The absence of WMD stockpiles did not change the fact that Saddam was a threat," Bush writes. Heads he wins, tails you lose.

Reading Bush's book, seeing him in his various TV appearances, I keep thinking of Menachem Begin, the late Israeli prime minister. In 1982, Begin took Israel to war in Lebanon. It cost Israel as many as 675 dead, 4,000 wounded and its image as invincible on the battlefield. Begin took responsibility. He resigned and became a recluse, a depressed and beaten man.

I suggest no such course for Bush - only that he read the WikiLeaks documents and, for the sake of history and the instruction it offers, reassess his vaunted decisions. His jejune approach to decision-making - know yourself but not necessarily the facts - is downright repellent. On the book's dust jacket, Bush is shown in a ranching outfit. A Peter Pan outfit would have been more fitting. Like him, Bush has never grown up.

cohenr@washpost.com

Top 10 revelations from WikiLeaks cables

By Zachary Roth
Yahoo! News
Mon Nov 29, 10:05 am ET

On Sunday, five international news outlets published a selection of more than 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables, provided by the website WikiLeaks. The disclosure of the cables, most of them from the past three years, offers a rare unfiltered view of the secretive world of high-level diplomacy. As such, it could complicate relations with a host of friendly and unfriendly nations.

But what did we actually learn? Here are 10 key revelations from the cables:

1. Many Middle Eastern nations are far more concerned about Iran's nuclear program than they've publicly admitted. According to one cable, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has repeatedly asked the U.S. to "cut off the head of the snake" -- meaning, it appears, to bomb Iran's nuclear program. Leaders of Qatar, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and other Middle Eastern nations expressed similar views.

2. The U.S. ambassador to Seoul told Washington in February that the right business deals might get China to acquiesce to a reunified Korea, if the newly unified power were allied with the United States. American and South Korean officials have discussed such a reunification in the event that North Korea collapses under the weight of its economic and political problems.

3. The Obama administration offered sweeteners to try to get other countries to take Guantanamo detainees, as part of its (as yet unsuccessful) effort to close the prison. Slovenia, for instance, was offered a meeting with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions.

4. Afghan Vice President Ahmed Zia Massoud took $52 million in cash when he visited the United Arab Emirates last year, according to one cable. The Afghan government has been plagued by allegations of corruption. Massoud has denied taking the money out of the country.

5. The United States has been working to remove highly enriched uranium from a Pakistani nuclear reactor, out of concern that it could be used to build an illicit nuclear device. The effort, which began in 2007, continues.

6. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ordered diplomats to assemble information on their foreign counterparts. Documents in the WikiLeaks cache also indicate that Clinton may have asked diplomats to gather intelligence on U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's plans for Iran, and information on Sudan (including Darfur), Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Iran and North Korea.

7. The State Department labeled Qatar the worst country in the region for counterterrorism efforts. The country's security services were "hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking reprisals," according to one cable.

8. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi are tighter than was previously known. Putin has given the high-living Berlusconi "lavish gifts" and lucrative energy contracts, and Berlusconi "appears increasingly to be the mouthpiece of Putin" in Europe, according to one cable.

9. Hezbollah continues to enjoy the weapons patronage of Syria. A week after Syrian president Bashar Assad promised the United States he wouldn't send "new" arms to the Lebanese militant group, the United States said it had information that Syria was continuing to provide the group with increasingly sophisticated weapons.

10. Some cables reveal decidedly less than diplomatic opinions of foreign leaders. Putin is said to be an "alpha-dog" and Afghan President Hamid Karzai to be "driven by paranoia." German Chancellor Angela Merkel "avoids risk and is rarely creative." Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi travels with a "voluptuous blonde" Ukrainian nurse.

The cables were obtained, via WikiLeaks, by the New York Times, the Guardian of Britain, Der Spiegel of Germany, Le Monde of France and El Pais of Spain.

5 Right-Wing Scumbags Bankrolling Dangerous (and Plain Weird) Conservative Causes

By Brad Reed
AlterNet
Posted on November 29, 2010

A non-insane observer of American politics might wonder why our elite policy makers are considering curbing our budget deficit by cutting Social Security and Medicare payments all while further lowering tax rates for high-income earners.

The answer is that most of our political class and establishment media have bought into the meme that rich people are so super-special that if we hurt their feelings by making them pay the same amount in taxes that they paid in the 1990s, they will get so depressed they will lose the will to work and no one in the country will ever have jobs again.

While this idea may seem insane to all sane people, it’s actually one of many ideas promoted over the past several decades by wealthy right-wingers who have plunged significant sums of money into conservative think tanks, political candidates and advertising campaigns. You see, for some reason rich Americans aren’t content to have five yachts and a butler named Willivers -- rather, they seem obsessed with having the entire country leave red, white and blue smooch marks all over their rear ends.

And just who are these multimillionaire propagandists, you ask? Well, I’m sure you know all about the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch, since they’ve all been relatively high-profile lately. But there are plenty more right-wing sugar daddies out there. So without further ado, let’s get started!

Right-Wing Sugar Daddy #1: Sheldon Adelson

Like most neoconservatives, Adelson’s goal in life is to make sure the United States and Israel remain in a state of perpetual warfare against Arab countries until most of the world is destroyed. Adelson, who made his fortune as a Las Vegas casino mogul, made headlines in 2007 when he funded Freedom’s Watch, a neoconservative advocacy group that supported wars wherever and whenever it could find them.

The group’s first campaign was a $15 million ad blitz urging Americans to support the Iraq troop surge. One of the group’s most notorious ads featured an Iraq war vet who lost both his legs during the war imploring Congress to keep funding the war indefinitely because “if we pull out now everything I’ve given and sacrificed will mean nothing.” The ad also shamelessly conflated the Iraq war with the September 11 terrorist attacks by showing pictures of the World Trade Center burning as the vet firmly reminded Americans that “they attacked us.”

From there, the group held a conference hyping up the dangers of Iran and radical Islam in general. Freedom’s Watch disbanded in late 2008 after a sizable chunk of Adelson’s spare cash went up in smoke -- quite possibly the only good outcome from the global financial crisis.

Although Adelson’s impact on U.S. policy is relatively small, he is much more of a factor in Israel where he invested a reported $180 million to launch the free Israel Hayom tabloid in 2007. The Israeli media apparently refer to the paper as “Bibi-ton” because it serves as a propaganda rage for Netanyahu’s hard-line Likud government. The paper, which now has the largest circulation of any daily newspaper in Israel, mercilessly attacked the government of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, particularly his handling of the 2006 mini-war with Lebanon (sample headline, per the New Yorker: “The Ass-Covering of the Government”). Adelson was also upset that Olmert had the audacity to support a two-state solution where Palestinians are actually given some level of autonomy over their lives.

Right-Wing Sugar Daddy #2: Richard Mellon Scaife

Scaife got his start in politics by giving Richard Nixon’s campaign $1 million in 1972 and he hasn’t looked back since. As an heir to the Mellon fortune, Scaife didn’t exactly have to pick himself up by his bootstraps on his way to the top. And instead of doing something useful with his life, Scaife has blown hundreds of millions of dollars keeping wastoids like Jonah Goldberg employed by funding conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, newspapers such as the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and right-wing opinion rags such as the American Spectator.

Scaife really hit his stride in the 1990s when he became obsessed with forcing President Bill Clinton and his penis from office. He kicked things off in 1993 by funding the so-called “Arkansas Project” that sent Spectator hacks down to Little Rock to dig up embarrassing dirt on the Clintons. Although that failed to produce the goods, Scaife decided to simultaneously fund Paula Jones’ unsuccessful sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton, thus setting the stage for later sex scandals that would result in the president getting impeached by the Republican House.

Scaife also got another “gift” when the suicide of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster sparked a litany of crazed conspiracies asserting that the Clintons had actually murdered Foster themselves.

“The death of Vincent Foster: I think that's the Rosetta Stone to the whole Clinton Administration,” Scaife told the New York Times in 1995. “There are just too many questions that have no answers. ”

In order to unlock this "Rosetta Stone," Scaife funded “journalists” who were willing to keep the Foster-was-murdered conspiracy alive. As New York Times reporter Tim Weiner noted at the time, Scaife’s Tribune-Review was “the only daily newspaper in the nation trying to prove that Mr. Foster might have been murdered.”

To make a long story short, Scaife never truly nailed Clinton like he wanted to, but he did get to watch Clinton get impeached for lying about a blowjob. God, America was a much nicer country back when we had no real problems to deal with.

Right-Wing Sugar Daddies #3 and #4: The Wyly Brothers

Sam and Charles Wyly gained notoriety during the 2000 Republican presidential primary by bankrolling the most comically Orwellian front group ever assembled. Dubbed “Republicans for Clean Air” the group spent more than $2 million for ads that attacked John McCain’s environmental record while praising George W. Bush’s green credentials. The Wylys similarly went to bat for their boy Bush by donating $10,000 a piece to the infamously dishonest Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign that attacked John Kerry’s war record in Vietnam. The Wylys also donated more than $1 million to the Republican National Committee from 2000 through 2004, although they significantly curbed those donations once the Securities and Exchange Commission started investigating them for tax fraud.

Other than funding conservative campaigns, the Wylys’ favorite hobby seems to be getting in trouble for alleged tax evasion. The Wylys, who started making money in the software business and then branched out to clothing stores, restaurants and energy companies, first got the attention of the SEC in 2004 when they refused to provide Bank of America with details on their offshore assets. Oops!

From there, it was one unfortunate event after another for the Wylys. In 2005 the brothers copped to “inadvertently” hiding company profits in offshore trusts. In 2006, the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a report detailing a series of trusts the Wylys set up on the Isle of Man that were used to shelter $720 million worth of profits from taxation. And this past summer the SEC finally brought the hammer down on the Wylys, accusing them of reaping more than $30 million from an insider trading scheme related to the sale of their Sterling Software company. The SEC is seeking millions of dollars in fines from the brothers, which would presumably leave them with less cash to use on political smear campaigns. And what a sad, sad tragedy that would be.

Right-Wing Sugar Daddy #5: Peter Thiel

This super-wealthy technodork, who made his money cofounding the PayPal online payment service and being one of Facebook’s earliest investors, is using his cash to influence hearts and minds, albeit in a significantly different way from the previous right-wing sugar daddies we’ve examined. For instead of funding right-wing political campaigns, advertising blitzes and think tanks, Thiel is instead trying to influence his fellow libertarians to flee society, not change it.

Thiel officially lost faith in American society after the 2008 presidential election and he confessed on the Cato Institute’s Web site that he thought democracy and freedom were no longer compatible. The big reason for this, Thiel said, was that over the past century too many people went on welfare and women got the right to vote. Since welfare recipients and women are “two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians,” Thiel reasoned, then “the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’” has become “an oxymoron. ”

To rectify this, Thiel sunk more than $500,000 into the hilariously bone-headed “Seasteading” project being headed up by Patri Friedman, the grandson of famous conservative economist Milton Friedman. With money from Thiel and other like-minded rich libertarians, the seasteading project aims to build large, floating, concrete platforms in international waters where libertarians can live without the greedy hands of Uncle Sam taking their hard-earned cash.

They also plan to make money for themselves by using these platforms as intranational havens for drugs and prostitution, since no legal authority would be able to arrest them out in the open waters. And presumably, women living on the platforms won’t have any say in how the seasteads are run, lest they transform these aquatic libertarian paradises into scummy socialist hellholes. Thiel is also interested in funding transhumanist life-extension projects, as he has given the Methuselah Foundation excess of $3.5 million to ensure that he and his buddies can haunt the Earth with their presence for at least the next few hundred years.

When you think about it, Thiel’s devotion to dopey libertarian escapism, while elitist and horribly sexist, actually makes him the most palatable of all the right-wing sugar daddies we’ve examined. Unlike Scaife, Adelson and the Wylys, Thiel doesn’t want to influence how we think about the world. Rather, he wants to flee the wretched mediocrity of his fellow fleshbags and escape to a no-girls-allowed cyber-treehouse out in the middle of the ocean. To which I say, “You go, Galt!” The only tragedy is that if Thiel succeeds he likely won’t bring any of his brethren with him to the seastead platforms. Because what America needs now more than ever is for a bunch of its self-appointed Atlases to go shrug themselves.

Brad Reed is a writer living in Boston. His work has previously appeared in the American Prospect Online, and he blogs at Sadly, No!.