David Cameron called on Tony Blair yesterday to quit office now because of his waning authority. At the same time Labour MPs urged the police to end the cash-for-peerages inquiry & Whitehall voiced concern over the “smearing” of individual reputations. The behind-the-scenes anger over the leaking of details of the police investigation, including arrests, surfaced as Downing Street spoke of the “unfairness” suffered by those who were subjected to allegations & could not answer back. Labour MPs believe that the investigation, which is almost a year old, is causing immense damage to the party & blighting Mr Blair’s last months in office. The rearrest of Lord Levy on Tue, with resulting banner headlines, prompted frustration at No 10 over the leaking of details of the investigation. An insider said: “People are being smeared. We don’t know who is doing it.” Mr Cameron, without mentioning the inquiry, seized on Mr Blair’s predicament during Prime Minister’s Questions ...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk
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Editor - 20:53:00 01-31-07
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 National Security in the Age of Terrorism: Remarks to the Congressional Research Service Seminar for New Members |
This is not a happy time for national security policy. There is the strategic ambush of Iraq to manage before it explodes into a wider war. North Korea is back to trying to get our attention, and this time it's got missiles and the bomb with which to do so. Iran is well along in replacing us as the dominant influence in the Middle East and is widely believed to be working on a nuclear deterrent to the air raids on it by Israel or us that leaders there and here are threatening. Hamas, which has never run an operation against Americans, and Hezbollah, which hasn't done so for decades, seem to be psyching themselves up to respond in kind to our violent efforts to crush them. The Taliban are making a comeback in Afghanistan, which just brought in the largest poppy harvest in history. The Venezuelans are replacing the Cubans as our adversaries in this hemisphere, and, unlike the Cubans, they've got oil and money to buy allies for their endeavor. China is rising and the dollar is declining. ...
http://www.mepc.org/whats/Nat'lSecurityinageofterrorism.asp
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Editor - 19:57:00 01-31-07
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| Soldiers 'tried frantically to stop US fire' |
Frantic attempts were made to call off American aircraft as they targeted a convoy of British tanks in Iraq, an inquest was told yesterday. Smoke identifying the tanks as friendly forces was sent up & tank commanders radioed air controllers, but they were told that the aircraft were being flown by “rogue” pilots who could not be contacted. Instead, they swooped over the convoy once more, setting tanks on fire & killing Lance Corporal of Horse Matty Hull, 25, from Windsor, Berkshire. Corporal Ashley Bell told Lance Corporal Hull’s inquest, in Oxford, of his shock when the aircraft continued to bomb the tanks as they conducted a reconnaissance mission near Basra in southern Iraq, in March 2003. “We started to realise this was a friendly-on-friendly & I got on to the radio,” said Corporal Bell. “I asked for a ‘Stop stop stop, check fire’, at which everyone in our forces is supposed to stop firing.” But he said that he got no response & the aircraft attacked again...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,172-2575509,00.html
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Editor - 19:17:00 01-31-07
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| Powerful yet weak - a US dilemma Thinktank reports on messy 'nonpolar' world and urges new psychological warfare |
The United States is still powerful enough to shape an agenda for international activity but too weak to implement it globally as it faces uncertain prospects in Iraq, an escalating confrontation over Iran's nuclear ambitions and a robust challenge to its military hegemony from an increasingly assertive China, argues a new report by a leading UK thinktank. An annual survey of the international military scene produces a picture of a messy "nonpolar" world rather than the "unipolar" or "multipolar" world often described as having emerged since the late 1980s, said John Chipman, director-general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Others, whether rival states or key "non-state actors", such as Lebanon's Hizbullah, are now "strong enough to resist an American agenda but too weak to shape an internationally attractive alternative or to implement an enduring local agenda free of outside influence", he suggested. ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2003309,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12
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Editor - 18:50:00 01-31-07
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| Mexicans protest as tortilla crisis hurts Calderon |
Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through Mexico's capital on Wednesday night to protest at a surge in tortilla prices that has put new President Felipe Calderon under intense pressure.Soaring U.S. demand for ethanol has sent corn prices to their highest level in a decade, pulling up prices of Mexico's national food staple. Protesters held up ears of corn and complained that Calderon, a conservative accused by his leftist rival of stealing last July's presidential election, was failing to protect them against foreign market forces. "Calderon isn't just a thief, he's a murderer because he wants us to die of hunger," Elvira Acevedo, 62, said at the march. ...
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2839784
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Editor - 18:24:00 01-31-07
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| Senator Wants VA to Explain Events Before Ex-Marine's Suicide |
An Iraq war veteran committed suicide after his family said he was turned away from two VA hospitals, and now a U.S. senator has asked for a probe into the hospitals' actions. U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, a Hawaii Democrat and chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, also wants to know what the Department of Veterans Affairs is doing to prevent tragedies similar to Jonathan Schulze's. "I am concerned that reports of VA's failure to respond to Mr. Schulze's request for help may indicate systemic problems in VA's capacity to identify, monitor, and treat veterans who are suicidal," Akaka wrote in a Jan. 29 letter to Dr. Michael J. Kussman, the acting undersecretary for health with the VA. Schulze, 25, of New Prague, Minn., told a staff member at a VA hospital in St. Cloud two weeks ago that he was thinking of killing himself and asked to be admitted, Jim and Marianne Schulze, his father and stepmother, have said....
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2839835
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Editor - 18:21:00 01-31-07
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