Bush Is A Lame Duck
Yet The Democrats Bend To The Will Of
Mr. 22%
Massacre Unfurls in Congo, Despite Nearby Support
By LYDIA POLGREEN
Published: December 11, 2008
KIWANJA, Congo – At last the bullets had stopped, and François Kambere Siviri made a dash for the door. After hiding all night from firefights between rebels and a government-allied militia over this small but strategic town, he was desperate to get to the latrine a few feet away.
“Pow, pow, pow,” said his widowed mother, Ludia Kavira Nzuva, recounting how the rebels killed her 25-year-old son just outside her front door. As they abandoned his bloodied corpse, she said, one turned to her and declared, “Voilà, here is your gift.”
In little more than 24 hours, at least 150 people would be dead, most of them young men, summarily executed by the rebels last month as they tightened their grip over parts of eastern Congo, according to witnesses and human-rights investigators.
U.S. Joins Effort to Bar Claims on Iraqi Coffers
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and JAMES GLANZ
Published: December 10, 2008
George Charchalis says he has never really recovered from the ordeal he endured after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990.
He hid for more than a month in Kuwait City but was ultimately arrested, “roughed up pretty good” and taken to Iraq. He was held there for nearly three months as a human shield against American bombing.
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Mr. Charchalis, now 78, had every reason to believe that he and 240 other Americans held during the Persian Gulf war of 1991 would be compensated under expansive laws that allow Americans to claim assets of foreign governments like Iraq’s. President Bush, after all, had seized Iraqi assets just before the war and paid other people used as human shields nearly $100 million.
USA
Auto Bailout Clears House but Faces Hurdles in Senate
Many in GOP Doubt Aid Will Save Detroit
By Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 11, 2008; Page A01
The House last night approved an emergency plan to prevent the collapse of the nation’s domestic automobile industry, but the measure faces serious opposition in the Senate, where Republicans are revolting against a White House-brokered deal to speed $14 billion to cash-starved General Motors and Chrysler.
After battling through the weekend to reach a compromise with congressional Democrats, the White House yesterday dispatched Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten to sell the plan to restive Republican senators. But many GOP lawmakers emerged from a combative luncheon with Bolten unconvinced the plan would compel Detroit automakers to make the painful changes necessary to restore them to profitability.
