1. McClatchy reports a Judge accuses CIA officials of fraud, unseals secret files.

   A federal district judge ruled Monday that the CIA repeatedly misled him in asserting that state secrets were involved in a 15-year-old lawsuit involving allegedly illegal wiretapping.

   U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth also ordered former CIA director George Tenet and five other CIA officials to explain their actions or face potential sanctions.

   Lamberth also questioned the credibility of current CIA Director Leon Panetta, saying that Panetta’s testimony in the case contained significant discrepancies, and rejected an Obama administration request that the case continue to be kept secret. He released hundreds of previously secret filings.

   “The court does not give the government a high degree of deference because of its prior misrepresentations regarding the stated secrets privilege in this case,” Lamberth wrote. “Although this case has been sealed since its inception to protect sensitive information, it is clear . . . that many of the issues are unclassified.”

Four at Four continues with an update from Afghanistan, Wall Street and the NY Fed, and India says no to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

1. The LA Times reports the U.S. is increasing counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan. The Drug Enforcement Administration is sending dozens of DEA agents to Afghanistan. “The increased DEA effort is aimed at more than a dozen drug kingpins whose networks are producing vast amounts of hashish, opium, morphine and heroin”.

   “The number of DEA agents and analysts in Afghanistan will rise from 13 to 68 by September, and to 81 in 2010. More agents will also be deployed in Pakistan.”

   Meanwhile, the NY Times reports the Pentagon Seeks to overhaul prisons in Afghanistan. “Under the new approach, the United States would help build and finance a new Afghan-run prison for the hard-core extremists who are now using the poorly run Afghan corrections system as a camp to train petty thieves and other common criminals to be deadly militants”. Along with “vocational skills”, inmates “would be taught about moderate Islam”.

   Elsewhere, the LA Times reports a Helicopter crash in Afghanistan kills 16 civilian contractors. Russian news “identified the owner and operator of the helicopter as the Russian company Vertikal-T”.

   This was the second crash in less than a week. “Six Ukrainian contractors were killed when their helicopter went down Tuesday in Helmand… Sunday’s crash came a day after an American F-16 fighter jet went down in eastern Afghanistan, killing the two-member crew.”

   The LA Times adds Captors release video of U.S. soldier held in Afghanistan. The military identified the captured soldier as Pvt. Bowe R. Bergdahl, 23, of Ketchum, Idaho. The CS Monitor speculates Bergdahl may be Held by Haqqani network.

Four at Four looks at the evolution of CIA torture, CDC reports Bush administration policies sharply increased teenage pregnancies and syphilis, engineers got the U.S. to the moon, and the blob is identified.

 

Wasting no time acting upon the Althingi vote, Reuters reports Iceland hands in application to join EU.

“The (Icelandic) ambassador to Sweden has met with the secretary of state and has handed in to him the application of accession to the EU,” said Urdur Gunnarsdottir.

Iceland’s formal application letter (pdf) states, “The Government of Iceland has the honour to present hereby, in conformity with Article 49 of the Treaty of European Union, the application of the Republic of Iceland for membership of the European Union.”

Yesterday, Iceland’s parliament, the Althingi, voted to start membership talks with the European Union. The vote was 33-28 with two members abstaining. ForexTV reported the vote was seen as a victory for Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir, “who has been pushing for joining the EU and the adoption of the euro as the recession-hit country’s currency.”

1. CBS News reports the U.S. threatens Afghans over captured GI. “At least two Afghan villages have been blanketed with leaflets warning that if an American soldier kidnapped by the Taliban two weeks ago isn’t freed, “you will be targeted.'”

   “Military spokeswoman Capt. Elizabeth Mathias confirmed that the leaflets were produced at Bagram Air Base, the primary U.S. installation in Afghanistan, and distributed in the region.”

   U.S. aircraft blanketed at least two Afghan villages with leaflets stating, “If you do not free the American soldier, then… you will be targeted.”

   “The new leaflet represents a broader, direct warning to local people in the region where the U.S. soldier was seized. Villagers from near the Paktika-Ghazni border told CBS News the papers were found stuck in trees and littering roofs in the area. The question is, will its stern message help win the missing soldier’s freedom, or just antagonize the local people who could help, or hurt, that effort.”

   At VetVoice, Brandon Friedman writes that Threatening Afghan Civilians Probably a Bad Idea.

   Now, whether the U.S. intends to actually target civilians is another question. It won’t happen. But it’s the threat that counts. And vocally threatening to do something without a willingness to back it up leads to problems in conflict situations…

   I think whoever came up with the idea to print these things didn’t really think it through. While the likelihood of success using a technique like this is slim, the chance of inflaming the locals even further is much higher. This whole thing seems clumsy and ham-handed, and will almost certainly do more harm than good. I’d love to be proved wrong.

   Our thoughts are with the captured soldier.

   Makes a person really question President Obama’s choice of having Gen. Stanley McChrystal lead his war in Afghanistan. Less than a month ago, the Washington Independent reported McChrystal’s tactical priority was to avoid civilian casualties because the U.S. was (and still is) losing Afghan support.

   Meanwhile, the NY Times reports an Explosion Kills nine in Afghanistan. “Nine civilians, including five children, were killed Friday when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle on the way to a religious shrine in southern Afghanistan, officials said.”

Four at Four continues with a striking jump in mental illness found in Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, the link between combat stress and homicide, Uighurs say U.S. helped Chinese interrogators, Bush-era war crimes dogging Obama, and an all-female flight crew for Marine One.

Buzz Aldrin, the second person to walk on the moon, writes in an opinion piece at the Washington Post that “it is time we were bold again in space.”

Aldrin’s vision, “Time to Boldly Go Once More“, advocates creating an American colony on Mars in 20 years. He believes if the United States space program “avoided the pitfall of aiming solely for the moon, we could be on Mars by the 60th anniversary year of our Apollo 11 flight.”

Aldrin thinks NASA plans to re-explore the moon is a “dead end”. Instead, Aldrin says we should commit our nation to establishing “an American colony” on Mars.

1. The Hill reports Job worries for Obama at NAACP. “Some NAACP officials say the president’s general approach to the economy and unemployment has not gone far enough to address the specific concerns of the black community… One source said many in the black community have expressed frustration with the administration over the number of traditional Wall Street firms handling the funds’ disbursement.”

   With black unemployment rates nearly 5 percent higher than the national average, Obama’s standard line that growing the national economy as a whole “will lift all boats” won’t cut it with some NAACP members.

   “We heard that phrase from Ronald Reagan, and it isn’t necessarily so,” said NAACP board member Amos Brown.

   Brown said that he and others “would expect of [Obama] the same as we would any other president – to be involved in specifics and not generalities.”

   Mr. Brown, good luck with getting specifics from the president.

2. The LA Times reports Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson testifies that Merrill Lynch sale helped stave off ‘great peril’. Paulson tried to justify the “actions he and other Bush administration officials took during the crisis in conjunction with the Federal Reserve and other financial regulators… Paulson said the actions
   ‘were not perfect’ but ‘they saved this nation from great peril.'”

   Paulson claimed he was told not acting would have caused another Great Depression with “people in the streets” and global political instability. “I knew it was going to be very bad, and I didn’t want to experience very bad,” Paulson said.

   The NY Times adds Members of Congress say Paulson misled them. ‘Several lawmakers accused Mr. Paulson of misleading Congress about how government money in the banking bailout would be used.”

   Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat, said the real issue was whether taxpayers should have aided the merger of Bank of America and Merrill. He calls the government’s $20 billion capital injection into the bank a “potentially illegal act.”

   Mr. Paulson repeatedly defended himself during the course of the hearing, saying at one point, “No one was more protective of the American taxpayer than I was.” …

   Representative Michael Turner, [an] Ohio Republican, called TARP “a crock” and the “largest theft in American history.”

   Along with Rep. Turner, the LA Times adds Rep. Stephen Lynch, a Democrat from Massachusetts, “accused Paulson of misleading Congress during its consideration of the $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.”

   “If you had come up here with Mr. Bernanke and said, ‘I want to take [$700 billion] of taxpayer money and I want to give it to my pals in the nine biggest banks in America,’ how many votes do you think you would have got here?” Lynch told Paulson, a former head of Goldman Sachs. “That’s why in my opinion you misled Congress.”

Four at Four continues with Obama seeking to increase the size of the Army and an update from Afghanistan.

1. The LA Times reports the U.S. and China try to reach accord on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “Recognizing the growing environmental crisis, Beijing has launched its own set of domestic policies to reduce pollution while resisting international accords on emissions that they believe will interfere with determining their own destiny.”

   “Beijing has committed $462 billion to scaling up renewable energy by 2020. China has increased wind power by 100% each of the last three years… China considers its efforts to battle climate change superior to those of the U.S., which did not sign the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and awaits a vote by the U.S. Senate on the Waxman-Markey climate bill.”

   “The Chinese bristled at a stipulation in a recent U.S. climate bill that calls for tariffs on green exports from nations that fail to sign emission caps… China wants industrialized nations to reduce their emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2020.”

   The NY Times adds U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu warns China in a speech at Tsinghua University.

   If China’s emissions of global warming gases keep growing at the pace of the last 30 years, the country will emit more such gases in the next three decades than the United States has in its entire history, said Mr. Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics.

2. The Washington Independent reports Insider trading bill looks to hold Congress to corporate standard. “Neither securities law nor ethics rules prevent congressional lawmakers and their staffs from benefiting financially from the non-public information they gather from their daily routines on the Hill. That loophole, studies reveal, has allowed lawmakers to reap significantly higher Wall Street returns than other investors.”

   The ‘Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act’ is a bill that has gotten nowhere in the past three years. On Monday, the legislation got its first public hearing on congressional insider-trading.

   “Members of Congress and their staffs should not be above the law when it comes to profiting from sensitive information,” Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.), a sponsor of the bill, said in a statement Monday. “The American people expect their public servants to represent their interests, not fatten their stock portfolios.”

3. The Guardian has what it is calling the First ever image of IED roadside explosion in Afghanistan. The photo by Manpreet Romana shows a U.S. Marine running for safety moments after an IED blast. The roadside bomb explosion was photographed in the Garmsir district of Helmand province.

   

   Meanwhile, the NY Times reports Afghan war’s buried bombs put risk in every step. The war in Afghanistan today is “where death is measured less by the accuracy of bullets than by the cleverness of bombs. And though the Afghan insurgency’s improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, are less powerful or complex than those used in Iraq, they are becoming more common and more sophisticated with each week, American military officers say.”

   “This year, bomb attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan have spiked to an all-time high, with 465 in May alone, more than double the number in the same month two years before. At least 46 American troops have been killed by I.E.D.’s this year, putting 2009 on track to set a record in the eight-year war.”

4. As if something out of a horror movie, the Anchorage Daily News reports a Huge blob of Arctic goo floats past North Slope communities. “Something big and strange is floating through the Chukchi Sea between Wainwright and Barrow.”

   “It’s thick and dark and “gooey” and is drifting for miles in the cold Arctic waters”. The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating and collected “globs” of the mysterious stuff floating miles offshore for testing. Nobody knows for sure what the gunk is, but Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer says the Coast Guard is sure what it is not.”

   “It’s certainly biological,” Hasenauer said. “It’s definitely not an oil product of any kind. It has no characteristics of an oil, or a hazardous substance, for that matter.

   “It’s definitely, by the smell and the makeup of it, it’s some sort of naturally occurring organic or otherwise marine organism.”

1. The NY Times reports Goldman Sachs records a huge profit. Goldman Sachs looted $3.44 billion from the U.S. and world economy, “or $4.93 a share, in the second quarter. The results continue a robust turnaround for Goldman since it rode out the final tumultuous months of last year with aid from the government’s banking rescue.”

   Goldman benefited from a multibillion-dollar taxpayer cushion last year and, “along with other banks, also benefited from a government program that allows banks to issue debt cheaply with the backing of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. In addition, it received money from the government’s bailout of the American International Group, being paid 100 cents on the dollar for its $13 billion counterparty exposure to the insurer.”

2. The LA Times reports Helicopter crash kills six military contractors in Afghanistan and two Marines die in separate incident. “A helicopter flying under private contract to Western forces in Afghanistan crashed in volatile Helmand province today, killing all six civilians aboard. Military officials also reported the deaths of two U.S. Marines in the same southern province”.

   The NY Times addds American pilots in Afghanistan alter tactics to avoid civilians.

   “It used to be, where do you want the bomb?” said Capt. Thomas P. Lalor, the commander of the air wing on this aircraft carrier, which provides about one-third of the combat support flights for American ground forces in Afghanistan. “Now, it’s much more collaborative.”

   …

   “It’s the right thing to do,” said Cmdr. Rich Brophy, the commander of one of the squadrons, VFA-115, based in Lemoore, Calif. “We certainly don’t want to cause civilian casualties.”

Four at Four continues with anger grows over the CIA, climate change and national borders, and the Euphrates drying up in Iraq.

1. Former VP Dick Cheney is linked to the secrecy of a mysterious CIA program, reports the LA Times on a story broken over the weekend by the NY Times. “The CIA kept a highly classified counter-terrorism program secret from Congress for eight years at the direction of then-Vice President Dick Cheney”. After years of being kept in the darkness, CIA Director Leon Panetta told the House and Senate about the program last month after he, himself, learned about it.

   A senior congressional aide said the magnitude of the program and the decision to keep it secret should not be downplayed. “Panetta found out about this for the first time, and within 24 hours was in the office telling us,” the aide said. “If this wasn’t a big deal, why would the director of the CIA come sprinting up to the Hill like that?”

   The CS Monitor adds As Congress fumes over CIA secrets, whither Cheney? Cheney has slunk back to his undisclosed secret lair once again and has been keeping silent since the bombshell disclosure. How does a member of the executive branch with no authority order the CIA to break the law? Sen. Dick Durban “flat-out stated that such a failure to inform Congress is illegal.”

   The National Security Act of 1947 does require Congress to be briefed about CIA operations. Section 501 states unequivocally that “the President shall ensure that the congressional intelligence committees are kept fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States, including any significant anticipated intelligence activity….”

   The Monitor notes, however, “may be a little wiggle room” and, if past behavior is any guide, Congress will let Cheney wiggle away on this crime too.

Four at Four continues with an update from Afghanistan, Goldman Sachs to post enormous profits, and Pakistani refugees begin to trickle home.

1. McClatchy reports the U.S. military didn’t want to release Iranians held in Iraq. “The U.S. military on Thursday reluctantly turned over to Iraq five Iranians it had accused of fomenting violence in Iraq”, but “said the United States had no choice but to free the five men under the terms of last year’s Status of Forces Agreement, which requires the United States eventually to transfer the more than 10,000 Iraqi and third-country detainees it now holds.” The five Iranians were “invited them to meet Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and then released them to Iranian custody.”

2. The CS Monitor reports that Once an empire, Britain faces big military cuts. “The global recession is causing Britain to face hard choices about its future military role in the world – putting at risk plans to build new aircraft carriers and heralding consequences for everything from operations alongside the US in Afghanistan to whether the UK remains nuclear-armed.”

   “The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), warned that the UK cannot afford much of the defense equipment it plans to buy, questioned the value of renewing the submarine-launched Trident nuclear deterrent, and said it was ‘delusional’ to think the UK could act alone without closer European defense cooperation.”

   Meanwhile, The Guardian reports the Afghan conflict has now claimed lives of as many British servicemen and women as that in Iraq. ‘Ten servicemen have died within the last nine days and the casualty rate is as high as at any point since Afghanistan was invaded in 2001… The latest casualty – the third to be announced today – was a soldier from the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment… The death is likely to intensify the debate about whether the Afghanistan operation is worthwhile.”

Four at Four continues with Iraqi Kurds struggle with Baghdad over land and oil, the warrantless surveillance report, and Mars.

 

Well this would be a good sign, but it seems to me like a hollow gesture from the Obama administration. The New York Times reports on the Lawyer picked for the U.S. war crimes post.

Note that isn’t ‘U.S. war crimes’, but a U.S. ambassador coordinating policy for war crimes perpetrated by others in the international community.

The White House has nominated Stephen Rapp, a well-known figure in international criminal law, to be ambassador at large for war crimes issues.

The ambassador at large, who works for the State Department, coordinates American policy on a variety of legal issues, including the response to international courts and tribunals and to grave violations anywhere of international human rights law. The Obama administration, which has signaled its belief in a strong American role in upholding international law, is expected to give new weight to the office.

Too bad that in America, war crimes can only happen by the other guy. What we need, Mr. Obama, is a war crimes lawyer to prosecute the Americans who ordered and perpetrated the war crimes. But then, the president is too busy looking forward rather than holding Bush, Cheney, et al accountable for their war crimes.

Upholding international law begins at home. It is far past time to bring our own war criminals to justice.