Tag: 4@4

1. McClatchy reports Obama sets a 18-month Iraq withdrawal timetable, with 50,000 troops to stay until the end of 2011. President Obama announced today all U.S. combat troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by August 31, 2010. However, up to 50,000 troops will remain in Iraq until December 31, 2011, the date the Bush administration set for withdrawal.

   “The 18-month timetable for withdrawing combat troops from Iraq is two months longer than he promised during his campaign… Under Obama’s plan, a force of between 35,000 and 50,000 U.S. troops would remain in Iraq after Aug. 31, 2010, to train, equip and advise Iraqi forces, help protect withdrawing forces and work on counterterrorism.”

2. The Washington Post reports the U.S. economy shrinks by 6.2%.

   The U.S. economy shrank by a larger-than-expected annualized rate of 6.2 percent during the final three months of 2008, the worst showing in about 25 years, according to a revised government estimate out today.

   The new estimate of the fourth-quarter gross domestic product from the Commerce Department is far worse than the initial estimate of negative 3.8 percent, and also larger than the 5 percent drop in growth most analysts had anticipated.

   It’s the largest contraction in one quarter since the first quarter of 1982, when the economy shrank by 6.4 percent.

Four at Four continues with Capitol coal and an octopus prankster.

1. The Hill reports Some Democrats question need for 50,000 troops in Iraq. President “Obama is expected to announce a 19-month plan for withdrawing American soldiers that would leave up to 50,000 troops in the country to advise Iraqi security forces and protect the embassy and other strategic interests.” Obama will also “ask Congress for an additional $75.5 billion this year to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

   Speaking on the redeployment, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said, “It has to be done responsibly, we all agree… But 50,000 is more than I would have thought. We await the justification for why that many are needed.”

2. The LA Times reports President Obama unveils $3.55 trillion budget plan for for fiscal 2010. “We need to be honest with ourselves about what costs are being racked up, because that’s how we’ll come to grips with the hard choices that lie ahead,” Obama said.

   Obama is asking for a $250 billion contingency reserve for the financial black hole. “Budget director Peter Orszag insisted that the ‘place holder’ was only a contingency in case economic conditions worsen further.”

   The Pentagon is asking for $663.7 billion, up from $654.4 billion in this fiscal year, including $130 billion in war funding. What a waste of this nation’s money.

   The NY Times adds the White House budget deficit forecast is optimistic.

   The forecasts are also founded on optimistic assumptions that the recession will end by next year and quickly produce stronger growth than was seen in the last decade. After the economy shrinks this year, the Obama team assumes that the gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, will increase by 3.2 percent next year and then 4 percent or more the following three years, a rate nearly twice the average of the Bush years.

Four at Four continues with the biggest threats to the United States and business, and Bill Holm.

1. The NY Times reports the U.S. escalation in Afghanistan includes billions to fight roadside blasts. “the Pentagon plans to deploy billions of dollars in heavily armored vehicles, spy planes, jammers and even experimental ground-penetrating radars to defend troops from roadside bombs that are proving increasingly lethal.”

   Last year, 175 troops were killed in Afghanistan by roadside bombs. Afghanistan’s terrain and system of undeveloped roads makes it easier to mine with improvised explosive devices.

2. The Guardian reports the Iraqi government welcomes U.S. plans to withdraw combat troops by August 2010. “Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, who has been pressing for an accelerated pullout, said that Iraqi forces would be ready to take over full responsibility for security.”

   However, President Obama may delay the redeployment by many months. Obama has asked the Pentagon for “withdrawal plans ranging between 16 to 23 months… Some of America’s generals based in Iraq preferred the longest option.”

   Even after redeployment, “a sizeable contingent – between 30,000 and 50,000 – will be left to help with security and training.”

3. McClatchy reports Carbon dioxide emissions could last millenniums.

   “David Archer, a leading climate researcher who teaches at the University of Chicago,” explains in a new book that “if the world continues its heavy use of coal over the next couple of hundred years until it’s essentially used up, it would take several centuries more for the oceans to absorb about three-quarters of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere… About 10 percent of it would still be in the atmosphere in 100,000 years”.

   “Ultimately, the amount of fossil fuel available could be enough to raise the atmospheric CO2 concentration higher than it has been in millions of years,” Archer wrote… “In the long run, it could be a steep price to pay for a century or so of fossil fuel energy.”

4. According to The Guardian, the United States’ Climate change timetable slips as Obama backtracks on 2008 deadline. President “Barack Obama has been forced to slow down early legislation to reduce the CO2 emissions that cause global warming, a key green objective of his presidency.” Press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters on Monday that Obama “would support moves by Congress to act on global warming ‘whether that’s this year or next year’. The shift appeared to be an attempt to downplay expectations for further dramatic action on the environment.”

   And last night, once again, Obama furthered the myth of ‘clean’ coal.

   As NASA climate scientist James Hansen wrote, “The dirtiest trick that governments play on their citizens is the pretence that they are working on ‘clean coal’ or that they will build power plants that are ‘capture-ready’ in case technology is ever developed to capture all pollutants.”

1. The LA Times reports Taxing pot could alleviate California’s budget crisis. Assemblyman Tom Ammiano from San Francisco announced legislation Monday to “make California the first state in the nation to tax and regulate recreational marijuana in the same manner as alcohol.”

   “By some estimates, California’s pot crop is a $14-billion industry, putting it above vegetables ($5.7 billion) and grapes ($2.6 billion). If so, that could mean upward of $1 billion in tax revenue for the state each year.”

2. The NY Times reports U.S. soldiers were attacked by Iraqis in uniforms. “American forces were attacked by Iraqi insurgents wearing police uniforms in Mosul on Tuesday, making it at least the third attack in the restive city in the past two months by Iraqis wearing the uniforms of security officers. At least two soldiers were wounded and an Iraqi interpreter was killed, according to a statement from the United States military.”

   The CS Monitor reports Iraq’s waning insurgency scrambles for new sanctuary. “Ongoing violence in outlying provinces such as Diyala and Nineveh indicates that although violence has fallen and some normalcy is returning to Baghdad, the fringes of Iraq – the rural towns, farming villages, and desert outposts – have become the new fronts in the fight against the insurgent threat as extremists have fled cities and are hiding in the country’s remote corners.”

   Meanwhile, in Britain The Guardian reports Blair cabinet Iraq war minutes are kept secret by veto.

   Jack Straw today said he would take the unprecedented step of vetoing the release of cabinet minutes relating to the decision to invade Iraq.

   The justice secretary made his announcement in response to a decision from the information tribunal, which last month ordered the publication of the minutes of two cabinet meetings, held on 13 and 17 March 2003.

   It is the first time the government has used its power to veto the release of documents under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act.

Four at Four continues with voting rights for D.C. and the mountains of Antarctica.

1. The Guardian reports the Consumer exports are behind 15% of China’s greenhouse gas emissions.

   The full extent of the west’s responsibility for Chinese emissions of greenhouse gases has been revealed by a new study. The report shows that half of the recent rise in China’s carbon dioxide pollution is caused by the manufacturing of goods for other countries…

   About 9% of total Chinese emissions are the result of manufacturing goods for the US, and 6% are from producing goods for Europe. Academics and campaigners increasingly say responsibility for these emissions lies with the consumer countries.

   The LA Times reports of Bubbles of warming, beneath the ice. “Methane (CH₄) has at least 20 times the heat-trapping effect of an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂). As warmer air thaws Arctic soils, as much as 55 billion tons of methane could be released from beneath Siberian lakes alone… That would amount to 10 times the amount currently in the atmosphere.”

   “Today, 20% of Earth’s land surface is locked up in a deep freeze. But scientists predict that air temperature in the Arctic is likely to rise as much as 6 degrees Celsius, or 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit, by the end of the century. That is expected to boost the emission of carbon compounds from soils.”

   And just to underscore the point — Climate change lays waste to Spain’s glaciers, reports The Guardian. “The Pyrenees mountains have lost almost 90% of their glacier ice over the past century… ‘It has become obvious that the ongoing trend of worldwide and fast, if not accelerating, glacier shrinkage … is of a non-cyclic nature'”.

Four at Four continues with Obama deficit optimism and Republican governors stupidity, sunken treasure, and Comet Lulin.

1. The LA Times reports President Barack Obama, with stimulus underway, warns mayors about waste. Obama told U.S. mayors that he will use the “full power” of the White House to expose fraud or misuse of economic stimuls money.

   “If a federal agency proposes a project that will waste that money, I will not hesitate to call them out on it and put a stop to it,” Obama told the mayors, who were gathered in the White House. “And I want everybody here to be on notice … if a local government does the same. I will call them out on it and use the full power of my office and our administration to stop it.”

   Meanwhile the NY Times reports Obama bans budget gimmicks Bush used. “For his first annual budget next week, President Obama has banned four accounting gimmicks that President George W. Bush used to make deficit projections look smaller. The price of more honest bookkeeping: A budget that is $2.7 trillion deeper in the red over the next decade than it would otherwise appear, according to administration officials.”

   Obama will budget for the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Medicare reimbursements, and natural disaster response. Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the Obama Obama administration will put the country on “a sustainable fiscal course” by the end of 2012.

Four at Four continues with the SEC may look at corporate boards, China on a natural resource buying spree, and trouble in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

1. The Globe and Mail reports Obama arrives in Canada. “President Barack Obama stepped off Air Force One for the first time in a foreign country, descending a ramp to be greeted by Canada’s Governor-General, Michäelle Jean… Overnight snow left the capital draped in white, while mild temperatures left roads and sidewalks wet and slushy ahead of the President’s drive to Parliament Hill” and his meeting with Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

   The NY Times reports that discussions on Trade and oil are on the agenda. “The United States is a major importer of Canadian oil, and Mr. Harper has been trying to win an agreement to exempt Canada’s vast tracts of oil sands, which contain up to 173 billion barrels of recoverable oil bound into sand and clay, from regulation. Mr. Obama is under intense pressure from environmentalists to resist that effort.”

   According to the CS Monitor, Obama is visiting Canada to tighten ties. “Although the two leaders are likely to find common ground on many economic issues, the controversial ‘Buy American’ clause attached to the $787 billion economic stimulus plan signed into law by the president Tuesday has been playing badly in Canada.”

   Obama hopes the strategy for Afghanistan will be one “ultimately the people of Canada can support.” However, he stopped short of “asking Canada to reconsider its plan to pull its troops out at the end of 2011.”

2. The LA Times reports More troops may be needed in Afghanistan, U.S. commander says.

   A day after President Obama ordered additional soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan, the top U.S. commander there said Wednesday that he may need still more troops in coming months to bolster an intensified war effort that could last as long as five more years.

   Army Gen. David D. McKiernan plans to use the 17,000 soldiers and Marines Obama authorized to try to break an impasse in fighting with the Taliban in the southern part of the country…

   McKiernan said that last year he had forecast the need for an additional 30,000 troops for 2009 and beyond. The 17,000 ordered Tuesday, combined with the earlier assignment of an Army brigade of about 3,500 from the 10th Mountain Division, provides two-thirds of the need, he said.

   Defense War Secretary Robert Gates thinks in addition to sending more U.S. troops, U.S. “allies must do more as well.” There is still no clear goal for the U.S. and NATO in Afghanistan.

Four at Four continues with Israel’s reaction to the nuclear programs in Iran and Syria, and the shoe-throwing journalist’s day in Iraqi court.

1. The CS Monitor reports Obama’s order to send 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan comes before the US has set a clear strategy. “President Obama’s decision to deploy 17,000 additional US troops to Afghanistan may be a defining move that will either reverse the deteriorating situation there or mire the new administration in a war with no foreseeable end.”

   “This is the beginning of an almost unending need,” says one Pentagon official.

   “It is as yet unclear exactly what the new force will do. But it will face a determined insurgency operating in a vast, mountainous country… At the same time, the Obama administration still has not settled on a comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan and does not yet know its endgame.”

   Plus the NY Times reports Obama’s war on terror may resemble Bush’s in some areas. Despite abandoning the Bush administration’s policy of torture, “Obama nominees endorsed continuing the C.I.A.’s program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone. The administration has also embraced the Bush legal team’s arguments that a lawsuit by former C.I.A. detainees should be shut down based on the ‘state secrets’ doctrine.”

2. From The Guardian a climate twofer. First the bad news: Melt-pools are ‘accelerating Arctic ice loss’, “New research has revealed that melt-water pooling on the Arctic sea ice is causing it to melt at a faster rate than computer models had previously predicted.” Since melt-pools “are darker than ice and snow, they absorb solar radiation rather than reflect it, which accelerates the melting process.”

   And some good news: a Fifth of world carbon emissions are soaked up by extra forest growth. “Trees across the tropics are getting bigger and offering unexpected help in the fight against climate change, scientists have discovered… Simon Lewis, a climate expert at the University of Leeds, who led the study, said: ‘We are receiving a free subsidy from nature. Tropical forest trees are absorbing about 18% of the carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere each year from burning fossil fuels, substantially buffering the rate of change.'”

Four at Four continues with whear stem rust, wind turbines in Alaska, and the Blackwater mercenaries trial.

1. McClatchy reports the Stimulus is only beginning of Obama’s economic plan. “This week will be a pivotal one for President Barack Obama and the U.S. economy… Obama will hear from automakers Tuesday on how they’ll restructure to get more taxpayer bailout money. Then he’ll sign a $787 billion stimulus bill in Denver and fly to Phoenix, where on Wednesday he’ll unveil how his administration will spend at least $50 billion of Wall Street rescue money to begin halting mortgage foreclosures nationwide.” Also this week, the Treasury Department will provide more details on the $100 billion plan for the bank’s toxic assets.

   ProPublica is assembling a State-by-state breakdown of the economic stimulus plan. As of now, they have found breakdowns for school districts, transportation and infrastructure, and an estimate of jobs that will be created. States with high unemployment states are getting shafted.

   And Politico reports as part of the stimulus, Obama plots huge railroad expansion. The stimulus bill “dedicates $8 billion to high-speed rail, most of which was added in the final closed-door bargaining at the instigation of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.” And, “when Obama outlines his 2010 budget next week, it will ask for $1 billion more for high-speed rail in each of the next five years.”

   According to Emanuel: “The president wanted to have a signature issue in the bill, his commitment for the future.” (Hat tip Jerome a Paris.)

   While the Obama administration and Democrats’ plan to restart the U.S. economy is about to get rolling, the NY Times reports the Dow nears its lowest level in a decade. “Analysts said investors were still nervous about the Treasury Department’s plans to shore up the financial system and help remove billions of dollars in troubled mortgage-related assets from the balance sheets of major banks.”

Four at Four continues with Iraq corruption and stacks of cash, new constitutions in South America, and coal is death.

1. The LA Times reports Missiles hit compound in Pakistan. “In the most lethal such strike since President Obama took office, suspected U.S. missiles today slammed into a compound near the Afghanistan border, killing about 30 people, by the count of local officials. Most of those killed were thought to be militants linked to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. The wrecked compound belonged to an associate of Baitullah Mehsud, leader of Pakistan’s Taliban movement, and was not far from Mehsud’s own headquarters.”

2. The NY Times reports Pakistan agrees to Islamic law in the Swat Region. “Pakistan government officials said they struck a deal on Monday to accept a legal system compatible with Shariah law in the violent Swat region in return for peace. The agreement contradicted American demands for the Pakistan authorities to fight harder against militants, and seemed certain to raise fears in Washington that a perilous precedent had been set across a volatile region where U.S. forces are fighting Taliban militants operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

3. The LA Times reports that a Conflicted Russia gives and takes on Afghanistan. “Russia seems to have a message for the Obama administration: Go ahead and boost your military effort in Afghanistan — but not without our help… Moscow has sent out increasingly broad offers to open its territory for transport. Last week Russia’s foreign minister even dangled the possibility of transporting weaponry to Afghanistan.”

4. The Guardian reports Terror suspects were tortured in Pakistan under UK policy. “A number of British terrorism suspects who have been detained without trial in Pakistan say they were tortured by Pakistani intelligence agents before being questioned by MI5… The existence of an official interrogation policy emerged during cross-examination in the high court in London of an MI5 officer who had questioned one of the detainees, Binyam Mohamed, the British resident currently held in Guantánamo Bay.”

5. Lastly, the Washington Post reports the CIA helped India and Pakistan share secrets in a probe of Mumbai siege. “The CIA orchestrated back-channel intelligence exchanges between India and Pakistan, allowing the two former enemies to quietly share highly sensitive evidence while the Americans served as neutral arbiters… ‘Intelligence has been a good bridge,’ the U.S. official said. ‘Everyone on the American side went into this with their eyes open, aware of the history, the complexities, the tensions. But at least the two countries are talking, not shooting.'”

1. The LA Times reports that Sen. Dianne Feinstein says missile-strike Predator planes are based in Pakistan. According to the Democratic senator from California, “unmanned CIA Predator aircraft operating in Pakistan are flown from an air base in that country, a revelation likely to embarrass the Pakistani government and complicate its counter-terrorism collaboration with the United States.” This is the first disclosure “a U.S. official had publicly commented on where the Predator aircraft patrolling Pakistan take off and land.”

2. The NY Times reports President Obama’s special envoy arrives in Afghanistan. “One day after a coordinated series of Taliban suicide attacks in Kabul”, Richard Holbrooke has arrived in Kabul. Security forces are on high alert, because “a Taliban spokesman claimed eight bombers remained at large in the city and were still ‘looking for a chance.'”

   Meanwhile, the Sydney Morning Herald reports at least Five children were killed in a battle. “Five children were killed in a night-time gun battle involving Australian special forces in Afghanistan, the Defence Force said yesterday. The battle, which also resulted in the death of a Taliban fighter and injuries to two children and two adults, comes amid a rising civilian toll in the eight-year-old war and marks a further setback for efforts to win local support against the insurgency.”

3. The Washington Post reports a Suicide bomber kills at least 35 on Iraqi pilgrimage route. “A woman wearing a vest rigged with explosives killed at least 35 Shiite pilgrims Friday morning at a checkpoint south of Baghdad… The attack was the deadliest in Iraq this year and marked the third consecutive day of bloodshed against Shiite pilgrims en route to Karbala… At least 67 people, mostly women and children, were wounded in the blast”.

4. ProPublica has A detailed list of the spending in the economic stimulus plan that the House approved today on a largely party-line vote. According to the Washington Post, the “Congressional Budget Office put the price tag of the stimulus plan at $787.2 billion over 10 years”.

A bonus story about Neanderthals is below the fold.

1. The LA Times reports the FBI expects number of major financial bailout fraud cases to rise. FBI officials told Congress they do not have the resources to combat fraud with the $1 trillion plus bailout.”

   Top FBI and Justice Department officials said they believed mortgage fraud and other types of corporate criminal behavior has contributed to the economic tailspin. And they said they already have more than 2,300 open investigations into suspected illegal financial activity — including 38 probes specifically linked to the crisis…

   But the problems will worsen exponentially as the economy plunges, and as the Obama administration and Congress spend more than $1 trillion in various bailout and stimulus packages in an effort to forestall foreclosures, corporate bankruptcies and a prolonged economic depression, they said.

2. The Miami Herald reports Judge OK’s use of Guantánamo forced-feeding chair. U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler accepted “the Pentagon’s argument that its forced-feeding regime is humane.” 35 people at Guantánamo “were being force-fed through a regime that has guards strap a shackled captive into a chair and Velcro his head to a metal restraint. Camp staff then tether a tube through the man’s nose and down to his stomach to pump in a protein shake twice a day. Each feeding lasts about an hour.”

Four at Four continues with the 2002 Invasion of The Hague Act, Pakistan admits Mumbai attacks partially planned in Pakistan, and the Neanderthal genome.