Tag: 4@4

1. McClatchy reports Afghan vote underway amid tension over Taliban threats. “Protected by tens of thousands of U.S.-led international troops and Afghan security forces, Afghans voted Thursday for a new president for only the second time in their history in an election held under the threat of vote-rigging and the Taliban’s vow to attack polling stations.”

   The Los Angeles Times adds Afghans in Kabul brush aside jitters to cast ballots. “On the eve of the vote, there was ample reason for nervousness. At least six election workers died in attacks by insurgents. Six more American troop deaths were reported in Afghanistan’s volatile south. And Taliban fighters engaged in an hours-long shootout with police in the heart of the capital, a clash that left three militants dead.”

   Meanwhile the Washington Independent reports of the Second major poll this month finds a big drop in support for Afghanistan war. “A narrow majority of 51 percent to 47 percent said the war was not worth fighting.”

2. The NY Times reports the CIA hired Blackwater to carryout assassinations. “The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials… The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects.”

   “Officials said the C.I.A. did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince”.

Four at Four continues with Swiss bank deal, fake letters to Congress, and endangered species selection.

1. The NY Times reports At least 95 people are killed in series of bomb attacks in central Baghdad around official buildings that also left 563 people wounded. “Taken together, the attacks were among the most devastating in Baghdad since the withdrawal of American forces from street patrols at the end of June.” The death toll is expected to rise.

   “The blasts were so intense that parts of a main highway near the Finance Ministry collapsed and were littered with shrapnel and splotches of blood. At roughly the same time, attacks in other parts of the city, including three roadside bombs and some mortar and rocket fire, left 17 people wounded, Iraqi officials said. In response to the chaos, the police and the Iraqi Army closed two main bridges over the Tigris River.”

   McClatchy adds this was Baghdad’s deadliest day in 18 months. Not since February 2008, has a day been this deadly in Baghdad. Some in the city fear violence will return as the government removes the blast walls and open roads that have been closed by the intense days of sectarian fighting from 2005 to 2008.

   “It is brother killing brother, son killing father,” said Katheema Hanoon, who owned a street vending booth next to the Foreign Ministry where she sold snacks and water. She was buried under her goods and shelves after the bombing. A taxi driver helped her out, and she felt fine an hour after the explosion.

   Of today’s attacks, the LA Times reports Bombs target ministries. “The main targets were the Finance and Foreign ministries, which were shaken by massive explosions minutes apart, demonstrating that the insurgency still has the capacity to strike at will against major institutions. In the first attack, a car bomb demolished a bridge beside the Finance Ministry.”

   The CS Monitor wonders if this is the start of a Sunni backlash. A Pentagon report to Congress released in July, “Measuring Stability in Iraq“, “warned of increasing disputes between the Shiite-led government and Sunni groups” because the Bush surge did nothing to resolve the sectarian tensions. The Guardian has a Timeline of bombings in Iraq since US withdrawal from cities.

2. The LA Times reports Violence and death toll mount before Afghanistan elections. “Thousands of new U.S. troops arrived over the summer. Safeguarding the election was one of their primary missions. Despite their efforts, both troop deaths and civilian casualties have soared.”

   In a separate article, the paper reports a Gang takes over a Kabul bank and a bomber strikes a military convoy.

   In another burst of preelection violence, a suicide car bomber targeted a Western military convoy Tuesday in Afghanistan’s capital, killing at least 10 people, including a soldier with the NATO-led force and two Afghan employees of the United Nations.

   More chaos broke out today, the eve of the presidential vote, when a gang of armed men took over a major bank in the heart of Kabul and got into a shootout with police. There was no immediate word on casualties.

   The Taliban claimed responsibility for both attacks…

   Elsewhere, “two U.S. soldiers died Tuesday in a roadside bombing in eastern Afghanistan, bringing the number of American military deaths in the country this month to at least 26”.

   Meanwhile Afghanistan Imposes Censorship on election day, reports the NY Times. Just two days before the presidential election, the Afghan government is “barring news organizations from reporting on election day violence.”

   The National Security Council had made the decision “in view of the need to ensure the wide participation of the Afghan people in upcoming presidential and provincial council elections, and prevent any election-related terrorist violence,” the statement said.

   The Guardian counters that Afghan journalists ignore ban on reporting election violence. “Afghan journalists have rejected a government order not to report attacks or violence on election day, saying the ban would stifle press freedoms that were supposed to have returned after the fall of the Taliban in 2001.” The Afghan government fears that reporting on the violence will “deter people from voting”.

Four at Four continues with Obama’s foreign drug victims, food speculators, and Exxon oil sabotage.

1. The Los Angeles Times reports President Obama tells veterans Afghanistan is a ‘war of necessity’. Obama told more than 5,500 veterans that fighting in Afghanistan was “fundamental to the defense of our people”.

   “This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity,” Obama told the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars conference — cautioning that the insurgency would not be defeated overnight. “Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.”

   Meanwhile, The Guardian reports an Afghanistan bomb attack kills NATO troops. “A suicide car bomb attack on a convoy of foreign soldiers killed seven people, including Nato troops, and wounded 52 in Afghanistan today, as violence continued in the run-up to Thursday’s election… Two Afghan United Nations staff members were killed and another was wounded, the UN said.”

   And the LA Times reports Hamid Karzai scrambles to hold on. The Afghan president’s latest move was to cut a deal with Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek warlord and alleged war criminal. “Karzai has been forced to make deals because of unexpected weakness in an election he had been expected to win easily.”

   His principal rival, Abdullah Abdullah, asks a rally, “Who’s the one who failed at governing?” The crowd chants “Kar-ZAI! Kar-ZAI!”

   The NY Times adds Peace talks with the Taliban top issue in Afghan vote. “Whether and how to negotiate peace with the Taliban has become the one issue that no candidate in the Afghan presidential election can avoid taking a stand on.”

   “Karzai has often talked about negotiating with the Taliban, little concrete has happened… Abdullah Abdullah, Ashraf Ghani and Ramazan Bashardost all oppose the Taliban, but they also promise if elected to do better and to make peace a priority.

Four at Four continues with an update from Pakistan, releasing Shiite militia in Iraq, screwing over cheap, foreign labor to fight wars, and China greenhouse gas emissions.

1. McClatchy reports June’s record ocean warmth worries fishermen and environmentalists. “Ocean surface temperatures around the world were the warmest on record for the month of June, according to federal scientists, though they caution that one month doesn’t necessarily imply global warming… Some scientists think that the rising temperatures hint at broader changes, perhaps resulting from global climate change. Environmentalists and fishermen are wary of what it may mean.”

2. The NY Times reports More U.S. troops are sought for Iraq. Gen. Ray Odierno, the commanding general of American forces in Iraq, has requested more U.S. troops for northern Iraq to help smooth the working of Kurdish and Iraqi forces. “Tensions between the Iraqi Army and the Kurdish militia, known as pesh merga, have kept them from working together, and as a result Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has been able to launch devastating attacks on small villages not controlled by either side”.

3. The Hill reports President Obama picks a fight with the left on health reform. “In backing away from its support for a public option in healthcare reform, the Obama administration is picking a fight with the liberal wing of the Democratic party.”

   “Liberal Democrats have insisted a public insurance option is necessary to ensure competition for private insurers. Just this week, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean predicted there could be Democratic primary challenges if a healthcare bill without a public option is approved by Congress.”

   The NY Times reports the ‘public option’ health plan may be dropped. Howard Dean “said on Monday that he saw a public plan as inextricably linked to a health overhaul.” “I don’t think it can pass without the public option,” he said.

   “You can’t have reform without a public option. If you really want to fix the health-care system, you’ve got to give the public the choice of having such an option,” he said.

   The LA Times reports White House says public healthcare option not ‘essential’.

   Both Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said on Sunday talk shows that a government insurance option was not essential — one day after President Obama himself said as much…

   Sebelius told CNN’s “State of the Union” that a public option is “not the essential element” of healthcare overhaul, but that lowering insurance costs and preventing insurers from dumping customers for preexisting conditions or for exceeding coverage caps are must-haves.

   “I think there will be a competitor to private insurers,” she said. “That’s really the essential part, is you don’t turn over the whole new marketplace to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing.”

   Gibbs agreed, describing the “bottom line” for the president: “What we have to have is choice and competition in the insurance market.”

   Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports there are Six lobbyists per lawmaker work on health overhaul. 3,300 lobbyists, six for each of the 535 members of the House and Senate, are influencing the debate on healthcare overhaul. That is “three times the number of people registered to lobby on defense” and more are signing up each day.

   “These groups spent $263.4 million on lobbying during the first six months of 2009, drugmakers alone spent $134.5 million, 64 percent more than the next biggest spenders, oil and gas companies.”

4. McClatchy reports a Notorious Afghan warlord returns to help Karzai. Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan warlord who allegedly allowed the murder of thousands of Afghan prisoners and destroying evidence of their mass graves has returned to Afghanistan from Turkey to help Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s re-election campaign. “His support could be key to Karzai’s chances of securing more than 50 percent of the vote”.

   Meanwhile, the NY Times reports Threats by the Taliban may sway the vote in Afghanistan. The Taliban has promised “anyone caught voting in the presidential election will have his finger – the one inked for the ballot – cut off… The possibility of large-scale nonparticipation by the country’s Pashtuns is casting a cloud over the Afghan presidential election”.

   The Guardian reports the UK Minister of Defense claims the Afghanistan war winnable despite growing death toll of British soldiers. “The war in Afghanistan is ‘winnable’, the defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth, insisted today, as new figures showed that more British soldiers have been injured in the country this year than in the whole of 2008.”

1. The Guardian reports the Oil lobby is to fund phoney campaign against U.S. climate change strategy. The American Petroleum Institute (API), the U.S. oil and gas lobby, is funding 20 fake ‘energy citizen’ rallies to “give the false appearance of a groundswell of public opinion against legislation that is key to President Obama’s climate change strategy”. The events will be “seeded with industry employees.”

   Jack Gerard, the president of the API, outlined in an email to put a “human face” on their lobbying efforts to thwart climate legislation before the Senate votes on it in September. “We must move aggressively,” he wrote.

   Elsewhere, the LA Times reports ExxonMobil pleads guilty to killing protected birds. The company will pay a mere $600,000 in fines and fees for killing 85 protected birds — including hawks, owls and waterfowl. “Most of the birds died after exposure to hydrocarbons in uncovered natural gas pits, oil tanks and waste water facilities at ExxonMobil drilling and production plants in Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas”.

2. The LA Times reports Loophole in government program to buy toxic securities will cost taxpayers. “A controversial $40-billion government program to buy toxic securities from ailing banks has a flaw that law enforcement and financial experts say could allow traders to illegally profit from inside information.”

   “The Treasury Department, which is in charge of the program, says it intends to closely monitor trading activity to prevent illegal insider trading and profiteering at the expense of the public interest.” But, Neal Barofsky, the special inspector general for the banking rescue program, said:

   “The Treasury cannot possibly match wits with the innovation and aggressiveness of Wall Street… If you give them a set of rules and there are technicalities and legal loopholes and things we haven’t thought of, they are going to find that out, not because they are bad, but because that is what they are supposed to do. They are supposed to seek out profits at all costs.”

   Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports Over 150 U.S. banks may be at the point of no return. “More than 150 publicly traded U.S. lenders own nonperforming loans that equal 5 percent or more of their holdings, a level that former regulators say can wipe out a bank’s equity and threaten its survival.”

   Already 72 banks failed this year; the most since 1992.

3. The Guardian reports Afghanistan passes ‘barbaric’ law diminishing women’s rights. “Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands’ sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation which President Hamid Karzai had promised to review.”

   Meanwhile, the LA Times reports the upcoming Afghanistan report won’t include U.S. troop request. Defense War Secretary Robert Gates said the “upcoming assessment of Afghanistan by the top U.S. commander there will not include a request for additional U.S. troop”, however Gates noted it was possible that Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, “will be considered separately and subsequent to his assessment”.

   “McChrystal is expected to call for an increasing focus on protecting the population and less on mounting individual attacks on suspected extremists.”

4. The Army Times reports the Army is on track to surpass 2008 suicide numbers.

   As many as 12 soldiers killed themselves in July, the Army announced today, and the service remains on course to setting a record for suicides in a single year.

   Of the 12 deaths, eight were active-duty soldiers and four were National Guard or Army Reserve soldiers who were not on active duty at the time of their deaths…

   Between Jan. 1 and July 31, there have been 96 reported active-duty suicides. Of those, 62 have been confirmed as suicides and 34 are still under investigation.

1. The NY Times reports on A window into the C.I.A.’s embrace of secret jails. Kyle “Dusty” Foggo was asked by CIA officials in 2003 for his help buidling secret prisons. Foggo was the head of the CIA’s main European supply base at the time and “someone who could get a cargo plane flying anywhere in the world or quickly obtain weapons, food, money – whatever the C.I.A. needed.”

   “Foggo went on to oversee construction of three detention centers”. Each prison was “designed to appear identical, so prisoners would be disoriented and not know where they were if they were shuttled back and forth.”

   “It was too sensitive to be handled by headquarters,” Foggo said. “I was proud to help my nation.” Foggo also helped himself. Last year he pleaded guilty “to a fraud charge involving a contractor that equipped the C.I.A. jails and provided other supplies to the agency”.

2. The Washington Independent reports the White House faces rising anxiety on Afghanistan. Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, faced a skeptical audience of journalists, think tankers, and former officials who pressed him “about the wisdom of the entire eight-year war in Afghanistan – and President Obama’s definitions of success for a conflict he may decide to escalate.”

   “Holbrooke’s answer suggested an unresolved tension at the level of strategy… ‘The military struggle with U.S. troops is not an open-ended event, but our civilian assistance will continue,'” he said.

   Meanwhile, America’s use of mercenaries is making the situation worse in Afghanistan. The LA Times reports a Deadly contractor incident sours Afghans. Four Xe (Blackwater) mercenaries “are said to be under investigation in the deaths of two Afghans.”

   “A June report by the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan cites serious deficiencies among private security companies in Afghanistan in training, performance, accountability and effective use-of-force rules. The report says U.S. authorities in Afghanistan have not applied ‘lessons learned’ in Iraq”.

   “Since February, oversight of security contractors in Afghanistan has been entrusted not to Congress or the Pentagon, but to a British-owned private contractor, Aegis. The company was hired by the American government after the U.S. military said it lacked the manpower and expertise to monitor security contractors.”

   While incapable of controlling mercenaries, The Guardian reports the US marines in Afghanistan are launching their first energy efficiency audit in the war zone. “General James T Conway, the Marines Corps Commandant, said he wanted a team of energy experts in place in Afghanistan by the end of the month to find ways to cut back on the fuel bills for the 10,000 strong marine contingent. US marines in Afghanistan run through some 800,000 gallons of fuel a day.“

   Meanwhile, the NY Times reports Bombs kill 14 civilians in Afghanistan. “Two bomb explosions in southern Afghanistan killed 14 people, including 3 children at play”. The bombings are likely part of the Stepped-up Taliban intimidation campaign as the Afghan elections nears. The Taliban is threatening Afghans not to vote or face “strong punishment”. “One Taliban commander stood up in a mosque in the southern province of Zabul and warned people that the Taliban would cut off any finger stained with the indelible ink that marks voters, a witness said.”

   Writing at Foreign Policy, Brian Glyn Williams writes What defeat in Afghanistan looks like.

   Having spent this past July at International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in Kabul, I have seen what defeat looks like. It takes the form of thousands of casualty-phobic troops ensconced behind the walls, sand bags, and blast barriers of a well-protected safety bubble…

   For the vast majority of troops at ISAF headquarters, Afghanistan remains an enigma, a threatening land lying beyond the concertina wire of the base. The only Afghan most ever meet is the Hazara carpet seller on base who serves authentic Afghan food once a month. And the only coalition soldiers most Afghans meet are encased in armor-plated vehicles or flak jackets.

   The troops at ISAF HQ are hardly the exception.

   Spencer Ackerman at the Washington Independent comments on the piece: “Defeat in Afghanistan has a very definable profile, and it looks like risk-aversion… you can’t fight a war if you don’t fight a war – but the war is out in the provinces more than it is in the capital city.”

Four at Four continues with Cheney unloading on Bush, revolts in India caused by lack of water, and a horrible crime in Portland, Oregon.

1. McClatchy reports Hey, wha’d’ ya know? Karl Rove played key role in firing U.S. attorneys, after all. “Karl Rove and other top officials in the George W. Bush White House were deeply involved in pushing for the ouster of several U.S. attorneys… according to testimony and e-mails that the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee released Tuesday.”

   “Sworn testimony from former White House Counsel Harriet Miers revealed that Rove considered former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico a ‘serious problem’ and ‘wanted something done about it'”.

   “Miers’ testimony and e-mails between White House officials contradict Rove’s assertion that he was merely a passive ‘conduit'”.

   The NY Times, of course, won’t say that he lied (he did), but do report Rove played a key role. The released records “offer a detailed portrait of a nearly two-year effort, from early 2005 to 2007, by senior White House officials, including Mr. Rove, to dismiss some prosecutors for what appear to be political reasons.”

Four at Four continues with an update from Afghanistan, Iraqi immigrants struggling to make a life in America, and America’s torture architects.

1. McClatchy reports Army General Stanley McChrystal wants huge boost in U.S. civilians in Afghanistan, plus 45,000 more troops. McChrystal will request double the number of U.S. goverment civilian workers in Afghanistan as “part of a 60-day assessment of the strategy in Afghanistan.”

   “It’s not clear, however, whether the State Department can deploy enough civilians fast enough to make progress in an economically backward nation that remains plagued by an Islamist insurgency, internal rivalries, inadequate infrastructure, official corruption and a booming opium trade. What’s more, nearly eight years after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, one thing that many of its people have in common is growing discontent with the presence of foreign forces.”

   The CS Monitor asks Are more U.S. troops in Afghanistan inevitable? “The 21,000 US troops promised to Afghanistan have still not all arrived, yet speculation is rife that rising violence may force the senior commander there to ask for more.”

   “Last month was the deadliest ever for US forces in Afghanistan. In all, 76 coalition troops were killed. Seeking to reverse that trend, the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is preparing an assessment of the mission. News reports suggest that he could ask for an additional 10,000 to 45,000 troops.”

   Meanwhile, the NY Times reports the Taliban seize building for an attack on Afghan government offices. “Taliban gunmen and suicide bombers seized a five-story building in” Pul-e-Alam, the provicial capital of Logar Province. In a battle with Afghan and American forces that lasted several hours and left at least four dead.

   Also, according to a new opinion poll by Glevum Associates and financed by the United States government that surveyed more than 3,500 Afghans from July 8 to 19, Afghans have less concerns about security than corruption and lack of jobs.

Four at Four continues with an update from Iraq, a look at tough times, nuclear power in Florida, and Green China.

1. The LA Times reports Criminal investigation into CIA treatment of detainees expected. U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is expected to name a criminal prosecutor to conduct an narrow-in-scope investigation “focusing on ‘whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized’ in Bush administration memos” that approved of torture.

   “Some cases have not previously been disclosed, including an instance in which a CIA operative brought a gun into an interrogation booth to force a detainee to talk, officials said.”

   “Obama and Holder have both said that they believe waterboarding constitutes torture.” But, “the U.S. anti-torture statute requires proving that an interrogator ‘specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering’ — a daunting legal threshold.”

   Meanwhile, the NY Times reports from London that the Head of MI-6 defends against torture allegations. Sir John Scarlett, “the head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service”, is defending Britain’s counterterrorism policies, “rejecting accusations that his agency has colluded in the torture of terrorist suspects being interrogated abroad.”

   Scarlett claims there was “no torture, and no complicity in torture” by the British despite allegations from former prisoners held by the U.S. American officials also have denied the torture claims.

2. The Washington Independent reports Xe (Blackwater) wants to keep State Department security contract.

   Even as a wrongful-death lawsuit moves forward against the controversial private security company formerly known as Blackwater, the firm seeks to renew its contract with the State Department to guard diplomats when the deal expires next year. And the State Department shows no signs of ruling the company out of competition, despite a high-profile incident in 2007 that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead…

   In 2005, the State Department issued a four-year contract, valued at $560 million per year, to provide on-the-ground security for its diplomats in dangerous areas around the world with three leading private security companies: Blackwater, Triple Canopy and DynCorp. The U.S. military does not consider the provision of security for diplomats in war zones to be its job…

   While Xe may no longer be operating in Iraq, it is the only private security company guarding State Department employees in Afghanistan… Already, Xe has come under criticism for aggressive actions in Afghanistan reminiscent of its Iraq behavior.

   Meanwhile, The Guardian reports a British security guard ‘admits Iraq killings’. Daniel Fitzsimons appeared before a Baghdad judge after the shooting deaths of two fellow ArmorGroup contractors. “The British guard today admitted his crime of killing the two men,” said Major Abdul Kareem General Kalaph, an Iraqi interior ministry spokesman. Fitzimons faces execution if convicted.

3. McClatchy reports Bombings kill dozens of people in Baghdad and northern Iraq. “Early morning bombings Monday in Baghdad and Mosul killed at least 49 people and wounded 231, the third large-scale attack on civilians in the past 10 days.”

   The NY Times adds “nearly 100 people have been killed and scores wounded in Mosul and Baghdad since Friday in the worst outburst in violence since June 30, when Iraqis officially took the lead on national security and American troops largely withdrew to their bases.”

4. The Washington Post reports Corporate Mercenary extols the ‘art of firing’ people. Meet Kim Hall, as vice president of the Five O’Clock Club, she “coaches businesses on how to execute mass downsizings and often visits companies on the designated day to help coordinate a layoff.”

   He business is “is a profitable one. The Five O’Clock Club has nearly doubled in size during the past two years, and Hall has guided more than 200 companies and 1,500 laid-off workers through downsizings in the past six months.” Her company “charges each company about $2,000 per fired employee in exchange for providing layoff victims with a year of career coaching.”

   She is a paid liar. She avoids saying “unemployed.” According to her, these are “job-seekers,” or “separated employees,” or “affected workers,” or “people in transition.”

   And most of all, Hall says, you remain optimistic on the phone no matter the circumstances. You never mention that 250,000 people lost their jobs in one month. Instead, you say that job loss has slowed, the market continues to recover and the economy is improving. Always improving.

1. The Guardian reports Hillary Clinton has hinted the United States may join international war crimes court. The Secretary of State, speaking at a public meeting in Kenya, “expressed regret” that the U.S. has not joined the International Criminal Court.

   “This is a great regret that we are not a signatory. I think we could have worked out some of the challenges that are raised concerning our membership. But that has not yet come to pass,” she said.

   There is division in the Obama White House whether or not the U.S. should join. U.S. “membership would be difficult while the US was still in Iraq and the prison at Guantánamo Bay remained open.”

2. The NY Times reports the U.S. Birth rate has declined as because of the Great Recession. “In 2007, the number of births in the United States broke a 50-year-old record high, set during the baby boom. But last year, births began to decline nationwide, by nearly 2 percent, according to provisional figures released last week” by the National Center for Health Statistics.

   “As more families were feeling the effects of layoffs and economic uncertainty, births decreased even faster… Historically, birth rates have fluctuated with the economy.”

3. The LA Times reports the Death of Pakistan Taliban chief Baitullah Mahsud is confirmed. “Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mahsud, Pakistan’s most wanted terrorist and a staunch Al Qaeda ally, was killed in an American missile strike, a Pakistani government minister confirmed today”.

   “The missile strike came from a U.S. unmanned aircraft that attacked the home of Mahsud’s father-in-law in Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal region early Wednesday. Pakistani intelligence officials have said that Mahsud’s second wife was among at least two people killed.”

   The NY Times notes it was a Missile strike from a CIA drone that killed Mehsud. “The C.I.A. made killing Mr. Mehsud one of its top priorities this year, partly at the urging of Pakistan’s civilian government.” Which again raises the question, why have we allowed the CIA to get in the business of waging war? Don’t we have a perfectly good military for this purpose?

   The CS Monitor asks Is Pakistan safer now? Maybe. “Many analysts in Pakistan say his death will substantially undermine Taliban operations in the country.” Experts are now expecting the Taliban to splinter into regional factions.

4. The NY Times reports the White House struggles to gauge Afghan war progress. “The Obama administration is struggling to come up with a long-promised plan to measure whether the war is being won.”

   The administration is seeking concrete signs of “success”. “That is especially difficult in a war like the one in Afghanistan, in which eliminating corruption, promoting a working democracy and providing effective aid are as critical as scoring military success against insurgents and terrorists.”

   But, “when President Obama unveiled his new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan in March, he emphasized the importance of these measures.”

   “We will set clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable,” Mr. Obama said. “We’ll consistently assess our efforts to train Afghan security forces and our progress in combating insurgents. We will measure the growth of Afghanistan’s economy and its illicit narcotics production. And we will review whether we are using the right tools and tactics to make progress towards accomplishing our goals.”

   Seems to me goals and benchmarks should have been established before additional troops were committed to the conflict.

1. Sure good to see President Obama looking out for corporate America. The NY Times reports White House acknowledges it will protect Big Pharma.

   Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion.

   Drug industry lobbyists reacted with alarm this week to a House health care overhaul measure that would allow the government to negotiate drug prices and demand additional rebates from drug manufacturers.

   In response, the industry successfully demanded that the White House explicitly acknowledge for the first time that it had committed to protect drug makers from bearing further costs in the overhaul.

   Meanwhile, Congress seeks $1 trillion to cover the the health legislation.

2. ABC News reports Environmental groups say Obama’s mining pick is an industry stooge. President Obama’s nominee to oversee the American coal mining industry is Joseph Pizarchik, Pennsylvania’s top environmental official for mining since 2002.

   “Pizarchik’s office, the Bureau of Mining and Reclamation for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, has drawn fire in the past for taking steps that activists and others said limited public input on controversial mining projects… Activists also object to Pizarchik’s support of disposing toxic ash from burned coal into Pennsylvania mines, which they say leads to poisoned streams and drinking water.”

   “The consensus among several current and former Office of Surface Mining employees was that Pizarchik was likely to speed approval for mining projects, not address environmental concerns, said Jeff Ruch of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.”

3. McClatchy reports Older workers hang on to jobs longer because they have to.

   “Everyone is seeing huge increases in unemployment – people dropping out of the labor force across the board – but older workers have seen a big increase in labor-force participation since the start of the recession. And I think it has a lot to do with declining retirement security,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group.

   A close look at work force data reveals that when the recession began in December 2007, workers 55 and older constituted 18 percent of the labor market. Today, they make up more than 19 percent. That means more Americans are working well into what would have been retirement, by choice and, increasingly, by necessity…

   “For older people right now, the crisis is not jobs, it is wealth,” Shierholz said. “They thought they had money tied up in their homes, and that’s gone or halved. If they have a 401(k), they’ve also seen a decline there … they are simply not leaving the labor force. In fact, they are still coming in.”

4. The Hill reports Harry Reid opposes democratic elections for senate vacancies. “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday that he will oppose an effort to require that Senate vacancies be filled by election instead of gubernatorial appointment… Earlier in the day, the Senate Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee advanced a proposed constitutional amendment sponsored by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) to require that Senate vacancies be filled by direct elections.”

   “I’m not in favor of our dictating to a state what it should do,” Reid told reporters. “We have a system now where some states have special elections and some have governors appoint.

1. The NY Times reports Obama tries to put a brighter face on the economy. The White House is trying happy talk to persuade Americans that a jobless recovery means the U.S. economy is getting better. Though, “double-digit unemployment could be a psychological threshold with political ramifications for Mr. Obama.”

   “In January, the Obama team predicted that unemployment would remain at 8 percent or lower in 2009 if the recovery bill passed.” Last month, Vice President Biden admitted the Obama Team “misread how bad the economy was” at the start of the year. The White House argues, however, that without Obama’s reward-the-rich economic policies, the economy “could be worse”.

2. McClatchy reports Most of the U.S. is ill prepared to help children in disasters, says Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Craig Fugate. “We’ve historically looked at special populations as an afterthought,” Fugate said. “Children are not small adults.”

   “The worst prepared states, which had few or none of those plans, include Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana and Missouri, as well as the District of Columbia.”

3. AP reports that Small Pacific islands call for big carbon cuts. Seven Pacific island nations say the world must cut by 45 percent by 2020, or their nations will be lost to rising sea levels.

   “The group of seven small countries – the Cook Islands, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau and Tuvalu – adopted the position of the global Association of Small Islands States that asks developed nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent by 2020 and 85 percent by 2050.”

   The Sydney Morning Herald adds Australian Prime Minister Kevin “Rudd said he was shocked to hear from regional leaders of coastal villages already being abandoned and farmland and water supplies destroyed by rising salt water.”

   The IPS reports Oxfam Australia predicts 8 million climate refugees as the island nations succumb to the rising seas. “Climate change could produce eight million refugees in the Pacific Islands, along with 75 million refugees in the Asia Pacific region in the next 40 years”.

4. The NY Times reports China seeks climate accord without strict limits. China is “the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide” and “together, China and the United States account for about 40 percent of pollutants linked to climate change.”

   Yu Qingtai, China’s climate envoy, “underscored China’s opposition to placing a ceiling on its emissions of greenhouse gases… Limiting China’s development would hamstring efforts to raise its living standards closer to a level that the developed world… China has proposed that the developed world commit to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020.”

   “The developed countries, in realizing their industrialization, have discharged a large amount of greenhouse gases in the course of one or two centuries,” he said. “The cumulative emissions by the developed countries have caused global warming. Who should take the historical responsibilities?”