Room 117 Kabul Hotel

Don't stop at the Blue Laws!

Jeff Jacoby's November 23, 2005 Got the Puritan blues op-ed in the Boston Globe finally got my nod when he describes the use of the Massachusetts Blue Laws today laid down by the Puritan's 300 years ago as out of touch with our reality, to say the least.  Don't stop at the Blue Laws. How about those who would like to reinstate Biblical laws from antiquity to replace all secular law for America. Similar to the Taliban's extreme interpretation of Islamic Sharia law, Christian Reconstructionism uses the ancient laws of Moses and Abraham created thousands of years ago to justify the elimination of all secular laws while replacing our democracy with a theocracy that would be governed by anachronistic biblical laws. Just as the Taliban did to Afghan women, American women would not be allowed to work outside the home, never mind vote! While advocating capital punishment for blasphemy, heresy, adultery, and homosexuality, children could be put to death for disobedience. Let's start addressing these ghosts with as much clarity as you addressed the outrage of following 300 year old Puritan laws today.

Pentagon Revises Nuclear Strike Plan

From those wonderful folks who bombed Iraq for all those mysteriously missing WMD, the Pentagon's new plan includes...

"potential nuclear weapon use listed in the draft is against an enemy that is using "or intending to use WMD" against U.S. or allied, multinational military forces or civilian populations." 

...No problem, it will require presidential approval! That's a relief.

Pentagon Revises Nuclear Strike Plan
Strategy Includes Preemptive Use Against Banned Weapons

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
September 11, 2005

The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

The document, written by the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs staff but not yet finally approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, would update rules and procedures governing use of nuclear weapons to reflect a preemption strategy first announced by the Bush White House in December 2002. The strategy was outlined in more detail at the time in classified national security directives.

At a White House briefing that year, a spokesman said the United States would "respond with overwhelming force" to the use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States, its forces or allies, and said "all options" would be available to the president.

The draft, dated March 15, would provide authoritative guidance for commanders to request presidential approval for using nuclear weapons, and represents the Pentagon's first attempt to revise procedures to reflect the Bush preemption doctrine. A previous version, completed in 1995 during the Clinton administration, contains no mention of using nuclear weapons preemptively or specifically against threats from weapons of mass destruction.

Titled "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations" and written under the direction of Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the draft document is unclassified and available on a Pentagon Web site. It is expected to be signed within a few weeks by Air Force Lt. Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, director of the Joint Staff, according to Navy Cmdr. Dawn Cutler, a public affairs officer in Myers's office. Meanwhile, the draft is going through final coordination with the military services, the combatant commanders, Pentagon legal authorities and Rumsfeld's office, Cutler said in a written statement.

A "summary of changes" included in the draft identifies differences from the 1995 doctrine, and says the new document "revises the discussion of nuclear weapons use across the range of military operations."

The first example for potential nuclear weapon use listed in the draft is against an enemy that is using "or intending to use WMD" against U.S. or allied, multinational military forces or civilian populations.

Another scenario for a possible nuclear preemptive strike is in case of an "imminent attack from adversary biological weapons that only effects from nuclear weapons can safely destroy."

That and other provisions in the document appear to refer to nuclear initiatives proposed by the administration that Congress has thus far declined to fully support.

Last year, for example, Congress refused to fund research toward development of nuclear weapons that could destroy biological or chemical weapons materials without dispersing them into the atmosphere.

The draft document also envisions the use of atomic weapons for "attacks on adversary installations including WMD, deep, hardened bunkers containing chemical or biological weapons."

But Congress last year halted funding of a study to determine the viability of the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator warhead (RNEP) -- commonly called the bunker buster -- that the Pentagon has said is needed to attack hardened, deeply buried weapons sites.

The Joint Staff draft doctrine explains that despite the end of the Cold War, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction "raises the danger of nuclear weapons use." It says that there are "about thirty nations with WMD programs" along with "nonstate actors [terrorists] either independently or as sponsored by an adversarial state."

To meet that situation, the document says that "responsible security planning requires preparation for threats that are possible, though perhaps unlikely today."

To deter the use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States, the Pentagon paper says preparations must be made to use nuclear weapons and show determination to use them "if necessary to prevent or retaliate against WMD use."

The draft says that to deter a potential adversary from using such weapons, that adversary's leadership must "believe the United States has both the ability and will to pre-empt or retaliate promptly with responses that are credible and effective." The draft also notes that U.S. policy in the past has "repeatedly rejected calls for adoption of 'no first use' policy of nuclear weapons since this policy could undermine deterrence."

Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee who has been a leading opponent of the bunker-buster program, said yesterday the draft was "apparently a follow-through on their nuclear posture review and they seem to bypass the idea that Congress had doubts about the program." She added that members "certainly don't want the administration to move forward with a [nuclear] preemption policy" without hearings, closed door if necessary.

A spokesman for Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said yesterday the panel has not yet received a copy of the draft.

Hans M. Kristensen, a consultant to the Natural Resources Defense Council, who discovered the document on the Pentagon Web site, said yesterday that it "emphasizes the need for a robust nuclear arsenal ready to strike on short notice including new missions."

Kristensen, who has specialized for more than a decade in nuclear weapons research, said a final version of the doctrine was due in August but has not yet appeared.

"This doctrine does not deliver on the Bush administration pledge of a reduced role for nuclear weapons," Kristensen said. "It provides justification for contentious concepts not proven and implies the need for RNEP."

One reason for the delay may be concern about raising publicly the possibility of preemptive use of nuclear weapons, or concern that it might interfere with attempts to persuade Congress to finance the bunker buster and other specialized nuclear weapons.

In April, Rumsfeld appeared before the Senate Armed Services panel and asked for the bunker buster study to be funded. He said the money was for research and not to begin production on any particular warhead. "The only thing we have is very large, very dirty, big nuclear weapons," Rumsfeld said. "It seems to me studying it [the RNEP] makes all the sense in the world."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

The controversy of breastfeeding?

It says a lot about the priorities in this country when the right to breastfeed needs to be supported by law. What kind of people are we in America? It's embarrassing when such an obvious and fundamental activity of life itself can be viewed as "uncomfortable" as this editorial claims Barbara Walters was made when she witnessed, horrors a baby being breast fed on an airline. Instead of getting mad at the mother why doesn't Babs try to help push for better accommodations from airlines to give breastfeeding mothers a quiet and private place on board to feed their babies instead of jamming us all in so tight we all risk our health to fly. That's a novel idea!

It's not just breastfeeding, we are all forced by the tightness of the cabins to witness all kinds of personal moments that would be better left for privacy!  There is literally no room to breathe without sucking up your neightbor's air too. To get out of an inner seat to the center aisle should require a blood test in case a accidental insemination! Let's get real here folks, it is pathetic that so many serious legal issues, such as the legitimacy of many aspects of the Patriot Act, will be pushed aside to deal with something that common sense should be capable of governing.

GLOBE EDITORIAL A boost for breastfeeding August 13, 2005 INFANTS AND their mothers would be healthier if more mothers would breast-feed their babies. A Food and Drug Administration study of why women don't, or stop after a short time, found that a principal factor is their embarrassment over the reaction nursing causes when it is done in public. Changing that reaction in squeamish America will take time -- Barbara Walters riled nursing mothers recently when she said on TV that the sight of a woman breastfeeding near her in an airplane made her ''uncomfortable." A step in the direction of making nursing more routine is state legislation that would end the harassment that nursing mothers too often face. Massachusetts is one of about 12 states that lack a law spelling out that breastfeeding mothers cannot be charged with lewdness or other violations. Rarely, if ever, has a nursing woman in this state actually been arrested, but state Representative David Linsky of Natick says many women have been told to stop breastfeeding in malls, stores, or other facilities by policemen, private security officers, or store employees. Linsky has filed a bill that makes it clear that nursing violates no laws. In the Senate, Susan Fargo of Lincoln has filed a bill that both establishes a woman's right to breastfeed in any public or private location where she has a right to be and addresses the problem that mothers have of being able to express their milk at their workplace for use later. Under her bill, employers could not stop a mother from expressing her milk during any authorized meal period or other break time. Moreover, employers would have to provide ''reasonable" unpaid breaks for expressing, unless doing so ''would unduly disrupt the operations of the employer." Fargo would also have the state award companies with the designation ''mother friendly" if they go so far as to provide nursing women with accessible private locations other than a bathroom stall for nursing and make available an electric outlet, wash basin, and refrigerator space for milk storage. Children who nurse have fewer ear infections, less diabetes, lower leukemia rates, and are less likely to be obese than formula-fed children. Mothers who nurse have lower rates of premenopausal breast cancer than mothers who don't. The American Academy of Pediatrics says the United States would save $3.6 billion in annual health costs if all children were breastfed exclusively for the first six months and at least partially for the next six. Currently, almost 70 percent of mothers start breastfeeding their babies, but only 33 percent are doing so after six months. The rates for Massachusetts are slightly higher. Bills like Linsky's and Fargo's would help make nursing the right formula for children's health. © Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

The newest twist on collateral damage

The "shoot-to-kill" police policy for an innocent man  after the London bombing of 7/7/05 does raise the question, who are we at war with?  In World War I the civilian casualties of war were 10%. Today we experience a rate 9 times that, yes, 90% of the  casualities of war are civilian. It means that war today is mostly about killing civilians, otherwise know as collateral damage!

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Met chief warns more could be shot 

Rosie Cowan, Vikram Dodd and Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday July 25, 2005

Guardian

Britain's most senior policeman remained defiant last night over the new "shoot-to-kill" policy for dealing with suspected suicide bombers, despite the killing last week of an innocent man by armed officers.

Sir Ian Blair, the Scotland Yard commissioner, apologised to the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, the 27-year-old Brazilian who died after being shot five times in the head at close range by police on board a tube train at Stockwell, south London, on Friday.

But he admitted more people could die at the hands of police marksmen in the escalating battle against terrorism. Openly discussing the shift in police tactics for the first time, Sir Ian defended the policy of "shoot to kill in order to protect", saying it was necessary to shoot suspects in the head if it was feared they might trigger devices on their body.

"The Metropolitan police accepts full responsibility for this," he said. "To the family I can only express my deep regrets. What we have got to recognise is that people are taking incredibly fast-moving decisions in life threatening situations. There is no point in shooting in someone's chest because that is where the bomb is likely to be. There is no point in shooting anywhere else if they fall down and detonate it. The only way to deal with this is to shoot to the head."

The block of flats in Tulse Hill, south London, where Mr Mr De Menezes lived, was under surveillance following the discovery of its address in a rucksack containing one of four bombs which failed to explode in the capital last Thursday.

He was followed for several miles by undercover officers. According to eyewitnesses, he bolted after being confronted by armed officers at the tube station, resulting in a chase and him being shot on the train. Mr De Menezes' family branded the police "stupid and incompetent", insisting they had no reason to suspect him.

Alex Pereira, his cousin, said: "He was 100% good guy who never did anything wrong and had no reason to run. What the police have shown is that they are incapable and stupid."

A criminal inquiry will be launched into the shooting today. The Independent Police Complaints Commission will bring in independent investigators to assess whether officers will face criminal or disciplinary charges.

It is, however, unclear, whether the special shoot-to-kill tactics, codenamed Operation Kratos, were authorised by a senior officer.

The shooting has increased the already huge strain on the Met, which Sir Ian has admitted is facing the biggest challenge in its history in hunting down the four men responsible for last week's bomb attempt, and their support network. Three men are currently under arrest but it is not known if any of them are the bombers.

In Little Wormwood Scrubs, north-west London the bomb squad carried out controlled explosions on a package found hidden in bushes. They believe it may have been a fifth bomb linked to the devices which failed to go off last Thursday.

Meanwhile, Charles Clarke and Jack Straw, the home and foreign secretaries, backed Sir Ian. Mr Clarke, who has postponed his holiday to attend an anti-terrorism summit chaired by the prime minister today, said: "It is an absolute tragedy for Mr De Menezes and his family and I send my deepest regrets."

Mr Straw, who will face difficult questions from Celso Amorim, the Brazilian foreign minister, today, said: "We have to ensure that clear rules are operated. But we also, tragically, have to ensure that the police do have effective discretion to deal with what could be terrorist suicide outrages about to take place."

anti-marijuana campaign is not what it seems

Dear Mr. Sharpe,

Sad to say there is an obvious reason for the apparent anomoly that the use of a truly dangerous drug such as meth should be less focused on than the use of marajuana, a durg more akin to liquor that meth.  It is very simple, so simple that the reason is usually overlooked. Anyone can grow marajuana in their own backyard. No drug company can compete with that. So the attack against  legalization of marajuana is because of the inability to control the distribution. It is also obvious why many of our politians of many stripes find common ground on this issue. They are owned by the drug companies.

Plain and simple.

"The biggest drug problem is meth July 25, 2005 YOUR JULY 15 editorial, ''Meth Math," was right on target. While local governments are struggling with a methamphetamine epidemic, the Office of National Drug Control Policy is spending millions on a reefer madness revisited ad campaign. This reflects a bizarre sense of priorities. A National Association of Counties survey found that the vast majority of county officials report that methamphetamine is the biggest drug problem. These are the public safety professionals who deal with drug offenses on a daily basis. And it's not marijuana that concerns them, but rather meth. Meanwhile, an out-of-touch federal government continues to be obsessed with marijuana, even going so far as to prosecute terminally ill patients who use medical marijuana. The biggest lie to come out of the ONDCP is that new, potent strains of marijuana allegedly make pot a far more dangerous drug. This is nonsense. The only difference between weak and strong marijuana is that potent marijuana requires significantly less smoke inhalation to achieve the desired effect. It's actually less harmful. The tax dollars wasted on the ONDCP's misleading anti-marijuana campaign would be better spent on treatment for methamphetamine addicts.

ROBERT SHARPE Policy Analyst Common Sense for Drug Policy Washington, DC

A liberal Hawk is a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

Hello Tom Hayden,

Loved your thoughts on Al Franken, liberal hawk? Instead of disappointment it should be a relief to know the truth about who Franken really is.  It's not the first time this kind of political creature has reared it's confusing head. Franken is only a voice for liberal hawks like Senator Joe Biden who is in the political mold of Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson. It's not so much an issue of getting them back to  safe "liberal" ground, but realizing they are covering up their true  "warrior" nature with the liberal shield that just disappears when the war comes along. Defense Dems are always big for social and defense spending. But  just like Conservative Hawks, if they have to choose, guess what they'll go for? You may call it a liberal Hawk but it looks more like a wolf in sheep's clothing from here.

06.23.2005 Tom Hayden

Al Franken, liberal hawk?

"This morning Franken was endorsing Sen. Joe Biden's proposal to send 5,000 NATO troops to close the Syrian-Iraq border, bring in foreign trainers for the Iraqi officer corps, and put Iraqis to work cleaning up the destruction of our invasion. "Last chance to get it right."

" It's a humanitarian excuse for open-ended American occupation. And it's shared widely by the professional political and pundit class who think of themselves as the conscience of the American establishment and the leadership of the Democratic Party."