Togo West-Vernon Clark Report: "DoD Independent Review Related to Fort Hood"

APPENDIX C

Summary of Findings and Recommendations
Finding 2.1
DoD programs, policies, processes, and procedures that address identification of indicators for violence are outdated, incomplete, and fail to include key indicators of potentially violent behaviors .
Recommendation 2.1
• Update training and education programs to help DoD personnel identify contributing factors and behavioral indicators of potentially violent actors .
• Coordinate with the FBI Behavioral Science Unit’s Military Violence unit to identify behavioral indicators that are specific to DoD personnel .
• Develop a risk assessment tool for commanders, supervisors, and professional support service providers to determine whether and when DoD personnel present risks for various types of violent behavior .
• Develop programs to educate DoD personnel about indicators that signal when individuals may commit violent acts or become radicalized .
Finding 2.2
Background checks on personnel entering the DoD workforce or gaining access to installations may be incomplete, too limited in scope, or not conducted at all .
Recommendation 2.2
• Evaluate background check policies and issue appropriate updates . • Review the appropriateness of the depth and scope of the National Agency Check with Local Agency
and Credit Check as minimum background investigation for DoD SECRET clearance .
• Educate commanders, supervisors, and legal advisors on how to detect and act on potentially adverse behaviors that could pose internal threats .
• Review current expedited processes for citizenship and clearances to ensure risk is sufficiently mitigated .
Finding 2.3
DoD standards for denying requests for recognition as an ecclesiastical endorser of chaplains may be inadequate .
Recommendation 2.3
Review the limitations on denying requests for recognition as ecclesiastical endorsers of chaplains .
Finding 2.4
The Department of Defense has limited ability to investigate Foreign National DoD military and civilian personnel who require access to DoD information systems and facilities in the U .S . and abroad .
C-1
Recommendation 2.4
Coordinate with the Department of State and Office of Personnel Management to establish and implement more rigorous standards and procedures for investigating Foreign National DoD personnel .
Finding 2.5
The policies and procedures governing assessment for pre- and post-deployment medical risks do not provide a comprehensive assessment of violence indicators .
Recommendation 2.5
• Assess whether pre- and post-deployment behavioral screening should include a comprehensive violence risk assessment .
• Review the need for additional post-deployment screening to assess long-term behavioral indicators that may point to progressive indicators of violence .
• Revise pre- and post-deployment behavioral screening to include behavioral indicators that a person may commit violent acts or become radicalized .
• Review policies governing sharing healthcare assessments with commanders and supervisors to allow information regarding individuals who may commit violent acts to become available to appropriate authorities .
Finding 2.6
The Services have programs and policies to address prevention and intervention for suicide, sexual assault, and family violence, but guidance concerning workplace violence and the potential for self- radicalization is insufficient .
Recommendation 2.6
• Revise current policies and procedures to address preventing violence toward others in the workplace .
• Integrate existing programs such as suicide, sexual assault, and family violence prevention with information on violence and self-radicalization to provide a comprehensive prevention and response program .
Finding 2.7
DoD policy regarding religious accommodation lacks the clarity necessary to help commanders distinguish appropriate religious practices from those that might indicate a potential for violence or self- radicalization .
Recommendation 2.7
Promptly establish standards and reporting procedures that clarify guidelines for religious accommodation .
C-2
Appendix C
Summary of Findings and Recommendations
Finding 2.8
DoD Instruction 5240 .6, Counterintelligence (CI) Awareness, Briefing, and Reporting Programs, does not thoroughly address emerging threats, including self-radicalization, which may contribute to an individual’s potential to commit violence .
Recommendation 2.8
Update DoD Instruction 5240 .6 to provide specific guidance to the Services, Combatant Commands, and appropriate agencies for counterintelligence awareness of the full spectrum of threat information particularly as it applies to behavioral indicators that could identify self-radicalization .
Finding 2.9
DoD and Service guidance does not provide for maintaining and transferring all relevant information about contributing factors and behavioral indicators throughout Service members’ careers .
Recommendation 2.9
• Review what additional information (e .g ., information about accession waivers, substance abuse, minor law enforcement infractions, conduct waivers) should be maintained throughout Service members’ careers as they change duty locations, deploy, and re-enlist .
• Develop supporting policies and procedures for commanders and supervisors to access this information .
Finding 2.10
There is no consolidated criminal investigation database available to all DoD law enforcement and criminal investigation organizations .
Recommendation 2.10
Establish a consolidated criminal investigation and law enforcement database such as the Defense Law Enforcement Exchange .
Finding 2.11
DoD guidance on establishing information sharing agreements with Federal, State, and local law enforcement and criminal investigation organizations does not mandate action or provide clear standards .
Recommendation 2.11
Require the Military Departments and Defense Agencies to establish formal information sharing agreements with allied and partner agencies; Federal, State, and local law enforcement; and criminal investigation agencies, with clearly established standards regarding scope and timeliness .
C-3
Finding 2.12
Policies governing communicating protected health information to other persons or agencies are adequate at the DoD-level, though they currently exist only as interim guidance . The Services, however, have not updated their policies to reflect this guidance .
Recommendation 2.12
Ensure Services update policies to reflect current DoD-level guidance on the release of protected health information .
Finding 2.13
Commanders and military healthcare providers do not have visibility on risk indicators of Service members who seek care from civilian medical entities .
Recommendation 2.13
Consider seeking adoption of policies and procedures to ensure thorough and timely dissemination of relevant Service member violence risk indicators from civilian entities to command and military medical personnel .
Finding 2.14
The Department of Defense does not have a comprehensive and coordinated policy for counterintelligence activities in cyberspace . There are numerous DoD and interagency organizations and offices involved in defense cyber activities .
Recommendation 2.14
Publish policy to ensure timely counterintelligence collection, investigations, and operations in cyberspace for identifying potential threats to DoD personnel, information, and facilities .
Finding 2.15
DoD policy governing prohibited activities is unclear and does not provide commanders and supervisors the guidance and authority to act on potential threats to good order and discipline .
Recommendation 2.15
Review prohibited activities and recommend necessary policy changes .
Finding 2.16
Authorities governing civilian personnel are insufficient to support commanders and supervisors as they attempt to identify indicators of violence or take actions to prevent violence .
C-4
Appendix C Summary of Findings and Recommendations
Recommendation 2.16
Review civilian personnel policies to determine whether additional authorities or policies would enhance visibility on indicators of possible violence and provide greater flexibility to address behaviors of concern .
Finding 3.1
• The Department of Defense has not issued an integrating force protection policy . • Senior DoD officials have issued DoD policy in several force protection-related subject areas such as
antiterrorism but these policies are not well integrated .
Recommendation 3.1
• Assign a senior DoD official responsibility for integrating force protection policy throughout the Department .
• Clarify geographic combatant commander and military department responsibilities for force protection . • Review force protection command and control relationships to ensure they are clear .
Finding 3.2
DoD force protection programs and policies are not focused on internal threats .
Recommendation 3.2
• Develop policy and procedures to integrate the currently disparate efforts to defend DoD resources and people against internal threats .
• Commission a multidisciplinary group to examine and evaluate existing threat assessment programs; examine other branches of government for successful programs and best practices to establish standards, training, reporting requirements /mechanisms, and procedures for assessing predictive indicators relating to pending violence .
• Provide commanders with a multidisciplinary capability, based on best practices such as the Navy’s Threat Management Unit, the Postal Service’s “Going Postal Program,” and Stanford University’s workplace violence program, focused on predicting and preventing insider attacks .
Finding 3.3
The Department of Defense’s commitment to support JTTFs is inadequate .
Recommendation 3.3
• Identify a single point of contact for functional management of the Department of Defense’s commitment to the JTTF program .
• Evaluate and revise, as appropriate, the governing memoranda of understanding between the FBI and different DoD entities involved with the JTTF to ensure consistent outcomes .
• Review the commitment of resources to the JTTFs and align the commitment based on priorities and requirements .
C-5
Finding 3.4
There is no formal guidance standardizing how to share Force Protection threat information across the Services or the Combatant Commands .
Recommendation 3.4
Direct the development of standard guidance regarding how military criminal investigative organizations and counterintelligence organizations will inform the operational chain of command .
Finding 3.5
The Department of Defense does not have direct access to a force protection threat reporting system for suspicious incident activity reports .
Recommendation 3.5
• Adopt a common force protection threat reporting system for documenting, storing, and exchanging threat information related to DoD personnel, facilities, and forces in transit .
• Appoint a single Executive Agent to implement, manage, and oversee this force protection threat reporting system .
Finding 3.6
There are no force protection processes or procedures to share real-time event information among commands, installations, and components .
Recommendation 3.6
Evaluate the requirement for creating systems, processes, policy, and tools to share near real-time, unclassified force protection information among military installations in CONUS to increase situational awareness and security response .
Finding 3.7
DoD installation access control systems and processes do not incorporate behavioral screening strategies and capabilities, and are not configured to detect an insider threat .
Recommendation 3.7
• Review best practices, including programs outside the U .S . Government, to determine whether elements of those programs could be adopted to augment access control protocols to detect persons who pose a threat .
• Review leading edge tools and technologies that augment physical inspection for protecting the force .
C-6
Appendix C Summary of Findings and Recommendations
Finding 3.8
The Department of Defense does not have a policy governing privately owned weapons .
Recommendation 3.8
Review the need for DoD privately owned weapons policy .
Finding 3.9
Services cannot share information on personnel and vehicles registered on installations, installation debarment lists, and other relevant information required to screen personnel and vehicles, and grant access .
Recommendation 3.9
• Develop timely information sharing capabilities among components including vehicle registration, installation debarment lists, and other access control information .
• Accelerate efforts to automate access control that will authenticate various identification media (e .g ., passports, CAC, drivers’ licenses, license plates) against authoritative databases .
• Obtain sufficient access to appropriate threat databases and disseminate information to local commanders to enable screening at CONUS and overseas installation access control points .
Finding 4.1
Services are not fully interoperable with all military and civilian emergency management stakeholders .
Recommendation 4.1
• Establish milestones for reaching full compliance with the Installation Emergency Management program .
• Assess the potential for accelerating the timeline for compliance with the Installation Emergency Management program .
Finding 4.2
There is no DoD policy implementing public law for a 911 capability on DoD installations . Failure to implement policy will deny the military community the same level of emergency response as those communities off base .
Recommendation 4.2
Develop policy that provides implementation guidance for Enhanced 911 services in accordance with applicable laws .
C-7
Finding 4.3
DoD policy does not currently take advantage of successful models for active shooter response for civilian and military law enforcement on DoD installations and facilities .
Recommendation 4.3
• Identify and incorporate civilian law enforcement best practices, to include response to the active shooter threat, into training certifications for civilian police and security guards .
• Include military law enforcement in the development of minimum training standards to ensure standard law enforcement practices throughout the Department of Defense .
• Incorporate the Department of Homeland Security best practices regarding workplace violence and active shooter awareness training into existing personal security awareness training contained in current Level 1 Antiterrorism Awareness training .
• Develop a case study based on the Fort Hood incident to be used in installation commander development and on-scene commander response programs .
Finding 4.4
Based on Joint Staff Integrated Vulnerability Assessments, many DoD installations lack mass notification capabilities .
Recommendation 4.4
Examine the feasibility of advancing the procurement and deployment of state-of-the-art mass warning systems and incorporate these technologies into emergency response plans .
Finding 4.5
Services have not widely deployed or integrated a Common Operational Picture capability into Installation Emergency Operations Centers per DoD direction .
Recommendation 4.5
• Examine the feasibility of accelerating the deployment of a state-of-the-art Common Operational Picture to support installation Emergency Operations Centers .
• Develop an operational approach that raises the Force Protection Condition in response to a scenario appropriately and returns to normal while considering both the nature of the threat and the implications for force recovery and healthcare readiness in the aftermath of the incident .
Finding 4.6
• Stakeholders in the DoD Installation Emergency Management program, including the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; Under Secretary for Personnel and Readiness; Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology & Logistics; Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs; and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks
C-8
Appendix C Summary of Findings and Recommendations
and Information Integration/Chief Information Officer, have not yet synchronized their applicable programs, policies, processes, and procedures .
• Better synchronization and coordination would remove redundant planning requirements, identify seams in policy, focus programmed resources, and streamline procedures to achieve unity of effort in installation emergency management .
Recommendation 4.6
• Review responsibilities for synchronizing Office of the Secretary Defense programs, policies, and procedures related to installation emergency management .
• Establish policy requiring internal synchronizing of installation programs, plans, and response for emergency management .
Finding 4.7
Mutual Aid Agreements (MAAs) between DoD and civilian support agencies across the Services are not current .
Recommendation 4.7
Review Installation Emergency Management programs to ensure correct guidance on integrating tracking, exercising, and inspections of MAAs .
Finding 4.8
The Department of Defense has not produced guidance to develop family assistance plans for mass casualty and crisis response . As a result, Service-level planning lacks consistency and specificity, which leads to variation in the delivery of victim and family care .
Recommendation 4.8
• Develop guidance incorporating the core service elements of a Family Assistance Center as identified in the Pentagon AAR .
• Develop implementation guidance to establish requirements for a Family Assistance Center crisis and mass casualty response as integral components of Installation Emergency Management plans .
• Consider the Air Force’s Emergency Family Assistance Control Center and the Fort Hood Behavioral Health Campaign Plan as possible best practices when developing policy .
Finding 4.9
The lack of published guidance for religious support in mass casualty incidents hampers integration of religious support to installation emergency management plans .
Recommendation 4.9
• Consider modifying DoD and Service programs designed to promote, maintain, or restore health and well-being to offer each person the services of a chaplain or religious ministry professional .
• Develop policy for religious support in response to mass casualty incidents and integrate guidance with the Installation Emergency Management Program .
C-9
Finding 4.10
Inconsistencies among Service entry level chaplain training programs can result in inadequate preparation of new chaplains to provide religious support during a mass casualty incident .
Recommendation 4.10
Review mass casualty incident response training in the Chaplain Basic Officer Courses .
Finding 4.11
The Department of Defense has not yet published guidance regarding installation or unit memorial service entitlements based on the new Congressional authorization to ensure uniform application throughout the Department .
Recommendation 4.11
Develop standardized policy guidance on memorial service entitlements .
Finding 4.12
• DoD casualty affairs policy, Federal law, and DoD mortuary affairs guidance do not exist regarding injury or death of a private citizen with no DoD affiliation on a military installation within CONUS .
• There is no prescribed process to identify lead agencies for casualty notification and assistance or to provide care for the deceased, resulting in each case being handled in an ad-hoc manner .
Recommendation 4.12
• Review current policies regarding casualty reporting and assistance to the survivors of a private citizen with no DoD affiliation, who is injured or dies on a military installation within CONUS .
• Review current mortuary affairs policies relating to mortuary services for private citizens who become fatalities on a military installation within CONUS .
Finding 5.1
• DoD installations are not consistent in adequately planning for mental health support for domestic mass casualty incidents to meet needs of victims and families .
• At Fort Hood, advanced treatment protocols developed at our universities and centers were not available to the commander prior to the incident .
• Fort Hood developed a Behavioral Health plan that incorporated current practices including a “whole of community” approach, and a strategy for long-term behavioral healthcare not reflected in any DoD policy .
C-10
Appendix C Summary of Findings and Recommendations
Recommendation 5.1
• Update Mental Health Care clinical practice guidelines that address both combat and domestic incidents to ensure current and consistent preventive care .
• Review best practices inside and outside the Department of Defense to develop policies, programs, processes, and procedures to provide commanders tools required to protect the force in the aftermath of combat or mass casualty incidents .
• Consider the Air Force Instruction and the Fort Hood Behavioral Health Campaign Plan as possible sources for developing appropriate guidance .
Finding 5.2
• The Department of Defense does not have comprehensive policies that recognize, define, integrate, and synchronize monitoring and intervention efforts to assess and build healthcare provider readiness .
• The Department of Defense does not have readiness sustainment models, with requisite resources, for the health provider force that are similar to readiness sustainment models for combat and combat support forces .
• The demand for support from caregivers in general, and from mental healthcare providers in particular, is increasing and appears likely to continue to increase due to the stress on military personnel and their families from our high operational tempo and repeated assignments in combat areas .
Recommendation 5.2
Create a body of policies that:
• recognizes, defines, and synchronizes efforts to support and measure healthcare provider readiness in garrison and deployed settings;
• addresses individual assessment, fatigue prevention, non-retribution, and reduced stigma for those seeking care, and appropriate procedures for supporting clinical practice during healthcare provider recovery;
• requires DoD and Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences curricula, training materials, and personnel performance management systems to incorporate healthcare provider self-care skills and readiness concepts;
• develop mechanisms for collaborating with civilian resiliency resources . Finding 5.3
The lack of a readiness sustainment model for the health provider force, the unique stressors that healthcare providers experience, and the increasing demand for support combine to undermine force readiness—care for both warriors and healthcare providers .
Recommendation 5.3
• Develop integrated policies, processes, procedures, and properly resourced programs to sustain high quality care .
C-11
• Develop a deployment model that provides recovery and sustainment for healthcare providers comparable to that provided to the combat and combat support components of the force .
• Review the requirement for the Department of Defense to de-stigmatize healthcare providers who seek treatment for stress .
Finding 5.4
Senior caregivers are not consistently functioning as clinical peers and mentors to junior caregivers .
Recommendation 5.4
Review Senior Medical Corps Officer requirements to determine optimal roles, utilization, and assignments

Download complete PDF file here:http://www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/DOD-ProtectingTheForce-Web_Security_HR_13Jan10.pdf.

Happy Martin Luther King Day!

AKA Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service...

President Woodrow Wilson's Intervention in Haiti

From Digital History (University of Houston):

Intervention in Haiti
Period: 1890-1920

In July 1915, a mob murdered Haiti's seventh president in seven years. Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was dragged out of the French legation and hacked to death. The mob then paraded his mutilated body through the streets of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. During the preceding 72 years, Haiti had experience 102 revolts, wars, or coups; only one of the country's 22 presidents had served a complete term, and merely four died of natural causes.

With the European powers engaged in World War I, President Woodrow Wilson feared that Germany might occupy Haiti and threaten the sea route to the Panama Canal. To protect U.S. interests and to restore order, the president sent 330 marines and sailors to Haiti.

This was not the first time that Wilson had sent marines into Latin America. Determined to "teach Latin Americans to elect good men," he had sent American naval forces into Mexico in 1913 during the Mexican Revolution. American Marines seized the city of Veracruz and imposed martial law.

The last marines did not leave Haiti until 1934. To ensure repayment of Haiti's debts, the United States took over the collection of customs duties. Americans also arbitrated disputes, distributed food and medicine, censored the press, and ran military courts. In addition, the United States helped build about a thousand miles of unpaved roads and a number of agricultural and vocational schools, and trained the Haitian army and police. It also helped to replace a government led by blacks with a government headed by mulattoes. The U.S. forced the Haitians to adopt a new constitution which gave American businessmen the right to own land in Haiti. While campaigning for vice president in 1920, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had served as assistant secretary of the Navy in the Wilson Administration, later boasted, "I wrote Haiti's Constitution myself, and if I do say it, it was a pretty good little Constitution."

Many Haitians resisted the American occupation. In the fall of 1918, Charlemagne Peralte, a former Haitian army officer, launched a guerrilla war against the U.S. Marines to protest a system of forced labor imposed by the United States to build roads in Haiti. In 1919, he was captured and killed by U.S. Marines, and his body was photographed against a door with a crucifix and a Haitian flag as a lesson to others. During the first five years of the occupation, American forces killed about 2,250 Haitians. In December 1929, U.S. Marines fired on a crowd of protesters armed with rocks and machetes, killing 12 and wounding 23. The incident stirred international condemnation and ultimately led to the end of the American occupation.

By that time, Roosevelt had changed his mind. In 1928, he had criticized the Republican administrations for relying on the Marines and "gunboat diplomacy." "Single-handed intervention by us in the internal affairs of other nations in this hemisphere must end," he wrote. After he became president in 1933, Roosevelt proclaimed a new policy toward Latin America. Under the Good Neighbor policy, he removed American Marines from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua.

Haitian Earthquake Relief Situation Reports

From Relief Web (ht Charles Crawford & chrismcdowell).

Higher Education = Lower Salary?

From Gabriella Montell's article in The Chronicle of Higher Education...

Click here for Mike Mandell's original blog post.

Center for International Disaster Information Relief Guidelines

Monetary Contributions to Established Relief Agencies are Always the Most Useful Response to Disasters

Financial contributions allow professional relief organizations to purchase exactly what is most urgently needed by disaster victims and to pay for the transportation necessary to distribute those supplies. Unlike in-kind donations, cash donations entail no transportation cost. In addition, cash donations allow relief supplies to be purchased at locations as near to the disaster site as possible. Supplies, particularly food, can almost always be purchased locally - even in famine situations. This approach has the triple advantage of stimulating local economies (providing employment, generating cash flow), ensuring that supplies arrive as quickly as possible and reducing transport and storage costs. Cash contributions to established legitimate relief agencies are always considerably more beneficial than the donation of commodities.


Confirm There is a Need for All Items Being Collected.

Do not make assumptions about the needs of disaster victims. Exactly what is needed can be confirmed by checking with an established relief organization that has personnel working on-site. Do not send what is not needed; unneeded commodities compete with priority relief items for transportation and storage. Organizations that receive in-kind relief donations can help this process by clearly communicating what items are required (in what size, type, etc.) as well as clearly stating what items or services are NOT needed. Please remember, certain foods, particularly in famine situations, can make victims ill. In most cases, donations of canned goods are not appropriate. The collection of bottled water is highly inefficient. It is important to have an accurate analysis of need before determining response.


Deliver Items Only to Organizations having Local Distribution Capacity

Distributing relief supplies requires personnel and financial resources within the affected country. To efficiently distribute relief commodities, staff, warehouses, trucks and communications equipment are required. It is not enough to gather supplies and send them to an affected region; a sound partnership with a reliable local agency having transport and management capacity is mandatory.


Donate Only to Organizations having the Ability to Transport Collected Items to the Affected Region

Immediately after a disaster, many local organizations will spontaneously begin collecting miscellaneous items for use in disaster relief. However, at the time that these collections are begun, agency officials will not have thought about to whom, or how, the items will be sent. It is not unusual for community and civic groups to have collected several thousands of pounds of relief supplies only to find that they do not know whom to send the supplies to and that they do not have viable transportation options for shipping the goods. At this juncture, it is often advisable for those collecting the goods to auction them off locally, converting commodities into cash to be applied to the relief effort.


Never Assume the U.S. Government or any Relief Agency Will Transport Unsolicited Relief Items Free of Charge

It is important to make arrangements for the transportation before collecting any kind of material donations. Never assume that the government or any relief agency will transport donations free of charge (or even for a fee). In the majority of cases, the collecting agency will be responsible for paying commercial rates for the transportation and warehousing of items gathered.


Volunteer Opportunities for Disaster Relief are Extremely Limited

Volunteers without prior disaster relief experience are generally not selected for relief assignments. Candidates with the greatest chance of being selected have fluency in the language of the disaster-stricken area, prior disaster relief experience, and expertise in technical fields such as medicine, communications logistics, water/sanitation engineering. In many cases, these professionals are already available in-country. Most agencies will require at least ten years of experience, as well as several years of experience working overseas. It is not unusual to request that volunteers make a commitment to spend at least three months working on a particular disaster. Most offers of another body to drive trucks, set up tents, and feed children are not accepted. Keep in mind that once a relief agency accepts a volunteer, they are responsible for the volunteer's well-being -i.e., food, shelter, health and security. Resources are strained during a disaster, and another person without the necessary technical skills and experience can often be a considerable burden to an ongoing relief effort.

SOURCE: http://www.cidi.org/guidelines/guide_ln.htm

Who You Going To Call? ADRg Ambassadors!

Just in time for the New Year...Maybe they're not really Ghostbusters, but Diplomatic Blogoir Charles Crawford has set up an alternative dispute resolution company staffed by former British ambassadors and other diplomats, called ADRg Ambassadors, to help you negotiate yourself out of a jam in business or personal life, and maybe get out of those pesky New Year's Resolutions, too...

Here's a link to the website: http://www.adrgambassadors.com/contact.asp.

President Obama's Statement on the Haitian Earthquake

My 2009 Man of the Year: Flight 253 Hero Jasper Schuringa

My runner-up: Capt. Chesley Sullenberger...

BTW, according to this AP story in The Baltimore Sun, Schuringa is a Dutch screenwriter and filmmaker.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Dutch traveler who has been hailed as a hero for stopping a suspected bomber on a U.S.-bound flight says the whole thing felt like a movie script — his own.

Jasper Schuringa, a video producer who leapt onto the Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, says he wrote a script eight years ago about a failed suicide attack on Amsterdam's airport, the same place from which the Christmas Day flight took off.

"It is about a suicide bomber who wants to murder a politician at Schiphol. But at the crucial moment the bomb doesn't go off," Schuringa said in an interview in Miami published in the Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad on Thursday.

"That's what happened with Umar. He thought he was already in heaven and then he saw me coming toward him." Schuringa did not say what became of the script.

Schuringa jumped on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab after the 23-year-old student allegedly tried to detonate explosives he had concealed in his underwear as Northwest Airlines Flight 253, with 289 passengers and crew, was descending toward Detroit.

Schuringa said he reacted instinctively when he saw Abdulmutallab sitting in his seat with flames rising around him.

Helped by other passengers, he patted down the flames with his bare hands and then dragged Abdulmutallab to the front of the aircraft and ripped off his clothes to remove the small package filled with the explosive pentrite.

"How did I know what I should do? I don't know, I just did," he said. "Maybe I've watched too many American movies."

Schuringa said his ordeal wasn't over when he landed safely in Detroit. American federal agents questioned him and took his clothing to test it for explosives, visiting a golf store at the airport to hastily buy him new clothes.

"I looked like a clown," he said. "The trousers were so big I had to hold them up."

I hope someone in Hollywood buys his story and makes it into a major motion picture, asap...we need some real heroes as role models for 2010.

BTW, here's what Wikipedia has to say about him:

Jasper Schuringa
Schuringa stopped the attack, and got burned in the process. He is resident in Amsterdam and was born in 1971. Schuringa is a graduate of Leiden University, Leiden. He is a film director of low-budget Dutch films for an Amsterdam-based media company, and was the assistant director for National Lampoon's Teed Off Too.[135][136]

Dutch Deputy Prime Minister Wouter Bos phoned Schuringa on behalf of the Dutch government on the day after the attack, and conveyed the government's compliments and gratitude for Schuringa's part in overpowering the suspect.[137][138] Dutch Member of Parliament Geert Wilders[139] called Schuringa "a national hero" who "deserves a royal honor", which Wilders said he would ask the Dutch government to award.[140][141] [142]. According to the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, even Queen Beatrix expressed her feelings of gratitude towards Schuringa though it wasn't made public how she had done this. [143]

Why doesn't President Obama given this Dutchman the Medal of Freedom in 2010--since nothing better could express the true spirit of America? And Hollywood might give him the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at this year's Oscar ceremony. What could be more humanitarian than a filmmaker saving the lives of everyone on Flight 253?

Happy New Year!

All the best in 2010!

Scandal Rocks Gulf Coast Arts World

Carlton Proctor reports in today's Pensacola News Journal:

Funding for the Arts Council of Northwest Florida may be terminated in 2010 if Escambia County commissioners follow a recommendation contained in a scathing audit of the organization.

In the 11-page report, Patty Sheldon, financial services administrator for the Escambia Clerk of the Circuit Court's Office, revealed the full extent of the Arts Council's fiscal woes.

The organization's 2009 budget was $520,400, but its actual revenues were $364,821.98, a deficit of $155,578.02.

In addition, Sheldon's report cited the Arts Council for the following:

• Failure to properly record purchases made by credit card.

• Failure to properly account for grant payments from granting agencies.

• A lack of internal accounting controls.

n Inconsistencies in the handling of records and policies and procedures.

• Failure to distribute in a timely manner program activity checks to local arts organizations.

n Using available cash that was supposed to go to local arts groups to pay salary and benefits for its two employees and other office operating costs.

n Budgeting far more revenue that it actually received in fiscal 2009.

• Retroactively altering accounting records to qualify the Arts Council for the City of Pensacola's fiscal year 2010 allocation of $40,000.

No Comment

As a result of the audit's findings, Sheldon recommends "no fiscal 2010 appropriations to the Arts Council be made ... since it may be requested to repay the county those payments from fiscal 2009 that were represented as being paid to the arts organizations and were not, in fact, actually paid."

But help is apparently on the way, according to Proctor's account...from dedicated volunteers willing to do the work:

Meanwhile, a volunteer group calling itself ACE (Arts, Culture and Entertainment) has formed under the leadership of arts patron David Bear, former president of the Arts Council and former member of the Florida Arts Council.

ACE is being formed, Bear said, to take over distribution of now-frozen city and county funds to local cultural groups should the city and county permanently terminate funding to the Arts Council.

The new arts group would be based on an all-volunteer model similar to Pensacola's IMPACT 100, where 100 percent of the money awarded by the city and county would be passed through to the arts, Bear said.

IMPACT 100 Pensacola Bay Area is an all-volunteer organization of women who contribute $1,000 each to fund $100,000 grants to nonprofit organizations. The nonprofits apply for the grants, and the women vote on the recipients.

Most local arts organizations have expressed initial support for ACE should the Arts Council be relieved permanently of its role as the single distributor of city and county arts grants.

UPDATE: Probe into Arts Council finances deepens:
State attorney looks for signs of embezzlement

Leon Aron on the Death of Yegor Gaidar, 53

From The American:

Egor Gaidar, the man to whom Boris Yeltsin entrusted Russia’s free-market revolution, died yesterday. He was 53.

Every time we had dinner in D.C. or Moscow in the past seven years, he looked worse and worse. He took bad care of himself. He drank more and more. Last time I saw him in his favorite D.C. restaurant, Morton’s, he looked like an old man and, formerly a hearty eater and a gourmand, barely touched his steak.

He was deeply depressed—by the direction Russia was taking; by his inability to do anything about it; and by the vicious calumny spread by the Kremlin about Russia’s freest years, the 1990s, and about his reforms, which literally saved the country from the famine everyone expected in 1992. It will take decades to clear out the Augean stables of the monstrously irrational and wasteful Soviet economy, but the first few, heaviest shovelfuls were Egor’s.

Throughout it all, he continued to write complicated and important books that only a brilliant economist and economic historian could have conceived and produced, and that future generations of Russians will enjoy and appreciate. (We were fortunate to publish excerpts from his last book, The Death of an Empire, as an AEI paper.)

Following Yeltsin’s death less than three years before and that of the “godfather of glasnost,” Alexander Yakovlev, in 2005, it is almost like nature itself has conspired to make the Gorbachev-Yeltsin-Gaidar revolution an aberration and Putinism Russia’s norm. As if Dostoevsky’s Great Inquisitor was right when he told the imaginary Christ: you have come to make people free, but they don’t want to be free.

I know that this is not so, and I know, too, that deep down, Egor did not believe this. But it must have been so hard to keep faith. The last eight years have gradually killed him. He died of a broken heart.

Happy Chanukah, Christmas, & New Year!

Will be on vacation a while longer...

Hope to have some new posts in 2010.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We're going on vacation ourselves, so will be offline for a while...

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington Calls for Peter Galbraith Investigation

Media silence regarding allegations concerning former US Ambassador Peter Galbraith's "sleaze factor" has been deafening, in the wake of the New York Times' front-page expose. Very little follow-up, until this item in TPM Muckracker:

A good government group is calling on the State Department to investigate the role of former ambassador Peter Galbraith in drafting Iraq's constitution in 2005 while he held a lucrative stake in a Kurdish oil field.

The letter from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington to the State Dept. Inspector General asks whether State approved Galbraith's activities, and cites a recent New York Times exposé that built off work of the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv.

Text of the letter posted on the TPM website at this link. More background on the Galbraith scandal by Reidar Visser at Historiae.org.

Memo to President Obama: Fire Secretary of Defense Robert Gates...

His press conference dealing with the Ft. Hood Massacre failed the "red face test," IMHO. Obviously, General Casey isn't the only one at fault. After hearing this on C-Span radio yesterday, it's pretty clear that Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates were on the same page. And setting up a yet another commission to conduct yet another investigation is a Bush-era move...From the weak response to the Ft. Hood massacre, his failure to take responsibility and his discussion of meeting with the Saudis, the official press conference transcript seems to cast an Islamist pall over Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen:

Q There is one detail of the investigation that, since it's already on the record, I'll ask you about. Yesterday, Attorney General Holder said he was disturbed by information that Hasan had e-mail communications with Anwar al-Awlaki. And I wonder if you were also disturbed by that.

SEC. GATES: I'm going to wait before I draw -- it's -- yes, it's disturbing. But before I draw any conclusions about it, I want to find out all the facts.

Q Sir, what is your advice to, say, an Army family right now, going in and out of Fort Hood or another base, that is now perhaps looking at their neighbors with suspicion? What are you telling them? What should they be watching for?

SEC. GATES: Well, I think that -- you know, I remember being on the outside of the government after 9/11, and the cautions that President Bush and others in the government exercised against identifying certain categories of people as -- as potentially suspicious.

And the thrust of their remarks was that, in a nation as diverse as the United States, the last thing we need to do is start pointing fingers at each other, particularly when there's no basis in fact for it. So until all the evidence is in, I think that the comments about how we treat each other still ought to apply. And I know this is an issue that's of concern to the services.

ADM. MULLEN: I would add to that, Kim, that it doesn't take this kind of direction to have leaders recognize the challenges that are associated with this. Every base, every unit, literally leaders have I think immediately grabbed this to look within, to kind of see where they are, and to look at what -- whether there's potential or not, and to reassure members and families that not only do we take it extremely seriously, we are looking at it, and to really come together in what is, you know, what was certainly a tragic, tragic incident, and a reminder of the times in which we live, and that leaders are in fact taking action, literally, before this guidance to ensure that it doesn't happen again.

SEC. GATES: Joe --

Q What is your message to the Muslim community in uniform? Because they're very -- they're caught by this incident.

ADM. MULLEN: My message to all those in uniform, including Muslims in uniform, is how much we appreciate their service, the difference that they make; that the -- I have, for my entire career, the diversity of our force is one of its greatest strengths; and that, not unlike what the secretary said, that no one should -- should draw any rapid conclusions. And we need to ensure that we treat everybody fairly -- I mean, before this incident and after this incident -- everybody fairly. And there are procedures that exist in all the services to look at our people and our programs, and evaluate ourselves routinely. And I am sure that leaders are doing that.

SEC. GATES: Joe.

Q Will this review look specifically at the mental health ranks within the Army, where, you know, the allegation has been made that a shortage of mental-health professionals may have let unqualified people continue on rather than being drummed out. How specific to the case before us will this be versus a general look at personnel policy?

SEC. GATES: Well, I think they're going to -- as I've indicated here, they are going to look at how we deal with stress of our healthcare providers. And I would say that it shouldn't be limited only to mental healthcare providers.

You know, you talk to the -- you go to the hospitals, and you talk to the nurses and the doctors and those who care for these grievously wounded young men and women, and, I mean, their level of commitment -- and I can't imagine the burden on them of doing that all day, every day. And so I think one of the things, for their own benefit, if nothing else, is for us to take a look at how are we helping them deal with stress, given the circumstances that they face.

ADM. MULLEN: Can I -- I'd just add to that that clearly there is a shortfall, and it's across the department. It's about 20 percent or so. It's a little more significant in the Army, in terms of the statistics. And that is represented -- representative of the shortfall that we actually have.

In the country, we've recruited significant numbers in the last several years. We've increased the mental health providers for both members and families in the last several years, but we certainly haven't closed that gap.

SEC. GATES: And it gets harder as you get to more rural areas, in terms of finding the -- an adequate number of mental healthcare providers.

One of the things that we're looking at, for example, is whether the military medical education system can expand beyond -- how much it could expand beyond doctors and try and provide opportunities for the training of psychologists and counselors and so on. To -- in -- and we would pay for that in exchange for a period of commitment to serve and then go into the communities. Because one of the things that -- as the chairman has just implied, one of the things we're discovering as we go around trying to hire people all over the country is that there really is a national shortage of these folks.

Q Mr. Secretary, based on the facts that you have now, about Hasan and what happened that day, is it fair to characterize the shooting as a terrorist attack?

SEC. GATES: I'm just not going to go there. I -- as I said in the very first paragraph, I am first of all -- as the senior person in the departmental chain of command, I am the least able to render opinions on these kinds of issues. I'm going to wait until the facts are in. And we'll let the military justice system take care of it.

Q Do you think it's possible they'll draw a conclusion, to that end, as a result of the criminal investigation?

SEC. GATES: I have no idea.

Q One of the threats that's obviously being looked at is the issue of whether the intercepted e-mails should have been shared with the Pentagon earlier. Given your background in the intelligence world, how much of a concern is it, do you think? I mean, is that relationship -- as far as intelligence-sharing between civilian intelligence agencies and the Pentagon, is that what it should be?

SEC. GATES: Well, without reference to this case, I will tell you that the sharing of information, between the intelligence community and the Department of Defense and I would say law enforcement, is so far superior to what it was when I left government in 1993.

It's dramatically different and dramatically better. And so you know, one of the things everybody is looking at and, after all, the purpose of the president's requirement, in terms of looking at who had what intelligence when and shared it with whom, is to answer your question. And we won't know the answer to that until it's over.

Barbara.

Q Short of someone in the U.S. military making a direct, specific, public threat, when you're in the military, what is allowed and not allowed for someone who might be described as becoming self- radicalized? What are they allowed to do, in terms of making Internet or e-mail contact with people known to the U.S. government to be of a radical bent, to belong to certain groups which are not in line with U.S. government policy? What is allowed here?

ADM. MULLEN: Well, I think -- I mean, we all have private lives. And basically in any command, you typically are not overly involved unless -- in private -- in the private lives of people that serve, in the command, unless circumstances surface that there are some difficulties and challenges.

And leaders, mid-level NCOs in particular, are intimately -- oftentimes intimately involved with challenges that young -- that actually any people would have, across a wide spectrum of areas. And the expectation that leaders engage so is very much there.

So, as leaders become aware of something like this over time, you know, my -- not -- or something else -- my expectation is that that gets surfaced in the chain of command. And commanders, whether they're squad leaders right up through battalion commanders or ship commanding officers, are -- they routinely deal with these kind of things when they are -- when they are made known. The question is, how are they made known? And that varies depending on the kind of situation you're talking about.

Q So, Admiral, if you had a young sailor in your command making statements of a radical nature, what -- what would -- what would be the appropriate course of action?

ADM. MULLEN: My -- without trying to map it to the -- to the current incident, you know, my expectation is for -- you know, for any commander to -- certainly to be aware of those kinds of things, and then to take appropriate action; to certainly not sit idly by, but to address it. And there are a lot of different ways to address it. And you know, a single -- a single proclamation, if you will, doesn't, in and of itself, necessarily mean anything. You got to put it into the circumstances.

Q Let me ask you, what's your expectation of any sharing of information between the criminal investigation and this broad review you've laid out in terms of any patterns or any shortfalls they saw in the Hasan case that might not bear on the criminality aspect, but might show a systemic problem that your -- that your larger review should take a look at?

SEC. GATES: Well, clearly we are going to have to be careful as we put together the terms of reference and as we go forward to ensure that we don't do anything to complicate or jeopardize the criminal prosecution. And so we will have some very clear guidelines in terms of the information that we're seeking. But the information that we're seeking in this shorter review really is -- really can, I think, be almost entirely isolated from the criminal investigation because we're really looking at the whole rest of the country in terms of what are our security capabilities, what are our capabilities for responding to a mass casualty event. And that might not be -- that might not be an act of murder; it may -- it might be a natural disaster of some kind. How -- what are our policies and procedures? Going back to the first question, what are our policies and procedures in certain of these areas on how we deal with these certain kinds of problems.

So I think -- I think we can deal effectively with the questions that are being posed without creating difficulties for the criminal prosecution. But at the same time, there'll be some very clear guidelines.

Q Can I ask you -- we haven't talked to you since the -- this horrendous event, but what was your initial reaction when you heard this -- the -- heard of the shooting? And what are one or two of the unresolved questions in your mind as a citizen you'd like answers to?

SEC. GATES: Well, I mean, my reaction was, I'm sure, the same as almost everybody in the country. It was one of horror. And I would just answer the second part by saying the most important thing for us now is to find out what actually happened, put all the facts together and figure out a way where we can do everything possible so that nothing like this ever happens again.

Q Sir, I would like to ask you about your meeting on Tuesday with the Saudi Prince bin Sultan. Could you give us an update about that meeting? Did the prince deliver any request, any message? And what are your views about the conflict -- the current conflict in Yemen?

SEC. GATES: Well, we have a -- we obviously have a very close -- (coughs) -- excuse me – military to military relationship with the Saudis and an ongoing arms sales program with them. And I would just leave it at the fact that we reviewed the programs that are -- for which there are outstanding requests and those that the Saudis may be thinking about. We did discuss the situation in Yemen, and he -- the assistant secretary -- basically outlined for me the Saudi view of the situation there. I'd just leave it at that.

Yeah.

President Obama, It's time for some new blood, and new approaches, at the Department of Defense. Someone who can say "Yes, we can!" with confidence, clean house, and purge Islamist influence from the US military. Obviously, given the failures at Ft. Hood, their slowness to react, and their reversion to Bush-era scripts for "damage control," Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen are not up to the job.

Stop University of California Tuition Hikes!

I'm with the student protesters on this one. The middle of a recession with high unemployment is no time to pull up the ladder of education for those unable to afford college tuition. State universities were not intended to be run like a business--that's for private universities like USC and Stanford. What made the UC system great was its commitment to providing at first a free education, later a modestly-priced education, for California state residents. The very last thing that should be done is to hike tuition.

I'd suggest that before any tuition hike, administrators try very hard to cut from administrative overhead, conference travel, and other non-instructional expenditures--before gouging their students any further.

Here's a link to Breitbart.com's account of UCLA protests (full disclosure, this blogger is a lifetime member of both the UC Berkeley and UCLA Alumni association):

About 30 to 50 protesters staged a takeover of Campbell Hall, a building across campus that houses ethnic studies, said UCLA spokesman Phil Hampton.

They chained the doors shut but were peaceful and there were no immediate plans to remove them, Hampton said.

No arrests had been made, although 14 demonstrators were arrested on Wednesday and cited for failure to disperse or disturbing the peace.

Demonstrations also were held at other UC campuses.

UC President Mark Yudof told reporters Wednesday he couldn't rule out raising student fees again if the state is unable to meet his request for an additional $913 million next year for the 10-campus system.

"I can't make any ... promises," he said.

After a series of deep cuts in state aid, and with state government facing a nearly $21 billion budget gap over the next year and a half, Board of Regents members said there was no option to higher fees.

"When you have no choice, you have no choice," Yudof said after a Regents' committee endorsed the fee plan Wednesday. "I'm sorry."

The Los Angeles meeting was repeatedly interrupted by outbursts from students and union members, who accused the board of turning its back on the next generation.

NPR: Walter Reed Psychiatrists Didn't Miss Hasan Warning Signs

With NPR's release of this memo from his personnel file (ht Huffington Post), the Nidal Malik Hasan case begins to come into focus:

On May 17, 2007, Hasan's supervisor at Walter Reed sent the memo to the Walter Reed credentials committee. It reads, "Memorandum for: Credentials Committee. Subject: CPT Nidal Hasan." More than a page long, the document warns that: "The Faculty has serious concerns about CPT Hasan's professionalism and work ethic. ... He demonstrates a pattern of poor judgment and a lack of professionalism." It is signed by the chief of psychiatric residents at Walter Reed, Maj. Scott Moran.

When shown the memo, two leading psychiatrists said it was so damning, it might have sunk Hasan's career if he had applied for a job outside the Army.

"Even if we were desperate for a psychiatrist, we would not even get him to the point where we would invite him for an interview," says Dr. Steven Sharfstein, who runs Sheppard Pratt's psychiatric medical center, based just outside Baltimore.

Sharfstein says it's a little hard to read the evaluation now and pretend that he doesn't know that Hasan is accused of shooting dozens of people. But he says if he had seen a memo like this about an applicant, Sharfstein would have avoided him like the plague.

The memo ticks off numerous problems over the course of Hasan's training, including proselytizing to his patients. It says he mistreated a homicidal patient and allowed her to escape from the emergency room, and that he blew off an important exam.

According to the memo, Hasan hardly did any work: He saw only 30 patients in 38 weeks. Sources at Walter Reed say most psychiatrists see at least 10 times that many patients. When Hasan was supposed to be on call for emergencies, he didn't even answer the phone.

Sharfstein says the memo doesn't suggest that Hasan would end up shooting people, but it warns that Hasan was "somebody who could potentially put patients in danger."

Link to PDF facsimile of memo on NPR website, here. One interesting item:

He failed his HGT/WGT screening and was found to be out of standards with body fat % and was counseled on that.

Why I Support Attorney General Holder's Indictment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

There's been railing from the right about criminal charges brought against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, but I think Attorney General Eric Holder did the right thing, for the following reasons:

1. The Bush Administration had 7 years to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Military Courts or Commissions

For whatever reasons--fear, incompetence, indecision, legal questions--President Bush did not put Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial, despite waterboarding, detention, and general warehousing. He didn't know what to do with him, it's pretty obvious. At least Holder is doing something to resolve the situation.

2. Islamists currently exploit Guantanamo and waterboarding for propaganda purposes

A criminal trial might provide a platform for Islamists, but also provides a platform to discredit Islamists in public--something indefinite detention at Guantanamo does not do.

3. Facts will come out in court to confound conspiracy theorists

Conspiracy theories thrive under conditions of coverup and silence. Bringing a public case in a public court allows the evidence to be examined by the public, in a way that undermines conspiracy theories. The failure to bring Lee Harvey Oswald to trial -- as opposed to Sirhan Sirhan -- undermined faith in the US government for years, and may have led to defeat in Vietnam.

4. The People of the United States v. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

One of the important facts about a criminal trial is that it is the People of the United States who are prosecuting the defendant, not a privatized, contracted-out, politically compromised, possibly fifth-column infiltrated US Military. The crime was against the people of the United States, not just the 3000 or so victims in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That is the strongest charge that we have.

5. If Khalid Sheikh Mohammed walks, he deserves to get off

One of the important things about a trial is that it is a genuine test for both the defendant the prosecution. The prosecution must prove the defendant guilty in open court. Justice results precisely because the result is not 100 percent certain beforehand.

IMHO, If our criminal justice system can't convict Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, it might not be worth fighting for. If the Attorney General can't convict an alleged mastermind of the attack on the World Trade Center, then something is wrong that better be fixed. This is one way for the public to find out what went wrong.

6. Opponents of a criminal trial are cowards

They are obviously and declaredly afraid of terrorist attacks on NYC, of terrorist propaganda, of media circuses, of a failure to convict, and so on... Such cowardice sends a signal of weakness even stronger than a failure to convict would send... Critics are too afraid to even try.

In this case, I agree with Attorney General Holder and President Obama. In answer to the question, "Can we try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, prove the case against him, and convict him in open court?" I answer, "YES, WE CAN!...and yes, we must."

Schroedinger's Cat Explained

After seeing the Coen brothers' A Serious Man, I found the University of Nottingham's explanation of Schroedinger's Cat on YouTube:

M.D. Nalapat: Give Karzai a Chance...

Writing for UPI, Indian analyst M.D. Nalapat argues that Hamid Karzai is doing a better job than NATO in Afghanistan, and should not be made a scapegoat for the alliance's failures:

It is no secret that the NATO chancelleries are in a state of panic over the situation in Afghanistan, nor that they are engaged in a desperate search for "good Taliban" – in other words, those promising a ceasefire in exchange for protection.

This would ensure for Karzai what a London newsweekly that is close to NATO has warned – a Najibullah-style fate. In 1996, the very squads that were hosted in Washington by the Clinton administration castrated and tortured former Afghani President Mohammed Najibullah and hung his blood-soaked body on a traffic light post.

However, as in many other cases involving peoples of a culture alien to the weekly's editors, the magazine is wrong in believing that Karzai can escape such a fate only by cooperating with NATO's designs, for the reverse is true: doing so would only accelerate the collapse of the moderate Pashtun polity in Afghanistan.

It is small wonder that Karzai has finally decided to hit back at his NATO traducers by making the counter-narcotics chief, General K. Khodaidad, go public about the assistance given by NATO elements to drug smugglers. That several NATO elements are involved in the drugs trade is no secret in Afghanistan, although it seems so to the international media and those in NATO capitals.

Perhaps such assistance is part of a policy of seeking to co-opt the Taliban by facilitating riches through the drugs trade. If such a strategy were adopted, it would be suicidal not only for Afghanistan but also to Europe, because rogue elements linked to the Taliban have succeeded in setting up viable networks within key NATO states, ready for activation since the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States.

Such a war will be waged in earnest once the Taliban wins the war in Afghanistan by becoming the dominant force in a new government that presumably will meet Obama's standards of integrity and modernism better than the Karzai team.

This columnist had warned against a second round of elections when it was only Karzai who could rally moderate Pashtuns and align them with Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras into a combination that can defeat the terrorist militia helped by the Middle East, cash from the narcotics trade and NATO's numerous policy errors.

Karzai has brought together Mohammad Fahim, Ismail Khan, Rashid Dostum, Karim Khalili and others who are effective on the ground but disliked by NATO for their independent thinking. It would seem that the United States and its allies in Europe interpret "freedom" the way Henry Ford defined customer choice: "Any color so long as it's black."

A "democratic" Afghan is by such a definition an individual who follows the confused and contradictory instructions from NATO commanders under fire from constituencies back home for their failure to subdue a ragtag force. Any Afghan who acts as though he is part of a free country needs to be reviled and cast aside as "corrupt" or "incompetent."

Harking to India, had New Delhi followed the many Kashmir nostrums peddled by the Clinton administration and later, in the post-9/11 phase, by the Bush team, U.S. troops would have been fighting today in Kashmir as well.

Karzai, by not acting on the suicidal course suggested to him by media outlets close to NATO, is keeping alive the possibility of an Afghan response to the Taliban after NATO finally pulls its troops out of the country. His team needs to succeed where NATO has failed. Of course, the reason for this failure is the alliance's inability to acknowledge the need to flush out the Taliban from their nests in Pakistan, notably in and around Quetta and Dera Ismail Khan.

The mistakes made during the Afghan war of the 1980s need to be avoided to avoid the blowback of such policies, which has caused the upsurge in terrorism worldwide. However, recent policy spasms of NATO indicate that a repeat of that tragic history is approaching.

Hermitage Capital Lawyer Dies in Russian Prison

After being denied medical treatment:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Death of Hermitage Lawyer in Russian Prison

17 November 2009 - Last night Sergey Magnitskiy, a 37-year old legal adviser and father of two, died in Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center in Moscow.

Since 2007, Sergey Magnitskiy was defending the Hermitage Fund and HSBC against serious frauds perpetrated with the involvement of Russian officials. Sergey Magnitskiy gave formal testimonies naming officers of the Interior Ministry and their role in the seizure of Hermitage Fund/HSBC companies. Shortly after his testimony, on 24 November 2008, Sergey Magnitskiy was arrested by the team of the same Interior Ministry officers named in his testimony.

Sergey Magnitskiy was refused bail and kept in detention for a year without trial. Yesterday, Sergey’s lawyers came to see him at a planned investigative procedure at Butyrka detention center and were denied access to him. The lawyers were told Sergey could not leave his cell because of his state of health. Investigators Oleinik and Silchenko refused to show a medical report about Sergey’s health to his lawyers, stating it was an “internal matter”.

Sergey’s mother was the first to find out about the death of her son this morning. She came to Butyrka detention center to give him some personal items and was told that her son had been transferred to a different detention facility, the Matrosskaya Tishina center, the previous day. When she then went to Matrosskaya Tishina, she was told that her son was dead.

Sergey’s lawyers were told that Sergey Magnitskiy died of a rupture to the abdominal membrane around 9:00 pm on 16 November 2009 and that his body was transferred to the 11th Morgue in Moscow.

Sergey Magnitskiy was kept in pre-trial detention for a year and denied by Investigator Silchenko the ability to see his mother and his wife and speak to his children for the entire time of his detention. He was transferred between four detention centers and his detention conditions progressively deteriorated. Numerous complaints by Sergey Magnitskiy and his lawyers about the physical and psychological pressure exerted on him, the legal breaches during the pre-trial investigation, the obstruction to his defence and the inhuman and degrading conditions in detention, were left unaddressed.

Additionally, Sergey Magnitskiy wrote a 40-page complaint to General Prosecutor Chaika describing a serious medical condition which developed in detention, the on-going and regular denial of medical treatment which resulted in a serious worsening of his health, and pleaded for access to medical attention. There was no response to his complaint.

“I would like to express my shock and sadness at the passing of Sergey Magnitskiy. Sergey was a brilliant and honourable lawyer known by all whom met him as a diligent professional and a committed family man. I know I speak for all the staff of Hermitage Capital when I say that both Sergey and his family are in our hearts at this time. He and the ideals he stood for will not be forgotten,” said CEO of Hermitage Capital William Browder.

Lawyers will conduct an independent investigation into his death.

For further information, please contact:

Hermitage Capital Management
Phone: +44 (0)20 7440 1777
Email: info@hermitagefund.com

Barry Rubin: Ft. Hood Gunman Announced He Was Jihadist

From The Rubin Report (ht AtlasShrugs):

How do we know that the attack at Fort Hood was an act of Islamist terrorism? Simple, Major Nidal Hassan told us so. You’ve seen reports of a long list of things he did and said along these lines. But what’s most amazing of all is this:

Hassan is the first terrorist in history to give an academic lecture explaining why he was about to attack. Yet that still isn’t enough for too many people—including the president of the United States--to understand that the murderous assault at Fort Hood was a Jihad attack.

It was reported that the audience was shocked and frightened by his lecture. He was supposed to speak on some medical topic yet instead talked on the topic: “The Koranic World View as it Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military.” All you have to do is look at the 50 Power Point slides and they tell you everything you need to know.

It is quite a good talk. He’s logical and presents his evidence. This is clearly not the work of a mad man or a fool, though there’s still a note of ambiguity in it. He's still working out what to do in his own mind and is trying to figure out if he has a way out other than in effect deserting the U.S. army and becoming a Jihad warrior. Ultimately, he concluded that he could not be a proper Muslim without killing American soldiers. Obviously, other Muslims could reach different conclusions but Hassan strongly grounds himself in Islamic texts.

In a sense, Hassan's lecture was a cry for help: Can anyone show me another way out? Can anyone refute my interpretation of Islam? One Muslim in the audience reportedly tried to do so. But unless these issues are openly discussed and debated--rather than swept under the rug--more people will die.

In fact, I’d recommend that teachers use this lecture in teaching classes on both Islam and Islamist politics.

National Review: Congress Must Investigate Islamist Fifth Column

Alex Alexiev writes:

To understand the nature of the problem, a quick look at the origins and evolution of Islamic extremism in America and its sponsors is essential. Radical Islam made its first appearance in America in 1963 at the University of Illinois with the founding of the Muslim Student Association (MSA) by group of Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimin) immigrant activists with money from the Saudi front organization Muslim World League (MWL). In the decade following the founding of the MSA, many of today’s self-proclaimed leading Islamic organizations were spun off from it and began acting independently — though neither the ideological nor the organizational ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and its Saudi paymasters were ever severed. These included the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), and a number of smaller groups.

In the 1990s, this network was augmented with a number of other radical-Islamist organizations affiliated with the Brotherhood, such as the Muslim Political Affairs Council (MPAC) and the above-ground incarnation of the clandestine Brotherhood, registered in 1993 as the Muslim American Society (MAS). What they all had in common was adherence to the hate-filled Wahhabi-Salafi Islamist ideology and a visceral dislike for America and the West, leading at least some of them to see their ultimate objective as “destroying Western civilization from within,” as an internal Brotherhood document put it succinctly. To understand the magnitude of the problem, it is worth recalling that as early as the period of 1980 to 1985, according to the Muslim World League Journal, some 60 American Islamic organizations were financed by Wahhabi interests. In 1991, the Brotherhood counted 29 American Islamic organizations among its allies; the MSA, which openly lionizes Osama bin Laden, now boasts over 1,000 college chapters in North America.

With the help of huge inflows of mostly Saudi money, these radical networks, which should more appropriately be seen as branches of the same organization run by a few dozen individuals through a system of interlocking directorships, have made radical Islam the dominant idiom of the American Muslim establishment, despite the fact that most American Muslims are well-integrated, economically prosperous, and not given to extremism. Taken together, this network, which controls a majority of American mosques, Islamic cultural centers, charities, and schools, is nothing short of an Islamist fifth column radicalizing large numbers of American Muslims and increasingly capable of infiltrating our government and key institutions including the military. Unfortunately, neither the U.S. government, nor the FBI, nor the military understands that what this fifth column is engaged in is not religion but political sedition and the subversion of our constitutional order under the guise of religion — both of which are prohibited under current U.S. law.

A gentleman by the name of Abdurahman Alamoudi provides a typical example of the Islamist modus operandi. In October 2004, he was sentenced to 23 years in prison for terrorism-related activities, and he is currently serving his sentence in a federal penitentiary. Prior to that, Alamoudi had been a kingpin of the Islamist network as a key official in a dozen top Islamist organizations and five charities suspected of funding terrorism. Despite that, Alamoudi evidently enjoyed unimpeded access to the White House under Presidents Clinton and Bush, and also served as a State Department “goodwill ambassador” in the Middle East and a U.S. Information Agency speaker abroad. Most important, as a founder of an organization called American Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council (AMAFVAC), this radical Islamist became the first exclusive endorsing agent for Muslim chaplains for all branches of the U.S. armed forces and was able to place Islamist extremists in the military virtually at will.

It is within this vast subversive enterprise that Major Hasan, like thousands of others, became radicalized and eventually a terrorist long before the war in Iraq came along to annoy him. It is not difficult to trace his transformation into a mass murderer by simply looking at the institutions in which he was indoctrinated. First, at Dar al-Hijrah in Falls Church, Va., one of the largest and most radical mosques in the country, where his mentor was Imam Anwar al-Aulaqi, an American-born jihad and suicide-bombing advocate; and then at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Md., under Imam Faizul Khan, yet another Muslim extremist, a key figure in the Washington, D.C., Islamist scene and an official at both ISNA (an unindicted co-conspirator at a terror-finance trial) and the Saudi front MWL.

All of the above information is easily accessible to anybody with an Internet connection. Yet, the U.S. government, our counterterrorism organs, and the military all refused to recognize or act upon it, and twelve young Americans have paid the ultimate price. Whether this was the result of sheer incompetence or obsequious political correctness or both, the American people have the right and duty to ask their representatives to conduct a broad investigation of this catastrophic failure and take appropriate measures to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. And do it soon. If not, the next suicide bombing in the homeland is not a matter of if, but when.

St. Petersburg Times: Peter Galbraith 'Self-Dealing' Harms US War Effort

From an editorial headlined "Corruption Erodes Trust":

Then there is the apparent self-dealing of Peter Galbraith, a former American ambassador and the son of legendary economist John Kenneth Galbraith. He appears to have secured rights to a share of the oil wealth of Kurdistan in the northern region of Iraq. The conflict of interest arises because he had been an adviser to the Kurdish government on the drafting of the Iraqi constitution, which partly addressed how the oil wealth of the region would be divided.

According to the New York Times, Galbraith helped the Kurds gain control over the region's internal affairs, including new oil discoveries, after Galbraith had already obtained rights to at least one of Kurdistan's oil fields. Galbraith's interest could be worth a hundred million dollars or more.

Galbraith claims no wrongdoing and argues he was a private citizen acting as an unpaid adviser. But those details don't matter to Iraqi officials in Baghdad, who see an American absconding with the country's oil wealth through manipulative self-dealing.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the commander of American forces in Iraq, told the BBC recently, "The endemic corruption within the Iraqi system — not only the security forces, but the system — is still probably the biggest problem facing Iraq." President Barack Obama has publicly called on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to rid his country of corruption. Those vital messages are undermined by the unethical behavior of Americans. Even as Blackwater officials and Galbraith acted in their own self-interests, they are staining the nation's image among Iraqis and Afghans.

"White Powder" Letters Hit 5 UN Missions

This seems like more than a coincidence, given the timing of the Ft. Hood attacks, and the fact that the countries hit are involved in Afghanistan. There were some anthrax letters right after 9/11. Even if there's no anthrax in these, they surely disrupted and terrorized those working in the affected UN missions. Louis Charbonneau reports for Reuters:

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Police are investigating letters containing white powder that were sent to five U.N. missions in New York City, but diplomats from the affected countries said on Tuesday that the material was harmless.

The U.N. missions of Austria, France, Germany and Uzbekistan received letters with an unidentified white powder on Monday.

Britain's U.N. mission in Manhattan also received a letter containing white powder on Tuesday and authorities were decontaminating the office where it was found, a British diplomat in New York told Reuters.

The New York Police Department has said that it had already decontaminated 40 people as a precaution.

Gal Luft: Saudi-Sponsored Fifth Column Behind Ft. Hood Massacre?

From Gal Luft's Middle East Strategy at Harvard blog post: "How the Saudis Radicalize US Troops":

While Muslim soldiers have served in uniforms loyally for decades, it is the rising number of Wahhabi-trained and converted Muslims that is a relatively recent phenomenon. Since Wahhabism is one of the most radical and puritan strands of Islam, the penetration of Wahhabi thinking into the ranks of the military must be treated with care.

The genesis of radical Islamic thinking within the military was in the 1990-91 Gulf War, when nearly half a million soldiers and marines were deployed in Saudi Arabia to liberate Kuwait and defend the oil kingdom from Saddam Hussein’s aggression. While the Saudis were adamantly opposed to any expression of religious practice by their guests, including a ban on Christmas carols, bible classes and Christian and Jewish prayers, they embarked on a well-orchestrated and generously funded effort sponsored by the Saudi government to convert as many American military members as possible to Islam.

According to General Norman Schwarzkopf’s aide Rick Francona,

Saudi officers appeared to have been directed by their senior military or religious leadership to spot and assess potential converts to Islam among American military members. Once a particular American was ‘targeted,’ […] a few Saudi military officers, including a military imam, would attempt to meet the American in either a purely social setting or at least outside of the work area. These approaches usually included fairly generous gifts and of course, literature about Islam. The gifts included expensive briefcases, pens, books and other personal items. Americans who decided to convert to Islam were rewarded handsomely […] including all expenses paid trips to Mecca, and payments as high as $30,000.

The commander of Saudi forces in the Gulf, Prince Khaled bin Sultan bragged in his memoir that more than 2,000 American troops converted to Islam through this campaign. “These Muslim troops are now the messengers of Islam in the U.S. forces,” said Dr. Abu Ameena Bilal Phillips, a Jamaican-born convert to Islam (1972) who worked during the Gulf war under the auspices of the U.S. Air Force while converting U.S. troops to Islam in his spare time. After the war, Phillips moved to the United States to “set up Islamic chapters in the U.S. Defense Department.”

Nearly two decades have passed since the Saudi conversion campaign, and most of the converts may no longer be in uniforms. But the seeds sown during the Gulf War have germinated, creating scores of radicalized Americans who are a threat to their comrades in uniforms as well as to their civilian communities.

Fort Hood’s Hasan yelled “Allahu Akbar“—Arabic for “God is Great”—just before the shooting. As Camp Pennsylvania’s killer Akbar was being led away after the incident, fellow soldiers heard him shout: “You guys are coming into our countries and you’re going to rape our women and kill our children.” Allahu Akbar, “you guys,” “our countries”—strong words which tell us that it is time to investigate what exactly happened back then in the desert and assess how serious and deep-rooted the damage is.

Jacob Heilbrunn, writing in The National Interest, has also raised the question of a Fifth Column:

Make no mistake: hovering over Sen. Lieberman’s inquiry will be the question of whether the army contains a fifth column of Muslim-Americans intent on waging a war against the war on terror on the American homeland. Done properly, it could provide a salutary look into what may well be a nonissue. But done in an inflammatory fashion, it could end up making the Army-McCarthy hearings look like a dainty tea party. Carried far enough, the ultimate target of suspicion for some could be none other than President Barack Hussein Obama, whose patriotism has already been impugned by his detractors.

World Net Daily has likewise raised the question of a Fifth Column, linked the release of a new book on the subject:

According to an explosive new book, "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America," Hasan is just the tip of a jihadist Fifth Column operating within the ranks of the U.S. military – which is too blinded by political correctness to see the threat.

Quoting from a classified military briefing, "Muslim Mafia" reveals that this Fifth Column has penetrated "every branch of the U.S. military." The Islamist enemy has even infiltrated the al-Qaida detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Security officials at Gitmo have been investigating a possible new spy ring involving several "dirty" Arabic linguists who are accused among other things of:

* omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of detainee interrogations;

* slipping notes to detainees inside copies of the Quran;

* coaching detainees to make allegations of abuse against interrogators; and

* meeting with suspects on the terrorist watchlist while traveling back in the United States.

More than 75 former Gitmo detainees have returned to the battlefield or anti-American jihad. Some met with the suspect Muslim translators. Others were privately counseled by chaplains also under investigation for security breaches.

Gitmo security officials recently met with FBI agents in Philadelphia to aid their investigation into one of the Muslim linguists under contract at Gitmo, according to sources quoted in the book who are familiar with the investigation.

They also this summer briefed members of Congress about the prison camp's internal security breaches, according to "Muslim Mafia," which is co-authored by former federal agent P. David Gaubatz and investigative journalist Paul Sperry, author of "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington," which is being used by law enforcement and the military.

"Three years of investigations have revealed the presence of pro-jihad/anti-Western activities among the civilian contractor and military linguist population serving Joint Task Force Guantanamo," states a copy of the classified Gitmo briefing, which was prepared in May 2009 for the FBI and CIA, as well as the congressional intelligence committees.

The report explains that "dirty" Arabic linguists have gathered classified data involving detainees, interrogations and security operations in an effort to "disrupt" Gitmo operations and U.S. "intelligence-collection capabilities."

It goes on to specifically finger the Muslim Brotherhood, which it calls a terrorist group, in the conspiracy. The Muslim Brotherhood and its U.S. operations and front groups are the subject of "Muslim Mafia."

"These actions are deliberate, carefully planned, global, and to the benefit of the detainees and multiple terrorist organizations, to include al-Qaida and Muslim Brotherhood," the briefing states, according to the bestselling book.

The enemy infiltration is not limited to Guantanamo.

The report strongly suggests that Islamist spies have penetrated nearly every sensitive U.S. security agency involved in the war on terror, potentially compromising intelligence government-wide.

"Persons participating in this activity move regularly between multiple contracting companies, various intelligence agencies in the U.S. government [FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, etc.], and every branch of the U.S. military."

The investigation comes on the heels of a major Muslim espionage ring that the FBI broke up at Gitmo in 2004.

The American Thinker's Selwyn Duke similarly discusses the possibility of a Fifth Column.

Given this, was it really shocking when Hasan walked among the "aggressors" and yelled Allahu Akbar before punctuating his story with a burst of violence?

It wasn't to me. You see, I knew the rough details of the event as soon as I heard about the shooting. I knew that there are jihadists among us; I knew the perpetrator was likely one of them; and I knew that a three-little-monkeys society, blinded, deafened, and dumbed down by political correctness, is allowing this fifth column to operate unfettered. I knew it not because I'm a genius but because I'm willing to profile -- also known as seeing reality as it is, not as fashions dictate it must be. And this brings us to what is most shocking.

Why was an obvious jihadist in our military in the first place, let alone promoted to major?

Well, the question has already been answered. We have become a sick society, where fantasies are favored and reality is called "racist." If there were an officer of Japanese descent in our military during WWII, he wouldn't have lasted til the next day's rising sun if he had expressed pro-Imperial Japanese sentiments. But that was then, when America was America, before she was sacrificed on the altar of the leftist dystopia in utopian clothing.

The Gall of Peter Galbraith

Is Peter Galbraith a corrupt thug?

Even if he's not, he sure sounds like one to me, judging from this account in Vermont's Rutland Herald. The ex-US official appears insensitive to the appearance of corruption, as well as unapologetic about reports in yesterday's front-page NY Times article that he stands to gain over $100 million from oil deals between Kurdistan and a Norwegian oil company:

He said he had done nothing wrong and didn't have a conflict of interest by having business and political dealings with the Kurds. "It was a straightforward business transaction," he said.

The New York Times estimated that Galbraith's oil interests in Kurdistan could net him more than $120 million, a figure that Galbraith disputed. "These numbers, I wish they were true," he said.

Galbraith said he had left his work for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was working as a private citizen when he started working for the Norwegian oil firm DNO in 2004.

Later, in August 2005, Galbraith said, the Kurds, knowing of his relationship with DNO, asked him to advise them as Iraq wrote its constitution, which dealt in part withon how to divide its oil wealth.

"I was not a negotiator. I gave them advice," he said.

Galbraith said he had always been supportive of Kurdistan's self-determination, which meant having control over its oil fields and establishing a Kurdish oil industry. Kurdistan is the northern, oil-rich section of Iraq.

His positions have always been "congruent," he said, that Kurds should control their own natural resources.

He said the news of his Kurdish oil interests had first been made public a week after he was dismissed by the U.N. and the stories first surfaced in Norway and were later picked up by American press.

He said he had no proof that it was payback for his criticism of Eide, a top ranking Norwegian diplomat, but he was suspicious about the news of the Kurdish oil interests first becoming public a week later. "I can't prove anything," he said.

Galbraith was speaking to a sympathetic audience: the Windham World Affairs Council of Vermont. He has spoken to the organization for the past seven years in the fall, he said.

He had no plans to address them this fall until he lost his diplomatic posting in Afghanistan over his criticism of the fraudulent elections in that country.

Galbraith, who spoke for more than an hour about the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, later answered questions from the audience. Of the 50 or so questions, only a handful dealt with Thursday's Times article.

But Galbraith said he had hoped to defend himself to his "friends and neighbors," and said that the financial estimates used by the Times were grossly overstated.

As an example of other mistakes he cited in "These numbers — I wish they were true," he said. The Times estimated that Galbraith stood to reap about $120 million from the 5 percent interest he held in a Kurdish oil field.

There's a similar account in the Brattleboro Reformer.

Blogger SouthFloridaLawyers says Galbraith sounds "almost...pathological":

Galbraith's defense was basically that there is no conflict -- his investments in Kurdish Oil are entirely consistent with his advocacy of Kurdish autonomy and control over their oil fields.

I couldn't help but think how disingenuous this is, and how often we see this in legal briefs nowadays.

Remember in law school how there was some loose governing feature which reigned in absurd or ridiculous arguments -- the "red face" test. You just weren't supposed to make an argument that you knew yourself was preposterous.

Yet Galbraith did just that -- the issue was not whether he personally has an inner conflict between his business investments and his public advocacy. That has nothing to do with anything.

The issue is whether it was unethical for Galbraith to pretend to be an "independent expert" and hold himself out as a disinterested observer yet fail to disclose he would personally and financially benefit from the policies he advocated.

Any moron can see this, yet Galbraith very happily and vigorously acted as if what he was saying made perfect sense.

We see arguments like this all the time in the law nowadays -- non sequiturs that have nothing to do with the issue at hand yet sound superficially appealing and noncontroversial in the abstract. Listening to Galbraith this morning I almost felt he was pathological -- he was utterly convinced that what he was saying was entirely logical and reasonable, yet it was totally irrelevant to the issue at hand.

Meanwhile, The Times of London ran this:

Not public at the time was the fact that Mr Galbraith stood to profit from the provisions through his arrangement with a Norwegian oil company, DNO. Months later, DNO discovered the large Tawke oil field in northern Iraq. The disclosure of Mr Galbraith’s stake fuelled Iraqi complaints that influential people in the Western powers that launched the 2003 war were trying to take control of Iraq’s oil.

Feisal al-Istrabadi, a former Iraqi diplomat and legal advisor, said the revelation cast doubt on Iraq's fragile constitutional order.

“The idea that a foreign oil company was in the room drafting the Iraqi Constitution has me reeling,” he said. “It casts a tremendous pall on the legitimacy of the process. We do not let Shell draft the constitution of Nigeria.” Mr Galbraith acted as a go-between for the Norwegian oil company with the Kurdish regional government until its oil contract was signed in 2004. He continued to be paid by DNO while advising the Kurds in negotiations on the Iraqi Constitution.

My question is: Why is Galbraith allowed to have any stake in oil deals at all? Aren't there any US anti-corruption, anti-insider trading, or anti-conflict-of-interest laws that might apply? Couldn't the Kurds use his commission to feed their people?

At least the NY Times realizes something is wrong here, judging from today's Editor's Note:

On Thursday, a news article in The Times reported on the ties between Peter W. Galbraith, a former United States ambassador, and a Norwegian oil company that operates in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. According to the article, Mr. Galbraith “received rights to an enormous stake in at least one of Kurdistan’s oil fields in the spring of 2004.”

Since that time, Mr. Galbraith has written several opinion articles for the Op-Ed page in support of Kurdish independence and security. These articles should have disclosed to readers that Mr. Galbraith could benefit financially from an independent Kurdistan that would not have to share oil revenues with Iraq.

Like other writers for the Op-Ed page, Mr. Galbraith signed a contract that obligated him to disclose his financial interests in the subjects of his articles. Had editors been aware of Mr. Galbraith’s financial stake, the Op-Ed page would have insisted on disclosure or not published his articles.

In other words, this note apparently charges that Galbraith filed a false declaration with the NY Times.

UPDATE: In National Review Online, Michael Rubin points out an alleged connection between Galbraith and a reputed Iraqi arms smuggler:

The Other Partner in the Galbraith Oil Scandal [Michael Rubin]
The Norwegian press has been doing great work in investigating the Norwegian oil firm DNO's somewhat questionable dealings in Iraqi Kurdistan, during the course of which they identified former ambassador Peter Galbraith as a claimant to a share of the Tawke oil field.

The other claimant is Shahir 'Abd-al-Haq, a Yemeni businessman, who had handled DNO's business in Yemen and, at some point, also bought shares in Tawke. It is uncertain whether Galbraith and 'Abd-al-Haq were formal partners, or were just thrown together by mutual interests and holdings in the same field. What is not disputed, however, is that they are co-plaintiffs in court proceedings in London seeking compensation from DNO for having been ousted from the contracts.

'Abd-al-Haq has appeared on the U.S. radar screen before, as he helped Iraqi president Saddam Hussein subvert U.N. sanctions and import weapons. So now we have Peter Galbraith, who was an outspoken advocate for Kurdish rights in the wake of Saddam's ethnic cleansing becoming a partner with a man who helped arm Saddam. Greed makes strange bedfellows.

More on "Tawke-gate" from Walid Khaddui's Oil in a Week blog:

In any case, Galbraith succeeded in concealing information regarding his million-dollar investments in the Tawke oil field Production Sharing Agreement, signed between the KRG and DNO - a small Norwegian oil company. This continued to be the case until the leading Norwegian business newspaper “Dagens Næringsliv” exposed Galbraith’s involvement, through a series of investigative reports focused on DNO’s shareholders, after having obtained information about them directly from the Oslo Stock Exchange.

In fact, the importance of what the Norwegian newspaper has published lies in the many questions these articles have added to the ones we already had regarding the lack of credibility in the slogans adopted by the Bush administration, in what concerns fairness and transparency in the Middle East (insofar as being its aims behind the occupation of Iraq). This is in addition to raising questions about the intentions and objectives of one of the most prominent advocates of ending the Iraqi state, and about how he, Galbraith, abused his political power and engaged in questionable practices to further his business interests. Dagens Næringsliv’s reports also helped shed light on the role of American diplomats and individuals theorizing for the U.S occupation of Iraq, who exploited their political posts to have stakes in the Iraqi oil wealth.

Moreover, the reports published in the Norwegian Newspaper revealed that a “third party”, who was not initially named, was between 2004 and 2008 a partner in the production sharing agreement of the Tawke oil field in northern Iraq, and which was signed between the Norwegian company and the KRG. It was also revealed that this third party was excluded from signing the new agreement in early 2008, and that a new partner, the Turkish company “Genel Enerji”, was given a stake in the agreement. This prompted the third party to sue DNO for 500 million dollars for the losses suffered it had suffered.

It soon became evident that this third party was none other than Peter Galbraith. DNO then admitted that Galbraith, along with his Yemeni partner Shaher Abdulhak, were that third party, and that they had a 5 percent share in the Tawke oil field contract, through Porcupine, a company registered in the American state of Delaware in 2004. To validate this information, DNO then published several documents issues by Porcupine, and which bore the signature of Mr. Galbraith. Also, it should be mentioned here that Porcupine had entered in arbitration with DNO.

Moreover, the Norwegian Economic Crime Division “Økokrim” is currently investigating DNO’s transactions, which means that there is still more room to obtain more information before the end of the investigation. Meanwhile in Erbil, the “change” opposition bloc at the Kurdish Parliament called on Mr. Ashti Hawrami, the Minister of Natural Resources in the KRG, to appear before the parliament to respond to the charges made against him of involvement in a deal to sell 30 million dollar stocks to the Turkish company “Generl Enerji.”

Huffington Post article here.

PLUS THIS, from Christopher Dowd in the Boston Examiner:

Galbraith's massive financial stake in the war in Iraq and in war generally is par for the course for the entire Beltway elite. His corruption is nothing special. From generals with massive investments in "defense" firms given time on air as "military analysts" to ex CIA directors being given cushy sinecures on the boards of MIC companies to "journalists" given chairs in oil industry funded "think tanks"- from top to bottom our Beltway is a corrupt cesspool of incestuous back room deals, nepotism, back scratching, bought and paid for pens for hire, and talking heads willing to say anything on air as long as the price is right...

UPDATE: Someone I know points out that the American Enterprise Institute blog has had a post up on Peter Galbraith's Kurdistan oil connection for a month, already. An uncredited source for the New York Times' article? Also, the same someone provided this link to an English translation of the original Norwegian Dagens Næringsliv articles.

Petition: Stop Columbarium Conversion of Chicago's Three Arts Club!

Of all the icky real-estate deals I've heard of, this has to be the ickiest. The charming and beautiful Three Arts Club of Chicago--once a residence for single female artists, adorned with beautiful bas-reliefs and courtyards-- is facing a planned conversion to a columbarium for the remains of cremated Chicagoans.

Chicago Tribune story here.

ArchitectureChicagoPlus blog post here.

Crain's Chicago Business story here.

A petition drive to stop this has been launched online. You may add your signature by clicking here. The text is pretty straightforward:

To: Alderman Brendan Reilly, 42nd Ward, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Petition To Alderman Reilly
Against Columbarium Proposal
for Three Arts Club Building
1300 North Dearborn
Chicago, Illinois, 60610


To: ALDERMAN BRENDAN REILLY
42nd Ward
Chicago City Hall
121 North LaSalle Street, Room 300
Chicago, Illinois 60602
phone: 312-744-3062
email: brendan@reillyforchicago.com

DEAR ALDERMAN REILLY:

We, the undersigned, do not want a columbarium or any related facilities at the Three Arts Club building, 1300 North Dearborn, Chicago, Illinois.
Sincerely,

The Undersigned

James Taranto on the Ft. Hood Massacre Media Party Line

This essay on Best of the Web really made me think. An excerpt:

Some have detected in the Fort Hood coverage a return to a pre-9/11 mindset, and there is some truth to this. In particular, the left-liberal tendency to stereotype servicemen and veterans as psychopaths, suckers and victims is a return to form. But the bending over backward to explain away the role of religious fanaticism in the Fort Hood massacre is, it seems to us, something new--something distinctly post-9/11, or post-post-9/11.

Politically correct sensitivities have, of course, long been with us. But as we noted Monday, journalists and political leaders really seem to be going to extremes to avoid acknowledging the evident religious motivations for Hasan's alleged crimes. We'd suggest that there are three reasons for such denial, all of which grow out of 9/11:

First, the liberal left has embraced the notion that America overreacted after 9/11, was beastly toward Muslims, and now needs to "reach out" and atone. There is very little truth to this. President Bush constantly reminded the world that we were not at war with Islam, which he called a religion of peace. But Bush-was-too-aggressive rhetoric is a much better fit with liberals' natural inclination toward inaction than the Bush-wasn't-aggressive-enough rhetoric that Barack Obama occasionally used while still a candidate.

Second, it is comforting to think that 9/11 was a one-off rather than the most horrific example (so far) of a continuing threat. From this standpoint, it's psychologically preferable to emphasize that the Fort Hood suspect appears to have been a lone nut rather than that he seems to have espoused an ideology similar to that of the 9/11 terrorists.

Third, the impulse to protect a religious minority from prejudice and discrimination is a noble one. Muslims are not collectively guilty for the worst crimes of their coreligionists. We've encountered enough anti-Muslim prejudice to say that fears of it are not unfounded.

But the denialist attitude is counterproductive on all three grounds. Willful ignorance of the enemy's ideology is of no help in fighting the enemy--or preventing future attacks. In any case clarity, not obfuscation, is the enemy of prejudice.