UPI:

A study says 94 percent of all euro bank notes currently in Spain have traces of cocaine on them because of their use in drug trafficking.

Salon.com |

A decisive year for “the decider”

 The Bush presidency plunged into a death spiral as the reality of Iraq spurred Americans to hand over Capitol Hill to the Democrats.

By Walter Shapiro

Dec. 26, 2006 | “In this decisive year, you and I will make choices that determine both the future and the character of our country.”
— George W. Bush, State of the Union address, Jan. 31, 2006

Rarely in the annals of American democracy has a president spoken with such godlike prescience about the year to come. The choices made by the voters in the 2006 elections altered the future of the nation and asserted the character of the country. A religious man, Bush undoubtedly appreciates these words of Jesus: “A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country.” But, as seems evident, Bush never expected this biblical statement to apply directly to him and his tragic misadventure in Iraq.

How bad a year was it for Bush? There are four distinct stages in the death spiral of a presidency — and Bush managed to reach three of them in 2006. He began the year with desperate, reality-defying belief in spin, as symbolized by this brazen line from the State of the Union: “We’re on the offensive in Iraq, with a clear plan for victory.” Then came denial, as the president in his bunker believed Field Marshal Karl Rove’s assurances that the Republicans had wonder weapons they would deploy on Election Day. Now we are in the Harry Truman phase, as Bush frequently likens himself to that midcentury president whose approval rating hit 23 percent during the Korean War. Pretty soon the star-crossed Bush (whose own popularity score is barely hovering above 30 percent) may display this motto on his desk: “The Luck Stops Here.” All that is missing in this four-part saga is for Bush to start talking to the portraits on the White House walls — the political version of the Book of Revelation that truly heralds Nixonian end times.

The year’s most politically significant eight-word sentence comes at the beginning of the December report by the Baker-Hamilton Commission: “The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating.” While the actual recommendations of the Iraq Study Group are fading faster than Judith Regan’s literary reputation, the establishment’s bipartisan verdict that the war is close to unwinnable will endure. Nearly four years after the statues of Saddam Hussein were toppled in Baghdad, 2006 was the year that reality set in about the Mesopotamian mess. Outside the closed-loop universe of conservative talk radio and Fox News, there no longer is a constituency for vaporous visions of victory. Even the president himself belatedly conceded the obvious about the situation in Iraq when he told the Washington Post in a year-end interview, “We’re not winning, we’re not losing.” The voters themselves are even more pessimistic. A mid-December CNN poll found that 70 percent of those surveyed believe that the likely outcome for the U.S. in Iraq will be either stalemate or defeat.

All this brings us to defrocked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the fall guy of the decade. Without glossing over his grotesque errors of military judgment and his legendary intolerance for dissent at the Pentagon, it does seem that all during the run-up to the 2006 elections Rummy was single-handedly taking the rap for the administration’s collective failures in Iraq. By early November, even desperate Republicans were bellowing, “Fire Rumsfeld!” when asked about an exit strategy from the war, as if a new defense chief would automatically bring the Age of Aquarius to Iraq. Still, Bush’s decision to wait until the day after the elections to relegate Rumsfeld to retirement remains baffling, especially to the maybe dozen GOP congressional incumbents who might have held their seats if the president had opened the (Robert) Gates earlier.

Much of what played out politically in 2006 seems inevitable in hindsight. OK, no one would have guessed that Virginia Sen. George Allen would have his “macaca” moment and go from a smart-money pick for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination to unemployment in a few short months. In fact, compared with Allen (whose racially insensitive past came to light along with his Jewish ancestry), Rumsfeld had a rather good year. Also unexpected was Joe Lieberman’s zigzag path back to the Senate from Connecticut (he lost the Democratic primary to antiwar blogger hero Ned Lamont, only to win handily in November running as an independent). Depending on perspective, the Lieberman saga proved a) the warriorlike worth of the netroots in Democratic primaries; b) the weakness of one-issue liberal candidates in the general election, even in New England; c) the weirdness of Connecticut’s election laws, which permitted Lieberman to run twice; or d) the wobbliness of largely self-funded candidates like Lamont in races against politically experienced incumbents.

Hard to remember how much skepticism there was last January among the seers and soothsayers about the chances that the Democrats would soon shed their minority status in Congress. The political culture in Washington is inordinately fond of identifying iron laws of human behavior based on the results of the last three or four elections. The conventional wisdom in early 2006 was that a Democratic upheaval on par with the 1994 Gingrich revolution in the House would be virtually impossible because of computer-enhanced partisan gerrymandering, the lack of close congressional elections in recent years, the Republican Election Day turnout machine and the diabolical genius of Rove. CNN political analyst William Schneider captured with perfect pitch the Beltway political orthodoxy when he wrote in National Journal in January, “Democrats are likely to make gains this year. But it would take a political earthquake for Democrats to win control of the House or Senate. Few House seats are truly up for grabs.” Eleven months later, the seismic rumbles are still reverberating, as the Democrats won 29 new House seats, won six Senate seats and took over six additional governorships, including those in New York and Ohio. The most stunning statistic: Not a single Democrat running for reelection was defeated for Congress or governor.

There are many explanations for the Democratic sweep, beginning with the underappreciated value of that thing called luck — a shift of 12,000 votes in Virginia and Montana (where Jon Tester upended scandal-singed GOP incumbent Conrad Burns) would have left the Republicans in control of the Senate by a 51-49 margin. But more than anything, the 2006 elections were a top-to-bottom repudiation of Rove’s hard-right-is-never-wrong theory of politics. Despite ruin in Iraq and the culture of corruption in Congress (symbolized by disgraced Florida Republican Mark Foley’s inappropriate advances to House pages), Rove’s beloved conservative base turned out to loyally vote for GOP candidates, the same as always. What changed was that these angry evangelicals and antitax conservatives were about the only people voting Republican. As pollster Andrew Kohut, the president of the Pew Research Center, wrote, “The outcome of this election … was determined by the shifting sentiments of independents and moderates. It is no exaggeration to say that the views of the least ideological voters decided this election for the Democrats.”

The year 2006 may someday be remembered as the year when the ascension of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court — with Senate Democrats proving to be all talk and no filibuster — created a permanent majority of jurists seemingly willing to give blank-check powers to the president in national security cases. (The precise trajectory of the Roberts court will not be known for years — and, in fact, civil libertarians were buoyed by Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, a landmark decision in June that challenged many premises of the war on terror.)

Historians may also look back at the meteoric rise of such would-be presidents as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, the outgoing Massachusetts Republican governor. These chroniclers may note the lack of even a day’s pause between the 2006 congressional elections and the start of the 2008 presidential race, demonstrating that politics (not software, entertainment or financial services) is 21st century America’s dominant industry.

But mostly this was a decisive year for a president who may wonder why he sought a second term. Now, mired in an unpopular war and deprived of the protection of a Republican Congress, George W. Bush — the only true “decider” per self-proclamation — must decide how to handle his final two years in office. For even amid the splendid isolation of the White House, Bush cannot escape the big message of 2006: The American people have offered a stinging vote of “no confidence” in his presidency.

Baltimore Sun

White House hiring lawyers in expectation of Democratic probes.

Washington – President Bush is bracing for what could be an onslaught of investigations by the new Democratic-led Congress by hiring lawyers to fill key White House posts and preparing to play defense on countless document requests and possible subpoenas.

Bush is moving quickly to fill vacancies within his stable of lawyers, though White House officials say there are no plans to drastically expand the legal staff to deal with a flood of oversight.

“No, at this point, no,” Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said recently. “We’ll have to see what happens.”

Snow rebutted the notion that Bush is casting about for legal advice in the wake of his party’s loss of control of the Congress.

“We don’t have a war room set up where we’re … dialing the 800 numbers of law firms,” he said.

Still, in the days after the elections, the White House announced that Bush had hired two replacements to plug holes in his counsel’s office, including one lawyer, Christopher G. Oprison, who is a specialist in handling white-collar investigations. A third hire was securities law specialist Paul R. Eckert, whose duties include dealing with the Office of the Special Counsel. Bush is in the process of hiring a fourth associate counsel, said Emily A. Lawrimore, a White House spokeswoman.

“Obviously, if we do have investigations, we’ll have to make sure we have enough people to be prepared to answer questions that come our way,” Lawrimore said. “As of right now, I wouldn’t say it’s anything special.”

Republicans close to Bush say any such moves would not come until the White House sees how aggressive Democrats are in trying to pry the lid off the inner workings of the administration.

“They just think it’s inevitable that there will be some investigations that will tie up some time and attention,” said Charles Black, a strategist with close ties to the White House. But there’s no panic in the ranks of Bush’s team, he added. “They don’t think they have anything to hide.”

Bush still must do what he can now – before Democrats take over the majority in Congress next month – to prepare, legal specialists say.

“At a time like this, the experienced people in the White House view themselves as in a race they hope to win, of organizing and coordinating their defenses to have them in place in time to slow down or resist oversight before the oversight can get organized,” said Charles Tiefer of the University of Baltimore Law School, a former House counsel and veteran of congressional investigations.

People familiar with the counsel’s office caution against reading too much into the new additions, saying that Bush has yet to go on a hiring spree akin to President Bill Clinton’s when he faced impeachment. But White House officials know of the potential challenges, they said.

“It’s certainly not lost on them that there will be more investigative requests and more things for them to respond to, but I don’t think that you’re going to see any dramatic changes,” said Reginald Brown, a former associate in Bush’s White House counsel’s office who is now in private practice.

Democrats’ stated intention to conduct more rigorous oversight of the Bush administration “simply will mean that [White House officials] need a few more people to manage the paper flow,” Brown said.

Veterans of investigative battles between the White House and Congress predict that Bush ultimately will need to add staff members – or at least borrow some from government agencies – to contend with Democrats with subpoena power on Capitol Hill.

“Like any White House that has to deal with a Congress run by the other party, this White House has to bulk up its staff to deal with the inevitable flood of subpoenas. They’re also going to have to coordinate with lots of friends and supporters,” said Mark Corallo, a former top Republican aide to the House committee that issued more than 1,000 subpoenas to the Clinton camp.

Corallo and Barbara Comstock, another Republican public-relations executive with broad experience in Hill investigations, are launching a crisis-communications firm to serve officials and corporations who, Corallo said, could end up as “drive-by victims” in a new round of probes.

Snow said the firm is “certainly independent of the White House.”

Republican lobbyist David M. Carmen has added an oversight practice to his firm’s menu of services, tapping Frank Silbey, a veteran of congressional investigations, to minister to companies and public figures caught in the web of expected probes.

Democrats are reluctant to reveal their investigative plans, but they have made it plain that they want to conduct more oversight of the Bush administration.

It is clear, though, that Democrats will be beefing up their staffs. With control of Congress comes twice as much funding, which will allow Democrats to double their staffs, including hiring new lawyers and investigators to face off with the Bush administration.

Bush will need “people who have experience in responding to subpoenas, overseeing document production and preparing witnesses,” said Amy R. Sabrin, who defended several Clinton administration officials during the investigations of the 1990s.

The president might want to launch internal investigations of his own, legal experts and analysts say, to turn up anything untoward before Democrats do. Some suggested that the administration was doing that last month when the Justice Department announced that it would look into the use of information gleaned from the National Security Agency’s warrantless domestic surveillance program, an investigation that Bush thwarted earlier by refusing to grant security clearances.

“It’s quite common that a White House, anticipating congressional investigations, will prefer to let previously blocked internal administrative investigations go ahead as a preferred alternative way of trying to deprive the upcoming congressional investigation of exciting things to discover,” Tiefer said.

An example from recent history was the Reagan administration’s Tower Commission, set up to “steal the thunder” of the congressional probe into the Iran-contra scandal, Tiefer added.

White House adviser Black noted that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have been careful to guard executive secrecy, a stance that is unlikely to change in the face of new congressional zeal for information.

“That means if a committee wants to investigate a Cabinet agency, they cooperate. If they’re asking to get information about who the president and the vice president are getting advice from and meeting with, the answer is no,” he said.

None of which will make life easier for White House lawyers who will be fielding Democrats’ requests.

Fulfilling congressional oversight requests is always tedious and time-consuming. When the investigations become partisan, it can be even worse.

“The oversight work was among the most stressful and least-rewarding work in the office,” said Bradford A. Berenson, a former counsel in Bush’s White House. “When you’re playing defense against investigations that are, to one degree or another, politically motivated in an environment where there are very few rules and very little prospect of judicial relief, it can be very frustrating.”

(FROM Monday, October 06, 2003)

This puts accountability right into the White House,” a senior administration official said:

White House announces reorganization to deal with Iraq and Afghanistan (according to story in the New York Times). Here’s a snapshot.

UGGA BUGGA SAID:

 Why is this being re-posted? Because the Bush administration has time after time after time asserted that the “next step” was going to lead to success. This particular case is one of the earlier ones, from over three years ago. And now the latest gambit is that a “surge” is going to make things right. Enough already. (Yes, this commentary is inspired by Kevin Drum’s post about how giving Bush more troops will finally make the war in Iraq look like a mistake.) Bush and his supporters have been wrong on virtually all the key assessments and implementations. Sometimes it’s hard to keep focus on that, because of the kind of political dialogue we encounter every day. Bush has been wrong, is wrong, and should not be indulged any more.

Also … even though so many Big Names have been wrong, does anybody think that Bill Kristol will no longer be invited to Fox News Sunday? Or that McCain and Lieberman won’t be chatting with Tim Russert? In any society that valued simple matters like being correct on foreign policy, these clowns would have been banished from the public arena a long time ago. But Rupert Murcoch and G.E. and the Washington Post don’t care about that. They want war and they will continue to support advocates of the Iraq war regardless of the facts. And when things go completely sour, or when the troops are finally taken out, get ready for it. These Masters Of The Media will give a forum for commentators to blame Democrats or liberals or anyone else they can find, for the failure. Expect to hear the kind of nonsense Tom DeLay says now (“It’s the fault of the liberals and the media and the Democrats”).

Facts don’t matter. Being right or wrong doesn’t matter. What matters is who controls the press.

Nineteenth Century Bush

Diagramming Kevin Phillips book on the Bush dynasty
Diagramming Bush the businessman
All the lies and distortions about Iraq peddled by Bush and his allies
Bush regime playing cards
Bush lies about Iraq having WMDs (14 times on the campaign trail)
Chalabi: Thief of Baghdad? (+ Baghdad museum info)
Bush: uniter or divider?
Seymour Hersh’s timeline of North Korean nuclear program
George W. Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service (table)
Let’s play North Korean Brinksmanship!
Bush lies about Saddam/alQaeda “connections” (11 times on the campaign trail).
Tim Russert uses a meaningless, 56 year old statistic about Social Security
Richard Perle’s Secret Plan.

uggabugga

Nineteenth Century Bush
Diagramming Kevin Phillips book on the Bush dynasty
Diagramming Bush the businessman
All the lies and distortions about Iraq peddled by Bush and his allies
Bush regime playing cards
Bush lies about Iraq having WMDs (14 times on the campaign trail)
Chalabi: Thief of Baghdad? (+ Baghdad museum info)
Bush: uniter or divider?
Seymour Hersh’s timeline of North Korean nuclear program
George W. Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service (table)
Let’s play North Korean Brinksmanship!
Bush lies about Saddam/alQaeda “connections” (11 times on the campaign trail).
Tim Russert uses a meaningless, 56 year old statistic about Social Security
Richard Perle’s Secret Plan.

By Charles Krauthammer

ROUNDS: the ritual whereby a senior doctor goes from bed to bed seeing patients, trailed by a gaggle of students.

ROUNDSMANSHIP: the art of distinguishing oneself from the gaggle with relentless displays of erudition.

The roundsman is the guy who, with the class huddled at the bed of a patient who has developed a rash after taking penicillin, raises his hand to ask the professor — obnoxious ingratiation is best expressed in the form of a question — whether this might not instead be a case of Shmendrick’s Syndrome reported in the latest issue of The Journal of Ridiculously Obscure Tropical Diseases.

None of the rest of us gathered around the bed has ever heard of Shmendrick’s. But that’s the point. The point is for the prof to remember this hyper-motivated stiff who stays up nights reading journals in preparation for rounds. That’s the upside. The downside, which the roundsman, let’s call him Oswald, ignores at his peril, is that this apple polishing does not endear him to his colleagues, a slovenly lot, mostly hung over from a terrific night at the Blue Parrot.

The general feeling among the rest of us is that we should have Oswald killed. A physiology major suggests a simple potassium injection that would stop his heart and leave no trace. We agree this is a splendid idea, and entirely just. But it would not solve the problem. Kill him and another Oswald will arise in his place.

There’s always an Oswald. There’s always the husband who takes his wife to Paris for Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day? The rest of us schlubs can barely remember to come home with a single long stem rose. What does he think he’s doing? And love is no defense. We don’t care how much you love her — you don’t do Paris. It’s bad for the team.

Baseball has its own way of taking care of those who commit the capital offense of showing up another player. Drop your bat to admire the trajectory of your home run and, chances are, the next time up the unappreciative pitcher tries to take your head off with high cheese that whistles behind your skull.

Now, you might take this the wrong way and think that I am making the case for mediocrity — what Australians call the “the tall poppy syndrome” of unspoken bias against achievement, lest one presume to be elevated above one’s mates. No. There is a distinction between show and substance. It is the ostentation that rankles, not the achievement. I’m talking about dancing in the end zone. Find a cure for cancer, and you deserve whatever honors and riches come your way. But the check-writer who wears blinding bling to the cancer ball is quite another manner.

Americans abroad have long been accused of such blinging arrogance and display. I find the charge generally unfair. Arrogance is incorrectly ascribed to what is really the cultural clumsiness of an insular (if continental) people less exposed to foreign ways and languages than most other people on earth.

True, America as a nation is not very good at humility. But it would be completely unnatural for the dominant military, cultural, and technological power on the planet to adopt the demeanor of, say, Liechtenstein. The ensuing criticism is particularly grating when it comes from the likes of the French, British, Spanish, Dutch (there are many others) who just yesterday claimed dominion over every land and people their Captain Cooks ever stumbled upon.

My beef with American arrogance is not that we act like a traditional great power, occasionally knocking off foreign bad guys who richly deserve it. My problem is that we don’t know where to stop — the trivial victories we insist on having in arenas that are quite superfluous. Like that women’s hockey game in the 2002 Winter Olympics. Did the U.S. team really have to beat China 12-1? Can’t we get the coaches — there’s gotta be some provision in the Patriot Act authorizing the CIA to engineer this — to throw a game or two, or at least make it close? We’re trying to contain China. Why then gratuitously crush them in something Americans don’t even care about? Why not throw them a bone?

I say we keep the big ones for ourselves — laser-guided munitions, Google, Warren Buffett — and let the rest of the world have ice hockey, ballroom dancing, and every Nobel Peace Prize. And throw in the Ryder Cup. I always root for the Europeans in that one. They lost entire empires, for God’s sake; let them have golf supremacy for one weekend. No one likes an Oswald.

The Boston Globe

Military considers recruiting foreigners
Expedited citizenship would be an incentive

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | December 26, 2006

WASHINGTON — The armed forces, already struggling to meet recruiting goals, are considering expanding the number of noncitizens in the ranks — including disputed proposals to open recruiting stations overseas and putting more immigrants on a faster track to US citizenship if they volunteer — according to Pentagon officials.

Foreign citizens serving in the US military is a highly charged issue, which could expose the Pentagon to criticism that it is essentially using mercenaries to defend the country. Other analysts voice concern that a large contingent of noncitizens under arms could jeopardize national security or reflect badly on Americans’ willingness to serve in uniform.

The idea of signing up foreigners who are seeking US citizenship is gaining traction as a way to address a critical need for the Pentagon, while fully absorbing some of the roughly one million immigrants that enter the United States legally each year.

The proposal to induct more noncitizens, which is still largely on the drawing board, has to clear a number of hurdles. So far, the Pentagon has been quiet about specifics — including who would be eligible to join, where the recruiting stations would be, and what the minimum standards might involve, including English proficiency. In the meantime, the Pentagon and immigration authorities have expanded a program that accelerates citizenship for legal residents who volunteer for the military.

And since Sept. 11, 2001, the number of imm igrants in uniform who have become US citizens has increased from 750 in 2001 to almost 4,600 last year, according to military statistics.

With severe manpower strains because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — and a mandate to expand the overall size of the military — the Pentagon is under pressure to consider a variety of proposals involving foreign recruits, according to a military affairs analyst.

“It works as a military idea and it works in the context of American immigration,” said Thomas Donnelly , a military scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington and a leading proponent of recruiting more foreigners to serve in the military.

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind on, the Pentagon has warned Congress and the White House that the military is stretched “to the breaking point.”

Both President Bush and Robert M. Gates, his new defense secretary, have acknowledged that the total size of the military must be expanded to help alleviate the strain on ground troops, many of whom have been deployed repeatedly in combat theaters.

Bush said last week that he has ordered Gates to come up with a plan for the first significant increase in ground forces since the end of the Cold War. Democrats who are preparing to take control of Congress, meanwhile, promise to make increasing the size of the military one of their top legislative priorities in 2007.

“With today’s demands placing such a high strain on our service members, it becomes more crucial than ever that we work to alleviate their burden,” said Representative Ike Skelton , a Missouri Democrat who is set to chair the House Armed Services Committee, and who has been calling for a larger Army for more than a decade.

But it would take years and billions of dollars to recruit, train, and equip the 30,000 troops and 5,000 Marines the Pentagon says it needs. And military recruiters, fighting the perception that signing up means a ticket to Baghdad, have had to rely on financial incentives and lower standards to meet their quotas.

That has led Pentagon officials to consider casting a wider net for noncitizens who are already here, said Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Hilferty , an Army spokesman.

Already, the Army and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security have “made it easier for green-card holders who do enlist to get their citizenship,” Hilferty said.

Other Army officials, who asked not to be identified, said personnel officials are working with Congress and other parts of the government to test the feasibility of going beyond US borders to recruit soldiers and Marines.

Currently, Pentagon policy stipulates that only immigrants legally residing in the United States are eligible to enlist. There are currently about 30,000 noncitizens who serve in the US armed forces, making up about 2 percent of the active-duty force, according to statistics from the military and the Council on Foreign Relations. About 100 noncitizens have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A recent change in US law, however, gave the Pentagon authority to bring immigrants to the United States if it determines it is vital to national security. So far, the Pentagon has not taken advantage of it, but the calls are growing to take use the new authority.

Indeed, some top military thinkers believe the United States should go as far as targeting foreigners in their native countries.

“It’s a little dramatic,” said Michael O’Hanlon , a military specialist at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution and another supporter of the proposal. “But if you don’t get some new idea how to do this, we will not be able to achieve an increase” in the size of the armed forces.

“We have already done the standard things to recruit new soldiers, including using more recruiters and new advertising campaigns,” O’Hanlon added.

O’Hanlon and others noted that the country has relied before on sizable numbers of noncitizens to serve in the military — in the Revolutionary War, for example, German and French soldiers served alongside the colonists, and locals were recruited into US ranks to fight insurgents in the Philippines.

Other nations have recruited foreign citizens: In France, the famed Foreign Legion relies on about 8,000 noncitizens; Nepalese soldiers called Gurkhas have fought and died with British Army forces for two centuries; and the Swiss Guard, which protects the Vatican, consists of troops who hail from many nations.

“It is not without historical precedent,” said Donnelly, author of a recent book titled “The Army We Need,” which advocates for a larger military.

Still, to some military officials and civil rights groups, relying on large number of foreigners to serve in the military is offensive.

The Hispanic rights advocacy group National Council of La Raza has said the plan sends the wrong message that Americans themselves are not willing to sacrifice to defend their country. Officials have also raised concerns that immigrants would be disproportionately sent to the front lines as “cannon fodder” in any conflict.

Some within the Army privately express concern that a big push to recruit noncitizens would smack of “the decline of the American empire,” as one Army official who asked not to be identified put it.

Officially, the military remains confident that it can meet recruiting goals — no matter how large the military is increased — without having to rely on foreigners.

“The Army can grow to whatever size the nation wants us to grow to,” Hilferty said. “National defense is a national challenge, not the Army’s challenge.”

He pointed out that just 15 years ago, during the Gulf War, the Army had a total of about 730,000 active-duty soldiers, amounting to about one American in 350 who were serving in the active-duty Army.

“Today, with 300 million Americans and about 500,000 active-duty soldiers, only about one American in 600 is an active-duty soldier,” he said. “Americ
a did then, and we do now, have an all-volunteer force, and I see no reason why America couldn’t increase the number of Americans serving.”

But Max Boot, a national security specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the number of noncitizens the armed forces have now is relatively small by historical standards.

“In the 19th century, when the foreign-born population of the United States was much higher, so was the percentage of foreigners serving in the military,” Boot wrote in 2005.

“During the Civil War, at least 20 percent of Union soldiers were immigrants, and many of them had just stepped off the boat before donning a blue uniform. There were even entire units, like the 15th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry [the Scandinavian Regiment] and General Louis Blenker’s German Division, where English was hardly spoken.”

“The military would do well today to open its ranks not only to legal immigrants but also to illegal ones and, as important, to untold numbers of young men and women who are not here now but would like to come,” Boot added.

“No doubt many would be willing to serve for some set period, in return for one of the world’s most precious commodities — US citizenship. Some might deride those who sign up as mercenaries, but these troops would have significantly different motives than the usual soldier of fortune.”

Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.

UN marks soaring Iraq death toll
More than 34,000 civilians were killed in violence in Iraq during 2006, a UN human rights official has said.

The envoy to Iraq, Gianni Magazzeni, said 34,452 civilians were killed and more than 36,000 hurt during the year.

The figure is nearly three times higher than calculations previously made on the basis of Iraqi interior ministry statistics for 2006.

Accurate figures are difficult to acquire, and previous UN estimates have been rejected outright by Baghdad.

Mr Magazzeni said his figures were compiled from data collected by the Health Ministry, hospitals, mortuaries and other agencies.

Car bombs

Speaking in London, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair described the death of innocent people in Iraq as “tragic”, but insisted it was the fault of insurgents, not foreign troops stationed in the country.

KEY DEVELOPMENTS DURING 2006
Civilian deaths reach new high of 12,320, Iraqi government says, UN puts toll at 34,452
More than 800 US troops killed
Violence at record levels, with 140 reported attacks daily
Thousands of Iraqis leaving the country each week

Incidents of violence are reported throughout Iraq everyday.

On Tuesday, at least 53 people were killed in a series of bomb blasts and gun attacks across Baghdad.

The BBC’s Andrew North in the capital says no-one knows the true figure for how many Iraqis are dying in the conflict, but the regular UN calculations are seen as one guide.

Iraqi officials have yet to respond to this latest report, but they described a UN estimate of 3,700 civilian deaths in October alone as grossly exaggerated.

Sectarian clashes

Nonetheless observers say the upward trend is clear and supported by evidence from the ground.

Every morning police collect dozens of bodies from the streets of Baghdad.

Most of those killed are victims of sectarian violence between the minority Sunni and majority Shia Muslims.

It’s not British and American soldiers that are killing innocent people, we’re trying to protect innocent people
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair
Mr Blair made mention of this fact when he was asked about Iraq’s soaring death toll at his monthly press briefing in Downing Street on Tuesday:

“But of course it is tragic when there’s innocent people losing their lives in Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of them lost their lives, innocent people, under Saddam.

“Now thousands of them are losing their lives, but they’re losing their lives because terrorists and because internal extremists, linking up with external extremists, are killing them,” he said.

“It’s not British and American soldiers that are killing innocent people, we’re trying to protect innocent people.”

There are fears violence will only intensify as a result of the circumstances surrounding the execution of Saddam Hussein and his aides, who were from the Sunni community.

The taunting of Saddam in his final moments and the decapitation of his half brother during an apparent accident in the hanging process has drawn intense international criticism.

Law and order

Mr Magazzeni demanded the Iraqi government do more to enforce the rule of law.

“Law enforcement agencies do not provide effective protection to the population of Iraq,” he said, adding that “militias act in collusion with or have infiltrated” the security forces.

“Without significant progress in the rule of law sectarian violence will continue indefinitely and eventually spiral out of control,” he warned.

Last week, US President Bush announced plans to send at least 20,000 more troops to Iraq, saying it will help bring security to Baghdad’s streets, where violence is most intense.

Previous attempts to stop the killings in the capital have failed, in part, analysts say, because coalition and Iraqi troops have not stayed in an area once insurgents have been cleared.

Under the new plans, once an area is taken, the extra US troops will stay behind, backing up Iraqi forces to hold the area.

Story from BBC NEWS:

BBC NEWS
Discussions to follow Basra raid
British officials are to explain to the authorities in Basra why coalition troops demolished the headquarters of the city’s Serious Crime Unit.

UK forces say Iraqis are still supporting them despite anger over the raid on a police station, and discussions will follow.

A British officer said the destruction of the base has made Basra safer.

Mohammed al Abadi, head of the city’s council, had said the raid was illegal and threatened to stop co-operation.

He said local officials had not been informed of the operation and that it violated earlier agreements to move the prisoners without military action.

And Basra police commander Brigadier General Ali Ibrahim said: “This storming operation is illegal and violates human rights.

“We think that what the operation sought to achieve is very simple and could have been settled by Iraqi troops.”

But the UK Foreign Office said there had been no formal announcement to withdraw co-operation with the British.

A spokesman conceded some elements of the council were unhappy but said the UK and the Iraqi government would explain the reasons for them.

‘Iraqi backing’

Major Charles Burbridge, speaking on behalf of the British Army in Basra, said the 127 prisoners rescued from Jamiat police station had been tortured.

And the raid had the backing of regional and national Iraqi politicians.

He said: “Some members of the provincial council conducted a press conference yesterday where they criticised what we did and how we did it.

“But at the same time the MoD up in Baghdad had a similar press conference stating that the provincial council’s facts were wrong.

“We still believe that we’ve done the right thing and I think it’s important to acknowledge the fact that what we do here is never going to be overwhelmingly popular and if we don’t get any criticism then this isn’t democracy.”

British forces raided and demolished the unit’s headquarters, and rescued prisoners they feared would be killed.

SAS rescue

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said hundreds of seized files and computers were taken as evidence.

The raid came three days after seven Iraqi officers were arrested by UK troops on suspicion of corruption and leading a death squad at the unit.

In September 2005, two SAS soldiers were rescued from Jamiat after being accused of shooting dead a local policeman and wounding another.