For full impact: McC's nuclear safety policy:

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it's the kind of impact this society at this time does not need -- inciting paranoia, fanning the flames of those fringers just looking for an excuse to let loose their craziness. I have watched this man's show many, many times and he and people like Pig-in-a-Blanket Limbaugh scare me to death. Their rabid spewing of garbage serve only one purpose -- to feed their own humongous egos and pad their greedy pockets, and I feel sorry for anyone who look to people like this as someone to admire.

America Hires Chinese Firm To Inspect Cargo For Nuclear Material

BY TED BRIDIS - Associated Press
March 23, 2006
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/29714

WASHINGTON (AP) - In the aftermath of the Dubai ports dispute, the Bush administration is hiring a Hong Kong conglomerate to help detect nuclear materials inside cargo passing through the Bahamas to the United States and elsewhere.

The administration acknowledges the no-bid contract with Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. represents the first time a foreign company will be involved in running a sophisticated U.S. radiation detector at an overseas port without American customs agents present.

Freeport in the Bahamas is 65 miles from the U.S. coast, where cargo would be likely to be inspected again. The contract is currently being finalized.

The administration is negotiating a second no-bid contract for a Philippine company to install radiation detectors in its home country, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. At dozens of other overseas ports, foreign governments are primarily responsible for scanning cargo.

While President Bush recently reassured Congress that foreigners would not manage security at U.S. ports, the Hutchison deal in the Bahamas illustrates how the administration is relying on foreign companies at overseas ports to safeguard cargo headed to the United States.

Hutchison Whampoa is the world's largest ports operator and among the industry's most-respected companies. It was an early adopter of U.S. anti-terror measures. But its billionaire chairman, Li Ka-Shing, also has substantial business ties to China's government that have raised U.S. concerns over the years.

Li Ka-Shing is pretty close to a lot of senior leaders of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party, said Larry M. Wortzel, head of a U.S. government commission that studies China security and economic issues. But Wortzel said Hutchison operates independently from Beijing, and he described Li as a very legitimate international businessman.

One can conceive legitimate security concerns and would hope either the Homeland Security Department or the intelligence services of the United States work very hard to satisfy those concerns, Wortzel said.

Three years ago, the Bush administration effectively blocked a Hutchison subsidiary from buying part of a bankrupt U.S. telecommunications company, Global Crossing Ltd., on national security grounds.

And a U.S. military intelligence report, once marked secret, cited Hutchison in 1999 as a potential risk for smuggling arms and other prohibited materials into the United States from the Bahamas.

Hutchison's port operations in the Bahamas and Panama could provide a conduit for illegal shipments of technology or prohibited items from the West to the PRC (People's Republic of China), or facilitate the movement of arms and other prohibited items into the Americas, the now-declassified assessment said.

The CIA currently has no security concerns about Hutchison's port operations, and the administration believes the pending deal with the foreign company would be safe, officials said.

Supervised by Bahamian customs officials, Hutchison employees will drive the towering, truck-like radiation scanner that moves slowly over large cargo containers and scans them for radiation that might be emitted by plutonium or a radiological weapon.

Any positive reading would set off alarms monitored simultaneously by Bahamian customs inspectors at Freeport and by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials working at an anti-terrorism center 800 miles away in northern Virginia. Any alarm would prompt a closer inspection of the cargo, and there are multiple layers of security to prevent tampering, officials said.

The equipment operates itself, said Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency negotiating the contract. It's not going to be someone standing at the controls pressing buttons and flipping switches.

A lawmaker who helped lead the opposition to the Dubai ports deal isn't so confident. Neither are some security experts. They question whether the U.S. should pay a foreign company with ties to China to keep radioactive material out of the United States.

Giving a no-bid contract to a foreign company to carry out the most sensitive security screening for radioactive materials at ports abroad raises many questions, said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

A low-paid employee with access to the screening equipment could frustrate international security by studying how the equipment works and which materials set off its alarms, warned a retired U.S. Customs investigator who specialized in smuggling cases.

Money buys a lot of things, Robert Sheridan said. The fact that foreign workers would have access to how the United States screens various containers for nuclear material and how this technology scrutinizes the containers _ all those things allow someone with a nefarious intention to thwart the screening.

Other experts discounted concerns. They cited Hutchison's reputation as a leading ports company and said the United States inevitably must rely for some security on large commercial operators in the global maritime industry.

We must not allow an unwarranted fear of foreign ownership or involvement in offshore operations to impair our ability to protect against nuclear weapons being smuggled into this country, said Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., a member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. We must work with these foreign companies.

A former Coast Guard commander, Stephen Flynn, said foreign companies sometimes prove more trustworthy _ and susceptible to U.S. influence _ than governments.

It's a very fragile system, Flynn said. Foreign companies recognize the U.S. has the capacity and willingness to exercise a kill switch if something goes wrong.

A spokesman for Hutchison's ports subsidiary, Anthony Tam, said the company is a strong supporter in port security initiatives.

In the case of the Bahamas, our local personnel are working alongside with U.S. customs officials to identify and inspect U.S.-bound containers that could be carrying radioactive materials, Tam said.

However, there are no U.S. customs agents checking any cargo containers at the Hutchison port in Freeport. Under the contract, no U.S. officials would be stationed permanently in the Bahamas with the radiation scanner.

The administration is finalizing the contract amid a national debate over maritime security sparked by the furor over now-abandoned plans by Dubai-owned DP World to take over significant operations at major U.S. ports.

Hutchison operates the sprawling Freeport Container Port on Grand Bahama Island. Its subsidiary, Hutchison Port Holdings, has operations in more than 20 countries but none in the United States.

Contract documents, obtained by The Associated Press, indicate Hutchison will be paid roughly $6 million. The contract is for one year with options for three years.

The Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration is negotiating the Bahamas contract under a $121 million security program it calls the second line of defense. Wilkes, the NNSA spokesman, said the Bahamian government dictated that the U.S. give the contract to Hutchison.

It's their country, their port. The driver of the mobile carrier is the contractor selected by their government. We had no say or no choice, he said. We are fortunate to have allies who are signing these agreements with us.

Some security experts said that is a weak explanation in the Bahamas, with its close reliance on the United States. The administration could insist that the Bahamas permit U.S. Customs agents to operate at the port, said Albert Santoli, an expert on national security issues in Asia and the Pacific.

Why would they not accept that? said Santoli, a former national security aide to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif. There is an interest in the Bahamas and every other country in the region to make sure the U.S. stays safe and strong. That's how this should be negotiated.

Flynn, the former Coast Guard commander, agreed the Bahamas would readily accept such a proposal but said the U.S. is short of trained customs agents to send overseas.

Contract documents obtained by the AP show at least one other foreign company is involved in the U.S. radiation-detection program.

A separate, no-bid $4 million contract the Bush administration is negotiating would pay a Manila-based company, International Container Terminal Services Inc., to install radiation detectors at the Philippines' largest port.

The U.S. says the Manila company is not being paid to operate the radiation monitors once they are installed. But two International Container executives and a senior official at the government's Philippine Nuclear Research Institute said the company will run the detectors on behalf of the institute and the country's customs bureau. U.S. officials said they will investigate further how the Filipinos plan to use the equipment.

U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report By House Panel
Paper on Nuclear Aims Called Dishonest

U.N. inspectors investigating Iran's nuclear program angrily complained to the Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House committee report on Iran's capabilities, calling parts of the document outrageous and dishonest and offering evidence to refute its central claims.

Officials of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency said in a letter that the report contained some erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements. The letter, signed by a senior director at the agency, was addressed to Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, which issued the report. A copy was hand-delivered to Gregory L. Schulte, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna.

The IAEA openly clashed with the Bush administration on pre-war assessments of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Relations all but collapsed when the agency revealed that the White House had based some allegations about an Iraqi nuclear program on forged documents.

After no such weapons were found in Iraq, the IAEA came under additional criticism for taking a cautious approach on Iran, which the White House says is trying to build nuclear weapons in secret. At one point, the administration orchestrated a campaign to remove the IAEA's director general, Mohamed ElBaradei. It failed, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize last year.

Yesterday's letter, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post, was the first time the IAEA has publicly disputed U.S. allegations about its Iran investigation. The agency noted five major errors in the committee's 29-page report, which said Iran's nuclear capabilities are more advanced than either the IAEA or U.S. intelligence has shown.

Among the committee's assertions is that Iran is producing weapons-grade uranium at its facility in the town of Natanz. The IAEA called that incorrect, noting that weapons-grade uranium is enriched to a level of 90 percent or more. Iran has enriched uranium to 3.5 percent under IAEA monitoring.

When the congressional report was released last month, Hoekstra said his intent was to help increase the American public's understanding of Iran as a threat. Spokesman Jamal Ware said yesterday that Hoekstra will respond to the IAEA letter.

Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), a committee member, said the report was clearly not prepared in a manner that we can rely on. He agreed to send it to the full committee for review, but the Republicans decided to make it public before then, he said in an interview.

The report was never voted on or discussed by the full committee. Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the vice chairman, told Democratic colleagues in a private e-mail that the report took a number of analytical shortcuts that present the Iran threat as more dire -- and the Intelligence Community's assessments as more certain -- than they are.

Privately, several intelligence officials said the committee report included at least a dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate. Hoekstra's office said the report was reviewed by the office of John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.

Negroponte's spokesman, John Callahan, said in a statement that his office reviewed the report and provided its response to the committee on July 24, '06. He did not say whether it had approved or challenged any of the claims about Iran's capabilities.

This is like prewar Iraq all over again, said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector who is president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is spun up, using bad information that's cherry-picked and a report that trashes the inspectors.

The committee report, written by a single Republican staffer with a hard-line position on Iran, chastised the CIA and other agencies for not providing evidence to back assertions that Iran is building nuclear weapons.

It concluded that the lack of intelligence made it impossible to support talks with Tehran. Democrats on the committee saw it as an attempt from within conservative Republican circles to undermine Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has agreed to talk with the Iranians under certain conditions.

The report's author, Fredrick Fleitz, is a onetime CIA officer and special assistant to John R. Bolton, the administration's former point man on Iran at the State Department. Bolton, who is now ambassador to the United Nations, had been highly influential during President Bush's first term in drawing up a tough policy that rejected talks with Tehran.

Among the allegations in Fleitz's Iran report is that ElBaradei removed a senior inspector from the Iran investigation because he raised concerns about Iranian deception regarding its nuclear program. The agency said the inspector has not been removed.

A suggestion that ElBaradei had an unstated policy that prevented inspectors from telling the truth about Iran's program was particularly outrageous and dishonest, according to the IAEA letter, which was signed by Vilmos Cserveny, the IAEA's director for external affairs and a former Hungarian ambassador.

Hoekstra's committee is working on a separate report about North Korea that is also being written principally by Fleitz. A draft of the report, provided to The Post, includes several assertions about North Korea's weapons program that the intelligence officials said they cannot substantiate, including one that Pyongyang is already enriching uranium.

The intelligence community believes North Korea is trying to acquire an enrichment capability but has no proof that an enrichment facility has been built, the officials said.

I have a real difficult time knowing who to believe. Bush has paid the media to present his point of view. This tactic used to be called propaganda when it referred to Communists. Communists were supposed to be the ones who wanted to take over the entire world and force their form of government on everyone.

If you can provide me with a similar list of lies told by Ahmadinejad, I'd love to read it.

The issue here is credibility and who has the biggest history of lying. Unfortunately, a pack of lies is what got us where we are in Iraq today. To me, it looks like Bush is trying the very same tactics to get us into a war with Iran.

Although Ahmadinejad is a terrible, psychotic, murderous, dangerous individual, Bush is the person who has the five-year history of lying to the American people and to the world.

Quite frankly, if I were the president of Iran and saw my neighbor, Iraq, invaded based on a pack of lies, I believe I'd want to flex my muscles and try to scare the USA into backing off and not attacking my citizens as they did in Iraq.

Israel has nuclear weapons (that I believe WE paid for). The USA has nuclear weapons. Why is that okay?

The real threat is Korea, but Bush is too much of a coward and doesn't have the courage to address that threat.

The propaganda machine of George W. Bush has cast Syria in a very negative light, yet Syria was responsible for saving American lives the other day by thwarting a terror attempt.

That, in and of itself, in addition to Bush's refusal to get the Taliban that were in plain view the other day, has me questioning every single word that comes out of this lying president's mouth.

Yes, I'll say it again. He is a liar. A LIAR! Maybe in your neck of the woods, lying is an accepted form of communication. Where I come from, it does nothing but destroy credibility and create distrust in the person who is doing the lying. You can respond with all the snappy **you hate bush** and **you're on the side of the terrorists** comebacks you want (seems to be the usual conservative talking point response), but the bottom line is he is a chronic liar. I don't hate Bush, but I sure as heck don't like (or trust) liars.

Is it more of a fire hazard just because more than 15 people meet on a regular basis than if someone has a single party for 30 people?

As long as you and the other wiccans are clothed and no open-burning laws are being broken (in a residential area, that would be a fire hazard) I would have no particular problem with your rituals. Depending on the time of day/night and loudness of chanting, it might constitute a disturbance of the peace, same as a loud barbecue party in the neighborhood. But with the basic concept of your meeting, no big deal.

I didn't vote for Obama, I was one of those on the fencers. But I must say one thing I am impressed with so far is his complete overhaul of the US food safety system and the new rule of no downed cows being put into our food system.

Some things should just be common sense, and they weren't being implemented. Good job Obama!

Cheney 'cabal' hijacked foreign policy
By Edward Alden in Washington
Published: October 20 2005 00:00 | Last updated: October 20 2005 00:19

Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.

In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: �What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

�Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.�

Transcript: Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson
Click here http://news.ft.com/cms/s/c925a686-4...000e2511c8.html

Mr Wilkerson said such secret decision-making was responsible for mistakes such as the long refusal to engage with North Korea or to back European efforts on Iran.

It also resulted in bitter battles in the administration among those excluded from the decisions.

�If you're not prepared to stop the feuding elements in the bureaucracy as they carry out your decisions, you are courting disaster. And I would say that we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran.�

The comments, made at the New America Foundation, a Washington think-tank, were the harshest attack on the administration by a former senior official since criticisms by Richard Clarke, former White House terrorism czar, and Paul O'Neill, former Treasury secretary, early last year.

Mr Wilkerson said his decision to go public had led to a personal falling out with Mr Powell, whom he served for 16 years at the Pentagon and the State Department.

�He's not happy with my speaking out because, and I admire this in him, he is the world's most loyal soldier.

Among his other charges:

■ The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was �a concrete example� of the decision-making problem, with the president and other top officials in effect giving the green light to soldiers to abuse detainees. �You don't have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you've condoned it.�

■ Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and now secretary of state, was �part of the problem�. Instead of ensuring that Mr Bush received the best possible advice, �she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president�.

■ The military, particularly the army and marine corps, is overstretched and demoralised. Officers, Mr Wilkerson claimed, �start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam. . . and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel�.

Mr Wilkerson said former president George H.W. Bush �one of the finest presidents we have ever had� understood how to make foreign policy work. In contrast, he said, his son was �not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either�.

�There's a vast difference between the way George H.W. Bush dealt with major challenges, some of the greatest challenges at the end of the 20th century, and effected positive results in my view, and the way we conduct diplomacy today.�

www.newamerica.net

Here is yet another expert criticizing Bush's policies. How can ALL of these people be wrong?

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-06-21T064029Z_01_N21187502_RTRUKOT_0_TEXT0.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage3

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former U.S. diplomat who was deeply involved in North Korea policy said the Bush administration's approach toward the isolated communist state has been a failure that left Pyongyang to pursue its nuclear and missile programs.

In a rare public attack on the administration by a foreign service officer, retired head of the State Department's office of Korean affairs David Straub also questioned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's decision-making on the issue. A spokesman for Rice was not immediately available for comment.

One fundamental failure of Bush's approach was the tendency to raise tensions and make South Korea nervous by stating that all options were the table, a phrase underscoring U.S. intentions to use force against North Korea if necessary, he said.

Of course all options are on the table. No government ever takes any option off the table but you don't have to talk about it all the time, Straub said.

Every time we said 'all options are on the table' gratuitously, we made the situation with our South Korean ally worse and made the prospect of coordination with South Korea to resolve the North Korean problem diplomatically that much more remote, he said.

Straub was head of the Korean office from 2002-2004 and was part of a team that negotiated with the North during former Secretary of State Colin Powell's tenure.

Several former administration political appointees have faulted President George W. Bush's policies after leaving office but it is rare for a foreign service officer to do so.

Straub spoke in Washington at a meeting of the Korea Club, which groups former officials, scholars and journalists interested in the Korean peninsula.

His remarks came as six-country negotiations on ending North Korea's nuclear program are at a stalemate and as Pyongyang fans tensions again with preparations for a possible long-range missile test.

Straub said Washington was not primarily responsible for the failure to stop the North's pursuit of nuclear weapons and expressed skepticism Pyongyang would abandon its growing capability even if the United States made major concessions.

But he said the only viable U.S. approach is serious negotiations, the appointment of a high-level envoy and a willingness to engage in bilateral as well as multilateral talks, something the Bush administration has eschewed.

Straub said North Korea never seemed a priority for Bush and he could not understand why the National Security Council under Rice, who is often credited with energizing diplomacy at the State Department, repeatedly rejected Powell's diplomatic proposals.

Powell was desperate to try to have some real diplomatic effort going (with Pyongyang). Maybe she did something (to assist that) for four years while he was in office, but if she did no one ever told me, Straub said.

As for Bush, Straub wondered how much attention is he able to pay to it (North Korea). How much does he know?

Straub noted that opinion polls show many South Koreans consider America a bigger problem than North Korea. I can't think of a better definition of diplomatic failure, he said

He expressed confidence Powell would have pursued bilateral talks with Pyongyang in 2002-2003 during a crisis created by U.S. discovery of the North's clandestine program for enriching weapons-grade uranium.

But he said the administration did not want real give and take so the stalemate in six-country talks between the United States, the two Koreas, Japan, China and Russia was predictable, he said.

Straub also questioned why, after six-party talks reached an important but preliminary agreement on the nuclear issue last September, Rice would allow release of a statement clarifying U.S. views on issues papered over in the agreement.

Obama started off saying he was confident in his FOREIGN POLICY experience ("Foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain"). He then proceeded to talk about his visit to Pakistan.

SO WHAT? I visited and lived in several foreign countries, too. Does that mean I understand foreign policy better than someone who may have spent less time but has had actual interaction and policy discussions with those countries' leaders? And with the leaders of 80 countries?

If 3 weeks in Pakistan is the extent of Obama's foreign policy credentials, then I am way more qualified on the "foreign policy" front.

My point is that Obama's claim is ridiculous. Better that he stick to his "better judgement" mantra, since the "3 weeks abroad = foreign policy experience" is just pathetically weak.