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tx_ned · #**121** Thursday, June 24, 2010

By ZARAR KHAN
The Associated Press
Thursday, June 24, 2010

SARGODHA, Pakistan -- Five American men were convicted Thursday on terror charges by a Pakistani court and sentenced to 10 years in prison in a case that has heightened concerns about Westerners traveling to Pakistan to contact al-Qaida and other Islamist extremist groups.

The trial of the young Muslim men from the Washington, D.C., area was sensitive for the U.S., which has a duty to ensure justice for its citizens abroad but also has pushed Pakistan to crack down on militancy.

The men were arrested in Pakistan in December after their families reported them missing. Prosecutors said e-mail records and witness statements proved they were plotting terror attacks in Pakistan and conspired to wage war against nations allied with it, a reference to Afghanistan, where the men were alleged to have been traveling.

The judge handed down two prison terms for each man, one for 10 years and the other for five. A copy of the decision seen by The Associated Press said the terms were to be served concurrently.

The men said nothing when the verdict was read out, Deputy Prosecutor Rana Bakhtiar said. Previously, the men claimed they had been tortured by Pakistani police and FBI agents. The allegations were denied by authorities in Pakistan and the United States. Their lawyers said they would appeal the case.

The trial moved with unusual speed in a country where cases often drag out for years and where terror convictions are rare and often overturned on appeal. The trial was closed to journalists and observers and was heard by a single judge in a special anti-terrorism court.

The men have been identified as Ramy Zamzam of Egyptian descent, Waqar Khan and Umar Farooq of Pakistani descent, and Aman Hassan Yemer and Ahmed Minni of Ethiopian descent. One allegedly left behind a farewell video in the United States showing scenes of war and casualties and saying Muslims must be defended.

Umar Farooq's father, Khalid Farooq, called the verdict "a great disappointment" and insisted the men had wanted to go to Afghanistan to do humanitarian work, not fight. The men also wanted to see Umar get married in Sargodha, he said.

The men were arrested at Farooq's home in Sargodha after he said he told them to avoid making the trip. Farooq, an American of Pakistani descent who also has a home and business in Alexandria, Virginia, was held for 20 days.

"I will right away go to the high court, even to the International Court of Justice, to get these innocent youths justice," said Farooq, who was not allowed to watch the trial. "I have not had a chance to see my son or the other fellows. I hear they are very frustrated and need to be consoled."

"It was not a fit case for conviction," defense lawyer Hassan Dastghir said. "I am confident that we will win the case at appeals level."

American officials have said little in public about the trial, and on Thursday, embassy spokesman Richard Snelsire said only that the U.S. respects the decision of the Pakistani courts.

Washington is trying to counter anti-American sentiment in Pakistan's government, security forces and media, as it pushes Islamabad to flush out the Taliban, al-Qaida and other militant networks who use its territory.

Associated Press Writer Munir Ahmed contributed to this report.

tx_ned · #**122** Friday, June 25, 2010

By Howard Schneider and Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 25, 2010

TORONTO -- Leaders of the world's major economies began gathering here Thursday amid warnings that their failure to cooperate on core financial and economic issues could cost the world tens of millions of jobs.

After crafting a common response to the financial crisis in the fall of 2008 -- one that saw countries from Communist-governed China to conservative Canada pull in the same direction -- members of the Group of 20 arrive this time rived by newly asserted national interests. Many are at odds over details such as how fast and far some countries should cut public spending, and how strict new capital requirements should be for the world's major banks.

Any broader political agenda -- whether climate change or nuclear proliferation -- has been largely set aside.

The situation poses a challenge for President Obama's commitment to multilateralism, and it prompted the International Monetary Fund to warn of the high price tag if the world's major economies don't find common ground. In a report being distributed to the G-20 leaders, the IMF concludes that the difference between well- and poorly coordinated policies could be as much as $4 trillion in economic output and perhaps 30 million jobs worldwide over the next few years.

"That is the strongest argument for common standards," said Canada's finance minister, James M. Flaherty. "I think we can get there with a lot more work. It is complicated."

"The G-20 was kind of the thing that was at hand in a moment of crisis," said Charles Freeman, a China scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It's not necessarily the natural board of directors of the global economy, let alone global social welfare. It just happened to be the tourniquet that was there when the bleeding was going."

It is indeed an unwieldy group, representing 90 percent of the world's economy but spanning the political sensibilities of Saudi Arabia's oil monarchy, China's opaque blend of communist politics and market capitalism, and increasingly assertive and economically important nations such as Brazil and India -- a tough forum to debate issues such as North Korea's weapons program.

There are observers from other African and Asian groups, as well as from the IMF, the World Bank, the European Union and other organizations -- a conclave so large and sensitive it has required the conversion of downtown Toronto into a fenced and heavily armed camp.

Obama's support for the group as the premier forum for discussing world economics speaks to the president's philosophy of global decision making, and answered criticism that the Group of Eight industrialized and mostly Western nations had become too exclusive a club. The smaller group will have its own one-day meeting Friday in northern Ontario.

Heading into Toronto, the larger forum has arguably helped smooth over some trouble spots. China's recent decision to allow its currency to increase in value avoided a potential argument not just with the United States but also with G-20 members Brazil and India, whose economies are also affected by China's policies. Major European countries agreed to divulge more information on the state of their banks -- a step the United States, the IMF and others probably would have pushed for at the Toronto meeting as an important part of financial reform.

But the expectation set at earlier meetings of a newly unified world leadership has been tempered. The stimulus programs put in place helped the world economy start growing again, but recent events have split the group into different camps when it comes to what should happen next.

Just as a recovery seemed to be taking hold, the crisis over government debt in Europe raised the risk of another round of recession. European governments have now embarked on a tough round of budget cutting -- including some, such as Germany, that Obama and others argue should ramp up spending to ensure growth continues as their neighbors scale back. Heading into the meetings, German Chancellor Angela Merkel rebuffed suggestions from Obama and others that her country's austerity efforts and continued large trade surpluses could spark a new downturn.

The disagreement speaks to one of the basic premises guiding G-20 and IMF discussion -- that the world's large exporting nations need to spend and import more.

"If you're [Treasury Secretary] Timothy Geithner, you're frustrated, because things you thought you had agreement on went away," said C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Neither is reform of the financial system heading toward a smooth conclusion.

Britain, France and Germany have endorsed a bank tax to pay for the cost of the recent crisis, something that Canada, South Korea and others have rejected. Flaherty said he now considers the issue a "distraction" that won't be endorsed by the entire group, and that would have no more impact on world commerce than current differences in corporate and other taxes.

Of larger concern is disagreement over how banks should be capitalized, how much they need to keep on hand in readily liquid assets, and other basic aspects of financial reform.

European nations, where one or two large institutions can play an outsized role in the economy, don't want rules that will saddle their companies with large capital "holes" to fill -- or if so, that they be given time to comply. Countries such as Canada and South Korea, where the banking systems remained healthy through the crisis, want a system that can offer tradeoffs between higher capital requirements and stricter oversight.

Toronto is considered a way station in that discussion, with a final agreement hoped for when the group meets again in Seoul in the fall.

"I'd hope the leaders would be able to prioritize -- to say that these are the most important things and let's agree and get those done," said former Canadian ambassador to the U.S. Michael Wilson, chairman for Barclay's Capital in Canada. "What happened in the last two or three months in Europe should have been a pretty clear signal that we are not out of the woods by any means."

tx_ned · #**123** Saturday, June 26, 2010

By Scott Wilson and Michael Savage
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 26, 2010

TORONTO -- President Obama and the new British prime minister, David Cameron, plan to grab some time alone here Saturday on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit. It will be their first meeting since Cameron became prime minister last month, and they will have a lot to talk about, not least a "special relationship" burdened by the BP oil spill and the war in Afghanistan.

The men do not know each other well. But each is facing intense public pressure at home over the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and a war in Afghanistan that has just experienced a dramatic change in command. The meeting will help set the tone for the latest incarnation of the relationship, which commentators on both sides of the Atlantic say is not particularly special any more.

As leaders of the world economic powers gathered for the summit here, Cameron announced that he intends to withdraw British troops from Afghanistan, where they make up the second-largest national contingent, within five years.

While that timeline does not necessarily conflict with Obama's, it magnified the perception that the mission is unraveling. It came just a day after Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's abrupt dismissal for the disdainful comments he and his staff made in a magazine article toward the civilian leadership.

Obama called Cameron just hours after he relieved McChrystal of his command, and the two have spoken a number of times by phone in recent weeks as concerns mount over the oil spill. But the British media have urged Cameron to take a sterner tone with Obama, whom they view as unfairly pillorying a company important to millions of British pensioners for political purposes.

In a recent column in the Daily Mail, Amanda Platell, a former aide to now British Foreign Secretary William Hague, wrote that "the way Tony Hayward has been vilified is a joke," referring to the BP chief executive who infamously noted that no one wanted the spill to end sooner than he did because he "want[ed his] life back."

"If you don't recognize the special relationship is special to you, and if you don't know loyalty goes both ways and you've never had a better friend than Britain, then send our 10,000 troops home from Helmand immediately," Platell wrote, referring to a region of southern Afghanistan where British and American forces are fighting the Taliban.

The strain between the governments of the United States and Britain started long before the oil spill.

In supporting President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair created the perception that his country was America's "poodle." The ongoing British inquiry into the Iraq war has kept the perception alive, making it harder for Blair's successors to fully embrace American policy, even when they have wanted to.

But Obama, too, came into office with a foreign policy philosophy that sought to treat all countries equally under a shared set of international "rights and responsibilities." The approach has left not only the British among U.S. allies feeling less special than they once did.

Earlier this year, Britain's foreign affairs committee issued a report concluding that the special relationship has lost its relevance.

David Manning, a former British ambassador to Washington, told the committee that Obama "comes with a very different perspective. He is an American who grew up in Hawaii, whose foreign experience was of Indonesia and who had a Kenyan father."

"The sentimental reflexes, if you like, are not there," Manning said. "If you want President Obama's attention at the moment, particularly when the agenda is so cluttered, it has to be relevant."

Signs and signals have supported those conclusions, unfairly or not.

Reports that Obama replaced an Oval Office bust of Winston Churchill -- among his predecessor's heroes -- with one of Martin Luther King Jr. dominated the British tabloids early in his administration.

The British press has also written that Obama has a special antipathy toward the country because his paternal grandfather was mistreated by British troops during Kenya's fight for independence. Then along came the oil spill.

The polling firm YouGov reported earlier this month that 64 percent of the British people believe Obama's handling of the BP spill has weakened the countries' relationship. The poll was conducted as Hayward faced scolding questions on Capitol Hill.

But 60 percent of respondents to an online poll conducted by the Guardian -- a self-selecting group of mostly liberal readers -- said the idea that Obama was "anti-British" was "over-sensitive nonsense."

The relationship has always "been much more special to England than America," wrote Gary Younge, an influential columnist and feature writer for the Guardian. "It is special so far as Britain can help America advance its interests. It makes diplomatic sense."

Cameron has weighed in on the relationship in the past. In 2006, the year he took over as head of the Conservative Party, Cameron said Britain should not be "slavish in how we approach the special relationship."

"Blair was too much the new friend telling you everything you want to hear rather than the best friend telling you what you need to hear," he told Time magazine in March of this year.

The Obama-Cameron meeting Saturday begins what Nigel Sheinwald, the British ambassador to Washington, described as an "intensive period of visits" to shore up its relationship with the administration.

Andrew Mitchell, Britain's international development secretary, visited his counterpart this week in Washington. Defense Secretary Liam Fox plans to be in Washington by the end of the month.

And when Cameron has his first official visit to Washington on July 20, his energy secretary, Chris Huhne, will join him to participate in a Cabinet-level clean energy meeting.

Obama has consistently spoken publicly in support of the "special relationship," and repeatedly thanked the British government and people for their large sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the oil spill, in particular, has injected political emotion into the calculus that has been hard for either leader to ignore.

"Public opinion on both sides is demanding a specific response by their leaders and it's a very populist response," said Heather Conley, director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It's not necessarily about seeking solutions to actual problems."

Staff researcher Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi in London contributed to this report.

tx_ned · #**124** Monday, June 28, 2010

By Howard Schneider and Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 28, 2010

TORONTO -- President Obama warned Sunday that the world economic recovery remains "fragile" and urged continued spending to support growth, an expansionist call at the end of a summit marked by an agreement among developed nations to halve their annual deficits within three years.

The president's remarks tempered the Group of 20's headline achievement at the summit, a deficit-reduction target that had been pushed by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the host of the meeting and a fiscal conservative. Although there is broad agreement that government debt in the developed world needs to be reduced, there is concern that cutting too fast and too deeply will slow growth and possibly spark a new recession.

In a news conference at the meeting's conclusion, Obama said that the world's largest economic powers had agreed on the need for "continued growth in the short term and fiscal sustainability in the medium term."

"A number of our European partners are making difficult decisions," Obama said. "But we must recognize that our fiscal health tomorrow will rest in no small measure on our ability to create jobs and growth today."

The group's closing statement included the specific deficit-reduction target, but it was couched in caveats -- that deficit reduction needed to be "calibrated" to avoid harming growth, paced differently in each country and paired with other reforms to strengthen the economy.

Obama and European leaders, in particular, came to the meeting with sharply different views of the strength of the global economic recovery, with the U.S. president more pessimistic. The declaration, in the works for weeks, gave each side what it wanted, although the specific deadlines went further than the Obama administration had preferred before the meeting.

The administration accepted the deadlines in order to avoid standing against Harper and such important economic powers as Germany. In his closing remarks, Obama stressed that "every country will chart its own unique course, but make no mistake -- we're moving in the same direction."

The International Monetary Fund's managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, called the deficit target an "oversimplification" of the problem; he said it was more important for individual countries to craft the right economic policies to sustain growth, not blindly cut for the sake of meeting a goal.

Along with pledging to cut their annual budget deficits by 2013, the developed countries committed to stabilizing their overall debt by 2016. Obama recently set similar goals for the United States.

Despite the seeming division between the United States' deficit-reduction target and the slower approach favored by Canada and Germany, Obama said there was "violent agreement" within the group about the need to find proper balance -- with some highly indebted countries such as Greece needing to cut immediately and others supporting the recovery with higher spending.

Overall, the group's final statement reflects its consensus theory for how the world economy needs to change, with the heavily indebted Western nations steadily taming government deficits, and surplus-rich nations "rebalancing" to boost local spending and demand.

Strong emerging markets such as China, the document said, need to guard against a slowdown by encouraging their governments and people to spend more, investing more on infrastructure, establishing better social safety nets to give families more income, and allowing exchange rates to fluctuate more freely -- a quiet reference to China's managed currency policies. China is a member of the G-20.

"Advanced surplus" countries -- developed nations that run large trade surpluses -- committed to try to narrow the gap between imports and exports, a particular concern in Europe, where Germany's powerful export-led economy is blamed by some for economic weakness in Greece and elsewhere.

But the G-20 delegations also left Toronto with much of the heavy lifting on new global financial rules still ahead of them.

Discussion of a global bank tax -- once considered a major issue for the group -- ended with a commitment that the financial sector would make a "fair" contribution to the cost of resolving financial crises, but leaving it to each nation to decide how and when the contribution would be collected.

The group also committed to requiring banks worldwide to hold a "significantly higher" amount of capital to buffer them against financial shock. But acknowledging the difficulty that will pose to some institutions, the group's statement opened the door for a transition period to give weaker companies time to raise the funds.

The G-20 hopes by the end of this year to have new capital rules for banks in place, and leaders consider the issue a core element of global financial reform. But an early test of proposed bank capital rules found that they risked undermining economic growth. Even banks in relatively healthy systems, such as Canada, would have been in a bind and forced to raise substantial new funds, according to bankers and officials familiar with the matter.

"We have the confluence of two forces. One is about making sure there are no more crises, but we have to make sure we don't destroy our domestic banking systems," said Hyun Song Shin, senior economic adviser to the South Korean government. "What you don't want to do is strangle bank lending."

tx_ned · #**125** Thursday, July 01, 2010

By Karin Brulliard and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 1, 2010

KABUL -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai has agreed to send a group of military officers to Pakistan for training, a significant policy shift that Afghan and Pakistani officials said signals deepening relations between the long-wary neighbors.

The move is a victory for Pakistan, which seeks a major role in Afghanistan as officials in both countries become increasingly convinced that the U.S. war effort there is faltering. Afghan officials said Karzai has begun to see Pakistan as a necessary ally in ending the war through negotiation with the Taliban or on the battlefield.

"This is meant to demonstrate confidence to Pakistan, in the hope of encouraging them to begin a serious consultation and conversation with us on the issue of [the] Taliban," Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Karzai's national security adviser, said of the training agreement.

The previously unpublicized training would involve only a small group of officers, variously described as between a handful and a few dozen, but it has enormous symbolic importance as the first tangible outcome of talks between Karzai and Pakistan's military and intelligence chiefs that began in May. It is likely to be controversial among some Afghans who see Pakistan as a Taliban puppet-master rather than as a cooperative neighbor, and in India, which is wary of Pakistan's intentions in Afghanistan.

Some key U.S. officials involved in Afghanistan said they knew nothing of the arrangement. "We are neither aware of nor have we been asked to facilitate training of the Afghan officer corps with the Pakistani military," Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, head of the NATO training command in Afghanistan, said in an e-mail. But Afghanistan, he said, "is a sovereign nation and can make bilateral agreements with other nations to provide training."

The United States has spent $27 billion to train and equip Afghan security forces since 2002, and President Obama's war strategy calls for doubling the strength of both the army and police force there by October 2011 to facilitate the gradual departure of U.S. troops.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, confirmed Wednesday as the new U.S. and NATO war commander, said this week that the United States wants to "forge a partnership or further the partnership that has been developing between Afghanistan and Pakistan." In addition to taking military action against Taliban sanctuaries inside its borders, Petraeus said, it is "essential" that Pakistan be involved "in some sort of reconciliation agreement" with the insurgents.

U.S. officials are generally pleased with the rapprochement between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the rapid progress of the talks has given some an uneasy feeling that events are moving outside U.S. control. Karzai told the Obama administration about his first meeting with Pakistani intelligence chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha when he visited Washington in May, but "he didn't say what they talked about, what the Pakistanis offered. He just dangled" the information, one U.S. official said.

That session, and at least one follow-up meeting among Karzai, Pasha and the Pakistani army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, included discussion of Pakistan-facilitated talks with Taliban leaders, although the two governments differed on whether the subject was raised with a Pakistan offer or an Afghan request. Both governments denied subsequent reports that Karzai had met face to face with Pakistan-based insurgent leader Sirajuddin Haqqani.

Hedging their bets

Pakistan and Afghanistan have long held each other at arm's length. The border between them is disputed, and Afghans resent Pakistan's support for the Taliban government during the 1990s and its tolerance of insurgent sanctuaries. But as they have assessed coalition prospects in the war, both governments appear to have turned to each other as a way of hedging their bets against a possible U.S. withdrawal.

While building Afghanistan's weak army is a key component of U.S. strategy, more than 300 Afghan soldiers are currently being trained under bilateral agreements in other countries, including Turkey and India, Pakistan's traditional adversary. Pakistan has been pushing for months for a training deal, and Spanta said that a "limited" number of officers would be part of the new agreement. Details were still under discussion, but a senior Pakistani government official said the program was expected to begin "soon."

Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington and an advocate of a Pakistani training program, said the plan could expedite joint operations between the two militaries and reduce suspicions about Pakistan within the Afghan army.

"This is a major move," Nawaz said. "It will have a powerful signaling effect in both countries."

Fears of Pakistani military influence persist among Afghan ethnic minorities and some in Karzai's government, including one official who compared the training initiative to the Soviet education of Afghan officers in the 1960s and 1970s that he said was "the start of all evil in Afghanistan."

"Pakistanis never trust Afghans. And Afghans never trust Pakistanis," according to a senior Afghan official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his job. "But because the current situation is getting worse and worse, Karzai has to say okay to the Pakistanis and shake hands."

'We have doubts'

Another Afghan official, citing Karzai's recent firing of two top security officials who were highly critical of Pakistan, said the Afghan leader may be moving too far, too fast. The firings, the official said, were a "triumph for the ISI," Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, which has had a history of backing the Taliban and other militant groups in Afghanistan.

Afghan skeptics noted that Pakistan still refuses Afghanistan's demand to extradite Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was captured in Karachi in a joint Pakistani-U.S. raid early this year, or to arrest other senior leaders with whom they believe Pakistan retains ties. "If they were able to arrest Mullah Baradar . . . why haven't they arrested [Afghan Taliban leader] Mullah Omar? Or . . . Haqqani? This is something we have doubts about," one senior Afghan official said.

Baradar, who reportedly had engaged in talks with the Karzai government, "was interested and more willing to negotiate," the official said. "He was tired of fighting. Pakistan wants to use the Taliban as a pressure element. They don't want the Taliban to be in direct contact with the Afghan government."

Some U.S. officials expressed similar wariness about Pakistan's intentions. "What the Pakistanis and the Taliban want," one said, "is a cleaning of the house," including replacement of the Afghan officer corps, currently dominated by ethnic Tajiks whom Pakistan sees as hostile to its interests.

But other officials in all three countries rejected that analysis and pointed to a broader thaw in Afghanistan-Pakistan relations over the past year. Pakistani scholarships have been accepted by a number of Afghan university students, and Pakistan is training Afghan civilian officials, Spanta said.

"We have seen a paradigm shift in the relationship," said Mohammad Sadiq, Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan. "And of course, both sides are benefiting from it."

DeYoung reported from Washington.

tx_ned · #**126** Friday, July 02, 2010

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 2, 2010

Architects of President Obama's 2008 victory are braced for potentially sizable Democratic losses in November's midterm elections. But they say voters' unease about a GOP takeover will help their party maintain congressional majorities.

"I think the prospect of a Republican takeover -- while not likely, but plausible -- will be very much part of the dynamic in October, and I think that will help us with turnout and some of this enthusiasm gap," said David Plouffe, who was Obama's campaign manager two years ago and is helping to oversee Democratic efforts this fall. Still, he put all Democrats on notice, saying: "We'd better act as a party as if the House and the Senate and every major governor's race is at stake and in danger, because they could be."

Plouffe and other Democratic strategists say Obama will play an important role in making the case that the Republican Party is one of obstruction and indifference. But they think the outcome in November will depend as much on the skill of candidates in mobilizing potential supporters who are now disinclined to vote.

Struggling economy

Independent projections show Republicans in range of winning the 39 additional seats they need to regain power in the House. Taking control of the Senate appears more difficult: Republicans would have to win virtually all the competitive races. But Democrats still are likely to return in January with their majority in the Senate significantly diminished.

Economic discontent remains the biggest threat to the Democrats' political prospects this fall. The issue has become more acute with growing fears that the economy has lost steam in recent weeks. Friday's unemployment report will provide more evidence.

"I think that as long as the economy is struggling, the economy is going to be a decisive issue," White House senior adviser David Axelrod said. "The question is whether people believe at the end of the day [that] turning backward to the policies that got us into the disaster is really the answer. That's a debate we're going to have."

Obama provided a taste of that on Wednesday in Racine, Wis., when he chastised House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) for saying that the financial regulatory reform bill was like "killing an ant with a nuclear weapon." The president will step up his political activity later this summer.

His team also said it must aggressively rebut Republicans' arguments that the president's policies have led to excessive growth of government spending and regulation. "If we allow a Republican Party that took a $237 billion surplus and turned it into a $1.3 trillion deficit over eight years to masquerade as the party of fiscal responsibility, then shame on us," Axelrod said.

Obama's strategists have been analyzing the state of the electorate and have concluded that the path for Democrats is treacherous but that there is room for improvement before November. They must woo back some independent voters who have defected since 2008 while boosting turnout beyond historical patterns for midterm elections among the millions of new or irregular voters who were energized by Obama's campaign.

At this point, GOP voters are significantly more motivated to cast ballots in November. Plouffe said that, because there is little likelihood that Republican enthusiasm will wane before then, "we have a lot less margin for error."

Still, Obama strategists see a variety of ways to offset the GOP's current advantages. Democratic incumbents have yet to tell their stories fully to voters in their districts, and most have not begun to challenge their GOP opponents directly. They also believe that the intensity of opposition to the new health-care reform law is slowly diminishing.

Maximizing victories

Obama faces questions about whether he and his team are more focused on his 2012 reelection bid than they are on ensuring his party maintains as much strength in Congress as possible. His advisers say he is fully committed to maximizing Democratic victories in November.

"I think by the time this thing is through, no one's going to say, 'Gee, I don't think he put a good effort into it,' " Axelrod said.

The president plans an extensive round of fundraising for Democrats this summer. He will also ramp up his activity as the party's chief politician. But the weight of holding the party's majorities may fall more heavily on candidates.

The Democratic National Committee has begun a program designed to increase turnout in November among the first-time and irregular voters who backed Obama in 2008. But advisers say many of these voters won't show up in November unless candidates make personal connections with them.

One way will be by raising the prospect of a GOP takeover. Unlike 1994, when Republicans took control of the House for the first time in 40 years, "it's not hard to remind people of what the Republican experiment will be," Plouffe said. "It's very fresh in their mind."

Democrats plan to highlight success stories, but they are being told they also must make the case against their opponents. "The key is to go into these districts, these battleground districts, and win them on the ground, win them on the attack with aggressive campaigns, win them in field, one by one," Axelrod said.

tx_ned · #**127** Saturday, July 03, 2010

By Leila Fadel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 3, 2010

BAGHDAD -- Vice President Biden made a surprise visit to Baghdad on Saturday for the Fourth of July holiday in the midst of a political deadlock nearly four months after Iraq's national election.

Biden arrived at a time when many question whether the United States policy in Iraq is adrift. They say they worry that with a shift of focus toward America's other war, Afghanistan, and so much attention on the planned drawdown and ultimate withdrawal of U.S. troops, the United States is focused only on its exit and not the success of a still very shaky democracy in Iraq.

This was Biden's fourth trip to Iraq as vice president. President Obama has visited once since he became commander in chief.

"A distant policy in this country is deemed as a weakness and also deemed as a failure," said Fawzi Hariri, Iraq's minister of industry. "It gives the wrong message to Syria and Iran, and it will give the wrong message to the Taliban."

Biden's visit may be a signal to Iraq that the U.S. administration is still engaged here. A White House statement said Biden would celebrate the holiday with the troops and "reaffirm" the U.S. "long-term commitment" to Iraq.

Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, were greeted by U.S. Ambassador Christopher R. Hill, Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and two other senior military commanders. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) were also in Iraq on an unrelated trip; they greeted the vice president later, before he went into meetings.

Biden will be briefed by the top two U.S. officials and meet with U.N. Special Representative Ad Melkhart on Saturday. On Sunday, Biden will meet with former prime minister Ayad Allawi and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who are both vying for Iraq's top job. Each will have an hour with the vice president.

Allawi's Iraqiya bloc won a plurality, with a razor-thin lead over Maliki's political bloc in the March election. Some say the two are nearing a deal that could break the deadlock. But others say that without more U.S. pressure, neither may compromise enough.

On Monday, Biden will meet with Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, and the head of the religious Shiite party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

Biden's last visit was widely criticized. He arrived after a series of Sunni and secular candidates were barred from running in the election for supposed links to Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath party. He left without helping to solve what was seen as a political crisis that deepened sectarian tensions, officials said at the time.

It is unclear when a government will be formed as political leaders make back-room deals for the nation's top jobs, but the United States is committed to draw down to 50,000 troops by Sept. 1 even if Iraq has no new government.

There are currently 77,500 troops in Iraq, according to Iraq's top U.S. military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Stephen Lanza. At the height of the troop "surge," more than 165,000 troops were in the country.

tx_ned · #**128** Monday, July 05, 2010

By Joshua Partlow
Monday, July 5, 2010

KABUL -- Seizing the flags of U.S. and NATO forces Sunday morning, Gen. David H. Petraeus formally took hold of the war in Afghanistan and began the daunting task of turning around an ever more deadly and unpopular conflict.

In a ceremony on the tree-shaded lawn in front of NATO headquarters in Kabul, Petraeus assumed command from Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who was fired last month after a magazine quoted him and his staff making critical remarks about Obama administration officials.

A general with a sterling reputation for military creativity and political acumen, Petraeus, 57, struck a determined tone in his remarks to fellow officers, foreign diplomats and Afghan officials, insisting "we are in this to win."

"We're engaged in a contest of wills. Our enemies are doing all that they can to undermine the confidence of the Afghan people," he said.

Before he mentioned the Taliban, Petraeus described those enemies as "al-Qaeda and its network of extremist allies," harking back to the justification for invasion nine years ago. He said his mission is to demonstrate to Afghanistan and the world that the extremists "will not be allowed to once again establish sanctuaries in Afghanistan from which they can launch attacks on the Afghan people and on freedom-loving nations around the world."

"We must demonstrate to the people and to the Taliban that Afghan and [U.S. and coalition] forces are here to safeguard the Afghan people, and that we are in this to win," he said. "That is our clear objective."

Rather than promising sweeping changes, Petraeus praised the work of McChrystal and said he would look, as any new commander should, for places "where refinements might be needed." The military strategy for Afghanistan, which Petraeus helped formulate in his previous position as head of the U.S. Central Command, will remain focused on protecting Afghanistan's people and shoring up its troubled government.

One of the growing problems McChrystal faced was reducing civilian casualties while not leaving his troops hamstrung by restrictive rules of engagement. In his speech, Petraeus affirmed the goal of reducing "the loss of innocent civilians to an absolute minimum," while not hesitating "to bring all assets to bear to protect you and the Afghan forces with which you are fighting shoulder to shoulder."

In a letter to NATO soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan, a gesture he also made when he took over command of U.S. troops in Iraq in 2007, Petraeus wrote, "We must never forget that the decisive terrain in Afghanistan is the human terrain."

"Protecting those we are here to help nonetheless does require killing, capturing, or turning the insurgents. We will not shrink from that; indeed, you have been taking the fight to the enemy and we will continue to do so," he added.

Petraeus ended by saying, "I pledge my total commitment to our mission as we work together to help achieve a brighter future for a new country in an ancient land."

tx_ned · #**129** Tuesday, July 06, 2010

By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 6, 2010

TEHRAN -- Inspections of Iranian vessels by the United States and its allies in accordance with a new U.N. sanctions regime could worsen tensions in the Persian Gulf, Iranian leaders and commanders have warned in recent days.

"Anybody who insists on implementing [searches] will regret them very harshly," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said June 28, echoing avowals by other senior Iranian officials that inspections would not go unanswered.

The resolution adopted last month by the U.N. Security Council calls on states to allow inspections of ships on the high seas if there "are reasonable grounds" to believe they are carrying weapons or other banned materials, a request Iran would reject as a violation of its sovereignty, analysts said. A similar U.N. provision that was passed last year to encourage the boarding of North Korean vessels has not led to a single interdiction of banned cargo on the high seas. But it has led to the seizure of North Korean weapons at foreign ports, according to a U.N. monitoring panel.

The prospect of inspections has led several key Iranian officials to emphasize their country's growing clout in the Persian Gulf -- the likeliest theater for countermeasures, Iranian commanders say.

"The Guard's navy has the capacity to respond appropriately and adequately to actions against Iranian ships," Revolutionary Guard Corps Rear Adm. Ali Fadavi said June 26 , according to the government newspaper Iran. "The Persian Gulf is the center and most sensitive point of the world. . . . At any time, we can exert as much pressure in this strait as we may wish to."

Iran has threatened for years to choke off the Hormuz Strait, the narrow passage at the entrance to the Gulf through which a daily caravan of tankers transports nearly 30 percent of the world's oil and gas. Recently, though, current and retired military officers have been touting what they call a total overhaul of military doctrine with respect to the Persian Gulf: preparing the naval arm of the Revolutionary Guard to carry out the kind of unconventional attacks known as asymmetrical warfare.

In 2007, command over the strategic body of water was given to the Guard, and the regular navy was banished to the open seas. At the same time, the country has invested heavily in an ever-growing fleet of small, high-speed vessels armed with missiles and torpedoes and capable of laying mines and even semi-submerging, according to a fall 2009 report by the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence.

"They're doing things differently than 10 or 15 years ago," said a U.S. intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, noting that, in addition to upgraded speedboats and more aggressive training exercises, Iran has "a cruise missile capability that certainly is a threat to any ship in the Gulf."

"They have the ability to do some harm to us or any other ships," the official said. "Would they be able to totally disrupt us? Probably not. They have the ability to do damage. I wouldn't call it sustained. I wouldn't call it overwhelming."

Iranian commanders say they have been studying the only real sea battle between Iran and the United States in the Persian Gulf, which took place in April 1988.

"What we learned from that fight was that the American Navy could easily take on our regular navy when they attacked by surprise, but they couldn't get anywhere with the Guards on their fast boats," retired Guard Navy Adm. Hossein Alaei said in an interview.

"In classical warfare, normally the stronger side wins," said Alaei, who teaches strategic sciences at the Guard's Imam Hussein University in Tehran. "Our forces are now much better prepared for any conflict in the Persian Gulf. The U.S. Navy is highly vulnerable to our kind of warfare."

U.S. military officials said they have long taken seriously the threat of asymmetrical attacks by Iranian naval forces in the Persian Gulf. But they were dismissive of assertions that the Revolutionary Guard has developed new methods of attack that the U.S. Navy could not defend against.

"The U.S. does not share the same assessment and remains ready for every contingency," Cmdr. Amy Derrick-Frost, spokeswoman for the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, said in an e-mail.

While Iran has been closely studying the 1988 naval conflict with the United States, the U.S. military has been examining the results of a 2005 war game it staged to simulate an attack by Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf. That war game, which alarmed commanders at the Pentagon, showed that it would be relatively easy for the Iranians to paralyze the Fifth Fleet by using a combination of high-speed gunboats and airborne suicide attacks.

Since then, according to analysts, the Navy has further developed the MK-182, essentially a giant shotgun shell packed with 9,000 tungsten pellets that can be aimed at Iranian speedboats or other small craft, and has equipped its ships with what it calls "close-in weapons systems," guns that can target anti-ship cruise missiles or suicide pilots at short range.

In February, U.S. officials also said that the United States had expanded its missile defense systems in Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to counter what it sees as Iran's growing missile threat.

Daniel Byman, director of the security studies program at Georgetown University, said that Iran's asymmetrical capabilities on the water are "not a hollow threat" and could succeed in damaging or disabling U.S. vessels.

"But let's not overblow it, either," Byman said. "If the [U.S.] Navy is prepared and goes in right, the Iranian navy would be on the bottom of the Gulf pretty quickly."

Staff writers Greg Miller and Craig Whitlock in Washington and Colum Lynch in New York contributed to this report.

tx_ned · #**130** Sunday, July 11, 2010

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 11, 2010

BOSTON -- Nick Ayers, the executive director of the Republican Governors Association, offers this preview of what's at stake in the 37 gubernatorial races in November. Between now and Election Day, the association and its Democratic counterpart will be engaged in "a $100 million-plus chess match for control of the foundation of American politics for the next 10 years."

If that sounds like hyperbole, it isn't. The Washington political community is understandably obsessed with the battle for control of Congress that will play out between now and November and the implications for how President Obama may govern in the second half of his first term. But no one at this weekend's summer meeting of the National Governors Association underestimates the potentially greater significance of the outcomes in the states this fall.

Everything from implications for redistricting to 2012 presidential politics to contrasting styles of Republican and Democratic governance that will be put before the American people will be affected by what happens in the races for governor. As Nathan Daschle, the executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, put it, "It's the most important gubernatorial election in a generation."

Daschle noted that many of the House seats that switch parties this November could shift back in two years. "Gubernatorial politics, particularly in a year like this, are long-term structural changes," he said.

There are 24 states in which the governors are either term-limited or have decided not to seek reelection, 12 in each party. In addition, about half a dozen incumbents seeking reelection face competitive races.

It means that by January, more than half of the states will probably be under new management, including some of the biggest and most important. There are competitive races in California, Texas and Florida, all now in Republican hands but clearly in varying degrees of jeopardy. Democrats will face challenges holding onto power in a swath of heartland states that includes Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Iowa as well as Colorado and New Mexico in the West -- all of which were important in Obama's 2008 victory.

One of the first areas where the changes in the governors' mansions could be felt will be in the redistricting wars that will break out next year. Ayers said redistricting presents a 15-to-26 House seat opportunity depending on who controls the redistricting machinery in the states. That alone could offset whatever happens in House races this November.

But the implications go beyond that. Reapportionment and redistricting will affect the shape of the House through much of the coming decade. If Republicans take over the House in November and control enough governorships in key states next year, they could use the redistricting process to virtually lock in a majority that could last for several election cycles.

A second area where the outcomes in November will be felt is the presidential race for 2012. Republicans are determined to create as many obstacles as possible to Obama's expected reelection bid, and that effort includes winning as many gubernatorial races as possible.

"If we do what I believe we can do this year, it creates a very difficult map for Obama in 2012," Ayers said.

Daschle agreed on the implications for presidential politics, pointing to perennial battleground Ohio. In 2004, Republicans controlled the governorship of Ohio and President George W. Bush narrowly won the state. Had Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) won Ohio, he would have become president. In 2008, with the state in the hands of Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, Obama won it.

Strickland's presence was one of several factors that caused Ohio to flip in 2008. But, Daschle said, "just having Ted Strickland in the governor's mansion in Ohio means that he controlled the state party, and the state party's infrastructure and operation was far more sophisticated than Democrats had in 2004."

It's possible, of course, to overstate the significance of what governors can do to help elect a president from his or her party. In 1996, President Bill Clinton captured states where Republican governors held power, including such regular battlegrounds as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. But both sides see the governor's races as helping to create the underpinning for political operations in 2012.

Turnover in the states also will produce contrasts between the governing philosophies of Democrats and Republicans. In the 1990s, Republican governors took the lead in experimenting with activist, conservative domestic policies. The most notable were welfare reform efforts in states such as Wisconsin and Michigan that became models for what eventually happened in Washington.

Economic hard times make such experiments less likely today. New governors, like those now in power, will spend much of their time managing states short on money and long on problems. Governors have been warned that it will be two or three years before they get back to the level of revenue they had before the economic collapse. That comes after a decade in which state revenue was growing at a rate of about 6 percent annually.

With the focus on spending in Washington at the heart of the political debate, voters may get insights into how a Republican president might deal with the budget compared to Obama and the Democrats. Already, the two sides are engaging in a rhetorical battle over whether Democrats or Republicans have been more successful in managing states during the recession.

Republicans say they have been more successful in balancing state budgets without raising taxes. Daschle noted that four of the five states with the highest unemployment rates have Republican governors and said that Democrats are doing a better job of creating economies of the future.

Governors are discussing these policy issues in polite forums in Boston this weekend. But the real debate will unfold on the campaign trail this fall and intensify next year. All that underscores why it's important to pay as much attention to the gubernatorial races in the next few months as the noisier battle for control of Congress.

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