The Political Chase

TPC Roundup - Bombs Literally and Figuratively

HEADLINES

• Bush Drawing Iran War Plans
• Bush to Nominate Ex-Judge Attorney General
• Greenspan Says Iraq War About Oil
• Crocker Blasts Refugee Process
• France Warns of War with Iran
• Gates Sees Extended Stay in Iraq
• Medicare Recipients May Be Denied Drugs

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WASHINGTON

• “Senior American intelligence and defence officials believe that President George W Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran,” the Telegraph reports.  “Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran, amid growing fears among serving officers that diplomatic efforts to slow Iran’s nuclear weapons programme are doomed to fail.” See TPC related post.
• “President Bush has decided to nominate Michael B. Mukasey, a former federal judge from New York…as his next attorney general,” the New York Times reports. If confirmed, “he would preside over a Justice Department that has been buffeted by Congressional inquiries into the firing of federal prosecutors and the resignation of the previous attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales.” See TPC related post.
• “Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said in an interview that the removal of Saddam Hussein had been ‘essential’ to secure world oil supplies, a point he emphasized to the White House in private conversations before the 2003 invasion of Iraq,” the Washington Post reports. “Greenspan … made the striking comment in a new memoir out today that ‘the Iraq War is largely about oil.’” See TPC related post.
• “The Justice Department inappropriately put pressure on a former” Alaska state representative Victor Kohring “to consider pleading guilty in a corruption case, said his lawyer, who wants a federal judge to review the department’s actions,” the New York Times reports. “The case has reached into Washington, where a senator and a member of the House have come under scrutiny.”
• “Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell heads to Capitol Hill this week seeking to extend the government’s power to read e-mails, listen to telephone calls and carry out other surveillance within the USA in national security cases,” USA Today reports. “Democrats, including” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., “are criticizing McConnell’s proposals.”

IRAQ

• “Militants stepped up attacks across Iraq on Sunday, killing at least 30 people in a spate of bombings and shootings that followed a threat by al Qaeda to launch a new phase of violence,” Reuters reports. “Besides the attacks by militants, Iraqi police said security contractors were involved in an incident in which up to 10 people were shot dead in Baghdad’s western Mansour district.”
• “The U.S. ambassador to Iraq warned that it may take the U.S. government as long as two years to process and admit nearly 10,000 Iraqi refugees referred by the United Nations for resettlement to the United States, because of bureaucratic bottlenecks,” the Washington Post reports. “In a bluntly worded State Department cable titled ‘Iraqi Refugee Processing: Can We Speed It Up?’ Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker noted that the Department of Homeland Security had only a handful of officers in Jordan to vet the refugees.”
• “Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said he would advise President Bush to veto a Senate proposal that would effectively force a major drawdown of American forces in Iraq,” the Washington Times reports.  “The proposal, sponsored by Sen. James H. Webb Jr., Virginia Democrat, that would require that troops be given equal time off to match tours of duty, was dismissed by Mr. Gates as ‘a backdoor way to try and force the president to accelerate the drawdown.’ ”
• “The U.S. military said Sunday that its forces had captured an Iraqi suspected in the killing of a tribal leader who had helped organize local forces against Al Qaeda-linked insurgents in Anbar province,” the LA Times reports. “The slaying of Abdul Sattar Rishawi on Thursday was part of a plot by militants to kill leaders of the Anbar Salvation Council, a coalition of tribes, military officials said.”

NATION

• “An obscure provision slipped into a $120 billion Iraq spending bill in May threatens to leave some poor and disabled Medicaid recipients without prescription drugs in October,” USA Today reports. “In a case of unintended consequences, Congress inserted a rule cracking down on Medicaid fraud that requires that all non-electronic prescriptions for Medicaid patients be written on tamper-resistant paper.”
• “In the first major antiwar demonstration in the nation’s capital since January, several thousand protesters marched from the White House to the Capitol on Saturday, carrying signs and chanting slogans demanding an end to the Iraq war and the impeachment of President Bush,” the Los Angeles Times reports.  “A smaller group conducted a counter-demonstration to support the president and the war, leading to some heated confrontations. But the event was mostly peaceful — until more than 100 protesters jumped barriers around the Capitol and were arrested on the building’s steps late in the day.”

WORLD

• “French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner says the world should prepare for war over Iran’s nuclear programme,” the BBC reports. ” ‘We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war,’ Mr Kouchner said in an interview on French TV and radio.”
• “A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a local government compound in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing four policemen and four civilians and wounding seven, the district chief said,” Reuters reports.   “He said the attack took place in the Naadali district of Helmand province, which has seen some of the worst violence between the resurgent Taliban on one side and Afghan and foreign troops on the other.”
• “Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf plans to stand down as army chief by 15 November, an official from the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) says,” BBC News reports. “Musharraf will resign from the powerful post after the presidential elections, said Mushahid Hussain Sayed, the PML’s secretary general.”