US detainee 'mentally tortured'

A Pakistani-born US resident detained at Guantanamo Bay has said he was "mentally tortured" there, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon.

Majid Khan, who has been accused of planning to blow up petrol stations in the US, also described how he tried to commit suicide by chewing on an artery.

Mr Khan presented a Statement of Torture to the US military tribunal reviewing his "enemy combatant" status.

He was among 14 "high-value" detainees moved to Guantanamo Bay in September.

The men were previously held in secret CIA prisons but are now being detained in a maximum security wing at the base in Cuba.

Mr Khan moved to the US in the late 1990s, where he went to high school in Baltimore.

The US government says that, on his return to Pakistan, family members introduced him to senior al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

He is also accused of having links with fellow Guantanamo detainee Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, and of passing money to the Islamist militant group, Jemaah Islamiah (JI).

'Extensive torture'

At the tribunal at Guantanamo Bay on 15 April, Mr Khan denied he had any connection with Islamist militant groups such as al-Qaeda.

There is extensive torture even for the smallest of infractions Majid Khan Key US terror suspects Majid Khan testimony

"I am not an enemy combatant," he asserted.

"I am not an extremist."

"I have never been to Afghanistan and I have never met Osama bin Laden."

Afterwards, Mr Khan's personal representative read out a written statement, in which he alleged psychological torture.

"I swear to God this place in some sense worst than CIA jails. I am being mentally torture here," he said.

"There is extensive torture even for the smallest of infractions."

Mr Khan complained about how US guards had taken away pictures of his daughter, given him new glasses with the wrong prescription, shaved his beard off, forcibly fed him when he went on hunger strike, and denied him the opportunity for recreation.

This led him to attempt to chew through his artery twice, Mr Khan said.

Later, Mr Khan produced a list of further examples of psychological torture, which included the provision of "cheap, branded, unscented soap", the prison newsletter, noisy fans and half-inflated balls in the recreation room that "hardly bounce".

Terror Group Warns U.S. Over Missing GIs

An al Qaeda front group that claims it has captured American soldiers warned the United States on Monday to stop searching for them. The insurgents suggested they attacked the U.S. convoy as revenge for the rape and murder of a local teenager last year.

The U.S. military also said for the first time it believes the three missing soldiers were abducted by al Qaeda-linked militants after an attack that included three roadside bombs.

"What you are doing in searching for your soldiers will lead to nothing but exhaustion and headaches. Your soldiers are in our hands. If you want their safety, do not look for them," the Islamic State of Iraq said on a militant Web site.

"You should remember what you have done to our sister Abeer in the same area," the statement said, referring to five American soldiers who were charged in the rape and killing of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi and the killings of her parents and her younger sister last year.

Three soldiers have pleaded guilty in the case — one of the most shocking atrocities committed by U.S. troops in the Iraq war.

Three U.S. soldiers have been missing since Saturday, since a deadly attack on their convoy in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad. The attack also killed four U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi soldier, according to the military, which had described the Iraqi as an interpreter.

On Sunday, the Islamic State of Iraq claimed that it had captured U.S soldiers in the deadly attack in the Sunni area, which is known as the "triangle of death" and is an al Qaeda stronghold.

If the claim proves true, it would mark one of the most brazen attacks by the Islamic State of Iraq, a coalition of eight insurgent groups, including al Qaeda in Iraq.

In Other Developments:

Pearl's murder inspires scholarly search for truth

While working for the Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau in 1993, journalist Asra Nomani played volleyball on the National Mall, explored the city's club scene and got her "socialization to America" with friend and colleague Daniel Pearl by her side. This fall, more than five years after Pearl was murdered while reporting in Pakistan, Nomani will lead a for-credit journalism seminar at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., that seeks to investigate the circumstances of his death. "Journalists are a lot like the Marines," Nomani says. "We can't leave the truth behind. We couldn't save Danny, but we have to come together to try to find the truth that's left behind." Classes such as these are not unusual in the world of collegiate journalism. Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., the University of Missouri, Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., the University of North Texas and Point Park University in Pittsburgh, among others, have programs or classes that allow students to get hands-on experience with investigative journalism.

An ongoing investigative project at Northwestern has exonerated 10 prisoners, including five on death row, largely based on newfound evidence. David Protess, who leads the course, says students work up to 40 hours a week and get one credit for the class. "They're skeptical enough to ask the right questions but not so cynical that they disbelieve what everyone's telling them," Protess says. "They have a real idealistic quest to find the truth." Florence Graves, founding director of the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis, says students can work for either pay or internship credit. A few students helped research a story that ran in The Washington Post last year, which examined how the Federal Aviation Administration handled whistle-blower allegations about plane parts installed by Boeing. "It's a very detailed kind of work that has to be right, and it has to be done in a very careful way," Graves says of the students' contributions.

Investigative journalism courses are valuable to students, says Brant Houston, executive director of the non-profit organization Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc., because they teach "nuts and bolts" of the job: "You move rapidly from theory to practicalities." Nomani has a list of dozens of questions she hopes the course will be able to answer, including why Pearl was kidnapped, who financed and distributed the video of his death, what story Pearl was chasing, and whether Omar Saeed Sheikh, whom police have said was identified by others involved in the crime as the mastermind, had ties to Pakistani intelligence. Sheikh has been convicted and sentenced to death for his role in the plot; he is in jail in Pakistan awaiting an appeal, Nomani says. In 2002, Pearl was kidnapped after attempting to interview a radical Islamic leader. His death has come to symbolize the perils of reporting in a world in which more than 160 journalists have been murdered since 9/11, according to records from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In March, the Pentagon released a military hearing transcript in which Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to decapitating Pearl, planning the 9/11 attacks and overseeing many other terrorist plots. Seminar instructors say they question the credibility of the confession and believe it adds another angle to the course. FBI special agent Rich Kolko says Pearl's death remains under investigation, despite the confession. He says there is no concern that the journalists' investigation would interfere with the work of law enforcement. Ann Cooper, former executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, says that when journalists are murdered, usually the only people who are punished are those who actually commit the crime rather than those who ordered it. "If you don't get to that level and bring the people to justice, the message is you can get away with killing a journalist," Cooper says.

The timing is right for the Georgetown project because in the years since Pearl's death, some American and Pakistani officials have retired, which frees them to speak more candidly, says Pearl's father, Judea Pearl. The class will interview sources primarily in the USA, especially in Washington, although Nomani says she has identified people who will be flying through Washington and the group hopes to interview. She also says journalists in Nepal, Pakistan and the Middle East have volunteered to conduct field reporting. The class does not have plans to visit Pakistan.

Suicide Bombers Kill 13 In Iraq

(CBS/AP) Suicide bombers killed 13 people in a pair of attacks Monday around the Sunni city of Ramadi in what local officials said was part of a power struggle between al Qaeda and tribes that have broken with the terror network.

In all, at least 68 people were killed or found dead nationwide Monday, police said. They included the bullet-riddled bodies of 30 men found in Baghdad �Ethe apparent victims of sectarian death squads.

All but two of them were found in west Baghdad, including 17 in the Amil neighborhood where Sunni politicians have complained of renewed attacks by Shiite militiamen, according to a police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not supposed to release those details.

The first of the Ramadi area attacks occurred about noon in a public market on the northwest outskirts of the city, killing eight people and wounding 13, said police Col. Tariq Youssef.

About 15 minutes later, police at a nearby checkpoint spotted a second car bomb and opened fire, but the driver was able to detonate the vehicle, Youssef said. Five people, including two policemen, were killed and 12 others were wounded, Youssef said.

The attacks occurred in areas controlled by the Anbar Salvation Council, an alliance of Sunni tribes formed last year to drive al Qaeda from their territory. Council officials blamed the attacks on al Qaeda.

"They committed this crime because we have identified their hideouts and we are chasing them," said Sheik Jabbar Naif al-Dulaimi.

In a Web statement Monday, an al Qaeda front organization, the Islamic State of Iraq, warned Sunnis against joining the government security forces �Ea move supported by the Salvation Council.

"We tell every father, mother, wife or brother who does not want to lose a relative to advise them not to approach the apostates, and we swear to God that we will use every possible means to strike at the infidels and the renegades," the group said.

The Islamic State also claimed responsibility Monday for a series of attacks that killed 34 people �Eincluding six U.S. soldiers and a Russian embedded photojournalist who died in a massive roadside bombing in Baqouba.

The 34 also included the police chief of Samarra, Col. Jalil Nahi Hassoun, who was killed Sunday in an attack on police headquarters. He was buried Monday following a tearful procession by police in blue uniform who escorted the flag draped coffin as it was driven through the Sunni city in the bed of a white pickup truck.

At least five al Qaeda fighters were killed in the fighting in Samarra, a U.S. military official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release details of the attack.

Also Monday, the military announced a U.S. soldier had been killed by small-arms fire in western Baghdad the day before, bringing to nine the number of troops who died Sunday.

The security situation in the capital figured high in talks between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and U.S. President George W. Bush, who conferred Monday in a video conference, the prime minister's office said in a statement.

Al-Maliki told Bush of the need to maintain cooperation between U.S. and Iraqi forces as they continue their crackdown, which is intended to end the chaos and violence in Baghdad, the statement said.

The White House confirmed that Bush spoke with al-Maliki.

In other violence, a mortar attack killed five people in Baghdad's mixed Baiyaa neighborhood, where more than 30 people were slain in a car bombing the day before.

In northern Iraq, gunmen attacked an Iraqi military checkpoint at the town of Baaj, killing two soldiers, two police officers and a civilian, police said.

Hundreds of thousands of other Iraqis have fled to Jordan and Syria.

Jordan said Monday that the more than 750,000 displaced Iraqis residing in the country has cost the government $1 billion a year and increasing Jordan's population by 14 percent.

In other developments:

Al Qaeda Video Mocks Bush, Withdrawal Bill

(AP) A new video of al Qaeda's No. 2 leader mocks President Bush and legislation requiring the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, saying the bill would rob the group's fighters of the chance to kill more Americans.

Osama bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahri derided the new U.S.-backed Baghdad security plan, recounting an April 12 suicide bombing in Baghdad's heavily protected Green Zone when an attacker slipped through security and killed a Sunni legislator in the Iraqi parliament's cafeteria. An al Qaeda-led amalgam of Sunni insurgents in Iraq claimed responsibility.

And lest Bush worry, I congratulate him on the success of his security plan, and I invite him on the occasion for a glass of juice, but in the cafeteria of the Iraqi parliament in the middle of the Green Zone,�Eal-Zawahri said in the video released Saturday.

The video was obtained Saturday by U.S.-based monitoring groups who released a transcript to media.

Al-Zawahri, shown seated before a bookshelf in a white robe and turban, addresses legislation pushed by Democratic leaders, and vetoed by Bush, that would have required the first U.S. troops in Iraq to be withdrawn by Oct. 1 with a goal of a complete pullout six months later.

This bill will deprive us of the opportunity to destroy the American forces which we have caught in a historic trap,�Eal-Zawahri said, according to a transcript released by the monitoring group SITE. The bill is evidence of American “failure and frustration,�Ehe added.

We ask Allah that they (U.S. troops) only get out of it after losing 200,000 to 300,000 killed, in order that we give the spillers of blood in Washington and Europe an unforgettable lesson,�Ehe said.

He made no mention of Bush vetoing the bill on Thursday �Ean indication the video may have been made beforehand.

Al-Zawahri encouraged minorities around the world to join the holy war, or jihad.

Al Qaeda is not merely for the benefit of Muslims,�Ehe said. That's why I want blacks in America, people of color, American Indians, Hispanics, and all the weak and oppressed in North and South America, in Africa and Asia, and all over the world.

Al-Zawahri claimed al Qaeda fighters in Iraq were nearing closer to victory over their enemy, despite this sectarian fighting�Ethat has convulsed the country.

He discussed other topics as well in the 67-minute video, including fighting in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Algeria, and Somalia. He made references to Saudi Arabia, Egyptian constitutional changes meant to cement the government's hold on power, and the Pentagon's release of the confessions of al Qaeda No. 3, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed �Ethe alleged Sept. 11 mastermind who was captured in Pakistan in March 2003.

Saturday's video was the fifth message �Eincluding posted video and audio tapes �Eby al-Zawahri this year. Osama bin Laden has not surfaced in any communications since mid-2006.

Padilla Jurors Cite Lack Of Trust On 9/11

(AP) Many potential jurors in the Jose Padilla terrorism-support case say they aren't sure who directed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks because they don't trust reporters or the federal government.

"There are too many ifs, too many things going on," one male juror said. "I don't know the whole story."

Others say they just don't pay close enough attention to world events to be certain.

"I'm oblivious to that stuff," one prospective female juror said during questioning this week. "I don't watch the news much. I try to avoid it."

The doubts were noted by a significant portion of the more than 160 people who have been questioned individually since jury selection in the case began April 16.

Padilla and two co-defendants are charged with being part of a North American support cell for Islamic extremists. A jury is expected to be seated next week, with testimony to begin May 14.

Padilla, a U.S. citizen held for 3½ years as an enemy combatant, is accused of applying for an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. He was previously accused of an al Qaeda plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a U.S. city, but that allegation is not part of the Miami case.

Before they came to court, each of the jurors filled out a 115-question form asking about a wide range of legal, political and religious topics, particularly their views of Arabs, Muslims and Islamic radicals. On question No. 60, which asks for an opinion about responsibility for the Sept. 11 terror attacks, many people said they don't know.

"I've been surprised at the number of our jurors who don't have an opinion about 9/11," U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke, who is presiding over the case and asks most of the juror questions, said Wednesday.

The questionnaires were used to weed out dozens of people with obvious biases or personal hardships before the face-to-face interviews began, meaning many potential jurors with strong views about Sept. 11 never made it to court because their ability to be impartial was in question.

A cottage industry of conspiracy theorists has sprung up among academics and others who claim such things as that the U.S. was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, or that explosives planted inside the World Trade Center towers brought the buildings down rather than the jetliners that crashed into them.

In the Padilla case, what's notable is not so much conspiracy theories as the lack of any views at all.

To be sure, most jurors without a Sept. 11 opinion are aware that the attacks have been blamed on terrorists of some sort. But many seem unwilling to blame al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden �Ethe conclusion reached by the national Sept. 11 Commission and the Bush administration and widely reported by news media.

One female juror agreed that was a "general public consensus" but still held out skepticism.

"I don't have an opinion. I don't tend to trust the news media," she said.

Many jurors seem to be unwilling to state the al Qaeda connection as fact because they don't have firsthand knowledge. An older male juror said he answered "al Qaeda and bin Laden" on his questionnaire because "that was what the news said."

"I really can't say who did it," said the man, who was not being identified because Cooke has prohibited publication of jurors' names.

Samuel Terilli, a journalism professor at the University of Miami and former general counsel at The Miami Herald, said that hesitancy often comes naturally when people are asked for their opinions in an official setting, such as federal court.

"You have a tendency among some people when they are called to jury duty to heighten their skepticism about what they have read or watched, and also they have a desire to be more neutral," Terilli said. "People are on guard too much."

Some people say they don't necessarily believe the U.S. government's statements about Sept. 11, with many of those people citing the faulty intelligence and misinformation about weapons of mass destruction that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the toppling of President Saddam Hussein.

"It could have been Saddam Hussein. It could have been bin Laden. I really don't know who," one woman said.

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Insurgents: Iraq Al Qaeda Leader Is Alive

(CBS/AP) Iraq's government received reports that the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq had been killed, but officials said Tuesday the information had not been confirmed, and an insurgent coalition insisted he was alive.

CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann reports U.S. military sources in Baghdad are being extremely cautious about taking the reports of Abu Ayyub al-Masri's death at face value.

One senior commander told CBS News that reports of al-Masri's death or capture seem to come from Iraqi officials every month, and so far they have all been false alarms. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker told reporters that American authorities in Baghdad were seeking more information.

An umbrella organization of Iraqi insurgent groups denied the al Qaeda leader had been killed, saying he was alive and safe, according to an Internet statement.

"The Islamic State of Iraq reassures the Ummah (nation) that Sheik Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, God protect him, is alive and he is still fighting the enemy of God," the umbrella group said on a Web site commonly used by insurgents.

A series of reports Tuesday said Abu Hamza al-Muhajer �Ewhom U.S. and Iraqi forces identify by another pseudonym, Abu Ayyub al-Masri �Ehad been killed, either by rivals in al Qaeda or Sunni tribesmen who have turned against al Qaeda.

A Pentagon spokesman, Col. Gary Keck, said he was aware of the reports from Iraq but had no confirmation.

"U.S. forces are working with Iraqi officials to determine if this is true," he said, adding that he did not know whether U.S. forces were at the site of the alleged killing.

In recent months, divisions among Sunni insurgent groups have sharpened, in part because of al Qaeda's attempt to dominate the "resistance," impose a harsh brand of Islam on ordinary people and use foreign fighters, U.S. officials say.

More than 200 Sunni Arab sheiks in Anbar province have decided to form a political party to oppose al Qaeda. Clashes have erupted in three Sunni provinces between al Qaeda and other insurgent groups, notably the nationalist 1920 Revolution Brigades, U.S. officers say.

Iraqi officials released conflicting accounts of when and where al-Masri was purportedly killed, and who was supposed to have killed him. It was also unclear whether Iraqi authorities had the body.

Chief government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh Al-Dabbagh told Al-Arabiya television that the report of al-Masri's death was based on "intelligence information," adding that "DNA tests should be done and we have to bring someone to identify the body."

But he refused to say unequivocally whether Iraqi security forces had the body, citing security restrictions.

Just as al-Zarqawi's death did little to reign in al Qaeda in Iraq, CBS News terrorism consultant Paul Kurtz says al-Masri's demise, if confirmed, would likely have little effect on the group's deadly operations.

"Al Qaeda in Iraq is a multi-headed hydra," Kurtz, who used to work for the Bush administration in counterterrorism, said on CBS' Early Show.

Kurtz says the influence of the Iraq chapter of al Qaeda is believed to be "limited to the confines of Iraq," and the leader's death would have little or know effect on the group's worldwide operations. A State Department report released Monday said terror attacks across the world had increased 25 percent in 2006 (read more).

In other developments

U.S. Soldiers Indicted In Iraq Tank Deaths

(AP) A judge indicted three U.S. soldiers Friday in the 2003 death of a Spanish journalist who was killed when their tank opened fire at a hotel in Baghdad.

Sgt. Shawn Gibson, Capt. Philip Wolford and Lt. Col. Philip DeCamp were charged with homicide in the death of Jose Couso and "a crime against the international community." This is defined under Spanish law as an indiscriminate or excessive attack against civilians during war.

At the time of the incident, all were from the 3rd Infantry Division, based in Fort Stewart, Ga. Judge Santiago Pedraz asked U.S. authorities to notify them of the indictment.

Couso, who worked as a cameraman for the Spanish TV network Telecinco, died on April 8, 2003, after a U.S. Army tank crew fired a shell at the Palestine Hotel, where many journalists were staying. Taras Portsyuk, a Ukrainian cameraman for Reuters, was also killed.

Following the incident, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell said the troops responded after drawing hostile fire from the hotel. He said a U.S. review of the incident found the use of force was justified.

According to the five-page indictment, DeCamp ordered the shot, and Wolford then authorized Gibson to carry it out.

"The people indicted knew and were aware that the Palestine Hotel was occupied by civilians, without there being a proved threat (sniper or otherwise) against themselves or the U.S troops, therefore, the tank shot that caused the death of Mr. Couso would constitute an attack, retaliation, or violence threat or act aimed at terrifying journalists," the indictment said.

DeCamp, who is now an adjunct professor of mathematics at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., did not immediately return a telephone message left at his home. The school said he retired from the Army in July 2005.

Pedraz has issued several arrest warrants against the three, but the United States has made clear it will not hand them over.

The three men still run the risk of arrest under a Spanish-issued international warrant should they travel to any country that has an extradition treaty with Spain.

Under Spanish law, a crime committed against a Spaniard abroad can be prosecuted here if it is not investigated in the country where it was allegedly committed.

In a separate case in Italy that has strained relations between Washington and Rome, former Spc. Mario Lozano, 37, of New York City went on trial in absentia earlier this month for the shooting death of an Italian intelligence agent at a checkpoint in Iraq two years ago.

The agent, Nicola Calipari, was shot March 4, 2005, on his way to the Baghdad airport shortly after securing the release of a kidnapped Italian journalist, Giuliana Sgrena. Sgrena and another agent who was driving the car were wounded.

Lozano, who was indicted in February on charges of murder and attempted murder, has defended his actions in comments to the U.S. media, saying he had no choice but to fire. He says he flashed a warning light signaling the vehicle to stop and that he shot first at the ground, and then at the car's engine.

The judge has adjourned the proceedings until May 14 for technical reasons.

Also in Italy, prosecutors in February indicted 26 Americans, all but one believed to be CIA agents, accused of kidnapping a Muslim cleric in Milan in 2003.

Osama Hassan Mustafa Nasr, suspected of recruiting fighters for radical Islamic causes, was flown to Egypt as part of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, and he was held in a prison where he has said he was tortured.

The 26 Americans have left Italy, and U.S. official have said they would not be turned over for prosecution even if Rome requests it. The trial is expected to start in June.

Resistance to the war in Iraq ran high in both Spain and Italy.

Spain was the scene of major protests before and during the early months of the U.S.-led invasion, with huge demonstrations in Barcelona and Madrid.

Report: Al Qaeda No. 2 In Algeria Killed

(AP) The No. 2 official of al Qaeda in Algeria was killed Thursday in a clash with an army patrol, the country's official APS news agency said, citing security officials.

Samir Mousaab was killed near the village of Si Moustapha about 25 miles east of the capital, Algiers, the radio reported.

It said Mousaab's body was identified by former members of the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, an insurgent group that changed its name to al Qaeda in Islamic North Africa when it announced its alliance with al Qaeda in January.

The group was built on the foundations of an Algerian insurgency to topple Algeria's secular government that erupted in 1992 after the army canceled elections that a Muslim fundamentalist party was set to win.

Up to 200,000 people �Emilitants, security forces and civilians �Ehave been killed.

Thursday's clash came weeks after double-suicide bombings on April 11 that killed 33 people and wounded 57 in Algiers. Al Qaeda in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility for the attacks, coordinated suicide bombings targeting the prime minister's office and a police station.

The attacks were the deadliest in the Algiers region since 2002, when a bomb in a suburban market killed 38 people and wounded 80.

Algeria has tried to turn the page on the insurgency through military crackdowns and amnesty offers. Until recently, its efforts appeared successful, with militants' ranks decimated and the holdouts isolated in rural hideouts.

Reassured, foreign businesses returned to oil- and gas-rich Algeria, and many foreign workers moved out of hotels and into apartments.

Yet violence has surged again recently, and al Qaeda's North Africa wing has claimed responsibility for several recent attacks on foreigners.

A March 3 bombing of a bus carrying workers for a Russian company killed a Russian engineer and three Algerians. In December, an Algerian and a Lebanese citizen were killed in an attack that targeted a bus carrying foreign employees of an affiliate of the U.S. company

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Taliban: Bin Laden Behind Cheney Attack

(AP) A top Taliban commander said al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was behind the February attack outside the U.S. military base in Bagram, Afghanistan, during the visit there by Vice President Dick Cheney, according to an interview aired Wednesday on Al-Jazeera.

Bin Laden planned and supervised the attack that killed 23 people outside the big U.S. base at Bagram during Cheney's visit, said Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban's main military commander in southern Afghanistan who has had close associations with al Qaeda.

"You may remember the martyr operation inside the Bagram base, which targeted a senior U.S. official. ... That operation was the result of his wise planning. He (bin Laden) planned that operation and guided us through it. The operation was a success," Dadullah told Al-Jazeera.

He did not say how he knew that bin Laden planned the attack, and it was not immediately clear when the interview took place.

Dadullah also insisted that bin Laden was alive and well, according to the interview.

"Thank God he is alive. We get updated information about him. Thank God he planned operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan," Dadullah told Al-Jazeera in excerpts that were translated into Arabic.

The bombing killed about 20 Afghan civilians, a U.S. soldier, a U.S. contractor and a South Korean soldier outside Bagram while Cheney was meeting with officials inside the base, an attack the Taliban claimed was aimed at Cheney but which officials said posed no real threat to the vice president.

The attacker never tried to penetrate even the first of several U.S.-manned security checkpoints at Bagram, instead detonating himself among a group of Afghan workers outside the base.

The bearded Dadullah, wearing a black turban and a gray traditional Afghani robe, was interviewed by Al-Jazeera's correspondent in Afghanistan. In the interview, the Taliban commander was seen sitting on the ground in the middle of a field with some trees.

In the video, a man covering his head and face with a white scarf and wearing an ammunition belt can be seen in the background.

Parts of the interview were broadcast on Al-Jazeera's English and Arabic satellite TV channels and were posted the stations' Web sites.

Al-Jazeera, which is based in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, said it planned to show the entire interview later Wednesday. The station declined to provide any more details about the interview.

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Murder Charges For Canadian Gitmo Inmate

(AP) The U.S. military filed murder charges Tuesday against Omar Khadr, a Canadian who was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan and sent to the Guantanamo Bay prison in 2002.

Khadr, now 20, also was charged with providing support to terrorism, attempted murder, conspiracy and spying. He faces a military trial at the prison in eastern Cuba under rules adopted last year and first used in March to try Australian detainee David Hicks.

Khadr is to be arraigned on the charges within 30 days at the U.S. military's courthouse in Guantanamo Bay, the military said. He faces a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

The Toronto-born Khadr, the son of an alleged al Qaeda financial leader, Ahmad Said al-Khadr, was captured in July 2002 after being badly wounded in a firefight near Khost, an al Qaeda hotbed in eastern Afghanistan.

He is charged with throwing a grenade that killed Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, 28, of Albuquerque, N.M., and wounded Army Sgt. Layne Morris, of West Jordan, Utah.

The murder and attempted murder charges stipulate that the acts were carried out "in violation of the law of war."

The wounded soldier and Speer's widow filed a civil lawsuit against Khadr and his father, who authorities believe was killed in Pakistan. In February, a judge awarded them US$102.6 million (euro78.2 million).

The military alleges that Khadr also conducted surveillance of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and planted land mines targeting American convoys.

Khadr allegedly received a month of one-on-one basic training from an al Qaeda member in June 2002 that included use of rocket-propelled grenades, rifles, pistols and explosives, according to the charge sheet signed by Susan J. Crawford, the convening authority for the military commissions.

Khadr's Egyptian-born father, Ahmad Said al-Khadr, was killed in Pakistan in 2003 alongside some senior al Qaeda operatives and Canada is holding his brother Abdullah on a U.S. extradition warrant accusing him of supplying weapons to al Qaeda.

In a documentary by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., another brother, Abdurahman, acknowledged their father and some of his brothers fought for al Qaeda and stayed with the terrorist group's mastermind, Osama bin Laden.

In March, the military tribunal at Guantanamo sentenced Hicks to nine months in prison after he pleaded guilty to supporting terrorism �Ethe first conviction at a U.S. war-crimes trial since World War II.

Under an agreement with the court, the confessed Taliban-allied gunman will be allowed to serve his sentence in an Australian prison, but must remain silent about any alleged abuse while in custody.

Prosecutors say they plan to charge as many as 80 of the 385 men now held at Guantanamo on suspicion of links to al Qaeda or the Taliban.

The U.S. Supreme Court in June struck down the previous military tribunal system at Guantanamo as unconstitutional. U.S. President George W. Bush subsequently signed into a law passed by Congress a new military tribunal system.

The high court is now considering a challenge to the revised tribunals. Some members of Congress have vowed to repeal the law that limits detainees' access to civilian courts.

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Al-Qaida Chief Appointed Minister of War

CAIRO, Egypt - A Sunni insurgent coalition posted Web videos on Thursday naming the head of al-Qaida in Iraq as "minister of war" and showing the execution of 20 men it said were members of the Iraqi military and security forces. The announcement unveiling an "Islamic Cabinet" for Iraq appeared to have multiple aims. One was to present the Islamic State of Iraq coalition as a "legitimate" alternative to the U.S.-backed, Shiite-led administration of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and to demonstrate that it was growing in power despite the U.S. military push against insurgents. It also likely sought to establish the coalition's dominance among insurgents after an embarrassing public dispute with other Iraqi Sunni militants.

The Islamic State of Iraq is a coalition of eight insurgent groups, the most powerful of them al-Qaida in Iraq. It was first announced in October, claiming to hold territory in the Sunni-dominated areas of western and central Iraq. In the Cabinet announcement video, a man identified as a spokesman for the group appeared, with his face obscured, speaking from behind a desk with a flat-screen computer. "It is the duty at our present stage to form this Cabinet, the first Islamic Cabinet, which has faith in God," said the spokesman, wearing robes and a red headdress. He denounced Iraq's rulers for the past decades including Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and the present government saying they "spread corruption and ruined the country and its people, until God helped the mujahideen (holy warriors) bring torture upon them." "Now the Islamic State emerges as a state for Islam and the mujahideen," he said.

He then listed a 10-member "Cabinet," including Abu Hamza al-Muhajer as "war minister." Al-Muhajer is the name announced as the successor of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq who was killed in the summer of 2006. The U.S. military and Iraqi government have identified him by another pseudonym, Abu Ayyub al-Masri. The names listed by the spokesman were all pseudonyms and their real names were not known though the pseudonyms included the names of some major Sunni Arab tribes. The Islamic state is led by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who holds the title of "emir (prince) of the faithful." Sheik Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Falahi was named as the emir's "first minister," the spokesman said. Other positions included ministers of information, "prisoners and martyrs," agriculture and health. The video came on the heels of a rare public dispute between the coalition and other insurgent groups.

In past week, another Sunni insurgent group, the Islamic Army in Iraq, has issued statements accusing al-Qaida of killing its members and trying to force others to join its ranks. Al-Baghdadi tried to patch up the dispute by issuing a Web audiotape this week calling for unity and promising to punish any of his group's members who kill other insurgents. Al-Qaida in Iraq is blamed for some of the deadliest suicide bombings against Shiite civilians, as well as numerous attacks on U.S. troops and Iraqi soldiers and police. The U.S. military has blamed it for a devastating bombing Wednesday in Baghdad's Sadriyah market.

The message came after hours after another video from the group showing a masked gunmen walking down a row of men, blindfolded and bound, shooting each in the back of the head.

The video purported to show 20 Iraqi police and soldiers that the Islamic State in Iraq claimed six days earlier to have kidnapped northwest of Baghdad. It had threatened to kill them after 48 hours unless the government freed female prisoners and handed over police accused of rapes in the northern town of Tal Afar. The Iraqi government has denied that 20 police and soldiers were kidnapped. Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said Thursday that the men in the video could not be identified and said the insurgents may have dressed up civilians to kill them.

"We checked with our commands then and all the troops were accounted for," Khalaf told The Associated Press. "They are immoral criminals. They have used all criminal methods and we don't rule out that they executed civilians who they dressed in military uniforms."

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France Knew Of Hijack Plot Before 9/11

(AP) France's foreign intelligence service learned as early as January 2001 that al Qaeda was preparing a hijacking plot likely to involve a U.S. airplane, former intelligence officials said Monday, confirming a report that also said the CIA received the warning.

Le Monde newspaper said it had obtained 328 pages of classified documents on Osama bin Laden's terror network that were drawn up by the French spy service, the DGSE, between July 2000 and October 2001. The documents included a Jan. 5, 2001, intelligence report warning that al Qaeda was at work on a hijacking plot.

Pierre-Antoine Lorenzi, the former chief of staff for the agency's director at the time, said he remembered the note and that it mentioned only the vague outlines of a hijacking plot �Enothing that foreshadowed the scale of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

"It wasn't about a specific airline or a specific day, it was not a precise plot," Lorenzi told The Associated Press. "It was a note that said, 'They are preparing a plot to hijack an airplane, and they have cited several companies."'

The Sept. 11 commission's report on the four hijacked flights has detailed repeated warnings about al Qaeda and its desire to attack airlines in the months before Sept. 11, 2001.

In a version declassified last September, the report shows that the Federal Aviation Administration's intelligence unit received "nearly 200 pieces of threat-related information daily from U.S. intelligence agencies, particularly the FBI, CIA, and State Department."

George Little, a CIA spokesman, said the agency does not generally comment on reports of information from foreign partners, but noted that the Le Monde story "merely repeats what the U.S. government knew and reported before Sept. 11 �Ethat al Qaeda was interested in airliner plots, especially hijackings," Little said.

"The article does not suggest that U.S. or foreign officials had advance knowledge of the details surrounding the Sept. 11 plot. Had the details been known, the U.S. government would have acted on them."

The French warning, part of which was published in Le Monde, detailed initial rumblings about the plot.

In early 2000 in Kabul, Afghanistan, bin Laden met with Taliban leaders and members of armed groups from Chechnya and discussed the possibility of hijacking a plane that would take off from Frankfurt, Germany, the note said, citing Uzbek intelligence.

The note listed potential targets: American Airlines, Delta Airlines, Continental Airlines, United Airlines, Air France and Lufthansa. The list also included a mention of "US Aero," but it was unclear exactly what that referred to.

Two of the airlines, United and American, were targeted months later on Sept. 11.

Lorenzi said details of the threat would certainly have been passed along to the CIA, though he was unable to specifically confirm that they had been.

"That's the kind of information concerning a friendly country that we communicate," he said. "If you don't do it, it's an error."

He also stressed that officials could not say whether the plot they outlined in January 2001 was an early warning about the attacks to come in September.

At the time, Lorenzi said, officials had heard echoes only about a standard hijacking �Ethey had no idea al Qaeda planned to slam planes into buildings, let alone the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Uzbek officials apparently tipped off the French about the plot. Alain Chouet, a former top anti-terrorism official within the DGSE, said that an Afghan warlord from the Uzbek community who was fighting the Taliban at the time had sent men to infiltrate al Qaeda camps �Eand their information was passed down the chain to Western intelligence officials.

Confirming information in Le Monde, Chouet said such intelligence was likely checked out before it was put into a note. He also said that to the best of his knowledge, "all identified threats, even indirect and minimal ones, were passed in both directions" between the CIA and the CGSE.

The 9/11 commission said that, as 2001 began, the CIA started receiving "frequent but fragmentary" threat reports. Among other warnings, the intelligence community sent out a March 2001 terror threat advisory about a heightened threat of Sunni extremist attacks against U.S. facilities, personnel and other interests.

During that investigation, then-CIA Director George Tenet told the commission that "the system was blinking red."

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US 'excessive' in Afghan attack

US marines violated international humanitarian law by using excessive violence in reaction to a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan, a report says.

The reaction was disproportionate and indiscriminate force used, it said.

At least 12 civilians died and 35 were injured during the incident which took place on 4 March in Nangarhar province.

A preliminary US investigation agreed with the report that the unit did not come under small-arms fire after the bombing, US media reports said.

Maj Gen Frank H Kearney III, who ordered the inquiry, told the Washington Post newspaper it had found no evidence that the victims were fighters.

"My investigating officer believes these folks were innocent," he was quoted as saying.

A US military spokesman said shortly after the incident that the civilians might have been killed by incoming fire from an ambush by insurgents which followed the bombing.

Deleted footage

The Afghan report said that, in failing to distinguish between civilian and legitimate military targets, the US marine corps used "indiscriminate force".

"Their actions thus constitute a serious violation of international humanitarian law standards," it said.

Evidence of a complex ambush involving militant gunmen who fired on the convoy was "far from conclusive", the report said.

According to the authors of the report, who spoke to victims, police and hospital officials as well as eyewitnesses, the marines fired indiscriminately on civilians and their vehicles as they left the scene.

Meanwhile Maj Gen Kearney said no ammunition casings had been found that might substantiate reports that the marines were fired on.

"We found ... no brass that we can confirm that small-arms fire came at them," he told the Washington Post.

"We have testimony from marines that is in conflict with unanimous testimony from civilians at the site."

Journalists said US soldiers deleted footage, including photos and videos, showing the aftermath of the Nangarhar violence.

The soldiers were moved out of Afghanistan after the incident.

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35 Taliban, 1 Brit Dead In Afghan Battles

(AP) U.S.-led troops and aircraft pounded Taliban militants in southern Afghanistan, killing more than 35, the coalition said. A British NATO soldier was killed in separate fighting, which has intensified following a winter lull.

With the weather warming, foreign and government forces pressed on with their largest-ever anti-Taliban offensive in the south. But the 11 NATO deaths since last weekend are a sign the insurgency remains virulent.

In Helmand province, the focus of the offensive, U.S.-led coalition and Afghan troops fought for five hours Thursday with guerrillas in the district of Sangin, a coalition statement said.

The troops "pursued fleeing Taliban fighters northward," and "more than 35 Taliban fighters were killed," the statement said.

The account could not be independently verified because of the remoteness of the area.

More than 5,000 NATO and Afghan troops are engaged in Operation Achilles, launched last month to flush militants entrenched in the northern tip of the opium-producing province.

A British soldier for NATO was killed and two soldiers were wounded in a firefight in the south on Friday, officials said.

In Zabul, a province on the Pakistani border, officials reported 35 suspected militants killed in an air strike called by U.S.-led troops on Thursday.

The violence coincided with a gathering of NATO military officials in Canada to discuss how to strengthen their efforts in Afghanistan.

NATO and U.S. leaders have made repeated calls for more resources, but have met resistance from some allies, including the French and Germans, who questioned the wisdom of deploying more combat troops and said more emphasis should be placed on reconstruction.

Returning from that meeting, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said NATO wants about 3,400 more trainers for the Afghan army and police force. U.S. officials hope European nations will meet most of that need.

The NATO-led force in the south also needs more aircraft and medical equipment as well as military trainers to bolster its spring assault against the Taliban, according to the U.S. military.

The U.S. now has about 25,000 troops in Afghanistan, including some 14,000 serving in the NATO-led force, which totals about 36,000 troops.

Separately, the coalition said American special forces and Afghan troops rescued five civilian contractors pinned down under insurgent gunfire after their helicopter made an emergency landing because of mechanical failure, the U.S.-led coalition said.

The contractors were evacuated to a nearby coalition base, where they were treated for minor injuries, the statement said.

Neither the company nor the contractors were identified.

Contractors and the military rely heavily on helicopters for transport and operations because of Afghanistan's forbidding terrain, lack of passable roads and frequent ambushes by insurgents. Dust and high altitude take a heavy toll on helicopter engines.

In February, a U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook carrying 22 U.S. service members crashed because of mechanical failure in southern Afghanistan, killing eight and injuring 14.

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35 Suspected Taliban Killed In Afghanistan

(AP) Afghan security forces clashed with suspected Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan, and a subsequent air strike killed 35 militants, an official said Thursday.

Two Canadian soldiers were also killed Wednesday in a bomb attack in southern Afghanistan as NATO military leaders met in Canada to ask for more resources for their fight in the volatile south.

Afghan security forces were ambushed and battled militants for about an hour in the Shahjoy district of Zabul province late Wednesday before an air strike was called in on militant positions, said Ali Kheil, a spokesman for Zabul's governor.

Authorities recovered the bodies of 35 militants along with 20 motorbikes and the militants' weapons, Kheil said. No casualties were reported among the Afghan security forces.

U.S.-led coalition and NATO officials did not immediately comment on the attack, and the number of casualties could not be independently verified due to the remoteness of the area.

Separately, a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol in Zabul's Shinkay district killed a policeman and wounded four others late Wednesday, Kheil said.

Also Wednesday, a bomb blast in the south killed two Canadian soldiers and wounded three others, said Col. Mike Cessford, deputy commander of the Canadian contingent in Afghanistan.

Cessford did not disclose the exact location of the attack. Most of the Canadian troops in the NATO-led force in Afghanistan are based in the volatile southern province of Kandahar.

The blast occurred three days after a roadside bomb killed six Canadian troops in the south. It was the single worst combat loss in Afghanistan for the Canadians, who have lost 53 soldiers and a diplomat in the country, according to the Canadian military.

There are about 2,500 Canadian troops in the 36,000-strong NATO force in Afghanistan.

As NATO pushes forward with its biggest-ever anti-Taliban offensive in southern Afghanistan, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was in Canada on Thursday to press allies to contribute more forces, equipment and other resources to Afghanistan.

Gates was set to meet with military leaders from Britain, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Denmark and Romania �Eall partners in southern Afghanistan.

NATO and the U.S. have made repeated calls for additional resources from allies, but have met resistance from some, including the French and Germans, who questioned the wisdom of sending more troops to Afghanistan.

Each year Taliban fighters have stepped up their attacks as the spring thaw begins. But this year, Gates said NATO should take the offensive and bring the fight first to the militants.

The initial phase of the assault began last month with Operation Achilles, in which more than 5,500 NATO and Afghan troops went into the opium-producing province of Helmand to battle hardcore Taliban insurgents.Bombs heavily damaged the prime minister's office and a police station Wednesday, killing at least 23 people and wounding about 160, the country's official news agency said. Al Qaeda's wing in North Africa claimed responsibility.

Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem, who was unhurt, called the attack a "cowardly, criminal terrorist act" as he spoke to reporters outside his wrecked offices.

The attacks were a devastating setback for the North African nation's efforts to close the chapter on its Islamic insurgency that has killed 200,000 people. After years of relative calm, the al Qaeda affiliate recently has recently waged several smaller attacks in the oil- and gas-rich nation.

According to Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera, a spokesman for al Qaeda in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying they were carried out by three suicide bombers in trucks packed with explosives.

Belkhadem declined to say how many had been killed or wounded. The official APS agency said at least 23 people were killed and 160 wounded in the two attacks, but gave no breakdown. The other bombing targeted the police station of Bab Ezzouar, east of the capital, Algiers, on the road to its airport.

Police cordoned off stairs leading up to the government building with orange police tape, and paramedics raced up the steps with stretchers. Paramedics escorted a man with blood on his head into an ambulance. Another woman, looking dazed and in tears, was checked for head injuries.

The explosion at about 10:45 local time caused windows to rattle at least a half-mile away.

Algeria's insurgency broke out in 1992, after the army canceled legislative elections that an Islamic party appeared set to win.

The military led a crackdown on militants hiding out in the country's brush and mountains, while the government tried to reconcile the nation with several amnesty offers to militants willing to turn in their weapons.

Belkhadem expressed bitterness at insurgents who refused the amnesty offers.

"The Algerian people stretched out a hand to them, and they respond with a terrorist act," he said.

Large-scale violence died down in the late 1990s, but skirmishes have surged in recent months as an al Qaeda affiliate carried out a deadly and carefully planned series of bomb attacks. Several targeted foreign workers.

A March 3 bombing of a bus carrying workers for a Russian company killed a Russian engineer and three Algerians. A December attack near Algiers and targeting a bus carrying foreign employees of an affiliate of Halliburton killed an Algerian and a Lebanese citizen.

Al Qaeda in Islamic North Africa �Ethe new name for the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, known by its French abbreviation GSPC �Eclaimed responsibility for both attacks.

Wednesday's explosions came a day after three suspected terrorists blew themselves up in neighboring Morocco as police closed in on them and another suspect was shot dead by police while he was preparing to detonate his explosives.

A police officer was killed and a child was injured, officials said.

Tuesday's suicide blasts revived memories of five near-simultaneous bombings in May 2003 that killed 45 people in Morocco's commercial capital Casablanca, an event that brought fear of terrorism into many Moroccan minds for the first time.

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Taleban kill Afghanistan reporter

The Taleban in Afghanistan have killed an Afghan reporter abducted last month with an Italian journalist.

The group said it had killed Ajmal Naqshbandi because the government had refused to meet its demands to release senior figures from prison.

Italian reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo was released after five Taleban members were freed in exchange. The driver, Sayed Agha, was beheaded last month.

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has condemned Mr Naqshbandi's killing.

The two reporters and their driver were captured on 6 March in Helmand province.

Shohaabuddin Atal, a spokesman for Taleban commander Mullah Dadullah, said: "We killed Ajmal today because the government did not respond to our demands."

Italian deal

The Afghan government's intelligence services spokesman, Saeed Ansari, confirmed Mr Naqshbandi had been killed.

Tom Koenigs, UN special envoy to Afghanistan, said: "I condemn this senseless murder unreservedly and call on the authorities to bring those responsible to justice."

In Italy, Mr Prodi said he "learned with anguish" of Mr Naqshbandi's death. "We strongly condemn this absurd crime," he said.

Ajmal Naqshbandi worked as a guide and translator for visiting foreign reporters.

He was abducted with Mr Mastrogiacomo and their driver at a Taleban checkpoint and originally accused of spying for the British army.

The reporters' driver was beheaded to put pressure on negotiations for their release.

The BBC's Mark Dummett in Kabul says after intense lobbying from the Italians, a deal was done. Five Taleban were allowed to go and Mr Mastrogiacomo was set free.

Our correspondent says there was outrage in Afghanistan that the government would firstly bow to its enemy's demands and secondly that it would save a foreigner but not an Afghan.

The Taleban are still holding five government medics and two French aid workers along with three Afghan colleagues. Their fate will be decided next, they say.

President Hamid Karzai has ruled out any more hostage deals with the Taleban.

"[Mr Mastrogiacomo] was an extraordinary situation and won't be repeated again," Mr Karzai said on Friday. "No more deals with no-one and with no other country."

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Pope decries 'slaughter' in Iraq

Pope Benedict XVI has lamented that "nothing positive comes from Iraq", in his Easter message in St Peter's Square at the Vatican.

In a live televised address, the pontiff said Iraq was being "torn apart by continual slaughter".

Pope Benedict also voiced worry over continuing violence and human suffering in parts of Asia and Africa.

Earlier the pontiff led Easter Sunday Mass before tens of thousands of pilgrims gathered in the square.

Easter Sunday is the holiest day in the Christian calendar, marking the Resurrection of Jesus Christ after his crucifixion on Good Friday.

'Signs of hope'

Speaking from the balcony overlooking the square, Pope Benedict expressed his concern at the level of suffering in the world.

"Nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees," he said.

His remarks came hours after at least 15 people were killed in an explosion in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, in the latest violence in Iraq.

But the Pope noted "some signs of hope" in the Middle East in what he called "the dialogue" between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Talks between the Israeli government and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have continued despite Israel's boycott of the recently formed Palestinian government of national unity, because it contains the militant Hamas group.

The Pope also expressed fears about the political future of Lebanon, which he said was in serious jeopardy.

'Faces of violence'

The pontiff spoke of the faith of Christians in the risen Christ but he also painted a very sombre picture of a world disfigured by war and terrorism.

He condemned terrorism and the use of religion to justify a "thousand faces of violence".

"Peace is sorely needed," he said.

The Pope said he also looked with apprehension at conditions prevailing in several parts of Africa, including the "catastrophic" humanitarian disaster in Darfur, violence and looting in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the "grievous crisis" in Zimbabwe.

After giving his Easter blessing, the Pope, dressed in gold vestments, greeted pilgrims in more than 60 different languages.

The Pope will spend the next few days at his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, before returning to Rome.

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Has Al Qaeda's Influence Reached Morocco?

Troubling signs are emerging that Morocco is becoming fertile ground for more sophisticated militant groups.

The latest evidence: A trial of 50 Islamists who allegedly planned to attack the U.S. Embassy in Rabat, a military base, and tourist destinations. And unlike the groups behind previous terrorist bombings in this moderate Muslim monarchy, this group was drawn not from the slums of Casablanca, but from the society's upper echelons.

There is also evidence of North Africans working with Al Qaeda insurgents in Iraq and Pakistan �Eraising concerns that they will return home with their newfound skills.

"We're at a tipping point now," says Evan Kohlmann, a counterterrorism consultant in New York who tracks militant Islamic groups. "If you look at the demographics of who joins terrorist groups, a lot are educated, a lot are prosperous."

The group on trial, called Ansar al Mehdi, includes middle-class Moroccans, some drawn from the Army, and four women, two of whom are married to Royal Air Maroc pilots, according to statements government officials have made to Moroccan media. That's a significant shift.

Before now, the bombers who killed 33 people in Casablanca in 2003, another young man who blew himself up March 11, as well as those who Spanish police say participated in the Madrid train bombings in 2004 were all drawn from the slums outside Casablanca and Tetouan in the north.

"The stereotype [about suicide bombers] is that everyone is stupid and poor," says Mr. Kohlmann. Until now, that's been true in Morocco, he says. But Kohlmann notes that isn't the right approach to stopping terrorism, "hoping your adversaries are making small bombs and are incapable."

Security services in Morocco, as well as neighboring Algeria, have aggressively cracked down on militant Islamist groups seen as a threat to the regimes. That has produced short-term results, but human rights groups say that innocent people are being arrested and tortured in the pursuit of terrorists, possibly creating more militants.

"The North African [militant] groups have suffered significantly in the past four to five years because of law enforcement and military action and intelligence action by the North African countries and the U.S.," says Rohan Gunaratna an associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and author of a book on Al Qaeda. But, "These groups have proved very resilient. That means despite sustained action against them, they have survived."

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Pentagon to alert Guard troops for 2008 Iraq tours

WASHINGTON (AP) — Several National Guard brigades are expected to be notified soon that they could be sent to Iraq around the first of next year, according to a senior Defense Department official. If their assignment to Iraq is ultimately approved by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, it would be the first time full Guard combat brigades were sent back to Iraq for a second tour. The units would serve as replacement forces in the regular unit rotation for the war, and would not be connected to the recent military build-up for security operations in Baghdad. Gates is expected to sign the notices alerting the Guard troops shortly, said the official, who requested anonymity because the information has not yet been released.

"You will start to see reserve component forces coming back into the rotation," said the official, adding that the notices are being done now in order to give the Guard units as much time as possible to prepare. Guard officials told The Associated Press in February that they had contingency plans to send at least two Guard combat brigades back to Iraq in 2008 for their second year-long tour of duty. While it is not clear yet which units would be alerted, they would likely include brigades that were among the first to go to Iraq early in the war. Some of those include brigades from North Carolina, Florida, Arkansas and Indiana. Smaller units and individual troops from the Guard have already returned to Iraq for longer periods, and some active duty units have served multiple tours. A brigade is roughly 3,500 troops.

The troop alerts come as President Bush and Congress wrestle over legislation that would set timelines for troop withdrawals from Iraq. Nearly two months ago, Bush asked for more than $100 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year. Congress has approved the money, but the Senate added a provision also calling for most U.S. combat troops to be out of Iraq by March 31, 2008. The House version demands a September 2008 withdrawal. Bush has vowed to veto any legislation that includes such deadlines. According to defense and Guard officials, the first Guard units could go as soon as late December with others following over the next six months. They would be sent only if commanders in Iraq determined the troops were needed. About 270,000 of the more than 347,000 Army Guard soldiers have served in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Gates said Thursday that the Pentagon's goal is to give reserve units five years at home for every year deployed. Earlier this year he announced that the reserves will now deploy as full units, and they will go for only 12 months at a time. Guard units currently serve about 18 months for each tour of duty, including six months of training. But Gates told Pentagon reporters that there will be a "transition period during which those guidelines would be violated and in which we would be unable, because of the troops commitments in Afghanistan and in Iraq, to meet those goals." That transition period, he said, could last a year or two.

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U.S. Taliban's Family Wants Sentence Cut

(CBS/AP) The lawyer and parents of American-born Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh asked President Bush on Wednesday to commute his 20-year prison term, citing the case of an Australian man who was sentenced to less than a year for aiding terrorism.

Lindh, 26, was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 by American forces sent to topple the Taliban after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He was charged with conspiring to kill Americans and support terrorists, but pleaded guilty to lesser offenses, including carrying weapons against U.S. forces.

Lindh's lawyer and father said the lighter sentence given to Australian David Hicks should be reflected in Lindh's case.

"It is a question of proportionality. It is a question of fairness, and it is a question of the religious experience John Walker Lindh had," attorney James Brosnahan said. "And it was not in any way directed at the United States."

When Lindh was captured, he was videotaped being interrogated by CIA officer Mike Spann, reports CBS News correspondent John Blackstone. Soon after, Spann was killed in an uprising and an angry nation saw Lindh and Spann as opposites.

"The good American and bad American," Lindh's father, Frank Lindh, told Blackstone. "It was completely unfair. John was wounded and nearly killed in the same uprising where Mike Spann was killed."

Lindh converted to Islam and went to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban against the Northern Alliance, which received U.S. backing.

On Saturday, Hicks pleaded guilty to supporting terrorism and acknowledged aiding al Qaeda during the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. He was sentenced to nine months in prison. After spending five years at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, the 31-year-old former kangaroo skinner is likely to be transferred to a prison in Australia within weeks.

Brosnahan brokered Lindh's plea deal and said it was the best he could do in the political climate immediately after the 2001 attacks.

"In the atmosphere of the time, the best John could get was a plea bargain and a 20-year sentence," said Frank Lindh. "We love our son very much. He was wrongly accused when he was found in Afghanistan."

The White House referred telephone calls to the Justice Department, which declined to comment because it had not received Lindh's petition.

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Clinton Urges Dems To Press Bush On Iraq

(AP) >Democrats should pressure President Bush to agree to a withdrawal of troops from Iraq rather than concede that he will veto such a plan, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday.

Bush has promised to veto House and Senate versions of a war spending bill that includes timetables for drawing down troops, but Democrats shouldn't give up, said Clinton, the front-runner for the 2008 Democratic nomination.

"I'm not ready to concede that," Clinton said. "We're actually back into a bipartisan government where we have a Democratic Congress and a Republican president. What has historically happened is there has to be some negotiation and compromise and we may not get it, but I'm not willing to concede."

Clinton, speaking with reporters during a campaign stop in Iowa, said she hadn't decided whether to support legislation calling for a cutoff in war funding _ a move that would force withdrawal of U.S. troops.

"I'm looking at that," Clinton said. "I don't know anything about it."

Also campaigning in Iowa, Rudy Giuliani, the GOP front-runner in national polls, appeared to back Bush, and said he had reviewed the Constitution earlier in the day.

"Congress has to have power to declare war. Congress has the power of the purse. The president has the sole power to direct the war," Giuliani said at a stop in Cedar Rapids. He added that he hoped Congress and the president would "all get together and figure out how to kind of do it the way" the founding fathers wanted.

"This idea that I find the most difficult is this idea of announcing your retreat. I just think it's fundamentally irresponsible. I've never heard of a retreating army giving their enemy a schedule for retreat. I just doesn't make any sense to me," the former New York City mayor told reporters.

Clinton said that before taking on the funding question, Congress should pressure Bush to go along with the budget bills already approved.

Republican National Committee spokesman Chris Taylor said Clinton in the past has opposed setting a deadline for pulling out troops, and he was taken aback by her apparent support.

"It must be confusing for the voters of Iowa," said Taylor.

Clinton said her husband, former President Bill Clinton, managed to work with a Congress often opposed to his proposals.

"I saw a lot of what happened when my husband had a Republican Congress," said Clinton.

Clinton, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination on a two-day trip to Iowa, said Congress should assert its authority

"I've challenged the president not to veto this, but to sit down and work with a bipartisan, representative sampling of the House and Senate and see whether we could figure out what we're going to do going forward."

Democrats took control of Congress largely due to their opposition to the war, Clinton said, and the party must push that agenda.

"I'm challenging the president not to veto the will of the American people," she said.

Clinton also criticized Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, whom she said have questioned the patriotism of war opponents.

"They have been very vocal in impugning the patriotism of members of Congress and citizens who disagree with them, and I don't think that's a very useful approach to take," said Clinton.

Clinton said she's launched a petition drive to gather signatures calling for Bush to go along with Congress.

Democrats will suffer if they don't assert themselves after winning control of Congress, she argued.

"We are now a Democratic majority and we are continuing in a very responsible manner to make it clear to the president that we are a coequal branch of government," said Clinton.

On her Iowa trip, Clinton was joined by former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and his wife, Christie, both of whom have endorsed Clinton's presidential bid. Clinton started her day with a breakfast at Vilsack's Mount Pleasnt home, mingling with local activists and sounding an anti-war theme.

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Congress will fund Iraq war if Bush uses veto, Obama says

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — If President Bush vetoes an Iraq war spending bill as promised, Congress quickly will provide the money without the withdrawal timeline the White House objects to because no lawmaker "wants to play chicken with our troops," Sen. Barack Obama said Sunday. "My expectation is that we will continue to try to ratchet up the pressure on the president to change course," the Democratic presidential candidate said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I don't think that we will see a majority of the Senate vote to cut off funding at this stage." Obama has made his opposition to the war a centerpiece of his campaign and has used it to differentiate himself from rival Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq.

In the interview, Obama pointed to a speech he gave five months before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. In that address, Obama warned of grave consequences if the United States went into Iraq. Obama noted on Sunday that the speech came about the same time the Senate was considering the use of force authorization. "I think that it's important for voters to get a sense of how the next president will make decisions in a foreign policy arena," said Obama, who is in his first term as a senator. "There are a number of senators who have acknowledged they got bad information or might have made a different decision. What I've tried to suggest is the speech I gave five months before we went to war shows how I think about the problem," he said. Clinton has refused to repudiate her vote but has criticized the conduct of the war, saying "if we knew then what we know now" she never would have voted as she did. Given that Bush is determined to veto a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, Congress has little realistic choice but to approve money for the war, Obama said.

"I think that nobody wants to play chicken with our troops on the ground," said Obama. "I do think a majority of the Senate has now expressed the belief that we need to change course in Iraq. "Obviously we're constrained by the fact that a commander in chief who also has veto power has the option of ignoring that position," Obama said. The Senate last week approved a bill providing $123 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would order Bush to begin withdrawing troops within 120 days of passage while setting a non-binding goal of ending combat operations by March 31, 2008. The House's version, passed March 23, would require that combat troops come home from Iraq before September 2008 — or earlier if the Baghdad government did not meet certain requirements.

The Senate is on vacation now for a week and the House for two weeks, so it will take time for a compromise to pass both chambers and get to the White House. If Bush vetoes the measure, the new bill that Obama describes would have to be written and put to votes. The senator said it is up to war opponents to be vocal about their position. "If the president vetoes this, the American people have to continue to put pressure on their representatives so that at some point we may be able to get a veto-proof majority for moving this war in a different direction," the senator said.

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Hicks to serve nine months' jail

Australian Guantanamo detainee David Hicks will be sent home to serve nine months in prison after being sentenced by a military judge at the facility.

Hicks was sentenced to seven years in jail after pleading guilty to supporting terrorism, but all but nine months of the sentence was suspended.

The former kangaroo skinner was captured in Afghanistan after fighting briefly with the Taleban.

He has already been held for more than five years at Guantanamo Bay.

Under a plea bargain deal with the prosecution, Hicks could only be sentenced to a maximum of seven years.

The judge at the sentencing hearing on Friday evening revealed that the plea deal also specified that any term beyond nine months be suspended.

The US must now send Hicks to his home country within 60 days - ie by 29 May.

As part of the agreement, Hicks also withdrew claims he was abused in US detention.

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House Passes Democratic Budget Plan

(AP) The House Thursday narrowly passed a $2.9 trillion Democratic budget blueprint predicting a big surplus in five years but relying on the expiration of tax cuts to do so.

The 216-210 vote sets up negotiations with the Senate, which last week passed a budget blueprint with similarly large spending increases for education, defense, homeland security and veterans programs.

The measure comes in response to Democratic complaints that President Bush has shortchanged domestic programs funded each year by appropriations bills �Eincluding education, health research and grants to local governments �Ewhile awarding deficit-boosting tax cuts tilted toward the affluent.

Democrats said the $2.9 trillion plan for next year would point the way to a surplus after years of red ink under Mr. Bush and a GOP-controlled Congress. Republicans said that $153 billion surplus in 2012 would appear only if tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 expire in four years �Eamounting to the "largest tax increase in American history."

The future of the Bush tax cuts will likely be decided after the 2008 presidential election. While in the majority, congressional Republicans never held votes to make all of them permanent, despite Mr. Bush's annual calls to do so.

Mr. Bush huddled with House Republicans at the White House, saying afterward: "We spent time talking today about our strong belief that we've got to keep taxes low. "

The Democratic budget received brickbats from Republicans because it would produce a $153 billion surplus in 2012 only by assuming tax cuts enacted during Mr. Bush's first term expire. Those tax cuts include lowered rates on income, investments and large estates, as well as breaks for married couples and people with children.

At the same time, the plan awards domestic agencies, on average, budget increases of 6 percent over current levels, far more than the less than 1 percent increases recommended by Mr. Bush.

Congress' annual debate on the budget is guided by an arcane process in which a nonbinding budget resolution sets the stage for subsequent bills affecting taxes and benefit programs such as Medicare, as well as the annual appropriations bills.

In most years, Congress leaves alone difficult budget issues such as the unsustainable growth in benefit programs such as Medicare and simply focuses on the 12 annual bills funding the budgets of Cabinet agencies such as Defense, Education and Agriculture.

This year is likely to be such a stand-pat year. Decisions on the fate of the Bush tax cuts are expected to wait until after next year's presidential election.

Extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts would cost about $250 billion in 2012 alone, which would balloon to $389 billion after accounting for extending other tax cuts and adjusting the alternative minimum tax so that it does not ensnare more than 20 million additional middle class taxpayers.

Democratic leaders view passing a congressional budget plan as a key test of their ability to govern. The GOP-controlled Congress failed to pass a budget last year, which fouled up passage of the annual spending bills lawmakers pass each year.

The Democratic budget blueprint calls for a nearly $25 billion increase next year for domestic programs popular with lawmakers in both parties, approving Mr. Bush's record $50 billion budget increase for the Pentagon's non-war budget and $145 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year.

Those spending boosts would cause the deficit to rise from $209 billion this year to $241 billion in 2009 before increased revenues from the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts rapidly generate a surplus.

The rival Senate plan contains would fail to generate surpluses since it dedicates $180 billion to extending several of the most popular tax cuts due to expire at the end of 2010.

One of the most important features of the Democratic budget plan is to require lawmakers seeking to cut taxes or boost benefit programs �Esuch as Medicare, children's health care or farm subsidies �Eto "pay for" the changes with tax increases or offsetting spending cuts.

That rule would greatly complicate efforts later this year to boost funding for a popular health insurance program for poor children.

Democrats opted to put off politically painful decisions on shoring up the finances of Medicare and Social Security.

Republicans countered with an alternative plan cutting $279 billion from federal benefit programs such as Medicare and Medicaid over the next five years �Efar greater cuts than proposed by Mr. Bush in February.

The plan, authored by Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, top Republican on the budget panel, would fully extend the 2001 and 2003 rounds of tax cuts, at a cost of about $450 billion. But Ryan's plan lost by a sweeping 160-268 vote.

Ryan warned his colleagues that the looming retirement of the Baby Boom generation threatens to swamp the budget because of the spiraling costs of Medicare and Social Security.

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Funding tug-of-war pits lawmakers against Bush

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush and his Democratic opponents in Congress are squaring off in a high-decibel, high-stakes game of chicken over a bill to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both sides are insisting the other needs to relent in order to get troops the supplies and equipment they need. The House of Representatives and the Senate have added language to a $124 billion war spending bill that would require U.S. combat troops to leave Iraq sometime in 2008 -- by March in the Senate version and August for the House.

A smaller American contingent would remain to train Iraqi security forces and battle al Qaeda terrorists, who make up a small but deadly element of the insurgency that has plagued the country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The House version passed narrowly Friday, and Senate Democrats on Tuesday beat back a Republican attempt to strip the withdrawal language from the bill. But Bush said his decision to commit nearly 30,000 additional U.S. troops to the four-year-old war was showing "some early signs that are encouraging." (Watch Bush vow to veto the withdrawal bill) For example, he said, restrictions on American troop movements have been lifted, checkpoints have been set up on the edges of the city and U.S. and Iraqi troops are manning new joint security stations.

The Iraqis are contributing $10 billion toward reconstruction, he added. "If the House bill becomes law, our enemies in Iraq would simply have to mark their calendars. They'd spend the months ahead plotting how to use their new safe havens once we were to leave," Bush said. "Some [lawmakers] believe that by delaying funding for our troops, they can force me to accept restrictions on our commanders that I believe would make withdrawal and defeat more likely," the president said. "That's not going to happen." "If Congress fails to pass a bill to fund our troops on the front lines, the American people will know who to hold responsible."

Pelosi to Bush: Calm down

Less than an hour after Bush made that comment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stood in front of the cameras to offer "a hand of friendship" and urge the president to "calm down with the threats." (Watch Pelosi tell Bush 'There's a new Congress in town') "There's a new Congress in town. We respect your constitutional role. We want you to respect ours," she said.

The remarks from her counterpart in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid, were a little more pointed. "Why doesn't [Bush] get real with what's going on in the world?" Reid said. "His arrogance is getting real out of touch with what's going on with reality." Emboldened by majority votes in the House and Senate to set a deadline for U.S. forces to leave Iraq, Democratic leaders insist the president is going to have to compromise in order to get funding to continue the war. "This president is not getting any more blank checks from the Congress," Pelosi said. "We will have legislation that will give him every dollar he asks for for our troops and more -- but with accountability."

But as Bush noted in a speech Wednesday to the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, Democrats have nowhere near the two-thirds majority they need in both houses to override his promised veto. "Yet Congress continues to pursue these bills, and as they do, the clock is ticking for our troops in the field," he said. Democratic sources told CNN that party leaders have not yet decided what strategy to pursue if Bush goes through with his threat to veto the spending bill. At that point, they will be faced with the question of how far to take this political standoff, with combat troops in the field.

Bush and congressional Democrats can't even agree on how long action on the bill can be delayed before the U.S. military begins having financial problems. The president said Wednesday that "funding for our forces in Iraq will begin to run out in mid-April." Democrats immediately pushed back, saying the military won't have any real financial issues until at least mid-May -- and noting that last year, Bush didn't sign the military funding bill until June 15.

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Court Throws Out Rumsfeld Torture Case

(AP) A federal judge says despite horrifying torture of U.S. prisoners alleged to have been committed in overseas prisons during former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's tenure, his position in the government shields him from being sued. U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan threw out a lawsuit brought on behalf of nine former prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan and said Rumsfeld cannot be held personally responsible for actions taken in connection with his government job.

The lawsuit contends the prisoners were beaten, suspended upside down from the ceiling by chains, urinated on, shocked, sexually humiliated, burned, locked inside boxes and subjected to mock executions. Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First had argued that Rumsfeld and top military officials disregarded warnings about the abuse and authorized the use of illegal interrogation tactics that violated the constitutional and human rights of prisoners.

Hogan appeared conflicted during arguments last year. On one hand, he said he was hesitant to allow allegations of torture to go unheard. On the other hand, he said the case was unprecedented. �gThis is a lamentable case,�h Hogan began his 58-page opinion Tuesday. No matter how satisfying it might seem to use courts to correct allegations of severe abuses of power, Hogan wrote, government officials are immune from such lawsuits. Additionally, foreigners held overseas are not normally afforded U.S. constitutional rights. �gDespite the horrifying torture allegations,�h Hogan said, he could find no case law supporting the lawsuit, which he previously had described as unprecedented. Hogan's opinion can be appealed.

Allowing the case to go forward, Hogan had said in December, might subject government officials to all sorts of political lawsuits. Even Osama bin Laden could sue, Hogan said, claiming two American presidents tried to have the al Qaeda leader killed. �gThere is no getting around the fact that authorizing monetary damages remedies against military officials engaged in an active war would invite enemies to use our own federal courts to obstruct the armed forces' ability to act decisively and without hesitation,�h Hogan wrote Tuesday. Had the Rumsfeld lawsuit been allowed to go forward, attorneys for the ACLU might have been able to force the Pentagon to disclose what officials knew about abuses such as those at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and what was done to stop them. �gThe court ruled that innocent civilians tortured by the United States cannot seek recourse in the federal courts to hold responsible U.S. officials legally liable,�h said ACLU attorney Lucas Guttentag. �gWe believe that the law and Constitution require more, and that the former secretary of defense must be held accountable for his policies that led to this abuse.�h

The Justice Department had no immediate comment. Hogan also dismissed the charges against other officials named in the lawsuit: retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, former Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski and Col. Thomas M. Pappas. Karpinski, whose Army Reserve unit was in charge of the Abu Ghraib prison, was demoted and is the highest-ranking officer punished in the scandal. Sanchez, who commanded U.S. forces in Iraq, retired from the Army and said his career was a casualty of the prison scandal.

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A President All Alone

Two weeks earlier on Capitol Hill, there was a groundswell of Republican demands -- public and private -- that President Bush pardon Scooter Libby. Last week, as Alberto Gonzales came under withering Democratic fire, there were no public GOP declarations of support amid private predictions of the attorney general's demise. Republican leaders in Congress, who asked not to be quoted by name, predicted early last week that Gonzales would fall because the Justice Department botched the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. By week's end, they stipulated that the president would not sack his longtime aide and that Gonzales would leave only on his own initiative. But there was still an ominous lack of congressional support for the attorney general.

"Gonzales never has developed a base of support for himself up here," a House Republican leader told me. But this is less a Gonzales problem than a Bush problem. With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, George W. Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress -- not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment. Republicans in Congress do not trust their president to protect them. That alone is sufficient reason to withhold statements of support for Gonzales, because such a gesture could be quickly followed by his resignation under pressure. Rep. Adam Putnam (Fla.), the highly regarded young chairman of the House Republican Conference, praised Donald Rumsfeld in November only to see him sacked shortly thereafter.

But not many Republican lawmakers would speak up for Gonzales even if they were sure Bush would stick with him. He is the least popular Cabinet member on Capitol Hill, even more disliked than Rumsfeld was. The word most often used by Republicans to describe the management of the Justice Department under Gonzales is "incompetent." Attorneys general in recent decades have ranged from skilled political operatives close to the president (most notably Bobby Kennedy under John F. Kennedy) to nonpolitical lawyers detached from the president (such as Ed Levi under Gerald Ford). Gonzales is surely close to Bush, but nobody would accuse him of being skilled at politics. He puzzled and alarmed conservatives with a January speech in which he claimed that he would take over from the White House the selection of future federal judicial nominees.

The saving grace that some Republicans find in the dispute over U.S. attorneys is that, at least temporarily, it draws attention away from debate over an unpopular war. But the overriding feeling in the Republican cloakroom is that the Justice Department and the White House could not have been more inept in dealing with the president's unquestioned right to appoint -- and replace -- federal prosecutors. The I-word (incompetence) is also used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally. Several of them I talked to cited a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI's misuse of the USA Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco. "We always have claimed that we were the party of better management," one House leader told me. "How can we claim that anymore?" The reconstruction of the Bush administration after the president's reelection in 2004, though a year late, clearly improved his team. Yet the addition of extraordinary public servants Josh Bolten, Tony Snow and Rob Portman has not changed the image of incompetence.

A few Republicans blame incessant attacks from the new Democratic majority in Congress for that image. Many more say today's problems in the administration derive from the continuing impact of yesterday's mistakes. The answer that is not entertained by the president's most severe GOP critics, even when not speaking for quotation, is that this is just the governing style of George W. Bush and will not change while he is in the Oval Office. Regarding Libby and Gonzales, unofficial word from the White House is not reassuring. One credible source says the president will never -- not even on the way out of office in January 2009 -- pardon Libby. Another equally good source says the president will never ask Gonzales to resign. That exactly reverses the prevailing Republican opinion in Congress. Bush is alone.

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Senate Passes Democrats' Budget Plan

(AP) The Senate approved a Democratic budget plan Friday that promises a balanced budget in five years by mixing spending increases with partial renewal of expiring tax cuts.

The $2.9 trillion budget outline won approval on a 52-47 vote, but only after Democratic moderates rewrote it to favor extending several popular tax cuts that are to expire at the end of the decade.

The most immediate impact would be to sanction big spending increases when lawmakers later this year write budget bills for the Pentagon and domestic Cabinet agencies.

The vote was a victory for Senate leaders who viewed passing a budget as a key sign of Democrats' ability to govern. The vote was mostly along party lines, though two Republicans joined the Democrats in backing the plan, Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine.

Congress failed to pass a budget last year, and Democrats didn't even bring one to the floor when controlling the Senate in 2002.

The Democratic blueprint is nonbinding but sets guidelines for follow-up legislation.

It also would require that lawmakers seeking to cut taxes or boost benefit programs �Esuch as Medicare, children's health care or farm subsidies �Eto "pay for" the changes with tax increases or offsetting spending cuts.

The budget suffers, however, from some of the same flaws Democrats see in President Bush's February budget plan. Like Mr. Bush, the Democrats left out funding for the long-term costs of the war in Iraq and for fixing the alternative minimum tax that threatens middle-class families.

"I don't assert that this is a perfect budget," said Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D. "But at the end of the day, the test for us is, 'Can we write a budget for our country?"'

Republicans criticized the Democratic plan for allowing above-inflation increases for domestic agency budgets and for assuming that lower taxes on income, inheritances and investments passed during Bush's first term will expire in 2010.

Conrad's original budget assumed all of Bush tax cuts expired in 2010, creating a $132 billion surplus in 2012. But Democrats who voted for the 2001 Bush tax cuts, including Max Baucus of Montana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, moved to take that surplus �Eand more �Eand devote it to renewing tax cuts aimed at the middle class.

They won a 97-1 vote in favor of extending tax relief for married couples, people with children and those inheriting large estates. The vote foreshadows renewal of those tax cuts �Emost likely after the 2008 presidential election, with the details depending on the balance of power in Washington and on the fiscal outlook at that time.

Non-military spending would increase by $18 billion under the Democratic plan, about a 4 percent increase that's much larger than passed in recent years by GOP-controlled Congresses.

Veterans programs, education, health research and homeland security programs would be the big winners under the Democratic blueprint.

Friday's debate featured many votes on taxes.

By a 51-48 vote, senators rejected an amendment by Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., to erase taxes on estates worth up to $5 million and impose a 35 percent top rate on larger estates, beginning in 2011.

The current top rate is 45 percent, but unless Congress acts the estate tax will revert to 2001 levels �Ea $1 million exemption and 55 percent top rate �Eat the end of 2010.

Democrats defeated Kyl's amendment because it would have swelled the deficit by $16 billion in 2012 �Ethe year their budget seeks to achieve balance.

Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., won a 59-40 vote to put lawmakers on record in favor of increasing taxes on tobacco to pay for a big boost in a popular program providing health insurance for children from poor families.

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Iraq Reconstruction "Less Than Optimal"

(AP) The U.S. government must learn from its multi-million-dollar mistakes of poor contract oversight and bad planning in its Iraq reconstruction effort or risk repeating them there and elsewhere, investigators say.

The audit released Thursday by Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, is the first to list in one place the series of mistakes, delays and missed opportunities in a four-year-old Iraq war and reconstruction effort that has cost taxpayers nearly $400 billion.

Characterizing the U.S. effort as chaotic and poorly managed, Bowen found the Bush administration's rebuilding effort riddled with problems �Efrom a lack of strategy and unclear lines of authority to confusion and disarray between the Defense and State Departments.

Bowen said the two departments must learn how to work more closely together. If their cultures prove too resistant to change, Congress should consider legislation to force better cooperation between them in running future U.S. military and civilian reconstruction efforts.

"Although no single U.S. agency demonstrated the capacity to manage the large and complex Iraq program alone, the resultant and unavoidably ad hoc response that sometimes ensued was less than optimal," according to the audit, which urges strengthening joint staff between the two departments.

Among the findings:

• A Defense Department agency charged with running the reconstruction effort never developed a fully coordinated plan upon members' arrival in 2003, leading to confusion and duplication of effort. "We were bumping into one another as we tried to solve the same problem," a former agency official is quoted as saying.
  
  
• Money flowed to reconstruction projects before procedures, training and staffing were fully in place, resulting in a "lack of clearly defined authorities" and little accountability in terms of how dollars were being spent.
  
  
• Only three contracting officers were initially sent to Baghdad to oversee spending of reconstruction dollars. As a result, some contract files were in disarray or missing while others were stored on personal e-mail accounts and individual hard drives.
  
  
• There was little oversight to ensure that Iraqi companies hired to do reconstruction work operated according to international standards. In a case involving the Baghdad Police Academy, the Iraqi subcontractor used cement joints to seal wastewater pipes, a practice used by Iraqi construction firms.
  
  But the cement joints leaked, causing major interior damage to the police facilities. The failure also raised concerns about health hazards as wastewater leaked through floors, ran down halls and filled ceiling lights. Because of the substantial repairs required, some of the planned construction for the $73 million project was canceled.

Bowen's office released the 157-page audit in advance of his appearance Thursday before a Senate committee hearing on the U.S. way forward in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The report does not take a position on whether greater U.S. involvement in the region is needed. But it makes clear that the U.S. government must clearly rethink its approach to future efforts, whether in Iraq and Afghanistan or elsewhere.

Earlier this year, federal investigators determined that the Bush administration had squandered as much as $10 billion in reconstruction aid in part because of poor planning and contract oversight, resulting in contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses.

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Thousands Protest Iraq War Policy

Thousands Protest Iraq War Policy

(CBS/AP) Denouncing a conflict entering its fifth year, protesters across the country raised their voices Saturday against U.S. policy in Iraq and marched by the thousands to the Pentagon in the footsteps of an epic demonstration four decades ago against another divisive war. A counterprotest was staged, too, on a day of dueling signs and sentiments such as �gIllegal Combat�h and �gPeace Through Strength,�h and songs like �gThe Battle Hymn of the Republic�h and �gWar (What's It Good For?).�h �gWhat I want to see come out of this administration and any administration is the troops — and then we can have some peace in the world if we have the troops,�h one protestor told CBS Radio News correspondent Tom Foty.

Thousands crossed the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial to rally loudly but peacefully near the Pentagon. �gWe're here in the shadow of the war machine,�h said anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan. �gIt's like being in the shadow of the death star. They take their death and destruction and they export it around the world. We need to shut it down.�h Smaller protests were held in other U.S. cities, stretching to Tuesday's four-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion. In Los Angeles, Vietnam veteran Ed Ellis, 59, hoped the demonstrations would be the �gtipping point�h against a war that has killed more than 3,200 U.S. troops and engulfed Iraq in a deadly cycle of violence. �gIt's all moving in our direction, it's happening,�h he predicted at the Hollywood rally. �gThe administration, their get-out-of-jail-free card, they don't get one anymore.�h Overseas, tens of thousands marched in Madrid as Spaniards called not only for the U.S. to get out of Iraq but to close the prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Smaller protests were staged in Greece and Turkey.

Speakers at the Pentagon rally criticized the Bush administration at every turn but blamed congressional Democrats, too, for refusing to cut off money for the war. �gThis is a bipartisan war,�h New York City labor activist Michael Letwin told the crowd. �gThe Democratic party cannot be trusted to end it.�h Five people were arrested after the demonstration when they walked onto a bridge that had been closed off to accommodate the protest and then refused orders to leave so police could reopen it to traffic, Pentagon police spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin said. They were cited and released, she said. President Bush was at Camp David in Maryland for the weekend. Spokesman Blair Jones said of the protests: �gOur Constitution guarantees the right to peacefully express one's views. The men and women in our military are fighting to bring the people of Iraq the same rights and freedoms.�h

People traveled from afar in stormy weather to join the march. �gToo many people have died and it doesn't solve anything,�h said Ann O'Grady, who drove through snow with her husband, Tom, and two children, 13 and 10, from Athens, Ohio. �gI feel bad carrying out my daily activities while people are suffering, Americans and Iraqis.�h Police on horseback and foot separated the two groups of demonstrators, who shouted at each other from opposite sides of Constitution Avenue in view of the Lincoln Memorial before the anti-war group marched. Barriers also kept them apart. But war protester Susanne Shine of Boone, N.C., found herself in a crowd of counterdemonstrators, and came out in tears, with her sign in shreds. �gThey ripped up my peace sign,�h she said, after police escorted her, her husband and two adult daughters from the group. �gIt was really pretty scary for me.�h

Protesters walked in a blustery, cold wind across the Potomac River with motorcycles clearing their way and police boats and helicopters watching. Police no longer give official estimates but said privately that perhaps 10,000 to 20,000 anti-war demonstrators marched, with a smaller but still sizable number of counterprotesters also out in force. An hour into the three-hour Pentagon rally, with the temperature near freezing, protesters had peeled away to a point where fewer than 1,000 were left.

Protesters met at the starting point of the Oct. 21, 1967, march on the Pentagon, which began peacefully but turned ugly in clashes between authorities and more radical elements of the estimated crowd of 50,000 on the plaza in front of the Defense Department's headquarters. More than 600 were arrested that day. That protest has lived on in the popular imagination because of the crowd's attempts to lift the Pentagon off the ground with their chants; they fell short of their fanciful goal. Veterans lined up at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and waved U.S, POW-MIA and military-unit flags. �gThey�fve got no business using our wall as a backdrop for their anti-war demonstration,�h one veteran told Eve Chen of CBS radio station WTOP.

Not all were committed to the U.S. course in Iraq, however. �gI'm not sure I'm in support of the war,�h said William �gSkip�h Publicover of Charleston, S.C., who was a swift boat gunner in Vietnam and lost two friends whose names are etched on the memorial's wall. �gI learned in Vietnam that it's difficult if not impossible to win the hearts and minds of the people.�h But Larry Stimeling, 57, a Vietnam veteran from Morton, Ill., said the loss of public support for the Iraq war mirrors what happened in Vietnam and leaves troops without the backing they need. �gWe didn't lose the war in Vietnam, we lost it right here on this same ground,�h he said, pointing to the grass on the National Mall. �gIt's the same thing now.�h Opening weekend events, more than 200 were arrested in a demonstration late Friday in front of the White House and charged with disobeying a lawful order or crossing a police line.

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US marine 'justifies' Iraq deaths

A US marine, charged with murdering unarmed Iraqi civilians in Haditha in 2005, said he regrets the deaths but would make the same decisions again.

In a TV interview, Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, 26, said he shot five unarmed Iraqi men because he believed they had hostile intent towards his men.

Iraqi witnesses say the shootings were in retaliation for a roadside bomb that killed a colleague hours earlier.

Eight US marines have been charged over the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians.

Four are accused of unpremeditated murder and four others are charged with attempting to cover up the incident.

Squad leader Staff Sgt Frank Wuterich is charged with the unpremeditated murder of 12 Iraqis and ordering his troops to kill six people.

It is the biggest US criminal case to emerge from the war in Iraq in terms of Iraqis killed. If found guilty of second-degree murder, the marines could face life imprisonment.

'Absolutely sorry'

In an interview with the 60 Minutes programme on the US TV channel CBS, to be broadcast on Sunday, Sgt Wuterich apologised for the deaths.

"There is nothing that I can possibly say to make up or make well the deaths of those women and children, and I am absolutely sorry it happened that day."

However, he said firing at the men was justified because he had identified them as military-age males in a car close to where a roadside bomb had just exploded.

He said they tried to run instead of obeying an order not to.

"I would make those decisions again today. Those are decisions that I made in a combat situation and I believe I had to make those decisions," he said.

'No bullets fired

The defence team says the marines from Kilo Company in America's First Marine Division were engaged in a furious battle on 19 November 2005 in Haditha after the roadside explosion.

It is known that five unarmed men were shot dead in a car when they approached the scene in a taxi and others, including women and children, died in three houses over the next few hours.

Those who died included a 76-year-old man and a three-year-old child. There were also several women among the dead.

An initial marine press statement said that some civilians were killed in the initial explosion and others in crossfire by insurgents.

But local people say that there were no bullets fired other than by the marines. The defence lawyers accept that innocent civilians may have died during the chaos but they deny premeditated killing.

There was no full US investigation into what happened until three months later when video footage taken by a local human rights activist of the aftermath reached Time Magazine.

Once their report showed flaws in the initial marine statement, an investigation began.

The Haditha inquiry is just one of a number the US military has been conducting into incidents of alleged unlawful killings by US forces in Iraq.

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Exclusive: Curveball, the Defector Whose Lies Led to War

The Iraqi defector known as Curveball, whose fabricated stories of "mobile biological weapons labs" helped lead the U.S. to war four years ago, is still being protected by the German intelligence service, an ABC News investigation has found. Intelligence sources, who provided ABCNews.com with the first known photo of the man, say he has been resettled in a small town near the Munich headquarters of the German service, which has continued to honor its original commitment made when he fled Iraq in 1999.

Curveball's false tales became the centerpiece of Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech before the United Nations in February 2003, even though he was considered an "unstable, immature and unreliable" source by some senior officials at the CIA.

Powell told ABC News he is "angry and disappointed" that he was never told the CIA had doubts about the reliability of the source. "I spent four days at CIA headquarters, and they told me they had this nailed," Powell said.

Behind the scenes at the CIA, however, a former senior official says he was trying to keep the Curveball information out of the Powell speech. "People died because of this," said Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of European operations at the CIA, who has written about it in a new book, "On the Brink." "All off this one little guy who all he wanted to do was stay in Germany."

Drumheller says he personally redacted all references to Curveball material in an advance draft of the Powell speech. "We said, 'This is from Curveball. Don't use this,'" Drumheller says. Powell says neither he nor his chief of staff Col. Larry Wilkerson was ever told of any doubts about Curveball.

"In fact, it was the exact opposite," Wilkerson told ABC News. "Never from anyone did we even hear the word 'Curveball,' let alone any expression of doubt in what Secretary Powell was presenting with regard to the biological labs," Wilkerson said. Drumheller also says he met personally with the then-deputy director of the CIA, John McLaughlin, to raise questions about the reliability of Curveball, well before the Powell speech. "And John said, 'Oh my, I hope not. You know this is all we have,' and I said, 'This can't be all we have.' I said, 'There must be another, there must be something else.' And he said, 'No, this is really the only tangible thing we have.'"

McLaughlin adamantly denies any such meeting or warning from Drumheller and also denies knowing that Drumheller had attempted to redact the Curveball portions of Powell's speech. "This man never came into my office, sat down, looked me in the eye and made a case that Curveball was a fabricator. That didn't happen," McLaughlin, now retired, told ABC News. The CIA has since issued an official "burn notice" formally retracting more than 100 intelligence reports based on his information.

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Senate Finally Agrees To Debate Iraq

(CBS/AP) Breaking a parliamentary roadblock, the Senate on Wednesday began its first formal debate on the Iraq war since Democrats took control of Congress, taking up a measure calling for President George W. Bush to withdraw combat troops by the end of next March. The White House swiftly issued a veto threat.

The 89-9 vote paved the way for consideration of the Democratic legislation, which would start troop withdrawals within four months and calls for �Ebut does not require �Ethe complete removal of combat troops by the end of March 2008. The vote came after many Republicans abandoned the tactic they had used earlier this year to twice prevent the Senate from considering legislation aimed at forcing an end to the war.

But it may be a Pyrrhic victory for the Democrats, CBS News correspondent Bob Fuss reports. They'll still need 60 votes to pass the resolution and there is no indication that they have anywhere near that.

Even so, the debate would give Democrats a chance to put Republicans on record as opposing a timetable on the war at a time when most American voters oppose the conflict.

"This is the message the American people delivered to Congress on Nov. 7, 2006, and this is the message we must send to President Bush," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, referring to an election day in which Democrats captured both chambers.

The Senate breakthrough came after Republicans abandoned demands for assurances that a debate on the war include consideration of various party proposals, including a resolution vowing to protect funding for troops. Fearful such a measure would undercut the anti-war message Democrats wanted, Senate Democrats had refused.

But confident the latest Democratic proposal would fail, Republicans agreed to let debate begin. Republicans have argued that Congress should give the troop increase Bush ordered in January time to work. Bush says the increase �E21,500 combat troops plus thousands of additional support troops �Eis needed to help stabilize Iraq, where U.S. forces are now commanded by Gen. David Petraeus.

"It is a clear statement of retreat from the support that the Senate only recently gave to Gen. Petraeus," said Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, contrasting the Democratic measures with the chamber's recent approval of Petraeus' nomination as commanding general of the Iraq war.

The resolution language states that "whereas United States troops should not be policing a civil war, and the current conflict in Iraq requires principally a political solution ..." the president "shall commence the phased redeployment of United States forces" no later than four months after enactment of the resolution, "with the goal of redeploying, by March 31, 2008."

The White House said the resolution "infringes upon the constitutional authority of the president as commander in chief by imposing an artificial timeline to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, regardless of the conditions on the ground or the consequences of defeat," according an administration statement.

Forty Republicans, 47 Democrats and two independents voted to begin debate, while nine Republicans opposed. Two senators did not vote.

Even before that vote, senators argued the merits of the war. Sen. Joseph Biden, Democratic chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, delivered an angry rebuke of what he said was Bush's blatant incompetence.

"You're leading us off a cliff," Biden, said of the president.

Sen. John McCain, an ardent supporter of Bush's new Iraq strategy, said if Democrats oppose the war as much as they claim, they should vote to cut off funds for the war. Democrats have been reluctant to take such a politically unpopular step.

"When we authorize this war, we accepted the responsibility to make sure (troops) could prevail," said McCain, who like Biden is a contender for his party's 2008 presidential nomination.

The Senate measure is weaker than legislation being considered by Democrats in the House of Representatives that would demand troops leave before September 2008. However, several Senate Democrats have been reluctant to impose a strict deadline on the president.

In the House, Democratic leaders continued to try to rally members behind spending legislation aimed at ending the war. The House passed a nonbinding resolution in February stating opposition to Bush's decision to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq.

The $124 billion measure would includes $95.5 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The money for the Defense Department is $4 billion more than the president requested, extra money intended to enhance operations in Afghanistan and pay for added training and equipment and improved medical care for U.S. troops.

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Edwards Was Advised To Back War, Book Says

(AP) Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards was skeptical about voting for the Iraq war resolution and was pushed into it by advisers looking out for his political future, according to an upcoming book by one of his former consultants.

Democratic strategist Bob Shrum writes in his memoir to be published in June that he regrets advising Edwards to give President Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq. He said if Edwards had followed his instincts instead of the advice of political professionals, he would have been a stronger presidential candidate in 2004.

Edwards spokesman David Ginsberg disputes the suggestion that Edwards was making a political calculation with the 2002 vote that he has called the most important of his career.

"John Edwards cast his vote based on the advice of national security advisers and the intelligence he was given, not political advisers," Ginsberg said. "He got political advice on both sides of the argument, and made his own decision based on what he thought was right, not political calculation."

After standing by his vote throughout the 2004 campaign, Edwards has recently acknowledged being conflicted about his decision in October 2002 and says it was a mistake. But Shrum's book, "No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner," provides the most extensive insight into Edwards' private discussions over the decision. The Associated Press obtained excerpts from uncorrected galley proofs of the book, scheduled to be published June 5 by Simon & Schuster.

Shrum writes that Edwards, then a North Carolina senator, called his foreign policy and political advisers together in his Washington living room in the fall of 2002 to get their advice. Edwards was "skeptical, even exercised" about the idea of voting yes �Eand his wife, Elizabeth, was forcefully against it, according to Shrum, who later signed on to John Kerry's presidential campaign.

But Shrum said the consensus among the advisers was that Edwards, just four years in office, did not have the credibility to vote against the resolution and had to support it to be taken seriously on national security. Shrum said Edwards' facial expressions showed he did not like where he was being pushed to go.

Edwards, campaigning for the 2008 nomination among Democrats who are overwhelmingly anti-war, has said he voted yes because he was ultimately convinced by intelligence reports saying that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He's said in recent months that he was conflicted because he was worried that President Bush wouldn't work with the international community to avoid an invasion. Since then, he has said repeatedly that he shouldn't have voted for the resolution.

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Key hearings open at Guantanamo

Hearings have opened at the Guantanamo Bay camp to decide whether key suspects can be deemed enemy combatants and therefore face military trials.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 11 September attacks on the US and 13 other terror suspects are due at the hearings in the US camp.

They were transferred to Guantanamo after years in secret CIA jails.

This is the first time they have faced any court. But human rights groups say the hearings are sham tribunals.

The hearings are being held with no defence lawyers present, and human rights groups say the panels of three military officials could consider evidence obtained by force.

The hearings do not rule on guilt or innocence, but are the first step towards charging a detainee with crimes.

'Too sensitive'

Officials declined to say which of the 14 would go first or how many have refused to take part in the proceedings.

"We started our first hearing, and the purpose is to determine whether the detainee fits the criteria for designation as an enemy combatant," said Pentagon spokesman Chito Peppler.

"There are a number who want to be present and there are a number that have said they don't want to be present," said Bryan Whitman, another spokesman.

"It's a healthy mix on both sides."

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, of Pakistani-Kuwaiti origins, who was captured in Pakistan in March 2003, has been described by US President George W Bush as "the man believed to be the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks" which killed about 3,000 people.

Another key suspect is Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged senior al-Qaeda figure originally from Yemen who was captured in Pakistan in September 2002.

A third man, Saudi-born Abu Zubaydah, who is believed to have been the chief al-Qaeda recruiter, was also captured in Pakistan in 2002.

The group also includes an Indonesian, Hambali, who is accused of planning the 2002 Bali bombings that killed more than 200 people.

They were moved from CIA detention last September.

In the past, initial hearings have been open to outside observers, but the Pentagon decided that these cases were too sensitive to be reported freely.

The BBC's Justin Webb in Washington says that, in particular, there is concern that the men might reveal information about how they were captured.

Edited transcripts of the proceedings will be released later after any information deemed to be classified is edited out.

Lawyers acting for the detainees have said this decision undermines the credibility of the whole process.

'Legal black hole'

Five years after the first prisoners arrived, Guantanamo Bay is soon to see a new phase with the expected start of military tribunals or commissions in March or April.

The camp currently holds about 385 suspects accused of fighting for al-Qaeda, the Taleban or associated militant groups.

It is seen by the Bush administration as a vital tool in the "war on terror". It enables the US to interrogate suspects who are not US citizens and hold them - indefinitely if necessary - in territory it controls but which is not subject to normal US court rules.

Critics say it is a legal black hole in which suspects have been abused and face either military tribunals or open-ended imprisonment.

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General says Iraq talks critical

The top US general in Iraq says the military alone cannot provide a solution to the country's conflict.

Gen David Petraeus said it was critical that alienated groups be brought into talks. He also said he believed violence in Baghdad could be curtailed.

He was speaking after the US defence secretary approved an extra 2,200 military police to aid the crackdown.

However, Democrats in the US Congress have proposed legislation requiring all US troops to leave Iraq by August 2008.

It is a direct challenge to President George W Bush, who has ruled out any fixed end to the Iraq operation.

Democrats, who took control of Congress after November elections, say they want the measure tied to the $100bn (£52bn) the president has requested to continue funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

'Encouraging signs'

Gen Petraeus said improving the situation in Iraq required more than armed force.

"There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq, to the insurgency of Iraq," he said.

"Military action is necessary to help improve security... but it is not sufficient. There needs to be a political aspect."

He said some groups "who have felt the new Iraq did not have a place for them" would have to be engaged in talks.

The new Baghdad offensive involves US and Iraqi forces, thousands of whom are already on the ground, sweeping the city for militants and illegally held weapons.

Gen Petraeus said: "It's too early to discern significant trends, but there have been a few encouraging signs."

However he admitted "sensational attacks inevitably will continue".

Options running out

BBC defence and security correspondent Rob Watson says that despite the scale of the new Baghdad drive, there simply are not enough US troops to prevent the violence shifting to other areas.

Our correspondent says that privately US officials believe it will not be possible to judge whether the surge has worked until all the troops have arrived in the summer and, if it does not, there will be few options remaining.

Gen Petraeus said it was essential to tackle the sectarian violence that has flared between Sunni and Shia Muslims since an attack on a key Shia shrine in Samarra just over a year ago.

He said US and Iraqi forces must "control the demons responsible for the vicious sectarian violence of the past year - demons who have torn at the very fabric of Iraqi society".

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Wilson: Questions Remain Over CIA Leak

(CBS/AP) Former Ambassador Joe Wilson said Wednesday that he and his wife, Valerie Plame, feel a "sense of personal relief" at the conviction of former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby, but don't consider the case closed by any means

Libby, the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted Tuesday of lying and obstructing an investigation into the leak of Plame's identity as a CIA operative. He was the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a government scandal since the Iran-Contra arms and money affair two decades ago.

Despite the conviction, Wilson said he and Plame are moving ahead with a civil suit, alleging the White House was behind the leak.

Wilson told CBS News' The Early Show that President Bush and Vice President Cheney "really need to step forward and reassure the American people that they had nothing to do with this - or explain to the American people what they had to do with it."

Wilson said he and his wife are going forward with their civil suit against the vice president, White House political adviser Karl Rove and others, because they "want the whole story to come out."

The trial revealed Cheney's eagerness to discredit Wilson, an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's Iraq war policy, as well as the administration's policies on talking to reporters and its strategies for dealing with a crisis.

But the case offered little new information about whether Mr. Bush was involved or whether he authorized any leaks. Defense attorneys never delivered Cheney or Libby to the witness stand as promised to discuss the White House effort to undermine Wilson's credibility, a campaign that resulted in the disclosure of his wife's job at the CIA.

Libby's attorneys offered few details about a supposed White House conspiracy to protect Rove from prosecution.

It also was never explained why former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who originally leaked Plame's identity, was never charged.

Now that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald says his investigation is complete, those questions are likely to go unanswered. Nobody will be charged with actually leaking Plame's identity. Libby was convicted of lying to cover up his conversations about Plame.

"The results are actually sad," Fitzgerald told reporters after the federal jury's verdict. "It's sad that we had a situation where a high-level official person who worked in the office of the vice president obstructed justice and lied under oath. We wish that it had not happened, but it did."

One juror said Libby was being made a scapegoat.

"There was a tremendous amount of sympathy for Mr. Libby on the jury. It was said a number of times, 'What are we doing with this guy here? Where's Rove? Where are these other guys?'" juror Denis Collins said. "I'm not saying we didn't think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of. It seemed like he was, as Mr. Wells put it, he was the fall guy."

Libby's fate remains unclear. He faces up to 25 years in prison when he is sentenced June 5, but his federal sentencing guidelines are much lower. His lawyers promised to ask for a new trial and said they'll ask that Libby remain free while any appeals are fought.

"We have every confidence Mr. Libby ultimately will be vindicated," defense attorney Theodore Wells said. He said Libby was "totally innocent and that he did not do anything wrong."

And then there's the lingering question of whether Mr. Bush will pardon Libby, as the president's father did in 1992 for former Reagan administration officials caught up in the scandal that grew out of arms sales to Iran and the diversion of proceeds to the Nicaraguan rebels.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., immediately called on Mr. Bush not to pardon Libby. The White House wouldn't say what the president might do.

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White House official Libby guilty

A former key White House official, Lewis Libby, has been found guilty of obstruction of justice and perjury.

Libby, ex-chief of staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney, faces a prison term of up to 25 years. He will be sentenced in June.

He was accused of lying to the FBI and a grand jury over revelations about CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity.

Libby's lawyer said he was "very disappointed" at the verdict, and would ask for a new trial, or would appeal.

In a statement shortly after the verdict was announced, Mr Cheney expressed his deep disappointment, saying he was "saddened" for Libby's family.

Libby, who goes by the nickname "Scooter", was found guilty on four out of five counts. He was acquitted on one count of lying to the FBI.

'Honest lapses'

Correspondents say the case shed light on the inner workings of the Bush White House.

Critics claimed the White House had deliberately leaked Ms Plame's identity to ruin her career. Her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, had publicly cast doubt on the Bush administration's case for going to war in Iraq.

It can be a crime to reveal the identity of an undercover CIA agent.

The alleged cover-up, rather than the leak itself, was the subject of the trial.

Libby told FBI investigators and a grand jury investigating the leak of Ms Plame's name, that he had learned of her identity as a CIA agent from reporters.

However, several people testified that he discussed her identity before the date he said he learned of it.

"He claims he forgot nine conversations with eight people over a four-week period," prosecution lawyer Peter Zeidenberg said in his closing statement.

The defence maintained that Libby's false statements were the results of honest lapses in memory by a man tasked with extraordinary responsibility.

"He was bombarded with a blizzard of information. Those briefings would make your toes curl," defence lawyer Theodore Wells said.

The defence also argued that Libby was a scapegoat for the misdeeds of other White House players, like President Bush's political strategist Karl Rove.

Bush 'saddened'

After the verdict, and standing beside his client, who remains free until sentencing, Mr Wells said: "We have every confidence that ultimately Mr Libby will be vindicated.

"We believe he is totally innocent, and did not do anything wrong."

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said he was "gratified" by the verdict, but that it was "sad" that "we had a high-level official... who obstructed justice and lied under oath".

US President George W Bush "said that he respected the jury's verdict. He said he was saddened for Scooter Libby and his family," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

But Senate majority leader Harry Reid said: "I welcome the jury's verdict. It's about time someone in the Bush administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics."

A member of the jury, Denis Collins, said although jurors decided Libby was guilty they also had a "tremendous amount of sympathy" for him, and thought he might just be "the fall guy".

"Where's Rove?" he asked, referring to Mr Bush's top aide.

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Report warns against Iran attack

Military strikes against Iran could speed Tehran's development of nuclear weapons, according to a UK think tank.

A report by the Oxford Research Group says military action could lead Iran to change the nature of its programme and quickly build a few nuclear arms.

Iran denies Western claims it is trying to build weapons, saying its nuclear programme is entire peaceful.

The study comes as the UN nuclear watchdog is set to discuss the nuclear programmes of Iran and North Korea.

In February, Iran ignored a deadline set by the UN Security Council to stop enriching uranium.

A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran was instead expanding the programme.

Enriched uranium is used as fuel for nuclear reactors, but highly enriched uranium can be used to make nuclear bombs.

Western powers have threatened to expand sanctions on Iraq. These could include travel bans on Iranian officials associated with nuclear and missile programmes.

The US has not ruled out using force but says it wants to give diplomacy a chance.

'Fast-track programme'

The Oxford Research Group report is written by nuclear scientist and arms expert Frank Barnaby.

"If Iran is moving towards a nuclear weapons capacity it is doing so relatively slowly, most estimates put it at least five years away," he says.

Mr Barnaby adds that an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities "would almost certainly lead to a fast-track programme to develop a small number of nuclear devices as quickly as possible".

He says it "would be a bit like deciding to build a car from spare parts instead of building the entire car factory".

The BBC's diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says that with two US navy aircraft carrier strike groups in the Gulf region and US spokesmen refusing to rule out force, this study is timely and highlights what most air power experts have been saying for some time.

IAEA meeting

An operation to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities would be neither brief nor limited in scope, our correspondent says. Multiple targets would have to be hit, and the outcome would be far from clear, especially if Iran has hidden facilities unknown to US intelligence.

But he points out that this is not a military study - written by a noted atomic scientist and peace campaigner, it looks more at the aftermath of a potential US attack and questions the central rationale for any military operation.

On Monday the IAEA board of governors is due to discuss both Iran and North Korea.

The BBC's Bethany Bell in Vienna says that while there is little progress on the Iranian nuclear file there has been movement on North Korea.

Last month Pyongyang agreed to take the first steps towards nuclear disarmament, as part of a deal reached during talks in Beijing.

Under the agreement, North Korea promised to shut down its main nuclear reactor in return for fuel aid.

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U.S. Files Terror Charges Against Aussie

(AP) The Bush administration filed charges Thursday against an Australian captured in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and held ever since without trial, the first terror-war suspect to face prosecution under a new system of military tribunals.

David Hicks, a 31-year old former kangaroo skinner now held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, was charged with providing material support for terrorism and could face life imprisonment if convicted. Court challenges are certain before any trial.

Hicks' case, which has attracted broad attention in the U.S. and overseas, could well become the one that opponents of the new military tribunal system use to challenge the system at the Supreme Court. Opponents of the military commissions say they are illegal because they do not afford many legal rights guaranteed under the Constitution.

"It all seems to be an intermingling of politics and pressure," said Jumana Musa, advocacy director for Amnesty International. "But none of it screams to me to be in the interest of justice."

Proponents of the new system say they expect the federal courts to rule in favor of the military commissions.

"I trust the system to judge Mr. Hicks fairly," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a co-sponsor of the commissions legislation. "It's long overdue this case be brought forward."

Meanwhile, Australia, a steadfast U.S. ally in the war on terror, has been pressuring the Bush administration to send Hicks back to his native country. But that apparently wouldn't come until after a trial, at Guantanamo.

Last month, Sandra Hodgkinson, the State Department's deputy director for war crimes issues, told reporters that "it's certainly believed that Mr. Hicks may be able to carry out his incarceration, after the appeals process is complete, in Australia."

President Bush and Congress established the new legal system last fall. Lawmakers set up the tribunals after the Supreme Court ruled an older version established by Bush was unconstitutional because it lacked Congress' blessing and violated international agreements.

"This is an important milestone for military commissions," said Navy Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

There are an estimated 385 detainees remaining at the Guantanamo prison in Cuba. None of the men held there on suspicion of links to al Qaeda or the Taliban has ever gone to trial.

Hicks was among 10 detainees who had been charged with crimes under the earlier law that the court struck down. Then, he had been charged with conspiracy, attempted murder and aiding the enemy.

Another of the 10 was Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen, whose case ended up being the one the Supreme Court used to throw out the previous tribunal system.

According to Pentagon documents, Hicks went to Afghanistan in January 2001 to attend al Qaeda terrorist training camps. He also traveled to the southern city of Kandahar, the former Taliban stronghold, and stayed in an al Qaeda guest house where he met "shoe bomber" Richard Reid and other al Qaeda associates.

The Pentagon says that for about a year starting around December 2000, Hicks provided "support or resources to be used in preparation for, or in carrying out, an act of terrorism" and that he "knew or intended" for the support to be used for terrorism.

Last month, military prosecutors recommended that Hicks be charged with attempted murder for fighting coalition forces in Afghanistan and with providing support for terrorism.

On Thursday, Susan Crawford, the head of the military commissions, formally charged Hicks only with providing material support for terrorism.

The Pentagon announcement did not explain why the attempted murder charge was dropped. But a package of talking points written for officials to answer questions on the announcement suggested Crawford didn't believe the evidence warranted it.

Hicks' Pentagon-appointed lawyer, Marine Corps Maj. Michael Mori, said in Australia that the charge of providing support for terrorism was a fabrication that had not previously existed under the laws of war, and he said Australian officials should not accept it.

"The Australians should demand that David be treated the same as an American citizen and that retrospective legislation should not be applied to him and he should be returned," Mori told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

The military eventually hopes to charge 60 to 80 of the Guantanamo detainees. Once formal charges are filed, a timetable requires preliminary hearings within 30 days and the start of a jury trial within 120 days at Guantanamo.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard discussed Hicks' case with Vice President Dick Cheney when Cheney visited Australia last month. Under growing public pressure and with elections due later this year, Howard has begun pushing U.S. officials to deal with Hicks' case more quickly.

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US accused on 'missing' prisoners

Thirty eight people believed to have been held in secret CIA prisons - or black sites - are missing, according to a report by a US human rights group.

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report also details allegations of torture by a terror suspect who was held in secret custody for more than two years.

The group has asked US President George W Bush to reveal the location of these detainees and close all US black sites.

Last year Mr Bush said the prisons had all closed and had not used torture.

'Missing' prisoners

In a televised address in September, Mr Bush admitted that 14 detainees had been held at secret CIA prisons that used interrogation methods that were "tough" but "lawful and necessary".

"The United States does not torture," Mr Bush said at the time. "It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorised it - and I will not authorise it."

He said the prisoners had since been transferred to the US military camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the CIA was not holding any more terror suspects.

But in a report published on Tuesday, HRW has named another 38 people who were believed to have been held in secret CIA prisons, who are now missing.

Quoting US intelligence officials, The Washington Post says more than 60 people have been held in the prisons since 2001.

'Beaten and burned'

The group has called on the US to reveal the location of all detainees held by the CIA since 2001 and end its "illegal" secret detention and interrogation programmes.

Palestinian Islamic extremist Marwan al-Jabour told HRW he saw or spoke to a number of those named in the report while he was held by the CIA between 2004 and 2006.

Mr Jabour, who was arrested in Lahore, Pakistan in May 2004, also detailed torture tactics he says were used against him while he was in US custody.

He says at various periods during his 28-month detention Pakistani authorities kept him naked and chained to a ceiling. He says he was beaten, burned and handcuffed in stress positions.

During this time he was also reportedly interrogated by US agents for hours on end, but Mr Jabour says he was only tortured when the Americans were not around.

Mr Jabour admits that in 1998 he trained in Afghanistan in the hope of fighting in Chechnya. He also says he helped Arab militants who had fled Afghanistan for Pakistan in 2003, but he denies any links to al-Qaeda or terror activities.

EU threat

Meanwhile, the US has warned the European Union that ongoing inquiries into secret CIA flights within Europe linked to the black sites are threatening intelligence ties between Europe and the US.

The investigations "have not been helpful with respect to necessary co-operation between the United States and Europe," John Bellinger, legal adviser to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said.

Mr Bellinger also labelled a European Parliament report into the flights, released earlier this month, as "unbalanced, inaccurate and unfair".

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Majority of Americans Support Setting a Deadline for Troop Withdrawal, Poll Finds

With Congress preparing for renewed debate over President Bush's Iraq war policies, a majority of Americans now support setting a deadline for withdrawing U.S. forces from the war-torn nation and also support putting new conditions on the military that could limit the number of personnel available for duty there, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

Opposition to Bush's plan to send an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq remained strong, with two in three Americans registering their disapproval -- 56 percent said they strongly object. The House recently passed a nonbinding resolution opposing the new deployments, but Republicans have successfully blocked consideration of such a measure in the Senate. Senate Democrats, led by Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (Mich.) and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph I. Biden (Del.) are now preparing another resolution that would have the effect of taking away the authority Bush was granted in 2002 to go to war. The measure would seek to have virtually all combat forces withdrawn from Iraq by the end of March 2008.

The Post-ABC poll found that 53 percent of Americans favored setting a deadline for troop withdrawals. Among those who favored a deadline, 24 percent said they would like to see U.S. forces out within six months and another 21 percent called for the withdrawals to be completed within a year. The rest of those who support a timetable said they did not favor withdrawing all troops until at least a year from now. This is the first time a Post-ABC News poll has found a majority of Americans supported establishing such a timetable for withdrawal, which has long been resisted by the president and even some Democrats. Growing numbers of Americans also favored withdrawing U.S. forces, even if civil order in Iraq has not been restored. The poll found that just 42 percent favored keeping troops there until civil order is restored, while 56 percent said the troops should be redeployed to avoid further U.S. casualties even if the sectarian violence is continuing.

Some Democrats have called for cutting off funds for the war. The Post-ABC News poll found that 46 percent of Americans supported restricting funding for the war while a bare majority, 51 percent, opposed it. There was clear support, however, for the kinds of conditions proposed by Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), who wants to establish requirements for the training and resting of military units that would have the effect of limiting the number of troops available to send to Iraq. Murtha's plan has drawn fire in the House, including from some of his Democratic colleagues, after it was unveiled on a liberal Web site. The Post-ABC News poll, which did not associate the plan with Murtha, found that 58 percent of Americans said they support such new rules. Even some Americans, 21 percent, who supported the president's troop surge said they would favor rules for training and resting troops.

On questions relating to troop withdrawals or setting conditions on the military, there was a substantial gender gap. For example, 51 percent of men said they favored keeping troops in Iraq until civil order is restored, while 35 percent of women supported such a course. Nearly seven in 10 women supported establishing some rules for training and rest time for troops in order to limit the number of available units for duty in Iraq, while 47 percent of men favored those limits. Similarly, a majority of men opposed setting any deadline for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq, while an even larger majority of women would like to see a deadline established. The latest poll also registered a new low on the question of whether the Iraq war was worth fighting. Just 34 percent responded that the war was worth fighting while 64 percent said it was not -- 51 percent strongly. On this question, 51 percent of military veterans and 53 percent of veteran households said they strongly believe the war was not worth fighting.

Bush's overall approval rating stood at 36 percent, up slightly from 33 percent last month. Sixty-two percent disapproved of the way he is handling his job, with 49 percent of those indicating they strongly disapproved. Approval of his handling of the Iraq war remained near its all-time low. Thirty-one percent said they approve and 67 percent saying they disapproved, a slight improvement from December, when only 28 percent approved. Bush also received negative marks on the campaign against terrorism (52 percent disapproved) and on his handling of the economy (55 percent disapproved). By wide margins, Americans said they trust Democrats in Congress more than Bush to deal with Iraq, health care, the budget, the economy and terrorism. The Democrats' advantage on health care was 37 percentage points, on the budget 27 points, on Iraq and the economy 20 points and on terrorism 13 points.

Overall, however, just 41 percent said they approved of the way Congress is doing its job, while 54 percent disapproved. The disapproval level was marginally higher than a month ago. The low point for congressional approval in the past year came a few weeks before the midterm elections that resulted in Republicans losing their House and Senate majorities, when just 31 percent gave Congress positive marks. Asked about the performance of new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), 50 percent said they approved and 31 percent said they disapproved. Her disapproval rating a month ago was 25 percent. On another issue, the poll found that a majority of Americans now distrust the Bush administration on its handling of intelligence. Just 35 percent said they can trust the administration to report potential threats from other countries honestly and accurately, while 63 percent said they cannot.

The administration has been challenged on the quality of the intelligence underpinning its claims that Iran is helping fuel the insurgents in Iraq. Forty-seven percent of those surveyed said they believed the administration has solid evidence to support those claims, while 44 percent disagreed. At the same time, just 41 percent expressed confidence that the administration will do a good job handling current tensions with Iran, compared with 58 percent who said they were not confident. The Post-ABC News poll is based on telephone interviews with 1,082 adults and was conducted between last Thursday and Sunday. The margin of sampling error is plus-or-minus 3 percentage points.

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Edwards: Congress Should Cut Iraq Funding

(CBS) North Carolina Democrat John Edwards believes that the war in Iraq will be one of the "dominating issues" in the 2008 race for the White House, and Sunday on Face The Nation, he said Congress should cut funding for the war effort to force a redeployment of American troops.

"I think the Congress should use its authority, its funding authority to bring down the troop level an initial 40- to 50,000 out of Iraq, and continue to use that authority to redeploy troops out of Iraq over the next year or so," Edwards told Bob Schieffer.

As a retired Senator, Edwards does not have a vote on the current Iraq policy. When he was in the Senate, Edwards voted in favor of the 2002 resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq. On Sunday, he said he thought that his vote was wrong.

"I also think it's important for those of us who were responsible for voting on the resolution in 2002 to say whatever the truth is for us about that vote," he said. "For those who voted for it, including me, if we believe we were wrong �Eand I believe I was �EI think it's important to be honest about that and to say it."

One of Edwards' chief Democratic rivals, Sen. Hilary Clinton, D-N.Y., has been criticized for not offering a clear apology for her 2002 vote.

Edwards' said his plan for U.S. troops in Iraq would be to withdraw American forces to Kuwait and Afghanistan, as well as to ships in the Persian Gulf.

"And while I was doing that, I would engage the Iranians and the Syrians directly, both of whom have an interest in a stable Iraq, particularly with America leaving Iraq," Edwards said.

The former Senator also talked about domestic issues. He said he would rollback President Bush's tax cuts for people who make over $200,000 a year to pay for his universal health care plan.

"I do not believe, having spent a lot of time on this, that you can achieve universal health care without finding a revenue source, and that's my revenue source," Edwards said.

The Edwards campaign has tried to label their candidate as "the candidate of fundamental change," but some of his Democratic opponents might say the fundamental changes have been in Edwards and his record.

But the former Senator said any changes were part of his maturation.

"In my case, there was a lot of seasoning that's gone on, both during the last campaign and since that time," he said. "I've done a lot of work overseas, for example, and I've learned. I hope we all continue to learn. And I don't think there's been any change in me as a human being, what my fundamental values are."

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UK move inflames debate on Bush troop increase

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House said Britain's announcement Wednesday to pull about 1,600 troops out of Iraq was proof of progress, while the top House Democrat said it "confirms doubts" about President Bush's plan to send more U.S. troops there. White House spokesman Tony Snow said the move by British Prime Minister Tony Blair "indicates that there's been some progress in Basra," in southern Iraq, where UK troops are deployed. The reduction of troops would leave about 5,500 British troops still there.

Blair's decision to sent some British troops home, Snow said, is largely because of the training of Iraqi troops and Basra's tranquil security climate compared with Baghdad's. (Watch Blair explain what will happen next to remaining UK troops) He said the situation in Basra is "ultimately the kind of thing we want to see throughout Iraq."

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the Democratically controlled House, suggested that Blair's decision "confirms the doubts in the minds of the American people" about Bush's decision to increase U.S. forces in Iraq by more than 21,000.

"Why are thousands of additional American troops being sent to Iraq at the same time that British troops are planning to leave?" the California Democrat said in a written statement. Bush has said the U.S. troop increase is part of a strategy aimed at quelling insurgent and sectarian violence in and around Baghdad.

Pelosi's counterpart, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the British troop reduction "is one more sign that the new strategy to stabilize Baghdad deserves a chance to succeed." He accused opponents of conspiring to use the congressional power of the purse to fight the Bush troop increase.

"The American people will not support the Democrats' 'slow-bleed' policy that cuts off funding and reinforcements for our troops in harm's way."

Kennedy: 'Stunning rejection'

On the other side of Capitol Hill, Sen. Edward Kennedy called Blair's announcement "a stunning rejection of President Bush's high risk Iraq policy." "No matter how the White House tries to spin it, the British government has decided to split with President Bush and begin to move their troops out of Iraq," Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, said.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice rejected that idea, saying, "The coalition remains intact and in fact the British will have thousands of soldiers deployed in Iraq in the south. "The British have done what is really the plan for the country as a whole which is to be able to transfer security responsibilities to the Iraqis as conditions permit," Rice said during a news conference in Berlin with German leaders Wednesday.

Earlier, the White House called the British announcement a sign of success. "We're pleased that conditions in Basra have improved sufficiently that [British forces] are able to transition more control to the Iraqis," said National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe in a statement.

Blair, announcing the withdrawal at the House of Commons in London, said that the number of British forces in the region would be pared from 7,100 to 5,500. (Watch how Blair will leave after leading the UK in the unpopular war) Blair said the troop reduction reflects stability in Basra, relative to violent sectarian and insurgent attacks that continue to plague Baghdad.

The much smaller population of the overwhelmingly Shiite south is more religiously homogeneous than the capital city -- which makes Baghdad more prone to sectarian violence.

Blair said British troops would increasingly play a support and training role with Iraqi forces assuming responsibility for security operations. More than 130 British troops have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. (Watch what may be the factors behind the decision) Also, Denmark on Wednesday announced it would withdraw its contingent of coalition forces by August. Lithuania also said it was considering withdrawing its 53 troops. Denmark's 460 soldiers serve under British command in Basra.

At its height, immediately after the war began in March 2003, Britain contributed about 46,000 soldiers, sailors and air force personnel to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. (UK forces in Iraq)

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Blair 'to confirm Iraq timetable'

Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to announce a timetable for the withdrawal of UK troops from Iraq.

Mr Blair is due to make a statement about the 7,000 British troops serving in Iraq at the Commons on Wednesday.

The BBC's James Landale said 1,500 troops were expected to return home in months, rising to 3,000 by Christmas.

Downing Street has not confirmed the reports but Whitehall sources have told the BBC the process could be slowed down if the situation in Iraq worsens.

A Downing Street spokesman said: "It is right that the prime minister should update Parliament first."

However, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe confirmed that President George W Bush had spoken to Mr Blair on Tuesday. Mr Bush recently announced plans to send 21,500 more US troops to Iraq.

Mr Johndroe said: "While the United Kingdom is maintaining a robust force in southern Iraq, we're pleased that conditions in Basra have improved sufficiently that they are able to transition more control to the Iraqis.

"The United States shares the same goal of turning responsibility over to the Iraqi Security Forces and reducing the number of American troops in Iraq."

BBC political correspondent James Landale said: "We have been expecting an announcement for some time on this."

However, he said reports that all troops will have returned home by the end of 2008 was "not a fair representation of what is true at the moment".

'Disastrous signal'

Our correspondent said senior Whitehall sources had told him that the pullout was "slightly slower" than they had expected and "if conditions worsen this process could still slow up".

Defence Secretary Des Browne said last November that the number of UK troops in Iraq was set to be "significantly lower by a matter of thousands" by the end of 2007.

Last month, the Liberal Democrats called for all UK troops to be withdrawn by October.

But Mr Blair said that to "set an arbitrary timetable... that we will pull British troops out in October, come what may... would send the most disastrous signal to the people we are fighting in Iraq".

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McCain: Iraq War Mismanaged For Years

(AP) Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Monday the war in Iraq has been mismanaged for years and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will be remembered as one of the worst in history.

"We are paying a very heavy price for the mismanagement — that's the kindest word I can give you — of Donald Rumsfeld, of this war," the Arizona senator told an overflow crowd of more than 800 at a retirement community near Hilton Head Island, S.C. "The price is very, very heavy and I regret it enormously."

McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, complained that Rumsfeld never put enough troops on the ground to succeed in Iraq.

"I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history," McCain said to applause.

The comments were in sharp contrast to McCain's statement when Rumsfeld resigned in November, and failed to address the reality that President Bush is the commander in chief.

"While Secretary Rumsfeld and I have had our differences, he deserves Americans' respect and gratitude for his many years of public service," McCain said last year when Rumsfeld stepped down.

On a two-day campaign swing in South Carolina, McCain fielded questions from the crowd for more than an hour and said the United States can succeed in Iraq with additional troops and a new strategy. McCain has been a strong proponent of using more troops and favors Bush's increase of some 21,500 U.S. forces in the nearly four-year-old war.

"I have been saying for 3½ years that we would be in this sad situation and this critical situation we are in today," he said.

McCain's bid for president was sidetracked in South Carolina in 2000 after a victory in New Hampshire. George W. Bush won the primary here and went on to win the nomination and White House.

"In life, one of the worst things you can do is hold a grudge," he said. "I felt the important thing for me to do with my life was to move forward after we lost our race. You have seen other people who have lost who mire themselves in bitterness and self pity. That's not what my life is all about."

Some in the crowd were Bush supporters who have not yet decided on a 2008 candidate.

"It's too early to say," said Paul Baker, a retiree from Niagara Falls, N.Y., who has lived in South Carolina about four years. "I'm just going to wait it out and see what happens."

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Biden: We'll Change 2002 War Authorization

(CBS) With Democratic efforts to pass a Senate resolution opposing President Bush's troop "surge" stalled, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman said he will try to rework the 2002 measure that authorized the use of force against Saddam Hussein. But, the committee's ranking Republican doubted that the idea would pass the Senate and, if it did, was sure that the president would veto it.

While the majority party in the House of Representatives passed a nonbinding resolution rebuking the president's Iraq strategy, Senate Democrats fell four votes short of pushing a similar measure forward in a rare Saturday session.

Appearing on Face the Nation the next day, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Delaware, proposed his alternate route to stopping Mr. Bush from sending 21,500 more troops to Iraq.

"I've been working with some of my colleagues to try to convince them that's the way to go �Eto repeal and restate the president's authority," Biden told Bob Schieffer. "Make it clear that the purpose that he has troops in there is to in fact protect against al Qaeda gaining chunks of territory, training the Iraqi forces, force protection and for our forces. It's not to get in the midst of a civil war."

Also appearing on Face the Nation,Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said that Biden's proposal would never get enough support in the Senate. Even if the majority could pass it, he said, the president would veto it and the veto could not be overturned.

Biden, who is in the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, said he was confident that his proposal would pass where the others had failed.

"I predict to you you're going to see pressure mount," Biden said, "and it's going to be significant."

Lugar agreed that public pressure was influencing the Congress' votes on the war, but he said none of the current proposals would make it through both houses and to the president. He said the nonbinding resolutions are being proposed to make the President consider to the opposition.

"I think the president is paying attention," Lugar said, suggesting that the next move would be a true bi-partisan search for solutions.

"I think there've been some fledgling efforts to see whether a group might be formed in a bipartisan way �Ecouple of them haven't worked out," Lugar said. "But for example, perhaps the president's situation is improved if he calls on Senator Biden and Senator Levin, Senator McCain, Speaker Pelosi, for example, and says, you know, 'We are in a war. We're in a situation of rather fractured political circumstances right now, and we need to think through this situation.'"

One of the most outspoken critics of the war, Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn., another, different approach for Congress to control the president's war plans. He described a series of provisions that would require the Pentagon to meet certain standards for training and equipping the troops, and for making sure they have enough time at home between deployments.

"I wouldn't favor it," Lugar said. "But I would just say again that it would not be passed by two Houses and signed by the president. And, once again, it's a debating tool, which makes the point."

Biden said that Murtha is trying to save the Army, not just stop the president's plan to send more troops to Iraq.

"You cannot keep extending these people," Biden said. "You cannot keep doing what you're doing here. You cannot be sending them back without the proper equipment."

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has said that Iran is shipping sophisticated weapons to Iraq to help Shiite militias. The increasingly hostile tone the White House is using against Iran has led to some worries that the U.S. might end up in another war.

"I don't think it's going anywhere, and my hope is that it would not," Lugar said. "I would hope very strongly that the diplomatic course is followed �Ethat Europeans help some more �Ebut clearly, we have got to go the diplomatic route."

Biden said the president is trying to regain credibility in the yes of the public.

"It's repackaged," Biden said. "Two years ago, I was briefed on this, a year ago I was briefed by General Chiarelli on these shape charges and how they're different."

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Iraq invasion plan 'delusional'

The US invasion plan for Iraq envisaged that only 5,000 US troops would remain in Iraq by December 2006, declassified Central Command documents show.

The material also shows that the US military projected a stable, pro-US and democratic Iraq by that time.

The August 2002 material was obtained by the National Security Archive (NSA). Its officials said the plans were based on delusional assumptions.

The US currently has some 132,000 troops in the violence-torn state.

'Completely unrealistic'

The documents - in the form of PowerPoint slides - were prepared by the now-retired Gen Tommy Franks and other top commanders at the time.

The documents were presented at a briefing in August 2002 - less than a year before the US invasion of Iraq in April 2003.

The commanders predicted that after the fighting was over there would be a two- to three-month "stabilisation" phase, followed by an 18- to 24-month "recovery" stage.

They projected that the US forces would be almost completely "re-deployed" out of Iraq at the end of the "transition" phase - within 45 months of invasion.

"Completely unrealistic assumptions about a post-Saddam Iraq permeate these war plans," NSA executive director Thomas Blanton said in a statement posted on the organisation's website.

"First, they assumed that a provisional government would be in place by 'D-Day', then that the Iraqis would stay in their garrisons and be reliable partners, and finally that the post-hostilities phase would be a matter of mere months'," Mr Blanton said.

"All of these were delusions," he added.

The NSA said it received the documents last month, after making a request in 2004.

The NSA is an independent research institute at George Washington University.

It obtained the papers under the Freedom of Information Act.

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Murtha Vows To Stop Troop Buildup

Rep. Jack Murtha, one of the most vocal congressional opponents of the war in Iraq, is vowing to block President Bush's plan to send another 21,500 U.S. combat troops to Iraq by restricting the administration's military options in a new wartime spending bill.

We're gonna stop this surge,�Ethe Pennsylvania Democrat declared in an interview posted on the Website MoveCongress.org.

Stepping up his campaign against the White House, Murtha, chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, told Tom Andrews, a former congressman-turned-activist, in the online interview that he would attach so many conditions to an upcoming spending bill for Iraq that the Pentagon would not be able to find enough troops to carry out the president's surge plan.

The Andrews group, the Win Without War Coalition, is part of a larger federation of anti-war groups sponsoring the site.

Murtha will oversee the $93 billion supplemental spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan that the House will consider in mid-March. And he wants to impose new restrictions on how the president can deploy combat forces from the United States to Iraq, allow combat veterans to have at least one year stateside before returning to the frontlines and prevent the Pentagon from keeping soldiers and Marines already in Iraq in uniform after their enlistments expire.

This vote will limit the options of the president and should stop the surge,�EMurtha predicted of next month's floor fight over the wartime supplemental appropriation. We're trying to force redeployment [of troops outside Iraq], not by taking money away but by redirecting it.�E

Murtha is not pushing a total cutoff of funds for the war in Iraq. But he is considering measure to limit the military actions Bush can take against Iran, although the congressman was more cautious than his statements about Iraq.

We are looking at the possibility of putting language in the bill that says you can't go into Iran unless you have authorization [from Congress],Murtha said.

Murtha also intends to push a provision to bar the creation of permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq and to raze the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

The strategy being employed by Murtha and other House Democratic leaders would force Bush and Republican congressional leaders to accept the new troop restrictions, or face the possibility the supplemental spending bill would falter, thus cutting off all funding for the war.

Democrats are betting that Bush and the Republicans won't take that risk and will go along with the Democratic proposals. And Republican leaders are not taking Murtha's threats lightly.

The Republican National Committee has e-mailed supporters, urging them to contact newspapers and other media outlets to object to the congressman's proposals.

The RNC was reacting to a story in The Politico on Wednesday that spelled out the Democratic strategy of cutting off the supply of troops available for the war, while retaining funding for forces already deployed in Iraq.

Without the troops to execute the surge, the Pentagon would find it increasingly difficult to keep U.S. forces in Iraq.

Republicans have repeatedly charged that Democrats want to put off funding for the troops,�Eand the Democratic strategy seeks to deflect those charges.

The Democratic plan was characterized in The Politico as the low-bleed strategy,which was not a term used by any Democrats or the anti-war groups supporting their efforts.

The RNC, however, attributed the phrase to Democrats, and it was used in their e-mail alert.

'Slow bleed' is exactly the right name for this incredibly irresponsible and dangerous strategy,RNC Chairman Mike Duncan wrote in his e-mail, which included a Web link to donate to the GOP.

Cutting and running is bad enough, he said. but the Murtha-Pelosi 'slow-bleed' plan is far worse. It is a cynical and dangerous erosion of our ability to fight the terrorists while we still have men and women on the ground in Iraq.�E

The National Republican Congressional Committee and Senate Republicans are also preparing to use the low-bleedline in their own news releases, slamming Murtha and the Democrats.

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EU endorses damning report on CIA

The European parliament has approved a damning report on secret CIA flights, condemning member states which colluded in the operations.

The UK, Germany and Italy were among 14 states which allowed the US to forcibly remove terror suspects, lawmakers said.

The EU parliament voted to accept a resolution condemning member states which accepted or ignored the practice.

The EU report said the CIA had operated 1,245 flights, some taking suspects to states where they could face torture.

The report was adopted by a large majority, with 382 MEPs voting in favour, 256 against and 74 abstaining.

Vigilance

The final version denounces the lack of co-operation of many EU member states and it condemns the actions of secret services and governments who accepted and concealed renditions.

It is unlikely, the report says, that European governments were unaware of rendition activities on their territory, something the British government, among others, has denied.

"This is a report that doesn't allow anyone to look the other way. We must be vigilant that what has been happening in the past five years may never happen again," said Italian Socialist Giovanni Fava, who drafted the document.

The parliament also called for an "independent inquiry" to be considered and for closure of the US' Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

Human rights campaigning group Amnesty International welcomed the EU lawmakers' vote, but urged member states to carry out independent investigations.

Revealing facts

Although the report has no force in EU law, Mr Fava said during the parliamentary debate that the related investigation, over a year, had uncovered much new evidence.

Many of those taken from EU states were subjected to torture to extract information from them, the report said.

It said there was a "strong possibility" that this intelligence had been passed on to EU governments who were aware of how it was obtained.

It also uncovered the use of secret detention facilities used as the flights made their journey across Europe towards countries such as Afghanistan.

It was not possible to contradict evidence or suggestions that secret detention centres were operated in Poland and Romania, the report said.

'Incommunicado detention'

Centre-right MEPs - the largest group in parliament - have been highly critical of the report, saying it is primarily motivated by anti-Americanism.

EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini said the commission would act on the truth, even if it were uncomfortable or unpalatable. But he called for a relaunching of the Euro-Atlantic relationship and said Europe must continue to work with its US partners.

During the course of their investigation, delegations of MEPs travelled to countries including Romania, Poland, the UK, the US and Germany to investigate claims of European involvement in so-called extraordinary renditions.

The governments of Austria, Italy, Poland, Portugal and the UK were criticised for their "unwillingness to co-operate" with investigators.

The report defines extraordinary renditions as instances where "an individual suspected of involvement in terrorism is illegally abducted, arrested and/or transferred into the custody of US officials and/or transported to another country for interrogation which, in the majority of cases involves incommunicado detention and torture".

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House Democrats Ready Anti-War Resolution

(CBS/AP) Moving ahead after the Senate Iraq debate got stymied by a Republican filibuster, House leaders Monday put out a very simple two-paragraph resolution saying Congress supports the troops in Iraq but opposes President Bush's plan to send 20,000 more, CBS News correspondent Bob Fuss reports.

The resolution sets the stage for the first major Iraq debate in Congress in years �Ethree full days where every member of the House will have five minutes to speak about the war.

Though nonbinding, it will speak volumes if, as expected, a bipartisan majority votes a resolution of no confidence in the president's war strategy.

Debate on the resolution is scheduled to begin on Tuesday with a vote by Friday.

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Read the House resolution on Iraq

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The measure says that Congress "disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush ... to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq."

It also says, "Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States armed forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq."

Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have vowed to force an end to U.S. participation in the war, and made debate over a nonbinding resolution a symbolic first step.

The House measure was drafted in simple, unadorned terms, an attempt by Democrats to maximize the number of Republicans who would support it and also to emphasize support for the troops. Republican leaders have said they expect at least a few dozen defections when the vote is taken later in the week.

House Republican leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, has said the GOP will have an alternative, but it is not clear that majority Democrats will allow it to be offered on the House floor.

"We're going to have Republicans who are skeptical of (Bush's) plan who'll probably vote for this," he said. Asked if he thought House Republicans would lose a third of their members to the Democrats' resolution, he said, "I don't think we'll lose that many."

Boehner complained Sunday that Democrats had backed out of a promise to allow an immediate, wide-ranging debate on Iraq.

On Thursday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Republicans would be permitted to propose an alternative this week to the Democrats' resolution. But on Sunday, Hoyer said that is "not necessarily our plan."

Hoyer, D-Md., said a House vote will be limited to the proposed resolution opposing President Bush's troop escalation and a Republican alternative would be voted on 30 to 45 days from now.

"Live up to your word," Boehner, R-Ohio, told Hoyer. Democrats, Boehner said, "won't even let us have a substitute. ... Give us a vote this week."

Boehner said Republicans want to offer a resolution saying a bipartisan panel should oversee the president's plan, with benchmarks to keep track of whether it is progressing.

"You're going to have that opportunity," Hoyer replied.

The lawmakers appeared together on "Meet the Press" on NBC.

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Sen. Kerry blasts 'escalation of misguided war'

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. John Kerry on Saturday blamed Republicans for squelching Senate debate on the Iraq war and warned that President Bush's plan for more troops in Iraq is a mistake.

"Another 21,000 troops sent into Iraq, with no visible end or strategy, ignores the best advice from our own generals and isn't the best way to keep faith with the courage and commitment of our soldiers," the Massachusetts Democrat said in his party's weekly radio address.

Kerry branded Bush's proposal for additional forces as "nothing more than the escalation of a misguided war."

The Pentagon is in the midst of implementing Bush's order to raise troop levels by 21,500, part of a plan to help quell sectarian violence in Baghdad.

The 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, who has said he will not run for the White House in 2008, criticized Republicans for blocking Senate debate on Iraq.

The GOP stalled a Senate resolution backed by Democrats and several Republicans that expresses dissatisfaction with Bush's call for additional troops and sets benchmarks for the Iraq government.

The measure fell 11 votes short of the 60 required to move the debate forward.

"If there was a straight up-or-down, yes-or-no vote this week on whether the United States should keep up an indefinite presence in Iraq, it would be voted down," Kerry said.

The senator called on Congress to take stronger action to end the war.

"The Congress should tell President Bush to end this open-ended commitment of American troops," Kerry said. "The United States must get tough with Iraqi politicians -- pressure them to meet tough benchmarks. ... Congress must push this administration to find not just a new way forward in Iraq, but the right way forward."

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Clinton Parries Iraq Questions In N.H.

(AP) Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton faced questions Saturday from New Hampshire voters skeptical about her stand on the Iraq war, including one who demanded that she repudiate her 2002 Senate vote to send U.S. troops into battle.

In her first presidential campaign visit to the early voting state, Clinton focused on her plans to revive struggling small-town economies, provide universal health care and make college more affordable. But at a town hall meeting in rural Berlin and at a boisterous gathering of some 3,000 people in the state capital, Concord, Clinton was peppered with questions about Iraq.

Most of the questions were cordial, and Clinton was loudly cheered when she repeated her pledge to end the war if she is elected president next year. But several attendees challenged the New York senator to explain how she could reconcile her sharp criticism of the war with her vote to authorize the original invasion.

"Aren't you trying to have it both ways?"asked a man in Concord.

Clinton acknowledged a great deal of frustration and anger and outrage�Eover the war, and said she was working hard in the Senate to pass legislation capping troop levels in Iraq. She also vowed to try to bring to a vote a resolution disapproving of President Bush's planned troop increase.

I'm still in the arena, she said an apparent riposte to a Democratic rival, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. Like Clinton, Edwards voted to authorize the invasion, but he has become a staunch war critic since leaving the Senate in 2004.

It's very easy to go around and say, 'Let's end the war,'�EClinton added. if we had a Democratic president we would end the war.�E

Her toughest question came in Berlin, a struggling mill town in northern New Hampshire.

Roger Tilton, 46, a financial adviser from Nashua, N.H., told Clinton that unless she recanted her vote, he was not in the mood to listen to her other policy ideas.

I want to know if right here, right now, once and for all and without nuance, you can say that war authorization was a mistake, Tilton said. " I think a lot of other primary voters until we hear you say it, we're not going to hear all the other great things you are saying."

In response, Clinton repeated her assertion that “knowing what we know now, I would never have voted for it,�Eand said voters would have to decide for themselves whether her position was acceptable.

The mistakes were made by this president, who misled this country and this Congress,�EClinton said to loud applause.

Later, Tilton said he was not satisfied with her answer and was inclined to support either Edwards or Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who announced his candidacy Saturday.

“I love what she says about health care, I love what she says about capping troop levels, I love what she says about the war now,�ETilton said, adding he would remain undecided until she offered a clearer answer.

Clinton's refusal to recant her vote has been a sore point for many Democratic activists who tend to vote heavily in the party's primaries.

Edwards, the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee, has said his vote was wrong. Obama was not in the Senate in 2002 but has opposed the war from the outset.

For the most part, Clinton was received warmly at both New Hampshire gatherings. People cheered her loudly, with intermittent shouts of we love you, Hillary! and you go, girl!

In Berlin, retired firefighter Henry Boucher said Clinton had won his vote.

“I never thought I'd vote for a woman, but this one here I'm going to support,�EBoucher, 65, said.

On Sunday, Clinton planned to attend house parties in Manchester and Nashua before a town hall meeting in Keene.

It was Clinton's first visit to New Hampshire since 1996, when as first lady she campaigned for the re-election of her husband.

New Hampshire was widely credited with reviving Bill Clinton's presidential prospects in 1992. He placed second in the state's primary amid a torrent of allegations about marital infidelity and questions about whether he had avoided military service in Vietnam.

He labeled himself the comeback kid after that primary, and went on to win the Democratic nomination and the general election.

Hillary Clinton reminisced about the warm welcome New Hampshire voters had given the Clintons in 1992, and said her husband envied her weekend visit to the state.

The only thing I will try to do differently from my husband is not to make so many Dunkin' Donuts stops,�Eshe said to laughter. Sill gained about 20 pounds in the New Hampshire primary and I cannot afford that.

She called her husband a Full-time political counselor�Ebut nodded as Evelyn Owen, 69, of Salem, N.H., described waiting 12 hours for Bill Clinton to autograph a copy of his memoir.

I've waited for him a lot myself,�Ethe senator cracked.

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House Plans Simple "Yes Or No" On Iraq

(CBS/AP) House Democratic leaders said Thursday that members will vote next week on a nonbinding resolution stating opposition to President Bush's decision to send more forces into combat and voicing support for the troops.

They said House members will also get a chance to vote on a Republican alternative.

The Democratic leaders said they would take a bare-bones approach to writing the resolution �Ea tack intended to persuade Republicans to break ranks with the GOP and express their frustration with a war.

"This is an up-or-down vote on the policy enunciated by the president," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill. "We owe that to our constituents."

The resolution would state opposition to Mr. Bush's dispatch of 21,500 more troops to Iraq and voice support for the troops themselves and for enlarging the overall size of the Army and Marines, which the administration has proposed. It is not expected to address the question of whether Congress should limit money for the war.

The leaders described the vote as the first step of many that will be taken by Democrats to try to force an end to the nearly four-year-old war that has killed more than 3,000 U.S. troops and turned public opinion strongly against the conflict.

But Republican leaders say the debate could end up hurting U.S. forces, CBS News correspondent Susan Roberts reports.

"A nonbinding resolution is nothing more than political theater that means nothing, and I believe that it demoralizes our troops in the field," said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R–Ohio.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said the House will have three full days of debate and that all members will have a chance "to articulate their view on how they want to proceed. That is important I think for the president to hear. It's important for the country to hear, and we will ensure that it is done."

The House measure in the works indicates leaders there are moving away from a Senate version backed by Democrats and several Republicans that the GOP blocked on Monday.

That resolution, by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., expresses dissatisfaction with Mr. Bush's plan to and identifies benchmarks the Iraqi government should meet. It was stalled when it fell 11 votes short of the 60 required to move the debate forward.

Frustrated that Senate leaders could not agree on debate rules for his resolution, Warner and six other Republicans told the leaders in a letter Wednesday that "the current stalemate is unacceptable to us and to the people of this country."

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Read the Senate Republicans' letter on the Iraq debate

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The senators warned they would attach the resolution against the troop increase to every piece of legislation they can in an effort to force a debate.

"The war in Iraq is the most pressing issue of our time. It urgently deserves the attention of the full Senate and a full debate on the Senate floor without delay," the letter said.

In addition to Warner, the other Republicans who signed the letter were Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Gordon Smith of Oregon and George Voinovich of Ohio.

Meanwhile, despite concerns by several lawmakers over the job he did in Iraq, the Senate voted Thursday to let Gen. George Casey become the new Army chief of staff.

In an 83-14 vote, senators approved Casey, who was nominated for the job by President Bush.

Casey had been America's top commander in Iraq since mid-2004 �Eand during his recent confirmation hearings, even some Republicans had doubts about his performance. Among them was Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who said under Casey's watch, the situation in Iraq got "progressively worse."

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Republicans block Iraq war debate

A resolution opposing President George W Bush's decision to send extra troops to Iraq has failed to advance in the US Senate, dealing a blow to war critics.

The measure needed 60 votes before the 100-member Senate could begin debate, but it got 49, with 47 voting against.

Although non-binding, it was the first serious effort in Congress to confront the White House over the war in Iraq.

Since the US-led invasion in 2003, more than 3,000 US troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed.

The resolution opposed Mr Bush's plan to send 21,500 additional troops to Iraq, the majority of them to violence-hit Baghdad in an effort to end sectarian clashes.

It called on the White House to examine all other possibilities. Mr Bush has said it is something he has already done.

It was the first time Democrats had scheduled a fully-fledged debate on the Iraq war since they won control of Congress in last year's mid-term elections.

'Uncertain fate'

The text of the bipartisan, non-binding resolution was proposed by senior Republican John Warner and it is unclear what will happen to the measure now.

Groups from the left and the right proposed amendments up to the last minute, as senators tried to balance criticism of the Bush administration with loyalty to US troops in Iraq.

Several Republicans supported the resolution, but there were not enough to block the efforts of White House loyalists in the Senate to prevent it from coming to a vote.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell described the vote as "a bump in the road" and added that GOP lawmakers "welcome the debate and are happy to have it".

Some Democrats said they would oppose the resolution because it did not go far enough.

Earlier, Mr Bush sent his budget plan to the Democrat-controlled Congress for approval, requesting extra funding for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Almost $700bn (£357bn) is earmarked for new military spending.

The Democratic majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, said that the budget, which also proposes large health care cuts, was not in tune with the needs of ordinary Americans.

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'Time is short' in Iraq, commander nominee says

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Stabilizing Iraq will require "new and different actions" to improve security and political reconciliation, the Navy admiral poised to lead American forces in the Middle East said Tuesday.

Adm. William Fallon, at his confirmation hearing, also told the Senate Armed Services Committee that it may be time to "redefine the goals" in Iraq. He also said he believes Iran would like to limit America's influence in the region.

"I believe the situation in Iraq can be turned around, but time is short," he said.

Fallon, 62, who currently is commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, said he saw a need for a comprehensive approach to Iraq, including economic and political actions to resolve a problem that requires more than military force.

"What we have been doing has not been working," he said. "We have got to be doing, it seems to me, something different."

Pelosi: 'We saw no evidence' of efforts to stabilize Iraq

At a news conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a leading critic of the administration's approach in Iraq, said that on a recent visit her delegation saw no sign that U.S. efforts were moving ahead with urgency.

"We went with the hope and expectation that what we would see in Iraq was some coordinated effort to have political solutions, to relieve the civil strife and violence there, and diplomatic efforts to bring stability to the region," the California Democrat said. "We saw no evidence of either, sadly."

Rejecting Bush's troop buildup, Pelosi called for changing U.S. troops' mission from one focused mainly on combat to a combination of training Iraqi forces, protecting Iraq's borders and fighting terrorists.

Fallon said that "we probably erred in our assessment" of the Iraqi government's ability to rebuild its society and establish a peaceful order after the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein nearly four years ago.

"One of the things in the back of my mind that I'd like to get answered is to meet with the people that have been working this issue -- particularly our ambassadors, our diplomats -- to get an assessment of what's realistic and what's practical," Fallon said.

"And maybe we ought to redefine the goals here a bit and do something that's more realistic in terms of getting some progress and then maybe take on the other things later," he added.

He made similar remarks that suggested an effort to tamp down expectations of sudden success in Baghdad as a result of Bush's troop buildup.

"I think that we would probably be wise to temper our expectations here, that the likelihood that Iraq is suddenly going to turn into something that looks close to what we enjoy here in this country is going to be a long time coming," Fallon said.

Negroponte: Syria allowing fighters into Iraq

In addition Tuesday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee convened a hearing to consider the nomination of John Negroponte, the first director of national intelligence, to become deputy secretary of state.

Negroponte told the panel that Syria is allowing 40 to 75 foreign fighters to cross its border into Iraq each month and repeated the charge that Iran is providing lethal help to insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.

Negroponte gave only mild endorsement to the administration's diplomatic hands-off policy toward Damascus and Tehran. Negroponte would lead the department's Iraq policy if confirmed.

Fallon and Negroponte's confirmations were not expected to rouse Senate protests, despite bitter opposition in Congress to Bush's plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq.

Public sentiment has turned strongly against a war that has dragged on for nearly four years with more than 3,000 American dead and violence unabated by insurgents and sectarian militias.

Bush nominated Fallon to replace Army Gen. John Abizaid, who is retiring after nearly four years as commander of Central Command.

Several senators asked Fallon his views on Iran, which the Bush administration accuses of meddling in Iraq's affairs and supplying weapons for use by insurgents against American and Iraqi soldiers.

Fallon: Iran knows U.S. strike capacity

Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-North Carolina, asked what he thinks are the intentions of the Iranian government, with regard to security in the Gulf region.

"They are posturing themselves with the capability to attempt to deny us the ability to operate in this vicinity," Fallon said, adding that there is room for diplomatic efforts with Iran because it also has an economic stake in keeping open the commercial shipping lanes of the Gulf.

"They are aware of our strike capabilities," he added, and are looking for ways to either neutralize those U.S. capabilities or to keep U.S. forces at bay.

Fallon said he has not been ordered to update the Pentagon's contingency plans for war with Iran.

Asked by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, chairman of the committee, whether the flow of additional U.S. troops would be tied to progress by the Iraqis on political and other commitments they made to Bush, Fallon said he had not yet studied the plans in detail, given his continuing responsibilities as Pacific Command chief.

"I'm surprised you don't have that understanding going in, frankly," Levin said.

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, the senior Republican on the committee, said he hoped Fallon intended to give Congress his unvarnished view of conditions in Iraq and elsewhere in his Central Command region.

"Too often administration officials came before this committee and the American people and painted a rosy scenario when it was not there," McCain said, referring to Iraq.

"We need candid assessments, and you'll get them from me," Fallon said.

Some were surprised when Bush chose Fallon to lead Central Command, in light of the protracted land wars it is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. He would be the first Navy admiral to hold the position.

The Central Command is responsible for U.S. military operations and relations in 27 countries stretching from the Horn of Africa, through the Middle East to Central Asia, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, who recently returned from a trip to the region, said only another 200,000 or 300,000 U.S. troops would make a substantial difference in Iraq.

Last Friday the Senate approved, 81-0, Bush's nomination of Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus to be the senior U.S. commander in Iraq. Petraeus, who is replacing Gen. George Casey, would report to Fallon.

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Protesters Feel "Obligation" To Stop War

(CBS/AP) Convinced this is their moment, tens of thousands marched Saturday in an anti-war demonstration linking military families, ordinary people and an icon of the Vietnam protest movement in a spirited call to get out of Iraq.

Celebrities, a half-dozen lawmakers and protesters from distant states rallied in the capital under a sunny sky, seizing an opportunity to press their cause with a Congress restive on the war and a country that has turned against the conflict.

Marching with them was Jane Fonda, in what she said was her first anti-war demonstration in 34 years.

"Silence is no longer an option," Fonda said to cheers from the stage on the National Mall. The actress once derided as "Hanoi Jane" by conservatives for her stance on Vietnam said she had held back from activism so as not to be a distraction for the Iraq anti-war movement, but needed to speak out now.

The rally on the Mall unfolded peacefully, although about 300 protesters tried to rush the Capitol, running up the grassy lawn to the front of the building. Police on motorcycles tried to stop them, scuffling with some and barricading entrances.

Protesters chanted "Our Congress" as their numbers grew and police faced off against them. Demonstrators later joined the masses marching from the Mall, halfway around Capitol Hill and back.

United for Peace and Justice, a coalition group sponsoring the protest, had hoped 100,000 would come. Police, who no longer give official estimates, said privately the crowd was smaller than that.

CBS News correspondent Joie Chen reported march organizers say numbers aren't what is going to make this particular rally notable.

"They're trying to send a message to Democrats instead of to the White House," Chen said, specifically Democrats who want to stand up against the president but fear being painted as unsupportive of military personnel. "That's been a difficult balance for them to reach," she said.

At the rally, 12-year-old Moriah Arnold stood on her toes to reach the microphone and tell the crowd: "Now we know our leaders either lied to us or hid the truth. Because of our actions, the rest of the world sees us as a bully and a liar."

The sixth-grader from Harvard, Mass., organized a petition drive at her school against the war that has killed more than 3,000 U.S. service-members.

More Hollywood celebrities showed up at the demonstration than buttoned-down Washington typically sees in a month.

Actor Sean Penn said lawmakers will pay a price in the 2008 elections if they do not take firmer action than to pass a nonbinding resolution against the war, the course Congress is now taking.

"If they don't stand up and make a resolution as binding as the death toll, we're not going to be behind those politicians," he said. Actors Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins also spoke.

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US soldier jailed for Iraq deaths

A US soldier has been jailed for 18 years for his part in the murder of three Iraqi detainees in May of 2006.

Pfc Corey Clagett, 22, who is the third soldier to plead guilty in connection with the case, made the plea in a deal with military prosecutors.

The soldiers originally claimed they had killed three men trying to escape.

A fourth soldier from the 101st Airborne Division, squad leader Staff Sgt Raymond Girouard, is due to face court-martial in the coming months.

Under the deal, Clagett admitted charges of murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

He admitted to killing one of the victims and participating in the murder of the other two.

Earlier this month another member of the group, Spc William Hunsaker, was jailed for 18 years after pleading guilty to murder.

Another soldier has admitted aggravated assault with a dangerous weapon and was jailed for nine months.

During his trial, Hunsaker testified that Sgt Girouard gave an order to kill the victims and make it look as if they had been fleeing.

"He told us to cut the zip ties [restraining the men], tell them to run and shoot them. I went out and did just that," he told the court.

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General: "Tough Days" Ahead In Iraq

(CBS/AP) The Army general who would carry out President George W. Bush's U.S. troop buildup in Iraq urged patience Tuesday and predicted "tough days" ahead.

"None of this will be rapid," Lt. Gen. David Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "The way ahead will be neither quick nor easy. There undoubtedly will be tough days."

Many in Congress, including some Republicans, oppose Mr. Bush's plan, which would send an extra 21,500 U.S. troops to Iraq as part of a revised strategy for quelling sectarian violence in Baghdad and stabilizing the country. Before the buildup began in recent days, there were 132,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

Mr. Bush nominated Petraeus to replace Army Gen. George Casey as the senior American commander in Iraq. Petraeus told the committee he had spoken to Casey in recent days and that Casey said he favored Mr. Bush's troop buildup.

According to a recent CBS News poll, two-thirds of Americans remain opposed to the president's plan for sending additional U.S. troops to Iraq. And 72 percent believe he should seek congressional approval for the troop increase.

Sen. Carl Levin, a Democrat, chairman of the committee and a leading critic of Mr. Bush's Iraq policy, pressed Petraeus on whether the flow of additional U.S. troops could be halted in midstream if the Iraqi government failed to meet its commitment to provide thousands more Iraqi troops.

"It could," Petraeus replied. Earlier he said there were no "specific conditions" the Iraqis must meet in order to keep the flow of U.S. forces moving. The last of five additional U.S. brigades are scheduled to arrive in the Iraqi capital in May; the first got there just days ago.

Petraeus said that in the event the Iraqis did not meet their commitments, he would consult with Defense Secretary Robert Gates on how to respond.

In his opening statement, Petraeus, 54, painted a grim picture of conditions in Iraq.

"The situation in Iraq is dire," he said. "The stakes are high. There are no easy choices. The way ahead will be very hard. ... But hard is not hopeless."

Famous for challenging 20-year-old solders to push-up contests and winning, Petraeus has a nearly perfect resume for the position of commander of multi-national forces in Iraq, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin. He commanded the 101st Airborne in the initial invasion and was in charge of training Iraqi security forces.

Petraeus is considered a shoo-in to win Senate confirmation. Devoted early in the war to trying to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis, Petraeus later wrote the Pentagon manual on how to tackle insurgencies. He also previously supported expanding U.S. forces in the region.

Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the committee and a leading proponent of Mr. Bush's troop buildup plan, asked Petraeus how long he thought the U.S. buildup could be sustained.

"I am keenly aware of the strain" on the Army and Marine Corps, Petraeus said, adding that he welcomes Mr. Bush's proposal to increase the size of the land forces over the coming five years.

Asked by McCain how soon he thought he would know whether the new strategy was working, Petraeus said, "We would have indicators at the least during the late summer." As currently planned, he said, the last of the five additional U.S. Army brigades would be ready to fight in Baghdad by the end of May.

Several committee members noted that Petraeus recently oversaw the writing of a new Army manual on how to counter an insurgency. Sen. Edward Kennedy asked him why an extra 21,500 troops would make a significant difference.

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Pelosi, White House Clash On Iraq

(CBS/AP) In a critique the White House labeled as "poisonous," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi charged Friday that President Bush is wading too deeply into Iraq and said it should not be "an obligation of the American people in perpetuity."

Pelosi said the president "has dug a hole so deep he can't even see the light on this. It's a tragedy. It's a stark blunder."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino retorted that Pelosi's comments were "poisonous," referring to the portion of Pelosi's statement that asserted Bush is rushing new troops there and betting that Congress won't cut off funds once they're in battle.

"It's certainly not in keeping with the bipartisan spirit and civility that the Democrats pledged and that we looked forward to," Perino said. "Speaker Pelosi was arguing in essence that the president is putting young men and women in harm's way for tactical political reasons. She's questioning his motivations rather than questioning his policies."

Perino also called it a mockery of national unity for Pelosi to suggest the conflict in Iraq is the president's war, CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller reports.

Democratic support is building around a resolution that would rebuff Mr. Bush's plans for more troops to Iraq, and more Republicans are looking for ways to sign on to the measure.

As the White House scrambled to secure the dwindling backers of President Bush's war policies on Capitol Hill, Republican Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon signaled that a simple wording change could persuade him to join the Democrats.

Pelosi said House Democrats would back a Senate Democratic resolution declaring that the troop increase is "not in the national interest of the United States." Senate leaders expect to begin action on the nonbinding measure next Wednesday.

Senate Democrats, backed by two Republicans, unveiled legislation Wednesday that criticized President Bush's decision. "It is not in the national interest of the United States to deepen its military involvement in Iraq, particularly by escalating the United States military force presence in Iraq," the nonbinding Senate measure states.

Smith said his reluctance to back the resolution hinged on the word "escalating," which he said is a partisan term that unnecessarily inflames the issue. He said he is working with Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Ben Nelson, D-Neb. on a "constructive, nonpartisan resolution that expresses the opposition of the Senate to the surge."

Pelosi's attack came as Lee Hamilton, the Democratic co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, told a House panel that the president's plan to deploy 21,500 additional troops to secure Baghdad and Anbar province would delay progress in training Iraqi security forces.

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group recommended removing U.S. combat troops by early next year and changing the U.S. mission from security to training and logistical support of Iraqi troops.

"You delay the date of completion of the training mission. You delay the date of handing responsibility to the Iraqis. You delay the date of departure of U.S. troops" from the region, Hamilton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the buildup.

President Bush and senior administration officials have been laboring to limit Republican defections.

"He said, 'If you can help us out, I really appreciate your help,"' Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., said after a White House meeting with Mr. Bush.

Republican lawmakers in both houses are expected to draft alternative legislation, in part to give party members a measure to support rather than merely oppose what Democrats draft. Officials said one possibility under discussion is an alternative that supports the troop increase as long as the Iraqi government meets certain conditions.

Administration supporters have expressed concerns the president faces a bipartisan repudiation of significant proportions.

So far, Republican Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine have said they back the resolution.

Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., echoed Smith's opposition to the troop increase but also said "there are some things in the resolution I don't agree with, and so we're kind of looking at language."

Even a Republican senator who won't speak out against the president for fear it will hurt the war effort told CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer there is virtually no enthusiasm among Senate Republicans for the plan.

With the exception of Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, the senator said almost no one among Republican senators is enthusiastic about enlarging the force.

Mr. Bush's meeting with lawmakers was his third session in as many days as he struggles to build support for an increase in troops for a war that is opposed by the public and played a role in Republican setbacks in last fall's elections. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley traveled to the Capitol to meet with House Republicans.

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Kennedy warns Bush on Iraq troops

US Senator Edward Kennedy has launched a bid to prevent President George W Bush sending more troops to Iraq.

The veteran Democratic Party senator said he would propose legislation requiring congressional approval for any further deployment of US troops.

Committing more troops to Iraq would be "an immense new mistake", he said.

Mr Bush is expected to set out his new strategy for Iraq on Wednesday - a strategy that could include an increase of up to 20,000 troops.

Senator Kennedy - a long-standing opponent of the war - said Democrats had to act to prevent an escalation of troops in Iraq.

"The best immediate way to support our troops is by refusing to inject more and more of them into the cauldron of a civil war that can be resolved only by the people and government of Iraq," he said.

The American people had sent a clear message in the November mid-terms that they wanted a change of course in Iraq, he said.

"President Bush should not be permitted to escalate the war further, and send an even larger number of our troops into harm's way, without a clear and specific new authorisation from Congress."

'Significant hurdles'

Democrats control Congress for the first time in 12 years and House leader Nancy Pelosi warned Mr Bush on Monday that he would have to justify any plans to boost troop levels in Iraq.

Senator Kennedy's comments came as a poll showed that 61% of Americans opposed a troop increase.

Approval of Mr Bush's handling of Iraq stood at a new low of 26%, the USA Today/Gallup poll showed.

The BBC's Justin Webb in Washington says that Senator Kennedy's effort will get a far better hearing in Congress than it would have done when the Republicans were in charge but it faces significant hurdles.

Many Democrats will feel queasy about voting to interfere in military matters, particularly if the newly-appointed commanders in Iraq say they need the reinforcements, our correspondent says.

Still, Senator Kennedy feels that most Americans are coming round to his way of thinking and he may well be right, he says.

Mr Bush is due to speak in Washington at 2100 local time on Wednesday (0200 GMT Thursday).

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'Peace mom' turns attention to Guantanamo

HAVANA, Cuba (AP) -- American "peace mom" Cindy Sheehan called for the closure of the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as she and other activists arrived in Cuba on Saturday to draw attention to the nearly 400 terror suspects held at the remote site.

Sheehan is among 12 human rights and anti-war activists who will travel across this Caribbean island next week, arriving at the main gate of the Guantanamo base in eastern Cuba on Thursday -- five years after the first prisoners were flown in.

"Anyone who knows me knows that I am not afraid of anything," Sheehan said when asked about the possibility of U.S. sanctions for traveling to communist-run Cuba, which remains under an American trade embargo.

"What is more important is the inhumanity that my government is perpetrating at Guantanamo," she told reporters.

Sheehan, 49, of Vacaville, California, became an anti-war activist known as the "peace mom" after losing her 24-year-old son, Casey, in Iraq in April 2004.

She drew international attention after camping outside President Bush's Texas ranch to protest the war in Iraq, and has been arrested numerous times for trespassing.

Sheehan arrived in Havana early Saturday evening with trip organizer Medea Benjamin of the California nonprofit groups Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace.

Benjamin said group members believed they were exempt from U.S. travel restrictions on Cuba because they were traveling as professional human rights activists who will attend a daylong international conference in the Cuban city of Guantanamo on Wednesday, the eve of their protest.

The U.S. military still holds about 395 men on suspicion of links to al Qaeda or the Taliban, including about 85 who have been cleared to be released or transferred to other countries.

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Iraq Plan Seeks Up To 20,000 More Troops

(CBS/AP) CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports Defense Secretary Robert Gates has recommended that President Bush order an immediate buildup of 10,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, with an option of doubling that to 20,000 by spring.

The plan is known as "Five Plus Two," sending five Army brigades into Baghdad plus two Marine battalions into western Iraq. Two of the Army brigades would go into Baghdad starting in January, with the other three on call.

Meanwhile, one day after taking control of Congress, the new Democratic leaders sent a blunt message to the president Friday: his new strategy should focus on bringing U.S. forces home, rather than the "surge" in troops he's considering.

In a letter sent to Mr. Bush on Friday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged him to begin pulling troops out of Iraq in four to six months. They also asked the president to begin shifting the mission of U.S. forces there from combat to training and logistical support of the Iraqis.

The Democrats' criticism of a troop buildup was not new. But the letter underscored a new reality for Mr. Bush: With the new congressional leadership, his Iraq policy will be challenged at every turn by lawmakers.

"Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain," Pelosi, D-Calif., and Reid, D-Nev., wrote a day after their party took control of Capitol Hill.

"We are well past the point of more troops for Iraq," they said.

But Martin reports that one of the plan's architects, retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, has said the insurgency can't be defeated without first protecting Iraqi citizens from violence.

"We have never had a strategy to defeat the insurgency," Keane says. "And if we had a strategy to defeat the insurgency, then the No. 1 military objective would have been protect and support the population. That is what this plan is all about."

There have been temporary buildups before to protect Iraqis going to the polls to vote, but this would be different. The new plan would need to last a year and a-half.

"What is different is you bring in a 24/7 force and they stay in those neighborhoods and they do not go back to their bases," Keane explains. "They stay in the neighborhoods and that force is U.S. and Iraqi."

Defense Secretary Gates made an unannounced visit Friday to the headquarters of the U.S. central command in Florida, which has overall control of the war in Iraq and where he is installing new commanders.

To Frederick Kagan, another architect of the plan, the change is long overdue.

"For too long, I think the administration has allowed military leadership that was clearly on the wrong track to continue driving in the wrong direction," Kagan says.

The president on Friday nominated Adm. William Fallon, described by people who have worked for him as "caustic," "arrogant" and an "SOB," to take over central command from Gen. John Abizaid. Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, perhaps the most controversial officer in the Army because of his "Type A" personality and what many view as his too-cozy relationship with the media, will replace Gen. George Casey as top American general in Iraq. Both men must be approved by the Senate.

Both Abizaid and Casey have expressed qualms in recent weeks about boosting U.S. forces in Iraq. Abizaid said an increase of 20,000 could not be sustained for long by the overburdened American military, and Casey said such a boost should be used only to advance U.S. strategic goals.

Author Rick Atkinson spent two months with Petraeus during the initial invasion of Iraq.

According to Atkinson, "He [Petraeus] said at one point, perhaps a week into the war, 'Tell me how this ends. Tell me how this ends.' Now, there's an ironic inflection when he says this, but it was the right question. It's the right question four years later."

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Pentagon Prepares For Iraq Troop Surge

(CBS/AP) Military commanders have told President Bush they are prepared to execute a troop surge that would put about 9,000 soldiers and Marines into Iraq with another 11,000 on alert outside the country, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin.

Two Army brigades ¡¦about 7,500 troops ¡¦would go into Baghdad. Two Marine battalions ¡¦about 1,500 troops ¡¦would be sent into the western province of al Anbar, heartland of the insurgency, although the commandant of the Marine Corps was recently quoted as saying he didn't see a need for more battalions.

Another Army brigade would be on standby in Kuwait, with two more on standby in the U.S.

Martin reports that Pentagon officials are certain the president will order a troop surge, but they caution the details could change between now and the time he unveils his new Iraq strategy next week.

Meanwhile, four Americans and an Austrian abducted in November in southern Iraq spoke briefly and appeared uninjured in a video believed to have been recorded nearly two weeks ago and delivered Wednesday to The Associated Press.

The men ¡¦security contractors for the Crescent Security Group based in Kuwait ¡¦appeared separately on the edited video, and three of them said they were being treated well. They were kidnapped Nov. 16 when suspected militiamen in Iraqi police uniforms ambushed a convoy of trucks being escorted by Crescent Security on a highway near the southern border city of Safwan.

"My name is John R. Young," one captive in a blue and white sweat suit said in the video. "I'm 44 years old. I'm from Kansas City, Missouri. The date is 21 December, 2006. I'm well, my friends are well, we've been treated well."

Another man identified himself as Jon Cote of Buffalo, N.Y. Fidgeting and appearing uncomfortable, he said: "I can't be released until the prisoners from the American jails and the British jails are released."

The captives were dressed in civilian clothes, and spoke in a flat, impassive tone. Several had their hands folded in their laps.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Lou Fintor said it was aware a second tape of the captives was circulating but declined to comment further.

The kidnappers were not seen or heard in the video, which lasted one minute and 40 seconds and was digitally stamped with the dates Dec. 21 and Dec. 22, 2006. It began with an image of a Quran and a map of Iraq over a green background, changing to a title that read, "The National Islamic Resistance in Iraq. The Furkan Brigades. The captivity operation was done in the Safwan district in Basra."

Safwan is a Sunni Arab city in a predominantly Shiite area. It was unclear whether the kidnappers were holding the contractors to put political pressure on American-led occupation forces and the U.S.-backed Iraqi government, or were seeking a ransom. U.S.-led forces have conducted raids in an effort to rescue the men.

Four of the captives were seen sitting alone and cross-legged on a carpet, with a black sheet hanging behind them. The video only showed the upper body of the fifth man, who identified himself as Paul Johnson Reuben of Buffalo, Minn., near Minneapolis. Reuben said the date is Dec. 22, 2006, and that he wanted his family to know he was being treated well.

Another man with a beard and a mustache identified himself as Bert Nussbaumer, an Austrian citizen working for Crescent Security.

Another captive identified himself as Josh Munz, 23, of Redding, Calif.

"I joined the Marine Corps in 2001, and I got out in 2005," Munz says. "After I got out of the Marine Corps, I went to work in the construction business, building swimming pools. After that, in July of 2006, I started working for Crescent Security out of Kuwait, and I don't know how long I've been here doing this, but today is December 21, 2006."

Another video of the captives surfaced last week and was reported by McClatchy Newspapers. That video was believed to have been recorded two weeks after the men were kidnapped.

Reuben's mother, Johnnie, was happy to hear her son apparently recorded another video on Dec. 22. "That's recent, that's more recent. That makes me more hopeful," she said Wednesday.

She said her faith in God has helped to get her through the difficult last few weeks since her son was reported missing.

"I pray a lot, I read the Bible and talk to God," Reuben said. "I believe Paul is alive. He may be looking peaked and he may be under the weather, but then I remember his internal fortitude, and his own belief in God."

In Vienna, Austria's Foreign Ministry said it was trying to get a copy of the video to confirm its authenticity, spokeswoman Astrid Harz said.

Harz said the parents of Nussbaumer, 25, had been informed about the existence of the video and its contents.

Last week, an audiotape containing a statement from Nussbaumer appeared to be authentic, the Foreign Ministry said after an expert analysis.

---

U.S. Military Death Toll Hits 3,000

(CBS/AP) American deaths in the Iraq war reached the sobering milestone of 3,000 on Sunday even as the Bush administration sought to overhaul its strategy for an unpopular conflict that shows little sign of abating.

The latest death came during one of the most violent periods during which the Pentagon says hate and revenge killings between Iraq's sects are now a bigger security problem than ever.

The death of a Texas soldier, announced Sunday by the Pentagon, raised the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq to at least 3,000, according to an Associated Press count, since the war began in March 2003.

Spc. Dustin R. Donica, 19, of Spring, Texas, was killed by small arms fire in Baghdad late last week. The announcement caps the deadliest month for U.S. forces in Iraq in the past year.

"The hardest decision the president ever has to make is to send our men and women into harm's way," said White House Deputy Press Secretary Scott Stanzel, with Mr. Bush in Crawford, Texas. "The president believes that every life is precious and grieves for each one that is lost. He will ensure their sacrifice was not made in vain."

In other developments:

Protesting mom Cindy Sheehan arrested at Bush ranch

CRAWFORD, Texas (CNN) -- Anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan was arrested Thursday afternoon outside President Bush's ranch, according to a law enforcement official.

Sheehan, who in the past has camped out for weeks in protest outside the ranch in Crawford, Texas, was arrested for blocking the road leading to the property, Texas Department of Public Safety's Tela Mange told CNN.

Four others were also arrested after law enforcement officials asked the group to move and they refused, Mange said.

"[Sheehan] told us if you want us to get out of the road, you're going to have to arrest us," Mange said. "So we did."

The protesters lay in the road about 20 minutes before being taken into custody, she said.

Sheehan and the others were taken to the McLennan County Sheriff's Department, booked and jailed.

It's not known if any of the protesters made bail.

Sheehan and the others are charged with obstructing a highway, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $2,000 fine and six months in jail, Mange said.

Mange said Vice President Dick Cheney's motorcade was delayed leaving the ranch while officers removed the protesters.

Sheehan's 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed in Iraq in 2004.

She has been arrested previously. She and three other women were convicted earlier this month in New York of trespassing, The Associated Press reported.

They had attempted in March 2005 to deliver an anti-Iraq war petition to the United Nations U.S. Mission and ignored signals to disperse, the AP said.

The four were acquitted of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and obstructing government administration. The Manhattan judge fined them $95 and gave them a conditional discharge.

That meant that if any of the women were arrested again they could face a tougher sentence.

Biden wants Rice to testify on Iraq policy

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. Joseph Biden, the incoming chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he has invited Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify during three weeks of hearings in January about the Iraq war.

Biden, a Delaware Democrat, told reporters Tuesday that the proponents of different plans for Iraq will be invited to the hearings that are to begin on January 9.

He also will call former secretaries of state, academics, Iraq Study Group members and other witnesses from outside the administration as the committee examines various approaches to the war.

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group, comprising five Democrats and five Republicans, recommended this month that the United States pull out of Iraq by 2008.

Rice has not announced whether she will appear before the committee, primarily because President Bush has not announced his plans regarding Iraq.

Bush is expected to tell the nation in January what changes in strategy or policy he intends to make.

Biden said the president has not yet reached out to Capitol Hill leaders to discuss ideas.

Biden said he opposes adding troops in Iraq. The Iraq Study Group recommended adding troops to the 140,000 U.S. in the country. And there have been signs that the administration favors putting more troops in Baghdad as a way to curb the escalating violence there.

On Tuesday, smoke engulfed Baghdad after three car bombs exploded at a busy intersection.

Biden said a "troop surge" will not work.

"We should be drawing down troops gradually, forcing the Iraqis to meet their own needs to end this civil war by a political agreement," Biden said Tuesday on CNN's "American Morning."

Biden has said he favors partitioning Iraq, something the Iraq Study Group and military leaders oppose.

Bush and Iraq Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki have said they agree that Iraq should not be partitioned along sectarian lines into semi-autonomous regions for the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites.

Biden Vows To Fight Troop Surge In Iraq

(CBS/AP) Incoming Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joseph Biden, a potential Democratic presidential candidate, said Tuesday he would oppose any effort by President Bush to increase U.S troops in Iraq as part of a new war strategy.

Biden also announced he has summoned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify before his committee next month to discuss the administration's new plan for Iraq as soon as it is made public.

The Delaware Democrat took advantage of a quiet holiday week to draw attention to his own proposal for Iraq, which includes beginning a drawdown of U.S. forces and finding a political settlement among the various ethnic factions there.

President Bush seems to be leaning toward a so-called "surge" of perhaps 30,000 more troops. Biden opposes that and demands that Iraqis come up with their own political solution, reports CBS News correspondent Thalia Assuras.

"I just think it's the absolute wrong strategy," Biden said Tuesday of an increase in troops.

Biden has spoken candidly of his desire to run for president and has made repeated visits in the past year to early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire. But he is trying to find room on a crowded stage of Democratic contenders that includes Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois.

Biden warned that congressional Republicans ¡¦not Democrats ¡¦would suffer in the 2008 elections if they do not join him in speaking out against Bush and opposing troop increases in Iraq.

"Absent some profound political announcement . . . I can't imagine there being an overwhelming, even significant support for the president's position," he told reporters during a telephone conference call Tuesday.

If the violence continues two years from now, "every one of those Republican senators ¡¦and there's 21 of them up for re- election ¡¦knows that that is likely to spell his or her doom," Biden said.

Bush has not announced whether he plans to increase the number of troops in Iraq, but administration officials say that option is among several being considered. Also, Bush last week said he wants to expand the size of the Army and Marine Corps to lessen the strain on ground forces.

The move was seen by many military experts as laying the groundwork to announce early next month a planned surge in forces in Iraq.

Military experts and some ground commanders are skeptical that a surge in ground forces could work to settle the violence in Iraq. Those concerns were expressed in a new bipartisan report on Iraq.

"Sustained increases in U.S. troop levels would not solve the fundamental cause of violence in Iraq, which is the absence of national reconciliation," the Iraq Study Group concluded.

But others, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., ¡¦another possible presidential contender ¡¦and experts at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, say a surge in forces could hold off the insurgency long enough to build up the Iraqi security forces and form a political settlement.

Biden, who will head the Foreign Relations Committee when Democrats take control of Congress next month, said he wants to hear from Rice on Jan. 9. The senator said she has agreed to testify, but only after Bush announces his plan on Iraq.

The president is expected to deliver a speech on Iraq sometime before his State of the Union address on Jan. 23.

Biden said he hopes the hearings will generate bipartisan consensus in Congress that will pressure the president to abandon talk of increasing troop levels in Iraq. There are currently an estimated 140,000 troops in the country.

"Even with the surge of troops, in a city of 6 million people you're talking about a ratio that would still be roughly above one to 100," Biden said of Baghdad. "It's bound to draw down support that we need in other parts of Iraq, including Anbar province."

Biden also said he believes Democrats' political vulnerability on Iraq is limited.

"I think we'll only have to accept responsibility for the war if we remain silent," he said.

Biden said he delivered this message in a recent meeting at the White House, where he told Bush: "Mr. President, this is your war."

Conn. Senator Calls For Troop Withdrawal

(AP) Sen. Chris Dodd, a Democrat who is considering a run for the White House, argued in a column in an Iowa newspaper Sunday for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

Iowa is home to the first contest for the Democratic nomination for president.

In an op-ed in The Des Moines Register, the Connecticut lawmaker wrote: "The time has come for the United States to begin the process of getting our troops out of Iraq."

Dodd, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, argued in the column that the U.S. strategy in Iraq "...makes no sense. It never really did. It is as bad in person as it appears on television."

Appearing on ABC's This Week on Sunday, Dodd said that he is "trying to raise the necessary resources" for a possible run for the White House and whether he will formally declare is "something I'll evaluate over the next couple of weeks."

Dodd, who also visited Syria on his trip to the Middle East, responded to remarks by White House Press Secretary Tony Snow that trips by members of Congress to the country amount to a "PR victory" for the leadership there.

The senator said in order to create stability in Iraq, "the job isn't to go to garden spots" it is to go to "hot spots."

Dodd and Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., who also recently returned from Iraq, and appeared with his Senate colleague on the news show, illustrated the partisan split over what should be done in Iraq.

The Democrat argued for dialogue with nations like Syria which will help lead to a political solution.

Graham argued that more troops are needed to stabilize Iraq and allow for a political solution to become possible.

"It's not the lack of dialogue that's the problem with Syria," Graham said, "it's the actions of the Syrian government."

8 Marines face charges in Haditha killings

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Four Marines have been charged with murder in the 2005 killings of 24 Iraqi civilians, and four officers are accused of failing to investigate and report the deaths properly, the Marine Corps announced Thursday.

A Marine investigation into the killings found initial reports -- including a press release that blamed the civilian deaths on a roadside bomb -- were "inaccurate and untimely," Marine Col. Stewart Navarre told reporters.

"We now know with certainty the press release was incorrect, and that none of the civilians were killed by the IED," Navarre said.

Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz and Lance Cpls. Justin Sharratt and Stephen Tatum have been charged with unpremeditated murder in the civilian deaths. Wuterich also is charged with making a false official statement and trying to get another Marine to make a false statement.

Haditha, located along the Euphrates River, was the target of previous Marine campaigns aimed at rooting out insurgents. Wuterich was leading a patrol through the city on November 19, 2005, when the unit was hit by a roadside bomb that killed one of its members.

The service launched its investigation in March, after an Iraqi human rights group raised allegations that the Marines had gone on a house-to-house rampage after the bombing.

None of the men charged Thursday will be held in the brig before trial, Navarre said.

Neal Puckett, one of Wuterich's attorneys, told reporters Wuterich was on two weeks' leave with his family at Camp Pendleton. His wife, Marisol, is expecting a baby any day. He has previously denied wrongdoing, and specifically denies allegations that he asked Dela Cruz to lie, Puckett said.

According to a Time magazine report, the Marines said they faced threats from the houses where the Iraqi civilians were killed and responded with appropriate force. (Read the Time magazine report on Haditha)

"There's no question that people died that day, innocent civilians died that day," Puckett said. "But Staff Sgt. Wuterich maintains, and quite frankly I believe, that they did everything they were supposed to do that day in protecting themselves."

Sharratt's attorney, Gary Myers, told CNN, "Our view has been and continues to be that these were combat-related deaths."

Wuterich's detachment was part of Kilo Company, from the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, based at Camp Pendleton. Their battalion commander, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, "wrongfully failed to accurately report and thoroughly investigate a possible, suspected, or alleged violation of the law of war by Marines under his command," the Marines announced.

Chessani has been charged with one count of violating a lawful order and two counts of dereliction of duty. Three other officers -- Capt. Randy Stone, Capt. Lucas McConnell and 1st Lt. Andrew Grayson -- also face charges in the case: Grayson is charged with obstruction of justice, dereliction of duty and making a false statement; McConnell and Stone are charged with dereliction of duty; and Stone faces an additional count of violating a lawful order.

In addition to the murder charges, which carry a possible life sentence, Dela Cruz is charged with making a false statement and Tatum is charged with negligent homicide and assault.

If convicted, the accused officers face sentences ranging from administrative punishment, such as loss of rank and pay, to prison terms of up to five years for obstruction of justice.

Although more than a year has passed since the raid, Navarre defended the pace of the investigation.

"The investigations and the referral of charges have been done as quickly as possible, but no quicker -- no slower, no faster," he said. "The intent is to move through the process as quickly as we can, making sure that we take the necessary time to ensure a complete, full, impartial execution of the process."

Wuterich has sued anti-war congressman John Murtha for libel, accusing the Pennsylvania Democrat and former Marine colonel of falsely accusing the Marines of killing civilians in "cold blood." Puckett said Thursday that if that were true, the men would have been charged with premeditated murder.

Bush Plans To Expand Military

(CBS/AP) President Bush, working to recraft his strategy in Iraq, said Tuesday that he plans to increase the size of the U.S. military so it can fight a long-term war against terrorism.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Bush said he has asked his new defense chief, Robert Gates, to report back to him with a plan to increase ground forces. The president did not say how many troops might be added, but said he agreed with officials in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill that the current military is being stretched too thin to deal with demands of fighting terrorism.

"I'm inclined to believe that we do need to increase our troops ¡¦the Army, the Marines," Bush said in the Oval Office session. "And I talked about this to Secretary Gates and he is going to spend some time talking to the folks in the building, come back with a recommendation to me about how to proceed forward on this idea."

Top generals have expressed concern that even temporarily shipping thousands of more troops would be largely ineffective in the absence of bold new political and economic steps, and that it would leave the already stretched Army and Marines Corps even thinner once the surge ended.

They also worry that it feeds a perception that the strife and chaos in Iraq is mainly a military problem; in their view it is largely political, fed by economic distress.

It will take time to train and recruit more soldiers, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin. Army chief of staff General Pete Schoomaker estimates the army could increase its current number of 507,000 by at most 7,000 a year. And it will also cost a lot of money ¡¦those additional 7,000 soldiers would cost about $840 million a year.

Bush said he has not yet made a decision about a new strategy for Iraq, which he is expected to announce next month. He said he was waiting for Gates to return from his expected trip to Iraq to get a firsthand look at the situation.

"I need to talk to him when he gets back," the president said. "I've got more consultations to do with the national security team, which will be consulting with other folks. And I'm going to take my time to make sure that the policy, when it comes out, the American people will see that we ... have got a new way forward."

Bush said his decision to increase the size of the armed forces was in response not just to the war in Iraq, but to the broader struggle against Islamic extremists around the globe.

"It is an accurate reflection that this ideological war we're in is going to last for a while and that we're going to need a military that's capable of being able to sustain our efforts and to help us achieve peace," he said.

Gates: Failure in Iraq would 'haunt' U.S.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Robert Gates assumed the helm at the Pentagon on Monday, saying Iraq is his top priority and warning that failure there would be a "calamity" that would haunt the United States for many years.

"All of us want to find a way to bring America's sons and daughters home again," Gates said after taking the oath of office as defense secretary from Vice President Dick Cheney at a Pentagon ceremony. "But as the president has made clear, we simply cannot afford to fail in the Middle East. Failure in Iraq at this juncture would be a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility, and endanger Americans for decades to come."

He takes office as Bush conducts a wide-ranging review of his approach to the more than 3-year-old Iraq conflict. The fighting, teetering on the edge of a civil war between sects, has seen more than 2,940 Americans die at a cost to U.S. taxpayers exceeding $300 billion.

Officials say the options Bush is studying run from a short-term buildup of thousands of more troops to a pullback of U.S. combat units so they can focus on training Iraqis and hunting terrorists. Bush said last week that he would wait until January to announce his new strategy, to give Gates a chance to offer advice.

Gates said he intends to travel to Iraq soon to hear the views of U.S. commanders on how to improve the situation, "unvarnished and straight from the shoulder." The remarks seemed to contrast with critics' complaints that the man he replaced, Donald H. Rumsfeld, did not listen enough to the advice of the military's top officers.

President Bush called Gates, 63, "the right man" for the multiple challenges the U.S. faces in Iraq and in the global war on terrorism.

"We are a nation at war," Bush said. "And I rely on our secretary of defense to provide me with the best possible advice and to help direct our nation's armed forces as they engage the enemies of freedom around the world. Bob Gates is the right man to take on these challenges. He'll be an outstanding leader for our men and women in uniform."

Gates assumed the job earlier Monday in a private swearing-in ceremony at the White House, replacing Donald H. Rumsfeld.

He took office more than a month after President Bush announced he was switching Pentagon chiefs, saying he wanted "fresh perspective" on the widely unpopular and costly war and acknowledging the current approach was not working well enough. Rumsfeld was a chief architect of the war strategy and still defends the decision to invade in March 2003.

"You have asked for my candor and my honest counsel at this critical moment in our nation's history, and you will get both," Gates said.

He said that since his Senate confirmation earlier this month he has participated in meetings on Iraq at the White House, received briefings at the Pentagon and held in-depth discussions with the president on ways ahead in Iraq.

Challenges abound

Besides the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gates faces other immediate challenges. One is the Army's proposal that it be allowed to grow by tens of thousands of soldiers, given the strains it is enduring from the two wars. Rumsfeld had resisted increasing the size of the Army or the Marine Corps; Gates' view is unknown.

It's not yet clear whether Gates intends to immediately shake up the Pentagon by firing generals or replacing senior civilian officials. He has asked Gordon England, the deputy defense secretary, to remain, but some have already announced their departures, including the top intelligence official, Stephen Cambone.

Gates, who had been president of Texas A&M University since 2002, completed his tenure over the weekend by attending three commencement ceremonies on the College Station campus.

At his confirmation hearing, Gates won plaudits for his candor.

Urged by Sen. Edward Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who is among the most vocal critics of the Iraq war strategy, to "be a standup person" with the courage to push a