Friday, December 12, 2003
US cluster bombs in Iraq
The deaths occurred because the world's most modern military, one determined to minimize civilian casualties, went to war with stockpiles of weapons known to endanger civilians and its own soldiers. The weapons claimed victims in the initial explosions and continued to kill afterward, as Iraqis and U.S. forces accidentally detonated bomblets lying around like small land mines.
A four-month examination by USA TODAY of how cluster bombs were used in the Iraq war found dozens of deaths that were unintended but predictable. Although U.S. forces sought to limit what they call "collateral damage" in the Iraq campaign, they defied international criticism and used nearly 10,800 cluster weapons; their British allies used almost 2,200.
The bomblets packed inside these weapons wiped out Iraqi troop formations and silenced Iraqi artillery. They also killed civilians. These unintentional deaths added to the hostility that has complicated the U.S. occupation. One anti-war group calculates that cluster weapons killed as many as 372 Iraqi civilians. The numbers are impossible to verify: Iraqi hospital records are incomplete, and many Iraqi families buried their dead without reporting their deaths.
In the most comprehensive report on the use of cluster weapons in Iraq, USA TODAY visited Iraqi neighborhoods and interviewed dozens of Iraqi families, U.S. troops, teams clearing unexploded ordnance in Iraq, military analysts and humanitarian groups. The findings:
•The Pentagon presented a misleading picture during the war of the extent to which cluster weapons were being used and of the civilian casualties they were causing. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on April 25, six days before President Bush declared major combat operations over, that the United States had used 1,500 cluster weapons and caused one civilian casualty. It turns out he was referring only to cluster weapons dropped from the air, not those fired by U.S. ground forces.
In fact, the United States used 10,782 cluster weapons, according to the declassified executive summary of a report compiled by U.S. Central Command, which oversaw military operations in Iraq. Centcom sent the figures to the Joint Chiefs in response to queries from USA TODAY and others, but details of the report remain secret.
The attacks also left behind thousands of unexploded bomblets, known as duds, that continued to kill and injure Iraqi civilians weeks after the fighting stopped. U.S. officials say they sought to limit civilian casualties by trying to avoid using cluster munitions. But often alternative weapons were not available or would not have been as effective during the invasion.
•Unexploded U.S. cluster bomblets remain a threat to U.S. forces in Iraq. They have killed or injured at least eight U.S. troops.
More of the USA Today report, plus a statement from Human Rights Watch.
posted by chris at 1:51 PM
"Television is Nasty and Bad"
Italy's mighty television networks are today facing their first nationwide TV viewers' strike.
Under the uncompromising slogan "Television is Nasty and Bad", it aims to tempt at least 400,000 people away from primetime weekend viewing. The strike's logo is made up of the multi-coloured vertical bars shown by an untuned set.
"We want to say to people that there are better ways of spending their free time than to stay home staring at television," said Anna Spreafico, a spokeswoman for Esterni, the Milan cultural association behind the initiative.
The organisers have negotiated discounts with museums, galleries, theatres, bars and restaurants for anyone who turns up between Friday and Sunday carrying a TV remote control, the symbol of mindless telly addiction.
Sez Ms. Spreafico: "If they bring the television set itself, we'll let them in free."
posted by chris at 11:31 AM
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Thursday, December 11, 2003
And this is a surprise?
A Pentagon investigation has found evidence of overcharging and other violations in billions of dollars worth of reconstruction contracts for Iraq that were awarded to Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, military officials said today.
The violations by a Halliburton Company subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root, could involve "potentially tens of millions of dollars" in overcharging for fuel that the company is trucking into Iraq under one of two contracts, said Michael Thibault, deputy director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency. In a draft report, Mr. Thibault said, the agency has recommended that the Army Corps of Engineers seek reimbursement from the company.
A second set of violations, in a second contract with the Army, involve unacceptable delays by the Halliburton subsidiary in providing cost estimates to the government for dozens of separate projects already under way in Iraq, Mr. Thibault said. These violations, for work that includes the construction of food, housing and other facilities for the military, could involve overcharging as well, Mr. Thibault said.
Halliburton, of course, denies all charges.
posted by chris at 6:47 PM
Where exactly is the "yin-yang"?
An e-mail found in a collection of files stolen from Diebold Elections Systems' internal database recommends charging Maryland "out the yin-yang" if the state requires Diebold to add paper printouts to the $73 million voting system it purchased.
The e-mail from "Ken," dated Jan. 3, 2003, discusses a (Baltimore) Sun article about a University of Maryland study of the Diebold system:
"There is an important point that seems to be missed by all these articles: they already bought the system. At this point they are just closing the barn door. Let's just hope that as a company we are smart enough to charge out the yin if they try to change the rules now and legislate voter receipts."
"Ken" later clarifies that he meant "out the yin-yang," adding, "any after-sale changes should be prohibitively expensive."
The e-mail has been cited by advocates of voter-verified receipts, who say estimates of the cost of adding printers -- as much as $20 million statewide -- have been bloated.
Story.
posted by chris at 12:58 PM
Bad timing
President Bush found himself in the awkward position on Wednesday of calling the leaders of France, Germany and Russia to ask them to forgive Iraq's debts, just a day after the Pentagon said it was excluding those countries and others from $18 billion in American-financed Iraqi reconstruction projects.
White House officials were fuming about the timing and the tone of the Pentagon's directive, even while conceding that they had approved the Pentagon policy of limiting contracts to 63 countries that have given the United States political or military aid in Iraq.
Many countries excluded from the list, including close allies like Canada, reacted angrily on Wednesday to the Pentagon action. They were incensed, in part, by the Pentagon's explanation in a memorandum that the restrictions were required "for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States."
No foresight with these people.
posted by chris at 11:45 AM
Sorry, Charlie - you're full of mercury
The federal government plans to warn pregnant women, nursing mothers and even those thinking of getting pregnant to limit their consumption of tuna as part of a broad advisory concerning the dangers of eating fish and shellfish with elevated levels of harmful mercury.
A draft advisory from the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency cautions women of childbearing age as well as young children to limit their intake of tuna and other fish and shellfish to 12 ounces a week, the equivalent of two to three modest meals. Among seafood, tuna ranks second only to shrimp in popularity in the United States.
The government is also advising consumers to mix the types of fish they eat and not to eat any one kind of fish or shellfish more than once a week. The FDA had previously warned pregnant women against eating shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish because they contain unusually high levels of mercury, but until now the agency has not directly addressed concerns about tuna or issued warnings for so large a segment of the population.
The advisory notes that mercury levels in tuna vary, and that tuna steaks and canned albacore tuna generally contain higher levels of mercury than canned light tuna. The document advises pregnant and nursing women: "You can safely include tuna as part of your weekly fish consumption."
But David Acheson, the FDA's medical officer in charge of the issue, said in an interview that it is implicit in the draft document that women at risk should eat no more than four to six ounces of tuna once a week.
Story.
posted by chris at 11:13 AM
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Wednesday, December 10, 2003
You think YOUR gas prices are high?
The United States government is paying the Halliburton Company an average of $2.64 a gallon to import gasoline and other fuel to Iraq from Kuwait, more than twice what others are paying to truck in Kuwaiti fuel, government documents show.
Halliburton, which has the exclusive United States contract to import fuel into Iraq, subcontracts the work to a Kuwaiti firm, government officials said. But Halliburton gets 26 cents a gallon for its overhead and fee, according to documents from the Army Corps of Engineers.
The cost of the imported fuel first came to public attention in October when two senior Democrats in Congress criticized Halliburton, the huge Houston-based oil-field services company, for "inflating gasoline prices at a great cost to American taxpayers." At the time, it was estimated that Halliburton was charging the United States government and Iraq's oil-for-food program an average of about $1.60 a gallon for fuel available for 71 cents wholesale.
But a breakdown of fuel costs, contained in Army Corps documents recently provided to Democratic Congressional investigators and shared with The New York Times, shows that Halliburton is charging $2.64 for a gallon of fuel it imports from Kuwait and $1.24 per gallon for fuel from Turkey.
Maybe the US government should start treating its contractors like Wal-Mart treats its suppliers.
posted by chris at 2:28 PM
Fewer polluters being punished
The Bush administration is catching and punishing far fewer polluters than the two previous administrations, according to an analysis of 15 years of environmental-enforcement records.
Civil enforcement of pollution laws peaked when the President's father was in office from 1989-93 and has fallen ever since, but it has plummeted since George W. Bush took office three years ago. That is according to records of 17 different categories of enforcement activity obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Violation notices against polluters are the most important enforcement tool, experts say, and they have had the biggest drop under the current President Bush. The monthly average of violation notices since January 2001 has dropped 58 percent compared with the Clinton administration's monthly average.
Those pollution citations dropped 12 percent from 2001 to 2002 and an additional 35 percent from 2002 through the first 10 months of 2003.
Punishing polluters - by fines or referrals for prosecution - has dropped as well, but not as dramatically. Administrative fines since January 2001 are down 28 percent, when adjusted for inflation, from Clinton administration levels. Civil penalties average 6 percent less, when adjusted for inflation. And the number of cases referred to the Justice Department for prosecution is down 5 percent.
Story.
posted by chris at 2:09 PM
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Tuesday, December 09, 2003
Bechtel's "reconstruction" work
On its corporate Web site, under a page titled "A Fresh Start for Iraqi School Children," Bechtel Group showcases sparkling new classrooms filled with happy, young Iraqi students.
But the reality is far different, according to Army investigators.
"In almost every case, the paint jobs were done in a hurry, causing more damage to the appearance of the school than in terms of providing a finish that will protect the structure," a recent Army investigation into Bechtel's work found. "In one case, the paint job actually damaged critical lab equipment, making it unusable."
Bechtel is one of the biggest corporate winners of U.S. contracts to rebuild Iraq. Before the war ended, it received a $680 million contract to fix Iraq's electrical grids, water ports and more than 1,200 schools. In October, it won an additional $350 million contract to continue the electrical work.
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What [the inspectors] found: The subcontractors Bechtel hired left paint everywhere - on the floors, on desks, all over windows. The classrooms were filthy, the school's desks and chairs were thrown out into the playground and left, broken. Windows were left damaged, and bathrooms that were reportedly fixed were left in broken, unsanitary condition.
"Would you allow your child to use that bathroom? I wouldn't," Scharf said, pointing to a photograph of a stained, broken hole in a dirty, tiled stall.
Iraqi Education Ministry city planner Israa Mohammed had received complaints from the schools, too, and tried to get Bechtel officials to address them before classes started, she said. But Bechtel officials would not attend regular education ministry meetings or answer her questions, she said.
Bechtel gets a D-
posted by chris at 3:56 PM
Florida sees nothing wrong with their election system
California will require that its touch-screen voting machines provide paper printouts for each ballot cast, but Florida's top elections official says she does not favor a similar standard here.
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As manufacturers develop ballot printers to accompany touch screens, Florida will be "very open-minded" in reviewing any printers submitted to the state for certification, Secretary of State Glenda Hood said this week. If printers are certified, Hood said, counties would have the option of using them.
But Hood said making a paper trail a statewide requirement is not necessary because Florida has multiple safeguards to assure the accuracy and security of touch screens, which are used in Palm Beach County and 14 other counties.
"Florida has led the nation in providing security and certification," Hood said. "At this point in time, with the satisfaction that the supervisors continue to show... and the fact that we haven't had complaints from voters, I have a high confidence level."
These people are delusional!
posted by chris at 3:50 PM
The power of Wal-Mart
A very interesting story about what goes on behind the scenes at Wal-Mart and its dealings with some of its suppliers. Here's just a small excerpt:
Therein lies the basic conundrum of doing business with the world's largest retailer. By selling a gallon of kosher dills for less than most grocers sell a quart, Wal-Mart may have provided a ser-vice for its customers. But what did it do for Vlasic? The pickle maker had spent decades convincing customers that they should pay a premium for its brand. Now Wal-Mart was practically giving them away. And the fevered buying spree that resulted distorted every aspect of Vlasic's operations, from farm field to factory to financial statement.
Indeed, as Vlasic discovered, the real story of Wal-Mart, the story that never gets told, is the story of the pressure the biggest retailer relentlessly applies to its suppliers in the name of bringing us "every day low prices." It's the story of what that pressure does to the companies Wal-Mart does business with, to U.S. manufacturing, and to the economy as a whole. That story can be found floating in a gallon jar of pickles at Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart is not just the world's largest retailer. It's the world's largest company--bigger than ExxonMobil, General Motors, and General Electric. The scale can be hard to absorb. Wal-Mart sold $244.5 billion worth of goods last year. It sells in three months what.
number-two retailer Home Depot sells in a year. And in its own category of general merchandise and groceries, Wal-Mart no longer has any real rivals. It does more business than Target, Sears, Kmart, J.C. Penney, Safeway, and Kroger combined. "Clearly," says Edward Fox, head of Southern Methodist University's J.C. Penney Center for Retailing Excellence, "Wal-Mart is more powerful than any retailer has ever been." It is, in fact, so big and so furtively powerful as to have become an entirely different order of corporate being.
Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest possible prices to its customers. At Wal-Mart, that goal is never reached. The retailer has a clear policy for suppliers: On basic products that don't change, the price Wal-Mart will pay, and will charge shoppers, must drop year after year. But what almost no one outside the world of Wal-Mart and its 21,000 suppliers knows is the high cost of those low prices. Wal-Mart has the power to squeeze profit-killing concessions from vendors. To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas.
Shopping ourselves out of jobs.
posted by chris at 11:04 AM
Throwing the net too wide
The terrorism dragnet cast after September 11 has ensnared 6,400 suspects nationwide, but has led to only a handful of convictions for plotting terrorist acts, according to a review of federal investigations released Sunday.
The review found nearly 2,700 of the cases have already been concluded, yielding 879 convictions, mostly for immigration violations and other minor offenses.
Only an unspecified few have been charged with crimes directly related to terrorism. Just 23 cases have led to prison sentences of five years or more, about the same number as in the two years before the attacks.
The numbers suggest the reach of the federal war on terrorism has been far broader than the government previously has suggested, scooping up thousands of people with no clear criminal links to terrorism, concluded researchers at Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which published the report.
More. Via August.
posted by chris at 10:54 AM
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Monday, December 08, 2003
The drugs don't work
A senior executive with Britain's biggest drugs company has admitted that most prescription medicines do not work on most people who take them.
Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), said fewer than half of the patients prescribed some of the most expensive drugs actually derived any benefit from them.
It is an open secret within the drugs industry that most of its products are ineffective in most patients but this is the first time that such a senior drugs boss has gone public. His comments come days after it emerged that the NHS drugs bill has soared by nearly 50 per cent in three years, rising by £2.3bn a year to an annual cost to the taxpayer of £7.2bn. GSK announced last week that it had 20 or more new drugs under development that could each earn the company up to $1bn (£600m) a year.
Dr Roses, an academic geneticist from Duke University in North Carolina, spoke at a recent scientific meeting in London where he cited figures on how well different classes of drugs work in real patients.
Drugs for Alzheimer's disease work in fewer than one in three patients, whereas those for cancer are only effective in a quarter of patients. Drugs for migraines, for osteoporosis, and arthritis work in about half the patients, Dr Roses said. Most drugs work in fewer than one in two patients mainly because the recipients carry genes that interfere in some way with the medicine, he said.
"The vast majority of drugs - more than 90 per cent - only work in 30 or 50 per cent of the people," Dr Roses said. "I wouldn't say that most drugs don't work. I would say that most drugs work in 30 to 50 per cent of people. Drugs out there on the market work, but they don't work in everybody."
Aspirin, anyone? Or perhaps a placebo?
posted by chris at 1:50 PM
Update on trampled Wal-Mart woman
Turns out she's got a history of accidents . . .
An investigation by WKMG-Local 6 reveals Vanlester has filed 16 previous claims of injuries at Wal-Mart stores and other places she has shopped or worked, according to Wal-Mart, court files and state records. Her sister, who accompanied her Friday on the visit to Wal-Mart, has also filed a prior injury claim against Wal-Mart, with Vanlester as her witness, a company spokeswoman said yesterday.
Asked whether Vanlester's frequent injury claims might cast doubt on the veracity of her latest allegation, her attorney, David L. Sweat, of Port Orange, said, "No comment." He did stress, though, that Vanlester "has not filed a claim nor have we decided to file one" related to last week's incident.
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Vanlester has for years complained of head, back, neck, leg or arm pain caused by slipping and falling, objects falling on her and other accidents, according to medical records in a public court file examined by WKMG-Local 6. In fact, her sister says she was wearing a neck brace at the time of last Friday's incident because of injuries from a years-old car accident.
More. Thanks, Dad.
posted by chris at 11:38 AM
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