Well,

The appeals court ruled against Judith Miller
and Matt Cooper. So they really might have to do
time in prison for not cooperating with Patrick Fitzgerald.
I bet the Supreme Court won't touch this one either--
the issue is already fimly addressed in Branzburg vs
Hayes.
I wonder who really called Novak. He must
be squirming in his seat by now.
This case sure does have staying power.
I was right. Even the Bushies couldn't shake this
scandal off...

The senseless death of the woman who fought George Bush
By Patrick Cockburn in Sulaymaniyah and Andrew Buncombe in Washington

19 April 2005

She looked like she should be surfing on a beach in California but Marla Ruzicka was drawn instead to Iraq and her self-appointed task of helping the civilian victims of George Bush's war. She was 28 years old and had been a peace activist since a young age. She went to Baghdad as the head of her own charity, determined to find out how many Iraqis had been killed or injured by US forces and get compensation for survivors.

At the weekend, the dedication that had taken Marla from her home in San Francisco to the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, led to her death.

On Saturday afternoon, as she and her driver were on the road leading from Baghdad to the city's airport, a suicide bomber attacked a passing convoy of security contractors. Marla's car was caught in the blast and engulfed in flames. A US Army medic who tried to help her said she was briefly conscious and was able to speak. "I'm alive," she had told him. She died along with an unnamed French national and an Iraqi.

The question everyone always asked about Marla was from where did she get all of her energy. She was constantly on the move: chattering, smiling, rushing to a hospital, dashing to a meeting, cajoling journalists, pestering diplomats, taking notes from a woman whose relatives had been killed, crossing time zones, entering people's lives.

Her drive - and probably the boundless energy - came from a deep desire to help ordinary people whose lives had been shattered in President Bush's so-called war on terror.

In the environment of the world's war zones, where cynicism and idealism often overlap, Marla was something of a one-woman wonder.

In the aftermath of the war in Afghanistan, she travelled to Kabul with the intention of trying to help Afghan civilians. If sometimes she appeared a little naive, it was to her advantage.

It was quite simple, she believed. If the US had been responsible for causing suffering, surely it could try and help those people who needed it?

To that aim, she established a non-governmental group Civic - Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict - and raised funds. Controversially, the US and Britain refuse to gather statistics on the numbers of dead or injured in the conflict.

In Washington, she turned to the likes of Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and asked him to help fund her programme - something she was able to persuade him to do. The senator confirmed yesterday that Marla was behind the appropriation of almost $20m in aid to Afghanistan and Iraq.

"She was the one that persuaded us to do it," Mr Leahy said. "Here's someone who, at 28 years old, did more than most people do in a lifetime."

While Marla proved to be adept at negotiating the bureaucracy of Washington and persuading its politicians to help - she once pressed the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, about civilian casualties - it was on the ground, working with people, that she was probably most at home. It was also where she knew she was doing most good.

If Marla was dedicated, she was probably also less concerned than she might have been about her safety. While the airport road on which she was travelling is a road that all journalists, aid workers and officials in Iraq must, at some point, travel on, the young woman believed she was somehow protected from the horror of Iraq's violence because of her work.

On Saturday afternoon, it appears she was travelling to visit an injured three-month-old Iraqi girl when the bomber struck, also killing Marla's driver, 43-year-old Faiz Ali Salim.

April Pedersen, a colleague, said: "It seems she fell right back into her old work - identifying and helping victims. At the moment, we are just trying to get through the next few days but we are all committed to ensuring the work that Marla did is going to continue."

Marla was raised in Lakeport, California, the youngest of six. Her father, Clifford, a civil engineer, recalled how his daughter had led a school protest against the 1991 Gulf War and was suspended.

When she was a student at Long Island University she travelled to countries such as Cuba, Guatemala and Israel. "She had a lot of purpose in her life, so it was kind of natural that she would go into places like these," Mr Ruzicka said. He said he was proud she had been "a lady with a tremendously open heart and warm feelings toward the people who've been in conflict".

Some may question why Marla's death has received such extensive coverage, given that tens of thousands of civilians have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. She, for one would certainly had preferred that those victims and the people she was trying to help were the front page story. Yet, in the world in which she worked Marla was undoubtedly exceptional. She recognised the most effective way for her to get things done was not simply to campaign as a peace activist but to focus on humanitarian efforts. Her overwhelming focus was always the victims.

Officials were organising the return of Marla's body to the US last night. A funeral service has been scheduled to take place at St Mary's Church in Lakeport on Saturday morning.

Saddam may escape noose in deal to halt insurgency

By Adrian Blomfield in Baghdad

Saddam Hussein could avoid the gallows under a secret proposal by insurgent leaders that Iraq's new administration is "seriously considering", a senior government source said yesterday.

A reprieve is understood to be among the central demands of Sunni nationalists and former members of Saddam's Ba'ath party who have reportedly begun negotiations with the government amid the backdrop of a bloody insurgency which claimed 30 lives during the weekend.


Officials say they are looking for a way of joining the political process after January's election, which was boycotted by most of the once-powerful Sunni minority.

"We are trying to reach out to the insurgents," the source said. "We don't expect them to stop fighting unconditionally. Sending Saddam to prison for the rest of his life is not a huge price for us to pay, but it will save them a lot of face."

The official said those involved in the negotiations included senior members of Saddam's Fedayeen militia and the Jaish Mohammed, a grouping of former army officers that operates under the guise of an Islamist organisation.

But it is unclear if those at the talks genuinely represent a majority of the deeply fragmented insurgency. While a deal could represent an important step towards ending the violence that has plagued postwar Iraq, a reprieve for Saddam would infuriate many in the country. He is unlikely to come to trial before the end of this year, but Jalal Talabani, Iraq's new president, has already begun to prepare his people for a possible reprieve.

Asked about the fate of Saddam in an interview yesterday in the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, the president, who is a Kurd, stated his personal opposition to a death sentence.

"I am among the lawyers who signed an international petition against the death penalty around the world and it would be a problem for me if Iraqi courts issued death sentences," he said.

Iraq factfile

Though Mr Talabani's powers are largely ceremonial, he has the power, as the head of a three-man presidential council, to commute death sentences. The two vice presidents that make up the remainder of the council, Ghazi al Yawar, a Sunni, and Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shia, have not stated their positions.

Further demonstrating his determination for a political settlement to the insurgency, Mr Talabani proposed an amnesty for fighters last week. But al-Qa'eda's wing in Iraq, which is led by Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, yesterday rejected the offer and dismissed Mr Talabani as an American "agent".

Though they regard Mr Talabani as a hero, many Kurds said they opposed any plans not to execute Saddam.

"Anything but death for Saddam would be a travesty of justice," said Nawzad Othman, a greengrocer whose brother was among 5,000 Kurds killed in the notorious chemical weapon attack on Halabja in 1988. "A murderer like that cannot be allowed to live."

Iraq's new government, dominated by the majority Shia community and its Kurdish coalition partners, faces a tricky balancing act. Its attempts to reach out to all parties were boosted yesterday when the outgoing interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, a secular Shia, agreed to join the new government after weeks of negotiation. It was unclear if Mr Allawi or any of his bloc would take cabinet posts.

Shia MPs in the cleric-backed United Iraqi Alliance, which won 51 per cent of the vote in the election, are unhappy with the development and accuse Mr Allawi of corruption.

I may be moving to New Zealand for a year.
Do I change this to "Shades of Blue from a KIWI State"?

Anyway my e-mail is yandoblu@msn.com

I'm getting about 45 hits per day at this website.
Send me an e-mail and say hello, or goodbye, or anything.

Anyway the situation in the USA continues to deteriorate. I feel so Bush-whacked.
It will be fun to get away and then return
when the lunacy has all dried up.

Support grows for beefing up U.S. forces

Some see situations where volunteers may not be enough

Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau

Monday, April 4, 2005



Washington -- The war-strained all-volunteer U.S. military has a growing manpower problem and a cross-section of Washington policymakers has proposed a solution -- increase the size of the regular military by 30,000, 40,000 or even 100, 000 or more.

While just about all the proponents maintain they want to achieve the increase by offering recruits bigger financial incentives or through appeals to patriotism, lurking in the background is a possibility that for now remains anathema to all but a few. The military draft, which coughed up its last conscript in 1973, could make a comeback if recruiting doesn't pick up and if America's commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan turn into long-term occupations or if the Bush administration's tough-minded foreign policy means military action in places like Iran or North Korea.

It's important to note that the Bush administration adamantly scorns the idea of a resumed draft. It won't even agree to a permanent increase in the Army's size, which Congress temporarily boosted by 30,000 last year, saying instead that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's plan to transform the military into a high-tech, mobile force will meet the nation's needs.

But the administration does admit it has a problem, particularly in filling the ranks in the 500,000-person regular Army and the 675,000-person Army National Guard and Army Reserve, which have been called upon to carry a large part of the burden of deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan. In a March 23 press conference, Army Secretary Francis Harvey said that in the first two months of 2005, the active Army was meeting 94 percent of its recruiting goal, the Reserve 90 percent and the Guard 75 percent.

"Obviously, I'm concerned about the National Guard. I am cautiously optimistic about the Reserve and the active component,'' he said. "We're doing everything that we know how to do in order to meet our goals."

More recruiters are being sent out to work with young people and their parents. A new advertising agency has been brought in. The maximum enlistment age in the Guard and Reserve has been boosted from 34 to 39.