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Convicted Republican Ney resigns from House - Yahoo! News
Convicted Republican Ney resigns from House - Yahoo! News: "Fri Nov 3, 7:50 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
Republican Bob Ney of Ohio resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday, three weeks after pleading guilty in the Jack Abramoff political corruption scandal.ADVERTISEMENT
Ney submitted a letter of resignation, effective immediately, to House Speaker
Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican who along with other lawmakers had urged him to step down immediately.
Ney had said in August he would not seek re-election to a seventh two-year term in the November 7 elections.
By staying on for a bit longer, he remained eligible to receive his paycheck and benefits, which drew widespread criticism.Ney was the first lawmaker convicted in the Abramoff influence-peddling scandal, and the fourth House Republican to step down under pressure in the 109th Congress.
Their cases have rocked Republicans as they seek to retain control of the House on Tuesday. Democrats have accused Republicans of 'a culture of corruption.'"
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Other corruption-tainted Republicans who left the House were former Republican leader Tom DeLay of Texas, indicted on state campaign finance charges; Randy "Duke" Cunningham of California, convicted of accepting bribes, and Mark Foley of Florida, found to have sent sexually explicit e-mails to former interns.
Sniper Attacks Adding to Peril of U.S. Troops - New York Times
Sniper Attacks Adding to Peril of U.S. Troops - New York Times: "
In recent months, military officers and enlisted marines say, the insurgents have been using snipers more frequently and with greater effect, disrupting the military’s operations and fueling a climate of frustration and quiet rage.Across Iraq, the threat has become serious enough that in late October the military held an internal conference about it, sharing the experiences of combat troops and discussing tactics to counter it. There has been no ready fix.
The battalion commander of Sergeant Leach’s unit — the Second Battalion, Eighth Marines — recalled eight sniper hits on his marines in three months and said there had been other possible incidents as well. Two of the battalion’s five fatalities have come from snipers, he said, and one marine is in a coma. Another marine gravely wounded by a sniper has suffered a stroke.
A sniper team was captured in the area a few weeks ago, he said, but more have taken its place. “The enemy has the ability to regenerate, and after we put a dent in his activity, we see sniper activity again,” said the commander, Lt. Col. Kenneth M. DeTreux.
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But as the insurgent sniper teams have become more active, the marines here say, they have displayed greater skill, selecting their targets and their firing positions with care. They have also developed cunning methods of mobility and concealment
, including firing from shooting platforms and hidden ports within cars."
Perle says he should not have backed Iraq war - Los Angeles Times
Perle says he should not have backed Iraq war - Los Angeles Times: "By Peter Spiegel, Times Staff Writer
November 4, 2006
WASHINGTON —
Richard N. Perle, the former Pentagon advisor regarded as the intellectual godfather of the Iraq war, now believes he should not have backed the U.S.-led invasion, and he holds President Bush responsible for failing to make timely decisions to stem the rising violence, according to excerpts from a magazine interview.Perle — a leading neoconservative who chaired the Pentagon's defense advisory board for the first three years of the Bush administration — is quoted in January's Vanity Fair as saying the U.S. might have been able to strip Saddam Hussein of his ability to build unconventional weapons 'by means other than a direct military intervention.'
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'I think if I had been Delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said 'Should we go into Iraq?' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists,' ' Perle said, according to interview excerpts released Friday by the magazine.
Perle's about-face is the latest in a series of war recriminations by neoconservatives, many of whom blame Iraq's spiraling violence on the administration's management of the postwar stabilization effort.
Others interviewed for the article included former Bush speechwriter David Frum and former Reagan administration official Kenneth L. Adelman.
Perle's prominent advocacy of invasion after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — and his close relationship with the war's top architects, including Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy Defense secretary, and Douglas J. Feith, the former Pentagon policy chief — makes his reversal particularly noteworthy.
Perle told Vanity Fair he did not anticipate the 'depravity' currently underway in Iraq, saying, 'The levels of brutality we've seen are truly horrifying.'"
U.S. Seeks Silence on CIA Prisons - washingtonpost.com
U.S. Seeks Silence on CIA Prisons - washingtonpost.com: "aturday, November 4, 2006; Page A01
The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the 'alternative interrogation methods' that their captors used to get them to talk."
