Update no.388

Update from the Heartland
No.388
18.5.09 – 24.5.09
Blog version: http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/

To all,
As we remember our fallen warriors this Memorial Day, may God rest their immortal souls.

I offer my heartfelt congratulations to the crew of STS-125 – the Final Shuttle Mission to Hubble Space Telescope – picture-perfect flight for the magnificent images of Hubble. Then, as the crew waited out the weather to land, the President nominated Major General Charles Frank “Charlie” Bolden, Jr., USMC (Ret.) [USNA ‘68] to be the next Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Congratulations Charley! Godspeed and following winds.

UPDATE NOTE: I may not by able to distribute the Update for the next two weeks. Jeanne and I are taking a week long cruise with our granddaughters, and their mother and her partner – an anniversary celebration. We leave on Saturday, 30.May.2009, and do not return home until Sunday, 7.June.2009. I have no idea how much reading, researching and writing I will be able to do, and I do not know what kind of computer access I will have. Who knows, the next Update may just be a travelogue of selected images. Nonetheless, I shall return.

The follow-up news items:
-- I wrote my opinion about Nancy Pelosi’s comédie tragique of embarrassing, EIT, briefing / knowledge denials [387]. Here is another opinion:
“Pelosi’s explanations are tortured”
by Leonard Pitts
Wichita Eagle
Published: Monday, May 18, 2009
http://www.kansas.com/opinion/story/816591.html
also published as:
“Pelosi's story has lots of holes in it”
by Leonard Pitts Jr.
Published: Sunday, 05.17.09
Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/living/columnists/leonard-pitts/story/1050860.html
I do not understand why she decided to take on the CIA, but shots have been fired. Let the chips fall where they may.
-- In a timely follow-up to last week’s topic on religion [387], this opinion column illuminates another dimension for our discussion.
“Should Christians ‘respect’ other religions?”
by R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
Posted: 5/19/2009 8:40:00 AM
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=534764
Mohler concluded, “Respect is a problematic category. In the end, Christians must show respect for Muslims by sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the spirit of love and truth. We are called to love and respect Muslims, not Islam.” First, his definition of respect is probably different from mine. To me, respect for another person entails recognition and acceptance of the physical characteristics as well as personal choices of the other person. This does NOT mean that we must agree with the choices the other person has made. Religious Evangelism does not respect the choices of others, but rather conveys an implicit (if not explicit) superiority of one’s beliefs and an imposition of those beliefs on others. I have no problem whatsoever with evangelical Christianity, any more than I do evangelical Islam. Nonetheless, Mohler offers an inverse rational for the wall of separation between church and State.

On Thursday, we witnessed an extraordinary event. President Obama and former Vice President Cheney gave starkly contrasting speeches regarding national security and the current debate involving battlefield combatants and intelligence interrogation. Henceforth, within this particular opinion, I shall refrain from further reference to their political opinions. To date, I have read 13 of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memoranda released by the administration -- 345 pages worth, so far. Perhaps the most salient of the 13 documents in the present debate was the 1.August.2002, Jay Bybee to John Rizzo Memorandum, which analyzed ten, then-proposed, Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT), specifically:
(1) attention grasp,
(2) walling,
(3) facial hold,
(4) facial slap (insult slap),
(5) cramped confinement,
(6) wall standing,
(7) stress positions,
(8) sleep deprivation,
(9) insects placed in a confinement box, and
(l0) the waterboard.
As we all know, everyone, from citizens to the Press to politicians including the President, focus all their wrath on no.10 as well as lump all of EIT under the same label. Before we debate whether an “attention grasp” is torture, please allow me to define the context. In the War on Islamic Fascism, we face extra-national, non-uniformed, fighters who resort to boundless terrorism of innocent civilians anywhere in the World. They fight with explosives, nails, cellphones, guns, computers, ad infinitum, and they have no compunction to hiding and fighting, among innocent men, women and children. We capture battlefield combatants when we can. The vast majority of captives have little intelligence value; they possess no useful information; they are simple suicide-bombers or gunmen. The intelligence process filters those captives as quickly as possible. For those who are known or believed to hold valuable information, the interrogation process must first induce the individual to divulge the information he holds. Some battlefield combatants will give up their information freely and easily. Others will not. Interrogation techniques are intended to apply progressive inducement for the individual to offer up the information they possess. EIT are intended to break the resistance of the most recalcitrant of the high-value battlefield captives. For those how have never worked in the intelligence process, let it suffice to say that information derived from interrogation of battlefield combatants is always considered inaccurate and unreliable, but it is highly valuable when placed in the context of other intelligence data. Even attempts at disinformation have value in connecting the dots. All this said, the low-value captives, and even the high value captives once they have exceeded their usefulness, should be treated with neutral respect to the boundaries of their confinement and the threshold of their proper conduct. Regrettably, the conduct of ill-trained, immature, military guards at Abu Graib prison in Iraq [161, et al] and the careless, foolish disclosures of “those images” have inflicted incalculable injury on our human intelligence (HumInt) processes. What happened at Abu Graib was a grotesque failure of leadership and supervision that compromises our national security. Further, what happened at Abu Graib in the early months of the Battle for Iraq served no proper combat or intelligence purpose other than the sick amusement of those guards. What those guards did was wrong from any perspective, but their mistakes must not compromise the proper intelligence collection process. Yet, to now color the treatment of captured battlefield combatants and more critically the intelligence interrogation of those captives with those Abu Graib abuses is shallow and foolish to the other extreme. As I have written before, intelligence interrogation is NOT prosecutorial interrogation and can (or should) never be used in any judicial process. Once the intelligence filtration and collection processes have been completed, battlefield captives must be confined and detained for the duration of hostilities (i.e., the War on Islamic Fascism). Captive battlefield combatants are not criminal . . . at least not the ordinary fighters . . . they are prisoners for the duration of the war. As the debate raged, the President suffered a serious rebuke. During the consideration of HR 2346 [Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2009, for war funding], the Senate passed Amendment 1133 by an overwhelming majority [Senate: 90-6-0-3(1)], which rejected the President’s request for US$80M to close the Guantánamo detention facility and prohibited use of funds for that purpose – the classic NIMBY syndrome (NIMBY = Not In My Back Yard). I am not a victim of the syndrome, and the famous military prison at Fort Leavenworth is just up the road from me. My objection to the President Bush’s handling of captive battlefield combatants and to President Obama’s politically motivated proposal for the remaining detainees rests on setting a very dangerous precedent. It is so easy to be against something; it is far more difficult to propose an alternative, presumably better, solution. I have yet to hear anyone in the government, in the Press, in the public or even in this forum offer a workable solution for handling captured battlefield combatants or the intelligence interrogation collection process.

This week, I note two bills signed into law by President Obama. The Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act of 2009 [PL 111-023; S.454; Senate: 95-0-0-4(1); House: 411-0-0-22(2)] is intended to improve the Defense weapons acquisition process – a noble objective, tried many times, with limited success. Please note the vote record – a rarity for legislation. The other bill was the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act of 2009 [PL 111-024; HR.627; Senate: 90-5-0-4(1); House: 357-70-0-7(1)] intended to reduce the predatory practices of credit card companies. The controversial, national park, loaded firearms amendment has not shown up in the publicly available text, as yet. I have mixed views of both laws despite their important objectives.

The Senate confirmed J. Randolph “Randy” Babbitt of Virginia as the new administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration of the Department of Transportation.

If we truly want to solve our societal blemishes, from gun violence to abortion, we must seek, determine and recognize the root cause behind individual, personal, private decisions. Outlawing guns or abortion is like treating a broken leg with two aspirin. In My Humble Opinion, we will find the genesis of behaviors we reject or resent lay in the parental-child relationships of the formative years. Crime, or “going Postal” gun violence, or even a woman’s decision to surgically terminate her pregnancy, grows in the flawed decision-making process of an individual’s childhood, not in the availability of a pistol or a surgeon’s scalpel. When we figure out how to help every citizen who wishes to be a parent, to be the best parent they can be, we will solve many of our societal problems. So, let us debate the real issue rather than deplete ourselves on peripheral, façade elements.

News from the economic front:
-- The Obama administration’s EPA and the Department of Transportation issued an edict that requires automobile companies raise the overall fuel efficiency of their vehicles to 35 miles per gallon by 2016 – four years faster than current federal law requires. While such edicts are nice “feel-good” actions, we need far bolder initiatives to make alternative personal transportation means broadly available to the public.
-- The Wall Street Journal published an analysis of the commercial real-estate market. More than 900 small and midsize U.S. banks could experience further losses of up to US$100B by the end of next year, if the recession deepens. Loans for construction of shopping malls, office buildings, apartment complexes and hotels could account for nearly half the losses, consuming capital that is an essential cushion against bad loans. The Journal’s analysis used the same worst-case scenario the federal government utilized in its recent stress tests of 19 large banks. The potential losses could exceed revenue at nearly all the banks analyzed by the Journal. We are not out of the woods, yet.
-- The Obama administration is considering the creation of a consumer-oriented, financial products, regulatory commission to police mortgages and other financial products as part of the government's broader overhaul of financial regulation.
-- Bank of America has raised approximately US$13B on the sale of 1.25B shares of common stock as part of the bank’s effort to gain US$34B in equity to meet the government’s stress test requirements. With the recent sale of its stake in China Construction Bank, the company appears to be more than halfway to its objective.
-- The Wall Street Journal reported that some Federal Reserve officials are open to raising the amounts of mortgage and Treasury securities purchase programs beyond the US$1.75T that they've already committed to buying. They are also projecting a deeper recession than they expected three months earlier and a more sluggish recovery over the next two years with the unemployment rate anticipated to be between 9.2% and 9.6% at the end 2009, and to stay above 9% in 2010.
-- Chrysler named C. Robert “Bob” Kidder – a former CEO and chairman of Duracell and Borden Chemical, and is currently the lead director on the board of Morgan Stanley – as its new chairman, succeeding Robert Nardelli, who had previously announced plans to step down amid the auto maker's bankruptcy filing and alliance with Fiat.
-- The Wall Street Journal also reported that the Treasury Department is moving toward injecting more than US$7B into GMAC, the first installment of a new government aid package that could reach US$14B. The government’s initiative is intended to firm up the company's balance sheet and allow it to grant loans for car purchases at General Motors and Chrysler, and could turn the USG into the largest – potentially a majority –shareholder in the company, which is now owned by GM and a group led by private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management.
-- Xerox named Ursula M. Burns, currently company president, to succeed Chairman and Chief Executive Anne M. Mulcahy, who will give up day-to-day oversight of the company, when she retires on July 1. Mulcahy will remain chairman and continue to run the board. She became CEO in 2001, and led the company through a string of quarterly losses amid falling market share and a serious probe into the company’s accounting practices. The company is currently under pressure from the global recession as well as the stronger dollar, since it gets most of its revenue from overseas.
-- The GM and UAW have reportedly reached a tentative labor pact little more than a week prior to the auto maker’s bankruptcy deadline. The agreement now puts pressure on the company’s bondholders and secured lenders to make concessions as the company struggles to avoid bankruptcy.
-- Indicted New York, high-flyer, lawyer Marc Stuart Dreier [365] pleaded guilty to eight felony charges: one count of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud, one count of money laundering, one count of securities fraud, and five counts of wire fraud, in a scheme to sell US$700M in fictitious promissory notes. He faces life in prison. Civil charges filed by the SEC in December 2008, are pending.
-- The Washington Post reported that the Obama administration is preparing to send General Motors into bankruptcy next week under a plan that would give the automaker tens of billions more in public financing.
-- The Wall Street Journal reported that a Russian Internet investment group, known as Digital Sky Technologies, has offered to invest US$200M in the social-networking company Facebook at a US$10B valuation for the company's preferred stock. The company has been talking to a range of venture capital and private-equity firms to expand its operations. Facebook has not responded to any of the public information.

L’Affaire Madoff [365]:
-- New York lawyer Jeffry M. Picower, 60; Beverly Hills money manager Stanley Chais, 82, and retired businessman Carl Shapiro, 96 – one of Bernie Madoff’s oldest friends – are among at least eight Madoff investors and associates being investigated by the U.S. Attorney of Manhattan. Federal investigators have reportedly gathered sufficient evidence that some investors may have pressured Madoff to deliver certain threshold returns, and then miraculously their accounts would soon reflect those amounts. Prosecutors are also continuing to probe Madoff family members and employees. Madoff is due to be sentenced for his crimes in June. I suspect that ol’ Bernie will have a lot of company in prison.

Comments and contributions from Update no.387:
“Ugh, Pelosi. Saw a great cartoon of her as "Pelosi-o" with a long nose. She is the best example of the worst kind of politician we have in the US of A.”
My response:
Amen!

My very best wishes to all. Take care of yourselves and each other.
Cheers,
Cap :-)