On Tuesday, fearing that they will be perceived as weak on terror, the Democrats in the House will propose a bill that “would maintain for several years the type of broad, blanket authority for N.S.A. eavesdropping that the administration secured in August for six months.”

The new bill, the RESTORE Act of 2007, clarifies “that no court orders are required for the government to conduct surveillance on communications outside the United States even when the surveillance is conducted on U.S. soil” and “allows the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to request an “umbrella warrant” to conduct surveillance of foreign targets” for up to one year.

The New York Times notes that the new bill does include some oversight provisions:

In an acknowledgment of concerns over civil liberties, the bill would require a more active role by the special foreign intelligence court that oversees the interception of foreign-based communications by the security agency…the House bill would not give retroactive immunity to the telecommunications utilities that participated in the eavesdropping. That has been a top priority of the administration. The temporary measure gave the utilities immunity for future acts, but not past deeds.

The House bill would also require the administration to disclose details of the program. Democrats say they plan to push the administration to turn over internal documents laying out the legal rationale for the program, something the administration has refused to do.

The extension comes on the heals Mike McConnell’s, the Director of National Intelligence, attempts to intimidate Congressional Democrats into extending blanket NSA eavesdropping authority by falsely claiming that “the new expansive FISA legislation passed by Congress prior to the August recess — the so-called Protect America Act — had helped to thwart a an alleged terror plot in Germany.” McConnell, who had previously claimed that “Americans are going to die “if Congress publicly debated wiretapping, later “acknowledged that he lied to the Senate.”

Congressional Democrats should not reward the administration’s scare tactics. Rather than allowing Republicans to frame the debate, the Democrats, recalling the consequences of unchecked surveillance, must demand adequate oversight. For the most part, the public is on their side. According to a AP-Ipsos poll released in January of 2006, when asked:

Should the Bush administration be required to get a warrant from a judge before monitoring phone and internet communications between American citizens in the United States and suspected terrorists, or should the government be allowed to monitor such communications without a warrant?

Fifty-six percent of respondents said “the administration should be required to get a warrant; only 42 percent of those polled said it should proceed without one.” And while the RESTORE Act of 2007, may be an improvement over the August bill, the new legislation “still authorizes the interception of Americans’ international communications without a warrant in far too many instances, and without adequate civil liberties protections.” Americans deserve better.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald makes a good point:

It is important here to recall that there is actually an amendment to FISA that is at least arguably justifiable. Even the original FISA law never required warrants in order to eavesdrop on (a) foreign-to-foreign calls or (b) calls involving a U.S. citizen where the target was a non-citizen outside the U.S. (who just happened to call into the U.S.). But recently, technological developments resulted in such calls, even foreign-foreign calls, being routed through the U.S. via fiber optics, and a FISA court ruled this year that the language of FISA requires warrants for such calls.

Even civil libertarian stalwarts such as Russ Feingold agree that it was never the intent of FISA to require warrants for those categories of calls and that amending FISA strictly to fix that problem is justifiable.

UPDATE II: A summary of the RESTORE Act can be found here.

A review has found that “tens of thousands of Medicare recipients have been victims of deceptive sales tactics and had claims improperly denied by private insurers that run the system’s huge new drug benefit program and offer other private insurance options encouraged by the Bush administration.” The problems include “the improper termination of coverage for people with H.I.V. and AIDS, huge backlogs of claims and complaints, and a failure to answer telephone calls from consumers, doctors and drugstores.”

The Washington Post reports that “the massive U.S. embassy under construction in Baghdad could cost $144 million more than projected and will open months behind schedule because of poor planning, shoddy workmanship, internal disputes and last-minute changes sought by State Department officials, according to U.S. officials and a department document provided to Congress.” Last month, a U.S. military report warned that our “national footprint” in Iraq, particularly the colossal embassy, conveyed the “opposite impression” of “what is needed.” 

The Guardian of London notes that President “George Bush was castigated by European diplomats and found himself isolated yesterday after a special conference on climate change ended without any progress.”

European ministers, diplomats and officials attending the Washington conference were scathing, particularly in private, over Mr Bush’s failure once again to commit to binding action on climate change. […]

Britain and almost all other European countries, including Germany and France, want mandatory targets for reducing greenhouse emissions. Mr Bush, while talking yesterday about a “new approach” and “a historic undertaking”, remains totally opposed.

The conference, attended by more than 20 countries, including China, India, Britain, France and Germany, broke up with the US isolated, according to non-Americans attending. One of those present said even China and India, two of the biggest polluters, accepted that the voluntary approach proposed by the US was untenable and favoured binding measures, even though they disagreed with the Europeans over how this would be achieved.

A senior European diplomat attending the conference, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the meeting confirmed European suspicions that it had been intended by Mr Bush as a spoiler for a major UN conference on climate change in Bali in December.

“It was a total charade and has been exposed as a charade,” the diplomat said. “I have never heard a more humiliating speech by a major leader. He [Mr Bush] was trying to present himself as a leader while showing no sign of leadership. It was a total failure.”

Climate Progress breaks down Bush’s approach to climate change: “If we had those technologies today, then maybe we could take genuine action now. But, darn it, people, we don’t. We can’t grow the economy and be responsible stewards of the earth quite yet. We are close, though, so be patient already and stop with all those calls for mandatory regulation. Sheesh!”

According to a new Washington Post - ABC News poll, “most Americans oppose fully funding President Bush’s $190 billion request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

- Bush’s approval rating stands at 33 percent, equal to his career low in Post-ABC polls. Congressional approval is even lower: Just 29 percent approve of the job the Congress is doing.

- 55 percent of Americans want congressional Democrats to do more to challenge the president’s Iraq war policies, while only a third think the Democrats have already gone too far.

- By a 2-1 margin, those who see little accomplishment in the Congress’s first nine months place more blame for the inaction on the president and the GOP rather than on the majority Democrats.

Despite the administration’s well-oiled pro-sure public relations campaign, the public isn’t biting. While Congress is busy condemning MoveOn.org and Rush Limbaugh, a sizable majority of Americans are demanding an end to the war. Rather than confronting Rush, the Democrats should be confronting Bush.

Please contact Congress and ask them to bring our troops home. You can find contact information for your Representatives HERE and for your Senators HERE.

During today’s Congressional testimony on progress in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker asked Congress to continue funding the war in Iraq. Yet given the lack of political progress and the weakness of Iraqi security forces, any limited military success is unsustainable. Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, put it best:

The current escalation in our military presence in Iraq may have produced some tactical successes. But strategically, the escalation has failed. It was intended to buy time for Prime Minister Maliki and the other Iraqi political leaders to find ways to move toward the one thing that may end this terrible civil conflict – and that, of course, is a political settlement. As best we can see, that time has been utterly squandered.

Moreover, America’s continued military presence in Iraq has undermined American security, underfunded national priorities, and increased the terror threat.

Diverted funds from homeland security: According to the U.S. Army War College, the Iraq war “diverted attention and resources away from the security of the American homeland against further assault by an undeterrable al Qaeda.”

Diverted funds from hurricane prevention: As the costs of the Iraq war began to soar in early 2004, the president diverted funds from the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA to Iraq. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security — coming at the same time as federal tax cuts — was the reason for the strain.

Slowed down the federal government’s response to natural disasters: After six tornadoes touched down in six southwest Kansas counties in May, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) acknowledged that since “the state is missing vital National Guard equipment because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” recovery time will be “that much slower.” During Hurricane Katrina, many National Guard units were short staffed in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama because they were serving in Iraq.

Led to a sharp rise in terror attacks: A study conducted by Mother Jones magazine has found that “the rate of fatal terrorist attacks around the world by jihadist groups, and the number of people killed in those attacks, increased dramatically after the invasion of Iraq…The rate of attacks on Western interests and citizens has risen by almost 25 percent.”

Radicalized jihadists: According to the latest National Intelligence Estimate, “Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives…The Iraq conflict has become the “cause celebre” for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.”

Alienated the world community: A report by the Pew Research Center found that “distrust of the United States has intensified across the world…Support for America’s so-called war on terrorism has plummeted since 2002, especially in Europe, where U.S. practices against inmates at the Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prisons have been harshly condemned.”

Diverted resources from the hunt for bin Laden and other terrorists: The Pentagon and the CIA acknowledged that the war in Iraq led to “a shortage of key personnel to fight the war on terrorism,” and hunt for bin Laden.

Drained our military: Ret. Maj. Gen. John Batiste wrote in an op-ed in August, “the war in Iraq is breaking our fine Army and Marine Corps, and we are perilously close to doing damage that will take more than a decade to fix.” According to the Washington Post, the Iraq war has also led to a drop in the overall readiness of U.S. ground forces to handle threats at home and abroad, forcing the Pentagon to accept new risks — even as military planners prepare for a global anti-terrorism campaign that administration officials say could last for a generation.”

Given these failings and the opinions of most Americans — 60% say the United States should set a timetable to withdraw forces “and stick to that timetable regardless of what is going on in Iraq” — Congress must change course in Iraq and bring our troops home. While conservatives continue to portray responsible redeployment from Iraq as defeat in the greater war on terrorism, it continues to be the case that a military withdrawal from Iraq would benefit American national security and allow the military to respond to greater threats from around the world.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released the 2007 assessment of opium in Afghanistan last week, and the figures are grim. Afghanistan now supplies approximately 93% of the world’s opium, and narcotics revenues make up at least one-third of its GDP. Unfortunately, the administration’s new counter-narcotics strategy is unlikely to stem opium production, and may undermine our mission in Afghanistan.

At the center of the strategy is a renewed focus on eradication of opium crops—a tool that has been used for years in Afghanistan and has yet to yield positive results. As Peter Bergen and Sameer Lalwani explain in the LA Times:

[The policy] has been met with growing Afghan skepticism and, in some cases, violence, and has coincided with a general decline in public support for the U.S. and NATO mission in Afghanistan. Why is the policy so unpopular? Most farmers who cultivate poppies do so because few other options — either alternative crops or alternative livelihoods — exist in their part of the world. You simply cannot eviscerate the livelihoods of the estimated 3 million Afghans who grow poppies and not expect a backlash.

Past eradication efforts have succeeded in eliminating only a minor portion of the overall opium crop, and in turn driving the population into the arms of the Taliban (who cast themselves as protectors of farmers’ crops) and increasing the profits of drug traffickers. According to The Senlis Council, a decrease in the total amount of cultivated opium poppy “ratchets up the market price of opium,” “drives up the value of opium-producing land,” creates “strong incentives for farmers to continue cultivating opium,” and produces “a deep conflict between the central government and rural communities that are dependent on poppy cultivation to survive” - circumstances under which the Taliban can thrive.

Yet, under the administration’s plan, eradication will continue to receive the greatest proportion of counter-narcotics funds, raising fears that that strategy will inevitably alienate the local population, making an effective counterinsurgency campaign impossible.

The U.S. must radically reevaluate its strategy: waging war on farmers’ crops is counterproductive and harms America’s overall mission in Afghanistan. It’s time we focus on the traffickers, criminal networks, and warlords who control Afghanistan’s drug economy instead.

On September 15, 2005, President Bush made a solemn commitment to the residents of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina:

Throughout the area hit by the hurricane, we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives. And all who question the future of the Crescent City need to know there is no way to imagine America without New Orleans, and this great city will rise again.

Yet, despite Bush’s widely publicized “feel-good” visit to the city last week to mark the two-year anniversary of the storm, his administration continues to bungle the recovery effort nearly as badly as it bungled the rescue effort. A new report issued by the Institute of Southern Studies reveals a stark reality that belies Bush’s sunny rhetoric. Some of the numbers:

$116 Billion: Amount that the Bush administration says has been spent on Gulf Coast recovery since Katrina.
30%: Estimated percent of those funds that are for long-term recovery projects.
$8.75 Billion: As of August 2006, value of Gulf Coast contracts that a Congressional study found were “plagued by waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement.”
$8.4 billion: Amount appropriated to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to restore storm defenses.
Less than 20%: Percent of those funds that the USACE has spent, as of July 2007.

“They talk and talk about what they’re going to do,” said one resident of New Orleans. “There was supposed to be all this money, but where’d it go? None of us got any.” Given Bush’s pattern of ignoring New Orleans in the time between ceremonial photo ops, it looks as though the residents of New Orleans will be left hanging for months to come.

Robert Draper’s new book on the Bush presidency, “Dead Certain,” reveals that the president relied on the opinions of “three Iraqi exiles” to shape his view of post war Iraq despite warnings from the intelligence community that Iraq could disintegrate into chaos in the aftermath of the invasion.

Several of Bush’s top advisers believe that the president’s view of postwar Iraq was significantly affected by his meeting with three Iraqi exiles in the Oval Office several months before the 2003 invasion, Draper reports.

He writes that all three exiles agreed without qualification that “Iraq would greet American forces with enthusiasm. Ethnic and religious tensions would dissolve with the collapse of Saddam’s regime. And democracy would spring forth with little effort — particularly in light of Bush’s commitment to rebuild the country.”

Intelligence reports sharply contradicted the exiles’ rosy predictions. According to a report released by the Senate Intelligence Committee in May, the intelligence community “warned the Bush administration in early 2003 that invading Iraq could create massive internal strife, giving extremist groups like al Qaeda new opportunities to expand their influence.” Some of the highlights of the report:

- Establishing a stable democracy in Iraq would be a “long, difficult and probably turbulent process.”

- “The U.S. intelligence community predicted al Qaeda ‘probably would try to exploit any postwar transition in Iraq…to mount hit-and-run operations against U.S. personnel.”

- “Some militant Islamists in Iraq might benefit from increases in funding and popular support and could choose to conduct terrorist attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq.”

- “Significant chance that domestic groups (in Iraq) would engage in violent conflict with each other.”

These “warnings predicting what would happen after the U.S.-led invasion were circulated widely in government, including to the Defense Department and the Office of the Vice President.” Yet Bush dismissed (or failed to read) their predictions and instead listened to those with whom he agreed.