Tom Paine reports that Congresspersons Dennis Kucinich, Carolyn Maloney and Bernie Sanders sent this letter with Ten Questions to Vice President Dick Cheney on July 21, 2003.

A new 900 page report by a Senate panel is about to be released that blasts the CIA and FBI for lapses in intelligence, while maintaining that nothing could have stopped the 9/11 attacks. What's in the report?

Bq. ...examples of missed signals, communication breakdowns and investigative failures, which several government officials said is a blistering critique of U.S. intelligence efforts in the months before the attacks.

Here's the Third Report to Congress on Implementation of Section 1001 of the USA PATRIOT Act, July 17, 2003. For a summary, here's a New York Times article.

Don't miss William Raspberry today on Bush's Homeland Security Sales Pitch .

Here we go again. First we had the Inspector General's report criticizing the military's treatment of detainees. Now there is a new Inspector General report scheduled for release this week documenting accusations of official abuse in carrying out the Patriot Act:

A report by internal investigators at the Justice Department has identified dozens of recent cases in which department employees have been accused of serious civil rights and civil liberties violations involving enforcement of the sweeping federal antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act.

The inspector general's report, which was presented to Congress last week and is awaiting public release, is likely to raise new concern among lawmakers about whether the Justice Department can police itself when its employees are accused of violating the rights of Muslim and Arab immigrants and others swept up in terrorism investigations under the 2001 law.

The report said that in the six-month period that ended on June 15, the inspector general's office had received 34 complaints of civil rights and civil liberties violations by department employees that it considered credible, including accusations that Muslim and Arab immigrants in federal detention centers had been beaten.

....The accused workers are employed in several of the agencies that make up the Justice Department, with most of them assigned to the Bureau of Prisons, which oversees federal penitentiaries and detention centers. The report said that credible accusations were also made against employees of the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Immigration and Naturalization Service; most of the immigration agency was consolidated earlier this year into the Department of Homeland Security.

Michigan Congressman John Conyers had this response to the report:

This report shows that we have only begun to scratch the surface with respect to the Justice Department's disregard of constitutional rights and civil liberties," Mr. Conyers said in a statement. "I commend the inspector general for having the courage and independence to highlight the degree to which the administration's war on terror has misfired and harmed innocent victims with no ties to terror whatsoever."

The FBI's highest ranking Arab-American agent has accused the FBI of bias:

The F.B.I.'s highest-ranking Arab-American agent has filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the bureau, charging that he was kept out of the investigation of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings because of his ancestry.

The agent, Bassem Youssef, filed the lawsuit on Friday in Federal District Court for the District of Columbia. Mr. Youssef, a naturalized American citizen born in Egypt, said in his complaint that "no other non-Arab F.B.I. employee with similar background and experience was willfully blocked from working 9/11-related matters."

The ATF is searching for over 1,100 pounds of ammonium nitrate stolen from companies in Colorado and California in recent days.

Ammonium nitrate, mixed with fuel oil, were the key ingredients in the Oklahoma City bomb back in 1995. By itslef, ammonium nitrate is used as fertilizer.

A nationwide alert was issued Monday by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives after eight 50-pound bags of an ammonium nitrate-based explosive vanished from the Pike View Quarry near Colorado Springs.

The other theft, 700 pounds of an ammonium nitrate product, occurred Sunday or Monday from Tom C. Dyke Drilling and Blasting in Alpine, Calif., about 30 miles east of San Diego, authorities said. Thieves forced their way into a locked trailer and took 16 50-pound bags. Two of the bags have been found.

This sounds somewhat ominous:

Authorities had said the material stolen in Colorado was already mixed with fuel oil and had a strong diesel fuel odor.

A panel of the Senate Appropriations Committee has proposed killing all funding for the T.I.A., the Defense Department's Terror Information Awareness Program. The program is the brainchild of John Poindexter.

Earlier this year, the Senate passed an amendment by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) prohibiting funding of the TIA, but allowing research, until Sept. 30, 2003.
The Senate panel now proposes extending that ban for another year, and banning funding for all purposes. The measure provides:

No funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Defense ... or to any other department, agency or element of the federal government, may be obligated or expended on research and development on the Terrorism Information Awareness program."

If this provision passes the Senate, it will proceed to a House-Senate Conference Committee.

Our view: Let's kill this privacy-intrusive data-mining program once and for all. The Government has enough information about us already, and there is no showing that the program will enhance our safety.

An Army report will be released today on the details surrounding the ambush of Private Jessica Lynch and her unit in Iraq. The Los Angeles Times has obtained a copy and reports:

The U.S. Army unit that included Pfc. Jessica D. Lynch was ambushed by Iraqi soldiers last March after the Americans, exhausted and isolated, became lost in the city of Nasiriyah with guns that jammed, radios that malfunctioned and heavy trucks that sank into soft sand and marshland, the Army has concluded.

You can read the Exeuctive Summary of the report on the El Paso Times' website here. The full report is available here.

The U.S. is now offering a $25 million reward for capturing Saddam --or for information proving he's dead. His sons are worth $15 million.

In other war related news, one day after Bush's "Bring 'em on" comments, it appears Iraq has done just that. 8 more soldiers were injured in blasts today.

An Army truck hit an explosive west of Baghdad on Thursday injuring six U.S. soldiers, and assailants in the capital wounded two other American soldiers in separate attacks, U.S. military officials and witnesses said. The violence comes a day after President Bush vowed that anti-U.S. attacks would not keep the United States from fulfilling its mission in Iraq.

[links via What Really Happened]

Democrats came out swinging Wednesday at our macho, cowboy President's taunt to Iraqi attackers, 'Bring 'Em On' :

Though Congress is in recess, some Democrats criticized Bush's "bring 'em on" statement. "I am shaking my head in disbelief," said Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.). "When I served in the Army in Europe during World War II, I never heard any military commander -- let alone the commander in chief -- invite enemies to attack U.S. troops." Lautenberg's statement said Bush's words were "tantamount to inciting and inviting more attacks against U.S. forces."

In addition, Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), a presidential candidate, said he had heard "enough of the phony, macho rhetoric" from Bush. Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor also mounting a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, said Bush "showed tremendous insensitivity to the dangers" troops face.

All three are correct. Bush needs to remember he's running a country and a war, not coaching a football game.

Some other Bushism's:

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he said he wanted al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." Bush also has said that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein "crawfished" to escape United Nations sanctions, and that he would "smoke" Taliban operatives "out of their caves."

A federal magistrate judge in Alexandria, Virginia granted bail over the Government's objections to four defendants accused of running a 'jihad' network in the U.S. The Judge also rebuked the Justice Department. The Government plans to appeal the decision at least as to three of the men.

Update: Reviews of detention hearings conducted by magistrate judges are conducted by the district court judge to whom the case is assigned. In this case, it is Judge Leonie Brinkema, who also has the Zacarias Moussaoui case. On Weds., July 3, Judge Brinkema upheld the Magistrate Judge's release order and Hammad Abdur-Raheem should be released by Friday. However, the judge upheld another Magistrate Judge's decision to detain one of the other suspects, Mohammed Aatique.