United Press International

Lawrence Wilkerson testimony in United Press International | 'Witness: Cheney Probably Knew of Torture'

Communications — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:17:00 -0400

New America in the News:

A former U.S. military official says U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney may have known military personnel were using torture techniques on Iraqi detainees.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson told a House panel he thought leadership failed "at the highest levels of the Pentagon, in the vice president's office and perhaps even in the Oval Office," The Washington Times reported Thursday.

Wilkerson's testimony followed a report by a human rights group that detainees in U.S. military facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba., Iraq and Afghanistan were subjected to beatings and other aggressive interrogation techniques... LINK

Arms and Security Initiative Policy Brief in United Press International | 'Security Industry''

Communications — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:10:00 -0400

New America in the News:
...A policy brief released by the New America Foundation analyzing the Top 10 defense contractors with the U.S. government found that companies involved with the production of mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, among other armored transportation, had the biggest growth in Pentagon prime contract awards... LINK

UPI Quotes Nir Rosen on Iraqi Refugees

Communications — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 08:04:00 -0400

New America in the News:

WASHINGTON, July 6 (UPI) -- The displacement of Iraqi refugees -- close to 4 million -- represents the most serious crisis involving population movements in the Middle East since the exodus of Palestinians in 1948, when fleeing the creation of the state of Israel, hundreds of thousands established themselves in decrepit refugee camps in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, as well as in Gaza and in the West Bank.

Yet despite their numbers, the Iraqis remain "an invisible refugee crisis," Ken Bacon, president of Refugees International, said at a Washington conference earlier this week. Roughly half of the refugees fled to safer areas within Iraq; the other half went mainly to Syria and Jordan.

The best way to stop Iraqis from fleeing is to create a safe and stable Iraq, which has been the government's main focus for the last few years...The short-term goal is to relieve the burden of those and other countries and prevent them from sending Iraqi refugees home...

The long-term goal is to avoid having another refugee population that can destabilize the Middle East. "When we think of the Iraqi refugee crisis, we should consider it the way people in the region do: through the prism of the Palestinian refugee crisis," Nir Rosen of the New America Foundation said at the news conference. After the Israeli-Arab conflict in 1948, many Palestinians found refuge in the region. In 2005, 4.4 million Palestinians were registered as refugees, according to U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

The majority of the refugees are Sunni, Rosen said, and "Syria has been the most generous by far in terms of accepting refugees and also in granting them rights." Until recently, Iraqis got the same healthcare as Syrians and their children could go to school for free, he said, but now classes are overcrowded and "schools are exploding..."

For the complete article, please visit the United Press International website.

UPI Reports on New America's Future of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Event

Communications — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 13:41:00 -0400

New America in the News:

The United States must build new nuclear weapons to maintain its deterrent capabilities, a National Nuclear Security Administration official said Friday.

The development of new warheads to replace the U.S. Cold War stockpile is necessary to assure a nuclear deterrent for the future, John Harvey, the NNSA's policy planning staff director, told a press conference at the New America Foundation, a [post-partisan] Washington think tank. The NNSA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Energy.

The controversial Reliable Replacement Warhead, or RRW, is cheap and secure, Harvey said, and despite congressional opposition remains "the only way to sustain our nuclear capacity."

"The idea is to provide the same military capabilities as the one it replaces," he said, "not to come out with whole new generations of nuclear weapons."

The RRW is part of the post-Cold War program Complex 2030 program that aims to reduce U.S. nuclear warheads to the lowest possible number consistent with national security. Some 2,000 -- one-fifth of Cold War levels -- would be deployed, Harvey said...

For the complete article, please visit the United Press International website.

For more information on this event, please click here.

UPI Quotes Daniel Levy on U.S., Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process

Communications — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 12:35:00 -0400

New America in the News:

The violent confrontation between warring Palestinian factions unfolding in Gaza is far more than a civil war. It's a coup d'etat accompanied by a civil war. And it's also the most serious, most nefarious chapter in the short history of the Palestinian Authority.

The heavy fighting pitting forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, against members of the Islamist Hamas movement, have not only revived fears of an intra-Palestinian civil war, but they have shattered the dream of the Palestinians gaining independence and ruling themselves as a sovereign nation at any time in the foreseeable future.

The defeat of Abu Mazen's Fatah forces in the Gaza Strip represents much more than a defeat for the mainstream Palestinian political/military movement. The mega-fiasco in Gaza is also a defeat of U.S. foreign policy in the region; it is the culmination of a policy of inaction on the part of the Bush administration. It represents a failure of Israel's policy vis-a-vis the Palestinian territories. After nearly 40 years of occupation Israel finds itself facing a far more hostile environment in Gaza than when they entered the territory in 1967. And possibly far more consequential in the Arab world, the resumption of fighting amongst Palestinians represents a defeat -- and loss of prestige -- for Saudi Arabia's King Abdallah who tried to broker a cease-fire among the warring factions.

"In light of the dramatic escalation of violence in Gaza and President Abbas' move to disband the Palestinian government, the U.S. needs to urgently rethink its failed policy in the Middle East," said Daniel Levy, a senior fellow and director of the Prospects for Peace Initiative at The Century Foundation and a senior fellow and director of the Middle East Initiative at the New America Foundation.

"Palestinians, and Israelis too, have much blame to shoulder, but American disengagement from the Israeli-Palestinian peace process for six and half years and its pursuit of regime change in Palestine have contributed significantly to the new developments," said Levy.

The onetime adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said that "in its failed effort to prevent Palestinians from embracing Hamas, they are driving them instead into the arms of al-Qaida..."

For the complete article, please visit the United Press International website.

UPI Quotes Peter Bergen on NATO Forces in Afghanistan

Communications — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 14:27:00 -0400

New America in the News:

WASHINGTON, June 8 (UPI) -- Taliban insurgents are challenging U.S.-led forces for the moral high ground in Afghanistan by avoiding mass casualty attacks and calling for an international commission to investigate civilian deaths in the conflict.

Analysts and experts say the battle for this vital hearts-and-minds territory is the key to winning the war in Afghanistan, and U.S. and NATO forces are handicapped in it.

They are held to higher standards by the local population, and have had problems with their system of payments to assist non-combatant victims of the fighting...

U.S. and NATO forces "are quite rightly being held to a higher standard" on the question, analyst Peter Bergen of Georgetown University and the New America Foundation told UPI.

As an example, he contrasted the reaction when a U.S. military vehicle killed six people in a road traffic accident in May 2006 -- sparking widespread rioting and anti-Western violence -- with the absence of reaction to the killing of nearly two dozen civilians by a suicide bomb attack aimed at Bagram airbase during a visit this year by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.

"There tends to be a lot less outrage from Afghans when the Taliban kill civilians," he said. As a result, U.S. and NATO forces had a steeper hill to climb in terms of how Afghans perceive the civilian casualties issue...

For the complete article, please visit the United Press International website.

UPI Highlights New America's Solar Energy Event

Communications — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 12:16:00 -0400

New America in the News:

WASHINGTON, June 8 (UPI) -- The potential of solar energy to help solve many of America's energy woes is real, but its success hinges on establishing long-term incentives, industry advocates say.

"The only risk posed by solar is not going forward rapidly," Michael Splinter, chief executive officer of Silicon Valley-based Applied Materials, said this week at a briefing sponsored by the New America Foundation on the potential for the technology to meet global energy demand.

Solar is a viable way to meet much of U.S. and world energy needs -- and to reduce carbon emissions, Splinter said.

Solar represents one-tenth of 1 percent of the 5,000 gigawatts of electricity produced globally each year, Splinter said. The global solar industry is a $15 billion market expected to grow to $50 billion by 2010, he said...

For the complete article, please visit the United Press International website.

For more information on the briefing, please click here.

UPI Quotes Steven Clemons on Valerie Plame Leak

Communications — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:51:00 -0400

New America in the News:

WASHINGTON, March 26 (UPI) -- Despite the hype surrounding the first public appearance by Valerie Plame Wilson last week, the testimony that was most indicting of the Bush administration's handling of the CIA leak controversy came not from the former CIA agent but from the second witness: a White House official responsible for carrying out internal White House investigations.

James Knodell, director of the Office of Security at the White House, testified that in the weeks following the leak of Plame's identity as a covert officer at the CIA, the White House never undertook an internal investigation to locate the loose cannon in its midst...

If the president claimed to support an investigation, why did the White House not conduct one as it is obligated to do by various executive orders protecting classified information? It's a simple question an even more obvious answer after hearing Knodell's testimony.

"The White House didn't engage in standard operating procedure because internally, everyone basically knew what had happened and knew that the involvement of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby and possibly others made this an insider's game," said Steve Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

Clemons said that while the leak of classified information is always a national security concern, this case is particularly insidious because of the way the Bush administration reacted.

"The president's huff and puff at the time of the outing of Valerie Plame was very good theater, but now if we go back and look at it, all of the key players inside who set the president up to make those comments were the ones very involved with making a campaign out of Valerie Plame's identity to get back at Joe Wilson," Clemons said...

For the complete article, please visit the United Press International website.

Len Nichols on Covering Children of Illegal Immigrants in UPI

Communications — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 19:24:00 -0500

New America in the News:

WASHINGTON, March 6 (UPI) -- While the reauthorization and expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program enjoys widespread support, state health officials say they are worried that the "new improved" program might include cumbersome new mandates or restrict the flexibility in health benefits built into the current program.

At a briefing Tuesday in Washington, health-policy analysts pronounced the decade-old federal/state grant program a stunning success -- plucking about 5 million U.S. children whose families make too much money to qualify for Medicaid out of the ranks of the uninsured -- and discussed how the reauthorized program should look.

Experts agreed that the renewed SCHIP program should be infused with enough funds to sustain current enrollment levels, reach the estimated 2 million additional children who are eligible for the program but are not currently enrolled and extend SCHIP to even more low-income children -- and possibly their parents. Those goals carry an estimated price tag of $50 billion over five years, analysts say...

The question of who exactly would qualify under an expanded SCHIP program is still a matter of debate. For example, some argue that SCHIP should be broadened to include the parents of low-income children...

Perhaps even trickier is the issue of covering the children of illegal immigrants under federal/state programs like SCHIP and Medicaid. The offspring of those in the country illegally are technically not eligible for either program, and even children who immigrate to the United States legally must wait five years before qualifying for healthcare assistance...

"The point is, children are not responsible for what their parents have done. They are here," said Len Nichols, director of the health policy program at the New America Foundation, who also spoke at the briefing...

For the complete article, please visit the United Press International website.

UPI Profiles 'The Iraq Effect' Event with Peter Bergen

Communications — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 17:11:00 -0500

New America in the News:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- Attacks by jihadist groups and the rate of fatalities in those attacks have increased significantly since the invasion of Iraq, according to a new study.

The study's authors data shows a sevenfold increase in the global yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks.

"Even when terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world have increased by more than one-third," [said] Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, authors of the study.

The co-authors are research fellows at the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law. Bergen is also a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, a public policy institute.

The study demonstrates "what we all knew intuitively to be true: that the Iraq war has radicalized a new generation and created a lot more jihadist terrorism," Bergen said at an event at the New America Foundation on Wednesday...

For the complete article, please visit the United Press International website.