$1 Million Hit? The Real Deal on Polonium

Polonium-210, the radioactive substance that killed former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko, is easily available on the Internet, but it could take $1 million to amass a lethal amount, according to leading authorities.

Polonium-210 isotopes are offered online by a number of companies, including United Nuclear of New Mexico. The company sells polonium-210 isotopes for about $69 but says it would take about 15,000 orders, for a total cost of over $1 million, to have a toxic amount.

United Nuclear today posted an online clarification to answer concerns they are selling weapons of assassination.

“These quantities of radioactive material are not hazardous,” says the statement on United Nuclear’s Web site. “Another point to keep in mind is that an order for 15,000 sources would look a tad suspicious, considering we sell about one or two sources every three months.”

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) agrees that the quantities sold by United Nuclear and similar companies are not hazardous. Even a large amount of polonium-210 is only toxic if swallowed or absorbed.

It remains unclear how anyone could have obtained the amount apparently used in the poisoning death of the former Russian spy. Speculation that it must have come from a Russian nuclear reactor is being discounted by many experts.

“The idea that you’d have to have access to the Russian nuclear complex is silly,” said Michael Levi, Fellow for Science and Technology at the Council on Foreign Relations. Levi says that while it isn’t easy to obtain a deadly amount of polonium online, it also isn’t prohibitively difficult.

Some devices that are used to clean records and film contain polonium-210, which Levi says could be extracted from the devices given some chemistry skills and provided the person had the other necessary materials. That equipment could be bought for a couple hundred dollars.

Many of those devices, however, are designed to prevent the polonium from being extractable and, according to the NRC, the devices would be a “highly unlikely source” from which someone would acquire a hazardous amount of polonium-210.

“It’s not easy to get,” said David McIntyre at the NRC. “Any amount if you were to disassemble the device would be very difficult to get, and it still wouldn’t be in a hazardous form.”

Levi agrees with the NRC that it would be hard, but he says it is far from impossible. “It doesn’t help that vendors provide engineering diagrams of their devices on the web,” he said.

So where else could one get polonium-210 without climbing the walls at a Russian nuclear complex? Other possible sources include commercial and research reactors overseas that deal with polonium isotopes.

Whatever the source, experts agree that the use of polonium as a murder weapon is a peculiar choice.

“There certainly are more tried and true ways to kill people,” said Levi. “You shouldn’t be particularly scared about polonium because there are a lot of other ways to kill people by slipping something into their drink.”

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U.S. warns of possible Qaeda financial cyber attack

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. government has warned U.S. private financial services of an al Qaeda call for a cyber attack against U.S. online stock trading and banking Web sites beginning Friday, officials said on Thursday.

The officials — a person familiar with the warning and a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security — said the Islamic militant group aimed to penetrate and destroy the databases of the U.S. stock market and banking Web sites.

Homeland Security said it had no evidence to corroborate the threat but had issued the warning out of an “abundance of caution.” The department said in a statement that the threat was for all of December.

“There is no information to corroborate this aspirational threat. As a routine matter and out of an abundance of caution, US-CERT issued the situational awareness report to industry stakeholders,” said Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke.

US-CERT is the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team. The U.S. government said the threat was to avenge the holding of suspected terrorists at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo.

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Bush agrees to speedy turnover in Iraq

AMMAN, Jordan –
President Bush said Thursday the United States will speed a turnover of security responsibility to Iraqi forces but assured Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that Washington is not looking for a “graceful exit” from a war well into its fourth violent year.

Under intensifying political pressure at home, the American and Iraqi leaders came together for a hastily arranged summit to explore how to stop escalating violence that is tearing Iraq apart and eroding support for Bush’s war strategy.

With Bush hoping to strengthen his Iraqi counterpart’s fragile government, the tensions that flared when their opening session was abruptly cancelled Wednesday evening were not apparent when they appeared before reporters after breakfast Thursday.

” I appreciate the courage you show during these difficult times as you lead your country,” Bush told al-Maliki after nearly two and a half hours of talks. “He’s the right guy for Iraq.” It was their third face-to-face meeting since al-Maliki took power about six months ago.

“There is no problem,” declared al-Maliki.

There were no immediate answers for mending the Shiite-Sunni divide that is fueling sectarian bloodshed in Iraq or taming the stubborn insurgency against the U.S. presence. The leaders emerged from their breakfast and formal session with few specific ideas, particularly on Bush’s repeated pledge to move more quickly to transfer authority for Iraq’s security to al-Maliki’s government.

“One of his frustrations with me is that he believes that we’ve been slow about giving him the tools necessary to protect the Iraqi people,” Bush said. “He doesn’t have the capacity to respond. So we want to accelerate that capacity.”

There was no explanation from either side of how that would happen, beyond support for the long-standing goals of speeding the U.S. military’s effort to train Iraqi security forces and to give more military authority over Iraq to al-Maliki.

A senior al-Maliki aide who attended Thursday’s talks said the Iraqi leader presented Bush a blueprint for the equipping and training of Iraqi security forces. The aide, who spoke anonymously because of the sensitive nature of the information, declined to give details.

The November elections that handed control of Congress to Democrats have given rise to heightened calls for the about 140,000 American soldiers in Iraq to begin coming home.

Bush acknowledged that pressure and said he wanted to start troop withdrawals as soon as possible. Still, he insisted the U.S. will stay “until the job is complete.”

“I know there’s a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there’s going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq,” he said. “This business about a graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all.”

The president added: “I’m a realist because I understand how tough it is inside of Iraq.”

Thursday’s meetings were supposed to be Bush’s second set of strategy sessions in the Jordanian capital. But the first meeting between Bush and al-Maliki, scheduled for Wednesday night along with Jordan’s king, was scrubbed.

Accounts varied as to why, but it followed the leak of a classified White House memo critical of al-Maliki and a boycott of the Iraqi leader’s government in Baghdad.

Thirty Iraqi lawmakers and five cabinet ministers loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said they were suspending participation in Parliament and the government to protest al-Maliki’s decision to meet with Bush.

Bush said al-Maliki “discussed with me his political situation,” but he declined to step publicly into delicate internal Iraqi matters.

Privately, Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice repeatedly pressed the Iraqi prime minister to disband a heavily armed Shiite militia loyal to al-Sadr and blamed for much of the country’s sectarian violence, according to the senior al-Maliki aide.

The official quoted al-Maliki as telling Bush that controlling the group “is not a big problem and we will find a solution for it.” Al-Sadr is a key al-Maliki political backer and the prime minister has regularly sidestepped U.S. demands to deal with the Mahdi Army.

Before the cameras, Al-Maliki sent the protesting forces at home a message.
“Those who participate in this government need to bear responsibilities, and foremost upon those responsibilities is the protection of this government, the protection of the constitution, the protection of the law, not breaking the law,” he said.

But al-Maliki’s insistence on not attending the three-way meeting with Bush and Jordan’s king was a troubling sign of possible U.S. difficulties ahead in the effort to calm Iraq.

The Bush administration is believed to be pushing its Sunni allies in the region — meeting host Jordan as well as Saudi Arabia — to persuade Sunni insurgent sympathizers in Iraq to reconcile with the Shiite factions that are close to the Iraqi leader.

Al-Maliki’s refusal to meet with Bush while Jordan’s king was in attendance showed a level of mistrust toward his Sunni-dominated neighbors that could bode ill for the U.S. strategy.

Bush, meanwhile, continued to reject drawing Shiite-led Iran into helping Iraq in its struggle for peace.

“I appreciate the prime minister’s views that the Iraqis are plenty capable of running their own business and they don’t need foreign interference from neighbors that will be destabilizing the country,” he said.

Al-Maliki, though, seemed open to the possibility of Tehran, as well as Damascus, getting involved.

A bipartisan commission on Iraq that will unveil recommendations next week is expected to urge direct diplomacy with Iran and Syria America’s chief rivals in the Middle East.

“We are ready to cooperate with everybody who believe that they need to communicate with the national unity government, especially our neighbors,” al-Maliki said. “Our doors are open.”

The two agreed that Iraq should not be partitioned along sectarian lines into semi-regions for the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites, Bush said.

“The prime minister made clear that splitting his country into parts, as some have suggested, is not what the Iraqi people want, and that any partition of Iraq would only lead to an increase in sectarian violence,” the president said. “I agree.”

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Court Hears Global Warming Case

The Supreme Court yesterday cautiously confronted for the first time the issue of global warming, hearing a challenge to the Bush administration’s refusal to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases in new vehicles.

Twelve states, led by Massachusetts and joined by the District of Columbia, are objecting to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to decline to issue emissions standards for new cars and trucks. They and the environmental organizations that support them say the standards should be the first step in a broader effort to reduce carbon dioxide and other gases that they say are harming the atmosphere and leading to global warming and rising sea levels.

But they faced a court sometimes skeptical about whether the remedy they seek would make much difference in the long run, and whether they can even show they are facing the kind of imminent harm that is required before they can press their case.

“I mean,” asked Justice Antonin Scalia, “when is the predicted cataclysm?”

Scalia was one of several justices to remark on a lack of scientific expertise during an hour of questioning that touched on whether the states have “standing” to challenge the EPA’s refusal, the level of evidence proving the existence of global warming and its causes, and even whether unilateral action by the United States to reduce greenhouse gases would hamper negotiations with other countries on the issue.

The debate inside the court is echoed outside the chamber. Former vice president Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” increased public awareness of the issue. And the Democrats who won control of Congress this month have said they will make the issue a priority: Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who is in line to become chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said a failure to limit greenhouse gases will lead to “economic decline and environmental ruin.” She would replace Chairman James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), who has called global warming a hoax.

Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General James R. Milkey told the court that 200 miles of the state’s coastline are threatened by rising seas, a result of global warming.

“The harm does not suddenly spring up in the year 2100; it plays out continuously over time,” Milkey said in answer to Scalia’s question. “Once these gases are emitted . . . they stay a long time — the laws of physics take over.”

Milkey faced skeptical questioning from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the court’s newest members, but the most sustained — and entertaining — interrogation came from Scalia.

At one point, he acknowledged the role of carbon dioxide as a pollutant in the air but wondered about it being a pollutant in the “stratosphere.”

“Respectfully, Your Honor, it is not the stratosphere. It’s the troposphere,” Milkey said.

“Troposphere, whatever. I told you before I’m not a scientist,” Scalia said to laughter. “That’s why I don’t want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth.”

Milkey had already said that the court need not pass judgment on the science of climate change to find that the EPA did not do its job when deciding not to regulate new vehicle emissions.

The case started in 1999, when an environmental group, the International Center for Technology Assessment, and others petitioned the EPA to set greenhouse gas emissions standards for new vehicles.

In 2003, the agency denied the petition, saying said that it lacked statutory authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, even though the agency in previous administrations had held that it did. Further, the agency said, even if it did have authority, it was not required to use it.

The agency decided, according to Deputy Solicitor General Gregory C. Garre, “now is not the time to exercise such authority, in light of the substantial scientific uncertainty surrounding global climate change and the ongoing studies designed to address those uncertainties.”

Even if the court sides with the states, it is only being asked to remand the issue back to the EPA with specifications on what to look at in deciding whether to issue the emissions standards. And both sides agree that vehicle admissions in the United States amount to only 6 percent of total carbon dioxide emissions; tougher standards on new vehicles would only moderately reduce that.

But the court’s decision could affect other efforts by environmentalists to force action on emissions from power plants — stalled in the courts — and shed light on the appropriateness of individual states’ actions. California, for instance, has passed greenhouse gas emissions standards that are to go into effect in 2009 but are being challenged by industry.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer said a change of heart by the EPA could set off a string of similarly small decisions by other agencies, “each of which has an impact, and lo and behold, Cape Cod is saved.” He seemed most sympathetic to the states’ case, along with Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who as usual asked no questions, is presumed to be in line with Scalia, Roberts and Alito. That leaves Justice Anthony M. Kennedy as a pivotal vote in whether the states have proven they have standing for the case to go forward.

He noted Milkey’s “perhaps reassuring statement” that the court does not have to make a judgment about global warming. “But,” Kennedy asked, “don’t we have to do that in order to decide the standing argument, because there’s no injury if there’s not global warming?”

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Iraq Panel to Recommend Pullback of Combat Troops

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 — The bipartisan Iraq Study Group reached a consensus on Wednesday on a final report that will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal, according to people familiar with the panel’s deliberations.

The report, unanimously approved by the 10-member panel, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, is to be delivered to President Bush next week.

It is a compromise between distinct paths that the group has debated since March, avoiding a specific timetable, which has been opposed by Mr. Bush, but making it clear that the American troop commitment should not be open-ended. The recommendations of the group, formed at the request of members of Congress, are nonbinding.

A person who participated in the commission’s debate said that unless the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki believed that Mr. Bush was under pressure to pull back troops in the near future, “there will be zero sense of urgency to reach the political settlement that needs to be reached.”

The report recommends that Mr. Bush make it clear that he intends to start the withdrawal relatively soon, and people familiar with the debate over the final language said the implicit message was that the process should begin sometime next year.

The report leaves unstated whether the 15 combat brigades that are the bulk of American fighting forces in Iraq would be brought home, or simply pulled back to bases in Iraq or in neighboring countries. (A brigade typically consists of 3,000 to 5,000 troops.) From those bases, they would still be responsible for protecting a substantial number of American troops who would remain in Iraq, including 70,000 or more American trainers, logistics experts and members of a rapid reaction force.

As the commission wound up two and a half days of deliberation in Washington, the group said in a public statement only that a consensus had been reached and that the report would be delivered next Wednesday to President Bush, Congress and the American public. Members of the commission were warned by Mr. Baker and Mr. Hamilton not to discuss the contents of the report.

But four people involved in the debate, representing different points of view, agreed to outline its conclusions in broad terms to address what they said might otherwise be misperceptions about the findings. Some said their major concern was that the report might be too late.

“I think we’ve played a constructive role,” one person involved in the committee’s deliberations said, “but from the beginning, we’ve worried that this entire agenda could be swept away by events.”

Even as word of the study group’s conclusions began to leak out, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said two or three battalions of American troops were being sent to Baghdad from elsewhere in Iraq to assist in shoring up security there. Another Pentagon official said the additional troops for Baghdad would be drawn from a brigade in Mosul equipped with fast-moving, armored Stryker vehicles.

As described by the people involved in the deliberations, the bulk of the report by the Baker-Hamilton group focused on a recommendation that the United States devise a far more aggressive diplomatic initiative in the Middle East than Mr. Bush has been willing to try so far, including direct engagement with Iran and Syria. Initially, those contacts might be part of a regional conference on Iraq or broader Middle East peace issues, like the Israeli-Palestinian situation, but they would ultimately involve direct, high-level talks with Tehran and Damascus.

Mr. Bush has rejected such contacts until now, and he has also rejected withdrawal, declaring in Riga, Latvia, on Tuesday that while he will show flexibility, “there’s one thing I’m not going to do: I’m not going to pull the troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete.”

Commission members have said in recent days that they had to navigate around such declarations, or, as one said, “We had to move the national debate from whether to stay the course to how do we start down the path out.”

Their report, as described by those familiar with the compromise, may give Republicans political cover to back away from parts of the president’s current strategy, even if Democrats claim that the report is short on specific deadlines.

While the White House reviews its strategy options, Pentagon planners are also looking beyond the immediate reinforcements for Baghdad to the question of whether they will need to draw more on reserve units to meet troop requirements in the Iraqi capital, military officials said. In particular, the Army is considering sending about 3,000 combat engineers from reserve units.

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NATIONAL STANDARDS INSTITUTE TO RECOMMEND SCRAPPING DIRECT RECORDING ELECTRONIC TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING MACHINES!

Says Machines Should be Decertified! Also Says So-Called ‘Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails (VVPAT) Should Not Be Used’ in Voting Systems!

A federal agency is set to recommend significant changes to specifications for electronic-voting machines next week, internetnews.com has learned.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is recommending that the 2007 version of the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) decertify direct record electronic (DRE) machines.…According to an NIST paper to be discussed at a meeting of election regulators at NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md., on Dec. 4 and 5, DRE vote totals cannot be audited because the machines are not software independent.

In other words, there is no means of verifying vote tallies other than by relying on the software that tabulated the results to begin with.

The machines currently in use are “more vulnerable to undetected programming errors or malicious code,” according to the paper.

The NIST paper also noted that, “potentially, a single programmer could ‘rig’ a major election.”

This is a tremendously important development!

To be clear, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is the group that oversees the formulation of the so-called federal “Voting Systems Standards”. Those are the standards, such that there are any, which are in effect today at the federal level to determine federal certification of voting systems. NIST hosts the Technical Guidelines Developement Committee for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and they are the body who developed the current standadards now in use. This report will likely have an enormous impact in shaping whatever may happen next concerning any upcoming Election Reform or legislation in DC.

But wait, it gets even better!…

Apropos of an article here at BRAD BLOG earlier today, in which we tried to make clear that paper trails on touch-screen machines (versus paper ballots as used with optical-scan or hand-counted systems) are not an adequate solution to the nation’s — or even Florida 13’s — current voting dysfunction, NIST agrees that paper trails don’t cut it:

The NIST is also going to recommend changes to the design of machines equipped with paper rolls that provide audit trails.

Currently, the paper rolls produce records that are illegible or otherwise unusable, and NIST is recommending that “paper rolls should not be used in new voting systems.”

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Iraq, Iran reach agreement on security

TEHRAN, Iran – Iraq’s president said Wednesday he had reached a security agreement with Iran, which the United States accuses of fueling the chaos in the war-torn country. Iran’s president called on countries to stop backing “terrorists” in Iraq and for the Americans to withdraw.

Tehran is believed to back some of the Shiite militias blamed in the vicious sectarian killings that have thrown the country into chaos. The United States has said the Iraqi government should press Iran to stop interfering in its affairs in a bid to calm the violence.

Presidents Jalal Talabani of Iraq and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran held talks Wednesday hours before U.S. President George W. Bush was due to meet with the Iraqi prime minister in Jordan in talks aimed at finding a solution to Iraq’s spiraling bloodshed.

Talabani gave no details on the security agreement with Iran, and Ahmadinejad made no mention of any deal at a joint press conference in Tehran.

“We discussed in the fields of security, economy, oil and industry. Our agreement was complete,” Talabani told reporters. “This visit was 100 percent successful. Its result will appear soon.”

It was not clear if Talabani’s comments reflected an agreement by Tehran to try to rein in Shiite militias. Most of the militias are run by political parties that are a powerful part of the coalition government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. He has resisted U.S. pressure to crack down on the militias.

Ahmadinejad repeated his calls for the United States to withdraw its forces from Iraq.

“I advise you to leave Iraq,” he said, addressing the Americans. “Based on a timetable, transfer the responsibilities to Iraqi government. This will agree to your interests, too.”

He urged countries to stop backing militants in Iraq, saying, “supporting terrorists is the ugliest act that they can do.” He did not specify which countries he was referring to.

Ahmadinejad said “extremists should be dismissed (from the Iraqi government) no matter to which group and ethnicity they belong to. This is the only way to salvation.”

“Enemies of Iraq are trying to create differences and extend hostility among the Iraqi people,” he said.

The United States accuses Iran and its ally Syria of stirring up violence in Iraq. Tehran denies this, saying it seeks calm in its neighbor and that an end to the bloodshed can only come when U.S. forces withdraw.

Al-Maliki and Talabani both have longtime ties with Iran. The Iraqi president has been in Iran the past three days, meeting Ahmadinejad and the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Talabani and Ahmadinejad attended a ceremony for the signing of two memorandums of understanding for cooperation in education and industry.

Ahmadinejad vowed that Iran “will stand by its Iraqi brothers,” saying “no one can divide nations of Iran and Iraq.”

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U.S.-Iraq summit put off until Thursday

AMMAN, Jordan –
President Bush high-profile meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Wednesday was canceled in a stunning turn of events after disclosure of U.S. doubts about the Iraqi leader’s capabilities and a political boycott in Baghdad protesting his attendance.

Instead of two days of talks, Bush and al-Maliki will have breakfast and a single meeting followed by a news conference on Thursday morning, the White House said.

The abrupt cancellation was an almost unheard-of development in the high-level diplomatic circles of a U.S. president, a king and a prime minister. There was confusion — and conflicting explanations — about what happened.

Bush had been scheduled to meet in a three-way session with al-Maliki and Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Wednesday night, and had rearranged his schedule to be in Amman for both days for talks aimed at reducing the spiral of violence in Iraq.

The last-minute cancellation was not announced until Bush had already come to Raghadan Palace and posed for photographs alone with the king.

White House counselor Dan Bartlett denied that the delay was a snub by al-Maliki directed at Bush or was related to the leak of a memo written by White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley questioning the prime minister’s capacity for controlling violence in Iraq.

“Absolutely not,” Bartlett said.” He said the king and the prime minister had met before Bush arrived from a NATO summit in Latvia. “That negated the purpose to meet tonight together in a trilateral setting.”

A senior administration official, who spoke with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, basically echoed Bartlett’s account.

The Jordanians and the Iraqis jointly decided it was not the best use of time because they both would be seeing the president separately, said the official.

Members of the Jordanian and Iraqi delegations contacted Khalilzad, who called Air Force One and spoke with Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, giving them a heads-up, the official said.

However, Redha Jawad Taqi, a senior aide of top Shiite politician Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim who also was in Amman, said the Iraqis balked at the three-way meeting after learning the king wanted to broaden the talks to include the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Two senior officials traveling with al-Maliki, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said the prime minister had been reluctant to travel to Jordan in the first place and decided, once in Amman, that he did not want “a third party” involved in talks about subjects specific to the U.S.-Iraqi relationship.

With Maliki already gone from the palace, Bush had an abbreviated meeting and dinner with the king before heading early to his hotel.

The cancellation came after the disclosure of a classified White House memo, written Nov. 8 by Hadley. In one particularly harsh section, Hadley asserted: “The reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action.”

Administration officials did not dispute the leaked account, saying that on balance the document was supportive of the Iraqi leader and generally portrayed him as well-meaning.

The president “has confidence in Prime Minister Maliki,” said Bush spokesman Tony Snow, who added that al-Maliki “has been very aggressive in recent weeks in taking on some of the key challenges.”

The memo recommended steps to strengthen the Iraqi leader’s position, including possibly sending more troops to defend Baghdad and providing monetary support for moderate political candidates for Iraq’s parliament.

The Iraqi prime minister also faced political pressure at home about the summit. Thirty Iraqi lawmakers and five cabinet ministers loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said they were boycotting Parliament and the government to protest al-Maliki’s presence at the summit.

Bartlett said that Wednesday night’s three-way meeting had always been planned as “more of a social meeting” and that Bush and Maliki on Thursday would have a “robust” meeting on their own.

The president was expected to ask the embattled Iraqi prime minister how best to train Iraqi forces faster so they can shoulder more responsibility for halting the sectarian violence and, specifically, mending a gaping Sunni-Shiite divide. There are about 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and Bush is under unrelenting pressure from Democrats and many Republicans to start bringing them home.

Some analysts suggested that the memo might actually help more than damage al-Maliki, showing distance between him and Bush.

Jon Alterman, former special assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, said the memo’s doubts about al-Maliki “seemed calculated to steel his spine.”

“This memo reads to me more like a memo to Prime Minister al-Maliki than to President Bush,” said Alterman, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It has his entire to-do list as well as a list of what he’ll get if he agrees.”

In Washington, Sen. Jack Reed (news, bio, voting record), D-R.I., called on Bush to appoint a high-ranking special envoy to work with the Iraqi government on disbanding militias, including all Iraq’s factions in the nation’s political process and equitably distributing resources such as oil revenue.
“Steps have to be taken now,” he said.

Bush’s meeting with al-Maliki is part of a new flurry of diplomacy the administration has undertaken across the Middle East. Hadley’s memo suggests that Secretary of State Rice should hold a meeting for Iraq and its neighbors in the region early next month and also that the U.S. could step up efforts to get Saudi Arabia to help. It was written just weeks before Secretary of State Dick Cheney was dispatched to Saudi Arabia.

Senior administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the document is still classified even though published, said that many of the concerns raised by Hadley have been or are being rectified in the month that has passed since his trip to Baghdad.

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US setbacks see dollar plunge to near 15-year low

The dollar tumbled to a near 15-year low against sterling yesterday on fresh signs of economic trouble in the United States.

An 8.3pc crash in US industrial orders and an admission by the Federal Reserve chairman that Washington does not know how bad housing really is set off another day of wild gyrations on the currency markets.

US house prices fell 3.5pc to an average $221,000, the third month of declines. Stocks of unsold homes rose to 7.4 months’ supply, the highest since 1993. The US consumer confidence index fell sharply to 102.9.

The “truckers index” of tonnage shipped by US haulage companies was down 1.8pc in October, a leading indicator of contraction. Merrill Lynch called the fall “borderline recessionary”.

The dollar continued its slide against the euro, dropping to $1.3194 after the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, said the housing slump “would be a drag on economic growth into next year”. Mr Bernanke said official figures did not pick up the “sharp increase” in cancellations on house deals and might understate the inventory glut.

“Any significant effect on consumer spending arising from further weakness in housing would have important implications for the economy,” he said.

The pound briefly touched $1.95 and surged to eight-year highs against the yen.

The Japanese currency has been in freefall for months on repeated weak data. It suffered a fresh blow yesterday after retail sales fell for a second month, increasing fears that Japan’s export-dependent economy may slow in lock step with America.

The OECD club of rich nations gave warning yesterday in its bi-annual economic outlook that the world’s second-biggest economy was still too fragile after years of debt deflation to risk a rapid rise in rates from 0.25pc.

“The return to price stability is proving longer and less assured than expected. Further monetary tightening should wait until a fully-fledged exit from deflation finally materialises,” it said.

The OECD downgraded its global growth forecast for the 30 leading economies from 2.9pc to 2.5pc in 2007, and said the US might need to start cutting interest rates next year.

Chief economist Jean-Philippe Cotis said there was no cause for alarm, arguing that the US would achieve the “soft-landing” it eluded after the dotcom bubble in 2000. “What the world may be facing is a rebalancing of growth,” he said. “In the euro area, recent hard data suggest that a solid upswing may be under way. Growth should remain buoyant in China, India, Russia and other emerging economies.”

In a rare piece of good news that helped calm Wall Street after the equity rout on Monday, Mr Bernanke said inflation had been “somewhat better behaved of late”.

David Lereah, chief economist for the US National Association of Realtors, said there might be light at the end of tunnel for the housing market, citing a slight rise in transactions.

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U.S. moving up to 2,700 troops into Baghdad

WASHINGTON (CNN) — In an effort to restore security in Baghdad, the U.S. military plans to move at least three more battalions of American soldiers into the Iraqi capital, a senior Pentagon official said.

Between 500 and 900 troops are in an Army battalion, but the Pentagon official could not give the exact number of troops involved in the movements.

The official said the troops will not include Marines based in Sunni-dominated Anbar province, where troops and insurgents have been fighting along the Euphrates River corridor. Instead, the official said, the troops will be moved from more peaceful regions, such as northern Iraq.

The troop shifts won’t require an increase in forces in the country, the official said.

Some troops are in the Baghdad area but will be moved closer into the city.

As sectarian violence rages in parts of Iraq, securing Baghdad has been the top priority in the U.S. strategy to bring democracy to the country.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government hasn’t been able to devise an effective strategy to stem the Sunni-Shiite violence that some observers say has plunged Iraq into civil war.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking at meeting of business leaders in Dubai on Wednesday, said Iraq’s violence meets the standard of a “civil war.” (Full story)

President Bush this week refused to debate whether Iraq was experiencing civil war. He called the latest violence “part of a pattern” of attacks by al Qaeda in Iraq to divide Shiites and Sunnis. (Full story)

President Bush was in Amman, Jordan, on Wednesday for a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, but the talks were put off after public disclosure of U.S. doubts about his capacity to control sectarian warfare. The two are scheduled to meet Thursday, the White House said. (Full story)

Al-Maliki’s his political standing weakened when allies of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a key Shiite supporter of al-Maliki’s government, said Wednesday they were stopping their participation as Cabinet ministers and members of parliament. (Full story)

Other developments

The Pentagon on Wednesday released the identity of the missing flier whose F-16 crashed near Baghdad on Monday. He is Maj. Troy L. Gilbert, who is listed as duty status whereabouts unknown. It said Gilbert is assigned to the 309th Fighter Squadron, Luke Air Force Base, Arizona. (Watch why military thinks pilot killed in crash )

The Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan panel assessing U.S. policies in the war in Iraq, will issue its report next Wednesday, a source told CNN. The report, prepared at the urging of Congress, is expected to include recommendations that will help the Bush administration deal with the conflict.

Fighting Wednesday between coalition forces and insurgents shut down the city of Baquba, killing scores of militants and civilians, The Associated Press reported. (Full story)

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