Obama: ‘withdraw’ to Afghanistan

Senator Barack Obama is proposing that the United States deploy about 10,000 more troops to battle resurgent forces in Afghanistan....

He said in a news conference here, “It’s very hard for us to bolster our forces in Afghanistan when we have such a heavy presence in Iraq....

“We need a timetable for withdrawal, not only to relieve pressure on our military, but also to deal with the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.” (NYT, 7/14)

Obama and key Dems
back wiretaps

...in the end Mr. Bush won...almost all the major elements the White House wanted. The measure gives the executive branch broader latitude in eavesdropping....

Support from key Democrats ensured passage of the measure....

Senator Barack Obama...had long opposed giving legal immunity to the phone companies’...wiretapping.... But on Wednesday, he ended up voting for what he called “an improved but imperfect bill.” (NYT, 7/10)

Drug co. $ to docs hurts kids

An analysis of Minnesota data by The New York Times last year found that on average, psychiatrists who received at least $5,000 from makers of newer-generation antipsychotic drugs appear to have written three times as many prescriptions to children for the drugs as psychiatrists who received less money or none. The drugs are not approved for most uses in children, who appear to be especially susceptible to the side effects, including rapid weight gain. (NYT, 7/12)

US let 9/11 go on as jolt for war

Jack Cloonan, a special agent for the F.B.I.’s Osama bin Laden unit until 2002, told Ms. Mayer that Sept. 11 was “all preventable.” By March 2000, according to the C.I.A.’s inspector general, “50 or 60 individuals” in the agency knew that two Al Qaeda suspects — soon to be hijackers — were in America. But there was no urgency at the top. Thomas Pickard, the acting F.B.I. director that summer, told Ms. Mayer that when he expressed his fears about the Qaeda threat to Mr. Ashcroft, the attorney general snapped, “I don’t want to hear about that anymore!”....

Nonexistent links between Iraq and Al Qaeda were cited by President Bush in his fateful Oct. 7, 2002, Cincinnati speech ginning up the war and by Mr. Powell in his subsequent United Nations presentation. (NYT, 7/13)

General reports US war crimes

When a distinguished American military commander accuses the United States of committing war crimes in its handling of detainees, you know that we need a new way forward.

“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Antonio Taguba, the retired major general who investigated abuses in Iraq, declares in a powerful new report... (NYT, 7/6)

In ex-colonies, childbirth grim

Pregnancy is now usually a cause for celebration, not an occasion to write a will....

But not so in sub-Saharan Africa, where one in every 16 women dies in childbirth.... Maternal mortality is the most dramatic health inequality on the planet — more stark even than child mortality.

It is the incontrovertible evidence of how little women’s lives are valued or their voices heard in many parts of the world. (GW, 7/4)