Obama Closes in on Afghan Troop Increase

President Obama is expected to address the nation early next week, saying he will send a sizable force of additional troops to Afghanistan, sources tell NPR.

The tentative plan is for the president to make his announcement Dec. 1, followed shortly thereafter by testimony on Capitol Hill by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Also expected to brief Congress is the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

The central issue is how many more U.S. forces will be sent to fight a resurgent Taliban and train Afghan forces. There are now 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan.

McChrystal is pressing for an additional 40,000 troops. Sources say the president is expected to send a sizable force, though it's uncertain whether he will agree to the precise number McChrystal wants. If he makes a decision within the next week to send more troops, the forces likely won't arrive in Afghanistan until March.

Obama called his war council together Monday night in the White House situation room as he moved toward a decision.

The president has said he would announce his plans by year's end. He first called the high-powered national security team together in August as he began wrestling with a new plan for Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, where the al-Qaida leadership is believed to be hiding.
The White House said Obama could use Monday's session to lock in his long-awaited decision on whether to commit tens of thousands of new U.S. forces to the stalemated war.

McChrystal has said more U.S. forces were needed to head off a U.S. failure in the fight against Taliban militants in Afghanistan.

Military officials and others told The Associated Press they expect Obama to settle on a middle-ground option that would deploy an eventual 32,000 to 35,000 U.S. forces to the eight-year-old conflict.

That rough figure has stood as the most likely option since before Obama's last large war council meeting earlier this month, when he tasked military planners with rearranging the timing and makeup of some of the deployments.

The president has said with increasing frequency in recent days that a big piece of the rethinking of options that he ordered had to do with building an exit strategy into the announcement — in other words, revising the options presented to him to clarify when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government and under what conditions.

As White House press secretary Robert Gibbs put it to reporters on Monday, it's "not just how we get people there, but what's the strategy for getting them out."

Monday night's meeting included a large cast of foreign policy advisers, who were to go over revised information from war planners.

In a session expected to last 90 minutes, "they'll go through some of the questions that the president had, some additional answers to what he'd asked for, and have a discussion about that," Gibbs said.

The meeting was arranged for the unusual nighttime slot to accommodate both Obama's packed public schedule on Monday and the fact that many of his top advisers were leaving town for the holiday. No more war council meetings are on the calendar.

The presidential spokesman said it was possible Obama could lock in a decision at Monday's meeting or that it could come "over the course of the next several days." In either case, it will not be announced this week, he said.

The force infusion expected by the military would represent most but not all of the troops requested by Obama's war commander, for a retailored war plan that blends elements of McChrystal's counterterrorist strategy with tactics more closely associated with the CIA's unacknowledged war to hunt down terrorists across the border in Pakistan.

McChrystal presented options ranging from about 10,000 to about 80,000 forces and told Obama he preferred an addition of about 40,000 atop the record 68,000 in the country now, officials have said.

Obama has already ordered a significant expansion of 21,000 troops since taking office. The war has worsened on his watch, and public support has dropped as U.S. combat deaths have climbed.
According to officials who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity:

— Additional troops would be concentrated in the south and east of Afghanistan, the areas where the U.S. already has most of its forces.

— The effort already begun to help relieve Marines stretched to the limit by far-flung postings in Helmand province would continue, while the U.S. effort would expand somewhat in Kandahar.
— The increase would include at least three Army brigades and a single, larger Marine Corps contingent.

U.S. war planners would be forgoing the option of increasing U.S. fighting power in the north, a once-quiet quadrant where insurgents have grown in strength and number in the past year. But McChrystal's recommendation never called for a quick infusion there.

In the absence of large additions of ground forces, dealing with the north would probably require relying more heavily on air power, two military officials told the AP. Any such additional airstrikes would be more successful if, as U.S. officials hope, Pakistan turns up the heat on Taliban militants on their side of the border.

As originally envisioned by McChrystal, the additional U.S. troops would begin flowing in late January or after, on a deployment calendar that would be slower and more complex than that used to build up the Iraq "surge" in 2007. McChrystal's schedule for full deployment has it taking nearly two years, military officials said.

Said Obama in a television interview last week: "At the end of this process, I'm going to be able to present to the American people in very clear terms what exactly is at stake, what we intend to do, how we're going to succeed, how much it's going to cost, how long it's going to take."
Congressional hearings would immediately follow that address, including testimony from McChrystal.

On the topic of increased costs in Afghanistan, Gibbs said that the subject of a war tax, suggested by some leading Democrats on Capitol Hill, has not come up yet in the president's extensive meetings with his war advisers.

Lieberman and the Public Policy

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, speaking in that trademark sonorous baritone, utters a simple statement that translates into real trouble for Democratic leaders: "I'm going to be stubborn on this."

Stubborn, he means, in opposing any health-care overhaul that includes a "public option," or government-run health-insurance plan, as the current bill does. His opposition is strong enough that Mr. Lieberman says he won't vote to let a bill come to a final vote if a public option is included.

Probe for a catch or caveat in that opposition, and none is visible. Can he support a public option if states could opt out of the plan, as the current bill provides? "The answer is no," he says in an interview from his Senate office. "I feel very strongly about this." How about a trigger, a mechanism for including a public option along with a provision saying it won't be used unless private insurance plans aren't spreading coverage far and fast enough? No again.

So any version of a public option will compel Mr. Lieberman to vote against bringing a bill to a final vote? "Correct," he says.

This is, of course, more than just one senator objecting to one part of health legislation. This is the former Democratic vice presidential nominee, now an independent, Joe Lieberman, still counted on to be the 60th vote Democrats will need to force a final vote on health legislation. In opposing a public option, he is opposing the element some Democratic liberals have come to consider the cornerstone of a health-care bill.

Maybe the Lieberman stance is posturing, or a maneuver to force a watering down of the public option into something he and like-minded Democratic conservatives can swallow. In any case, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tries to solve the Rubik's Cube that is health legislation, Mr. Lieberman just might represent the hardest piece to flip into place.

In spite of that, Mr. Lieberman insists he wants a bill. He voted with Democrats over the weekend on a procedural motion to let debate begin on a version that definitely includes a public option, albeit one states could choose not to join. "I want to get to the health-care debate, and I want to be part of creating, working on and passing health-care reform," he says. "I've been working on it for years, so that's my goal. But I'm not going to vote for anything and everything called health-care reform."

He says he wants the government to help uninsured Americans get coverage, as the bill envisions, and likes the provisions designed to bring down overall health costs. And he favors the consumer protections it would impose on private insurers, including one that bans insurance companies from denying coverage to those with pre-existing health conditions.

But none of that trumps his opposition to a public option, Mr. Lieberman says. And he insists his objection isn't based on the oft-expressed conservative fear that a public option would lead to a government takeover of health care. He says he doubts this or any subsequent Congress would allow that.

Rather, his objection is based on fiscal risk: "Once the government creates an insurance company or plan, the government or the taxpayers are liable for any deficit that government plan runs, really without limit," he says. "With our debt heading over $21 trillion within the next 10 years...we've got to start saying no to some things like this."

Mr. Lieberman also notes that the public option wasn't a big feature of past health-overhaul plans or the campaign debate of 2008. So he says he finds it odd that it now has become a central demand -- which it has, he suspects, because some Democrats wanted a full-bore, single-payer, government-run health plan, and were offered a public option as a consolation.

Critics, of course, think Mr. Lieberman is merely protecting insurers from his home state of Connecticut. He, of course, insists otherwise, arguing that regulation and litigation are the traditional and more appropriate ways to keep the private market honest. The real risk he sees, he insists, is government debt.

Yet he still thinks that, somehow, health legislation will get done, probably not by Christmas but early next year. "At the end of the day," he says, "I feel strongly health-care reform will pass the Senate and the Congress."

How? Mr. Lieberman says he has made his position absolutely clear to Mr. Reid. And Mr. Reid, all agree, is a wily tactician. So does he think Mr. Lieberman, and the two or three conservative Democrats who share his inclination, will give in at the end? Or is there some artful compromise that can be seen as including and not including a public option at the same time?

Here's another possibility: Maybe Mr. Reid plans to push as far as he can with a bill including a public option, to show his party he has done all humanly possible, before yanking the public option just before the whole effort goes off a cliff. We've proven that a bill is possible, he might say then, but also that a public option isn't.

Dems Split Over Healthcare Bill

President Barack Obama’s mission to reform US healthcare vaulted another legislative hurdle over the weekend, but the scramble to secure his own party’s votes sheds light on the messy compromises that may be needed to get it to the finish line.

Fissures between liberal and centrist Democrats cracked open on Sunday in the aftermath of a procedural vote, which paved the way for the estimated $848bn (€570bn, £514bn) draft Senate bill to be debated on the floor. Leaders hope there will be a vote on the bill by Christmas. If passed, the House and Senate versions will have to be mashed together.
Ben Nelson: 'When I saw the bill I said: 'This can be amended''

If this weekend is anything to go by, it will not be a pretty process. All Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents voted to push the bill forward – creating a filibuster-proof majority of 60 – but some of those votes came far from quietly. A group of centrist Democrats, unhappy about elements of the bill such as a public insurance option, managed to wring concessions from the leadership in return for their acquiescence.

In what wags have already dubbed the “Louisiana Purchase”, Mary Landrieu was offered at least $100m in extra federal money for her state. Ben Nelson won the omission of a provision that would strip health insurers of their anti-trust exemption. Blanche Lincoln won more time.
The group’s disproportionate power in the debate has antagonised some liberal Democrats. “In the end, I don’t want four Democratic senators dictating to the other 56 of us and to the country, when the public option has this much support, that it’s not going to be in it,” said Sherrod Brown of Ohio on Sunday on CNN.

“But in the end, I think that all four of our colleagues surveyed this . . . and I don’t think they want to be on the wrong side of history. I don’t think they want to go back and say, ‘You know, on a procedural vote, I killed the most important bill in my political career’.”

As the debate gets going, the centrists will face increased pressure at home, where they are vulnerable to losing their seats if they are seen to let their colleagues in Washington push them too far to the left. Lobbyists on both sides of the debate are well aware of this, and are blitzing their home states with adverts.

Ms Lincoln claimed that groups had spent $3.3m on advertising in her state of Arkansas. She said she would refuse to yield to either side, but was shocked by the “unbelievable type of threats” she had received.

“These ad groups seem to think this is all about my re-election. I simply think they don’t know me very well,” she said on the Senate floor.

The group, which also includes independent senator Joe Lieberman, all said they wanted more changes made to the bill in the coming weeks.

“When I saw the bill I said, ‘This can be amended, this can be improved’,” Mr Nelson said on Sunday on ABC. He said language on federal funding for abortion, which is softer than that of the House bill, was one problem. He did signal he was willing to compromise on a public option, but said it would have to be much weaker than the current version, which has already been watered down to allow states to opt out.

“We could negotiate a public option of some sort that I might look at, but I don’t want a big government, Washington-run operation that would undermine the . . . private insurance that 200m Americans now have,” he said.

Mr Lieberman, though, was more intransigent.

“[A public option] is a radical departure from the way we’ve responded to the market in America in the past,” he told NBC. “We rely first on competition in our market economy. When the competition fails then what do we do? We regulate or we litigate.”

The weekend’s vote was a victory for Harry Reid, Senate leader, but he acknowledged that it was simply an opening skirmish in a battle that is now set to break into full force. Much of that battle will take place within his own party.

“Tonight’s vote is not the end of the debate,” he said on Saturday night. “It is only the beginning.”

New York Prepares for Terror Trial

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Forty percent of New Yorkers believe the trial of accused September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed makes an attack on the city more likely, according to a new poll, while security experts say it is already the top target in America.

The planned trial of Mohammed and four accused accomplices has stoked debate in the city where nearly 3,000 people died in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Rudy Giuliani, who was mayor at the time of the attacks, and others say it makes the city a target, but police say they can handle such events. Some on Wall Street who lost colleagues in the attacks say they are sickened at the prospect.

A Marist College Institute for Public Opinion poll on Tuesday found 40 percent of New Yorkers say holding the trial blocks from Ground Zero, the site of the destroyed World Trade towers, increases likelihood of another attack in the city.

The telephone survey of 602 New Yorkers had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

A Daily News editorial on Tuesday called the trial, "a profoundly wrong step that will undermine the War on Terror and increase the threat to New York."

But Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counter-terrorism chief, said: "It will be an extraordinary event in terms of media coverage and the public reaction to the theater ... but in terms of physically presenting a greater threat to the city of New York, or the citizens of New York, I don't think so."

"I'm not sure it presents any greater danger to New York, which is already a symbol for terrorists," he said.

U.S. Republican Representative Peter King of New York took the opposite view.
"Detaining and trying these five terrorists only a few blocks from the World Trade Center site where, by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's design, thousands were brutally murdered puts our nation -- and New York City -- at greater risk," King said.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said last week the five men would be removed from the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba ahead of their trial in a Manhattan federal court, which he called an ideal venue and the site of many successful prosecutions of accused terrorists since 2001.

POLICE SAY CITY IS PREPARED

New York City's police department said the city will handle the trial without security problems.
"There's already security improvements in the area that lend itself to providing a secure environment for a trial like this," said police spokesman Paul Browne. "We've dealt with high-profile events, including terrorism-related ones, many times. We're prepared for this one."

He declined to detail what precautions were planned or the costs for trial security, except to say that he expected Washington to reimburse the city for its costs.

Browne said eight terrorism plots against the city have been scuttled since 2001, including plots to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge and the retaining wall at Ground Zero.

The five accused men could be brought to New York within weeks and will likely be held in a high-security wing of the Metropolitan Correctional Center known as "10-South," a fortress-like unit in the heart of the Chinatown neighborhood.

The lower Manhattan jail has held multiple high-profile defendants in recent years, including Omar Abdel-Rahman, known as the "Blind Sheik", who was convicted in 1995 for conspiring to blow up the United Nations building and other New York City landmarks, and admitted U.S. swindler Bernard Madoff.

"The defendants in this case (will) go from their jail to the courthouse without ever being outside," Browne said.

Giuliani said the trial would give "an unnecessary advantage to the terrorists" and pose risks to New York. "Anyone that tells you this doesn't create additional security problems, of course, isn't telling you the truth," said Giuliani, who spoke to CNN and Fox News.

Michael Bloomberg, the current mayor, said, "It is fitting that 9/11 suspects face justice near the World Trade Center site where so many New Yorkers were murdered."

As many as 7 percent of New Yorkers have some form of post-traumatic stress disorder because of the September 11 attacks, said Yuval Neria, director of the Trauma and PTSD Program at the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia University. And while the trial could be cathartic for some, "for others, it will be brutally painful," Neria said.

Howard Lutnick, chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost 658 of its 960 New York employees in the September 11 attacks, said he found the planned trial distressing.

"The concept of this being a circus just nauseates me. I can't get my head around it," Lutnick told the Reuters Global Finance Summit in New York.

A Day Without Complaining

Sure, the economy sucks. Unemployment is at least 10.2% and, yes, if you include part-time workers who would rather have full-time jobs it may be over 17%. The government is showering our cash on Wall Street and burning through piles of our children and grandchildren’s money “saving” phantom jobs in Congressional Districts that don’t exist.

Oh yeah, and Congress is planning for a government take-over of our health care system, legislating higher energy prices and raising taxes. Sheesh, no wonder we’re feeling blue.

Well, not to worry, three-term Congressman Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) has found a solution: Stop Complaining So Much. Rep. Cleaver is currently circulating a “Dear Colleague” letter, seeking co-sponsors for House Concurrent Resolution 155, designating the day before Thanksgiving as the official “Complaint Free Wednesday.”

You see, as the Congressman explains:

From time to time, we all experience anxiety, frustration, stress, and regret. And often, we respond to these feelings with a criticism or a complaint. Regrettably, complaining keeps people stuck on current problems, inhibiting them from thinking constructively to find solutions. Research has also shown that complaining can be harmful to one’s emotional and physical health; relationships; and can limit professional career success.

We will set aside the question of whether Rep. Cleaver has discovered the risk of too much complaining only because his party’s legislative proposals are tanking in the polls. We do think it is interesting that he believes we should focus on “solutions” and “look forward”, subtle prods to enact new laws and programs.

We are torn on the larger question of whether Congress should even be wasting any time on such silliness as “official” days for this or that. On the one hand, it is surely a waste of taxpayer money and a decidedly unserious response to our challenges. On the other, though, every moment spent on things like this is a moment that isn’t spent re-regulating huge swaths of the economy.

We do know one thing, though: The Age of Pericles this ain’t.

Uncle Jay Explains Congress

One of my favorite episodes!
Enjoy!

Abortion Debate in Healthcare Bill

The US Senate could start debating its final healthcare reform bill as early as Tuesday, pitting Democrat against Democrat over the controversial question of abortion coverage.

The debate puts Barack Obama, who campaigned as pro-choice, in the middle of one of the most emotional and enduring debates in US politics, potentially forcing him to take sides on an issue he has tried to avoid since becoming president.

The House of Representatives this month passed a healthcare reform bill that would sharply curtail access to abortion. Several Democrats in the Senate have said they want similar restrictions in their own bill.

Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the upper chamber, is “still consulting with members of his caucus” on the abortion issue, one aide said, and it is not yet clear whether he will include the restrictions.

“This is a horrible dilemma,” said Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia. “The Democrats have to pass something – they have no choice,” he said, adding that they have backed themselves into a corner by making healthcare reform a priority.

The House passed a bill including the “Stupak-Pitts” amendment, which not only prevents abortion coverage in the public health insurance option but also prohibits private health insurers that have any customers receiving federal subsidies from offering abortion coverage to anyone else.

This is sharply more restrictive than even the 1976 Hyde amendment, which banned the use of federal funds to pay for terminations, and pro-choice activists say it amounts to a de facto ban on abortion.

“It would be a great irony if we worked so hard to elect a pro-choice president and this law passed on his watch,” said Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organisation for Women, one of the pro-choice leaders who met Rahm Emmanuel, the president’s chief of staff, this week to lobby against such measures.

“This would basically sweep aside Roe v Wade. Women are calling us and they are furious,” Ms O’Neill said, referring to the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalising first- trimester abortions.
Kirsten Gillibrand, New York senator, gathered prominent pro-choice advocates, including feminist Gloria Steinem, on Monday to protest what she called a “discriminatory and dangerous anti-choice provision”, one that would “prevent women from purchasing reproductive insurance with their own money and put the health of millions of women and young girls at grave risk”.

Mr Obama has tried to avoid talking about abortion since taking office, instead stressing the need to reduce unwanted pregnancies, but is now being drawn into the debate.

“This is a healthcare bill, not an abortion bill,” Mr Obama told ABC News last week. “We’re not looking to change what is the principle that has been in place for a very long time, which is federal dollars are not used to subsidise abortions.”

Mr Reid, who is facing a tough re-election campaign in Nevada next year, will have a difficult balancing act as Democrats occupy 60 seats in the Senate – the exact number needed to pass a bill.

Both camps are saying they have the upper hand. Barbara Boxer, a California liberal, last week said that supporters of stronger restrictions on abortion funding would not be able to muster 60 votes. “It is a much more pro-choice Senate than it has been in a long time,” she told the Huffington Post.

But Ben Nelson, a moderate from Nebraska, said he would not vote for healthcare reform unless it included the abortion provisions and a handful of other “blue dog Democrats” have signalled the same.

“I think it’s extremely likely that they can get this through the Senate, with the leadership of Ben Nelson,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that seeks to elect female candidates who oppose abortion.

But can Mr Obama put his signature on a bill – the Senate and House leaders plan to have one on his desk by the end of the year – that would go against the principles he has long espoused?

“He has staked so much of his future on this healthcare bill,” said Bill Galston, a former Clinton administration adviser now at the Brookings Institution. “If it comes to his desk [with a Stupak-style clause], the president is not going to veto it for that reason. He will then have to start the task of public explanations.”

Is Anyone To Blame? Hannity Says It's Obama's Fault

Sean Hannity speculated that "there is a chance our government knew all about" alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan "and did nothing because nobody wanted to be called an Islamophobe," and asked, "What does it say about Barack Obama and our government?" But there is no evidence that Obama was aware of the emails between Hasan and an imam with alleged ties to Al Qaeda; moreover, Hannity did not address what the incident says about President Bush, who was in office when the authorities reportedly first intercepted the emails.

HANNITY: This Fort Hood situation is really beginning to disturb me and should disturb everybody. And that is that there is a chance our government knew all about this guy Hasan and did nothing because nobody wanted to be called an Islamophobe. We're not talking about Islam, we're talking about radical Islam. You know, this guy going in there, god is great, etc., etc., and all the things he's saying. But everybody hat worked with him, Bob, knew ahead of time, our government apparently knew and did nothing. Now, this is a terrorist act, if in fact this was motivated in such a way. What does it say about Barack Obama and our government?

Reports: Army and FBI aware of emails during Bush administration. Several news outlets, including the Chicago Tribune and Associated Press, have reported that the FBI and Army became aware of emails between Hasan and Anwar al-Awlaki in late 2008, during the Bush administration. These reports contain no evidence that Obama (or Bush) were made aware of the emails. From a November 9 Chicago Tribune article:

The FBI and the Army looked into contacts between the Army psychiatrist accused of last week's deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood and a Yemen-based militant Islamist prayer leader but concluded that he didn't pose a terrorist threat, senior law enforcement and military officials said Monday.

The disclosure that Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan had ongoing communications with an imam who had ties to Sept. 11 hijackers was sure to raise the question of whether U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies had information that, if properly shared and investigated, might have helped to prevent the attack.

[...]

Several U.S. officials said U.S. intelligence agencies first intercepted communications between Hasan and Awlaki starting in late 2008 as a result of another investigation, and that the information was given to one U.S.-based multi-agency Joint Terrorism Task Force and then to another one based at the Washington Field Office because of Hasan's assignment at the Walter Reed medical center.The Washington task force, which included FBI agents and Army criminal investigative personnel, launched a probe and determined that Hasan was contacting the radical cleric -- who has ties to other Al Qaeda-affiliated individuals -- "within the context of the doctor's position and what he was doing at the time, conducting research on the issues of Muslims in the military and the effects of war in Muslim countries.''The official said Hasan had ''reached out to Awlaki several times before he got a response,'' and that there was little in the correspondence to raise serious red flags.

U.S. Knew of Suspects Tie to Radical Cleric

WASHINGTON — Intelligence agencies intercepted communications last year and this year between the military psychiatrist accused of shooting to death 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., and a radical cleric in Yemen known for his incendiary anti-American teachings.

But the federal authorities dropped an inquiry into the matter after deciding that the messages from the psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, did not suggest any threat of violence and concluding that no further action was warranted, government officials said Monday.

Major Hasan’s 10 to 20 messages to Anwar al-Awlaki, once a spiritual leader at a mosque in suburban Virginia where Major Hasan worshiped, indicate that the troubled military psychiatrist came to the attention of the authorities long before last Thursday’s shooting rampage at Fort Hood, but that the authorities left him in his post.

Counterterrorism and military officials said Monday night that the communications, first intercepted last December as part of an unrelated investigation, were consistent with a research project the psychiatrist was then conducting at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington on post-traumatic stress disorder.

“There was no indication that Major Hasan was planning an imminent attack at all, or that he was directed to do anything,” one senior investigator said. He and the other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying the case was under investigation.

The officials said the Departments of Defense and Justice had decided Major Hasan would be prosecuted in a military court, an indication that investigators believe he acted alone. Government lawyers had said his case might be tried in civilian court if he were believed to have conspired with nonmilitary defendants.

In a statement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said, “At this point, there is no information to indicate Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had any co-conspirators or was part of a broader terrorist plot.” The statement concluded that “because the content of the communications was explainable by his research and nothing else was found,” investigators decided “that Major Hasan was not involved in terrorist activities or terrorist planning.”

Officials said the F.B.I. and the Defense Department would be reviewing their earlier assessment of Major Hasan to determine whether it was handled correctly.

Given the radical views of Mr. Awlaki, however, the conduct of the F.B.I. and the military is likely to come under intense scrutiny from Congress. Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, on Monday asked intelligence and law enforcement officials to preserve all records of their dealings with Major Hasan.

The communications provide the first indication that Major Hasan was in direct communication with anyone who espoused militant views. On Monday, Mr. Awlaki praised Major Hasan on his Web site, saying that he “did the right thing” in attacking soldiers preparing to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq.

The officials said the communications did not alter the prevailing theory that Major Hasan acted by himself, lashing out as a result of combination of factors, including his outspoken opposition to American policy in Iraq and Afghanistan and his deepening religious fervor as a Muslim.

Major Hasan, who was shot by a police officer, has regained consciousness at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio and is able to talk, though he declined on Sunday to speak to federal investigators about the shooting rampage. “He is critical but stable,” said a hospital spokeswoman, Maria Gallegos.

Ms. Gallegos added that Major Hasan had come out of a coma on Saturday and had been conversing with his doctors ever since. A lawyer for Major Hasan told The Associated Press on Monday that he had asked investigators not to question his client and expressed doubt that he could get a fair trial. The lawyer, John P. Galligan, a retired Army colonel, said he was contacted by Major Hasan’s family on Monday and was traveling to San Antonio to consult with him.

The imam whom Major Hasan made contact with is an American citizen born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents. He wrote on Monday on his English-language Web site that Major Hasan was “a hero.” The cleric said, “He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people.”

Mr. Awlaki added, “The only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the U.S. Army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal.”

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Awlaki was quoted as disapproving of such violence and was portrayed as a moderate figure who might provide a bridge between Islam and Western democracies. But since leaving the United States in 2002 for London and later Yemen, Mr. Awlaki has become, through his Web site, a prominent proponent of militant Islam.

“He’s one of the most popular figures among hard-line, English-speaking jihadis around the world,” said Jarret Brachman, the author of “Global Jihadism” and a terrorism consultant to the government.
Mr. Brachman said Mr. Awlaki was especially appealing to young Muslims who are curious about radical ideas but not yet committed. “He’s American, he’s funny, and he speaks in a very understandable way,” Mr. Brachman said.

In 2000 and 2001, Mr. Awlaki served as an imam at two mosques in the United States frequented by three future Sept. 11 hijackers. Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi attended the Rabat mosque in San Diego, where Mr. Awlaki later admitted meeting Mr. Hazmi several times but “claimed not to remember any specifics of what they discussed,” according to the report of the national Sept. 11 commission.

Both Mr. Hazmi and another hijacker, Hani Hanjour, later attended the Dar al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., after Mr. Awlaki had moved there in early 2001. The Sept. 11 commission report expressed “suspicion” about the coincidence, but said its investigators were unable to find Mr. Awlaki to question him.

Major Hasan attended the same Virginia mosque, but it is not known whether they met there.
Mr. Awlaki, who is in his late 30s, had returned to Yemen with his family as a child. He received a religious education in Yemen and later earned degrees in engineering at Colorado State and in education leadership at San Diego State, according to his Web site.

His writings urge Muslims to dedicate themselves to defending Islam, including pursuing “arms training,” in such works as “44 Ways of Supporting Jihad.”

At Fort Hood, the Army erected walls of gray containers around the headquarters of III Corps in advance of a memorial service Tuesday for the 13 people killed when, the authorities say, Major Hasan opened fire in a center where soldiers get vaccinated before being sent abroad.

President Obama and his wife, Michelle, are expected to attend the ceremony, and the president will speak to a crowd that will include the survivors of the attack and the families of the victims.

Change?

Last November, Americans flocked to the polls to vote for change.

A year later, change again drove voters on an Election Day -- with much different results.
The same dynamics that powered President Obama to victory -- frustration with the status quo, economic anxieties, hope that new leadership can bring answers -- now stand as the biggest threats to the Democrats' governing agenda.

One year after Obama's resounding victory, the soaring rhetoric of campaigning has given way to the trench warfare of governing in a polarized country. The president's agenda is now backed up behind a stalled health care bill, even as the calendar prepares to flip into a congressional election year.

Yesterday's election results bring the president's obstacles into harsh focus: All three marquee races on the ballot resulted in party switches. The lesson: Change cuts in at least two directions.
"Anger is far more motivating than satisfaction," said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. "People were hopeful for change; now they're driving change."

In Tuesday's two state governor races, independent voters who were critical to the president's winning coalition in 2008 favored Republican candidates by a 2-1 margin. And economic unease -- again, a key factor in Obama's victory -- was foremost on voters' minds, according to exit polls in New Jersey and Virginia.

The mistrust of government Obama capitalized on has only worsened over the past year. Bailouts and stimulus spending may have stopped the economy from collapsing, but voters remain unconvinced -- if not downright angry -- about the nation's economic prospects.
Those factors complicate the president's attempts to enact his ambitious agenda, which -- like most government initiatives -- require money to work.

Pollster: "Door Is Open" For Republicans

The Obama administration has sought to cast his top priority of health care reform as part of efforts to curb government spending. But the public hasn't quite accepted that argument, polls suggest.

The case is likely to be a harder sell after yesterday's results, with moderates in both parties viewing the elections as, at least in part, a referendum on the Democratic agenda.
"The public clearly weren't buying what President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress were selling," Republican pollster Whit Ayres said. "They haven't yet latched on to the Republican candidates, but the door is opened."

Democrats sought to minimize the importance of a handful of local races. Democrats are still poised to pass a health care reform bill in the House in the coming days, and the president's political standing will get a boost with such a victory. The picture is more complicated in the Senate, where moderates hold more sway.

The challenge for Democrats will be to make the case that the change voters supported last year needs a second endorsement next year, said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who heads House campaign efforts for Democrats. That impacts both candidate preparation and the legislative agenda.

"We need to make sure that between now and a year from now we take actions both on the campaign side as well as whatever policy efforts we need to undertake, to make sure that all those voters understand that & the success of the Obama agenda will depend on the turnout at the polls next November 2010," said Van Hollen.

But after some early victories, that agenda has come up hard against Washington realities. Aside from health care's slow crawl, a climate change bill has been shelved in the Senate, where moderates are fearful of being seen as raising taxes.

Obama Agenda Slow to Materialize Means Opportunity for Republicans

The president's efforts to wind down the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq haven't gone as planned, with Democrats emerging as some of his harshest critics on foreign policy. Other campaign promises -- sweeping immigration reform, gay-rights legislation, closing Guantanamo -- have fallen by the wayside, at least temporarily.

This has helped open opportunities for Republicans, as evidenced by the fact that the so-called Obama "surge" voters -- first-time voters who flocked the polls last year -- stayed home in large numbers in Virginia and New Jersey, both states the president carried. Independents, meanwhile, migrated to the GOP camp.

"The normal laws of political gravity have reasserted themselves," said Rick Wilson, a veteran Republican political consultant. "This means we have the opportunity to compete. You put up an A-tier candidate, and you can compete anywhere."

The GOP clearly hasn't walked through that door just yet. Democrats picked up both congressional seats that were decided Tuesday; in one of them, they won a seat that had been in Republican hands for more than a century, in upstate New York.

In that race, Democrats exploited a party fissure that left conservative activists dueling with local GOP leaders over whether the Republican candidate was sufficiently conservative. The Republican wound up dropping out of the race and endorsing the Democrat, who scored something of an upset on Tuesday.

That race stands as a lesson for some moderate Republicans about the dangers inherent in trying to rebuild the party. The temptation to drive the party hard to the right -- with a sharp focus on social and fiscal conservatism -- could splinter the GOP, said Tom Davis, a moderate Republican and a former House member from Virginia.

Lesson: Electoral Realignments Aren't Permanent

"What happens is you'll split up. You could even get a third party out of this," Davis said on ABCNews.com's "Top Line" last week. "It's very clear neither party is popular in this country. You know, they're not electing Republicans or un-electing Democrats. That's the only way the Republicans come back. And to do that they have to have a broad coalition."

Democrats, of course, are hoping for more intra-party skirmishes that damage Republican chances. And they could take a small slice of solace in watching GOP candidates win with centrist, pragmatic messages -- even using words like "hope" and "change" in their stump speeches.

Among the lessons of the past year is one that seems to get re-learned every few years in Washington: There's no such thing as a permanent electoral realignment.

The prevailing sentiment -- and perhaps the most powerful electoral force -- has less to do with either political party than it does with anxiety over the status quo.

"There's definitely an anti-incumbent mood out there that's palpable," Celinda Lake said. "That bodes worse for the Democrats, because we have more incumbents. It's bad for both parties, but it's worse for the Democrats."

Health Bill Weighs in at $1.2 Trillion

WASHINGTON – The health care bill headed for a vote in the House this week costs $1.2 trillion or more over a decade, according to numerous Democratic officials and figures contained in an analysis by congressional budget experts, far higher than the $900 billion cited by President Barack Obama as a price tag for his reform plan.

While the Congressional Budget Office has put the cost of expanding coverage in the legislation at roughly $1 trillion, Democrats added billions more on higher spending for public health, a reinsurance program to hold down retiree health costs, payments for preventive services and more.

Many of the additions are designed to improve benefits or ease access to coverage in government programs. The officials who provided overall cost estimates did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss them.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has referred repeatedly to the bill's net cost of $894 billion over a decade for coverage.

Asked about the higher estimate, Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said the measure not only insures 36 million more Americans, it provides critical health insurance reform in a way that is fiscally sound.

"It will not add one dime to the deficit. In fact, the CBO said last week that it will reduce the deficit both in the first 10 years and in the second 10 years," Daly said.

Democrats have been intent on passing legislation this year to implement Obama's call for expanded coverage for millions, curbs on industry abuses and provisions to slow the rate of growth of health care costs nationally.

"Now, add it all up, and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years," the president said in a nationally televised speech in early September.

Whatever the final cost of legislation, the calendar is working increasingly against the White House and Democrats. While a House vote is possible late this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., may not be able to begin debate on the issue until the week before Thanksgiving. Additionally, the Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has hinted at efforts to extend the debate for weeks if not months, a timetable that could extend into 2010.

One casualty of the time crunch and threatened Republican delaying tactics may be formal House-Senate negotiations on a final compromise. An alternative is a less formal hurry-up final negotiation involving the White House and senior Democrats.

Pelosi and her lieutenants worked on last-minute changes in the measure to ease concerns among opponents of abortion and a contentious provision relating to illegal immigrants. Conservative Democrats have expressed concern about the cost of the bill, and an evening closed-door meeting gave Pelosi and her lieutenants their first chance to hear their response.

The bill includes an option for a government-run health plan.

The leadership can afford more than two dozen defections and still be assured of the votes to prevail on the bill, one of the most sweeping measures in recent years.

Republicans put the cost of the bill at nearly $1.3 trillion.

"Our goal is to make it as difficult as possible for" Democrats to pass it, House Republican leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said at a news conference. "We believe it is the wrong prescription."
One day after announcing Republicans would have an alternative measure, Boehner offered few details. He said it would omit one of the central provisions in Democratic bills — a ban on the insurance industry's practice of denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions.

Instead, he said the Republicans would encourage creation of insurance pools for high-risk individuals and take other steps to ease their access to coverage.

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., the third-ranking leader, said that Democrats looked at their bill as a way to advance universal coverage. In contrast, he said, Republicans "believe the real issue back home is cost" of insurance, and said their alternative would be designed to tackle it.

Democrats have made elimination of the industry's practice a linchpin of their drive to overhaul the health care system. The industry has said it would not fight the change, and an accompanying restriction on its ability to charge higher premiums for certain groups, as the legislation includes a requirement for individuals to purchase insurance. Lacking that, the industry says millions of relatively healthy individuals would refuse to pay for coverage until they became sick, and the cost of premiums would rise sharply for everyone else.

Republicans oppose any government requirements for individuals to purchase insurance or for businesses to provide coverage.

The Congressional Budget Office is seen by lawmakers as the arbiter of claims about the costs and effects of proposed legislation, and the agency has been under intense pressure in recent weeks to compete assessments on several bills circulating in House and Senate.

In a letter last week, the agency's director, Dr. Douglas Elmendorf, said the net cost of expanding coverage in the House measure was estimated at $894 billion over 10 years, a figure reflecting a gross total of $1 trillion in federal subsidies as well as other spending.

The letter contained no similar assessment for the balance of the legislation and it was not clear when or whether one would be forthcoming.

In a letter last week to Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., on the general subject of health care, Elmendorf cautioned that some provisions in legislation have elements that raise costs and elements that lower costs.

"Tabulating all of the aspects of the proposal that would, in isolation, increase federal outlays would be complicated and would require somewhat arbitrary judgments" about calculating overall costs, Elmendorf said.

Saudi Usual Punishment

RIYADH (Reuters) - A Saudi court of cassation upheld a ruling to behead and crucify a 22-year-old man convicted of raping five children and leaving one of them to die in the desert, newspapers reported on Tuesday.

The convict was arrested earlier this year after a seven-year old boy helped police in their investigation. The child left in the desert after the rape was three years old, Okaz newspaper said.

International rights groups have accused the kingdom, the birthplace of Islam, of applying draconian justice, beheading murderers, rapists and drug traffickers in public. So far this year about 40 people have been executed in Saudi Arabia.

In Saudi Arabia, crucifixion means tying the body of the convict to wooden beams to be displayed to the public after beheading.

(Reporting by Souhail Karam; editing by Inal Ersan)

Chris Christie's Next Case: Who Stole My Election

The race for governor in New Jersey is so close in final polls that it may well end up in a recount -- the 1981 election did and was decided by less than 1,800 votes. If there is a recount, you can bet disputes about absentee ballots will loom large. Moreover, if serious allegations of fraud emerge, you can also expect less-than-vigorous investigation by the Obama Justice Department -- which showed just how seriously it takes such allegations when it walked away from an open-and-shut voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia earlier this year.

Plenty of reasons exist for suspecting absentee fraud may play a significant role in tomorrow's Garden State contests. Groups associated with Acorn in neighboring Pennsylvania and New York appear to have moved into the state. An independent candidate for mayor in Camden has already leveled charges that voter fraud is occurring in his city. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party in New Jersey is taking advantage of a new loosely written vote-by-mail law to pressure county clerks not to vigorously use signature checks to evaluate the authenticity of absentee ballots, the only verification procedure allowed.

The state has received a flood of 180,000 absentee ballot requests. On some 3,000 forms the signature doesn't match the one on file with county clerks. Yet citing concerns that voters would be disenfranchised, Democratic Party lawyer Paul Josephson wrote New Jersey's secretary of state asking her "to instruct County Clerks not to deny applications on the basis of signature comparison alone." Mr. Josephson maintained that county clerks "may be overworked and are likely not trained in handwriting analysis" and insisted that voters with suspect applications should be allowed to cast provisional ballots. Those ballots, of course, would then provide a pool of votes that would be subject to litigation in any recount, with the occupant of New Jersey's highest office determined by Florida 2000-style scrutiny of ballot applications.

Absentee voter fraud is in danger of becoming a hardy perennial in New Jersey. Atlantic City Councilman Marty Small and 13 campaign workers were indicted in September on charges of conspiring to commit election fraud using absentee ballots. One worker pleaded guilty last month. In Newark, five campaign workers were indicted in August on charges involving absentee ballot fraud.

Victor Negron, a campaign adviser for independent mayoral candidate Roberto Feliz, a former director of Camden's public works department, says he's shocked that more than fifteen times the normal number of voters are casting absentee ballots in Camden this year. In the 2005, when the city's voters voted for both governor and mayor on the same day, only 200 absentee ballots were cast. This year, some 3,700 have already been received. At least four voters have approached the Feliz campaign to complain that an absentee ballot was sent to them without their permission or cast for them without their understanding the documents they were signing.

I spoke with Uremia Rojas who reports that "a man with a clipboard knocked on my door and had me sign something so I could vote by mail. I was skeptical but signed and got a ballot. I never really wanted one." Says Mr. Negron: "We believe this to be underhanded and a possibly illegal strategy by the Democratic Party to undermine the civil rights of the residents of Camden."

There are additional reports from Camden that Hispanic voters have been misled into voting absentee ballots. So-called bearers who are allowed to collect and carry absentee ballots are said to have encouraged voters to fill out applications for absentee ballots. A few days later, the bearers reportedly return with the actual ballots, which they offer "assistance" in filling out.

Authorities in nearby Philadelphia know about such scams. In one infamous case, a key 1993 race that determined which party would control the Pennsylvania state senate was thrown out by a federal judge after massive evidence that hundreds of voters had been pressured into casting improper absentee ballots. Voters were told by "bearers" that it was all part of "la nueva forma de votar" -- the new way to vote. Local politicos tell me Philly operatives associated in the past with Acorn may now be advising their Jersey cousins on how to perform such vote harvesting.

Elsewhere, an investigation is being conducted into a report that people wearing Acorn T-shirts entered an East Orange hospital near Newark carrying blank absentee ballots and left with completed ballots. New Jersey law allows anyone to pick up an absentee ballot for someone else -- these are called messenger ballots.

After repeated election-related scandals, Acorn has become toxic for many candidates who once relied on the group. But Acorn's longtime allies, the Service Employee International Union and New York's Working Families Party, have both moved into New Jersey. Peter Colavito, Acorn's former political director in New York and a board member of the Working Families Party, is now the political director of SEIU Local 32BJ, which is heavily involved in New Jersey's election. Nationally, the SEIU is a political powerhouse with White House visitor's logs showing that Andrew Stern, its national head, visited 22 times in the first six months of the Obama White House -- more than any other person. "Andrew Stern practically lives at the White House," notes Politico.com.

The Working Families Party, which is co-chaired by Acorn head Bertha Lewis, is no stranger to absentee ballot fraud. A special prosecutor in Troy, N.Y. is investigating New York's September primary, in which at least 38 ballots cast for Working Families Party candidates were thrown out as forged or fraudulent. New York Judge Michael Lynch found "significant election law violations that have compromised the rights of numerous voters and the integrity of the ballot process."
Nor is in-person fraud at the polls unknown in New Jersey. In 2007, a former Hoboken zoning board president noticed a group of men outside a polling place being given index cards by two people. One of the loiterers later tried to vote in the name of a voter who had moved out of the area. When challenged by the former zoning board president, he ran out of the building and was caught. He later admitted to police he was part of a group from a homeless shelter who had been paid $10 each to vote using the names of other people.

That's one reason ElectionJournal.org will be deploying observers with cameras around New Jersey to hunt for irregularities. The Web site hit gold last year when its cameras captured footage of two members of the New Black Panther Party in black combat boots and black uniforms blocking the door of a Philadelphia polling place. One was brandishing a large police-style nightstick and hurling racial epithets at voters.

The Bush Justice Department filed a civil-rights lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party and the two individuals. When none of the defendants answered the lawsuit, a federal court rendered a default judgment against the defendants. But last May, Attorney General Eric Holder dropped charges against the party and the two individual defendants. Another man was given the mild sanction of being barred from displaying a weapon near a polling place for three years. To groups that may be contemplating vote fraud in tomorrow's races, such an outcome will hardly be seen as a big deterrent.