Tuesday, September 11, 2007 News Update

Congress is poised to eliminate the 25 percent U.S. funding for the U.N. Human Rights Council, saying that the forum is dominated by human rights abusers and has become a forum to bash Israel.

The move against the council is part of a number of proposed cuts in U.S. funding for the world body now working their way through Capitol Hill.

Moreover, the latest effort appears to be bipartisan, unlike past budget battles that were driven largely by conservative Republicans.

The Senate on Friday agreed to cut $3 million from its payment to the U.N. regular budget, the share that would normally be earmarked for the Geneva-based Human Rights Council. The House passed a similar measure this spring.

Leading Democratic Sens. John Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy, both of Massachusetts, and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin were among several longtime U.N. supporters to vote for the funding cut.

Because money is easily transferred between U.N. agencies, the cut is unlikely to have much effect on the Human Rights Council, which the Bush administration has twice declined to join.

Lawmakers this year have already sought to cut $20 million from the U.N. Development Program. That effort is led by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Florida Republican, and Sen. Norm Coleman, Minnesota Republican, both of whom are upset at U.N. persecution of an employee who exposed the agency's payments of hard currency to North Korea.

The Senate last week approved an amendment sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, to halt all appropriations to the world body "until the secretary of state certifies that the United Nations [and subsidiaries] is fully and publicly transparent about all of its spending, including procurement purposes."

That would amount to about $5.3 billion a year, including payments to the regular budget, peacekeeping and voluntary contributions to diverse agencies such as UNICEF and the World Health Organization.

The amendment, which passed in the Senate by 92-0 with all the 2008 presidential candidates abstaining, was drafted "to ensure that the U.S. contribution is not being lost to waste, fraud, abuse or corruption."

A new Osama bin Laden videotape released Tuesday on the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks shows one of the suicide hijackers speaking his last will and testament into the camera as his image is superimposed upon an image of a burning World Trade Center.

The videotape had not yet been posted on extremist web sites. But the IntelCenter, a monitoring group in suburban Washington, said it had obtained the videotape privately and provided it to Associated Press Television News.

The video began with a still photo of bin Laden in front of a brown backdrop. The terror leader, in a voiceover, is heard saying: "This talk of mine consists of some reflections on the will of a young man who personally penetrated the most extreme degrees of danger and is a rarity among men: one of the 19 champions (may Allah have mercy on them all)."

Then, the videotape appears of Sept. 11 hijacker Walid al-Shehri, who was aboard American Airlines Flight 11 that hit the World Trade Center.

"We shall come at you from your front and back, your right and left," al-Shehri said in the tape, asserting that America would suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union.

In the tape, al-Shehri also praised the losses the United States suffered in Somalia in the late 1990s.

The voice said to be bin Laden's identifies the hijacker as Abu Mus'ab al-Shehri and describes him as "one of these magnificent men."

Republican support for the Iraq war remained on shaky ground in Congress but wasn't lost after a four-star general recommended keeping some 130,000 U.S. troops in the country through next summer.

With Gen. David Petraeus scheduled to testify Tuesday before Senate committees heavy with 2008 presidential candidates, many rank-and-file Republicans said they still were uneasy about the lack of political progress in Iraq. But they also remained reluctant to embrace legislation ordering troops home by next spring, increasing the likelihood that Democrats will have to soften their approach if they want to pass an anti-war proposal.

"I think people recognize the surge (in U.S. troops) has made a difference, but it hasn't enabled the Iraqi government to get its act together," said Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., among the nearly dozen House Republicans who went to the White House last spring to personally relay their concerns about the war to President Bush.

"There's going to continue to be some heartburn," he said, adding that he would like to see Bush call for new elections in Iraq and possibly a more drastic drawdown of troops than suggested by Petraeus. He said he is not keen on forcing a timetable on the war.

The view of LaHood and other Republicans will factor in heavily as Democrats decide their next step. Democrats had anticipated that a larger number of Republicans by now would have turned against Bush on the war because of grim poll numbers and the upcoming 2008 elections.

Without their support, Democrats repeatedly have fallen short of enough votes to pass legislation ordering troop withdrawals to begin this fall and be completed by spring.

Petraeus told two House committees on Monday that he envisions the withdrawal of as many as 30,000 U.S. troops by next summer — down from the current 160,000-plus — beginning with a Marine contingent of about 2,000 Marines later this month and an Army brigade numbering 3,500 to 4,000 soldiers in mid-December. After that, an additional four brigades would be withdrawn by July 2008, he said.

Bush is widely anticipated to embrace the withdrawal goals when he unveils his plan for Iraq later this week.

Petraeus' testimony Tuesday was expected to be in an arena thick with politics. In separate hearings conducted by the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, the general and U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker were to face five presidential hopefuls: Republican John McCain of Arizona and Democrats Joseph Biden of Delaware, Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Barack Obama of Illinois.

He also was to face several of the GOP senators who have been the most vocal against Bush's decision to send an extra 30,000 troops to Iraq this year.

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The September 11 Generation Doesn’t Forget

Listening to Petraeus; The president had the courage to change course on Iraq. Does Congress?

Facing Evil

“These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” —Thomas Paine