"It was causing problems because some of these hard-core guys were getting worse," General Craddock said at a breakfast meeting with reporters. Explaining the use of the restraint chairs, he added, "The way around that is you have to make sure that purging doesn't happen."



After The New York Times reported Feb. 9 that the military had begun using restraint chairs and other harsh methods, military spokesmen insisted that the procedures for dealing with the hunger strikes at Guantánamo had not changed. They also said they could not confirm that the chairs had been used.

On Tuesday, General Craddock said he had reviewed the use of the restraint chairs, as had senior officials at the Department of Defense, and they concluded that the practice was "not inhumane." General Craddock left no doubt, however, that commanders had decided to try to make life less comfortable for the hunger strikers, and that the measures were seen as successful.

"Pretty soon it wasn't convenient, and they decided it wasn't worth it," he said of the hunger strikers. "A lot of the detainees said: 'I don't want to put up with this. This is too much of a hassle.' "

A spokesman for the Southern Command, Lt. Col. James Marshall, said that restraint chairs had been used in the feeding of 35 of the detainees so far, and that 3 were still being fed that way. He said the number of prisoners refusing to eat had fallen from 41 on Dec. 15 - when the restraint chairs were first used on a trial basis - to 5, according to a military spokesman.

Military officials have said the tough measures were necessary to keep detainees from dying. But while many of the strikers lost between 15 and 20 percent of their normal body weight, only a few were thought to be in immediate medical danger, two officers familiar with the strike said.

Lawyers for the detainees and several human rights groups have assailed the new methods used against the hunger strikers as inhumane, and as unjustified by the reported medical condition of the prisoners.

According to newly declassified interview notes, several detainees who had been on hunger strikes told their lawyers during visits late last month that the military had begun using harsher methods more widely in the second week of January. One Yemeni detainee, Emad Hassan, described the chair to lawyers in interviews on Jan. 24 and 25.

"The head is immobilized by a strap so it can't be moved, their hands are cuffed to the chair and the legs are shackled," the notes quote Mr. Hassan as saying. "They ask, 'Are you going to eat or not?' and if not, they insert the tube. People have been urinating and defecating on themselves in these feedings and vomiting and bleeding. They ask to be allowed to go to the bathroom, but they will not let them go. They have sometimes put diapers on them."



Another former hunger striker, Isa al-Murbati of Bahrain, described a similar experience to his lawyer, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, in an interview on Jan. 28.

On Jan. 10, he said, a lieutenant came to his isolation cell and told him that if he did not agree to eat solid food, he would be strapped into the chair and force-fed. After he refused to comply, he said, soldiers picked him up by the throat, threw him to the floor and strapped him to the restraint chair.

Like Mr. Hassan, Mr. Murbati said he had been fed two large bags of liquid formula, which were forced into his stomach very quickly. "He felt pain like a 'knife in the stomach' " Mr. Colangelo-Bryan said.

Detainees said the Guantánamo medical staff also began inserting and removing the long plastic feeding tubes that were threaded through the detainees' nasal passages and into their stomachs at every feeding, a practice that caused sharp pain and frequent bleeding, they said. Until then, doctors there said, they had been allowing the hunger strikers to leave their feeding tubes in, to reduce discomfort.

Military spokesmen have generally discounted the complaints, saying the prisoners are for the most part terrorists, trained by Al Qaeda to use false stories as propaganda.

In a letter to a British physician and human rights activist, Dr. David J. Nicholl, on Dec. 12, the former chief medical officer at Guantánamo, Capt. John S. Edmondson of the Navy, wrote that his staff was not force-feeding any detainees but "providing nutritional supplementation on a voluntary basis to detainees who wish to protest their confinement by not taking oral nourishment."



General Craddock suggested that the medical staff had indulged the hunger strikers to the point that they had been allowed to choose the color of their feeding tubes.

Two other Defense Department officials said a decision had been made to try to break the hunger strikes because they were having a disruptive effect and causing stress for the medical staff.

That effort was stepped up, one official said, in January, when Captain Edmondson left Guantánamo for a new post after receiving a Legion of Merit Medal for "inspiring leadership and exemplary performance."

The officials said that in recent months the U.S. has withdrawn financial and advisory support from the patrol in an effort to distance the American training effort from what they perceived to be a renegade force.

"We don't train them, we don't give them equipment, we don't conduct site visits over there. They are just bad, criminal people," said a high-ranking U.S. military officer who advises the Interior Ministry. The officer was one of three who each spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they wanted to maintain relationships with Iraqi police officials and avoid retaliation by U.S. military superiors.



Last month, Iraqi army soldiers stopped a 22-member squad of uniformed highway patrol officers at a nighttime checkpoint in northern Baghdad and discovered a man in their custody who told them the police planned to kill him. His contention was supported by confessions of officers in the squad, U.S. advisors said.

U.S. officials have called 2006 "the year of the police" and have placed a renewed emphasis on training officers. The Bush administration repeatedly has said the development of Iraq's security forces must occur before withdrawal of U.S. troops can begin.

The U.S. military works closely with Iraqi army units, conducting joint operations and sharing space on some military bases. By contrast, police forces have evolved far more independently in approximately 11,000 stations and outposts around the nation.

The result is a motley conglomeration of agencies under the Interior Ministry with overlapping jurisdictions and poorly defined functions.

"You've got the facilities protection service, the public order brigades, the commandos, the highway patrol, the regular police, the traffic police, patrol officers," said a second U.S. military official.

"Who knows who they all are? Nobody controls them but the minister," the officer said, referring to Interior Minister Bayan Jabr.

Jabr, a Shiite with close ties to the Badr Brigade, a paramilitary group, has been at the center of allegations of abuse at the hands of Iraqi security forces. The minister's notoriety rose last year as the bodies of hundreds of men - mostly Sunni Arabs - started appearing in sewage treatment plants, garbage dumps and desert ravines. Most of the bodies showed signs of torture and execution-style killings. Many families of the deceased said their kin had last been seen in the back of a police vehicle.

The Shiites, who constitute about 60% of the Iraqi population, were severely repressed under Saddam Hussein's regime, which favored the Sunni minority. The Shiites came to power in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003. A Sunni-led insurgency has carried out a campaign of bombings and assassinations against the government.

Over the last two years, Shiite militias within Iraq's security forces have been accused of staging reprisals for the Sunni attacks. Leading Sunni figures have blamed the reprisals on Jabr. Sunni political parties have made his removal from office a key issue in negotiations over whether they will take part in Iraq's Shiite-led government.

In a recent interview, Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, who is leading the multibillion-dollar effort to train and equip Iraq's police forces, vigorously defended the minister and said he was heartened by Jabr's pledge to investigate the abuse fully.

"Death squads - they're a real issue," said Peterson. "I can tell you, we caught our first death squad," he said, referring to the unit that was apprehended last month. "The minister of Interior is elated that we caught them," he added.

Peterson said U.S. and Interior Ministry officials were investigating the highway patrol squad to determine "where these guys came from and how they were organized and who was leading them and what was their purpose."

Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a U.S. military spokesman, said that the Interior Ministry was leading the investigation into the suspected death squad.

Ali Hussein Kamal, the Interior Ministry's intelligence chief, said in an interview Sunday that investigators were also trying to determine whether the Iraqi general in charge of the highway patrol was linked to the squad.

"If we find that these allegations that he is involved are true, we will be taking very firm measures against him," Kamal said. "But generally speaking, high-ranking officers are usually ignorant of what their lower-ranking officers are doing."

U.S. personnel who have been training Iraqi police officers said they long had suspected the highway patrol of conducting illegal raids and killings but had little oversight of the force.

The black-garbed highway patrol officers rarely attend U.S.-financed police academies aimed at improving professionalism and sensitivity to human rights within Iraq's security forces, police trainers said, and have refused to share information about their activities.

U.S. police advisors said the highway patrol was almost entirely Shiite and included a core of 400 to 800 Badr militia members who make up the patrol's 4th Company, which was created last year.

"The 4th Company is filled by people with unconventional militia ties," said the U.S. military officer who advises the Interior Ministry. "Minister Jabr is very supportive of them. The general in charge [of the highway patrol] is very supportive of them."

After the suspected death squad was stopped last month, U.S. police advisors said, four members of the squad confessed to several sectarian killings.

The highway patrol officers were asked, " 'Who are you doing this for?' " said a third U.S. military officer who is involved in training Iraqi troops and has knowledge of the interrogations of the suspected death squad. "And they're telling us, 'Jabr.' " The rest of the squad, said the advisor, has been released.

Sunni Arab leaders complain that an earlier investigation into alleged police abuse has yet to show results.

In November, a U.S. Army unit discovered a secret detention and torture facility run by police officers affiliated with the Badr militia. In all, 169 people had been detained at the secret prison, and photos showed that some inmates had been severely beaten and malnourished.

Jabr pledged to investigate the origin of the detention facility and the possible existence of other secret prisons, even as he downplayed the abuse that had taken place there.

"OK, there were signs of torture … but there were no killings and no beheadings, as some have said," Jabr told reporters in November.

But inmates at the bunker compiled a list of 18 detainees who they said had been tortured to death.

Two U.S. Embassy officials said Monday that Iraqi authorities were conducting visits of Interior Ministry jails and prisons, but declined to release details about the facilities.

Kamal, the ministry's intelligence chief, said of the detention probe, "we are still investigating this, but it is better if we do this quietly, without any media."

Peterson, the U.S. officer in charge of Iraqi police training, said that so far, no other secret prisons had been discovered. U.S. officials were trying to help the Interior Ministry centralize and upgrade its detention system, he said, so that it would be more transparent and acceptable by international standards.

"I've seen all the reports that say there are secret prisons out there," Peterson said. "So where are they? We have not found them. We have gone out there and looked for them. Can they exist? Well, the bunker existed, so yeah, they can exist. Is the ministry trying to find these things? Well, yes, they are."

"The need for much secrecy can hardly be doubted," Trager wrote in an 88-page judgment. "One need not have much imagination to contemplate the negative effect on our relations with Canada if discovery were to proceed in this case and were it to turn out that certain high Canadian officials had, despite public denials, acquiesced in Arar's removal to Syria."

Canadian officials have always denied complicity in the decision to send Arar to Syria after he was held in U.S. custody for 13 days, but Arar said yesterday Justice Dennis O'Connor, who is examining the role Canadian officials played in the affair, should make special note of the judge's comments.

He also vowed he would never give up his quest to reverse the "evil" done against him.

The Syrian-born Canadian engineer was detained as a suspected terrorist during a stopover in New York as he returned from a vacation in September 2002.

After being held virtually incommunicado by U.S. officials, he was sent to Syria, where he said he was tortured and held in a tiny cell he likened to a "grave" for nearly a year. He was never charged before Syria returned him to Canada.

O'Connor is expected to issue an interim report next month.

The Arar suit was the first court test of the Bush administration policy of "extraordinary rendition," a practice often referred to as the outsourcing of torture.

Arar's is just one of a number of well-documented cases in which suspects have been shipped to third countries with dubious human rights records where interrogation methods outlawed in the U.S. can be used.

Trager acknowledged Arar's fears of torture in Syria were real and he cited the U.S. State Department's own report on human rights abuses there.

He said such decisions were beyond the realm of his court.

"A judge who declares on his or her own ... authority that the policy of extraordinary rendition is under all circumstances unconstitutional must acknowledge that such a ruling can have the most serious of consequences to our foreign relations or national security or both," Trager wrote.

Arar said that is exactly what courts are for. "If the courts will not stop this evil act, who is going to stop this administration?

"Where do we go? The United Nations? We -- me and others who have been subjected to this -- are normal citizens who have done no wrong.

"They have destroyed my life. They have destroyed other lives. But the court system does not listen to us.

"The court system is what distinguishes the West from the Third World. When a court will not act because of `national security,' there is no longer any difference between the West and the Third World."

His lawyers vowed to continue the fight.

"This ruling sets a frightening precedent," said Maria LaHood, one of a team of lawyers who took up Arar's case at the Center for Constitutional Rights, based in New York.

"U.S. officials sent Maher Arar to Syria to be detained and interrogated through torture. To allow the Bush administration to continue to evade accountability and continue to hide behind the smokescreen of `national security' is to do grave and irreparable damage to the U.S. constitution and the guarantee of human rights that people in this country could once be proud of."

Barbara Olshansky, the center's deputy legal director, said: "We will not accept this decision and are ... continuing our campaign to obtain the truth ... and demand accountability (from) the Bush administration."

Arar's action named U.S. officials who held him and who ran key government departments.

The claims in the lawsuit include violations of Arar's right not to be tortured under foreign law as guaranteed by the Torture Victim Protection Act.

The U.S. government asserted the "state secrets" privilege, arguing the lawsuit must be dismissed because allowing it to proceed would necessarily involve the disclosure of sensitive information that would threaten national security or diplomatic relations if made public.

A justice official said the ruling pleased the government.

However, charges are rare and sentences are light, the report said.

The report comes a week after new photographs of alleged prisoner abuse at Baghdad's notorious US-run Abu Ghraib prison emerged.

The report alleged that one person was made to jump off a bridge into the Tigris river in Iraq and another was forced inside a sleeping bag and suffocated.

The number of deaths in custody discounts those due to fighting, mortar attacks or violence between detainees. They were directly attributable to their detention or interrogation in American custody, the BBC's Newsnight programme said.

The report's editor Deborah Pearlstein told Newsnight: "We're extremely comfortable with the veracity and the reliability of the facts here."

"These are documents based on army investigative reports, documents that we've obtained from the government or that have come out through freedom of information act requests in the United States."

Newsnight was told by the US Pentagon: "We haven't seen the report yet. Where we find allegations of maltreatment we take them very seriously and prosecute."

Doctor Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq, told the BBC: "There are thousands of prisoners that have been held by the coalition during the past more than two years.

"Some have died of natural causes and there have been charges of abuse. Of course, we always investigate and determine what happened and appropriate punishment is given if the judgment is made that illegal actions took place.

"If those reports are true, of course they would be terrible abuses and they would be illegal things. Those who are responsible for them would be investigated and they will be punished."

However, David Rivkin, a former White House legal adviser, said the numbers had to be put in perspective.

"[If] 10 people were tortured to death out of over 100,000 detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan" that was "a better rate" than in both world wars and "most civilian penal systems".

"It is not a scandal. Bad things happen in detention. A lot of them died for reasons that have nothing to do with it."

Amnesty International UK demanded an investigation into the deaths.

A spokesman said: "We want to see the US and its allies allowing a full independent and impartial investigation into these deaths, as well as mounting incidents of alleged torture and other mistreatment.

"We've also raised with the Americans the question of overly lenient sentences for those found guilty of torturing prisoners to death in Afghanistan."

Despite Nagin's plea that the meeting be held in a "spirit of peace," police eventually had to handle the line of furious residents gathered at the microphone. Amid cries that the plan was too academic or did too little to help people trying to return, Harvey Bender, a 44-year-old resident of the Lower Ninth Ward, pointed a finger at committee Chairman Joe Canizaro, a prominent local developer. "I hate you, Mr. Canizaro, because you've been in the background scheming to get our land,"he said. "I'm going to die on my land."

In the City That Care Forgot, the plan for a grander future has run headlong into the politics of race, class, and power, which, as in most places, translates to money. Resistance to the commission's plan, even outright defiance, still exists, but that may be the least of its problems. There's been good news, to be sure, some of it just last week. But the Bring New Orleans Back blueprint faces a host of daunting questions--questions about flood protection, about controlling scattershot redevelopment, and about Washington's willingness to foot the bill to bring back the Big Easy. For now, all that seems certain is that the New Orleans of tomorrow will be smaller in size and population, most likely a whiter, wealthier city, and perhaps more of a tourist theme park than the rich cultural gumbo that made the Big Easy a unique American experience.

The future is unfathomable in part because the present is unfathomable. Downtown and the French Quarter are bustling, but of the 480,000 residents who lived here before Katrina, only an estimated 130,000 have returned. Approximately 50,000 homes were swamped by at least 4 feet of water. The twisted ruins of thousands of cars litter neighborhoods like Gentilly and Desire. Scores of schools, public and private, are closed. Mortgage delinquency rates have skyrocketed. Per day, the metropolitan area is losing $15.2 million in tourism revenue alone.

Starting over. While vast swaths of the city still lie in waste, New Orleans also has the feel of a pioneer town, populated by those lucky enough to be spared by last year's hurricanes or those with the insurance or savings to rebuild quickly. On Canal Street and in moneyed Lakeview, hammers and saws provide a steady soundtrack. It's no accident that most of the construction is taking place in the city's wealthiest and, with some exceptions, whitest neighborhoods. Black neighborhoods, many in the lowest and least valuable quarters of the city, were hit disproportionately hard by Katrina. So a city that was once 70 percent black is now closer to 50 percent black. A Los Angeles Times analysis showed that the wealthy and white also stayed closer to New Orleans, making their return much easier.

The slow pace of installing trailers--of the almost 20,000 ordered for New Orleans, fewer than 3,000 were occupied as of late January--has also impeded the return of residents. The lack of White House support for construction of levees able to withstand a Category 5 hurricane (Page 74) is also slowing the city's comeback. "If you want people to return," says Jay Lapeyre, chairman of the New Orleans Business Council, "we have to know we're protected from a Cat 5, at least eventually."

"I'll be home." The hope of the Bring Back New Orleans Commission was that its plan would jump-start the recovery process by providing a rational road map for rebuilding. The plan's first priority is to focus the recovery effort on portions of the city that suffered little or no flooding. Specific pockets of high ground--portions of downtown, New Orleans East, and the Lower Ninth Ward--are targeted for high-density development of both homes and businesses.

Throughout New Orleans, residents would plan their neighborhoods with the assistance of a professional team; neighborhoods with few people left might be consolidated, while low-lying, more flood-prone regions could be converted to green space if planners can persuade homeowners to seek higher ground. The commission's plan gives neighborhoods just four months to prove residents are returning; otherwise, those neighborhoods run the risk of being left out of the city's planned redevelopment. The deadline has sparked outrage and ignited a race against the clock in the black community to get residents to return. While networks of friends and families are reaching out across the country, grass-roots rebuilding efforts are springing up in black neighborhoods, encouraged by a majority-black City Council, which has repeatedly argued that the whole city should be redeveloped. "The footprint of the city has become a civil rights issue," says Susan Howell, a political scientist at the University of New Orleans. "The city was racially polarized before the storm, so these huge decisions are certain to tap race concerns."

Headquartered in a ramshackle office in the Eighth Ward, the New Orleans branch of the community group ACORN is gutting up to 200 homes a day in poor parts of the city--homes they hope can be rebuilt. One of those belonged to 73-year-old Edna Alexander Berkley, who had to chisel through the attic of her home after the 17th Street levee collapsed. She has since relied on ACORN to gut her home and help guide her through the beginnings of the rebuilding process--like getting a permit from the city to rebuild. Now staying with her son, Berkley makes a simple vow: "I'll be home soon." ACORN's head man here, Stephen Bradberry, argues that the commission's plan pushes out African-Americans. "[Tourists] come because of the flavor of the people," Bradberry says. "New Orleans without black people will be Disney World on the river."

By the time the commission's plan is formally accepted by the statewide Louisiana Recovery Authority in coming weeks, as is expected, controlling the upstart construction could prove an all but impossible task. Officials fear a "jack o'lantern effect"--a patchwork of occupied and blighted homes across wide swaths of the city. City services could be scarce in some of these neighborhoods, while other partially rebuilt neighborhoods may be sitting on flood-prone land, like areas of New Orleans East near Lake Pontchartrain, that the city covets as green space.

Even if every resident followed the road map, committed to consolidating neighborhoods and abandoning dangerous parts of the city, the commission's plan of "infill" areas and development zones is still only a best guess of where it makes sense to rebuild. That's because the Federal Emergency Management Agency will be months late releasing new, revised maps showing which parts of the city are most prone to floods; the maps are now expected this summer, at the earliest. The maps will dictate which parts of the city are uninsurable--and difficult to rebuild in, as a practical matter--as opposed to which regions are relatively safe. Surviving homes that don't get grandfathered in under the old maps could be required to elevate, which can cost thousands of dollars. As time wears on, "the more we'll have people make precipitous decisions about rebuilding," says Reed Kroloff, dean of the Tulane School of Architecture, who's codirecting the urban plan. So the more the clock keeps ticking, the less the plan is, well, a plan.

And for the commission plan to work, it needs broad support from the White House and funding from Congress--and that process has been bumpy. To date, Washington has allocated $87 billion in Gulf Coast relief, and the White House requested an additional $19.8 billion for 2006 just last week. Billions more have been spent in federal flood insurance payouts. A relatively scant amount has been spent on housing. "We have 200,000 families that don't have a place to come back to," says Andy Kopplin, the executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority.

Limbo. The housing crisis in Louisiana has created a testy, on-again, off-again relationship between Louisiana and Washington. In January, the White House launched a stunning offensive against legislation that was to provide a funding mechanism for much of the commission plan. Authored by Republican Rep. Richard Baker of Baton Rouge, the bill proposes a big government fix: the Louisiana Recovery Corp. Funded by up to $30 billion in treasury bonds, it would buy up property from willing sellers, even those in the flood plain--potentially tens of thousands of parcels. The corporation would clean up contaminants and sell those properties to developers, whose projects would be guided by the commission's master plan. Originally the White House seemed friendly to the proposal, but last month, Don Powell, the federal coordinator for Gulf Coast rebuilding, disavowed the bill as too costly and bureaucratic. Instead, the administration proposed that Louisiana use $6.2 billion in block grants--money the state wanted to pour into infrastructure and small businesses--to focus on the 20,000 uninsured destroyed homes above the flood plain, which the administration says are the most deserving of federal aid. The federal plan, Powell says, would eliminate the proposed LRC's bureaucracy. "Plus," he adds, "it doesn't put the federal government in the real-estate business."

The news sent Louisianians reeling. "It doesn't help the people who to their detriment relied on the levees," says Kopplin of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. The federal government has an acute responsibility to help all homeowners, Louisiana officials argue, because levee failures contributed massively to damage from Katrina--and the levees were built and maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The proposal would have left the poor in particularly tough shape. Owners of homes with mortgages are required to carry flood insurance, but many poor forgo the cost of insurance once the home is paid off. Those who did so and were flooded by Katrina lost a risky bet. But without federal aid, uninsured families are facing an uphill battle.

The White House announcement spurred an intense behind-the-scenes lobbying effort by the Louisiana delegation and a phalanx of bankers and mortgage lenders. The Mortgage Bankers Association has argued that without a mechanism to buy and clean up as many as 200,000 devastated properties--many of which contain contaminants from the flood--the housing market will have little value. If homeowners begin defaulting on their loans, mortgage companies may choose not to foreclose rather than to take on the risk of absorbing polluted or worthless property. "Our guess is that many of these properties will simply be abandoned," says Kurt Pfotenhauer of the association. If that happens, they could remain in a state of legal limbo for years, with local municipalities eventually seizing properties for sale or demolition. As one congressional aide put it, without the Baker bill or something like it, "you'd have ruins. Just like Greece."

Last week, the White House switched course. After a series of meetings with Louisiana leaders, Powell announced that the administration would target $4.2 billion of the new $19.8 billion request toward additional block grants for Louisiana that can be used to repair housing. Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, previously the most vocal of White House critics, took the microphone to give "a special thank you to the president." Theoretically, the state may now have $12.4 billion to direct toward housing: the earlier $6.2 billion block grant, the new $4.2 billion, and about $2 billion in hazard mitigation funds. Officials calculate they can offer homeowners as much as $150,000, minus insurance payouts, to rebuild or remodel devastated houses.

The money won't cover everything included in the Baker bill, notably billions of dollars' worth of commercial property. And the new $4.2 billion is still just a request to Congress, which has been skeptical of everything from New Orleans's geographical viability to Louisiana's long history of political corruption. So it's no sure thing. "The view of most members of Congress,"Baker says, "is 'We've fixed the Louisiana problem.'"

Making plans. If Congress ultimately approves the extra $4.2 billion, state officials hope the pool of money can be used to create its own minirecovery corporation that would provide homeowners with the option of a buyout or funds to elevate homes to new FEMA levels. "This money is going to be directed straight to our citizenry," Blanco said. In the meantime, though, Louisiana is hatching plans for how to best leverage the $6.2 billion it already has in hand. An idea offered by Nagin would use the $6.2 billion as a first phase to the rebuilding process. The cash would target homes across the region that flooded with at least 2 feet of water, offering owners buyouts at 100 percent of their prestorm value (minus insurance payments) or a grant to cover repairs. Owners of less damaged homes, rental units, and small businesses would be left out. If the extra $4.2 billion is blessed by Congress, Nagin says, some of it would flow to less severely damaged homes and rental units.

Whether or not Nagin's plan takes hold, the commission's ambitious blueprint for New Orleans "is going to be scaled back and done in phases," says Mel Lagarde, cochair of the Bring New Orleans Back Commission. His hope, and the hope of many here, is that with a plan in place, city officials can come back to Washington with more ideas--and, of course, more requests for a whole lot more money. Sounds good, in theory at least. But the City That Care Forgot still faces plenty of stormy weather.

The call sign Juliet Golf Oscar (JGO) followed by a flight number belongs, says the ICAO, to a now bankrupt Canadian low-cost airline called Jetsgo of Montreal.

But for several years and as recently as last December it has been used selectively by both the American air force and army to cover the flights of aircraft to and from the Balkans.

These range from Learjet 35 executive jets to C-130 transport planes and MC-130P Combat Shadows, which are specially adapted for clandestine missions in politically sensitive or hostile territory.

A Sunday Times analysis of flight plans and radio logs has placed these aircraft at locations including Tuzla in Bosnia, Pristina in Kosovo, Aviano, the site of a large joint US-Italian military air base in northern Italy, and Ramstein in Germany, the headquarters of the US Air Forces in Europe (USAFE).

On December 11, 2004, USAFE in Ramstein filed a flight plan for a Learjet 35 to fly from Tuzla to Aviano. The flight plan was copied to 15 addressees including Tuzla airport, Aviano airport and a mysterious recipient labeled "xxxxxxxx".

The aircraft's identity was given as JGO 80, the flight was a Learjet 35 operated by the Department of Defense and the registration was 99999E.

The status of the flight was given as "humanitarian". But it was also given as "state", which means government, and as "protected", which means diplomatic.

During the time the plane was in the air, USAFE changed some of the flight plan timings and at the same time the registration changed. The aircraft metamorphosed into 40112E but continued to be a Learjet 35 and was still JGO 80 and a humanitarian, government and diplomatic flight.

While the Learjet was on the ground at Tuzla, an Ilyushin 76 was loading a cargo of 45 tons of surplus weapons and ammunition sold off by the Bosnian military and destined for Rwanda in defiance of a UN embargo.

The Ilyushin left Tuzla, flew over Italy and headed south in the direction of Africa. The American Learjet took off 55 minutes later.

In a report exposing arms trafficking to war-torn central Africa, Amnesty International has suggested that "US security authorities were engaged in a covert operation to ferry arms to Rwanda in the face of political opposition from the European Union".

Another interesting convergence of flights occurred in February 2004. On February 24, an MC-130P Combat Shadow using the call sign JGO 50 took off from Aviano for an unknown destination.

Two days later, on February 26, the aircraft left Pristina for Tuzla. A short while after that, a Gulfstream 5 executive jet, call sign JGO 47, flew from Tuzla to Aviano, arriving at 23.11 GMT. The next day, a Learjet 35 using the call sign SPAR 92 left Aviano for an unknown destination.

SPAR is short for Special Air Resources, an American military airlift service that transports senior military officers and civilian VIPs.

However, SPAR 92 has been identified as the aircraft which was used by the CIA secretly to transport a Muslim preacher who was kidnapped by CIA agents in Milan in 2003.

A USAFE spokesman last week said American aircraft using the JGO call sign were performing "Joint Guard Operations" for the NATO/European peacekeeping mission in the Balkans.

However, inquiries have shown that the military operation called "Joint Guard" ended in 1998. They also show that none of the US aircraft deployed in it match ones using the JGO call sign.

A spokesman for the ICAO said: "Our records indicate that the designator JGO is still assigned to Jetsgo and the ICAO does not assign the same code to two operators."

In his speech to the Ganesh Man Singh Academy (Kathmandu) on February 15, 2006, Moriarty clearly stated that the US wanted "reconciliation and compromise" between Monarchy and parliamentary parties, and any other arrangement is unacceptable to it. And what is unacceptable to it needs to be checked with all its might. (1) Moriarty cleared away the confusion that the US statement after the royalty's failed attempt to conduct elections to municipal bodies in the beginning of February 2006 engendered among a few people. They thought that the US seemed to be drifting away from its support to monarchy. Moriarty's speech much be welcomed in this regard. He made clear that the US thought the elections could have been a successful exercise; "unfortunately" it was proved "hollow" and "yet another missed opportunity", with the Maoists' violence and parties' boycott being the main culprits. In the Question-Answer session of his speech, in answer to a particular question, Moriarty immediately tried to reinstall the ambiguity. Such kind of ambiguity allows a hegemonic power to opportunistically play various contradictory forces at the same time.(2)

Moriarty presented a comprehensive overview of the American perceptions of the Nepalese crisis. Firstly, for the US, the main task of the Nepalese politicians must be to eliminate the Maoists, not to bring in a stable democracy. The latter could be just an instrument in this regard. The "authoritarian rule" imposed by Monarchy per se was not wrong, If it had eliminated the Maoists, it would have been declared successful. Monarchy proved to be wrong in its "envisioning". Secondly, the US really thinks that the recent agreement between the "parties" and the Maoists is a result of the frustration of the former, who are trying to use the latter as "political leverage against the palace". In fact, within the US' scheme of things, the King and the "parties" are equally obstinate "locked in a circle of mistrust" using the Maoists as "bargaining chip in their ongoing struggle of wills". Thirdly, in this struggle of wills and fancies, of course, "the Maoists will only continue to gain advantage". Fourthly, of course, speaking for the Big Brother (BB), Moriarty feels free to philosophise, "wishing that something were so does not make it that way, as we all learn in life". And with BB watching and judging, how did Nepalese politicians dare to make judgement on their own that the insurgents would renounce violence? BB thinks that the Maoists are "committed to violence to achieve political ends", so they must be; believe it or else you are doomed! Don't talk about the revolutionaries of Nicaragua or El Salvador whose struggles contributed in stabilising democracy in those countries, BB knows better!

To teach the Nepalis, Moriarty makes a list of FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQs) and, of course, supplied with answers, too. His first question is: "Are the Maoists truly committed to peace and democracy, as the 12-point understanding suggests?" Moriarty comes out with a "Bushy" style of argumentation. When Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai talks about "absolute democracy" and about attacking the "autocratic monarchy", can't you see what he means? He means "murder, extortion, and intimidation". If you don't see that, Uncle Sam sees that; hence, you must see that. Don't you remember Bhattarai said something about the simultaneity of armed and unarmed struggle to achieve the goal of absolute democracy? Why did he call for an armed struggle to complement the unarmed? What if the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) and the police shoot at your demonstrations and protests? You must never defend yourself because Uncle Sam himself trained them to do that.

The second question, which Moriarty supplies with an answer, is "Are the Maoists committed to joining the political mainstream?" The argumentation is similar. Because he has found "that the insurgents seek to bring the parties further into their sphere, and to the Maoists' advantage", so everybody must see the "common sense". How did he find that? Somewhere Baburam Bhattarai said, "since our working policy [with the parties] is now the same, we have forged this partnership," and also that "tomorrow if the nature of the political intercontradiction changes, the nature of our relations could change as well." So the conclusion is "icy". Actually, the parties didn't have any mind when they signed the 12-point agreement with the Maoists. Look Uncle Sam has done the homework for them, he has "translated" "Maoist thinking" for these illiterate Nepalis, and it is icy because he himself was frozen by its implications. Did you say, even Uncle Sam changes his colours frequently as "the nature of the political intercontradiction changes" - that he supported all kinds of dictatorial regimes to eliminate nationalists, democrats and people's movements all over the world? He fed Pinochet, Talibans, Osama, Saddam, literally everybody against whom he claims to wage the War on terrorism todayOh, boy! You can't even understand that! Firstly, because he is big he can dare to do this; secondly, if you go on telling his own story to him, he might do what he did in Chile, beware!

The last FAQ is "If the parties and Maoists were ever able to topple the monarchy, what then?" Of course, "the answer here is particularly worrisome: The Maoists would be armed; the parties would be unarmed." Here comes a major revelation: "the Royal Nepalese Army" is "the parties' one logical source of defense". So what if all these days it has terrorised you? Once you become the King's compliant little brothers, you will find them handy and playful. Don't listen to the Maoists! In fact, the RNA is the King's private army and it is not professional because it is in the best interest of you and the Nepalese people in general. You all are very innocent and young; you could have misused the Army and its arms. BP Koirala (the first and only prime minister to serve during Nepal's first fling of democracy (1959-60) was overthrown because he dared to support some land reform measures) was not in his mind when he questioned the compatibility of the democratic system in Nepal with the preponderance of the Nepalese Army. You must be happy with the "elections", that's democracy. More regularly you are ousted by the King and his army, you will have more elections, and hence, more democracy You don't understand the logic, boy! Moreover, "we like elections".

Moriarty himself found all these trivial questions "provocative, which is their aim". To "provoke" more he finds that "if ever the phrase 'politics makes strange bedfellows' was appropriate, it is in Nepal in 2006". Did all these provoke you? No, but they must, they were meant to be provocative. Look, Uncle Sam has caught you in bed, too! So what if every night he himself has strange bedfellows! You are still young and struggling. You must not sleep with bedfellows whom he finds strange. Don't sleep with his enemies! Do you know how much you have aggrieved the Big Boy Gyani, because of your "lack of leadership and unwillingness to compromise"? He too was at fault, agreed, but he is the Big Boy. Moreover, you were the one who aligned with "a separate violent force" and isolated the Big Boy, maddening him. Further don't you see Russia, North Korea, China, Cuba and others, the Maoists, Marxists etc found totalitarian states? Don't talk about Allende, Chavez, Ortega and others? It is good that Uncle Sam and his cronies fund local criminals, drug pedlars, mafias to check them or eliminate them before they are successful in building totalitarian states. And that is why you don't find totalitarianism flourishing there. You talk about Pinochet and his ilk, you must understand the logic of tit for tat. Choices are before you - decide what you want to become. Now stop provoking Uncle Sam. But are you provoked, or not?

In the speech, Moriarty clearly comes out with a warning: Behave yourself or you will impair your "democratic credentials" by aligning with the Maoists. It does not matter whether the 'demos' supported your boycott and the Maoists' General Strike, what matters is that you have not behaved according to the 'democratic' recipe that Uncle Sam proposes. Your partnership with the Maoists is "uneasy", because it makes him uneasy. It is wrongheaded, because he has been wronged. Worse for you, Uncle Sam has started believing that what you have done "is fraught with danger"? You know what this means. You have enraged Uncle Sam, and you don't know the results that are in store "for the political parties themselves, and for the future of the Nepalese people". So, start rethinking.

It is clear from the speech that the Maoists' coming out openly in the media and rising popular sympathy and support for them have forced the US to prepare for its last ditch attempt to save monarchy and buy back at least the inconsistent elements in the democracy movement. The US game plan is to downplay the Maoists' genuine stress on an effective Constituent Assembly that can decide upon the nature of the political system for Nepal in a genuinely democratic manner. Moriarty's jugglery with facts and statements by the Maoists taken out of context is meant for this. The US and its allies know quite well that the Nepalese royalty, which they fed for more than 50 years, is almost doomed, if this demand is honestly met. The royalty is their only stable agency that can keep the political economic aspirations of the enlightened Nepalese population in check, from 'harming' foreign interests in Nepal - both security and business. The royalty's doom is Nepal's complete independence, its freedom to decide its own destiny.

Moriarty uses all kinds of attacks that can make the Maoists look like the simple mindless terrorists whom the Americans trained during the Cold War and whom they utilise today to legitimise their invasion of "non-compliant" ("rogue") free nations. In the name of chasing the terrorists they can freely bombard innocent people. Of course, in order to pre-empt the rise of a future 'terrorist', they must slaughter the whole generation, as Herod "slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof" (St. Mathew, 2:16).

They themselves know that the Maoists are not like those terrorists whom they brainwashed for their own Cold War loots. That is why the Ambassador shows his desperation by evoking the logic of "common sense" so many times, without telling what sense it is. Don't you see the common sense that "the King and parties" are natural allies? Don't you see the common sense that the Maoists are violent? Don't you see the common sense that "There is no other practical, workable solution to your constitutional crisis and to effectively face the most immediate, as well as the most serious long-term, threat to your peace and prosperity ­ the insurgency", except that "at some point, for the sake of Nepal, senior party and palace leaders must gather together in a room and begin hashing out the hard details of the way forward. No one else can do it for them". So party leaders must gather in a room, not on the streets, not like Zapatistas in Mexico, who go in thousands when they go for negotiation.

Throughout the speech Moriarty is trying to entice the Democrats and the King to be ready for "hard compromise, tough give and take". "The United States, for one, would look eagerly for ways to assist a new Nepal government that respects and supports democracy, human rights, and freedom. This also could include renewing assistance for the Royal Nepalese Army." So don't you see that Uncle Sam will now onward protect both the Big Boy and the little ones, if you behave well with each other? This is the common sense. And if you don't believe Moriarty's "common sense plea", then you must listen to "the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command". You know, what it means

[Note: Most of the quotes here are from US Ambassador in Nepal, James F Moriarty's speech. Its text and audio versions are available at http://kathmandu.usembassy.gov/. The audio includes the Question-Answer session. A partial transcript of the Q-A session is available on the website of International Nepal Solidarity Network for Democratic Peace (insn.org) at http://66.116.151.85/?p=2772. The Q-A session shows the desperation of US diplomacy in Nepal, as its Ambassador in his answers had the audacity to break the basic diplomatic discursive ethos, using phrases like "with the middle fingers"]

The case will test the new balance of abortion opinion on a court whose membership now includes two Bush appointees, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. Given their conservative leanings and the court's past vote count on the issue, the federal ban's chances appear strong.

Arguing that an appeals court's invalidation of an act of Congress was worthy of the court's attention, the Bush administration persuaded the justices to take the case without one usual criterion for doing so -- a division among lower courts. Since the first appeals court struck down the law last year, two other appeals courts have followed suit.

The procedure, performed by fewer than two dozen physicians in the country and known medically as "intact dilation and evacuation," takes place relatively late in pregnancy, generally after the 20th week, when the fetus's head may become lodged in the birth canal. Under those circumstances, the doctors draw the fetus out feet first, then puncture the skull to vacuum out the brain and collapse the head, permitting the rest of the fetus to be removed.

It is unclear how often the procedure is done. Abortion rights organizations say the annual number is in the hundreds; antiabortion groups say thousands. There were 1.3 million abortions in the United States in 2002, of which 88 percent occurred in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

What is clear is that few other issues in American politics trigger stronger emotions. A 2005 poll by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute showed that three-quarters of the public supports a ban, except when a woman's life is at stake.

But some physicians, including the plaintiff in this case, Leroy Carhart of Nebraska, say the procedure is sometimes safer than the alternatives, which may include the dismemberment of the fetus before its extraction.

For the Supreme Court, the issue is whether the constitutional right to have an abortion means that any law regulating this procedure must contain an exception to protect a woman's health.

In a 1992 decision reaffirming the abortion right first announced in Roe v. Wade 19 years earlier, the court barred abortion regulations that pose an "undue burden" on women.

The court applied that ruling in 2000 to a Nebraska ban on the procedure that was similar to laws in 25 states. It struck the law down 5 to 4, ruling that it was so vaguely written that it could also criminalize other procedures, and that it lacked an exception for the woman's health.

The federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 was Congress's answer to that ruling. It banned the procedure except when necessary to save the life of the woman. And it deliberately omitted an exception to protect the woman's health. Indeed, as drafted by its Republican sponsors, the law formally declared, based on expert testimony, that such an abortion could never be necessary to preserve health.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, based in St. Louis, said in July that the lack of a health exception made the law unconstitutional under the 2000 Supreme Court ruling that had required a health exception whenever "substantial medical authority" supports the necessity of the procedure. Congress's findings to the contrary were not sufficient, the 8th Circuit ruled.

But the Bush administration argues that the federal law is more precisely drawn than the Nebraska statute, and that the courts must defer to Congress's findings regarding the medical necessity of the procedure.

Oral argument in the case, Gonzales v. Carhart , No. 05-380, is likely to take place during the run-up to the 2006 congressional elections, and the high political stakes were evident from the statements of organizations on both sides of the abortion issue.

"We fear the new court is ready to further undermine a woman's access to legal abortion," says Jennifer K. Brown, vice president and legal director of Legal Momentum, a women's rights organization.

Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, said, "Unless the Supreme Court now reverses the extreme position that five justices took in 2000, partly born premature infants will continue to die by having their skulls punctured by seven-inch scissors."

When the court voted 5 to 4 to strike down Nebraska's ban on the procedure in 2000, former justice Sandra Day O'Connor cast the deciding vote.

She is no longer on the court and has been replaced by Alito, who sat on his first oral argument yesterday. As a federal appeals judge, Alito voted to strike down a New Jersey ban on the procedure, saying that his court must follow the Supreme Court's 2000 ruling.

But in 1991, he voted to allow Pennsylvania to require spousal notification before abortion. He said that the state's rule, and its exceptions, did not pose an "undue burden." That view was overruled by the Supreme Court in 1992.

And as a young Reagan administration lawyer, Alito expressed opposition to the court's landmark abortion rights case, Roe v. Wade.

Roberts replaced the late chief justice William H. Rehnquist, a strong foe of abortion rights. Roberts has a thinner abortion record than Alito but has also come up to the court through conservative ranks.

Three dissenters from the court's 2000 ruling, justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas, are still on the court.

I take Joseph Pulitzer's exhortation seriously. ''Always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice and corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news; always be drastically independent; never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.''

I may never win the prize named in his honor -- the highest honor one can achieve in this profession -- but Joe wasn't speaking only to the best. He was speaking to each and every person in the news business. When President Clinton was in office, I wrote critically of his administration, particularly with regards to U.S. policy in Iraq and welfare reform.

In this unimaginative era of political thought, which operates on a false liberal-conservative dichotomy, you are considered beyond the pale if you utter anything perceived to be ''left'' of liberal. The problem with that is the center has moved rightward, circa the Reagan administration, drifting further through Clinton and accelerating under President Bush.

That's why I think it's important to keep an eye on who society holds up as the poster-child ''liberal,'' whether it's Clinton, Kennedy or Kerry. Whoever offers an analysis ''left'' of those ''liberals'' are considered ''extreme.''

But that's not only anti-intellectual, it's dangerous. Take the WMD debate, for example. Pro-war conservatives discount Scott Ritter and other UNSCOM inspectors' expert analyses, essentially arguing that it's mere coincidence the chief weapons inspector in Iraq for seven years was right on the money, even though he wrote detailed books and gave detailed interviews before the war laying out just how little of a threat Saddam posed after 90 to 95 percent of his WMD had been destroyed by UNSCOM. The ''liberals,'' as conservatives love to point out, thought Saddam had WMD, too.

But Ritter's pre-war intelligence ''coincidentally'' turned out to better than ''everyone'' else in the world who was ''mistaken.''

Why critique fundamentalist Christian politics? Because I come out of that tradition. And like my brothers and sisters in Christ, I believe that Jesus embodied the Word, the Truth and the Suffering Servant spoken of in scripture.

I also believe that a preacher I once heard was right. If Jesus is the Word, the Truth and The Suffering Servant, then it is a condition of truth to allow suffering to speak. In other words, you have to go through suffering to discover the truth.

So when the privileged classes that Pulitzer described theorizes and makes decisions that disproportionately affect the weak and vulnerable, we're not talking about truth. We're talking power politics.

There are countless verses in the Bible that speak of God's eternal concern for ''the least of these,'' which, by comparison, far outnumbers the relatively few references to sexual immorality that seems to be the primary focus of politically engaged conservative Christians.

It's a distortion of both what Jesus taught and what traditional Christianity has been all about to focus on individual sex-related sins while ignoring or downplaying institutional and social sins.

The Rev. Martin Luther King sums it up best for me. ''A religion true to its nature must also be concerned about man's social conditions… Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a dry-as-dust religion… Such a religion is the kind the Marxists like to see -- an opiate of the people.''

Sembler, a longtime party fundraiser, backed Cheney as a presidential candidate in 1996 until he dropped out of the race, and described himself as vindicated and thrilled when George W. Bush chose Cheney as a running mate in 2000.

Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, was indicted in late October on five felony counts of obstruction of justice, perjury and false statements during an investigation of the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

The Libby Legal Defend Fund opened a Web site yesterday ( http://www.scooterlibby.org ) and reported its advisory committee has raised $2 million since it began in November. The names of donors are not being disclosed; officials said most donors limit their gift a non-taxable $12,000.

Among Cheney's longtime friends on the committee are former senator Alan K. Simpson (Wyo.); GOP donor Frederic V. Malek of McLean, chairman of Thayer Capital Partners who served in the Nixon White House at the same time as Cheney; and top communications aide Mary Matalin. Former Bush energy secretary Spencer Abraham and former CIA director R. James Woolsey are also lending a hand.

"These are people who have been involved in political activities for a long while and know things can get pretty rough . . . who are willing to put their good names behind Scooter's good name," Barbara Comstock, Libby defense fund spokesperson, said.

Some -- including lobbyist Wayne Berman, Mercer Reynolds, a gas and oil businessman; Sam Fox, chairman of a business acquisition group; and banker and former Republican National Committee finance chairman Lawrence E. Bathgate II -- also have a proven ability to raise a lot of money for Republican causes, especially the two Bush-Cheney campaigns, the 2000 recount and two inaugurations.

The committee boasts academics, such as Bernard Lewis, Princeton history professor, and Francis Fukuyama of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, who has written critically of the administration's Iraq policy.

In the article Arthur Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law, reportedly wrote that "thousands of our military have suffered and died from, [and depleted uranium] has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. The terrible truth is now being revealed." Bernklau went on to detail several alarming statistics. The historical disability rate amongst soldiers last century was about 5 percent, although it approached 10 percent during Vietnam. But due to the use of depleted uranium in the battlefield, 56 percent of the 580,400 solders that served in the first Gulf War were on Permanent Medical Disability by 2000. 11,000 Gulf War veterans are already dead. Now 518,739 Gulf War Veterans, almost all of them, are currently on medical disability.

Principi, under the order of the Bush Administration, had been allegedly covering up the disastrous results of using depleted uranium since 2000. However, with so many soldiers having serious health problems it has become impossible to keep secret.