Entries for March 06, 2007

Pentagon reporter Anna Mulrine brings us this:

According to a report released this afternoon by the Center for American Progress, of all of the U.S. Army's 44 brigade combat teams, just one has not been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. The majority--31--have had two or more tours in Iraq or Afghanistan (9 brigades have had three tours, and two have had four).

In total, some 1.4 million U.S. military troops have served in Iraq or Afghanistan. Some 50,000 soldiers have been put under stop-loss orders, a measure that requires troops to remain deployed, despite the fact that their volunteer commitments have expired. The report cites an Army study that found that soldiers who serve more than one tour are 50 percent more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and that suicide rates among troops deployed to Iraq spiked in 2006.

Etc.: You're In the Army--For Now, on USNews.com

This item comes from Jill Konieczko and Danielle Burton in the U.S. News Library:

A new report (pdf) estimates the amount of digital information the world created and copied in 2006 at 161 billion gigabytes. For the non-techies out there, that's "approximately three million times the information in all the books ever written - or the equivalent of 12 stacks of books, each extending more than the 93 million miles from the earth to the sun."

The report's project director explains that this explosion "represents an entire shift in how information has moved from analog form, where it was finite, to digital form, where it's infinite." And, if predictions for 2007 are correct, the amount of information will exceed existing storage capacity. Looking out even further, from 2006 to 2010, the digital universe will expand more than sixfold, to 988 exabytes (or 988 billion gigabytes).

To make your head spin even faster, imagine the implications for data management and architecture, not to mention privacy and security. And you might consider this a gentle reminder: delete all unwanted E-mails.

Etc.: Can Your Data Survive a Storm? on USNews.com

This comes from reporter Silla Brush, live from the Capitol:

In the second game of a legislative doubleheader, a House Judiciary subcommittee has six former U.S. attorneys on hand plus the principal associate deputy attorney general, William Moschella, to explain the situation leading to the end of their tenures.

Moschella was asked under oath to outline the reasons for each of the attorneys being asked to leave, a public version of closed-door briefings last month and yesterday. Carol Lam, the U.S. attorney in San Diego who prosecuted the case of Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, was asked to resign, Moschella said, because of inadequate numbers of prosecutions for violent gun crime cases. Moschella said Lam, who was sworn in on Nov. 18, 2002, had the lowest number of such prosecutions of all but two other districts: Guam and the Virgin Islands. (According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), which independently records this information, Lam initiated 16 weapons cases in 2006 and eight in 2005.)

U.S. News media correspondent Liz Halloran was at the federal courthouse in Washington today for the verdict and has this to report: "They tell me it's nothing compared with the Clinton days, but the courtroom was full, and the full Washington media horde was out in force. Libby doesn't have a celebrity profile -- chief of staff to the vice president is not that sexy -- so there wasn't the usual gathering of curious onlookers looking to glimpse someone famous."

Libby was found guilty of two counts of perjury, one count of obstruction of justice, and one count of lying to the FBI. He was also acquitted of one count of lying to the FBI.

Halloran was also present for the statement of juror Denis Collins, who spoke to reporters after the verdict was announced. Collins said jurors had sympathy for Libby but that in the end they just didn't buy his faulty-memory defense. From the testimony, the jurors documented nine separate times that witnesses said Libby had learned of Valerie Plame Wilson and her job at the CIA.

"There was a tremendous amount of sympathy for Mr. Libby," he said. Some jurors asked, "Where's [Bush aide Karl]Rove? Where are these other guys?' He was the fall guy."

But for the matter-of fact jurors, who spent a week mapping out testimony on each of the five charges before starting to make their decisions, that was not a defense.

Update: U.S. News White House correspondent Kenneth T. Walsh will appear on MSNBC's Tucker Carlson this afternoon to discuss the implications of the verdict, beginning at 4 p.m.

Chief legal affairs correspondent Chitra Ragavan caught up with two legal experts who both predicted that, if he is eventually found guilty after all motions and appeals are exhausted, Scooter Libby will be sentenced to somewhere between 1 and 3 years in prison in a minimum-security facility.

The University of Richmond's Carl Tobias predicted 1 1/2 to 3 years and told Ragavan he does not think Libby has a good chance of escaping the charges. "The judge was extremely careful in trying the case, so it seems there will be few grounds for appeal," he said.

Meanwhile, Barry Boss, a former federal public defender and former cochair of the United States Sentencing Commission's Practitioners' Advisory Group, says the defense appeal could be based on the Judge precludingLibby from presenting his lack of memory defense, including his denying Libby the right to call an expert. Regarding his sentencing, Boss says Libby is likely to get between 15-21 months in prison. If that sentence is upheld on appeal, he likely will serve it in a mininum security prison. The defense will ask that Libby be released pending a decision by the appellate court. If this motion is granted, then Libby likely would not start serving any sentence for at least another year or more.

Etc.: No Libby Legacy for the Press, on USNews.com

Just in: Former Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is guilty of four out of five counts, including two countrs of perjury, one count of obstruction of justice, and one count of lying to the FBI. Stay tuned for updates and analysis from U.S. News reporters Chitra Ragavan and Liz Halloran, who have followed the case.

Sentencing is scheduled for June.

Reporter Silla Brush brings us these gems live from the Senate hearing on the firings of at least six U.S. attorneys. The House will hold a similar hearing at 2 p.m.

• Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.: "Not since the 'Saturday Night Massacre,' when President Nixon forced the firing of the Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox, have we witnessed anything of this magnitude."
• Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa.: "It would be helpful if DOJ would be a little more sensitive about what they're doing. To replace seven U.S. attorneys all at once is not exactly a discreet thing to do."
• Dismissed New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, remembering a call with Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.: "Domenici said, 'Are there going to be findings before November?' I said I don't think so. Then he said 'sorry to hear that' and then the line went dead. I felt sick afterwards. I felt leaned on. I felt pressure to get these matters moving."
• Iglesias on a separate call with Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M.: "The second she said anything about sealed indictments, a red flag went up. It's like calling up a scientist and asking about secret launch codes."

Etc.: News Desk: The Lost Numbers in the Case of the Fired Attorneys on USNews.com