The Ashford Zone Blog

Pentagon spokesman Larry Dirita today announces some uncorroborated and unverified “facts” to the world:

We’ve found nothing that would substantiate anything that you just said about the treatment of a Koran. We have, other than what we’ve seen – that it’s possible detainees themselves have done with pages of the Koran. And I don’t want to overstate that, either, because it’s based on log entries that have to be corroborated.

Sounds like DiRita is well on his way to repairing relations with the Arab world.  Heh.

Meanwhile, some Pakistanis are asking good questions.  If the Newsweek story was wrong and/or volatile and/or a “defamation of the troops” (*rolls eyes*), why did the DoD greenlight its publication?

"The damage cannot be controlled by the belated retraction from Newsweek under U.S. government pressure,” Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the leader of the religious-party alliance, said in a telephone interview from Islamabad.

Ahmad noted that Newsweek, before publishing the item, had run it past a senior Defense Department official to check its accuracy. “The fact that the story was given by Newsweek to a U.S. government official and the Pentagon cleared it before publication tells a lot,” Ahmad said.

Congress is attempting to pass the Real ID Act (text of the bill and the Congressional Research Services analysis of the bill), which would establish uniform standards for state driver’s licenses, effectively creating a national ID card.

A number of criticisms of the idea have made their way around the blogosphere.

For example, the Real ID Act requires driver’s licenses to include a "common machine-readable technology." This will make identity theft easier, since that data will easily find its way on to many databases — like the kinds that were recently hacked at companies like Choicepoint.

Real ID requires that driver’s licenses contain actual addresses, and no post office boxes. There are no exceptions made for judges or police — even undercover police officers or CIA spies.  This creates an unnecessary security risk.

Real ID also prohibits states from issuing driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.  So what will be the result?  Illegal aliens driving without licenses — which isn’t going to help anyone’s security.

Real ID is expensive. It’s an unfunded mandate: the federal government is forcing the states to spend their own money to comply with the act.

What’s more, none of this is required.The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, signed into law last year, included stronger security measures for driver’s licenses (the ones recommended by the 9/11 Commission Report).

USA Today reports what many of us already suspected:

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says.

Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or "high" risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled.

His comments at a Washington forum describe spirited debates over terrorist intelligence and provide rare insight into the inner workings of the nation’s homeland security apparatus.

Ridge said he wanted to "debunk the myth" that his agency was responsible for repeatedly raising the alert under a color-coded system he unveiled in 2002.

"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge told reporters. "Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don’t necessarily put the country on (alert). … There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, ‘For that?’ "