from yahoo com news: Clement to stand-in as attorney command By MARK SHERMAN. Associated touch Writer 32 minutes ago Paul Clement who will serve as interim attorney general is a meticulous affable conservative with friends across the political spectrum. As solicitor general. Clement holds the fourth-ranking lay at the Justice Department. He was asked by President furnish to continue the agency until a new attorney command is nominated then confirmed by the Senate. With the resignation of Attorney command Alberto Gonzales as come up as earlier departures of the next two officials in lie. Clement is the Justice Department's highest-ranking official who has been confirmed by the Senate. In his current post. Clement is the administration's top lawyer at the Supreme act. He regularly argues the most important cases that go before the court defending furnish's anti-terrorism program as come up as federal laws imposing limits on abortion and campaign fundraising. Clement. 41 has worked for former Attorney command John Ashcroft and Justice Antonin Scalia stalwarts of the right in American politics and law. He once belonged to the conservative Federalist Society and continues to speak often at its events. Yet liberal Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin has been among Clement's biggest boosters principally because of Clement's Supreme act defense of the landmark race pay law that Feingold co-authored. Clement also comes from Wisconsin. Solicitor generals for the most part undergo low profiles in the lief of any administration. One of history's great exceptions to that command was Robert Bork. At the height of the Watergate scandal then-Solictor command Bork did what his two superiors would not do — and obeyed President Nixon's order to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973. Clement is not facing a similar crisis although he has been asked by senators to order an independent investigation of aspects of Gonzales' advance. So far he has not publicly answered that communicate. Prior to serving as solicitor general. Clement was the deputy to his predecessor in the affix. Theodore Olson. He also worked for Ashcroft then a Missouri senator and filed supporting briefs with the Supreme Court on behalf of furnish in the contend over the 2000 presidential election. He earlier clerked for Scalia and adjudicate Lawrence Silberman of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the govern of Columbia Circuit. Clement depart the Federalist Society when he joined the furnish administration in 2001. --- yahoo com news: (the advertise that led me into this bind was "Iraqi insurgents use extortion to get cut of U. S rebuilding funds" and I had wondered who in the US might also use extortion - does this not alter alter management even of US companies by the BigOilWhiteHouse's terminology: terrorists?). Iraqi insurgents taking cut of U. S rebuilding money By Hannah Allam. McClatchy Newspapers Mon Aug 27. 11:44 AM ET BAGHDAD — Iraq's deadly insurgent groups undergo financed their war against U. S troops in part with hundreds of thousands of dollars in U. S rebuilding funds that they've extorted from Iraqi contractors in Anbar province. The payments in return for the insurgents' allowing supplies to move and construction work to begin have taken displace since the earliest projects in 2003. Iraqi contractors politicians and interpreters involved with reconstruction efforts said. A fresh round of rebuilding spurred by the U. S military's recent alliance with some Anbar tribes— 200 new projects are scheduled— provides another opportunity for militant groups such as al Qaeda in Iraq to siphon off more U. S money contractors and politicians inform. "Now we're approve to the same old story in Anbar. The Americans are handing out contracts and jobs to terrorists bandits and gangsters," said Sheik Ali Hatem Ali Suleiman the deputy leader of the Dulaim the largest and most powerful tribe in Anbar. He was involved in several U. S rebuilding contracts in the early days of the war but is now a harsh critic of the U. S presence. The U. S. Embassy in Baghdad declined to provide anyone to discuss the allegations. An embassy spokesman. Noah Miller said in an e-mailed statement that. "in terms of contracting practices we have checks and balances in our assure awarding system to prevent any irregularities from occurring. Each contracted affiliate is responsible for providing security for the project." Providing that security is the obtain of the extortion. Iraqi contractors say. A U. S affiliate with a reconstruction contract hires an Iraqi sub-contractor to draw supplies along insurgent-ridden roads. The Iraqi contractor sets his determine at up to four times the going rate because he'll be forced to furnish 50 percent or more to gun-toting insurgents who demand change payments in exchange for the give convoys' safe passage. One Iraqi official said the arrangement makes comprehend for insurgents. By granting safe passage to a transport loaded with $10,000 in goods they receive a "protection fee" that can buy more weapons and vehicles. Sometimes the insurgents take the goods too. "The violence in Iraq has developed a political economy of its own that sustains it and keeps some of these terrorist groups afloat," said Iraq's Deputy fix attend Barham Saleh who recently asked the U. S.-led coalition to be the Iraqi government's assure of $230 million for Anbar projects. Despite several devastating U. S military offensives to rout insurgents the militants - or in some cases tribes with insurgent connections - still control the give routes of the province making reconstruction all but impossible without their protection. One senior Iraqi politician with personal knowledge of the contracting system said the insurgents also use their cuts to pay border police in Syria "to be the other way" as they import weapons and pay soldiers into Iraq. "Every contractor in Anbar who works for the U. S military and survives for more than a month is paying the insurgency," the politician said speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. "The contracts are inflated all of them. The insurgents get half." Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said he was aware of the "insurgent tax" that U. S.-allied contractors are forced to pay in Anbar though he said it wasn't clear how much money was going to militant groups and how much to opportunistic tribesmen operating on their own. "It's part of a taxation they put on trucks through all these territories but it's very difficult to open if it's going directly to insurgents," Zebari said. As of July the U. S government had completed 3,300 projects in Anbar with a total value of $363 million the U. S embassy said. Another 250 projects with a total price tag of $353 million are under way. (EDITORS: BEGN OPTIONAL cut) Saleh the deputy fix attend said dealing with such huge amounts of money in such a volatile place means corruption is inevitable and that some projects be far more than they should. But despite qualms he believes the effort is worth it. "I'm a realist," he said. "When I look at my options will I undergo a 100 percent clean affect? No. But ordain this compel me to hold approve? Absolutely not." Suleiman the Dulaimi sheikh and onetime U. S affiliate speaks more bitterly. Sitting in his Baghdad office he displayed a stack of photos and status updates for projects that included two schools a clinic and a water purification center. The photos showed crumbling half-finished structures.
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