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Some Gitmo Prisoners Don't Want to Go Home
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Fearing militants or even their own governments, some prisoners at Guantanamo Bay from China, Saudi Arabia and other nations do not want to go home, according to transcripts of hearings at the U.S. prison in Cuba.
Uzbekistan, Yemen, Algeria and Syria are also among the countries to which detainees do not want to return. The inmates have told military tribunals that they or their families could be tortured or killed if they are sent back.
President Bush has said the United States transfers detainees to other countries only when it receives assurances that they will not be tortured. Critics say such assurances are useless. The U.S. has released or transferred 267 prisoners and has announced plans to do the same with at least 123 more in the future.
Inmates have told military tribunals they worry about reprisals from militants who will suspect them of cooperating with U.S. authorities in its war on terror. Others say their own governments may target them for reasons that have nothing to do with why they were taken to Guantanamo Bay in the first place.
A man from Syria who was detained along with his father pleaded with the tribunal for help getting them political asylum - in any country that will take them.
"You've been saying 'terrorists, terrorists.' If we return, whether we did something or not, there's no such things as human rights. We will be killed immediately," he said. "You know this very well."
It is impossible to know how many of the detainees, most held for years now without being charged, fear going home. The U.S. military does not comment on individual cases, and the detainees generally are not in a position to offer any evidence of persecution as they plead their cases before the tribunals.
A Saudi identified only as Yasim, who said he attended an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan and was jailed in his country for selling drugs, told the tribunal that after being repeatedly interrogated at Guantanamo, he fears his fellow prisoners as well as others back in Saudi Arabia.
"I can't go back to my country. I have been threatened to be killed by many people," he said, according to the transcripts, which the Pentagon released Friday in response to a Freedom of Information Act Lawsuit filed by The Associated Press.
A detainee from Uzbekistan told the tribunals in December 2004 that his father and uncles were jailed for their Muslim faith in his native country and said he fears the rest of his family would be tortured if he returned.
The prisoner shrugged off the threat to his own safety in Uzbekistan, where the government has clamped down on Islamic groups which are not sanctioned by the state.
"I'm not afraid to die. We all belong to Allah and we shall return to him," he said.
This Uzbek's fate is unknown, as is that of almost every other detainee whose names are no longer blacked out when they appear in the hearing transcripts. The Bush administration has not said who has been held in the prison it opened in January 2002, and does not announce when or where individual detainees are released.
What the Pentagon has said is that 187 prisoners have been released, and 80 others have been transferred to prisons in more than a dozen countries, including Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Russia, Bahrain and Pakistan. An unknown number of these prisoners were later released, but many languish in other jails, again without charges, let alone trials.
"We have no authority to tell another government what they are going to do with a detainee," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico told the AP a year ago when asked about dozens of Pakistani prisoners transferred home for continued detention.
The personal threats that detainees may face after leaving Guantanamo Bay pose a human rights challenge to the United States, which has stopped bringing new prisoners to the camp and is under international pressure to close it altogether.
"This policy of handing over prisoners to countries that the U.S. challenges on their human rights abuses is a sham and it opens the United States to charges of hypocrisy around the world," said Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has sought passage of a bill that would ban the U.S. from sending prisoners to other countries to face torture.
In the case of one group of prisoners, Muslims from western China known as Uighurs, the U.S. has struggled to find a solution.
A military tribunal has determined that five are "no longer enemy combatants" and can be released from Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. agrees they could face persecution back in China but so far has not found a third country to take them.
For now, the Uighurs are being kept at Camp Iguana, a privileged section of the prison with televisions, stereos and a view of the Caribbean.
A Uighur told a military tribunal that he feared going back to China so much, he considered trying to convince the panel that he was guilty, according to a hearing transcript.
"If I am sent back to China, they will torture me really bad," said the man, whose name did not appear in the transcript. "They will use dogs. They will pull out my nails."
Two of the Uighurs are appealing a federal judge's rejection of their request to be released in the United States, where a family in the Washington suburbs has offered to take them in.
"Home is China, and in China you disappear into a dungeon and no one ever hears from you again," said their lawyer, Sabin Willett. "These guys are not a risk to anyone. They should be released here."
Associated Press Writer Paul Haven contributed to this story from Pakistan.Breitbart.com ~ Associated Press - Ben Fox ** Some Gitmo Prisoners Don't Want to Go Home
Posted by yaahoo_2006iest
at 9:29 PM EST
d'oh
Cindy Sheehan Arrested After U.N. March
NEW YORK - Cindy Sheehan, who drew international attention when she camped outside President Bush's ranch to protest the Iraq war, was arrested Monday along with three other women during a demonstration demanding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
The march to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations by about a dozen U.S. and Iraqi anti-war activists followed a news conference at U.N. headquarters, where Iraqi women described daily killings and ambulance bombings as part of the escalating violence that keeps women in their homes.
Women Say No to War, which helped organize the news conference and march, said Sheehan and three other women were arrested while trying to deliver a petition to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations with more than 60,000 signatures urging the "withdrawal all troops and all foreign fighters from Iraq." Police said they were arrested for criminal trespassing and resisting arrest.
Richard Grenell, the spokesman for the U.S. Mission, said in response to Sheehan's arrest: "We invited her in to discuss her concerns with a U.S. Mission employee. She chose not to come in but to lay down in front of the building and block the entrance. It was clearly designed to be a media stunt, not aimed at rational discussion," Grenell said.
At the news conference, Sheehan said when her 24-year-old son - a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq - died in April 2004, "the morgues were filled with innocent men, women and children."
Entessa Mohammed, a pharmicist who works at a hospital in Baghdad, became tearful when recalling the deaths and injuries she said she has witnessed daily.
She estimated that 1,600 Iraqis are killed in Baghdad every month, with a greater number injured. "Thanks for the liberation from Saddam" Hussein, Mohammed said, addressing the Bush administration, "now please go out."
special
A friend of mine sent me a list of headlines from the year 2029. They're good for a laugh or two - so enjoy!
Headlines for the year 2029:
Ozone created by electric cars now killing millions in the seventh largest country in the world, Mexifornia, formerly known as California.
Spotted Owl plague threatens northwestern United States crops and livestock.
Baby conceived naturally. Scientists stumped.
Couple petitions court to reinstate heterosexual marriage.
Last remaining Fundamentalist Muslim dies in the AmericanTerritory of the Middle East! (formerly known as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon).
Iran still closed off; physicists estimate it will take at least 10 more years before radioactivity decreases to safe levels.
France pleads for global help after being taken over by Jamaica.
Castro finally dies at age 112; Cuban cigars can now be imported legally, but President Chelsea Clinton has banned all smoking.
George Z. Bush says he will run for President in 2036.
Postal Service raises price of first class stamp to $17.89 and reduces mail delivery to Wednesdays only.
85-years, $75.8 billion study: Diet and Exercise is the key to weight loss.
Average weight of Americans drops to 250 lbs.
Massachusetts executes last remaining conservative.
Supreme Court rules punishment of criminals, violates their civil rights.
Average height of NBA players now nine feet, seven inches.
New federal law requires that all nail clippers, screwdrivers, fly swatters and rolled-up newspapers must be registered by January 2036.
Congress authorizes direct deposit of formerly illegal political contributions to campaign accounts.
IRS sets lowest tax rate at 75 percent.
Florida voters still having trouble with voting machines!
I'm sure Mr. Peters' account will be widely reported by all of the major news outlets... can't wait.
DUDE, WHERE'S MY CIVIL WAR?
Maybe actually being on the ground in Iraq prevents me from seeing it. Perhaps the view's clearer from Manhattan. It could be that my background as an intelligence officer didn't give me the right skills.
And riding around with the U.S. Army, looking at things first-hand, is certainly a technique to which The New York Times wouldn't stoop in such an hour of crisis.
Let me tell you what I saw anyway. Rolling with the "instant Infantry" gunners of the 1st Platoon of Bravo Battery, 4-320 Field Artillery, I saw children and teenagers in a Shia slum jumping up and down and cheering our troops as they drove by. Cheering our troops.
All day - and it was a long day - we drove through Shia and Sunni neighborhoods. Everywhere, the reception was warm. No violence. None.
And no hostility toward our troops. Iraqis went out of their way to tell us we were welcome.
Instead of a civil war, something very different happened because of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. The fanatic attempt to stir up Sunni-vs.-Shia strife, and the subsequent spate of violent attacks, caused popular support for the U.S. presence to spike upward.
Think Abu Musab al-Zarqawi intended that?
In place of the civil war that elements in our media declared, I saw full streets, open shops, traffic jams, donkey carts, Muslim holiday flags - and children everywhere, waving as our Humvees passed. Even the clouds of dust we stirred up didn't deter them. And the presence of children in the streets is the best possible indicator of a low threat level.
Southeast Baghdad, at least, was happy to see our troops.
And we didn't just drive past them. First Lt. Clenn Frost, the platoon leader, took every opportunity to dismount and mingle with the people. Women brought their children out of their compound gates to say hello. A local sheik spontaneously invited us into his garden for colas and sesame biscuits.
It wasn't the Age of Aquarius. The people had serious concerns. And security was No. 1. They wanted the Americans to crack down harder on the foreign terrorists and to disarm the local militias. Iraqis don't like and don't support the militias, Shia or Sunni, which are nothing more than armed gangs.
Help's on the way, if slowly. The Iraqi Army has confounded its Western critics, performing extremely well last week. And the people trust their new army to an encouraging degree. The Iraqi police aren't all the way there yet, and the population doesn't yet have much confidence in them. But all of this takes time.
And even the police are making progress. We took a team of them with us so they could train beside our troops. We visited a Public Order Battalion - a gendarmerie outfit - that reeked of sloth and carelessness. But the regular Iraqi Police outfit down the road proved surprisingly enthusiastic and professional. It's just an uneven, difficult, frustrating process.
So what did I learn from a day in the dust and muck of Baghdad's less-desirable boroughs? As the long winter twilight faded into haze and the fires of the busy shawarma stands blazed in the fresh night, I felt that Iraq was headed, however awkwardly, in the right direction.
The country may still see a civil war one day. But not just yet, thanks. Violence continues. A roadside bomb was found in the next sector to the west. There will be more deaths, including some of our own troops. But Baghdad's vibrant life has not been killed. And the people of Iraq just might surprise us all.
So why were we told that Iraq was irreversibly in the throes of civil war when it wasn't remotely true? I think the answers are straightforward. First, of course, some parties in the West are anxious to believe the worst about Iraq. They've staked their reputations on Iraq's failure.
But there's no way we can let irresponsible journalists off the hook - or their parent organizations. Many journalists are, indeed, brave and conscientious; yet some in Baghdad - working for "prestigious" publications - aren't out on the city streets the way they pretend to be.
They're safe in their enclaves, protected by hired guns, complaining that it's too dangerous out on the streets. They're only in Baghdad for the byline, and they might as well let their Iraqi employees phone it in to the States. Whenever you see a column filed from Baghdad by a semi-celeb journalist with a "contribution" by a local Iraqi, it means this: The Iraqi went out and got the story, while the journalist stayed in his or her room.
And the Iraqi stringers have cracked the code: The Americans don't pay for good news. So they exaggerate the bad.
And some of them have agendas of their own.
A few days ago, a wild claim that the Baghdad morgue held 1,300 bodies was treated as Gospel truth. Yet Iraqis exaggerate madly and often have partisan interests. Did any Western reporter go to that morgue and count the bodies - a rough count would have done it - before telling the world the news?
I doubt it.
If reporters really care, it's easy to get out on the streets of Baghdad. The 506th Infantry Regiment - and other great military units - will take journalists on their patrols virtually anywhere in the city. Our troops are great to work with. (Of course, there's the danger of becoming infected with patriot-ism...)
I'm just afraid that some of our journalists don't want to know the truth anymore.
For me, though, memories of Baghdad will be the cannoneers of the 1st Platoon walking the dusty, reeking alleys of Baghdad. I'll recall 1st Lt. Frost conducting diplomacy with the locals and leading his men through a date-palm grove in a search for insurgent mortar sites.
I'll remember that lieutenant investigating the murder of a Sunni mullah during last week's disturbances, cracking down on black-marketers, checking up on sewer construction, reassuring citizens - and generally doing the job of a lieutenant-colonel in peacetime.
Oh, and I'll remember those "radical Shias" cheering our patrol as we passed by.
Ralph Peters is reporting from Forward Operating Base Loyalty, where he's been riding with the 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division.
loud
Iran has completed uranium enrichment equipment at Isfahan. >>>>>
How we duped the West, by Iran's nuclear negotiator
The man who for two years led Iran's nuclear negotiations has laid out in unprecedented detail how the regime took advantage of talks with Britain, France and Germany to forge ahead with its secret atomic program.
In a speech to a closed meeting of leading Islamic clerics and academics, Hassan Rowhani, who headed talks with the so-called EU3 until last year, revealed how Teheran played for time and tried to dupe the West after its secret nuclear program was uncovered by the Iranian opposition in 2002.
He boasted that while talks were taking place in Teheran, Iran was able to complete the installation of equipment for conversion of yellowcake - a key stage in the nuclear fuel process - at its Isfahan plant but at the same time convince European diplomats that nothing was afoot.
"From the outset, the Americans kept telling the Europeans, 'The Iranians are lying and deceiving you and they have not told you everything.' The Europeans used to respond, 'We trust them'," he said.
Revelation of Mr Rowhani's remarks comes at an awkward moment for the Iranian government, ahead of a meeting tomorrow of the United Nations' atomic watchdog, which must make a fresh assessment of Iran's banned nuclear operations.
In his address to the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution, Mr Rowhani appears to have been seeking to rebut criticism from hardliners that he gave too much ground in talks with the European troika. The contents of the speech were published in a regime journal that circulates among the ruling elite.
He told his audience: "When we were negotiating with the Europeans in Teheran we were still installing some of the equipment at the Isfahan site. There was plenty of work to be done to complete the site and finish the work there. In reality, by creating a tame situation, we could finish Isfahan."
America and its European allies believe that Iran is clandestinely developing an atomic bomb but Teheran insists it is merely seeking nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Iran's negotiating team engaged in a last-ditch attempt last week to head off Security Council involvement. In January the regime removed IAEA seals on sensitive nuclear equipment and last month it resumed banned uranium enrichment.
Iran is trying to win support from Russia, which opposes any UN sanctions, having unsuccessfully tried to persuade European leaders to give them more time. Against this backdrop, Mr Rowhani's surprisingly candid comments on Iran's record of obfuscation and delay are illuminating.
He described the regime's quandary in September 2003 when the IAEA had demanded a "complete picture" of its nuclear activities. "The dilemma was if we offered a complete picture, the picture itself could lead us to the UN Security Council," he said. "And not providing a complete picture would also be a violation of the resolution and we could have been referred to the Security Council for not implementing the resolution."
Mr Rowhani disclosed that on at least two occasions the IAEA obtained information on secret nuclear-related experiments from academic papers published by scientists involved in the work.
The Iranians' biggest setback came when Libya secretly negotiated with America and Britain to close down its nuclear operations. Mr Rowhani said that Iran had bought much of its nuclear-related equipment from "the same dealer" - a reference to the network of A Q Khan, the rogue Pakistani atomic scientist. From information supplied by Libya, it became clear that Iran had bought P2 advanced centrifuges.
In a separate development, the opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) has obtained a copy of a confidential parliamentary report making clear that Iranian MPs were also kept in the dark on the nuclear program, which was funded secretly, outside the normal budgetary process.
Mohammad Mohaddessin, the NCRI's foreign affairs chief, told the Sunday Telegraph: "Rowhani's remarks show that the mullahs wanted to deceive the international community from the onset of negotiations with EU3 - and that the mullahs were fully aware that if they were transparent, the regime's nuclear file would be referred to the UN immediately."
Related, recent stories:
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a-ok
Haweeja tribes declare war on Zarqawi 
Tribal leaders in Haweeja, one of the most tense areas of Iraq, have launched a war against terrorist groups linked with al-Qaeda in Iraq, headed by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They issued a declaration on February 28 allowing the killing of anyone involved in sabotage operations such as murder, abduction, property destruction, targeting of security forces, and attacks on oil facilities.
Anyone connected with al-Qaeda or engaged in such violence is deemed to be "not Muslim".
The move comes after a wave of assassinations in the neighbourhood in the last five weeks.
silly
Gitmo Inmate: Osama Called Himself 'Prophet'
A Pakistani millionaire held at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay testified that he met Osama bin Laden twice, and the al-Qaida leader called himself "a prophet."
The testimony of Saifullah A. Paracha was included in thousands of pages of transcripts released Friday by the Pentagon because of a successful Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by The Associated Press. The material was also made public last year in court filings by Paracha's lawyer.
Paracha, a New York Institute of Technology graduate, testified in English. He said he owns seven businesses, including a news agency, a construction agency and a manufacturing company in Pakistan and travel agencies in New York, Chicago, Washington and San Francisco.
In 1999, Paracha said, he met bin Laden in Afghanistan. The following year, he returned to Afghanistan to interview bin Laden for his news agency, Universal Broadcast Ltd.
"He delivered (preached) the Quran, and said he was a prophet," Paracha said. "He said very nice things, very impressive."
But Paracha denied all the accusations raised in the January 2005 tribunal, conducted to determine whether he was properly classified as an "enemy combatant." Those accusations included money laundering for al-Qaida, plotting to smuggle explosives into the United States and recommending that nuclear weapons be used against U.S. soldiers.
don't ask
UNC graduate charged with attempted murder
A witness said he entered the crowded area slowly, then sped through.
Five students and a visiting scholar were treated at and released from hospitals, the university said in a statement. Three other people declined treatment, police said.
Taheri-azar is being held on a $5.5 million bond. He was scheduled appear in court Monday. Poarch would not say whether Taheri-azar had an attorney.
Taheri-azar, who called police to surrender and then awaited officers on a street two miles from campus, is cooperating with investigators, Poarch said. The FBI has also interviewed him, but Poarch said he did not know whether he would be federally charged.
Taheri-azar told police Friday that they would find things inside his apartment in nearby Carrboro that would shed light on his motives, Poarch said. The State Bureau of Investigation searched the apartment with a bomb squad, but Poarch said they didn't find anything dangerous.
Poarch declined to offer any additional details about what police found in the apartment but said Taheri-azar's roommates have cooperated and are not suspects.
"There is no indication whatsoever that he acted in any way other than alone," Poarch said.
Taheri-azar graduated from the university in December after studying psychology and philosophy.
Vermont Losing Prized Resource as Young Depart
Poultney, Vt., was once home to two big names in journalism. >>>>>
Vermont, with a population of about 620,000, now has the lowest birth rate among states. Three-quarters of its public schools have lost children since 2000.
Vermont also has the highest rate of students attending college out of their home state - 57 percent, up from 36 percent 20 years ago. Many do not move back. The total number of 20- to 34-year-olds in Vermont has shrunk by 19 percent since 1990.
Vermont's governor, Jim Douglas, is treating the situation like a crisis. He proposes making Vermont the "Silicon Valley" of environmental technology companies to lure businesses and workers; giving college scholarships requiring students to stay in Vermont for three years after graduating; relaxing once-sacrosanct environmentally driven building restrictions in some areas to encourage more housing; and campaigning in high schools and elementary schools to encourage students "to focus now on making a plan to stay in Vermont," said Jason Gibbs, a spokesman for Mr. Douglas.
Mr. Douglas said: "There's an exodus of young people. It's dramatic. We need to reverse it. The consequences of not acting are severe."
While Vermont's population of young people shrinks, the number of older residents is multiplying because Vermont increasingly attracts retirees from other states. It is now the second-oldest state, behind Maine. Arthur Woolf, an economist at the University of Vermont, said that by 2030, there would be only two working-age Vermonters for every retiree.
Without more working people, Mr. Douglas said, "we won't have tax revenue for anything other than public education and Medicaid. There'll be no money for anything else."
The situation stems from what Robert G. Clarke, chancellor of Vermont's state colleges, calls "a perfect demographic storm" involving jobs, housing, the environment, education, even skiing.
The back-to-the-land influx of the 1960's, 70's and 80's, which once had Vermont growing faster than the country as a whole, has dissipated, Professor Woolf said. Vermont may have lost some cachet for the people often referred to as "flatlanders."
"If you live in New York or Boston and you want to get away from it all, these days it's just as cheap to fly out to Boise, Idaho, or Montana," Professor Woolf said.
Fewer babies are being born in part because Vermont has few immigrants, who tend to have larger families. Vermont has also lost many good-paying jobs, driving away many well-educated young people and further discouraging businesses.
Zachary Menchini, 21, left Shaftsbury, Vt., for Syracuse University and does not expect to return until he retires. Graduating, with interests in finance and nonprofit housing, he searched unsuccessfully for jobs in Burlington, Vermont's largest city.
"Vermont just doesn't offer many opportunities," he said. "For someone who's young and trying to make a name for himself, it's just not really the best environment."
Governor Douglas said one executive had told him: "My business is growing, my orders are increasing, my markets are branching out. I would like to grow in Vermont, but I'm not sure I can find enough workers."
The worker shortage recently forced Mr. Douglas to say he would not drive out illegal immigrants working on Vermont's dairy farms.
"I respect the laws of the United States, of course," Mr. Douglas said. "But the cows have to be milked."
There is also a serious housing shortage, with mountains and environmental restrictions barring building in many places.
New houses are mostly built for affluent second-home owners who come for skiing or summer. In Poultney, on Lake St. Catherine, nonresidents own 56 percent of the homes, up from 38 percent in 1999. In Ludlow, a ski area, year-round residents own only 16 percent of homes.
Expensive new construction "makes it a challenge for a young working family," said Frank Heald, Ludlow's municipal manager.
Vermont has the most colleges per capita in the nation and is full of out-of-state students who leave after graduating. But Vermonters often find tuition lower elsewhere because Vermont's colleges and universities get less state financing.
Besides, with the biggest city having only 40,000 people, "growing up in Vermont can feel like a straitjacket," said Nicholas Reid, 22, who was raised on a farm in Brookfield but now lives near Boston. "There wasn't a lot of opportunity for diversity."
Jennifer Black of Walden, Vt., now in Stoneham, Mass., said she contemplated returning, with two children for Vermont's schools. But jobs for her husband, a defense industry engineer, are "hard to come by" in Vermont, as are some conveniences.
"When I'm up there visiting, I think I would love to live up there," said Ms. Black, 36. "The air's so fresh." But, she added, "you have to drive half an hour to a grocery store. I can walk to a grocery store from here. There's a place where my kids can take swimming lessons readily available here."
Most people moving to Vermont are well-educated retirees like Dale Lott, 71, from New Jersey, who bought a Victorian Gothic house in Poultney for just over $100,000.
Some of Governor Douglas's proposals are controversial, like scholarships to be financed with tobacco settlement money, which some legislators want for health care.
And Daniel M. Fogel, the University of Vermont's president, says some have not grasped the seriousness of the problem. They believe a shrinking population will prevent overdevelopment, but these "antisprawl folks are the very people who tend to value very highly the environmental protections and the social programs, which the state is not going to be able to afford if the working population shrinks," Mr. Fogel said.
In Poultney, a working-class town, it seems as if many young people have heeded the call of a former resident, Horace Greeley, to "go west" - or south or east, for that matter.
"Here's another house that had a few kids, but an elderly retired couple bought it," said Jonas Rosenthal, the town manager. "These people had several kids - they're in Texas now visiting those children."
Anne DeBonis, co-president of Poultney's Chamber of Commerce, said two of her three sons had left Vermont. The third, married with two children, cannot afford a house, living instead in a duplex and renting out part of it to make ends meet.
"You spend your life raising these wonderful individuals and they leave," said Pattie McCoy, Poultney's town clerk, who has two daughters out of state and a third in high school. "You're exporting your best product, that's what you're doing."
(Origional story requires registration)
55 'Catholic' Democrats Out Themselves as Pro-Abortion - Slammed by Catholic Leaders
WASHINGTON - In a so-called 'Statement of Principles', 55 House Democrats have exposed themselves as being pro-abortion. The self-proclaimed 'historic' statement issued Monday, contains the basic message that the proponents support all the politically correct teachings of the Catholic Church such as reducing poverty and increasing access to education and health care but stop short on the Church's teaching on abortion. The letter also conveniently skips over the issue of homosexuality which has serious bearing in public life today.
On abortion, the Democrats make a lame attempt to feign agreement with the Church saying that they, "agree with the Catholic Church about the value of human life and the undesirability of abortion, we do not celebrate its practice." They propose as a solution, not granting unborn children the legal right to life, but rather efforts toward "reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies and creating an environment with policies that encourage pregnancies to be carried to term. We believe this includes promoting alternatives to abortion..."
The gobbledygook is not being bought by Catholic leadership, both lay and clerical.
Catholic League president William Donohue commented, "The House Catholic Democrats who signed this statement - and 17 of them did not - are trying to convince the public, and especially Catholics,
that one can be a good Catholic and differ with the Catholic Church on abortion."
"Perhaps the most convincing evidence that this statement is a sham," said Donahue, " is the fact that Rep. Rosa DeLauro is the point person for this effort. There has never been an abortion she couldn't justify, including the killing of an innocent child who is 80-percent born. Indeed, she previously served as the executive director of EMILY's List, the richest pro-abortion organization in the country. So with her at the helm, the 'Statement of Principle' is nothing more than a 'Statement of Politics.'"
Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, commented that the legislators had "made a big mistake" and introduced "a bundle of contradictions" into the public debate on faith and public service.
"This statement tries to soften the contradiction between creating a just society and tolerating legal abortion," said Fr. Pavone. "The voting records of these legislators are available to anyone who wants to look them up. To fail to protect the unborn, and then to say that you are 'committed to…protecting the most vulnerable among us' is a blatant contradiction."
Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, President of Human Life International (HLI), responded to the 'Statement of Principles' saying, "On the Eve of Ash Wednesday the day that marks the beginning of the Lenten Season, 'Catholic' House Democrats choose to play the role of Judas in a passion play that ends with the crucifixion of the unborn child."
"The House Democrat so-called 'Statement of Principles' is nothing more than Washington-speak for:
'We support abortion on demand and we do not care what the Church teaches.'
The 55 signatories and the full letter are available online 
Robert Brady
Patrick J. Kennedy
Silvestre Reyes
Nydia Velazquez