Morning News Roundup (16 August)

Middle East Sturm und Drang

• Seeking to counter the White House's depiction of its Middle East policies as crucial to the prevention of terrorist attacks at home, 21 former generals, diplomats and national security officials will release an open letter tomorrow arguing that the administration's "hard line" has actually undermined U.S. security.
  [...]
  Retired Army Lt. Gen. Robert G. Gard, one of the letter's signers and a former military assistant to Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara in the 1960s, said the group was particularly concerned about administration policies toward Iran, believing them to be a possible prelude to a military attack on suspected nuclear sites in that country. [LATimes]
  
  
• As for the much-anticipated international force [to monitor the Israel-Hezbollah cease fire], the LAT notes that U.N. officials "continued to haggle" about whether the soldiers will even have the authority to fire on guerillas who are fighting or smuggling weapons. The WaPo notices that no country has yet agreed to send troops. They're waiting on France, which has been expected to take the lead. But according to the Financial Times, France is now holding off until it gets assurances from Lebanon that Hezbollah's fighters will keep out of the south. [Slate's Today's Papers]
  
  
• A day after a cease-fire quieted the guns in Lebanon, Hezbollah opened another front in its struggle: rebuilding its state within a state in the poor southern suburbs of Beirut and the tattered villages of southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley. Hundreds of activists fanned out across the country; in Khiam, at times, they outnumbered the residents. Acting on the orders of Hasan Nasrallah, the group's secretary general, they began clearing rubble, pulling bodies from collapsed homes, cataloguing damage house by house, securing truckloads of food and water, and preparing to provide tens of millions of dollars in compensation.
  [...]
  For families whose houses were destroyed, a number estimated at 15,000 by Nasrallah, Hezbollah would provide money to rent another house for a year as well as buy furniture. An informed source said the group planned to spend $150 million, already provided by Iran, in coming days. [WaPo]

Climate Crisis

• Seven northeastern states have agreed to form the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, “a model rule that would create the country’s first market for heat-trapping carbon dioxide by curbing emissions at power plants.” [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• Our insatiable appetite for the big picture is threatening the planet. A scientist has warned that if half of British homes buy a plasma-screen TV, two nuclear power stations would have to be built to meet the extra energy demand. Plasma sets can use up to four times as much electricity as the old-style cathode-ray tube models. Combined with set-top boxes, digital video recorders, DVD players and home PCs, the digital home is seen by environmental campaigners as a growing contributor to the energy crisis. [Guardian via Hugg]
  
  
• A third of the world is facing water shortages because of poor management of water resources and soaring water usage, driven mainly by agriculture, the International Water Management Institute said on Wednesday.
  
  Water scarcity around the world was increasing faster than expected, with agriculture accounting for 80 percent of global water consumption, the world authority on fresh water management told a development conference in Canberra. Globally, water usage had increased by six times in the past 100 years and would double again by 2050, driven mainly by irrigation and demands by agriculture. [Reuters]
  
  
• Two new scientific studies measuring Greenland's rapidly melting ice sheet and the pace of Antarctic snowfall suggest that the sea level may be rising faster than researchers previously assumed.
  
  The papers, both published in the journal Science, provide the latest evidence of how climate change is transforming the global landscape. University of Texas at Austin researchers, using twin satellites, determined that the Greenland ice sheet, Earth's second-largest reservoir of fresh water, is melting at three times the rate at which it had been melting over the previous five years. A separate study by 16 international scientists concluded that Antarctic snowfall accumulation has remained steady over the past 50 years, with no increases that might have mitigated the melting of the ice shelf, as some researchers had assumed would occur.
  
  Taken together, the two reports indicate that global sea level rise may increase more rapidly in the coming years, though the Greenland study is based on only 2 1/2 years of data. The melting of 57 cubic miles a year from Greenland's ice sheet could add 0.6 millimeters alone, which is higher than any previously published measurement for Greenland, according to University of Texas Center for Space Research scientist Jianli Chen. [WaPo]

Domestic Potpourri

• The Big Dog bites back! Former president Bill Clinton accused Republicans of using the reported plot for political purposes and questioned Bush's national security priorities. Clinton, who generally refrains from criticizing Bush by name, said Republicans have been "trying to play politics" with the London arrests. "They seem to be anxious to tie it to al-Qaeda," he told ABC News. "If that's true, how come we've got seven times as many troops in Iraq as in Afghanistan? Why has the administration and congressional leadership consistently opposed adequate checks on cargo containers at ports and airports?"
  
  Senate Democratic leader Harry M. Reid said Bush has not done enough to keep the United States safe. "Five years after 9/11, al-Qaeda has morphed into a global franchise operation, terror attacks have increased sharply across the world, and the president has shut down the program designed to catch Osama bin Laden," Reid said. [WaPo]
  
  
• From the "Greeted as Liberators" Department comes word that George W. Bush is frustrated that Iraqi citizens aren't more appreciative of his efforts to invade and occupy their country. As the New York Times reports this morning, the president "expressed frustration" at a private meeting at the Pentagon this week "that Iraqis had not come to appreciate the sacrifices the United States had made in Iraq."
  
  Specifically, the Times says, Bush was "puzzled" by a recent anti-American, pro-Hezbollah rally in Baghdad. "I do think he was frustrated about why 10,000 Shiites would go into the streets and demonstrate against the United States," someone who attended the meeting tells the Times.
  
  We can only imagine how "puzzled" the president will be when he learns -- from a Fox News poll, no less -- that 58 percent of the American people want all U.S. troops out of Iraq within a year. [Salon's War Room]
  
  
• Yesterday on Fox News’ Dayside, panelists Michael Gross, a constitutional law attorney, and conservative radio host Mike Gallagher debated whether profiling is the answer to fighting terror. As Newshounds first noted, Gallagher argued, “It’s time to have a Muslims check point line in American airports and have Muslims be scrutinized. You better believe it.” Gallagher’s suggestion was met with tepid applause from the audience. [ThinkProgress, which includes the video]
  
  
• State ballot measures to increase the minimum wage have qualified for the ballot in Colorado and Arizona. [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]