EEUU (Continuación)

The dramatic rescue of 15 hostages this month by Colombia’s special forces underscored how far Colombia has progressed — with the strong support of the United States — from a nation under siege by narcoterrorists and paramilitary vigilantes to one poised to become a linchpin of security and prosperity in South America.

As we meet today in Washington to discuss the United States-Colombia security relationship, we want to take stock of what has been gained over the past decade and commit our two nations to continue this progress.

The remarkable transformation of the security situation in Colombia can be credited in large part to the improvement in the capacity of its military and police — an improvement in which American security assistance has played a key role.…  Seguir leyendo »

Every two minutes, someone is raped in the United States. Every year, more than 200,000 rape victims, mostly women, report their rapes to police. Most consent to the creation of a rape kit, an invasive process for collecting physical evidence (including DNA material) of the assault that can take up to six hours. What most victims don't know is that in thousands of cases, that evidence sits untested in police evidence lockers.

The backlog of untested evidence gained national attention in 2001 when Debbie Smith, a rape victim, testified before Congress. The Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Grant Program was started in 2004 with the goal of processing the nearly 400,000 untested rape kits nationwide.…  Seguir leyendo »

En Washington hace mucho calor y mientras la mayoría de los estadounidenses están de vacaciones (o se disponen a ellas), la larga campaña electoral ha llegado casi a un punto de estancamiento, situación que probablemente no variará antes del día del Trabajo, en la primera semana de septiembre. Entre tanto, ¿qué balance cabe extraer? Este año debería ser el año de los demócratas: los medios de comunicación apoyan a Obama y le dan más cancha que a su rival. La Administración Bush acaba en medio de un amplio descontento. Aunque la situación en Iraq ha mejorado, no es el caso de la economía.…  Seguir leyendo »

Last Tuesday a 25-year-old white student was wandering around Union Square in New York when she was set upon by four black teenage girls who pushed her, pulled out her earphones, and spat in her face. She was wearing a T-shirt proclaiming "Obama is my slave" that she had bought from Apollo Braun's Lower East Side store in Manhattan.

This isn't the first controversial T-shirt Braun has printed about the Democratic presidential hopeful, Barack Obama. His body of work includes such slogans as "Jews Against Obama", "Obama = Hitler" and "Who Killed Obama?" - which he told New York's Metro was his most popular yet.…  Seguir leyendo »

El candidato presidencial Barack Obama se acerca raudo y sin evidentes obstáculos al objetivo magno que apareció en su horizonte hace apenas cuatro años, cuando desembarcó en Washington como un senador sin experiencia pero con un carisma arrebatador y una ambición de acero.

Las encuestas le dan entre siete y quince puntos de ventaja sobre su rival a la presidencia, el senador republicano John McCain del Estado de Arizona. Si no tropieza ante alguna zancadilla electoral como la que quitó la Casa Blanca a Al Gore en el 2000, el 4 de noviembre el senador demócrata de Illinois podría ser elegido el primer presidente negro de los Estados Unidos; él, que nació en 1961, en plena batalla contra la discriminación racial.…  Seguir leyendo »

As a frequent air traveler who is regularly inconvenienced because my common name routinely triggers the government's terrorist watch list, I read with interest the July 17 op-ed by Leonard Boyle, director of the federal Terrorist Screening Center. I consider his column the long-awaited reply to my May 2, 2005, submission to the Transportation Security Administration in an effort to avoid the inconvenience of watch-list misidentification.

Boyle asked readers how many times they have heard this "myth": "Thousands of Americans get detained and inconvenienced daily because of watch-list errors!" Without providing evidence, he said, "They don't." I know that I do, and it is unclear how Boyle or his agency would know how many others are similarly inconvenienced.…  Seguir leyendo »

Barack Obama puede ser el próximo presidente de Estados Unidos. De momento, las encuestas le otorgan ocho puntos de ventaja sobre McCain. Y le saca veinte puntos a McCain en la opinión de la gente sobre la gestión de la economía, tema decisivo en esta elección, salvo atentado terrorista o fuegos artificiales con Irán. Las finanzas atraviesan ua grave crisis, los ahorradores están al borde del ataque de nervios, el empleo cae, se pierde poder adquisitivo y aumentan los impagos hipotecarios.

En una situación así, los ciudadanos suelen confiar en los demócratas, igual que recurren a los republicanos en las crisis de seguridad.…  Seguir leyendo »

President Bush's decision to send William Burns, his third-ranking diplomat, to observe nuclear negotiations in Geneva with Iran, represents a long-overdue shift in American policy - underlined by plans revealed in yesterday's Guardian to re-establish a diplomatic presence in Tehran. Hitherto, the US had demanded that Iran must concede the main point of negotiations, namely suspension of its uranium enrichment programme, before talks begin. Iran has responded positively to negotiations, but ruled out the US precondition of suspension. The US still states that it will only enter into dialogue with Iran if it halts its enrichment programme.

Iran's nuclear plants are all under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has stressed consistently that there has not been any illicit diversion of declared nuclear material.…  Seguir leyendo »

You have to go back to the Beatles' first US tour to find a transatlantic trip freighted with the sort of pregnant excitement that attends the one Barack Obama is about to make next week.

The faces of the crowds expected in Berlin when he arrives on Thursday will be portraits of the same devotional ecstasy that greeted the Liverpool quartet on their way from JFK to Manhattan that February day in 1964. In London next weekend Gordon Brown will play Ed Sullivan to the Fab One, hoping to borrow, just for a day, a little of the superstar charisma to bolster his own ratings.…  Seguir leyendo »

The Supreme Court decision last month overturning the District's handgun ban, though controversial, may have ended a long-standing political logjam. As a local law enforcement official, I hope this decision will allow a working coalition to transcend partisan disagreements and support strategies proven to reduce gun violence.

The ruling left almost entirely intact the gun restrictions in Maryland and most other jurisdictions. Still permitted are: licensing requirements, bans on concealed weapons, prohibitions on felons and the mentally ill possessing handguns, bans on carrying handguns in "sensitive places such as schools and government buildings" and conditions on the commercial sale of firearms.…  Seguir leyendo »

Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, has made known her displeasure at the possibility that Barack Obama might use an appearance before the Brandenburg Gate here to present himself to the world as a politician of balance and integrity. Such an event would doubtless be heavy with symbolism as well as heavily attended, and one should always be wary meddling in another nation’s elections.

Yet Chancellor Merkel’s reaction seems quite odd when you consider that in 2003 she herself, as the new and internationally all-but-unknown leader of the German opposition, sought to take her place on the world stage — and scored a public relations coup — by writing an article for The Washington Post in which she assured George W.…  Seguir leyendo »

It may be too early to proclaim an end to the "Cheney era", but Washington's decision to participate in Saturday's nuclear talks with Iran and send diplomats back to Tehran is a very significant shift. It marks a nadir for the gun-toting neoconservatives who dominated the first Bush term and for their unofficial champion, vice-president Dick Cheney, the stealthy advice-giver also known as "whispering grass".

Noisy sabre-rattling and a crescendo of shouted threats exchanged by Iran and Israel in recent weeks convinced many observers that the Middle East was on the brink of a new conflagration. They feared a "second Iraq" was in the making, again triggered by worries about real or imagined weapons of mass destruction.…  Seguir leyendo »

Don't bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They don't need it. The losses they face are not surprising, given what's happened to housing prices. They have more than enough capital to meet their cash obligations when those become due, which is the most basic definition of solvency. They also have hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of unencumbered assets that can be used as collateral for secured borrowing, were that to become necessary. The recent Treasury proposals do not change these facts.

What the companies need from Washington is policy clarity. I say this not just on the basis of my experience as an executive at Fannie Mae but also because of my experience as director of the Office of Management and Budget and my time as an investment banker in the 1980s, when I helped solve the problems of cities and states in financial crisis.…  Seguir leyendo »

Now that we have presumptive presidential nominees from the two major political parties, we need to turn our attention to the transition that will take place six months from now. One of the observations of the 9/11 commission was that the deeply flawed presidential transition of 2000 and 2001 created a dangerous period of vulnerability.

As always, the crowd coming in was dismissive of the concerns of the crowd going out. There was a mismatch between the concerns of the Clinton national security team and those of the incoming Bush team. While there were briefings between the election and the swearing-in, there was no trust — and thus no effective dialogue — between the members of the two administrations.…  Seguir leyendo »

The chief stewards of U.S. financial market policies seem to be living out an old-time movie serial. Over the past year, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have moved from crisis to crisis, improvising as they go. The distressed damsels they saved over the weekend were the government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Part of creative policymaking, as in moviemaking, is obscuring the moving parts. But it's clear even now that over the weekend the government safety net was significantly expanded, the lines between the public and private sector were further blurred, and the odds were raised that such government rescues will be needed in the future.…  Seguir leyendo »

Capitalism has triumphed everywhere, but it's time to dust off an old socialist slogan. When it comes to housing finance, the commanding heights of the economy must be nationalized. Last night's statement from Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was designed to look statesmanlike and measured, but it misses an opportunity.

You can understand why nationalization is not Paulson's first choice. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two monster housing-finance companies, between them owe trillions to their bondholders. Nationalizing that exposure would appear to inflate the federal debt, and there's been talk of damage to the nation's credit rating. Moreover, Fannie and Freddie have made or guaranteed almost half of all loans to American homeowners.…  Seguir leyendo »

Iran's latest missile tests occurred just as there have been glimmers of progress in nuclear negotiations between Tehran and the Western powers. Whether or not those talks succeed, it’s time for Washington to open a diplomatic post in Tehran.

A high-level official has told me that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is seeking President Bush’s approval to establish a United States Interests Section in the Iranian capital. This is a smart idea that Democrats and Republicans should support.

Iran is an anomaly in the Middle East. In Iran, unlike in the Arab world, America is seen as an adversary primarily by the government while most of the Iranian people see it as a country of freedom and moderation.…  Seguir leyendo »

Energy independence is the wrong goal.

Oil, like all other goods, flows toward the highest bidder. Consequently, talking about "independence" in a global economy ruled by market forces is a contradiction.

As national policy, we must protect the U.S. economy from interruptions in the supply of such a critical commodity -- whether those interruptions are related to natural or political causes. I believe that the appropriate aim is to strengthen our energy resilience to adjust to such changes.

We can do this by increasing our reliance on electricity.

Electricity can be transported only over land. Consequently, it will stay in (or stick to) the continent where it is produced.…  Seguir leyendo »

The U.S. Army has done something remarkable in its new history of the disastrous first 18 months of the American occupation of Iraq: It has conducted a rigorous self-critique of how bad decisions were made, so that the Army won't make them again.

Civilian leaders are still mostly engaged in a blame game about Iraq, pointing fingers to explain what went wrong and to justify their own actions. That's certainly the tone of recent memoirs by Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense, and L. Paul Bremer, the onetime head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. These were the people making policy, yet they treat the key mistakes as other people's fault.…  Seguir leyendo »

On the day the Colombian military freed Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other long-held hostages, the Italian Parliament passed yet another resolution demanding her release. Europe had long ago adopted this French-Colombian politician as a cause celebre. France had made her an honorary citizen of Paris, passed numerous resolutions and held many vigils.

Unfortunately, karma does not easily cross the Atlantic. Betancourt languished for six years in cruel captivity until freed in a brilliant operation conducted by the Colombian military, intelligence agencies and special forces -- an operation so well executed that the captors were overpowered without a shot being fired.

This in foreign policy establishment circles is called "hard power."…  Seguir leyendo »