Dozens of former and current F.D.A. officials, outside scientists and advocates for patients say the agency's efforts to monitor the ill effects of drugs that are on the market are a shadow of what they should be because the White House and Congress forced a marriage between the agency and industry years ago for the rich dowry that industry offered.
Under the 1992 agreement, the industry promised to give the agency millions -- in the 2003 fiscal year, $200 million -- but only if the agency spent a specified level of money on new drug approvals.
Robert F. Worth and John F. Burns weigh in on Iraq. Worth's "Wave of Violence By Iraqi Rebels Kills 80 in 3 Days":
Citing the deepening violence, more political leaders added their voices to a growing movement to delay the national and provincial elections now scheduled for Jan. 30. Leaders of Iraq's majority Shiite community have responded to earlier calls by insisting that the election go forward as planned, and President Bush said Thursday that they must not be postponed.
But the political leaders who gathered in Baghdad on Sunday, mostly Sunni Arabs reprsenting about 40 political parties and individuals, said that the insurgents' campaign of violence and intimidation made credible elections impossible for the moment, and that holding them in January would achieve an illegitimate result that could provoke futher civil conflict.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/06/international/middleeast/06iraq.html?oref=login
Burns' "Marines' Raids Underline Push in Crucial Area":
The four brothers fit the profile marines have come to expect of insurgents: Sunni Arabs, with experience in Mr. Hussein's armed forces, followed by government-assigned jobs in local industries, living comfortably off a plot of government-granted land. After their capture, they were handcuffed and loaded onto an armored truck for the ride back to the base.
There, they were bundled into a detainee-processing center known among the marines as "the tent of no return," electronically fingerprinted, photographed and lined up for an iris-recognition test.
[. . .]
"It looks like the snitch in Abu Ghraib was acting on a grudge," Mr. Roussell said. "But that's O.K. We're following American principles here, and that means that we've got to be pretty darned sure we've got the right men before we lock them away. We don't want to be sending innocent men to Abu Ghraib."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/06/international/middleeast/06guerrillas.html
And jumping inside to A8, Monica Davey's "Eight Soldiers Plan to Sue Over Army Tours of Duty." Here's the opening:
The eight soldiers come from places scattered across the country, from this small town an hour northwest of Little Rock to cities in
But the eight share a bond of anger: each says he has been prevented from coming home for good by an Army policy that has barred thousands of soldiers from leaving Iraq this year even though the terms of enlistment they signed up for have run out. And each of these eight soldiers has separately taken the extraordinary step of seeking legal help, through late-night Internet searches and e-mail inquiries from their camps in the conflict zone, or through rounds of phone calls by an equally frustrated wife or mother back home.
With legal support from the Center for Constitutional Rights, a liberal-leaning public interest group, lawyers for the eight men say they will file a lawsuit on Monday in federal court in Washington challenging the Army policy known as stop-loss.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/06/national/06soldiers.html
Richard W. Stevenson's "Treasury Secretary Is Likely to Leave Soon" says "Bush has decided to replace John W. Snow as treasury secretary" and the article mentions Andrew Card, Gerald L. Parsky and "other candidates."
And in "equal time" department, after focusing strictly on the Republican side of the equation Sunday (re: intell bill), Philip Shenon (page A12) actually has some quotes from Democrats: Senator Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. It's a shame no one at the Times apparently knows how to reach Senator Barbara Boxer since she did an excellent job of outlining the hold up re: intell bill on Uniflltered Friday and on Marty Kaplan's So What Else Is News? -- maybe NY Times journalists are missing not only contact info for Senator Boxer but also can't find Air America Radio on their radio dial? (Hint, in NYC it's WLIB 1190 AM.)
Speaking of AAR, Senator Harry Reid will be on The Al Franken Show today (according to the AAR web site).
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