The latest Pew Research study shows newspapers have cut both international and national news in favor of local coverage. I support covering local news, but ignoring everything else is dangerous and sets us up for more miserable failures both nationally and internationally. We need to monitor what our government is doing in our names. Write to your local paper and ask that they include coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Tell them you want to know what your elected officials are doing.

Almost two-thirds of American newspapers publish less foreign news than they did just three years ago, nearly as many print less national news, and despite new demands on newsrooms like blogs and video, most of them have smaller news staffs, according to a new study.

The study, by the Pew Research Center and Tyler Marshall, a former foreign correspondent for The Los Angeles Times, is based on a written survey of the top editors at 259 newspapers of all sizes and interviews with a sampling of those editors.

The findings come as no surprise to anyone following the travails of the newspaper industry, racked every few days by new reports of layoffs, falling revenue, credit downgrades, shrinking page counts and declining circulation. But the Pew study appears to be the broadest attempt yet to measure how widespread the changes have been.

Sixty-four percent of the newspapers reported cutting the space given to foreign news over three years, making that the area that has suffered at the most papers as the business contracts. Only 10 percent of the editors said they considered foreign news “very essential” to their papers.

“It’s really concerning when we have two wars overseas, our economy is more global, we’re competing with economies that are growing faster than ours, and our dependence on foreign oil is one of the biggest stories,” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Almost half the papers said they had cut the human resources devoted to covering news from abroad, a striking figure given that most newspapers are small and historically have not had any reporters or editors working full time on foreign news.

“In many cases, the resource they had for foreign news was an editor pulling material from the wire services, or they were willing to send a reporter overseas in limited cases, and they’re doing less of that now, or none at all,” Mr. Rosenstiel said.

Three-fifths of the papers reported having less space for news over all, as newspapers try to save money by shifting to smaller pages and printing fewer of them. The only area cut nearly as often as foreign news was national news, which declined at 57 percent of the papers. Business coverage ranked next, reduced by one-third of the papers.

Large-circulation papers have been far more likely to reduce the space given to business, the arts, features and opinions — areas that historically have not been central to small papers.

Half of all papers said they had increased the amount of state and local news they published, especially “hyper-local” community news.

At 59 percent of the newspapers, editors said news staffing had declined over the previous three years, and that was true at 85 percent of the large papers. In the months since the survey was taken, the nation’s major newspaper chains have made some of the deepest newsroom cuts on record.

Yet the shrunken newsrooms have taken on added duties in feeding their Web sites, like producing subsites covering specific towns or neighborhoods, or posting articles in the morning and updating them throughout the day. And most papers report that their reporters’ blog posts are not edited before going online.

A majority of the editors who took part in the study said they worry about a loss of institutional memory and journalistic standards, as experienced people leave the business and a younger crew of reporters publishes more news quickly online. But almost half the editors said they were more excited than fearful about the possibilities of the Internet.

“One thing that surprised me was how optimistic the editors are,” Mr. Rosenstiel said. “They’re convinced that they can still make their newspapers better, because otherwise I’m not sure they could go to work in the morning.”

Another great article by Seymour M. Hersh.

Preparing the Battlefield

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees—the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed.

“The Finding was focussed on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” a person familiar with its contents said, and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money.” The Finding provided for a whole new range of activities in southern Iran and in the areas, in the east, where Baluchi political opposition is strong, he said.

Although some legislators were troubled by aspects of the Finding, and “there was a significant amount of high-level discussion” about it, according to the source familiar with it, the funding for the escalation was approved. In other words, some members of the Democratic leadership—Congress has been under Democratic control since the 2006 elections—were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party’s presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy.

Yet another example of how American tax dollars are being misused.

Whistle-Blower Suits Languish at Justice

More than 900 cases alleging that government contractors and drugmakers have defrauded taxpayers out of billions of dollars are languishing in a backlog that has built up over the past decade because the Justice Department cannot keep pace with the surge in charges brought by whistle-blowers, according to lawyers involved in the disputes.

The issue is drawing renewed interest among lawmakers and nonprofit groups because many of the cases involve the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, rising health-care payouts, and privatization of government functions — all of which offer rich new opportunities to swindle taxpayers.

Since 2001, 300 to 400 civil cases have been filed each year by employees charging that their companies defrauded the government. But under the cumbersome process that governs these cases, Justice Department lawyers must review them under seal, and whistle-blowers routinely wait 14 months or longer just to learn whether the department will get involved. The government rejects about three-quarters of the cases it receives, saying that the vast majority have little merit.

Disputes can stay buried for years more while the government investigates the allegations.

“Even if no new cases are filed, it might take 10 years for the Department of Justice to clear its desk. Cases in the backlog represent a lot of money being left on the table,” said Patrick Burns, a spokesman for Taxpayers Against Fraud, which advocates for Justice to receive more funding to support cases by whistle-blowers and their attorneys.

As the rhetoric about the need to attack Iran builds, let’s pause to remember what war is — what it means to those living in a country under attack and to our sons, daughters, husbands, brothers and sisters that we send to kill. Listen to soldiers as they describe war and then decide whether it is worth attacking another country that is not a danger to the US or its allies. Israel can protect itself, it has plenty of nuclear weapons.

What the media is not telling you AGAIN, is that most insiders do not believe that there are WMDs in Iran. The leaders of Iran have repeatedly said they do not favor the development of nuclear weapons. Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia and many other countries have praised Iran for its help during recent difficult times. We hear a lot about what the president of Iran says. What we don’t hear is that he is a figure head and that the country’s religious leaders rule. They have repeatedly said they consider nuclear weapons a crime against Islam.

Let’s be smarter than our leaders give us credit for.

Let’s protect the innocent children who will be killed if we attack Iran.

Let’s protect our sons and daughters from war.

Let’s focus on becoming a nation that we can be proud of again. Vote in November and hold your Congressional representatives responsible. They are destroying our country and we need to take it back.

Most of all, let’s say no to war.