Tag: Docudharma Times

Olympic Sized

Censorship

Brought To You

By

The IOC

McCain Tries to Define Obama as Out of Touch



By JIM RUTENBERG

Published: July 31, 2008

WASHINGTON – After spending much of the summer searching for an effective line of attack against Senator Barack Obama, Senator John McCain is beginning a newly aggressive campaign to define Mr. Obama as arrogant, out of touch and unprepared for the presidency.

On Wednesday alone, the McCain campaign released a new advertisement suggesting – and not in a good way – that Mr. Obama was a celebrity along the lines of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Republicans tried to portray Mr. Obama as a candidate who believed the race was all about him, relying on what Democrats said was a completely inaccurate quotation.

China to Limit Web Access During Olympic Games



By ANDREW JACOBS

Published: July 31, 2008

BEIJING – The International Olympic Committee failed to press China to allow fully unfettered access to the Internet for the thousands of journalists arriving here to cover the Olympics, despite promising repeatedly that the foreign news media could “report freely” during the Games, Olympic officials acknowledged Wednesday.

Since the Olympic Village press center opened Friday, reporters have been unable to access scores of Web pages – among them those that discuss Tibetan issues, Taiwanese independence, the violent crackdown on the protests in Tiananmen Square and the Web sites of Amnesty International, the BBC’s Chinese-language news, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong newspapers known for their freewheeling political discourse.

USA

Bush Orders Revamping Of Intelligence Gathering

DNI’s Authority Boosted, Document Shows

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, July 31, 2008; Page A02

President Bush ordered a major restructuring of the nation’s intelligence-gathering community yesterday, approving new guidelines aimed at bolstering the authority of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) as the leader of the nation’s 16 spy agencies.

The long-awaited overhaul of Executive Order 12333 gives the DNI greater control over spending and priority-setting, and also over contacts with foreign intelligence services — a responsibility that has traditionally fallen to the CIA, according to a Bush administration document describing the changes.

Executive Order 12333, which was originally issued by President Ronald Regan in 1981, established the powers and responsibilities of the major U.S. intelligence services.

Department Of Justice

Hiring Questions:

Who Do You Love

More?

The Constitution Or

George Bush?

Which Law Is

Higher?

Gods Law

Or

The Rule Of Law?

You Know The Answers

Beijing losing battle against Olympic smog



By Clifford Coonan in Beijing

Tuesday, 29 July 2008

With 10 days to go until the Beijing Olympics opens, the smog simply refuses to lift and the Games organisers are preparing emergency measures to clear the air ahead of the big day.

The traffic on the streets of Beijing is noticeably lighter, and many of the big steelworks and coal-fired power stations have been silenced. But the capital was still enveloped yesterday in a haze that restricted visibility to a couple of hundred yards.

For years the authorities have been trying to clear the yellow-tinged smog masking the city, including a recent batch of measures as a quick-fix solution.

Report Faults Aides in Hiring at Justice Dept.



By ERIC LICHTBLAU

Published: July 29, 2008

Senior aides to former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales broke Civil Service laws by using politics to guide their hiring decisions, picking less-qualified applicants for important nonpolitical positions, slowing the hiring process at critical times and damaging the department’s credibility, an internal report concluded on Monday.

A longtime prosecutor who drew rave reviews from his supervisors was passed over for an important counterterrorism slot because his wife was active in Democratic politics, and a much-less-experienced lawyer with Republican leanings got the job, the report said.

USA

Lawmakers Agree to Ban Toxins in Children’s Items



By Lyndsey Layton

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, July 29, 2008; Page A01

Congressional negotiators agreed yesterday to a ban on a family of toxins found in children’s products, handing a major victory to parents and health experts who have been clamoring for the government to remove harmful chemicals from toys.

The ban, which would take effect in six months, would have significant implications for U.S. consumers, whose homes are filled with hundreds of plastic products designed for children that may be causing dangerous health effects.

The Economic

Stimulus

There Was

An

Economic Stimulus?

No One

Told Me

Iraq clings to a rickety calm between war and peace

As the last troops sent in a U.S. military buildup leave, security has improved, but Iraqis tread carefully. They know no victor has been declared in the battles that will decide the nation’s future.

By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 28, 2008

BAGHDAD — The departure this month of the last of the 28,500 extra troops sent in a U.S. military buildup leaves Iraq in a rickety calm, an in-between space that is not quite war and not quite peace where ethnic and sectarian tensions bubble beneath the surface.

Politicians and U.S. officials hail the remarkable turnaround from open civil war that left 3,700 Iraqis dead during the worst month in the fall of 2006, compared with June’s toll of 490, according to Pentagon estimates.

Signs abound that normal life is starting to return. Revelers can idle away the hours at several neighborhood joints in Baghdad where the tables are buried in beers and a man can bring a girlfriend dolled up in a nice dress.

Despite the gains, the political horizon is clouded: Shiite Muslim parties are locked in dangerous rivalries across central and southern Iraq. Kurds and Arabs in the north compete for land with no resolution in sight. U.S.-backed Sunni Arab fighters who turned on the group Al Qaeda in Iraq could return to the insurgency if the government does not deliver jobs and a chance to join the political process.

Worried Banks Sharply Reduce Business Loans  



By PETER S. GOODMAN

Published: July 28, 2008

Banks struggling to recover from multibillion-dollar losses on real estate are curtailing loans to American businesses, depriving even healthy companies of money for expansion and hiring.

Two vital forms of credit used by companies – commercial and industrial loans from banks, and short-term “commercial paper” not backed by collateral – collectively dropped almost 3 percent over the last year, to $3.27 trillion from $3.36 trillion, according to Federal Reserve data. That is the largest annual decline since the credit tightening that began with the last recession, in 2001.

USA

For Obama, Hurdles in Expanding Black Vote



By Alec MacGillis and Jennifer Agiesta

Washington Post Staff Writers

Monday, July 28, 2008; Page A01

MACON, Ga. — Amanda Bass, a volunteer for Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, had already tried once to get Wilmer Gray to register to vote. But when she glimpsed him in a black T-shirt and White Sox cap again on a recent weekday at the main bus stop here, she was determined to give it another try.

This time, Gray, 21, agreed — but his bus pulled up before he could fill out the form. Bass jumped onboard and persuaded the driver to wait.

“He was someone I’d worked hard to get,” said Bass, 19. “I couldn’t let him go, not after seeing how far he’d come.”

Sometimes

Going To

Supermarket and

Looking For

Sausage and Votes

Just Ends Up

In A Whine

OIL SHOCK

This Time, It’s Different

Global Pressures Have Converged to Forge a New Oil Reality

By Steven Mufson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, July 27, 2008; Page A01

The two events, half a world apart, went largely unheralded

Early this month, Valero Energy in Texas got the unwelcome news that Mexico would be cutting supplies to one of the company’s Gulf Coast refineries by up to 15 percent. Mexico’s state-owned oil enterprise is one of Valero’s main sources of crude, but oil output from Mexican fields, including the giant Cantarell field, is drying up. Mexican sales of crude oil to the United States have plunged to their lowest level in more than a dozen years.

Shiite Militia in Baghdad Sees Its Power Ebb  



By SABRINA TAVERNISE

Published: July 27, 2008

BAGHDAD – The militia that was once the biggest defender of poor Shiites in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, has been profoundly weakened in a number of neighborhoods across Baghdad, in an important, if tentative, milestone for stability in Iraq.

It is a remarkable change from years past, when the militia, led by the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr, controlled a broad swath of Baghdad, including local governments and police forces. But its use of extortion and violence began alienating much of the Shiite population to the point that many quietly supported American military sweeps against the group.

USA

Justice, 64 years later

‘Long-overdue vindication’ comes for 28 black soldiers cleared in a 1944 lynching.

By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 27, 2008

SEATTLE — It was a crime so improbable that many had trouble believing it could have happened at all: Three black soldiers stood accused of lynching an Italian prisoner of war, found dangling from a wire on an obstacle training course at Ft. Lawton in the middle of World War II.

The subsequent trial of the three men, along with 40 other black enlistees charged with rioting, became the largest and longest Army court-martial of the war, and the only recorded instance in U.S. history in which black men stood trial for a mob lynching.

By the time it was over, 28 men had been convicted on rioting charges and two of them were also found guilty of manslaughter in connection with the 1944 hanging.

He’s Not Sure

If He

Agrees With

This Policy Or

Not

Maybe What

Day It Is

Makes A Difference

Meet Cuba’s best-known Generation Y blogger

Yoani Sanchez won the Spanish equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, but her government wouldn’t allow her to leave the country to receive it.

By Sara Miller Llana

from the July 25, 2008 edition

Havana –  Blogger Yoani Sanchez had just found out that she had won an 2008 Ortega y Gasset award – essentially the Pulitzer prize of Spanish journalism – and she was nervous. Would Cuban officials give her the exit visa to fly to Madrid and accept the prize for digital journalism?

At a cafe in Havana, as she talked about the origins of her blog and the risks she takes chronicling daily life in Cuba, she seemed distracted. No wonder; at that moment her husband was standing in a line at a government office seeking instructions on the proper visa protocol.

Ms. Sanchez’s no-nonsense – and often contentious – slices of life that she posts on her blog Generación Y (www.desdecuba.com/generationy/) have suddenly catapulted her into the world spotlight.

AIDS Funding Binds Longevity of Millions to U.S.

pen-Ended Commitment of Money Is Implied

By David Brown

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, July 26, 2008; Page A01

President Bush plans to sign a bill next week that commits the United States to spending about $40 billion over the next five years to fight AIDS overseas, a major expansion of what many consider his most successful foreign policy initiative.

The legislation also extends an implicit pledge that has little precedent in the history of U.S. foreign assistance: to continue purchasing lifesaving drugs for millions of individual people in developing indefinite period of time. countries for an indefinite period of time.

USA

California Bars Restaurant Use of Trans Fats



By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Published: July 26, 2008

LOS ANGELES – California, a national trendsetter in all matters edible, became the first state to ban trans fats in restaurants when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill Friday to phase out their use.

Under the new law, trans fats, long linked to health problems, must be excised from restaurant products beginning in 2010, and from all retail baked goods by 2011. Packaged foods will be exempt.

New York City adopted a similar ban in 2006 – it became fully effective on July 1 – and Philadelphia, Stamford, Conn., and Montgomery County, Md., have done so as well.

200,000

Listened to

What The

Man Said

That’s Incredible

China marshals Olympic spirit to rebuild

Government pumps money, manpower into earthquake recovery zone

Associated Press

YINGXIU, China – The streets here are alive with the sounds – rumbling backhoes, roaring jackhammers, clanging pickaxes – of a town being brought back from the dead.

The 7.9-magnitude earthquake that tore apart Sichuan province in May left the town of Yingxiu in near-silent ruin. Two months later, it is buzzing with activity as soldiers dig trenches for water pipes and temporary housing units rise practically overnight.

U.S. Expands Visa Program for Iraqi Allies



By ALISSA J. RUBIN

Published: July 25, 2008

BAGHDAD – The American Embassy in Baghdad announced Thursday that it had expanded tenfold its program to help Iraqi employees of the American government here, who faced threats for their work, to obtain visas and ultimately citizenship in the United States.

Although the program was established by law in January, it has become a practical reality just in the last two to three weeks as guidelines have been finalized and the embassy has brought in staff members and started processing applications.

USA

Obama has huge lead among Hispanic voters, poll finds



By Lesley Clark | McClatchy Newspapers  

WASHINGTON – Barack Obama has picked up support from nearly all the Hispanic voters who voted for rival Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries, giving him a nearly three-to-one lead over Republican John McCain among Hispanics, a poll released Thursday shows.

The Pew Hispanic Center survey found Obama with 66 percent of the Hispanic vote to McCain’s 23 percent.

The results represent a “sharp reversal” in Obama’s fortunes from the primaries, when he lost the Latino vote to Clinton by nearly two-to-one, prompting speculation that Hispanics were leery of voting for a black candidate, said Susan Minushkin, the center’s deputy director.

Obama

Gives Speech

in

Berlin

Pundits

Hold a

Whine Festival

China Presses Grieving Parents to Take Hush Money on Quake  



By EDWARD WONG

Published: July 24, 2008

HANWANG, China – The official came for Yu Tingyun in his village one evening last week. He asked Mr. Yu to get into his car. He was clutching the contract and a pen.

Mr. Yu’s daughter had died in a cascade of concrete and bricks, one of at least 240 students at a high school here who lost their lives in the May 12 earthquake. Mr. Yu became a leader of grieving parents demanding to know if the school, like so many others, had crumbled because of poor construction.

Plan Would Use Antiterror Aid on Pakistani Jets



By ERIC SCHMITT

Published: July 24, 2008

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration plans to shift nearly $230 million in aid to Pakistan from counterterrorism programs to upgrading that country’s aging F-16 attack planes, which Pakistan prizes more for their contribution to its military rivalry with India than for fighting insurgents along its Afghan border.

Some members of Congress have greeted the proposal with dismay and anger, and may block the move. Lawmakers and their aides say that F-16s do not help the counterterrorism campaign and defy the administration’s urgings that Pakistan increase pressure on fighters of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in its tribal areas.

USA

‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy is reexamined

Lawmakers review the 1993 law that prohibits gays and lesbians from openly serving in the military.

By Vimal Patel, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 24, 2008  

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is being harmed by prohibiting gays and lesbians from serving openly, a congressional panel was told Wednesday, the first time lawmakers have examined the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy since the law was passed in 1993.

Opponents of the policy told a House Armed Services subcommittee that it is hurting the military by barring the enlistment of otherwise qualified people and requiring the discharge of highly trained personnel who have publicly acknowledged their sexual orientation.

Several recent polls show that Americans are significantly more accepting of allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly, and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, has said he would work to repeal the law. His expected Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, has said the policy should be maintained.

Hey!

Don’t Listen

To Him

He’s The

Iraqi Prime Minister

Women Are Now Equal as Victims of Poor Economy



By LOUIS UCHITELLE

Published: July 22, 2008

Across the country, women in their prime earning years, struggling with an unfriendly economy, are retreating from the work force, either permanently or for long stretches.

They had piled into jobs in growing numbers since the 1960s. But that stopped happening this decade, and as the nearly seven-year-old recovery gives way to hard times, the retreat is likely to accelerate.

Indeed, for the first time since the women’s movement came to life, an economic recovery has come and gone, and the percentage of women at work has fallen, not risen, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.

COUNTDOWN TO BEIJING

China on war footing ahead of Olympic Games

Fearing terrorist threats, Beijing has deployed tens of thousands of security personnel, banned cars into the capital and is installing surface-to-air missiles near stadiums.

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 22, 2008

BEIJING — In China, the preparations for the Olympics look more like a military deployment than arrangements for a sporting event.

The government is installing surface-to-air missiles near the stadiums and setting up checkpoints to stop out-of-town cars from entering Beijing. It has enlisted 110,000 security personnel and more than 1 million citizens to protect the Games against what it says are credible terrorist threats.

Unmanned drones are to patrol the skies above Beijing for the duration of the Games, from Aug. 8 to Aug. 24. The 800-mile border with North Korea will be sealed, according to reports from South Korea. Beijing’s airport will be closed during the opening ceremony to enforce a “no fly” zone around the city.

USA

Guantanamo Judge Blocks Use of Some Statements

‘Highly Coercive’ Conditions Are Cited

By Jerry Markon

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, July 22, 2008; Page A01

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba. July 21 — Prosecutors in the trial of Osama bin Laden’s former driver cannot use as evidence some statements the defendant gave interrogators because they were obtained under “highly coercive” conditions while he was a captive in Afghanistan, a military judge ruled Monday evening.

As the first U.S. military commission since World War II got underway, Navy Capt. Keith J. Allred threw out the statements that Salim Ahmed Hamdan made after he was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001, including detailed descriptions of bin Laden’s whereabouts.

Voting

And Voting

Machines In

America A

Regular Magical

Mystery Tour

World warned over killer flu pandemic



By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent

Monday, 21 July 2008

The world is failing to guard against the inevitable spread of a devastating flu pandemic which could kill 50 million people and wreak massive disruption around the globe, the Government has warned.

In evidence to a House of Lords committee, ministers said that early warning systems for spotting emerging diseases were “poorly co-ordinated” and lacked “vision” and “clarity”. They said that more needed to be done to improve detection and surveillance for potential pandemics and called for urgent improvement in rapid-response strategies.

Threat of mass starvation looms in Zimbabwe after latest harvest fails

· Five million will need help within months, warns UN

· Families flee as many reduced to one meal a day

Chris McGreal in Harare

The Guardian,

Monday July 21, 2008

Millions of Zimbabweans are threatened with starvation after the widespread failure of the latest harvest brought on by the government’s disastrous mishandling of land redistribution, and food shortages in the shops caused by hyperinflation.

The United Nations says hundreds of thousands of people require food aid immediately because they have harvested little or nothing in recent weeks. It has warned that up to 5 million will need assistance in the coming months. A third of the population is chronically malnourished.

But attempts to assist them are blocked by a ban on foreign aid agencies working in rural areas after President Robert Mugabe said they were fronts for “regime change” by Britain and the US.

USA

Influx of Voters Likely to Test New Machines

By IAN URBINA

Published: July 21, 2008



With millions of new voters heading to the polls this November and many states introducing new voting technologies, election officials and voting monitors say they fear the combination is likely to create long lines, stressed-out poll workers and late tallies on Election Day.

At least 11 states will use new voting equipment as the nation shifts away from touch-screen machines and to the paper ballots of optical scanners, which will be used by more than 55 percent of voters.

Iraqi Prime Minister

Nouri al-Maliki

Has A

Sock-Puppet

CENTCOM

Who Knew!

Iran given two-week deadline to end the nuclear impasse



Julian Borger in Geneva

The Observer,

Sunday July 20, 2008

Iran was given a fortnight to agree to freeze its uranium enrichment programme yesterday or face further international isolation.

After a day of inconclusive talks in Geneva, a six-nation negotiating team warned the Iranian delegation that it had run out of patience and demanded a ‘yes or no’ answer to a proposal it put forward five weeks ago.

Under that offer, sponsored jointly by the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, Iran would not expand its uranium enrichment programme, while the international community refrained from imposing further sanctions. This phase would last six weeks, possibly paving the way for suspension of enrichment and more comprehensive talks.

Somali Killings of Aid Workers Imperil Relief



By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

Published: July 20, 2008

NAIROBI, Kenya – At a time of drought, skyrocketing food prices, crippling inflation and intensifying street fighting, many of the aid workers whom millions of Somalis depend on for survival are fleeing their posts – or in some cases the country.

They are being driven out by what appears to be an organized terror campaign. Ominous leaflets recently surfaced on the bullet-pocked streets of Mogadishu, Somalia’s ruin of a capital, calling aid workers “infidels” and warning them that they will be methodically hunted down. Since January, at least 20 aid workers have been killed, more than in any year in recent memory. Still others have been abducted.

USA

Obama Gets Look At Afghan War Zone

Iraqi Leader Backs 16-Month Pullout Plan, Magazine Reports

By Candace Rondeaux and Dan Balz

Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, July 20, 2008; Page A01

KABUL, July 19 — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama got his first look at deteriorating conditions in war-torn Afghanistan on Saturday, meeting with U.S. military commanders and local officials and touring part of the country by helicopter on the first day of a highly anticipated visit abroad that drew a fresh rebuke from Republican rival John McCain.

Obama, traveling as part of an official congressional delegation, landed in the Afghan capital on Saturday morning under tight security amid a surge of Taliban activity in recent weeks.

Oh

The Pain

Of

Opening Ones

Mouth

John McCain

Obama Lands in Afghanistan



By JEFF ZELENY

Published: July 20, 2008

WASHINGTON – Senator Barack Obama arrived in Afghanistan early Saturday morning, opening his first overseas trip as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee by meeting with American commanders there, and later in Iraq, to receive an on-the-ground assessment of military operations in the two major U.S. war zones.

Mr. Obama touched down in Kabul at 3:15 a.m. Eastern time, according to a pool report released by his aides. In addition to attending briefings with military leaders, he hoped to meet with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan before flying to Iraq later in the weekend.

His trip was cloaked in secrecy, which advisers said was due to security concerns set forth by the Secret Service. His whereabouts have been unknown since he departed Chicago.

Giant steelworks’ leap lets Beijing breathe in time for the Olympics



From The Times

July 19, 2008

Martin Fletcher

For 89 years the great black furnaces and mills of the Beijing Capital Iron and Steel Company – commonly known as Shougang – have been churning out pipes, plates and girders on the edge of the Chinese capital.

For nine decades, as it has transformed trainloads of iron ore into steel for everything from Peoples’ Liberation Army tanks to the new Olympic stadium, this flagship of Chinese heavy industry has also been blanketing Beijing in soot, dust and noxious chemicals.

In recent times the chimneys of its huge plant 11 miles (18km) west of Tiananmen Square have spewed forth 18,000 tonnes of particulate dust a year – the equivalent of 100 average-sized factories – and equally alarming quantities of sulphur dioxide, making it Beijing’s worst polluter.

USA

Bush agrees to ‘time horizon’ for Iraq withdrawal

In a video call with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, he says troop withdrawals still would be tied to security conditions. The shift is seen as an effort to break a deadlock in talks on security pact.

By Julian E. Barnes and Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

July 19, 2008

 WASHINGTON — President Bush has agreed to a “general time horizon” for withdrawals of U.S. combat troops from Iraq, the White House announced Friday in a marked softening of his long-standing opposition to deadlines for reducing the American presence.

Administration officials portrayed the shift, which was announced a day after a video conference between Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, as an evolution in policy rather than a fundamental change. They emphasized that withdrawals still would be tied to improvements in security conditions.

But military officials acknowledged that by setting targets for troop reductions, the new agreement was a step toward a timeline.

“The bottom line is I think there has been a little bit of a shift, or at least a shuffle,” a senior Defense official said.

Terror Funds and

The Lap

Of Luxury

So!

What About The

Terrorists?

Electrical Risks at Bases in Iraq Worse Than Previously Said  



By JAMES RISEN

Published: July 18, 2008

WASHINGTON – Shoddy electrical work by private contractors on United States military bases in Iraq is widespread and dangerous, causing more deaths and injuries from fires and shocks than the Pentagon has acknowledged, according to internal Army documents.

During just one six-month period – August 2006 through January 2007 – at least 283 electrical fires destroyed or damaged American military facilities in Iraq, including the military’s largest dining hall in the country, documents obtained by The New York Times show. Two soldiers died in an electrical fire at their base near Tikrit in 2006, the records note, while another was injured while jumping from a burning guard tower in May 2007.

India’s Government accused of buying votes



From The Times

July 18, 2008

Jeremy Page in Delhi

The Indian Government, on the brink of a crucial no-confidence motion that is regarded as a turning point in the world’s biggest democracy, has been accused of buying votes on an epic scale.

In the run-up to Tuesday’s vote, Delhi has been gripped by a frenzy of mud-slinging, back-slapping and deal-making as the Congress Party and its main rivals try to make up the numbers. An MP said this week that the Government was offering to pay as much as 250 million rupees (£3 million) for each vote in parliament.

USA

Terrorism Funds May Let Brass Fly in Style

Luxury Pods for Air Force Debated

By R. Jeffrey Smith

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, July 18, 2008; Page A01

The Air Force’s top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on “comfort capsules” to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules’ carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents.

Production of the first capsule — consisting of two sealed rooms that can fit into the fuselage of a large military aircraft — has already begun.