Barack Obama retakes oath of office after stumble

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In a highly unusual move, President Barack Obama retook the oath of office on Wednesday after Chief Justice John Roberts led him into a stumble when he originally swore-in to become the 44th US President. Obama retook the oath in the Map Room of the White House, watched by several close political aides, one day after his inauguration at the US Capitol. ”

Are you ready to take the oath?” Roberts, wearing his black ceremonial robes, asked the president Wednesday. “I am, and we’re going to do it very slowly,” Obama said, reciting the oath flawlessly and taking 25 seconds. “We believe that the oath of office was administered effectively and that the President was sworn in appropriately yesterday,” said White House Counsel Greg Craig. “But the oath appears in the Constitution itself. And out of an abundance of caution, because there was one word out of sequence, Chief Justice Roberts administered the oath a second time.”

Obama was first sworn in by Roberts on Tuesday, resting his left hand on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible and raising his right hand to deliver the words that formally made him the successor to former president George W. Bush. But things didn’t go exactly as planned for the swearing-in of the country’s first African-American commander-in-chief. Under the gaze of more than two million crowded onto Washington’s National Mall and millions more around the world, Obama said: “I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear that I will execute the office of president of the United States faithfully, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the United States. “So help me God.” As specified in the US Constitution, the word “faithfully” precedes the phrase “execute the office,” but the chief justice, in his first presidential inauguration, read that part of the oath incorrectly. Obama paused, apparently realizing something was wrong, and after an awkward moment, Roberts repeated himself, but the chief justice stumbled again.

Obama eventually recited the line as Roberts originally said it. Two former presidents, Chester Arthur (1881-1885) and Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929) are believed to have retaken the oath after stumbling over the wording the first time. On Tuesday, Jeffrey Rosen, a US constitutional law expert and professor at George Washington University in Washington, said stumbling over the oath had “no impact. News flash: He’s president.

” Rosen pointed to the 20th amendment of the US Constitution, which provides that the president and vice president’s term begins at noon on January 20. “Lots of people have flubbed the oath, perhaps most memorably Chief Justice (William Howard) Taft, who sort of riffed and then made up his own” upon swearing in then-president Herbert Hoover, said Rosen. Where the oath calls for the president to pledge to “preserve, protect, and defend” the constitution, Taft said “preserve, maintain and defend”, injecting an entirely new word, while Roberts merely got the order wrong.

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Nawaz Sharif Declines To Meet Asif Zardari For Photo Sessions

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ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari, under immense political pressure at home, has sent at least three messages to PML-N leader Mian Nawaz Sharif for a summit meeting but the invitations have been declined because, according to a top PML-N leader “we do not want any more photo sessions in the Presidency.”

According to credible sources, the three messages were sent through different emissaries, political and non-political, in the last five days. Read More

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Qureshi calls for immediate ceasefire in Gaza

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MULTAN: Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said situation is heading towards positive direction with India, but still all is not well.

Talking to newsmen at the Multan Airport on Sunday, Foreign Minister said government’s policy statement could not be issued on the basis of newspaper reports.


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New proof: LeT man admits to Mumbai plot

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Top Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Zarar Shah captured in the crackdown on militants earlier this
month in Pakistani-occupied Kashmir, has confessed the group’s involvement in terror attacks in Mumbai, a media report said today (December 31).

However, Pakistan on Wednesday (Dec 31) issued a strong denial, with Information Minister Sherry Rehman saying that reports are false and that the Government didn’t have any information of any confession by an LeT operative regarding it’s role in Mumbai terror strikes.

The report also said Shah implicated other LeT members, and had broadly confirmed the confession made by the sole captured militant Ajmal Kasav to Indian investigators — that the 10 assailants trained in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and then went by boat from Karachi to Mumbai, the Wall Street Journal reported quoting a senior Pakistani security official.

The paper said Pakistan’s own investigation of terror attacks in Mumbai have begun to show substantive links between the LeT and 10 gunmen who tookpart in the Mumbai mission. Pakistani security officials were quoted as saying that a top Lashkar commander, Zarar Shah, has admitted a role in the Mumbai attack during interrogation.

The paper quoted a person familiar with investigation as saying that Shah also admitted that the attackers spent at least a few weeks in Karachi, training in urban combat to hone skills they would use in their assault. The disclosure, it said, could add new international pressure on Pakistan to accept that the attacks, which left 183 dead in India, originated within its borders and to prosecute or extradite the suspects.

That raises difficult and potentially destabilising issues for the country’s new civilian government, its military and the spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence — which is conducting interrogations of militants it once cultivated as partners, the Journal said.

“He is singing,” the security official said of Shah.

The admission, the official told the paper, is backed up by US intercepts of a phone call between Shah and one of the attackers at the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, the site of a 60-hour confrontation with Indian security forces.

A second person familiar with the investigation was quoted by the Journal as saying that Shah told Pakistani interrogators that he was one of the key planners of the operation, and that he spoke with the attackers during the rampage to give them advice and keep them focused.

Shah, the paper said, was picked up along with fellow Lashkar commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi during the military camp raids in PoK.

The probe, the Journal said, also is stress-testing an uncomfortable shift under way at Pakistan’s spy agency — and the government — since the election of civilian leadership replacing the military-led regime earlier this year.

Military and intelligence officials, it says, acknowledge they have long seen India as their primary enemy and Islamist extremists such as Lashkar as allies. But now the ISI is in the midst of being revamped, and its ranks purged of those seen as too soft on Islamic militants.

That revamp and the Mumbai attacks are in turn putting pressure on the civilian leadership, which risks a backlash among the population — and among elements of ISI and the military — if it is too accommodating to India.

“The ISI can make or break any regime in Pakistan,” retired Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, a former army chief, was quoted as saying. “Don’t fight the ISI.”

The delicate politics of the Mumbai investigation, the Journal said, have given the spy agency renewed sway just when the government was trying to limit its influence. A Western diplomat told the paper that the question now is what Pakistan will do with the evidence it is developing.

The big fear in the West and India is a repeat of what happened after a 2001 attack on India’s parliament, which led to the ban on Lashkar.

Top militant leaders were arrested only to be released months later, the Journal noted. Lashkar and other groups continued to operate openly, even though formal ISI links were scaled back or closed, the diplomat was quoted as saying.

“They’ve got the guys. They have the confessions. What do they do now?” the diplomat said. “We need to see that this is more than a show. We want to see the entire infrastructure of terror dismantled. There needs to be real prosecutions this time.”

A spokesman for Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Farhatullah Babar, was quoted as saying yesterday that he wasn’t aware of the Pakistani investigation yet producing any links between Lashkar militants and the Mumbai attacks. (Read more)

“The Interior Ministry has already stated that the government of Pakistan has not been furnished with any evidence,” he said.

The Pakistani security official, it said, cautioned that the investigation is still in early stages and a “more full picture” could emerge once India decides to share more information.

Pakistani authorities didn’t have evidence that LeT was involved in the attacks before the militants’ arrest in PoK, the security official claimed. They were captured based only on initial guidance from US and British authorities.

(With inputs from agencies)

( This post is from an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by APakistanNews.Com.)

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Mumbai Attack’s Link Found By Pakistan

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NEW YORK: Pakistani investigators have unearthed substantive links between the gunmen who attacked Mumbai in November and a banned militant group, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The newspaper said that at least one top LeT leader, Zarar Shah, captured in a raid early this month in Azad Kashmir, had confessed to the group’s involvement in the attack.
“He is singing,” an unidentified Pakistani security official told the Journal, referring to Shah.
“The disclosure could add new international pressure on Pakistan to accept that the attacks, which left 171 dead in India, originated within its borders and to prosecute or extradite the suspects,” the newspaper said in a dispatch from Islamabad. “That raises difficult and potentially destabilising issues for the country’s new civilian government, its military and the spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence - which is conducting interrogations of militants it once cultivated as partners”.
India’s accusation of a Pakistani link to the assault on Mumbai has revived old hostilities between the nuclear-armed rivals and raised fears of conflict.
Pakistan has condemned the Mumbai attacks and has denied any state role, blaming ‘non-state actors’.
Shah’s admission was backed up by US intercepts of a telephone call between Shah and one of the attackers during the assault, the Pakistani security official told the newspaper.
Shah told interrogators that he was one of the main planners of the assault and he had spoken to the attackers during the rampage to give them advice and keep them focused, the newspaper cited a second person familiar with the investigation as saying.
Shah had implicated other LeT members, and had broadly confirmed the account the sole captured gunman told Indian investigators, the second person told the newspaper

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