NEWS Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2006 - The Michigan Daily - 7 DEFENSE Continued from page 1A Judging by the initial reac- tion, it seems like this may be a poor business plan for the site. Anger enough users, reason follows, and you won't be the seventh most visited site on the Internet anymore. The question is whether the voices of the angered are simply louder than the voices of the pleased. Are the majority of stu- dents happy with this change? Are they going to check their accounts more frequently? That's clearly what the Facebook staff is banking on. After all, did you become more or less interested when the site added a feature that shows you which of your friends have recently tagged photographs? They're betting on our innate curiosity. Martha Stewart once said that if you don't like gossip, you don't like people. This is instant gossip. You don't have to wait to hear until lunch Sunday to hear about what your friend did at party Saturday night. Now you can have immedi- ate documentation, often involving photographs and blog posts. It won't be long before there will be video and audio, too. I should use this sce to urge you to join the otest, to go back to the daywhere you could only post o pho- tograph, usually one ithout decadent sexual, alcollic or narcotic-laden undtones. That's what I'd do if were listening to my consence. Except I'm too buscheck- ing the site. As of 4:55 p.m.Aman- da Freebeck left t' group "Sex and the City. As of 11:26 p.m., Kaitl Ford has removed "Bar lntheon Wandering arouns Rome for hours and hos at a time" from her infests. As of 11:38 p.m., she is put it back. IRAN Continued from page 1A affected by secularism for the last 150 years. But, he added: "Such a change has begun." It was not clear whether Ahmadinejad intended to take immediate specific measures, or was just urging the students to rally. Ahmadinejad, in his role as head of the coun- try's Council of Cultural Revolution, would have the authority to make such changes himself. But his comments seemed designed to encourage hard-line stu- dents to begin a pressure campaign on their own, thus putting a squeeze on universities. "This is the beginning of a so-called cultural revolu- tion. Ahmadinejad and his allies plan to sweep their opponents from the uni- versities," said Saeed Al-e Agha, a Tehran University professor. "They want to rule the brains of youth there." "Ahmadinejad wants to settle scores with the most important center of critics and opposition and close the door to any opponent before municipal elections in late November," said Kouhyar Goodarzi, a human rights activist. "But his move may prompt a new round of stu- dent unrest." Liberal and secular pro- fessors teach at universities around the country, but they are a minority. Most are politically passive and do not identify with either the hard- liners or the liberal camp. Public opinion is difficult to gauge because of a lack of independent opinion polls. But Ahmadinejad must tread carefully among various fac- tions, and strong moderate voices remain. Hard-liners increasingly control the top rungs of gov- ernment but still encounter resistance from some mem- bers of the public. Moderates also remain in government. Even among conservatives, there are different goals and powerful political factions. It remains unclear, for example, how tightly Ahma- dinejad controls the govern- ment, or the exact nature of his relationship with the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Ahmadinejad surprised his conservative backers in April by deciding that women could attend soccer games, but Khamenei didn't agree and the supreme lead- er's view prevailed. Shortly after the Iranian revolution, Tehran fired hundreds of liberal and left- ist university teachers and expelled many students. It had a brief period of reform in the 1990s under then-President Mohammad Khatami, but hard-line fac- tions cracked down then, too, especially on university students, dissidents and jour- nalists. "It's horrible. I did not expect at all that Ahmadine- jad ... would try to deprive others of their jobs because of political differences," Reza, a university graduate who did not wish to be iden- tified further for fear of retal- iation, said of the president's statement Tuesday. In spite of Ahmadinejad's bluster, the purge has not yet taken place, a human rights activist pointed out. "At the moment, these words haven't been followed with actions;" said Hadi Ghaemi, a researcher on Iran for the New York-based Human Rights Watch. But they could signal a coming crackdown, he added. Ghaemi cautioned the international community not to be "fixated" on the Irani- an nuclear issue. "We should not forget about human rights violations within the country," he said. FACEBOOK Continued from page 1A Although the technology is new, par- ent and student concerns are not. Levy said complaints have also been based on information ranging from the roommate's address to comments made during phone conversations. No room changes have beengranted based on Facebook-related concen, Levy said. The University is attempting todapt to students using Facebook and sinsr sites by sending them their roommates'iforma- tion earlier than ever before, givingtudents a chance to get to know their roomates in July instead of September. Bush: Without U.S. in Iraq, Osama would be like Hitler President tells voters that terrrorist threat is not diminished from five years ago WASHINGTON (AP) - Quoting repeatedly from Osama bin Laden, President Bush said yesterday that pull- ing U.S. troops out of Iraq would fulfill the terrorist leader's wishes and propel him into a more powerful global threat in the mold of Adolf Hitler. With two months until an Election Day that hinges large- ly on national security, Bush laid out bin Laden's vision in detail, including new revelations from previously unre- ported documents. Voters were never more united behind the president than in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, and his speech was designed to convince Americans that the threat has not faded five years later. Democrats have been increasing their criticism of the president's policies in Iraq as the congressional elections approach, with the latest salvo coming in a letter Monday that suggested he fire Defense Secretary Donald H. Rums- feld. The White House rejected the idea, both in a written response from chief of staff Joshua Bolten and in a lengthy verbal rebuttal from spokesman Tony Snow. "It's not going to happen," Snow said. "Creating Don Rumsfeld as a bogeyman may make for good politics but would make for very lousy strategy at this time:' To make the administration's strategy more clear, the White House yesterday published a 23-page booklet called "National Strategy for Combating Terrorism," which Bush described as an unclassified version of the strategy he's been pursuing since Sept. 11, 2001. The booklet's conclu- sion: "Since the Sept. 11 attacks, America is safer, but we are not yet safe." Democrats dismissed Bush's actions as a public relations strategy that avoided real solutions. "A new glossy strategy paper doesn't take the place of real change that will make our country safer" said Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis. "If President Bush had unleashed the American military to do the job at Tora Bora four years ago and killed Osama bin Laden, he wouldn't have to quote this barbarian's words today;' said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. "Because President Bush lost focus on the killers who attacked us and instead launched a disastrous war in Iraq, today Osama bin Laden and his henchmen still find sanctuary in the no man's land between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they still plot attacks against America:' Bush's speech was the second in a series linked to next week's anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. It was delivered to the Military Officers Association of America in a hotel ballroom filled with U.S. troops, including several injured in the war, and with diplomatic representatives of foreign countries that have suffered terrorist attacks. Later, the White House said Bush was extending for one- year the national emergency he declared following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks because the "terrorist threat continues" and measures adopted to deal with that emergency must remain in effect. Bush planned a third speech today from the White House, laying out his plan to change the law so that detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, can be tried for crimes before military commissions. The administration also was expected to brief lawmakers today on a new Army field manual that would set guidelines for the treatment of military detainees. Congress passed legislation late last year requiring military interrogators to follow the manual, which abided by Geneva Convention standards. Bush argued yesterday that history will look favorably on his currently unpopular war strategy. "History teaches that underestimating the words of evil and ambitious men is a terrible mistake" the president said. "Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them. The question is: Will we listen? Will we pay attention to what these evil men say?" To make his case,the White House cited previously unre- leased documents including a copy of the al-Qaida charter found by coalition forces in Afghanistan that says hostilities will continue until everyone believes in Allah. One document Bush cited was what he called "a grisly al-Qaida manual" found in 2000 by British police during an anti-terrorist raid in London, which included a chapter called "Guidelines for Beating and Killing Hostages." He also cited what he said was a captured al-Qaida document found during a recent raid in Iraq. He said it described plans totake over Iraq's western Anbar province and set up a governing structure including an education department, a social services department, a justice department and an execution unit. The White House also unveiled a letter from bin Laden to Taliban leader Mullah Omar in which he wrote about plans for a "media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government" so the people will pressure leaders to retreat in the fight. This June 2006 photo provided by Devon Energy Corporation shows the Jack 2 el located in the Gulf of Mexico, approximately 170 miles southwest of New Orleans in approximately 7,000 feet of water. Oil com say tests may mean significant discovery * Find could be the biggest in U.S. in 38 years, but fuel yield is still far away WASHINGTON (AP) - Move over, Alas- ka. Geoscientists have made what may be the nation's largest oil discovery off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas. It could be the biggest domestic oil find in 38 years, but production is years away, and even then it won't reverse America's growing reli- ance on imports or have any meaningful effect at the gasoline pump. A group led by Chevron Corp. has tapped a petroleum pool that lies 270 miles south of New Orleans - and almost four miles beneath the ocean floor - in a region that could hold as, much as 15 billion barrels of oil, or more than Alaska's Prudhoe Bay. "It confirms a new frontier, a new horizon in the ultra-deep water," said Daniel Yergin, chair- man of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and author of "The Prize," the Pulitzer Prize- winning history of the oil industry. "It isn't energy independence," he added. Nevertheless, the announcement of a test well that sustained a flow rate of more than 6,000 barrels per day is a boon to Western oil compa- nies at a time when they are finding it harder and more expensive to gain access to countries such as Russia and Venezuela, and when foreign sup- plies are increasingly at risk because of political unrest across Africa and the Middle East. The proximity of the Gulf of Mexico to the world's largest oil consuming nation makes the new discovery extra attractive to hindustry; however, analysts said the new fin ould bring pressure on Florida and other state tsrelax lim- its they have placed on drilling in hir offshore waters for environmental and touisn reasons. Chevron estimated that the 30-square-mile region known as the lower tertivy, a rock for- mation that is 24 million to 65nillion years old, contains between 3 billionind 15 billion barrels. The upper end of that Inge would be enough oil to expand the count's reserves by 50 percent. But the first drop f oil from the lower tertiary isn't expected tchit the market until at least 2010 and at best will only slow' the decline in annual U.S. prodction. Some analysts urged cautionn inferring too much, too soon. "One well doesn't tell you lot of informa- tion," said Matthew Simmons, Houston invest- ment banker and author of Twilight in the Desert: the Coming Saudi O Shock and the Global Economy." At its height in 1988, the Iudhoe Bay field produced an average of 1.6 nilion barrels per day; in 2005, it yielded less tha 400,000 barrels per day. (An Alaska wildlife riuge the industry has sought to drill is believeto contain some 10 billion barrels.) Output from the lower tesary could even- tually reach 750,000 barrelsa day, or more, analysts said, but it won't sigificantly dent the country's energy imbalance. "It's a nice positive, but theJ.S. still has a big difference between its consuiption and indig- enous production," said Art sith, chief execu- tive of energy consultant JohS. Herold. "We'll still be importing more thar0 percent of our oil needs." While the industry was mostly upbeat about the potential of this new discovery, it also acknowledged some challenges, including a dearth of rigs capable of drilling in such deep water and the long lead times required to drill and complete deep-water wells. The U.S. consumes roughly 5.7 billion bar- rels of crude-oil in a year, while its reserves currently exceed 29 billion barrels, according to the U.S. Energy Department. To put that into perspective, Saudi Arabia's reserves are believed to exceed 250 billion barrels. Chevron's test well, called "Jack 2," was drilled in about 7,000 feet of water. Chevron has a 50 percent stake in the field, while part- ners Statoil ASA of Norway and Devon Energy Corp. of Oklahoma City own 25 percent each. The financial implications of "Jack 2" and other prospects in the lower tertiary are most significant for independent oil and gas producer Devon, which is the smallest of the three part- ners. Devon's shares soared about 15 percent on the New York Stock Exchange. "Relative to its size, Devon has one of the greatest exposures to the deepwater Gulf of Mexico," said Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Fadel Gheit. That said, many companies, including BP PLC, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Anadarko Petro- leum Corp., stand to benefit from their own proj- ects in the lower tertiary. "If the current thinking is correct, this is only a beginning" Gheit said. The well was drilled in the Walker Ridge area of the Gulf, 175 miles off the coast of Louisiana. It is an area the industry has been exploring for about five years.