In the alternate universe most right wingers inhabit, Bill Clinton “gutted our military.” Here in reality, it’s a somewhat different story:
The military is falling far behind in its effort to recruit and re-enlist soldiers for some of the most vital combat positions in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new government report.
The report, completed by the Government Accountability Office, shows that the Army, National Guard and Marines signed up as few as a third of the Special Forces soldiers, intelligence specialists and translators that they had aimed for over the last year.
Both the Army and the Marines, for instance, fell short of their goals for hiring roadside bomb defusers by about 20 percent in each of the last two years. The Army Reserve, meanwhile, failed to fill about a third of its more than 1,500 intelligence analysts jobs. And in the National Guard, there have been consistent shortages filling positions involving tanks, field artillery and intelligence.
The report found that, in all, the military, which is engaged in the most demanding wartime recruitment effort since the 1970’s, had failed to fully staff 41 percent of its array of combat and noncombat specialties.
Officials with the accountability office, the independent investigative arm of Congress, found that some of the critical shortfalls had been masked by the overfilling of other positions in an effort to reach overall recruiting goals. As a result, the G.A.O. report questioned whether Congress had been given an accurate picture by the Pentagon of the military’s ability to maintain the force it needs for Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The aggregate recruiting numbers are rather meaningless,” said Derek B. Stewart, the G.A.O.’s director of military personnel. “For Congress and this nation to truly understand what’s happening with the all-volunteer force and its ability to recruit and retain highly qualified people, you have to drill down into occupational specialties. And when you do, it’s very revealing.”
* * *
Some military experts also said the gaps would be dangerous only if they continued. Michael O’Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, said the problems posed by the shortfalls would be eased if the military began to reduce its deployment in Iraq.
“We are taking a gamble here that the Iraq mission can be wound down before the cumulative problems become really serious,” Mr. O’Hanlon said.
* * *
The war, several military experts said, has scared many young people away from dangerous work.
“Prospective recruits, when they think about rewards and sacrifices of military service, realize that some positions are simply a lot more dangerous than others,” said Mr. Hosek, the personnel expert at RAND.
There are nonetheless some bright spots for the military in the G.A.O. analysis. Dr. Chu said there had been growth in the Special Forces ranks, thanks in part to a new bonus of $150,000 for those who qualify. He said bonuses were also part of the reason some jobs were overfilled.
But some military experts doubt that these small triumphs will be enough to keep the ranks - and the right jobs - filled at a time of war.
“I’m not convinced that we can cap the problem,” Mr. O’Hanlon said. “I think there’s a strong possibility the situation could worsen.”
Freedom in Afghanistan, say goodbye Taliban
Free elections in Iraq, Saddam Hussein locked up
Osama’s staying underground, Al Qaida now is finding out
America won’t turn and run once the fighting has begun
Libya turns over nukes, Lebanese want freedom, too
Syria is forced to leave, don’t you know that all this means
Bush was right!
Bush was right!
Bush was right!
Democracy is on the way, hitting like a tidal wave
All over the middle east, dictators walk with shaky knees
Don’t know what they’re gonna do, their worst nightmare is coming true
They fear the domino effect, they’re all wondering who’s next
Bush was right!
Bush was right!
Bush was right!
Ted Kennedy - wrong!
Cindy Sheehan - wrong!
France - WRONG!
Zell Miller - right!
Economy is on the rise kicking into overdrive
Angry liberals can’t believe it’s cause of W’s policies
Unemployment’s staying down, Democrats are wondering how
Revenue is going up, can you say “Tax Cuts”
Bush was right!
Bush was right!
Bush was right!
Cheney was right, Condi was right,
Rummy was right, Blair was right
You were right, We were right, “The Right” was right
and Bush was right…
Bush was right!
Bush was right!
What We’re About
What We’re Fighting For
ASSERTION: In his speech, Bush noted that “more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate - who had access to the same intelligence - voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power.”
I think I may on my way to a state of transcendental numbness. My outrage reservoirs may be drained. There’s more appalling news than a person can keep up with lately. Today alone, we have graft in Iraq…
In what is expected to be the first of a series of criminal charges against officials and contractors overseeing the rebuilding of Iraq, an American has been charged with paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks to American occupation authorities and their spouses to obtain construction contracts, according to a complaint unsealed late yesterday.
The man, Philip H. Bloom, who controlled three companies that did work in Iraq in the multibillion-dollar reconstruction effort, was charged with conspiracy, wire fraud, conspiracy to launder money and interstate transportation of stolen property, all in connection with obtaining up to $3.5 million in reportedly fraudulent contracts.
The complaint, unsealed in the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia, also cites two unnamed co-conspirators who worked in the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American administration that governed Iraq when the contracts were awarded in early 2004. These were the officials who, with their spouses, allegedly received the payments.
“This is the first case, but it won’t be the last,” said Jim Mitchell, a spokesman for the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent office. Mr. Mitchell said as many as a dozen related cases had been referred to the Justice Department for possible prosecution.
Congressional negotiators neared a final agreement Wednesday night on legislation that will extend and keep largely intact the sweeping antiterrorism powers granted to the federal government after the Sept. 11 attacks under the law known as the USA Patriot Act.
After months of vitriolic debate, the tentative agreement represents a significant and somewhat surprising victory for the Bush administration in maintaining the government’s expanded powers to investigate, monitor and track terror suspects.
Negotiators met into the night Wednesday, with last-minute wrangling over several narrow points, and were expected to reach a final agreement by Thursday. Once negotiators sign the deal, it will require the final approval of the full House and Senate, which is likely to come this week.
But civil rights advocates and Democrats were already in full attack mode late Wednesday, calling the expected deal an “unacceptable” retreat from promised restrictions on the government’s sweeping antiterrorism powers.
The agreement ensures the extension of all 16 provisions of the law that were set to expire in six weeks. Fourteen will be extended permanently, and the remaining two - dealing with the government’s demands for business and library records and its use of roving wiretaps - will be extended for seven years.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 17 - As Iraqi investigators began searching through a secret underground prison run by the police in the capital, Sunni Arab leaders furiously denounced the Shiite-led government on Wednesday, saying it supported the torture of Sunni detainees there and calling for an international inquiry.
The discovery of the prison by the American military in a raid on Sunday has galvanized Sunni Arab anger and widened the country’s sectarian divide just a month before elections for a full, four-year government.
…said torture being justified with the old “not as bad as the terrorists” defense…
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Iraq’s interior minister has defended a government facility that was found to be holding dozens of prisoners, including some showing signs of torture, saying it held “the most criminal terrorists.”
“Nobody was beheaded or killed,” a defiant Bayan Jabr told a news conference Thursday, saying that only seven of 170 detainees showed marks of torture.
“Those detainees, those criminal killers inside the bunker were not Indians or Pakistanis or Iranians,” he said, waving a stack of passports in the air. “Those are your Arab brothers that came here to kill your sons.”
He said one detainee who had been reported as paralyzed was afflicted before his arrival at the facility and had been used “by one of the terrorists” to set off bombs.
“They gave the handicapped $1,000, and he was just a beggar,” Jabr said.
…and, in a classic Rovian hit-back-at-their-strongest-point strategy, the White House continues to attack critics of the war for stating the obvious.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 - Vice President Dick Cheney joined the White House attack on critics of the Iraq war Wednesday night when he told a conservative group that senators who had suggested that the Bush administration manipulated prewar intelligence were making “one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city.”
Mr. Cheney, who was the administration’s toughest, most persistent advocate for the war in Iraq, depicted the senators as hypocrites swayed by antiwar sentiment and their own political ambitions.
“Some of the most irresponsible comments have, of course, come from politicians who actually voted in favor of authorizing force against Saddam Hussein,” Mr. Cheney told the group, Frontiers of Freedom, at the Mayflower Hotel. “What we’re hearing now is some politicians contradicting their own statements and making a play for political advantage in the middle of a war.”
And going back a day or two, we can add this little gem to our list:
The US initially said white phosphorus had been used only to illuminate enemy positions, but now admits it was used as a weapon.
BBC defence correspondent Paul Wood says having to retract that denial is a public relations disaster for the US.
A Pentagon spokesman, Lt Col Barry Venable, confirmed to the BBC the US had used white phosphorus “as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants” - though not against civilians, he said.
He said earlier denials had been based on “poor information”.
Washington is not a signatory to an international treaty restricting the use of the substance against civilians.
The US-led assault in November 2004 on Falluja - a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency west of Baghdad - displaced most of the city’s 300,000 population and left many of its buildings destroyed.
San Diego journalist Darrin Mortenson, who was embedded with US marines during the assault on Falluja, told the BBC’s Today radio programme he had seen white phosphorous used “as an incendiary weapon” against insurgents.
However, he “never saw anybody intentionally use any weapon against civilians”, he said.
White phosphorus is highly flammable and ignites on contact with oxygen. If the substance hits a person’s body, it will burn until deprived of oxygen.
Globalsecurity.org, a defence website, says: “Phosphorus burns on the skin are deep and painful… These weapons are particularly nasty because white phosphorus continues to burn until it disappears… it could burn right down to the bone.”
Britain’s Defence Secretary John Reid said UK forces had used white phosphorus in Iraq, but not as “anything other than a smokescreen to protect our troops when in action”.
The UK Ministry of Defence said its use was permitted in battle in cases where there were no civilians near the target area.
But Professor Paul Rogers, of the University of Bradford’s department of peace studies, said white phosphorus could be considered a chemical weapon if deliberately aimed at people.
He told the BBC: “It is not counted under the chemical weapons convention in its normal use but, although it is a matter of legal niceties, it probably does fall into the category of chemical weapons if it is used for this kind of purpose directly against people.”
Of course, there’s also the Bob Woodward story, which might possibly count as good news, at least if the Times is correct that it will prolong the leak inquiry:
The revelation left the special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, grappling with an unexpected new twist - one that he had not uncovered in an exhaustive inquiry - and gave lawyers for I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff and the only official charged with a crime, fresh evidence to support his defense.
Mr. Woodward’s account of his surprise testimony to Mr. Fitzgerald - reported by The Post in Wednesday’s issue and elaborated on in a first-person statement - now makes it apparent that he was the first journalist known to have learned the C.I.A. identity of Valerie Wilson, whose husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, has sharply criticized the administration’s rationale for war with Iraq.
He says that he was told in mid-June 2003 that Ms. Wilson worked as a C.I.A. weapons analyst, by an official who made an offhand reference that did not appear to indicate her identity was classified or secret.
* * *
A lawyer for Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff who has acknowledged conversations with reporters about the case and remains under investigation, said Mr. Rove was not Mr. Woodward’s source.
Mr. Cheney did not join the parade of denials. A spokeswoman said he would have no comment on a continuing investigation. Several other officials could not be reached for comment.
Woodward helped bring down one corrupt administration by trumpeting what an anonymous source was feeding him. It would be a small historical irony if he helped bring down another corrupt administration by trying to downplay what another anonymous source fed him.
Some of you may remember that one of my client papers, the Des Moines City View, was bought by new owners six months ago. They emailed me repeatedly, very eager to keep the cartoon, and then abruptly dropped it. I mentioned it here, a lot of readers complained, and the cartoon was reinstated.
Ah, but it wasn’t over yet. Last month I got this email from the editor:
I just wanted to let you know that this week, Oct. 19, is the last date we are running Tom Tomorrow. Like a ton of other papers, we need to tighten things up. There is nothing personal. Love the cartoon. Just need to utilize every bit of space we can with our salaried employees.
Thanks, Jon Gaskell
I didn’t mention it on the site because I figured, whatever, if they’re this determined to lose the strip, there’s not much I can do about it. It’s a shame, but I’ve picked up a couple of new papers lately; these things tend to even out.
I really wasn’t going to mention it until a Des Moines reader pointed this out:
I, too, am extremely disappointed to learn that “This Modern World” has been “voted out” and that Kenneth Cleaver’s Consumer Correspondent apparently has been cut, as well. There were only two features that led me, unfailingly, to pick up Cityview each week, and those two were it. What’s going on? At least give us some explanation as to the sudden disappearance of this content. Was it a cost-cutting measure, or a Gannett-like tactic of making the content more “mainstream?” Did TMW hit a little too close to home for some of your advertisers?
Jeff Ewoldt
Des Moines
Editor’s note: Actually, both “TMW” and Consumer Correspondent were pulled because our staff thought each was losing its edge, and each will be thoughtfully replaced with smarter content in the near future.
Strange. I thought they just needed to tighten things up.
Oh well. Those of you in Des Moines–please do keep me posted. I look forward to learning what the discerning editors of this fine paper consider “edgy.” Not to mention “smarter.”
Went to the tenth anniversary party last night. Doesn’t seem like that long ago that I sat down to lunch with David Talbot to hear about this crazy scheme he had for a magazine on the internet. Gary Kamiya looks back at the first decade here.
Two Iraqi men who were arrested in Iraq in 2003 but never charged with crimes say that U.S. troops put them in a cage with lions, pretended to execute them in a firing line and humiliated them during interrogations at multiple detention facilities.
Sherzad Khalid, 35, and Thahe Sabber, 37, say they were brutally beaten over several months at U.S. facilities such as Camp Bucca, Abu Ghraib prison and another detention facility at the Baghdad airport. They said the abuse occurred when they were unable to tell U.S. troops where Saddam Hussein was hiding and did not know about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Both are businessmen who were arrested in a July 17, 2003, raid in Baghdad while Khalid, of Kurdistan, was visiting friends. Both said they were supporters of the U.S. invasion.
The two men are plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First against Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and top military commanders in Iraq. The suit contends that U.S. policies during the war allowed abuse and torture. Both men say that they were tortured and degraded for months before they were released.
"That was a terrifying period for me," Khalid said through an interpreter yesterday, slowly recounting being shoved into a lion’s cage at one of the presidential palaces in Baghdad three times before soldiers lined him up for a mock execution. "I was wondering if it could be real that the American army would act this way."
It’s common wisdom that this administration has, from the outset, and right up to the present, made a habit of accusing others of what it is guilty of. I’ve always thought of that as just an effective technique — put your opposition on the defense, so that, at best, no one notices what you’re doing, and, at worst, people excuse your crimes because the other side supposedly does it too.
But when self-described Christians are choosing to replicate the history of their faith in reverse, casting themselves in the villains’ place, while somehow still claiming the innocence of holy victims, it looks more like pathology than political spin. They remind me of Alex in A Clockwork Orange, aroused by Christian iconography, fantasizing himself as a Roman soldier. Then throw in something too twisted for Alex –fantasizing himself, simultaneously, as a martyr.
Sick. Just sick, these Clockwork Christians.
I don’t know yet, if this story about the lions is really true. It sounds so insane that I’m reluctant to believe it. But I’m almost as reluctant to believe we have a vice president whose primary job at the moment is torturers’ p.r. man. And the Pentagon disclaimer — "it should not surprise anyone that detainees would make false allegations against their captors." — doesn’t carry much weight given how often categorically denied abuses have turned out to be true. Or, for that matter, how many "terrorists" have turned out to be nothing of the kind.
These "detainees," recall, were innocent — not an uncommon trait for detainees — and even supported the U.S. invasion. (I think we can assume the past tense is required here.) Frankly, I think the Pentagon has more reason to lie than they do. In fact, I tend to place a lot of faith in the word of someone who makes a statement like this:
"They just wanted to humiliate us in any shape or form they could," Sabber said. "I wish I knew why. I was sure, however, that their actions were not the same as the values and morals of the American people."
Early in Christian history, there were many who faced the same ordeal as Mr. Sabber, and, following the example of their Savior, responded with similar generosity of spirit. Forgive them, Father….
I’m sitting here in awe of Muslims, cast by "Christians" into the role of martyrs, responding in a way that reflects what, to me, is the essence of Christianity. And the essence of Islam, too, I’m sure. And every other faith. And every non-religious ethical tradition worthy of the name. It’s a reminder of how little the boundaries between religions, and between religious and secular, really matter in comparison to the difference between those who believe in the power of love to overcome evil, and those who not only meet evil with evil, but come to see it as their noblest aspiration.
According to the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, 44 percent of the public thinks torture is often or sometimes justified as a way to obtain important information, while 51 percent say it is rarely or never justified. A clear majority—58 percent—would support torture to thwart a terrorist attack, but asked if they would still support torture if that made it more likely enemies would use it against Americans, 57 percent said no.
I’m shocked that we can barely eek out a majority of Americans against torture only by including those who think it’s "rarely" justified. I’m even more shocked though, by the casual ignorance revealed by this poll, as if this were still a theoretical issue for us. There’s an ugly little chunk in there of people who are against torture unless someone comes up with a half-baked excuse. Like a half-baked chicken, a half-baked excuse still oozes blood. I’d like to believe Dick Cheney is simply a psychopath. I don’t want to believe he’s just an ordinary American, but as much as people may dislike him, it looks like, on this subject, they agree with him.
We have work to do.
I haven’t written anything the past few days not only because I was busy, but also because I was overwhelmed by the few things I did make time to read. Katherine and hilzoy, at Obsidian Wings, have been doing spectacular work fighting the noxious Graham amendment, which would — it now seems all too literally — throw innocent people to the lions. Me, I felt like I couldn’t quite wrap my meager brain around the complexities of it. It looks like the latest news is better than it might have been but worse than we have a right to expect — a compromise holding on to a few rights that Graham would have taken away, but losing others. I don’t entirely understand what that will mean in practice. The effort to make sense of it wears me down.
What lifts me up again is an innocent Iraqi prisoner’s faith that Americans are better than this, his ability to meet our brutality with love. I can’t always follow the complex twists and turns of this administration’s attempts to inflict evil. But I know that as important as it is to understand the machinations, and fight each one in turn, it is equally important to take to heart the love, the faith in our essential goodness, that we were offered. We can only win by trying to live up to the enormity of that generosity.
Once again, a conservative rant is spreading throughout the liberal blogosphere and I’m more interested in word choice. In this case, it’s Bill O’Reilly’s McCarthyite rant against his enemies and his use of the word “guttersnipes”.
What is a guttersnipe?? I just assumed it was one of those made-up conservative insults like “assclown” or “crapweasel”, but it actually appears in the dictionary :
gut·ter·snipen. : a child who spends most of his time in the streets especially in slum areas (Synonym: street urchin)
So when Bill O’Reilly is trying to find term to smear his enemies, this is what he compares them to :
I know conservatives don’t care about the poor, but when did poverty become an insult to these people?
Some far left internet smear sites have launched a campaign to get me fired over my point of view. I believe they do this on a daily basis. This time the theme is O’Reilly is encouraging terrorist attacks. Unbelievably stupid. Not unusual with these guttersnipes.
I’m glad the smear sites made a big deal out of it. Now we can all know who was with the anti-military internet crowd. We’ll post the names of all who support the smear merchants on billoreilly.com. So check with us.
Just in case you’ve been on board the international space station and missed it, here’s what O’Reilly said:
Hey, you know, if you want to ban military recruiting, fine, but I’m not going to give you another nickel of federal money. You know, if I’m the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium, and I say, “Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you’re not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead.”
And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.
Can you even imagine the response if someone as prominent on the left as O’Reilly is on the right said something that inflammatory? If Al Franken said, “Go ahead, blow up Houston”? There would be a shitstorm, and rightfully so.
This does seem likely to be a great source of amusement in the weeks to come.
Update: apparently one of the selling points to investors was the accuracy, and willingness to immediately correct misrepresentations, of the bloggers involved. I kid you not.
With today being Veteran’s Day, we should take a look back at the past year to see whose commitment to veterans goes beyond the annual ceremony at the tomb of the unknown soldier. For example, let’s take a look at this request the Veterans of Foreign Wars made back in March :
The commander-in-chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. called on Congress today to fix the veterans’ health care shortfalls in the president’s fiscal year 2006 budget.
“The administration’s budget is troubling in many ways because it’s an obvious attempt to balance part of the nation’s deficit on the backs of a disabled and aging military veteran population,” testified John Furgess, before a joint meeting of the House and Senate Committees on Veterans Affairs.
. . .
Furgess asked the senators and representatives to help make the budget fit the need and not make the need fit the budget by eliminating or reducing services while increasing costs. He also urged them to make military veterans the number one priority of the nation.
A week later, Senator Daniel Akaka of Hawaii proposed an amendment to the 2006 budget to increase spending on veterans medical care by $2.8 billion. Despite the fact that we’re in the middle of a war, the resolution failed with a 53-47 vote, with every Democrat voting “Yea” and all but two Republicans voting “Nay”. A month later, Senator Patty Murray offered a similar amendment to the Tsunami, Defense, and War on Terror appropriations bill that would provide an additional $1,975,183,000 for veterans medical care. This one also failed, largely along party lines, with only one Republican Senator voting to support veterans.
“Three billion dollars is a lot of money,” you might say, but before you chalk up GOP callousness to budgetary hawkishness, let me point you to this reliable indicator of fiscal responsibility :
The federal government’s expanding waistline (a record $427 billion deficit) has resulted from too many members of Congress believing that the United States Treasury is their own personal ATM. Our elected officials have let themselves go whole hog while letting down every hard-working American taxpayer.
. . .
For fiscal 2005, appropriators stuffed 13,997 projects into the 13 appropriations bills, an increase of 31 percent over last year’s total of 10,656. In the last two years, the total number of projects has increased by 49.5 percent. The cost of these projects in fiscal 2005 was $27.3 billion, or 19 percent more than last year’s total of $22.9 billion.
In other words, the Senate could have more than made up for the $2-3 billion shortfall for veteran care if they had simply remained as reckless as they were in 2004, rather than throw away an additional $4.4 billion. But that would require putting veterans ahead of pork-barrel programs, which seems too much to ask of the GOP controlled House and Senate or the still veto-less President of the United States.
